Coningsby ... Edited, with a preface and elucidatory notes, by Francis Hitchman

Front matter

CONINGSBY; OK THE NEW GENEBATION. No. 717.] A oab.mt peDPraa. [21 Feb. 1842. Lordi Pelmenton, Melbourne. Haddington, RJpon, Wbarncliffe, Stanley, Aberdeen, Sir James 8rahem, Coke of Wellington, Blr Robert Peei. lord UOmurne.— "Well, I hope you (eel a bttle more comfortable than i Dukeof Wellington.—" Thank yon, we feel verr moa* what do ion *.. t* yon did. Havent found thinga quite ao bad aa yon thought a Uttle while Joining ua. you and yonr Mend there 1 You know if wouKn't he the fin* agof" I time. CONINGSBY; OR THE NEW GENERATION. BY THE EIGHT HON. THE EAKL OF BEACONSFIELD, E.G. (Reprinted from the Edition of 1844.) EDITED, WITH A PEEFACE AND ELUCIDATORY NOTES, BY FRANCIS HITCHMAN, AUTHOR OF 'THE PUBLIC LIFE OF THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD,' &C, &C. LONDON: W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL, S.W. 1889. LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Limited, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

Preface

. On the 30th May, 1844, Lord Palmerston began at Broad lands a letter to his brother, the Hon. William Temple, which he finished in London a week later. In the course of that letter he wrote, " I send you ' Coningsby,' D'lsraeli's novel, well worth reading and admirably written. The characters are many of them perfect portraits." What Lord Palmerston wrote half a century ago is as true as ever to-day. ' Coningsby ' is still well worth reading ; the excellence of its writing has been universally acknowledged : it is more frequently quoted than any novel of its type ; a host of its persons and their sayings are amongst the stock illustrations of political authorcraft, while as many of the author's utterances in bis own person have become the commonplaces of con troversy. As a novel ' Coningsby ' is entitled to a very high and a very special place.

Croker might sneer at it as " a contribution to the circulating library," but it was much more than that. It was from the first reckoned as the most perfect existing picture of London society at and about the time of the Queen's accession, while merely as a novel it confessedly stands very high. Tbe latter quality has won for it a popularity which even now is very far from being while the former places it in the rank of a classic, and makes the study of it essential to all who would understand the political history of England in the period which followed the first Reform Act. All who read the book in this spirit — all, that is to say,

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. who do not take their political ideas ready-made from the Times of this morning or the Echo of last night — find it a book of perennial interest. The personages who carry on the action of the story are even more real than their prototypes in life and history, and are familiar to a thousand readers who never heard even the names of the originals. Tadpole and Taper are immortal. Hardly a week goes by without tbeir names making an appearance in the leading columns of some one or other of the London newspapers. But what human being out of a library troubles himself about Mr. Ross or Mr. Pringle, Mr. Clarke or Mr. Bonham ? Lord Harrowby, the leader of " the Waverers " in the days of the Reform Bill, has gone over to the majority, and is forgotten as though he had never existed, but Lord Fitz-booby lives in the pages of ' Coningsby,' and will survive when we of this generation are dust.

The Marquis of Hertford is dead and — save by those whom his imperious cynicism injured so cruelly — is forgotten also, but his prototype, the Marquis of Monmouth of ' Coningsby,' is as real as ever. The Marquis of Steyne in ' Vanity Fair ' — sketched from the same original — is a far less perfect study of character. And, not to prolong the list, what shall be said of Rigby, the most brilliant, the most cruelly incisive, the most lifelike of all the portraits in this book ? Everybody who reads, knows, of course, that Rigby stands for John Wilson Croker, but who of this generation knows aught of Croker save from ' Coningsby ' and from the niche accorded to him in Macaulay's Essays? Mr. Louis Jennings, the present M.P. for Stockport, did his best to resuscitate the memory and rehabilitate the character of the old Tory gladiatora few years ago, and from the literary point of view he did his work most admirably.

