His Novels.
To the general his novels must always be a kind of caviare; for they have
no analogue in letters, but are the output of a mind and temper of
singular originality. To the honest Tory, sworn to admire and unable to
comprehend, they must seem inexplicable as abnormal. To the professional
Radical they are so many proofs of innate inferiority: for they are full
of pretentiousness and affectation; they teem with examples of all manner
of vices, from false English to an immoral delight in dukes; they prove
their maker a trickster and a charlatan in every page. To them, however,
whose first care is for rare work, the series of novels that began with
_Vivian Grey_ and ended with _Endymion_ is one of the pleasant facts in
modern letters. These books abound in wit and daring, in originality and
shrewdness, in knowledge of the world and in knowledge of men; they
contain many vivid and striking studies of character, both portrait and
caricature; they sparkle with speaking phrases and happy epithets; they
are aglow with the passion of youth, the love of love, the worship of
physical beauty, the admiration of whatever is costly and select and
splendid--from a countess to a castle, from a duke to a diamond; they are
radiant with delight in whatever is powerful or personal or
attractive--from a cook to a cardinal, from an agitator to an emperor.
They often remind you of Voltaire, often of Balzac, often of _The Arabian
Nights_. You pass from an heroic drinking bout to a brilliant criticism
of style; from rhapsodies on bands and ortolans that remind you of Heine
to a gambling scene that for directness and intensity may vie with the
bluntest and strongest work of Prosper Merimee; from the extravagant
impudence of _Popanilla_ to the sentimental rodomontade of _Henrietta
Temple_; from ranting romanticism in _Alroy_ to vivid realism in _Sybil_.
Their author gives you no time to weary of him, for he is worldly and
passionate, fantastic and trenchant, cynical and ambitious, flippant and
sentimental, ornately rhetorical and triumphantly simple in a breath. He
is imperiously egoistic, but while constantly parading his own
personality he is careful never to tell you anything about it. And
withal he is imperturbably good-tempered: he brands and gibbets with a
smile, and with a smile he adores and applauds. Intellectually he is in
sympathy with character of every sort; he writes as becomes an artist who
has recognised that 'the conduct of men depends upon the temperament, not
upon a bunch of musty maxims,' and that 'there is a great deal of vice
that is really sheer inadvertence.' It is said that the Monmouth of
_Coningsby_ and the Steyne of _Vanity Fair_ are painted from one and the
same original; and you have but to compare the savage realism of
Thackeray's study to the scornful amenity of the other's--as you have but
to contrast the elaborate and extravagant cruelty of Thackeray's Alcide
de Mirobolant with the polite and half-respectful irony of Disraeli's
treatment of the cooks in _Tancred_--to perceive that in certain ways the
advantage is not with 'the greatest novelist of his time,' and that the
Monmouth produces an impression which is more moral because more kindly
and humane than the impression left by the Steyne, while in its way it is
every whit as vivid and as convincing. Yet another excellence, and a
great one, is his mastery of apt and forcible dialogue. The talk of Mr.
Henry James's personages is charmingly equable and appropriate, but it is
also trivial and tame; the talk in Anthony Trollope is surprisingly
natural and abundant, but it is also commonplace and immemorable; the
talk of Mr. George Meredith is always eloquent and fanciful, but the
eloquence is too often dark and the fancy too commonly inhuman. What
Disraeli's people have to say is not always original nor profound, but it
is crisply and happily phrased and uttered, it reads well, its impression
seldom fails of permanency. His _Wit and Wisdom_ is a kind of _Talker's
Guide_ or _Handbook of Conversation_. How should it be otherwise, seeing
that it contains the characteristic utterances of a great artist in life
renowned for memorable speech?
A Contrast.
Now, if you ask a worshipper of him that was so long his rival, to repeat
a saying, a maxim, a sentence, of which his idol is the author, it is
odds but he will look like a fool, and visit you with an evasive answer.
What else should he do? His deity is a man of many words and no sayings.
He is the prince of agitators, but it would be impossible for him to mint
a definition of 'agitation'; he is the world's most eloquent
arithmetician, but it is beyond him to epigrammatise the fact that two
and two make four. And it seems certain, unless the study of Homer and
religious fiction inspire him to some purpose, that his contributions to
axiomatic literature will be still restricted to the remark that 'There
are three courses open' to something or other: to the House, to the angry
cabman, to what and whomsoever you will. In sober truth, he is one who
writes for to-day, and takes no thought of either yesterdays or morrows.
For him the Future is next session; the Past does not extend beyond his
last change of mind. He is a prince of journalists, and his excursions
into monthly literature remain to show how great and copious a master of
the 'leader'--ornate, imposing, absolutely insignificant--his absorption
in politics has cost the English-speaking world.
