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Sybil, or the Two Nations

B >> Benjamin Disraeli >> Sybil, or the Two Nations




The Polish lady sang "Cherry Ripe" to the infinite
satisfaction of her audience. Young Mowbray indeed, in the
shape of Dandy Mick and some of his followers and admirers,
insisted on an encore. The lady as she retired curtseyed like
a Prima Donna; but the host continued on his legs for some
time, throwing open his coat and bowing to his guests, who
expressed by their applause how much they approved his
enterprise. At length he resumed his seat; "It's almost too
much." he exclaimed; "the enthusiasm of these people. I
believe they look upon me as a father."

"And you think you have some clue to this Hatton?" resumed
Stephen.

"They say he has no relations," said their host.

"I have heard as much."

"Another glass of the bar mixture, Master Gerard. What did we
call it? Oh! the bricks and beans--the Mowbray bricks and
beans; known by that name in the time of my grandfather. No
more! No use asking Mr Morley I know. Water! well, I must
say--and yet, in an official capacity, drinking water is not
so unnatural."

"And Hatton." said Gerard; "they say he has no relations,
eh?"

"They do, and they say wrong. He has a relation; he has a
brother; and I can put you in the way of finding him."

"Well, that looks like business," said Gerard; "and where may
he be?"

"Not here," said their host; "he never put his foot in the
Temple to my knowledge; and lives in a place where they have
as much idea of popular institutions as any Turks or heathen
you ever heard of."

"And where might we find him?" said Stephen.

"What's that?" said their host jumping up and looking around
him. "Here boys, brush about. The American gentleman is a
whittling his name on that new mahogany table. Take him the
printed list of rules, stuck up in a public place, under a
great coat, and fine him five shillings for damaging the
furniture. If he resists (he has paid for his liquor), call
in the police; X. Z. No. 5 is in the bar, taking tea with your
mistress. Now brush."

"And this place is--"

"In the land of mines and minerals," said their host; "about
ten miles from ---. He works in metals on his own account.
You have heard of a place called Hell-house Yard; well, he
lives there; and his name is Simon."

"And does he keep up any communication with his brother, think
you?" said Gerard.

"Nay, I know no more; at least at present," said their host.
"The secretary asked me about a person absent without leave
for twenty years and who was said to have no relations, I
found you one and a very near one. You are at the station and
you have got your ticket. The American gentleman's wiolent.
Here's the police. I must take a high tone." And with these
words Chaffing Jack quitted them.

In the meantime, we must not forget Dandy Mick and his two
young friends whom he had so generously offered to treat to
the Temple.

"Well, what do you think of it?" asked Caroline of Harriet in
a whisper as they entered the splendid apartment.

"It's just what I thought the Queen lived in," said Harriet;
"but indeed I'm all of a flutter."

"Well, don't look as if you were," said her friend.

"Come along gals," said Mick; "who's afraid? Here, we'll sit
down at this table. Now, what shall we have? Here waiter; I
say waiter!"

"Yes, sir, yes, sir."

"Well, why don't you come when I call," said Mick with a
consequential air. "I have been hallooing these ten minutes.
Couple of glasses of bar mixture for these ladies and go of
gin for myself. And I say waiter, stop, stop, don't be in
such a deuced hurry; do you think folks can drink without
eating;--sausages for three; and damme, take care they are not
burnt."

"Yes, sir, directly, directly."

"That's the way to talk to these fellows," said Mick with a
self-satisfied air, and perfectly repaid by the admiring gaze
of his companions.

"It's pretty Miss Harriet," said Mick looking up at the
ceiling with a careless nil admirari glance.

"Oh! it is beautiful," said Harriet.

"You never were here before; it's the only place. That's the
Lady of the Lake," he added, pointing to a picture; "I've seen
her at the Circus, with real water."

The hissing sausages crowning a pile of mashed potatoes were
placed before them; the delicate rummers of the Mowbray slap-
bang, for the girls; the more masculine pewter measure for
their friend.

"Are the plates very hot?" said Mick;

"Very sir."

"Hot plates half the battle," said Mick.

"Now, Caroline; here, Miss Harriet; don't take away your
plate, wait for the mash; they mash their taters here very
elegant."

It was a very happy and very merry party. Mick delighted to
help his guests, and to drink their healths.

"Well," said he when the waiter had cleared away their plates,
and left them to their less substantial luxuries. "Well,"
said Mick, sipping a renewed glass of gin twist and leaning
back in his chair, "say what they please, there's nothing like
life."

