If Lord Raglan was the Hector of the Crimean Iliad, its Agamemnon was Lord Stratford: "king of men," as Stanley called him in his funeral sermon at Westminster; king of distrustful home Cabinets, nominally his masters, of scheming European emba.s.sies, of insulting Russian opponents, of presumptuous French generals, of false and fleeting Pashas (_Le Sultan_, _c"est Lord Stratford_, said St. Arnaud), of all men, whatever their degree, who entered his amba.s.sadorial presence. Ascendency was native to the man; while yet in his teens we find Etonian and Cambridge friends writing to him deferentially as to a critic and superior. At four and twenty he became Minister to a Court manageable only by high-handed authority and menace. He owned, and for the most part controlled, a violent temper; it broke bounds sometimes, to our great amus.e.m.e.nt as we read to-day, to the occasional discomfiture of _attaches_ or of dependents, {66} to the abject terror of Turkish Sublimities who had outworn his patience. But he knew when to be angry; he could pulverize by fiery outbreaks the Reis Effendi and his master, Abdu-l-Mejid; but as Plenipotentiary to the United States he could "quench the terror of his beak, the lightning of his eye," disarming by his formal courtesy and winning by his obvious sincerity the suspicious and irritable John Quincy Adams. When Menschikoff once insulted him, seeing that a quarrel at that moment would be fatal to his purpose, he pretended to be deaf, and left the Russian in the belief that his rude speech had not been heard. Enthroned for the sixth time in Constantinople, at the dangerous epoch of 1853, he could point to an unequalled diplomatic record in the past; to the Treaty of Bucharest, to reunion of the Helvetic Confederacy shattered by Napoleon"s fall, to the Convention which ratified Greek independence, to the rescue from Austrian malignity of the Hungarian refugees.
His conduct of the negotiations preceding the Crimean War is justly called the cornerstone of his career: at this moment of his greatness Kinglake encounters and describes him: through the brilliant chapters in his opening volume, as more fully later on through Mr. Lane Poole"s admirable biography, the Great Eltchi is known to English readers. He moves across the stage with a majesty sometimes bordering on what Iago calls bombast circ.u.mstance; drums and trumpets herald his every entrance; now pacing the shady gardens of the Bosphorus, now foiling, "in his grand quiet way," the Czar"s ferocious Christianity, or torturing his baffled amba.s.sador by scornful concession of the points which he formally demanded but did not really want; or crushing with "thin, tight, merciless lips and grand overhanging Canning brow" the presumptuous French commander who had dared to enter his presence with a plot for undermining England"s influence in the partnership of the campaign. Was he, we ask as we end the fascinating description, was he, what Bright and the Peace Party proclaimed him to be, the cause of the Crimean War? The Czar"s personal dislike to him-a caprice which has never been explained {68}-exasperated no doubt to the mind of Nicholas the repulse of Menschikoff"s demands; but that the precipitation of the prince and his master had put the Russian Court absolutely in the wrong is universally admitted. It has been urged against him that his recommendation of the famous Vienna Note to the Porte was official merely, and allowed the watchful Turks to a.s.sume his personal approbation of their refusal. It may be so; his biographer does not admit so much: but it is obvious that the Turks were out of hand, and that no pressure from Lord Stratford could have persuaded them to accept the Note. Further, the "Russian a.n.a.lysis of the Note," escaping shortly afterwards from the bag of diplomatic secrecy, revealed to our Cabinet the necessity of those amendments to the Note on which the Porte had insisted. And lastly, the pa.s.sage of the Dardanelles by our fleet, which more than any overt act made war inevitable, was ordered by the Government at home against Lord Stratford"s counsel. Between panic-stricken statesmen and vacillating amba.s.sadors, Lord Clarendon on one side, M. de la Cour on the other, the Eltchi stands like Tennyson"s promontory of rock,
"Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crowned."
Napoleon at St. Helena attributed much of his success in the field to the fact that he was not hampered by governments at home. Every modern commander, down certainly to the present moment, must have envied him.
