He writes on the 22nd of September:—
"To-day my wife was sent for to the Austro-Hungarian Embassy to receive from Count Lützow a very beautiful portrait of the Empress of Austria, in approval of her life and works. This has made me very proud and her very happy."
In October we went down to Newmarket, to see my cousins Lord and Lady Gerard, where we met some very pleasant people, and where Richard was very much interested going to the training ground, and saw hundreds of racehorses taking their gallops, and Captain Machell and Colonel Oliver Montagu explained everything to us.
On the 15th of October, 1888, Richard left London. Little did we think he would never return to it more alive. We stayed at Folkestone ten days to be near his sister and niece, and had some charming country drives. We crossed on the 26th of October—his last sight of Old England. Two years later he was gone.
We stayed at Boulogne. He was very fond of it; it agreed with him, and he liked to go over all the old haunts where we had met as young people, and his old fencing school too. He writes: "My old fencing-master Constantin is eighty, with a young bright eye." On the 29th of October, 1888, we went to Paris, also for the last time, and here at breakfast and dinner we generally had Professor Zotenberg (who gave us an always-remembered breakfast at the Lion d'Or), or Professor Houdas, or Mr. Barnard of the New York Herald—all who knew things that were interesting to him. We went on from there to Geneva by the train de luxe to the Hôtel Nationale, which was as nice as could be. On the 19th of November, after dinner, the chandelier fell on the dinner-table, the gas rushed out, and waiters went to fetch a lamp. This happened to us two winters running. Geneva is a charming place in winter, and agreed well with Richard, who was again enabled to enjoy his days with Karl Vogt. We got to know very pleasant society and had delightful drives—one to Ferney (château of Voltaire) and the Voirons. After he left England in 1888, his health got ever so much better, and I had confident hopes that he would last for many years. Here Richard made his last public lecture. The Geneva Geographical Society asked him to speak, and he had a regular ovation. At first he was very nervous and tired, but he wound up as he went on, and, like our Society, at the end he was asked to sit down, and everybody who felt inclined got up and asked him questions, which he answered. The meeting was very cordial. There are some very distinguished men in Geneva, and all the best Society, when you have pierced the outer crust, tends to serious life, study, and acquiring information. On the 1st of December we went on to Vevey, where we found Madame Nubar Pasha. Monsieur Albert de Montêt, a member of one of the great families—a young man, but learned—came frequently to breakfast. We stopped at the Hôtel du Lac on the Lake, but it was too damp, so we went up to Mooser's, which was delightful. Here I was asked to lecture at the house of the great family of the place—the De Couvreurs, and it was just a repetition of the one at the Geographical Society in Geneva.
From here Richard wrote:
"The Position at Suákin.
"To the Editor of the Times.
"Sir,—The decisive defeat of the dervish invader unsieges Suákin, but the chronic difficulties of our false position are by no means diminished. We cannot evacuate the unhealthy, wretched slave port, because it would immediately be occupied by rivals or enemies, and our unwritten compact with the Egyptian Government binds us to retain it. But occupation under the existing circumstances means simply a protracted state of petty warfare, and troubles will recur at regular intervals, until one party or the other will prefer to give way.
"The grievance of the Soudanese tribes is most reasonable. They have a racial and inherited hate and dread of the Egyptian and of the Turk, and they will never rest until they rid 'Blackland' of them. I found the same feeling prevalent throughout the Somali country, and at Harar, where my greatest danger was of being mistaken for an Osmanli.
"To make the game worth the candle, we must clear Suákin of its Egyptian clique, and re-embark the last Egyptian soldier en route for the Nile Valley. I would not expose British troops to the abominable climate of the Red Sea littoral; but I think that, after the fighting is fought, the Indian sepoy could resist the exile till such time as we can make peace with the tribes, raise, arm, and discipline a native Soudanese contingent, and settle the country on the firm basis of commerce and friendly intercourse. And note that the sepoy is more feared in Egypt than the British soldier; the latter has a scornful dislike to shed black blood, whereas the former shows no such weakness.
