The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 2 (of 2): By His Wife, Isabel BurtonBurton, Isabel, Lady
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The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 2 (of 2): By His Wife, Isabel Burton
Burton, Isabel, Lady
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir, 1821-1890; Explorers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Scholars -- Great Britain -- Biography
He used to go away by himself and make pilgrimages; I know of about
ten he made to various places. Once, in 1875, he left town to go into
the country for a week, and to my surprise I received a private letter
from him from Paray le Monial, the place once so talked about in
the papers as a pilgrimage-place of St. Mary Margaret Alacoque and
the Sacred Heart.[1] He had gone there to make a pilgrimage all by
himself, and brought me back some medals and rosaries. He used to go
into every church. He made a pilgrimage on this voyage to St. Nicholas
of Bari, and brought me a lot of curios. The ship's course went by way
of Venice, Fiume, Bari, Naples, Palermo, and Malaga, where they found
cholera, and then to Gib. and Lisbon. He arrived in high spirits on the
14th of June.
Here I may remark that he kept two sets of journals. The public
set contained remarks on the weather, scraps out of newspapers,
and "Varia" (notes of what he reads), the people he writes to, the
people he receives letters from, and public news. In the private
set, come notices on his and my health at one side, what he and I
did, obituaries, his sentiments about things in concentrated notes,
condemnations of things, and scraps of poetry on the circumstances here
and there.
I must here notice making at this time acquaintance with three very
interesting people. One was a gentleman who would not like to be
named, the leader of a religious sect, who conceals his name under
the _soubriquet_ of the "Recorder," and who is the St. Paul of their
belief in a second advent--he publishes a book called "The Mother, or
the Woman clothed with the Sun;" and another was Dr. Anna Kingsford,
who became my fast friend, and who used to let me work with her in
regard to the protection of animals. She was tall, fair, delicate,
soft, refined, exceedingly pretty, beautifully dressed, of the highest
possible culture, combining the education and courage of both man and
woman. I made her acquaintance at an Anti-vivisection meeting, with
Lord Shaftesbury in the chair, and the Bishop of Oxford present, a very
little while before Lord Shaftesbury's death. The third interesting
person was Mr. George Lewis.
[Sidenote: _Arabian Nights_.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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