animal spirits which Disraeli brought to his business. _Vivian Grey_ was
absurd, but it was fresh and popular, and it pleased at once. As the
opening work of a literary career, it promised well; the impertinent
young gentleman dashed off to Parnassus at a gallop. It was a bold bid
for personal distinction, which the author easily perceived already to
be "the only passport to the society of the great in England." _Vivian
Grey_ is little more than a spirited and daring boy's book; Disraeli
himself called it "a hot and hurried sketch." It was a sketch of what he
had never seen, yet of what he had begun to foresee with amazing
lucidity. It is a sort of social fairy-tale, where every one has
exquisite beauty, limitless wealth, and exalted rank, where the
impossible and the hyperbolic are the only homely virtues. There has
always been a tendency to exalt _Vivian Grey_ at the expense of _The
Young Duke_ (1831), Disraeli's next leading permanence; and, indeed, the
former has had its admirers who have preferred it to all the others in
this period. The difference is, however, not so marked as might be
supposed. In _The Young Duke_ the manner is not so burlesque, but there
is the same roughness of execution, combined with the same rush and
fire. In either book, what we feel to-day to be the great objection to
our enjoyment is the lack of verisimilitude. Who can believe in the
existence of persons whose titles are the Earl of Fitz-Pompey and Baron
Deprivyseal, or whose names are Lady Aphrodite and Sir Carte Blanche?
The descriptions are "high-falutin" beyond all endurance, and there is
particularly noticeable a kind of stylistic foppery, which is always
hovering between sublimity and a giggle.
But here is an example, from _Vivian Grey_, of Disraeli's earliest
manner:--
"After a moment had passed, he was pouring forth in a rapid voice,
and incoherent manner, such words as men speak only once. He spoke
of his early follies, his misfortunes, his misery; of his matured
views, his settled principles, his plans, his prospects, his hopes,
his happiness, his bliss; and when he had ceased, he listened, in
his turn, to some small still words, which made him the happiest of
human beings. He bent down, he kissed the soft silken cheek which
now he could call his own. Her hand was in his; her head sank upon
his breast. Suddenly she clung to him with a strong clasp. 'Violet!
my own, my dearest; you are overcome. I have been rash, I have been
imprudent. Speak, speak, my beloved! say, you are not ill!'
"She spoke not, but clung to him with a fearful strength, her head
still upon his breast, her full eyes closed. Alarmed, he raised her
off the ground, and bore her to the river-side. Water might revive
her. But when he tried to lay her a moment on the bank, she clung
to him gasping, as a sinking person clings to a stout swimmer. He
leant over her; he did not attempt to disengage her arms; and, by
degrees, by very slow degrees, her grasp loosened. At last her arms
gave way and fell by her side, and her eyes partly opened.
"'Thank God! Violet, my own, my beloved, say you are better!'
"She answered not, evidently she did not know him, evidently she
did not see him. A film was on her sight, and her eye was glassy.
He rushed to the water-side, and in a moment he had sprinkled her
temples, now covered with a cold dew. Her pulse beat not, her
circulation seemed suspended. He rubbed the palms of her hands, he
covered her delicate feet with his coat, and then rushing up the
bank into the road, he shouted with frantic cries on all sides. No
one came, no one was near. Again, with a cry of fearful anguish, he
shouted as if an hyena were feeding on his vitals. No sound; no
answer. The nearest cottage was above a mile off. He dared not
leave her. Again he rushed down to the water-side. Her eyes were
still open, still fixed. Her mouth also was no longer closed. Her
hand was stiff, her heart had ceased to beat. He tried with the
warmth of his own body to revive her. He shouted, he wept, he
prayed. All, all in vain. Again he was in the road, again shouting
like an insane being. There was a sound. Hark! It was but the
screech of an owl!
"Once more at the river-side, once more bending over her with
starting eyes, once more the attentive ear listening for the
soundless breath. No sound! not even a sigh! Oh! what would he have
given for her shriek of anguish! No change had occurred in her
position, but the lower part of her face had fallen; and there was
a general appearance which struck him with awe. Her body was quite
cold, her limbs stiffened. He gazed, and gazed, and gazed. He bent
over her with stupor rather than grief stamped on his features. It
was very slowly that the dark thought came over his mind, very
slowly that the horrible truth seized upon his soul. He gave a loud
shriek, and fell on the lifeless body of VIOLET FANE!"
