Elegant Eastern traveller

Press, 7 May 1983, Page 20

Elegant Eastern traveller

Eothen. By Alexander Kinglake. Oxford, 1982. 279 pp. (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley) Alexander Kinglake, born in 1809, had been educated at Eton and Cambridge and was in the middle of his studies for the Bar when he was smitten, with the urge to travel. In 1834 he left London for what was then known as the Near East. An English companion returned home after a short time, but Kinglake with his guide -and interpreter, Mysseri, crossed into, the Ottoman Empire near Belgrade, braving the terrors of the plague which was then endemic in those regions. He journeyed to Constantinople and Smyrna, through Lebanon (where he visited an old friend of his mother, the legendary Lady Hester Stanhope)

Palestine, Egypt, and Turkey, before returning home after 15 months of wandering. Over the next seven years, living sedately at 24 Old Buildings, Lincoln Inn, Kinglake set down his impressions in the book “Eothen” (from the East). It was published anonymously in 1844 and such was the ’ book’s impact that, for the rest of his long life, the author was known to all as Eothen Kinglake. The secret of its first immediate success, and of its continual appeal, lies in the combination of the elegance of the writing and of the brilliant, mocking quality of the author’s mind. Travel writing in the early nineteenth century (though by no means the overworked genre it is today) was not a new literary form; nor was Kinglake’s

journey (despite the menace of the plague) anything extraordinary. But the book which he produced is extraordinary. Begun as a letter giving advice to a friend who planned a similar journey, it has maintained an intimate epistolary form. The author wrote in a way which suggests he and the reader are old friends with shared interests and ideas, and he unashamedly wrote only of what aroused his interest: “It is right to forewarn people that the book is quite superficial in its character. I have endeavoured to discard from it all valuable matter derived from the works of others, and it appears to me that my efforts in this direction have been attended with great success; I believe I may truly acknowledge, that from all details of geographical discovery, or antiquarian research — from all display of sound learning and religious knowledge — from all' historical and scientific illustrations — from all useful statistics — from all political disquisitions — and from all good moral reflections the volume is thoroughly free ... As I have felt so have I written.” Kinglake did, however, find much which moved and interested him and he wrote of it in fluent and polished prose which sparkles with urbanity and wit. “Eothen” could only have been written, by an Englishman at that time of history — it is confident, humorous, and self conscious. The ironic style and subtly paced humour with which he tells of meeting another Englishman in the midst of a vast desert (“It became a question with me whether we should speak ... I was quite ready to be sociable, but still I could not think of anything particular I had to say to him.”) can be found over and over again in this marvellously entertaining book.