LITERATURE
WIT, HUMOUR, ROMANCE
Whatever Disraeli wrote was always literature, and never lecture. He
was a born man of letters, and Dickens once lamented that politics had
so long and often deprived fiction of a master.
Disraeli is renowned for his wit; but he is not so generally famed for
two qualities in which he excelled, though with limitations--his subtle
sense of humour and his fine feeling for the picturesque and romantic.
Like his own “Sidonia,” Disraeli “said many things that were strange,
yet they instantly appeared to be true;” like his own “Pinto,” he “had
the art of viewing common things in a fanciful light.” I shall notice
both these characteristics. He believed in the force of phrases as a
pollen, so to speak, of ideas wafted through the air; and he believed
in the perpetual miracles of existence. His favourite English authors
were the romantics of Queen Elizabeth and the wits of Queen Anne and
the Georges.
It was once said that wit is a point, but humour a straight line.
This epigram is inadequate. Wit is no _résumé_ of humour; the two
qualities differ in kind. Wit is a department of style; and style
is gesture, accent, expression. Wit is the faculty of combining the
unlike, by the language of illustration, suggestion, and surprise.
It sums up characters, things, and ideas. Like misery, “it yokes
strange bedfellows,” but with the link of words alone. It is best when
intellectually true, but its requisite is _fancy_, and its domain
expression. Humour, on the other hand, is an exercise of perceptive
sympathy; it is the faculty of discerning the incongruous, especially
of human nature, in the visible alone; it “looks on this picture and
on that;” it is most excellent when ethically sound, but its essence is
insight, and its sphere, situation.
No one ever heard of a witty picture, or a humorous epigram. We laugh
at humour, whereas at wit we smile. Wit is, as it were, Yorick with cap
and bells; but humour unmasks him with a moral. Popular proverbs are
the wit of the people; what the crowd laughs at is its humour, and its
humour varies in different countries; but the standard of wit is the
same in all civilisations. To define wit and humour would require both
qualities, but, if I were to try my hand, I would venture to call wit,
mirth turned philosopher--humour, philosophy at play.
Disraeli’s wit is at root arabesque. Its filagree flourishes, like the
ornaments of the Alhambra, are supported by solid if slender pillars.
It is fanciful grace sustained by a poised strength; but it is also
tempered by the cheery, if sententious, cynicism of the eighteenth
century, in which he had steeped himself from childhood. Its source was
racial; but its form and colour were much influenced by Pope, Swift,
and Voltaire. He was “a master of sentences.” He delighted to condense
thought, as it were, in civilised proverbs, and at the same time to let
his terse fancy[169] embellish it with subtle and airy flourishes. His
paradoxes are almost always thought in a nutshell, and never obscure
nonsense in a clever frame. Of his directer wit, a good instance is to
be found in his repartee to the crowd at his early Marylebone election:
“On what do you stand?” “_My head._” Or his remark on the member who
solemnly assured the House that he “took” his “stand” on “progress.”
“It occurred to me that progress was a somewhat slippery thing to take
one’s stand on.” When the late Mr. Beresford Hope’s rather turgid
remark on the “golden image set up on the sands of Arabia” provoked
Disraeli’s famous phrase, its accompaniment was equally good. He said
that there was “a certain prudery” about the honourable member’s
eloquence which never failed to fascinate.[170] The great Catholic
lady who received her guests “with extreme unction” reminds one of
Horace Walpole.
Wit, of whatever class, is, roughly speaking, twofold in
degree--lightning wit and wit lambent--the wit that strikes sharply,
and the pleasantry that shines around its object. In the first Disraeli
excelled. Like his own Monsignor, he “sparkles with anecdote and
blazes with repartee.” His pages bristle with good things; it is hard
to choose. Every one remembers his political retorts and his literary
aphorisms. “One whom I will not say that I respect, but rather that I
regard.” Another, “Who has learned much, but has still to learn that
petulance is not sarcasm, nor insolence invective.” The “conjuror who
advances to the edge of the platform, and for hours draws yards of red
tape from his mouth.” One quotation against Peel--“Always ready with
his Virgil”--that of the Horatian “Vectabor tunc humeris;” and “Is
England to be governed by Popkins’ plan?” “Batavian Grace,” “Superior
Person,” and the like. Then there are the drunken recruits “full of
spirit;” the hansom, the “gondola of London;” the critics, “the men
who have failed;”[171] Tadpole’s, “Tory men and Whig measures;” and
Rigby’s, “little words in great capitals”--these are household words.
“Our young Queen, and our old institutions.” There are Diplomatists,
“the Hebrews of politics;” St. James’s Square, “the Faubourg St.
Germain of London;” the “bad politician” of the ’thirties, who “like
a bad shilling has worn off his edge by his very restlessness,” and
the enlightened Whig minister “almost eructating with the plenary
inspiration of the spirit of the age;” the men of the ’seventies who
“played with billiard-balls games that were not billiards,” and the
lady of the ’forties who “sacrificed even her lovers to her friends;”
stolid bores, our “Social Polyphemi;” books, “the curse of the human
race;” of Austria, “two things made her a nation, she was German
and she was a Catholic, and now she is neither;” of the Reform Bill,
“It gave to Manchester a bishop and to Birmingham a dandy.” And,
less familiar, there is “Lord Squib’s” definition of money value,
“very dear;” “Count Mirabel’s” pleasantry, “coffee and confidence;”
“Essper George’s,” “Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I
remember, and remembered more than I have seen;” Venus, the “goddess
of watering-places,” and “Burlington” with “his old loves and new
dances.” There is the advice in _The Young Duke_, too, that “good
fortune with good management, no country house and no children, is
Aladdin’s lamp,” and that in _Lothair_ to “go into the country for the
first note of the nightingale and return to town for the first muffin
bell.” Then there is the “treatise on a subject in which everybody
is interested, in a style no one understands;” and there are the
French actresses averring at supper, “No language makes you so thirsty
as French;” the English tradesmen who “console themselves for not
getting their bills paid by inviting their customers to dinner;” the
Utilitarian, whose dogma was “Rules are general, feelings are general,
and property should be general;” and the definition of Liberty, “Do
as others do, and never knock men down.” There is Monmouth’s “some
woman has got hold of him and made him a Whig.” There is the great
political lady “who liked handsome people, even handsome women;” and
there is the unfortunate third-rate statesman, “who committed suicide
from a want of imagination.” Nor should I omit an unprinted _mot_. He
defined a political “Deputation” as “a noun of multitude meaning many,
but not signifying much.” He was wont also to distinguish between
“lawyers” and “legislators.” A brace of very witty similes also
claim a mention here--the comparison of the Parliament-built region
of Harley Square to “a large family of plain children with Portland
Place and Portman Square for their respectable parents;” and that of
the detached breakfast-tables at “Brentham,” to “a cluster of Greek
or Italian Republics, instead of a great metropolitan table, like a
central government, absorbing all the genius and resources of society.”
