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UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

THE LIFE OF
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
' EARL OF BEACONSFIELD

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK * BOSTON • CHICAGO
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cS&fy€unln zl) JiftYieli iAe (older

THE LIFE OF
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
EARL OF BEACONSFIELD BY
WILLIAM FLAVELLE MONYPENNY

VOLUME I
1804— 1837
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Read no history, nothing but
biography, for that is life without
theory. — Contarini Fleming.

Nerj) gotft
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1910
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1910,
By THE TIMES PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED.

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1910.

Nortoooti $rKSSS
J. S. dishing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE
The main source of the biography of which this is
the first volume is the great mass of papers bequeathed
by Lord Beaconsfield to the late Lord Rowton and now
in the keeping of the trustees of the Beaconsfield estate ;
and my first duty is a grateful recognition of the unfail
ing kindness and confidence which Lord Rothschild and
the other trustees have bestowed upon me since I began
my long and arduous enterprise. For this volume, the
most difficult and laborious portion of the whole work,
it has not been possible to derive much assistance from
extraneous sources other than those which are accessible
to all: my principal obligations are to Lady Layard for
Disraeli's correspondence with the Austens ; to Sir Her
bert Thompson for the letters to William Pyne; and to
Captain C. L. Lindsay for some of the original material
which formed the basis of the published volume Lord
Beaconsfield' s Letters.
To the King I owe my dutiful acknowledgment of
the permission which his Majesty has been graciously
pleased to accord me to print the letter to Queen Victoria
in Appendix A ; and I have to thank Lord Grey, Lord
Tennyson, and Constance Lady Haldon for access to, or
permission to publish, other single documents. I have
also to thank Mr. Coningsby Disraeli for much assist
ance with the illustrations, in particular for allowing the

vi PREFACE
reproduction of pictures at Hughenden; and Mr. Mo-
berly Bell and Mr. G. W. Prothero for their kindness
in reading the proof sheets and for many valuable criti
cisms and suggestions.
While still in his youth Disraeli adopted the practice,
which he followed scrupulously and consistently to the
end of his life, of spelling words such as ' honor,' ' favor,'
and so forth, according to their Latin origin; and in
passages where his own language is reproduced this spell
ing has been allowed to stand, though elsewhere the
ordinary English usage has been followed.
W. F. M.
October, 1910.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE  ix
I. ANCESTRY  1
II. ISAAC D'ISRAELI  9
III. EARLY YEARS. 1804-1821  18
IV. LAW AND TRAVEL. 1821-1824  32
V. FINANCE AND JOURNALISM. 1825 .... 54
VI. VIVIAN GREY. 1826  79
VTI. A TOUR IN ITALY. 1826  94
VIII. ILLNESS AND DESPONDENCY. 1827-1830 . . .112
IX. TOUR IN THE EAST. 1830-1831  136
X. CONTARINI FLEMING AND ALROY. 1832-1833 . 181
XI. ENTRY INTO POLITICS. 1832-1833 . . . .201
XII. LIFE IN LONDON. 1833-1834  230
XIII. JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES. 1834-1835 . . .260
XIV. POLITICAL WRITINGS. 1835-1836 . . . .296
XV. HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA. 1834-1837 . 337
XVI. PARLIAMENT AT LAST. 1837  367
Appendix :
A. TITA  383
B. LORD LYNDHURST'S RECOLLECTIONS. 1826-1832 386
C. D'ORSAY'S PORTRAIT OF LYNDHURST . . 390
Index  393

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I.
BENJAMIN D'ISRAELI THE ELDER . . . Frontispiece
From a portrait at Hughenden. FAOING PAGE
SARAH D'ISRAELI THE ELDER  8
From a portrait at Hughenden.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI AS A CHILD  18
From a miniature by Cosway.
ISAAC D'ISRAELI  48
From a drawing by Denning, 1834.
MARIA D'ISRAELI  74
From a painting by Downman, 1805.
BRADENHAM MANOR  120
From a watercolour by Mrs. Partridge.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI  148
From a drawing by Maclise, 1828.
SARAH DISRAELI THE YOUNGER  178
From a drawing by Maclise, 1828.
THE HIGH STREET, HIGH WYCOMBE  214
From an engraving of a picture by E. J. Niemann.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI  262
From a portrait by Count D'Orsay, 1834.
LORD LYNDHURST  330
From a portrait by Count D'Orsay.
'THE AUTHOR OF VIVIAN GREY'  354
From a drawing by Maclise.

CHAPTER I
Ancestry
What a famous man believes as to his remote
ancestral origins is often of more import than the
dry, literal truth, and it will be best, therefore, to
begin with the story of the Disraelis as it shaped
itself in the mind of the subject of these memoirs.
There have been two great colonies of the Jewish race in
Europe — in Spain and in Sarmatia. The origin of the Jews
in Spain is lost in the night of time. That it was of great
antiquity we have proof. The tradition, never derided,
that the Iberian Jews were a Phoenician colony has been
favoured by the researches of modern antiquaries, who
have traced the Hebrew language in the ancient names of
the localities. . . . We know that in the time of Cicero the
Jews had been settled immemorially in Spain. When the
Romans, converted to Christianity and acted on by the
priesthood, began to trouble the Spanish Jews, it appears
by a decree of Constantine that they were owners and culti
vators of the soil, a circumstance which alone proves the
antiquity and the nobility of their settlement, for the posses
sion of the land is never conceded to a degraded race. The

2 ANCESTRY [chap, i
conquest of Spain by the Goths in the fifth and sixth centuries
threatened the Spanish Jews, however, with more serious
adversaries than the Romans. The Gothic tribes, very
recently converted to their Syrian faith, were full of barbaric
zeal against those whom they looked upon as the enemies
of Jesus. But the Spanish Jews sought assistance from
their kinsmen the Saracens on the opposite coast; Spain
was invaded and subdued by the Moors, and for several
centuries the Jew and the Saracen lived under the same
benignant laws and shared the same brilliant prosperity.
In the history of Spain during the Saracenic supremacy any
distinction of religion or race is no longer traced. And so it
came to pass that when at the end of the fourteenth century,
after the fell triumph of the Dominicans over the Albigenses,
the Holy Inquisition was introduced into Spain, it was re
ported to Torquemada that two-thirds of the nobility of
Arragon — that is to say, of the proprietors of the land —
were Jews.
All that these men knew of Christianity was that it was a
religion of fire and sword, and that one of its first duties was
to revenge some mysterious and inexplicable crime which
had been committed ages ago by some unheard-of ancestors
of theirs in an unknown land. The inquisitors addressed
themselves to the Spanish Jews in the same abrupt and
ferocious manner in which the monks saluted the Mexicans
and the Peruvians. All those of the Spanish Jews who did
not conform after the fall of the Mahomedan kingdoms
were expatriated by the victorious Goths, and these refugees
were the main source of the Italian Jews, and of the most
respectable portion of the Jews of Holland. These exiles
found refuge in two republics — Venice and the United
Provinces.1 After this historic preamble we enter the more dubious
region of family tradition and genealogical legend.
My grandfather, who became an English denizen in 1748,
was an Italian descendant of one of those Hebrew families
whom the Inquisition forced to emigrate from the Spanish
Peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century, and who found
a refuge in the more tolerant territories of the Venetian
Republic. His ancestors had dropped their Gothic surname
on their settlement on the terra firma, and, grateful to the
God of Jacob who had sustained them through unprece
dented trials and guarded them through unheard-of perils,
1 Life of Lord George Bentinck, ch. 24.

JEWS IN ENGLAND 3
they assumed the name of Disraeli, a name never borne
before or since by any other family, in order that their race
might be for ever recognised. Undisturbed and unmolested
they flourished as merchants for more than two centuries
under the protection of the lion of St. Mark, which was but
just, as the patron Saint of the Republic was himself a child
of Israel. But towards the middle of the eighteenth century
the altered circumstances of England, favorable, as it was
then supposed, to commerce and religious liberty, attracted
the attention of my great-grandfather to this island, and
he resolved that the youngest of his two sons, Benjamin,
the son of his right hand, should settle in a country where
the dynasty seemed at length established through the recent
failure of Prince Charles Edward, and where public opinion
appeared definitively adverse to persecution of creed, and
conscience. The Jewish families who were then settled in England
were few, though, from their wealth and other circumstances,
they were far from unimportant. They were all of them
Sephardim — that is to say, Children of Israel, who had
never quitted the shores of the Midland Ocean until
Torquemada had driven them from their pleasant residences
and rich estates in Arragon, and Andalusia, and Portugal,
to seek greater blessings even than a clear atmosphere and
a glowing sun, amid the marshes of Holland and the fogs of
Britain. Most of these families, who held themselves aloof
from the Hebrews of Northern Europe, then only occasion
ally stealing into England, as from an inferior caste, and
whose synagogue was reserved only for the Sephardim, are
now extinct; while the branch of the great family, which,
notwithstanding their own sufferings from prejudice, they
had the hardihood to look down upon, have achieved an
amount of wealth and consideration which the Sephardim,
even with the patronage of Mr. Pelham, never could have
contemplated. Nevertheless, at the time when my grand
father settled in England, and when Mr. Pelham, who was
very favourable to the Jews, was Prime Minister, there might
be found, among other Jewish families settled in this country,
the Villa Reals, who brought wealth to these shores almost
as great as their name, though that is the second in Portugal,
and who have twice allied themselves with the English
aristocracy, the Medinas, the Laras — who were our kinsmen
— and the Mendez da Costas, who, I believe, still exist.
Whether it were that my grandfather, on his arrival, was
not encouraged by those to whom he had a right to look up

4 ANCESTRY [chap, i
— which is often our hard case in the outset of life — or whether
he was alarmed at the unexpected consequences of Mr. Pel-
ham's favorable disposition to his countrymen in the dis
graceful repeal of the Jew Bill which occurred a very few
years after his arrival in this country, I know not ; but cer
tainly he appears never to have cordially or intimately
mixed with his community. This tendency to alienation
was, no doubt, subsequently encouraged by his marriage,
which took place in 1765. My grandmother, the beautiful
daughter of a family who had suffered from persecution,
had imbibed that dislike for her race which the vain are
too apt to adopt when they find that they are born to public
contempt. The indignant feeling that should be reserved
for the persecutor, in the mortification of their disturbed
sensibility, is too often visited on the victim; and the cause
of annoyance is recognised not in the ignorant malevolence
of the powerful, but in the conscientious conviction of the
innocent sufferer. Seventeen years, however, elapsed before
my grandfather entered into this union, and during that
interval he had not been idle. He was only eighteen when he
commenced his career and when a great responsibility devolved
upon him. He was not unequal to it. He was a man of
ardent character ; sanguine, courageous, speculative, and
fortunate; with a temper which no disappointment could
disturb, and a brain, amid reverses, full of resource. He
made his fortune in the midway of life, and settled near
Enfield, where he formed an Italian garden, entertained
his friends, played whist with Sir Horace Mann, who was
his great acquaintance, and who had known his brother at
Venice as a banker, ate macaroni which was dressed by the
Venetian Consul, sang canzonettas, and, notwithstanding a
wife who never pardoned him for his name, and a son who
disappointed all his plans, and who to the last hour of his life
was an enigma to him, lived till he was nearly ninety, and
then died in 1817 1 in the full enjoyment of prolonged
existence. My grandfather retired from active business on the eve of
that great financial epoch, to grapple with which his talents
were well adapted ; and when the wars and loans of the
Revolution were about to create those families of millionaires,
in which he might probably have enrolled his own. That,
however, was not our destiny.2
1 He really died in Nov., 1816, at the age of 86.
2 Memoir of Isaac D'Israeli prefaced to the collected edition of his
works published in 1849.

ITALIAN HOME OF THE DTSRAELIS 5
Such is Benjamin Disraeli's story of the vicissitudes
of his family, such the background of historic truth
and genealogical legend in which he sought his con
nexion with the larger vicissitudes of his race. In these
ancestral matters we are most of us prone to mistake
possibilities for probabilities, and to rear grandiose
theories on a very slender foundation of fact. Disraeli
was no exception to the rule : indeed, all his days he was
haunted, more than most men, by a longing to escape
from the sordid details of commonplace life into spacious
historical atmospheres. In the present instance he had
probably very little precise knowledge to cool his ardent
imagination. His father, in spite of his multifarious
curiosity, appears never to have troubled himself about
his own family antecedents, and Benjamin D'Israeli the
elder died before his grandson was of an age to have
his curiosity awakened. It need not then surprise us
to find that criticism has been busy with the narrative
which has just been given. The tradition of an ancestor
who took part in the great Jewish exodus from Spain
in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella may or may not
be well founded, but it is not supported by any inde
pendent evidence. The story of the long sojourn in
Venice is even more open to suspicion ; no trace of the
family having been discovered in Venetian archives till
a period subsequent to the migration to England. What
we know for certain is that the grandfather Benjamin
D'Israeli, who 'became an English denizen in 1748,'
had his Italian home not in Venice but at Cento in
Ferrara 1 : we know also that a Jewish colony, no doubt
mainly of Levantine origin, existed in Ferrara before
the Spanish exodus, but that it was largely reinforced
1 In his formal deed of denization in England, dated 1801, he
described himself as 'of Cento in Italy.' Cento is best known
as the birthplace of the painter Guercino, and it is worthy of note
that among the possessions of the D'Israeli family were a couple of
pictures by that master which Lord Beaconsfield used to say
had been a wedding present to his grandfather from an Italian
friend.

6 ANCESTRY [chap, i
by the exiles who fled from Torqueinada. The name,1
for which we have to be content with a less picturesque
derivation than was claimed for it by the man who has
made it so famous, is equally consistent either with a
Spanish or a Levantine origin. It was only after his
arrival in England that Benjamin D'Israeli, the grand
father, began to write it with the D' . His father was
one Isaac Israeli, of whom we know nothing besides,
and Israeli, it would appear, is an Arabic word meaning
Israelite, which from its constant application to indi
vidual Jews by the non-Jewish population in Moorish
Spain and in the Levant frequently developed into
a permanent surname. Thus all that our positive
knowledge amounts to is that the DTsraelis were of
the seed of Abraham, and that they came proximately
from Italy, a land which has produced so many more
than its due allotment of the world's great statesmen
and rulers.
The circumstances of the young immigrant who came
to London to seek his fortune were in all likelihood
humble enough, and we need not suppose that when
he set out for England the security of the Hanoverian
dynasty figured very largely in his calculations. He
was content to begin as a clerk in an Anglo-Italian
house, and though he presently established himself in
a business of his own as an Italian merchant, it was long
before real prosperity came to him. To vary the mo
notony of his business as a merchant he tried experiments
in the stock market ; but these at first were unfortunate,
and though eventually he won a good position as a
stockbroker, and even became a member of the Stock
Exchange Committee, he was for a time involved in
serious difficulties. In 1765, however, he married, as
1 The whole question of Disraeli origins has been examined -with
much learning and industry by Mr. Lucien Wolf in two articles
contributed to The Times on the occasion of the Disraeli centenary
in 1904, to which I am indebted for several of the facts here
given.

BENJAMIN D'ISRAELI THE ELDER 7
his second 2 wife, one Sarah Siprut de Gabay, who,
through her paternal grandmother, inherited the blood
of the Villa Reals, a fact which her grandson in later
days loved to recall. What is more to the point, she
seems to have brought her husband both capital and
credit, and from this time onward he made steady pro
gress and ultimately attained to substantial prosperity.
It is only, however, in the imagination of his grandson
that he was ever even a possible rival of the Rothschilds.
At his death he left estate real and personal which was
sworn under £35,000. In his will he sums up his
vicissitudes of residence by describing himself as
'formerly of Enfield in the County of Middlesex, and
then of Woodford in the County of Essex and of Old
Broad Street, London, but late of Church Street, Stoke
Newington,' where he died. His tomb, restored by his
grandson when in the plenitude of his fame and great
ness, may still be seen in the Portuguese Jews' Cemetery
at Mile End, in the East of London.
Benjamin D'Israeli the elder remained to the end of
his life a member of the Sephardi congregation of Bevis
Marks, and though, as we are told,2 he was somewhat
lax in his observances and took no great interest in
the affairs of the Synagogue, he contributed liberally
to its support and increased his donations as the growth
of his fortune gave him warrant. On one occasion he
even served in the minor office of Inspector of the Charity
School, though apparently his zeal in the performance
of the duties was not remarkable. From the few
glimpses we get of him, he seems to have been a man of
winning and kindly disposition. His son Isaac, writing
1 He had previously married in 1756 Rebecca Mendez Furtado,
and the offspring of this union was a daughter Rachel, who in her
turn became the mother of four daughters by a second marriage with
one Angelo Todosto (orTedesco). Rachel Todosto eventually migrated
with her children to Italy, where their descendants are living at the
present day.
2 Picciotto's Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History, p. 295.

8 ANCESTRY [chap, i
after his death, dwells on his 'sweetness of temper and
generosity of feeling'; and more than half a century
later his grandson still affectionately remembered the
' kind good-natured' man who was in the habit of giving
me presents when his wife' was away.' Far different
were Lord Beaconsfield's recollections of his grand
mother: 'a demon,' as he described her to Lord Rowton
in his grandiose way, ' only equalled by Sarah Duchess
of Marlborough, Frances Ann [Marchioness of Lon
donderry], and perhaps Catherine of Russia.'
She lived till 1825, when she died, aged 82, and was buried
in Willesden Church, where her monument is. She was
informally a Protestant at the time of her death. She came
to stay with my father and mother at Hyde House near
Chesham in the year 1825, and was kind and suave to all :
upon seeing which I recollect that my mother remarked,
• Depend upon it she is going to die. ' I remember with
horror the journeys on Sundays from Bloomsbury Square
to Kensington when I was a boy. No public conveyances,
no kindness, no tea, no tips — nothing.

aaraA, mfe sof Zv&njamAJt 91) Jdraeli 1796.

^•r^-cyyyh cc p^u>6oi/rey .by c7f&7vr-ie.re.
,cc£ <7tu^we#u£e>n.-

CHAPTER II

Isaac D'Israeli
To Benjamin and Sarah D'Israeli a son Isaac, their
only child, was born in 1766.
Nature [proceeds the Memoir from which we have already
drawn] had disqualified him, from his cradle, for the busy
pursuits of men. A pale, pensive child, with large dark
brown eyes, and flowing hair, had grown up beneath this roof
of worldly energy and enjoyment, indicating even in his
infancy, by the whole carriage of his life, that he was of a
different order from those among whom he lived. Timid,
susceptible, lost in reverie, fond of solitude, or seeking no
better company than a book, the years had stolen on, till
he arrived at that mournful period of boyhood when eccen
tricities excite attention and command no sympathy. Then
commenced the age of domestic criticism. His mother,
not incapable of deep affections, but so mortified by her social
position that she lived until eighty without indulging in a
tender expression, foresaw for her child only a future of degra
dation. Having a strong, clear mind, without any imagina
tion, she believed that she beheld an inevitable doom. The
tart remark and the contemptuous comment on her part,
elicited, on the other, all the irritability of the poetic idiosyn
crasy. After frantic ebullitions, for which, when the cir
cumstances were analysed by an ordinary mind, there seemed
no sufficient cause, my grandfather always interfered to
soothe with good-tempered commonplaces, and promote
peace. He was a man who thought that the only way to
make people happy was to make them a present. He took
it for granted that a boy in a passion wanted a toy or a guinea.
At a later date when my father ran away from home, and after

10 ISAAC D'ISRAELI [chap, ii
some wanderings was brought back, found lying on a tomb
stone in Hackney Churchyard, he embraced him, and gave him
a pony. Soon however these remedies ceased to avail.
The crisis arrived, when, after months of abstraction and
irritability, my father produced a poem. For the first time
my grandfather was seriously alarmed. The loss of one of
his argosies, uninsured, could not have filled him with more
blank dismay. His idea of a poet was formed from one
of the prints of Hogarth hanging in his room, where an
unfortunate wight in a garret was inditing an ode to riches,
while dunned for his milk-score.
Decisive measures were at once adopted and the young
poet was sent to Amsterdam, 'consigned like a bale of
goods to my grandfather's correspondent,who had instruc
tions to place him at some collegium of repute in that
city.' Here he lived for the next three or four years
in the charge of a tutor who gave the intelligent boy
the run of an excellent library, but made no attempt
to impart the mental discipline that might have been so
salutary. ' Before his pupil was fifteen, he had read the
works of Voltaire and had dipped into Bayle,' authors,
it may be remarked, whose influence can be seen in all
his subsequent work and may be detected even in the
mind of his more famous son. ' When he was eighteen
he returned to England a disciple of Rousseau,' and no
better equipped than when he left for taking the place
which the commercial ambition of his father or the social
aspirations of his mother would have assigned to him.
The father proposed to place his son in a mercantile
establishment at Bordeaux. Isaac replied that ' he had
written a poem of considerable length, which he wished to
publish, against commerce which was the corruption of
man.' Finally a compromise was discovered.
He was sent abroad, to travel in France, which the peace
then permitted, visit some friends, see Paris, and then proceed
to Bordeaux if he felt inclined. My father travelled in Prance,
and then proceeded to Paris where he remained till the eve
of great events in that capital. This was a visit recollected
with satisfaction. He lived with learned men and moved

HIS MARRIAGE 11
in vast libraries, and returned in the earlier part of 1788,
with some little knowledge of life, and with a considerable
quantity of books.
As early as 1786 D'Israeli had appeared in print in
the Gentleman's Magazine and the year after his return
from Paris he published in the same serial an anonymous
satire in verse which is now forgotten but was fortunate
enough to attract some attention at the time and to win
for its author, when his identity was revealed, the acquain
tance of some of the minor literary celebrities of the day.
Poetry, however, was not his field, and he presently struck
a more productive vein. In his twenty-fifth year he
published, again anonymously, a volume of anecdotes,
sketches, and observations which under the happy title
of " Curiosities of Literature " soon became popular.
A second volume followed a couple of years later,
and the success of this work gave a bias to its author's
mental development and eventually determined his
whole literary career. Many years indeed of undecided
purpose, of 'hesitating and imperfect effort' and of
vague aspirations after fame in the creative fields of
literature were still to come; for, with ample means
to supply his immediate wants provided under the
will of his maternal grandmother and ample prospects
secured in the succession to his father's fortune Isaac
D'Israeli missed the salutary compulsion which the
necessity of earning his daily bread would have imposed.
But at the age of thirty-five he renounced his dreams and,
according to his son, * resolved to devote himself for the
rest of his life to the acquisition of knowledge.'
This crisis in his mental development coincided with
an important change in the external ordering of his life.
In 1802 he married Maria Basevi,the youngest daughter
of an Italian Jew who had settled in England later than
Benjamin D'Israeli. In the case of most great men
the mother's influence is perhaps more potent than the
father's in the shaping of character and career ; but the
subject of this biography seems to have been an exception.

12 ISAAC D'ISRAELI [chap, ii
The Basevi family were then and later not devoid of
intellectual distinction, but no portion of it seems to have
fallen to the lot of Maria D'Israeli. She lived till 1847
— long enough to see her son one of the foremost men
in Parliament ; yet in the family correspondence we
seldom hear of her, or if she is mentioned it is usually
in connexion with some passing illness or some domestic
detail. In the Memoir of Isaac D'Israeli, which his son
contributed to a collected edition of his works published
after his death, and which forms the basis of this and the
preceding chapter, she finds no place at all. Her daughter,
writing on its appearance to congratulate her brother
on ' the success of his labour of love ' and writing with
a sister's admiring partiality, was nevertheless quick
to notice the omission.
Your essay must ever rank among the most delightful
biographic sketches in our language, if not the most so, and
I can at this moment remember nothing like it. Never was
there a character at once so skilfully, tenderly, and truthfully
delineated. Every line told in my heart as I eagerly ran over
them. As for the whole, no one but ourselves can know how
true it is, but everybody will feel how charming. Only your
magic pen could have so grouped materials which seemed so
scant into a picture full of interest for all the world. If it be
short, it is full of matter. Every thing is in it — everything
at least but one. I do wish that one felicitous stroke, one
tender word had brought our dear Mother into the picture.
You will think me ungrateful not 'to be quite satisfied. ' It is
easy for one who can do nothing else to make remarks.
Maria D'Israeli in fact appears to have been an excel
lent wife and mother, who kept the affection of her
husband and won the affection of her children, but never
counted for much in the intellectual life of either.
For Isaac D'Israeli the ten years that followed his mar
riage were years mainly of accumulation. ' His pen was
never idle, but it was to note and to register, not to com
pose. His researches were prosecuted every morning
among the MSS. of the British Museum, while his own
ample collections permitted him to pursue his investiga-

HIS WRITINGS 13
tion in his own library into the night.' Boxes of his
papers still survive which bear testimony to this untiring
if somewhat desultory industry — a chaos of fragmentary
notes in small and crowded penmanship, no scrap of
paper that came to hand and had an unused corner
being either too high or too low to serve his need. Even
tually the desire of composition again came over him.
' From 1812 to 1822 the press abounded with his works.
His Calamities of Authors, his Memoirs of Literary Con
troversy, in the manner of Bayle ; his Fssay on the Literary
Character, the most perfect of his compositions, were
all chapters in that History of English Literature which
he then commenced to meditate, and which it was fated
should never be completed.' There is evidence that
even before his marriage the idea of this monumental
work had occurred to him : it became no doubt the
leading inspiration of his studies and gave to them
whatever unity of purpose they possessed; and it hovered
before his eyes for forty years till blindness overtook
him. But his activity was by no means confined within
the bounds of this great design. His early work, the
Curiosities of Literature, was cosmopolitan rather than
exclusively English in its range, and as the public con
tinued to buy and read it, the author was eventually
induced to begin a process of revision and enrichment
under which it grew in time to its final ample dimensions.
In its enlarged form it more than retained the favour it
had already won, and remains to this day the most
popular of his writings. Even more deserving of notice
in a biography of his son are his excursions into the
realm of political history. His literary studies had led
him on to an Inquiry into the Literary and Political
Character qf James the First, in which he strove to vindi
cate the reputation of that monarch against the strictures
of historians dominated by the Whig tradition; and,
pursuing the same line of study, he gave five years of
his life to an elaborate and ambitious treatise intended
to perform a similar office for James's successor. The

14 ISAAC D'ISRAELI [chap, ii
Commentaries on ihe Life and Reign of Charles I. have
long been superseded by the works of later historians ;
but they won for their author an honorary degree at
Oxford to which he was presented as the 'optimi regis
vindex optimus ' ; and they have won for him also
lasting credit as one of the first of English historians to
recognise the value and attempt the exploration of the
masses of manuscript material lodged in the British
Museum and elsewhere.
Among his contemporaries and not least among those
whose praise was best worth having, Isaac DTsraeli's
reputation stood high. Byron, Scott, Southey, Rogers,
were all among his admirers. ' There's a man,' said
Rogers to Southey, ' with only half an intellect who
writes books that must live.' Byron was less caustic
in his appreciation. ' I don't know a living man's
books,' he wrote to his publisher, 'I take up so often
— or lay down more reluctantly — as Israeli's -,'1 'If
there is anything new of Israeli's send it me. . . .
He is the Bayle of literary speculation and puts together
more amusing information than anybody.'2
Shortly after the publication of the first two cantos
of Childe Harold Byron and D'Israeli met, apparently not
for the first time, and a scrap in Benjamin Disraeli's
hand has preserved his father's recollection of his inter
course with the poet.
I never knew a man with a more modest, gentlemanly, and
perfectly unaffected manner. He was now in full fame, and
i Byron's Letters and Journals (Ed.; R. E. Prothero), IV., p. 274.
The letter reproaches Murray for his indiscretion in showing D'Israeli
Byron's copy of the original issue of the Literary Character full of
marginal notes and emendations. This copy was the proximate cause of
a revised and enlarged edition of that work, which appeared in 1818.
Byron read the book in its new form and added notes which were
embodied in the edition of 1822. In a note to the preface of the 1818
edition Byron declared that he had read D'Israeli's works ' oftener than
perhaps those of any English writer whatever, except such as treat of
Turkey.' *Ibid., V., p. 390.

INFLUENCE ON HIS SON 15
until he left England I often met him. He treated me with
so much respect — I had almost said reverence — that I, being a
somewhat modest and retired man, thought at first that he
was quizzing me, but I soon found that I did him injustice.
The fact is my works being all about the feelings of literary
men were exceedingly interesting to him. They contained
knowledge which he could get nowhere else. It was all new
to him. He told me that he had read my works over and
over again. I thought this, of course, a compliment, but
some years afterwards found it to be true.
D'Israeli in his turn was of course not behindhand
in appreciation of the poet, and his son grew to man
hood in a household where the name of Byron was always
held in reverence. Yet in spite of this it is hard to believe
that the father was really in sympathy with the romantic
movement of the day. His true idol was Pope, and
in the whole complexion of his mind we find an affinity
with the eighteenth century rather than with the nine
teenth. The son was more deeply penetrated with
the spirit of the later time; and he had the daemonic
force which his father lacked and which that spirit calls
for or inspires in its votaries. Yet we shall find, as
we proceed, in subtle combination with very different
matter, a certain eighteenth century element in the
intellect of the son which, unless we are to explain it
by direct inheritance from his father, was doubtless
the result of early education and of constant intercourse
during the impressionable age with a mind originally
cast in the eighteenth century mould.
Isaac D'Israeli's works, especially the Curiosities, still
have their readers, but his reputation has hardly rested
at the level to which it rose during his life. It is as
the father of his son that he now mainly interests us, and
as a capital influence in the formation of that son's mind
and character. Superficially the resemblance is slight
between the student recluse buried in his books and the
statesman who through the turmoil of public life forced
his way to fame and honour, and the son was well aware
that his father never fully understood him ; yet he

16 ISAAC D'ISRAELI [chap, ii
assigned to his father a foremost place among the few
from whose wisdom he had himself drawn profit, and
to the end of his days he retained the most unquestioning
admiration for his works and was never weary of paying
affectionate homage to his genius and attainments. If
we bear in memory the lineaments of the father as drawn
by the son, we shall catch in the son himself many a
suggestion of heredity even where the contrast between
the two seems sharpest and where resemblance is least
to be expected. Take, for instance, the following : —
He was a complete literary character, a man who really
passed his life in his library. Even marriage produced no
change: he rose to enter the chamber where he lived alone
with his books, and at night his lamp was ever lit within the
same walls. Nothing, indeed, was more remarkable than
the isolation of this prolonged existence. . . . He disliked
business, and he never required relaxation; he was absorbed
in his pursuits. In London his only amusement was to
ramble among booksellers ; if he entered a club, it was only
to go into the library. In the country, he scarcely ever
left his room but to saunter in abstraction upon a terrace;
muse over a chapter, or coin a sentence. He had not a
single passion or prejudice : all his convictions were the
result of his own studies, and were often opposed to the
impressions which he had early imbibed. He not only
never entered into the politics of the day, but he could never
understand them. He never was connected with any par
ticular body or set of men; comrades of school or college,
or confederates in that public life which, in England, is,
perhaps, the only foundation of real friendship.
D'Israeli the elder lived through one of the most stirring
periods in the history of the world, yet in all his corre
spondence there is hardly an allusion to passing events.
Not the sort of man, one would say, whose son was likely
to become Prime Minister of England; but we shall
find as we proceed in the son himself something of the
same tendency to aloofness and isolation, and many of
the habits of the student recluse not eradicated though
held in subordination by what was strenuous and enter
prising in his character and genius.

CHARACTERISTICS 17
Though at this stage it is in part an anticipation, one
last extract from the Memoir by his son will complete
the picture of Isaac D'Israeli : —
On his moral character I shall scarcely presume to dwell.
The philosophic sweetness of his disposition, the serenity
of his lot, and the elevating nature of his pursuits, combined
to enable him to pass through life without an evil act, almost
without an evil thought. As the world has always been
fond of personal details respecting men who have been
celebrated, I will mention that he was fair, with a Bourbon
nose, and brown eyes of extraordinary beauty and lustre.
He wore a small black velvet cap, but his white hair latterly
touched his shoulders in curls almost as flowing as in his
boyhood. His extremities were delicate and well-formed,
and his leg, at his last hour, as shapely as in his youth, which
showed the vigour of his frame. Latterly he had become
corpulent. He did not excel in conversation, though in his
family circle he was garrulous. Everything interested him,
and blind and eighty-two he was still as susceptible as a
child. . One of his last acts was to compose some verses
of gay gratitude to his daughter-in-law, who was his
London correspondent, and to whose lively pen he was
indebted for constant amusement. He had by nature a
singular volatility which never deserted him. His feelings,
though always amiable, were not painfully deep, and amid
joy or sorrow the philosophic vein was ever evident. He
more resembled Goldsmith than any man that I can compare
him to; in his conversation, his apparent confusion of ideas
ending with some felicitous phrase of genius, his naivete,
his simplicity not untouched with a dash of sarcasm
affecting innocence — one was often reminded of the gifted
friend of Burke and Johnson. There was however one trait
in which my father did not resemble Goldsmith ; he had no
vanity. Indeed, one of his few infirmities was rather a
deficiency of self-esteem.

CHAPTER III
Early Years
1804-1821
On his marriage early in 1802, Isaac D'Israeli, who
had been living in chambers in James Street, Adelphi,
moved to 6, King's Road, Bedford Row1, and there at
half-past five in the morning of Friday, December 21,
1804, or according to the Jewish reckoning the 19th of
Tebet, 5565, his eldest son Benjamin was born. On the
eighth day the boy was duly initiated into the covenant
of Abraham, the rite of circumcision being performed by
a relative of his mother's, David Lindo. Benjamin was
not the eldest child, for a daughter Sarah had preceded
him on December 29, 1802; and three sons were to follow
— Naphtali (who died in infancy) in 1807, Raphael
(Ralph) in 1809, and Jacobus (James) in 1813.
The glimpses we are able to catch at this distance of
time of the future statesman's childhood are few and of
slight significance. ' My son Ben assures me you are ii.
Brighton. He saw you ! Now, he never lies,' wrote
Isaac D'Israeli from Brighton, where he was a frequent
visitor, to his friend John Murray when the boy was
JNow 22, Theobald's Road. The house, though in what is now
a noisy thoroughfare, has a pleasant outlook over Gray's Inn Garden,
and is marked by a memorial tablet affixed by the London County Council.
Oddly enough, Lord Beaconsfield seems never to have been certain either
of the place of his birth or of the year in which it occurred.
18

Jo-eyiyHifriLfi, 9DfArxve.U. ao a G-fiild

^frxym a rrwniatu-r-e. by en. Ooowat/ A.A.
in. /the p<hy^ey>yyuyyv -o^1 ' ,, 'l'6r ' &-<y>tui^y>bu yl'uracU

1810-15] SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLDAYS 19
between four and five. Perhaps not only truthfulness,
but a certain precocious alertness, is to be deduced from
this. At the age of six, or earlier,1 Benjamin was sent to
a school at Islington which was kept by a Miss Roper,
and which is described by one who knew it as ' for those
•days a very high-class establishment.' Miss Roper had
a Bucks connexion, so that by an odd coincidence
Benjamin's schoolmates included a number of boys
belonging to families among whom the Disraelis after
wards settled in that county. From Islington in process
of time he passed to a school of higher grade kept by the
Rev. John Potticany, an Independent Minister, it is said,2
in Elliott Place, Blackheath. Here the atmosphere we
are told, was liberal ' as to both politics and religion,' though
most of the boys appear to have attended the services
of the Established Church. Probably it was only in a
school of a certain latitude in religious matters that
room could be found in those days for a professing Jew ;
and we learn that Ben was not only allowed to stand
back at prayer time, but in common with a schoolfellow
who was also a Jew received instruction in Hebrew from
a Rabbi who visited them on Saturdays. Among his
contemporaries at Blackheath was Milner Gibson, the
well-known Radical politician, who in later days was to
sit opposite him in the House of Commons. From
another contemporary we get a pleasant picture of Mr.
Potticany's most distinguished pupil : —
When my father took me to school he handed me over
to Ben, as he always called him. I looked up to him as a big
boy, and very kind he was to me, making me sit next to him
in play hours, and amusing me with stories of robbers and
caves, illustrating them with rough pencil sketches, which he
continually rubbed out to make way for fresh ones. He was
a very rapid reader, was fond of romances, and would often
let me sit by him and read the same book, good-naturedly
waiting before turning a leaf till he knew I had reached the
bottom of the page. He was very fond of playing at horses,
1 So early that he used afterwards to say he believed he was
sent there to learn to speak.
2 Jeioish Chronicle, Ma.' 29, 1868.

20 EARLY YEARS [chap, hi
and would often drive me and another boy as a pair with
string reins. He was always full of fun ; and at Midsummer,
when he went home for the holidays in the basket of the
Blackheath coach, fired away at the passers-by with his pea
shooter.1 Another and less friendly account, which appears to
be based on the recollections of his Jewish schoolfellow,
describes Disraeli as
a lazy boy who excelled in none of the school exercises. How
ever, he would amuse his companions on a wet half-holiday
with a little extemporised drama. Being able to draw he
would also construct a castle in paper as the scene of the
adventures which he described. He had a taste not un
common among schoolboys for little acts of bargaining and
merchandise. . . . Mr. Potticany forbade newspapers,
but a clique, of which the two Jew boys were members, were
allowed to take in Bell's Weekly Messenger. So far as politics,
the talk of the embryo Premier was pronounced Toryish.
According to this writer the youthful Benjamin was
not only dramatist but actor ; in a school performance of
' The Merchant of Venice ' he took the part of Gratiano,
but failed to win applause.2
Meagre indeed, in other respects, is our knowledge of
those schooldays at Blackheath, though they extended
into a good many years. In both the reminiscences that
have been cited we find touches that remind us of Disraeli's
own pictures of the boyhood of his heroes in Vivian Grey
and Contarini Fleming ; and these two novels in their
turn, which have an autobiographic significance above
that of all the others, may help us to imagine what
manner of boy their author must have been. Like both
his heroes we may surmise that he was daring and im
petuous, sometimes perhaps mutinous and pugnacious ;
1 Rev. E. Jones in the Standard of April 28, 1887. Mr. Jones
was only six months younger than his protector, who had no doubt,
however, both physically and mentally, the precocious development
of his race.
2 Jewish Chronicle, May 29, 1868. Published soon after Disraeli
had become Prime Minister for the first time, these recollections are open
to the suspicion of having taken a colour from the political animus of
later years.

1816] HIS GRANDFATHER'S DEATH 21
keenly sensitive and warmly affectionate ; a leader when
he chose to lead, but somewhat isolated and much given
to reverie and castle building. According to a recollec
tion of his brother Ralph's he was fond of 'playing at
Parliament ' in the holidays, and always reserved for him
self the part of leader and spokesman of the Govern
ment, keeping the others, somewhat to their annoyance,
in the cold shades of opposition. Of Benjamin's studies
at Blackheath we know nothing at all. The only letter
of his early years that has come down to us is severely
laconic and gives us no assistance. It owes its preserva
tion to the fact that the reverse of the paper on which it
is written afforded space for one of his father's multi
farious notes, and it runs : ' Dear Mama, — I have arrived
safe. B. D'Israeli.' From a letter by his grandfather
which has also floated down, and which incidentally gives
us a pleasant taste of the kind-hearted old man who wrote
it, we hear of a serious illness by which the child was.
stricken in a summer vacation of this period. In August,,
1816, Benjamin D'Israeli the elder writes to a relation : —
' We are now in great anxiety for poor little Ben, who has
been very ill. ... I am very much alarmed by the
account I have from Isaac, and very much afeard. God
preserve him and grant that he may get the better and
recover ! ' ' Little Ben ' recovered, but three months later
the grandfather died.
His death proved in its indirect consequences an impor
tant event in the life of the child. In the first place, Isaac
D'Israeli, grown more affluent now by the accession of
his father's fortune, moved in the course of the follow
ing year from King's Road to 6, Bloomsbury Square,1
a better house with the further advantage of closer
neighbourhood to the British Museum. Here he resided
till twelve years later he left London for the coun
try and here his eldest son grew up to manhood. In
the religious history of the family the removal of the
1 This house also is marked by a tablet affixed by the London
County Council in accordance with their excellent practice.

22 EARLY YEARS [chap, in
grandfather from the scene was quickly followed by
serious developments which his presence had delayed.
By temperament and training Isaac D'Israeli was ultra-
liberal or Laodicean in his attitude towards the traditional
faith; his mother, we know, had little affection for it;
and some of the Basevi family into which he had married
shared his dislike for the narrow orthodoxy which was
still supreme in the Synagogue. Nevertheless his children
were until their grandfather's death brought up in the
Jewish faith, special provision being made as we have
seen for the religious instruction of his eldest son in Mr.
Potticany's establishment ; and though Isaac himself
neither attended the Synagogue nor took any interest
in its affairs he paid his dues regularly and would no doubt
have been content to retain his nominal connexion with
it if only he had been left in peace. But in 1813 he was
for some pedantic reason elected Parnass or Warden of
the Congregation of Bevis Marks; and on his writing
to the Mahamad or Chamber of Elders to point out the
' singular impropriety ' of the choice, and to decline
the office, he was fined <£ 40, and told that his election
was in strict accordance with the laws of the Congrega
tion. The quarrel was pursued with curious obstinacy on
the part of the Elders and growing irritation on the
part of their rebellious colleague. A long letter of
remonstrance which D'Israeli wrote in December, 1813,
defines his attitude : —
A person who has always lived out of the sphere of your
observation; of retired habits of life; who can never unite
in your public worship, because, as now conducted, it disturbs,
instead of exciting, religious emotions, a circumstance of
general acknowledgment; who has only tolerated some part
of your ritual, willing to concede all he can in those matters
which he holds to be indifferent ; — such a man, with but
a moderate portion of honour and understanding, never can
accept the solemn functions of an Elder in your congregation,
and involve his life, and distract his pursuits, not in temporary
but in permanent duties always repulsive to his feelings.
Though in this letter he threatened to withdraw from

1817] BREACH WITH THE SYNAGOGUE 23
their society, the dispute did not as yet come to any
definite head. Without rescinding their decrees the
Elders were content for the present not to enforce them ;
but three years later they renewed their demands and
D'Israeli, no longer under the restraint of his father's
influence, responded by insisting that his name should be
erased from the list of their members. His resignation
was not formally accepted till several years had elapsed,
but the connexion of the D'Israeli family with the Syna
gogue was now at an end. •
Isaac D'Israeli though he ceased to be a Jew never
became a Christian ; and apparently he saw no reason
at first why his children should not remain in the same
amphibious condition. 'It was Mr. Sharon Turner1
who persuaded my father — after much trouble — to
allow his children to be baptized. He, one day, half
consented, upon which Mr. Turner called on the day
following and took us off to St. Andrew's, |Holborn.'
This was Lord Beaconsfield's account of the matter
in his later days, and no doubt it fairly represents the
general situation ; but like many of his autobiographic
recollections it is inaccurate in detail, for the children
were not all baptized on one day. Benjamin himself
was received into the Church on July 31, 1817, the two
younger boys, Ralph and James, having preceded him
earlier in the month, and his sister following after a short
interval. No one could have foreseen how fruitful in
great consequences this event was to be — neither the
Elders of the Synagogue who forced the rupture, nor
the Voltairian father, nor the zealous family friend, nor
Mr. Thimbleby who in Benjamin's case performed the
ceremony of baptism. If the gentlemen of the Mahamad
had shown less obstinacy or more worldly wisdom — and it
was only, we are told, a question of two or three votes —
that strange political career which was to fascinate a
later generation might well have been impossible.
Whether it was that the change of religion made a
1 The well-known historian of Anglo-Saxon England.

24 EARLY YEARS [chap, hi
change of school seem desirable, or that, as there is some
reason to suspect, the establishment at Blackheath was
closed, Benjamin about this time entered on a new stage
of his education. He was transferred to ' a school in
Epping Forest where there were about 50 or 60 boys,
and where,' as he once told Lord Rowton after reading in
some hostile article a sneer at his un-English Education,
'the whole drama of Public School life was acted in a
smaller theatre.' The head of the school was a Unitarian
Minister,1 the Rev. Eli Cogan.
There were two brothers Cogan, the eldest a physician and
a man of mark in his day. He was the founder of the Humane
Society, having brought the idea from Holland. Dr. Cogan
had travelled much and was a member of foreign Universities.
He published his travels in Germany and Holland and other
works. His brother was not a public character, but Dr. Parr
said of him that he was the only Nonconformist who was
a Greek scholar.1 He was a complete one ; of the Porson
school, and was really intended by Nature for a College Don.
My father made his acquaintance at a bookseller's shop,
where Cogan purchased always the finest editions in the finest
condition.' My father assumed for a long time that he was
a clergyman. When he discovered that he was a schoolmaster,
he thought I should be his pupil. I was thirteen, or about to
be thirteen, when I went to him, at Higham Hall, an old
manor house, about two miles from Walthamstow. Noth
ing was thought of there but the two dead languages, but he
was an admirable instructor in them as well as a first rate
scholar. I remained there four years, and was quite fit to have gone
to a University when I left Cogan — I mean, I did not require
any preliminary cramming at a private tutor's. Not that
I was more advanced than other boys of my age: not so
advanced, and never could reach the first class, which con
sisted once of only one boy, Stratton, afterwards at Trinity
College, Cambridge, and who, it was supposed, was to have
carried everything before him there, and everywhere else,
but I have never heard of him since. The first class dealt
with iEschylus, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Plato, and the Greek
1 'I am almost entirely, and in Greek altogether, self-taught,'
says Mr. Cogan himself in a letter to Isaac D'Israeli, ' and have
been obliged to acquire without assistance when a man what ought to
have been communicated to me when a boy.'

1817-19] COGAN'S 25
Orators. I never could reach this stage, though I listened to
many of the interpretations and expositions of the master
with interest and admiration. Though a very reserved
shy, calm man, his whole being became animated when he
was interpreting a great classic writer. This I fully ex
perienced when I went before him with my Terence. After
our dull construing, he would himself interpret the scene.
It was acting — full of humor.
However, though I never reached the first class, and was
not eminent even in the second, I learnt, or rather read a
great deal in those years. In Greek, all Herodotus ; much of
Thucydides ; the greater part of the Iliad ; something of the
Odyssey; the Ajasc, (Edipus Bex and Antigone of Sophocles;
the Medea, Hippolytus and Alcestis of Euripides ; Theocritus,
the Idylls (my copy is now in the Library with notes)1;
and Xenophon, the Retreat and part of the Cyropoedia. In
Latin he bathed us in Cicero, and always impressed on us
that, so far as style was concerned, in lucid arrangement
of subject, and power of expression the Pro Milone was an
education in itself; Csesar; much of Livy; something of
Tacitus ; all Virgil and Horace ; some of the best things
in Catullus and the elegiac poets; the first book of Lucretius;
and all Terence.2
The accounts which Disraeli gives of his early
years, in such fragments of autobiography, letters, notes,
and conversations as have come down to us, are not
easy to harmonise. Mr. Potticany's school he nowhere
mentions, and in later years the memory of Higham Hill
seems to have absorbed many of the recollections both
of what preceded and what followed in his education. It is
probable that his stay at Cogan's was a good deal shorter
than he makes it in the account just cited. In another
narrative he himself reduces the period to two or three
years ; and the best conjecture would appear to be that
he left about the end of his fifteenth year, and during
the couple of years that followed continued his educa-
1 Perhaps Disraeli had this copy in mind when in a somewhat-
imaginative piece of autobiography which he once addressed to a cor
respondent he wrote : — 'In the pride of boyish erudition I edited the
Adonisian Eclogue of Theocritus, which was privately printed. This was
my first production : puerile pedantry.'
2 Autobiographic note written for Lord Rowton.

26 EARLY YEARS [chap, hi
tion at home, probably, as the same narrative informs
us, under the guidance of a private tutor. With this
version a diary of studies for the year 1820 that has
come down to us in a mutilated form would appear
best to harmonise; it certainly bears out a further
statement that his education was at this time 'severely
classical.' Readers of Vivian Grey will recollect how
the boy when he went to Burnsley Vicarage, 'although
more deficient than most of his own age in accurate
classical knowledge, found himself in talents, and various
acquirements, immeasurably their superior,' and how
afterwards when he 'sat down to read' at home,
'twelve hours a day, and self -banishment from society,
overcame in twelve months the ill effects of his imperfect
education.' The same tale is told in almost the same
words of Contarini Fleming, and though we may doubt
whether young Disraeli was equally successful in overcom
ing the defects of early training, it is clear that he made
an heroic attempt. In the list of authors which he claims
to have read while at Higham Hill there is probably a
good deal of anticipation of subsequent study, but the
testimony of the diary is all in favour of its virtual
accuracy. Questions have been sometimes raised as
to the extent of Disraeli's classical acquirements, and
he has been accused in this connexion of pretending to
knowledge which he did not really possess. The truth
would seem to be that he contrived at this time to make
himself a fair Latin scholar and retained in after life
a moderate familiarity with the great Roman authors ;
but that his Greek was scanty in the beginning, and, in
spite of his efforts after leaving school, remained scanty
to the end. A thorough training in the Greek language
and a better acquaintance with Greek literature might
have been wholesome discipline for a mind that was too
apt to be slipshod and a taste that was too apt to be
artificial. But the Disraeli that we know would not have
been himself if he had received the stamp that a public
school education places upon intellect and character.

1820] CLASSICAL STUDIES 27
The diary reveals the lack of that severe grounding in
the elements which smooths the approach to the classical
authors for the clever public school boy ; but they show
also a precocity of mind, a readiness to appraise and criti
cise, and a confidence in passing judgment that would be
no less alien to the public school boy of fifteen than the
frequent blunders in Greek accidence by which its pages
are disfigured. A few extracts will bring us closer to
the mind of the youthful student : —
Monday [May?]. — Lucian — his Timon increases in inter
est. Terence, the Eunuch. Erench — read the sensible pre
face of M. Marmontel to the Henriade. Livy — finished the
Speech of Camillus. Writing, ciphering, &c. ; prepared my
Greek ; made Latin verses ; grammar.
Friday, June 2nd — Lucian. Terence — the Adelphi, which
promises to be an interesting play. Henriade. Writing,
ciphering. Virgil — 2nd book of the Georgics, which begins
with a splendid invocation to Bacchus; it, however, all
vanishes in a sleepy lecture on grafting boughs and lopping
trees. Prepared Greek. Read Webb on the Greek metres ;
the author is not very profound, yet it is an useful work for a
Tyro. Grammar, &c.
Lucian, as various entries show, he read with no small
relish, and to the impression then produced we are no
doubt in part indebted for Ixicm and The Infernal Marriage.
The future leader of the agricultural Party was at first
at all events disappointed with the Georgics. He admired
indeed the ' extraordinary elegance of the versification, '
but thought 'the celebration of ploughshares, of fallow
land, and rainy days ' but a poor subject for the genius
of a great poet. In Course of time, however, apprecia
tion grew, and Lucretius from the first filled him with
enthusiasm : —
Wednesday. — Demosthenes, Philipp. 1. I find it difficult.
Lucretius — most beautiful : his invocation to Venus is very
elegant and his description of Religion with her head among
the clouds is sublime. Apollonius Rhodius. Gibbon, Vol.
12. Friday. — Georgics, Bk. 2nd, 430 line ; this glorious passage
is evidently imitated from Lucretius ; but it is the finest

28 EARLY YEARS [chap, iii
specimen of versification that any language has ever produced.
Horace — read six odes, 1st Bk. with myself.
Saturday. — This evening I again with increased admira^
tion compared the passages of Lucretius and Virgil. I wonder
extremely that Lucretius is not a greater favourite. . . .
Friday. — Lucretius — on Death : a sublime chapter, full of
original and grand ideas, but the versification is rugged and
wants the harmonious flow of Virgil.
An independent attack upon the Iliad leads to a
curious outburst against his unlucky editor : —
Tuesday. — Euripides — Alcestis, to 98 line. Verses. Cicero
— the Oration for Milo. Latin Exercise. Drawing. Began with
myself the Iliad, Valpy's Edition ; the notes are prolix and
numerous, but little information is to be gleaned from them.
Valpy rejects the digamma and supports the ridiculous theory
of the self-sufficient Professor of Edinburgh. The Doctor
and the Professor are equally contemptible. They mistake
incapacity for originality, and endeavour to compensate
for their moderate talents by rejecting every established
rule and advocating every ridiculous system. One libels
Heyne and the other criticizes Hermann. Illumined by such
stars as these, surely the horizon of classical literature can
never be clouded !
Greek metres, ' a dry but, I am afraid, necessary study* '
were a sore affliction : but the young student was not
easily discouraged.
Friday. — Again at the Greek Metres — bewildered! lost!
miserable work, indeed. Writing. Prepared Greek. Read
Gibbon, Vol. 9. Homer — the Iliad, Bk. 1st by myself.
Saturday. — Read Literary Character [his father's essay],
3 first chapters.
Monday. — Lucian, Ek/cA^oto ®-nw [sic]. Tibullus, Lib. 3,
Eleg. 6. Henriade. Gibbon — Vol. 9. Livy. The Speech
of Minutius and Fa. Maximus. Greek metres — a ray of
light. Latin verses. Homer with myself.
Wednesday. — Greek metres — tolerable success.
Demosthenes, as we have seen, was not found easy, nor
at first did he inspire much admiration.

1820] CLASSICAL STUDIES 29
Whether it is to be ascribed to my difficulty in understand
ing him or to my deficiency of taste, I know not, but I must
own I rather prefer the elegant and musical Orations of
Cicero. I have a prejudice against Demosthenes, and, though
his speeches are replete with Virtue, Patriotism and Courage,
history tells me he was a Villain, a Partisan, and a Poltroon!
Presently, however, we find the entry, ' Demosthenes,
irapa [sic] tov orecbavov a most eloquent and irresistible
passage' ; and a complacent repetition of the blunder
makes us suspect that deficiency of Greek as much as
deficiency of taste determined the initial want of appre
ciation. Finally, in spite of every obstacle, the Crown
Oration arouses real enthusiasm : —
Friday. — Demosth. Orat. de Corona. In my lesson of
to-day is included that magnificent passage in which the
Athenian Orator swears by the warriors of Marathon and the
day of Salamis, and a more eloquent and enchanting passage
mortal hand never penned, mortal ear never heard. The
eloquence of Demosthenes is indeed irresistible, and while
we peruse the pages of his genius, we lose our prejudices
against the man in our admiration of the orator. At length
I must own that Cicero is his inferior. . . . We admire
in Cicero the well-turned sentence and the cadenced period,
the subtile argument, and the acute remark. But in reading
Demosthenes we think not of these, our imagination is fired,
our enthusiasm awakened, and even I, I who have been
obliged to wade through his beauties, with a hateful lexicon
at my side, have often wished to have lived in the olden time,
when Philip was King of Macedon and Demosthenes dema
gogue of Athens.
Pericles, of course, was his favourite among Athenian
statesmen, 'the greatest and most accomplished of the
characters of antiquity, his policy sound, his judgment
unequalled.' Tuesday. — Read Gibbon — the factions of the Theatre are
described with his usual felicity, but I think he has not made
the most of the character of Belisarius. He speaks, I think,
too slightingly of Justinian, a monarch who, with all his
faults and weaknesses, was infinitely superior to the rest of
the later Roman Emperors.
Saturday, Sept. 9. — Apollonius Rhodius [* this weak
gentleman,' as he elsewhere calls him] .... Cicero's

30 EARLY YEARS [chap, iii
Oration for Milo ['impressive eloquence, well-timed irony,
and subtle reasoning'] .... Gibbon, his chapter on
the Doctrine of the Incarnation — as usual
Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer.1
Tuesday. — . . . . Read Mitf ord : he is deeply versed in
Greek literature, but his style is wretched, nay, scarcely
English, a striking contrast to the cadenced periods of the
Decline and Fall.
Thursday. — Voltaire — Critique on the CEdipus of Sopho
cles. Some just criticism mixed with much frivolity and bad
taste. . . .
He then reads the (Edipe, but with little satisfaction;
and ' a furious denunciation against Oracles and Supersti
tion, brazen pipes and flagitious priests,' which he finds
in it moves him to the following reflection : ' This is a
speech worthy of a French Illumine ; but in the heroic
age Philosophers did not exist, and the good men were
contented to obey and consult those institutions which
from their youth upward they were taught to respect
and reverence.' An intimate friend of Disraeli's once,
in a moment of pique, described him as a Voltairian in
religion. The description was notvery happy, for, as
these boyish jottings alone would show, the Voltairian
spirit aroused an instinctive antagonism in a mind
cast from the beginning in the Semitic mould. And
yet even thus early the subtle contradictions of a most
complex character reveal themselves. In a note-book,
which is probably not later than the period we have
reached, we find this pencil entry in Disraeli's hand :
'Resolution. — To be always sincere and open with Mrs.
E. Never to say but what I mean — point de moquerie,
in which she thinks I excel.' Who 'Mrs. E.' may have
been does not appear, but an anecdote that has floated
down from the school-days at Cogan's bears witness to
her discernment. The boys at Higham Hill who were
members of the Church of England had to walk some
1 Childe Harold, III. 107.

1817-19] ANECDOTE OF COGAN'S 31
distance on Sundays to attend morning service ; and it
resulted from this that they fared rather badly at the
midday dinner, which was usually half over by the time
they got back. Disraeli was himself among the victims,
and his new religion had as yet aroused in him none of
the zeal of a martyr ; so he solemnly threw out the
suggestion to his Anglican companions that it might
be as well if they all became Unitarians for the term of
their life at school.

CHAPTER IV
Law and Travel
1821-1824
At seventeen, Disraeli tells us, a great change took
place in his life. In November, 1821, he was articled
to a firm of solicitors in the City — Messrs. Swain, Stevens,
Maples, Pearse, and Hunt, of Frederick's Place, Old
Jewry. My father had a great friend, the head of the most eminent
solicitors' firm in the City, except Freshfield's, of whom they
were the honored rivals. He was very rich (the firm of five
partners divided, though in unequal portions, fifteen thousand
per annum), a man of considerable taste, with a fine library
and collections of art, and one daughter, by no means without
charm, either personally or intellectually. This gentleman
wished that I should enter into his profession, and, in due
course, his firm, and the parents wished and meant something
else, also in due course. . . . My father was very warm
about this business : the only time in his life in which he
exerted authority, always, however, exerted with affection.
I had some scruples, for even then I dreamed of Parliament.
My father's refrain always was Philip Carteret Webb, who was
the most eminent solicitor of his boyhood and who was an
M.P. It would be a mistake to suppose that the two years and
more that I was in the office of our friend were wasted. I
have often thought, though I have often regretted the Uni
versity, that it was much the reverse. My business was to
be the private secretary of the busiest partner of our friend.
He dictated to me every day his correspondence, which was
as extensive as a Minister's, and when the clients arrived I
did not leave the room, but remained not only to learn my
business but to become acquainted with my future clients.
They were in general men of great importance — bank direc
tors, East India directors, merchants, bankers. Often extra-
32

1821-24] IN A SOLICITOR'S OFFICE 33
ordinary scenes when firms in the highest credit came to
announce and prepare for their impending suspension;
questions, too, where great amounts were at stake; the
formation, too, of companies, &c, &c. It gave me great
facility with my pen and no inconsiderable knowledge of
human nature.
Unfortunately, if indeed I ought to use the word, the
rest of my life was not in harmony with this practice and
business. I passed my evenings at home, alone, and always
in deep study. This developed at last different feelings
and views to those which I had willingly but too quickly
adopted when I was little more than seventeen. I became
pensive and restless, and before I was twenty I was obliged
to terminate the dream of my father and his friend. Nothing
would satisfy me but travel. My father then made a feeble
effort for Oxford, but the hour of adventure had arrived. I
was unmanageable. Let me say one word about the lady.
She said to me one day, and before I had shown any indica
tion of my waywardness, ' You have too much genius for
Frederick's Place : it will never do.'
We were good friends. She married a Devonshire gentle
man and was the mother of two general officers, of whom
we have heard a good deal of late [Zulu "War, 1879], and whom
I employed as a Minister ! Such is life !

The ' two years and more ' in Frederick's Place really
stretched out to three. ' Most assiduous in his attention
to business and showing great ability in the transaction
of it ' 1 was the impression he left on the mind of one of
the partners; though all the evidence is not equally
favourable, and Mr. Maples's recollections may have
taken a colour from Disraeli's subsequent fame. In
the formal sense his education no doubt had suffered,
and we may be inclined to echo his own regret that he
missed what Oxford could have given him — not merely
the scholastic training, but the other gifts of even higher
value which she bestows upon the aspirant to a public
career. But ' nature is more powerful than education ' ;
and this maxim, which was given to Contarini Fleming
for his guidance, was signally verified in the case of
Benjamin Disraeli. Nor in those evenings of deep
1 Froude's Lord Beaconsfield, p. 22.
vol. i — D

34 LAW AND TRAVEL [chap, iv
study at home was the learning of the Universities
neglected. He pursued his heroic attacks on the Greek
and Latin classics, and presently, like Vivian Grey, he
made the discovery 'that there were classics in other
languages besides Greek and Latin,' and in his father's
library 'was introduced to that band of noble spirits,
the great poets and legislators and philosophers of modern
Europe.' In the eager pursuit of knowledge he had his
father's example to draw him on and his father's experi
ence, no doubt, to guide him ; and it was at this time
that he acquired the wide, though possibly superficial,
acquaintance with books which we find even in his earliest
writings, and that he laid the foundations of that really
remarkable and highly unconventional knowledge of
history, English and other, which he shows in all his
works, and upon which he justly prided himself through
out his career. From his multifarious reading even law
books were not wholly excluded, or so at least some
scraps in the litter of early remains appear to indicate ;
though more often we find the law profaned by the use
of fragments of legal documents for literary notes and
verses. In his enthusiasm for knowledge Vivian Grey narrowly
escaped ' being all his life a dreaming scholar,' and a
similar danger may have seemed at this time to threaten
the young Disraeli. Inherited instinct and his father's
example alike pointed in this direction. But though
the thirst for knowledge was present in the son as in
the father, and the habit of dreaming was there also,
and remained there till the end, there was that in
the son besides which made it impossible that his father's
fate should overtake him. ' Destiny bears us to our lot
and destiny is our own will.' 1
Neither Vivian Grey nor Contarini Fleming can be used
without discrimination as an authority for biographical
details. In both, and especially in Contarini, which was
written five years later than the other, the events of the
1 Contarini Fleming, Pt. HI. ch. 11.

1821-24] EARLY AMBITIONS 35
author's childhood and youth are viewed through the
refracting medium of his subsequent experience; and in
both the story takes a colour from his mood at the time
of writing. When Disraeli wrote Vivian Grey his ambition
was turned towards the world of action; and when he
wrote Contarini he was dreaming of winning fame by
literary creation. It is the supreme interest of his char
acter that he combined in such high degree the qualities
that make for greatness in either sphere, the brooding
temperament and glowing imagination of the poet with
the practical energy, compelling will, and daring initiative
of the man of action; and the two novels reveal as
competing tendencies in the youth powers which were
harmonised in the complex character of the man. Judi
ciously interpreted they supplement each other and abound
in touches and incidents that help us to complete the
picture of these years of adolescence. But it is to
Contarini that we must look for the most vivid repre
sentation of the internal struggles by which Disraeli's
youth, no less than his hero's, must have been torn. In
Contarini ambition awakes at a very early age. While
still a child he is consumed with desire to be ' something
great and glorious and dazzling,' and ' entertains a deep
conviction that life must be intolerable unless he be tha
greatest of men.' Yet he hovers perpetually between
the two ideals of the life of glorious action on the one
hand and the life of contemplation and literary achieve
ment on the other, and hardly even at the end of the novel
has he succeeded in finding rest. At one moment he
' longs to wave his inspiring sword at the head of armies
or dash into the very heat and blaze of eloquent faction ;
at another he feels the delight of composition and grows
intoxicated with his own eloquence ' ; he ' begins to
ponder over the music of language ; he studies the colloca
tion of sweet words and constructs elaborate sentences in
lonely walks ' ; and then again, losing confidence in his
powers, he falls into ' the agony of doubt and despair
which is the doom of youthful genius.' Affected by the

36 LAW AND TRAVEL [chap.iv
spectacle of greatness achieved, moving before him in
its quick and proud reality,' he turns with disgust from
his ' weak meditations of unexecuted purposes and dreamy
visions of imaginary grandeur ' and becomes a worldling ;
or he writes a romance or tragedy and throws it aside
' dissatisfied. Now he plunges into action; again he finds
a substitute for the excitement of action in the excite
ment of thought.' To-day 'in reverie he is an Alberoni,
a Ripperda, a Richelieu ; ; to-morrow he has ' resolved
to be a great historical writer,' and expound ' the nature of
man and the origin of nations in glowing sentences of
oracular majesty.'
Through all these phases or something like them the
young Disraeli no doubt passed. Over Vivian Grey and
Contarini Fleming indeed he had one great advantage.
Amid his wildest day-dreams the constant attendance
at Frederick's Place must have been a steadying influence,
and have introduced an element of discipline into his life
that was lacking to both his heroes. When he was most
a bookworm it helped to keep the active instincts within
him alive; which was the more fortunate as in his father's
house and the society that frequented it he can have
found little to feed them or to point the way to his subse
quent career. ' Neither the fortune nor the family of
Mr. Grey entitled him to mix in any other society than
that of what is, in common parlance, termed the middling
classes ; but from his distinguished literary abilities he
had always found himself an honoured guest among the
powerful and the great.'1 If the former part of the
sentence is true of Benjamin Disraeli's father, no less than
of Vivian Grey's, the latter is not. Isaac D'Israeli was
a recluse, and while there is no reason to suppose that he
was sought by the powerful and the great, it is certain
that he never sought them. The pictures that have been
drawn of the young Disraeli's securing early initiation into
the world of fashion and politics through the guests
whom he met at his father's table are devoid of truth.
1 Vivian Grey, Bk. I. ch. 8.

1822] JOHN MURRAY'S DINNERS 37
His father's chosen companions were those with whom
his attendance at the British Museum brought him into
contact or his studies into sympathy, men like Francis
Douce and Sharon Turner, Crofton Croker and Francis
Cohen ; and, above all, John Murray, his publisher.
Murray, indeed, has a place of some importance in our
story. Being on terms of closest intimacy with the
D'Israeli family, he had seen the eldest son grow up from
childhood, and was among the first to note his unusual
capacity; so much so that before the youth had com
pleted his eighteenth year we find the shrewd publisher
seeking his opinion as to the merits of a tragedy which
there was some thought of producing. In recognition of
his precocity Benjamin was early admitted to the privilege
of accompanying his father to Murray's dinner parties,
where he listened with rapt attention to the discourse of
Murray's guests, usually literary celebrities, small or
great. Of one of these feasts of wit and learning we have
a record from his own pen which helps us to realise the
character of them all.
November 27th, 1822. Wednesday. — Dined at Murray's.
Present Tom Moore, Stuart Newton, John Murray, Walter
Hamilton, my father and self. Moore very entertaining. . . .
Moore. — This is excellent wine, Murray.
D'Israeli. — You'll miss the Freach wines.1
M. — Yes, the return to port is awful.
D. — I am not fond of port, but really there is a great deal of
good port in England, and you'll soon get used to it.
M. — Oh ! I have no doubt of it. I used to be very fond of
port — but French wines spoil one for a while. The
transition is too sudden from the wines of France to the
port of Dover.
D. — Pray is Lord Byron much altered ?
M. — Yes, his facing has swelled out and he is getting fat ;
his hair is gray and his countenance has lost that
' spiritual expression ' which he so eminently had. His
teeth are getting bad, and when I saw him he said that
if ever he came to England it would be to consult Wayte
about them.
1 Moore had recently returned from his long residence abroad.

38 LAW AND TRAVEL [chap.iv
B. D. — Who is since dead, and therefore he certainly won't
come.
M. — I certainly was very much struck with an alteration for
the worse. Besides he dresses very extraordinarily.
D. — Slovenly?
M. — Oh, No! No! He's very dandified, and yet not an
English dandy. When I saw him he was dressed in a
curious foreign cap, a frogged great coat, and had a gold
chain round his neck and pushed into his waistcoat
pocket. I asked him if he wore a glass and took it out,
when I found fixed to it a set of trinkets. He had also
another gold chain tight round his neck, something like
a collar. He had then a plan of buying a tract of land
and living in South America. When I saw Scrope
Davies and told him that Byron was growing fat he
instantly said, /Then he'll never come to England.'1
M. — Rogers is the most wonderful man in conversation that
I know. If he could write as well as he speaks he would
be matchless, but his faculties desert him as soon as he
touches a pen.
D. — It is wonderful how many men of talent have been so
circumstanced.
M. — Yes! Curran, I remember, began a letter to a friend
thus : ' It seems that directly I take a pen into my
hand it remembers and acknowledges its allegiance
to its mother goose.' . . .
D. — Have you read the Confessions of an Opium Eater?
M. — Yes.
D. — It is an extraordinary piece of writing.
M. — I thought it an ambitious style and full of bad taste.
D. — You should allow for the opium. You know it is a
genuine work.
M. — Indeed.
D. — Certainly. The author's name is De Quincey. He lives
at the lakes. I know a gentleman who has seen him.
Murray. — I have seen him myself. He came to me on busi
ness once. He was the man whom the Lowthers pro
cured to edit a paper against Brougham's party. He
read me the prospectus, and the first thing he said was
1 See Vivian Grey, Bk. IV. ch. 1, where the foregoing conversation
about Byron is reproduced almost verbatim.

1823-24] YOUTHFUL DANDYISM 39
to tell the reader the whole story of his being hired by
Lord Lonsdale.
M.— Ha! ha! ha!
Murray. — From this you may judge what kind of man he
is, and I need not tell you that there never was a being
so ignorant of the world's ways.
M. — I read the confessions in the London Magazine, and I
had no idea that it was a genuine production. . . .
To the young law clerk these dinners were evidently
something of an event ; they gave him his earliest glimpses
into a greater world ; and when in Vivian Grey he wanted
to reproduce the conversation of men of fashion of the
more serious type it was to his recollections of John
Murray's dinner parties that he turned for his model, and
in part for his material.
As the years rolled by, however, and the boy outgrew
his bookworm habits, the social side of his nature must
have found room for expansion elsewhere; certainly he
developed tastes and manners which neither his father's
library nor Murray's dining-room could have suggested.
Vivian Grey, we are told, when at the age of nineteen he
emerged from the seclusion of his study and began to
mingle in society, was 'an elegant lively lad with just
enough of dandyism to preserve him from committing
gaucheries and with the devil of a tongue ' ; and at a
similar stage of his career the young Disraeli, we may
suppose, was much the same. The dandyism at all
events was already visible. From the wife of one of the
partners of Frederick's Place testimony has come down
that even thus early Benjamin Disraeli dressed very
differently from other young men; he used to come to
her house in 'a black velvet suit with ruffles, and black
stockings with red clocks — which in those days was
rather conspicuous attire.' Both Vivian Grey and
Contarini Fleming indicate that the love of feminine
society, and the susceptibility to feminine influence,
which were abiding features of his character, made their
appearance early; though beyond his mother and his

40 LAW AND TRAVEL [chap.iv
sister, to whom he was then as always, devoted, we know
nothing of the women who were at this time of his circle.
Vivian Grey's ' devil of a tongue ' made him popular
with the ladies of his acquaintance, and he in his turn
discovered that ' there is no fascination so irresistible
to a boy as the smile of a married woman.' The men
trembled at Contarini's sarcasms, but ' the women
repeated with wonderment his fantastic raillery.' Clever,
spirited, and handsome, and with as much assurance
and as sharp a tongue as either of his heroes, the young
Disraeli no doubt had much the same success.
Meanwhile, as he shed the habits and manners of the
scholar, his taste for the profession to which his father
had devoted him did not increase. There is a story of
a friendly solicitor endeavouring to quicken his flagging
interest in the law by installing him for a time in his own
office ; but when he found the youth reading Chaucer
during business hours he came to the conclusion that
nature had not intended him to be a lawyer, and advised
that he should be allowed to follow his own inclinations
and devote himself to literature.1 To literature at all
events he about this time seriously applied himself. The
first attempt of which we have any record is curiously
indicative of the trend of his subsequent genius. En
couraged by the kindness of John Murray, he submitted
for publication in May, 1824, a short manuscript which
under the guise of a tale was intended to be a satire on
'the present state of society.' Of society outside Blooms-
bury the youthful satirist can have known nothing,
except what he had picked up at Murray's dinner parties
or a vivid imagination could teach him ; and Murray
showed so little eagerness to publish that a month
later the author asked him to forget the ' indiscretion '
and consign the manuscript to the flames.2 A couple of
chapters which had been mislaid when the manuscript
was first sent to Albemarle Street have by that accident
1 Sir Henry Layard's Autobiography, I., p. 47.
2 Smiles's Life of Murray, II., p. 182.

1823] LETTER TO MR. MAPLES 41
survived, and they seem to show that the work was a crude
anticipation of Popanilla, its theme being the adven
tures of one Aylmer Papillon in a visit to Vraibleusia.
It was characteristic of Disraeli that in spite of disappoint
ment at the first the project, though allowed to sleep, should
not have been abandoned. Nearly all his successes in life
were founded on previous failures.
To Mr. T. F. Maples. WINDSOR, Aug. 2, 1823.
Mv dear Sib,
A letter which begins with congratulations is generally a
pleasant thing, and I therefore feel very grateful for the
opportunity of thus happily commencing my epistle to the
young stranger who porrigens teneras manus
matris e gremio suae
Dulce rideat ad patrem
semihiante labello.1
But to leave Catullus and congratulations for a more matter
of fact subject. As no particular time was settled for my
return, and as you expressed a wish that I would communicate
with you upon it, I am under the necessity of intruding upon
you, surrounded of course by crowds of hurrying and eager
friends who hail this new accession to the house of Montague,
to ask the very uninteresting and business-like question of,
when would you wish me to return ?
If you can find time to write me half a line upon this subject
I shall feel much obliged.
Present my best compliments to Mrs. Maples.
With the wish that every day of your daughter's life may
be as sunny as the present and that she may never know the
miseries of a wet summer, I remain, my dear Sir,
Yours sincerely, B. Disraeli.2
When that letter was written the Disraeli family were
spending a summer holiday on the Thames. In their
1 Catullus, Carrn. LXI., 210.
2 It seems to have been about the beginning of this year, when
he was eighteen, that Benjamin dropped the apostrophe in his name.
His brothers and sister followed his example, though their father
retained the old spelling to the end.

42 LAW AND TRAVEL [chap.iv
annual excursions they rarely went far afield, but in
1824, Benjamin, whose travels had hitherto been confined
probably within a hundred miles of London, had a
notable extension of his experience. His health was
already becoming delicate and his father was also ailing ;
so father and son set forth for a six weeks' tour on the
Continent, accompanied by a young family friend called
Meredith, who had just taken his degree at Oxford, and
whom we shall meet again hereafter. Leaving London
towards the end of July, the travellers went by steamer
to Ostend, posted through Belgium to Cologne, and
ascended the Rhine valley as far as Mannheim and
Heidelberg. We have Benjamin's impressions of the
tour partly in an unfinished diary and partly in volumi
nous letters to his sister, which show in the writer, in
addition to some merely boyish pertness and vivacity,
a keen eye alike for the picturesque and the ridiculous ;
a good deal of descriptive power ; an interest in the fine
arts and a knowledge of them, both surprising in one
so young ; and a no less surprising interest in gastronomy,
regarded also as an art and not merely as ministering to a
healthy boy's appetite. To Sarah Disraeli. Bruges, Thursday, July 29, 1824.
My dear Sa,
I add a few lines to my father's letter not only out of my
great affection for you, but also that you may not miscon
ceive the meaning of his dubious paragraph respecting our
triumph. The truth is that we had a very stiff breeze, and almost
every individual was taken down stairs save ourselves, who
bore it out in the most manly and magnificent manner, not
even inclining to indisposition. We came in with a very fresh
sea; the night was most magnificent — indeed, I never
witnessed a finer night. The Governor was most frisky on
his landing, and on the strength of mulled claret, &c, was
quite the lion of Ostend. This latter place we found suffi
ciently disgusting, uninteresting for anything with the
exception of its fortifications and harbour. We left it at 8
o'clock same morning as we arrived, and proceeded to Bruges
in diligence thro' a flat but richly wooded country full of

1824] BRUGES 43
chateaux, long avenues, and paysannes with wooden shoes
and rich lace caps. Bruges is the city of cities. Nothing
but Churches and grand maisons — not a hovel in it. The
streets the handsomest and widest and the architecture the
most varied and picturesque imaginable. I never knew the
Governor in such fine racy spirits. I see he has hinted at
the Hamiltons adventure. Sir John is certainly rather a
bore, but ' upon my life
he has two daughters and a ladye wife ; '
the first are regular prime girls, both fine women, the youngest
devilish pretty, regularly unaffected, full of sketching, and
void of sentimentality. He has introduced us with the
greatest sangfroid, and Meredith and myself intend to run
away with them. We have put up at the same inn at Bruges, a
capital one by the bye. . . . Meredith and myself talk Erench
with a mixture of sublimity and sangfroid perfectly inimitable.
We are off to Gaud to-morrow by canal after having passed
a long and luscious day at Bruges. Give my best love to
ma mire and the dear young slave drivers. Yours, B. Disraeli.
Antwerp, Monday, Aug. 2.
Mt dear Sa,
We have been in Antwerp about two hours and a half, and
the post goes off to-morrow morning. My father, as usual
emulous of saving postage, positively forbids our writing
separate letters, and he has been, of course, the whole two
hours and a half writing his half page. I myself am extremely
tired, and have not room, even if I had time, enough to write
you a letter as long as I could desire, but I trust that by next
post my father will sicken of his Sevigne fit, and resign the
sheet in my favour. We left Bruges excessively delighted
on Friday morning in the barque. The vessel was very full.
The Hamiltons, &c. There was an Irishman among the
passengers who would have made an inimitable hero for
Matthews. It was his debut on the Continent, and, with a most
plentiful supply of ignorance and an utter want of taste,
he was enthusiastically fond of paintings; for many years
running he had come up from Dublin on purpose to see the
exhibition, and after a discourse with him on Rubens, the
Flemish School, &c, on all of which subjects he exhibited
the most splendid enthusiasm, he coolly remarked that he
should have enjoyed his journey much more had he not missed

44 LAW AND TRAVEL [chap.iv
the Watercolor Exhibition. I met him two or three times
afterwards in different places, and his salutations were ex
ceedingly rich ; it was always " How do you do, Sir ; wonder
ful city this, Sir, wonderful ! Pray have you seen the cruci
fixion by Vandyke, wonderful picture, Sir, wonderful, Sir.'
We arrived at Ghent after a pleasant passage of six hours on
Friday at 3. I was agreeably surprised by the place, which
I had imagined would have been Bruges on a larger scale.
Its character, however, is perfectly different; there seems
a great deal of business going on, or at least the numerous
canals and the river Scheldt, by which it is intersected,
and which are tolerably well filled with shipping, give it
that appearance. We of course visited Mr. Schamp's collec
tion, the University, Cathedral, &c, and of course we always
thought each thing more wonderful than another, were
exceedingly delighted, and tired ourselves to death. At St.
Nicholas we took it into our heads to dine, perfectly
extemporaneous. We ordered of course something cold,
not to be detained. The hostess, however, seemed pecul
iarly desirous to give us a specimen of her cookery, and
there was a mysterious delay. Enter the waiter. A
fricandeau, the finest I ever tasted, perfectly admirable,
a small and very delicate roast joint, veal chops dressed with
a rich sauce piquant, capital roast pigeons, a large dish of
peas most wonderfully fine, cheese, dessert, a salad pre
eminent even among the salads of Flanders which are unique
for their delicate crispness and silvery whiteness, bread and
beer ad lib. served up in the neatest and purest manner
imaginable, silver forks, &c. ; cost only 6 francs, forming
one of the finest specimens of exquisite and economic cookery
I ever witnessed. We have had a good deal of veal stewed
with sorrel, and not bad. The paper in this country is bad,
the ink infamous, and the pens wusser. Love to Mere and all.
Your affectionate Brother, B. Disraeli.
Sometimes the .diary is an interesting supplement to
the letters. Bruges, Thursday.
Magnificent city, perpetual palaces, not an ordinary house.
The proportions of the town perfect. The Cathedral a
very ancient building. The tower a rude shapeless pile, rises
like a great leviathan. The bricks of which it is built are of
a most diminutive size. This apparently adds to its height.
. . . The city is three times too extensive for its
inhabitants, and you may lounge down magnificent parades

1824] ANTWERP AND BRUSSELS 45
bounded on both sides by palaces and churches, without
being disturbed by a single sound or meeting a single
individual. In its decay, its splendour, its antiquity and
its silence, it very much resembles our Winchester. Ghent, Sunday.
Cathedral High Mass. Clouds of incense and one of
Mozart's sublimest masses by an orchestra before which San
Carlo might grow pale. The effect inconceivably grand.
The host raised, and I flung myself on the ground.
To Sarah Disraeli. Brussels, Friday, Aug. 6.
Mv dear Sa,
The sermones gubernatorii are this time rather diminished.
We have heard that a post has arrived from England this
evening; there is therefore some little chance of a letter;
if however we do not receive one we shall be off on Saturday
morning. We were more delighted with Antwerp than with
any place we have yet been at. We put up at the Grand
Laboureur, unfortunately no table d'hote, but capital private
feeds ; our living for the last week has been the most
luxurious possible, and my mother must really reform her
table before our return. I have kept a journal of dinners
for myself and of doings in general for my father, so I shall
leave the account of the churches, cathedrals, and cafes
till we come home. We have had a perfect debauch of
Rubens, and Meredith and myself have destroyed the reputa
tion of half the cathedrals in Flanders by our mysterious
hints of the spuriousness of their Sir Pauls.
On Tuesday morning we set off for Brussels. We dined
at Mechlin, and stayed between four and five hours there;
dinner good and Cathedral magnificent, oysters as small as
shrimps, but delicately sweet; hunted up an old book
seller. The entrance to Brussels is very striking. The part
in which we reside, the new town, is a perpetual Waterloo
Place, a regular succession of grand places and Rue Royales
in a magnificent style of architecture.
The governor is particularly well. He has mounted a
black stock, and this, added to his former rather military
appearance, very materially aided a very pleasant mistake
which occurred a short time ago. Our affectionately slang
appellation of governor aided by the aforesaid military
appearance has caused him to be lionised over a maison de
force with regular major-general honors.

46 LAW AND TRAVEL [chap.iv
We visited the Comidie last night; but the performances
were meagre and the house ill attended. The King of Holland
pays the actors, and, of course, there is no theatrical spirit
in Bruxelles. We pass the evenings very agreeably in cafes,
where Meredith and myself play dominoes in a most magnifi
cent manner and the governor invents or discovers new ices,
lectures on sorbettes and liqueurs, and reads the Flanders
papers, which are a copy a week old of the Parisian copies
of the English. We then rush home to Selzer water and
Moselle, sugar and lemon, an invention of a waiter and my
father, and which, to use our favorite national phrase, if it is
equalled by any cup in Europe, is certainly not excelled. . . .
Brussels is full of English. The Belle Vue crowded. An
Irish officer, rather grand, invited me to a picnic party at
Waterloo ; also told me he thought an Irish gentleman was the
completest gentleman in the world when he chose, fancying his
brogue did not detect him. We visit the field of Waterloo
not so much for the scenery, but, as Mrs. Young says, for the
idea. Yours, B. Disraeli.
Some notes on pictures and gastronomy may be added
from the diary. Antwerp, Monday.
It is impossible without visiting Antwerp to have any idea
of the character and genius of Rubens. It is ridiculous to
hear the sage critiques on his particular style and manner.
No artist seems to have painted so differently. His style
in his large pictures is sometimes sketchy and rapid, while
in the Museum are many pictures finished with almost a
miniature exactness.
Without a pause, the diarist goes on to a subject that
interested him as much as pictures.
The dinner was good. The Grand Laboureur is, as the
Clerk of the Police well termed it, un hotel pour les riches.
The vol au vent of pigeons was admirable. The peas were
singularly fine. The idiots, imagining they could please
our English taste, dressed them au naturell Peste I Tuesday.
Rose at 5, — was at the Museum at 6. The Diputi Directeur
a civil fellow. Copied some drolls from an ancient picture of
Hans of Malines. In the midst of my sketching, the D D
mysteriously beckoned me away and conducted me to a large

1824] BRUSSELS TO COLOGNE 47
and curtained picture which when unveiled displayed to my
awe-struck vision the Christ between the Thieves, by Rubens.
The picture had been lately undergoing an operation and strict
orders had been given that it was to be shown to no one. The
D., however, with whom we had formed a kind of mon ami
acquaintance, took advantage of the early morn to display to
us the most magnificent painting in the world. This is an
additional argument in favour of early rising. Brussels, Wednesday.
Table d'hote at Belle Vue — between 30 and 40 persons.
Sufficiently amusing. Dinner excellent — frogs — pate" de
grenouilles — magnificent ! Sublime !
To Sarah Disraeli. Cologne, Saturday, Aug. 14.
Dear Sa,
We are in a city in which there are so many churches to
lionize that I am afraid we shall never get out of it. We
arrived at Cologne last night. I wrote to you last from
Brussels. ... On Saturday we left Brussels for Waterloo,
lionised over the field of battle and the adjoining country by
old Shorter himself, a jolly antique. He harangued in a
mixture of Dutch, Flemish, French, and English — very rich —
forming a kind of Belle Alliance lingo, most likely in compli
ment to the place. We dined at Genappe most admirably;
by the bye, we hired a carriage at Brussels. It is a complete
travelling carriage left behind by a Hamburg gentleman at
the Belle Vue, perhaps for his bill. We got to Namur by
11 o'clock at night. At Genappe the country rises and the
road for about 7 leagues is through a bold but highly cultivated
country. We left Namur, where there is little to see, on
Sunday afternoon. Our road lay through the valley of the
Meuse, and after proceeding for about 20 miles we arrived at
Huy, a small village most romantically situated amidst lofty
hills on the banks of the Meuse. The journey to Huy is a
succession of scenery which I think the Rhine can scarcely
equal. On Monday morning we continued our journey for
about 30 miles, as far as Liege, still through the valley. The
scenery if possible even more picturesque than before and the
valley considerably wider. . . .
At seven in the morning on Tuesday we set off for Spa.
We passed over a mountainous country, and for miles
continued to ascend. The road to Spa is a perfect
debauch of gorgeous scenery. We arrived at the far-
famed watering place; pen and ink, and particularly

48 LAW AND TRAVEL [chap.iv
the miserable material with which I am scratching, can give
you no idea of our rich adventures. We rode on the Spa
ponies to the distant springs. They are handsome little
galloways ; the governor was particularly equestrian. I have
become a most exquisite billiard player ; we shewed off to great
advantage at the Wells and Aix, to which place we were off on
Wednesday. We were asleep when we entered the Prussian
frontier, and the governor mistook the officer for an inn
keeper and kindly informed him that he had taken refresh
ment at Limburg. The rest of this scene, which was exquisite,
when we meet. Aix is close and inelegant, the pictures we
saw magnifique. We slept on Thursday at Juliers, and had
rich adventures at a country inn, and arrived at the Rhine
last night. It is flowing in sight of our windows. Excuse
false construction and vicious grammar, as I have lost my
English. Everything has gone right except hearing from
you. I suppose you missed the English post. We did not
sufficiently calculate. As for our own journey, if we find a
letter at Mayence, saying dear Mother is well, we may perhaps
favor you by not returning at all, as really your manners
are so barbarous and your dishes so detestable that, &c.
Give my love to all. I trust my Mother and yourself are
well. I meant to have written to Ralph, but my father
approves of concentrated postage. How is Jem ?
Yours ever, B. Disraeli.
On the road between Spa and Aix he notes in the
diary : — ' The Belgians seem extremely hostile against
the Dutch. It may be questioned whether, in case of a
war, they might not rebel against the present authorities '
— probably his first political observation of which there
is record. One of the pictures at Aix which he found so
' magnifique ' leads to a strange rhapsody : —
Head of Christ by Morales, exactly as in the description
in the pseudo letter of the Roman Proconsul. Morales well
entitled to his surname of Divino. The first painters depicted
the Saviour with the common national countenance, always
undignified and sometimes vulgar. The great masters, aware
of the impropriety, were not bold enough to alter what they
attempted to improve, and in their attenuated and unin
teresting figures they have only spiritualized a sad humanity.
In the present picture, the auburn locks seem only prevented
from growing over the countenance by the moiety of the star

Jo€Uu> 9D Syrcc&U 1834.
lAvwt- xz- xycuuyun.a^ Jru CT. <J. ^/J^eo^owyhq

1824] THE RHINE 49
which forms the glory: everything which can even be con
ceived as necessary to the formation of a face of perfect
beauty, but nothing earthly in the appearance. You could
not mistake the head for an Apollo or an Adonis. The eyes,
beaming with human beauty, are nevertheless bright with the
effulgence of celestial light, and fixed upon no particular ob
ject. They seem looking on the world. The nose is exqui
sitely formed, and the flesh tints seem immortal.
To Sarah Disraeli. Mainz, Aug. 19.
My Dear Sa,
We arrived at Mainz yesterday morning, and immediately
rushed to the post-office, though we were all convinced of
the utter impossibility of receiving a letter. To our great
joy one was immediately handed us. It was very clever in
you writing to M. The non-receipt of a letter was the only
circumstance which threw a cloud over our enjoyment, and to
receive it so unexpectedly was quite delightful. My father
recovered his spirits in an instant. . . . Since I last wrote
from Cologne our adventures have been grand. So much
was to be seen at Cologne that we hired a fiacre, as we
thought, from our host, determined to ride all over the city.
To our great surprise a most elegant landaulet with the coach
men in military livery stopped at our gate. This, we were
informed, was the fiacre, and also nearly the only carriage
in Cologne. We were almost stopped in our progress by
the stares of the multitude, who imagined we were Arch
dukes at least. We have always put up at the crack hotels,
which we find the most reasonable. We travel, as I wrote
to you, in a most elegant equipage, and live perfectly en
prince. The governor allows us to debauch to the utmost,
and Hoehheimer, Johannisberg, Rudesheimer, Assmanns-
hausen, and a thousand other varieties are unsealed and
floored with equal rapidity.
On Sunday we left Cologne early, dined at Bonn —
where we stayed some short time — passed Drachenfels and
the seven mountains, reached Coblenz early next morning,
left it in the afternoon, visited Ehrenbreitstein — for which
our landlord got us a ticket — and left for the present
the Rhine to proceed on our tour to the Baths of the
Taunus Mountains. We entered the principality of Nas
sau, and arrived at Ems at five o'clock. The scenery
is of a nature baffling all description, the chief feature
richly wooded mountains. The baths of Ems are now among
the most fashionable of the continent. Spa and those
VOL. I — E

50 LAW AND TRAVEL [chap.iv
kind of place are now out of date, or visited merely by English.
The establishment consists of a mansion which covers nearly
an acre of ground and which was formerly a palace of Nassau.
It contains upwards of 230 rooms, besides 80 baths, which
are similar to those at Aix. The lodgings are a concern of
the Prince, and on each door the price of the bed, &c., is
affixed. Over this department a maltre d'hdtel appointed
by the Prince presides. The rest of the establishment is
perfectly separate, and is constructed by a restaurateur at
nis own risk. There is a Saloon of an immense length and
magnificently furnished, at which there is a table d'hdte every
day at 1, all other meals and refreshments independent in
different parts of the Saloon. Opposite to the mansion are
beautiful gardens running by the side of the river Lahn.
Such is a slight sketch of Ems, a most singular, indeed, an
unique spot. A watering place without shops and without
houses ; the very Castle of Indolence. Above all, its situation
is, perhaps, one of the most magical in the world, this in
a small valley surrounded by ranges of lofty but wooded
mountains. The river Lahn winds through them, and walks
and gardens are on its banks. Further on the heights and
woods of Nassau, studded with old grey ruins, and without
a sign of population. The visitors are perfectly in unison
with the genius loci. Lounging and lackadaisical, they
bask on sunny banks or doze in acacia arbors. Some creep
to the woods of Nassau, others are rowed down the river,
music perpetual. The ladies patronise superb donkeys.
There seems an utter void of all thought and energy, and
positively in this place even the billiard room and the gambling
table are deserted. Above all, no English. The Hamiltons,
whom we met again, the only ones. After this account you will
perhaps rejoice to hear that we left this fatal and delicious
paradise next day at 12, a glorious morning, passed to and
through Nassau, the country, if possible, increasing in loveli
ness. . . . We are all exceedingly well. Have made
many acquaintances, chiefly among the military, the governor
being perpetually mistaken for a gin&ral anglais. His black
stock is grand, and he has long left off powder. . . .
Your affectionate Brother,
B. Disraeli.
Heidelberg,
Monday, Aug. 23.
My Dear Sa,
We arrived at Heidelberg, or, as my father terms it, Heligo
land, this morning and received your letter. On Thursday
the 19th we left Mainz, crossed again the Rhine, re-entered

1824] FRANKFORT TO HEIDELBERG 51
Nassau, and arrived at Frankfort early. We remained in
this city until Sunday morning, and were very much amused.
F. is a very populous, busy, and dashing city. The Opera
is one of the best in Germany. We went on Thursday night,
Cherubini's Medea. The house crammed full. The boxes
private, as in London, save two in the centre for strangers.
We were much amused. We lounged a great deal at Frank
fort. Our banker was extremely civil, and gave us a ticket
for the Casino, an institution similar to our crack London
clubs, and not inferior to them in style or splendour. Here
we read all the English newspapers and billiardised. Return
ing home we discovered at a confiseur's something superb
beyond conception ; we committed an excess, and have talked
of the ambrosia ever since. My father has bought some
fine prints at F. — Albrecht Diirers, Max Antonios, and
many Rembrandts, very magnificent impressions and very
reasonable. On Saturday we visited the collection of Mr.
Bethmann; in it Dannecker's grand Ariadne on the Lion,
which you remember described in Dodd. In the evening
we rushed to the Opera, the Zauberflote. . . .
On Sunday, after visiting the Museum, we left Frankfort for
Darmstadt, a lounging little city full of new and architectural
streets. The Opera is celebrated throughout Europe, and justly
so. We attended it in the evening — Otello ; the scenery is the
most exquisite I ever met with, the discipline of the orchestra
admirable. The Grand Duke an immense amateur. The
Royal Box is a large pavilion of velvet and gold in the midst
of the Theatre. The Duke himself, in grand military uniform,
gave the word for the commencement of the Overture, stand
ing up all the time, beating time with one hand and watching
the orchestra through an immense glass with the other.
We left Darmstadt this morning, a very fine day, travelled
through a beautiful country at the foot of the Bergstrasse moun
tains, reached Heidelberg, which is beautifully situated on the
Neckar, surrounded and partly built on lofty mountains.
We called and delivered our letters to Mrs. Fobin, a cleverish,
pleasant woman. She was very civil, pressed us very much
to stay at Heidelberg, asked us to meet Lady Davy and Lord
Dudley, who are both at H, which we declined, as we set off
to-morrow. . . . We rise very early, and travel chiefly in the
early morning. We shall be back, I dare say, in a fortnight,
as there are no great cities to visit on our return. We have
been only a month coming to Heidelberg, and have done any
thing but hurry, spending in Brussels and Frankfort alone
upwards of a week. . . . Remember me to all, my best love to
my mother. ... I expect no more letters from you, but shall

52 LAW AND TRAVEL [chap.iv
enquire at Mannheim and Mainz and Coblenz before our
excursion into Luxembourg. We are now in the Duchy of
Baden; have been much disappointed in not seeing the
FreiscMtz. It would have been a great treat to have seen
it at Darmstadt. Your affectionate Brother, B. Disraeli.
Coblenz, Sunday, Aug. 29.
My Dear Sa,
I wrote to you last from Heidelberg, which pretty place
we left on Wednesday last. We had the misfortune of having
very rainy weather there, but the new moon has brought us
at last the most beautiful weather that I ever remember.
We reached Mannheim, a beautiful city — a f ete on the birth
day of the G. Duke of Baden ; the Opera, very elegant house
and very fully attended; Don Giovanni — very bad. From
Mannheim we travelled through Worms and arrived again
at Mayence on Friday.
Yesterday having made necessary arrangements for
the conveyance of our carriage, we commenced our
voyage down the Rhine. So much has been read and
written about this descent that I will not bore you with
descriptions of a country which you know almost as well
as myself. I can only say that the most glowing descrip
tions do but imperfect justice to the magnificent scenery.
It answered my highest expectations, which, after passing
over the Bergstrasse and the Taunus, is saying a great deal.
We set off at 6 o'clock, stopped at Bingen two hours for dinner,
but the time not suiting us we had supplied ourselves with
prog. We therefore took a boat during these two hours
and made an excursion to the ruined castle of Ehrenfels,
near Bingen and opposite the famous tower of Archbishop
Hatto. . . .
We landed in the evening again at Coblenz after
passing through 60 miles of the most beautiful part of
the river. Here we are digesting an excursion into Luxem
bourg. Our host at Coblenz is a most excellent fellow. My
love to my mother and all. The weather continues most
beautiful. Tell Ralph we had two military bands alter
nately playing while we dined at Mannheim. Jem I hope
is prospering.
Our host at Coblenz has discovered since our last visit
that the governor is a great author and has coolly informed
him this morning he shall be obliged to him for his works.
Our dinners, if possible, improve. Game is rushing in in
all directions. Partridges abound. The roebuck is superb

1824] THE LAW ABANDONED 53
beyond imagination. At Mannheim we had sour craut, but
this is not the season for it. Yours ever, B. Disraeli.
Here Disraeli's own record of his journey comes to an
end. From Coblenz the travellers made their way up
the valley of the Moselle by Treves to Luxembourg ;
and thence by Sedan and Valenciennes to Calais. Nine
years later, when he had occasion to recall this visit to
the Rhine, Disraeli wrote : — 'I determined when descend
ing those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer. '
His father, forgetful of his own early experience, seems
not to have yielded without a struggle : ' a father is,
perhaps, the worst judge of his son's capacity ; he knows
too much — and too little.'1 But he yielded in the end,
and though the connexion with Frederick's Place was
not formally severed at once, we soon hear of the son
in other fields of activity. ' The hour of adventure had
arrived.' 1 Vivian Grey, Bk. II. ch. 3.

