W^Wf^^(^^^^^ 
 
 r\fMM^, 
 
 \A-. Qa /S v^ A A- 
 
 ^mmMmrrt&m 
 
 w.'snu^'/^'Si.'■ 
 
 ^ AAA A ^ ^ "'' rViSi'' ■ "^'^^^^/^^na^ 
 
 
 iDD^fV 
 
 • ■■■ ■'■ ' ■■"■■ r~ .-, - .^, ,^, ^'^ ,0> ^ 
 
 •^^ - ;::^ ^, 
 
 ; ' '-qAPY OF CON^^ESS. 
 
 ■i 
 
 life : ■ - 
 
 
 
 UHITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
 \f^F\i^f\r^m 
 
 A aaaaA/5A 
 
 Af^f^^i^ 
 
 ^fsf\f\f\rsfSf\i 
 
 ^Ar\AAAAAAr^' 
 
 ^^r^fy^^^ 
 
 '^/^PmfUsK, 
 
 ^m6f^f\K 
 
 fSf\^A 
 
 «,AA«.A^f ^AA/1 
 
, ' 11T>^\^ 
 
 ^; - • rs'^r\ ^ A A AA r\ A n n, A A 
 
 
 ^'^ft^^A 
 
 
 iS/^ft^-^ 
 
 f^l^^f^(^f>Ar\mt^mm 
 
 ^^0?^a^^Aaa.oW/ 
 
 
 nAAnno 
 
 ^^^^^A 
 
 ^^A^AAAA,^^! 
 
 "^Amm^f^N^^ 
 
 A aA A A 1 AA/^.A/ 
 
 
 
 '^AAAiA 
 
 Aaaaaa 
 
 '^^^f^/H^fm^ 
 
 ^f\fmM^^&^^^ 
 
 ^'J'^aaAaa 
 
 «'» AA:^ -^ 
 
 ',Ma'*W.C 
 
 ^MAa 
 
 ^C'^ 
 
 ^a/" 
 
 '^^^AMAA/^^^Ar^- 
 
[25 Cts 
 
 Appletons' 
 New Handy-Volume Series. 
 
 BEACONSFIELD 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 D. APPLETON & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. 
 
PPLETOSfe' 
 
 APPLETONS' 
 
 MW HAOY-YOLTJIE SERIES. 
 
 22 
 
 um^ I 
 
 VOfllWK ! BriUia*ii Novelettes : Rotnance, Ad7<enture, Travel, Humor ; Historic, 
 I Literary, and Society Monographs. 
 
 SERIES. : —. - - 
 
 The later developments of literary taste with American reader 
 indicate two tilings : /?rs^, a preference for compact and lucid out 
 lines of historic or literary periods, and for stories which, whil 
 within the compass of a single reading, shall have all the syn)nictr\ 
 the artistic treatment, the careful character-drawing, and the fresli 
 ness of incident, which mark the lengthier but scarcely more anibi 
 tious novel ; second^ a demand for books in a form to convenient and 
 handy that the volume may always be carried in the pocket, ready 
 for use on the train, on the steamboat, in the horse-car, at moments 
 snatched at twilight or bedtime, while sitting on the sea-phore or 
 rambling in the Avoods — at all periods of re.'^t or leisure, whether in 
 town or country. 
 
 In recognition of these preferences and needs, Appletons' New 
 Handy-Volume Series is projected. The books in this series a rp 
 of a size convenient for the pocket, and yet large enough to admii 
 of bold and handsome type in order that they may be perused with- 
 out fatigue, with that sense of restfulness and pleasure which well- 
 printed volumes alone confer. They will appear rapidly, in uniform 
 style, at low prices, and will draw (heir material from American, 
 English, and Continental sources, forming eventually a delightful li 
 brary, varied in character and fairly exhaustless in the retined cntci 
 tainment it will afford. Fiction necessarily predominates in th 
 plan, but it is designed to make the range of selection comprehen- 
 sive, so as to include works of every variety of theme, from old 
 authors as well as new, and attractive to students as well as £reneral 
 
 Beacons- 
 
 fGWlvE. 
 
 
 readers. 
 
 ♦*♦ Any volume in the series mailed post-paid to any address within tlie 
 United Stales, on receipt of the price. 
 
 D. APPLETOW & CO., 549 & 551 Broadway, New lork. 
 
DISRAELI IN 1830. 
 From a sketch hy the late D. Maclise, B. A. 
 
DISRAELI IN 1870. 
 From a sketch by Sir JoJin Gilbert. 
 
APPLETONS' NEW HANDY-VOLUME SERIES, r \J 
 
 BEACOJ^SFIELD. 
 
 BY 
 
 y 
 
 GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE. 
 
 
 KEW YOEK 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 549 AlO) 551 BEOADWAY. 
 
 1879. 
 
COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 D. APPLETON & COMPAJ^Y, 
 
 1878, 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 I. 
 
 " Me. Diseaeli," says a caustic English writer, 
 " has earned a place in history. To meet him in 
 the long roll of English prime-ministers is a per- 
 petual surprise, like that of encountering Saul 
 among the prophets. His premiership will be 
 one of the standing jokes of history, as amusing 
 to future students of the Victorian era as to us, 
 who have had the happiness to enjoy it at first 
 hand. It supplies the vein of comedy which runs 
 through a momentous epoch, as the frolics of Fal- 
 staff and Prince Henry lighten the intrigues and 
 wars of Shakespeare's chronicle plays. 
 
 "It is not likely to be forgotten, since what is 
 great often attracts attention less than what is 
 curious. Mr. Disraeli is a curious puzzle. No- 
 body ever mentions his name without a smile ; 
 nobody hears it without a corresponding smile. 
 It awakens that sense of incongruity in the per- 
 ception of which we are told that humor consists. 
 
4 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 Among the staid respectabilities of English poli- 
 tics, Mr. Disraeli is Fifine at court, or turned 
 duenna." 
 
 That there is such a thing as romance in poli- 
 tics, indeed, the career of him who is now Earl of 
 Beaconsfield, a Knight of the Garter, and Prime- 
 Minister of England, amply proves. That career 
 has been a thrilling, romantic drama, with its 
 " situations " and dmoHments, its coups de thed- 
 tre, its plots within plots, its sudden surprises, its 
 brilliant effects, its startling changes of scene, its 
 maze of mystery, and its final reward of " happi- 
 ness ever after," from first to last. What a con- 
 trast to the lives of most statesmen has been his 
 progress from the obscurity of a solicitor's cham- 
 bers, and the discouraging isolation of a Jewish 
 home, to the height of power and fame in the Brit- 
 ish Empire ! In tracing it we find ourselves little 
 worried by the dry details of figures and speech- 
 es ; by mere lists of measures carried and ofiices 
 attained ; by monotonous accounts of parliamen- 
 tary struggles, and alternate parliamentary victo- 
 ries and defeats. We are following the hero of 
 an absorbing story, whose achievements are never 
 dull, and who takes care never to let our interest 
 flag. He prepares for us perpetual puzzles to 
 solve. He springs unthought-of surprises upon 
 us. He snatches unexpected triumphs from the 
 very brink of humiliation, and, by a rapid succes- 
 sion of bold, brilliant, audacious strokes, unravels, 
 
BEACfONSFIELD. 5 
 
 like tlie consummate political magician he is, the 
 most tangled webs and most bewildering knots 
 of statecraft. 
 
 He is peculiarly the picturesque figure of the 
 politics of his age. The slow brain of the aver- 
 age Briton, who has been accustomed to hear of 
 Disraeli, and read his speeches and observe his 
 statecraft, for nearly forty years, has not yet done 
 wondering at the rapidity of his rise, the tenacity 
 of his hold on fame and power, and the secret of 
 the vast authority he wields over the great major- 
 ity of his countrymen. 
 
 Tenniel once represented Disraeli, in a strik- 
 ing sketch, as the Sphinx ; and it is, perhaps, part- 
 ly the Egyptian-like mystery of his character and- 
 actions that has so attracted, bewildered, and fas- 
 cinated the staid English people. His face is in- 
 scrutable ; to this day it is hard to define exactly 
 what are his opinions ; what he will do next is 
 always a query upon the lips of politicians, to 
 which there is no echo of an answer. 
 
 In one respect, indeed, the romantic tinge 
 which almost entirely colors Disraeli's character 
 and career has been to his disadvantage. People 
 are rather attracted to their picturesqueness than 
 to the real results of his statesmanship. They 
 are so intent upon waiting for coups cPetat and 
 brilliant surprises, that they fail to credit him 
 with such substantial triumphs of statesmanship 
 as he has achieved. 
 
6 BEAGONSFIELD. 
 
 " From the day when he filled an uncongenial 
 post in a solicitor's ofiice ; from the day when he 
 wrote novels and satires, which did something 
 more than amuse society, which added new treas- 
 ures to the literature of his country ; from the 
 day when he was one of that gay throng of wits 
 and fops of which he is now, alas ! almost the 
 last man left to us— Disraeli's life has been one 
 that deserves and will unquestionably receive the 
 study and the criticism of future generations. 
 
 "He was a man of mark before he entered 
 Parliament ; he had made himself a man of mark 
 —he, the obscure son of a man of the middle 
 class, foredoomed to the drudgery of conveyanc- 
 ing, was looked upon as a successful novelist and 
 social critic, at a time when the great rival, who 
 has pressed him so hard throughout his political 
 career, was still a youth at Oxford." 
 
 One great lesson of this amazing career is the 
 power of unterrified audacity and indomitable 
 pluck. From first to last, Disraeli has never been 
 known to shrink from a bold action, to hesitate 
 from timidity, to be dismayed by ridicule, to 
 flinch at the prospect of defeat, or to accept dis- 
 comfiture. His pertinacity and patience have at 
 all times kept pace with his ambition. 
 
 On one occasion, when he was a young man, 
 on the point of entering Parliament, Disraeli was 
 introduced to Lord Melbourne, then prime-minis- 
 ter. That genial and indolent statesman, hand- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 7 
 
 some, rubicund, with an aristocratic, aquiline 
 nose, and large blue eyes, tliat oftener twinkled 
 with fun than flashed mth fire, was struck with 
 his appearance, and deigned to chat with him fa- 
 miliarly. Turning to him with a smile, Lord 
 Melbourne said : " Well, Mr. Disraeli, what is 
 your idea in entering Parliament ? What is your 
 ambition ?" 
 
 " To be Prime-Minister of England, my lord ! " 
 
 This, from a man still very young, and only 
 known as a fashionable novelist and gay fop 
 about town, was the very sublimity of audacity ; 
 but it was said in earnest. Here at least he made 
 no secret of his towering ambition ; and the lofty 
 goal which, in entering political life, he had set 
 before himself, he kept in sight, and struggled 
 toward, with a grit and perseverance that never 
 were surpassed by any hero of history, until at 
 last he attained it. 
 
 To possess power, to wield influence — these 
 seem the grand aim of his personal aspira- 
 tions. Fond no doubt of pomp, glitter, title, the 
 applause of senates and multitudes, the favor of 
 sovereigns and the friendship of nobles and states- 
 men, the circumstances and ceremony of great oc- 
 casions, the outward splendors of high office, he 
 has yet always valued far more the sway of his 
 mind over other minds, and the authority of his 
 will over other wills. 
 
 "I am no cold-blooded philosopher," he ex- 
 
8 BEAOONSFIELD. 
 
 claims in " Vivian Grey " — and in " Vivian Grey/' 
 we cannot doubt, lie seeks to portray mucli of 
 himself — " that would despise that for which, in 
 my opinion, men — real men — should alone exist. 
 Power ! Oh, what sleepless nights ! what days 
 of hot anxiety ! what exertions of mind and 
 body ! what travel ! what hatred ! what fierce 
 encounters ! what dangers of all possible kinds, 
 would I not endure with a joyous spirit to gain 
 it!" 
 
 To him, as he looked forth confidently, boldly, 
 upon the difficult upward path which he was de- 
 termined to pursue, and at the top of which his 
 magnificent reward awaited him, it seemed that 
 the way to govern mankind was " a smile for a 
 friend, and a sneer for the world." 
 
 Looking in the mirror, and observing himself 
 mentally and physically, the strangely ambitious 
 youth, at but little over twenty-five, thus pictured 
 what he expected to be as soon as his new book 
 should win for himself a place in the esteem 
 of the fashionable world (he is describing the 
 Prime-Minister of Sweden in "Contarini Flem- 
 ing ") : 
 
 " The moment he entered society his thought- 
 ful face would break into a fascinating smile, and 
 he listened with interest to the tales of levity and 
 joined with readiness in each frivolous pursuit. 
 He was sumptuous in his habits, and was said to 
 be even voluptuary. . Perhaps he affected gallant- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 9 
 
 ry because he was deeply impressed with the in- 
 fluence of women both upon public and private 
 opinion. With them he was a universal favorite ; 
 and, as you beheld him assenting with conviction 
 to their gay or serious nonsense, and waving with 
 studied grace his perfumed handkerchief in his 
 delicately white and jeweled hand, you might 
 have supposed him for a moment a consummate 
 lord-chamberlain — ^but only for a moment, for, 
 had you caught his eye, you had withdrawn your 
 gaze with precipitation and perhaps with awe. 
 For the rest, he spoke all languages, never lost 
 his self-possession, and never displayed a spark of 
 strong feeling." 
 
 Already, while yet little more than a boy in 
 age, he was a deep, observing student of the 
 world around him, gauging the weaknesses of 
 men and women, the foibles by which they 
 might be led, the conduct which was to secure 
 admiration and submission to the power of his 
 genius. The motto which he placed on the title- 
 page of "Vivian Grey" was that by which, 
 through life, he has guided his acts and his ambi- 
 tion : 
 
 " "Why, then, the world's mine oyster, 
 Which I with sword will open." 
 
 What has added immensely to the romance 
 of this once obscure young man, meditating in 
 the solitude of Bloomsbury the capture of society, 
 
10 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 party, and power, has been the conspicuously 
 Oriental quality of Disraeli's character, tenden- 
 cies, and methods. He has been all the time a 
 magician from the East, conjuring amid the 
 broad-cloth civilization of the West. Proud to 
 excess of the ancient race whence he sprang, he 
 has derived from it a glowing imagination, a 
 fondness for the majesty and glory of effect, a 
 love of successes that are palpable, material, and 
 brillianl^. 
 
 To make the queen Empress of India was a 
 masterpiece of Oriental inspiration and display.. 
 
 It has been the result of a consummate art, 
 that this dreamer of Jewish greatness in the past, 
 and of Jewish glory in time to come, has been 
 able to mould the public opinion of the most pro- 
 saic and practical people of Europe to his sover- 
 eign will. He has almost constantly, indeed, ap- 
 peared in a dual character. ]N"o man could be 
 more English in his obstinate adherence to tradi- 
 tion, in his assertion of " a spirited foreign pol- 
 icy," in his devotion to the Established Church, 
 in his sympathies with land, custom, and privilege. 
 Yet, with all this, he has retained the full meas- 
 ure of his Oriental inspirations and enthusiasms, 
 and for the most part has appeared apart and 
 solitary, like one who was essentially separated by 
 instinct, feeling, and thought, from those by whom 
 he was surrounded. 
 
 It is surely one of the marvels of this age 
 
BEACONSFIELD. H 
 
 that he who declared, years ago, that " the slum- 
 ber of the East is more vital than the waking life 
 of the rest of the globe ; " who, by the mouth of 
 one of his heroes, said that it is only in Palestine 
 that " the Creator of the world speaks with men; " 
 who speaks of the " Venetian origin of the Brit- 
 ish Constitution ; " who has for forty years taken 
 every occasion to vaunt the superiority of the 
 Jewish over the Saxon race, and who once told a 
 nobleman of ancient descent that his (Disraeli's) 
 ancestors were great when the noble lord's ances- 
 tors were hinds and robbers, should have so com- 
 pletely conquered the English mind and heart as 
 to rule the empire for years with unquestioned 
 and unchallenged power ! 
 
 II. 
 
 In one respect, certainly, Disraeli is a "self- 
 made man." The son of Jews, bearing upon his 
 countenance and in his very name the indelible 
 stamp of his Hebrew origin, and having rooted 
 in his soul, and inevitably betraying by his mouth, 
 Hebrew ideas and traits, without great fortune, 
 forbidden by birth and blood the entree into high 
 society, it was far more difficult for him to con- 
 quer the deep and ancient prejudices of English- 
 men, and to rise to be their virtual ruler, than for 
 
13 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 the little-educated son of an American farmer, 
 like Jackson, a rail-splitter, like Lincoln, or a 
 tailor, like Andrew Johnson, to reach the presi- 
 dency. 
 
 Lord Truro, the son of a tradesman, was Lord 
 High Chancellor, and married a cousin of the 
 queen. Lord Tenterden, the son of a barber, be- 
 came Lord Chief-Justice of the King's Bench. 
 William H. Smith, once a newsboy, is First Lord 
 of the Admiralty, and will, no doubt, be a peer. 
 But these only had to overcome poverty, and to 
 struggle forward. Englishmen with Englishmen, 
 to the height that their talents and virtues merited. 
 
 Disraeli was heavy-weighted from the first, 
 with a burden from which no amount of wealth 
 could relieve him, and which no exhibition of 
 genius, however brilliant, could wholly put out 
 of sight. He made a prime-minister out of a 
 Jew, an earl out of a dandy, and a Knight of the 
 Garter out of a young radical whose first essay in 
 Parliament brought down upon him the crushing 
 ddicule of nearly every man who heard him. 
 
 But George Eliot, in one of her stories, has 
 said that a man of genius can only be accurately 
 estimated by knowing something about his pro- 
 genitors. While Disraeli has done much toward 
 " making " himself, he in fact inherited pure and 
 gentle blood ; and derived, without doubt, from 
 his Hebrew ancestors, the germs of the genius of 
 which he has made such conspicuous use. 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 13 
 
 Right proudly he has told the world that 
 there are Jews and Jews ; that of all the Jewish 
 castes, that of the Sephardim is the only caste 
 extant which can boast of gentle blood in all its 
 generations to the present time ; and that among 
 the few Sephardim still left on earth to maintain 
 the dignity and honor of their descent, is com- 
 prised his own family. 
 
 The Disraelis have been, in succession, Span- 
 ish Jews, Italian Jews, and English Jews ; and, 
 like Jews, they have been a race of wanderers. 
 Four centuries ago they were settled in Spain, 
 thriving as they could in trade, but much har- 
 assed, like all their brethren, by the proceedings 
 of the Holy Inquisition, which reserved its most 
 persistent persecutions and choicest tortures for 
 the people of Israel. At last one of them, having 
 his peril of the rack and the branding-iron visibly 
 brought home to him by the martyrdom of one 
 of his friends, gathered up his goods, and, after 
 many dangers and troubles, succeeded in escap- 
 ing to the then hospitable shores of the powerful 
 and flourishing Venetian Republic. 
 
 Hitherto, the family had borne another name ; 
 but the pious emigrant, who had thus fled from 
 the terrors of the Inquisition, now commemorated 
 that happy deliverance by assuming a new and 
 significant cognomen. " Grateful to the God of 
 Israel," says his famous descendant, "who had 
 sustained them through unprecedented trials, and 
 
14 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 guarded them througli unheard-of perils, lie as- 
 sumed the name of Disraeli, a name never borne 
 before or since by any other family, in order that 
 their race might be forever recognized." 
 
 For two centuries the Disraelis lived and 
 traded in peace under the then potent protection 
 of the lion of St. Mark ; not acquiring wealth, 
 indeed, as many Jews of their time did, but toil- 
 ing patiently on and living in comfort, and at 
 least assured of life and liberty. 
 
 Finally Benjamin, the grandfather of Lord 
 Beaconsfield, a more enterprising trader than his 
 fathers, a shrewd young fellow, who heard won- 
 derful stories of the ease with which fortunes 
 were to be made in London, and how the Jews 
 had begun to receive some installment of the 
 much-vaunted British freedom ; like all his race, 
 moreover, not averse to adventure and wander- 
 ing, emigrated from his soft native climate and 
 repaired to the foggy capital of the north, where 
 he settled down, and plodded thenceforth to the 
 end of his mortal career. 
 
 Step by step he rose until he became, first a 
 merchant of good repute for honesty and thrift, 
 then a well-to-do citizen ; and having attained 
 this position, toward middle life he got married. 
 
 It is a pleasing picture that the grandson 
 gives of his existence, after having made a for- 
 tune and a good name. 
 
 " He settled near Enfield," we are told, " where 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 15 
 
 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 his name, and a son who dis- 
 appointed 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, in the 
 full enjoyment of prolonged existence." 
 
 The old man must, indeed, have been much 
 tortured by the contempt with which his wife, 
 herself a Jewess, regarded his name and race. 
 She was seemingly a proud woman, who craved 
 good society, and was " so mortified by her social 
 position, that she lived until eighty without in- 
 dulging a tender expression." 
 
 Disraeli, while he has inherited some of his 
 grandfather's most salient traits — for the latter 
 was " a man of ardent character, sanguine, cou- 
 rageous, speculative, fortunate, with a temper 
 which no disappointment could disturb, and a 
 brain, amid reverses, full of resource " — certainly 
 did not derive from his grandmother her dislike 
 of her Jewish blood, and her detestation of the 
 ancient name. 
 
 She exhausted every art of persuasion in try- 
 ing to induce Benjamin the elder to abandon his 
 ancestral faith, and to embrace the tenets of the 
 
16 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 English Church ; but in this she did not succeed. 
 It is evident, indeed, that she was by no means 
 the mistress of her husband's will ; for their only- 
 child was named Isaac, as if to still preserve in 
 the family at least the Jewish memories of which 
 he was so proud. This Isaac was " the very op- 
 posite of his father ; a timid recluse, living among 
 his books, simple as Goldsmith, and learned as a 
 grammarian of the middle ages. His birth left 
 him without relations or family acquaintance." 
 
 According to his son, Isaac Disraeli " not only 
 never entered into the politics of the day, but he 
 could never understand them. He never was con- 
 nected with any body or set of men, comrades 
 of school or college, or confederates in that pub- 
 lic life which, in England, is perhaps the only 
 foundation of real friendship." 
 
 He began life by shocking his mercantile fa- 
 ther with his enthusiasm for Rousseau, his abhor- 
 rence of trade, and his penchant for books, to 
 which he took early, and to which he clung as 
 long as life lasted. 
 
 " He was a complete literary character, a man 
 who really passed his life in a library. Even 
 marriage produced no change in these habits. He 
 rose early to enter the chamber where he lived 
 alone with his books, and at night his lamp was ever 
 lit in the same walls. He disliked business, and 
 he never required relaxation ; he was absorbed in 
 his pursuits. In London his only amusement was 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 17 
 
 to ramble among booksellers ; if he entered a club 
 it was only to go into the library. In the coun- 
 try he scarcely ever left his room but to saunter 
 in abstraction upon a terrace, muse over a chap- 
 ter, or coin a sentence. He had not a single pas- 
 sion or prejudice." 
 
 He became, and continued through life indeed, 
 as dry and incorrigible an antiquarian, as diligent 
 a plodder among old tomes and manuscripts, vel- 
 lum-bound volumes and worm-eaten memoirs, as 
 the veriest Dryasdust that Oxford or Cambridge 
 contained in its cloisters. 
 
 But he was not dumb, gathering and not giv- 
 ing forth again. He published his chit-chat of 
 literary learning, and from his pen came, perhaps, 
 the quaintest books of the age in which he lived. 
 He told the world all about authors and the per- 
 sonal lore of letters ; pictured the habits, foibles, 
 eccentricities, the " curiosities," " amenities," and 
 " quarrels," of the genius irritahile. In fact, he 
 was the master of ceremonies of literature. His 
 books are not only still extant, but read and 
 quoted ; few libraries are without them ; and if 
 you will look into a copy of them, a portrait of 
 the genial old man, grown old, but still with a 
 round, cheerful, shining, and unmistakably Jewish 
 face, huge round spectacles upon his nose, having 
 the air rather of a social good liver than of a plod- 
 der in the gossip of literature, will look out upon 
 you from the frontispiece. 
 2 
 
18 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 Isaac Disraeli, flourisliing in ample competence^ 
 from the fair fortune left by his father, and the 
 goodly royalties that flowed in from the sale of 
 his books, lived to a green old age, gratified by 
 the friendship of many of the literary lights whom 
 he held in so healthy an awe and respect, and 
 surviving long enough to rejoice in the rising 
 promise of his son's genius. 
 
 In religious matters, Isaac, who was really a 
 believer in Rousseau and Voltaire, was indifferent 
 to his sect, and though he caused his little son 
 Benjamin, at an early age, to " be received into 
 the covenant of Abraham," he ended by causing 
 his own name to be erased from the list of the 
 contributing members of the synagogue. 
 
 When Benjamin had reached the age of twelve, 
 the poet Rogers, it is said, induced Isaac to con- 
 sent that the boy should be baptized in the Church 
 of England ; and this actually took place at St. 
 Andrew's, Holborn, July 31, 1817. 
 
 The early homes of Benjamin Disraeli are thus 
 described : 
 
 " The house at Enfield seems to have been given 
 up at an early date. Isaac Disraeli was one of the 
 most constant frequenters of the British Museum ; 
 and, for convenience of access, took a house, in or 
 about 1809, in the King's Road, Gray's Inn, then 
 an almost rural spot, and very different from the 
 crowded locality it has since become. Later on,, 
 in 1825, he removed to an estate which he had 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 19 
 
 bought at Bradenliam, in Bucks, and with that 
 event commenced the connection of his illustri- 
 ous son with the county which he has so aptly- 
 designated Hhe county of statesmen.' From 
 Bradenham House the prefaces to the early 
 works and election addresses of the younger Dis- 
 raeli were regularly dated, the removal to Hugh- 
 enden Manor not occurring till after his mar- 
 riage." 
 
 From his grandfather, then, Disraeli inherited 
 his pluck, his ardor, his courage and hopefulness, 
 his resource amid reverses, and his indomitable 
 serenity of temper ; from his father, that ardent 
 love of books and letters which inspired his early 
 triumphs, and which has lent grace and force to 
 his oratorical career. 
 
 But to one of his saMguiae and social tempera- 
 ment, his home must have been dull and tedious. 
 " Reared in a home of as absolute seclusion from 
 English society as if it had been placed in an island 
 of the Mediterranean, with occasional glimpses, 
 perhaps, at Enfield, of a strange society, more for- 
 eign than English, and more cosmopolitan than 
 either, the young Disraeli must early have felt 
 that strange sense of moral detachment from the 
 nation in which he has lived, and in which he has 
 attained the highest place, which is visible in his 
 ■writings and his career. In both homes, he must 
 soon have learned that his name and race placed 
 a certain barrier between him and the distinctions 
 
20 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 to which he aspired. They set him apart. He 
 was outside the English world." 
 
 The obstacles before him, however, were only 
 so many victories to be won ; and in the struggle 
 and conflict he found a thrilling and happy ex- 
 citement. 
 
 Isaac Disraeli was at least not too absorbed in 
 his tomes to discern early his boy's precocious 
 talent. He bestowed the greatest pains upon his 
 education ; sent him for a while to school at 
 Winchester and Walthamstowe ; infused into him 
 his own keen love of literature and literary pur- 
 suits ; saw with exceeding joy Benjamin's sunny 
 and elastic temperament ; hoped for a moment 
 that he might make a great lawyer of him, and 
 put him to drudgery in a solicitor's office — drud- 
 gery which the mercurial youth detested from the 
 first, and got rid of as soon as he could ; then, 
 despairing of his success in this direction, good- 
 naturedly allowing Benjamin to follow his own 
 erratic bent, and make his way, if he could, with 
 a tyro's pen. 
 
 III. 
 