"At the Traffords'," said Caroline, "the greatest fun we ever
had was a singing class."

"I pity them poor devils in the country," said Mick; "we got
some of them at Collinson's--come from Suffolk they say; what
they call hagricultural labourers, a very queer lot, indeed."

"Ah! them's the himmigrants," said Caroline; "they're sold out
of slavery, and sent down by Pickford's van into the labour
market to bring down our wages."

"We'll teach them a trick or two before they do that," urged
Mick. "Where are you, Miss Harriet?"

"I'm at Wiggins and Webster's, sir."

"Where they clean machinery during meal-time; that won't do,"
said Mick. "I see one of your partners coming in," said Mick,
making many signals to a person who very soon joined them.
"Well, Devilsdust, how are you?"

This was the familiar appellation of a young gentleman, who
really had no other, baptismal or patrimonial. About a
fortnight after his mother had introduced him into the world,
she returned to her factory and put her infant out to nurse,
that is to say, paid threepence a week to an old woman who
takes charge of these new-born babes for the day, and gives
them back at night to their mothers as they hurriedly return
from the scene of their labour to the dungeon or the den,
which is still by courtesy called "home." The expense is not
great: laudanum and treacle, administered in the shape of some
popular elixir, affords these innocents a brief taste of the
sweets of existence, and keeping them quiet, prepares them for
the silence of their impending grave. Infanticide is
practised as extensively and as legally in England, as it is
on the banks of the Ganges; a circumstance which apparently
has not yet engaged the attention of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. But the vital
principle is an impulse from an immortal artist, and sometimes
baffles, even in its tenderest phasis, the machinations of
society for its extinction. There are infants that will defy
even starvation and poison, unnatural mothers and demon
nurses. Such was the nameless one of whom we speak. We
cannot say he thrived; but he would not die. So at two years
of age, his mother being lost sight of, and the weekly payment
having ceased, he was sent out in the street to "play," in
order to be run over. Even this expedient failed. The
youngest and the feeblest of the band of victims, Juggernaut
spared him to Moloch. All his companions were disposed of.
Three months' "play" in the streets got rid of this tender
company,--shoeless, half-naked, and uncombed,--whose age
varied from two to five years. Some were crushed, some were
lost, some caught cold and fevers, crept back to their garret
or their cellars, were dosed with Godfrey's cordial, and died
in peace. The nameless one would not disappear. He always
got out of the way of the carts and horses, and never lost his
own. They gave him no food: he foraged for himself, and
shared with the dogs the garbage of the streets. But still he
lived; stunted and pale, he defied even the fatal fever which
was the only habitant of his cellar that never quitted it.
And slumbering at night on a bed of mouldering straw, his only
protection against the plashy surface of his den, with a
dungheap at his head and a cesspool at his feet, he still
clung to the only roof which shielded him from the tempest.

At length when the nameless one had completed his fifth year,
the pest which never quitted the nest of cellars of which he
was a citizen, raged in the quarter with such intensity, that
the extinction of its swarming population was menaced. The
haunt of this child was peculiarly visited. All the children
gradually sickened except himself; and one night when he
returned home he found the old woman herself dead, and
surrounded only by corpses. The child before this had slept
on the same bed of straw with a corpse, but then there were
also breathing beings for his companions. A night passed only
with corpses seemed to him in itself a kind of death. He
stole out of the cellar, quitted the quarter of pestilence,
and after much wandering laid down near the door of a factory.
Fortune had guided him. Soon after break of day, he was woke
by the sound of the factory bell, and found assembled a crowd
of men, women, and children. The door opened, they entered,
the child accompanied them. The roll was called; his
unauthorized appearance noticed; he was questioned; his
acuteness excited attention. A child was wanted in the
Wadding Hole, a place for the manufacture of waste and damaged
cotton, the refuse of the mills, which is here worked up into
counterpanes and coverlids. The nameless one was prefered to
the vacant post, received even a salary, more than that, a
name; for as he had none, he was christened on the spot--
DEVILSDUST.