CHAPTER V
Finance and Journalism
1825
The law was to be abandoned, but what was to take
its place? Conscious of extraordinary powers, and re
solved at all hazards to find a field for their exercise,
the young Disraeli was not to be bound in the trammels
of any of the conventional professions. His first attempt
in literature had failed and his aims, though not yet defi
nitely political, were now clearly directed towards the
world of action. We can imagine that, like Vivian
Grey —
In the plenitude of his ambition he stopped one day to
enquire in what manner he could obtain his magnificent
ends: — 'The Bar — pooh! law and bad jokes till we are
forty ; and then with the most brilliant success, the prospect
of gout and a coronet. Besides, to succeed as an advocate,
I must be a great lawyer, and to be a great lawyer, I must
give up my chance of being a great man. The Services in
war time are fit only for desperadoes (and that truly am I) ;
but, in peace, are fit only for fools. The Church is more
rational. Let me see : I should certainly like to act Wolsey,
but the thousand and one chances against me! and truly
I feel my destiny should not be on a chance. Were I the son
of a Millionaire, or a noble, I might have all. Curse on my
lot ! that the want of a few rascal counters, and the posses
sion of a little rascal blood should mar my fortunes ! ' 1
1 Vivian Grey, Bk. I. ch. 9.
54

1825] LOSSES ON THE STOCK EXCHANGE 55
The rascal blood could not be changed, but the rascal
counters might be won, and to win them by some speedy
method seemed the easiest solution of the problem.
Even before his visit to the Rhine, Disraeli, in partner
ship with a fellow clerk in Frederick's Place called Evans,
had tried his fortune on the Stock Exchange, with what
results we do not know, though the stakes were probably
small. He now, however, increased them. The English
people were at this moment suffering from one of those
attacks of speculative mania to which they are subject.
Some years of great national prosperity had preceded,
and for the capital then accumulated and now seeking
investment a new outlet had been found in the revolted
colonies of Spain. Canning's foreign policy, of which
these colonies were the pivot, helped to give an air of
respectability, or even of patriotism, to the schemes of
company promoters, and presently all the phenomena
of the South Sea Bubble were reproduced. The old
stories of the mineral riches of the New World were
revived, companies were formed in great numbers to
exploit them, and the shares eagerly bought by a credu
lous public. Disraeli and Evans did not escape the
prevalent mania. At the moment when they caught
the infection the revolted States were clearly on the eve
of receiving formal recognition from England, and the
tide of speculation was nearing its height. Having
found a confederate in another youth, the son, apparently,
of a rich stockbroker, the partners began a series of
operations in Spanish American shares, the first recorded
transaction being in November, 1824. Their operations
were disastrous from the beginning : by the close of the
year there was a balance against them of nearly ,£400 ;
by the end of January, 1825, this adverse balance was
nearly £1,000 ; and by the end of June they had lost
about £7,000, of which half had been paid in cash, pro
vided mainly, it would seem, by Evans. It is not clear
how the losses were distributed between the partners ;
the accounts that have been preserved are confused,

56 ! FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
nor is it worth while to disentangle them. What concerns
us is that Disraeli at the age of twenty had incurred a
debt of several thousand pounds, a debt which was not
finally liquidated till nearly thirty years later, when he
had already led the House of Commons and been Chan
cellor of the Exchequer. The 'rascal counters' were
thrown into the scale against him, and his folly or mis
fortune on this occasion was the beginning of financial
embarrassments by which he was tormented through a
great portion of his career.
When they began their operations Disraeli and Evans
were speculating for the fall ; they reversed their tactics
and became 'bulls,' most unluckily just at the moment
when the market was losing its buoyancy. Their first
instinctive judgment of the financial situation had been
sound, though their action had been premature, and the
change of view and tactics may have been owing to the in
fluence of a man who now for a time plays an important
part in the life of Disraeli. Mr. John Diston Powles was
the head of a financial house which had been reaping a rich
harvest from the boom, and whose credit was deeply in
volved in its continuance and justification. The firm had
promoted several mining companies with large capital,
and to two of these, including one, the Anglo-Mexican
Mining Association, which had become the focus of great
speculative excitement, Messrs. Swain and Stevens
were solicitors. In this way, perhaps, it came about
that young Disraeli made the acquaintance of Mr.
Powles, and, with an extraordinary power which he
already possessed of influencing men, even of years
and standing far greater than his own, he appears speedily
to have won his way into the counsels and confidence of
the financier, and the two formed a close alliance. Disraeli
possibly thought he had found the road to a great position
in the world of finance, and to the fortune of which he
was in quest ; Powles, on the other hand, no doubt saw
that his young confederate's glowing imagination, ready
pen, and connexion through John Murray with the

1825] FIRST PUBLICATION 57
world of literature and journalism, a connexion which,
we may be sure, lost none of its importance in the setting
forth, were assets that might be turned to valuable
account. The speculative fever had risen to such a height
that cool observers were beginning to feel alarm; Lord
Eldon, the Chancellor, had drawn a parallel between
the present mania and the South Sea Bubble ; and the
air was full of rumours of interference by the Legislature.
To avert the danger of such interference and reassure the
public, Disraeli's pupil pen was enlisted, and in March
the first result of his labours, a pamphlet of nearly a
hundred pages, was published by Murray on commission,
under the title of ' An Enquiry into the Plans, Progress,
and Policy of the American Mining Companies.' This
pamphlet, which was anonymous, seems to have been
Disraeli's first appearance as an author. Its ostensible
aim was ' to afford the public accurate data for forming
an opinion as to the nature of these undertakings,' and
so arriving at a decision as to the expediency of legislative
interference. In pursuance of this aim our author
discourses learnedly of mining methods, sets forth the
main facts as to the principal companies, and arrives at
the conclusion that 'their general promise is performed,'
that 'the profits which have accrued by managing the
American Mines in the market are not of an extraor
dinary nature,' and that ' the value of the shares of the
different companies will be found to be relative to the
progress which they have made in mining, and to the
former reputation of the mines which belong to them.'
On the question of policy the line he takes is high.
He compares the mining interest in America to the
manufacturing interest in England and dwells on the
benefits to both countries that must follow from its
development; he deprecates in the approved style of
nineteenth century thought attempts to control 'the
spirit of commercial enterprise ' ; and concludes with an
appeal to 'our lawgivers to pause before they decide,
and to enquire before they legislate, and not to be

58 FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
induced by frivolous tales and unfounded fears to
restrain or prevent the agency of undertakings which
are not the least conspicuous parts of a system on which
mainly depend the wealth, the power, and the glory of
our country.' The style becomes more flowing and the
tone more declamatory as we proceed, and the dulness
of the subject is relieved by occasional passages of
picturesque impudence. The pamphlet was dignified
with a review in the Gentleman's Magazine 1 and ran
through several editions.
Presumably it realised the expectations of the author
and his patrons ; for it was shortly followed by another.
The second was entitled 'Lawyers and Legislators, or
Notes on the American Mining Companies' and dedicated
'without permission' to Canning, who is lauded as
'not more eminent for his brilliant wit and classic
eloquence than for that sedate sublimity of conception
which distinguishes the practical statesman from the
political theorist.' In this the note of declamation
rises even higher than before, and in the style there is
something also of that vituperative quality which the
fashion of the day encouraged and which runs through
all Disraeli's earlier political writings and speeches till
he refined it into the rapier-like manner of his full
maturity. In substance the second pamphlet is a
development of the argument of the first against
restrictive legislation. The attack on Lord Eldon
is pressed home with greater vigour than before.
The 'perfect fallacy' of his parallel between the
present time and that which had generated the South
Sea Bubble is demonstrated to the satisfaction of the
writer ; the law and policy of his observations in a case
which had recently come before the Courts are both
impugned, the former with no small ostentation of
legal learning; and the so-called Bubble Act of 1820,
with the terrors of which the Chancellor had menaced
the company promoters, is denounced as a 'disgusting
1 May, 1825.

1825] MINING PAMPHLETS 59
and disgraceful statute,' a 'miserable medley of royal
favour and penal legislation, gracious charters and
terrific praemunires.1 So much for the lawyers. A
couple of legislators, Mr. Alexander Baring 2 and Mr.
Hobhouse,8 who had raised their- voices in the House of
Commons in condemnation of the prevalent mania, are
handled with even more severity ; and in one sweeping
indictment they and all the other assailants of the min
ing companies are charged with ' supporting their
anathemas by statements which are so utterly unfounded
that they might make mendacity blush and so awfully
ridiculous that they might make folly grave.' Finally,
and not without a certain insight and prescience, the
Legislature is invited to deal with the subject of joint
stock companies, though not in a hostile spirit, but
with the purpose of recognising their existence and
making them 'amenable to the law of which under the
present system they are forced to be independent.'
Whether that policy will be pursued [our pamphleteer
concludes with becoming gravity] it is not for us to divine.
These sentiments come not from one who sits in Royal
Councils, or mingles in the assemblies of legislative wisdom,
but they come from one who has had some opportunity of
investigation, some patience for inquiry, whose opinions
are unbiased by self-interest, and uncontrolled by party
influence, who, whatever may be the result will feel some
satisfaction, perchance some pride, that at a time when
warring and inconsistent councils were occasioning the very
ruin which they affected to deprecate, when Ignorance was
the ready slave of Interest, and Truth was deserted by those
who should have been her stoutest champions, there was at
least one attempt to support sounder principles, and inculcate
a wiser policy.
A third pamphlet in the series was issued by Murray
on 'The Present State of Mexico'; but it was in the
1 The Act, or so much of it as related to joint stock companies,
was, on the initiative of the Government, repealed later in the
Session of Parliament.
2 Afterwards the 1st Lord Ashburton.
8 John Cam Hobhouse, the friend of Byron, afterwards Lord
Broughton.

60 FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
main a translation of a report presented to the Mexican
Congress by a Minister in high office who was also a
subsidised ally of the mining companies. Disraeli,
however, contributed some explanatory notes, and intro
duced the Minister in question in a memoir which
has no appearance of doing less than justice to the
merits of its subject or the other Mexican statesmen of
the day. ' Inconsiderate ignorance,' it is true, was
'daily stigmatising them as weak and unprincipled
adventurers.' But 'if they be not pure and practical
patriots,' exclaims the indignant biographer in one of his
roundest periods, 'we know not what names should
be inscribed on the illustrious scroll of national grati
tude.' The brilliant pen of the young pamphleteer, whatever
else it may have accomplished, did not avail, as we have
seen, to save his private speculations from disaster.
He was still undismayed; but as the fortune which was
to serve as a main instrument of his ambition had eluded
his grasp, it became necessary to frame some new
combination, and the materials were soon discovered.
In his preoccupation with finance Disraeli had not
forgotten nor been forgotten by his old friend John
Murray. He seems even to have persuaded Murray
into joining him in a speculation in South American
shares; and as the mining pamphlets could hardly be
regarded as a contribution to literature, Murray in his
turn provided his young ally with another opportunity
of making an appearance as an author.1 Having decided
to issue for English readers a Life of Paul Jones, based
on the same material as the Life by Sherburne, which was
on the eve of publication in the United States, Murray
entrusted the manuscript to young Disraeli and requested
him to prepare it for the press. Immersed in what he
no doubt thought was more important business, the
editor seems to have discharged his duty in a rather
1 Smiles, II., pp. 182-194.

1825] A NEWSPAPER PROJECT 61
perfunctory manner, but the work1 in due course appeared
with a prefaoe2 from his pen, which is remarkable only
for its flatness and banality. Meanwhile, Murray had
formed the habit of consulting the precocious youth in
the perplexities of his business, had learnt to place a
high value on his judgment,3 and had taken him into
his confidence with ever-diminishing reserve. Encour
aged by the success of the Quarterly Review, Murray had
for some time cherished the ambition of establishing a
periodical which should appear at more frequent intervals;
and in a fateful moment he confided this ambition to
his young adviser.4 Disraeli's eager imagination at once
went to work and discovered possibilities latent in the
project that Murray had never dreamt of. The Times
had already taken a commanding position in daily
journalism, but it was too independent of party affilia
tions to suit an ardent Canningite such as Disraeli, with
his new world interests, had now become. Why, asked
the audacious youth, should it not be possible to establish
a daily paper in the Conservative interest which should
equal or even surpass The Times in influence ? And
who more fitted than Benjamin Disraeli, with Murray's
resources behind him and assistance from his new friends

1 ' The Life of Paul Jones, from original documents in the pos
session of John Henry Sherburne, Esq., Register of the Navy of the
United States. London, John Murray, 1825.' The exact relation
ship of the English book to the American is not clear ; but the
former seems also to have been written by an American, and the
original manuscript, which has been preserved, shows that Disraeli's
share in it was limited to the introduction here and there of a word
or phrase where the excision of a passage rendered such amendment
necessary. 2 Dr. Smiles treats this preface as Disraeli's earliest appearance
as an author ; but the first of the Mining Pamphlets was published
in March, and the Life of Paul Jones not till September.
8 It was to Disraeli's advice, for instance, that the publication of
Crofton Croker's Fairy Legends of Ireland, one of the successful books
of the time, appears to have been due.
4 For the story of The Bepresentative see Smiles' Life of Murray,
II. ch. 26 ; Lang's Life of Lockhart, I, ch. 12 ; and Scott's Familiar
Letters, II., Appendix.

62 FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
in the City, to be the triumphant organiser? He was
without experience, it is true; but 'If a person have
imagination, experience appears to me of little use,' and
this heresy of Contarini Fleming's, if heresy it be, was
one from which Disraeli was never quite delivered.
It was an easy matter to persuade himself of the feasibility
of the scheme, and once persuaded he threw himself
into it with all the eager enthusiasm of a temperament
that was impulsive by nature and, well as the fact was
concealed in after years, remained impulsive to the end.
The first step was to win Murray's acquiescence, and
Murray was pursued, as he afterwards put it, ' with
unrelenting excitement and importunity,' 1 till he yielded.
Powles was then approached and his support secured.
He and Murray were made acquainted by Disraeli's
intervention, about the end of July, and on August 3 the
three signed an agreement for the establishment of a
morning paper under Murray's management, the property
in which was to be vested as to one-half in Murray and
as to the other in equal shares in Powles and Disraeli,
the three contributing the capital in like proportions.
Where Disraeli's share of the capital was to come from
does not appear, and was a subject to which probably
that sanguine youth gave little consideration ; but Mur
ray, who must have known his want of resources, no doubt
regarded Powles as good enough for the share of both.
The paper was to make its first appearance early in
the new year, and in the meantime an organisation had
to be created and multitudinous details to be arranged.
The first problem was to find an editor, and for some
reason Murray had fixed on Lockhart, Scott's son-in-law,
as the most suitable person for the post. It is not
impossible that the suggestion may have come from
1 Smiles, II., p. 217. It is well to note, however, that this phrase
was used when Murray was smarting from the disappointment of recent
failure. At an earlier stage of the enterprise he wrote to Jerdan : — 'I
have never attempted anything with more considerate circumspection.' —
Ibid, p. 205.

1825] MISSION TO ABBOTSFORD 63
Canning, with whom Murray was in communication, and
to whom apparently he presented, or endeavoured to
present, Disraeli.1 At all events, Murray resolved to
consult Sir Walter, who had given him valuable aid in the
establishment of the Quarterly ; and as the matter was
too delicate to be settled by correspondence, Disraeli
was despatched to the North to try the effect of his
persuasive eloquence in the conduct of the negotiations.
He was armed with two letters of introduction to Lock
hart — one from Murray, in which he is described as ' my
most particular and confidential young friend,' and
Lockhart is requested to receive his communications
' as if they were given to you in person by myself '; the
other from a Mr. Wright, a barrister, who, by Murray's
wish, 'suggests the place of superintendent of the new
paper,' and adds his belief that Canning wishes Lockhart
to accept.2 Disraeli's own letters to Murray give a
graphic account of the mission, and incidentally show
that the young plenipotentiary neither underrated its
importance nor failed to take himself as seriously as the
occasion required.
The first letter, written apparently on September 17,3
is from Edinburgh, where he had arrived the night
before, having 'slept at Stamford, York, and Newcastle,
and by so doing felt quite fresh at the end of my journey.
I never preconceived a place better than Edinburgh.
It is exactly what I fancied it, and certainly is the most
beautiful town in the world.' He has already discovered
that Lockhart is at Chiefswood, his country cottage
near Abbotsford, and has despatched Wright's letter
thither ; and he has visited a printing and bookbinding
establishment, where his eyes are open for suggestions
as becomes a practical man of business. ' I intend to
examine the whole minutely before I leave, as it may
be useful. I never thought of binding. Suppose you
were to sew, &c, your own publications.'
i Smiles, H., p. 189. 2Lang, pp. 364, 367.
8 Dr. Smiles's dates are obviously inaccurate.

64 FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
I arrived at York in the midst of the Grand Festival. It
was late at night when I arrived, but the streets were crowded
and continued so for hours. I never witnessed a city in such
an extreme bustle and so delightfully gay. It was a perfect
carnival. I postponed my journey from five in the morning
to eleven, and by so doing got an hour for the Minster, where
I witnessed a scene which must have far surpassed, by all
accounts, the celebrated commemoration in Westminster
Abbey. York Minster baffles all conception. Westminster
Abbey is a toy to it. I think it is impossible to conceive
of what Gothic architecture is susceptible until you see York.
I speak with the cathedrals of the Netherlands and the Rhine
fresh in my memory. I witnessed in York another splendid
sight — the pouring in of all the nobility and gentry of the
neighbourhood and the neighbouring counties. The four-
in-hands of the Yorhshire squires, the splendid rivalry in
liveries and outriders, and the immense quantity of gorgeous
equipages — numbers with four horses — formed a scene
which you can only witness in the mighty and aristocratic
county of York. It beat a Drawing Room hollow, as much
as an oratorio in York Minster does a concert in the Opera
House. The delightful stay at York quite refreshed me.
. . I find Froissart a most entertaining companion,
just the fellow for a traveller's evening ; and just the work,
too, for it needs neither books of reference nor accumulation
of MS.
Next day he writes from Edinburgh again. Lockhart
has invited him to Chiefswood, and he will of course
accept the invitation. 'I intend to go to Melrose
to-morrow, but as I will not take the chance of meeting
him the least tired, I shall sleep at Melrose and call on
the following morning. ' Then with an impressive air
of mystery he gives Murray a code under which, owing to
the very delicate nature of the names he will have to
mention, he deems it wise to veil them ; and, this serious
business disposed of, he unbends sufficiently to end his
letter with the information 'I revel in the various
beauties of a Scotch breakfast ; cold grouse and mar
malade find me, however, constant. '
The third letter is worth giving at greater length.

1825] DISRAELI AND LOCKHART 65

To John Murray. Chiefswood, Sept. [21?] 1825.
My dear Sir,
I arrived at Chiefswood yesterday. M. [Lockhart] had
conceived that it was my father who was coming. He was
led to believe this through Wright's letter. In addition,
therefore, to his natural reserve there was, of course, an
evident disappointment at seeing me. Everything looked
as black as possible. I shall not detain you now by informing
you of fresh particulars. I leave them for when we meet.
Suffice it to say that in a few hours we completely understood
each other, and were upon the most intimate terms. M.
enters into our views with a facility and readiness which were
capital. He thinks that nothing can be more magnificent
and excellent; but two points immediately occurred: first,
the difficulty of his leaving Edinburgh without any
ostensible purpose ; and, secondly, the losing caste in society
by so doing. He is fully aware that he may end by making
his situation as important as any in the empire, but the
primary difficulty is insurmountable. . . .
The Chevalier [Sir Walter] breakfasted here to-day, and
afterwards we were all three closeted together. The Chevalier
entered into it excellently. . . . He agrees with me that M.
cannot accept an official situation of any kind, as it would
compromise his independence, but he thinks Parliament for
M. indispensable, and also very much to our interest. I dine
at Abbotsford to-day, and we shall most probably again
discuss matters.
Now, these are the points which occur to me. When M.
comes to town, it will be most important that it should be
distinctly proved to him that he will be supported by the
great interests I have mentioned to him. He must see that,
through Powles, all America and the Commercial Interest
is at our beck; that Wilmot H[orton],1 &c, not as mere
under-secretary, but as our private friend, is most staunch ;
that the Chevalier is firm ; that the West India Interest will
pledge themselves ; that such men and in such situations
as Barrow,2 &c, &c, are distinctly in our power ; and, finally,
that he is coming to London, not to be an Editor of a
Newspaper, but the Director-General of an immense organ,
1 Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies in Lord Liverpool's
Administration. 2 Secretary of the Admiralty, afterwards Sir John Barrow ; the well-
known founder of the Royal Geographical Society.

66 FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
and at the head of a band of high-bred gentlemen and
important interests.
The Chevalier and M. have unburthened themselves to me
in a manner the most confidential that you can possibly
conceive. Of M.'s capability, perfect complete capability,
there is no manner of doubt. Of his sound principles, and of
his real views in life, I could in a moment satisfy you. Rest
assured, however, that you are dealing with a perfect
gentleman. There has been no disguise to me of what has
been done, and the Chevalier had a private conversation
with me on the subject, of a nature the most satisfactory.
With regard to other plans of ours, if we could get him up,
we should find him invaluable. I have a most singular and
secret history on this subject when we meet.
Now, on the grand point — Parliament. M. cannot be a
representative of a Government Borough. It is impossible.
He must be free as air. I am sure that if this could be
arranged, all would be settled; but it is "indispensable"
without you can suggest anything else. M. was two days
in company with X. [Canning] this summer, as well as X.'s
and our friend, but nothing transpired of our views. This
is a most favourable time to make a parliamentary arrange
ment. What do you think of making a confidant of Wilmot
H. ? He is the kind of man who would be right pleased by
such conduct. There is no harm of Lockhart's coming in
for a Tory Borough, because he is a Tory ; but a Ministerial
borough is impossible to be managed.
If this point could be arranged, I have no doubt that I
shall be able to organise, in the interest with which I am
now engaged, a most immense party, and a most serviceable
one. Be so kind as not to leave the vicinity of London, in
case M. and myself come up suddenly ; but I pray you, if you
have any real desire to establish a mighty engine, to exert
yourself at this present moment, and assist me to your very
utmost. Write as soon as possible, to give me some idea
of your movements, and direct to me here, as I shall then be
sure to obtain your communication. The Chevalier and
all here have the highest idea of Wright's nous, and think
it most important that he should be at the head of the legal
department. I write this despatch in the most extreme
haste. Ever yours, B. D.
Before the end of the month he writes again : —
The Abbotsford and Chiefswood families have placed me
on such a friendly aud familiar footing, that it is utterly
impossible for me to leave them while there exists any chance

1825] MURRAY ON DISRAELI 67
of M.'s going to England. M. has introduced me to most of
the neighbouring gentry, and receives with a loud laugh
any mention of my return to Edinburgh. I dined with Dr.
Brewster the other day. He has a pretty place near
Melrose. It is impossible for me to give you any written
idea of the beauty and unique character of Abbotsford.
His father was delighted with these letters from the
'young plenipotentiary.' 'I know nothing against him
but his youth,' he wrote to Murray, 'a fault which a
few seasons of experience will infallibly correct ; but I
have observed that the habits and experience he has
acquired as a lawyer often greatly serve him on matters
of business. His views are vast, but they are based on
good sense, and he is most determinedly serious when he
sets to work.' Still more interesting is Murray's own
opinion of his youthful partner.

John Murray to J. G. Lockhart. Sept. 25, 1825.
I left my young friend Disraeli to make his own way with
you, confident that, if my estimation of him were correct,
you would not be long in finding him out. But as you have
received him with so much kindness and favour, I think it
right to confirm the good opinion which you appear so early
to have formed of him, by communicating to you a little of
my own. And I may frankly say, that I never met with a.
young man of greater promise, from the sterling qualifica
tions which he already possesses. He is a good scholar, hard
student, a deep thinker, of great energy, equal perseverance,
and indefatigable application, and a complete man of business.
His knowledge of human nature, and the practical tendency
of all his ideas, have often surprised me in a young man who
has hardly passed his twentieth year, and above all, his mind
and heart are as pure as when they were first formed ; a most
excellent temper, too, and with young people, by whom he
is universally loved, as playful as a child. I have been
acquainted with him from his birth, but it is only within
the last twelve months that I have known him. I can pledge
my honour, therefore, with the assurance that he is worthy
of any degree of confidence that you may be induced to repose
in him — discretion being another of his qualifications. If
our great plan should take effect I am certain that you will

68 FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
find in him a most invaluable, trustworthy friend, from whose
energies you may derive the most valuable assistance. But he
is yet very young.1
Disraeli's stay at Chiefswood lasted about three
weeks. ' Here,' writes Sir Walter immediately after his
departure, 'has been a visitor of Lockhart's, a sprig of
the root of Aaron, young D'Israeli. In point of talents
he reminded me of his father, for what sayeth Mungo's
garland ? — " Crapaud pickanini,
Crapaud himself,"
which means a young coxcomb is like the old one who
got him. ' 2 It is clear that the ' young coxcomb ' made
no small impression on both Scott and Lockhart, and
succeeded in enlisting the interest of both in the "great
plan ' which he had invented. But the obstacle to which
he alludes in his first letter from Chiefswood was not
easily overcome. In those days it would appear the
editorship of a daily newspaper was not supposed to be
an office that became 'a scholar and a gentleman,' and
neither the title of 'Superintendent' nor Disraeli's still
more splendid appellation, ' Director- General of an
immense organ' could overcome the fastidiousness of
Scott and his son-in-law, or reconcile them to the 'loss
of caste ' which an undisguised acceptance of Murray's
proposal was thought to involve. Lockhart, however,
came to London with Disraeli in the second week of
October, and there a compromise was arranged. A
vacancy was about to occur in the editorship of the
Quarterly Review, and this apparently was an office that
ranked as quite ' respectable ' ; so two agreements were
sighed in the presence of Disraeli, by one of which Lockhart
became editor of the Quarterly at a salary of £1,000 a
year, while by the other he undertook ' to the best of his
skill and ability to aid and assist ' Murray in the produc-
1 Scott's Familiar Letters, II., p. 405.
2 Ibid., II., p. 355.

1825] DISRAELI'S ENERGY 69
tion of his newspaper, to write articles for publication
therein, and 'by all other means consistent with his
rank in life to promote the sale and character' of the
said newspaper, receiving for these services -£1,500 a
year.1 On his return to town Disraeli flung himself into the
work of organisation with headlong energy. Premises
had to be taken, offices to be planned, a printing establish
ment to be fitted up ; reporters and sub-editors had to be
interviewed and engaged, contributions to be secured
from commercial authorities in the City, and home and
foreign correspondents to be appointed and instructed.
In all he was indefatigable. He employs his cousin
Basevi as architect or arranges for the examination of
title when a building has been secured. He writes one
day to his host of the previous year at Coblenz, whom
he found ' a most excellent fellow,' assures him that the
new paper is to be ' the focus of the information of the
whole world,' and that 'the most celebrated men in
Europe have promised their assistance to Mr. Murray in
his great project,' and enlists him as correspondent for
the Rhine. 'I have been engaged at the magnum opus
unceasingly since we parted,' he tells Lockhart on the
day following. ' I have received six letters from different
correspondents in the Levant and Morea who all appear
very intelligent. I have written to them fully.' Or
again, ' Much, my dear Lockhart, has happened since we
parted, I think of importance. In the first place Maginn
is engaged. I called upon the Doctor shortly after your
departure.' Maginn was a journalist of experience
whose services they were anxious to secure, but in this
interview with Disraeli he was inclined at first to dismiss
the whole project as ridiculous.
1 Mr. Lang shows a curious anxiety to minimise the part Lockhart
played in connexion with The Representative, but there can be no doubt
whatever that Lockhart was at first virtually editor, as there can equally
be no doubt that he was quite unfitted for the post. It is worth noting
that in the agreement between him and Murray, though Disraeli signed
as witness, there is nothing to indicate that Murray had partners in his
undertakin''.

70 FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
As I felt the importance of arguing the question with a man
who might fairly be considered a very prosopopoeia of the
public press, I thought the experiment might be hazarded
of giving him a slight and indefinite sketch of our intentions.
This I did with great caution, and mentioning no names.
To give you an idea of the effect I produced is utterly impos
sible. The Doctor started from his chair like Giovanni in the
banquet scene, and seemed as astounded, — as attonitus — as
Porsenna when Scaevola missed him. A new world seemed
open to him, and this sneering scribe, this man of vast experi
ence, who had so smiled at our first mentioning of the business,
ended by saying that as to the success of the affair doubt
could not exist, and that a year could not elapse without our
being the very first paper going. ... In brief, the Doctor
goes to Paris.1
In the same letter he transmits to Lockhart ' a sketch
of our correspondence at present established.' He has
provided for all South America, for the United States
and Mexico, for all the Levant, and for every important
place in Europe from Constantinople to Paris and from
Rome to St. Petersburg. He has been ' very much
assisted in this grand coup of Germany by Mrs. Wm.
Elliot,2 who, when devoid of humbug, is very clever.' 'I
have no doubt that in a few days I shall get a most
excellent correspondent at Cadiz ; but I have not yet
succeeded in Madrid, which is most important.' ' We
have established also at Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester,
Birmingham, etc., etc.: — actually established.'
About the middle of November Disraeli was at
Chiefswood again, and an entry in Sir Walter's journal
tells us the object of this second visit. A cabal headed
apparently by John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the
Admiralty, had been formed among the old contributors
to the Quarterly against Lockhart's appointment as
Editor. Murray, 'the most timorous, as Byron called
him, of all God's booksellers,' took fright at their
opposition, so ' down comes young D'Israeli to Scotland
imploring Lockhart to make interest with my friends
1 Scott's Letters, II., p. 408.
2 A lady of German birth who had married Murray's brother-in-law.

1825] SECOND VISIT TO ABBOTSFORD 71
in London to remove objections and so forth.' Scott
wrote to a couple of his friends, and he also wrote to
Murray himself 'in something of a determined style.'
' My physic,' he remarks, ' has wrought well, for it
brought a letter from Murray saying all was right, that
D'Israeli was sent to me not to Lockhart . . . and
other incoherencies which intimate his fright has got
into another quarter.'1 The result was that when Dis
raeli returned to London on November 21 he found himself
in disgrace. To J. G. Lockhart. Nov. 21, half-past five o'clock.
I have arrived after a most fatiguing journey. I went
immediately to the Emperor [Murray], and my reception
was most unfavourable. I would use a harsher word if I
remembered one. . . . He swears that he understood
I undertook to go to Sir W. au secret, and not to you ; that I
have ruined and m&Ued everything, etc. ; that he only wanted
Sir W. to write a few letters in consequence of the spirit
evinced against you, &c, &c. I was too ill to answer him
and I trust to the course of events to settle all things. He
swears also that I ought not to have mentioned Barrow's
name, &c All these things, I need not tell you, appear to
me very extraordinary, as I am not aware of having violated
any confidence or instructions whatever.
By the following morning, however, the wearied
traveller has recovered his elasticity, and ' three hours'
uninterrupted conversation with Murray,' puts everything
right again. To J. G. Lockhart. Nov. 22, 1825.
My dear Lockhart,
Forget the letter, which, in a moment of great agitation
about your business, and utterly exhausted in mind and body
I wrote you yesterday evening. I rose this morning, having
previously sworn by the God of the Silver Bow to slay the
mighty Python of humbug, whose vigorous and enormous
folds were so fast and fatally encircling us. Thank the
God, I have succeeded ! You will now come to London in
triumph. — Yours ever, B. D.2
1 Scott's Journal, I., pp. 21, 22.
2 Scott's Letters, II. , pp. 410, 411.

72 FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
That he did not overrate his success Murray himself
furnishes testimony in a letter to Lockhart on the
following day.
I have yesterday and to-day listened to Mr. Disraeli's
admirable details of his conferences with you and Sir Walter,
and I can now state with my whole heart that nothing could
have proved more completely gratifying; it has put me into
complete possession of your views and character, and I can
only repeat what I told him to say to you, that after this,
Heaven and Earth may pass away, but it cannot shake my
opinion.1 It was probably at this time that Disraeli first began
to feel that dislike of Croker which was to find
memorable expression in Ooningsby. In a letter to
Murray he speaks, with obvious reference to Croker
and Barrow, of ' the junta of official scamps who have
too long enslaved you.' To Lockhart he is even more
explicit : —
I have often complained to you of Murray's inconsistency,
vacillation, and indecision. I have done more, I have
complained of them to himself. I regret it. Had I had
any conception of the intriguing, selfish and narrow-minded
officials by whom he has been so long surrounded, I certainly
would have restrained my sentiments, and have pitied the
noble and generous-minded being who was subjected to such
disgusting thraldom. ... It is impossible in a letter
to give you any idea of the agitating and curious scenes
which have taken place during these last days. The scales,
however, have at length fallen from our friend's eyes, and
the walls of the Admiralty have resounded to his firm and
bold but gentlemanly tones. . . . Thank God I did not
postpone my departure to town one other second ! 2
With the obscure intrigues to which this and other
letters refer we are not much concerned. Lockhart
came to London in the first week of December, and a
fortnight later, at Disraeli's suggestion and with the
approbation of all, the new paper was named The
Representative. There, as far as Disraeli is involved,
the story abruptly ends. In a letter to Lockhart on
November 28 he alludes to ' the terrific agitation in which
1 Scott's Letters, II., p. 414. 2 Ibid., II., p. 413.

1826] FAILURE OF 'THE REPRESENTATIVE' 73
the city and the whole commercial interest have been
thrown during the last three weeks.' About the middle
of December the agitation culminated in panic, and the
crash which had for some time been inevitable came,
spreading disaster far and wide, and burying Disraeli's
hopes in the general ruin. Thenceforth, at all events,
his name disappears from the records which tell the
story of The Representative, and it is probably a safe con
jecture to seek the explanation in the bursting of the
City bubble, though we know nothing definite.1 Murray
went on with his enterprise, and in due course the paper
was published ; but, badly managed and badly edited,
it was a failure from the beginning, and after a flickering
life of half a year and a cost to its proprietor of ,£26,000
it ceased to exist.
So ended this bold attempt by the young Disraeli to
storm the heights to which his ambition aspired. In
after years, it would seem, his memory dwelt with little
pleasure on the episode. He had more than once to
deny statements that he had been the editor of The
Representative, but as to his real connexion with the
enterprise he was silent. There is nothing surprising
in this ; public men do not love to have their names
associated with failure, and Disraeli was no exception.
But apart from the failure there is nothing discredit-
1 Dr. Smiles, indeed, definitely states that, when the time came
for Murray's partners to contribute their share of the capital, they
both of them failed to fulfil their engagements ; but this still leaves
something unexplained in the story as it affects Disraeli, for Mr. Powles,
as the correspondence shows, retained his position in respect of Murray
and the newspaper apparently unquestioned for at least a couple of
months after Disraeli had disappeared. As some things in the published
accounts of these transactions have given offence to the living represent
atives of Mr. Powles's family, it is only fair to note that his own version
of the story is unfortunately not available. Though the crisis of 1826
involved him in bankruptcy, it would appear that he afterwards recov
ered his position and paid his creditors in full ; and his family state that
he maintained friendly relations with Murray down to the latter' s death.
Certainly Disraeli, as his correspondence proves, even after he had
become Chancellor of the Exchequer, remained in confidential com
munication with Mr. Powles, whom he valued both as a leading City
Conservative and an authority on subjects in which the City took a
special interest.

74 FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
able to him in the story as far as it can be traced
to-day. He had shown amazing energy, amazing self-
confidence, and amazing power of winning to his views
men older and riper in experience than himself. His
faults had been the faults of youth, an over-sanguine
temperament, and immaturity of judgment. In trusting
so implicitly to his alliance with the mining interests
in the City, he had built upon foundations of sand,
but older heads than his, before and since, have been
guilty of a similar error. It is not clear that the con
ception of the newspaper was in itself unsound. Until
the last moment, in spite of its appearance at a time of
severe financial stress, the success of The Representative
was generally anticipated, and it was only the feebleness of
the first few numbers that destroyed its chances. For this
Disraeli, who had withdrawn a month before, can hardly be
held responsible ; if he had remained the result might
have been the same, but it is not impossible that his daemo
nic energy would have imparted to the paper some of the
life and vigour which it so conspicuously lacked.
Murray, it ought to be said, seems to have cherished
a feeling that, apart from the loss of his money, he had
grounds for indignation against one who, in his own
touching words, had received from him ' nothing but the
most unbounded confidence and parental attachment';
but that feeling appears to have been of later origin.
Whatever the circumstances and explanation of the
young Disraeli's withdrawal from The Representative,
the event at first made not the slightest difference
to the intimate relations between the Murray and
Disraeli families. A few months later, however, Vivian
Grey was published, and the situation changed at once.1
Because the Disraelis had expressed, or were supposed
to have expressed, their approbation of this performance,
1 Mr. Murray allows me to cite him in support of the view here
taken : — 'I believe the real cause of my grandfather's resentment was
not The Representative affair nor the loss of his money, but the feeling
that he had been caricatured and that his confidence had been betrayed
by Disraeli in Vivian Grey. So my father always told me.'

JWtz, co picture. <by f.Q)xw™na*v <A. Ut cA.

1826] BREACH WITH MURRAY 75
Murray dropped their acquaintance, and his feelings
were shown by a letter written later in the year in which
he speaks of Benjamin's 'outrageous breach of all con
fidence and of every tie which binds man to man in social
life in the publication ' of the novel. Vivian Grey, as we
shall see, is full of boyish impudence, but there is nothing
in it that can be even thought of as giving justification
for language such as this. Murray apparently fancied
that he had been satirised in the character of the Marquis,
though it is not easy to detect the slightest resemblance
between them. As Sharon Turner assured him, 'If the
author were to swear to me that he meant the Marquis
for you, I could not believe him : it is in all points so
entirely unlike.' The fact is, Murray's temper, which
was naturally far from perfect, was by the time the
novel appeared in a state of sore trial. The Representative
was not succeeding, and Murray found himself committed
to a hopeless undertaking and left to bear alone the
burden of a heavy weekly loss. It was not consoling
to remember that he, a shrewd man of business of no
small experience, had been led into the venture by one
who was a boy in years ; and the boy had made enemies
who apparently did not neglect to foster the prejudice
against him. Not only did Murray break off relations
with the Disraelis, but he seems to have spoken of Ben
jamin in terms which struck the latter as ' outrageous '
and 'inexplicable.' Young Disraeli replied with a menace
of legal action, which he conveyed in a letter to Mrs.
Murray invoking her interference to avert such a deplor
able necessity ; and Maria D'Israeli followed with a vig
orous and sensible letter of protest addressed to Murray
himself. ' I feel your disappointment,' she writes, ' and
can forgive your irritability, yet I must resent your late
attack on Benjamin ' ; and she expresses the shrewd
opinion that ' the failure of The Representative lay much
more with the proprietor and his editor than it ever did
with my son.' Murray, as she reminds him, had known
the boy from his cradle, and knew his want of resources,

76 FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
and how could he have been deceived ? Her son, though
'a clever boy,' was 'no prodigy,' but Murray 'had formed
in his versatile imagination a perfect being and expected
impossibilities, and found him on trial a mere mortal
and a very very young man.' 'What can you mean by
saying that our son had divulged and made public your
secrets? I must beg an explanation of this enigma.'
Isaac D'Israeli also was stirred to unwonted vigour.
Eventually it would appear there was a reconciliation
between Murray and the parents ; but between Murray
and the son, though business relations were resumed,
friendship was at an end. How deeply this estrange
ment was regretted by young Disraeli, who beneath all
appearance had a truly affectionate heart, is shown by his
subsequent efforts to bring it to an end. When he began
to make a name as a novelist it became one of his dearest
ambitions to have a book published by Murray, and he
never rested till this ambition was achieved. More than
a year after his retirement from The Representative, when
he found himself in possession of a little money, the earn
ings no doubt of Vivian Grey, though his debts on the
Stock Exchange swallowed up the greater portion, he
contrived to send £150 to Murray in payment for the
printing of the mining pamphlets. 'I have never been
able,' he explains, ' to obtain a settlement of those accounts
from the parties originally responsible, and it has hitherto
been quite out of my power to exempt myself from the
liability, which, I have ever been conscious, on their
incompetency, resulted from the peculiar circumstances
of the case to myself.'1 Murray's heart, however,
remained unsoftened. Disraeli seems to have thought,
and perhaps not without reason, that Lockhart's in
fluence was used against him ; at all events, from this
time onwards we find him, whenever occasion offers,
showing a hearty dislike for Lockhart, who appears in
deed from his side to have reciprocated the feeling with
no less cordiality.2
1 Smiles, IL, p. 254.
2 See for instance Lockhart's remarks on Coningsby, Lang, II., p. 199.

1825] DISRAELI AND SIR WALTER 77
Among Disraeli's papers there is a reminiscence, written
nearly forty years later, of his early visits to Scotland
and his intercourse with Sir Walter Scott.
When I was quite a youth (1825) I was travelling in Scot
land, and my father gave me a letter to Sir Walter Scott.
I visited him at Abbotsford. I remember him quite well. A
kind, but rather stately, person : with his pile of forehead,
sagacious eye, white hair and green shooting coat. He was
extremely hospitable ; and after dinner, with no lack of claret,
the quaighs and whisky were brought in. I have seen him
sitting in his armchair, in his beautiful library, which was the
chief rendezvous of the house, and in which we met in the
evening, with half a dozen terriers about him: in his lap,
on his shoulders, at his feet. 'These,' he said to me 'are
Dandie Dinmont's breed.' They were all called Mustard and
Pepper, according to their color and their age. He would
read aloud in the evening, or his daughter, an interesting girl,
Anne Scott, would sing some ballad on the harp. He liked
to tell a story of some Scotch chief, sometimes of some Scotch
lawyer. I was at Abbotsford again later in the year for a day. The
Edinburgh Review had just arrived. Mr. Lockhart, then
about thirty or so, but a very experienced literary man, I
remember saying, ' Well, they may say what they like, but
no man can write like Jeffrey on poetry. The article on Milton
in the new number is the finest thing we have had for years.'
As I came down to dinner, Sir Walter was walking up and
down the hall with a very big, stout, florid man, apparently
in earnest conversation. I was introduced to him before
dinner as Mr. Constable — the famous publisher of the Edin
burgh Review and the Waverley Novels, the authorship of
them not then acknowledged; at least, not formally. It
struck me, that I had never met before such an ostentatious
man, or one whose conversation was so braggart. One would
think that he had written the Waverley Novels himself, and
certainly that Abbotsford belonged to him. However, he
seemed to worship Scott, aud to express his adoration. His
carriage was announced, while he was at dinner, and he was
obliged to go, as he had to return to Edinburgh to transact
some business, and then go up to London by the morrow's mail,
by which also I was to return.
So we met again, and I sate opposite him. He put a rich
velvet cap with a broad gold band on his head, and looked
like a great heraldic lion crowned. We had two fellow
passengers, I am sure, but I don't recollect anything about

78 FINANCE AND JOURNALISM [chap, v
them. But I never shall forget Constable's conversation.
It was only about Abbotsford and the Waverley Novels.
He informed me, that he intended to build a new wing to
Abbotsford next year, and you would have supposed from
what he said that Sir Walter had only commenced developing
a new Eldorado. I never in my life met such a braggart,
or a man so full of self-importance. Something had gone
wrong on the journey; the guard or the coachman had
displeased. He went into an ecstasy of pompous passion.
' Do you know who I am, man ? I am Archibald Constable,'
&c, &c, &c. This man was on the point of a most fatal
and shattering bankruptcy; had gone up to town with some
desperate resolve; and in less than a week the crash came.
When he had exhausted Abbotsford and the Waverley
Novels, he began bragging about the Edinburgh Review : and
dilated much on an article on Milton. I, like a youth, repeat
ing at second-hand, ventured to observe, that no one wrote on
poetry like Jeffrey. I copied this from Lockhart, but I flatter
myself, that if I had read the article, I should not have made
the observation ; for it always afterwards gave me a very low
opinion of Lockhart's literary discrimination. No man with a
good nose could have for an instant supposed that Jeffrey had
written the article in question. Constable informed me, that
it was not by Jeffrey but that it was a secret : but so little was
his power of reserve and reticence, or so great the excitement
under which he then laboured, that before long I had no diffi
culty in worming out from him, that it was by a young law
yer of the name of Macaulay, from whom he expected great
things. Therefore, I arrived in London with a sort of literary
secret.

CHAPTER VI
Vivian Grey
1826
Disraeli was never easily discouraged. His twenty-
first birthday, which he celebrated on the 21st of
December, a few days after the crash in the City, must
have been gloomy enough; but, foiled in his practical
ambition, he turned again to literature and within four
months had produced a book which became the talk
of London and won for him celebrity or notoriety in a
measure that few secure when they have barely crossed
the threshold of manhood.
In the previous year a novel called Tremaine had
appeared which was much read and talked about at the
time, though it is now forgotten. It was a ' novel of fash
ionable life ' and its popularity had given a certain vogue
to this form of literature. The author, Robert Ward,
better known by his later name of Plumer Ward, was a
person of some prominence in Parliament and society ;
but his book was published anonymously, and owed not a
little of its success to the mystery in which its authorship
was for some time carefully wrapt. As it happened, the
Disraeli family rented Hyde House, Ward's residence near
Amersham, for some months in the autumn of 1825,
and here Disraeli always said he wrote Vivian Grey, tak
ing the idea from Tremaine and completing the book
before he was twenty-one. The link between the Dis
raelis and Ward was Ward's solicitor, Austen, who, living
79

80 VIVIAN GREY [chap, vi
close by in Guilford Street, had formed an acquaint
ance with the family in Bloomsbury Square. It was
Austen who, according to the very doubtful story,
had found Benjamin reading Chaucer in chambers,
and decided that he would never make a lawyer ;
and it was through Austen that Hyde House was
taken by the Disraelis. Austen, as Ward's agent,
had made the arrangements for the publication of
Tremaine, and his young and clever wife was also
in Ward's confidence, and had played a part in the
negotiations. Aware, no doubt, of her relations with
Colburn the publisher, Disraeli, who had no longer
John Murray to apply to, turned to her for advice and
assistance when his own novel was becoming ripe for
publication. Sara Austen was well fitted to be the
Egeria of a precocious youth of genius. ' She was a
woman,' as her nephew Sir Henry Layard describes her,
' of more than ordinary talent and of more than ordinary
beauty, very ambitious of shining in society and fond
of flattery and admiration. Her accomplishments were
many and various. She was a clever musician, a skilful
artist, a good judge and critic of literary merit, and an
excellent letter-writer. Had she chosen to be an author
ess she would probably have been a successful one.'1
Disraeli's earlier letters to her have unfortunately per
ished, but enough remain of Mrs. Austen's to help to
elucidate our story. From Mrs. Austen.
Saturday Morning, 25iA [Feb.,1 1826].
My dear Sir,
Patience is not one of my virtues, as I fear you will
discover to your cost, and I could just as easily sit without
speaking till Tuesday as wait till then to give you my opinion
1 Layard's Autobiography, I. p. 46.
2 March 25 was also a Saturday, but as the book was announced
for publication at the beginning of April the earlier date must be
chosen.

1826] MRS. AUSTEN 81
of your MS. I am quite delighted with it, and enter into
the spirit of the book entirely. I have now gone through it
twice, and the more I read the better I am pleased. I never
make any professions, but if you can do no better take me
as an ally upon trust: at least I will be faithful to your
secret and can undertake to manage it exactly in accordance
to your wishes in Burlington Street [Colburn's offices].
Trouble is an odious word which shall be henceforth banished
our vocabulary. I only long to receive my credentials, for
indeed you have no time to lose on account of a very
extraordinary coincidence,1 which I dare not explain on
paper, but of which you shall know enough the first time we
meet to prove the advantage of its going to press immediately.
The moment I have your permission and instructions I will
write to C[olburn]. Pray send me the remainder of your
MS. as soon as possible, for I am in a state of complete excita
tion on the subject.  1 forget Mr. D'I's christian initial so
must direct ' Junior.' 2
Your sincere friend and ally S.A.
At Mrs. Austen's instance Colburn accepted the novel
for publication, though the secret of the authorship was
rigorously withheld from him, as even for a time from
Disraeli's own family. That the mystification might be
complete, Mrs. Austen copied the whole of the manuscript
in her own hand and her friends believed that she had
helped to write the story; but her letters at the time
confirm the statement she made more than half a
century later : ' She had given him advice and had
occasionally induced him to suppress or modify pas
sages which she considered objectionable in taste, but
1 The reference is without doubt to the approaching appearance
of Ward's second novel De Vere.
2 Sir Henry Layard, writing half a century later of events which
happened when he was a child, has, as this letter and others show,
antedated the intimacy between the Austens and Disraeli, and has
perhaps somewhat exaggerated the part they played in his life. The
Chaucer story seems to me of doubtful authenticity, and not less so an
other story which is often quoted on Sir Henry Layard's authority of
his accompanying his aunt in a call on the Disraelis and finding ' Ben '
in the middle of a boxing lesson.
vol. i — G

82 VIVIAN GREY [chap, vi
nothing more.'1 Why Disraeli should have taken
so much trouble to preserve the anonymity of the
book, or whether he had any more solid reasons than a
native love of mystery and a desire to follow the fashion
which Scott had established and to which lesser lights
like Plumer Ward had conformed, we cannot be sure ;
but the publisher was so far from disliking the mystery
thus created that he skilfully availed himself of it for
purposes of his own. A master of the art of advertising,
Colburn controlled, or was in a position to influence,
several of the best-known organs of literary opinion ;
and presently in the daily journals and in weekly and
monthly periodicals hints began to be given of the
approaching appearance of a new society novel by an
author who for obvious reasons desired to remain
anonymous and in whose pages all the leading people
of the day were to appear under thin disguises. The
book was to be ' extremely satirical,' and was to contain
'portraits of living characters, sufficient to constitute
a National Gallery'; it was to be 'a sort of Don Juan
in prose,' and the hero was ' to become acquainted with
every literary and fashionable character in existence.'
By arts such as these curiosity was aroused and
expectation created, and when towards the end of April
Vivian Grey appeared in two octavo volumes its success
was at once assured. Long reviews were published in
many of the leading newspapers and periodicals ; society
amused itself by endeavouring to identify the originals
of the characters ; and at the same time speculation,
diligently fomented by the ingenious Colburn, raged as
to the identity of the author. From their different points
of view both publisher and author had every reason to be
satisfied with the success they had achieved.
Though we may safely assume that Disraeli was not
averse from the prospect of notoriety, there is nothing to
show that he had any real responsibility for the puffing
1 Layard, I, p. 46.

1826] COLBURN'S PUFFERY 83
arts of Colburn. He only received £200 for the novel,1
and he was not even in direct communication with his
publisher ; but in the end he had to pay the penalty for
Colburn's delinquencies as well as for his own. As long
as it was supposed that Vivian Grey was the work of a
man of high position the Press, where it did not praise,
was silent ; but in spite of Colburn's attempts to connect
well-known names with the authorship, or at least to
encourage the belief that the author was a ' man of
fashion,' some of the critics were from the first suspicious.
Jerdan, of the Literary Gazette, for instance, was acute
enough to observe that 'the class of the author was a
little betrayed by his frequent recurrence to topics about
which the mere man of fashion knows nothing and cares
less,' and that the book 'somewhat smacked of the
literary writer '; and presently — it would seem through
Jerdan, who had somehow ferreted out the secret, and
in spite of the greatest exertions on the part of Mrs.
Austen to ' blind ' all concerned — the truth leaked out.
When it was realised that the author of Vivian Grey
was only an audacious boy, Colburn's enemies abandoned
their reserve. 'Christopher North' in Blackwood2
denounced 'the shameful and shameless puffery' by
which the sale of the book had been secured, and
dismissed it as 'a paltry catchpenny' by *an obscure
person for whom nobody cares a straw.' Another
writer, in an article entitled 'The New Unknown,'
revealed the author's identity by name, branded him as
having acquired popularity 'by the meanest and most
revolting artifices and the total disregard of all honourable
feeling'; ridiculed 'his most ludicrous affectation of
good breeding'; and even accused Disraeli and Mrs.
Austen of having tricked Colburn into paying a high
price for the novel by leading him to believe that it was
1 That is to say for the novel as it originally appeared. For the
Second Part, published in the following year, he received £500 in addi
tion. 2 July, 1826, p. 98.

84 VIVIAN GREY [chap, vi
from the pen of Plumer Ward.1 With all his assurance
Disraeli was by nature sensitive, and this was his first
taste of the malignant abuse which was to be showered
upon him all through life and against which experience
was to make him proof. There is an obvious reminiscence
of the effect upon the victim's mind in the well known
passage in which Contarini Fleming describes his sensa
tions after reading the review of his novel Manstein : —
With what horror, with what supreme, appalling astonish
ment, did I find myself for the first time in my life a subject
of the most ruthless, the most malignant, and the most adroit
ridicule. I was scarified. I was scalped. . . . The criti
cism fell from my hand, a film floated over my vision ; my
knees trembled. I felt that sickness of heart that we experi
ence in our first serious scrape. I was ridiculous, it was time
to die.
Yet in spite of the critics, perhaps to some extent
because of their violence and acerbity, which revived the
interest of the public as it began to flag, Vivian Grey
survived. 'There was little art in my creation,' says
Contarini of an early composition, 'but there was much
vitality,' and the description exactly fits the first part
1 Literary Magnet, Vol. n., pp. 1 and 129. From the same writer the
legends took their origin that Disraeli had been the first editor of The
Representative and responsible for its failure ; and that he had also been
editor of The Star Chamber, a weekly publication which appeared for a
couple of months in the spring of 1826, and author of the ' Dunciad of
To-day,' a satirical poem which was printed in The Star Chamber and
provoked much resentment. The statement about The Representative,
as we have seen, was not true. As for The Star Chamber, it was founded
by a certain Peter Hall, a friend of Meredith's at Brasenose, who, through
Meredith, had become acquainted with Disraeli. Disraeli contributed
some fables with a political application under the title of ' The Modern
iEsop,' at least one review, and perhaps other matter. But in later life
he expressly denied {The Times, Nov. 3, 1871 ; Leisure Hour, Nov. 4,
1871) having been editor, if indeed there ever was an editor ; and in the
second part of Vivian Grey (Bk. V. ch. 1) he declared, with obvious
reference to the ' Dunciad,' that he never wrote a single line ' of the
various satires in verse ' that had been attributed to him, and the internal
evidence is in complete agreement with this repudiation.

1826] SUCCESS OF THE NOVEL 85
of Vivian Grey. The novel owed its success no doubt
in the first instance to Colburn's ingenious puffing, but
it had sufficient merit of its own to reward the attention
that had been artificially drawn to it. By the beginning
of July a second edition had been called for, and a third,
with certain modifications, was issued in the following
year. Within three years of its first appearance Disraeli
had come to reckon Vivian Grey among his ' juvenile
indiscretions,' 1 and for a quarter of a century, as he wrote
in 1853, he refused to reprint it ; but in that year, as the
book had ' baffled even the efforts of its creator to suppress
it,' he submitted it to a severe expurgation and gave it a
place in a collected edition of his works. He was careful,
however, in a preface, to disarm the critics by anticipating
their harshest censure.
Books written by boys, which pretend to give a picture of
manners and to deal in knowledge of human nature, must
necessarily be founded on affectation. They can be, at the
best, but the results of imagination, acting upon knowledge
not acquired by experience. Of such circumstances exaggera
tion is a necessary consequence, and false taste accompanies
exaggeration. . . . Such productions should be exempt
from criticism, and should be looked upon as a kind of literary
lusus. In the face of this frank avowal, it would be absurd to
embark on any pedantic inquiry into the worth of the
book as a permanent contribution to literature. The
question that is really interesting is its biographical
value — what light, if any, does it throw on the developing
mind and character of the author ? The scheme of the
novel is very simple. A couple of lines from the Merry
Wives of Windsor —
' Why, then the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open,'
appear as a motto on the title page. Vivian Grey, the
clever and precocious son of a distinguished man of
letters, after a stormy career at school and a period of
1 Life of Bulwer Lytton, II., p. 316.

86 VIVIAN GREY [chap.vi
hard study thereafter looks about at the age of twenty for
the means to satisfy his already inordinate ambition.
Vivian's sword is his wit, and
at this moment how many a powerful noble wants only wit
to be a Minister, and what wants Vivian Grey to attain the
same end ? That noble's influence. . . . Supposing I am
in contact with this magnifico, am I prepared ? Now let me
probe my very soul. Does my cheek blanch ? I have the
mind for the conception ; and I can perform right skilfully
upon the most splendid of musical instruments — the human
voice — to make those conceptions beloved by others. There
wants but one thing more — courage, pure, perfect courage ; —
and does Vivian Grey know fear ?
He finds his magnifico in the Marquis of Carabas, a
weak but vain and ambitious nobleman whom he meets at
his father's table. Vivian fascinates him by his ready
wit, plays upon his vanity, is invited to his country house,
Chateau Desir, and there proceeds to organise a Carabas
party out of the friends of the Marquis, prominent among
whom, strange to say, is a Lord Beaconsfield — 'a very
worthy gentleman, but between ourselves, a damned
fool.' The new party will require a leader in the House
of Commons, and as Vivian with calculated modesty
declines the task he is at his own suggestion despatched
to Wales to win over by his diplomacy a certain Cleveland,
a young and once promising politician who had been
betrayed by the Marquis and had retired from politics
in disgust. The mission is successful, and Vivian carries
Cleveland back with him to Chateau Desir. Now,
however, a woman who has long been on the scene, but
whose place in the scheme of the novel has hitherto
seemed uncertain, begins to play a more definite part.
Either from jealousy or from sheer love of mischief, she
poisons the mind of the Marquis against Vivian Grey,
and the catastrophe speedily comes. Dissension and
treachery invade the ranks of the plotters, the house
of cards that has been so laboriously constructed suddenly
collapses, Cleveland is killed in a duel by Vivian Grey,

1826] IS THE HERO DISRAELI? 87
and the hero retires to Germany discomfited in his ambi
tion and a prey to bitter remorse.
Now that there is a large element of autobiography in
the external setting of this fantastic story is soon apparent.
Horace Grey is clearly a picture of Isaac D'Israeli ;
Vivian Grey's early years are, as has already been seen,
described in great part from the author's own experience ;
the journey to Wales to secure Cleveland's adhesion to
the Carabas party is obviously suggested by Disraeli's
own mission to Scotland to enlist the services of Lockhart
for Tlie Representative ; and we can trace in the book the
influence of nearly every important fact of which we have
knowledge in the author's previous history — his father's
library, his conversations with literary men at Murray's,
his tour in Germany, his intercourse with financial mag
nates in the City. All this is natural : a man can only
write of what he knows, and at twenty-one his experience
is so limited that his range of choice is narrow. But a
question of greater interest and difficulty remains. Is
Vivian Grey's character a reflexion of the author's own ?
Is his view of life the view which Benjamin Disraeli had
deliberately adopted on the threshold of manhood ?
Are his ideals and ambitions Disraeli's youthful ideals
and ambitions, and his adventures in some degree an
anticipation of Disraeli's own career? It has generally
been assumed that these things are so, and Disraeli's
friends, accepting the assumption, have offered the best
apology they could, while his enemies have exultantly
pointed to the moral. But another theory is possible.
A recent critic,1 while admitting, or rather insisting on,
the autobiographic significance of the book, has argued
with some plausibility that the story is not an anticipa
tion, but a retrospect ; that it embodies not an ideal, but
a confession and a warning ; that the author is drawing
from his own past experience in a very literal sense, and
is transposing into the form of fiction the story of The
Representative and the shipwreck of his own precocious
ambitions. 1 Mr. Lucien Wolf in his edition of Vivian Grey.

88 ' VIVIAN GREY [chap, vi
As so often happens, Disraeli himself can be
quoted in support of either theory. In a reply he
made to his critics in the second part of the novel, he
anxiously explained that he had been conscious from
the beginning of the moral obliquity of his hero.
I conceived the character of a youth of great talents
whose mind had been corrupted, as the minds of many of
our youth have been, by the artificial age in which he
lived. ... In his whole career he was to be pitied;
but for his whole career he was not to be less punished.
When I sketched the feelings of his early boyhood,
as the novelist, I had already foreseen the results to which
those feelings were to lead ; and had in store for the fictitious
character the punishment which he endured.1
This statement appears explicit enough ; but it was
written a year later when Disraeli was suffering from ill-
health and the depression that attends it, and when for the
moment he had lost his native buoyancy and self-confidence;
and if that be remembered, the explanation ceases to carry
conviction. To no reader of the earlier chapters of
Vivian Grey would it ever occur that the purpose of
the novel is to unfold the moral lesson of the consequences
to which ambition uncontrolled by moral principle must
inevitably lead. The author's sympathies are obviously
with his hero, and the reader's sympathies, whether he
will or not, are enlisted on the same side. The author
no less than the reader may be intellectually aware of
the hero's imperfections, but even when the action is
well advanced there are few signs of moral reprobation.
The catastrophe when it comes is a mere matter of
machinery, and hardly affects the ethos of the story ;
it comes only, one feels, because the story had to be
ended somehow, and a satisfactory ending was hardly to
be found. But we have testimony from Disraeli himself
which is more convincing than an apology framed while
he was still smarting from the wounds inflicted by the
critics. Seven years later he wrote in a diary which
till after his death was probably never seen by any eyes
but his own : ' Poetry is the safety valve of my passions
1 Vivian Grey, Bk. V., Ch. 1.

1826] DUALITY OF THE NOVEL 89
— but I wish to act what I write. My works are the
embodification of my feelings. In Vivian Grey I have
portrayed my active and real ambition.' Here again
we might seem to have a final settlement of the matter ;
but even this declaration must not be pressed too far.
Disraeli, with his infinitely subtle and elusive mind and
character, is a perpetual snare to the unwary who place
too literal a construction upon his isolated words and
actions. If it is ridiculous on the one hand to pretend
that Vivian Grey is a confession written in a fit of
penitence and remorse, it would be no less ridiculous on
the other to pretend that Disraeli was unconscious of
or indifferent to the moral obliquity of his hero, or that
he deliberately set him up as an example which he
afterwards meant to follow.
Though neither of the rival theories is wholly satis
factory, neither is wholly false, and it is not impossible
to effect a harmony between them. Disraeli, as has
been seen, used in later life to declare that he wrote
Vivian Grey at Plumer Ward's house, where his family
spent the autumn of 1825. It is not easy to see how
in the whirl of those crowded months he could have
found the leisure necessary for the completion of such a
task ; and Mrs. Austen's letters seem to imply that a
good deal of work was done on Vivian Grey after the
secret had been confided to her in the following spring.
But it is highly probable that a beginning had been
made before, either at Hyde House in the month preceding
Disraeli's first visit to Abbotsford, or even at an earlier
date ; and that the story was picked up again after
the catastrophe of The Representative. No one reading
Vivian Grey, especially if he read it in the original edition,
can fail to be struck by the contrast between the first
volume and the second. All the merit of the book lies
in the first volume.1 In the earlier chapters especially
we find the author writing from a genuine artistic
impulse and with a joyous interest in his subject ; and
1 Containing the first two books of the ordinary editions.

90 VIVIAN GREY [chap, vi
his story has all the coherence that comes from a strong
and living conception of the character of the hero. The
subordinate actors duly play their parts, though Mrs.
Felix Lorraine is somewhat of an enigma, and is evi
dently beyond the powers of a boy of twenty-one. The
style is light and vivacious, full of sparkle and epigram ;
and, though faults of taste are numerous, this first volume
on the whole is a most amusing blend of cleverness and
impudence. Even the flippancy and cynicism are too
obviously boyish affectations to cause real offence. If we
remember that Vivian Grey is only a work of fiction, and a
work of fiction with a large element of caricature and exag
geration, and if we make allowance also for that subtle
Disraelian irony which pervades all the novels, we may
fairly say that in the first volume the hero is Disraeli
himself; though just for that reason the work ought
to have remained a fragment, as without a further de
velopment of the author's personality the story of the
hero's adventures could not be carried on in conform
ity with the original conception.
The second volume opens with the mission to Wales,
which bears so close a resemblance in detail to Disraeli's
own mission to Scotland that it could hardly have been
written except in the light of that experience ; but signs
of haste and discord at once begin to be apparent, and
the remainder of the novel is a continuous descent.
Both the story and the characters become incoherent,
whole chapters of irrelevant padding are introduced,
and the author's main preoccupation now appears to
be to stretch his story out to a fairly respectable length
and then with the least possible trouble in the develop
ment of the plot to bring it to some sort of conclusion.
Presently we lapse into vulgar and hideous melodrama.
Mrs. Felix Lorraine, who before was an enigma, now
becomes a monster, and, monster as she is, the hero in
his revenge upon her shows himself a fiend. ' As hot
and hurried a sketch as ever yet was penned,' is Disraeli's
own description of the first part of the novel in his

1826] INFERIORITY OF SECOND VOLUME 91
apology a year later, and he probably had in mind the
second volume especially and the conditions under which
it was written. It is just such work as we might expect
from a boy without experience who, in the reaction
after a period of unnatural tension ending in great
misfortune, is endeavouring in headlong haste to bring
an earlier literary sketch to some sort of conclusion.
We now instinctively feel that the artistic impulse has
spent itself, that the author is no longer inspired by
genuine love of his subject, and that we are dealing with
a mere piece of crude and hasty book-making. There is
no definite artistic motive, not even the motive of con
trition, though the treatment has taken a colour from the
author's own misfortunes ; and certainly the hero now
is as far from reflecting Disraeli's ideals and ambitions
as this second volume is from exhibiting his literary
power. So much on the question as to the sense in which
Vivian Grey is a portrait of Disraeli himself; on the
larger question as to whether the novel as a whole is
a gallery of portraits from living originals something
remains to be said. Elaborate keys were published at
the time, one especially, as it appeared in The Star
Chamber, being supposed to have the author's sanction.
But the key-makers were probably just as well able as
the author to affix a name to most of the characters.
It required no great penetration to translate Lord Past
Century into Lord Eldon or the Duke of Waterloo into
the Duke of Wellington. By thin disguises such as these
and by the frequent introduction of names of living
persons the reader is certainly encouraged in the first
part of Vivian Grey to search for real characters behind
the fictitious names. Disraeli admitted as much himself
in a letter which he wrote after the . publication of the
sequel in the following year. Colburn had made a
circuitous attempt to extract from him information as
to the prototypes of his characters ; and Disraeli's an
swer well defines his position then and later on the

92 VIVIAN GREY [chap, vi
whole question of portraiture from living originals in
his novels. To William Jerdan. [1827.]
I am very much surprised at Mr. Colburn's request. How
my knowledge of the characters in Vivian Grey can be
necessary to, or, indeed, in the slightest degree assist any
one in understanding the work, is to me a most inexplicable
mystery. Let it be taken for granted that the characters
are purely ideal, and the whole affair is settled. If any
collateral information be required in order to understand the
work, either Vivian Grey is unworthy to be read, or, which
is, of course, an impossible conclusion, the reader is not
sagacious enough to penetrate its meaning.
Of course, I have no intention of denying that these volumes
are, in a very great degree, founded on my own observation
and experience. Possibly, in some instances, I may have
very accurately depicted existing characters. But Vivian
Grey is not given to the public as a gallery of portraits, nor
have I any wish that it should be considered as such. It
will give me great pleasure if the public recognize it as a faith
ful picture of human nature in general. Whether it be
anything further, rests with the author and can only interest
him. I cannot prevent surmises ; but I shall always take
care that from me they shall receive neither denial nor
confirmation. In part of the former volumes, a number of names and
characters were introduced which were evident portraits
or caricatures. I can understand any reader of those pages
being naturally desirous to comprehend their full meaning,
and seeking auxiliary means to procure the desired know
ledge ; but to comprehend the full meaning of the present
volumes, the public has only to read them ; and if there
be anything obscure or unsatisfactory, it is the author's
fault — he is a blunderer. All the notes and keys in the
kingdom will not make him more intelligible. The Author of V. G.1
As a matter of fact Disraeli's, knowledge of the world
of politics and society when he wrote the first part of
Vivian Grey was far too slight for genuine portraiture
1 Jerdan's Autobiography, IV., p. 78.

1827] PORTRAITURE IN THE NOVELS 93
beyond a very limited circle. The characters which
have an obvious reference to originals in high places
are names and little more ; in the world of letters he was
more at home, and the sketch of Theodore Hook in
Stanislaus Hoax is a good deal more ambitious ; but
most of the dramatis persona were merely conventional
types, and in many cases we may believe that the key-
makers in their zeal traced them to originals of whom
the author had never heard.

CHAPTER VII
A Tour in Italy
1826
Twelve months' continual strain and excitement were
too much for a constitution that was never really robust.
In June we hear of serious illness, and in an opportune
hour, when the need of rest and change had become
apparent, there came an invitation from the Austens to
accompany them in a tour through Switzerland and
Northern Italy. The invitation was at once accepted.
To Benjamin Austen. [July (?), 1826.]
Dear Austen,
Having met many women who were too beautiful at the
last night's dance, I slept off the memory of their loveliness
by an extra three hours of oblivion, and was therefore unable
to answer your note immediately ; which, however, I am now
doing surrounded by a much better breakfast than graced
your board this morning.
A devil, though an ugly name, is certainly the wisest style
of dejeuner — an innocent egg perhaps the silliest: why I
say innocent I know not, for certainly if a devilled turkey's
leg is the real limb of Satan, the other article may not inaptly
be considered the ' yoke of sin.'
According to your advice, I have ' perused your note with
attention and considered your offer with care,' and, as the
man says who is going to be hired, ' I think the sitiation will
suit.' It ill befits any man to dilate on his own excellence,
but I may perhaps be allowed to observe that my various,
94

1826] PARIS 95
not to say innumerable, accomplishments are not altogether
unknown to you ; and as for my moral capacities, why, I can
have a good character from my last place, which I left on
account of the disappearance of the silver spoons. I defy,
also, any one to declare that I am not sober and honest, except
when I am entrusted with the key of the wine cellar, when I
must candidly confess I have an ugly habit of stealing the
claret, getting drunk, and kissing the maids. Nevertheless,
I've no doubt but that we shall agree very well. You cer
tainly could not come to any person better fitted for ordering
a dinner, and as to casting up accounts, if there's anything
in the world I excel in that's the very one — and as I've got
into the habit of never attending to the shillings and pence
because they make my head ache, I generally detect the
aubergiste in a super-charge 
B. D.
For this second Continental journey we have the same
voluminous material in the shape of letters and journals
as for the former. Setting forth in the beginning of
August, the travellers crossed from Dover to Boulogne.
To Isaac D'Israeli. Paris, Aug. 9, 1826.
My dear Father,
. . . . Our journey to Paris was much pleasanter
than I expected. We slept the first night at Montreuil,
at the inn you mentioned. It was full of English,
but the accommodation is as delightful as ever. Being
overtaken by a storm in the next day's journey we
stopped short at Grandvilliers instead of reaching Beauvais,
passing in our way through Abbeville, where we stopped two
hours; the next day passing through Beauvais, where we
stopped a couple of hours to see the old Cathedral, painted
glass, tapestry, &c. We reached Paris Sunday afternoon,
and are now in the Rue de Rivoli, the best situation here,
having obtained these apartments in a manner which would
make an excellent chapter in Gil Bias, and beat the adventure
of the Hotel Garni hollow.
'Paris is delightful.' I never was so much struck with
anything in the whole course of my life. I expected another
London, but there are no points of resemblance. I did not
expect in so sbr-t a distance to have met such a contrariety
of manners and life. . . . Yesterday I lionised the old
City and the Quais, Notre Dame, &c. I was very much

96 TOUR IN ITALY [chap.vii
struck with the resemblance of the Old Town of Edinburgh to
the ancient parts of Paris ; indeed, at some times the resem
blance was perfect. I am going to the Louvre this morning
and to the Opera this evening, for we do not leave Paris until
Friday. . . .
I have not kept my journal, but of course shall. My fellow
travellers will, however, make up for all my negligence;
Austen's journal commencing at Guilford Street, with the
incidents of wheel-greasing and vail-giving not forgotten,
and Mrs. A. having already filled her quarto, although
having more modestly commenced only at Dover. . . .
God bless you. Yours most affectionately, B. Disraeli.
From Paris they posted by the road through Dijon to
Geneva. There are some brightly written letters from
Mrs. Austen to Sarah Disraeli, which give us here and
there an interesting side-glimpse of her young fellow-
traveller. 'The real improvement in your brother's
health and looks quite surprises me,' she writes from
Dijon. ' He seems to enjoy everything, pour ou contre,
and. has just said high mass for a third bottle of burgundy.'
Burgundy was always his favourite wine.

To Isaac D'Israeli.

Geneva, Aug. 1.

My dear Father,
. . . . At the termination of the Jura ridge which
bounds one side of the plain of Geneva, did I on Friday
morning witness the most magnificent sight in the world —
the whole range of the high Alps with Mont Blanc in the
centre without a cloud1; the effect was so miraculous that
for a long time I did not perceive the lovely scene under
me, the plain and city and lake of Geneva, the latter of
ultra-marine blue. Such a view of the Alps has been seen
by few persons in this country, and was occasioned by the
unparalleled dryness and heat of the season, which, as we are
daily informed by travellers, exceeds by much the heat now
experienced on the other side of the Alps, in Italy. The heat
does not, however, affect me the least. I have not had a
day's, nay an hour's, illness since I left England. ... I
1 Compare Contarini Fleming, Pt. III. ch. 1.

1826] BYRON'S BOATMAN 97
take a row on the lake every night with Maurice, Lord
Byron's celebrated boatman. Maurice is very handsome and
very vain, but he has been made so by the English, of whom he
is the regular pet. He talks of nothing but Lord Byron,
particularly if you shew the least interest in the subject. He
told me that in the night of the famous storm described
in the third Canto of C[hilde] H[arold], had they been
out five minutes more the boat must have been wrecked. He
told Lord Byron at first of the danger of such a night voyage,
and the only answer which B. made was stripping quite
naked and folding round him a great robe de chambre, so that
in case of wreck he was ready prepared to swim immediately.
Lord B., he assures me, was out all night without even
stockings, and up most of the night to his knees in water.
I asked him if he spoke. He said that he seldom conversed
with him or any one at any time, but that this night he
(Maurice) was so employed in managing the boat and sail,
&c, that conversation would have been quite impossible.
One day Byron sent for him and, sitting down in the boat,
he put a pistol on each side (which was his invariable practice)
and then gave him 300 napoleons, ordering him to row
to Chillon. He then had two torches lighted in the dungeon
and wrote for two hours and a half. On coming out, the
gendarme who guarded the castle humbly asked for quelque
chose a boire. 'Give him a napoleon,' said his Lordship.
' De trop, milor' said Maurice, who being but recently
installed in his stewardship was somewhat mindful of his
master's interest. 'Do you know who I am?' rejoined the
master, ' Give it to him and tell him that the donor is Lord
Byron ! ' This wonderful piece of information must have
produced a great effect on the poor miserable tippling
gendarme. But in the slightest things was Byron, by Maurice's
account, most ludicrously ostentatious. He gave him one
day five napoleons for a swimming race across the lake. At
the sight of the club foot Maurice thought he was sure to
win, but his Lordship gained by five minutes. Byron, he
says, was not a quick swimmer, but he was never exhausted,
by which means he generally won when the distance was great.
One morning Maurice called for him very early to swim.
Byron brought to the boat his breakfast, consisting of cold
duck, &c, and three or four bottles of wine. He scarcely
eat anything, but drank all the wine, and then amused him
self, while they were sailing to the appointed place, by throw
ing the provisions gradually into the water. Upon this honest
Maurice gently hinted that he had not himself breakfasted,
and that he should swim much better if he had some portion
VOL. I — H

98 TOUR IN ITALY [chap.vii
of his Lordship's superfluity. 'Friend Maurice,' said B.,
'it ill becomes true Christians to think of themselves; I
shall give you none. You see I eat no breakfast myself :
do you also refrain, for the sake of the fishes.' He then con
tinued his donations to the pikes (which here are beautiful)
and would not bestow a single crumb on his companion.
'This is all very well,' says Maurice, 'but his Lordship
forgot one little circumstance. He had no appetite ; I had.'
He says that he never saw a man eat so little as B. in all his
life, but that he would drink three or four bottles of the
richest wines for his breakfast. I shall perhaps remember
more when we meet.
I have been on the lake at all hours, and seen Mt. Blanc
by all lights, twice by sunset, when the whole mighty mountain
is quite rosy. The effect is beyond all description. The
living at Secheron is most excellent ; we much wanted it.
Except at Dijon I have scarcely had anything to eat since
I left Paris. In the Juras we were literally without a meal.
The honey of the Alps, wild strawberries, butter, cheese,
and eggs are all very well in romance and certainly are not
to be despised as collaterals, but with us they were principals
for successive days. Travellers require nourishing food. In
the Juras we could not even get a bottle of common wine,
and the bread was black and not only sour but acid. . . .
Mrs. A. is very well, and speaks French with even greater
rapidity than she does English. I hope to God my mother
is better. Love to all. Tell Jim and Ralph I'd give anything
for an election. Your most affectionate son, B. Disraeli.
An eloquent passage in the diary supplements this
letter : — Geneva, Aug. 20.
I was on the lake again this night. It was partially cloudy ;
the moon finally gained the ascendency. Swift lightning
played opposite her at intervals. In valleys of mountains
it is very beautiful to watch the effect of sunrise and sunset.
The high peaks are first illumined: the soft yellow light
then tips the lower elevations, and the bright golden showers
soon bathe the whole valley, except a dark streak at the
bottom, which is often not visited by sunlight. The effect of
sunset is perhaps still more lovely : the highest peaks are those
which the sun loves most. One by one mountains relatively
to their elevations steal into darkness; and the rosy tint

1826] LAKE OF GENEVA 99
is often suffused over the peaks and glaciers of Mt. Blanc,
while the whole world below is perfectly in the darkest
twilight.1 To Isaac D'Israeli. Milan,
ir -r. Sept. 2.
My dear Father,
. . . . I mentioned that I had been to Ferney in my
last letter. . . . Of the situation I had no previous
idea, and can give you no present description. It is sublime !
placed between two of the most splendid ranges of Alps in
the world, with eternal snows, and a gigantic lake, and
forest of pines, it should have inspired a more Homeric epic
than the Henriade, and chastened a more libidinous effusion
than the Pucette.
I had my heart's content before I left Geneva — the night
before. My friend Maurice sent for me after a very cloudy
day to say that there was every prospect of a fine storm upon
the lake. As it was just after dinner, and Austen was with
me, I was obhged to take a companion, but, as we had dis
cussed a considerable quantity of Burgundy, I was soon
freed from his presence, for he laid down in the boat on my
cloak, and ere half an hour was past was fast asleep, never
disturbing us save with an occasional request to participate
in our brandy bottle. As for myself, I was soon sobered,
not by sleep, but by the scene. It was sublime — Hghtning
almost continuous, and sometimes in four places, but as the
evening advanced the lake became quite calm, and we never
had a drop of rain. I would willingly have staid out all
night, but we were to leave the next morning at five, and
nothing was packed up. . . .
After the lake we entered the valley of the Rhone and
approached the high Alps. The scenery was really painfully
sublime. We gazed till our eyes ached, and yet dared not
withdraw them from the passing wonders. . . . The
passage of the Simplon is the grand crowning scene. We
staid one day at Brieg, where the passage commences, on
account of the stormy weather, but as it did not abate we
set off the next day. Nothing could be more awful than the
first part of our passage; the sublimity of the scenery was
increased by the partial mists and the gusts of rain. Nothing
is more terrific than the near roar of a cataract which is
covered by a mist. It is horrible. When we arrived at the
summit of the road the weather cleared, and we found
1 Compare again Contarini, Pt. DU. ch. 1.

100 TOUR IN ITALY [chap, vii
ourselves surrounded by perpetual snow. The scenery here
and for a mile or two before was perfect desolation, cataracts
coursing down crumbled avalanches whose horrible surface
was only varied by the presence of one or two blasted firs.
Here in this dreary and desolate scene burst forth a small
streak of blue sky, the harbinger of the Italian heaven.
During our whole descent down the Italian side, which is
by far the most splendid, we enjoyed the sun. We were
for a long time, however, very cold. The contrast on
descending into Italy is wonderfully striking . . . the
purple mountains, the glittering lakes, the cupola'd convents,
the many-windowed villas crowning luxuriant-wooded hills,
the undulation of shore, the projecting headland, the receding
bay, the roadside uninclosed, yet bounded with walnut and
vine and fig and acacia and almond trees bending down
under the load of their fruit, the wonderful effect of light
and shade, the trunks of every tree looking black as ebony,
and their thick foliage, from the excessive light, looking quite
thin and transparent in the sunshine, the thousand villages,
each with a church with a tall, thin tower, the large melons
trailing over walls, and, above all, the extended prospect
are so striking after the gloom of Alpine passes, are so different
in their sunny light from the reflected unearthly glitter of
eternal snows that we are constrained to feel that, in speaking
of Italy, romance has omitted for once to exaggerate. But
you must remember that we are in the most beautiful parts
of northern Italy, and that I have not yet entered the plains
of Lombardy. I say the most beautiful part, for I have
just quitted the Lago Maggiore, and I am about to introduce
you to the Lake of Como.
It is a much smaller lake than Maggiore, and yet quite
different — wooded mountains green with vineyards and
descending immediately into the water without any shore
to the lake. It is literally covered with glittering palaces.
It is difficult to make you understand the difference between
these two magical lakes, but Maggiore, with the exception
of Isola Bella, is of a severer kind of beauty. Lago Maggiore
is a precious stone and the Lake of Como is a gem ; perhaps
you now understand me a little better. We were on the
lake six or seven hours. We visited the Villa Pliniana, so
called, not because it was the residence of a Pliny, but because
of a celebrated intermittent spring, the curiosity of which
supplied a chapter to the naturalist and a letter to the nephew.
I also saw the Villa d' Este, the residence of the late Queen.
The apartments are left in exactly the same state as in her
lifetime ; there is the theatre in which she acted Columbine,

1826] THE ALPS AND MILAN 101
and the celebrated statues of Adam and Eve covered with
the yet more celebrated fig-leaves. It is a villa of the first
grade, and splendidly adorned, but the ornaments are, without
an exception, so universally indelicate that it was painful to
view them in the presence of a lady. . . . Here, if they
possessed any interest, might you obtain thousands of stories
of her late Majesty, but the time is passed, thank God, for
them. Our riots in her favor are the laughing stock of
Italy. ...
Dr. Ciceri, to whom Forbes gave me a letter, is of the
greatest use to us at Milan. He is a very singular character
and of great importance in this city. We find him extremely
courteous, and through him see everything here to great
advantage. I was yesterday at the refectory of Santa Maria
delle Grazie to see the Last Supper. It is in a much better
state than I had imagined. The engraving of Morghen is
very unlike. I do not think the expression of any of the
countenances is correct. . . . The pride of Ciceri is to
be considered an Englishman. He lives among the English
nobility who travel through and reside here, and is their
factotum on every subject. He lodges in a palace, and dines
every day on a beefsteak. He is known to everybody in
Italy, and manages the business of all Milan. He is a sort of
intellectual Paul Pry, the best of cicerones, of course, and
with a little management the most courteous of men, but he
is a little surly at first, because he conceives that that is
keeping up the English character. However, our acquaint
ance with him is extremely fortunate. My fellow travellers
are very kind and very accommodating. Austen is particularly
learned in coins and postilions and exchange. We have
met lots of people whom the Austens know, and these
occasional rencontres are very agreeable. I meant to have
written a whole letter about La Scala and the ballet here,
which ranks almost with tragedy, but my long letter is full.
I shall write from here again when I have received yours,
or from Venice, where I shall be on Thursday. We travel
slowly, which is delightful. Could you but see a few of our
countrymen, how much they do and how little they enjoy
and understand ! The excitement of idiotism I never witnessed
before, and it is very ludicrous, but I must introduce you to
characters orally. God bless you all.
Your affectionate son, B. Disraeli.

102 TOUR IN ITALY [chap.vii
It must have been on this journey through the Alps
that Disraeli made an excursion to the Great St. Bernard,
and the visit rewarded him with an incident which he
used to recall in later years.
The Brotherhood on hearing that a young Englishman
was in the Hospice expressed an anxious desire to see me,
and I waited on the Superior. I found that all the anxiety
arose from a desire to hear how the Thames Tunnel had
succeeded. I had to confess I had never seen it, and I
afterwards reflected that one must travel to learn what
really is to be seen in one's country, and resolved at once on
my return to supply the omission. But do you know, I
have never seen it yet.1
In Milan, under the guidance of his friend Ciceri,
Disraeli saw, in addition to Leonardo's great picture,
everything notable that there was to be seen : the
Cathedral, for which he has only qualified praise ;
'it stands alone without a rival, but whether rivalry
is desirable is dubious ' ; the Brera, where strangely
enough the two pictures that struck him most were
Salvator's ' Souls being delivered from Purgatory '
and Guercino's ' Abraham dismissing Hagar ' — but
those were the days before Ruskin ; and the Ambrosian
Library, where, more in accordance with modern taste,
he notes 'an exquisite Holy Family by Luini — a
mannerist who for once is delicious.' Nor had he an
eye only for churches and pictures. A visit to the
Corso leads to many reflections on the life and manners
of the Milanese ; and here we come across the original
of a sketch in the second part of Vivian Grey.
Count Ciconia is the leader of the ton at Milan. He is
a dandy of genius, worthy of Brummell. He is about 45,
dresses very plainly, has been frequently in England, and
pays constant trips there to study. He is young in figure,
but his face is long and old, a bachelor with a loud shrill
voice. He is curious in horses, drives four-in-hand in perfect
style, and was attended always by English grooms till their
idleness forced him to give them up. They will not do for
i Erom a note by Lord Rowton.

