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Updated: May 8, 2025
Burton to Miss Stisted, who had just written a novel, A Fireside King, gives welcome glimpses of the Burtons and touches on matters that are interesting in the light of subsequent events. "My dearest Georgie, On leaving you I came on to Trieste, arriving 29th May, and found Dick just attacked by a virulent gout.
That they were so forbearing was, I think, largely due to his wife this same Isabel who, according to Miss Stisted, was responsible for her husband's recall and the consequent ruin of his official career. It was Isabel who fought Burton's battles on every charge against him, and she defended him against every attack.
The first lieutenant-governor of Ontario was Lieutenant-General Stisted, of Quebec, Sir Narcisse Belleau; of Nova Scotia, Lieutenant-General Sir Fenwick Williams, the hero of Kars; of New Brunswick, Major-General Doyle, but only for three months. With the exception of the case of Quebec, these appointments were only temporary.
Fortunately, in searching for the true reasons of Burton's recall from Damascus, I am not dependent, like Miss Stisted, on a mere opinion of my own, nor am I dependent on the testimony of Lady Burton, which, though correct in every detail, might be refused acceptance, on the plea that it was biassed.
Miss Stisted asserts that the true cause of Burton's recall was Isabel his wife, who had espoused with more zeal than discretion the cause of the Shazli converts to Christianity.
In this I have the advantage of Miss Stisted, who appears to be animated by a bitter hostility not only against her aunt but against the Church of Rome. In her book she asserts that Sir Richard Burton died before the priest arrived on the scene, and that the Sacrament of Extreme Unction was administered to a corpse.
Surely it is cruelly unjust to say that it was she who cast the slur! And now to refer to another matter. Miss Stisted animadverts on Lady Burton's having sold the library edition of The Arabian Nights in 1894 "with merely a few excisions absolutely indispensable."
Would she be likely to perjure herself on such a subject? Miss Stisted writes with an unconcealed animus, and is not so much concerned in defending the purity of her uncle's Protestantism as in vilifying her aunt and the faith to which she belonged.
She through whose interest Burton had obtained the coveted post at Damascus; she who fought his battles for him all round; she who shielded him from the official displeasure; she who obeyed his lightest wish, and whose only thought from morning to night was her husband's welfare and advancement; she who would have died for him, this same woman, according to Miss Stisted, deliberately behind her husband's back ran counter to his wishes, fanned the flame of fanaticism, and brought about the crash which ruined his career!
Miss Stisted died in 1904. So of Burton's parents there are now no descendants. Within fifteen years of his death, the family was extinct. Of the friends and intimate acquaintances of Burton who still survive we must first mention Mr. A. C. Swinburne, Mr. Watts-Dunton and Mr. John Payne. Mr.
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