George Eliot - "How Lisa Loved the King"

Grace Miller White - "The Secret of the Storm Country"

Various - "Legend Land, Volume 2"

Alexandre Dumas [Pere] - "The Three Musketeers"

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




This was the first _dejeuner_ at which Tancred had been present. He
rather liked it. The scene, lawns and groves and a glancing river, the
air, the music, our beautiful countrywomen, who, with their brilliant
complexions and bright bonnets, do not shrink from the daylight, these
are circumstances which, combined with youth and health, make a morning
festival, say what they like, particularly for the first time, very
agreeable, even if one be dreaming of Jerusalem. Strange power of the
world, that the moment we enter it, our great conceptions dwarf! In
youth it is quick sympathy that degrades them; more advanced, it is the
sense of the ridiculous. But perhaps these reveries of solitude may not
be really great conceptions; perhaps they are only exaggerations;
vague, indefinite, shadowy, formed on no sound principles, founded on no
assured basis.

Why should Tancred go to Jerusalem? What does it signify to him whether
there be religious truth or political justice? He has youth, beauty,
rank, wealth, power, and all in excess. He has a mind that can
comprehend their importance and appreciate their advantages. What more
does he require? Unreasonable boy! And if he reach Jerusalem, why should
he find religious truth and political justice there? He can read of
it in the travelling books, written by young gentlemen, with the best
letters of introduction to all the consuls. They tell us what it is, a
third-rate city in a stony wilderness. Will the Providence of fashion
prevent this great folly about to be perpetrated by one born to be
fashion's most brilliant subject? A folly, too, which may end in a
catastrophe? His parents, indeed, have appealed in vain; but the
sneer of the world will do more than the supplication of the father. A
mother's tear may be disregarded, but the sigh of a mistress has changed
the most obdurate. We shall see. At present Lady Constance Rawleigh
expresses her pleasure at Tancred's arrival, and his heart beats a
little.




CHAPTER XV.

_Disenchantment_

THEY are talking about it,' said Lord Eskdale to the duchess, as she
looked up to him with an expression of the deepest interest. 'He asked
St. Patrick to introduce him to her at Deloraine House, danced with her,
was with her the whole evening, went to the breakfast on Saturday to
meet her, instead of going to Blackwall to see a yacht he was after.'

'If it were only Katherine,' said the duchess, 'I should be quite
happy.'

'Don't be uneasy,' said Lord Eskdale; 'there will be plenty of
Katherines and Constances, too, before he finishes. The affair is not
much, but it shows, as I foretold, that, the moment he found something
more amusing, his taste for yachting would pass off.' 'You are right,
you always are.' What really was this affair, which Lord Eskdale held
lightly? With a character like Tancred, everything may become important.
Profound and yet simple, deep in self-knowledge yet inexperienced, his
reserve, which would screen him from a thousand dangers, was just the
quality which would insure his thraldom by the individual who could once
effectually melt the icy barrier and reach the central heat. At this
moment of his life, with all the repose, and sometimes even the high
ceremony, on the surface, he was a being formed for high-reaching
exploits, ready to dare everything and reckless of all consequences, if
he proposed to himself an object which he believed to be just and great.
This temper of mind would, in all things, have made him act with that
rapidity, which is rashness with the weak, and decision with the strong.
The influence of woman on him was novel. It was a disturbing influence,
on which he had never counted in those dreams and visions in which there
had figured more heroes than heroines. In the imaginary interviews in
which he had disciplined his solitary mind, his antagonists had been
statesmen, prelates, sages, and senators, with whom he struggled and
whom he vanquished.

He was not unequal in practice to his dreams. His shyness would have
vanished in an instant before a great occasion; he could have addressed
a public assembly; he was capable of transacting important affairs.
These were all situations and contingencies which he had foreseen, and
which for him were not strange, for he had become acquainted with them
in his reveries. But suddenly he was arrested by an influence for which
he was unprepared; a precious stone made him stumble who was to have
scaled the Alps. Why should the voice, the glance, of another agitate
his heart? The cherubim of his heroic thoughts not only deserted him,
but he was left without the guardian angel of his shyness. He melted,
and the iceberg might degenerate into a puddle.

