Some Diversions of a Man of Letters

There is, perhaps, no second example of a writer whose work is divided, as is that of Disraeli, into three totally distinct periods. Other authors, as for example, the poet Crabbe, and in a less marked degree Rogers, have abandoned the practice of writing for a considerable number of years, and then have resumed it. But the case of Disraeli seems to be unique as that of a man who pursued the writing, of books with great ardour during three brief and independent spaces of time. We have his first and pre-Parliamentarian period, which began with Vivian Grey (1826) and closed with Venetia (1837).

We have a second epoch, opening with Coningsby (1844) and ending with Tancred (1847), during which time he was working out his political destiny; and we have the novels which he wrote after he had won the highest distinction in the State. Certain general characteristics are met with in all these three classes, but they have also differences which require to be noted and accounted for. It will, therefore, be convenient to treat them successively.

As oblivion scatters its poppy over the prose fiction of the reigns of George IV. and William IV., it becomes in creasingly dangerous that criticism should take the early "fashionable" novels of Disraeli as solitary representations of literary satire or observation. It is true that to readers of to-day this class of romance is exclusively suggestive of Vivian Grey and its fellows, with perhaps the Pelham of Bulwer. But this was not the impression of the original readers of these novels, who were amused by them, but found nothing revolutionary in their treatment of society. In the course of The Young Duke, written in 1829, Disraeli suggests an amiable rivalry with the romances "written by my friends Mr. Ward and Mr. Bulwer." The latter name had only just risen above the horizon, but that of Plumer Ward, forgotten as it now is, was one to conjure by. Ward was the author of Tremaine (1825) and De Vere (1827), two novels of the life of a modern English gentleman, which seems to a reader to-day to be insipid and dull enough. But they contained "portraits" of public persons, they undertook to hold the mirror up to the political and fashionable world of London, and they lashed that fastidiousness which was considered to be the foible of the age.

The books of Plumer Ward, who was an accomplished personage in advancing years, were treated with marked distinction in the press, and were welcomed by critics who deigned to take little notice of even such books as Granby and Dacre. But the stories of the youthful Disraeli belonged to a class held in still less esteem than those just mentioned. They had to hold their own as best they might in rivalry with a huge flight of novels of fashionable life, all of them curiously similar in general treatment. Above these the romances of Plumer Ward rose in a sort of recognised dignity, as two peaks around which were crowded innumerable hillocks. It is necessary to recall readers of to-day, who think of Vivian Grey as a work of amazing novelty, to the fact that the genre it represents to us was one which had been lifted into high credit the year before by the consecrated success of Tremaine, and was at that moment cultivated by a multitude of minor novelists.

There was, however, a distinction, and it lay in the greater fund of animal spirits which Disraeli brought to his business. Vivian Grey was absurd, but it was fresh and popular, and it pleased at once. As the opening work of a literary career, it promised well; the impertinent young gentleman dashed off to Parnassus at a gallop. It was a bold bid for personal distinction, which the author easily perceived already to be "the only passport to the society of the great in England." Vivian Grey is little more than a spirited and daring boy's book; Disraeli himself called it "a hot and hurried sketch." It was a sketch of what he had never seen, yet of what he had begun to foresee with amazing lucidity. It is a sort of social fairy-tale, where every one has exquisite beauty, limitless wealth, and exalted rank, where the impossible and the hyperbolic are the only homely virtues. There has always been a tendency to exalt Vivian Grey at the expense of The Young Duke (1831), Disraeli's next leading permanence; and, indeed, the former has had its admirers who have preferred it to all the others in this period. The difference is, however, not so marked as might be supposed. In The Young Duke the manner is not so burlesque, but there is the same roughness of execution, combined with the same rush and fire. In either book, what we feel to-day to be the great objection to our enjoyment is the lack of verisimilitude. Who can believe in the existence of persons whose titles are the Earl of Fitz-Pompey and Baron Deprivyseal, or whose names are Lady Aphrodite and Sir Carte Blanche? The descriptions are "high-falutin" beyond all endurance, and there is particularly noticeable a kind of stylistic foppery, which is always hovering between sublimity and a giggle.

But here is an example, from Vivian Grey, of Disraeli's earliest manner:-

"After a moment had passed, he was pouring forth in a rapid voice, and incoherent manner, such words as men speak only once. He spoke of his early follies, his misfortunes, his misery; of his matured views, his settled principles, his plans, his prospects, his hopes, his happiness, his bliss; and when he had ceased, he listened, in his turn, to some small still words, which made him the happiest of human beings. He bent down, he kissed the soft silken cheek which now he could call his own. Her hand was in his; her head sank upon his breast. Suddenly she clung to him with a strong clasp. 'Violet! my own, my dearest; you are overcome. I have been rash, I have been imprudent. Speak, speak, my beloved! say, you are not ill!'

"She spoke not, but clung to him with a fearful strength, her head still upon his breast, her full eyes closed. Alarmed, he raised her off the ground, and bore her to the river-side. Water might revive her. But when he tried to lay her a moment on the bank, she clung to him gasping, as a sinking person clings to a stout swimmer. He leant over her; he did not attempt to disengage her arms; and, by degrees, by very slow degrees, her grasp loosened. At last her arms gave way and fell by her side, and her eyes partly opened.

"'Thank God! Violet, my own, my beloved, say you are better!'

"She answered not, evidently she did not know him, evidently she did not see him. A film was on her sight, and her eye was glassy. He rushed to the water-side, and in a moment he had sprinkled her temples, now covered with a cold dew. Her pulse beat not, her circulation seemed suspended. He rubbed the palms of her hands, he covered her delicate feet with his coat, and then rushing up the bank into the road, he shouted with frantic cries on all sides. No one came, no one was near. Again, with a cry of fearful anguish, he shouted as if an hyena were feeding on his vitals. No sound; no answer. The nearest cottage was above a mile off. He dared not leave her. Again he rushed down to the water-side. Her eyes were still open, still fixed. Her mouth also was no longer closed. Her hand was stiff, her heart had ceased to beat. He tried with the warmth of his own body to revive her. He shouted, he wept, he prayed. All, all in vain. Again he was in the road, again shouting like an insane being. There was a sound. Hark! It was but the screech of an owl!

