CHAPTER VI.

ON LEAVE IN LONDON.

[Sidenote: _A Remarkable Visit_.]

Then Richard gave a lecture at the Architects', and we made up a party to go. We had a very curious visit one night from a gentleman who had occupied a position in one of the Government offices. He was very well known, and had had some malady of the brain, so I shall not name him for fear that I should hurt any of his relatives or friends. We had not met before, but he said he came on business, and appeared to be a Spiritualist of high degree. We were just going down to an eight o'clock dinner--rather a large family party--and as the butler showed him into the dining-room, I could not do otherwise than say, "We are just going to sit down to dinner; will you take some?" He accepted very readily. When my father, who was a very old man, came down, I introduced him, and said, "Father, Mr. So-and-so has kindly consented to stay and dine with us." "Oh, I am very happy," said my father. The family all flocked down and fell into their seats, and dinner went on very well till about the second course, and then, looking round the table and seeing nearly all of us had aquiline noses, he said, "What a treat it is to me to be with Rosicrucians once more!" My father nudged Richard, and whispered, "What does he mean?" "I don't know," said Richard, with an amused smile.

Presently Mr. ---- pointed at me, and said, "You have been a Queen countless times, and an Empress seven times, and you will be again; and also your sister" (pointing to Blanche Pigott, who was exactly like me, and is now dead) "has been very often a Queen, and will be an Empress." There was a little pause after this. Father began to look rather frightened. Mr. ---- went on to say that he hated people with snub noses, and described how he fell amongst a party of that common ilk, and how they had treated him--how they had put him under a pump till he was nearly dead, and had tied him down, and several other acts with which we are all familiar from reading. After dinner he asked Richard for a map of Midian, and taking it, he marked all the spots where the best gold existed, and the different spots which contained anything valuable, and what they were, and said that was what he came for (I have it now).

He then said he would like to brew a bowl of Rosicrucian punch, and requested us to order a bottle of brandy, two bottles of rum, and several other things to be brought to him, and he did brew the punch; and when he gave us each some, we all put it down and said, "I cannot drink that, for I feel it to the very tips of my fingers." He said, "That is just what you _ought_ to feel; it is how the Rosicrucians always felt." He prescribed for all of us, and I remember one gentleman, who had rather a red nose, was directed to rub the tip of it with cantharides. We could not ask him to go, but at eleven o'clock my father retired, and we stayed up with him till two o'clock; but in spite of having drunk all the punch himself, as we found it _impossible_, he was perfectly sober, agreeable, and gentlemanly, and took his leave and went away.

My father was very angry with me for asking a lunatic to dinner, which of course I had done quite unconsciously, but it was worse for me when, next morning, he arrived for half-past one lunch, quite naturally "delighted to find again his new Rosicrucian family." He told us that he lived at Primrose Hill, that the last night he had been borne there on air in a few minutes, and that his feet had never touched the ground the whole way. But what _did_ touch us immensely was, that he said that "last night he had not known where to look for a dinner, and the spirits had directed him to our house, and had urged him to come back on the present occasion." We were all very nice and kind to him; but it had such effect on my father's nerves, he being very aged, that we had to tell the butler to say, when he called again, that Richard and I had gone into the country--as it was _us_ he had come ostensibly to see. I have still about twenty very clever letters that he wrote us.

[Sidenote: _On Leave in London_.]

All this time--the end of 1878, early 1879--the minerals were being assayed. Richard had not packed his own minerals; there were cases for France, and cases for England. Frenchmen had the selection of them, and Richard's cases did not give such good results as were expected. We could not understand it, but _he_ knew that the mineral was in the ground, and he determined on the following Expedition to choose and send his _own_ specimens, and prove a very different tale. In early January Richard got an attack of pleurodynia, from which he very speedily recovered. Dr. George Bird attended him. Amongst other friends, we saw a good deal of Hepworth Dixon. We also went down to Hatfield; Lady Salisbury had a house party. Richard gave lectures at 9, Conduit Street. On the 22nd of January he gave his lecture to the Anthropological.

