There were narghilehs
and chibouques, and cups of filigree and porcelain for the dispensing
of delectable Arab coffee. Quaint brackets of Morocco work, Eastern
pictures, portraits, Persian enamels, and curios of every description
covered the walls. The most striking object in the room was a life-
size portrait of Sir Richard Burton, dressed in white, with a scarlet
cummerbund, flanked on either side by a collection of rare books, most
of them his works. Many other relics of him were scattered about the
room; and all over the house were to be found his books and pictures,
and busts of him. In fact, she made a cult of her husband's memory, and
there were enough relics of him in the house to fill a little museum.
In this house Lady Burton settled down with her sister, Mrs. Fitzgerald,
to her daily life in England, which was mostly a record of work--arduous
and unceasing work, which began at 10.30 in the morning, and lasted till
6.30 at night. Sometimes, indeed, she would work much later, far on into
the night, and generally in the morning she would do a certain amount of
work before breakfast, for the old habit of early rising clung to her
still, and until her death she never broke herself of the custom of
waking at five o'clock in the morning. At the top of her Baker Street
house Lady Burton built out a large room, or rather loft. It was here
she housed her husband's manuscripts, which she knew, as she used to
say, "as a shepherd knew his sheep.
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