A line in Disraeli's unfortunate tragedy of _Alarcos_ pathetically
admits: "Ay! ever pert is youth that baffles age!" The youth of Disraeli
was "pert" beyond all record, and those who cannot endure to be teased
should not turn to his early romances, or, indeed, to any of his
writings. _Henrietta Temple_ is the boldest attempt he ever made to tell
a great consecutive story of passion, and no doubt there have been those
who have palpitated over the love-at-first-sight of Ferdinand Armine and
Henrietta Temple. But Disraeli's serious vein is here over-luscious; the
love-passages are too emphatic and too sweet. An early critic spoke of
this _dulcia vitia_ of style which we meet with even in _Contarini
Fleming_ as the sin by which the young author was most easily beset. His
attempts at serious sentiment and pompous reflection are too often
deplorable, because inanimate and stilted. When he warns a heroine
against an error of judgment by shouting, "'Tis the madness of the fawn
who gazes with adoration on the lurid glare of the anaconda's eye," or
murmurs, "Farewell, my lovely bird; I'll soon return to pillow in thy
nest," we need all the stimulus of his irony and his velocity to carry
us over such marshlands of cold style.
Of these imperfections, fewer are to be found in _Venetia_ and fewest in
_Contarini Fleming_. This beautiful romance is by far the best of
Disraeli's early books, and that in which his methods at this period can
be most favourably studied. A curious shadow of Disraeli himself is
thrown over it all; it cannot be styled in any direct sense an
autobiography, and yet the mental and moral experiences of the author
animate every chapter of it. This novel is written with far more ease
and grace than any previous book of the author's, and Contarini gives a
reason which explains the improvement in his creator's manner when he
remarks: "I wrote with greater facility than before, because my
experience of life was so much increased that I had no difficulty in
making my characters think and act." _Contarini Fleming_ belongs to
1831, when its writer, at the comparatively ripe age of twenty-seven,
had already seen a vast deal of man and of the world of Europe.
We are not to believe the preposterous account that Contarini-Disraeli
gives of his methods of composition:--
"My thoughts, my passion, the rush of my invention, were too quick
for my pen. Page followed page; as a sheet was finished I threw it
on the floor; I was amazed at the rapid and prolific production,
yet I could not stop to wonder. In half a dozen hours I sank back
exhausted, with an aching frame. I rang the bell, ordered some
refreshment, and walked about the room. The wine invigorated me and
warmed up my sinking fancy, which, however, required little fuel. I
set to it again, and it was midnight before I retired to bed."
At this rate we may easily compute that the longest of his novels would
be finished in a week. _Contarini Fleming_ seems to have occupied him
the greater part of a year. He liked the public to think of him,
exquisitely habited, his long essenced hair falling about his eyes,
flinging forth a torrent of musky and mellifluous improvisation; as a
matter of fact he was a very hard worker, laborious in the arts of
composition.
It is to be noted that the whole tone of _Contarini Fleming_ is
intensely literary. The appeal to the intellectual, to the fastidious
reader is incessant. This is an attitude always rare in English fiction,
but at that epoch almost unknown, and its presence in the writings of
Disraeli gives them a cachet. Under all the preposterous conversation,
all the unruly turmoil of description, there runs a strong thread of
entirely sober, political, and philosophical ambition. Disraeli striving
with all his might to be a great poet, of the class of Byron and Goethe,
a poet who is also a great mover and master of men--this is what is
manifest to us throughout _Contarini Fleming_. It is almost pathetically
manifest, because Disraeli--whatever else he grew to be--never became a
poet. And here, too, his wonderful clairvoyance, and his command over
the vagaries of his own imagination, come into play, for he never
persuades himself, with all his dithyrambics, that Contarini is quite a
poet.
A new influence is felt upon his style, and it is a highly beneficial
one. Up to this date, Disraeli had kept Byron before him, and in his
serious moments he had endeavoured to accomplish in prose what the
mysterious and melancholy poet of the preceding generation had done in
verse. The general effect of this Byronism, in spite of a certain
buoyancy which carried the reader onwards, had been apt to be wearisome,
in consequence of the monotony of effort. The fancy of the author had
been too uniformly grandiose, and in the attempt to brighten it up he
had sometimes passed over into positive failure. The most unyielding
admirers of his early novels can hardly contradict a reader who
complains that he finds the adventures of the bandits at Jonstorna
insupportable and the _naivete_ of Christiana mawkish. There are pages
in _Alroy_ that read as if they were written for a wager, to see how
much balderdash the public will endure. Disraeli seems to have been
conscious of this weakness, and he tried to relieve the pompous gravity
of his passionate scenes by episodes of irony and satire. From his
earliest days these were apt to be very happy; they were inspired,
especially in the squibs, by Lucian and Swift.
