The Life of Sir Richard Burton Part 39

Copies of the Kama Shastra edition of The Scented Garden issued in 1886 [662] are not scarce. The edition of 1904, to which we have several times referred, is founded chiefly on the Arabic Ma.n.u.script in the Library at Algiers, which a few years ago was collated by Professor Max Seligsohn with the texts referred to by Burton as existing in the Libraries of Paris, Gotha and Copenhagen.

175. The Fate of the Catullus.

The fate of the Catullus was even more tragic than that of The Scented Garden. This work, like The Scented Garden, was left unfinished. Burton had covered his Latin copy and his ma.n.u.script with pencil notes looking like cobwebs, and on one page was written "Never show half finished work to women or fools." The treatment meted to his ma.n.u.script would, if Burton had been a poet of the first order, have drawn tears from a milestone. But it must be borne in mind that Lady Burton did consider him a poet of the first order, for she ranked his Camoens and his Kasidah with the work of Shakespere. And this is how she treated a work which she considered a world-masterpiece. First she skimmed it over, then she expurgated it, and finally she either typed it herself, [663]

or, what is more likely, put it into the hands of a typist who must have been extremely illiterate or abominably careless. Then, without even troubling to correct the copy, she sent the ma.n.u.script of the Catullus up the chimney after that of The Scented Garden. The typewritten copy was forwarded to the unhappy and puzzled Mr. Leonard C. Smithers, with the request, which was amusing enough, that he would "edit it" and bring it out. Just as a child who has been jumping on the animals of a Noah's Ark brings them to his father to be mended.

"To me," observes Mr. Smithers piteously, "has fallen the task of editing Sir Richard's share in this volume from a type-written copy literally swarming with copyist's errors. [664] Lady Burton has without any reason constantly refused me even a glance at his MS." The book, such as it was, appeared in 1894. If Burton had not been embalmed he would have turned in his coffin. We may or may not pardon Lady Burton for destroying the MS. of The Scented Garden, but it is impossible not to pa.s.s upon her at any rate a mild censure for having treated in that way a translation of Catullus after it had been expurgated to her own taste. Whether Burton would have considerably improved the poetry of his version we cannot say; but as it stands no single poem is superior to the work of his predecessors. One need only compare his rendering of the lines "To the Peninsula of Sirmio" with the Hon. George Lamb's [665]

"Sirmio of all the sh.o.r.es the gem,"

or Leigh Hunt's

"O, best of all the scattered spots that lie,"

to see what a fall was there, and yet neither Lamb's version nor Hunt's is satisfactory. His "Atys" pales before Cranstoun's, and his "Epithalamium," is almost unreadable; while the lines "On the death of Lesbia's Sparrow" naturally compel comparison with Byron's version.

Nor will readers of the translations by Sir Theodore Martin or Robinson Ellis gain anything by turning to Burton.

On the other hand, we can well believe that his work, considered as a commentary on Catullus--for nearly all his loose notes have perished--would have been as valuable to us as, viewed in the same light, is his edition of Camoens. He had explored all the Catullus country. Verona, the poet's birthplace, "Sweet Sirmio," his home on the long narrow peninsula that cleaves Garda's "limpid lake," Brescia, "below the Cycnaean peak," [666] the "dimpling waters" of heavenly Como, and the estate of Caecilius; [667] all were familiar to him. He knew every spot visited by the poet in his famous voyage in the open pinnance [668] from Bithynia "through the angry Euxine," among the Cyclades, by "purple Zante," up the Adriatic, and thence by river and ca.n.a.l to 'Home, sweet home.' He was deep in every department of Catullian lore. He had taken enormous pains; he had given his nights and days to the work. The notes at the end of the printed volume are a mere drop compared with the ocean he left. However, the ma.n.u.script with its pencilled cobwebs, the voluminous "loose notes"--all--good and bad--went up the chimney.

