On June 5th the Burtons and their “Magpie Trunk” again left Trieste and travelled via Innsbruck, Zurich, Bale and Boulogne to England.  After a short stay at Folkestone with Lady Stisted and her daughter, they went on to London, whence Burton memorialized the vice-chancellor and the curators of the Bodleian Library for the loan of the Wortley Montagu manuscripts of the Arabian Nights.  Not a private loan, but a temporary transference to the India Office under the charge of Dr. R. Rost.  On November 1st came a refusal, and Burton, at great inconvenience to himself, had to go to Oxford.  “The Bodleian,” he says, “is the model of what a reading library should not be, and the contrast of its treasures with their mean and miserable surroundings is a scandal.”  He did not know in which he suffered most, the Bodleian, the Radcliffe or the Rotunda.  Finally, however, the difficulty was got over by having the required pages photographed.

He now wrote to the Government and begged to be allowed, at the age of sixty-six, to retire on full pension.  His great services to the country and to learning were set down, but though fifty persons of importance in the political and literary world supported the application, it was refused.  It is, however, only just to the Government to say that henceforward Burton was allowed “leave” whenever he wanted it.  An easier post than that at Trieste it would have been impossible to imagine, still, he was in a measure tied, and the Government missed an opportunity of doing a graceful act to one of its most distinguished servants, and to one of the most brilliant of Englishmen.

Then followed a holiday in Scotland, where the Burtons were the guests of Mr. (now Sir) Alexander Baird of Urie.  Back in London, they lunched at different times with F. F. Arbuthnot, G. A. Sala, A. C. Swinburne, and “dear old Larkin”—­now 85—­in whose house at Alexandria, Burton had stayed just before his Mecca journey.  It was apparently during this visit that Burton gave to his cousin St. George Burton a seal showing on one side the Burton crest, on another the Burton Arms, and on the third a man’s face and a hand with thumb to the nose and fingers spread out.  “Use it,” said Burton, “when you write to a d-----d snob.”  And he conveyed the belief that it would be used pretty often.

On 16th September 1886, writing to Mr. Kirby[FN#542] from “United Service Club,” Pall Mall, Burton says, “We here have been enjoying splendid weather, and a really fine day in England (I have seen only two since May) is worth a week anywhere else. ...  You will find your volumes[FN#543] sent to you regularly.  No. 1 caused big sensation.  A wonderful leader about it in Standard (Mrs. Gamp, of all people!) followed by abuse in Pall Mall.  I have come upon a young woman friend greedily reading it in open drawing-room, and when I warned another against it, she answered:  ’Very well, Billy [her husband] has a copy, and I shall read it at once.’”