second child and eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli (q.v.) and Maria Basevi,
who were married in 1802, was born at No. 6 John Street, Bedford Row, on
the 21st of December 1804. Of Isaac D'Israeli's other children, Sarah
was born in 1802, Naphtali in 1807, Ralph (Raphael) in 1809, and James
(Jacob) in 1813. None of the family was akin to Benjamin for genius and
character, except Sarah, to whom he was deeply indebted for a wise,
unswerving and sympathetic devotion, when, in his earlier days, he
needed it most. All Isaac D'Israeli's children were born into the Jewish
communion, in which, however, they were not to grow up. It is a
reasonable inference from Isaac's character that he was never at ease in
the ritual of Judaism. His father died in the winter of 1816, and soon
afterwards Isaac formally withdrew with all his household from the
Jewish church. His son Benjamin, who had been admitted to it with the
usual rites eight days after his birth, was baptized at St Andrew's
church in Holborn on the 31st of July 1817. One of Isaac D'Israeli's
reasons for quitting the tents of his people was that rabbinical
Judaism, with its unyielding laws and fettering ceremonies, "cuts off
the Jews from the great family of mankind." Little did he know, when
therefore he cut off the D'Israeli family from Judaism, what great
things he was doing for one small member of it. The future prime
minister was then short of thirteen years old, and there was yet time to
provide the utmost freedom which his birth allowed for the faculties and
ambitions he was born with. Taking the worldly view alone, of course,
most fortunate for his aspirations in youth was his withdrawal from
Judaism in childhood. That it was fully sanctioned by his intellect at
maturity is evident; but the vindication of unbiased choice would not
have been readily accepted had Disraeli abandoned Judaism of his own
will at the pushing _Vivian Grey_ period or after. And though a mind
like Disraeli's might work to satisfaction with Christianity as
"completed Judaism," it could but dwell on a breach of continuity which
means so much to Jews and which he was never allowed to forget amongst
Christians. With all, he was proud of his race as truly, if not as
vehemently, as his paternal grandmother detested it. Family pride
contributed to the feeling in his case; for in his more speculative
moods he could look back upon an ancestry which was of those, perhaps,
who colonized the shores of the Mediterranean from before the time of
the Captivity. More definite is the history of descent from an ennobled
Spanish family which escaped from the Torquemada persecutions to Venice,
there found a new home, took a new name, and prospered for six
generations. The Benjamin D'Israeli, Lord Beaconsfield's grandfather,
who came to England in 1748, was a younger son sent at eighteen to try
his fortune in London. "A man of ardent character, sanguine, courageous,
speculative, fortunate, with a temper which no disappointment could
disturb" (so Lord Beaconsfield described him), he soon made the
beginnings of a handsome fortune and turned country gentleman. That his
grandson exaggerated his prosperity is highly probable; but that he
became a man of wealth and consideration is certain. He married twice.
His second wife was Sarah Siprout de Gabay, "a beautiful woman of strong
intellect" and importunate ambitions, who hated the race she belonged to
because it was despised by others. She felt so keenly the social
disabilities it brought upon her, and her husband's indifference to
them, that "she never pardoned him his name." Her literary son Isaac
suffered equally or even more; for though he had ambitions he had none
that she could recognize as such. She could ridicule him for the
aspirations which he had not and for those which he had; on the other
hand, he never heard from her a tender word "though she lived to be
eighty." Nor did any other member of her family, according to her
grandson.
"The Representative."
Isaac D'Israeli was devoted to the reading and writing of books in
domestic quiet; and his son Benjamin suffered appreciably from his
father's gentle preoccupations. As a child--unruly and disturbing no
doubt--he was sent to a school of small account at Blackheath, and was
there "for years" before he was recalled at the age of twelve on the
death of his grandfather. Isaac D'Israeli was his father's sole heritor,
but change of fortune seems to have awakened in him no ambitions for the
most hopeful of his sons. At fifteen, not before, Benjamin was sent to a
Unitarian school at Walthamstow--a well-known school, populous enough to
be a little world of emulation and conflict but otherwise unfit. Not
there, nor in any similar institution at that illiberal time, perhaps,
was a Jewish boy likely to make a fortunate entry into "the great family
of mankind." His name, the foreign look of him, and some pronounced
incompatibilities not all chargeable to young Disraeli (as afterwards
the name came to be spelt), soon raised a crop of troubles. His stay at
Walthamstow was brief, his departure abrupt, and he went to school no
more. With the run of his father's library, and the benefits of that
born bookman's guidance, he now set out to educate himself. This he did
with an industry stiffened by matchless self-confidence and by ambitions
fully mature before he was eighteen. Yet he yielded to an attempt to
make a man of business of him. He was barely seventeen when (in November
1821) he was taken into the office of Messrs Swain, Stevens and Co.,
solicitors, in Frederick's Place, Old Jewry. Here he remained for three
years--"most assiduous in his attention to business," said one of the
partners, "and showing great ability in the transaction of it." It was
then determined that he should go to the bar; and accordingly he was
entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1824. But Disraeli had found other studies
and an alien use for his pen. Though "assiduous in his attention to
business" in Frederick's Place, he found time to write for the printer.
Dr Smiles, in his _Memoirs of John Murray_, tells of certain pamphlets
on the brightening prospects of the Spanish South American colonies,
then in the first enjoyment of emancipation--pamphlets seemingly written
for a Mr Powles, head of a great financial firm, whose acquaintance
Disraeli had made. In the same year, apparently, he wrote a novel--his
first, and never published. _Aylmer Papillon_ was the title of it, Dr
Smiles informs us; and he prints a letter from Disraeli to the John
Murray of that day, which indicates its character pretty clearly. The
last chapter, its author says, is taken up with "Mr Papillon's
banishment under the Alien Act, from a ministerial misconception of a
metaphysical sonnet." About the same time he edited a _History of Paul
Jones_, originally published in America, the preface of the English
edition being Disraeli's first appearance as an author. Murray could not
publish _Aylmer Papillon_, but he had great hopes of its boyish writer
(Isaac D'Israeli was an old friend of his), "took him into his
confidence, and related to him his experiences of men and affairs."
Disraeli had not completed his twenty-first year when (in 1825) Murray
was possessed by the idea of bringing out a great daily newspaper; and
if his young friend did not inspire that idea he keenly urged its
execution, and was entrusted by Murray with the negotiation of all
manner of preliminaries, including the attempt to bring Lockhart in as
editor. The title of the paper, _The Representative_, was Disraeli's
suggestion. He chose reporters, looked to the setting-up of a
printing-office, busied himself in all ways to Murray's great
satisfaction, and, as fully appears from Dr Smiles's account of the
matter, with extraordinary address. But when these arrangements were
brought to the point of completion, Disraeli dropped out of the scheme
and had nothing more to do with it. He was to have had a fourth share of
the proprietorship, bringing in a corresponding amount of capital. His
friend Mr Powles, whom he had enlisted for the enterprise, was to have
had a similar share on the same conditions. Neither seems to have paid
up, and that, perhaps, had to do with the quarrel which parted Benjamin
Disraeli and John Murray before a sheet of the luckless _Representative_
was printed. Many years afterwards (1853) Disraeli took an active
interest in _The Press_, a weekly journal of considerable merit but
meagre fortunes.
"Vivan Grey."
