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diff --git a/old/awkbi10.txt b/old/awkbi10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..96f5c5d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/awkbi10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3498 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake +by Rev. W. Tuckwell + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake + +Author: Rev. W. Tuckwell + +Release Date: May, 1996 [EBook #539] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on March 23, 1996] +[Most recently updated: August 27, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF KINGLAKE *** + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1902 Edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + +A. W. KINGLAKE--A BIOGRAPHICAL AND LITERARY STUDY + + + + +PREFACE + + + +It is just eleven years since Kinglake passed away, and his life +has not yet been separately memorialized. A few years more, and +the personal side of him would be irrecoverable, though by +personality, no less than by authorship, he made his contemporary +mark. When a tomb has been closed for centuries, the effaced +lineaments of its tenant can be re-coloured only by the idealizing +hand of genius, as Scott drew Claverhouse, and Carlyle drew +Cromwell. But, to the biographer of the lately dead, men have a +right to say, as Saul said to the Witch of Endor, "Call up Samuel!" +In your study of a life so recent as Kinglake's, give us, if you +choose, some critical synopsis of his monumental writings, some +salvage from his ephemeral and scattered papers; trace so much of +his youthful training as shaped the development of his character; +depict, with wise restraint, his political and public life: but +also, and above all, re-clothe him "in his habit as he lived," as +friends and associates knew him; recover his traits of voice and +manner, his conversational wit or wisdom, epigram or paradox, his +explosions of sarcasm and his eccentricities of reserve, his words +of winningness and acts of kindness: and, since one half of his +life was social, introduce us to the companions who shared his +lighter hour and evoked his finer fancies; take us to the Athenaeum +"Corner," or to Holland House, and flash on us at least a glimpse +of the brilliant men and women who formed the setting to his +sparkle; "dic in amicitiam coeant et foedera jungant." + +This I have endeavoured to do, with such aid as I could command +from his few remaining contemporaries. His letters to his family +were destroyed by his own desire; on those written to Madame +Novikoff no such embargo was laid, nor does she believe that it was +intended. I have used these sparingly, and all extracts from them +have been subjected to her censorship. If the result is not Attic +in salt, it is at any rate Roman in brevity. I send it forth with +John Bunyan's homely aspiration: + + +And may its buyer have no cause to say, +His money is but lost or thrown away. + + + +CHAPTER I--EARLY YEARS + + + +The fourth decade of the deceased century dawned on a procession of +Oriental pilgrims, variously qualified or disqualified to hold the +gorgeous East in fee, who, with bakshish in their purses, a theory +in their brains, an unfilled diary-book in their portmanteaus, +sought out the Holy Land, the Sinai peninsula, the valley of the +Nile, sometimes even Armenia and the Monte Santo, and returned home +to emit their illustrated and mapped octavos. We have the type +delineated admiringly in Miss Yonge's "Heartsease," {1} bitterly in +Miss Skene's "Use and Abuse," facetiously in the Clarence Bulbul of +"Our Street." "Hang it! has not everybody written an Eastern book? +I should like to meet anybody in society now who has not been up to +the Second Cataract. My Lord Castleroyal has done one--an honest +one; my Lord Youngent another--an amusing one; my Lord Woolsey +another--a pious one; there is the 'Cutlet and the Cabob'--a +sentimental one; Timbuctoothen--a humorous one." Lord Carlisle's +honesty, Lord Nugent's fun, Lord Lindsay's piety, failed to float +their books. Miss Martineau, clear, frank, unemotional Curzon, +fuddling the Levantine monks with rosoglio that he might fleece +them of their treasured hereditary manuscripts, even Eliot +Warburton's power, colouring, play of fancy, have yielded to the +mobility of Time. Two alone out of the gallant company maintain +their vogue to-day: Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine," as a Fifth +Gospel, an inspired Scripture Gazetteer; and "Eothen," as a +literary gem of purest ray serene. + +In 1898 a reprint of the first edition was given to the public, +prefaced by a brief eulogium of the book and a slight notice of the +author. It brought to the writer of the "Introduction" not only +kind and indulgent criticism, but valuable corrections, fresh +facts, clues to further knowledge. These last have been carefully +followed out. The unwary statement that Kinglake never spoke after +his first failure in the House has been atoned by a careful study +of all his speeches in and out of Parliament. His reviews in the +"Quarterly" and elsewhere have been noted; impressions of his +manner and appearance at different periods of his life have been +recovered from coaeval acquaintances; his friend Hayward's Letters, +the numerous allusions in Lord Houghton's Life, Mrs. Crosse's +lively chapters in "Red Letter Days of my Life," Lady Gregory's +interesting recollections of the Athenaeum Club in Blackwood of +December, 1895, the somewhat slender notice in the "Dictionary of +National Biography," have all been carefully digested. From these, +and, as will be seen, from other sources, the present Memoir has +been compiled; an endeavour--sera tamen--to lay before the +countless readers and admirers of his books a fairly adequate +appreciation, hitherto unattempted, of their author. + +I have to acknowledge the great kindness of Canon William +Warburton, who examined his brother Eliot's diaries on my behalf, +obtained information from Dean Boyle and Sir M. Grant Duff, cleared +up for me not a few obscure allusions in the "Eothen" pages. My +highly valued friend, Mrs. Hamilton Kinglake, of Taunton, his +sister-in-law, last surviving relative of his own generation, has +helped me with facts which no one else could have recalled. To Mr. +Estcott, his old acquaintance and Somersetshire neighbour, I am +indebted for recollections manifold and interesting; but above all +I tender thanks to Madame Novikoff, his intimate associate and +correspondent during the last twenty years of his life, who has +supplemented her brilliant sketch of him in "La Nouvelle Revue" of +1896 by oral and written information lavish in quantity and of +paramount biographical value. Kinglake's external life, his +literary and political career, his speeches, and the more fugitive +productions of his pen, were recoverable from public sources; but +his personal and private side, as it showed itself to the few close +intimates who still survive, must have remained to myself and +others meagre, superficial, disappointing, without Madame +Novikoff's unreserved and sympathetic confidence. + + +Alexander William Kinglake was descended from an old Scottish +stock, the Kinlochs, who migrated to England with King James, and +whose name was Anglicized into Kinglake. Later on we find them +settled on a considerable estate of their own at Saltmoor, near +Borobridge, whence towards the close of the eighteenth century two +brothers, moving southward, made their home in Taunton--Robert as a +physician, William as a solicitor and banker. Both were of high +repute, both begat famous sons. From Robert sprang the eminent +Parliamentary lawyer, Serjeant John Kinglake, at one time a +contemporary with Cockburn and Crowder on the Western Circuit, and +William Chapman Kinglake, who while at Trinity, Cambridge, won the +Latin verse prize, "Salix Babylonica," the English verse prizes on +"Byzantium" and the "Taking of Jerusalem," in 1830 and 1832. Of +William's sons the eldest was Alexander William, author of +"Eothen," the youngest Hamilton, for many years one of the most +distinguished physicians in the West of England. "Eothen," as he +came to be called, was born at Taunton on the 5th August, 1809, at +a house called "The Lawn." His father, a sturdy Whig, died at the +age of ninety through injuries received in the hustings crowd of a +contested election. His mother belonged to an old Somersetshire +family, the Woodfordes of Castle Cary. She, too, lived to a great +age; a slight, neat figure in dainty dress, full of antique charm +and grace. As a girl she had known Lady Hester Stanhope, who lived +with her grandmother, Lady Chatham, at Burton Pynsent, her own +father, Dr. Thomas Woodforde, being Lady Chatham's medical +attendant. {2} The future prophetess of the Lebanon was then a +wild girl, scouring the countryside on bare-backed horses; she +showed great kindness to Mary Woodforde, afterwards Kinglake's +mother. It was as his mother's son that she received him long +afterwards at Djoun. To his mother Kinglake was passionately +attached; owed to her, as he tells us in "Eothen," his home in the +saddle and his love for Homer. A tradition is preserved in the +family that on the day of her funeral, at a churchyard five miles +away, he was missed from the household group reassembled in the +mourning home; he was found to have ordered his horse, and galloped +back in the darkness to his mother's grave. Forty years later he +writes to Alexander Knox: "The death of a mother has an almost +magical power of recalling the home of one's childhood, and the +almost separate world that rests upon affection." Of his two +sisters, one was well read and agreeably talkative, noted by +Thackeray as the cleverest woman he had ever met; the other, Mrs. +Acton, was a delightful old esprit fort, as I knew her in the +sixties, "pagan, I regret to say," but not a little resembling her +brother in the point and manner of her wit. The family moved in +his infancy to an old-fashioned handsome "Wilton House," adjoining +closely to the town, but standing amid spacious park-like grounds, +and inhabited in after years by Kinglake's younger brother +Hamilton, who succeeded his uncle in the medical profession, and +passed away, amid deep and universal regret, in 1898. Here during +the thirties Sydney Smith was a frequent and a welcome visitor; it +was in answer to old Mrs. Kinglake that he uttered his audacious +mot on being asked if he would object, as a neighbouring clergyman +had done, to bury a Dissenter: "Not bury Dissenters? I should +like to be burying them all day!" + +Taunton was an innutrient foster-mother, arida nutrix, for such +young lions as the Kinglake brood. Two hundred years before it had +been a prosperous and famous place, its woollen and kersey trades, +with the population they supported, ranking it as eighth in order +among English towns. Its inhabitants were then a gallant race, +republican in politics, Puritan in creed. Twice besieged by Goring +and Lumford, it had twice repelled the Royalists with loss. It was +the centre of Monmouth's rebellion and of Jeffrey's vengeance; the +suburb of Tangier, hard by its ancient castle, still recalls the +time when Colonel Kirke and his regiment of "Lambs" were quartered +in the town. But long before the advent of the Kinglakes its glory +had departed; its manufactures had died out, its society become +Philistine and bourgeois--"little men who walk in narrow ways"-- +while from pre-eminence in electoral venality among English +boroughs it was saved only by the near proximity of Bridgewater. A +noted statesman who, at a later period, represented it in +Parliament, used to say that by only one family besides Dr. +Hamilton Kinglake's could he be received with any sense of social +or intellectual equality. + +Not much, however, of Kinglake's time was given to his native town: +he was early sent to the Grammar School at Ottery St. Mary's, the +"Clavering" of "Pendennis," whose Dr. Wapshot was George Coleridge, +brother of the poet. He was wont in after life to speak of this +time with bitterness; a delicate child, he was starved on +insufficient diet; and an eloquent passage in "Eothen" depicts his +intellectual fall from the varied interests and expanding +enthusiasm of liberal home teaching to the regulation gerund- +grinding and Procrustean discipline of school. "The dismal change +is ordained, and then--thin meagre Latin with small shreds and +patches of Greek, is thrown like a pauper's pall over all your +early lore; instead of sweet knowledge, vile, monkish, doggerel +grammars and graduses, dictionaries and lexicons, and horrible odds +and ends of dead languages are given you for your portion, and down +you fall, from Roman story to a three-inch scrap of 'Scriptores +Romani,'--from Greek poetry, down, down to the cold rations of +'Poetae Graeci,' cut up by commentators, and served out by school- +masters!" + +At Eton--under Keate, as all readers of "Eothen" know--he was +contemporary with Gladstone, Sir F. Hanmer, Lords Canning and +Dalhousie, Selwyn, Shadwell. He wrote in the "Etonian," created +and edited by Mackworth Praed; and is mentioned in Praed's poem on +Surly Hall as + + +"Kinglake, dear to poetry, +And dear to all his friends." + + +Dr. Gatty remembers his "determined pale face"; thinks that he made +his mark on the river rather than in the playing fields, being a +good oar and swimmer. His great friend at school was Savile, the +"Methley" of his travels, who became successively Lord Pollington +and Earl of Mexborough. The Homeric lore which Methley exhibited +in the Troad, is curiously illustrated by an Eton story, that in a +pugilistic encounter with Hoseason, afterwards an Indian Cavalry +officer, while the latter sate between the rounds upon his second's +knee, Savile strutted about the ring, spouting Homer. + +Kinglake entered at Trinity, Cambridge, in 1828, among an +exceptionally brilliant set--Tennyson, Arthur Hallam, John +Sterling, Trench, Spedding, Spring Rice, Charles Buller, Maurice, +Monckton Milnes, J. M. Kemble, Brookfield, Thompson. With none of +them does he seem in his undergraduate days to have been intimate. +Probably then, as afterwards, he shrank from camaraderie, shared +Byron's distaste for "enthusymusy"; naturally cynical and self- +contained, was repelled by the spiritual fervour, incessant logical +collision, aggressive tilting at abuses of those young "Apostles," +already + + +"Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would +yield, +Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field," + + +waxing ever daily, as Sterling exhorted, "in religion and +radicalism." He saw life differently; more practically, if more +selfishly; to one rhapsodizing about the "plain living and high +thinking" of Wordsworth's sonnet, he answered: "You know that you +prefer dining with people who have good glass and china and plenty +of servants." For Tennyson's poetry he even then felt admiration; +quotes, nay, misquotes, in "Eothen," from the little known +"Timbuctoo"; {3} and from "Locksley Hall"; and supplied long +afterwards an incident adopted by Tennyson in "Enoch Arden," + + +"Once likewise in the ringing of his ears +Though faintly, merrily--far and far away - +He heard the pealing of his parish bells," {4} + + +from his own experience in the desert, when on a Sunday, amid +overpowering heat and stillness, he heard the Marlen bells of +Taunton peal for morning church. {5} + +In whatever set he may have lived he made his mark at Cambridge. +Lord Houghton remembered him as an orator at the Union; and +speaking to Cambridge undergraduates fifty years later, after +enumerating the giants of his student days, Macaulay, Praed, +Buller, Sterling, Merivale, he goes on to say: "there, too, were +Kemble and Kinglake, the historian of our earliest civilization and +of our latest war; Kemble as interesting an individual as ever was +portrayed by the dramatic genius of his own race; Kinglake, as bold +a man-at-arms in literature as ever confronted public opinion." We +know, too, that not many years after leaving Cambridge he received, +and refused, a solicitation to stand as Liberal representative of +the University in Parliament. He was, in fact, as far as any of +his contemporaries from acquiescing in social conventionalisms and +shams. To the end of his life he chafed at such restraint: "when +pressed to stay in country houses," he writes in 1872, "I have had +the frankness to say that I have not discipline enough." +Repeatedly he speaks with loathing of the "stale civilization," the +"utter respectability," of European life; {6} longed with all his +soul for the excitement and stir of soldiership, from which his +shortsightedness debarred him; {7} rushed off again and again into +foreign travel; set out immediately on leaving Cambridge, in 1834, +for his first Eastern tour, "to fortify himself for the business of +life." Methley joined him at Hamburg, and they travelled by +Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, to Semlin, where his book begins. +Lord Pollington's health broke down, and he remained to winter at +Corfu, while Kinglake pursued his way alone, returning to England +in October, 1835. {8} On his return he read for the Chancery Bar +along with his friend Eliot Warburton, under Bryan Procter, a +Commissioner of Lunacy, better known by his poet-name, Barry +Cornwall; his acquaintance with both husband and wife ripening into +life-long friendship. Mrs. Procter is the "Lady of Bitterness," +cited in the "Eothen" Preface. As Anne Skepper, before her +marriage, she was much admired by Carlyle; "a brisk witty prettyish +clear eyed sharp tongued young lady"; and was the intimate, among +many, especially of Thackeray and Browning. In epigrammatic power +she resembled Kinglake; but while his acrid sayings were emitted +with gentlest aspect and with softest speech; while, like Byron's +Lambro: + + +"he was the mildest mannered man +That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat, +With such true breeding of a gentleman, +You never could divine his real thought," + + +her sarcasms rang out with a resonant clearness that enforced and +aggravated their severity. That two persons so strongly resembling +each other in capacity for rival exhibition, or for mutual +exasperation, should have maintained so firm a friendship, often +surprised their acquaintance; she explained it by saying that she +and Kinglake sharpened one another like two knives; that, in the +words of Petruchio, + + +"Where two raging fires meet together, +They do consume the thing that feeds their fury." + + +Crabb Robinson, stung by her in a tender place, his boastful +iterative monologues on Weimar and on Goethe, said that of all men +Procter ought to escape purgatory after death, having tasted its +fulness here through living so many years with Mrs. Procter; "the +husbands of the talkative have great reward hereafter," said +Rudyard Kipling's Lama. And I have been told by those who knew the +pair that there was truth as well as irritation in the taunt. "A +graceful Preface to 'Eothen,'" wrote to me a now famous lady who as +a girl had known Mrs. Procter well, "made friendly company +yesterday to a lonely meal, and brought back memories of Mr. +Kinglake's kind spoiling of a raw young woman, and of the wit, the +egregious vanity, the coarseness, the kindness, of that hard old +worldling our Lady of Bitterness." In the presence of one man, +Tennyson, she laid aside her shrewishness: "talking with Alfred +Tennyson lifts me out of the earth earthy; a visit to Farringford +is like a retreat to the religious." A celebrity in London for +fifty years, she died, witty and vigorous to the last, in 1888. +"You and I and Mr. Kinglake," she says to Lord Houghton, "are all +that are left of the goodly band that used to come to St. John's +Wood; Eliot Warburton, Motley, Adelaide, Count de Verg, Chorley, +Sir Edwin Landseer, my husband." "I never could write a book," she +tells him in another letter, "and one strong reason for not doing +so was the idea of some few seeing how poor it was. Venables was +one of the few; I need not say that you were one, and Kinglake." + +Kinglake was called to the Chancery Bar, and practised apparently +with no great success. He believed that his reputation as a writer +stood in his way. When, in 1845, poor Hood's friends were helping +him by gratuitous articles in his magazine, "Hood's Own," Kinglake +wrote to Monckton Milnes refusing to contribute. He will send 10 +pounds to buy an article from some competent writer, but will not +himself write. "It would be seriously injurious to me if the +author of 'Eothen' were affiched as contributing to a magazine. My +frailty in publishing a book has, I fear, already hurt me in my +profession, and a small sin of this kind would bring on me still +deeper disgrace with the solicitors." + +Twice at least in these early years he travelled. "Mr. Kinglake," +writes Mrs. Procter in 1843, "is in Switzerland, reading Rousseau." +And in the following year we hear of him in Algeria, accompanying +St. Arnaud in his campaign against the Arabs. The mingled interest +and horror inspired in him by this extra-ordinary man finds +expression in his "Invasion of the Crimea" (ii. 157). A few, a +very few survivors, still remember his appearance and manners in +the forties. The eminent husband of a lady, now passed away, who +in her lifetime gave Sunday dinners at which Kinglake was always +present, speaks of him as SENSITIVE, quiet in the presence of noisy +people, of Brookfield and the overpowering Bernal Osborne; liking +their company, but never saying anything worthy of remembrance. A +popular old statesman, still active in the House of Commons, +recalls meeting him at Palmerston, Lord Harrington's seat, where +was assembled a party in honour of Madame Guiccioli and her second +husband, the Marquis de Boissy, and tells me that he attached +himself to ladies, not to gentlemen, nor ever joined in general +tattle. Like many other famous men, he passed through a period of +shyness, which yielded to women's tactfulness only. From the first +they appreciated him; "if you were as gentle as your friend +Kinglake," writes Mrs. Norton reproachfully to Hayward in the +sulks. Another coaeval of those days calls him handsome--an +epithet I should hardly apply to him later--slight, not tall, sharp +featured, with dark hair well tended, always modishly dressed after +the fashion of the thirties, the fashion of Bulwer's exquisites, or +of H. K. Browne's "Nicholas Nickleby" illustrations; leaving on all +who saw him an impression of great personal distinction, yet with +an air of youthful ABANDON which never quite left him: "He was +pale, small, and delicate in appearance," says Mrs. Simpson, Nassau +Senior's daughter, who knew him to the end of his life; while Mrs. +Andrew Crosse, his friend in the Crimean decade, cites his finely +chiselled features and intellectual brow, "a complexion bloodless +with the pallor not of ill-health, but of an old Greek bust." + + + +CHAPTER II--"EOTHEN" + + + +"Eothen" appeared in 1844. Twice, Kinglake tells us, he had +essayed the story of his travels, twice abandoned it under a sense +of strong disinclination to write. A third attempt was induced by +an entreaty from his friend Eliot Warburton, himself projecting an +Eastern tour; and to Warburton in a characteristic preface the +narrative is addressed. The book, when finished, went the round of +the London market without finding a publisher. It was offered to +John Murray, who cited his refusal of it as the great blunder of +his professional life, consoling himself with the thought that his +father had equally lacked foresight thirty years before in +declining the "Rejected Addresses"; he secured the copyright later +on. It was published in the end by a personal friend, Ollivier, of +Pall Mall, Kinglake paying 50 pounds to cover risk of loss; even +worse terms than were obtained by Warburton two years afterwards +from Colburn, who owned in the fifties to having cleared 6,000 +pounds by "The Crescent and the Cross." The volume was an octavo +of 418 pages; the curious folding-plate which forms the +frontispiece was drawn and coloured by the author, and was compared +by the critics to a tea-tray. In front is Moostapha the Tatar; the +two foremost figures in the rear stand for accomplished Mysseri, +whom Kinglake was delighted to recognize long afterwards as a +flourishing hotel keeper in Constantinople, and Steel, the +Yorkshire servant, in his striped pantry jacket, "looking out for +gentlemen's seats." Behind are "Methley," Lord Pollington, in a +broad-brimmed hat, and the booted leg of Kinglake, who modestly hid +his figure by a tree, but exposed his foot, of which he was very +proud. Of the other characters, "Our Lady of Bitterness" was Mrs. +Procter, "Carrigaholt" was Henry Stuart Burton of Carrigaholt, +County Clare. Here and there are allusions, obvious at the time, +now needing a scholiast, which have not in any of the reprints been +explained. In their ride through the Balkans they talked of old +Eton days. "We bullied Keate, and scoffed at Larrey Miller and +Okes; we rode along loudly laughing, and talked to the grave +Servian forest as though it were the Brocas clump." {9} Keate +requires no interpreter; Okes was an Eton tutor, afterwards Provost +of King's. Larrey or Laurie Miller was an old tailor in Keate's +Lane who used to sit on his open shop-board, facing the street, a +mark for the compliments of passing boys; as frolicsome youngsters +in the days of Addison and Steele, as High School lads in the days +of Walter Scott, were accustomed to "smoke the cobler." The Brocas +was a meadow sacred to badger-baiting and cat-hunts. The badgers +were kept by a certain Jemmy Flowers, who charged sixpence for each +"draw"; Puss was turned out of a bag and chased by dogs, her chance +being to reach and climb a group of trees near the river, known as +the "Brocas Clump." Of the quotations, "a Yorkshireman +hippodamoio" (p. 35) is, I am told, an obiter dictum of Sir Francis +Doyle. "Striving to attain," etc. (p. 33), is taken not quite +correctly from Tennyson's "Timbuctoo." Our crew were "a solemn +company" (p. 57) is probably a reminiscence of "we were a gallant +company" in "The Siege of Corinth." For "'the own armchair' of our +Lyrist's 'Sweet Lady'" Anne'" (p. 161) see the poem, "My own +armchair" in Barry Cornwall's "English Lyrics." "Proud Marie of +Anjou" (p. 96) and "single-sin--" (p. 121), are unintelligible; a +friend once asked Kinglake to explain the former, but received for +answer, "Oh! that is a private thing." It may, however, have been +a pet name for little Marie de Viry, Procter's niece, and the chere +amie of his verse, whom Eothen must have met often at his friend's +house. The St. Simonians of p. 83 were the disciples of Comte de +St. Simon, a Parisian reformer in the latter part of the eighteenth +century, who endeavoured to establish a social republic based on +capacity and labour. Pere Enfantin was his disciple. The "mystic +mother" was a female Messiah, expected to become the parent of a +new Saviour. "Sir Robert once said a good thing" (p. 93), refers +possibly to Sir Robert Peel, not famous for epigram, whose one good +thing is said to have been bestowed upon a friend before Croker's +portrait in the Academy. "Wonderful likeness," said the friend, +"it gives the very quiver of the mouth." "Yes," said Sir Robert, +"and the arrow coming out of it." Or it may mean Sir Robert +Inglis, Peel's successor at Oxford, more noted for his genial +kindness and for the perpetual bouquet in his buttonhole at a date +when such ornaments were not worn, than for capacity to conceive +and say good things. In some mischievous lines describing the +Oxford election where Inglis supplanted Peel, Macaulay wrote + + +"And then said all the Doctors sitting in the Divinity School, +Not this man, but Sir Robert'--now Sir Robert was a fool." + + +But in the fifth and later editions Kinglake altered it to "Sir +John." + +By a curious oversight in the first two editions (p. 41) Jove was +made to gaze on Troy from Samothrace; it was rightly altered to +Neptune in the third; and "eagle eye of Jove" in the following +sentence was replaced by "dread Commoter of our globe." The phrase +"a natural Chiffney-bit" (p. 109), I have found unintelligible to- +day through lapse of time even to professional equestrians and +stable-keepers. Samuel Chiffney, a famous rider and trainer, was +born in 1753, and won the Derby on Skyscraper in 1789. He managed +the Prince of Wales's stud, was the subject of discreditable +insinuations, and was called before the Jockey Club. Nothing was +proved against him, but in consequence of the fracas the Prince +severed his connection with the Club and sold his horses. Chiffney +invented a bit named after him; a curb with two snaffles, which +gave a stronger bearing on the sides of a horse's mouth. His rule +in racing was to keep a slack rein and to ride a waiting race, not +calling on his horse till near the end. His son Samuel, who +followed him, observed the same plan; from its frequent success the +term "Chiffney rush" became proverbial. In his ride through the +desert (p. 169) Kinglake speaks of his "native bells--the innocent +bells of Marlen, that never before sent forth their music beyond +the Blaygon hills." Marlen bells is the local name for the fine +peal of St. Mary Magdalen, Taunton. The Blaygon, more commonly +called the Blagdon Hills, run parallel with the Quantocks, and +between them lies the fertile Vale of Taunton Deane. "Damascus," +he says, on p. 245, "was safer than Oxford"; and adds a note on Mr. +Everett's degree which requires correction. It is true that an +attempt was made to non-placet Mr. Everett's honorary degree in the +Oxford Theatre in 1843 on the ground of his being a Unitarian; not +true that it succeeded. It was a conspiracy by the young lions of +the Newmania, who had organized a formidable opposition to the +degree, and would have created a painful scene even if defeated. +But the Proctor of that year, Jelf, happened to be the most-hated +official of the century; and the furious groans of undergraduate +displeasure at his presence, continuing unabated for three-quarters +of an hour, compelled Wynter, the Vice-Chancellor, to break up the +Assembly, without recitation of the prizes, but not without +conferring the degrees in dumb show: unconscious Mr. Everett +smilingly took his place in red gown among the Doctors, the Vice- +Chancellor asserting afterwards, what was true in the letter though +not in the spirit, that he did not hear the non-placets. So while +Everett was obnoxious to the Puseyites, Jelf was obnoxious to the +undergraduates; the cannonade of the angry youngsters drowned the +odium of the theological malcontents; in the words of Bombastes: + + +"Another lion gave another roar, +And the first lion thought the last a bore." + + +The popularity of "Eothen" is a paradox: it fascinates by +violating all the rules which convention assigns to viatic +narrative. It traverses the most affecting regions of the world, +and describes no one of them: the Troad--and we get only his +childish raptures over Pope's "Homer's Iliad"; Stamboul--and he +recounts the murderous services rendered by the Golden Horn to the +Assassin whose serail, palace, council chamber, it washes; Cairo-- +but the Plague shuts out all other thoughts; Jerusalem--but +Pilgrims have vulgarized the Holy Sepulchre into a Bartholomew +Fair. He gives us everywhere, not history, antiquities, geography, +description, statistics, but only Kinglake, only his own +sensations, thoughts, experiences. We are told not what the desert +looks like, but what journeying in the desert feels like. From +morn till eve you sit aloft upon your voyaging camel; the risen +sun, still lenient on your left, mounts vertical and dominant; you +shroud head and face in silk, your skin glows, shoulders ache, +Arabs moan, and still moves on the sighing camel with his +disjointed awkward dual swing, till the sun once more descending +touches you on the right, your veil is thrown aside, your tent is +pitched, books, maps, cloaks, toilet luxuries, litter your spread- +out rugs, you feast on scorching toast and "fragrant" {10} tea, +sleep sound and long; then again the tent is drawn, the comforts +packed, civilization retires from the spot she had for a single +night annexed, and the Genius of the Desert stalks in. + +Herein, in these subjective chatty confidences, is part of the +spell he lays upon us: while we read we are IN the East: other +books, as Warburton says, tell us ABOUT the East, this is the East +itself. And yet in his company we are always ENGLISHMEN in the +East: behind Servian, Egyptian, Syrian, desert realities, is a +background of English scenery, faint and unobtrusive yet persistent +and horizoning. In the Danubian forest we talk of past school- +days. The Balkan plain suggests an English park, its trees planted +as if to shut out "some infernal fellow creature in the shape of a +new-made squire"; Jordan recalls the Thames; the Galilean Lake, +Windermere; the Via Dolorosa, Bond Street; the fresh toast of the +desert bivouac, an Eton breakfast; the hungry questing jackals are +the place-hunters of Bridgewater and Taunton; the Damascus gardens, +a neglected English manor from which the "family" has been long +abroad; in the fierce, dry desert air are heard the "Marlen" bells +of home, calling to morning prayer the prim congregation in far-off +St. Mary's parish. And a not less potent factor in the charm is +the magician's self who wields it, shown through each passing +environment of the narrative; the shy, haughty, imperious Solitary, +"a sort of Byron in the desert," of cultured mind and eloquent +speech, headstrong and not always amiable, hiding sentiment with +cynicism, yet therefore irresistible all the more when he +condescends to endear himself by his confidence. He meets the +Plague and its terrors like a gentleman, but shows us, through the +vicarious torments of the cowering Levantine that it was courage +and coolness, not insensibility, which bore him through it. A foe +to marriage, compassionating Carrigaholt as doomed to travel +"Vetturini-wise," pitying the Dead Sea goatherd for his ugly wife, +revelling in the meek surrender of the three young men whom he sees +"led to the altar" in Suez, he is still the frank, susceptible, +gallant bachelor, observantly and critically studious of female +charms: of the magnificent yet formidable Smyrniotes, eyes, brow, +nostrils, throat, sweetly turned lips, alarming in their latent +capacity for fierceness, pride, passion, power: of the Moslem +women in Nablous, "so handsome that they could not keep up their +yashmaks:" of Cypriote witchery in hair, shoulder-slope, +tempestuous fold of robe. He opines as he contemplates the plain, +clumsy Arab wives that the fine things we feel and say of women +apply only to the good-looking and the graceful: his memory +wanders off ever and again to the muslin sleeves and bodices and +"sweet chemisettes" in distant England. In hands sensual and +vulgar the allusions might have been coarse, the dilatings +unseemly; but the "taste which is the feminine of genius," the +self-respecting gentleman-like instinct, innocent at once and +playful, keeps the voluptuary out of sight, teaches, as Imogen +taught Iachimo, "the wide difference 'twixt amorous and +villainous." Add to all these elements of fascination the unbroken +luxuriance of style; the easy flow of casual epigram or negligent +simile;--Greek holy days not kept holy but "kept stupid"; the mule +who "forgot that his rider was a saint and remembered that he was a +tailor"; the pilgrims "transacting their salvation" at the Holy +Sepulchre; the frightened, wavering guard at Satalieh, not +shrinking back or running away, but "looking as if the pack were +being shuffled," each man desirous to change places with his +neighbour; the white man's unresisting hand "passed round like a +claret jug" by the hospitable Arabs; the travellers dripping from a +Balkan storm compared to "men turned back by the Humane Society as +being incurably drowned." Sometimes he breaks into a canter, as in +the first experience of a Moslem city, the rapturous escape from +respectability and civilization; the apostrophe to the Stamboul +sea; the glimpse of the Mysian Olympus; the burial of the poor dead +Greek; the Janus view of Orient and Occident from the Lebanon +watershed; the pathetic terror of Bedouins and camels on entering a +walled city; until, once more in the saddle, and winding through +the Taurus defiles, he saddens us by a first discordant note, the +note of sorrow that the entrancing tale is at an end. + +Old times return to me as I handle the familiar pages. To the +schoolboy six and fifty years ago arrives from home a birthday +gift, the bright green volume, with its showy paintings of the +impaled robbers and the Jordan passage; its bulky Tatar, towering +high above his scraggy steed, impressed in shining gold upon its +cover. Read, borrowed, handed round, it is devoured and discussed +with fifth form critical presumption, the adventurous audacity +arresting, the literary charm not analyzed but felt, the vivid +personality of the old Etonian winged with public school +freemasonry. Scarcely in the acquired insight of all the +intervening years could those who enjoyed it then more keenly +appreciate it to-day. Transcendent gift of genius! to gladden +equally with selfsame words the reluctant inexperience of boyhood +and the fastidious judgment of maturity. Delightful self- +accountant reverence of author-craft! which wields full knowledge +of a shaddock-tainted world, yet presents no licence to the +prurient lad, reveals no trail to the suspicious moralist. + + + +CHAPTER III--LITERARY AND PARLIAMENTARY LIFE + + + +Kinglake returned from Algiers in 1844 to find himself famous both +in the literary and social world; for his book had gone through +three editions and was the universal theme. Lockhart opened to him +the "Quarterly." "Who is Eothen?" wrote Macvey Napier, editor of +the "Edinburgh," to Hayward: "I know he is a lawyer and highly +respectable; but I should like to know a little more of his +personal history: he is very clever but very peculiar." +Thackeray, later on, expresses affectionate gratitude for his +presence at the "Lectures on English Humourists":- "it goes to a +man's heart to find amongst his friends such men as Kinglake and +Venables, Higgins, Rawlinson, Carlyle, Ashburton and Hallam, +Milman, Macaulay, Wilberforce, looking on kindly." He dines out in +all directions, himself giving dinners at Long's Hotel. "Did you +ever meet Kinglake at my rooms?" writes Monckton Milnes to +MacCarthy: "he has had immense success. I now rather wish I had +written his book, WHICH I COULD HAVE DONE--AT LEAST NEARLY." We +are reminded of Charles Lamb--"here's Wordsworth says he could have +written Hamlet, IF HE HAD HAD A MIND." "A delightful Voltairean +volume," Milnes elsewhere calls it. + +"Eothen" was reviewed in the "Quarterly" by Eliot Warburton. +"Other books," he says, "contain facts and statistics about the +East; this book gives the East itself in vital actual reality. Its +style is conversational; or the soliloquy rather of a man +convincing and amusing himself as he proceeds, without reverence +for others' faith, or lenity towards others' prejudices. It is a +real book, not a sham; it equals Anastasius, rivals 'Vathek;' its +terseness, vigour, bold imagery, recall the grand style of Fuller +and of South, to which the author adds a spirit, freshness, +delicacy, all his own." Kinglake, in turn, reviewed "The Crescent +and the Cross" in an article called "The French Lake." From a +cordial notice of the book he passes to a history of French +ambition in the Levant. It was Bonaparte's fixed idea to become an +Oriental conqueror--a second Alexander: Egypt in his grasp, he +would pass on to India. He sought alliance against the English +with Tippoo Saib, and spent whole days stretched upon maps of Asia. +He was baffled, first at Aboukir, then at Acre; but the partition +of Turkey at Tilsit showed that he had not abandoned his design. +To have refrained from seizing Egypt after his withdrawal was a +political blunder on the part of England. + +By far the most charming of Kinglake's articles was a paper on the +"Rights of Women," in the "Quarterly Review" of December, 1844. +Grouping together Monckton Milnes's "Palm Leaves," Mrs. Poole's +"Sketch of Egyptian Harems," Mrs. Ellis's "Women and Wives of +England," he produced a playful, lightly touched, yet sincerely +constructed sketch of woman's characteristics, seductions, +attainments; the extent and secret of her fascination and her +deeper influence; her defects, foibles, misconceptions. He was +greatly vexed to learn that his criticism of "Palm Leaves" was +considered hostile, and begged Warburton to explain. His praise, +he said, had been looked upon as irony, his bantering taken to +express bitterness. Warburton added his own conviction that the +notice was tributary to Milnes's fame, and Milnes accepted the +explanation. But the chief interest of this paper lies in the +beautiful passage which ends it. "The world must go on its own +way, for all that we can say against it. Beauty, though it beams +over the organization of a doll, will have its hour of empire; the +most torpid heiress will easily get herself married; but the wife +whose sweet nature can kindle worthy delights is she that brings to +her hearth a joyous, hopeful, ardent spirit, and that subtle power +whose sources we can hardly trace, but which yet so irradiates a +home that all who come near are filled and inspired by a deep sense +of womanly presence. We best learn the unsuspected might of a +being like this when we try the weight of that sadness which hangs +like lead upon the room, the gallery, the stairs, where once her +footstep sounded, and now is heard no more. It is not less the +energy than the grace and gentleness of this character that works +the enchantment. Books can instruct, and books can exalt and +purify; beauty of face and beauty of form will come with bright +pictures and statues, and for the government of a household hired +menials will suffice; but fondness and hate, daring hopes, lively +fears, the lust of glory and the scorn of base deeds, sweet +charity, faithfulness, pride, and, chief over all, the impetuous +will, lending might and power to feeling:- these are the rib of the +man, and from these, deep veiled in the mystery of her very +loveliness, his true companion sprang. A being thus ardent will +often go wrong in her strenuous course; will often alarm, sometimes +provoke; will now and then work mischief and even perhaps grievous +harm; but she will be our own Eve after all; the sweet-speaking +tempter whom heaven created to be the joy and the trouble of this +pleasing anxious existence; to shame us away from the hiding-places +of a slothful neutrality, and lead us abroad in the world, men +militant here on earth, enduring quiet, content with strife, and +looking for peace hereafter." {11} Beautiful words indeed! how +came the author of a tribute so caressingly appreciative, so +eloquently sincere, to remain himself outside the gates of +Paradise? how could the pen which in the Crimean chapter on the +Holy Shrines traced so exquisitely the delicate fancifulness of +purest sexual love, perpetrate that elaborate sneer over the +bachelor obsequies of Carrigaholt--"the lowly grave, that is the +end of man's romantic hopes, has closed over all his rich fancies +and all his high aspirations: he is utterly married." {12} + +"Gai, gai, mariez vous, +Mettez vous dans la misere! +Gai, gai, mariez vous, +Mettez vous la corde au cou!" {13} + + +There is generally a good reason for prolonged celibacy, a reason +which the bachelor as generally does not betray: Kinglake remained +single, by his own account, because he had observed that women +always prefer other men to their own husbands. Yet, although +unmarried, perhaps because unmarried, he