Chapter XI: Decline in Our Well-Being (1)

END OF 1883.

A change now came over our circumstances for the worse, and here we begin the last seven years of his life, three and a half years of long gout sicknesses, on and off, without any suspicion of danger, though much suffering, and three and a half years after that, when every moment was a fear. He began now to notice in his journals when he heard the first nightingale, when the first cuckoo note in spring, and for some time past he had noticed the first swallow, and the first flight of swallows, and then their departure, with increasing sadness. For these twenty-two years of our married life I had made, as I said, our morning tea at any time from three o'clock in the morning up to half-past five, and if I came home late from any party, I found it was not worth while to go to bed; but now he began to have it at six and 6.30. On the 16th Miss Bishop had to go.

We went up very much to Opçina, where Richard got better and could walk. Mrs. Learmouth and family came to Trieste for a while, and then Mr. Steigand came to stay with us, and our old friend and Governor, Baron Pino.

He notices the death of Captain Mayne Reid on the 31st of October.

[Sidenote: _Richard's First Bad Attack of Gout_.]

On the 31st of November Richard really got so bad he alarmed me, for he nearly fainted, and I got the master of the Opçina Inn (Daneu) to help me to bring him down to Trieste, and had rooms prepared on the _other_ side of our house; and about four hours after, in his new warm room, he got perfectly well. It was a curious kind of gout, because he would seem to be in agonies of pain, and after trying no end of things, one would suddenly hit upon something quite simple that took it all away. He was well enough in a day or two to lunch on board the _Bokhara_, and also the P. and O. _Gwalior_. We got tired of consulting doctors, and we sent for the wife of the _Schinder_ (the dog-slaughterer), who lived up in the forest of Prevald, and was reported to be a wise woman. She said that Richard had _mandrone_, or flying pains. The worst was, that as soon as he was a little bit better he would forget what he had suffered, and commit some little imprudence, like going out in the _Bora_; it was so hard for him to believe he ever could be an invalid.

We went out a great many drives, which did him more good than anything. Sometimes he would pay visits. We used to go to Miramar and sit out in the gardens.

I found the best way was to take him about a great deal to different places. I always contrived that he saw plenty of people, asking amusing people to dine or breakfast. I got then an attack of peritonitis that kept me in bed for a week; fortunately Richard and I were never ill at the same time, and I was up and able to attend him when he got his gout back again.

In the night of the 19th, the Admiralty (situated below our house) took fire, and the roof was burnt out.

We were able also to keep our St. Silvester with the Gutmansthals, but so many people had gone away, that it was not the same as the year before.

On the 6th of December, 1883, he puts the following notice in his journal in red ink:--

"To-day, eleven years ago, I came here; what a shame!!!"

He notices the death of Richard Doyle the 11th of December.

1884.

At this time we were far from being well off, and we were obliged to incur many expenses for Richard's illness; besides which, I hoped he would get change of air. It may be imagined, therefore, that when the news of the death of an aunt by marriage who did not care very much for me, and whom I very seldom saw, reached me that I received the intelligence that she had left me a legacy of £500 with pleasure. All the early part of the year we had a bad time of it. Richard had insisted on going back to the big room, and once he had put on a damp coat. I always think that foreign doctors do not understand English constitutions, which can never stand starving, and they do always starve you. He went on alternately better and worse.

In all these attacks I never left his room, day or night, and I frequently used to disobey orders as to diet. When he was free from pain he was immensely cheerful, and used to laugh like a schoolboy at his doctor, who _would_ speak English for the sake of learning and practising it. "What him eat to-day?" "Pheasant, doctor!" He plunged his hands into his hair as if he were going to tear it all out. "What for you give him the wild?" (German, _das wild_, meaning game). One day after about six months he said, "You sall give him ten drops of rum in a tumbler of water for his dinner!" Peals of laughter came from the sick-bed. "Ach! das ist gut to hear him laugh like dat? Vat for he laugh?" I answered, "Because he gets a brandy-grog fit for a sailor every night, or he would have been a dead man long ago." More tearing of the hair and real displeasure. When he got over that illness he was a veritable skeleton; his legs were like two sticks of sealing-wax.

On the 4th of February Richard lost the use of his legs. After this he got better and better, and we were quite cheerful till the 14th of March. He had been moved on to a divan in the drawing-room, upon which we had made a bed, for change of air. He was so well that I thought I might take a walk in the garden, when a servant came flying after me to tell me that he was faint. I rushed up again, and found him very bad, and sent off for two doctors. They gave him twenty-five drops of digitalis three times at intervals of fifty minutes, and for two days and nights I never left his side. What the doctors had feared was a clot of blood arising to the heart, and I shall never forget the anguish of that time. What it _really_ was, though we did not know it then, was flatulence round the heart, which would have been brought away by drinking boiling water; but after two days he was so well that we could wheel him about the house in a chair. The following day he had very bad attacks of the same, and then he seemed to get quite well. He again had one bad attack, and then all was well. From that he rallied wonderfully, and he began to walk.

