CHAPTER VI_A. W. Kinglake: A Biographical and Literary Study

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.” {111} “Pleaceman X.” has not, perhaps, before been revered as

the Shade-compelling son of Maia:

“Tu pias lætis 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 Athenæum. 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 Athenæum

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 Athenæum; 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 _tête-à-tête_, with whom at

his ease he could unfold himself.

No man ever fought more gallantly the encroachments of old age—_on sut

être 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 être 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

Kiréeff; 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 _Suprême de Volaille_ to the bread and wine of

our Sacrament.”

He chuckled over the indignation of the _haute volée_, 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’être_.” He disparaged the wild fit of morality undergone by the “Pall

Mall Gazette” during the scandalous “Maiden Tribute” revelation,

pronouncing its protegées 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 _déconsideré_ 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 Athenæum “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.”

[Picture: Kinglake in the early Seventies]

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 Mérimée: 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.” {130}

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, décontenancé_,

_repondit tout bas intimidé comme un enfant qu’on met dates le coin_:

_Oui—non—pas précisément_.”

He had no knowledge of or liking for music. Present once by some

mischance at a _matinée __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.” {133} 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 Athenæum 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. {140} 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?”

INDEX

Abdu-l-Medjid, 66.

Aberdeen, Lord, 70.

Acton, Lord, 135.

Acton, Mrs., 7.

Adams, J. Quincy, 66.

Airey, General, 63, 72.

Alma, 39, 48, 59, 64, 73.

Ampère, M., 102.

Anastasius, 34.

Ancelot, Mme., 99.

Arnold, Matthew, 88.

Ashburton, Lady, 135.

Ashburton, Lord, 33.

Athanasian Creed, 104.

* * * * *

Bachaumont, M., 87.

Balaclava, 74–77.

Bazancourt, Baron de, 48.

Beaconsfield. _See_ Disraeli.

Beauclerk, T., 129.

Beaufort, Duke of, 39.

Bedford, Duke of, 127.

Berlin Congress, 139, etc.

Beust, Count, 96, 137.

Bismarck, 105, 116–118, 140, 141.

Blackwood, 46, 49, 52, 127.

Blaygon Hills, 25.

Boissy, Marquis de, 18.

Bosquet, General, 74, 76.

Boyle, Dean, 3.

Bridgewater, 40, 43, 45.

Bright, John, 68.

Brocas Clump, 22.

Brookfield, Mrs., 11, 18, 126, 127.

Browning, R., 15.

Buller, Charles, 11.

Bulwer-Lytton, 19.

Bulwer, Sir H., 135.

Bunbury, Sir H., 111, 112.

Burghersh, Lord, 65.

Burnaby, Captain, 78.

Burton. _See_ Carrigaholt.

Bury, Lord, 118.

Byron, 11, 15, 22, 29.

* * * * *

Cabinet, Sleeping, 61.

Cagliari, 41.

Campbell, Colin, 62, 72.

Cambridge, 10, 13.

Canning, Lady, 66.

Canning, Sir S. _See_ Stratford.

Canrobert, 71, 78, 79.

“Caradoc,” 60.

Carlisle, Lord, 2.

Carlyle, 15, 33, 63, 136–137.

Carrigaholt, 21, 38.

Cartwright, Mr., 138.

Cathcart, General, 60, 76, 77.

Catherine II., 121.

Charles et George, 41.

Chatham, Lady, 6.

Chenery, Mr., 98, 111, 138–139.

Chesterfield, Lord, 58.

Chiffney, 24, 25.

Chorley, Mr., 17.

Clarendon, Lord, 50, 69.

Claridge’s Hotel, 100, 137, 146.

Clarke, Major, 64.

Codrington, General, 63, 74.

Coleridge, G., 9.

Collier, Sir R., 144.

“Corner,” the, 112, 126.

Cornwall, Barry. _See_ Procter.

“Cosmo,” the, 115.

Cour, M. de la, 69.

Crosse, Mrs., 3, 19.

