Endymion - Benjamin Disraeli
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ENDYMION
by Benjamin Disraeli, Earl Of Beaconsfield, K.G.
First Published 1880
CHAPTER I
It was a rich, warm night, at the beginning of August, when a gentleman
enveloped in a cloak, for he was in evening dress, emerged from
a club-house at the top of St. James' Street, and descended that
celebrated eminence. He had not proceeded more than half way down the
street when, encountering a friend, he stopped with some abruptness.
"I have been looking for you everywhere," he said.
"What is it?"
"We can hardly talk about it here."
"Shall we go to White's?"
"I have just left it, and, between ourselves, I would rather we should
be more alone. 'Tis as warm as noon. Let us cross the street and get
into St. James' Place. That is always my idea of solitude."
So they crossed the street, and, at the corner of St. James' Place, met
several gentlemen who had just come out of Brookes' Club-house. These
saluted the companions as they passed, and said, "Capital account
from Chiswick--Lord Howard says the chief will be in Downing Street on
Monday."
"It is of Chiswick that I am going to speak to you," said the gentleman
in the cloak, putting his arm in that of his companion as they walked
on. "What I am about to tell you is known only to three persons, and is
the most sacred of secrets. Nothing but our friendship could authorise
me to impart it to you."
"I hope it is something to your advantage," said his companion.
"Nothing of that sort; it is of yourself that I am thinking. Since our
political estrangement, I have never had a contented moment. From Christ
Church, until that unhappy paralytic stroke, which broke up a government
that had lasted fifteen years, and might have continued fifteen more, we
seemed always to have been working together. That we should again unite
is my dearest wish. A crisis is at hand. I want you to use it to your
advantage. Know then, that what they were just saying about Chiswick
is moonshine. His case is hopeless, and it has been communicated to the
King."
"Hopeless!"
"Rely upon it; it came direct from the Cottage to my friend."
"I thought he had a mission?" said his companion, with emotion; "and men
with missions do not disappear till they have fulfilled them."
"But why did you think so? How often have I asked you for your grounds
for such a conviction! There are none. The man of the age is clearly the
Duke, the saviour of Europe, in the perfection of manhood, and with an
iron constitution."
"The salvation of Europe is the affair of a past generation," said his
companion. "We want something else now. The salvation of England should
be the subject rather of our present thoughts."
"England! why when were things more sound? Except the split among our
own men, which will be now cured, there is not a cause of disquietude."
"I have much," said his friend.
"You never used to have any, Sidney. What extraordinary revelations can
have been made to you during three months of office under a semi-Whig
Ministry?"
"Your taunt is fair, though it pains me. And I confess to you that
when I resolved to follow Canning and join his new allies, I had many a
twinge. I was bred in the Tory camp; the Tories put me in Parliament
and gave me office; I lived with them and liked them; we dined and
voted together, and together pasquinaded our opponents. And yet, after
Castlereagh's death, to whom like yourself I was much attached, I had
great misgivings as to the position of our party, and the future of the
country. I tried to drive them from my mind, and at last took refuge in
Canning, who seemed just the man appointed for an age of transition."
"But a transition to what?"
"Well, his foreign policy was Liberal."
"The same as the Duke's; the same as poor dear Castlereagh's. Nothing
more unjust than the affected belief that there was any difference
between them--a ruse of the Whigs to foster discord in our ranks. And
as for domestic affairs, no one is stouter against Parliamentary Reform,
while he is for the Church and no surrender, though he may make a
harmless speech now and then, as many of us do, in favour of the
Catholic claims."
"Well, we will not now pursue this old controversy, my dear Ferrars,
particularly if it be true, as you say, that Mr. Canning now lies upon
his deathbed."
"If! I tell you at this very moment it may be all over."
"I am shaken to my very centre."
"It is doubtless a great blow to you," rejoined Mr. Ferrars, "and I wish
to alleviate it. That is why I was looking for you. The King will,
of course, send for the Duke, but I can tell you there will be a
disposition to draw back our friends that left us, at least the younger
ones of promise. If you are awake, there is no reason why you should not
retain your office."
"I am not so sure the King will send for the Duke."
"It is certain."
"Well," said his companion musingly, "it may be fancy, but I cannot
resist the feeling that this country, and the world generally, are on
the eve of a great change--and I do not think the Duke is the man for
the epoch."