 One day, suddenly, " Vivian Grey " burst upon 
 astonished society, and took it by storm. It found 
 its way at once to every drawing-room table. It 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 21 
 
 was the town talk at ministerial soirees, in the 
 lobbies of the House of Commons, at the Pall Mall 
 clubs. Great ladies asked each other if they had 
 read it ; wondered who wrote it ; guessed whom 
 the author meant to represent as the Marquis of 
 Carabas, and Lord Courtown, and Mr. Cleveland ; 
 and who was Vivian Grey himself. 
 
 It was a bulky book, in no less than five vol- 
 umes ; yet the first edition went off before the 
 publishers could issue a second ; those who could 
 not afford to purchase it flocked to the circulating 
 libraries to borrow it. 
 
 It was " a fashionable novel," and gave strange- 
 ly vivid pictures of high life, not without many a 
 sneer and sarcasm at high life's foibles, and boldly 
 professing to portray some of the leaders of poli- 
 tics and fashion under the thin disguise of ficti- 
 tious names. It was full of sounding maxims and 
 hot tirades ; and it sang loud paeans in praise of 
 power and authority. 
 
 Aristocratic critics pounced upon it, and de- 
 clared the picture " impudently false and out- 
 rageously absurd." People spoke of it as a strange 
 jumble of radical politics, fashionable chit-chat, 
 and original thought. 
 
 Then it leaked out that the author was not yet 
 twenty, and that he was that black-eyed, curly- 
 headed, flashily-dressed little Jew, the son of old 
 Disraeli, the bookworm. 
 
 Disraeli had made his plunge for the pearl of 
 
22 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 literary fame, and liad grasped it. In the musty 
 purlieu of the solicitor's office, instead of drawing 
 deeds of settlement and droning over authorities 
 on " mortmain," lie had been feverishly plying his 
 pen over his first novel ; had issued it, and it had 
 made " a hit." 
 
 It is said that, thus early, he had already con- 
 ceived the singular and original idea of mounting 
 in politics by a literary ladder. Addison had 
 risen to the secretaryship of state by the " Spec- 
 tator ; " Mat Prior had won a place in diplomacy ; 
 Sheridan had graduated from "The School for 
 Scandal " into the rank and fame of a great par- 
 liamentary orator ; Canning, in his own time, had 
 owed his earlier political progress to his pen. But 
 it was a new notion to make way in politics by 
 establishing a reputation as a fashionable novelist. 
 The result proved that it was as successful as it 
 was bold and unheard-of. 
 
 The hero of "Vivian Grey " is "a fast young 
 man in upper-class life — a brilliant, fashionable, 
 clever, sardonic, heartless, ambitious youth — pos- 
 sessed by an ardent craving for political intrigue, 
 and a keen desire for fame and power, to achieve 
 which he has no scruple about the means, employ- 
 ing tricks, falsities, and grand coups de theatre, 
 provided these will serve his purpose." 
 
 So immensely popular was it that not long 
 after it was published a " Key to Vivian Grey " 
 was issued, and ran through no less than ten edi- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 23 
 
 tions within a year. Then was it divulged to the 
 world whom the characters were really intended to 
 portray, over which the fashionable folk had been 
 torturing their brains for months. 
 
 " The studious father of the hero, who never 
 interfered in politics, and who ' hopes the urchin 
 will never scribble,' is, of course, sketched from 
 Isaac Disraeli ; while the son, educated at a pri- 
 vate school, and full of wit and cleverness, is also 
 undoubtedly designed, in the elements of his char- 
 acter, for the author himself." 
 
 In the crowd of figures who appear and disap- 
 pear in the pages of the story, we are able — ^thanks 
 to the " key " — to discern many of the most cele- 
 brated wits, politicians, and great ladies of the 
 era of " Gentleman George." Lord Brougham 
 struts and fumes as " Mr. Foaming Fudge ; " the 
 proud but dissolute Marquis of Clanricarde found 
 himself odiously caricatured as Carabas, whose 
 traits are really one of the chief satires of the 
 book ; that stout old Tory, Lord Eldon, poses as 
 " Lord Past Century ; " Mr. Canning is merciless- 
 ly ridiculed as " Mr. Charlatan Gas ; " Mrs. Coutts 
 is easily recognized under the pseudonym of " Mrs. 
 Million ; " Theodore Hook is pleasantly parodied 
 as " Stanislaus Hoax ; " Prince Esterhazy is seen 
 as " Prince Hungary ; " Lady Caroline Lamb re- 
 ceives the name of " Mrs. Felix Lorraine ; " in 
 " Prince Little Lilliput " it is not difficult to iden- 
 tify Prince Leopold, the uncle of the future queen. 
 
24 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 and afterward the wise and sagacious King of the 
 Belgians ; the sumptuous Marquis of Hertford, 
 whose revels in Regent's Park were then a scandal 
 even to a scandal-loving court, appears thinly dis- 
 guised as " Marquis of Grandgout ; " and Prince 
 Metternich, Austria's famous diplomat, masquer- 
 ades as " Beckendorf." 
 
 " Vivian Grey," in short, was conceived and 
 executed with the ambitious intent to capture a 
 reputation ; and so consummate was its art, so full 
 was it of thought, and wit, of vivacious conversa- 
 tion, so replete with incident, so charged with dar- 
 ing sarcasm, original, sparkling, and coherent, that 
 at one bound the young author rose to fame. 
 The admixture of the politics of the day was a 
 surprise ; the audacious delineation of men and 
 women actually living and in high places took 
 away the breath of the hon ton ; the strange and 
 radical doctrines, insidiously smuggled into the 
 very midst of the fashionable world, such as had 
 once before invaded another fashionable world, in 
 France, at the court of Louis XVI., just before the 
 Revolution : all these were so many shrewd strokes 
 to catch the public ear, and to set everybody to 
 wondering and guessing, to denouncing or prais- 
 ing or laughing at "Vivian Grey." 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 25 
 
 IV. 
 
 To "Disraeli tlie younger," as, witli filial 
 loyalty and sometliing, perhaps, of affectation, 
 he began to style himself, " Vivian Grey " was an 
 " open sesame " to high society. At first, people 
 stared and half sneered at this demi-plebeian 
 young Jew who could write such startling things ; 
 they did not more than half like him, though he 
 had so glib a tongue, such fine conversational wit, 
 and bore so graceful and easy a carriage in well- 
 bred circles. 
 
 Yet, he became the " fashion." He began to 
 appear, in gorgeous attire, and with all the self- 
 composure of an experienced man of the world, 
 in the much-frequented salons of those social 
 leaders who prided themselves on cultivating and 
 displaying the lions of the day. Everywhere he 
 went, he was the subject of admiring glances, and 
 the centre of interested groups. He saw with 
 joyous pride that his intellectual brilliancy was 
 confessed ; nor, perhaps, was he chagrined to ob- 
 serve that the confession had been extorted in- 
 stead of freely given. 
 
 To elbow dukes descended from the Conquest, 
 gartered earls and powerful ministers, popular 
 poets and famous men of wit and fashion, to be 
 listened to with pleased attention by the belles 
 and beauties of the West End, to evoke the 
 
26 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 laughter of brilliant companies by the sparkle of 
 his sallies and the sting of his satires, to find his 
 table covered with coroneted invitations, to be 
 sought for at all the social festivities and lit- 
 erary reunions of patrician London, was indeed 
 a triumph to the recently obscure student of 
 the law, and still almost beardless youth, in 
 which he did not care to conceal his pride and 
 delight. 
 
 It was a dazzling change, indeed, from the 
 dull monotony of Bloomsbury to the unceasing 
 gayety and movement of the West End ; and 
 " Disraeli the younger " drank freely and deeply 
 of the draught of reputation and popularity he 
 had won. 
 
 He bloomed forth, not only as a wit, but as a 
 dandy of dandies, a gallant, and a man of the 
 world. In dress, like a true Jew that he was, he 
 was ostentatious and conspicuous almost to vul- 
 garity. He joined clubs, frequented the stalls and 
 coulisses of the opera, paid his devotions to the 
 coquettish beauties of the day, rode in the park 
 at fashionable hours, and, wherever it was "the 
 thing " to show himself, there he was. 
 
 From one fashionable resort, in particular, he 
 was almost never absent. No sooner had he ap- 
 peared as a successful novelist than he attracted 
 the attention and won the favor and friendship 
 of the famous Countess of Blessington. 
 
 Lady Blessington occupied a somewhat pecu- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 27 
 
 liar position in London society. Of low birth and 
 Irish parentage, and with a not wholly unsullied 
 reputation, this fascinating and brilliant woman 
 had married, in his old age, the Earl of Blessing- 
 ton, who at once gave her, by reason of his rank 
 and wealth, a conspicuous social position. Of 
 this she availed herself to the utmost. She was 
 ambitious, lively, witty, strikingly handsome, en- 
 gaging, thoroughly good-natured, and lavishly 
 hospitable ; and her aspirations were speedily re- 
 warded by her achieving an unquestioned place as 
 a leader of fashion. 
 
 She did not, indeed, move in the highest cir- 
 cles of the nobility and the court ; yet great no- 
 bles and courtiers frequented her mansion. Gore 
 House. She loved, especially, to surround herself 
 with young and rising literary genius ; and her 
 salons were almost nightly crowded by young 
 poets, novelists, and politicians. 
 
 After Lord Blessington's death, her son-in-law, 
 Count d'Orsay, " the most splendid specimen of a 
 man," says I:^, P. Willis, " and well dressed one, 
 that I have ever seen," resided with her, and most 
 effectively aided her in dispensing the brilliant 
 hospitalities of Gore House. 
 
 Lady Blessington is graphically described by 
 Willis as being forty when he saw her, but look- 
 ing " something on the sunny side of thirty. Her 
 person is full, but preserves all the fineness of an 
 admirable shape ; her foot is not crowded in a 
 
28 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 fashionable slipper, and lier complexion is even of 
 a girlish delicacy and freshness. Her dress of 
 bine satin was cut low and folded across her 
 bosom, in a way to show to advantage the round 
 and sculpture-like curve and whiteness of a pair 
 of exquisite shoulders ; while her hair, dressed 
 close to her head, and parted simply on her fore- 
 head with a xiGhferronni^re of turquoise, enveloped 
 in clear outline a head with which it would be 
 difficult to find a fault. Her features are regular, 
 and her mouth, the most expressive of them, has 
 a full ripeness and freedom of play, peculiar to 
 the Irish physiognomy, and expressive of the 
 most unsuspicious good humor. Add to all this a 
 voice merry and sad by turns, but always musical, 
 and manners of the most unpretending elegance, 
 yet even more remarkable for their winning kind- 
 ness, and you have the most prominent traits of 
 one of the most lovely and fascinating women I 
 have ever seen." 
 
 Such was the friend that Disraeli won at the 
 outset of his society career, and who adhered to 
 him warmly as long as she lived, praising him and 
 petting him without stint, and eagerly defending 
 him from the sneers of his rivals and the sarcasms 
 of his enemies. 
 
 One who is still living, and who had the privi- 
 lege of frequenting Lady Blessington's drawing- 
 rooms when Disraeli was one of its young lions, 
 thus charmingly describes that celebrated resort 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 29 
 
 of London celebrities and wits, and Disraeli him- 
 self as he appeared there : 
 
 " It is the height of the London season some 
 forty years since, and we are standing in a long 
 library in Lady Blessington's mansion in Seamore 
 Place, whose sides are alternately covered with 
 rows of magnificently-bound books and gorgeous- 
 ly-framed mirrors. The window, which is deep 
 and runs the entire breadth of the room, opens 
 upon Hyde Park. We have before us a letter, 
 written by a gentleman at the time, describing his 
 introduction to Lady Blessington in this very 
 room, and from that letter we will venture to 
 quote : 
 
 " * The picture to my eye as the door opened 
 was a very lovely one : a woman of remarkable 
 beauty, half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, 
 reading by a magnificent lamp suspended from 
 the centre of the arched ceiling ; sofas, couch33, 
 ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded 
 sumptuousness through the room ; grand tables 
 covered with expensive and elegant trifles in every 
 corner; and a delicate white hand, relieved on the 
 back of a book, to which the eye was attracted by 
 the blaze of its diamond rings. As the servant 
 mentioned my name, she rose and gave me her 
 hand very cordially, and, a gentleman entering 
 immediately afterward, she presented me to Count 
 d^Orsay, the well-known Pelham of London.' 
 " There was no other room in Europe which 
 
30 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 could boast of witnessing more brilliant reunions 
 tban those wliicli were tben in the habit of fre- 
 quently assembling in that library in Seamore 
 Place. The salon glitters with stars, and is re- 
 splendent with orders of every kind. ISTot a na- 
 tion of the civilized world is without its repre- 
 sentative. There are foreign counts, who have 
 achieved eminence, and who speak every European 
 language ; attaches^ embassadors, and princes. 
 
 "There stands the greatest capitalist in the 
 world, the original, possibly, of Sidonia of *Con- 
 ingsby ' fame ; and there, in groups at intervals 
 round the apartment, are met together all that is 
 most eminent in every possible department and 
 kind of excellence and skill in England. 
 
 "Mr. Lytton Bulwer, who has just won his 
 spurs by his novel 'Pelham,' enters with an at- 
 tractive frankness, and is received with empresse- 
 ment by the noble hostess. That speaker yonder 
 with the merry eye and the Bacchus head is Tom 
 Moore, criticising the personnel of the English 
 House of Commons, and discussing the condition 
 of Ireland. ' The great period of Ireland's glory,' 
 you may hear him say, ' was between '82 and '98, 
 and it was a time when a man almost lived with 
 a pistol in his hand.' 
 
 " A volley of well-bred laughter draws your at- 
 tention to another portion of the room ; you look 
 up and you see Theodore Hook, the Lucian Gay 
 of ^Coningsby,' with his hand on Lord Canter- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 31 
 
 bury's sleeve, narrating the incidents of the last 
 practical joke, or expatiating upon the theme of 
 some new political squib for the Mcaminer. 
 
 "A little bit to the left you have Horace 
 Smith, one of the authors of * Rejected Addresses,' 
 playing rather an aside in the conversation, in- 
 terpolating a pun or a witticism whenever he gets 
 a chance, but more a listener than a talker. There 
 is a famous traveler just returned from Constanti- 
 nople ; and there, Henry Bulwer (the late Lord 
 Dalling) discussing with great earnestness the last 
 speech of Daniel O'Connell. 
 
 "Scattered about the room are such men as 
 Lord Lyndhurst, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Strang- 
 f ord. Sir Thomas Lawrence, Henry Luttrell — the 
 ' wit among lords, and the lord among wits ' — the 
 Hon. W. R. Spencer, and Captain Marryat. 
 
 " Two persons of different ages and different 
 api)earance, indeed, yet not without a strong mu- 
 tual resemblance of feature, enter, and remind us, 
 by the announcement of their names, that we have 
 already delayed too long over the preliminaries 
 of the subject of this article. 
 
 " The pair are Mr. Disraeli the elder and Mr. 
 Disraeli the younger ; and Lady Blessington re- 
 ceives them both with conspicuous welcome. 
 
 " It was only the other day that her ladyship 
 was mentioning to a visitor how delightful it was 
 to witness the old man's pride in his clever young 
 son, and the son's respect and affection for his 
 
3^ BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 father. Mr. Disraeli plre is just now engaged in 
 collecting materials for an exceedingly elaborate 
 and comprehensive * History of English Litera- 
 ture,' one of those books, unfortunately, which 
 are destined never to advance beyond the stage 
 of design. 
 
 " Mr. Disraeli fils^ Disraeli ' the younger,' as 
 you may read on the title-page of his new and 
 soon to be issued volume, has lately made a 
 triumphantly successful debut in the arena of au- 
 thorship. ' Vivian Grey ' is the talk of the town. 
 Who is the Marquis of Carabas ? Can it be pos- 
 sible that Lord Courtown is really Sir ? And 
 
 then, who are all the German duchy celebrities ? 
 And if it comes to that, who is Yivian Grey 
 himself ? These are questions which sapient Lon- 
 don is asking itself, and every day rejecting an- 
 swers by the score, or framing new ones which 
 are certain to meet a similar destiny of repudia- 
 tion to-morrow. 
 
 "Just at this moment we will not puzzle our- 
 selves with the interrogations as to who Mr. Vi- 
 vian Grey is or is not ; we may as well occupy 
 ourselves with taking some personal observations 
 as to the creator of Mr. Vivian Grey. And there 
 he stands — * Disraeli the younger,' He has taken 
 up his position in front of the hostess's mantel- 
 piece, and you may note the clever young man at 
 your leisure. 
 
 " Every one is looking at him to-night ; for 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 33 
 
 Mr. Benjamin Disraeli has made a sensation, and 
 sensation is what society loves, and of whose au- 
 thor it invariably makes a hero. It is possible 
 that if we were to project ourselves somewhat for- 
 ward in the course of time, and to glance at the 
 costume of Mr. Benjamin Disraeli by the light of 
 some ridiculously-advanced date in the world's 
 history, say a. d. 1878, if our island is not by 
 that time sunk deep in the sea's profound, we 
 should pronounce it a trifle peculiar, antiquated 
 perhaps. 
 
 " The coat is the coat of any ordinary civilian 
 of the times, but not the waistcoat — a marvelous 
 vest, in truth, gleaming in the wax-lights with its 
 splendid embroidery of gorgeous gold flowers. 
 Add to these, patent-leather pumps, a white stick 
 with a black cord and tassel, and a mysterious 
 complication of gold chains in the region of his 
 neck and pockets — and you have a faithful pic- 
 ture of Disraeli the younger, author of 'Vivian 
 Grey' and 'Contarini Fleming, a Psychological 
 Autobiography.' " 
 
 Lady Blessii^gtoi^, sitting in her luxurious 
 drawing-room in 1835, and chatting in her cor- 
 dial, enthusiastic, whole-souled way with her new 
 3 
 
^4: BEAOONSFIELD. 
 
 American acquaintance, IsT. P. Willis, is talking 
 of literary people, and asks him : 
 
 " Do you know the Disraelis in America ? " 
 
 "We do, indeed; 'Curiosities of Literature,' 
 by the father, and ' Vivian Grey,' by the son, are 
 universally known." 
 
 "I am pleased at that, too, for I like them 
 both. Disraeli the elder, with his son, came here 
 the other night. It would have delighted you to 
 see the old man's pride in him. He is very fond 
 of him, and as he was going away, he patted him 
 on the head, and said to me, 'Take care of him. 
 Lady Blessington, for my sake. He is a clever 
 lad, but he wants ballast. I am glad he has the 
 honor to know you, for you will check him some- 
 times when I am away.' Disraeli the elder lives 
 in the country, about twenty miles from town, 
 and seldom comes up to London. He is a very 
 plain old man in his manners, as plain as his son 
 is the reverse. Disraeli the younger is quite his 
 own character of Vivian Grey, crowded with tal- 
 ent, but very soigneux of his curls, and a bit of a 
 coxcomb. There is no reserve about him, how- 
 ever, and he is the onlj Joyous dandy I ever saw." 
 
 The American looker-on in London was soon, 
 thanks to Lady Blessington's hospitality, to have 
 an opportunity to judge of the brilliant young au- 
 thor and fop for himself. 
 
 " I dined," he says, " at Lady Blessington's, in 
 company with several authors, three or four noble- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 35 
 
 men, and an exquisite or two. The authors were 
 Bulwer, the novelist, and his brother, the statist ; 
 Proctor (better known as ' Barry Cornwall ') ; Dis- 
 raeli, the author of ' Vivian Grey ; ' and Fon- 
 blanque, of the Examiner. The principal noble- 
 man was the Earl of Durham, and the prin- 
 cipal exquisite (though the word scarcely ap- 
 plies to the magnificent scale on which Nature 
 made him, and on which he made himself) was 
 Count d'Orsay. There were plates for twelve. 
 
 " Disraeli had arrived before me, and sat in the 
 deep window, looking out upon Hyde Park, with 
 the last rays of daylight reflected from the gor- 
 geous gold flowers of a splendidly embroidered 
 waistcoat. 
 
 " Disraeli has one of the most remarkable faces 
 I ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the 
 energy of his action and the strength of his lungs, 
 would seem a victim to consumption. His eye 
 is as black as Erebus, and has the most mock- 
 ing, lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. 
 His mouth is alive with a kind of working and 
 impatient nervousness, and when he bursts forth, 
 as he does constantly, with a partially successful 
 cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of tri- 
 umphant scorn that would be worthy of a Mephis- 
 topheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste 
 in waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black 
 ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to his col- 
 larless stock, while on the right temple it is parted 
 
36 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 and put away with the smooth carelessness of a 
 girl's, and shines most unctuously 
 
 'With thy incomparable oil, Macassar ! ' " 
 
 The conversation on this occasion turned on 
 new books, and a volume on Italy by Beckford, 
 the friend of Byron, who " has luxuriated in every 
 country with the fancy of a poet and the refined 
 splendor of a Sybarite," was vivaciously dis- 
 cussed. 
 
 " Disraeli was the only one at the table who 
 knew him, and the style in which he gave a sketch 
 of his habits and manners was worthy of himself. 
 I might as well attempt to gather up the foam of 
 the sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary 
 language in which he clothed his- description. 
 There were, at least, five words in every sentence 
 that must have been very much astonished at the 
 use they were put to, and yet no others, apparent- 
 ly, could so well have conveyed his idea. Dis- 
 raeli talked like a race-horse approaching the win- 
 ning-post, every muscle in action, and the utmost 
 energy of expression flung out in every burst. It 
 is a great pity he is not in Parliament. It ap- 
 peared, from Disraeli's account, that Beckford is 
 a splendid egotist, determined to free life as much 
 as possible from its usual fetters, and to enjoy it 
 to the highest degree of which his genius, backed 
 by an immense fortune, is capable." 
 
 From Beckford the chit-chat passed to Yic- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 37 
 
 tor Hugo, then looming up brilliantly as novelist, 
 dramatist, and poet. This awoke Disraeli's en- 
 thusiasm, and, " fired with his own eloquence, he 
 started off, dpropos de hottes, with a long story of 
 impalement he had seen in Upper Egypt. It was 
 as good, and perhaps as authentic, as the descrip- 
 tion of the chow-chow-tow in ' Vivian Grey.' He 
 had arrived from Cairo on the third day after the 
 man was transfixed by two stakes from hip to 
 shoulder, and he was still alive ! Then followed 
 the sufferer's history, with a score of murders and 
 barbarities, heaped together like Martin's 'Feast 
 of Belshazzar,' with a mixture of horror and splen- 
 dor, that was un]3aralleled in my experience of 
 improvisation. No mystic priest of the Cory- 
 bantes could have worked himself up into a finer 
 frenzy of language." 
 
 When the ladies retired from the dining-room, 
 and the gentlemen were left to themselves with 
 their champagne and port, the talk turned, as it is 
 quite apt to do, on the politics of the day. Dan- 
 iel O'Connell was then a very conspicuous figure 
 in the House. 
 
 " Disraeli's lips were playing on the edge of a 
 champagne glass, which he had just drained, and 
 off he shot again, with a description of an inter- 
 view he had had with the agitator the day before, 
 ending in a story of an Irish di*agoon who was 
 killed in the Peninsula. His name was Sarsfield. 
 Disraeli told how his arm was shot off, and he was 
 
38 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 bleeding to death. When told that he couM not 
 live, he called for a large silver goblet, out of 
 which he usually drank his claret. He held it to 
 the gushing artery and filled it to the brim with 
 blood, looked at it a moment, turned it out slowly 
 upon the ground, muttered to himself, ^If that 
 had been shed for old Ireland ! ' and expired. 
 You can have no idea how thrillingly this little 
 story was told. Fonblanque, however, who is a 
 cold political satirist, could see nothing in a man's 
 * decanting his claret ' that was in the least sub- 
 lime, and so Vivian Grey got into a passion, 
 and for a while was silent. 
 
 "Slidell, the American, was spoken of, when 
 Disraeli cried out, ' Slidell ! I owe him two-pence, 
 by Jove ! ' And he went on to relate how, sitting 
 next to Mr. Slidell at a bull-fight at Seville, he 
 wanted to buy a fan to keep off the flies, and hav- 
 ing nothing but doubloons in his pocket, Mr. Sli- 
 dell lent him a small Spanish coin to that value, 
 which he owed him to this day. 
 
 ^^ Apj^opos to this, Disraeli gave a description, 
 in a gorgeous, burlesque, galloping style, of a 
 Spanish bull-fight ; and when we were nearly dead 
 with laughing, some one made a move, and we 
 went up to Lady Blessington in the drawing-room. 
 Lord Durham requested her ladyship to introduce 
 him particularly to Disraeli — the effect of his elo- 
 quence." 
 
 On another occasion, at Lady Blessington's, 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 39 
 
 Disraeli made " a splendid defense " of Tom 
 Moore's indifference to criticism ; and in tlie 
 course of a brilliant conversation "flared up," 
 as a dandy would say, " immediately," on the sub- 
 ject of Platonism. 
 
 "His wild, black eyes glistened, and his ner- 
 vous lips quivered and poured out eloquence ; and 
 a German professor, who had entered late, and the 
 Russian charg^ cVaffaires, who had entered later, 
 and a whole ottomanful of noble exquisites, lis- 
 tened with wonder. Disraeli gave us an account 
 of Taylor, almost the last of the celebrated Plato- 
 nists, who worshiped Jupiter in a back parlor in 
 London a few years ago, with undoubted sincerity. 
 He had an altar, Disraeli said, and a brazen figure 
 of the Thunderer, and performed his devotions 
 as regularly as the most pious sacerdos of the 
 ancients. In his old age he was turned out of the 
 lodgings he had occupied for a great number of 
 years, and went to a friend in much distress to 
 complain of the injustice. He had ' only attempt- 
 ed to worship his gods according to the dictates 
 of his conscience.' * Did you pay your bills ? ' 
 asked his friend. * Certainly.' ' Then what is the 
 reason ? ' * His landlady had taken offense at 
 his sacrificing a bull to Jupiter in his back par- 
 lor.' 
 
 " The story sounded very Yivian-Grey-ish, and 
 everybody laughed at it as a very good invention ; 
 but Disraeli quoted his father as his authority, 
 
40 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 and it may appear in the ' Curiosities of Litera- 
 ture,' where, however, it will never be so well 
 told as by the extraordinary creature from whom 
 we had heard it." 
 
 Crabb Robinson used to see Disraeli at Lady 
 Blessington's in those flourishing days of his so- 
 ciety heroism. His first meeting with him is thus 
 described in his autobiography : 
 
 " At Lady Blessington's, after tea. With her 
 were D'Orsay, Dr. Lardner, Trelawney, Edward 
 Bulwer. A stranger, whose conversation interest- 
 ed and pleased me, I found to be young Disraeli. 
 He talked with spirit of German literature. He 
 spoke of Landor's ' Satire ' as having no satire in 
 it. The chat was an amusing one." 
 
 From these pleasant glimpses of Disraeli as he 
 appeared among fashionable people and at literary 
 dinners, we perceive his brilliant talent for conver- 
 sation ; his wit, and admirably dramatic way of 
 telling a story ; his quick criticism of the books of 
 the day ; his knowledge of, and insight into, the 
 conspicuous figures before the public ; his enthu- 
 siasm, joyousness, and vivacity. By such quali- 
 ties, he established himself in the circles to which 
 he had aspired, and to which " Vivian Grey " had 
 given him an entrance. 
 
BEACO^SFIELD. 41 
 
 VI. 
 
 This pet of polite society, dazzling in dress 
 and speech, full of talk and wit and self-confi- 
 dence, seemingly plunged in all the dissipations 
 and distractions of the hour, had, however, an- 
 other side to his habits and character. 
 