But who can galvanize a corpse or impart to it more than an instant's vitality ? What human being of to-day cares one straw about John Wilson Croker's person ality, or would cross his library to read a single one of his

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. V " slashing articles " in the Quarterly Review . Who out of Bedlam or Colney Hatch troubles himself about Croker's ' Dissertation on the State of Ireland in the manner of Tacitus ' or bis ' History of the Guillotine ' ? or cares to hear about his cottage at West Molesey and his ignoble relations with Lord Hertford and the base crew that surrounded him and pandered to his vices ? No ! Croker is dead, and his " brilliant literary reputation " lies like the case of an exploded squib for anyone to pick up and examine who will. But for every living man who has read one line of Croker's writing there are thousands and tens of thousands in England and America who could pass a competitive examination in the life and character of the Rt. Hon. Nicholas Rigby ;• who know all about his Letter on the Study of History in a style " as much like that of Lord Bolingbroke as if it had been written by the authors of the ' Rejected Addresses,' " and the rural retreat ' which was to him a Tusculum ' and at which he entertained the unpresentable companions of his less decorous hours ; who relish the sarcasms levelled at the man whom Macaulay " hated like cold boiled veal," and at his friend Mr. Wordy, the author of " a History of England in twenty volumes, designed to show that Providence in the late War was on the side of the Tories."

At the time of their publication these portraits and these sarcasms told with double effect, for the simple reason that their author was a conspicuous figure in London society, social as well as political. It is perhaps worth while to recall this fact in view of the host of unspeakably silly stories which have at various times been current, and which are even now not unfrequently repeated, concerning the obscurity of Lord Beaconsfield's origin, and the difficulties which he had to surmount in attaining to the position which he finally occupied. One after another the writers who have dealt with the great VI

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. statesman's career have expatiated on the meanness of his birth and origin, and the obstacles cast in his way by reason of his Hebrew blood. Sometimes those things have been dwelt upon in order to enforce a trite moral, or to enforce the writer's admiration for the courage, patience and capacity of the subject of these fables. More often the brush has been dipped in gall. A sneer at the " Jew boy," or a gibing reference to the attorney's office in which " Disraeli the Younger " spent a few brief months, suffices to acuminate an argument astonishingly in the mind of a scribbler of the baser sort, while a sarcastic reference to certain wholly imaginary pecuniary embarrass ments is to such men a convincing proof that the victim of them was neither man of letters nor statesman. Both classes of critics may spare their emotion, whether of sympathy or of satire.

Though never in the conventional sense of the term a rich man, Lord Beaconsfield was also never absolutely poor, and certainly at no time in his life could he be ranked amongst the obscure. His Jewish blood was not remembered against him by those whose opinion was valuable and whose esteem was to be sought. The " comic " papers (save the mark !) might draw him with three hats on his head and an old-clothes bag at his back, and the refined organ of Buckinghamshire Whiggery might revel in delicate allusions to pork sausages, but the man whose closest friend was the present Duke of Rutland (Lord John Manners) and whose chosen associates were such men as Henry Hope, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Lyndhurst, Strangford, and " Tom " Duncombe on the one hand, with the society of Gore House and the literary coterie of Mr. Murray on the other, could smile serenely at their sarcasms and disregard their insults.

As a matter of fact, long before ' Coningsby ' had made its appearance its author was a personage in London society, as is abundantly evident from the two volumes of ' Home Letters ' which bis brother has lately given to the world. " Everybody PEEFACE. VII who was anybody" was, by the testimony of every contemporary diarist and memorist, more than glad to welcome the brilliant dandy who had already written three of the most popular novels of the day, and who was known to be the ablest and most capable amongst the younger members of Parliament. A man who had travelled far — and "personally conducted tours" as yet were not ; who had written much and well ; whose pamphlets were eagerly watched for ; whose Parlia mentary utterances emptied the dining-room and the smoking-room, and who was, as Lady Blessington once said, " crowded with talent," was naturally welcome everywhere, and as naturally a somewhat conspicuous figure in the society which ' Coningsby ' depicts.