On the 27th of March he was allowed to go out for a drive, but even that gave him a little fresh cold. He was allowed then to sit in the garden. I had a machine constructed to carry him up and down stairs, and a wheel-chair in the garden, so that he could drive about and get out and walk a few steps with the help of my arm and a stick, if he liked.

We had a present from home of good claret and good port. He was awfully fond of port, and when he got his first glass he said, "Ah! that puts life into a man." Mr. George Paget came, and Mr. and Mrs. Phipps from the Embassy in Vienna, and Mr. Fahie from Persia, and we took drives. Richard was able to tidy his books again. The doctor came for the last time (regularly) on the 8th of April. He then went through a course of sulphur baths in the house.

During this eight months' illness he had had a bad attack of pain, and I had a mattress by his bed, and if he slept, I slept; if he was awake, I was by him; but I had been thirty-six hours on duty, without taking my clothes off, trying to alleviate the pain by various things until he slept. I then threw myself on the mattress and slept a dead sleep, and, as he told me afterwards, he woke up with the pain and groaned, and heard a sleepy voice issuing from my mattress, saying, "Oh, offer it up, dear; offer it up." I was unconscious of all this, but when after some hours I really woke, I thought he was swearing very hard, but at last I distinguished, him saying exactly in the same tones as if he were swearing, "Offer it up, dear; offer it up." I asked him what he meant, and then he told me, and he said that he had laughed so much that it had quite done him good, and he often afterwards used this expression instead of rapping out an oath when the pain came.

All this time until the 4th of June, Richard was able to be wheeled out, and to walk and sit in the garden, and to take drives with me. He was very patient, very gentle, and very cheerful too; except when he was actually suffering, and we observed rigidly all the doctor's daily orders, whether sulphur baths or medicines, only reserving the right of plenty of plain wholesome food, and some claret, a very occasional glass of port, a nightly glass of grog, and the very essence of beef by simmering the meat in a jar put into a saucepan of boiling water, or squeezing the meat in a lemon squeezer, and plenty of Brand's strengthening things for invalids. I began to perceive that the drainage left much to be desired, and I was very troublesome to my poor dear landlord, who was a personal friend; but he always stoutly maintained that the smells were in my nose, and that he could not pull down the house to please me, and it was three years before I got what I wanted.

Richard notes with sorrow the death of Admiral Glyn on February 16th.

On the 1st of April, 1884, he began his "Arabian Nights" (Calcutta edition), taking it up from the material already collected with Dr. Steinhaüser thirty years before, and I volunteered to work the financial part of it. His journal shows him to be very sorry for the death of Trübner, of the great publishing house in Ludgate Hill, and also for Charles Reade, the novelist and dramatist, who was a good friend of ours, and who died on April 10th.

On the 15th of April, 1884, we had to call in an amanuensis to begin to copy the "Arabian Nights," as, what with attending Richard night and day, and doing all his correspondence and business, I got no time to copy.

[Sidenote: _His Leave of Absence_.]

In May he obtained leave of absence, but was too weak to leave for a little while after its arrival. An incident happened which it is perhaps silly to relate, but which is uncomfortable when you have sick and dying people in the house. One girl in the house had died of consumption, and my husband was lying ill. The day the girl died, all the bells in the house kept ringing without hands, and continued for about ten days, to our great discomfort, and there were blows on the doors, as if somebody was going round with a stick. We could see the bell-pulls moving, but no hands touching them. It caused the deceased girl's family great fear, and was very uncanny.

We were able to start on the 4th of June. We had a very trying journey to Graz, which is halfway to Vienna; the train was a regular buck-jumper. Richard was quite done up three or four hours before arriving. On getting out he could hardly stand, and his head was whirling. The Hôtel Daniele was only just across the road, and leaning on me he managed to get there; I left the baggage at the station till afterwards. We stayed the whole of the next day to rest him, but had a very miserable time of it, and then went on to Vienna, which he bore very well, for it was a quiet, agreeable journey, but he had had quite enough of it when we arrived at the Erzherzog Karl Hotel.

