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Lady for Burning. Two things almost defeated her—Burton's stubborn inability to see the difference between Catholicism and any other religion, and his invincible interest in the theory of sex. She dealt with both problems in masterly fashion. When he died in 1890 at 79, she arranged for him to receive the last sacrament of the Roman Church. He had been dead for two hours, but the priest took her word that he was alive. Then, "sorrowfully, reverently, and in fear and trembling," she set about burning his manuscript of The Scented Garden, an encyclopaedic sex manual whose translation from the Arabic had occupied Burton's last years (a partial version survived). Also into the flames went his private journal of 40 years, which he had kept under lock and key. This act left her free to clean up Ruffian Dick for the visitors and write a biography of "the most pure, the most refined and modest man that ever lived."
Lady Burton had her dead hero interred at the Catholic cemetery of Mortlake in a marble mausoleum resembling, as much as anything in marble can, a tent. She bought a cottage near by to facilitate regular visits to this marmoreal monstrosity. She hoped, like so many Victorians, to communicate with the dead. But whatever regions Sir Richard was then exploring, he failed to report back to Lady Burton at the tent. It would have served her right if he had returned just once, and burnt her biography of him.