"Once more at the river-side, once more bending over her with starting eyes, once more the attentive ear listening for the soundless breath. No sound! not even a sigh! Oh! what would he have given for her shriek of anguish! No change had occurred in her position, but the lower part of her face had fallen; and there was a general appearance which struck him with awe. Her body was quite cold, her limbs stiffened. He gazed, and gazed, and gazed. He bent over her with stupor rather than grief stamped on his features. It was very slowly that the dark thought came over his mind, very slowly that the horrible truth seized upon his soul. He gave a loud shriek, and fell on the lifeless body of VIOLET FANE!"

A line in Disraeli's unfortunate tragedy of Alarcos pathetically admits: "Ay! ever pert is youth that baffles age!" The youth of Disraeli was "pert" beyond all record, and those who cannot endure to be teased should not turn to his early romances, or, indeed, to any of his writings. Henrietta Temple is the boldest attempt he ever made to tell a great consecutive story of passion, and no doubt there have been those who have palpitated over the love-at-first-sight of Ferdinand Armine and Henrietta Temple. But Disraeli's serious vein is here over-luscious; the love-passages are too emphatic and too sweet. An early critic spoke of this dulcia vitia of style which we meet with even in Contarini Fleming as the sin by which the young author was most easily beset. His attempts at serious sentiment and pompous reflection are too often deplorable, because inanimate and stilted. When he warns a heroine against an error of judgment by shouting, "'Tis the madness of the fawn who gazes with adoration on the lurid glare of the anaconda's eye," or murmurs, "Farewell, my lovely bird; I'll soon return to pillow in thy nest," we need all the stimulus of his irony and his velocity to carry us over such marshlands of cold style.

Of these imperfections, fewer are to be found in Venetia and fewest in Contarini Fleming. This beautiful romance is by far the best of Disraeli's early books, and that in which his methods at this period can be most favourably studied. A curious shadow of Disraeli himself is thrown over it all; it cannot be styled in any direct sense an autobiography, and yet the mental and moral experiences of the author animate every chapter of it. This novel is written with far more ease and grace than any previous book of the author's, and Contarini gives a reason which explains the improvement in his creator's manner when he remarks: "I wrote with greater facility than before, because my experience of life was so much increased that I had no difficulty in making my characters think and act." Contarini Fleming belongs to 1831, when its writer, at the comparatively ripe age of twenty-seven, had already seen a vast deal of man and of the world of Europe.

We are not to believe the preposterous account that Contarini-Disraeli gives of his methods of composition:-

"My thoughts, my passion, the rush of my invention, were too quick for my pen. Page followed page; as a sheet was finished I threw it on the floor; I was amazed at the rapid and prolific production, yet I could not stop to wonder. In half a dozen hours I sank back exhausted, with an aching frame. I rang the bell, ordered some refreshment, and walked about the room. The wine invigorated me and warmed up my sinking fancy, which, however, required little fuel. I set to it again, and it was midnight before I retired to bed."

At this rate we may easily compute that the longest of his novels would be finished in a week. Contarini Fleming seems to have occupied him the greater part of a year. He liked the public to think of him, exquisitely habited, his long essenced hair falling about his eyes, flinging forth a torrent of musky and mellifluous improvisation; as a matter of fact he was a very hard worker, laborious in the arts of composition.

It is to be noted that the whole tone of Contarini Fleming is intensely literary. The appeal to the intellectual, to the fastidious reader is incessant. This is an attitude always rare in English fiction, but at that epoch almost unknown, and its presence in the writings of Disraeli gives them a cachet. Under all the preposterous conversation, all the unruly turmoil of description, there runs a strong thread of entirely sober, political, and philosophical ambition. Disraeli striving with all his might to be a great poet, of the class of Byron and Goethe, a poet who is also a great mover and master of men-this is what is manifest to us throughout Contarini Fleming. It is almost pathetically manifest, because Disraeli-whatever else he grew to be-never became a poet. And here, too, his wonderful clairvoyance, and his command over the vagaries of his own imagination, come into play, for he never persuades himself, with all his dithyrambics, that Contarini is quite a poet.

A new influence is felt upon his style, and it is a highly beneficial one. Up to this date, Disraeli had kept Byron before him, and in his serious moments he had endeavoured to accomplish in prose what the mysterious and melancholy poet of the preceding generation had done in verse. The general effect of this Byronism, in spite of a certain buoyancy which carried the reader onwards, had been apt to be wearisome, in consequence of the monotony of effort. The fancy of the author had been too uniformly grandiose, and in the attempt to brighten it up he had sometimes passed over into positive failure. The most unyielding admirers of his early novels can hardly contradict a reader who complains that he finds the adventures of the bandits at Jonstorna insupportable and the na?veté of Christiana mawkish. There are pages in Alroy that read as if they were written for a wager, to see how much balderdash the public will endure. Disraeli seems to have been conscious of this weakness, and he tried to relieve the pompous gravity of his passionate scenes by episodes of irony and satire. From his earliest days these were apt to be very happy; they were inspired, especially in the squibs, by Lucian and Swift.

But in Contarini Fleming we detect a new flavour, and it is a very fortunate one. The bitterness of Swift was never quite in harmony with the genius of Disraeli, but the irony of Voltaire was. The effect of reading Zadig and Candide was the completion of the style of Disraeli; that "strange mixture of brilliant fantasy and poignant truth" which he rightly perceived to be the essence of the philosophic contes of Voltaire, finished his own intellectual education. Henceforth he does not allow his seriousness to overweigh his liveliness; if he detects a tendency to bombast, he relieves it with a brilliant jest. Count de Moltke and the lampoons offer us a case to our hand; "he was just the old fool who would make a cream cheese," says Contarini, and the startled laugh which greets him is exactly of the same order as those which were wont to reward the statesman's amazing utterances in Parliament.

In spite of a certain undeniable insipidity, the volumes of Contarini Fleming cannot but be read with pleasure. The mixture of Byron and Voltaire is surprising, but it produces some agreeable effects. There is a dash of Shelley in it, too, for the life on the isle of Paradise with Alcesté Contarini is plainly borrowed from Epiphsychidion. Disraeli does not even disdain a touch of "Monk" Lewis without his voluptuousness, and of Mrs. Radcliffe without her horrors, for he is bent on serving up an olio entirely in the taste of the day. But through it all he is conspicuously himself, and the dedication to beauty and the extraordinary intellectual exultation of such a book as Contarini Fleming are borrowed from no exotic source.

