第 2 节
作者:
竹水冷 更新:2021-02-20 05:38 字数:9322
The family moved in his infancy to an old…fashioned handsome 〃Wilton House;〃 adjoining closely to the town; but standing amid spacious park…like grounds; and inhabited in after years by Kinglake's younger brother Hamilton; who succeeded his uncle in the medical profession; and passed away; amid deep and universal regret; in 1898。 Here during the thirties Sydney Smith was a frequent and a welcome visitor; it was in answer to old Mrs。 Kinglake that he uttered his audacious MOT on being asked if he would object; as a neighbouring clergyman had done; to bury a Dissenter: 〃Not bury Dissenters? I should like to be burying them all day!〃
Taunton was an innutrient foster…mother; ARIDA NUTRIX; for such young lions as the Kinglake brood。 Two hundred years before it had been a prosperous and famous place; its woollen and kersey trades; with the population they supported; ranking it as eighth in order among English towns。 Its inhabitants were then a gallant race; republican in politics; Puritan in creed。 Twice besieged by Goring and Lumford; it had twice repelled the Royalists with loss。 It was the centre of Monmouth's rebellion and of Jeffrey's vengeance; the suburb of Tangier; hard by its ancient castle; still recalls the time when Colonel Kirke and his regiment of 〃Lambs〃 were quartered in the town。 But long before the advent of the Kinglakes its glory had departed; its manufactures had died out; its society become Philistine and bourgeois … 〃little men who walk in narrow ways〃 … while from pre…eminence in electoral venality among English boroughs it was saved only by the near proximity of Bridgewater。 A noted statesman who; at a later period; represented it in Parliament; used to say that by only one family besides Dr。 Hamilton Kinglake's could he be received with any sense of social or intellectual equality。
Not much; however; of Kinglake's time was given to his native town: he was early sent to the Grammar School at Ottery St。 Mary's; the 〃Clavering〃 of 〃Pendennis;〃 whose Dr。 Wapshot was George Coleridge; brother of the poet。 He was wont in after life to speak of this time with bitterness; a delicate child; he was starved on insufficient diet; and an eloquent passage in 〃Eothen〃 depicts his intellectual fall from the varied interests and expanding enthusiasm of liberal home teaching to the regulation gerund… grinding and Procrustean discipline of school。 〃The dismal change is ordained; and then … thin meagre Latin with small shreds and patches of Greek; is thrown like a pauper's pall over all your early lore; instead of sweet knowledge; vile; monkish; doggerel grammars and graduses; dictionaries and lexicons; and horrible odds and ends of dead languages are given you for your portion; and down you fall; from Roman story to a three…inch scrap of 'Scriptores Romani;' … from Greek poetry; down; down to the cold rations of 'Poetae Graeci;' cut up by commentators; and served out by school… masters!〃
At Eton … under Keate; as all readers of 〃Eothen〃 know … he was contemporary with Gladstone; Sir F。 Hanmer; Lords Canning and Dalhousie; Selwyn; Shadwell。 He wrote in the 〃Etonian;〃 created and edited by Mackworth Praed; and is mentioned in Praed's poem on Surly Hall as
〃Kinglake; dear to poetry; And dear to all his friends。〃
Dr。 Gatty remembers his 〃determined pale face〃; thinks that he made his mark on the river rather than in the playing fields; being a good oar and swimmer。 His great friend at school was Savile; the 〃Methley〃 of his travels; who became successively Lord Pollington and Earl of Mexborough。 The Homeric lore which Methley exhibited in the Troad; is curiously illustrated by an Eton story; that in a pugilistic encounter with Hoseason; afterwards an Indian Cavalry officer; while the latter sate between the rounds upon his second's knee; Savile strutted about the ring; spouting Homer。
Kinglake entered at Trinity; Cambridge; in 1828; among an exceptionally brilliant set … Tennyson; Arthur Hallam; John Sterling; Trench; Spedding; Spring Rice; Charles Buller; Maurice; Monckton Milnes; J。 M。 Kemble; Brookfield; Thompson。 With none of them does he seem in his undergraduate days to have been intimate。 Probably then; as afterwards; he shrank from CAMARADERIE; shared Byron's distaste for 〃enthusymusy〃; naturally cynical and self… contained; was repelled by the spiritual fervour; incessant logical collision; aggressive tilting at abuses of those young 〃Apostles;〃 already
〃Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield; Eager…hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field;〃
