Henry M. Cist - "The Army of the Cumberland"

John Evelyn - "Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2)"

John Kendrick Bangs - "Ghosts I have Met and Some Others"

J. M. Barrie - "Better Dead"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Coningsby

B >> Benjamin Disraeli >> Coningsby




END OF BOOK III.




BOOK IV


CHAPTER I.


A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some
great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of
Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique
world, Art.

In modern ages, Commerce has created London; while Manners, in the most
comprehensive sense of the word, have long found a supreme capital in the
airy and bright-minded city of the Seine.

What Art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern: the
distinctive faculty. In the minds of men the useful has succeeded to the
beautiful. Instead of the city of the Violet Crown, a Lancashire village
has expanded into a mighty region of factories and warehouses. Yet,
rightly understood, Manchester is as great a human exploit as Athens.

The inhabitants, indeed, are not so impressed with their idiosyncrasy as
the countrymen of Pericles and Phidias. They do not fully comprehend the
position which they occupy. It is the philosopher alone who can conceive
the grandeur of Manchester, and the immensity of its future. There are yet
great truths to tell, if we had either the courage to announce or the
temper to receive them.




CHAPTER II.


A feeling of melancholy, even of uneasiness, attends our first entrance
into a great town, especially at night. Is it that the sense of all this
vast existence with which we have no connexion, where we are utterly
unknown, oppresses us with our insignificance? Is it that it is terrible
to feel friendless where all have friends?

Yet reverse the picture. Behold a community where you are unknown, but
where you will be known, perhaps honoured. A place where you have no
friends, but where, also, you have no enemies. A spot that has hitherto
been a blank in your thoughts, as you have been a cipher in its
sensations, and yet a spot, perhaps, pregnant with your destiny!

There is, perhaps, no act of memory so profoundly interesting as to recall
the careless mood and moment in which we have entered a town, a house, a
chamber, on the eve of an acquaintance or an event that has given colour
and an impulse to our future life.

What is this Fatality that men worship? Is it a Goddess?

Unquestionably it is a power that acts mainly by female agents. Women are
the Priestesses of Predestination.

Man conceives Fortune, but Woman conducts it.

It is the Spirit of Man that says, 'I will be great;' but it is the
Sympathy of Woman that usually makes him so.

It was not the comely and courteous hostess of the Adelphi Hotel,
Manchester, that gave occasion to these remarks, though she may deserve
them, and though she was most kind to our Coningsby as he came in late at
night very tired, and not in very good humour.

He had travelled the whole day through the great district of labour, his
mind excited by strange sights, and at length wearied by their
multiplication. He had passed over the plains where iron and coal
supersede turf and corn, dingy as the entrance of Hades, and flaming with
furnaces; and now he was among illumined factories with more windows than
Italian palaces, and smoking chimneys taller than Egyptian obelisks. Alone
in the great metropolis of machinery itself, sitting down in a solitary
coffee-room glaring with gas, with no appetite, a whirling head, and not a
plan or purpose for the morrow, why was he there? Because a being, whose
name even was unknown to him, had met him in a hedge alehouse during a
thunderstorm, and told him that the Age of Ruins was past.

Remarkable instance of the influence of an individual; some evidence of
the extreme susceptibility of our hero.

Even his bedroom was lit by gas. Wonderful city! That, however, could be
got rid of. He opened the window. The summer air was sweet, even in this
land of smoke and toil. He feels a sensation such as in Lisbon or Lima
precedes an earthquake. The house appears to quiver. It is a sympathetic
affection occasioned by a steam-engine in a neighbouring factory.

Notwithstanding, however, all these novel incidents, Coningsby slept the
deep sleep of youth and health, of a brain which, however occasionally
perplexed by thought, had never been harassed by anxiety. He rose early,
freshened, and in fine spirits. And by the time the deviled chicken and
the buttered toast, that mysterious and incomparable luxury, which can
only be obtained at an inn, had disappeared, he felt all the delightful
excitement of travel.

And now for action! Not a letter had Coningsby; not an individual in that
vast city was known to him. He went to consult his kind hostess, who
smiled confidence. He was to mention her name at one place, his own at
another. All would be right; she seemed to have reliance in the destiny of
such a nice young man.