His Backgrounds.
Disraeli's imagination, at once practical and extravagant, is not of the
kind that delights in plot and counterplot. His novels abound in action,
but the episodes wear a more or less random look: the impression produced
is pretty much that of a story of adventure. But if they fail as stories
they are unexceptionable as canvases. Our author unrolls them with
superb audacity; and rapidly and vigorously he fills them in with places
and people, with faces that are as life and words expressive even as
they. Nothing is too lofty or too low for him. He hawks at every sort
of game, and rarely does he make a false cast. It is but a step from the
wilds of Lancashire to the Arabian Desert, from the cook's first floor to
the Home of the Bellamonts; for he has the Seven-League-Boots of the
legend, and more than the genius of adventure of him that wore them. His
castles may be of cardboard, his cataracts of tinfoil, the sun of his
adjurations the veriest figment; but he never lets his readers see that
he knows it. His irony, sudden and reckless and insidious though it be,
yet never extends to his properties. There may be a sneer beneath that
mask which, with an egotism baffling as imperturbable, he delights in
intruding among his creations; but you cannot see it. You suspect its
presence, because he is a born mocker. But you remember that one of his
most obvious idiosyncrasies is an inordinate love of all that is
sumptuous, glittering, radiant, magnificent; and you incline to suspect
that he keeps his sneering for the world of men, and admires his scenes
and decorations too cordially to visit them with anything so merciless.
His Men and Women.
But dashing and brilliant as are his sketches of places and things, they
are after all the merest accessories. It was as a student of Men and
Women that he loved to excel, and it is as their painter that I praise
him now. Himself a worshipper of intellect, it was intellectually that
he mastered and developed them. Like Sidonia he moves among them not to
feel with them but to understand and learn from them. Such sympathy as
he had was either purely sensuous, as for youth and beauty and all kinds
of comeliness; or purely intellectual, as for intelligence,
artificiality, servility, meanness. And as his essence was satirical, as
he was naturally irreverent and contemptuous, it follows that he is best
and strongest in the act of punishment not of reward. His passion for
youth was beautiful, but it did not make him strong. His scorn for
things contemptible, his hate for things hateful, are at times too bitter
even for those who think with him; but in these lay his force--they
filled his brain with light, and they touched his lips with fire. The
wretched Rigby is far more vigorous and life-like than the amiable
Coningsby; Tom Cogit--a sketch, but a sketch of genius--is infinitely
more interesting than May Dacre or even the Young Duke; Tancred is a good
fellow, and very real and true in his goodness, but contrast him with
Fakredeen! And after his knaves, his fools, his tricksters, the most
striking figures in his gallery are those whom he has considered from a
purely intellectual point of view: either kindly, as Sidonia, or coolly,
as Lord Monmouth, but always calmly and with no point of passion in his
regard: the Eskdales, Villebecques, Ormsbys, Bessos, Marneys, Meltons,
and Mirabels, the Bohuns and St. Aldegondes and Grandisons, the Tadpoles
and the Tapers, the dominant and subaltern humanity of the world. All
these are drawn with peculiar boldness of line, precision of touch, and
clearness of intention. And as with his men so is it with his women: the
finest are not those he likes best but those who interested him most.
Male and female, his eccentrics surpass his commonplaces. He had a great
regard for girls, and his attitude towards them, or such of them as he
elected heroines, was mostly one of adoration--magnificent yet a little
awkward and strained. With women, married women, he had vastly more in
common: he could admire, study, divine, without having to feign a warmer
feeling; and while his girls are poor albeit splendid young persons, his
matrons are usually delightful. Edith Millbank is not a very striking
figure in _Coningsby_; but her appearance in _Tancred_--well, you have
only to compare it to the resurrection of Laura Bell, as Mrs. Pendennis
to see how good it is.
His Style.
Now and then the writing is bad, and the thought is stale. Disraeli had
many mannerisms, innate and acquired. His English was frequently loose
and inexpressive; he was apt to trip in his grammar, to stumble over 'and
which,' and to be careless about the connection between his nominatives
and his verbs. Again, he could scarce ever refrain from the use of
gorgeous commonplaces of sentiment and diction. His taste was sometimes
ornately and barbarically conventional; he wrote as an orator, and his
phrases often read as if he had used them for the sake of their
associations rather than themselves. His works are a casket of such
stage jewels of expression as 'Palladian structure,' 'Tusculan repose,'
'Gothic pile,' 'pellucid brow,' 'mossy cell,' and 'dew-bespangled meads.'
