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Endymion
It was a rich, warm night, at the beginning of August, when a gentleman enveloped in a cloak, for he was in evening dress, emerged from a club-house at the top of St. James' Street, and descended that celebrated eminence. He had not proceeded more than half way down the street when, encountering a friend, he stopped with some abruptness. "I have been looking for you everywhere," he said. "'Tis as warm as noon. Let us cross the street and get into St. James' Place. That is always my idea of solitude."
424 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1881
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182 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Disraeli
1,060 books189 followersOne of the great British politicians of the nineteenth century, Disraeli served twice as Tory Prime Minister (1868 and 1874 - 1880) and was also a prominent figure in opposition. He is most famous today for the bitter hatred between himself and his political rival William Gladstone. He enjoyed the favour of Queen Victoria, who shared his dislike of Gladstone. His most significant political achievements are the 1867 Reform Act, in which he was instrumental, and the creation of the modern Conservative Party, with which he is credited. His literary career was greatly overshadowed by his parliamentary ambitions ('climbing the greasy pole'), but includes both romances and political novels.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 28, 2010
[These notes were made in 1985. I read the New York: Cambridge Society, 1905 edition]. I bought this for the pretty cover, and read it because it was there. A curiosity in several ways: it's a subscription edition (a book club?) It has a "critical introduction" by Edmund Gosse which doesn't even mention the book it introduces. It is, bless their little hearts, imperfect, having a largish section (at least 2 gatherings, I think) duplicated and misbound, while part of the text is of course missing in compensation. (Am I just unlucky, or were they generally this careless?) The novel itself is Disraeli's last, a somewhat nostalgic, semi-autobiographical roman-à-clef about the 1830s and '40s. There are little love intrigues, of course, but our author isn't really putting his heart into them - no pun intended - so we end up with peculiar misconceptions. I had a picture of Lady Montfort, for instance, which had her a far maturer woman than the one with whom Endymion finally throws in his lot at the end. The enigmatic, passionate, controlled elder sister, Myra, is the most interesting character of the lot, but instead of seeing inside her, we simply get to see her crowned a queen. The key at the beginning and my DNB helped me keep Whigs and Tories straight, and provided a certain sort of crossword-puzzle-like interest to the political bits - which were most of the novel!
September 14, 2016
A 19th century Who's Who, following the climbing of the social ladder of a brother and sister from public disgrace to top of the social ladder. Not very much of a plotline. It's political upheavals and marriages interspersed with parties, balls and gossip.
I did appreciate following characters for such an extended period of time-- 101 chapters. You really got to know Endymion, Myra and Lady Montfort especially. St. Barbe is a really disgusting fellow, but you laugh at him quite a bit. Interesting to become more familiar with British politics and social life, as well as some of hte big issues of the day-- corn laws and railroads.
I did appreciate following characters for such an extended period of time-- 101 chapters. You really got to know Endymion, Myra and Lady Montfort especially. St. Barbe is a really disgusting fellow, but you laugh at him quite a bit. Interesting to become more familiar with British politics and social life, as well as some of hte big issues of the day-- corn laws and railroads.
March 27, 2025
“How is that your hero should be a Whig?” Queen Victoria asked Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in a letter after she finished her two-month project of reading his final novel “Endymion” in 1880.
Until April of that year Disraeli was the head of the conservative Tory party and therefore in charge of defeating the liberal Whig party. And yet “the whole tone of ‘Endymion’ is distinctly Whiggish,” as Philip Guedalla wrote in his introduction to a 1926 edition of the book. The lead character is a Tory turned Whig, and many of the most sympathetic supporting characters are Whigs too. Perhaps this is because Disraeli was in a mellow mood. The narrative of “Endymion” begins in a moment in time, 1827, when Disraeli felt things were less bitter in politics:
“The darkest hour precedes the dawn, and a period of unusual stillness often, perhaps usually, heralds the social convulsion. At this moment the general tranquillity and even content were remarkable. In politics the Whigs were quite prepared to extend to [hardline Tory leader the Duke of Wellington] the same provisional confidence that had been accepted by [the more liberal Tory leader] Mr. Canning, and conciliation began to be an accepted phrase.”
To Disraeli, the social convulsion that was approaching was the battle that accompanied the Reform Act of 1832, which expanded the tiny electorate and attempted to fix the problem of "rotten boroughs," legislative districts that were absurdly drawn and dominated by aristocratic families. So bittersweetly nostalgic a look at that time is jarring from a contemporary perspective, for good reason: we usually regard the years before reform as the dark ages. But the view from Disraeli’s unique vantage is a fascinating one. The political observations in this entertaining and wistful novel may fail to coalesce into a roman à thèse like those of Disraeli's earlier political novels, which is disappointing, but “Endymion” is an under-read work of considerable wit even when it lacks the thematic focus of his prior novels.