He saw all; they were kind and hospitable to the young stranger, whose
thought, and earnestness, and gentle manners attracted them. One
recommended him to another; all tried to aid and assist him. He entered
chambers vaster than are told of in Arabian fable, and peopled with
habitants more wondrous than Afrite or Peri. For there he beheld, in long-
continued ranks, those mysterious forms full of existence without life,
that perform with facility, and in an instant, what man can fulfil only
with difficulty and in days. A machine is a slave that neither brings nor
bears degradation; it is a being endowed with the greatest degree of
energy, and acting under the greatest degree of excitement, yet free at
the same time from all passion and emotion. It is, therefore, not only a
slave, but a supernatural slave. And why should one say that the machine
does not live? It breathes, for its breath forms the atmosphere of some
towns. It moves with more regularity than man. And has it not a voice?
Does not the spindle sing like a merry girl at her work, and the steam-
engine roar in jolly chorus, like a strong artisan handling his lusty
tools, and gaining a fair day's wages for a fair day's toil?

Nor should the weaving-room be forgotten, where a thousand or fifteen
hundred girls may be observed in their coral necklaces, working like
Penelope in the daytime; some pretty, some pert, some graceful and jocund,
some absorbed in their occupation; a little serious some, few sad. And the
cotton you have observed in its rude state, that you have seen the silent
spinner change into thread, and the bustling weaver convert into cloth,
you may now watch as in a moment it is tinted with beautiful colours, or
printed with fanciful patterns. And yet the mystery of mysteries is to
view machines making machines; a spectacle that fills the mind with
curious, and even awful, speculation.

From early morn to the late twilight, our Coningsby for several days
devoted himself to the comprehension of Manchester. It was to him a new
world, pregnant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought
and feeling. In this unprecedented partnership between capital and
science, working on a spot which Nature had indicated as the fitting
theatre of their exploits, he beheld a great source of the wealth of
nations which had been reserved for these times, and he perceived that
this wealth was rapidly developing classes whose power was imperfectly
recognised in the constitutional scheme, and whose duties in the social
system seemed altogether omitted. Young as he was, the bent of his mind,
and the inquisitive spirit of the times, had sufficiently prepared him,
not indeed to grapple with these questions, but to be sensible of their
existence, and to ponder.

One evening, in the coffee-room of the hotel, having just finished his
well-earned dinner, and relaxing his mind for the moment in a fresh
research into the Manchester Guide, an individual, who had also been
dining in the same apartment, rose from his table, and, after lolling over
the empty fireplace, reading the framed announcements, looking at the
directions of several letters waiting there for their owners, picking his
teeth, turned round to Coningsby, and, with an air of uneasy familiarity,
said,--

'First visit to Manchester, sir?'

'My first.'

'Gentleman traveller, I presume?'

'I am a traveller.' said Coningsby.

'Hem! From south?'

'From the south.'

'And pray, sir, how did you find business as you came along? Brisk, I dare
say. And yet there is a something, a sort of a something; didn't it strike
you, sir, there was a something? A deal of queer paper about, sir!'

'I fear you are speaking on a subject of which I know nothing,' said
Coningsby, smiling;' I do not understand business at all; though I am not
surprised that, being at Manchester, you should suppose so.'

'Ah! not in business. Hem! Professional?'

'No,' said Coningsby, 'I am nothing.'

'Ah! an independent gent; hem! and a very pleasant thing, too. Pleased
with Manchester, I dare say?' continued the stranger.

'And astonished,' said Coningsby; 'I think, in the whole course of my
life, I never saw so much to admire.'

'Seen all the lions, have no doubt?'

'I think I have seen everything,' said Coningsby, rather eager and with
some pride.

'Very well, very well,' exclaimed the stranger, in a patronising tone.
'Seen Mr. Birley's weaving-room, I dare say?'

'Oh! isn't it wonderful?' said Coningsby.

'A great many people.' said the stranger, with a rather supercilious
smile.

'But after all,' said Coningsby, with animation, 'it is the machinery
without any interposition of manual power that overwhelms me. It haunts me
in my dreams,' continued Coningsby; 'I see cities peopled with machines.
Certainly Manchester is the most wonderful city of modern times!'

The stranger stared a little at the enthusiasm of his companion, and then
picked his teeth.

'Of all the remarkable things here,' said Coningsby, 'what on the whole,
sir, do you look upon as the most so?'

'In the way of machinery?' asked the stranger.

'In the way of machinery.'

'Why, in the way of machinery, you know,' said the stranger, very quietly,
'Manchester is a dead letter.'

'A dead letter!' said Coningsby.

'Dead and buried,' said the stranger, accompanying his words with that
peculiar application of his thumb to his nose that signifies so eloquently
that all is up.