heartily admired many +clever women; formed with them sedate but genuine friendships, the +l'amour sans ailes, sometimes called "Platonic" by persons who have +not read Plato; found in their illogical clear-sightedness, in +their [Greek word which cannot be reproduced], to use the master's +own untranslatable phrase, a titillating stimulus which he missed +in men. He thought that the Church should ordain priestesses as +well as priests, the former to be the Egerias of men, as the latter +are the Pontiffs of women. And Lady Gregory tells us, that when +attacked by gout, he wished for the solace of a lady doctor, and +wrote to one asking if gout were beyond her scope. She answered: +"Dear Sir,--Gout is not beyond my scope, but men are." + +In 1854 he accompanied Lord Raglan to the Crimea. "I had heard," +writes John Kenyon, "of Kinglake's chivalrous goings on. We were +saying yesterday that though he might write a book, he was among +the last men to go that he might write a book. He is wild about +matters military, if so calm a man is ever wild." He had hoped to +go in an official position as non-combatant, but this was refused +by the authorities. His friend, Lord Raglan, whose acquaintance he +had made while hunting with the Duke of Beaufort's hounds, took him +as his private guest. Arrested for a time at Malta by an attack of +fever, he joined our army before hostilities began, rode with Lord +Raglan's staff at the Alma fight, likening the novel sensation to +the excitement of fox-hunting; and accompanied the chief in his +visit of tenderness to the wounded when the fight was over. +Throughout the campaign the two were much together, as we shall +notice more fully later on. There are often slight but +unmistakable signs of Kinglake's presence as spectator and auditor +of Lord Raglan's deeds and words; {14} his affection and reverence +for the great general animate the whole; in outward composure and +latent strength the two men resembled each other closely. The book +is, in fact, a history of Lord Raglan's share in the campaign; +begun in 1856 at the request of Lady Raglan, the narrative ends +when the "Caradoc" with the general's body on board steams out of +the bay, "Farewell" flying at her masthead, the Russian batteries, +with generous recognition, ceasing to fire till the ship was out of +sight. "Lord Raglan is dead," said Kinglake as vol. viii. was sent +to press, "and my work is finished." + +Ten years were to elapse before the opening volumes should appear; +and meanwhile he entered parliament for the borough of Bridgewater, +which had rejected him in 1852. His colleague was Colonel Charles +J. Kemyss Tynte, member of a family which local influence and +lavish expenditure had secured in the representation of the town +for nearly forty years. Catechized as to his political creed, he +answered: "I call myself an advanced Liberal; but I decline to go +into parliament as the pledged adherent of Lord Palmerston or any +other Liberal." He adds, in response to a further question: "I am +believed to be the author of 'Eothen.'" He broke down in his +maiden speech; but recovered himself in a later effort, and spoke, +not unfrequently, on subjects then important, now forgotten; on the +outrage of the "Charles et George"; the capture of the Sardinian +"Cagliari" by the Neapolitans on the high seas; our attitude +towards the Paris Congress of 1857; while in 1858 he led the revolt +against Lord Palmerston's proposal to amend the Conspiracy Laws in +deference to Louis Napoleon; in 1860 vigorously denounced the +annexation of Savoy and Nice; and in 1864 moved the amendment to +Mr. Disraeli's motion in the debate on the Address, which was +carried by 313 to 295. His feeble voice and unimpressive manner +prevented him from becoming a power in the House; but his speeches +when read are full, fluent, and graceful; the late Sir Robert +Peel's remarkable harangue against the French Emperor in the course +of an earlier debate was taken, as he is said to have owned, mainly +from a speech by Kinglake, delivered so indistinctly that the +reporters failed to catch it, but audible to Sir Robert who sate +close beside him. + +With his constituents he was more at ease and more effective. His +seat for Bridgewater was challenged at a general election by Henry +Padwick, a hanger-on to Disraeli and a well-known bookmaker on the +turf, who, with an Irish Colonel Westbrook, tried to cajole the +electors and their wives by extravagant compliments to the town, +its neighbourhood, its denizens; a place celebrated, as Captain +Costigan said of Chatteris, "for its antiquitee, its hospitalitee, +the beautee of its women, the manly fidelitee, generositee, and +jovialitee of its men." Kinglake met them on their own ground. In +his flowery speeches the romance of Sinai and Palestine faded +before the glories of the little Somersetshire town. What was the +Jordan by comparison with the Parrett? Could Libanus or Anti- +Libanus vie with the Mendip and the Quantock Hills? The view +surveyed by Monmouth from St. Mary's Tower on the Eve of Sedgemoor +transcended all the panoramas which the Holy Land or Asia Minor +could present! But his more serious orations were worthy of his +higher fame. In the panic of 1858, when the address of the French +colonels to the Emperor, beseeching to be led against England, had +created serious alarm on this side the Channel, he went down to +Bridgewater to enlighten the West of England. "Why," he asked, "do +we fear invasion? The population of France is peaceful, the +'turnip-soup Jacques Bonhomme' is peaceful, the soldiers of the +line are peaceful. Why are we anxious? Because there sits in his +chamber at the Tuileries a solitary moody man. He is deeply +interested in the science and the art of war; he told me once that +he was contemplating a history of all the great battles ever +fought. He holds absolute control over vast resources both in men +and money; he has shown that he can attack successfully at a few +weeks' notice the greatest European military power: gout or +indigestion may at any moment convert him into an enemy of +ourselves. Until France returns to parliamentary government this +danger is imminent and continual. Our safety lies in our fleet, +and in that alone. If for twenty-four hours only the Channel were +denuded of our ships in time of war with France, they would hurl +upon our shores a force we could not meet. Such denudation must be +made impossible; our fleet so augmented and strengthened as to +provide impregnably at all times for home defence no less than for +foreign necessities. Our danger, I repeat, lies in no hostility on +the part of the French army, in no ferocity on the part of the +French people, in no PRESENT unfriendliness on the part of the +French Emperor: it arises from the fact that a revolutionary +government exists in France, which has armed one man, under the +name of Emperor--Dictator rather, I should say--with a power so +colossal, that until such power is moderated, as all power ought to +be, no neighbour can be entirely safe." This speech was reproduced +in "The Times." Montalembert read it with admiration. "Who," he +asked Sir M. E. Grant Duff, "who is Mr. Kinglake?" "He is the +author of 'Eothen.'" "And what is 'Eothen?' I never heard of it." + +He found great enjoyment in parliamentary life, but was in 1868 +unseated on petition for bribery on the part of his agents. Blue- +books are not ordinarily light reading; but the Report of the +Commissioners appointed to inquire into the alleged corrupt +practices at Bridgewater is not only a model of terse and vigorous +composition, but to persons with a sense of humour, inclined to +view human irregularities and inconsistencies in a sportive rather +than an indignant light, it is a sustained and diverting comedy. +Of the constituency, both before and after the Reform Bill, three- +fourths, the Commissioners artlessly inform us, sought and received +bribes; of the remainder, all but a few individuals negotiated and +gave the bribes. So in every election, both sides bribed avowedly; +if a luckless Purity Candidate appeared, he was promptly informed +that "Mr. Most" would win the seat: highest bribes decided each +election, further bribes averted petitions. When once a desperate +riot took place and the ringleaders were tried at Quarter Sessions, +the jury were bribed to acquit, in the teeth of the Chairman's +summing up. At last, in 1868, the defeated candidate petitioned; +blue-book literature was enriched by a remarkable report, and the +borough was disfranchised. Of course Kinglake had only himself to +thank; if a gentleman chooses to sit for a venal borough, and to +intrust his interests to a questionable agent, he must, in the +words of Mrs. Gamp, "take the consequences of sech a sitiwation." +The consequences to him were loss of his present seat, and +permanent exclusion from Parliament. + +He was keenly mortified by his ostracism, speaking of himself ever +after as "a political corpse." Thenceforward he gave his whole +energy to literary work, to occasional reviews, mainly to his +"Invasion of the Crimea." In the "Edinburgh" I think he never +wrote, cordially disliking its then editor. A fine notice in +"Blackwood" of Madame de Lafayette's life was from his pen. +Surveying the Revolutionary Terror, he points out that +Robespierre's opponents were in numbers overwhelmingly strong, but +lacked cohesion and leaders; while the Mountain, dominated by a +single will, was legally armed with power to kill, and went on +killing. The Church played into Robespierre's hands by enforcing +Patience and Resignation as the highest Christian virtues, +confusing the idea of submission to Heaven with the idea of +submission to a scoundrel. Had Hampden been a Papist he would have +paid ship-money. He wrote also in "The Owl," a brilliant little +magazine edited by his friend Laurence Oliphant; a "Society +Journal," conducted by a set of clever well-to-do young bachelors +living in London, addressed like the "Pall Mall Gazette," in +"Pendennis," "to the higher circles of society, written by +gentlemen for gentlemen." When the expenses of production were +paid, the balance was spent on a whitebait dinner at Greenwich, and +on offerings of flowers and jewellery to the lady guests invited. +It came to an end, leaving no successor equally brilliant, high- +toned, wholesome; its collected numbers figure sometimes at a +formidable price in sales and catalogues. {15} + +The first two volumes of his "Crimea" had appeared in 1863. They +were awaited with eager expectation. An elaborate history of the +war had been written by a Baron de Bazancourt, condemned as unfair +and unreliable by English statesmen, and severely handled in our +reviews. So the wish was felt everywhere for some record less +ephemeral, which should render the tale historically, and +counteract Bazancourt's misstatements. "I hear," wrote the Duke of +Newcastle, "that Kinglake has undertaken the task. He has a noble +opportunity of producing a text-book for future history, but to +accomplish this it must be STOICALLY impartial." + +The beauty of their style, the merciless portraiture of the Second +Empire, the unparalleled diorama of the Alma fight, combined to +gain for these first four-and-twenty chapters an immediate vogue as +emphatic and as widely spread as that which saluted the opening of +Macaulay's "History." None of the later volumes, though highly +prized as battle narratives, quite came up to these. The political +and military conclusions drawn provoked no small bitterness; his +cousin, Mrs. Serjeant Kinglake, used to say that she met sometimes +with almost affronting coldness in society at the time, under the +impression that she was A. W. Kinglake's wife. Russians were, +perhaps unfairly, dissatisfied. Todleben, who knew and loved +Kinglake well, pronounced the book a charming romance, not a +history of the war. Individuals were aggrieved by its notice of +themselves or of their regiments; statesmen chafed under the +scientific analysis of their characters, or at the publication of +official letters which they had intended but not required to be +looked upon as confidential, and which the recipients had in all +innocence communicated to the historian. Palmerstonians, accepting +with their chief the Man of December, were furious at the exposure +of his basenesses. Lucas in "The Times" pronounced the work +perverse and mischievous; the "Westminster Review" branded it as +reactionary. "The Quarterly," in an article ascribed to A. H. +Layard, condemned its style as laboured and artificial; as palling +from the sustained pomp and glitter of the language; as wearisome +from the constant strain after minute dissection; declaring it +further to be "in every sense of the word a mischievous book." +"Blackwood," less unfriendly, surrendered itself to the beauty of +the writing; "satire so studied, so polished, so remorseless, and +withal so diabolically entertaining, that we know not where in +modern literature to seek such another philippic." + +Reeve, editor of the "Edinburgh," wished Lord Clarendon to attack +the book; he refused, but offered help, and the resulting article +was due to the collaboration of the pair. It caused a prolonged +coolness between Reeve and Kinglake, who at last ended the quarrel +by a characteristic letter: "I observed yesterday that my malice, +founded perhaps upon a couple of words, and now of three years' +duration, had not engendered corresponding anger in you; and if my +impression was a right one, I trust we may meet for the future on +our old terms." + +On the other hand, the "Saturday Review," then at the height of its +repute and influence, vindicated in a powerful article Kinglake's +truth and fairness; and a pamphlet by Hayward, called "Mr. Kinglake +and the Quarterlies," amused society by its furious onslaught upon +the hostile periodicals, laid bare their animus, and exposed their +misstatements. "If you rise in this tone," he began, in words of +Lord Ellenborough when Attorney-General, "I can speak as loudly and +emphatically: I shall prosecute the case with all the liberality +of a gentleman, but no tone or manner shall put me down." And the +dissentient voices were drowned in the general chorus of +admiration. German eulogy was extravagant; French Republicanism +was overjoyed; Englishmen, at home and abroad, read eagerly for the +first time in close and vivid sequence events which, when spread +over thirty months of daily newspapers, few had the patience to +follow, none the qualifications to condense. Macaulay tells us +that soon after the appearance of his own first volumes, a Mr. +Crump from America offered him five hundred dollars if he would +introduce the name of Crump into his history. An English gentleman +and lady, from one of our most distant colonies, wrote to Kinglake +a jointly signed pathetic letter, intreating him to cite in his +pages the name of their only son, who had fallen in the Crimea. He +at once consented, and asked for particulars--manner, time, place-- +of the young man's death. The parents replied that they need not +trouble him with details; these should be left to the historian's +kind inventiveness: whatever he might please to say in +embellishment of their young hero's end they would gratefully +accept. + +Unlike most authors, from Moliere down to Dickens, he never read +aloud to friends any portion of the unpublished manuscript; never, +except to closest intimates, spoke of the book, or tolerated +inquiry about it from others. When asked as to the progress of a +volume he had in hand, he used to say, "That is really a matter on +which it is quite out of my power even to inform myself"; and I +remember how once at a well-selected dinner-party in the country, +whither he came in good spirits and inclined to talk his best, a +second-hand criticism on his book by a conceited parson, the +official and incongruous element in the group, stiffened him into +persistent silence. All England laughed, when Blackwood's +"Memoirs" saw the light, over his polite repulse of the kindly +officious publisher, who wished, after his fashion, to criticise +and finger and suggest. "I am almost alarmed, as it were, at the +notion of receiving suggestions. I feel that hints from you might +be so valuable and so important, it might be madness to ask you +beforehand to abstain from giving me any; but I am anxious for you +to know what the dangers in the way of long delay might be, the +result of even a few slight and possibly most useful suggestions. . +. . You will perhaps (after what I have said) think it best not to +set my mind running in a new path, lest I should take to re- +writing." Note, by the way, the slovenliness of this epistle, as +coming from so great a master of style; that defect characterizes +all his correspondence. He wrote for the Press "with all his +singing robes about him"; his letters were unrevised and brief. +Mrs. Simpson, in her pleasant "Memories," ascribes to him the +eloquence du billet in a supreme degree. I must confess that of +more than five hundred letters from his pen which I have seen only +six cover more than a single sheet of note-paper, all are alike +careless and unstudied in style, though often in matter +characteristic and informing. "I am not by nature," he would say, +"a letter-writer, and habitually think of the uncertainty as to who +may be the reader of anything that I write. It is my fate, as a +writer of history, to have before me letters never intended for my +eyes, and this has aggravated my foible, and makes me a wretched +correspondent. I should like very much to write letters gracefully +and easily, but I can't, because it is contrary to my nature." "I +have got," he writes so early as 1873, "to shrink from the use of +the pen; to ask me to write letters is like asking a lame man to +walk; it is not, as horse-dealers say, 'the nature of the beast.' +When others TALK to me charmingly, my answers are short, faltering, +incoherent sentences; so it is with my writing." "You," he says to +another lady correspondent, "have the pleasant faculty of easy, +pleasant letter-writing, in which I am wholly deficient." + +In fact, the claims of his Crimean book, which compelled him +latterly to refuse all other literary work, gave little time for +correspondence. Its successive revisions formed his daily task +until illness struck him down. Sacks of Crimean notes, labelled +through some fantastic whim with female Christian names--the Helen +bag, the Adelaide bag, etc.--were ranged round his room. His +working library was very small in bulk, his habit being to cut out +from any book the pages which would be serviceable, and to fling +the rest away. So, we are told, the first Napoleon, binding +volumes for his travelling library, shore their margins to the +quick, and removed all prefaces, title-pages, and other superfluous +leaves. So, too, Edward Fitzgerald used to tear out of his books +all that in his judgment fell below their authors' highest +standard, retaining for his own delectation only the quintessential +remnants. Vols. III. and IV. appeared in 1868, V. in 1875, VI. in +1880, VII. and VIII. in 1887; while a Cabinet Edition of the whole +in nine volumes was issued continuously from 1870 to 1887. Our +attempt to appreciate the book shall be reserved for another +chapter. + + + +CHAPTER IV--"THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA" + + + +Was the history of the Crimean War worth writing? Not as a +magnified newspaper report,--that had been already done--but as a +permanent work of art from the pen of a great literary expert? +Very many of us, I think, after the lapse of fifty years, feel +compelled to say that it was not. The struggle represented no +great principles, begot no far-reaching consequences. It was not +inspired by the "holy glee" with which in Wordsworth's sonnet +Liberty fights against a tyrant, but by the faltering boldness, the +drifting, purposeless unresolve of statesmen who did not desire it, +and by the irrational violence of a Press which did not understand +it. It was not a necessary war; its avowed object would have been +attained within a few weeks or months by bloodless European +concert. It was not a glorious war; crippled by an incompatible +alliance and governed by the Evil Genius who had initiated it for +personal and sordid ends, it brought discredit on baffled generals +in the field, on Crown, Cabinet, populace, at home. It was not a +fruitful war; the detailed results purchased by its squandered life +and treasure lapsed in swift succession during twenty sequent +years, until the last sheet of the treaty which secured them was +contemptuously torn up by Gortschakoff in 1870. But a right sense +of historical proportion is in no time the heritage of the many, +and is least of all attainable while the memory of a campaign is +fresh. On Englishmen who welcomed home their army in 1855, the +strife from which shattered but victorious it had returned, loomed +as epoch-making and colossal, as claiming therefore permanent +record from some eloquent artist of attested descriptive power. +Soon the report gained ground that the destined chronicler was +Kinglake, and all men hailed the selection; yet the sceptic who in +looking back to-day decries the greatness of the campaign may +perhaps no less hesitate to approve the fitness of its chosen +annalist. His fame was due to the perfection of a single book; he +ranked as a potentate in STYLE. But literary perfection, whether +in prose or poetry, is a fragile quality, an afflatus irregular, +independent, unamenable to orders; the official tributes of a +Laureate we compliment at their best with the northern farmer's +verdict on the pulpit performances of his parson: + + +"An' I niver knaw'd wot a mean'd but I thow't a 'ad summut to saay, +And I thowt a said wot a owt to 'a said an' I comed awaay." + + +Set to compile a biography from thirty years of "Moniteurs," the +author of Waverley, like Lord Chesterfield's diamond pencil, +produced one miracle of dulness; it might well be feared that +Kinglake's volatile