1826] VERONA 103
Italy. Ciconia is as rapid in the change of his style and
dress as in his conceptions. White hats are at Milan the
rage, which Ciconia introduced. He appeared the last day on
the Corso in a black one. This formed the subject of the af
ternoon's conversation at all the cafes and circles. The dandies
are numerous and splendid : Italians, Austrians, Hungarians ;
mustaches of all colours and descriptions.
From Milan the travellers proceeded to Brescia and
thence by Desenzano, ' where we breakfasted on delicious
trout on the banks of the Lago di Garda and opposite
to the villa of Catullus ' to Verona.
To Isaac D'Israeli.1
Verona is full of pictures which have never been painted.
Every step excites emotion and gives rise to unaffected
reflection. In the course of a short stroll, you may pass
by a Roman amphitheatre, still used, then the castle of
some petty prince of the Middle Ages, and while you are
contrasting the sublime elevation of antiquity with the
heterogeneous palace of a Scaliger your eyes light on a gate
of Oriental appearance and fantastic ornament erected by
the Venetians when they were the conquerors of the most
fertile district of Northern Italy. Memorials of this wonder
ful people are constantly before you. In the market place
rises a lofty pillar which evidently once bore some sculptured
burden. Ask, it was the winged. Lion of St. Mark. Stand
in the Piazza dei Signori at Verona. There is the palace
of the Council of Sansovino — on another hill is a Saracenic
palace, once an office of Venetian administration, three or
four perspectives are afforded by various arches which open
into streets or other piazzas, and a magnificent tower rises
from a corner. The illusion is perfect, the eye rests with
pain on the passing citizens in their modern costumes ; you
look for black velvets and gold chains, white feathers and red
stockings. . . .
From Verona through a beautiful country, where the vine
is married to the mulberry, we travelled to Vicenza. The
famous Palladian palaces are in decay. They are built of
brick, sometimes plastered, occasionally whitewashed; the
red material is constantly appearing and vies in hideous color
1 The descriptions now begin to lag so much behind the journey
that we only reach Venice in a letter written from Florence ;
and I have omitted the date-lines where they might mislead or con
fuse.

104 TOUR IN ITALY [chap, vii
with the ever offensive roof. It is a miserable thing that
a man worthy of Athens or Rome should have worked with
such materials. . . .
From Vicenza, with its much-appreciated treasures of
Palladian architecture, the travellers drove through Padua
and along the banks of the Brenta to Venice.
To Isaac D'Israeli.
I entered x Venice with a magnificent setting sun on a grand
fete day. As we glided in a gondola up the great Lagune
we passed St. Mark's, the Campanile, the Palace of the
Doges, the Bridge of Sighs, the Prison, before we reached our
hotel, once the proud residence of the Bernadinis, a family
which has given more than one Doge to the old Republic;
the floors of our rooms were of marble, the hangings of satin,
the ceilings painted by Tintoretto and his scholars full of
Turkish triumphs and trophies, the chairs of satin and the
gilding though of two hundred years' duration as brightly
burnished as the new mosaic invention. After a hasty
dinner we rushed to the mighty Place of St. Mark. It was
crowded, two Greek and one Turkish ship of war were from
accidental circumstances in port, and their crews mingled
with the other spectators with high foreheads and higher
caps and elevated eyebrows ; then there was the Austrian
military band, and the bearded Jew with his black velvet
cap was not wanting. Three gorgeous flags waved on the
mighty staffs which are opposite the Church in all the old
drawings and which once bore the standards of Candia,
Crete, and the Morea. Tired with travelling we left the
gay scene crowded, but the moon was so bright that a
juggler was conjuring in a circle under our window, and an
itinerant Italian opera performing by our bridge. Serenades
were constant during the whole night ; indeed, music is never
silent in Venice. 1 wish I could give you an idea of the
moonlights there, but that is impossible. Venice by moon
light is an enchanted city; the floods of silver light upon
the moresco architecture, the perfect absence of all harsh
sounds of carts and carriages, the never-ceasing music on the
waters produced an effect on the mind which cannot be ex
perienced, I am sure, in any other city in the world.
Five days in all were spent in Venice, and they were
days of intense enjoyment. To one so deeply imbued
1 On Sept. 8.

1526] VENICE 105
with historic feeling and with an innate love of the
gorgeous East, it could not be otherwise.

To Isaac D'Israeli.
Sailing down the Grand Canal the palaces of Foscari,
Grimani, Barberigo, and other names which make the coldest
heart thrill rise rapidly before you. . . . The Palace of
the Doges is still kept up for public offices, library, &c. Its
walls are painted by the greatest masters of the miraculous
Venetian school, and its roof is gilt and adorned in a manner
which leaves far behind all the magnificence of all the palaces
in the world. In every room you are reminded of the glory
and the triumphs of the Republic : the door of one chamber
once closed upon the Mosque of St. Sophia, the pillars of
another graced a temple in the Morea, and even Solomon's
Temple is not forgotten, and two pillars of fantastic archi
tecture were carved from large columns of granite which were
brought in triumph by a noble Venetian from the ruins of
Jerusalem. St. Mark's Church is a pile of precious stones,
the walls are of all kinds of the rarest marbles and even of
jasper, lapis lazuli, and the richest porphyry and Oriental
agates, the interior is cased with mosaics of gold, and in the
front figure five hundred pillars of all kinds of architecture
and colors, some of which are of verd antique. The four
brazen horses amble, not prance, as some have described,
on the front, and five cupolas, hooded cupolas, crown this
Christian Mosque. . . . It is vain to write anything here
of the pictures, the churches, the palaces, with which this
city abounds. According to the common opinion I saw all
that ought to be seen, but I never felt less inclined to quit a
place. It is in these spots that I wish to stay, for it is in
such places that the mind receives that degree of wholesome
excitation which is one of the great benefits of travel, I mean
an excitation which quickens the feelings and the fancy, and
which enables the mind to arrive at results with greater
facility and rapidity than we do at home, and in our
studies. But in these sage reflections and in all this enthusiasm
for the external splendour of Venice, there is still some
thing wanting, as readers of Contarini will feel. We find
not a trace of the peculiar excitement and exultation
with which the hero of that novel approached the home

106 TOUR IN ITALY [chap, vii
of his fathers. Clearly Disraeli had not yet evolved the
theory of his own Venetian origin ; and he does not even
seem to have been aware that he had near relations living
in the City at the time of his visit. Even his apprecia
tion of the art treasures of Venice — of 'the miraculous
Venetian school ' — seems to have been far from perfect.
' Venice,' he writes later from Florence, ' revealed to me
the Venetian school, Titian, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Paul
Veronese, Palma, &c.' But alas ! without a pause he
addfj; ' Bologna in its publie gallery introduced me to
perhaps a still more illustrious band, taken altogether,
the finest school in Italy, the three Carracci and their
four wonderful scholars, Domenichino, Guido, Albani,
Guercino ; the latter, perhaps the most wonderful, and
who from his miraculous and enchanting use of chiaro
scuro was called the magician of art, is a native of a
little town a few miles from Bologna, Cento, which
perhaps you remember.' Apparently he had no sus
picion of the fact that Cento had a place in his own
family history.
On the way from Venice to Bologna a pilgrimage was
made to the tomb of Petrarch at Arqua, and in Ferrara
of course the cell of Tasso was visited. ' The door posts
of this gloomy dungeon are covered with the names of
its visitors ; here scratched with a great nail on the brick
wall I saw sprawled " Byron " ; " Sam Rogers " printed
in pencil in a neat banker's hand was immediately under
neath.' Bologna he 'left on the second day with regret,'
and crossed the Apennines to Florence. A long letter
to his father retails his impressions and adventures
during a fortnight's stay in this 'most delightful city.'
He has now, after seeing the pictures of the great
Florentine masters and 'many of the finest works of
Raphael and other painters of the Roman school' in the
Uffizi and Pitti Palaces, acquired 'a very tolerable idea
of the comparative styles and merits of the great Italian
schools.' He has 'gazed upon the Venus de Medici
without prejudice and left it with veneration.' He has

1826] FLORENCE 107
' seen enough in Italy to know that we are not setting
about the right way in England to form a National
Gallery.' At a recent sale in Florence ' the finest pictures
were sold for a song. Why had not the National Gallery
an agent on the spot? What is Lord Burghersh paid
for?' and so forth.1 To Isaac D'Israeli. Florence, Sept. 29, 1826.
There are some clever artists and sculptors at Florence.
Among the latter, since the death of Canova, Bertolini is
reckoned the most eminent in Italy. He is a man of genius.
I had the honor of a very long conversation with him, of course
upon his art. He is a friend of Chantrey, but the God of his
idolatry, and indeed of all the Italians, is Flaxman. Bertolini
said that he considered that Flaxman had revived the taste of
Europe, that he was a classic, and that he thought that a
young man might study his works with as much advantage
as the treasures of the Vatican or the Tribune. He asked me
to explain the reason of the indifference of the English to this
great man, and expressed his surprise at finding him almost
unknown to the great number of our travelling countrymen,
and little esteemed even by our great artists. He mentioned
Wilkie's opinion of Flaxman with his eyes up to the sky. It
seems the English Teniers is no great admirer of one whom
Bertolini says is the greatest poet that ever lived, though he
never wrote a verse. The studios of all these men are open
to all travellers, and form the most agreeable and instructive
lounges. . . .
In one of my speculations I have been disappointed. In
the Pitti Palace there is a most beautiful portrait of Charles 1st
by Vandyke, the most pleasing and noble likeness that I have
ever seen. It is a picture highly esteemed. I engaged a
miniature painter here (a class of artists much esteemed at
Florence) to make me an exquisite copy of this picture with
which I intended to surprise you. After a week's work he has
1 Disraeli's interest in the Christian Middle Age was never great, and
in the letters from Florence there is not a single mention of Dante.
Of Michael Angelo, as we may gather from the long tirade in Vivian
Grey (Bk. V., ch. 2), he was 'no extravagant admirer'; even the
great monuments in the Sacristy of San Lorenzo he was not able to look
upon ' without disappointment.'

108 TOUR IN ITALY [chap, vir
brought it to-day, but has missed the likeness ! And yet he
was the Court painter, Signor Carloni. I have refused to take
the work and am embroiled in a row, but in this country firm
ness is alone necessary and the Italians let you do what you
like, so I've no fear as to the result. My mortification and
disappointment, however, are extreme.
We have some agreeable acquaintance here. Among them
a very extraordinary man of the name of Saunders. He is
the descendant of one of those Scotch families who used so
often to emigrate on speculation to Russia. He was the
intimate friend of the late Emperor Alexander, and is highly
esteemed by the present Emperor ... is still attached
to the Court of Russia, is an Aulic Councillor, &c. He is a
deep student, full of philosophy, first principles, and the
study of the beautiful, but eloquent and profound. Though
of a very close temper, he was so delighted to get hold of
some one who had a literary turn that we have become toler
ably intimate, and I occasionally visit him at his country
villa, which, by the bye, is the Villa Vespucci, rented by
him of a noble family of that name, the lineal descend
ants of the famous Americus. He is now engraving the
most valuable picture in Italy, the masterpiece of Fra Barto
lommeo.1 Florence is not only one of the most delightful cities to
live in, but is also the cheapest in Europe. Here cheapness,
real cheapness, is to be found, for here luxuries are cheap.
An English family of the highest respectability may live
in Florence with every convenience and keep a handsome
carriage, horses, liveries, &c, for five hundred a year. I
speak here of an average sized family, as ours. On this
income you might enter into the best society, and the best
society here is excellent. You may live in a palace built
by Michael Angelo, keep a villa two miles from the city in
a most beautiful situation, with vineyards, fruit and pleasure
gardens, &c, &c, keep two carriages, have your opera box,
and live in every way as the first Florentine nobility, go to
Court, have your own night for receiving company, &c, &c,
on less than a thousand a year, and this with no miserable
managing, but with the enjoyment of every comfort and
luxury. 1 The ' Madonna della Misericordia,' now in the public gallery at
Lucca.

1826] FLORENCE TO TURIN 109

TraiN, Oct. 10, 1826.
My dear Father,
We travelled from delightful Florence through the luxuri
ant Val d'Arno to Pisa, where the Cathedral and its more won
derful Baptistery, the leaning tower, and the Campo Santo
riveted our attention. . . . The country from Pisa to
Lucca, and, indeed, the whole of that little state is most
lovely. Sated as we were with scenery, and desirous al
most to avoid any mention of the subject, yet we have yet
scarcely ceased to talk in wonder and admiration of the shores
of the Mediterranean. The journey from Spezzia to Genoa
baffles all idea. . . . For two days we wandered among
the most exquisite and the wildest parts of the Apennines,
not the Apennines that we had before been used to, but
the Apennines of romance and Mrs. Ratcliffe, with streamy
blue distances and unfathomable woody dells and ruined
castles, and constant views of the blue Mediterranean and
its thousand bays. On the third day we descended nearly to
its shore, but what a shore ! It required no stretch of the
imagination to fancy ourselves in Asia and under an Oriental
sky, for aloes, huge everlasting aloes, here grow on the
shingles, and groves of olive trees, dates and figs, and clusters
of Eastern trees abound upon the green mountains, which
descend into the sea, and whose only artificial ornaments are
towns of colored marble, and amphitheatres of palaces. The
shore, as I said before, is broken into innumerable bays, which
vie with each other for superiority, until they all yield to their
Queen — the gorgeous bay of Genoa, on whose mountain
banks rises in a crescent Genoa la Superba, a crowd of palaces,
villas, and convents. But I am writing of that which should
be seen. However, the scenery of the Mediterranean would
alone repay me for twice ten thousand the fatigues I have
suffered. Two days' travelling, during one of which we again crossed
the great chain of the Apennines and entered Northern
Italy, have brought us to Turin. The mighty chain of the
High Alps covered with snow now meets our eyes, and to
morrow we shall cross Mount Cenis. ... I expect to be
on the 24th at Dover. Thus end my travels. I trust I have
not travelled in vain. Nature and Art have been tolerably
well revealed to me. The Alps, the Apennines, and two seas
have pretty well done for the first, and though I may see
more cities I cannot see more varieties of European nature.
Five capitals and twelve great cities, innumerable remains of
antiquity and the choicest specimens of modern art have told

110 TOUR IN ITALY [chap, vii
me what man has done and is doing. I feel now that it is not
prejudice, when I declare that England, with all her imperfec
tions, is worth all the world together, and I hope it is not
misanthropy when I feel that I love lakes and mountains
better than courts and cities, and trees better than men.
That is to say, men in general. Yours I must always be most
affectionately. In a fortnight I shall have the inexpressible
happiness of joining you. B. Disraeli.

To Sarah Disraeli. Lyons. Oct. 15, 1826.
Dearest Sa,
We arrived at this city last night. . . . Nothing can
have been more prosperous than our whole journey. Not
a single contretemps and my compagnons de voyage uniformly
agreeable. Everything that I wished has been realized, and
more than I wished granted. I have got all the kind of
knowledge that I desired, and much more, but that much
more, I am convinced, was equally necessary. To discover
new wants and find them instantly gratified, or rather to
discover unexpected necessities anticipated, is the most pleas
ing of all things. From Turin we travelled to Susa and
crossed Mont Cenis, which, considering the mountain pass
merely, is not to be compared to the Simplon. It is vast
without being sublime, and dreary without any of the grand
effects of desolation. Some points, however, are wonderful ;
a small lake at the top of the range in the midst of eternal
snow, a small blue lake with banks of white marble, attracted
my attentive admiration. It is about half a mile from the
road, and I walked there while our trout were cooking. Cenis,
however, leads to Savoy, which I prefer to Switzerland. The
valley of the Arc is even finer than the valley of the Rhone ;
it is as sublime, and yet not gloomy. The lofty mountains
are covered with firs, and tipped with the snows of centuries ;
brilliant cascades falling from elevations of 200 to 300 feet
contrasted with the variety of autumnal tints, and banished
monotony without disturbing reflection. . . .
I am glad that I at last get some account of my mother —
my best love to her ; we meet soon. My father says that he
has been very idle, and I fear from his tone that I am to
believe him. I have been just the reverse, but I would throw
all my papers into the Channel only to hear that he had

1826] HOME AGAIN 111
written fifty pages. This continued inertia makes me sad,
but I have hopes that if we get on without fresh vexations
for six months more his spirits may be raised. I had a great
row about the portrait of Charles 1st, but was quite successful.
The consequence is that I have got a new miniature,1 in which
the likeness is exactly hit, and at a cheaper rate.
With best love to all,
Most affectionately yours, B. D.

On the homeward journey through France Disraeli
turned aside with the Austens to see the Layards at
school, and Sir Henry Layard, then a boy at school,
caught a passing glimpse of his future chief. ' I still
retain a vivid recollection of his appearance, his black
curly hair, his affected manner, and his somewhat fan
tastic dress.'2 Mrs. Austen's letters to Sarah Disraeli
testify to his possession of that rare virtue — excellence
as a travelling companion. 'Your brother,' she writes,
'is so easily pleased, so accommodating, so amusing, and
so actively kind, that I shall always reflect upon the
domestic part of our journey with the greatest pleasure.'
And, again, more dubiously : — ' Your brother has behaved
excellently, except when there is a button, or, rather,
' buttons to be put on his shirt ; then he is violently
bad, and this happens almost daily. I said once, " They
cannot have been good at first " ; and [now he always
threatens to "tell my Mother 'you have abused my
linen.'" The methodical Austen kept careful statistics of the
journey. They posted more than 2,000 miles, and
Disraeli's share of the expenses, including about -£20
for prints and other purchases, was £150.
1 This miniature is still at Hughenden.
a Layard's Autobiography, I., p. 18.

CHAPTER VIII
Illness and Despondency
1827-1830
In a letter from Lyons to his sister, Disraeli, as we saw,
remarked that he had been the ' reverse of idle ' during
his Continental journey ; a few months after his return
a sequel to Vivian Grey appeared in three volumes, and
we may safely assume that it was at these volumes he
had been working. This sequel, or 'second part,' need
not long detain us. In Mr. Gladstone's diary for March
20, 1874, we find the entry, ' Finished Vivian Grey.
The first quarter extremely clever, the rest trash.'1 Mr.
Gladstone was never a sympathetic critic of Disraeli's
novels, or of anything else for which Disraeli was
responsible, and perhaps at the moment of that entry he
was less likely than usual to be in a sympathetic mood.
But there is little reason to quarrel with his judgment
on the present occasion. What is still worth reading
in the five original volumes of Vivian Grey is the first.
For the second trash is hardly too strong a word ; and of
the remaining three volumes almost the best that can be
said is that they are void of offence.
After the wreck of his ambitious plans, Vivian Grey,
it will be remembered, took refuge in Germany, and his
adventures in that country are the subject of the second
1 Morley's Life of Gladstone, H., p. 499.
112

1827] SEQUEL TO VIVIAN GREY 113
part. It is a curious illustration of Disraeli's brooding
temperament that he should thus have recurred in fancy
to the scenes he had visited two years before, leaving
the impressions of his Italian journey for future use and
record. Perhaps the romantic genius of the Rhine
was more in harmony with the mood in which he now
found himself. Ill-health and the many misfortunes of
the last two years had given to his thoughts a melancholy
bias ; and it is not surprising then to find when we meet
Vivian Grey again that he has become a Byronic exile
who makes a luxury of the sorrow which he believes to
be incurable. But energy is of the essence of the true
Byronic manner, and there is an air of languor over these
volumes that makes them ineffective. The sparkling
and audacious hero whom we knew in the original novel
has become tame and lifeless, and if there is less extrava
gance now we feel that the change is owing to loss of
vigour by the author rather than to the growth of that
conscious self-restraint which comes with maturing
power. ' The springiness of my mind is gone,' cries
Vivian Grey himself in the agony of remorse that follows
the death of Cleveland ; and as we read his subsequent
adventures we cannot help feeling that the ' springiness '
of his creator's mind is gone no less. Now and then we
see flashes of the old epigrammatic spirit : — ' Though a
great liar he was a dull man '1; ' Like all great travellers
I have seen more than I remember and remember more
than I have seen.'2 Now and then we hear the welcome
note of that subtle ironic laughter which Disraeli has
always in store for his own most cherished affectations,
and which goes so far to redeem them ; as when he mocks
at his Byronic enthusiasm : — ' The English youth . . .
travel now, it appears, to look at mountains and catch
cold in spouting trash on lakes by moonlight.'3 There
are isolated episodes that show vigour and invention;
1 Bk. VI., ch. 2. * Bk. VTH. ch. 5. » Bk. V. ch. 8.
VOL. I — I

114 ILLNESS AND DESPONDENCY [chap.viii
there are scenes that show an advance in descriptive
power. The picture of life at the little German Court
of Reisenberg is cleverly painted, and lacks neither move
ment nor variety. But the book as a whole is flat and
dull, and the story leads to nothing. Our interest has
no sooner been awakened in a character or a situation
than we are whisked away to something else, and the
result is a novel which is fragmentary and inconsecutive,
and always unsatisfying. The author in fact was not
sufficiently recovered from the strain of the previous year
for a fresh creative effort.
The most interesting character in the book is Becken-
dorff, the Prime Minister of Reisenberg, Disraeli's first
attempt at a finished portrait of a statesman. Becken-
dorff is a man of plebeian origin who has raised himself
to power by the force of his own 'master-mind.' He is
of a type that recurs more than once in Disraeli's other
novels, and is made the medium for the exposition of
some of Disraeli's favourite doctrines. 'Fate, Destiny,
Chance, particular and special Providence — idle words.
Dismiss them all, Sir I A man's Fate is his own temper.'
'Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circum
stances are the creatures of men. We are free agents,
and man is more powerful than matter.' 'No con
juncture can possibly occur, however fearful, however
tremendous it may appear, from which a man, by his
own energy, may not extricate himself.'1 In Beckendorff
Vivian Grey sees a man with his own principles of conduct
whose ambition has been crowned with success.
Apparently the philosophy on which Beckendorff had
regulated his extraordinary career was exactly the same
with which he himself, Vivian Grey, had started in life;
which he had found so fatal in its consequences; which he
believed to be so vain in its principles. How was this?
What radical error had he committed? It required little
consideration. Thirty, and more than thirty, years had
passed over the head of Beckendorff, ere the world felt his
power, or indeed was conscious of his existence. A deep
1 Bk. VI. ch. 7.

1827] BECKENDORFF 115
student not only of man in detail but of men in groups . . .
when that opportunity, which in this world comes to all men,
occurred to Beckendorff, he was prepared. With acquire
ments equal to his genius, Beckendorff depended only upon
himself, and succeeded. Vivian Grey, with a mind inferior
to no man's, dashed on the stage, in years a boy, though in
feelings a man. Brilliant as might have been his genius,
his acquirements necessarily were insufficient. He could not
depend only upon himself; a consequent necessity arose to
have recourse to the assistance of others ; to inspire them with
feelings which they could not share ; and humour and manage
the petty weaknesses which he himself could not experience.
His colleagues were at the same time to work for the gratifica
tion of their own private interests, the most palpable of all
abstract things ; and to carry into execution a great purpose
which their feeble minds, interested only by the first point,
cared not to comprehend. The unnatural combination failed ;
and its originator fell. To believe that he could recur again
to the hopes, the feelings, the pursuits of his boyhood, he felt
to be the vainest of delusions.1
The passage throws an illuminating flash on some of
Disraeli's most cherished ideals of character, and on the
significance of Vivian Grey in relation to those ideals ;
and incidentally it makes visible the clouds of despond
ency which were now settling upon Disraeli's mind as
they had settled upon his hero's.
It was many a long day before the clouds finally
lifted. The three years that followed the publication of
the Second Part of Vivian Grey are almost a blank in
Disraeli's life. As he had now definitely renounced the
intention of becoming a solicitor, it was decided that he
should at least formally qualify for the other branch of
the legal profession; and in April, 1827, he was entered
at Lincoln's Inn with a view, in due course, to being
called to the Bar. He seems to have kept his terms
regularly for nearly a couple of years, but there is nothing
to show that beyond eating his dinners and paying
his dues he gave any serious labour to preparation for
a barrister's career. During all this time, in fact, a
mysterious disease held him in its grip and paralysed
i Bk. VII. ch. l.

116 ILLNESS AND DESPONDENCY [chap, viii
his energies. In the summer of 1827 we hear of him
seriously ill at Fyfield, in Oxfordshire, where the
Disraelis and the Austens were spending their holidays
together. In the summer of 1828 he is ill again and with
his family at Lyme Regis, in Dorset. ' I am at present
quite idle,' he says in a letter to Sharon Turner in March,
1828, 'being at this moment slowly recovering from one
of those tremendous disorganisations which happen to
all men at some period of their lives, and which are
perhaps equally necessary for the formation of both body
and constitution. Whether I shall ever do anything
which may mark me out from the crowd, I know not.
I am one of those to whom moderate reputation can give
no pleasure, and who in all probability am incapable of
achieving a great one.' ' My son's life,' writes Isaac
D'Israeli to a friend in January, 1829, ' within the last
year and a half, with a very slight exception, has been
a blank in his existence. His complaint is one of those
perplexing cases which remain uncertain and obscure,
till they are finally got rid of. Meanwhile patience
and resignation must be his lot — two drugs in human
life, bitter of digestion, in an ardent and excitable mind. '
Ten years later a doctor who had attended him in this
illness described the complaint as ' chronic inflammation
of the membranes of the brain,' adding that his patient
had made a perfect recovery.
To Benjamin Austen. June 14, 1827.
My dear Austen,
It has given me great pleasure to find that the accounts
from you this morning continue favorable, and that you
have arranged for a further enjoyment of your native air —
the atmosphere of Ramsgate, that glory of Kent and first of
watering places and worthy rival of Ems and Wiesbaden.
As, however, you have postponed your return, I cannot
refrain from writing to you, if it be only to inform you of my
existence and that I continue just 'as ill' as ever. Little
else have I to tell you, being in the situation of those youthful
jackanapes at school who write home to their parents every

1828] POPANILLA 117
week to tell them that they have nothing to say. Your good
lady, I am aware, sends you daily bulletins, and I am quite
sure that nothing certain or contingent in this odd world
can possibly escape the comprehensive circuit of her lively
pen. ...
As I understand you are in want of a book I send you the
most amusing in any language — for such I do not hesitate
to style the Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. It is many years
since I read it, and I was then enchanted. I should have
been entranced with rapture had I then been in Italy. The
whole scene lies at Rome, Florence (especially), Milan, Padua,
Paris, Fontainebleau, Lyons, &c. You will read it with great
delight and sympathise with all his scrapes. The part that
will least please you will not be his interesting history of his
Perseus — his beautiful Perseus — which you will remember
in the more beautiful Palazzo Vecchio at Firenze. . . .
I shall be very happy when we are all together again and
at Fyfield. . . . Jem is richer than ever and struts about
town in a kind of cloth shooting jacket made by the cele
brated Hyde of Winchester — almost as celebrated as a tailor
as Dr. Chard is as a musician. In this quaint costume, with
the additional assistance of a sporting handkerchief, he looks
very much like one of those elegant, half blackguard, half
gentleman speculators in horseflesh who crowd Winchester
market and dine at the 'good ordinary at two o'clock,' for-
which great grub, if you remember, the bell rang loud and
long as we crossed from the Cathedral. Your sincere friend, B. D.
In some interval of comparative health during the
first year of his illness, Disraeli recurred to the idea of
a satire on contemporary society, which he had attempted
to carry into execution in his twentieth year ; and ' The
Adventures of Mr. Aylmer Papillon,' which had been
rejected by John Murray, soon grew into The Voyage
of Captain Popanilla, which was accepted by Colburn
and was given to the world as the work of ' The author
of Vivian Grey' in the late spring of the year 1828. The
main object of the piece is to ridicule the then rising
sect of the Utilitarians. Popanilla is a native of the Isle
of Fantaisie, an earthly paradise in the Indian Ocean,
where men lead lives of careless happiness amid the

118 ILLNESS AND DESPONDENCY [chap, viii
resources provided by a bountiful nature. Finding on
the seashore a box of books crammed with useful know
ledge he learns from them that his countrymen are nothing
more than ' a horde of useless savages ' ; and full of his
new conception of the blessings of civilisation in the
Utilitarian sense, he endeavours to make converts of the
King and people of the island. He talks to them ' of
men in a savage state, the origin of society, and the ele
ments of the social compact in sentences which would
not have disgraced the mellifluous pen of Bentham.'
He shows them that ' the interests of the body are alone
to be considered and not those of the individual, and that
a nation might be extremely happy, extremely powerful,
and extremely rich, although every individual member
of it might at the same time be miserable, dependent,
and in debt.' If they will only adopt his principles
and carry out his schemes of development, ' no long time
could elapse ere, instead of passing their lives in a state
of unprofitable ease and useless enjoyment, they might
reasonably expect to be the terror and astonishment of
the universe, and to be able to annoy every nation of any
consequence.' Finally Popanilla makes himself so much of a nuisance
that the King to get rid of him ironically professes himself
a convert and appoints him to the command of an
expedition for the extension of the international relations
of the island. ' As the axiom of your school seems to be
that everything can be made perfect at once, without
time, without experience, without practice, and without
preparation, I have no doubt, with the aid of a treatise
or two, you will make a consummate naval commander,
although you have never been at sea in the whole course
of your life. Farewell, Captain Popanilla ! ' Popanilla
is launched alone upon the waters, but after giving himself
up for lost is carried by a storm to the great city of
Hubbabub, which is the capital of the island of Vraibleusia,
the most famous island in the world, and a paradise of
wealth and freedom, and also of competition. Henceforth

1828] THE UTILITARIANS 119
the piece is a satire on English social life and the English
Constitution. It is not very deep, it abounds in crudities
and at times it is a little wearisome ; but it is worth
reading still as Disraeli's first political essay. In so far
as his political faith in the form which it ultimately
assumed was the product of temperament, its main
features are already visible : on the one hand, the deep-
seated popular sympathies and the essentially liberal
outlook ; on the other, the instinctive aversion of a mind
imbued with the historic spirit and full of an imaginative
sense of the romance and mystery of life from the hard and
self-sufficing dogmatism, the cramped philosophy, and
somewhat repellent ideals of the school of thought which
was becoming dominant in England. Needless to say,
Disraeli was very far from having sounded the depths of
Utilitarianism, and made no attempt to do justice to what
was best in the teaching of the Benthamites ; between
them and one of his romantic temper warfare was in
evitable, and he struck at them instinctively. Needless
also to say, the outlines of his own philosophy are not yet
firmly drawn nor his views on questions of party politics
consistently elaborated. No one therefore need be
surprised to find the future leader of the Protectionists
ridiculing the Corn Laws, or the future founder of
Imperialism ridiculing the Colonial system ; in either
case quite heedless of the fact that he was aligning
himself with the school which was the immediate object
of his ridicule in an attack upon those who were to be his
own future allies. John Bright, it is said, 1 greatly admired
Popanilla, and in these vagaries of the author we may
see perhaps in part the reason for his admiration.
Popanilla appeared with a dedication to Plumer Ward,
who showed himself no niggard in his appreciation of the
compliment. ' Since the days of Swift and Voltaire,'
he wrote, ' I have not read anything so witty. Je riais
aux eclats and made others do so too. In my opinion it
1 By Mr. George Russell in the Cornhill Magazine for January,
1907.

120 ILLNESS AND DESPONDENCY [chap, viii
is equal to the Tale of a Tub and Candide, and superior to
Zadig and Babouk.' The critics, however, took a more
moderate view of the merits of the piece, and the public,
who perhaps expected stronger meat from the author of
Vivian Grey, gave it little attention.
In the course of many holiday visits the Disraelis
had tasted the pleasures of country life in Bucks, and in
the summer of 1829 they gave up their London residence
altogether and moved out to Bradenham, an old manor
house on the slopes of the Chilterns, a few miles to the
west of the town of High Wycombe. 'The precarious
health of several members of my family,' writes D'Israeli
the elder to Southey, ' has decided me on this movement,
and I quit London with all its hourly seductions. My
House is described by the "Nourrisse of Antiquitie,"
venerable Camden, as built by the Lord Windsor in the
reign of Henry VIII — for the salubrity of the soil and
air.' In this peaceful spot Isaac DTsraeli spent the
remainder of his days. Half a century after it first
became their home, when his own life was drawing to a
close, his son's thoughts recurred to the scene associated
with his father's declining years, and in Endymion he
sketched it with loving fidelity.
At the foot of the Berkshire Downs [Chiltern Hills], and
itself on a gentle elevation, there is an old hall with gable
ends and lattice windows, standing in grounds which once
were stately, and where there are yet glade-like terraces of yew
trees, which give an air of dignity to a neglected scene. In the
front of the hall huge gates of iron, highly wrought, and
bearing an ancient date as well as the shield of a noble house,
opened on a village green, round which were clustered the
cottages of the parish with only one exception, and that was
the vicarage house, a modern building, not without taste,
surrounded by a small but brilliant garden. The church was
contiguous to the hall, and had been raised by the lord on a
portion of his domain. Behind the hall and its enclosure the
country was common land but picturesque. It had once been
a beech forest, and though the timber had been greatly cleared,
the green land was still occasionally dotted, sometimes with

¦/';,•¦ ''v ¦ ¦ •

a< s
ffl §

o

1829] BRADENHAM 121
groups and sometimes with single trees, while the juniper
which here abounded, and rose to a great height, gave a rich
wildness to the scene and sustained its forest character.1
For nearly twelve months, with rare and brief visits to
London, Disraeli lived quietly at Bradenham. In addi
tion to the trials of bad health the burden of his debts
weighed heavily upon him. ' I am desperately ill,' he
writes to Austen in November, ' and shall be in town in
a day or two, incognito of course  Tell
Madam I shall call upon her if possible, but I can only
call, because I am necessarily betrayed by her and in
consequence " the heathen rage most furiously." ' The
rage of the heathen did not, however, hinder his framing
large projects which called for more expenditure. He
had somehow conceived the ambition of acquiring an
estate and settling down to the life of a country gentleman,
and at this very moment was pressing the scheme upon
his father. But Isaac D'Israeli was frightened by the
prevailing agricultural depression, and declined to invest
his money on the advice of a son who confesses that he
had ' more than once interfered with his affairs and never
with any particular success.' The son, however, had
another project. A year or more before he had been
attracted by the career of David Alroy, the Jewish hero
of the twelfth century, and he had begun the novel on this
subject which he completed and published some years
later ; and his awakening interest in the history of his
race had aroused in him a passionate longing to seek rest
for his troubled mind and body in the East. At first
his father would not hear of it.
To Benjamin Austen.
Bradenham,
Dec. 8, 1829.
Mv dear Austen,
. . . I am sorry to say that my other and still more
important plan prospers as badly. I have partly broken it,
and it was at once fairly knocked on the head in a calmer
manner than I should have expected from my somewhat rapid
1 Endymion, ch. 11.

122 ILLNESS AND DESPONDENCY [chap, viii
but too indulgent sire. But I will not quite despair. A
sanguine temper supports me still. There is yet time, and
that, according to the great Frederick, is everything. The
fact is I am ' Spellbound within the clustering Cyclades '
and go I must, though I fear I must hack for it. A literary
prostitute I have never yet been, though born in an age of
literary prostitution, and though I have more than once been
subject to temptations. . . . Tempting mother Colburn!
However, as Frederick says, I have yet time, and I may be
saved. Keep this letter to yourself without exception, and indeed
all I write to you. Though generally accused of uncom-
municativeuess, I like a gentle chat with a friend provided
it be strictly confidential and he be a tried and trusty one like
yourself. Women are delightful creatures, particularly if
they be pretty, which they always are ; but then they chatter
— they can't help it — and I have no ambition in case my
dearest project fails to be pointed out as the young gentleman
who was going to Constantinople. Let it be secret as the
cave of the winds, and then perhaps a friendly breeze may yet
bear me to Syria ! Farewell, mon ami,
B. D.
By the bye, I advise you to take care of my letters, for if
I become half as famous as I intend to be you may sell them
for ten guineas apiece to the Keepsake for 1840, that being the
price, as on dit, at which that delicate creature D[ouglas]
K[innaird] furnishes a Byronic epistle to the Annuals.
To Mrs. Austen. BrADENHAM HOUSE, March 7, 1830.
My dear Madame,
Your repeated kind messages require my personal acknow
ledgment, and deserve something better. With regard to
myself, in a word, I cannot be worse. With regard to London,
it is of all places the one, in my present situation, least suited
to me. Solitude and silence do not make my existence easy,
but they make it endurable.
My plans about leaving England are more unsettled than
ever. I anticipate no benefit from it, nor from anything else,
but I am desirous of quitting England that I may lead even
a more recluse life than I do at present, and emancipate
myself from perpetual commiserations. When I was in
town last, I consulted secretly many eminent men. I received

1830] THE YOUNG DUKE 123
from them no consolation. Without any exception they
approved of Mr. Bolton's treatment, though they were not
surprised that it produced no benefit. . . .
I grieve to say my hair grows very badly, and I think more
grey, which I can unfeignedly declare occasions me more
anguish than even the prospect of death. Yours ever,
B. D.
In Popanilla Disraeli had gone out of his way to ridi
cule the novel of fashionable life ; but this was precisely
the novel that Colburn and the public wanted, and the
outcome apparently of Disraeli's determination to hack
was that he began The Young Duke. By the end of March,
1830, he had nearly finished, and he came to town with
his manuscript in quest of a publisher. ' It is a series of
scenes,' he told his friend Meredith, ' every one of which
would make the fortune of a fashionable novel : I am
confident of its success, and that it will complete the
corruption of the public taste.' If there was anything
serious in this, the complacent view of the merits of his
work did not long survive. Colburn's reader told him
that it was certain to be severely criticised for the
egoism and other sins of the writer. Lytton Bulwer, for
whom Pelham had won celebrity a couple of years before,
sounded the same note of warning. Disraeli and he had
exchanged volumes in the previous year, and a corre
spondence had sprung up between them, which some
where about this time ripened into personal acquaintance.
Bulwer was shown the manuscript, and was not sparing
of eulogy ; but he suggested that the author's judgment
was not equal to his genius, that if he had attained more
than the excellences of Vivian Grey he had not sufficiently
avoided its faults, and that the pruning knife might well
be applied to the many flippancies and otiose antitheses of
the book. The sensitive author was at first so discouraged
that he talked of casting aside the work altogether, but
money was needed, and a bargain was soon concluded
with Colburn, who gave -£500 for the book. What proved

124 ILLNESS AND DESPONDENCY [chap, viii
even more attractive, he consented to pay by post-dated
bills, which were no doubt promptly discounted; and in
this way and with the aid of a friendly advance from
Austen, the tour in the East at last became possible.
Meredith, Disraeli's companion in his visit to the Rhine,
and now engaged to his sister, was again to accompany
him, and at the end of May the travellers were to set forth
on their journey.
An entry in Meredith's diary during Disraeli's visit
to London with the manuscript of The Young Duke
gives us a picture that is worth preserving.
Mar. 29. — B. D. to dine with me. He came up Regent
Street, when it was crowded, in his blue surtout, a pair
of military light blue trousers, black stockings with red
stripes, and shoes! 'The people,' he said, 'quite made
way for me as I passed. It was like the opening of the Red
Sea, which I now perfectly believe from experience. Even
well-dressed people stopped to look at me.' I should think
so ! He was in excellent spirits, full of schemes for the pro
jected journey to Stamboul and Jerusalem; full, as usual,
also of capital stories, but he could make a story out of
nothing. A note by Disraeli himself deals with another incident
which can probably be referred to this same visit to
London. Just at the commencement of the spring of 1830, if spring
it could be called, I made the acquaintance of Lytton Bulwer,
and dined with him at his house in Hertford Street. He
was just married, or about just married : a year or two. We
were both of us then quite youths ; about four and twenty.
I met three men at dinner of much the same standing; all
full of energy and ambition, and all unknown to fame.
Bulwer and I had, at least, written something; I Vivian
Grey, and he two or three years afterwards Pelham. The
other three were Henry Bulwer, Charles Villiers, and
Alexander Cockburn. Writing this, nearly five and thirty
years afterwards, it is curious to mark what has been the
result of the careers of these five young men. I have been
twice leader of the House of Commons, Edward Bulwer has
been Secretary of State, Henry Bulwer is at this moment
H.M. Ambassador at Constantinople, Charles Villiers is at

1830] LETTER TO EVANS 125
this moment a Cabinet Minister, and Alexander Cockburn
is Lord Chief Justice of England.1
Henry Bulwer has also left his recollections of this
occasion. Disraeli, he tells us, ' wore green velvet trou
sers, a canary coloured waistcoat, low shoes, silver
buckles, lace at his wrists, and his hair in ringlets.
. 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." ' 2
When in the course of his preparations for the long
journey before him Disraeli came to review his position
and affairs, he bethought him of the unlucky partner of
his boyish speculations, and wrote the letter that follows.
To T. M. Evans.
Union Hotel, Cockspur St.,
May 9, 1830.
My dear Evans,
We have been too long silent. It has been my fault, but
if you could form the slightest idea of the severe visitation
under which I have been long, and am still, suffering, I
am confident you would not only accept my excuses, but
sympathise with their cause. For the last three years — I
will not talk of enjoyment — life has not afforded me a moment's
ease; and after having lived in perfect solitude for nearly
eighteen months, I am about to be shipped off for the last
resource of a warmer climate.
To leave England at all, particularly in the state in which
I am, is to me most distressing; to leave it without finally
arranging my distracted affairs costs me a pang, which is
indeed bitter. But I can assure you at this moment, when
so many harrowing interests solicit the attention of my
weakened mind, there is no subject on which I oftener think,
than our past relations, and no person who more constantly
occurs to me than yourself.
I assure you, dear Evans, that it would be very difficult
to find one who is really more interested in the welfare of
another than I am in yours, and although you may perhaps
1 There is an obvious reminiscence of this party in the dinner given
by Mr. Bertie Tremaine and his brother, Mr. Tremaine Bertie, in chapter
37 of Endymion.
2 Article on Lord Beaconsfield in the Enycl. Brit.

126 ILLNESS AND DESPONDENCY [chap, viii
doubt the sincerity of this declaration, I nevertheless make
it. It would be a great consolation for me if before my
departure I could hear from yourself that you were prospering
in the world, a great satisfaction if you could communicate
to me with the candor which I wish to be the characteristic
of our letters.
Although I have not been fortunate enough in finally
arranging my affairs, I flatter myself I have succeeded in
making some temporary dispositions. Nothing of importance
has been done with M, but he is inclined to wait till my
return if possible, and if he cannot, to be silent. I feel less
for him than for others, because I now see too well what was
the cause of all our errors, and curse the hour he practised,
as he thought so cunningly, upon our inexperienced youth.
But this only to yourself, for he is after all an object of pity,
and I would to God that I could do something for him more
than I am bound to do.
For yourself, who — most unintentionally on my part —
have suffered from my madness — it is for you I feel, indeed
keenly, you, whose generous and manly soul I have ever
honored, and credit me, have ever done justice to. All I
can say is, that the first step I take, when the power is mine,
shall be in your favor, and that sooner, or later, the power
will be mine; and that, some day or other, we may look back
to these early adventures, rather as matter of philosophical
speculation than individual sorrow, I confidently believe.
For there is something within me, which, in spite of all
the dicta of the faculty, and in the face of the prostrate-
state in which I lie, whispers to me I shall yet weather
this fearful storm, and that a more prosperous career may
yet open to me.
My father has quitted London, and now resides at.
Bradenham House, near Wycombe, Bucks — a place where
I hope some day to see you, though at present I am only
the inmate of an unsocial hotel, and preparing for my
embarkation in the course of this current month. Anything
addressed to me at the Union will reach one who will always-
consider himself Your sincere friend, B. D.
Disraeli at first had thought of making The Young
Duke an occasion for the resumption of relations with
his old friend Murray, and during his visit to London
in March he sought an interview with that purpose.
'It has always,' he explained, 'been my wish, if it ever

1830] DISRAELI AND MURRAY 127
were my fate to write anything calculated to arrest
public attention, that you should be the organ of intro
ducing it to public notice. If you feel any inclination
to pursue this affair, act as you like, and fix upon any
critic you please. I have no objection to Mr. Lockhart,
who is certainly an able one, and is, I believe, influenced
by no undue partiality towards me ' Murray icily de
clined the interview, but ' Mr. Disraeli was assured '
that if he cared to submit his manuscript ' the proposal
would be entertained with the strictest honour and
impartiality.' Disraeli took the manuscript to Colburn,
but before he left for the East he wrote the following
letter : — To John Murray. Bradenham, Bucks,
May 27, 1830.
Sir, _
I am unwilling to leave England, which I do on Saturday,
without noticing your last communication, because I should
regret very much if you were to misconceive the motives
which actuated me in not complying with the suggestion
therein contained. I can assure you I leave in perfect
confidence both in your 'honor' and your 'impartiality,'
for the first I have never doubted, and the second it is your
interest to exercise.
The truth is, my friend and myself differed in the estimate
of the MS. alluded to, and while I felt justified, from his
opinion, in submitting it to your judgment, I felt it due to
my own to explain verbally the contending views of the
case, for reasons which must be obvious.
As you forced me to decide, I decided as I thought most
prudently. The work is one which, I dare say, would neither
disgrace you to publish, nor me to write; but it is not the
kind of production which should recommence our connection,
or be introduced to the world by the publisher of Byron and
Anastasius. I am now about to leave England for an indefinite, perhaps
a long period. When I return, if I do return, I trust it will
be in my power for the third time1 to endeavour that you
should be the means of submitting my works to the public.
1 The first attempt, no doubt, had been with the manuscript of
Aylmer Papillon.

128 ILLNESS AND DESPONDENCY [chap, viii
For this I shall be ever ready to make great sacrifices, and
let me therefore hope that when I next offer my volumes
to your examination, like the Sibylline Books, their inspiration
may at length be recognised. I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant, B. Disraeli.1
The novel which was thus thought unworthy of presen
tation by the publisher of Byron is a picture at once
flashy and conventional of a society of which Disraeli had
little direct knowledge when he wrote. ' The Young Duke!'
exclaimed his father, according to a family tradition,
when he first heard of the book. ' What does Ben know
of dukes ? ' 2 The Duke of St. James himself is not wholly
uninteresting, for he possesses certain qualities which ap
pear again and again in the heroes of Disraeli's novels,
and appear because they are reflected from the author's
own personality. 'He was a sublime coxcomb, one of
those rare characters whose finished manner and shrewd
sense combined prevent their conceit from being con
temptible.' But his career of dissipation and prodigality
soon grows wearisome, and that in some degree through
the unskilfulness of the author. In the well-known gam
bling scene at Brighton he writes with genuine power;
but too often where he endeavours to produce an ef
fect he falls into more extravagance. The figure of
May Dacre, however, partially redeems the book, even
as she redeemed the hero. She is one of the most
charming of Disraeli's women, a forerunner of Sybil, and
like Sybil, it is worthy of note, an adherent of ' the old
faith.' The Young Duke finally wins her heart by a
1 Smiles, II., pp. 332-334.
2 An attempt indeed has been made to show that Disraeli had
shared the life of the young bucks whose dissipations he professes
to describe ; but there is no real evidence to support the theory,
and his own testimony is decisive against it. 'Until my return
from the East on the eve of the '32 election,' he once said to Lord
Rowton, 'I had lived a very secluded life, and mixed not at all
with the world.'

1830] THE YOUNG DUKE 129
speech in favour of Catholic Emancipation, in which of
course she was an enthusiastic believer ; and so clearly in
1829 was Disraeli himself. This is not the only indica
tion in the novel of a steady movement of his mind to
wards an interest in political questions. He treats us in
one chapter to a disquisition on eloquence, and illustrates
it with miniature literary sketches of the leading orators
in Parliament which are both interesting and character
istic in themselves and significant as an index to the pre
occupations of the artist's mind.

I like a good debate ; and, when a stripling, used often
to be stifled in the Gallery, or enjoy the easier privileges of a
member's son. I like, I say, a good debate, and have no
objection to a due mixture of bores, which are a relief. I
remember none ofthe giants of former days; but I have heard
Canning. He was a consummate rhetorician ; but there seemed
to me a dash of commonplace in all that he said, and fre
quent indications of the absence of an original mind. To
the last, he never got clear of ' Good God, Sir ! ' and all
the other hackneyed ejaculations of his youthful debating
clubs. The most commanding speaker that I ever listened
to is, I think, Sir Francis Burdett. I never heard him in the
House, — but at an election. He was full of music, grace, and
dignity, even amid all the vulgar tumult ; and, unlike all mob
orators, raised the taste of the populace to him, instead of
lowering his own to theirs. . . .
Mr. Brougham, at present, reigns paramount in the House
of Commons. I think the lawyer has spoiled the statesman.
He is said to have very great powers of sarcasm. From what
I have observed there, I should think very little ones would be
quite sufficient. Many a sneer withers in those walls, which
would scarcely, I think, blight a currant-bush out of them ;
and I have seen the House convulsed with raillery which, in
other society, would infallibly settle the rallier to be a bore
beyond all tolerance. Even an idiot can raise a smile. They
are so good-natured, or find it so dull. . . .
I hear that Mr. Babington Macaulay is to be returned.
If he speak half as well as he writes, the House will be in
fashion again. I fear that he is one of those who, like the
individual whom he has most studied, will ' give up to party
what was meant for mankind.' At any rate, he must get rid
of his rabidity. He writes now on all subjects, as if he cer-
VOL. I — K

130 DLLNESS AND DESPONDENCY [chap, viii
tainly intended to be a renegade, and was determined to make
the contrast complete.
Mr. Peel is the model of a minister, and improves as a
speaker; though, like most of the rest, he is fluent without
the least style. He should not get so often in a passion
either, or, if he do, should not get out of one so easily.
His sweet apologies are cloying. His candour — he will do
well to get rid of that. He can make a present of it to Mr.
Huskisson. . . .
In the Lords, I admire the Duke. The readiness with
which he has adopted the air of a debater, shows the man
of genius. There is a gruff, husky sort of a downright
Montaignish ndiveti about him, which is quaint, unusual, and
tells. You plainly perceive that he is determined to be a
civilian ; and he is as offended if you drop a hint that he
occasionally wears a uniform, as a servant on a holiday, if
you mention the word livery}
In the matter of party allegiance Disraeli in the same
chapter professes himself a Gallio.
Am I a Whig or a Tory? I forget. As for the Tories,
I admire antiquity, particularly a ruin ; even the relics of the
Temple of Intolerance have a charm. I think I am a Tory.
But then the Whigs give such good dinners, and are the most
amusing. I think I am a Whig ; but then the Tories are so
moral, and morality is my forte ; I must be a Tory. But the
Whigs dress so much better ; and an ill-dressed party, like an
ill-dressed man, must be wrong. Yes ! I am a decided Whig.
And yet  1 feel like Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy.
I think I will be a Whig and Tory alternate nights, and then
both will be pleased ; or I have no objection, according to the
fashion of the day, to take a place under a Tory ministry, pro
vided I may vote against them.
The Young Duke is remarkable for its long and frequent
digressions of autobiographic interest. It is dangerous
indeed, as it always is in Disraeli's case, to interpret these
too literally. Some of the personal touches are obviously
deliberate mystifications, the pretence, for instance, above
that his father was a member of Parliament or elsewhere
that he himself was writing the novel in Rome. In others
there is probably a good deal of Byronic exaggeration.
It was the fashion in those days for a clever youth to pose
1 Bk. V. ch. 6.

1830] THE AUTHOR'S DIGRESSIONS 131
as the victim of despair, and though Disraeli's illness was
real enough, 'there certainly is a dark delight in being
miserable,' as he says himself in the book, and we need not
suppose that he took such a hopeless view of his future as
in some passages he would have us believe.
I have lost the power of conveying what I feel, if indeed
that power were ever mine. I write with an aching head and
quivering hand; yet I must write if but to break the soli
tude.1 The drooping pen falls from my powerless hand, and I feel
— I keenly feel myself what indeed I am — far the most pros
trate of a fallen race ! 2
Where are now my deeds and aspirations, and where the
fame I dreamed of when a boy ? I find the world just slipping
through my fingers, and cannot grasp the jewel ere it falls.
I quit an earth, where none will ever miss me, save those
whose blood requires no laurels to make them love my memory.
My life has been a blunder and a blank, and all ends by my
adding one more slight ghost to the shadowy realm of fatal
precocity ! 1
What I am, I know not, nor do I care. I have that within
me, which man can neither give nor take away, which can
throw light on the darkest passages of life, and draw, from a
discordant world, a melody divine. For it I would live, and
for it alone. Oh ! my soul, must we then part ! Is this the end
of all our conceptions, all our musings, our panting thoughts,
our gay fancies, our bright imaginings, our delicious reveries,
and exquisite communing ? Is this the end, the great and full
result, of all our sweet society ? I care not for myself ; I am
a wretch beneath even pity. My thousand errors, my ten.
thousand follies, my infinite corruption, have well deserved
a bitterer fate than this. But thou ! — I feel I have betrayed
thee. Hadst thou been the inmate of more spiritual clay,
bound with a brain less headstrong, and with blood less hot,
thou mightest have been glorious.1
There is more sincerity, we may believe, in the follow
ing confession : —
I am one, though young, yet old enough to know, Ambition
is a demon; and I fly from what I fear. . . . Think of
unrecognised Caesar, with his wasting youth, weeping over
1 Bk. m. ch. 18. 2 Bk. IV. ch. 3.

132 ILLNESS AND DESPONDENCY [chap, viii
the Macedonian's young career ! Could Pharsalia compensate
for those withering pangs? View the obscure Napoleon
starving in the streets of Paris ! What was St. Helena to
the bitterness of such existence ? The visions of past glory
might illumine even that dark imprisonment; but to be con
scious that his supernatural energies might die away without
creating their miracles — can the wheel, or the rack rival the
torture of such a suspicion? Lo! Byron, bending o'er his
shattered lyre, with inspiration in his very rage. And the
pert taunt could sting even this child of light ! To doubt of
the truth of the creed in which you have been nurtured, is not
so terrific as to doubt respecting the intellectual vigour on
whose strength you have staked your happiness.1
Or in this apostrophe to his father : —
Oh, my father ! . . . our friendship is a hallowed joy : —
it is my pride, and let it be thy solace. O'er the waters that
cannot part our souls, I breathe good wishes. Peace brood
o'er thy lettered bowers, and Love smile in the cheerful
hall, that I shall not forget upon the swift Symplegades,
or where warm Syria, with its palmy shore, recalls our holy
ancestry ! 2
Or, even in spite of the dithyrambs, in the following
outburst of patriotism : —
Oh, England ! Oh, my country — although full many an
Eastern clime aud Southern race have given me something
of their burning blood, it flows for thee ! I rejoice that my
flying fathers threw their ancient seed on the stern shores
which they have not dishonoured : — I am proud to be thy
child. Thy noble laws have fed with freedom a soul that ill
can brook constraint. Among thy hallowed hearths, I own
most beautiful affections. In thy abounding tongue, my
thoughts find music ; and1 with the haughty fortunes of thy
realm, my destiny would mingle ! . . . Few can love thee
better than he who traces here these idle lines. Worthier
heads are working for thy glory and thy good ; but if ever the
hour shall call, my brain and life are thine.3
In lighter vein, he laughs, as he was always ready to
do, at his own faults and foibles : —
I sometimes think I write a pretty style, though spoiled
by that confounded puppyism ; but, then, mine is the puppy
iBk. II. ch. 7. 2 Bk. III. ch. 8. 8 Bk. HI. ch. 18.

1831] PUBLICATION 133
age, and that will wear off. Then, too, there are my vanity,
my conceit, my affectation, my arrogance, and my egotism ;
all very heinous, and painfully contrasting with the imperturb
able propriety of my fellow-scribblers, — ' All gentlemen in
stays, as stiff as stones.' But I may mend, or they fall off,
and then the odds will be more equal.1
But by far the most remarkable of all these asides is
the following truly astonishing bit of prescient imperti
nence : —
One thing is quite clear, — that a man may speak very well
in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the
House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite:
I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give
a specimen of both. In the Lower House, Don Juan may
perhaps be our model ; in the Upper House, Paradise Lost.2
By reason of Colburn's many delays the book did not
make its appearance till the year after it was completed,
when Disraeli was in the East. It was never a favourite
of its author's. Even before publication he had lost
interest in it, so far that he was able to write to his
sister : ' I don't care a jot about The Young Duke. I never
staked any fame on it ; it may take its chance.' In the
General Preface to the novels, written in 1870, when
passing his early novels in review, he ignores it altogether,
and to the severely expurgated edition issued with his
collected works in 1853 he thought it necessary to prefix
the apology : ' Young authors are apt to fall into affectation
and conceit, and the writer of this work sinned very much -
in these respects ; but the affectation of youth should be
viewed leniently, and every man has a right to be con
ceited until he is successful.' In one quarter it was
assured of an admiring welcome from the first.
From Sarah Disraeli. April 4, ' 31.
For The Young Duke, it is excellent, — most excellent.
There is not a dull half page, — not a dull half line. Your
1 Bk. III. ch. 18. 2 Bk. V. ch. 6.

134 ILLNESS AND DESPONDENCY [chap, viii
story is unparalleled, for though it ends in a marriage which
one can tell without peeping it grows more exciting as it
winds towards its close. Your heroine is fit to be worshipped —
your first sight of her is inimitable. The Young Duke is as you
say ' the noblest animal in the world.' The two scenes of
rejection and the Alhambra Supper, and the gambling scene
all wonderful, — the last so utterly unlike all gambling scenes
in novels, no thumping of the table or the forehead, but all
so desperate and so cool that it makes your hair stand on end.
The last stake beats Hogarth. You must expect to be rated
for bringing your fair innocent readers into such company as
pseudo Mrs. Annesley and pseudo Lady Squib. I say nothing
of your moral episodes, for they touch my heart too keenly to
let me be at all aware of what effect they will have upon
others. One reading has repaid me for months of suspense,
and that is saying everything if you knew how much my heart
is wrapt up in your fame.
The reception of the book by the critics was at least
as good as it deserved, and it at once became popular.
From Sarah Disraeli. May 1, 1831.
Wherever we go, The Young Duke is before us, and its
praises for ever resounding. But I know you care nothing
for family commendation. . . . Jerdan has at last dis
covered that its author is gifted with every quality that
constitutes a man of splendid genius. The highest power of
imagination that creates and combines the most brilliant wit,
the keenest sense of the ridiculous, a fullness of knowledge
that conveys a characteristic trait in a slight phrase, and
a long etcetera of truths which I suppose he has acquired from
his -friend Bulwer. To balance such an extraordinary venture
of commendation, he is obliged to find a fault or two. . . .
The book is reviewed in all weekly and Sunday papers — all
with excessive praise.
Subsequently the admiring sister reports, on the
authority of ' some Americans who have just come to
England,' that ' The Young Duke is the text-book of the
United States, from wliich they preach and read, and learn
that important requisite manners.' The one conspicu
ous exception to the general friendliness of the critics
was supplied by the Westminster Review, the organ of

1831] RECEPTION OF THE NOVEL 135
the Benthamites. ' To parasites, sycophants, toadeaters,
tuft-hunters, and humble companions,' this paper ur
banely remarked, ' it will be a book full of comfort and
instruction in their callings.' Disraeli, it must be said,
had given much provocation ; for not only had ridicule
of the Benthamites been the express purpose of Popanilla,
but in The Young Duke itself there is some bitter satire
of their 'screw and lever' philosophy. Sarah Disraeli
wrote before publication that the book had not been
puffed ' in anything to find fault with ' ; but this was
hardly just to Colburn, who was practising his customary
arts with his customary activity and address — and that
in spite of the fact that the author had tried in the preface
to deprive him of one of the most potent weapons in his
armoury by expressly disclaiming portraiture.
The great mass of my readers (if I have a mass, as I hope,)
will attribute the shades that flit about these volumes to any
substances they please. That smaller portion of society,
who are most competent to decide upon the subject, will
instantly observe, that however I may have availed myself
of a trait, or an incident, and often inadvertently, the whole
is ideal. To draw caricatures of our contemporaries is not a
very difficult task : it requires only a small portion of talent,
and a great want of courtesy.

CHAPTER IX
Tour in the East
1830-1831
The journey on which Disraeli now embarked with
his friend Meredith proved a capital event in his life and
had marked effects on his whole subsequent career, both
literary and political. It not only enlarged his experi
ence beyond that of most young Englishmen of his day,
but, what was even more important to one of his peculiar
temperament, it helped to give definite purpose and
significance to that Oriental tendency in his nature which,
vaguely present before, was henceforth to dominate his
imagination and show itself in nearly all his achieve
ments. We can see the influence of the Eastern journey
in Contarini Fleming, in Alroy, in Tancred, and in
Lothair; but we can see it not less clearly in the bold
stroke of policy which laid the foundations of English
ascendency in Egypt, in the Act which gave explicit form
to the conception of an Indian Empire with the Sovereign
of Great Britain at its head, and in the settlement imposed
on Europe at the Berlin Congress. The letters x written
to his family during the journey have been published
since his death ; and after the lapse of eighty years they
retain their freshness and interest in a way that is rare
with such compositions. Keen observation, a graphic
1 The references here will be to the 1887 edition of Lord Beacons-
field's Letters, in which the Home Letters and Lord Beaconsfield' s
Correspondence with his Sister are combined in one volume.
136

1830] GIBRALTAR 137
and vivacious style, the power of concentrating a picture
into a phrase, and a strain of joyous raillery running
through all are the elements of their charm. ' C'est
une si jolie chose que de savoir 6crire ce que Ton pense,'
says Madame de Sevigne, a favourite of Disraeli's, who
well knew herself the vivid delight of easy and perfect
expression. Meredith, Disraeli's companion, was much
better educated, much more methodical, and much more
conscientiously laborious in profiting by the opportuni
ties of the journey ; but his diary and letters which, with
other material beyond what has been already published,
are available for this chapter, help one to realise how
easily the scenes and incidents to which the man of
imagination can lend an abiding interest may become in
the hands of another the subject of a prosy and lifeless
chronicle. The travellers left London by steamer on the 28th of
May, and after a week's detention at Falmouth proceeded
by the mail packet to Gibraltar.

To Isaac Disraeli.

Gibraltar, July 1, 1830.

My dear Father,
I write to you from a country where the hedges consist of
aloes all in blossom: fourteen, sixteen feet high. Conceive
the contrast to our beloved and beechy Bucks. I say nothing
of geraniums and myrtles, bowers of oranges and woods of
olives, though the occasional palm should not be forgotten for
its great novelty and uncommon grace. We arrived here
after a very brief and very agreeable passage, passed in very
agreeable society. . . . This Rock is a wonderful place, with
a population infinitely diversified. Moors with costumes
radiant as a rainbow or an Eastern melodrama ; Jews with
gaberdines and skull-caps; Genoese, Highlanders, and
Spaniards, whose dress is as picturesque as that of the sons of
Ivor. There are two public libraries — the Garrison Library,
with more than 12,000 volumes ; and the Merchants', with
upwards of half that number. In the Garrison are all your
works, even the last edition of the Literary Character ; in the
Merchants' the greater part. Each possesses a copy of another
book, supposed to be written by a member of our family, and

138 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
which is looked upon at Gibraltar as one of the masterpieces
of the nineteenth century. You may feel their intellectual
pulse from this. At first I apologised and talked of youthful
blunders and all that, really being ashamed; but finding
them, to my astonishment, sincere, and fearing they were
stupid enough to adopt my last opinion, I shifted my position
just in time, looked very grand, and passed myself off for a
child of the Sun, like the Spaniard in Peru.
We were presented to the Governor, Sir George Don, a
general and G.C.B., a very fine old gentleman, of the Windsor
Terrace school, courtly, almost regal in his manner, paternal,
almost officious in his temper, a sort of mixture of Lord St.
Vincent and the Prince de Ligne, English in his general style,
but highly polished and experienced in European society.
His palace, the Government House, is an old convent, and one
of the most delightful residences I know, with a garden under
the superintendence of Lady Don, full of rare exotics, with a
beautiful terrace over the sea, a berceau of vines, and other
delicacies which would quite delight you. . . . He 1 behaved to
us with great kindness, asked us to dine, and gave us a route
himself for an excursion to the Sierra da Ronda, a savage
mountain district, abounding in the most beautiful scenery
and bugs !
We returned from this excursion, which took us a
week, yesterday, greatly gratified. The country in which
we travelled is a land entirely of robbers and smugglers.
They commit no personal violence, but lay you on the ground
and clean out your pockets. If you have less than sixteen
dollars they shoot you ; that is the tariff, and is a loss worth
risking. I took care to have very little more, and no baggage
which I could not stow in the red bag which my mother
remembers making for my pistols. . . . You will wonder how
we managed to extract pleasure from a life which afforded
us hourly peril for our purses and perhaps for our lives,
which induced fatigue greater than I ever experienced, for
here are no roads, and we were never less than eight hours
a day on horseback, picking our way through a course which
can only be compared to the steep bed of an exhausted
cataract, and with so slight a prospect of attaining for a
reward either food or rest. — I will tell you. The country
was beautiful, the novelty of the life was great, and above
all we had Brunet. What a man ! Born in Italy of French
parents, he has visited, as the captain of a privateer, all
countries of the Mediterranean: Egypt, Turkey, Syria.
1 Meredith testifies that Disraeli's lectures on morals and politics had
made a great impression on Sir George.

1830] TRAVELLING IN SPAIN 139
Early in life, as valet to Lord Hood, he was in England, and
has even been at Guinea. After fourteen years' cruising he
was taken by the Algerines, and was in various parts of Barbary
for five or six years, and at last he obtains his liberty and
settles at Gibraltar, where he becomes cazador to the Governor,
for he is, among his universal accomplishments, a celebrated
shot. He can speak all languages but English, of which he
makes a sad affair — even Latin, and he hints at a little Greek.
He is fifty, but light as a butterfly and gay as a bird ; in
person not unlike English at Lyme, if you can imagine
so insipid a character with a vivacity that never flags, and
a tongue that never rests. Brunet did everything, remedied
every inconvenience, and found an expedient for every diffi
culty. Never did I live so well as among these wild moun
tains of Andalusia, so exquisite is his cookery. Seriously,
he is an artist of the first magnitude, and used to amuse
himself by giving us some very exquisite dish among these
barbarians ; for he affects a great contempt of the Spaniards,
and an equal admiration for the Moors. Whenever we
complained he shrugged his shoulders with a look of ineffable
contempt, exclaiming, 'Nous ne sommes pas en Barbarie!'
Recalling our associations with that word and country, it
was superbly ludicrous. . . .
At Castellar we slept in the very haunt of the banditti,
among the good fellows of Jose Maria, the Captain Rolando
of this part, and were not touched. In fact, we were not
promising prey, though picturesque enough in our appearance.
Imagine M. and myself on two little Andalusian mountain
horses with long tails and jennet necks, followed by a
larger beast of burthen with our baggage, and the inevitable
Brunet cocked upon its neck with a white hat and slippers,
lively, shrivelled and noisy as a pea dancing upon tin. Our
Spanish guide, tall, and with a dress excessively brodi and
covered with brilliant buttons, walking by the side and
occasionally adding to the burthen of our sumpter steed.
The air of the mountains, the rising sun, the rising appetite,
the variety of picturesque persons and things we met, and the
impending danger, made a delightful life, and had it not been
for the great enemy I should have given myself up entirely
to the magic of the life ; but that spoiled all. It is not worse,
sometimes I think it lighter about the head, but the palpita
tion about the heart greatly increases, otherwise my health is
wonderful. Never have I been better ; but what use is this
when the end of all existence is debarred me ? I say no more
upon this melancholy subject, by which I am ever and infinitely
depressed, and often most so when the world least imagines it ;

140 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap.ix
but to complain is useless, and to endure almost impossible ;
but existence is certainly less irksome in the mild distraction
of this various life. . . .
Tell my mother that as it is the fashion among the dandies
of this place — that is, the officers, for there are no others —
not to wear waistcoats in the morning, her new studs come into
fine play, and maintain my reputation of being a great judge
of costume, to the admiration and envy of many subalterns. I
have also the fame of being the first who ever passed the
Straits with two canes, a morning and an evening cane. I
change my cane as the gun fires, and hope to carry them both
on to Cairo. It is wonderful the effect these magical wands
produce. I owe to them even more attention than to being the
supposed author of — what is it ? — I forget !
These Straits, by-the-bye — that is, the passage for the
last ten miles or so to Gib, between the two opposite coasts
of Africa and Europe, with the ocean for a river, and the
shores all mountains — is by far the sublimest thing I have
yet seen. . . . When I beg you to write, I mean my
beloved Sa, because I know you think it a bore; but do
all as you like. To her and to my dearest mother a thousand
kisses. Tell Ralph I have not forgotten my promise of an
occasional letter ; and my dear pistol-cleaner, that he forgot
to oil the locks, which rusted in conveyance. I thank the gods
daily I am freed of Louis Clement, who would have been an
expense and a bore. Tell [Washington] Irving he has left a
golden name in Spain. Few English visit Gibraltar. Tell
Lord Mahon, inquiries made after his health. Adieu, my
beloved padre. Your most affectionate son,
B. D.1
Cadiz,
July 14.
We passed a very pleasant week at Gibraltar, after our
return from Ronda. We dined with the Governor at his
cottage at Europa, a most charming pavilion, and met a most
agreeable party. Lady Don was well enough to dine with us,
and did me the honour of informing me that I was the cause of
the exertion, which, though of course a fib, was nevertheless
flattering. She is, though very old, without exception one of
the most agreeable personages that I ever met, excessively
acute and piquante, with an aptitude of detecting, character,
and a tact in assuming it, very remarkable. To listen to her
you would think you were charming away the hour with a
blooming beauty in Mayfair ; and, though excessively infirm,
1 Letters, pp. 3-10.

1830] LADY DON 141
her eye is so brilliant and so full of moquerie that you quite
forgot her wrinkles. Altogether the scene very much re
sembled a small German Court. There was his Excellency
in uniform covered with orders, exactly like the old Grand
Duke of Darmstadt, directing everything ; his wife the clever
Prussian Princess that shared his crown ; the aides-de-camp
made excellent chamberlains, and the servants in number
and formality quite equalled those of a Residenz. The
repast was really elegant and recherche" even for this curious
age. Sir George will yet head his table and yet carve,
recommend a favourite dish, and deluge you with his summer
drink, half champagne and half lemonade.
After dinner Lady Don rode out with the very pretty wife of
Colonel Considine, and the men dispersed in various directions.
It was the fate of Meredith and myself to be lionised to some
cave or other with Sir George. What a scene, and what a pro
cession! First came two grooms on two Barbs; then a
carriage with four horses ; at the window at which H. E.
sits, a walking footman, and then an outrider, all at a funeral
pace. We were directed to meet our host at the cave, ten
minutes' walk. During this time Sir G. tries one of the
Arabians, but at the gentlest walk, and the footman changes
his position in consequence to his side ; but it is windy,
our valiant but infirm friend is afraid of being blown off,
and when he reaches the point of destination, we find him
again in the carriage. In spite of of his infirmities he will get
out to lionise ; but before he disembarks, he changes his
foraging cap for a full general's cock with a plume as big as
the Otranto one; and this because the hero will never be
seen in public in undress, although we were in a solitary
cave looking over the ocean, and inhabited only by monkeys.
The cave is shown, and we all get in the carriage, because
he is sure we are tired; the foraging cap is again assumed,
and we travel back to the Cottage, Meredith, myself, the
Governor, and the cocked hat, each in a seat. In the
evening he has his rubber, which he never misses, and is
surprised I do not play ' the only game for gentlemen ! You
should play; learn.' However, I preferred the conversation
of his agreeable lady, although the charms of Mrs. Considine
were puzzling, and I was very much like Hercules between
— you know the rest.
I am sorry to say my hair is coming off, just at the moment
it had attained the highest perfection, and was universally
mistaken for a wig, so that I am obliged to let the
women pull it to satisfy their curiosity. Let me know
what my mother thinks. There are no wigs here that I

142 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap.ix
could wear. Pomade and all that is quite a delusion.
Somebody recommends me cocoa-nut oil, which I could
get here ; but suppose it turns it grey or blue or green ! I
made a very pleasant acquaintance at Gibraltar, Sir Charles
Gordon, a brother of Lord Aberdeen, and Colonel of the
Royal Highlanders. He was absent during my first visit.
He is not unlike his brother in appearance, but the frigidity
of the Gordons has expanded into urbanity, instead of sub
siding into sullenness — in short, a man with a warm heart
though a cold manner, and exceedingly amusing, with the
reputation of being always silent. As contraries sometimes
agree, we became exceedingly friendly. . . .
The Judge Advocate at Gibraltar is that Mr. Baron
Field who once wrote a book, and whom all the world
took for a noble, but it turned out that Baron was
to him what Thomas is to other men. He pounced upon
me, said he had seen you at Murray's, first man of the
day, and all that, and evidently expected to do an amaz
ing bit of literature; but I found him a bore, and vulgar,
a Storks without breeding, consequently I gave him a
lecture on canes, which made him stare, and he has avoided
me ever since. The truth is, he wished to saddle his mother
upon me for a compagnon de voyage, whom I discovered in
the course of half an hour to be both deaf, dumb, and blind,
but yet more endurable than the noisy, obtrusive, jargonic
judge, who is a true lawyer, ever illustrating the obvious,
explaining the evident, and expatiating on the common
place. . . .
I have met here Mr. Frank Hall Standish, once a cele
brated dandy, and who wrote a life of Voltaire, you re
member. We have heard of the King's death, which is the
destruction of my dress waistcoats. I truly grieve. News
arrived last night of the capture of Algiers, but all this will
reach you before my letter. My general health is excellent.
I have never had a moment's illness since I left home, not
counting an occasional indigestion, but I mean no fever and
so on. The great enemy, I think, is weaker, but the palpitation
at the heart the reverse. I find wherever I go plenty of friends
and nothing but attention.1
The Governor's 'agreeable lady,' made a great im
pression on Disraeli. 'While I remember it,' he wrote
later, ' a copy of The Young Duke must be sent to Lady
Don. Tell Ralph to attend to it. Write in the title
1 Letters, p. 10.

1830] ANDALUSIA 143
"Lady Don, by desire of the author." . . . You will
be surprised at my sending a light novel, and finding a
muse in an old lady of seventy ; but in truth she is the
cleverest and most charming woman I ever met .
and the only person I know who gives one the least idea of
the Madame du Tencins and the other brillantes, who flirted
with Henault, chatted with Montesquieu, and corresponded
with Horace Walpole.'
The original intention of the two friends had been to
hasten on to Malta, but they were so delighted with
their first glimpse of Spain that they lingered for a couple
of months. ' I travelled through the whole of Andalusia
on horseback,' Disraeli wrote to Austen, ' I was never
less than ten hours out of the twenty-four on my steed,
and more than once saw the sun set and rise without
quitting my saddle, which few men can say, and which I
never wish to say again. I visited Cadiz, Seville, Cordova,
and Granada, among many other cities which must not be
named with these romantic towns. I sailed upon the
Guadalquivir, I cheered at the bull fights ; I lived for a
week among brigands and wandered in the fantastic halls
of the delicate Alhambra. Why should I forget to say
that I ate an olla podrida ? I will not weary you with
tales of men of buckram ; they must be reserved for our
fireside. I entered Spain a sceptic with regard to their
robbers, and listened to all their romances with a smile.
I lived to change my opinion. I at length found a country
where adventure is the common course of existence.'
Leaving Gibraltar he rode in a couple of days to Cadiz,
gazing by the way across those ' sublime ' Straits, where
' Europe and Africa frown on each other,' at the picturesque
beauty of the 'sultry sister.' Cadiz he found brilliant
beyond description. ' " Fair Florence " is a very dingy
affair compared with it. The white houses and the
green jalousies sparkle in the sun. Figaro is in every
street; Rosina in every balcony.'

144 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap.ix
To Isaac D'Israeli. Seville, July 26.
Cadiz I left with regret, though there is little to interest
except its artificial beauty. It is not unlike Venice in its
situation, but there the resemblance ceases. Cadiz is without
an association — not a church, a picture, or a palace. The
family of the Consul is a most agreeable one: you must
not associate with this somewhat humble title a character
at all in unison. Mr. Brackenbury is great enough for an
ambassador, and lives well enough for one ; but with some
foibles, he is a very hospitable personage, and I owe many
agreeable hours to its exercise. You see what a Sevillian
4critoire is by this despatch. I have already expended on it
more time than would have served for writing many letters.
I am almost in a state of frenzy from the process of painting
my ideas in this horrible scrawl. It is like writing with
blacking and with a skewer. Mr. Standish returned to Seville,
where he resides at present, and called on me the next day.
We dined with him yesterday. He is a most singular character
— a spoiled child of fortune, who thinks himself, and who is
perhaps now, a sort of philosopher. But all these characters
must be discussed over our fireside or on the Terrace.1
Fleuriz, the Governor of Cadiz, is a singular brute. When
we meet I will tell you how I Pelhamised him. All the
English complain that when they are presented to him he
bows and says nothing, uttering none of those courtly inanities
which are expected on such occasions, and for which crowned
heads and all sorts of viceroys are celebrated. Brackenbury
had been reading a review of the Commentaries" in the
Courier in the morning, and full thereof, announced me to
Fleuriz as the son of the greatest author in England. The
usual reception, however, only greeted me ; but I, being pre
pared for the savage, was by no means silent, and made
him stare for half an hour in a most extraordinary manner.
He was sitting over some prints just arrived from England —
a view of Algiers, and the fashions for June. The question
was whether the place was Algiers, for it had no title. Just
1 The Yew Terrace at Bradenham, where Disraeli in these early years
was wont to compose his novels or con his speeches as he walked up
and down.
2 His father's Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I.

1830] MURILLO 145
fresh from Gibraltar, I ventured to inform his Excellency
that it was, and that a group of gentlemen intended to
represent A  and a couple of his friends, but displaying
those extraordinary coats and countenances that Mr. Acker-
mann offers monthly as an improvement upon Nature and
Nugee, were personages no less eminent than the Dey and
his two principal conseillers d'itat. The dull Fleuriz took
everything au pied de lettre, and after due examination insin
uated scepticism. Whereupon I offer renewed arguments to
prove the dress to be Moorish. Fleuriz calls a mademoiselle
to translate the inscription, but the inscription only proves
that they are ' fashions for June ' ; — at Algiers, I add, appealing
to every one whether they had ever seen such beings in London.
Six Miss Brackenburys, equally pretty, protest they have not.
Fleuriz, unable to comprehend badinage, gives a Mashallah
look of pious resignation, and has bowed to the ground every
night since that he has met me. . . .
We came here up the Guadalquivir, and to-morrow proceed
by a diligence to Cordova. . . . We have found here a most
agreeable friend in Mr. Williams, an English merchant mar
ried to a Spanish lady, and considered the greatest connois
seur in paintings in Spain. He has nearly thirty of the finest
Murillos. I had a letter to him from Brackenbury. It is
astonishing with what kindness he behaves to us. His house
is open to us at all times, and we pass our evenings most
agreeably sitting in his patio, turning over the original draw
ings of Murillo, while his Spanish sister-in-law, Dolores, sings
a bolero. It is the mode to call all the ladies here by their
Christian name directly you are introduced. So much for
Spanish etiquette. On the other hand, my tailor is offended
if I do not ask him to take a chair, and always address him
Signor. It is all banished to the lower classes. When he
brought home my jacket, he told me his whole fortune was at
my command.1
Disraeli was enchanted with Murillo. ' Run, my dear
fellow, to Seville,' he wrote to Austen, ' and for the first
time in your life know what a great artist is — Murillo,
Murillo, Murillo ! ' ' The most original of artists,' he
says in a letter to Bradenham. 'No man has painted
more, or oftener reached the ideal. He never fails.
Where can his bad pictures be ? '
I parted with my friend Standish at Seville with regret.
He is excessively fantastic and odd, but a good fellow. The
1 Letters, p. 14.

146 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
Spaniards cannot make him out, and the few English that
meet him set him down only as exceedingly affected. He is
something more. The man of pleasure, who, instead of
degenerating into a roui, aspires to be a philosopher, is to
my mind certainly a respectable, and I think, an interesting
character.1 At Cordova Disraeli saw and was impressed by the
great Cathedral Mosque, and noted therein the beautiful
'shrine and chapel of a Moorish saint, with the blue
mosaic and the golden honeycombed roof as vivid and as
brilliant as when the saint was worshipped'; and then
he set forth on the long ride to Granada.

To Sarah Disraeli.
What a country have I lived in ! I am invited by ' a grand
lady of Madrid ' — I quote our host at Cordova — to join her
escort to Granada : twenty foot soldiers, four servants armed,
and tirailleurs in the shape of a dozen muleteers. We refused,
for reasons too long here to detail, and set off alone two
hours before, expecting an assault. I should tell you we
dined previously with her and her husband, having agreed
to meet to discuss matters. It was a truly Gil Bias scene.
My lord in an undress uniform, slightly imposing in appear
ance, greeted us with dignity ; the signora, exceedingly
young and really very pretty, with infinite vivacity and
grace. A French valet leant on his chair, and a duenna,
such as Stephanoff would draw, broad and supercilious, with
jet eyes, mahogany complexion, and cocked-up nose, stood
by my lady bearing a large fan. She was most complaisant,
as she evidently had more confidence in two thick-headed
Englishmen with their Purdeys and Mantons than in her
specimen of the once famous Spanish infantry. She did
not know that we are cowards on principle. I could screw
up my courage to a duel or a battle, but I think my life
worth five pounds in the shape of ransom to Jose Maria.
In spite of her charms and their united eloquence, which,
as they only spoke Spanish, was of course most persuasive,
we successfully resisted. The moon rises on our course :
for the first two leagues all is anxiety, as it was well known
that a strong band was lying in wait for the 'great lady.'
After two leagues we began to hope, when suddenly our
1 Letters, p. 27.

1830] RIDE TO GRANADA 147
guide informs us that he hears a trampling of horses in the
distance. Ave Maria! A cold perspiration came over me.
Decidedly they approached, but rather an uproarious crew.
We drew up out of pure fear, and I had my purse ready.
The band turned out to be a company of actors travelling
to Cordova. There they were, dresses and decorations, sce
nery and machinery, all on mules and donkeys, for there
are no roads in this country. The singers rehearsing an
opera; the principal tragedian riding on an ass; and the
buffo, most serious, looking as grave as night, with a cigar,
and in greater agitation than them all. Then there were
women in side-saddles, like sedans, and whole panniers of
children, some of the former chanting an ave, while their
waists (saving your presence, but it is a rich trait) were in
more than one instance encircled by the brawny arm of a
more robust devotee. All this irresistibly reminded me of
Cervantes. We proceed and meet a caravan (corsario they
call it, but I spell from sound) of armed merchants, who
challenged us, with a regular piquet, and I nearly got shot
for not answering in time, being somewhat before my guide.
Then come two travelling friars who give us their blessing,
and then we lose our way. We wander about all night,
dawn breaks, and we stumble on some peasants sleeping in
the field amid their harvest. We learn that we cannot regain
our road, and, utterly wearied, we finally sink to sound sleep
with our pack-saddles for our pillows.1
At Granada Disraeli was of course delighted with the
Alhambra, which he placed 'with the Parthenon, the
Pantheon, and York Minster.'

To Isaac D'Israeli.
The Saracenic architecture is the most inventive and fan
ciful, but at the same time the most fitting and the most
delicate that can be conceived. There would be no doubt
about its title to be considered among the first inventions of
men if it were better known. It is only to be found in any
degree of perfection in Spain. When a man sneers at the
Saracenic, ask him what he has seen. Perhaps a barbarous
though picturesque building, called the Ducal Palace, at Ven
ice! What should we think of a man who decided on the
buildings of Agrippa by the architecture of Justinian, or judged
1Ibid., pp. 23-5.

148 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
the age of Pericles by the restorations of Hadrian ? Yet he
would not commit so great a blunder. . . .
The great efforts of antique architecture are confined to
temples or theatres, which at the best can be only a room.
The Alhambra is a palace, and the opportunity for invention
is, of course, infinitely increased. It is not a ruin, as I ex
pected, scarcely in a state of dilapidation. Certainly, under
the patronage of our late monarch, it might have been
restored to all its pristine splendour, though I think a compliant
Parliament would have been almost as necessary as Sir
Jeffrey Wyatville. Everything about it, though exquisitely
proportioned, is slight and small and delicate. Murphy
makes the Court of Pillars too large and coarse. Around
this court are chambers with carved and purple roofs studded
with gold, and walls entirely covered with the most fanciful
relief, picked out with that violet tint which must have been
copied from their Andalusian skies. In these you may
sit in the coolest shade, reclining upon cushions, with your
beads or pipe, and view the most dazzling sunlight in the
court, which assuredly must scorch the flowers if the faithful
lions ever ceased from pouring forth that element which you
must travel in Spain or Africa to honour. Pindar was
quite right.1 These chambers are innumerable. There is
the Hall of the Ambassadors, always the most sumptuous ;
the Hall of Justice ; the rooms of the sultanas and of the
various members of the family, quite perfect, not a single roof
has given. What a scene ! Ah, that you were here ! But
conceive it in the times of the Boabdils; conceive it with
all its courtly decoration, all the gilding, all the imperial
purple, all the violet relief, all the scarlet borders, all the
glittering inscriptions and costly mosaics, burnished, bright
and fresh ; conceive it full of still greater ornaments, the liv
ing groups with their rich and vivid and picturesque cos
tume, and, above all, their shining arms ; some standing in
groups conversing, some smoking in sedate silence, some
telling their beads, some squatting round a storier. Then the
bustle and the rush, and the arming horsemen all in motion,
and all glancing in the most brilliant sun.2
Meredith records a curious incident of their first visit.
The old lady who showed us over the Alhambra, talkative
and intelligent, would have it that Benjamin D. was a Moor,
many of whom come to visit this palace, which they say will
1'ApurToy ptv vSup — Water is best.
2 Letters, pp. 28, 29.

u'\ejy*Lm<on. ¥Dy>rtxe66 7828.
c^-nym, a, cLi-CLWi/ns/ .6-%/ -J).LyPuu>lL&e/ iSL.^fc.

cit

xJv&ruT&m

1830] THE ALHAMBRA 149
yet be theirs again. His southern aspect, the style in which
he paced the gorgeous apartments, and sat himself in the
seat of the Abencerrages, quite . deceived her ; she repeated
the question a dozen times, and would not be convinced of
the contrary. His parting speech, ' es mi casa,' ' This is my
palace,' quite confirmed her suspicions.
From Granada Disraeli wrote a letter to his mother ' on
an elephantine sheet, all about Spanish ladies and tomato
sauce.' No one would dream that it was from the pen
of an invalid to whom ' the least exertion of mind ' was
instantly painful. To Maria D 'Israeli. Granada, Aug. 1.
My dear Mother,
Although you doubtless assist, as the French phrase
it, at the reading of my despatches, you will, I am sure, be
pleased to receive one direct from your absent son. It has
just occurred to me that I have never yet mentioned the
Spanish ladies, and I do not think that I can address anything
that I have to say upon this agreeable subject to any one*
more suitable than yourself. You know that I am rather an
admirer of the blonde; and, to be perfectly candid, I will
confess to you that the only times which I have been so
unfortunate as to be captivated, or captured, in this country
were both by Englishwomen. But these Espagnolas are
nevertheless very interesting personages. What we associate
with the idea of female beauty is not common in this country.
There are none of those seraphic countenances, which strike
you dumb or blind, but faces in abundance which will never
pass without commanding a pleasing glance. Their charm
consists in their sensibility; each incident, every person,
every word touches the far eye of a Spanish lady, and her
features are constantly confuting the creed of Mahomet,
and proving that she has a soul : but there is nothing quick,
harsh, or forced about her. She is extremely unaffected, and
not at all French. Her eyes gleam rather than sparkle, she
speaks with quick vivacity but in sweet tones, and there is
in all her carriage, particularly when she walks, a certain
dignified grace which never leaves her, and which is very
remarkable. . . .
I sat next to a lady of high distinction at a bull-fight

150 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
at Seville. She was the daughter-in-law of the Captain-
General, and the most beautiful Spaniard I have yet met.
Her comb was white, and she wore a mantilla of blonde,
I have no doubt extremely valuable, for it was very
dirty. The effect, however, was charming. Her hair was
glossy black, and her eyes like an antelope's, but all her other
features deliriously soft; and she was further adorned,
which is rare in Spain, with a rosy cheek, for here our heroines
are rather sallow. But they counteract this defect by never
appearing until twilight, which calls them from their bowers,
fresh, though languid, from the late siesta. To conclude,
the only fault of the Spanish beauty is that she too soon
indulges in the magnificence of embonpoint. There are,
however, many exceptions to this. At seventeen a Spanish
beauty is poetical, tall, lithe, and clear, though sallow. But
you have seen Mercandotti.1 . As she advances, if she does not
lose her shape, she resembles Juno rather than Venus.
Majestic she ever is ; and if her feet are less twinkling than in
her first career, look on her hand and you'll forgive them all.
There is calm voluptuousness about the life here that
wonderfully accords with my disposition, so that if I were resi
dent, and had my intellect at command, I do not know any
place where I could make it more productive. The imagination
is ever at work, and beauty and grace are not scared away
by those sounds and sights, those constant cares and changing
feelings, which are the proud possession of our free land
of eastern winds. You rise at eight, and should breakfast
lightly, although a table covered with all fruits renders
that rather difficult to one who inherits, with other qualities
good and bad, that passion for the most delightful productions
of nature, with which my beloved sire can sympathise. I
only wish I had him here over a medley of grape and melon,
gourd and prickly-pear. In the morning you never quit the
house, and these are hours which might be profitably employed
under the inspiration of a climate which is itself poetry,
for it sheds over everything a golden hue which does not exist
in the objects themselves illuminated. At present I indulge
only in a calm reverie, for I find the least exertion of mind
instantly aggravate all my symptoms ; and even this letter
is an exertion, which you would hardly credit. My general
health was never better. You know how much better I
am on a sunny day in England ; well, I have had two months
of sunny days infinitely warmer. I have during all this period
enjoyed general health of which I have no memory during my
life. All the English I have met are ill, and live upon a diet.
1 A famous dancer of the day.

1830] A DAY IN SPAIN 151
I eat everything, and my appetite each day increases. . . .
The Spanish cuisine is not much to my taste, for garlic and
bad oil preponderate ; but it has its points : the soups are
good, and the most agreeable dish in the world is an olio. I
will explain it to you, for my father would delight in it.
There are two large dishes, one at each end of the table.
The one at the top contains bouilli beef, boiled pork sausage,
black-pudding; all these not mixed together, but in their
separate portions. The other dish is a medley of vegetables
and fruits, generally French beans, caravanseras, slices of
melons, and whole pears. Help each person to a portion of
the meats, and then to the medley. Mix them in your plate
together, and drown them in tomato sauce. There is no garlic
and no grease of any kind. I have eaten this every day, it
is truly delightful. . . .
After dinner you take your siesta. I generally sleep
for two hours. I think this practice conducive to health.
Old people, however, are apt to carry it to excess. By
the time I have risen and arranged my toilette it is time
to steal out, and call upon any agreeable family whose
Tertullia you may choose to honour, which you do, after
the first time, uninvited, and with them you take your tea
or chocolate. This is often al fresco, under the piazza or
colonnade of the patio. Here you while away the time until
it is cool enough for the alameda or public walk. At Cadiz,
and even at Seville, up the Guadalquivir, you are sure of a
delightful breeze from the water. The sea breeze comes like
a spirit. The effect is quite magical. As you are lolling in
listless languor in the hot and perfumed air, an invisible guest
comes dancing into the party and touches them all with an
enchanted wand. All start, all smile. It has come ; it is the
sea breeze. There is much discussion whether it is as strong,
or whether weaker, than the night before. The ladies furl
their fans and seize their mantillas, the cavaliers stretch their
legs and give signs of life. All rise. I offer my arm to
Dolores or Florentina (is not this familiarity strange ?), and in
ten minutes you are in the alameda. What a change ! All is
now life and liveliness. Such bowing, such kissing, such
fluttering of fans, such gentle criticism of gentle friends !
But the fan is the most wonderful part of the whole scene.
A Spanish lady with her fan might shame the tactics of a troop
of horse. Now she unfurls it with the slow pomp and conscious
elegance of a peacock. Now she flutters it with all the languor
of a listless beauty, now with all the liveliness of a vivacious
one. Now, in the midst of a very tornado, she closes it with
a whir which makes you start, pop ! In the midst of your
confusion Dolores taps you on the elbow; you turn round

152 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
to listen, and Florentina pokes you in your side. Magical
instrument ! You know that it speaks a particular language,
and gallantry requires no other mode to express its most
subtle conceits or its most unreasonable demands than this
slight, delicate organ. But remember, while you read, that
here, as in England, it is not confined alone to your delightful
sex. I also have my fan, which makes my cane extremely
jealous. If you think I have grown extraordinarily effeminate,
learn that in this scorching clime the soldier will not mount
guard without one. Night wears on, we sit, we take a panal,
which is as quick work as snapdragon, and far more elegant ;
again we stroll. Midnight clears the public walks, but few
Spanish families retire till two. A solitary bachelor like myself
still wanders, or still lounges on a bench in the warm moonlight.
The last guitar dies away, the cathedral clock wakes up your
reverie, you too seek your couch, and amid a gentle, sweet flow
of loveliness, and light, and music, and fresh air, thus dies a
day in Spain.
Adieu, my dearest mother. A thousand loves to all.1
B. Disraeli.

