We had a glorious season, and took up our position in Society. He introduced me to all the people he knew, and I introduced him to all the people that I knew. Lord Houghton (Monckton-Milnes), the father of the present Lord Houghton, was very much attached to Richard, and he settled the question of our position by asking his friend Lord Palmerston to give a party, and to let me be the bride of the evening; and when I arrived, Lord Palmerston gave me his arm, and he introduced Richard and me to all the people we had not previously known, and my relatives clustered around us as well. I was allowed to put my name down for a Drawing-room. And Lady Russell, now the Dowager, presented me at Court "on my marriage."
Shortly after this, happened Grindlay's fire, where we lost all we possessed in the world, except the few boxes we had with us. The worst was that all his books, and his own poetry, which was beautiful, especially one poem, called "The Curse of Vishnu," and priceless Persian and Arabic manuscripts, that he had picked up in various out-of-the-way places, and a room full of costumes of every nation, were burnt. He smiled, and said in a philosophical sort of way, "Well, it is a great bore, but I dare say that the world will be none the worse for some of those manuscripts having been burnt" (a prophetic speech, as I now think of it). When he went down to ask for some compensation, he found that Grindlay was insured, but that he was not—not, he said, that any money could repay him for the loss of the things. As he always saw the comic side of a tragedy as well as the pathetic, "the funniest thing was the clerk asking me if I had lost any plate or jewellery, and on my saying, 'No,' the change in his face from sympathy to the utter surprise that I could care so much for any other kind of loss, was amusing."
In 1861, when the Indian army changed hands, Richard suffered, and, as Mr. Hitchman remarked, "his enemies may be congratulated upon their mingled malice and meanness." He just gave the official animus a chance. It was a common thing in times of peace for Indian officers to be allowed to take appointments and remain on the cadre of their regiment, temporarily or otherwise. Richard, in remonstrance, would not quote names for fear of injuring other men, but any man who knew Egypt could score off half a dozen. His knowledge of the East, and of so many Eastern languages, would have been of incalculable service in Egypt, upon the Red Sea, in Marocco, Persia, in any parts of the East, and yet he, who in any other land would have been rewarded with at least a K.C.B. and a handsome pension, was glad to get his foot on the lowest rung of the ladder of the Consular service, called the "Foreign Office Grave," the Consulate of Fernando Po, and we could not think enough of, talk enough of, or be grateful enough to Lord John Russell, who gave it him; yet the acceptance of this miserable post was made an excuse to strike his name off the Indian army list, and the rule, which had been allowed to lapse in a score of cases, was revived for Richard's injury under circumstances of discourtesy so great, that it would be hard to believe the affront unintentional. He received no notice whatever, and he only realized, on seeing his successor gazetted, that his military career was actually ended, and his past life become like a blank sheet of paper. It would have been stretching no point to have granted this appointment, and to have been retained in the army on half-pay, but it was refused; they swept out his whole nineteen years' service as if they had never been, without a vestige of pay or pension.
All his services in Sind had been forgotten, all his Explorations were wiped out, and at the age of forty he found himself at home, with the rank of Captain, no pay, no pension, plenty of fame, a newly married wife, and a small Consulate in the most pestilential climate, with £700 a year. In vain he asked to go to Fernando Po temporarily till wanted for active service. He wrote—
"It will be an act of injustice on the part of the Bombay Government to solicit my removal on account of my having risked health and life in my country's service.
"They are about to treat me as a man who has been idling away my time and shirking duty; whereas I can show that every hour has been employed for my country's benefit, in study, writings, languages, and explorations. Are my wounds and fevers, and perpetual risk of health and life, not to speak of personal losses, to go for nothing?
"The Bombay Government does not take into consideration one iota of my service, but casts the whole into oblivion. I consider the Bombay Government to be unjustly prejudiced against me on account of the private piques of a certain half-dozen individuals. Will the Bombay Government put all its charges against me in black and white, and thus allow me a fair opportunity of clearing myself of my supposed delinquencies? Other men—I will merely quote Colonel Greathed and Lieut.-Colonel Norman—are permitted to take service in England, and yet to retain their military service in India.
