| CONINGSBY, by Benjamin Disraeli (1844)
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BOOK IV
CHAPTER XV.
Notwithstanding the fatigues of the morning, the evening was passed with
great gaiety at the Castle. The gentlemen all vowed that, far from being
inconvenienced by their mishaps, they felt, on the whole, rather better
for them. Mr. Guy Flouncey, indeed, did not seem quite so limber and
flexible as usual; and the young guardsman, who had previously discoursed
in an almost alarming style of the perils and feats of the Kildare
country, had subsided into a remarkable reserve. The Provincials were
delighted with Sidonia's riding, and even the Leicestershire gentlemen
admitted that he was a 'customer.'
Lord Monmouth beckoned to Coningsby to sit by him on the sofa, and spoke
of his approaching University life. He gave his grandson a great deal of
good advice: told him to avoid drinking, especially if he ever chanced to
play cards, which he hoped he never would; urged the expediency of never
borrowing money, and of confining his loans to small sums, and then only
to friends of whom he wished to get rid; most particularly impressed on
him never to permit his feelings to be engaged by any woman; nobody, he
assured Coningsby, despised that weakness more than women themselves.
Indeed, feeling of any kind did not suit the present age: it was not _bon
ton_; and in some degree always made a man ridiculous. Coningsby was
always to have before him the possible catastrophe of becoming ridiculous.
It was the test of conduct, Lord Monmouth said; a fear of becoming
ridiculous is the best guide in life, and will save a man from all sorts
of scrapes. For the rest, Coningsby was to appear at Cambridge as became
Lord Monmouth's favourite grandson. His grandfather had opened an account
for him with Drummonds', on whom he was to draw for his considerable
allowance; and if by any chance he found himself in a scrape, no matter of
what kind, he was to be sure to write to his grandfather, who would
certainly get him out of it.
'Your departure is sudden,' said the Princess Lucretia, in a low deep tone
to Sidonia, who was sitting by her side and screened from general
observation by the waltzers who whirled by.
'Departures should be sudden.'
'I do not like departures,' said the Princess.
'Nor did the Queen of Sheba when she quitted Solomon. You know what she
did?'
'Tell me.'
'She wept very much, and let one of the King's birds fly into the garden.
"You are freed from your cage," she said; "but I am going back to mine."'
'But you never weep?' said the Princess.
'Never.'
'And are always free?'
'So are men in the Desert.'
'But your life is not a Desert?'
'It at least resembles the Desert in one respect: it is useless.'
'The only useless life is woman's.'
'Yet there have been heroines,' said Sidonia.
'The Queen of Sheba,' said the Princess, smiling.
'A favourite of mine,' said Sidonia.
'And why was she a favourite of yours?' rather eagerly inquired Lucretia.
'Because she thought deeply, talked finely, and moved gracefully.'
'And yet might be a very unfeeling dame at the same time,' said the
Princess.
'I never thought of that,' said Sidonia.
'The heart, apparently, does not reckon in your philosophy.'
'What we call the heart,' said Sidonia, 'is a nervous sensation, like
shyness, which gradually disappears in society. It is fervent in the
nursery, strong in the domestic circle, tumultuous at school. The
affections are the children of ignorance; when the horizon of our
experience expands, and models multiply, love and admiration imperceptibly
vanish.'
'I fear the horizon of your experience has very greatly expanded. With
your opinions, what charm can there be in life?'
'The sense of existence.'
'So Sidonia is off to-morrow, Monmouth,' said Lord Eskdale.
'Hah!' said the Marquess. 'I must get him to breakfast with me before he
goes.'
The party broke up. Coningsby, who had heard Lord Eskdale announce
Sidonia's departure, lingered to express his regret, and say farewell.
'I cannot sleep,' said Sidonia, 'and I never smoke in Europe. If you are
not stiff with your wounds, come to my rooms.'
This invitation was willingly accepted.
'I am going to Cambridge in a week,' said Coningsby. I was almost in hopes
you might have remained as long.'
'I also; but my letters of this morning demand me. If it had not been for
our chase, I should have quitted immediately. The minister cannot pay the
interest on the national debt; not an unprecedented circumstance, and has
applied to us. I never permit any business of State to be transacted
without my personal interposition; and so I must go up to town
immediately.'
'Suppose you don't pay it,' said Coningsby, smiling.