Colonel Primrose came, and we saw Sir Augustus and Lady Paget, and our friends the Pinos. Two days afterwards Richard began to feel quite different, and he enjoyed so much seeing Sir Augustus and Lady Paget. She is one of the most charming, the cleverest, and most sympathetic of women. We left Vienna on Tuesday, the 10th, by an early train, and he was able to bear a pleasant journey of nine hours to Maríenbad, although I must say that the only two objects of interest between Vienna and Maríenbad are Prince Schwarzenberg's castle and the storks sitting on their nests on the cottage roof-tops. We went to Klinger's Hotel, and here he rapidly progressed, and went through the cure. We found Miss Bishop here, which was a great pleasure. She took us in hand, and literally drove us out for long walks. Richard was delighted with the wild strawberries, myosotis, buttercups, and daisies, and enjoyed Maríenbad very much. I found the Society for Protection of Animals, founded in 1882, very flourishing, and gave the dog-prizes. When we went for the first time on the promenade to hear the band, he looked round for a minute, and said, "My God, what a lot of Jews! Why, the whole of Noah's Ark is turned out here!" And they really did look just like the little figures out of Noah's Ark. Mr. J. J. Aubertin now arrived, so that we were four in party. From here we visited Königswort, Prince Metternich's place. It was a very pleasant life, strolling about in the forests, reading together, and occasionally having a professor to read German to us, making occasional expeditions, such as to Podhorn and Tepl. There was a very pretty concert of eight Spanish students, paying their way with guitar and bandurria. They sang lovely little Spanish songs, and charmed everybody very much. We made one excursion to Eger to see the Schloss, and the small interesting collection, which details the whole tragedy of Wallenstein at the Rathhaus. In our absence two griefs happened at Trieste. One was the death, on the 8th of June, of a very peculiar little child, whom we had taken a great fancy to and a great interest in, but whose story would not come well into this book. She had foretold her own death on this day three months before, when in good health. The other was of a poor Irish lady, who had made an unfortunate marriage, and was bravely earning her living in Trieste by giving lessons. She got suddenly ill, and the doctor on visiting her, seeing that she had no means of comfortable nursing, advised she should accompany him to the hospital. She did, and she died almost immediately, and had to be buried within a few hours, and what hurt us more than all was that nobody knew it till it was over. Maríenbad never agreed with me, and I had to let Richard and Mr. Aubertin go over to Carlsbad without me, but they were only absent a day.

A very interesting and peculiar person we used always to meet every year, was a second Cuthbert Bede from Oxford, whose real name was Mr. Robert Laing.

On return after the cure, we went back for a few days to Vienna, and then left as if we were returning to Trieste, but descending at Pöltschach, from which is a pleasant drive to Roitsch-Sauerbrunn in Steiermark, where we did a _nach-kur_. This place is not at all well known. There is no town, but there are rows of houses for patients, bathing and drinking places, a good Kur-saal, a Catholic chapel, a good restaurant, a large garden and shady walks running between the two rows of buildings, where the band plays twice a day. It is surrounded by lovely woods and mountains, and a large level country to drive upon. It is very pleasant in summer. You never see any English there, but plenty of Austrians, Italians, Hungarians, Slavs, and Jews. We there had the pleasure of constantly seeing Monsignor Strossmayer, who is an ultra-Slav and a sort of Prince Archbishop, almost a small Pope in his own country. We saw a great deal also of the Baroness von Vay Wurmbrandt, the great spiritualist. Here we stayed till the 3rd of September, leading the pleasant idle life usual at that kind of bath. We found a bath-chair which accompanied us on all our walks; we drove out, made excursions, and read and wrote under the trees.

[Sidenote: _We return to Trieste--Streams of Visitors_.]

On the 3rd of September we left Sauerbrunn for Trieste, and went on the 4th to meet Lord Northbrook, with Sir Evelyn Baring, Lord Wolseley, Major Wardropp and Major Macdonald, Lord Airlie, Lord Charles Beresford, Colonel Swaine, and others. The _Iris_ came in to fetch them. Mr. George Paget, Mr. Egerton, and Major Hoare also arrived, and lastly the Marchese and Marchesa di Guiccioli, best known to us through Byron, though that is not a source of pride to the family. Mr. and Mrs. Percival, Professor Sayce, and Mr. Myers, _en route_ to Egypt, were the next visitors, and we enjoyed their week's stay very much. Arrived also Dr. MacDouall the author, Lady Baring, Artin Yakoob Pasha and his wife, Madame Nubar Pasha, and Mr. Rowett, a great merchant from Rangoon, married to a friend of ours, Miss Ritterbandt; then came Colonel Wynne, Lady Fitzgerald, Mr. Quirk, Mrs. Reginald Talbot, Miss Wortley, and the travellers, Mr. James and Mr. Lort-Philips, _en route_ to Somali-land. So we had a lively time.

There were earthquakes all this month. The next sad thing was that Everard Primrose wrote to ask us to take his passage for Egypt, that he wanted to go to the Soudan; and he came down with Colonel Gerard, stayed a day and a night at Trieste, and we saw them off to join the Camel-corps in the Soudan on the 3rd of October. He promised on his return to stay a fortnight with us, as we had so often stayed with him. We never saw him again. He ought never to have gone; but his high spirit and breeding would not let him be a drawing-room soldier when there was service going on. A delicate man, and accustomed to luxury (especially such a life as that of military _attaché_ at Vienna), left him no strength to throw off fever, under such hardships and disadvantages as were his lot, when it took hold of him. Again we went for a short visit to Monfalcone, Duino, and Aquilea.