Devilsdust had entered life so early that at seventeen he
combined the experience of manhood with the divine energy of
youth. He was a first-rate workman and received high wages;
he had availed himself of the advantages of the factory
school; he soon learnt to read and write with facility, and at
the moment of our history, was the leading spirit of the
Shoddy-Court Literary and Scientific Institute. His great
friend, his only intimate, was Dandy Mick. The apparent
contrariety of their qualities and structure perhaps led to
this. It is indeed the most assured basis of friendship.
Devilsdust was dark and melancholy; ambitious and
discontented; full of thought, and with powers of patience and
perseverance that alone amounted to genius. Mick was as
brilliant as his complexion; gay, irritable, evanescent, and
unstable. Mick enjoyed life; his friend only endured it; yet
Mick was always complaining of the lowness of his wages and
the greatness of his toil; while Devilsdust never murmured,
but read and pondered on the rights of labour, and sighed to
vindicate his order.

"I have some thoughts of joining the Total Abstinence," said
Devilsdust; "ever since I read Stephen Morley's address it has
been in my mind. We shall never get our rights till we leave
off consuming exciseable articles; and the best thing to begin
with is liquors."

"Well, I could do without liquors myself," said Caroline. "If
I was a lady, I would never drink anything except fresh milk
from the cow."

"Tea for my money," said Harriet; "I must say there's nothing
I grudge for good tea. Now I keep house, I mean always to
drink the best."

"Well, you have not yet taken the pledge, Dusty," said Mick:
"and so suppose we order a go of gin and talk this matter of
temperance over."

Devilsdust was manageable in little things, especially by
Mick; he acceded, and seated himself at their table.

"I suppose you have heard this last dodge of Shuffle and
Screw, Dusty," said Mick.

"What's that?"

"Every man had his key given him this evening--half-a-crown a
week round deducted from wages for rent. Jim Plastow told
them he lodged with his father and didn't want a house; upon
which they said he must let it."

"Their day will come," said Devilsdust, thoughtfully. "I
really think that those Shuffle and Screws are worse even than
Truck and Trett. You knew where you were with those fellows;
it was five-and-twenty per cent, off wages and very bad stuff
for your money. But as for Shuffle and Screw, what with their
fines and their keys, a man never knows what he has to spend.
Come," he added filling his glass, "let's have a toast--
Confusion to Capital."

"That's your sort," said Mick. "Come, Caroline; drink to your
partner's toast, Miss Harriet. Money's the root of all evil,
which nobody can deny. We'll have the rights of labour yet;
the ten-hour bill, no fines, and no individuals admitted to
any work who have not completed their sixteenth year."

"No, fifteen," said Caroline eagerly.

"The people won't bear their grievances much longer," said
Devilsdust.

"I think one of the greatest grievances the people have," said
Caroline, "is the beaks serving notice on Chaffing Jack to
shut up the Temple on Sunday nights."

"It is infamous," said Mick; "aynt we to have no recreation?
One might as well live in Suffolk, where the immigrants come
from, and where they are obliged to burn ricks to pass the
time."

"As for the rights of labour," said Harriet, "the people goes
for nothing with this machinery."

"And you have opened your mouth to say a very sensible thing
Miss Harriet," said Mick; "but if I were Lord Paramount for
eight-and-forty hours, I'd soon settle that question.
Wouldn't I fire a broadside into their 'double deckers?' The
battle of Navarino at Mowbray fair with fourteen squibs from
the admiral's ship going off at the same time, should be
nothing to it."

"Labour may be weak, but Capital is weaker," said Devilsdust.
"Their capital is all paper."

"I tell you what," said Mick, with a knowing look, and in a
lowered tone, "The only thing, my hearties, that can save this
here nation, is--a--good strike."




Book 2 Chapter 11



"Your lordship's dinner is served," announced the groom of the
chambers to Lord de Mowbray; and the noble lord led out Lady
Marney. The rest followed. Egremont found himself seated
next to Lady Maud Fitz-Warene, the younger daughter of the
earl. Nearly opposite to him was Lady Joan.

The ladies Fitz-Warene were sandy girls, somewhat tall, with
rather good figures and a grand air; the eldest very ugly, the
second rather pretty; and yet both very much alike. They had
both great conversational powers, though in different ways.
Lady Joan was doctrinal; Lady Maud inquisitive: the first
often imparted information which you did not previously
possess; the other suggested ideas which were often before in
your own mind, but lay tranquil and unobserved, till called
into life and notice by her fanciful and vivacious tongue.
Both of them were endowed with a very remarkable self-
possession; but Lady Joan wanted softness, and Lady Maud
repose.

This was the result of the rapid observation of Egremont, who
was however experienced in the world and quick in his
detection of manner and of character.