It is impossible to overlook the fascination which Venice exercises over Disraeli in these early novels. Contarini's great ambition was to indite "a tale which should embrace Venice and Greece." Byron's Life and Letters and the completion of Rogers' Italy with Turner's paradisaical designs had recently awakened to its full the romantic interest which long had been gathering around "the sun-girt city." Whenever Disraeli reaches Venice his style improves, and if he mourns over her decay, his spirits rise when he has to describe her enchantments by moonlight. He reserves his most delicate effects for Greece and Venice:-

"A Grecian sunset! The sky is like the neck of a dove! the rocks and waters are bathed with a violet light. Each moment it changes; each moment it shifts into more graceful and more gleaming shadows. And the thin white moon is above all; the thin white moon, followed by a single star, like a lady by a page."

There are many passages as sumptuous as this in Venetia, the romance about Byron and Shelley, which Disraeli was thought indiscreet in publishing so soon after Byron's death. In the story the heroine Venetia is the daughter of Shelley (Marmion Herbert) and the bride of Byron (Lord Cadurcis). Marmion is a most melodramatic figure, but the indiscretions are not noticeable nowadays, while the courage with which the reviled and hated Shelley is described in the preface to Lord Lyndhurst as one of "the most renowned and refined spirits that have adorned these our latter days" is highly characteristic of Disraeli. The reception of Lord Cadurcis in the House of Peers and the subsequent riot in Palace Yard mark, perhaps, the highest point in direct narrative power which the novelist had yet reached; but Venetia was not liked, and Disraeli withdrew from literature into public life.

When Disraeli resumed the art of the novelist, he was no longer talking of what lay outside his experience when he touched on politics. In 1837 he had entered the House at last, as Member for Maidstone, and although his enemies roared him down on the first occasion of his rising to speak, he soon learned how to impose his voice on Parliament. In 1839 his declaration that "the rights of labour are as sacred as the rights of property" made him famous, and in 1841 he was one of Sir Robert Peel's Conservative army in the House.

Then followed the formation of the Young England Party, with Disraeli as one of its leaders; these men broke away from Peel, and held that the Tory Party required stringent reform from within. It was in 1843 that Henry Thomas Hope, of Deepdene, urged, at a meeting of the Young Englanders, the expediency of Disraeli's "treating in a literary form those views and subjects which were the matter of their frequent conversations." Disraeli instantly returned to literary composition, and produced in quick succession the four books which form the second section of his work as an author; these are Coningsby, Sybil, Tancred, and the Life of Lord George Bentinck.

In this group of books we observe, in the first place, a great advance in vitality and credibility over the novels of the earlier period. Disraeli is now describing what he knows, no longer what he hopes in process of time to know. He writes from within, no longer from without the world of political action. These three novels and a biography are curiously like one another in form, and all equally make a claim to be considered not mere works of entertainment, but serious contributions to political philosophy. The assumption is borne out by the character of the books, each of which had a definite aim and purpose. Coningsby was designed to make room for new talent in the Tory Party by an unflinching attack on the "mediocrities." In Sybil the heartless abuse of capital and the vices of class distinction are exposed. Tancred is a vision of better things to follow upon the reforms already indicated. In Lord George Bentinck, under the guise of a record of the struggle between Protection and Free Trade, we have a manual of personal conduct as applied to practical politics.

In all these works narrative pure and simple inclines to take a secondary place. It does so least in Coningsby which, as a story, is the most attractive book of Disraeli's middle period, and one of the most brilliant studies of political character ever published. The tale is interspersed with historical essays, which impede its progress but add to its weight and value. Where, however, the author throws himself into his narrative, the advance he has made in power, and particularly in truth of presentment, is very remarkable. In the early group of his novels he had felt a great difficulty in transcribing conversations so as to produce a natural and easy effect. He no longer, in Coningsby, is confronted by this artificiality. His dialogues are now generally remarkable for their ease and nature. The speeches of Rigby (who represents John Wilson Croker), of Lord Monmouth (who stands for Lord Hertford), of the Young Englanders themselves, of the laughable chorus of Taper and Tadpole, who never "despaired of the Commonwealth," are often extremely amusing. In Coningsby we have risen out of the rose-coloured mist of unreality which hung over books like The Young Duke and Henrietta Temple. The agitated gentleman whose peerage hangs in the balance, and who on hearing that the Duke of Wellington is with the King breathes out in a sigh of relief "Then there is a Providence," is a type of the subsidiary figure which Disraeli had now learned to introduce with infinite lightness of irony.

Disraeli had a passion for early youth, and in almost all his books he dwells lovingly upon its characteristics. It is particularly in Contarini Fleming and in Coningsby-that is to say, in the best novels of his first and of his second period-that he lingers over the picture of schoolboy life with tenderness and sympathy. We have only to compare them, however, to see how great an advance he had made in ten years in his power of depicting such scenes. The childish dreams of Contarini are unchecked romance, and though the friendship with Mus?us is drawn with delicacy and insight, and though that is an extremely pretty scene where Christiana soothes the pride of Contarini, yet a manliness and a reality are missing which we find in the wonderful Eton scenes of Coningsby.

Disraeli's comprehension of the feelings of half-grown ambitious boys of good family was extraordinary, and when we consider that he had never been to a public school, his picture of the life and conversation at Eton is remarkable for its fidelity to nature. The relation of the elder schoolboys to one another-a theme to which he was fond of recurring-is treated in a very adroit and natural spirit, not without a certain Dorian beauty. This preoccupation with the sentiments and passions of schoolboys was rather crudely found fault with at the time. We need have no difficulty in comprehending the pleasure he felt in watching the expansion of those youthful minds from whom he hoped for all that was to make England wise and free. The account of Coningsby's last night at Eton is one of the most deeply felt pages which Disraeli ever composed, and here it may be said that the careful avoidance of all humour-an act of self-denial which a smaller writer would not have been capable of-is justified by the dignified success of a very dangerous experiment.

