For the first time this summer Isabel and her husband found that swimming in the sea, which had been one of their favourite recreations at Trieste, no longer agreed with them, and they came reluctantly to the conclusion that their swimming must go the way of the fencing, and that the days of their more active physical exercises were over. For the first time also in all the twenty-two years of their married life they began to shirk the early rising, and now no longer got up at 3 or 4 a.m., but at the comparatively late hour of 6 or 6.30 a.m. In November Burton had a serious attack of gout, which gave him agonies of pain; and it was at last borne in upon him that he would have to make up his mind henceforth to be more or less of an invalid. Simultaneously Isabel was ill from peritonitis. There seemed to be a curious sympathy between the two, which extended to all things, even to their physical health. On December 6 Burton put the following in his diary in red ink: “This day eleven years I came here. What a shame!”

Early in 1884 Isabel came in for a small legacy of £500, which was useful to them at the time, as they were far from being well off, and had incurred many expenses consequent on their change of house. She expended the whole of it in additional comforts for her husband during his illness, which unfortunately seemed to get more serious as time went on. In February he quite lost the use of his legs for eight months, which of necessity kept him much in the house. It was during this period that he began his great work Alf Laylah wa Laylah, or The Arabian Nights. When I say he began it, that is not strictly speaking correct, for he had been gathering material for years. He merely took in hand the matter which he had already collected thirty years before. He worked at it con amore, and it was very soon necessary to call in an amanuensis to copy his manuscript.

This year was uneventful. They were absent from Trieste a good deal on “cures” and short excursions. Burton’s health gave him a great deal of trouble; but whenever he was well enough, or could find time from his official duties, he devoted himself to his translation of The Arabian Nights. Isabel also worked hard in connexion with it in another way. She had undertaken the financial part of the business, and sent out no less than thirty-four thousand circulars to people with a view to their buying copies of the book as it came out.

In January and February, 1885, Burton was so ill that his wife implored him to throw up the Consular Service, and live in a place which suited him, away from Trieste. Of course that meant that they would have to live in a very small way; for if they gave up their appointment at that time and forfeited the salary, they would have been very poor. Still, so impressed was Isabel that the winter in Trieste did not agree with her husband, that she said, “You must never winter here again”; but he said, “I quite agree with you there—we will never winter here again; but I won’t throw up the Service until I either get Morocco or they let me retire on full pension.” She then said, “When we go home again, that is what we will try for, that you may retire on full pension, which will be only six years before your time.” Henceforth she tried for only two things: one, that he might be promoted to Morocco, because it was his pet ambition to be Consul there before he died; the other, failing Morocco, he should be allowed to retire on full pension on account of his health. Notwithstanding that she moved heaven and earth to obtain this latter request, it was never granted.

In the meantime they were busy writing together the index to The Arabian Nights. On Thursday, February 12, she said to him, “Now mind, to-morrow is Friday the 13th. It is our unlucky day, and we have got to be very careful.”

When the morning dawned, they heard of the death of one of their greatest friends, General Gordon, which had taken place on January 26 at Kartoum; but the news had been kept from them. At this sad event Isabel writes, “We both collapsed together, were ill all day, and profoundly melancholy.”

CHAPTER XXV
GORDON AND THE BURTONS

Oh! bring us back once more

The vanished days of yore,

When the world with faith was filled;