The dinner was stately, as becomes the high nobility. There
were many guests, yet the table seemed only a gorgeous spot in
the capacious chamber. The side tables were laden with silver
vases and golden shields arranged on shelves of crimson
velvet. The walls were covered with Fitz-Warenes, De
Mowbrays, and De Veres. The attendants glided about without
noise, and with the precision of military discipline. They
watched your wants, they anticipated your wishes, and they
supplied all you desired with a lofty air of pompous devotion.

"You came by the railroad?" enquired Lord de Mowbray
mournfully, of Lady Marney.

"From Marham; about ten miles from us," replied her ladyship.

"A great revolution!"

"Isn't it?"

"I fear it has a very dangerous tendency to equality," said
his lordship shaking his head; "I suppose Lord Marney gives
them all the opposition in his power."

"There is nobody so violent against railroads as George," said
Lady Marney; "I cannot tell you what he does not do! He
organized the whole of our division against the Marham line!"

"I rather counted on him," said Lord de Mowbray, to assist me
in resisting this joint branch here; but I was surprised to
learn he had consented."

"Not until the compensation was settled," innocently remarked
Lady Marney; "George never opposes them after that. He gave
up all opposition to the Marham line when they agreed to his
terms."

"And yet," said Lord de Mowbray, "I think if Lord Marney would
take a different view of the case and look to the moral
consequences, he would hesitate. Equality, Lady Marney,
equality is not our m‚tier. If we nobles do not make a stand
against the levelling spirit of the age, I am at a loss to
know who will fight the battle. You many depend upon it that
these railroads are very dangerous things."

"I have no doubt of it. I suppose you have heard of Lady
Vanilla's trip from Birmingham? Have you not, indeed! She
came up with Lady Laura, and two of the most gentlemanlike men
sitting opposite her; never met, she says, two more
intelligent men. She begged one of them at Wolverhampton to
change seats with her, and he was most politely willing to
comply with her wishes, only it was necessary that his
companion should move at the same time, for they were chained
together! Two of the swell mob, sent to town for picking a
pocket at Shrewsbury races."

"A countess and a felon! So much for public conveyances,"
said Lord Mowbray. "But Lady Vanilla is one of those who will
talk with everybody."

"She is very amusing though," said Lady Marney.

"I dare say she is," said Lord de Mowbray; "but believe me, my
dear Lady Marney, in these times especially, a countess has
something else to do than be amusing."

"You think as property has its duties as well as its rights,
rank has its bores as well as its pleasures."

Lord Mowbray mused.

"How do you do, Mr Jermyn?" said a lively little lady with
sparkling beady black eyes, and a very yellow complexion,
though with good features; "when did you arrive in the North?
I have been fighting your battles finely since I saw you," she
added shaking her head, rather with an expression of
admonition than of sympathy.

"You are always fighting one's battles Lady Firebrace; it is
very kind of you. If it were not for you, we should none of
us know how much we are all abused," replied Mr Jermyn, a
young M.P.

"They say you gave the most radical pledges," said Lady
Firebrace eagerly, and not without malice. "I heard Lord
Muddlebrains say that if he had had the least idea of your
principles, you would not have had his influence."

"Muddlebrains can't command a single vote," said Mr Jermyn.
"He is a political humbug, the greatest of all humbugs; a man
who swaggers about London clubs and consults solemnly about
his influence, and in the country is a nonentity."

"Well, that can't be said of Lord Clarinel," rejoined Lady
Firebrace.

"And have you been defending me against Lord Clarinel's
attacks?" inquired Mr Jermyn.

"No; but I am going to Wemsbury, and then I have no doubt I
shall have the opportunity."

"I am going to Wemsbury myself," said Mr Jermyn.

"And what does Lord Clarinel think of your pledge about the
pension list?" said Lady Firebrace daunted but malignant.

"He never told me," said Mr Jermyn.

"I believe you did not pledge yourself to the ballot?"
inquired Lady Firebrace with an affected air of
inquisitiveness.

"It is a subject that requires some reflection," said Mr
Jermyn. "I must consult some profound politician like Lady
Firebrace. By the bye, you told my mother that the
conservatives would have a majority of fifteen. Do you think
they will have as much?" said Mr Jermyn with an innocent air,
it now being notorious that the whig administration had a
majority of double that amount.