He delighted in 'hyacinthine curls' and 'lustrous locks,' in 'smiling
parterres' and 'stately terraces.' He seldom sat down in print to
anything less than a 'banquet', he was capable of invoking 'the iris
pencil of Hope'; he could not think nor speak of the beauties of woman
except as 'charms.' Which seems to show that to be 'born in a library,'
and have Voltaire--that impeccable master of the phrase--for your chief
of early heroes and exemplars is not everything.
His Oratory.
It is admitted, I believe, that he had many of the qualities of a great
public speaker: that he had an admirable voice and an excellent method;
that his sequences were logical and natural, his arguments vigorous and
persuasive; that he was an artist in style, and in the course of a single
speech could be eloquent and vivacious, ornate and familiar, passionate
and cynical, deliberately rhetorical and magnificently fantastic in turn;
that he was a master of all oratorical modes--of irony and argument, of
stately declamation and brilliant and unexpected antithesis, of
caricature and statement and rejoinder alike; that he could explain,
denounce, retort, retract, advance, defy, dispute, with equal readiness
and equal skill; that he was unrivalled in attack and unsurpassed in
defence; and that in heated debate and on occasions when he felt himself
justified in putting forth all his powers and in striking in with the
full weight of his imperious and unique personality he was the most
dangerous antagonist of his time. And yet, in spite of his mysterious
and commanding influence over his followers--in spite, too, of the fact
that he died assuredly the most romantic and perhaps the most popular
figure of his time--it is admitted withal that he was lacking in a
certain quality of temperament, that attribute great orators possess in
common with great actors: the power, that is, of imposing oneself upon an
audience not by argument nor by eloquence, not by the perfect utterance
of beautiful and commanding speech nor by the enunciation of eternal
principles or sympathetic and stirring appeals, but by an effect of
personal magnetism, by the expression through voice and gesture and
presence of an individuality, a temperament, call it what you will, that
may be and is often utterly commonplace but is always inevitably
irresistible. He could slaughter an opponent, or butcher a measure, or
crumple up a theory with unrivalled adroitness and despatch; but he could
not dominate a crowd to the extent of persuading it to feel with his
heart, think with his brain, and accept his utterances as the expression
not only of their common reason but of their collective sentiment as
well. He was as incapable of such a feat as Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian
campaign as Mr. Gladstone is of producing the gaming scene in _The Young
Duke_ or the 'exhausted volcanoes' paragraph in the Manchester speech.
His Speeches as Literature.
As a rule--a rule to which there are some magnificent exceptions--orators
have only to cease from speaking to become uninteresting. What has been
heard with enthusiasm is read with indifference or even with
astonishment. You miss the noble voice, the persuasive gesture, the
irresistible personality; and with the emotional faculty at rest and the
reason at work you are surprised--and it may be a little indignant--that
you should have been impressed so deeply as you were by such cold, bald
verbosity as seen in black and white the masterpiece of yesterday appears
to be. To some extent this is the case with these speeches of
Disraeli's. At the height of debate, amid the clash of personal and
party animosities, with the cheers of the orator's supporters to give
them wings, they sounded greater than they were. But for all that they
are vigorous and profitable yet. Their author's unfailing capacity for
saying things worth heeding and remembering is proved in every one of
them. It is not easy to open either of Mr. Kebbel's volumes without
lighting upon something--a string of epigrams, a polished gibe, a burst
of rhetoric, an effective collocation of words--that proclaims the
artist. In this connection the perorations are especially instructive,
even if you consider them simply as arrangements of sonorous and
suggestive words: as oratorical impressions carefully prepared, as
effects of what may be called vocalised orchestration touched off as
skilfully and with as fine a sense of sound and of the sentiment to
correspond as so many passages of instrumentation signed 'Berlioz' might
be.
The Great Earl.
Fruits fail, and love dies, and time ranges; and only the whippersnapper
(that fool of Time) endureth for ever. Moliere knew him well, and he
said that Moliere was a liar and a thief. And Disraeli knew him too, and
he said that in these respects Disraeli and Moliere were brothers. That
he said so matters as little now as ever it did; for though the
whippersnapper is immortal in kind, he is nothing if not futile and
ephemeral in effect, and it was seen long since that in life and death
Disraeli, as became his genius and his race, was the Uncommonplace
incarnate, the antithesis of Grocerdom, the Satan of that revolt against
the yielding habit of Jehovah-Bottles the spirit whereof is fast coming
to be our one defence against socialism and the dominion of the Common
Fool. He was no sentimentalist: as what great artist in government has
ever been? He loved power for power's sake, and recognising to the full
the law of the survival of the fittest he preferred his England to the
world. He knew that it is the function of the man of genius to show that
theory is only theory, and that in the House of Morality there are many
mansions. To that end he lived and died; and it is not until one has
comprehended the complete significance of his life and death that one is
qualified to speak with understanding of such a life and death as his who
passed at Khartoum.