Benjamin Disraeli, an unconventional biography
Meynell, Wilfrid, 1852-1948
^4 CL 4- '-♦ "•'^■^"^ «.' '(f' .-^^^ •'^ *»tnL'. V • 1 ,r« ^"Ik a.' 5.^ •'■JX^^/k" •<?'« c'* *■ K^^°^ <^^ * O B 0 ^'^^^^^ V %^ 7, "vi>«3' ,^Ct^^- BENJAMIx DISRAELI U^iiK *^'. ^C- BENJAMIN DISRAELI AN UNCONVENTIONAL BIOGRAPHY BY WILFRID MEYNELL WITH FOI^Y ILLUSTRATIONS, INCLUDING TWO PHOTOGRAVURE PLATES NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY MCMIII A^ ^ n HE LrBhArt> Of ^ S* 7- ^ <5 COPTKIGHT, 1903, BT D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Published November, 1903 DEDICATION TO WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT, OF CBABBET PARK, SUSSEX, AND SHEYKH OBEYD, CAIRO: COSMOPOLITAN Dear Blunt,— A dedication is an author* s per- quisite: more acceptable than even the check of his spendthrift publisher. For this uncovenanted page ceded to the scribbler is his to cede again; twice blessed is he to receive and to bestow. Shelley ^ with his nosegay to give, cried, "Oh, to whom?" But already his heart well knew the destination. I, for my part, with this bunch of Primroses to give, thrust it in quick fancy first toward this friendly hand, then toward that. Indeed, the formula of dedication seems ready made: "To the most severe of critics" {as she is in all that concerns Dizzy), ""but a Perfect Wife." And there are, as we know, names of other ladies that suffice of themselves to make a dull page shine. Yet among these I look in vain for a Dizzy r DEDICATION worshiper so devout as you: ungrateful they to their fastidious admirer; and failing in that ampler faculty of worship allowed them by our Seoc with a generosity suspiciously ungrudging. True, the townsman who brings to you his Primroses, risks bringing you those, staled, that were freshly gath- ered in your own Sussex copses; nor am I sanguine enough to hope, in placing your name on the fore- head of my book, that its pages will tell you of Disraeli aught that you do not already know, and that we have not dwelt upon together. But there are auguries, for all that, in favor of this conjunction of his name and yours. You, like him, have loved the Arab, man and horse; and it is my faith that had you lived of old in Egypt, you, vexing the souls of Pharaohs, would have solaced and shortened the captivity of the Children of Israel — Disraelis own fathers. "Egypt for the Egyp- tians" on your lips had then meant ''Let this people go!" And I recall the time when, even in our Island, and under Hanoverians, you, a Poet, pursued the fickle jade Politics, enamored of her in England, in Ireland, in Egypt; enduring sorrow for her sake, yet not living happily with her ever after. Disraeli, on the other hand, paramount in Parliament, was hooted from Parnassus. The pleasure of the antith- esis tempts me to make allusion to this one failure of his in a career that otherwise reconciles, over the range of romance, and to the very verge of miracle, vi DEDICATION faith with fulfilment^ purpose with achievement^ wish with accomplishment, dream with daily reality. Believe me,, dear Blunt, Ever devotedly yours in Dizzy, Wilfrid Meynell Palace Court House, W., September^ 1903. Vll PREFACE Disraeli the Man — Disraeli as son, brother, husband, friend — is the theme of this book. It is an informal study of Temperament; in its way, and in his own words, "A Psychological Romance." A record of his public acts — not here attempted, except so far as those acts illustrate his personality — would be nothing short of a History of the reign of Victoria. Our England was, indeed, his chess-board; and I take for granted in the reader, or dispense with it, an acquaintance with the progress and issue of the game, of the detailed moves of his pawns, his knights, his bishops, his Queen even. What I have striven to make evident is the motive that informed the hand — not the hand of an automaton. Of his multitude of speeches — (hardly one of them all but is redeemed from the dominant dulness of Hansard by some flash of individuality in phrase or thought) — I cite only those that help to elucidate his human story; and the same may be said of the million words he contributed to our Fiction with a Purpose. With that Purpose I am much concerned; hardly at all with the placing of Disraeli as a Man of Letters. Yon Angeli, when he painted the Minister, said he ix PREFACE never saw Ms face, he saw only a mask; and Millais, at the end, produced a corse. That seeming mask was indeed an honest face — that of an onlooker, so unper- turbed and so unimpassioned that he never made a grimace, and in public was seen by one long watcher to smile but twice. I fail if the reader does not in these pages make of that mask a familiar, most friendly, and true countenance; if that corse does not show animation. Yet the writer of the North on this Disraeli