The portraiture of living people is performed with the greatest good-nature. It is difficult to believe that the most sensitive and the most satirised could really be infuriated, so kindly and genial is the caricaturing. We are far here from Swift's bludgeon and from Voltaire's poisoned needle. The regeneration of the social order in England, as Disraeli dreamed it, involved the removal of some mediocrities, but he was neither angry nor impatient. The "brilliant personages who had just scampered up from Melton, thinking it probable that Sir Robert might want some moral Lords of the Bedchamber," and the Duke, who "might have acquired considerable information, if he had not in his youth made so many Latin verses," were true to their principles, and would scarcely have done more than blush faintly when he poked his fun at them. Of all the portraits none is more interesting than that of the dark, pale stranger, Sidonia, as he revealed himself to Coningsby at the inn in the forest, over the celebrated dish of "still-hissing bacon and eggs that looked like tufts of primroses." This was a figure which was to recur, and to become in the public mind almost coincident with that of Disraeli himself.

When we pass from Coningsby to Sybil we find the purely narrative interest considerably reduced in the pursuit of a scheme of political philosophy. This is of all Disraeli's novels the one which most resembles a pamphlet on a serious topic. For this reason it has never been a favourite among his works, and his lighter readers have passed it over with a glance. Sybil, however, is best not read at all if it is not carefully studied. In the course of Coningsby, that young hero had found his way to Manchester, and had discovered in it a new world, "poignant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought and feeling." His superficial observation had revealed many incongruities in our methods of manipulating wealth, and Disraeli had sketched the portrait of Mr. Jawster Sharp with a superfluity of sarcastic wit. But it was not until somewhat later that the condition of the working-classes in our northern manufacturing districts began to attract his most serious attention. The late Duke of Rutland, that illustrious and venerable friend who alone survived in the twentieth century to bear witness to the sentiments of Young England, told me that he accompanied Disraeli on the journey which led to the composition of Sybil, and that he never, in long years of intimacy, saw him so profoundly moved as he was at the aspect of the miserable dwellings of the hand-loom workers.

All this is reflected on the surface of Sybil, and, notwithstanding curious faults in execution, the book bears the impress of a deep and true emotion. Oddly enough, the style of Disraeli is never more stilted than it is in the conversations of the poor in this story. When Gerard, the weaver, wishes to prevent the police-inspector from arresting his daughter, he remarks: "Advance and touch this maiden, and I will fell you and your minions like oxen at their pasture." Well may the serjeant answer, "You are a queer chap." Criticism goes further and says, "You are a chap who never walked in wynd or factory of a Yorkshire town." This want of nature, which did not extend to Disraeli's conversations among well-to-do folks, was a real misfortune, and gave Sybil no chance of holding its own in rivalry with such realistic studies of the depression of trade in Manchester as Mrs. Gaskell was presently to produce, nor with the ease of dialogue in Dickens' Christmas Stories, which were just now (in 1845) running their popular course. A happier simplicity of style, founded on a closer familiarity, would have given fresh force to his burning indignation, and have helped the cause of Devils-dust and Dandy Mick. But the accident of stilted speech must not blind us to the sincere and glowing emotion that inspired the pictures of human suffering in Sybil.

Then followed Tancred, which, as it has always been reported, continued to the last to be the author's favourite among his literary offspring. Disraeli had little sympathy with either of the great parties which in that day governed English political life. As time went on, he became surer than ever of the degeneracy of modern society, and he began to despair of discovering any cure for it. In Tancred he laid aside in great measure his mood of satirical extravagance. The whole of this book is steeped in the colours of poetry-of poetry, that is to say, as the florid mind of Disraeli conceived it. It opens-as all his books love to open-with the chronicle of an ardent and innocent boy's career. This is commonplace, but when Tancred, who is mainly the author's customary type of young Englishman born in the purple, arrives in the Holy Land, a flush of pure romance passes over the whole texture of the narrative. Real life is forgotten, and we move in a fabulous, but intensely picturesque, world of ecstasy and dream.

The Prerogation of Judaism, as it had been laid down by Sidonia in Coningsby, is emphasised and developed, and is indeed made the central theme of the story in Tancred. This novel is inspired by an outspoken and enthusiastic respect for the Hebrew race and a perfect belief in its future. In the presence of the mighty monuments of Jerusalem, Disraeli forgets that he is a Christian and an ambitious member of the English Parliament. His only solicitude is to recover his privileges as a Jew, and to recollect that he stands in the majestic cradle of his race. He becomes interpenetrated with solemn mysticism; a wind of faith blows in his hair. He cries, "God never spoke except to an Arab," and we are therefore not surprised to find an actual Divine message presently pronounced in Tancred's ears as he stands on the summit of Mount Sinai. This is, perhaps, the boldest flight of imagination which occurs in the writings of Disraeli. Tancred endeavours to counteract the purely Hebraic influences of Palestine by making a journey of homage to Astarte, a mysterious and beautiful Pagan queen-an "Aryan," as he loves to put it-who reigns in the mountains of Syria. But even she does not encourage him to put his trust in the progress of Western Europe.

Tancred is written in Disraeli's best middle style, full, sonorous, daring, and rarely swelling into bombast. It would even be too uniformly grave if the fantastic character of Facredeen did not relieve the solemnity of the discourse with his amusing tirades. Like that of all Disraeli's novels, the close of this one is dim and unsatisfactory. If there is anything that the patient reader wants to know it is how the Duke and Duchess of Bellemont behaved to the Lady of Bethany when they arrived at Jerusalem and found their son in the kiosk under her palm-tree. But this is curiosity of a class which Disraeli is not unwilling to awaken, but which he never cares to satisfy. He places the problems in a heap before us, and he leaves us to untie the knots. It is a highly characteristic trait of his mind as a writer that he is for ever preoccupied with the beginnings of things, and as little as possible with their endings.

It is not, however, from Tancred but from Coningsby, that we take our example of Disraeli's second manner:-

"Even to catch Lord Monmouth's glance was not an easy affair; he was much occupied on one side by the great lady, on the other were several gentlemen who occasionally joined in the conversation. But something must be done.

"There ran through Coningsby's character, as we have before mentioned, a vein of simplicity which was not its least charm. It resulted, no doubt, in a great degree from the earnestness of his nature. There never was a boy so totally devoid of affectation, which was remarkable, for he had a brilliant imagination, a quality that, from its fantasies, and the vague and indefinite desires it engenders, generally makes those whose characters are not formed, affected. The Duchess, who was a fine judge of character, and who greatly regarded Coningsby, often mentioned this trait as one which, combined with his great abilities and acquirements so unusual at his age, rendered him very interesting. In the present instance it happened that, while Coningsby was watching his grandfather, he observed a gentleman advance, make his bow, say and receive a few words and retire. This little incident, however, made a momentary diversion in the immediate circle of Lord Monmouth, and before they could all resume their former talk and fall into their previous positions, an impulse sent forth Coningsby, who walked up to Lord Monmouth, and standing before him, said,

"'How do you do, grandpapa?'

