Early in May Burton joined her on a lengthy leave of absence, and they did a great deal of visiting, and enjoyed themselves generally. Isabel’s Inner Life of Syria was published at this time, and she was very anxious about it. It had taken sixteen months to write. The evening of the day on which it made its appearance she went to a party, and the first person she saw whom she knew was a well-known editor, who greeted her with warm congratulations on her book. She says, “It made me as happy as if somebody had given me a fortune.”
[From the portrait by the late Lord Leighton.
Richard F. Burton
The favourable reception which was accorded to The Inner Life of Syria, which was largely devoted to a defence of her husband’s action when Consul at Damascus, encouraged Isabel to proceed further on his behalf. So she wrote to, or interviewed, every influential friend she knew, with a view of inducing the Government to make Burton K.C.B., and she prepared a paper setting forth his claims and labours in the public service, which was signed by thirty or forty of the most influential personages of the day. She also induced them to ask that Burton should either return to Damascus, or be promoted to Morocco, Cairo, Tunis, or Teheran. Unfortunately her efforts met with no success, though she renewed them again through another source three years later. In one sense, however, she succeeded; for though she could not convert the Government to her view, the press unanimously took up the cause of Burton, and complained that the Government did not give him his proper place in official life, and called him the “neglected Englishman.” As for Burton himself, he took no part in this agitation, except to thank his friends and the press generally for their exertions on his behalf.
They went down to Oxford at Commemoration to visit Professor Jowett and others. At Oxford they met with an ovation. In London they passed a very pleasant season, for private personages seemed anxious to make up for official neglect. This year Frederick Leighton’s famous picture of Burton was exhibited in the Royal Academy. Among other celebrated people whom they met was Mr. Gladstone, at Lord Houghton’s. Of Burton’s meeting with Mr. Gladstone Isabel relates the following: “Very late in the evening Mrs. Gladstone said to me, ‘I don’t know what it is; I cannot get Mr. Gladstone away this evening’; and I said to her, ‘I think I know what it is; he has got hold of my husband, Richard Burton, and they are both so interested in one another, and have so many points of interest to talk over, that I hope you will not take him away.’”
The season over, Burton started on another trip to Iceland; and Isabel was left alone, during which time she paid some visits to the Duke and Duchess of Somerset at Bulstrode, always kind friends of hers, and to Madame von Bülow at Reigate. Madame von Bülow was the wife of the Danish Minister in London, and one of Isabel’s most intimate friends—a friendship which lasted all her life.
When Burton returned from Iceland, he went off to Vichy for a cure, and rejoined his wife in London in the autumn; and they went out a great deal, chiefly in scientific, literary, and artistic circles. This year was in some respects one of the pleasantest of Isabel’s life. Her book had come out, and was a great success; she had been fêted by all her friends and relations; and though her efforts to obtain promotion for her husband had not met with the success which they deserved, yet the kind encouragement which she received from influential friends, who, though not members of the Government, were yet near the rose, made her hope that better days were soon to come.
In December Burton, finding that he had still six months’ leave, asked his wife where she would like to go best. She answered, “India.” It had long been her desire to go there with her husband, and get him to show her all the familiar spots which he had described to her as having visited or lived at during his nineteen years’ service in India. Burton was delighted with the idea. So they got a map, cut India down the middle lengthways from Cashmere to Cape Comorin, and planned out how much they could manage to see on the western side, intending to leave the eastern side for another time, as the season was already too far advanced for them to be able to see the whole of India.