Lord Eskdale drew his conclusions like a clever man of the world, and in
general he would have been right; but a person like Tancred was in much
greater danger of being captured than a common-place youth entering
life with second-hand experience, and living among those who ruled his
opinions by their sneers and sarcasms. A malicious tale by a spiteful
woman, the chance ribaldry of a club-room window, have often been the
impure agencies which have saved many a youth from committing a great
folly; but Tancred was beyond all these influences. If they had
been brought to bear on him, they would rather have precipitated the
catastrophe. His imagination would have immediately been summoned to the
rescue of his offended pride; he would have invested the object of
his regard with supernatural qualities, and consoled her for the
impertinence of society by his devotion.

Lady Constance was clever; she talked like a married woman, was
critical, yet easy; and having guanoed her mind by reading French
novels, had a variety of conclusions on all social topics, which she
threw forth with unfaltering promptness, and with the well-arranged air
of an impromptu. These were all new to Tancred, and startling. He was
attracted by the brilliancy, though he often regretted the tone, which
he ascribed to the surrounding corruption from which he intended to
escape, and almost wished to save her at the same time. Sometimes
Tancred looked unusually serious; but at last his rare and brilliant
smile beamed upon one who really admired him, was captivated by his
intellect, his freshness, his difference from all around, his
pensive beauty and his grave innocence. Lady Constance was free from
affectation; she was frank and natural; she did not conceal the pleasure
she had in his society; she conducted herself with that dignified
facility, becoming a young lady who had already refused the hands of two
future earls, and of the heir of the Clan-Alpins.

A short time after the _dejeuner_ at Craven Cottage, Lord Montacute
called on Lady Charmouth. She was at home, and received him with great
cordiality, looking up from her frame of worsted work with a benign
maternal expression; while Lady Constance, who was writing an urgent
reply to a note that had just arrived, said rapidly some agreeable
words of welcome, and continued her task. Tancred seated himself by the
mother, made an essay in that small talk in which he was by no means
practised, but Lady Charmouth helped him on without seeming to do so.
The note was at length dispatched, Tancred of course still remaining at
the mother's side, and Lady Constance too distant for his wishes. He had
nothing to say to Lady Charmouth; he began to feel that the pleasure of
feminine society consisted in talking alone to her daughter.

While he was meditating a retreat, and yet had hardly courage to rise
and walk alone down a large long room, a new guest was announced.
Tancred rose, and murmured good-morning; and yet, somehow or other,
instead of quitting the apartment, he went and seated himself by Lady
Constance. It really was as much the impulse of shyness, which sought
a nook of refuge, as any other feeling that actuated him; but Lady
Constance seemed pleased, and said in a low voice and in a careless
tone, ''Tis Lady Bran-cepeth; do you know her? Mamma's great friend;'
which meant, you need give yourself no trouble to talk to any one but
myself.

After making herself very agreeable, Lady Constance took up a book
which was at hand, and said, 'Do you know this?' And Tancred, opening a
volume which he had never seen, and then turning to its titlepage, found
it was 'The Revelations of Chaos,' a startling work just published, and
of which a rumour had reached him.

'No,' he replied; 'I have not seen it.'

'I will lend it you if you like: it is one of those books one must read.
It explains everything, and is written in a very agreeable style.'

'It explains everything!' said Tancred; 'it must, indeed, be a very
remarkable book!'

'I think it will just suit you,' said Lady Constance. 'Do you know, I
thought so several times while I was reading it.'

'To judge from the title, the subject is rather obscure,' said Tancred.

'No longer so,' said Lady Constance. 'It is treated scientifically;
everything is explained by geology and astronomy, and in that way. It
shows you exactly how a star is formed; nothing can be so pretty! A
cluster of vapour, the cream of the Milky Way, a sort of celestial
cheese, churned into light, you must read it, 'tis charming.'

'Nobody ever saw a star formed,' said Tancred.

'Perhaps not. You must read the "Revelations;" it is all explained. But
what is most interesting, is the way in which man has been developed.
You know, all is development. The principle is perpetually going on.
First, there was nothing, then there was something; then, I forget the
next, I think there were shells, then fishes; then we came, let me see,
did we come next? Never mind that; we came at last. And the next change
there will be something very superior to us, something with wings. Ah!
that's it: we were fishes, and I believe we shall be crows. But you must
read it.'