of the South must equally fail in his effect who, giving motive to the Sphinx, does not leave him a Sphinx still. The man of mystery, the man who thought, loved, suffered more than he said or wrote or looked, must still remain. If, as the poet dreams, a gem is hard and fixed in proportion to the rapidity of its "interparticled vibration," so, too, the immo- bility of Disraeli was the expression of a thousand activities only too quick, too varied, to be caught by the casual eye. The legend of Disraeli the Adventurer is here sub- mitted to that test before which legends in general lapse; and with the common result. The consistency, even the pertinacity, of his political aims can be traced, as a Gulf Stream, through changing tides of the nation's mutable politics, more definite, more cohesive than they, but of a different impulse, of a more tempered quality; not always understood even when appreciated and felt. Less of an Opportunist (which every English statesman, being the servant as well as the leader of public opinion, may honorably PREFACE be) than the many among his contemporaries, or than his great Antagonist most of all, Disraeli did not easily take the party label. Hence he had his early adventures at the polls. But the crude representa- tion that he was first a Radical and then a Tory to serve the day's purpose, and in defiance of his own fixed individuality — that rude legend, repeated to this very day in Memoirs that will carry, if uncorrected, false weight with posterity as the evidence of Dis- raeli's contemporaries — dies hard. Contributory an- ecdotage, such as that about an early and implicating membership of the Reform Club, has been traced to its sources; and the base smaller coinage in daily currency is here similarly nailed to the counter at which Disraeli long traded for the nation — with such excellent profits, whether in the case of Suez Canal shares, or a Piero della Francesca for the National Gallery. The volubility hitherto has been all on the side of Disraeli's less than friendly critics; and with the statement that he placed the Crucifixion in the reign of Augustus, we are asked to t6st his capacity as historian; and are told that he once thought the Andes the world's highest mountains — and that is his own highest measure in geography. If the task of freeing Disraeli from some of the myths that obscure his true story has fallen to one who is not a con- ventional member of a political party, the result, it is hoped, will not be less welcome to all "true blue" Dizzyites, "true blue" at least in the sense in which xi PREFACE R. L. Stevenson proclaimed himself a "true blne'^ Mereditliian. In Disraeli's case, emphatically, the style was the man. His own acts have a close relation to his own words; and, as he said, so he did, them. As far as may be, therefore, I have left him to tell his own tale. Lucky is the biographer for whom Disraeli's always self-revealing novels exist; and the classic Biography of Lord George Bentinck; and the Home Letters, shrewd as Walpole's, yet unlike his, since they are lighted and warmed at the constant fires of a son's and a brother's love. Accordingly, too, I have gath- ered together Disraeli's letters — some published al- ready in scattered papers and books, others here for the first time. To these are added the spoken word — Table^Talk^the Table of Grosvenor Gate and Down- ing Street, of Bradenham and Hughenden, and that of the Carlton Club smoking-room; even that Table of the House itself, which he once felt relieved to find safely separating him from certain gesticulating oratory Of the opposing Front Bench. The book then, in its plan, is something of a novelty; therefore, too, something of an experiment. It is a cross-breed — I would hope a serviceable one — between biography and autobiography. The text, as it were, is Disraeli's, and mine the commentary; yet in the commentary too shall be found enough of Dis- raeli to give th^ salt, and to atone for any apparent disprbportibh of space occupied by text and com- mentaryj page for ^ag6. The method adopted has at xii PREFACE least one large advantage. It imposes less strain on the reader than a more continuous and disquisitive narrative demands. Themes treated with brevity have at least brevity to commend them. They gain in point what they miss in amplification; moreover, the obvious fitness of the subdivisions — the rightness of the paragraph form for the matter under treat- ment^— must, I think, preserve the friendly reader frotn any feeling that he is being fed upon hasty scraps, i ; My thanks go to those whose friendly help has at times rendered simple for me an otherwise com- plicated task: to the Duke of Rutland, last left of the Young England leaders, for interesting facts about the birth of the party; to the Duke of Devon- shire, to