Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/21

Rh or of polish, or to select the best language, the best English,—no time to shine as an authoress. I must just think aloud, so as not to keep the public waiting.

From the time of my husband's becoming a real invalid—February, 1887—whilst my constant thoughts reviewed the dread To Come—the catastrophe of his death—and the subsequent suffering, I have been totally incapable, except writing his letters or attending to his business, of doing any good literary work until July, 1892, a period of five years, which was not improved by four attacks of influenza.

Richard was such a many-sided man, that he will have appeared different to every set of people who knew him. He was a diamond with so many facets. The tender, the true, the brilliant, the scientific,—and to those who deserved it, the cynical, the hard, the severe. Loads of books will be written about him, and every one will be different; and though perhaps it is an unseemly boast, I venture to feel sure that mine will be the truest one, for I have no interest to serve, no notoriety to gain, belong to no party, have nothing to sway me, except the desire to let the world understand what it once possessed, what it has lost. With many it will mean I. With me it means.

When this biography is out, the public will, theoretically, but no practically, know him as well as I can make them, and all of his friends will be able after that to put forth a work representing that particular facet of his character which he turned on to them, or which they drew from him. He was so great, so world-wide, he could turn a fresh facet and sympathy on to each world. I always think that a man is one character to his wife at his fireside corner, another man to his own family, another man to her family, a fourth to a mistress or an amourette—if he have one,—a fifth to his men friends, a sixth to his boon companions, and a seventh to his public, and so on ad infinitum; but I think the wife, if they are happy and love each other, gets the pearl out of the seven oyster-shells.

I fear that this work will be too long. I cannot help it. When I embarked on it I had no conception of the scope: it was a labour of love. I thought I could fly over it; but