Being the Consul's wife, I had a good many funny experiences, and met with all possible classes and characters. One of the annoyances of a Consul, and, if they are women, of his wife, is that everybody who is not strictly honest, and is fond of making delightful journeys abroad, of which he or she boast loudly when they go back, starts with just enough money to take them out of England. They then go to the first Consul, represent themselves in distress, and get him to pass them on to the next Consul; and they make quite a beautiful tour in this way. But the poor Consul hardly ever sees a penny of the money back, and after a little experience he begins to be harder, and small blame to him. My particular grievance was, that every girl who was too vivacious to stay at home, would always come abroad to look for work, as a governess, secretary, or companion. Some were regular swindlers, some were anything but nice, and some were poor inoffensive creatures who would not have embarked on the enterprise if they had known what they would have to go through; but seven out of nine were generally very odd.

After having seen all our friends off, we went up to Opçina, where I sent out thirty-four thousand circulars for the "Arabian Nights."

[Sidenote: _Richard's Second Attack of Gout_.]

Towards the end of December, Richard had a fresh breaking out of the gout; we found that rubbing him with cod-liver oil did him a lot of good. It was a sad Christmas, but he got better the day after Christmas Day; only, as he would walk about without much clothing, and would eat sucking pig, he went back to bed ill; so then we tried Mattei's remedies, and his electricity. On the 15th of December we lost a great friend in the Duchess of Somerset.

On St. Silvester night we were not able to keep our usual engagement. We had one glass of champagne together in his room, and the servants went through a very usual ceremony in Trieste of forming procession, and chevying the evil spirits with sticks and brooms out of the house down the stairs, and out of the street door, and inviting the good spirits and good luck to come and dwell with us.

Richard notices poor Sir Charles Sebright's death, aged seventy-seven, on the 10th of October.

One of Richard's great delights was the setter at Opçina (so often mentioned), named Fazán. He was so fond of us that on Saturday, as he was perfectly sure we should arrive about four, about two o'clock he would go to the wood stack, draw a great block of wood out with his teeth, and carry it to Daneu, the master of the inn, and, wagging his tail, would run and put it down before the stove, as much as to say, "Light the fire; they will be cold when they come up;" then he would fetch another bit, and come and sit before the gate at about half-past three to wait for our arrival, and he never left us, night or day, as long as he was there. During Richard's gout attacks it frequently occurs in his journals, "I feel too well to-day to be altogether right;" and next day, surely, he would have some attack of gout. It was so difficult for him to understand that he could not do what he did when he was twenty-five, and to get him to train down to what he could do, not what he _used_ to do.

We now tried a new thing that seemed very good, and that is fusel oil, which is of the dregs of whisky; it is deadly poison to drink, but it acts splendidly on gouty limbs; and then we tried sulphur foot-baths.

1885.

All this January and part of February Richard was ill, and I began to implore him to throw up the Service, and to live where best suited him, even in a small way, as of course we should have been very, very poor, and at any rate, I said, "One winter _may_ be an accident, but two winters is a caution; and you must never winter here again." He said, "No; I quite agree with you there; we will never winter here again; but I won't throw up the Service until I either get Marocco, or they let me retire on full pension." And I then said, "When we go home that is what we will try for, that you may retire _now_ on full pension, which will only be six years before your time."

On the 17th of January he mourns Colonel Burnaby's death.

He was delighted in February with reading a German author, who began his book thus: "Der Geruch der rosen verpestet die Lüft und die verdammten Nachtigallen heulen die ganze Nacht."

We were now writing the index of the "Arabian Nights," I at dictation.

On Thursday, the 12th, I said to him, "Now mind, to-morrow is _Friday, the 13th_; it is our unlucky day, and we have got to be very careful."

[Sidenote: _Gordon's Death_.]

But when Friday, the 13th, came, we heard of poor Gordon's death, which had taken place Monday, January the 26th, and they had been keeping it from us. We both collapsed altogether, were ill all day, and profoundly melancholy. I remembered, too, that at the time that Gordon had been sent out, it was a toss up whether Richard or Gordon should go. Richard had just begun to break up (he was fifty-five), and I knew that if he was sent he would get up out of his sick bed to go, and think himself perfectly capable of undertaking the expedition; and I remember writing privately to the Foreign Office, to let them know how ill he was. Richard at that time expressed a hope that they would not send Gordon without five hundred soldiers to back him, and the neglect of this, whether from economy, or whether Gordon refused it, was the sole cause of the failure. Richard could talk of nothing else, and he fretted a great deal about it. In one of the illustrated papers there was a picture of Gordon lying deserted in the desert, his Bible in one hand, his revolver in the other, and the vultures sitting around. When Richard saw it he said with great emotion, "Take it away! I can't bear to look at it. I have had to feel that myself; I know what it is." But the more the news came in, the less he believed in Gordon's death, and he died believing that Gordon (disgusted at the cruel treatment of being abandoned to his fate) had escaped by the missing boat, and would come out Congo-wards, but that he would never let himself be rediscovered, nor reappear in England--and Gordon was quite the man to do it.

I quote this prematurely, because it concerns the present subject:--

"IS GORDON DEAD?

"Trieste, April 29, 1887.

"I have just received a note from the Rev. Mr. Robert W. Felkin, dated Edinburgh, April 2nd. Under the supposition that I am proceeding with an expedition to the Soudan in order to discover General Charles Gordon, he encloses me a note from a youth whom he educated in England for some years, and whom he has now placed at the American Mission School at Assiout. It dates from as far back as November 28, 1886.