Lady Betty Balfour, to Lord George Hamil- ton, and to Sir William Harcourt, for verifications which only they could furnish. For delightful remi- niscences of Disraeli, their guest, I thank Lady La- mington and Constance, Countess De la Warr — the bearer of a name long endeared to Disraeli. A daugh- ter of that House, who became, in succession, Lady Salisbury and Lady Derby, the step-mother of one of Disraeli's colleagues in the Cabinet and the wife of another, was his "admirable hostess" at Hatfield in 1851 ; and, "quite a Sackville" in her "great simplicity," was his report of her. Still farther back, in 1843 Dis- raeli was interested to meet at Deepdene "a Young Oxonian, full of Young England," and Mr. John Eve- lyn of Wotton — for it was he — has favored me with xiii PREFACE his vivid memories of what occurred on that evening sixty years ago. To the Rev. James Weller and Lady Marion Weller, I am indebted for the intimate Dis- raeli letter addressed to Lady Marion's mother, the Marchioness of Ely. I thank others among Disraeli's favored correspondents, including Lady Dorothy Ne- vill; and, as her husband's representative, Edith, Countess of Lytton. Henniker Heaton, M.P., and to Mr. S. T. Meynell, among the rest. Not one of these has, however, a shred of responsibility for the contents of this book; least of all for any passages of it in which their own names occur. To the former biographers of Disraeli the author has elsewhere made acknowledgments; and it remains for him now to give his thanks to the firms of pub- lishers to whom he has found himself especially, even if not formally, indebted — particularly Mr. John Mur- ray, Messrs. Longmans & Co., and Messrs. Constable & Co., names that are closely associated, in one way and another, with Disraeli's own. XIV CHRONOLOGY OF DISRAELI'S LIFE December 21, 1804. Born in London; son of Isaac D'Israeli, author of " Curiosities of Literature " and other books. 1826. Pubhshed "Vivian Grey," a novel. 1830. Pubhshed "The Young Duke/' a novel. 1831. Having begun his career as a Radical, he became a candi- date for Parliament, but was defeated. 1832. Published " Contarini Fleming," a novel. 1835. Having become a Tory, he was rejected as a candidate for Parliament from Taunton. 1836. Published "Henrietta Temple," a novel. 1837. Elected a member of Parliament from Maidstone. His first speech in Parliament having been received with derision, he closed abruptly by saying, " I shall sit down now, but the time is coming when you will hear me." 1839- Married the widow of Wyndham Lewis. 1842. Became the leader of the " Young England " Party, opposing Sir Robert Peel and the repeal of the Corn Laws. 1844. Published " Coningsby," a novel. 1 846. Elected to Parliament from Buckinghamshire, which he con- tinued to represent for many years. 1848. On the death of Lord George Bentinck became leader of the Protectionist Party in the House of Commons. 1852. Became Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative Ministry of Lord Derby, holding the place for nine months. 1853. Resumed his place as leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. 1858. Appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the new Con- servative Derby-Disraeli Ministry. 1 XV CHRONOLOGY OF DISRAELI'S LIFE 1859. Introduced a bill for Parliamentary Reform^ which the House of Commons rejected. He then resigned. 1 866. The Electoral Reform Bill of Lord John Russell and Glad- stone^ which Mr. Disraeli had bitterly opposed, having been defeated, the Liberal Ministers resigned, and the Conservatives formed a new cabinet in which Disraeli was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He also became leader of the House of Commons, and, except Lord Derby, the Prime Minister, rose to the most conspicuous place in the Ministry. 1867. Became the principal author and manager of the New Reform Bill, which extended the rights of suffrage to every householder in a borough. The bill became a law in this year and enfranchised nearly a million persons, mostly working men. 1868- Lord Derby having resigned as Prime Minister, Disraeli succeeded him in that office. He opposed Gladstone's resolutions for the disestablishment of the Irish (Episco- pal) Church, but the resolutions were adopted by a ma- jority of 64. Although thus defeated, he decided not to resign until after the general elections had been held, some months later. In those elections the Liberal Party secured a large majority and Disraeli resigned, Glad- stone becoming Prime Minister. 1870. Published "Lothair," a novel. 1873. Chosen Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. 