Part 18 (1/2)
CHAPTER XXVI. THE SWORD HANGS. (1885-1890).
Life is no holiday: therein Are want and woe and sin, Death with nameless fears; and over all Our pitying tears must fall.
The hour draws near, howe'er delayed or late, When, at the Eternal Gate, We leave the words and works we call our own, And lift void hands alone.
For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul Brings to that gate no toll: Giftless we come to Him who all things gives; And live because He lives.
WHITTIER.
In May, 1885, Isabel started with her husband for England. They travelled together as far as Venice, and here as often, they parted, and went their separate ways. Burton was ordered to go by sea for his health, and his wife arranged to proceed by land. She went round by way of Bologna, and thence travelled _via_ Milan and Paris, and arrived in London on June 2. Her husband joined her twelve days later.
They had two objects in coming to London at this time--one was to consult physicians concerning Burton's health, the other to make arrangements concerning _The Arabian Nights_. The production of this book may be described as a joint affair; for though the lion's share of the work of translating, writing, and correcting proofs devolved upon Burton alone, the financial part of the work fell upon his wife, and that it was a big thing no one who has had any experience of writing or publis.h.i.+ng would deny. There were several editions in the field; but they were all abridged or ”Bowdlerized” ones, adapted more or less for ”family and domestic reading.” Burton's object in bringing out this great work was not only to produce a literal translation but to reproduce it faithfully in the Arabian manner. He preserved throughout the orientation of the verses and figures of speech instead of Anglicising them. It is this, combined with his profound oriental scholars.h.i.+p, his fine old-world style, and the richness, variety, and quaintness of vocabulary, which has given to his original edition its unique value.
In Burton the immortal tales had at last found a translator who would do them justice, and who was not afraid of prejudices of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism. Burton's view of this matter is sufficiently expressed in the following speech: ”I do not care a b.u.t.ton about being prosecuted; and if the matter comes to a fight, I will walk into court with my Bible and my Shakspeare and my Rabelais under my arm, and prove to them that before they condemn me they must cut half of _them_, and not allow them to be circulated to the public.”[1] He expressed his views in this matter to his wife; and though at his wish she did not read the original edition of _The Arabian Nights_, she set to work to help him in every way that she could. In fact it may be truly said that it was she who did all the difficult work of evading the ”vigilance” of certain persons, and of arranging for the publication of this important book.
In order that her husband's original text might be copyrighted, she herself brought out an expurgated edition, which was called the ”Household Edition.” By this means she was enabled to copyright three thousand pages of her husband's original text, and only excluded two hundred and fifteen. She says, ”Richard forbade me to read these pages until he blotted out with ink the worst words, and desired me to subst.i.tute not English but Arab society words, which I did to his complete satisfaction.” Of course to bring out a work of this kind, and to bear the whole burden of the labour and initial expense of it, was no ordinary task, and it is to Isabel's efforts and to her marvellous business capacity that the credit of publis.h.i.+ng the book is due. From a financial point of view the Burtons had no reason to regret their venture. At the beginning a publisher had offered Burton 500 pounds for the book; but Isabel said, ”No, let me do it.” It was seventeen months' hard work, and during that time they had to find the means for printing and binding and circulating the volumes as they came out. The Burtons were their own printers and their own publishers, and they made between September, 1885, and November, 1888, sixteen thousand guineas, six thousand of which went towards the expenses of publis.h.i.+ng and ten thousand guineas into their own pockets. Isabel writes, ”It came just in time to give my husband the comforts and luxuries and freedom which gilded the last five years of his life.
When he died there were four florins left, which I put into the poor-box.”
They had a very pleasant season in London. They were mainly occupied in preparing _The Arabian Nights_; but their labours over for the day, they went out in society a great deal. Perhaps the most noteworthy event at this time was that Isabel made a long speech at St. James's Hall at a meeting for the purpose of appealing to the Pope for a Circular Letter on the subject of the protection of animals. The meeting was in vain.
The first volume of _The Arabian Nights_ came out on December 12, 1885, and the sixteenth volume, the last of the Supplementals, on November 13, 1888. Thus in a period of three years they produced twenty-two volumes--namely, ten Originals, six Supplementals, and Lady Burton's six volumes of the Household Edition.
