Coningsby

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Anne Soulard, Tiffany Vergon, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

CONINGSBY

OR THE NEW GENERATION

BY

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

EARL OF BEACONSFIELD

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

As a novelist, Benjamin Disraeli belongs to the early part of the
nineteenth century. "Vivian Grey" (1826-27) and "Sybil" (1845) mark the
beginning and the end of his truly creative period; for the two
productions of his latest years, "Lothair" (1870) and "Endymion" (1880),
add nothing to the characteristics of his earlier volumes except the
changes of feeling and power which accompany old age. His period, thus, is
that of Bulwer, Dickens, and Thackeray, and of the later years of Sir
Walter Scott--a fact which his prominence as a statesman during the last
decade of his life, as well as the vogue of "Lothair" and "Endymion," has
tended to obscure. His style, his material, and his views of English
character and life all date from that earlier time. He was born in 1804
and died in 1881.

"Coningsby; or, The New Generation," published in 1844, is the best of his
novels, not as a story, but as a study of men, manners, and principles.
The plot is slight--little better than a device for stringing together
sketches of character and statements of political and economic opinions;
but these are always interesting and often brilliant. The motive which
underlies the book is political. It is, in brief, an attempt to show that
the political salvation of England was to be sought in its aristocracy,
but that this aristocracy was morally weak and socially ineffective, and
that it must mend its ways before its duty to the state could be
fulfilled. Interest in this aspect of the book has, of course, to a large
extent passed away with the political conditions which it reflected. As a
picture of aristocratic life in England in the first part of the
nineteenth century it has, however, enduring significance and charm.
Disraeli does not rank with the great writers of English realistic
fiction, but in this special field none of them has surpassed him. From
this point of view, accordingly, "Coningsby" is appropriately included in
this series.

TO HENRY HOPE

It is not because this work was conceived and partly executed amid the
glades and galleries of the DEEPDENE that I have inscribed it with your
name. Nor merely because I was desirous to avail myself of the most
graceful privilege of an author, and dedicate my work to the friend whose
talents I have always appreciated, and whose virtues I have ever admired.

But because in these pages I have endeavoured to picture something of that
development of the new and, as I believe, better mind of England, that has
often been the subject of our converse and speculation.

In this volume you will find many a thought illustrated and many a
principle attempted to be established that we have often together
partially discussed and canvassed.

Doubtless you may encounter some opinions with which you may not agree,
and some conclusions the accuracy of which you may find cause to question.
But if I have generally succeeded in my object, to scatter some
suggestions that may tend to elevate the tone of public life, ascertain
the true character of political parties, and induce us for the future more
carefully to distinguish between facts and phrases, realities and
phantoms, I believe that I shall gain your sympathy, for I shall find a
reflex to their efforts in your own generous spirit and enlightened mind.

GROSVENOR GATE: May Day 1844.

PREFACE

'CONINGSBY' was published in the year 1844. The main purpose of its writer
was to vindicate the just claims of the Tory party to be the popular
political confederation of the country; a purpose which he had, more or
less, pursued from a very early period of life. The occasion was
favourable to the attempt. The youthful mind of England had just recovered
from the inebriation of the great Conservative triumph of 1841, and was
beginning to inquire what, after all, they had conquered to preserve. It
was opportune, therefore, to show that Toryism was not a phrase, but a
fact; and that our political institutions were the embodiment of our
popular necessities. This the writer endeavoured to do without prejudice,
and to treat of events and characters of which he had some personal
experience, not altogether without the impartiality of the future.

It was not originally the intention of the writer to adopt the form of
fiction as the instrument to scatter his suggestions, but, after
reflection, he resolved to avail himself of a method which, in the temper
of the times, offered the best chance of influencing opinion.

In considering the Tory scheme, the author recognised in the CHURCH the
most powerful agent in the previous development of England, and the most
efficient means of that renovation of the national spirit at which he
aimed. The Church is a sacred corporation for the promulgation and
maintenance in Europe of certain Asian principles, which, although local
in their birth, are of divine origin, and of universal and eternal
application.