"In the time of the Court of Directors, an officer might be serving the Foreign Office and India too, as in the case of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, late Consul at Zanzibar; but since the amalgamation, the officers of her Majesty's Indian Army hope that they may take any appointment in any part of the world, as a small recompense for their losses; i.e. supercession and inability to sell their commissions, after having paid for steps."
At first he wanted to try me, so he pretended he did not like my going to Confession, and I used to say, "Well, my religion teaches me that my first duty is to obey you," and I did not bother to go; so he at once took off this restraint, and used to send me to Mass, and remind me of fish-days. It astonished me, the wonderful way he knew our doctrine, and frequently explained things to me that I did not know myself. He always wore his medal. I was very much surprised, shortly after we were married, at my husband giving me £5. Whilst he had been away one of my brothers had met with a sudden death; his horse had fallen on him and crushed him in a moment. He said, "Take this and have Masses said with it for your poor brother." I only thought then what generosity and what good taste it was. He was always delighted with the society of priests—not so much foreign priests, as English ones—especially if he got hold of a highly educated, broad theologian of a Jesuit; but in all cases he was most courteous to any of them, and protected them and their Missions whenever he was in a position to do so. Once he went with me to a midnight Mass, and he cried all the time. I could not understand it, and he said he could not explain it himself. I had no idea then that he had ever been once received into our Church in India. He always bowed his head at "Hallowed be Thy Name," and he did that to the day of his death.
Delightful Days at Country Houses.
We passed delightful days at country houses, notably at Lord Houghton's (Fryston), where, at his house in the country, and his house in Brook Street, and at Lord Strangford's house in Great Cumberland Place, we met all that was worth meeting of rank and fashion, beauty and wit, and especially all the most talented people in the world. I can shut my eyes and mentally look round his (Lord Houghton's) large round table even now, which usually held twenty-five guests. I can see Buckle, and Carlyle, and all the Kingsleys, and Swinburne, and Froude, and all the great men that were, and many that are, for the last thirty-two years, and remember a great deal of the conversation. But I am not here to describe them, but to give a description of Richard Burton. I can remember the Due d'Aumale cheek by jowl with Louis Blanc. The present Lord Houghton, and his two sisters, Lady Fitzgerald and the Hon. Mrs. Henniker, were babes in the nursery. I can remember the good old times in the country, at Fryston, where breakfast was at different little round tables, so people came down when they liked, and sat at one or another, and he would stroll from one table to another, with a book in his hand. Swinburne was then a boy, and had just brought out his "Queen Mother Rosamund," and Lord Houghton brought it up to us, saying, "I bring you this little book, because the author is coming here this evening, so that you may not quote him as an absurdity to himself." I can remember Vambéry telling us Hungarian tales, and I can remember Richard cross-legged on a cushion, reciting and reading "Omar el Khayyâm" alternately in Persian and English, and chanting the call to prayer, "Allahhu Akbar."
My Society recollections, my happy days, are all of the pleasantest and most interesting. The evil day came far too soon; this was a large oasis of seven months in my life, and even if I had had no other it would have been worth living for. We went down to Worthing to my family, where we passed a very happy time, and he here gave me a proof of affection which I shall never forget. He had gone to see his cousin, Samuel Burton, at Brighton, and had promised to be back by the last train, but he did not make his appearance. I was in a dreadful state of mind lest anything should have happened to him. He arrived about one in the morning, pale and worn out. He had gone to sleep in the train, and had been carried some twenty miles away from Worthing. He could get no kind of conveyance, being in the night; so, inquiring in what direction Worthing lay, and settling the matter by a pocket compass, he started across country, and between a walk and a sort of long trot, from nine to one, he reached me, instead of waiting, as another man would have done, till the next morning for a train back.