In fact, though the book is approaching its 150th birthday, no one has examined the politics in this novel in quite enough detail. The book has never been annotated the way almost all of Disraeli’s other novels have. Without annotation, for non-Brits in particular, the book may be approachable only because the Internet has made it easy to look up the historical details. But with that tool at hand it's a fascinating and fun read.
The novel, set between 1827 and 1855, tells the story of Endymion Ferrars, who as the book begins is the small child of a Tory government official swimming in the London high society life. After the Reform Act is passed in 1832 and the Whigs take over, however, Endymion’s father is unable to climb back into government and they are forced to move miles out of London to a country area not yet serviced by the railroads. Ultimately, he commits suicide, and his wife dies of grief, leaving Endymion and his twin sister orphaned. The rest of the book relates Endymion’s climb from office boy to, in the final pages of the novel, Whig Prime Minister.
Through the story of Endymion’s family Disraeli tells of the so-called “great world” of English high society, which is in transition between domination by the aristocracy to domination by industry. Read what Disraeli has to say in the opening pages of the novel about that transition:
“The great world then, compared with the huge society of the present period, was limited in its proportions ... It consisted mainly of the great landed aristocracy, who had quite absorbed the nabobs of India, and had nearly appropriated the huge West Indian fortunes. Occasionally, an eminent banker or merchant invested a large portion of his accumulations in land, and in the purchase of parliamentary influence, and was in time duly admitted into the sanctuary. But those vast and successful invasions of society by new classes which have since occurred, though impending, had not yet commenced. The manufacturers, the railway kings, the colossal contractors, the discoverers of nuggets, had not yet found their place in society and the senate.”
Disraeli says with an almost audible sigh that the social world before the Reform Act was in some ways preferable because it was smaller but that they knew less of the poor, and the poor knew less of themselves:
“Conversation was more cultivated; manners, though unconstrained, were more stately; and the world, being limited, knew itself much better. On the other hand, the sympathies of society were more contracted than they are at present. The pressure of population had not opened the heart of man. The world attended to its poor in its country parishes … but their knowledge of the people did not exceed these bounds, and the people knew very little more about themselves. They were only half born.”
Such concern for the poor is less a major theme here than in Disraeli’s earlier novel “Sybil.” (Such as it was -- while it focused on the condition of the under-classes its thesis supporting a government run by young aristocrats hardly qualified as the most sensitive of all novels of its time.) But it does paint a rousing picture of multiple elements of British society at the time. The character list is made up of fictionalized and often satirical portraits of persons Disraeli knew: Louis Napoleon, William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Carlyle (the latter two of whom are combined in the brilliantly funny character of St. Barbe), Bismarck, the Rothschilds, and many others.
The characters in “Endymion” are not always Disraeli’s most fully sketched. The author never mentions the age of one character, Lady Montfort, until late in the book, and I know from reading reviews on Goodreads that I’m not the only reader to have been picturing a much older woman than Disraeli intended almost until she was the young Endymion’s romantic interest. Lady Monfort’s dry, sharp wit conjures Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell until suddenly, on page 315 of 511, she is described as young and beautiful: “Here were three women, young, beautiful and powerful, and all friends of Endymion.”
Women are important to this novel. Critics have rarely failed to notice the theme of women advancing the careers of men, and that’s not surprising given how often Disraeli’s characters ruminate about the qualities of “women” in general. Here is a smattering of examples:
“Everything in this world depends upon will,” Lady Monfort says.
“I think everything in this world depends upon women,” Endymion retorts.
“It is the same thing,” answers back Lady Monfort.
“I wish I had been a woman," says the cynical journalist St. Barbe. "Women are the only people who get on. A man works all his life, and thinks he has done a wonderful thing if, with one leg in the grave and no hair on his head, he manages to get a coronet; and a woman dances at a ball with some young fellow or other, or sits next to some old fellow at dinner and pretends she thinks him charming, and he makes her a peeress on the spot. Oh! it is a disgusting world; it must end in revolution.”
"I like fascinating women," says a prince, "but they are rare."
"Perhaps it is better it should be so," said Lady Roehampton, "for they are apt—are they not?—to disturb the world."
Occasionally the author and/or his characters mean to be complimentary but come off as condescending instead:
“I believe that women are loved much more for themselves than is supposed. Besides, a woman should be content if she is loved; that is the point; and she is not to inquire how far the accidents of life have contributed to the result. Why should you not be loved for yourself? You have an interesting appearance. I think you very pretty.”
