And may its buyer have no cause to say, His money is but lost or thrown away.
CHAP. PAGE I. EARLY YEARS 1 II. “EOTHEN” 20 III. LITERARY AND PARLIAMENTARY LIFE 33 IV. “THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA” 56 V. MADAME NOVIKOFF 90 VI. LATER DAYS, AND DEATH 111 INDEX 149
KINGLAKE IN THE LATE FIFTIES _Frontispiece_ ELIOT WARBURTON 14 LORD RAGLAN 40 MADAME NOVIKOFF 92 KINGLAKE IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES 128
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 _bakshîsh_ 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 coæval 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 Athenæum 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.