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作者:竹水冷      更新:2021-02-20 05:38      字数:9320
  Biographical Study of A。 W。 Kinglake
  by Rev。 W。 Tcikwell
  PREFACE
  IT is just eleven years since Kinglake passed away; and his life  has not yet been separately memorialized。  A few years more; and  the personal side of him would be irrecoverable; though by  personality; no less than by authorship; he made his contemporary  mark。  When a tomb has been closed for centuries; the effaced  lineaments of its tenant can be re…coloured only by the idealizing  hand of genius; as Scott drew Claverhouse; and Carlyle drew  Cromwell。  But; to the biographer of the lately dead; men have a  right to say; as Saul said to the Witch of Endor; 〃Call up Samuel!〃   In your study of a life so recent as Kinglake's; give us; if you  choose; some critical synopsis of his monumental writings; some  salvage from his ephemeral and scattered papers; trace so much of  his youthful training as shaped the development of his character;
  depict; with wise restraint; his political and public life: but  also; and above all; re…clothe him 〃in his habit as he lived;〃 as  friends and associates knew him; recover his traits of voice and  manner; his conversational wit or wisdom; epigram or paradox; his  explosions of sarcasm and his eccentricities of reserve; his words  of winningness and acts of kindness: and; since one half of his  life was social; introduce us to the companions who shared his  lighter hour and evoked his finer fancies; take us to the Athenaeum  〃Corner;〃 or to Holland House; and flash on us at least a glimpse  of the brilliant men and women who formed the setting to his  sparkle; 〃DIC IN AMICITIAM COEANT ET FOEDERA JUNGANT。〃
  This I have endeavoured to do; with such aid as I could command  from his few remaining contemporaries。  His letters to his family  were destroyed by his own desire; on those written to Madame  Novikoff no such embargo was laid; nor does she believe that it was  intended。  I have used these sparingly; and all extracts from them  have been subjected to her censorship。  If the result is not Attic  in salt; it is at any rate Roman in brevity。  I send it forth with  John Bunyan's homely aspiration:
  And may its buyer have no cause to say; His money is but lost or thrown away。
  CHAPTER I … EARLY YEARS
  THE fourth decade of the deceased century dawned on a procession of  Oriental pilgrims; variously qualified or disqualified to hold the  gorgeous East in fee; who; with BAKSHISH in their purses; a theory  in their brains; an unfilled diary…book in their portmanteaus;  sought out the Holy Land; the Sinai peninsula; the valley of the  Nile; sometimes even Armenia and the Monte Santo; and returned home  to emit their illustrated and mapped octavos。  We have the type  delineated admiringly in Miss Yonge's 〃Heartsease;〃 (1) bitterly in  Miss Skene's 〃Use and Abuse;〃 facetiously in the Clarence Bulbul of  〃Our Street。〃  〃Hang it! has not everybody written an Eastern book?   I should like to meet anybody in society now who has not been up to  the Second Cataract。  My Lord Castleroyal has done one … an honest  one; my Lord Youngent another … an amusing one; my Lord Woolsey  another … a pious one; there is the 'Cutlet and the Cabob' … a  sentimental one; Timbuctoothen … a humorous one。〃  Lord Carlisle's  honesty; Lord Nugent's fun; Lord Lindsay's piety; failed to float  their books。  Miss Martineau; clear; frank; unemotional Curzon;  fuddling the Levantine monks with rosoglio that he might fleece  them of their treasured hereditary manuscripts; even Eliot  Warburton's power; colouring; play of fancy; have yielded to the  mobility of Time。  Two alone out of the gallant company maintain  their vogue to…day: Stanley's 〃Sinai and Palestine;〃 as a Fifth  Gospel; an inspired Scripture Gazetteer; and 〃Eothen;〃 as a  literary gem of purest ray serene。
  In 1898 a reprint of the first edition was given to the public;  prefaced by a brief eulogium of the book and a slight notice of the  author。  It brought to the writer of the 〃Introduction〃 not only  kind and indulgent criticism; but valuable corrections; fresh  facts; clues to further knowledge。  These last have been carefully  followed out。  The unwary statement that Kinglake never spoke after  his first failure in the House has been atoned by a careful study  of all his speeches in and out of Parliament。  His reviews in the  〃Quarterly〃 and elsewhere have been noted; impressions of his  manner and appearance at different periods of his life have been  recovered from coaeval acquaintances; his friend Hayward's Letters;  the numerous allusions in Lord Houghton's Life; Mrs。 Crosse's  lively chapters in 〃Red Letter Days of my Life;〃 Lady Gregory's  interesting recollections of the Athenaeum Club in Blackwood of  December; 1895; the somewhat slender notice in the 〃Dictionary of  National Biography;〃 have all been carefully digested。  From these;  and; as will be seen; from other sources; the present Memoir has  been compiled; an endeavour … SERA TAMEN … to lay before the  countless readers and admirers of his books a fairly adequate  appreciation; hitherto unattempted; of their author。