"The following is the extract:--

"'There was a man came from Khartoum and said that he was one of General Gordon's soldiers; he came into class (school) and the master asked him many questions, and he said that General Gordon had a steamboat and went down to South, and there was a Turkish soldier whose face was like his, and they killed him and said it was General Gordon.

"'He said a great many things about Gordon's soldiers, that they were not able to use their guns because they were so weakened with hunger.

"'(Signed) SULAYMAN KABSUN.'

"I see with pleasure that Mr. Felkin never thought that the evidence proved Gordon's death, and conceives many ways to explain his escape.

"RICHARD F. BURTON."

London _Figaro_, September 26th, 1887.

"I am not surprised," says a correspondent, "to hear that Sir Richard Burton has from the first maintained that Gordon is not dead. He was Gordon's intimate friend, and, being of the same stamp, having lived the same kind of glorious life, and had the same experience of his country's neglect, is more likely to know than others what Gordon, in disgust at the treatment he received from the Government, could and might do. Moreover, as Sir Richard Burton says, no two of the several accounts of Gordon's death are alike. He is sure to have had a picked lot of attached followers, who, as well as one steamer, are missing."

A correspondent wrote: "A friend called in the other day to see Sir Richard Burton, and remarked, 'Why, Burton, if Gordon turns up, the Government will begin to believe in your knowledge. You will be a made man.' Burton replied with his usual quiet 'Ye--es,' stroking his chin thoughtfully; 'for God's sake, my dear fellow, don't say anything about it. The Foreign Office will only say what a damned beast I was to know it when _they_ never even suspected it!'"

Spring comes very soon in Trieste, and we were able to sit and walk out a great deal in the garden. We now had a very nice telephone, which put _us_ in comfortable communication with the whole of the City, and it was very useful, as we lived out of and above it.

On the 14th of April he notices the death of his enemy, Major-General Rigby of Zanzibar, and then poor Rogers Bey, regretted by us both, and then of Nachtigall the traveller.

[Sidenote: _Colonel Primrose's Death_.]

One morning in April I had a letter, a very cheerful one, from Everard Primrose, to say that he expected to be back in April, as he was very seedy; and that he would come and stay with us for a fortnight _en route_ home. I was just preparing his room, and looking round to see if I could do anything to make it prettier, when a telegram was put into my hand announcing his death. Richard and I were both terribly cut up, and we did not go for a very long time to Vienna, for we had lost our best friend there, and it would have made it too melancholy. On the 9th of May he rejoices that Mr. Gerald Fitzgerald, Director of Public Accounts in Egypt, is made a K.C.M.G., as "he married the elder daughter of our dear friend Lord Houghton," adding, "Dear old fellow, how pleased he will be!" On the 11th of May he mourns Douglas Jerrold, and was touched at the account of Mr. Fred Fargus's death, better known as Hugh Conway.

This summer the English opened a lawn-tennis club, which was very amusing. Our Consular chaplain played lawn tennis like a boy of twenty.

[Sidenote: _Leave to England_.]

Richard having obtained "leave" (after a second attack of gout), and as I was the proud possessor of £500, we started gaily for London on the 19th of May, and went on board the _Tarifa_ for Venice; it was a Cunarder. Here we saw a great number of friends, and met Lord Lytton at Lady Layard's. We were neither of us well, in different ways, and Richard was ordered to go by sea, and I by land; so, after a couple of days at Venice, I saw Richard off in the _Tarifa_ for Liverpool, and I prepared to come over the Mont Cenis to London; but when I got back to the hotel, I found a telegram from a man I knew, one of what Richard used laughingly to call "my wife's pious pals," who said, "If you want to see a girl exorcised of the devil, come at once to Bologna." I went down to the station, only instead of taking my ticket for London, I, naturally, wild with curiosity, and knowing I had plenty of time, took it at once for Bologna.

I stayed there three days. I do not think I am quite at liberty to give an account of what I saw, in these criticizing times, but it was wonderfully interesting, and I had a thorough insight into mediæval Italy, which I renew whenever I get the chance, as it is more than interesting. After three days I went on thence to Milan to see the Certosa of Pavia, one of the most glorious architectural relics in Europe, and from there I went to Pusiano, a now hidden "sanctuary" that will one day become famous to all the world. Pusiano is a village of one street, on the borders of a beautiful little lake, with villages and churches on the opposite bank; it is situated in the Lake Country, and there one lives with the peasantry in primitive style. I stayed there three whole days; it is beautiful in summer, but a terrible snow desolation in winter. It is quite off the railway line, and one gets to it in a little country cart. When I got back to Milan I embarked for home by the St. Gothard, Bâle, to Paris. Paris was black with people in mourning for Victor Hugo. It was his funeral next day; soldiers lined the streets, artillery commanded the two ends of the streets to fire on the people if the red flag was raised. I had much difficulty in getting to the station, for besides being in a hurry to get home, I did not want to be shut up in Paris alone, if anything occurred. Arrived at Boulogne, the passenger-boat was gone, so I took the cargo-boat at one in the night, and arrived at 4.30 a.m. at Folkestone, where the custom-house kept me till about six, searching for dynamite in my baggage, and I arrived in town on the 2nd of June. Somehow I put my arm out, and had to go back to Hutton the bone-setter. Richard did not arrive till twelve days after me.

