A. W. Kinglake | Page 6

cover risk of loss;
even worse terms than were obtained by Warburton two years
afterwards from Colburn, who owned in the fifties to having cleared
6,000 pounds by "The Crescent and the Cross." The volume was an
octavo of 418 pages; the curious folding-plate which forms the
frontispiece was drawn and coloured by the author, and was compared
by the critics to a tea-tray. In front is Moostapha the Tatar; the two
foremost figures in the rear stand for accomplished Mysseri, whom

Kinglake was delighted to recognize long afterwards as a flourishing
hotel keeper in Constantinople, and Steel, the Yorkshire servant, in his
striped pantry jacket, "looking out for gentlemen's seats." Behind are
"Methley," Lord Pollington, in a broad-brimmed hat, and the booted leg
of Kinglake, who modestly hid his figure by a tree, but exposed his foot,
of which he was very proud. Of the other characters, "Our Lady of
Bitterness" was Mrs. Procter, "Carrigaholt" was Henry Stuart Burton of
Carrigaholt, County Clare. Here and there are allusions, obvious at the
time, now needing a scholiast, which have not in any of the reprints
been explained. In their ride through the Balkans they talked of old
Eton days. "We bullied Keate, and scoffed at Larrey Miller and Okes;
we rode along loudly laughing, and talked to the grave Servian forest as
though it were the Brocas clump." {9} Keate requires no interpreter;
Okes was an Eton tutor, afterwards Provost of King's. Larrey or Laurie
Miller was an old tailor in Keate's Lane who used to sit on his open
shop-board, facing the street, a mark for the compliments of passing
boys; as frolicsome youngsters in the days of Addison and Steele, as
High School lads in the days of Walter Scott, were accustomed to
"smoke the cobler." The Brocas was a meadow sacred to badger-baiting
and cat-hunts. The badgers were kept by a certain Jemmy Flowers, who
charged sixpence for each "draw"; Puss was turned out of a bag and
chased by dogs, her chance being to reach and climb a group of trees
near the river, known as the "Brocas Clump." Of the quotations, "a
Yorkshireman hippodamoio" (p. 35) is, I am told, an obiter dictum of
Sir Francis Doyle. "Striving to attain," etc. (p. 33), is taken not quite
correctly from Tennyson's "Timbuctoo." Our crew were "a solemn
company" (p. 57) is probably a reminiscence of "we were a gallant
company" in "The Siege of Corinth." For "'the own armchair' of our
Lyrist's 'Sweet Lady'" Anne'" (p. 161) see the poem, "My own
armchair" in Barry Cornwall's "English Lyrics." "Proud Marie of
Anjou" (p. 96) and "single-sin--" (p. 121), are unintelligible; a friend
once asked Kinglake to explain the former, but received for answer,
"Oh! that is a private thing." It may, however, have been a pet name for
little Marie de Viry, Procter's niece, and the chere amie of his verse,
whom Eothen must have met often at his friend's house. The St.
Simonians of p. 83 were the disciples of Comte de St. Simon, a Parisian
reformer in the latter part of the eighteenth century, who endeavoured

to establish a social republic based on capacity and labour. Pere
Enfantin was his disciple. The "mystic mother" was a female Messiah,
expected to become the parent of a new Saviour. "Sir Robert once said
a good thing" (p. 93), refers possibly to Sir Robert Peel, not famous for
epigram, whose one good thing is said to have been bestowed upon a
friend before Croker's portrait in the Academy. "Wonderful likeness,"
said the friend, "it gives the very quiver of the mouth." "Yes," said Sir
Robert, "and the arrow coming out of it." Or it may mean Sir Robert
Inglis, Peel's successor at Oxford, more noted for his genial kindness
and for the perpetual bouquet in his buttonhole at a date when such
ornaments were not worn, than for capacity to conceive and say good
things. In some mischievous lines describing the Oxford election where
Inglis supplanted Peel, Macaulay wrote
"And then said all the Doctors sitting in the Divinity School, Not this
man, but Sir Robert'--now Sir Robert was a fool."
But in the fifth and later editions Kinglake altered it to "Sir John."
By a curious oversight in the first two editions (p. 41) Jove was made
to gaze on Troy from Samothrace; it was rightly altered to Neptune in
the third; and "eagle eye of Jove" in the following sentence was
replaced by "dread Commoter of our globe." The phrase "a natural
Chiffney-bit" (p. 109), I have found unintelligible to- day through lapse
of time even to professional equestrians and stable-keepers. Samuel
Chiffney, a famous rider and trainer, was born in 1753, and won the
Derby on Skyscraper in 1789. He managed the Prince of Wales's stud,