She felt now that her work
was done and that nothing remained. She wrote to a friend early in the
New Year (1894)[4]:
"I have had my head quite turned by the great success of my book. First
came about a hundred half-nasty, or wholly nasty, critiques; then the
book made its way. I had three leading articles, over a thousand
charming reviews, and have been inundated with the loveliest letters and
invitations. . . . With my earnings I am embellishing his mausoleum, and
am putting up in honour of his poem, _Kasidah_, festoons of camel bells
from the desert, in the roof of the tent where he lies, so that when I
open or shut the door, or at the elevation of the Mass, the 'tinkling
of the camel bell' will sound just as it does in the desert. On January
22 I am going down to pass the day in it, because it is my thirty-third
wedding day, and the bells will ring for the first time. I am also
carrying out all his favourite projects, and bringing out by degrees
all his works hitherto published or unpublished, as of the former
only small quantities were published, and these are mostly extinct.
If God gives me two years, I shall be content. I live in my little
_chaumiere_ near the mausoleum on the banks of the Thames for the six
good months of the year, and in my warm dry home in London six bad
months, with my sister. You cannot think how the picture of Richard
by you was admired at the Grosvenor Gallery, and I put your name over
it.
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