He and I had our peculiar ideas, and I was determined, if I could, to carry them out. He hated darkness so much that he never would have the blind down, lest he might lose a glimpse of light from twilight to dawn. He has got the very thing he wanted, only of stone and marble instead of canvas—to be buried in a tent above ground; to have sun, and light, and air, trees, birds, and flowers; and he has love, tears, prayers, and companionship even in the grave. His tent is the only one in the world, and it is by far the most beautiful, most romantic, most undeathlike resting-place in the wide world.

Cutting from Black and White, June 20th, 1891.

"A tomb shaped like an Eastern tent stands amidst alien palms in a little corner of English earth beside the Thames. Within that tomb, in the churchyard at Mortlake on Monday last, one of the greatest Englishmen of the reign was laid to rest. Under happier conditions and in a freer age Richard Burton might have founded an Empire; had his life been passed in the service of some great Continental Power, Richard Burton would have received much honour from the State while he lived, much honour from the State at his death. It is somewhat disheartening to think that, because he lived in our time and gave his services to the Government, he died a Consul at Trieste—a desert eagle in a cage—with his genius almost unrecognized by the State; to think that after his death it was left to his widow and his friends to bear him to his grave with such ceremony as they deemed fitting. He was placed in his tomb with the most solemn rites of the Catholic faith, in the presence of many of those who knew him best and loved him most—and no one knew him well, who did not love him. The great career is over; the life of endless adventure, tireless enterprise, unfading courage, is done, and Mortlake earth holds the bones of the hero."

"Rapt though he be from us,
Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus;
Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, each
Greets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach;
Proudly a gaunt right hand doth Dante reach;
Milton and Wordsworth bid him welcome home;
Bright Keats to touch his raiment doth beseech;
Coleridge, his locks aspersed with fairy foam,
Calm Spencer, Chaucer suave,
His equal friendship crave:
And godlike spirits hail him guest, in speech
Of Athens, Florence, Weimar, Stratford, Rome.
——"William Watson.
"October 15, 1892."

Finding my purse would be too slender to carry it out, and as friends started subscriptions for me,[4] I secured my ground, made my design, and set sculptors at work in the cemetery in which, for the last forty years, most of my people have been buried, and which he himself had chosen.

"Beautiful rest where the willows weep,
Beautiful couch where the moss lies deep,
Beautiful life that earns beautiful sleep."

My desire was to embody the beautiful idea found in the tombs of Lydia and Lycia, and which is enshrined in the Taj Mahal at Agra. The early tomb-builders had doubtless some connection with Nomads, and embodied the conception that the home in death should be like that of the home on earth. For this reason I feel, the public have not quite understood the beauty of my mausoleum-tent. I wished to embody the poetry contained in my husband's "Kasîdah," with the religion he wished to die in. I have sent to the desert for strings of camel-bells, which will hang across the tent, and like an Æolian harp when the wind blows, the tinkle of the camel-bells may still sound near him. I have asked Major J. B. Keith, in his "Monograph on Indian Architecture," which will include tentage and tombs, to explain my meaning in his "Great Tents of Antiquity" better than I have done for myself.

I felt the necessity, in my altered circumstances, of trying to arouse myself, that I might do what I knew he would wish me to do—to leave Trieste, and carry out all that we should have done had he been alive. I lost all at once; my beautiful home had been my pride—it had to be given up. The money, except a little patrimony, died with my husband. I had to say good-bye to all the friends I had loved for eighteen years. Lisa, my confidential maid upon whom I entirely depended, to whom I owed all my personal comfort, who managed everything for me, and who alone knew all my belongings, I had to part with, for reasons which I do not wish to mention here. We had always had what was playfully called a very large "staff" in our house in my husband's life. The Master being dead—if I had been a sensible woman—I should have cleared my house out directly after the funeral; but I was too absorbed with the horrors of my now desolate position, and I had neither sense nor heart enough to make any changes. From this arose complications, misunderstandings, and heart-burnings enough to make life still more unbearable. We all know what one bad bit of yeast does to a loaf of bread. I shut myself up entirely alone in my husband's rooms for sixteen days, sorting and classifying his manuscripts, packing and arranging his books, and carrying out all his last wishes and written instructions. What a terrible time it was I passed in the midst of these relics, shutting myself away in solitude, and rejecting all offers of assistance, as I could not bear any one to witness what I had to go through, and also there were many private papers which I knew nobody ought to see but myself, and much that he particularly desired me to burn if anything happened to him.

The only letters Richard had not yet answered, and which would have been answered the following Thursday, were—A. Jameson, of Riverbank, Newmilns, Ayrshire, Scotland; Miss Bird, 49, Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square; John Addington Symonds, Am Hof, Davos-Platz, Switzerland; M. Zotenberg, of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Lady Stisted, Grazeley, Gypsy Hill, S.E.; Dr. F. Steingass, 6, Gairloch Road, Camberwell, S.E.; George Faber, our English Consul at Fiume; J. J. Aubertin, 33, Duke Street, St. James's.

Colonel Grant attacks Richard after his Death.

My husband died on the 20th of October, 1890, and on the 25th of October Colonel Grant ventured to attack him for the first time in print, and the following letter appeared in the Times of the 28th of October, 1890:—