Chapter XXXIX. January 1891 to July 1891, Lady Burton in England
Bibliography (Posthumous works):
81. Morocco and the Moors, by Henry Leared, edited by Burton. 1891. 82. Il Pentamerone, published 1893. 83. The Kasidah (100 copies only). 1894. [Note.—In 1900 an edition of 250 copies appeared].
177. Lady Burton in England.
By the new year Lady Burton had completed all her arrangements. The swarms of servants and parasites which her good nature had attracted to her had been paid, or thrown, off; and the books and the mutilated manuscripts packed up. Every day she had visited her "beloved in the chapelle ardente." "I never rested," she says, "and it was a life of torture. I used to wake at four, the hour he was taken ill, and go through all the horrors of his three hours' illness until seven."
On January 20th, Burton's remains were taken to England by the steamer "Palmyra." Lady Burton then walked round and round to every room, recalling all her life in that happy home and all the painful events that had so recently taken place. She gazed pensively and sadly at the beautiful views from the windows and went "into every nook and cranny of the garden." The very walls seemed to mourn with her.
On arriving in England on February 9th her first concern was to call on Lady Stisted and Miss Stisted, in order to "acquaint them with the circumstances of her husband's death and her intentions." The meeting was a painful one both to them and to her. They plainly expressed their disapproval of the scenes that had been enacted in the death chamber and at the funerals at Trieste; and they declared that as Protestants they could not countenance any additional ceremonial of a like nature. Lady Burton next visited Ilkeston, in Derbyshire, where she had implored "Our Lady of Dale" to bring about her husband's conversion. Entering the Catholic Church there, she knelt before the altar and cried "Here I asked! Here I obtained! Our Lady of Dale, deliver his soul from Purgatory!" [671]
Burton's remains arrived—by "long sea"—in England on February 12th (1891) and were placed temporarily in the crypt of the Catholic Church at Mortlake; and Lady Burton then devoted the whole of her time to arranging for a public funeral in England.