pen, when linked with forceful feeling and +bound to rigid task-work, might lose the charm of casual epigram, +easy luxuriance, playful egotism, vagrant allusion, which +established "Eothen" as a classic. On the other hand, he had been +for twenty years conversant with Eastern history, geography, +politics; was, more than most professional soldiers, an adept in +military science; had sate in the centre of the campaign as its +general's guest and comrade; was intrusted, above all, by Lady +Raglan with the entire collection of her husband's papers: her +wish, implied though not expressed, that they should be utilized +for the vindication of the great field-marshal's fame, he accepted +as a sacred charge; her confidence not only governed his decision +to become the historian of the war, but imparted a personal +character to the narrative. + +In order, therefore, rightly to appreciate "The Invasion of the +Crimea," we must look upon it as a great prose epic; its argument, +machinery, actors, episodes, subordinate to a predominant ever +present hero. In its fine preamble Lord Raglan sits enthroned high +above generals, armies, spectators, conflicts; on the quality of +his mind the fate of two great hosts and the fame of two great +nations hang. He checks St. Arnaud's wild ambition; overrules the +waverings of the Allies; against his own judgment, but in dutiful +obedience to home instruction carries out the descent upon the Old +Fort coast. The successful achievement of the perilous flank march +is ascribed to the undivided command which, during forty-eight +hours, accident had conferred upon him. From his presence in +council French and English come away convinced and strengthened; +his calm in action imparts itself to anxious generals and panic- +stricken aides-de-camp. Through Alma fight, from the high knoll to +which happy audacity had carried him he rides the whirlwind and +directs the storm. In the terrible crisis which sees the Russians +breaking over the crest of Inkerman, in the ill-fated attack on the +Great Redan where Lacy Yea is killed, his apparent freedom from +anxiety infects all around him and achieves redemption from +disaster. {16} We see him in his moments of vexation and +discomfiture; dissembling pain and anger under the stress of the +French alliance, galled by Cathcart's disobedience, by the loss of +the Light Brigade, by Lord Panmure's insulting, querulous, +unfounded blame. We read his last despatch, framed with wonted +grace and clearness; then--on the same day--we see the outworn +frame break down, and follow mournfully two days later the +afflicting details of his death. As the generals and admirals of +the allied forces stand round the dead hero's form, as the palled +bier, draped in the flag of England, is carried from headquarters +to the port, as the "Caradoc," steaming away with her honoured +freight, flies out her "Farewell" signal, the narrative abruptly +ends. The months of the siege which still remained might be left +to other hands or lapse untold. Troy had still to be taken when +Hector died; but with his funeral dirge the Iliad closed, the blind +bard's task was over: + + +"Such honours Ilion to her hero paid, +And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade." + + +If the framework of the narrative is epic, its treatment is +frequently dramatic. The "Usage of Europe" in the opening pages is +not so much a record as a personification of unwritten Law: the +Great Eltchi tramps the stage with a majesty sometimes bordering on +fustian. Dramatic is the story of the sleeping Cabinet. "It was +evening--a summer evening"--one thinks of a world-famous passage in +the "De Corona"--when the Duke of Newcastle carried to Richmond +Lodge the fateful despatch committing England to the war. "Before +the reading of the Paper had long continued, all the members of the +Cabinet except a small minority were overcome with sleep"; the few +who remained awake were in a quiet, assenting frame of mind, and +the despatch "received from the Cabinet the kind of approval which +is awarded to an unobjectionable Sermon." Not less dramatic is +Nolan's death; the unearthly shriek of the slain corpse erect in +saddle with sword arm high in air, as the dead horseman rode still +seated through the 13th Light Dragoons; the "Minden Yell" of the +20th driving down upon the Iakoutsk battalion; the sustained and +scathing satire on the Notre Dame Te Deum for the Boulevard +massacre. A simple dialogue, a commonplace necessary act, is +staged sometimes for effect. "Then Lord Stratford apprised the +Sultan that he had a private communication to make to him. The +pale Sultan listened." . . . "Whose was the mind which had freshly +come to bear upon this part of the fight? Sir Colin Campbell was +sitting in his saddle, the veteran was watching his time." . . . +"The Emperor Nicholas was alone in his accustomed writing-room. He +took no counsel; he rang a bell. Presently an officer of his staff +stood before him. To him he gave his order for the occupation of +the Principalities." This overpasses drama--it is melodrama. + +To the personal element which pervades the volumes great part of +their charm is due. The writer never obtrudes himself, but leaves +his presence to be discerned by the touches which attest an eye- +witness. Through his observant nearness we watch the Chief's +demeanour and hear his words; see him "turn scarlet with shame and +anger" when the brutal Zouaves carry outrage into the friendly +Crimean village, witness his personal succour of the wounded +Russian after Inkerman, hear his arch acceptance of the French +courtesy, so careful always to yield the post of danger to the +English; his "Go quietly" to the excited aide-de-camp; {17} his +good-humoured reception of the scared and breathless messenger from +D'Aurelle's brigade; the "five words" spoken to Airey commanding +the long delayed advance across the Alma; the "tranquil low voice" +which gave the order rescuing the staff from its unforeseen +encounter with the Russian rear. He records Codrington's leap on +his grey Arab into the breast-work of the Great Redoubt; Lacy Yea's +passionate energy in forcing his clustered regiment to open out; +Miller's stentorian "Rally" in reforming the Scots Greys after the +Balaclava charge; Clarke losing his helmet in the same charge, and +creating amongst the Russians, as he plunged in bareheaded amongst +their ranks, the belief that he was sheltered by some Satanic +charm. He notes on the Alma the singular pause of sound maintained +by both armies just before the cannonade began; the first death--of +an artilleryman riding before his gun--a new sight to nine-tenths +of those who witnessed it; {18} the weird scream of exploding +shells as they rent the air around. He crossed the Alma close +behind Lord Raglan, cantering after him to the summit of a +conspicuous hillock in the heart of the enemy's position, whence +the mere sight of plumed English officers scared the Russian +generals, and, followed soon by guns and troops, governed the issue +of the fight. The general's manner was "the manner of a man +enlivened by the progress of a great undertaking without being +robbed of his leisure. He spoke to me, I remember, about his +horse. He seemed like a man who had a clue of his own and knew his +way through the battle." When the last gun was fired Kinglake +followed the Chief back, witnessed the wild burst of cheering +accorded to him by the whole British army, a manifestation, Lord +Burghersh tells us, which greatly distressed his modesty--and dined +alone with him in his tent on the evening of the eventful day. + +If Lord Raglan was the Hector of the Crimean Iliad, its Agamemnon +was Lord Stratford: "king of men," as Stanley called him in his +funeral sermon at Westminster; king of distrustful home Cabinets, +nominally his masters, of scheming European embassies, of insulting +Russian opponents, of presumptuous French generals, of false and +fleeting Pashas (Le Sultan, c'est Lord Stratford, said St. Arnaud), +of all men, whatever their degree, who entered his ambassadorial +presence. Ascendency was native to the man; while yet in his teens +we find Etonian and Cambridge friends writing to him deferentially +as to a critic and superior. At four and twenty he became Minister +to a Court manageable only by high-handed authority and menace. He +owned, and for the most part controlled, a violent temper; it broke +bounds sometimes, to our great amusement as we read to-day, to the +occasional discomfiture of attaches or of dependents, {19} to the +abject terror of Turkish Sublimities who had outworn his patience. +But he knew when to be angry; he could pulverize by fiery outbreaks +the Reis Effendi and his master, Abdu-l-Mejid; but as +Plenipotentiary to the United States he could "quench the terror of +his beak, the lightning of his eye," disarming by his formal +courtesy and winning by his obvious sincerity the suspicious and +irritable John Quincy Adams. When Menschikoff once insulted him, +seeing that a quarrel at that moment would be fatal to his purpose, +he pretended to be deaf, and left the Russian in the belief that +his rude speech had not been heard. Enthroned for the sixth time +in Constantinople, at the dangerous epoch of 1853, he could point +to an unequalled diplomatic record in the past; to the Treaty of +Bucharest, to reunion of the Helvetic Confederacy shattered by +Napoleon's fall, to the Convention which ratified Greek +independence, to the rescue from Austrian malignity of the +Hungarian refugees. + +His conduct of the negotiations preceding the Crimean War is justly +called the cornerstone of his career: at this moment of his +greatness Kinglake encounters and describes him: through the +brilliant chapters in his opening volume, as more fully later on +through Mr. Lane Poole's admirable biography, the Great Eltchi is +known to English readers. He moves across the stage with a majesty +sometimes bordering on what Iago calls bombast circumstance; drums +and trumpets herald his every entrance; now pacing the shady +gardens of the Bosphorus, now foiling, "in his grand quiet way," +the Czar's ferocious Christianity, or torturing his baffled +ambassador by scornful concession of the points which he formally +demanded but did not really want; or crushing with "thin, tight, +merciless lips and grand overhanging Canning brow" the presumptuous +French commander who had dared to enter his presence with a plot +for undermining England's influence in the partnership of the +campaign. Was he, we ask as we end the fascinating description, +was he, what Bright and the Peace Party proclaimed him to be, the +cause of the Crimean War? The Czar's personal dislike to him--a +caprice which has never been explained {20}--exasperated no doubt +to the mind of Nicholas the repulse of Menschikoff's demands; but +that the precipitation of the prince and his master had put the +Russian Court absolutely in the wrong is universally admitted. It +has been urged against him that his recommendation of the famous +Vienna Note to the Porte was official merely, and allowed the +watchful Turks to assume his personal approbation of their refusal. +It may be so; his biographer does not admit so much: but it is +obvious that the Turks were out of hand, and that no pressure from +Lord Stratford could have persuaded them to accept the Note. +Further, the "Russian Analysis of the Note," escaping shortly +afterwards from the bag of diplomatic secrecy, revealed to our +Cabinet the necessity of those amendments to the Note on which the +Porte had insisted. And lastly, the passage of the Dardanelles by +our fleet, which more than any overt act made war inevitable, was +ordered by the Government at home against Lord Stratford's counsel. +Between panic-stricken statesmen and vacillating ambassadors, Lord +Clarendon on one side, M. de la Cour on the other, the Eltchi +stands like Tennyson's promontory of rock, + + +"Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crowned." + + +Napoleon at St. Helena attributed much of his success in the field +to the fact that he was not hampered by governments at home. Every +modern commander, down certainly to the present moment, must have +envied him. Kinglake's mordant pen depicts with felicity and +compression the men of Downing Street, who without military +experience or definite political aim, thwarted, criticised, over- +ruled, tormented, their much-enduring General. We have Aberdeen, +deficient in mental clearness and propelling force, by his horror +of war bringing war to pass; Gladstone, of too subtle intellect and +too lively conscience, "a good man in the worst sense of the term"; +Palmerston, above both in keenness of instinct and in strength of +will, meaning war from the first, and biding his time to insure it; +Newcastle, sanguine to the verge of rashness, loyally adherent to +Lord Raglan while governed by his own judgment, distrustful under +stress of popular clamour; Panmure, ungenerous, rough-tongued, +violent, churlish, yet not malevolent--"a rhinoceros rather than a +tiger"--hurried by subservience to the newspaper Press into +injustice which he afterwards recognized, yet did but sullenly +repair. We see finally that dominant Press itself, personified in +the all-powerful Delane, a potentate with convictions at once +flexible and vehement; forceful without spite and merciless without +malignity; writing no articles, but evoking, shaping, revising all. +The French commanders were not hampered by the muzzled Paris Press, +which had long since ceased to utter any but dictated sentiments; +they suffered even more disastrously from the imperious +interference of the Tuileries. Canrobert's inaction, mutability, +sudden alarms, flagrant breaches of faith, were inexplicable until +long afterwards, when the fall of the Empire disclosed the secret +instructions--disloyal to his allies and ruinous to the campaign-- +by which Louis Napoleon shackled his unhappy General. In +Canrobert's successor, Pelissier, he met his match. For the first +time a strong man headed the French army. Short of stature, bull- +necked and massive in build, with grey hair, long dark moustache, +keen fiery eyes, his coarse rough speech masking tested brain power +and high intellectual culture, he brought new life to the benumbed +French army, new hope to Lord Raglan. The duel between the +resolute general and the enraged Emperor is narrated with a touch +comedy. All that Lord Raglan desired, all that the Emperor +forbade, Pelissier was stubbornly determined to accomplish; the +siege should be pressed at once, the city taken at any cost, the +expedition to Kertch resumed. Once only, under torment of the +Emperor's reproaches and the Minister at War's remonstrances, his +resolution and his nerve gave way; eight days of failing judgment +issued in the Karabelnaya defeat, the severest repulse which the +two armies had sustained; but the paralysis passed away, he showed +himself once more eager to act in concert with the English +general;--when the long-borne strain of disappointment and anxiety +sapped at last Lord Raglan's vital forces, and the hard fierce +Frenchman stood for upwards of an hour beside his dead colleague's +bedside, "crying like a child." + +The lieutenants of Lord Raglan in the Crimea have long since passed +away, but in artistic epical presentment they retain their place +around him. Airey, his right hand from the first disembarkation at +Kalamita Bay, strong-willed, decisive, ardent, thrusting away +suspense and doubt, untying every knot, is vindicated by his Chief +against the Duke of Newcastle's wordy inculpation in the severest +despatch perhaps ever penned to his official superior by a soldier +in the field. Colin Campbell, with glowing face, grey kindling +eye, light, stubborn, crisping hair, leads his Highland brigade tip +the hill against the Vladimir columns, till "with the sorrowful +wail which bursts from the brave Russian infantry when they have to +suffer loss," eight battalions of the enemy fall back in retreat. +Lord Lucan, tall, lithe, slender, his face glittering and panther- +like in moments of strenuous action, wins our hearts as he won +Kinglake's, in spite of the mis-aimed cleverness and presumptuous +self-confidence which always criticised and sometimes disobeyed the +orders of his Chief. General Pennefather, "the grand old boy," his +exulting radiant face flashing everywhere through the smoke, his +resonant innocuous oaths roaring cheerily down the line, sustains +all day the handful of our troops against the tenfold masses of the +enemy. Generous and eloquent are the notices of Korniloff and +Todleben, the great sailor and the great engineer, the soul and the +brain of the Sebastopol defence. The first fell in the siege, the +second lived to write its history, to become a valued friend of +Kinglake, to explore and interpret in his company long afterwards +the scenes of struggle; his book and his personal guidance gave to +the historian what would otherwise have been unattainable, a clear +knowledge of the conflict as viewed from within the town. + +The pitched battlefields of the campaign were three, Alma, +Balaclava, Inkerman. The Alma chapter is the most graphic, for +there the fight was concentrated, offering to a spectator by Lord +Raglan's side a coup d'oeil of the entire action. The French were +by bad generalship virtually wiped out; for Bosquet crossed the +river too far to the right, Canrobert was afraid to move without +artillery, Prince Napoleon and St. Arnaud's reserves were jammed +together in the bottom of the valley. We see, as though on the +spot, the advance, irregular and unsupported, of Codrington's +brigade, their dash into the Great Redoubt and subsequent +disorderly retreat; the enemy checked by the two guns from Lord +Raglan's knoll and by the steadiness of the Royal Fusiliers; the +repulse of the Scots Fusiliers and the peril which hung over the +event; then the superb advance of Guards and Highlanders up the +hill, thin red line against massive columns, which determined +finally the action. + +The interest of the Balaclava fight centres in the two historic +cavalry charges. Here again, from his position on the hill above, +Kinglake witnessed both; the first, clear in smokeless air, the +second lost in the volleying clouds which filled the valley of +death. He saw the enormous mass of Russian cavalry, 3,500 sabres, +flooding like an avalanche down the hill with a momentum which +Scarlett's tiny squadron could not for a moment have resisted; +their unexplained halt, the three hundred seizing the opportunity +to strike, digging individually into the Russian ranks, the scarlet +streaks visibly cleaving the dense grey columns. Inwedged and +surrounded, in their passionate blood frenzy, with ceaseless play +of whirling sword, with impetus of human and equestrian weight and +strength, the red atoms hewed their way to the Russian rear, +turned, worked back, emerged, reformed; while the 4th and 5th +Dragoons, the Royals, the 1st Inniskillings, dashed upon the amazed +column right, left, front, till the close-locked mass headed slowly +up the hill, ranks loosened, horsemen turned and galloped off, a +beaten straggling herd. Eight minutes elapsed from the time when +Scarlett gave the word to charge, until the moment when the +Russians broke: we turn from the fifty describing pages, +breathless as though we had ridden in the melley; if the episode +has no historical parallel, the narrative is no less unique. Our +greatest contemporary poet tried to celebrate it; his lines are +tame and unexciting beside Kinglake's passionate pulsing rhapsody. +Its effect upon the Russian mind was lasting; out of all their vast +array hardly a single squadron was ever after able to keep its +ground against the approach of English cavalry; while but for +Cathcart's obstinacy and Lucan's temper it would have issued in the +immediate recapture of the Causeway Heights. + +The Charge of the Light Brigade, on the other hand, while it +stirred the imagination of the poet, shocked the military +conscience of the historian. He saw in it with agony, as Lord +Raglan saw, as the French spectators saw, no act of heroic +sacrifice, but a needless, fruitless massacre. "You have lost the +Light Brigade," was his commander's salutation to Lord Lucan. +"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre," was the oft-quoted +reproof of Bosquet. The "someone's blunder," the sullen perversity +in misconception which destroyed the flower of our cavalry, has +faded from men's memories; the splendour of the deed remains. It +is well to recover salvage from the irrevocable, to voice and to +prolong the deep human interest attaching to death encountered at +the call of duty; that is the poet's task, and brilliantly it has +been discharged. Its other side, the paean of sorrow for a self- +destructive exploit, the dirge on lives wantonly thrown away, the +deep blame attaching to the untractableness which sent them to +their doom, was the task of the historian, and that too has been +faithfully and lastingly accomplished. + +Inkerman was the most complicated of the battles; the chapters +which record it are correspondingly taxing to the reader. More +than once or twice they must be scanned, with close study of their +lucid maps, before the intricate sequences are fairly and +distinctively grasped; the sixth book of Thucydides, a standing +terror to young Greek students, is light and easy reading compared +with the bulky sixth volume of Kinglake. The hero of the day was +Pennefather; he maintained on Mount Inkerman a combat of pickets +reinforced from time to time, while around him through nine hours +successive attacks of thousands were met by hundreds. The +disparity of numbers was appalling. At daybreak 40,000 Russian +troops advanced against 3,000 English and were repulsed. Three +hours later 19,000 fresh troops came on, passed through a gap in +our lines, which Cathcart's disobedience, atoned for presently by +his death, had left unoccupied, and seized the heights behind us; +they too were