At the death of the elder Benjamin (1817), his son Isaac had moved from
the King's Road, Gray's Inn (now Theobald's Road), to No. 6 Bloomsbury
Square. Here he entertained the many distinguished friends, literary and
political, who had been drawn to him by his "Curiosities" and other
ingenious works, and here his son Benjamin also had their acquaintance
and conversation. In Bloomsbury Square lived the Austens, and to their
house, a great resort of similar persons, Mrs Austen cordially welcomed
him. Murray's friendship and associations helped him in like manner, no
doubt; and thus was opened to Disraeli the younger a world in which he
was to make a considerable stir. The very much smaller society of that
day was, of course, more comprehensible to sight and hearing, when once
you were within its borders, than the society of this. Reverberations of
the gossip of St James's and Mayfair extended to Bloomsbury in those
days. Yet Disraeli's range of observation must have been not only brief
but limited when he sat down at twenty or twenty-one to write _Vivian
Grey_. It is therefore a probable conjecture that Mrs Austen, a clever
woman of the world, helped him from her knowledge. His own strongly
perceptive imagination (the gift in which he was to excel every other
politician of his time) and the bent of political reading and aspiration
from boyhood completed his equipment; and so the wonder that so young a
man in Disraeli's social position should write a book like _Vivian Grey_
is accounted for. It was published in 1826. The success of this
insolently clever novel, the immediate introduction of its author to the
great world, and the daring eccentricities of dress, demeanour, and
opinion by which he fixed attention on himself there, have always been
among the most favourite morsels of Disraeli's history. With them it
began, and successive generations of inquirers into a strange career and
a character still shrouded and baffling refer to them as settled
starting-points of investigation. What was the man who, in such a
society and with political aspirations to serve, could thrive by such
vagaries as these, or in spite of them? If unaffected, what is to be
thought of them as keys to character? If affected, what then? Inquiry
still takes this shape, and when any part of Disraeli's career is
studied, the laces and essences, the rings over gloves, the jewelled
satin shirt-fronts, the guitareries and chibouqueries of his early days
are never remote from memory. The report of them can hardly be doubted;
and as the last relation was made (to the writer of this article) not
with intent to ridicule Mr Disraeli's taste but to illustrate his
conquering abilities, the story is repeated here. One of Disraeli's
first friends in the world of fashion and genius was Sir Edward Lytton
Bulwer. "And," said Sir Henry Bulwer ("Pelham's" brother), "we heard so
much at the time of Edward's amazingly brilliant new friend that we were
the less inclined to make his acquaintance." At length, however, Sir
Edward got up a little dinner-party to convince the doubters. It was to
meet at the early hour of those days at one of the Piccadilly hotels.
"There was my brother, Alexander Cockburn, myself and (I think) Milnes;
but for a considerable time no Mr Disraeli. Waiting for Mr Disraeli did
not enhance the pleasure of meeting him, nor when he did arrive did his
appearance predispose us in his favour. He wore green velvet trousers, a
canary-coloured waistcoat, low shoes, silver buckles, lace at his
wrists, and his hair in ringlets." The description of the coat is
forgotten. "We sat down. Not one of us was more than five-and-twenty
years old. We were all--if you will allow me to include myself--on the
road to distinction, all clever, all ambitious, and all with a perfect
conceit of ourselves. Yet if on leaving the table we had been severally
taken aside and asked which was the cleverest of the party, we should
have been obliged to say 'the man in the green velvet trousers.'" This
story is a little lamp that throws much light. Here we see at their
sharpest the social prejudices that Disraeli had to fight against,
provocation of them carried to its utmost in every way open to him, and
complete conquest in a company of young men less likely to admit
superiority in a wit of their own years, probably, than any other that
could have been brought together at that time.
Travel.
Soon after the publication of _Vivian Grey_, Disraeli, who is said by
Froude to have been "overtaken by a singular disorder," marked by fits
of giddiness ("once he fell into a trance, and did not recover for a
week"), went with the Austens on a long summer tour in France,
Switzerland and Italy. Returning to a quiet life at Bradenham--an old
manor-house near High Wycombe, which his father had taken--Disraeli put
law in abeyance and resumed novel-writing. His weakest book, and two or
three other productions, brief, but in every literary sense the finest
of his works, were written in the next two or three years. But for
_Ixion in Heaven_, _The Infernal Marriage_, and _Popanilla_, Disraeli
could not be placed among the greater writers of his kind; yet none of
his imaginative books have been so little read as these. The mysterious
malady continued, and Disraeli set out with William Meredith, who was to
have married Sarah Disraeli, for a tour in southern Europe and the
nearer East. He saw Cadiz, Seville, Granada, Athens, Constantinople,
Jerusalem, Cairo, Thebes; played the corsair with James Clay on a yacht
voyage from Malta to Corfu; visited the terrible Reschid, then with a
Turkish army in the Albanian capital; landed in Cyprus, and left it with
an expectation in his singularly prescient mind that the island would
one day be English. These travels must have profited him greatly, and we
have our share of the advantage; not so much, however, in _The Wondrous
Tale of Alroy_ or _Tancred_, or the "Revolutionary Epic" which he was
inspired to write on "the windy plains of Troy," but in the letters he
sent home to his sister. These letters, written with the utmost freedom
and fullness to the one whose affection and intellect he trusted more
than any, are of the greatest value for interpreting the writer.
Together with other letters also published some time after Disraeli's
death, they tell more of him than anything that can be found in print
elsewhere. They show, for example, that his extraordinary exuberances
were unforced, leaping by natural impulse from an overcharged source.
They also show that his Oriental fopperies were not so much "purposed
affectation" as Froude and others have surmised. That they were so in
great part is confessed again and again in these letters, but confessed
in such a way as to reveal that they were permitted for his own
enjoyment of them as much as planned. The "purposed affectation" sprang
from an unaffected delight in gauds of attire, gauds of fancy and
expression. It was not only to startle and impress the world that he
paraded his eccentricities of splendour. His family also had to be
impressed by them. It was to his sober father that he wrote, at the age
of twenty-six: "I like a sailor's life much, though it spoils the
toilette." It is in a letter from Gibraltar to the same hand that we
read of his two canes--"a morning and an evening cane"--changed as the
gun fires. And the same correspondent must be told that "Ralph's
handkerchief which he brought me from Paris is the most successful thing
I ever wore."
Literary production.
When Disraeli returned to England in 1831, all thought of the law was
abandoned. The pen of romance was again taken up--the poet's also and
the politician's. In the next five years he wrote _Contarini Fleming_,
the _Revolutionary Epick, Alroy, Henrietta Temple, What is He?_ (a
pamphlet expository of his opinions), the _Runnymede Letters_, a
_Vindication of the British Constitution_, and other matter of less
note. The epic, begun in great hope and confidence, was ended in less,
though its author was to the last unwilling that it should be forgotten.
The novels revived the success he had with _Vivian Grey_, and restored
him to his place among the brilliancies and powers of the time. The
political writing, too, much of it in a garish, extravagant style,
exercised his deeper ambitions, and stands as witness to the working of
original thought and foresight. Both qualities are conspicuous in _What
is He?_ and the _Vindication_, of which it has been truly said that in
these pages he "struck the keynote to the explanations he afterwards
consistently offered of all his apparent inconsistencies." Here an
interpretation of Tory principles as capable of running with the
democratic idea, and as called upon to do so, is ingeniously attempted.