But in _Contarini Fleming_ we detect a new flavour, and it is a very
fortunate one. The bitterness of Swift was never quite in harmony with
the genius of Disraeli, but the irony of Voltaire was. The effect of
reading _Zadig_ and _Candide_ was the completion of the style of
Disraeli; that "strange mixture of brilliant fantasy and poignant truth"
which he rightly perceived to be the essence of the philosophic _contes_
of Voltaire, finished his own intellectual education. Henceforth he does
not allow his seriousness to overweigh his liveliness; if he detects a
tendency to bombast, he relieves it with a brilliant jest. Count de
Moltke and the lampoons offer us a case to our hand; "he was just the
old fool who would make a cream cheese," says Contarini, and the
startled laugh which greets him is exactly of the same order as those
which were wont to reward the statesman's amazing utterances in
Parliament.
In spite of a certain undeniable insipidity, the volumes of _Contarini
Fleming_ cannot but be read with pleasure. The mixture of Byron and
Voltaire is surprising, but it produces some agreeable effects. There is
a dash of Shelley in it, too, for the life on the isle of Paradise with
Alceste Contarini is plainly borrowed from _Epiphsychidion_. Disraeli
does not even disdain a touch of "Monk" Lewis without his
voluptuousness, and of Mrs. Radcliffe without her horrors, for he is
bent on serving up an olio entirely in the taste of the day. But through
it all he is conspicuously himself, and the dedication to beauty and the
extraordinary intellectual exultation of such a book as _Contarini
Fleming_ are borrowed from no exotic source.
It is impossible to overlook the fascination which Venice exercises
over Disraeli in these early novels. Contarini's great ambition was to
indite "a tale which should embrace Venice and Greece." Byron's _Life
and Letters_ and the completion of Rogers' _Italy_ with Turner's
paradisaical designs had recently awakened to its full the romantic
interest which long had been gathering around "the sun-girt city."
Whenever Disraeli reaches Venice his style improves, and if he mourns
over her decay, his spirits rise when he has to describe her
enchantments by moonlight. He reserves his most delicate effects for
Greece and Venice:--
"A Grecian sunset! The sky is like the neck of a dove! the rocks
and waters are bathed with a violet light. Each moment it changes;
each moment it shifts into more graceful and more gleaming shadows.
And the thin white moon is above all; the thin white moon, followed
by a single star, like a lady by a page."
There are many passages as sumptuous as this in _Venetia_, the romance
about Byron and Shelley, which Disraeli was thought indiscreet in
publishing so soon after Byron's death. In the story the heroine Venetia
is the daughter of Shelley (Marmion Herbert) and the bride of Byron
(Lord Cadurcis). Marmion is a most melodramatic figure, but the
indiscretions are not noticeable nowadays, while the courage with which
the reviled and hated Shelley is described in the preface to Lord
Lyndhurst as one of "the most renowned and refined spirits that have
adorned these our latter days" is highly characteristic of Disraeli. The
reception of Lord Cadurcis in the House of Peers and the subsequent riot
in Palace Yard mark, perhaps, the highest point in direct narrative
power which the novelist had yet reached; but _Venetia_ was not liked,
and Disraeli withdrew from literature into public life.
II
When Disraeli resumed the art of the novelist, he was no longer talking
of what lay outside his experience when he touched on politics. In 1837
he had entered the House at last, as Member for Maidstone, and although
his enemies roared him down on the first occasion of his rising to
speak, he soon learned how to impose his voice on Parliament. In 1839
his declaration that "the rights of labour are as sacred as the rights
of property" made him famous, and in 1841 he was one of Sir Robert
Peel's Conservative army in the House. Then followed the formation of
the Young England Party, with Disraeli as one of its leaders; these men
broke away from Peel, and held that the Tory Party required stringent
reform from within. It was in 1843 that Henry Thomas Hope, of Deepdene,
urged, at a meeting of the Young Englanders, the expediency of
Disraeli's "treating in a literary form those views and subjects which
were the matter of their frequent conversations." Disraeli instantly
returned to literary composition, and produced in quick succession the
four books which form the second section of his work as an author; these
are _Coningsby_, _Sybil_, _Tancred_, and the _Life of Lord George
Bentinck_.
In this group of books we observe, in the first place, a great advance
in vitality and credibility over the novels of the earlier period.
