The Young Duke

The Young Duke, by Benjamin
Disraeli

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Title: The Young Duke
Author: Benjamin Disraeli
Release Date: December 3, 2006 [EBook #20008]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE YOUNG DUKE
By Benjamin Disraeli
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BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
Fortune's Favourite
GEORGE AUGUSTUS FREDERICK, DUKE OF ST. JAMES,
completed his twenty-first year, an event which created almost as great
a sensation among the aristocracy of England as the Norman Conquest.
A minority of twenty years had converted a family always amongst the
wealthiest of Great Britain into one of the richest in Europe. The Duke
of St. James possessed estates in the north and in the west of England,
besides a whole province in Ireland. In London there were a very
handsome square and several streets, all made of bricks, which brought
him in yearly more cash than all the palaces of Vicenza are worth in
fee-simple, with those of the Grand Canal of Venice to boot. As if this
were not enough, he was an hereditary patron of internal navigation;
and although perhaps in his two palaces, three castles, four halls, and
lodges ad libitum, there were more fires burnt than in any other
establishment in the empire, this was of no consequence, because the
coals were his own. His rent-roll exhibited a sum total, very neatly
written, of two hundred thousand pounds; but this was independent of
half a million in the funds, which we had nearly forgotten, and which
remained from the accumulations occasioned by the unhappy death of
his father.
The late Duke of St. James had one sister, who was married to the Earl

of Fitz-pompey. To the great surprise of the world, to the perfect
astonishment of the brother-in-law, his Lordship was not appointed
guardian to the infant minor. The Earl of Fitz-pompey had always been
on the best possible terms with his Grace: the Countess had, only the
year before his death, accepted from his fraternal hand a diamond
bracelet; the Lord Viscount St. Maurice, future chief of the house of
Fitz-pompey, had the honour not only of being his nephew, but his
godson. Who could account, then, for an action so perfectly
unaccountable? It was quite evident that his Grace had no intention of
dying.
The guardian, however, that he did appoint was a Mr. Dacre, a Catholic
gentleman of ancient family and large fortune, who had been the
companion of his travels, and was his neighbour in his county. Mr.
Dacre had not been honoured with the acquaintance of Lord
Fitz-pompey previous to the decease of his noble friend; and after that
event such an acquaintance would probably not have been productive
of agreeable reminiscences; for from the moment of the opening of the
fatal will the name of Dacre was wormwood to the house of St.
Maurice. Lord Fitz-pompey, who, though the brother-in-law of a Whig
magnate, was a Tory, voted against the Catholics with renewed fervour.
Shortly after the death of his friend, Mr. Dacre married a beautiful and
noble lady of the house of Howard, who, after having presented him
with a daughter, fell ill, and became that common character, a
confirmed invalid. In the present day, and especially among women,
one would almost suppose that health was a state of unnatural existence.
The illness of his wife and the non-possession of parliamentary duties
rendered Mr. Dacre's visits to his town mansion rare, and the mansion
in time was let.
The young Duke, with the exception of an occasional visit to his uncle,
Lord Fitz-pompey, passed the early years of his life at Castle Dacre. At
seven years of age he was sent to a preparatory school at Richmond,
which was entirely devoted to the early culture of the nobility, and
where the principal, the Reverend Doctor Coronet, was so extremely
exclusive in his system that it was reported that he had once refused the

son of an Irish peer. Miss Coronet fed her imagination with the hope of
meeting her father's noble pupils in after-life, and in the meantime read
fashionable novels.
The moment that the young Duke was settled at Richmond, all the
intrigues of the Fitz-pompey family were directed to that quarter; and
as Mr. Dacre was by nature unsuspicious, and was even desirous that
his ward should cultivate the friendship of his only relatives,