'You astonish me!' said Coningsby.

'It's a booked place though,' said the stranger, 'and no mistake. We have
all of us a very great respect for Manchester, of course; look upon her as
a sort of mother, and all that sort of thing. But she is behind the times,
sir, and that won't do in this age. The long and short of it is,
Manchester is gone by.'

'I thought her only fault might be she was too much in advance of the rest
of the country,' said Coningsby, innocently.

'If you want to see life,' said the stranger, 'go to Staleybridge or
Bolton. There's high pressure.'

'But the population of Manchester is increasing,' said Coningsby.

'Why, yes; not a doubt. You see we have all of us a great respect for the
town. It is a sort of metropolis of this district, and there is a good
deal of capital in the place. And it has some firstrate institutions.
There's the Manchester Bank. That's a noble institution, full of
commercial enterprise; understands the age, sir; high-pressure to the
backbone. I came up to town to see the manager to-day. I am building a new
mill now myself at Staleybridge, and mean to open it by January, and when
I do, I'll give you leave to pay another visit to Mr. Birley's weaving-
room, with my compliments.'

'I am very sorry,' said Coningsby, 'that I have only another day left; but
pray tell me, what would you recommend me most to see within a reasonable
distance of Manchester?'

'My mill is not finished,' said the stranger musingly, 'and though there
is still a great deal worth seeing at Staleybridge, still you had better
wait to see my new mill. And Bolton, let me see; Bolton, there is nothing
at Bolton that can hold up its head for a moment against my new mill; but
then it is not finished. Well, well, let us see. What a pity this is not
the 1st of January, and then my new mill would be at work! I should like
to see Mr. Birley's face, or even Mr. Ashworth's, that day. And the Oxford
Road Works, where they are always making a little change, bit by bit
reform, eh! not a very particular fine appetite, I suspect, for dinner, at
the Oxford Road Works, the day they hear of my new mill being at work.
But you want to see something tip-top. Well, there's Millbank; that's
regular slap-up, quite a sight, regular lion; if I were you I would see
Millbank.'

'Millbank!' said Coningsby; 'what Millbank?'

'Millbank of Millbank, made the place, made it himself. About three miles
from Bolton; train to-morrow morning at 7.25, get a fly at the station,
and you will be at Millbank by 8.40.'

'Unfortunately I am engaged to-morrow morning,' said Coningsby, 'and yet I
am most anxious, particularly anxious, to see Millbank.'

'Well, there's a late train,' said the stranger, '3.15; you will be there
by 4.30.'

'I think I could manage that,' said Coningsby.

'Do,' said the stranger; 'and if you ever find yourself at Staleybridge, I
shall be very happy to be of service. I must be off now. My train goes at
9.15.' And he presented Coningsby with his card as he wished him good
night.

MR. G. O. A. HEAD,
STALEYBRIDGE.




CHAPTER III.


In a green valley of Lancaster, contiguous to that district of factories
on which we have already touched, a clear and powerful stream flows
through a broad meadow land. Upon its margin, adorned, rather than
shadowed, by some old elm-trees, for they are too distant to serve except
for ornament, rises a vast deep red brick pile, which though formal and
monotonous in its general character, is not without a certain beauty of
proportion and an artist-like finish in its occasional masonry. The front,
which is of great extent, and covered with many tiers of small windows, is
flanked by two projecting wings in the same style, which form a large
court, completed by a dwarf wall crowned with a light, and rather elegant
railing; in the centre, the principal entrance, a lofty portal of bold and
beautiful design, surmounted by a statue of Commerce.

This building, not without a degree of dignity, is what is technically,
and not very felicitously, called a mill; always translated by the French
in their accounts of our manufacturing riots, 'moulin;' and which really
was the principal factory of Oswald Millbank, the father of that youth
whom, we trust, our readers have not quite forgotten.

At some little distance, and rather withdrawn from the principal stream,
were two other smaller structures of the same style. About a quarter of a
mile further on, appeared a village of not inconsiderable size, and
remarkable from the neatness and even picturesque character of its
architecture, and the gay gardens that surrounded it. On a sunny knoll in
the background rose a church, in the best style of Christian architecture,
and near it was a clerical residence and a school-house of similar design.
The village, too, could boast of another public building; an Institute
where there were a library and a lecture-room; and a reading-hall, which
any one might frequent at certain hours, and under reasonable regulations.