1874. Chosen Prime Minister again. He held the office until 1880. Among the incidents of his Ministry were the creation of the title "Empress of India " for the Queen, the establishment of a "scientific frontier" between Afghanistan and Central Asia, the acquisition of Cyprus, the subjugation of the Zulus, and the " Peace with Honor " results of the Russo-Turkish war as determined at Berlin. 1880. Published "Endymion," a novel. 1881. Died in London, April 19. XVI CONTENTS BOOK I HIS TALK FROM YOUTH TO OLD AGE PAGE Of his Birthplace 3 Of his School Days 4 Of Dinners 17 Of his Youth 23 Of " CoNTARiNi Fleming " ,25 Of his Name 32 Of his Maiden Speech .35 Of his Married Life 50 Of Chartism 62 Of his " Splendid Failure " . 65 Of Sport and Politics 77 Of Robes of Office 86 Of " Peace with Honor " 107 Of Men and Books . , 119 Op Hughenden Church 129 Of Gladstone 146 Of his Amusements , . . . . 151 Of his Last Days 157 BOOK II HIS LETTERS, BOOKS, AND PUBLIC LIFE Early Travels and III Health 175 Sarah Disraeli, his Sister 184 Bulwer-Lytton as his Best Friend . . ; . . ■ . . 187 xyii CONTENTS PAGE Clubs and Clubs . . 199 Daniel O'Connell 204 The Home of his Youth 250 Lady Blessington 252 A Quarrel with his Uncle . . , . o , . . . 264  Best Friends 381 A Man of Devon 392 The Woman of the " The Lady of Shalott " 402 Lives of him " Infamous Libels " 416 Tennyson 425 Carlyle 435 Berespord Hope . . . , 443 Minister and Cardinal 455 — ■ " A Broken Spirit " 461 Gladstone 463 Isaac D'Israeli 470 " I Love the Queen " . . . ' 488 The Queen's Favorite Minister • . . . 498 — Index 515 XVlll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli. After the painting by Sir Francis Grant. Birthplace of Benjamin Disraeli No. 6 King^s Road, Gray's Inn, now 22 Theobalds Road, Disraeli's School-room at Dr. Cogan's Dr. Cogan's School at Walthamstow Where Disraeli was educated, 1817-1820. No. 6 Bloomsburt Square .... The residence of the Disraeli family, 1817-1829. Benjamin Disraeli From the portrait by D. Maclise, R. A., 1828. Benjamin Disraeli From the portrait by Count -D' Orsay, 18SU, The Author of " Vivian Grey ". By Daniel Maclise, R. A. Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli. Mart Anne Disraeli, Viscountess Beaconsfield From, the portrait at Hughenden Manor. Mary Anne Disraeli, Viscountess Beaconsfield From the portrait by A. E. Chalon, R. A., 18U0. Grosvenor Gate, now 29 Park Lane. Disraeli's town residence, 1839-1872. Benjamin Disraeli At the date of his first becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer. No. 10 Downing Street, Whitehall. Disraeli's official residence, 187U-18S0. The Prime Minister's Room, 10 Downing Street Showing Disraeli's desk and chair. The Church at Hughenden Showing the Disraeli vault, beneath the window on the right. No. 19 CuRZON Street, Mayfair. The hotise which was taken by Disraeli in 1880, and in which he d. xix Frontispiece . 13 ' . 20 . 36 34 53 \ 60 63 86 " 94 - 110 128^ 148 • 153 ed in 1881. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE The Earl of Wilton shows Dizzy the Belvoir Hounds, 1869 . 156 ' The Earl of Beaconsfield, K.-G. 170 Frovi a photograph taken in the 'seventies. The Disraeli Vault at Hughenden 330 "^ Showing the wreaths deposited there after the funeral of Lord Beaconsfield. Bradenham House, Bucks 336 The residence of the Disraeli family, 1829-18U9. The Dining-room at Bradenham House 350 The Yew-tree Walk, Bradenham 354 " A favorite walk of Disraeli's while writing "Sybil." Benjamin Disraeli 393 ^ From a photograph taken in the 'sixties. Lord Beaconsfield 306 A From a photograph taken in the 'seventies. i Lord Beaconsfield 318 ^ After the portrait by Sir J. E. Millais, Bart., R. A., in the possession of the Hon. W. F. Danvers Smith, M. P., the sittings for which were interrupted by Lord Beaconsfield' s last illness. The Monument in Westminster Abbey 333 Designed by Sir Edgar Boehm, R. A. The Monument in the Guildhall 363 / Designed by Richard Belt, 1882. The Monument in Parliament Square 376 Designed by M. Raggi. Lord Beaconsfield, 1879 404 " The statue by Lord Ronald Gower in the National Portrait Gallery. Lord Beaconsfield 416 ^ From a carved ivory cameo presented by Queen Victoria to her Lady of the Bedchamber, Jane, Marchioness of Ely. Lord Beaconsfield 433 From (he bust by Sir Edgar Boehm at Windsor Castle. A Group at Hughenden 444 Hughenden Manor, Bucks 458 The residence of Disraeli, 1SU9-1S81. Disraeli's Writing-room at Hughenden ...... 