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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vivian Grey, by The Earl of Beaconsfield
[AKA Benjamin Disraeli]

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Title: Vivian Grey
Author: The Earl of Beaconsfield
[AKA Benjamin Disraeli]
Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9840]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on October 23, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIVIAN GREY ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Charlie Kirschner
and PG Distributed Proofreaders
The English Com die Humaine
\ufffd
Second Series
VIVIAN GREY
BY
THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD
PUBLISHER'S NOTE.

As a novelist, Benjamin Disraeli belongs to the early part of the
nineteenth century. "Vivian Grey" (1826-27) and "Sybil" (1845) mark the
beginning and the end of his truly creative period; for the two
productions of his latest years, "Lothair" (1870) and "Endymion" (1880),
add nothing to the characteristics of his earlier volumes except the
changes of feeling and power which accompany old age. His period, thus,
is that of Bulwer, Dickens, and Thackeray, and of the later years of Sir
Walter Scott--a fact which his prominence as a statesman during the last
decade of his life, as well as the vogue of "Lothair" and "Endymion,"
has tended to obscure. His style, his material, and his views of English
character and life all date from that earlier time. He was born in 1804
and died in 1881.

Disraeli was barely twenty-one when he published "Vivian Grey," his first work of fiction; and the young author was at once hailed as a master of his art by an almost unanimous press.

In this, as in his subsequent books, it was not so much Disraeli's
notable skill as a novelist but rather his portrayal of the social and
political life of the day that made him one of the most popular writers
of his generation, and earned for him a lasting fame as a man of
letters. In "Vivian Grey" is narrated the career of an ambitious young
man of rank; and in this story the brilliant author has preserved to us
the exact tone of the English drawing-room, as he so well knew it,
sketching with sure and rapid strokes a whole portrait gallery of
notables, disguised in name may be, but living characters nevertheless,
who charm us with their graceful manners and general air of being people
of consequence. "Vivian Grey," then, though not a great novel is beyond
question a marvelously true picture of the life and character of an
interesting period of English history and made notable because of
Disraeli's fine imagination and vivid descriptive powers.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Is there anything you want, sir?
He distinctly beheld Mrs. Felix Lorraine open a small silver box.
It was very slowly that the dark thought came over his mind.

VIVIAN GREY
BOOK I
CHAPTER I

We are not aware that the infancy of Vivian Grey was distinguished by
any extraordinary incident. The solicitude of the most affectionate of
mothers, and the care of the most attentive of nurses, did their best to
injure an excellent constitution. But Vivian was an only child, and
these exertions were therefore excusable. For the first five years of
his life, with his curly locks and his fancy dress, he was the pride of
his own and the envy of all neighbouring establishments; but, in process
of time, the spirit of boyism began to develop itself, and Vivian not
only would brush his hair straight and rebel against his nurse, but
actually insisted upon being--breeched! At this crisis it was discovered
that he had been spoiled, and it was determined that he should be sent
to school. Mr. Grey observed, also, that the child was nearly ten years
old, and did not know his alphabet, and Mrs. Grey remarked that he was
getting ugly. The fate of Vivian was decided.

"I am told, my dear," observed Mrs. Grey, one day after dinner to her
husband, "I am told, my dear, that Dr. Flummery's would do very well for
Vivian. Nothing can exceed the attention which is paid to the pupils.
There are sixteen young ladies, all the daughters of clergymen, merely
to attend to the morals and the linen; terms moderate: 100 guineas per
annum, for all under six years of age, and few extras, only for fencing,
pure milk, and the guitar. Mrs. Metcalfe has both her boys there, and
she says their progress is astonishing! Percy Metcalfe, she assures me,
was quite as backward as Vivian; indeed, backwarder; and so was Dudley,
who was taught at home on the new system, by a pictorial alphabet, and
who persisted to the last, notwithstanding all the exertions of Miss
Barrett, in spelling A-P-E, monkey, merely because over the word there
was a monster munching an apple."

"And quite right in the child, my dear. Pictorial alphabet! pictorial

fool's head!"
"But what do you say to Flummery's, Horace?"
"My dear, do what you like. I never trouble myself, you know, about

these matters;" and Mr. Grey refreshed himself, after this domestic
attack, with a glass of claret.

Mr. Grey was a gentleman who had succeeded, when the heat of youth was
over, to the enjoyment of a life estate of some two thousand a year. He
was a man of lettered tastes, and had hailed with no slight pleasure his
succession to a fortune which, though limited in its duration, was still
a great thing for a young lounger about town, not only with no
profession, but with a mind unfitted for every species of business.
Grey, to the astonishment of his former friends, the wits, made an
excellent domestic match; and, leaving the whole management of his
household to his lady, felt himself as independent in his magnificent
library as if he had never ceased to be that true freeman, A MAN
OF CHAMBERS.

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