"I see that the 'basest of kingdoms'—for such Egypt has become once more—officially objects to the return of Mr. Wylde, and that our authorities have, as usual, admitted the preposterous demand. Mr. Wylde has committed the unpardonable sin of publishing two volumes of home-truths. He has shown up the wild Suákin clique; he has accounted for our military failures; he has unsparingly denounced the jobbery and corruption which disgrace our petty district wars. He is loved neither by civil administrators nor by military incapables, and he is the bête noir of railroad contractors and others of the same genus. But he has shown us the way out of our difficulties—that is, if we choose to adopt the results of his long and extensive experience. But the Soudan question is becoming, like its Eastern kinsfolk, easy enough to be settled, whenever settlement shall become necessary; and, meanwhile, it is a permanent malady most profitable to the faculty. Without it what would become of the diplomatists and the host of little nationalities and individuals who delight to fish in troubled waters, and who would starve in the calm of peace and quiet?
"To my countrymen I would say, 'Englishmen, at least be humane. The Soudanese tribes never had any quarrel with you. They knew you only as the folk who came among them to shoot big game. They entertained you hospitably, and they freely lent themselves to all your fads. With indescribable levity you attacked these gallant and noble Negroids, who were doing battle for liberty, for their hearths and homes, and for freedom from the Egyptian tax-gatherer and from the Turkish despoiler. You threw yourselves, unlike your forefathers, who dearly loved fair play, on the strongest side, and you aided in oppressing the weak by a most unholy war. You have cast an indelible blot upon the fair fame of England. With your breech-loading rifles and Gatling guns you attacked these gallant races; but Allah sometimes defends the right, and you have had more than once to flee before men armed with a miserable spear and a bit of limp leather by way of a shield. Your errors were those of ignorance. Do not persist in them now that you have learnt the truth. After dispersing the dervishes, seize the earliest opportunity of showing your magnanimity, and come to terms with the gallant enemy, upon the express condition that no Egyptian official, civil or military, shall ever pollute the land with his presence. And if this step fail (but it will not fail) to restore peace, you will at least have offered the best atonement for the bloody misdeeds of the past.
"In advocating this treatment of the Suákin affairs, I presume that the public is no longer blinded about our occupation of Egypt. We entered the country for a purpose which, as all experts know, was perfectly Utopian. We shall not teach the Moslems of the Nile Valley our civilization, nor shall we Christianize even the Christian Copts. We shall remain among them upon sufferance. We shall even be welcome, after a fashion, to the Fellah so long as we half tax him, and abate the nuisance of the Pasha and the Bey and the Greek village usurer. But this means that we must continue there for an indefinite time. The embarkation of the last British soldier will be followed by horrors far surpassing the worst 'plagues of Egypt' in the olden days.
"I am, sir, yours faithfully,
"Richard F Burton.
"(Vevey,) December 21st, 1888."
Extract from a cutting.
"We have had enough of these sickening massacres. Sir Richard Burton, who knows the Egyptian to the bone, and who is a second Gordon in his knowledge of the Soudan and its people, has declared that it is folly to expect Fellah troops, officered by Europeans, to fight against any Mahdi. He foresaw the present disaster when he wrote that nothing that Sir Evelyn Wood or Baker Pacha might do 'could prevail against Fellah superstition.'"
On Christmas Eve, 1888, we amused ourselves with putting our stockings outside the door, like the children, for Santa Claus, and we all filled each other's with little presents; but the two greatest amusements were that my contribution to my husband's stocking was only a birch-rod, i.e. a bonbonnière made exactly like a birch-rod, the goodies being in the handle. He was delighted with this, and I found it amongst his treasures after his death. The other was that (of course) we all filled Lisa's stocking to repletion, and she got some very pretty things. So she said, "Oh, I like this game! I never saw it before; I shall put my stocking out every night." She thought they would always come. On Christmas Day we had egg-nogg with the Montgomerys, our ex-American Consul of Trieste.