Further, in the same category are the many metaphorical allusions and
descriptions that ornament his speeches. The transference of the
Bank currency crisis to the Neapolitan procession and miracle of St.
Januarius, both from a common cause, “congealed circulation;” the
picture of a maladroit reinforcement of opposition as the exploit of
the Turkish Admiral, summoned by the Sultan and blessed by the muftis,
to retrieve the war, who yet steered his imposing fleet right into the
enemy’s port; and the many illustrations from Cervantes, whose irony
they share.
Then, again, there are those terse figurative fancies which belong
to the family of those first mentioned. The “Midland Sea” for the
Mediterranean; the “Western minster” for Westminster Abbey; the “dark
sex” for man; the “free-trader in gossip” for the bad listener; the
“confused explanations and explained confusions,” “Stateswoman”[172]
and “Anecdotage,” which, by-the-by, is a phrase of Isaac Disraeli
derived by him in conversation from Rogers[173]--all these and their
kindred remind us that he was the son of an author portrayed by him as
sauntering on his garden terrace meditating some happy phrase.
Of the second--the wit of sustained sparkle rather than of sudden
flashes--there are abundant examples. There is the passage in which
“Lady Constance” in _Tancred_ unconsciously ironises evolution in her
criticism of a pamphlet, “The Revelations of Chaos.” There is the
lady’s reasoning on the Gulf Stream theory, and “Lothair’s” retort,
“You believe in Gulf Stream to that extent--no skating.” There is the
pious regret that a boring authoress could not be married to the author
of “The Letters of Junius” and “have done with it;” and the pious hope
that the Whigs would disfranchise every town without a Peel statue.
Then, again, there is “Herbert” in _Venetia_.
“I doubt whether a man at fifty is the same material being that he is
at five-and-twenty.”
“I wonder,” said Lord Cadurcis, “if a creditor brought an action
against you at fifty for goods sold and delivered at five-and-twenty,
one could set up the want of identity as a plea in bar; it would be a
consolation to elderly gentlemen.”
And to go back to an even earlier date--
“What a pity, Miss Manvers, that the fashion has gone out of selling
one’s self to the devil!... _What a capital plan for younger brothers!_
It is a kind of thing I have been trying to do all my life, and
never could succeed in. I began at school with toasted cheese and a
pitchfork.”
Or take the report of the debate in the House of Lords, “imposing,
particularly if we take a part in it”--
“Lord Exchamberlain thought the nation going on wrong, and he made a
speech full of currency and constitution. Baron Deprivyseal seconded
him with great effect, brief but bitter, satirical but sore. The Earl
of Quarterday answered these, full of confidence in the nation and
himself. When the debate was getting heavy, Lord Snap jumped up to
give them something light. The Lords do not encourage wit, and so
are obliged to put up with pertness. But Viscount Memoir was very
statesmanlike, and spouted a sort of universal history. Then there was
Lord Ego, who vindicated his character, when nobody knew he had one,
and explained his motives, because his auditors could not understand
his acts.”
Or the comparison of the defeated Tories to the Saxons converted by
Charlemagne--
“... When the Emperor appeared, instead of conquering, he converted
them. How were they converted? In battalions; the old chronicler
informs us they were converted in battalions, and baptised in platoons.
It was utterly impossible to bring these individuals from a state of
reprobation to one of grace with sufficient celerity.”
In his speeches again there is the _locus classicus_ of “the range
of exhausted volcanoes”--“not a flame flickers on a single pallid
crest.” There are the wonderful political pictures of the “Calabrian
Earthquake,” the “ragged regiment that would not march through
Coventry--that’s flat;” “Melbourne with his Reform Ministry and
Ducrow still professing to ride on three sullen jackasses at once,
but sprawling in the sawdust of the arena;” of Peel as the profligate
deserting his mistress and “sending down his valet to say, ‘I will
have no whining here,’” and a hundred others as good.[174] Perhaps
“Gamaliel, with all the broad ‘phylacteries on his forehead,’
who ‘comes down to tell us that he is not as other men are,’ in
reference to the ‘Cabal’ of 1859, should also be included. This is the
‘parliamentary wit’ which Gladstone avowed unrivalled, and these, the
vivid illustrations and metaphors, which he declared supreme in power
of ‘summing up characters and situations,’ and fraught with the gift of
‘appealing to the ear and the fancy.’”
But there is also one from _The Press_ of 1853 which is unknown, and
claims a memorial. He is referring to the “Coalition” Ministry of
1853--one, as he calls it, of “suspended opinions,” and “resembling the
ark into which creatures of the most opposite species walked two by
two.” It singles out a magnificent “over-educated mediocrity” among the
strait sect of the “Peelites”--those who in Lady Clanricarde’s epigram
“were always putting themselves up to auction and buying themselves
in again.” It satirises that leader’s protest that he was still a
“Conservative,” his announced “regret at the rupture of ancient ties,”
his “hope of some future reunion”--
“... Amiable regret! Honourable hope! reminding us of those inhabitants
of the South Sea Islands, who never devour their enemies--that would be
paying them too great a compliment. They eat up only their own friends
and relations with an appetite proportioned to the love that they bear
to them. And then they hasten to deck themselves in the feathers and
trappings of those thus tenderly devoured in memorial of their regret
at the ‘rupture of ancient ties,’ and their ‘hope of some future
reunion.’ Do you feel quite safe with your new ally? Do you not dread
that the same affectionate tooth will some day be fastened upon your
own shoulders?’”
No wonder that Lord Granville--“un radical qui aime la bonne
societé”--described Disraeli as a “master” in the literary expression
of “praise and blame.”