"I see no reason why there should be any great change; certainly not in
this country," said Mr. Ferrars. "Here we have changed everything that
was required. Peel has settled the criminal law, and Huskisson the
currency, and though I am prepared myself still further to reduce the
duties on foreign imports, no one can deny that on this subject the
Government is in advance of public opinion."
"The whole affair rests on too contracted a basis," said his companion.
"We are habituated to its exclusiveness, and, no doubt, custom in
England is a power; but let some event suddenly occur which makes a
nation feel or think, and the whole thing might vanish like a dream."
"What can happen? Such affairs as the Luddites do not occur twice in a
century, and as for Spafields riots, they are impossible now with Peel's
new police. The country is employed and prosperous, and were it not so,
the landed interest would always keep things straight."
"It is powerful, and has been powerful for a long time; but there are
other interests besides the landed interest now."
"Well, there is the colonial interest, and the shipping interest," said
Mr. Ferrars, "and both of them thoroughly with us."
"I was not thinking of them," said his companion. "It is the increase of
population, and of a population not employed in the cultivation of the
soil, and all the consequences of such circumstances that were passing
over my mind."
"Don't you be too doctrinaire, my dear Sidney; you and I are practical
men. We must deal with the existing, the urgent; and there is nothing
more pressing at this moment than the formation of a new government.
What I want is to see you as a member of it."
"Ah!" said his companion with a sigh, "do you really think it so near as
that?"
"Why, what have we been talking of all this time, my dear Sidney? Clear
your head of all doubt, and, if possible, of all regrets; we must deal
with the facts, and we must deal with them to-morrow."
"I still think he had a mission," said Sidney with a sigh, "if it were
only to bring hope to a people."
"Well, I do not see he could have done anything more," said Mr. Ferrars,
"nor do I believe his government would have lasted during the session.
However, I must now say good-night, for I must look in at the Square.
Think well of what I have said, and let me hear from you as soon as you
can."
CHAPTER II
Zenobia was the queen of London, of fashion, and of the Tory party. When
she was not holding high festivals, or attending them, she was always
at home to her intimates, and as she deigned but rarely to honour the
assemblies of others with her presence, she was generally at her evening
post to receive the initiated. To be her invited guest under such
circumstances proved at once that you had entered the highest circle of
the social Paradise.
Zenobia was leaning back on a brilliant sofa, supported by many
cushions, and a great personage, grey-headed and blue-ribboned, who was
permitted to share the honours of the high place, was hanging on her
animated and inspiring accents. An ambassador, in an armed chair which
he had placed somewhat before her, while he listened with apparent
devotion to the oracle, now and then interposed a remark, polished
and occasionally cynical. More remote, some dames of high degree were
surrounded by a chosen band of rank and fashion and celebrity; and
now and then was heard a silver laugh, and now and then was breathed
a gentle sigh. Servants glided about the suite of summer chambers,
occasionally with sherbets and ices, and sometimes a lady entered and
saluted Zenobia, and then retreated to the general group, and sometimes
a gentleman entered, and pressed the hand of Zenobia to his lips, and
then vanished into air.
"What I want you to see," said Zenobia, "is that reaction is the law
of life, and that we are on the eve of a great reaction. Since Lord
Castlereagh's death we have had five years of revolution--nothing but
change, and every change has been disastrous. Abroad we are in league
with all the conspirators of the Continent, and if there were a general
war we should not have an ally; at home our trade, I am told, is quite
ruined, and we are deluged with foreign articles; while, thanks to Mr.
Huskisson, the country banks, which enabled Mr. Pitt to carry on the
war and saved England, are all broken. There was one thing, of which
I thought we should always be proud, and that was our laws and their
administration; but now our most sacred enactments are questioned, and
people are told to call out for the reform of our courts of judicature,
which used to be the glory of the land. This cannot last. I see, indeed,
many signs of national disgust; people would have borne a great deal
from poor Lord Liverpool--for they knew he was a good man, though
I always thought a weak one; but when it was found that his boasted
Liberalism only meant letting the Whigs into office--who, if they had
always been in office, would have made us the slaves of Bonaparte--their
eyes were opened. Depend upon it, the reaction has commenced."
