out of The Daily
News. I congratulate you on it and on being able to write again. I was
very sorry you and Maria [Lady Stisted] would not come to the funeral.
When you come in August I shall give you a photo of the monument and
a list of the people who were invited.... There were 850 asked, 400
influenza refusals and over 500 were present, counted by the police at
the gates.... When you come I shall be I trust at No. 67. [678] Your
loving aunt Zoo."

But the comic always treads on the heels of the pathetic for it is not
probable that Miss Stisted valued very much the photograph of what
in her "True Life," she thought fit to call "an eccentric tomb" in a
"shabby sectarian cemetery." [679] The removal into 67, Baker Street,
took place in September 1891, and a little later Lady Burton hired a
cottage at Wople End, near Mortlake, where she spent her summer months.
During the last decade of her husband's life she had become, to use her
own words, coarse and rather unwieldy, but her sorrow had the effect of
restoring to her some of the graces of person that had marked her early
days. That this is no figment of our imagination may easily be seen by
anyone who compares her portrait in the group taken by Miller in 1888
with the photograph by Gunn and Stuart, [680] where she is in her
widow's cap with its long white streamers. In this photograph and others
taken at the time she looks handsome and stately. She is once more
"Empress of Damascus." The house in baker Street has thus been
described: "No sooner have you crossed Lady Burton's threshold than
you are at once transported, as if by magic, to Eastern climes. You
are greeted by a handsome woman whose black dress and white widow's cap
present a striking contrast to the glow of rich but subdued colour
which surrounds her. Opposite the fireplace is a full length and very
characteristic portrait of Burton in fencing costume. [681] Among the
curiosities are the necklace [682] of human bones given to Burton by
Gelele, some specimens of old Istrian china picked up in the cottages
near Trieste, and a three-sided mirror and two crystals with which
Burton used to mesmerise his wife. From the ceiling hung a quaint
Moorish lamp with many branches, and its softened rays often fall on a
Damascene silver gilt coffee service studded with turquoises." At the
top of the house and approached by a narrow staircase and a ladder was a
large loft, built by herself, for storing her husband's manusc