Last, though not least, should be mentioned Pinto’s dictum on English--
“It is an expressive language, but not difficult to master. Its range
is limited. It consists, so far as I can observe, of four words,
“nice,” “jolly,” “charming,” and “bore;” and some grammarians add
“fond.”
But none knew better than Disraeli that wit unrelieved is metallic. He
had a very real perception of the ludicrous, and it was usually of a
cast bordering on irony. In boyhood, Disraeli had been a great admirer
of Montaigne, one of those authors, as he acknowledged, who “give a
spring to the mind;” but I cannot discern any influence of Montaigne’s
twinkling stillness on Disraeli’s humour. The humour of Molière and of
Sheridan, like that of Fielding, of Hogarth, and of Dickens, is direct
and didactic, pointing to the follies and foibles of mankind. That,
on the other hand, of Sterne, often of Thackeray, always of Heine, is
indirect, inclined to be sentimental, and insinuating with all the
machinery of playful surprise, the inconsistencies that enlist feeling
or awaken thought. Swift’s grim and creative humour, also, that “knocks
off the tallest of heads” with a knotted bludgeon, wielded, however,
by an imaginative fierceness, is of the same order; and Swift had been
early studied, was constantly quoted, and often imitated by Disraeli.
The former is the broadsword of Cœur de Lion; the latter, the scimitar
of Saladin. It is of this latter species that Disraeli at his best must
be reckoned. It stamps the whole of _Popanilla_, and much of _Ixion_,
and _The Infernal Marriage_, and it interleaves both his wit, his
argument, and his reflection throughout his novels, and, conspicuously
in his triumph, _Coningsby_.
Take “Lord Monmouth’s” indignant lesson to the hero: “You go with your
family, sir, like a gentleman. _You are not to consider your opinions
like a philosopher or a political adventurer_;” or the motive for his
bequest of his bust to “Rigby,” “that he might perhaps wish to present
it to another friend;” or the same amiable nobleman’s reason for
esteeming besides appreciating “Sidonia”--he was so rich that he could
not be bought. “A person or a thing that you perhaps could not buy,
became,” in his eyes, “invested with a kind of halo amounting almost
to sanctity.” “Lord Monmouth,” indeed, and “Rigby” are Disraeli’s
masterpieces in this vein; and “Mrs. Guy Flouncey,” who, like “Becky,”
“was always sure of an ally the moment the gentlemen entered the
drawing-room,” follows at no very remote distance. Take “Waldershare’s”
account of England’s ascendency:--
“I must say it was a grand idea of our Kings making themselves
sovereigns of the sea. _The greater portion of this planet is water, so
we at once became a first-rate power._”
Or the Homeric simplicity of the “Ansary” tribe, who believe London to
be surrounded by sea, and inquire if the English dwell in ships, and
are thus corrected by their would-be interpreter “Keferinis”--
“The English live in ships only during six months of the
year--principally when they go to India--the rest entirely at their
country houses.”
Similarly, too, is the oblique sarcasm of “_Tancred’s_” “Fakredeen”--
“... We ought never to be surprised at anything that is done by the
English, who are, after all, in a certain sense, savages.... Everything
they require is imported from other countries.... I have been assured
at Beiroot that they do not grow even their own cotton; but that I can
hardly believe. _Even their religion is an exotic, and, as they are
indebted for that to Syria, it is not surprising they should import
their education from Greece._”
So, too, the piteous plight of the two honest servants--“Freeman
and Trueman”--who complain to their master, in sight of Sinai, that
they “do miss the ‘ome-brewed ale and the family prayers;” and the
twice-raised wonder of the “Swells” as to what could drag one of
their compeers to Palestine: “I believe Jeremiah somewhere mentions
partridges.” Nor should “St. Aldegonde’s sigh”--“of a rebellious
Titan”--at refusing to attend morning church at Brentham be forgotten:
“Sunday in London is bad, but Sunday in the country is infernal;” or
his dainty wife’s elaborate efforts that he should never be bored;
or the handsome Duke’s[175] daily thanksgiving as he completed his
“consummate toilette” that he had a family “worthy of him.”
“Rigby’s” election, too--an excellent example--well illustrates the man
to whom the country meant nothing in comparison with the constituency,
and to whom his titled patron’s choice of him as executor was a
“sublime truth.” The whole scene is one of sustained humour. I will
only cite “Rigby’s” “grand peroration.”
“... He assured them that the eyes of the whole empire were on this
particular election (cries of ‘That’s true!’ on all sides), and England
expected every man to do his duty. ‘_And who do you expect to do
yours_,’ inquired a gentleman below, ‘_about that ’ere pension?_’...”
Then again, the episode of the Justice of the Peace in _Venetia_, and
this from _Endymion_--
“The chairman opened the proceedings, but was coldly received, though
he spoke sensibly and at some length. He then introduced a gentleman
who was absolutely an alderman to move a resolution.... The august
position of the speaker atoned for his halting rhetoric; and a city
which had only just for the first time been invested with municipal
privileges was hushed before a man who might in time even become a
mayor.”
So, too, once more; the description of “Armine’s” experiences in the
sponging-house, where the only literature was a Hebrew Bible. This is
from _Henrietta Temple_. In _Vivian Grey_, his first novel, occurs the
same whimsical humour that is to be found in his last, _Endymion_.
The German statesman is pointing a _gourmet_-metaphysician, “stuffing
‘kalte schale’ in a corner.”
“... The leaven of the idealists, a pupil of the celebrated Fichte....
The first principle of this school is to reject all expressions which
incline in the slightest degree to substantiality.... Matter is his
great enemy. My dear sir, observe how exquisitely Nature revenges
herself on these capricious and fantastic children. Methinks that the
best answer to the idealism of M. Fichte is to see his pupil devouring
_kalte schale_.”
In _Lothair_ few will forget the hero’s musings after the opera
attendant’s “Thank you, my lord” had attested the “overpowering
honorarium.”
“‘He knows me,’ thought Lothair; but it was not so. When the British
nation is at once grateful and enthusiastic, they always call you
‘my lord.’” And in the same novel occurs the admirable humour of the
scene at Muriel Towers, where the new French dance which is remembered
and at last arranged by the impromptu good humour and cleverness of
“Theodora,” is muddled by “Lord Carisbrook,” who sums up his knowledge
by “Newest thing in Paris,” yet, notwithstanding, grins afterwards,
quite self-satisfied, with his “I am glad I remembered it.”