On Sundays we used to visit the studios; oftenest to Mr. Val Prinsep's and Sir Frederick Leighton's.

We spent a delightful day with Richard's old friend, Mr. John Larking, "The Firs," Lee, Kent, and his family, who lived in half-Oriental style, so that it seemed like a day back at Damascus. We also saw a great deal of Dr. Percy Badger, who was always delighted (and his wife too) to get hold of Richard. Dr. Badger turned an old kitchen into a comfortable studio, and there we used to find him, working hard at his Dictionary. Mr. Henry Irving gave us a delightful supper at 15A, Grafton Street. We went to Bethnal Green to look at the Free Library, and saw the Museum. We frequently had many pleasant dinners and evenings at my father's, where people would come accidentally as a pleasant surprise. One night came Lord Houghton, Lord Arundell, Mr. F. F. Arbuthnot, and Uncle Gerard; it is noted because it was a very amusing evening.

On the 21st of February my book, "A.E.I.," came out. My publisher, Mr. Mullan, was so pleased with it that he gave a large party in its honour. We were seventeen invited. Mr. Mullan, being an Irishman, ordered that everything on the table should be an Irish dish. A pyramid of my books was in the middle of the table, one to be given to each guest, which was a very pretty thought. The notables were my husband, Lord Houghton, Mr. Irving, and Arthur Sketchley. There were a great many short, friendly speeches made; the gaieties began at eleven and terminated at five. We had a very pleasant dinner at General and Mrs. Paget's, and a visit from Mr. Joyner, C.E., our old friend from Poonah, and from the Montalbas, whom we had known in Venice. We came in also for three of Lady Salisbury's Foreign Office parties, one at Lady Derby's, and several parties at Lady Margaret Beaumont's.

On the 23rd of March, 1879, we drove down to Mortlake, where I now live, to see the graves of my mother, and the uncle and brother who had died in 1877. We called on Canon Wenham, who afterwards buried Richard in 1891, and we went to look over the old house where my two aunts had lived so many years and died.

On the 27th I went to the Drawing-room. We resumed writing and reading part of Richard's memoirs. He also commenced writing letters to the papers as Mirza Ali of London to his brother, Mirza Hasan of Shiraz, describing what he saw in England; but, to his disappointment, they did not take. He also wrote and published "A Visit to Lissa and Pelagosa;" "Sosivizha, the Bandit of Dalmatia," translated from the Slav; two papers on Midian, "Stones and Bones from Egypt and Midian;" "Flints from Egypt;" Reports on two Expeditions to Midian; "The Itineraries of the Second Khedivial Expedition;" "Report upon the Minerals of Midian."

One evening we had a masquerade dinner-party; everybody was to come in some fancy dress, which was to be a surprise, and it was a great amusement. Richard appeared as an Australian miner, I as Carmen; there were huntsmen and Highlanders, and all sorts of funny people. There seemed to be great astonishment in the street as the cabs in April kept discharging their visitors at half-past seven.

We went to see Lord Archibald Douglas's (the English Don Bosco) Home for Boys in Harrow Road.

In our early married life Richard had amongst his papers the following, which was written between whiles in Somali-land and the Crimea, but he never put them forward, nor should I do so, though perhaps it will serve as a good map to his thoughts. But this year, in 1879, he gave a copy of the Agnostic side only to a mutual woman-friend who is of that persuasion, and she _now_ says, that to be _perfectly fair_, I ought to bring it out--and I am nothing if not fair--nor do I see any reason or object in being otherwise. She kindly lent me her copy, but after much search in his private papers I have found his original, which I used to chaff him unmercifully about, as his "Double Ten Commandments."

"EGO." mapped out

The Frontiers

closed down upon open to the higher air

1. The so-called bad 1. The so-called good

2. The material part of me 2. The spiritualistic part of me

3. Body 3. Soul

4. Nature 4. Grace

5. Reason 5. Heart

6. The outside of me 6. Inside of me

7. Mind and Matter 7. Faith

8. The World I live on 8. Home

I. I.

Intellectual Truth is one; Moral A Supreme Being. or sentimental Truth varies with the individual.