 He was a fashionable fop of the di-awing-room ; 
 he was also an intense and enthusiastic worker in 
 his study at home. The success of " Yivian Grey " 
 had fired all his ambition ; he was eager to win 
 new laurels, to pass on to new literary victories. 
 His faith in his own powers was limitless ; he had 
 leaped at a bound to the side of Bulwer and Scott 
 as a claimant for popular favor ; he would rival 
 Swift as a satirist. All the while, he kept his 
 political aspirations in full view. He had his eye 
 already on St. Stephen's, and imagined himself 
 thrilling " the House " with his bold antitheses and 
 glowing periods. 
 
 It was whispered in the clubs, " Young Disraeli 
 actually wants to get into Parliament ; " and the 
 young politicians laughed scornfully, while the 
 old stared and rolled up their eyes in amazement 
 at such iTuparalleled audacity. 
 
 As suddenly as " Vivian Grey " had burst upon 
 the town, " The Voyage of Caj)tain Popanilla " 
 made its appearance, and set the gossiping tongues 
 of the West End once more wagging. It was in- 
 
4:2 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 tended to be a modern " Gulliver," and to thin- 
 ly disguise a bold and brilliant, yet good-natured, 
 satire on the political and social follies of the day. 
 
 The scene of this satire was laid in " the isle 
 of Fantasie," which meant Ireland, and that of 
 " Yraibleusia " (" True-Blue " island), which stood 
 for England, the capital of the latter being " Hub- 
 babub," or London. 
 
 While thus reveling in his social popularity 
 and literary conceits, Disraeli felt one longing 
 which he could not repress. From earliest youth 
 he had listened with eagerness to his father's 
 praises of their ancient Jewish race. He had 
 heard with pride its many noble traditions ; had 
 been thrilled with its career of glory and power ; 
 had read with the most absorbing interest the his- 
 tory of its greatness, its empire, and its misfor- 
 tunes. 
 
 To be a Jew seemed to him to be the truest 
 and purest aristocrat extant. The contempt and 
 scorn which the English felt for the Jews only 
 made him the prouder of his blood. 
 
 And now that, in his own person, he had con- 
 quered the aversion of good society, at least so 
 far as himself was concerned ; now that he had 
 found a vocation and succeeded in it ; now that, 
 what with the royalties pouring in from "Vi- 
 vian Grey " and " Popanilla," and the indulgence 
 of a kind old father, who, tickled out of his 
 equanimity by the youth's success, opened his 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 43 
 
 purse freely to liim, he found himself in ample 
 funds, he resolved at last to feed his eyes and 
 his imagination upon those wondrous lands of the 
 Orient which were the scenes of the Jewish strug- 
 gles, deeds, and grandeur. 
 
 He started forth on a long journey, in com- 
 pany with his sister, and a Mr. Meredith, to whom 
 his sister was betrothed. He went to Constanti- 
 nople, and in the city of the emperors and the 
 sultans spent a long, dreamy, delightful winter. 
 Little, perhaps, did he then imagine that, years 
 after, he would be the arbiter of the destinies of 
 that fair, strange city, " at once beautiful and 
 hideous," that " human bazaar of all nations, cos- 
 tumes, customs, physiognomies," the metropolis 
 of three continents, the citadel that guards the 
 watery portal where Europe meets Asia. 
 
 Thence he traveled with delight over many 
 of the picturesque and romantic places of the 
 East. He went to Albania, and there observed 
 the singular and primitive customs of one of the 
 most heroic people under Ottoman rule ; then 
 hastened eagerly to Syria, the land of his fathers, 
 and the cradle of his race, where his glowing 
 imagination found ample food, and where he 
 stored his mind with facts and thoughts that 
 imprinted their traces on all his subsequent liter- 
 ary works ; explored Egypt and the Upper Nile ; 
 went thence to Jerusalem, where "he nearly lost 
 his life in an attempt to penetrate the Mosque of 
 
44 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 Omar ; " sailed along tlie lovely coast of tlie 
 Adriatic ; delved into the grand antiquities of 
 Rome ; dreamed and wandered among the gor- 
 geous ruins of the Alhambra ; and on the historic 
 plain of Troy conceived his "Revolutionary 
 Epic," in which he sought to celebrate the great 
 revolutionists of modern times, from Robespierre 
 to John Frost. After nearly two years of wan- 
 dering, he returned home, full to overflowing 
 with new ideas and enthusiastic fancies, with 
 which to concoct for the world fresh literary sur- 
 prises. His first publication after his return was 
 " The Young Duke," written very hastily, and the 
 poorest of his novels, though it has some power- 
 ful passages. 
 
 Full to the brim of the dreams inspired by 
 his travels in the Orient, he soon finished a tale 
 which he had begun " under the deep shadow of 
 Eastern tradition and romance " — " The Won- 
 drous Tale of Alroy." 
 
 This romance, as one of his biographers says, 
 " the critics universally hailed as a damning proof 
 of the young author's literary lunacy. The book 
 was beautifully written ; yet it was an exhibition 
 of romance run mad, which no elegances of style 
 could redeem. Wild, incongruous, and raving, it 
 was laughed at unmercifully ; and for a writer to 
 be laughed at in England, when he means to be 
 serious — every one knows what the fate of that 
 writer is. But Disraeli had pluck in him, and he 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 45 
 
 recovered himself in time, but not before he had 
 perpetrated several other literary absurdities of 
 an extraordinary kind." 
 
 " Alroy " is thus somewhat differently judged 
 and graphically described by an American writer 
 in Appletons^ Journal for May, 1870 : 
 
 " It is an Oriental romance of the twelfth cen- 
 tury, founded on the extraordinary adventures of 
 David Alroy, a Hebrew prince of the house of 
 David, who claimed to be Messiah, and excited 
 an insurrection of the Jews against the Seljukian 
 rulers of the decaying caliphate. Its historical 
 foundation is probably very slight ; but, as a 
 clramatic picture of Eastern manners, character, 
 and scenery, of Hebrew belief, Hebrew super- 
 stitions, and Hebrew aspirations, it has very high 
 value. 
 
 " The passionate and picturesque elements of 
 Oriental life, the strange vicissitudes, the rapid 
 revolutions, the barbaric magnificence, the pro- 
 digious pomp, the incredible successes, the over- 
 whelming disasters of Oriental history, are de- 
 picted in the most glowing and graceful style, 
 with singular boldness and warmth, and yet with 
 consummate tact and delicacy. Warriors and 
 priests, merchants and robbers, kings and cour- 
 tiers, fanatics and intriguers, fair princesses and 
 inspired prophetesses, are brought upon the scene 
 in the most vivid and animated manner. 
 
 *'The scenery of the desert, of the mighty 
 
46 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 mountain-range of Elburz, of tlie fair and fertile 
 plains of the Tigris, the life of the harem, of the 
 court of the caliph, of the camp of the bandit and 
 of the soldier, are described with a versatile power 
 not surpassed in literature, and sufficient of itself 
 to entitle the author to very high rank as a poet. 
 The supernatural element, so consonant with the 
 traditions of the Hebrews and the genius of the 
 East, is introduced freely, and always with artis- 
 tic skill and striking effect. 
 
 " Among the many powerfully drawn charac- 
 ters of the romance, we have space only to allude 
 to the subtle and accomplished Honain, one of 
 the most original and refined creations in the 
 whole range of English fiction. 
 
 " In the profundity of its conception, and the 
 rare and delicate genius of its execution, ^ Alroy ' 
 rises above the common herd of novels, and takes 
 rank with the few great poems of the world. It 
 has to be studied, to be justly appreciated in its 
 full scope and purpose, and will, we are confident, 
 when better known, attain eventually an endur- 
 ing fame." 
 
 " The Wondrous Tale of Alroy " was not the 
 only book he had begun while on his travels. He 
 published, about the same time with this, " Con- 
 tarini Fleming, a Psychological Autobiography," 
 which, he says in his preface, "was written with 
 great care, after deep meditation, in a beautiful 
 and distant land, favorable* to composition. The 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 47 
 
 author," lie goes on, "proposed to himself, in 
 writing this work, a subject that has ever been 
 held one of the most difficult and refined, and 
 which is virgin in the imaginative literature of 
 every country, namely, the development and for- 
 mation of the literary character." 
 
 " Contarini Fleming " was welcomed at once 
 with salvos of applause and a din of critical de- 
 nunciation. Disraeli's purpose was achieved — to 
 sustain and spread his fame, and keep himself 
 before the public, the talk of the drawing-rooms 
 and the clubs. But in the book, says Smiles, 
 " there was the same flashiness and force [as in 
 * Vivian Grey '], the same dashing satire and ex- 
 aggerated character, the same self -portraiture, the 
 same desire to astonish people, and take them, as 
 it were, by storm. And yet, withal, the book was 
 full of brilliant writing and captivating imagery ; 
 and, though the taste that dictated it was often 
 false, the thoughts are generally striking, and the 
 language chaste, elegant, and classical." 
 
 Of this novel the writer in Apijletons^ has well 
 said I " ^ Contarini Fleming ' is assuredly one of 
 the most perfect of English novels. It is a great 
 prose poem, in conception, in tone, in characters, 
 in incidents, in style. Contarini himself, in all his 
 moods and mental struggles, is admirably de- 
 picted. The conflict between his Venetian nature 
 and his Swedish position, ' the combination that 
 connected in one being Scandinavia and the South, 
 
48 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 and made tlie image of a distant and most roman- 
 tic city continually act upon a nervous tempera- 
 ment, surrounded by the snows and forests of the 
 North,' is finely conceived, and very happily car- 
 ried out. Its successful execution was doubtless 
 in great part due to the fact that the author wrote, 
 riot entirely from imagination, but from the vivid 
 consciousness of his own refined and subtile Ori- 
 ental and Italian nature, immersed in the chill 
 atmosphere of prosaic England. 
 
 " The style of the book is worthy of the theme. 
 It is animated and graceful, rich and melodious, 
 though it may be a little too ornate for critical 
 taste. The conversations are vivacious and easy, 
 and the descriptions of scenery and of countries 
 and cities, in which it abounds, singularly fine and 
 effective, though brief. Its descriptions of Venice, 
 of Florence, of Pisa, of Spain, Constantinople, Asia 
 Minor, and Egypt, have never been surpassed in 
 equal compass." 
 
 " I published ' Contarini Fleming ' anonymous- 
 ly," says Disraeli, " and in the midst of a revolu- 
 tion. Gradually it found sympathizing readers ; 
 Goethe and Beckf ord were impelled to communi- 
 cate their unsolicited opinions of it to its anony- 
 mous author, and I have since seen a criticism of 
 it by Heine, of which any writer might be justly 
 proud." 
 
 Aspiring to the laurels of a poet, Disraeli now 
 plied his pen zealously in the production of a 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 49 
 
 " Revolutionary Epic ; " and, to challenge tlie 
 verdict of the public, issued in 1834 the first 
 part of it before completing the rest. It was 
 for the poet, he said, to embody in his verse 
 the spirit of his time. The heroic period had its 
 " Iliad ; " conquering Rome its political epic, the 
 " ^neid ; " the Italian Renaissance, " The Divine 
 Comedy;" the Reformation, "Paradise Lost." 
 The spirit of Jiis time was revolutionary. He 
 says in his preface : " Is the revolution of France 
 a less important event than the siege of Troy? 
 Is I^J'apoleon a less interesting character than 
 Achilles ? " " For me," he declares, with character- 
 istic audacity, " remains the revolutionary epic." 
 
 ISTever, indeed, did young author more frankly 
 and publicly plume himself upon his all-powerful 
 genius than "Disraeli the younger," when he 
 serenely posed as the Homer, the Yirgil, the 
 Dante, the Milton, of his time and age ! " What- 
 ever may be the public's decision," he placidly 
 says in his preface, "I shall bow to it without a 
 murmur. For I am not one who finds consolation 
 for the neglect of my contemporaries in the im- 
 aginary plaudits of a more sympathetic posterity. 
 The public, then, will decide whether this work is 
 to be continued and completed ; and, if it pass in 
 the negative, I shall without a pang hurl my lyre 
 to limbo." 
 
 The verdict of the public was indifference. 
 Very few saw the book, of which only fifty copies 
 4 
 
50 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 were printed for the first edition. Disraeli smil- 
 ingly bowed Ms submission, and quietly aban- 
 doned his Homeric aspiration. 
 
 Several years elapsed before he gave his next 
 romance to the world. He had begun to take an 
 active part in politics ; he was much distracted by 
 social engagements ; and he had begun to so far 
 cool in his youthful ardor as to perceive that it 
 would need time and reflection, as well as enthu- 
 siasm, to acquire an enduring literary fame. 
 
 " Henrietta Temple," which followed those of 
 which we have spoken at an interval of three 
 years, is, as says the writer in Appletons\ " a love- 
 story, pure and simple, and a very charming one. 
 Its heroine, who gives name to the novel, is one 
 of those exquisitely gracious and refined women 
 whom Disraeli loves to depict, and who are no- 
 where found in greater perfection than in his 
 pages. It contains also one of his most agreeable 
 creations in the character of Count Mirabel, whose 
 unflagging vivacity, good-nature, and gay good 
 sense, are very amusing. The love-letters of the 
 book are singularly successful specimens of a dif- 
 ficult kind of composition, and throughout the 
 work the fervor of youthful passion is happily ex- 
 pressed without anything like mawkishness or sen- 
 timentality." 
 
 The same writer, in speaking of Disraeli's 
 novels as a whole, gives the following estimate of 
 his style, genius, and method .* 
 
 n 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 51 
 
 " As a novelist, Mr. Disraeli, though his works 
 have circulated widely both in England and in 
 this country, has not, we think, received that con- 
 sideration to which he is justly entitled. He is 
 one of the first of English authors in imagination, 
 in art, in wit, in high invention, in subtile and 
 refined delineation of character, and in clearness 
 and grace of style. He is never obscure, and very 
 seldom tiresome. There is hardly a dull page in 
 all the thousands he has written. 
 
 "He is ever bright, sparkling, vivacious, and 
 intelligible. And yet his characters and scenes 
 are almost always in the highest walks of society, 
 and his themes often rise to the loftiest heights of 
 thought and the freshest and most daring specu- 
 lations of modern research. Without the slight- 
 est trace of pedantry, he exhibits everywhere the 
 training and the knowledge of the scholar, com- 
 bined, in rare conjunction, with the wisdom and 
 polish of the experienced man of the world. 
 
 " The two leading purposes of his novels, apart 
 from certain political aims in some of them, are 
 the vindication of the Hebrew race and the de- 
 lineation of the English aristocracy. He has de- 
 scribed the land of his ancestors, and defended the 
 character and celebrated the genius of the chosen 
 people, in many earnest and eloquent passages, in 
 several of his works. But the general range of his 
 characters and scenes is in the highest walks of 
 English life. IsTo other writer has depicted, with so 
 
52 BEACONSFIELD, 
 
 mucli art or so much accuracy, the habits, the man- 
 ners, the conversation, the modes of thought and of 
 feeling, the occupations and pursuits, the follies 
 and the vices, of the 'upper ten thousand' of 
 England. He has been all his life associated 
 with them, and has had unrivaled facilities for 
 their observation and study. He has watched 
 them curiously, and painted them minutely, with- 
 out caricature, though perhaps not without a lit- 
 tle too much rose-color on his canvas. 
 
 "He has described their spacious domains, 
 their picturesque parks, their stately mansions, 
 their sumptuous life, their accomplished men and 
 lovely women, as no other writer has described 
 them, with inimitable grace and vivacity, and 
 with a fullness and freedom which leave little to 
 be desired. 
 
 " To all coming ages his novels will have an 
 ever-increasing value for their brilliant and faith- 
 ful representation of the highest phase in the 
 social and political life of the foremost nation of 
 the nineteenth century — a delineation all the more 
 valuable because the mode of life which they de- 
 pict, and the social organization to which they 
 refer, are inevitably transient, and likely to pass 
 away, at no distant period, under the influence of 
 democratic ideas. 
 
 "It is fortunate for literature and for pos- 
 terity that so perfect a picture of aristocratic 
 England has been drawn by so skillful an artist in 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 53 
 
 such charming and enduring colors. What would 
 we not give for an equally vivid contemporaneous 
 delineation of the ruling class of Assyria or Egypt, 
 of Athens or Rome, of feudal France or mediaeval 
 Italy?" 
 
 VII. 
 
 The picture presented of Disraeli in the pre- 
 ceding pages would scarcely seem to be the like- 
 ness of a practical and successful politician ; far 
 less that of a great party leader, and a statesman 
 apt in dealing with perplexing questions of in- 
 ternal economy or foreign policy. A "joyous 
 dandy," the frequenter of routs and balls, the 
 satirist of the dinner-table, the author of extrava- 
 gant society novels, full of genius, but also full of 
 eccentricity and strange theories, recklessly ut- 
 tered ; a Jew by descent, moreover, certain, at his 
 first attempt to enter the political arena, to meet 
 with the stern, set prejudices of the English against 
 Jews — there would seem to be no man less fitted 
 or less likely to become a political figure. 
 
 But Disraeli, even from youth, was an ardent 
 politician. He loved the fierce light that beats 
 upon public characters. He yearned for the pow- 
 er which a successful party chief in England 
 wields. He longed to share the triumphs of the 
 forensic arena ; to hold a House of Commons 
 
54 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 spell-bound by his burst of rhetoric, and to hear 
 the buzz of admiration which should circle round 
 the crowded benches when he should fire a shaft 
 of satire, or utter a masterpiece of invective ; 
 to have the papers sing choruses of applause at 
 his speeches ; to compel the conciliatory smiles 
 of ministers ; to revel in that combat of intellect 
 against intellect, of wit against wit, of repartee 
 against repartee, for which the House of Com- 
 mons provided the most favorable and conspicu- 
 ous of all arenas. 
 
 From his first entrance into society, therefore, 
 he had kept his ambition and purpose steadily in 
 view. By hook or by crook he would enter 
 Parliament. At all hazards, he would try his 
 fortunes in politics. Thus early, as we have 
 seen in his celebrated reply to Lord Melbourne, 
 he dared to raise his eye to the very summit of 
 political power, and to imagine himself shaping 
 the destinies of the empire " upon which the sun 
 never sets." 
 
 But what were his political opinions at this 
 period ? As far as can be made out from his 
 novels, they were a strange jumble of political 
 ideas, largely colored by his Oriental dreams, 
 partly high Tory, and partly Radical, if not revo- 
 lutionary. 
 
 At one time he is eager to believe that the 
 press and public opinion are more powerful than 
 Parliament. 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 55 
 
 " Opinion," he declares, " is now supreme, and 
 speaks in print. The representation of the press 
 is far more complete than the representation of 
 Parliament. Parliamentary representation was 
 the happy device of a ruder age, to which it was 
 admirably adapted ; an age of semi-civilization, 
 when there was a leading class in the community ; 
 but it exhibits many symptoms of desuetude. If 
 we are forced to revolutions, let us propose to our 
 consideration a free monarchy, established on fun- 
 damental laws, itself the apex of a vast pile of 
 municipal and local government, ruling an educa- 
 ted people, represented by a free and intellectual 
 press." 
 
 In " Coningsby," the most political of his tales, 
 he treats the nobility with scorn ; and forever pre- 
 serves the odious picture of the tuft-hunting toady 
 and time-server, in his Taper and Tadpole. He 
 vigorously assails the rotten boroughs, and yet 
 seems to be seeking to make a kind of " Young 
 England Toryism popular." 
 
 " His sentiments," says Smiles, " are Tory, his 
 presentiments are Radical. He feels like a Pala- 
 din, he thinks like a Kepublican. In ' Coningsby,' 
 while he avers that * the Whigs are worn out,' and 
 that * Radicalism is polluting,' he also emphatical- 
 ly declares that ' Conservatism is a sham.' Indeed, 
 Mr. Disraeli is a thorough skeptic as regards all 
 that Ave denominate social progress. He scouts it 
 as a delusion, and represents it as a hoax." 
 
66 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 Thus, attaching himself to no party, flaunting 
 his Judaic pride in sneering British faces, temer- 
 ariously uttering startling theories and magnifi- 
 cently rash ideas, he entered the race-course of 
 politics weighted with still another heavy burden. 
 
 He had, however, in his social career, formed 
 some valuable friendships. He had become inti- 
 mate with Bulwer, a brilliant young novelist like 
 himself, and like himself a waverer between Tory- 
 ism and Radicalism, but, unlike himself, a son of 
 a great county family, with a sound patrician de- 
 scent, a most thorough education, and ample 
 wealth. He had attracted the attention of the 
 " bilious Lord Durham," one of the foremost of 
 the reform statesmen. He had won the favor of 
 the great Radical Hume, and of O'Connell, then 
 at the height of his power, as holding the bal- 
 ance between the two great parties in the House. 
 He had the advantage, moreover, of the social 
 sway of the seductive Lady Blessington and the 
 magnificent Count d'Orsay, who had the ear of 
 powerful politicians, and were more than ready to 
 use their influence for their brilliant and ambitious 
 favorite. 
 
 With a strong will and a high ambition, he 
 devoted himself, after the publication of " Conta- 
 rini Fleming," more ardently than ever to the 
 study of the politics of the time. He read politi- 
 cal history in his study ; he talked politics every- 
 where in fashionable circles. Conscious that elo- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 57 
 
 cution was an essential to success, and observing 
 with complacent satisfaction that few politicians 
 of the day were accomplished orators, he studied 
 this art with zeal, and, as it afterward proved, with 
 success. 
 
 At last an opportunity appeared to present it- 
 self, and a way to open before him to the House 
 of Commons. Bulwer, who was devoted to him, 
 and whom Disraeli, nearly forty years afterward, 
 was delighted to honor by causing him to be cre- 
 ated a peer of England, advised him to come for- 
 ward as a candidate in the little borough of High 
 Wycombe, the seat for which had become vacant. 
 
 Disraeli jumped at the chance. It was noth- 
 ing to him that his opponent was Colonel Grey, a 
 brother of Earl Grey, then Premier of England ; 
 he entered the jousts as cheerily against this emi- 
 nent patrician as he had always braved the laugh- 
 ter and ridicule of the world. Colonel Grey was 
 sustained by the Whigs, and had the whole influ- 
 ence of the cabinet at his back. Disraeli had only 
 a certificate of character from Edward Bulwer, 
 Joseph Hume, and Lady Blessington. He was a 
 party unto himself, and had only his own brains 
 and pluck as his capital. 
 
 The manner in which he proposed himseK to 
 the electors was Disraelian, and nothing else. He 
 freely denounced both the great parties in the 
 state. He sneered loftily at the Whigs ; and as 
 for the Tories, they were " in a state of ignorant 
 
58 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 stupefaction." They were haunted, he boldly 
 added, "with a nervous apprehension of that 
 bugbear, the people ; that bewildering title under 
 which a miserable minority contrive to coerce and 
 plunder a nation." 
 
 As might be expected, the staid folk of High 
 Wycombe were rather bewildered by Disraeli's 
 rhetoric than persuaded by his plea ; Colonel Grey 
 was elected. 
 
 In the same year, however, Parliament was 
 dissolved, and Disraeli, nothing discouraged, again 
 asked High Wycombe to elect him. More boldly 
 than ever he shot his arrows right and left among 
 the great, tilted against every prejudice of party 
 and custom, satirized hoary ministers and borough- 
 laden lords, and drew fantastic sketches of pre- 
 miers and chancellors. In the curious address 
 which he made to the borough, he pictures Lord 
 Brougham, then Lord Chancellor, " dangling about 
 the great seal in post-chaises, spouting in pot- 
 houses, and vowing that he would write to the 
 sovereign by the post ! " 
 
 This time he was defeated by only eleven votes. 
 
 It is said that Earl Grey, the premier, when he 
 heard the name of his brother's opponent, super- 
 ciliously asked, " Who is he ? " Disraeli was stung 
 by the sneer, and immediately published an in- 
 dignant pamphlet under this title, " It was a fu- 
 rious and very eloquent onslaught on the Whigs." 
 
 Disraeli's next attempt to get into Parliament 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 59 
 
 was in 1833, when a vacancy occurred in the me- 
 tropolitan borough of Marylebone. He boldly 
 told the electors that he " sought the support of 
 neither of the aristocratic parties." Once, while 
 making a speech in the borough, he was inter- 
 rupted by some one in the audience, who cried 
 out, "Upon what ground do you stand here, 
 sir?" 
 
 " On my head, sir ! " was Disraeli's sarcastic 
 retort. 
 
 Marylebone would have none of him, for all 
 his eloquence ; and he was forced to resort next 
 to Taunton, where Mr. Labouchere (afterward 
 Lord Taunton, and son-in-law of Thomas Baring) 
 was a candidate for reelection. 
 
 The struggle at Taunton was a very bitter 
 one. Labouchere was the candidate of the Whigs, 
 while the Tories gave Disraeli a lukewarm, sup- 
 port. O'Connel], the great Thor of Irish agita- 
 tion, had just reconciled himself with the Whigs, 
 and, to Disraeli's disgust, now used his influence 
 with the Irish voters of Taunton in Labouchere's 
 interest. Disraeli had counted on O'Connell's 
 warm support ; and finding it withdi'awn from 
 him, he launched out into a hot tirade against the 
 Liberator. He called him an " incendiary," " a 
 traitor," and exhausted his ample fund of invec- 
 tive on his head. 
 
 O'Connell was quick with his reply. Flinging 
 back on Disraeli the epithets of "liar," "a living 
 
60 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 lie," he gave utterance to that bitter and scath- 
 ing denunciation of his antagonist which has be- 
 come memorable in the annals of political elo- 
 quence. " He possesses," said the angry states- 
 man, " just the qualities of the impenitent thief, 
 whose name, I verily believe, must have been 
 Disraeli. For aught I know, the present Disraeli 
 is descended from him ; and with the impression 
 that he is, I now forgive the heir-at-law of the 
 blasphemous thief who died upon the cross." 
 
 Long before this, O'Connell had fought a duel, 
 and killed his opponent, and had publicly declared 
 that he would never again accept a challenge. 
 Lord Alvanley had sent him one, and he had re- 
 fused to fight ; so his son, Morgan O'Connell, had 
 taken up the quarrel. 
 
 Disraeli was stung to the quick by O'Connell's 
 insult ; and lost no time in sending a challenge, 
 not to him, but to Morgan, demanding satisfac- 
 tion " for the insults which your father has so 
 long lavished with impunity upon his political 
 opponents." Justice, however, took the matter up, 
 and before the foes could meet, Disraeli was ar- 
 rested and bound over to keep the peace. 
 
 But he did not fail, even after this obstacle, 
 to avenge himself. In a letter to O'Connell, sent 
 to the papers, he wrote as follows : 
 
 " Me. O'Connell : Although you have placed 
 yourself out of the pale of civilization, still I am 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 61 
 
 one who will not be insultedj even by a Yalioo, 
 without chastising it. We shall meet at Philippic 
 when I will seize the opportunity of inflicting 
 castigation for the insults you have lavished upon 
 me. B. DiSEAELi." 
 
 By "Philippi," he was understood to mean 
 the floor of the House of Commons ; and there, 
 indeed, not many years after, he met his foe face 
 to face, and held many a tournament of invective 
 and vituperation with him. 
 
 Failing to be returned at Taunton, as at Wy- 
 combe and Marylebone, Disraeli was still abso- 
 lutely undiscouraged, and bore himself proudly 
 and confidently amid the din of political conflict. 
 Once more he took up his pen, not to write spark- 
 ling pictures of high life, or drape in the allegory 
 of fiction his ideas of men and principles. 
 
