Grant Duff, cleared
up for me not a few obscure allusions in the "Eothen" pages. My
highly valued friend, Mrs. Hamilton Kinglake, of Taunton, his
sister-in-law, last surviving relative of his own generation, has
helped me with facts which no one else could have recalled. To Mr.
Estcott, his old acquaintance and Somersetshire neighbour, I am
indebted for recollections manifold and interesting; but above all
I tender thanks to Madame Novikoff, his intimate associate and
correspondent during the last twenty years of his life, who has
supplemented her brilliant sketch of him in "La Nouvelle Revue" of
1896 by oral and written information lavish in quantity and of
paramount biographical value. Kinglake's external life, his
literary and political career, his speeches, and the more fugitive
productions of his pen, were recoverable from public sources; but
his personal and private side, as it showed itself to the few close
intimates who still survive, must have remained to myself and
others meagre, superficial, disappointing, without Madame
Novikoff's unreserved and sympathetic confidence.
Alexander William Kinglake was descended from an old Scottish
stock, the Kinlochs, who migrated to England with King James, and
whose name was Anglicized into Kinglake.
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