Part 14 (2/2)
After he had left Isabel went into retreat at the Convent della Osolini at Gorzia. The following were among her reflections at this period[4]:
”In retreat at last. I have so long felt the want of one. My life seems to be like an express train, every day bringing fresh things which _must_ be done. I am goaded on by time and circ.u.mstances, and G.o.d, my first beginning and last end, is always put off, thrust out of the way, to make place for the unimportant, and gets served last and badly. This cannot continue. What friend would have such long-enduring patience with me? None! Certainly less a king! far less a husband!
How then? Shall G.o.d be kept waiting until n.o.body else wants me? How ashamed and miserable I feel! How my heart twinges at the thought of my ingrat.i.tude, and the poor return I make for such favours and graces as I have received! G.o.d has called me into retreat once more, perhaps for the last time. He has created an unexpected opportunity for me, since my husband has been sent to look for poor Palmer's body. I thought I heard Him cry, 'Beware! Do not wait until I drive you to misfortune, but go voluntarily into solitude, prepare for Me, and wait for Me, till I come to abide with you.'
”I am here, my G.o.d, according to Thy command; Thou and I, I and Thou, face to face in the silence. Oh, speak to my heart, and clear out from it everything that is not of Thee, and let me abide with Thee awhile!
Not only speak, but make me understand, and turn my body and spirit and soul into feelings and actions, not words and thoughts alone.
”My health and nerves for the past three years have rendered me less practical and a.s.siduous in religion than I was. Then I used to essay fine, large, good works, travel, write, and lead a n.o.ble and virile life. Now I am weaker, and feel a la.s.situde incidental to my time of life, and I seem to have declined to petty details, small works, dreaming, and making lists and plans of n.o.ble things not carried out.
It looks like the beginning of the end.
”I ask for two worldly pet.i.tions, quite submitted to G.o.d's will” (1) That I may be cured, and that d.i.c.k and I may have good, strong health to be able to work and do good--if we are destined to live. (2) That if it be G.o.d's will, and not bad for us we may get a comfortable independence, without working any more for our bread, and independent of any master save G.o.d.”
Isabel returned to Trieste when her retreat was concluded; and soon after--much sooner than she expected--her husband returned to her.
When he reached Gazzeh, Burton found Sir Charles Warren already in the field, and he did not want to be interfered with, so that Burton came home again and spent Christmas with his wife at Trieste. Thus ended 1882. Isabel notes: ”After this year misfortunes began to come upon us all, and we have never had another like it.”
Early next year the Burtons left their flat in Trieste, where they had been for over ten years. Something went wrong with the drainage for one thing, and Burton took an intense dislike to it for another; and when he took a dislike to a house nothing would ever induce him to remain in it. The only thing to do was to move. They looked all over Trieste in search of something suitable, and only saw one house that would do for them, and that was a palazzo, which then seemed quite beyond their means; yet six months later they got into it. It was a large house in a large garden on a wooded eminence looking out to the sea. It had been built in the palmy days of Trieste by an English merchant prince, and was one of the best houses in the place. It had a good entrance, so wide that it would have been possible to drive a carriage into the hall. A marble staircase led to the interior, which contained some twenty large rooms, magnificent in size. The house was full of air and light, and the views were charming. One looked over the Adriatic, one over the wooded promontory, another towards the open country, and the fourth into gardens and orchards.
The early part of 1883 was sad to Isabel by reason of her husband's failing health and her own illness. In May she went alone to Bologna, at her husband's request, for she then told him of the nature of her illness, to consult Count Mattei, of whom they had heard much from their friend Lady Paget, Amba.s.sadress at Vienna. When she arrived at Bologna, she found he had gone on to Riola, and she followed him thither. Mattei's castle was perched on a rock, and to it Isabel repaired.
”First,” she says, ”I had to consult a very doubtful-looking mastiff; then appeared a tall, robust well-made, soldierlike-looking form in English costume of blue serge, brigand felt hat, with a long pipe, who looked fifty, and not at all like a doctor. He received me very kindly, and took me up flights of stairs, through courts, into a wainscoted oak room, with fruits and sweets on the table, with barred-iron gates and drawbridges and chains in different parts of the room, that looked as if he could pull one up and put one down into a hole. He talked French and Italian; but I soon perceived that he liked Italian better, and stuck to it; and I also noticed that, by his mouth and eyes, instead of fifty, he must be about seventy-five. A sumptuous dinner-table was was laid out in an adjoining room, with fruit and flowers. I told him I could not be content, having come so far to see him, to have only a pa.s.sing quarter of an hour. He listened to all my long complaints about my health most patiently, asked me every question; but he did not ask to examine me, nor look at my tongue, nor feel my pulse, as other doctors do. He said that I did not look like a person with the complaint mentioned, but as if circulation and nerves were out of order. He prescribed four internal and four external remedies and baths. I wrote down all his suggestions, and rehea.r.s.ed them that he might correct any mistakes.”[5]
After the interview with Count Mattei Isabel did not remain at Riola, but with all her medicines returned to Trieste. The remedies were not, however, of any avail.