Kinglake"s mordant pen depicts with felicity and compression the men of Downing Street, who without military experience or definite political aim, thwarted, criticised, over-ruled, tormented, their much-enduring General. We have Aberdeen, deficient in mental clearness and propelling force, by his horror of war bringing war to pa.s.s; Gladstone, of too subtle intellect and too lively conscience, "a good man in the worst sense of the term"; Palmerston, above both in keenness of instinct and in strength of will, meaning war from the first, and biding his time to insure it; Newcastle, sanguine to the verge of rashness, loyally adherent to Lord Raglan while governed by his own judgment, distrustful under stress of popular clamour; Panmure, ungenerous, rough-tongued, violent, churlish, yet not malevolent-"a rhinoceros rather than a tiger"-hurried by subservience to the newspaper Press into injustice which he afterwards recognized, yet did but sullenly repair. We see finally that dominant Press itself, personified in the all-powerful Delane, a potentate with convictions at once flexible and vehement; forceful without spite and merciless without malignity; writing no articles, but evoking, shaping, revising all. The French commanders were not hampered by the muzzled Paris Press, which had long since ceased to utter any but dictated sentiments; they suffered even more disastrously from the imperious interference of the Tuileries. Canrobert"s inaction, mutability, sudden alarms, flagrant breaches of faith, were inexplicable until long afterwards, when the fall of the Empire disclosed the secret instructions-disloyal to his allies and ruinous to the campaign-by which Louis Napoleon shackled his unhappy General. In Canrobert"s successor, Pelissier, he met his match. For the first time a strong man headed the French army. Short of stature, bull-necked and ma.s.sive in build, with grey hair, long dark moustache, keen fiery eyes, his coa.r.s.e rough speech masking tested brain power and high intellectual culture, he brought new life to the benumbed French army, new hope to Lord Raglan. The duel between the resolute general and the enraged Emperor is narrated with a touch comedy. All that Lord Raglan desired, all that the Emperor forbade, Pelissier was stubbornly determined to accomplish; the siege should be pressed at once, the city taken at any cost, the expedition to Kertch resumed. Once only, under torment of the Emperor"s reproaches and the Minister at War"s remonstrances, his resolution and his nerve gave way; eight days of failing judgment issued in the Karabelnaya defeat, the severest repulse which the two armies had sustained; but the paralysis pa.s.sed away, he showed himself once more eager to act in concert with the English general;-when the long-borne strain of disappointment and anxiety sapped at last Lord Raglan"s vital forces, and the hard fierce Frenchman stood for upwards of an hour beside his dead colleague"s bedside, "crying like a child."
The lieutenants of Lord Raglan in the Crimea have long since pa.s.sed away, but in artistic epical presentment they retain their place around him.
Airey, his right hand from the first disembarkation at Kalamita Bay, strong-willed, decisive, ardent, thrusting away suspense and doubt, untying every knot, is vindicated by his Chief against the Duke of Newcastle"s wordy inculpation in the severest despatch perhaps ever penned to his official superior by a soldier in the field. Colin Campbell, with glowing face, grey kindling eye, light, stubborn, crisping hair, leads his Highland brigade tip the hill against the Vladimir columns, till "with the sorrowful wail which bursts from the brave Russian infantry when they have to suffer loss," eight battalions of the enemy fall back in retreat. Lord Lucan, tall, lithe, slender, his face glittering and panther-like in moments of strenuous action, wins our hearts as he won Kinglake"s, in spite of the mis-aimed cleverness and presumptuous self-confidence which always criticised and sometimes disobeyed the orders of his Chief. General Pennefather, "the grand old boy," his exulting radiant face flashing everywhere through the smoke, his resonant innocuous oaths roaring cheerily down the line, sustains all day the handful of our troops against the tenfold ma.s.ses of the enemy.
Generous and eloquent are the notices of Korniloff and Todleben, the great sailor and the great engineer, the soul and the brain of the Sebastopol defence. The first fell in the siege, the second lived to write its history, to become a valued friend of Kinglake, to explore and interpret in his company long afterwards the scenes of struggle; his book and his personal guidance gave to the historian what would otherwise have been unattainable, a clear knowledge of the conflict as viewed from within the town.
The pitched battlefields of the campaign were three, Alma, Balaclava, Inkerman. The Alma chapter is the most graphic, for there the fight was concentrated, offering to a spectator by Lord Raglan"s side a _coup d"il_ of the entire action. The French were by bad generalship virtually wiped out; for Bosquet crossed the river too far to the right, Canrobert was afraid to move without artillery, Prince Napoleon and St.
Arnaud"s reserves were jammed together in the bottom of the valley. We see, as though on the spot, the advance, irregular and unsupported, of Codrington"s brigade, their dash into the Great Redoubt and subsequent disorderly retreat; the enemy checked by the two guns from Lord Raglan"s knoll and by the steadiness of the Royal Fusiliers; the repulse of the Scots Fusiliers and the peril which hung over the event; then the superb advance of Guards and Highlanders up the hill, thin red line against ma.s.sive columns, which determined finally the action.
The interest of the Balaclava fight centres in the two historic cavalry charges. Here again, from his position on the hill above, Kinglake witnessed both; the first, clear in smokeless air, the second lost in the volleying clouds which filled the valley of death. He saw the enormous ma.s.s of Russian cavalry, 3,500 sabres, flooding like an avalanche down the hill with a momentum which Scarlett"s tiny squadron could not for a moment have resisted; their unexplained halt, the three hundred seizing the opportunity to strike, digging individually into the Russian ranks, the scarlet streaks visibly cleaving the dense grey columns. Inwedged and surrounded, in their pa.s.sionate blood frenzy, with ceaseless play of whirling sword, with impetus of human and equestrian weight and strength, the red atoms hewed their way to the Russian rear, turned, worked back, emerged, reformed; while the 4th and 5th Dragoons, the Royals, the 1st Inniskillings, dashed upon the amazed column right, left, front, till the close-locked ma.s.s headed slowly up the hill, ranks loosened, hors.e.m.e.n turned and galloped off, a beaten straggling herd. Eight minutes elapsed from the time when Scarlett gave the word to charge, until the moment when the Russians broke: we turn from the fifty describing pages, breathless as though we had ridden in the melley; if the episode has no historical parallel, the narrative is no less unique. Our greatest contemporary poet tried to celebrate it; his lines are tame and unexciting beside Kinglake"s pa.s.sionate pulsing rhapsody. Its effect upon the Russian mind was lasting; out of all their vast array hardly a single squadron was ever after able to keep its ground against the approach of English cavalry; while but for Cathcart"s obstinacy and Lucan"s temper it would have issued in the immediate recapture of the Causeway Heights.
