Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/796

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The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton

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 I am also carrying out all his favourite projects, and bringing out by degrees all his works hitherto published or unpublished, as of the former only small quantities were published, and these are mostly extinct.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 chaumiére 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. I have now got it home again, and I thought he smiled as I brought him back in the cab for joy to get home. . . . There is a great waxwork exhibition in England which is very beautifully done (Tussaud's). They have now put Richard in the Meccan dress he wore in the desert. They have given him a large space with sand, water, palms, and three camels, and a domed skylight, painted yellow, throws a lurid light on the scene. It is quite life-like. I gave them the real clothes and the real weapons, and dressed him myself. When it was offered to him during his life, his face beamed, and he said, 'That will bring me in contact with the people.'"

The other works of Sir Richard's which Lady Burton