G. A. Henty - "By England's Aid"

Charles G. D. Roberts - "Earth's Enigmas"

Ferdinand Gregorovius - "Lucretia Borgia"

Martin Farquhar Tupper - "Heart"

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




Coningsby, who since his practice with Lady Everingham, flattered himself
that he had advanced in small talk, and was not sorry that he had now an
opportunity of proving his prowess, made some lively observations about
pets and the breeds of lapdogs, but he was not fortunate in extracting a
response or exciting a repartee. He began then on the beauty of Millbank,
which he would on no account have avoided seeing, and inquired when she
had last heard of her brother. The young lady, apparently much distressed,
was murmuring something about Antwerp, when the entrance of her father
relieved her from her embarrassment.

Dinner being announced, Coningsby offered his arm to his fair companion,
who took it with her eyes fixed on the ground.

'You are very fond, I see, of flowers,' said Coningsby, as they moved
along; and the young lady said 'Yes.'

The dinner was plain, but perfect of its kind. The young hostess seemed to
perform her office with a certain degree of desperate determination. She
looked at a chicken and then at Coningsby, and murmured something which he
understood. Sometimes she informed herself of his tastes or necessities in
more detail, by the medium of her father, whom she treated as a sort of
dragoman; in this way: 'Would not Mr. Coningsby, papa, take this or that,
or do so and so?' Coningsby was always careful to reply in a direct
manner, without the agency of the interpreter; but he did not advance.
Even a petition for the great honour of taking a glass of sherry with her
only induced the beautiful face to bow. And yet when she had first seen
him, she had addressed him even with emotion. What could it be? He felt
less confidence in his increased power of conversation. Why, Theresa
Sydney was scarcely a year older than Miss Millbank, and though she did
not certainly originate like Lady Everingham, he got on with her perfectly
well.

Mr. Millbank did not seem to be conscious of his daughter's silence: at
any rate, he attempted to compensate for it. He talked fluently and well;
on all subjects his opinions seemed to be decided, and his language was
precise. He was really interested in what Coningsby had seen, and what he
had felt; and this sympathy divested his manner of the disagreeable effect
that accompanies a tone inclined to be dictatorial. More than once
Coningsby observed the silent daughter listening with extreme attention to
the conversation of himself and her father.

The dessert was remarkable. Millbank was proud of his fruit. A bland
expression of self-complacency spread over his features as he surveyed his
grapes, his peaches, his figs.

'These grapes have gained a medal,' he told Coningsby. 'Those too are
prize peaches. I have not yet been so successful with my figs. These
however promise, and perhaps this year I may be more fortunate.'

'What would your brother and myself have given for such a dessert at
Eton!' said Coningsby to Miss Millbank, wishing to say something, and
something too that might interest her.

She seemed infinitely distressed, and yet this time would speak.

'Let me give you some,' He caught by chance her glance immediately
withdrawn; yet it was a glance not only of beauty, but of feeling and
thought. She added, in a hushed and hurried tone, dividing very nervously
some grapes, 'I hardly know whether Oswald will be most pleased or grieved
when he hears that you have been here.'

'And why grieved?' said Coningsby.

'That he should not have been here to welcome you, and that your stay is
for so brief a time. It seems so strange that after having talked of you
for years, we should see you only for hours.'

'I hope I may return,' said Coningsby, 'and that Millbank may be here to
welcome me; but I hope I may be permitted to return even if he be not.'

But there was no reply; and soon after, Mr. Millbank talking of the
American market, and Coningsby helping himself to a glass of claret, the
daughter of the Saxon, looking at her father, rose and left the room, so
suddenly and so quickly that Coningsby could scarcely gain the door.

'Yes,' said Millbank, filling his glass, and pursuing some previous
observations, 'all that we want in this country is to be masters of our
own industry; but Saxon industry and Norman manners never will agree; and
some day, Mr. Coningsby, you will find that out.'

'But what do you mean by Norman manners?' inquired Coningsby.

'Did you ever hear of the Forest of Rossendale?' said Millbank. 'If you
were staying here, you should visit the district. It is an area of twenty-
four square miles. It was disforested in the early part of the sixteenth
century, possessing at that time eighty inhabitants. Its rental in James
the First's time was 120_l._ When the woollen manufacture was introduced
into the north, the shuttle competed with the plough in Rossendale, and
about forty years ago we sent them the Jenny. The eighty souls are now
increased to upwards of eighty thousand, and the rental of the forest, by
the last county assessment, amounts to more than 50,000_l._, 41,000 per
cent, on the value in the reign of James I. Now I call that an instance of
Saxon industry competing successfully with Norman manners.'