The Charge of the Light Brigade, on the other hand, while it stirred the imagination of the poet, shocked the military conscience of the historian. He saw in it with agony, as Lord Raglan saw, as the French spectators saw, no act of heroic sacrifice, but a needless, fruitless ma.s.sacre. "You have lost the Light Brigade," was his commander"s salutation to Lord Lucan. "_C"est magnifique_, _mais ce n"est pas la guerre_," was the oft-quoted reproof of Bosquet. The "someone"s blunder," the sullen perversity in misconception which destroyed the flower of our cavalry, has faded from men"s memories; the splendour of the deed remains. It is well to recover salvage from the irrevocable, to voice and to prolong the deep human interest attaching to death encountered at the call of duty; that is the poet"s task, and brilliantly it has been discharged. Its other side, the paean of sorrow for a self-destructive exploit, the dirge on lives wantonly thrown away, the deep blame attaching to the untractableness which sent them to their doom, was the task of the historian, and that too has been faithfully and lastingly accomplished.
Inkerman was the most complicated of the battles; the chapters which record it are correspondingly taxing to the reader. More than once or twice they must be scanned, with close study of their lucid maps, before the intricate sequences are fairly and distinctively grasped; the sixth book of Thucydides, a standing terror to young Greek students, is light and easy reading compared with the bulky sixth volume of Kinglake. The hero of the day was Pennefather; he maintained on Mount Inkerman a combat of pickets reinforced from time to time, while around him through nine hours successive attacks of thousands were met by hundreds. The disparity of numbers was appalling. At daybreak 40,000 Russian troops advanced against 3,000 English and were repulsed. Three hours later 19,000 fresh troops came on, pa.s.sed through a gap in our lines, which Cathcart"s disobedience, atoned for presently by his death, had left unoccupied, and seized the heights behind us; they too were dispossessed, but our numbers were dwindling and our strength diminishing. The Home Ridge, key of our position, was next invaded by 6,000 Russians; the 7th St. Leger, linked with a few Zouaves and with 200 men of our 77th Regiment, French and English for once joyously intermingled, hurled them back. It was the crisis of the fight; Canrobert"s interposition would have determined it; but he sullenly refused to move. Finally, led by two or three daring young officers, 300 of our wearied troops charged the Russian battery which had tormented us all day; their artillerymen, already flinching under the galling fire of two 18-pounders, brought up by Lord Raglan"s foresight early in the morning, hastily withdrew their guns, and the battle was won. It was a day of Homeric rushes; Burnaby, with only twenty men to support him, rescuing the Grenadier Guards"
colours; the onset of the 20th with their "Minden Yell"; Colonel Daubeny with two dozen followers cleaving the Russian trunk column at the barrier; Waddy"s dash at the retreating artillery train, foiled only by the presence and the readiness of Todleben. One marvels in reading how the English held their own; their victory against so tremendous odds is ascribed by the historian to three conditions; the hampering of the enemy by his crowded ma.s.ses; the slaughter amongst his officers early in the fight, which deprived their men of leadership; above all, the dense mist which obscured from him the fewness of his opponents. If Canrobert with his fresh troops had followed in pursuit, the Russian"s retreat must have been turned into a rout and his artillery captured; if on the following day he had a.s.saulted the Flagstaff Bastion, Sebastopol, Todleben owned, must have fallen. He would do neither; his hesitancy and apparent feebleness have already been explained; but to it, and to the sinister influence which held his hand, were due the subsequent miseries of the Crimean winter.
But the epic muse exacted from Kinglake, as from Virgil long before, the portrayal not only of generals and of battles, but of two great monarchs, each in his own day conspicuously and absolutely prominent-the Czar Nicholas and the Emperor Napoleon:
"dicam horrida belia, Dicam acies, actosque animis in funera REGES."
His handling of them is characteristic. Few men living then could have approached either without a certain awe, their "genius" rebuked,-like Mark Antony"s, in the presence of Caesars so imposing and so mighty; Kinglake"s att.i.tude towards both is the att.i.tude of cold a.n.a.lysis.
In the opening of the fifties the Czar Nicholas was the most powerful man then living in the world. He ruled over sixty million subjects whose loyalty bordered on worship: he had in arms a million soldiers, brave and highly trained. In the troubles of 1848 he had stood scornful and secure amid the overthrow of surrounding thrones; and the entire impact of his vast and well-organized Empire was subject to his single will; whatever he chose to do he did. Of stern and unrelenting nature, of active and widely ranging capacity for business, of gigantic stature and commanding presence, he inspired almost universal terror; and yet his friendliness had when he pleased a glow and frankness irresistible in its charm.