"Lord Monmouth beheld his grandson. His comprehensive and penetrating glance took in every point with a flash. There stood before him one of the handsomest youths he had ever seen, with a mien as graceful as his countenance was captivating; and his whole air breathing that freshness and ingenuousness which none so much appreciates as the used man of the world. And this was his child; the only one of his blood to whom he had been kind. It would be an exaggeration to say that Lord Monmouth's heart was touched; but his good-nature effervesced, and his fine taste was deeply gratified. He perceived in an instant such a relation might be a valuable adherent; an irresistible candidate for future elections: a brilliant tool to work out the Dukedom. All these impressions and ideas, and many more, passed through the quick brain of Lord Monmouth ere the sound of Coningsby's words had seemed to cease, and long before the surrounding guests had recovered from the surprise which they had occasioned them, and which did not diminish, when Lord Monmouth, advancing, placed his arms round Coningsby with a dignity of affection that would have become Louis XIV., and then, in the high manner of the old Court, kissed him on each cheek.

"'Welcome to your home,' said Lord Monmouth. 'You have grown a great deal.'

"Then Lord Monmouth led the agitated Coningsby to the great lady, who was a Princess and an Ambassadress, and then, placing his arm gracefully in that of his grandson, he led him across the room, and presented him in due form to some royal blood that was his guest, in the shape of a Russian Grand Duke. His Imperial Highness received our hero as graciously as the grandson of Lord Monmouth might expect; but no greeting can be imagined warmer than the one he received from the lady with whom the Grand Duke was conversing. She was a dame whose beauty was mature, but still radiant. Her figure was superb; her dark hair crowned with a tiara of curious workmanship. Her rounded arm was covered with costly bracelets, but not a jewel on her finely-formed bust, and the least possible rouge on her still oval cheek. Madame Colonna retained her charms."

AN OPEN LETTER

Dear Lady Burghclere,

When we met for the first time after the death of our friend, you desired me to produce what you were kind enough to call "one of my portraits." But the art of the portrait-writer is capricious, and at that time I felt wholly disinclined for the adventure. I excused myself on the ground that the three thick volumes of her reminiscences made a further portrait needless, and I reflected, though I did not say, that the difficulties of presenting the evanescent charm and petulant wit of Lady Dorothy were insuperable. I partly think so still, but your command has lingered in my memory all these months, and I have determined to attempt to obey you, although what I send you can be no "portrait," but a few leaves torn out of a painter-writer's sketch-book.

The existence of the three published volumes does, after all, not preclude a more intimate study, because they are confessedly exterior. They represent what she saw and heard, not what others perceived in her. In the first place, they are very much better written than she would have written them herself. I must dwell presently on the curious fact that, with all her wit, she possessed no power of sustained literary expression. Her Memoirs were composed, as you know, by Mr. Ralph Nevill, who is a practised writer and not otherwise could they have been given to the public. On this point her own evidence is explicit. She wrote to me, in all the excitement of the success of the volume of 1906: "The Press has been wonderfully good to my little efforts, but to Ralph the better part is due, as, out of the tangled remnants of my brain, he extracted these old anecdotes of my early years." This is as bravely characteristic of her modesty as it is of her candour, but I think it shows that there is still room for some record of the more intimate features of her charming and elusive character. I take up my pencil, but with little hope of success, since no more formidable task could be set me. I will at least try to be, as she would have scorned me for not being, sincere.

My friendship with Lady Dorothy Nevill occupied more than a quarter of a century. I met her first in the house of Sir Redvers and Lady Audrey Buller in the winter of 1887, soon after their return from Ireland. She had done me the great honour of desiring that I should be invited to meet her. She had known my venerable relative, the zoologist, Thomas Bell of Selborne, and she had corresponded in years long past, about entomology, with my father. We talked together on that first occasion for hours, and it seems to me that I was lifted, without preliminaries, into her intimacy. From that afternoon, until I drank tea with her for the last time, ten days before her death, the precious link was never loosened.

In 1887, her great social popularity had not begun. She was, I now know, already near sixty, but it never occurred to me to consider her age. She possessed a curious static quality, a perennial youthfulness. Every one must have observed how like Watts' picture of her at twenty she still was at eighty-six. This was not preserved by any arts or fictile graces. She rather affected, prematurely, the dress and appearance of an elderly woman. I remember her as always the same, very small and neat, very pretty with her chiselled nose, the fair oval of her features, the slightly ironic, slightly meditative smile, the fascinating colour of the steady eyes, beautifully set in the head, with the eyebrows rather lifted as in a perpetual amusement of curiosity. Her head, slightly sunken into the shoulders, was often poised a little sideways, like a bird's that contemplates a hemp-seed. She had no quick movements, no gestures; she held herself very still. It always appeared to me that, in face of her indomitable energy and love of observation, this was an unconscious economy of force. It gave her a very peculiar aspect; I remember once frivolously saying to her that she looked as though she were going to "pounce" at me; but she never pounced. When she had to move, she rose energetically and moved with determination, but she never wasted a movement. Her physical strength-and she such a tiny creature-seemed to be wonderful. She was seldom unwell, although, like most very healthy people, she bewailed herself with exaggerated lamentations whenever anything was the matter with her. But even on these occasions she defied what she called "coddling." Once I found her suffering from a cold, on a very chilly day, without a fire, and I expostulated. She replied, with a sort of incongruity very characteristic of her, "Oh! none of your hot bottles for me!" In her last hours of consciousness she battled with the doctor's insistence that she must have a fire in her bedroom, and her children had to conceal the flame behind screens because she threatened to get out of bed and put it out. Her marvellous physical force has to be insisted on, for it was the very basis of her character.

Her humorous petulance, her little sharp changes of voice, the malice of her downcast eyes, the calmness of her demure and easy smile-how is any impression to be given of things so fugitive? Her life, which had not been without its troubles and anxieties, became one of prolonged and intense enjoyment. I think that this was the main reason of the delight which her company gave to almost every one. She was like a household blaze upon a rainy day, one stretched out one's hands to be warmed. She guarded herself against the charge of being amiable. "It would be horrid to be amiable," she used to say, and, indeed, there was always a touch of sharpness about her. She was amused once because I told her she was like an acidulated drop, half sweet and half sour. "Oh! any stupid woman can be sweet," she said, "it's often another name for imbecile."