  I have to acknowledge the great kindness of Canon William  Warburton; who examined his brother Eliot's diaries on my behalf;  obtained information from Dean Boyle and Sir M。 Grant Duff; cleared  up for me not a few obscure allusions in the 〃Eothen〃 pages。  My  highly valued friend; Mrs。 Hamilton Kinglake; of Taunton; his  sister…in…law; last surviving relative of his own generation; has  helped me with facts which no one else could have recalled。  To Mr。  Estcott; his old acquaintance and Somersetshire neighbour; I am  indebted for recollections manifold and interesting; but above all  I tender thanks to Madame Novikoff; his intimate associate and  correspondent during the last twenty years of his life; who has  supplemented her brilliant sketch of him in 〃La Nouvelle Revue〃 of  1896 by oral and written information lavish in quantity and of  paramount biographical value。  Kinglake's external life; his  literary and political career; his speeches; and the more fugitive  productions of his pen; were recoverable from public sources; but  his personal and private side; as it showed itself to the few close  intimates who still survive; must have remained to myself and  others meagre; superficial; disappointing; without Madame  Novikoff's unreserved and sympathetic confidence。
  Alexander William Kinglake was descended from an old Scottish  stock; the Kinlochs; who migrated to England with King James; and  whose name was Anglicized into Kinglake。  Later on we find them  settled on a considerable estate of their own at Saltmoor; near  Borobridge; whence towards the close of the eighteenth century two  brothers; moving southward; made their home in Taunton … Robert as  a physician; William as a solicitor and banker。  Both were of high  repute; both begat famous sons。  From Robert sprang the eminent  Parliamentary lawyer; Serjeant John Kinglake; at one time a  contemporary with Cockburn and Crowder on the Western Circuit; and  William Chapman Kinglake; who while at Trinity; Cambridge; won the  Latin verse prize; 〃Salix Babylonica;〃 the English verse prizes on  〃Byzantium〃 and the 〃Taking of Jerusalem;〃 in 1830 and 1832。  Of  William's sons the eldest was Alexander William; author of  〃Eothen;〃 the youngest Hamilton; for many years one of the most  distinguished physicians in the West of England。  〃Eothen;〃 as he  came to be called; was born at Taunton on the 5th August; 1809; at  a house called 〃The Lawn。〃  His father; a sturdy Whig; died at the  age of ninety through injuries received in the hustings crowd of a  contested election。  His mother belonged to an old Somersetshire  family; the Woodfordes of Castle Cary。  She; too; lived to a great  age; a slight; neat figure in dainty dress; full of antique charm  and grace。  As a girl she had known Lady Hester Stanhope; who lived  with her grandmother; Lady Chatham; at Burton Pynsent; her own  father; Dr。 Thomas Woodforde; being Lady Chatham's medical  attendant。 (2)  The future prophetess of the Lebanon was then a  wild girl; scouring the countryside on bare…backed horses; she  showed great kindness to Mary Woodforde; afterwards Kinglake's  mother。  It was as his mother's son that she received him long  afterwards at Djoun。  To his mother Kinglake was passionately  attached; owed to her; as he tells us in 〃Eothen;〃 his home in the  saddle and his love for Homer。  A tradition is preserved in the  family that on the day of her funeral; at a churchyard five miles  away; he was missed from the household group reassembled in the  mourning home; he was found to have ordered his horse; and galloped  back in the darkness to his mother's grave。  Forty years later he  writes to Alexander Knox: 〃The death of a mother has an almost  magical power of recalling the home of one's childhood; and the  almost separate world that rests upon affection。〃  Of his two  sisters; one was well read and agreeably talkative; noted by  Thackeray as the cleverest woman he had ever met; the other; Mrs。  Acton; was a delightful old ESPRIT FORT; as I knew her in the  sixties; 〃pagan; I regret to say;〃 but not a little resembling her  brother in the point and manner of her wit。