And the Rest Is History by Marlene Wagman-Geller Page A

the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he was able to engage in one of his other interests: writing. His best-known contribution to literature was when he translated foreign works into English, thereby giving the Western world The Kama Sutra . Its sexual content was considered the epitome of pornography. Another masterpiece he added to literary lore was his translation of The Arabian Nights , thereby introducing to the western world stories from the east: Sinbad the Sailor , Aladdin’s Magic Lamp , and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves .
    Many felt that Burton’s travel books that delineated exotic sexual practices were based on primary sources. This aspect of her husband’s nature pained the extremely Catholic Isabel, as did his premise that polygamy was not immoral. Isabel was aware of the gossip bandied about that her conjugal bed was used to test Oriental sexual practices. However, she never regretted her destiny. As she wrote her mother, “I want to live ... I want a wild, roving, vagabond life ... I wish I were a man. If I were I would be Richard Burton: but, being only a woman, I would be Richard Burton’s wife.” Their marriage, despite her absorption with piety and his with pornography, was one of unending devotion.
    Public recognition and respect for Burton culminated with his knighthood: In 1886, they became Sir Richard and Lady Burton.
    In Trieste, in 1890, death found the man who had evaded it for so long when Burton passed away from a heart attack. By his side was his partner in wanderlust, his ever-devoted Isabel. During his final moments he used his wife’s nickname and made his final request. His last words were to his first love: “Quick, Puss, chloroform—ether—or I am a dead man.”
    In death, as in life, Isabel remained devoted to Richard. She commissioned a mausoleum in the shape of a stone reproduction of a Bedouin tent. On its wall hang two portraits of husband and wife on their wedding day. When Isabel passed away she was buried beside her knight in the Arab-styled stone tent, under the British sky.
    Postscript
    The atheist Burton had three church services performed over him and 1,100 masses said for the repose of his soul. Four days later, Trieste gave the legend a full military funeral “such as is only accorded to royalty.” All the flags in the city were lowered to half staff and most of the 150,000 inhabitants turned out to view his coffin, draped in a Union Jack. Richard’s body was shipped to England, where it was temporarily laid to rest in a crypt under the altar in St. Mary Magdalene’s Church until his stone tent mausoleum (and six years later, Isabel’s as well) was completed.

9
    Charles Parnell and Katharine O’Shea
    1880
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    T hroughout history, women have been portrayed as femmes fatales whose sexuality brought about the fall of great men: the mythological Pandora, the biblical Eve, the Egyptian Cleopatra, the Shakespearean Lady Macbeth. Ireland has its own such femme fatale; when Charles Parnell took Katharine O’Shea into his arms he brought his country to its knees, and thus, she was viewed as responsible for the downfall of the one she loved.
    Charles Stewart Parnell was born in Avondale, County Wicklow. His parents separated when he was six, and he was sent to school in England, eventually attending Cambridge. As an adult, he returned to Ireland and, as a landowner, his interests aligned with the nationalist political agenda: home rule—freedom from England’s yoke. He was elected president of the newly founded Irish National League and traveled to raise funds for famine relief. He was so well received in Toronto that he was dubbed “the uncrowned king of Ireland.”
    Parnell also became president of the Land League, which encouraged the Irish to protest against unfair rent by the mainly British landlords. The first English victim of this policy