A. W. Kinglake | Page 2

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