Crimea, 39, 48, 54, 57, etc.

Crump, 51.

Curzon, 2.

* * * * *

Daubeny, Col., 78.

D’Aurelle, 63.

Delane, 70.

Dilke, Sir Charles, 114.

Dilke, Lady, 87.

Disraeli, B., 41, 42, 121, 139, 140.

Dollinger, Dr., 104.

Doyle, Sir F., 22.

Dream, 125.

Du Barry, Mme., 130.

Duff, Sir M. E. Grant, 4, 44.

* * * * *

Ellenborough, Lord, 50.

Ellis, Mrs., 35.

Eothen, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20–32, 38, 41, 58,

85–88, 127.

Estcott, Mr., 4.

Etchingham Letters, 130.

Eton, 10, 21, 28.

Everett, Mr., 25–26.

* * * * *

Fane, Violet, 102.

Ffoulkes, Rev. E. S., 104.

“Filioque,” 104.

Fiske, Mr., 139.

Fitzgerald, E., 54.

Flowers, Jemmy, 22.

Forster, W. E., 124, 136.

Froude, J. A., 95, 99, 102, 126, 137.

* * * * *

Gallifet, M., 117.

Gambetta, 118.

Gatty, Dr., 10.

Gerontaion, 101.

Gladstone, W. E., 10, 70, 94, 95, 99, 107, 115, 124, 143–145.

Gladstone, Mrs., 143.

Gortschakoff, 57, 97, 105–108, 122.

Grant, Miss, 121.

Gregory, Sir W., 112, 126.

Gregory, Lady, 3, 38, 111, 126, 133.

Greville Memoirs, 60.

Grey, Earl, 93, 108.

Grundy, Mrs., 110.

Guiccioli, Mme., 18.

Gull, Sir W., 147.

* * * * *

Hallam, A., 11.

Hamley, Sir E., 118.

Hampden, J., 46.

Harrington, Lord, 18.

Harrison, F., 114.

Harrington, Lord, 124.

Hatherley, Lord, 144.

Hay, Mr., 66.

Hayward, Abraham, 3, 19, 33, 95, 100, 102, 112, 124, 126, 131–133.

Herbert, Auberon, 115.

Holland, Lady, 99.

Homer, 7, 10, 24, 27, 61.

Hood, Thomas, 17.

Hook, Theodore, 112.

Hoseason, 10.

Houghton, Lord, 3, 11, 13, 16, 17, 34–36, 99, 145.

Howard, Mrs., 82.

Huxley, Professor, 139.

* * * * *

Inglis, Sir R., 23–24.

Inkerman, 77–79.

Irby, Miss, 98.

* * * * *

Jelf, W. E., 26.

Johnstone, Butler, 134.

Jowett, B., 125, 136.

* * * * *

Karabelnaya, 72, 85.

Keate, Dr., 10, 21, 22.

Kemble, Adelaide, 128.

Kemble, J. M., 11, 13.

Kenyon, J., 39.

Kinglake, A. W., parentage and birth, 5; school at Ottery, 9; Eton, 10;

Cambridge, 11–13; tour in the East, 14; called to the Bar, 17; further

travel, 18; shyness in society, 18; manners and appearance, 19; “Eothen”

published, 20; its popularity, 26–32; writes in “Quarterly Review,” 33;

accompanies Lord Raglan to the Crimea, 39; enters Parliament for

Bridgewater, 40; first failure in the House, and subsequent speeches, 41,

etc.; unseated for bribery, 45; publishes the first two volumes of

“Invasion of the Crimea,” 48; further volumes, 55; the book discussed,

56–86; and compared with “Eothen,” 86–89; his first acquaintance with

Madame Novikoff, his tribute to her brother, M. Kiréeff, 91; her history,

character, literary work, 92–95, 99; Kinglake’s review of her book

“Russia and England,” 95–98; his letters to her when abroad, 100, etc.;

his later years, friends, daily habits, 111; the Athenæum “Corner,” 112;

his comment on Sir Charles Dilke’s Civil List motion, 114; on the French

character, 116; on Gortschakoff’s circular, 122; his singular dream, 125;

increasing deafness, 126; sickness and death, 127; his traits of manner,

temperament, speech, as reported by surviving friends, 127, etc.;

attendance on Hayward’s last hours, 133; antipathies and likings, 137,

etc.; opinion of Gladstone and Disraeli, 139, etc.; reserve as to his own

religious feelings, 147.

