Sybil ... Illustrated by F. Pegram. With an introduction by H. D. Traill

Introduction

BY H. D. TRAILL ILonlion MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK i895 All rights reserved

INTRODUCTION.

It is not improbable that, if the modern method of ascer taining the measure of a book's or an author's popularity by newspaper plebiscite were applied to Disraeli's novels, Sybil would come in a winner. Others among them may be higher favourites among particular classes of admirers ; but none, I think, would collect suffrages from so many different quarters. To those readers whose chief relish is for social and political satire, it can be little less satisfying than its predecessor, Coningsby, and far more so than that brilliant but flimsy extravaganza, Vivian Grey. Those who read a novel frankly "for the story," and want to be interested in plot and action rather than dazzled by dialogue, will certainly find in it more of what they seek than they will in any other of the Disraelian series.

And, finally, with two, and those the two most serious of its readers — with the student of English social history, and with the critic of English literature — it has always held and will always hold_ the foremost place among the works of its author. To appreciate its merits in either of these two latter respects, it ought to be read after Coningsby for its theories, and after no matter what predecessor for its style. Speculatively speaking it is far the sincerest thing that Disraeli ever wrote. It is almost wholly critical of the SYBIL, OR THE TWO NATIONS contemporary state of the country, or at any rate it is far less avowedly constructive than the remarkable novel of the preceding year ; and being so, it escapes the atmosphere of unreality which pervades those pages of Coningsby wherein the project of national regeneration by the com bined efforts of a generous nobility and a faithful peasantry is being shadowed forth.

It is not even now certain how far the Disraeli of 1 840-1 845 believed in his own remedies ; but there is no doubt whatever that he profoundly and even passionately believed in the gravity of the national disease. He may have theorised and rhetorised to an unlimited extent about the way of dealing with what Carlyle called the Condition of England Question, but about the terrible pressure of that question he did not write either in the temper of the theorist or in the language of the rhetorician. He had studied it from actual observation ; he felt it with a sympathy which went far deeper down than his mere artistic instincts, and revealed indeed a side of his character which both then and afterwards it was his habit to conceal. Carlyle himself was not more moved by what he saw around him in the days of his Past and Present, nor has he given much more powerful expression to it, than has Disraeli in some passages of this volume. 'The present work,' he writes in its concluding pages, ' advances another step in the same emprise ' as that upon which he had entered the year before. ' From the state of Parties it would now draw public thought to the state of the People whom those parties for two centuries have governed.' It is a considerable step forward if not in the political at any rate in the literary ' emprise.' No one can read Sybil after Coningsby, still less after any of the still earlier novels, without a consciousness that the author has at last ' found his manner ' once for all, that he has become more fully, con-

INTRODUCTION.

sciously, and deliberately the artist than he had ever been before, and that in addition to his always remarkable gifts of humorous observation and witty reflection, he has now brought to bear upon this new genre of his own inventing in fiction, an amount of narrative and constructive power which it had hitherto lacked. How entirely new that genre was, and how fresh, piquant, and original it seemed to the author's contem poraries we are nowadays too apt to forget. Yet there is every reason for remembering that Disraeli was not only the most famous maker, but the actual inventor of the Political Novel. Its origin might well be fixed in our memories by the mere fact that it has had no worthy successors, and that the style, at any rate so far as its highest forms of expression are concerned, may be said to have died with its inventor.

The political novel, indeed, in the full Disraelian sense of the term, has never been attempted since his time. ' Coningsby, Sybil, and Tancred,' wrote their author .five-and-twenty years after the publication of the last of the three, ' form a real trilogy ; that is to say, they treat of the same subject and endeavour to complete that treatment.' Well, nobody feels any trilogies of this sort inside him in these days; and if anybody did he would seek quite a different form of expression for them. If he felt moved to deliver his soul on (i) 'the origin and character of our political parties,' (2) ' their influence on the moral and physical condition of the people,' and (3) ' the means by which that condition could be elevated and improved,' the last idea that would occur to him, and certainly the very last he would seriously entertain, would be that of composing a trilogy of novels, wherein and whereby to put the world in possession of his views.