On the other side of the principal factory, but more remote, about half-a-
mile up the valley, surrounded by beautiful meadows, and built on an
agreeable and well-wooded elevation, was the mansion of the mill-owner;
apparently a commodious and not inconsiderable dwelling-house, built in
what is called a villa style, with a variety of gardens and
conservatories. The atmosphere of this somewhat striking settlement was
not disturbed and polluted by the dark vapour, which, to the shame of
Manchester, still infests that great town, for Mr. Millbank, who liked
nothing so much as an invention, unless it were an experiment, took care
to consume his own smoke.

The sun was declining when Coningsby arrived at Millbank, and the
gratification which he experienced on first beholding it, was not a little
diminished, when, on enquiring at the village, he was informed that the
hour was past for seeing the works. Determined not to relinquish his
purpose without a struggle, he repaired to the principal mill, and entered
the counting-house, which was situated in one of the wings of the
building.

'Your pleasure, sir?' said one of three individuals sitting on high stools
behind a high desk.

'I wish, if possible, to see the works.'

'Quite impossible, sir;' and the clerk, withdrawing his glance, continued
his writing. 'No admission without an order, and no admission with an
order after two o'clock.'

'I am very unfortunate,' said Coningsby.

'Sorry for it, sir. Give me ledger K. X., will you, Mr. Benson?'

'I think Mr. Millbank would grant me permission,' said Coningsby.

'Very likely, sir; to-morrow. Mr. Millbank is there, sir, but very much
engaged.' He pointed to an inner counting-house, and the glass doors
permitted Coningsby to observe several individuals in close converse.

'Perhaps his son, Mr. Oswald Millbank, is here?' inquired Coningsby.

'Mr. Oswald is in Belgium,' said the clerk.

'Would you give a message to Mr. Millbank, and say a friend of his son's
at Eton is here, and here only for a day, and wishes very much to see his
works?'

'Can't possibly disturb Mr. Millbank now, sir; but, if you like to sit
down, you can wait and see him yourself.'

Coningsby was content to sit down, though he grew very impatient at the
end of a quarter of an hour. The ticking of the clock, the scratching of
the pens of the three silent clerks, irritated him. At length, voices were
heard, doors opened, and the clerk said, 'Mr. Millbank is coming, sir,'
but nobody came; voices became hushed, doors were shut; again nothing was
heard, save the ticking of the clock and the scratching of the pen.

At length there was a general stir, and they all did come forth, Mr.
Millbank among them, a well-proportioned, comely man, with a fair face
inclining to ruddiness, a quick, glancing, hazel eye, the whitest teeth,
and short, curly, chestnut hair, here and there slightly tinged with grey.
It was a visage of energy and decision.

He was about to pass through the counting-house with his companions, with
whom his affairs were not concluded, when he observed Coningsby, who had
risen.

'This gentleman wishes to see me?' he inquired of his clerk, who bowed
assent.

'I shall be at your service, sir, the moment I have finished with these
gentlemen.'

'The gentleman wishes to see the works, sir,' said the clerk.

'He can see the works at proper times,' said Mr. Millbank, somewhat
pettishly; 'tell him the regulations;' and he was about to go.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Coningsby, coming forward, and with an air
of earnestness and grace that arrested the step of the manufacturer. 'I am
aware of the regulations, but would beg to be permitted to infringe them.'

'It cannot be, sir,' said Mr. Millbank, moving.

'I thought, sir, being here only for a day, and as a friend of your son--'

Mr. Millbank stopped and said,

'Oh! a friend of Oswald's, eh? What, at Eton?'

'Yes, sir, at Eton; and I had hoped perhaps to have found him here.'

'I am very much engaged, sir, at this moment,' said Mr. Millbank; 'I am
sorry I cannot pay you any personal attention, but my clerk will show you
everything. Mr. Benson, let this gentleman see everything;' and he
withdrew.

'Be pleased to write your name here, sir,' said Mr. Benson, opening a
book, and our friend wrote his name and the date of his visit to Millbank:

'HARRY CONINGSBY, Sept. 2, 1836.'

Coningsby beheld in this great factory the last and the most refined
inventions of mechanical genius. The building had been fitted up by a
capitalist as anxious to raise a monument of the skill and power of his
order, as to obtain a return for the great investment.

'It is the glory of Lancashire!' exclaimed the enthusiastic Mr. Benson.

The clerk spoke freely of his master, whom he evidently idolised, and his
great achievements, and Coningsby encouraged him. He detailed to Coningsby
the plans which Mr. Millbank had pursued, both for the moral and physical
well-being of his people; how he had built churches, and schools, and
institutes; houses and cottages on a new system of ventilation; how he had
allotted gardens; established singing classes.

