I here insert the beautiful and characteristic letter which my husband wrote to my father on the following day, in case he should wish to give it to my mother. For the first few days of our marriage, Richard used to be so worried at being stared at as a bridegroom, that he always used to say that we had been married a couple of years; but that sort of annoyance soon wore off, and then he became rather proud of being a married man. To say that I was happy would be to say nothing; a repose came over me that I had never known. I felt that it was for Eternity, an immortal repose, and I was in a bewilderment of wonder at the goodness of God, who had almost worked miracles for me.
We are received at Home again.
During this time my brothers visited us, keeping us up in all that was going on. Some weeks later, two dear old aunts, Mrs. Strickland-Standish and Monica, Lady Gerard, who lived at Portobello House, Mortlake, nearly opposite to where I live now, and where I had frequently passed several weeks every year (for they made a sort of family focus), got to hear that I was seen going into a bachelor lodging, and bowled up to London to tell my mother. She wrote in an agony to my father, who was visiting in the country, "that a dreadful misfortune had happened in the family; that I been seen going into a bachelor lodging in London, and could not be at the country house where I was supposed to be." My father telegraphed back to her, "She is married to Dick Burton, and thank God for it;" and he wrote to her, enclosing the letter just inserted, and desired her to send one of my brothers for us, who knew where to find us, and to mind and receive us properly. We were then sent for home. My mother behaved like a true lady and a true Christian. She kissed us both, and blessed us. I shall never forget how shy I felt going home, but I went in very calmly, I kissed them all round, and they received Richard in the nicest way, and then mother embarrassed us very much by asking our pardon for flying in the face of God, and opposing what she now knew to be His will. My husband was very much touched. It was not long before she approved of the marriage more than anybody, and as she grew to know him, she loved him as much as her own sons. And this is the way we came to be married.
In short, mother never could forgive herself, and was always alluding to it either personally or by letter. It always was the same burthen of song—"that she exposed me to such a risk, that my relations might have abandoned me, that Society might not have received me, that I might have been forbidden to put my name down for the Drawing-room, when I had done nothing wrong;" and she said, "All through me, and God had destined it, but I could not see it. I never thought you would have the courage to take the law in your own hands;" and I used to answer her, "Mother, if you had all cast me out, if Society had tabooed me, if I had been forbidden to go to Court, it would not have kept me from it—I could not have helped myself—I am quite content with my future crust and tent, and I would not exchange places with the Queen; so do not harass yourself."
However, by the goodness of God, and the justness and kindness of a few great people, none of these catastrophes did happen. We used to entreat of her not to say anything more about it, but even on her deathbed she persisted in doing so. I shall never forget that first night when we went home; I went up to my room and changed my things, and ate my dinner humbly and silently. We were a very large family and were all afraid to speak, and as Richard was so very clever, the family stood rather in awe of him; so there was a silence and restraint upon us; but the children were allowed to come down to dessert for a treat, and, with the intuition that children have, they knew that he wanted them, and that they could do what they liked with him. One was a little enfant terrible, and very fond of copying our midshipmen brothers' slang. They crowded round my mother with their little doll-tumblers waiting for some wine. He was so constrained that he forgot to pass the wine at dessert as it came round to him, when a small voice piped out from the end of the long table, "I say, old bottle-stopper—pass the wine!" He burst out laughing, and that broke the ice, and we all fell to laughing and talking. Mother punished the child by giving him no wine, but Richard looked up and said so sweetly, "Oh, Mother, not on my first night at home!" that her heart went out to him.
We had seven months of uninterrupted bliss. Through the kindness of Lord John Russell, Richard obtained the Consulship of Fernando Po, in the Bight of Biafra, West Coast of Africa, with a coast line of six or seven hundred miles for his jurisdiction, a deadly climate, and £700 a year. He was too glad to get his foot on the first rung of the ladder, so, though it was called the "Foreign Office Grave," he cheerfully accepted it. It was not quite so cheerful for me, because it was a climate of certain death to white women, and he would not allow me to go out in an unlimited way.