No : he would embody them in a series of thoughtful articles in X SYBIL, OR THE TWO NATIONS one of the more serious of the serious monthlies, and would afterwards republish them in a neat volume with a thoughtful preface. If in this he described them, as is improbable, by any metonym borrowed from ancient classical literature, he would be much more likely to lay Aristotle under contribution than the Tragedians. To say of such an one that he could or would have expressed himself through the political novel if he had 'had the mind,' has in this case rather less ironical signi ficance than originally informed that familiar gibe. For among the multitude of our contemporary political thinkers, bursting with their multitude of contradictory ' messages to the age,' there is perhaps not one who might not honestly say, that he would not deliver his message through a political novel of the Disraelian pattern, even if he could.

For the public whom he has to address and convince is so much larger, less ' initiated,' more priggishly ' earnest,' more owlishly solemn than Disraeli's public, that if he aimed at their intelligence and sympathies as the author of this Trilogy aimed at them he would inevitably miss his mark. As a novelist pure and simple, indeed, he might look, of course, for a ' bigger success ' than was ever within reach of his model ; for his brilliant character -sketches, his strokes of social satire, his spicy bits of political gossip, and his general ' behind-the-scenes ' air, would hugely delight the public of the ' society papers,' and would undoubtedly make a new Coningsby or a new Sybil the hit of the season. But though the novelist might rejoice in the fame and fortune which he was winning, the prophet, the projector, the reformer would have lost all the ground that the novelist had gained. It was all very well for Horace to ask what forbids a man to convey truth in a jest. Horace did not know the modern young man of the University

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Extension lecture ; he had no conception of ' earnestness ' in its modern and deadlier sense ; or he would have known what it was that ' forbids,' and both as critic and as man of the world he would have understood why the gentleman with ' the message to his age ' — a message which he wishes to be taken seriously by serious politicians — does not nowadays consider it hopeful to slip it, like an ' advertising ' cardboard book-marker, between the leaves of a political novel. This is reason enough why the particular path struck out by the author of these remarkable romances should have been left untrodden. Those, if any such there be, who have succeeded him as original political thinkers have not, even in the colloquial sense of the phrase, ' had the mind ' to make the attempt. That no one has had the mind, in the other sense, or at any rate that no one since Disraeli has possessed that peculiar combination of temperament, genius, and position, which were united in him, is obvious enough. ' Born in a library,' he says of himself in the document above cited — the Introduction to the ' Hughenden ' edition of his novels published in 1870 — 'and trained from early childhood by learned men who did not share the passions and prejudices of our political and social life, I had imbibed on some subjects conclusions different from those which generally prevail, and especially with reference to the history of our own country.' That in itself was no common advantage in a day when strait was the gate and narrow the way that led through public school and university to political distinction, but when those who took that route to it found that the high walls which on either hand kept out competitors, proportionately obstructed their own view of the world wherein they lived.

It was from the heart of this outer world that the young Disraeli found a way for himself into SYBIL, OR THE TWO NATIONS obtruded, kept steadily in view. The art with which this is managed in all probability escapes the notice of many, through the very fact of its being so artistically con cealed. But if any one accustomed to the critical analysis of novels will devote a little careful study to the mere structural scheme of Sybil, to the arrangement of its chapters, the intertexture of the twofold thread of its narrative, and, above all, to the mode in which political speculation has been sandwiched in between chapters, now of satirical dialogue, now of love-romance, he will rise a convert, if indeed he required conversion, to the opinion that Disraeli, over and above the remarkable array of his other qualifications for success as a novelist, had acquired a signal mastery of the difficult art of construction.

