We had once to pass through a very uncanny trial, which may be said to have lasted from 1877 to the end of 1880, and somewhat (though in a less degree) to 1883. We suddenly began to be inundated with anonymous letters; then our private papers and writings would disappear; a great fuss of finding them was made, and when all fuss and hope of recovery was over, they would reappear. There was always some mystery hanging about, and once we found on the floor a copy-book with some very good imitations of my handwriting, or what my handwriting would be if I tried to disguise it a little backwards, and some very bad and easily recognizable attempts at my husband's very peculiar hand. The anonymous letters generally tried to set us against each other, if possible, and I was always finding love-letters thrust into his pockets, whenever I cleaned or brushed his clothes, which I generally did when he was ill, in order not to have the servants in the room. Fortunately we told each other everything, and he used to carry his letters to me, and I mine to him, but we could make nothing of it.
At last he said, in 1879 (when he was going away to Midian), "You must be quite sure not to make yourself uncomfortable about any of this sort of thing, and to tell me everything that occurs; because I am sure this is an intrigue, and a woman's intrigue, which has something to do with money. When we were poor everybody left us in peace, but ever since 1877 nothing has been talked about but the enormous riches that I am going to make in these mines, and you have been offering parures of turquoise to all your friends in my name. So somebody is working to try and separate us. You keep your 'weather eye' open, and believe nothing, nor shall I, and you will see that one day or another it is bound to ooze out." It did ooze out—after it did not matter.
Ever after these annoyances began, whenever we were going to make the smallest remark which might be unlucky, we always used to say, "Hush! 'IT' will hear you;" and then we used to laugh. This became so habitual with us, that everybody else thought we were alluding to Providence, or evil spirits, or such like; but we were really alluding to our uncanny, fleshly evil genius, who, though we did not know it, was nestling close to us and heard it all. It was, therefore, with a doubly heavy heart that I saw him depart on his third and last journey for Midian, and was thankful when it was over.
Richard and I now went to Opçina a great deal alone, and we were working together at his Camoens, beginning at the two volumes of the "Lusiads."
In early 1880, he brought out a little bit of the first canto of the "Lusiads," and the episode of "Ignez de Castro," his favourite bit, as samples. I can never remember to have had a more peaceful and happy time with Richard than in Opçina, where we led a Darby and Joan life, and principally 1879, 1880, 1881, and part of 1882. We did all the six volumes of Camoens, he translating, I helping him and correcting. I wrote the little sonnet for him, my preface, and the Glossary, and his "Reviewers Reviewed."
"TO MY MASTER CAMOENS.
"(Tu se' lo mio maestro, è lo mio autore.)
"Great Pilgrim-poet of the Sea and Land;
Thou life-long sport of Fortune's ficklest will;
Doomed to all human and inhuman ill,
Despite thy lover-heart, thy hero-hand;
Enrollèd by the pen what marvellous band
Of god-like Forms thy golden pages fill;
Love, Honour, Justice, Valour, Glory thrill
The Soul, obedient to thy strong command:
Amid the Prophets highest sits the Bard,
At once Revealer of the Heaven and Earth,
To Heaven the guide, of Earth the noblest guard;
And, 'mid the Poets, thine the peerless worth,
Whose glorious song, thy Genius' sole reward,
Bids all the Ages, Camoens, bless thy birth!"
——Isabel Burton.
He was quite upset about the Glossary. When he had used archaic words, which belonged to Chaucer and Spencer, he said, "Do you mean to say that they won't understand me?" When I produced my glossary of three hundred and fourteen words, he said, "You are never going to insult the English public with that?" I said, "But, indeed, I am; and I know very well that you have not fifteen readers that will know them without, but they will pretend they do, and be very much offended, whilst internally they will thank their God that they have got it, and are able to look grand on the strength of it." But he curtailed it, and in this he was encouraged by our old friend Bernard Quaritch.
Camoens is splendidly and literally translated. No one was so well fitted as Richard to bring out this epic and heroic life. He divided his work into six heads: Biographical, Bibliographical, Historical and Chronological, Geographical, and Annotative—it was the result of a daily act of devotion of more than twenty years, from a man of this age, who has taken the hero of a former age for his model, his master, as Dante did Virgil; and between whose two fates—master and disciple—exists a strange similarity. The two volumes of "Life and Commentary" show a profundity of learning and intelligence which would be quite enough to make the name of any other man, if he had never written anything else, but though Camoens has not taken hold of the public yet, he will. Richard lived to do six volumes; he would have done four more had he lived. His little letter of dedication to Swinburne, in vol. i of the "Lyrics," is a masterpiece.