In June Isabel presided over a _fete_ of her Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and made a long speech, in which she reviewed the work from the beginning, and the difficulties and successes. She wound up as follows:
”May none of you ever know the fatigue, anxiety, disgust, heartaches, nervousness, self-abnegation and disappointments of this mission, and the small good drawn out of years of it; for so it seems to me. Old residents, and people living up the country, do say that you would not know the town to be the same it was eleven years ago, when I first came.
They tell me there is quite a new stamp or horse, a new mode of working and treatment and feeling. I, the workwoman, cannot see it or feel it.
I think I am always rolling a stone uphill. I know that you all hear something of what I have to put up with to carry it out--the opposition, and contentions, treachery, abuse, threats and ridicule; and therefore I all the more cherish the friendly hand such a large a.s.sembly has gathered together to hold out to me to-day to give me fresh courage.
You all know how fond I am of Trieste; but it is the very hardest place I ever worked in, and eleven years of it have pretty nearly broken me up.
Nevertheless I shall always, please G.o.d, wherever I am, 'open my mouth for the dumb,' and adhere to my favourite motto: 'Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra.'”
For the first time this summer Isabel and her husband found the swimming in the sea, which had been one of their favourite recreations at Trieste, no longer agreed with them, and they came reluctantly to the conclusion that their swimming must go the way of the fencing, and that the days of their more active physical exercises were over. For the first time also in all the twenty-two years of their married life they began to s.h.i.+rk the early rising, and now no longer got up at 3 or 4 a.m., but at the comparatively late hour of 6 or 6.30 a.m. In November Burton had a serious attack of gout, which gave him agonies of pain; and it was at last borne in upon him that he would have to make up his mind henceforth to be more or less of an invalid. Simultaneously Isabel was ill from peritonitis. There seemed to be a curious sympathy between the two, which extended to all things, even to their physical health. On December 6 Burton put the following in his diary in red ink: ”_This day eleven years I came here. What a shame!_”
Early in 1884 Isabel came in for a small legacy of 500 pounds sterling, which was useful to them at the time, as they were far from being well off, and had incurred many expenses consequent on their change of house.
She expended the whole of it in additional comforts for her husband during his illness, which unfortunately seemed to get more serious as time went on. In February he quite lost the use of his legs for eight months, which of necessity kept him much in the house. It was during this period that he began his great work _Alf Laylah wa Laylah_, or _The Arabian Nights_. When I say he began it, that is not strictly speaking correct, for he had been gathering material for years. He merely took in hand the matter which he had already collected thirty years before.
He worked at it _con amore_, and it was very soon necessary to call in an amanuensis to copy his ma.n.u.script.
This year was uneventful. They were absent from Trieste a good deal on ”cures” and short excursions. Burton's health gave him a great deal of trouble; but whenever he was well enough, or could find time from his official duties, he devoted himself to his translation of _The Arabian Nights_. Isabel also worked hard in connexion with it in another way.
She had undertaken the financial part of the business, and sent out no less than thirty-four thousand circulars to people with a view to their buying copies of the book.
In January and February, 1885, Burton was so ill that his wife implored him to throw up the Consular Service, and live in a place which suited him, away from Trieste. Of course that meant that they would have to live in a very small way; for if they gave up their appointment at that time and forfeited the salary, they would have been very poor. Still, so impressed was Isabel that the winter in Trieste did not agree with her husband, that she said, ”You must never winter here again”; but he said, ”I quite agree with you there--we will never winter here again; but I won't throw up the Service until I either get Morocco or they let me retire on full pension.” She then said, ”When we go home again, that is what we will try for, that you may retire on full pension, which will be only six years before your time.” Henceforth she tried for only two things: one, that he might be promoted to Morocco, because it was his pet ambition to be Consul there before he died, the other, failing Morocco, he should be allowed to retire on full pension on account of his health. Notwithstanding that she moved heaven and earth to obtain this latter request, it was never granted.
In the meantime they were busy writing together the index to _The Arabian Nights_. On Thursday, February 12, she said to him, ”Now mind, to-morrow is Friday the 13th. It is our unlucky day, and we have got to be very careful.”
When the morning dawned, they heard of the death of one of their greatest friends, General Gordon, which had taken place on January 26 at Kartoum; but the news had been kept from them. At this sad event Isabel writes, ”We both collapsed together, were ill all day, and profoundly melancholy.”
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