There remains this light thrust at London architecture--
“Shall we find refuge in a committee of taste, escape from the
mediocrity of one to the mediocrity of many?... One suggestion might
be made. No profession in England has done its best until it has
furnished its victim. The pure administration of justice dates from the
deposition of Macclesfield.... Even our boasted navy never achieved a
victory until we shot an admiral. _Suppose an architect were hanged!_”
And, finally, how admirable is the mock epic of the _chef’s_ dilemma at
the opening of _Tancred_: “It is worthy of Boileau.”
“... ‘What you learned from me,’ says Papa Prevost, ‘came at least
from a good school. It is something to have served under Napoleon,’ he
added, with the grand air of the imperial kitchen. ‘Had it not been
for Waterloo, I should have had the cross. _But the Bourbons and the
Cooks of the Empire never could understand each other._ They brought
over an emigrant _chef_ who did not comprehend the taste of the age.
He wished to bring everything back to the time of the “_œil-de-bœuf_.”
_When Monsieur passed my soup of Austerlitz untasted, I knew the old
family was doomed._.’... ‘We must muster all our forces,’ says the
great Leander. ‘There is a want not only of genius but of men in our
art. The Cooks are like the civil engineers: since the middle class
have taken to giving dinners, the demand exceeds the supply.’ ‘There
is Andrien,’ said Papa Prevost; ‘you had some hopes of him.’ ‘He is
too young. I took him to Hellingsley, and he lost his head on the
third day. I entrusted the _soufflés_ to him, and but for the most
desperate personal exertions, all would have been lost. _It was an
affair of the Bridge of Arcola._’...” How Lilliput and Brobdingnag here
combine! I prefer this epic-fantasy to the lyric-fantasy of Thackeray’s
“Mirobolant.”
When Disraeli was out of office for the last term, he was walking with
a leading member of the Government that had replaced his own. The
statesman asked him how he thought the new Administration was getting
on. “Pretty well,” was his answer, “but I like the old-fashioned
methods. The first year you do nothing; the second year you talk
of doing something; the third year you do something--and succeed;
the fourth you do something--and fail; the fifth year you spend in
discussing whether it was a failure or not; the sixth, you go to the
country, _who pronounce that it was_.”
Most of these are to some degree fanciful _persiflage_. Not so the
following--a passage alluded to in a note already, and compared
with another one from Heine. He is describing the Vintage Feast of
Tabernacles, and the passage is the more remarkable because Disraeli’s
father instances this very festival as one of the obsolete and
fanatical absurdities that unfit the Old Testament religion for its
proper fulfilment by the New:--
“Picture to yourself the child of Israel in the dingy suburb or the
stolid quarter of some bleak Northern town, where there is never a sun
that can at any rate ripen grapes; yet he must celebrate the vintage
of purple Palestine.... He rises in the morning, goes early to some
Whitechapel market, purchases some willow boughs for which he has
previously given a commission, and which are brought probably from one
of the neighbouring rivers of Essex, hastens home, cleans out the yard
of his miserable tenement, builds his bower, decks it even profusely
with the finest flowers and fruit he can procure, and hangs its roof
with variegated lamps. After the service of his synagogue, he sups late
with his wife and children, as if he were in the pleasant villages of
Galilee beneath its sweet and starry sky.... Perhaps as he is offering
up the peculiar thanksgiving, ... and his wife and children are joining
in a pious ‘Hosanna’--that is, ‘Save us’--_a party of Anglo-Saxons,
very respectable men, ten-pounders, a little elevated, it may be,
though certainly not in honour of the vintage, pass the house, and
words like these are heard: ‘I say, Buggins, what’s that row?’ ‘Oh,
it’s those cursed Jews! We’ve a lot of them. It’s one of their horrible
feasts. The Lord Mayor ought to interfere. However, things are not so
bad as they used to be. They used always to crucify little boys at
their hullabaloos, but now they only eat sausages made of stinking
pork.’ ‘To be sure,’ replies his companion, ‘we all make progress.’_”
And there are many pendants to this kind of pathetic humour in the sad
vagaries, degraded ignorance, sordid joys and squalid sorrows of the
operatives of “Wodgate” so sympathetically presented in _Sybil_:--
“... ‘They call me Tummas, but I ayn’t got no second name; but now I’m
married I mean to take my wife’s, for she has been baptised, and so
has got two.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said the girl with the vacant face and the
back like a grasshopper, ‘I be a reg’lar born Christian, and my mother
afore me, and that’s what few gals in the yard can say. Thomas will
take to it himself when work is slack; and he believes now in Our Lord
and Saviour Pontius Pilate, who was crucified to save our sins, and
in Moses, Goliath, and the rest of the apostles.’ ‘Ah, me!’ thought
Morley, ‘and could not they spare one missionary from Tahiti for their
fellow-countrymen at Wodgate?’”
* * * * *
I must turn to the romantic and the picturesque in Disraeli’s fiction.
It is a large subject, but it need not necessitate a long treatment.
The Brontës and Bulwer Lytton, in opposed spheres and with opposite
material, are perhaps the only modern pure romantics in English
fiction, before the romantic revival of the last twenty years or
so had set in. In the early nineteenth century Sir Walter Scott had
headed another romantic revival. Miss Austen, however,--the miniaturist
of realism--recalled fiction in her delicate manner to the beaten
high-road of the eighteenth. Dickens, romantic by instinct, dwelt on
the horrible and grotesque, and was more melodramatic than strictly
romantic. Thackeray, sternly combating the infinite romance of his
own nature, disclaimed a hero, and proved sentimental rather than
romantic. Trollope, who photographed feeling, abominated romance.
George Eliot set out as a romantic, but she soon became gloriously
whelmed in the vortex of scientific psychology. Others, who lack her
imagination, have since followed in her track. We have been treated to
analytic presentations of life, where some five persons engage in a
mutual war of motive, and the very reasons for turning a door-handle
are minutely involved in character. On the one hand, we had the
English and French sensationalists elaborately unravelling mysteries;
on the other, the boudoir psychologists as elaborately anatomising
moods. The great “naturalist” school supervened with its claims to
scientise misery. Victor Hugo’s romanticism was doomed by the merciless
lancet of these literary surgeons. And throughout--even now, in the
main, using “romance” more with regard to situation and expression
than to events--the purely and simply heroic and adventurous has
lost ground. Mind rather than action engrossed a great part of late
nineteenth-century fiction.