To Sarah Disraeli. Gibraltar, Aug. 9.
My dear Sa,
We arrived here 2 yesterday tired to death, but very well.
The Mediterranean packet is expected hourly, and I lose not
a moment in writing to you, which I do in compliment to your
most welcome letter which awaited me here, and which,
though short enough, was most sweet. The very long one
about all the things I want to know makes my mouth water.
. . . In regard to any plans, we are certainly off next
packet. No farther can I aver. What use are plans ? Did
I dream six months ago of Andalusia, where I have spent
some of the most agreeable hours of my existence ? Such a
trip ! Such universal novelty, and such unrivalled luck in
all things ! . . .
This is the country for a national novelist. The alfresco
life of the inhabitants induces a variety of the most pictu
resque manners ; their semi-savageness makes each district
retain with barbarous jealousy its own customs and its own
costumes. A weak government resolves society into its
1 Letters, p. 17.
2 They returned from Granada by Malaga and the sea.

1830] WONDERFUL SPAIN 153
original elements, and robbery becomes more honourable
than war, inasmuch as the robber is paid and the soldier in
arrear. Then a wonderful ecclesiastical establishment covers
the land with a privileged class, who are perpetually pro
ducing some effect on society. I say nothing, while writing
these lines — which afterwards may be expanded into a picture
— of their costume. You are awakened from your slumbers
by the rosario — the singing procession by which the peasantry
congregate to their labours. It is most effective, full of noble
chants and melodious responses, that break upon the still
fresh air and your even fresher feelings in a manner truly
magical. Oh, wonderful Spain! Think of this romantic land
covered with Moorish ruins and full of Murillo! Ah that
I could describe to you the wonders of the painted
temples of Seville ! ah that I could wander with you amid
the fantastic and imaginative halls of delicate Alhambra!
Why, why cannot I convey to you more perfectly all that I
see and feel? I thought that enthusiasm was dead within
me, and nothing could be new. I have hit perhaps upon
the only country which could have upset my theory — a
country of which I have read little and thought nothing — a
country of which indeed nothing has been of late written, and
which few visit. I dare to say I am better. This last fort
night I have made regular progress, or rather felt perhaps the
progress which I had already made. It is all the sun. Do
not think that it is society or change of scene. This, however
occasionally agreeable, is too much for me, and even throws
me back. It is when I am quite alone and quite still that I
feel the difference of my system, that I miss old aches, and
am conscious of the increased activity and vitality and ex
pansion of my blood. Write to me whenever you can, always
to Malta, from whence I shall be sure to receive my letters
sooner or later. If I receive twenty at a time, it does not
signify; but write: do not let the chain of my domestic
knowledge be broken for an instant. Write to me about
Bradenham, about dogs and horses, orchards, gardens, who
calls, where you go, who my father sees in London, what is
said. This is what I want. Never mind public news, except
it be private in its knowledge, or about private friends. I
see all newspapers sooner or later. . . . Keep on writing,
but don't bore yourself. Mind this. A thousand thousand
loves to all. Adieu, my beloved. We shall soon meet.
There is no place like Bradenham, and each moment I feel
better I want to come back. . . .
B. D.1
1 Letters, p. 22.

154 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
From Gibraltar to Malta the two friends had ' a very
rough and disagreeable voyage, the wind — a devil of a
levanter, and sometimes sirocco — full in our teeth half the
time, and not going, even with the steam, more than
four knots an hour.' Their ship called at Algiers, and
there, though they did not land, they 'observed with
interest that the tricolor flag was flying,' a reminder
that this was the summer of ' the three glorious days of
July.' At Malta they found an old acquaintance in
James Clay, in later years a well-known member of Parlia
ment and the great authority on whist.
To Isaac D'Israeli.
Malta,
Aug. 27.
He has been here a month, and has already beat the whole
garrison at rackets and billiards and other wicked games, given
lessons to their prima donna, and seccatura'd the primo
tenore. Really he has turned out a most agreeable personage,
and has had that advantage of society in which he had been
deficient, and led a life which for splendid adventure would
beat any young gentleman's yet published in three vols, post
8vo. Lord Burghersh wrote an opera for him, and Lady
Normanby a farce. He dished Prince Pignatelli at billiards,
and did the Russian Legation at ecarte. I had no need of
letters of introduction here, and have already ' troops of
friends.' The fact is, in our original steam-packet there were
some very agreeable fellows, officers, whom I believe I never
mentioned to you. They have been long expecting your
worship's offspring, and have gained great fame in repeating
his third-rate stories at second-hand : so in consequence of
these messengers I am received with branches of palm. Here
the younkers do nothing but play rackets, billiards, and
cards, race aud smoke. To govern men, you must either
excel them in their accomplishments, or despise them. Clay
does one, I do the other, and we are both equally popular.
Affectation tells here even better than wit. Yesterday, at
the racket court, sitting in the gallery among strangers,
the ball entered, and lightly struck me and fell at my feet.
I picked it up, and observing a young rifleman excessively
stiff, I humbly requested him to forward its passage into the
court, as I really had never thrown a ball in my life. This

1830] DISRAELI'S BUFFOONERIES 155
incident has been the general subject of conversation at all
the messes to-day ! x
Long afterwards, when Disraeli had become famous,
Clay appears to have given a somewhat discrepant
account of his friend's popularity with those whom that
friend believed to be the admiring audience of his affecta
tions. ' It would not have been possible to have found
a more agreeable, unaffected companion when they were
by themselves ; but when they got into society, his cox
combry was intolerable. . . . He made himself so hateful
to the officers' mess that, while they welcomed Clay, they
ceased to invite "that damned bumptious Jew boy.'"2
There seems, indeed, at this time to have been hardly
any limit to Disraeli's ' buffooneries,' as he has the grace
himself to call them. He dined at a regimental mess
in an Andalusian dress. He 'paid a round of visits,'
writes Meredith, 'in his majo jacket, white trousers,
and a sash of all the colours in the rainbow ; in this
wonderful costume he paraded all round Valetta, followed
by one-half the population of the place, and, as he said,
putting a complete stop to all business. He, of course,
included the Governor and Lady Emily in his round,
to their no small astonishment.' The Governor, a brother
of Lady Caroline Lamb's, was ' reputed a very nonchalant
personage, and exceedingly exclusive in his conduct to
Ms subjects.' Disraeli, however, was undismayed.

To Isaac D'Israeli. Sunday, Aug. 29.
Yesterday I called on Ponsonby, and he was fortunately at
home. I flatter myself that he passed through the most ex
traordinary quarter of an hour of his existence. I gave him
no quarter, and at last made our nonchalant Governor roll on
the sofa, from his risible convulsions. Then I jumped up,
remembered that I must be breaking into his morning, and
1 Letters, pp. 31, 32. 2 Sir William Gregory's Autobiography, p. 95.

156 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
was off ; making it a rule aways to leave with a good impres
sion. He pressed me not to go. I told him I had so much to
do ! . . . When I arrived home I found an invitation for
Tuesday. . . . Clay confesses my triumph is complete
and unrivalled.1

To Benjamin Austen.
Malta,
Sept. 14.
From Gibraltar I arrived here, a place from which I ex
pected little and have found much. Valetta surprises me as
one of the most beautiful cities I have ever visited, something
between Venice and Cadiz. ... It has not a single tree,
but the city is truly magnificent, full of palaces worthy of
Palladio. I have still illness enough to make my life a
burthen, and as my great friend the Sun is daily becoming less
powerful, I daily grow more dispirited and resume my old
style of despair. Had I been cured by this time, I had made
up my mind to join you in Italy — as it is, I go I know not
where, but do not be surprised if you hear something very
strange indeed. . . . The smallpox rages here so des
perately that they have put a quarantine of three weeks at
Sicily, which has prevented my trip to an island I much desire
to visit. . . . Write to me about your movements, in
order that, if possible, I may meet you and seethe Coliseum by
moonlight with Madame, and all that. I was told here by a
person of consideration that my father was to be in the new
batch of baronets, but I suppose this is a lie. If it be offered I
am sure he will refuse, but I have no idea that it will.

To Ralph Disraeli.
Malta.
My dear Ralph,
Mashallah! Here I am sitting in an easy chair,
with a Turkish pipe six feet long, with an amber mouthpiece
and a porcelain bowl. What a revolution! But what if I
tell you that I not only have become a smoker, but the
greatest smoker in Malta. The fact is I find it relieves my
head. Barrow,2 who is here in the 'Blonde,' . . . has
given me a meerschaum, and Anstruther a most splendid
Dresden green china, set in silver — an extremely valuable
pipe ; but there is nothing like a meerschaum.
1 Letters, p. 33. 2 Younger son of Sir John Barrow.

1830] MALTA 157
I have spent some weeks here. Ponsonby, the Governor,
is a most charming fellow, and has been most courteous to me.
His wife is very plain and not very popular, being grand, but
I rather like her. . . . Do you remember in ancient days
in Windsor, the Royal Fusiliers being quartered there, and
James swearing that the two young subs, Liddell and Lord
Amelius Paulet, were brothers of his schoolfellows, and all
that ? How curious life is. That Liddell is now quartered
here, and being senior captain on the station in the absence of
Fitzclarence, who has gone home to see his papa, he commands
the regiment, and has become my most intimate friend. . . .
He and another Fusilier, by name Pery, the future Lord
Limerick, are my usual companions. They are both men of
the world and good company, forming a remarkable contrast
to all their brother officers forsooth. A visit to Gibraltar and
Malta, our two crack garrisons, has quite opened my eyes to
the real life of a militaire. By heavens ! I believe these fel
lows are boys till they are majors, and sometimes do not even
stop there. ... .
A week ago I knew not what I should do. All is now settled.
On Wednesday morning I quit this place, where on the whole
I have spent very agreeable hours, in a yacht which Clay has
hired, and in which he intends to turn pirate. The original
plan was to have taken it together, but Meredith was averse
to this, and we have become his passengers at a fair rate,
and he drops us whenever and wherever we like. You
should see me in the costume of a Greek pirate. A blood-red
shirt, with silver studs as big as shillings, an immense scarf
for girdle, full of pistols and daggers, red cap, red slippers,
broad blue striped jacket and trousers. . . . There is a Mrs.
Pleydell Bouverie here, with a pretty daughter, cum multis aliis.
I am sorry to say among them a beauty, very dangerous to
the peace of your unhappy brother. But no more of that,
and in a few weeks I shall be bounding, and perhaps seasick,
upon the blue .<Egean, and then all will be over. Nothing
like an emetic in these cases. I find I have very little to tell
you, for although each day brings an infinite deal of nothings,
which might authorise a record over a wood fire in the old
hall, they are too slight to bear any communication but an oral
one. So let us hope that may soon take place. I often think
of you all. ... If you hear of my marriage or death, don't
believe it, any more than I shall of our father being in the new
batch of baronets, which is here currently reported. Clay is
immensely improved, and a very agreeable companion indeed,
with such a valet, Giovanni1 by name. Byron died in his
1 See Appendix A.

158 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
arms, and his mustachios touch the earth. Withal mild as a
lamb, though he has two daggers always about his person.
Our yacht is of fifty-five tons, an excellent size for these seas,
with a crew of seven men. She is a very strong sea boat, and
bears the unpoetical title of ' Susan,' which is a bore ; but as
we can't alter it we have painted it out. And now, my dear
boy, adieu. . . . Your very affectionate brother,
B. D.1
The ' something very strange ' which he had in con
templation when he wrote to Austen from Malta is ex
plained in his next letter.
To Benjamin Austen.
When I wrote to you last I had some thoughts, indeed had
resolved, to join the Turkish Army as volunteer in the Albanian
war. I found, however, on my arrival at Corfu, whither for
this purpose I had repaired instead of going to Egypt, that the
Grand Vizier, whilst all your newspapers were announcing
the final loss of Albania to the Porte, had proceeded with such
surprising energy that the war which had begun so magni
ficently had already dwindled into an insurrection. I waited
a week at Corfu to see how affairs would turn out ; at the end
of which came one of the principal rebels flying for refuge, and
after him some others. Under these circumstances I deter
mined to turn my intended campaign into a visit of congratu
lation to headquarters, and Sir Frederick Adam gave me a
letter, and with Meredith and Clay, our servants, and a guard
of Albanians we at last reached Yanina, the capital of the
province. I can give you no idea in a letter of all the Pashas, and all
the Silictars, and all the Agas that I have visited and visited
me; all the pipes I smoked, all the coffee I sipped, all the
sweetmeats I devoured. . . . For a week I was in a scene
equal to anything in the Arabian Nights — such processions,
such dresses, such corteges of horsemen, such caravans of
camels. Then the delight of being made much of by a man
who was daily decapitating half the Province. Every morning
we paid visits, attended reviews, and crammed ourselves with
sweetmeats ; every evening dancers and singers were sent to
our quarters by the Vizier or some Pasha. . . .
1 Letters, p. 34.

1830] ALBANIA 159
I am quite a Turk, wear a turban, smoke a pipe six feet long,
and squat on a divan. Mehemet Pasha told me that he did
not think I was an Englishman because I walked so slow : in
fact I find the habits of this calm and luxurious people en
tirely agree with my own preconceived opinions of propriety
and enjoyment, and I detest the Greeks more than ever. You
have no idea of the rich and various costume of the Levant.
When I was presented to the Grand Vizier I made up such
a costume from my heterogeneous wardrobe that the Turks,
who are mad on the subject of dress, were utterly as
tounded. ... I had a regular crowd round our quarters
and had to come forward to bow like Don Miguel and Donna
Maria. Nothing would persuade the Greeks that we were not
come about the new King, and I really believe that if I had
£25,000 to throw away I might increase my headache by
wearing a crown.
Meredith gives details of the costume which produced
so great an impression. 'Figure to yourself,' he writes,
'a shirt entirely red, with silver studs as large as six
pences, green pantaloons with a velvet stripe down the
sides, and a silk Albanian shawl with a long fringe of
divers colours round his waist, red Turkish slippers, and
to complete all his Spanish majo jacket covered with em
broidery and ribbons.' ' Questo vestito Inglese o di fan
tasia ? ' asked a ' little Greek physician who had passed a
year at Pisa in his youth.' ' Inglese e fantastico ' was the
oracular reply.
A long letter written immediately after the return
from Yanina gives a highly-coloured account, full of
vivid and picturesque detail, of all Disraeli saw and felt
during ' this wondrous week ' in Albania ; it contains
among other things an excellent piece of comedy in the
description of a festive evening on the journey up from
Arta.

To Isaac Disraeli.

Prevesa, Oct. 25.

. . . Two hours before sunset, having completed only half
our course in spite of all our exertions, we found ourselves at a

160 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
vast but dilapidated khan as big as a Gothic castle, situated on
a high range, and built as a sort of half-way house for travellers
by Aii Pasha when his long, gracious, and unmolested reign
had permitted him to turn this unrivalled country, which
combines all the excellences of Southern Europe and Western
Asia, to some of the purposes for which it is fitted. This
khan had now been turned into a military post ; and here
we found a young Bey, to whom Kalio x had given us a letter
iu case of our stopping for an hour. He was a man of very
pleasing exterior, but unluckily could not understand Gio
vanni's Greek, and had no interpreter. What was to be
done ? We could not go on, as there was not an inhabited
, place before Yanina ; and here were we sitting before sunset
on the same divan with our host, who had entered the place to
receive us, and would not leave the room while we were there,
without the power of communicating an idea. We were in
despair, and we were also very hungry, and could not therefore
in the course of an hour or two plead fatigue as an excuse for
sleep, for we were ravenous and anxious to know what prospect
of food existed in this wild and desolate mansion. So we
smoked. It is a great resource, but this wore out, and it was
so ludicrous smoking, and looking at each other, and dying to
talk, and then exchanging pipes by way of compliment, and
then pressing our hand to our heart by way of thanks.
The Bey sat in a corner, I unfortunately next, so I had the
onus of mute attention ; and Clay next to me, so he and M. could
at least have an occasional joke, though of course we were
too well-bred to exceed an occasional and irresistible observa
tion. Clay wanted to play ecarte, and with a grave face, as
if we were at our devotions; but just as we were about
commencing, it occurred to us that we had some brandy,
and that we would offer our host a glass, as it might be a
hint for what should follow to so vehement a schnaps.
Mashallah! Had the effect only taken place 1830 years
ago, instead of in the present age of scepticism, it would
have been instantly voted a first-rate miracle. Our mild
friend smacked his lips and instantly asked for another cup ;
we drank it in coffee cups. By the time that Meredith had
returned, who had left the house on pretence of shooting,
Clay, our host, and myself had despatched a bottle of brandy
in quicker time and fairer proportions than I ever did a
bottle of Burgundy, and were extremely gay. Then he
would drink again with Meredith and ordered some figs,
talking I must tell you all the time, indulging in the most
graceful pantomime, examining our pistols, offering us his
own golden ones for our inspection, and finally making out
1 The Governor of Arta.

1830] A FESTIVE EVENING 161
Giovanni's Greek enough to misunderstand most ludicrously
every observation we communicated. But all was taken in
good part, and I never met such a jolly fellow in the course
of my life. In the meantime we were ravenous, for the dry,
round, unsugary fig is a great whetter. At last we insisted
upon Giovanni's communicating our wants and asking for
bread. The Bey gravely bowed and said, ' Leave it to me ;
take no thought,' and nothing more occurred. We prepared
ourselves for hungry dreams, when to our great delight a
most capital supper was brought in, accompanied, to our
great horror, by — wine. We ate, we drank, we ate with our
ringers, we drank in a manner I never recollect. The wine
was not bad, but if it had been poison we must drink ; it was
such a compliment for a Moslemin; we quaffed it in rivers.
The Bey called for the brandy; he drank it all. The room
turned round ; the wild attendants who sat at our feet seemed
dancing in strange and fantastic whirls ; the Bey shook hands
with me ; he shouted English — I Greek. ' Very good ' he had
caught up from us. 'Kalo, kalo' was my rejoinder. He
roared ; I smacked him on the back. I remember no more.
In the middle of the night I woke. I found myself sleeping
on the divan, rolled up in its sacred carpet; the Bey had
wisely reeled to the fire. The thirst I felt was like that of
Dives. All were sleeping except two, who kept up during the
night the great wood fire. I rose lightly, stepping over my
sleeping companions, and the shining arms that here and there
informed me that the dark mass wrapped up in a capote was
a human being. I found Abraham's bosom in a flagon of
water. I think I must have drunk a gallon at the draught.
I looked at the wood fire and thought of the blazing blocks
in the hall at Bradenham, asked myself whether I was indeed
in the mountain fastness of an Albanian chief, and, shrugging
my shoulders, went to bed and woke without a headache.
We left our jolly host with regret. I gave him my pipe as a
memorial of having got tipsy together. . . .
In the same letter there is a vivid description of the
scene in the Hall of Audience at Yanina.
An hour having been fixed for the audience, we repaired
to the celebrated fortress-palace of Aii, which, though greatly
battered in successive sieges, is still inhabitable, and yet
affords a very fair idea of its old magnificence. Having
passed the gates of the fortress, we found ourselves in a
number of small streets, like those in the liberties of the
Tower, or any other old castle, all full of life, stirring and ex
cited ; then we came to a grand place, in which on an ascent
stands the Palace. We hurried through courts and corridors,

162 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
all full of guards, and pages, and attendant chiefs, and in fact
every species of Turkish population, for in these countries
one head does everything, and we with our sub-division of
labour and intelligent and responsible deputies have no
idea of the labour of a Turkish Premier. At length we came
to a vast, irregular apartment, serving as the immediate ante
chamber to the Hall of Audience. This was the finest thing
I have ever yet seen. In the whole course of my life I never
met anything so picturesque, and cannot expect to do so
again. I do not attempt to describe it ; but figure to yourself
the largest chamber that you ever were perhaps in, full of the
choicest groups of an Oriental population, each individual
waiting by appointment for an audience, and probably about
to wait for ever. In this room we remained, attended by the
Austrian Consul who presented us, about ten minutes — too
short a time. I never thought that I could have lived to have
wished to kick my heels in a minister's ante-chamber. Sud
denly we are summoned to the awful presence of the pillar
of the Turkish Empire, the man who has the reputation of
being the mainspring of the new system of regeneration, the
renowned Reschid, an approved warrior, a consummate poli
tician, unrivalled as a dissembler in a country where dissim
ulation is the principal portion of their moral culture.
The Hall was vast, built by Aii Pasha purposely to receive
the largest Gobelins carpet that was ever made, which be
longed to the chief chamber in Versailles, and was sold to
him in the Revolution. It is entirely covered with gilding
and arabesques. Here, squatted upon a corner of the large
divan, I bowed with all the nonchalance of St. James's
Street to a little ferocious-looking, shrivelled, care-worn
man, plainly dressed, with a brow covered, with wrinkles,
and a countenance clouded with anxiety and thought. I
entered the shed-like divan of the kind and comparatively
insignificant Kalio Bey with a feeling of awe ; I seated myself
on the divan of the Grand Vizier (' who,' the Austrian Consul
observed, 'has destroyed in the course of the last three
months,' not in war, 'upwards of four thousand of my
acquaintance') with the self-possession of a morning call.
At a distance from us, in a group on his left hand, were his
secretary and his immediate suite; the end of the saloon
was lined by lacqueys in waiting, with an odd name which
I now forget, and which you will find in the glossary of
Anastasius. Some compliments now passed between us, and
pipes and coffee were then brought by four of these lacqueys ;
then his Highness waved his hand, and in an instant the
chamber was cleared. Our conversation I need not repeat.
We congratulated him on the pacification of Albania.

1830] THE HALL OF AUDIENCE 163
He rejoined, that the peace of the world was his only
object, and the happiness of mankind his only wish; this
went on for the usual time. He asked us no questions
about ourselves or our country, as the other Turks did, but
seemed quite overwhelmed with business, moody and anxious.
While we were with him, three separate Tartars arrived with
despatches. What a life ! and what a slight chance for the
gentlemen in the ante-chamber ! T
This letter to his father, like the previous letter to
Austen, breathes in nearly every line a spirit of intense
delight in all the splendour and circumstance of the East,
The buzz and bustle of the swarming population,
' arrayed in every possible and fanciful costume ' ; the
brilliant colours of the military chieftains ; the scribe with
the writing material in his girdle ; the call of the muezzin
from the minaret ; the salute of the passing dervish ; the
'wild unearthly drum' that heralds the approach of a
caravan and the stately camel that follows at the head
of ' an almost interminable procession of his Arabian
brethren'; for all such sights and sounds he has eager
eyes and ears, and he records them with an exultation that
betrays an access of Orientalism. But before the letter
closes Europe triumphs over Asia and with perhaps un
conscious art he ends with the following palinode : —
I write you this from that Ambracian Gulf where the soft
Triumvir gained more glory by defeat than attends the victory
of harsher warriors. The site is not unworthy of the beauty
of Cleopatra. From the summit of the land this gulf appears
like a vast lake walled in on all sides by mountains more or
less distant. The dying glory of a Grecian eve bathes with
warm light a thousand promontories and gentle bays, and
infinite modulations of purple outline. Before me is Olympus,
whose austere peak glitters yet in the sun ; a bend of the
land alone hides from me the islands2 of Ulysses and of
Sappho. When I gaze upon this scene I remember the barbaric
splendour and turbulent existence which I have just quitted
1 Letters, p. 40-47.
2 Ithaca and Leucadia. Disraeli no doubt had in mind his Byron
(Childe Harold, II. , 39). It was from
' Leucadia's far projecting rock of woe '
that Sappho, according to the very doubtful story, flung herself into the
sea. Lesbos, her island home, was of course far away off the coast of
Asia Minor.

164 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
with disgust. I recur to the feelings in the indulgence of
which I can alone find happiness, and from which an inexorable
destiny seems resolved to shut me out.1
'I wander in pursuit of health,' he wrote in another
letter, 'like the immortal exile in pursuit of that lost
shore, which is now almost glittering in my sight. Five
years of my life have been already wasted, and some
times I think my pilgrimage may be as long as that of
Ulysses. Their 'yacht,' he told Austen, was 'the
only mode of travel for this sea, where every headland
and bay is the site of something memorable, and which
is studded with islands that demand a visit.

To Isaac D'Israeli.
We sailed from Prevesa through the remaining Ionian
islands, among which was Zante, pre-eminent in beauty;
indeed, they say none of the Cyclades is to be compared to
it, with its olive trees touching the waves and its shores
undulating in every possible variety. For about a fortnight we
were for ever sailing on a summer sea, always within two
or three miles of the coast, and touching at every island or
harbour that invited. A cloudless sky, a summer atmosphere,
and sunsets like the neck of a dove, completed all the enjoy
ment which I anticipated from roving in a Grecian sea. We
were, however, obliged to keep a sharp look-out for pirates,
who are all about again. We exercised the crew every day
with muskets, and their increasing prowess and our pistol
exercise kept up our courage.2
They spent a week at Navarino, 'the scene of
Codrington's bloody blunder, a superb, perhaps un
rivalled harbour, with the celebrated Sphacteria on
one side and old Pylus on the other. Here we found
the French in their glory. They have already covered
the scene of Spartan suffering with cafes and billiard
rooms and make daily picnics to the grotto of Nestor.'
From Napoli, where they also lingered, the travellers
made excursions to Corinth, Argos, and Mycenae ; and
finally, on Nov. 24, they cast anchor in the Piraeus.
1 Letters, p. 47. 2 Ibid., to. 48.

1830] ATHENS 165
To Isaac Disraeli.
Athens,
Nov. 30.
On the afternoon of our arrival in Piraeus, which is about five
miles from the city, I climbed a small hill, forming the side
of the harbour. From it I looked upon an immense plain
covered with olive woods and skirted by mountains. Some
isolated hills rise at a distance from the bounding ridge. On
one of these I gazed upon a magnificent temple, bathed in the
sunset ; at the foot of the hill was a walled city of considerable
dimensions, in front of which a Doric temple apparently quite
perfect. The violet sunset — and to-day the tint was peculiarly
vivid — threw over this scene a colouring becoming its beauty,
and if possible increasing its delicate character. The city was
Athens; but independent of all reminiscences, I never wit
nessed anything so truly beautiful, and I have seen a great
deal. We were fortunate. The Acropolis, which has been shut
for nine years, was open to us, the first Englishmen. Athens
is still in the power of the Turks, but the Grecian Commission
to receive it arrived a short time before us. When we entered
the city, we found every house roofless ; but really, before the
war, modern Athens must have been no common town.
The ancient remains have been respected ; the Parthenon, and
the other temples which are in the Acropolis, have necessarily
suffered during the siege, but the injury is only in the detail ;
the general effect is not marred. We saw hundreds of shells
and balls lying about the ruins. The temple of Theseus looks
at a short distance as if it were just finished by Pericles.1
'Of all that I have yet visited,' he wrote to Mrs.
Austen, ' nothing has more completely realized all that
I imagined and all that I could have wished than Athens.'
In spite, however, of this momentary enthusiasm there
was not much real sympathy between Disraeli's genius
and the pure Hellenic spirit, and education had done
little to foster any that nature had implanted in him.
' Pleasant Argos and rich Mycenae, the tomb of
Agamemnon and the palace of Clytemnestra,' inspired
in Contarini Fleming thoughts that were not unworthy
of the scene : —
1 Ibid., p. 49. In Contarini Fleming he corrected ' Pericles ' into
Cimon.

166 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
The fortunes of the House of Atreus form the noblest of
all legends. I believe in that destiny before which the
ancients bowed. Modern philosophy, with its superficial
discoveries, has infused into the breast of man a spirit of
scepticism; but I think that, ere long, science will again
become imaginative, and that as we become more profound,
we may become also more credulous. Destiny is our will,
and our will is our nature. . . . All is mystery, but
he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark
veil.1 In the legend of the House of Atreus and the tragic
idea of destiny that underlies it we are in touch with the
Oriental background of Hellenic civilisation, and here
Disraeli is at home. Within sight of the Parthenon
his thoughts are still turned towards the East. ' In art
the Greeks were the children of the Egyptians,' observes
Contarini, and there was more orginality in the ob
servation in those days than there would be in ours.
But Athens stands for literature as well as art, and
presently the memory of early sufferings from grammar
and lexicon supervenes. ' The Greeks, who were masters
of composition, were ignorant of all languages but their
own.' Now that every nation has in its own tongue a
record of all knowledge, let education be confined to the
national literature. To the few who have leisure or
inclination to study foreign literatures he would say, ' Why
not study the Oriental ? Surely in the pages of the Per
sians and the Arabs we might discover new sources of
emotion, new modes of expression, new trains of
ideas, new principles of invention, and new bursts of
fancy.' These are Contarini's 'meditations amid the
ruins of Athens ' ; these and one of those defiant out
bursts of racial scorn for the Northern barbarians among
whom he lived, which became more frequent with
Disraeli at a later date: —
With horror I remember that, through some mysterious
necessity, civilisation seems to have deserted the most
1 Contarini Fleming, Pt. V. ch. 18.

1830] DISRAELI AND HELLENISM 167
favoured regions and the choicest intellects. The Persian,
whose very being is poetry, the Arab, whose subtle mind
could penetrate into the very secret shrine of Nature, the
Greek, whose acute perceptions seemed granted only for the
creation of the beautiful — these are now unlettered slaves
in bai'barous lands. The arts are yielded to the flat-nosed
Franks. And they toil, and study, and invent theories to
account for their own incompetence. Now it is the climate,
now the ; religion, now the government; everything but the
truth, everything but the mortifying suspicion that their
organization may be different, and that they may be as distinct
a race from their models as they undoubtedly are from the
Kalmuck and the Negro.1
The travellers made, of course, an expedition to
Marathon, where, however, discomfort seems to have
effaced in Disraeli's mind the memory of its heroic past.
' I can give you no idea of the severe hardship and
privation of present Grecian travel. Happy are we to
get a shed for nightly shelter, and never have been
fortunate enough to find one not swarming with vermin.
My sufferings in this way are great.' They ' lived for
a week on the wild boar of Pentelicus and the honey of
Hymettus, both very good,' though the former, apparently,
was ' not as good as Bradenham pork ' : and then
early in December they continued their voyage round
Sunium, of which they had ' a most splendid view,' and
through ' the clustering Cyclades ' to Constantinople.
We have reached the Dardanelles, a capital passage — what
a road to a great city ! — narrower and much longer than the
Straits of Gibraltar, but not with such sublime shores. Asia
and Europe look more kindly on each other than Europe and
her more sultry sister.
The breeze has again sprung up; we have one hundred
and thirty miles to Constantinople.
It is near sunset, and Constantinople is in full sight ; it
baffles all description, though so often described. An immense
mass of buildings, cupolas, cypress groves, and minarets.
I feel an excitement which I thought was dead.2
1 Ibid., Pt. V. ch. 19. 2 Letters, p. 50.

168 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
On a closer view the far-famed city did not disappoint
him.
To Isaac D'Israeli. Constantinople, Jan. 11, 1831.
I leave Constantinople to your imagination. Cypress
groves and mosquish domes, masses of habitations grouped
on gentle acclivities rising out of the waters, millions of
minarets, a sea like a river covered with innumerable long
thin boats as swift as gondolas, and far more gay, being carved
and gilt — all these, and then when filled with a swarming
population in rich and brilliant and varied costume, will
afford you a more lively, and certainly not a more incorrect,
idea than half a dozen pages worthy of Horace Smith.
There are two things here which cannot be conceived without
inspection — the Bosphorus and the Bazaar. Conceive the
ocean not broader than the Thames at Gravesend, with
shores with all the variety and beauty of the Rhine, covered
with palaces, mosques, villages, groves of cypress, and woods
of Spanish chestnuts ; the view of the Euxine at the end is
the most sublime [and mystical] 1 thing I can remember. The
Bazaar would delight you more than the Bosphorus. Fancy
the Burlington Arcade, or some of the Parisian passages and
panoramas; fancy perhaps a square mile of ground covered
with these arcades intersecting each other in all directions and
full of every product of the empire, from diamonds to dates.
The magnificence, novelty, and variety of the goods on sale,
the whole nation of shopkeepers all in different dress, the
crowds of buyers from all parts of the world, are just to be
hinted at.
Here every people have a characteristic costume. Turks,
Greeks, Jews, and Armenians are the staple population ;
the latter seem to predominate. The Armenians wear round
and very unbecoming black caps and robes; the Jews a
black hat wreathed with a white handkerchief; the Greeks
black turbans; the Turks indulge in all combinations of
costume. The meanest merchant in the Bazaar looks like
a Sultan in an Eastern fairy tale. This is merely to be
ascribed to the marvellous brilliancy of their dyes, which is
one of the most remarkable circumstances in their social life,
and which never has been explained to me. A common
pair of slippers that you push on in the street is tinged of a
vermilion or a lake so extraordinary that I can compare their
colour to nothing but the warmest beam of a summer sunset.
1 The words in brackets are from a letter to Mrs. Austen.

1831] CONSTANTINOPLE 169
We have seen the Sultan 1 several times. He affects all the
affable activity of a European prince, mixes with his subjects,
interferes in all their pursuits, and taxes them most un
mercifully. He dresses like a European, and all the young
men have adopted the fashion. You see young Turks in
uniforms which would not disgrace one of our crack cavalry
regiments, and lounging with all the bitterness of Royal
illegitimates. It is on the rising generation that the Sultan
depends, and, if one may form an opinion, not in vain. After
all his defeats, he has now 60,000 regular infantry excellently
appointed and well disciplined. They are certainly not to be
compared to French or English line, but they would as
certainly beat the Spanish and the Dutch, and many think,
with fair play, the Russian. Fair play their monarch certainly
had not during the last campaign ; the secret history would
not now interest, but it was by other means than military
prowess that the Muscovites advanced so successfully. The
Sultan had to struggle against an unprecedented conspiracy
the whole time, and the morning that Adrianople was
treacherously delivered up, the streets of Stamboul were filled
with dead bodies of detected traitors.2

He lingered there for more than a month, lounging
daily in the shop of ' Mustapha the Imperial perfumer,'
attending 'masquerade balls and diplomatic dinners,'
and leading a life of rapturous, but far from inattentive,
indolence. The Ambassador, a brother of Lord Aber
deen's, received him 'with a kindness which he should
always remember with gratitude ' ; though in a game
of forfeits one day his Excellency showed so little respect
for the Oriental gravity which his guest was anxious to
cultivate as to make him ' tumble over head and heels.
Can you conceive anything more dreadful ? ' ' My health
improved, but my desire of wandering increased. I
began to think that I should now never be able to settle
in life. The desire of fame did not revive. I felt no
intellectual energy ; I required nothing more than to
be amused.' This was Contarini's mood during his
stay in the ' Capital of the East,' and Disraeli's seems to
have been not very different. ' All,' as he wrote to Mrs.
1 Mahmud II. , destroyer of the Janissaries.
2 Letters, pp. 53-55.

170 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
Austen, ' was like life in a pantomime or Eastern tale of
enchantment.'

To Edward Lytton Bulwer. Constantinople, Dec. 27, 1830.
I confess to you that my Turkish prejudices are very much
confirmed by my residence in Turkey. The life of this people
greatly accords with my taste, which is naturally somewhat
indolent and melancholy. And I do not think it would
disgust you. To repose on voluptuous ottomans and smoke
superb pipes, daily to indulge in the luxuries of a bath which
requires half a dozen attendants for its perfection ; to court
the air in a carved caique, by shores which are a perpetual
scene ; and to find no exertion greater than a canter on a
barb ; this is, I think, a far more sensible life than all the
bustle of clubs, all the boring of drawing-rooms, and all the
coarse vulgarity of our political controversies. And all this,
I assure you, is, without any coloring or exaggeration, the
life which may be here commanded. A life accompanied
by a thousand sources of calm enjoyment, and a thousand
modes of mellowed pleasure, which it would weary you to
relate, and which I leave to your own lively imagination.
. . . I mend slowly, but mend. The seasons have
greatly favoured me. Continual heat. And even here, where
the winter is proverbially cold, there is a summer sky.1
At the beginning of the year Meredith had parted
from ' his amusing but idle ' companions and gone over
land to Smyrna, and a fortnight later Disraeli and Clay
sailed in the ' Susan ' for the same place. There they found
their companion intent on an expedition to ' the unseen
relics of some unheard-of cock-and-a-bull city,' and as
Disraeli was bent on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre,
he and Clay continued their voyage to the south.

To Sarah Disraeli.
We found ourselves again in an archipelago — the Sporades
— and tried to make Rhodes ; but a contrary wind, although
we were off it for two days, prevented us. After some days
1 Life of Bulwer, II., p. 323.

1831] CYPRUS AND SYRIA 171
we landed at Cyprus, where we passed a day on land famous
in all ages, but more delightful to me as the residence of
Fortunatus than as the rosy realm of Venus or the romantic
kingdom of the Crusaders. Here we got a pilot to take us
to Jaffa. One morning, with a clear blue sky and an intense sun, we
came in sight of the whole coast of Syria, very high and
mountainous, and the loftiest ranges covered with snow.
We passed Beyrout, Sur, the ancient Tyre, St. Jean d'Acre,
and at length cast anchor in the roads of Jaffa. Here we made
a curious acquaintance in Damiani, the descendant of an
old Venetian family, but himself a perfect Oriental. We had
read something about his grandfather in Volney, and as he had
no conception of books, he was so appalled by our learning
that, had we not been Englishmen, he would have taken us for
sorcerers. We found him living among the most delightful
gardens of oranges, citrons, and pomegranates, the trees as
high and the fruit as thick as in our English apple orchards ;
himself a most elegant personage in flowing robes of crimson
silk, &c, &c. I am obliged to hint rather than describe, and
must reserve all detail till our meeting. He wished us to
remain with him for a month, and gave us an admirable
Oriental dinner, which would have delighted my father —
rice, spices, pistachio nuts, perfumed rotis, and dazzling
confectionery. From Jaffa, a party of six, well mounted and well armed,
we departed for Jerusalem. Jaffa is a pretty town, surrounded
by gardens, and situated in a fruitful plain. After riding
over this, we crossed a range of light hills and came into the
plain of Ramie, vast and fertile. Ramie, the ancient Arima-
thea, is the model of our idea of a beautiful Syrian village,
all the houses isolated, and each surrounded by palm trees,
the meadows and the exterior of the village covered with
olive trees or divided by rich plantations of Indian fig.
Here we sought hospitality in the Latin convent, an im
mense establishment, well kept up, but with only one
monk.1 The next day they continued their journey towards the
East. In the distance rose a chain of severe and savage mountains.
I was soon wandering, and for hours, in the wild, stony ravines
of these shaggy rocks. At length, after several passes, I
gained the ascent of a high mountain. Upon an opposite
1 Letters, p. 58.

172 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
height, descending as a steep ravine, and forming, with the
elevation on which I rested, a dark and narrow gorge, I beheld
a city entirely surrounded by what I should have considered
in Europe an old feudal wall, with towers and gates. The
city was built upon an ascent, and, from the height on which
I stood, I could discern the terrace and the cupola of almost
every house, and the wall upon the other side rising from the
plain ; the ravine extending only on the side to which I was
opposite. The city was in a bowl of mountains. In the front
was a magnificent mosque, with beautiful gardens, and many
light and lofty gates of triumph ; a variety of domes and
towers rose in all directions from the buildings of bright
stone. Nothing could be conceived more wild, and terrible, and
desolate than the surrounding scenery, more dark, and
stormy, and severe ; but the ground was thrown about in
such picturesque undulations, that the mind, full of the sublime,
required not the beautiful; and rich and waving woods
and. sparkling cultivation would have been misplaced. Except
Athens, I had never witnessed any scene more essentially
impressive. I will not place this spectacle below the city of
Minerva. Athens and the Holy City in their glory must have
been the finest representations of the beautiful and the
sublime ; the Holy City, for the elevation on which I stood
was the Mount of Olives, and the city on which I gazed was
JERUSALEM.1 The week they spent at Jerusalem was to him 'the
most delightful of all our travels.' He visited the Holy
Sepulchre of course and the so-called Tombs of the Kings,
and was so fascinated by the Mosque of Omar, standing
on the supposed site of the temple of his forefathers, that
he 'endeavoured to enter it at the hazard of his life.'
I was detected, and surrounded by a crowd of turbaned
fanatics, and escaped with difficulty; but I saw enough to
feel that minute inspection would not belie the general
character I formed of it from the Mount of Olives. I caught
a glorious glimpse of splendid courts, and light airy gates of
Saracenic triumph, flights of noble steps, long arcades, and
interior gardens, where silver fountains spouted their tall
streams amid the taller cypresses.2
1 Contarini Fleming, Pt. VI. ch. 4.
2 Alroy, note 35.

1831] EGYPT 173
Returning to Jaffa the two companions continued
their voyage thence and arrived at Alexandria on
March 12, 1831. In 'the ancient land of Priestcraft
and of Pyramids,' which next to Syria had from the
beginning 'formed the most prominent object of his
travels,' Disraeli remained for more than four months.
To Sarah Disraeli.
From Alexandria, I crossed the desert to Rosetta. It was
a twelve hours' job, and the whole way we were surrounded
by a mirage of the most complete kind. I was perpetually
deceived, and always thought I was going to ride into the
sea. At Rosetta I first saw the mighty Nile, with its banks
richly covered with palm groves. A grove of palms is the
most elegant thing in nature. From Rosetta five days in a
capital boat which the Consul had provided for us, with
cabins and every convenience .... took us to Cairo
through the famous Delta. This greatly reminded me of the
rich plains in the Pays Bas, quite flat, with a soil in every part
like the finest garden mould, covered with production, but
more productive than cultivated. The banks of the river
studded with villages of mud, but all clustered in palm
groves ; beautiful moonlight on the Nile, indescribably
charming, and the palms by this light perfectly magical.
Grand Cairo, a large town of dingy houses of unbaked brick,
looking terribly dilapidated, but swarming with population
in rich and various costume. Visited the Pyramids, and
ascended the great one, from the top of which, some weeks
afterwards, a man, by name Maze, whom I had slightly known
in Spain, tumbled, and dashed himself to a mummy. Very
awful, the first accident of the kind.
A voyage of three weeks in the same boat to Thebes : banks
of the river very different. The Delta ceases at Cairo, and
Egypt now only consists of a valley, formed by a river running
through a desert. The land is, however, equally rich, the
soil being formed by the Nile ; but on each side at the distance
of three or four miles, and sometimes much nearer, deserts.
The Libyan desert on the African side is exactly our common
idea of a desert, an interminable waste of burning sand ; but
the Arabian and Syrian deserts very different, in fact, what we
call downs. Landing on the African side, one might, where
the desert stretches to the very banks, find a ship of Hadgees
emptied on the shore, in the most picturesque groups, some

174 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
squatting down with their pipes, some boiling coffee, some
performing their devotions. It was excessively close, but
had been a fine clear day. I walked nearly a mile from the
shore ; in an instant very dark, with a heat perfectly stifling ;
saw a column of sand in the distance. It struck me directly
what it was. I rushed to the boat with full speed, but barely
quick enough. I cannot describe the scene of horror and
confusion. It was a simoom. The wind was the most awful
sound I ever heard. Five columns of sand, taller than the
Monument, emptied themselves on our party. Every sail
was rent to pieces, men buried in the earth. Three boats
sailing along overturned ; the crews swam to shore. The
wind, the screaming, the shouting, the driving of the sand,
were enough to make you mad. We shut all the windows of
the cabin, and jumped into bed, but the sand came in like
fire. . . .
As for Dendera and Thebes, and the remains in every
part of Upper Egypt, it is useless to attempt to write.
Italy and Greece were toys to them, and Martin's inventions
commonplace. Conceive a feverish and tumultuous dream,
full of triumphal gates, processions of paintings, interminable
walls of heroic sculpture, granite colossi of gods and kings,
prodigious obelisks, avenues of sphinxes, and halls of a thou
sand columns, thirty feet in girth, and of a proportionate
height. My eyes and mind yet ache with a grandeur so little
in unison with our own littleness. Then the landscape was
quite characteristic : .mountains of burning sand, vegetation
unnaturally vivid, groves of cocoa trees, groups of croco
diles, and an ebony population in a state of nudity, armed
with spears of reeds.
Having followed the course of the Nile for seven hundred
miles, to the very confines of Nubia, we returned. As an
antiquary I might have been tempted to advance, to have
witnessed further specimens, but I was satisfied, and I wish
not to lose time unnecessarily. We were a week at Thebes,
with the advantage of the society of Mr. Wilkinson,1 an
Englishman of vast learning, who has devoted ten years to
the study of hieroglyphics and Egyptian antiquity, and who
can read you the side of an obelisk, or the front of a pylon
as we would the last number of the Quarterly.2
By the end of May he is back in Cairo, which, in spite
of its dinginess, he finds 'a luxurious and pleasant place.'
1 Afterwards well known as Sir Gardner Wilkinson.
2 Letters, pp. 65-67.

1831] CAIRO 175
Clay, however, is ill and likely to leave him, and this
is a serious trouble. ' You know that though I like to be
at my ease I want energy in those little affairs of which
life greatly consists; here I found Clay always ready.' As
Clay expressed it to Meredith, Disraeli was one of those
people who 'ought never to travel without a nurse.'

To Sarah Disraeli.

Cairo, May 28.

I am sorry also to say that his faithful servant Giovanni,
better known by the name of Tita (he was Byron's chasseur of
renown), who is a Belzoni in appearance and constitution,
is also very ill, which is a great affliction. Thus you see the
strong men have all fallen, while I, who am an habitual
invalid, am firm on my legs ; but the reason is this, that I,
being somewhat indolent and feeble, live d, la Turque, while
Clay and Giovanni are always in action, have done nothing
but shoot and swim from morning to night. As I am on the
chapter of domestic troubles, you will hear with regret that my
favourite servant, a Greek of Cyprus, gave me warning yester
day, his father being very ill at Alexandria. He leaves me
directly, which is a great bore at this moment, especially as
I am about to be alone, and would annoy me at all times,
because he wore a Mameluke dress of crimson and gold, with
a white turban thirty yards long, and a sabre glittering like
a rainbow.. I must now content myself with an Arab attendant
in a blue shirt and slipperless. How are the mighty fallen !
I cannot sufficiently commend your letters; they are in
every respect charming, very lively and witty, and full exactly
of the stuff I want. If you were only a more perfect mistress
of the art of punctuation, you might rival ' Lady Mary ' her
self. Thank my mother for her remembrance of me. I can
not write to say I am quite well, because the enemy still holds
out, but I am sanguine, very, and at any rate quite well
enough to wish to be at home  I am quite de
lighted with my father's progress. How I long to be with
him, dearest of men, flashing our quills together and opening
their minds, 'standing together in our chivalry,' which we
will do, now that I have got the use of my brain for the first
time in my life. Tell Ralph to write as often and as much as
he likes, and that I have become a most accomplished smoker,
carrying that luxurious art to a pitch of refinement of which

176 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
he has no idea. My pipe is cooled in wet silken bag, my
coffee is boiled with spices, and I finish my last chibouque
with a sherbet of pomegranate. Oh the delicious fruits that
we have here, and in Syria ! Orange gardens miles in extent,
citrons, limes, pomegranates ; but the most delicious thing in
the world is a banana, which is richer than a pineapple.
I don't care a jot about The Young Duke. I never staked
any fame on it. It may take its chance. I meant the hero
to be a model for our youth ; but after two years' confinement
in these revolutionary times, I fear he will prove old-fashioned.
Goethe1 and Vivian Grey of course gratifying. I hear the
Patriarch is dead : perhaps a confusion with his son. I saw
it in Galignani, an excellent publication which keeps me
au jour. . . . The death of Max2 has cut me to the
heart.3 When Disraeli wrote this letter his thoughts, as can be
seen, were all directed homeward, and in fact he was ' only
waiting for a ship to convey him to Malta '; but 'the more
he saw of Oriental life the more he liked it,' and he
lingered on that he might return with Meredith, who was
now in Upper Egypt. His first glimpse of the redoubtable
Mehemet Aii was curious.
Wandering in the gardens of his palace at Shubra, I
suddenly came upon him one afternoon, surrounded by his
Court, a very brilliant circle, in most gorgeous dresses, par
ticularly the black eunuchs in scarlet and gold, and who ride
white horses. I was about to retire, but one of his principal
attendants took me by the arm and led me to the circle.
The Pasha is exceedingly fond of the English. His Highness
was playing chess with his fool, and I witnessed a very curi
ous scene. I stayed about a quarter of an hour, and had I
waited till his game was finished, I am informed that he
1 A friend of the Austens and Disraelis had just returned from Weimar
and reported that ' the old man himself, and Madame Goethe, his son's
wife, were among the warmest admirers of Vivian Grey ; they had
it on their own particular bookshelves, and they spoke enthusi
astically of it as being after Scott the first of their English
favourites. They could find but one fault, that the author had mis
conceived the German character in his youthful Princess.' Goethe,
according to his daughter-in-law, 'considered that there was
more true originality in the work than in any he had seen for
years.' 2 A favourite puppy at Bradenham.
8 Letters, pp. 62-64.

1831] DEATH OF MEREDITH 177
would have spoken to me ; but as I had no interpreter with
me, and am pretty sure that he was in the same state, I
thought it best to make my bow.1
He seems, however, before he left to have had more
than one audience of the Pasha, to have succeeded in
engaging his attention 'by the readiness or patience of his
replies,' and to have had the honour of being consulted
as to a scheme his Highness was considering for the
introduction of Parliamentary institutions into his
dominions. The traveller pointed out the immediate
difficulties that occurred to him, and the Pasha listened
in silence ; but at the next levee he welcomed his visitor
with a favouring smile and beckoned to him to advance : —
'God is great!' said Mehemet Aii to the traveller; 'you
are a wise man — Allah! Kerim, but you spit pearls.
Nevertheless I will have a Parliament, and. I will have as
many Parliaments as the King of England himself. See
here ! ' So saying, his Highness produced two lists of names.
. . . ' See here ! ' said he, ' here are my parliaments ;
but I have made up my mind, to prevent inconvenience, to
elect them myself.'2
Meredith arrived in Cairo at the end of June, and the
two friends were about to start on their homeward
journey when a calamity befell which was a terrible
shock to Disraeli at the time and threw a cloud over
the whole of his sister's remaining life. Meredith was
stricken with smallpox, and, after a short illness, died on
the 19th of July.

To Isaac Disraeli.

Cairo, July 20th, 1831.

My dearest Father,
If you were not a great philosopher as well as a good man,
I do not think that I could summon courage to communicate
to you the terrible intelligence which is now to be imparted
by this trembling pen; but I have such confidence in your
wisdom as well as in your virtue, that it is your assistance

1 Ibid., p. 67.
2 Vindication of the English Constitution, p. 103.

178 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
to which I look in the saddest office that has ever yet devolved
upon me, because I know that the joint influence of your
experience and your benevolent soul will at the same time
assist the sufferers in forming a juster estimate of the loss
than can perhaps occur in the first pangs of affliction, and
offer the only solace which is dear to a refined soul, the
sympathy of one as refined.
You have already guessed the fatal truth — our William
is lost to us. I feel that I must repeat it. It is too terrible
to believe. ... I would willingly have given my life
for his  , Oh ! my father, why do we live ? The
anguish of my soul is great. Our innocent lamb, our angel
is stricken. Save , her, save her. I will come home directly.
. . . I wish to live only for my sister. I think of her
all day and all night. It is some satisfaction that I was
with our friend to the last. Oh ! my father, I trust a great
deal to you and my dear mother. I do not know what to
write, what to think. I have not said anything that I wanted,
yet I have said too much. God bless you, my dear father.
Embrace them all. I wish that I could mingle my tears with
yours. To Sarah Disraeli.
My own Sa,
Ere you open this page, our beloved, father will have
imparted to you with all the. tenderness of parental love
the terrible intelligence which 1 have scarcely found energy
enough to communicate to him: It is indeed true. Yes ! our
friend of many years, our hope and joy and consolation, is
lost to us for ever. He has yielded to his Creator without a
bodily or mental pang that pure, and honorable, and upright
soul which we all so honored and so esteemed. He has
suddenly closed a life unsullied by a crime, scarcely by a
weakness. Oh! my sister, in this hour of overwhelming
affliction my thoughts are only for you. Alas ! my beloved, if
you are lost to me where, where am I to fly for refuge ? I have
no wife, I have no betrothed; nor since I have been better
acquainted with my own mind and temper have I sought
them. Live then, my heart's treasure for one who has ever
loved you with a surpassing love, and who would cheerfully
have yielded his own existence to have saved you the bitterness
of this letter. Yes, my beloved, be my genius, my solace,
my companion, my joy. We will never part, and if I cannot
be to you all our lost friend [was ?], at least we will feel that
life can never be a blank while gilded by the perfect love of a
sister and a brother.

UcMyyoh 9J)sLy>?yzeyOL 1828.
t^T-cwv .a xlrauHrLg 61/ £7). yia.c-l'j-e. 3Q.yf£
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1831] SARAH DISRAELI 179
Disraeli had thought of returning through Italy, that
he might see Naples and Rome, but he now abandoned
the project, and took what was then the direct route
by Gibraltar ; though owing to a long detention in
quarantine at Malta it was late in October before he
reached England. At Bradenham he found a sorrowing
household, and the beloved sister on whom the blow
had directly fallen almost crushed by its force. ' I cannot
trust myself to write of her,' he says in a letter to
Meredith's sister on his arrival, 'but her sweet and
virtuous soul struggles under this overwhelming affliction.'
Sarah Disraeli was a woman, as her letters show her and
as she is described by her friends, of intensely loving and
sympathetic nature, of real nobility of character, and of
no small intellectual capacity. Henceforth her life was
dedicated to others; above all to her father and her
family, for whom the desolation that had come upon
her seemed to have quickened her affection. For her
eldest brother especially this affection now became a
passion. From the first she had a romantic faith in his
coming greatness, which never wavered even in the darkest
hour, and her chief solace in her loneliness was to watch
the progress of his fame. It is not given to a man in
the stress and turmoil of an active life to pay back in
kind the self-forgetting devotion of a lonely woman's
heart ; but Disraeli's affection for his sister remained of
rare depth and tenderness. ' I believe,' wrote an intimate
friend,1 'he never entirely got over his deep sense of
suffering at the crushing disappointment of her early
hopes, and, amid the many stirring incidents of his
eventful life, the death-bed scene at Cairo was not seldom
recalled. He rarely spoke either of his sister or of
Meredith, but that was his habit where his feelings
were deeply concerned. Once I remember his describing
Meredith to me as a man of great intellectual powers
who would certainly have distinguished himself if he
had lived ; and on the first occasion of his becoming
1 The late Sir Philip Rose.

180 TOUR IN THE EAST [chap, ix
Prime Minister I remember saying to him, " If only your
sister had been alive now to witness your triumph what
happiness it would have given her "; and he replied, " Ah,
poor Sa, poor Sa ! we've lost our audience, we've lost our
audience," and at once turned the subject as too painful
to dwell upon.'

CHAPTER X
Contarini Fleming and Alkoy
1832-1833
Disraeli's pen had not been idle during the last few
months of his residence in the East or during the voyage
home. Contarini Fleming was not published till May,
1832, and Alroy not till March, 1833 ; but when he reached
Bradenham in November both works, if not complete,
must have been far on the road towards completion. In.
the Preface to the 1845 edition of Contarini he speaks of
the book as having been composed ' in a beautiful and.
distant land'; in an unpublished letter of later date h&
couples Alroy with Contarini as having been written while
he was abroad ; and three months after his return, when.
Contarini is already in the hands of the publisher, he tells
Austen that he has another work finished in his portfolio,
and this can only have been Alroy. Whatever the
external facts, there is internally, at all events, a close
association between the two novels. They are spiritually
the product of the same period in Disraeli's life, and that
the period of the journey in the East, and they are
artistically the most sincere and disinterested of his
early works, direct emanations from his own personality
and inner experience. ' My works,' he writes in the
diary to which reference has already been made, ' are the
embodification of my feelings. In Vivian Grey I have
portrayed my active and real ambition : in Alroy my
181

182 CONTARINI FLEMING AND ALROY [chap, x
ideal ambition : The Psychological Romance is a develop
ment of my poetic character. This trilogy is the secret
history of my feelings — I shall write no more about
myself.' These two novels are therefore, in common with Vivian
Grey, of first-rate biographic significance, and Contarini
especially is in some respects the most self -revealing of
all Disraeli's works.
I am desirous of writing a book which shall be all truth : a
work of which the passion, the thought, the action, and even
the style, should spring from my own experience of feeling,
from the meditations of my own intellect, from my own obser
vation of incident, from my own study of the genius of expres
sion. So the self-discovering hero tells us in the first chapter
of the novel, and the author of course intended that we
should apply the words to himself. Contarini's father is
a Saxon nobleman in the service of a northern court ; his
mother was the daughter of a great Venetian house who
had died in giving birth to him : he has thus, like Dis
raeli himself, though surrounded by the snows and forests
of the North, the nervous temperament and glowing
imagination of the South. We have seen something
already of his sensitive and brooding childhood and the
perpetual oscillation of his aims between the fields of art
and of action : on the one hand ' his imaginary deeds of
conquest, his heroic aspirations, his long dazzling dreams
of fanciful adventure '; on the other, ' the first indication
of his predisposition (as a poet), the growing consciousness
of his powers, his reveries, his loneliness, his doubts, his
moody misery, his ignorance of his art, his failures, his
despair.' ' To feel the strong necessity of fame, and to
be conscious that without intellectual excellence life must
be insupportable, to feel all this with no simultaneous
faith in your own power, these are moments of despond
ency for which no immortality can compensate.' While

1832] CONTARINI'S BOYHOOD 183
in some such mood as this Contarini falls in with one
Winter, an artist, a man of philosophic mind and wide
experience, who, in his serene wisdom and penetrating
gaze into the hidden springs of character and the deeper
realities of life, is of the same family as Horace Grey and
Beckendorff in the earliest of the novels, or as Sidonia
in the great trilogy of Disraeli's full maturity. Winter
recognises the poetic gift of the child, teaches him that
before he can hope to be a great artist he must study
his art, and leaves him with some talismanic rules
which he had ' copied off an obelisk amid the ruins of
Thebes': —

Be patient : cherish hope. Read more : ponder less.
Nature is more powerful than education : time will develope
everything.In accordance with this oracular advice the boy deter
mines to be patient and that a book shall be ever in his
hand; but the first he reads, a History of Venice, reawakens
the love of action that slumbers in him and gives another
turn to his aspirations. His ' consular blood demands a
sword,' he resolves to be a Doge, and, as a first step, to
run away from school and set out for Venice; and so end
his schooldays.
After many other youthful adventures and many
shiftings of ambition Contarini at length becomes private
secretary to his father, and developing into a callous and
unscrupulous worldling so much distinguishes himself in
his new career that in a few years he is made an Under-
Secretary of State. In a conference with the ambassadors
of the great powers, he, by a sudden stroke of audacitj*,
wins a diplomatic success which seems to open a path to
the attainment of his highest ambitions. The passage in
which he describes his feelings at this moment of triumph
is worth quoting at length as a specimen of Disraeli's
style at its best.

184 CONTARINI FLEMING AND ALROY [chap, x
The conference broke up, my father retired with the King,
and desired me to wait for him in the hall. I was alone.
I was excited. I felt the triumph of success. I felt that I
had done a great action. I felt all my energies. I walked
up and down the hall in a frenzy of ambition, and I thirsted
for action. There seemed to be no achievement of which
I was not capable, and of which I was not ambitious. In
imagination I shook thrones and founded empires. I felt
myself a being born to breathe in an atmosphere of revolution.
My father came not. Time wore away, and the day died.
It was one of those stern, sublime sunsets, which is almost
the only appearance in the north in which nature enchanted
me. I stood at the window, gazing on the burnished masses
that for a moment were suspended in their fleeting and
capricious beauty on the far horizon. I turned aside and
looked at the rich trees suffused with the crimson light, and
ever and anon irradiated by the dying shoots of a golden
ray. The deer were stealing home to their bowers, and I
watched them till their glancing forms gradually lost their
lustre in the declining twilight. The glory had now departed,
and all grew dim. A solitary star alone was shining in the
grey sky, a bright and solitary star.
And as I gazed upon the sunset, and the star, and the dim
beauties of the coming eve, my mind grew calm, and all the
bravery of my late reverie passed away. And I felt indeed
a disgust for all the worldliness on which I had been late
pondering. And there arose in my mind a desire to create
things beautiful as that golden sun and that glittering star.
I heard my name. The hall was now darkened. In the
distance stood my father. I joined him. He placed his
arm affectionately in mine, and said to me, 'My son, you
will be Prime Minister of . . . .; perhaps something
greater.'1 A short time before, a fresh encounter with a lady
who had been the object of a boyish passion had re
awakened the better feelings of the young egoist and
made him recoil in disgust from the thought of his present
life. The latent poetry of his being revived ; he took
up his pen and, in the sudden rush of inspiration, pro
duced in seven days a novel which was published
anonymously under the title of Manstein. The narrative
1 Pt. II. ch. 13.

1832] CONTARINI'S NOVEL 185
now runs closely parallel to Disraeli's own experience in
the case of Vivian Grey. Manstein is a rapid sketch of
the development of the poetic character, the hero 'a
youth whose mind is ever combating with his situation.'
It never strikes Contarini that he is delineating his own
character, and this may have been true of Disraeli when
he wrote Vivian Grey. In the following passage we may
assume that we have an exact account of the feelings
with which Disraeli regarded his earliest novel five years
after its publication : —
For the work itself, it was altogether a most crude perform
ance, teeming with innumerable faults. It was entirely
deficient in art. The principal character, although forcibly
conceived, for it was founded on truth, was not sufficiently
developed. Of course, the others were much less so. The
incidents were unnatural, the serious characters exaggerations,
the comic ones caricatures ; the wit was too often flippant,
the philosophy too often forced ; yet the vigour was remark
able, the licence of an uncurbed imagination not without
charms, and, on the whole, there breathed a freshness which
is rarely found, and which, perhaps, with all my art and
knowledge, I may never again afford : and, indeed, when I
recall the heat with which this little work was written, I am
convinced that, with all its errors, the spark of true creation
animated its fiery page.1
Manstein proves a decisive influence in Contarini's
life. In depicting the scenes of society amid which his
hero was forced to move, the bitterness of the author's
heart finds vent in slashing satire and malignant
personality. The anonymity which shelters him is not
long preserved, and there is at once a tremendous outcry.
Everybody takes a delight in detecting the originals of
his portraits.
Various keys were handed about, all different; and not
content with recognizing the very few decided sketches from
life which there really were, and which were sufficiently
obvious and not very malignant, they mischievously insisted
i Pt. II. ch. 12.

186 CONTARINI FLEMING AND ALROY [chap, x
that not a human shadow glided over my pages which might
not be traced to its substance.
In the storm that now bursts Contarini's chances of
a political career are wrecked ; and even if it were other
wise his desire for worldly success is gone. Analysing
his own character, he recognises that he has been ' selfish
and affected,' ' entirely ignorant of the principles of genuine
morality,' and with ' a total want of nature in everything
connected with him.' He determines to re-educate him
self. Considering himself a poet, he resolves to pursue
a course which shall develop and perfect his poetic
power ; and, as the first step must be to gain an acquaint
ance with men and nature in all their varieties and con
ditions, he bids farewell to Scandinavia and sets out upon
his travels.
In all this there is much that is of the first importance
as a picture of Disraeli's childhood and youth : though
whether it equally well depicts the formation of the
poetic character is quite another matter. Some of the
ingredients that go to the making of the true poet are
to be found in Contarini as they are to be found in
Disraeli himself. The high imagination, the brooding
temperament, the wild ecstasy — even in some degree
the creative faculty and the self-devotion of the artist
are there ; and yet there is an indefinable something
which we look for in vain. There are elements, moreover,
in Contarini's character — a fierce and ravening ambition,
a consuming thirst for power and greatness — which
assuredly were present in the young Disraeli also, and
have very little to do with the true poetic temperament.
In those perpetual oscillations of Contarini's will between
the active and literary careers it is the author's artistic
purpose to have us believe that poetry is the real vocation,
and that the bias for action is factitious. But the im
pression really left on us is exactly the opposite. We see
Contarini in action ; we are only told that he is a poet ;

1832] POET OR MAN OF ACTION 187
and we feel that Baron Fleming has truly divined the
sentiments both of his son and of the author when he
thus gives expression to his own : —
What were all those great poets of whom we now talk so
much, what were they in their lifetime ? The most miserable
of their species. ... A man of great energies aspires
that they should be felt in his lifetime, that his existence
should be rendered more intensely vital by the constant
consciousness of his multiplied and multiplying power. Is
posthumous fame a substitute for all this ? . . . Would
you rather have been Homer or Julius Csesar, Shakespeare
or Napoleon ? No one doubts. . . . We are active be
ings, and our sympathy above all other sympathies is with
great action. . . . Mix in society [is his final advice],
and I will answer that you lose your poetic feeling; for
in you as in the great majority, it is not a creative faculty
originating in a peculiar organization, but simply the conse
quence of a nervous susceptibility that is common to all.1
From the moment that Contarini sets out upon his
travels the value of the novel as a biographic document
rapidly diminishes. The fact is, just as in Vivian Grey,
after the first volume, the creative impulse is now spent ;
the author has given us a picture of his inward experi
ence as far as it has been carried, and he has to resort to
book making to bring his story to an end. It is better
book making than what we get in the second volume of
Vivian Grey, but little more can be said in its praise. Con
tarini first of all finds his way to Venice and there meets
and marries his predestined bride, the last of his mother's
house. Apart from the descriptions, this part of the tale
is merely conventional romance, with even less relation
than has generally been supposed to Disraeli's own experi
ence. After a year of intense happiness in Crete the bride
dies in childbirth, and in a highly melodramatic scene the
hero, maddened by his anguish, flings himself from a peak
of Mount Ida. For anything that he ever seems to accom
plish he might just as well succeed in his purpose of self-
1 Pt. IL ch. 9.

188 CONTARINI FLEMING AND ALROY [chap, x
destruction ; but he is picked up alive and, after a time,
begins a course of wandering which is made an excuse for
the introduction of the travel scenes in Disraeli's letters
from the East. Falling in again with the philosophic
Winter, Contarini receives some excellent advice.
I tell you what, my friend, the period has arrived in your
life when you must renounce meditation. Action is now
your part. Meditation is culture. It is well to think until
a man has discovered his genius, and developed his faculties,
but then let him put his intelligence in motion. Act, act,
act ; act without ceasing, and you will no longer talk of the
vanity of life.
Disraeli himself profited by this advice, but Contarini
neglects it. He becomes a mere dilettante, and at the
end, having inherited his father's wealth, is found devoting
himself to the planning of an earthly paradise at Naples,
which is to rival Hadrian's Villa. ' Here let me pass my
life in the study and the creation of the beautiful: such
is my desire ; but,' as the author with prescient scepti
cism makes him add, ' whether it will be my career is, I
feel, doubtful.'
My interest in the happiness of my race is too keen to
permit me for a moment to be blind to the storms that lour
on the horizon of society. Perchance, also, the political re
generation of the country to which I am devoted may not be
distant, and in that great work I am resolved to participate.
Bitter jest, that the most civilized portion of the globe should
be considered incapable of self-government !
This enthusiasm for the Italian cause proved short
lived in the author, whatever may have been the case with
the hero ; but in all that is really essential the true com
pletion of Contarini, as of Vivian Grey before it, and of
Ooningsby and Tancred later, is Disraeli's own career.
On nearly every page of Contarini the reader who knows
Disraeli will find him lifting the veil that hides his own
personality. Sometimes in those smaller touches that

1832] PERSONAL TOUCHES 189
reveal his tastes and habits : his unaffected joys in woods
and trees — ; I began to long to be a woodman, to pass a
quiet, and contemplative, and virtuous life, amid the deep
silence and beautiful scenery of forests ' ; his love of
women's society — ' For a long time, I could not detect
the reason why I was so charmed with Egyptian life.
At last I recollected that I had recurred, after a long
estrangement, to the cheerful influence of women ' ; the
incidents of composition — 'After writing a book my mind
always makes a great spring.' 'I can write only in the
morning. It is then I execute with facility all that I
have planned the preceding eve.' ' It is my habit to
contrive in my head the complete work before I have
recourse to the pen which is to execute it! I do not think
that meditation can be too long, or execution too rapid.'
Or in the Polonius-like advice of Baron Fleming to his son,
Read French authors. Read Rochefoucauld. The French
writers are the finest in the world, for they clear our heads
of all ridiculous ideas. . . . Do not talk too much at
present ; do not try to talk. But whenever you speak,
speak with self-possession. . . . Never argue. In soci
ety nothing must be discussed ; give only results. . . .
Talk to women, talk to women as much as you can. This
is the best school. This is the way to gain fluency, because
you need not care what you say, and had better not be
sensible. They, too, will rally you on many points, and as
they are women you will not be offended. Nothing is of so
much importance and of so much use to a young man enter
ing life as to be well criticised by women. . . . Read
no history, nothing but biography, for that is life without
theory. Or, again, in half-conscious utterances of his deeper
self : ' There is that within me which may yet mould
the mind and fortunes of my race ' ; ' the breath of man
has never influenced me much, for I depend more upon
myself than upon others ' ; 'I contrasted the smiling
indifference of his public appearance with the agonies
of ambition which it was my doom alone to witness.'

190 CONTARINI FLEMING AND ALROY [chap, x
Here, too, are many characteristic formulae from the
Disraelian philosophy of life — ' There is little mystery,
there is much ignorance ' ; and with no less conviction,
'Everything is mysterious ' ; 'at the present day we too
much underrate the influence of individual character ' ;
' patience is a necessary ingredient of genius ' ; ' the
magic of his character was his patience. This made
him quicker, and readier, and more successful than all
other men.' The stormy passions, violent impulses,
and conflicting aspirations which made Contarini's life
so fluctuating and tumultuous were present in Disraeli
himself ; but in him held in subjection by an all-mastering
will, so that if we had to select any single quality
as the keynote to his character the choice might best
fall on patience — patience and that unbroken continuity
of mind and purpose and endeavour which patience
renders possible.
In accordance with the promise which he had given to
John Murray before departing for the East, Disraeli sent
his manuscript to Albemarle Street as soon as he had
it ready. On the suggestion of Lockhart, whose own
judgment was perplexed between the ' affectations and
absurdities 7 on the one hand, and ' the life and brilliancy '
of the descriptions on the other, Murray submitted the
work to Milman,1 withholding the name of the author,
and obtained a report so favourable that he at once
accepted it for publication. ' Very wild, very extrav
agant, very German, very powerful, very poetical,'
wrote Milman. ' It will, I think, be much read, . . .
much admired, and much abused. It is much more
in the Macaulay than in the Croker 2 line, and the former
is evidently in the ascendant. . . . The latter part
. . . is a rapid volume of travels, a Childe Harold in
1 The well-known historian of Latin Christianity, later Dean of
St. Paul's.
2 Macaulay had just been ' dusting that varlet's jacket ' in a number
of the ' Blue and Yellow. '

1832] RECEPTION OF CONTARINI 191
prose.'1 Disraeli had called his novel "A Psychological
Romance," and to this title he reverted in subsequent
editions; but at the suggestion of Milman and under
pressure from Murray he now consented to change
it into " Contarini Fleming : A Psychological Auto
biography." The work appeared in four volumes and
with nothing on the title-page to indicate the authorship,
but the anonymity was only thinly veiled, many of the
reviewers mentioning Disraeli by name.

To Sarah Disraeli. May 26, 1832.
I received your letter yesterday, and the note you
enclosed was from Beckford, to whom I had sent a copy of
Contarini. His answer is short, but very courteous. It
commences with four exclamations. ' How wildly original !
How full of intense thought ! How awakening ! How
delightful!' This really consoles one for Mr. Patmore's
criticism in the Court Journal. May 28.
Amid abundance of praise and blame of Contarini, one
thing which we all expected is very evident, that not one of
the writers has the slightest idea of the nature or purposes
of the work. As far as I can learn it has met with decided
success. Among others Tom Campbell, who, as he says,
never reads any books but his own, is delighted with it;
' I shall review it myself,' he exclaims, ' and it will be a
psychological review.' Have you read the review in the
Monthly, where I am accused of atheism, because I retire
into solitude to write novels? July 5.
Contarini seems universally liked, but moves slowly. The
staunchest admirer I have in London, and the most discerning
appreciator of Contarini, is old Madame d'Arblay. I have
a long letter, which I will show you — capital !
1 Smiles, II., p. 338.
2 Letters, pp. 76, 77.

192 CONTARINI FLEMING AND ALROY [chap, x
In the course of the following year Disraeli wrote in
the diary from wliich we have already quoted: —
Beckford was so enraptured when he read The Psycho
logical that he sent Clarke, his confidential agent and pub
lisher, with whom alone he corresponds, to call upon me on
some pretence or other, and give him a description of the
person, converse, &c, of the author of what he was pleased
to style 'that transcendent work.' Clarke called accord
ingly and wrote back to Beckford that Disraeli was the
most conceited person he had ever met in the whole course of
his life. B. answered and rated C. roundly for his opinion,
telling him that what ' appeared conceit in D. was only the
irrepressible consciousness of superior power.' Some time
after this, when Clarke knew me better, he very candidly
told me the whole story and gave me a copy of B.'s letter.
I shall always consider The Psychological as the perfection of
English prose and a chef d'oeuvre. It has not paid its ex
penses. Vivian Grey, with faults which even youth can
scarcely excuse, in short, the most unequal, imperfect,
irregular thing that indiscretion ever published, has sold
thousands, and eight years after its publication a new edition
is announced to-day — so much for public taste.
In fact, in spite of the comparative unfriendliness of
the critics and the praise it received from some of those
whose praise was best worth having, Contarini was a
failure. I published Contarini Fleming anonymously and in the
midst of a revolution. It was almost still-born, and having
written it with deep thought and feeling, I was naturally
discouraged from further effort. Yet the youthful writer
who may, like me, be inclined to despair, may learn also
from my example not to be precipitate in his resolves.
Gradually Contarini Fleming found sympathising readers;
Goethe 1 and Beckford were impelled to communicate their
unsolicited opinions of this work to its anonymous author,
and I have seen a criticism on it by Heine, of which any writer
might be justly proud.2
The criticism by Heine is worthy of citation as the
judgment of the only Hebrew contemporary with
1 Disraeli must have been thinking of the incident already related
(p. 176) in connexion with Vivian Grey ; Goethe died in March, 1832,
a month or more before Contarini was published.
2 General Preface to the Novels, 1870.

1832] DISRAELI'S EARLY STYLE 193
Disraeli who might dispute with him the primacy in
genius : —
Modern English letters have given us no offspring equal to
Contarini Fleming. Cast in our Teutonic mould, it is never
theless one of the most original works ever written : profound,
poignant, pathetic; its subject the most interesting, if not
the noblest, imaginable — the development of a poet ; truly
psychological ; passion and mockery ; Gothic richness, the
fantasy of the Saracens, and yet over all a classic, even a
death-like, repose.1
One of the most discerning critics 2 of Disraeli's novels
has noted the excellence of his style in early life as com
pared with what we find after the habits of Parliamentary
oratory had grown upon him ; and though we may not
be able to adopt his own too complacent judgment that
Contarini is 'the perfection of English prose,' his style
perhaps is here at its best. It has a rhythm and swing
that carry us along, and is full of sparkle and vitality;
and though it is deficient in some of the finer graces of
consummate prose, in the unerring instinct of the scholar
for the most appropriate word, in tenderness, in deli
cacy, in all that prose may legitimately borrow from
poetry, there is no lack of any rhetorical excellence. At
times the fervour of the rhetoric carries us to real heights
of imaginative eloquence, and it is not often that the
eloquence degenerates into bombast or that the glitter
of the style becomes merely meretricious ; while we
find comparatively little of the affected prettiness or
careless verbiage that are too frequent in the later novels.
On the other hand, there is a curious absence in Contarini
of the special qualities which give to the novels their
peculiar flavour. Disraeli is here so full of his high
poetic theme that we seldom see the familiar ironic
smile playing over his features or catch that note of
1 1 am indebted for this passage to Dr. E. C. Brewster's work
Disraeli in Outline, but have not succeeded in tracing the original
reference. 2 Sir Leslie Stephen : Hours in a Library, H., p. 139.
vol. i — o

194 CONTARINI FLEMING AND ALROY [chap, x
mocking laughter which is heard so often in his other
works.

Alroy, the second direct product of the Eastern jour
ney, though, as already noted, not published till March,
1833, was begun two years earlier during Disraeli's visit
to Jerusalem ; indeed, in later life Disraeli ascribed to
it an even earlier origin.
I had commenced Alroy the year after my first publica
tion, and had thrown the manuscript aside. Being at
Jerusalem iu the year 1831, and visiting the traditionary
Tombs of the Kings, my thoughts recurred to the marvellous
career which had attracted my boyhood, and I shortly after
finished a work which I began the year after I wrote Vivian
Grey.1 The novel appeared as ' The Wondrous Tale of
Alroy, by The Author of Vivian Grey and Contarini
Fleming,' and with a dedication to Sarah Disraeli ; and
like Vivian Grey and The Young Duke it was published
by Colburn; Murray, out of heart with the frightful
aspect of coming events,' and ' his incessant ill luck
in the publication of works of fiction,' and not encouraged
by the comparative failure of Contarini Fleming, had
returned the manuscript unread when the author sub
mitted it.
The period of the novel is the twelfth century, when
the Caliphate was in a state of rapid decay and the
Empire of Western Asia was divided among the Seljuks :
its purpose, in Disraeli's own words, ' the celebration of
a gorgeous incident in the annals of that sacred and
romantic people from whom I derive my blood and name.'2
The real David Alroy appears to have been little better
than a vulgar impostor, but Disraeli has idealised him
into a figure worthy to be compared with Judas Mac-
cabaeus. 1 General Preface to the Novels.
2 Preface to The Revolutionary Epick, 1834.

1833] CAREER OF ALROY 195
A scion of the House of David and one of those
Hebrew rulers who under the title of 'Princes of the
Captivity ' exercised a certain authority over their own
people by the tolerant permission of the Mahomedan
conquerors, Alroy conceives the idea of winning back
the independence of Israel and restoring her departed
glory. The slaying of a Seljuk chief, who has offered
violence to his sister, compels him to fly from his home,
and encouraged by a visit to Jabaster, a priest who had
been the mentor of his youth, and who had diligently
fostered his high ideals and ambitions, he sets out on a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem to win the token of his election.
There, after manifold sufferings and adventures, he
arrives ; and there in the Tombs of the Kings, amid inci
dents of supernatural awe, he receives the sceptre of
King Solomon from the hands of his great ancestor him
self. With full assurance of his mission, and supported
by Jabaster, he now raises the standard of revolt and
sweeps through Western Asia on a tide of victory and
conquest. But with constant success his belief in him
self grows overweening, and he begins to dream of other
things than Jabaster's lofty but narrow aim of re-estab
lishing the theocracy.
The world is mine ; and shall I yield the prize, the universal
and heroic prize, to realize the dull tradition of some dream
ing priest and consecrate a legend? ... Is the Lord
of Hosts so slight a God, that we must place a barrier to His
sovereignty, and fix the boundaries of Omnipotence between
the Jordan and the Lebanon ? . . . Universal Empire
must not be founded on sectarian prejudices and exclusive
rights. x
Convincing himself by such reasoning as this, he makes
Bagdad the centre of his kingdom, and is there ensnared
by a Delilah in the form of the daughter of the Caliph.
Jabaster and the more fanatical spirits presently rise in
revolt, and the friend of Alroy's youth falls a victim
i Pt. VTII. ch. 1.

196 CONTARINI FLEMING AND ALROY [chap, x
to the vindictive hatred of the Sultana. From that
moment Alroy 's good fortune is at an end; his enemies
begin to close upon him ; and a crushing defeat in battle
at the hands of the Sultan of Karasme causes his mush
room empire to disappear. Taken captive Alroy redeems
his fame, and wins the crown of martyrdom by refusing
life and liberty as the reward of apostasy from his faith.
His epitaph is written in the words with which his beloved
sister Miriam — a character modelled on Disraeli's own
sister — endeavours to console him in his failure and
remorse : —
You have shown what we can do and shall do. Your
memory alone is inspiration. A great career, although
baulked of its end, is still a landmark of human energy.
Failure, when sublime, is not without its purpose. Great
deeds are great legacies, and work with wondrous usury. By
what Man has done, we learn what Man can do ; and gauge
the power and prospects of our race.1
Did the young Disraeli himself ever dream that the
legacy of Alroy had descended to him, or feel the inspira
tion of his memory as a motive not merely to literary
effort, but to an active carer ? It is probable enough.
As he stood in the Tombs of the Kings at Jerusalem, or
gazed on Mount Zion, the thought may have passed
through his mind that the true aim of the political ambition
which was beginning to shape itself within him should be
to win back the Holy Land for the chosen people, and
restore the sceptre to Judah. To any young Hebrew
of genius such thoughts would naturally — nay, inevitably
— occur ; and in no other way can Disraeli's own declara
tion that Alroy represented his ' ideal ambition ' be con
strued. Men of great achievement have often, in addition
to the imaginative aims which are the inspiration of their
practical careers, their merely visionary fancies which
they never realise, which they never seriously try to
realise, and which are perhaps neither capable nor
1 Pt. X. ch. 19.

1833] DISRAELI'S IDEAL AMBITION 197
deserving of realisation, but which cling to them through
life and, though they may not seriously deflect their
energies, give a certain bias to their character and colour
to their outlook. With all his dreaminess Disraeli's
genius was far too practical to permit him to devote his
life to the pursuit of a mere phantom ; but it is probable
that these early visions never wholly forsook him. They
had a soil of genuine racial sentiment from which
perennially to spring, and though it would be easy to
exaggerate their significance, yet to know them is to
get a glimpse into the inmost recesses of Disraeli's mind.
Therein lies the value of Alroy for us now. Before the
novel was published Disraeli boasted to a lady of evan
gelical turn, who inquired after his spiritual welfare, that
it would show he read his Bible. He read his Bible,
indeed, though less to edification as his pious friend would
have interpreted the word than as a record of exclusive
interest to the race to which he belonged. In this
esoteric sense Alroy is saturated with the language and
spirit of the Old Testament ; and more than any of
Disraeli's works, more even than Tancred, it reveals
the Hebraic aspect of his many-sided nature.
Apart from this biographic interest not much can
be said in commendation of the novel. We are im
pressed, in the dialogue especially, by the quickness
and success with which Disraeli has caught the spirit
of the East, but his story as a story never really grips us.
The East may give us pictures or the embryonic tales
which are little more than pictures ; but where events
lead to nothing and life is a troubled sea with no definite
current setting through it, an historical novel is impos
sible. The remoteness and unreality of the surroundings
destroy the interest for Western readers, and the effect
of unreality is increased by the author's too faithful
adherence to his Eastern models in the things in which
they are least deserving of imitation. In his descrip
tions he falls into a mechanical magnificence and in his
action into a mechanical hyperbole which are certainly in

198 CONTARINI FLEMING AND ALROY [chap, x
harmony with the spirit of the East, but no less certainly
wearisome and absurd ; and he needlessly introduces a
crude supernatural machinery which we like none the
better for being told in the preface that it is ' cabalistical
and correct.' Disraeli had to pay for the faults of his
education, and the mysticism which was such a marked
feature of his character, and which on its higher and
imaginative side was a source of power and insight, too
often degenerated into a taste for mere hocus-pocus.
But the most obvious defect of the novel is the style
in which it is written. In Contarini we had a strain of
fervid rhetoric rarely without distinction. In Alroy we
get in its place a sort of prose poetry which the author
only adopted, as he tells us in the preface to the original
edition, ' after long meditation and a severe examination
of its qualities.' His tale is 'essentially dramatic,' and
therefore he introduces ' occasional bursts of lyric melody
for that illustrative music without which all dramatic
representations are imperfect.' His subject is essentially
poetical, and therefore
I never hesitate although I discard verse to have recourse
to rhythm whenever I consider its introduction desirable, and
occasionally even to rhyme. There is no doubt that the style
in which I have attempted to write this book is a delicate and
difficult instrument for an artist to handle. He must not
abuse his freedom. He must alike beware the turgid and the
bombastic, the meagre and the mean. He must be easy in
his robes of state, and a degree of elegance and dignity must
accompany him even iu the camp and the market house. The
language must rise gradually with the rising passions of the
speakers and subside in harmonious unison with their sinking
emotions. Whether it would ever be possible to use such an instru
ment with effect it is not necessary to inquire ; suffice it
to say that Disraeli has not succeeded. When he tries
to be most impressive he is often simply grotesque, and
at times we ask in amazement if his sense of the ridiculous
has wholly deserted him. Take for instance such a piece
of intolerable bombast as the following : —

1833] PROSE POETRY 199
Pallid and mad he swift upsprang, and he tore up a tree by
its lusty roots, and down the declivity, dashing with rapid
leaps, panting and wild, he struck the ravisher on the temple
with the mighty pine.
That fantastical genius Beckford was enchanted with
it all, and wished 'the truly wondrous tale had been
extended to twenty volumes'; this in spite of some
distress at the discovery that ' Disraeli and company
were smoking away like vulgar factories.' Disraeli
wrote J to his sister immediately after publication : —
Of Alroy I hear golden opinions, and I doubt not of its
success. ... I hear no complaints of its style, except from
the critics. The common readers seem to like the poetry and
the excitement. Mrs. Jameson told Otley that 'reading it
was like riding an Arab.' Slade, the traveller, said ' it was the
most thoroughly Oriental book he had ever read.'
In spite, however, of these encouraging pronouncements,
the author's hopes were hardly realised : the subject was
too remote and, his own opinion notwithstanding, the
style presented too easy a mark for ridicule2; so that
the book, if not a failure, had at best only a moderate
success. With Alroy was published a short story entitled The
Rise of Iskander, which Disraeli appears to have written
while he was on a visit to Bath with Bulwer. Iskander
is the Scanderbeg of Gibbon, the Albanian prince who
won his independence in the days of Mahommed the
Conqueror; and the piece was designed to provide a
contrast to Alroy by setting forth ' the history of a
Christian hero placed in a somewhat similar position but
1 March 26, 1833 ; Letters, p. 81.
2 There was an amusing parody by Maginn, Disraeli's old acquaintance
of Representative days : — ' O reader dear ! do pray look here, and you
will spy the curly hair and forehead fair, and nose so high and gleaming
eye of Benjamin Dis-ra-e-li, the wondrous boy who wrote Alroy in rhyme
and prose, only to show, how long ago victorious Judah's lion-banner
rose,' &c. There is a good deal of this prose poetry in The Young Duke,
and Disraeli never wholly lost the habit. Even in his last novel we find
him in the middle of a passage of ordinary prose suddenly breaking into
verse: 'And now and then was heard a silver laugh, and now and then
was breathed a gentle sigh ' (Endymion, Ch. II.).

200 CONTARINI FLEMING AND ALROY [chap, x
achieving a very different end. It is a pretty tale,
as the author claimed, and it shows to what good
account he could turn his brief visit to Albania; but
apart from this it has nothing that is peculiar to
Disraeli nor any special significance in the story of his
inner development.

CHAPTER XI
Entry into Politics
1832-1833
' Poetry is the safety valve of my passions, but I wish
to act what I write.' Disraeli was not the man to de
generate into a dilettante recluse like Contarini or to
waste his life in fanciful dreams of Hebrew conquest
after the manner of Alroy. The journey to the East
had restored him to health and vigour. He arrived in
England ' in famous condition — better indeed than I
ever was in my life and full of hope and courage in
spite of the overwhelming catastrophe ' ; so he wrote
to Austen. One of his first acts was to withdraw his
name from the books of Lincoln's Inn; he would not
even pay the tribute to convention of cloaking his vague
ambitions under the dress of an acknowledged profes
sion. His debts were a heavy burden, but he had one
tangible asset in his literary reputation. 'Mr. Disraeli,
Sir, is come to town — young Mr. Disraeli,' said Col
burn to Bulwer. ' Won't he give us a nice light article
about his travels ? ' In his pen Disraeli had a per
manent source of income ; but during his absence he
had developed new ambitions that were more likely to
increase expenditure than income. In the East, as
health and courage returned, his thoughts had begun
to dwell on the attractions of an active political career.
Even before he left England Parliament seems to have
201

202 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
been in his mind. 'I should have liked you,' writes
Austen in July, 1830, to have had a picking out of this
general election ; it would be a famous opening and lots
to say.' During his sojourn in the East, Disraeli had
been a diligent reader of Galignani, and he used in later
life to say that it was in studying a file of that ' excellent
publication ' during his long detention in quarantine at
Malta that he first began to understand politics.1 Through
Galignani he was able to follow the fortunes of the
Reform movement, and he followed them with the keenest
interest. ' What a confusion you are all in,' he wrote
to Austen from Constantinople, when he read of that
' bold act of cowardice ' 2 on the part of the Wellington
Ministry, the postponement of the King's visit to the
City in November, 1830. 'I have just got through
a batch of Galignanis. What a capital Pantomime it
would make : " The Lord Mayor's Day or Harlequin
Brougham " ' ; and the fancy pleased him so much that
by a habit that was already forming he repeated it in
almost the same words in letters to his father and Bulwer,
adding to Bulwer, ' Oh for the days of Aristophanes,
or Foote, or even Scaramouch ! Damn the Licenser ! '
'The wonderful news which meets me here in a pile of
Galignanis has quite unsettled my mind,' he writes from
Cairo on reading of the introduction of the first Reform
Bill. ' I am of course very anxious to hear of the pro
gress of the Bill. I have heard up to the majority of one.'
Disraeli arrived in England on the day that Parliament
was prorogued after the rejection of the second Reform
1 Life of Jowett, IL, p. 109.
2 The phrase was Lord Wellesley's. Disraeli has an interesting note
on this occurrence, written in 1836 : —
' Sir Robert Peel told me that Hume was the real cause of the King's
not going into the City. They had received many warnings and much
information, when suddenly Joseph sought a confidential interview at
the Home Office and told Peel he was in possession of information of an
extraordinary character and that an insurrection was certain. After
wards Joseph had the impudence to make a speech in the House of
Commons abusing the Ministers for not letting the King go, and declaring
that it was his solemn belief that the outcry was all an alarming invention
of their own. " I might have risen and crushed him, the impudent dog,"
said Peel. Why did he not ? The interview was certainly confidential,
but the speech absolved the Minister, in my opinion.'

1832] IN LONDON 203
Bill by the Lords. A fortnight later, during the riotous
weeks that followed the prorogation, he writes to Austen
somewhat in the spirit of an old Tory : ' The times are
damnable. I take the gloomiest view of affairs, but
we must not lose our property without a struggle.'
' In the event of a new election,' he adds, ' I offer myself
for Wycombe.' No new election, however, came at
present, and he spent the greater part of the winter at
Bradenham 'working like a tiger,' no doubt at Con
tarini. By the middle of February he is in London,
' most comfortably located in Duke Street,' and enjoying
his first real taste of the pleasures, of London society.
Through his friend Bulwer, already at the height of his
fame, Disraeli at once found his way into the charmed
circle of Mayfair, and in his letters to his sister he has
left us a graphic and vivacious record of his adventures
in this paradise. To Sarah Disraeli. Feb. 18, 1832.
We had a very brilliant r&union at Bulwer's last night.
Among the notables were Lords Strangford1 and Mulgrave,2
with the latter of whom I had a great deal of conversation ;
Count D'Orsay, the famous Parisian dandy ; there was a
large sprinkling of blues — Lady Morgan, Mrs. Norton,
L.E.L., &c. Bulwer came up to me, said ' There is one
blue who insists upon an introduction.' ' Oh, my dear
fellow, I cannot really ; the power of repartee has deserted
me.' ' I have pledged myself, you must come ' ; so he led
me up to a very sumptuous personage, looking like a full
blown rose, Mrs. Gore. Albany Fonblanque,3 my critic, was
in the room, but I did not see him. . . . The Mr.
Hawkins who made a wonderful speech, and who, al
though he squinted horribly, was the next day voted a
Cupidon, and has since lost his beauty by a failure, and
many others, whom in this hurry I cannot recall — Charles
1 6th Viscount (1780-1855) : A diplomatist of some distinction who had
been for many years Minister at Lisbon, and afterwards for some years
Ambassador at Constantinople.
2 Afterwards 1st Marquis of Normandy.
8 Editor of the Examiner.