He was delighted when he got on board the _Tarifa_ on the 19th. He then notices the death of Victor Hugo in Paris on May 23rd. He seemed to enjoy the journey thoroughly, and to have got quite rid of the gout the moment he left. He was always thoroughly happy on board a ship, and so sorry when the voyage was over. He never knew what sea-sickness was. He could eat enough for three on board, and when the ship was rolling right round in the water, he would balance himself, holding the ink-bottle in one hand, and writing with the other.

He used to go away by himself and make pilgrimages; I know of about ten he made to various places. Once, in 1875, he left town to go into the country for a week, and to my surprise I received a private letter from him from Paray le Monial, the place once so talked about in the papers as a pilgrimage-place of St. Mary Margaret Alacoque and the Sacred Heart.[1] He had gone there to make a pilgrimage all by himself, and brought me back some medals and rosaries. He used to go into every church. He made a pilgrimage on this voyage to St. Nicholas of Bari, and brought me a lot of curios. The ship's course went by way of Venice, Fiume, Bari, Naples, Palermo, and Malaga, where they found cholera, and then to Gib. and Lisbon. He arrived in high spirits on the 14th of June.

Here I may remark that he kept two sets of journals. The public set contained remarks on the weather, scraps out of newspapers, and "Varia" (notes of what he reads), the people he writes to, the people he receives letters from, and public news. In the private set, come notices on his and my health at one side, what he and I did, obituaries, his sentiments about things in concentrated notes, condemnations of things, and scraps of poetry on the circumstances here and there.

I must here notice making at this time acquaintance with three very interesting people. One was a gentleman who would not like to be named, the leader of a religious sect, who conceals his name under the _soubriquet_ of the "Recorder," and who is the St. Paul of their belief in a second advent--he publishes a book called "The Mother, or the Woman clothed with the Sun;" and another was Dr. Anna Kingsford, who became my fast friend, and who used to let me work with her in regard to the protection of animals. She was tall, fair, delicate, soft, refined, exceedingly pretty, beautifully dressed, of the highest possible culture, combining the education and courage of both man and woman. I made her acquaintance at an Anti-vivisection meeting, with Lord Shaftesbury in the chair, and the Bishop of Oxford present, a very little while before Lord Shaftesbury's death. The third interesting person was Mr. George Lewis.

[Sidenote: _Arabian Nights_.]

Now, we had come to London partly for Richard's health, and partly to bring out the "Arabian Nights." The translating, writing, and correcting devolved upon him; the copying fell to a lady amanuensis; the financial part devolved upon me. It was said that there was no room for a new edition, but every previous edition was imperfect, and mostly taken from Professor Galland's French version, made a hundred and eighty years ago, and adapted for civilization. This in itself was an abridgment, and turns a most valuable ethnographical work into a collection of fairy tales. Mr. Torrens was the nearest to the original, but he only got as far as fifty tales. Mr. Lane, whose works are so popular, has only given us half the tales, and he substituted popular fairy tales. Mr. John Payne was excessively good, but he was limited to five hundred copies, and his profession forbade his being quite so daring as Richard.

Richard's object was not only to produce an absolutely literal translation, but to reproduce it in an absolutely Arabian manner. He preserved the strict divisions of the Nights, he kept to the long unbroken sentences in which the composer indulged. Being perfect master of both languages, he could imitate the rhythmic prose which is a characteristic of the Arabic. He furnished it only to scholars, and at a prohibitive price. He gave a most literal rendering of the Oriental phrases and figures. Richard called it the "Walling of the Horizon," the orientation being strictly preserved, instead of being Anglicized. The choicest phrases, the sacred preservation of them, speaks for itself. He kept the swing, the wave of Arab poetry, which one can only liken in its melancholy to the sound of an Æolian harp balanced on a tree-branch. He loved his work, and he was sorry when it was finished.

In many of the stories of other translators, he used to say, "the very point which enables you to understand the action is left out, because the translator was afraid of Mrs. Grundy. Arab ideas of morality are different from European, and if we are to understand the Arabs, and if the 'Nights' are to be of any value from an anthropological point of view, it can only be written as I have written it. I think it is such a disgrace that our Rulers should rule so many million Easterns, and be as ignorant of them as if they lived in a far-away planet; and it is to give _them_ a chance of knowing what they are about, that I leave this legacy to the Government. I have not only preserved the spirit of the original, but the _mechanique_. The metrical portion has been very difficult, because Arab poetry is quite different to English. An Arab will turn out sentence after sentence before he comes to his rhyme.