dispossessed, but our numbers were dwindling and our +strength diminishing. The Home Ridge, key of our position, was +next invaded by 6,000 Russians; the 7th St. Leger, linked with a +few Zouaves and with 200 men of our 77th Regiment, French and +English for once joyously intermingled, hurled them back. It was +the crisis of the fight; Canrobert's interposition would have +determined it; but he sullenly refused to move. Finally, led by +two or three daring young officers, 300 of our wearied troops +charged the Russian battery which had tormented us all day; their +artillerymen, already flinching under the galling fire of two 18- +pounders, brought up by Lord Raglan's foresight early in the +morning, hastily withdrew their guns, and the battle was won. It +was a day of Homeric rushes; Burnaby, with only twenty men to +support him, rescuing the Grenadier Guards' colours; the onset of +the 20th with their "Minden Yell"; Colonel Daubeny with two dozen +followers cleaving the Russian trunk column at the barrier; Waddy's +dash at the retreating artillery train, foiled only by the presence +and the readiness of Todleben. One marvels in reading how the +English held their own; their victory against so tremendous odds is +ascribed by the historian to three conditions; the hampering of the +enemy by his crowded masses; the slaughter amongst his officers +early in the fight, which deprived their men of leadership; above +all, the dense mist which obscured from him the fewness of his +opponents. If Canrobert with his fresh troops had followed in +pursuit, the Russian's retreat must have been turned into a rout +and his artillery captured; if on the following day he had +assaulted the Flagstaff Bastion, Sebastopol, Todleben owned, must +have fallen. He would do neither; his hesitancy and apparent +feebleness have already been explained; but to it, and to the +sinister influence which held his hand, were due the subsequent +miseries of the Crimean winter. + +But the epic muse exacted from Kinglake, as from Virgil long +before, the portrayal not only of generals and of battles, but of +two great monarchs, each in his own day conspicuously and +absolutely prominent--the Czar Nicholas and the Emperor Napoleon: + + +"dicam horrida belia, +Dicam acies, actosque animis in funera REGES." + + +His handling of them is characteristic. Few men living then could +have approached either without a certain awe, their "genius" +rebuked,--like Mark Antony's, in the presence of Caesars so +imposing and so mighty; Kinglake's attitude towards both is the +attitude of cold analysis. + +In the opening of the fifties the Czar Nicholas was the most +powerful man then living in the world. He ruled over sixty million +subjects whose loyalty bordered on worship: he had in arms a +million soldiers, brave and highly trained. In the troubles of +1848 he had stood scornful and secure amid the overthrow of +surrounding thrones; and the entire impact of his vast and well- +organized Empire was subject to his single will; whatever he chose +to do he did. Of stern and unrelenting nature, of active and +widely ranging capacity for business, of gigantic stature and +commanding presence, he inspired almost universal terror; and yet +his friendliness had when he pleased a glow and frankness +irresistible in its charm. Readers of Queen Victoria's early life +will recall the alarm she felt at his sudden proposal to visit +Windsor in 1844, the fascination which his presence exercised on +her when he became her guest. He professed to embody his standard +of conduct in the English word "gentleman"; his ideal of human +grandeur was the character of the Duke of Wellington. It was an +evil destiny that betrayed this high-minded man into crooked ways; +that made England sacrifice the stateliest among her ancient +friends to an ignoble and crime-stained adventurer; that poured out +blood and treasure for no public advantage and with no permanent +result; that first humiliated, then slew with broken heart the man +who had been so great, and who is still regarded by surviving +Russians who knew his inner life and had seen him in his gentle +mood with passionate reverence and affection. + +Kinglake's description of "Prince Louis Bonaparte," of his +character, his accomplices, his policy, his crimes, is perhaps +unequalled in historical literature; I know not where else to look +for a vivisection so scientific and so merciless of a great +potentate in the height of his power. With scrutiny polite, +impartial, guarded, he lays bare the springs of a conscienceless +nature and the secrets of a crime-driven career; while for the +combination of precise simplicity with exhaustive synopsis, the +masquerading of moral indignation in the guise of mocking laughter, +the loathing of a gentleman for a scoundrel set to the measure not +of indignation but of contempt, we must go back to the refined +insolence, the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] of Voltaire. +He had well known Prince Napoleon in his London days, had been +attracted by him as a curiosity--"a balloon man who had twice +fallen from the skies and yet was still alive"--had divined the +mental power veiled habitually by his blank, opaque, wooden looks, +had listened to his ambitious talk and gathered up the utterances +of his thoughtful, long-pondering mind, had quarrelled with him +finally and lastingly over rivalry in the good graces of a woman. +{21} He saw in him a fourfold student; of the art of war, of the +mind of the first Napoleon, of the French people's character, of +the science by which law may lend itself to stratagem and become a +weapon of deceit. + +The intellect of this strange being was subject to an uncertainty +of judgment, issuing in ambiguity of enterprise, and giving an +impression of well-kept secrecy, due often to the fact that divided +by mental conflict he had no secret to tell. He understood truth, +but under the pressure of strong motive would invariably deceive. +He sometimes, out of curiosity, would listen to the voice of +conscience, and could imitate neatly on occasion the scrupulous +language of a man of honour; but the consideration that one of two +courses was honest, and the other not, never entered into his +motives for action. He was bold in forming plots, and skilful in +conducting them; but in the hour of trial and under the confront of +physical danger he was paralysed by constitutional timidity. His +great aim in life was to be conspicuous--digito monstrarier-- +coupled with a theatric mania which made scenic effects and +surprises essential to the eminence he craved. + +Handling this key to his character, Kinglake pursues him into his +December treason, contrasts the consummate cleverness of his +schemes with the faltering cowardice which shrank, like Macbeth's +ambition, from "the illness should attend them," and which, but for +the stronger nerve of those behind him, would have caused his +collapse, at Paris as at Strasburg and Boulogne, in contact with +the shock of action. It is difficult now to realize the commotion +caused by this fourteenth chapter of Kinglake's book. The Emperor +was at the summit of his power, fresh from Austrian conquest, +viewed with alarm by England, whose rulers feared his strength and +were distrustful of his friendship. Our Crown, our government, our +society, had condoned his usurpation; he had kissed the Queen's +cheek, bent her ministers to his will, ridden through her capital a +triumphant and applauded guest. And now men read not only a +cynical dissection of his character and disclosure of his early +foibles, but the hideous details of his deceit and treachery, the +phases of cold-blooded massacre and lawless deportation by which he +emptied France of all who hesitated to enrol themselves as his +accomplices or his tools. Forty years have passed since the +terrible indictment was put forth; down to its minutest allegation +it has been proved literally true; the arch criminal has fallen +from his estate to die in disgrace, disease, exile. When we talk +to-day with cultivated Frenchmen of that half-forgotten epoch, and +of the book which bared its horrors, we are met by their response +of ardent gratitude to the man who joined to passionate hatred of +iniquity surpassing capacity for denouncing it; their avowal that +with all its frequent exposure of their military shortcomings and +depreciation of their national character, no English chronicle of +the century stands higher in their esteem than the history of the +war in the Crimea. + +The close of the book is grim and tragic in the main, the stir of +gallant fights exchanged for the dreary course of siege, +intrenchment, mine and countermine. We have the awful winter on +the heights, the November hurricane, the foiled bombardments, the +cruel blunder of the Karabelnaya assault, the bitter natural +discontent at home, the weak subservience of our government to +misdirected clamour, the touching help-fraught advent of the Lady +Nurses: then, just as better prospects dawn, the Chief's collapse +and death. From the morrow of Inkerman to the end, through no +fault of his, the historian's chariot wheels drag. More and more +one sees how from the nature of the task, except for the flush of +contemporary interest then, except by military students now, it is +not a work to be popularly read; the exhausted interest of its +subject swamps the genius of its narrator. Scattered through its +more serious matter are gems with the old "Eothen" sparkle, of +periphrasis, aphorism, felicitous phrase and pregnant epithet. +Such is the fine analogy between the worship of holy shrines and +the lover's homage to the spot which his mistress's feet have trod; +such France's tolerance of the Elysee brethren compared to the Arab +laying his verminous burnous upon an ant-hill; the apt quotation +from the Psalms to illustrate the on-coming of the Guards; the +demeanour of horses in action; the course of a flying cannon-ball; +the two ponderous troopers at the Horse Guards; Tom Tower and his +Croats landing stores for our soldiers from the "Erminia." Or +again, we have the light clear touches of a single line; "the +decisiveness and consistency of despotism"--"the fractional and +volatile interests in trading adventure which go by the name of +Shares"--"the unlabelled, undocketed state of mind which shall +enable a man to encounter the Unknown"--"the qualifying words which +correct the imprudences and derange the grammatical structure of a +Queen's Speech": but these are islets in the sea of narrative, +not, as in "Eothen," woof-threads which cross the warp. + +To compare an idyll with an epic, it may be said, is like comparing +a cameo with a Grecian temple: be it so; but the temple falls in +ruins, the cameo is preserved in cabinets; and it is possible that +a century hence the Crimean history will be forgotten, while +"Eothen" is read and enjoyed. The best judges at the time +pronounced that as a lasting monument of literary force the work +was over refined: "Kinglake," said Sir George Cornewall Lewis, +"tries to write better than he can write"; quoting, perhaps +unconsciously, the epigram of a French art critic a hundred years +before-- Il cherche toujours a faire mieux qu'il ne fait. {22} He +lavished on it far more pains than on "Eothen": the proof sheets +were a black sea of erasures, intercalations, blots; the original +chaotic manuscript pages had to be disentangled by a calligraphic +Taunton bookseller before they could be sent to press. This +fastidiousness in part gained its purpose; won temporary success; +gave to his style the glitter, rapidity, point, effectiveness, of a +pungent editorial; went home, stormed, convinced, vindicated, +damaged, triumphed: but it missed by excessive polish the +reposeful, unlaboured, classic grace essential to the highest art. +Over-scrupulous manipulation of words is liable to the "defect of +its qualities"; as with unskilful goldsmiths of whom old Latin +writers tell us, the file goes too deep, trimming away more of the +first fine minting than we can afford to lose. Ruskin has +explained to us how the decadence of Gothic architecture commenced +through care bestowed on window tracery for itself instead of as an +avenue or vehicle for the admission of light. Read "words" for +tracery, "thought" for light, and we see how inspiration avenges +itself so soon as diction is made paramount; artifice, which +demands and misses watchful self-concealment, passes into +mannerism; we have lost the incalculable charm of spontaneity. +Comparison of "Eothen" with the "Crimea" will I think exemplify +this truth. The first, to use Matthew Arnold's imagery, is Attic, +the last has declined to the Corinthian; it remains a great, an +amazingly great production; great in its pictorial force, its +omnipresent survey, verbal eloquence, firm grasp, marshalled +delineation of multitudinous and entangled matter; but it is not +unique amongst martial records as "Eothen" is unique amongst books +of travel: it is through "Eothen" that its author has soared into +a classic, and bids fair to hold his place. And, apart from the +merit of style, great campaigns lose interest in a third, if not in +a second generation; their historical consequence effaced through +lapse of years; their policy seen to have been nugatory or +mischievous; their chronicles, swallowed greedily at the birth like +Saturn's progeny, returning to vex their parent; relegated finally +to an honourable exile in the library upper shelves, where they +hold a place eyed curiously, not invaded: + + +"devoured +As fast as they are made, forgot as soon +As done. . . . To have done, is to hang +Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, +In monumental mockery." + + + +CHAPTER V--MADAME NOVIKOFF + + + +The Cabinet Edition of "The Invasion of the Crimea" appeared in +1877, shortly after the Servian struggle for independence, which +aroused in England universal interest and sympathy. Kinglake had +heard from the lips of a valued lady friend the tragic death-tale +of her brother Nicholas Kireeff, who fell fighting as a volunteer +on the side of the gallant Servian against the Turk: and, much +moved by the recital, offered to honour the memory of the dead hero +in the Preface to his forthcoming edition. He kept his word; made +sympathetic reference to M. Kireeff in the opening of his Preface; +but passed in pursuance of his original design to a hostile +impeachment of Russia, its people, its church, its ruler. This was +an error of judgment and of feeling; and the lady, reading the +manuscript, indignantly desired him to burn the whole rather than +commit the outrage of associating her brother's name with an attack +on causes and personages dear to him as to herself. Kinglake +listened in silence, then tendered to her a crayon rouge, begging +her to efface all that pained her. She did so; and, diminished by +three-fourths of its matter, the Preface appears in Vol. I. of the +Cabinet Edition. The erasure was no slight sacrifice to an author +of Kinglake's literary sensitiveness, mutilating as it did the +integrity of a carefully schemed composition, and leaving visible +the scar. He sets forth the strongly sentimental and romantic side +of Russian temperament. Love of the Holy Shrines begat the war of +1853, racial ardour the war of 1876. The first was directed by a +single will, the second by national enthusiasm; yet the mind of +Nicholas was no less tossed by a breathless strife of opposing +desires and moods than was Russia at large by the struggle between +Panslavism and statesmanship. Kinglake paints vividly the imposing +figure of the young Kireeff, his stature, beauty, bravery, the +white robe he wore incarnadined by death-wounds, his body captured +by the hateful foes. He goes on to tell how myth rose like an +exhalation round his memory: how legends of "a giant piling up +hecatombs by a mighty slaughter" reverberated through mansion and +cottage, town and village, cathedral and church; until thousands of +volunteers rushed to arms that they might go where young Kireeff +had gone. Alexander's hand was forced, and the war began, which +but for England's intervention would have cleared Europe of the +Turk. We have the text, but not the sermon; the Preface ends +abruptly with an almost clumsy peroration. + +The lady who inspired both the eulogy and the curtailment was +Madame Novikoff, more widely known perhaps as O. K., with whom +Kinglake maintained during the last twenty years of life an +intimate and mutual friendship. Madame Olga Novikoff, nee Kireeff, +is a Russian lady of aristocratic rank both by parentage and +marriage. In a lengthened sojourn at Vienna with her brother-in- +law, the Russian ambassador, she learned the current business of +diplomacy. An eager religious propagandist, she formed alliance +with the "Old Catholics" on the Continent, and with many among the +High Church English clergy; becoming, together with her brother +Alexander, a member of the Reunion Nationale, a society for the +union of Christendom. Her interest in education has led her to +devote extensive help to school and church building and endowment +on her son's estate. God-daughter to the Czar Nicholas, she is a +devoted Imperialist, nor less in sympathy, as were all her family, +with Russian patriotism: after the death of her brother in Servia +on July 6/18, 1876, she became a still more ardent Slavophile. The +three articles of her creed are, she says, those of her country, +Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationalism. Her political aspirations have +been guided, and guided right, by her tact and goodness of heart. +Her life's aim has been to bring about a cordial understanding +between England and her native land; there is little doubt that her +influence with leading Liberal politicians, and her vigorous +allocutions in the Press, had much to do with the enthusiasm +manifested by England for the liberation of the Danubian States. +Readers of the Princess Lieven's letters to Earl Grey will recall +the part played by that able ambassadress in keeping this country +neutral through the crisis of 1828-9; to her Madame Novikoff has +been likened, and probably with truth, by the Turkish Press both +English and Continental. She was accused in 1876 of playing on the +religious side of Mr. Gladstone's character to secure his interest +in the Danubians as members of the Greek Church, while with +unecclesiastical people she was said to be equally skilful on the +political side, converting at the same time Anglophobe Russia by +her letters in the "Moscow Gazette." Mr. Gladstone's leanings to +Montenegro were attributed angrily in the English "Standard" to +Madame Novikoff: "A serious statesman should know better than to +catch contagion from the petulant enthusiasm of a Russian Apostle." +The contagion was in any case caught, and to some purpose; letter +after letter had been sent by the lady to the great statesman, then +in temporary retirement, without reply, until the last of these, "a +bitter cry of a sister for a sacrificed brother," brought a feeling +answer from Mrs. Gladstone, saying that her husband was deeply +moved by the appeal, and was writing on the subject. In a few days +appeared his famous pamphlet, "Bulgarian Horrors and the Question +of the East." + +Carlyle advised that Madame Novikoff's scattered papers should be +worked into a volume; they appeared under the title "Is Russia +Wrong?" with a preface by Froude, the moderate and ultra-prudent +tone of which infuriated Hayward and Kinglake, as not being +sufficiently appreciative. Hayward declared some woman had biassed +him; Kinglake was of opinion that by studying the etat of Queen +Elizabeth Froude had "gone and turned himself into an old maid." + +Froude's Preface to her next work, "Russia and England, a Protest +and an Appeal," by O. K., 1880, was worded in a very different tone +and satisfied all her friends. The book was also reviewed with +highest praise by Gladstone in "The Nineteenth Century." Learning +that an assault upon it was contemplated in "The Quarterly," +Kinglake offered to supply the editor, Dr. Smith, with materials +which might be so used as to neutralize a PERSONAL attack upon O. +K. Smith entreated him to compose the whole article himself. "I +could promise you," he writes, "that the authorship should be kept +a profound secret;" but this Kinglake seems to have thought +undesirable. The article appeared in April, 1880, under the title +of "The Slavonic Menace to Europe." It opens with a panegyric on +the authoress: "She has mastered our language with conspicuous +success; she expostulates as easily as she reproaches, and she +exhibits as much facility in barbing shafts of satire as in framing +specious excuses for daring acts of diplomacy." It insists on the +high esteem felt for her by both the Russian and Austrian +governments, telling with much humour an anecdote of Count Beust, +the Prime Minister of Austria during her residence in Vienna. The +Count, after meeting her at a dinner party at the Turkish Embassy, +composed a set of verses in her honour, and gave them to her, but +she forgot to mention them to her brother-in-law. The Prime +Minister, encountering the latter, asked his opinion of the verses; +and the ambassador was greatly amazed at knowing nothing of the +matter. {23} From amenities towards the authoress, the article +passes abruptly to hostile criticism of the book; declares it to be +proscribed in Russia as mischievous, and to have precipitated a +general war by keeping up English interest in Servian rebellion. +It sneers in doubtful taste at the lady's learning: + + +"sit non doctissima conjux, +Sit nox cum somno, sit sine lite dies;" + + +denounces the Slavs as incapable of being welded into a nation, +urging that their independence must destroy Austria-Hungary, a +consummation desired by Madame Novikoff, with her feline contempt +for "poor dear Austria," but which all must unite to prevent if +they would avert a European war. + +How could one clear harp, men asked themselves as they read, have +produced so diverse tones? The riddle is solved when we learn that +the first part only was from Kinglake's pen: having vindicated his +friend's ability and good faith, her right to speak and to be heard +attentively, he left the survey of her views, with which he +probably disagreed, to the originally assigned reviewer. The +article, Madame Novikoff tells us in the "Nouvelle Revue," was +received avec une stupefaction unanime. It formed the general talk +for many days, was attributed to Lord Salisbury, was supposed to +have been inspired by Prince Gortschakoff. The name standing +against it in Messrs. Murray's books, as they kindly inform me, is +that of a writer still alive, and better known now than then, but +they never heard that Kinglake had a hand in it; the editor would +seem to have kept his secret even from the publishers. Kinglake +sent the article in proof to the lady; hoped that the facts he had +imparted and the interpolations he had inserted would please her; +he could have made the attack on Russia more pointed had he written +it; she would think the leniency shows a fault on the right side; +he did not know the writer of this latter part. He begged her to +acquaint her friends in Moscow what an important and majestic organ +is "The Quarterly," how weighty therefore its laudation of herself. +She recalls his bringing her soon afterwards an article on her, +written, he said, in an adoring tone by Laveleye in the "Revue des +Deux Mondes," and directing her to a paper in "Fraser," by Miss +Pauline Irby, a passionate lover of the "Slav ragamuffins," and a +worshipper of Madame Novikoff. He quotes with delight Chenery's +approbation of her "Life of Skobeleff"; he spoke of you "with a +gleam of kindliness in his eyes which really and truly I had never +observed before." "The Times" quotes her as the "eloquent +authoress of 'Russia and England'"; "fancy that from your enemy! +you are getting even 'The Times' into your net." A later article +on O. K. contains some praise, but more abuse. Hayward is angry +with it; Kinglake thinks it more friendly than could have been +expected "to YOU, a friend of ME, their old open enemy: the sugar- +plums were meant for you, the sprinklings of soot for me." + +Besides "Russia and England" Madame Novikoff is the author of +"Friends or Foes?