'Contarini Fleming'--The Poetical Life--Paternal advice--A Poet, or not
a Poet?--'Revolutionary Epic'--Unfavourable verdict--Success of the
Novels--Disraeli a new Star--London Society--Political ambition--Mrs.
Wyndham Lewis--Financial embarrassments--Portraits of Disraeli by N.
P. Willis--Lady Dufferin and others--Stands for High Wycombe--Speech
at the Red Lion--Tory Radicalism--Friendship with Lord
Lyndhurst--Self-confidence--Vindication of the British
Constitution--Conservative Reaction--Taunton Election--Crosses swords
with O'Connell--The Runnymede Letters---Admitted into the Carlton
Club--'Henrietta Temple' and 'Venetia.'
[Sidenote: CHOICE OF A PROFESSION]
The law had not been finally abandoned--perhaps in deference to Isaac
Disraeli's continued anxiety on the subject. Schemes and projects,
however, which had shaped themselves in Disraeli's own mind during his
travels had to be executed first. He brought home with him a brain
restored to energy, though with saddened spirits. There was the
'Revolutionary Epic' to be written, and an Eastern story which was
brought out afterwards as the tale of 'Alroy.' Before undertaking either
of them, however, he drew a second portrait of himself in 'Contarini
Fleming.' Vivian Grey was a clever, independent youth, with the world
before him, with no purpose save to make himself conspicuous. Disraeli
now hoped to be a poet, and in 'Contarini' his aim, he said, was to
trace the development and function of the poetic character. The
flippancy of 'Vivian' is gone. The tone is calm, tender, and at times
morbid. The hero is taken through a series of adventures. He tries
politics, but politics do not interest him. He falls in love. The lady
of his affections dies and leaves him in despair. Contarini revives to
find a desire, and perhaps a capacity--for he cannot be confident that
he is not deceiving himself--to become the poet which Disraeli was then
aspiring to make himself. The outward characteristics of that character
could at least be assumed. Contarini becomes a wanderer like Byron, and
visits the same scenes from which Disraeli had just returned. The book
contains passages of striking beauty, so striking that Goethe sent
praises and compliments, and Milman, who reviewed it, said it was a work
in no way inferior to 'Childe Harold,' and equally calculated to arrest
public attention. Yet the story ends in nothing. The river loses itself
in the sands. Contarini is but Disraeli himself in the sick period of
undetermined energies. He meditates on the great problems of life, and
arrives at the conclusions adopted almost universally by intellectual
men before they have learnt to strike out their course and to control
circumstances and their own nature.
'I believe in that destiny before which the ancients bowed. Modern
philosophy has infused into the breast of man a spirit of scepticism,
but I think that ere long science will become again imaginative, and
that as we become more profound we may also become more credulous.
Destiny is our will, and our will is nature. The son who inherits the
organisation of the father will be doomed to the same fortunes as his
sire, and again the mysterious matter in which his ancestors were
moulded may in other forms, by a necessary attraction, act upon his
fate. All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to
penetrate the mystery.'
Such passages as this were not ominous of much success in the high
functions to which Contarini was aspiring. Much more interesting,
because more natural, is a dialogue which was probably an exact
reproduction of a conversation between Disraeli and his father. The
father of Contarini entirely objects to his son's proposed destination
of himself.
'A poet!' exclaims the old man. 'What were the great poets in their
lifetime? The most miserable of their species--depressed, doubtful,
obscure, or involved in petty quarrels and petty persecutions; often
unappreciated, utterly uninfluential, beggars, flatterers of men,
unworthy even of their recognition. What a train of disgustful
incidents! what a record of degrading circumstances is the life of a
great poet! A man of great energies aspires that they should be felt in
his lifetime; that his existence should be rendered more intensely vital
by the constant consciousness of his multiplied and multiplying powers.
Is posthumous fame a substitute for all this? Try the greatest by this
test, and what is the result? Would you rather have been Homer or Julius
Cæsar, Shakespeare or Napoleon? No one doubts. We are active beings, and
our sympathy, above all other sympathies, is with great actions.
