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 circumstances. 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.
"I can tell you how to cure that," said Lady Burton.
"How?" said Mr. Payne. "Say your prayers," said she.
After an attack of influenza Lady Burton hired a cottage—Holywell Lodge—at Eastbourne [692] where she stayed from September to March 1896, busying herself composing her autobiography. [693] Two letters which she wrote to Miss Stisted from Holywell Lodge are of interest. Both are signed "Your loving Zoo." The first contains kindly references to Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot, who had been visiting her, and to the widow of Professor Huxley [694] who was staying at Eastbourne; and the second, which is amusing enough, records her experiences among some very uncongenial people at Boscombe. Wherever she went, Lady Burton, as we have seen, was always thrusting her opinions, welcome or not, upon other persons; but at Boscombe the tables were turned, and she experienced the same annoyance that she herself had so often excited in others.
"I went," she says, "to a little boarding-house called.... The house was as comfortable as it could be, the food plain, but eatable, but the common table was always chock full of Plymouth Brethren and tract-giving old maids, and we got very tired of it."
Then follows an account of her establishment at Eastbourne. "It consists," she says, "of my secretary (Miss Plowman) and nurse, and we have our meals together, and drive out together whenever I am able. Then my servants are a maid, house-parlour-maid, a housemaid and a cook (my Baker Street lot). The cottage [at Mortlake] is in charge of a policeman, and Baker Street a caretaker. My friend left three servants in the house, so we are ten altogether, and I have already sent one of mine back, as they have too much to eat, too little to do, and get quarrelsome and disagreeable." Thus it was the same old story, for Lady Burton, though she had the knack of living, was quite incapable of learning, or at any rate of profiting by experience.
The letter concludes sadly, "As to myself, I am so thin and weak that I cannot help thinking there must be atrophy, and in any case my own idea is that I may be able to last till March."