Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/14

iv merely in the outward circumstances of his life that one may trace the change in the man; his wife's great love influenced him, elevated him, ennobled him; henceforth he did not live only for himself. We can trace this subtle change in the book before us; it is not expressed, but we can read between the lines. It may be that the side of his character he showed to his wife, and on which she most loved to dwell, was not the side the world knew best. It may even be that in writing this book she so threw her soul into the work that her own vivid and remarkable personality is engraved upon it like a palimpsest, and her very self-abnegation produced this unconscious result. I doubt if any woman could do justice to all aspects of Burton's character, for the psychological difference between man and woman is as essential as the physical; a woman's way of looking at things can never be quite the same as a man's, and Burton was of all men intensely virile. But, even so, this book remains the last crowning work of a devoted woman's life, who loved her husband with a love passing the love of woman.

Lady Burton wrote the whole of this compendious work in eight months, three of which were spent in sorting the material, and five in the actual writing. It was finished at the end of March 1893, and the first edition was published in the following May. These months, as indeed all of lady Burton's life in England after her husband's death, were spend in arduous and unceasing work, which begun at 10.30 in the morning and lasted until 6.30 in the evening. Many days she would work much later, far on into the night. Generally in the morning she would do a certain amount of work before breakfast, for the old habit of early rising clung to her, and until her death she never broke herself off the custom of waking at 5 o'clock in the morning. Thus she was able to write this book in so short a time, and when it is remembered that all the time she was suffering acutely from a dire disease, which later proved fatal, we can realize something of the magnitude of the task. Lady Burton always said that she could never have accomplished the work had it not been for other and higher aid. She was intensely religious woman, with a deep sense of spiritual nature of things; every action of her