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Editorial
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.

The Young Duke

B >> Benjamin Disraeli >> The Young Duke



THE YOUNG DUKE

By Benjamin Disraeli

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BOOK I.




CHAPTER I.

_Fortune's Favourite_

GEORGE AUGUSTUS FREDERICK, DUKE OF ST. JAMES, completed his twenty-first
year, an event which created almost as great a sensation among the
aristocracy of England as the Norman Conquest. A minority of twenty
years had converted a family always amongst the wealthiest of Great
Britain into one of the richest in Europe. The Duke of St. James
possessed estates in the north and in the west of England, besides a
whole province in Ireland. In London there were a very handsome square
and several streets, all made of bricks, which brought him in yearly
more cash than all the palaces of Vicenza are worth in fee-simple, with
those of the Grand Canal of Venice to boot. As if this were not enough,
he was an hereditary patron of internal navigation; and although perhaps
in his two palaces, three castles, four halls, and lodges _ad libitum_,
there were more fires burnt than in any other establishment in the
empire, this was of no consequence, because the coals were his own. His
rent-roll exhibited a sum total, very neatly written, of two hundred
thousand pounds; but this was independent of half a million in the
funds, which we had nearly forgotten, and which remained from the
accumulations occasioned by the unhappy death of his father.

The late Duke of St. James had one sister, who was married to the Earl
of Fitz-pompey. To the great surprise of the world, to the perfect
astonishment of the brother-in-law, his Lordship was not appointed
guardian to the infant minor. The Earl of Fitz-pompey had always been on
the best possible terms with his Grace: the Countess had, only the year
before his death, accepted from his fraternal hand a diamond bracelet;
the Lord Viscount St. Maurice, future chief of the house of Fitz-pompey,
had the honour not only of being his nephew, but his godson. Who could
account, then, for an action so perfectly unaccountable? It was quite
evident that his Grace had no intention of dying.

The guardian, however, that he did appoint was a Mr. Dacre, a Catholic
gentleman of ancient family and large fortune, who had been the
companion of his travels, and was his neighbour in his county. Mr. Dacre
had not been honoured with the acquaintance of Lord Fitz-pompey previous
to the decease of his noble friend; and after that event such an
acquaintance would probably not have been productive of agreeable
reminiscences; for from the moment of the opening of the fatal will
the name of Dacre was wormwood to the house of St. Maurice. Lord
Fitz-pompey, who, though the brother-in-law of a Whig magnate, was a
Tory, voted against the Catholics with renewed fervour.

Shortly after the death of his friend, Mr. Dacre married a beautiful and
noble lady of the house of Howard, who, after having presented him with
a daughter, fell ill, and became that common character, a confirmed
invalid. In the present day, and especially among women, one would
almost suppose that health was a state of unnatural existence. The
illness of his wife and the non-possession of parliamentary duties
rendered Mr. Dacre's visits to his town mansion rare, and the mansion in
time was let.

The young Duke, with the exception of an occasional visit to his uncle,
Lord Fitz-pompey, passed the early years of his life at Castle Dacre.
At seven years of age he was sent to a preparatory school at Richmond,
which was entirely devoted to the early culture of the nobility, and
where the principal, the Reverend Doctor Coronet, was so extremely
exclusive in his system that it was reported that he had once refused
the son of an Irish peer. Miss Coronet fed her imagination with the hope
of meeting her father's noble pupils in after-life, and in the meantime
read fashionable novels.

The moment that the young Duke was settled at Richmond, all the
intrigues of the Fitz-pompey family were directed to that quarter; and
as Mr. Dacre was by nature unsuspicious, and was even desirous that
his ward should cultivate the friendship of his only relatives, the St.
Maurice family had the gratification, as they thought, of completely
deceiving him. Lady Fitz-pompey called twice a week at Crest House with
a supply of pine-apples or bonbons, and the Rev. Dr. Coronet bowed in
adoration. Lady Isabella St. Maurice gave a china cup to Mrs. Coronet,
and Lady Augusta a paper-cutter to Miss. The family was secured. All
discipline was immediately set at defiance, and the young Duke passed
the greater part of the half-year with his affectionate relations.
His Grace, charmed with the bonbons of his aunt and the kisses of his
cousins, which were even sweeter than the sugar-plums; delighted
with the pony of St. Maurice, which immediately became his own; and
inebriated by the attentions of his uncle,--who, at eight years of age,
treated him, as his Lordship styled it, 'like a man'--contrasted this
life of early excitement with what now appeared the gloom and the
restraint of Castle Dacre, and he soon entered into the conspiracy,
which had long been hatching, with genuine enthusiasm. He wrote to his
guardian, and obtained permission to spend his vacation with his uncle.
Thus, through the united indulgence of Dr. Coronet and Mr. Dacre, the
Duke of St. James became a member of the family of St. Maurice.