The aristocratic principle of government having been destroyed by the
Reform Bill, and the House of Lords being practically "abrogated" by
that measure, it became necessary that Toryism should start from the
democratic basis, from which it had never been alien. The filched
liberties of the crown and the people should be restored, and the nation
redeemed from the oligarchies which had stolen from both. When at the
beginning of all this writing Disraeli entered the political arena as
candidate for High Wycombe (1832), he was nominated by a Tory and
seconded by a Radical--in vain; and vain were two subsequent attempts in
the autumn of 1832 and in 1834. In the first he was recommended to the
electors by Daniel O'Connell and the Radical Hume. In his last
candidature at Wycombe he stood on more independent ground, commending
himself by a series of speeches which fully displayed his quality,
though the prescience which gemmed them with more than one prophetic
passage was veiled from his contemporaries. Among Disraeli's great
acquaintances were many--Lyndhurst at their head--whose expectations of
his future were confirmed by the Wycombe speeches. He was "thought of"
for various boroughs, Marylebone among the number, but his democratic
Toryism seems to have stood in his way in some places and his inborn
dislike of Radicalism in others. It was an impracticable situation--no
getting on from it; and so, at Lyndhurst's persuasion, as he afterwards
acknowledged, he determined to side with the Tories. Accordingly, when
in the spring of 1835 a vacancy occurred at Taunton, Disraeli contested
the seat in the Tory interest with Carlton Club support. Here again he
failed, but with enhanced reputation as a fighting politician and with
other consequences good for notoriety. It was at Taunton that Disraeli
fell upon O'Connell, rather ungratefully; whereupon the Liberator was
roused to retort on his assailant vehemently as "a liar," and humorously
as a probable descendant of the impenitent thief. And then followed the
challenge which, when O'Connell declined it, was fastened on his son
Morgan, and the interruption of the duel by seizure of Mr Disraeli in
his bed, and his famous appearance in the Marylebone police court. He
declared himself very well satisfied with this episode, but nothing in
it can really have pleased him, not even the noise it made.
Enters Parliament.
Here the first period of Disraeli's public life came to an end, a period
of preliminaries and flourishes, and of what he himself called sowing
his political wild oats. It was a more mature Disraeli who in the
general election of 1837 was returned for Maidstone as the colleague of
his providential friend Mr Wyndham Lewis. Though the fortunes of the
Tory party were fast reviving under Peel's guidance, the victory was
denied him on this occasion; but, for once, the return of the Whigs to
power was no great disappointment for the junior member for Maidstone.
To gain a footing in the House of Commons was all that his confident
spirit ever asked, and Froude vouches for it that he succeeded only just
in time to avert financial ruin. His electioneering ventures, the
friendly backing of bills, and his own expense in keeping up
appearances, had loaded him with debt. Yet (mark his worldly wisdom) "he
had never entangled his friends in his financial dealings. He had gone
frankly to the professional money-lenders, who made advances to him in a
speculation on his success": they were to get their money back with
large interest or lose it altogether. Such conditions were themselves
incitement enough to a prompt redemption of the promise of parliamentary
distinction, even without the restless spurring of ambition. And
Disraeli had another promise to redeem: that which he uttered when he
told O'Connell that they would meet again at Philippi. Therefore when,
three weeks after the session began, a debate on Irish election
petitions gave him opportunity, Disraeli attempted that first House of
Commons speech which imagination still dwells upon as something wondrous
strange. That he should not have known better, even by hearsay, than to
address the House of Commons in fantastic phrase from the mouth of a
fantastic figure is indeed remarkable, but not that he retained
self-confidence enough to tell the unwitting crew who laughed him down
that a time would come when they would hear him. It was one of the least
memorable of his prophecies. The speech was a humiliating but not an
oppressive failure. In about a week afterwards he spoke again, which
shows how little damage he felt, while the good sense, brevity, and
blameless manner of the speech (on a copyright bill) announced that he
could learn. And for some time thereafter he affected no importance in
the House, though not as withdrawing from attention.
Mental characteristics.
Meanwhile, consciously and unconsciously, as is the way with men of
genius, his mind was working upon problems of government, the magnitude,
the relations and the natural developments of which he was more sensible
of than any known politician of his time. "Sensible of," we say, to mark
the difference between one sort of understanding and another which comes
of labour and pains alone. Disraeli studied too, no doubt, reading and
inquiring and applying set thought, but such means were insufficient to
put into his mind all that he found there. It seems that opinions may be
formed of inquiry and study alone, which are then constructive; but
where intuitive perception or the perceptive imagination is a robust
possession, the fruits of research become assimilative--the food of a
divining faculty which needs more or less of it according to the power
of divination. The better judgment in all affairs derives from this
quality, which has some very covetable advantages for its possessor. His
judgments may be held with greater confidence, which is an intellectual
advantage; and, standing in his mind not so much an edifice as a natural
growth, they cannot be so readily abandoned at the call of ease or
self-interest. They may be denied assertion or even outraged for a
purpose, but they cannot be got rid of,--which is a moral advantage.
Disraeli's mind and its judgments were of this character. Its greatest
gift was not the romantic imagination which he possessed abundantly and
employed overmuch, but the perceptive, interpretative, judicial or
divining imagination, without which there can be no great man of
affairs. Breadth of view, insight, foresight, are more familiar but less
adequate descriptions of a faculty which Disraeli had in such force that
it took command of him from first to last. Although he knew and acted on
the principle that "a statesman is a practical character," whose
business is to "serve the country according to its present necessities,"
he was unable to confine his vision to the nearer consequences of
whatever policy, or course of action, or group of conditions it rested
on. Without effort, and even without intention probably, it looked
beyond first consequences to the farther or the final outcome; and to
complete the operation, the faculty which detected the remoter
consequences did not allow them to remain in obscurity, but brought them
out as actualities no less than the first and perhaps far more important
than the first. Moreover, it did not allow him to keep silence where the
remoter consequences were of that character, and ought to be provided
for betimes. Of course silence was always possible. These renderings to
foresight might be denied assertion either for the sake of present ease
(and Disraeli's prescience of much of his country's later troubles only
made him laughed at) or in deference to hopes of personal advancement.
But the same divining imagination which showed him these things also
showed him the near time when it would be too late to speak of them, and
when not to have spoken would leave him irredeemably in the common herd
of hand-to-mouth politicians. Therefore he spoke.
"Coningsby," "Sybil."
