A. W. Kinglake: A Biographical and Literary Study
William Tuckwell
eBook
(CAIMAN, June 20, 2019)
CHAPTER IEARLY YEARSThe fourth decade of the deceased century dawned on a procession of Oriental pilgrims, variously qualified or disqualified to hold the gorgeous East in fee, who, with bakshĂŽsh in their purses, a theory in their brains, an unfilled diary-book in their portmanteaus, sought out the Holy Land, the Sinai peninsula, the valley of the Nile, sometimes even Armenia and the Monte Santo, and returned home to emit their illustrated and mapped octavos. We have the type delineated admiringly in Miss Yongeâs âHeartsease,â [1] bitterly in Miss Skeneâs âUse and Abuse,â facetiously in the Clarence Bulbul of âOur Street.â âHang it! has not everybody written an Eastern book? I should like to meet anybody in society now who has not been up to the Second Cataract. My Lord Castleroyal has done oneâan honest one; my Lord Youngent anotherâan amusing one; my Lord Woolsey anotherâa pious one; there is the âCutlet and the Cabobââa sentimental one; Timbuctoothenâa humorous one.â Lord Carlisleâs honesty, Lord Nugentâs fun, Lord Lindsayâs piety, failed to float their books. Miss Martineau, clear, frank, unemotional Curzon, fuddling the Levantine monks with rosoglio that he might fleece them of their treasured hereditary manuscripts, even Eliot Warburtonâs power, colouring, play of fancy, have yielded to the mobility of Time. Two alone out of the gallant company maintain their vogue to-day: Stanleyâs âSinai and Palestine,â as a Fifth Gospel, an inspired Scripture Gazetteer; and âEothen,â as a literary gem of purest ray serene.