Disraeli is now describing what he knows, no longer what he hopes in
process of time to know. He writes from within, no longer from without
the world of political action. These three novels and a biography are
curiously like one another in form, and all equally make a claim to be
considered not mere works of entertainment, but serious contributions to
political philosophy. The assumption is borne out by the character of
the books, each of which had a definite aim and purpose. _Coningsby_
was designed to make room for new talent in the Tory Party by an
unflinching attack on the "mediocrities." In _Sybil_ the heartless abuse
of capital and the vices of class distinction are exposed. _Tancred_ is
a vision of better things to follow upon the reforms already indicated.
In _Lord George Bentinck_, under the guise of a record of the struggle
between Protection and Free Trade, we have a manual of personal conduct
as applied to practical politics.
In all these works narrative pure and simple inclines to take a
secondary place. It does so least in _Coningsby_ which, as a story, is
the most attractive book of Disraeli's middle period, and one of the
most brilliant studies of political character ever published. The tale
is interspersed with historical essays, which impede its progress but
add to its weight and value. Where, however, the author throws himself
into his narrative, the advance he has made in power, and particularly
in truth of presentment, is very remarkable. In the early group of his
novels he had felt a great difficulty in transcribing conversations so
as to produce a natural and easy effect. He no longer, in _Coningsby_,
is confronted by this artificiality. His dialogues are now generally
remarkable for their ease and nature. The speeches of Rigby (who
represents John Wilson Croker), of Lord Monmouth (who stands for Lord
Hertford), of the Young Englanders themselves, of the laughable chorus
of Taper and Tadpole, who never "despaired of the Commonwealth," are
often extremely amusing. In _Coningsby_ we have risen out of the
rose-coloured mist of unreality which hung over books like _The Young
Duke_ and _Henrietta Temple_. The agitated gentleman whose peerage hangs
in the balance, and who on hearing that the Duke of Wellington is with
the King breathes out in a sigh of relief "Then there _is_ a
Providence," is a type of the subsidiary figure which Disraeli had now
learned to introduce with infinite lightness of irony.
Disraeli had a passion for early youth, and in almost all his books he
dwells lovingly upon its characteristics. It is particularly in
_Contarini Fleming_ and in _Coningsby_--that is to say, in the best
novels of his first and of his second period--that he lingers over the
picture of schoolboy life with tenderness and sympathy. We have only to
compare them, however, to see how great an advance he had made in ten
years in his power of depicting such scenes. The childish dreams of
Contarini are unchecked romance, and though the friendship with Musaeus
is drawn with delicacy and insight, and though that is an extremely
pretty scene where Christiana soothes the pride of Contarini, yet a
manliness and a reality are missing which we find in the wonderful Eton
scenes of _Coningsby_.
Disraeli's comprehension of the feelings of half-grown ambitious boys of
good family was extraordinary, and when we consider that he had never
been to a public school, his picture of the life and conversation at
Eton is remarkable for its fidelity to nature. The relation of the elder
schoolboys to one another--a theme to which he was fond of recurring--is
treated in a very adroit and natural spirit, not without a certain
Dorian beauty. This preoccupation with the sentiments and passions of
schoolboys was rather crudely found fault with at the time. We need have
no difficulty in comprehending the pleasure he felt in watching the
expansion of those youthful minds from whom he hoped for all that was to
make England wise and free. The account of Coningsby's last night at
Eton is one of the most deeply felt pages which Disraeli ever composed,
and here it may be said that the careful avoidance of all humour--an act
of self-denial which a smaller writer would not have been capable of--is
justified by the dignified success of a very dangerous experiment.
The portraiture of living people is performed with the greatest
good-nature. It is difficult to believe that the most sensitive and the
most satirised could really be infuriated, so kindly and genial is the
caricaturing. We are far here from Swift's bludgeon and from Voltaire's
poisoned needle. The regeneration of the social order in England, as
Disraeli dreamed it, involved the removal of some mediocrities, but he
was neither angry nor impatient. The "brilliant personages who had just
scampered up from Melton, thinking it probable that Sir Robert might
want some moral Lords of the Bedchamber," and the Duke, who "might have
acquired considerable information, if he had not in his youth made so
many Latin verses," were true to their principles, and would scarcely
have done more than blush faintly when he poked his fun at them. Of all
the portraits none is more interesting than that of the dark, pale
stranger, Sidonia, as he revealed himself to Coningsby at the inn in the
forest, over the celebrated dish of "still-hissing bacon and eggs that
looked like tufts of primroses." This was a figure which was to recur,
and to become in the public mind almost coincident with that of Disraeli
himself.
