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Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake

R >> Rev. W. Tuckwell >> Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake





"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.

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