Personally we have never expended a sigh over the loss of The Scented Garden, and we should not have minded one straw if Lady Burton had burnt also her typewritten travesty of the Catullus; but her destruction of Sir Richard’s private journals and diaries was a deed that one finds it very hard to forgive.  Just as Sir Richard’s conversation was better than his books, so, we are told, his diaries were better than his conversation.  Says Mr. W. H. Wilkins,[FN#669] referring to Sir Richard, “He kept his diaries and journals, not as many keep them, with all the ugly things left out, but faithfully and fully,” and again, “the private journals and diaries which were full of the secret thoughts and apologia of this rare genius have been committed to the flames.”  Dr. Baker, who was favoured with the sight of portions of these diaries, tells me that Sir Richard used to put in them not only an epitome of every important letter written or received by him, and of every conversation he had with persons of consequence; but also any remarks that struck him, uttered by no matter whom.[FN#670]

176.  Lisa Departs, November 1890.

Like Chico, like Khamoor, Lisa, the Baroness lady-companion, had through injudicious treatment grown well-nigh unendurable.  While Burton was alive she still had some dim notion of her place, but after his death she broke the traces, and Lady Burton had, with deep regret, to part with her.  They separated very good friends, however, for Lady Burton was generosity itself.  By this time she had been pretty well cured of lady’s maid and servant pets, at any rate we hear of no other.

Lady Burton was also distressed by an attack make in The Times upon the memory of her husband by Colonel Grant, who declared that Burton had treated both Speke and their native followers with inhumanity.  Lady Burton replied with asperity—­giving the facts much as we have given them in Chapter ix.  Grant died 10th February 1892.

   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.