With all faults, native and imposed, Disraeli proclaimed in his novels,
in those which were political fairy-tales, as in those which were not,
“adventures are to the adventurous;” and this very phrase, too, occurs
in his earliest satire. _Contarini Fleming_ was originally styled “The
Psychological Romance;” _Alroy_ is undoubtedly a romance historical;
_The Young Duke_, a romance of fashion; _Vivian Grey_, one both of
fashion and of ambition; _Venetia_, of biography; _Henrietta Temple_,
of love; and the rest, romances of the world’s actors and action.
But the extraordinary is merely the mantle of romanticism proper.
Its method is everything. It is one that brings up before us at
once the thing seen and the man seeing. It releases individuality
from stereotyped shackles, it transfers interest from achievement to
achievement’s atmosphere, and it lends to landscape-painting the same
element that it lends to character-drawing.
The French separate their terms in distinguishing between real
and feigned romance. The one they call _romantique_; the other,
_romanesque_. The really romantic in fiction is so to write as to
import into the interest of the extraordinary the interest also
of the author’s temperament. Both the unusual subject and the
imparted atmosphere are requisites. _Rasselas_ is an unusual subject
sententiously treated. It is parable, not romance. The _Song of the
Shirt_ is an, alas! commonplace theme transfigured by sympathy. It
is pathetic, not romantic. Sir Walter Scott, however, is romantic
_par excellence_. We are sure that his background is unusual, and he
stamps his individuality on the foreground. So, too, with his pictures
of scenery. The writer’s heart, rather than his head, pervades the
perspective. The unromantic author is a showman, the romantic author
an actor. The one fits character to persons; the other from persons
evolves character. The romantic reveals the wonderful to us by
personal feeling. Ruskin once defined the picturesque as “parasitical
sublimity;” Carlyle, too (as romantic and picturesque himself as
Ruskin), denounces the faculty in which he excelled. But these
thinkers failed, perhaps, to grasp that the root of the most beautiful
impressions is association interwoven with memory, fancy, affection,
even superstition, and the symbols of very names. Strip Venice of her
climate, rob man of his memory, and where is the Venice that Ruskin
adored? Absolute beauty does exist, but rarely; and we atone for
imperfections by supplementing it with the endearments of outward
accident. It is Nature’s own method; she garlands the rift of ruins
with her greenery. The dead letter sleeps in literature as in life, of
which literature ought to be the most sensitive mirror. Warmth is as
indispensable as light; and if fiction is to remain an art and not sink
into a false science, the dry bones of hard facts must be made to live.
By these means, too, the personal influence of great writers is most
practically preserved. The wonderful in Nature can never be unnatural.
It is only the affectation of it that is so--and that is usually
accompanied by Mrs. Malaprop’s “nice derangement of epitaphs.”
Now, so far as Disraeli’s characters merely typify--and they do
often--causes or movements, they are not romantic, however picturesque
their garb. But so far as they do not, they are essentially romantic,
and, where politicians in council are not concerned, this is constantly
the case.
Nothing can be more romantic, both in matter and manner, than the
first introduction of “Sidonia.” The “Princess Lucretia Colonna” in
_Coningsby_, is romance incarnate. “Morley,” again, in _Sybil_ is a
most romantic figure. The whole episode of the “Baronis,” in _Tancred_,
is genuinely and strikingly romantic. So is the figure of “Theodora”
in _Lothair_; and all these occur in political novels. But in the
non-political they abound. The early squibs are, perhaps, the only
romantic skits in our language. _Vivian Grey_, too, is full of romance,
and comprises the romantic drolleries of “Essper George,” a modern
Sancho. The whole of _Venetia_ and all the action of _Contarini_ are
romantic; so is his only and halting drama, _Alarcos_. Though at times,
and from causes which I shall consider, there is in these early novels
something of old Drury, and too much occasionally of the “Ha!-and-Pah!”
attitude, these are only blemishes in the costume; the figures remain
romantic.
But it is, perhaps, in the short but charming descriptions of character
and of scenery that Disraeli best showed his powers for the romantic
and the picturesque. Take the character of “Fakredeen;” take even the
character of Sir Robert Peel in the _Life of Lord George Bentinck_.
Take a hundred touches from his _Home Letters_, and those to his
sister and family. He there says that “description is a bore,” but he
contrived in a few strokes to picture without describing. The sunset
at Athens, “like the neck of a dove.” His vignettes of the Parthenon,
of the Lagoons, of Jerusalem, of Syria, both here and in _Contarini_,
_Tancred_, and _Lothair_, are etched by a master-hand.
Disraeli casts over his scenes the reflected glow of associative
feeling. Peruse the beautiful rendering of “Marney Abbey” in _Sybil_
(too long to quote). It is essentially a placid scene romantically
described, with an individual feeling of soft regret and tender awe
communicated to the dreamy landscape. It proves his delight in what he
called “the sweet order of country life;” his feeling for the “order of
the peasantry ... succeeded by a race of serfs who are called labourers
and burn ricks.”
If we would note the contrast in unromantic writers of genius, we have
only to re-read Jane Austen’s description of Northanger Abbey, where,
be it marked, in purposely deriding the false romance of a girl’s
sickly fancy, she must have desired to depict the demesne with every
impressive attribute.
And take this from _Tancred_: “Sometimes the land is cleared, and he
finds himself by the homestead of a forest farm.... Still advancing the
deer become rarer, and the road is formed by an avenue of chestnuts....
Persons are moving to and fro on the side-path of the road. Horsemen
and carts seem returning from market; women with empty baskets, and
then the rare vision of a stage-coach. The postillion spurs his horses,
cracks his whip, and dashes at full gallop into the town of Montacute,
the capital of the forest.... Nor does this green domain terminate till
it touches the vast and purple moors that divide the kingdoms of Great
Britain.”
The effects of light play a leading part in Disraeli’s landscapes.
“... Nor is there, indeed, a sight” (of Mont Blanc in _Contarini_)
“more lovely than to watch at decline of day the last embrace of the
sun lingering on the rosy glaciers. Soon, too soon, the great luminary
dies; the warm peaks subside into purple, and then die into a ghostly
white: but soon, and not too soon, the moon springs up from behind
a mountain, flings over the lake a stream of light, and the sharp
glaciers glitter like silver.”