204 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
Villiers, Henry Ellis, &c. I avoided L.E.L., who looked
the very personification of Brompton — pink satin dress and
white satin shoes, red cheeks, snub nose, and her hair a la
Sappho. Feb. 22.
I am writing a very John Bull book, which will quite delight
you and my mother. I am still a Reformer, but shall destroy
the foreign policy of the Grey faction. They seem firmly
fixed at home, although a storm is without doubt brewing
abroad. I think peers will be created, and Charley Gore
has promised to let me have timely notice if Baring1 be one.
He called upon me, and said that Lord John often asked
how I was getting on at Wycombe. He fished as to whether
I should support them. I answered, 'They had one claim
upon my support ; they needed it,' and no more. April 28.
The soirie last night at Bulwer's was really brilliant, much
more so than the first. There were a great many dames
there of distinction, and no blues. I should, perhaps, except
Sappho, who was quite changed ; she had thrown off Greco-
Bromptonian costume and was perfecly d, la Frangaise,
and really looked pretty. At the end of the evening I
addressed a few words to her, of the value of which
she seemed sensible. I was introduced, 'by particular
desire,' to Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, a pretty little woman, a
flirt, and a rattle ; indeed, gifted with a volubility I should
think unequalled, and of which I can convey no idea. She
told me that she liked • silent, melancholy men.' I answered
( that I had no doubt of it.' . . .
I had a long conversation with Lord Mulgrave, and
a man talked to me very much who turned out to be
Lord William Lennox. In the course of the evening I
stumbled over Tom Moore, to whom I introduced my
self. It is evident that he has read or heard of the
Young Duke, as his courtesy was marked. 'How is your
head ? ' he enquired. ' I have heard of you, as everybody
has. Did we not meet at Murray's once ? ' He has taken
his name off the Athenaeum, 'really Brooks is sufficient;
so I shall not see your father any more. . . . ' I remained
in Hertford Street after the breaking up, smoking. Colonel
Webster, who married Boddington's daughter, said to me,
' Take care, my good fellow ; I lost the most beautiful woman
1 Sir Thomas Baring, father of the first Lord Northbrook, and at this
time M.P. for Wycombe.

1832] MEETING WITH PEEL 205
in the world by smoking. It has prevented more liaisons
than the dread of a duel or Doctors' Commons.' Then I
replied, 'You have proved that it is a very moral habit.'
W., you know, although no Adonis, is a terrible rouL May 15.
I very much fear that the Whigs are again in, and on their
own terms. Such, indeed, is the report, but that is only a
shot founded on last night's debate; but it is, I apprehend,
a conjecture that will turn out to be a prophecy. I dined at
[Lord] Eliot's1 on Saturday, and met Colonel and Captain
A'Court, brothers of Lord Heytesbury, and Lord Strang-
ford. We had some delightful conversation and remained
till a late hour. Strangford is an aristocratic Tom Moore;
his flow is incessant and brilliant. The A'Courts very un
affected, hearty fellows.
Yesterday I dined at Eliot's — a male party consisting of
eight. I sat between Peel and Herries,2 but cannot tell you
the names of the other guests, although they were all members
of one or other House; but I detected among them Captain
York, whom I had met in the Levant. Peel was most gracious.
He is a very great man, indeed, and they all seem afraid of
him. By-the-bye, I observed that he attacked his turbot
most entirely with his knife, so Walker's story is true. I can
easily conceive that he could be very disagreeable, but yester
day he was in a most condescending mood and unbent with
becoming haughtiness. I reminded him by my dignified
familiarity both that he was ex-Minister and I a present
Radical. Herries — old, grey-headed, financial Herries —
turned out quite a literary man — so false are one's impres
sions. The dinner was sumptuous, and we broke up late.3
The ' John Bull book,' of which he wrote in February
and which was to ' destroy the foreign policy of the
Grey faction,' was published by Murray in April under
the title of " England and France ; or a Cure for the
Ministerial Gallomania." It appeared anonymously and
with an ironical dedication to the Prime Minister as ' the
most eminent Gallomaniac of the day.' ' With regard
to the authorship of this work,' Disraeli wrote to Murray,
'I should never be ashamed of being considered the
1 Afterwards 3rd Earl of St. Germans.
2 Chanceller of the Exchequer in Goderich's Ministry.
8 Letters, pp. 70-75.

206 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
author. I should be proud to be ; but I am not. It is
written by Legion, but I am one of them, and I bear the
responsibility.'1 His chief coadjutors appear to have
been Baron d'Haussez, a legitimist exile, who had been
Minister of Marine in the last Ministry of Charles X., and
Baron de Haber, 'a mysterious German gentleman of
Jewish extraction,' as Dr. Smiles describes him. ' Beware,
my dear, of secret agents,' wrote Isaac D'Israeli to his
son, who had told him that he was about to startle
Europe; 'beware of forgeries and delusions.' His son
had all his life a certain weakness for mystery and intrigue,
and disregarded the warning : but Murray, who, as pub
lisher, bore the real responsibility, was less disposed to
be venturesome, and insisted, to Disraeli's great annoy
ance, on the proofs being read by Croker. ' I have no
desire,' writes the irritated author, 'to thrust my
acquaintance on your critic. More than once I have
had an opportunity to form that acquaintance, and more
than once I have declined it.' It will be remembered
that at the time of the Representative affair Disraeli had
found reason for resenting Croker's interference, and the
prejudice which had slumbered in his mind since then
had just been reawakened by an incident of the present
year. A few weeks before the letter to Murray Disraeli
had failed in an attempt to secure election2 to the
Athenaeum, a club of which his father was one of the
original members, and Croker practically the founder;
and rightly or wrongly the Bradenham family laid the
failure to the charge of Croker. We shall hear again of
the antipathy which these things combined to foster.
The pamphlet, or book — for it runs to 300 pages — is a
violent diatribe against the foreign policy of Palmerston
and against the friendly understanding with France upon
which this policy was for the moment based. The alli
ance between the two countries is, we are assured, ' un-
1 Smiles's Life of Murray, II., p. 344.
2 Under the rule allowing the Committee to elect anually a limited
number of persons ' who have attained to distinguished eminence.' Disraeli
did not become a member till 1866.

1832] GALLOMANIA 207
natural,' and their friendship ' fictitious.' Their ' perma
nent interests are incompatible from natural passions
and prejudices, if from no other reasons.' 'The resolu
tion to be supreme, and the consequent hatred of England,
are rooted in the breast of every Frenchman.' Louis
Philippe and his government are attacked with a bitter
ness for which d'Haussez no doubt was responsible ; and
with a great parade of secret information the writer pro
fesses to set forth the true history of ' that mean and
monstrous incident which hitherto we have been pleased
to style a Glorious Revolution.'
I have endeavoured to show that the English Minister, in
sacrificing all the ancient principles of our policy to ally him
self with our hereditary foe, has not even succeeded in the
object for which he has thus imprudently and previously
paid the dearest price; aud that we have, in fact, deserted
Portugal arid outraged Holland, not for the friendship of
the French nation, but for a mere transient connexion with
two individuals — the French King and the French Minister;
one of whom that nation despises and the other of whom that
nation detests.1
Disraeli afterwards became a personal friend and
admirer of Louis Philippe's, and a consistent supporter
of the policy of friendship with France through all her
many changes of Government. No one would dream
of turning to this hastily-written pamphlet, in which he
made his pen the instrument for setting forth the views
of others, in order to obtain light on his real and perma
nent convictions in the region of foreign affairs. Both at
the time of publication and afterwards he was unusually
silent as to his connexion with the book. ' I am anxious,'
he wrote to Mrs. Austen, ' that my name should not be
mentioned in reference to the work you have been lately
reading. . . . You are so familiar with my writings
that you will not give me credit for every idiotism you
meet in its columns.' What is of real interest now is
the choice of subject for his first venture in the domain
1 Gallomania, p. 255.

208 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
of practical politics. Though it was not until near the
end of his career that he was able to assert himself effec
tively in the field of foreign affairs he had early divined the
truth that it is in this field far more than in the noisy and
exaggerated strife of parties over questions of internal
politics that history is really made. 'There is no sub
ject,' he writes in the Gallomania, 'on which, as a
society, we are so misinformed as our foreign policy. . .
To my mind it is of primary, of paramount, importance :
upon our foreign policy the safety as well as the glory
of this country as a great Empire depends.' After the
experience of a lifetime his judgment remained the same.
'Real politics,' says Lady Montfort to Endymion, 'are
the possession and distribution of power. I want to see
you give your mind to foreign affairs.'
One passage of the Gallomania, which is clearly not
the outcome of any extraneous inspiration, has a curious
and picturesque interest.
An Englishman recently resident in Egypt discovered by
an accident that a secret agent in the employ of France
was in the habit of being honoured with private interviews
by the Pasha. It was immediately after the events of July.
As the Englishman was well cognisant of the constant intrigues
of the French in Egypt — a country of which we may some
day hear, although it is not at present much thought of at
the Foreign Office — he resolved to ascertain the nature
of their conferences. By what means he succeeded, it matters
not at present. . . . Let it suffice that he did ascertain
that, in the event of any collision with England, a French
army was to be received in Egypt and that India was to be
threatened. . . . The feelings of the Moslemin population
of India were to be excited, and even the Hindus were to be
reminded that the most ancient temples of their creed rose
on the palmy banks of Nile. . . . We possess no
diplomatic agent in Egypt. A Consul-General, indeed,
resides there, but his residence is the seaport of Alexandria.
. . . But it so happened that about this time an eminent
person J distinguished by his talents and by the confidence
of our Sovereign, was travelling in Egypt, and the Englishman
1 Some erased words in the original MS. show that the ' eminent
person ' was Sir John Malcolm.

1832] ATTITUDE TO REFORM 209
seized this opportunity of impressing upon that eminent
person his conviction of the French intrigues. The eminent
person was not deficient in that frankness which we flatter
ourselves to be characteristic of our nation. . . . He
took an opportunity in an early interview to communicate
to the Pasha his apprehensions. ' God is great ! ' exclaimed
his Highness, as he drew his pipe from his mouth. ' It is
an infamous falsehood. . . . ' It is an infamous false
hood,' repeated the eminent person to his informant on the
first opportunity. 'His Highness declares that we are the
greatest nation in the world and dear to him as his own
children. Depend upon it, he is devoted to us. Has he
not presented me during my visit with his finest palace ?
Does not his European band, by his special command, play
every day under my window during my dinner ? Does he
not always proffer me the pipe of honour ? And has he not
condescended to accept from my hands the finest shawl
that Cashmere ever produced ? ' The reasoning was unanswer
able, and the solitary Englishman, who was rather a poet than
a politician, proceeded on his pilgrimage.1
The pamphlet received the honour of a leading article
in The Times,2 in which recognition was freely given to
the cleverness and curious information of the authors ;
though it was also broadly hinted that the real motive
which animated them was hostility to the Reform Bill.
The third Reform Bill had now been launched, and as it
proceeded on the perilous voyage which eventually was
to carry it into port, Disraeli's sympathy with the cause
whose fortunes it carried seemed rapidly to cool. ' I
am still a Reformer,' he wrote, as we have seen, in the
last week of February; but a fortnight later he pro
nounced the Bill to be in a most crazy state, and added
that he ' would not be overwhelmed if it failed altogether.
Yet he erased some passages in the Gallomania that were
adverse to Reform, and, when Croker wanted to restore
them, he entered an emphatic protest.
To John Murray. March 30, 1832.
It is quite impossible that anything adverse to the general
measure of Reform can issue from my pen or from anything
1 Gallomania, p. 40. 2 April 20, 1832.
VOL. I  P

210 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
to which I contribute. Within these three months I have
declined being returned for a Tory borough, and almost
within these four days, to mention slight affairs, I have
refused to inscribe myself a member of 'The Conservative
Club.' I cannot believe that you will place your critic's
feelings for a few erased passages against my permanent
interest.1

That curious phrase, ' the general measure of Reform,'
is not without significance. It seems to suggest that
Disraeli's attitude on the question was already not far
different from that which he was soon openly to adopt —
sympathy with the movement for broadening the electo
rate and bringing the House of Commons into touch
with popular aspirations combined with deep distrust
of the motives by which the Whigs were animated,
and of the principles on which they were founding their
reconstruction of the constituency. His political creed,
however, was still somewhat vague, and in the matter
of party allegiance his position was still wholly unsettled.
'I am neither Whig nor Tory,' he explains in the
Gallomania. 'My politics are described by one word,
and that word is England.' His political stock-in-trade
consisted, in fact, of a sincere and ardent patriotism,
genuine popular sympathies, a strong and apparently
instinctive antipathy to Whiggery, and an hereditary
disposition to Toryism derived from his father with an
imaginative interest in its romantic aspect that was na
tive to himself. These apparently conflicting principles
and elements had not yet been fused into the popular
or democratic Toryism for which his name stands in
history, and by the eccentricity of his views and his
rather light-hearted detachment from party he was to
get himself and his friends into no small amount of
trouble. ' I, too, have read the Gallomania,' writes his
sister, ' and I long to see you that you may read me many
riddles. The principal one is, how you will reconcile
1 Smiles, II., p. 344.

1832] CANDIDATE FOR WYCOMBE 211
your constituents to your politics.' His ' constituents,'
indeed, were sorely perplexed by the behaviour of their
candidate. From Sarah Disraeli.
You can imagine the astonishment and consternation
of old and young Wycombe. Huffam [Disraeli's chief
supporter] is in a great fright that you are going to betray
him by proving yourself a Tory after he has for so many
months sworn to all Wycombites that you were not one.
What will happen ? I should be sorry to give up the plan of
regenerating Wycombe and turning them all unconsciously
into Tories.
1 You are probably acquiring an European name,'
writes his father in the same connexion, 'but invention
and imagination are not the qualities for a representative
of our modern patriots.'
High Wycombe, or Chepping Wycombe, as it was
alternatively called, a few miles from Bradenham on
the London side, was a typical close borough of the time
before the Reform Act, returning to Parliament two
members whose election rested exclusively with the
Corporation and burgesses. The sitting members were
the Hon. Robert Smith, the son and heir of the local
magnate, Lord Carrington, and Sir Thomas Baring,
both supporters of the Grey Ministry. When Disraeli
began to cast eyes on the borough there was the possi
bility of an election with the old constituency owing to
a dissolution in the course of the struggle over the Reform
Bill, and there was also the certainty of an election with
the new constituency, and at no distant date, if the
Reform Bill passed. The Royal assent was given to
the Bill on, June 7, and a few days before Disraeli posted
down from London to begin his canvass. 'I start on
the high Radical interest,' he wrote to Austen, ' and
take down strong recommendatory epistles from
O'Connell, Hume, Burdett, and hoc genus. Toryism
is worn out, and I cannot condescend to be a Whig.'
Edward Bulwer, himself a member of Parliament and a

212 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
Reformer of the Radical type, had procured the letters
from O'Connell and Hume, and to him O'Connell's was
addressed. It regretted that the writer had ' no acquaint
ance at Wycombe to whom he could recommend Mr.
Disraeli.' I am as convinced as you are of the great advantage the
cause of genuine Reform would obtain from his return. His
readiness to carry, the Reform Bill into practical effect towards
the production of cheap government and free institutions
is enhanced by the talent and information which he brings
to the good cause. I should certainly express full reliance
on his political and personal integrity, and it would give
me the greatest pleasure to assist in any way in procuring
his return, but that, as I have told you, I have no claim on
Wycombe, and can only express my surprise that it should
be thought I had any.
Hume was more explicit ; but his knowledge of Disraeli
and of the situation at Wycombe seems to have been
extremely meagre, and he presently discovered that he
had lent the use of his name against 'his best friend'
Baring, and another staunch Reformer, whereas, by some
confusion between Wycombe and Wendover, he had
believed that Disraeli was opposing a couple of Anti-
Reformers. A letter of explanation which he wrote to
Smith and Baring, and in which he expressed a hope that
their seats would not be disturbed, was of course published
by their agents, and gave something of a check to Disraeli
at the opening of his campaign. But Disraeli was not
easily discouraged, and he persevered with his candidature.
To Benjamin Austen. Red Lion, Wycombe.
I write you a hurried note after a hard day's canvass.
Whigs, Tories, and Radicals, Quakers, Evangelicals, Abolition
of Slavery, Reform, Conservatism, Cornlaws — here is hard
work for one who is to please all parties. I make an excellent
canvasser, and am told I shall carry it if the borough be opened.
His canvass had at first for its objective the new
constituency of ten-pound householders ; but before it

1832] THE RED LION SPEECH 213
had proceeded many days the situation was suddenly
changed. A chance vacancy occurred for one of the seats
in Hampshire, and in order to contest it Sir Thomas
Baring resigned his seat at Wycombe, thus precipitating
a single election under the unreformed system. Bulwer
tried hard to secure his friend from opposition, but
they seem to have had no love for Disraeli at the Whig
headquarters in London, and Bulwer's efforts were in
vain. To Mrs. Austen. [June 10, 1832.]
We are hard at it. Sir Thomas you know has resigned.
His son was talked of; I have frightened him off and old
Pascoe Grenfell and Buxton. Yesterday the Treasury sent
down Colonel Grey with a hired mob and a band. Never was
such a failure. After parading the town with his paid voices,
he made a stammering speech of ten minutes from his phaeton.
All Wycombe was assembled. Feeling it was the crisis, I
jumped up on the portico of the Red Lion and gave it them
for an hour and a quarter. I can give you no idea of the effect.
I made them all mad. A great many absolutely cried. I
never made as many friends in my life or converted as many
enemies. All the women are on my side and wear my colors,
pink and white. Do the same. The Colonel returned to
town in the evening absolutely astounded out of his presence
of mind, on dit never to appear again. If he come I am pre
pared for him. B. D.
There is some reason for suspecting that the terror
inspired in ' old Pascoe Grenfell ' and others by Disraeli's
prowess was purely imaginary, and that they had never
had any thought of standing ; and certainly the official
candidate, however astounded he may have been, soon
reappeared. Colonel Grey was the second son of the
Prime Minister and was afterwards to be well known to
Disraeli and the world as Private Secretary to Queen
Victoria. In the brief and stammering speech which he
delivered from his phaeton he admitted that he had "^ver
addressed a public meeting before. The same ms 've
been true of Disraeli, but in his case there was non e

214 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
diffidence or hesitation of the beginner. Tales are still
told in Wycombe of that famous first speech from the
portico of the Red Lion. The youthful orator was now
at the height of his dandyism, and his ' curls and ruffles '
played no small part in the election. Standing on
the top of the porch beside the figure of the lion,
with his pale face set off by masses of jet-black hair
and his person plenteously adorned with lace and cam
bric, he must have seemed to the spectators better fitted
for his rdle of fashionable novelist than for that of stren
uous politician. Great, then, was their surprise when
this ' popinjay,' as a hostile newspaper called him, be
gan to pour forth a torrent of eloquence with tremendous
energy of action and in a voice that carried far along the
High Street. He had an instinct for the dramatic effects
which hold the attention of a mob. ' When the poll is
declared, I shall be there,' he exclaimed, according to a
Wycombe tradition, pointing to the head of the lion,
'and my opponent will be there,' pointing to the tail.
By the admission even of the opposite party the speech
was a complete success and his popularity with the crowd
was thenceforth assured.
In the days of unreformed constituencies, however,
elections were not to be won by popularity alone. The
official Whigs and Reformers of course opposed him, and
their county organ x gave him a first taste of that malig
nant and rancorous abuse of which he was to have such
full measure throughout his political career and which a
certain cynical truculence on his own part no doubt did
much to provoke. The Tory organ,2 on the other hand,
welcomed him as an independent in preference to the
official Whig, and gave him a qualified blessing. He had
placed his interests in the hands of one Nash, the local
representative of the great county magnate, the Duke of
Buckingham, whose son, Lord Chandos, was the leader
of the Buckinghamshire Tories ; and though Disraeli
1 The Bucks Gazette. 2 The Bucks Herald.

The High Street, High Wycombe, looking West
Engraved from a painting by E. J. Niemann

1832] FIRST DEFEAT 215
declared on the hustings that he had never had any
communication with Lord Chandos, his choice of an
agent gave no little point to the charge with which the
Whigs persistently assailed him that whetever his Radi
cal protestations he was all the time a Tory at heart.
What is really of interest now is the undoubted fact that
in this his first election he succeeded in effecting an alli
ance between Radicals and Tories, between the popu
lar elements in the constituency and the supporters of
privilege and tradition. When the day of nomination
came he explained his position in a long speech on the
hustings. He wore, he declared, the badge of no party ;
if the Tories had supported him the people had supported
him first ; as regards the Reform Act, it was only a means
to a great end; he expected to derive from it financial,
ecclesiastic, and legal reform : he would seek the ame
lioration of the condition of the poor; the happiness of
the many must now be preferred to the happiness of
the few : and as regards himself he had never received
one shilling of the public money and he belonged to a
family who never had; he was sprung, moreover, from
the people and had none of the blood of the Plantagenets
in his veins. But in spite of this popular programme
and these many popular qualifications he speedily found
it useless to persevere, the poll at its close on June 26
being — Grey, 20 ;
Disraeli, 12.
The defeated candidate consoled himself with another
lengthy speech, in which he fiercely assailed the Corpora
tion and poured the vials of his wrath on all his enemies.
He ended, according to his opponents, with the words,
' The Whigs have cast me off and they shall repent it ' ;
but in a letter to The Times1 Disraeli repudiated this
version. Whatever may be the disposition of the Whigs to me
they never could have cast me off since I never had the
1 Nov. 12, 1832.

216 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
slightest connexion with them. I believe that the phrase I
did use, and I am sanctioned in my recollection by every
person to whom I have applied, was the following: — 'The
Whigs have opposed me, not I them, and they shall repent it.'
I am in no wise ashamed of this observation and I adhere to it.
The defiant note in the hour of defeat was highly
characteristic ; but the speech very nearly involved him
in a duel. As he flung his gibes and sarcasms right and
left he pointed to Lord Nugent1 and retorting to the
charge that he himself was a Tory in disguise declared
that the nearest thing to a Tory in disguise was a Whig
in office. Lord Nugent construed these words as a per
sonal affront and sent a challenge ; but when the seconds
met they agreed that the affair was absurd and arranged
for such an interchange of explanations as averted a
meeting.2 To Sarah Disraeli. [London,] July 5.
Giovanni3 called on me (announced by the servant as
Don Giovanni). He has left Clay and brought me a lock of
Byron's hair from Venice, which he cut himself off the corpse
at Missolonghi. I have been very idle, the natural conse
quence of former exertion, but shall soon buckle to among
our beeches. Aug. 4.
Town is fast emptying. I have been lately at the House
of Commons, and one night had a long conversation with my
late antagonist and present representative. We are more than
friendly. Aug. 8.
On Friday I shall pitch my tent in the green retreats of
Bradenham, and Bulwer accompanies me. He wants absolute
retirement, really, to write, aud all that. He is to do what
he likes, and wander about the woods like a madman. I
1 Younger brother of the first Duke of Buckingham and author of
those Memorials of Hampden which gave occasion for one of Macaulay's

2 Lord Ebrington acted as Lord Nugent's second and Captain Anger-
stein of the Grenadier Guards as Disraeli's. A notice containing the
explanations agreed upon and signed by them is to be seen in the Bucks
Gazette for July 7, 1832.
$ See above, p. 157.

1832] FIRST POLITICAL PROGRAMME 217
am anxious that he and my father should become better
acquainted. Our sire never had a warmer votary. .
I saw Tita to-day, who suggests that he shall return with me
to Bradenham, and try our place.1
The general election could not long be delayed, and the
campaign at Wycombe proceeded almost without inter
mission. The unreformed Parliament was not actually
dissolved till December 3, but on October 1 Disraeli
issued a fresh address which is interesting as the first
full and authentic exposition of his political opinions that
has survived the chances of time. He comes forward
again 'wearing the badge of no party and the livery
of no faction.' He is 'prepared to support that ballot
which will preserve us from that unprincipled system
of terrorism with which it would seem we are threatened
even in this town.' He is ' desirous of recurring to those
old English triennial Parliaments of which the Whigs
originally deprived us ; and by repealing the taxes upon
knowledge ' he ' would throw the education of the people
into the hands of the philosophic student, instead of the
ignorant adventurer.' He is already occupied with that
great question of the condition of the people in which he
took an abiding interest.
While I shall feel it my duty to enforce on all opportunities
the most rigid economy, and the most severe retrenchment,
to destroy every useless place and every undeserving office,
and to effect the greatest reduction of taxation consistent
with the maintenance of the public faith and the real efficiency
of the Government, I shall withhold my support from every
Ministry which will not originate some great measure to
ameliorate the condition of the lower orders — to rouse the
dormant energies of the country, to liberate our shackled
industry, aud reinstate our expiring credit.
With regard to the Corn Laws,
I will support any change the basis of which is to relieve
the customer without injuring the farmer ; and for the Church
I am desirous of seeing effected some commutation which,
while it prevents the tithe from acting as a tax on industry
and enterprise, will again render the clergy what I am always
1 Letters, p. 77.

218 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
desirous of seeing them, fairly remunerated, because they are
valuable and efficient labourers, and influential, because they
are beloved.
And then in a fine rhetorical conclusion he appeals for
support in his struggle.
Against that rapacious, tyrannical, and incapable faction,
who, having knavishly obtained power by false pretences,
sillily suppose that they will be permitted to retain it by
half measures, aud who, in the course of their brief but
disastrous career, have contrived to shake every great interest
of the Empire to its centre. Ireland in rebellion, the colonies
in convulsion, our foreign relations in a state of such in
extricable confusion, that we are told that war alone can
sever the Gordian knot of complicated blunders ; the farmer
in doubt, the shipowner in despair, our merchants without
trade, and our manufacturers without markets, the revenue
declining, and the army increased, the wealthy hoarding
their useless capital, and pauperism prostrate in our once-
contented cottages. Englishmen, behold the unparalleled
Empire raised by the heroic energies of your fathers ; rouse
yourselves in this hour of doubt and danger ; rid yourselves
of all that political jargon and factious slang of Whig and
Tory — two names with one meaning, used only to delude
you — and unite in forming a great national party which can
alone save the country from impending destruction.
At a dinner given to him by his supporters in the
course of the campaign he elaborated his programme,
leaning on this occasion somewhat more towards the
Tory side of the argument, probably because there were
a good many Tories among his hosts and audience as
certainly there was a Tory in the chair. He is still,
indeed, defiantly independent. 'I care not for party.
I stand here without party. I plead the cause of the
people, and I care not whose policy I arraign': but
he rejoices that ' the Tories have joined the popular
party ' iu that town, and it is now that, for the first time,
we are taken back to the principles of primitive Toryism
and introduced to 'Sir William Wyndham and my
Lord Bolingbroke,' of whom we shall hear a good deal in
future. A Whig organ had denounced Disraeli as ' a

1832] A CAMPAIGN SPEECH 219
destructive Radical.' A few short months ago, he
retorted, they had described him as 'a disappointed
Tory candidate.' ' I need scarcely say to you that I
have undergone no change. I am as I ever was in motive,
principle, and determination.' In advocating triennial
Parliaments he was only supporting ' the true principles,
the just spirit of our admirable constitution.' They
had been advocated by the Tory Party in ' the most
laudable period of its career,' — by Sir William Wyndham
'in a speech which for sound argument, keen research,
close reasoning, and bitter invective, is, I think, un
equalled,' and by Lord Bolingbroke, 'one of the ablest
men who ever lived' : and he was not ashamed to be
'as great and as destructive a Radical as Sir William
Wyndham and my Lord Bolingbroke.' The ballot
again was decidedly a Conservative measure, and he
supported it as much against the passions of the many
as the prejudices of the few. He was, in fact, ' a Con
servative to preserve all that is good in our constitution,
a Radical to remove all that is bad.' As the people had
been invested with power, he wished to see them fitted
for its exercise ; therefore, he wished to see the taxes
on knowledge repealed and the Press really free. In the
matter of foreign affairs ' he shewed how the policy of
the present Administration must lead to an ultimate
loss of the sovereignty of the seas, the destruction of our
commerce, and finally of our country. Peace is now
the policy of England. We have gained everything:
now it is our duty to preserve.' He was a sincere friend
of the slave population, but he was not 'one of those
precious politicians who wish to deliver the Colonies of
England to the United States of America.' Finally, Free
Trade was a theory which ' as a theory he much admired,'
but a word of warning was necessary as to its practical
application. I cannot resist the conviction that if we have recourse
to any sudden alteration of the present system, we
may say farewell to the county of Bucks, farewell

220 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
to the beautiful Chilterns. . . . You will ask is
bread, then, always to be dear? By no means, but it is
surely better to have dear bread than to have no bread
at all. Reduce the burdens that so heavily press upon the
farmer, and then reduce his protection in the same ratio.
That is the way to have cheap bread. I do not doubt that
when the question of tithes is eventually settled, when the
poor laws are brought back to the system of 1795, and when
we employ our surplus revenue in relieving the agricultural
interest instead of sending forth fantastic expeditions to
attack our ancient allies — I do not doubt that then we may
have the blessing of cheap bread without destroying the inter
est which is the basis of all sound social happiness.1
' If I gain my election I think I have doubled the
Cape of my destiny,' Disraeli wrote to Evans, his old
comrade of the solicitor's office. He wah not to gain
his election. The Whigs put forth all their efforts to
defeat him, and on the hustings he angrily declared that
' the secret of their enmity was that he was not nobly
born.' When the poll closed on Dec. 12, the figures
were — Smith, 179.
Grey, 140.
Disraeli, 119.
To Benjamin Austen. Sunday.
Had my agent attended to our registration, which for
various reasons he did not, I should have succeeded at
Wycombe, as upwards of 18 ratted from Grey, but the rates
of many of my old supporters were not paid up. The election,
or rather contest, did not cost me £80, the expense of
hustings, &c, and Grey not short of £800. Had I let money
fly I should have come in. I make no doubt of success another
time. Beaten at Wycombe, he on the same day issued an
address to the electors of the county.
1 This speech is preserved in the Wycombe Sentinel (Nov. 30), a
weekly publication, of which eight numbers were issued gratis by' the
Disraeli party during the campaign. There is also a report in the Bucks
Herald of Dec. 1.

1832] A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW 221
I come forward as the supporter of that great interest
which is the only solid basis of the social fabric, and, con
vinced that the sound prosperity of this country depends
upon the protected industry of the farmer, I would resist
that spirit of rash and experimental legislation which is fast
hurrying this once glorious Empire to the agony of civil con
vulsion. Lord Chandos1 was the only Tory in the field, opposed
to two Reformers ; but when Disraeli arrived at Ayles
bury on the day. after the issue of his address he found
that he had been anticipated, and he at once withdrew
his own pretensions, and appeared on the hustings as
a supporter of the second Tory candidate. The incident
marked a distinct advance towards formal alliance with
the Tory Party. As the hostile Journal put it, having been
beaten at Wycombe as a Tory Radical he endeavoured
to come forward, for the County as a Radical Tory.

To the Rev. Alfred Beaven.
Hughenden Manor, Jan. 17, 1874.
On the loss of my election in 1832 I started for the County,
and issued my address on the same day that Mr. Scott Murray,
unknown to me, agreed to become a candidate. I acted
throughout the Wycombe election and on this occasion
entirely with the approval and under the advice of Lord
Chandos, then one of the principal leaders of the Tory party.
We felt it would not do for me to stand in the way of Mr.
Scott Murray, a gentleman of large estate. He was an amiable
man, totally unfit to be a County candidate in those stormy
days, and lost his election, which seemed difficult, as there
was no doubt, from the enthusiasm of the farmers in my
favour, I should have been returned by five or six hundred
majority. Though it is now a mere point of historical curiosity, I
must observe, that I advocated the ballot in 1832 because
it was part of the Tory scheme of a century before ; and for
the same reason, as it was suggested by Sir W. Wyndham,
and particularly Sir John Hinde Cotton, almost as distin
guished a leader of the Country party, in the days of the
1 Afterwards second Duke of Buckingham.

222 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
first Georges. It seemed to me, that the Borough constitu
ency of Lord Grey was essentially, and purposely, a dissenting
and low Whig constituency, consisting of the principal em
ployers of labour — and that the ballot was the only instru
ment to extricate us from these difficulties. . . .
Political history is not sufficiently known now, but when
I started in life, it is not an exaggeration to say, that the mind
of the country, even in the Houses of Parliament, was a com
plete blank upon it. The Tory party had lost all their tradi
tions, and this led to their fall : to the mess they made about
the Roman Catholics, and Parliamentary Reform. I have,
for forty years, been labouring to replace the Tory party in
their natural and historical position in this country. I am
in the sunset of life, but I do not despair of seeing my purpose
effected. To General The Hon. Charles Grey}
10, DOWNINO-STKEET, WhTTEHAII., Nov. 30, 1868.
Mv dear General,
I reciprocate all your feelings, and shall cherish your
friendship, which I highly esteem. Your conduct to me,
during my tenure of Office, has been admirable, and in quitting
my post, it is a consolation to me to know that Her Majesty
has near her a gentleman in whose abilities, experience,
judgment, honor, and devotion she may place implicit re
liance. Let me know when Her Majesty would wish to receive me
to-morrow ; and believe me, Yours sincerely, B. Disraeli.

Meanwhile during those autumn months at Bradenham,
in the intervals of electioneering, Alroy had been com
pleted ; and early in the new year Disraeli was at Bath
writing The Tale of Iskander.

To Sarah Disraeli. Bath, Jan. 19, 1833.
Bulwer and I arrived here on Monday, and have found the
change very beneficial and refreshing. Such is the power of
1 His antagonist at Wycombe.

1833] IXION 223
novelty, that the four or five days seem an age. . . We are
great lions here, as you may imagine, but have not been any
where, though we have received several invitations, preferring
the relaxation of our own society, and smoking Latakia, which
as a source of amusement, I suppose, will last a week. I like
Bath very much. Bulwer and I went in late to one publie
ball, and got quite mobbed. London, Jan. 29.
I dined with Bulwer en famille on Sunday, ' to meet some
truffles ' — very agreeable company. His mother-in-law,
Mrs. Wheeler, was there ; not so pleasant, something between
Jeremy Bentham and Meg Merrilies, very clever, but awfully
revolutionary. She poured forth all her systems upon my
novitiate ear, and while she advocated the rights of woman,
Bulwer abused system-mongers and the sex, and Rosina
played with her dog. Feb. 7.
Went to the House of Commons to hear Bulwer adjourn
the House : was there yesterday during the whole debate —
one of the finest we have had for years. Bulwer spoke, but
he is physically disqualified for an orator; and, in spite of
all his exertions, never can succeed. He was heard with great
attention, and is evidently backed by a party. Heard
Macaulay's best speech, Sheil and Charles Grant. Macaulay
admirable ; but, between ourselves, I could floor them all.
This entre nous ; I was never more confident of anything than
that I could carry everything before me in that House. The
time will come. . . . Grey spoke highly of my oratorical
powers to Bulwer, said he never heard 'finer command of
words.' Ixion is thought the best thing I ever wrote.1
Ixion in Heaven was one of several short pieces which
he contributed about this time to the New Monthly, a
magazine owned by Colburn, of which Bulwer was the
editor. A companion piece The Infernal Marriage was
published in the following year. Light, satirical dialogues
conceived in the manner of Lucian, they are reminiscences,
as has been noted before, of Disraeli's schoolboy admira
tion for that author, though they surpass even Lucian in
the audacity of their persiflage. There was an element
1 Letters, pp. 79, 80.

224 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
of sheer irreverence in Disraeli strangely mingled as
in Heine with the more obvious characteristics of
the Semitic temperament — a spirit of revolutionary
mockery ever struggling in both with the mysticism of
the Hebrew, so that they both of them appear to be
the most impossible compounds of Spinoza and Voltaire;
and nowhere has Disraeli given more perfect expression
to this side of his complex nature than in these dialogues,
because nowhere else is its expression so genial and in
offensive. His father thought them the most original
of all his writings ; and more than one critic since, charmed
by their wit and vivacity and sparkle, their entire freedom
from malice, and the spirit of innocent mischief wliich
breathes through them, has repeated the contemporary
judgment, and pronounced them to be the best things
that their author ever wrote.
To Sarah Disraeli. April 8.
I have agreed to stand for Marylebone, but I shall not go
to the poll unless I am certain, or very confident ; there is
even a chance of my not being opposed. In the Town yester
day, I am told, ' some one asked Disraeli, in offering himself
for Marylebone, on what he intended to stand. " On my
head," was the reply.'
I have heard nothing more from  , who appears
to have pocketed more than I should like to do. It was
impossible to pass over attacks from such a quarter in silence.
The only way to secure future ease is to take up a proper
position early in life, and show that you will not be insulted
with impunity.1
The allusion in this passage is to a correspondence
with Dashwood, the Whig member for Bucks, who in
a speech at Wycombe had elaborately depicted a type
of political profligacy in language that had been inter
preted as applying to the late candidate for the borough.
More perhaps in a spirit of calculation than out of real
sensitiveness or irritability Disraeli was in these years
1 Letters, p. 82.

1833] CANDIDATE FOR MARYLEBONE 225
something of a fire-eater, ready to fly out at every fancied
insult ; in marked contrast to his contemptuous dis
regard in later days of the shower of venomous abuse
that unceasingly descended on him. He succeeded
on this occasion in intimidating his critic, but at the
expense of alarming his family.
The candidature for Marylebone began and ended with
the issue of an address. Appealing to an urban constitu
ency, Disraeli stands forth again as a militant democrat,
the comparative Toryism of his views on Church and
land fading into the background. ' Supported by neither
of the aristocratic parties,' he appears before the electors
' as an independent member of society who has no interest,
either direct or indirect, in corruption or misgovernment,
and as one of a family untainted by the receipt of public
money.' He asks for their votes 'as a man who has
already fought the battle of the people and as one who
believes that the only foundation on which a beneficent
and vigorous government can now be raised is an un
limited confidence in the genius of the British nation.'
And then he repeats the principal items of his Wy
combe programme ; triennial Parliaments, election by
ballot, the repeal of the taxes on knowledge, reduc
tion of the public burdens, and the elevation of the
moral and improvement of the physical condition of the
people. The vacancy did not occur, and Disraeli had recourse
to his pen in order to explain and, at the same time,
draw attention to his somewhat anomalous political
position. A short pamphlet presently appeared entitled
' " What is He ? " By the author of Vivian Grey ' ;
the title finding its explanation in the legend beneath it —
' " I hear that * * * * is again in the field ; I hardly
know whether we ought to wish him success. ' What is
he ? ' " — Extract from a letter of an Eminent Personage.'
The 'Eminent Personage' was supposed to be Lord
Grey, the Prime Minister, but he is just as likely to have
been a figment of Disraeli's imagination. The pamphlet
VOL. I — o.

226 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
is an argument in favour of a National Party and an
explanation of the principles on which it should be
founded. The Tories have announced [it begins] that they could
not carry on the government of this country with the present
state machinery ; every day the nation is more sensible that
the Whigs cannot. . . . The first object of a statesman
is a strong Government, without which there can be no
security. ... By what means are we to obtain a strong
Government ? We must discover some principles on which
it can be founded. We must either revert to the aristocratic
principle, or we must advance to the democratic. . . . The
moment the Lords passed the Reform Bill, from menace
instead of conviction, the aristocratic principle of govern
ment in this country, in my opinion, expired for ever. From
that moment, it became the duty of every person of property,
talents, and education, unconnected with the unhappy party
at present in power, to use his utmost exertions to advance
the democratic principle, in order that the country should not
fall into that situation, in which, if I mistake not, it will
speedily find itself — absolutely without any Government
whatever. A Tory and a Radical, I understand; a Whig — a demo
cratic aristocrat, I cannot comprehend. If the Tories indeed
despair of restoring the aristocratic principle, and are sincere
in their avowal that the State cannot be governed with the
present machinery, it is their duty to coalesce with the Radi
cals, and permit both political nicknames to merge in the
common, the intelligible, and the dignified title of a National
Party. He is a mean-spirited wretch who is restrained from
doing his duty by the fear of being held up as insincere and
inconsistent by those who are incapable of forming an opinion
on public affairs. ... A great mind, that thinks and feels,
is never inconsistent and never insincere. . . . The in
sincere and the inconsistent are the stupid and the vile. In
sincerity is the vice of a fool and inconsistency the blunder of
a knave. What then in practice are ' the easiest and most obvious
methods by which the democratic principle may be made
predominant ' ? The answer, it must be confessed, is
somewhat disappointing. They are, we are told, 'the
instant repeal of the Septennial Act, the institution of
Election by Ballot, and the immediate dissolution of Par-

1833] WHAT IS HE? 227
liament.' We feel at once that the current of thought
has lost itself in the shallows of formula, and we hasten
on with some impatience to the much-quoted passage
which brings the tract to an eloquent conclusion.
It is wise to be sanguine in public as well as in private life ;
yet the sagacious statesman must view the present portents
with anxiety, if not with terror. It would sometimes appear
that the loss of our great Colonial Empire must be the
necessary consequence of our prolonged domestic dissensions.
Hope, however, lingers to the last. In the sedate but
vigorous character of the British nation, we may place great
confidence. Let us not forget also an influence too much
underrated in this age of bustling mediocrity — the influence
of individual character. Great spirits may yet arise
to guide the groaning helm through the world of troubled
waters; spirits whose proud destiny it may still be at the
same time to maintain the glory of the Empire and to secure
the happiness of the People !
' Who will be the proud spirit ? ' was Isaac DTsraeli's
pointed query when he read the pamphlet; but his son
vouchsafed no answer. The whole performance is a
characteristically Disraelian blend of eloquence and.
bathos, of sincerity and pose, of insight and fantasy.
April 30, 1833.
There is an attack in the Morning Herald on What is He ?
where the author is advised to adhere to the region of romance.
Such attacks are not very disagreeable, for you have no idea of
the success of the pamphlet, which is as much a favourite
with the Tories as the Rads. The recent exposi of the Whigs
proves me a prophet.1
In spite of this complacent view the world was as far
as ever from an answer to the question which supplied a
title to the pamphlet. A year had now elapsed since
Disraeli's first appearance on the stage of practical politics,
and he had done little more than win for himself the
reputation of a political adventurer with unintelligible
opinions. As he became more famous, controversy began
1 Letters, p. 82.

228 ENTRY INTO POLITICS [chap, xi
to rage around the details of these first campaigns and it
has never wholly died away ; pamphleteering biographers
striving with one another — some eager to prove that he
was a consistent Tory from the beginning, others no less
eager to convict him as an unscrupulous time-server,
careless of everything but his own advancement. The
outlines of the truth will now begin to be apparent.
Disraeli in 1832 was impatiently eager to get into
Parliament ; but his opinions were the opinions of a man
[ in complete isolation from the ordinary schools of political
'. thought and he was almost cynically indifferent to the
conventions of party allegiance. Experience soon taught
him that this indifference could not be maintained ; he
learnt in due course to pay the necessary tribute to
convention, and as time went on he acquired some of the
freedom which is the privilege of greatness. But in these
early days his extreme detachment in the matter of
opinion and allegiance was ascribed by the multitude of
humdrum politicians to absence of political convictions.
That he was without political convictions, however, was
the exact opposite of the truth. He was a man over-
| burdened with political convictions, not yet fully
[elaborated or harmonised into a system, but dear to him
|as the product of original and independent thought. If
he had been content to wear the livery of either party he
could with half the energy and ability he showed have
speedily forced his way into Parliament. But it was not
in his nature to accept a political creed or programme
ready made or to stifle the instinct of criticism which was
so strong within him. He was a political free-thinker
at the beginning of his career as he remained a political
free-thinker to the end.
Born in a library and trained from early childhood by
learned men who did not share the passions and the prejudices
of our political and social life, I had imbibed on some subjects
conclusions different from those which generally prevail, and
especially with reference to the history of our own country.
How an oligarchy had been substituted for a kingdom, and a

1833] POLITICAL ISOLATION 229
narrow-minded and bigoted fanaticism flourished in the name
of religious liberty, were problems long to me insoluble, but
which early interested me. But what most attracted my
musing, even as a boy, was the elements of our political
parties, and the strange mystification by which that which
was national in its constitution had become odious, and that
which was exclusive was presented as popular.1
We are not bound to suppose that the Disraeli of 1832
would have set forth his difficulties in the precise manner
in which the Disraeli of 1870 set them forth in retrospect :
the language of the foregoing extract is the language of
his finished political creed, of the Vindication or of
Ooningsby ; but even in 1832 all the elements of his
finished political creed can already be detected. His
faith in democracy on the one hand, his reverence for
tradition and our traditional institutions on the other ;
his. dislike of the selfish Whig oligarchy; his desire to
secure a modification of the Corn Laws, but without the
sacrifice of agriculture; his interest in the condition of the
people, and that, too, at a time when the subject had not
become fashionable; these are all to be found in the
speeches and writings of Disraeli's first year in politics
precisely as they run through his subsequent political
life. If we study his first campaigns in the light of what
followed, putting aside party prepossessions and ignoring
party labels, what they demonstrate is not any tendency to
mental fickleness in the man, but an amazing continuity,
not to say rigidity, of thought in the principles which
underlie his whole political career. We need never look
in Disraeli for the self-conscious consistency of the moral
precisian ; but there is no lack of the far deeper consist
ency which has its roots in a highly original mind, in a
strong intellectual grasp of certain cardinal ideas, in a
temperament of marked idiosyncrasy, and in a character
of exceptional persistence.
i General Preface to the Novels, 1870.

CHAPTER XII
Life in London
1833-1834
In Endymion we are shown the contrast between the
social world of London as Disraeli first knew it in his
youth and the same world as he saw it half a century
later. The great world then, compared with the huge society
of the present period, was limited in its proportions, and
composed of elements more refined though far less various.
. . . There were then, perhaps, more great houses open
than at the present day, but there were very few little ones.
The necessity of providing regular occasions for the assembling
of the miscellaneous world of fashion led to the institution
of Almack's, which died out in the advent of the new system
of society, and in the fierce competition of its inexhaustible
private entertainments. The season then was brilliant
and sustained, but it was not flurried. People did not go to
various parties on the same night. They remained where
they were assembled, and, not being in a hurry, were more
agreeable than they are at the present day. Conversation
was more cultivated; manners, though unconstrained, were
more stately ; and the world, being limited, knew itself much
better.1 On his return from the East Disraeli had, as we have
seen, at once found admission to a society which if not
the highest stood in close relationship to the highest
— a curious blend of literature, fashion, politics, and
1 Endymion, ch. 5.
230

1833] THE SHERIDAN FAMILY 231
bohemianism ; and here and in even more Olympian
circles he made rapid headway from the first. He had
all the qualities that enable a man to shine in such an
atmosphere : he was by instinct a social artist, as his
earliest novels prove ; in those days dandyism was in
fashion, and he was a dandy by nature, practice, and
conviction ; he was 'at that time a very handsome young
man, with a countenance in which beauty of feature
and intellectual expression were strikingly combined'1;
and he could when he liked be so brilliant in conversation
as to extort admiring testimony even from unsympathetic
listeners. To Sarah Disraeli. Feb. 21, 1833.
Yesterday I dined with the Nortons; it was her eldest
brother's birthday, who, she says, is 'the only respectable
one of the family, and that is because he has a liver complaint.'
There were there her brother Charles and old Charles
Sheridan, the uncle, and others. The only lady beside Mrs.
Norton, her sister Mrs. Blackwood,2 also very handsome
and very Sheridanic. She told me she was nothing. 'You
see Georgy's the beauty, and Carry's the wit, and I ought
to be the good one, but then I am not.' I must say I liked
her exceedingly ; besides, she knows all my works by heart,
and spouts whole pages of ' V. G.' and ' C. E.' and the ' Y. D.'
In the evening came the beauty, Lady St. Maur, and any
thing so splendid I never gazed upon. Even the handsomest
family in the world, which I think the Sheridans are, all
looked dull. Clusters of the darkest hair, the most brilliant
complexion, a contour of face perfectly ideal. In the
evening Mrs. Norton sang and acted, and did everything
that was delightful. Ossulston came in — a very fine singer,
unaffected and good-looking. Old Mrs. Sheridan — who, by
the bye, is young and pretty, and authoress of Carwell — is
my greatest admirer ; in fact, the whole family have a very
proper idea of my merits ! and I like them all.3
Many years later Lady Dufferin gave a description of
the appearance presented at this dinner party by her
1 Sir Henry Layard in the Quarterly Review for Jan., 1889.
2 Afterwards Lady Dufferin. 8 Letters, p. 80.

232 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
sister's fantastic guest. He wore, she said, 'a black
velvet coat lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold
band running down the outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat,
long lace ruffles, falling down to the tips of his fingers,
white gloves with several brilliant rings outside them,
and long black ringlets rippling down upon his shoulders. ' 1
Lady Dufferin protested that there was not the slightest
exaggeration in this picture ; but we may at least suspect
or hope that time had not deprived it of any of its colour.
It may have been to the same occasion that she referred
in a well-known anecdote.

He was once dining with my insufferable brother-in-law,
Mr. Norton, when the host begged him to drink a particular
kind of wine, saying he had never tasted anything so good
before. Disraeli agreed that the wine was very good. ' Well,'
said Norton, 'I have got wine twenty times as good in my
cellar.' 'No doubt, no doubt,' said Disraeli, looking round
the table ; ' but, my dear fellow, this is quite good enough
for such canaille as you have got to-day.'

To Sarah Disraeli. April 25, 1833.
I have done nothing but go to the play lately, one night
with Mrs. Norton to see Sheridan Knowles's new play, which
was successful. Public amusements are tedious, but in a
private box with a fair companion less so.

May 22.
There was a review in Hyde Park, and the Wyndham
Lewis's gave a dijeuner, to which I went. By the bye, would
you like Lady Z  for a sister-in-law, very clever, £25,000
and domestic? As for 'love,' all my friends who married
for love and beauty either beat their wives or live apart from
them. This is literally the case. I may commit many
follies in life, but I never intend to marry for 'love,' which I
am sure is a guarantee of infelicity.2
1 Motley's Correspondence, I., p. 264.
2 Letters, p. 82.

1833] THOUGHTS OF MARRIAGE 233
The meeting with this lady was at the Opera, and an
entry in her diary gives us a glimpse of Disraeli in the
company of a clever and romantic girl.
The younger Disraeli was in the box. He and I soon got
acquainted. He is wild, enthusiastic, and very poetical.
He told me he thought Southey the greatest man of the age ;
he was really a great man, he said. . . . The brilliancy
of my companion infected me, and we ran on about poetry
and Venice and Baghdad and Damascus. He tells me that
repose is the great thing and that nothing repays exertion.
Yet noise and light are his fondest dreams, and nothing could
compensate him for an obscure youth — not even glorious old
age. It was beautiful to hear him talk of Southey.
The girl was herself a great admirer of Southey's, but
her companion's enthusiasm, we may suspect, began
and ended in that opera box. 'Lady Z.' presently
found a less poetical husband, and nearly fifty years
later Disraeli had the satisfaction of recommending her
son for a peerage. Marriage at this time was a good deal
in his thoughts, and in the letters from Bradenham there
are frequent allusions to a matrimonial scheme to which,
though probably having its origin less in his own feelings
than in the wishes of his family, he seems seriously for
a time to have given his attention. The lady was a
sister of his lost friend Meredith, but whether through
her own reluctance or her suitor's lack of zeal the project
came to nothing. To Sarah Disraeli. June 29.
My table is literally covered with invitations, and some
from people I do not know. I dined yesterday with the St.
Maurs, to meet Mrs. Sheridan. An agreeable party: the
other guests, Lady Westmorland, very clever; Mrs. Black
wood, Lord Clements, and Brinsley. Lord St. Maur, great
talent, which develops itself in a domestic circle, though
otherwise shy-mannered. In the evening a good soirie at
Lady Charleville's. I met Lady Aldboro', but the lion of
the evening was Lucien Bonaparte, the Prince of Canino. I
went to the Caledonian Ball after all, in a dress from my

234 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
Oriental collection. Particulars when we meet. Yesterday,
at Mrs. Wyndham's, I met Joseph Bonaparte and his beautiful
dauShter- JulyM.
I am putting my house in order and preparing for a six
months' sojourn and solitude amid the groves of Bradenham.
. . . London is emptying fast, but gay. Lady Cork x had
two routs. 'All my best people, no blues.' At a concert
at Mrs. Mitford's I was introduced to Malibran, who is to be
the heroine of my opera. She is a very interesting person. Aug. 4.
My letters are shorter than Napoleon's, but I love you
more than he did Josephine. I shall be down to-morrow.2
'I wish,' wrote his father on some occasion, 'that
your organization allowed you to write calmer letters,
and that you could sober yourself down to a diary before
you went to bed.' To a diary in the ordinary sense
Disraeli never did succeed in sobering himself down,
but in these quiet autumn months at Bradenham he began
a document which has unfortunately not escaped the
ravages of time and is known to those who have engaged
in the exploration of his papers as the 'Mutilated
Diary.' Sept. 1, 1833.
I have passed the whole of this year in uninterrupted
lounging and pleasure — with the exception of offering myself
for Marylebone and writing a pamphlet, but the expected
vacancy, thank God, did not occur: and one incident has
indeed made this year the happiest of my life. How long
will these feelings last ? They have stood a great test, and
now absence, perhaps the most fatal of all. My life has not
been a happy one. Nature has given me an awful ambition
1 Mary Countess of Cork (1746-1840), widow of the 7th Earl, who
died in 1798. Before her marriage she was the Miss Monckton whom we
meet in Boswell ; whose ' vivacity enchanted the sage ' ; and whom John
son crushed in argument with the retort, 'Dearest, you're a dunce,' add
ing, when she reproached him afterwards, ' Madam, if I had thought so,
I certainly should not have said it.' She was a lion-hunter all her life and,
beside the members of Johnson's circle, had known the Prince Regent,
Castlereagh, Canning, Byron, Scott, and a hundred other celebrities. We
shall find her appearing in Henrietta Temple as Lady Bellair.
2 Letters, pp. 83-84.

1833] MUTILATED DIARY 235
aud fiery passions. My life has been a struggle, with moments
of rapture — a storm with dashes of moonlight — Love, Poetry
############
***** achieve the difficult undertaking.
With fair health I have no doubt of success, but the result
will probably be fatal to my life.
My disposition is now indolent. I wish to be idle and
enjoy myself, muse over the stormy past and smile at the
placid present. My career will probably be more energetic
than ever, and the world will wonder at my ambition. Alas !
I struggle from Pride. Yes ! It is Pride that now prompts
me, not Ambition. They shall not say I have failed. It
is not Love that makes me say this. I remember expressing
this feeling to Bulwer as we were returning from Bath together,
a man who was at that moment an M.P., and an active one,
editing a political journal and writing at the same time a
novel and a profound and admirable philosophical work.
He turned round and pressed my arm and said in a tone
the sincerity of which could not be doubted: 'It is true,
my dear fellow, it is true. We are sacrificing our youth,
the time of pleasure, the bright season of enjoyment — but
we are bound to go on, we are bound. How our enemies would
triumph were we to retire from the stage! And yet,' he
continued in a solemn voice, 'I have more than once been
tempted to throw it all up, and quit even my country, for ever.'
All men of high imagination are indolent.
I have not gained much in conversation with men. Bulwer
is one of the few with whom my intellect comes into collision
with benefit. He is full of thought, and views at once origi
nal and just. The material of his conversation and many a
hint from our colloquies he has poured into his England and
the English, a fine series of philosophic dissertations. Lock
hart is good for t&te-drUtes, if he like you, which he did me
once. His mind is full of literature, but no great power
of thought. He is an overrated man. But the man from
whom I have gained most in conversation is Botta,1 the
son of the Italian historian, whom I knew in Egypt, travelling
as a physician in the Syrian dress — the most philosophic
mind that I ever came in contact with. Hour after hour
has glided away, while, chibouque in mouth, we have disserted
together upon our divan, in a country where there are no
journals and no books. My mind made a jump in these high
discourses. Botta was wont to say that they formed also
1 Paul Emile Botta, 1805-1870. He was afterwards French Consul
at Mosul, and shares with Layard the honour of founding Assyrian
archaeology.

236 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
an era in his intellectual life. If I add to these my father,
the list comprises the few men from whose conversation I
have gained wisdom. I make it a rule now never to throw
myself open to men. I do not grudge them the knowledge
I could impart, but I am always exhausted by composition
when I enter society, and little inclined to talk, and as I
never get anything in return, I do not think the exertion
necessary. In the conversation of society the most brilliant
men I know are perhaps Spencer (now in Paris) and Tom
Moore. As a lively companion, of ceaseless entertainment
and fun, no one perhaps equals Charles Mathews, the son
of the comedian, but far excelling his father, who is, I un
derstand, jealous of him. James Smith, though gouty, will
nevertheless not easily find a rival as a diseur des bons mots.
I met him at General Phipps's this year, and he divided
mankind into those who walked to get an appetite for their
dinner and those who walked to get a dinner for their appe
tite. Jeemes Smith, as the good old General (who, by the bye,
gives as pleasant little dinners as anybody in town) ever calls
him. 'General,' says Lady Cork, 'when am I to dine with
you?' 'Name your day and your party, Lady Cork.' 'Well
then, the 20th, and you may ask whom you like — only not
Jeemes Smith or Jekyll, I am tired of them.'
But I am not Lady Cork, and was very much amused with
Jeemes. Jekyll has his faculties, but is deaf, like Lady
Aldboro'. I cannot bear deaf people. I feel for them so
much, and I never can repeat what I say, not even to Princes.
The world calls me conceited. The world is in error. I
trace all the blunders of my life to sacrificing my own opinion
to that of others. When I was considered very conceited
indeed I was nervous and had self-confidence only by fits.
I intend in future to act entirely from my own impulse. I
have an unerring instinct — I can read characters at a glance ;
few men can deceive me. My mind is a continental mind.
It is a revolutionary mind. I am only truly great in action.
If ever I am placed in a truly eminent position I shall prove
this. I could rule the House of Commons, although there
would be a great prejudice against me at first. It is the
most jealous assembly in the world. The fixed character
of our English society, the consequence of our aristocratic
institutions, renders a career difficult. Poetry is the safety-
valve of my passions, but I wish to act what I write. My
works are the embodification of my feelings. In Vivian Grey
I have portrayed my active and real ambition. In Alroy my
ideal ambition. The Psychological Romance is a development
of my poetic character. This trilogy is the secret history of
my feelings. I shall write no more about myself.

1833] POETIC ASPIRATIONS 237
The Utilitarians in politics are like the Unitarians in
religion; both omit imagination in their systems, and imag
ination governs mankind. Oct. 21.
Seven weeks ! and not a line in my book.
These strange rhapsodies show that Disraeli's mind
was in a state of unusual exaltation and excitement,
and prepare us for that which followed. In the course
of the autumn months at Bradenham he embarked on
a literary venture which is one of the most curious
enterprises of an enterprising life. The habit of verse-
making, apart from any genuine poetic impulse, was
more in fashion among the educated in those days than
now ; Isaac D'Israeli was much addicted to it, and his
son hardly less, in spite of his discovery proclaimed in
Contarini, and repeated in Alroy, that the age of versifica
tion was past. Full of a vague consciousness of power,
which had hardly yet been directed into definite channels,
he was now seized, as he wrote to Austen, by ' an un
conquerable desire of producing something great and
lasting,' and he seems to have indulged for a moment
in the dream that he might become a supreme poet. He
had achieved already no small reputation as a writer
of prose fiction ; in imagination, at all events, he had
scaled the steepest heights of political ambition ; and
turning his thoughts to poetry he characteristically
aimed at the highest. Let him tell the tale himself.
It was in the plains of Troy that I first conceived the idea
of this work. -> Wandering over that illustrious scene, sur
rounded by the tombs of heroes and by the confluence of
poetic streams, my musing thoughts clustered round the
memory of that immortal song, to which all creeds and
countries alike respond, which has vanquished Chance, and
defies Time. Deeming myself, perchance too rashly, in that
excited hour a Poet, I cursed the destiny that had placed
me in an age that boasted of being anti-poetical. And while
my Fancy thus struggled with my Reason, it flashed across
my mind, like the lightning which was then playing over
Ida, that in those great poems which rise, the pyramids of

238 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
poetic art, amid the falling and the fading splendour of less
creations, the Poet hath ever embodied the spirit of his Time.
Thus the most heroick incident of an heroick age produced
in the Iliad an Heroick Epick ; thus the consolidation of the
most superb of Empires produced in the Aeneid a Political
Epick; the revival of learning and the birth of vernacular
genius presented us in the Divine Comedy with a National
Epick; and the Reformation and its consequences called
from the rapt lyre of Milton a Religious Epick.
And the spirit of my time, shall it alone be uncelebrated ?
Standing upon Asia, and gazing upon Europe, with the
broad Hellespont alone between us, and the shadow of night
descending on the mountains, these mighty continents
appeared to me, as it were, the rival principles of government
that, at present, contend for the mastery of the world.
' What ! ' I exclaimed, ' is the revolution of France a less
important event than the siege of Troy ? Is Napoleon a less
interesting character than Achilles ? For me remains the
Revolutionary Epick.'1

To the development of this great conception he now
accordingly applied himself. ' I live here like a hermit,'
he writes to Mrs. Austen from Bradenham, 'and have
scarcely seen my family. I rise at seven, and my day
passes in study and composition.' A little later he is
at Southend, staying ' at an old grange with gable ends
and antique windows,' ' living solely on snipes and riding
a good deal,' but still 'passing his days in constant
composition.' By the beginning of December he is far
enough advanced to set forth his argument.
To Mrs. Austen. Dec. 1, 1833.
Since the revolt of America a new principle has been at
work in the world to which I trace all that occurs. This is
the Revolutionary principle, and this is what I wish to embody
in the Revolutionary Epick. I imagine the Genius of Feudalism
and the Genius of Federalism appearing before the Almighty
Throne and pleading their respective and antagonistic causes.
The pleading of the Feudal Genius, in which I say all that can
be urged in favour of the aristocratic system of society, forms
1 Preface to the Revolutionary Epick.

1834] REVOLUTIONARY EPICK 239
the first book : the pleading of the Federal, the second : the
decree of the Omnipotent is mystical. It declares that a man
is born of supernatural energies and that whichever side he
embraces will succeed, or to that effect. The man is Napoleon
just about to conquer Italy. The spirits descend to earth to
join him. He adopts the Federal or Democratic side. The
Feudal stirs up the Kings against him. Hence my machinery !
The next two books contain the conquest of Italy, very little
vulgar fighting but highly idealised. This is all — about 4,000
lines — that I shall now venture to print ; the whole of it is
matured in my mind, though probably it could not be com
pleted under 30,000 lines. What do you think of it? The
conception seems to me sublime. All depends on the execu
tion. I have finished the three first books. The two first
cost me much the most trouble ; the rest is play work.
Mrs. Austen was still his literary Egeria. ' You appear,'
he tells her, ' to be the only person in the world except
myself who have any energy. What would I give to
have you always at my right hand ? ' When he wants a
description of Josephine he appeals to her. ' Are you
sure that a Creole is dark ? No matter, I will make her
brunette. ... I was introduced to the King of
Spain and the Prince of Canino (Lucien) last year, but
do not like to write to them.' Or again,
I have got [a grand simile about a S. Wester, I think they
call it : and am perfectly ignorant of the geography of the wind
and have no atlas here. I mean that wind that blows, I think,
about the Cape and knocks the Honourable Company's ships
about. Daniel has a famous picture about it, consisting of
one ship and one wave. Is it a S. Wester that I mean, and
whence does it blow, and all about it ? Get it up for the 16th.
On the 16th of January he was to dine with the Austens,
and he promised to put a canto of his work in his bag and
if they were alone 'to perform the part of the Impor
tunate Author and bore them with a grand recitation.'
They were not alone, but the grand recitation was given
all the same. ' There was something irresistibly comic,'
writes an eye-witness a of the scene that followed, ' in the
young man dressed in the fantastic, coxcombical costume
1 Sir Henry Layard in the Quarterly Review for January, 1889.

240 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
that he then affected — velvet coat of an original cut
thrown wide open, and ruffles to its sleeves, shirt collars
turned down in Byronic fashion, an elaborately em
broidered waistcoat whence issued voluminous folds of
frill, and shoes adorned with red rosettes — his black hair
pomatumed and elaborately curled, and his person redo
lent with perfume — announcing himself as the Homer
or Dante of the age.' Thus arrayed, and standing with
his back to the fire, our poet unfolded in grandiloquent
language his great conception ; and he then declaimed
in pretentious tones the whole of his first canto. But
unfortunately for the effect produced he had no sooner left
the room than Samuel Warren,1 who was present, recited
in perfect mimicry of style and voice and manner a number
of heroic verses improvised for the occasion ; and the
company, which had no doubt been hovering between
admiration and amusement, hardly knowing whether to
regard the poem as a work of genius or of coxcombry,
settled the question at once by going into fits of laughter.
The Epick was published in the spring of 1834, the first
book separately in March, the second and third together
in June. ' My poem turns out a terrible labor,' he wrote
to Austen on the eve of publication, but presently added
with some complacency : —
I have executed the work to my satisfaction and, what is of
more importance, to the satisfaction of my father, a critic
difficult to please. I await the great result with composure,
though I am not sanguine of pleasing the million. I feel that
I have now done enough for my reputation and that I am at
length justified in merely looking to my purse.
The preface showed more becoming diffidence : —
I have ventured to submit to the public but a small portion
of my creation, and even that with unaffected distrust and
sincere humility. Whatever may be their decision I shall
bow to it without a murmur ; for I am not one who find con
solation for the neglect of my contemporaries in the imaginary
1 Author of Ten Thousand a Year.

1834] FAILURE OF THE POEM 241
plaudits of a more sympathetic posterity. The public will
then decide whether this work is to be continued and com
pleted ; and if it pass in the negative, I shall, without a pang,
hurl my lyre to Limbo.
The reading public gave the would-be successor of
Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton no encouragement,
and with or without a pang he accordingly 'hurled his
lyre to Limbo ' ; though not, it would seem, at once.
Thirty years later, when the poem had long been buried,
the stress of political controversy brought it to the light
again. In debate in the House of Commons in 1864
Disraeli had occasion to denounce certain well-known
opinions of Mazzini's ; whereupon Mr. Bright retorted that
if what he had somewhere read was true Disraeli himself
in one of his earlier works had propounded doctrines not
dissimilar in tendency. The statement was at once
denied and the denial accepted : but some lines of
swelling rhetoric were subsequently quoted in the news
papers from the Revolutionary Epick and eagerly repeated
to prove that in his youth the Conservative leader had
advocated regicide. Disraeli might very well have
followed his usual practice and laughed at the charge,
the more so as the lines in question,1 occurring in the rival
pleadings before the throne of Demogorgon, could no
more be held with justice to incriminate the author
than Milton could be held responsible for every sentiment
1 They have a double dramatic shelter in their place in the
poem, being quoted by Lyridon as the utterance of the maiden
Opinion. In the original edition the passage runs: —
Pharaoh's doom
Shall cool those chariot wheels now wet with blood,
And blessed be the hand that dares to wave
The regicidal steel that shall redeem
A nation's sorrow with a tyrant's blood.
In the edition of 1864 this became Dark Pharaoh's doom
Shall cool your chariot wheels, and hallowed be
The regicidal steel that shall redeem
A nation's woe. — Bk. II. sect. 22.

242 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
of the fallen spirits in the debate in Paradise Lost: but
he chose instead to make the incident the occasion for
a new edition of the poem with substantial variations
from the original, and in a dedicatory address to Lord
Stanley prefixed to this edition he thus explained the
variations : —
The Revolutionary Epick is printed from the only copy in
my possession, and which, with slight exceptions, was corrected
in 1837, when, after three years' reflection, I had resolved not
only to correct but to complete the work. The corrections
are purely literary. The somewhat sudden accession of her
Most Gracious Majesty occasioned in that year a dissolution
of Parliament, and being then returned to the House of
Commons, in which I have since sat without an interval,
these dreams for ever vanished.
No one who has read Contarini will think it strange
that the dreams should have visited him. Disraeli
was indeed something of a poet, though his proper medium
was neither tbe prose poetry of Alroy nor the heroic
verse of the Revolutionary Epick. 'I am only truly
great in action ' ; when he wrote that, his insight into
character did not fail him. He carried into the field of
action indeed a good deal of the spirit of the poet
and the artist, but action was his true province all the
same. For supreme greatness in the field of creative
literature he had neither the self-restraint nor the self-
devotion that are needed ; and though he could make
verses, he had none of the peculiar and divine gift which
gives to verses the quality of lasting poetry. No one
need be surprised then at the failure of the Epick. The
conception, if not, according to his own word, sublime,
has a certain largeness which a happier execution might
have raised to the pitch of grandeur, and which even as
it is gives an air of spaciousness to the poem. But the
execution, on which, as he saw, all would depend, falls
far short of the conception. Disraeli's verse is fluent,
but where we look for poetry we find only the dull and
cloudy rhetoric into which a man invariably falls who

1834] VERSE NOT HIS MEDIUM 243
writes poetry not because he must, but because he thinks
it a fine thing to do. There is a brave pretence of poetic
rapture, but rarely any gleam of genuine inspiration ;
a succession of brilliant fancies clothed in eloquent
language, image piled upon image with gorgeous though
bewildering prodigality ; but nowhere the passionate
thought that goes direct to the heart, or the inevitable
phrase that lingers by its beauty in the memory. Where
we find merit in the verse it is usually a merit that reflects
the writer's studies in poetry rather than his own native
gift. Take, for instance, the following description of
Athens from the second book : —
A city like the dream of youthful bard,
Reposing in the shade of summer trees,
And pressing to his eyes his magic hand,
To call up visions of a fairer world :
Blue ocean, bowery plain, and azure sky,
And marble walls, and free-born citadel,
Glittering with snowy columns in the sun ;
Statues of ivory, tablets like the blaze
Of the far-flashing twilight of the land ;
And choral theatres, where the Poet's voice
Blends with the whisper of the delicate air,
The messenger of nature to his soul ;
And gardens of delight, in whose green glades
And fragrant groves, or by the mossy verge
Of sparkling fountain or serener stream,
Conversing Sages teach to genial youth
Ennobling precepts ; to be wise and free,
Refined and virtuous, is their theme sublime ;
Or for the high and passionate hour prepare,
When from the Bema's all-subduing throne
A voice may sway the fortunes of a world !
Divine Equality, thou art a God
Omnipotent indeed ! Thy sacred fire
Burns now in later temples, not to fall
Like thine old shrines ; yet who can e'er forget,
Whose soul indeed thy noble faith inflames,
Thy broken altar on Athena's hill !
We feel at once that our poet has studied his
Milton and is engaged in a vain endeavour to mimic
him. Original as was his genius, Disraeli was always

244 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
a liberal borrower, both from others and himself ; and
here, whether he is at his best or at his worst, he is
invariably imitative. He had early been a devoted stu
dent of Shelley, and if the diction and versification of
the poem are feebly reminiscent of Milton, the matter and
machinery, and often even the sentiment, are still more
reminiscent of Shelley, though unfortunately of Shelley
in his least inspired moments. The word Demogorgon,
which meets us in the opening lines, recalls Shelley at
once, and in the first two books we have not only Demo
gorgon and the rival genii Magros and Lyridon, but
a bewildering mixture of subordinate agents, Faith and
Fealty, Religion and Loyalty, the Monster Change, the
beautiful maiden Opinion, daughter of Physical and
Moral Strength, and so forth — all vague impersonations
in the Shelleyan manner, but not, alas ! the manner of
Prometheus or Adonais.
' Standing upon Asia and gazing upon Europe,
. . . these mighty continents appeared to me as it
were the Rival Principles of Government that at present
contend for the mastery of the world. ' What is still of pro
found interest in the poem to the student of Disraeli is the
development of this contention between Asia and Europe
which forms its essential subject. In his choice of the
poetical form for the clothing of his thoughts there was
no doubt a large element of pose, with the result that he
produced poetry which is rhetorical, imitative, and, in
a sense, insincere. But in his choice of the subject
itself there was no insincerity. The conflict between
Asia and Europe and all that they symbolise ran through
Disraeli's life, as it runs through the poem, and never
wholly found an issue in the triumph of either principle
or in their harmonious reconcilement. ' My mind is a
revolutionary mind ' : that was true, and perhaps espe
cially true when it was written and when the Revolutionary
Epick was conceived. Disraeli had been fascinated by
the great drama in which the modern spirit was unfolding
itself, and hence we get in the Epick the triumph of the

1834] ASIA AND EUROPE 245
' Federal ' side and the apotheosis of Napoleon. The
third book closes with Napoleon's entry into Milan ;
but if the poem had been ¦ continued one wonders how
the action could ever have been brought to a climax or to
any natural conclusion. It is safe indeed to assume
that even if Disraeli had received the encouragement
which he looked for, he could never have completed
the Epick ; as in the case of Vivian Grey or Conta
rini Fleming, the impulse of creation must before long
have spent itself and the current of his story have
lost itself in shallows. He was able to remain at ease
with his revolutionary theme through the space of a book
or more, but he could not long have pursued it without
acute spiritual discomfort. Revolutionary as he really
was on one side of his complex nature, there was another
side which is exposed in the first book of the Epick and
which was to be the front presented to the world in his
subsequent career. Reverence for the past, a Semitic
feeling for religion, an instinct for the positive, for order,
for tradition, for everything that Carlyle embodies in the
phrase ' the everlasting yea' — all these things were strong-
within him, and it was in their development and expres
sion and not in the rdle of revolutionary leader that hia
mission really lay. Yet to the end the revolutionary side
was there ; and it is just because Disraeli never lost his
sympathy with the modern spirit, never felt any of that
timorous shrinking from new political ideals which afflicts
Conservatives of a narrower type, that his Conservatism
is so sane, so robust, and so fruitful ; without forgetting
the things which are behind he is always found reaching
forth unto the things which are before.

To Sarah Disraeli.
The Grange, Southend,
Thursday. [Feb. 13, 1834.]
Mv dear Child,
Although I have only half a sheet in my desk, you shall not
be a loser thereby. I continue here quite alone, my only com-

246 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
panion little Eva, who with her golden locks and rosy cheeks
is a most beautiful child, and prattles without ceasing. The
Sykes have not returned, and their return is indefinite, for the
Baronet is very unwell, and confined to his room.
Solitude at this moment suits me very well. The book sur
passes all my hopes, but so little of the original sketch remains
that you will scarcely recognise it. Assure my father that it
is not now at all like Pye, which he seemed to fear. I think
of dedicating it to the Duke in a long political prose ; if so, I
shall request his permission ; but upon this dedication I have
not determined.
Montagu Gore has accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, and
asked me to stand for Devizes, which I have refused. Any
place but Parliament at present. The time will, however,
come, and is coming speedily. Gore, according to his address,
resigns for two reasons ; his health, and also because he has
recanted and turned Tory! His health and head seem equally
weak. He is an ass, who has terminated an asinine career
with a very characteristic bray.
I hunted the other day with Sir Henry Smythe's hounds,
and although not in scarlet was the best mounted man in the
field, riding Lady Sykes's Arabian mare, which I nearly killed,
a run of 30 miles, and I stopped at nothing. I gained great
kudos. The only Londoner I met was Henry Manners Sutton,
who had come over to cover from Mistley Hall. He asked
me to return with him, but as Lady Manners was not there, I
saw no fun, and refused.
Write directly. Love to all, Your affectionate D.
I told you, I believe, that Mrs. Norton had given me her
portrait.

From the Duke of Wellington. Stbathfieldsate, March 7, 1834.
Sir, I am really much flattered by your desire to dedicate to
me by permission your Epic Poem.
Unfortunately I found myself under the necessity twenty
years ago of determining that I would never give a formal
permission that any work should be dedicated to me. I will
not trouble you with the reasons for this determination. They
were founded upon a sense of the necessity for this course,
or for the adoption of another — viz., that I should peruse

1834] LADY BLESSINGTON 247
every work which it was wished that I should give per
mission that it should be dedicated to me, before I should
grant the required permission. This last alternative was im
practicable; and I have found myself under the painful ne
cessity in many instances, as in this, of declining to give such
formal permission.
If, however, you should think proper to dedicate your poem
to me without such formal permission, you are at full liberty
to take that course ; x assuring you at the same time that I feel
greatly flattered by the expression of your desire that I should
permit it, I have the honour to be, Sir
Your most obedient humble servant,Wellington.
The Epick off his mind, Disraeli plunged with renewed
zest into the dissipations of society. May, 1834.
On Monday I dined with Lady Blessington — the Prince of
Moskova, Charles Lafitte, Lords Castlereagh, Elphinstone, and
Allen, Mr. Talbot, myself; and Lord Wilton was the absent
guest, having to dine with the King, but he came in the even
ing. He is very handsome. Hope's ball on Monday was the
finest thing this year — supped off gold and danced in the
sculpture gallery. To-day is the Drawing-room ; but nobody
thinks of anything but politics. I dine with O'Connell on
Saturday.2 Disraeli, as has been seen, had met Count D'Orsay,
'the famous Parisian dandy,' at a reception at Bulwer's
a couple of years before, but this is the first time we hear
of an acquaintance with Lady Blessington. Still in the
fullness of her mature beauty, she had now been a widow
for several years, and her house in Seamore Place, though
shunned by the great ladies of society, had become a meet
ing ground for most of the social, literary, and political
celebrities of the day. D'Orsay, the husband of her step
daughter, had succeeded after an interval to the empire
of Brummell and was now at the height of his fame as
leader of the dandies, arbiter of fashion, and gambler
and spendthrift. With both him and Lady Blessington
Disraeli soon formed an intimate and enduring friendship.
1 The poem appeared without a dedication. 2 Letters, p. 85.

248 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
June 4, 1834.
I was at Lady Dudley Stuart's on Sunday — a pleasant
circle — and made the acquaintance of Lord Hertford.1 I dine
with Lady Cork to-day, to meet the Mulgraves, Tavistocks,
and Lincolns. June 16.
I made Beckford's acquaintance at the Opera on Thursday.
Conversation of three hours [he adds in the Mutilated Diary];
very bitter and malin, but full of warm feelings for the worthy.
I dined yesterday with Lady Blessington, and Durham
among the guests, and he talked to me nearly the whole even
ing; afterwards to Lady Salisbury's.2
A gossiping American journalist was one of the guests
at this last dinner and wrote an account of it in his
paper a few years later when Durham had crossed the
Atlantic for his memorable work in Canada.
The guests dropped in, announced but unseen, in the dim
twilight, and when Lord Durham came, I could only see that
he was of middle stature, and of a naturally cold address.
Bulwer spoke to him, but he was introduced to no one — a
departure from the custom of that maison sans g&ne, which
was either a tribute to his Lordship's reserve or a ruse on the
part of Lady Blessington to secure to Disraeli the advantage
of having his acquaintance sought : successful, if so, for Lord
Durham after dinner requested a formal introduction to him.
But for D'Orsay, who sparkles, as he does everything else,
out of rule, and in splendid defiance of others' dullness, the
soup and first half hour of dinner would have passed off
with, the usual English fashion of earnest silence. . . .
Bulwer and Disraeli were silent altogether. I should have
foreboded a dull dinner if in the open brow, and clear sunny
eye, and unembarrassed repose of the beautiful and expressive
mouth of Lady Blessington I had not read the promise of a
change. It came presently. With a tact of which the subtle
ease and grace can in no way be conveyed into descrip
tion, she gathered up the cobweb threads of conversation
going on at different parts of the table, and, by the most
apparent accident, flung them into Disraeli's fingers. It was
an appeal to his opinion on a subject he well understood,
and he burst at once, without preface, into that fiery vein of
1 The ' Lord Monmouth ' of Coningsby and the ' Lord Steyne ' of
Vanity Fair.
2 Letters, p. 86.

1834] DISRAELI AND DURHAM 249
eloquence which, hearing many times after, and always
with new delight, has stamped Disraeli in my mind as the
most wonderful talker I have ever had the fortune to meet.
He is anything but a declaimer. You would never think
him on stilts. If he catches himself in a rhetorical sentence,
he mocks at it in the next breath. ' He is satirical, con
temptuous,, pathetic, humorous, everything in a moment.
Add to this that Disraeli's is the most intellectual face in
England — pale, regular, and overshadowed with the most
luxuriant masses of raven-black hair, and you will scarce
wonder that meeting him for the first time Lord Durham
was impressed. . . . Disraeli and he formed at the
moment a finely-contrasted picture. Understanding his
game perfectly, the author deferred constantly and adroitly
to the opinion of his noble listener, shaped his argument
by his suggestions, allowed him to say nothing without using
it as the nucleus of some new turn to his eloquence, and all
this with an apparent effort against it, as if he had desired
to address himself exclusively to Lady Blessington, but
was compelled by a superior intellectual magnetism to turn
aside to pay homage to her guest. . . . Without meaning
any disrespect to Disraeli, whom I admire as much as any
man in England, I remarked to my neighbour, a celebrated
artist, that it would make a glorious drawing of Satan tempt
ing an archangel to rebel.
Well, Disraeli is in Parliament, and Lord Durham on
the last round but one of the ladder of subject greatness.
The Viceroy will be Premier, no doubt, but it is question
able if the author of Vivian Grey does more than carry
out the moral of his own tale. Talking at a brilliant
table, with an indulgent and superb woman on the watch
for wit and eloquence, and rising in the face of a cold, common-
sense House of Commons on the look out for froth and humbug,
are two different matters. In a great crisis, with the nation
in a tempest, Disraeli would flash across the darkness very
finely, but he will never do for the calm right hand of a
Premier.1 This testimony as to Disraeli's powers of conversation is
confirmed in a less exuberant manner by another witness.
'I frequently met Mr. Disraeli at Lady Blessington's,'
writes her biographer.
1 N. P. Willis — known among his countrymen, for reasons which
any reader of the above excerpt will understand, as ' Namby Pamby '
Willis — in the New York Mirror for Aug. 11, 1838.

250 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
Though in general society he was habitually silent and
reserved, he was closely observant. It required generally a
subject of more than common interest to produce the fitting
degree of enthusiasm to animate him and to stimulate him
into the exercise of his marvellous powers of conversation.
When duly excited, however, his command of language was
truly wonderful, his power of sarcasm unsurpassed; the
readiness of his wit, the quickness of his perception, the
grasp of mind that enabled him to seize on all the parts of
any subject under discussion, those only would venture to
call in question who had never been in his company at the
period I refer to.1

To Sarah Disraeli. June 19, 1834.
I was at the Duchess of St. Albans on Monday, but rather
too late for the fun. It was a most brilliant f&te. The break
fast a real banquet; but I missed the Morris dancers, &c.
In the evening at Lady Essex, where the coterie consisted of
the new Postmaster-General and his lady, the Chesterfields,
George Ansons, and Albert Conynghams, and Castlereagh.
Tuesday after the Opera I supped with Castlereagh, who
gave a very recherchi. party. Ossulston,2 myself, Massey
Stanley, and a Forester, not Cecil. Wednesday a good dinner
at Lady Sykes: to-night, after paying my respects to their
Majesties at the Opera, I am going to the Duchess of
Hamilton's. I have had great success in society this year in every
respect. ... I make my way easily in the highest set,
where there is no envy, malice, &c, and where they like to
admire and be amused. Yesterday Lord Durham called upon
me, being the first day he has been in town since we met. I
was not at home ; but this Lady Blessington told me. I am
also right in politics as well as society, being now backed by a
very powerful party, and I think the winning one.
A good story ! On Monday, I think, Lady Sykes was at
Lady Cork's, and Lord Carrington paid her a visit.
Lady C. : Do you know young Disraeli ?
Lord C. : Hem ! Why ? Eh ?
Lady C. : Why, he is your neighbour, isn't he, eh ?
Lord C. : His father is.
1 Madden's Countess of Blessington, III., p. 81.
2 Castlereagh was afterwards 4th Marquis of Londonderry and Ossul
ston 6th Earl of Tankerville.

1834] SOCIAL SUCCESS 251
Lady C. : I know that. His father is one of my dearest
friends. I dote on the Disraelis.
Lord C. : The young man is a very extraordinary sort of
person. The father I like; he is very quiet and
respectable.
Lady C. : Why do you think the young man extraordinary ?
I should not think that you could taste him.
Lord C. : He is a great agitator. Not that he troubles us
much now. He is never amongst us now. I believe
he has gone abroad again.
Lady C, literatim: You old fool! Why, he sent me this
book this morning. You need not look at it ; you can't
understand it. It is the finest book ever written.
Gone abroad, indeed! Why, he is the best ton in
London ! There is not a party that goes down without
him. The Duchess of Hamilton says there is nothing
like. Lady Lonsdale would give her head and shoul
ders for him. He would not dine at your house if you
were to ask him. He does not care for people because
they are lords ; he must have fashion, or beauty, or wit,
or something ; and you are a very good sort of person,
but you are nothing more.
The old Lord took it very good-humouredly, and laughed.
Lady Cork has read every line of the new book. I don't doubt
the sincerity of her admiration, for she has laid out 17s. in
crimson velvet, and her maid is binding it. . . . D.
Monday morning. [July 7.]
Mt dearest,
I have quite recovered, but I am taking quinine and shall
yet for a few days. I was very unwell unto Friday evening.
I had promised to join a water party in Sir Frank's yacht,
which has returned without its master, to witness the Royal
embarkation on Saturday morning, and the exertion, which
I dreaded, cured me. It was almost the only party of pleasure
that ever turned out pleasant. Lady Sykes and Sir M. aud
Lady Georgiana Cholmely, the Burdett daughters, Castlereagh,
Ossulsfcon, and myself. The day was beautiful. The ladies
went off the night before. Ossulston drove me down in
his cab. We arrived just in time, half past 9, in spite of a
long debate on tithes, which had kept him and Cas. up till 2.
Cas. rode down and arrived covered with dust and sulky, but
just in time also; and regained his good humor after break
fast. After the show we breakfasted, and sailed up to Green
wich. After lionising the hospital and sentimentalising in
the Park, we had a magnificent banquet on deck, and had

252 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
nothing from shore except whitebait piping hot. Ossulston
was our minstrel, and a most musical one; and we all arrived
in town in time for the ballet. I never knew a more agreeable
day, and never drank so much champagne in my life. I
woke, quite well, and after a very dull dinner party at the
Wyndham Lewis's, went to Lady Salisbury's. So you see
I am on my legs again. I am sorry for dear Jem, but he has
many fellow-sufferers. The influenza, however, is not so
severe as last year.
My love to all. Your own D.
Ossulston asked me to allow him to put me up for
Crockford's. I told him that I was sure I should be black
balled ; but he was sanguine of the reverse, and is to consult
his friends.
Disraeli was not elected to Crockford's, the famous
gaming house in St. James's Street, till 1840, shortly
before the retirement of the founder and the consequent
dissolution of the club. Another social institution of
the day was Almack's, a periodical subscription ball
held at Willis's Rooms and presided over by an oligarchy
of fashionable ladies, who wielded their powers with a
jealous and vigilant exclusiveness.
To Sarah Disraeli. July 11, 1834.
I made my dibut at Almack's with a subscription from
Lady Tankerville,1 but it was not a very brilliant reunion.
Yesterday I met Lord Lyndhurst, whom I like very much.
The next time he goes the Norfolk circuit he is to sleep at
Bradenham. He says the Duke of Wellington never -reads
any book but the Commentaries2 and assured me it was a
positive fact! July 23.
I still adhere to my plan of being down with you in a week
or ten days, and tell Tita to get my pipes in order, as I
look forward to a batch of smoking with great zest.
I go every day to fetes and water parties. Lady
Tavistock's at Richmond on Saturday. Monday, another
1 Daughter of Antoine Due de Gramont and sister of the Due de
Gramont who married Count Alfred D'Orsay's sister.
2 Isaac D'Israeli's Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the
First.

1834] THE DIARY AGAIN 253
party to Blackwall with D'Orsay. To-morrow to Lord
Hertford's. I find the end of the season more fatiguing
than the beginning, owing to the morning festivities.
The water party at the 'Cedars' most delightful. We
embarked at five o'clock, the heavens very favourable, sang
all the way down, wandered in beautiful gardens worthy
of Paul Veronese full not only of flowers, but fountains and
parroquets : the dinner first-rate and much better than
cold, miserable picnics, in which all bring the same things.
People are still in town. But Goodwood will, I think, clear
us.1 ' You give me the same advice as my father ever has
done,' he wrote on some occasion to Lady Blessington,
' about dotting down the evanescent feelings of youth ;
but, like other excellent advice, I fear it will prove
unprofitable. I have a horror of journalising, and indeed
of writing of all description. With me execution is ever
a labour and conception a delight. Although a great
traveller, I never kept a diary in my life.' His book of
jottings and reflections, if we are not to call it a diary,
had been forgotten since October, but in the seclusion
of Bradenham he returned to it once more. Bradenham, Aug. 4, 1834.
And now nearly a year has elapsed. And what an
eventful one ! Let me sketch it. The end of 1833 and spring
of 1834 passed in Essex, writing the three first books of the
Revolutionary Epick: returned to Bradenham before Easter,
then to town and remained there until this moment. A
season of unparalleled success and gaiety. What a vast
number of extraordinary characters have passed before me
or with whom I have become acquainted. Interviews with
O'Connell, Beckford, and Lord Durham, three men all making
a great noise. Will they be remembered when this book
turns up, if ever it do? Perhaps O'Connell. The first [he
added in a letter to his sister] is the man of the greatest
genius ; the second of the greatest taste ; and the last of the
greatest ambition.
Conversation of three hours with O'Connell, next whom
I sat at dinner. Very communicative. Said that from
being the son of a gentleman farmer he had raised himself
to be une des puissances du monde (his very words). Said that
1 Letters, pp. 87, 88.

254 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
the Clare Election was the most nervous moment of his life.
I think he said he did not sleep a wink for three days. Had
he failed he would have been ridiculous for life. Did not
determine on the step until he had tried every country gentle
man favorable to the Catholics. Two days after the election
a legal flaw was detected in the registration of his voters by
which, had it been discovered in time, his majority, and much
more, would have been cut off.
How sorry I am that I did not keep some record of the last
four months. I revived my acquaintance with the Sheridans,
with whom I was so intimate last year, Mrs. Norton, Helen
Blackwood, Lady Seymour — three matchless sisters, and the
mother and Lady Graham.
Mrs. Norton's house was the scene of the famous
encounter with Lord Melbourne, of which the story has
been so often told.
It was in 1834 that I met Lord Melbourne at Storey's Gate
and was introduced to him. Lord Melbourne asked how he
could advance me in life, and half proposed that I should
be his private secretary, enquiring what my object in life
might be. 'To be Prime Minister.' It was then that Lord
Melbourne, with a gravity not common with him, set to
work to prove to me how vain and impossible to realise, in
those days, was this ambition. It was a long speech, and
I think I could repeat every word of it still.
So Disraeli himself told the story to Lord Rowton, and
Melbourne's biographer supplies what is missing. Lord
Grey, it will be borne in mind, had not yet resigned,
and Melbourne was still Home Secretary. Disraeli was
presented to him after dinner, and the two had a long
conversation. The Minister was attracted more and more as he listened
to the uncommonplace language and spirit of the youthful
politician, and thought to himself he would be well worth
serving. Abruptly, but with a certain tone of kindness which
took away any air of assumption, he said, 'Well now, tell
me, what do you want to be?' The quiet gravity of the
reply fairly took him aback — ' I want to be Prime Minister.'
Melbourne gave a long sigh, and then said very seriously:
'No chance of that in our time. It is all arranged and
settled. Nobody but Lord Grey could perhaps have carried
the Reform Bill; but he is an old man, and when he gives

1834] THE MELBOURNE INCIDENT 255
up, he will certainly be succeeded by one who has every
requisite for the positiou, in the prime of life and fame,
of old blood, high rank, great fortune, and greater ability.
Once in power, there is nothing to prevent him holding office
as long as Sir Robert Walpole. Nobody can compete with
Stanley. I heard him the other night in the Commons,
when the party were all divided and breaking away from
their ranks, recall them by the mere force of superior will
and eloquence: he rose like a young eagle above them all,
and kept hovering over their heads till they were reduced
to abject submission. There is nothing like him. If you
are going into politics and mean to stick to it, I daresay you
will do very well, for you have ability and enterprise ; and
if you are careful how you steer, no doubt you will get into
some port at last. But you must put all these foolish notions
out of your head; they won't do at all. Stanley will be the
next Prime Minister, you will see.'1
There is a sequel to the story which is not so well
known. Melbourne lived till near the close of 1848 ;
and when, after the death of Lord George Bentinck and
shortly before his own, he heard of Disraeli's approaching
elevation to the leadership of the Tory party in the
House of Commons, he exclaimed in some excitement,
' By God ! the fellow will do it yet.'
I have become this year [the diary resumes] very popular
with the dandies. D'Orsay took a fancy to me, and they
take their tone from him. Lady Blessington is their muse,
and she declared violently in my favor. I am as popular
with first-rate men as I am hated by the second-rate : D'Orsay,
Massey Stanley, Talbot, Marquis of Worcester. Revived
my acquaintance with Angerstein,2 who thought I meant to
cut him — an error! I am very blind.
What a happy or rather amusing society H[enrietta] 3
and myself commanded this year. What delicious little
suppers after the Opera ! Castlereagh ever gay, a con
stant attendant, and Ossulston, the pet of all the women,
with his beautiful voice. What a singular character is
Ossulston. He requires studying. Then we made it a point
always to have some very pretty women. Charles Mathews
ever there. Inimitable mime ! His animal spirits are extraor-
1 Torrens's Life of Melbourne, p. 275.
2 His second, it will be remembered, in the affair with Lord
Nugent. 3 See below, p. 339.