'If I followed my own impulse, I would remain here,' said Sidonia. 'Can
anything be more absurd than that a nation should apply to an individual
to maintain its credit, and, with its credit, its existence as an empire,
and its comfort as a people; and that individual one to whom its laws deny
the proudest rights of citizenship, the privilege of sitting in its senate
and of holding land? for though I have been rash enough to buy several
estates, my own opinion is, that, by the existing law of England, an
Englishman of Hebrew faith cannot possess the soil.'
'But surely it would be easy to repeal a law so illiberal — '
'Oh! as for illiberality, I have no objection to it if it be an element of
power. Eschew political sentimentalism. What I contend is, that if you
permit men to accumulate property, and they use that permission to a great
extent, power is inseparable from that property, and it is in the last
degree impolitic to make it the interest of any powerful class to oppose
the institutions under which they live. The Jews, for example,
independently of the capital qualities for citizenship which they possess
in their industry, temperance, and energy and vivacity of mind, are a race
essentially monarchical, deeply religious, and shrinking themselves from
converts as from a calamity, are ever anxious to see the religious systems
of the countries in which they live flourish; yet, since your society has
become agitated in England, and powerful combinations menace your
institutions, you find the once loyal Hebrew invariably arrayed in the
same ranks as the leveller, and the latitudinarian, and prepared to
support the policy which may even endanger his life and property, rather
than tamely continue under a system which seeks to degrade him. The Tories
lose an important election at a critical moment; 'tis the Jews come
forward to vote against them. The Church is alarmed at the scheme of a
latitudinarian university, and learns with relief that funds are not
forthcoming for its establishment; a Jew immediately advances and endows
it. Yet the Jews, Coningsby, are essentially Tories. Toryism, indeed, is
but copied from the mighty prototype which has fashioned Europe. And every
generation they must become more powerful and more dangerous to the
society which is hostile to them. Do you think that the quiet humdrum
persecution of a decorous representative of an English university can
crush those who have successively baffled the Pharaohs, Nebuchadnezzar,
Rome, and the Feudal ages? The fact is, you cannot destroy a pure race of
the Caucasian organisation. It is a physiological fact; a simple law of
nature, which has baffled Egyptian and Assyrian Kings, Roman Emperors, and
Christian Inquisitors. No penal laws, no physical tortures, can effect
that a superior race should be absorbed in an inferior, or be destroyed by
it. The mixed persecuting races disappear; the pure persecuted race
remains. And at this moment, in spite of centuries, of tens of centuries,
of degradation, the Jewish mind exercises a vast influence on the affairs
of Europe. I speak not of their laws, which you still obey; of their
literature, with which your minds are saturated; but of the living Hebrew
intellect.
'You never observe a great intellectual movement in Europe in which the
Jews do not greatly participate. The first Jesuits were Jews; that
mysterious Russian Diplomacy which so alarms Western Europe is organised
and principally carried on by Jews; that mighty revolution which is at
this moment preparing in Germany, and which will be, in fact, a second and
greater Reformation, and of which so little is as yet known in England, is
entirely developing under the auspices of Jews, who almost monopolise the
professorial chairs of Germany. Neander, the founder of Spiritual
Christianity, and who is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of
Berlin, is a Jew. Benary, equally famous, and in the same University, is a
Jew. Wehl, the Arabic Professor of Heidelberg, is a Jew. Years ago, when I
was In Palestine, I met a German student who was accumulating materials
for the History of Christianity, and studying the genius of the place; a
modest and learned man. It was Wehl; then unknown, since become the first
Arabic scholar of the day, and the author of the life of Mahomet. But for
the German professors of this race, their name is Legion. I think there
are more than ten at Berlin alone.
'I told you just now that I was going up to town tomorrow, because I
always made it a rule to interpose when affairs of State were on the
carpet. Otherwise, I never interfere. I hear of peace and war in
newspapers, but I am never alarmed, except when I am informed that the
Sovereigns want treasure; then I know that monarchs are serious.
'A few years back we were applied, to by Russia. Now, there has been no
friendship between the Court of St. Petersburg and my family. It has Dutch
connections, which have generally supplied it; and our representations in
favour of the Polish Hebrews, a numerous race, but the most suffering and
degraded of all the tribes, have not been very agreeable to the Czar.
