Mallinger, Sir Hugo

A genial baronet and M.P., who is on poor terms with his own nephew and and heir, Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt, and is much attached to his ward and reputed nephew, Daniel Deronda. "Sir Hugo was an easytempered man, tolerant both of differences and defects; but a point of view different from his own concerning the settlement of the family estates fretted him rather more than if it had concerned Church discipline, or the ballot, and faults were the less venial for belonging to a person whose existence was inconvenient to him. In no case could Grandcourt have been a nephew after his own heart; but as the presumptive heir to the Mallinger estates he was the sign and embodiment of a chief grievance in the baronet's life—the want of a son to inherit the lands." "Hardly any man could be more good-natured than Sir Hugo ; indeed, in his kindliness, especially to women, he did actions which others would have called romantic ; but he never took a romantic view of them, and in general smiled at the introduction of motives on a grand scale, or of reasons that lay very far off." In his youth he had been deeply in love with a beautiful prima donna, the Italian Jewess, Alcharisi, and at her request, after her husband's death, had taken charge of her young son, Daniel Deronda, to bring him up in England, as an Englishman and in ignorance of his race. When he marries, he has only daughters, and so gradually gives to his ward the affection that he would have given a son, ignorant of the fact that the secrecy maintained about his parentage has made Daniel believe that he is Sir Hugo's illegitimate son. He wishes Daniel to enter English public life, and when the latter, after his parentage and race are revealed to him, by his unknown mother, elects to call himself a Jew and work for his race, Sir Hugo is disappointed but is too genuinely attached to Daniel to oppose him.

<em>Daniel Deronda</em>

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