"I said Mr Tadpole gave us a majority of fifteen," said Lady
Firebrace. "I knew he was in error; because I had happened to
see Lord Melbourne's own list, made up to the last hour; and
which gave the government a majority of sixty. It was only
shown to three members of the cabinet," she added in a tone of
triumphant mystery.

Lady Firebrace, a great stateswoman among the tories, was
proud of an admirer who was a member of the whig cabinet. She
was rather an agreeable guest in a country-house, with her
extensive correspondence, and her bulletins from both sides.
Tadpole flattered by her notice, and charmed with female
society that talked his own slang, and entered with affected
enthusiasm into all his dirty plots and barren machinations,
was vigilant in his communications; while her whig cavalier,
an easy individual who always made love by talking or writing
politics, abandoned himself without reserve, and instructed
Lady Firebrace regularly after every council. Taper looked
grave at this connection between Tadpole and Lady Firebrace;
and whenever an election was lost, or a division stuck in the
mud, he gave the cue with a nod and a monosyllable, and the
conservative pack that infests clubs, chattering on subjects
of which it is impossible they can know anything, instantly
began barking and yelping, denouncing traitors, and wondering
how the leaders could be so led by the nose, and not see that
which was flagrant to the whole world. If, on the other hand,
the advantage seemed to go with the Canton Club, or the
opposition benches, then it was the whig and liberal hounds
who howled and moaned, explaining everything by the
indiscretion, infatuation, treason, of Lord Viscount Masque,
and appealing to the initiated world of idiots around them,
whether any party could ever succeed, hampered by such men,
and influenced by such means.

The best of the joke was, that all this time Lord Masque and
Tadpole were two old foxes, neither of whom conveyed to Lady
Firebrace a single circumstance but with the wish, intention,
and malice aforethought, that it should be communicated to his
rival.

"I must get you to interest Lord de Mowbray in our cause,"
said Sir Vavasour Firebrace, in an insinuating voice to his
neighbour, Lady Joan; "I have sent him a large packet of
documents. You know, he is one of us; still one of us. Once
a baronet, always a baronet. The dignity merges, but does not
cease; and happy as I am to see one covered with high honours,
who is in every way so worthy of them, still I confess to you
it is not so much as Earl de Mowbray that your worthy father
interests me, as in his undoubted character and capacity of
Sir Altamont Fitz-Warene, baronet."

"You have the data on which you move I suppose well digested,"
said Lady Joan, attentive but not interested.

"The case is clear; as far as equity is concerned,
irresistible; indeed the late king pledged himself to a
certain point. But if you would do me the favour of reading
our memorial."

"The proposition is not one adapted to our present
civilisation," said Lady Joan. "A baronetcy has become the
distinction of the middle class; a physician, our physician
for example, is a baronet; and I dare say some of our
tradesmen; brewers, of people of that class. An attempt to
elevate them into an order of nobility, however inferior,
would partake in some degree of the ridiculous."

"And has the duke escaped his gout this year?" enquired Lord
Marney of Lady de Mowbray.

"A very slight touch; I never knew my father so well. I
expect you will meet him here. We look for him daily."

"I shall be delighted; I hope he will come to Marney in
October. I keep the blue ribbon cover for him."

"What you suggest is very just," said Egremont to Lady Maud.
"If we only in our own spheres made the exertion, the general
effect would be great. Marney Abbey, for instance, I believe
one of the finest of our monastic remains,--that indeed is not
disputed--diminished yearly to repair barns; the cattle
browsing in the nave; all this might be prevented, If my
brother would not consent to preserve or to restore, still any
member of the family, even I, without expense, only with a
little zeal as you say, might prevent mischief, might stop at
least demolition."

"If this movement in the church had only revived a taste for
Christian architecture," said Lady Maud, "it would not have
been barren, and it has done so much more! But I am surprised
that old families can be so dead to our national art; so full
of our ancestors, their exploits, their mind. Indeed you and
I have no excuse for such indifference Mr Egremont."

"And I do not think I shall ever again be justly accused of
it," replied Egremont, "you plead its cause so effectively.
But to tell you the truth, I have been thinking of late about
these things; monasteries and so on; the influence of the old
church system on the happiness and comfort of the People."

"And on the tone of the Nobles--do not you think so?" said
Lady Maud. "I know it is the fashion to deride the crusades,
but do not you think they had their origin in a great impulse,
and in a certain sense, led to great results? Pardon me, if I
speak with emphasis, but I never can forget I am a daughter of
the first crusaders."

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