However, circumstances drew to an approximation between the Romanoffs and
the Sidonias. I resolved to go myself to St. Petersburg. I had, on my
arrival, an interview with the Russian Minister of Finance, Count Cancrin;
I beheld the son of a Lithuanian Jew. The loan was connected with the
affairs of Spain; I resolved on repairing to Spain from Russia. I
travelled without intermission. I had an audience immediately on my
arrival with the Spanish Minister, Senor Mendizabel; I beheld one like
myself, the son of a Nuevo Christiano, a Jew of Arragon. In consequence of
what transpired at Madrid, I went straight to Paris to consult the
President of the French Council; I beheld the son of a French Jew, a hero,
an imperial marshal, and very properly so, for who should be military
heroes if not those who worship the Lord of Hosts?'
'And is Soult a Hebrew?'
'Yes, and others of the French marshals, and the most famous; Massena, for
example; his real name was Manasseh: but to my anecdote. The consequence
of our consultations was, that some Northern power should be applied to in
a friendly and mediative capacity. We fixed on Prussia; and the President
of the Council made an application to the Prussian Minister, who attended
a few days after our conference. Count Arnim entered the cabinet, and I
beheld a Prussian Jew. So you see, my dear Coningsby, that the world is
governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who
are not behind the scenes.'
'You startle, and deeply interest me.'
'You must study physiology, my dear child. Pure races of Caucasus may be
persecuted, but they cannot be despised, except by the brutal ignorance of
some mongrel breed, that brandishes fagots and howls extermination, but is
itself exterminated without persecution, by that irresistible law of
Nature which is fatal to curs.'
'But I come also from Caucasus,' said Coningsby.
'Verily; and thank your Creator for such a destiny: and your race is
sufficiently pure. You come from the shores of the Northern Sea, land of
the blue eye, and the golden hair, and the frank brow: 'tis a famous
breed, with whom we Arabs have contended long; from whom we have suffered
much: but these Goths, and Saxons, and Normans were doubtless great men.'
'But so favoured by Nature, why has not your race produced great poets,
great orators, great writers?'
'Favoured by Nature and by Nature's God, we produced the lyre of David; we
gave you Isaiah and Ezekiel; they are our Olynthians, our Philippics.
Favoured by Nature we still remain: but in exact proportion as we have
been favoured by Nature we have been persecuted by Man. After a thousand
struggles; after acts of heroic courage that Rome has never equalled;
deeds of divine patriotism that Athens, and Sparta, and Carthage have
never excelled; we have endured fifteen hundred years of supernatural
slavery, during which, every device that can degrade or destroy man has
been the destiny that we have sustained and baffled. The Hebrew child has
entered adolescence only to learn that he was the Pariah of that
ungrateful Europe that owes to him the best part of its laws, a fine
portion of its literature, all its religion. Great poets require a public;
we have been content with the immortal melodies that we sung more than two
thousand years ago by the waters of Babylon and wept. They record our
triumphs; they solace our affliction. Great orators are the creatures of
popular assemblies; we were permitted only by stealth to meet even in our
temples. And as for great writers, the catalogue is not blank. What are
all the schoolmen, Aquinas himself, to Maimonides? And as for modern
philosophy, all springs from Spinoza.
'But the passionate and creative genius, that is the nearest link to
Divinity, and which no human tyranny can destroy, though it can divert it;
that should have stirred the hearts of nations by its inspired sympathy,
or governed senates by its burning eloquence; has found a medium for its
expression, to which, in spite of your prejudices and your evil passions,
you have been obliged to bow. The ear, the voice, the fancy teeming with
combinations, the imagination fervent with picture and emotion, that came
from Caucasus, and which we have preserved unpolluted, have endowed us
with almost the exclusive privilege of Music; that science of harmonious
sounds, which the ancients recognised as most divine, and deified in the
person of their most beautiful creation. I speak not of the past; though,
were I to enter into the history of the lords of melody, you would find it
the annals of Hebrew genius. But at this moment even, musical Europe is
ours. There is not a company of singers, not an orchestra in a single
capital, that is not crowded with our children under the feigned names
which they adopt to conciliate the dark aversion which your posterity will
some day disclaim with shame and disgust. Almost every great composer,
skilled musician, almost every voice that ravishes you with its
transporting strains, springs from our tribes. The catalogue is too vast
to enumerate; too illustrious to dwell for a moment on secondary names,
however eminent. Enough for us that the three great creative minds to
whose exquisite inventions all nations at this moment yield, Rossini,
Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, are of Hebrew race; and little do your men of
fashion, your muscadins of Paris, and your dandies of London, as they
thrill into raptures at the notes of a Pasta or a Grisi, little do they
suspect that they are offering their homage to "the sweet singers of
Israel!"'