256 LLFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
dinary. Landseer (Edwin), Grantley Berkeley, Seymour de
Constant. This last hero reminds me of that extraordinary
woman Lady Dudley Stuart1 and she again of her family —
most of whom I know, Lucien Prince of Canino, Joseph
Count of Survilliers. Lady Dudley's little son, like the
Emperor. And Lord Dudley must not be forgotten with
his handsome melancholy face, and then Lady Tankerville
and her lovers. How much I could write of this singular
coterie ! But this is a mem. which will recall them perhaps
to my memory.
Old Lady Salisbury and old Lady Cork. Met the Duke
of Wellington at Lady Cork's in his blue ribbon the eve of
the day Lord Grey resigned. 'He always wears his blue
ribbon when mischief is going on,' whispered Ossulston to
me. Rogers hates me. I can hardly believe, as he gives out,
that V. G. is the cause. Considering his age I endeavoured
to conciliate him, but it is impossible. I think I will give him
cause to hate me. When Shee was elected P. R. A. Rogers
(his friend) said it was the greatest compliment ever paid to
Literature. Lord Wilton and his Italian. The story I thought too good
but I believe true. [Come sto Signor Rubini]
[Come sta Signora Grisi J
Dined with him at Lady B.'s.
Lady Blessington and Lady Manners Sutton [her sister].
The Speaker appeared to me a bite when I was introduced to
him by his wife.
Long conversation with Lord Lyndhurst. He said that if
he were to choose a career now it would be at once editor
and proprietor of a firstrate newspaper.

To Lady Blessington. Bradenham House,
Aug. 5. [1834.]
I was so sorry to leave London without being a moment
alone with you; but although I came to the Opera last night
on purpose, Fate was against us. I did not reach this place
until Sunday, very ill indeed from the pangs of parting.
Indeed, I feel as desolate as a ghost, and. I do not think
that I ever shall be able to settle to anything again. It is
1 Daughter of Lucien Bonaparte.

1834] LADY BLESSINGTON 257
a great shame, when people are happy together, that they
should be ever separated; but it seems the great object
of all human legislation that people never should be happy
together. My father I find better than I expected, and much cheered
by my presence. I delivered him all your kind messages.
He is now very busy on his History of Enghsh Literature, in
which he is far advanced. I am mistaken if you will not
delight in these volumes. They are full of new views of the
history of our language, and indeed of our country, for the
history of a State is necessarily mixed up with the history of
its literature.
For myself, I am doing nothing. The western breeze favors
an al fresco existence, and I am seated with a pipe under a
spreading sycamore, solemn as a pasha.
I wish you would induce Hookham to entrust me with
Agathon,1 that mad Byronic novel.
What do you think of the modern French novelists, and is
it worth my while to read them, and if so, what do you recom
mend me ? What of Balzac, is he better than Sue and Geo :
Sand Dudevant and are these inferior to Hugo ? I ask you
these questions because you will give me short answers, like
all people who are masters of their subject.
I suppose it is vain to hope to see my dear D'Orsay here ;
I wish indeed he would come. Here is a cook by no means
contemptible. He can bring his horses if he like, but I can
mount him. Adieu, dear Lady Blessington, some day I will
try to write you a more amusing letter ; at present I am in
truth ill and sad.2

Bradenham House,
Friday, Aug. 15. [1834.]
My dear Lady Blessington,
I have been very unwell, or I should sooner have acknow
ledged the receipt of your kind letter. I can assure you that
your friendship is a great consolation to me. The change of
life was too sad and sudden. Indeed I am quite at a loss how
to manage affairs in future as I find separation more irksome
than even my bitterest imagination predicted. God however
is great, and the future must regulate itself, for I can't. I
have done nothing but scribble one day a third part of The
Infernal Marriage with which fantasy Colburn pretends now
to be much pleased. I suppose your letter is at the bottom
of his rapture.
1 A translation from the German of Wieland.
" Prom Mr. Alfred Morrison's collection of autograph letters.

258 LIFE IN LONDON [chap, xii
I am delighted with Agathon. It left me musing which is
a test of a great work. I invariably close one in a reverie.
Wieland indeed always delights me. I sympathise with him
much. There is a wild Oriental fancy blended with his
Western philosophy which is a charming union. I like a moral
to peep out of the wildest invention, to assure us that, while
we have been amused, we have also all the time been growing
a little wiser. The translation of the Agathon is very clumsy.
I wish I could read it in the original but I have no talent for
languages and invariably lose my command over English in
an exact proportion as I gain any hold over another tongue.
. . . My kind regards to his Highness, King Alfred: a
wise man though not a Saxon. Your faithful D.
From Lady Blessington. Aug. 20, 1834.
I am very sorry indeed to hear that you have been ill and
sad ; we are all but poor machines, easily put out of order,
when the mind, or the heart, or both — for they always like
true friends sympathise — are deranged or chagrined. What
poor philosophers even the wisest of us are proved to be, when
influenced by some master passion, and authors who, like
yourself, can make others think, are among those who can the
least govern their own thoughts, when once under the rule of
love. Genius is, and must ever be, accompanied by passions
proportionately strong, and I therefore reserve all my sym
pathies for its calamities, which is exactly the reverse of the
practice of the world. From Count D'Orsay. [Undated.1
C'est une injustice que fait le cher Disraeli que de supposer
qu'il ne peut approcher son ami que comme un Pacha a trois
queues, charge de presents orientaux. Ces chevaux arabes,
ces sabres damas, ne sont que des presents materiels, mais
lorsqu'il s'agit de dons spirituels, de ceux qu'une belle Nature
seule peut engendre, c'est alors qu'il regrette de ne pas voir
celui qui possede toute la vivacity et le feu du coursier arabien
dans le caractere et le tranchant dans l'esprit du damas. Ces
richesses sont les seules dont I'homme ait le droit de se glorifier
et le cher Disraeli a done extr§mement tort, d'etre injuste
envers cette belle Nature, qui a eto si genereuse a son egard.
Son ami affectionne, D'Orsay.

1834] ILLNESS 259
To Lady Blessington.
Bradenham,
Friday. [Oct. 17, 1834.]
My dear Lady Blessington,
. . . I sympathise with your sufferings ; my experi
ence unhappily assures me how ably you describe them. This
golden autumn ought to have cured us all. I myself, in spite
of the sunshine, have been a great invalid. Indeed, I know
not how it is, but I am never well save in action, and then
I feel immortal. I am ashamed of being ' nervous.' Dyspepsia
always makes me wish for a civil war. In the meantime I
amuse myself by county politics. . . .
My father sends his kindest regards. As for myself, I am
dying for action, and rust like a Damascus sabre in the sheathe
of a poltroon.
Adieu ! dear friend, we shall meet on your return. B. Disraeli.1

To Benjamin Austen.
Bradenham,
Oct. 24, 1834.
I have been prevented in bringing out a novel [Henrietta
Temple] in November by a strange illness which kept me to
my sofa exactly two months. It was something of the kind
of attack you experienced at Fyfield — great pain in the legs
and extraordinary languor. It came upon me suddenly. I
struggled against it for some time, but mounting my horse
one day, I had a slight determination of blood to my head,
and was obliged to throw myself on the floor of the hall.
This frightened me, remembering old sufferings, and I laid up.
Quiet, diet and plenteous doses of ammonia (heavenly maid !)
not only restored me, but I have felt better and more hearty
this last fortnight than I long remember.
1 From Mr. Alfred Morrison's collection.

CHAPTER XIII
Joins the Conservatives
1834-1835
The last letters prepare us for another period of mainly
political activity. Nearly two years had now elapsed
since the second Wycombe election, and during that
interval, while the politician slumbered in Disraeli,
public events had been moving swiftly on. ' There is
nothing more remarkable,' he writes in Endymion,1
' than the sudden break-up of the Whig party after their
successful revolution of 1832. It is one of the most
striking instances on record of all the elements of political
power being useless without a commanding individual
will.' Durham, whose place was at the extreme left of
the party, had abandoned the Grey Ministry in March,
1833 ; Stanley and Graham at the extreme right had
followed in May, 1834; and Lord Grey himself retired
a couple of months later. Melbourne succeeded as
Prime Minister ; but in November his position was
weakened by the succession of Lord Althorp to the peer
age, and his consequent withdrawal from the House of
Commons, of which he had been leader, and King
William IV. seized the opportunity of dismissing his
Ministers to make way for Peel and Wellington. During
the crisis that followed the retirement of Stanley and
1 Ch. 14.
260

1834] LORD LYNDHURST 261
Graham, Disraeli had anticipated the course of events
with curious prescience. To Sarah Disraeli. June 4, 1834.
There is a lull in the storm ; it is supposed the session will
now be hurried over quietly, and then something must be
determined on. The Whigs cannot exist as a party without
taking in Lord Durham, and the King will not consent to it.
Durham is not in a hurry, and becomes each day more violent
in his demands. Triennial Parliaments to be a Cabinet
measure, and an extension of the constituency, the ballot to
stand on its merits — in short, a revolution ; for this must
lead to a fatal collision with the House of Lords. The Tories
will not take office unless the Whigs give it up in despair.
My own opinion is, that in the recess the King will make an
effort to try and form a Conservative Government with Peel
and Stanley ; but the Tories think that Durham will have
his way. I fear a dissolution must be the end of it.1
Incidentally this letter reveals a growing estrange
ment on the part of the writer from the Radicalism of
his first political campaigns: triennial Parliaments and
the ballot, the nostrums which had figured so promi
nently in his earlier political programmes, had now
come to spell 'a revolution.' Disraeli's acquaintance
with Durham may have checked for a moment the
progress of his conversion ; but Durham's influence was
soon overshadowed by the influence of another and more
congenial spirit. At the end of the season, as has been
seen, he had met Lord Lyndhurst, and their acquaint
ance soon ripened into a friendship which became a capi
tal fact in Disraeli's life. Lyndhurst was already over
sixty, but he had still nearly thirty years of life before
him, and he was still in the full vigour of those splendid
faculties which might have given him an even higher
place among his contemporaries and in the eyes of
posterity than that to which he attained, if he had only
possessed in larger measure the power of inspiring con
fidence, which is so essential to the success of a states
man in England. But he suffered from a certain lack
1 Letters, p. 86.

262 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
of seriousness, and the crowning gifts of lofty purpose
and severe integrity were denied him.
To Sarah Disraeli. Nov. 4, 1834.
I dined on Saturday with Lyndhurst enfamille. A more
amiable and agreeable family I never met. The eldest
daughter, 'Sa,' is just like her mother, and, although only
thirteen, rules everything and everybody — a most astound
ing little woman. Yesterday I went to see the new actor,
Denvil. He is deplorable, has not the slightest feeling, nor
one physical or mental qualification for the stage. I saw
Chandos to-day, and had a long conversation with him on
politics. He has no head, but I flatter myself I opened his
mind a little. . . . D'Orsay has taken my portrait.1
Lord Chandos, as has been seen, was one of the members
for Bucks ; but, as the author or reputed author of the
famous clause in the Reform Bill which enfranchised
the agricultural occupiers, and as the recognised spokes
man for the farmers in the House of Commons, he was
a person of more than local importance. With his
genius for intrigue Disraeli was not long in devising a
plot in which his county member and his new friend
Lyndhurst might be usefully combined. Let him tell
the tale himself.2
I became acquainted with Lord L. at the latter end of
the summer of 1834. We took to each other instantly.
I sat next to him at dinner at Henrietta's. He went abroad
in the autumn with a family party which he asked me to
accompany, but I refused. On his return we again met with
much intimacy. It was the latter end of October that he
first began to speak to me in confidence on political affairs.
It was his opinion at that moment that the end of Whiggism
was at hand. The secession of the Stanley party, the
1 Letters, p. 88.
2 What follows is from a memorandum inscribed over date ' Hughen
den, 1863 ' — the year of Lyndhurst's death — ' I cut this out
of an old paper book. It was written at Bradenham in 1836,
and is very authentic' Its accuracy in certain points of detail is
confirmed by contemporary letters from Lyndhurst and Chandos them
selves.

Benjamin Disraeli

1834] LYNDHURST AND CHANDOS 263
subsequent intrigues of the Whigs with O'Connell and
the consequent retirement of Lord Grey on their dis
covery had reduced the mighty reform Parliament in spite
of their apparently overwhelming majority to a very low
ebb in public opinion ; but the nation at large was impressed
with an idea that from their reconstruction of the con
stituency they were our masters for life. I had then no
political relations, though I had had overtures from Durham,
who offered to return me to Parliament. I had conversation
with him, but he appeared to me to have no definite plan.
Lord L. thought the time had arrived when the movement
might be stopped. He was looking about for a party to put
in motion which might not seem factious. After some
consultation he resolved that the Ministers should be thrown
in a minority on some agricultural amendment at the meeting
of Parliament, and I agreed to see Lord Chandos, with whom
I had a county acquaintance, on the subject.
I went into the country therefore to attend some meet
ing of our agricultural committee. We agreed to petition
Parliament on the Malt Tax, and I was requested to prepare
the county petition to the House of Commons, which I did.
After business was over I took Lord C. aside and it was
settled that I should go over with him to Wotton and talk
over affairs. The result of our conference was this — being,
I think, the 11th November — that he undertook to organise
a country party and throw the Government in a minority
on Parliament meeting by an agricultural amendment on
the address. He required for himself the First Lord of the
Admiralty, but told me then that he was assured, from
some communication he had received, that the Duke would
recommend Peel as Premier. He made no terms for any
other country leader except Knatchbull, who, he stipulated,
should have a seat in the Cabinet.
In the evening of the 12th I arrived in town on my return
and immediately had an interview with L. who told me
the Duke of W. had arrived that day and that Lord Spencer
was dead, which, by-the-bye, I had heard at Wotton as I
was departing, Chandos hurrying my departure, as he said
he thought this was the last blow to the Cabinet. Lord L.
immediately wrote to the D. requesting an interview, and
afterwards appointed me to meet him at his private room
in the Exchequer1 the morning of the 14th, at 2 o'clock, to
hear the result. The Duke fixed the evening of the 13th
for the interview, and I wrote to Lord C. accordingly.
Lord L. had accordingly his interview with the D. on
the evening of the 13th, and opened his plan ; but the D.
1 Lyndhurst was Chief Baron.

264 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
threw cold water upon it. The interview finished thus : —
' At this moment I will make no movements — to-morrow
morning I depart for Strathfieldsaye. If the King is well
advised he will now send for me — but I will not even be in
London.' In spite of what occurred Lord L. does not believe
that the D. was at the time in any communication with the
Court. The D. accordingly departed for Strathfieldsaye
the following morning, and I wrote to Lord C. notifying his
Grace's refusal to concur in our plan, of which I had been
apprised by Lord L. on the morning of the 14th. On the
same day (the 14th) the Ministry were dismissed at Brighton,
and a messenger arrived for the Duke at Apsley House.
The letter was, I believe, brought up by Lord Melbourne
himself. It was immediately forwarded to Strathfieldsaye.
15th Nov. — Dismissal of the Ministry publicly anuounced.
The Duke at Brighton — whence he wrote to Lyndhurst,
informing him that he had recommended H.M. to send for
Peel, and requesting him to meet his Grace the following
morning at Apsley House. This L. communicated to me
in the evening. After that interview I met L. The Duke
was in good spirits. He said ' It will be a month perhaps
before he comes. All that we have got to do now is to get
the Government of the country into our hands. I shall sit at
the Treasury and take all the Secretary's seals ; you must
take the Great Seal — you and I must be the government of
the country. Things are quiet, the people will not murmur.'
Thus the government of the country was efficiently carried
on, L. retaining his C[hief] B[aron]y and sitting also in the
Chancery. Nobody murmured. The general opinion was
that the Tories would succeed. Bonham calculated we might
just get a Tory majority, but the chief hope was in the
goodness of our measures and the impossibility of the
Conservative Whigs a la Grey, &c, coalescing with Papists
and Republicans. Lord L. was, however, in the habit of
saying to me ' You will see that there will be a coalition
of all parties against us.' 'You will see that these fellows
will coalesce.'
Great was the suspense until Peel arrived. At last one
evening we were informed that he had indeed come. The
messenger, Mr. Hudson, a King's page, reached him at
Rome, about to depart for Naples. P. immediately had an
audience of the King and undertook the Government, and
then interviews with the D. and L. He immediately offered
the F. Secretary to the Duke and the Great Seal to L., who
accepted it, though at a sacrifice. He then wrote to Lord
Stanley offering him four places in the Cabinet, at his choice,
with the above exceptions. Never was such an offer before

1834] THE PEEL MINISTRY 265
— never will it be made again. The refusal of Lord Stanley
was expected, but it was not expected that the reason would
have been his unwillingness to act with the D. on account of
foreign policy. This was frivolous. Sir J[ames] G[raham]
was inclined to join, but, of course, went with Lord S.
From this moment P. only consulted Goulburn, which
astonished all and disgusted many. Sir H[enry] H[ardinge]
was dissatisfied at being offered Ireland, which, however,
he accepted. G[oulburn] was Secretary for Home; a very
unpopular appointment. Lord Ashburton accepted the Board
of Trade on the condition of being Lord Ashburton — a
good name, but Mr. B[aring] has had no success in the Upper
House. The man who gained most was Scarlett — a Chief
[Barony of the Exchequer] and a peerage [as Lord
Abinger] after having been apparently shelved. Chandos,
entangled in our agricultural intrigues and pledged to the
repeal of the Malt Tax, was obliged to decline office, as Peel
would not consent to his panacea. Knatchbull was less
nice and deserted the Country party.
The Cabinet was necessarily a weak one, and contained
many feeble and some odious names. And yet never did
a Cabinet mature such admirable and comprehensive
measures ! But all was owing to P. and L. The law
appointments were excellent and popular. To the astonish
ment of Lord L. Sugden accepted the Irish Chancellorship.
Before he offered it to him L. was prepared for an indignant
refusal. Pollock was Attorney, a weak man but the leader
of his circuit: the Solicitor, Follett, who had great success
in the House as well as at the Bar, though the youngest
Solicitor, I believe, ever appointed. So excellent were the
projected measures of the Cabinet that with 300 Tories or
Conservatives — for the Stanley section of 25 votes was
counted among them — Lord L. became sanguine and
thought that they had weathered the storm. The vote on
the Speakership, however, opened all eyes, and after that no
one could hesitate about the ultimate fate of the Cabinet.
Had Lord S. joined, the movement would have been
arrested : this junction would have been a golden bridge
for rats, of which there were numbers who only wanted a
leader. This memorandum has anticipated — anticipated both
in the order of the events which it narrates and still more
in the point of view from which they are surveyed.
When it was written, nearly two years later than the
time our narrative has reached, Disraeli had definitely

266 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xm
taken his place in the Tory ranks; at present all was
confusion and unsettlement both for him and others.
It was a lively season, that winter of 1834 ! What hopes
what fears, and what bets ! From the day on which Mr.
Hudson was to arrive at Rome to the election of the Speaker,
not a contingency that was not the subject of a wager! Peo
ple sprang up like mushrooms; town suddenly became full.
Everybody who had been in office, and everybody who wished
to be in office; everybody who had ever had anything, and
everybody who ever expected to have anything, were alike
visible. All of course by mere accident ; one might meet the
same men regularly every day for a month, who were only
'passing through town.' . . .
But, after all, who were to form the government, and what
was the government to be ? Was it to be a Tory govern
ment, or an Enlightened-Spirit-of-the-Age Liberal-Moderate-
Reform government; was it to be a government of high
philosophy or of low practice ; of principle or of expediency ;
of great measures or of little men ? A government of states
men or of clerks? Of Humbug or of Humdrum? Great
questions these, but unfortunately there was nobody to answer
them. They tried the Duke; but nothing could be pumped
out of him. All that he knew, which he told in his curt,
husky manner, was, that he had to carry on the King's gov
ernment. As for his solitary colleague, he listened and smiled,
and then in his musical voice asked them questions in return,
which is the best possible mode of avoiding awkward in
quiries. It was very unfair this, for no one knew what tone
to take ; whether they should go down to their public dinners
and denounce the Reform Act or praise it ; whether the Church
was to be remodelled or only admonished; whether Ireland
was to be conquered or conciliated.1
Disraeli, unlike the majority, was in no doubt at all
as to his opinions ; but he was still in great doubt as to
his party affiliations, and, decided only in his hostility
to the Whigs, was still straddling between the extremes
of Toryism on the one side and Radicalism on the other.
The formation of the Peel Government had made a gen
eral election a certainty, and he was of course anxious to
obtain a seat. ' I saw your son yesterday,' writes Bulwer
1 Coningsby, Bk. II. ch. 4.

1834] APPEALS TO DURHAM 267
to Isaac D'Israeli one day in the middle of November,
' restless and ambitious as usual : such dispositions always
carve out their way.' The son was indeed determined
to carve out his way, and restlessness and ambition
marked all his conduct at this time of crisis. His first
appeal appears to have been addressed to a high Radical
quarter. To Lord Durham.
Bradenham House, High Wvcombe,
Monday, Nov. 17, 1834.
My dear Lord Durham,
My electioneering prospects look gloomy. The squires
throughout my own county look grim at a Radical, and the
Liberal interest is split and pre-engaged in our few towns,
that I fear I shall fail. At present I am looking after Ayles
bury, where young Hobhouse was beat last time, and will
be beat this, if he try, but where, with my local influence,
your party would succeed. If you have influence with Hob
house, counsel him to resign in my favour, and not of an
other person, as 'tis rumoured he will. At the same time
if Nugent return, he will beat us all. So my dear Lord,
my affairs are black; therefore, remember me and serve me
if you can. My principles you are acquainted with; as for
my other qualifications, I am considered a great popular
orator. What do you think of the Tories ! at a moment when
decision and energy would be pearls and diamonds to them,
they have formed a provisional Government ! ' The voice
of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the —
Lords.' Such is Wellington's solitary cry ; a Baptist worthy
of such a Messiah as — Peel.
In great haste,
Dear Lord Durham,
Your faithful, Benj. Disraeli.1

Durham's reply was sympathetic. He had not, indeed,
sufficient acquaintance with Hobhouse to justify his inter
ference at Aylesbury ; but, he added, ' these are times
which require the presence in Parliament of every true
1 Reid's Life of Durham, I., p. 408.

268 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
and honest politician. I trust and hope, therefore, that
you will find your way there yet. If an occasion offers
when I can forward your views I shall not fail to do
so.' Disraeli, however, was in quest of something more
substantial, and he soon turned to his friends at the oppo
site pole of politics. To Sarah Disraeli. Nov. 28, 1834.
The Duke and the Chancellor are besetting old Carrington
in my favour, that they say he must yield. I am not san
guine, but was recommended to issue the address.1 D'Orsay
is working Bob Smith very hard. The Duke wrote a strong
letter to the chairman of election committees, saying that
if Wycombe were not insured something else must be done
for Disraeli, as 'a man of his acquirements and reputa
tion must not be thrown away.' L. showed me the letter,
but it is impossible to say how things will go. Entre nous,
Parliament will not be dissolved as speedily as is imagined,
which is all in my favour, both as regards Wycombe or any
other place. It is impossible for anyone to be warmer than
the Duke or Lyndhurst, and I ought to say the same of
Chandos.2 In spite of all these blandishments Lord Carrington
and his son remained courteously obdurate, and Lynd
hurst, foiled in this quarter, employed his good offices
elsewhere, as the following entries in Grevilie's Diary
show : —
Dec. 6, 1834. — The Chancellor called on me yesterday
about getting young Disraeli into Parliament (through the
means of George Bentinck) for Lynn. I had told him George
wanted a good man to assist in turning out William Lennox,
and he suggested the above-named gentleman, whom he called
a friend of Chandos. His political principles must, however,
be in abeyance, for he said that Durham was doing all he
could to get him by the offer of a seat, and so forth ; if there
fore he is undecided and wavering between Chandos and
Durham, he must be a mighty impartial personage. I don't
think such a man will do, though just such as Lyndhurst
would be connected with.
Dec. 7. — Disraeli he [George Bentinck] won't hear of.
1 To the electors of High Wycombe.
2 Letters, p. 88.

1834] THE CRISIS EXAMINED 269
Eventually Disraeli decided to enter on a third contest
at Wycombe, the other candidates being his old opponents
Smith and Grey. To Wycombe accordingly he repaired,
and delivered1 a long speech on the situation, which he
at once reissued as a pamphlet under the title of ' The
Crisis Examined.' This speech has an important place
in the story of Disraeli's political development. He
begins with the usual assurance of the fixity of his
principles. Since he last addressed them - great revo
lutions have occurred — revolutions of government and
revolutions of opinion : I can, however, assure you that
I remain unchanged.' But as he cannot condescend
to obtain even the honour of a seat in Parliament 'by
Jesuitical intrigue or casuistical cajolery,' as he ' cannot
condescend at the same time to be supported by the
Tories because they deem me a Tory, and by the Liberals
because they hold me a Liberal,' he proceeds to unfold
his programme as adapted to the new circumstances
which have arisen. In the foreground stands relief for
the agricultural interest, which is suffering from severe
depression. ' We may hope that the Exchequer may
grant them at least the partial relief of the malt tax,
although I recommend them to petition for the whole.
I would not at the same time make a request and intimate
a compromise.' The popular cry of the country is Church
Reform ; but he dislikes that ' cant phrase,' and hopes to
hear less of Church reform and more of Church improve
ment. Pluralities must be abolished, the great evil of
non-residence must be terminated, and to achieve these
all-important objects there must be an increase in 'the
value of the lesser livings and the incomes in general
of the inferior clergy.' Church reform leads him on to
Ireland. I deem it absolutely necessary, even for the existence of
the Protestant Establishment itself, that the question of the
Irish Church should be forthwith grappled with; that it
1 On December 16.

270 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
should be the object of a measure in its nature as final, in its
operation as conclusive, as human wit can devise. It is now
impossible to avoid, and too late to postpone it; it must be
met immediately — the question is, how may it be met effi
ciently ? Twelve months, therefore, must not pass over with
out the very name of tithes in that country being abolished
for ever; nor do I deem it less urgent that the Protestant
Establishment in that country should be at once proportioned
to the population which it serves. But, gentlemen, I for one
will never consent that the surplus revenues of that branch of
our Establishment shall ever be appropriated to any other ob
ject save the interests of the Church of England, because expe
rience has taught me that an establishment is never despoiled
except to benefit an aristocracy. ... I know the love
that great lords, and especially Whig lords, have for abbey
lands and great tithes : I remember Woburn, and I profit by
the reminiscence.
Then there are the claims of the Dissenters.
In my opinion these are claims which must not be eluded
by any Government that wishes to stand. I would grant
every claim of this great body that the spirit of the most com
prehensive toleration required, consistent with the established
constitution of the country. Therefore, I think that the regis
tration and the marriage claims should be conceded. As for
the question of the church-rate, it is impossible that we can
endure that every time one is levied, a town should present
the scene of a contested election. The rights of the Establish
ment must be respected, but, for the sake of the Establishment
itself, that flagrant scandal must be removed. These are con
cessions which, I think, are due to a numerous and powerful
portion of our fellow-subjects ; due, I repeat, to their numbers,
their intelligence, and their property, and consistent, in my
opinion, with the maintenance of an Established Church, a
blessing with which I am not prepared to part, and which I
am resolved to uphold, because I consider it a guarantee of
civilisation, and a barrier against bigotry.
In the matter of the Municipal Corporations he is also
in favour of reform ; but what is to be his attitude to
the Government that had just been constituted ? If
they will adopt and carry measures similar to those he
has enumerated, he indicates that he will be ready to
support them ; though, as Peel had not yet explained
his policy, he is careful not to commit himself. ' I am

1834] THEORY OF OPPORTUNISM 271
for measures, gentlemen, and not men, and for this simple
reason, that for four years we have had men and not
measures, and I am wearied of them.' It was said,
however, that they ought not to accept any measures
from the hands of those who had opposed the Reform
Bill. But he shows at length how little claim the Whigs
themselves can lay to consistency even in the matter of
reform, and how little right they have to call other men
renegades and apostates : and then, in a famous and daring
passage, he expounds his doctrine of consistency.
The truth is, gentlemen, a statesman is the creature of his
age, the child of circumstances, the creation of his times. A
statesman is essentially a practical character; and when he
is called upon to take office, he is not to inquire what his
opinions might or might not have been upon this or that
subject ; he is only to ascertain the needful and the beneficial,
and the most feasible measures are to be carried on. The
fact is, the conduct and the opinions of public men at different
periods of their career must not be too curiously contrasted
in a free and aspiring country. The people have their passions,
and it is even the duty of public men occasionally to adopt
sentiments with which they do not sympathise, because the
people must have leaders. Then the opinions and prejudices
of the Crown must necessarily influence a rising statesman.
I say nothing of the weight which great establishments and
corporations, and the necessity of their support and patronage,
must also possess with an ambitious politician. All this,
however, produces ultimate benefit; all these influences
tend to form that eminently practical character for which
our countrymen are celebrated. I laugh, therefore, at the
objection against a man, that at a former period of his career
he advocated a policy different to his present one. All I
seek to ascertain is whether his present policy be just, neces
sary, expedient; whether at the present moment he is pre
pared to serve the country according to its present neces
sities. If on Peel and his Ministry he suspends judgment, to the
Whigs he gives no quarter. He has always believed that
they intended to make themselves masters for life, and
they would certainly have gained their object if they had
succeeded in overpowering the House of Lords as they

272 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
have succeeded in packing the House of Commons. What
then would have become of the liberties of England ?
I will allow for the freedom of the Press ; I will allow for
the spirit of the age ; I will allow for the march of intellect ;
but I cannot force from my mind the conviction that a
House of Commons, concentrating in itself the whole power of
the State, might — I should rather say would — notwithstanding
the great antagonistic forces to which I have alluded, estab
lish in this country a despotism of the most formidable and
dangerous character.
He reminds his hearers of the consequences of such an
arrangement in the reign of Charles I.
Looking at such consequences I think we may feel that we
have some interest in maintaining- the prerogative of the
Crown and the privileges of the Peers. I, for one, shall ever
view with jealous eye the proceedings of any House of
Commons, however freely chosen.
Already he sees symptoms of jobbery and servility in
the Reformed Parliament, and what of the Reform
Ministry ? ' The Reform Ministry indeed ! Why
scarcely an original member of that celebrated Cabinet
remained ' at the time of their dismissal. And then we
have the famous Ducrow simile, a characteristic specimen
of Disraeli's early political eloquence, full of the broad
humour which appeals effectively to the mob and yet
with the indefinable quality which suggests the born
man of letters.
The Reform Ministry ! I dare say, now, some of you have
heard of Mr. Ducrow, that celebrated gentleman who rides
upon six horses. What a prodigious achievement ! It seems
impossible ; but you have confidence in Ducrow. You fly to
witness it ; unfortunately, one of the horses is ill, and a donkey
is substituted in its place. But Ducrow is still admirable;
there he is, bounding along in a spangled jacket and cork
slippers! The whole town is mad to see Ducrow riding at
the same time on six horses. But now two more of the
steeds are seized with the staggers, and lo ! three jackasses in
their stead ! Still Ducrow persists, and still announces to the
public that he will ride round the circus every night on his six

1834] THE DUCROW SIMILE 273
steeds. At last all the horses are knocked up, and now there
are half-a-dozen donkeys. What a change ! Behold the hero
in the amphitheatre, the spangled jacket thrown on one side,
the cork slippers on the other. Puffing, panting, and perspir
ing, he pokes one sullen brute, thwacks another, cuffs a third,
and curses a fourth, while one brays to the audience, and
another rolls in the sawdust. Behold the late Prime Minister
and the Reform Ministry — the spirited and snow-white steeds
have gradually changed into an equal number of sullen and
obstinate donkeys ; while Mr. Merryman, who, like the Lord
Chancellor, was once the very life of the ring, now lies his
despairing length in the middle of the stage, with his jokes
exhausted and his bottle empty !
One can imagine how this kind of thing was relished by
his audience. ' I stand astonishingly well at Wycombe,'
he wrote to Austen,' ' and may beat the Colonel yet. Had
I the money, I might canter over the county, for my
popularity is irresistible.' On the day following the
speech at Wycombe he spoke again at Aylesbury at an
agricultural dinner where he was introduced to the
audience as a firm friend of the agricultural interest,
and where he declared that his confidence in the present
Administration was greatly abated by the exclusion of
Lord Chandos from office. The Duke of Buckingham
was in the chair, so this declaration was not only good
politics for the audience, but a courtly compliment which,
however touched with irony, was in the style Disraeli
loved. His presence at such a gathering marked a distinct
advance towards identification with the Tories ; and in
sending the reprint of the Wycombe speech to Durham,
whom he had described in it as the only man of any
decision of character in the Reform Ministry, he shows a
consciousness of the widening of the interval between
them.

As for the opinions contained in these pages [he writes]
they are those I have ever professed, and I should grieve if your
Lordship's juncture with the Whigs and [my ?] continued
resistance to a party which has ever opposed me, even with a
degree of personal malignity, should ever place me in opposition

274 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
to a nobleman whose talents I respect, and who, I am
confident, has only the same object in view with myself —
to maintain this great Empire on a broad democratic basis,
which I am convinced is the only foundation on which it can
now rest.1
Radicals and Whigs, as usual, were drawing closer to
each other in opposition, and Disraeli, resolute in his
detestation of the Whigs, was moving in the opposite
direction ; but in Wycombe at all events he still clung to
his Radical friends, and this third election was fought
on the old basis of an alliance between Radicals and
Tories. On the day of nomination, ' it is not enough to
say of Mr. Disraeli,' writes a hostile witness, ' that he
delivered himself with his usual ability; the difficulties
he had to encounter were most ably met and judiciously
avoided ; to steer between the shoals of Toryism on the
one hand and the quicksands of Radicalism on the
other (for he was supported by the two parties) required
his utmost skill, and well did he acquit himself.'2 All his
adroitness, however, did not avail to carry the election.
When the poll closed on January 7 the figures were —
Smith, 289.
Grey, 147.
Disraeli, 128.
' It would be injustice to Mr. Disraeli,' the same writer
adds, 'not to say that he conducted himself throughout the
whole proceedings in the handsomest manner : there was
a total absence of those personalities which disgraced the
last election ; and in his concluding speech the unfortunate
candidate admitted that he had had fair play, and no
cause to complain.' A fortnight later, at a Conservative
dinner at Wycombe, with Chandos in the chair, the unfail
ing note of hopefulness and faith was sounded.
I am not at all disheartened. I do not in any way feel like
a beaten man. Perhaps it is because I am used to it. I will
1 Reid's Life of Durham, I., p. 371.
2 From a letter in the Bucks Gazette for Jan. 16, 1835.

1835] THIRD DEFEAT AT WYCOMBE 275
say of myself like the famous Italian general, who being asked
in his old age why he was always victorious, replied, it was
because he had always been beaten in his youth.

To the Duke of Wellington. [Jan. 7, 1835.]
I have fought our battle and I have lost it by a majority of
14.1 .... Had Lord Carrington exerted himself
even in the slightest degree in my favour I must have been
returned; but he certainly maintained a neutrality — a neu
trality so strict that it amounted to a blockade.
Grey made a violent anti-Ministerial speech, and I annihi
lated him in my reply ; but what use is annihilating men
out of the House of Commons. ... I am now a cipher ;
but if the devotion of my energies to your cause, in and out,
can ever avail you, your Grace may count upon me, who
seeks no greater satisfaction than that of serving a really
great man.2 From the Duke of Wellington. Jan. 10, 1836.
The Duke of Wellington presents his compliments to Mr.
Disraeli, and has received his letter of Wednesday night,
for which he is much obliged. He very much regrets the
result of the election at Wycombe.
The failure of this third attempt at Wycombe seems
finally to have convinced Disraeli that he could not hope
for a political career unless he definitely identified him
self with one or other of the two great parties ; and there
could no longer be any doubt as to which he would choose.
The formation of the Peel Government entirely changed
the problem for him, and thousands of others who were
still unsettled in their political allegiance. When he
published his Wycombe speech of December 16 as a
pamphlet, he told Austen that he was acting by 'the
Minister's desire'; and if Peel read the speech at all he
could hardly have failed to read it with approval. On
1 This does not agree with the figures given above, but those were
the days of open voting, and Disraeli may have written before the final
figures were available.
2 Maxwell's Life of Wellington, II., p. 305.

276 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
the very day after its delivery Peel himself submitted
to his Cabinet the draft of the address to his constituents
which has become famous in history as the Tamworth
Manifesto, and there is a very remarkable coincidence,
for it can hardly have been more, between the policy of
moderate reform therein unfolded and the practical
measures upon which Disraeli had insisted in his speech.
The Tamworth Manifesto was too opportunist in its
spirit, too much of a programme and too little of a creed,
long to satisfy Disraeli ; but at all events it showed that
Toryism had ceased to spell reaction or — a thing even
more repugnant to one of his temperament — stagnation,
and was in process of adapting itself to the spirit of the
age. The greatest obstacle in the way of his entering
the Tory camp had now been removed, and not many
tweeks after the Wycombe election he was nominated1
at his own request as a candidate for the Carlton Club,
which had been founded a few years before by the Duke
of Wellington and his friends, and had at once become
the recognised social citadel of Toryism. The decisive
step had now been taken. He had been exactly three
years in politics, and his apparent course in those years
had been that of a political comet, highly eccentric and
irregular. Henceforward his place in the political firma
ment is fixed, or his orbit at all events conforms to the
accepted laws of political motion.
It is no accident that there is a certain ambiguity about
the party affiliations of nearly all our greater statesmen:
Chatham, Pitt, Burke, Canning, Peel, Palmerston,
Disraeli, and Gladstone — none of these has an absolutely
consistent party record ; and, indeed, a man with such
a record would be more likely to win distinction as a
good partisan than as a great statesman. If we are to
measure consistency by ideas, Disraeli is the most con
sistent of them all, and yet more than any of the others
he was to suffer throughout his career from the reputa
tion of political time-server and adventurer acquired in
1 Lord Strangf ord proposer and Lord Chandos seconder.

1835] NOMIN*- COk> FOR THE CARLTON 277
these early and erra . years. In one sense this reputa
tion was wholly unjust ; in another it had not been un
provoked nor, indeed, wholly undeserved. In his guiding
principles and ideas he had changed far less than most
of his judges and critics, but the world, which looks only
to externals, saw that he had been in communication, if
not in co-operation, with men at the opposite poles of
politics, and drew its conclusions accordingly. He had
been too eager in his desire for tangible and immediate
success, too reckless in his disregard for the conventions
of political life ; and he had thus aroused in many a dis
trust which he was never wholly to allay, and which to
the very end of his days was to be a cause of weakness
to himself and a formidable weapon at the disposal of
his enemies.

To Sarah Disraeli.

Jan. 20, 1835.

Last Saturday a dinner by the Chancellor to Lord Abinger
and the Barons of the Exchequer. There were also George
Dawson, myself, Praed, young Gladstone, Sir M. Shee, Sir J.
Beresford, and Pemberton: rather dull, but we had a swan
very white and tender, and stuffed with truffles, the best
company there.1
In 'young Gladstone's' recollections of this dinner
apparently neither the swan nor Disraeli found a place ;
but he noted for his future guidance some counsel given
them by Lyndhurst : ' Never defend yourself before a
popular assembly, except with and by retorting the
attack ; the hearers, in the pleasure which the assault
gives them, will forget the previous charge ' 2 — a piece of
wisdom which, if Disraeli failed to note it at the time, he
was afterwards, as Lord Morley reminds us, to make his
1 Letters, p. 90.
2 Morley's Life of Gladstone, I., p. 122.

278 JOINS THE CONSErWaTives [chap, xiii
own, compressing it into one of his\o^st effective phrases,
'•Never com/plain and never explain.'
To Sarah Disraeli. Feb. 20, 1835.
About last night's debate [on the election of the Speaker],
Peel did not speak well ; Stanley with great point and power.
. . . O'Connell is so powerful that he says he will be
in the Cabinet. How can the Whigs submit to this ? It is
the Irish Catholic Party that has done all the mischief. Feb. 26.
Here there is only one topic, the division on the Address.
Peel made a powerful speech; Stanley constrained and
qualifying. His way is evidently not clear ; I cannot under
stand the game he is playing. On the Speakership he had no
party. Now fifty men meet at his house every morning.
Lyndhurst squabashed Brougham on Tuesday. April 1.
I do not doubt myself that the Government will be in a
minority on the present question, but this is not the cause of
the malaise of the Tories. The fact is, their chief is worried
by his wife, and she is nervous lest he should fight and all
that. There is no more reason now that the Tories should go
out than two months ago, and I cannot help believing that
they will not. On Sunday I dined at the Chancellor's, and
ever since I have had a severe cold and been nowhere. April 4.
I have not seen the Chancellor since Thursday. Peel is
much firmer and the King quite so, but his Majesty cannot
sleep. The decisive battle is to be fought on the Irish Tithe
Bill, and we expect to win. Everybody has got the influenza;
the Lord Chancellor has had an attack ; and, as you rightly
expected, myself, though mine was much modified to former
years.1 The decisive battle, however, was lost, and Peel re
signed. We are now admitted to some knowledge of a
curious episode in unwritten political history.
1 Letters, pp. 90-92.

1835] A COALITION SCHEME 279
In April, 1835, when Sir R. P[eel] resigned and great
difficulties and time experienced in forming a Government
by the Whigs, my old friend Mrs. Norton opened a communica
tion with me in order to form a coalition between the consti
tutional Whigs and Sir R. P. Melbourne was her prompter,
and he and she wished the affair to be arranged by Lord
L[yndhurst]. Lord M. would, I think, have thrown over the
Appropriation Clause. He expressed, according to her, an
absolute horror of O'Connell — with whom, he said, nothing
should induce him to form a connexion. He had authorised
none of the intrigues.
I had several conferences with her, prompted by L., and
paid her visits sometimes of two hours (though our acquaint
ance otherwise had quite ceased). Admitting the possibility
of arranging the Appropriation Clause, which of course rested
with M., I enquired whether M. would serve under P. She
assured me he had positively agreed to do so, and that he
would throw over Brougham as Chancellor for L.
I think the idea of throwing over B. occurred in this manner,
as I know the resolution was taken lately. Although our
negotiation failed, very friendly feelings subsisted at that
time between M. and L., and when all was over M. consulted
L. through Mrs. Norton as to putting the Seals in commission.
The difficulty was to communicate to B. that he was thrown
over. At last M. resolved to do it himself, which he did.
What an interview ! 1

To Isaac D'Israeli.
Good Friday Morn [April nth}, 1835.
My dearest Father,
The Whigs cannot form a Government. It is impossible
to describe to you the extraordinary state of affairs. On
Wednesday Mrs. N. sent for me, and I was closeted with her
from 3 until 5. Lords Grey, Melbourne, and all the old con
stitutional aristocratic Whigs are desirous of forming a
coalition with Peel, Lyndhurst, &c. They will have nothing
to do with the Radicals, and a considerable section of the
Opposition, headed by Lord Seymour, no doubt acting under
the auspices and instigation of Mrs. N., back them. They
(Melbourne, &c.) will have nothing to do with O'Connell
and the English and Scotch Rads., and will not make
Brougham Chancellor or anything. Melbourne disapproved
of the attack on Manners Sutton and Londonderry and the
1 Prom the Memorandum of 1836, already quoted.

280 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
whole course of John Russell's career on the Irish Church.
From Mrs. N. I went to the Lord Chancellor's, with whom
I remained in close conference until half-past 7, so I could not
write to you. Yesterday I was obliged to be at the House
of Commons until half-past 5, then to see Lord Seymour,
and afterwards with the Chancellor again until 8 o'clock,
so it was impossible to write again. There seem great, I
fear insuperable, difficulties in the way of an immediate
coalition, though eventually it must take place.
I cannot say now whether Peel will immediately resume
office or Melbourne form an Administration of his friends
by way of blind, and which may last a few months. But
at present the Whigs have absolutely not advanced a jot.
I need not say that we are all in the highest spirits, and that
the excitement is unparalleled. I think myself Peel will
be again sent for by the King. If there be any more this
morning and I have an opportunity to write by post, I will.
That we shall win in the long run, and triumphantly, I have
no doubt. You now know all the secrets of affairs which
not ten people do in the realm, and you must burn this letter
when read. Mulgrave and the more useful and desperate
Whiglings are for pushing on to Durham. ... I intended
to have come down to Bradenham to-day or to-morrow, but
can say nothing of my movements now, as all is on my
shoulders. Love to all,
B. D.1

To Sarah Disraeli. April 13, 1835.
As coalition, or, as the Whigs call it, amalgamation, is at
the present moment impossible, Lord Melbourne has, I under
stand, formed his Cabinet, and some of the writs will be moved
for this evening. It is purely Whig, and consists entirely
of the old hacks — Palmerston, Auckland, Duncannon, &e.
Granville Somerset sent for me to the Woods and Forests this
morning to say if there was a fair opening the Tories would
start me, &c. I was astonished at his courtesy and strong
expressions of desire to see me in.2
The fair opening soon presented itself. Mr. Henry
Labouchere, the member for Taunton, vacated his seat
on his appointment as Master of the Mint in the new
1 From an original in the possession of Mr. Walter "V. Daniell.
2 Letters, p. 92.

1835] CONTESTS TAUNTON 281
Melbourne Government, and at the last moment Disraeli
was sent down by the Tories to oppose his re-election.

To Sarah Disraeli. Wednesday night [April 23].
There is no place like Taunton, not that I can win this time,
for Labouchere, who was twenty-four hours in advance of
me, has picked up many blues (my colour) ; but come in at the
general election I must, for I have promises of two-thirds of
the electors. I live in a rage of enthusiasm ; even my
opponents promise to vote for me next time. The fatigue is
awful. Two long speeches to-day, and nine hours' canvass
on foot in a blaze of repartee. I am quite exhausted, and can
scarcely see to write. Castle, Taunton, April 27.
The county gentlemen for ten miles round flock to me
every day, but I am obliged to decline all their invitations.
As for Taunton itself, the enthusiasm of Wycombe is a minia
ture to it; and I believe in point of energy, eloquence, and
effect I have far exceeded all my former efforts. Had I
arrived twenty hours sooner the result might have been in
my favour. ... It is astonishing how well they are
informed in London of all that passes here, and how greatly
they appreciate my exertions. They have opened a sub
scription for me at the Carlton, headed by Chandos, who has
written twice to me in the warmest manner. To-morrow is
nomination day.1
An eye-witness of the election scenes has recorded his
impressions of the candidate's appearance.
Never in my life had I been so struck by a face as I was by
that of Disraeli. It was lividly pale, and from beneath two
finely-arched eyebrows blazed out a pair of intensely black
eyes. I never have seen such orbs in mortal sockets, either
before or since. His physiognomy was strictly Jewish. Over
a broad, high forehead were ringlets of coal-black, glossy hair,
which, combed away from his right temple, fell in luxuriant
clusters or bunches over his left cheek and ear, which it entirely
concealed from view. There was a sort of half-smile, half-
sneer, playing about his beautifully-formed mouth, the upper
1 Ibid., p. 93.

282 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
lip of which was curved as we see it in the portraits of Byron.
. . . . He was very showily attired in a dark bottle-
green frock-coat, a waistcoat of the most extravagant pattern,
the front of which was almost covered with glittering chains,
and in fancy-pattern pantaloons. He wore a plain black
stock, but no collar was visible. Altogether he was the most
intellectual-looking exquisite I had ever seen.1
Now that he had definitely emerged as a Tory, Disraeli
heard, of course, a good deal about the ambiguity of his
previous performance.2 ' It is absolutely essential,'
wrote D'Orsay on the eve of the election, 'for you to
explain to them that though a Tory you are a reforming
one ; because it is generalty understood that you com
mitted yourself in some degree with the other party.'
In his speech on nomination day Disraeli essayed the task
thus proposed to him.
Gentlemen, if there be anything on which I pique myself
it is my consistency. I shall be ready to prove that con
sistency either in the House of Commons or on the hustings
at Taunton. Every man may be attacked once ; but no one
ever attacked me twice. Gentlemen, here is my consistency.
I have always opposed with my utmost energy the party
of which my honorable opponent is a distinguished member.
That party I have opposed for reasons I am prepared to give
and to uphold. I look upon the Whigs as an anti-national
party. When I first entered political life I found the high
places of the realm filled by the party of which my opponent
is a member. I found they had an immense majority in the
House of Commons, acquired by a system of nomination not
less equivocal than that of the boroughmongers they affected
to destroy. Believing that the policy of the party was such

1 Pen and Ink Sketches of Poets, Preachers, and Politicians.
London, 1846.
2 There was much pother then and subsequently about a cer
tain Westminster Club of which Disraeli had been nominally
a member, and which after his resignation assumed a political
character and became the Westminster Reform Club ; but it
is now fortunately unnecessary to enter on the details of a tire
some controversy from which Disraeli emerges quite unscathed.
' Life is too short,' as he said himself in connexion with this
affair, ' to refute every misrepresentation of every malicious
fool.'

1835] MAINTAINS HIS CONSISTENCY 283
as must destroy the honour of the kingdom abroad and the
happiness of the people at home, I considered it my duty to
oppose the Whigs, to ensure their discomfiture, and, if possible,
their destruction.
Let me recall to your recollection the extraordinary
characteristic of the political world when I entered
it. Gentlemen, the great safeguard of our liberties, the
balance of parties, was destroyed. There was then no
constitutional Opposition to keep the Government in check.
The great Tory party, now so strongly constituted, was a
shattered, a feeble, and a disheartened fragment, self-con
firming their own inability to carry on the King's Govern
ment, and announcing an impending revolution. Had I
been a political adventurer I had nothing to do but to join
the Whigs; but, conscientiously believing that their policy
was in every respect pernicious, I felt it my duty to oppose
them. But how were they to be opposed? Where were
the elements of a party to keep the Government in check,
and to bring back the old constitutional balance ? I thought
they existed in the Liberal Tories, and in those independent
Reformers who had been returned to Parliament independent
of the Whigs. I laboured for the union, and I am proud of
it. Gentlemen, remember the Whig policy. They had a
packed Parliament. They had altered the duration of Parlia
ments once before. They had the whole power of the State
in their hands. I believed, and I still believe, that we were
nearer to a Long Parliament than we imagined. I wished
to break the strength of the Whigs by frequent elections,
and by frequent appeals to a misgoverned people; there
fore I advocated a recurrence to those triennial Parliaments
which it was once the proudest boast of the Tories to advo
cate. I wished to give the country gentlemen a chance of
representing the neighbouring towns, where they are esteemed,
instead of the nominees of a sectarian oligarchy ; therefore
I proposed the adoption of the ballot, in the only constitu
encies willing to assume it. . . .
Had the Whigs remained in power — and it seemed
to me, and the wisest men in England shared my
conviction, that they were our masters for life — had,
I repeat, they remained iu power I considered the dis
memberment of the empire inevitable ; and, therefore, I
tried to root them out. But, Gentlemen, great, ay, almost
illimitable as was my confidence in Whig incapacity, I confess
they far surpassed even my most sanguine expectations.
The mighty Whig party which had consented to a revolution
to gain power fell to pieces ; the vessel of the State righted
itself ; and now there is no necessity to cut away its masts.

284 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
Gentlemen, the object for which I laboured is attained ; the
balance of parties is restored ; and I do no longer advocate
the measures in question, simply because they are no longer
necessary. Is this an answer ? Is this inconsistency ? 1

To Sarah Disraeli. April 28.
I have just left the hustings, and have gained the show
of hands, which no blue candidate ever did before. This,
though an idle ceremony in most places, is of great account
here, for the potwallopers of Taunton are as eloquent as those
of Athens, and we gain votes by such a demonstration.2
In spite, however, of this demonstration, when the poll
was closed on the second day the figures were —
Labouchere 452
Disraeli 282 170
Disraeli did not perhaps overrate the popularity he had
acquired during the election. 'His undaunted spirit,
his eloquence, his wit, his courtesy and kindness,' says a
writer in the local paper in words that appear to be
charged with something more than conventional eulogy,
'have acquired him the respect and admiration of all
parties and the entire confidence of his own.' After the
election the Conservatives of the district made him the
central figure in an elaborate festival culminating in
a banquet, and great appears to have been the enthusiasm.
The writer already quoted was present at the banquet,
and has given us a minute description of the manner of
Disraeli's oratory.
He commenced in a lisping, lackadaisical tone of voice.
. . . He minced his phrases in apparently the most
affected manner, and, whilst he was speaking, placed his hands
in all imaginable positions ; not because he felt awkward,
and did not know, like a booby in a drawing-room, where to
1 Dorset County Chronicle, April 30, 1835.
2 Letters, p. 93.

1835] DISRAELI'S ORATORY 285
put them, but apparently for the purpose of exhibiting to the
best advantage the glittering rings which decked his white
and taper fingers. Now he would place his thumbs in the
armholes of his waistcoat, and spread out his fingers on its
flashing Surface ; then one set of digits would be released and
he would lean affectedly on the table, supporting himself
with his right hand; anon he would push aside the curls
from his forehead. . . . But as he proceeded all traces
of this dandyism and affectation were lost. With a rapidity
of utterance perfectly astonishing he referred to past
events and indulged in anticipations of the future. The
Whigs were, of course, the objects of his unsparing satire,
and his eloquent denunciations of them were applauded to
the echo. In all he said he proved himself to be the finished
orator — every period was rounded with the utmost elegance,
and in his most daring flights, when one trembled lest he should
fall from the giddy height to which he had attained, he so
gracefully descended that every hearer was wrapt in admiring
surprise. . . . His voice, at first so finical, gradually
became full, musical, and sonorous, and with every varying
sentiment was beautifully modulated. His arms no longer
appeared to be exhibited for show, but he exemplified the
eloquence of the hand. The dandy was transformed into the
man of mind, the Mantalini-looking personage into a practised
orator and finished elocutionist.

Disraeli's speech1 on this occasion is full of interest.
It is the first in which we find the main lines of his creed
of democratic Toryism firmly drawn.
He had told them once before that the Conservative party
was the really democratic party in the country who surrounded
the people with the power of the Throne to shield them from
the undue power of the aristocracy. . . . The point to
which they were arrived in the history of the country was
this : whether the establishments of the realm should be
supported or destroyed. The question was between an
hereditary monarchy on one side and an elective executive
on the other. . . . He was in favour of an hereditary
monarchy because a King whose power and authority were so
judiciously limited as those of the King of England was in
effect the great leader of the people against an usurping
aristocracy. 1 There is a report in the Dorset County Chronicle for June 4, 1835.

286 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
He was, he told them also, a steadfast supporter of the
Established Church against
that misty, ambiguous, and impalpable thing, that spectre of
unsubstantiality, rising confusedly from the realm of dark
ness, that nameless thing called by some 'the voluntary
system.' Now when he who was a tower of toleration avowed
that he was opposed to this system, he declared that he was
so opposed because he regarded it as an essentially aristocratic
system devoted to the few and not to the many. It was a
system that amounted to this, that no man should be saved
who could not pay for salvation. Let them ask whether this
was the way by which to instruct a nation. The same system
that cared not for the unrepresented many in politics cared
little for the unrepresented many in religion.

Incidentally he gives unstinted praise to the policy and
achievements of the late Administration.

Nowhere in history could there be found an instance of a
council of statesmen who in so short a period had matured a
series of measures so vast in their character, so beneficent in
their nature, so conducive to the prosperity and the glory of
the country, as those which had been brought forward by the
late Ministers. He confessed that, great as was his confidence
in that great man who stood at the helm, and in his colleagues,
sanguine as were his hopes, he was utterly astonished at what
they did.

The Taunton election involved Disraeli in a quarrel
which became too celebrated. The Peel Ministry had
been overthrown by a combination between the Whigs
and O'Connell, and it was only by virtue of the same
combination that Melbourne could hope to maintain
himself in office. Inevitably of course the new alliance
between politicians who had been so recently at war
became the great mark for invective with Tory orators
and writers, and Disraeli could be trusted not to be
behindhand. Alluding to the subject in his speech on
the hustings, he was reported in the summarised version

1835] QUARREL WITH O'CONNELL 287
which appeared in the London papers to have described
O'Connell as an incendiary and a traitor. Disraeli then
and ever afterwards maintained that the summary
misrepresented him, and that he had only quoted from
the Whigs the language in which they had but recently
denounced their present ally ; and his explanation is
in full accord with the speech as reported in all the local
papers.1 The unlucky version, however, came before
the eyes of O'Connell and much incensed him; and
he seized the opportunity of a meeting in Dublin a
few days later to take a savage revenge on his supposed
assailant. I must confess, that some of the attacks made on me,
particularly one, by a Mr. Disraeli, at Taunton, surprised
me. Anything so richly deserving the appellation of superla
tive blackguardism, or at all equal to that in impudence
and assurance, I never before met with. The annals of
ruffianism do not furnish anything like it. He is an author,
I believe, of a couple of novels, and that was all I knew about
him until 1831, or 1832, when he 2 wrote to me, being about
to stand for High Wycombe, requesting a letter of recom
mendation from me to the electors. He took the letter with
him to the place, got it printed and placarded all over the
place. The next I heard of him was his being a candidate
for Marylebone; in this he was also unsuccessful. He got
tired of being a Radical any longer after these two defeats,
and was determined to try his chance as a Tory. He stands
the other day at Taunton, and by way of recommending
himself to the electors he calls me an incendiary and^ a
traitor. Now, my answer to this piece of gratuitous imperti
nence is, that he is an egregious liar. He is a liar both in
action and words. What ! shall such a vile creature be
tolerated in England? Shall the man be received by any
constituency who after coming forward on two separate
1 The best report is that in the Dorset County Chronicle for April 30,
1835, reprinted in Kebbel's Selected Speeches of Lord Beaconsfield.
Here the word 'incendiary' does not occur at all, and the only mention
of ' traitor ' is in a passage in which the Whigs are described as ' that
weak aristocratic party in the state who could only obtain power by
leaguing themselves with one whom they had denounced as a
traitor.' 2 This was inaccurate. The application, as has been seen, was made
through Bulwer.

288 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
occasions as the advocate of certain opinions, now boldly
and unblushingly recants those principles by which his
political life had been apparently regulated ? He is a living
lie: and the British Empire is degraded by tolerating a
miscreant of his abominable description. The language is
harsh, I must confess ; but it is no more than deserved, and
if I should apologise for using it, it is because I can find no
harsher epithets in the English language by which to convey
the utter abhorrence which I entertain for such a reptile.
He is just fit now, after being twice discarded by the people,
to become a Conservative. He possesses all the necessary
requisites of perfidy, selfishness, depravity, want of principle,
&c, which would qualify him for the change. His name
shews that he is of Jewish origin. I do not use it as a term
of reproach; there are many most respectable Jews. But
there are, as in every other people, some of the lowest and
most disgusting grade of moral turpitude; and of those I
look upon Mr. Disraeli as the worst. He has just the
qualities of the impenitent thief on the Cross, and I verily
believe, if Mr. Disraeli's family herald were to be examined
and his genealogy traced, the same personage would be
discovered to be the heir at law of the exalted individual
to whom I allude. I forgive Mr. Disraeli now, and as the
lineal descendant of the blasphemous robber, who ended
his career beside the Founder of the Christian Faith, I leave
the gentleman to the enjoyment of his infamous distinction
and family honours.1
Vituperation so picturesque was of course irresistible,
and ' this terrible philippic,' as the reporter well described
it, found its way into nearly every newspaper. Having
once killed an antagonist in a duel, O'Connell had taken
a vow that he would never fight another ; but this self-
denying ordinance had not been accompanied by the
practice of any similar self-denial in the matter of his
language ; and the papers had just been full of a quarrel
between him and Lord Alvanley, a Tory peer, to whom
he had alluded as 'a bloated buffoon.' A duel had
resulted, in which Morgan O'Connell, the Liberator's
son, had acted in the interest of his father's honour ; and
1 This, from the Courier of May 6, 1835, was the version of O'Con-
nell's speech adopted by Disraeli himself in an explanatory address to
the electors of Taunton.

1835] A CHALLENGE 289
as soon, therefore, as Disraeli saw his ' crucifixion ' in
The Times of May 5 he wrote the following letter : —

To Mr. Morgan O'Connell, M.P.
31a, Park St., Grosvenor Square,
Tuesday, May 5.
Sir, As you have established yourself as the champion of your
father, I have the honour to request your notice to a very
scurrilous attack which your father has made upon my conduct
and character.
Had Mr. O'Connell, according to the practice observed
among gentlemen, appealed to me respecting the accuracy
of the reported expressions before he indulged in offensive
comments upon them, he would, if he can be influenced by
a sense of justice, have felt that such comments were un
necessary. He has not thought fit to do so, and he leaves
me no alternative but to request that you, his son, will resume
your vicarious duties of yielding satisfaction for the insults
which your father has too long lavished with impunity upon
his political opponents. I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant, B. Disraeli.
Morgan O'Connell very reasonably replied that he was
not answerable for what his father might say, and that
he had only challenged Lord Alvanley because he con
ceived the latter had purposely insulted his father.
Thereupon Disraeli sent the following letter to the
newspapers. To Mr. Daniel O'Connell, M.P. for Dublin. London, May 5.
Mr. O'Connell,
Although you have long placed yourself out of the pale of
civilisation, still I am one who will not be insulted, even by
a Yahoo, without chastising it. When I read this morning
in the same journals your virulent attack upon myself, and
that your son was at the same moment paying the penalty

290 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
of similar virulence to another individual on whom you had
dropped your filth, I thought that the consciousness that
your opponents had at length discovered a source of satis
faction might have animated your insolence to unwonted
energy, and I called upon your son to re-assume his vicarious
office of yielding satisfaction for his shrinking sire. But it
seems that gentleman declines the further exercise of the
pleasing duty of enduring the consequences of your libertine
harangues. I have no other means, therefore, of noticing
your effusion but this public mode. Listen, then, to me.
If it had been possible for you to act like a gentleman, you
would have hesitated before you made your foul and inso
lent comments upon a hasty and garbled report of a speech
which scarcely contains a sentence or an expression as they
emanated from my mouth ; but the truth is, you were glad
to seize the "first opportunity of pouring forth your venom
against a man whom it serves the interest of your party to
represent as a political apostate.
In 1831,1 when Mr. O'Connell expressed to the electors of
Wycombe his anxiety to assist me in my election, I came
forward as the opponent of the party in power, and which
I described in my address as 'a rapacious, tyrannical, and
incapable faction ' — the English Whigs, who in the ensuing
year denounced you as a traitor from the Throne, aud every
one of whom, only a few months back, you have anathe
matised with all the peculiar graces of a tongue practised in
scurrility. You are the patron of these men now, Mr.
O'Connell : you, forsooth, are ' devoted ' to them. I am
still their uncompromising opponent. Which of us is the
most consistent ?
You say that I was once a Radical, and now that I am
a Tory. My conscience acquits me of ever having deserted
a political friend, or ever having changed a political opinion.
I worked for a great and avowed end in 1831, and that was
the restoration of the balance of parties in the state, a result
which I believed to be necessary to the honour of the realm
and the happiness of the people. I never advocated a measure
which I did not believe tended to this result, and if there be
any measures which I then urged, and now am not disposed
to press, it is because that great result is obtained.
In 1831 I should have been very happy to have laboured
for this object with Mr. O'Connell, with whom I had no
personal acquaintance, but who was a member of the Legis
lature, remarkable for his political influence, his versatile
talents, and his intense hatred aud undisguised contempt of
the Whigs. 1 A slip, of course, for 1832.

1835] LETTER TO O'CONNELL 291
Since 1831 we have met only once ; but I have a lively
recollection of my interview with so distinguished a personage.
Our conversation was of great length; I had a very ample
opportunity of studying your character. I thought you a
very amusing, a very interesting, but a somewhat overrated
man. I am sure on that occasion I did not disguise from
you my political views : I spoke with a frankness which I
believe is characteristic of my disposition. I told you I
was not a sentimental, but a practical politician ; that what
I chiefly desired to see was the formation of a strong but
constitutional Government, that would maintain the Empire,
and that I thought if the Whigs remained in office they
would shipwreck the State. 1 observed then, as was my
habit, that the Whigs must be got rid of at any price. It
seemed to me that you were much of the same opinion as
myself ; but our conversation was very general. We formed
no political alliance, and for a simple reason — I concealed
neither from yourself, nor from your friends, that the repeal of
the Union was an impassable gulf between us, and that I
could not comprehend, after the announcement of such an
intention, how any English party could co-operate with you.
Probably you then thought that the English Movement
might confederate with you on a system of mutual assistance,
and that you might exchange and circulate your accommoda
tion measures of destruction ; but even Mr. O'Connell, with
his lively faith in Whig feebleness and Whig dishonesty,
could scarcely have imagined that in the course of twelve
months his fellow-conspirators were to be my Lord Melbourne
and the Marquis of Lansdowne.
I admire your scurrilous allusions to my origin. It is
quite clear that the ' hereditary bondsman ; has already
forgotten the clank of his fetter. I know the tactics of your
Church; it clamours for toleration, and it labours for
supremacy. I see that you are quite prepared to persecute.
With regard to your taunts as to my want of success in
my election contests, permit me to remind you that I had
nothing to appeal to but the good sense of the people. No
threatening skeletons canvassed for me ; a death's-head
and cross-bones were not blazoned on my banners. My
pecuniary resources, too, were limited ; I am not one of those
public beggars that we see swarming with their obtrusive
boxes in the chapels of your creed, nor am I in possession of a
princely revenue wrung from a starving race of fanatical
slaves. Nevertheless, I have a deep conviction that the
hour is at hand when I shall be more successful, and take my
ri'u-e in that proud assembly of which Mr. O'Connell avows
*¦ wish no longer to be a member. I expect to be a repre-

292 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
sentative of the people before the repeal of the Union. We
shall meet at Philippi; and rest assured that, confident in
a good cause, and in some energies which have been not
altogether unproved, I will seize the first opportunity of
inflicting upon you a castigation which will make you at the
same time remember and repent the insults that you have
lavished upon Benjamin Disraeli.
The newspapers of those days were anything but
squeamish, and most of them published this letter; and
as soon as it appeared, Disraeli wrote again to Morgan
O'Connell: —

I deduce from your communication that you do not
consider yourself responsible for any insults offered by your
father, but only bound to resent the insults that he may
receive. Now, Sir, it is my hope that I have insulted him ;
assuredly it was my intention to do so. I wished to express
the utter scorn in which I hold his character, and the disgust
with which his conduct inspires me. If I failed in conveying
this expression of my feelings to him, let me more successfully
express them now to you. I shall take every opportunity of
holding your father's name up to public contempt. And I
fervently pray that you, or some one of his blood, may attempt
to avenge the unextinguishable hatred with which I shall
pursue his existence.

To Sarah Disraeli. May 6, 1835.
There is but one opinion among all parties — viz., that
I have squabashed them. I went to D'Orsay immediately.
He sent for Henry Baillie for my second, as he thought a
foreigner should not interfere in a political duel, but he
took the management of everything. I never quitted his
house till ten o'clock, when I dressed and went to the
Opera, and every one says I have done it in first-rate style.
May 9.
This morning as I was lying in bed, thankful that I had
kicked all the O'Connells and that I was at length to have a
quiet morning, Mr. Collard, the police officer of Marylebone,
rushed into my chamber, and took me into custody. . . .

1835] THE GENERAL EFFECT 293
We all went in a hackney coach to the office, where I found
that the articles were presented by a Mr. Bennett, residing
in some street in Westminster, and an acquaintance of the
O'Connells. We were soon dismissed, but I am now bound
to keep the peace in £500 sureties. As far as the present
affair was concerned, it was a most unnecessary precaution,
as if all the O'Connells were to challenge me I could not think
of meeting them now. I consider and every one else that they
are lynched. It is very easy for you to criticise, but I do not
regret the letter : the expressions were well weighed, and
without it the affair was but clever pamphleteering. Critics
you must always meet. W. told me the last letter was the
finest thing in the English language, but that the letter to
Dan was too long; others think that perfect. One does not
like the Yahoo as coarse, others think it worthy of Swift, and
so on. . . . The general effect is the thing, and that
is, that all men agree I have shown pluck.1
His father and sister had been much alarmed by the
ferocity and vindictiveness of the second letter to Morgan
O'Connell, and perhaps Disraeli himself may in calmer
moments have suspected that his violence had been
excessive. I have no ambition [he wrote 2 to the electors of Taunton]
to be considered either ferocious or vindictive. ... I
am, I believe, of a mild and tolerant disposition, not too easily
nettled, aud quite ready to subscribe to a considerable lati
tude in the gladiatorial encounter between political opponents.
. . . If in those hot and hurried letters I indulged in
expressions which my calmer reason may disapprove, I am
sure no candid aud generous spirit, whatever may be his
party, would scan with severity the words of one who had
been subjected, without the prospect of redress, to such un
paralleled outrage ; I am sure no candid and generous spirit
but must sympathise with one, who young, alone, supported
only by his own energies, and the inspiration of a good cause,
dared to encounter, in no inglorious struggle, the most power
ful individual in the world who does not wear a crown.
The general effect, however, was the thing, and judged
by this test the result was not unsatisfactory. - Row
with O'Connell in which I greatly distinguish myself is
1 Letters, p. 94. 2 Address of May 12.

294 JOINS THE CONSERVATIVES [chap, xiii
the complacent entry in the Mutilated Diary a year
later. The incident had at least made him notorious, and
notoriety to Disraeli was at this time as the breath of
his nostrils. Some observers may have thought the taste
of his letters questionable. D'Orsay declared that they
were perfection and added that everybody agreed with
him ; and one of Disraeli's supporters at Wycombe was
so impressed by their eloquence that 'neither he nor
his old father could sleep all the night ' after their perusal.
' Scarcely a day has elapsed,' Disraeli wrote a a month
later, 'on which I have not received letters from some
part of the United Kingdom congratulating me on my
conduct.' The charge of ingratitude, skilfully exploited by his
adversaries, is what did him most injury, both then and
afterwards ; and it is worth while repeating his own
defence : —
Whatever may be Mr. O'Connell's errors, he has an
instinctive horror of blockheads. The man who talks or
writes of my ingratitude to Mr. O'Connell only perverts our
language and makes himself ridiculous. Mr. O'Connell, not
at my written request, as he has been falsely represented to
have stated, but at the verbal request of a third person,
wrote a commonplace letter to the electors of Wycombe in
my favour when opposed to Colonel Grey, the son of the Whig
Prime Minister. The letter did me no good, but the reverse,
but it was one of those slight courtesies of life, whatever
might be its motives, of which a gentleman would always be
prepared to show his sense by courtesies as slight. When
therefore, long after, I for the first and only time met Mr.
O'Connell, who, in the meantime, had become a Repealer, I
thanked him for his courtesy, and however we differed in
politics, I seized with pleasure that opportunity of being civil
to him ; and very recently when I met his most intimate
friend, Mr. Ronayne.2 ... I wished to show by the
tone of my conversation that, however I was opposed to him
1 Letter to the electors of Taunton, June 13, 1835.
2 In a letter to the Morning Chronicle dated May 3, 1835, this
gentleman declared that Disraeli 'had within the last month
spoken to him in terms of the most extravagant admiration of
O'Connell,' to whom also he had asked him 'to communicate his
kind remembrances.'

1835] A MESSAGE OF PEACE 295
or his friend in public life, I was far from desirous of con
ducting myself towards them in a hostile spirit when we met
in serener situations than the hustings or the House of
Commons. ... In the tone of courtesy I then used
I should have ever spoken of Mr. O'Connell, had not he,
from the intentional misrepresentations of some busy fools
in London, thought proper to make his notorious attack
upon me in Dublin.1
The following note, written in the early sixties, though
it anticipates, may be given here as an epilogue.
Croker, Peel, and O'Connell sent me, I may say, messages
of peace before they died — literally O'Connell. He was so
delighted with my smashing of Peel, and so glad, perhaps,
that he had escaped what I once threatened and he now found
I could do, that he sent me a message that it had always been
heavy on his heart that there should have been a misunder
standing between us, and that he had long known that he
had been misinformed and misled in the matter. I sent him
a very courteous reply : but avoided any personal communi
cation. He always made me a very reverential bow after
wards. To Dawson Turner? May 29, 1835.
All this vulgar electioneering bustle is not worth a few calm
hours in your magnificent library among those collections of
which you have good cause to be proud ; but we are the
creatures of circumstances, and as far as Destiny and tobacco
are concerned I am a decided Orientalist.3
1 Letter to the electors of Taunton, June 13, 1835.
2 Botanist and Antiquary. His library and collection of manuscripts
were famous.
8 Ifrom a letter in Mr. Alfred Morrison's collection.

CHAPTER XIV
Political Writings
1835-1836
During the next couple of years Disraeli's political
activity was mainly with the pen. He had a mind of the
complexion that will not allow a man to feel at ease in
a fresh position till he has framed a theory to account for
it ; and now that he had become a Tory it was necessar}*
for him to justify his faith both to himself and to the world.
The times and the Tory party alike called for guidance :
in his own words, it was ' a perplexed, ill-informed, jaded
and shallow generation.' The reaction which followed
the high idealism and strenuous efforts of the French Revo
lutionary era had produced the Benthamite philosophy
and the Ricardian political economy, and when Disraeli
entered public life these systems had just emerged from
their period of struggle as the peculiar possession of an un
popular sect, and attained to that position of dominating
influence over the mind of England, and especially over
the mind of the English middle class, which they were
to retain for nearly fifty years. It was only in the
eighth decade of the century, after Disraeli himself had
overthrown the ascendancy of the middle class, and when
for the greater part of the decade he was Prime Minister
296

1833] THE COUNTER REVOLUTION 297
of England, that the authority of these systems began
seriously to be shaken. His active career coincides closely
with the period of their dominion, and in his life, his
writings, and his achievements he stands for all that is
their spiritual antithesis, at war with them throughout
the whole range of their influence. Not that he was the
only or even the first antagonist in the field. The
Reform Act of 1832 had marked the triumph of the
commercially-minded middle class with their unimagi
native ideals. In the summer of 1833 Newman, with
' fierce thoughts against the Liberals,' x hastened home
from the Mediterranean, writing ' Lead, kindly Light '
in the orange boat that carried him from Palermo to
Marseilles, to begin the Oxford movement ; and in the
winter of the same year the book which Carlyle had
' hawked ' round the publishers of London appeared in
Frazer's Magazine under the title of Sartor Resartus.
Newman, Carlyle, and Disraeli were far different figures ;
but, little as they may have known it, they were in a sense
spiritual brethren, engaged in a desperate fight against
a common enemy, working in their several ways with a
common purpose. Beneath a thousand superficial differ
ences they had all three the same romantic temperament ;
all three had in them something of the artist ; and all
three were deeply imbued with that historical senti
ment which is the fatal enemy of Benthamism, as of
every kind of system-mongering. Disraeli's sphere of
operations being primarily political, in his case the prophet
and the teacher had to wear the livery and submit to the
routine of the practical politician and statesman ; but,
though it may have happened not infrequently that in
appearance at all events he postponed the higher to
the lower, he was nevertheless in the conflict in which
all were engaged not the least potent and effective of
the three.
1 Apologia, p. 33, ' It was the success of the Liberal cause which
fretted me inwardly. I became fierce against its instruments and its mani
festations.'

298 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
Politically the Utilitarian doctrines were throughout
the period of their prevalence an appanage of the Liberal
party, and in the political sphere accordingly the problem
of resistance was to recreate the Tory party so as to
make it a bulwark against all that was devastating in
the philosophy of the hour. This was the problem that
presented itself to Peel after the Reform Bill, and his
assumption of office in 1834 is therefore a critical event
in the history of English parties.
In 1834 England, though frightened at the reality of
Reform, still adhered to its phrases; it was inclined, as
practical England, to maintain existing institutions; but, as
theoretical England, it was suspicious that they were
indefensible. No one had arisen, either in Parliament, the
Universities, or the Press, to lead the public mind to the
investigation of principles ; and not to mistake, in their refor
mations, the corruption of practice for fundamental ideas.
It was this perplexed, ill-informed, jaded, shallow generation,
repeating cries which they did not comprehend, and wearied
with the endless ebullitions of their own barren conceit, that
Sir Robert Peel was summoned to govern. It was from such
materials, ample in quantity, but in all spiritual qualities
most deficient; with great numbers, largely acred, Consoled
up to their chins, but without knowledge, genius, thought,
truth, or faith, that Sir Robert Peel was to form a ' great
Conservative party on a comprehensive basis.' 1
Disraeli, as we have seen, in his last speech at
Taunton praised in the highest terms the policy
and measures of the Peel administration ; but his
maturer view, the view of Ooningsby, was that the whole
attempt was premature, precipitated by ' the tactics of
those short-sighted intriguers who persisted in looking
upon a revolution as a mere party struggle, and would
not permit the mind of the nation to work through the
inevitable phases that awaited it.' The result was that
Peel, though he did his work of reconstructing the Tory
party like a 'dexterous politician,' failed to realise
- those prescient views of a great statesman in which he
1 Coningsby, Bk. II. ch. 4.

1834] PEEL'S FAILURE 299
had doubtless indulged, and in which, though still clogged
by the leadership of 1834, he may yet find fame for
himself and salvation for his country.' These last words
are probably nothing more than conventional homage
to a leader whom the writer still acknowledged, and one
seems to detect in them that note of grave irony which
is so often heard from Disraeli. When they were written
in 1844 Disraeli was well aware that Peel was not the
man for a great constructive work such as the formation
of a Conservative party on a comprehensive basis. He
had already come to see that the Tamworth manifesto
was an attempt to construct a party without principles ;
its basis ' Latitudinarianism' ; its inevitable consequence
'Political Infidelity.'
There was indeed a considerable shouting about what they
called Conservative principles ; but the awkward question
naturally arose, what will you conserve ? The prerogatives
of the Crown, provided they are not exercised; the independ
ence of the House of Lords, provided it is not asserted ; the
Ecclesiastical estate, provided it is regulated by a commis
sion of laymen. Everything, in short, that is established, as
long as it is a phrase and not a fact.1
Peel, in fact, was a political opportunist, disinterested
and therefore with a certain nobility in his opportunism,
but still essentially an opportunist, a man who lived
without ideas. Disraeli, if any one will have it so, may
in the stress of practical politics have sunk at times to
an opportunism that was less disinterested than Peel's,
and therefore more ignoble ; but he was never without
ideas or the courage to follow their guidance. He had
what Peel signally lacked, the creative mind, and for
him therefore was reserved the task at which Peel so
disastrously failed.
Between men so different in temperament and in
mental constitution antagonism from the first was
perhaps almost inevitable. A division of tendency soon
1 Coningsby, Bk. II. ch. 5.

300 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
declared itself in the reconstituted Tory party, and
Disraeli not many months after his enrolment found
himself in the opposite camp to his newly accepted
leader. It was a case in which Peel's policy seemed to
him to be ' the conservation of the independence of the
House of Lords provided it is not asserted.' The
principal measures of the Melbourne Government in
the Session of 1835 were the Irish Tithes Bill and the
Municipal Corporations Bill. Both parties were agreed
as to the policy of the conversion, of the Irish tithes into
a rent-charge ; but through the clumsy strategy of the
Whig leaders the Peel Ministry had been overthrown, not
on a vote of want of confidence nor on any question that
was worth fighting for, but on a motion asserting the
barren principle of the appropriation of the surplus
revenues of the Irish Church to secular purposes.
Eventually, in 1838, the difficulty was settled exactly
on the lines of Peel's original proposals, but for the
present the Whig Ministers clung to this principle of
appropriation with what even the Whig historian is
constrained to call 'factious folly.'1 In the present
Session they carried through the House of Commons a
Tithe Bill in which, in spite of the protests of Peel,
appropriation found a place, and when the House of
Lords, under the guidance of Lyndhurst, expunged the
offensive clauses, Ministers abandoned the Bill. On the
question of the English municipal corporations the two
Houses again came into sharp collision. In his speech at
Taunton in June Disraeli had spoken contemptuously of
the Bill as ' a measure of such utter insignificance that he
hoped the Conservatives would not condescend to oppose
it' ; but he soon found himself strenuously supporting
Lyndhurst in a campaign for converting the Government
proposals into 'a conservative arrangement.' Under
Lyndhurst's direction the Bill was drastically amended in
the House of Lords ; but Peel, who had approved of
its main principles during its passage through the House
1 Walpole's History, III., p. 312.

1835] LYNDHURST AND PEEL 301
of Commons, was known to have little sympathy with the
action of his late Chancellor, and when the measure came
back to the Commons he separated himself from the Lords
on some important points, though duly laying stress on
their privileges and independence. Ultimately a com
promise was arranged which, while making large conces
sions to the wishes of the Upper House, secured the
adoption of the Government plan in most of its important
features ; but the compromise did not prevent a good deal
of angry declamation against the Lords during the Parlia
mentary recess or an attempt on the part of the Radicals
to revive the old Reform cry of ' the Bill, the whole Bill,
and nothing but the Bill.' The country, however, refused
to respond, and in spite of the Radicals, and to some ex
tent in spite of Peel, the session had for result that the
Lords, whose prestige had been almost destroyed by the
passage of the Reform Act, had now successfully vindi
cated the independence of their chamber and reasserted
its rights as an organic part of the working constitution.
It appears to be the case that during this crisis the
King, who was still eagerly seeking for a way in which
to rid himself of his hated Whig Ministers, applied to
Lyndhurst to assist him if Peel should refuse ; and the
terms on which Lyndhurst was to become Prime Minister
were discussed and informally arranged. Throughout
these events Disraeli was in the closest touch with Lynd
hurst, and his account x of the transaction is to be found
in a fragment among his papers written in the following
year. It was in this session [1835] that Lord L[yndhurst] first
formed his great plan of stopping the movement. Tried
1 See also the remarkable memoir of Lyndhurst that appeared in
The Times of Oct. 13, 1863, the day after his death. The disclosures
of this memoir were commonly attributed to Disraeli, who was
known to have been in Lyndhurst's confidence during the events in
question ; but though in full agreement with his own account, they
surprised Disraeli himself, and were most probably derived from
Barnes, who was Editor of The Times in 1835, and in close com
munication with Lyndhurst.

302 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
upon the English Municipal Reform Bill as a basis. His
triumphant and able career in the House of Lords. Jealousy
of Peel. Lyndhurst determines to accept the Premiership
if offered, having received hints from Windsor. His plan
to make Brougham Chancellor — to demand from his party
10 seats in the Commons, which were to be given to 10 young
men whom he should select. I was one, Bickham Escott
another, Thesiger a third. The Commons to be led by Sir
James Graham, whom he had sounded, and Sir William
Follett, in whom he had great confidence. Peel came up
from Drayton and threw him over, and a party in the Lords,
led by Wharncliffe, frightened at not being supported in the
Commons, receded from their engagement at a meeting at
Apsley House at the end of August or beginning of Sep
tember. The D[uke] of Wellington] would have been firm in spite
of Peel and accepted office if Wharncliffe and his friends
had not seceded. The secession was only private. L.'s
final speech at the close of the business, and Brougham's
complimentary oration to him, surprised everybody, but the
truth is there was an understanding between B. and L.
After the debates they generally went home together, and
once B. said : ' You and I, Lyndhurst, can rule this country
if we like.' Before L.'s final speech B. took him aside and
shook hands with him with great feeling and said: 'Let
us embrace. We are both Ex-Chancellors and have both
been thrown over by our party.'
The consequence of Peel's conduct was the inevitable
demonstration apparently in favour of the Whigs by the
corporation elections in November. This alone saved the
Cabinet. They had become so unpopular in the country,
and the H[ouse] of L[ords] had so rallied, even in spite of
Peel, and had done so much that in the autumn all the elections
went against the Whigs. Ten days or so before the municipal
elections was the death of Lord Milton and the Northampton
shire election. The blow was so great that I heard from a
good authority that the Ministers did not intend to meet
Parliament. To Sarah Disraeli. July 20, 1835.
Nothing has been talked of but the great fancy ball which
came off last night, and exceeded in splendor anything
ever known in London. My dress was very good, with some
additions, such as a silken shirt with long sleeves, lent me
by Henry Baillie. D'Orsay, Henry Bulwer, myself, Massey

1835] A FANCY BALL 303
Stanley, Talbot, Herbert, and Regina went in a party with
the Chesterfields, Ansons, and Worcesters. We flattered
ourselves we were by far the most distinguished there. Lady
Chesterfield was a Sultana, and Mrs. Anson a Greek, with
her own hair lower than the calf of her leg. She was the
most brilliant in the room. Lady Burghersh, Lady Fitzroy
Somerset, and Lady Sykes wore powder — the two first
Louis XIV., the last a complete copy of a Sir Joshua. Lady
Londonderry,1 as Cleopatra, was in a dress literally embroidered
with emeralds and diamonds from top to toe. Castlereagh
introduced me to her by her desire, and I was with her a
great deal. Mrs. Norton and Mrs. Blackwood beautiful
Greeks ; but the finest thing was that at half-past two Lynd
hurst gave a supper in George Street to eighty of the supremest
ton and beauty, and you can conceive nothing more brilliant
than his house illuminated with a banquet to a company so
fancifully dressed. The Duke of Wellington, who was at
the ball, was too tired to come. This great secession rather
knocked up the ball, however, and everybody looked blue
who was not going to Lyndhurst's. He looked like a French
marshal. Wilton was Philip IV., and the Duke lent him his
Golden Fleece set in diamonds for the evening. July 24.
I have since dined at Rosebank with the Londonderrys.
'Tis the prettiest baby-house in the world — a pavilion rather
than a villa, all green paint, white chintz, and looking-glass.
The grounds, however, are considerable, and very rich, border
ing the Thames. The dinner was admirable, but no plate;
porcelain, fresh as the room, with a bouquet by every guest,
and five immense pyramids of roses down the table. . . .
Lyndhurst was quite delighted with his visit, and certainly
Bradenham never looked to greater advantage. Yesterday
he and I went to Richmond. Aug. 5.
I can hardly trust myself to write about politics; the
debate2 was dashing in the extreme. Lyndhurst's speech
by far the crack one — most bold and triumphant, and
1 Daughter and heiress of Sir Henry Vane-Tempest and second wife of
the 3rd Marquis of Londonderry.
2 Of August 3 in the Lords, on the motion that the House should
go into Committee on the Municipal Corporations Bill. An amend
ment was moved from the Tory benches that the House, which had
already heard counsel in behalf of the corporations, should now
receive evidence, and this amendment, supported by Lyndhurst, was
carried against the Government.

304 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
received with tumultuous cheering. I can give you no idea
of the excited and at the same time depressed state of
Melbourne. He seemed quite wild and scared. Brougham
spoke very well, but his conduct is perplexing. He rather
assists us than the reverse. The course taken was kept
secret, and perfectly confounded the Whigs. It is an awful
crisis whatever may be the result. I cannot think of the hot
weather or anything else. Aug. 12, 1835.
Lyndhurst has been very ill, and unable to go to the Lords,
where he ought not to be absent a moment, as all depends
upon him. However, Saturday and Sunday's nursing brought
him round. The Duke has formally resigned to him the
leadership of the House of Lords, and there is every proba
bility of his being Prime Minister; his own disinclination
alone stands in the way. To-morrow the war begins in the
Lords. The speeches of counsel made a great impression ;
the evidence was capital, the Lords united, and Lyndhurst
has with his own hand drawn up their counter project. . . .
But for him all would have been lost, and now everybody
praises the stand the Lords have made, and the Whigs have
entirely failed in getting up a crisis. Aug. 14.
There was a sharp engagement in the House of Lords last
night. Melbourne is evidently so annoyed that I cannot
help fancying he will come down to-night and withdraw the
Bill. . . . Brougham was terribly tipsy. He shook his
fist at Lord Wicklow, and quoted Ciceronian braggadocios.
. . . After all this is over, Lyndhurst will like to come
down with me for a quiet week at Bradenham.1 Aug. 20.
I have sent you the Morning Post every day, which is the
only paper now read, and in whose columns some great
unknown has suddenly risen, whose exploits form almost the
sole staple of political conversation, and all conversation is
now political. The back numbers for the last week cannot be
obtained for love or money, and the sale has increased nearly
one-third. All attempts at discovering the writer have been
baffled, and the mystery adds to the keen interest which the
articles excite.2
1 ' Lord Lyndhurst' s visits this year to Bradenham and our increas
ing friendship ' is the corresponding entry in the Mutilated Diary.
2 Letters, pp. 95-98.

1835] LEADER WRITING 305
The mystery, if any mystery there be, is solved by
another entry in the Mutilated Diary : ' Write the M.P.
during the English Municipal Bill for L. — three leading
articles a day for nearly a month.' The articles, which
have been preserved in a book of cuttings, are in the
strain of reckless vituperation which was then the fashion
even in responsible journals, with only here and there a
flash of wit or a happy phrase to redeem the person
alities. That ' meagre-minded rebel Roebuck ' 1 has
something perhaps of the true Disraelian touch ; but
what would be thought to-day of a newspaper that
described a great officer of State as ' this shrewd, coarse,
manoeuvring Pict,' 'this base-born Scotchman,' 'this
booing, fawning, jobbing progeny of haggis and cocka-
leekie,' the pleasant labels affixed in the articles to the
Attorney- General, Campbell.2 For argument there is
a great deal of the doctrine that the House of Commons
is no more representative of the people than is the House
of Lords ; but the constitutional theories which Disraeli
was now evolving we shall find more systematically set
forth in a work which was shortly to appear and which
must presently engage our attention.
To Lady Blessington. Bradenham, Oct. 4 [1835].
I see by the papers that you have quitted the shores of the
'far-resounding sea' and resumed your place in the most
charming of modern houses. I therefore venture to recall
my existence to your memory, and request the favour of
hearing some intelligence of yourself, which must always
interest me. Have you been well, happy, and prosperous ?
And has that pen, plucked assuredly from the pinion of a
bird of paradise, been idle or creative ? My lot has been as
usual here, tho' enlivened by the presence of Lady Sykes,
who has contrived to pay us two visits, and the presence of
1 The ' meagre-minded rebel ' before his death was made a Privy Coun
cillor by Disraeli.
2 Afterwards Lord Campbell.
vol. i — x

306 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
Lord Lyndhurst, who also gave us a fortnight of his delightful
society. I am tolerably busy, and hope to give a good
account of myself and doings when we meet, which I trust
will be soon. How goes that ' great lubber ' the Public, and
how fares that mighty hoax, the World ? Who of our
friends has distinguished or extinguished himself or herself ?
In short, as the hart for the waterside, I pant for a little news,
but chiefly of your fair and agreeable self. . . . How
is the most delightful of men and best of friends, the Admirable
Crichton ? . . . How and where is Bulwer ? How are
the Whigs and how do they feel ? All here who know you
send kind greetings, and all who have not that delight, kind
wishes. Peace be within your walls and plenteousness within
your palace. Vale. Yours affectionately, Dis.1

In December of this year there was published as a
volume of 200 pages a tract entitled a ' Vindication of
the English Constitution in a Letter to a Noble and
Learned Lord, by Disraeli the Younger,' the noble and
learned Lord being, of course, Lyndhurst. This tract
is the most important of Disraeli's early political writings,
and the fullest exposition of his political creed that
preceded Ooningsby ; while even Ooningsby, as we shall
see, added little that is essential to the statement. There
is little in the Vindication itself, perhaps, that may not
be found in germ in the speeches, letters, and articles
of the few preceding years, but all is now brought together,
and this is one of the cases where the whole is something
more than the mere aggregate of the parts. The Vindica
tion gave Disraeli what his fugitive efforts could never
have given him, a recognised position as a political
writer and thinker, and it not only helped to fix and
clarify his own ideas, but, appearing at a moment when
party boundaries were shifting and principles in a state
of flux, it from the first exerted no inconsiderable influence
over the development of political thought.
1 Mr. Alfred Morrison's collection. In the reprint the year is wrongly
given as 1837.