She had curious little prejudices and antipathies. I never fathomed the reason of her fantastic horror of the feasts of the Church, particularly of Christmas. She always became curiously agitated as the month of December waned. In her notes she inveighed, in quaint alarm, against the impending "Christmas pains and penalties." I think she disliked the disturbance of social arrangements which these festivals entailed. But there was more than that. She was certainly a little superstitious, in a mocking, eighteenth-century sort of way, as Madame du Deffand might have been. She constantly said, and still more frequently wrote, "D.V." after any project, even of the most frivolous kind. The idea was that one should be polite all round, in case of any contingency. When she was in the Riviera, she was much interested to hear that the Prince of Monaco had built and endowed a handsome church at Monte Carlo. "Very clever of him," she said, "for you never can tell."

Lady Dorothy's entire absence of affectation was eminently attractive. She would be mistress of herself, though China fell. Her strange little activities, her needlework, her paperwork, her collections, were the wonder of everybody, but she did not require approval; she adopted them, in the light of day, for her own amusement. She never pushed her peculiarities on the notice of visitors, but, at the same time, if discovered in the act of some incredible industry, she went on with it calmly. When she was in Heidelberg in 1892 and successive years, what interested her was the oddity of the students' life; she expatiated to me on their beer and their sabre-cuts. Whenever I went abroad of late years, I was exhorted to send her picture post-cards from out-of-the-way places, and "Remember that I like vulgar ones best," she added imperturbably. The story is perhaps known to you of how, in a circle of superfine ladies, the conversation turned to food, and the company outdid one another in protestations of delicacy. This one could only touch a little fruit, and that one was practically confined to a cup of tea. Lady Dorothy, who had remained silent and detached, was appealed to as to her opinion. In a sort of loud cackling-a voice she sometimes surprisingly adopted-she replied, "Oh, give me a blow-out of tripe and onions!" to the confusion of the précieuses. She had a wholesome respect for food, quite orthodox and old-fashioned, although I think she ate rather markedly little. But she liked that little good. She wrote to me once from Cannes, "This is not an intellectual place, but then the body rejoices in the cooking, and thanks God for that." She liked to experiment in foods, and her guests sometimes underwent strange surprises. One day she persuaded old Lord Wharncliffe, who was a great friend of hers, to send her a basket of guinea-pig, and she entertained a very distinguished company on a fricassee of this unusual game. She refused to say what the dish was until every one had heartily partaken, and then Mr. George Russell turned suddenly pale and fled from the room. "Nothing but fancy," remarked the hostess, composedly. When several years ago there was a proposal that we should feed upon horse-flesh, and a purveyor of that dainty opened a shop in Mayfair, Lady Dorothy was one of the first of his customers. She sallied forth in person, followed by a footman with a basket, and bought a joint in the presence of a jeering populace.

She had complete courage and absolute tolerance. Sometimes she pretended to be timid or fanatical, but that was only her fun. Her toleration and courage would have given her a foremost place among philanthropists or social reformers, if her tendencies had been humanitarian. She might have been another Elizabeth Fry, another Florence Nightingale. But she had no impulse whatever towards active benevolence, nor any interest in masses of men and women. And, above all, she was not an actor, but a spectator in life, and she evaded, often with droll agility, all the efforts which people made to drag her into propagandas of various kinds. She listened to what they had to say, and she begged for the particulars of specially awful examples of the abuses they set out to remedy. She was all sympathy and interest, and the propagandist started with this glittering ally in tow; but he turned, and where was she? She had slipped off, and was in contemplation of some other scheme of experience.

She described her life to me, in 1901, as a "treadmill of friendship, perpetually on the go"; and later she wrote: "I am hampered by perpetual outbursts of hospitality in every shape." Life was a spectacle to her, and society a congeries of little guignols, at all of which she would fain be seated, in a front stall. If she complained that hospitality "hampered" her, it was not that it interfered with any occupation or duty, but simply that she could not eat luncheon at three different houses at once. I remember being greatly amused when I congratulated her on having enjoyed some eminent public funeral, by her replying, grudgingly: "Yes-but I lost another most interesting ceremony through its being at the same hour." She grumbled: "People are tugging me to go and see things," not from any shyness of the hermit or reluctance to leave her home, but simply because she would gladly have yielded to them all. "Such a nuisance one can't be in two places at once, like a bird!" she remarked to me.

In this relation, her attitude to country life was droll. After long indulgence in her amazing social energy in London, she would suddenly become tired. The phenomenon never ceased to surprise her; she could not recollect that she had been tired before, and this must be the end of all things. She would fly to the country; to Dorsetshire, to Norfolk, to Haslemere, to what she called "the soberness of Ascot." Then would come letters describing the bliss of rural calm. "Here I am! Just in time to save my life. For the future, no clothes and early hours." That lasted a very short while. Then a letter signed "Your recluse, D.N.," would show the dawn of a return to nature. Then boutades of increasing vehemence would mark the rising impatience. Sept 12: "How dreadful it is that the country is so full of ladies." Sept. 15: "I am surrounded by tall women and short women, all very tiresome." Sept. 20: "So dull here, except for one pleasant episode of a drunken housemaid." Sept. 23: "Oh! I am so longing for the flesh-pots of dear dirty old London"; and then one knew that her return to Charles Street would not be long delayed. She was very fond indeed of country life, for a short time, and she was interested in gardens, but she really preferred streets. "Eridge is such a paradise-especially the quadrupeds," she once wrote to me from a house in which she found peculiar happiness. But she liked bipeds best.

However one may postpone the question, sooner or later it is necessary to consider the quality of Lady Dorothy Nevill's wit, since all things converge in her to that. But her wit is so difficult to define that it is not surprising that one avoids, as long as possible, coming actually to grips with it. We may lay the foundation of a formula, perhaps, by saying that it was a compound of solid good sense and an almost reckless whimsicality of speech. The curious thing about it was that it was not markedly intellectual, and still less literary. It had not the finish of such wit as is preserved in anthologies of humour. Every one who enjoyed the conversation of Lady Dorothy must have perceived with annoyance how little he could take away with him. Her phrases did not often recur to please that inward ear, "which is the bliss of solitude." What she said seemed at the time to be eminently right and sane; it was exhilarating to a high degree; it was lighted up by merriment, and piquancy, and salt; but it was the result of a kind of magic which needed the wand of the magician; it could not be reproduced by an imitator. It is very unfortunate, but the fact has to be faced. When we tell our grandchildren that Lady Dorothy Nevill was the finest female wit of her age, they will ask us for examples of her talent, and we shall have very few to give.

