A. W. Kinglake | Page 5

as a girl had known Mrs. Procter well,
"made friendly company yesterday to a lonely meal, and brought back
memories of Mr. Kinglake's kind spoiling of a raw young woman, and
of the wit, the egregious vanity, the coarseness, the kindness, of that
hard old worldling our Lady of Bitterness." In the presence of one man,
Tennyson, she laid aside her shrewishness: "talking with Alfred
Tennyson lifts me out of the earth earthy; a visit to Farringford is like a
retreat to the religious." A celebrity in London for fifty years, she died,
witty and vigorous to the last, in 1888. "You and I and Mr. Kinglake,"
she says to Lord Houghton, "are all that are left of the goodly band that
used to come to St. John's Wood; Eliot Warburton, Motley, Adelaide,

Count de Verg, Chorley, Sir Edwin Landseer, my husband." "I never
could write a book," she tells him in another letter, "and one strong
reason for not doing so was the idea of some few seeing how poor it
was. Venables was one of the few; I need not say that you were one,
and Kinglake."
Kinglake was called to the Chancery Bar, and practised apparently with
no great success. He believed that his reputation as a writer stood in his
way. When, in 1845, poor Hood's friends were helping him by
gratuitous articles in his magazine, "Hood's Own," Kinglake wrote to
Monckton Milnes refusing to contribute. He will send 10 pounds to buy
an article from some competent writer, but will not himself write. "It
would be seriously injurious to me if the author of 'Eothen' were
affiched as contributing to a magazine. My frailty in publishing a book
has, I fear, already hurt me in my profession, and a small sin of this
kind would bring on me still deeper disgrace with the solicitors."
Twice at least in these early years he travelled. "Mr. Kinglake," writes
Mrs. Procter in 1843, "is in Switzerland, reading Rousseau." And in the
following year we hear of him in Algeria, accompanying St. Arnaud in
his campaign against the Arabs. The mingled interest and horror
inspired in him by this extra-ordinary man finds expression in his
"Invasion of the Crimea" (ii. 157). A few, a very few survivors, still
remember his appearance and manners in the forties. The eminent
husband of a lady, now passed away, who in her lifetime gave Sunday
dinners at which Kinglake was always present, speaks of him as
SENSITIVE, quiet in the presence of noisy people, of Brookfield and
the overpowering Bernal Osborne; liking their company, but never
saying anything worthy of remembrance. A popular old statesman, still
active in the House of Commons, recalls meeting him at Palmerston,
Lord Harrington's seat, where was assembled a party in honour of
Madame Guiccioli and her second husband, the Marquis de Boissy, and
tells me that he attached himself to ladies, not to gentlemen, nor ever
joined in general tattle. Like many other famous men, he passed
through a period of shyness, which yielded to women's tactfulness only.
From the first they appreciated him; "if you were as gentle as your
friend Kinglake," writes Mrs. Norton reproachfully to Hayward in the

sulks. Another coaeval of those days calls him handsome--an epithet I
should hardly apply to him later--slight, not tall, sharp featured, with
dark hair well tended, always modishly dressed after the fashion of the
thirties, the fashion of Bulwer's exquisites, or of H. K. Browne's
"Nicholas Nickleby" illustrations; leaving on all who saw him an
impression of great personal distinction, yet with an air of youthful
ABANDON which never quite left him: "He was pale, small, and
delicate in appearance," says Mrs. Simpson, Nassau Senior's daughter,
who knew him to the end of his life; while Mrs. Andrew Crosse, his
friend in the Crimean decade, cites his finely chiselled features and
intellectual brow, "a complexion bloodless with the pallor not of
ill-health, but of an old Greek bust."
CHAPTER II
--"EOTHEN"

"Eothen" appeared in 1844. Twice, Kinglake tells us, he had essayed
the story of his travels, twice abandoned it under a sense of strong
disinclination to write. A third attempt was induced by an entreaty from
his friend Eliot Warburton, himself projecting an Eastern tour; and to
Warburton in a characteristic preface the narrative is addressed. The
book, when finished, went the round of the London market without
finding a publisher. It was offered to John Murray, who cited his
refusal of it as the great blunder of his professional life, consoling
himself with the thought that his father had equally lacked foresight
thirty years before in declining the "Rejected Addresses"; he secured
the copyright later on. It was published in the end by a personal friend,
Ollivier, of Pall Mall, Kinglake paying 50 pounds to