Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (book recommendations website TXT) 📕
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Benjamin Disraeli was a remarkable historical figure. Born into a Jewish family, he converted to Anglican Christianity as a child. He is now almost certainly most famous for his political career. Becoming a member of the British Parliament at the age of 33, he initially rose to prominence within the Conservative (“Tory”) party because of his clashes with the then Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. Rising to lead the Conservative Party, Disraeli became Prime Minister for a short period in 1868, and then for an extended period between 1874 and 1880. He became friendly with Queen Victoria and was appointed Earl of Beaconsfield by her in 1876.
However, Disraeli was much more than a politician. He wrote both political treatises and no less than seventeen novels during his lifetime, of which Sybil, or The Two Nations is now among the best regarded. The “Two Nations” of the subtitle refer to the divisions in Britain between the rich and the poor, each of whom might as well be living in a different country from the other. In the novel, Disraeli highlights the terrible living conditions of the poor and the shocking injustices of how they were treated by most employers and land-owners. He contrasts this with the frivolous, pampered lifestyles of the aristocracy. He covers the rise of the Chartist movement, which was demanding universal manhood suffrage—the right for all adult men to vote, regardless of whether they owned property—and other reforms to enable working men a voice in the government of the country. (Female suffrage was to come much later). The upheavals of the time led to the development of the People’s Charter and a massive petition with millions of signatures being presented to Parliament. However the Parliament of the time refused to even consider the petition, triggering violent protests in Birmingham and elsewhere. All of this is well covered and explained in the novel.
Sybil is rather disjointed in structure as it ranges over these different topics, but the main plot revolves around Egremont, the younger son of a nobleman, who encounters some of the leaders of the workers’ movement and in particular Walter Gerard, one of the most respected of these leaders, whom Egremont befriends while concealing his real name and social position. During visits to Gerard under an assumed name, Egremont falls for the beautiful and saintly Sybil, Gerard’s daughter, but she rejects him when his true identity is exposed. Sybil subsequently undergoes many difficult trials as the people’s movement develops and comes into conflict with the authorities.
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- Author: Benjamin Disraeli
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“But you never expressed this opinion,” said Sir Vavasour.
“You never asked for my opinion,” said Mr. Hatton; “and if I had given it, you and your friends would not have been influenced by it. The point was one on which you might with reason hold yourselves as competent judges as I am. All you asked of me was to make out your case, and I made it out. I will venture to say a better case never left these chambers; I do not believe there is a person in the kingdom who could answer it except myself. They have refused the Order their honours, Sir Vavasour, but it is some consolation that they have never answered their case.”
“I think it only aggravates the oppression,” said Sir Vavasour, shaking his head; “but cannot you advise any new step, Mr. Hatton? After so many years of suspense, after so much anxiety and such a vast expenditure, it really is too bad that I and Lady Firebrace should be announced at court in the same style as our fishmonger, if he happens to be a sheriff.”
“I can make a Peer,” said Mr. Hatton, leaning back in his chair and playing with his seals, “but I do not pretend to make Baronets. I can place a coronet with four balls on a man’s brow; but a coronet with two balls is an exercise of the prerogative with which I do not presume to interfere.”
“I mention it in the utmost confidence,” said Sir Vavasour in a whisper; “but Lady Firebrace has a sort of promise that in the event of a change of government, we shall be in the first batch of peers.”
Mr. Hatton shook his head with a slight smile of contemptuous incredulity.
“Sir Robert,” he said, “will make no peers; take my word for that. The Whigs and I have so deluged the House of Lords, that you may rely upon it as a secret of state, that if the Tories come in, there will be no peers made. I know the Queen is sensitively alive to the cheapening of all honours of late years. If the Whigs go out tomorrow, mark me, they will disappoint all their friends. Their underlings have promised so many, that treachery is inevitable, and if they deceive some they may as well deceive all. Perhaps they may distribute a coronet or two among themselves: and I shall this year make three: and those are the only additions to the peerage which will occur for many years. You may rely on that. For the Tories will make none, and I have some thoughts of retiring from business.”
It is difficult to express the astonishment, the perplexity, the agitation, that pervaded the countenance of Sir Vavasour while his companion thus coolly delivered himself. High hopes extinguished and excited at the same moment; cherished promises vanishing, mysterious expectations rising up; revelations of astounding state secrets; chief ministers voluntarily renouncing their highest means of influence, and an obscure private individual distributing those distinctions which sovereigns were obliged to hoard, and to obtain which the first men in the country were ready to injure their estates and to sacrifice their honour! At length Sir Vavasour said, “You amaze me Mr. Hatton. I could mention to you twenty members of Boodle’s, at least, who believe they will be made peers the moment the Tories come in.”
“Not a man of them,” said Hatton peremptorily. “Tell me one of their names, and I will tell you whether they will be made peers.”
“Well then there is Mr. Tubbe Sweete, a county member, and his son in parliament too—I know he has a promise.”
“I repeat to you, Sir Vavasour, the Tories will not make a single peer; the candidates must come to me; and I ask you what can I do for a Tubbe Sweete, the son of a Jamaica cooper? Are there any old families among your twenty members of Brookes’?”
“Why I can hardly say,” said Sir Vavasour; “there is Sir Charles Featherly, an old baronet.”
“The founder a lord mayor in James the First’s reign. That is not the sort of old family that I mean,” said Mr. Hatton.
“Well there is Colonel Cockawhoop,” said Sir Vavasour. “The Cockawhoops are a very good family, I have always heard.”
“Contractors of Queen Anne: partners with Marlborough and Solomon Medina; a very good family indeed: but I do not make peers out of good families, Sir Vavasour; old families are the blocks out of which I cut my Mercurys.”
“But what do you call an old family?” said Sir Vavasour.
“Yours,” said Mr. Hatton, and he threw a full glance on the countenance on which the light rested.
“We were in the first batch of baronets,” said Sir Vavasour.
“Forget the baronets for a while,” said Hatton. “Tell me, what was your family before James the First?”
“They always lived on their lands,” said Sir Vavasour. “I have a room full of papers that would perhaps tell us something about them. Would you like to see them?”
“By all means: bring them all here. Not that I want them to inform me of your rights: I am fully acquainted with them. You would like to be a peer, sir. Well, you are really Lord Vavasour, but there is a difficulty in establishing your undoubted right from the single writ of summons difficulty. I will not trouble you with technicalities, Sir Vavasour: sufficient that the difficulty is great though perhaps not unmanageable. But we have no need of management. Your claim on the barony of Lovel is very good: I could recommend your pursuing it, did not another more inviting still present itself. In a word, if you wish to be Lord Bardolf, I will undertake to make you so, before, in all probability, Sir Robert Peel obtains office; and that I should think would gratify Lady Firebrace.”
“Indeed it would,” said Sir Vavasour, “for if it had not been for this sort of a promise of a peerage made—I speak in great confidence Mr. Hatton—made by Mr. Taper, my tenants would have voted for the Whigs the other
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