A. W. Kinglake | Page 7

was the subject of discreditable insinuations, and was called before the
Jockey Club. Nothing was proved against him, but in consequence of
the fracas the Prince severed his connection with the Club and sold his
horses. Chiffney invented a bit named after him; a curb with two
snaffles, which gave a stronger bearing on the sides of a horse's mouth.
His rule in racing was to keep a slack rein and to ride a waiting race,
not calling on his horse till near the end. His son Samuel, who followed
him, observed the same plan; from its frequent success the term
"Chiffney rush" became proverbial. In his ride through the desert (p.
169) Kinglake speaks of his "native bells--the innocent bells of Marlen,

that never before sent forth their music beyond the Blaygon hills."
Marlen bells is the local name for the fine peal of St. Mary Magdalen,
Taunton. The Blaygon, more commonly called the Blagdon Hills, run
parallel with the Quantocks, and between them lies the fertile Vale of
Taunton Deane. "Damascus," he says, on p. 245, "was safer than
Oxford"; and adds a note on Mr. Everett's degree which requires
correction. It is true that an attempt was made to non-placet Mr.
Everett's honorary degree in the Oxford Theatre in 1843 on the ground
of his being a Unitarian; not true that it succeeded. It was a conspiracy
by the young lions of the Newmania, who had organized a formidable
opposition to the degree, and would have created a painful scene even
if defeated. But the Proctor of that year, Jelf, happened to be the
most-hated official of the century; and the furious groans of
undergraduate displeasure at his presence, continuing unabated for
three-quarters of an hour, compelled Wynter, the Vice-Chancellor, to
break up the Assembly, without recitation of the prizes, but not without
conferring the degrees in dumb show: unconscious Mr. Everett
smilingly took his place in red gown among the Doctors, the Vice-
Chancellor asserting afterwards, what was true in the letter though not
in the spirit, that he did not hear the non-placets. So while Everett was
obnoxious to the Puseyites, Jelf was obnoxious to the undergraduates;
the cannonade of the angry youngsters drowned the odium of the
theological malcontents; in the words of Bombastes:
"Another lion gave another roar, And the first lion thought the last a
bore."
The popularity of "Eothen" is a paradox: it fascinates by violating all
the rules which convention assigns to viatic narrative. It traverses the
most affecting regions of the world, and describes no one of them: the
Troad--and we get only his childish raptures over Pope's "Homer's
Iliad"; Stamboul--and he recounts the murderous services rendered by
the Golden Horn to the Assassin whose serail, palace, council chamber,
it washes; Cairo-- but the Plague shuts out all other thoughts;
Jerusalem--but Pilgrims have vulgarized the Holy Sepulchre into a
Bartholomew Fair. He gives us everywhere, not history, antiquities,
geography, description, statistics, but only Kinglake, only his own

sensations, thoughts, experiences. We are told not what the desert looks
like, but what journeying in the desert feels like. From morn till eve
you sit aloft upon your voyaging camel; the risen sun, still lenient on
your left, mounts vertical and dominant; you shroud head and face in
silk, your skin glows, shoulders ache, Arabs moan, and still moves on
the sighing camel with his disjointed awkward dual swing, till the sun
once more descending touches you on the right, your veil is thrown
aside, your tent is pitched, books, maps, cloaks, toilet luxuries, litter
your spread- out rugs, you feast on scorching toast and "fragrant" {10}
tea, sleep sound and long; then again the tent is drawn, the comforts
packed, civilization retires from the spot she had for a single night
annexed, and the Genius of the Desert stalks in.
Herein, in these subjective chatty confidences, is part of the spell he
lays upon us: while we read we are IN the East: other books, as
Warburton says, tell us ABOUT the East, this is the East itself. And yet
in his company we are always ENGLISHMEN in the East: behind
Servian, Egyptian, Syrian, desert realities, is a background of English
scenery, faint and unobtrusive yet persistent and horizoning. In the
Danubian forest we talk of past school- days. The Balkan plain
suggests an English park, its trees planted as if to shut out "some
infernal fellow creature in the shape of a new-made squire"; Jordan
recalls the Thames; the Galilean Lake, Windermere; the Via Dolorosa,
Bond Street; the fresh toast of the desert bivouac, an Eton breakfast; the
hungry questing jackals are the place-hunters of Bridgewater and
Taunton; the Damascus gardens, a neglected English manor from
which the "family" has been long abroad; in the fierce, dry desert air
are heard