Bibliography:
84. Life of Sir Richard Burton, 2 vols. 1893. 85. Translation of
Catullus. 1894. 86. The Library Edition of The Arabian Nights, 12 vols.
1894.
180. A Letter to Miss Stisted.
In July 1891 there appeared in Temple Bar an article by Miss Stisted,
entitled "Reminiscences of Sir Richard Burton," and upon reading it,
Lady Burton, who headed her letter "5 or 67 Baker Street, Portman
Square," wrote as follows:
"Dearest Georgy, [677] I read last night your clever and well-written
article on my darling, and send you a little notice out of The Daily
News. I congratulate you on it and on being able to write again. I was
very sorry you and Maria [Lady Stisted] would not come to the funeral.
When you come in August I shall give you a photo of the monument and
a list of the people who were invited.... There were 850 asked, 400
influenza refusals and over 500 were present, counted by the police at
the gates.... When you come I shall be I trust at No. 67. [678] Your
loving aunt Zoo."
But the comic always treads on the heels of the pathetic for it is not
probable that Miss Stisted valued very much the photograph of what
in her "True Life," she thought fit to call "an eccentric tomb" in a
"shabby sectarian cemetery." [679] The removal into 67, Baker Street,
took place in September 1891, and a little later Lady Burton hired a
cottage at Wople End, near Mortlake, where she spent her summer months.
During the last decade of her husband's life she had become, to use her
own words, coarse and rather unwieldy, but her sorrow had the effect of
restoring to her some of the graces of person that had marked her early
days. That this is no figment of our imagination may easily be seen by
anyone who compares her portrait in the group taken by Miller in 1888
with the photograph by Gunn and Stuart, [680] where she is in her
widow's cap with its long white streamers. In this photograph and others
taken at the time she looks handsome and stately. She is once more
"Empress of Damascus." The house in baker Street has thus been
described: "No sooner have you crossed Lady Burton's threshold than
you are at once transported, as if by magic, to Eastern climes. You
are greeted by a handsome woman whose black dress and white widow's cap
present a striking contrast to the glow of rich but subdued colour
which surrounds her. Opposite the fireplace is a full length and very
characteristic portrait of Burton in fencing costume. [681] Among the
curiosities are the necklace [682] of human bones given to Burton by
Gelele, some specimens of old Istrian china picked up in the cottages
near Trieste, and a three-sided mirror and two crystals with which
Burton used to mesmerise his wife. From the ceiling hung a quaint
Moorish lamp with many branches, and its softened rays often fall on a
Damascene silver gilt coffee service studded with turquoises." At the
top of the house and approached by a narrow staircase and a ladder was a
large loft, built by herself, for storing her husband's manuscripts and
books. On one side glittered a "small but tastefully decorated altar,"
while scattered around were the many relics which have since drifted to
Camberwell.
181. The writing of the Life August 1892-March 1893.
In this loft Lady Burton spent many hours examining her husband's
papers, and in the autumn of 1902 she commenced in earnest to write
his life--a work that occupied her about eight months. That she was
absolutely unfitted for the task must be clear to all who have any
knowledge of Burton. Indeed, she was quite incapable of doing literary
work of any kind properly. The spirit in which she wrote may be gauged
both from the book itself, with its frequent offences against good
taste, and the following citation from a letter to a friend: "I do not
know," she said, "if I can harden my heart against the curs, but I can
put out my tongue and point my pen and play pussy cat about their eyes
and ears." By "curs" she means those who rated her for burning her
husband's manuscripts, but in justice to her, let it be borne in mind
that she had received some letters that were quite unworthy of the
writers.
The great questions was, Would she live to complete her task? Owing to
an incurable complaint she could give only a limited portion of her time
to the work, and there were whole days in which no progress was made.
Every page bears evidences of hurry. We have already told the story
of the three appearances of Sir Richard just before the burning of The
Scented Garden MS. Lady Burton persistently declared that after the
third appearance her husband came again and never left her until she had
finished her work. "He was constantly with me," she said to Mr. Murray,
"appearing exactly as in life, and he advised and comforted me. He
helped me most materially towards the compilation of his own biography,
and gave me references to books and manuscripts so that the biography
came comparatively easy to my hand. He gave me absolutely the position
of the book in the shelf and the page and reference itself which I
required."
A letter [683] of one of Burton's friends contains the following
comments on the work. "I plainly see that the objects of writing the
Life were two-fold. First to prove Sir Richard a Roman Catholic, and
thus fit him to be buried with her, and secondly to whitewash his
escapades and insubordination. As to the first, I know he despised [684]
the Roman Catholic religion; and if any very deep sense of religious
feeling existed at all, it was of the Mohammedan rather than
anything else; but his religion was not very apparent, though he was
fundamentally an honest and conscientious man, and I think he had but
one enemy--himself. He was a very great man; very like a magnificent
machine one part of which had gone wrong--and that was his hot temper."
