Part 40 (2/2)
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 grat.i.tude to G.o.d, 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 s.h.i.+ne like a beacon in all ages. Thank G.o.d!” 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 d.i.c.k'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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 d.i.c.k 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.
Chapter XLI. Death of Lady Burton
Bibliography:
87. The Jew, the Gypsy, and El Islam. 1898. 88. Wanderings in Three Continents. 1901.
183. Lady Burton at Eastbourne.
Lady Burton spent the year 1894 and part of 1895 at Baker Street and Mortlake, making occasional visits to friends. As at Trieste, she surrounded herself with a crowd of servants and other idle people whom, in her good nature, she systematically pampered, and who in their turn did their best to make her life unendurable. She could, however, easily afford these luxuries, for thanks to the large sums received for her Life of Sir Richard, the Library Edition, &c., she was now in affluent circ.u.mstances. She won to herself and certainly deserved the character of ”a dear old lady.” In politics she was a ”progressive Conservative,”
though what that meant neither she nor those about her had any clear notion. She dearly loved children--at a safe distance--and gave treats, by proxy, to all the Catholic schools in the neighbourhood. She took an active interest in various charities, became an anti-vivisectionist, and used very humanely to beat people about the head with her umbrella, if she caught them ill-treating animals. If they remonstrated, she used to retort, ”Yes, and how do you like It?” ”When she wanted a cab,” says Mr.
W. H. Wilkins, ”she invariably inspected the horse carefully first, to see if it looked well fed and cared for; if not, she discharged the cab and got another; and she would always impress upon the driver that he must not beat his horse under any consideration.” On one occasion she sadly forgot herself. She and her sister, Mrs. FitzGerald, had hired a cab at Charing Cross Station and were in a great hurry to get home. Of course, as usual, she impressed upon the cabman that he was not to beat his horse. ”The horse, which was a wretched old screw, refused, in consequence, to go at more than a walking pace,” and Lady Burton, who was fuming with impatience, at last so far forgot herself as to put her head out of the window and cry to the driver, ”Why don't you beat him?
Why don't you make him go?” [691] She occasionally met her husband's friends, Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mr. Payne. One day at some dinner it transpired in the course of conversation that Mr. Payne had all his life been an habitual sufferer from insomnia.
<script>