In asserting the paramount character of the ecclesiastical polity and the
majesty of the theocratic principle, it became necessary to ascend to the
origin of the Christian Church, and to meet in a spirit worthy of a
critical and comparatively enlightened age, the position of the
descendants of that race who were the founders of Christianity. The modern
Jews had long laboured under the odium and stigma of mediaeval
malevolence. In the dark ages, when history was unknown, the passions of
societies, undisturbed by traditionary experience, were strong, and their
convictions, unmitigated by criticism, were necessarily fanatical. The
Jews were looked upon in the middle ages as an accursed race, the enemies
of God and man, the especial foes of Christianity. No one in those days
paused to reflect that Christianity was founded by the Jews; that its
Divine Author, in his human capacity, was a descendant of King David; that
his doctrines avowedly were the completion, not the change, of Judaism;
that the Apostles and the Evangelists, whose names men daily invoked, and
whose volumes they embraced with reverence, were all Jews; that the
infallible throne of Rome itself was established by a Jew; and that a Jew
was the founder of the Christian Churches of Asia.

The European nations, relatively speaking, were then only recently
converted to a belief in Moses and in Christ; and, as it were, still
ashamed of the wild deities whom they had deserted, they thought they
atoned for their past idolatry by wreaking their vengeance on a race to
whom, and to whom alone, they were indebted for the Gospel they adored.

In vindicating the sovereign right of the Church of Christ to be the
perpetual regenerator of man, the writer thought the time had arrived when
some attempt should be made to do justice to the race which had founded
Christianity.

The writer has developed in another work ('Tancred') the views respecting
the great house of Israel which he first intimated in 'Coningsby.' No one
has attempted to refute them, nor is refutation possible; since all he has
done is to examine certain facts in the truth of which all agree, and to
draw from them irresistible conclusions which prejudice for a moment may
shrink from, but which reason cannot refuse to admit.

D.
GROSVENOR GATE: May 1894.

CONINGSBY

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

It was a bright May morning some twelve years ago, when a youth of still
tender age, for he had certainly not entered his teens by more than two
years, was ushered into the waiting-room of a house in the vicinity of St.
James's Square, which, though with the general appearance of a private
residence, and that too of no very ambitious character, exhibited at this
period symptoms of being occupied for some public purpose.

The house-door was constantly open, and frequent guests even at this early
hour crossed the threshold. The hall-table was covered with sealed
letters; and the hall-porter inscribed in a book the name of every
individual who entered.

The young gentleman we have mentioned found himself in a room which
offered few resources for his amusement. A large table amply covered with
writing materials, and a few chairs, were its sole furniture, except the
grey drugget that covered the floor, and a muddy mezzotinto of the Duke of
Wellington that adorned its cold walls. There was not even a newspaper;
and the only books were the Court Guide and the London Directory. For some
time he remained with patient endurance planted against the wall, with his
feet resting on the rail of his chair; but at length in his shifting
posture he gave evidence of his restlessness, rose from his seat, looked
out of the window into a small side court of the house surrounded with
dead walls, paced the room, took up the Court Guide, changed it for the
London Directory, then wrote his name over several sheets of foolscap
paper, drew various landscapes and faces of his friends; and then,
splitting up a pen or two, delivered himself of a yawn which seemed the
climax of his weariness.

And yet the youth's appearance did not betoken a character that, if the
opportunity had offered, could not have found amusement and even
instruction. His countenance, radiant with health and the lustre of
innocence, was at the same time thoughtful and resolute. The expression of
his deep blue eyes was serious. Without extreme regularity of features,
the face was one that would never have passed unobserved. His short upper
lip indicated a good breed; and his chestnut curls clustered over his open
brow, while his shirt-collar thrown over his shoulders was unrestrained by
handkerchief or ribbon. Add to this, a limber and graceful figure, which
the jacket of his boyish dress exhibited to great advantage.

Just as the youth, mounted on a chair, was adjusting the portrait of the
Duke, which he had observed to be awry, the gentleman for whom he had been
all this time waiting entered the room.

'Floreat Etona!' hastily exclaimed the gentleman, in a sharp voice; 'you
are setting the Duke to rights. I have left you a long time a prisoner;
but I found them so busy here, that I made my escape with some
difficulty.'