466 -^ Showing family portraits over the mantel-piece. The Drawing-room at Hughenden Manor 473 Isaac D'Israeli 478 After a portrait by Drummond, 1798. XX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Isaac D'Israeli 482 Froin a drawing hy D. Maolise, It. A. Monument to Isaac D'Israeli 486 Erected at Hughenden by Viscountess Beaconsfield, Memorial in Hughenden Church 510 Erected to lier Favorite Minister hy Queen Victoria. FACSIMILES PAGE Letter to a Reviewer of " Sybil " 345 — Letter to Montagu Scott 39;^ (^ Letter to A. J. Beresford Hope facing 454 -^ Letter to the Marchioness of Ely 489 ^^ XXI BOOK I HIS TALK FROM YOUTH TO OLD AGE < BIRTHPLACE OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI. No. 6 King's Road, Gray's Inn, now 22 Theobalds Road, BOOK I HIS TALK FROM YOUTH TO OLD AGE Disraeli, asked by Lord Barrington where he was born, replied: "That is not generally known. I was His born in the Adelphi, and I may say in a birthplace. library. My father was not rich when he married. He took a suite of apartments in the Adelphi, and as he possessed a large collection of books, all the rooms were covered with them, includ- ing that in which I was born." Disraeli did not here speak as an eye- or ear-wit- ness. His birthplace was No. 6 King's Road, Gray's Inn, now 22 Theobald's Road. If Lord Barrington ac- curately caught his words (where a slight confusion might easily occur between the Adelphi and King's Road, the Disraelis having removed from one to the other just before Benjamin's birth), then Disraeli him- self shared what is now known without any doubt to be a popular delusion about his birthplace. This un- lucky trip of Talk comes pat at the outset of these Dis- raeli sayings, if only to illustrate warningly the du- biety always attending the heard and the recollected word, where ear and memory are constantly detected traitors, with no ill intent. "Born in a library" had left mere topography out of court; and would, stand- ing alone, illustrate a particular Disraelian quality of speech by which the narrowing of a phrase or 3 BENJAMIN DISRAELI boundary — here from a district to a room — actually expands it into something elemental and universal. When, for another example, he places the announcing of her accession to Queen Victoria "in a palace in a garden," he transforms a tiny spot into something larger than Kensington or than London, giving it a more generous dimension, and charging it with world- wide and all-time romance. Disraeli, above all others, had the trick of this veritable multum in parvo of speech. "I can wait." To Edward Jones, a schoolfellow of Disraeli's at Mr. Potticary's school at Blackheath, he Schools and addressed in boyish good-nature these schoolfellows, -^ords — words which his life for some years yet was to illustrate. Jones and Disraeli had been friends at home. Jones's father, a surgeon, had attended Mrs. Isaac Disraeli in the time of her trouble when Sara was born; and, later, a consultation, this time about schools, and with Disraeli the Elder as prescriber, resulted in the Jones boy's going to the Blackheath academy where Ben, aged still under ten, was already numbered among the pupils. An elder boy, still too young to have graduated in the school of patience, does not always welcome the advent of a junior who is a family acquaintance; but Mr. Potti- cary's new pupil was in fortune. So he thought then; and still thought with gratitude long years after- ward. Grown old in the ministry of the Church of England, he looked back three-quarters of a century and wrote: "When my father took me to school, he 4 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLFELLOWS handed me over to Ben, as he always called him. I 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, illus- trating them with rough pencil-sketches. 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." "I can wait," said the boy Disraeli, to whom "all things" came, that the proverb might be fulfilled. All the same, both here at Blackheath and, later, at Dr. Cogan's school at Walthamstow, Disraeli, though he waited, burned. We get at his mood by the description of school life he gave later in his novels; and it is precisely because he has invested these men in miniature with the passions and the pangs of adults that many schoolboys of ardent disposition will recog- nize in him their truest historian — boys like Heine who, at sight of a certain girl, fell into a swoon; or like Byron, who loved so consumedly at eight that he doubted (as we, too, may) whether he was ever really in love again. "We are too apt to believe that the character of a boy is easily read," wrote Disraeli, who did not forget, as most men do, their own boyish mysteriousness. "'Tis a mystery the most profound. Mark what blunders parents constantly make as to the nature of their own offspring, bred, too, under their eyes and displaying every hour their characteristics. The schoolboy, above all others, is not the simple being the 5 BENJAMIN DISRAELI world imagines. In that young bosom are often stir- ring passions as strong as our own, desires not less violent, a volition not less supreme. In that young bosom what burning love, what intense ambition, what avarice, what lust of power; envy that fiends might emulate, hate that man might fear." He might have added the word "cruelty" had he