Throughout the book, indeed, the presiding instinct of the artist is everywhere felt : in selection, and still more in compression, its presence is constantly perceptible. The book opens with a chapter of narrative of the lightest, not to say most frivolous kind — the chatter of young dandies in a club-house on the eve of a Derby Day. Several pages of this talk are succeeded by twice as many more recounting the rise of the Marney family from obscurity, in the reign of Henry VIII., to the wealth, honour, and influence possessed by them in the reign of Victoria. In the matter of condensation this second chapter is simply masterly. It practically summarises the whole of Disraeli's reading, reflections, and conclusions on English politics and political parties for three hundred years ; and apart from the intrinsic interest of its original and suggestive views it is as picturesque, vigorous, and eloquent a piece of political writing as he ever achieved.

Yet one can almost feel the firm hand upon the rein of his rhetorical steed, and realise the severity of reserve that marks the treatment of a subject on which he would have liked

INTRODUCTION.

nothing better than to spread himself over thrice the number of pages. Of course, however, the successful fusion of political or social doctrine with living narrative, and with the portrayal of scenes and personages that produce the effect of life, is no matter of mere constructive skill. Such skill is indeed indispensable to success, but it is not sufficient for it. The various ingredients of thought and imagination, of politics and romance, may be adjusted to each other with the nicest accuracy of proportion, but without that fusing imaginative ardour which alone can make them chemically combine the result will be mere mechanical mixture. This ardour Disraeli possessed, and nowhere does it rise nearer to the poetic temperature, which he never quite reaches, than in Sybil. The romantic fortune of the novel is indeed made, it finds salvation as a love story, in its admirable fourth and fifth chapters, perfect alike in colour and in feeling, wherein Egremont first meets Sybil Gerard with her father and his friend among the ruins of Marney Abbey.

It has always been somewhat of a puzzle to the students of the brilliant romancist, no less than to the contemporaries of the famous Parliamentary orator, to determine the precise depth and genuineness of the sentiments to which he could give such eloquent expression ; but there is nothing enigmatic about his attitude towards that fair vision of mediæval Catholic England, which was called up before his imagination by the touching relics of her monastic life. If ever man felt deeply and sincerely the poetry and pathos of such a situation as these chapters describe, it was the creator of the dramatically-contrasted characters who fill the scene — the young and generous heir of the Tudor plunderer, the impoverished descendant ofthe plundered, the devote daughter whose love is destined to b SYBIL, OR THE TWO NATIONS bring the two together, and, apart from these three mourners over a stately past, the active-minded and energetic, but aggressive and self-sufficient welcomer of the sordidly prosaic future.

It is by sheer grip of character and imaginative power of realising situation that Disraeli gives life and life-blood to personages whom a colder brain and weaker hand would have left mere puppet-mouthpieces of the doctrines which he desired to advocate. It is thus that he has raised what would otherwise have been a mere political plaidoyer into a genuine romance. In judging of it, however, especially in these later days, we must never forget that Disraeli is consistently a Romantic in spirit. Not to remember this is to be in danger of the heresy of those who charge the author with over-drawing and exaggeration. It is true that for the purposes of this novel he had studied the condition of the less fortunate of i the ' Two Nations ' from the life — that he had made himself familiar not only with the material circumstances of the jworking-class but with their ways, their opinions, their Aspirations, even their insurrectionary designs.

In the introduction above referred to he boasts of having ' visited and observed with care all the localities introduced,' and he declares that 'as an accurate and never exaggerated picture of a remarkable period in our domestic history, and of a popular organisation,' that of the Chartists, 'which in its extent and completeness has never been equalled, the pages of Sybil may be consulted with confidence.' But if so, they must be consulted with intelligence also ; and it would be an essentially unintelligent use of them to study them as though they were the pages of a Blue Book. To those readers who approach Disraeli in the spirit in which they would approach a Realist of the last quarter of the nineteenth cen tury he will, no doubt, seem fantastic and artificial enough.

INTRODUCTION.

For of course he is nothing so little as a Realist of the modern, the photographic type. He was no more capable of slavishly copying the interior of a handloom weaver's cottage, than he was of transcribing word for word the vapid chatter of political quidnuncs in a London drawing room. It belonged alike to his nature and to his deliberate theory of art to idealise in both cases — to select and combine such characteristic features of either scene as should give the ideal though not the actual, the ' noumenal ' as opposed to the ' phenomenal ' truth of each. Some day, perhaps, when the tyranny of latter-day realism is over past, it may again be perceived that this selection and combination of characteristic features in the objects described is essential to all the art which is not mere photography, all the literature of description which rises above the literary level of an auctioneer's inventory.

But until that day arrives Disraeli will have to abide, even from those who ought to know better, the criticism which the artist has undergone from the beginning and will have to undergo till the end of time from the vulgar — the criticism which one can hear repeated every five minutes in any art gallery in the world before a Greek Aphrodite in marble or on canvas : ' There never was a woman so beautiful as that.' So undoubtedly there never was a mill overseer's daughter so passionately and poetically devote as Sybil Gerard, nor any mill overseer of ancient lineage but depressed circumstances who quite resembled her father. Nor doubtless would you have been able to find an exact match for Stephen Morley among socialistic - radical working-men ; or even for Dandy Mick or Devilsdust, any more perhaps than for the gilded youth who surround the hero in club and drawing-room, or even (though they are SYBIL, OR THE TWO NATIONS evidently more individually studied) for the Lady Fire braces, and St. Julians, and the other political intrigantes of the Whig or Tory party.

They are idealised all of them, more or less ; their delineator has in every case aimed at the typical rather than the individual ; he has sought to be true to an intellectual conception rather than faithful to an observed object. In other words, his theory of his art has been that which all the great masters of fiction have held in every age, and which, though it may be temporarily displaced in one era or another by the crude and shallow doctrines of a so-called realism, is as certain to regain its supremacy as art itself, which would perish if long divorced from it, is certain to endure. That Disraeli's practice is not always worthy of his theory is of course true ; but to say that is only to say that he never, in fiction at any rate, attained the level of the consummate artist. And this no sensible critic would deny.

The romantic key is not maintained consistently throughout. There is not that perfect homogeneity which Scott succeeded in infusing into his romances, in what ever age or country their theatre is laid, so that, vary as they may in merit, there is not one of them which has a character or an incident out of keeping with its surround ings. There are scenes of melodrama in Sybil which break in incongruously upon the high comedy of its political and social intrigue ; and which are in their turn succeeded, not without jolt and shock, by those chapters of unconvincing Cockney dialogue and humour, in which Mick and Caroline, and Harriet, and the other factory hands, take part. In chapters like these, with the view no doubt, of showing that he had been studying from the life he plays the Realist, and not altogether with success. He had not that last and greatest art of inventing, or at any rate of

INTRODUCTION.

consistently employing, an idealised language to suit idealised characters. Succeeding admirably where his imaginative sympathy with them was strong, as, for instance, in the case of Gerard and Stephen Morley, who both for the most part use a form of expression eminently suited to the type which they represent, he fails disastrously with a character like Philip Warner, the handloom weaver, who ' spouts ' long solilo quies on the displacement of manual industry by machinery to the neglect of the job of piece-work which he must finish to earn his arrears of rent. Occasionally, too, he wavers a little undecidedly in his treatment of the same characters. Even the immortal Messrs. Tadpole and Taper, the fathers of all such as pull the wires of party at every making of a new Cabinet, are not treated with uniform con sistency.

Ordinarily pursuing their business with a delightful naivete of insensibility to its true character, they suddenly, in the ministerial crisis of 1839, become for a moment conscious of themselves. This, of course, should not be. The augur who laughs when he meets a colleague, and the augur who does not, are both of them representatives of true augurial types ; but the types are not represented in the same augur. One prefers to contemplate them in their more habitual presentment as the idealised wire-puller, and not looking to find in either of them an exact photographic portrait of some gentleman or other whom you might have found at the last general election, busy over the latest telegraphic returns from the constituencies in the hall of a political club. And so with many of the other personages whom and whose doings Disraeli studied 'from the life.' The impossibly truculent ' tommy-shop ' keeper belabouring his unwilling and miserable customers; the incredibly savage ' filer ' amid his cowering apprentices ; the melodramatic XX SYBIL, OR THE TWO NATIONS meeting of the Trade's Union, with its masks and oaths and otherparaphemaliaof the transpontine stage, — wecanaccept as idealisations of actual fact, useful for their substratum of truth to those who read them intelligently, and only mislead ing to those who do not.

We know, or ought to know, what deductions to make from these scenes, and we enjoy them all the more for their romantically heightened colour ; just as we appreciate, or should appreciate, the keen insight of the novelist's political speculations all the more fully for his choosing to diversify them with such fascinating paradoxes as that Charles I. died a martyred confessor to ' the principle of direct taxation,' and 'laid down his heroic life, not only for the cause of the Church, but for the cause of the poor.' For alike in the speculation and the paradox, in the portraiture and its exaggeration, we recognise the unique personality of him who was one of the most brilliant of the makers and recorders of the political history of our era, and beyond all comparison its most picturesque figure.

H. D. Traill. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE ' I too have had visions in my youth, Sybil ' .

Frontispiece Heading to Book I. . . . . . .3 ' I'll take the odds against Caravan ' . . . .4 The pace round Tottenham corner terrific . . .12 ' Poor woman ! she is always wrong ' . . . .32 Rode in the park . . . . • .40 ' Pish ! ' said the secretary . . . • -44 Heading to Book II. , . . . • -49 Was giving her some narrative of his travels . . • S2 'You lean against an ancient trunk,' said Egremont . . 69 He beheld a female form . . ■ • 7<> * I would pursue our right for no other cause ' . . • 92 Dandy Mick ... 99 The first footstep of the new week of toil is heard . 125 ' My name is Warner ' . • • • • '31 Lady Joan only required a listener . . ■ • J42 Rather as an excuse to be alone . • • .146 Heading to Book III. . ■ ■ ■ ■ '53 ' Touch me at your peril ! ' exclaimed Egremont • .169 ' I salute thee, holy sister,' said Egremont . - .192 SYBIL, OR THE TWO NATIONS FACE Egremont, bending very low, pressed it to his lips . .217 Egremont was lying on its precipitous bank . . .218 Heading to Book IV. . . . . .221 Their appearance appalled, their stillness terrified, Mick . 238 Baptist Hatton ....-• 256 ' Who is this gentleman who addresses me ? ' . . . 267 ' Believe me,' she said, ' the gulf is impassable ' . . 300 Heading to Book V. . . . . . • 3°3 Looked up, to breathe as it were for relief . . • 3'5 For a moment she indulged in impossible dreams . . 325 He rushed franticly from the room .... 333 Sybil prayed ....... 335 And knocked ....... 343 Assisted Sybil into the coach ..... 362 Heading to Book VI. . . . . . -375 The Liberator . . . . . .419 She looked round at her father .... 430 ' No, you shall not enter,' said Sybil advancing . . 440 A shot from a trooper struck Stephen in the breast . .447 ' We will never part again,' said Egremont . . .

I WOULD inscribe this volume to one whose noble spirit and gentle nature ever prompt her to sym pathise with the suffering ; to one whose sweet voice has often encouraged, and whose taste and judgment have ever guided, its pages ; the most severe of critics, but — a perfect Wife ! B I

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE general reader whose attention has not been specially drawn to the subject which this volume aims to illustrate, the Condition of the People, might suspect that the Writer had been tempted to some exaggeration in the scenes which he has drawn and the impressions which he has wished to convey. He thinks it therefore due to himself to state that he believes there is not a trait in this work for which he has not the authority of his own observation, or the authentic evidence which has been received by Royal Commissions and Parlia mentary Committees. But while he hopes he has alleged nothing which is not true, he has found the absolute necessity of suppressing much that is genuine. For so little do we know of the state of our own country, that the air of im probability that the whole truth would inevitably throw over these pages might deter many from their perusal. Grosvenor Gate, May-Day, 1845.

Chapter I

' I'LL take the odds against Caravan.' ' In ponies ? ' ' Done.' And Lord Milford, a young noble, entered in his book the bet which he had just made with Mr. Latour, a grey-headed member of the Jockey Club. It was the eve of the Derby of 1837. In a vast and golden saloon, that in its decorations would have become, and in its splendour would not have disgraced, Versailles in the days of the grand monarch, were assembled many whose hearts beat at the thought of the morrow, and whose brains still laboured to control its fortunes to their advantage. 'They say that Caravan looks puffy,' lisped in a low voice a young man, lounging on the edge of a buhl table that had once belonged to a Mortemart, and dangling a rich cane with affected indifference in order to conceal his anxiety from all, except the person whom he addressed. ' They are taking seven to two against him freely over the way,' was the reply. ' I believe it's all right.' ' Do you know I dreamed last night something about Mango,' continued the gentleman with the cane, and with a look of uneasy superstition.

His companion shook his head. ' Well,' continued the gentleman with the cane, ' I have no opinion of him. I gave Charles Egremont the odds against ' I'll take the odds against Caravan* Mango this morning ; he goes with us, you know. By the bye, who is our fourth ? ' ' I thought of Milford,' was the reply in an under tone. ' What say you ? ' ' Milford is going with St. James and Punch Hughes.' 'Well, let us come in to supper, and we shall see some fellow we like.' So saying, the companions, taking their course through more than one chamber, entered an apartment of less dimensions than the principal saloon, but not less sumptuous in its general appearance. The gleaming lustres poured a flood of soft yet brilliant light over a plateau glittering with gold plate, and fragrant with exotics embedded in vases of rare porcelain.

The seats on each side of the table were occupied by persons consuming, with a heedless air, delicacies for which they had no appetite ; while the conversation in general con sisted of flying phrases referring to the impending event of the great day that had already dawned. ' Come from Lady St. Julians', Fitz ? ' said a youth of very tender years, and whose fair visage was as downy and as blooming as the peach from which with a languid air he with drew his lips to make this inquiry of the gentleman with the cane. ' Yes ; why were not you there ? ' ' I never go anywhere,' replied the melancholy Cupid, ' everything bores me so.' ' Well, will you go to Epsom with us to-morrow, Alfred ? ' said Lord Fitzheron. ' I take Berners and Charles Egremont, and with you our party will be perfect.' ' I feel so cursed blase' ! ' exclaimed the boy in a tone of elegant anguish. ' It will give you a fillip, Alfred,' said Mr. Berners ; ' do you all the good in the world.' ' Nothing can do me good,' said Alfred, throwing away his almost untasted peach ; ' I should be quite content if anything could do me harm.

Waiter, bring me a tumbler of Bad minton.' ' And bring me one too,' sighed out Lord Eugene De Vere, who was a year older than Alfred Mountchesney, his companion and brother in listlessness. Both had exhausted life in their teens, and all that remained for them was to mourn, amid the ruins of their reminiscences, over the extinction of excitement. 'Well, Eugene, suppose you come with us,' said Lord Fitzheron. ' I think I shall go down to Hampton Court and play tennis,' said Lord Eugene. ' As it is the Derby, nobody will be there.' ' And I will go with you, Eugene,' said Alfred Mountchesney, ' and we will dine together afterwards at the Toy. Anything is better than dining in this infernal London.' ' Well, for my part,' said Mr. Berners, ' I do not like your suburban dinners. You always get something you can't eat, and cursed bad wine.' ' I rather like bad wine,' said Mr. Mountchesney ; ' one gets so bored with good wine.' ' Do you want the odds against Hybiscus, Berners ? ' said a guardsman looking up from his book, which he had been very intently studying. ' All I want is some supper, and as you are not using your place ' ' You shall have it.