II. II.

Revealed religions consist of three The Trinity, Father, Son, parts, all more or less untrue. (1) A and Holy Ghost. Cosmogony more or less absurd. (2) An Historical sketch, more or less falsified. (3) A System of morality more or less pure.

III. III.

The Higher Law of Humanity bids Jesus Christ, born of the us cast off the slough of old creeds, Virgin Mary. especially the obsolete and the debasing doctrine of degradation; the Fall of Man, Original Sin, Redemption, Salvation, and so forth.

IV. IV.

Reason, while suggesting the idea Salvation and Hope. of a First Cause, a God, forbids us, in the present stage of humanity, to inquire further into the subject.

V. V.

The description of the Devil and Good and bad deeds and his Angels, of Hell, Heaven, and expiation. Purgatory given by "Revealed Religions" are equally dishonouring to the Creator, and debasing to the Creature, if at least the latter be the work of the former.

VI. VI.

Death, physically considered, is not The Catholic Church and annihilation, but change. Sacraments.

VII. VII.

Man's individuality, his Ego, survives Resurrection of body and the death of the body. Soul.

VIII. VIII.

To most races of men, the idea of Communion with the Saints annihilation is painful, whilst that of and the Dead. eternal parting is too heavy to be borne.

IX. IX.

A next world, a continuation of Passing over al-Sirat, the this world, is against our Reason, but bridge as fine as a hair, to it is supported by sentiment, and by El Mathar, or Purgatory--to the later traditions of both the Aryan Heaven. and the Semitic races.

X. X.

The only idea of continuation acceptable Hell--Eternity.[1] to man, is that the future world is a copy of this world, whilst the law of Progress suggests that it is somewhat less material and not subject to death or change.

[Sidenote: _We leave London--I get a Bad Fall_.]

Richard now, intending to make a little tour, and to meet me at Trieste in two or three weeks, went to Hamburg, to Berlin, and to Leipzig to see Tauchnitz, and to Dresden. I packed up and started on my journey Triestewards. As I was about to get into the cab at my father's door a beggar woman asked me for charity, and I gave her a shilling, and she said, "God bless you, and may you reach your home without an accident!" These words made an impression on me afterwards. I slept in Boulogne that night, and went on to Paris the following day. The day after, the 30th of April, I ordered a _voiture de place_, and was going out to do a variety of visits and commissions. They had been waxing the stairs till they were as slippery as ice. I had heels to my boots, and I took one long slide from the top of the stairs to the bottom, with my leg doubled under me, striking my head and my back on every stair. When I arrived at the bottom I was unconscious, picked up, and taken back to bed. When I came to I said, "I have no time to lose. Don't send the carriage away; I must get my work done and go on;" but, when I attempted to get out of bed, I fell on the floor and fainted again. A doctor was fetched, I was undressed, my boot and stocking had to be cut away; the whole of my leg was as black as ink, and so swollen that at first the doctor thought it was broken. However, it proved to be only a bad sprain and a twisted ankle.

Instead of stopping there six weeks, as the doctor said I must, I had myself bound up and conveyed to the Gare de Lyons on the fourth day, where, with a _wagon-lit_, I arrived at Turin in twenty-four hours. There I had to be conveyed to the hotel, being too bad to go on; but next day I insisted on being packed up again, and having another _coupé-lit_ in the train to Mestre. I suffered immensely from the heat, for the first time since leaving England. At Mestre I had to wait four hours in the wretched station, sitting on a chair with my leg hanging down, which gave me intense pain, and then to embark in the _Post-Zug_, a slow train, where there were no _coupé-lits_ to be had, arriving at half-past eight in the morning, where I found Richard waiting to receive me on the platform, and I was carried home and put into my own bed. In spite of pain I was as charmed as ever with the run down from Nabresina to dear old Trieste.

