On two subjects, theology and politics, Madame Novikoff was, as we have seen, passionately in earnest. Himself at once an amateur casuist 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 to the contests between Father Mole and the Reverend Mr. Trail. He expresses his surprise in all seriousness that the Pharisees, a thoughtful and cultured set of men, who alone among the Jews believed in a future state, should have been the very men to whom our Saviour was habitually antagonistic. He refers more 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.
"MISS O. Well, certainly I did my best; but I fear I have ruined the political reputation of my English partizans, for in order to make them 'beloved of the Slave,' I of course had to make them, poor souls! go against their own country; and their country, stupid as it is, has now I fear found them out.
"G. TANT PIS POUR EUX! ENTRE NOUS, if I had been Gladstone, Ishould have preferred the love of my own country to the love of these - Slaves of yours. But, tell me, how did you get hold of Gladstone?
"MISS O. RIEN DE PLUS SIMPLE! Four or five years ago I asked what was his weak point, and was told that he had two, 'Effervescence,'
and 'Theology.' With that knowledge I found it all child's play to manage him. I just sent him to Munich, and there boiled him up in a weak decoction of 'Filioque,' then kept him ready for use, and impatiently awaited the moment when our plans for getting up the 'Bulgarian atrocities' should be mature. I say 'impatiently,' for, Heavens, how slow you all were! at least so it strikes a woman.
The arrangement of the 'atrocities' was begun by our people in 1871, and yet till 1876, though I had Gladstone ready in 1875, nothing really was done! I assure you, Prince, it is a trying thing to a woman to be kept waiting for promised atrocities such an unconscionable time.