He who uttered these words was a man of middle size and age, originally in
all probability of a spare habit, but now a little inclined to corpulency.
Baldness, perhaps, contributed to the spiritual expression of a brow,
which was, however, essentially intellectual, and gave some character of
openness to a countenance which, though not ill-favoured, was unhappily
stamped by a sinister cast that was not to be mistaken. His manner was
easy, but rather audacious than well-bred. Indeed, while a visage which
might otherwise be described as handsome was spoilt by a dishonest glance,
so a demeanour that was by no means deficient in self-possession and
facility, was tainted by an innate vulgarity, which in the long run,
though seldom, yet surely developed itself.

The youth had jumped off his chair on the entrance of the gentleman, and
then taking up his hat, said:

'Shall we go to grandpapa now, sir?'

'By all means, my dear boy,' said the gentleman, putting his arm within
that of the youth; and they were just on the point of leaving the waiting-
room, when the door was suddenly thrown open, and two individuals, in a
state of great excitement, rushed into the apartment.

'Rigby! Rigby!' they both exclaimed at the same moment. 'By G---- they're
out!'

'Who told you?'

'The best authority; one of themselves.'

'Who? who?'

'Paul Evelyn; I met him as I passed Brookes', and he told me that Lord
Grey had resigned, and the King had accepted his resignation.'

But Mr. Rigby, who, though very fond of news, and much interested in the
present, was extremely jealous of any one giving him information, was
sceptical. He declared that Paul Evelyn was always wrong; that it was
morally impossible that Paul Evelyn ever could be right; that he knew,
from the highest authority, that Lord Grey had been twice yesterday with
the King; that on the last visit nothing was settled; that if he had been
at the palace again to-day, he could not have been there before twelve
o'clock; that it was only now a quarter to one; that Lord Grey would have
called his colleagues together on his return; that at least an hour must
have elapsed before anything could possibly have transpired. Then he
compared and criticised the dates of every rumoured incident of the last
twenty-four hours, and nobody was stronger in dates than Mr. Rigby;
counted even the number of stairs which the minister had to ascend and
descend in his visit to the palace, and the time their mountings and
dismountings must have consumed, detail was Mr. Rigby's forte; and
finally, what with his dates, his private information, his knowledge of
palace localities, his contempt for Paul Evelyn, and his confidence in
himself, he succeeded in persuading his downcast and disheartened friends
that their comfortable intelligence had not the slightest foundation.

They all left the room together; they were in the hall; the gentlemen who
brought the news looked somewhat depressed, but Mr. Rigby gay, even amid
the prostration of his party, from the consciousness that he had most
critically demolished a piece of political gossip and conveyed a certain
degree of mortification to a couple of his companions; when a travelling
carriage and four with a ducal coronet drove up to the house. The door was
thrown open, the steps dashed down, and a youthful noble sprang from his
chariot into the hall.

'Good morning, Rigby,' said the Duke.

'I see your Grace well, I am sure,' said Mr. Rigby, with a softened
manner.

'You have heard the news, gentlemen?' the Duke continued.

'What news? Yes; no; that is to say, Mr. Rigby thinks--'

'You know, of course, that Lord Lyndhurst is with the King?'

'It is impossible,' said Mr. Rigby.

'I don't think I can be mistaken,' said the Duke, smiling.

'I will show your Grace that it is impossible,' said Mr. Rigby, 'Lord
Lyndhurst slept at Wimbledon. Lord Grey could not have seen the King until
twelve o'clock; it is now five minutes to one. It is impossible,
therefore, that any message from the King could have reached Lord
Lyndhurst in time for his Lordship to be at the palace at this moment.'

'But my authority is a high one,' said the Duke.

'Authority is a phrase,' said Mr. Rigby; 'we must look to time and place,
dates and localities, to discover the truth.'

'Your Grace was saying that your authority--' ventured to observe Mr.
Tadpole, emboldened by the presence of a duke, his patron, to struggle
against the despotism of a Rigby, his tyrant.

'Was the highest,' rejoined the Duke, smiling, 'for it was Lord Lyndhurst
himself. I came up from Nuneham this morning, passed his Lordship's house
in Hyde Park Place as he was getting into his carriage in full dress,
stopped my own, and learned in a breath that the Whigs were out, and that
the King had sent for the Chief Baron. So I came on here at once.'

'I always thought the country was sound at bottom,' exclaimed Mr. Taper,
who, under the old system, had sneaked into the Treasury Board.