When we pass from _Coningsby_ to _Sybil_ we find the purely narrative
interest considerably reduced in the pursuit of a scheme of political
philosophy. This is of all Disraeli's novels the one which most
resembles a pamphlet on a serious topic. For this reason it has never
been a favourite among his works, and his lighter readers have passed it
over with a glance. _Sybil_, however, is best not read at all if it is
not carefully studied. In the course of _Coningsby_, that young hero had
found his way to Manchester, and had discovered in it a new world,
"poignant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought and
feeling." His superficial observation had revealed many incongruities in
our methods of manipulating wealth, and Disraeli had sketched the
portrait of Mr. Jawster Sharp with a superfluity of sarcastic wit. But
it was not until somewhat later that the condition of the
working-classes in our northern manufacturing districts began to attract
his most serious attention. The late Duke of Rutland, that illustrious
and venerable friend who alone survived in the twentieth century to bear
witness to the sentiments of Young England, told me that he accompanied
Disraeli on the journey which led to the composition of Sybil, and that
he never, in long years of intimacy, saw him so profoundly moved as he
was at the aspect of the miserable dwellings of the hand-loom workers.
All this is reflected on the surface of _Sybil_, and, notwithstanding
curious faults in execution, the book bears the impress of a deep and
true emotion. Oddly enough, the style of Disraeli is never more stilted
than it is in the conversations of the poor in this story. When Gerard,
the weaver, wishes to prevent the police-inspector from arresting his
daughter, he remarks: "Advance and touch this maiden, and I will fell
you and your minions like oxen at their pasture." Well may the serjeant
answer, "You _are_ a queer chap." Criticism goes further and says, "You
are a chap who never walked in wynd or factory of a Yorkshire town."
This want of nature, which did not extend to Disraeli's conversations
among well-to-do folks, was a real misfortune, and gave _Sybil_ no
chance of holding its own in rivalry with such realistic studies of the
depression of trade in Manchester as Mrs. Gaskell was presently to
produce, nor with the ease of dialogue in Dickens' Christmas Stories,
which were just now (in 1845) running their popular course. A happier
simplicity of style, founded on a closer familiarity, would have given
fresh force to his burning indignation, and have helped the cause of
Devils-dust and Dandy Mick. But the accident of stilted speech must not
blind us to the sincere and glowing emotion that inspired the pictures
of human suffering in _Sybil_.
Then followed _Tancred_, which, as it has always been reported,
continued to the last to be the author's favourite among his literary
offspring. Disraeli had little sympathy with either of the great parties
which in that day governed English political life. As time went on, he
became surer than ever of the degeneracy of modern society, and he began
to despair of discovering any cure for it. In _Tancred_ he laid aside in
great measure his mood of satirical extravagance. The whole of this book
is steeped in the colours of poetry--of poetry, that is to say, as the
florid mind of Disraeli conceived it. It opens--as all his books love to
open--with the chronicle of an ardent and innocent boy's career. This is
commonplace, but when Tancred, who is mainly the author's customary type
of young Englishman born in the purple, arrives in the Holy Land, a
flush of pure romance passes over the whole texture of the narrative.
Real life is forgotten, and we move in a fabulous, but intensely
picturesque, world of ecstasy and dream.
The Prerogation of Judaism, as it had been laid down by Sidonia in
_Coningsby_, is emphasised and developed, and is indeed made the central
theme of the story in _Tancred_. This novel is inspired by an outspoken
and enthusiastic respect for the Hebrew race and a perfect belief in its
future. In the presence of the mighty monuments of Jerusalem, Disraeli
forgets that he is a Christian and an ambitious member of the English
Parliament. His only solicitude is to recover his privileges as a Jew,
and to recollect that he stands in the majestic cradle of his race. He
becomes interpenetrated with solemn mysticism; a wind of faith blows in
his hair. He cries, "God never spoke except to an Arab," and we are
therefore not surprised to find an actual Divine message presently
pronounced in Tancred's ears as he stands on the summit of Mount Sinai.
This is, perhaps, the boldest flight of imagination which occurs in the
writings of Disraeli. Tancred endeavours to counteract the purely
Hebraic influences of Palestine by making a journey of homage to
Astarte, a mysterious and beautiful Pagan queen--an "Aryan," as he loves
to put it--who reigns in the mountains of Syria. But even she does not
encourage him to put his trust in the progress of Western Europe.