No sooner had Lord Fitz-pompey secured the affections of the ward than
he entirely changed his system towards the guardian. He wrote to
Mr. Dacre, and in a manner equally kind and dignified courted his
acquaintance. He dilated upon the extraordinary, though extremely
natural, affection which Lady Fitz-pompey entertained for the only
offspring of her beloved brother, upon the happiness which the young
Duke enjoyed with his cousins, upon the great and evident advantages
which his Grace would derive from companions of his own age, of the
singular friendship which he had already formed with St. Maurice; and
then, after paying Mr. Dacre many compliments upon the admirable manner
in which he had already fulfilled the duties of his important office,
and urging the lively satisfaction that a visit from their brother's
friend would confer both upon Lady Fitz-pompey and himself, he requested
permission for his nephew to renew the visit in which he had been 'so
happy!' The Duke seconded the Earl's diplomatic scrawl in the most
graceful round-text. The masterly intrigues of Lord Fitz-pompey,
assisted by Mrs. Dacre's illness, which daily increased, and which
rendered perfect quiet indispensable, were successful, and the young
Duke arrived at his twelfth year without revisiting Dacre. Every year,
however, when Mr. Dacre made a short visit to London, his ward spent
a few days in his company, at the house of an old-fashioned Catholic
nobleman; a visit which only afforded a dull contrast to the gay society
and constant animation of his uncle's establishment.

It would seem that fate had determined to counteract the intentions
of the late Duke of St. James, and to achieve those of the Earl of
Fitz-pompey. At the moment that the noble minor was about to leave Dr.
Coronet for Eton, Mrs. Dacre's state was declared hopeless, except from
the assistance of an Italian sky, and Mr. Dacre, whose attachment to his
lady was romantic, determined to leave England immediately.

It was with deep regret that he parted from his ward, whom he tenderly
loved; but all considerations merged in the paramount one; and he was
consoled by the reflection that he was, at least, left to the care of
his nearest connections. Mr. Dacre was not unaware of the dangers
to which his youthful pledge might be exposed by the indiscriminate
indulgence of his uncle, but he trusted to the impartial and inviolable
system of a public school to do much; and he anticipated returning to
England before his ward was old enough to form those habits which are
generally so injurious to young nobles. In this hope Mr. Dacre was
disappointed. Mrs. Dacre lingered, and revived, and lingered, for nearly
eight years; now filling the mind of her husband and her daughter with
unreasonable hope, now delivering them to that renewed anguish, that
heart-rending grief, which the attendant upon a declining relative can
alone experience, additionally agonizing because it cannot be indulged.
Mrs. Dacre died, and the widower and his daughter returned to England.
In the meantime, the Duke of St. James had not been idle.




CHAPTER II.

_Tender Relatives_

THE departure and, at length, the total absence of Mr. Dacre from
England yielded to Lord Fitz-pompey all the opportunity he had long
desired. Hitherto he had contented himself with quietly sapping the
influence of the guardian: now that influence was openly assailed. All
occasions were seized of depreciating the character of Mr. Dacre,
and open lamentations were poured forth on the strange and unhappy
indiscretion of the father who had confided the guardianship of his son,
not to his natural and devoted friends, but to a harsh and repulsive
stranger. Long before the young Duke had completed his sixteenth year
all memory of the early kindness of his guardian, if it had ever
been imprinted on his mind, was carefully obliterated from it. It was
constantly impressed upon him that nothing but the exertions of his aunt
and uncle had saved him from a life of stern privation and irrational
restraint: and the man who had been the chosen and cherished confidant
of the father was looked upon by the son as a grim tyrant, from whose
clutches he had escaped, and in which he determined never again to find
himself. 'Old Dacre,' as Lord Fitz-pompey described him, was a phantom
enough at any time to frighten his youthful ward. The great object
of the uncle was to teaze and mortify the guardian into resigning his
trust, and infinite were the contrivances to bring about this desirable
result; but Mr. Dacre was obstinate, and, although absent, contrived to
carry on and complete the system for the management of the Hauteville
property which he had so beneficially established and so long pursued.

