The custom of the day
And the haunting of the night.
My altered circumstances, and the looking into and facing my future, had also to be borne.”
In the meantime her friends, notably the Dowager Lady Stanley of Alderley, the Royal Geographical and other Societies, had not been idle, and her claims had been brought before the Queen, who was graciously pleased to grant Lady Burton a pension of £150 a year from the Civil List. This pension, which she enjoyed to the day of her death, came to her as a surprise, and was not due to any effort of her own. She would never have asked anything for herself: the only thing she did ask for was that the nation should help her in raising a monument to her husband’s honour; but, as we have seen, the nation was somewhat lukewarm on that point.
At the end of April Lady Burton recovered sufficiently to leave the hotel, and joined her sister, Mrs. Fitzgerald. She was chiefly occupied during the next few months in looking out for a house, and in completing the arrangements for her husband’s final resting-place. About the middle of June the tent was finished. Sir Richard Burton’s remains were transferred from the crypt under the church to the mausoleum where they now rest. At the funeral service Lady Burton occupied a prie-dieu by the side, and to the right was Captain St. George Burton, of the Black Watch, a cousin of Sir Richard. There was a large gathering of representatives of both families and many friends. The widow carried a little bunch of forget-me-nots, which she laid on the coffin. This simple offering of love would doubtless have been far more acceptable to the great explorer than the “wreath from Royalty” the absence of which his latest biographer so loudly deplores.
When the ceremony was over, Lady Burton went away at once to the country for a ten days’ rest to the Convent of the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre, New Hall, Chelmsford, where she had been educated, and which had received within its walls many of the Arundells of Wardour. She left New Hall much refreshed and invigorated in mind and body, and for the next month was busy arranging a house which she had taken in Baker Street. She moved into it in September, 1891, and so entered upon the last chapter of her life.
CHAPTER III
THE TINKLING OF THE CAMEL’S BELL
(1891–1896)
Friends of my youth, a last adieu! haply some day we meet again;
Yet ne’er the self-same men shall meet; the years shall make us other men:
The light of morn has grown to noon, has paled with eve, and now farewell!