Personally we have never expended a sigh over the loss of The Scented Garden, and we should not have minded one straw if Lady Burton had burnt also her typewritten travesty of the Catullus; but her destruction of Sir Richard's private journals and diaries was a deed that one finds it very hard to forgive. Just as Sir Richard's conversation was better than his books, so, we are told, his diaries were better than his conversation. Says Mr. W. H. Wilkins, [669] referring to Sir Richard, "He kept his diaries and journals, not as many keep them, with all the ugly things left out, but faithfully and fully," and again, "the private journals and diaries which were full of the secret thoughts and apologia of this rare genius have been committed to the flames." Dr. Baker, who was favoured with the sight of portions of these diaries, tells me that Sir Richard used to put in them not only an epitome of every important letter written or received by him, and of every conversation he had with persons of consequence; but also any remarks that struck him, uttered by no matter whom. [670]

176. Lisa Departs, November 1890.

Like Chico, like Khamoor, Lisa, the Baroness lady-companion, had through injudicious treatment grown well-nigh unendurable. While Burton was alive she still had some dim notion of her place, but after his death she broke the traces, and Lady Burton had, with deep regret, to part with her. They separated very good friends, however, for Lady Burton was generosity itself. By this time she had been pretty well cured of lady's maid and servant pets, at any rate we hear of no other.

Lady Burton was also distressed by an attack make in The Times upon the memory of her husband by Colonel Grant, who declared that Burton had treated both Speke and their native followers with inhumanity. Lady Burton replied with asperity--giving the facts much as we have given them in Chapter ix. Grant died 10th February 1892.

Chapter x.x.xIX. January 1891 to July 1891, Lady Burton in England

Bibliography (Posthumous works):

81. Morocco and the Moors, by Henry Leared, edited by Burton. 1891. 82.

Il Pentamerone, published 1893. 83. The Kasidah (100 copies only). 1894.

[Note.--In 1900 an edition of 250 copies appeared].

177. Lady Burton in England.

By the new year Lady Burton had completed all her arrangements. The swarms of servants and parasites which her good nature had attracted to her had been paid, or thrown, off; and the books and the mutilated ma.n.u.scripts packed up. Every day she had visited her "beloved in the chapelle ardente." "I never rested," she says, "and it was a life of torture. I used to wake at four, the hour he was taken ill, and go through all the horrors of his three hours' illness until seven."

On January 20th, Burton's remains were taken to England by the steamer "Palmyra." Lady Burton then walked round and round to every room, recalling all her life in that happy home and all the painful events that had so recently taken place. She gazed pensively and sadly at the beautiful views from the windows and went "into every nook and cranny of the garden." The very walls seemed to mourn with her.

On arriving in England on February 9th her first concern was to call on Lady Stisted and Miss Stisted, in order to "acquaint them with the circ.u.mstances of her husband's death and her intentions." The meeting was a painful one both to them and to her. They plainly expressed their disapproval of the scenes that had been enacted in the death chamber and at the funerals at Trieste; and they declared that as Protestants they could not countenance any additional ceremonial of a like nature. Lady Burton next visited Ilkeston, in Derbys.h.i.+re, where she had implored "Our Lady of Dale" to bring about her husband's conversion. Entering the Catholic Church there, she knelt before the altar and cried "Here I asked! Here I obtained! Our Lady of Dale, deliver his soul from Purgatory!" [671]

Burton's remains arrived--by "long sea"--in England on February 12th (1891) and were placed temporarily in the crypt of the Catholic Church at Mortlake; and Lady Burton then devoted the whole of her time to arranging for a public funeral in England.

To Mrs. E. J. Burton she wrote (23rd March 1891): "You must have thought me so ungrateful for not answering your sweet letter of five months ago, but, indeed, I have felt it deeply. Losing the man who had been my earthly G.o.d for thirty-five years, was like a blow on the head, and for a long time I was completely stunned." [672]

178. The Funeral at Mortlake, 15th June 1891.

The sum of 700 having been raised by Burton's admirers, a mausoleum, made of dark Forest of Dean stone and white Carrara marble, and shaped like an Arab tent, was erected in the Catholic Cemetery at Mortlake.

Over the door is an open book inscribed with the names of Sir Richard and Lady Burton, and below the book runs a ribbon with the words "This monument is erected to his memory by his loving countrymen." Among those present at the funeral were Major St. George Burton, Dr. E. J. Burton, Mr. Mostyn Pryce, Lord Arundell, Mr. Gerald Arundell, Lord Gerard, Lord Northbrook, Mr. Van Zeller, Dr. Baker, Dr. Leslie, Mr. F. F. Arbuthnot, Commander Cameron, and Mr. Justin Huntley McCarthy; and Canon Wenham officiated.

