Alice Hegan Rice - "Quin"

W. S. B. Mathews - "A Popular History of the Art of Music"

Laura Lee Hope - "The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound"

Alexandre Dumas - "La dame de Monsoreau v.1"

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.

Tancred

B >> Benjamin Disraeli >> Tancred




'Ah!' said Tancred, kindling, 'you too have felt that want?'

'But I never can pardon myself for not having satisfied it,' said Lady
Bertie and Bellair in a mournful tone, and looking in his face with her
beautiful dark eyes. 'It is the mistake of my life, and now can never be
remedied. But I have no energy. I ought, as a girl, when they opposed
my purpose, to have taken up my palmer's staff, and never have rested
content till I had gathered my shell on the strand of Joppa.'

'It is the right feeling' said Tancred. 'I am persuaded we ought all to
go.'

'But we remain here,' said the lady, in a tone of suppressed and elegant
anguish; 'here, where we all complain of our hopeless lives; with not
a thought beyond the passing hour, yet all bewailing its wearisome and
insipid moments.'

'Our lot is cast in a material age,' said Tancred.

'The spiritual can alone satisfy me,' said Lady Bertie and Bellair.

'Because you have a soul,' continued Tancred, with animation, 'still
of a celestial hue. They are rare in the nineteenth century. Nobody now
thinks about heaven. They never dream of angels. All their existence is
concentrated in steamboats and railways.'

'You are right,' said the lady, earnestly; 'and you fly from it.'

'I go for other purposes; I would say even higher ones,' said Tancred.

'I can understand you; your feelings are my own. Jerusalem has been
the dream of my life. I have always been endeavouring to reach it, but
somehow or other I never got further than Paris.'

'And yet it is very easy now to get to Jerusalem,' said Tancred; 'the
great difficulty, as a very remarkable man said to me this morning, is
to know what to do when you are there.'

'Who said that to you?' inquired Lady Bertie and Bellair, bending her
head.

'It was the person I was going to call upon when I met you; Monsieur de
Sidonia.'

'Monsieur de Sidonia!' said the lady, with animation. 'Ah! you know
him?'

'Not as much as I could wish. I saw him to-day for the first time. My
cousin, Lord Eskdale, gave me a letter of introduction to him, for
his advice and assistance about my journey. Sidonia has been a great
traveller.'

'There is no person I wish to know so much as M. de Sidonia,' said Lady
Bertie and Bellair. 'He is a great friend of Lord Eskdale, I think?
I must get Lord Eskdale,' she added, musingly, 'to give me a little
dinner, and ask M. de Sidonia to meet me.'

'He never goes anywhere; at least I have heard so,' said Tancred.

'He once used to do, and to give us great fetes. I remember hearing of
them before I was out. We must make him resume them. He is immensely
rich.'

'I dare say he may be,' said Tancred. 'I wonder how a man with his
intellect and ideas can think of the accumulation of wealth.'

''Tis his destiny,' said Lady Bertie and Bellair. 'He can no more
disembarrass himself of his hereditary millions than a dynasty of the
cares of empire. I wonder if he will get the Great Northern. They talked
of nothing else at Paris.'

'Of what?' said Tancred.

'Oh! let us talk of Jerusalem!' said Lady Bertie and Bellair. 'Ah, here
is Augustus! Let me make you and my husband acquainted.'

Tancred almost expected to see the moustached companion of the
morning, but it was not so. Lord Bertie and Bellair was a tall, thin,
distinguished, withered-looking young man, who thanked Tancred for his
courtesy of the morning with a sort of gracious negligence, and, after
some easy talk, asked Tancred to dine with them on the morrow. He was
engaged, but he promised to call on Lady Bertie and Bellair immediately,
and see some drawings of the Holy Land.




CHAPTER XIX.

_Lord Henry Sympathises_

PASSING through a marble antechamber, Tancred was ushered into an
apartment half saloon and half-library; the choicely-bound volumes,
which were not too numerous, were ranged on shelves inlaid in the walls,
so that they ornamented, without diminishing, the apartment. These walls
were painted in encaustic, corresponding with the coved ceiling, which
was richly adorned in the same fashion. A curtain of violet velvet,
covering if necessary the large window, which looked upon a balcony full
of flowers, and the umbrageous Park; an Axminster carpet, manufactured
to harmonise both in colour and design with the rest of the chamber; a
profusion of luxurious seats; a large table of ivory marquetry, bearing
a carved silver bell which once belonged to a pope; a Naiad, whose
golden urn served as an inkstand; some daggers that acted as paper
cutters, and some French books just arrived; a group of beautiful
vases recently released from an Egyptian tomb and ranged on a tripod of
malachite: the portrait of a statesman, and the bust of an emperor,
and a sparkling fire, were all circumstances which made the room both
interesting and comfortable in which Sidonia welcomed Tancred and
introduced him to a guest who had preceded him, Lord Henry Sydney.