1835] THE VINDICATION 307
From Isaac D'Israeli. Dec. 23, 1835.
Your vulgar birthday was, it seems, last Monday, but
your nobler political birth has occurred this week, and truly,
like the fable of old, you have issued into existence armed
in the full panoply of the highest wisdom. You have now
a positive name and a being in the great political world,
which you had not ten days ago. It is for you to preserve
the wide reputation which I am positive is now secured.
I never doubted your powers — they were not latent to me.
With more management on your side they would have been
acknowledged long ere now — universally. You never wanted
for genius, but it was apt in its fullness to run over. You
have now acquired, what many a great genius never could,
a perfect style, and that's a pickle which will preserve even
matter less valuable than what you, I doubt not, will always
afford the world. You have rejected the curt and flashy
diction which betrayed perpetual effort. All now flows
in one continuous stream of thought and expression — at
once masculine and graceful. . . . All that now remains
for you to do is to register ' a vow in Heaven ' that you
will never write anything inferior to what you have now
written, and never to write but on a subject which may call
forth all your energies. Should you ever succeed in getting
into Parliament I well know that your moral intrepidity
and your rapid combinations of ideas will throw out many
'a Vindication' in the brilliancy and irresistible force of
your effusions. No man thinks more deeply, while he delights
even common eyes by the beauties of his surface. . . .
Take care of your health — that is the only weak part which
I fear about you.
Disraeli begins the Vindication with an attack on his
old enemies the Utilitarians. He had not only the
instinctive antipathy of the born romantic to their
unimaginative creed, but by training as well as by
temperament he had all the intolerance of Burke for
their practice of indulging in ' barren assertions of abstract
rights,' of dabbling in ' a priori systems of politics,' and
of framing ' new constitutions on the abstract princi
ples of theoretic science.' There are, indeed, frequent
passages in the Vindication which sound like echoes of

308 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
Burke, and show that Disraeli was deeply penetrated
with the spirit and sentiment of Burke's later writings.
' Nations have characters as well as individuals, and
national character is precisely the quality which the new
sect of statesmen in their schemes and speculations
either deny or overlook.' 'This respect for precedent,
this clinging to prescription, this reverence for antiquity,
which are so often ridiculed by conceited and superficial
minds . . . appear to me to have their origin in
a profound knowledge of human nature.' Disraeli
had read widely, if not deeply, in history ; and, like Burke,
indeed like Bolingbroke in a still earlier generation,
and, above all, like Bolingbroke's friend Montesquieu,
he carried into his investigation of political problems
the spirit of that pregnant historical method which,
already triumphant in Germany, was in a subsequent
generation to overthrow the pretensions of the dominant
school of thinkers in England and present their so-called
philosophy in its true historical perspective as a mere
insular anachronism in the oecumenical history of thought.
The argument of the Vindication is largely based on a
favourite doctrine of Disraeli's, the representation in
Parliament of separate estates of the realm and the
dependence of the balance of the constitution on the
maintenance of their several rights. The assailants
against whom he was vindicating the constitution were
the Radicals, who, as has been seen, had attempted
during the recess to stir up agitation against
the House of Lords, and O'Connell, who, in a
pilgrimage of passion through the north, had especially
distinguished himself in this endeavour. With a con
siderable display of learning the author traces the
origin and development of our institutions, and arrives
at the conclusion that 'the House of Commons is no
more the house of the people than is the House of Lords.'
To the Radical conception of the people he opposes his
conception of the nation as a living and organized whole ;
but not even in the narrower or in any reasonable sense

1835] ARGUMENT OF THE TRACT 309
of the term can the House of Commons be regarded as
the house of the people or its members as the rep
resentatives of the people. ' The Commons form still
only an estate of the realm, a privileged and limited order
of the nation, in numbers a fraction of the mass,' the
constituency even "since its enlargement by the Reform
Act comprising no more than three or four hundred
thousand persons. The House of Lords, on the other
hand, though not elective, is truly representative, ' the
most eminent existing example of representation with
out election.'
The House of Lords represents the Church in the Lord
Bishops, the law in the Lord Chancellor, and often the Lord
Chief Justice, the counties in the Lord Lieutenants, the
boroughs in their noble recorders. This estate, from the
character of the property of its members, is also essentially
the representative chamber of the land ; and, as the hereditary
leaders of the nation, especially of the cultivators of the land,
the genuine and permanent population of England, its
peasantry.1 ' In a hasty and factious effort to get rid of representa
tion without election, it will be as well if eventually we
do not discover that we have only obtained election
without representation.' But if the Lords are repre
sentative, what of their responsibility ? They are
in fact in no greater degree irresponsible than the Com
mons.

Is a privileged order of three hundred thousand individuals,
represented by their deputies, likely to be more responsible
than a privileged order of three hundred individuals appear
ing by themselves ? On the contrary, every one sees and
feels in an instant that, as far as the nation is concerned, the
more limited order, who appear for themselves, and are more
in the eye of the world, are in fact in a moral point of view
much more responsible to the general body of the people
than the more numerous and more obscure class, who shuffle
off that moral responsibility on their representatives.2
i p. 129. 2 p. 145.

310 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
'If I were called upon,' he declares in words wliich
sound like an echo of an often-quoted dictum of Alex
ander Hamilton's, 'to construct a constitution a priori
for this country, of which a senate, or superior chamber,
was to be a constituent part, I am at a loss to conceive
where I could obtain more suitable materials for its con
struction than in the body of our hereditary peerage.' The
tree, his argument runs, shall be known by its fruit. The
hereditary peerage has formed an active and powerful
branch of our legislature for five centuries, and no states
man can doubt that its peculiar character has mainly con
tributed to the stability of our institutions. Throughout
that period it has given us a senate not inferior in capacity
to the elective chamber, and now, as he contends, the
hereditary assembly manifestly excels the elective, not only
' in the higher accomplishments of statesmen, in elevation
of thought and feeling, in learning and in eloquence,'
but ' also in ' those very qualities, for the possession of
which at first sight we should be most disposed to give
a House of Commons credit, that mastery of detail and
management of complicated commonplaces which we
style in this country " business-like habits." '
You cannot, he is careful to observe, obtain a substitute
for the House of Lords by merely collecting all the clever
men of the country and giving them the august title of a
senate. A nation will not allow three hundred men,
however ingenious, to make laws for them, just because
the sovereign power of the state chooses to appoint that
such a number of its subjects shall possess this privilege.
' The King of England may make peers, but he cannot
make a House of Lords.'
The order of men, of whom such an assembly is formed,
is the creation of ages. In the first place, they must really
be an estate of the realm, a class of individuals who from
their property and personal influence alone form an important
section of the whole nation. . . . Their names, office,
and character, and the ennobling achievements of their
order, must be blended with our history and bound up with
our hereditary sentiment. They must be felt and recognised

1835] THE HOUSE OF LORDS 311
as the not unworthy descendants or successors of a class that
has always taken the lead in civilisation and formed the
advance guard in the march of national progress.1
Be it observed, moreover, that at the root of the per
manence and popularity of our hereditary peerage is
its essentially democratic character. The basis of our
social fabric is the principle of civil equality. It is
this principle which has 'prevented the nobility of
England from degenerating into a favoured and odious
sect.' It is this principle which has placed the Peers
at the head of the people and filled the House of Commons
with members connected with the Peers by the most
intimate ties of birth and blood.

The English nation, to obtain the convenience of monarchy,
have established a popular throne, and to enjoy the security
of aristocracy, have invested certain orders of their fellow
subjects with legislative functions: but these estates, however
highly privileged, are invested with no quality of exclusion ;
and the Peers and the Commons of England are the trustees
of the nation, not its masters. The country where the leg
islative and even the executive office may be constitution
ally obtained by every subject of the land, is a democracy,
and. a democracy of the noblest character. . . . Neither
ancient ages, nor the more recent experience of our newer
time, can supply us with a parallel instance of a free
government, founded on the broadest basis of popular rights,
yet combining with democratic liberty, aristocratic security,
and monarchical convenience.2

Incidentally Disraeli sets forth his theory of the
origin and genius of our English parties — a curious
blend of insight and paradox, of which perhaps the
paradox will seem less startling when our history has
been truly interpreted and freed from the bias it has
received from the great Whig historians. The Whigs,
according to Disraeli, have always been an anti-national
party, always striving to upset the balance of the
1 pp. 159, 161 2 p. 207.

312 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
constitution, always making war on the national in
stitutions in the interest of their own aggrandisement.
The party had its origin in the latter part of the 17th
century in a combination between the Peers and the
Puritans, the former animated by hostility to the
monarchy, the latter by hatred of the Establishment.
A republican sentiment united the two ; but the
republican model of the House of Russell was Venice ;
of their plebeian allies, Geneva. ' Their cry was civil
and religious Freedom . . . that is, a doge and no
bishops : advocating the liberty of the subject, the
Peers would have established an oligarchy ; upholding
toleration, the Puritans aimed at supremacy.' The
Tory party, on the other hand, is the national party, the
really democratic party in England. ' It supports the
institutions of the country, because they have been
established for the common good, and because they secure
the equality of civil rights, without which, whatever
may be its name, no government can be free.' When
the Peers and the Puritans raised their cry of civil and
religious liberty as a pretext for the destruction of the
Monarchy and the Church —
The mass of the nation still smarting under the seques
trations and imprisonments of parliamentary committees,
and loathing the recollection of the fanaticism and the
hypocrisy of the Roundhead apostles of the tub, clung to
the national institutions. The clergy, jealous of the Non
conformists, and fearful of another deprivation, exaggerated
the power and character of the Crown, in which they
recognized their only safeguard. Hence divine right and
passive obedience resounded from our Protestant pulpits,
echoed with enthusiasm by a free and spirited people who
acknowledged in these phrases only a determination to
maintain the mild authority of their King and of their
Church, i
Such was the origin of the Tory party in this country.
The position long remained preposterous and paradoxical.
' An oligarchy sought to establish itself by the plan of
1 p. 177.

1835] LORD BOLINGBROKE 313
public freedom ; a nation struggled to maintain its
rights on the principles of arbitrary power.'
There are periods when the titles and watchwords of
political parties become obsolete ; and when, by adhering to
an ancient and accustomed cry, a party often appears to
profess opinions less popular than it really practises, and
yields a proportionate advantage to its more dexterous
competitor. In times of great political change, and rapid
political transition, it will generally be observed that political
parties find it convenient to re-baptize themselves. Thus,
in the present day, Whigs have become Reformers, and
Tories Conservatives. In the early part of the last century,
the Tory party required a similar reorganization to that
which it has lately undergone ; and as it is in the nature of
human affairs that the individual that is required shall not
long be wanting, so in the season of which I am treating,
arose a man remarkable in an illustrious age, who, with the
splendour of an organizing genius, settled the confused and
discordant materials of English faction, and reduced them
into a clear and systematic order. This was Lord Boling
broke. Gifted with that fiery imagination, the teeming fertility
of whose inventive resources is as necessary to a great
statesman or a great general, as to a great poet, the ablest
writer and the most accomplished orator of his age, that rare
union that in a country of free parliaments and a free press,
insures to its possessor the privilege of exercising a constant
influence over the mind of his country, that rare union that
has rendered Burke so memorable; blending with that
intuitive knowledge of his race which creative minds alone
enjoy, all the wisdom which can be derived from literature,
and a comprehensive experience of human affairs ; —
no one was better qualified to be the minister of a free and
powerful nation than Henry St. John ; and destiny at first
appeared to combine with nature in the elevation of his
fortunes. Opposed to the Whigs from principle, for an
oligarchy is hostile to genius, and recoiling from the Tory
tenets, which his unprejudiced and vigorous mind taught
him at the same time to dread and to contemn, Lord
Bolingbroke, at the outset of his career, incurred the com
monplace imputation of insincerity and inconsistency, be
cause in an age of unsettled parties with professions
contradictory of their conduct, he maintained that vigi
lant and meditative independence which is the privilege
of an original and determined spirit. It is probable

314 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
that in the earlier years of his career he meditated over
the formation of a new party, that dream of youthful
ambition in a perplexed and discordant age, but destined
in English politics to be never more substantial than a
vision. More experienced in political life, he became
aware that he had only to choose between the Whigs
and the Tories, and his sagacious intellect, not satisfied
with the superficial character of these celebrated divisions,
penetrated their interior and essential qualities, and dis
covered, in spite of all the affectation of popular sympathy
on one side and of admiration of arbitrary power on the
other, that this choice was in fact a choice between oli
garchy and democracy. From the moment that Lord Boling
broke, in becoming a Tory, embraced the national cause, he
devoted himself absolutely to his party : all the energies
of his Protean mind were lavished in their service ; and
although the ignoble prudence of the Whig Minister re
strained him from advocating the cause of the nation in the
Senate, it was his inspiring pen that made Walpole tremble
in the recesses of the Treasury, and in a series of writings,
unequalled in our literature for their spirited patriotism,
their just and profound views, and the golden eloquence in
which they are expressed, eradicated from Toryism all those
absurd and odious doctrines which Toryism had adventi
tiously adopted, clearly developed its essential and permanent
character, discarded jure divino, demolished passive obedience,
threw to the winds the doctrine of non-resistance, placed
the abolition of James and the accession of George on their
right basis, and in the complete re-organisation of the pub
lic mind laid the foundation for the future accession of
the Tory party to power, and to that popular and trium
phant career which must ever await the policy of an ad
ministration inspired by the spirit of our free and ancient
institutions.1

Disraeli had steeped himself in the politics of the age
of Anne and the early Georges, had studied Bolingbroke
both in his career and in his writings, and drawn freely
from the fund of political ideas which he found in him.
The English Alcibiades has received something less than
justice from the Whig writers who have given us our
history, but whether he wholly deserved Disraeli's glow
ing eulogy is not now the question. It is not as an
i pp. 185-188.

1835] DISRAELI'S OWN TASK 315
historical judgment on the character and achievements
of Henry St. John that the passage really interests us,
but as a statement of the ideal and an anticipation of the
career of Benjamin Disraeli. The writer proceeds at
once to show the need for another Bolingbroke in the
circumstances of the hour. The Tories have just carried
England through a perilous age of war and revolution,
and are burdened in consequence with an accretion of
those accidental qualities which are inseparable from all
political parties that have long been in power.
If the Whigs at this moment be pursuing the same desperate
and determined policy that they prosecuted so vigorously
a century back, it will be well for their rivals to adopt the
same cautious yet energetic system of conduct which, de
veloped at the same period by the genius of a Bolingbroke,
led in due season to the administration of a Pitt. In the
conduct of the Tory party at this moment, it appears to me
that there are three points to the furtherance of which we
should principally apply ourselves : 1st. That the real char
acter and nature of Toryism should be generally and clearly
comprehended : 2ndly. That Toryism should be divested of
all those qualities which are adventitious and not essential,
and which, having been produced by that course of cir
cumstances which are constantly changing, become in time
obsolete, inconvenient, and by the dexterous misrepresenta
tion of our opponents even odious : 3rdly. That the efficient
organisation of the party should be secured and maintained.1
There surely is a statement of the task Disraeli pro
posed to himself. ' I do not think, he adds, ' there ever
was a period in our history when the English nation was
so intensely Tory in feeling as at the present moment;
but the Reform Act has placed the power of the country
in the hands of a small body of persons hostile to the
nation, and therefore there is no due proportion between
the social and the political power of the national party.'
To this partial and sectarian character of the con
stituency of 1832 he is never tired of recurring. 'I
am not one of those,' he tells us elsewhere in a passage
1 p. 192.

316 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
that ought to be remembered, 'who believe that the
safety of the constitution is consulted by encouraging an
exclusive principle in the formation of the constituency
of our third estate. It is not the supposed democratic
character which it has assumed under the new arrange
ment — I wish I could call it settlement — that fills me
with any apprehensions. On the contrary, I wish it were
even more catholic, though certainly not more Papist.1
It is its sectarian quality in which I discover just cause
of alarm.'2 In genuine Toryism there is no shrinking
from democracy.
It is curious to observe that so difficult is it to destroy
the original character and eradicate the first principles of
human affairs, that those very members of the Tory party
who are loudest in upbraiding the Whig Reform Act as a
democratic measure were simultaneously, and have ever
since been, urging and prosecuting measures infinitely more
democratic than that cunning oligarchical device. . . .
No sooner was the passing of the Whig Reform Act inevitable,
than the Tories introduced a clause into it which added many
thousand members to the estate of the Commons. No
sooner was the Whig Reform Act passed, and circumstances
had proved that, with all their machinations, the oligarchy
was not yet secure, than the Whigs, under the pretence of
reforming the corporations, attempted to compensate them
selves for the democratic increase of the third estate, through
the Chandos clause, by the political destruction of all the
freemen of England; but the Tories again stepped in to the
rescue of the nation from the oligarchy, and now preserved
the rights of eighty thousand members of the third estate.
And not content with adding many thousands to its numbers,
and preserving eighty thousand, the Tories, ever since the
passing of the oligarchical Reform Act of the Whigs, have

1 Disraeli's language in this tract is coloured in many places by
the Protestant feeling which the Whig attack on the revenues of
the Irish Church had aroused into activity ; and his reconstruction of
history had not yet been carried to the stage which we shall find It reaches
in Sybil. James II. is still ' the Popish tyrant ' ; Lord Somers is held up
to us as the model of a wise statesman ; and the Revolution of 1688 is
regarded as salutary and inevitable.
2 p. 100.

1836] PEEL'S APPRECIATION 317
organised societies throughout the country for the great
democratic purpose of increasing to the utmost possible
extent the numbers of the third estate of the realm. The
clause of Lord Chandos, your Lordship's triumphant defence
of the freemen of England, and the last registration, are
three great democratic movements, and quite in keeping with
the original and genuine character of Toryism.1

To Sarah Disraeli. Jan., 1836.
The letter that was sent on to me was from Sir Robert
Peel. I sent him a copy, late and grudgingly, with a cold
dry note, convinced that he would never notice or even con
fess to having heard of it, being, as you well know, by reputa
tion the most jealous, frigid, and haughty of men. This is
what he says : — 'I beg to return you my best thanks for
that copy of your recent work respecting the House of Lords
for which I am indebted to your kind attention and considera
tion. It is not the only one in my possession, for, attracted
as well by your name as by some extracts from the work in
the public papers, which struck me as very forcibly written,
I had taken the first opportunity of procuring a copy, and
was gratified and surprised to find that a familar and appar
ently exhausted topic could be treated with so much of original
force of argument and novelty of illustration.
' I thank you, both for the work itself and the satisfaction
which the reading of it has afforded me.
' I have the honour to be,
' Your faithful and obedient servant,
'Robert Peel.'
Lyndhurst thinks this is much, considering the writer.2
' A masterly union of learning, skill, and eloquence,'
was Lyndhurst's own judgment.

To Sarah Disraeli. Jan. 9.
The sale of the Vindication continues, and, though not
quite so brisk, is in daily demand. I received to-day a letter
from Eliot, which, from its length and the extreme warmth
1 pp. 201-3. 2 Letters, p. 108.

318 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
of its feeling, would quite surprise you. His copy did not
reach him till the 6th. He says, among other things, 'In
reading your sketch of Bolingbroke I could not help thinking
that if opportunities are not withheld you may become what
he might have been.' He wants to know, by the bye, why I
call the Orleans branch the House of Valois. I am sure I
don't know. Pray find out for me, and write your answer, if
you catch one, as soon as possible.
On Tuesday I dined at Lyndhurst's, and met Lords Roden,
Lowther, and Rosslyn, Sir E. Sugden,1 Sir H. Hardinge,
Courtenay, Alderson, &c, and Lockhart, whom L. asked, that
he might review the Vindication. Chance! he never spoke a
word. He is known in society by the name of ' The Viper,' but
if he tries to sting me, he will find my heel of iron.2

The beginning of the year had found him engaged in
an angry quarrel wliich afforded him abundant opportu
nity for displaying his 'heel of iron.' 'The letters to
The Times have made a great sensation,' he writes3 to his
sister. ' I am the first individual who has silenced the
Press with its own weapons.' The Globe, then a Whig
organ, in an abusive notice of the Vindication, had
revived the old business of Hume, O'Connell, and the
first Wycombe election ; and a lengthy controversy
ensued conducted on Disraeli's side in the columns of
The Times. His letters add nothing of moment to our
knowledge, but one passage is, perhaps, worth preserving,
both as a specimen of the manner in which the ' heel
of iron' was applied and as an illustration of the contro
versial methods of the day.
The editor of the Globe has been pleased to say that he is
disinclined to continue this controversy because it gratifies
my 'passion for notoriety.' The editor of the Globe must
have a more contracted mind and paltrier spirit than even I
imagined if he can suppose for a moment that an ignoble
controversy with an obscure animal like himself can gratify
the passion for notoriety of one whose works at least have
been translated into the languages of polished Europe, aud
circulate by thousands in the New World. It is not then
my passion for notoriety that has induced me to tweak the
1 Afterwards Lord St. Leonards and Lord Chancellor.
2 Letters, p. 100. s Qn Jan. 4.

1836] DISRAELI AND THE TIMES 319
editor of the Globe by the nose, and to inflict sundry kicks
upon the baser part of his base body ; to make him eat dirt,
and his own words, fouler than any filth ; but because I
wished to show to the worid what a miserable poltroon, what
a craven dullard, what a literary scarecrow, what a mere thing,
stuffed with straw and rubbish, is the soi-disant director of
public opinion and official organ of Whig politics.1

' 'Tis a great thing to have such an organ for response
as The Times,' wrote Disraeli to his sister. Under the
guidance of John Walter, second of the name, The
Times had already taken a place far ahead of all its
rivals ; and, though it had supported the Reform move
ment and been friendly to the Grey Ministry, it was now
in open opposition to Melbourne and bitterly hostile
to the alliance between the Whigs and O'Connell. In
the previous summer, it will be remembered, Disraeli
had used the Morning Post as his journalistic medium,
but he now transferred his flag to The Times and formed
a close alliance with Barnes, the Editor. The alliance
soon bore fruit. In The Times of January 19 there
appeared a scathing philippic against the Government
and its members in the form of a letter addressed to
Lord Melbourne, and written in the style of Junius
over the signature of 'Runnymede.' This letter was
the first of a series of nineteen2 in all which appeared
in the course of the four months that followed. Three
are addressed to Melbourne, two to Peel and Stanley,
and most of the others to the leading members of the
Government.

To Sarah Disraeli. [Jan. 1836.]
The Letters of Runnymede are the only things talked of in
London, especially the latter ones. The author is unknown,
and will probably so remain. One or two papers have foolishly
1 The Times, Jan. 9, 1836.
2 A few more letters appeared over the same signature in the following
year.

320 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
ascribed them to me. There is certainly some imitation of my
style, and the writer is familiar with my works. Feb. 5.
The Letters of Runnymede are still making a great sensation.
They are considered as rising regularly in power, and the two
last, the characters of Lord J[ohn] R[ussell] and 0'C[onnellJ
are generally esteemed the most powerful. Fraser, which is
making some noise, is the highest eulogy I ever received,
saying : ' Swift observes, the appearance of a great genius
in the world may always be known by the virulence of the
dunces, and that this has been singularly illustrated in my
case,' &c. Peel told Lyndhurst the last letter was the most
powerful of all ; so it is generally esteemed.1
That the letters were immensely effective at the time
of their appearance there is no room for doubt, but their
style is hardly such as to win appreciation now or to act
as a salt to preserve them for posterity. Urbanity was
certainly not in those days a characteristic of Disraeli's
controversial methods any more than it was a character
istic of the journalism of the time ; and whatever wit or
wisdom the letters may contain, their tone is too personal,
their invective too unmeasured, and even their praise, when
they praise, too little under restraint for the taste of the
present day. The abuse of O'Connell, for instance, in the
letter which Peel thought so powerful exceeds all bounds
in its savagery : — ' He is a systematic liar and a beggarly
cheat, a swindler, and a poltroon  His
public and his private life are equally profligate ; he has
committed every crime that does not require courage.'2
In the case of O'Connell there was of course - personal
animus to add venom to the shaft, but others who were
guiltless of provocation are made to suffer hardly less.
'You have a most surprising disdain for the law of libel,'
wrote Barnes on some occasion, and the law of libel was
evidently less of a terror to newspapers in those days
than now. Disraeli never till the end of his life acknow
ledged the authorship of the letters, and probably he was
1 Letters, pp. 100 and 102.
" Letter VIH. To the People.

1836] LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE 321
deterred by a feeling of remorse for the rough handling
he had given to men with whom he was afterwards on
terms of friendship. Lord John Russell, for instance,
is ' a feeble Catiline ' ; 'an individual, who, on the prin
ciple that good vinegar is the corruption of bad wine,
has been metamorphosed from an incapable author into
an eminent politician.' In all his conduct 'it is not
difficult to detect the workings of a mean and long-
mortified spirit suddenly invested with power, — the
struggles of a strong ambition attempting, by a wanton
exercise of authority, to revenge the disgrace of a feeble
intellect.' Palmerston is the ' Lord Fanny of diplomacy,'
endowed with a dexterity ' which seems a happy compound
of the smartness of an attorney's clerk and the intrigue
of a Greek of the lower Empire.' 'The leader of the
Whig Opposition was wont to say that your Lordship
reminded him of a favourite footman on easy terms with
his mistress ' : that was of course said in Palmerston's
Tory days, but those days had been ended by his expul
sion from the Duke of Wellington's Cabinet ' for playing
a third-rate part in a third-rate intrigue.' ' Our language
commands no expression of scorn which has not been
exhausted in the celebration of your character; there
is no conceivable idea of degradation which has not been
at some period or another, associated with your career.'
Spring Rice, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has the
reputation of ' a man of business ' ; ' and, indeed, shrewd
without being sagacious, bustling without method,
loquacious without eloquence, ever prompt though
always superficial, and ever active though always blun
dering, you are exactly the sort of fussy busybody who
would impose upon and render himself indispensable to
indolent and ill-informed men of strong ambition and
weak minds.' Melbourne himself in a happy phrase is
accused of 'sauntering over the destinies of a nation,
and lounging away the glory of an Empire.'
I think the Cabinet might take to cricket — they are a choice
eleven. With their peculiarly patriotic temperaments, and

322 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
highly national feelings, they might venture, I think, to play
against ' All England.' Lord Palmerston and Lord Glenelg,
with their talent for keeping in, would assuredly secure a
good score. Lord John, indeed, with all his flourishing, will
probably end in knocking down his own wicket ; and as for
Sir Cam,1 the chances certainly are that he will be 'caught
out,' experiencing the same fate in play as in politics. If
you could only engage Lord Durham to fling sticks at the
seals of the Foreign Office, and the agile Mr. Ellice to climb
a greasy pole for the Colonial portfolio, I think you will have
provided a very entertaining programme of Easter sports.2
The letter to Peel is throughout a piece of highly-
pitched glorification that reads strangely in the light
of subsequent events. ' In your chivalry alone is our
hope. Clad in the panoply of your splendid talents and
your spotless character we feel assured that you will'
conquer.

What a contrast does your administration as Prime Minister
afford to that of one of your recent predecessors ! No selfish
views, no family aggrandisement, no family jobs, no nepotism.
. . . Contrast the serene retirement of Drayton, and the
repentant solitude of Howick; contrast the statesman,
cheered after his factious defeat by the sympathy of a nation,
with the coroneted Necker, the worn-out Machiavel, wringing
his helpless hands over his hearth in remorseful despair, and
looking up with a sigh at his scowling ancestors. . . .
You have an addition to the scutcheon of your fame in
the emblazoned memory of your brief but masterly premier
ship. They cannot taunt you now with your vague promises
of amelioration: you can appeal to the deeds of your Cabinet,
and the plans which the applause of a nation sanctioned,
and the execution of which the. intrigues of a faction alone
postponed. Never, too, since the peace of Paris, has the
great national party of this realm been so united as at the
present moment. It is no exaggeration to say, that among
its leaders not the slightest difference of opinion exists upon
any portion of their intended policy. Pitt himself, in the
plenitude of his power, never enjoyed more cordial con
fidence than that which is now extended to you by every
alleged section of the Conservative ranks.
1 Sir John Cam Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Broughton.
2 Letter XV.

1836] PRAISE OF PEEL AND STANLEY 323
A similar strain of panegyric runs through the letter to
Stanley. When the acerbities of faction have passed away, posterity
will do justice to your disinterestedness and devotion. . . .
Less than three years ago the Whigs, and loudest among
them my Lord Melbourne, announced you as the future
Prime Minister of England. Young, of high lineage, of
illustrious station, and of immaculate character, and un
questionably their ablest orator, — among your own party you
had no rival. . . . You, my Lord, preferred your honour
to your interest, the prosperity of your native land to the
gratification of your ambition. You sacrificed without a
pang the proudest station in your country, to prove to your
countrymen that public principle was not yet a jest. You
did well. The pulse of our national character was beating
low. We required some great example to re-brace the energies
of our honour. From the moment that you denounced
the disgusting thraldom and the base expedients of your
chicaning colleagues, a better feeling pervaded England, and
animated Englishmen. . . .
The time is ripe for union and fair for concord.
When, some days back, in my letter to Sir Robert
Peel — a letter, let me observe in passing, written by one
whose name, in spite of the audacious licence of frantic
conjecture, has never yet been even intimated, can never be
discovered, and will never be revealed — I announced the
fact that the great Conservative party was at length com
pletely united, it was a declaration equivalent to England
being saved. . . . In a Peel, a Stanley, a Wellington,
and a Lyndhurst, the people of England recognise their fitting
leaders. Let the priestly party oppose to these the acrid
feebleness of a Russell, and the puerile commonplace of a
Howick, Melbourne's experienced energy, and Lansdowne's
lucid perception !

From Lord Lyndhurst.

[February, 1836.]

My uear Dissy,
Lord John is a great, very great success. B[arnes] writes
me word that it is the best of the series. I agree entirely
with him in this.
It strikes me that one advantage of a strict incognito is
this : that people are never jealous of the success of an
unknown person : they praise therefore readily, freely, fully.

324 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
This they will not do when an author is known : other feel
ings, other considerations raise themselves up in the mind and
operate as a minus quantity in the sum of praise. I fear
in this case nobody can doubt the author! It should have
been discovered later. Ever, L.

The letters were republished in the course of the summer
with a long dedication to Peel, and bound up with them
there was a short tract entitled ' The Spirit of Whiggism,'
which could have left little doubt in the mind of any one
who had read the Vindication as to the identity of ' Runny
mede.' From beginning to end we have the argument,
the history, and even the language of the Vindication
repeated, though here and there is a phrase more finished,
a point more precisely made, or a position more happily
elaborated. It is a great delusion to believe that revolutions are ever
effected by a nation. It is a faction, and generally a small
one, that overthrows a dynasty or remodels a constitution.
. . . During the last five years the Whigs have been
at war with the English constitution. First of all they
captured the King; then they vanquished the House of
Commons ; now they have laid siege to the House of Lords.
. . . The House of Lords at this moment represents
everything in the realm except the Whig oligarchs, their
tools — the Dissenters, and their masters — the Irish priests.
In the meantime, the Whigs bawl aloud that there is a 'colli
sion ! ' It is true there is a collision ; but it is not a collision
between the Lords and the People, but between the Ministers
and the Constitution.
It may be as well to remind the English nation that a
revolutionary party is not necessarily a liberal one, and
that a republic is not indispensably a democracy. . . .
The rights and liberties of a nation can only be preserved
by institutions. It is not the spread of knowledge or the
march of intellect that will be found sufficient sureties for
the public welfare in the crisis of a country's freedom. . . .
I would address myself to the English Radicals. ... I

1836] SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM 325
mean those thoughtful and enthusiastic men who study their
unstamped press, and ponder over a millennium of operative
amelioration. Not merely that which is just, but that which
is also practicable, should be the aim of a sagacious politician.
Let the Radicals well consider whether, in attempting to
achieve their avowed object, they are not, in fact, only
assisting the secret views of a party whose scheme is
infinitely more adverse to their own than the existing system,
whose genius I believe they entirely misapprehend. The
monarchy of the Tories is more democratic than the republic
of the Whigs. It appeals with a keener sympathy to the
passions of the millions ; it studies their interests with a
more comprehensive solicitude.

There is no probability of ever establishing in England a
more democratic form of government than the present English
constitution. . . . The disposition of property in England
throws the government of the country into the hands of its
natural aristocracy. I do not believe that any scheme of
the suffrage, or any method of election, could divert that
power into other quarters. It is the necessary consequence
of our present social state. I believe, the wider the popular
suffrage, the more powerful would be the natural aristocracy.
This seems to me an inevitable consequence ; but I admit
this proposition on the clear understanding that such an
extension should be established upon a fair, and not a
factious, basis.

Our revolutions are brought about by the passions of
creative minds taking advantage, for their own aggrandise
ment, of peculiar circumstances in our national progress.
They are never called for by the great body of the nation.
Churches are plundered, long rebellions maintained, dynasties
changed, Parliaments abolished; but when the storm is
passed, the features of the social landscape remain unimpaired ;
there are no traces of the hurricane, the earthquake, or the
volcano; it has been but a tumult of the atmosphere, that
has neither toppled down our old spires and palaces, nor
swallowed up our cities and seats of learning, nor blasted
our ancient woods, nor swept away our ports and harbours.
The English nation ever recurs to its ancient institutions —
the institutions that have alike secured freedom and order;
and after all their ebullitions, we find them, when the sky is
clear, again at work, and toiling on at their eternal task of
accumulation.

326 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
There is ever an union in a perverted sense between those
who are beneath power and those who wish to be above it;
and oligarchies and despotisms are usually established by the
agency of a deluded multitude. . . . This union of oli
garchical wealth and mob poverty is the very essence of the
' Spirit of Whiggism.'
Meanwhile Disraeli had found a haven of rest in the
Carlton.

To Lady Blessington. Wednesday [Feb., 1836].
My dearest Lady,
Early in March there are to be fifty members elected into
the Carlton by the members at large. A strong party of my
friends, Lord L., Lord Chandos, Stuart de Rothesay, etc.,
are very active in my behalf, and I think among the leaders
of our party my claims would be recognised; but doubtless
there is a sufficient alloy of dunces even among the Conserv
atives, and I have no doubt there will be a stout opposition
to me. Although I will not canvass myself, I wish my friends
to do so most earnestly. I know from personal experience that
one word from you would have more effect upon me than
letters from all the lords in Xdom. I wish therefore to enlist
you on my side, and will take the liberty of sending you a list
to-morrow. Votre Dis.1

To Sarah Disraeli. [March, 1836.]
I carried the Carlton ; the opposition was not inconsiderable
in the committee, but my friends were firm — 400 candidates,
and all in their own opinion with equal claims. The Carlton, April 18.
The Opera is very good this year, and Carlotta Grisi the
great dancer. There is a report in Times of the Lewes ban
quet. About my pledging myself to come forward is a men
dacious flourish, but does not matter. The Carlton is a great
1 Morrison collection.

1836] ELECTED TO THE CARLTON 327
lounge, and I have found a kind friend in Francis Baring —
Lord Ashburton's eldest son.1
Disraeli knew how to employ to advantage his new
connexion with The Times. He had gone to Lewes with
a friend who was candidate for the borough and addressed
a meeting in his interest ; and The Times gave a column
of the speech, introducing the speaker as ' Mr. Disraeli,
already well known for his literary talents and his op
position to the O'Connell influence in the Government.'
The report is worth reading even now for the skill with
wliich the history and constitutional theory of the Vin
dication are woven into a speech that was yet supremely
effective as a piece of platform oratory, as is proved
by the fact that when the orator sat down ' the most
deafening applause prevailed for the space of several
minutes.'

To Sarah Disraeli. June 13.
The crisis goes on. The general impression is that the
Ministers are going to play 1832 over again, aud resign with
the idea we cannot form a Government. Nothing can give
you an idea of the excitement prevailing in the political
circles, but I am not inclined to change my opinion, viz.,
that there will be no dissolution. Lyndhurst, who has been
dining with the Duke, confirms what I have heard ; the battle
cannot be fought better than at present. . . . Lyndhurst's
speech was really a masterpiece ; since Canning there has
been nothing like it. O'Connell came into the House, but;
he will have it, after L. had done speaking about him. How
ever, he was there, and it was a grand hit, for everybody be
lieved him to be there. The Commons were cowed last night ;
Lyndhurst's dash has daunted them ; John Russell was really
feeble, and O'Connell furiously tame. In the meantime, I
am brought forward with great trumpeting iu leading arti
cles of the Chronicle. Both Lyndhurst and Sir R. Peel are
said to have adopted Mr. Disraeli's view of the Consti
tution, &c, &c.2 1 Letters, pp. 103-4. *Ibid., p. 104.

328 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
The session was in the main an Irish session, and
though it opened well for the Government tbey emerged
from it with little credit. Disraeli's account of it, from
the same fragment as his account of the session of 1835,1
and written in the same staccato style, is as follows : —

The Tories met Parliament in the most sanguine spirits.
It was supposed that the Ministers would not have a majority.
The Tories had gained in isolated elections since their resigna
tion enough votes to destroy the majority that drove Sir
R. P. from office. The Raphael Carlow business was also
considered very injurious to O'Connell. To our surprise the
Ministers as strong as ever. Our party became dispirited.
Peel timid and always acting on the defensive. The Irish
Corporations and Church Bill again approaching. The last
propitiously postponed by the Ministers for reasons after
wards discovered.

L. has a conference with the Duke of Cumberland. Forms
another and still more comprehensive plan for arresting the
movement. Conferences with the Duke of Wellington : an
nounces his determination to withdraw if not supported by
Sir R. P. Conferences between the D. of W., Sir R. P., and
Lord L. Sir R. P. agrees to accept Lord L.'s plan and pledges
himself to act upon it. The total extinction2 of the Irish
corporations resolved upon. Strength of the Ministers in
the Commons — majority of more than 80. Lords assembled
at Apsley House. Each peer individually pledges himself
to support Lord L.'s plans at all events. Commencement of
the real session of the Lords as late as June. Extraordinary
speeches and exertions of Lord L. Attempt at creating a
collision. Total failure from the firmness of the Lords.
Great courage and eminent services of the D. of Cumber
land. Great exertions of the Press and of Tlie Times in fa
vour of Lyndhurst. The country sides with the Lords. The
threatened collision laughed at. The Ministerial tactics long
planned by O'Connell now developed. The Lords Bill on
Irish Corporations to be accepted and the appropriation
clause to be given [up ?]. Consequent jealousy and dis-
1 See above, p. 301.
2 The Government Bill proposed to substitute for the old corrupt
corporations a system of elected councils ; but the Lords declined
to accept the constructive portion of the scheme and converted the
Bill into a measure for the abolition of municipal corporations in
Ireland.

1836] ACCOUNT OF THE SESSION 329
content of the English Radicals. The Ministers obliged to
give up the O'Connell tactics. They reject the Irish Corpora
tions Bill as amended by the Lords and pass the Appropria
tion clause. The Lords follow up the Lyndhurst plan. He
becomes virtual leader of the Upper House. All the Whig
Radical measures thrown out with the entire approbation of
the country : all the elections in favour of the Tories. Rage
of the Irish party. The country rallies round Lyndhurst.
He delivers his speech called ' The Summary of the Session' —
reprinted, and circulates through the country in innumerable
editions. The English Radicals announce their provisional
defection from the Whigs. The Foreign policy of the Whigs.
The session closes with the complete triumph of the Tories
at home and abroad.
About a month ago (I write this rapid sketch 17 Sept. 1836)
at the Carlton Club Lord de L'lsle, son-in-law of the King,
informed me that His Majesty wished L. to be Premier, but
was afraid he was inextricably bound to Sir R. P. Dined
alone with Lord Strangford on the 13th, who was fresh from
Walmer, where he had. a confidential conversation with the
D. of W'n. His Grace said he anticipated a daily break-up
of the Government but himself wished it postponed. That he
himself would take a seat in the Cabinet but no office : wished
L. to throw over his profession. Thought P. must be Premier,
but thought L. with the leadership of the House of Lords, an
earldom, and the Home Department would be almost the same
as Premier. Similar ideas are common — but a large party in
the country would hail L.'s accession to the Premiership with
satisfaction. His firmness and courage have won all hearts,
and the result has proved his sagacity.
On the day that Lyndhurst died nearly thirty years
later Disraeli took his pen and placed on paper his impres
sions of the dead man's mind and character : and the
document, which is at once an appreciation guided by the
knowledge and warmed by the sympathy of a long and
intimate friendship, and a judgment that is almost Rhada-
manthine in its penetration and detachment, has happily
come down to us. Oct. 13, 1863.
Lord Lyndhurst died this morning.
He had a mind equally distinguished for its vigour and
flexibility. He rarely originated, but his apprehension was

330 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
very quick and he mastered the suggestions of others and
made them clearer and more strong. He had a great grasp ;
thoroughly mastered a subject ; deep and acute ; and some
times when you thought him slow, was only exhaustive. In
his statements accurate, complete and singularly lucid : the
clearest mind on affairs with equal power of conceiving and
communicating his perspicuous views.
His soul wanted ardor, for he was deficient in imagination,
though by no means void of sensibility. He adapted himself
to circumstances in a moment, though he could not create,
or even considerably control them. His ambition active,
not soaring. Its natural height to hold the Great Seal thrice :
but when the King in 1836 had it conveyed to him that he
might be called upon to take the first place, and would he be
ready, he exclaimed ' Why, I am a lawyer, not a statesman,'
and seemed disconcerted : but when he had talked over the
matter with a friend,1 he not only arrived at the result that
he was a statesman, but let his Master be assured that he was
prepared to do his bidding, though it was one unusually
difficult and perilous. His cultivation was considerable :
far more than he was given credit for. His reading had been
various and extensive, though he never sought to display
it; and his scientific acquirements notable. He retained
and digested everything; supported by a powerful and well-
ordered memory.
A pleader rather than an orator, and never a debater.
Unsuccessful in the House of Commons, he rose at once in
the House of Lords to a position of unapproached supremacy ;
the times were favourable to him there. His stately and
luminous expositions, in a voice of thrilling music, were
adapted to a senate of which he caught the tone with facility.
His taste almost amounted to austerity, yet he did not appre
ciate Demosthenes, and was a strong Ciceronian.
He had . a sweet disposition, with a temper that nothing
could ruffle ; indulgent, placable, free from prejudice and
utterly devoid of vanity. His feelings perhaps were not very
strong, but they were always lucid. He was wonderfully
fond of the society of women, and this not merely from his
susceptibility to the sex, which was notorious, but because he
was fond of them in every relation of life. He loved to be
surrounded by his family, who were all females : a mother of
90, a sister nearly his own age, and who survived him in
1 There is here an interlineal gloss— ' i.e., D. — 1873.'

TWtn /the c/fcture 6y Count 'SD On>ay cu>i>iy>teyl try uir- O.ufarbdAeer <yi.
jln the podtheAdiorb of ^ VK tom,ria&bu ZlUAraeTc cvtcfdbqheruien^ Uanor

1836] APPRECIATION OF LYNDHURST 331
possession of all her faculties, indulged and devoted daughters.
He was happy in two marriages, though his wives in every
respect were very different.
His mind was playful, but not witty, and he had little humor
though he could sympathise with it. His knowledge of man
kind was great, but not consummate, for in their management
there was this error, he was willing to give them credit for
being influenced by amiable, but not elevated feelings.
His person was highly prepossessing. Far above the
middle height, his figure was symmetrical and distinguished,
and though powerfully formed, he never became stout. His
countenance was that of a high-bred falcon. Indeed, nothing
could be finer than the upper part of his countenance. His
deep-set eye gleamed with penetrating fire, and his brow was
majestic. Nothing could be more beautiful. It was that
of the Olympian Jove. The lower part of his countenance
betrayed the deficiencies of his character; a want of high
purpose, and some sensual attributes.
To Sarah Disraeli. June 15, 1836.
Chandos is going to give a grand fish dinner on the 18th
to the leaders of both Houses, and has asked me. . . .
I have dined with Baring Wall in a house the most beautiful
I ever entered, built by Kent; domed staircases, landing-
places supported by Corinthian columns, and a grand salon,
which, • for its height, carving, gilding, and richly-painted
ceiling, exceeded anything I ever saw in a private house.
Our dinner was worthy of the ' veritable Amphitryon ' of
London, and was served off a set of Dresden china of the most
marvellous beauty ; the candelabra in the middle of immense
size, and covered with groups of shepherds and shepherdesses,
the whole mounted on green velvet ; even the salt-cellars and
handles of knives and forks were china, most charming in this
weather ; our party eight. [Undated.]
Chandos's dinner was a banquet. I was the only person
there not an M.P. Peel and Sir James Graham were there ;
the first came up to me and resumed our acquaintance most
flatteringly. Chandos introduced me to Graham. They
went down by water, but I accompanied Lyndhurst. We
came home in two omnibuses hired for the owner. . . .
What do you think of Spain ? Trelawny, who is a Re
publican, is in raptures with the prospects. ' The Spaniards,'

332 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
he says, ' are in advance of all countries ; they have got their
constitution of 1812 ! ' Says James Smith, ' I wish I had got
mine.' Aug. 20.
I suppose you have recognised four bolts of veritable
Olympian thunder in Tlie Times. It is considered worthy
of Jove, and nobody can discover behind what cloud the
god is shrouded.1
The thunderbolts in The Times were in the form of
leading articles ; but, as is the way with leading articles,
their lightning has ceased to flash and their thunder to
reverberate. When he comes in the autumn to his now customary
review in the diary of the leading events of the year the
entries are : —
Establish my character as a great political writer by the
Letters of Runnymede. Resume my acquaintance with Sir
Robert Peel. My influence greatly increases from the per
fect confidence of L[yndhurst] and my success as a political
writer. Stayed a week with Bulwer this spring and intro
duced him to L., against whom he was bitterly prejudiced.
They became warm friends. I must not forget the singular
fate of my friend old Lady Salisbury — burnt to death at
Hatfield. And then follow lists of names, new acquaintances of
recent date, or merely mnemonic hints to recall some
incident of the year — Francis Baring and Lord Ash
burton, Croker, Baring Wall, Duke of Beaufort, 'an
amusing character — Major Fancourt,' Lord Mahon, Lord
Lincoln, 'Trelawny — a strange character,' 'Maclise — a
painter,' Lord Ashley [afterwards the philanthropic Earl
of Shaftesbury], Mackworth Praed, Barnes, and Sterling —
but whether Edward Sterling of The Times or John, his
son, the subject of Carlyle's biography, we are left to
conjecture. 'It is a very remarkable thing,' said Disraeli to Sir
Philip Rose, on some occasion when the Star Chamber
myth had been revived, 1 Letters, pp. 105, 107.

1836] JOURNALISTIC ACTIVITY 333
that whatever may have been ascribed to me I suppose
there are few men who ever led a literary and political life
as I have done who have written so little for the periodical
Press ; and what is remarkable is that I can positively assert
that I never in my life either required or received any re
muneration for anything I have ever written except for the
books published under my name. Of course, I have written
at various times for the Press. I wrote a great deal at one
time for Lord Lyndhurst, but I never either received or would
have accepted any payment. My object was to connect
myself with a man who had already been a Minister, and who
was destined to take a conspicuous part in public affairs,
and to establish a claim upon him which might some day be
useful, but I never held any engagement on the Press or
accepted any remuneration ; not that I should have been
the least ashamed of it if I had done so, but it is not the fact.
His journalistic activity in these years was great.
In the course of the winter of 1836 he contributed to
The Times a long-drawn series of articles under the title
of 'A New Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor, recently dis
covered,' in which, as the title suggests, he recurred to
the method of allegory adopted in Popanilla. ' I do not,'
said Barnes, ' see much object in allegorising a subject
or set of subjects which have been and are daily discussed
in the plainest and most intelligible terms' ; and cer
tainly Runnymede had suffered from no restraint of
reticence that could be removed by disguising Melbourne
as ' Shrugshoulders the Grand Vizier,' or Palmerston as
'the Vizier for Foreign Affairs' of 'His Majesty King
Mihrage.' Sindbad, accordingly, had none of the success
of Runnymede. Disraeli also tried his hand at political
satires in verse. There is 'An Heroic Epistle to Lord
Viscount Mel ... e ' in The Times of March 20, 1837 ;
but the day of such things was past, and when some
what later he proposed to renew his poetical declamation,
on this occasion in blank verse instead of the heroic
couplet, Barnes was not encouraging : — ' Your verses
have a stately march and the sentiments are just, but
they want variety. The tone is a high one, but the
sound is monotonous.'

334 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
It is the spoken word, however, and not the written,
as Lord Salisbury once remarked, that in the end governs
England. Disraeli's activity in The Times may have
brought him no pecuniary reward, but it brought him
something else that he valued a great deal more. In
December, 1836, there was a Conservative banquet at
Aylesbury, and Disraeli, to whom was entrusted the
toast of the House of Lords, delighted his hearers with
a speech full of wit and vigour. But he delighted not
only his hearers. Through the favour of Barnes, The
Times sent down a special staff of reporters and regaled
its readers with a long account of the demonstration,
Disraeli's speech, but no other, being given in the first
person. ' Now,' wrote his sister, ' you must be satisfied,
that you have succeeded in doing that which you so
much desired, viz., to make a speech that would be
talked of all over England.' To Sarah Disraeli. Dec. 15.
The Spectator said of the Bucks meeting that the ' speaking,
on the whole, was as stupid as usual, except Mr. Disraeli,
who, after a little of his usual rhodomontade about the
Peers being the founders of liberty, grew abusive and
amusing,' and then quoted the Shakespearean passage.
The Shakespearean passage is worth quoting again.
It may be said that the Prime Minister of the Sovereign
rather winks approbation at this assault upon the House of
Lords than leads on the assailants. It may be so : discretion
may be the better part of valour even in Downing Street.
The gay Epicurean leader may summon his forces and yet
may refuse to march through Coventry with them. . . .
He has placed a Justice Shallow in the Cabinet, assigned the
seals of one office to Master Silence, and entrusted the manage
ment of our foreign affairs to Master Slender. But the rank
and file who, after all, are the men to fight at Shrewsbury —
he turns up his nose at these — at Mouldy and Wart, and
Shadow and Forcible Feeble, and Bull Calf bellowing out
' Down with the House of Lords,' and who must surely
have been a member for one of the metropolitan districts;

1836] SPEECH AT AYLESBURY 335
our Falstaff of the Treasury will not lead these fellows to the
field. If we add to these the Milesian Pistol and his raga
muffin tail of cut-purse Nyms and drunken Bardolph s the
political picture is complete ; and these — these are our rulers.
More to the taste of his audience, probably, was the
following attack on O'Connell.
A denunciation has gone forth against the House of Lords,
and from whom ? From the paid agent of the Papacy.
I am not surprised at this. It is as natural for Mr. O'Connell
to cry out ' Down with the House of Lords ' as for a robber
to cry out 'Down with the gallows.' Both are national
institutions very inconvenient in their respective careers.
. . . 'Down with the House of Lords,' cries Mr.
O'Connell. Ay, down with the only barrier between him
and his disastrous machinations. The House of Lords is a
great breakwater of sedition that his waves of commotion will
beat against in vain. . . . When I listen to him I am
reminded of what the great Dean Swift said of a gentleman
who was almost as anxious to plunder the people of Ireland
as Mr. O'Connell himself, though not quite so successful —
I mean William Wood, who tried to impose on them with
brass farthings, ' These are the last howls of a dog dissected
alive.'1 This sally was greeted with 'loud and continued
cheers,' and made a tremendous noise.

To Sarah Disraeli. Dec. 15.
O'Connell makes no reply; all the Irish papers taunt
him. The Warder says 'he can find time to attack Fraser,
O'Connor, and D. W. Harvey, and to call Mr. Lascelles a
blockhead, but why does he not answer Disraeli ? " Will
not the dog dissected alive give another howl ? " ' All the
country papers are full of it. Lord Strangford, who came up
from Strathfieldsaye last night, began, ' You have no idea of
the sensation your speech has produced at Strathfieldsaye.'
I said, ' Oh, my lord, you always say agreeable things.' He
took me aside and said, ' I give you my honour as a gentleman
that the Duke said at the dinner-table, "It was the most manly
thing done yet ; when will he come into Parliament ? " ' 2
1 The Times, Dec. 10, 1836.
2 Letters, p. 107.

336 POLITICAL WRITINGS [chap, xiv
After this pronouncement by the greatest Englishman
of the day there is nothing more to be said.

From Lord Lyndhurst.

Paris, Dec, 1836.

My dear Disraeli,
Sindbad tells me you are in London and active in the
great cause — able and active as usual. The Bucks dinner was
a grand demonstration, aud has placed you in an admirable
position as far as character and reputation are concerned.
It will be infamous if not followed up by some effort to place
you in a position which may give the party the full benefit
of your talents and of your activity and untiring zeal. . . .
It is hard indeed if we don't get you into the House. The
Duke, you may depend upon it, is your friend. . . .
They are beginning here to hate us, and they invent
all sorts of lies as a ground for abuse. As to Palmerston
and the Ministers in general, they are never named in
society without expressions of ridicule and contempt. . . .
Suppose (which I think not improbable) there should be a
break-up of our Government, how are the parts to be cast
in the Tory Administration ? This a difficult affair. I
find they talk of me as Home Secretary. I could not afford
it. What will they do with Chandos : he is become a very
important person. His hold of the country is most powerful
and extensive. Will Peel have many of his own click?
Give me all the information you can, and as often as you
can. . . .
I am now reading the love of Henrietta. I only got the
book this morning. Mrs. Gore lent it to me. She says it is
the best thing you have written since Vivian Grey. . . .
What I have read of it is light and brilliant and sparkling
and impassioned, and all that such a work ought to be.
Ever yours, L.

CHAPTER XV
Henrietta Temple and Venetia
1834-1837
Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem :
Difficile est, verum hoc qua lubet efficias.
As we see from Lyndhurst's letter at the end of the
last chapter Henrietta Temple had been published shortly
before the close of 1836 ; and a few months later it was
followed by Venetia.
Henrietta Temple and Venetia are not political works,
but they would commemorate feelings more enduring than
public passions, and they were written with care, and some
delight. They were inscribed to two friends, the best I ever
had, and not the least gifted. One was the inimitable
D'Orsay, the most accomplished and the most engaging
character that has figured in this century, who, with the form
and universal genius of an Alcibiades, combined a brilliant
wit and a heart of quick affection, and who, placed in a public
position, would have displayed a courage, a judgment, and a
commanding intelligence which would have ranked him with
the leaders of mankind. The other was one who had
enjoyed that public opportunity which had been denied to
Comte D'Orsay. The world has recognised the political
courage, the versatile ability, aud the masculine eloquence
of Lord Lyndhurst ; but his intimates only were acquainted
with the tenderness of his disposition, the sweetness of his
temper, his ripe scholarship, and the playfulness of his bright
and airy spirit.1 1 General Preface to the Novels, 1870.
vol. i — z 337

338 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
Since the failure of the Revolutionary Epick in 1834
Disraeli seemed, save for a few slight contributions to
Heath's Book of Beauty, of which his friend Lady Bles
sington was editor, to have abandoned the field of
imaginative literature ; but he had begun Henrietta
Temple in the summer of 1834, and written a volume
before he threw the novel aside. Politics, social engage
ments, and the worry and burden of his debts sufficiently
occupied both his time and energy for the next couple
of years, but eventually the urgent need of money com
pelled him to pick up the discarded manuscript. ' I have
agreed to let Colburn have a novel . . . for a
greater sum than I have ever yet received,' he writes
to Bradenham in June, 1836. The announcement
brought no pleasure to his father. ' How,' he anxiously
inquires, ' will the fictionist assort with the politician ?
Most deeply am I regretting that you find it necessary
to return to drink of the old waters.' Isaac D'Israeli,
however, knew little of his son's embarrassments, and the
need for money was far more pressing than he realised.
And there was another and a deeper reason that
prompted a resumption of the unfinished story, or, at all
events, made a resumption no longer impossible. When
the first volume was composed Disraeli himself was in
the grip of a strong and vehement passion, and the love
story could no more have been carried to any fitting con
clusion then than could Vivian Grey or Contarini Fleming
or any of the other novels which are chapters in an auto
biography and reflexions of an uncompleted personal
experience. But in the years that had since elapsed
the experience had passed into another phase. Love,
after its first rapture was over, had come into conflict
with the harder side of Disraeli's character, with his
masterful will and daemonic ambition ; and in the clash
between will and passion will had triumphed. The
connexion between his own Henrietta and the novel
is indicated by a laconic entry in the Mutilated
Diary.

1836] HENRIETTA TEMPLE 339
Autumn of 1836. — Parted for ever from Henrietta. Re
turned to Bradenham at the latter end of August; concluded
Henrietta Temple, of which one volume had been written three
years. It • was published early in December, and was very
successful. ' Henrietta Temple : a Love Story,' was the full title
of the book. Ferdinand Armine, the heir of an ancient
but impoverished Catholic family, heir also as he fancies
to a great estate on his mother's side of the house, is
with his regiment at Malta, and living the life of a spend
thrift, when he learns that he is disinherited, and that
the estate has gone to another, his cousin, Katherine
Grandison. Overwhelmed with debt, he returns to
England, and finds in the heiress a beautiful girl unversed
in the ways of the world, whom, as the easiest mode of
escape from his embarrassments, he at once determines to
marry. Handsome and brilliant, he easily captivates her
and they become engaged, though on his side, at all
events, there is no spark of love. But soon afterwards he
meets Henrietta Temple, and love, instant and overwhelm
ing, takes possession of his soul.
There is no love but love at first sight. This is the
transcendent and surpassing offspring of sheer and un
polluted sympathy. All other is the illegitimate result of
observation, of reflection, of compromise, of comparison, of
expediency. The passions that endure flash like the lightning:
they scorch the soul, but it is warmed for ever.1
Henrietta returns his passion and they exchange vows,
Ferdinand persuading her into secrecy for a time and con
cealing from her his engagement to Katherine, which he
determines, however, to break at once. But the pressure
of his debts and the fear of bringing ruin and disgrace
upon his father and mother counsel delay and he becomes
involved in a course of double-dealing which soon ends
in catastrophe. Henrietta and her father discover the
prior engagement and draw the worst conclusions ; and
i Bk. H. ch. 4.

340 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
the rupture that follows is nearly fatal to both the lovers.
After some interval they meet again and love is not yet
dead though it has fallen on evil days. Chance has made
Henrietta one of the greatest heiresses in England and
under pressure from her father she has become the
affianced bride of Lord Montfort the heir to a dukedom.
The knot gets more and more entangled till we find
Ferdinand in a sponging house under arrest for debt,
his engagement with his cousin, which was the mainstay of
his credit, openly terminated, and his heart nearly broken
by the loss of Henrietta ; but when things are at their
worst everything is set right by the skilful diplomacy of
Count Alcibiades de Mirabel, who is D'Orsay drawn to the
life and with very little pretence of concealment or dis
guise. Ferdinand is reunited to Henrietta, and Lord
Montfort and Miss Grandison find consolation for their
disappointment in an interchange of their more tranquil
and accommodating affections.
The interest of the novel as a love story lies mainly in
that first volume,1 which takes its inspiration from a
vivid personal experience. Some of Disraeli's critics
after reading Henrietta Temple have contrived to pro
nounce the love in it affected and unreal ; but it would
be hard in the annals of criticism to find a more notable
instance of the perverse human tendency to ignore obvious
facts when they refuse to fit a theory. In the second
book of the novel we have a picture of first love at the
height of its spiritual ardour and intensity which only a
man who had really loved himself could ever have pro
duced. Disraeli indeed had not the simplicity of touch
which achieves the supreme lyric effect. That is the
privilege of the greatest masters and of them alone ; but
of the essential truth and sincerity of his picture no
unbiased reader can really feel a doubt.
Amid the gloom and travail of existence suddenly to behold
a beautiful being, and as instantaneously to feel an over
whelming conviction that with that fair form for ever our
1 Including Books I. and H. of the ordinary editions.

1836] TWO CONCEPTIONS OF LOVE 341
destiny must be entwined ; that there is no more joy but in
her joy, no sorrow but when she grieves ; that in her sigh of
love, in her smile of fondness, hereafter is all bliss ; to feel
our flaunty ambition fade away like a shrivelled gourd before
her vision ; to feel fame a juggle and posterity a lie ; and to
be prepared at once, for this great object, to forfeit and fling
away all former hopes, ties, schemes, views; to violate in
her favour every duty of society ; this is a lover, and this is
love ! Magnificent, sublime, divine sentiment ! An immortal
flame burns in the breast of that man who adores and is adored.
He is an ethereal being. The accidents of earth touch him not.
Revolutions of Empire, changes of creed, mutations of opinion,
are to him but the clouds and meteors of a stormy sky. The
schemes and struggles of mankind are, in his thinking, but
the anxieties of pigmies and the fantastical achievements of
apes. Nothing can subdue him. He laughs alike at loss of
fortune, loss of friends, loss of character. The deeds and
thoughts of men are to him equally indifferent. He does not
mingle in their paths of callous bustle, or hold himself respon
sible to the airy impostures before which they bow down.
He is a mariner, who, in the sea of life, keeps his gaze fixedly
on a single star; and if that do not shine, he lets go the
rudder, and glories when his bark descends into the bottomless
gulf.1 When that passage was written Disraeli, we may
believe, sincerely felt for the moment that the world
could be well lost for love ; but with a nature such as
his the mood could hardly last. We find it succeeded
by another, which, if less heroic, is more serene, as we
advance into the later volumes of the novel.

Love is inspiration; it encourages to great deeds, and
develops the creative faculty of our nature. ... It
is woman whose prescient admiration strings the lyre of the
desponding poet, whose genius is afterwards to be recognised
by his race, and which often embalms the memory of the gentle
mistress whose kindness solaced him in less glorious hours.
How many an official portfolio would never have been carried,
had it not been for her sanguine spirit and assiduous love !
How many a depressed and despairing advocate has clutched
the Great Seal and taken his precedence before princes, borne
onward by the breeze of her inspiring hope, and illumined
i Bk. II. ch. 4.

342 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
by the sunshine of her prophetic smile ! A female friend,
amiable, clever, and devoted, is a possession more valuable
than parks and palaces ; and, without such a muse, few men
can succeed in life, none be content.1
The temperature has now fallen and all the uncalcu-
lating vehemence of love is gone. In its earlier present
ment the passion of Ferdinand and Henrietta is strangely
free from all admixture of sense ; from the artistic point
of view it might indeed be better if there were more,
for the sensuous element refined and sublimated in the
furnace of the imagination is a necessary ingredient in
the poetry of love ; but if the sensuous element is absent
there is no lack of spiritual warmth and fire. In the later
volumes of the novel, however, this is changed : even the
spiritual glow of passion has now died away, and love
has passed into a sentiment which though pure and ten
der and reverent is of the intellect rather than of the
soul. The portion of the novel which was written in the
autumn of 1836 betrays many signs of crudity in
conception and haste in execution. The images of
Ferdinand and Henrietta are both in some degree
defaced. Ferdinand shows himself such a selfish and
deceitful egoist in his love that our sympathy is to a
great extent estranged ; and in spite of the tact and
skill with which the author prepares us for the defection
of Henrietta her fickleness cannot be wholly disguised.
In the conditions of their genesis there is some
resemblance between Henrietta Temple and the first part
of Vivian Grey, in either case a discarded manuscript
having been picked up again after the original creative
impulse had lost its force. But since the days of Vivian
Grey Disraeli had gained immensely in experience both
as an artist and as a man, and with all its imperfec
tions the supplementary work in Henrietta Temple is far
different in literary value from the concluding chapters
of his first novel. If the lyric rapture of first love is
1 Bk. III. ch. 4.

1836] PORTRAITS FROM LIFE 343
partly lost we are given a good deal of delightful comedy
in recompense, and many of the secondary characters
now introduced are admirable. Lady Bellair is an
amusing portrait of Disraeli's eccentric friend and ally,
of whom we have heard more than once — old Lady Cork.
The unimpassioned Montfort, with whom ' life was the
romance of reason,' as with Ferdinand it was ' the
romance of imagination,' may seem at the first view
artificial, but he is of the Disraelian line of Beckendorff
and Winter, and interesting as the immediate precursor
of Sidonia. Then there is Mr. Bond Sharpe, apparently
drawn from Crockford ; the little waiter in the sponging
house from some unknown model who allowed Disraeli
to catch his likeness and was lost in obscurity again ;
and Mirabel's companions, Mr. Bevil, who 'never per
mitted himself to smile except in the society of intimate
friends,' Lord Catchimwhocan, ' that dear Catch who
was always repeating nonsense which he heard from
somebody else,' and Charles Doricourt, whom the world
called Charley, ' from which it will be inferred that
he was a privileged person, and was applauded for a
thousand actions which in any one else would have been
met with decided reprobation.' But by far the most
attractive character of all, perhaps the most attractive
that Disraeli ever created or drew, is de Mirabel himself,
in whom the wit, the gaiety, the charm, the generosity,
and the insouciance of D'Orsay are enshrined for the
benefit of future generations.
There was something in Count Mirabel's very presence
which put everybody in good spirits. His lighthearteduess
was caught by all. Melancholy was a farce in the presence of
his smile ; and there was no possible combination of scrapes
that could withstand his kind and brilliant raillery.1
His radiant figure lights up all the concluding scenes
and makes the last book, with its reconciliation of the
lovers, the most readable in the novel.
i Bk. VI. ch. 14.

344 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
To Sarah Disraeli. Dec. 15, 1836.
Strangford [fresh from Strathfieldsaye] said he had not
yet seen my novel, and there was only one person at the
Duke's who had read it — Lady Wilton. She said she had
cried so much that she had excited all their curiosity.
Bulwer tells me that at Lady Charlotte Bury's the other
night he only heard one report, ' Tears, tears, tears ! ' so he
supposes I am right and he is wrong. Colburn is in high
spirits about H. T. He says he shall not be content unless
he works it up like Pelham. There were many reviews
yesterday. You have of course seen the Athenaeum; they
were all in that vein, but highly calculated to make people
read, if they were wanted, but it is not.1
' This vexatious, high-flown, foolish, clever work,'
the Athenaeum called it. Colburn had not lost his skill
in working up a novel. ' I hope,' he writes while the
book is in the stocks, 'you will have a dozen more
originals to draw from besides old Lady C. ; an exhibi
tion of two or three leading political characters would
not be amiss ' ; and in another letter he ' wants to
know all he can that he may say something about it
in the papers to excite curiosity and expectation
without in the least gratifying it.' With Colburn's
arts to aid its intrinsic merits Henrietta Temple
was more successful than any of Disraeli's novels
that had appeared since Vivian Grey. Some of his
friends, however, were disappointed. Bulwer 'thinks
my speech the finest in the world and my novel the
worst,' he writes to his sister ; and D'Orsay and Lady
Blessington apparently agree with Bulwer. There has
been a curious divergence of view among the critics
ever since. Those to whom Disraeli is primarily a
politician and his distinctive work in literature the crea
tion of the political novel despise Henrietta Temple
because of the absence of political motive. To Froude,
for instance, it is a ' clever story, but without the merit
or the interest which would have given it a permanent
1 Letters, p. 108.

1836] SUCCESS OF HENRIETTA 345
place in English literature.'1 Tennyson, on the other
hand, 'told Disraeli that the "silly sooth" of love
was given perfectly there ' 2 ; and Leslie Stephen 3 speaks
of Henrietta and Contarini as ' Disraeli's most satisfactory
performances,' because in these 'he has worked without
any secondary political purpose, and has, therefore, pro
duced more harmonious results.'

From Count D'Orsay.
Mon cher Dis,
J'ai recu votre lettre avec plaisir, et votre de'dicace avec
fierte. Le mot d'affectionne ami s'applique tout aussi bien
a mes sentiments pour vous que les votres envers moi. Je
regrette seulement que Mirabel ait fait connaissance avec
Armine dans un Hell. C'etait probablement pour chauffer
leurs sentiments au premier abord que vous avez eu recours
a ce moyen qui etait inutile. J'espere bientSt vous revoir,
pour vous r^peter combien votre dedicace est vraie.
Votre affectionne ami,
Alfred D'Orsay.

From Alfred Tennyson. Clapham Common, April 28, 1868.
Dear Mr. Disraeli,
Pray accept my best thanks for the instant attention you
have paid to this small matter of mine. . . . Though
the result appears to be nil, I do not the less feel an obligation
to you ; and am quite as much pleased to know that it is
owing to the author of that charming love story, Henrietta
Temple, as to the Prime Minister of England.
Believe me, ever yours truly, A. Tennyson.

One of Disraeli's critics disputed the truth and accuracy
of the scenes in the sponging house in Henrietta Temple
and of Ferdinand's interview with Levison, of the money-
1 Lord Beaconsfield, p. 215. 2 Life, II., p. 371.
8 Hours in a Library, n., p. 130.

346 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
lending firm of Messrs. Morris and Levison ; and con
gratulated the author on having escaped the 'usurious
experience ' himself. It is to be feared that the author's
knowledge of these things was far greater than his critic's.
Since his return from the East, Disraeli's pecuniary
embarrassments had multiplied and increased. In the
debtor's career it is the first step that is decisive.
If youth but knew the fatal misery that they are entailing
on themselves the moment they accept a pecuniary credit
to which they are not entitled, how they would start in their
career ! How pale they would turn ! How they would
tremble, and clasp their hands in agony at the precipice on
which they are disporting! Debt . . . hath a small
beginning, but a giant's growth and strength. When we
make the monster we make our master, who haunts us at
all hours, and shakes his whip of scorpions for ever in our
sight. Faustus, when he signed the bond with blood, did not
secure a doom more terrific.1
Disraeli had committed the first fatal blunder while
he was still young, and had never succeeded in retrieving
it. Since his return from the East four contested elec
tions, extravagant companions, and an expensive social
environment had increased his liabilities and led him
deeper into the mire. He was by nature generous and
open-handed, caring only for money as he loved to spend
it freely, and with no gift of acquisitiveness or power of
accumulation. Debt soon makes a man improvident,
if it does not find him so ; his financial vision ceases to
extend beyond the date at which the next bill matures,
and if, like Disraeli, he be of a sanguine temperament,
he readily convinces himself that a respite is the equivalent
of a reprieve, and that if only time can be secured every
thing will settle itself. During a great part of his life,
and in these years especially, Disraeli was in the grip of
the moneylenders, never escaping from an atmosphere
of bills, writs, annuities, renewals, discountings, assign
ments, and all the other processes which are the imple-
1 Henrietta Temple, Bk. II. ch. 1.

1836] DISRAELI'S DEBTS 347
ments and appurtenances of usury. Amid the worries and
vexations of such a life most men would have found
serious work or even serious enjoyment utterly im
possible, but Disraeli contrived to pursue his pleasures,
his labours and his ambitions with a wonderful serenity
through all. 'As from fear of the Philistines I cannot
come and dine with you, you must come and dine with
me,' he writes to Austen one day in 1833. ' I am over
whelmed with difficulties,' he tells him in another letter
of the same year, though ' all that is necessary to settle
my affairs is six months of quiet.' A couple of years
later the situation is much the same. ' My affairs have
been so involved,' he says in answer to a complaint that
he is neglecting his friends, 'that seclusion, absolute
seclusion from society and severe daily labour have been
to me as much a matter of necessity as choice.' But
he has now ' more than a prospect of almost immediately
emancipating himself from sufferings not easy to describe.'
' Circumstances have placed him behind the curtain of
financial politics,' and he reckons among his assets
£1,000 which he is shortly to receive, 'the result of a
piece of business which has engaged my attention during
the last five months, and respecting which I have twice
visited The Hague.' This was written at the beginning
of 1836, and in the Mutilated Diary about the same time
there is a laconic entry, ' Haber again,' which points to
some connexion between the financial politics in question
and the Baron de Haber,1 with whom Disraeli had
collaborated in the Gallomania several years before. The
business seems to have been some affair of a Swedish
loan, and it was carried to a stage where, in the sanguine
view of Disraeli, only formal difficulties stood between
him and his reward. Apparently, however, the reward
never came, and when ' from the strange aspect of the
1 Haber was at this time the head of a financial house with a branch
at The Hague among other places on the Continent, and Disraeli was
no doubt acting for the moment, or aspiring to act, as his London
agent.

348 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
money market any immediate prospect of a favourable
nature grew desperate,' he was compelled to 'engage
in an intellectual effort, painful at all times, under such
circumstances a very terrible exertion,' in order, if possible,
to meet the demands of his creditors ; the intellectual
effort being the completion of Henrietta Temple.
In these early years his liabilities probably amounted
to no more than a few thousand pounds, a sum which
would not have been beyond the competence of his
father to provide, but throughout he showed the greatest
reluctance to seek assistance from his father. 'In the
most important step of a man's life,' he writes on one
occasion to Austen, who had advised such an application,
'I have opposed his earnest wishes, and have based
my dutiful opposition upon my independence. I do
not wish by extraordinary money applications to one
who is always very generous to me, to revive a most
painful subject.' On another occasion when the stress
was even greater Austen repeated his advice, urging
that this objection should yield to force of circumstances
lest character should be compromised ; but Disraeli still
clung to his precarious independence and persisted in
his policy of faith in the future and temporary expedients
for the present. An undated letter of these years,
which might well have been signed Alcibiades de Mirabel,
will give the atmosphere better than pages of accounts or
disquisition. From Count D'Orsay.
I swear before God that I have not six pence at my banker
now, having lost the night before last £325. You may judge
how disappointed I am not to be able to assist you, but if you
find that I could be of any use to you in the way of security I
will do for you what I would not do for any other.
Yours affectionately, D'Orsay.
Such was the school of finance in which our future
Chancellor of the Exchequer graduated. Let it be

1836] FINANCIAL INTEGRITY 349
said at once, however, that though Disraeli ran through
the whole gamut of the debtor's customary experience,
was guilty of all the improvidence to which embarrass
ment surely leads, submitted perforce to all the humilia
tions which it carries in its train, was skilled in all the
subterfuges by which debtors commonly evade the
importunity of greedy and exacting creditors, and too
often caused annoyance to obliging friends by reluctant
but unavoidable disappointment of their hopes, nothing
that seriously touches his character is to be deduced from
the records as they have been preserved ; and in the
matter of records Disraeli showed himself splendidly
indifferent to posterity or splendidly confident as to
its verdict. In his career from beginning to end there
is no trace of any money transaction that will not bear
investigation, and if we waive the inevitably squalid
details of a life of embarrassment, nothing that infringes
the code of 'the man of honour ' or 'the gentleman.' It
might even be urged that his debts themselves had a
certain disciplinary value. A well-known passage in
Tancred, if we allow for some whimsical exaggeration,
reflects undoubtedly a personal feeling of Disraeli's.

Fakredeen was fond of his debts ; they were the source in
deed of his only real excitement, and he was grateful to them
for their stirring powers. The usurers of Syria are as adroit
and callous as those of all other countries, and possess no doubt
all those repulsive qualities which are the consequence of an
habitual control over every generous emotion. But, instead of
viewing them with feelings of vengeance or abhorrence,
Fakredeen studied them, unceasingly with a fine and profound
investigation, and found in their society a deep psychological
interest. . . . 'What should I be without my debts?'
he would sometimes exclaim ; ' dear companions of my life
that never desert me ! All my knowledge of human nature
is owing to them : it is in managing my affairs that I have
sounded the depths of the human heart, recognised all the
combinations of human character, developed my own powers,
and mastered the resources of others. What expedient in
negotiation is unknown to me ? What degree of endurance
have I not calculated ? What play of the countenance have

350 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
I not observed? Yes, among my creditors, I have disciplined
that diplomatic ability, that shall some day confound and
control cabinets. Oh, my debts, I feel your presence like
that of guardian angels ! If I be lazy, you prick me to action ;
if elate, you subdue me to reflection ; and thus it is that
you alone can secure that continuous yet controlled energy
which conquers mankind.' 1
No doubt like Fakredeen Disraeli grew 'sometimes a
little wearied even of the choice excitement of pecuniary
embarrassment. It was too often the same story, the
adventures monotonous, the characters identical.' The
characters, however, were not always sordid. From those
early days in which he took Evans, his fellow clerk, for
partner in a speculation in South American shares he
showed a notable capacity for enlisting the good offices
of friends, for inspiring them with confidence in his future,
and winning and retaining their affection. ' The singular
good services of Pyne to me ' is an entry in the Mutilated
Diary for 1836. Pyne was a prosperous solicitor who
had succeeded Austen as the repository of Disraeli's
confidence in these unsavoury matters, and Disraeli's
letters to him, luckily preserved, tell a tale of which one
hardly knows whether it calls more often for tears or
laughter. By May, 1836, Disraeli, through Pyne's good
offices, has been relieved of some of his most pressing
claims, and elate with his temporary freedom is ready
for any fresh enterprise tbat presents itself. A ' new
weekly journal under the highest patronage ' is about to
be started and he has been ' offered and has provisionally
accepted half the proprietorship, which however will
require £500.' 'I have little resources except the -£200,
which are in fact yours, but I think I could scrape enough
together. The object is considerable. This speculation,
if there be any virtue in calculation, may turn out, and
quickly, a considerable property.' How Pyne regarded
the speculation there is nothing to show, but by July
his client is in trouble again. 'Peel has asked me to
1 Tancred, Bk. V. ch. 3.

1836] PYNE'S GOOD SERVICES 351
dine with a party to-day of the late Government at the
Carlton. Is it safe ? I fear not. '

To William Pyne. Bradenham, Sept. 25, 1836.
Your letter rather alarms me; I scarcely think it safe
to remain here as any proceedings of the kind here would be
confusion. I have not left this house except for County
business x occasionally, working unceasingly at my forthcoming
book. I have no pecuniary cares for the next three months,
and I wish if possible to reap a great harvest in this serene
interval, and finish, or nearly so, a second novel for January,
getting the forthcoming one out in the very early part of
November. Beadbnham, Sunday. [November, 1836.]
My dear Pyne,
The letter which I received from you to-day fills me with
great disquietude. The idea that I am involving Count
D'Orsay and yourself, my two best friends, and especially
hampering you, is so insupportable, that there seems to me
hardly any explanations and crisis which I would not encounter
sooner than the present state of affairs. My situation is
simply this. I have taken advantage of the temporary repose
for which I am indebted to you and with the exception of
County business I have not quitted my room for the last ten
weeks. I have now written five octavo volumes, i.e. the
novel about to be published, and two more of another, which
I calculate finishing by the end of the year. If affairs can be
carried on, I then purpose commencing a third, but, as you can
easily comprehend, such almost superhuman labors, though
practicable with a serene mind and unbroken time, are impos
sible under opposite circumstances. A serene mind I never
expect to have, but hitherto my time has been little disturbed.
If the results are what my publisher anticipates, and I am
able to complete this engagement, I think between £3,000 and
£4,000 might be poured into my coffers by May : but the ships,
though built and building, are not yet launched, and as I have
some difficulties with which you are not mixed up, still to
contend with, I doubt whether on our present system I can
hope effectively to assist you before the Spring. Do you
think the present system can be maintained ? That you will
1 He had been sworn in as a Justice of the Peace in the preceding
month.

352 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
' do your best ' I want no assurance, but I am loth to strain
a generous steed to whom I am indebted for such great
services. I am always afraid that a feeling of false delicacy
may prevent you being as frank with me as your interests
may require, and that you may imagine that you are in some
degree cancelling your unparalleled services to me, by remind
ing me that they must necessarily have a limit. This never
can be the case, and I hope, therefore, you will write to me
your wishes, for however disagreeable at this moment may be
a family expose", I should prefer it infinitely to your injury.
Ever yours, D.

Bradenham, Dec. 5 [1836].
Our county Conservative Dinner, which will be the most
important assembly of the kind yet held, takes place on
Friday the 9th inst. I have been requested to move the
principal toast 'The House of Lords.' I trust there is no
danger of my being nabbed, as this would be a fatal
contretemps, inasmuch as, in all probability, I am addressing
my future constituents.
Bradenham,
Dec. 26.
This is really Xmas. I arrived just in time, for what
with the fall and the snow drifting from the hills, our
road is really blocked up, in some parts as high as a
man's breast, and I doubt almost whether this may reach
our post, which is two miles distant. I assure you when
I reached the old hall, and found the beech blocks crackling
and blazing, I felt no common sentiments of gratitude to
that kind friend whose never tired zeal allowed me to reach
my house, and is some consolation for the plague of women,
the wear and tear of politics, and the dunning of creditors.
We are now, however, comparatively in still waters, thanks
to your pilotage, and I am at work again animated by
success and by the greatness of future results.

Sunday. [Jan. 8, 1837.]
Mv dear Pyne,
How goes on the damned coin ? I am ashamed to bore
you, but am beset with as great duns as myself.
I am in good health, considering I have never left my
rooms, and have been in worse spirits. But the quantity

1836-37] LETTERS TO PYNE 353
I have written, and am pouring forth, is something monstrous.
I find it a relief, and now that I have nothing else to distract
my thoughts, I am resolved to ruin Colburn.
I suppose I shall be in town about the 15th. I am in treaty
for Lord Althorp's rooms in the Albany, once Byron's, and
now Bulwer's ; a curious coincidence of successive scribblers ;
the spell I suppose growing weaker every degree, and the in
spiration less genuine ; but I may flare up yet, and surprise you
all. I find they won't be dearer than wretched lodgings and
infinitely cheaper than the worst hotel ; and then I shall be
lodged in a way that suits mej gloomy and spacious, with
room to stroll and smoke, and aijle to spout occasionally with
out being overheard by any damned fellow who steals all your
jokes and sublimities.
I am on the whole savagely gay, and sincerely glad that I
am freer of encumbrances, in every sense of the word, than I
was this time last year. Ever thine, D.
A few days later he has heard that the well-known
estate of Chequers Court is to be sold and 'we here
wish to purchase.' 'I should suppose,' he adds in his
usual airy way, 'not under £40,000, perhaps £10,000
more, as there is timber; but at any rate I should like
to leave half the purchase money on mortgage, if
practicable; if not, we must manage some other way.'
'Be of good cheer,' he concludes, 'the Spring is coming
and will bring us all good fortune. I am " bobbish," as
Horace says, or someone else, and my fellow is putting
on my spurs preliminary to an inspiring canter ' ; and
then follows a cheerful postscript, 'I enclose the blasted
bills. ' To Lady Blessington.
Bradenham,
Thursday. [Jan. 12, 1837.]
My dear Lady,
We have all here been dying of an epidemic; Tita and
myself being the only persons who have escaped. I trust that
it has not reached K[ensington] G[ore]. All this district
are prostrate. I fear for you; D'Orsay I know — immortal
vol. i — 2 a

354 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
youth — is never indisposed. I ascribe my exemption to a
sort of low, gentleman-like fever that has had hold of me
ever since I came down here, and which is not very incon
venient. I have in consequence never left the house, scarcely
my room, and it has not incapacitated me from a little gentle
scribbling. I am about something in a higher vein than the
last ; what you and E. L. B. would call ' worthy of me,' alias
unpopular. I am sorry about B's play1; I would not write to him as
I detest sympathy save with ,*jood fortune; but I am sorry,
very, ahd for several reasons" 1st, because he is my friend;
2ndly, because he is the only literary man whom I do not
abominate and despise ; 3rdly, because I have no jealousy on
principle (not from feeling) since I think always the more the
merrier, and his success would probably have assisted mine;
4thly, because it proves the public taste lower even than I
imagined it, if indeed there can be a deeper still than my
estimate; 5thly, because, from the extracts which have met
my eye, the play seems excellent, and far the best poeshie that
he has yet relieved himself of; 6thly, because there seems
to have been a vast deal of disgusting cant upon the occasion ;
7thly, because he is a good fellow; and 8thly, — I forget
the 8th argument, but it was a very strong one. However,
the actors of the present day are worse even than the authors ;
that I knew before, but E. L. B. would not believe it and I
could pardon his scepticism. As for myself I have locked
up my mModrame in the same strong box with my love
letters; both lots being productions only interesting to the
writer. I have received several letters from Ld. L., who has sent
me H. T. from Paris price 4s. & 2d.; an agreeable present
proving the value of our copyrights to London publishers. It
is a vile trade, but what is better ? Not politics. I look for
ward to the coming campaign with unmitigated disgust ; and
should certainly sell out, only one's enemies would say one
had failed, to say nothing of one's friends. The fact is, I am
too much committed to the fray to retire at present — but oh!
that I had the wings of a dove, &c.
Ld. L. will be with us in a week. I feel interested in his
career, more than in my own; for he is indeed the most
amiable of men, though that is not very high praise you will
say. Ah! michantel I see the epigram on your lips!
1 The Lady of Lyons.

l</(0K

y

. At) T H O B. 0- F V S v I A H' GBB Y."

1837] LETTER TO LADY BLESSINGTON 355
I really grieve if I said anything which deserved the lecture1
you gave me, though I am almost glad I merited it if only for
its kindness. I was rather harassed when I was last in town
as you know and have a disagreeable habit of saying every
thing I feel ; but I love my friends and am not naturally
suspicious or on the alert to quarrel about straws. I am here
pretty well and have my rooms and my time to myself, but
still there is a family, though an amiable and engaging one ;
and the more I feel, the more I am convinced that man is not
a social animal. Remember me to D'O. and E. L. B. ; to
nobody else and believe me Yours, Dis.

By the middle of January he is in London, the guest
of D'Orsay in Kensington. Lady Blessington had left
Seamore Place in the previous year and moved to Gore
House, once the home of William Wilberforce ; and
D'Orsay, as Disraeli puts it, had taken 'an elegant resi
dence adjoining her magnificent mansion.'
To Sarah Disraeli. Wednesday. [Feb., 1837.]
My dearest,The Whigs and Tories watch each other like a cat and a
dog, and neither will make the first move. The Duke is
for the tactics of last Session, and I think under the circum
stances he is right ; Melbourne is pledged to bring the Irish
question immediately forward, and if again defeated, as is
certain, he will dissolve or resign. This is exactly the state
of affairs. But there is not the slightest doubt that when
L. wrote to me from Paris that M. had resigned, &c, it was
true. His informant was Ellice, and I have since learnt
from an unquestionable quarter that the information was
authentic. Through the whole recess there has scarcely
been a single Cabinet Council, in consequence of the dis
sensions in the Cabinet, but Melbourne saw bodies of the
Ministers at his own office. He yielded to the representations
of Lord John in maintaining his post, as Lord J. is of opinion
that if the Whigs go out of office, they should contrive to go
1 ' Be more just to yourself and to your friends, than to listen to those
pests of society who desire nothing so much as to make mischief ' — that
is the pith of the lecture.

356 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
out with a claptrap and not quietly resign from difficulties
during the prorogation. This will show you on what a frail
tenure the whole hinges, and what may be expected.
I am very well, indeed, but with the exception of seeing
L. occasionally, I shall devote myself to the fair Venetia.
I write well here, as the life suits me, and am at hand if wanted.
As we dine late there is a long morning, and the air bath,
which is wonderful, renders exercise unnecessary, and does
my head much good. It certainly baffled the influenza, of
which poor Lady Combermere has died, surviving her father,
old Greville, but a few days.
When D'Orsay does not dine out, which is generally every
other day, there is usually one or two persons at dinner here.
On Monday Ossulston dined en famille here and gave us a
very agreeable account of the Gramonts, whom he had been
visiting at Versailles. The Due de Gram is D'Orsay's
brother-in-law and Oss's uncle. Since the glorious days
they have retired from Court and keep themselves aloof,
the Duke devoting himself entirely to the education of his
three sons. The first, Agenor, the Due de Guiche, is quiet, with
great talents, and at fourteen has just passed the examination
of the 6cole polytechnique, one of the severest in the world;
the second, Augustus, the Marquis de Gramont, is a complete
soldier ; the third, Alfred, the Count de Gramont, is only
eight years of age, but, though brought up in so domestic and
even severe a style, is as greatarewd as his illustrious ancestor;
he does nothing but laugh, shrug his shoulders and run after
the maids, who complain bitterly of his rudeness. . . .
Miladi here writes ten hours a day ; and makes £2,000 per
ann. This is true, for she showed me her agreements. Her
novels do not sell very much. She only gets £400 for one;
copyright and all. But she has a guinea a line for her poetry,
of which she is very proud, and receives from Heath altogether
£1,000 per ann. She is not entirely free from the irritability
of genius, but what can be expected from such severe
labor ? But she is a good-hearted woman and a warm friend.
I could tell you much of her that would amuse and interest
you. She allows her father £200 a year, and has twice paid
his debts, and has three or four nephews, young Powers, at
school, and at very expensive ones, who are no favorites
with her and not very engaging, but she acts from principle.
One is here, just come over from New Brunswick, where his
father has an appointment. This lad is to be sent out to
India, a cadet, all by Lady B. Lady Canterbury will do
nothing, and turns up her nose at old days of which her sister
is not ashamed. D.

1837] AN ALARMING INCIDENT 357
If Disraeli escaped the influenza, his general health,
as the result of over-work and monetary worries, was
by no means robust. Before February was far advanced
the death of one of the members for Bucks sent him
back post haste to Bradenham, and he performed prodi
gies of exertion for the Conservative candidate in the
bye-election that followed ; but on the first day of the
polling an incident occurred that greatly alarmed his
friends. After canvassing far and wide, he had travelled
all through the night to Aylesbury, and, as he stood in
front of the George Inn talking to his friends, he fell
in a fit, which the doctors, according to his father, ex
plained as a slight attack of epilepsy, but which was,
perhaps, sufficiently accounted for by the recording
journalist x as the result of great fatigue and excitement,
acting on a frame already enfeebled. According to the
practice of the times, the patient was bled and put to
bed, but the following day he was sufficiently recovered
to be taken back to Bradenham. This incident seems
to have led to an explanation with his father on the
state of his affairs, and so afforded a great economist
an opportunity for lecturing the future Chancellor of
the Exchequer on the first principles of finance.
From Count D'Orsay.
Je suis bien aise pour votre interet present et futur que
vous vous soyez decide a avouer a votre pere, l'etendue de
votre scrape. Car les plasterings-over se demolissent tou-
jours et vous en auriez ete victime continuellement. Votre
imagination vive et brillante, vous fait b§tir des chateaux
en Espagne. Tout cela est bei et bon pour les Wonderful
Tales of Alroy, mais pour la matenelle vie de l'Angleterre le
positif bat l'imaginaire.
In spite of D'Orsay's wise exhortations, Disraeli seems
to have given only a half confidence to his father, and
the two months that followed were perhaps the most
distracting of his life.
!In The Times of February 17, 1837.