 "He began to recover himself," says Smiles, 
 " through the means of the press, always his great 
 power. He wrote a very clever, brilliant, and ad- 
 mirable essay, entitled ' A Vindication of the Eng- 
 lish Constitution ; ' and, shortly after, he pub- 
 lished in the Times newspaper a series of very 
 clever letters, afterward collected in a volume, en- 
 titled ' Letters of Kunnymede.' They were racy, 
 brilliant, satirical, and well informed, though oc- 
 casionally rather insolent in their smartness. It 
 is also supposed that, about the same time, and 
 even down to a recent date, Disraeli contributed 
 
62 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 frequently to the leading columns of the * Thun- 
 derer.' " 
 
 The " Vindication " was in the shape of a " Let- 
 ter to a ISToble and Learned Lord," who was Lord 
 Lyndhurst, a native, it need not be forgotten, of 
 Boston, Massachusetts, and lord chancellor under 
 Wellington, of whom Disraeli has spoken as hav- 
 ing " political courage, versatile ability, and mas- 
 culine eloquence," and, not less, "tenderness of 
 disposition, sweetness of temper, and ripe scholar- 
 ship." 
 
 Among the friends he had made during his 
 brief and so far unsuccessful political career was 
 Mr. Wyndham Lewis, a fine specimen of the old 
 British landed stock, and the husband of the lady 
 who, after Mr. Lewis's death, became Mrs. Dis. 
 raeli. Mr. Lewis, when the general election of 
 1837, for Victoria's first Parliament, apj^roached, 
 invited Disraeli to stand with him as a candidate 
 in the borough of Maidstone. Disraeli eagerly 
 accepted the invitation, and entered into the con- 
 test, side by side with his friend, as ardently and 
 blithely as if he had never met a rebuff in politics. 
 
 At the close of the poll, the young aspirant 
 thrilled with delight to learn that he stood second 
 in the number of suffrages cast, and to hear him- 
 self formally declared, at last, a member of Par- 
 liament. One great object of ambition was ful- 
 filled. It remained to make the best use of the 
 vast opportunities before him. His foot was on 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 63 
 
 the stepping-stone to fame and power. It rested 
 now with him whether he should rise or fall forever 
 out of the chances of politics. 
 
 Meanwhile it is worth noting that Queen Vic- 
 toria and he who, of all living statesmen, is her 
 favorite and enjoys her completest confidence, be- 
 gan their public career together. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 DiSEAELi was in hot haste to display his elo- 
 quence in " the greatest debating society in the 
 world." Lady Blessington and his other friends 
 encouraged him to look for a brilliant triumph. 
 They were sure he would produce a great sensa- 
 tion, and that he would leap at a bound to a 
 national reputation as an orator. 
 
 He had not been in the House a year before 
 he prepared to make his maiden speech, by which, 
 he frankly let it be known, he expected to make 
 a profound impression. It became the talk of the 
 clubs, and the members of the House looked for- 
 ward to the dthiit of one whom they were half 
 amused and half shocked to find at their side with 
 almost as much impatience as did he himself. 
 
 When the debate on the Spottiswoode combina- 
 tion came up, Disraeli made this the pretext of 
 his first harangue. 
 
64 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 " How the names of the parliamentary chiefs 
 who took part in this discussion," says Mark 
 Rochester, "recall to mind a legislative epoch 
 long since faded out of the recollection of the 
 generality ! Every name upon the list of the de- 
 baters of that evening is famous, historical — the 
 name more or less of a celebrity. More than half 
 the number — the elders among this group of act- 
 ors—have long since been swept away into their 
 graves. The rest, then inspirited by the earlier 
 and halcyon visions of a youth kindling with am- 
 bition, still survive — one alone among them soured 
 and disappointed, the others with many, at least, 
 of their more golden hopes realized — statesmen at 
 this moment both renowned and powerful." 
 
 It was the night of December 7, 1837. Smith 
 O'Brien, the rash and eloquent patriot of Erin, 
 opened the debate, and was followed by "Mr. 
 Bulwer, then in his thirty-second year, and in the 
 first radiance of his varied reputation ; meditating 
 the sequel of * Ernest Maltravers ; ' potent, though 
 so young a politician, if only by reason of his 
 pamphlet on ' The Crisis ; ' fresh from the comple- 
 tion of the first two volumes of his history of 
 * Athens and the Athenians ; ' already standing 
 midway in his brilliant career as a novelist, hav- 
 ing even then produced half the number of his 
 far-famed works of imagination."^ 
 
 Bulwer's speech on this occasion was one of the 
 most vigorous and spirited he had yet delivered. 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 65 
 
 " He is followed by Sir William Follett, the 
 great advocate, destined to expire, a few years 
 later on, in the very act of extending his hand to 
 grasp the seals of the chancellorship. A once 
 familiar figure rises directly afterward ; ' Old 
 Glory ' yonder, in the blue coat, the buckskins, 
 and the top-boots — pleasant-featured, bald-headed 
 Sir Francis Burdett." 
 
 Then "the Celtic Thunderer of the House," 
 Daniel O'Connell, the very man whom Disraeli 
 had so arrogantly promised "to meet at Philippi," 
 started to his feet, and the chamber echoed with 
 his sonorous brogue and his thunderbolt sentences. 
 
 Disraeli, sitting in the second row of benches 
 opposite the Speaker's chair, among the "inde- 
 pendent members," bent forward to catch his for- 
 midable foe's every word, and to mark his every 
 glance and gesture. The benches were crowded ; 
 the galleries were full of interested listeners ; it 
 was just at that period of the evening when, in 
 an exciting debate that inspires the bitter combat - 
 of party chiefs, the House of Commons warms 
 up, and is ready to listen eagerly, to cheer vocif- 
 erously, and, if need be, to burst into roars of 
 laughter. 
 
 IN'o sooner had O'Connell taken his seat than 
 the young and impatient member for Maidstone 
 sprang up, and in a clear and loud voice cried out, 
 "Mr. Speaker!" 
 
 The floor was accorded to him, and in an in- 
 5 
 
66 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 stant the House was hushed to a death-like still- 
 ness. Every eye was turned toward him. In the 
 ladies' gallery sat Lady Blessington and her friends, 
 awaiting with palpitating hearts the moment of 
 their favorite's fate. 
 
 Scarcely had he begun to speak, however, when 
 his attitude and manner, his grandiloquent sen- 
 tences, his profuse gestures, brought down upon 
 him the scoffs and ridicule of the assembly. 
 
 " Disraeli's appearance and manner," says one 
 who witnessed this maiden effort, " were very sin- 
 gular. His dress also was peculiar ; it had much 
 of a theatrical aspect. His black hair was long 
 and flowing, and he had a most ample crop of it. 
 His gesture was abundant ; he often appeared as 
 if trying with what celerity he could move his 
 body from one side to the other, and throw his 
 hands out and draw them in again. At other 
 times he flourished one hand before his face, and 
 then the other. His voice^ too, is of a very un- 
 usual kind. It is powerful, and had every justice 
 done to it in the way of exercise ; but there is 
 something peculiar in it which I am at a loss to 
 characterize. His utterance was rapid, and he 
 never seemed at a loss for words. IsTotwithstand- 
 ing the result of his first attempt, however, I am 
 convinced," adds this shrewd judge of parliamen- 
 tary talent, " that he is a man who possesses many 
 of the requisites of a good debater." 
 
 Disraeli had not spoken more than a minute 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 67 
 
 or two when " lie met with every possible mani- 
 festation of opposition and ridicule from the min- 
 isterial [Whig] benches, and was, on the other 
 hand, cheered in the loudest and most earnest 
 manner by his Tory friends ; and it is particularly 
 deserving of mention that even Sir Robert Peel, 
 who very rarely cheers any honorable gentleman, 
 not even the most able and accomplished speak- 
 ers of his own party, greeted Disraeli's speech 
 with a prodigality of applause which must have 
 been severely trying to the worthy baronet's 
 lungs. 
 
 " Sir Robert, as usual, sat on the first row of 
 benches, a little to Disraeli's left ; and so exceed- 
 ingly anxious was the baronet to encourage the 
 debutant to proceed, that he repeatedly turned 
 round his head, and looking the youthful orator 
 in the face, cheered him in most stentorian tones. 
 All, however, would not do." 
 
 As Disraeli went on, he was more and more 
 frequently interrupted by the ironical cheering, 
 the feet-scraping, and the strange noises by which 
 the House of Commons so freely manifests its 
 displeasure. But he manfully struggled on to 
 the end. He had composed his speech, and re- 
 hearsed it, and no power could stop him from fin- 
 ishing it. At last, however, losing all temper, and 
 stung to desperation by the howling cat-calls and 
 " shouts of laughter," he looked the Whigs indig- 
 nantly in the face, and wound up his harangue in 
 
68 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 loud tones that trembled with, his anger and 
 chagrin : 
 
 " If honorable members think it is fair thus to 
 interrupt me, I will submit. [Great laughter.] I 
 would not act so to any one ; that is all I can say. 
 [Laughter and cries of " Go on."] But I beg sim- 
 ply to ask — [" Oh ! " and loud laughter.] Noth- 
 ing is so easy as to laugh. [Roars of laughter.] 
 I really wish to put before the House what is our 
 position. When we remember all this — when we 
 remember all that, in spite of the support of the 
 honorable gentleman, the member for Dublin, and 
 his well-disciplined phalanx of patriots, and in spite 
 of all this, we remember the Amatory Eclogue 
 [roars of laughter] — the old loves and new loves 
 that took place between the noble lord, the 
 Tityrus of the treasury bench, and the learned 
 Daphne of Liskeard [loud laughter and cries of 
 " Question ! "], which appeared as a fresh instance 
 of the amoris redintegratio [excessive laughter] 
 — when we remember at the same time that, with 
 emancipated Ireland and enslaved England, on 
 the one hand a triumphant nation, on the other a 
 groaning people ; and, notwithstanding the noble 
 lord, secure on the pedestal of power, may wield 
 in one hand the keys of a St. Peter and — " Here 
 the honorable member was interrupted with such 
 loud and incessant bursts of laughter that it was 
 impossible to know whether he really closed his 
 sentence or not. The honorable member con- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 69 
 
 eluded in these words : " ISTow, Mr. Speaker, we 
 see the philosophical prejudices of man. [Laugh- 
 ter and cheers.] I respect cheers, even when they 
 come from the lips of political opponents. [Re- 
 newed laughter.] I think, sir — [" Hear, hear ! " 
 and repeated cries of " Question, question ! "] I am 
 not at all surprised, sir, at the reception which I 
 have received. [Continued laughter.] I have be- 
 gun several times many things [laughter], and I 
 have succeeded at last. [Fresh cries of " Ques- 
 tion ! "] Ay, sir ; and though I sit down now, the 
 time will come when you will hear me ! " The 
 honorable member delivered the last sentence in 
 a very loud tone, and resumed his seat amid cheers 
 from the opposition and much laughter from the 
 ministerial benches. Of this indignant prophecy 
 the world has long since seen the brilliant fulfill- 
 ment. 
 
 The failure of this first essay was absolute and 
 complete. For the nonce Disraeli became a laugh- 
 ing-stock. In the House, he could see contemptu- 
 ous smiles passing from face to face as he entered ; 
 and at the clubs he was the butt of the choicest 
 wit of their frequenters.. 
 
 His pluck, however, was far from being dam- 
 pened by what seemed an overwhelming and ir- 
 reparable misfortune. He meant his audacious 
 prophecy to the House in real earnest ; and, not 
 long after, expressed in "Tancred" his feeling 
 about his discomfiture. 
 
70 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 " A failure," said he, " is nothing. It may be 
 deserved, or it may be remedied. In the first in- 
 stance, it brings self-knowledge ; in the second, it 
 develops a new combination, which may be tri- 
 umphant." 
 
 Instead, therefore, of taking his terrible failure 
 to heart, he had the philosophy to seek to extract 
 from it a lesson for the future. It may even be 
 that, had he not suffered it, he might never have 
 become the strong, vigorous, and effective orator, 
 upon whose lips the House of Commons learned 
 to love to hang in after-years. 
 
 IX. 
 
 At the time that Disraeli entered Parliament, 
 there was another, younger man, though an older 
 member, who had already won an enviable fame 
 for the rare force and persuasiveness of his elo- 
 quence. He, too, like Disraeli, seems to have 
 been inspired by an ambition to struggle forward 
 to the highest rewards of political life. 
 
 A graduate, with the most distinguished hon- 
 ors, of the patrician university of Oxford, the 
 acknowledged pet and champion of that institu- 
 tion, he had already proved himself able to handle 
 the most perplexing questions of statesmanship, 
 by writing an essay on the relations of church 
 and state. 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 71 
 
 This was William Ewart Gladstone. These 
 two young men, starting nearly together in the 
 race for political honors, not far from the same 
 age, but in almost every other respect as dissimi- 
 lar as it was possible for two young men possess- 
 ing the same ambition to be, were destined to be 
 rivals, and the foremost rivals of their generation, 
 from that day to this. 
 
 The contrast between Gladstone and Disraeli 
 was very marked, even then. True, neither was 
 of aristocratic birth. Gladstone was the son of a 
 respectable Liverpool merchant, Disraeli the son 
 of a Jewish man of letters. But, while Disraeli 
 had started in political life almost entirely with- 
 out high influence, and had won his place in Par- 
 liament by indomitable pluck, Gladstone entered 
 the House as the pet and hope of the aristocratic 
 Oxford party. 
 
 Disraeli was not a university student ; Glad- 
 stone had been the most brilliant scholar which 
 Oxford had lately produced. The family tradi- 
 tions of Disraeli were Jewish ; those of Gladstone 
 strongly linked with the Church of England. 
 Their political ideas at the commencement of 
 their political careers were sharply opposed to 
 each other ; and, strange to say, they are so, by a 
 singular series of events, to-day — both having 
 changed sides, and each thinking now what the 
 other thought at the beginning. 
 
 Gladstone entered Parliament under the pat- 
 
TZ BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 ronage of the Duke of Newcastle, and carried 
 with him there as well the High Tory and High 
 Church principles as the enthusiastic hopes of 
 the University of Oxford. He was regarded as 
 the future chief of the Tory party, as its strong- 
 est man among the rising generation. He was 
 looked upon as the champion of the Established 
 Church, in all its ancient privileges, powers, and 
 abuses ; and he was welcomed to Parliament by 
 all the great men of the old Tory coterie, which 
 had warred upon the United States and l!^apoleon 
 I., which had refused to abolish the test oath, 
 refused to grant Catholic emancipation and re- 
 form, and which had prosecuted Queen Caroline 
 at the instigation of the heartless and dissolute 
 George IV. ; by the Duke of Wellington, Sir 
 Robert Peel, Lord Lyndhurst, Westmoreland, and 
 Buckingham. 
 
 Disraeli, on the contrary, began his political 
 life as a strange political hybrid between Toryism 
 and Radicalism. He had no aristocratic ties, no 
 university prestige — was the pet of no church, of 
 no caste ; he naturally allied himself with Radical 
 men, because, a Jew and a plebeian, he had noth- 
 ing to hope for from the ancient ruling class in 
 England. He was loud for reform, bitter against 
 the aristocracy and the Church ; almost preached 
 democracy, and doubtless would have quite done 
 so, had he dared. 
 
 To-day, the position of each is strikingly dif- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 73 
 
 ferent. Disraeli has become the leader and the 
 soul of the aristocratical Tory and High Church 
 party — even its prime-minister, dictating to dukes, 
 turning out lord chancellors with a quietly curt 
 epistle, and dining familiarly with her Majesty at 
 Windsor. Gladstone, on the other hand, has be- 
 come the captain of the advance-guard of Liberal- 
 ism ; and is so earnest to push forward, so eager 
 to demolish the ideas of which, when young, he 
 was the hottest champion, that he cannot keep 
 the mass of Liberals apace with him. 
 
 Gladstone's success as a parliamentary orator 
 was instant and unequivocal ; as we have seen, 
 Disraeli's debut was a desperate failure. 
 
 But his motto was *' perseverantia omnia vin- 
 cit." He sought to retrieve himself by patience, 
 pertinacity, and study. Perhaps he had conned 
 the story of Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, 
 and had compared himself to that famous civic 
 " self-made man," as he turned away from the 
 London streets, to come back again and conquer. 
 The example of Charles James Fox, too, may not 
 have been without its lesson to him ; Fox, who 
 had been so persistently coughed down, but who 
 had ended by becoming the first parliamentary 
 orator of his time. 
 
 The " transformation scene " by which Dis- 
 raeli gained not only a hearing, but authority in 
 the House of Commons, was as sudden and sur- 
 prising as the pitiful farce of his discomfiture had 
 
74 BEAOONSFIELD. 
 
 been. All his friends had expected to see him 
 succeed on the first occasion of his appearance in 
 debate ; they looked forward with fear and fore- 
 boding to the second. Like a wise man, he held 
 his peace for a year and a half ; and when, one 
 afternoon in 1839, he again demanded the Speak- 
 er's recognition, it was to make a strong, sensible, 
 straightforward speech, on the Chartist petition, 
 which created a complete revulsion of feeling in 
 his favor. 
 
 " He had already," says Smiles, " thrown away 
 his poetic and historical imagery, and took his 
 stand on facts, feelings, and strong common-sense. 
 He had carefully unlearned his faults, studied the 
 character of his audience, cultivated the arts of 
 speech, and filled his mind with the elements of 
 parliamentary knowledge." He had learned to 
 feel " that success in oratory was not to be ob- 
 tained at a bound, but had to be patiently worked 
 for." 
 
 Now that the time had indeed come when 
 the House would hear him, he was no longer the 
 mere adventurer he had up to this period seemed 
 to the public eye. Men could not, indeed, so soon 
 forget his Jewish origin, for it everywhere con- 
 fronted them in his features, and now and then 
 in his ideas. 
 
 But he was now recognized as a good speaker. 
 He had become a valuable ally, a formidable an- 
 tagonist ; the old Tory caste, while it might sneer 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 75 
 
 at him in whispers and behind his back, began to 
 treat him with complacent patronage, to defer 
 somewhat to him, and even to pat him on the 
 back and encourage him. He won the friendship 
 and confidence of a great noble and politician — 
 Lord Stanley, afterward Earl of Derby — side by 
 side with whom he was destined to fight furious 
 political battles for many years, and whom he 
 was finally to succeed as the powerful and trusted 
 chief of the Tory party. With this party he now 
 cast in his political fortunes. He declared him- 
 self a vigorous supporter of Sir Robert Peel, 
 when he became premier in 1841, and for several 
 years sustained him with all the energy and en- 
 thusiasm of his ardent nature. 
 
 A MOMENT came, however, when the follower 
 dared to pit himself against his chief, and the au- 
 dacious aspirant became the most inveterate foe 
 of the once all-powerful Nestor of Torydom. 
 
 The annals of Parliament contain no more 
 memorable or exciting episode than the fierce war 
 of invective, irony, and denunciation which Dis- 
 raeli waged against Sir Robert Peel. The nation 
 looked breathlessly on at this furious combat ; 
 nor have the friends of the elder statesman yet 
 
76 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 forgotten or forgiven the stinging tirades which 
 Disraeli then poured out upon their idolized leader. 
 
 The occasion of this quarrel was Sir Robert 
 Peel's conversion to the policy of the abolition of 
 the corn laws ; of its cause there has been some 
 difference of opinion. Disraeli's opponents have 
 freely declared that it was due to Sir Robert's 
 neglect to invite Disraeli to become a member of 
 his ministry, and that this disappointment goaded 
 Disraeli into his attitude of inveterate hostility. 
 Others declare that Disraeli, foreseeing the dis- 
 ruption of the Tories, shrewdly took time by the 
 forelock, by placing himself at the head of those 
 Tories who were about to break away from their 
 old chief. Whatever the cause, it is certain that 
 the alteration in Disraeli's tone was sharp and 
 sudden. 
 
 " Placed," said he, speaking of Sir Robert in 
 a speech in 1841, " in an age of rapid civilization 
 and rapid transition, he has adapted the practical 
 character of his measures to the condition of the 
 times. When in power, he has never proposed a 
 change which he did not carry, and when in op- 
 position he never forgot that he was the head of 
 the great Conservative party. He never employed 
 his influence for factious purposes, and has never 
 been stimulated in his exertions by a disordered 
 desire of obtaining of&ce ; above all, he has never 
 carried himself to the opposite benches by mak- 
 ing propositions by which he was not ready to 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 77 
 
 abide. Whether in or out of office, the right hon- 
 orable baronet has done his best to make the set- 
 tlement of the new Constitution of England work 
 for the benefit of the present time and of poster- 
 ity." 
 
 The change of tone, in three years, from this 
 lavish panegyric to the most bitter taunts and 
 most stinging sarcasm, was extreme. In one of 
 the longest speeches Disraeli ever made in the 
 House of Commons, he spoke thus contemptuous- 
 ly of his old leader : 
 
 " Sir, the right hon. gentleman has been ac- 
 cused of foregone treachery, of long-meditated 
 deception ... of always having intended to 
 abandon the opinions by professing which he rose 
 to power. Sir, I entirely acquit the right hon. 
 gentleman of any such intention. I do it for this 
 reason — that when I examine the career of this 
 minister, who has filled a great space in the par- 
 liamentary history of this country, I find that for 
 between thirty and forty years, from the days of 
 Mr. Horner to the days of the hon. member for 
 Stockport [Mr. Cobden], that right hon. gentle- 
 man has traded on the ideas and intelligence of 
 others. His life has been one great appropriation 
 clause. He is a burglar of others' intellect. . . . 
 There is no statesman who has committed political 
 petty larceny on so great a scale." 
 
 "The daring onslaught thus made by Dis- 
 raeli," says Mark Rochester, " upon the authori- 
 
78 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 tative leader of the House, tlie chief of a strong, 
 apparently impregnable government, then the 
 most practised of living debaters, one whose per- 
 fect mastery of all the arts of discussion was such 
 that his assailant has since written of him em- 
 phatically that ^he played upon the House of 
 Commons like an old fiddle ' — ^that defiant, single- 
 handed, unflinching onslaught, thus adventured 
 upon by Disraeli, must ever remain on record as 
 one of the most surprising incidents in the annals 
 of the British Parliament. 
 
 "The missiles hurled by the assailant, with an 
 aim that seldom if ever missed, were each as 
 slight, apparently, but as potent, as a pebble of 
 the Terebinthine valley. A deadly irony, a 
 barbed sarcasm, a withering ridicule ; here the 
 stab of a sneer, here the thrust of a taunt, here 
 the blow of an imputation. 
 
 "In a single sentence, sometimes, Disraeli 
 struck to the right and to the left, at the domineer- 
 ing leader of the House of Commons, Sir Robert 
 Peel, and at the despotic leader of the Lords, the 
 Duke of Wellington." 
 
 " Another place," he exclaimed bitterly, in the 
 parliamentary phrase signifying the House of 
 Peers, "another place may be drilled into a 
 guard-room, and the House of Commons may be 
 degraded into a vestry ! " 
 
 The principal, almost the exclusive object 
 upon which, with a view to its demolition, he 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 79 
 
 plied all tlie keen and polislied weapons of his 
 satirical armory, was the overshadowing reputa- 
 tion of the one dominant statesman on the treas- 
 ury bench in the popular assembly ; one until 
 then unassailed, and by many deemed unassail- 
 able. Several of the gibes then directed against 
 Sir Robert are as famous, as ridiculous, as laugh- 
 ter-moving, as a caricature by Gillray or by Row- 
 landson. "The right honorable baronet," said 
 Disraeli, " has caught the Whigs bathing, and has 
 run away with their clothes." 
 
 The great minister's solemn array of argu- 
 ments he coolly degraded into so many fallacies 
 based upon " tea-kettle precedents." Peel himself 
 was flagrantly dubbed "a great parliamentary 
 middleman." It was impossible even for his de- 
 voted partisans and personal adherents to listen 
 and preserve a grave countenance. 
 
 Once, Sir Robert was earnestly recommended, 
 by the implacable wit, " to stick to quotation ; 
 because," said his relentless foe, "he [the premier] 
 never quoted any passage that had not previously 
 received the meed of parliamentary approbation." 
 
 On another occasion, the House was begged 
 " to dethrone a dynasty of deception, by putting 
 an end to this intolerable yoke of official despotism 
 and parliamentary imposture." 
 
 The speeches of Sir Robert Peel, as reported 
 in Hansard, were summarily characterized as 
 " dreary pages of interminable talk, full of pre- 
 
80 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 dictions falsified, pledges broken, calculations 
 that have gone wrong, and budgets that have 
 blown up ; and all this not relieved by a single 
 original thought, a single generous impulse, a 
 single happy expression." The political tactics 
 of his government were summed up, with a subtle 
 and exquisite wit, as " a system so matter-of-fact, 
 yet so fallacious — taking in everybody, though 
 everybody knew he was deceived ; a system so 
 mechanical, yet so Machiavellian, that he could 
 hardly say what it was, except a sort of humdrum 
 hocus-pocus, in which the order of the day was 
 moved, to take in a nation ! " 
 
 This famous tirade was concluded by appealing 
 to the House to prove that " cunning is not cau- 
 tion, nor habitual perfidy high policy of state." 
 
 Once more, Disraeli described his victim — for 
 surely victim a statesman must be called who 
 suffered from shafts so piercing — as " a man who 
 bamboozled one party and plundered the other, 
 till, having obtained a position to which he was 
 not entitled, he called out, ' Let us have no party 1 
 let us have fixity of tenure ! ' " 
 
 Alluding, on another occasion, to a previous 
 decision of the House that had been canceled, 
 " I really think," said Disraeli, " to rescind one 
 vote during the session is enough. I don't think 
 in reason we ought to be called upon to endure 
 this degradation more than once a year. The 
 right honorable baronet [Peel] has joined in the 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 81 
 
 antislaveiy cry ; but it seems that his horror of 
 slavery extends to every place except the benches 
 behind him. There, the gang is still assembled, 
 and there the thong of the whip still sounds. If 
 the whip were less heard there, the right honor- 
 able baronet's conduct would be more consistent 
 with his professions." 
 
 " No marvel that the great minister worried 
 under this deadly ridicule, and at last succumbed. 
 No wonder the House learned at length to recog- 
 nize in the ex-member for Maidstone the most 
 brilliant satirist and one of the most gifted and 
 daring debaters within the walls of the legislature. 
 For the acerbity of these attacks, in which every 
 sentence had the point of an epigram, Disraeli 
 has magnanimously compensated since the death 
 of his great antagonist, by a generous tribute to 
 his genius, expressed in the language of admira- 
 tion. 
 
 " If there be one peculiarity more conspicuous 
 than another in the temperament of Disraeli, it is 
 that of his possessing a generous capacity for the 
 magnanimous appreciation of his parliamentary 
 antagonists. Witness this, not merely his pane- 
 gyric on Sir Robert Peel, but his noble eulogium 
 on Lord Palmerston in one of the chapters of 
 'Tancred,' and his graceful but earnest enco- 
 mium on Mr. Hume in the earlier pages of a later 
 composition." 
 
 This same generous trait appears in the fine 
 6 
 
82 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 tribute wliicli Disraeli, some years after, paid to 
 one of his most inveterate opponents, Lord Jolm 
 Russell, when lie withdrew the Aberdeen Reform 
 Bill. On this occasion the Tory leader said : 
 
 " Although it has been my fate to be always 
 seated opposite to the noble lord, I can say, most 
 sincerely, that no one in this House has a more 
 heart-felt respect for the noble lord than I have. 
 I think his character and career are precious pos- 
 sessions of the House of Commons ; and I am 
 sure that the members of this House will always 
 cherish them. Wherever the noble lord sits, I 
 am sure he will be accompanied by the respect of 
 every member of this House ; and I think the 
 manner in which, to-night, he has made what was 
 evidently a painful communication, is in every 
 way worthy of the noble lord's character." 
 
 No more graceful praise was ever uttered by a 
 statesman of a formidable and obstinate political 
 rival. 
 
