" She has been called
hysterical and illiterate. It has been asserted that she did it from
selfish motives, "for the sake of her own salvation, through the
promptings of a benighted religion," for fear of the legal consequences
which might fall upon her if she sold the book, for love of gain, for
love of notoriety, for love of "posing as a martyr," and so on, and so
on. She was publicly vilified and privately abused, pursued with
obscene, anonymous, and insulting letters until the day of her death.
In fact, every imputation was hurled at her, and she who might have
answered all her persecutors with a word, held her peace, or broke it
only to put them on another track. It was not merely the act itself
which caused her suffering; it was the long persecution which followed
her from the day her letter appeared in _The Morning Post_ almost to
the day she died. How keenly she felt it none but those who knew her
best will ever know. A proud, high-spirited woman, she had never
schooled herself to stay her hand, but generally gave her adversaries
back blow for blow; but these cowardly attacks she bore in silence,
nay more, she counted all the suffering as gain, for she was bearing
it for the sake of the man she loved.
And this silence would never have been broken, and the true reasons
which led Lady Burton to act as she did would never have been told to
the world, had it not been that, after her death, a woman, whom she had
never injured by thought, word, or deed, has seen fit to rake up this
unpleasant subject again, for the purpose of throwing mud on her memory,
impugning her motives, and belittling the magnitude of her sacrifice.
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