It was a name that touched Tancred, as it has all the youth of England,
significant of a career that would rescue public life from that strange
union of lax principles and contracted sympathies which now form the
special and degrading features of British politics. It was borne by one
whose boyhood we have painted amid the fields and schools of Eton, and
the springtime of whose earliest youth we traced by the sedgy waters
of the Cam. We left him on the threshold of public life; and, in four
years, Lord Henry had created that reputation which now made him a
source of hope and solace to millions of his countrymen. But they were
four years of labour which outweighed the usual exertions of public men
in double that space. His regular attendance in the House of Commons
alone had given him as much Parliamentary experience as fell to the
lot of many of those who had been first returned in 1837, and had been,
therefore, twice as long in the House. He was not only a vigilant member
of public and private committees, but had succeeded in appointing and
conducting several on topics which he esteemed of high importance. Add
to this, that he took an habitual part in debate, and was a frequent
and effective public writer; and we are furnished with an additional
testimony, if that indeed were wanting, that there is no incentive
to exertion like the passion for a noble renown. Nor should it be
forgotten, that, in all he accomplished, he had but one final purpose,
and that the highest. The debate, the committee, the article in the
Journal or the Review, the public meeting, the private research, these
were all means to advance that which he had proposed as the object of
his public life, namely, to elevate the condition of the people.

Although there was no public man whose powers had more rapidly ripened,
still it was interesting to observe that their maturity had been
faithful to the healthy sympathies of his earlier years. The boy, whom
we have traced intent upon the revival of the pastimes of the people,
had expanded into the statesman, who, in a profound and comprehensive
investigation of the elements of public wealth, had shown that a jaded
population is not a source of national prosperity. What had been a
picturesque emotion had now become a statistical argument. The material
system that proposes the supply of constant toil to a people as the
perfection of polity, had received a staggering blow from the exertions
of a young patrician, who announced his belief that labour had its
rights as well as its duties. What was excellent about Lord Henry
was, that he was not a mere philanthropist, satisfied to rouse public
attention to a great social evil, or instantly to suggest for it some
crude remedy.

A scholar and a man of the world, learned in history and not
inexperienced in human nature, he was sensible that we must look to the
constituent principles of society for the causes and the cures of great
national disorders. He therefore went deeply into the question, nor
shrank from investigating how far those disorders were produced by the
operation or the desuetude of ancient institutions, and how far it might
be necessary to call new influences into political existence for
their remedy. Richly informed, still studious, fond of labour and
indefatigable, of a gentle disposition though of an ardent mind, calm
yet energetic, very open to conviction, but possessing an inflexibility
amounting even to obstinacy when his course was once taken, a ready and
improving speaker, an apt and attractive writer, affable and sincere,
and with the undesigning faculty of making friends, Lord Henry seemed
to possess all the qualities of a popular leader, if we add to them
the golden ones: high lineage, an engaging appearance, youth, and a
temperament in which the reason had not been developed to the prejudice
of the heart.

'And when do you start for the Holy Land?' said Lord Henry to Tancred,
in a tone and with a countenance which proved his sympathy.

'I have clutched my staff, but the caravan lingers.'

'I envy you!'

'Why do you not go?'

Lord Henry slightly shrugged his shoulders, and said, 'It is too late. I
have begun my work and I cannot leave it.'

'If a Parliamentary career could save this country,' said Tancred, 'I
am sure you would be a public benefactor. I have observed what you and
Mr. Con-ingsby and some of your friends have done and said, with great
interest. But Parliament seems to me to be the very place which a man
of action should avoid. A Parliamentary career, that old superstition of
the eighteenth century, was important when there were no other sources
of power and fame. An aristocracy at the head of a people whom they had
plundered of their means of education, required some cultivated tribunal
whose sympathy might stimulate their intelligence and satisfy their
vanity. Parliament was never so great as when they debated with closed
doors. The public opinion, of which they never dreamed, has superseded
the rhetorical club of our great-grandfathers. They know this well
enough, and try to maintain their unnecessary position by affecting
the character of men of business, but amateur men of business are very
costly conveniences. In this age it is not Parliament that does the real
work. It does not govern Ireland, for example. If the manufacturers want
to change a tariff, they form a commercial league, and they effect their
purpose. It is the same with the abolition of slavery, and all our great
revolutions. Parliament has become as really insignificant as for two
centuries it has kept the monarch. O'Connell has taken a good share of
its power; Cobden has taken another; and I am inclined to believe,'
said Tancred, 'though I care little about it, that, if our order had
any spirit or prescience, they would put themselves at the head of the
people, and take the rest.'