Tadpole and Taper were great friends. Neither of them ever despaired of
the Commonwealth. Even if the Reform Bill were passed, Taper was convinced
that the Whigs would never prove men of business; and when his friends
confessed among themselves that a Tory Government was for the future
impossible, Taper would remark, in a confidential whisper, that for his
part he believed before the year was over the Whigs would be turned out by
the clerks.

'There is no doubt that there is considerable reaction,' said Mr. Tadpole.
The infamous conduct of the Whigs in the Amersham case has opened the
public mind more than anything.'

'Aldborough was worse,' said Mr. Taper.

'Terrible,' said Tadpole. 'They said there was no use discussing the
Reform Bill in our House. I believe Rigby's great speech on Aldborough has
done more towards the reaction than all the violence of the Political
Unions put together.'

'Let us hope for the best,' said the Duke, mildly. ''Tis a bold step on
the part of the Sovereign, and I am free to say I could have wished it
postponed; but we must support the King like men. What say you, Rigby? You
are silent.'

'I am thinking how very unfortunate it was that I did not breakfast with
Lyndhurst this morning, as I was nearly doing, instead of going down to
Eton.'

'To Eton! and why to Eton?'

'For the sake of my young friend here, Lord Monmouth's grandson. By the
bye, you are kinsmen. Let me present to your Grace, MR. CONINGSBY.'

CHAPTER II.

The political agitation which for a year and a half had shaken England to
its centre, received, if possible, an increase to its intensity and
virulence, when it was known, in the early part of the month of May, 1832,
that the Prime Minister had tendered his resignation to the King, which
resignation had been graciously accepted.

The amendment carried by the Opposition in the House of Lords on the
evening of the 7th of May, that the enfranchising clauses of the Reform
Bill should be considered before entering into the question of
disfranchisement, was the immediate cause of this startling event. The
Lords had previously consented to the second reading of the Bill with the
view of preventing that large increase of their numbers with which they
had been long menaced; rather, indeed, by mysterious rumours than by any
official declaration; but, nevertheless, in a manner which had carried
conviction to no inconsiderable portion of the Opposition that the threat
was not without foundation.

During the progress of the Bill through the Lower House, the journals
which were looked upon as the organs of the ministry had announced with
unhesitating confidence, that Lord Grey was armed with what was then
called a 'carte blanche' to create any number of peers necessary to insure
its success. But public journalists who were under the control of the
ministry, and whose statements were never contradicted, were not the sole
authorities for this prevailing belief. Members of the House of Commons,
who were strong supporters of the cabinet, though not connected with it by
any official tie, had unequivocally stated in their places that the
Sovereign had not resisted the advice of his counsellors to create peers,
if such creation were required to carry into effect what was then styled
'the great national measure.' In more than one instance, ministers had
been warned, that if they did not exercise that power with prompt energy,
they might deserve impeachment. And these intimations and announcements
had been made in the presence of leading members of the Government, and
had received from them, at least, the sanction of their silence.

It did not subsequently appear that the Reform ministers had been invested
with any such power; but a conviction of the reverse, fostered by these
circumstances, had successfully acted upon the nervous temperament, or the
statesman-like prudence, of a certain section of the peers, who
consequently hesitated in their course; were known as being no longer
inclined to pursue their policy of the preceding session; had thus
obtained a title at that moment in everybody's mouth, the title of 'THE
WAVERERS.'

Notwithstanding, therefore, the opposition of the Duke of Wellington and
of Lord Lyndhurst, the Waverers carried the second reading of the Reform
Bill; and then, scared at the consequences of their own headstrong
timidity, they went in a fright to the Duke and his able adviser to
extricate them from the inevitable result of their own conduct. The
ultimate device of these distracted counsels, where daring and
poltroonery, principle and expediency, public spirit and private intrigue,
each threw an ingredient into the turbulent spell, was the celebrated and
successful amendment to which we have referred.

But the Whig ministers, who, whatever may have been their faults, were at
least men of intellect and courage, were not to be beaten by 'the
Waverers.' They might have made terms with an audacious foe; they trampled
on a hesitating opponent. Lord Grey hastened to the palace.