Remembrance of these characteristics--remembrance, too, that his mind,
which was neither English nor European, worked in absolute
detachment--should accompany the traveller through all the turns and
incidents of Disraeli's long career. They are sometimes puzzling, often
speculative; yet nearly all that is obscure in them becomes clear, much
apparent contradiction disappears, when read by these persistent
unvarying lights. The command which his idiosyncrasies had upon him is
shown, for example, by reproachful speeches on the treatment of Ireland,
and by a startling harangue on behalf of the Chartists, at a time when
such irregularities could but damage him, a new man, where he hoped for
influence and office. At about the same time his political genius
directed him to open a resolute critical campaign against the
Conservatism of the party he proposed to thrive in, and he could but
obey. This he did in writing _Coningsby_, a novel of the day and for the
day, but commended to us of a later generation not only by the undimmed
truth of its character-portraits, but by qualities of insight and
foresight which we who have seen the proof of them can measure as his
contemporaries could not. _Sybil_, which was written in the following
year (1845), is still more remarkable for the faculties celebrated in
the preceding paragraph. When _Sybil_ was written a long historic day
was ending in England, a new era beginning; and no eyes saw so clearly
as Disraeli's the death of the old day, the birth of the new, or what
and how great their differences would be. In _Coningsby_ the political
conditions of the country were illustrated and discussed from the
constitutional point of view, and by light of the theory that for
generations before the passing of the Reform Bill the authority of the
crown and the liberties of the people had been absorbed and extinguished
in an oligarchic system of government, itself become fossilized and
soulless. In _Sybil_ were exhibited the social relations of rich and
poor (the "two nations") under this regime, and under changes in which,
while the peasantry were neglected by a shoddy aristocracy ignorant of
its duties, factory life and a purblind gospel of political economy
imbruted the rest of the population. These views were enforced by a
startling yet strictly accurate representation of the state of things in
the factory districts at that time. Taken from the life by Disraeli
himself, accompanied by one or two members of the Young England party of
which he was the head, it was the first of its kind; and the facts as
there displayed, and Disraeli's interpretation of them--a marvel of
perceptive and prophetic criticism--opened eyes, roused consciences, and
led direct to many reforms.
These two books, the _Vindication_, published in 1835, and his speeches
up to this time and a little beyond, are quite enough to show what
Disraeli's Tory democracy meant, how truly national was its aim, and how
exclusive of partisanship for the "landed interest"; though he did
believe the stability and prosperity of the agricultural class a
national interest of the first order, not on economic grounds alone or
even chiefly. And if Disraeli, possessed by these views, became
aggressively insubordinate some time before Peel's proclaimed conversion
to Free Trade, we can account for it on reasonable and even creditable
grounds. Spite, resentment at being passed over when Peel formed the
1841 government, is one explanation of these outbreaks, and a letter to
Peel, lately published, is proof to many minds that Disraeli's denial to
Peel's face in 1846 that he had ever solicited office was daringly
mendacious. The letter certainly reads like solicitation in the
customary half-veiled form. All that can be said in doubt is that since
the '41 government came into existence on the 6th of September, and the
letter was written on the 5th, its interpretation as complaint of being
publicly neglected, as a craving for _some_ mark of recognition, is
possible. More than possible it is if Disraeli knew on the 5th (as he
very well might from his friend Lyndhurst, Peel's lord chancellor) that
the appointments were then complete. The pecuniary need of office, if
that comes into the question, had been lightened, if not extinguished,
two years before by his marriage with Mrs Wyndham Lewis. Mrs Lewis--a
lady fifteen years his senior--brought him a considerable fortune which,
however, was but for her life. She lived to a great age, and would
gladly have lived longer, in any of the afflictions that time brings on,
to continue her mere money-worth to her "Dizzy." Her devotion to him,
and his devotion to her, is the whole known story of their private life;
and we may believe that nothing ever gratified him more than offering
her a coronet from Mr Disraeli.
Politics. 1841-67.
Disraeli made Peel's acquaintance early in his career and showed that he
was proud of it. In his _Life of Lord George Bentinck_ he writes of Peel
fairly and even generously. But they were essentially antipathetic
persons; and it is clear that the great minister and complete Briton
took no pains to understand the dazzling young Jew of whom Lyndhurst
thought so much, and wished to have little to do with him. Such men make
such feelings evident; and there is no reason for thinking that when,
after 1841, Disraeli charged at Peel in obedience to his principles, he
gave himself pain. It was not long after it had settled in office that
Peel's government, the creature of an anxious Conservative reaction,
began to be suspected of drifting toward Manchester. That it was forced
in that direction we should say rather, looking back, for it was a time
of dire distress, especially in the manufacturing districts of the
north; so that in his second session Peel had to provide some relief by
revising the corn laws and reducing import dues generally. His measures
were supported by Disraeli, who understood that Protection must bend to
the menacing poverty of the time, though unprepared for total abolition
of the corn tax and strongly of opinion that it was not for Peel to
abolish it. In the next session (1843) he and his Young England party
took up a definitely independent role, which became more sharply
critical to the end. Disraeli's first strong vote of hostility was on a
coercion bill for perishing and rebellious Ireland. It was repeated with
greater emphasis in the session of 1844, also in a condition-of-Ireland
debate; and from that time forth, as if foreseeing Peel's course and its
effect on the country party, Disraeli kept up the attack. Meanwhile bad
harvests deepened the country's distress, Ireland was approached by
famine, the Anti-Corn-Law League became menacingly powerful, and Peel
showed signs of yielding to free trade. Disraeli's opportunity was soon
to come now; and in 1845, seeing it on the way, he launched the
brilliantly destructive series of speeches which, though they could not
prevent the abolition of the corn-laws, abolished the minister who ended
them. These speeches appeal more to admiration than to sympathy, even
where the limitations of Disraeli's protectionist beliefs are understood
and where his perception of the later consequences of free trade is most
cordially acknowledged. That he remained satisfied with them himself is
doubtful, unless for their foresight, their tremendous effect as
instruments of punishment, and as they swept him to so much distinction.
Within three years, on the death of Lord George Bentinck, there was none
to dispute with him the leadership of the Conservative party in the
House of Commons.
In the parliament of 1841 he was member for Shrewsbury. In 1847 he was
returned for Buckinghamshire, and never again had occasion to change his
constituency. Up to this time his old debts still embarrassed him, but
now his private and political fortunes changed together. Froude reports
that he "received a large sum from a private hand for his _Life of Lord
George Bentinck_" (published in 1852), "while a Conservative millionaire
took upon himself the debts to the usurers; the 3% with which he was
content being exchanged for the 10% under which Disraeli had been
staggering." In 1848 his father Isaac D'Israeli died, leaving to his son
Benjamin nearly the whole of his estate. This went to the purchase of
Hughenden Manor--not, of course, a great property, but with so much of
the pleasant and picturesque, of the dignified also, as quite to explain
what it was to the affectionate fancy of its lord. About this time, too
(1851), his acquaintance was sought by an old Mrs Brydges Willyams--born
a Spanish Jewess and then the widow of a long-deceased Cornish
squire--who in her distant home at Torquay had conceived a restless
admiration for Benjamin Disraeli. She wrote to him again and again,
pressing for an appointment to consult on an important matter of
business: would meet him at the fountain of the Crystal Palace in Hyde
Park. Her importunity succeeded, and the very small, oddly-dressed,
strange-mannered old lady whom Disraeli met at the fountain became his
adoring friend to the end of her life. Gratitude for her devotion
brought him and his wife in constant intimacy with her. There were many
visits to Torquay; he gratified her with gossiping letters about the
great people with whom and the great affairs with which the man who did
so much honour to her race was connected, that being the inspiration of
her regard for him. She died in 1863, leaving him all her fortune, which
was considerable; and, as she wished, was buried at Hughenden, close to
the grave where Disraeli was to lie.
As leader in the House of Commons.