For that omnivorous personage the " general reader " of to-day, however, at least one half of the interest of the book evaporates by reason of his incapacity to understand the allusions and the sketches of character which swarm throughout its pages. Something of the same kind was felt when it first appeared. Half the so-called reviews were occupied with attempts at identification, and amongst the host of pamphlets, parodies, burlesques and replies wliich ' Coningsby ' evoked, there were no fewer than five so-called " Keys." Tbe guesses were sometimes right, but more frequently hopelessly wrong — sometimes ludicrously so ; * but the very fact of their having been made is a proof that from the outset ' Coningsby ' was regarded as a gallery of contemporary portraits — a point which was invariably overlooked by the critics and opponents of " Disraelifthe Younger," from Mr. Thackeray downwards.

The present edition is an attempt to supply the want thus indicated. Notes gathered from a considerable variety of sources have been added by which to identify the personages of the story with their living prototypes, or pointing out the persons from whom the leading features * See the instance on page 3 of the present edition.

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. of the character were sketched. In a matter of this kind absolute accuracy can hardly be expected, but great pains have been taken to secure it, and the reader may rest assured that for every contradiction or correction which will inevitably be offered it would be quite possible to produce a third opinion entitled to perhaps as much consideration as the contradiction itself. A word may, perhaps, be allowed on the subject of politics. Several notes will be found in which I have endeavoured to elucidate the meaning of the novel by reference to political history. Every effort bas been made to purge this part of the work from party spirit and sectarian animosity, but it is not always easy in dealing with a book of such strongly marked individuality as ' Coningsby ' to preserve an absolutely impartial attitude.

The time for any real bitterness over tbe events of the first years of the Queen's reign has, however, long passed away. We of 1888 can understand and duly appreciate the indignant declaration of Disraeli the Younger in 1844 that " a Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy," remembering as we must tbat the Tory party by the defection of Peel on matters of general policy, and not merely upon the Corn Laws, sustained a shock from which it did not recover for more than thirty years. Long before ' Coningsby ' was written — as far back indeed as 1833 — Lord Beaconsfield foresaw the necessity for a reconstruction of the party upon popular lines, and in the famous 'What is He?' pamphlet fearlessly advocated a frank acceptance of the democratic principle, subject of course to the implied proviso, that the aristocracy should be the leaders of the people, which, by the way, was also the theory of Carlyle, as Mr. Courthope has pointed out in a most admirable and thoughtful essay lately published. This idea lay at the root of the interesting intellectual and religious movement, led by those who were known as the " Young

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. IX England " party. For several years that party was the butt of all the small wits of the day, who delighted in representing it as a clique of young men " who wore white waistcoats and wrote spoony poetry." * Punch, which had then hardly emerged from the big drum and Pandean-pipe stage of existence, was especially fond of girding at it, and Mr. Thackeray thought so highly of his achievements in this line as to reproduce them in all the various editions of his collected works — a step which possibly added bitterness to the satirical portrait which Lord Beaconsfield afterwards painted in ' Endymion.' It is hardly necessary to dwell upon this injustice. Time has in part repaired it, and some small excuse for it may be found in the often quoted and certainly unfortunate couplet about " our old nobility."

The author of those verses was, however, only one of many. Lord Beaconsfield led the way, and with him was associated George Smythe (the seventh Lord Strangford), whom in later years Lord Beaconsfield described as "a man of brilliant gifts, dazzling wit, infinite culture and fascinating manners," — a character which will hardly seem overstrained to those who were honoured by his friendship, or who have read the delightful volumes in which the piety of his widow has enshrined his memory. Amongst the names of those who composed this much derided " clique " will be found also the learned and accomplished Henry Thomas Hope of the Deepdene ; Eichard Monckton Milnes (afterwards Lord Houghton), the poet and the friend of poets ; Faber, the Father Faber * Brewer's ' Dictionary of Phrase and Fable ' gives a definition of Young England -which is too beautiful to be lost.