She liked to discuss people better than books or politics or principles, although she never shrank from these. But it was what she said about human beings that kept her interlocutors hanging on her lips. She made extraordinarily searching strictures on persons, without malice, but without nonsense of any kind. Her own favourites were treated with reserve in this respect: it was as though they were put in a pen by themselves, not to be criticised so long as they remained in favour; and she was not capricious, was, on the contrary, conspicuously loyal. But they always had the impression that it was only by special licence that they escaped the criticism that every one else was subjected to. Lady Dorothy Nevill was a stringent observer, and no respecter of persons. She carried a bow, and shot at folly as it flew. But I particularly wish to insist on the fact that her arrows, though they were feathered, were not poisoned.

Light was thrown on the nature of Lady Dorothy's wit by her correspondence. She could in no accepted sense be called a good letter-writer, although every now and then brilliantly amusing phrases occurred in her letters. I doubt whether she ever wrote one complete epistle; her correspondence consisted of tumultuous, reckless, sometimes extremely confused and incorrect notes, which, however, repeated-for those who knew how to interpret her language-the characteristics of her talk. She took no pains with her letters, and was under no illusion about their epistolary value. In fact, she was far too conscious of their lack of form, and would sign them, "Your incompetent old friend"; there was generally some apology for "this ill-written nonsense," or "what stuff this is, not worth your reading!" She once wrote to me: "I should like to tell you all about it, but alas! old Horace Walpole's talent has not descended on me." Unfortunately, that was true; so far as literary expression and the construction of sentences went, it had not. Her correspondence could never be given to the world, because it would need to be so much revised and expanded and smoothed out that it would no longer be hers at all.

Nevertheless, her reckless notes were always delightful to receive, because they gave the person to whom they were addressed a reflection of the writer's mood at the moment. They were ardent and personal, in their torrent of broken sentences, initials, mis-spelt names and nouns that had dropped their verbs. They were not so good as her talk, but they were like enough to it to be highly stimulating and entertaining; and in the course of them phrases would be struck out, like sparks from flint, which were nearly as good, and of the very same quality, as the things she used to say. She wrote her letters on a fantastic variety of strangely coloured paper, pink and blue and snuff-brown, violet and green and grey, paper that was stamped with patterns like a napkin, or frilled like a lace handkerchief, or embossed with forget-me-nots like a child's valentine. She had tricks of time-saving; always put "I" for "one," and "x" for "cross," a word which she, who was never cross, loved to use. "I did not care for any of the guests; we seemed to live in a storm of x questions and crooked answers," she would write, or "I am afraid my last letter was rather x."

Lady Dorothy, as a letter-writer, had no superstitious reverence for the parts of speech. Like M. Bergeret, she "se moquait de l'orthographie comme une chose méprisable." The spelling in her tumultuous notes threw a light upon that of very fine ladies in the seventeenth century. She made no effort to be exact, and much of her correspondence was made obscure by initials, which she expected her friends to interpret by divination. From a withering denunciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to 1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most of her thoughts. In her letters of those years the references to him are incessant, but when he is not "the F.M." and "our C.C.," she rings the changes on all possible forms of his name, from "Wollesley" to "Walsey." When she wrote to me of the pleasure she had had in meeting "the Abbot Guaschet," it took me a moment to recognise the author of English Monastic Life. She would laugh herself at her spelling, and would rebut any one who teased her about it by saying, "Oh! What does it matter? I don't pretend to be a bright specimen-like you!" When she made arrangements to come to see me at the House of Lords, which she frequently did, she always wrote it "the Lord's House," as though it were a conventicle.

One curious observation which the recipient of hundreds of her notes is bound to make, is the remarkable contrast between the general tone of them and the real disposition of their writer. Lady Dorothy Nevill in person was placid, indulgent, and calm; she never raised her voice, or challenged an opinion, or asserted her individuality. She played, very consistently, her part of the amused and attentive spectator in the theatre of life. But in her letters she pretended to be, or supposed herself called upon to seem, passionate and distracted. They are all twinkling with humorous or petulant exaggeration. She happens to forget an engagement, which was of no sort of importance, and this is how she apologises:-

"To think that every hour since you said you would come I have repeated to myself-Gosse at 5, Gosse at 5, and then after all to go meandering off and leaving you to cuss and swear on the doorstep, and you will never come again now, really. No punishment here or hereafter will be too much for me. Lead me to the Red Hill Asylum, and leave me there."

This was written nearly twenty years ago, and she was not less vivacious until the end. Lord Lansdowne tells me of an anonymous letter which he once received, to which she afterwards pleaded guilty. A cow used to be kept at the back of Lansdowne House, and the animal, no doubt feeling lonely, was in the habit of lowing at all sorts of hours. The letter, which was supposed to voice the complaint of the neighbours in Charles Street, was couched in the broadest Wiltshire dialect, and ended with the postscript: "Dang 'un, there 'ee goes again!" As a matter of fact, her letters, about which she had no species of vanity or self-consciousness, were to her merely instruments of friendship. There was an odd mingling of affection and stiffness in them. She marshalled her acquaintances with them, and almost invariably they were concerned with arrangements for meeting or explanations of absence. In my own experience, I must add that she made an exception when her friends were abroad, when she took considerable pains to tell them the gossip, often in surprising terms. I was once regaled with her experiences as the neighbour of a famous African magnate, and with the remark, "Mrs. --," a London fine lady of repute, "has been here, and has scraped the whole inside out of Mr. --, and gone her way rejoicing." Nor did she spare the correspondent himself:-

"Old Dr. -- has been here, and tells me he admires you very much; but I believe he has lost his memory, and he never had good taste at any time."

