But the comic always treads on the heels of the pathetic for it is not probable that Miss Stisted valued very much the photograph of what in her “True Life,” she thought fit to call “an eccentric tomb” in a “shabby sectarian cemetery."[FN#679] The removal into 67, Baker Street, took place in September 1891, and a little later Lady Burton hired a cottage at Wople End, near Mortlake, where she spent her summer months.  During the last decade of her husband’s life she had become, to use her own words, coarse and rather unwieldy, but her sorrow had the effect of restoring to her some of the graces of person that had marked her early days.  That this is no figment of our imagination may easily be seen by anyone who compares her portrait in the group taken by Miller in 1888 with the photograph by Gunn and Stuart,[FN#680] where she is in her widow’s cap with its long white streamers.  In this photograph and others taken at the time she looks handsome and stately.  She is once more “Empress of Damascus.”  The house in baker Street has thus been described:  “No sooner have you crossed Lady Burton’s threshold than you are at once transported, as if by magic, to Eastern climes.  You are greeted by a handsome woman whose black dress and white widow’s cap present a striking contrast to the glow of rich but subdued colour which surrounds her.  Opposite the fireplace is a full length and very characteristic portrait of Burton in fencing costume.[FN#681] Among the curiosities are the necklace[FN#682] of human bones given to Burton by Gelele, some specimens of old Istrian china picked up in the cottages near Trieste, and a three-sided mirror and two crystals with which Burton used to mesmerise his wife.  From the ceiling hung a quaint Moorish lamp with many branches, and its softened rays often fall on a Damascene silver gilt coffee service studded with turquoises.”  At the top of the house and approached by a narrow staircase and a ladder was a large loft, built by herself, for storing her husband’s manuscripts and books.  On one side glittered a “small but tastefully decorated altar,” while scattered around were the many relics which have since drifted to Camberwell.

181.  The writing of the Life August 1892-March 1893.

In this loft Lady Burton spent many hours examining her husband’s papers, and in the autumn of 1902 she commenced in earnest to write his life—­a work that occupied her about eight months.  That she was absolutely unfitted for the task must be clear to all who have any knowledge of Burton.  Indeed, she was quite incapable of doing literary work of any kind properly.  The spirit in which she wrote may be gauged both from the book itself, with its frequent offences against good taste, and the following citation from a letter to a friend:  “I do not know,” she said, “if I can harden my heart against the curs, but I can put out my tongue and point my pen and play pussy cat about their eyes and ears.”  By “curs” she means those who rated her for burning her husband’s manuscripts, but in justice to her, let it be borne in mind that she had received some letters that were quite unworthy of the writers.