Kinglake, Captain, 127.

Kinglake, Dr. Hamilton, 5, 6, 7, 9, 126–127.

Kinglake, Mr. Robert, 5, 6.

Kinglake, Mr. William, 5, 6.

Kinglake, Mrs. Hamilton, 4, 126–127.

Kinglake, Mrs. William (the elder), 6, 8.

Kinglake, Mr. Serjeant, 5, 6.

Kinglake, Mrs. Serjeant, 48.

Kinglake, Rev. W. C., 5, 6.

Kiréeff, Alexander, 92, 96.

Kiréeff, Nicholas, 90.

Knox, Alexander, 7.

Korniloff, 73, 120.

* * * * *

Lafayette, Mme. de, 46.

“Lama, The,” 16.

Lamb, Charles, 34.

Landseer, Edwin, 17.

Lane-Poole, Mr., 66, 67.

Laveleye, M., 98.

Layard, A. H., 49.

Lear, Edward, 146.

Le Brun, Mme., 99.

Lecky, Mr., 126.

Lever, Charles, 134.

Lewis, Sir G. Cornewall, 87.

Liddon, Canon, 104.

Lieven, Princess, 93, 108.

Lind, Jenny, 13.

Lockhart, J. G., 33.

Lucas, Mr., 49.

Lucan, Lord, 72, 76.

Lyons, Lord, 114.

* * * * *

Macaulay, 13, 33, 48, 51.

MacCarthy, 34.

Marie of Anjou, 23.

Marlen Bells, 13, 25.

Martineau, Miss, 2.

Massey, Mr., 112.

Maurice, F. D., 11.

Menschikoff, Prince, 67–68.

Mérimée, Prosper, 129.

Methley, 10, 14, 21.

Mexborough, Lord, 10, 126.

Miller, Captain, 64.

Miller, Larrey, 21–22.

Milman, Dean, 33.

“Minden Yell,” 62, 78.

Mirliton, 137.

Monckton Milnes. _See_ Houghton.

Montalembert, M. de, 44.

Morier, Sir Robert, 99, 102, 136.

“Most, Mr.,” 45.

Motley, Mr., 17.

Murray, John, 20.

Murray, Messrs., 97.

* * * * *

Napier, Macvey, 33.

Napoleon I., 34–35, 54, 69, 82, 117.

Napoleon, Louis, 41, 43, 71, 81, etc., 117, 119, 130.

Napoleon, Prince, 74.

Newcastle, Duke of, 48, 61, 70, 72.

Nicholas, Czar, 62, 68, 79–81, 93, 122.

Nolan, Captain, 62.

Norton, Mrs., 19.

“Nouvelle Revue,” 4, 97.

Novikoff, Mme., 4, 90–110, 118–119, 126–127, 130, 134, 137–138, 146.

Nugent, Lord, 2.

Nurses, The Lady, 85.

* * * * *

Okes, Dr., 21–22.

Oliphant, L., 46, 112.

Ollivier, Mr., 20.

Osborne, Bernal, 18, 99, 134.

Ostend, 122.

Ottery St. Mary, 9.

Ourusoff, Prince, 119.

“Owl, The,” 46–47.

* * * * *

Padwick, Henry, 42.

“Pall Mall Gazette,” 122.

Palmerston, Lord, 41, 70.

Panmure, Lord, 60, 70.

Parnell, C. S., 139.

Paton, Sir N., 146.

Peel, Lady E., 135.

Peel, Sir R. (senior), 23.

