Readers of the Princess Lieven's letters to Earl Grey will recall the part played by that able ambassadress in keeping this country neutral through the crisis of 1828-9; 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 title "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 biassed 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 assault 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. "Icould 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 title of "The Slavonic Menace to Europe." It opens with a panegyric on the authoress: "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 Embassy, 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 ambassador was greatly amazed at knowing nothing of the matter. From amenities towards the authoress, the article passes 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 cum 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 assigned 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 passionate lover of the "Slav ragamuffins," 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 authoress of 'Russia and England'"; "fancy that from your enemy!