" Young England. A set of young noblemen and aristocratic gentlemen who tried to revive the formality and court manners ofthe Chesterfield School. They wore white waistcoats, looked down upon shopkeepers, and were altogether Red Tape Knights. Disraeli has immortalised their ways and manners, but scarcely a caput mortuum of their folly now remains."

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. X of the Oratory, and author of some of the most popular hymns in the English language ; Whytehead, the martyred missionary ; and if last not least, Tennyson, then the rising sun of English poetry. A party so led and so composed hardly stands in need of defenders. The " Young England " movement itself was distinctly the result of that religious agitation which has so profoundly influenced the social life of this country for the last half century. Tbe religious fervour of the Reformation burnt itself out in the struggles of the Commonwealth, and for a hundred years and more the nation lay in a condition of contented lethargy. The Wesleys and their associate Whitefield led the way when a reaction set in, and they in their turn were followed by the leaders of the Evangelical party. Looking back over the long course of years it is not a little interesting to note how the restoration of the religious hfe in England came from below.

Wesley, and Whitefield even more than Wesley, addressed himself to the common people. The great middle class — the lawyers, the doctors, the bankers, the merchants — have at no time been seriously affected by Methodism, and even now, when dissent has ceased to be the unfashionable thing it was fifty years ago, the Methodists belonging to it may be counted on the fingers. Evangelicalism, on the other hand, appealed to that class distinctly. Cowper, the poet ofthe Evangeli cals, was the most bourgeois of men of genius. His muse is the divinity of the Sofa who drinks no bubbling draughts of Hippocrene, but is quite content to sip the " cups which cheer but not inebriate," and to munch the simple bread and butter of domestic Use. She is perfectly natural if a trifle prosaic and humdrum, and it is hard to say which of these qualities most recommended her to the worthies of the Clapham sect to whom Newton and Simeon, Venn and Wilson ministered. All through the century during which the Evangelical school was practically the only

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. XI existing representative of religious thought in England the upper classes— the aristocracy — were absolutely untouched by it. Sydney Smith and the Edinburgh Review undoubtedly expressed the feeling of this section of society in the famous articles of 1808-9 on Methodism and Foreign Missions. The class whom he addressed were loftily indifferent to the distinction between "Armenian and Calvinistic Methodists," and held in utter contempt the " evangelical clergymen of the Church of England." " We shall use," said the witty Canon of St. Paul's, whose recorded sallies have to-day such a marvellous flavour of yesterday's champagne, " we shall use the general term Methodism, to designate these three classes of fanatics, not troubling ourselves to point out the finer shades and nicer discriminations of lunacy, but treating them all as in one general conspiracy against common sense and rational orthodox Christianity."

" Rational orthodox Christianity " — the Christianity that is to say which sent the heads of families to church on Sunday mornings " for the sake of example," and left their daily life uninfluenced — remained the rule amongst the higher classes until about 1830 — a date which -with its associations marks most distinctly the close of that period which for convenience' sake we call the eighteenth century. In the few years before and after that date " the old order changed, giving place to the new," with astonishing rapidity. Catholic Emancipation, the French Revolution of 1830, our own Reform Bill agitation, the breakdown of the political system of which Sidmouth and Eldon, Liverpool, Vansittart and Castlereagh were the typical representatives, marked the close of the last century, and the disappearance of its ideas.

" And," to continue the quotation, "God fulfilled Himself in many ways"— in none more than in the Oxford movement, which, for the first time for a hundred and fifty years, brought the aristocracy of England under the direct

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. XII influence of religion. That the ' Tracts for the Times ' were the wisest productions of the human intellect no one will, in these days, pretend ; that they exercised a literally unparallelled influence upon English society it is im possible to deny. The " new generation " of ' Coningsby ' seized upon them, and under their inspiration and at the bidding of their leaders, looked for a while to the Church as the destined agent for the salvation of society. The world was to renew its youth under the guidance of the Oxford leaders, thought "Young England," but a rude and bitter awakening w^s to be the lot of these enthusiasts. Lord Beaconsfield himself bore testimony to his disappointment in the latest public acts of his hfe. " The monks and priests," into whose hands tbe great Church revival fell, abandoned their posts, associated themselves with an alien Church, and dealt to the Church of their baptism a blow^ under which she still staggers. ' Coningsby ' helps the reader to understand what " Young England " hoped for from the Church : its author's utterances in ' Lothair ' and his support of the Public Worship Regulation Act in later hfe testify to the bitterness of his chagrin at her failure.