"We shall have some trouble with France," said the ambassador, "unless
there is a change here."
"The Church is weary of the present men," said the great personage. "No
one really knows what they are after."
"And how can the country be governed without the Church?" exclaimed
Zenobia. "If the country once thinks the Church is in danger, the affair
will soon be finished. The King ought to be told what is going on."
"Nothing is going on," said the ambassador; "but everybody is afraid of
something."
"The King's friends should impress upon him never to lose sight of the
landed interest," said the great personage.
"How can any government go on without the support of the Church and the
land?" exclaimed Zenobia. "It is quite unnatural."
"That is the mystery," remarked the ambassador. "Here is a government,
supported by none of the influences hitherto deemed indispensable, and
yet it exists."
"The newspapers support it," said the great personage, "and the
Dissenters, who are trying to bring themselves into notice, and who are
said to have some influence in the northern counties, and the Whigs,
who are in a hole, are willing to seize the hand of the ministry to help
them out of it; and then there is always a number of people who will
support any government--and so the thing works."
"They have got a new name for this hybrid sentiment," said the
ambassador. "They call it public opinion."
"How very absurd!" said Zenobia; "a mere nickname. As if there could be
any opinion but that of the Sovereign and the two Houses of Parliament."
"They are trying to introduce here the continental Liberalism," said the
great personage. "Now we know what Liberalism means on the continent. It
means the abolition of property and religion. Those ideas would not suit
this country; and I often puzzle myself to foresee how they will attempt
to apply Liberal opinions here."
"I shall always think," said Zenobia, "that Lord Liverpool went much
too far, though I never said so in his time; for I always uphold my
friends."
"Well, we shall see what Canning will do about the Test and Corporation
Acts," said the great personage. "I understand they mean to push him."
"By the by, how is he really?" said the ambassador. "What are the
accounts this afternoon?"
"Here is a gentleman who will tell us," said Zenobia, as Mr. Ferrars
entered and saluted her.
"And what is your news from Chiswick?" she inquired.
"They say at Brookes', that he will be at Downing Street on Monday."
"I doubt it," said Zenobia, but with an expression of disappointment.
Zenobia invited Mr. Ferrars to join her immediate circle. The great
personage and the ambassador were confidentially affable to one whom
Zenobia so distinguished. Their conversation was in hushed tones, as
become the initiated. Even Zenobia seemed subdued, and listened; and to
listen, among her many talents, was perhaps her rarest. Mr. Ferrars was
one of her favourites, and Zenobia liked young men who she thought would
become Ministers of State.
An Hungarian Princess who had quitted the opera early that she might
look in at Zenobia's was now announced. The arrival of this great
lady made a stir. Zenobia embraced her, and the great personage with
affectionate homage yielded to her instantly the place of honour, and
then soon retreated to the laughing voices in the distance that had
already more than once attracted and charmed his ear.
"Mind; I see you to-morrow," said Zenobia to Mr. Ferrars as he also
withdrew. "I shall have something to tell you."
CHAPTER III
The father of Mr. Ferrars had the reputation of being the son of a once
somewhat celebrated statesman, but the only patrimony he inherited from
his presumed parent was a clerkship in the Treasury, where he
found himself drudging at an early age. Nature had endowed him with
considerable abilities, and peculiarly adapted to the scene of their
display. It was difficult to decide which was most remarkable, his
shrewdness or his capacity of labour. His quickness of perception and
mastery of details made him in a few years an authority in the office,
and a Secretary of the Treasury, who was quite ignorant of details,
but who was a good judge of human character, had the sense to appoint
Ferrars his private secretary. This happy preferment in time opened the
whole official world to one not only singularly qualified for that kind
of life, but who possessed the peculiar gifts that were then commencing
to be much in demand in those circles. We were then entering that era
of commercial and financial reform which had been, if not absolutely
occasioned, certainly precipitated, by the revolt of our colonies.
Knowledge of finance and acquaintance with tariffs were then rare gifts,
and before five years of his private secretaryship had expired, Ferrars
was mentioned to Mr. Pitt as the man at the Treasury who could do
something that the great minister required. This decided his lot. Mr.
