That evening, when Miss Letchford, after her return, entered Sir Richard’s room, she saw some papers still smouldering in the grate.  They were all that remained of The Scented Garden.  On noticing Miss Letchford’s reproachful look, Lady Burton said, “I wished his name to live for ever unsullied and without a stain.”

174.  Discrepancies in Lady Burton’s Story.

Some have regarded this action of Lady Burton’s—­the destruction of The Scented Garden manuscript—­as “one of rare self-sacrifice prompted by the highest religious motives and the tenderest love for one whom she looked to meet again in heaven, to which her burnt offering and fervent prayers might make his entrance sure.”  If the burning of the Ms. of The Scented Garden had been an isolated action, we might have cheerfully endorsed the opinion just quoted, but it was only one holocaust of a series.  That Lady Burton had the best of motives we have already admitted; but it is also very evident that she gave the matter inadequate consideration.  The discrepancies in her account of the manuscript prove that at most she could have turned over only three or four pages—­ or half-a-dozen at the outside.[FN#658]

Let us notice these discrepancies: 

(1) In her letter to the Morning Post (19th June 1891) she says of The Scented Garden:  “It was his magnum opus, his last work that he was so proud of.”  Yet in the Life (ii., 243) she calls it the only book he ever wrote that was not valuable to the world and in p. 445 of the same work she alludes to it “as a few chapters which were of no particular value to the world.”  So it was at once the most valuable book he ever wrote and also of no value whatever. (2) In Volume ii. of the Life (p. 441) she says the only value in the book at all consisted in his annotations, and there was no poetry.  This remark proves more than anything else how very superficial must have been her examination of the manuscript, for even the garbled edition of 1886 contains nearly 400 lines of verse, while that of 1904 probably contains over a thousand.[FN#659] For example, there are twenty-three lines of the poet Abu Nowas’s. (3) On page 444 of the Life she says:  “It was all translation except the annotations on the Arabic work”—­which gives the impression that the translation was the great feature, and that the notes were of secondary importance; but on p. 441 she says, “The only value in the book at all consisted in the annotations.”  As a matter of fact, the annotations amounted to three-quarters of the whole. [See Chapter xxxiv.] (4) In the Life, page 410 (Vol. ii.), she says the work was finished all but one page; and on page 444 that only 20 chapters were done.  Yet she much have known that the whole work consisted of 21 chapters, and that the 21st chapter was as large as the other twenty put together, for her husband was always talking about and trying to obtain an Arabic manuscript of this chapter (See chapter 35).