Remember that all this time I am taking for granted you may be a Homer.
Let us now recollect that it is perhaps the most impossible incident
that can occur. The high poetic talent, as if to prove that the poet is
only at the best a wild, although beautiful, error of nature, is the
rarest in creation. What you have felt is what I have felt myself. Mix
in society and I will answer for it that you lose your poetic feeling;
for in you, as in the great majority, it is not a matter of faculty
originating in a peculiar organisation, but simply the consequence of
nervous susceptibility that is common to us all.'
Contarini admits the truth of what his father said, but answers that his
ambition is great, as if he must find some means to satisfy it. He did
not think he would find life tolerable unless he was in an eminent
position, and was conscious that he deserved it. Fame, and not
posthumous fame, was necessary to his felicity. Such a feeling might
lead to exertion, and on some roads might lead to success; but poetry is
a jealous mistress and must be pursued for her own sake if her favours
are ever to be won. Disraeli would not part with his hope till the
experiment had been tried. He destroyed a tragedy which he had already
composed; but he was better satisfied with his 'Revolutionary Epic.'
Three cantos were written, and fifty copies were printed. These he
resolved to submit to the judgment of his friends. If the verdict was
unfavourable he would burn his lyre.
[Sidenote: THE REVOLUTIONARY EPIC]
The recitation was at a party at Mrs. Austen's, and a scene is thus
described which 'was never to be forgotten' by those who witnessed it.
'There was something irresistibly comic in the young man dressed in the
fantastic coxcombical costume that he then affected--velvet coat thrown
wide open, ruffles on the sleeves, shirt collars turned down in Byronic
fashion, an elaborate embroidered waistcoat from which issued voluminous
folds of frill, shoes adorned with red rosettes, his black hair
pomatumed and elaborately curled, and his person redolent with perfume.
Standing with his back to the fire, he explained the purpose of his
poem. It was to be to the revolutionary age what the 'Iliad,' the
'Æneid,' and 'Paradise Lost' had been to their respective epochs. He
had imagined the genius of feudalism and the genius of federation
appearing before the almightly throne and pleading their respective and
antagonistic causes.'[1]
With this prelude he recited his first canto. It was not without
passages sonorous and even grand, but the subject itself was hopeless.
Disraeli had not yet discerned that modern revolution had nothing grand
about it, that it was merely the resolution of society into its
component atoms, that centuries would have to pass before any new
arrangement possessing worth or dignity would rise out of the ruin. The
audience was favourably disposed, but when the poet left the room a
gentleman present declaimed an impromptu burlesque of the opening lines,
which caused infinite merriment to those present. Disraeli said
afterwards of himself that in his life he had tried many things, and
though he had at first failed he succeeded at last. This was true; but
poetry was not one of these many things. He was wise enough to accept
the unfavourable verdict, and to recognise that, although his ambition
was feverish as ever, on this road there were no triumphs before him.
The dream that he could become a great poet was broken.
[Sidenote: POLITICAL AMBITION]
His prose writings deserved better and fared better. 'Contarini Fleming'
and the tale of 'Alroy' were well received. Milman, as was said above,
compared 'Contarini' to 'Childe Harold.' Beckford found 'Alroy' wildly
original, full of intense thought, awakening, delightful. Both these
eminent critics were too lavish of their praise, but they expressed the
general opinion. The fame of 'Vivian Grey' was revived. The literary
world acknowledged that a new star had appeared, and Disraeli became a
London lion. The saloons of the great were thrown open to him. Bulwer he
knew already. At Bulwer's house he was introduced to Count d'Orsay,
Lady Morgan, Mrs. Norton, Mrs. Gore, and other notabilities. Lady
Blessington welcomed him at Kensington. Flying higher he made
acquaintance with Lord Mulgrave, Lord William Lennox, and Tom Moore. He
frequented the fashionable smoking-rooms, sporting his Eastern
acquirements. A distinguished colonel, supposing that he meant to push
his good fortune, gave him a friendly warning. 'Take care, my good
fellow. I lost the most beautiful woman in the world by smoking; it has
prevented more liaisons than the dread of a duel or Doctors' Commons.'