 XI. 
 
 DisEAELi had not been long in Parliament 
 before an event happened which had a very im- 
 portant influence on his after-career. It has al- 
 ready been said that one of his warmest support- 
 ers in the election at Maidstone was Mr. Wynd- 
 ham Lewis, also a candidate for the borough. 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 83 
 
 After tlieir success at the polls, Disraeli became 
 more than ever intimate in his colleague's family- 
 circle ; it was there that he had met the lady who 
 was afterward to become one of the most devoted, 
 helpful, and ambitious wives who ever lived. 
 
 Mr. Lewis was already ill when he was chosen 
 at Maidstone ; and he did not long survive to 
 serve the borough in Parliament. Two years 
 after his death, Disraeli married his widow. 
 
 It is said that this lady's attention was first 
 attracted to her future second husband by read- 
 ing and admiring " Vivian Grey ; " that she so 
 much admired the talent displayed in the book, 
 that she took pains to seek out its author, to in- 
 vite him to the hospitalities of her house, and to 
 ardently befriend him in any possible way. She 
 was not only an elegant leader of society, but a 
 woman of superior intelligence, practical wisdom, 
 profound sense, and noble character. 
 
 Despite the fact that she was fourteen years 
 older than Disraeli, being, at the time of their 
 marriage, forty-eight years of age while he was 
 only thirty-four, their acquaintance quickly ri- 
 pened into a most congenial friendship, and this 
 deepened, after she became a widow, into an abid- 
 ing mutual affection which lasted during her life. 
 
 It has always been remarked of Disraeli, in- 
 deed, that one of his finest traits of character was 
 his loving and chivalrous devotion to the partner 
 of his life. His leisure hours were always spent 
 
84 BEAOONSFIELD. 
 
 in her congenial companionship. She was his 
 counselor in all his labors, political and intellect- 
 ual ; went over his speeches with him, discussed 
 what course he should pursue at difficult junc- 
 tures, shared the joy of his triumphs, and was his 
 efficient consoler in his discomfitures. He seldom 
 appeared in society unless in her company ; and 
 always seemed as proud of her and as tender of 
 her as if, instead of being a matron much older 
 than himself, she had been a fair and youthful 
 bride. 
 
 Often was he seen, when his wife had, before 
 him, grown aged and feeble, slowly walking in 
 the London streets, supporting her on his arm, 
 carefully accommodating his pace to hers, bending 
 his head with tender deference when she spoke, 
 and chatting to her in his pleasant, jaunty way. 
 She, on the other hand, reveled in his Ibrilliant 
 feats, and it was the happiness of her life to ap- 
 plaud his successes, and spur him on to the high- 
 est flights at which his ambition could aim. 
 
 It was her custom to never be absent from a 
 debate in the House of Commons in which he was 
 to take part. Night after night, her tall, frail 
 figure and quiet, intelligent face were seen in the 
 ladies' gallery, which was shut in by glass win- 
 dows, and where she nearly always occupied a 
 front seat. When Disraeli rose to speak, she would 
 lean forward, a new light would gleam from her 
 eyes, and she would listen almost breathlessly to 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 85 
 
 every word he uttered, and watch every gesture 
 and movement he made. 
 
 Disraeli has always prepared his speeches with 
 the greatest care. Without writing them out in 
 full, he made copious notes, and his rhetorical 
 flights, epigrammatic "hits," and florid perora- 
 tions were invariably prepared and polished with 
 minute attention. When his mind was once 
 charged with a contemplated speech, he became 
 absorbed in it, and was very particular not to 
 have it disturbed or diverted to other matters. 
 He would hasten directly from his study to the 
 House, sit there wrapped in thought, with his hat 
 over his eyes, speaking to or noticing no one, un- 
 til the time came for him to rise and deliver him- 
 self of his harangue. 
 
 His wife knew how important it was that he 
 should be undisturbed ; and, though she always 
 accompanied him in his carriage from their home 
 at the West End to Westminster, she would re- 
 main silent during the drive, that he might cogi- 
 tate his speech in peace. 
 
 On one occasion, Disraeli entered the carriage 
 first, and his wife followed him. As she was get- 
 ting in, however, resting her hand on the door, 
 the carriage window fell, and crushed and firmly 
 held her thumbs so that she could not easily extri- 
 cate it. 
 
 The position of her thumb, jammed and lacer- 
 ated as it was, was excruciatingly painful. But 
 
86 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 sTie neither tried to withdraw it, nor did she utter 
 a sound. Heroically she held it there, tortured as 
 she was, while the carriage rattled over the streets, 
 and jolted and jarred, with each jolt adding a new 
 thrill of pain. 
 
 On reaching the Parliament House, she quiet- 
 ly lifted the window, concealed the bruised thumb, 
 and, as she parted from her husband at the door, 
 gave him a serene, bright, encouraging smile. She 
 passed on to the ladies' gallery, and he into the 
 House. He made one more of his sparkling, dash- 
 ing, fascinating speeches ; nor did he learn of the 
 suffering thus endured by his faithful wife until, 
 his triumph achieved, they returned home again. 
 Disraeli never let a proper occasion pass without 
 bearing public testimony to the noble virtues of 
 his wife, and attributing to her advice and inspira- 
 tion a large share of his political success. 
 
 Once, at one of those autumn " harvest-homes " 
 which he has always delighted to frequent, the 
 cares of politics being thrown aside, at Hughen- 
 den, he launched into an ardent eulogy of her, 
 declaring her to be " the best wife in England." 
 He told the students of one of the Scotch uni- 
 versities, of which he had been elected lord rector, 
 that if he had risen to high seats in the councils 
 of the nation, he had Mrs. Disraeli to thank for 
 it. His novel "Sibyl," of which he was espe- 
 cially proud, he dedicated fondly "to the most se- 
 vere of critics, but a perfect wife." 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 87 
 
 Happily she lived long enougli to see the ful- 
 fillment of his and her loftiest aspirations. It was 
 the proudest day of her life when her idolized 
 husband became at last Prime-Minister of Eng- 
 land ; and aged as she was, she presided with 
 singular grace, dignity, and refinement, over the 
 household of the real ruler of the realm. 
 
 When he was about to retire from the premier- 
 ship, and transfer it to his life-long rival, Glad- 
 stone, the queen, with whom Disraeli has always 
 been a special favorite, offered him a peerage. 
 While grateful for this intended honor, he de- 
 clined it ; but told the queen that, if she desired 
 to bear such a testimony to his public services, 
 she could not more greatly favor him than to 
 confer the peerage on the loving partner of his 
 life. 
 
 So, while he remained simply Mr. Disraeli, and 
 continued for some years longer to sit in his ac- 
 customed place in the House of Commons, his 
 wife became " Viscountess Beaconsfield," and took 
 her rank among the nobility of the kingdom. 
 
 She died several years ago, and was tenderly 
 laid in her last resting-place, the family tomb at 
 Hughenden. 
 
88 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 XII. 
 
 DuEiiTG the busy periods between DisraelPs 
 entrance into Parliament and his promotion, after 
 the fall of Sir Robert Peel, to the position of a 
 leader of the out-and-out Tories, neither his fancy 
 nor his pen was by any means idle. 
 
 At intervals of two or three years, other nov- 
 els were the fruit of his relaxation from political 
 toil and warfare ; he could not resist those fas- 
 cinations of imaginative literature, following the 
 allurements of which he had won name and fame ; 
 and so far was he from being ashamed of his early 
 literary work, or cowed by the sneers of his op- 
 ponents, that he more audaciously than ever fol- 
 lowed the bent of his mind, and boldly clothed 
 daring political ideas in the attractive dress of 
 fiction. 
 
 First came " Venetia," a novel given to the 
 world the first year he entered the House of Com- 
 mons. 
 
 Of this novel, the writer in Appletons' says that 
 it is " the most purely literaiy of Disraeli's novels. 
 It is an attempt to shadow forth two of the most 
 renowned and refined spirits that have adorned 
 these our latter times — Byron and Shelley — who 
 are represented under the names of Lord Cadur- 
 cis and Marmion Herbert. To Herbert, however, 
 are assigned many of the incidents of Byron's 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 89 
 
 history, and to Cadurcis the melancholy termina- 
 tion of Shelley's life by drowning in the Mediter- 
 ranean. Herbert is represented as separated from 
 his wife, and his daughter Yenetia, who gives 
 name to the novel, is, like Ada Byron, brought up 
 in ignorance of her father and his unhappy career. 
 The time of the novel, also, is thrown back to 
 the period of the American Revolution, before 
 either Byron or Shelley was born. In other re- 
 spects, the story of the two great and unhappy 
 poets is very closely followed." 
 
 Then, in quick succession, came the three most 
 celebrated, perhaps, of all Disraeli's works of fic- 
 tion, excepting his very last, " Lothair." These 
 were what he was pleased to style a " trilogy " of 
 political novels : " Coningsby," " Sibyl," and " Tan- 
 cred." 
 
 Disraeli had long in contemplation the forma- 
 tion of a new party, which he called that of 
 " Young England " — a cross between Radicalism 
 and Toryism ; and to the " Young England " party 
 the first of the three, " Coningsby," was devoted. 
 In it he explained thus his political idea : 
 
 " To change back the oligarchy into a gener- 
 ous aristocracy round a real throne ; to infuse life 
 and vigor into the Church as the trainer of the 
 nation by the revival of a convocation, then dumb, 
 on a wide basis, and not, as has been since done, 
 in the shape of a priestly section ; to establish a 
 commercial code on the principles successfully 
 
90 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 negotiated by Lord Bolingbroke at Utreclit, and 
 whicli, though baffled at the time by a Whig Par- 
 liament, were subsequently and triumphantly vin- 
 dicated by his political pupil and heir, Mr. Pitt ; 
 to govern Ireland according to the policy of 
 Charles I., and not of Oliver Cromwell ; to eman- 
 cipate the political constituency of 1832 from its 
 sectarian bondage and contracted sympathies ; to 
 elevate the physical as well as the moral condition 
 of the people by establishing that labor requires 
 regulation as much as property, and all this rather 
 by the use of ancient forms and the restoration of 
 the past than by political revolutions founded 
 upon abstract ideas," 
 
 " Coningsby," and the manner in which it was 
 received, are vividly described in these words : 
 "In its way, * Coningsby' was as great and as 
 startling a success as ' Vivian Grey.' It has been 
 very heartily abused ; it has been praised almost 
 as heartily. It has been condemned for relying 
 for its attractiveness on the most ephemeral quali- 
 ties, and it is still popular enough to yield a good 
 income to its publishers. It is accused of person- 
 ality ; and in spite of the fact that the greater 
 number of the persons satirized are dead, the cari- 
 catures survive. 
 
 " At this distance of time no harm can be done 
 by recalling a few of those whose idiosyncrasies 
 are thus hit off. The hero is of course Lord Lyt- 
 telton ; Rigby is said to have been intended for 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 91 
 
 Mr. John Wilson Croker. Lord Monmouth, Con- 
 ingsby's grandfather, is a faithful portrait — not 
 in oil — of Lord Hertford ; while the Duke and 
 Lord Henry Sidney stand respectively for the 
 Duke of Rutland and Lord John Manners. Lu- 
 cian Gay is of course Theodore Hook, and Mr. 
 Gladstone significantly figures as Oswald Milbank. 
 Lord and Lady Everingham stand for the Earl 
 and Countess of Clarendon ; Lady St. Julians for 
 Lady Jersey, and the Duke and Duchess of Agin- 
 court for the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham 
 and Chandos. Taper and Tadpole are said, on 
 less authority, to stand for Mr. Ross and Mr. 
 Pringle, whose names were once familiar to the 
 political world, but who are now forgotten." 
 
 Of this novel, another critic says : " ' Conings- 
 by ' is very brilliant and powerful. It has great 
 wit and more humor than the author usually dis- 
 plays. The sketch of 'The Right Honorable 
 Nicholas Rigby ' is a masterpiece of satire, and 
 the character of ' Sidonia ' a fine conception ad- 
 mu-ably carried out." 
 
 The next novel of the trilogy was " Sibyl," 
 which, as has been said, was dedicated to his wife, 
 and was the author's especial pride. It was in- 
 tended as a sort of sequel, or development, of 
 " Coningsby," and " is a story of singular power, 
 full of those touches of higher art of which, in 
 some quarters, the author is believed to be inca- 
 pable," It deals largely with the famous Chartist 
 
92 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 troubles of tlie times during whicli it was written. 
 It has "great variety, its scenes and characters 
 ranging from the highest patrician circles to the 
 lowest depth of social degradation. It contains 
 a startling picture of the misery of the lower or- 
 ders of England, very striking in itseK, and very 
 significant as proceeding from the authentic pen 
 of one of her most eminent statesmen." 
 
 Following "Sibyl" came "Tancred," by far 
 the most quoted and in some respects most pow- 
 erful and impressive of Disraeli's romances. " It 
 was a true instinct," says the author of " Political 
 Portraits," "which directed Disraeli's youthful 
 footsteps, as it almost always, after more or less 
 wandering, has directed his pen, to his ancestral 
 East." "Tancred" was the most finished, the 
 most ripened, outcome of that Oriental Journey. 
 
 Its great idea is the supremacy of the Jewish 
 race ; while as a glowing picture of Oriental 
 life and character, and as a graphic contrast be- 
 tween the genius of the West and that of the 
 East, it is superior to, though more subdued than, 
 "Alroy." 
 
 "In * Alroy,'" says the writer in AppUtons^ 
 whom we have so often quoted, " the author is only 
 a poet, though a very great one. In ' Tancred ' 
 he has become a statesman, without ceasing to be 
 also a poet. The ' ISTew Crusade ' (the other title 
 of the book) is that of a young English noble- 
 man, who seeks to discover at the fountain-head 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 93 
 
 the source and meaning of the great Asian mys- 
 tery, and sets out accordingly for the Holy Land, 
 like his chivalrous ancestors of the twelfth cen- 
 tury. He there falls in with the mysterious An- 
 sarey, an obscure and singular Syrian tribe, ad- 
 hering to ancient paganism, of whom a most in- 
 teresting and original description is given. 
 
 " The English part of the novel, with which it 
 begins, is very charming for its easy grace and 
 pleasant satire of the prevalent follies of the day. 
 ISTothing can be better than the Darwinian young 
 lady who has read * The Revelations of Chaos,' 
 which explains everything, and shows you exactly 
 how a star is formed, and who believes that we 
 were once fishes and shall yet be crows. Equally 
 good is the fashionable lady who mingles senti- 
 ment with stock- jobbing, and is prostrated in the 
 presence of her romantic lover by a telegram an- 
 nouncing a fall in the shares of a railroad." 
 
 ISTearly thirty years were to elapse, after Dis- 
 raeli had written " Finis " to " Tancred," before he 
 again resumed his pen to indulge his genius for 
 suggestive fiction. It was not until after he had 
 reached and then retired from the great office 
 which he was destined afterward to hold a second 
 time, that, in the leisure of political opposition, he 
 wrote and published " Lothair." The hand of the 
 magician was still deft and cunning, the fire of his 
 fancy still glowed with a warm and luminous 
 flame ; he proved that lengthening age had not 
 
94 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 deprived him of the zest for literary work, or 
 diminislied the power of his art. 
 
 It has been said of " Lothair " that it is " less 
 political than its immediate predecessors. Eng- 
 lish politics, in fact, scarcely enter into it at all 
 except in a few Fenian sketches. Its hero, Lord 
 Lothair, is, like Tancred, a young English noble- 
 man of the highest rank and of enormous wealth, 
 one of whose guardians during his orphan minority 
 was a Jesuit, who is a cardinal of the Church of 
 Rome, and who strives to bring his ward over to 
 Romanism. For this purpose he employs all the 
 arts and wiles of the Jesuits, which are narrated 
 very minutely, and with the author's highest 
 skill. 
 
 " Lothair, after a series of adventures, in which 
 Colonel Campian, an American, and his Italian 
 wife Theodora, are conspicuous, joins the Gari- 
 baldian army which sought in 1867 to drive the 
 pope from Rome, is initiated into the great secret 
 revolutionary societies of * the Mary Anne,' and 
 the ^Madre Natura,' and, desperately wounded 
 in the battle of Mentone, falls into the hands of 
 the papal forces, and is consigned to the care of 
 his Jesuit friends in Rome. They renew their 
 efforts to convert him, and by strange and varied 
 arts very nearly succeed. 
 
 " He escapes, however, first to Sicily ; then in 
 an open boat to Malta, where, under English pro- 
 tection, he baffles the pursuit of the Jesuits, and 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 95 
 
 embarks for the East and visits Jerusalem. His 
 experiences there are narrated in the author's best 
 style, and are very peculiar and curious. 
 
 " Its perusal shows that, in the interval since 
 he published ^Tancred,' Mr. Disraeli's invention 
 has not lost its force, nor his hand its cunning. 
 He is destined to a high and enduring reputation 
 in literature, and long after English power has 
 decayed and English ministries have passed into 
 oblivion, his brilliant pictures of English life and 
 character will survive, and 'far climes and dis- 
 tant ages will respond to the magic of his sym- 
 pathetic page.' " 
 
 " Disraeli's writings," says a writer in JLofidon, 
 Society J "have always been pure and elevating 
 in tone. The characters which he has selected for 
 eulogy, or the models which he has held up for 
 imitation, have all been of an ennobling kind. 
 The atmosphere into which he introduces us is 
 healthy and sweet. His husbands are honest ; 
 his wives are true ; his maidens are pure ; and his 
 lads are ingenuous. He has never written a word 
 which a father would not read to his daughter, or 
 a lover to his betrothed. And, in ' Yivian Grey ' 
 and ' Lothair ' alike, there is the same chivalry of 
 sentiment, the same generosity of soul, the same 
 loyalty to the cause of friendship. There is noth- 
 ing more interesting in Mr. Disraeli's history than 
 his devotion to and his championship of those 
 whose friendship he has made. In his biography 
 
96 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 of Lord George Bentinck, professedly a panegyric 
 as that biography is, there is not a word which 
 savors of fulsome insincerity." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 From the day that Sir Robert Peel, "aban- 
 doning his party to serve his country," repealed 
 the corn laws, Lord Stanley (later Earl of Derby), 
 who had been a reformer of 1832, and Disraeli, 
 the author of radical "Coningsby," became the 
 acknowledged leaders of the old-fashioned Tories, 
 and thenceforward were to put themselves obsti- 
 nately against the tide of progress which had per- 
 manently set in in England. 
 
 From that time, too, Disraeli acquired another 
 of those many and singular honors which are the 
 rewards of English statesmen ; he made his ap- 
 pearance in Punch / and nearly every week, for 
 thirty years, his Jewish curls, and large black 
 eyes, and bold thick nose, and long narrow face, 
 have appeared in that most unique of political 
 satires. " Dizzy," . a nickname originated by 
 Punchy became his appellation everywhere among 
 the facetious of society, and by that name he 
 is known from Land's End to John O' Groat's 
 House. 
 
 The time had not yet come, however, when he 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 97 
 
 could be the unquestioned chief of the Tory party. 
 As long as the eloquent and chivalrous Earl of 
 Derby lived, and took a part in politics, his place 
 was the second one. Derby had birth, wealth, 
 personal popularity, wide family connection, and 
 great parliamentary talent ; of these Disraeli had 
 only the last. His birth was, as far as his rela- 
 tions with the Tories were concerned, far worse 
 than useless ; his property was limited ; far from 
 being personally popular, we doubt if there ever 
 was an English statesman more positively and 
 generally disliked ; far from being politically 
 trusted, we doubt if there was ever a party leader 
 who inspired less confidence. 
 
 The nobles who followed him knew that he 
 had been a Radical, and that he was intensely am- 
 bitious ; might he not, then, still be a Radical at 
 heart, and, some fine day, betray them all into 
 the hands of their enemies ? Some sUch idea was 
 once actually expressed by a noble lord who loved 
 Toryism, but not its Hebrew exponent ; and when 
 we remember that Disraeli, some years after, per- 
 suaded the Tories to pass a reform bill, compared 
 with which that proposed by the Liberals was no 
 reform at all, the utterance seems to have been 
 shrewdly prophetic. 
 
 Strange to say, too, Disraeli's literary reputa- 
 tion was a serious obstacle to obtaining the confi- 
 dence of his political associates. The Howards 
 and Nevilles, the Percys and Wellesleys, the 
 7 
 
98 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 Courtenays and Churcliills, reluctantly followed 
 tlie lead of a sensational novelist. 
 
 The repugnance of the patrician Tories to him 
 was so great, that though they sat with him in 
 council, and deferred to his opinions, they long^ 
 neglected to extend to him the hospitality of 
 their houses. 
 
 Yet with all these obstacles and prejudices — 
 prejudices which must have bitterly, in secret, 
 galled a high spirit like that of Disraeli — he suc- 
 ceeded in establishing himself more and more 
 firmly as an absolute necessity to his party. 
 
 A hasty temper, an impudent remark, a petu- 
 lant outburst of resentment, might have forever 
 overthrown him. Had he committed such a blun- 
 der, there were plenty in his own ranks to seize 
 upon it as an opportunity to get rid of him. He 
 had few ties, little extraneous propping, to save 
 him. For one reason alone was he endured by 
 the Tories : he was useful, he had the power and 
 the genius to save them. A more imperturbable 
 equanimity of temper, a more perfect self-con- 
 trol, a serener patience, have never been displayed 
 in a political career, than his during his leadership 
 of the Tory party. If his soul has been stung by 
 contempt or superciliousness, he has not only con- 
 cealed the wound, but has availed himself of it in 
 castigating his foes. 
 
 The greatest master of irony of his time, he 
 has, armed with this formidable gift, lashed his 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 99 
 
 adversaries the more severely, by keeping a cool 
 and steady head and a firm hand, that never for- 
 got their power. 
 
 Willing to stand alone, submitting to be bare- 
 ly suffered, conscious that his party allies were 
 seldom his personal friends, Disraeli has owed 
 his success as much to his admirable pluck and 
 his excellent temper as to his brilliant and aggres- 
 sive talents. 
 
 It was mainly through his leadership that the 
 Tories, thrown into confusion by Peel's defection, 
 were reformed into a compact and disciplined 
 body, and gradually increased in popularity and 
 power. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The time quickly came when the reward of his 
 consummate generalship, in conjunction with that 
 of Derby, was reaped. In 1852, Lord John Rus- 
 sell resigned the premiership, and the Earl of 
 Derby, with a Tory cabinet, succeeded him. 
 
 Everybody awaited with curiosity to see what 
 part Disraeli would now be called upon to play. 
 He was without question the second man in the 
 triumphant party ; to him, in large measure, was 
 due its triumph ; he led it in the House of Com- 
 mons. Yet, was it possible that this fantastic 
 figure, as he was still considered, would actually 
 
100 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 be made, as was customary, Chancellor of tlie Ex- 
 chequer? People smiled to imagine "Yivian 
 Grey" proposing a budget, and arranging the 
 finances of England ; to think of this whilom 
 Radical lording it officially in the House over 
 younger sons of peers and staid but proud old 
 county baronets. 
 
 The Earl of Derby was brave enough to meet 
 the storm of his own party, of his noble connec- 
 tions, and of the deep-seated prejudices of Eng- 
 land. Disraeli could not be spared. He would 
 take no office but the Chancellorship of the Ex- 
 chequer ; and Chancellor of the Exchequer, there- 
 fore, he became. 
 
 How the English public took this startling 
 appointment may be somewhat judged by a witty 
 letter, written at this time by Douglas Jerrold to 
 his friend Mr. Novello : 
 
 " I must congratulate you on the advent of 
 the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. The 
 Right Honorable Benjamin Disraeli is the suc- 
 cessful man of letters. He has ink in his veins. 
 The goosequill — let gold and silver sticks twinkle 
 as they may — leads the House of Commons. Thus 
 I feel confident that the literary instincts of the 
 right honorable gentleman will give new anima- 
 tion to the coldness of statesmanship, apt to be 
 numbed by tightness of red tape. We were, I 
 know, early taught to despair of the right honor- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. lOi 
 
 able gentleman, because he is allowed to be the 
 smallest of things, ' a wit.' Is arithmetic forever 
 to be the monopoly of substantial respectable 
 dullness? Must it be that a Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, like Portia's portrait, is only to be 
 found in lead ? No ; I have a cheerful faith that 
 our new fiscal minister will, to the confusion of 
 obese dullness, show his potency over pounds, 
 shillings, and pence. The Exchequer L. S. D., 
 that have hitherto been as the three witches — the 
 weird sisters — stopping, whenever we turned, the 
 right honorable gentleman will at least transform 
 into the three Graces, making them in all their 
 salutations, at home and abroad, welcome and 
 agreeable." 
 
 Disraeli's service in the second political office 
 of England was but brief, for the first Derby 
 cabinet survived but seven months. But in that 
 brief period he displayed qualities of statesman- 
 ship and leadership that he had not before been 
 supposed to possess. 
 
 He led his party, as chief of the government 
 in the House of Commons, with masterly tact and 
 skill ; he managed the finances as if figures had 
 always been his forte ; and when he presented the 
 annual budget, he displayed a remarkable clear- 
 ness and soundness that showed how careful and 
 effective a study he had made of fiscal science. 
 
 Thj'oughout the coalition ministry of the Earl 
 
102 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 of Aberdeen — through the exciting period of the 
 Crimean War — through the first administration of 
 Lord Palmerston, Disraeli still led, gallantly and 
 pertinaciously, the Tory opposition in the lower 
 House. Finally, in March, 1858, the Palmer st on 
 government, defeated on the " conspiracy to mur- 
 der " bill, was compelled to retire, and once more 
 the Tories came in, with Lord Derby as Premier, 
 and Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 This time, they made a desperate effort to hold 
 on to power : Disraeli brought out a masterpiece 
 of a budget ; the cabinet, although Tory, brought 
 forward a reform bill, which the Liberal cabinets 
 had failed to do. The country, however, was not 
 yet with them ; their reform bill failed, and after 
 administering the government a little more than a 
 year, they retired in June, 1859, giving place in 
 turn to Lord Palmerston. 
 
 There was another long shady era for the 
 Tories, from '59 to '66. But Disraeli, the lieu- 
 tenant and unresting ally of Derby, the Tory chief, 
 never lost heart, but worked assiduously to effect 
 union in the Tory ranks, and to deliver continual 
 assaults on the ministry. Lord Palmerston, al- 
 though nominally a Liberal, was known to be 
 hostile to reform ; and, by reason of his personal 
 popularity in England, and his wonderful capacity 
 for conciliating divergent views, during his life- 
 time he succeeded in ignoring that great ques- 
 tion. The venerable Premier died, in full posses- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 103 
 
 sion- of his mental faculties, at more than eighty, 
 in the autumn of 1865 ; and his veteran lieutenantj 
 himself past seventy, Earl Russell, became Prime- 
 Minister. 
 
 It was evident that the reform question could 
 no longer he avoided ; so Lord Russell and Mr. 
 Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, brought 
 a reform bill into Parliament in May, 1866. 
 
 The discussion was long and violent ; the Lib- 
 erals in the House of Commons began to show a 
 deplorable want of harmony, and finally, upon an 
 amendment of Lord Dunkellin, the cabinet was 
 defeated, in July, 1866, by five majority in a very 
 full house. Russell and Gladstone, indignant that 
 the blow should come from their own side, where 
 less than a year before there had been a Liberal 
 majority of at least sixty votes, resigned. 
 
 The only alternative was a return of the Derby 
 party, led in the Commons by the indefatigable 
 and unsubduable Disraeli. Lord Derby became, 
 for the third time, Prime-Minister, the adventu- 
 rous Jewish novelist a third time Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer. 
 