It is agreed that the first three years of Disraeli's leadership in
Opposition were skilfully employed in reconstructing the shattered Tory
party. In doing this he made it sufficiently clear that there could be
no sudden return to Protectionist principles. At the same time, however,
he insisted (as he did from first to last) on the enormous importance
to the country, to the character of its people no less than to its
material welfare, of agricultural contentment and prosperity; and he
also obtained a more general recognition of the fact that "the land" had
borne fiscal burdens under the old regime which were unfair and
unendurable under the new. So far he did well; and when in 1852 he took
office as chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Derby's first
administration, the prospect was a smiling one for a man who, striving
against difficulties and prejudices almost too formidable for
imagination in these days, had attained to a place where he could fancy
them all giving way. That, however, they were not. New difficulties were
to arise and old prejudices to revive in full force. His first budget
was a quaint failure, and was thrown out by a coalition of Liberals and
Peelites which he believed was formed against Mr Disraeli more than
against the chancellor of the exchequer. It was on this occasion that he
exclaimed, "England does not love coalitions." After a reign of ten
months he was again in Opposition, and remained so for seven years. Of
the Crimean War he had a better judgment than those whose weakness led
them into it, and he could tell them the whole truth of the affair in
twenty words: "You are going to war with an opponent who does not want
to fight, and whom you are unwilling to encounter." Neither were they
prepared; and the scandals and political disturbances that ensued
revealed him as a party leader who could act on such occasions with a
dignity, moderation and sagacity that served his country well,
maintained the honour of party government and cost his friends nothing.
The mismanagement of the war broke down the Aberdeen government in 1855,
and then Disraeli had the mortification of seeing a fortunate chance of
return to office lost by the timidity and distrust of his chief, Lord
Derby--the distrust too clearly including the under-valuation of
Disraeli himself. Lord Derby wanted Lord Palmerston's help, Mr
Gladstone's, Mr Sidney Herbert's. This arrangement could not be made;
Lord Derby therefore gave up the attempt to form a ministry and Lord
Palmerston came in. The next chance was taken in less favouring times.
The government in which Disraeli was again financial minister lasted for
less than eighteen months (1858-1859), and then ensued another seven
years in the cold and yet colder shade of Opposition. Both of these
seven-year outings were bad, but the second by far the worse.
Parliamentary reform had become a burning question and an embarrassing
one for the Tory party. An enormous increase of business, consequent
upon the use of steam machinery and free-trade openings to commerce,
filled the land with prosperity, and discredited all statesmanship but
that which steered by the star over Manchester. Mr Gladstone's budgets,
made possible by this prosperity, were so many triumphs for Liberalism.
Foreign questions arose which strongly excited English feeling--the
arrangements of peace with Russia, Italian struggles for freedom, an
American quarrel, the "Arrow" affair and the Chinese war, the affair of
the French colonels and the Conspiracy Bill; and as they arose
Palmerston gathered into his own sails (except on the last occasion)
every wind of popular favour. Amid all this the Tory fortunes sank
rapidly, becoming nearly hopeless when Lord Palmerston, without
appreciable loss of confidence on his own side, persuaded many Tories in
and out of parliament that Conservatism would suffer little while he was
in power. Yet there was great despondency, of course, in the
Conservative ranks; with despondency discontent; with discontent
rancour. The prejudice against Disraeli as Jew, the revolt at his
theatricalisms, the distrust of him as "mystery man," which up to this
time had never died out even among men who were his nearest colleagues,
were now more openly indulged. Out of doors he had a "bad press," in
parliament he had some steady, enthusiastic friends, but more that were
cold. Sometimes he was seen on the front Opposition bench for hours
quite alone. Little conspiracies were got up to displace him, and might
have succeeded but for an unconquerable dread of the weapon that
destroyed Peel. In this state of things he patiently held his ground,
working for his party more carefully than it knew, and never seizing
upon false or discrediting advantages. But it was an extremely bad time
for Benjamin Disraeli.
Reform Bill of 1867.
Premier, 1868.
Though Lord Palmerston stumbled over his Foreign Conspiracy Bill in
1858, his popularity was little damaged, and it was in no hopeful spirit
that the Tories took office again in that year. They were perilously
weak in the House of Commons, and affairs abroad, in which they had
small practice and no prestige, were alarming. Yet the new
administration did very well till, after resettling the government of
India, and recovering from a blunder committed by their Indian
secretary, Lord Ellenborough, they must needs launch a Reform Bill to
put that dangerous question out of controversial politics. The
well-intended but fantastic measure brought in for the purpose was
rejected. The country was appealed to, with good but insufficient
results; and at the first meeting of the new parliament the Tories were
turned out on a no-confidence vote moved by Lord Hartington. Foreign
affairs supplied the motive: failure to preserve the peace of Europe at
the time of the Italian war of independence. It is said that the foreign
office had then in print a series of despatches which would have
answered its accusers had they been presented when the debate began, as
for some unexplained reason they were not. Lord Palmerston now returned
to Downing Street, and while he lived Disraeli and his colleagues had to
satisfy themselves with what was meant for useful criticism, though with
small hope that it was so for their own service. A Polish insurrection,
the Schleswig-Holstein question, a commercial treaty with France, the
Civil War in America, gave Disraeli occasions for speech that was always
forcible and often wiser than all could see at the time. He never
doubted that England should be strictly neutral in the American quarrel
when there was a strong feeling in favour of the South. All the while he
would have gladly welcomed any just means of taking an animated course,
for these were dull, dark days for the Conservatives as a parliamentary
party. Yet, unperceived, Conservatism was advancing. It was much more
than a joke that Palmerston sheltered Conservative principles under the
Liberal flag. The warmth of his popularity, to which Radical applause
contributed nothing in his later days, created an atmosphere entirely
favourable to the quiet growth of Conservatism. He died in 1865. Earl
Russell succeeded him as prime minister, Mr Gladstone as leader of the
House of Commons. The party most pleased with the change was the
Radical; the party best served was Disraeli's. Another Reform Bill,
memorable for driving certain good Liberals into a Cave of Aduilam,
broke up the new government in a few months; Disraeli contributing to
the result by the delivery of opinions not new to him and of lasting
worth, though presently to be subordinated to arguments of an inferior
order and much less characteristic. "At this rate," he said in 1866,
"you will have a parliament that will entirely lose its command over the
executive, and it will meet with less consideration and possess less
influence." Look for declining statesmanship, inferior aptitude, genius
dying off. "Instead of these you will have a horde of selfish and
obscure mediocrities, incapable of anything but mischief, and that
mischief devised and regulated by the raging demagogue of the hour." The
Reform legislation which promised these results in 1866 was thrown out.
Lord Derby's third administration was then formed in the summer of the
same year, and for the third time there was a Tory government on
sufferance. Its followers were still a minority in the House of Commons;
an angry Reform agitation was going on; an ingenious resolution founded
on the demand for an enlarged franchise serviceable to Liberals might
extinguish the new government almost immediately; and it is pretty
evident that the Tory leaders took office meaning to seek a cure for
this desperate weakness by wholesale extension of the suffrage. Their
excuses and calculations are well known, but when all is said, Lord
Derby's statement of its character, "a leap in the dark," and of its
intention, "dishing the Whigs," cannot be bettered. Whether Lord Derby
or Mr Disraeli originated this resolve has been much discussed, and it
remains an unsettled question. It is known that Disraeli's private
secretary, Mr Ralph Earle, quarrelled with him violently at about this
time; and Sir William Fraser relates that, meeting Mr Earle, that
gentleman said: "I know what your feelings must be about this Reform
Bill, and I think it right to tell you that it was not Disraeli's bill,
but Lord Derby's. I know everything that occurred." Mr Earle gave the
same assurances to the writer of these lines, and did so with hints and
half-confidences (quite intelligible, however) as to the persuasions
that wrought upon his chief. Mr Earle's listener on these occasions
confesses that he heard with a doubting mind, and that belief in what he
heard still keeps company with Mahomet's coffin. One thing, however, is
clear. To suppose Disraeli satisfied with the excuses made for his
adoption of the "dishing" process is forbidden by the whole tenor of his
teaching and conduct. He could not have become suddenly blind to the
fallacy of the expectations derived from such a course; and all his life
it had been his distinction to look above the transient and trafficking
expedients of the professional politician. However, the thing was done.
