Part 38 (1/2)
Some months after, when her mind had regained its equilibrium, she observed to Major St. George Burton. [637] ”To a Protestant, d.i.c.k's reception into the Holy Church must seem meaningless and void. He was dead before extreme unction was administered; and my sole idea was to satisfy myself that he and I would be buried according to the Catholic rites and lie together above ground in the Catholic cemetery. He was not strictly received, for he was dead, and the formula Si es capax, &c., saved the priest's face and satisfied the church.” When mortification began to set in, the body, which was found to be covered with scars, the witnesses of a hundred fights, was embalmed, laid out in uniform, and surrounded with candles and wreaths. ”He looked so sweet,” says Lady Burton, ”such an adorable dignity, like a sleep.” [638] Behind the bed still hung the great map of Africa. On his breast Lady Burton had placed a crucifix, and he still wore the steel chain and the ”Blessed Virgin Medal,” which she had given him just before the Tanganyika journey.
Priests, pious persons, and children from the orphanage of St. Joseph, in which Lady Burton had taken so much interest, watched and prayed, recited the office for the dead, and sang hymns.
There were three distinct funerals at Trieste, and there was to be another nine months onward in England. All that can be said is that Lady Burton seemed to draw comfort from pageantry and ceremonial that to most mourners would have been only a long-drawn agony.
The procession was a royal one. The coffin was covered with the Union Jack, and behind it were borne on a cus.h.i.+on Burton's order and medals.
Then followed a carriage with a pyramid of wreaths, and lastly, the children of St. Joseph's orphanage, a regiment of infantry and the governor and officials of Trieste.
Every flag in the town was half-mast high, mult.i.tudes thronged the streets, and every window and balcony was crowded. Every head was uncovered. The procession wound its way from the Palazzo Gosleth down the declivity into the city under a bright sun pouring down its full beams, and so onward through the serried ma.s.ses of spectators to the cemetery. Writing to Lady Stisted, [639] Lady Burton says, ”I did not have him buried, but had a private room in the cemetery [a ”chapelle ardente”] consecrated (with windows and doors on the ground floor) above ground where I can go and sit with him every day. He had three church services performed over him, and 1,100 ma.s.ses said for the repose of his soul.” ”For the man,” commented the profane, ”who, in his own words, 'protested against the whole business,' perhaps 1,100 ma.s.ses would not have been enough.” In an oration delivered in the Diet of Trieste, Dr.
Cambon called him an intrepid explorer, a gallant soldier, an honour to the town of Trieste.” The whole press of the world rang with his praises. The n.o.ble tribute paid to his memory by Algernon C. Swinburne has often been quoted:
”While England sees not her old praise dim, While still her stars through the world's night swim, A fame outs.h.i.+ning her Raleigh's fame, A light that lightens her loud sea's rim: Shall s.h.i.+ne and sound as her sons proclaim The pride that kindles at Burton's name, And joy shall exalt their pride to be The same in birth if in soul the same.” [640]
”Our affairs,” Lady Burton tells Lady Stisted, in a heartrending letter, [641] ”are so numerous and we belonged to so many things that I have not strength enough to get them carried out before eight weeks, and I could not bear to arrive in Xmas holidays, but immediately after they are over, early January, I shall arrive, if I live, and pa.s.s through Folkestone on my way to Mortlake with the dear remains to make a tomb there for us two; and you must let me know whether you wish to see me or not.
”I wish to go into a convent for a spiritual retreat for fifteen days, and after that I should like to live very quietly in a retired way in London till G.o.d show me what I am to do or, as I hope, will take me also; and this my belief that I shall go in a few months is my only consolation. As to me, I do not know how anyone can suffer so much and live. While all around me had to go to bed ill, I have had a supernatural strength of soul and body, and have never lost my head for one moment, but I cannot cry a tear. My throat is closed, and I sometime cannot swallow. My heart swelled to bursting. It must go snap soon, I think. I have not forgotten you, and what it means to you who loved each other so much. I shall save many little treasures for you. His and your father's watch, &c. There are hundreds of telegrams and letters and cards by every post from all parts of the world, and the newspapers are full. The whole civilized world ringing with his praise, and appreciative of his merits--every one deeming it an honour to have known him. Now it will be felt what we have lost. I shall pa.s.s the remainder of my short time in writing his life and you must help me. Best love to dearest Georgy. I will write to her. Your affectionate and desolate Isabel.”
To Mr. Arbuthnot, Lady Burton also wrote a very long and pitiful letter.
[642] As it records in other words much that has already been mentioned we will quote only a few sentences.