"I don't care a button about being prosecuted, and if the matter comes to a fight, I will walk into court with my Bible and my Shakespeare and my Rabelais under my arm, and prove to them that, before they condemn me, they must cut half of _them_ out, and not allow them to be circulated to the public."

Richard then found that it was a popular idea that "Ali Baba, and the Forty Thieves" and "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" belonged to the "Arabian Nights," whereas they do not, and he found a collection of similar tales sufficient to produce six Supplemental volumes. At first I rather objected to his risking the "Arabian Nights," from a passage written by himself in his "First Footsteps in East Africa," page 36--

"When Arabs are present, I usually recite or read a tale from 'The Thousand and One Nights,' that wonderful work so often translated, so much turned over, and so little understood at home. The most familiar book in England, next to the Bible, it is one of the least known, the reason being that about one-fifth is utterly unfit for translation; and the most sanguine Orientalist would not dare to render literally more than three-quarters of the remainder, consequently the reader loses the contrast--the very essence of the book--between its brilliancy and dulness, its moral putrefaction and such pearls as--

'Cast the seed of good works on the least fit soil;
Good is never wasted, however it may be laid out.'

And in a page or two after such divine sentiment, the ladies of Baghdad sit in the porter's lap, and indulge in a facetiousness which would have killed Pietro Aretino before his time." (This was written in 1855, thirty years before.)

But, on his explaining to me his new idea about its usefulness, its being so good for the Government, I was glad, and I helped him in every way I possibly could. It was also agreed, in order to secure him against piracy, and in order not to limit to a thousand people what the many should enjoy, that they should not lose this deep well of reading and knowledge, beside which the flood of modern fiction flows thin and shallow, that I should reproduce all my husband's original text, excluding only such words as were not possible to put on the drawing-room table. Mr. Justin Huntly McCarthy, jun., helped me a little, so that out of the 3215 original pages, I was able to copyright three thousand pages of my husband's original text, and only exclude two hundred and fifteen. Richard forbade me to read them till he blotted out with ink the worst words, and desired me to substitute, not English, but Arab Society words, which I did to his complete satisfaction. The language is so wonderful, the expression so graceful, the rendering of thought as well as words so accurate, the poetry so fresh and charming. Orientalists tell me that they learnt more Orientalism by these volumes than by years of hard study, and that it greatly facilitated their study of Arabic. He translated from the Calcutta edition, the Boulak, the Hindostani, and the Breslau. The Wortley Montagu manuscript was refused him by the Bodleian Library, even under the charge of Dr. Rost, but he got one in Paris.

Richard said that "a student of Arabic, who reads the 'Nights' with his version, will not only be competent to join in any conversation in Arabic, but to read the popular books and newspapers, and to write letters to his friends; he will also possess a _répertoire_ of Arab manners and customs, beliefs and practices, which are not found in books. My endeavour was to give them the original text without detracting from its merits." This grand Arabian work I consider my husband's "Magnum Opus;" it is a masterpiece; it is the real thing, not the drawing-room tales which have been _called_ the "Arabian Nights" for so long. The home student can realize what the Arab is, and understand those people, Egyptians, Syrians, and others, of whose "life behind the scenes" Britons know so very little.

I do not know whether to be amused or provoked because people are prejudiced against "Lady Burton's edition of the 'Arabian Nights,'" as a milk-and-water thing. I did not write nor translate it; it is _Richard Burton's_ "Arabian Nights," with a coarse word or two cut out here and there, and a Society word introduced, but in nowise altering the text (when I say a Society word, I mean of course an Arab Society word, not an English one); and my name was only put upon it to copyright and protect my husband's from piracy.

We had no reason, in a financial point of view, to regret our venture. A publisher offered Richard £500 for it, but I said, "No, let me do it." It was seventeen months' hard work, but we found (no matter how) the means of printing and binding and circulating. We were our own printers and our own publishers, and we made between September, 1885, and November, 1888, sixteen thousand guineas, six thousand of which went towards publishing, and ten thousand into our own pockets; and it came just in time to give my husband the comforts and luxuries and freedom that gilded the five last years of his life. When he died there were four florins left, which I put in the poor-box.

WHAT ALL THE WORLD SAID.

_Athenæum_, February 6th, 1886.

"TO RICHARD F. BURTON.

"_ On his Translation of the 'Arabian Nights.'_

"Westward the sun sinks, grave and glad; but far
Eastward, with laughter and tempestuous tears,
Cloud, rain, and splendour as of Orient spears,
Keen as the sea's thrill toward a kindling star
The sundawn breaks the barren twilight's bar
And fires the mist and slays it. Years on years
Vanish, but he that hearkens eastward hears
Bright music from the world where shadows are.

"Where shadows are not shadows. Hand-in-hand
A man's word bids them rise and smile and stand
And triumph. All that glorious Orient glows
Defiant of the dusk. Our twilight land
Trembles; but all the heaven is all one rose,
Whence laughing love dissolves her frosts and snows.
----"ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE."

_Morning Advertiser_, September 15th, 1885.

