Part 22 (1/2)
So this year (1890) the saddest in Lady Burton's life, came to an end.
On January 20, 1891, she caused her husband's remains to be removed from the chapel and conveyed on board the Cunard steamer _Palmyra_. She herself was going to England by the quicker route overland.
Her work now being done, a few days later Lady Burton left Trieste for the last time. The evening before her departure twenty of her friends came up to spend the last hours with her. She walked round every room, recalling her life in her happy home. She visited every nook and cranny of the garden; she sat under the linden tree where she and her husband had spent so many quiet hours, and she gazed at the beautiful views for the last time. This went on till the time came for her to leave. Many friends came to accompany her to the station. When she arrived she found that she had to face quite a demonstration. All the leading people in Trieste and the authorities of the city, all the children of the orphanage in which she had taken so keen an interest, all the poor whom she had helped, and all her private friends, who were many, were there to bid her good-bye and offer her flowers. She says: ”It was an awful trial not to make an exhibition of myself, and I was glad when the train steamed out; but for a whole hour, ascending the beautiful road close to the sea and Miramar and Trieste, I never took my misty eyes off Trieste and our home where I had been so happy for eighteen years.”
On arriving in England, Lady Burton's first care was to go and see Sir Richard's sister and niece, Lady and Miss Stisted, and acquaint them with the circ.u.mstances of her husband's death, and her intentions. We will draw a veil over that meeting. She then went on to London and stayed at the Langham Hotel, intending to remain there a few days until she could find a lodging. At the Langham her three sisters were waiting for her.
Two days after her arrival in London, Lady Burton went to see about a monument to her husband. This monument has been already described, and it is unnecessary to repeat the description at any length here.
Suffice it to say that it is a tomb, shaped like an Arab tent, of dark Forest of Dean stone, lined inside with white Carrara marble. The tent is surmounted by a large gilt star, and over the flap door is a white marble crucifix. The fringe is composed of gilt crescents and stars. The door supports an open book of white marble: on one page is an inscription to Sir Richard Burton; the opposite page was then left blank. Lady Burton had the tomb fitted up with an altar and other accessories, so as to make it as much like a _chapelle ardente_ as possible, while preserving its Eastern character. There was room in the tent for two coffins, those of her husband and herself. Finding that her purse was too slender to carry out this somewhat elaborate design, Lady Burton was encouraged by her friends to ask for a public subscription, with the result that she received the greater part of the money, but the appeal was not responded to as it might have been.
She found that, owing to the state of the weather, the monument could not be completed for some months, but she selected the site in Mortlake Cemetery, the spot which she and her husband had chosen many years before, and had the ground pegged out. The next day, though very ill, she, with her sister Mrs. Fitzgerald, went down to Liverpool to meet her husband's remains, which were arriving by sea. Lord and Lady Derby, who had always been her kind friends, had arranged everything for her, and the next morning Lady Burton went on board s.h.i.+p. She says, ”I forgot the people when I saw my beloved case, and I ran forward to kiss it.”
It was taken to the train, and to Mortlake, where they arrived that evening. The coffin was conveyed by torchlight to a temporary resting- place in the crypt under the altar of the church, where it remained until the tent was erected. The same evening Lady Burton returned to London, and, her work being done, the reaction set in. She broke down and took to her bed that night, where she remained for many weeks.
She says ”I cannot describe the horror of the seventy-six days enhanced by the fog, which, after sunlight and air, was like being buried alive.
The sense of desolation and loneliness and longing for him was cruel, and it became
The custom of the day And the haunting of the night.
My altered circ.u.mstances, and the looking into and facing my future, had also to be borne.”
In the meantime her friends, notably the Dowager Lady Stanley of Alderley, the Royal Geographical and other Societies, had not been idle, and her claims had been brought before the Queen, who was graciously pleased to grant Lady Burton a pension of 150 pounds a year from the Civil List. This pension, which she enjoyed to the day of her death, came to her as a surprise, and was not due to any effort of her own.
She would never have asked anything for herself: the only thing she did ask for was that the nation should help her in raising a monument to her husband's honour; but, as we have seen, the nation was somewhat lukewarm on that point.