This, too, of night in Venice--
“... The music and the moon reign supreme.... Around on every side are
palaces and temples rising from the waves which they shadow with their
solemn form, their costly fronts rich with the spoils of kingdoms and
softened with the magic of the midnight beam. The whole city, too, is
poured forth for festival. The people lounge on the quays and cluster
on the bridges; the light barks skim along in crowds, just touching the
surface of the water, while their bright prows of polished iron gleam
in the moonshine and glitter in the rippling wave. Not a sound that is
not graceful--the tinkle of guitars, the sighs of serenaders, and the
responsive chorus of gondoliers. Now and then a laugh, light, joyous,
and yet musical, bursts forth from some illuminated coffee-house,
before which a buffo disports....”
Here, again, is an English summer morning from _Sybil_--
“A bloom was spread over the morning sky; a soft golden light bathed
with its fresh sheen the bosom of the valley, except where a delicate
haze rather than a mist still partially lingered over the river,
which yet occasionally gleamed and sparkled in the sunshine. A sort
of shadowy lustre suffused the landscape, which, though distinct,
was mitigated in all its features--the distant woods, the clumps of
tall trees that rose about the old grey bridge, the cottage chimneys
that sent their smoke into the blue, still air, amid their clustering
orchards and gardens, flowers and herbs.”
There are many more such studies of light in home landscape, and not
least in _Lothair_. And these are all renderings of scenery, and not
scene-painting. In those abroad I might have included, too, the German
Twilight from _Vivian Grey_, and the Grecian Sunset from _Contarini_,
each dashed off with speed, yet each breathing a delicate and pensive
peace.
Another feature of his pencil is its fondness for and studied
conversance with the forms, and even the sounds, of trees. Their
“various voices” are introduced with effect into the storm in _Vivian
Grey_. As years went on, this love of trees grew stronger. It is
expressly mentioned as the hobby of his old age by Lady John Manners.
There is not one of his novels where the varieties of wood and forest
are not handled with distinctness and affectionate observation.
“Contarini’s” pet tree is oak. In _Endymion_ is a park entirely of
ilex. A glade at “Hurstley” is “bounded on each side with masses of
yew, their dark green forms now studded with crimson berries.” “Nigel
Penruddock,” the Tractarian, lolls “on the turf amid the old beeches
and the juniper;” and in the woods of a castle in _Vivian Grey_, “There
was the elm with its rich branches bending down like clustering grapes;
there was the wide-spreading oak with its roots fantastically gnarled;
there was the ash with its smooth bark, and the silver beech, and the
gracile birch, and the dark fir affording with its rough foliage a
contrast to the trunks of its more beautiful companions, or shooting
far above their branches with a spirit of freedom worthy of a rough
child of the mountains.” “Elegant” and “gracile” in this boyish sketch
are Johnsonese, it is true; but its romantic faculty is evident. He
delighted, too, in Elizabethan gardens and Italian parterres; and he
has drawn, both in outward and inward outline, suggestive and romantic
presentments of Oxford, Cambridge, and Eton.
And he could paint the marvellous to perfection. In _Alroy_, the magic
ravine over which the hero must cross to win his talisman, rises before
the view with the detail of reality: so does the ideal island of
_Popanilla_. So--and they really belong to the marvellous--do the great
country seats of “Montacute,” “Hellingsley,” “Beaumanoir,” “Alhambra,”
“Château Désir,” “Hainault,” “Princewood,” and “Muriel Towers.” There
are pictures, besides, of Seville, Cairo, and the Frankfort Fair.
I could have subjoined the flaming castle in _Sybil_, the Derby in
_Endymion_, the bull-fight in _Contarini_, the desert in _Alroy_, the
mountain storm in _Vivian Grey_. But I prefer his tranquil pictures,
and perhaps one of the best is the “Cherbury” in _Venetia_.
Another prominent characteristic of his romance was its fondness for
London and the suburbs, the beauty of which, he always held, was
only half appreciated. “Airy” Brompton and “merry” Kensington, with
its young Queen “in a palace in a garden,” touched his fancy; and
the Georgian pleasaunces of Roehampton, the antiquer abodes of Sheen
dedicated to Swift, Temple, and Stella, and the deer-haunted woodland
of Richmond Park still breathing of Anne, and Ormonde, Pope, and
Thomson, and Walpole; even, too, the Regency villas of Wimbledon.
A few romantic strokes in _Henrietta Temple_ thus etch the Park of
London:--
“At the end of a long sunny morning, ... where can we see such
beautiful women and gallant cavaliers, such fine horses and such
brilliant equipages? The scene, too, is worthy of such agreeable
accessories; the groves, the gleaming waters, and the triumphal arches.
In the distance the misty heights of Surrey and the bowery glades of
Kensington.” And readers of _Lothair_ will remember with what romance
he clothes an early June morning in Bond Street, and how, out of the
prismatic hues of the fishmonger’s shop, he weaves a garland of gay
fancies; nor will he forget St. James’s Street--that “celebrated
eminence” in _Endymion_. But it was more serious London that he admired
most. The foreign crannies of Soho and the dingy length of Marylebone
have both been explored by him. The Strand and the City purlieus,
however, were his favourites. The quaint sites, the busy romances of
the now grimy riverside, the historic names, the contrast of outside
flurry with inside repose, the dwelling-houses of a past age rich with
its art but now reserved for musty parchments or massive ledgers,
fascinated him. “It is at Charing Cross,” he avers, that “London
becomes more interesting.” This is how he limns one of finance’s
headquarters:--
“In a long, dark, narrow, crooked street, which is still called a
lane, and which runs from the south side of the street of the Lombards
towards the river, there is one of these old houses of a century
past.... A pair of massy iron gates of elaborate workmanship separates
the street from its spacious and airy courtyard, which is formed on
either side by a wing of the mansion, itself a building of deep red
brick, with a pediment and pilasters and copings of stone; in the
middle of the plot there is a small garden plot inclosing a fountain,
and a very fine plane tree. The stillness, doubly effective after the
tumult just quitted, the lulling voice of the water, the soothing
aspect of the quivering foliage, the noble building and the cool and
spacious quadrangle--the aspect even of those who enter, and frequently
enter, the precincts, and who are generally young men gliding in and
out earnest and full of thought--all contribute to give to this
locality something of the classic repose of a college, instead of a
place agitated with the most urgent interests of the current hour.”
London’s motley vastness, too, and magnetism of attraction were
constantly his themes. “... It is a wonderful place, ... this London; a
nation, not a city; with a population greater than some kingdoms, and
districts as different as if they were under different governments, and
spoke different languages.” And yet (of “Lothair”), “I have been living
here six months, and my life has been passed in a park, two or three
squares, and half a dozen streets!”
In _Vivian Grey_ Disraeli whimsically observed that literature was
declining in the ’twenties through a wealth grown so luxurious as to
rank it with “ottomans, bonbons, and pier-glasses.” “Consols at a
hundred were the origin of all book societies. There is nothing like a
fall in consols to bring the blood of our good people of England into
good order.”
Consols have now fallen, and maybe literature is reviving. Certain I
am that, when its revival becomes pronounced, it will be through the
invigoration of romance. The strange need not be sought in the remote.
Wordsworth found it in “laughing daffodils,” as truly as Byron in the
Corsair. Unromantic matter, romantically treated, is more refreshing
than romantic matter unquickened by personal feeling--by
“_Quod latet arcanâ non enarrabile fibrâ_.”
I have mentioned Disraeli’s early tendency towards “Ha!” and “Pah!” For
this there were several reasons besides his own temper and that of the
time.
When we speak of an “artificial” style we mean one unnatural to the
author. Disraeli’s style was perfectly natural to him, and it altered
little. To impose another man’s voice on our own is real artifice. How
natively pathetic he could be, is shown by the scene in _Vivian Grey_,
where the broken Cleveland sits and sobs amid the laughing children on
his lonely bench in Kensington Gardens; and how simply pleasing, by the
encounter after long years between “Coningsby” and “Lady Theresa.” He
constantly alternates between the homely and the outlandish.
In the few years preceding his grand tour, and, still more, the earlier
_Vivian Grey_, he was at a phase in his development when he was only
just beginning to realise the true bent of his powers, of which he had
from the first been conscious, but which had hitherto more or less
perplexed and bewildered him. In _Alroy_ and _Contarini_ his tone
is one of savage force as yet unchastened and unmellowed. The wild
Arab is in them. All the over-mastering dreams of his youth claimed
materialisation; his language went before his feelings, and strove to
outrun them by vehement strokes of attitude. He thirsted for action,
and yet drooped, restless and mortified. His circumstances were at war
with his consuming ambitions. It was the discord of a peculiar fate and
an unique organisation; the ferment of a ripe spirit cooped by unripe
experience, of an as yet untempered vigour. The genius, as in the old
legend, shrank and dwindled in the bottle, but soared with gigantic
stature when the stopper was released. One must not take the personal
touches in _Vivian_, _Alroy_, and _Contarini_ too literally. They are a
blend of several factors and of various characters; and he himself in
his age regretted that the last had been the task of immaturity. But
from the main emphasis and the prevailing moods of the three together,
thus much one may gather.
“Why, what is life” (this from _Alroy_), “for meditation mingles ever
with my passion?... Throw accidents to the dogs, and tear off the
painted mask of false society! Here am I, a hero; with a mind that can
devise all things, and a heart of superhuman daring, with youth, with
vigour, with a glorious lineage ... and I am--nothing.” He was morbidly
overdone, and he brooded and overdid his own morbidity. He had lived
in “a private world and a public world,” and the two were still at
variance. “I was,” he says extravagantly of a still earlier date, on
the lips of “Contarini,” “in these days but a wild beast who thought
himself a civilised human being;” and yet “I felt the conviction that
literary creation was necessary to my existence.”--“What vanity in all
the empty bustle of common life! It brings to me no gratification;
on the contrary, degrading annoyance. It develops all the lowering
attributes of my nature.” He was impatient, and yet he felt that
“patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.” “Nothing is more
fatal than to be seduced into composition by the first flutter of
the imagination.” He had aspired to be a poet, and a poet in a new
style befitting modern life. The failure of the _Revolutionary Epick_
disgusted him; yet how could he have expected it to succeed? even if it
had been sold at a farthing, as in the case of Mr. Horne’s experiment,
it would never have attracted the public, for it was a long essay
in stilted verse.[176] He still aspired to influence and rule his
fellow-men, but no path was clear. These moods were not to last. “Think
of me as of some exotic bird which for a moment lost its way in thy
cold heaven, but has now regained its course and wings its flight to a
more brilliant earth, and a brighter sky.”
Moreover, he had for some years fostered the idea that verse was
obsolete for poetry, and that rhyme was a solecism. Poetry should
be the revelation of nature, and yet it had sought a modern vent in
unnatural language.[177] He attempted, therefore, to frame a language
for poetical expression on a plan of his own, at once rhythmical and
theatrical. And for all his confidence he was not wholly at ease.
“I observed that I was the slave of custom, and never viewed any
particular incident in relation to men in general.... I deeply felt
that there was a total want of nature in everything connected with
me.”--“When I look back on myself at this period, I have difficulty
in conceiving a more unamiable character.” And yet instinct revolted
against artificiality. In defiance he would air his most extreme
passions. To veil them was cant. “Never apologise for showing
feeling.... Remember that when you do so, you apologise for truth.”
But if something of all this is applicable to 1829, still more is
applicable to three years earlier, when _Vivian Grey_--a miracle,
whatever its defects, for one barely out of his nonage--was
published;[178] and much of the phase was only a remnant of its
aggravated form in 1826. He had been seriously and mysteriously ill. He
had small acquaintance with the great world, and continual conversance
with his visions of it. He was in doubt, even in despair. His family
was astonished, even annoyed. In _Contarini_, where his first novel
figures as “Manstein,” he has himself told us what he regretted in
_Vivian Grey_. It was “written in a storm and without any reflection;”
its few images were all “probably copied from books.”--“I thought
of ‘Manstein’ as of a picture painted by a madman in the dark.”--“I
determined to re-educate myself.” Years afterwards, when these fleeting
phases had long passed, and had been succeeded by the higher and
healthier moods following on the discovery and pursuit of his true
destiny, he apologised for _Vivian Grey_ as a boyish freak, affected
because not written from observation of the world, and he added that
every one has a right to be conceited until he is successful. He showed
his opinion of it by publishing _Contarini_ anonymously. In his old
age, he excused its “inevitable reappearance” by once remarking that
first efforts dealing with a big but unknown world must be exaggerated
in style, and that “false taste accompanies exaggeration.” Had he been
grandiose without afterwards proving himself great, the blame would
have been deserved.