358 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
To William Pyne. Sunday. [Feb. 19, 1837.]
Mv DEAR P.,
I enclose the bill, which I hope will be all right. Your
letter is gloomy, but yesterday was Spring and to-day is
Winter, and Tuesday may therefore bring sunshine, both
moral and physical.
I assure you the trouble, the harass and anxiety, which
you must experience in all this, is not the least part of my
afflictions : aud, indeed, I know not how I can repay you.
I have only 150 pages, or less, of my book ,to finish, which
I ought to canter through in the remainder of the month
with ease, but I find it difficult to command the Muse amid
all these vexations. The form of Davis, or the unknown
visage of Green, mixed themselves up, by some damnable
process, with the radiant countenance of my heroine, and
though visions of spunging houses might have been in keep
ing with the last vol. of Henrietta Temple, they do not
accord quite so well with the more ethereal scenes of the
fair Venetia. Nevertheless, I have contrived to write, and I
hope my inspiration has not been much diluted by their
distractions, but I am a little nervous.
I long to be in town for many reasons. I have a letter
from Ld. L. this morning from Paris where he has been
detained by the dangerous state of his daughter, now happily
ceased, and he writes to me, as if he half thought he should
be Lord Chancellor before he reached Dover. I think there
is something in the wind. Vale! D.
He is soon in town again and again with D'Orsay in
Kensington ; but early in March he is back at Bradenham
once more, still in quest of the peace which ever eludes
him. ' Of all things in the world preserve me from a
Sheriff's officer in my own county,' he writes to Pyne
immediately on his arrival. A fortnight later the
Sheriff's officer is at Wycombe, and he fears 'it is no
longer possible to prevent a disgraceful catastrophe.'
'Seged King of Ethiopia who was resolved to have a
day of happiness was not more unfortunate than I have
been with my month of quiet. The blows have been
rapid and violent.' This early in April ; and a few

1837] MONETARY WORRIES 359
days later to Austen, ' Every possible claim that could
be made upon me has poured in during the last two
months. ... I never have been so distressed.'

To William Pyne.
Bradenham,
April 23, 1837.
I conclude from your interview, that the game is up, and
that our system has failed. I assure you that the only
feelings that I have at this moment are regret for your
unavailing exertions, which I feel no professional remu
neration can compensate, and gratitude for the generous zeal
with which you have served me for the now not incon
siderable period of our acquaintance, and of which I believe
few men were capable, and certainly no other lawyer. I am
sure that your kind feelings and your matchless energy
have effected all that was possible, and that you have been
baffled only by circumstances which could not be foreseen,
and over which you had no. control.
Eventually, with the assistance of his father, some
modus vivendi was discovered; but he shrank from re
vealing to his father, who was 'one of the old school,'
the full complexity of a situation which 'he has long
taught me to look upon with the greatest apprehension
and mortification' ; and the arrangement now effected,
though it procured the distracted author a certain breath
ing space, was uneasy and precarious enough.
Such were the unpromising conditions under which
Venetia was conceived and written. The agreement
with Colburn is dated December 20, and a little earlier,
as we have seen, Disraeli expected to have the novel
finished by the end of the year : but again and again
in those disturbed months his hopes were disappointed
and the spring was far advanced before his task was
completed. To Lady Blessington.
Bradenham,
March 21. [1837.]
In spite of every obstacle in the shape of harassed feelings
and other disagreeable accidents of life, I have not forgotten

360 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
the fair Venetia, who has grown under my paternal care,
and as much in grace, I hope, as in stature, or rather
dimensions. She is truly like her prototype 
' The child of love, though born in bitterness,
And nurtured in convulsion ' ; 1
but I hope she will prove a source of consolation to her
parent, and also to her godmother, for I consider you to
stand in that relation to her. I do not think that you will
find any golden hint of our musing strolls has been thrown
away upon me ; and I should not be surprised if, in six weeks,
she may ring the bell at your hall door, and request admit
tance, where I know she will find at least one sympa
thising friend. . . .
I have, of course, no news from this extreme solitude.
My father advances valiantly with his great enterprise,
but works of that calibre are hewn out of the granite with
slow and elaborate strokes. Mine are but plaster-of-Paris
casts, or rather statues of snow that melt as soon as they are
fashioned.2

The novel appeared in May, its full title being
' Venetia or the Poet's daughter,' and its parentage being
assigned to ' The Author of Vivian Grey and Henrietta
Temple,' a variant on the previous formula that may
be interpreted as Colburn's tribute to the success of
Henrietta. There is a dedication to Lyndhurst in which
the author tells him that ' In happier hours when I
first mentioned to you the idea of this work, it was my
intention, while inscribing it with your name, to have
entered into some details as to the principles which had
guided me in its composition, and the feelings with
which I had attempted to shadow forth, though as " in
a glass darkly," two of the most renowned and refined
spirits that have adorned these our latter days.' This
explanation, which might have been so illuminating,
was unluckily never given, and we can only conjecture
the motives that prompted Disraeli at this time to turn
to the two 'renowned and refined spirits,' Byron and
1 These words from the third canto of Childe Harold appeared on
the title page.
2 From Mr. Alfred Morrison's collection.

1837] PUBLICATION OF VENETIA 361
Shelley, in his quest for the material for a new work of
fiction. But it would almost appear as if now that
he had become a good Conservative something in the
depths of his passionate and romantic nature revolted
against the dominion of a prosaic political creed and an
uninspiring leader ; so that he felt impelled to demon
strate that, though he had submitted himself to the
yoke of a definite political allegiance, his thoughts
were not therefore to be bounded by the Tamworth
manifesto. By choosing as his heroes the two greatest ¦
revolutionary figures that England had produced he
made proclamation in no uncertain tones that as an
artist at all events he was determined to retain his
freedom and not to bow down before the idols of the
Philistines. As one1 of the best and most appreciative
critics of the book has said, ' a waft of liberty flutters
through its pages.'
In the complete absence of direct political motive Vene
tia resembles Henrietta Temple, and it is peculiar, among
Disraeli's novels, in the comparative absence also of re
flexions of his own personality or drafts from his own per
sonal experience ; unless indeed we are to see in Cadurcis,
who stands in the book for Byron, something of Disraeli
himself. The idea is by no means fanciful. Disraeli
had grown to manhood, as we have seen, in an atmosphere
where reverence for Byron was almost a religion, and to
him, even more than to most of the aspiring youth of the
day, Byron had been an inspiration and a model. Many
also as are the obvious differences between the two
men they had a certain natural affinity of character and
genius, alike in their strength and in their weakness.
There is something in both of the same daemonic force,
the same devouring ambition, the same self -idolatry, the
same disposition to coxcombry and affectation ; and in
the wayward childhood and tempestuous career of
Cadurcis we are not infrequently reminded of Disraeli
1 Dr. Georg Brandes in his Study of Lord Beaconsfield, p. 152.

362 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
himself, though there is nothing to suggest that the
resemblance was intended. Yet in spite of the author's
sympathy, latent or avowed, it can hardly be maintained
that Byron's personality as presented in Cadurcis is
really attractive ; though in that perhaps the picture was
only true to life. Far more pleasing is the presentation
of Shelley in the person of Marmion Herbert. Disraeli
had less in common with Shelley than with Byron ; but
in strange combination with Byron's ambitious egoism
he had also something of Shelley's power of seeing visions
of the future, and he had studied Shelley's poetry as closely
as he had studied Byron's. Meredith's diary gives us a
glimpse of him, during their enforced stay at Falmouth
on the way to the East, deep in the Cenci, and he had pur
sued his studies later, as the Revolutionary Epick shows.
In the matter of personal details Tita 1 served him as an
authority for Shelley as well as for Byron ; and in the year
in which Venetia was begun, Disraeli, it will be remem
bered, had also made the acquaintance of that 'strange
character ' Trelawny, the friend of Byron and Shelley,
who in company with Byron had burnt Shelley's body
on the Tuscan shore. Whether Tita or Trelawny was
the source, the accuracy of the personal touches is
attested by high authority.2 Herbert, we are assured,
' is drawn in conformity with the most orthodox Shelleyan
tradition ' ; the picture of his appearance in youth is the
picture also of Shelley's, and the details of the final
catastrophe are in strict accordance with the fact. Even
the colloquy between Herbert and Cadurcis, in which
Cadurcis by comparison is so flippant and unsatisfying,
is derived almost word for word as regards Herbert's
portion from Shelley's Discourse on the Manners of the
Ancients, a work then known to few. In one respect,
indeed, the portrait is hardly faithful. It ignores too
much perhaps the element in Shelley's character which
1 See Appendix A.
2 The late Dr. Garnett in a privately printed essay, Lord Beaconsfield
and Shelley.

1837] BYRON AND SHELLEY 363
made him describe himself as 'sudden and swift and
proud ' ; but Herbert, it may be urged, is an older man
than Shelley, and allowance must be made for the mellow
ing effect of age. At the time Venetia was written Shelley
was still something of a bugbear to the narrow and self-
sufficient English world of the day ; his fame as a poet
had not yet won him forgiveness for his transgressions
as a man, and still less for the crude and aggressive opin
ions which had brought him into such violent collision
with orthodoxy as established in Church and State. To
Disraeli's credit be it remembered that he was one of the
first who had the courage to attempt to do him justice or,
in defiance of popular prejudice, to present his personality
in a sympathetic light.
The division of parts between the two poets is very
curious and complex. The genius and personality of
Byron are assigned to Cadurcis ; but the external
circumstances of Byron's life are apportioned almost
equally between Cadurcis and Herbert. To Cadurcis are
given the wilful childhood, the foolish mother, the sudden
poetic success, the relations to Lady Caroline Lamb,
who appears in the book as Lady Monteagle, and the
outburst of popular hostility which closed Byron's career
in England ; but his unhappy marriage and subsequent
relations to his wife and ' Ada, sole daughter of my house
and heart,' are transferred to Herbert, who has the genius
and personality of Shelley. Both poets are involved
in a common end — the end, in fact, of Shelley. The link
between the two in life is Venetia, herself a beautiful
figure, though, as befits a daughter of Shelley's, almost too
ethereal. Long before the world at large was disposed
to be just to Disraeli either as a novelist or as a man, some
forgotten critic 1 noted that he was almost the first writer
' who resolutely set himself to picture the child life '
and accounted this to his credit 'as proving a greater
1 His words are preserved in a letter of Sarah Disraeli's, who
was ever ready to seize on any morsel of praise bestowed on her
beloved brother.

364 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
depth of character and more freshness of feeling' than
were commonly attributed to him. Of this phase of his
art we saw something in Contarini, and we shall see more in
Ooningsby ; but it is in Venetia that we find it in its perfect
expression. Disraeli has written nothing more pleasing
than those early chapters, in which the child Venetia is
growing up by her mother's side, in happy ignorance
of her father, and with the strangely contrasted but
ever affectionate Plantagenet as her constant companion ;
and the story of the subsequent awakening, in spite of
all her mother's precautions, of love and admiration for
the unknown and banished father, and of the develop
ment of these sentiments into an intense and overmaster
ing passion, is told with power and pathos. Even when
Disraeli, greatly daring, tries to write verses for both
Byron and Shelley, he is happiest when his subject is a
father's love ; for nowhere perhaps has he come nearer
to real poetry than in the lines written by Herbert ' On
the night our daughter was born.'
Of the secondary characters the most interesting
and attractive are George Cadurcis, the cousin of the
poet, in whom is well exemplified the truth of a maxim
that comes strangely from Disraeli, 'Though we are
most of us the creatures of affectation, simplicity has
a great charm'; and the good Dr. Masham, in whom
we have a first-rate picture of the 'regular orthodox
divine of the eighteenth century ' —
With a large cauliflower wig, shovel hat, and huge knee-
buckles, barely covered by his top-boots; learned, jovial,
humorous, and somewhat courtly; truly pious, but not
enthusiastic; not forgetful of his tithes, but generous and
charitable when they were once paid; never neglecting the
sick, yet occasionally following a fox; a fine scholar, an
active magistrate, and a good shot; dreading the Pope,
and hating the Presbyterians.1
' I fear,' Disraeli wrote to Pyne on the eve of publication,
' my book bears marks of the turbulence of the last two
1 Bk. I. ch. 4.

1837] HASTY WORKMANSHIP 365
months.' Many signs of hasty and imperfect workman
ship there are. The introduction of Herbert's mistress is
a serious sesthetic blunder. Lady Annabel Herbert in
the earlier portion of the book is a stately though severe,
if not awe-inspiring, figure ; but her behaviour towards
the end is hardly consistent with her character, and her
reconciliation with Herbert strikes us as somewhat
forced. Probably also the conditions under which the
book was written supply the best explanation of a curious
plagiarism from Macaulay which has often been discussed.
The well-known passage in the essay on Moore's Life
of Byron beginning ' We know no spectacle so ridiculous
as the British public in one of its periodical fits of
morality ' is appropriated bodily with no better acknow
ledgment in the original text of the novel than the
introductory phrase, ' It has been well observed ' ; though
in subsequent editions to fence in the borrowed passage
the words ' These observations of a celebrated writer '
are introduced into the sentence with which the narrative
is resumed. Venetia had not the popular success of Henrietta
Temple, though it pleased the critics more. Even the
Athenceum hailed it as exhibiting 'much less of affecta
tion and disordered ardour ' than that ' incoherent love-
story ' ; and its appearance was made the occasion for
an article in the Edinburgh Review 1 which was written
in no captious spirit, but endeavoured, though not spar
ing Disraeli's faults, to do justice to his merits as a
novelist. The reviewer, however, upbraided him severely
for ' intruding into the domestic life of a poet and his
relations and extracting the materials of fiction out of
events so recent and so melancholy ' ; and the intro
duction of Lady Caroline Lamb was especially con
demned both then and later. Though Lady Caroline
Lamb had been in the grave many years, her husband
was still alive and — a fact that is not irrelevant — the
Whig Prime Minister ; but it may probably have been
1 For Oct., 1837.

366 HENRIETTA TEMPLE AND VENETIA [chap, xv
some feeling of the delicacy of the experiment that
prompted Disraeli to throw the whole story back by
nearly a generation. If the story was to be told at all,
it has been told with admirable tact ; ' a masterpiece of
tact ' is the judgment of an eminent critic 1 on the novel
as a whole. 1 Dr. Brandes.

CHAPTER XVI
Parliament at Last
1837
An entry in the Mutilated Diary resumes the narra
tive.
Returned to London on the first of May; entered much
into society : invited by Lord Francis Egerton x personally
to a magnificent entertainment, which I attended — Sir J.
Tyrrell, Q. Dick, Lord Walpole, Exmouth, Fector, Grimston.
Distinguished myself very much in the election of Burdett
for Westminster ; the success mainly attributable to myself :
proposed and organised the youth of the Carlton, including
all the nobility, fashion, and influence of our party to canvass
 Lord Forester and his brother, Codrington, H. Baring,
Pigot, Sir H. Campbell, &c, &c.

To Sarah Disraeli. May, 1837.
Town is quite full, and the only thing talked of is the
Westminster election. I am on Burdett's committee and
obliged to canvass. My district, which is Bolton Street,
Clarges, &c, is all right, though, curious enough, Leader2
is one of my list.
P. is the most wonderful person in the world. He lives
in one of the most expensive houses in Portland Place, many
servants in livery, a handsome wife ornately dressed, children
in fancy dresses tumbling on ottomans, one swearing he is
a Tory, the other a Radical, &c. An Expenditure not under
£5,000 per annum, and no one is the least aware of his
means. The 'party was very stupid. A few Carlton men,
mixed up with some Marylebone and Bloomsbury slip-slop ;
but I like to go to a house for the first time.
1 Second son of the first Duke of Sutherland, and himself subsequently
first Earl of Ellesmere.
2 Burdett's opponent. 367

368 PARLIAMENT AT LAST [chap, xvi
I suppose the King has really rallied, as I met Tom Young,
who affected that he had never even been in danger. I met
Sir J. Hanmer, the youthful M.P. for Shrewsbury, and his
pretty wife, and was glad to make his acquaintance, for he
is full of talent and literature, and so enthusiastic an ad
mirer of mine that he had absolutely read the Revolutionary
Epick. The party at Bridgewater House last night turned out to
be a grand concert, and the best assembly that has been
given this season. There were about one thousand persons,
and the suite of apartments, including the picture gallery,
all thrown open and illuminated, and I enjoyed myself
excessively.1 Among Disraeli's papers there is an account 2 of Burdett
which is interesting, if for no other reason, because there
was a certain analogy between Burdett's political vicis
situdes and his own ; both of them having been Radicals
and Reformers, while Toryism was unregenerate ; both
becoming Tories when Toryism had recovered its
vitality. Sir Francis Burdett was a very high-bred man, very tall,
and with a distinguished countenance. He was a complete
Norman. As an orator, in his best days, he had no equal.
It was all grace and music ; never was a more commanding
manner or a finer voice. The range of his subjects was
limited, referring mainly to the character of the constitution ;
the rights and grievances of the people, &c, &c. : but of these
he was master. His declamation was fiery and thrilling, but
always natural. He was one of the most natural speakers
I recollect; never betrayed into bombast, either in matter
or manner. He had considerable power of sarcasm, and
his hits always told. His quotations were, I think, gener
ally from Shakespeare.
In politics he was a Jacobite. He was sprung from a Jacobite
family, and entered life with the hereditary opinions of his
class. He was against the Boromongers, that is to say, the
new capitalist classes which William the Third and the House
of Hanover had introduced : he was for annual Parliaments
and universal suffrage, as Sir William Wyndham and Sir
1 Letters, p. 112. 2 Written about 1863.

1837] SIR FRANCIS BURDETT 369
John Hinde Cotton had been before him, in order to curb and
control these classes. The latter (Sir J. Cotton) also was
for the ballot. It so happened, that the French Revolution
was coincident with Burdett's appearance in public life, and
so, in the confusion of circumstances it turned out that he
was looked upon as a Jacobin, when in reality he was a
Jacobite. The English public, which is particularly ignorant
of history, joined in the taunts of his inconsistency when,
late in life, the Boromongers having been got rid of, Burdett
turned out to be what he started, a high aristocratic English
politician. He was extremely vain, but not offensively so ; his high
breeding prevented that: and under all circumstances, he
was distinguished by simplicity. I think he was the greatest
gentleman I ever knew. For many years after he entered
Parliament he rode up to Westminster from his seat in Wilt
shire on horseback. The country, especially in that part of
England, was then very open, and abounded in downs and
commous. In one of his best speeches in Parliament (then
reformed and full of quiet middle-class people) on the expenses
of elections, he greatly denounced them, and observed that
he had a right to give an opinion on the subject, as there was
a period in his life when Parliamentary contests had reduced
him to a state of absolute beggary. There was a murmur of
admiring incredulity. ' I assure you, Sir,' he continued,
' I am indulging in no exaggeration. Honorable gentlemen
may not beleive it, but I can assure them there was a time
when Lady Burdett had only one pair of horses to her car
riage.' The effect of this remark in one of the early reformed
Parliaments, full of retired tradesmen, many of whom had
amassed wealth, but had never plucked up courage to keep
a carriage, may be conceived. It was the most patrician
definition of poverty ever made.
He was very good-natured, especially to young members,
but rather absent and thoughtless in domestic arrangements.
He would say to me (1838 and so on) ' Will you take your
mutton with me to-day ? We are quite alone. Come in
boots. You won't be wanted for an hour.' And I often
went. He lived in St. James's Place. His dinners were
most agreeable. Lady Burdett, a clever woman, but a great
invalid, appeared after dinner : and there were several agree
able daughters. One day he asked me to take mutton,
and so on, and, when I arrived in frock, I was ushered into
illumined saloons, full of grand guests in full tenue !
vol. i — 2b

370 PARLIAMENT AT LAST [chap, xvi
When he was taunted at the beginning of 1837 (I think)
with changing his opinions, he gallantly resigned the seat for
Westminster, and declared himself at the same time a candi
date for the vacancy. It was a crisis in the Conservative
cause, and it was generally felt on both sides that his fate
would decide the future course of politics. The Tories worked
hard. The Carlton Club mapped the City into districts and
divided these among the ardent youth of the party. May Fair
fell to me and Sir Robert Pigot, and very great fun we had.
There was one street in our district entirely filled with cooks,
chiefly foreigners. Ten years afterwards, writing Tancred,
I availed myself of the experience then obtained, and it
formed my first chapter. Burdett won his election: and no
one ever enjoyed a triumph more. Perhaps he found the con
test still more exciting. He was ' at home ' every evening
during it, in his dining room, and all might come who cared.
There he delivered every evening one of his constitutional
harangues, or invectives, against O'Connell, then in the Lib
eral ascendant. They were very fiery and created great enthu
siasm when he denounced the manner of the famous agitator
'half bully, and half blarney.'1

To Sarah Disraeli. June 19, 1837.
There was an agreeable party at Madame Montalembert's ;
but whether la Comtesse had taken an extra glass of cham
pagne, or what might be the cause, she lionised me so dread
fully that I was actually forced to run for my life. She even
produced Venetia and was going to read a passage out loud,
when I seized my hat and rushed downstairs, leaving the
graceful society of Lady Egerton, much to my vexation. . . .
I have just seen a very interesting letter from Munster
dated 11 last night. The King dies like an old lion. He said
yesterday to his physicians, ' Only let me live through this
glorious day ! ' This suggested to Munster to bring the tri
color flag which had just arrived from the Duke of Welling
ton, and show it to the King. William IV. said, 'Right,
right,' and afterwards, ' Unfurl it and let me feel it,' then he
pressed the eagle and said, ' Glorious day.' This may be de
pended on. He still lives. D.2
1 Burdett reappears, with many of the features of this sketch repro
duced, as Sir Praunceys Scrope in Endymion, ch. 76.
2 Letters, p. 113.

1837] ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA 371
The King died in the course of the night, and Queen
Victoria began that long reign in which Disraeli himself
was to be so conspicuous a figure. By eleven o'clock
the following morning her first council was assembled.
I accompanied Lord Lyndhurst to Kensington Palace, when,
on the accession of the Queen, the peers and privy council
lors and chief personages of the realm pledged their fealty
to their new Sovereign. He was greatly affected by the un
usual scene: a youthful maiden receiving the homage of her
subjects, most of them illustrious, in a palace in a garden, and
all with a sweet and natural dignity. He gave me, as we
drove home, an animated picture of what had occurred in the
presence chamber, marked by all that penetrating observation,
and happy terseness of description, which distinguished him.
Eight years afterwards, with my memory still under the in
fluence of his effective narrative, I reproduced the scene in
Sybil, and I feel sure it may be referred to for its historical
accuracy.1 Throughout the session the Whig Government had
been tottering to its fall, but a political struggle was now
precipitated, as in those days the death of the Sovereign
rendered a dissolution necessary.

To Sarah Disraeli. Carlton Club, . [June 20.]
Dearest, I write in the midst of three or four hundred persons and
in a scene of great excitement.
The battle now approaches ; what will be my fate I pretend
not to foresee. They tell me Ashburton is safe and it has
been offered me, but I have refused it, as I should have had
to leave town to-night. I suppose in the course of two or
three days I shall be able to speak more definitely.
Lord Lyndhurst attended the Privy Council at Kensington
and kissed the young Queen's hand, which all agreed was
remarkably sweet and soft. She read her address well and
was perfectly composed though alone in the council chamber
and attended by no women.
1 General Preface to the Novels, 1870.

372 PARLIAMENT AT LAST [chap, xvi
As yet there are not even rumours ; all is tumult and hke
a camp. Ever, D.
In a speech in the course of the election campaign which
followed, Disraeli declared that no one probably during
the few preceding months had received more requisitions
to become a candidate for Parliament than himself. Not
only was Ashburton offered, but proposals came from
Derby, Chichester, and Dartmouth, and also from his
former friends in Marylebone and Taunton. It was all
but arranged that he should stand for Barnstaple; but
eventually an opening presented itself that proved more
attractive than any of the others. The borough of Maid
stone, then with two members, had been represented in
the expiring Parliament by a Conservative and a Liberal,
the Conservative being Wyndham Lewis, husband of
the ' pretty little flirt and rattle ' whom Disraeli had met
at Bulwer's five years before. It was at first the inten
tion of the local Conservatives to nominate Lewis only,
but when they had completed the first day's canvass
they found their position so much stronger than they
had supposed that they despatched a deputation to the
Carlton Club in quest of a second candidate, and the
choice fell upon Disraeli. To Sarah Disraeli. Friday. [June 30.]
The clouds have at length dispelled, and my prospects seem
as bright as the day. At six o'clock this evening I start for
Maidstone with Wyndham Lewis, and I suppose by Wednes
day I shall have completed my canvass. I doubt whether
there will be a contest.1
His address to the electors of Maidstone is worth pre
serving as a model of vigour in thought and terseness in
expression. I solicit your suffrages as an uncompromising adherent of
1 Letters, p. 114.

1837] CANDIDATE FOR MAIDSTONE 373
that ancient constitution which once was the boast of our
fathers, and is still the blessing of their children. I wish to
see the Crown enjoy its prerogative, both Houses of Parlia
ment their equal privileges, and the great body of the nation
that unrivalled and hereditary freedom which has been the
noble consequence of our finely-balanced scheme of legislative
power. Convinced that the reformed religion as by law
established in this country is, at the same time, the best
guarantee for religious toleration and orthodox purity, I feel
it my duty to uphold the rights of our national Church, that
illustrious institution to which we are not less indebted for
our civil than for our spiritual liberties. Resident in an
agricultural county, and deeply interested in the land, I will
on all occasions watch with vigilant solicitude over the fortunes
of the British farmer, because I sincerely believe that his
welfare is the surest and most permanent basis of general
prosperity.

To Sarah Disraeli. Maidstone, Tuesday. [July i.}
Last night there was a full meeting, and I think I made the
best speech I ever made yet — as well maintained as the
Aylesbury one, and more than an hour in length; so to-day
I canvassed on my own influence. I do not see how we can
be defeated, but I have said little about the affair generally,
as when one feels assured it is best to be quiet.1
Of the speech on this occasion Wyndham Lewis wrote
to his wife, ' Disraeli was on his legs more than an hour :
he is a splendid orator and astonished the people.' In
the matter of political doctrine tbe speech followed
the lines that have become so familiar to us, and with
the exception of an impassioned attack on that
'flagitious statute,' the new Poor Law, there is nothing
in it now that calls for attention. The new Poor Law
had been passed by the Whigs in 1834 with the full
approval of Peel and Wellington, but though it corrected
flagrant abuses, its harshness made it unpopular, and
the cruelties that attended its enforcement had for
some time been denounced daily in the columns of The
1 Letters, p. 116.

374 PARLIAMENT AT LAST [chap, xvi
Times and by John Walter, the chief proprietor of The
Times, from his place in the House of Commons.

It is not to elicit an electioneering cheer [said Disraeli],
it is not to gain a single vote that I tell you I have long since
registered myself among the sternest opponents of that
measure. I can appeal to a career which, though private,
is not altogether obscure, in proof of my sincerity and
consistency. I have the proud consolation to know that,
with the exception of the honorable member for Berkshire
[John Walter], I was the first county magistrate who raised
his voice against that odious Bill. I had the honor of
calling the first meeting in my own county against it, and
it was this right hand inscribed one of the first petitions to
both Houses of Parliament. I hope, therefore, my sincerity
cannot for a moment be doubted. That Bill bears fearful
tidings for the poor. Its primary object is founded not
only on a political blunder, but a moral error — it went
on the principle that relief to the poor is a charity. I
maintain that it is a right ! . . . I would not have
the poor man deprived of the small consolation of witnessing
the games of his grandchildren — I would not deny him the
mournful satisfaction of viewing the tombs of his fore
fathers. One of our poets has beautifully said — 'Sweet
is the music of the Sabbath bells,' but of this music the Whigs
have deprived the poor and the aged. For him the Sabbath
bells sound no more. Immured in a prison, no spiritual con
solation can he derive in the hallowed temple of his ancestors ;
but, at length, broken-hearted, he quits a world with which
he is disgusted. To sum up my feelings in a sentence — I
consider that this Act has disgraced the country more than
any other upon record. Both a moral crime and a political
blunder, it announces to the world that in England poverty
is a crime.

' I was glad,' he remarks to Pyne in praying him to
guard against the descent of writs during the election,
'to find the Sheriff's officer here among my staunch
supporters : I suppose gratitude.' He was sanguine
from the first, and when the Liberal candidate, Wyndham
Lewis's colleague in the late Parliament, retired from
the contest it looked for a moment as if he would be
returned unopposed.

1837] ELECTED FOR MAIDSTONE 375
To Sarah Disraeli. July 22.
The accounts from Maidstone continue as favorable as
ever. Several of Robarts' supporters have come over to me
since his secession. I believe I am the only new candidate
of our side who has not an opposition. ... So much for
the 'maddest of all mad acts,' my uncle G.'s1 prescience,
and B.E.L.'s unrivalled powers of encouragement ! The
nomination day is fixed for the 25th.2
On the 25th, however, Colonel Perronet Thompson,
editor of the Westminster Review, and a well-known
figure- among the Radicals of the day, more adventurous
than Robarts, allowed himself to be nominated. 'I
hope,' said his proposer when he found occasion to
mention Disraeli, 'that I pronounce his name aright.'
' Colonel Perronet Thompson,' retorted Disraeli in the
opening sentences of his speech, ' I hope, as Mr. Ellis
said, that I pronounce his name aright.' Disraeli's
ready wit and eloquence had made him a favourite with
his side, though, as his popularity grew, the animosity
of his opponents increased in like proportion. On this
occasion a hostile paper tell us, 'the Blues opened the
floodgates of their recriminating eloquence on the
degraded Disraeli, who winced beneath the cries of
" Old clothes ! " " Shylock ! " and various other com
plimentary epithets for- nearly an hour.' Such are the
amenities of electioneering. To Sarah Disraeli.
Maidstone, July 27, 1837. 11 o'clock.
Dearest, Lewis  707
Disraeli  616
Colonel Thompson  412
The constituency nearly exhausted. In haste, Dizzy.2
1 George Basevi, a brother of Disraeli's mother. Another Miss
Basevi, their sister, had married a Mr Lindo, and 'B.E.L.' was her
son, and therefore Disraeli's cousin.
2 Letters, p. 115. It is about this time that the familiar appellation
which is here used as signature, and which was subsequently to become
so famous, begins to make its appearance.

376 PARLIAMENT AT LAST [chap, xvi
When the final figures were declared they were not far
different : he had reached the goal at last.
Mrs. Wyndham Lewis to Major Viney Evans.1 July 29, 1837.
Mark what I say — mark what I prophesy : Mr. Disraeli
will in a very few years be one of the greatest men of his day.
His great talents, backed by his friends Lord Lyndhurst
and Lord Chandos, with Wyndham's power to keep him in
Parliament, will insure his success. They call him my
Parliamentary protigL

To Mrs. Wyndham Lewis.
Bradenham, Sunday.
[July 30, 1837.]
My dear Mrs. Wyndham,
You may conceive my astonishment yesterday on entering
the County of Bucks to find the walls of every town plastered
over with pink (my colour at Wycombe) placards ' Maidstone
Election ; State of the Poll ; Lewis and Disraeli ! ' &c, &c.
It was curious to meet our united names thus unexpectedly,
and as I had been dozing in the postehaise, I really thought,
on waking, that I had been dreaming all the while of home
and Buckinghamshire, and that I was still by the waters
of the Medway and among the men of Kent. All doubt,
however, was dispelled on my arrival at Wycombe, where
I found that on the previous day there had been a great
festival spontaneously and suddenly celebrated by my
neighbours in honour of our victory. Friday was market
day at Wycombe, which is the greatest corn market in
England, and the news arrived there about noon. Imme
diately all the bells were set a-ringing, a subscription made
at the market tables to illuminate the town in the evening,
and the band called out, parading long after midnight. At
Aylesbury, twelve miles further on, the news was known
earlier, and was announced from the hustings by Lord Chandos,
whereupon the multitude gave three times three for Lewis
and Disraeli, and cards were printed by Praed's committee,
circulating the intelligence. I thought all this would amuse
you, and indeed I was rather gratified by finding that those
among whom I lived, and who, after all, in this world, must
know me best, felt such genuine satisfaction in my success.
1 Her brother.

1837] MRS. WYNDHAM LEWIS 377
We all here wish very much that Mr. Wyndham and
yourself would come and pay us a visit among our beechen
groves. We have nothing to offer you but simple pleasures,
a sylvan scene and an affectionate hearth. I hope to get to
town on Tuesday evening after polling. I am rather nervous
about our county election; our third man lost the show of
hands on Saturday, which they are pleased to say would not
have occurred had I spoken. I suppose my colleague is in
Glamorganshire. My kind regards are his and yours. Dis.
To Sarah Disraeli. [Aug. 5.]
Dearest, The Government talks of breaking up ! Lord Melbourne
really said that he could not carry on the thing with ' Irish
boroughs against English counties.' The Whigs now confess
that they are beaten to pieces. . . .
I dined with Munster, Strangford, Shaftesbury, Exmouth,
and Loftus at the Carlton the day that Hume was thrown
out. It is a fact that the little Queen clapped her hands
when she was told that Hume was out. Yesterday I dined at
the W. L.'s. The Clarendons, Prince and Princess Poniatowski,
Mrs. C. Gore, Lady Floyd; Mrs. Dawson, Parnther, Beauclerk,
and myself ; a fine dinner well cooked and gorgeous service ;
very friendly, more friendly every day ; certainly W. L. is
one of the oddest men that ever lived, but I like him very
much. What do you think of Lyndhurst's marriage ? I had long
heard, but never credited it. ... I am very well and
begin to enjoy my new career. I find that it makes a
sensible difference in the opinion of one's friends; I can
scarcely keep my countenance.
I received my father's letter, for which I send my love, and
to all. Dis.1
[Aug. 12.]
Dearest, I did not see the Herald 2 ; but I find my advent canvassed
in many papers ; among them the Spectator, who puts Holmes,
1 British Museum. Addit. MSS.
2 His sister had written : — 'A few days back the Morning Herald said
something of two men being returned to this Parliament of whom great
things were expected. Who is the second ? '

378 PARLIAMENT AT LAST [chap, xvi
Sugden, and myself as men whom the Whigs would anxiously
have kept out ; but says they have no doubt I fancy I shall
be the terror of the Treasury bench, but they shall be
' agreeably disappointed if I turn out anything better than a
buffoon.' This must come from Col. Thompson & Co., who
did not particularly relish my nomination jokes. Clear your
head of all nonsense about scrutinies, petitions, &c, &c. There
is not a safer seat in England than mine. They have not a
shadow to work upon. . . .
I franked your letter. . . .
From the prospects of the undecided elections there is no
doubt there must be 318 Tories in the House . . . and
I shall be rather surprised if we don't pick up a few more.
In short, the Government is done, and I doubt whether they
will meet Parliament. . . . The Whigs are more than
low-spirited ; they are in extremis ; they give the affair up.
Peel says he can carry on the Government with the present
Parliament, not the slightest doubt, so I hope we are sitting
for seven years. What fun ! And how lucky after all I should

esteem myself

My love to all, D.

To Mrs. Bulwer Lytton. [Undated.}
It was odd that my electioneering struggle should terminate
in being M.P. for Maidstone. As I am already a believer in
destiny, it required not this strange occurrence, and doubly
strange from the manner in which it took place, to confirm
me in my Oriental creed. . . . We are the children of
the gods, and are never more the slaves of circumstances than
when we deem ourselves their masters. What may next
happen in the dazzling farce of life the Fates only know.1
To Mrs. Wyndham Lewis. Bradenham, Sept. 1, 1837.
After you went, everything and everybody were most
dull and triste. The truth is the visit was too short. Yesterday
I ' executed justice and maintained truth ' at West Wycombe,
where they kept me so late that I missed the post. Here
everything remains the same, save that it is now the
memorable first of September and the boys are out shooting.
1 From a letter in Mr. Alfred Morrison's collection.

1837] AT BRADENHAM 379
They went out at six this morning and have not yet made
their reappearance.
We must ask you for news : you cannot expect it from
this sylvan solitude. Not an incident ever occurs here ;
one day is as like another as fruit on a tree. The weather
has been more favorable, which made us all still more deplore
the absence of our recent guests.
All unite here in love and affection and compliments to
you and Wyndham : I send my quota. Dis.
Mrs. Wyndham Lewis to Major Evans. Sept. 8, 1837.
I have been paying a visit to Mr. Disraeli's family. They
reside near High Wycombe — a large family house, most of the
rooms 30 and 40 feet long, and plenty of servants, horses,
dogs, and a library full of the rarest books. But how shall
I describe his father ; the most lovable, perfect old gentleman
I ever met with ? A sort of modern Dominie Sampson —
and his manners are so high-bred and natural. Miss Disraeli
is handsome and talented, and two brothers. Our political
pet, the eldest, commonly called Dizzy, you will see a great
deal of ; you know Wyndham brought him in for Maidstone
with himself.

To Sarah Disraeli. WOOLBEDING, [Oct. 24 (?), 1837.]
My Dearest,
I arrived here yesterday at 3 o'clock, having travelled
through a fine country, Esher, Guildford, Godalming, until
leaving at that point the high road, I entered a region of
picturesque and sylvan beauty I have never seen equalled,
in the midst of which, after a hilly drive of 20 miles, I found
Woolbeding on the banks of the Bother. This is a house
rather old-fashioned than antiquated, but very convenient
and compact, covered with ivy, with the Church joining it in
the same green garb, and a very fine conservatory. The
grounds and gardens are as remarkable for their beautiful
forms and rich shrubs as you can conceive, with the river
winding all about. The place belongs to Lord Robert
Spencer's heirs, who are doubtful, and is only used by Maxse x
1 Mr. James Maxse, his host. Lady Caroline Maxse, his hostess, was
a daughter of the fifth Earl of Berkeley.

380 PARLIAMENT AT LAST [chap, xvi
as a shooting box. His principal residence is in the West of
England and he only lives here in the sporting season. . . .
lt rains to-day without ceasing. Here are at present
nothing but shooting dandies ; Lord Rokeby, Henry Berkeley,
and Whyte Melville. . . . We dine at half past six and
there is a constant breakfast — the only rule, as Maxse says,
being that it is expected that his guests will endeavour to
breakfast before he dines: there is no end of horses, guns,
and dogs and a very large company of London servants. All
you have to do is to give your orders without delicacy. Lady
Caroline is amiable, and has four beautiful and interesting
children, to whom she is devoted.
I see by the Globe of last night that the forthcoming
Edinburgh has an article on ' Disraeli's Novels ' — I suppose to
assist my parliamentary debut. Very kind of the Whigs.
I am, however, perfectly callous. . . .
I will write when there is matter for a letter ; but if it rains
I doubt whether there will be. At any rate I shall not stay
here longer than I can help. In the course of my travelling
down I passed many famous places, Ockham (Lord King's),
Loseley House, and Sutton Place, but the latter was so
embosomed in trees I could not distinguish it : all this on the
high road. Your affectionate, D.1

WOOLBEDING, [Oct. 26(?).]
My Dearest, Yesterday Lady Caroline drove me to Cowdray, Mr.
Poyutz's, in one of the most brilliant equipages I ever wit
nessed. Her poneys, for such they are styled though they
are 15 hands high, are thoroughbred, and worthy of George
the Fourth, as well as her carriage, which is of cane on a
frame of a peculiarly brilliant and rich green; she has two
outriders, and the moment there is the slightest elevation the
poneys break into a gallop of their own accord to the fear and
astonishment of all passengers. She is, however, a good whip
and knows her cattle and country 
Cowdray is one of the most magnificent demesnes in
England. Poyntz has about 25,000 acres. The old Tudor
Hall which you approach from Midhurst by an avenue was
burnt down many years ago and is now only a picturesque
ruin ; but in the most favored spot of the park, surrounded
1 Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS.

1837] IN SUSSEX 381
by the most poetic timber in the world, with a fine view of
the South Downs through their tall stems, is the modern
residence, an irregular cluster of great extent and presenting
no lack of tall chimneys built at different times and added as
occasion prompted 
I doubt whether I shall stay here beyond Saturday ; but
I find it difficult to get away, being very popular with the
women, who are charmed I do not shoot. I like my friends;
they are very good, warm-hearted people indeed. I am going
to Petersfield to see the Jollifies to-day. ...
Your affectionate, D.1

To Mrs. Wyndham Lewis.
WOOLBEDING, MlDHURST, Oct. 29.
Your letter of the 18th did not reach me until yesterday,
as I have been rambling about. I date this from the Maxses,
where I have been staying three or four days and which I
leave to-morrow. The house is full of shooting dandies, not
much in my way. Until the last fortnight, I have been in
Bucks, but on the wing. I stayed a week at Lord Chandos'
at Wotton, a few days with Sir Gore Ouseley, and a few days
at Newport Pagnell in the extreme north of the county,
where we had a great Conservative dinner. We have indeed
had a brisk campaign in this respect in our county, and I
am quite wearied with after-dinner spouting. I have heard
nothing directly from Maidstone, but indirectly I am sorry
to say I learnt yesterday that they are still very eager about
their dinner, which they intend shall take place in November,
though I should think this were impossible. Tell my
colleague he must be in his place by the 15th. There
is a pressing circular out. What is to happen no one knows,
but there is a very active whip. Lord John had the impudence
to write to Peel, enquiring whether there would be a division
on the Speakership ; Sir Robert gave him a caustic reply and
now the Whigs protest there will certainly be a struggle,
though I doubt it myself. My health is excellent. . . .
An extraordinary season is expected : at present the only
topic of interest is the Queen's visit to the City, and all the
triumphal arches through which she is to pass before she
tastes the orthodox turtle cooked in the sound of Bow Bells ;
as there are to be no toasts given the affair must be very dull.
The Duke of Wellington dines there, and I hope Sir Robert
i Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS.

382 PARLIAMENT AT LAST [chap, xvi
Peel. The Queen and Lord Melbourne are having their
portraits taken by Hayter at the same time and under the
same roof. Melbourne lives only at Brighton, the other
Ministers work, except Palmerston, who is Leporello to our
Don Juan.
My kind regards to Wyndham. D.

The last entry in the Mutilated Diary carries us on
to the eve of the meeting of Parliament.

Bradenham, Nov. 12, 1837.'
To-morrow I leave Bradenham to take my seat in Parlia
ment, i.e., on the 15th. I have passed these three months
since my election chiefly in Bucks, and in a run of desultory
political reading, tho' chiefly on Ireland. Attended several
political dinners in my County, to which I limit myself:
spoke often and well — at Newport Pagnell, where there was
great enthusiasm, and Great Marlow. After the Quarter
Sessions, the 17th of October, went to Woolbeding, -Lady
Caroline Maxse's, where I passed a week. Returned to
Bradenham that I might pass ten quiet days.
My health wonderfully renovated : were it not for the
anxiety the state of my affairs occasionally causes me I should
laugh at illness. My life for the past year has been very
temperate; my nervous system consequently much stronger.
I am now as one leaving a secure haven for an unknown sea.
What will the next twelve months produce ?

APPENDIX A

TITA

This interesting personage, one of the many links
between Byron and Disraeli, was a Venetian whose full
name was Giovanni Battista Falcieri, and who, entering
Byron's service as gondolier, had become his devoted
personal servant and was with him at Missolonghi when
he died. He is introduced in Don Juan (II. , 56),
' Battista, though (a name call'd shortly Tita),
Was lost by getting at some aqua-vita,'
and is mentioned by Shelley in a letter written
from Ravenna, Aug. 15, 1821 : — ' Tita, the Venetian,
is here, and operates as my valet — a fine fellow
with a prodigious black beard who has stabbed two
or three people, and is the most good-natured looking
fellow I ever saw.' 1 After Byron's death Tita fought for
the Greek cause at the head of a regiment of Albanians ;
but at the close of the war he fell into distress, and in
this condition was picked up by Clay at Malta in the
summer of 1830, and accompanied Clay and Disraeli in
their subsequent wanderings in the Levant. On their
return to England, when Clay had no further occasion for
Tita's services, Disraeli sent him down to Bradenham,
where at first he startled the inhabitants of the quiet
Buckinghamshire village by his dress, appearance, and
habits, and where he remained a privileged favourite till
Isaac DTsraeli's death in 1848. The rest of the story can
be given in the words in which Disraeli himself told it to
Sir Philip Rose. 1 Moore's Life of Byron, III., p. 237.
383

384 TITA [append, a
One of the chief anxieties of my sister and myself was, what
was to be done with Tita. Our embarrassment was increased by
the announcement of his marriage to ' Hughes,' my mother's
former maid, who remained on as housekeeper — an event
which we suspected had taken place some years previously.
It was dreadful to think that a man who had been in Byron's
service, and soothed his last moments, who had been the
faithful attendant and almost the companion and friend of
my father, for so many years, who had actually died in his
arms, should end his days in the usual refuge for domestic
servants, by keeping a public-house, or a greengrocer's shop ;
but, happily, just at that moment I accidentally met Sir John
Cam Hobhouse, in a country house, and asked him if he
remembered Tita in Byron's service. He replied, 'Perfectly.'
Then I said, ' He now wants a friend, and he has an hereditary
claim on you as Byron's executor.' I told him his subsequent
history and my anxiety to provide for him, and asked him
for an appointment as messenger in some department of the
Government. Hobhouse gave me little hope at the time,
but, within a week of our meeting, I received a letter that a
messengership at the Board of Control had fallen vacant, to
which he should be happy to appoint Tita, and so we landed
him. Another crisis occurred when the Board of Control
was abolished, and Tita was liable to be dismissed, on a small
pension ; but fortunately we were then in power, and Stanley
was head of the India Office, to whom I related Tita's history,
and appealed to him to look after his interests. The result
was that Tita was appointed chief messenger at the new India
Office, then temporarily located in Victoria St., but without
the liability of having to carry messages.
Tita died in 1874 at the age of 76 ; and the following
letter well illustrates Disraeli's habit of pertinacious kind
ness for those whom he had once admitted to his friend
ship or taken under his protection : —

To Queen Victoria.
10, Downing Street, Whitehall, Jan. 13, 1875.
Mr. Disraeli with his humble duty to your Majesty. He
earnestly recommends to your Majesty, for a pension of £50,
Sarah Falcieri, the widow, after thirty years of much devotion,
of Giovanni Battista Falcieri, the faithful servant of Lord
Byron.

1875] LETTER TO QUEEN VICTORIA 385
In Mr. Disraeli's youth, 45 years ago, Falcieri travelled with
him for two years, in Egypt, Syria, and other parts of the
East : a most faithful and gifted man. Then he served your
Majesty, as a Messenger in the India Office; and retired
pensioned and universally beloved. His widow is an English
woman.

VOL. I — 20

APPENDIX B
LORD LYNDHURST'S RECOLLECTIONS
1826-1832
The accounts of the sessions of 1835 and 1836 on pp. 301,
328, are taken from a memorandum headed ' Summary of
Events — mainly Lord Lyndhurst's career from 1826
to 1836 ; written at Bradenham, Sept. 17, 1836,' and
inscribed with the motto, ' Those who anticipate their
century are persecuted when they live and pilfered when
they are dead I'1 The earlier portion of the memorandum,
though it has no connexion with Disraeli's own political
career, is interesting as a contribution to Lyndhurst's
biography and perhaps to the history of the time : —
Copley [1 826] at Duke of Montrose's, which he joined from
the circuit : very dull : intended to go abroad, but detained a
week by waiting for remittance from London. On his way
up found at Manchester a communication from the Minister
offering him the Mastership of the Rolls. Had he been abroad
perhaps it would not have been offered. Lord Gifford had
died suddenly, killed by his wife : a cold and fever — wished
not to travel to Dover ; she insisted upon it, and he died from
inflammation on his arrival.
Canning, aware of the impending fate of Liverpool, had
long been maturing a party of his own ; had sounded Copley.
Canning aware that the Duke of Wn. meditated the premiership.
There had long been two parties in the Cabinet, Canning's
and Wellington's; but Lord Liverpool supported Canning.
A- breeze in the H. of C. between Canning and Copley,
a little before the death of Liverpool, on the Catholic
question. Canning irritated by Copley's rechauffing in a
speech Phillpotts' (afterwards Bishop of Exeter) pamphlet.
1 Vivian Grey, Bk. VI. ch. 4 : ' He who anticipates his century is
generally persecuted when living and is always pilfered when dead.'
386

1826-32] THE CANNING MINISTRY 387
When Canning wrote to him to offer the great seal added
at the end ' Phillpotts non obstante.' Canning wished
to get Brougham out of the H. of C, and offered him
the Chief Barony of the Exchequer. B. took time to con
sider, and was to report to the Lord Chancellor : declined
to Lyndhurst, saying that he had consulted his brother (the
one who died), who recommended him not to leave the H. of C.
Lyndhurst, not very sanguine as to the success of the
Canning Cabinet; but the great seal and a peerage! 'Who
would refuse it? I thought I would not baulk fortune, and
that a seat in the H. of L. would always keep me a
career.' Canning had resolved not only not to press the
Catholic Question, but had promised the King that he would
prevent it being carried in the Commons. Difficulty in form
ing a Cabinet unrivalled. Now the difficulty is to satisfy so
many, then to find Ministers. The seals of the Home Office
actually begging, as Canning wanted a Protestant Secretary.
At last Sturges Bourne took them out of mere friendship.
Canning elated at obtaining the adhesion of Lansdowne:
Holland very eager to take office.
Nothing annoyed Canning more than the denunciation of
Lord Grey. Said to Lyndhurst, ' I feel I must remain in the
Commons, but I am half tempted to ask for a peerage merely
to let fly at him.' Nothing could exceed the virulence of the
party of defection. There was a dinner, I think, at Bathurst's.
It had been an invitation of a month. The Copleys had been
asked before the break-up. L. hesitated about going, but
thought it was shabby and spiritless to decline. Went and
sat next to Mrs. Arbuthnot: nothing could be more bitter.
The only person who was civil and good-humoured was old
Eldon. Lady L. sat next to him.
Canning had been long ailing. Eat voraciously. There was
a Cabinet dinner at Lord L.'s at Wimbledon. A beautiful day
with a clear blue sky, but a cutting easterly wind. Canning
rode down. They were tempted by the fine weather to hold
the Cabinet in the garden. Soon Canning complained of the
cold and shivered. Went in to dinner, but even the dinner,
though he eat voraciously, did not remove it. Went home,
was taken ill, and died very shortly.
Nothing can give an idea of the scene under Goderich. No
order at the Cabinet. A most ludicrous scene. Nothing ever
done. Anglesea sitting with a napkin round his head from
the tic, but the only one who seemed to exert himself. As
they went home L. said to a colleague, ' This can never last.'
In a few days Goderich sent for L. to Downing Street — walking
up and down the room in great agitation, wringing his hands,
and even shedding tears. Told L. that he must resign. L.

388 LYNDHURST'S RECOLLECTIONS [append, b
tried to reason with him, but no avail. Resigned the next
day. Geo. IV. sent for L. and asked what he was to do. L.
said there was only one thing. ' Send for the Duke of
Wellington.' Knighton had arranged the Canning Cabinet, and was C.'s
friend. That appointment had been long maturing — much
intrigue. Knighton very able — the real king of this country —
did everything — wrote all the King's letters. When a weak or
indolent person in a high situation once admits the assistance
of an inferior, soon becomes a slave. What is occasional
becomes a habit. The Wellington Cabinet broke up ou the
Catholic question, and were out for four and twenty hours.
The King was firm. The Duke, Peel, L., &c, went down to
Windsor and resigned the seals. The King kissed each of
them. George IV. was much distressed — acted in spite
of Knighton. They went back to London and dined at
Bathurst's, and were in high spirits at being free of office.
In the middle of the night letters came to the Duke and Lynd.
giving up. Knighton had worked upon his distress after their
departure. The Catholic Bill. — Lord Grey wanted office, and it was
known that he would have taken the viceroyalty of Ire
land (e.g.). Once the intention of the Duke to admit the
Grey party. Took a sudden prejudice to Grey. Something
happened on a coal committee. Told L. afterwards he had
seen enough of Grey that morning to have nothing to do with
him. 1832. — L.'s motion that enfranchisement should precede
disfranchisement threw out the Whigs. It was the intention
of the Tories to make the Speaker Premier. A weak man,
but a stalking-horse. Peel would have been the virtual
Premier. L. was deputed to make the offer. I must do
Manners Sutton the justice to say that he at first burst out
laughing and said, 'Why, it will be the Doctor over again.'
But after some conversation he entertained the idea, seemed
very complacent, and asked until to-morrow to decide.
Thence L. went to offer Baring the Chancellorship of the
Exchequer. He sent for Holmes out of the H. of C. and
told him to find Baring and send him to him. Baring hesitated
and asked for twelve hours. The next morning M. S. and
B. both refused in consequence of the vote of the H. of C.
It was the original intention not to have given the House
time to come to this vote, but to have prorogued it that
morning. The hesitation of M. S. and B., and the unwilling
ness of Peel to act without their adhesion, lost everything.
Had the Tories formed their Government it would have had
the power of modifying the Reform Bill.

1832] THE REFORM BILL 389
Among some of my papers will be found an account x of
the secret political movements of 1834, and the formation of
the Peel Government, in which preceding movements I was
engaged. Four places in the Cabinet offered to Lord Stanley :
one reason of his declining, unwillingness to act with the
Duke of Wellington.
A few undated political notes, written in Disraeli's
hand apparently about the same time, and relating to
the same period, may conveniently be added.
Committee on the Reform Bill Sir James Graham, Lord
J. Russell, Lord Durham, Lord Duncannon, divided on the
ballot, three to one in favour. The one was Duncannon : not
known — Graham always insinuating it was himself. Had
Lord Durham lived would have made a communication in
the House of Lords, he was so indignant.
On leave to bring in the Reform Bill, Peel was anxious
to meet it at once with a direct negative — it would have
been thrown out by a very considerable majority, and the
question would have been finished. Lord Granville Somerset
was the person who dissuaded Peel. The consequence of the
delay was the agitation of the country, &c.
Lord Duncannon twice offered O'Connell office — once under
the Government of Lord Grey with the Premier's sanction.
It was the Mastership of the Rolls.
1 See pp. 262-265.

APPENDIX C
D'ORSAY'S PORTRAIT OF LYNDHURST
The portrait of Lyndhurst by D'Orsay, which is repro
duced in this volume, has an interesting history. It some
how came into the possession of Mr. Gladstone, and was by
him despatched to Christie's with other pictures and his col
lection of china when he left Carlton House Terrace in 1875.
Disraeli, hearing that the picture was to be sold, sent Mr.
Montagu Corry, his private secretary, to buy it ; but in the
meantime it had occurred to Mr. Cecil Raikes to invite a
number of Conservative members of Parliament to join
him in securing it with a view to a presentation. The
rival bidders reached the auction room about the same
time, but only to find that the picture had been already
sold at an extremely low price. By the offer of a very
handsome profit, Mr. Corry tried to obtain it, but his offer
was rejected ; and eventually, after some amusing man
oeuvres by the purchaser, which are related in the Life of
Raikes,1 it was secured by Mr. Raikes for a sum nearly ten
times as great as the original auction price. The picture
was sent to the Prime Minister accompanied by the follow
ing letter : — House of Commons Library, July 2, 1875.
Dear Mr. Disraeli,
Knowing the friendship that united you both to the late
Lord Lyndhurst and to Count D'Orsay, we beg to express the
1 Pages 100-102. The story as given there differs in some small
particulars from the version here adopted, this latter being based
on a contemporary memorandum written by Lord Barrington.
390

1875] A GRACEFUL ACT OF FRIENDSHIP 391
hope that you will accept from us the portrait of the one
painted by the other as a mark of our sincere admiration and
respect. Barrington, Robert Bourke, Henry Chaplin, W. Romaine
Callender, George Cubitt, W. Hart Dyke, Henry W.
Eaton, Alex. Staveley Hill, Henry G. Lennox, John
Manners, Charles H. Mills, Mahon, Henry W. Peek,
Henry Cecil Raikes, Sandon, W. H. Smith, Newport,
Fred. Stanley, Gerard Sturt, C. Sykes, Richard Wallace,
Row. Winn, H. Drummond Wolff.
Disraeli addressed his acknowledgment to Lord Bar
rington. 2, Whitehall Gardens, July 12, 1875.
My dear Barrington,
Do me the favour of expressing to those members of the
House of Commons who, with yourself, have made me an
offering, which I infinitely value, the gratitude and the gratifi
cation which I feel at this graceful act of friendship, and my
sense of the refined manner in which it has been conveyed.
Yours ever,
B. Disraeli.

INDEX

Abinger, Lord, 265, 277
A'Court, Col., 205
A'Court, Capt., 205
Adam, Sir Frederick, 158
Aix, 48
Albania, visit to, 158, 159
Aldborough, Lady, 233, 236
Alexandria, 173
Algiers, 154
Allen, Lord, 247
Almack's, 230, 252
Alps, 96, 98, 99, 100
Alroy, 181, 222, 236 ; published, 194-
200
Alroy, David, 121
Althorp, Lord, 260
Alvanley, Lord, 288, 289
Angerstein, Capt., 216, 255
Anson, Mrs., 303
Anson, George, 250
Antwerp, 43, 45, 46
Arbuthnot, Mrs., 387
Ashburton, Lord, 59, 265, 332
Ashley, Lord, 332
Athenceum: on Henrietta Temple,
344
Athenaeum Club — fails to secure
election to, 206
Athens, 165
Auckland, Lord, 280
Austen, Benjamin, 80, 94, 96, 99,
111, 121 ; letters to, 94, 116, 121,
143, 145, 156, 158, 164, 201, 202,
203, 211, 212, 220, 237, 240, 259,
273, 347, 359
Austen, Mrs. Sara, 80, 81, 82, 83,
84, 89; letter from, 81; letters
to Sarah Disraeli, 96, 111 ; letters
to, 122, 165, 168, 170, 207, 213,
238, 239

Baillie, Henry, 292
Balzac, 257
Baring, Alexander :
burton, Lord
Baring, Francis, 332

Baring, H., 367
Baring, Sir Thomas, 204, 211, 212,
213
Barnes, Thomas, Editor of The
Times, 301, 319, 323, 332, 333, 334
Barrington, Lord : letter to, 391
Barrow, Sir John, 65, 72, 156
Basevi, George, 375
Basevi, Maria : see D'Israeli, Maria
Basevi family, 11, 12
Bath, 222
Beauclerk, 377
Beaufort, Duke of, 332
Beaven, Rev. Alfred — letter to, 221
Beckford, W., 191, 199, 248, 253
Bentinck, Lord George, 255, 268
Bentinck, Life of Lord George:
quoted, 2
Beresford, Sir J., 277
Berkeley, Grantley, 256
Berkeley, Henry, 380
Bertolini, 107
Bethmann, 51
Blackwood, Mrs., 231, 232, 233,
254, 303
Blackwood's Magazine, 83
Blessington, Lady, 247, 248, 249,
255, 256, 356; letters to, 256,
257, 259, 305, 326, 354, 360;
letter from, 258
Bolingbroke, Lord, 218, 219, 313
Bonaparte, Joseph, 234
Bonaparte, Lucien : see Canino,
Prince of
Bonn, 49
Bosphorus, 168
Botta, Paul Emile, 235
Bourne, Sturges, 387
Bouverie, Mrs. Pleydell, 157
Brackenbury, 144
Bradenham House, 120, 126
Brandes, Dr. Georg: Study of
Beaconsfield quoted, 361 ; on
Ash- Venetia, or a Poet's Daughter,
366
Brewster, Dr., 67
393

394

INDEX

Brewster, Dr. F. C: Disraeli in
Outline Quoted, 193
Bright, John, 119, 241
Brougham, Lord, 129, 278, 279,
302, 304, 387
Bruges, 42, 43, 44
Brunet, 138, 139
Brussels, 45, 47
Buckingham, Duke of, 273
Bucks Gazette, 214, 274
Bucks Herald, 214, 220
Bulwer, Lytton, 123, 124, 125, 134,
170, 202, 203, 204, 211, 213, 216,
222, 223, 235, 344, 354;
letter to, 170 ; letter to Isaac
D'Israeli, 267; on Henrietta
Temple, 344
Bulwer, Life of: quoted, 170
Bulwer, Henry, 124, 125, 302
Burdett, Sir Francis, 129, 211,
367, 368-370
Burdett, Lady, 369
Burghersh, Lady, 303
Burghersh, Lord, 154
Burke, 276, 307, 308
Byron, Lord, 14, 37, 38, 70, 97,
98, 106, 216, 360, 361, 362, 363,
383, 384 ; Letters and Journals
quoted, 14
Cadiz, 143, 144
Cairo, 173, 175
Campbell, Lord, 305
Campbell, Sir H., 367
Campbell, Thomas, 191
Canino, Prince of, 233, 239, 256
Canning, 58, 63, 66, 129, 276, 386,
387, 388 ; death, 387
Canterbury, Lady, 356
Carloni, Signor, 108
Carlton Club : nominated candi
date for, 276 ; elected member,
326
Carlyle, Thomas, 245, 297
Carrington, Lord, 250, 251, 268
Castlereagh, Lord, 247, 250, 251,
256, 303
Chandos, Lord, 214, 215, 221,
262, 263, 264, 265, 268, 273,
274, 281
Charleville, Lady, 233
Chatham, Lord, 276
Chequers Court, 353
Chesterfield, Lady, 303
Cholmeley, Lady Georgiana, 251
Cholmeley, Sir M., 251

Ciceri, Dr., 101
Clay, James, 154, 155, 156, 157,
158, 160, 170, 171, 175, 216,
383
Clement, Louis, 140
Clements, Lord, 233
Coblenz, 49
Cockburn, Alexander, 124, 125
Cogan, Dr., 24
Cogan, Rev. Eli, 24
Cohen, Francis, 37
Colburn, Henry, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84,
85, 92, 117, 123, 124, 127, 133,
135, 194, 201, 223, 258, 338,
344, 359
Cologne, 47, 49
Combermere, Lady : death, 356
Como, Lake, 100
Ooningsby, 72, 77, 266, 298, 299
Constable, Archibald, 77, 78
Constantinople, 168
Constitution, Vindication of Eng
lish: see Vindication of English
Constitution in a Letter to a
Noble and Learned Lord
Contarini Fleming, 20, 26, 33, 34,
35, 36, 39, 84, 96, 99, 105, 166,
167, 172, 237; published, 181-
193
Conyngham, Albert, 250
Copley : see Lyndhurst, Lord
Cordova, 146
Corfu, 158
Cork, Lady, 234, 236, 248, 250, 251,
256, 343
Corn Laws, 217, 229
Cotton, Sir J. H., 221
Courier quoted, 288
Crisis Examined, The, 269
Crockford's : election to, 252
Croker, Crofton, 37 ; Fairy Legends
of Ireland, 61
Croker, John Wilson, 70, 72, 206,
209, 295, 332
Cumberland, Duke of, 328
Curran, J. P., 38
Cyprus, 171
Damiani, 171
d'Arblay, Madame, 191
Dardanelles, 167
Darmstadt, 51
Dashwood, 224
Davies, Scrope, 38
Davy, Lady, 51
Dawson, Mrs., 377

INDEX

395

Dawson, George, 277
de Constant, Seymour, 256
de Haber, Baron, 206, 347
d'Haussez, Baron, 206, 207
de L'Isle, Lord, 329
Dendera, 174
Denvil, 262
D'Orsay, Count, 203, 247, 252,
255, 257, 262, 292, 294, 337,
353, 356, 358; letters from, 258,
282, 345, 348, 357; portrait of
Lord Lyndhurst, 390
De Quincey, 38
Dick, Q., 367
Disraeli: origin of name, 2, 6, 41
Disraeli, Benjamin — • ancestry, 1-8 ;
birth, 18 ; at Miss Roper's
school (Islington), 19; at Rev.
J. Potticany's school (Black
heath), 19; baptism, 23; at
Rev. Eli Cogan's school (Higham
Hall), 24; in solicitors' offices,
32, 40 ; continental tour, 42-
53 ; decides to abandon law,
53 ; stock exchange specula
tions, 55, 56 ; publishes En
quiry into the Plans, Progress,
and Policy of the American
Mining Companies, 57; pub
lishes Lawyers and Legisla
tors, or Notes on the American
Mining Companies, 58 ; pub
lishes The Present State of
Mexico, 59 ; edits Life of
Paul Jones, 60, 61 ; associated
with Murray and Powles in
establishing new periodical, 61-
78 ; publishes Vivian Grey,
79-93 ; visit to Switzerland and
Italy, 94-111 ; publishes sequel
to Vivian Grey, 112-115;
entered at Lincoln's Inn, 115 ;
illness, 116; publishes The
Voyage of Captain Popanilla,
117-120; publishes The Young
Duke, 123-135; tour in the
East, 136-180; publishes Con
tarini Fleming, 181-193 ; pub
lishes Alroy, 193-199; pub
lishes Tlie Rise of Iskander,
199; withdraws from Lincoln's
Inn, 201 ; publishes England
and France: or a Cure for the
Ministerial Gallomania, 205-
209 ; publishes Ixion in Heaven,
223; publishes The Infernal

Marriage, 223 ; publishes The
Revolutionary Epick, 238-247 ;
joins Conservative party, 260-
295 ; publishes Vindication of
the English Constitution in a
Letter to a Noble and Learned
Lord, 306; publishes The Spirit
of Whiggism, 324-326; publishes
Henrietta Temple, 337-344 ; finan
cial embarrassments, 346-359 ;
sworn in as justice of the
peace, 351 ; epileptic attack,
357 ; publishes Venetia, 360-
366; elected M.P. for Maid
stone, 375
Works — Alroy, 173, 181, 222;
published, 194-199 ; Coningsby,
72, 76, 266, 298, 299; Contarini
Fleming, 20, 26, 33, 34, 35, 36,
39, 84, 96, 99, 105, 166, 167,
172, 237; published, 181-193;
Crisis Examined, The, 269 ;
Diary: quoted, 44, 45, 46, 47,
48, 98, 181, 192, 234, 235, 236,
237, 248, 253, 255, 293, 304, 332,
339, 347, 350, 367, 382; Diary
Mutilated: quoted, 234, 235, 236,
237, 248, 293, 304, 339, 347, 350,
367, 382 ; Endymion quoted,
120, 125, 208, 230, 260; England
and France: or n. Cure for Mini
sterial Gallomania, published,
205-209 ; Henrietta Temple pub
lished, 337-344; Infernal Mar
riage, 27; published, 223-258;
Iskander, The Rise of, 199, 222 ;
Ixion in Heaven, 27, 223 ;
Letters (1887 edition) : quoted,
136, 142, 145, 146, 147, 148, 152,
154, 155, 156, 158, 163, 164, 165,
168, 171, 175, 176, 177, 191, 199,
205, 216, 223, 224, 227, 231, 232,
234, 247, 248, 253, 261, 262, 268,
277, 278, 280, 281, 284, 293, 304,
317, 318, 326, 327, 335, 368, 370,
372, 373, 375 ; Lytton, Life of Bul
wer, 85 ; Mel . . . . e, An Heroic
Epistle to, 333 ; Memoir of
Isaac D'Israeli quoted, 2-4, 9,
10, 12, 16, 17; Novels, General
Preface to: quoted, 229, 337,
371 ; Popanilla, The Voyage of
Captain, 41 ; published, 117-
120; Revolutionary Epick, The,
194; published, 237-247; Sind
bad the Sailor, A New Voyage

396

INDEX

of, 333 ; Speeches — during High
Wycombe elections (Red Lion
speech), 213, 214, 215, 218-220,
269-274; Ducrow simile, 272;
during Taunton election, 282,
285; at Lewes, 326, 327; at
Aylesbury, 333, 334; during
Maidstone election, 373-374 ;
Sybil, 371 ; Tancred quoted, 349 ;
Venetia, or the Poet's Daughter,
337, 356, 358, 359, 360-366 ; Vindi
cation of the English Constitution
in a letter to a Noble and Learned
Lord : published, 306 ; Vivian
Grey, 20, 26, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39,
53, 54, 74, 75, 76, 102, 107, 176,
181, 182, 184, 185, 187, 192, 236,
386; published, 79-93; sequel
published, 112-115; What is He?
225-227; Whiggism, The Spirit
of, 324-326; Young Duke, The,
176 ; published, 123-135
D'Israeli, Benjamin (grandfather),
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 21
D'Israeli, Isaac (father), 9-17, 21,
22, 23, 36, 110, 116, 120, 121;
letters to, 95, 96, 99, 103, 104,
105, 107, 109, 137, 140, 144,
147, 154, 155, 159, 164, 165,
168, 177, 279 ; letter from, 306
D'Israeli, Memoir of Isaac : quoted,
2-4, 9, 10, 12, 16, 17
Disraeli, Jacobus (James), 18, 23,
117
D'Israeli, Maria (mother), 11, 12,
75; letters to, 21, 149; letter
to Murray, 75
Disraeli, Naphtali, 18
Disraeli, Ralph (Raphael), 18, 21,
23 ; letter to, 156
D'Israeli, Sarah (grandmother), 4,
6, 7, 8, 9
Disraeli, Sarah (sister), 12, 18, 23 ;
letters to, 42, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51,
52, 110, 146, 152, 171, 173, 175,
178, 191, 199, 203, 204, 205, 216,
222, 223, 224, 231, 232, 233, 234,
245, 250, 251, 252, 261, 262, 268,
277, 278, 280, 281, 284, 292, 302,
317, 319, 326, 327, 331, 334, 355,
367, 370, 371, 372, 373, 375, 377,
379, 380; letters from, 133, 134,
210, 211
' Dizzy ' — used as signature, 375
Don, Sir George, 138, 141
Don, lady, 138, 140, 141, 143

Dorset County Chronicle quoted;
284, 285
Douce, Francis, 37
Drachenfels, 49
Ducrow simile, 272
Dudley, Lord, 51, 256
Dufferin, Lady: see Blackwood,
Mrs.
Duncannon, Lord, 280, 389
Dunciad of To-day, 84
Durham, Lord, 248, 249, 250, 253,
260, 261, 263, 273, 322, 389;
letter to, 267 ; letter from, 268
'E., Mrs.,' 30
Ebrington, Lord, 216
Edinburgh, 63
Edinburgh Review, 77, 78, 380;
on Venetia, 365
Egerton, Lady, 370
Egerton, Lord Francis, 367
Ehrenbreitstein, 49
Eldon, Lord, 57, 58, 91, 387
Eliot, Lord, 205 ; on The Vindica
tion of the English Constitution,
317
Elliot, Mrs. W., 70
Ellice, 'Bear,' 322, 355
Ellis, Henry, 204
Elphinstone, Lord, 247
Ems, 50
Encyclopaedia Britannica '. article
quoted, 125
Endymion, quoted, 120, 125, 208,
230, 260
England and France: or, a Cure
for the Ministerial Gallomania,
205-209
Enquiry into the Plans, Progress,
and Policy of the American Mining
Companies, 57
Escott, Bickham, 302
Essex, Lady, 250
Evans, T. M., 55, 56; letters to,
125, 220
Evans, Maj. Viney, 376, 379
Exmouth, Lord, 367, 377
Falcieri, Giovanni Battista (Tita),
157, 175, 216, 354, 362, 383-385
Fancourt, Major, 332
Fector, 367
Field, Baron, 142
Flaxman, 107
Fleuriz, 144, 145
Florence, 107, 108

INDEX

397

Floyd, Lady, 377
Fobin, Mrs., 51
Follett, Sir William, 265, 302
Fonblanque, Albany, 203
Forester, Lord, 367
Frankfort, 51
Froissart, 64
Froude : Lord Beaconsfield quoted,
33 ; on Henrietta Temple, 344
Furtado, Rebecca Mendez, 7
Gabay, Sarah Siprut de: see
D'Israeli, Sarah (grandmother)
Galignani, 176, 202
Garnett, Dr. : Lord Beaconsfield
and Shelley quoted, 362
Genappe, 47
Geneva, 96, 98, 99
Gentleman's Magazine, 58
George IV., King, 388
Ghent, 44, 45
Gibraltar, 137, 140
Gibson, Milner, 19
Gifford, Lord, 386
Giovanni: see Falcieri, Giovanni
Battista
Gladstone, W. E., 112, 276, 277, 390
Glenelg, Lord, 322
Globe : controversy with editor, 318
Goderich, Lord, 387
Goethe, 176, 192
Goldsmith, Oliver: Isaac D'Israeli's
resemblance to, 17
Gordon, Sir Charles, 142
Gore, Mrs., 203, 377
Gore, Montagu, 246
Gore, Charles, 204
Goulburn, H., 265
Graham, Sir James, 260, 265, 302,
331, 389
Gramonts, the, 356
Granada, 146, 147
Grant, Charles, 223
Gregory, Sir William: Auto
biography quoted, 155
Grenfell, Pascoe, 213
Greville : Diary quoted, 268
Grey, Gen. Charles, 213, 215, 220,
273, 274 ; letter to, 222
Grey, Lord, 225, 254, 255, 256,
260, 262, 388
Guercino, 5
Hall, Peter, 84
Hamilton, Alexander, 310
Hamilton, Duchess of, 250, 251

Hamilton, Walter, 37
Hanmer, Sir J., 368
Hans of M alines, 46
Hardinge, Sir Henry, 265, 318
Heath's Book of Beauty : contributes
to, 338
Heidelberg, 51
Heine, 192
Henrietta Temple, 337-344
Herries, J. C, 205
Hertford, Lord, 248, 253
Higham Hall, Walthamstow, 24, 25
High Wycombe (Chepping Wy
combe) — Parliamentary candi
dature for : see under Parlia
ment
Hobhouse, Sir John Cam, 59, 322,
384
HoUand, Lord, 387
Hook, Theodore, 93
Horton, Wilmot, 65,66
Hume, Joseph, 202, 211, 212,
377
Huy, 47
Infernal Marriage, 27, 257; pub
lished, 223
Irish Corporations and Church
Bill, 328
Irish Tithe Bill, 278, 300
Irving, Washington, 140
Iskander, The Rise of, 199, 222
Israeli, Isaac, 6
Ixion in Heaven, 27, 223
Jaffa, 171
Jameson, Mrs., 199
Jeffrey, Lord, 77, 78
Jekyll, Joseph, 236
Jerdan, William, 83, 92, 134
letter to, 92 ; Autobiography, 92
Jerusalem, 172
Jewish Chronicle quoted, 19, 20
Jones, Rev. E., 20
Jones, Life of Paul, 60, 61
Jowett, Life of, quoted, 202
Juliers, 48
Kalio, 160
Kinnaird, Douglas, 122
Knatchbull,v'Sir E., 263, 266
Knighton, Sir W., 388
Knowles, Sheridan,i232
'L.E.L.,' 203, 204
Labouchere, Henry, 280, 284

398

INDEX

Lafitte, Charles, 247
Lamb, Lady Caroline, 363, 365
Landseer, Edwin, 256
Lang : Life of Lockhart, 61, 63, 69
Lansdowne, Lord, 387
Laras, 3
Lawyers and Legislators: or. Notes
on the American Mining Com
panies, 58, 59
Layard, Sir Henry, 231, 235, 239;
Autobiography quoted, 40, 80,
81, 82, 111
Leader, 367
Lennox, Lord William, 204
Lewis, Wyndham, 232, 252, 372,
373, 374, 377
Lewis, Mrs. Wyndham, 204; letters
to Maj. Viney Evans, 376, 379;
letters to, 376, 378, 381 tJ
Liddell, Captain, 157
Liege, 47
Limerick, Lord, 157
Lindo, B. E., 375
Literary Gazette, 83
Literary Magnet, 84
Lockhart, J. G., 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68,
69, 70, 71, 72, 76, 77, 78, 190, 235,
318 ; letters from Murray to,
67, 72 ; letters to, 70, 71, 72
Londonderry, Lady, 8, 303
Londonderry, Lord, 279
Lonsdale, Lady, 251
Louis-Philippe, King of France, 207
Lowther, Lord, 318
Lyndhurst, Lord, 252, 256, 261,
262, 263, 264, 265, 268, 277, 278,
279, 300, 301, 303, 304, 306, 317,
323, 329, 337, 354, 358, 371, 386-
389, 390, 391; letters from, 323,
336 ; on Vindication of the Eng
lish Constitution, 317 ; on Letters
of Runnymede, 332 ; Disraeli's
appreciation of, quoted, 329 ;
Venetia dedicated to, 360 ; mar
riage, 377 ; ' Summary of Events
— mainly Lord Lyndhurst's ca
reer from 1826 to 1836,' 386-389 ;
D'Orsay's portrait, 390-391
Lytton, Mrs. Bulwer: letter to,
378
Lytton, Life of Bulwer, 85
Macaulay, Lord, 129, 190, 223, 365
Maclise, D., 332
Madden's Countess of Blessington
quoted, 250

Maggiore, Lake, 100
Maginn, Dr., 69, 199
Mahmud II., Sultan of Turkey, 169
Mahon, Lord, 140, 332
Maidstone : Parliamentary candi
dature for : see under Parliament
Mainz, 49, 52
Malcolm, Sir John, 208
Malta, 154, 156, 157
Malt tax, 263, 269
Mann, Sir Horace, 4
Mannheim, 52
Maples, Mr., 33 ; letter to, 41
Marathon, 167
Marriage, thoughts of, 232, 233
Mathews, Charles, 236, 255
Maurice, Byron's boatman, 97, 98,
99
Maxse, Lady Caroline, 379, 380
Maxse, James, 379, 380
Maxwell's Life of Wellington quoted,
275
Mazzini, 241
Mechlin, 45
Medinas, 3
Mehemet Pasha, of Yanina, 159
Mehemet Aii, 176, 177
Melbourne, Lord, 254, 255, 279,
280, 304, 321, 377, 382
Mel . . . e, An Heroic Epistle to,
333
Melville, Whyte, 380
Mendez da Costas, 3
Mercandotti, 150
Meredith, W., 42, 43, 45, 46, 123, 124,
137, 138, 141, 148, 155, 157, 158,
159, 160, 170, 176, 179; death,
177 ; diary quoted, 362
Milan, 101
Milman, Dean, 190
Milton, 243
Milton, Lord : death, 302
Ministry (Canning), 387, 388
Ministry (coalition) : negotiations
to form, 279, 280
Ministry (Grey), 260
Ministry (Melbourne), 260, 264,
355
Ministry (Peel), 260, 264, 265,
278, 279
Ministry (Wellington), 388
Montalembert, Comtesse, 370
Montreuil, 95
Moore, Thomas, 37, 38, 39, 204,
236 ; Life of Byron, 365, 383
Morales, 48

INDEX

399

Morgan, Lady, 203
Morley, Lord ; Life of Gladstone
quoted, 112, 277
Morning Herald : on election for
Maidstone, 377
Morning Post, 304 ; contributes
leading articles to, 305
Moskova, Prince of, 247
Motley's Correspondence quoted,
232
Mulgrave, Lord, 203, 204, 280
Municipal Corporations Bill : de
bate in Lords, 303
Munster, Lord, 377
Murray, Mrs., 75
Murray, late John, 37, 40, 56, 57,
59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 69,
70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 117,
127, 190, 194, 205, 206; letters
to, 63, 64, 65, 66, 127, 205, 206,
209 ; letters to Lockhart, 67,
72
Murray, Scott, 221
Namur, 47
Nash, 214
Navarino, 164
Newman, Cardinal, 297; Apologia
quoted, 297
New Monthly, 223
Newton, Stuart, 37
New York Mirror, 249
Nile, 173, 174
Normanby, Lady, 154
Norton, Mrs., 203, 231, 232, 246,
254, 279, 303
Norton, Hon. G., 232
Nugent, Lord, 216
O'Connell, D., 211, 212, 247, 253,
262, 278, 286, 308, 320, 327, 389;
dispute with concerning refer
ences in speech at Taunton, 287-
295 ; references in Aylesbury
speech, 335; Sir F. Burdett on,
370
O'Connell, Morgan — letter to, 289,
292
Ossulston, Lord, 231, 250, 251, 252,
255, 256, 356
Ostend, 42
Ouseley, Sir Gore, 381
Palmerston, Lord, 206, 276, 280,
321, 322, 336, 382
Paris, 95

Parliament: candidature for High
Wycombe, 211-220; candida
ture for Buckinghamshire, 220 ;
candidature withdrawn, 221 ;
candidature for Marylebone, 224,
225 ; third candidature for High
Wycombe, 269-275 ; candida
ture for Taunton, 281-284;
letters to electors of Taunton,
293, 294, 295; candidature for
Maidstone, 372-382 ; elected,
375
Peel, Sir Robert, 130, 202, 205, 260,
261, 263, 264, 275, 276, 278, 279,
280, 295, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302,
317, 320, 322, 328, 329, 336, 378,
381, 382, 388, 389; letter from,
317
Pelham, H„ 3, 4
Pen and Ink Sketches of Poets,
Preachers, and Politicians quoted,
282
Pery : see Limerick, Lord
Phipps, Gen., 236
Picciotto's Sketches of Anglo-Jewish
History, quoted, 7
Pignatelli, Prince, 154
PirEeus, 165
Pitt, 276, 322
Pollock, Sir J. F., 265
Poniatowski, Prince and Princess,
377
Ponsonby, Sir F. C, 155, 157
Poor Law, 373, 374
Popanilla, The Voyage of Captain,
41 ; published, 117-120
Pope, 15
Potticany, Rev. John, 19, 25
Powles, Mr. John Diston, 56, 62,
65, 73
Praed, Mackworth, 277, 332
Present State of Mexico, 59
Psychological Romance : see Con
tarini Fleming
Pyne, William, 350; letters to,
351, 352, 353, 358, 359, 365, 374
Quarterly Review, 61, 68, 231, 239
Raikes, H. C, 390
Ramie, 171
Reform Act, 211, 215, 297, 315, 316
Reform Bills, 202, 209, 211, 212,
262, 389
Reid's Life of Durham quoted, 267,
274

400

INDEX

Representative, The, 61-78, 84, 87, 88
Revolutionary Epick, The, 194 ;
published, 237-247
Rhine, 47, 49, 52
Rise of Iskander, The, 199
Robarts, 374, 375
Roden, Lord, 318
Roebuck, J. A., 305
Rogers, S., 14, 256
Rokeby, Lord, 380
Ronayne, 294
Roper, Miss, 19
Rose, Sir Philip, 179, 333, 384
Rosetta, 173
Rosslyn, Lord, 318
Rowton, Lord, 8, 24, 25, 102, 128,
254
Runnymede: letters to The Times,
319-324, 332
Russell, George, 119
Russell, Lord John, 204, 279, 320,
321, 323, 327, 356, 389
St. Albans, Duchess of, 250
St. Bernard — visit to hospice at,
102
St. Maur, Lady, 231, 254
St. Maur, Lord, 233, 279, 280
Salisbury, Lady, 248, 252, 256;
death, 332
Saunders, 108
Scarlett : see Abinger, Lord
Scott, Anne, 77
Scott, Sir Walter, 14, 62, 63, 65,
66, 68, 70, 71, 77, 82; Familiar
Letters, 61, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72;
Journal, 71
Seville, 144, 145
Seymour : see St. Maur
Shaftesbury, Lord, 377
Shee, Sir M., 256, 277
SheU, R. L., 223
Shelley, 244, 361, 362, 363, 383
Sherburne, John Henry, 60, 61
Sheridan, Charles, 231
Sheridan, Mrs., 231, 233
Sheridan, R. Brinsley, 233
Sindbad the Sailor, A New Voyage
of, 333
Slade, Sir A., 199
Smiles : Life of Murray quoted,
40, 60, 61, 62, 63, 73, 76, 128,
190, 206, 210
Smith, James, 236, 332
Smith, Hon. Robert, 211, 212, 220,
274

Smyrna, 170
Somerset, Lady Fitzroy, 303
Somerset, Granville, 280
Southey, 14, 120, 233
Spa, 47, 48, 49
Spain, King of, 239
Spectator: on speech at Aylesbury,
334; on election for Maidstone,
377
Spencer, Lord, 236 ; death, 263
Spring Rice, T., 321
Standish, Frank Hall, 142, 144,
145
Stanley, Massey, 250, 255, 303
Stanley, Lord, 242, 255, 260, 261,
265, 278, 323
Stephen, Sir Leslie: Hours in a
Library quoted, 193, 345
Star Chamber, 84, 91, 332
Sterling, 332
Strangford, Lord, 203, 205, 329,
335, 377
Stuart, Lady Dudley, 248, 256
Sugden, Sir E., 265, 318
Summary of Events — mainly Lord
Lyndhurst's Career from 1826
to 1836, 301, 328, 386-389
Survilliers, Count of, 256
Sutton, Henry Manners, 246, 279,
388, 389
Sutton, Lady Manners, 246, 256
Swain, Stevens, Maples, Pearse,
and Hunt, Messrs., 32, 56
Sybil, 371
Sykes, Lady, 250, 251, 303, 305
Talbot, 247, 255, 303
Tancred quoted, 349
Tankerville, Lady, 252, 256
Taunton : Parliamentary candida
ture : see under Parliament
Tavistock, Lady, 252
Tennyson : on Henrietta Temple,
345 ; letter from, 345
Thebes, 173, 174
Theocritus : Adonisian Eclogue, 25
Thesiger, F., 302
Thompson, Col. Perronet, 375
Times, The, 61, 209, 301, 334, 373;
letters to, 215, 318; Letters of
Runnymede, 319-324, 332; re
port of speech at Lewes, 326;
contributes articles to, 332, 333
Tita: see Falcieri, Giovanni
Battista
Todosto, Rachel, 7

INDEX

401

Torrens's Life of Melbourne quoted,
255
Trelawny, E. J., 331, 332, 362
Turner, Dawson : letter to, 295
Turner, Sharon, 23, 37, 75, 116;
letter to, 116
Tyrrell, Sir J., 367
Venetia, or the Poet's Daughter,
337, 356, 358, 359, 360-366
Venice, 104, 105, 106
Verona, 103
Vicenza, 104
Victoria, Queen, 222, 371, 377, 382,
384
Villa Reals, 3, 7
Villiers, Charles, 124, 125, 203
Vindication of the English Consti
tution in a Letter to a Noble and
Learned Lord, 177, 306
Vivian Grey, 20, 26, 34, 35, 36, 38,
39, 53, 54, 74, 75, 76, 102, 107,
176, 181, 182, 184, 185, 187, 192,
236, 386; published, 79-93;
sequel published, 112-115
Wall, Baring, 331, 332
Walpole's History quoted, 300
Walpole, Lord, 367
Walpole, Sir Robert, 255
Walter, John, 319, 373, 374
Ward, Robert (Plumer), 80, 81, 82,
84, 119; Tremaine, 79; De Vere,
81
Warren, Samuel, 240
Waterloo, battle of : visits site of,
46,47
Webb, Philip Carteret, 32
Webster, Col., 204, 205
Wellesley, Lord, 202
Wellington, Duke of, 91, 130, 246,

247, 252, 256, 260, 263, 264, 268,
275, 303, 304, 328, 329, 335, 381,
386, 388 ; refuses formal permis
sion to dedication of The Revolu
tionary Epick, 246, 247; letter
to, 275; letters from, 247,
275
Westminster Club : membership of,
282
Westminster Review : on The Young
Duke, 134
Westmorland, Lady, 233
Wharncliffe, Lord, 302
What is He? 225, 226, 227
Wheeler, Mrs., 223
Whiggism, The Spirit of: pub
lished, 324-326
Wicklow, Lord, 304
Wieland's Agathon, 257, 258
Wilkinson, Sir Gardiner, 174
William IV., King, 260, 264, 278,
301, 329, 368, 371
Williams, 145
Willis, N. P., 249
Wilton, Lady, 344
Wilton, Lord, 247, 256, 303
Wolff, Lucien, 6, 87
Woolbeding, 379
Worcester, Marquis of, 255
Wright, 63, 65, 66
Wycombe Sentinel, 220
Wyndham, Sir William, 218, 219,
221
Yanina, 158, 161
York, 63
Young, Tom, 368
Young Duke, The, 176: published,
123-135
Zante, 164

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ago. His .ntention was that they should serve for material for a memoir which
he intended to write, and it is doubtful whether he ever contemplated their
appearance in their present form.
" It is this, perhaps, that renders them of such absorbing interest. They
are so intensely human. They give evidence of the gift of humor, with which
but few people credited the prince when he was alive, and they show him to
have been a man of rare breadth of mind and of freedom from prejudice.
Perhaps this was due in a measure to the exalted character of his birth. For,
whereas Bismarck belonged to the petty Prussian nobility, Prince Clovis Ho
henlohe was a scion of one of the former sovereign houses of Europe, and re
lated as such to most of the reigning dynasties of the Old World." — New
York Tribune.
" It presents a capital portrait of the early development of a true patriot
and able statesman, whose clear insight and firmness of purpose are percepti
ble even in the earliest years of his career, a picture of a man who began to
dream in youth the dream of German unity, and who remained faithful to his
ideal, and served it steadfastly till its realization. . . .
" Bismarck looms large in the second volume, as he is destined to loom in
all the memoirs of biographies still to come ofthe Germany of the second half
of the last century, and, unfortunately, the impression one receives of the per
sonality and character of this man of genius grows more unfavorable with each
new revelation. Hohenlohe's report of the Emperor's account of his final rup
ture with his grandfather's chancellor is still too fresh in the mind of every
American newspaper reader to need repetition here, but throughout this sec
ond volume there are glimpses of a man of imperious intolerance of all pow
ers besides his own, capable of descending to the pettiest meannesses, swayed
by the smallest jealousies. Prince Hohenlohe, whose revelation of himself in
these memoirs shows him to have combined a strong pride of birth with a
sane liberalism of statesmanship, asserts that the dream of a 'Bismarck dy
nasty ' was very real." — Independent.
"The unexpectedness of the Hohenlohe Memoirs is almost as refreshing
in France as in Germany. They are not ordinary memoirs, but rather tell
tale impressions of persons and things in the Third French Republic as they
were felt by a keenly sensitive, highly trained, and experienced observer. No
one ever dreamed that the spare-framed, brick-complexioned German ambas
sador, disinterested rather than distinguished, sitting silent for the most part,
with lack-lustre eyes and head leaning boredly over the right shoulder, was
taking interior notes of the passing show, to be transcribed by night with dis
concerting frankness and left to be printed." — New York Evening Post.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

Rambling Recollections
By the Rt. Hon. Sir HENRY DRUMMOND WOLFF,
G.C.B., G.C.M.G.
Two volumes Cloth 8vo $7.50 net
"The most valuable parts of the book are those chapters devoted to the
British administration of the Ionian islands; the account of Wolffs interviews
with a number of the prominent European statesmen just prior to the Con
gress of Berlin of 1878; the description of the organization of East Rumelia,
pursuant to the treaty formulated by that Congress, and the story of the insti
gation of the treaty with Turkey, upon which is based the legality of Eng
land's present anomalous position in Egypt. Of great interest also are the
personal impressions of the Franco-Prussian War, and the detailed account of
Lytton's strange interest in occult phenomena, to which he gave expression
in ' Zanoni,' and in some of his other novels." — New York Times.
" Sir Henry Drummond Wolff's volume is interesting in another way. It
is crammed full of anecdotes of all kinds of people in all kinds of circles —
religious, diplomatic, parliamentary, social, literary. The work corroborates
the statements often made that Sir Henry is a raconteur par excellence, while
it also proves him to be a first-class diplomatist, with a fine memory and a
keen eye and ear. He has many stories of his work and experiences in Mad
rid, Roumania, Egypt, France, and America, as well as of his House of Com
mons period. Here is a tale about the future Lord Beaconsfield : Mr. Dis
raeli used generally to walk home from the House of Commons, usually in the
society of Lord Henry Lennox. One night, rather late, I was in the neigh
borhood of Whitehall as the house was breaking up, and I met Mr. Disraeli
alone. He asked me to accompany him, and we canvassed the prospects of
the government. I said to him, as there was some talk of the government
resigning, 'I suppose you will be prime minister.' He answered, 'In the ex
traordinary course of things.' " — Chicago Record-Herald.
Life of Lord Randolph Churchill
Two volumes Cloth i2mo Illustrated $g.oo net
"These two volumes form the stormy record of a stormy life. That they
should be more or less partisan was to be expected, that they should be more
or less colored by personal prejudice was also certain, yet they are on the
whole a fairer and more comprehensive consideration of the man and his
work than could have been written by any one else. They form a permanent
addition to political history, and they prove that Mr. Winston Churchill is a
worthy member ofhis distinguished family." — Boston Evening Transcript.
" Disraeli had great faith in the possibilities of Lord Randolph as a young
man. He gave the Fourth Party movement his approval at the outset. Per
haps he sympathized with any other man who undertook again what he had
so triumphantly accomplished, the remaking of the Tory party by bringing it
in touch with democracy. . . . His weakness as a statesman was an in
ability to act along with others. He offended Queen Victoria, he alienated
Lord Salisbury, and he quarreled with his intimate political associates. But
he saw clearly, and he predicted the fast-approaching time when labor laws will
be made by labor interest for the advantage of labor. These volumes are the
record of the most splendid failure in the political history of England." —
Philadelphia Press.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

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