This was not a tribute which self-esteem could hug to its bosom. Of a very notorious individual she wrote to me:-

"I thought I should never be introduced to him, and I had to wait 100 years, but everything is possible in the best of worlds, and he was very satisfactory at last." Satisfactory! No word could be more characteristic on the pen of Lady Dorothy. To be "satisfactory," whether you were the President of the French Republic or Lord Wolseley or the Human Elephant (a pathetic freak in whom she took a great interest), was to perform on the stage of life, in her unruffled presence, the part which you had been called upon by Providence to fill. Even a criminal might be "satisfactory" if he did his job thoroughly. The only entirely unsatisfactory people were those who were insipid, conventional, and empty. "The first principle of society should be to extinguish the bores," she once said. I remember going with her to the Zoo in 1898, and being struck with a remark which she made, not because it was important, but because it was characteristic. We were looking at the wolves which she liked; and then, close by, she noticed some kind of Indian cow. "What a bore for the wolves to have to live opposite a cow!" and then, as if talking to herself, "I do hate a ruminant!"

Her relations to literature, art, and science were spectacular also. She was a sympathetic and friendly onlooker, always on the side of those things against the Philistines, but not affecting special knowledge herself. She was something of a virtuoso. She once said, "I have a passion for reading, but on subjects which nobody else will touch," and this indicated the independence of her mind. She read to please herself, and to satisfy her thirst for experience. When our friendship began, Zola was in the act of producing the tremendous series of his Rougon-Macquart novels. It was one of our early themes of conversation. Zola was then an object of shuddering horror to the ordinary English reader. Lady Dorothy had already read L'Assommoir, and had not shrunk from it; so I ventured to tell her of La Terre, which was just appearing. She wrote to me about it: "I have been reading Zola. He takes the varnish off rural life, I must say. Oh! these horrid demons of Frenchmen know how to write. Even the most disgusting things they know how to describe poetically. I wish Zola could describe Haslemere with all the shops shut, rain falling, and most of the inhabitants in their cups." She told me later-for we followed our Zola to Lourdes and Paris-that some young Oxford prig saw La Bête Humaine lying on the table at Charles Street, and remarked that Lady Dorothy could surely not be aware that that was "no book for a lady." She said, "I told him it was just the book for me!"

She read Disraeli's novels over again, from time to time, with a renewal of sentiment. "I am dedicating my leisure hours to Endymion. What a charm after the beef and mutton of ordinary novels!" She gradually developed a cult for Swinburne, whom she had once scorned; in her repentance after his death, she wrote: "I never hear enough about that genius Swinburne! My heart warms when I think of him and read his poems." I think she was very much annoyed that he had never been a visitor at Charles Street. When Verlaine was in England, to deliver a lecture, in 1894, Lady Dorothy was insistent that, as I was seeing him frequently, I should bring the author of Parallelement to visit her. She said-I think under some illusion-"Verlaine is one of my pet poets, though," she added, "not of this world." I was obliged to tell her that neither Verlaine's clothes, nor his person, nor his habits, admitted of his being presented in Mayfair, and that, indeed, it was difficult to find a little French eating-house in Soho where he could be at home. She then said: "Why can't you take me to see him in this eating-house?" I had to explain that of the alternatives that was really the least possible. She was not pleased.

Nor am I pleased with this attempt of mine to draw the features of our wonderful fairy friend. However I may sharpen the pencil, the line it makes is still too heavy. I feel that these anecdotes seem to belie her exquisite refinement, the rapidity and delicacy of her mental movement. To tell them is like stroking the wings of a moth. Above all, it is a matter of despair to attempt to define her emotional nature. Lady Dorothy Nevill was possessed neither of gravity nor of pathos; she was totally devoid of sentimentality. This made it easy for a superficial observer to refuse to believe that the author of so many pungent observations and such apparently volatile cynicism had a heart. When this was once questioned in company, one who knew her well replied: "Ah! yes, she has a heart, and it is like a grain of mustard-seed!" But her kindliness was shown, with great fidelity, to those whom she really honoured with her favour. I do not know whether it would be strictly correct to say that she had the genius of friendship, because that supposes a certain initiative and action which were foreign to Lady Dorothy's habits. But she possessed, to a high degree, the genius of comradeship. She held the reins very tightly, and she let no one escape whom she wished to retain. She took immense pains to preserve her friendships, and indeed became, dear creature, a little bit tyrannical at last. Her notes grew to be excessively emphatic. She would begin a letter quite cheerfully with "Oh, you demon!" or complain of "total and terrible neglect of an old friend; I could fill this sheet of paper with an account of your misdeeds!" She was ingenious in reproach: "I cannot afford to waste penny after penny, and no assets forthcoming," or "I have only two correspondents, and one of them is a traitor; I therefore cease to write to you for ever!" This might sound formidable, but it was only one of the constant surprises of her humour, and would be followed next day by the most placable of notelets.

Her curiosity with regard to life spread to her benevolences, which often took somewhat the form of voyages of discovery. Among these her weekly excursion to the London Hospital, in all weathers and in every kind of cheap conveyance, was prominent. I have to confess that I preferred that a visit to her should not be immediately prefaced by one of these adventures among the "pore dear things" at the hospital, because that was sure to mean the recital of some gruesome operation she had heard of, or the details of some almost equally gruesome cure. She enjoyed the whole experience in a way which is blank to the professional humanitarian, but I suspect the "pore dear things" appreciated her listening smile and sympathetic worldliness much more than they would have done the admonitions of a more conscious philanthropist.

And, indeed, in retrospect, it is her kindliness that shines forth. She followed all that her friends did, everything that happened to those who were close to them. She liked always to receive the tribute of what she called my "literary efforts," and was ruthlessly sharp in observing announcements of them: "Publishing again, and of course no copy for poor old me," when not a volume had yet left the binders. She took up absurd little phrases with delightful camaraderie; I have forgotten why at one time she took to signing herself "Your Koh-i-Noor," and wrote: "If I can hope to be the Koh-i-Noor of Mrs. Gosse's party, I shall be sure to come on Monday." One might go on indefinitely reviving these memories of her random humour and kindly whimsicality. But I close on a word of tenderer gravity, which I am sure will affect you. She had been a little tyrannical, as usual, and perhaps thought the tone of her persiflage rather excessive; a few hours later came a second note, which began: "You have made my life happier for me these last years-you, and Lady Airlie, and dearest Winifred." From her who never gave way to sentimentality in any form, and who prided herself on being as rigid as a nut-cracker, this was worth all the protestations of some more ebullient being. And there, dear Lady Burghclere, I must leave this poor sketch for such approval as you can bring yourself to give it.

Very faithfully yours,

EDMUND GOSSE.

January 1914.