Readers of Queen Victoria"s early life will recall the alarm she felt at his sudden proposal to visit Windsor in 1844, the fascination which his presence exercised on her when he became her guest. He professed to embody his standard of conduct in the English word "gentleman"; his ideal of human grandeur was the character of the Duke of Wellington. It was an evil destiny that betrayed this high-minded man into crooked ways; that made England sacrifice the stateliest among her ancient friends to an ign.o.ble and crime-stained adventurer; that poured out blood and treasure for no public advantage and with no permanent result; that first humiliated, then slew with broken heart the man who had been so great, and who is still regarded by surviving Russians who knew his inner life and had seen him in his gentle mood with pa.s.sionate reverence and affection.
Kinglake"s description of "Prince Louis Bonaparte," of his character, his accomplices, his policy, his crimes, is perhaps unequalled in historical literature; I know not where else to look for a vivisection so scientific and so merciless of a great potentate in the height of his power. With scrutiny polite, impartial, guarded, he lays bare the springs of a conscienceless nature and the secrets of a crime-driven career; while for the combination of precise simplicity with exhaustive synopsis, the masquerading of moral indignation in the guise of mocking laughter, the loathing of a gentleman for a scoundrel set to the measure not of indignation but of contempt, we must go back to the refined insolence, the ???? pepa?de????, of Voltaire. He had well known Prince Napoleon in his London days, had been attracted by him as a curiosity-"a balloon man who had twice fallen from the skies and yet was still alive"-had divined the mental power veiled habitually by his blank, opaque, wooden looks, had listened to his ambitious talk and gathered up the utterances of his thoughtful, long-pondering mind, had quarrelled with him finally and lastingly over rivalry in the good graces of a woman. {82} He saw in him a fourfold student; of the art of war, of the mind of the first Napoleon, of the French people"s character, of the science by which law may lend itself to stratagem and become a weapon of deceit.
The intellect of this strange being was subject to an uncertainty of judgment, issuing in ambiguity of enterprise, and giving an impression of well-kept secrecy, due often to the fact that divided by mental conflict he had no secret to tell. He understood truth, but under the pressure of strong motive would invariably deceive. He sometimes, out of curiosity, would listen to the voice of conscience, and could imitate neatly on occasion the scrupulous language of a man of honour; but the consideration that one of two courses was honest, and the other not, never entered into his motives for action. He was bold in forming plots, and skilful in conducting them; but in the hour of trial and under the confront of physical danger he was paralysed by const.i.tutional timidity.
His great aim in life was to be conspicuous-_digito monstrarier_-coupled with a theatric mania which made scenic effects and surprises essential to the eminence he craved.
Handling this key to his character, Kinglake pursues him into his December treason, contrasts the consummate cleverness of his schemes with the faltering cowardice which shrank, like Macbeth"s ambition, from "the illness should attend them," and which, but for the stronger nerve of those behind him, would have caused his collapse, at Paris as at Strasburg and Boulogne, in contact with the shock of action. It is difficult now to realize the commotion caused by this fourteenth chapter of Kinglake"s book. The Emperor was at the summit of his power, fresh from Austrian conquest, viewed with alarm by England, whose rulers feared his strength and were distrustful of his friendship. Our Crown, our government, our society, had condoned his usurpation; he had kissed the Queen"s cheek, bent her ministers to his will, ridden through her capital a triumphant and applauded guest. And now men read not only a cynical dissection of his character and disclosure of his early foibles, but the hideous details of his deceit and treachery, the phases of cold-blooded ma.s.sacre and lawless deportation by which he emptied France of all who hesitated to enrol themselves as his accomplices or his tools. Forty years have pa.s.sed since the terrible indictment was put forth; down to its minutest allegation it has been proved literally true; the arch criminal has fallen from his estate to die in disgrace, disease, exile.
When we talk to-day with cultivated Frenchmen of that half-forgotten epoch, and of the book which bared its horrors, we are met by their response of ardent grat.i.tude to the man who joined to pa.s.sionate hatred of iniquity surpa.s.sing capacity for denouncing it; their avowal that with all its frequent exposure of their military shortcomings and depreciation of their national character, no English chronicle of the century stands higher in their esteem than the history of the war in the Crimea.
The close of the book is grim and tragic in the main, the stir of gallant fights exchanged for the dreary course of siege, intrenchment, mine and countermine. We have the awful winter on the heights, the November hurricane, the foiled bombardments, the cruel blunder of the Karabelnaya a.s.sault, the bitter natural discontent at home, the weak subservience of our government to misdirected clamour, the touching help-fraught advent of the Lady Nurses: then, just as better prospects dawn, the Chief"s collapse and death. From the morrow of Inkerman to the end, through no fault of his, the historian"s chariot wheels drag. More and more one sees how from the nature of the task, except for the flush of contemporary interest then, except by military students now, it is not a work to be popularly read; the exhausted interest of its subject swamps the genius of its narrator. Scattered through its more serious matter are gems with the old "Eothen" sparkle, of periphrasis, aphorism, felicitous phrase and pregnant epithet. Such is the fine a.n.a.logy between the worship of holy shrines and the lover"s homage to the spot which his mistress"s feet have trod; such France"s tolerance of the Elysee brethren compared to the Arab laying his verminous burnous upon an ant-hill; the apt quotation from the Psalms to ill.u.s.trate the on-coming of the Guards; the demeanour of horses in action; the course of a flying cannon-ball; the two ponderous troopers at the Horse Guards; Tom Tower and his Croats landing stores for our soldiers from the "Erminia." Or again, we have the light clear touches of a single line; "the decisiveness and consistency of despotism"-"the fractional and volatile interests in trading adventure which go by the name of Shares"-"the unlabelled, undocketed state of mind which shall enable a man to encounter the Unknown"-"the qualifying words which correct the imprudences and derange the grammatical structure of a Queen"s Speech": but these are islets in the sea of narrative, not, as in "Eothen," woof-threads which cross the warp.
