[159] This recalls us to the ’thirties. In a letter to his sister he mentions the wineglass shape as a new receptacle for champagne.
[160] It may, however, refer to a certain Lady Sykes.
[161] There is another similar passage so early as in Popanilla, which says that “... there were those who paradoxically held all this Elysian morality was one of great delusion, and that this scrupulous anxiety about the conduct of others arose from a principle, not of Purity, but Corruption. The woman who is “talked about,” these sages would affirm, is generally virtuous....” But the allusion may here be to Queen Caroline.
[162] Coningsby.
[163] Venetia; The Young Duke.
[164] Ibid.
[165] Ibid.
[166] The brilliant Mr. T. P. O’Connor, in the first edition of a “Biography” (which, perhaps, now he regrets), troubled himself to search out and enumerate the writs out against Disraeli in the early ’thirties. Most of his debts were for elections and “backing” his friends’ bills. From friends he never borrowed; always from “Levison’s.” Vivian Grey was originally written to defray a debt.
[167] Levison offers the required advance, £700 in cash, £800 in coals. The captain expostulates, and is answered: “Lord! my dear Captin, £800 worth of coals is a mere nothink. With your connection you will get rid of them in a morning. All you have got to do ... is to give your friends an order on us, and we will let you have cash at a little discount.... Three or four friends would do the thing.... Why, ’tayn’t four hundred chaldron, Captin.... Baron Squash takes ten thousand of us every year; but he has such a knack; he gits the clubs to take them.”
[168] It was written 1830–31.