Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake [28]
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 ambassador 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 Institution, 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, passionately 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
"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 ambassador 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 Institution, 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, passionately 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