Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (book recommendations website TXT) 📕

father returns. I take so much interest too in their discussions; and sometimes I go to hear him speak. None of them can compare with him. It seems to me that it would be impossible to resist our claims if our rulers only heard them from his lips.”

Egremont smiled. “Your Convention is in its bloom, or rather its bud,” he said; “all is fresh and pure now; but a little while and it will find the fate of all popular assemblies. You will have factions.”

“But why?” said Sybil. “They are the real representatives of the people, and all that the people want is justice; that Labour should be as much respected by law and society as Property.”

While they thus conversed they passed through several clean, still streets, that had rather the appearance of streets in a very quiet country town than of abodes in the greatest city in the world, and in the vicinity of palaces and parliaments. Rarely was a shop to be remarked among the neat little tenements, many of them built of curious old brick, and all of them raised without any regard to symmetry or proportion. Not the sound of a single wheel was heard; sometimes not a single individual was visible or stirring. Making a circuitous course through this tranquil and orderly district, they at last found themselves in an open place in the centre of which rose a church of vast proportions, and built of hewn stone in that stately, not to say ponderous, style which Vanburgh introduced. The area round it, which was sufficiently ample, was formed by buildings, generally of a very mean character: the long back premises of a carpenter, the straggling yard of a hackney-man: sometimes a small, narrow isolated private residence, like a waterspout in which a rat might reside: sometimes a group of houses of more pretension. In the extreme corner of this area, which was dignified by the name of Smith’s Square, instead of taking a more appropriate title from the church of St. John which it encircled, was a large old house, that had been masked at the beginning of the century with a modern front of pale-coloured bricks, but which still stood in its courtyard surrounded by its iron railings, withdrawn as it were from the vulgar gaze like an individual who had known higher fortunes, and blending with his humility something of the reserve which is prompted by the memory of vanished greatness.

“This is my home,” said Sybil. “It is a still place and suits us well.”

Near the house was a narrow passage which was a thoroughfare into the most populous quarter of the neighbourhood. As Egremont was opening the gate of the courtyard, Gerard ascended the steps of this passage and approached them.

VII

When Gerard and Morley quitted the Albany after their visit to Egremont, they separated, and Stephen, whom we will accompany, proceeded in the direction of the Temple, in the vicinity of which he himself lodged, and where he was about to visit a brother journalist, who occupied chambers in that famous inn of court. As he passed under Temple Bar his eye caught a portly gentleman stepping out of a public cab with a bundle of papers in his hand, and immediately disappearing through that well-known archway which Morley was on the point of reaching. The gentleman indeed was still in sight, descending the way, when Morley entered, who observed him drop a letter. Morley hailed him, but in vain; and fearing the stranger might disappear in one of the many inextricable courts, and so lose his letter, he ran forward, picked up the paper, and then pushed on to the person who dropped it, calling out so frequently that the stranger at length began to suspect that he himself might be the object of the salute, and stopped and looked round. Morley almost mechanically glanced at the outside of the letter, the seal of which was broken, and which was however addressed to a name that immediately fixed his interest. The direction was to “Baptist Hatton, Esq., Inner Temple.”

“This letter is I believe addressed to you, Sir,” said Morley, looking very intently upon the person to whom he spoke⁠—a portly man and a comely; florid, gentleman-like, but with as little of the expression which Morley in imagination had associated with that Hatton over whom he once pondered, as can easily be imagined.

“Sir, I am extremely obliged to you,” said the strange gentleman; “the letter belongs to me, though it is not addressed to me. I must have this moment dropped it. My name, Sir, is Firebrace⁠—Sir Vavasour Firebrace, and this letter is addressed to a⁠—a⁠—not exactly my lawyer, but a gentleman⁠—a professional gentleman⁠—whom I am in the habit of frequently seeing; daily, I may say. He is employed in a great question in which I am deeply interested. Sir, I am vastly obliged to you, and I trust that you are satisfied.”

“Oh! perfectly, Sir Vavasour;” and Morley bowed; and going in different directions, they separated.

“Do you happen to know a lawyer by name Hatton in this Inn?” inquired Morley of his friend the journalist, when, having transacted their business, the occasion served.

“No lawyer of that name; but the famous Hatton lives here,” was the reply.

“The famous Hatton! And what is he famous for? You forget I am a provincial.”

“He has made more peers of the realm than our gracious Sovereign,” said the journalist. “And since the reform of parliament the only chance of a Tory becoming a peer is the favour of Baptist Hatton; though who he is no one knows, and what he is no one can describe.”

“You speak in conundrums,” said Morley; “I wish I could guess them. Try to adapt yourself to my somewhat simple capacity.”

“In a word, then,” said his friend, “if you must have a definition, Hatton may rank under the genus ‘antiquary,’ though his species is more difficult to describe. He is a heraldic antiquary; a discoverer, inventor, framer, arranger of