It runs: "Dear Sir, I am truly grateful to you for your kind note of June 30th and for the obliging expressions which it contains. Your highly distinguished brother, who met my wife at Suez, has also written me a long and interesting account of Harar. As you may imagine, the subject concerns me very nearly, and the more so as I have yet hopes of revisiting that part of Africa. It is not a little curious that although I have been in communication with Colonel Gordon for years, we have never yet managed to meet. Last spring the event seemed inevitable, and yet when I reached Suez, he had steamed south. However, he writes to me regularly, scolding me a little at times, but that is no matter. I hope to be luckier next winter. I expect to leave Trieste in a few days [311] and to make Liverpool via long sea. Both Mrs. Burton and I want a medicine of rest and roast beef as opposed to rosbif. Nothing would please me more than to meet you and talk over your brother's plans. My direction is Athenaeum Club, and Woolwich is not so difficult to explore as Harar was. Are we likely to meet at the British Association?"
95. Death of Maria Stisted, 12th November 1878.
Burton and his wife reached London on July 27th (1878). Presently we hear of them in Ireland, where they are the guests of Lord Talbot of Malahide, and later he lectured at various places on "Midian" and "Ogham Runes." Again Gordon tried to draw him to Africa, this time with the offer of £5,000 a year, but the answer was the same as before. Then came a great blow to Burton—the death of his beloved niece—"Minnie"—Maria Stisted. Mrs. Burton, who was staying at Brighton, wrote to Miss Georgiana Stisted a most kind, sympathetic and beautiful letter—a letter, however, which reveals her indiscreetness more clearly, perhaps, than any other that we have seen. Though writing a letter of condolence—the sincerity of which is beyond doubt—she must needs insert remarks which a moment's consideration would have told her were bound to give offence—remarks of the kind that had already, indeed, made a gulf between her and Burton's relations.
She says: "My poor darling Georgy, I do not know how to write or what to say to you in such poignant grief. I think this is the most terrible blow that could have happened to Maria (Lady Stisted) and you. I do not grieve for Minnie, because, as I told Dick in my letter, her pure soul has known nothing but religion and music, and is certainly in its own proper place among the angels, but I do grieve for you with all my heart.... It is no use to talk to you about 'Time healing the wound,' or 'resigning oneself to what is inevitable,' but I have so long studied the ways of God, that I know He has taken the angel of your house as He always does, that this is a crisis in your lives, there is some change about to take place, and some work or new thing you have to do in which Minnie was not to be. I can only pray for you with all my heart, as I did at communion this morning." So far, so good, but then comes: "and have masses said to create another gem upon Minnie's crown."
Yet Mrs. Burton knew that she was writing to staunch Protestants whom such a remark would make positively to writhe. Still, in spite of her indiscretions, no human being with a heart can help loving her. She then goes on: "Please know and feel that though the world looks dark, you have always a staunch friend in me. Dick feels Minnie's death fearfully. He telegraphed to me and writes every day about it. I don't think he is in a state of health to bear many shocks just now, he is so frightfully nervous. He so little expected it, he always thought it was only one of the little ailments of girls, and Maria (Lady Stisted) was over anxious; so it has come like a sledge-hammer upon him. I feel what a poor letter this is, but my heart is full, and I do not know how to express myself. Your attached and sympathising Aunt Zoo."
Burton was just then engaged upon his work The Land of Midian Revisited, and he dedicated it to the memory of his "much loved niece."
96. Burton's "Six Senses."
On 2nd December 1878, Burton lectured at 38, Great Russell Street before the British National Association of Spiritualists—taking as his subject, "Spiritualism in Foreign Lands." His ideas on Spiritualism had been roughly outlined some time previous in a letter to The Times. [312] He said that the experience of twenty years had convinced him: (1) that perception is possible without the ordinary channels of the senses, and (2) that he had been in the presence of some force or power which he could not understand. Yet he did not believe that any spirits were subject to our calls and caprices, or that the dead could be communicated with at all. He concluded, "I must be contented to be at best a spiritualist without the spirits." The letter excited interest. The press commented on it, and street boys shouted to one another, "Take care what you're doing! You haven't got Captain Burton's six senses." At Great Russell Street, Burton commenced by defending materialism. He could not see with Guizot that the pursuit of psychology is as elevating as that of materialism is degrading. What right, he asked, had the theologian to limit the power of the Creator. "Is not the highest honour His who from the worst can draw the best?" [313] He then quoted his letter to The Times, and declared that he still held the same opinions. The fact that thunder is in the air, and the presence of a cat may be known even though one cannot see, hear, taste, smell or feel thunder or the cat. He called this force—this sixth sense—zoo-electricity. He then gave an account of spiritualism, thaumaturgy, and wizardry, as practised in the East, concluding with a reference to his Vikram and the Vampire. "There," said he, "I have related under a facetious form of narrative many of the so-called supernaturalisms and preternaturalisms familiar to the Hindus." [314] These studies will show the terrible 'training,' the ascetic tortures, whereby men either lose their senses, or attain the highest powers of magic, that is, of commanding nature by mastering the force, whatever it may be, here called zoo-electric, which conquers and controls every modification of matter. [315] His lecture concluded with an account of a Moorish necromancer, which reminds us of the Maghrabi incident in "the Story of Judar." When Burton sat down, Mrs. Burton asked to be allowed to speak. Indeed, she never hesitated to speak upon any subject under the sun, whether she did not understand it, as was almost invariably the case, or whether she did; and she always spoke agreeably. [316] She pointed out to the spiritualists that they had no grounds to suppose that her husband was one of their number, and stated her belief that the theory of zoo-electricity would suit both spiritualists and non-spiritualists. Then, as a matter of course, she deftly introduced the "one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" to which it was her "glory to belong," and which this theory of Burton's "did not exactly offend." As regards the yogis and the necromancers she insisted that her husband had expressed no belief, but simply recounted what is practised in the East, and she concluded with the remark, "Captain Burton is certainly not a spiritualist." Some good-humoured comments by various speakers terminated the proceedings. It is quite certain, however, that Burton was more of a spiritualist than Mrs. Burton would allow, and of Mrs. Burton herself in this connection, we shall later have a curious story to tell. [317]