'I do not believe I ever was a fish,' said Tancred. 'Oh! but it is all
proved; you must not argue on my rapid sketch; read the book. It is
impossible to contradict anything in it. You understand, it is all
science; it is not like those books in which one says one thing and
another the contrary, and both may be wrong. Everything is proved: by
geology, you know. You see exactly how everything is made; how many
worlds there have been; how long they lasted; what went before, what
comes next. We are a link in the chain, as inferior animals were that
preceded us: we in turn shall be inferior; all that will remain of us
will be some relics in a new red sandstone. This is development. We had
fins; we may have wings.'

Tancred grew silent and thoughtful; Lady Bran-cepeth moved, and he
rose at the same time. Lady Charmouth looked as if it were by no means
necessary for him to depart, but he bowed very low, and then bade
farewell to Lady Constance, who said, 'We shall meet to-night.'

'I was a fish, and I shall be a crow,' said Tancred to himself, when the
hall door closed on him. 'What a spiritual mistress! And yesterday, for
a moment, I almost dreamed of kneeling with her at the Holy Sepulchre! I
must get out of this city as quickly as possible; I cannot cope with
its corruption. The acquaintance, however, has been of use to me, for
I think I have got a yacht by it. I believe it was providential, and a
trial. I will go home and write instantly to Fitz-Heron, and accept his
offer. One hundred and eighty tons: it will do; it must.'

At this moment he met Lord Eskdale, who had observed Tancred from the
end of Grosvenor Square, on the steps of Lord Charmouth's door. This
circumstance ill prepared Lord Eskdale for Tancred's salutation.

'My dear lord, you are just the person I wanted to meet. You promised to
recommend me a servant who had travelled in the East.'

'Well, are you in a hurry?' said Lord Eskdale, gaining time, and
pumping.

'I should like to get off as soon as practicable.' 'Humph!' said Lord
Eskdale. 'Have you got a yacht?' 'I have.'

'Oh! So you want a servant?' he added, after a moment's pause.

'I mentioned that, because you were so kind as to say you could help me
in that respect.'

'Ah! I did,' said Lord Eskdale, thoughtfully. 'But I want a great many
things,' continued Tancred. 'I must make arrangements about money; I
suppose I must get some letters; in fact, I want generally your advice.'

'What are you going to do about the colonel and the rest?'

'I have promised my father to take them,' said Tancred, 'though I feel
they will only embarrass me. They have engaged to be ready at a week's
notice; I shall write to them immediately. If they do not fulfil their
engagement, I am absolved from mine.'

'So you have got a yacht, eh?' said Lord Eskdale. 'I suppose you have
bought the Basilisk?'

'Exactly.'

'She wants a good deal doing to her.'

'Something, but chiefly for show, which I do not care about; but I mean
to get away, and refit, if necessary, at Gibraltar. I must go.'

'Well, if you must go,' said his lordship, and then he added, 'and in
such a hurry; let me see. You want a firstrate managing man, used to the
East, and letters, and money, and advice. Hem! You don't know Sidonia?'

'Not at all.'

'He is the man to get hold of, but that is so difficult now. He never
goes anywhere. Let me see, this is Monday; to-morrow is post-day, and
I dine with him alone in the City. Well, you shall hear from me on
Wednesday morning early, about everything; but I would not write to the
colonel and his friends just yet.'




CHAPTER XVI.

_Tancred Rescues a Lady in Distress_

THAT is most striking in London is its vastness. It is the illimitable
feeling that gives it a special character. London is not grand. It
possesses only one of the qualifications of a grand city, size; but it
wants the equally important one, beauty. It is the union of these two
qualities that produced the grand cities, the Romes, the Babylons,
the hundred portals of the Pharaohs; multitudes and magnificence; the
millions influenced by art. Grand cities are unknown since the beautiful
has ceased to be the principle of invention. Paris, of modern capitals,
has aspired to this character; but if Paris be a beautiful city, it
certainly is not a grand one; its population is too limited, and, from
the nature of their dwellings, they cover a comparatively small space.
Constantinople is picturesque; nature has furnished a sublime site, but
it has little architectural splendour, and you reach the environs with a
fatal facility. London overpowers us with its vastness.

