I stayed there three days. I do not think I am quite at liberty to give an account of what I saw, in these criticizing times, but it was wonderfully interesting, and I had a thorough insight into mediæval Italy, which I renew whenever I get the chance, as it is more than interesting. After three days I went on thence to Milan to see the Certosa of Pavia, one of the most glorious architectural relics in Europe, and from there I went to Pusiano, a now hidden "sanctuary" that will one day become famous to all the world. Pusiano is a village of one street, on the borders of a beautiful little lake, with villages and churches on the opposite bank; it is situated in the Lake Country, and there one lives with the peasantry in primitive style. I stayed there three whole days; it is beautiful in summer, but a terrible snow desolation in winter. It is quite off the railway line, and one gets to it in a little country cart. When I got back to Milan I embarked for home by the St. Gothard, Bâle, to Paris. Paris was black with people in mourning for Victor Hugo. It was his funeral next day; soldiers lined the streets, artillery commanded the two ends of the streets to fire on the people if the red flag was raised. I had much difficulty in getting to the station, for besides being in a hurry to get home, I did not want to be shut up in Paris alone, if anything occurred. Arrived at Boulogne, the passenger-boat was gone, so I took the cargo-boat at one in the night, and arrived at 4.30 a.m. at Folkestone, where the custom-house kept me till about six, searching for dynamite in my baggage, and I arrived in town on the 2nd of June. Somehow I put my arm out, and had to go back to Hutton the bone-setter. Richard did not arrive till twelve days after me.
He was delighted when he got on board the Tarifa on the 19th. He then notices the death of Victor Hugo in Paris on May 23rd. He seemed to enjoy the journey thoroughly, and to have got quite rid of the gout the moment he left. He was always thoroughly happy on board a ship, and so sorry when the voyage was over. He never knew what sea-sickness was. He could eat enough for three on board, and when the ship was rolling right round in the water, he would balance himself, holding the ink-bottle in one hand, and writing with the other.
He used to go away by himself and make pilgrimages; I know of about ten he made to various places. Once, in 1875, he left town to go into the country for a week, and to my surprise I received a private letter from him from Paray le Monial, the place once so talked about in the papers as a pilgrimage-place of St. Mary Margaret Alacoque and the Sacred Heart.[1] He had gone there to make a pilgrimage all by himself, and brought me back some medals and rosaries. He used to go into every church. He made a pilgrimage on this voyage to St. Nicholas of Bari, and brought me a lot of curios. The ship's course went by way of Venice, Fiume, Bari, Naples, Palermo, and Malaga, where they found cholera, and then to Gib. and Lisbon. He arrived in high spirits on the 14th of June.
Here I may remark that he kept two sets of journals. The public set contained remarks on the weather, scraps out of newspapers, and "Varia" (notes of what he reads), the people he writes to, the people he receives letters from, and public news. In the private set, come notices on his and my health at one side, what he and I did, obituaries, his sentiments about things in concentrated notes, condemnations of things, and scraps of poetry on the circumstances here and there.
I must here notice making at this time acquaintance with three very interesting people. One was a gentleman who would not like to be named, the leader of a religious sect, who conceals his name under the soubriquet of the "Recorder," and who is the St. Paul of their belief in a second advent—he publishes a book called "The Mother, or the Woman clothed with the Sun;" and another was Dr. Anna Kingsford, who became my fast friend, and who used to let me work with her in regard to the protection of animals. She was tall, fair, delicate, soft, refined, exceedingly pretty, beautifully dressed, of the highest possible culture, combining the education and courage of both man and woman. I made her acquaintance at an Anti-vivisection meeting, with Lord Shaftesbury in the chair, and the Bishop of Oxford present, a very little while before Lord Shaftesbury's death. The third interesting person was Mr. George Lewis.
Now, we had come to London partly for Richard's health, and partly to bring out the "Arabian Nights." The translating, writing, and correcting devolved upon him; the copying fell to a lady amanuensis; the financial part devolved upon me. It was said that there was no room for a new edition, but every previous edition was imperfect, and mostly taken from Professor Galland's French version, made a hundred and eighty years ago, and adapted for civilization. This in itself was an abridgment, and turns a most valuable ethnographical work into a collection of fairy tales. Mr. Torrens was the nearest to the original, but he only got as far as fifty tales. Mr. Lane, whose works are so popular, has only given us half the tales, and he substituted popular fairy tales. Mr. John Payne was excessively good, but he was limited to five hundred copies, and his profession forbade his being quite so daring as Richard.
Richard's object was not only to produce an absolutely literal translation, but to reproduce it in an absolutely Arabian manner. He preserved the strict divisions of the Nights, he kept to the long unbroken sentences in which the composer indulged. Being perfect master of both languages, he could imitate the rhythmic prose which is a characteristic of the Arabic. He furnished it only to scholars, and at a prohibitive price. He gave a most literal rendering of the Oriental phrases and figures. Richard called it the "Walling of the Horizon," the orientation being strictly preserved, instead of being Anglicized. The choicest phrases, the sacred preservation of them, speaks for itself. He kept the swing, the wave of Arab poetry, which one can only liken in its melancholy to the sound of an Æolian harp balanced on a tree-branch. He loved his work, and he was sorry when it was finished.
In many of the stories of other translators, he used to say, "the very point which enables you to understand the action is left out, because the translator was afraid of Mrs. Grundy. Arab ideas of morality are different from European, and if we are to understand the Arabs, and if the 'Nights' are to be of any value from an anthropological point of view, it can only be written as I have written it. I think it is such a disgrace that our Rulers should rule so many million Easterns, and be as ignorant of them as if they lived in a far-away planet; and it is to give them a chance of knowing what they are about, that I leave this legacy to the Government. I have not only preserved the spirit of the original, but the mechanique. The metrical portion has been very difficult, because Arab poetry is quite different to English. An Arab will turn out sentence after sentence before he comes to his rhyme.
"I don't care a button about being prosecuted, and if the matter comes to a fight, I will walk into court with my Bible and my Shakespeare and my Rabelais under my arm, and prove to them that, before they condemn me, they must cut half of them out, and not allow them to be circulated to the public."