"As the holiday season draws to a close, the publishers' announcements of 'new books' fill column after column of the organs chosen from these special _communiqués_. But there is one work which is not entered in these lists, though for years scholars, and many people who are not scholars, have been looking for it with an eagerness which has left far behind the ordinary curiosity which is bestowed on the greatest of contributions to current literature. And to-day the chosen few who are in possession of the volume in question are examining it with an interest proportionate to the long toil which has been bestowed on its preparation. We refer to Captain Burton's translation of the 'Arabian Nights' Entertainments,' now entitled 'The Book of the thousand Nights and a Night,' of which the first tome has just been issued. There will be ten in all, so that it must be well on for two years before the entire series can be in the hands of those who have subscribed for it. For the book is not published. It is even questionable whether a copy will be in the British Museum or the Bodleian, unless those institutions have entered their names in advance. It is printed 'by the Kamashastra Society of Benares for private subscribers only,' and Captain Burton, in a circular sent with the first volume, earnestly begs that it will not be permitted to fall into the hands of any save scholars and students of Moslem manners. For years and years the 'Arabian Nights' have been a sort of nursery companion. But it is, perhaps, unnecessary to tell any one acquainted in the slightest degree with Oriental romances that the 'Alf Laylah wa Laylah' in its unabridged form is, despite the popularity which it enjoys as a 'child's book,' emphatically not for the entertainment of boys and girls. Hitherto, however, all of the editions have been imperfect and more or less colourless versions of the original. They have been prepared for the drawing-room, and even Mr. Payne inserted a Latin word here and there rather than search Captain Grose's 'Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue' for its equivalent. Captain Burton scorns any such namby-pambyism. In the Arabic a spade is usually called a spade, and in the latest English translation it is never designated an agricultural implement. Moreover, the endless footnotes which the editor appends, speak with much freedom of many things usually avoided as themes for conversation in polite society, though they throw a flood of light on hundreds of features of Oriental life on which, since travellers have been compelled to write for 'refined' audiences, the student has failed to be informed.

"Yet, admitting that the 'Nights' are often coarse and indelicate, and sometimes even gross, it is a mistake to suppose that they are demoralizing in the same way that a French novel of the Zola type is, or might be. Indeed, what we would call its impropriety is only a reflection of the _naïve_ freedom with which talk is to this day carried on in the family circles of the East. They see no harm in what we should regard as indecency. So that when Captain Burton prefaces his unbowdlerized version with the Arab proverb, 'To the pure in heart all things are pure,' he presents perhaps the best defence he could against the attack which it is quite possible may be made on him for devoting many years of his life to what he terms 'a labour of love.' One hundred and eighty years have passed since Galland, the French Orientalist, published his version in twelve small volumes. But though even at that time it was not thought proper to issue a verbatim edition--so far as the accessible manuscripts permitted--the best scholars of the age did not hesitate to pronounce them forgeries. In brief, they were regarded in much the same light that Macpherson's 'translations' of 'Ossian's Poems' were at a later date. But the less critical world cared very little whether Antony Galland had invented them or merely translated them from some 'unknown Arab writer.' They eagerly read these wondrous stories. Europe was on fire with delight at anything so unconventional, so entirely undidactic, so completely without any religious, moral, or philosophical purpose, and which delineated the primitive manners and customs of the East. The fine gentlemen and gay ladies could talk about nothing else than 'jins' or genii, as they were called after the French fashion, viziers--or 'Wazirs,' as Captain Burton has it--caves of jewels, underground palaces, enchanters and kalendars, princes of black islands, and kings in disguise. The terrible justice of the Kazi, or Cadai, as he used to be called, and the equally fearful vengeance of the husband who is at last undeceived, were revelations to the easy-going, utterly corrupt Europe of the _ancien régime_. Edition after edition appeared, though in nearly every case these so-called fresh versions were little more than translations, more or less abridged, from Galland. Of late, however, several more or less complete editions have appeared. Among them may be mentioned those of Torrens, Lane, Payne. Torrens was, however, a poor Arabic scholar, and though Lane was a better one--if not quite so good as he afterwards became--he was, like his predecessors, in terror of offending propriety. Hence, though some simple folk supposed that his language was sufficiently plain, it only required the consultation of the Breslau, the Bulak, or the Calcutta edition of the original to be convinced to the contrary. Mr. Payne brought out a nine-volumed translation for the Villon Society. But it was printed solely for private subscribers, and though issued at seven guineas cannot now be procured under twenty-five or thirty when a copy accidentally comes into the market. Payne was, however, not much more than an amateur Arabist, and his practical acquaintance with Arabs and the East was simply _nil_. Captain Burton, it is unnecessary to remind any one, is in a very different case. Thirty-three years ago he went in the disguise of an Indian pilgrim to Mecca and Al-Medinah, and no one capable of giving the world the result of his experience has so minute, so exhaustive a knowledge of Arab and Oriental life generally. Hence the work now begun only a limited number of students can ever see, and it is simply priceless to any one who concerns himself as marking an era in the annals of Oriental translation.