--is Russia wrong?" and of a "Life of Skobeleff," +the hero of Plevna and of Geok Tepe. From her natural endowments +and her long familiarity with Courts, she has acquired a capacity +for combining, controlling, entertaining social "circles" which +recalls les salons d'autrefois, the drawing-rooms of an Ancelot, a +Le Brun, a Recamier. Residing in several European capitals, she +surrounds herself in each with persons intellectually eminent; in +England, where she has long spent her winters, Gladstone, Carlyle +and Froude, Charles Villiers, Bernal Osborne, Sir Robert Morier, +Lord Houghton, and many more of the same high type, formed her +court and owned her influence. + +Kinglake first met her at Lady Holland's in 1870, and mutual liking +ripened rapidly into close friendship. During her residences in +England few days passed in which he did not present himself at her +drawing-room in Claridge's Hotel: when absent in Russia or on the +Continent, she received from him weekly letters, though he used to +complain that writing to a lady through the poste restante was like +trying to kiss a nun through a double grating. These letters, all +faithfully preserved, I have been privileged to see; they remind +me, in their mixture of personal with narrative charm, of Swift's +"Letters to Stella"; except that Swift's are often coarse and +sometimes prurient, while Kinglake's chivalrous admiration for his +friend, though veiled occasionally by graceful banter, is always +respectful and refined. They even imitate occasionally the "little +language" of the great satirist; if Swift was Presto, Kinglake is +"Poor dear me"; if Stella was M. D., Madame Novikoff is "My dear +Miss." This last endearment was due to an incident at a London +dinner table. A story told by Hayward, seasoned as usual with gros +sel, amused the more sophisticated English ladies present, but +covered her with blushes. Kinglake perceived it, and said to her +afterwards, "I thought you were a hardened married woman; I am glad +that you are not; I shall henceforth call you MISS." Sometimes he +rushes into verse. In answer to some pretended rebuff received +from her at Ryde he writes + + +"There was a young lady of Ryde, so awfully puffed up by pride, +She felt grander by far than the Son of the Czar, +And when he said, 'Dear, come and walk on the pier, +Oh please come and walk by my side;' +The answer he got, was 'Much better not,' from that awful young +lady of Ryde." + + +Oftenest, the letters are serious in their admiring compliments; +they speak of her superb organization of health and life and +strength and joyousness, the delightful sunshine of her presence, +her decision and strength of will, her great qualities and great +opportunities: "away from you the world seems a blank." He is +glad that his Great Eltchi has been made known to her; the old +statesman will be impressed, he feels sure, by her "intense life, +graciousness and grace, intellect carefully masked, musical faculty +in talk, with that heavenly power of coming to an end." He sends +playfully affectionate messages from other members of the +Gerontaion, as he calls it, the group of aged admirers who formed +her inner court; echoing their laments over the universality of her +patronage. "Hayward can pardon your having an ambassador or two at +your FEET, but to find the way to your HEART obstructed by a crowd +of astronomers, Russ-expansionists, metaphysicians, theologians, +translators, historians, poets;--this is more than he can endure. +The crowd reduces him, as Ampere said to Mme. Recamier, to the +qualified blessing of being only chez vous, from the delight of +being avec vous. He hails and notifies additions to the list of +her admirers; quotes enthusiastic praise of her from Stansfeld and +Charles Villiers, warm appreciation from Morier, Sir Robert Peel, +Violet Fane. He rallies her on her victims, jests at Froude's +lover-like galanterie--"Poor St. Anthony! how he hovered round the +flame";--at the devotion of that gay Lothario, Tyndall, whose +approaching marriage will, he thinks, clip his wings for +flirtation. "It seems that at the Royal Institution, or whatever +the place is called, young women look up to the Lecturers as +priests of Science, and go to them after the lecture in what +churchmen would call the vestry, and express charming little doubts +about electricity, and pretty gentle disquietudes about the solar +system: and then the Professors have to give explanations;--and +then, somehow, at the end of a few weeks, they find they have +provided themselves with chaperons for life." So he pursues the +list of devotees; her son will tell her that Caesar summarized his +conquests in this country by saying Veni, Vidi, Vici; but to her it +is given to say, Veni, Videbar, Vici. + +On two subjects, theology and politics, Madame Novikoff was, as we +have seen, passionately in earnest. Himself at once an amateur +casuist and a consistent Nothingarian, whose dictum was that +"Important if true" should be written over the doors of churches, +he followed her religious arguments much as Lord Steyne listened to +the contests between Father Mole and the Reverend Mr. Trail. He +expresses his surprise in all seriousness that the Pharisees, a +thoughtful and cultured set of men, who alone among the Jews +believed in a future state, should have been the very men to whom +our Saviour was habitually antagonistic. He refers more lightly +and frequently to "those charming talks of ours about our +Churches"; he thinks they both know how to effleurer the surface of +theology without getting drowned in it. Of existing Churches he +preferred the English, as "the most harmless going"; disliked the +Latin Church, especially when intriguing in the East, as +persecuting and as schismatic, and therefore as no Church at all. +Roman Catholics, he said, have a special horror of being called +"schismatic," and that is, of course, a good reason for so calling +them. He would not permit the use of the word "orthodox," because, +like a parson in the pulpit, it is always begging the question. He +refused historical reverence to the Athanasian Creed, and was +delighted when Stanley's review in "The Times" of Mr. Ffoulkes' +learned book showed it to have been written by order of Charles the +Great in 800 A.D. as what Thorold Rogers used to call "an election +squib." In the "Filioque" controversy, once dear to Liddon and to +Gladstone, now, I suppose, obsolete for the English mind, but which +relates to the chief dividing tenet of East from West, he showed an +interest humorous rather than reverent; took pains to acquaint +himself with the views held on it by Dollinger and the old +Catholics; noted with amusement the perplexity of London ladies as +to the meaning of the word when quoted in the much-read "Quarterly" +article, declaring their belief to be that it was a clergyman's +baby born out of wedlock. + +Madame Novikoff's political influence, which he recognized to the +full, he treated in the same mocking spirit. She is at Berlin, +received by Bismarck; he hopes that though the great man may not +eradicate her Slavophile heresies, he may manifest the weakness of +embroiling nations on mere ethnological grounds. "Are even nearer +relationships so delightful? would you walk across the street for a +third or fourth cousin? then why for a millionth cousin?" Madame +Novikoff kindly sends to me an "Imaginary Conversation" between +herself and Gortschakoff, constructed by Kinglake during her stay +in St. Petersburg in 1879. + +"G. Well--you really have done good service to your country and +your Czar by dividing and confusing these absurd English, and +getting us out of the scrape we were in in that--Balkan Peninsula. + +"Miss O. Well, certainly I did my best; but I fear I have ruined +the political reputation of my English partizans, for in order to +make them 'beloved of the Slave,' I of course had to make them, +poor souls! go against their own country; and their country, stupid +as it is, has now I fear found them out. + +"G. Tant pis pour eux! Entre nous, if I had been Gladstone, I +should have preferred the love of my own country to the love of +these--Slaves of yours. But, tell me, how did you get hold of +Gladstone? + +"Miss O. Rien de plus simple! Four or five years ago I asked what +was his weak point, and was told that he had two, 'Effervescence,' +and 'Theology.' With that knowledge I found it all child's play to +manage him. I just sent him to Munich, and there boiled him up in +a weak decoction of 'Filioque,' then kept him ready for use, and +impatiently awaited the moment when our plans for getting up the +'Bulgarian atrocities' should be mature. I say 'impatiently,' for, +Heavens, how slow you all were! at least so it strikes a woman. +The arrangement of the 'atrocities' was begun by our people in +1871, and yet till 1876, though I had Gladstone ready in 1875, +nothing really was done! I assure you, Prince, it is a trying +thing to a woman to be kept waiting for promised atrocities such an +unconscionable time. + +"G. That brother-in-law of yours was partly the cause of our +slowness. He was always wanting to have the orders for fire and +blood in neat formal despatches, signed by me, and copied by +clerks. However, I hope you are satisfied now, with the butcheries +and the flames, and the--? + +"Miss O. Pour le moment!" + +She is absent during the sudden dissolution of Parliament in 1874. +"London woke yesterday morning and found that your friend Gladstone +had made a coup-d'etat. He has dissolved Parliament at a moment +when no human being expected it, and my impression is that he has +made a good hit, and that the renovated Parliament will give him a +great majority." The impression was wildly wrong; and he found a +cause for the Conservative majority in Gladstone's tame foreign +policy, and especially in the pusillanimity his government showed +when insulted by Gortschakoff. He always does justice to her +influence with Gladstone; his great majority at the polls in 1880 +is HER victory and HER triumph; but his Turkophobia is no less her +creation: "England is stricken with incapacity because you have +stirred up the seething caldron that boils under Gladstone's skull, +putting in diabolical charms and poisons of theology to overturn +the structure of English polity:" she will be able, he thinks, to +tell her government that Gladstone is doing his best to break up +the British Empire. + +He quotes with approbation the newspaper comparison of her to the +Princess Lieven. She disparages the famous ambassadress; he sets +her right. Let her read the "Correspondence," by his friend Mr. +Guy Le Strange, and she will see how large a part the Princess +played in keeping England quiet during the war of 1828-29. She did +not convert her austere admirer, Lord Grey, to approval of the +Russian designs, nor overcome the uneasiness with which the Duke of +Wellington regarded her intrigues; but the Foreign Minister, Lord +Aberdeen, was apparently a fool in her hands; and, whoever had the +merit, the neutrality of England continued. That was, he repeats +more than once, a most critical time for Russia; it was an object +almost of life and death to the Czar to keep England dawdling in a +state of actual though not avowed neutrality. It is, he argued, a +matter of fact, that precisely this result was attained, and "I +shall be slow to believe that Madame de Lieven did not deserve a +great share of the glory (as you would think it) of making England +act weakly under such circumstances; more especially since we know +that the Duke did not like the great lady, and may be supposed to +have distinctly traced his painful embarrassment to her power." So +the letters go, interspersed with news, with criticisms of notable +persons, with comments enlightening or cynical on passing political +events: with personal matters only now and then; as when he notes +the loss of his two sisters; dwells with unwonted feeling on the +death of his eldest nephew by consumption; condoles with her on her +husband's illness; gives council, wise or playful, as to the +education of her son. "I am glad to hear that he is good at Greek, +Latin, and Mathematics, for that shows his cleverness; glad also to +hear that he is occasionally naughty, for that shows his force. I +advise you to claim and exercise as much control as possible, +because I am certain that a woman--especially so gifted a one as +you--knows more, or rather feels more, about the right way of +bringing up a boy than any mere man." + +Unbrokenly the correspondence continues: the intimacy added charm, +interest, fragrance to his life, brought out in him all that was +genial, playful, humorous. He fights the admonitions of coming +weakness; goes to Sidmouth with a sore throat, but takes his papers +and his books. It is, he says, a deserted little sea-coast place. +"Mrs. Grundy has a small house there, but she does not know me by +sight. If Madame Novikoff were to come, the astonished little +town, dazzled first by her, would find itself invaded by +theologians, bishops, ambassadors of deceased emperors, and an ex- +Prime-Minister." But as time goes on he speaks more often of his +suffering throat; of gout, increasing deafness, only half a voice: +his last letter is written in July, 1890, to condole with his +friend upon her husband's death. In October his nurse takes the +pen; Madame Novikoff comes back hurriedly from Scotland to find him +in his last illness. "It is very nice," he told his nurse, "to see +dear Madame Novikoff again, but I am going down hill fast, and +cannot hope to be well enough to see much of her." This is in +November, 1890; on New Year's Eve came the inexorable, "Terminator +of delights and Separator of friends." + + + +CHAPTER VI--LATER DAYS, AND DEATH + + + +For twenty years Kinglake lived in Hyde Park Place, in bright +cheerful rooms looking in one direction across the Park, but on +another side into a churchyard. The churchyard, Lady Gregory tells +us, gave him pause on first seeing the rooms. "I should not like +to live here, I should be afraid of ghosts." "Oh no, sir, there is +always a policeman round the corner." {24} "Pleaceman X." has not, +perhaps, before been revered as the Shade-compelling son of Maia: + + +"Tu pias laetis animas reponis +Sedibus, virgaque levem coerces +Aurea turbam." + + +Here he worked through the morning; the afternoon took him to the +"Travellers," where his friends, Sir Henry Bunbury and Mr. Chenery, +usually expected him; then at eight o'clock, if not, as Shylock +says, bid forth, he went to dine at the Athenaeum. His dinner seat +was in the left-hand corner of the coffee-room, where, in the +thirties, Theodore Hook had been wont to sit, gathering near him so +many listeners to his talk, that at Hook's death in 1841 the +receipts for the club dinners fell off to a large amount. Here, in +the "Corner," as they called it, round Kinglake would be Hayward, +Drummond Wolff, Massey, Oliphant, Edward Twisleton, Strzelecki, +Storks, Venables, Wyke, Bunbury, Gregory, American Ticknor, and a +few more; Sir W. Stirling Maxwell, when in Scotland, sending +hampers of pheasants to the company. "Hurried to the Athenaeum for +dinner," says Ticknor in 1857, "and there found Kinglake and Sir +Henry Rawlinson, to whom were soon added Hayward and Stirling. We +pushed our tables together and had a jolly dinner. . . . To the +Athenaeum; and having dined pleasantly with Merivale, Kinglake, and +Stirling, I hurried off to the House." In later years, when his +voice grew low and his hearing difficult, he preferred that the +diners should resolve themselves into little groups, assigning to +himself a tete-a-tete, with whom at his ease he could unfold +himself. + +No man ever fought more gallantly the encroachments of old age--on +sut etre jeune jusque dans ses vieux jours. At seventy-four years +old, staying with a friend at Brighton, he insisted on riding over +to Rottingdean, where Sir Frederick Pollock was staying. "I +mastered," he said, in answer to remonstrances, "I mastered the +peculiarities of the Brighton screw before you were born, and have +never forgotten them." Vaulting into his saddle he rode off, +returning with a schoolboy's delight at the brisk trot he had found +practicable when once clear of the King's Road. Long after his +hearing had failed, his sight become grievously weakened, and his +limbs not always trustworthy, he would never allow a cab to be +summoned for him after dinner, always walking to his lodgings. But +he had to give up by and by his daily canter in Rotten Row, and +more reluctantly still his continental travel. Foreign railways +were closed to him by the Salle d'Attente; he could not stand +incarceration in the waiting-rooms. + +The last time he crossed the Channel was at the close of the +Franco-Prussian war, on a visit to his old friend M. Thiers, then +President. It was a dinner to deputies of the Extreme Left, and +Kinglake was the only Englishman; "so," he said, "among the +servants there was a sort of reasoning process as to my identity, +ending in the conclusion, 'il doit etre Sir Dilke.'" Soon the +inference was treated as a fact; and in due sequence came newspaper +paragraphs declaring that the British Ambassador had gravely +remonstrated with the President for inviting Sir Charles Dilke to +his table. Then followed articles defending the course taken by +the President, and so for some time the ball was kept up. The +remonstrance of the Ambassador was a myth, Lord Lyons was a friend +of Sir Charles; but the latter was suspect at the time both in +England and France; in England for his speeches and motion on the +Civil List; in France, because, with Frederic Harrison, he had +helped to get some of the French Communists away from France; and +the French Government was watching him with spies. In Sir +Charles's motion Kinglake took much interest, refusing to join in +the cry against it as disloyal. Sir Charles, he said, spoke no +word against the Queen; and only brought the matter before the +House because challenged to repeat in Parliament the statements he +had made in the country. As a matter of policy he thought it +mistaken: "Move in such a matter openly, and party discipline +compels your defeat; bring pressure to bear on a Cabinet, some of +its members are on your side, and you may gain your point." Sir +Charles's speech was calmly argumentative, and to many minds +convincing; it provoked a passionate reply from Gladstone; and when +Mr. Auberon Herbert following declared himself a Republican, a +tumult arose such as in those pre-Milesian days had rarely been +witnessed in the House. But the wisdom of Kinglake's counsel is +sustained by the fact that many years afterwards, as a result of +more private discussion, Mr. Gladstone pronounced his conversion to +the two bases of the motion, publicity, and the giving of the State +allowance to the head of the family rather than, person by person, +to the children and grandchildren of the Sovereign. Action +pointing in this direction was taken in 1889 and 1901 on the advice +of Tory ministers. + +Amongst Frenchmen of the highest class, intellectually and +socially, he had many valued friends, keeping his name on the +"Cosmopolitan" long after he had ceased to visit it, since "one +never knows when the distinguished foreigner may come upon one, and +of such the Cosmo is the London Paradise." But he used to say that +in the other world a good Frenchman becomes an Englishman, a bad +Englishman becomes a Frenchman. He saw in the typical Gaul a +compound of the tiger and the monkey; noted their want of +individuality, their tendency to go in flocks, their susceptibility +to panic and to ferocity, to the terror that makes a man kill +people, and "the terror that makes him lie down and beg." We +remember, too, his