To compare an idyll with an epic, it may be said, is like comparing a cameo with a Grecian temple: be it so; but the temple falls in ruins, the cameo is preserved in cabinets; and it is possible that a century hence the Crimean history will be forgotten, while "Eothen" is read and enjoyed. The best judges at the time p.r.o.nounced that as a lasting monument of literary force the work was over refined: "Kinglake," said Sir George Cornewall Lewis, "tries to write better than he can write"; quoting, perhaps unconsciously, the epigram of a French art critic a hundred years before-_Il cherche toujours a faire mieux qu"il ne fait_.
{87} He lavished on it far more pains than on "Eothen": the proof sheets were a black sea of erasures, intercalations, blots; the original chaotic ma.n.u.script pages had to be disentangled by a calligraphic Taunton bookseller before they could be sent to press. This fastidiousness in part gained its purpose; won temporary success; gave to his style the glitter, rapidity, point, effectiveness, of a pungent editorial; went home, stormed, convinced, vindicated, damaged, triumphed: but it missed by excessive polish the reposeful, unlaboured, cla.s.sic grace essential to the highest art. Over-scrupulous manipulation of words is liable to the "defect of its qualities"; as with unskilful goldsmiths of whom old Latin writers tell us, the file goes too deep, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g away more of the first fine minting than we can afford to lose. Ruskin has explained to us how the decadence of Gothic architecture commenced through care bestowed on window tracery for itself instead of as an avenue or vehicle for the admission of light. Read "words" for tracery, "thought" for light, and we see how inspiration avenges itself so soon as diction is made paramount; artifice, which demands and misses watchful self-concealment, pa.s.ses into mannerism; we have lost the incalculable charm of spontaneity. Comparison of "Eothen" with the "Crimea" will I think exemplify this truth. The first, to use Matthew Arnold"s imagery, is Attic, the last has declined to the Corinthian; it remains a great, an amazingly great production; great in its pictorial force, its omnipresent survey, verbal eloquence, firm grasp, marshalled delineation of mult.i.tudinous and entangled matter; but it is not unique amongst martial records as "Eothen" is unique amongst books of travel: it is through "Eothen" that its author has soared into a cla.s.sic, and bids fair to hold his place. And, apart from the merit of style, great campaigns lose interest in a third, if not in a second generation; their historical consequence effaced through lapse of years; their policy seen to have been nugatory or mischievous; their chronicles, swallowed greedily at the birth like Saturn"s progeny, returning to vex their parent; relegated finally to an honourable exile in the library upper shelves, where they hold a place eyed curiously, not invaded:
"devoured As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done. . . . To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, In monumental mockery."
CHAPTER V MADAME NOVIKOFF
THE Cabinet Edition of "The Invasion of the Crimea" appeared in 1877, shortly after the Servian struggle for independence, which aroused in England universal interest and sympathy. Kinglake had heard from the lips of a valued lady friend the tragic death-tale of her brother Nicholas Kireeff, who fell fighting as a volunteer on the side of the gallant Servian against the Turk: and, much moved by the recital, offered to honour the memory of the dead hero in the Preface to his forthcoming edition. He kept his word; made sympathetic reference to M. Kireeff in the opening of his Preface; but pa.s.sed in pursuance of his original design to a hostile impeachment of Russia, its people, its church, its ruler. This was an error of judgment and of feeling; and the lady, reading the ma.n.u.script, indignantly desired him to burn the whole rather than commit the outrage of a.s.sociating her brother"s name with an attack on causes and personages dear to him as to herself. Kinglake listened in silence, then tendered to her a _crayon rouge_, begging her to efface all that pained her. She did so; and, diminished by three-fourths of its matter, the Preface appears in Vol. I. of the Cabinet Edition. The erasure was no slight sacrifice to an author of Kinglake"s literary sensitiveness, mutilating as it did the integrity of a carefully schemed composition, and leaving visible the scar. He sets forth the strongly sentimental and romantic side of Russian temperament. Love of the Holy Shrines begat the war of 1853, racial ardour the war of 1876. The first was directed by a single will, the second by national enthusiasm; yet the mind of Nicholas was no less tossed by a breathless strife of opposing desires and moods than was Russia at large by the struggle between Panslavism and statesmanship. Kinglake paints vividly the imposing figure of the young Kireeff, his stature, beauty, bravery, the white robe he wore incarnadined by death-wounds, his body captured by the hateful foes. He goes on to tell how myth rose like an exhalation round his memory: how legends of "a giant piling up hecatombs by a mighty slaughter" reverberated through mansion and cottage, town and village, cathedral and church; until thousands of volunteers rushed to arms that they might go where young Kireeff had gone. Alexander"s hand was forced, and the war began, which but for England"s intervention would have cleared Europe of the Turk. We have the text, but not the sermon; the Preface ends abruptly with an almost clumsy peroration.