After various remodellings, and amid much perturbation, secession,
violent reproach, the Household Suffrage Bill passed in August 1867.
Another memorable piece of work, the confederation of Canada, had
already been accomplished. A few days after parliament met in the next
year Lord Derby's failing health compelled him to resign and Mr Disraeli
became prime minister. Irish disaffection had long been astir; the
Fenian menace looked formidable not only in Ireland but in England also.
The reconstructed government announced its intention of dealing with
Irish grievances. Mr Gladstone approved, proposing the abolition of the
Irish Church to begin with. A resolution to that effect was immediately
carried against the strong opposition of the government. Disraeli
insisted that the question should be settled in the new parliament which
the franchise act called for, and he seems to have had little doubt that
the country would declare against Mr Gladstone's proposal. He was
mistaken. It was the great question at the polls; and the first
elections by the new constituencies went violently against the authors
of their being.
The history of the next five years is Mr Gladstone's. The Irish Church
abolished, he set to work with passionate good intention on the Irish
land laws. The while he did so sedition took courage and flourished
exceedingly, so that to pacify Ireland the constable went hand in hand
with the legislator. The abolition of the Irish Church was followed by a
coercion act, and the land act by suspension of _Habeas Corpus_.
Disraeli, who at first preferred retirement and the writing of
_Lothair_, came forward from time to time to point the moral and predict
the end of Mr Gladstone's impulsive courses, which soon began to fret
the confidence of his friends. Some unpleasant errors of conduct--the
case of Sir R. Collier (afterwards Lord Monkswell, q.v.), the Ewelme
rectory case,[1] the significant Odo Russell (Lord Ampthill) episode (to
help the government out of a scrape the ambassador was accused of
exceeding his instructions)--told yet more. Above all, many humiliating
proofs that England was losing her place among the nations came out in
these days, the discovery being then new and unendurable. To be brief,
in less than four years the government had well-nigh worn out its own
patience with its own errors, failures and distractions, and would
gladly have gone to pieces when it was defeated on an Irish university
bill. But Disraeli, having good constitutional reasons for declining
office at the moment, could not allow this. Still gathering
unpopularity, still offending, alarming, alienating, the government went
on till 1874, suddenly dissolved parliament, and was signally beaten,
the Liberal party breaking up. Like most of his political friends,
Disraeli had no expectation of such a victory--little hope, indeed, of
any distinct success. Yet when he went to Manchester on a brief
political outing two years before, he was received with such acclaim as
he had never known in his life. He was then sixty-eight years old, and
this was his first full banquet of popularity. The elation and
confidence drawn from the Manchester meetings were confirmed by every
circumstance of the 1874 elections. But he was well aware of how much he
owed to his opponents' errors, seeing at the same time how safely he
could lay his future course by them. He had always rejected the
political economy of his time, and it was breaking down. He had always
refused to accept the economist's dictum without reference to other
considerations than the turnover of trade; and even Manchester could
pardon the refusal now. The national spirit, vaporized into a
cosmopolitan mist, was fast condensing again under mortification and
insult from abroad uncompensated by any appreciable percentage of cash
profit. This was a changing England, and one that Disraeli could govern
on terms of mutual satisfaction; but not if the reviving "spirit of the
country" ran to extremes of self-assertion. At one of the great
Manchester meetings he said, "Do not suppose, because I counsel firmness
and decision at the right moment, that I am of that school of statesmen
who are favourable to a turbulent and aggressive diplomacy. I have
resisted it during a large part of my life."
Suez Canal shares.
But for the hubbub occasioned by the Public Worship Regulation Act, the
first two years of the 1874 administration had no remarkable excitements
till near the end of them. The Public Worship Act, introduced by the
archbishop of Canterbury, was meant to restrain ritualism. Disraeli, who
from first to last held to the Reformed Church as capable of dispensing
social good as no other organization might, supported the Bill as
"putting down ritualism"; spoke very vehemently; gave so much offence
that at one time neither the bill nor the government seemed quite safe.
For some time afterwards there was so little legislation of the kind
called "enterprising" that even some friends of the government began to
think it too tame; but at the end of the second year an announcement was
made which put that fear to rest. The news that the khedive's Suez Canal
shares had been bought by the government was received with boundless
applause. It was a courageous thing to do; but it was not a Disraeli
conception, nor did it originate in any government department. It was
suggested from without at a moment when the possibility of ever
acquiring the shares was passing away. On the morning of the 15th of
November 1875, Mr Frederick Greenwood, then editor of the _Pall Mall
Gazette_, went to Lord Derby at the foreign office, informed him that
the khedive's shares were passing into the hands of a French syndicate,
and urged arrest of the transaction by purchase for England. (The shares
being private property their sale could not, of course, be forbidden.)
Lord Derby thought there must be a mistake. He could not believe that
bargaining of that kind could go on in Cairo without coming to the
knowledge of the British consul there. He was answered that nevertheless
it was going on. The difficulties of purchase by England were then
arrayed by Lord Derby. They were more than one or two, and of course
they had a formidable look, but so also had the alternative and the lost
opportunity. One difficulty had already come into existence, and had to
be met at once. Lord Derby had either to make direct inquiry of the
khedive or to let the matter go. If he inquired, and there was no such
negotiation, his question might be interpreted in a very troublesome
way; moreover, we should put the idea of selling the shares into the
khedive's head, which would be unfortunate. "There's my position, and
now what do you say?" The answer given, Lord Derby drafted a telegram to
the British consul-general at Cairo, and read it out. It instructed
Colonel Stanton to go immediately to the khedive and put the question
point blank. Meanwhile the prime minister would be seen, and Lord
Derby's visitor might call next day to hear the reply from Cairo. It is
enough to add here that on receipt of the answer the purchase for
England was taken up and went to a speedy conclusion.[2]
Eastern question.
As if upon the impulse of this transaction, Disraeli opened the next
session of parliament with a bill to confer upon the queen the title of
empress of India--a measure which offended the instincts of many
Englishmen, and, for the time, revived the prejudices against its
author. More important was the revival of disturbances in European
Turkey, which, in their outcome, were to fill the last chapter of
Disraeli's career. But for this interruption it is likely that he would
have given much of his attention to Ireland, not because it was an
attractive employment for his few remaining years, but because he saw
with alarm the gathering troubles in that country. And his mind was
strongly drawn in another direction. In a remarkable speech delivered in
1872, he spoke with great warmth of the slighting of the colonies,
saying that "no minister in this country will do his duty who neglects
any opportunity of reconstructing as much as possible our colonial
empire, and of responding to those distant sympathies which may become
the source of incalculable strength and happiness to this island."