These are not the blemishes of his great political novels; but there
is in them also, with all their deep thought and striking insight,
their absolute originality and stimulating suggestiveness, an air at
times of the perfumer’s shop rather than of the fresh air. Even “Sybil”
cries out, “Oh! the saints, ’tis a merry morn!” “Coningsby” meets his
lady-love at a ball, which “is a dispensation of almost supernatural
ecstasy;” and in _Lothair_ itself we revert to “barbs” and “jennets.”
I think that these later defects were partly due to the reaction
against the constraint, repression, and formality compelled by his
political career. They were a reaction in form, but in no case were
they artificial in substance. They meant something, and they pressed
it home. Disraeli was always a fantastic, and the fantastic holds
high rank in literature. It distinguishes Disraeli’s pet, Cervantes.
But fantasy is different far from frippery. Fantasy is the flicker of
firelight, not the flare of gas.
Again, it is always hard for originality to win a first hearing from
the public. Browning once remarked in a letter that to fasten the
attention of the British public some stroke of style is required. This
is true. Browning is himself an example; Carlyle, another; for his
early essays completely lack that compound of Jean Paul’s German, and
old Mrs. Carlyle’s Scotch, out of which Carlylese was evolved. Ruskin
is another instance. Disraeli in his correspondence is far more free
and flowing than in his books. Of those books there is least trace of
apparent affectation in _Coningsby_, which is the best political novel
in any language. Reviewed as a whole, his novels are creative, and a
marvellous medium for thought. Some bedizenment there is doubtless, and
there are many gauds of fancy; and parts of the characterisation may be
said to be written in italics. It is true also that some of the persons
are waxworks, but none of the characters are, and his movement of
ideas, as well as his ideas of movement, display a flexibility rarely
joined to such piercing penetration. Next to his three great political
novels and in some respects above them, I would rank _Venetia_,
which has never met with such widespread appreciation. _Alroy_ and
_Contarini_ are psychological romances, exceptional of their kind. His
method of composition was the same throughout his life. He pondered in
the night what he penned in the morning. And of his early preparation
he has left a memorial--
“... I prepared myself for composition in a very different mood
from that in which I had poured forth my fervid crudities in the
Garden-house. Calm and collected, I constructed characters on
philosophical principles, and mused over a chain of action which should
develop the system of our existence. All was art. I studied contrasts
and grouping, and metaphysical analysis was substituted for anatomical
delineation. I was not satisfied that the conduct of my creatures
should be influenced merely by the general principles of their being; I
resolved that they should be the very impersonations of the moods and
passions of our mind. _One was ill-regulated will;[179] another offered
the formation of a moral being_;[180] materialism sparkled in the
wild gaiety and reckless caprice of one voluptuous girl, while spirit
was vindicated in the deep devotion of a constant and enthusiastic
heroine.[181] Even the lighter temperaments were not forgotten.
Frivolity smiled and shrugged her shoulders before us, and there was
even a deep personification of cynic humour.”
He believed in the influence of the creative arts on creative
authorship. He has pointed out how the Tuscan school of painting trains
to the grandeur of simplicity, the Venetian to the gorgeousness of
fancy. And of music he has written: “The greatest advantage that a
writer can derive from it is that it teaches most exquisitely the art
of development. It is in remarking the varying recurrence of a great
composer to the same theme, that a poet may learn how to dwell upon
the phases of a passion,--how to exhibit a mood of mind under all its
alterations, and gradually to pour forth the full tide of feeling.”
But he thought that such influences were a prelude to creation, not to
execution. “It is well to meditate upon a subject under the influence
of music, but to execute we should be alone, and supported only by our
essential and internal strength.”
As is familiar, he was fastidious even when he was florid. It is well
known that he relieved his last illness by correcting the proofs of his
last speeches for Hansard--“the Dunciad of Politics.” “I will not,” he
said, “descend to history speaking bad grammar.”
About national literature he held views which sprang from his theories
of race. He considered that modern Europe depended overmuch on ideas
derived from Rome, Greece, and Palestine. “At the revival of letters
we beheld the portentous spectacle of national poets communicating
their inventions in an exotic form.... They sought variety in increased
artifice of diction, and substituted the barbaric clash of rhyme for
the melody of the lyre....” Spain, he thought, offered the best field
for a national novel.
“The outdoor life of the natives induces a variety of the most
picturesque manners, while their semi-civilisation makes each district
retain with barbarous jealousy its peculiar customs.”
For the critics he had a smile at the first as at the last. They
“admired what had been written in haste and without premeditation, and
generally disapproved of what had cost me much forethought and been
executed with great care.... My perpetual efforts at being imaginative
were highly reprobated.... I puzzled them, and no one offered a
prediction as to my future career.... I thought no more of criticism.
The breath of man has never influenced me much, for I depend more upon
myself than upon others....”
At “Reisenburg” in _Vivian Grey_ were two great journals edited on
opposite principles. In the one, every review was written by a personal
enemy; in the other by a personal friend. And there was a third by
that “literary comet,” “Von Chronicle,” the historical novelist, who
believed that in romance costume was superior to character. His novel
of “Rienzi” terminated with the scene of the Coronation, because
“after that, what is there in the career of Rienzi which would afford
matter...? All that afterwards occurs is a mere contest of passions and
a development of character; but where is a procession, or a triumph,
or a marriage...? Not a single name is given in the work for which he
has not contemporary authority; but what he is particularly proud of
are his oaths. Nothing has cost him more trouble than the management of
the swearing; and the Romans, you know, are a most profane nation....
The ‘’sblood’ of the sixteenth century must not be confounded with
the ‘zounds’ of the seventeenth.... The most amusing thing is to
contrast this mode of writing works of fiction with the prevalent and
fashionable mode of writing works of history.... Here we write novels
like history and history like novels. All our facts are fancy, and all
our imagination reality.”
Excellent fooling, this! Through the long range of his writings
Disraeli did more than any novelist of the nineteenth century to
impress on the ordinary mind not only the pleasures but the powers of
the Imagination.