”Dear Mr. Arbuthnot, ”Your sympathy and that of Mrs. Arbuthnot is very precious to me and I answer you both in one. I cannot answer general letters, but you were his best friend. I should like to tell you all if I saw you but I have no heart to write it.... I am arranging all his affairs and when finished I bring him to England.... I shall be a little slow coming because I have so much to do with his books and MSS., and secondly because the rent is paid to the 24th February and I am too poor to pay two places. Here I cannot separate from his body, and there it will be in the earth. I am so thoroughly stunned that I feel nothing outside, but my heart is crucified. I have lost all in him. You will want to know my plans. When my work is done, say 1st of March, I will go into a long retreat in a convent and will offer myself to a Sister of Charity. I do not think I shall be accepted for my age and infirmities, but will try.... The world is for me a dead letter, and can no more touch me. No more joy--no further sorrow can affect me. Dr. Baker is so good to me, and is undertaking my affairs himself as I really cannot care about them now. Love to both. G.o.d bless you both for unvarying friends.h.i.+p and kindness. Your affectionate and desolate friend, Isabel Burton.
”I have saved his gold watch-chain as a memorial for you.”
So pa.s.sed from human ken the great, n.o.ble and learned Richard Francis Burton, ”wader of the seas of knowledge,” ”cistern of learning of our globe,” ”exalted above his age,” ”opener by his books of night and day,”
”traveller by s.h.i.+p and foot and horse.” [643] No man could have had a fuller life. Of all travellers he was surely the most enthusiastic.
What had he not seen? The plains of the Indus, the slopes of the Blue Mountains, the cla.s.sic cities of Italy, the mephitic swamps of Eastern Africa, the Nilotic cataracts, Brazil, Abeokuta, Iceland, El Dorado--all knew well--him, his star-sapphire, and his congested church service: lands fertile, barren, savage, civilized, utilitarian, dithyrambic. He had wors.h.i.+pped at Mecca and at Salt Lake City. He had looked into the face of Memnon, and upon the rocks of Midian, 'graven with an iron pen,'
upon the head waters of the Congo, and the foliate columns of Palmyra; he had traversed the whole length of the Sao Francisco, crossed the Mississippi and the Ganges. Then, too, had not the Power of the Hills been upon him! With what eminence indeed was he not familiar, whether Alp, Cameroon or Himalaya! Nor did he despise the features of his native land. If he had climbed the easy Andes, he had also conquered, and looked down from the giddy heights of Hampstead. Because he had grubbed in the Italian Pompeii he did not, on that account, despise the British Uriconium. [644] He ranks with the world's most intrepid explorers--with Columbus, Cabot, Marco Polo, Da Gama and Stanley. Like another famous traveller, he had been ”in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in weariness and painfullness.” In the words of his beloved Camoens, he had done
”Deeds that deserve, like G.o.ds, a deathless name.” [645]
He had lived almost his three score and ten, but, says one of his friends, ”in the vigour, the vehemence indeed with which he vented his indignation over any meanness or wrong, or littleness, he was to the last as youthful as when he visited Mecca and Harar. If, however, the work he did, the hards.h.i.+ps he endured, and the amazing amount of learning which he acquired and gave forth to the world are to be taken as any measure of his life, he lived double the term of most ordinary men.” Like Ovid, for the parallelism preserved itself to the end, he died in the land of his exile.
”It has been said of him that he was the greatest Oriental scholar England ever had and neglected.” He was a mighty writer of books--some fifty works, to say nothing of mult.i.tudinous articles in the journals of the learned societies, having proceeded from his pen. If it be conceded that he was wanting in the literary faculty and that no one of his books is entirely satisfactory, it should be borne in mind that he added enormously to the sum of human knowledge. We go to him, not for style, but for facts. Again, if his books are not works of art, they contain, nevertheless, many pa.s.sages that cling to the memory. Take him as linguist, traveller and anthropologist, he was certainly one of the greatest men that modern England has produced.
Chapter x.x.xVIII. 20th October 1890-December 1890, The Fate of ”The Scented Garden”
173. The Fate of The Scented Garden.
Burton wad dead. All that was mortal of him lay cold and motionless in the chapelle ardente. But his spirit? The spirits of the departed, can they revive us? The Roman poet Propertius answers:
”Yes; there are ghosts: death ends not all, I ween.”
and Lady Burton was just as thoroughly imbued with that belief. Hereby hangs a curious story, now to be told as regards its essentials for the first time; and we may add that Lady Burton particularly wished these essentials to be made public after her decease. [646]