[Picture: Madame Novikoff]
The lady who inspired both the eulogy and the curtailment was Madame Novikoff, more widely known perhaps as O. K., with whom Kinglake maintained during the last twenty years of life an intimate and mutual friendship. Madame Olga Novikoff, _nee_ Kireeff, is a Russian lady of aristocratic rank both by parentage and marriage. In a lengthened sojourn at Vienna with her brother-in-law, the Russian amba.s.sador, she learned the current business of diplomacy. An eager religious propagandist, she formed alliance with the "Old Catholics" on the Continent, and with many among the High Church English clergy; becoming, together with her brother Alexander, a member of the _Reunion Nationale_, a society for the union of Christendom. Her interest in education has led her to devote extensive help to school and church building and endowment on her son"s estate. G.o.d-daughter to the Czar Nicholas, she is a devoted Imperialist, nor less in sympathy, as were all her family, with Russian patriotism: after the death of her brother in Servia on July 6/18, 1876, she became a still more ardent Slavophile. The three articles of her creed are, she says, those of her country, Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationalism. Her political aspirations have been guided, and guided right, by her tact and goodness of heart. Her life"s aim has been to bring about a cordial understanding between England and her native land; there is little doubt that her influence with leading Liberal politicians, and her vigorous allocutions in the Press, had much to do with the enthusiasm manifested by England for the liberation of the Danubian States. Readers of the Princess Lieven"s letters to Earl Grey will recall the part played by that able amba.s.sadress in keeping this country neutral through the crisis of 18289; to her Madame Novikoff has been likened, and probably with truth, by the Turkish Press both English and Continental. She was accused in 1876 of playing on the religious side of Mr. Gladstone"s character to secure his interest in the Danubians as members of the Greek Church, while with unecclesiastical people she was said to be equally skilful on the political side, converting at the same time Anglophobe Russia by her letters in the "Moscow Gazette." Mr.
Gladstone"s leanings to Montenegro were attributed angrily in the English "Standard" to Madame Novikoff: "A serious statesman should know better than to catch contagion from the petulant enthusiasm of a Russian Apostle." The contagion was in any case caught, and to some purpose; letter after letter had been sent by the lady to the great statesman, then in temporary retirement, without reply, until the last of these, "a bitter cry of a sister for a sacrificed brother," brought a feeling answer from Mrs. Gladstone, saying that her husband was deeply moved by the appeal, and was writing on the subject. In a few days appeared his famous pamphlet, "Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East."
Carlyle advised that Madame Novikoff"s scattered papers should be worked into a volume; they appeared under the t.i.tle "Is Russia Wrong?" with a preface by Froude, the moderate and ultra-prudent tone of which infuriated Hayward and Kinglake, as not being sufficiently appreciative.
Hayward declared some woman had bia.s.sed him; Kinglake was of opinion that by studying the _etat_ of Queen Elizabeth Froude had "gone and turned himself into an old maid."
Froude"s Preface to her next work, "Russia and England, a Protest and an Appeal," by O. K., 1880, was worded in a very different tone and satisfied all her friends. The book was also reviewed with highest praise by Gladstone in "The Nineteenth Century." Learning that an a.s.sault upon it was contemplated in "The Quarterly," Kinglake offered to supply the editor, Dr. Smith, with materials which might be so used as to neutralize a _personal_ attack upon O. K. Smith entreated him to compose the whole article himself. "I could promise you," he writes, "that the authorship should be kept a profound secret;" but this Kinglake seems to have thought undesirable. The article appeared in April, 1880, under the t.i.tle of "The Slavonic Menace to Europe." It opens with a panegyric on the auth.o.r.ess: "She has mastered our language with conspicuous success; she expostulates as easily as she reproaches, and she exhibits as much facility in barbing shafts of satire as in framing specious excuses for daring acts of diplomacy." It insists on the high esteem felt for her by both the Russian and Austrian governments, telling with much humour an anecdote of Count Beust, the Prime Minister of Austria during her residence in Vienna. The Count, after meeting her at a dinner party at the Turkish Emba.s.sy, composed a set of verses in her honour, and gave them to her, but she forgot to mention them to her brother-in-law. The Prime Minister, encountering the latter, asked his opinion of the verses; and the amba.s.sador was greatly amazed at knowing nothing of the matter.