Peel, Sir R. (junior), 41, 102, 135.

Pelissier, Marshal, 71–72.

Pennefather, General, 73, 77.

Pere Enfantin, 23.

Pharisees, the, 103.

Platonic, 38, 120.

Pleydell, Counsellor, 146.

Poitier, M., 38.

Pollington, Lord, 10, 14, 21.

Pollock, Sir F., 113, 145.

Poole, Mrs., 35.

Portraits, 127.

Praed, Mackworth, 10.

Prince Consort, 60.

Procter, Adelaide, 17.

Procter, B. W., 15, 16, 23.

Procter, Mrs., 15, 16, 17, 21.

* * * * *

Quaire, Mme. de, 126.

* * * * *

Raglan, Lord, 39, 40, 59, etc.

Raglan, Lady, 40, 58.

Rawlinson, Sir H., 33, 112.

Récamier, Mme., 99.

Reeve, H., 50.

Robespierre, 46.

Robinson, Crabb, 16.

Rogers, Thorold, 104.

Ruskin, J., 88.

* * * * *

Salisbury, Lord, 97, 143.

Salvation Army, 14.

Sartoris, Mr., 128.

Savile, Mr., 10.

Scarlett, General, 74–75.

Schwetschke, G., 140.

Schouvaloff, Count, 140.

Sidmouth, 110.

Simpson, Mrs., 19, 53, 82.

Skene, Miss, 1.

Skepper, Anne, 15.

Skirrow, Ch., 134.

Skobeleff, General, 98, 99, 120.

Smith, Dr. Wm., 95.

Smith, Sydney, 7, 8.

Spedding, J., 11.

Spring Rice, Hon. S., 11.

St. Arnaud, 18, 65, 116.

St. Simon, 23.

Stanhope, Lady H., 6.

Stanhope, Lord, 135.

Stanley, Dean, 2, 65, 104, 131, 135.

Stanley, Lady A., 135.

Stansfeld, Rt. Hon. J., 102.

Sterling, J., 11.

Steyne, Lord, 103.

Stirling, Sir W., 112.

Storks, Mr., 112.

Stratford de Redcliffe, Lord, 61, 62, 65, etc., 101, 122.

Strachan, Sir R., 131.

Strzelecki, Count, 112.

Swift, Dean, 100.

* * * * *

Talleyrand, 129.

Tangier, 8.

Taunton, 4, 5, 8, 9, 13.

Tennyson, 11, 12, 16, 22, 58, 69.

Thackeray, 11, 7, 15, 33.

Thiers, M., 113.

Thompson, Dr., 11.

Ticknor, G., 112.

“Timbuctoo,” 12.

“Times, The,” 49, 98, 99, 137, 138.

Todleben, 49, 73, 78–79, 119, 123.

Tower, Tom, 86.

Trench, R. C., 11.

Trevelyan, Sir G., 47.

“Tristram Shandy,” 145.

Twisleton, E., 112.

Tyndall, Professor, 102.

Tynte, Colonel, 40.

* * * * *

“Vanity Fair,” 127.

Vathek, 34.

Venables, G., 17, 33, 112.

Verg, Count de, 17.

Victoria, Queen, 80, 84, 121.

Villiers, Charles, 99.

Voltaire, 84.

* * * * *

Waddy, Colonel, 78.

Wales, Prince of (Regent), 24–25.

Wales, Prince of (late), 120.

Warburton, Canon, 3, 137.

Warburton, Eliot, 2, 14, 17, 20, 21, 34–35, 129, 137.

Waverley, 58.

Wellington, Duke of, 80, 108, 131.

Westbrook, Colonel, 42.

Wilberforce, Samuel, 33.

Wolff, Drummond, 112.

Woodforde, Dr., 6.

Woodforde, Mary, 6.

Wordsworth, W., 11, 34, 56.

Wordsworth, Charles, 12.

Wynter, Dr., 26.

* * * * *

Yea, Lacy, 60, 63.

Yonge, Miss, 1.

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* * * * *