The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, vol. II, by Isabel Burton.

Lady Burton's Last Words to the "Echo."

My Defence about the burnt MS. to the "Echo."

"On reading my own letter in the Morning Post, which paper has always been my best friend, I see that the few lines that explained my reasons for taking the public into my confidence are cut out, probably on account of its length. I quite understand, and see exactly what the opposite side think of it. I wrote to the Morning Post, 'I am obliged to confess this, because there are fifteen hundred men expecting the book, and I do not quite know how to get at them, also I want to avoid unpleasant hints by telling the truth.' My reasons were, that there were too many people after the book, too many inconvenient letters and questions from those who expected it and wanted to buy it, and had I not told what I did, my few bitter enemies—we all have some—would hint and not speak out, which is the worst of all things. Will you believe that I have been four months in England, and quite unable to wind-up half our affairs because my whole mornings have been taken up with answering such letters? I can satisfy all the objections. Had my husband lived, the book would now have been in the printing press; I should never have been allowed to read it, and I should have done exactly what I did to the 'Arabian Nights'—worked the financial part of it. I intended privately to offer it for three thousand guineas to a bookseller with whom my husband and I had had a long-standing friendship, in order to save myself the trouble of all I went through with the 'Arabian Nights,' and it was only on getting the double offer from the unknown man, which was more than I could ever have hoped for—not the next day, as the Press has it—that I sat down to read it. The money was quite a secondary consideration with me, though I like money as much as most women, and have got none; but no woman who truly loved a man, and cared for his interests after death, would have coveted that class of monument for his beloved memory, and only the most selfish or thoughtless of men could have expected me to give it up. Such men would not have risked one little corner of their good names, or reputations, or profession, or money, or family, or society, in connection with any book on this subject. No! they would have shoved him forward into the breach; they would have egged him on with the bravado of schoolboys to his face, in good fellowship—how often have I seen it!—and, if anything went wrong, would probably have pretended that they did not know anything about it. He would have been perfectly justified, had he lived, in carrying out his work. He would have been surrounded by friends to whom he could have explained any objections or controversies, and would have done everything to guard against the incalculable harm of his purchasers lending it to their women-friends, and to their boyish acquaintances, which I could not guarantee.

"Was it a classic? No! it was not a classic; it was a translation from Arabic manuscripts very difficult to get in the original, with copious notes and explanations of his own. But it is very difficult for me, as a woman, to tell you exactly what it was.

"I have received hundreds of letters, with all sorts of opinions, all except a few thoroughly approving my act, and some of these are anonymous, showing how careful people are with their own skins, but the most curious trait is that so many agree with me privately and write in the papers against me. I did not expect my confession to be noticed at all; it was a great surprise to me to find it discussed. I only meant to stop the letters asking for it. Moreover, I only burnt what was my own property, and at my own loss. If my husband had been alive I should not have read it, and I should not have done it. He and I both supposed that he would live for many, many years; but, nevertheless, one day, several weeks before he died, when we were travelling in Switzerland, he called me into his room, and dictated to me a list of such things as he wished burnt in case I survived him, and three documents, which he signed. One of them, amongst other things, contained the following:—

"'In the event of my death, I bequeath especially to my wife, Isabel Burton, every book, paper, or manuscript, to be overhauled and examined by her only, and to be dealt with entirely at her own discretion, and in the manner she thinks best, having been my sole helper for thirty years,' etc., etc., etc., etc.

"'(Signed) Richard F Burton.'

"I need hardly tell you that the 'Scented Garden' was not included in the list of things to be burnt. I did it purely out of love for my husband, and all the censure is as nothing to me in comparison to his memory and our speedy reunion.

"Shortly after we married we lost all we possessed in the world in Grindlay's fire, and when the news was brought to him he remained silent for a few minutes, and then turning to me, said, 'The worst part of the loss is that there were boxes full of priceless Arabic and Persian manuscripts, which I picked up in out-of-the-way places; but,' he added, smiling, 'the world will be all the better for the loss.'