However, nothing was done in fulfilment of this duty in the first two
years from 1874, and early in the third the famous Andrassy note, the
Berlin memorandum, the Bashi-Bazouk atrocities, and the accumulative
excitement thereby created in England, reopened the Eastern question
with a vengeance. The policy which Disraeli's government now took up may
be truly called the national policy. Springing from the natural
suggestions of self-defence against the march of a dangerous rivalry, it
had the sanction of all British statesmanship for generations, backed by
the consenting instinct of the people. It was quite unsentimental, being
pro-Turkish or anti-Russian only as it became so in being pro-British.
The statesmen by whom it was established and continued saw in Russia a
power which, unless firmly kept within bounds, would dominate Europe;
more particularly that it would undermine and supersede British
authority in the East. And without nicely considering the desire of
Russia to expand to the Mediterranean, the Pacific or in any other
direction, they thought it one of their first duties to maintain their
own Eastern empire; or, to put it another way, to contrive that Great
Britain should be subject to Russian ascendancy (if ever), at the
remotest period allowed by destiny. Such were the ideas on which
England's Russian policy was founded. In 1876 this policy revived as a
matter of course in the cabinet, and as spontaneously, though not upon a
first provocation, became popular almost to fury. And furiously popular
it remained. But a strong opposing current of feeling, equally
passionate, set in against the Turks; war began and lasted long; and as
the agitation at home and the conflict abroad went on, certain of
Disraeli's colleagues, who were staunch enough at the beginning,
gradually weakened. It is certainly true that Disraeli was prepared, in
all senses of the word, to take strong measures against such an end to
the war as the San Stefano treaty threatened. Rather than suffer that,
he would have fought the Russians in alliance with the Turks, and had
gone much farther in maturing a scheme of attack and defence than was
known at the time or is commonly known now. That there was a master
motive for this resolution may be taken for granted; and it is to be
found in a belief that not to throw back the Russian advance then was to
lose England's last chance of postponing to a far future the
predominance of a great rival power in the East. How much or how little
judgment shows in that calculation, when viewed in the light of later
days, we do not discuss. What countenance it had from his colleagues
dropped away. At the end their voices were strong enough to insist upon
the diplomatic action which at no point falls back on the sword; Lord
Derby (foreign minister) being among the first to make a stand on that
resolution, though he was not the first seceder from the government.
Such diplomacy in such conditions is paralytic. It cannot speak thrice,
with whatever affectation of boldness, without discovering its true
character to trained ears; which should be remembered when Disraeli's
successes at Berlin are measured. It should be remembered that what with
the known timidity of his colleagues, and what with the strength and
violence of the Russian party in England, his achievement at Berlin was
like the reclamation of butter from a dog's mouth; as Prince Bismarck
understood in acknowledging Disraeli's gifts of statesmanship. It should
also be remembered, when his Eastern policy in 1876-1878 is denounced as
malign and a failure, that it was never carried out. Good or bad, ill or
well calculated, effective existence was denied to it; and a man cannot
be said to have failed in what he was never permitted to attempt. The
nondescript course of action which began at the Constantinople
conference and ended at Berlin was not of his direction until its few
last days. It only marked at various stages the thwarting and
suppression of his policy by colleagues who were haunted night and day
by memories of the Crimean War, and not least, probably, by the fate of
the statesmen who suffered for its blunders and their own. Disraeli also
looked back to those blunders, and he was by no means insensible to the
fate of fallen ministers. But just as he maintained at the time of the
conflict, and after, that there would have been no Crimean War had not
the British government convinced the tsar that it was in the hands of
the peace party, so now he believed that a bold policy would prevent or
limit war, and at the worst put off grave consequences which otherwise
would make a rapid advance.
As if aware of much of this, the country was well content with
Disraeli's successes at Berlin, though sore on some points, he himself
sharing the soreness. Yet there were great days for him after his
return. At the Berlin conference he had established a formidable
reputation; the popularity he enjoyed at home was affectionately
enthusiastic; no minister had ever stood in more cordial relations with
his sovereign; and his honours in every kind were his own achievement
against unending disadvantage. But he was soon to suffer irretrievable
defeat. A confused and unsatisfactory war in Afghanistan, troubles yet
more unsatisfactory in South Africa, conspired with two or three years
of commercial distress to invigorate "the swing of the pendulum" when he
dissolved parliament in 1880. Dissolution the year before would have
been wiser, but a certain pride forbade. The elections went heavily
against him. He took the blow with composure, and sank easily into a
comparative retirement. Yet he still watched affairs as a great party
leader should, and from time to time figured vigorously in debate.
Meanwhile he had another novel to sit down to--the poor though highly
characteristic _Endymion_; which, to his great surprise and equal
pleasure, was replaced on his table by a cheque for ten thousand pounds.
Yet even this satisfaction had its tang of disappointment; for though
_Endymion_ was not wholly written in his last days, it was in no respect
the success that _Lothair_ was. This also he could bear. His description
of his grandfather recurs to us: "A man of ardent character, sanguine,
courageous and fortunate, with a temper which no disappointment could
disturb."
Death and influence.
As earl of Beaconsfield (failing health had compelled him to take refuge
in the House of Lords in 1876) Benjamin Disraeli died in his house in
Curzon Street on the 19th of April 1881. The likelihood of his death was
publicly known for some days before the event, and then the greatness of
his popularity and its warmth were declared for the first time. No such
demonstration of grief was expected even by those who grieved the most. He
lies in Hughenden churchyard, in a rail-enclosed grave, with liberty for
the turf to grow between him and the sky. Within the church is a marble
tablet, placed there by his queen, with a generous inscription to his
memory. The anniversary of his death has since been honoured in an
unprecedented manner, the 19th of April being celebrated as "Primrose
Day"--the primrose, for reasons impossible accurately to define, being
popularly supposed to have been Disraeli's favourite flower. Even among
his friends in youth (Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, for example), and not
improbably among the city men who wagered their money in irrecoverable
loans to him on the chance of his success, there may have been some who
compassed the thought of Benjamin Disraeli as prime minister and peer; but
at no time could any fancy have imagined him remembered so enduringly as
Lord Beaconsfield has been. It is possible that Sarah Disraeli (the Myra
of _Endymion_), or that "the most severe of critics but a perfect wife,"
may have had such dreams--hardly that they could have occurred to any mind
but a devoted woman's. Disraeli's life was a succession of surprises, but
none was so great as that he should be remembered after death more
widely, lastingly, respectfully, affectionately, than any other statesman
in the long reign of Queen Victoria. While he lived he did not seem at all
cut out for that distinction even as an Imperialist. Significant as was
the common grief when he died, no such consequence could be inferred from
it, and certainly not from the elections of 1880. It stands, however, this
high distinction, and with it the thought that it would have been denied
to him altogether had the "adventurer" and "mystery man" of the sixties
died at the age of threescore years and ten. We have said that never till
1872 did he look upon the full cup of popularity. It might have been said
that even at that time intrigue to get rid of him had yet to cease in his
own party; and but a few years before, a man growing old, he was still in
the lowest deeps of his disappointments and humiliations. How, then, could
it be imagined that with six years of power from his seventieth year, the
Jew "adventurer," mysterious and theatrical to the last, should fill a
greater space in the mind of England twenty years after death than Peel or
Palmerston after five? Of course it can be explained; and when explained,
we see that Disraeli's good fortune in this respect is not due entirely to
his own merits. His last years of power might have been followed by as
long a period of more acceptable government than his own, to the
effacement of his own from memory; but that did not happen. What did
follow was a time of universal turbulence and suspicion, in which the
pride of the nation was wounded again and again. To say "Majuba" and
"Gordon" recalls its deepest hurts, but not all of them; and it may be
that a pained and angry people, looking back, saw in the man whom they
lately displaced more than they had ever seen before. From that time, at
any rate, Disraeli has been acknowledged as the regenerator and
representative of the Imperial idea in England. He has also been accused
on the same grounds; and if the giver of good wine may be blamed for the
guest who gets drunk on it, there is justice in the accusation. It is but
a statement of fact, however, that Disraeli retains his hold upon the
popular mind on this account mainly. The rekindling of the Imperial idea
is understood as a timely act of revolt and redemption: of revolt against
continuous humiliations deeply felt, redemption from the fate of nations
obviously weak and suspected of timidity. It has been called
rescue-work--deliverance from the dangers of invited aggression and a
philosophical neglect of the means of defence. And its first achievement
for the country (this is again a mere statement of fact) was the
restoration of a much-damaged self-respect and the creation of a great
defensive fleet not a day too soon for safety. So much for "the great
heart of the people." Meanwhile political students find to their
satisfaction that he never courted popularity, and never practised the art
of working for "quick returns" of sympathy or applause. As "adventurer,"
he should have done so; yet he neglected the cultivation of that paying
art for the wisdom that looks to the long future, and bears its fruit,
perchance, when no one cares to remember who sowed the seed. So it is that
to read some of his books and many of his speeches is to draw more respect
and admiration from their pages than could have been found there
originally. The student of his life understands that Disraeli's claim to
remembrance rests not only on the breadth of his views, his deep insight,
his long foresight, but even more on the courage which allowed him to
declare opinions supplied from those qualities when there was no visible
likelihood of their justification by experience, and therefore when their
natural fate was to be slighted. His judgments had to wait the event
before they were absolved from ridicule or delivered from neglect. The
event arrives; he is in his grave; but his reputation loses nothing by
that. It gains by regret that death was beforehand with him.