been condemned to a public school, Jew as he was by birth, and sensitive to all that affected his race. His father's proposal of Eton for him was vetoed by his mother, who thought of it, not very extravagantly, as a place where her Ben would be burned. As it was, he found in his very first school, emotional as the trial of his strength must have been to him, a field for his own powers of dominance. "The hour came," says Contarini Fleming, who more than any of his characters personates Disraeli, "and I was placed in the heart of a little and busy world. For the first time in my life I was surrounded by struggling and excited beings. Joy, hope, sorrow, ambition, craft, courage, wit, dulness, cowardice, beneficence, awkwardness, grace, avarice, generosity, wealth, poverty, beauty, hideousness, tyranny, suffer- ing, hypocrisy, truth, love, hatred, energy, inertness; these were all there, and all sounded and acted and moved about me." Once again we note the absence of "cruelty" from the long inventory. Nor does the boy find the novelty anything but exciting and developing: "As I gazed, a new principle rose up in my breast, and I perceived only beings whom I was determined 6 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLFELLOWS to control. They came up to me with a curious glance of half-suppressed glee, breathless and mocking. They asked me questions of gay nonsense with a serious voice and solemn look. I answered in their kind. Of a sudden I seemed endowed with new powers and blessed with the gift of tongues. I spoke to them with a levity w^hich was quite strange to me, a most un- natural ease. I even, in my turn, presented to them questions to which they found it difficult to respond. When they found that I was endowed with a pregnant and decided character, their eyes silently pronounced me a good fellow. My companions caught my unusual manner, they adopted my new phrases, they repeated my extraordinary apothegms." The child was here father indeed to the man; for these words, written five years before he entered Parliament, may well do double duty for schoolboy and for member of Parliament alike. If Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, Disraeli reached Westminster and the Cabinet by way of Blackheath and Walthamstow. "Everything," the prophetic tale proceeds, "was viewed and done according to the new tone I had in- troduced. A coterie of the congenial insensibly formed around me" — a Young England party betimes — "and my example gradually ruled the choice spirits of our world. I even mingled in their games, although I disliked the exertion, and in those in which the emu- lation was very strong I even excelled. It seemed that I was the soul of the school." The passage is suggestive. Had Disraeli gone to 7 BENJAMIN DISRAELI Eton, would he there, too, have controlled his fellows as he did later his fellow-legislators — "just Eton boys grown heavy," Praed calls them? If, on the contrary, they had molded him, we should have lost Disraeli. A public school or a university has a level to which, if some rise, others descend; it may war against many a town and village provinciality only to impress on its subjects a provinciality of its own — and one of a de- pressingly monotonous brand. There can be no gen- eral rule; for while the (anti-Disraelian) Duke of Argyll might have had his talents ripened and his temper sweetened by contact with equals, mankind must rejoice that Disraeli developed aloof — like Mere- dith, Eossetti, and Kipling — who, in a crowd, had been worse than cabined, crippled even. Disraeli was at Potticary's school at Blackheath between the years 1813 and 1817. From 1817 until 1820 he was a parlor-boarder at the school kept at Walthamstow by the Eev. Dr. Cogan, a retired Uni- tarian minister, who earned some sequestered reputa- tion as a Greek scholar, and whose theological views may be taken as some index of Isaac Disraeli's own. Cogan complained that he could never get the Disraeli boy to understand the subjunctive; nor had he much patience with an "if" in after life. His schoolfellows were the children of prosperous parents, sufficiently undistinguished in a worldly sense to point the satiric allusion in The Young Duke to the very select school kept by "the Eev. Dr. Coronel," who was "so extremely exclusive in his system that it was reported he had once refused the son of an Irish peer." Disraeli's com- 8 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLFELLOWS rades included E. J. Busk, who did well in later life at the Chancery Bar; Paget, the future Metropolitan Police magistrate; the sons of Baron Gurney, of whom more anon; Benjamin Travers (who kept him in coun- tenance with his "Christian" name); Gilbert Mac- murdo and Samuel Solly, F.R.S., known surgeons in their day; Sutton Sharpe, Q.C.; Samuel