In October, 1885, they went down to Hatfield on a visit to Lord and Lady Salisbury. A week before this Burton, having heard that Sir John Drummond Hay, Consul at Morocco, was about to retire, applied for the post. It was the one thing that he had stayed on in the Consular Service in hope of obtaining. He wrote a letter to the Foreign Secretary, which was backed up by about fifty of the best names in England, whom his wife had canva.s.sed; and indeed it seemed that the post was as good as a.s.sured to him. In the third week in November Burton started for Morocco in order to spy out the promised land, or rather the land which he hoped would have been his. Isabel was left behind to bring out some volumes of _The Arabian Nights_. She brought them out up to the seventh volume, and then made ready to join her husband at Gibraltar on his way to Tangiers in January. She says _a propos_ of her labours in this respect: ”I was dreadfully spied upon by those who wished to get Richard into trouble about it, and once an unaccountable person came and took rooms in some lodgings which I took after Richard left, and I settled with the landlord that I should leave or that person should not have the rooms, and of course he did not have any hesitation between the two, and I took the whole of the rooms during my stay.”
In January, 1886, just as she was leaving London, she received a telegram from her husband saying that there was cholera at Gibraltar, and she could get no quarantine there, and would not be allowed to land. But she was not a woman to be stopped; so she at once telegraphed to Sir John Ayde, who was then commanding Gibraltar, and asked if he would allow a Government boat to take her off the P. & O. and put her straight on the Morocco boat. He telegraphed back, ”Yes,” whereat she rejoiced greatly, as she wanted especially to reach her husband in time for them to celebrate their Silver Wedding together. When she arrived at Gibraltar, Burton, who was staying there, came off in a boat to meet her, and they called together on Sir John Ayde to thank him for his kindness. A few days later the news came to them that the Government had at last recognized Burton's public services. It came in the form of a telegram addressed to ”Sir Richard Burton.” Isabel says: ”He tossed it over to me, and said, 'Some fellow is playing me a practical joke, or else it is not for me. I shall not open it, so you may as well ring the bell and give it back again.'” His wife said, ”Oh no; I shall open it if you don't.” So it was opened. It was from Lord Salisbury, conveying in the kindest terms that the Queen, at his recommendation, had made him K.C.M.G. in reward for his services. He looked very serious and quite uncomfortable, and said, ”Oh, I shall not accept it.”
She said, ”You had better accept it, Jemmy, because it is a certain sign that they are going to give you the place--Tangiers, Morocco.”
There is only one thing to be said about this honour--it came too late.
Too late for him, because he had never at any time cared much for these things. ”Honour, not honours” was his motto; and now the recognition of his services, which might have been a great encouragement ten of fifteen years earlier, and have spurred him on to fresh efforts, found him broken by sickness, and with life's zest to a great extent gone. Too late for her because her only pleasure in these things was that they reflected credit upon her husband; and if he did not appreciate them, she did not care. Yet of course she was glad that at last there had come some return for her unceasing efforts, and some admission, though tardy, of the services which her husband had rendered. It was a sign too that the prejudice against him in certain quarters was at last lived down. She wrote to a friend:
”You will have seen from the papers, and I know what pleasure it will give you, that the Conservatives on going out made d.i.c.k Sir Richard Burton, K.C.M.G. . . . . The Queen's recognition of d.i.c.k's forty-four years of service was sweetly done at last, sent for our Silver Wedding, and she told a friend of mine that she was pleased to confer something that would include both husband and wife.”
The Burtons crossed over to Morocco from Gibraltar in a flat-bottomed cattle-tug, only fit for a river; and as the sea was exceedingly heavy, and the machinery had stopped, the sailors said for want of oil, the seas washed right over the boat, and the pa.s.sage was prolonged from two hours to five. They made many excursions round about Tangiers; but on the whole they were disappointed with Morocco. They disliked Tangiers itself, and the Consulate seemed to them a miserable little house after the palazzo at Trieste. Lady Burton had expected to find Tangiers a second Damascus; but in this she was sorely disappointed. She wrote to a friend from there, ”Trieste will seem like Paris after it. It has none of the romance or barbaric splendour of Damascus. Nevertheless,”
she says, ”I would willingly have lived there, and put out all my best capabilities, if my husband could have got the place he wanted, and for which I had employed every bit of interest on his side and mine to obtain.” They received a great deal of hospitality in Tangiers, and inspected the place and the natives thoroughly. Most of the people looked forward to welcoming them.