Before the result of this appeal to the Sovereign was known, for its
effects were not immediate, on the second morning after the vote in the
House of Lords, Mr. Rigby had made that visit to Eton which had summoned
very unexpectedly the youthful Coningsby to London. He was the orphan
child of the youngest of the two sons of the Marquess of Monmouth. It was
a family famous for its hatreds. The eldest son hated his father; and, it
was said, in spite had married a lady to whom that father was attached,
and with whom Lord Monmouth then meditated a second alliance. This eldest
son lived at Naples, and had several children, but maintained no
connection either with his parent or his native country. On the other
hand, Lord Monmouth hated his younger son, who had married, against his
consent, a woman to whom that son was devoted. A system of domestic
persecution, sustained by the hand of a master, had eventually broken up
the health of its victim, who died of a fever in a foreign country, where
he had sought some refuge from his creditors.

His widow returned to England with her child; and, not having a relation,
and scarcely an acquaintance in the world, made an appeal to her husband's
father, the wealthiest noble in England and a man who was often prodigal,
and occasionally generous. After some time, and more trouble, after urgent
and repeated, and what would have seemed heart-rending, solicitations, the
attorney of Lord Monmouth called upon the widow of his client's son, and
informed her of his Lordship's decision. Provided she gave up her child,
and permanently resided in one of the remotest counties, he was authorised
to make her, in four quarterly payments, the yearly allowance of three
hundred pounds, that being the income that Lord Monmouth, who was the
shrewdest accountant in the country, had calculated a lone woman might
very decently exist upon in a small market town in the county of
Westmoreland.

Desperate necessity, the sense of her own forlornness, the utter
impossibility to struggle with an omnipotent foe, who, her husband had
taught her, was above all scruples, prejudices, and fears, and who, though
he respected law, despised opinion, made the victim yield. But her
sufferings were not long; the separation from her child, the bleak clime,
the strange faces around her, sharp memory, and the dull routine of an
unimpassioned life, all combined to wear out a constitution originally
frail, and since shattered by many sorrows. Mrs. Coningsby died the same
day that her father-in-law was made a Marquess. He deserved his honours.
The four votes he had inherited in the House of Commons had been
increased, by his intense volition and unsparing means, to ten; and the
very day he was raised to his Marquisate, he commenced sapping fresh
corporations, and was working for the strawberry leaf. His honours were
proclaimed in the London Gazette, and her decease was not even noticed in
the County Chronicle; but the altars of Nemesis are beneath every outraged
roof, and the death of this unhappy lady, apparently without an earthly
friend or an earthly hope, desolate and deserted, and dying in obscure
poverty, was not forgotten.

Coningsby was not more than nine years of age when he lost his last
parent; and he had then been separated from her for nearly three years.
But he remembered the sweetness of his nursery days. His mother, too, had
written to him frequently since he quitted her, and her fond expressions
had cherished the tenderness of his heart. He wept bitterly when his
schoolmaster broke to him the news of his mother's death. True it was they
had been long parted, and their prospect of again meeting was vague and
dim; but his mother seemed to him his only link to human society. It was
something to have a mother, even if he never saw her. Other boys went to
see their mothers! he, at least, could talk of his. Now he was alone. His
grandfather was to him only a name. Lord Monmouth resided almost
constantly abroad, and during his rare visits to England had found no time
or inclination to see the orphan, with whom he felt no sympathy. Even the
death of the boy's mother, and the consequent arrangements, were notified
to his master by a stranger. The letter which brought the sad intelligence
was from Mr. Rigby. It was the first time that name had been known to
Coningsby.

Mr. Rigby was member for one of Lord Monmouth's boroughs. He was the
manager of Lord Monmouth's parliamentary influence, and the auditor of his
vast estates. He was more; he was Lord Monmouth's companion when in
England, his correspondent when abroad; hardly his counsellor, for Lord
Monmouth never required advice; but Mr. Rigby could instruct him in
matters of detail, which Mr. Rigby made amusing. Rigby was not a
professional man; indeed, his origin, education, early pursuits, and
studies, were equally obscure; but he had contrived in good time to
squeeze himself into parliament, by means which no one could ever
comprehend, and then set up to be a perfect man of business. The world
took him at his word, for he was bold, acute, and voluble; with no
thought, but a good deal of desultory information; and though destitute of
all imagination and noble sentiment, was blessed with a vigorous,
mendacious fancy, fruitful in small expedients, and never happier than
when devising shifts for great men's scrapes.

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