In answer to some pretended rebuff receivedfrom her at Ryde he writes "There was a young lady of Ryde, so awfully puffed up by pride, Shefelt 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 sendsplayfully 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 ofastronomers,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 thequalified blessing of being only CHEZ VOUS, from the delight ofbeing AVEC VOUS.He hails and notifies additions to the list ofher admirers; quotes enthusiastic praise of her from Stansfeld andCharles Villiers, warm appreciation from Morier, Sir Robert Peel,Violet Fane.He rallies her on her victims, jests at Froude'slover-like GALANTERIE - "Poor St. Anthony! how he hovered round theflame"; - at the devotion of that gay Lothario, Tyndall, whoseapproaching marriage will, he thinks, clip his wings forflirtation."It seems that at the Royal Institution, or whateverthe place is called, young women look up to the Lecturers aspriests 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 solarsystem: and then the Professors have to give explanations; - andthen, somehow, at the end of a few weeks, they find they haveprovided themselves with chaperons for life."So he pursues thelist of devotees; her son will tell her that Caesar summarized hisconquests in this country by saying VENI, VIDI, VICI; but to her itis 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 amateurcasuist 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 tothe contests between Father Mole and the Reverend Mr. Trail.Heexpresses his surprise in all seriousness that the Pharisees, athoughtful and cultured set of men, who alone among the Jewsbelieved in a future state, should have been the very men to whomour Saviour was habitually antagonistic.He refersmore 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 amusement 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 scrape we were in in that - Balkan Peninsula.