'Here is Mr. Millbank,' continued the clerk, as he and Coningsby, quitting
the factory, re-entered the court.

Mr. Millbank was approaching the factory, and the moment that he observed
them, he quickened his pace.

'Mr. Coningsby?' he said, when he reached them. His countenance was rather
disturbed, and his voice a little trembled, and he looked on our friend
with a glance scrutinising and serious. Coningsby bowed.

'I am sorry that you should have been received at this place with so
little ceremony, sir,' said Mr. Millbank; 'but had your name been
mentioned, you would have found it cherished here.' He nodded to the
clerk, who disappeared.

Coningsby began to talk about the wonders of the factory, but Mr. Millbank
recurred to other thoughts that were passing in his mind. He spoke of his
son: he expressed a kind reproach that Coningsby should have thought of
visiting this part of the world without giving them some notice of his
intention, that he might have been their guest, that Oswald might have
been there to receive him, that they might have made arrangements that he
should see everything, and in the best manner; in short, that they might
all have shown, however slightly, the deep sense of their obligations to
him.

'My visit to Manchester, which led to this, was quite accidental,' said
Coningsby. 'I am bound for the other division of the county, to pay a
visit to my grandfather, Lord Monmouth; but an irresistible desire came
over me during my journey to view this famous district of industry. It is
some days since I ought to have found myself at Coningsby, and this is the
reason why I am so pressed.'

A cloud passed over the countenance of Millbank as the name of Lord
Monmouth was mentioned, but he said nothing. Turning towards Coningsby,
with an air of kindness:

'At least,' said he, 'let not Oswald hear that you did not taste our salt.
Pray dine with me to-day; there is yet an hour to dinner; and as you have
seen the factory, suppose we stroll together through the village.'




CHAPTER IV.


The village clock struck five as Mr. Millbank and his guest entered the
gardens of his mansion. Coningsby lingered a moment to admire the beauty
and gay profusion of the flowers.

'Your situation,' said Coningsby, looking up the green and silent valley,
'is absolutely poetic.'

'I try sometimes to fancy,' said Mr. Millbank, with a rather fierce smile,
'that I am in the New World.'

They entered the house; a capacious and classic hall, at the end a
staircase in the Italian fashion. As they approached it, the sweetest and
the clearest voice exclaimed from above, 'Papa! papa!' and instantly a
young girl came bounding down the stairs, but suddenly seeing a stranger
with her father she stopped upon the landing-place, and was evidently on
the point of as rapidly retreating as she had advanced, when Mr. Millbank
waved his hand to her and begged her to descend. She came down slowly; as
she approached them her father said, 'A friend you have often heard of,
Edith: this is Mr. Coningsby.'

She started; blushed very much; and then, with a trembling and uncertain
gait, advanced, put forth her hand with a wild unstudied grace, and said
in a tone of sensibility, 'How often have we all wished to see and to
thank you!'

This daughter of his host was of tender years; apparently she could
scarcely have counted sixteen summers. She was delicate and fragile, but
as she raised her still blushing visage to her father's guest, Coningsby
felt that he had never beheld a countenance of such striking and such
peculiar beauty.

'My only daughter, Mr. Coningsby, Edith; a Saxon name, for she is the
daughter of a Saxon.'

But the beauty of the countenance was not the beauty of the Saxons. It was
a radiant face, one of those that seem to have been touched in their
cradle by a sunbeam, and to have retained all their brilliancy and
suffused and mantling lustre. One marks sometimes such faces, diaphanous
with delicate splendour, in the southern regions of France. Her eye, too,
was the rare eye of Aquitaine; soft and long, with lashes drooping over
the cheek, dark as her clustering ringlets.

They entered the drawing-room.

'Mr. Coningsby,' said Millbank to his daughter, 'is in this part of the
world only for a few hours, or I am sure he would become our guest. He
has, however, promised to stay with us now and dine.'

'If Miss Millbank will pardon this dress,' said Coningsby, bowing an
apology for his inevitable frock and boots; the maiden raised her eyes and
bent her head.

The hour of dinner was at hand. Millbank offered to show Coningsby to his
dressing-room. He was absent but a few minutes. When he returned he found
Miss Millbank alone. He came somewhat suddenly into the room. She was
playing with her dog, but ceased the moment she observed Coningsby.

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