 The new cabinet found itseK face to face 
 with a very grave state of affairs. The agitation 
 in the country on the question of electoral reform 
 was very great, and reached a dangerous height 
 in the autumn of 1866. Monster meetings were 
 held in the large cities, and leagues were formed, 
 with the avowed object of forcing, by popular 
 
104 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 pressure, a large concession of reform from the 
 Tory ministers. The Tories had just voted 
 against the Gladstone reform as too democratic ; 
 they had denounced it as ruinous ; Lord Lytton 
 had declared it revolutionary. Yet now public 
 opinion would not accept any other than a reform 
 which should far surpass that of Gladstone. 
 
 Here were the Tories in office ; they had long 
 lived in the cold shade of opposition, deprived of 
 those sweets of office which they were now enjoy- 
 ing ; they could only remain by either coming to 
 a direct issue with the agitation, thus endanger- 
 ing civil war, or, belying all their party traditions 
 and latest declarations, concede a greater reform 
 than that which they had opposed. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Disraeli, and he 
 alone, saved the Tory cabinet and the Tory party 
 at this juncture. A bold and audacious, and, as 
 the event proved, sagacious statesman, utterly in- 
 different to taunt or menace, he proposed to his 
 patrician followers that they should adopt a policy 
 of "household suffrage." It was a hazardous 
 thing to attempt to persuade the aristocratic ^arty 
 to turn its back on its whole previous career, and 
 adopt a measure that was nothing if not revolu- 
 tionary ; yet more hazardous, perhaps, to suggest 
 it to the country. Possibly Disraeli, with a 
 leaven of his old-time radicalism left, enjoyed, as 
 one having a profound sense of the ridiculous, 
 the perplexity of his ducal and baronial partisans; 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 105 
 
 he may have felt a sweetness of revenge — revenge 
 for all those slights and sneers of years gone by 
 — when he thrust so unwelcome a morsel down 
 their throats. 
 
 He showed them that the choice lay between 
 conceding household suffrage and perpetual, or at 
 least long-continued, ostracism from the delights 
 of office. He cajoled, flattered, threatened them 
 by turns ; and at last convinced a majority of the 
 most haughty cabinet that has sat in Downing 
 Street for half a century to take what Lord Derby 
 so pathetically called " a leap in the dark." Derby 
 himself reluctantly gave way before his colleague's 
 enthusiasm ; and the Dukes of Marlborough, 
 Richmond, and « Buckingham, followed his exam- 
 ple. Of the cabinet, three members alone — Lords 
 Salisbury and Carnarvon, and General Peel — re- 
 fused to take the " leap," and retired from office ; 
 with them, it is probable, a motive of intense 
 personal dislike to Disraeli actuated their course 
 as much as their hostility to his measure. 
 
 He smiled placidly when ' they withdrew, and 
 soon proved to them that they were unnecessary 
 to his success. His triumph was now secure. 
 With all his oratorical tact and fluency, the au- 
 thor of " Coningsby " introduced into the House 
 of Commons one of the greatest achievements of 
 ills romantic political life — the Household Suffrage 
 Reform Bill of 1867. 
 
 The debates that followed were prolific in 
 
106 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 brilliant displays of parliamentary eloquence. 
 Gladstone, Disraeli's life-long rival, galled to see 
 himself cheated of the glory of accomplishing a 
 great reform, and of all men in the world by 
 Disraeli, burst forth in a torrent of hot and indig- 
 nant declamation, and impetuously arraigned his 
 successful antagonist for political theft and pre- 
 sumptuous ambition. 
 
 Disraeli, feeling the great prize in his palm, 
 kept his temper finely, coolly taunted his rival, 
 and entered confidently upon the task of winning 
 a hesitating and doubting House. 
 
 Just a year after he had resumed the Ex- 
 chequer, the Household Suffrage Bill was passed, 
 and Disraeli was hailed as a benefactor to Eng- 
 land, who had deserved well of the country, and 
 was the hero of the hour. 
 
 XV. 
 
 It was in the autumn of this memorable year, 
 1867, that repeated attacks of the gout, and rap- 
 idly advancing age, admonished the chivalrous 
 Tory chief, the Earl of Derby, that it was time 
 for him to throw off the cares of office and the 
 perplexities of power. 
 
 For a moment there was a doubt who should 
 succeed him in the great office which confers vir- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 107 
 
 tual sovereignty over the British Empire. Der- 
 by's son, Lord Stanley, a young statesman of such 
 conspicuous talent that he had held the seals of 
 the Foreign Office in his father's cabinet, was 
 thought of, and was greatly preferred by the 
 high aristocratic element of the Tory party. 
 
 But a consideration of palpable justice deter- 
 mined the question. The Tories, although unwill- 
 ingly, were fain to acknowledge that of all men 
 Disraeli had most efficiently borne the banner of 
 Toryism for a score of years. It was also true 
 that of all men he alone could conduct with suc- 
 cess a Tory administration. Although distrusted 
 by some, hated by others, personally liked by but 
 few among his prominent colleagues, his services 
 had been too great in the past, his abilities too 
 great at present, to be slighted. It was known 
 that he would never serve except as chief. He 
 had waited long and patiently — had suffered more, 
 worked harder, accomplished greater results, than 
 any living Tory. England, then, was but little 
 surprised when it was announced that the Queen 
 had summoned Disraeli to an audience, and had 
 designated him as Prime-Minister of England. 
 
 Disraeli's elevation to this lofty summit was 
 remarkable in more than one respect. He was 
 not the first Prime-Minister, indeed, not of aris- 
 tocratic blood ; but he was the first Prime-Min- 
 ister of Jewish birth ; thirty years before, he 
 had cast a prophetic glance into the future, and 
 
108 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 had determined that he would one day be Prime- 
 Minister. It was like the poor Swiss youth, Cla- 
 viere, who, entering Paris, and happening to pass 
 the Ministry of Finance, was of a sudden struck 
 with the presentiment that he should some time 
 be its chief ; it was like the prophecy of the old 
 Creole hag to Josephine in her infancy, that she 
 would one day be "more than a queen." But 
 Disraeli was by no means the first Prime-Minister 
 who was a man of letters. His immediate prede- 
 cessor, the Earl of Derby, gave to the world an 
 elegant version of Homer's Iliad. The minister 
 who preceded Derby, Earl Russell, is known in 
 the literary world as the author of " The Life of 
 Fox," and of many able political essays. Can- 
 ning, too, was a literary man. 
 
 Of modern statesmen with whom Disraeli has 
 found himself sitting in the House of Commons, 
 many, perhaps a majority, of the more prominent 
 were cultivators of letters. Macaulay and Bul- 
 wer were members of the cabinet at different 
 periods. Gladstone is only less celebrated as a 
 Greek scholar and a powerful writer than as an 
 orator and statesman. John Stuart Mill, one of 
 the greatest of English philosophers ; Layard, 
 the antiquarian ; Hughes, the author of " Tom 
 Brown ; " R. Monckton Milnes, the poet ; George 
 Cornewall Lewis, an elegant essayist ; and Lord 
 Herbert, a man of varied literary accomj)lish- 
 ments, have been found side by side with the 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 109 
 
 Prime-Minister in the House of Commons during 
 the past quarter of a century. Disraeli became 
 Prime-Minister at the age of 62, his mind and body- 
 being at the height of their vigor, his energy still 
 unimpaired, and his endurance equal to that of 
 the youngest man in Parliament. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 DiSEAELi's first term as Prime-Minister was 
 brief. Having established household suffrage, 
 which virtually brought a new constituency into 
 existence, he found it necessary to dissolve Par- 
 liament. The general election was held in the 
 autumn of 1868, and resulted in an overwhelm- 
 ing majority for the Liberals ; and before the new 
 Parliament met, Disraeli had resigned, and Glad- 
 stone had succeeded him. 
 
 At this moment the* prospects of the Tory 
 party seemed dark indeed. It looked as if they 
 were doomed to a long sojourn outside the sun- 
 shine of power. Few would then have predicted 
 that Disraeli, who was now sixty-three, would ever 
 again wield the destinies of the empire. Glad- 
 stone's triumph seemed complete, and likely to be 
 enduring. 
 
 But the spirit of the Tory chief was irrepress- 
 ibly buoyant, and less than ever daunted. He 
 
110 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 went jauntily to the task of leading a forlorn 
 hope of opposition, and. abated not a jot of his 
 vigor in attacking every weak place in the armor 
 of his victorious, contemptuous, and hot-blooded 
 rival. 
 
 Unluckily for Gladstone his armor was in too 
 many places vulnerable. He led a party which, 
 though its majority was great, and, when united, 
 was irresistible in the Commons, was divided into 
 several camps and coteries, which looked upon each 
 other with jealousy and suspicion. The Liberals 
 were never compact and harmonious as an or- 
 ganization, like the Tories ; and, while Gladstone 
 held their allegiance by the splendor of his genius 
 and the boldness of his measures, he was quite 
 wanting in the tact and temper by which his an- 
 tagonist maintained the order and discipline of 
 his followers. 
 
 The Liberal majority, therefore, decreased ev- 
 ery year ; Gladstone saw it fast crumbling away ; 
 and his measures, intended to keep them together, 
 only had the effect to widen the breaches. 
 
 It was while this process of disintegration was 
 fast going on, that Disraeli once more displayed 
 his audacity, and produced one more of those 
 striking dramatic effects which have been so fre- 
 quent in his political career, by visiting and de- 
 livering an address in the very midst of his ene- 
 my's camp, the Radical town of Manchester. Here, 
 where have been born so many of the reforms 
 
BEACONSFIELD. HI 
 
 which have gradually been adopted in England 
 during the past half century, the vicinity of 
 John Bright's home, and John Bright's former 
 constituency, Disraeli ventured to sharply attack 
 the cabinet of which probably three quarters of 
 his audience were cordial supporters. 
 
 He arraigned Gladstone for his missteps in do- 
 mestic legislation, and the feebleness of his for- 
 eign policy ; and declared that, by modifying the 
 treaty of Paris to please Russia, the cabinet, " in 
 the form of a congress, had guaranteed its own 
 humiliation." Speaking then of the future tactics 
 of the Tories, he betrayed all his own shrewdness 
 as a party leader by saying : " If I may venture to 
 give such a hint, let us take care not to allow our- 
 selves to be made to any extent the. tools of the 
 ambition or of the discontent of extreme politicians 
 on either side. I will tell you what I mean. It 
 may very likely be the game of the Radical party 
 to try and turn out the present ministry if they 
 can, and to put a Conservative government in its 
 place, that Conservative government being in a 
 minority ; hoping that by so doing they shall be 
 able to reconstruct their own party upon a new 
 platform, pledged to more extreme and more vio- 
 lent measures, and then to have a cabinet formed 
 of the most thorough-going Radicals. These may 
 be their tactics ; but just because it is their game, 
 it ought not to be ours." 
 
 The downfall of Gladstone, owing to the melt- 
 
112 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 ing away of his once great majority, was not 
 long postponed. The really fatal blow to his 
 cabinet, though it did not fully take effect for a 
 year, was the dissension in the Liberal ranks aroused 
 by Gladstone's scheme of Irish university reform. 
 
 In one of the great debates upon this measure 
 Disraeli took a brilliant part, in which he showed 
 that he still retained, in all its force, that power 
 of masterly invective which, nearly thirty years 
 ago, he had launched against Gladstone's political 
 teacher. Sir Robert Peel. In the course of his 
 speech, he drew himself up, and, riveting his eyes 
 upon the restless Premier, said : 
 
 "You have now had four years of it. You 
 have despoiled churches, you have threatened 
 every corporation and every endowment in the 
 country. You have examined into everybody's 
 affairs, you have criticised every profession and 
 vexed every trade. ISTobody is certain of his 
 property ; nobody knows what duties he may 
 have to perform to-morrow." 
 
 The result was the defeat of the cabinet by 
 three votes. Gladstone at once resigned. Dis- 
 raeli was summoned to the Queen at Windsor, as 
 he was entering the House of Commons. But he 
 refused to return to power and face a hostile 
 House of Commons. With his wise patience, he 
 was content to bide his time. With his clear 
 forecast, he foresaw that, sooner or later, he should 
 win the game. 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 113 
 
 A year after, Gladstone, who had reluctantly- 
 resumed the premiership after Disraeli's refusal, 
 found that he could no longer carry on the gov- 
 ernment with a party so obstreperous and unman- 
 ageable as the Liberals had become. He there- 
 fore suddenly dissolved Parliament early in 1874, 
 and an exciting general election at once ensued. 
 
 It was during this hot electoral contest that 
 Disraeli uttered a sarcasm upon Mr. Lowe, who 
 had long been one of his most persistent and viru- 
 lent foes, which alike illustrates his keenness and 
 his humor. It had been complained of that Lon- 
 don University, which Mr. Lowe represented in 
 Parliament, should have a member. Disraeli, in 
 a speech at Newport, thus alluded to the matter : 
 ^' Were it not for me the London University would 
 not have had a member. Everybody was opposed 
 to it. My colleagues did not much like it ; the 
 Conservative party did not much like it ; but, 
 more strange than anything else, the whole Liberal 
 party were ready to oppose it. But I, with char- 
 acteristic magnanimity, said to myself, * Unless 
 I give a member to the London University Mr. 
 Lowe cannot have a seat.' It was then impossible 
 for him, and probably still is, to show himself 
 upon any hustings with safety to his life. I said 
 to myself, ' There is so much ability lost to Eng- 
 gland,' and I pique myself always upon upholding 
 and supporting ability in every party, and wher- 
 ever I meet it ; and I also said to myself, ' One 
 8 
 
114 BEACONSriELD. 
 
 must have an eye to tlie main chance. If I keep 
 Mr. Lowe in public life — and this is his only- 
 chance — I make sure that no cabinet, if it be 
 brought into power by an overwhelming majority, 
 can long endure and long flourish if he be a mem- 
 ber of it ; ' and, gentlemen, I think what took place 
 perfectly justified my prescience." 
 
 He had good reason to assume this tone of not 
 ill-natured jocularity ; for the signs in the politi- 
 cal heavens were full of auguries favorable to a 
 great Tory triumph. To Disraeli's exultation, and 
 Gladstone's indignant dismay, the country sent to 
 the new House a Tory majority of sixty ; and 
 Disraeli once more, in the spring of 18T4, became 
 Prime-Minister of England, which office he has 
 continued to hold from that day to this. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 As Prime-Minister, Disraeli has been still res- 
 olute, dramatic, brilliant, impressing his own 
 forcible character upon any measure ; bold in the 
 conception and execution of policies ; masterly in 
 party leadership ; patient under the most violent 
 vituperation ; delighting in the full exercise of 
 the power which the command of a large majority 
 of both Houses of Parliament has enabled him to 
 wield from first to last. 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 115 
 
 His premiership, like his early public career, 
 has been a political romance. Who else, in all 
 the long roll of British statesmanship, would have 
 produced such startling surprises, such scenic, 
 effects, such audacious transformations ? To pur- 
 chase a controlling share in the Suez Canal, to 
 hail the Queen as Empress of India, to send the 
 fleet into the waters of Constantinople, to acquire 
 Cyprus, were acts of daring, which only a coura- 
 geous and self-confident spirit, fond of striking 
 displays of power, could have successfully exe- 
 cuted. 
 
 The period of his power fell upon dangerous 
 and perplexing times. The skeleton in the closet 
 of Europe, the Eastern question, reappeared to 
 bring terror into every court and cabinet council. 
 A timid statesman might well have shrunk from 
 confronting it. To lay this periodically-appearing 
 phantom was a task which a statesman, doubtful 
 of himself, might well have sought to avoid. 
 
 But Disraeli, amid a storm of popular denun- 
 ciation, went to this task jauntily, with a "light 
 heart ; " the fruit of his policy was the treaty 
 of Berlin ; and he transformed the unpopularity 
 with which he seemed at one time about to be 
 overwhelmed into something very like adulation. 
 " On all hands," says an English writer, " his 
 name was coupled with disparaging epithets, and 
 his personal character assailed with the grossest 
 calumny. Even the journals of his own party — 
 
116 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 confessedly not the most intelligent organs of 
 public opinion in existence — wavered in their al- 
 legiance, and when he announced plainly that the 
 * interests of England ' held the first place in his 
 mind, there was a general outcry against his insensi- 
 bility to the enthusiasm of humanity. Gradually, 
 but certainly, however, public opinion veered in 
 the direction of the statesman who has best in 
 this century exemplified the truth of Mr. Carlyle's 
 favorite proposition that, if ' speech is silvern, si- 
 lence is golden.' Without any striving or crying 
 out, without any public meetings or letters to the 
 journals, or post-cards to anxious constituents. 
 Lord Beaconsfield succeeded in winning the peo- 
 ple of this country over to his side. By a policy 
 equally bold and prudent, he secured the support of 
 the nation ; and when the prospects of an amicable 
 settlement of existing diificulties appeared to be 
 darkest, he took a step which drove from his side 
 the two weakest members of his cabinet, and left 
 him free to pursue the courageous line of action 
 which has given to this country the greatest treaty 
 since the peace of Utrecht — a treaty which as- 
 sures the interests of England in the Ottoman 
 Empire, which provides for the safety and good 
 government of the Christian subjects of the Porte, 
 and which guarantees, as never has been guaran- 
 teed before, our Indian Empire against Russian 
 aggression." 
 
 It was undoubtedly a proud day when, in the 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 117 
 
 early winter of 1877, Benjamin Disraeli walked 
 up the aisle of tlie House of Lords, enveloped in 
 the robes and bearing upon his head the coronet 
 of an earl. Of all the events of his checkered 
 career, this was perhaps the most remarkable and 
 the most gratifying to his imaginative nature. To 
 be an hereditary peer of the realm ; to sit as an 
 equal beside the proud nobles who had once so 
 contemptuously scorned and snubbed him ; to 
 outrank patricians who could trace their descent 
 from the barons of William the !N'orman ; to be 
 the visible leader and chief of archbishops, dukes, 
 and marquises ; to find himself the principal per- 
 sonage in the haughtiest assembly in the world : 
 this was glory enough to satisfy even his vast am- 
 bition. Nor was this the last of the dazzling titu- 
 lar honors which his toils and triumphs have won. 
 When he returned from the Prussian capital, where 
 he had been the central and conspicuous figure, and 
 by his voice had made the authority of England 
 felt in the most distinguished conclave of modern 
 times, as impressively as did Gortchakoff that of 
 Russia, and Bismarck that of Germany, he was 
 welcomed back to London with such a demonstra- 
 tion as had not been seen since Wellington re- 
 turned from Waterloo. 
 
 The Queen, summoning him to Osborne, con- 
 ferred upon him that Order of the Garter which 
 is an object coveted by the most illustrious of 
 England's nobles. 
 
118 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 It is a suggestive fact that Disraeli, transferred 
 to the serener arena of the House of Lords, did 
 not thereby lose any of the personal power and 
 influence which he so long wielded in the more 
 popular and more authoritative House. When 
 William Pitt became Earl of Chatham, and Rob- 
 ert Walpole became Earl of Orford, they were 
 the shorn Samsons of British politics. When a 
 commoner is transferred to the peers, he is usually 
 regarded as "laid on the shelf." 
 
 It has not been so with the present Premier. 
 The Earl of Beaconsfield is as much the real, 
 moving head of the cabinet and of Parliament as 
 was Disraeli. Their policy is still emphatically 
 his policy. It is his hand that is always on the 
 rudder of the ship of state ; the impress of his 
 peculiar, energetic, audacious mind is on every 
 great public act. 
 
 He has, besides, during a period in which he 
 has been assailed with a degree of persistent 
 ferocity and denunciation such as few English 
 statesmen have ever had to encounter, not only 
 maintained his majority in the House of Com- 
 mons, but he has increased it. He was much 
 stronger after he had been in power for four 
 years than when he first assumed it ; and this is 
 one of the rarest things in the history of British 
 politics. 
 
 His achievements as Premier, indeed, are enough 
 to establish the fame of any one statesman. " He 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 119 
 
 began life," says a recent writer, "under almost 
 every conceivable disadvantage. He was the rep- 
 resentative of an unpopular race and the advocate 
 of an eminently unpopular political creed ; in later 
 years lie has been in opposition to two of the most 
 popular of English statesmen ; and yet, in spite 
 of every difficulty, he has contrived to live down 
 his opponents, and by dint of patience, courage, 
 inexhaustible temper, and knowledge of the world, 
 to reconstruct the old national party of England, 
 and to restore her waning prestige. Still, it may 
 be open to question whether posterity will recog- 
 nize him by the title he has adopted. Bacon is 
 Bacon to the end of the chapter, and never Lord 
 Verulam ; the Great Commoner is Pitt, and never 
 the Earl of Chatham. So probably will it be now. 
 His country will remember the Earl of Beacons- 
 field by the name by which he was known during 
 so many years of struggle and difficulty, rather 
 than by the title with which he strove to identify 
 himself in the eyes of his neighbors with his * per- 
 fect wife.' The desire to do so was unquestiona- 
 bly natural, but to the people of that country 
 which he has served so faithfully and loved so 
 well the chief of the Tory party will be always 
 not Lord Beaconsfield, but Benjamin Disraeli." 
 
120 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 XVIIL 
 
 The personal appearance of a famous man, the 
 way lie looks and a,cts, Ms peculiarities, attitudes, 
 mannerisms, are always interesting, and serve to 
 complete the picture of Ms character. The idea 
 conceived of him is clearer and more precise if 
 his person is described ; we feel that we know 
 him better ; his image is more distinct in the 
 mind's eye. 
 
 How Disraeli looked and dressed and bore 
 himself when he was the young and brilliant 
 profege of Gore House, we have already seen« 
 As he advances in years, we get here and there a 
 glimpse of him through those who observed and 
 have written of him from time to time. 
 
 " His external appearance," says Smiles, writ- 
 ing in 1860, when Disraeli was fifty-five, "is very 
 characteristic. A face of ashy paleness, large 
 dark eyes, curling black hair, a stooping gait, an 
 absorbed look, a shuffling walk — these are his ex- 
 ternal marks ; and, once seen, you will not fail to 
 remember Disraeli. There is something unusual, 
 indeed quite foreign, in his appearance ; you 
 could not by any possibility mistake him for a 
 ^axon. Notwithstanding his position, he is an 
 exceedingly isolated being. He makes no inti- 
 mates, has few personal friends ; he seems to be 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 121 
 
 lonely and self-isolated, feeding upon his own 
 thoughts." 
 
 " Disraeli is full of pluck and vigor this ses- 
 sion," wrote Justin McCarthy in 1871, " quite 
 jubilant and confident. He still looks wonder- 
 fully young, despite his awkward, shuffling, slink- 
 ing walk, and his stooped shoulders. A few 
 evenings since I saw him pass along Parliament 
 Street, leaning on two friends. Everybody looked 
 after him. He is a much more remarkable figure 
 in the street than Gladstone or Bright. Let me 
 describe him as he then showed : 
 
 " A tall man, with stooped and rounded shoul- 
 ders ; a peculiarly-shaped head, fast denuding it- 
 self of hair, but with the hair that remains still 
 black as ever ; a complexion of dull brick-dust ; 
 a face puckered up like an old mask, or as if the 
 wearer of the face were always screwing up his 
 lips to whistle, and never accomplished the feat. 
 A small chin-tuft adorns the countenance ; and 
 let me add that the expression on the countenance 
 is lugubrious enough to become an artistic and 
 conscientious mute at a funeral. 
 
 "A long gray or white outer coat reaches 
 nearly to the ankles of this remarkable figure, and 
 beneath the coat might be seen trousers of a dark 
 gray, and very neat boots. There was something 
 of the air of a decayed and fading dandy about 
 the entire personage, which, joined with the odd 
 walk, and the stooped shoulders, and the chill 
 
122 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 gray atmospliere of tlie early evening, diffused a 
 sense of gloom over tlie meditative spectator. 
 
 " Was this, then, the brilliant, eccentric, and 
 dashing man of genius, who used to be the cynosure 
 of eyes in Lady Blessington's bright salons, who 
 wrote * Vivian Grey,' and came out as a wild rad- 
 ical, and proclaimed that revolution was hi^ forte, 
 and challenged O'Connell to a duel, and heard the 
 chimes ever so long past midnight with the elder- 
 ly gentleman now vegetating at Chiselhurst, who 
 was then Prince Louis Napoleon ? 
 
 " Yes, that was he. ' There goes old Dizzy,' 
 said a working man, as the great politician, ro- 
 mancist, and adventurer, shuffled along." 
 
 In the following year he appeared as follows 
 to an observant writer : 
 
 " A man of middle height, of spare but well- 
 proportioned frame, of scrupulous neatness of 
 dress, arid possessed of a countenance which no 
 one can forget who has once looked upon it — this 
 is Disraeli, as we see him now quietly walk- 
 ing up the floor of the House to take his place on 
 the front Opposition bench. 
 
 " Arrived at his seat, he removes his hat — he 
 alone among the gentlemen upon that bench — 
 and sits down, folding his arms and stretching 
 out his legs in a fashion which recalls by-gone 
 days, when, out of every twenty honorable gen- 
 tlemen in the House, nineteen of them stretched 
 out their legs in exactly the same way. 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 123 
 
 "Over the high-arched forehead — surely the 
 forehead of a poet — there hangs from the crown 
 of the head a single curl of dark hair, a curl 
 which you cannot look at without feeling a touch 
 of pathos in your inmost heart, for it is the only 
 thing about the worn and silent man reminding 
 you of the brilliant youth of 'Vivian Grey.' 
 
 " The face below this solitary lock is deeply 
 marked with the furrows left by care's plough- 
 share ; the fine dark eyes look downward, the 
 mouth is closed with a firmness that says more for 
 this man's tenacity of will than pages of eulogy 
 would do ; but what strikes you more than any- 
 thing else is the utter lack of expression upon the 
 countenance. 
 
 " 'No one looking at the face, though but for 
 a moment, could fall into the error of supposing 
 that expression and intelligence are not there ; 
 they are there, but in concealment. 
 
 " Much is said of the power possessed by Na- 
 poleon III. of hiding his thoughts from the keen- 
 est scrutiny ; but more than once even his power 
 over his countenance has been sorely taxed, and 
 he has been glad of the grateful shelter of the 
 curling mustache that shades his mouth. 
 
 "Without any such help, however, Disraeli 
 has a face that is simply inscrutable. Again 
 and again have hundreds of keen eyes been turned 
 at critical moments toward that face, to read, if 
 it might be possible, something of the thoughts 
 
124 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 of the man himself ; but never once, not even in 
 the most exciting crisis of personal or political 
 conflict, has the face unwittingly relaxed, or friend 
 or foe been able to read aught there. 
 
 " It is the face of a sphinx, inscrutable and 
 unfathomable ; it is, as men of every party will 
 admit, the most remarkable face in England. 
 
 " We have dwelt thus long upon it because, 
 by its very absence of outward expression, it 
 gives a clew to the general character of the man 
 himself. It is not for us to attempt to sound the 
 depths of his soul. They are beyond the reach of 
 our plummet, nay, of any plummet that has yet 
 been dropped into them. There have been many 
 men — a few friends, a vast number of foes — who 
 have imagined that they have dived down into 
 the innermost recesses of Disraeli's nature, and- 
 who have come to the surface again to tell us 
 about everything that they saw there, to explain 
 every hidden motive, each smothered passion, 
 and to reduce the man himself to a mere piece of 
 mechanism — an automaton chess-player — whose 
 motive power, and springs, and wheels, and wires, 
 are to be discovered by any one who will take 
 the trouble to look for them. We intend to be 
 guilty of no such folly. 
 
