After this episode of my being publicly attacked about her biography, Chambers' Journal, September 9th, 1876, produced the following notice:—
"Jane Elizabeth, Lady Ellenborough, if we may trust the matter-of-fact pages of Lodge's 'Peerage,' is the only sister of the present Lord Digby, being daughter of the late Admiral Sir Henry Digby, G.C.B., great-grandson of the fifth Lord Digby; her mother was a daughter of Thomas William Coke, of Holkham, the veteran M.P. for Norfolk, and well-known agriculturist, afterwards created Earl of Leicester. She was born in April, 1807, and when little more than seventeen, was married to the late Lord Ellenborough (the Governor-General of India); but the union was dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1830.
"The rumour of her death was effectually contradicted a few months later by a letter in her own handwriting, addressed to an English lady, who was well acquainted with her in Damascus. This lady and her husband had mourned old Lady Ellenborough for two or three months as having died in the desert, and had quite given up all hope of ever seeing her again, when one day she received from her a letter stating that she was alive and in the best of health, and asking her to contradict the rumour of her decease.
'Lady Ellenborough was fortunate in the possession of at least one sincere friend, generously eager to defend her when attacked, and to make out the best case possible for her. Mrs. Isabel Burton, who had been intimately acquainted, and in the habit of daily intercourse with this extraordinary woman, during a residence of some years in Damascus, while her husband, Captain Burton, was the English Consul at that city, appears to have contracted a warm attachment for her, and speaks of her, in spite of all her faults, in terms of the highest praise. To Mrs. Burton Lady Ellenborough confided the task of writing her biography, and dictated it to her day by day until the task was accomplished. In a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, written in March, 1873, when under the belief that Lady Ellenborough was dead, Mrs. Burton says, in allusion to this biography, 'She did not spare herself, dictating the bad with the same frankness as the good. I was pledged not to publish this until after her death and that of certain near relatives.'
"Mrs. Burton subsequently adds, 'I cannot meddle with the past without infringing on the biography confided to me; but I can say a few words concerning her life, dating from her arrival in the East, as told me by herself and by those now living there; and I can add my testimony as to what I saw, which I believe will interest every one in England, from the highest downwards, and be a gratification to those more nearly concerned. About sixteen years ago, tired of Europe, Lady Ellenborough conceived the idea of visiting the East, and of imitating Lady Hester Stanhope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, not to mention a French lady, Mdme. de la Tour d'Auvergne, who has built herself a temple on the top of Mount Olivet, and lives there still. Lady Ellenborough arrived at Beyrout and went to Damascus, where she arranged to go to Baghdad across the Desert. A Bedouin escort for this journey was necessary; and as the Mezrab tribe occupied the ground, the duty of commanding the escort devolved upon Shaykh Mijwal, a younger brother of Shaykh Mohammed, chief of this tribe, which is a branch of the great Anezeh tribe. On the journey the young Shaykh fell in love with this beautiful woman, who possessed all the qualities that could fire the Arab imagination. Even two years ago she was more attractive than half the young girls of our time. It ended by his proposing to divorce his Moslem wives and to marry her; to pass half the year in Damascus—which to him was like what London or Paris would be to us—for her pleasure, and half in the Desert to lead his natural life. The romantic picture of becoming a Queen of the Desert and of the Bedouin tribes exactly suited her wild fancies, and was at once accepted; and she was married, in spite of all opposition made by her friends and the British Consulate. She was married according to Mohammedan law, changed her name to that of the Honourable Mrs. Digby El Mezrab, and was horrified when she found that she had lost her nationality by her marriage, and had become a Turkish subject. For fifteen years she lived as she died,[3] the faithful and affectionate wife of the Shaykh, to whom she was devotedly attached. Half the year was passed in a very pretty house, which she built at Damascus just without the gates of the City; and the other six months were passed, according to his nature, in the Desert in the Bedouin tents of the tribe.
"'In spite of this hard life, necessitated by accommodating herself to his habits—for they were never apart—she never lost anything of the English lady, nor the softness of a woman. She was always a perfect lady in sentiment, voice, manners, and speech. She never said or did anything could wish otherwise. She kept all her husband's respect, and was the Mother and the Queen of his tribe. In Damascus we were only nineteen Europeans, but we all flocked around her with affection and friendship. The natives did the same. As to strangers, she received only those who brought a letter of introduction from a friend or relative; but this did not hinder every ill-conditioned passer-by from boasting of his intimacy with the House of Mezrab, and recounting the untruths which he invented, pour se faire valoir, or to sell his book or newspaper at a better profit. She understood friendship in its best and fullest sense, and for those who enjoyed her confidence it was a treat to pass the hours with her. She spoke French, Italian, German, Slav, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, and Greek, as she spoke her native tongue. She had all the tastes of a country life, and occupied herself alternately with painting, sculpture, music, or with her garden-flowers, or poultry, or with her thoroughbred Arab mares, or in carrying out some improvement. She was thoroughly a connoisseur in each of her amusements or occupations. To the last she was fresh and young; beautiful, brave, refined, and delicate. She hated all that was false. Her heart was noble; she was charitable to the poor. She regularly attended the Protestant church, and often twice on Sundays. She fulfilled all the duties of a good Christian lady and an Englishwoman. She is dead. All those who knew her in her latter days will weep for her. She had but one fault (and who knows if it was hers?), washed out by fifteen years of goodness and repentance. Let us hide it, and shame those who seek to drag up the adventures of her wild youth to tarnish so good a memory. Requiescat in pace.'
"But Lady Ellenborough was not dead. It will, of course, be obvious that, along with Lord Brougham, she has been privileged to read the obituary notice of her own career; and she is probably destined to see many more summers and winters in her Arab home.
"It is evident, from the tenor of the last few sentences of the foregoing letter, that the 'one fault' to which the writer alludes was the elopement of Lady Ellenborough with Prince Schwartzenberg, and that Mrs. Burton entirely disbelieves in the half-dozen or more of apocryphal husbands intervening between Lord Ellenborough and the Arab sheikh. At any rate, the eccentric lady is entitled to the benefit of the doubt; and public curiosity respecting this extraordinary woman must remain unsatisfied until the period shall arrive when her friend and confidante, Mrs. Burton, will be at liberty to publish the autobiography committed to her charge.
"It would be possible, without difficulty, to draw at once a parallel and a contrast between the eccentric Lady Ellenborough and the scarcely less eccentric niece of the younger Pitt, Lady Hester Stanhope, whom I have named above, and who, more than half a century ago, exchanged English life, habits, and sentiments, and possibly also to some extent her faith as well, for those of the wild and romantic East."
The others, besides Richard and myself, on the house roof were frequently Charles Tyrwhitt-Drake, an indefatigable worker in the Palestine Exploration; and E. H. Palmer, afterwards professor of Arabic at Cambridge, and in 1882 murdered by the Bedawi in Arabia. We were six, and I need not say how romantic those evenings were, what a halo my memory throws around them, what conversation, what real adventures, real life, real wit, real spirituality we enjoyed; and we often stayed there till the moon was on the wane. The two Englishmen were living with us, and Abd el Kadir, with an escort of his Algerines, who were picketed in our court, would see the lady home on his road to his own palace. Now I am the only survivor of those happy meetings.
THE BURTONS' HOUSE-ROOF AT DAMASCUS AND THE ADJOINING MOSQUE-MINARET.
Richard and Children.
Richard's love for children was quite extraordinary. If there was a child in the room, even a baby in arms, no one could get a word out of him; but you would find him on the floor, romping with them, and they were never afraid of him. I do not think there could possibly be a better illustration than the very admirable and striking account given by Salih, who was one of the missionaries in Damascus:—
"Burton at Damascus.
"My first sight of Captain Burton revealed not only the man in his complex character, but supplied the key to the perplexing vicissitudes of his extraordinary career.
"On his arrival in Damascus, Burton called at my house. My study adjoined the drawing-room, into which he was shown by a native servant. I heard him command the Arab to fetch me in harsh, peremptory tones, which were meant to be obeyed. The servant, not thinking that I was in the study, went to seek me elsewhere. I advanced, in noiseless Damascus slippers, to the drawing-room door, and I came upon a scene never to be forgotten.
"At one side of the room stood my curly-headed, rosy-cheeked little boy of five, on the other side stood Burton. The two were staring at each other. Neither was aware of my presence. Burton had twisted his face into the most fiendish-like aspect. His eyes rolled, exposing the whites in an alarming manner. The features were drawn to one side, so as to make the gashes on his jaw and brow appear more ghastly. The two cheeks were blown out, and Burton, raising a pocket-handkerchief to his left cheek, struck his right with the flat of his right hand, thus producing an explosion, and making the pocket-handkerchief fly to the left as if he had shot it through his two cheeks.
"The explosion was followed by a suppressed howl, something between the bark of a hyæna and a jackal. All the time Burton glared on the little fellow with the fiery eyes of a basilisk, and the child stood riveted to the floor as if spell-bound and fascinated, like a creature about to be devoured. Suddenly a very wonderful thing happened. The little boy, with a wild shout of delight, sprang into the monster's arms, and the black beard was instantly mingled with the fair curls, and Burton was planting kisses all over the flaxen pate. The whole pantomime was gone through as quick as lightning, and Burton, disentangling himself, caught sight of my Arab returning without me, and, instead of waiting for an explanation, hurled at him a volley of exasperating epithets, culled from the rich stores of spicy and stinging words which garnish Arabic literature. Burton had revealed himself to me fully before he saw me. The child's clear, keen instinct did not mislead it. The big, rough monster had a big child's heart behind the hideous grimaces. The child's unerring instinct was drawn by affinity to the child's heart in the man."
During our time a very interesting episode occurred at Damascus—a sad one, too. Lord and Lady Langdale had a daughter who was married to Count Téleki. It was not a very happy marriage. She made a journey to Syria and Palestine with her mother, a very nice cousin, and a young friend of his, for diversion. Like many travellers, unused to sun, hard riding, bad water, exposure, and fatigue, she got the usual fever and dysentery, and was brought down in a dying state to Damascus. She was of Agnostic principles, but in her last few hours she desired to be baptized a Catholic. I did all I could for her in the way of nursing, and Richard as far as his power went. When she died, her desk was found to contain a letter which had been written years before, when she had been very much excited by reading Buckle's "History of Civilization," and she wrote, "Should I die at Damascus, I should like to be buried by Buckle." It so happened that there was place for two next to Buckle, and she was buried there—a most impressive and touching funeral. Her coffin was covered with the Union Jack; Richard and all his dragomans and kawwáses, in full uniform, were present; and some time after, appeared the following note in a newspaper:—