In quitting England, although he had appointed a fixed allowance for
his noble ward, Mr. Dacre had thought proper to delegate a discretionary
authority to Lord Fitz-pompey to furnish him with what might be called
extraordinary necessaries. His Lordship availed himself with such
dexterity of this power that his nephew appeared to be indebted for
every indulgence to his uncle, who invariably accompanied every act of
this description with an insinuation that he might thank Mrs. Dacre's
illness for the boon.

'Well, George,' he would say to the young Etonian, 'you shall have
the boat, though I hardly know how I shall pass the account at
head-quarters; and make yourself easy about Flash's bill, though I
really cannot approve of such proceedings. Thank your stars you have not
got to present that account to old Dacre. Well, I am one of those who
are always indulgent to young blood. Mr. Dacre and I differ. He is your
guardian, though. Everything is in his power; but you shall never want
while your uncle can help you; and so run off to Caroline, for I see you
want to be with her.'

The Lady Isabella and the Lady Augusta, who had so charmed Mrs. and Miss
Coronet, were no longer in existence. Each had knocked down her earl.
Brought up by a mother exquisitely adroit in female education, the
Ladies St. Maurice had run but a brief, though a brilliant, career.
Beautiful, and possessing every accomplishment which renders beauty
valuable, under the unrivalled chaperonage of the Countess they had
played their popular parts without a single blunder. Always in the best
set, never flirting with the wrong man, and never speaking to the wrong
woman, all agreed that the Ladies St. Maurice had fairly won their
coronets. Their sister Caroline was much younger; and although she did
not promise to develop so unblemished a character as themselves, she
was, in default of another sister, to be the Duchess of St. James.

Lady Caroline St. Maurice was nearly of the same age as her cousin, the
young Duke. They had been play-fellows since his emancipation from
the dungeons of Castle Dacre, and every means had been adopted by her
judicious parents to foster and to confirm the kind feelings which had
been first engendered by being partners in the same toys and sharing
the same sports. At eight years old the little Duke was taught to call
Caroline his 'wife;' and as his Grace grew in years, and could better
appreciate the qualities of his sweet and gentle cousin, he was not
disposed to retract the title. When George rejoined the courtly Coronet,
Caroline invariably mingled her tears with those of her sorrowing
spouse; and when the time at length arrived for his departure for Eton,
Caroline knitted him a purse and presented him with a watch-ribbon. At
the last moment she besought her brother, who was two years older, to
watch over him, and soothed the moment of final agony by a promise to
correspond. Had the innocent and soft-hearted girl been acquainted with,
or been able to comprehend, the purposes of her crafty parents, she
could not have adopted means more calculated to accomplish them. The
young Duke kissed her a thousand times, and loved her better than all
the world.

In spite of his private house and his private tutor, his Grace did not
make all the progress in his classical studies which means so calculated
to promote abstraction and to assist acquirement would seem to promise.
The fact is, that as his mind began to unfold itself he found a
perpetual and a more pleasing source of study in the contemplation of
himself. His early initiation in the school of Fitz-pompey had not been
thrown away. He had heard much of nobility, and beauty, and riches,
and fashion, and power; he had seen many individuals highly, though
differently, considered for the relative quantities which they possessed
of these qualities; it appeared to the Duke of St. James that among the
human race he possessed the largest quantity of them all: he cut his
private tutor. His private tutor, who had been appointed by Mr. Dacre,
remonstrated to Lord Fitz-pompey, and with such success that he thought
proper shortly after to resign his situation. Dr. Coronet begged to
recommend his son, the Rev. Augustus Granville Coronet. The Duke of St.
James now got on rapidly, and also found sufficient time for his boat,
his tandem, and his toilette.

The Duke of St. James appeared at Christ Church. His conceit kept him
alive for a few terms. It is delightful to receive the homage of two
thousand young men of the best families in the country, to breakfast
with twenty of them, and to cut the rest. In spite, however, of the
glories of the golden tuft and a delightful private establishment which
he and his followers maintained in the chaste suburbs of Alma Mater, the
Duke of St. James felt ennuied. Consequently, one clear night, they set
fire to a pyramid of caps and gowns in Peckwater. It was a silly thing
for any one: it was a sad indiscretion for a Duke; but it was done. Some
were expelled; his Grace had timely notice, and having before cut the
Oxonians, now cut Oxford.