'Exactly,' said Coningsby, 'but those manners are gone.'

'From Rossendale, 'said Millbank, with a grim smile; 'but not from
England.'

'Where do you meet them?'

'Meet them! In every place, at every hour; and feel them, too, in every
transaction of life.'

'I know, sir, from your son,' said Coningsby, inquiringly, 'that you are
opposed to an aristocracy.'

'No, I am not. I am for an aristocracy; but a real one, a natural one.'

'But, sir, is not the aristocracy of England,' said Coningsby, 'a real
one? You do not confound our peerage, for example, with the degraded
patricians of the Continent.'

'Hum!' said Millbank. 'I do not understand how an aristocracy can exist,
unless it be distinguished by some quality which no other class of the
community possesses. Distinction is the basis of aristocracy. If you
permit only one class of the population, for example, to bear arms, they
are an aristocracy; not one much to my taste; but still a great fact.
That, however, is not the characteristic of the English peerage. I have
yet to learn they are richer than we are, better informed, wiser, or more
distinguished for public or private virtue. Is it not monstrous, then,
that a small number of men, several of whom take the titles of Duke and
Earl from towns in this very neighbourhood, towns which they never saw,
which never heard of them, which they did not form, or build, or
establish, I say, is it not monstrous, that individuals so circumstanced,
should be invested with the highest of conceivable privileges, the
privilege of making laws? Dukes and Earls indeed! I say there is nothing
in a masquerade more ridiculous.'

'But do you not argue from an exception, sir?' said Coningsby. 'The
question is, whether a preponderance of the aristocratic principle in a
political constitution be, as I believe, conducive to the stability and
permanent power of a State; and whether the peerage, as established in
England, generally tends to that end? We must not forget in such an
estimate the influence which, in this country, is exercised over opinion
by ancient lineage.'

'Ancient lineage!' said Mr. Millbank; 'I never heard of a peer with an
ancient lineage. The real old families of this country are to be found
among the peasantry; the gentry, too, may lay some claim to old blood. I
can point you out Saxon families in this county who can trace their
pedigrees beyond the Conquest; I know of some Norman gentlemen whose
fathers undoubtedly came over with the Conqueror. But a peer with an
ancient lineage is to me quite a novelty. No, no; the thirty years of the
wars of the Roses freed us from those gentlemen. I take it, after the
battle of Tewkesbury, a Norman baron was almost as rare a being in England
as a wolf is now.'

'I have always understood,' said Coningsby, 'that our peerage was the
finest in Europe.'

'From themselves,' said Millbank, 'and the heralds they pay to paint their
carriages. But I go to facts. When Henry VII. called his first Parliament,
there were only twenty-nine temporal peers to be found, and even some of
them took their seats illegally, for they had been attainted. Of those
twenty-nine not five remain, and they, as the Howards for instance, are
not Norman nobility. We owe the English peerage to three sources: the
spoliation of the Church; the open and flagrant sale of its honours by the
elder Stuarts; and the boroughmongering of our own times. Those are the
three main sources of the existing peerage of England, and in my opinion
disgraceful ones. But I must apologise for my frankness in thus speaking
to an aristocrat.'

'Oh, by no means, sir, I like discussion. Your son and myself at Eton have
had some encounters of this kind before. But if your view of the case be
correct,' added Coningsby, smiling, 'you cannot at any rate accuse our
present peers of Norman manners.'

'Yes, I do: they adopted Norman manners while they usurped Norman titles.
They have neither the right of the Normans, nor do they fulfil the duty of
the Normans: they did not conquer the land, and they do not defend it.'

'And where will you find your natural aristocracy?' asked Coningsby.

'Among those men whom a nation recognises as the most eminent for virtue,
talents, and property, and, if you please, birth and standing in the land.
They guide opinion; and, therefore, they govern. I am no leveller; I look
upon an artificial equality as equally pernicious with a factitious
aristocracy; both depressing the energies, and checking the enterprise of
a nation. I like man to be free, really free: free in his industry as well
as his body. What is the use of Habeas Corpus, if a man may not use his
hands when he is out of prison?'

'But it appears to me you have, in a great measure, this natural
aristocracy in England.'