'You have proved it a very moral habit,' replied Disraeli. His ambition
did not run in the line which the colonel suspected. Success as a
novelist might gratify vanity, but could never meet Disraeli's
aspirations. He met public men, and studied the ways of them, dimly
feeling that theirs was the sphere where he could best distinguish
himself. At a dinner at Lord Eliot's he sat next to Peel. 'Peel most
gracious,' he reported to his sister next day.[2] 'He is a very great
man indeed, and they all seem afraid of him. I observed that he attacked
his turbot almost entirely with his knife. I could conceive that he
could be very disagreeable; but yesterday he was in a most condescending
humour, and unbent with becoming haughtiness. I reminded him by my
dignified familiarity both that he was an ex-Minister and I a present
Radical.' He went to the gallery of the House of Commons, 'heard
Macaulay's best speech, Shiel, and Charles Grant. Macaulay admirable,
but between ourselves I could floor them all. This _entre nous_. I was
never more confident of anything than that I could carry everything
before me in that House.' In that House, perhaps. He knew that he had a
devil of a tongue, that he was clever, ready, without fear, and, however
vain, without the foolish form of vanity which is called modesty. He had
studied politics all his life, and having no interests at stake with
either of the great parties, and, as being half a foreigner, lying
outside them both, he could take a position of his own. In that House;
but, again, how was he to get there? Young men of genius may be invited
to dinners in the great world, but seats in Parliament will be only
found for them if they will put on harness and be docile in the shafts.
Disraeli had shown no qualities which promised official usefulness; he
called himself a Radical, but he was a Radical in his own sense of the
word. He did not talk democratic platitudes, and insisted that if he
entered Parliament he would enter it independent of party ties.
Notoriety as a novelist even in these more advanced days is no
recommendation to a constituency, unless backed by money or connection,
and of these Disraeli had none.
One chance only seemed to offer. There was a possibility of a vacancy at
High Wycombe, close to his father's house. There he was personally
known, and there, if the opportunity were offered, he intended to try.
Meantime he extended his London acquaintance, and one friend he acquired
the importance of whom to his future career he little dreamt of. He was
introduced by Lytton Bulwer, 'at particular desire,' to Mrs. Wyndham
Lewis, 'a pretty little woman,' he says, 'a flirt and a rattle--indeed,
gifted with a volubility, I should think, unequalled. She told me she
liked silent, melancholy men. I answered that I had no doubt of it.'
[Sidenote: DISRAELI IN SOCIETY]
The intimacy with Mrs. Wyndham Lewis was matured, and was extended to
her husband, a gentleman of large fortune and member for Maidstone.
Meantime his chief associates in London were the set who gathered about
Lady Blessington, young men of fashion and questionable reputation, who
were useful to him perhaps as 'studies' for his novels, but otherwise of
a value to him less than zero. Although he never raced, never gambled,
or gave way to any kind of dissipation, his habits of life were
expensive, and his books, though they sold well, brought him money in
insufficient quantity. His fashionable impecunious friends who wanted
loans induced him to introduce them to men in the City who knew him, or
who knew his connections. These persons were ready to make advances if
Disraeli would give his own name as an additional security. The bills,
when due, were not paid. Disraeli had to borrow for himself to meet
them,[3] and to borrow afterwards on his own account. When he was once
involved the second step was easy, and this was the beginning of
difficulties which at one time brought him to the edge of ruin. He was
careless, however, careless in such matters even to the end of his life.
His extraordinary confidence in his own powers never allowed him to
doubt.
Several sketches of him have been preserved as he appeared in these
years in the London world. N. P. Willis, the American, met him at a
party at Lady Blessington's.
