Digitized by tlie Internet Arcliive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation Iittp://www.arcliive.org/details/autobiograpliylet01layauoft SIR A. HENRY LAYARD G.C.B., D.C.L. (yte'H'yu: Au/>^n/ .^J^iMti^rc/ \ i ^ / X \ a SIR A. HENRY LAYARD G.C.B., D.C.L. AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND LETTERS FROM HIS CHILDHOOD UNTIL HIS APPOINT- MENT AS H.M. AMBASSADOR AT MADRID EDITED BY TME HON. WILLIAM N. BRUCE, WITH A CHAPTER ON HIS PARLIAMENTARY CAREER BY THE RT. HON. SIR ARTHUR OTWAY IN TWO VOLUMES—VOL. I. WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS V Y^ LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. W. 1903 70 PREFACE Austen Henry Lavard was born in Paris on the 5th March 18 17, and died in London on the 5th July 1894. This wide span of years was singularly full of adventure and of mani- fold activities. He won distinction as traveller, archaeologist, politician, diplomatist, student of the Fine Arts. Before he was twenty-three, he had, with the scantiest means and without the aid of railways, travelled widely in France, Switzerland, and Northern Italy, and had visited Denmark, Sweden, and St Petersburg ; had made friends with young Cavour, seen Benjamin Disraeli in boxing- gloves, and been admitted to the intimate circle of Henry Crabb Robinson. Before he was twenty- five, he had accomplished the most adventurous and perilous of his many travels, and, as the guest and friend of the Chief of the Baktiyaris, had taken part in the armed resistance of those tribes to the tyranny of Persia. In later years, besides his well- known Assyrian discoveries, he was the faithful henchman of Sir Stratford Canning during the most brilliant period of that statesman's career at Constantinople ; he saw the Crimea during the War, India during the Mutiny, and Italy in the vi PREFACE War of Liberation. He held office under four Liberal Administrations. He was Ambassador at Madrid during the Revolution of 1870-71, and at Constantinople during the Russo-Turkish War of 1878. In the Fine Arts, he was a frequent writer on the history of painting, and particularly of fresco ; he was the moving spirit of the Arundel Society ; a Trustee of the National Gallery ; and will long be remembered for his efforts to revive the lost or dying art industries of Venice. There are here abundant materials for an interesting book, and after his retirement from the Public Service he set himself to work upon an account of his life. Part of this, indeed, had already been given to the world ; for his two well- known books on the Assyrian discoveries are also fragments of Autobiography. Constant enquiries as to how he had been led to seek for the remains of Nineveh induced him to publish in 1887 another instalment under the title of " Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia." The present volumes tell his story down to the period dealt with in the " Early Adventures," and give a description of his subsequent life at Constantinople under Sir Stratford Canning. Part of the latter section (chaps, iii.-v.) is to some extent a repetition of the two last chapters of the Early Adventures, but it is so intermixed with new matter that its reproduction seemed necessary to give unity to the work. At the beginning of his exploration in the Assyrian mounds, his connected Autobiography comes to an PREFACE vii end. He may naturally have considered that he had said enough about that part of his life ; but the absence of an account of his doings from 1852 to 1869, the period of his Parliamentary career and of his exhaustive study of Italian Art, is much to be regretted. He has left a full account of his two important embassies to Madrid and Constantinople ; but he expressed the desire that this work should only be published "when the public interest will permit, and those who might be injured or offended by it have passed away." That time has not yet arrived, and it has there- fore been judged expedient to terminate the present work in 1869 on the eve of his departure for Madrid. The gaps left by him in his story down to that date have been to some extent supplied by extracts from his correspondence ; and a sketch of his career as a Member of Parliament is made the subject of a separate chapter from the pen of his valued friend and colleague, the Right Honourable Sir Arthur Otway. It remains to acknowledge the extent to which the labours of the Editor have been lightened owing to the careful preparation and arrangement of the materials by Lady Layard, by whose authority these memorials of her distinguished husband are now published. W. N. BRUCE. November 1902. CONTENTS I. FAMILY HISTORY AND CHILDHOOD (1817-1833) II. LEGAL STUDIES AND INTERLUDES (1834-1839) 43 III. OVERLAND JOURNEY TO CONSTANTINOPLE (1839) 102 IV. JOURNEY THROUGH ASIA MINOR (1839) '54 V. THROUGH SYRIA (1839) . 