The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Part 19

It was during this time in Switzerland that Burton made his wife his literary executrix. He called her into his room one day, and dictated to her a list of private papers which he wished to be burned in the event of his death, and gave her three signed doc.u.ments, one of which ran as follows:

"In the event of my death, I bequeath especially to my wife, Isabel Burton, every book, paper, or ma.n.u.script, to be overhauled and examined by her only, and to be dealt with entirely at her own discretion, and in the manner she thinks best, having been my sole helper for thirty years.

(Signed) "RICHARD F. BURTON."

On September 7 they returned to Trieste together for the last time.

They were both very much better for the good air in Switzerland, and settled down again to their quiet literary life, full of occupations for the present and plans for the future. Lady Burton was especially busy during these six weeks in helping her husband to sort and arrange his ma.n.u.scripts and papers, and he worked as usual at three or four books at a time, especially his _Scented Garden_, which was now nearing completion.

I should like to interpolate here a beautiful and characteristic letter Lady Burton wrote, on October 10, to a friend, Madame de Gutmansthal- Benvenuti, who had just lost her husband:

"You need no letter from me to tell you how my heart is grieving for you, and with you, in this greatest trial woman can ever know--the trial before which my own head is ever bowed down, and my heart shrinking from in terror. And it has fallen on you, my best and dearest friend. But you have such consolations. He was a religious man, and died with the Sacraments, and you are sure of a happy meeting, just as if he had gone on a journey to wait for you; but _more surely to meet_ than if he had gone on an earthly journey. You have your dear children to live for, and that must now be your _only_ thought, and taking care of your health for that purpose. All of us, who love you, are thinking of you and praying for you."

Ten days later the trial she so much dreaded had come upon her. And here for a s.p.a.ce Lady Burton will speak in her own words.

NOTES:

1. He actually compiled a book of quotations from the Bible and Shakspeare for use in case of need, which he called _The Black Book_.

2. Letter to Miss Bishop from Tangiers, Morocco, February 16, 1886.

3. The late Lord Gerard.

4. Letter to Miss Bird from Trieste, April 10, 1887.

5. The d.u.c.h.ess of Fife.

6. Letter to Miss Bishop, July 21, 1890.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE SWORD FALLS. 1890.

Life is a sheet of paper white, Whereon each one of us may write His word or two, and then comes night.

LOWELL.

"Let me recall the last happy day of my life. It was Sunday, October 19, 1890. I went out to Communion and Ma.s.s at eight o'clock, came back, and kissed my husband at his writing. He was engaged on the last page of _The Scented Garden_, which had occupied him seriously only six actual months, not thirty years, as the press said. He said to me, 'To-morrow I shall have finished this, and I promise you that I will never write another book on the subject. I will take to our biography.'

And I said, 'What a happiness that will be!' He took his usual walk of nearly two hours in the morning, breakfasting well.

"That afternoon we sat together writing an immense number of letters, which, when we had finished, I put on the hall table to be posted on Monday morning. Each letter breathed of life and hope and happiness; for we were making our preparations for a delightful voyage to Greece and Constantinople, which was to last from November 15 to March 15. We were to return to Trieste from march 15 till July 1. He would be a free man on March 19, and those three months and a half we were to pack up, make our preparations, wind up all our affairs, send our heavy baggage to England, and, bidding adieu to Trieste, we were to pa.s.s July and August in Switzerland, arrive in England in September, 1891, look for a little flat and a little cottage, unpack, and settle ourselves to live in England.

"The only difference remarkable on this particular Sunday, October 19, was, that whereas my husband was dreadfully punctual, and with military precision as the clock struck we had to be in our places at the table at half-past seven, he seemed to dawdle about the room putting things away.

He said to me, 'You had better go in to table'; and I answered, 'No, darling, I will wait for you'; and we went in together. He dined well, but sparingly; he laughed, talked, and joked. We discussed our future plans and preparations, and he desired me on the morrow to write to Sir Edmund Monson, and several other letters, to forward the preparations.

We talked of our future life in London, and so on. About half-past nine he got up and went to his bedroom, accompanied by the doctor and myself, and we a.s.sisted him at his toilet. I then said the night prayers to him, and whilst I was saying them a dog began that dreadful howl which the superst.i.tious say denotes a death. It disturbed me so dreadfully that I got up from the prayers, went out of the room, and called the porter to go out and see what was the matter with the dog. I then returned, and finished the prayers, after which he asked me for a novel. I gave him Robert Buchanan's _Martyrdom of Madeleine_. I kissed him and got into bed, and he was reading in bed.