'He was sitting in a window looking on Hyde Park, the last rays of
sunlight reflected from the gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly
embroidered waistcoat. Patent leather pumps, a white stick with a black
cord and tassel, and a quantity of chains about his neck and pockets,
served to make him a conspicuous object. He has one of the most
remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the energy
of his action and the strength of his lungs would seem to be a victim of
consumption. His eye is black as Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying
in wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind
of working and impatient nervousness; and when he has burst forth, as he
does constantly, with a particularly successful cataract of expression,
it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of
Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats.
A thick, heavy mass of jet black ringlets falls on his left cheek almost
to his collarless stock, which on the right temple is parted and put
away with the smooth carefulness of a girl. The conversation turned on
Beckford. I might as well attempt to gather up the foam of the sea as to
convey an idea of the extraordinary language in which he clothed his
description. He talked like a racehorse approaching the winning post,
every muscle in action.'
His dress was purposed affectation. It led the listener to look for only
folly from him, and when a brilliant flash broke out it was the more
startling as being so utterly unlooked for from such a figure. Perhaps
he overacted his extravagance. Lady Dufferin told Mr. Motley that when
she first met him at a dinner party he wore a black velvet coat lined
with satin, purple trousers with a gold band running down the outside
seam, a scarlet waistcoat, long lace ruffles falling down to the tips of
his fingers, white gloves with several brilliant rings outside them, and
long black ringlets rippling down upon his shoulders. She told him that
he made a fool of himself by appearing in such fantastic shape, never
guessing for what reason it had been adopted.
Here is another picture from Mr. Madden's memoirs of Lady
Blessington:--'I frequently met Disraeli at her house. Though in general
society he was usually silent and reserved, he was closely observant. It
required generally a subject of more than common interest to animate
and stimulate him into the exercise of his marvellous powers of
conversation. When duly excited, however, his command of language was
truly wonderful, his powers of sarcasm unsurpassed. The readiness of his
wit, the quickness of his perception, the grasp of his mind, that
enabled him to seize all the points of any subject under discussion,
persons would only call in question who had never been in his company at
the period I refer to.'
[Sidenote: HIGH WYCOMBE]
Such was Disraeli when, in the summer of 1832, he offered himself as a
candidate to the electors of High Wycombe. The expected vacancy had
occurred. It was the last election under the unreformed constituency.
The voters were only some forty or fifty in number. One seat in the
borough had been a family property of the Whig Carringtons; the other
was under the influence of Sir Thomas Baring, whose interest went with
the Government. Disraeli started as a Radical. He desired generally to
go into Parliament as a profession, as other men go to the Bar, to make
his way to consequence and to fortune. But he did not mean to take any
brief which might be offered him. He was infected to some extent by the
general Reform enthusiasm. Lord Grey's measure had taken half their
power from the aristocracy and the landed interest, and had given it to
the middle classes. There the Whigs desired to stop and to put off the
hungry multitude (who expected to be better clothed and fed and housed)
with flash notes on the Bank of Liberty. Ardent young men of ability
had small belief in the virtues of the middle classes. They were
thinking of a Reform which was to make an end of injustice and misery, a
remodelling of the world. Carlyle, in the Dumfriesshire Highlands,
caught the infection, and believed for a time in the coming of a new
era. Disraeli conceived that 'Toryism was worn out, and he could not
condescend to be a Whig.' He started against the Carringtons on the line
of the enthusiasts, advocating the ballot and triennial Parliaments. For
cant of all kinds he had the natural hatred which belongs to real
ability. The rights of man to what was called liberty he never meddled
with. He desired practical results. His dislike of the Whigs recommended
him to their enemies, and half his friends in the borough were Tories.
The local newspapers supported him as an independent. But help was
welcome from any quarter but the Whigs. Bulwer, who worked hard for him,
procured commendatory letters from O'Connell, Burdett, and Hume, and
these letters were placarded ostentatiously in the Wycombe market-place.