'Coningsby dines here to-day,' said Sidonia, who, unobserved, had
watched Tancred as he spoke, with a searching glance.

'Notwithstanding what you say,' said Lord Henry, smiling, 'I wish I
could induce you to remain and help us. You would be a great ally.'

'I go to a land,' said Tancred, 'that has never been blessed by that
fatal drollery called a representative government, though Omniscience
once deigned to trace out the polity which should rule it.'

At this moment the servant announced Lord and Lady Marney.

Political sympathy had created a close intimacy between Lord Marney
and Coningsby. They were necessary to each other. They were both men
entirely devoted to public affairs, and sitting in different Houses,
both young, and both masters of fortunes of the first class, they were
indicated as individuals who hereafter might take a lead, and, far
from clashing, would co-operate with each other. Through Coningsby
the Marneys had become acquainted with Sidonia, who liked them both,
particularly Sybil. Although received by society with open arms,
especially by the high nobility, who affected to look upon Sybil quite
as one of themselves, Lady Marney, notwithstanding the homage that
everywhere awaited her, had already shown a disposition to retire as
much as possible within the precinct of a chosen circle.

This was her second season, and Sybil ventured to think that she had
made, in the general gaieties of her first, a sufficient oblation to
the genius of fashion, and the immediate requirements of her social
position. Her life was faithful to its first impulse. Devoted to the
improvement of the condition of the people, she was the moving spring
of the charitable development of this great city. Her house, without any
pedantic effort, had become the focus of a refined society, who, though
obliged to show themselves for the moment in the great carnival,
wear their masks, blow their trumpets, and pelt the multitude with
sugarplums, were glad to find a place where they could at all times
divest themselves of their mummery, and return to their accustomed garb
of propriety and good taste.

Sybil, too, felt alone in the world. Without a relation, without an
acquaintance of early and other days, she clung to her husband with a
devotion which was peculiar as well as profound. Egremont was to her
more than a husband and a lover; he was her only friend; it seemed to
Sybil that he could be her only friend. The disposition of Lord Marney
was not opposed to the habits of his wife. Men, when they are married,
often shrink from the glare and bustle of those social multitudes which
are entered by bachelors with the excitement of knights-errant in a
fairy wilderness, because they are supposed to be rife with adventures,
and, perhaps, fruitful of a heroine. The adventure sometimes turns out
to be a catastrophe, and the heroine a copy instead of an original; but
let that pass.

Lord Marney liked to be surrounded by those who sympathised with his
pursuit; and his pursuit was politics, and politics on a great scale.
The commonplace career of official distinction was at his command. A
great peer, with abilities and ambition, a good speaker, supposed to be
a Conservative, he might soon have found his way into the cabinet,
and, like the rest, have assisted in registering the decrees of one
too powerful individual. But Lord Marney had been taught to think at
a period of life when he little dreamed of the responsibility which
fortune had in store for him.

The change in his position had not altered the conclusions at which
he had previously arrived. He held that the state of England,
notwithstanding the superficies of a material prosperity, was one of
impending doom, unless it were timely arrested by those who were in high
places. A man of fine mind rather than of brilliant talents, Lord Marney
found, in the more vivid and impassioned intelligence of Coningsby, the
directing sympathy which he required. Tadpole looked upon his lordship
as little short of insane. 'Do you see that man?' he would say as Lord
Marney rode by. 'He might be Privy Seal, and he throws it all away for
the nonsense of Young England!'

Mrs. Coningsby entered the room almost on the footsteps of the Marneys.

'I am in despair about Harry,' she said, as she gave a finger to
Sidonia, 'but he told me not to wait for him later than eight. I suppose
he is kept at the House. Do you know anything of him, Lord Henry?'