210 VI. SYRIA AND PALESTINE (1840) . 251 VII. ALEPPO TO MOSUL (1840) 283 VIII. MOSUL TO B.\GHD.\D (1840) 322 LIST or ILLUSTRATIONS Austen Henry La yard, in Albanian Dress. From the picture by Wv.^ViM PHILLIPS, /« the possession of Lady Lavard {Photogravure) . Frontispiece. Mrs Layard. From a drawing by Seymour KiRKUP, in the possession (y Lady Layard To face p. lo. Austen Henry Layard as a hoy . „ P- -A- Map of Syria ...... At the end. SIR A. HENRY LAYARD CHAPTER I FAMILY HISTORV AND CHILDHOOD 1817— 1833 A S my life has been, in some respects, an eventful one, I have thought that an account of it may not be without interest to those who may hereafter bear my name. I have therefore determined to employ the leisure which I now enjoy in writing. Unfortunately, except during some of my early journeys in Europe and the East, I have not kept a journal or diary. I have often begun one, but have soon found the task too irksome, or have been too much engaged with other matters, to continue it. I shall therefore be obliged to have recourse to my memory for much that I may have to write, should I live to complete these memoirs, and to such notes and corre- spondence as I may have preserved. My family, as the name denotes, i;? of French origin. It claims to be of a very ancient stock, and to have descended, like many others, in a somewhat mythical way from Ray- mond of Toulouse. Be that as it may, it came, I believe, originally from that part of France, and appears to have been allied to many noble and ancient houses. A pedigree VOL. I. A FAMILY HISTORY AND CHILDHOOD ['8i7- exactly how, for my great-grand- compiled, I know not a certain Raymond Calo di father, commences with de Toulouse m Calominti.who married Yaffenda Raymond century. ^ the middle of the eleventh Stafford- The English Barony of Clifton Camville in member of this family in the shire was conferred upon a great-grandfather put forward thirteenth century. My however, he failed to establish. a claim to the title, which, if any reliance can be Some of my ancestors, moreover, which I have referred, placed upon the pedigree to their arms. quartered the three Leopards of England in supported by According to a family tradition, how far unable to say, there documentary or other evidence I am of the Edict of Nantes lived at the time of the Revocation who belonged to three brothers of the name of Raymond, of wealth and dis- the Huguenot party. They were men whose ancestors had tinction in the South of France, One of them, suffered in the massacre of St Bartholomew. his religion. The Jean Raymond, became a martyr to flight they were others escaped his fate and fled. In their and was separated. The eldest, who was disguised, a person seeking to conceal himself, was recognised by refused to evidently of high rank and authority, though he of humanity, reveal his name. This person, from motives ancestor in safety or for some other reason, conducted my to pass through to the Dutch frontier, and enabled him for Huguenot the guards who were lying in wait there fugitives.'- occupied his leisure 1 My brother, General Frederic Layard, has history of the hours in collecting materials for the pedigree and Layard family. 2 a account written by I remember well reading in my boyhood MS. in the possession of this Raymond of his adventures, which was then what has become my uncle, the Rev Brownlow Layard. I do not know antiquity of his family and of it. The writer, after describing the in order to their possessions, remarks that he had not left this record ancestors encourage his descendants to seek and recover what their i833l HUGUENOT ANCESTORS 3 The fate of the other brother was never known. But my father, when in Ceylon in the early part of this century, chanced to read in a London newspaper an advertise- ment which had been inserted by a certain Monsieur Raymond, who was in search of the descendants of a Frenchman of that name, who had taken refuge in England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The com- munications between England and her Eastern possessions were not, in those days, as rapid and frequent as they now are. Before my father could call the attention of his relations at home to this advertisement, its author had died, leaving the property which he possessed, and which was said to have been not inconsiderable, to a tradesman over whose shop he lodged in Bond Street.