Place a Forum or an Acropolis in its centre, and the effect of the
metropolitan mass, which now has neither head nor heart, instead of
being stupefying, would be ennobling. Nothing more completely represents
a nation than a public building. A member of Parliament only represents,
at the most, the united constituencies: but the Palace of the Sovereign,
a National Gallery, or a Museum baptised with the name of the country,
these are monuments to which all should be able to look up with pride,
and which should exercise an elevating influence upon the spirit of the
humblest. What is their influence in London? Let us not criticise what
all condemn. But how remedy the evil? What is wanted in architecture,
as in so many things, is a man. Shall we find a refuge in a Committee of
Taste? Escape from the mediocrity of one to the mediocrity of many? We
only multiply our feebleness, and aggravate our deficiencies. But one
suggestion might be made. No profession in England has done its duty
until it has furnished its victim. The pure administration of justice
dates from the deposition of Macclesfield. Even our boasted navy never
achieved a great victory until we shot an admiral. Suppose an architect
were hanged? Terror has its inspiration as well as competition.

Though London is vast, it is very monotonous. All those new districts
that have sprung up within the last half-century, the creatures of our
commercial and colonial wealth, it is impossible to conceive anything
more tame, more insipid, more uniform. Pancras is like Mary-le-bone,
Mary-le-bone is like Paddington; all the streets resemble each other,
you must read the names of the squares before you venture to knock at
a door. This amount of building capital ought to have produced a great
city. What an opportunity for architecture suddenly summoned to furnish
habitations for a population equal to that of the city of Bruxelles,
and a population, too, of great wealth. Mary-le-bone alone ought to have
produced a revolution in our domestic architecture. It did nothing. It
was built by Act of Parliament. Parliament prescribed even a facade. It
is Parliament to whom we are indebted for your Gloucester Places, and
Baker Streets, and Harley Streets, and Wimpole Streets, and all those
flat, dull, spiritless streets, resembling each other like a large
family of plain children, with Portland Place and Portman Square for
their respectable parents. The influence of our Parliamentary Government
upon the fine arts is a subject worth pursuing. The power that produced
Baker Street as a model for street architecture in its celebrated
Building Act, is the power that prevented Whitehall from being
completed, and which sold to foreigners all the pictures which the King
of England had collected to civilise his people.

In our own days we have witnessed the rapid creation of a new
metropolitan quarter, built solely for the aristocracy by an aristocrat.
The Belgrave district is as monotonous as Mary-le-bone; and is so
contrived as to be at the same time insipid and tawdry.

Where London becomes more interesting is Charing Cross. Looking to
Northumberland House, and turning your back upon Trafalgar Square, the
Strand is perhaps the finest street in Europe, blending the architecture
of many periods; and its river ways are a peculiar feature and rich with
associations. Fleet Street, with its Temple, is not unworthy of being
contiguous to the Strand. The fire of London has deprived us of the
delight of a real old quarter of the city; but some bits remain, and
everywhere there is a stirring multitude, and a great crush and crash of
carts and wains. The Inns of Court, and the quarters in the vicinity of
the port, Thames Street, Tower Hill, Billingsgate, Wapping, Rotherhithe,
are the best parts of London; they are full of character: the buildings
bear a nearer relation to what the people are doing than in the more
polished quarters.

The old merchants of the times of the first Georges were a fine race.
They knew their position, and built up to it. While the territorial
aristocracy, pulling down their family hotels, were raising vulgar
streets and squares upon their site, and occupying themselves one of
the new tenements, the old merchants filled the straggling lanes, which
connected the Royal Exchange with the port of London, with mansions
which, if not exactly equal to the palaces of stately Venice, might at
least vie with many of the hotels of old Paris. Some of these,
though the great majority have been broken up into chambers and
counting-houses, still remain intact.

In a long, dark, narrow, crooked street, which is still called a lane,
and which runs from the south side of the street of the Lombards towards
the river, there is one of these old houses of a century past, and
which, both in its original design and present condition, is a noble
specimen of its order. A pair of massy iron gates, of elaborate
workmanship, separate the street from its spacious and airy court-yard,
which is formed on either side by a wing of the mansion, itself a
building of deep red brick, with a pediment, and pilasters, and copings
of stone. A flight of steps leads to the lofty and central doorway; in
the middle of the court there is a garden plot, inclosing a fountain,
and a fine plane tree.

The stillness, doubly effective after the tumult just quitted, the
lulling voice of the water, the soothing aspect of the quivering
foliage, the noble building, and the cool and capacious quadrangle, the
aspect even of those who enter, and frequently enter, the precinct, and
who are generally young men, gliding in and out, earnest and full
of thought, all contribute to give to this locality something of the
classic repose of a college, instead of a place agitated with the
most urgent interests of the current hour; a place that deals with the
fortunes of kings and empires, and regulates the most important affairs
of nations, for it is the counting-house in the greatest of modern
cities of the most celebrated of modern financiers.