"At twelve o'clock, midnight, he began to grow uneasy. I asked him what ailed him, and he said, 'I have a gouty pain in my foot. When did I have my last attack?' I referred to our journals, and found it was three months previously that he had had a real gout, and I said, 'You know that the doctor considers it a safety-valve that you should have a healthy gout in your feet every three months for your head and your general health. Your last attack was three months ago at Zurich, and your next will be due next January.' He was then quite content; and though he moaned and was restless, he tried to sleep, and I sat by him magnetizing the foot locally, as I had the habit of doing, to soothe the pain, and it gave him so much relief that he dozed a little, and said, 'I dreamt I saw our little flat in London, and it had quite a nice large room in it.' Between whiles he laughed and talked and spoke of our future plans, and even joked.

"At four o'clock he got more uneasy, and I said I should go for the doctor. He said, 'Oh no, don't disturb him; he cannot do anything.'

And I answered, 'What is the use of keeping a doctor if he is not to be called when you are suffering?' The doctor was there in a few moments, felt his heart and pulse, found him in perfect order--that the gout was healthy. He gave him some medicine and went back to bed.

About half-past four he complained that there was no air. I flew back for the doctor, who came and found him in danger. I went at once, called up all the servants, sent in five directions for a priest, according to the directions I had received, hoping to get one; and the doctor, and I and Lisa[1] under the doctor's orders, tried every remedy and restorative, but in vain.

"What hara.s.ses my memory, what I cannot bear to think of, what wakes me with horror every morning from four till seven, when I get up, is that for a minute or two he kept on crying, "Oh, Puss, chloroform--ether--or I am a dead man!' My G.o.d! I would have given him the blood out of my veins, if it would have saved him; but I had no answer, 'My darling, the doctor says it will kill you; he is doing all he knows.' I was holding him in my arms, when he got heavier and heavier, and more insensible, and we laid him on the bed. The doctor said he was quite insensible, and a.s.sured me he did not suffer. I trust not; I believe it was a clot of blood to the heart.

"My one endeavour was to be useful to the doctor, and not impede his actions by my own feelings. The doctor applied the electric battery to the heart, and kept it there till seven o'clock; and I knelt down at his left side, holding his hand and pulse, and prayed my heart out to G.o.d to keep his soul there (though he might be dead in appearance) till the priest arrived. I should say that he was insensible in thirty minutes from the time he said there was no air.

"It was a country Slav priest, lately promoted to be our parish priest, who came. He called me aside, and told me that he could not give Extreme Unction to my husband, because he had not declared himself; but I besought him not to lose a moment in giving the Sacrament, for the soul was pa.s.sing away, and that I had the means of satisfying him. He looked at us all three, and asked if he was dead, and we all said no. G.o.d was good, for had he had to go back for the holy materials it would have been too late, but he had them in his pocket, and he immediately administered Extreme Unction--_'Si vivis,'_ or _'Si es capax,'_ 'If thou art alive'-- and said the prayers for the dying and the departing soul. The doctor still kept the battery to the heart all the time, and I still held the left hand with my finger on the pulse. By the clasp of the hand, and a little trickle of blood running under the finger, I judged there was a little life until seven, and then I knew that . . . I was alone and desolate for ever."[2]

I have given the foregoing in Lady Burton's own words, as unfortunately a fierce controversy has raged round her husband's death-bed, and therefore it is desirable to repeat her testimony on the subject. This testimony was given to the world in 1893, when all the witnesses of Sir Richard Burton's death were living, and it was never publicly contradicted or called into question until December of last year (1896), eight months after Lady Burton's death, when Miss Stisted's book made its appearance.

In consequence of the attack made upon Lady Burton by her niece, which has been repeated and echoed elsewhere, it is necessary to defend Lady Burton on this point, since she is no longer able to defend herself.

But I should like to reiterate that the question of Sir Richard Burton's religion did not enter into the original scheme of this book. I only approach it now with reluctance, and that not so much for the purpose of arguing as to what was Sir Richard Burton's religion (that was a matter for himself alone) as of upholding the good faith of his wife. In view also of the peculiar bitterness of the _odium theologic.u.m_, perhaps it may be permitted me to say at the outset that I have no prejudice on this subject. I am not a Roman Catholic, and therefore cannot be accused of approaching the controversy with what Paley was wont to call an "antecedent bias."

