A. W. Kinglake

Biographical Study of A. W.
Kinglake
by Rev. W. Tuckwell

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Kinglake
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Title: Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake

Author: Rev. W. Tuckwell
Release Date: May, 1996 [EBook #539] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 23, 1996]
[Most recently updated: August 27, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF KINGLAKE ***

Transcribed from the 1902 Edition by David Price, email
[email protected]

A. W. KINGLAKE--A BIOGRAPHICAL AND LITERARY STUDY

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,