"When I wrote to the Morning Post I never calculated or thought of either praise, or blame, or gain; in fact, I think any one may see I never thought of myself at all, or I should have been more worldly-wise. I shall never regret what I have done, but I shall regret all my life having confessed it, though I could scarcely have helped it, as I was ordered to do so. My husband did no wrong; he had a high purpose, and he thought no evil of printing it, and could one have secured the one per cent. of individuals to whom it would have been merely a study, it probably would have done no harm; but once you get a thing in print in England you have lost all hold of it, and the merest schoolgirl, if she is bent upon seeing it, will get to do so, and the more the mystery the keener they are.

"You will pardon me, who have spent the best part of thirty years on foreign stations, for saying, that if what people tell me be true, and if England progresses in this line at the rate she has done for the last fifteen or twenty years, let us say in another sixty or seventy years, my husband's 'Scented Garden' would have become a Christmas book for boys, on the plea that the mind should be trained to everything. I shall not have done the world such an injury as they make out. Thousands, millions, admire my husband, and many talk of their great love for him, in many instances truly, but I am the only being in the world to whom he was everything, whose soul is mine, whose interests are mine, and therefore I am obliged to harden myself against all abuse, although I quite understand the people of the opposite part, from their point of view.

"I do not understand what the Press meant by my casting a slur on his memory. Did any slur attach to him from the 'Arabian Nights'? On the contrary, great praise, and fame, and gain! Why, then, should a slur come from the 'Scented Garden'? It was not the world's slur that was to be feared. I did not think I could laugh now, but I did when I read 'that I appealed to the public for sympathy and acclaim for my own purity—at his expense,' for there is no cause for sympathy—I never thought about being pure or impure—I felt no sacrifice. I know what I saw. I knew what I had to do, and I did it. It is no use explaining, because the world would not understand me—and there is no need why it should. It never understood him whilst he lived, and it will not understand me while I live.

"Some articles in the Press say that I am uneducated. I am not going to deny it, but my husband found that I had quite sufficient common sense to trust me unreservedly with the whole of his business of whatever nature for thirty years, and he never had cause to regret it, nor did he ever do the slightest thing without consulting me. This is the only instance in which I have not co-operated. I am accused of doing it to earn money, which is rather illogical. If that was my object, why did I not quietly pocket my six thousand guineas, hold my tongue, and pass the manuscript quietly to a man who is incapable of betraying me? Out of the many hundreds of letters which I have received since the 20th of June, three offered to start public subscriptions for me, but I declined them, because this subject is, to me, too sacred for barter. The only money I have ever asked for was for the monument. I forgive those who have heaped me with unmeasured abuse, but I shall never forget it, and I thank them for showing me what sort of people were waiting for the book, and how right I was to burn it. Yet I am quite sure that more than two-thirds of this particular school would condemn what has been said and written to me, did they know it. At any rate, I am quite certain that none of it (either private letters or Press) was penned by any true friend of Sir Richard's to his wife.

"Isabel Burton."

"My confession has been twisted and turned into the following:—'That my poor husband had been engaged on a most beautiful and scientific work for thirty years, that he had finished it all but the last page, that it contained gems of science, that it was full of transcendental Oriental poetry, and that I brutally burnt it, the day after he was dead, in either wanton ignorance or bigotry.' Now, the truth is this. Ever since 1842, whenever my husband came across any information on any subject, he collected it and pigeon-holed it, and at this particular time the accumulations of twenty-seven years (since Grindlay's fire, which lost all preceding ones) were pigeon-holed in different compartments, on as many as twenty different subjects. As fast as he had finished one book, he opened a compartment to produce another, and sometimes had several books on the stocks at the same time, on as many different large plain deal tables.

"It was towards the end of 1888, that he pulled out of its nook the material which would go towards the 'Scented Garden,' and occasionally he translated bits from an Arabic manuscript called the 'Perfumed Garden,'[1] by the Shaykh El Nefzáwih, a Kabyle Arab of the early sixth century (Hegira), the French translation of which is as poor, as a translation of the original, as all the translations of the 'Arabian Nights' were (except Mr. John Payne's) until Richard's came out, which was the perfect one. The only value in the book at all, consisted in his annotations, and there was no poetry. He was engaged on Catullus at the same time, and he threw all his strength and style into the more virile work at the expense of the other. His journal of 31st of March, 1890, contains this sentence—'Began, or rather resumed, "Scented Garden," and don't much care about it, but it is a good pot-boiler,' which I interpret that he knew it was not up to the mark; but the time he was actually seriously occupied on it was from 31st of March, 1890, till the 19th of October—not quite seven months. I have often bewailed my own folly in considering that I was in any way responsible to or owed any explanation to the public respecting my husband's writings, and the only object, as I said, of my letter was to deliver myself from the bother of the letters and visits of a very large number of would-be purchasers. I never supposed for an instant that my action would excite any comment, one way or the other, much less did I suppose that any one would attach any kind of blame to my husband, any more than to the printing of the 'Arabian Nights,' which gave him so much kudos and plenty of money.