Like all young men who get into scrapes, the Duke of St. James
determined to travel. The Dacres returned to England before he did. He
dexterously avoided coming into contact with them in Italy. Mr. Dacre
had written to him several times during the first years of his absence;
and although the Duke's answers were short, seldom, and not very
satisfactory, Mr. Dacre persisted in occasionally addressing him. When,
however, the Duke had arrived at an age when he was at least morally
responsible for his own conduct, and entirely neglected answering his
guardian's letters, Mr. Dacre became altogether silent.

The travelling career of the young Duke may be conceived by those who
have wasted their time, and are compensated for that silliness by being
called men of the world. He gamed a little at Paris; he ate a good deal
at Vienna; and he studied the fine arts in Italy. In all places his
homage to the fair sex was renowned. The Parisian duchess, the Austrian
princess, and the Italian countess spoke in the most enthusiastic terms
of the English nobility. At the end of three years the Duke of St. James
was of opinion that he had obtained a great knowledge of mankind. He was
mistaken; travel is not, as is imagined, the best school for that sort
of science. Knowledge of mankind is a knowledge of their passions. The
traveller is looked upon as a bird of passage, whose visit is short, and
which the vanity of the visited wishes to make agreeable. All is
show, all false, and all made up. Coterie succeeds coterie, equally
smiling--the explosions take place in his absence. Even a grand passion,
which teaches a man more, perhaps, than anything else, is not very
easily excited by the traveller. The women know that, sooner or later,
he must disappear; and though this is the case with all lovers, they do
not like to miss the possibility of delusion. Thus the heroines keep in
the background, and the visitor, who is always in a hurry, falls into
the net of the first flirtation that offers.

The Duke of St. James had, however, acquired a great knowledge; if
not of mankind, at any rate of manners. He had visited all Courts, and
sparkled in the most brilliant circles of the Continent. He returned to
his own country with a taste extremely refined, a manner most polished,
and a person highly accomplished.




CHAPTER III.

_The Duke Returns_

A SORT of scrambling correspondence had been kept up between the young
Duke and his cousin, Lord St. Maurice, who had for a few months been his
fellow-traveller. By virtue of these epistles, notice of the movements
of their interesting relative occasionally reached the circle at
Fitz-pompey House, although St. Maurice was scanty in the much-desired
communications; because, like most young Englishmen, he derived
singular pleasure from depriving his fellow-creatures of all that small
information which every one is so desirous to obtain. The announcement,
however, of the approaching arrival of the young Duke was duly made.
Lord Fitz-pompey wrote and offered apartments at Fitz-pompey House. They
were refused. Lord Fitz-pompey wrote again to require instructions for
the preparation of Hauteville House. His letter was unanswered. Lord
Fitz-pompey was quite puzzled.

'When does your cousin mean to come, Charles?' 'Where does your cousin
mean to go, Charles?' 'What does your cousin mean to do, Charles?' These
were the hourly queries of the noble uncle.

At length, in the middle of January, when no one expected him, the Duke
of St. James arrived at Mivart's.

He was attended by a French cook, an Italian valet, a German jaeger, and
a Greek page. At this dreary season of the year this party was, perhaps,
the most distinguished in the metropolis.

Three years' absence and a little knowledge of life had somewhat changed
the Duke of St. James's feelings with regard to his noble relatives.
He was quite disembarrassed of that Panglossian philosophy which had
hitherto induced him to believe that the Earl of Fitz-pompey was the
best of all possible uncles. On the contrary, his Grace rather doubted
whether the course which his relations had pursued towards him was
quite the most proper and the most prudent; and he took great credit
to himself for having, with such unbounded indulgence, on the whole
deported himself with so remarkable a temperance. His Grace, too, could
no longer innocently delude himself with the idea that all the attention
which had been lavished upon him was solely occasioned by the impulse
of consanguinity. Finally, the young Duke's conscience often misgave him
when he thought of Mr. Dacre. He determined, therefore, on returning to
England, not to commit himself too decidedly with the Fitz-pompeys, and
he had cautiously guarded himself from being entrapped into becoming
their guest. At the same time, the recollection of old intimacy, the
general regard which he really felt for them all, and the sincere
affection which he entertained for his cousin Caroline, would have
deterred him from giving any outward signs of his altered feelings, even
if other considerations had not intervened.