Character.
"Adventurer," as applied to Disraeli, was a mere term of abuse.
"Mystery-man" had much of the same intention, but in a blameless though
not in a happy sense it was true of him to the end of his days. Even to
his friends, and to many near him, he remained mysterious to the last.
It is impossible to doubt that some two or three, four or five
perchance, were at home in his mind, being freely admitted there; but of
partial admissions to its inner places there seem to have been few or
none. Men who were long associated with him in affairs, and had much of
his stinted companionship, have confessed that with every wish to
understand his character they never succeeded. Sometimes they fancied
they had got within the topping walls of the maze, and might hope to
gain the point whence survey could be made of the whole; but as often
they found themselves, in a moment, where they stood at last and at
first--outside. His speeches carry us but a little way beyond the mental
range; his novels rather baffle than instruct. It is commonly believed
that Disraeli looked in the glass while describing Sidonia in
_Coningsby_. We group the following sentences from this description for
a purpose that will be presently seen:--(1) "He was admired by women,
idolized by artists, received in all circles with great distinction, and
appreciated for his intellect by the very few to whom he at all opened
himself." (2) "For, though affable and generous, it was impossible to
penetrate him: though unreserved in his manners his frankness was
limited to the surface. He observed everything, thought ever, but
avoided serious discussion. If you pressed him for an opinion he took
refuge in raillery, and threw out some paradox with which it was not
easy to cope. The secret history of the world was Sidonia's pastime. His
great pleasure was to contrast the hidden motive with the public pretext
of transactions." (3) "He might have discovered a spring of happiness in
susceptibilities of the heart; but this was a sealed fountain for
Sidonia. In his organization there was a peculiar, perhaps a great
deficiency; he was a man without affection. It would be hard to say that
he had no heart, for he was susceptible of deep emotions; but not for
individuals. Woman was to him a toy, man a machine." These sentences are
separately grouped here for the sake of suggesting that they will more
truly illustrate Disraeli's character if taken as follows:--The first as
representing his most cherished social ambitions--in whatever degree
achieved. The second group as faithfully and closely descriptive of
himself; descriptive too of a character purposely cloaked. The third as
much less simple; in part a mixture of truth with Byronic affectation,
and for the rest (and more significantly), as intimating the resolute
exercise of extraordinary powers of control over the promptings and
passions by which so many capable ambitions have come to grief. So read,
Sidonia and Benjamin Disraeli are brought into close resemblance by
Disraeli himself; for what in this description is untrue to the
suspected fundamentals of his character is true to his known foibles.
But for a general interpretation of Lord Beaconsfield and his career
none serves so well as that which Froude insists on most. He was
thoroughly and unchangeably a Jew. At but one remove by birth from
southern Europe and the East, he was an Englishman in nothing but his
devotion to England and his solicitude for her honour and prosperity. It
was not wholly by volition and design that his mind was strange to
others and worked in absolute detachment. He had "none of the hereditary
prepossessions of the native Englishman." No such prepossessions
disturbed his vision when it was bent upon the rising problems of the
time, or rested on the machinery of government and the kind of men who
worked it and their ways of working. The advantages of Sidonia's
intellect and temperament were largely his, in affairs, but not without
their drawbacks. His pride in his knowledge of the English character was
the pride of a student; and we may doubt if it ever occurred to him that
there would have been less pride but more knowledge had he been an
Englishman. It is certain that in shrouding his own character he checked
the communication of others to himself, and so could continue to the end
of his career the costly mistake of being theatrical in England. There
was a great deal too (though little to his blame) in Lord Malmesbury's
observation that he was not only disliked in the House of Commons for
his mysterious manner, but prejudiced by a pronounced foreign air and
aspect. Lord Malmesbury does not put it quite as strongly as that, but
he might have done so with truth. No Englishman could approach Disraeli
without some immediate consciousness that he was in the presence of a
foreigner.
Lord Beaconsfield has been praised for his integrity in money matters;
the praise could have been spared--it does not rise high enough. It is
also said to his honour that he "never struck at a little man," and that
was well; but it is explained as readily by pride and calculation as by
magnanimity. A man of extraordinary coolness and self-control, his
faults in every kind were faults of excess: it is the mark of them all.
But whatever offence they gave, whatever mischief they did, was soon
exhausted, and has long since been pardoned.
AUTHORITIES.--The writer's personal knowledge is largely represented
in the above article. Among the biographical literature available
prior to the authoritative _Life_ the following may be cited:--Lord
Beaconsfield's Preface to 1849 edition of Isaac D'Israeli's works;
_Correspondence with his Sister_, and _Home Letters_, edited by Ralph
Disraeli; Samuel Smiles, _Memoirs and Correspondence of John Murray;
Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield_, by F. Hitchman; _Memoir_ by T.E.
Kebbel; _Memoir_ by J.A. Froude; _Memoir_ by Harold Gorst; Sir William
Fraser's _Disraeli and his Day; The Speeches of Lord Beaconsfield_,
edited by T.E. Kebbel. In 1904, however, the large collection of
material for Lord Beaconsfield's life, in the hands of his executors
Lord Rowton and Lord Rothschild, was acquired by _The Times_, and the
task of preparing the biography was assigned to Mr W.F. Monypenny, an
assistant editor of _The Times_ (1894-1899), who was best known to the
public as editor of the Johannesburg _Star_ during the crisis of
1899-1903. (F. G.)