'Ah, to be sure! If we had not, where should we be? It is the
counteracting power that saves us, the disturbing cause in the
calculations of short-sighted selfishness. I say it now, and I have said
it a hundred times, the House of Commons is a more aristocratic body than
the House of Lords. The fact is, a great peer would be a greater man now
in the House of Commons than in the House of Lords. Nobody wants a second
chamber, except a few disreputable individuals. It is a valuable
institution for any member of it who has no distinction, neither
character, talents, nor estate. But a peer who possesses all or any of
these great qualifications, would find himself an immeasurably more
important personage in what, by way of jest, they call the Lower House.'

'Is not the revising wisdom of a senate a salutary check on the
precipitation of a popular assembly?'

'Why should a popular assembly, elected by the flower of a nation, be
precipitate? If precipitate, what senate could stay an assembly so chosen?
No, no, no! the thing has been tried over and over again; the idea of
restraining the powerful by the weak is an absurdity; the question is
settled. If we wanted a fresh illustration, we need only look to the
present state of our own House of Lords. It originates nothing; it has, in
fact, announced itself as a mere Court of Registration of the decrees of
your House of Commons; and if by any chance it ventures to alter some
miserable detail in a clause of a bill that excites public interest, what
a clatter through the country, at Conservative banquets got up by the
rural attorneys, about the power, authority, and independence of the House
of Lords; nine times nine, and one cheer more! No, sir, you may make
aristocracies by laws; you can only maintain them by manners. The manners
of England preserve it from its laws. And they have substituted for our
formal aristocracy an essential aristocracy; the government of those who
are distinguished by their fellow-citizens.'

'But then it would appear,' said Coningsby, 'that the remedial action of
our manners has removed all the political and social evils of which you
complain?'

'They have created a power that may remove them; a power that has the
capacity to remove them. But in a great measure they still exist, and must
exist yet, I fear, for a long time. The growth of our civilisation has
ever been as slow as our oaks; but this tardy development is preferable to
the temporary expansion of the gourd.'

'The future seems to me sometimes a dark cloud.'

'Not to me,' said Mr. Millbank. 'I am sanguine; I am the Disciple of
Progress. But I have cause for my faith. I have witnessed advance. My
father has often told me that in his early days the displeasure of a peer
of England was like a sentence of death to a man. Why it was esteemed a
great concession to public opinion, so late as the reign of George II.,
that Lord Ferrars should be executed for murder. The king of a new
dynasty, who wished to be popular with the people, insisted on it, and
even then he was hanged with a silken cord. At any rate we may defend
ourselves now,' continued Mr. Millbank, 'and, perhaps, do something more.
I defy any peer to crush me, though there is one who would be very glad to
do it. No more of that; I am very happy to see you at Millbank, very happy
to make your acquaintance,' he continued, with some emotion, 'and not
merely because you are my son's friend and more than friend.'

The walls of the dining-room were covered with pictures of great merit,
all of the modern English school. Mr. Millbank understood no other, he was
wont to say! and he found that many of his friends who did, bought a great
many pleasing pictures that were copies, and many originals that were very
displeasing. He loved a fine free landscape by Lee, that gave him the
broad plains, the green lanes, and running streams of his own land; a
group of animals by Landseer, as full of speech and sentiment as if they
were designed by Aesop; above all, he delighted in the household humour
and homely pathos of Wilkie. And if a higher tone of imagination pleased
him, he could gratify it without difficulty among his favourite masters.
He possessed some specimens of Etty worthy of Venice when it was alive; he
could muse amid the twilight ruins of ancient cities raised by the magic
pencil of Danby, or accompany a group of fair Neapolitans to a festival by
the genial aid of Uwins.

Opposite Coningsby was a portrait, which had greatly attracted his
attention during the whole dinner. It represented a woman, young and of a
rare beauty. The costume was of that classical character prevalent in this
country before the general peace; a blue ribbon bound together as a fillet
her clustering chestnut curls. The face was looking out of the canvas, and
Coningsby never raised his eyes without catching its glance of blended
vivacity and tenderness.

There are moments when our sensibility is affected by circumstances of a
trivial character. It seems a fantastic emotion, but the gaze of this
picture disturbed the serenity of Coningsby. He endeavoured sometimes to
avoid looking at it, but it irresistibly attracted him. More than once
during dinner he longed to inquire whom it represented; but it is a
delicate subject to ask questions about portraits, and he refrained.
Still, when he was rising to leave the room, the impulse was irresistible.
He said to Mr. Millbank, 'By whom is that portrait, sir?'