And other considerations did intervene. A Duke, and a young Duke, is
an important personage; but he must still be introduced. Even our
hero might make a bad tack on his first cruise. Almost as important
personages have committed the same blunder. Talk of Catholic
emancipation! O! thou Imperial Parliament, emancipate the forlorn
wretches who have got into a bad set! Even thy omnipotence must fail
there!

Now, the Countess of Fitz-pompey was a brilliant of the first water.
Under no better auspices could the Duke of St. James bound upon the
stage. No man in town could arrange his club affairs for him with
greater celerity and greater tact than the Earl; and the married
daughters were as much like their mother as a pair of diamond ear-rings
are like a diamond necklace.

The Duke, therefore, though he did not choose to get caged in
Fitz-pompey House, sent his page, Spiridion, to the Countess, on a
special embassy of announcement on the evening of his arrival, and on
the following morning his Grace himself made his appearance at an early
hour.

Lord Fitz-pompey, who was as consummate a judge of men and manners as he
was an indifferent speculator on affairs, and who was almost as finished
a man of the world as he was an imperfect philosopher, soon perceived
that considerable changes had taken place in the ideas as well as in the
exterior of his nephew. The Duke, however, was extremely cordial, and
greeted the family in terms almost of fondness. He shook his uncle by
the hand with a fervour with which few noblemen had communicated for
a considerable period, and he saluted his aunt on the cheek with a
delicacy which did not disturb the rouge. He turned to his cousin.

Lady Caroline St. Maurice was indeed a right beautiful being. She, whom
the young Duke had left merely a graceful and kind-hearted girl, three
years had changed into a somewhat dignified but most lovely woman. A
little perhaps of her native ease had been lost; a little perhaps of a
manner rather too artificial had supplanted that exquisite address
which Nature alone had prompted; but at this moment her manner was as
unstudied and as genuine as when they had gambolled together in the
bowers of Malthorpe. Her white and delicate arm was extended with
cordial grace, her full blue eye beamed with fondness, and the soft
blush that rose on her fair cheek exquisitely contrasted with the
clusters of her dark brown hair.

The Duke was struck, almost staggered. He remembered their infant
loves; he recovered with ready address. He bent his head with graceful
affection and pressed her lips. He almost repented that he had not
accepted his uncle's offer of hospitality.




CHAPTER IV.

_A Social Triumph_

LORD FITZ-POMPEY was a little consoled for the change which he had
observed in the character of the Duke by the remembrance of the embrace
with which his Grace had greeted Lady Caroline. Never indeed did a
process which has, through the lapse of so many ages, occasioned so much
delight, produce more lively satisfaction than the kiss in question.
Lord Fitz-pompey had given up his plan of managing the Duke after the
family dinner which his nephew had the pleasure to join the first day
of his first visit. The Duke and he were alone, and his Lordship availed
himself of the rare opportunity with that adroitness for which he was
celebrated. Nothing could be more polite, more affable, more kind,
than his Grace's manner! but the uncle cared little for politeness, or
affability, or kindness. The crafty courtier wanted candour, and that
was absent. That ingenuous openness of disposition, that frank and
affectionate demeanour, for which the Duke of St. James had been
so remarkable in his early youth, and with the aid of which Lord
Fitz-pompey had built so many Spanish castles, had quite disappeared.

Nothing could be more artificial, more conventional, more studied, than
his whole deportment. In vain Lord Fitz-pompey pumped; the empty bucket
invariably reminded him of his lost labour. In vain his Lordship laid
his little diplomatic traps to catch a hint of the purposes or an
intimation of the inclinations of his nephew; the bait was never seized.
In vain the Earl affected unusual conviviality and boundless affection;
the Duke sipped his claret and admired his pictures. Nothing would
do. An air of habitual calm, a look of kind condescension, and an
inclination to a smile, which never burst into a beam, announced that
the Duke of St. James was perfectly satisfied with existence, and
conscious that he was himself, of that existence, the most distinguished
ornament. In fact, he was a sublime coxcomb; one of those rare
characters whose finished manner and shrewd sense combined prevent
their conceit from being contemptible. After many consultations it was
determined between the aunt and uncle that it would be most prudent to
affect a total non-interference with their nephew's affairs, and in
the meantime to trust to the goodness of Providence and the charms of
Caroline.

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