I cannot say how thankful I was to be safe and sound in my own home at Trieste with Richard, and how sweet were the welcomes, and the flowers, and the friends' visits. I was a very long time before I could leave my bed. It was found that I had injured my back and my ankle very badly, and I went through a long course of shampooing and soap baths, but I never got permanently quite well. Strong health and nerves I had hitherto looked upon as a sort of right of nature, and supposed everybody had them, and had never felt grateful for them as a blessing; but I began to learn what suffering was from this date. Richard took me up to Opçina for a great part of the summer, and used to invite large parties of friends up to dinner. We used to dine out in the lit-up gardens in the evening, overlooking the sea, which was very pleasant; and often itinerant Hungarian gypsy bands would come in and play. This summer we had the usual annual _fête_ for the cause of humanity, and speeches and giving of prizes.

"GOLD IN MIDIAN.

"To the Editor of the _Globe_.

"Sir,--The _Globe_ of the 25th of May has printed from the _Sheffield Telegraph_ a very serious misstatement on the subject of the twenty-five tons of mineral brought by Captain Burton from Midian, and I beg you to allow me a little space to refute it. The moment a lion leaves a place the jackals generally set up a bark; we left Egypt only on the 12th of May. There is a Spanish proverb which says, 'No one ever pelts a tree unless there is fruit upon it;' if this discovery were worth so little as its enemies assert, no one would take the trouble to attack it. We are only too glad to court discussion, but we want truth. Captain Burton will have to suffer for Midian what M. de Lesseps had to go through for his canal. There are plenty of drowning men in Cairo, who are only too happy to catch at any straw. Let me note the two principal blunders in the _Sheffield Telegraph_. Firstly, Captain Burton reported to his Highness the Khedive, and to the public, only what the Egyptian Government's own geologist and engineer, appointed by them to the Expedition, reported (of course, officially) to Captain Burton, and to the Government in whose employ he (M. George Marie) is. Secondly, close examinations and analysis show none of the evil results mentioned in the _Sheffield Telegraph_. On arriving in Trieste, Captain Burton was careful to have his own little private collection analyzed by Dr. L. Karl Moser, an able professor of geology, who declares that the turquoises are not malachites, but pure crystals of turquoise. Moreover, he has found metals in three several rocks where, till now, they were not known to exist--dendritic gold in chalcedony; silver lead in a peculiar copper-bearing quartz, and possibly in the red veins traversing the gypsum; and, lastly, worked coppers in obsidian slag. In fact, the collection has only gained, and will gain, by being scientifically examined. The Khedive has sent a quantity of each sort of mineral to London for analysis, and as soon as Captain Burton receives a telegram from his secretary, in whose charge it is, to say that it has arrived, he will, if permitted, hasten home to superintend the operation personally, and forward the official report to his Highness the Khedive. Meanwhile we only ask every one to suspend judgment till the results are known, instead of publishing and believing every gossiping bit of jealousy and intrigue that may issue from Cairo, thereby injuring the interest of future companies, of his Highness, and of Egypt, and lastly, but not least, casting a slight upon the noble and arduous work of my husband.

"I have the honour to be, sir, yours obediently,

"ISABEL BURTON.

"Her Britannic Majesty's Consulate, Trieste, May 30."

[Sidenote: _The Austrian Scientific Congress_.]

From Opçina we went to Sessana, a village about half an hour's drive in the interior, which is very good for the nerves, and from there back to Adelsberg, and thence to Laibach. There was a scientific Congress (like our British Association) at the Redouten Sala, and lectures on the Pfalbauten, tumuli, etc., a public dinner, a country excursion, and then a concert and supper, which exhausted me considerably, and these things went on for two or three days.

We visited the Pfalbauten, the excavated villages built upon piles in a peat country, and all the treasures excavated therefrom. Richard was received with great honour, surrounded by all the Austrian scientists. The Pfalbauten, or Pine villages, yielded excavations, which illustrated the whole age of Horn that preceded the age of Stone, and weapons made of Uchatius metal, which is wrongly called _bronze-steel_. It is compressed bronze and easily cuts metal. This settles the old dispute of how the Egyptians did such work with copper and bronze.