 " Disraeli's mind is no more to be analyzed than 
 his countenance is to be fathomed. He is here ; 
 we know what he has done, we have seen his la- 
 bors, we acknowledge his genius, we believe him 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 125 
 
 to be intellectually one of the greatest men not of 
 his own time only but of all English history. Be- 
 yond that we cannot go, and we must leave to 
 future critics, who will see him through a clearer 
 medium than that through which it is possible for 
 us to behold him, and who may have new lights 
 thrown upon his character which are withheld 
 from us, to decide what he is, and what precisely 
 is the motive power of his life. All that we know 
 at present is that he is an intellectual prodigy, 
 and, like other prodigies, he must be tried by ex- 
 ceptional rules and standards." 
 
 A graphic picture of Disraeli, as he appeared 
 in the House of Commons seven or eight years 
 ago, is thus given by Ewing Ritchie : 
 
 " Seated on the Opposition benches, half-way 
 down, with some small-brained son of a duke by 
 his side, night after night, may be seen the leader 
 of Her Majesty's Opposition. Generally, his eyes 
 are cast down, his hands are crossed in front, and 
 he has all the appearance of a statue. Cold, pas- 
 sionless, he seems of an alien race — a stranger to 
 the hopes, and fears, and interests of a British 
 House of Commons. However fierce the debate, 
 or heated the House, or pressing the crisis, there 
 sits Disraeli, occasionally looking at his hands, or 
 the clock — otherwise silent, unmoved, and still. 
 Yet an Indian scout could not keep a more vigi- 
 lant watch ; and, immediately an opportunity oc- 
 curs, he is on his legs, boiling with real or affected 
 indignation." 
 
126 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 In private character, Disraeli is known for Ms 
 social accomplisliments, his equable and amiable 
 temper, Ms freedom from anything like hauteur, 
 his courtesy to every one, and an air of quiet dig- 
 nity which is very far from repelling the advances 
 of those who come in contact with him. 
 
 One of his most hostile and most caustic crit- 
 ics says of him : " Disraeli, in private, is much 
 liked. He is very kindly ; he is a good friend ; 
 he is sympathetic in his dealings with young poli- 
 ticians, and is always glad to give a helping hand 
 to a young man of talent. Personal ambition, 
 which, in Mr. Bright's eyes, is something despica- 
 ble, and which Mr. Gladstone probably regards 
 as a sin, is, in Disraeli's acceptation, something 
 generous and elevating, something to be fostered 
 and encouraged. Therefore, young men of talent 
 admire Disraeli, and are glad and proud to gather 
 around him. " 
 
 " Of Disraeli's personal qualities," says a more 
 friendly observer, " apart from those which he 
 displays as a debater, a party-leader, or a states- 
 man, this is not the place in which to say much. 
 l!^evertheless, it is bare justice to a man who has 
 been the subject of a severer and more merciless 
 criticism than any of his contemporaries, to point 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 127 
 
 to one or two of the most prominent traits of his 
 private character. Watching him in his public 
 career, he always strikes one as a man of singular 
 reserve ; a man having few confidential friends, 
 and seldom indulging in free intercourse even 
 with his immediate colleagues. 
 
 " The popular impression of him, indeed, is that 
 he is a man without friends, laboring alone, and 
 holding himself aloof from those who are his nat- 
 ural allies. We believe this impression is an en- 
 tirely niistaken one. It is, at any rate, certain 
 that, personally, Disraeli is one of the most popu- 
 lar men in the House of Commons, winning upon 
 politicians of all shades of opinion by his never- 
 failing courtesy, by his generosity toward those 
 who are beginning their political career, and by 
 the utter absence of anything like personal vanity 
 in his character. Nor is it unworthy of remark 
 that toward Gladstone he has always shown a de- 
 gree of personal esteem, and of actual generosity, 
 which has never been requited by the latter as 
 fully as we could have wished. 
 
 "What the reason of this apparent want of 
 generosity on Gladstone's part may be, it is diffi- 
 cult to tell. Assuredly, Gladstone is not, as a 
 rule, cold or ungenerous toward his rivals or op- 
 ponents, but there is in his bearing toward Dis- 
 raeli an unquestionable coldness which has often 
 puzzled those who know him best. To us it seems 
 in some degree to be accounted for by the fact 
 
128 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 that Gladstone entertains some doubt as to the 
 sincerity of Disraeli's convictions. 
 
 " But, if that be so, his conduct is, to say the 
 least, inconsistent. There are other men whose 
 convictions are much more open to suspicion than 
 Disraeli's, toward whom he shows none of this 
 coldness. How high the personal feud between 
 these two great statesmen has sometimes risen 
 will be remembered by those who can recall one 
 memorable occasion when Disraeli congratulated 
 himself on the fact that the ponderous table of 
 the House separated and in a measure protected 
 him from his rival. Yet it is bare justice to Glad- 
 stone to recall another occasion when Disraeli, un- 
 der, as it then appeared, the imminent pressure 
 of a severe domestic affliction, was manifestly 
 touched by the feeling and delicacy with which 
 his great opponent alluded to his position. We 
 only wish that such displays of mutual good-feel- 
 ing were more common than they are. 
 
 " The great Conservative leader is a poet as 
 well as a statesman. In the lightness of his fancy, 
 in the depth of his feeling for the sufferings of 
 others, in the catholicity of his sympathies, in his 
 fine imaginative powers, and in his ability to in- 
 vest the homeliest of topics with something of ro- 
 mance and of beauty, he gives proof of the pure 
 vein of poetry hidden somewhere in his nature." 
 
 The Kew York World of November 1st, in 
 giving a cable dispatch from London, correcting 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 129 
 
 a report from that city that Lord Beaconsfield 
 had had an attack of epilepsy, adds from its 
 English correspondence the following interesting 
 sketch of his country seat in Buckinghamshire, 
 Hughenden Manor : 
 
 "In his home at Hughenden what he most 
 values would seem to be the privacy it insures 
 him, and the sylvan seclusion with which it sur- 
 rounds him when he seeks refuge there from the 
 battle of life in London. Hughenden Manor is 
 the estate not of an English earl exactly, for it 
 yields at the most an income of some £1,500 ster- 
 ling only a year, but of an English country gen- 
 tleman ; and it is no secret that the lord of Hugh- 
 enden has throughout his career been notably 
 earnest in asserting his right to be regarded as a 
 person having roots in the English soil. The af- 
 front which he has always most sharply resented 
 has been to speak of him as an * adventurer,' for 
 nothing could be more unjust, though many Eng- 
 lish writers not unfriendly to him have offered 
 him this affront in perfect good faith. So little 
 is known of Disraeli the man that a loose notion 
 is common throughout England of his having ob- 
 tained Hughenden through his marriage with Mrs. 
 Wyndham Lewis, the widow of a Gloucestershire 
 land-owner, and of his having in this way anchored 
 himself for the first time in English ground. ][^oth- 
 ing could be further from the truth. In the archi- 
 tectural section of the South Kensington Museum 
 
130 BEACOFSFIELD. 
 
 you may see any day a singularly beautiful screen 
 of carved brick- work tracery, unrivaled in Eng- 
 land, which formerly constituted the central part 
 of the fa9ade of a house which stood where the 
 Great Eastern Railway Station now stands in En- 
 field, and which was the residence from 1766 to 
 to 1804 of Isaac Disraeli, the father of Lord Bea- 
 consfield. It was one of the finest of the many fine 
 old houses which made Enfield famous in its way 
 long before the rifle-factories came there, and it 
 was a mere chance connected with his marriage 
 which led Isaac Disraeli to leave it just in time 
 to rob Enfield of the glory of giving birth to his 
 now illustrious son. When Benjamin Disraeli 
 issued his first election address he was able to 
 speak of himself as a land-owner in Berks, and to 
 date it from 'Bradenham House.' This house, 
 built by William Lord Windsor, and visited by 
 Queen Elizabeth on her return from Oxford in 
 1566, was long the home of Isaac Disraeli, who 
 received there some of the best society of his day, 
 and who now lies buried in Bradenham Church, 
 under a handsome monument. It was Isaac Dis- 
 raeli, too, who obtained Hughenden by fair pur- 
 chase, though he did not buy the whole area of 
 about two thousand acres included in the existing 
 domain. Lord Beaconsfield, in fact, is quite as 
 much of an Englishman and of an English squire 
 by birth and descent as Lord Romilly, for instance, 
 and much more of both than was the late, Lord 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 131 
 
 Lyndhurst. Yet nothing could be more unlike 
 an Englisliman's or an English squire's enjoyment 
 of a 'landed position' than Lord Beaconsfield's 
 life at Hughenden. He has covers for game as 
 good as may be found in Buckinghamshire, but 
 he never shoots ; he is in a good hunting country, 
 if a little hilly, but he never follows a fox ; he 
 has a home 'bosomed high in tufted trees,' but 
 he never led a pleasure party in among the 
 beeches. But little company comes for him to 
 the station of the little chair-making town of 
 High Wycombe (or High Wykeham — you may 
 spell it either way provided Only you are careful 
 never to pronounce it as you write it). What- 
 ever gayety of the great flourishes here is by the 
 grace of his neighbor, the newly-married Lord 
 Carington, who was the Earl of Rosebery's best 
 man last spring, and whose seat, 'The Abbey,' 
 lies a little south of Wycombe on the Marlow 
 road. For there is very little for company to do 
 at Hughenden, which, by-the-way, these wonder- 
 ful rustics choose to call ' Hitchendon.' English- 
 men in these days will not long endure a coun- 
 try house without sport. The lord of Hughenden 
 has learned much and feigned more to please 
 them, but he will not 'pay with his person,' as 
 the French say, for their admiration. He has 
 drawn the line at the arts of riding across country 
 and of handling the rod and the gun. This makes 
 him the most extraordinary, the most uncanny 
 
132 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 squire, perhaps, except tliat mad grandee of Spain, 
 Bethell Walrond, who ever held a rood of Eng- 
 lish ground. To this day the neighborhood pro- 
 fesses itself just as unable to make him out as 
 Landor's vicinage was to get along with that 
 strange poet at Llanthony. Lord Beaconsfield, 
 unlike Landor, is admired ; he is even rather pop- 
 ular, for he is the most lenient because the most 
 indifferent of landlords, but he is not in the least 
 understood. What a pity, the rural folk seem to 
 say to themselves, that he should have wellnigh 
 all knowledge, except that supreme part of it 
 which is necessary to social salvation and which 
 is treated of in those supplementary chapters of 
 the British Bible, the ' Sportsman's Pocket-Book ' 
 and the ' Country Gentleman's Guide ! ' For his 
 part he lives among them like a foreigner on the 
 lands he has conquered — as far removed from all 
 participation in their local pleasures as an Eng- 
 lishman would be, settled among the Hindoos. 
 One feature of Hughenden is supremely significant 
 on this point. Nearly all the paths cut through 
 the woods of the estate are drives, not walks, nor 
 even bridle-roads. The Earl of Beaconsfield's 
 way of getting from distant point to point is a 
 pony-carriage. A ' real English ' nobleman might 
 indeed be found taking his exercise in a vehicle of 
 that description, but it would be only because he 
 had the gout upon him or had broken his leg ! 
 Lord Beaconsfield's early enemy, the late Duke 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 133 
 
 of Rutland, used to go shooting even when he 
 was lamed with the gout, on a shaggy, vicious 
 little pony. High Wycombe is reached by a rail- 
 way ride of an hour and a half from London. As 
 you leave the station you strike the Hughenden 
 road at once, and in a very few minutes you come 
 in sight of a white house-top peeping out of a 
 dense plantation or natural wood. That is Hugh- 
 enden Manor in its hiding-place of trees. The 
 woodland is flanked by a wide stretch of meadow, 
 and both are fenced in, so that you must pass the 
 meadow gates to reach the park, and pass the 
 park gates to reach the house. And even the 
 first outwork is not to be lightly carried, as you 
 may infer from the warning, 'Trespassers will 
 be prosecuted,' set up almost at the outermost 
 gate. But be not alarmed ! These frowning 
 syllables mean no more than such warnings usual- 
 ly do. Even the inner sanctum of foliage swarms 
 with trespassers in the wild strawberry season. 
 The estate is then invaded by the urchins of the 
 district, who suffer no severer punishment than is 
 involved in the stony stare of their sovereign's 
 Prime-Minister when he happens to come upon 
 them in a raid. The mere grass land is comfort- 
 less in the extreme in its aspect ; it is only when 
 you pass the second gate that you come upon the 
 trim and ordered beauty of a private park. The 
 abundance of timber has given the landscape gar- 
 dener splendid material to work upon. Here he 
 
134 BEACONSMELD. 
 
 has cleared a glade and there a little amphitheatre, 
 and at needful distances for effect he has varied 
 the greens and browns of the grass and the trees 
 with patches of all the colors in which God has 
 painted the flowers of the field. It is a very, very 
 pretty place, and it is a pity that the house should 
 be there to spoil it. For the house does spoil it. 
 Hughenden Manor was once a not unpleasing 
 eighteenth-century mansion of red brick. It never 
 had many pretensions to architectural effect, but 
 it might have ' passed muster ' if it had been 
 left in its original state. In an evil hour years 
 ago, however, the owner took it into his head 
 to have it smartened up ' for company,' and with 
 his connivance a local genius whitened it all 
 over with paint or lime color to that end. It 
 now in consequence resembles a model factory 
 rather more than anything else, and may be 
 taken as another signal proof that the owner 
 could not be quite English if he tried, though 
 where he is under no obligation he does not care 
 to try. The lawn, with its richly variegated 
 flower-beds, tends somewhat to modify the de- 
 pressing effect of the house, and the interior of 
 the house soon makes you entirely forgetful of 
 the exterior. Once within the doors, you see at a 
 glance with what manner of man you have to 
 deal. It is a house of memories rather than of 
 tastes. The place is a positive museum of por- 
 traits, and most of these, as they represent the 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 135 
 
 friends of the owner's youth, are portraits of the 
 dead and gone. The pictures begin at the hall 
 door, they line the staircase walls, they overflow 
 into every chamber and antechamber, and there 
 is hardly one of them that is not a personal me- 
 mento ; of landscapes, genre pictures, historical 
 and ideal paintings, there are few or none. There 
 is something pathetic and almost painful in this 
 presence of so many faces that will never more 
 greet Lord Beaconsfield with anything warmer 
 than their pictured smiles. Here in the low-ceiled 
 entry is Edward Lytton Bulwer in the day of his 
 dandyism, a picture as carefully wrought out by 
 the painter in boots and cuffs and collar as in the 
 fine brow above them. Here is Lyndhurst, the 
 great Tory Lord Chancellor, who was a friend 
 and patron of Mr. Disraeli when Lord Beacons- 
 field was in urgent need of such countenance to 
 commend him even to the attention of the party 
 which now lives and moves in him. This por- 
 trait was painted by the young Disraeli's idol, 
 D'Orsay, and opposite to it hangs the effigy of 
 the artist and the idol himself — the Crichton of 
 his time, the best dresser, the brightest wit, the 
 most accomplished swordsman, painter, equestrian, 
 and general highflyer perhaps ever seen in London 
 society, and withal, as tradition assures us, the 
 handsomest man, not only of a season, but of an 
 epoch. It is conclusive as to his power that he 
 should have enchanted one who has since been 
 
136 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 recognized as the chief of enchanters, Disraeli 
 himself. The young worshiper sat at his feet. 
 There was nothing he would not have done for 
 this glittering idol. There was, indeed, nothing 
 he did not do for him. One chief secret of his 
 early impecuniosity 'is now known ; he gave up 
 the ready money left him by his father, some 
 thousands of pounds, to help to pay D'Orsay's 
 debts. It was but a drop in that ocean of lia- 
 bility, but it helped his hero through one bad 
 quarter of an hour, and with that the devotee was 
 content. Another canvas only separates D'Orsay 
 from the Countess of Blessington — a brunette 
 radiant with youthful beauty. Social history will 
 always couple these two names together, and 
 in its own way — though to the day of his death 
 D'Orsay most solemnly swore that the mother of 
 his unhappy wife was no more to him than a 
 mother or a much-loved friend. Disraeli made 
 his social debut in London in the Blessington cir- 
 cle, and his associates there were the brightest 
 men (the women never approached her) known to 
 the world of her hour. 
 
 " A portrait of the young Disraeli, taken at this 
 period, is to be seen up-stairs at Hughenden. A 
 portrait of the Disraeli of to-day, copied from 
 one painted but the other day for the Queen, is to 
 be seen below. The difference is as saddening as 
 it is striking. The earlier portrait is in the high 
 Byronio manner. We have a drawing-room cor- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 137 
 
 Bair before us, with flasliing eye, flowing locks, 
 and an expression of wild devil-may-careishness 
 carried out in it to the very twist of the tie. 
 This was the Disraeli of the past, in one incarna- 
 tion of fashion. In the other — the Beaconsfield 
 of to-day — all the suppleness of line has vanished 
 out of face and dress, the more obviously because 
 the cheek is close-shaven. You feel yourself in 
 the presence of a ' very hard customer,' v\^ho has 
 parted with every illusion, and who no longer be- 
 lieves, with the original of the earlier picture, 
 that life is an easy matter, to be carried with a 
 rush. What the second face has gained, in the 
 look of worldly wisdom, fails to make up, per- 
 haps, for what it has lost in the look of confidence 
 and hope. ISTear this later portrait hangs a still 
 stronger contrast — the face of Byron, with its 
 almost fabulous purity of classic outline. The 
 original of this portrait, as everybody knows, was 
 another of the young Disraeli's heroes, and the 
 enthusiasm of his early admiration has survived 
 to old age, as Lord Beaconsfield recently showed 
 when he headed a movement for erecting a statue 
 to the great English poet in the capital which has 
 commemorated so many meaner and less-enduring 
 fames than his. The genius of Byron, like that 
 of Disraeli, was passionate rather than reflective. 
 Disraeli's earliest successes may be almost de- 
 scribed as a result of the application of the By- 
 ronic method to politics. Let Mr. Lowe say 
 
138 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 what he will of the 'slatternly inaccuracy' of 
 his rival's thought, its volume of fire has often 
 more than made up for its lack of precision with 
 an English multitude. ISTear Byron hangs Sir 
 [N'athaniel Rothschild, in his uniform of a yeo- 
 manry captain, the picture of a dandy who would 
 be a perfect type of the British ofiicer but for his 
 swarthy face. The Rothschilds are Lord Beacons- 
 field's best and oldest friends. There is more than 
 a community of race between them — there is a 
 community of defiance to the prejudices of creed. 
 They have made a social pact with Christendom 
 — the Prime-Minister, of course, has gone even 
 further than that — and the Rothschilds are now 
 allying themselves with the best blood not only 
 in the English but in the French aristocracy, to 
 the great scandal of old-fashioned orthodoxy 
 among the Jews. It is a kind of new dispensa- 
 tion, of which no hint is to be found in either the 
 law or the prophets as they are read in the syna- 
 gogues, but which obtains its sufficient sanction 
 in society's approving smile. 
 
 " The staircase leads us to a dressing-room filled 
 with more art treasures — a singularly fine collec- 
 tion of the engravings of Bartolozzi, whom Isaac 
 Disraeli knew very well when he lived near Rich- 
 ardson's old home at North End. These things, 
 however, may indicate rather the taste of the 
 father than the taste of the son. Beyond the 
 dressing-room is a little narrow slip of a chamber. 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 139 
 
 lined on one side with book-shelves. In this room 
 the secretaries of the Premier's secretaries work 
 during the two or three months of the year in 
 which the business of state is carried on at Hugh- 
 enden instead of in the old official residence in 
 Downing Street. Lord Beaconsfield's favorite 
 and most trusted private secretary, Mr. Montagu 
 Corry, who is not only his secretary but his de- 
 voted personal friend, of course works with his 
 chief in a small study on this landing, in which 
 portraits of Isaac Disraeli and his wife look down, 
 as in a happy dream, from the mantel-piece on the 
 world-embracing labors of their son. You must 
 come down again to the lower floor for the best 
 rooms in the house. The dining-room may be 
 reckoned among these by virtue of its uses, but 
 in no other respect. It is as bare and comfortless 
 almost as a monastic refectory, and resembles one 
 rather than a convivial chamber. 
 
 "In the matter of gastronomy, Disraeli has 
 always been as careless and abstemious as an 
 Arab. His official dinners, from the time when 
 he first became Chancellor of the Exchequer, are 
 remembered with a sort of anguish by all the 
 hons vivants who were compelled to go through 
 with them. A story still goes the rounds of the 
 first of these banquets, at which one course after 
 another came upon the table either tepid or frigid, 
 chilly fish following cold soup, and a lukewarm 
 roast supervening, until the time of the ices came, 
 
140 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 when appeared a leaning tower of Pisa, toppling 
 to its fall in a pool of deliquescent rosy cream. 
 ' Thank Heaven ! ' murmured a discontented guest, 
 in a stage-whisper, 'there's something warm, at 
 last!' 
 
 " The style of the Hughenden dining-room is 
 Gothic, but, unfortunately, it is what may be called 
 the secondary Walpolian Gothic of thirty or forty 
 years ago. The oak sideboard is the best thing 
 in the room, but that is so much like a communion 
 table that it must seem indecent to decant any- 
 thing upon it but sacramental wine. It stands in 
 a side chapel rather than a common recess — the 
 taste of a former occupant of the house having 
 led him to reproduce a bit of the architecture of 
 his college at Oxford on this part of the building. 
 One wall is adorned with medallions in marble, 
 brought from Pompeii — character sketches, if not 
 caricatures, of the great ones of the old city. The 
 other walls would be quite bare but for the slen- 
 der lines of oak paneling which run from ceiling 
 to floor. The comfort which we are taught to 
 look for in every English home is found for the 
 first time in the library. This apartment is half 
 a library and half a drawing-room. There are 
 plenty of tomes, but no dust. The light is abun- 
 dant, and it falls as often on brilliant hangings as 
 on sober bindings ; and evidently no hangings 
 are too brilliant for the taste of the occupant. 
 Rich Oriental yellows predominate in the decora- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 141 
 
 tions, but there is an Oriental harmony in the fit- 
 tings of the apartment, taken as a whole. The 
 bookbinder's lines of gold on the volumes here 
 and there catch up and carry out the color, as an 
 artist would say, from one end of the room to the 
 other, and the place is filled with bits of bric-a- 
 brac which serve the same end. Yonder huge 
 knife in its case of gold is one of the owner's 
 memorials of Eastern travel. He was but a boy 
 then, and he had a marked boy's taste for these 
 glittering toys. Copies of the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes^ lying on the table, show if not the tastes 
 at least the necessities of his maturer age. These 
 two numbers are the very last books he has been 
 consulting. The paper-knife marks them. The 
 reader has but just left them, to take them up 
 again when he returns to the room. Evidently, 
 the hero of the Berlin Congress desires to see 
 what his neighbors think of his Eastern policy — 
 who was it put about the story that Lord Bea- 
 consfield knows no French? Another lie gone 
 the way of the rest ! Here, as everywhere in this 
 interesting but melancholy house, are pictures of 
 friends dead and gone. That of the poet Rogers 
 hanging by the mantel -piece is but a pencil- 
 sketch, amateurish, yet not without merit. It at 
 least does full justice to that nose and chin which, 
 according to Byron, 'would shame a knocker.' 
 Rogers was a very early friend of Disraeli, per- 
 haps his earliest. It was he who took the boy to 
 
142 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 be baptized, at St. Andrew's, Holborn, and, in 
 thus giving bim his start in Protestant Christi- 
 anity, gave him also his start in English political 
 life. There are other sketches, more amateurish 
 still, of which the master of the house is the sub- 
 ject, as he appeared when receiving an honorary 
 degree at a Scotch university. The lady who drew 
 them did not spare him. They show enough 
 feminine malice, if not enough artistic ability, for 
 Punch. His lordship seems to be quite conscious 
 how exquisitely ludicrous he looks in his baggy 
 robe of dignity, and with his demure, downcast 
 eye. Presentation books lie about on the tables. 
 One of them, a trophy from Berlin, is a beauti- 
 fully printed and as beautifully bound edition of 
 the Psalms in German, weighing several pounds. 
 A slip of paper thrust between the leaves says 
 that it is from an admirer — there is no other clew 
 to the giver's name. Xear it lies a copy of the 
 parliamentary return of land-owners in England 
 and Wales, the modern ^ Domesday Book ' 
 brought down to date. It is handsomely bound, 
 and an inscription on the cover mentions that the 
 return was moved for by Mr. Disraeli. It did 
 not exactly answer his purpose, which was to 
 prove that the ownership of the soil of England 
 was far more equably distributed among the peo- 
 ple than was supposed. For, if it showed that 
 Mr. Bright had monstrously overstepped the Rad- 
 ical case, it also showed that the few have too 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 143 
 
 much land and the many too little. Perhaps Mr. 
 Disraeli had better have left it alone. But he 
 has never troubled himself much about deluges 
 in the great hereafter. 
 
 " From the library we pass into the drawing- 
 room, commanding, like most of the other apart- 
 ments, beautiful views of the fertile uplands with 
 their ridge of woods. It is very gorgeous in its 
 glow of gold and yellow satin. The parqueted 
 floor is in the French style. French, too, in taste, 
 is the abundance of figure-subjects in old china, 
 though these are mostly of Dresden ware. This 
 might be called the Queen's room, for the Queen 
 sat in it on her memorable visit to her favorite 
 minister a year or so ago — a visit of a couple of 
 hours, but it made Russia and Germany under- 
 stand his hold on power, and it will be remembered 
 in this rural neighborhood for ten times as many 
 years. This room abounds with evidences of her 
 royal favor to the man who has made her some- 
 thing more than a queen, and whose enemies, in- 
 deed, accuse him of making her an empress in 
 England as well as in India by liberating her 
 from the critical control of Parliament, and ac- 
 cepting her will as the nation's law. In the place 
 of honor among the pictures hangs the portrait of 
 Her Majesty, painted by command. On the table 
 lies a ponderously bound copy of Theodore Mar- 
 tin's ' Faust,' with the inscription on the fly-leaf 
 in a handwriting beautifully clear and bold : ' To 
 
144 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield, with many happy returns of 
 the season, from Victoria, Reg. and I. {JRegma et 
 Imperatrix). Christmas Eve, 1876.' Here, too, 
 lies a more popular tribute, the 'pair of ivory 
 carvers' (the fork almost big enough to form a 
 trident for Britannia, and the knife to match) 
 given by the workmen of Shef&eld in acknowl- 
 edgment, as is told in an inscription on the han- 
 dle, of the ' Peace with Honor ' brought back 
 from Berlin. There could be no better tools for 
 the dismembering of that prince of farm-yard 
 birds, the turkey. Let us hope the Sheffield work- 
 men never thought of this. From the drawing- 
 room we may pass to the Disraeli room, a bed- 
 chamber of state hung round with pictures of the 
 family. There is Disraeli the elder, as a boy 
 with large dark Jewish eyes, and as a man. The 
 portrait of his wife, the great man's mother, is 
 now a mere network of lines of decay on a cracked 
 canvas. Their gifted son, too, is seen here as a 
 boy and as a young man. A portrait of his grand- 
 father, the Venetian, who made the family fortune 
 in England more than a century and a half ago, 
 completes the collection. These elders both are 
 dignified figures, tending to show that 
 
 ' St. Patrick was a gentleman, 
 And came of decent people.' 
 