{96} From amenities towards the auth.o.r.ess, the article pa.s.ses abruptly to hostile criticism of the book; declares it to be proscribed in Russia as mischievous, and to have precipitated a general war by keeping up English interest in Servian rebellion. It sneers in doubtful taste at the lady"s learning:
"sit non doctissima conjux, Sit nox c.u.m somno, sit sine lite dies;"
denounces the Slavs as incapable of being welded into a nation, urging that their independence must destroy Austria-Hungary, a consummation desired by Madame Novikoff, with her feline contempt for "poor dear Austria," but which all must unite to prevent if they would avert a European war.
How could one clear harp, men asked themselves as they read, have produced so diverse tones? The riddle is solved when we learn that the first part only was from Kinglake"s pen: having vindicated his friend"s ability and good faith, her right to speak and to be heard attentively, he left the survey of her views, with which he probably disagreed, to the originally a.s.signed reviewer. The article, Madame Novikoff tells us in the "Nouvelle Revue," was received _avec une stupefaction unanime_. It formed the general talk for many days, was attributed to Lord Salisbury, was supposed to have been inspired by Prince Gortschakoff. The name standing against it in Messrs. Murray"s books, as they kindly inform me, is that of a writer still alive, and better known now than then, but they never heard that Kinglake had a hand in it; the editor would seem to have kept his secret even from the publishers. Kinglake sent the article in proof to the lady; hoped that the facts he had imparted and the interpolations he had inserted would please her; he could have made the attack on Russia more pointed had he written it; she would think the leniency shows a fault on the right side; he did not know the writer of this latter part. He begged her to acquaint her friends in Moscow what an important and majestic organ is "The Quarterly," how weighty therefore its laudation of herself. She recalls his bringing her soon afterwards an article on her, written, he said, in an adoring tone by Laveleye in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," and directing her to a paper in "Fraser," by Miss Pauline Irby, a pa.s.sionate lover of the "Slav ragam.u.f.fins," and a worshipper of Madame Novikoff. He quotes with delight Chenery"s approbation of her "Life of Skobeleff"; he spoke of you "with a gleam of kindliness in his eyes which really and truly I had never observed before." "The Times" quotes her as the "eloquent auth.o.r.ess of "Russia and England""; "fancy that from your enemy! you are getting even "The Times" into your net." A later article on O. K. contains some praise, but more abuse. Hayward is angry with it; Kinglake thinks it more friendly than could have been expected "to _you_, a friend of _me_, their old open enemy: the sugar-plums were meant for you, the sprinklings of soot for me."
Besides "Russia and England" Madame Novikoff is the author of "Friends or Foes?-is Russia wrong?" and of a "Life of Skobeleff," the hero of Plevna and of Geok Tepe. From her natural endowments and her long familiarity with Courts, she has acquired a capacity for combining, controlling, entertaining social "circles" which recalls _les salons d"autrefois_, the drawing-rooms of an Ancelot, a Le Brun, a Recamier. Residing in several European capitals, she surrounds herself in each with persons intellectually eminent; in England, where she has long spent her winters, Gladstone, Carlyle and Froude, Charles Villiers, Bernal Osborne, Sir Robert Morier, Lord Houghton, and many more of the same high type, formed her court and owned her influence.
Kinglake first met her at Lady Holland"s in 1870, and mutual liking ripened rapidly into close friendship. During her residences in England few days pa.s.sed in which he did not present himself at her drawing-room in Claridge"s Hotel: when absent in Russia or on the Continent, she received from him weekly letters, though he used to complain that writing to a lady through the _poste restante_ was like trying to kiss a nun through a double grating. These letters, all faithfully preserved, I have been privileged to see; they remind me, in their mixture of personal with narrative charm, of Swift"s "Letters to Stella"; except that Swift"s are often coa.r.s.e and sometimes prurient, while Kinglake"s chivalrous admiration for his friend, though veiled occasionally by graceful banter, is always respectful and refined. They even imitate occasionally the "little language" of the great satirist; if Swift was Presto, Kinglake is "Poor dear me"; if Stella was M. D., Madame Novikoff is "My dear Miss."
This last endearment was due to an incident at a London dinner table. A story told by Hayward, seasoned as usual with _gros sel_, amused the more sophisticated English ladies present, but covered her with blushes.
Kinglake perceived it, and said to her afterwards, "I thought you were a hardened married woman; I am glad that you are not; I shall henceforth call you _Miss_." Sometimes he rushes into verse. In answer to some pretended rebuff received from her at Ryde he writes
"There was a young lady of Ryde, so awfully puffed up by pride, She felt grander by far than the Son of the Czar, And when he said, "Dear, come and walk on the pier, Oh please come and walk by my side;"
The answer he got, was "Much better not," from that awful young lady of Ryde."
Oftenest, the letters are serious in their admiring compliments; they speak of her superb organization of health and life and strength and joyousness, the delightful sunshine of her presence, her decision and strength of will, her great qualities and great opportunities: "away from you the world seems a blank." He is glad that his Great Eltchi has been made known to her; the old statesman will be impressed, he feels sure, by her "intense life, graciousness and grace, intellect carefully masked, musical faculty in talk, with that heavenly power of coming to an end."