Pitt found in Ferrars the instrument he wanted, and appreciating all his
qualities placed him in a position which afforded them full play. The
minister returned Ferrars to Parliament, for the Treasury then had
boroughs of its own, and the new member was preferred to an important
and laborious post. So long as Pitt and Grenville were in the ascendant,
Mr. Ferrars toiled and flourished. He was exactly the man they liked;
unwearied, vigilant, clear and cold; with a dash of natural sarcasm
developed by a sharp and varied experience. He disappeared from the
active world in the latter years of the Liverpool reign, when a newer
generation and more bustling ideas successfully asserted their
claims; but he retired with the solace of a sinecure, a pension, and
a privy-councillorship. The Cabinet he had never entered, nor dared to
hope to enter. It was the privilege of an inner circle even in our then
contracted public life. It was the dream of Ferrars to revenge in
this respect his fate in the person of his son, and only child. He
was resolved that his offspring should enjoy all those advantages
of education and breeding and society of which he himself had been
deprived. For him was to be reserved a full initiation in those costly
ceremonies which, under the names of Eton and Christ Church, in his time
fascinated and dazzled mankind. His son, William Pitt Ferrars, realised
even more than his father's hopes. Extremely good-looking, he was gifted
with a precocity of talent. He was the marvel of Eton and the hope
of Oxford. As a boy, his Latin verses threw enraptured tutors into
paroxysms of praise, while debating societies hailed with acclamation
clearly another heaven-born minister. He went up to Oxford about the
time that the examinations were reformed and rendered really efficient.
This only increased his renown, for the name of Ferrars figured among
the earliest double-firsts. Those were days when a crack university
reputation often opened the doors of the House of Commons to a young
aspirant; at least, after a season. But Ferrars had not to wait. His
father, who watched his career with the passionate interest with which a
Newmarket man watches the development of some gifted yearling, took care
that all the odds should be in his favour in the race of life. An old
colleague of the elder Mr. Ferrars, a worthy peer with many boroughs,
placed a seat at the disposal of the youthful hero, the moment he was
prepared to accept it, and he might be said to have left the University
only to enter the House of Commons.
There, if his career had not yet realised the dreams of his youthful
admirers, it had at least been one of progress and unbroken prosperity.
His first speech was successful, though florid, but it was on foreign
affairs, which permit rhetoric, and in those days demanded at least
one Virgilian quotation. In this latter branch of oratorical adornment
Ferrars was never deficient. No young man of that time, and scarcely any
old one, ventured to address Mr. Speaker without being equipped with a
Latin passage. Ferrars, in this respect, was triply armed. Indeed, when
he entered public life, full of hope and promise, though disciplined to
a certain extent by his mathematical training, he had read very little
more than some Latin writers, some Greek plays, and some treatises of
Aristotle. These with a due course of Bampton Lectures and some dipping
into the "Quarterly Review," then in its prime, qualified a man in
those days, not only for being a member of Parliament, but becoming a
candidate for the responsibility of statesmanship. Ferrars made his way;
for two years he was occasionally asked by the minister to speak, and
then Lord Castlereagh, who liked young men, made him a Lord of the
Treasury. He was Under-Secretary of State, and "very rising," when the
death of Lord Liverpool brought about the severance of the Tory party,
and Mr. Ferrars, mainly under the advice of zealots, resigned his office
when Mr. Canning was appointed Minister, and cast in his lot with the
great destiny of the Duke of Wellington.
The elder Ferrars had the reputation of being wealthy. It was supposed
that he had enjoyed opportunities of making money, and had availed
himself of them, but this was not true. Though a cynic, and with little
respect for his fellow-creatures, Ferrars had a pride in official
purity, and when the Government was charged with venality and
corruption, he would observe, with a dry chuckle, that he had seen a
great deal of life, and that for his part he would not much trust any
man out of Downing Street. He had been unable to resist the temptation
of connecting his life with that of an individual of birth and rank;
and in a weak moment, perhaps his only one, he had given his son
a stepmother in a still good-looking and very expensive
Viscountess-Dowager.
Mr. Ferrars was anxious that his son should make a great alliance, but
he was so distracted between prudential considerations and his desire
that in the veins of his grand-children there should flow blood of
undoubted nobility, that he could never bring to his purpose that clear
and concentrated will which was one of the causes of his success in
life; and, in the midst of his perplexities, his son unexpectedly
settled the question himself. Though naturally cold and calculating,
William Ferrars, like most of us, had a vein of romance in his being,
and it asserted itself. There was a Miss Carey, who suddenly became
the beauty of the season. She was an orphan, and reputed to be no
inconsiderable heiress, and was introduced to the world by an aunt
who was a duchess, and who meant that her niece should be the same.