In this I have the advantage of Miss Stisted, who appears to be animated by a bitter hostility not only against her aunt but against the Church of Rome. In her book she a.s.serts that Sir Richard Burton died before the priest arrived on the scene, and that the Sacrament of Extreme Unction was administered to a corpse. She also goes on to say:

The terrible shock of so fatal a termination to what seemed an attack of little consequence, would have daunted most Romanists desirous of effecting a death-bed conversion. It did not daunt Isabel. No sooner did she perceive that her husband's life was in danger, than she sent messengers in every direction for a priest. Mercifully, even the first to arrive, a man of peasant extraction, who had just been appointed to the parrish, came too late to molest one then far beyond the reach of human folly and superst.i.tion. But Isabel had been too well trained by the Society of Jesus not see that a chance yet remained of glorifying her Church--a heaven-sent chance which was not to be lost. Her husband's body was not yet cold, and who could tell for certain whether some spark of life yet lingered in that inanimate form? The doctor declared that no doubt existed regarding the decease, but doctors are often mistaken. So hardly had the priest crossed the threshold than she flung herself at his feet, and implored him to administer Extreme Unction. The father, who seems to have belonged to the ordinary type of country-bred ecclesiastic so common abroad, and who probably in the whole course of his life had never before availed himself of so startling a method of enrolling a new convert, demurred. There had been no profession of faith, he urged; there could be none now, for--and he hardly liked to p.r.o.nounce the cruel words--Burton was dead. But Isabel would listen to no arguments, would take no refusal; she remained weeping and wailing on the floor, until at last, to terminate a disagreeable scene, which most likely would have ended in hysterics he consented to perform the rite.

Rome took formal possession of Richard Burton's corpse, and pretended, moreover, with insufferable insolence, to take under her protection his soul. From that moment an inquisitive mob never ceased to disturb the solemn chamber.

Other priests went in and out at will, children from a neighbouring orphanage sang hymns and giggled alternately, pious old women recited their rosaries, gloated over the dead, and splashed the bed with holy water; the widow, who had regained her composure, directing the innumerable ceremonies. . . . After the necessary interval had elapsed, Burton's funeral took place in the largest church in Trieste, and was made the excuse for an ecclesiastical triumph of a faith he had always loathed.[3]

These statements of Lady Burton and Miss Stisted have been placed one after another, in order that the dispa.s.sionate reader may be able to judge not only of their conflicting nature, but of the different spirit which animates them. Lady Burton writes from her heart, reverently, as a good woman would write of the most solemn moments of her life, and of things which were to her eternal verities. Would she be likely to perjure herself on such a subject? Miss Stisted writes with an unconcealed animus, and is not so much concerned in defending the purity of her uncle's Protestantism as in vilifying her aunt and the faith to which she belonged. It may be noted too that Miss Stisted has no word of womanly sympathy for the wife who loved her husband with a love pa.s.sing the love of women, and who was bowed down by her awful sorrow. On the contrary, with revolting heartlessness and irreverence, she jeers at her aunt's grief and the last offices of the dead. We may agree with the doctrines of the Church of Rome, or we may not; the solemn rites may be unavailing, or they may be otherwise; but at least they can do no harm, and the death-chamber should surely be sacred from such vulgar ribaldry!

Good taste, if no higher consideration, might have kept her from mocking the religious convictions of others.

Miss Stisted's indictment of Lady Burton on this point falls under three heads:

First, that Sir Richard was dead before the priest arrived.

Secondly, that he was never a Catholic at all, and so his wife acted in bad faith.

Thirdly, that he "loathed" the Catholic religion.

It is better to deal with these charges _seriatim_.

With regard to the first, we have the positive and public testimony of Lady Burton, which was never contradicted during her lifetime, to the effect that her husband was alive when the Sacrament of Extreme Unction was administered to him. As, however, this testimony had been publicly called in question, though not until eight months after her death, we obtained through the kindness of the Baroness Paul de Ralli, a friend of Lady Burton at Trieste, the following written attestation from the priest who attended Sir Richard Burton's death-bed, and who is still living:

DECLARATION.[4]

"On October 20, 1890, at six o'clock in the morning, I was called in to a.s.sist at the last moments of Sir Richard Burton, British Consul.

"Knowing that he had been brought up, or born in, the Evangelical religion, before repairing to his house I went to see Dr. Giovanni Sust, the Provost of this Cathedral, in order to find out from him what I was to do in the matter. He replied that I should go, and act accordingly as the circ.u.mstances might seem to require.

"So I went.

"Entering into the room of the sick man, I found him in bed with the doctor and Lady Burton beside him.