The Government was in alarm for Sir T. Baring's seat; Colonel Grey, Lord
Grey's son, was brought down as their candidate. Isaac Disraeli seems to
have stood aloof and to have left his son to his own resources. Disraeli
himself did not mean to lose for want of displaying himself. He drove
into Wycombe in an open carriage and four, dressed with his usual
extravagance--laced shirt, coat with pink lining, and the morning cane
which had so impressed the Gibraltar subalterns. Colonel Grey had
arrived on his first visit to the borough, and Disraeli seized the
opportunity of his appearance for an impromptu address. 'All Wycombe was
assembled,' he wrote, describing the scene. 'Feeling it was the crisis,
I jumped upon the portico of the 'Red Lion' and gave it them for an hour
and a quarter. I can give you no idea of the effect. I made them all
mad. A great many absolutely cried. I never made so many friends in my
life, and converted so many enemies. All the women are on my side, and
wear my colours--pink and white.' Colonel Grey told Bulwer that he never
heard a finer command of words. Wycombe was prouder than ever of its
brilliant neighbour; but of course he failed. Hume had shaken the
Radicals by withdrawing his support before the election; Government
influence and the Carringtons did the rest. Disraeli, however, had made
a beginning and never let himself be disheartened.
This election was in June. On August 16 Parliament was dissolved, and he
offered himself a second time to the new constituency. He invited them,
in his address, to have done with 'political jargon,' to 'make an end of
the factious slang of Whig and Tory, two names with one meaning, and
only to delude the people,' and to 'unite in forming a great national
party.' 'I come before you,' he said, 'to oppose this disgusting system
of factions; I come forward wearing the badge of no party and the livery
of no faction. I seek your suffrages as an independent neighbour.... I
will withhold my support from every Ministry which will not originate
some great measure to ameliorate the condition of the lower orders.'
This too was not to serve him. Party government may be theoretically
absurd when the rivalry is extended from measures to men. When the
functions of an Opposition are not merely to resist what it disapproves,
but to dethrone the other side, that they may step into its place, we
have a civil war in the midst of us, and a civil war which can never end
because the strength of the combatants is periodically renewed at the
hustings. Lord Lyndhurst and the Duke of Wellington were by this time
interested in Disraeli.
'The Duke and the Chancellor are besetting old Carrington in my favour,'
he wrote. 'They say he must yield. I am not sanguine, but was
recommended to issue the address. The Duke wrote a strong letter to the
chairman of the election committee, saying if Wycombe was not ensured
something else must be done for Disraeli, as a man of his acquirements
and reputation must not be thrown away. L. showed me the letter, but it
is impossible to say how things will go. It is impossible for anyone to
be warmer than the Duke or Lyndhurst, and I ought to say the same of
Chandos.'
The Carrington family would not yield; Disraeli was defeated again, and
it became clear that he must look elsewhere than to Wycombe. More than
one seat might have been secured for him if he would have committed
himself to a side, but he still insisted that if he entered Parliament
he would enter it unfettered by pledges. There was an expected chance at
Marylebone. When he proposed himself as a candidate he was asked on what
he intended to stand. 'On my head,' he answered. Lyndhurst wished him to
stand at Lynn as a friend of Lord Chandos. Lord Durham offered to return
him as a Radical. 'He must be a mighty independent personage,' observed
Charles Greville, when he persisted in the same reply. He realised by
degrees that he was making himself impossible, but he would not yield
without a further effort. There was curiosity about him, which he
perhaps overrated, for he published a pamphlet as a self-advertisement,
with the title 'What is He?' of the same ambitiously neutral tint. His
object now was to make himself notorious, and the pamphlet, he said,
'was as much a favourite with the Tories as with the Rads.'
[Sidenote: O'CONNELL AND THE WHIGS]
In society he was everywhere, dining with Lyndhurst, dining with
O'Connell, or at least invited to dine with him, at fêtes and water
parties, at balls and suppers. D'Orsay painted his picture. The world
would have spoilt him with vanity if his self-confidence had not been
already so great that it would admit of no increase. His debts were
growing. He had again borrowed for his election expenses. It was hinted
to him that he might mend his fortune by marriage. 'Would you like Lady
---- for a sister-in-law?' he says in a letter to Miss Disraeli. 'Very
clever, 25,000_l._, and domestic.' 'As for love,' he added, 'all my
friends who married for love and beauty either beat their wives or live
apart from them. This is literally the case. I may commit many follies
in life, but I never intend to marry for love, which I am sure is a
guarantee for infelicity.'
