Lady Isabel Burton

Birth Data

Biography

British adventuress who married Richard Burton on 1/22/1861 and traveled with him around the world. Born to luxury as the refined daughter of a well-to-do Catholic family, Isabelle was expected to marry well and her mom objected to Burton, penniless and not a Christian. He had a reputation for being an unstable and rather off-color fellow. His normally fierce look was made more so by a scar from a Berber spear that had cut through one cheek into his mouth. This did not stop 29-year-old Isabel from falling hopelessly in love with him from the time they first met in 1851. She had gone to an astrologer who told her that her life would be "all wandering, change and adventure," and Burton seemed her destiny. She trained herself to be a poor man's wife by practicing small economies. She was an excellent equestrian, and took lessons in fencing. 

Five years passed before they were secretly engaged and another five before she went against her parents wishes and eloped to London with Burton, where they married on 1/22/1861. 

Her marriage was undoubtedly one of lifelong passion and devotion, though Richard continued his intellectual and sexual adventures through the periods when they were apart.

Isabel herself was not exactly a conventional homemaker. A lover of animals, she kept a panther cub as a pet in Damascus. She went into the harems to cull information for her husband, and often nursed the sick, not the least daunted by unbelievable squalor. At times, she wore Arab costumes in order to fit in where women are not welcomed. 

When he became consul, they went to Damascus in 1869 and Trieste, Italy, in 1872. He published his first book in 1875, just before they moved to India. Burton died on 10/20/1890, Trieste, Austria-Hungary. After his death, Isabel went through his papers, letters and manuscripts, putting many of them into the fire. Though it seemed an inestimable loss of unpublished material, she felt that she was protecting him by destroying an essay that was bigoted toward Jews and some of his more extreme political views. She also destroyed his work on a translation of another porno classic, "The Scented Garden." 

She designed a stone mausoleum in the shape of a desert tent, complete with camel bells to tinkle in the wind, for her beloved Richard. At her death of cancer five years later, on 3/22/1896, London, she was interred in the same mausoleum.

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