The countenance of Millbank became disturbed; it was not an expression of
tender reminiscence that fell upon his features. On the contrary, the
expression was agitated, almost angry.

'Oh! that is by a country artist,' he said,' of whom you never heard,' and
moved away.

They found Miss Millbank in the drawing-room; she was sitting at a round
table covered with working materials, apparently dressing a doll.

'Nay,' thought Coningsby, 'she must be too old for that.'

He addressed her, and seated himself by her side. There were several dolls
on the table, but he discovered, on examination, that they were
pincushions; and elicited, with some difficulty, that they were making for
a fancy fair about to be held in aid of that excellent institution, the
Manchester Athenaeum. Then the father came up and said,

'My child, let us have some tea;' and she rose and seated herself at the
tea-table. Coningsby also quitted his seat, and surveyed the apartment.

There were several musical instruments; among others, he observed a
guitar; not such an instrument as one buys in a music shop, but such an
one as tinkles at Seville, a genuine Spanish guitar. Coningsby repaired to
the tea-table.

'I am glad that you are fond of music, Miss Millbank.'

A blush and a bow.

'I hope after tea you will be so kind as to touch the guitar.'

Signals of great distress.

'Were you ever at Birmingham?'

'Yes:' a sigh.

'What a splendid music-hall! They should build one at Manchester.'

'They ought,' in a whisper.

The tea-tray was removed; Coningsby was conversing with Mr. Millbank, who
was asking him questions about his son; what he thought of Oxford; what he
thought of Oriel; should himself have preferred Cambridge; but had
consulted a friend, an Oriel man, who had a great opinion of Oriel; and
Oswald's name had been entered some years back. He rather regretted it
now; but the thing was done. Coningsby, remembering the promise of the
guitar, turned round to claim its fulfilment, but the singer had made her
escape. Time elapsed, and no Miss Millbank reappeared. Coningsby looked at
his watch; he had to go three miles to the train, which started, as his
friend of the previous night would phrase it, at 9.45.

'I should be happy if you remained with us,' said Mr. Millbank; 'but as
you say it is out of your power, in this age of punctual travelling a host
is bound to speed the parting guest. The carriage is ready for you.'

'Farewell, then, sir. You must make my adieux to Miss Millbank, and accept
my thanks for your great kindness.'

'Farewell, Mr. Coningsby,' said his host, taking his hand, which he
retained for a moment, as if he would say more. Then leaving it, he
repeated with a somewhat wandering air, and in a voice of emotion,
'Farewell, farewell, Mr. Coningsby.'




CHAPTER V.


Towards the end of the session of 1836, the hopes of the Conservative
party were again in the ascendant. The Tadpoles and the Tapers had infused
such enthusiasm into all the country attorneys, who, in their turn, had so
bedeviled the registration, that it was whispered in the utmost
confidence, but as a flagrant truth, that Reaction was at length 'a great
fact.' All that was required was the opportunity; but as the existing
parliament was not two years old, and the government had an excellent
working majority, it seemed that the occasion could scarcely be furnished.
Under these circumstances, the backstairs politicians, not content with
having by their premature movements already seriously damaged the career
of their leader, to whom in public they pretended to be devoted, began
weaving again their old intrigues about the court, and not without effect.

It was said that the royal ear lent itself with no marked repugnance to
suggestions which might rid the sovereign of ministers, who, after all,
were the ministers not of his choice, but of his necessity. But William
IV., after two failures in a similar attempt, after his respective
embarrassing interviews with Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne, on their return
to office in 1832 and 1835, was resolved never to make another move unless
it were a checkmate. The king, therefore, listened and smiled, and loved
to talk to his favourites of his private feelings and secret hopes; the
first outraged, the second cherished; and a little of these revelations of
royalty was distilled to great personages, who in their turn spoke
hypothetically to their hangers-on of royal dispositions, and possible
contingencies, while the hangers-on and go-betweens, in their turn, looked
more than they expressed; took county members by the button into a corner,
and advised, as friends, the representatives of boroughs to look sharply
after the next registration.

Lord Monmouth, who was never greater than in adversity, and whose
favourite excitement was to aim at the impossible, had never been more
resolved on a Dukedom than when the Reform Act deprived him of the twelve
votes which he had accumulated to attain that object. While all his
companions in discomfiture were bewailing their irretrievable overthrow,
Lord Monmouth became almost a convert to the measure, which had furnished
his devising and daring mind, palled with prosperity, and satiated with a
life of success, with an object, and the stimulating enjoyment of a
difficulty.