Of the social side of Young Englandism ' Coningsby ' affords something more than a glimpse. At the time of its appearance the national conscience was greatly and not unreasonably exercised by the working of the New Poor Law. It had been supposed that that measure would bring about a species of social millennium : it produced instead something that was not very far short of an insurrection. The old system, it may be admitted, bad been full of abuses and eminently called for reform ; but it had merits of its own which the new certainly did not possess. It was, for example, in many ways more humane, and it recognised the right of those who cultivated the soil to hve by the soil. The New Poor Law changed all this, treating the maintenance to which

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. XIII the peasant had a right under the old system as a matter of charity, to be doled out with as niggard a hand as possible. Asa result a spirit of lawless insubordination grew up which filled the propertied classes witb dread. Tbe exasperated labourers listened to the mischievous declamations of agitators and incendiaries ; rick-burning and machine-breaking, sheep-stealing and p> aching in creased to a frightful extent, and the rage that is born of despair filled the heart of rural England. Nor were matters much better in the towns. The trade of the country was stagnant, and a host of factories were idle. The distress was universal and appalling, and to meet it the pour were offered in charity barely enough food to keep them alive in exchange for a heavy task of severe and often degrading work.

The New Poor Law was in t-hort administered with merciless t-everitv, and witb a singru larly cruel want of sympathy for its victims. With them " Young England " sympathised in no perfunctory fashion, and it was mainly through the efforts ofthe Parliamentary membeis of that party that the inquiries were made which resulted in tbe relaxation of Poor Law severity. Workhouse administration is occasionally condemned for its harshness even now, but at least we never hear in these days of paupers being put upon a dietary wliich gives them meat only once a week, and that in quantity so small as to be practically useless. Our workhouses too may not be palatial abodes, except as seen from the out-ide, but pauper children are not put to sleep two and three in a bed in rooms which afford their inmates no more than 140 cubic feet of space to each.

The reforms have been great and beneficent, and no one had a larger share in bringing them about than the author of ' Coningsby,' whose work in this direction in and out of the House of Commons has hardly yet been appreciated. Of the state of parties during the period immediately before and after the Queen's Accession ' Coningsby '

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. affords a curiously truthful and interesting picture. In considering it the reader will do well to bear in mind the fact that Lord Beaconsfield and those who acted with him in the earlier part of his career opposed the Reform Bill, and the measures which arose out of it, not because they conferred the franchise upon per.-ons or constituencies who up to that time had not enjoyed it, but because the Whig measure of 1832 was before all things a measure of disfranchisement. It has suited a certain class of writers and speakers to describe the Whigs as the champions of popular rights and the Tories as their selfish and obstruc tive opponents, but the men who vindicated the claims of the free-men and the " pot-wallopers " — the ancient historical franchises of England — hardly deserve this measure at the hands of the champions of tbe £10 householders.

Those who followed the debates of the " sixties " on the Reform question are perfectly well aware that the opposition to the great measure of 1867 came not so much from the Conservative, or more properly the Tory, party as from the representatives of those who still believed in the £10 householder. Mr. Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke) was not a Tory when he accused the working classes of this country of" venality, ignorance, and drunkenness," of being " impulsive, violent and unre flecting people " and of a host of similar high crimes and misdemeanours. The truth is that, whatever the faults of the Tory party may be, the charge of distrusting the people, often though it has been made, is the one least capable of substantiation. Its leaders have certainly pro tested against the vulgarly mechanical system of counting heads, and have asked for safeguards against its abuses.

