At Trieste there was no room for
the eagles to soar; their wings clipped.
Seeing that the last hope was over, and the one post which Sir Richard
Burton had coveted as the crown of his career was denied him, his wife
set to work to induce the Government to allow him to retire on his
pension four years before his time. She had good grounds for making
this request, for his health was breaking, and this last disappointment
about Morocco seemed to have broken him even more. When he told her that
it was given to another man, he said, "There is no room for me now, and
I do not want anything; but I have worked forty-four years for nothing.
I am breaking up, and I want to go free." So she at once set to work
to draw up what she called "The Last Appeal," enumerating the services
which her husband had rendered to his country, and canvassing her friends
to obtain the pension. The petition was backed as usual by forty-seven
or fifty big names, who actively exerted themselves in the matter. It
was refused notwithstanding that public feeling and the press seemed
unanimously in favour of its being granted. The ground on which it was
refused, apparently, was that it was contrary to precedent, and that it
was not usual; but then the case was altogether an unusual one, and Sir
Richard Burton was altogether an unusual man. Even supposing that there
had been a difficulty about giving him full Consular pension, it would
have been easy for the Government, if they had been so minded, to have
made up to him the sum--only a few hundred pounds a year--from the Civil
List, on the ground of his literary and linguistic labours and services.
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