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Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake

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




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.

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