Lady Burton's book was finished at Mortlake on 24th March 1893, and
appeared in the autumn of that year. She then commenced the issue of the
Memorial Edition of her husband's works. The Pilgrimage to Al Medinah
and Meccah (2 vols.), The Mission to Gelele (2 vols.), and Vikram and
the Vampire appeared in 1893, First Footsteps in East Africa in 1894.
The venture, however, proved a failure, so no more volumes were issued.
She published her husband's Pentameron in 1893, and the Catullus in
1894.
Writing 11th July 1893 to Mrs. E. J. Burton just before a visit to that
lady, Lady Burton says--and it must be borne in mind that her complaint
often made her feel very ill--"Send me a line to tell me what is the
nearest Roman Catholic Church to you, as I must drive there first to
make all arrangements for Sunday morning to get an early confession,
communion and mass (after which I am at liberty for the rest of the day)
because, as you know, I have to fast from midnight till I come back, and
I feel bad for want of a cup of tea. ...The Life is out to-day."
The reception accorded to her work by the Press, who, out of regard to
Sir Richard's memory, spoke of it with the utmost kindness, gave Lady
Burton many happy hours. "It is a great pleasure to me," she says, "to
know how kind people are about my book, and how beautifully they speak
of darling Richard." [685]
Most of Lady Burton's remaining letters are full of gratitude to God,
tender and Christian sentiment, faulty English and bad spelling. [686]
"I did see The Times," she says, "and was awfully glad of it. Kinder
still is The Sunday Sun, the 1st, the 8th and the 15th of October, five
columns each, which say that I have completely lifted any cloud away
from his memory, and that his future fame will shine like a beacon in
all ages. Thank God!" St. George Burton was wicked enough to twit her
for her spelling, and to say that he found out as many as seventeen
words incorrectly spelt in one letter. But she deftly excused herself by
saying that she used archaic forms. "Never mind St. George," she writes
good-humouredly, to Mrs. E. G. Burton, "I like old spelling." She did
not excuse her slang by calling it old, or refer her friends to Chaucer
for "awfully glad."
The greatest pleasure of her life was now, as she oddly expresses it,
to "dress the mausoleum" on "darling Dick's anniversary." She says (21st
October 1893 to Mrs. E. J. Burton), [687] "I received your dear flowers,
and the mausoleum was quite lovely, a mass of lights and flowers sent by
relations and affectionate friends. Yours stood in front of the altar."
Then follows a delicious and very characteristic sample of Lady Burton's
English: "We had mass and communion," she says, "and crowds of friends
came down to see the mausoleum and two photographers."
She was glad to visit and decorate the Mortlake tomb certainly, but the
pleasure was a very melancholy one, and she could but say, borrowing a
thought from The Arabian Nights:
"O tomb, O tomb, thou art neither earth nor heaven unto me." [688]
When Lady Stisted died (27th December 1893), Lady Burton felt the blow
keenly, and she wrote very feelingly on the subject, "Yes," she says,
in a letter to Mrs. E. J. Burton, "I was very shocked at poor Maria's
death, and more so because I wish nothing had come between us." "Poor
Maria," she wrote to St. George Burton, "You would be surprised to know,
and I am surprised myself, how much I feel it." In a letter to Madame
de Gutmansthal-Benvenuti (10th January 1894), Lady Burton refers to the
Burton tableau to Madame Tussaud's. She says, "They have now put Richard
in the Meccan dress he wore in the desert. They have given him a large
space with sand, water, palms; and three camels, and a domed skylight,
painted yellow, throws a lurid light on the scene. It is quite
life-like. I gave them the real clothes and the real weapons, and
dressed him myself."
"I am so glad," she writes to Miss Stisted, [689] "you went to
Tussaud's, and that you admired Dick and his group. I am not quite
content with the pose. The figure looks all right when it stands up
properly, but I have always had a trouble with Tussaud about a certain
stoop which he declares is artistic, and which I say was not natural to
him."
182. The Library Edition of The Nights 1894.
Lady Burton now authorised the publication of what is called the Library
Edition of The Arabian Nights. According to the Editorial Note, while
in Lady Burton's Edition no fewer than 215 pages of the original are
wanting [690] in this edition the excisions amount only to about 40
pages. The Editor goes on: "These few omissions are rendered necessary
by the pledge which Sir Richard gave to his subscribers that no cheaper
edition of the entire work should be issued; but in all other respects
the original text has been reproduced with scrupulous fidelity."
By this time Lady Burton had lost two of her Trieste friends, namely
Lisa, the baroness-maid who died in 1891, and Mrs. Victoria Maylor,
Burton's amanuensis, who died in 1894.