He had early resolved to appropriate to himself a division of the county
in which his chief seat was situate; but what most interested him, because
it was most difficult, was the acquisition of one of the new boroughs that
was in his vicinity, and in which he possessed considerable property. The
borough, however, was a manufacturing town, and returning only one member,
it had hitherto sent up to Westminster a radical shopkeeper, one Mr.
Jawster Sharp, who had taken what is called 'a leading part' in the town
on every 'crisis' that had occurred since 1830; one of those zealous
patriots who had got up penny subscriptions for gold cups to Lord Grey;
cries for the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill; and public
dinners where the victual was devoured before grace was said; a worthy who
makes speeches, passes resolutions, votes addresses, goes up with
deputations, has at all times the necessary quantity of confidence in the
necessary individual; confidence in Lord Grey; confidence in Lord Durham;
confidence in Lord Melbourne: and can also, if necessary, give three
cheers for the King, or three groans for the Queen.

But the days of the genus Jawster Sharp were over in this borough as well
as in many others. He had contrived in his lustre of agitation to feather
his nest pretty successfully; by which he had lost public confidence and
gained his private end. Three hungry Jawster Sharps, his hopeful sons, had
all become commissioners of one thing or another; temporary appointments
with interminable duties; a low-church son-in-law found himself
comfortably seated in a chancellor's living; and several cousins and
nephews were busy in the Excise. But Jawster Sharp himself was as pure as
Cato. He had always said he would never touch the public money, and he had
kept his word. It was an understood thing that Jawster Sharp was never to
show his face again on the hustings of Darlford; the Liberal party was
determined to be represented in future by a man of station, substance,
character, a true Reformer, but one who wanted nothing for himself, and
therefore might, if needful, get something for them. They were looking out
for such a man, but were in no hurry. The seat was looked upon as a good
thing; a contest certainly, every place is contested now, but as certainly
a large majority. Notwithstanding all this confidence, however, Reaction
or Registration, or some other mystification, had produced effects even in
this creature of the Reform Bill, the good Borough of Darlford. The
borough that out of gratitude to Lord Grey returned a jobbing shopkeeper
twice to Parliament as its representative without a contest, had now a
Conservative Association, with a banker for its chairman, and a brewer for
its vice-president, and four sharp lawyers nibbing their pens, noting
their memorandum-books, and assuring their neighbours, with a consoling
and complacent air, that 'Property must tell in the long run.' Whispers
also were about, that when the proper time arrived, a Conservative
candidate would certainly have the honour of addressing the electors. No
name mentioned, but it was not concealed that he was to be of no ordinary
calibre; a tried man, a distinguished individual, who had already fought
the battle of the constitution, and served his country in eminent posts;
honoured by the nation, favoured by his sovereign. These important and
encouraging intimations were ably diffused in the columns of the
Conservative journal, and in a style which, from its high tone, evidently
indicated no ordinary source and no common pen. Indeed, there appeared
occasionally in this paper, articles written with such unusual vigour,
that the proprietors of the Liberal journal almost felt the necessity of
getting some eminent hand down from town to compete with them. It was
impossible that they could emanate from the rival Editor. They knew well
the length of their brother's tether. Had they been more versant in the
periodical literature of the day, they might in this 'slashing' style have
caught perhaps a glimpse of the future candidate for their borough, the
Right Honourable Nicholas Rigby.

Lord Monmouth, though he had been absent from England since 1832, had
obtained from his vigilant correspondent a current knowledge of all that
had occurred in the interval: all the hopes, fears, plans, prospects,
manoeuvres, and machinations; their rise and fall; how some had bloomed,
others were blighted; not a shade of reaction that was not represented to
him; not the possibility of an adhesion that was not duly reported; he
could calculate at Naples at any time, within ten, the result of a
dissolution. The season of the year had prevented him crossing the Alps in
1834, and after the general election he was too shrewd a practiser in the
political world to be deceived as to the ultimate result. Lord Eskdale, in
whose judgment he had more confidence than in that of any individual, had
told him from the first that the pear was not ripe; Rigby, who always
hedged against his interest by the fulfilment of his prophecy of
irremediable discomfiture, was never very sanguine. Indeed, the whole
affair was always considered premature by the good judges; and a long time
elapsed before Tadpole and Taper recovered their secret influence, or
resumed their ostentatious loquacity, or their silent insolence.

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