Lady Burton now authorised the publication of what is called the Library Edition of The Arabian Nights.  According to the Editorial Note, while in Lady Burton’s Edition no fewer than 215 pages of the original are wanting[FN#690] in this edition the excisions amount only to about 40 pages.  The Editor goes on:  “These few omissions are rendered necessary by the pledge which Sir Richard gave to his subscribers that no cheaper edition of the entire work should be issued; but in all other respects the original text has been reproduced with scrupulous fidelity.”

By this time Lady Burton had lost two of her Trieste friends, namely Lisa, the baroness-maid who died in 1891, and Mrs. Victoria Maylor, Burton’s amanuensis, who died in 1894.

Chapter XLI Death of Lady Burton

Bibliography: 

87.  The Jew, the Gypsy, and El Islam. 1898. 88.  Wanderings in Three Continents. 1901.

183.  Lady Burton at Eastbourne.

Lady Burton spent the year 1894 and part of 1895 at Baker Street and Mortlake, making occasional visits to friends.  As at Trieste, she surrounded herself with a crowd of servants and other idle people whom, in her good nature, she systematically pampered, and who in their turn did their best to make her life unendurable.  She could, however, easily afford these luxuries, for thanks to the large sums received for her Life of Sir Richard, the Library Edition, &c., she was now in affluent circumstances.  She won to herself and certainly deserved the character of “a dear old lady.”  In politics she was a “progressive Conservative,” though what that meant neither she nor those about her had any clear notion.  She dearly loved children—­at a safe distance—­and gave treats, by proxy, to all the Catholic schools in the neighbourhood.  She took an active interest in various charities, became an anti-vivisectionist, and used very humanely to beat people about the head with her umbrella, if she caught them ill-treating animals.  If they remonstrated, she used to retort, “Yes, and how do you like It?” “When she wanted a cab,” says Mr. W. H. Wilkins, “she invariably inspected the horse carefully first, to see if it looked well fed and cared for; if not, she discharged the cab and got another; and she would always impress upon the driver that he must not beat his horse under any consideration.”  On one occasion she sadly forgot herself.  She and her sister, Mrs. FitzGerald, had hired a cab at Charing Cross Station and were in a great hurry to get home.  Of course, as usual, she impressed upon the cabman that he was not to beat his horse.  “The horse, which was a wretched old screw, refused, in consequence, to go at more than a walking pace,” and Lady Burton, who was fuming with impatience, at last so far forgot herself as to put her head out of the window and cry to the driver, “Why don’t you beat him?  Why don’t you make him go?"[FN#691] She occasionally met her husband’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mr. Payne.  One day at some dinner it transpired in the course of conversation that Mr. Payne had all his life been an habitual sufferer from insomnia.