"I know that no one would have dared to blame him had he been alive, nor to have represented me as throwing a blight on his reputation, for whom I would at any moment, during a period of forty years, have cheerfully given my life. I knew that this book, being the outcome of sickness during the last two years of his life, was not up to the standard of his former works. Turner's executors burnt a few of his last pictures under similar circumstances to leave his reputation as a painter at its zenith. I acted from the same motive. I should not have dared to burn any autobiography, and every word that he wrote about himself to be given to the public is given. I consider that I have done infinitely more for his reputation and memory by burning it than by printing it. People must not tell me that I am no judge, because I wrote with him, and for him, and also copied everything for him, for the first twenty-six of our thirty years' married life, till I broke down myself, and the 'Arabian Nights' was then handed over to another copyist, I doing all the rest. He laid no stress on bringing it out, except for money's sake. When he had done the 'Arabian Nights,' he said, in his joking, honest way, 'I have struggled for forty-seven years, distinguishing myself honourably in every way that I possibly could. I never had a compliment, nor a "thank you," nor a single farthing. I translate a doubtful book in my old age, and I immediately make sixteen thousand guineas. Now that I know the tastes of England, we need never be without money.'

"Had we lived to come home together, I should have talked him off printing it, as I did another manuscript, quite on a different subject, and he knew that if I had my will, I would burn it. This did not prevent him, about eight weeks before he died, leaving me sole executrix of all he possessed, with instructions 'to sift thoroughly, and publish anything that I thought would not misrepresent him to the public,' adding, 'having been my sole helper for thirty years, I wish you to act solely on your own judgment and discretion.' Now, I judged, after long thinking, that the subject would be unpopular; that had he lived to explain it, to talk about it in the clubs amongst his men-friends, it would have been different; that I probably should have worked the financial part of it, as I did that of the 'Arabian Nights,' because I should not have read it, and large sums would doubtless have accrued from it. He always wrote over the heads of his public, and sixty years in advance of his time: I think that about fifteen people would possibly have understood it and his motives (which were always noble) if the germ was big enough to produce the good intended.

"Given fifteen people to read and understand, given a dead hero who could no longer profit from the money, who could not explain or defend himself if he were attacked by the press, who could not enjoy the praise of a small section of his fellow-men; given two thousand or more other men who could buy the book and in course of time would tire of it and sell it. It would be bought by rich Tom, Dick, and Harry. It would by degrees descend amongst the populace out of Holywell Street, the very opposite result to what the upright manly translator would have desired, and the whole contents might be so misunderstood by the uneducated that the good, noble, glorious life of Richard Burton, of which I and thousands of others are most proud and delight to honour, might sixty years hence receive a very different colouring from the truth, and be handed down to posterity in a false light.

"Many people will regret that Richard did not leave his manuscripts in the hands of a literary man, a lawyer, or a so-called friend. If he had, little men without a name would have profited by it, by tacking on theirs to his big name, money would have been made, and everybody, without distinction, who could have paid would have been pandered to, but nobody would have thought of the dead man, the soldier, the chivalrous gentleman in his tomb—he knew this. I alone stand here, and I think it an honour, for his sake, to bear with the epithets of scorn that the brutality of the athlete, and the dyspepsia of the effete—mostly anonymous Braves—have showered upon me. All that he has left will be given to the public by degrees, if it is more than a mere sketch, but it is cruel to the dead to give their sketches to the world and pretend that they are their best work, simply because they fetch money."[2]

CHAPTER XVII.

THE TWO CONTESTED POINTS BETWEEN A SMALL SECTION OF ANTAGONISTS AND MYSELF.

The "Scented Garden" Controversy.

Lady Burton's Last Words to the "Echo."

"The Second Bone of Contention is Religion.