'You may make yourself quite easy about him,' said Lord Henry. 'He
promised Vavasour to support a motion which he has to-day, and perhaps
speak on it. I ought to be there too, but Charles Buller told me there
would certainly be no division and so I ventured to pair off with him.'

'He will come with Vavasour,' said Sidonia, 'who makes up our party.
They will be here before we have seated ourselves.'

The gentlemen had exchanged the usual inquiry, whether there was
anything new to-day, without waiting for the answer. Sidonia introduced
Tancred and Lord Marney.

'And what have you been doing to-day?' said Edith to Sybil, by whose
side she had seated herself. 'Lady Bardolf did nothing last night but
gronder me, because you never go to her parties. In vain I said that you
looked upon her as the most odious of her sex, and her balls the pest of
society. She was not in the least satisfied. And how is Gerard?'

'Why, we really have been very uneasy about him,' said Lady Marney, 'but
the last bulletin,' she added, with a smile, 'announces a tooth.'

'Next year you must give him a pony, and let him ride with my Harry;
I mean my little Harry, Harry of Monmouth I call him; he is so like a
portrait Mr. Coningsby has of his grandfather, the same debauched look.'

'Your dinner is served, sir!'

Sidonia offered his hand to Lady Marney; Edith was attended by Tancred.
A door at the end of the room opened into a marble corridor, which led
to the dining-room, decorated in the same style as the library. It was
a suite of apartments which Sidonia used for an intimate circle like the
present.




CHAPTER XX.

_A Modern Troubadour_

THEY seated themselves at a round table, on which everything seemed
brilliant and sparkling; nothing heavy, nothing oppressive. There
was scarcely anything that Sidonia disliked so much as a small table,
groaning, as it is aptly termed, with plate. He shrunk from great masses
of gold and silver; gigantic groups, colossal shields, and mobs of
tankards and flagons; and never used them except on great occasions,
when the banquet assumes an Egyptian character, and becomes too vast
for refinement. At present, the dinner was served on Sevres porcelain of
Rose du Barri, raised on airy golden stands of arabesque workmanship;
a mule bore your panniers of salt, or a sea-nymph proffered it you on
a shell just fresh from the ocean, or you found it in a bird's nest; by
every guest a different pattern. In the centre of the table, mounted on
a pedestal, was a group of pages in Dresden china. Nothing could be
more gay than their bright cloaks and flowing plumes, more elaborately
exquisite than their laced shirts and rosettes, or more fantastically
saucy than their pretty affected faces, as each, with extended arm, held
a light to a guest. The room was otherwise illumined from the sides.

The guests had scarcely seated themselves when the two absent ones
arrived.

'Well, you did not divide, Vavasour,' said Lord Henry.

'Did I not?' said Vavasour; 'and nearly beat the Government. You are a
pretty fellow!'

'I was paired.'

'With some one who could not stay. Your brother, Mrs. Coningsby, behaved
like a man, sacrificed his dinner, and made a capital speech.'

'Oh! Oswald, did he speak? Did you speak, Harry?'

'No; I voted. There was too much speaking as it was; if Vavasour had not
replied, I believe we should have won.'

'But then, my dear fellow, think of my points; think how they laid
themselves open!'

'A majority is always the best repartee,' said Coningsby.

'I have been talking with Montacute,' whispered Lord Henry to Coningsby,
who was seated next to him. 'Wonderful fellow! You can conceive nothing
richer! Very wild, but all the right ideas; exaggerated of course. You
must get hold of him after dinner.'

'But they say he is going to Jerusalem.'

'But he will return.'

'I do not know that; even Napoleon regretted that he had ever re-crossed
the Mediterranean. The East is a career.'

Mr. Vavasour was a social favourite; a poet and a real poet, and
a troubadour, as well as a member of Parliament; travelled,
sweet-tempered, and good-hearted; amusing and clever. With catholic
sympathies and an eclectic turn of mind, Mr. Vavasour saw something good
in everybody and everything, which is certainly amiable, and perhaps
just, but disqualifies a man in some degree for the business of life,
which requires for its conduct a certain degree of prejudice. Mr.
Vavasour's breakfasts were renowned. Whatever your creed, class, or
country, one might almost add your character, you were a welcome guest
at his matutinal meal, provided you were celebrated. That qualification,
however, was rigidly enforced.