Everybody talked about them, and they went everywhere--among other
places to the House of Commons, where Miss Carey, spying the senators
from the old ventilator in the ceiling of St. Stephen's Chapel, dropped
in her excitement her opera-glass, which fell at the feet of Mr.
Under-Secretary Ferrars. He hastened to restore it to its beautiful
owner, whom he found accompanied by several of his friends, and he was
not only thanked, but invited to remain with them; and the next day
he called, and he called very often afterwards, and many other things
happened, and at the end of July the beauty of the season was
married not to a Duke, but to a rising man, who Zenobia, who at first
disapproved of the match--for Zenobia never liked her male friends to
marry--was sure would one day be Prime Minister of England.
Mrs. Ferrars was of the same opinion as Zenobia, for she was ambitious,
and the dream was captivating. And Mrs. Ferrars soon gained Zenobia's
good graces, for she had many charms, and, though haughty to the
multitude, was a first-rate flatterer. Zenobia liked flattery, and
always said she did. Mr. Under-Secretary Ferrars took a mansion in Hill
Street, and furnished it with befitting splendour. His dinners were
celebrated, and Mrs. Ferrars gave suppers after the opera. The equipages
of Mrs. Ferrars were distinguished, and they had a large retinue of
servants. They had only two children, and they were twins, a brother and
a sister, who were brought up like the children of princes. Partly for
them, and partly because a minister should have a Tusculum, the Ferrars
soon engaged a magnificent villa at Wimbledon, which had the advantage
of admirable stables, convenient, as Mrs. Ferrars was fond of horses,
and liked the children too, with their fancy ponies, to be early
accustomed to riding. All this occasioned expenditure, but old Mr.
Ferrars made his son a liberal allowance, and young Mrs. Ferrars was an
heiress, or the world thought so, which is nearly the same, and then,
too, young Mr. Ferrars was a rising man, in office, and who would
always be in office for the rest of his life; at least, Zenobia said so,
because he was on the right side and the Whigs were nowhere, and never
would be anywhere, which was quite right, as they had wished to make us
the slaves of Bonaparte.
When the King, after much hesitation, send for Mr. Canning, on the
resignation of Lord Liverpool, the Zenobian theory seemed a little at
fault, and William Ferrars absolutely out of office had more than one
misgiving; but after some months of doubt and anxiety, it seemed after
all the great lady was right. The unexpected disappearance of Mr.
Canning from the scene, followed by the transient and embarrassed
phantom of Lord Goderich, seemed to indicate an inexorable destiny that
England should be ruled by the most eminent men of the age, and the most
illustrious of her citizens. William Ferrars, under the inspiration of
Zenobia, had thrown in his fortunes with the Duke, and after nine months
of disquietude found his due reward. In the January that succeeded the
August conversation in St. James' Street with Sidney Wilton, William
Ferrars was sworn of the Privy Council, and held high office, on the
verge of the Cabinet.
Mr. Ferrars had a dinner party in Hill Street on the day he had returned
from Windsor with the seals of his new office. The catastrophe of the
Goderich Cabinet, almost on the eve of the meeting of Parliament, had
been so sudden, that, not anticipating such a state of affairs, Ferrars,
among his other guests, had invited Sidney Wilton. He was rather
regretting this when, as his carriage stopped at his own door, he
observed that very gentleman on his threshold.
Wilton greeted him warmly, and congratulated him on his promotion. "I
do so at once," he added, "because I shall not have the opportunity
this evening. I was calling here in the hope of seeing Mrs. Ferrars, and
asking her to excuse me from being your guest to-day."
"Well, it is rather awkward," said Ferrars, "but I could have no idea of
this when you were so kind as to say you would come."
"Oh, nothing of that sort," said Sidney. "I am out and you are in, and
I hope you may be in for a long, long time. I dare say it may be so, and
the Duke is the man of the age, as you always said he was. I hope your
being in office is not to deprive me of your pleasant dinners; it would
be too bad to lose my place both at Whitehall and in Hill Street."