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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。