dissection of St. Arnaud, as before all things a +type of his nation; "he impersonated with singular exactness the +idea which our forefathers had in their minds when they spoke of +what they called 'a Frenchman;' for although (by cowing the rich +and by filling the poor with envy), the great French Revolution had +thrown a lasting gloom on the national character, it left this one +man untouched. He was bold, gay, reckless, vain; but beneath the +mere glitter of the surface there was a great capacity for +administrative business, and a more than common willingness to take +away human life." + +"I relish," Kinglake said in 1871, "the spectacle of Bismarck +teaching the A B C of Liberal politics to the hapless French. His +last mot, they tell me, is this. Speaking of the extent to which +the French Emperor had destroyed his own reputation and put an end +to the worship of the old Napoleon, he said: 'He has killed +himself and buried his uncle.'" Again, in 1874, noting the contre +coup upon France resulting from the Bismarck and Arnim despatches, +he said: "What puzzles the poor dear French is to see that truth +and intrepid frankness consist with sound policy and consummate +wisdom. How funny it would be, if the French some day, as a +novelty, or what they would call a caprice, were to try the effect +of truth; "though not naturally honest," as Autolycus says, "were +to become so by chance." + +He thought M. Gallifet dans sa logique in liking the Germans and +hating Bismarck; for the Germans, in having their own way, would +break up into as many fragments as the best Frenchman could desire, +and Bismarck is the real suppressor of France. Throughout the +Franco-Prussian war he sided strongly with the Prussians, refusing +to dine in houses where the prevailing sympathy with France would +make him unwelcome as its declared opponent; but he felt "as a +nightmare" the attack on prostrate Paris, "as a blow" the +capitulation of Metz; denouncing Gambetta and his colleagues as +meeting their disasters only with slanderous shrieks, "possessed by +the spirit of that awful Popish woman." Bismarck as a statesman he +consistently admired, and deplored his dismissal. I see, he said, +all the peril implied by Bismarck's exit, and the advent of his +ambitious young Emperor. It is a transition from the known to the +unknown, from wisdom, perhaps, to folly. + +His Crimean volumes continued to appear; in 1875, 1880, finally in +1887; while the Cabinet Edition was published in 1887-8. This last +contained three new Prefaces; in Vol. I. as we have seen, the +memorial of Nicholas Kireeff; in Vol. II. the latter half of the +original Preface to Vol. I., cancelled thence at Madame Novikoff's +request, though now carefully modified so as to avoid anything +which might irritate Russia at a moment when troubles seemed to be +clearing away. In his Preface to Vol. VII. he had three objects, +to set right the position of Sir E. Hamley, who had been neglected +in the despatches; to demolish his friend Lord Bury, who had +"questioned my omniscience" in the "Edinburgh Review"; and to +exonerate England at large from absurd self-congratulations about +the "little Egypt affair," the blame of such exaggeration resting +with those whom he called State Showmen. + +Silent to acquaintances about the progress of his work, he was +communicative to his few intimates, though never reading aloud +extracts or allowing them to be seen. In 1872 he would speak +pathetically of his "Crimean muddle," perplexed, as he well might +be, by the intricacies of Inkerman. Asked if he will not introduce +a Te Deum on the fall of Louis Napoleon, he answered that to write +without the stimulus of combat would be a task beyond his energy; +"when I took the trouble to compose that fourteenth chapter, the +wretched Emperor and his gang were at the height of their power in +Europe and the world; but now!" He was insatiate as to fresh facts: +utilized his acquaintance with Todleben, whom he had first met on +his visit to England in 1864; sought out Prince Ourusoff at a later +time, and inserted particulars gleaned from him in Vol. IX., +Chapter V. + +In 1875 he told Madame Novikoff that his task was done so far as +Inkerman was concerned, and was proud to think that he had rescued +from oblivion the heroism of the Russian troops in what he calls +the "Third Period" of the great fight, ignored as it was by all +Russian historians of the war. He made fruitless inquiries after a +paper said to have been left behind him by Skobeleff, explaining +that "India is a cherry to be eaten by Russia, but in two bites"; +it was contrary to the general's recorded utterances and probably +apocryphal. Russophobe as regarded Turkey, he sneered at England's +sentimental support of nationalities as "Platonic": a capital +epithet he called it, and envied the Frenchman who applied it to +us, declaring that it had turned all the women against us. He was +moved by receiving Korniloff's portrait with a kind message from +the dead hero's family, seeing in the features a confirmation of +the ideal which he had formed in his own mind and had tried to +convey to others. Readers of his book will recall the fine tribute +to Korniloff's powers, and the description of his death, in +Chapters VI. and XIII. of Vol. IV. (Cabinet Edition). + +Many of his comments on current events are preserved in the notes +or in the memories of his friends. Sometimes these were +characteristically cynical. He ridiculed the newspaper parade of +national sympathy with the Prince of Wales's illness: "We are +represented as all members of the royal family, and all in family +hysterics." Dizzy's orientalization of Queen Victoria into an +Empress angered him, as it angered many more. The last Empress +Regnant, he said, was Catherine II. and it seems to be thought that +by advising the Queen to take that great monarch's title, we shall +exercise a wholesome influence on the morals of our women. He +would quote Byron's + + +"Russia's mighty Empress +Behaved no better than a common sempstress;" + + +"there was an old-fashioned sacredness, which, however foolish +intrinsically, was still useful, in our title of 'The Queen'; nor +do we see the policy of adding a Supreme de Volaille to the bread +and wine of our Sacrament." + +He chuckled over the indignation of the haute volee, when on the +visit to England of President Grant's daughter in 1872, Americans +in London sent out cards of invitation headed "To meet Miss Grant," +as at a profane imitation of a practice hitherto confined to +royalties; laughing not at the legitimate American mimicry of +European consequence, but at the silly formalists in Society who +fumed over the imagined presumption. Consulted by an invalid as to +the charm of Ostend for a seaside residence, he limited it to +persons of gregarious habits; "the people are all driven down to +the beach like a flock of sheep in the morning, and in the evening +they are all driven back to their folds." He reported a feeble +drama written by his ancient idol, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe; "it +is a painful thing to see a man of his quality and of his age +unduly detained in the world; when the Emperor Nicholas died, the +Eltchi lost his raison d'etre." He disparaged the wild fit of +morality undergone by the "Pall Mall Gazette" during the scandalous +"Maiden Tribute" revelation, pronouncing its protegees to be +"clever little devils." He was greatly startled by Gortschakoff's +famous circular, annulling the Black Sea clause in the Treaty of +Paris, and much relieved by Bismarck's dexterous interposition, +which saved the susceptibility of Europe, and especially of +England, by yielding as a favour to the demand of Russia what no +one was in a position to refuse; but he maintained, and Lord +Stratford agreed with him, that Gortschakoff's precipitate act was +governed by circumstances never revealed to mankind. He learned, +too, that it caused the Chancellor to be deconsidere in high +Russian circles; he was called "un Narcisse qui se mire dans son +encrier." Kinglake used to say that in conceding the right of the +Sultan to exclude any war-flag from the Bosphorus and the +Dardanelles, Russia was treating Turkey as a bag-fox, to be gently +hunted occasionally, but not mangled or killed; and he felt keenly +the ridicule resting on the allies, who were compelled to surrender +the neutralization purchased at the cost of so much blood and +treasure. He watched with much amusement the restoration of +Turkish self-confidence. "Turkey believes that he is no longer a +sick man, and is turning all his doctors out of the house, to the +immense astonishment of the English doctor, so conscious of his own +rectitude that he cannot understand being sent off with the quacks. +You know in our beautiful Liturgy we have a prayer for the Turks; +it looks as if our supplications had become successful." His +interest in Turkey never flagged. "I am in a great fright," he +said in 1877, "about my dear Turks, because Russia gives virtual +command of the army before Plevna to Todleben, a really great homme +de guerre." + +Russophobia was at that time so strong in London that Madame +Novikoff hesitated to visit England, and he himself feared that she +might find it uncomfortable. Her alarm, however, was ridiculed by +Hayward, "most faithful of the Russianisers, ready to do battle for +Russia at any moment, declaring her to be quite virtuous, with no +fault but that of being incomprise." But he groaned over the +humiliation of England under Russia's bold stroke, noting +frequently a decay of English character which he ascribed to +chronic causes. The Englishman taken separately, he said, seems +much the same as he used to be; but there is a softening of the +aggregate brain which affects Englishmen when acting together. He +hailed the great Liberal victory of 1880, and watched with +interest, as one behind the scenes, the negotiations which led to +Lord Hartington's withdrawal and Mr. Gladstone's resumption of +power; for in these his friend Hayward was an active go-between, +removing by his tact and frankness "hitches" which might otherwise +have been disastrous. He thought W. E. Forster's attack on Mr. +Gladstone's Irish policy in 1882 ill-managed for his own position, +his famous speech not sufficiently "clenching." Had he separated +from his chief on broader grounds, refusing complicity with a +Minister who consented to parley with the imprisoned Irishmen, he +would, Kinglake thought, have occupied a highly commanding +position. At present his difference from his colleagues was one +only of degree. + +He was once beguiled, amongst friends very intimate, into telling a +dream. He dreamed that he was attending an anatomical lecture-- +which, as a fact, he had never done--and that his own body, from +which he found himself entirely separated, was the dissected +subject on which the lecturer discoursed. The body lay on a table +beside the lecturer, but he himself, his entity, was at the other +end of the room, on the furthest or highest of a set of benches +raised one above the other as at a theatre. He imagined himself in +a vague way to be disagreeing with the lecturer; but the strongest +impression on his mind was annoyance at being so badly placed, so +far from the professor and from his own body that he could not see +or hear without an effort. The dream, he pointed out, showed this +curious fact, that without any conscious design or effort of the +will a man may conceive himself to be in perfect possession of his +identity, whilst separated from his own body by a distance of +several feet. "The highest concept," said Jowett, "which man forms +of himself is as detached from the body." ("Life," ii. 241.) The +lecture-room which he imagined was one of the lower school-rooms at +Eton, with which he had been familiar in early days. + +After Hayward's death in 1884, his own habits began to change. He +still dined at the Athenaeum "corner," but increasing deafness +began to make society irksome, and, his solitary meal ended, he +spent his evenings reading in the Library. By-and-by that too +became impossible. His voice grew weak, throat and tongue were +threatened with disease. In 1888 he went to Brighton with a nurse, +returned to rooms on Richmond Hill, then to Bayswater Terrace. An +operation was performed and he seemed to recover, but relapsed. +Old friends tended him: Madame Novikoff, Mr. Froude and Mr. Lecky, +Madame de Quaire and Mrs. Brookfield, Lord Mexborough his ancient +fellow-traveller, Mrs. Craven, Sir William and Lady Gregory, with a +few more, cheered him by their visits so long as he was able to +bear them; and his brother and sister, Dr. and Mrs. Hamilton +Kinglake, were with him at the end. Patient to the last, kind and +gentle to all about him, he passed away quietly on New Year's Day, +1891: + + +"being merry-hearted, +Shook hands with flesh and blood, and so departed." + + +His remains were cremated at Woking, after a special service at +Christchurch, Lancaster Gate, attended by Dr. and Mrs. Kinglake +with their son Captain Kinglake, the Duke of Bedford, Mr. and Mrs. +Lecky, Mrs. W. H. Brookfield and her son Charles. + + +No good portrait of him has been published. That prefixed to +Blackwood's "Eothen" of 1896 was furnished by Dr. Kinglake, who, +however, looked upon it as unsatisfactory. The "Not an M.P." of +"Vanity Fair," 1872, is a grotesque caricature. The photograph +here reproduced (p. 128), by far the best likeness extant, he gave +to Madame Novikoff in 1870, receiving hers in return, but +pronouncing the transaction "an exchange between the personified +months of May and November." The face gives expression to the shy +aloofness which, amongst strangers, was characteristic of him +through life. He had even a horror of hearing his name pealed out +by servants, and came early to parties that the proclamation might +be achieved before as few auditors as possible. Visiting the newly +married husband of his friend Adelaide Kemble, and being the first +guest to arrive, he encountered in Mr. Sartoris a host as +contentedly undemonstrative as himself. Bows passed, a seat by the +fire was indicated, he sat down, and the pair contemplated one +another for ten minutes in absolute silence, till the lady of the +house came in, like the prince in "The Sleeping Beauty," though not +by the same process, to break the charm. He gave up calling at a +house where he was warmly appreciated, because father, mother, +daughter, bombarded him with questions. "I never came away without +feeling sure that I had in some way perjured myself." + +On his shyness waited swiftly ensuing boredom; if his neighbour at +table were garrulous or banale, his face at once betrayed +conversational prostration; a lady who often watched him used to +say that his pulse ought to be felt after the first course; and +that if it showed languor he should be moved to the side of some +other partner. "He had great charm," writes to me another old +friend, "in a quiet winning way, but was 'dark' with rough and +noisy people." So it came to pass that his manner was threefold; +icy and repellent with those who set his nerves on edge; good- +humoured, receptive, intermittently responsive in general and +congenial company; while, at ease with friends trusted and beloved, +the lines of the face became gracious, indulgent, affectionate, the +sourire des yeux often inexpressibly winning and tender. +"Kinglake," says Eliot Warburton in his unpublished diary, "talked +to us to-day about his travels; pessimistic and cynical to the rest +of the world, he is always gentle and kind to us." To this dear +friend he was ever faithful, wearing to the day of his death an +octagonal gold ring engraved "Eliot. Jan: 1852." He would never +play the raconteur in general company, for he had a great horror of +repeating himself, and, latterly, of being looked upon as a bore by +younger men; but he loved to pour out reminiscences of the past to +an audience of one or two at most: "Let an old man gather his +recollections and glance at them under the right angle, and his +life is full of pantomime transformation scenes." The chief +characteristic of his wit was its unexpectedness; sometimes acrid, +sometimes humorous, his sayings came forth, like Topham Beauclerk's +in Dr. Johnson's day, like Talleyrand's in our own, poignant +without effort. His calm, gentle voice, contrasted with his +startling caustic utterance, reminded people of Prosper Merimee: +terse epigram, felicitous apropos, whimsical presentment of the +topic under discussion, emitted in a low tone, and without the +slightest change of muscle: + + +"All the charm of all the Muses +Often flowering in a lonely word." {25} + + +Questions he would suavely and often wittily parry or repel: to an +unhistorical lady asking if he remembered Madame Du Barry, he said, +"my memory is very imperfect as to the particulars of my life +during the reign of Lous XV. and the Regency; but I know a lady who +has a teapot which belonged, she says, to Madame Du Barry." Madame +Novikoff, however, records his discomfiture at the query of a +certain Lady E-, who, when all London was ringing with his first +Crimean volumes, asked him if he were not an admirer of Louis +Napoleon. "Le pauvre Kinglake, decontenance, repondit tout bas +intimide comme un enfant qu'on met dates le coin: Oui--non--pas +precisement." + +He had no knowledge of or liking for music. Present once by some +mischance at a matinee musicale, he was asked by the hostess what +kind of music he preferred. His preference, he owned, was for the +drum. One thinks of the "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," "la trompette +marine est un instrument qui me plait, el qui est harmonieux"; we +are reminded, too, of Dean Stanley, who, absolutely tone-deaf, and +hurrying away whenever music was performed, once from an adjoining +room in his father's house heard Jenny Lind sing "I know that my +Redeemer liveth." He went to her shyly, and told her that she had +given him an idea of what people mean by music. Once before, he +said in all seriousness, the same feeling had come over him, when +before the palace at Vienna he had heard a tattoo rendered by four +hundred drummers. + + +Kinglake used to regret the disuse of duelling, as having impaired +the higher tone of good breeding current in his younger days, and +even blamed the Duke of Wellington for proscribing it in the army. +He had himself on one occasion sent a cartel, and stood waiting for +his adversary, like Sir Richard Strachan at Walcheren, eight days +on the French coast; but the adversary never came. Hayward once +referred to him, as a counsellor, and if necessary a second, a +quarrel with Lord R-. Lord R-'s friend called on him, a Norfolk +squire, "broad-faced and breathing port wine," after the fashion of +uncle Phillips in "Pride and Prejudice," who began in a boisterous +voice, "I am one of those, Mr. Kinglake, who believe R- to be a +gentleman." In his iciest tones and stoniest manner Kinglake +answered: "That, Sir, I am quite willing to assume." The effect, +he used to say, as he told and acted the scene, was magical; "I had +frozen him sober, and we settled everything without a fight." Of +all his friends Hayward was probably the closest; an association of +discrepancies in character, manner, temperament, not complementary, +but opposed and hostile; irreconcilable, one would say, but for the +knowledge that in love and friendship paradox reigns supreme. +Hayward was arrogant, overbearing, loud, insistent, full of strange +oaths and often unpardonably coarse; "our dominant friend," +Kinglake called him; "odious" is the epithet I have heard commonly +bestowed upon him by less affectionate acquaintances. Kinglake was +reserved, shy, reticent, with the high breeding, grand manner, +quiet urbanity, grata protervitas, of a waning epoch; restraint, +concentration, tact of omission, dictating alike his silence and +his speech; his well-weighed words "crystallizing into epigrams as +they touched the air." {26} When Hayward's last illness came upon +him in 1884, Kinglake nursed him tenderly; spending the morning in +his friend's lodgings at 8, St. James's Street, the house which +Byron occupied in his early London days; and bringing on the latest +bulletin to the club. The patient rambled towards the end; "we +ought to be getting ready to catch the train that we may go to my +sister's at Lyme." Kinglake quieted his sick friend by an assurance +that the servants, whom he would not wish to hurry, were packing. +"On no account hurry the servants, but still let us be off." The +last thought which he articulated while dying was, "I don't exactly +know what it is, but I feel it is something grand." "Hayward is +dead," Kinglake wrote to a common friend; "the devotion shown to +him by all sorts and conditions of men, and, what is better, of +women, was unbounded. Gladstone found time to be with him, and to +engage him in a conversation of singular interest, of which he has +made a memorandum." + +Another of Kinglake's life-long familiars was Charles Skirrow, +Taxing Master in Chancery, with his accomplished wife, from whose +memorable fish dinners at Greenwich he was seldom absent, adapting +himself no less readily to their theatrical friends--the Bancrofts, +Burnand, Toole, Irving--than to the literary set with which he was +more habitually at home. He was religiously loyal to his friends, +speaking of them with generous admiration, eagerly defending them +when attacked. He lauded Butler Johnstone as the most gifted of +the young men in the House of Commons; would not allow Bernal +Osborne to be called untrue; "he offends people if you like, but he +is never false or hollow." A clever sobriquet fathered on him, +burlesquing the monosyllabic names of a well-known diarist and +official, he repelled indignantly. "He is my friend, and had I +been guilty of the jeu, I should have broken two of my +commandments; that which forbids my joking at a friend's expense, +and that which forbids my fashioning a play upon words." He +entreated