Whatever might be his faults he was no paltry fortune-hunter. He
trusted to himself, and only himself. He did not sit down upon his
disappointments. The press at any rate was open to him. He wrote
incessantly, 'passing days in constant composition.' In the season he
was always in London; in the winter either at Bradenham or at some quiet
place by himself, riding for health and 'living solely on snipes.'
Determined to be distinguished, he even made a show, and not a bad one,
in the hunting field. Writing from Southend in 1834, he says, 'Hunted
the other day with Sir H. Smythe's hounds, and though not in pink was
the best mounted man in the field, riding an Arabian mare, which I
nearly killed--a run of thirty miles, and I stopped at nothing.'
It was as a politician that he was desiring to keep himself before
men's eyes, if not in Parliament yet as a political writer; his pen was
busy with a 'Vindication of the British Constitution,' but he meant also
to be known for the manly qualities which Englishmen respect.
Public events meantime hastened on. In England after each rush in the
direction of Liberalism there is always a reaction. Within two years of
the passing of the Reform Bill Lord Grey and his friends had disgusted
the Radicals in Parliament. The working men, finding that they had been
fed with chaff instead of corn, had turned to Chartism. The Tories
closed up their broken ranks. The king dismissed the Ministers, and sent
to Rome for Peel to take the helm. The step itself may have been
premature; but Sir Robert was able to take a commanding position before
the country, and form a party strong enough to hold the Whigs in check
if too weak to prevent their returning to office. Disraeli, though he
never much liked Peel, had found by this time that there was no place in
Parliament for a man who had a position to make for himself, unless he
joined one party or the other. He swallowed his pride, probably on the
advice of Lyndhurst, with whom he was now on intimate terms. The cant of
Radicalism was distasteful to him. The Whigs were odious. He made up his
mind to enlist under Peel. In the spring of 1835 Lord Melbourne came
back in alliance with O'Connell, while the world was ringing with the
Rathcormack massacre. Thirteen lives had been lost, and 'something was
to be done' for the pacification of Ireland. 'O'Connell is so powerful,'
wrote Disraeli, 'that he says he will be in the Cabinet. How can the
Whigs submit to this? It is the Irish Catholic party that has done all
this mischief.' O'Connell was not taken into the Cabinet, but under the
new arrangement would be more powerful than if restrained by office.
Disraeli, who had shown in 'Popanilla' what he thought about the English
administration of that unfortunate island, had said openly that large
changes were needed there, but it was another thing to truckle to
anarchy and threats of rebellion.
[Sidenote: SPEECH AT TAUNTON]
Mr. Labouchere, the member for Taunton, was in the new Ministry. Custom
required that he should resign his seat and be re-elected. Disraeli,
supported by the Carlton Club, went down to oppose him in the Tory
interest. He was late in the field. He soon saw that for the present
occasion at least he must again fail; but he found supporters enough to
make it worth his while to fight and keep himself conspicuous. 'As to
Taunton itself,' he wrote in the heat of the conflict,[4] 'the
enthusiasm of Wycombe is a miniature to it, and I believe in point of
energy, eloquence, and effect I have far exceeded my former efforts.' He
was beaten, though two-thirds of the electors promised him their votes
on the next opportunity. The Taunton election went by, and would have
been forgotten like a thousand others but for an incident which grew out
of it. Disraeli desired notoriety, and notoriety he was to have. The
Irish alliance was not popular in England. Irish alliances never are
popular when the meaning of them is to purchase the support of a
disloyal faction, to turn the scale in a struggle for power between
English parties. Such an alliance had been last tried by Strafford and
Charles I., with unpleasant consequences both to them and to Ireland.