It not rarely happened that never were men more incongruously grouped.
Individuals met at his hospitable house who had never met before, but
who for years had been cherishing in solitude mutual detestation, with
all the irritable exaggeration of the literary character. Vavasour liked
to be the Amphitryon of a cluster of personal enemies. He prided himself
on figuring as the social medium by which rival reputations became
acquainted, and paid each other in his presence the compliments which
veiled their ineffable disgust. All this was very well at his rooms in
the Albany, and only funny; but when he collected his menageries at his
ancestral hall in a distant county, the sport sometimes became tragic.

A real philosopher, alike from his genial disposition and from the
influence of his rich and various information, Vavasour moved amid
the strife, sympathising with every one; and perhaps, after all, the
philanthropy which was his boast was not untinged by a dash of humour,
of which rare and charming quality he possessed no inconsiderable
portion. Vavasour liked to know everybody who was known, and to see
everything which ought to be seen. He also was of opinion that everybody
who was known ought to know him; and that the spectacle, however
splendid or exciting, was not quite perfect without his presence.

His life was a gyration of energetic curiosity; an insatiable whirl of
social celebrity. There was not a congregation of sages and philosophers
in any part of Europe which he did not attend as a brother. He was
present at the camp of Kalisch in his yeomanry uniform, and assisted at
the festivals of Barcelona in an Andalusian jacket. He was everywhere,
and at everything; he had gone down in a diving-bell and gone up in a
balloon. As for his acquaintances, he was welcomed in every land; his
universal sympathies seemed omnipotent. Emperor and king, jacobin and
carbonaro, alike cherished him. He was the steward of Polish balls and
the vindicator of Russian humanity; he dined with Louis Philippe, and
gave dinners to Louis Blanc.

This was a dinner of which the guests came to partake. Though they
delighted in each other's society, their meetings were not so rare that
they need sacrifice the elegant pleasures of a refined meal for the
opportunity of conversation. They let that take its chance, and ate
and drank without affectation. Nothing so rare as a female dinner where
people eat, and few things more delightful. On the present occasion some
time elapsed, while the admirable performances of Sidonia's cook were
discussed, with little interruption; a burst now and then from the
ringing voice of Mrs. Coningsby crossing a lance with her habitual
opponent, Mr. Vavasour, who, however, generally withdrew from the
skirmish when a fresh dish was handed to him.

At length, the second course being served, Mrs. Coningsby said, 'I think
you have all eaten enough: I have a piece of information for you. There
is going to be a costume ball at the Palace.'

This announcement produced a number of simultaneous remarks and
exclamations. 'When was it to be? What was it to be? An age, or a
country; or an olio of all ages and all countries?'

'An age is a masquerade,' said Sidonia. 'The more contracted the circle,
the more perfect the illusion.'

'Oh, no!' said Vavasour, shaking his head. 'An age is the thing; it is a
much higher thing. What can be finer than to represent the spirit of an
age?'

'And Mr. Vavasour to perform the principal part,' said Mrs. Coningsby.
'I know exactly what he means. He wants to dance the polka as Petrarch,
and find a Laura in every partner.'

'You have no poetical feeling,' said Mr. Vavasour, waving his hand. 'I
have often told you so.'

'You will easily find Lauras, Mr. Vavasour, if you often write such
beautiful verses as I have been reading to-day,' said Lady Marney.

'You, on the contrary,' said Mr. Vavasour, bowing, 'have a great deal of
poetic feeling, Lady Marney; I have always said so.'

'But give us your news, Edith,' said Coningsby. 'Imagine our suspense,
when it is a question, whether we are all to look picturesque or
quizzical.'

'Ah, you want to know whether you can go as Cardinal Mazarin, or the
Duke of Ripperda, Harry. I know exactly what you all are now thinking
of; whether you will draw the prize in the forthcoming lottery, and get
exactly the epoch and the character which suit you. Is it not so, Lord
Montacute? Would not you like to practise a little with your crusados at
the Queen's ball before you go to the Holy Sepulchre?'

'I would rather hear your description of it,' said Tancred.

'Lord Henry, I see, is half inclined to be your companion as a Red-cross
Knight,' continued Edith. 'As for Lady Marney, she is the successor
of Mrs. Fry, and would wish, I am sure, to go to the ball as her
representative.'

'And pray what are you thinking of being?' said Mr. Vavasour. 'We
should like very much to be favoured with Mrs. Coningsby's ideal of
herself.'

'Mrs. Coningsby leaves the ideal to poets. She is quite satisfied to
remain what she is, and it is her intention to do so, though she means
to go to Her Majesty's ball.'

'I see that you are in the secret,' said Lord Marney.

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