“Endymion” marks the first time Disraeli inserts a fictional prime minister into his otherwise historical timeline of real prime ministers: at the end of the novel, Endymion takes over after the real-life Aberdeen government has fallen. Before Endymion, Disraeli’s mature novels (from “Coningsby” on) have always named the prime ministers by their real names and often commented sarcastically upon them. The only exception was Lothair, set during the years Disraeli himself was prime minister. In that novel he simply ignored the prime minister altogether, avoiding the unsightly egotism of depicting himself.
Was Disraeli in a Whiggish mood at the close of his life? (He died the year after the book was published.) It wouldn’t be the first time. John Vincent wrote that his first political novel, “Coningsby,” “while affecting to be anti-Whig … was in reality venomously anti-Tory.” It’s been speculated that Disraeli made Endymion a Whig because that party dominated politics during the period he chose to write about, so it’s impossible to write a rising Tory in that age. But this is unconvincing as Disraeli himself rose to prominence as a Tory during that time, and there’s no reason he could not have given Endymion an ascent to Tory power like his own.
When he answered Queen Victoria’s question — why make your hero a Whig of all things?— Disraeli offered no hint of a change of political mind. Stanley Weintraub’s Farewell Victoria! (2011) reveals that Disraeli returned the queen’s letter by writing that his lead character Endymion “was not intended for a hero any more than M. Gil Blas by LeSage.” Weintraub decodes this reference: “In Alain-Rene LeSage’s ‘Gil Blas’ (1715), the hero is a rather passive student pushed by circumstance into a series of adventures.” Endymion, Disraeli continued, was given “no imagination and very controlled passions: but he has great patience, perseverance, judgment and tact, which qualities, with good looks, have, before this, elevated men in your Majesty’s Councils."
"He is in fact rather a plodder," Disraeli concluded with a sneer, "and I thought quite good enough to be a Whig.”
Until April of that year Disraeli was the head of the conservative Tory party and therefore in charge of defeating the liberal Whig party. And yet “the whole tone of ‘Endymion’ is distinctly Whiggish,” as Philip Guedalla wrote in his introduction to a 1926 edition of the book. The lead character is a Tory turned Whig, and many of the most sympathetic supporting characters are Whigs too. Perhaps this is because Disraeli was in a mellow mood. The narrative of “Endymion” begins in a moment in time, 1827, when Disraeli felt things were less bitter in politics:
“The darkest hour precedes the dawn, and a period of unusual stillness often, perhaps usually, heralds the social convulsion. At this moment the general tranquillity and even content were remarkable. In politics the Whigs were quite prepared to extend to [hardline Tory leader the Duke of Wellington] the same provisional confidence that had been accepted by [the more liberal Tory leader] Mr. Canning, and conciliation began to be an accepted phrase.”
To Disraeli, the social convulsion that was approaching was the battle that accompanied the Reform Act of 1832, which expanded the tiny electorate and attempted to fix the problem of "rotten boroughs," legislative districts that were absurdly drawn and dominated by aristocratic families. So bittersweetly nostalgic a look at that time is jarring from a contemporary perspective, for good reason: we usually regard the years before reform as the dark ages. But the view from Disraeli’s unique vantage is a fascinating one. The political observations in this entertaining and wistful novel may fail to coalesce into a roman à thèse like those of Disraeli's earlier political novels, which is disappointing, but “Endymion” is an under-read work of considerable wit even when it lacks the thematic focus of his prior novels.
In fact, though the book is approaching its 150th birthday, no one has examined the politics in this novel in quite enough detail. The book has never been annotated the way almost all of Disraeli’s other novels have. Without annotation, for non-Brits in particular, the book may be approachable only because the Internet has made it easy to look up the historical details. But with that tool at hand it's a fascinating and fun read.
The novel, set between 1827 and 1855, tells the story of Endymion Ferrars, who as the book begins is the small child of a Tory government official swimming in the London high society life. After the Reform Act is passed in 1832 and the Whigs take over, however, Endymion’s father is unable to climb back into government and they are forced to move miles out of London to a country area not yet serviced by the railroads. Ultimately, he commits suicide, and his wife dies of grief, leaving Endymion and his twin sister orphaned. The rest of the book relates Endymion’s climb from office boy to, in the final pages of the novel, Whig Prime Minister.
Through the story of Endymion’s family Disraeli tells of the so-called “great world” of English high society, which is in transition between domination by the aristocracy to domination by industry. Read what Disraeli has to say in the opening pages of the novel about that transition:
“The great world then, compared with the huge society of the present period, was limited in its proportions ... It consisted mainly of the great landed aristocracy, who had quite absorbed the nabobs of India, and had nearly appropriated the huge West Indian fortunes. Occasionally, an eminent banker or merchant invested a large portion of his accumulations in land, and in the purchase of parliamentary influence, and was in time duly admitted into the sanctuary. But those vast and successful invasions of society by new classes which have since occurred, though impending, had not yet commenced. The manufacturers, the railway kings, the colossal contractors, the discoverers of nuggets, had not yet found their place in society and the senate.”
