“I finished the book last night, and have never left Mortlake. It has taken me eight months. I hope it will be out the end of May. I do not know if I can harden my heart against the curs,[52] but I can put out my tongue and point my pen and play pussy cat about their eyes and ears. I am to have six months’ rest, but you know what that means.”[53]
Lady Burton received a substantial sum from the publishers for the book, and it was published in May. The success which it achieved was immediate and unqualified, and, what is more, deserved, for with all its faults it is a great book—the last great work in the life of the woman who never thought of self, and her supreme achievement to raise aloft her husband’s name. Its success was very grateful to Lady Burton’s heart, not on her own account, but her husband’s; in fact, it may be said to have gilded with brightness the last years of her life. She felt now that her work was done and that nothing remained. She wrote to a friend early in the New Year (1894)[54]:
“I have had my head quite turned by the great success of my book. First came about a hundred half-nasty, or wholly nasty, critiques; then the book made its way. I had three leading articles, over a thousand charming reviews, and have been inundated with the loveliest letters and invitations.... With my earnings I am embellishing his mausoleum, and am putting up in honour of his poem, Kasidah, festoons of camel bells from the desert, in the roof of the tent where he lies, so that when I open or shut the door, or at the elevation of the Mass, the ‘tinkling of the camel bell’ will sound just as it does in the desert. On January 22 I am going down to pass the day in it, because it is my thirty-third wedding day, and the bells will ring for the first time. I am also carrying out all his favourite projects, and bringing out by degrees all his works hitherto published or unpublished, as of the former only small quantities were published, and these are mostly extinct. If God gives me two years, I shall be content. I live in my little chaumière near the mausoleum on the banks of the Thames for the six good months of the year, and in my warm dry home in London six bad months, with my sister. You cannot think how the picture of Richard by you was admired at the Grosvenor Gallery, and I put your name over it. I have now got it home again, and I thought he smiled as I brought him back in the cab for joy to get home.... There is a great wax-work exhibition in England which is very beautifully done (Tussaud’s). They have now put Richard in the Meccan dress he wore in the desert. They have given him a large space with sand, water, palms, and three camels, and a domed skylight, painted yellow, throws a lurid light on the scene. It is quite life-like. I gave them the real clothes and the real weapons, and dressed him myself. When it was offered to him during his life, his face beamed, and he said, ‘That will bring me in contact with the people.’”
The other works of Sir Richard’s which Lady Burton brought out after the Life of her husband included Il Pentamerone and Catullus. She also arranged for a new edition of his Arabian Nights, and she began what she called the “Memorial Library,” which was mainly composed of the republication of half-forgotten books which he had written in the days before he became famous. She also recalled, at great pecuniary sacrifice to herself, another work which she thought was doing harm to his memory, and destroyed the copies.
Upon the publication of the Life of her husband, Lady Burton was overwhelmed with letters from old acquaintances who had half-forgotten her, from tried and trusted friends of her husband and herself, and from people whom she had never known, but who were struck by the magnitude of her self-sacrificing love. All these letters were pleasant. But she also received a number of letters of a very doubtful nature, which included begging letters and applications requesting to see her from quacks and charlatans of different kinds, who by professing great admiration for her husband, and veneration for his memory, thought they would find in Lady Burton an easy prey. In this they were mistaken. Although generous and open-hearted as the day, she always found out charlatans in the long run. She used to say she “liked to give them rope enough.” Unfortunately, though, it must be admitted that Lady Burton had the defects of her qualities. Absolutely truthful herself, she was the last in the world to suspect double-dealing in others, and the result was that she sometimes misplaced her confidence, and put her trust in the wrong people. This led her into difficulties which she would otherwise have avoided.
The publication of the Life of her husband seemed also to arouse a number of dormant animosities, and it led, among other things, to a large increase in the number of abusive and insulting letters which she received from anonymous writers, chiefly with regard to her burning of The Scented Garden. They gave her great pain and annoyance. But many approved of her action, and among others who wrote to her a generous letter of sympathy was Lady Guendolen Ramsden, the daughter of her old friends the Duke and Duchess of Somerset. I give Lady Burton’s reply because it shows how much she appreciated the kindness of her friends:
“October 31, 1893.
“My dear Lady Guendolen,
“I cannot tell you what pleasure your very kind letter gave me. I feared that you and all your family had forgotten me long ago. I was, and so was Richard, very much attached to the Duke and Duchess; they always made us welcome, they always made us feel at home. I delighted in the Duke—so clever, so fascinating, and he was my beau idéal of a gentleman of the Old School, whilst the kindness of heart, the high breeding, and the wit of the Duchess attached us both greatly to her. You were such a very young girl that I knew you the least, and yet you are the one to be kind to me now. The ones I knew best were poor Lord St. Maur and Lady Ulrica. Let me now thank you for speaking so truly and handsomely of my dear husband, and your kindness and sympathy with me and my work. It is quite true! If you knew what a small section of people have made me suffer, and the horrible letters that they have written me, you would feel sorry to think that there were such people in the world, and when I reflect that it was that class of people who would have received the manuscript with joy, I know how right I was to burn it. It was not the learned people, as you imagine, who regret this, because there was no learning to be gained in it. My dear husband did it simply to fill our purse again. The people who were angry were the people who loathe good, and seek for nothing but that class of literature. My husband had no vicious motive in writing it; he dissected these things as a doctor would a body. I was calculating what effect it would have on the mass of uneducated people who might read it. I did receive many beautiful letters on the subject, and the papers have more or less never let me drop, but often much blame. I was so astonished to find myself either praised or blamed; it seemed to me the natural thing for a woman to do; but I see now how mistaken I was to have confessed it, and to imagine it was my duty to confess, which I certainly did. I know that he, being dead, would not have wished it published; if so, why did he leave it to me?... You are quite right; it has pleased me more than I can say that you should approve and confirm my ideas, and I am so thankful that the Life has succeeded. I got my best reward in a review which said that ‘Richard Burton’s widow might comfort herself, as England now knew the man inside and out, that she had lifted every cloud from his memory, and his fame would shine as a beacon in all future ages.’ I remember so well the party at Lady Margaret Beaumont’s. I can shut my eyes and see the whole dinner-table; we were twenty-five in party. And I remember well also the party at Bulstrode. If I am alive in the summer, I shall be only too glad to pass a few days with you at Bulstrode, if you will let me. I feel that a talk to you would carry me back to my happy days.
“Believe me, with warmest thanks,