On their departure they went to Genoa, which they reached after a rough voyage, and thence they proceeded by easy stages to Trieste. Lady Burton arrived home alone at ten o'clock in the evening; and as she was accustomed to be met by a crowd of friends on her return, she was surprised to find no one to meet her. When she got to the house, their absence was explained. Three telegrams were handed to her. The first was, ”Father very ill; can you come?” the second was, ”Father died to- day”; the third, ”Father buried to-day at Mortlake.” As her friends were unaware of her address the telegrams had not been forwarded, and they had kept away, so as not to intrude on her grief. The blow was not altogether unexpected, for Mr. Arundell had been ill for some time; but it was none the less severe, for she had always been devotedly attached to her father, and his house had been made a rallying-point for them when they were wont to return home.
They remained at Trieste three months, during which time the English colony presented them with a silver cup and congratulations on their hardly earned honours. Then, as Burton had to consult a particular ma.n.u.script which would supply two volumes of his ”Supplemental”
_Arabian Nights_, they left again for England. On their return to London they took up their work where they had left it a few months before. In July they had the mortification of finding that Lord Rosebery had given away the coveted post of Morocco, which had been as good as promised to them by Lord Salisbury, to some one else. It was during their few months' absence from England that the change of Government had taken place, and Lord Salisbury's brief-lived Administration of 1886 had yielded place to a Liberal Government.
Such are the vicissitudes of official life. Had Lord Salisbury been in office, Sir Richard would probably have got Morocco. It was perhaps all for the best that he did not get the post, although it was a sore disappointment to them at the time. Even Lady Burton came to take this view. She writes: ”I sometimes now think that it was better so, and that he would not have lived so long had he had it, for he was decidedly breaking up. The climate did not appear to be the one that suited him, and the anxiety and responsibilities of the post might have hurried on the catastrophe. . . . It was for the honour of the thing, and we saw for ourselves how uneasy a crown it would be.”
Perhaps there was another reason too, for when Lady Burton remonstrated a Minister wrote to her in friendly chaff: ”We don't want to annex Morocco, and we know that you two would be Emperor and Empress in about six months.” This was an evident allusion to the part which they had played during their brief reign at Damascus. At Trieste there was no room for the eagles to soar; their wings clipped.
Seeing that the last hope was over, and the one post which Sir Richard Burton had coveted as the crown of his career was denied him, his wife set to work to induce the Government to allow him to retire on his pension four years before his time. She had good grounds for making this request, for his health was breaking, and this last disappointment about Morocco seemed to have broken him even more. When he told her that it was given to another man, he said, ”There is no room for me now, and I do not want anything; but I have worked forty-four years for nothing.
I am breaking up, and I want to go free.” So she at once set to work to draw up what she called ”The Last Appeal,” enumerating the services which her husband had rendered to his country, and canva.s.sing her friends to obtain the pension. The pet.i.tion was backed as usual by forty-seven or fifty big names, who actively exerted themselves in the matter. It was refused notwithstanding that public feeling and the press seemed unanimously in favour of its being granted. The ground on which it was refused, apparently, was that it was contrary to precedent, and that it was not usual; but then the case was altogether an unusual one, and Sir Richard Burton was altogether an unusual man. Even supposing that there had been a difficulty about giving him full Consular pension, it would have been easy for the Government, if they had been so minded, to have made up to him the sum--only a few hundred pounds a year--from the Civil List, on the ground of his literary and linguistic labours and services.
It should be added that this pet.i.tion was refused both by Liberal and Conservative Governments, for Lord Salisbury's second Administration came into office before the Burtons left England. But there was this difference: whereas Lord Rosebery reprimanded Burton for his frequent absence from his post, Lord Salisbury was very indulgent in the matter of leave. He recognized that Burton's was an exceptional case, and gave him exceptional privileges.
They remained in London until the end of the year, and on January 4., 1887, they left England for Cannes, where they spent a few pleasant weeks, rejoicing in the sun and blue sea and sky. They enjoyed a good deal of society at Cannes, where they met the Prince of Wales and many friends. On Ash Wednesday occurred the earthquake which made such a commotion on the Riviera at the time, and of which Sir Richard Burton gave the following account: