On the 1st of April, 1884, he began his "Arabian Nights" (Calcutta edition), taking it up from the material already collected with Dr. Steinhaüser thirty years before, and I volunteered to work the financial part of it. His journal shows him to be very sorry for the death of Trübner, of the great publishing house in Ludgate Hill, and also for Charles Reade, the novelist and dramatist, who was a good friend of ours, and who died on April 10th.
RICHARD BURTON IN HIS BEDROOM AT TRIESTE.
Here he began his "Arabian Nights," 1st April, 1884. In this room he died on 30th October, 1890.
By Albert Letchford.
On the 15th of April, 1884, we had to call in an amanuensis to begin to copy the "Arabian Nights," as, what with attending Richard night and day, and doing all his correspondence and business, I got no time to copy.
In May he obtained leave of absence, but was too weak to leave for a little while after its arrival. An incident happened which it is perhaps silly to relate, but which is uncomfortable when you have sick and dying people in the house. One girl in the house had died of consumption, and my husband was lying ill. The day the girl died, all the bells in the house kept ringing without hands, and continued for about ten days, to our great discomfort, and there were blows on the doors, as if somebody was going round with a stick. We could see the bell-pulls moving, but no hands touching them. It caused the deceased girl's family great fear, and was very uncanny.
We were able to start on the 4th of June. We had a very trying journey to Graz, which is halfway to Vienna; the train was a regular buck-jumper. Richard was quite done up three or four hours before arriving. On getting out he could hardly stand, and his head was whirling. The Hôtel Daniele was only just across the road, and leaning on me he managed to get there; I left the baggage at the station till afterwards. We stayed the whole of the next day to rest him, but had a very miserable time of it, and then went on to Vienna, which he bore very well, for it was a quiet, agreeable journey, but he had had quite enough of it when we arrived at the Erzherzog Karl Hotel.
Colonel Primrose came, and we saw Sir Augustus and Lady Paget, and our friends the Pinos. Two days afterwards Richard began to feel quite different, and he enjoyed so much seeing Sir Augustus and Lady Paget. She is one of the most charming, the cleverest, and most sympathetic of women. We left Vienna on Tuesday, the 10th, by an early train, and he was able to bear a pleasant journey of nine hours to Maríenbad, although I must say that the only two objects of interest between Vienna and Maríenbad are Prince Schwarzenberg's castle and the storks sitting on their nests on the cottage roof-tops. We went to Klinger's Hotel, and here he rapidly progressed, and went through the cure. We found Miss Bishop here, which was a great pleasure. She took us in hand, and literally drove us out for long walks. Richard was delighted with the wild strawberries, myosotis, buttercups, and daisies, and enjoyed Maríenbad very much. I found the Society for Protection of Animals, founded in 1882, very flourishing, and gave the dog-prizes. When we went for the first time on the promenade to hear the band, he looked round for a minute, and said, "My God, what a lot of Jews! Why, the whole of Noah's Ark is turned out here!" And they really did look just like the little figures out of Noah's Ark. Mr. J. J. Aubertin now arrived, so that we were four in party. From here we visited Königswort, Prince Metternich's place. It was a very pleasant life, strolling about in the forests, reading together, and occasionally having a professor to read German to us, making occasional expeditions, such as to Podhorn and Tepl. There was a very pretty concert of eight Spanish students, paying their way with guitar and bandurria. They sang lovely little Spanish songs, and charmed everybody very much. We made one excursion to Eger to see the Schloss, and the small interesting collection, which details the whole tragedy of Wallenstein at the Rathhaus. In our absence two griefs happened at Trieste. One was the death, on the 8th of June, of a very peculiar little child, whom we had taken a great fancy to and a great interest in, but whose story would not come well into this book. She had foretold her own death on this day three months before, when in good health. The other was of a poor Irish lady, who had made an unfortunate marriage, and was bravely earning her living in Trieste by giving lessons. She got suddenly ill, and the doctor on visiting her, seeing that she had no means of comfortable nursing, advised she should accompany him to the hospital. She did, and she died almost immediately, and had to be buried within a few hours, and what hurt us more than all was that nobody knew it till it was over. Maríenbad never agreed with me, and I had to let Richard and Mr. Aubertin go over to Carlsbad without me, but they were only absent a day.
A very interesting and peculiar person we used always to meet every year, was a second Cuthbert Bede from Oxford, whose real name was Mr. Robert Laing.