Brings to that gate no toll:
Giftless we come to Him who all things gives;
And live because He lives.
Whittier.
In May, 1885, Isabel started with her husband for England. They travelled together as far as Venice, and here, as often, they parted, and went their separate ways. Burton was ordered to go by sea for his health, and his wife arranged to proceed by land. She went round by way of Bologna, and thence travelled viâ Milan and Paris, and arrived in London on June 2. Her husband joined her twelve days later.
They had two objects in coming to London at this time—one was to consult physicians concerning Burton’s health, the other to make arrangements concerning The Arabian Nights. The production of this book may be described as a joint affair; for though the lion’s share of the work of translating, writing, and correcting proofs devolved upon Burton alone, the financial part of the work fell upon his wife, and that it was a big thing no one who has had any experience of writing or publishing would deny. There were several editions in the field; but they were all abridged or “Bowdlerized” ones, adapted more or less for “family and domestic reading.” Burton’s object in bringing out this great work was not only to produce a literal translation, but to reproduce it faithfully in the Arabian manner. He preserved throughout the orientation of the verses and figures of speech instead of Anglicising them. It is this, combined with his profound oriental scholarship, his fine old-world style, and the richness, variety, and quaintness of his vocabulary, which has given to his original edition its unique value.
In Burton the immortal tales had at last found a translator who would do them justice, and who was not afraid of prejudices of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism. Burton’s view of this matter is sufficiently expressed in the following speech: “I do not care a button about being prosecuted; and if the matter comes to a fight, I will walk into court with my Bible and my Shakspeare and my Rabelais under my arm, and prove to them that before they condemn me they must cut half of them out, and not allow them to be circulated to the public.”[34] He expressed his views in this matter to his wife; and though at his wish she did not read the original edition of The Arabian Nights, she set to work to help him in every way that she could. In fact it may be truly said that it was she who did all the difficult work of evading the “vigilance” of certain persons, and of arranging for the publication of this important book. In order that her husband’s original text might be copyrighted, she herself brought out an expurgated edition, which was called the “Household Edition.” By this means she was enabled to copyright three thousand pages of her husband’s original text, and only excluded two hundred and fifteen. She says, “Richard forbade me to read these pages until he blotted out with ink the worst words, and desired me to substitute not English but Arab society words, which I did to his complete satisfaction.” Of course to bring out a work of this kind, and to bear the whole burden of the labour and initial expense of it, was no ordinary task, and it is to Isabel’s efforts and to her marvellous business capacity that the credit of publishing the book is due. From a financial point of view the Burtons had no reason to regret their venture. At the beginning a publisher had offered Burton £500 for the book; but Isabel said, “No, let me do it.” It was seventeen months’ hard work, and during that time they had to find the means for printing and binding and circulating the volumes as they came out. The Burtons were their own printers and their own publishers, and they made between September, 1885, and November, 1888, sixteen thousand guineas, six thousand of which went towards the expenses of publishing and ten thousand guineas into their own pockets. Isabel writes, “It came just in time to give my husband the comforts and luxuries and freedom which gilded the last five years of his life. When he died there were four florins left, which I put into the poor-box.”
They had a very pleasant season in London. They were mainly occupied in preparing The Arabian Nights; but their labours over for the day, they went out in society a great deal. Perhaps the most noteworthy event at this time was that Isabel made a long speech at St. James’s Hall at a meeting for the purpose of appealing to the Pope for a Circular Letter on the subject of the protection of animals. The meeting was in vain.
The first volume of The Arabian Nights came out on December 12, 1885, and the sixteenth volume, the last of the Supplementals, on November 13, 1888. Thus in a period of three years they produced twenty-two volumes—namely, ten Originals, six Supplementals, and Lady Burton’s six volumes of the Household Edition.
In October, 1885, they went down to Hatfield on a visit to Lord and Lady Salisbury. A week before this Burton, having heard that Sir John Drummond Hay, Consul at Morocco, was about to retire, applied for the post. It was the one thing that he had stayed on in the Consular Service in the hope of obtaining. He wrote a letter to the Foreign Secretary, which was backed up by about fifty of the best names in England, whom his wife had canvassed; and indeed it seemed that the post was as good as assured to him. In the third week in November Burton started for Morocco in order to spy out the promised land, or rather the land which he hoped would have been his. Isabel was left behind to bring out some volumes of The Arabian Nights. She brought them out up to the seventh volume, and then made ready to join her husband at Gibraltar on his way to Tangiers in January. She says à propos of her labours in this respect: “I was dreadfully spied upon by those who wished to get Richard into trouble about it, and once an unaccountable person came and took rooms in some lodgings which I took after Richard left, and I settled with the landlord that I should leave or that person should not have the rooms, and of course he did not have any hesitation between the two, and I took the whole of the rooms during my stay.”