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 passed 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 coarse 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 GROSSEL, 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.