Richard then took me on to Graz, where we saw a good deal of Brugsch Bey. Then we went to Baden, near Vienna, where I had twenty-one days' bathing and drinking, which we varied with excursions to Vienna, sometimes to breakfast with Colonel Everard Primrose, to see people, and to hunt up swords in the Museum for Richard's "Sword" book. We went to Professor Benedict, nerve specialist, where Richard had his back electrified for lumbago. Mr. Egerton and Everard Primrose accompanied us to a place we were very fond of making an excursion to, Vöslau, and then back to Baden with us.

On the 31st of May I find in Richard's journal, "Poor Tommy Short dead, ninety years old;" he was his master at Oxford. After Richard's death I found one of the Rev. Thomas Short's cards kept amongst his treasures.

One day we had a delightful journey over the Semmering to Fröhnleiten. The Badhaus was on a terrace, with the running river under it in front, a plain and grand mountains all around. The night air was perfectly delightful, with a beautiful starlight. We had gone there to see the family of Mr. Brock, our dear old Vice-Consul. We then went to Römerbad. The Pension Sophien Schloss was beautifully situated, and we were well lodged. The baths there are like a gentle electric battery for nerves--the water turns a magnet a hundred and thirty-five degrees; the woods are lovely; the forestfull of squirrels come and play about you. We had delightful walks, and visits from several friends in the neighbourhood, Prince and Princess Wrede and others.

We had a most charming family of neighbours, who were some of our best friends in Trieste; they had a lovely property, an old castle called Weixelstein, near Steinbrück (Monsieur and Madame Gutmansthal de Benvenuti). He was a Trieste-Italian gentleman, and she was the daughter of a Russian, by an American wife, and is far away the most charming woman I know, and so clever. Their place is to be got at through a mountain gorge, and a river which you cross by ferry-boats. It is an old-fashioned-monastery-like-looking house in a gorge, with the river Save running through its park, and here we paid frequent visits. We had a pleasant excursion also to Mark Tüffer; a delightful moonlight drive back.

[Sidenote: _A Ghost Story_.]

After we had been there about a fortnight, the _avant courier_ of the Crown Princess of Germany, now Empress Frederick, came to engage rooms. Seeing that her Imperial Highness wished to be _incog._, that I was the only Englishwoman there, and had been presented to her, that I had got the only rooms in the place that were very nice, that I had the only bath, we thought it would be good taste to vanish, which we did next morning, and we went to our friends at Weixelstein. They received so perfectly, making us at home, like part of the family, and they let us do exactly what we liked without any effort at entertaining. Here Madame Gutmansthal, who is a first-rate artist amongst many other talents, began to paint Richard's picture, which was a great success, and which is now on view at the Grosvenor Gallery, in the little room to the left, with a pretty bronze medallion by Henry Page. Meantime he translated the Weixelstein ghost story from Old German to English, as he was very much taken with it. He writes--

"VERITABLE AND SINGULAR ACCOUNT OF AN APPARITION, AND THE SAVING OF A SOUL, IN CASTLE WEIXELSTEIN, IN KRAIN.

"I send you one of the best ghost-stories, and one which your readers have certainly never seen. We were lately paying a visit to the Castle of Weixelstein, near Steinbrück, Krain (Carniola), the country-house of our hospitable friends Monsieur and Madame Gutmansthal de Benvenuti. My attention was drawn to two old and portly folios, entitled 'Die Ehre des Herzogthum's Krain'('The Honour of the Dutchy of Carniola'). An awful title-page of forty-six lines declares that it was written by Johann Weichard, Freiherr (Baron) Valvásor, or Walvásor, Lord of Wazemberg, and printed at Laibach in M.DC.LXXXIX.

"The author, a Fellow R. Soc. London, who was Governor of the Duchy and Captain of the Frontier, then an important post, is portrayed with long hair, _à la Milton_, shaven face, and laced cravat (Croatian) falling over his breastplate. The book is full of curious episodes, and above I give you the 'tune' it recommends for catching crabs. Amongst other things it gives a valuable disquisition on the bell (lib. xi.), which it dates from the days of Saint Jerome (A.D. 400).