“It was a country Slav priest, lately promoted to be our parish priest, who came. He called me aside, and told me that he could not give Extreme Unction to my husband, because he had not declared himself; but I besought him not to lose a moment in giving the Sacrament, for the soul was passing away, and that I had the means of satisfying him. He looked at us all three, and asked if he was dead, and we all said no. God was good, for had he had to go back for the holy materials it would have been too late, but he had them in his pocket, and he immediately administered Extreme Unction—‘Si vivis,’ or ‘Si es capax,’ ‘If thou art alive’—and said the prayers for the dying and the departing soul. The doctor still kept the battery to the heart all the time, and I still held the left hand with my finger on the pulse. By the clasp of the hand, and a little trickle of blood running under the finger, I judged there was a little life until seven, and then I knew that ... I was alone and desolate for ever.”[41]
I have given the foregoing in Lady Burton’s own words, as unfortunately a fierce controversy has raged round her husband’s death-bed, and therefore it is desirable to repeat her testimony on the subject. This testimony was given to the world in 1893, when all the witnesses of Sir Richard Burton’s death were living, and it was never publicly contradicted or called into question until December of last year (1896), eight months after Lady Burton’s death, when Miss Stisted’s book made its appearance. In consequence of the attack made upon Lady Burton by her niece, which has been repeated and echoed elsewhere, it is necessary to defend Lady Burton on this point, since she is no longer able to defend herself. But I should like to reiterate that the question of Sir Richard Burton’s religion did not enter into the original scheme of this book. I only approach it now with reluctance, and that not so much for the purpose of arguing as to what was Sir Richard Burton’s religion (that was a matter for himself alone) as of upholding the good faith of his wife. In view also of the peculiar bitterness of the odium theologicum, perhaps it may be permitted me to say at the outset that I have no prejudice on this subject. I am not a Roman Catholic, and therefore cannot be accused of approaching the controversy with what Paley was wont to call an “antecedent bias.”
In this I have the advantage of Miss Stisted, who appears to be animated by a bitter hostility not only against her aunt but against the Church of Rome. In her book she asserts that Sir Richard Burton died before the priest arrived on the scene, and that the Sacrament of Extreme Unction was administered to a corpse. She also goes on to say:
The terrible shock of so fatal a termination to what seemed an attack of little consequence, would have daunted most Romanists desirous of effecting a death-bed conversion. It did not daunt Isabel. No sooner did she perceive that her husband’s life was in danger, than she sent messengers in every direction for a priest. Mercifully, even the first to arrive, a man of peasant extraction, who had just been appointed to the parish, came too late to molest one then far beyond the reach of human folly and superstition. But Isabel had been too well trained by the Society of Jesus not to see that a chance yet remained of glorifying her Church—a heaven-sent chance which was not to be lost. Her husband’s body was not yet cold, and who could tell for certain whether some spark of life yet lingered in that inanimate form? The doctor declared that no doubt existed regarding the decease, but doctors are often mistaken. So, hardly had the priest crossed the threshold than she flung herself at his feet, and implored him to administer Extreme Unction. The father, who seems to have belonged to the ordinary type of country-bred ecclesiastic so common abroad, and who probably in the whole course of his life had never before availed himself of so startling a method of enrolling a new convert, demurred. There had been no profession of faith, he urged; there could be none now, for—and he hardly liked to pronounce the cruel words—Burton was dead. But Isabel would listen to no arguments, would take no refusal; she remained weeping and wailing on the floor, until at last, to terminate a disagreeable scene, which most likely would have ended in hysterics, he consented to perform the rite. Rome took formal possession of Richard Burton’s corpse, and pretended, moreover, with insufferable insolence, to take under her protection his soul. From that moment an inquisitive mob never ceased to disturb the solemn chamber. Other priests went in and out at will, children from a neighbouring orphanage sang hymns and giggled alternately, pious old women recited their rosaries, gloated over the dead, and splashed the bed with holy water; the widow, who had regained her composure, directing the innumerable ceremonies.... After the necessary interval had elapsed, Burton’s funeral took place in the largest church in Trieste, and was made the excuse for an ecclesiastical triumph of a faith he had always loathed.[42]
These statements of Lady Burton and Miss Stisted have been placed one after another, in order that the dispassionate reader may be able to judge not only of their conflicting nature, but of the different spirit which animates them. Lady Burton writes from her heart, reverently, as a good woman would write of the most solemn moments of her life, and of things which were to her eternal verities. Would she be likely to perjure herself on such a subject? Miss Stisted writes with an unconcealed animus, and is not so much concerned in defending the purity of her uncle’s Protestantism as in vilifying her aunt and the faith to which she belonged. It may be noted too that Miss Stisted has no word of womanly sympathy for the wife who loved her husband with a love passing the love of women, and who was bowed down by her awful sorrow. On the contrary, with revolting heartlessness and irreverence, she jeers at her aunt’s grief and the last offices of the dead. We may agree with the doctrines of the Church of Rome, or we may not; the solemn rites may be unavailing, or they may be otherwise; but at least they can do no harm, and the death-chamber should surely be sacred from such vulgar ribaldry! Good taste, if no higher consideration, might have kept her from mocking the religious convictions of others.
Miss Stisted’s indictment of Lady Burton on this point falls under three heads:
First, that Sir Richard was dead before the priest arrived.
Secondly, that he was never a Catholic at all, and so his wife acted in bad faith.
Thirdly, that he “loathed” the Catholic religion.