The coffin was laid in the middle of the church upon trestles, which were covered by "a cramoisie velvet pall." Tall silver candlesticks with wax candles surrounded it. An unseen choir sang solemn chants. Lady Burton, "a pathetic picture of prayerful sorrow," occupied a prie-dieu at the coffin's side. When the procession filed out priests perfumed the coffin with incense and sprinkled it with holy water, acolytes bore aloft their flambeaux, and the choir, now seen to be robed in black, sang epicedial hymns. The service had all been conducted in Latin, but at this point Canon Wenham, turning to the coffin, said in English, "with a smile and a voice full of emotion, [673] 'Enter now into Paradise.'"

Lady Burton then laid on the coffin a bunch of forget-me-nots, and said, "Here lies the best husband that ever lived, the best son, the best brother, and the truest staunchest friend."

The bystanders were moved according to their temperaments and religious views, but all were touched by the tempestuousness of Lady Burton's grief. She seemed as "one of the Eumenides." To some the pomp and scenic effects were gratifying. Others were affected by the reflection that the great traveller, after roaming through almost every known land, had at last been laid in a quiet nook in an English graveyard. Others who were familiar with Burton's religious views considered "the whole ceremony an impertinence." All, however, whatever their opinions, were united in the desire to honour the great Englishman whose motto had been "Honour not Honours." So at last, after four funerals, Sir Richard Burton was left in peace.

The interior of the tomb remains much as it did on that day. Facing the entrance is an altar with pictures, vases and the other customary appurtenances. Sir Richard's sarcophagus lies to one's left, and on the right has since been placed the coffin of Lady Burton, while over all hang ropes of camel bells, which when struck give out the old metallic sound that Sir Richard heard so often in the desert.

The ceremony over, Lady Burton went to spend ten days in the convent of the canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre at Chelmsford--"my convent," as she called it, because she was educated there. She then hired longing at No.

5, Baker Street, London, until a house--No. 67--in the same street could be made ready for her. By the kindness of Queen Victoria she was allowed a pension of 150 a year.

179. The Scented Garden Storm, June 1891.

In the meantime, the fifteen hundred subscribers to The Scented Garden kept writing to Lady Burton to ask when the promised work was to be in their hands. As she could not possibly reply to so many persons, and as the nature of some of the letters cast her into a state of wild perturbation, there seemed only one course open to her--namely, to write to the press. So she sent to The Morning Post the well-known letter which appeared 19th June, 1891, mentioning some of her reasons for destroying the ma.n.u.script, the princ.i.p.al being her belief that out of fifteen hundred men, fifteen would probably read it in the spirit of science in which it was written, the other fourteen hundred and eighty-five would read it "for filth's sake." The princ.i.p.al cause, the apparition of her husband, she did not mention. [674]

The letter in The Morning Post had no sooner appeared than a cry arose against her from one end of the country to the other. The Press castigated her, private persons expressed their indignation by post.

Burton's family in particular bitterly resented what they considered a "foolish, mad act, insulting alike to the dead and the living."

Lady Burton then wrote a second letter, which she sent to The Echo. She said that if Burton had lived "he would have been perfectly justified in carrying out his work. He would have been surrounded by friends to whom he could have explained any objections or controversies, and would have done everything to guard against the incalculable harm of his purchasers lending it to their women friends and to their boyish acquaintances, which I could not guarantee.... My husband did no wrong, he had a high purpose [675] and he thought no evil of printing it, and could one have secured the one per cent. of individuals to whom it would have been merely a study, it would probably have done no harm." Later she made some further defence in the New Review.

The opinions of Burton's friends and intimate acquaintances on the matter were as follows: Mr. Payne and Mr. Watts-Dunton [676] thought that Lady Burton did quite rightly, considering the circ.u.mstances, in destroying the work. Mr. W.F. Kirby thought that, though from her own point of view she was justified in so doing, she would have done better to present it to the College of Surgeons, where it would have been quite harmless and might have been consulted by bona-fide students.