LADY BURTON.

Otago Witness, Issue 2051, 15 June 1893, Page 41

LADY BURTON.

An interesting character sketch of a very interesting woman appears in the " Ladies' Review." Lady Burton is a daughter of the late Mr Henry Arundell, who belonged to a very old Roman Catholic family. She is a woman greatly interested in the welfare of her own sex, and is a zealous worker for the advancement of women generally. While she is of opinion that tbis is the age for women to take a more prominent position than they ever have done, she none the less believes that woman's first duty is at home and for home. For a woman her life has been curiously full of adventure and strange experiences. Some of her early years she spent in a convent in the country, where, she herself Bays, she enjoyed a free and happy life. She went to France to complete her education, and it was while studying there that she made the acquaintance of Richard Burton, a young lieutenant in the Bombay army who happened to be home on leave. Some years later, and in spite of considerable opposition from her mother on religious grounds, she became engaged to him, and this engagement lasted for no less than five years, during which time the intrepid officer was away on his famous expedition with Speke, endeavouring to find out the sources of the Nile. Throughout those five years Miss Atundell only heard from him four times. On his return, in spite of the continued opposition of her mother, she was at length married to him, risking her all with the man she loved, and entered upon what has been described as an " ideal life." She was most devoted to her husband. She was proud to be the wife of such a man, and shared his courageous.'adventurous disposition, and was a most able support to him in bis various Consulate appointments. In speaking of Lady Burton, it must of necessity be in conjunction with her husband, for while he lived she may be said to have had no life apart from his. In 1869 they were removed to Damascus, and speaking of the prospect of Eastern life, Lady Burton says:— "The East had always been enchanted ground to me, the romance of the Mohammedan life appealed to my gip*y nature, and I was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing things about which I had hitheito only read and dreamed." Women are kept very secluded in the East, and the account of tho way in which Lady Burton contrived to accompany her husband is full of romantic excitement and daring adventure. Upon several occasions she travelled with him as his son, and in male attire was thus able to see a great many curious Eastern customs and interiors which woald otherwise have been entirely closed to her, as they are to all women. She rode behind her husband, and at the various halting stations she attended to him and to the horses, and often used to lead the horses to water. In the East she assumed an inferior position to her husband, and before Orientals she woull always wait upon him, as they do not regaid women as the equals* of men.