Sharpe, Egyp- tologist; and Daniel Sharpe, President of the Geo- logical Society and translator of the Zanthus inscrip- tions; while Richard and Henry Green, besides being shipbuilders at Blackwall, were, like so many of the later associates of Disraeli, philanthropists. All these Benjamins, Daniels, and Samuels notwithstand- ing, the school was not a Jewish one. At Disraeli's earlier school, at Blackheath, was a Jew called Ser- gius; and he and Disraeli (who was not then baptized) used to stand back when the other boys knelt down for prayer; a solitude of two again repeated when, once a week, a master attended to give the little Jews les- sons in Hebrew. How far he went in his Hebrew or in his Greek and Latin there is testimony at variance. The truth is that he continued the classics with a tutor after he left Cogan's, and he loved them in later life. Though he refused to speak French at the Berlin Conference, he was familiar with French literature to the end of his days. "By your account I have not changed since I was seven or eight years old." This was Disraeli's dry comment on a remark made to him (in the House of Commons when he took his seat in 1837) by a fellow- member — Hawes. 9 BENJAMIN DISRAELI "Do you remember," Hawes asked, "my taking you from school with the Gurneys and giving you a dinner? You are not altered." The reply seems to indicate that Hawes's manner was not ingratiating — possibly it was too obviously meant to be so. If Disraeli was willing to suffer fools gladly, let them at least be fools on his own side of the House: Hawes was on the other. When, there- fore, Hawes, quite in part, said, "We are all waiting for you to lash us" Disraeli's comment was : "They may wait." If he did not hustle others — "/ can wait" — he himself was not to be hustled — ^'Tou can wait." As he became a parlor-boarder at Dr. Cogan's at the age of thirteen and stayed till he was sixteen, the figures ("seven or eight") flung at Hawes were — well, figures of speech. Some people we all know whom we, serious, refuse to treat seriously. We can not waste on them the accuracy they can neither hand on to others nor return to us in kind; we would not concede to them that it was cold though the mercury was at zero; we prefer to tell them nothing; but if they force our tongue, we tell them nonsense — all which prepares a nice confusion for the gatherer and re- porter of sayings credibly repeated from mouth to mouth. "Before you can understand Pitt, you must understand Shelburne," Disraeli once said; and before you can interpret the sayings of Disraeli you must in some instances have an acquaintance with the char- acter of those to whom they were spoken. One of these four Gurney schoolfellows became well known as Russell Gurney, Q.C., Recorder of the 10 SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLFELLOWS City of London, and framer of that Public Worship Kegulation Bill which Disraeli offended High Church- men by sedulously supporting. To his widow Bays- water is indebted for the House of Eest fronting the Park from the burying-ground that holds the tomb of Sterne. This lady, who lived always in a state of religious exaltation, had a dream when she lost her husband. A bunch of fragrant wallflowers was held out to her; and these had grown on the wall of Death dividing him from her — an allegory that gave her com- fort. The son of another of these Gurney schoolfel- lows was the Kev. Alfred Gurney, a man of deep relig- ious feeling and the author of hymns that reach the rare confines of Poetry. Other boys besides Jones were Disraeli's friends in the holidays. The house in Bloomsbury Square was the scene of many juvenile entertainments. Mr. William Archer Shee, son of Sir Martin, President of the Koyal Academy, has the clearest memory of these functions, of which no invitation card remains to-day. "When I was a little boy, up to the age of ten or eleven," he recalls, "it was a great source of delight to me to go, at each returning Christmas, to the Juvenile parties which Mrs. Disraeli gave, and I used to meet Benjamin on these occasions. He was then in his teens, and at an age when a young fellow of seven- teen or eighteen had little in common with a young- ster of my age. He took little notice of the small fry around him, but walked about and dawdled through the quadrilles, in tight pantaloons, with his hands in his pockets, looking very pale, bored, and dissatisfied, 11 BENJAMIN DISRAELI and evidently wishing that we were all in bed. He looked like Gulliver among the Liliputians, suffering from chronic dyspepsia." These characteristic impressions of a younger boy^ rather interpreted by the bias of after-life, may be supplemented by a few extracts from a letter ad- dressed to me at random, after reading a newspaper article, by a lady who knew the Disraelis