But Lady Burton was not an
ordinary woman, and the money side of the question never weighed with
her for one moment. How she acted at this crisis in her life is best
told by herself.
"My husband had been collecting for fourteen years information and
materials on a certain subject. His last volume of _The Supplemental
Nights_ had been finished and out on November 13, 1888. He then gave
himself up entirely to the writing of this book which was called
_The Scented Garden_, a translation from the Arabic. It treated of a
certain passion. Do not let any one suppose for a moment that Richard
Burton ever wrote a thing from the impure point of view. He dissected
a passion from every point of view, as a doctor may dissect a body,
showing its source, its origin, its evil, and its good, and its proper
uses, as designed by Providence and Nature, as the great Academician
Watts paints them. In private life he was the most pure, the most
refined and modest man that ever lived, and he was so guileless himself
that he could never be brought to believe that other men said or used
these things from any other standpoint. I, as a woman, think
differently. The day before he died he called me into his room and
showed me half a page of Arabic manuscript upon which he was working,
and he said, 'To-morrow I shall have finished this, and I promise you
after this I will never write another book upon this subject. I will
take to our biography.
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