It was the visit of Tancred to the City, on the Wednesday morning after
he had met Lord Eskdale, that occasions me to touch on some of the
characteristics of our capital. It was the first time that Tancred had
ever been in the City proper, and it greatly interested him. His visit
was prompted by receiving, early on Wednesday morning, the following
letter:


'Dear Tancred: I saw Sidonia yesterday, and spoke to him of what you
want. He is much occupied just now, as his uncle, who attended to
affairs here, is dead, and, until he can import another uncle or cousin,
he must steer the ship, as times are critical. But he bade me say you
might call upon him in the City to-day, at two o'clock. He lives in
Sequin Court, near the Bank. You will have no difficulty in finding
it. I recommend you to go, as he is the sort of man who will really
understand what you mean, which neither your father nor myself do
exactly; and, besides, he is a person to know.

'I enclose a line which you will send in, that there may be no mistake.
I should tell you, as you are very fresh, that he is of the Hebrew race;
so don't go on too much about the Holy Sepulchre.

'Yours faithfully,

'ESKDALE.

'Spring Gardens, Wednesday morning.'


It is just where the street is most crowded, where it narrows, and
losing the name of Cheapside, takes that of the Poultry, that the last
of a series of stoppages occurred; a stoppage which, at the end of ten
minutes, lost its inert character of mere obstruction, and
developed into the livelier qualities of the row. There were oaths,
contradictions, menaces: 'No, you sha'n't; Yes, I will; No, I didn't;
Yes, you did; No, you haven't; Yes, I have;' the lashing of a whip, the
interference of a policeman, a crash, a scream. Tan-cred looked out of
the window of his brougham. He saw a chariot in distress, a chariot such
as would have become an Ondine by the waters of the Serpentine, and the
very last sort of equipage that you could expect to see smashed in the
Poultry. It was really breaking a butterfly upon a wheel to crush its
delicate springs, and crack its dark brown panels, soil its dainty
hammer-cloth, and endanger the lives of its young coachman in a flaxen
wig, and its two tall footmen in short coats, worthy of Cinderella.

The scream, too, came from a fair owner, who was surrounded by clamorous
carmen and city marshals, and who, in an unknown land, was afraid she
might be put in a city compter, because the people in the city had
destroyed her beautiful chariot. Tan-cred let himself out of his
brougham, and not without difficulty contrived, through the narrow and
crowded passage formed by the two lines, to reach the chariot, which was
coming the contrary way to him. Some ruthless officials were persuading
a beautiful woman to leave her carriage, the wheel of which was broken.
'But where am I to go?' she exclaimed. 'Icannot walk. I will not leave
my carriage until you bring me some conveyance. You ought to punish
these people, who have quite ruined my chariot.'

'They say it was your coachman's fault; we have nothing to do with that;
besides, you know who they are. Their employers' name is on the cart,
Brown, Bugsby, and Co., Limehouse. You can have your redress against
Brown, Bugsby, and Co., Lime-house, if your coachman is not in fault;
but you cannot stop up the way, and you had better get out, and let the
carriage be removed to the Steel-yard.'

'What am I to do?' exclaimed the lady with a tearful eye and agitated
face.

'I have a carriage at hand,' said Tancred, who at this moment reached
her, 'and it is quite at your service.'

The lady cast her beautiful eyes, with an expression of astonishment she
could not conceal, at the distinguished youth who thus suddenly appeared
in the midst of insolent carmen, brutal policemen, and all the cynical
amateurs of a mob. Public opinion in the Poultry was against her; her
coachman's wig had excited derision; the footmen had given themselves
airs; there was a strong feeling against the shortcoats. As for the
lady, though at first awed by her beauty and magnificence, they rebelled
against the authority of her manner. Besides, she was not alone. There
was a gentleman with her, who wore moustaches, and had taken a part in
the proceedings at first, by addressing the carmen in French. This was
too much, and the mob declared he was Don Carlos.

'You are too good,' said the lady, with a sweet expression.

[Illustration: page152]

Tancred opened the door of the chariot, the policemen pulled down the
steps, the servants were told to do the best they could with the wrecked
equipage; in a second the lady and her companion were in Tancred's
brougham, who, desiring his servants to obey all their orders,
disappeared, for the stoppage at this moment began to move, and there
was no time for bandying compliments.

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