He sends playfully affectionate messages from other members of the _Gerontaion_, as he calls it, the group of aged admirers who formed her inner court; echoing their laments over the universality of her patronage. "Hayward can pardon your having an amba.s.sador or two at your _feet_, but to find the way to your _heart_ obstructed by a crowd of astronomers, Russ-expansionists, metaphysicians, theologians, translators, historians, poets;-this is more than he can endure. The crowd reduces him, as Ampere said to Mme. Recamier, to the qualified blessing of being only _chez vous_, from the delight of being _avec vous_." He hails and notifies additions to the list of her admirers; quotes enthusiastic praise of her from Stansfeld and Charles Villiers, warm appreciation from Morier, Sir Robert Peel, Violet Fane. He rallies her on her victims, jests at Froude"s lover-like _galanterie_-"Poor St.
Anthony! how he hovered round the flame";-at the devotion of that gay Lothario, Tyndall, whose approaching marriage will, he thinks, clip his wings for flirtation. "It seems that at the Royal Inst.i.tution, or whatever the place is called, young women look up to the Lecturers as priests of Science, and go to them after the lecture in what churchmen would call the vestry, and express charming little doubts about electricity, and pretty gentle disquietudes about the solar system: and then the Professors have to give explanations;-and then, somehow, at the end of a few weeks, they find they have provided themselves with chaperons for life." So he pursues the list of devotees; her son will tell her that Caesar summarized his conquests in this country by saying _Veni_, _Vidi_, _Vici_; but to her it is given to say, _Veni_, _Videbar_, _Vici_.
On two subjects, theology and politics, Madame Novikoff was, as we have seen, pa.s.sionately in earnest. Himself at once an amateur casuist and a consistent Nothingarian, whose dictum was that "Important if true" should be written over the doors of churches, he followed her religious arguments much as Lord Steyne listened to the contests between Father Mole and the Reverend Mr. Trail. He expresses his surprise in all seriousness that the Pharisees, a thoughtful and cultured set of men, who alone among the Jews believed in a future state, should have been the very men to whom our Saviour was habitually antagonistic. He refers more lightly and frequently to "those charming talks of ours about our Churches"; he thinks they both know how to _effleurer_ the surface of theology without getting drowned in it. Of existing Churches he preferred the English, as "the most harmless going"; disliked the Latin Church, especially when intriguing in the East, as persecuting and as schismatic, and therefore as no Church at all. Roman Catholics, he said, have a special horror of being called "schismatic," and that is, of course, a good reason for so calling them. He would not permit the use of the word "orthodox," because, like a parson in the pulpit, it is always begging the question. He refused historical reverence to the Athanasian Creed, and was delighted when Stanley"s review in "The Times"
of Mr. Ffoulkes" learned book showed it to have been written by order of Charles the Great in 800 A.D. as what Thorold Rogers used to call "an election squib." In the "Filioque" controversy, once dear to Liddon and to Gladstone, now, I suppose, obsolete for the English mind, but which relates to the chief dividing tenet of East from West, he showed an interest humorous rather than reverent; took pains to acquaint himself with the views held on it by Dollinger and the old Catholics; noted with amus.e.m.e.nt the perplexity of London ladies as to the meaning of the word when quoted in the much-read "Quarterly" article, declaring their belief to be that it was a clergyman"s baby born out of wedlock.
Madame Novikoff"s political influence, which he recognized to the full, he treated in the same mocking spirit. She is at Berlin, received by Bismarck; he hopes that though the great man may not eradicate her Slavophile heresies, he may manifest the weakness of embroiling nations on mere ethnological grounds. "Are even nearer relationships so delightful? would you walk across the street for a third or fourth cousin? then why for a millionth cousin?" Madame Novikoff kindly sends to me an "Imaginary Conversation" between herself and Gortschakoff, constructed by Kinglake during her stay in St. Petersburg in 1879.
"_G._ Well-you really have done good service to your country and your Czar by dividing and confusing these absurd English, and getting us out of the sc.r.a.pe we were in in that-Balkan Peninsula.
"_Miss O._ Well, certainly I did my best; but I fear I have ruined the political reputation of my English partizans, for in order to make them "beloved of the Slave," I of course had to make them, poor souls! go against their own country; and their country, stupid as it is, has now I fear found them out.
"_G._ _Tant pis pour eux_! _Entre nous_, if I had been Gladstone, I should have preferred the love of my own country to the love of these-Slaves of yours. But, tell me, how did you get hold of Gladstone?
"_Miss O._ _Rien de plus simple_! Four or five years ago I asked what was his weak point, and was told that he had two, "Effervescence," and "Theology." With that knowledge I found it all child"s play to manage him. I just sent him to Munich, and there boiled him up in a weak decoction of "Filioque," then kept him ready for use, and impatiently awaited the moment when our plans for getting up the "Bulgarian atrocities" should be mature. I say "impatiently," for, Heavens, how slow you all were! at least so it strikes a woman. The arrangement of the "atrocities" was begun by our people in 1871, and yet till 1876, though I had Gladstone ready in 1875, nothing really was done! I a.s.sure you, Prince, it is a trying thing to a woman to be kept waiting for promised atrocities such an unconscionable time.
"_G._ That brother-in-law of yours was partly the cause of our slowness.