in the Bloomsbury Square era: "In the year 1828, when I was seventeen years of age, I became personally acquainted with Maclise, not much my senior. My family was intimate with the Dis- raelis; and it was through them that we knew Maclise. They had told us of a young artist who had lately come from Ireland, and who drew charmingly. . .. You say, 'Lord Beaconsfield put all his hopes in sis- ters.' And no wonder, with such a sister as he had. My elder sisters were about the same age as Miss Dis- raeli, and they were intimate friends, and, as a little boy, Mr. Disraeli would ask me to dance with him at children's parties, which I much appreciated. There was no old gentleman out of my family that I liked so much as old Mr. Disraeli, because he talked so kindly to me; and his youngest son, who died early, I also liked. My father died an admiral; he had been twice first lieutenant to Captain (afterward Admiral) Burney, brother to Madame DArblay, whose friend- ship he retained; and it was there my family, perhaps, got into a literary set. . . . My sister used to tell an amusing story of Benjamin. She was dancing with him at his father's house, and the subject of their con- 12 No. 6 BLOOMSBURY SQUARE. The residence of the Disraeli family, 1817-1829. I CONVERSATION versation was the novel of Vivian Grey, the name of the author of which had been so carefully suppressed. He was very amusing on the subject, but made no revelation. The next day it came out in the papers that he was the author." "Oh, my dear fellow, I can not really: the power of repartee has deserted me," was Disraeli's response when Bulwer, the host at an evening Conversation. party in 1832, asked him to be presented to Mrs. Gore. Society, Disraeli thought, was nothing if not amus- ing; conversation must be communication; by all laws of exchange the guest should give as well as take.^ He could not satisfy, nor even gratify, his social in- stinct by pushing through heated rooms, looking the whole world in the face, yet owing every man and woman of his acquaintance a coinage of the tongue. Disraeli thought stupid people should stay mostly at homie, and keep weird relations about dull weather and duller doings — for weird relations. Bulwer knew his man; and the presentation to Mrs. Gore, the be- ginning of a kind acquaintance between author and author, duly took place, Mrs. Norton and "L. E. L." ("the very personification of Brompton, pink satin dress and white satin shoes, red cheeks, snub nose, and hair a la Sappho") looking on. Mrs. Wyndham Lewis also was there, and put that good mark against him ' Yet how little "give and take" the most favored society may yield can be gathered from the confession of Monckton-Milnes, Lord Houghton : "I go out as much as I want and see plenty of clever and agreeable people ; but somehow or other get very little good of them." 13 BENJAMIN DISRAELI as a "silent" man — which must have well compensated him for the temporary failure of his "power of rep- artee." "Disraeli," Sir William Fraser says, "was fond of inserting little metaphors in his conversation. Dur- ing the last time he was Prime Minister, while a con- ference of importance was sitting on the Continent I met him in Pall Mall close to the War Oflflce. It was a bitter cold day; he had a white silk pocket-handker- chief tied, not around his throat, but over his chin: he appeared to be in the last stage of exhaustion. He stopped me; and after a few good-natured words said: 'Has the dove left the ark?' "I thought for a moment that it was some allusion to the olive-branch of peace, and replied: 'If you da not know, nobody else can.' "He said then: 'It's a dreadful thing for the country.' ' " 'Oh, you mean the floods. I beg your pardon.' "I felt that it was very kind of him to stop even for a minute on such a day; and said: 'We must not lose our Prime Minister.' "He said: 'Thank you for your kindness,' and walked on." "I do not care to be amused — I prefer to be in- terested." This was said by Disraeli to a friend and hostess who feared he had not been amused at her dinner-table. 14 CONVERSATION once written Capel. "What I like is an agreeable person." And Hugo Bohun adds: "My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me." "Well," said Miss Arundel, "as long as a person can talk agreeably I am satisfied. I think to talk well a rare gift — quite as rare as singing; and yet you expect every one to be able to talk, and very few to be able to sing." Disraeli's own early methods as a talker are not easily set out in a formula. He avoided platitudes in his own talk; and platitudes about talk in general do not touch him. The best description of him during his early period is the familiar one given by that naif American writer, Willis, whose initials, N. P., are not quite justly written Namby Pamby. 