Disraeli says with an almost audible sigh that the social world before the Reform Act was in some ways preferable because it was smaller but that they knew less of the poor, and the poor knew less of themselves:
“Conversation was more cultivated; manners, though unconstrained, were more stately; and the world, being limited, knew itself much better. On the other hand, the sympathies of society were more contracted than they are at present. The pressure of population had not opened the heart of man. The world attended to its poor in its country parishes … but their knowledge of the people did not exceed these bounds, and the people knew very little more about themselves. They were only half born.”
Such concern for the poor is less a major theme here than in Disraeli’s earlier novel “Sybil.” (Such as it was -- while it focused on the condition of the under-classes its thesis supporting a government run by young aristocrats hardly qualified as the most sensitive of all novels of its time.) But it does paint a rousing picture of multiple elements of British society at the time. The character list is made up of fictionalized and often satirical portraits of persons Disraeli knew: Louis Napoleon, William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Carlyle (the latter two of whom are combined in the brilliantly funny character of St. Barbe), Bismarck, the Rothschilds, and many others.
The characters in “Endymion” are not always Disraeli’s most fully sketched. The author never mentions the age of one character, Lady Montfort, until late in the book, and I know from reading reviews on Goodreads that I’m not the only reader to have been picturing a much older woman than Disraeli intended almost until she was the young Endymion’s romantic interest. Lady Monfort’s dry, sharp wit conjures Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell until suddenly, on page 315 of 511, she is described as young and beautiful: “Here were three women, young, beautiful and powerful, and all friends of Endymion.”
Women are important to this novel. Critics have rarely failed to notice the theme of women advancing the careers of men, and that’s not surprising given how often Disraeli’s characters ruminate about the qualities of “women” in general. Here is a smattering of examples:
“Everything in this world depends upon will,” Lady Monfort says.
“I think everything in this world depends upon women,” Endymion retorts.
“It is the same thing,” answers back Lady Monfort.
“I wish I had been a woman," says the cynical journalist St. Barbe. "Women are the only people who get on. A man works all his life, and thinks he has done a wonderful thing if, with one leg in the grave and no hair on his head, he manages to get a coronet; and a woman dances at a ball with some young fellow or other, or sits next to some old fellow at dinner and pretends she thinks him charming, and he makes her a peeress on the spot. Oh! it is a disgusting world; it must end in revolution.”
"I like fascinating women," says a prince, "but they are rare."
"Perhaps it is better it should be so," said Lady Roehampton, "for they are apt—are they not?—to disturb the world."
Occasionally the author and/or his characters mean to be complimentary but come off as condescending instead:
“I believe that women are loved much more for themselves than is supposed. Besides, a woman should be content if she is loved; that is the point; and she is not to inquire how far the accidents of life have contributed to the result. Why should you not be loved for yourself? You have an interesting appearance. I think you very pretty.”
“Endymion” marks the first time Disraeli inserts a fictional prime minister into his otherwise historical timeline of real prime ministers: at the end of the novel, Endymion takes over after the real-life Aberdeen government has fallen. Before Endymion, Disraeli’s mature novels (from “Coningsby” on) have always named the prime ministers by their real names and often commented sarcastically upon them. The only exception was Lothair, set during the years Disraeli himself was prime minister. In that novel he simply ignored the prime minister altogether, avoiding the unsightly egotism of depicting himself.
Was Disraeli in a Whiggish mood at the close of his life? (He died the year after the book was published.) It wouldn’t be the first time. John Vincent wrote that his first political novel, “Coningsby,” “while affecting to be anti-Whig … was in reality venomously anti-Tory.” It’s been speculated that Disraeli made Endymion a Whig because that party dominated politics during the period he chose to write about, so it’s impossible to write a rising Tory in that age. But this is unconvincing as Disraeli himself rose to prominence as a Tory during that time, and there’s no reason he could not have given Endymion an ascent to Tory power like his own.
When he answered Queen Victoria’s question — why make your hero a Whig of all things?— Disraeli offered no hint of a change of political mind. Stanley Weintraub’s Farewell Victoria! (2011) reveals that Disraeli returned the queen’s letter by writing that his lead character Endymion “was not intended for a hero any more than M. Gil Blas by LeSage.” Weintraub decodes this reference: “In Alain-Rene LeSage’s ‘Gil Blas’ (1715), the hero is a rather passive student pushed by circumstance into a series of adventures.” Endymion, Disraeli continued, was given “no imagination and very controlled passions: but he has great patience, perseverance, judgment and tact, which qualities, with good looks, have, before this, elevated men in your Majesty’s Councils."
"He is in fact rather a plodder," Disraeli concluded with a sneer, "and I thought quite good enough to be a Whig.”
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