Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/207

Rh marriage, he was offered the post of Consul at Fernando Po, on the west coast of Africa—a deadly climate, and £700 a year. He cheerfully accepted it, as he was only too glad to get his foot on the lowest rung of the official ladder. He was told to hold himself in readiness to leave in August; and as the climate of Fernando Po was almost certain death to a white woman, he would not allow his young wife to accompany him. So the bliss of the first months of their wedded life was overshadowed by the thought of approaching separation.

In accepting the offer of Fernando Po, Burton wrote to the Foreign Office : "My connexion with H.M.'s Indian army has now lasted upwards of nineteen years, and I am unwilling to retire without pension or selling out of my corps. If therefore my name could be retained upon the list of my regiment—as, for instance, is the case with H.M.'s Consul at Zanzibar—I should feel deeply indebted." A reasonable request truly. Lord John Russell, who was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and who had given Burton the Consulship, caused his application to be forwarded to the proper quarter—the Bombay Government. But the authorities in India refused to entertain Burton's application; they struck his name off the Indian Army List; and in this way the whole of his nineteen years' service in India was swept away without pay or pension. If the brutal truth must be told, they were only too glad to seize on this excuse to get rid of him. But that does not palliate their conduct; it was well said,