waxing ever daily; as Sterling exhorted; 〃in religion and radicalism。〃 He saw life differently; more practically; if more selfishly; to one rhapsodizing about the 〃plain living and high thinking〃 of Wordsworth's sonnet; he answered: 〃You know that you prefer dining with people who have good glass and china and plenty of servants。〃 For Tennyson's poetry he even then felt admiration; quotes; nay; misquotes; in 〃Eothen;〃 from the little known 〃Timbuctoo〃; (3) and from 〃Locksley Hall〃; and supplied long afterwards an incident adopted by Tennyson in 〃Enoch Arden;〃
〃Once likewise in the ringing of his ears Though faintly; merrily … far and far away … He heard the pealing of his parish bells;〃 (4)
from his own experience in the desert; when on a Sunday; amid overpowering heat and stillness; he heard the Marlen bells of Taunton peal for morning church。 (5)
In whatever set he may have lived he made his mark at Cambridge。 Lord Houghton remembered him as an orator at the Union; and speaking to Cambridge undergraduates fifty years later; after enumerating the giants of his student days; Macaulay; Praed; Buller; Sterling; Merivale; he goes on to say: 〃there; too; were Kemble and Kinglake; the historian of our earliest civilization and of our latest war; Kemble as interesting an individual as ever was portrayed by the dramatic genius of his own race; Kinglake; as bold a man…at…arms in literature as ever confronted public opinion。〃 We know; too; that not many years after leaving Cambridge he received; and refused; a solicitation to stand as Liberal representative of the University in Parliament。 He was; in fact; as far as any of his contemporaries from acquiescing in social conventionalisms and shams。 To the end of his life he chafed at such restraint: 〃when pressed to stay in country houses;〃 he writes in 1872; 〃I have had the frankness to say that I have not discipline enough。〃 Repeatedly he speaks with loathing of the 〃stale civilization;〃 the 〃utter respectability;〃 of European life; (6) longed with all his soul for the excitement and stir of soldiership; from which his shortsightedness debarred him; (7) rushed off again and again into foreign travel; set out immediately on leaving Cambridge; in 1834; for his first Eastern tour; 〃to fortify himself for the business of life。〃 Methley joined him at Hamburg; and they travelled by Berlin; Dresden; Prague; Vienna; to Semlin; where his book begins。 Lord Pollington's health broke down; and he remained to winter at Corfu; while Kinglake pursued his way alone; returning to England in October; 1835。 (8) On his return he read for the Chancery Bar along with his friend Eliot Warburton; under Bryan Procter; a Commissioner of Lunacy; better known by his poet…name; Barry Cornwall; his acquaintance with both husband and wife ripening into lifelong friendship。 Mrs。 Procter is the 〃Lady of Bitterness;〃 cited in the 〃Eothen〃 Preface。 As Anne Skepper; before her marriage; she was much admired by Carlyle; 〃a brisk witty prettyish clear eyed sharp tongued young lady〃; and was the intimate; among many; especially of Thackeray and Browning。 In epigrammatic power she resembled Kinglake; but while his acrid sayings were emitted with gentlest aspect and with softest speech; while; like Byron's Lambro:
〃he was the mildest mannered man That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat; With such true breeding of a gentleman; You never could divine his real thought;〃
her sarcasms rang out with a resonant clearness that enforced and aggravated their severity。 That two persons so strongly resembling each other in capacity for rival exhibition; or for mutual exasperation; should have maintained so firm a friendship; often surprised their acquaintance; she explained it by saying that she and Kinglake sharpened one another like two knives; that; in the words of Petruchio;
〃Where two raging fires meet together; They do consume the thing that feeds their fury。〃
Crabb Robinson; stung by her in a tender place; his boastful iterative monologues on Weimar and on Goethe; said that of all men Procter ought to escape purgatory after death; having tasted its fulness here through living so many years with Mrs。 Procter; 〃the husbands of the talkative have great reward hereafter;〃 said Rudyard Kipling's Lama。 And I have been told by those who knew the pair that there was truth as well as irritation in the taunt。 〃A graceful Preface to 'Eothen;'〃 wrote to me a now famous lady who as a girl had known Mrs。 Procter well; 〃made friendly company yesterday