Tancred

Tancred, by Benjamin Disraeli

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Title: Tancred Or, The New Crusade
Author: Benjamin Disraeli
Release Date: December 3, 2006 [EBook #20004]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Produced by David Widger

TANCRED
OR
THE NEW CRUSADE
By Benjamin Disraeli

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CHAPTER I.
A Matter of Importance
IN THAT part of the celebrated parish of St. George which is bounded
on one side by Piccadilly and on the other by Curzon Street, is a district
of a peculiar character. 'Tis cluster of small streets of little houses,
frequently intersected by mews, which here are numerous, and
sometimes gradually, rather than abruptly, terminating in a ramification
of those mysterious regions. Sometimes a group of courts develops
itself, and you may even chance to find your way into a small
market-place. Those, however, who are accustomed to connect these
hidden residences of the humble with scenes of misery and characters
of violence, need not apprehend in this district any appeal to their
sympathies, or any shock to their tastes. All is extremely genteel; and
there is almost as much repose as in the golden saloons of the
contiguous palaces. At any rate, if there be as much vice, there is as
little crime.
No sight or sound can be seen or heard at any hour, which could pain
the most precise or the most fastidious. Even if a chance oath may float
on the air from the stable-yard to the lodging of a French cook, 'tis of
the newest fashion, and, if responded to with less of novel charm, the
repartee is at least conveyed in the language of the most polite of
nations. They bet upon the Derby in these parts a little, are interested in
Goodwood, which they frequent, have perhaps, in general, a weakness

for play, live highly, and indulge those passions which luxury and
refinement encourage; but that is all.
A policeman would as soon think of reconnoitring these secluded
streets as of walking into a house in Park Lane or Berkeley Square, to
which, in fact, this population in a great measure belongs. For here
reside the wives of house-stewards and of butlers, in tenements
furnished by the honest savings of their husbands, and let in lodgings to
increase their swelling incomes; here dwells the retired servant, who
now devotes his practised energies to the occasional festival, which,
with his accumulations in the three per cents., or in one of the
public-houses of the quarter, secures him at the same time an easy
living, and the casual enjoyment of that great world which lingers in his
memory. Here may be found his grace's coachman, and here his
lordship's groom, who keeps a book and bleeds periodically too
speculative footmen, by betting odds on his master's horses. But, above
all, it is in this district that the cooks have ever sought a favourite and
elegant abode. An air of stillness and serenity, of exhausted passions
and suppressed emotion, rather than of sluggishness and of dullness,
distinguishes this quarter during the day.
When you turn from the vitality and brightness of Piccadilly, the park,
the palace, the terraced mansions, the sparkling equipages, the cavaliers
cantering up the hill, the swarming multitude, and enter the region of
which we are speaking, the effect is at first almost unearthly. Not a
carriage, not a horseman, scarcely a passenger; there seems some great
and sudden collapse in the metropolitan system, as if a pest had been
announced, or an enemy were expected in alarm by a vanquished
capital. The approach from Curzon Street has not this effect. Hyde Park
has still about it something of Arcadia. There are woods and waters,
and the occasional illusion of an illimitable distance of sylvan joyance.
The spirit is allured to gentle thoughts as we wander in what is still
really a lane, and, turning down Stanhope Street, behold that house
which the great Lord Chesterfield tells us, in one of his letters, he was
'building among the fields.' The cawing of the rooks in his gardens
sustains the tone of mind, and Curzon Street, after a long, straggling,
sawney course, ceasing to be a thoroughfare, and losing itself in the

gardens of another palace, is quite in keeping with all the accessories.
In the night, however, the quarter of which we are speaking is alive.
The manners of the population follow those of their