They have asked that votes should be weighed as well as counted, and that property should be taken into account as well as numbers. But they have ever been the champions of popular rights, and — what is perhaps more to the purpose — they have treated the poorer classes of

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. XV their fellow-countrymen with a sympathy and brother liness which have not always been displayed by those who claim the title of " friends of the people." After all, it was the Tory Lord Shaftesbury who carried the Ten Hours Bill in the teeth of Radical opposition. One other matter bas to be remembered. Lord Beacons field, as we know, had been deeply and even painfully impressed by the appearance of the great historical Whig party after the passage of the Reform Bill. He had seen their blaze of triumph, he had Ustened to their almost frantic self-applause, he had noted the ignominious collapse of " the Reform Ministry " ; be had seen them " laughed out of office " by their indignant sovereign in 1834; he had noted how Lord Melbourne returned to office in the following year, and by what ignominious shifts and strategems — the Lichfield House Compact and the Bed chamber Plot for example — Whig Ministers had clung to place and power, and in ' Coningsby ' he gave vent to some portion of bis sarcastic wrath.

On the other hand, he had seen Peel on his invitation, as pressed upon him in the ' Runnymede Letters,' take office and at once vindicate his claim to power by a policy of tergiversa tion which explains and excuses all the bitterness of ' Coningsby ' and all the fury of those tremendous attacks, the echo of which has even now scarcely died away from the halls of St. Stephen's. All these things must be remembered by the reader of ' Coningsby ' to-day, and if they are he will assuredly have no reason to complain of want of interest in the book. Of the Semitic theories of Sidonia it is unnecessary to say much in this place. They speak for themselves, and whatever may be thought of them they must be mastered by every reader who would understand the political life of their author. It is not many years since a London newspaper of very large circulation — though perhaps not of corresponding influence — spoke in its leading columns

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. XVI of Mr. Disraeli as sharing with Lord George Bentinck the leadership of the opposition to the Bill for the relief of Jewish Disabilities. Every student of political history is, of course, well aware that this statement is the very reverse of the truth, and that the only estrangement which ever arose between the Protectionist leaders was upon this identical subject. From the first, indeed, he could not have taken any other course than that of supporting the abrogation of all the disqualifications and disabilities of the race to which he was so honestly proud to belong, and his splendid speech of 1847 is but an echo of the thoughts and words of " Sidonia." " On every sacred day," said Mr. Disraeli in the House of Commons, " you read to the people the exploits of Jewish heroes, the proofs of Jewish devotion, the brilliant annals of past Jewish magnificence. . .

Every Sunday, every Lord's day, if you wish to express feelings of praise and thanks giving to the Most High, or if you wish to find ex pressions of solace in grief, you find both in the works of the Jewish poets . . . Yes ! it is as a Christian that I will not take upon myself the awful responsibility of excluding from the Legislature those who are of the religion in the bosom of which my Lord and Saviour was born." Writing a couple of years ago, I ventured to describe ' Endymion ' — Lord Beaconsfield's last novel — as the very crown and flower of his literary Use, and quite the most perfect novel he ever produced. That opinion I still adhere to, but ' Coningsby,' if less perfect as a work of Uteraiy art, is to the full as interesting, and to the student of English political history even more valuable.

The notes and elucidations appended to the present edition will, I trust, make this fact clear even to those who are not students, and render this great work, which has already become classic, more readily intelligible to the mass of readers. TO HENRY HOPE. It is sot because this work was conceived and partly executed amid the glades and galleries of the Deepdene * that I have inscribed it with your name. Nor merely because I wras desirous to avail myself of the most graceful privilege of an author, and dedicate my work to the friend whose talents I have always appreciated, and whose virtues I have ever admired. But because in these pages I have endeavoured to * Henry Thomas Hope, of the Deepdene, was the eldest son of Thomas Hope, the author of ' Aiiastasius,' and some other less-known works.