Now the Whigs were trying the same game--the Whigs, who were the heirs
of the Long Parliament. The combination of English Liberals and Irish
Papists was in itself a monstrous anomaly. Disraeli had no personal
dislike of O'Connell, and had been grateful for his support at Wycombe;
but he was now retained on the Tory side, and he used the weapons which
were readiest to his hand. In one of the speeches which he thought so
successful he had called O'Connell an incendiary, and spoke of the Whigs
as 'grasping his bloody hand.' The Protestant Somersetshire yeomen
no doubt cheered him to his heart's content. The speech, being
exceptionally smart, was reported at length and fell under O'Connell's
eyes. O'Connell was good-natured, but he knew Disraeli only as a young
politician whom he had asked to dinner and had endeavoured to serve.
Disraeli had gone out of his way to call him bad names, he might well
have thought ungraciously and ungratefully. He was himself the
unrivalled master of personal abuse. He saw an opening for a bitter
joke, and very naturally used it. At a public meeting in Dublin he
mentioned the part which he had taken at Wycombe; he had been repaid, he
said, by an atrocity of the foulest description.
'The miscreant had the audacity to style me an incendiary. I was a
greater incendiary in 1831 than I am at present, if ever I was one, and
he is doubly so for having employed me. He calls me a traitor; my answer
to this is, he is a liar. His life is a living lie. He is the most
degraded of his species and kind, and England is degraded in tolerating
and having on the face of her society a miscreant of his abominable,
foul, and atrocious nature. His name shows that he is by descent a Jew.
They were once the chosen people of God. There were miscreants amongst
them, however, also, and it must certainly have been from one of those
that Disraeli descended. He possesses just the qualities of the
impenitent thief that died upon the cross, whose name I verily believe
must have been Disraeli. For aught I know the present Disraeli is
descended from him, and with the impression that he is I now forgive the
heir at law of the blasphemous thief that died upon the cross.'
[Sidenote: O'CONNELL AND DISRAELI]
All the world shouted with laughter. The hit was good, and the
provocation, it was generally felt, had been on Disraeli's side. But
there are limits to license of tongue even in political recrimination,
and it was felt also that O'Connell had transgressed those limits. An
insult so keen and bitter could be met in one way only. Disraeli had
already been spattered by the mud which flies so freely in English
political contests. He had found that 'the only way to secure future
ease was to take up a proper position early in life, and to show that he
would not be insulted with impunity.' He put himself into the hands of
Count d'Orsay. D'Orsay considered that a foreigner should not interfere
in a political duel, and found Disraeli another friend; but he undertook
himself the management of the affair. O'Connell having once killed an
antagonist on an occasion of this kind, had 'registered a vow in heaven'
that he would never fight again. But Morgan O'Connell had recently
fought Lord Alvanley in his father's behalf, and was now invited to
answer for the Dublin speech. If he was to meet every person who had
suffered from his father's tongue his life would have been a short one.
He replied that he had fought Lord Alvanley because Lord Alvanley had
insulted his father; he was not accountable for what his father might
say of other people. Disraeli undertook to obviate this difficulty. He
addressed O'Connell in a letter published in the 'Times,' which, if less
pungent, at least met Morgan O'Connell's objection. 'Although,' he said,
'you have placed yourself out of the pale of civilisation I am one who
will not be insulted even by a yahoo without chastising it.... I admire
your scurrilous allusion to my origin; it is clear the hereditary
bondsman has already forgotten the clank of his fetters.... I had
nothing to appeal to but the good sense of the people. No threatening
skeleton canvassed for me. A death's-head and cross-bones were not
blazoned on my banners; my pecuniary resources too were limited. I am
not one of those public beggars that we see swarming with their
obtrusive boxes in the chapels of your creed, nor am I in possession of
a princely revenue from a starving race of fanatical slaves.'
He expected, he said in conclusion, to be a representative of the people
before the repeal of the Union. 'We shall meet at Philippi.'