At the end of April Lady Burton recovered sufficiently to leave the hotel, and joined her sister, Mrs. Fitzgerald. She was chiefly occupied during the next few months in looking out for a house, and in completing the arrangements for her husband's final resting-place. About the middle of June the tent was finished. Sir Richard Burton's remains were transferred from the crypt under the church to the mausoleum where they now rest. At the funeral service Lady Burton occupied a _prie-dieu_ by the side, and to the right was Captain St. George Burton, of the Black Watch, a cousin of Sir Richard. There was a large gathering of representatives of both families and many friends. The widow carried a little bunch of forget-me-nots, which she laid on the coffin. This simple offering of love would doubtless have been far more acceptable to the great explorer than the ”wreath from Royalty” the absence of which his latest biographer so loudly deplores.
When the ceremony was over, Lady Burton went away at once to the country for a ten days' rest to the Convent of the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre, New Hall, Chelmsford, where she had been educated, and which had received within its walls many of the Arundells of Wardour. She left New Hall much refreshed and invigorated in mind and body, and for the next month was busy arranging a house which she had taken in Baker Street. She moved into it in September, 1891, and so entered upon the last chapter of her life.
NOTES:
1. Letter to Madame de Gutmansthal-Benvenuti, from London, March 1, 1891.
CHAPTER III. THE TINKLING OF THE CAMEL'S BELL. (1891-1896).
Friends of my youth, a last adieu! haply some day we meet again; Yet ne'er the self-same men shall meet; the years shall make us other men:
The light of morn has grown to noon, has paled with eve, and now farewell!
Go, vanish from my Life as dies the tinkling of the Camel's bell.
RICHARD BURTON (_The Kasidah_).
The next few months Lady Burton mainly occupied herself by arranging in her new house the things which she had brought with her from Trieste.
When all was finished, her modest quarters in Baker Street were curiously characteristic of the woman. Like many of the houses in her beloved Damascus, the one in Baker Street was unpretentious, not to say unprepossessing, when viewed from without, but within totally different, for Lady Burton had managed to give it an oriental air, and to catch something of the warmth and colouring of the East. This was especially true of her little drawing-room, which had quite an oriental aspect.
Eastern curtains veiled the windows, the floor was piled with Persian carpets, and a wide divan heaped with cus.h.i.+ons and draped with bright Bedawin rugs ran along one side of the room. There were narghilehs and chibouques, and cups of filigree and porcelain for the dispensing of delectable Arab coffee. Quaint brackets of Morocco work, Eastern pictures, portraits, Persian enamels, and curios of every description covered the walls. The most striking object in the room was a life- size portrait of Sir Richard Burton, dressed in white, with a scarlet c.u.mmerbund, flanked on either side by a collection of rare books, most of them his works. Many other relics of him were scattered about the room; and all over the house were to be found his books and pictures, and busts of him. In fact, she made a cult of her husband's memory, and there were enough relics of him in the house to fill a little museum.
In this house Lady Burton settled down with her sister, Mrs. Fitzgerald, to her daily life in England, which was mostly a record of work--arduous and unceasing work, which began at 10.30 in the morning, and lasted till 6.30 at night. Sometimes, indeed, she would work much later, far on into the night, and generally in the morning she would do a certain amount of work before breakfast, for the old habit of early rising clung to her still, and until her death she never broke herself of the custom of waking at five o'clock in the morning. At the top of her Baker Street house Lady Burton built out a large room, or rather loft. It was here she housed her husband's ma.n.u.scripts, which she knew, as she used to say, ”as a shepherd knew his sheep.” They lined three sides of the room, and filled many packing-cases on the floor. To this place she was wont to repair daily, ascending a tortuous staircase, and finally getting into the loft by means of a ladder. Later she had to abandon this steep ascent, but so long as it was possible she scaled the ladder daily, and would sit on a packing-case surrounded by her beloved ma.n.u.scripts for hours together.
Lady Burton was scarcely settled in Baker Street before her sister (the one next to her in age), Mrs. Smyth Pigott, of Brockley Court, Somerset, died. She had to go down to Weston-super-Mare for the funeral. When that was over she came back to Baker Street, where she remained over Christmas. She wrote to a friend of hers about this time: