Coningsby;

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13 y the

LOTHAIR.

Preface To The Fifth Edition. (1849.)

“ Coningsby” was published in the year 1844. The main purpose of its writer was to vindicate the just claims of the Tory party to be the popular political confederation of the country ; a purpose which he had, more or less, pursued from a very early period of life. The occasion was favorable to the attempt. The youthful mind of England had just recovered from the inebriation of the great Conservative triumph of 1841, and was beginning to inquire what, after all, they had conquered to preserve. It was opportune therefore to show that Toryism was not a phrase, but a fact, and that our political institutions were the embodiment of our popular necessities. This the writer endeavored to do without prejudice, and to treat of events and characters of which he had some personal experience, not altogether without the impartiality of the future.

It was not originally the intention of the writer to adopt the form of fiction as the instrument to scatter his suggestions ; but, after reflection, he resolved to avail himself of a method which, in the temper of the times, offered the best chance of influencing opinion.

In considering the Tory scheme, the author recognized in the Church the most powerful agent in the previous development of England, and the most efficient means of that renovation of the national spirit at which he aimed. The Church is a sacred corporation for the promulgation and maintenance in Europe of certain Asian principles, which, although local in their birth, are of divine origin, and of universal and eternal application.

In asserting the paramount character of the ecclesiastical polity and the majesty of the theocratic principle, it became necessary to ascend to the origin of the Christian Church, and to meet, in a spirit worthy of a critical and comparatively enlightened age, the position of the descendants of that race who were the founders of Christianity. The modern Jews had long labored under the odium and stigma of mediaeval malevolence. In the dark ages, when history was unknown, the passions of societies, undisturbed by traditionary experience, were strong, and their convictions, unmitigated by criticism, were necessarily fanatical. The Jews were looked upon in the middle ages as an accursed race — the enemies of God and man — the especial foes of Christianity. No one in those days paused to reflect that Christianity was founded by the Jews; that its Divine Author, in his human capacity, was a descendant of King David ; that his doctrines avowedly were the completion, not the change, of Judaism ; that the apostles and the evangelists, whose names men daily invoked, and whose volumes they embraced with reverence, were all Jews; that the infallible throne of Rome itself was established by a Jew ; and that a Jew was the founder of the Christian Churches of Asia.

The European nations, relatively speaking, were then only recently converted to a belief in Moses and in Christ, and, as it were, still ashamed of the wild deities whom they had deserted, they thought they atoned for their past idolatry by wreaking their vengeance on a race to whom, and to whom alone, they were indebted for the Gospel they adored.

In vindicating the sovereign right of the Church of Christ to be the perpetual regenerator of man, the writer thought the time had arrived when some attempt should be made to do justice to the race which had founded Christianity.

The writer has developed in another work (“ Tancred ”) the views respecting the great house of Israel, which he first intimated in “ Coningsby.” No one has attempted to refute them, nor is refutation possible ; since all he has done is to examine certain facts in the truth of which all agree, and to draw from them irresistible conclusions which prejudice for a moment may shrink from, but which reason cannot refuse to admit.

The success of this work was not questionable. Three considerable editions were sold in this country in three months . -it was largely circulated throughout the Continent of Europe, and, within a very brief period, more than fifty thousand copies were required in the United States of America. In the fifth year of its life, the writer has been called upon to prepare its fifth edition.

D.

Grosvenor Gate, May , 1849.

CONINGSBY.

B O OK I.

Chapter I

It was a bright May morning some twelve years ago, when a youth of still tender age, for he had certainly not entered his teens by more than two years, was ushered into the waiting-room of a house in the vicinity of St. James’s Square, wrhich, though with the general appearance of a private residence, and that, too, of no very ambitious character, exhibited at this period symptoms of being occupied for some public purpose.

The house-door was constantly opened, and frequent guests even at this early hour crossed the threshold. The hall-table was covered with sealed letters ; and the hall-porter inscribed in a book the name of every individual who entered.

The young gentleman we have mentioned found himself in a room which offered few resources for his amusement. A large table amply covered with writing materials, and a few chairs, were its sole furniture, except the grey drugget that covered the floor, and a muddy mezzotinto of the Duke of Wellington that adorned its cold walls. There was not even a newspaper ; and the only books were the Court Guide and the London Directory. For some time he remained with patient endurance planted against the wall, with his feet resting on the rail of his chair ; but at length in his shifting posture he gave evidence of his restlessness, rose from his seat, looked out of the -window into a Stnall side court of the house surrounded with dead walls, paced the room, took up the Court Guide, changed it for the London Directory, then wrote his name over several sheets of foolscap paper, drew various landscapes and faces of his friends ; and then, splitting up a pen or twro, delivered himself of a yawn which seemed the climax of his weariness.

And yet the youth’s appearance did not betoken a character that, if the opportunity had offered, could not have found amusement and even instruction. His countenance, radiant with health and the lustre of innocence, was at the same time thoughtful and resolute. The expression of his deep blue eye was serious. Without extreme regularity of features, the face was one that would never have passed unobserved. His short upper lip indicated a good breed ; and his chestnut curls clustered over his open brow, while his shirt-collar thrown over his shoulders was unrestrained by handkerchief or ribbon. Add to this a limber and graceful figure, wrhich the jacket of his boyish dress exhibited to great advantage.

Just as the youth, mounted on a chair, was adjusting the portrait of the Duke, which he had observed to be awry, the gentleman for whom he had been all this time waiting entered the room.

“ Floreat Etona ! ” hastily exclaimed the gentleman, in a sharp voice ; “ you are setting the Duke to rights. I have left you a long time a prisoner ; but I found them so busy here, that I made my escape with some difficulty.”

He -who uttered these words wras a man of middle size and age, originally in all probability of a spare habit, but now a little inclined to corpulency. Baldness, perhaps, contributed to the spiritual expression of a brow, -which was, however, essentially intellectual, and gave some character of openness to a countenance which, though not ill-favored, wras unhappily stamped by a sinister cast that was not to be mistaken. His manner wras easy, but rather audacious than well-bred. Indeed, while a visage which might otherwise be described as handsome was spoilt by a dishonest glance, so a demeanor that was by no means deficient in self-possession and facility, was tainted by an innate vulgarity, which in the long run, though seldom, yet surely developed itself.

The youth had jumped off" his chair on the entrance of the gentleman, and then, taking up his hat, said :

“ Shall we go to grandpapa now, sir ? ”

“ By all means, my dear boy,” said the gentleman, putting his arm within that of the youth ; and they were just on the point of leaving the waiting-room, when the door was suddenly thrown open, and two individuals, in a state of great excitement, rushed into the apartment.

“ Rigby — Rigby ! ” they both exclaimed at the same moment. “ By G — , they’re out ! ”

“ Who told you ? ”

“ The best authority ; one of themselves.”

“ Who— who ? ”

“ Paul Evelyn ; I met him as I passed Brookes’s, and he told me that Lord Grey had resigned, and the King had accepted bis resignation.”

But Mr. Rigby, who, though very fond of news, and much interested in the present, w as

CONINGSBY.

extremely jealous of any one giving him information, was sceptical. He declared that Paul Evelyn was always wrong ; that it was morally impossible that Paul Evelyn ever could be right; that he knew, from the highest authority, that Lord Grey had been twice yesterday with the King ; that on the last visit nothing was settled ; that if he had been at the palace again to-day, he could not have been there before twelve o’clock ; that it was only now a quarter to one ; that Lord Grey would have called his colleagues together on his return ; that at least an hour must have elapsed before any thing could possibly have transpired. Then he compared and criticised the dates of every rumored incident of the last twenty-four hours (and nobody was stronger in dates than Mr. Rigby) ; counted even the number of stairs which the minister had to ascend and descend in his visit to the palace, and the time their mountings and dismountings must have consumed (detail was Mr. Rigby’s forte) ; and finally, what with his dates, his private information, his knowledge of palace localities, his contempt for Paul Evelyn, and his confidence in himself, he succeeded in persuading his downcast and disheartened friends that their comfortable intelligence had not the slightest foundation.

They all left the room together ; they were in the hall ; the gentlemen who brought the news looked somewhat depressed, but Mr. Rigby gay, even amid the prostration of his party, from the consciousness that he had most critically demolished a piece of political gossip and conveyed a certain degree of mortification to a couple of his companions ; when a travelling carriage and four with a ducal coronet drove up to the house. The door was thrown open, the steps dashed down, and a youthful noble sprang from his chariot into the hall.

“ Good-morning, Rigby,” said the Duke.

“ I see your Grace well, I am sure,” said Mr. Rigby, with a softened manner.

“You have heard the news, gentlemen?” the Duke continued.

“ What news ? Yes — no — that is to say — Mr. Rigby thinks — ”

“ You know, of course, that Lord Lyndhurst is with the king ? ”

“ It is impossible,” said Mr. Rigby.

“ I don’t think I can be mistaken,” said the Duke, smiling.

“ I will show your Grace that it is impossible,” said Mr. Rigby. “ Lord Lyndhurst slept at Wimbledon. Lord Grey could not have seen the King until twelve o’clock ; it is now five minutes to one. It is impossible, therefore, that any message from the King could have reached Lord Lyndhurst in time for his Lordship to be at the palace at this moment.”

“ But my authority is a high one,” said the Duke.

“ Authority is a phrase,” said Mr. Rigby ; “ we must look to time and place, dates and localities, to discover the truth.”

“Your Grace was saying that your authority — ” ventured to observe Mr. Tadpole, emboldened by the presence of a duke, his patron, to struggle against the despotism of a Rigby, his tyrant.

“ Was the highest,” rejoined the Duke, smiling, “ for it was Lord Lyndhurst himself. I came up from Nuneham this morning, passed his Lordship’s house in Hyde Park Place as he was getting into his carriage in full dress, stopped my own, and learned in a breath, that the Whigs were out, and that the King had sent for the Chief Baron. So I came on here at once.”

“ I always thought the country was sound at bottom,” exclaimed Mr. Taper, who, under the old system, had sneaked into the Treasury Board.

Tadpole and Taper were great friends. Neither of them ever despaired of the Commonwealth. Even if the Reform Bill were passed, Taper was convinced that the Whigs would never prove men of business ; and when his friends confessed among themselves that a Tory Government was for the future impossible, Taper would remark, in a confidential whisper, that for his part he believed before the year was over the Whigs would be turned out by the clerks.

“ There is no doubt that there is considerable reaction,” said Mr. Tadpole. “ The infamous conduct of the Whigs in the Amersham case has opened the public mind more than any thing.”

“ Aldborough wras worse,” said Mr. Taper.

“ Terrible ! ” said Tadpole. “ They said there ■was no use discussing the Reform Bill in our House. I believe Rigby’s great speech on Aldborough has done more towards the reaction than all the violence of the Political Unions put together.”

“ Let us hope for the best,” said the Duke, mildly. “ ’Tis a bold step on the part of the Sovereign, and I am free to say I could have wished it postponed ; but we must support the King like men. What say you, Rigby ? You are silent.”

“ I am thinking how very unfortunate it was that I did not breakfast with Lyndhurst this morning, as I was nearly doing, instead of going down to Eton.”

“ To Eton ! and why to Eton ? ”

“ For the sake of my young friend here, Lord Monmouth’s grandson. By the bye, you are kinsmen. Let me present to your Grace — Mr. Coningsby.”

Chapter II

The political agitation which for a year and a half had shaken England to its centre, received, if possible, an increase to its intensity and virulence, when it was known, in the early part of the month of May, 1832, that the Prime Minister had tendered his resignation to the King, which resignation had been graciously accepted.

The amendment carried by the Opposition in the House of Lords on the evening of the 7th of May, that the enfranchising clauses of the Reform Bill should be considered before entering into the question of disfranchisement, was the immediate cause of this startling event. The Lords had previously consented to the second reading of the Bill with the view of preventing that large increase of their numbers with which they had been long menaced ; rather, indeed, by mysterious rumors than by any official declaration ; but, nevertheless, in a manner which had carried conviction to no inconsiderable portion of the Opposition that the threat was not without foundation.

During the progress of the Bill through the

“THE WAVERERS.”

Lower House, the journals which were looked upon as the organs of the ministry had announced with unhesitating confidence, that Lord Grey was armed with what was then called a “ carte blanche ” to create any number of peers necessary to insure its success. But public journalists w'ho were under tbe control of the ministry, and whose statements were never contradicted, were not the sole authorities for this prevailing belief. Members of the House of Commons, who were strong supporters of the cabinet, though not connected with it by any official tie, had unequivocally stated in their places that the Sovereign had not resisted the advice of his counsellors to create peers, if such creation were required to carry into effect wdiat was then styled “ the great national measure.” In more than one instance, ministers had been warned, that if they did not exercise that power with prompt energy, they might deserve impeachment. And these intimations and announcements had been made in the presence of leading members of the Government, aud had received from them, at least, the sanction of their silence.

It did not subsequently appear that the Reform ministers had been invested with any such power ; but a conviction of the reverse, fostered by these circumstances, had successfully acted upon the nervous temperament, or the statesmanlike prudence, of a certain section of the peers, who consequently hesitated in their course — were known as being no longer inclined to pursue their policy of the preceding session — had thus obtained a title at that moment in everybody’s mouth — the title of “ the Waverers.”

Notwithstanding, therefore, the opposition of the Duke of Wellington and of Lord Lyndhurst, the Waverers carried the second reading of the Reform Bill; and then, scared at the consequences of their own headstrong timidity, they ■went in a fright to the Duke and his able adviser to extricate them from the inevitable result of their own conduct. The ultimate device of these distracted counsels, wrh ere daring and poltroonery, principle and expediency, public spirit and private intrigue, each threw an ingredient into the turbulent spell, was the celebrated and successful amendment to which we have referred.

But the Whig ministers, who, wdiatever may have been their faults, were at least men of intellect and courage, were not to be beaten by “ the Waverers.” They might have made terms with an audacious foe ; they trampled on a hesitating opponent. Lord Grey hastened to the palace.

Before the result of this appeal to the Sovereign was known, for its effects were not immediate, on the second morning after the vote in the House of Lords, Mr. Rigby had made that visit to Eton which had summoned very unexpectedly the youthful Coningsby to London. He was the orphan child of the youngest of the two sons of the Marquess of Monmouth. It was a family famous for its hatreds. The eldest son hated his father ; and, it was said, in spite had married a lady to whom that father was attached, and with whom Lord Monmouth then meditated a second alliance. This eldest son lived at Naples, and had several children, but maintained no connection either with his parent or his native country. On the other hand, Lord Monmouth hated his younger son, who had married, against his consent, a woman to whom that son was devoted. A system of domestic persecution, sustained by the hand of a master, had eventually broken up the health of its victim, who died of a fever in a foreign country, where he had sought some refuge from his creditors.

His widow returned to England with her child ; and, not having a relation, and scarcely an acquaintance, in the world, made an appeal to her husband’s father, the wealthiest noble in England, and a man who was often prodigal, and occasionally generous. After some time, and more trouble, after urgent and repeated, and what would have seemed heart-rending, solicitations, the attorney of Lord Monmouth called upon the widow of his client’s son, and informed her of his Lordship’s decision. Provided she gave up her child, and permanently resided in one of the remotest counties, he was authorized to make her, in four quarterly payments, the yearly allowance of three hundred pounds, that being the income that Lord Monmouth, who was the shrewdest accountant in the country, had calculated a lone woman might very decently exist upon in a small market town in the county of Westmoreland.

Desperate necessity, the sense of her own forlornness, the utter impossibility to struggle with an omnipotent foe, who, her husband had taught her, was above all scruples, prejudices, and fears, and who, though he respected law, despised opinion, made the victim yield. But her sufferings were not long; the separation from her child, the bleak clime, the strange faces around her, sharp memory, and the dull routine of an unimpassioned life, all combined to wear out a constitution originally frail, and since shattered by many sorrows. Mrs. Coningsby died the same day that her father-in-law was made a Marquess. He deserved his honors. The four votes he had inherited in the House of Commons had been increased, by his intense volition and unsparing means, to ten ; and the very day he was raised to his Marquisate, he commenced sapping fresh corporations, and wras working for the strawberry leaf. His honors were proclaimed in the London ’ Gazette, and her decease was not even noticed in the County Chronicle ; but the altars of Nemesis are beneath every outraged roof, and the death of this unhappy lady, apparently without an earthly friend or an earthly hope, desolate and deserted, and dying in obscure poverty, was not forgotten.

Coningsby was not more than nine years of age when he lost his last parent ; and he had then been separated from her for nearly three years. But he remembered the sweetness of his nursery days. His mother, too, had written to him frequently since he quitted her, and her fond expressions had cherished the tenderness of his heart. He wept bitterly when his school-master broke to him the news of his mother’s death. True it was they had been long parted, and their prospect of again meeting wras vague and dim ; but his mother seemed to him his only link to human society. It was something to have a mother, even if he never saw her. Other boys went to see their mothers ! he, at least, could talk of his. Now he was alone. His grandfather was to him only a name. Lord Monmouth resided almost

CONINGSBY.

constantly abroad, and during his rare visits to England had found no time or inclination to see the orphan with whom he felt no sympathy. Even the death of the boy’s mother, and the consequent arrangements, were notified to his master by a stranger. The letter which brought the sad intelligence was from Mr. Rigby. It was the first time that name had been known to Coningsby.

Mr. Rigby was a member from one of Lord Monmouth’s boroughs. He was the manager of Lord Monmouth’s parliamentary influence, and the auditor of his vast estates. He was more ; he was Lord Monmouth’s companion when in England, his correspondent when abroad — hardly his counsellor, for Lord Monmouth never required advice ; but Mr. Rigby could instruct him in matters of detail, which Mr. Rigby made amusing. Rigby was not a professional man ; indeed, his origin, education, early pursuits, and studies, were equally obscure ; but he had contrived in good time to squeeze himself into Parliament, by means which no one could ever comprehend, and then set up to be a perfect man of business. The world took him at his word, for he was bold, acute, and voluble ; with no thought, but a good deal of desultory information ; and, though destitute of all imagination and noble sentiment, was blessed with a vigorous, mendacious fancy, fruitful in small expedients, and never happier than when devising shifts for great men’s scrapes.

They say that all of us have one chance in this life, and so it was with Rigby. After a struggle of many years, after a long series of the usual alternatives of small successes and small failures, after a few cleverish speeches and a good many cleverish pamphlets, with a considerable reputation, indeed, for pasquinades, most of which he never wrote, and articles in reviews to which it was whispered he had contributed, Rigby, who had already intrigued himself into a subordinate office, met with Lord Monmouth.

He was just the animal that Lord Monmouth wanted, for Lord Monmouth always looked upon human nature with the callous eye of a jockey. He surveyed Rigby, and he determined to buy him. He bought him ; with his clear head, his indefatigible industry, his audacious tongue, and his ready and unscrupulous pen ; with all his dates, all his lampoons ; all his private memoirs, and all his political intrigues. It was a good purchase. Rigby became a great personage, and Lord Monmouth’s man.

Mr. Rigby, who liked to be doing a great many things at the same time, and to astonish the Tadpoles and Tapers with his energetic versatility, determined to superintend the education of Coningsby. It was a relation which identified him with the noble house of his pupil, or, properly speaking, his charge: for Mr. Rigby affected rather the graceful dignity of the governor than the duties of a tutor. The boy was recalled from his homely, rural school, where he had been well grounded by a hard-working curate, and affectionately tended by the curate’s unsophisticated wife. lie was sent to a fashionable school preparatory to Eton, where he found about two hundred youths of noble families and connections, lodged in a magnificent villa that had once been the retreat of a minister, superintended by a sycophantic Doctor of Divinity, already well beneficed, and not despairing of a bishopric by favoring the children of the great nobles. The doctor’s lady, clothed in cashmeres, sometimes inquired after their health, and occasionally received a report as to their linen.

Mr. Rigby had a classical retreat, not distant from this establishment, which he esteemed a Tusculum. There, surrounded by his busts and books, he wrote his lampoons and articles ; massacred a she liberal (it was thought that no one could lash a woman like Rigby), cut up a rising genius whose politics were different from his own, or scarified some unhappy wretch who had brought his claims before Parliament, proving, by garbled extracts from official correspondence that no one could refer to, that the malcontent, instead of being a victim, was, on the contrary, a defaulter. Tadpole and Taper would back Rigby for a “ slashing reply ” against the field. Here, too, at the end of a busy week, he found it occasionally convenient to entertain a clever friend or two of equivocal reputation, with whom he had become acquainted in former days of equal brotherhood. No one was more faithful to his early friends than Mr. Rigby, particularly if they could write a squib.

It was in this refined retirement that Mr. Rigby found time enough, snatched from the toils of official life and parliamentary struggles, to compose a letter on the study of History, addressed to Coningsby. The style was as much like that of Lord Bolingbroke as if it had been writcn by the authors of the “Rejected Addresses,” and it began, “My dear young friend.” This polished composition, so full of good feeling and comprehensive views, and all in the best taste, was not published. It was only privately printed, and a few thousand copies were distributed among selected personages as an especial favor and mark of high consideration. Each copy given away seemed to Rigby like a certificate of character — a property which, like all men of dubious repute, he thoroughly appreciated! Rigby intrigued very much that the head master of Eton should adopt his discourse as a classbook. For this purpose he dined with the Doctor, told him several anecdotes of the King, which intimated personal influence at Windsor ; but the head master was inflexible, and so Mr. Rigby was obliged to be content with having his Letter on History canonized as a classic in the Preparatory Seminary, where the individual to whom it was addressed was a scholar.

This change in the life of Coningsby contributed to his happiness. The various characters which a large school exhibited interested a young mind whose active energies were beginning to stir. His previous acquirements made his studies light ; and he was fond of sports, in which he was qualified to excel. He did not particularly like Mr. Rigby. There was something jarring and grating in that gentleman’s voice and modes, from which the chords of the young heart shrank. He was not tender, though perhaps he wished to be ; scarcely kind : but he was good-natured, at least to children. However, this connection vras, on the whole, a very agreeable one for Coningsby. He seemed suddenly to have friends ; he never passed his holydays again at school. Mr. Rigby was so clever that he contrived always to quarter

ETON.

Coningsby on the father of one of his school-fellows, for Mr. Rigby knew all his school-fellows and all their fathers. Mr. Rigby also called to see him, not unfrequently would give him a dinner at the Star and Garter, or even have him up to town for a week to Whitehall. Compared with his former forlorn existence, these were happy days, when he was placed under the gallery as a member’s son, or went to the play with the butler !

When Coningsby had attained his twelfth year, an order was received from Lord Monmouth, who was at Rome, that he should go at once to Eton. This was the first great epoch of his life. There never was a youth who entered into that wonderful little world with more eager zest than Coningsby. Nor was it marvellous.

That delicious plain, studded with every creation of graceful culture; hamlet and hall, and grange ; garden and grove, and park ; that castlepalace, grey with glorious ages ; those antique spires, hoar with faith and wisdom, the chapel and the college ; that river winding through the shady meads ; the sunny glade and the solemn avenue ; the room in the Dame’s house where we fii’st order our own breakfast and first feel we are free ; the stirring multitude, the energetic groups, the individual mind that leads, conquers, controls ; the emulation and the affection ; the noble strife and the tender sentiment ; the daring exploit and the dashing scrape ; the passion that pervades our life, and breathes in every thing, from the aspiring study to the inspiring sport — oh ! what hereafter can spur the brain and touch the heart like this ; can give us a world so deeply and variously interesting; a life so full of quick and bright excitement — passed in a scene so fair ?