Disraeli waited at home till the night of the day on which the letter
appeared for the effect of his missive. No notice being taken of it, 'he
dressed and went to the opera.' When Peel had challenged O'Connell some
years before, the police interfered; on this occasion the same thing had
happened. 'As I was lying in bed this morning,' Disraeli wrote on May 9
to his sister, 'the police officers from Marylebone rushed into my
chamber and took me into custody. I am now bound to keep the peace in
500_l._ sureties--a most unnecessary precaution, as if all the
O'Connells were to challenge me I could not think of meeting them now.
The general effect is the thing, and that is that all men agree I have
shown pluck.'
[Sidenote: NOVELS AND SPEECHES]
If Disraeli gained nothing by this encounter he at least lost nothing.
He was more than ever talked about, and he had won approval from a high
authority at any rate. 'You have no idea,' said Lord Strangford to him,
'of the sensation produced at Strathfieldsaye. The Duke said at dinner
it was the most manly thing done yet.' On one side only his outlook was
unfavourable. The Taunton election had been a fresh expense. He had
again to borrow, and his creditors became pressing. Judgments were out
against him for more debts than he could meet. About this time--the date
cannot be fixed exactly, but the fact is certain--a sheriff's officer
appeared at Wycombe on the way to Bradenham to arrest him. Dr. Rose,[5]
a medical man in the town, heard of the arrival, and sent on an express
with a warning 'to hide Ben in the well.' Affairs were again
smoothed over for the moment. 'Ben,' undaunted as ever, worked on
upon his own lines. He completed his 'Vindication of the British
Constitution'--vindication rather of Democratic Toryism--amidst the
harassing of duns. It was dedicated to Lyndhurst, and Lyndhurst paid him
a visit at his father's house. He had a smart quarrel with the 'Globe'
over a revival of the O'Connell business. In the spring of 1836 appeared
the Runnymede letters in the 'Times,' philippics against the Whig
leaders after the manner of Junius. He was elected at the Carlton Club,
to his great satisfaction, and when the newspapers abused him he quoted
a saying of Swift, 'that the appearance of a man of genius in the world
may be always known by the virulence of dunces.' To assist his finances
a proposal was made to him 'to edit the "Arabian Nights" with notes and
an additional tale by the author of "Vivian Grey."' He described it as
'a job which would not take up more than a month of his time' and by
which he might make 'twelve or fifteen hundred pounds.' Happily for his
literary reputation this adventure was not prosecuted. Some one in the
City introduced him to a speculation connected with a Dutch loan, which
took him twice to the Hague and taught him the mysteries of finance.
More legitimately in the midst of embarrassments and platform speeches
he wrote 'Henrietta Temple' and 'Venetia,' the first a pretty love-story
which offered no opportunities for his peculiar gifts, the second an
attempt to exhibit in a novel the characters of Byron and Shelley. They
would have made a reputation for an ordinary writer. They sustained the
public interest in Disraeli. Of his speeches there was one at Wycombe in
which he said that there would be no tranquillity in Ireland 'till the
Irish people enjoyed the right to which the people of all countries were
entitled, to be maintained by the soil which they cultivated with their
labour.' In another there is a prophetic passage. 'I cannot force from
my mind the conviction that a House of Commons concentrating in itself
the whole powers of the State might--I should say would--constitute a
despotism of the most formidable and dangerous description.' A third was
the celebrated Ducrow speech--the Whig Premier as Ducrow first riding
six horses at once, and as they foundered one by one left at last riding
a jackass, which showed what Disraeli could do as a mob orator when he
chose to condescend to it.
Bulwer said of one of these speeches that it was the finest in the
world, and of one of the novels that it was the very worst. The
criticism was smartly worded, and on both sides exaggerated; but it was
true that, if Disraeli had been undistinguished as a speaker, his early
novels would have been as the 'flowers of the field,' charming for the
day that was passing over them and then forgotten. His political
apprenticeship was at last over; the object of his ambition, the so
deeply coveted seat in the House of Commons, was within his reach, and
he was to pass into his proper sphere--to pass into it too while still
young, for after all that he had done and experienced he was still only
thirty-three. Few men, with the odds so heavy against them, had risen so
high in so short a time.