Madame Novikoff to visit and cheer Charles Lever, dying +at Trieste; deeply lamented Sir H. Bulwer's death: "I used to +think his a beautiful intellect, and he was wonderfully simpatico +to me." But he was shy of condoling with bereaved mourners, +believing words used on such occasions to be utterly untrue. He +loved to include husband and wife in the same meed of admiration, +as in the case of Dean Stanley and Lady Augusta, or of Sir Robert +and Lady Emily Peel. Peel, he said, has the RADIANT quality not +easy to describe; Lady Emily is always beauteous, bright, +attractive. Lord Stanhope he praised as a historian, paying him +the equivocal compliment that his books were much better than his +conversation. So, too, he qualified his admiration of Lady +Ashburton, dwelling on her beauty, silver voice, ready enthusiasm +apt to disperse itself by flying at too many objects. + +He was wont to speak admiringly of Lord Acton, relating how, a +Roman Catholic, yet respecting enlightenment and devoted to books, +he once set up and edited a "Quarterly Review," with a notion of +reconciling the Light and the Dark as well as he could; but the +"Prince of Darkness, the Pope," interposed, and ordered him to stop +the "Review." He was compelled to obey; not, he told people, on +any religious ground, but because relations and others would have +made his life a bore to him if he had been contumacious against the +Holy Father. + +Kinglake was strongly attracted by W. E. Forster, a "rough +diamond," spoken of at one time as a possible Prime Minister. +Beginning life, he said, as a Quaker, with narrow opinions, his +vigour of character and brain-power shook them off. Powerful, +robust, and perfectly honest, yet his honesty inflicted on him a +doubleness of view which caused him to be described as engaging his +two hands in two different pursuits. His estimate of Sir R. Morier +would have gladdened Jowett's heart; he loved him as a private +friend; eulogized his public qualities; rejoiced over his +appointment as Ambassador at St. Petersburg, seeing in him a +diplomatist with not only a keen intellect and large views, but +vibrating with the warmth, animation, friendliness, that are +charmingly un-diplomatic. Of Carlyle, his life-long, though not +always congenial intimate, he used to speak as having great graphic +power, but being essentially a humourist; a man who, with those he +could trust, never pretended to be in earnest, but used to roar +with glorious laughter over the fun of his own jeremiads; "so far +from being a prophet he is a bad Scotch joker, and knows himself to +be a wind-bag." He blamed Froude's revelations of Carlyle in "The +Reminiscences," as injurious and offensive. Froude himself he +often likened to Carlyle; the thoughts of both, he said, ran in the +same direction, but of the two, Froude was by far the more +intellectual man. + +Staunch friend to the few, polite, though never effusive, to the +many, he also nourished strong antipathies. The appearance in +Madame Novikoff's rooms of a certain Scotch bishop invariably drove +him out of them, "Peter Paul, Bishop of Claridge's," he called him. +To Von Beust (the Austrian Chancellor), who spoke English in a +rapid half-intelligible falsetto, he gave the name of Mirliton +(penny trumpet). His allusions to Mirliton and to the Bishop +frequently mystified Madame Novikoff's guests. For he loved to +talk in cypher. Canon Warburton, kindly searching on my behalf his +brother Eliot's journals, tells me that he and Kinglake, meeting +almost daily, lived in a cryptic world of jokes, confidences, +colloquialisms, inexplicable to all but their two selves. + +He cordially disliked "The Times" newspaper, alleging instances of +the unfairness with which its columns had been used to spite and +injure persons who had offended it, chuckling over Hayward's +compact anathema,--"'The Times,' which as usual of late supplied +its lack of argument and proof by assumption, misrepresentation, +and personality." He thought that its attacks upon himself had +helped his popularity. "One of the main causes," he said in 1875, +"of the interest which people here were good enough to take in my +book was the fight between 'The Times' and me. In 1863 it raged, +in 1867 it was renewed with great violence, and now I suppose the +flame kindles once more, though probably with diminished strength. +In 1863 the storm of opinion generally waxed fierce against me, but +now, as I hear, 'The Times' is alone, journals of all politics +being loud in my praise. But I never look at any comment on my +volumes till long afterwards, and I never in my life wrote to a +newspaper." Once, when Chenery, the editor, came to join the table +at the Athenaeum where he and Mr. Cartwright were dining, Kinglake +rose, and removed to another part of the room. "The Times" had +inserted a statement that Madame Novikoff was ordered to leave +England, and he thus publicly resented it. "So unlike me," he +said, relating the story, "but somehow a savagery as of youth came +over me in my ancient days; it was like being twenty years old +again." It came out, however, that "our indiscreet friend Froude" +had written something which justified the paragraph, and Kinglake +sent his amende to Chenery, with whom ordinarily he was on most +friendly terms. + +He disliked Irishmen "in the lump," saying that human nature is the +same everywhere except in Ireland. Parnell he personally admired, +though hating Home Rule; and stigmatized as gross hypocrisy the +desertion of him by Liberals after the divorce trial. He was wont +to speak irreverently of Lord Beaconsfield, whom he had known well +at Lady Blessington's in early days. He would have found himself +in accord with Huxley, who used to thank God, his friend Mr. Fiske +tells us, that he had never bowed the knee either to Louis Napoleon +or Benjamin Disraeli. He poured scorn on the Treaty of Berlin. +Russia, he said, defeating the Turks in war, has defeated +Beaconsfield in diplomacy. If Englishmen understood such things +they would see that the Congress was a comedy; anyone who will +satisfy himself as to what Russia was really anxious to obtain, and +then look at the Salisbury-Schouvaloff treaty, will see that, +thanks to Beaconsfield's imbecility, Schouvaloff obtained one of +the most signal diplomatic triumphs that was ever won. {27} A +sound entente between Russia and England he thought both possible +and desirable; but conceived it to be rendered difficult by the +want of steadiness and capacity which, for international purposes, +were the real faults of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury. He +repeated with much amusement the current anecdote of Lord +Beaconsfield's conquest of Mrs. Gladstone. Meeting her in society, +he was said to have inquired with tenderness after Mr. Gladstone's +health, and then after receiving the loving wife's report of her +William, to have rejoined in his most dulcet tones, "Ah! take care +of him, for he is very VERY precious." He always attributed +Dizzy's popularity to the feeling of Englishmen that he had "shown +them sport," an instinct, he thought, supreme in all departments of +the English mind. + +Towards his old schoolfellow Gladstone he never felt quite +cordially, believing, rightly or wrongly, that the great statesman +nourished enmity towards himself. He called him, as has been said, +"a good man in the worst sense of the term, conscientious with a +diseased conscience." He watched with much amusement, as +illustrating the moral twist in Gladstone's temperament, the +"Colliery explosion," as it was called, when Sir R. Collier, the +Attorney-General, was appointed to a Puisne Judgeship, which he +held only for a day or two, in order to qualify him for a seat on a +new Court of Appeal; together with a very similar trick, by which +Ewelme Rectory, tenable only by an Oxonian, was given to a +Cambridge man. The responsibility was divided between Gladstone +and Lord Hatherley the Chancellor, with the mutual idea apparently +that each of the two became thereby individually innocent. But Sir +F. Pollock, in his amusing "Reminiscences," recalls the amicable +halving of a wicked word between the Abbess of Andouillet and the +Novice Margarita in "Tristram Shandy." It answered in neither +case. "'They do not understand us,' cried Margarita. 'BUT THE +DEVIL DOES,' said the Abbess of Andouillet." "The Collier scandal +narrowly escaped by two votes in the Lords, twenty-seven in the +Commons, a Parliamentary vote of censure, and gave unquestionably a +downward push to the Gladstone Administration. Mr. Gladstone, on +the other hand, cordially admired Kinglake's speeches, saying that +few of those he had heard in Parliament could bear so well as his +the test of publication. + +To the great Prime Minister's absolute fearlessness he did full +justice, as one of the finest features in his character; and loved +to quote an epigram by Lord Houghton, to whom Gladstone had +complained in a moment of weariness that he led the life of a dog. +"Yes," said Houghton, "but of a St. Bernard dog, ever busied in +saving life." He loved to contrast the twofold biographical +paradox in the careers of the two famous rivals, Gladstone and +Disraeli; the dreaming Tory mystic, incarnation of Oxford +exclusiveness and Puseyite reserve, passing into the Radical +iconoclast; the Jew clerk in a city lawyer's office, "bad specimen +of an inferior dandy," coming to rule the proudest aristocracy and +lead the most fastidious assembly in the world. + +He was not above broad farce when the fancy seized him. At the +time when a certain kind of nonsense verse was popular, he, with +Sir Noel Paton and others, added not a few facetious sonnets to +Edward Lear's book, which lay on Madame Novikoff's table. His +authorship is betrayed by the introduction of familiar +Somersetshire names, Taunton, Wellington, Curry Rivel, Creech, +Trull, Wilton: + + +"There was a young lady of Wilton, +Who read all the poems of Milton: +And, when she had done, +She said, 'What bad fun!' +This prosaic young lady of Wilton." + + +There were many more, but this will perhaps suffice; ex ungue +leonem. They were addressed to the "Fair Lady of Claridge's," +Madame Novikoff's hotel when in London, and were signed "Peter +Paul, Bishop of Claridge's." + + +"There is a fair lady at Claridge's, +Whose smile is more charming to me, +Than the rapture of ninety-nine marriages +Could possibly, possibly, be;--" + + +is the final dedicatory stanza. It is the gracious fooling of a +philosopher who understood his company. "There are folks," says +Mr. Counsellor Pleydell, "before whom a man should take care how he +plays the fool, because they have either too much malice or too +little wit." Kinglake knew his associates, and was not ashamed +desipere in loco, to frolic in their presence. + + +One point there was on which he never touched himself or suffered +others to interrogate him, his conception of and attitude towards +the Unseen. He wore his religion as Sir William Gull wore the fur +of his coat, INSIDE. Outwardly he died as he had lived, a Stoic; +that on the most personal and sacred of all topics he should +consult the Silences was in keeping with his idiosyncrasy. Another +famous man, questioned as to his religious creed, made answer that +he believed what all wise men believe. And what do all wise men +believe? "That all wise men keep to themselves?" + + + +Footnotes: + + +{1} When "Heartsease" first appeared, Percy Fotheringham was +believed to be a portrait; but the accomplished authoress in a +letter written not long before her death told me that the character +was wholly imaginary. + +{2} Pedigrees are perplexing unless tabulated; so here is +Kinglake's genealogical tree. + +KINGLAKES OF SALTMOOR. WOODFORDES OF + CASTLE CARY. + | | + +-------------------+ | + | WILLIAM=MARY WOODFORDE. +ROBERT | + | +--------------------+ ++--------------+ | | +| | | | +SERJEANT REV. W.C. A.W. KING- DR. HAMILTON +JOHN KING- KINGLAKE LAKE KINGLAKE. +LAKE. ("Eothen.") + +{3} "Eothen," p. 33. Reading "Timbuctoo" to-day one is amazed it +should have gained the prize. Two short passages adumbrate the +coming Tennyson, the rest is mystic nonsense. "What do you think +of Tennyson's prize poem?" writes Charles Wordsworth to his brother +Christopher. "Had it been sent up at Oxford, the author would have +had a better chance of spending a few months at a lunatic asylum +than of obtaining the Prize." A current Cambridge story at the +time explained the selection. There were three examiners, the +Vice-Chancellor, a man of arbitrary temper, with whom his juniors +hesitated to disagree; a classical professor unversed in English +Literature; a mathematical professor indifferent to all literature. +The letter g was to signify approval, the letter b to brand it with +rejection. Tennyson's manuscript came from the Vice-Chancellor +scored all over with g's. The classical professor failed to see +its merit, but bowed to the Vice-Chancellor, and added his g. The +mathematical professor could not admire, but since both his +colleagues ordained it, good it must be, and his g made the award +unanimous. The three met soon after, and the Vice-Chancellor, in +his blatant way, attacked the other two for admiring a trashy poem. +"Why," they remonstrated, "you covered it with g's yourself." +"G's," said he, "they were q's for queries; I could not understand +a line of it." + +{4} "Enoch Arden," p. 34. + +{5} "Eothen," p. 169. Reprint by Bell and Sons, 1898. + +{6} "Eothen," p. 17. + +{7} His deferential regard for army rank was like that of Johnson +for bishops. Great was his indignation when the "grotesque +Salvation Army," as he called it, adopted military nomenclature. +"I would let those ragamuffins call themselves saints, angels, +prophets, cherubim, Olympian gods and goddesses if they like; but +their pretension in taking the rank of officers in the army is to +me beyond measure repulsive." + +{8} "Eothen," p. 190 in first edition. It was struck out in the +fourth edition. + +{9} "Eothen," p. 18. Reprint by Bell and Sons, 1898. + +{10} He is very fond of this word; it occurs eleven times. + +{11} "Quarterly Review," December, 1844. + +{12} "Eothen," p. 46. + +{13} Poitier's "Vaudeville." + +{14} One characteristic anecdote he omits. Two French officers +were attached to our headquarters; and the staff were partly +embarrassed and partly amused by Lord Raglan's inveterate habit, +due to old Peninsular associations, of calling the enemy "the +French" in the presence of our foreign guests. + +{15} Some of us can recall the lines in which Sir G. Trevelyan +commemorated "The Owl's" nocturnal flights: + + +"When at sunset, chill and dark, +Sunset thins the swarming park, +Bearing home his social gleaning - +Jests and riddles fraught with meaning, +Scandals, anecdotes, reports, - +Seeks The Owl a maze of courts +Which, with aspect towards the west, +Fringe the street of Sainted James, +Where a warm, secluded nest +As his sole domain he claims; +From his wing a feather draws, +Shapes for use a dainty nib, +Pens his parody or squib; +Combs his down and trims his claws, +And repairs where windows bright +Flood the sleepless Square with light." + +{16} Greville, vii. 223, quotes from a letter written after +Inkerman to the Prince Consort by Colonel Steele, saying "that he +had no idea how great a mind Raglan really had, but that he now saw +it, for in the midst of distresses and difficulties of every kind +in which the army was involved, he was perfectly serene and +undisturbed." + +{17} "Go quietly" might have been his motto: even on horseback he +seemed never to be in a hurry. Airey used to come in from their +rides round the outposts shuddering with cold, and complaining that +the Chief would never move his horse out of a walk. "I daresay," +said Carlyle, "Lord Raglan will rise quite quietly at the last +trump, and remain entirely composed during the whole day, and show +the most perfect civility to both parties." + +{18} The first death! out of how many he nowhere reckons: he +shrinks from estimates of carnage, and we thank him for it. But an +accomplished naturalist tells me that the vulture, a bird unknown +in the Crimea before hostilities began, swarmed there after the +Alma fight, and remained till the war was over, disappearing +meanwhile from the whole North African littoral. + +{19} "D-n your eyes!" he said once, in a moment of irritation, to +his attache, Mr. Hay. "D-n your Excellency's eyes!" was the +answer, delivered with deep respect but with sufficient emphasis. +Dismissed on the spot, the candid attache went in great anger to +pack up, but was followed after a time by Lady Canning, habitual +peacemaker in the household, who besought him if not to apologize +at least to bid his Chief good-bye. After much persuasion he +consented. "Hardly had he entered the room when Sir Stratford had +him by the hand. 'My dear Hay, this will never do; what a devil of +a temper you have!' The two were firmer friends than ever after +this" (LANE POOLE'S Life of Lord Stratford, chapter xiii.). + +{20} The story of an old quarrel between Sir Stratford Canning and +the then Grand Duke Nicholas at St. Petersburg in 1825 is disproved +by Canning's own statement. The two met once only in their lives, +at a purely formal reception at Paris in 1814. + +{21} La Femme was a "Miss" or "Mrs." Howard. She followed Louis +Napoleon to France in 1848, and lived openly with him as his +mistress. In the once famous "Letters of an Englishman" we are +told how shortly after the December massacre the elite of English +visitors in Paris were not ashamed to dine at her house in the +President's company: and in 1860, Mrs. Simpson, in France with her +father, Nassau Senior, found her, decorated with the title of +Madame de Beauregard, inhabiting La Celle, near Versailles, once +the abode of Madame de Pompadour, "with the national flag flying +over it, to the great scandal of the neighbourhood." + +{22} Bachaumont's criticism of Latour. Lady Dilke's "French +Painters," p. 165. + +{23} Here is one of the stanzas: + +"L'Autriche--dit-on--et la Russie +Se brouillent pour la Turquie. +Des aujourd'hui il n'en est plus question. +En invitant une femme charmante, +Le Turc--et je l'en complimente - +Est devenu pour nous un trait d'union." + +{24} "Blackwood's Magazine," December, 1895, p. 802. + +{25} I inserted this quotation before reading the "Etchingham +Letters." Sir Richard would wish me to erase it as hackneyed; but +it applies to Kinglake's talk as accurately as to Virgil's writing, +and I refuse to be defrauded of it. + +{26} This delightful phrase is Lady Gregory's. One would wish, +like Lord Houghton, though suppressing his presumptuous rider, to +have been its author. + +{27} Of course Kinglake was not alone in this opinion. It was +voiced in a delightful jeu d'esprit, now forgotten, which it is +worth while to reproduce: + + +"THE BERLIN CONGRESS. + +"The following Latin poem, from the pen of the well-known German +poet, Gustave Schwetschke, was distributed by Prince Bismarck's +special request amongst the Plenipotentiaries immediately after the +last sitting on Saturday: + + +"'GAUDEAMUS CONGRESSIBILE. +"'Gaudeamus igitur +Socii congressus, +Post dolores bellicosos, +Post labores gloriosos, +Nobis fit decessus. + +"'Ubi sunt, qui ante nos +Quondam consedere, +Viennenses, Parisienses +Tot per annos, tot per menses? +Frustra decidere. + +"'Mundus heu! vult decipi, +Sed non decipiatur, +Non plus ultra inter gentes +Litigantes et frementes +Manus conferatur. + +'Vivat Pax! et comitent +Dii nunc congressum, +Ceu Deus ex machina +Ipsa venit Cypria +Roborans successum. + +"'Pereat discordia! +Vincat semper litem +Proxenetae probitas, {27a} +Fides, spes, et charitas, +Gaudeamus item! + +"G. S." + + +"THE OTHER VERSION. +(From the "Pall Mall Gazette.") + + +"A correspondent informs us that the version given in 'The +Standard' of yesterday of the congratulatory ode ('Gaudeamus +igitur,' etc.) addressed to the Congress by 'the well-known German +poet Gustave Schwetschke,' and 'distributed by Prince Bismarck's +request among the Plenipotentiaries,' is incorrect. The true +version, we are assured, is as follows: + +"'Rideamus igitur, +Socii Congressus; +Post dolores bellicosos, +Post labores bumptiosos, +Fit mirandus messus. + +"Ubi sunt qui apud nos +Causas litigare, +Moldo-Wallachae frementes, +Graeculi esurientes? +Heu! absquatulare. + +"'Ubi sunt provinciae +Quas est laus pacasse? +Totae, totae, sunt partitae: +Has tulerunt Muscovitae, +Illas Count Andrassy. + +"'Et quid est quod Angliae +Dedit hic Congressus? +Jus pro aliis pugnandi, +Mortuum vivificandi - +Splendidi successus! + +"'Vult Joannes decipi +Et bamboosulatur. +Io Beacche! Quae majestas! +Ostreae reportans testas +Domum gloriatur!'" + + +"This version, which from internal evidence will be seen to be the +true one, may be roughly Englished thus: + + +"Let us have our hearty laugh, +Greatest of Congresses! +After days and weeks pugnacious, +After labours ostentatious, +See how big the mess is! + +"'Where are those who at our bar +Their demands have stated: +Robbed Roumanians rampaging, +Greeklings with earth-hunger raging? +Where? Absquatulated! + +"'Where the lands we've pacified, +With their rebel masses? +All are gone; yes, all up-gobbled: +These the Muscovite has nobbled, +Those are Count Andrassy's. + +"'And what does England carry off +To add to her possessions? +The right to wage another's strife, +The right to raise the dead to life - +Glorious concessions! + +"'Well, let John Bull bamboozled be +If he's so fond of sells! +Io Beacche! Hark the cheering! +See him home in triumph bearing +BOTH {27b} the oyster shells!'" + +{27a} "Der ehrlich Miikler." + +{27b} Peace and Honour. + + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF KINGLAKE *** + +This file should be named awkbi10.txt or awkbi10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, awkbi11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, awkbi10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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