A third attempt was induced by
an entreaty from his friend Eliot Warburton, himself projecting an
Eastern tour; and to Warburton in a characteristic preface the
narrative is addressed. The book, when finished, went the round of
the London market without finding a publisher. It was offered to
John Murray, who cited his refusal of it as the great blunder of
his professional life, consoling himself with the thought that his
father had equally lacked foresight thirty years before in
declining the "Rejected Addresses"; he secured the copyright later
on. It was published in the end by a personal friend, Ollivier, of
Pall Mall, Kinglake paying 50 pounds to cover risk of loss; even
worse terms than were obtained by Warburton two years afterwards
from Colburn, who owned in the fifties to having cleared 6,000
pounds by "The Crescent and the Cross." The volume was an octavo
of 418 pages; the curious folding-plate which forms the
frontispiece was drawn and coloured by the author, and was compared
by the critics to a tea-tray. In front is Moostapha the Tatar; the
two foremost figures in the rear stand for accomplished Mysseri,
whom Kinglake was delighted to recognize long afterwards as a
flourishing hotel keeper in Constantinople, and Steel, the
Yorkshire servant, in his striped pantry jacket, "looking out for
gentlemen's seats.
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