 " But why linger longer in the house ? A view 
 of Hughenden Church, from the windows, invites 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 145 
 
 us out of doors. The cliurch is old, but so bare 
 of ornamentation that, were it not for that equally- 
 bare pew in the chancel, * where he sits,' I grieve 
 to say it would be little more interesting than the 
 newest meeting-house in town. 'He' sits in no 
 sort of pomp, and that is to his credit ; but for its 
 position, there would be little to distinguish his 
 line of board from that occupied by the worship- 
 ers from his rustic almshouse at the gate. The 
 Young England theory has left its mark on rural 
 life, if not on political history. In the almshouse, 
 the infirm poor live in the very shadow of the 
 manor. It is a sort of preserve of charity, anoth- 
 er of *the curiosities.' You step out of the hall 
 door, and you have hardly done admiring the tame 
 peacocks on the terrace before you find yourself 
 wondering at still tamer men who are glad to owe 
 the comfort of their evening of life to the bounty 
 of their lord. Well, well, if they do not mind it, 
 why should you ? The graves of the Disraeli family 
 lie outside the church, at the altar end. They are 
 very plain — three grass-grown spaces perfectly flat, 
 or rather one broad space divided by lines of ma- 
 sonry. On one side lies James Disraeli, that young- 
 er brother of Lord Beaconsfield who lived and died 
 in the tolerably lucrative office of a Commissioner 
 of Inland Revenue. His portrait in official cos- 
 tume is in the house. The face is a clew to the 
 history. It is that of a mild, harmless man, with- 
 out any striking gift but that best one of all — the 
 10 
 
146 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 gift of knowing when one is well off. No swim- 
 mer himself, this brother quietly held on to the 
 other's skirts in the sea of Fortune, and with well- 
 founded confidence, for Beaconsfield's stroke was 
 strong enough for two. In fact, it was strong 
 enough for three. Kalph Disraeli, another brother, 
 owes his comfortable place also, as Clerk of the 
 Parliaments, to the head of the house ; and he has 
 gracefully acknowledged the debt by giving the 
 name of Coningsby to his only son, born on the 
 eve of Lord Beaconsfield's greatest political tri- 
 umphs. On the other side of James Disraeli lies 
 a stranger to the family circle, who yet has a right 
 to the place. This is Mrs. Brydges-Wyllyams, of 
 Torquay, a lady who made Mr. Disraeli the heir 
 to her estate of some £30,000 sterling, out of her 
 profound admiration for his genius. The story is 
 stranger than any fiction. Mr. Disraeli years ago 
 received an anonymous letter asking him to meet 
 the writer on a certain day in the nave of West- 
 minster Abbey. He showed it to his wife, laugh- 
 ingly, and threw it aside. Shortly afterward he 
 received another letter in the same handwriting,' 
 and without opening it thrust it into a pocket of 
 his coat. There it was found, and handed to him 
 by his valet. He opened it, when out fell a £1,000 
 Bank-of -England note. Naturally enough he ex- 
 amined the letter which came to him so hand- 
 somely recommended. It proved to be from an 
 elderly lady who lamented his failure to come to 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 147 
 
 the Abbey, expressed her earnest desire to make 
 him her heir, and begged only that she might see 
 and speak with him while she yet lived. The re- 
 sult was a visit regularly paid to Mrs. Wyllyams 
 twice a year for several years, a will making Mr. 
 Disraeli her heir, and an agreement on his part 
 that she should be laid at rest after her death 
 among the Disraelis at Hughenden. 
 
 " Not much more is known of Mrs. Brydges- 
 Wyllyams, though the family is rather a conspic- 
 uous one in Cornwall, where one of its members 
 led a Liberal attack on a Conservative seat only 
 the other day in vain. It is her sole and doubt- 
 less, as she would have considered, her all-suffi- 
 cient record. She was of no great mark in life, 
 but she took measures to attain in death to a kind 
 of companionship with one who, in her opinion, 
 was the greatest man of his age. One is tempted 
 to think that she must have judged him rightly, 
 if only because he inspired such devotion. This 
 verdict of a woman's worship is, in some sort, 
 more convincing than that of the bellicose enthu- 
 siasm of the mob. And it was no solitary in- 
 stance, as we are reminded by a glance at the 
 central compartment of turf, where lies that 
 * Viscountess Beaconsfield in her own right,' 
 whose devotion to the present solitary bearer of 
 the title was as touching and as romantic as any- 
 thing in mediaeval romance. The fortune left 
 her by her first husband gave the second one the 
 
148 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 means of pusMng his way in tlie political world. 
 He lost the use of it at her death under the terms 
 of Mr. Wyndham Lewis's will ; and, in spite of 
 the timely legacy of Mrs. Brydges-Wyllyams, he 
 is at this moment, to his honor be it said, almost 
 a poor man — certainly anything but a rich one. 
 Before his late return to power he was one of the 
 few ex-Premiers of England who have felt them- 
 selves obliged to accept the allowance of £2,000 a 
 year, to which they are entitled when out of office. 
 Disraeli has always sought fortune in the higher 
 sense of glory and fame ; and when it has come 
 to him as pelf it has been by the pure favor of 
 the goddess and not by his own exertions. His 
 life-long devotion to his wife would be enough to 
 prove, were any one impertinent enough to doubt 
 it, that her jointure was not her attraction in his 
 eyes. ' They was like a pair of turtle-doves, 
 they was,' says the head gardener as he shows 
 you through the shrubberies, cultivated by her 
 constant care to suit her husband's taste. ' They 
 was like that to the last day of their lives. They 
 would spend whole days out here together in the 
 summer time, and it was her delight to take him 
 to see things which she had done to please him 
 unbeknown. If she thought he'd like to have a 
 clearer view of the meadows she'd have openings 
 cut in the woods. She used to tell me to do it on 
 the quiet, and when it was all done she'd lead 
 him to the spot. Do you see that monnyment 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 149 
 
 yonder on the hill ? Well, it's put up in memory 
 of my lord's father, him that wrote the book ; 
 and my lady did it all of her own accord. She 
 had the plans made and set the masons to work 
 without sayin' a word to him about it ; and then 
 she takes him out one fine afternoon, and says he, 
 " What's that ? " " Let's go see," says she, with 
 a smile ; and when they got near it he stood and 
 looked at her for a full minute without speakin' 
 a word. I've heerd as how he cried, but not bav- 
 in' been near enough to see it I can't say. It was 
 the finished monnyment to Isaac Disraeli, sir, fit 
 for Westminster Abbey. She loved Isaac Dis- 
 raeli's son like that.' As you listen to this you 
 cannot but call to mind many another story on 
 the same subject equally to the point. Men may 
 dispute as to the value of power and of titles. 
 Looking at the price he has paid for them, in this 
 his desolate evening of life. Lord Beaconsfield 
 may himself doubt their value ; but who will 
 deny that the man has been happy who has been 
 so deeply loved ? " 
 
 XX. 
 
 It may be said of Disraeli, as he once said of 
 Peel, that " he is one of the greatest ' members of 
 Parliament' of the present century." There is 
 
150 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 no doubt tliat he lias shown himself a great party- 
 leader. The qualities that have made him so have 
 been manifold, and have acted in a happy combi- 
 nation. A great lesson of his life has been its il- 
 lustration of the almost boundless power of indom- 
 itable pluck. The patience, the temper, the per- 
 severance, the contempt of reverse, of obstacle, of 
 difficulty, of the most obstinate prejudice with 
 which a man ever had to contend, which his ca- 
 reer has betrayed, have made him the irresistible 
 chief of a compact and submissive party organiza- 
 tion, which acts not only with the discipline but 
 with the precision and force of an army. 
 
 He became a great party leader, not by jug- 
 glery, but by the patience with which he awaited 
 his opportunity, by the excellent temper with 
 which he dealt with his colleagues, with the rank 
 and file of his party, and even with his antago- 
 nists ; by his conspicuous skill in debate, by his 
 power as an orator, by his boldness in timely at- 
 tack, and by his equal boldness in timely retreat ; 
 by his almost invariably wise plan of parliamen- 
 tary campaign, by his constant encouragement 
 given to the young and promising men of his 
 political connection, and by the almost inexhausti- 
 ble fertility of his resources in party warfare. 
 
 Gladstone became the leader of a united Lib- 
 eral party ; he has managed to divide, distract, 
 and almost destroy it. Disraeli found the Tory 
 party on the verge of chaos, split in two by the 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 151 
 
 course of Sir Robert Peel on the corn laws. He 
 has given it unity, strength, compactness, and a 
 very palpable and lasting power. Little more can 
 be said for Canning, Grey, Peel, Kussell, or Pal- 
 merston, or even Pitt, as party chiefs. 
 
 " To him," says a close observer, " belongs the 
 honor of having, with an exquisite tact and skill, 
 led the House of Commons, when he had only a 
 minority of supporters at his back, and of having 
 led it in such a way that the most watchful of 
 foes was unable to trip him up, or even to change 
 the secretly-formed purpose of his mind. 
 
 " Those who saw him first as Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, then as Prime-Minister during the last 
 Conservative administration, leading his party and 
 the House of Commons at the same time, witnessed 
 a spectacle the like of which has perhaps never 
 been seen before ; for we have no previous record 
 of such generalship as that which Disraeli then 
 displayed. 
 
 " The wi'iter, while watching him during that 
 eventful period, was, curiously enough, constantly 
 reminded of a line in Cowper's well-known hymn; 
 for, if ever a man seemed to ' ride upon the storm ' 
 of party politics, to be above it, and superior to its 
 fury, it was Disraeli. 
 
 " Once and again there was mutiny in the ranks 
 of his own party : as a minister, he could have 
 cried with the Psalmist against his own familiar 
 friend in whom he trusted ; opposite to him was 
 
152 " BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 a foe bent upon miscHef, superior to him in num- 
 bers, and led by a man wbo, with many great and 
 noble qualities of his own, had never once during 
 a long career been betrayed into the weakness of 
 an act savoring of tenderness toward his brilliant 
 rival. 
 
 " From this man Disraeli had to look for noth- 
 ing but the most uncompromising and relentless 
 opposition — and he knew it. He was himself en- 
 gaged in a task which, to the most sanguine of 
 followers, had but a short time before seemed an 
 utterly hopeless one, and which to those of them 
 who were unable to see as far as he did, seemed 
 worse than hopeless — suicidal. 
 
 " But he went on, in spite of difficulties and 
 discouragements which would have broken the 
 spirit and destroyed the strength of any other 
 party leader of modern times. And he went on 
 with wonderful success. Past rocks and shoals, 
 and quicksands without number, and by a chan- 
 nel on which it had never before entered, he 
 steered the vessel of the state ; he faced obstacles 
 which seemed insurmountable, and which to any 
 other man would have been what they seemed, and 
 lo ! they vanished under his marvelous manipula- 
 tion ; with a party sorely reduced in strength, he 
 kept at bay the overwhelming numbers of the 
 enemy — nay, he even used them as instruments of 
 his own, and it was by their aid that he passed 
 the great measure which will henceforth be asso- 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 153 
 
 ciated witli his name, and balked his eager rivals. 
 This is what Disraeli has accomplished within the 
 last few years ; and no impartial man will deny 
 that it is one of the greatest political achieve- 
 ments recorded in the history of Parliament. 
 
 " It was during the trying period between 
 1866-'69 that he developed his ripest powers. 
 Until he became leader of the House of Commons 
 on the last occasion, he had never shown his re- 
 markable fitness for such a post. On previous oc- 
 casions, he had done well ; but then he did his 
 work superlatively well. It is true that, when he 
 had formerly been leader of the House, he had 
 labored under the disadvantage of having opposed 
 to him the skilled veteran who was the most pop- 
 ular party man ever seated within the walls of 
 Parliament. 
 
 "There is but one instance which need be 
 quoted to show that he does possess in a very high 
 degree the foresight and the accuracy of judg- 
 ment which are necessary to make a man a really 
 great statesman. IsTeed we say that we allude to 
 the question of the American War ? Upon that 
 topic we were nearly all in the wrong — all but 
 Disraeli. Lord Palmerston — clever, experienced, 
 worldly-wise old man as he was — would have gone 
 in unhesitatingly for a recognition of the Southern 
 States. Earl Russell declared that we saw in the 
 New World that which we had so often seen in 
 the Old — a war on the one side for empire, and 
 
154 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 on the other side for independence. Mr. Glad- 
 stone was bursting with zeal — even when official 
 restraints ought to have tied his tongue — on be- 
 half of Mr. Davis, and *the nation he had made.' 
 " Disraeli was in opposition, and therefore at 
 liberty to act entirely in accordance with his own 
 sympathies ; his party were almost to a man the 
 enthusiastic adherents of the South. It would 
 have seemed, to an ordinarily acute person, that 
 the safest and most profitable game he could pos- 
 sibly have played would have been that of the 
 Confederacy. But Disraeli himself knew better. 
 A cool judgment and a clear foresight had led him 
 to see the inevitable end. He was beyond his owii 
 party, beyond his colleagues, beyond his rivals, in 
 the prescience which enabled him to see what the 
 results of the American War would be ; and, 
 while we believe that this statesman-like sagacity 
 did much to save England at the time from im- 
 measurable evils, we cannot but deplore the fact 
 that those who are put forward as his superiors in 
 statesmanship did not in this instance show that 
 they possessed it in something like the same de- 
 'gree." 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Closely allied to his unrivaled sway as a 
 party chief, are Disraeli's versatile gifts as a par- 
 liamentary debater and orator. In the art of 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 155 
 
 eloquence he is as full of surprises, of sudden and 
 striking turns, of dazzling flashes and dramatic 
 climaxes, as his public career has displayed in 
 action and conduct. 
 
 " Lord Derby," says Ritchie, " has been called 
 the Rupert of debate ; but the term is more ap- 
 plicable to Disraeli. When you exj)ect him to 
 speak he has nothing to say ; when you do not 
 exjiect him he is on his legs ; when you think he 
 will go on for another hour he sits down as rap- 
 idly as he gets up. He delights in surprises, and 
 you cannot tell which is the studied effort and 
 which the impromptu retort. 
 
 " As an orator, Disraeli stands by himself. It 
 is not English — that elaborately dressed form ; 
 that pale Hebrew face, shaded with curling hair, 
 once luxuriant and dark ; that style, so melo- 
 dramatic, yet so effective ; that power of individ- 
 uality which makes you hate the object of his 
 hate ; that passion which you scarce know wheth- 
 er to call malignant or sublime. When he rises 
 it is needless for the Sj)eaker to announce his 
 name. A glance at the orator, with his glistening 
 vest, tells you that the great advocate of the pure 
 Semitic race is on his legs. . . . Immediately you 
 lean forward. In his face there is a dazzling, 
 saucy look which at once excites your interest. 
 You see that if he is not a great man he is an in- 
 tensely clever one, and you feel that as an orator 
 he has few rivals. When he soars, as he occasion- 
 
156 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 ally does, you tremble lest he should break down ; 
 but Disraeli never attempts more than he can 
 achieve, and when nearest to bathos, he saves 
 himself by a happy flight. But even in his high- 
 est efforts he aims at a doggedly cool and uncon- 
 cerned appearance, and will stop to suck an or- 
 ange, or actually, as he did in his great budget 
 speech, to cut his nails. It is true there are times 
 when he looks more emotional. On that memo- 
 rable December morning when he was ousted from 
 his chancellorship, when his party were inglori- 
 ously driven from the Eden where they had hoped 
 long 
 
 ' To live and lie reclined 
 On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind,' 
 
 back into the bleak and desert world, Disraeli 
 came out of the House at half -past five a. m., gay 
 and fresh as if the majority had been with him, 
 not against him. There was an unwonted buoy- 
 ancy in his walk, and sparkle in his eye ; but the 
 excitement of the contest was hardly over — the 
 swell of the storm was there still— still rang in his 
 ears the thunders of applause, audible in the lobby, 
 which greeted his daring retorts and audacious 
 personalities." 
 
 Another witness to many of his forensic ex- 
 hibitions in the House of Commons declares that 
 " no speaker can be more effective than he is in 
 making his * points.' His by-play, as the actors 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 157 
 
 call it, is perfect ; and to Ms sneers and sarcasms 
 he gives the fullest force by the most subtile mod- 
 ulation of his voice, by transient expressions of 
 the features, and the inimitable shrug ; and, while 
 the House is convulsed by the laughter which he 
 has raised at an adversary's expense, he himself 
 usually remains as apparently unmoved and im- 
 passive as if he were not an actor in the scenCo" 
 
 "It is the parrot-cry of those who criticise 
 Disraeli's character," says another, "to say that, 
 despite his wonderful genius, he is incapable of 
 appreciating the peculiarities — the weaknesses, if 
 you will — of the character of the average English 
 gentleman. What better answer can there be to this 
 charge, so constantly brought against him, than 
 to point to the way in which he has made himself 
 master of the greatest weakness of the House of 
 Commons — its love of A good laugh ? During his 
 premiership, despite all that there was to worry 
 and annoy him, he kept the House of Commons 
 in good temper by his constant use of an unflag-. 
 ging and unfailing humor. 
 
 " He put down bores, or he silenced awkward 
 questions, with one of those happy phrases or 
 pleasant jests which Lord Palmer ston loved so 
 dearly, and which did so much to smooth the path 
 of that great statesman while he was at the head 
 of affairs. It seems a very small thing, this abil- 
 ity to cope successfully with the bores of the 
 House of Commons ; but no one who has studied 
 
158 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 the science of party government will regard it 
 with contempt. 
 
 " Disraeli is perhaps never so happy as when 
 he is putting down one of those terrible children 
 of Parliament who icill know everything, and who 
 vnll ask their questions, or air their most recently- 
 acquired knowledge at the most inappropriate 
 moment. Who, for instance, has forgotten the 
 way in which he met Mr. Darby Griffith, when 
 that honorable gentleman had put a question 
 which looked like ' a poser ? ' 
 
 "Among the bores, Mr. Griffith is, or rather 
 was, facile princeps ; and at times, by the very 
 perseverance of his boring, he has wormed some 
 secrets out of unwilling governments. 
 
 " But when Disraeli, instead of giving him the 
 information for which he asked, got up, and, in 
 that airy, off-hand manner that sits so well upon 
 him, congratulated the member for Devizes upon 
 the possession of a ' luminous intellect,' the House 
 was so delighted with the saying that it gave the 
 minister full liberty to sit down, and leave Mr. 
 Griffith to digest the unexpected compliment — if 
 he could. 
 
 " Somewhat akin to this humor is that higher 
 power of sarcasm for which Disraeli has been 
 famous throughout his whole public life. He is 
 not, in one sense of the word, a good debater. It 
 cannot be denied that at times he contrasts un- 
 favorably with Mr. Gladstone. But upon some 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 159 
 
 subjects lie makes speeches which are far above 
 the level reached by any other man in the House 
 of Commons. No one has the power of investing 
 a great political event with more of the interest 
 attaching to domestic affairs than he has. 
 
 " Over and over again he has brought down 
 incidents, which were so far above the ordinary 
 level of the House of Commons as to be beyond 
 the reach of its sympathy, to the region of every- 
 day life — as, for instance, in the case of Mr. Lin- 
 coln's assassination, when he made the speech of 
 all the speeches made the world over upon that 
 most terrible and most touching of tragedies, and 
 brought tears into the eyes of men to whom, be- 
 fore that moment, the President of the United 
 States had been a mere abstraction. 
 
 " But, while upon such topics he is a perfect 
 master of words and ideas, when he is speaking 
 upon the mere party question of the hour, he 
 often fails to produce that impression upon his 
 audience which one would expect from a man of 
 his genius. No doubt many causes unite to pro- 
 duce this effect. 
 
 " Chief among them, we believe, is the fact 
 that he has not the passion of the ordinary party 
 man. The range of his sympathies is so catholic, 
 that his mind is seldom roused to passion upon a 
 question which is only a question of party ; it is 
 not until he is really touched by one of those few 
 topics which have power to move him deeply. 
 
160 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 that the fire of genius in Ms soul pours forth its 
 sparks, and that he shows all the depths of passion 
 and enthusiasm hidden within him. And yet, 
 even when he is in his coldest mood, what an in- 
 tellectual treat it is to listen to him speaking upon 
 one of the great questions of the day ! 
 
 " A few years ago the Times contemptuously 
 spoke of his speech on the Irish Church bill — in 
 opposing it upon the second reading — as ' flimsy 
 covered with spangles.' That may have been the 
 impression produced upon the gentleman who 
 wrote the Times leader, but we can bear testi- 
 mony to the fact that it was not the impression 
 produced upon the House of Commons. 
 
 " In making that speech, Disraeli labored 
 under many disadvantages — disadvantages so ob- 
 vious that we need not. recur to them — ^yet his 
 speech was one which drew shouts of applause 
 from those who had least sympathy with the 
 cause on behalf of which he was pleading. From 
 beginning to end it sparkled — with ' spangles,' if 
 it pleases the Times to say so — ^but, at any rate, 
 with spangles the brilliancy of which dazzled the 
 beholders, and roused new admiration within them 
 for the speaker. 
 
 "We have made the fullest allowance for a 
 fact which is obvious to those who have studied 
 Disraeli's career in the House of Commons — the 
 fact, namely, that upon many party questions he 
 is not so successful in the effect he produces by 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 161 
 
 his speeches as might be expected ; but no one 
 will deny that the speeches themselves are among 
 the most remarkable specimens of parliamentary- 
 eloquence which the present generation has wit- 
 nessed. Their cleverness is unsurpassed. 
 
 " And even the most jealous of rivals, or the 
 most censorious of critics, will be ready to admit 
 that in sarcasm and in wit he is also unapproached 
 by any politician of the present day. We said 
 that his sarcasm was akin to the humor he shows 
 in putting down bores. It is, indeed, a humorous 
 rather than a venomous sarcasm, bringing smiles 
 even to the faces of those who are wincing under 
 its shafts. 
 
 "No one can watch him upon an occasion 
 on which his sarcastic powers are evoked, with- 
 out being lost in admiration at the skill he dis- 
 plays. He flings about his wonderfully polished 
 epigrams with the careless grace of an Eastern 
 magician flinging knives at one of his confeder- 
 ates — with this difference, however, that whereas 
 the magician always misses, he always hits. He 
 meets a whole broadside of invective with a sin- 
 gle thrust of his rapier-like wit, and lo ! his oppo- 
 nent is laid prostrate on the ground. 
 
 " He compliments Mr. Beresford Hope, when 
 that gentleman is most emphatic in denouncing 
 him, upon * the Bat avian grace ' of his style ; he 
 remarks parenthetically, after the most cutting 
 onslaught of Lord Salisbury, that *the noble 
 11 
 
IQ2 BEAOONSFIELD. 
 
 lord's invective possesses vigor, but it has one de- 
 fect — it lacks finish ; ' he sends Mr. Goldwin 
 Smith to roam over the world labeled * an itiner- 
 ant spouter of stale sedition ; ' he shuts the mouth 
 of a noisy and demonstrative assailant like Mr. 
 Sergeant Dowse by a passing allusion to his * jo- 
 vial profligacy ; ' and among the leaders of the 
 Liberal party there is not one who has not been 
 made the subject of a happy epigram, polished to 
 the fineness of a needle, which at the time it was 
 tossed across the House with an airy, graceful in- 
 difference, never failed to reach its mark, and to 
 strike home. ISTor is it only in meeting assailants 
 that he deals in epigrams. The national debt is ' a 
 mere flea-bite ; ' the Derby is ' the blue ribbon of 
 the turf ; ' nay, there are a hundred happy phrases 
 now in every-day use among us, for which we are 
 indebted to the leader of the Opposition." 
 
 We cannot more appropriately bring this lit- 
 tle volume to a close than by quoting the eloquent 
 words of the same writer, casting a rapid eye 
 over Disraeli's whole career, and estimating his 
 fame in England as it will appear in the days 
 when he and his generation shall have passed 
 away : 
 
 " He has played a great part in the history of 
 the country, and, on the whole, has played it well ; 
 while, as for his personal career, his struggle from 
 comparative poverty and obscurity to the greatest 
 height which it is possible for a subject to attain, 
 
BEACONSFIELD. 163 
 
 and the qualities whicli, during that struggle, he 
 has displayed, his resolution and endurance in de- 
 feat, his generosity and moderation in victory — 
 these are things for which every man must feel 
 the most genuine sympathy and admiration, 
 whose sympathy and admiration are worth pos- 
 sessing. His career is a romance ; but it is a 
 romance that teaches a thousand useful and noble 
 lessons, and that will have power, in times when 
 the party passions of to-day shall be cold as the 
 ashes of those by whom they are fanned, to fire 
 many a young soul with the highest ambition, 
 and to fill many a tender heart with the sympathy 
 for him whose story it records." 
 
 THE END. 
 
APPLETONS' 
 
 Li])rary of American Eictioa. 
 
 Consisting of Select Novels by A merican A uthors ; published in 
 neat %vo volumes, at jiopular prices. 
 
 I. VALERIE AYLMER. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 n. THE LADY OFftTHE ICE. By James De Mille. With D- 
 lustrations. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 m. MORTON HOUSE. By the author of "Valerie Aylmer." 
 
 With IllustratioDB. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 IV. EIGHTED AT LAST. A Novel. With lUastrations. Paper, 
 
 75 cents; cloth. $1.25. 
 V. MABEL LEE. By the author of " Morton House." Paper, 
 75 cents; cloth, $1.25. 
 VI. DOCTOR VANDYKE. By John Esten Cooke. With Illus- 
 trations. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 Vn. EBB-TIDE AND OTHER STORIES. By the author of 
 "Morton House." With Illustrations. Paper, 75 cents; 
 cloth, $1.25. 
 VHL AN OPEN QUESTION. By James De Mille. With IlluB- 
 trations. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 IX. SPICY. A Novel. By Mrs. Maktha J. Lamb. With IlIuB- 
 
 trations. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 X. LAKEVILLE ; or, Suhstance and Shadow. By Mary Healt, 
 author of " A Summer's Romance," etc. Illustrated. Pa- 
 per, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 XI. NINA'S ATONEMENT, A_ND OTHER STORIES. By Chris- 
 tian Reid, author of "Morton House," etc. Illustrated. 
 Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.25. 
 Xn. A DAUGHTER OP BOHEMIA. By Christian Rmd. Pa- 
 
 T)GT* 7^ CGTll'S ' plotll ^r\ 2^ 
 
 Xm. HEARTS AND HANDS. A Story in Sixteen Chapters. By 
 Christian Reid, author of "A Daughter of Bohemia." 
 "Morton House," "Valerie Aylmer," etc. 8vo. Paper, 60 
 
 cents. 
 
 XIV. LITTLE JOANNA. A Novel. By Kamba Thorpe. Paper, 
 
 60 cents. 
 XV. BRESSANT. A Novel. By Juxian Hawthorne. Paper, 
 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 XVI. THE LAND OP THE SKY; or. Adventures in Mountain By- 
 ways. By Christian Reid. Illustrated. Paper, 75 cents ; 
 
 cloth, $1.25. 
 
 XVn. AFTER MANY DAYS. A Novel. By Christian Beid, au- 
 thor of "A Question of Honor," "Morton House," "Valerie 
 
 Aylmer," etc. 8vo. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1,25. 
 
 XVm. GARTH. A Novel. By Jitlian Hawthorne, author of 
 " Bressaut," " Saxon Studies," etc. 8vo. Paper, 75 cents: 
 cloth, $1.25. 
 XIX. BONNY KATE. By Christian Reid, author of " A Daughter 
 of Bohemia," " Morton House," " Valerie Aylmer,'" etc 
 Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 
 Z). APPLETON & CO., 549 & 551 Broadway, New York. 
 
APPLETONS' 
 
 COLLECTION OF FOREIGN AUTiRS. 
 
 The design of the " Collection of Foreign Authors " is to give selec- 
 tions from the better current light literature of France, Germany, and 
 other countries of the European Continent, translated by competent 
 hands. The series will be published in uniform 16mo volumes, at a 
 low price, and bound in paper covers and in cloth. 
 
 I.-SAMTJEL BROHIi AND COMPANY. A Novel. 
 From the French of Victor Cherbuliez. 1 vol., 16mo. 
 Paper cover, 60 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 
 
 II.— GERAHD'S MAE-HIAGE. From the French of Andk6 
 Theukiet. Paper cover, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 III.— SPIHITE. A Fantasy. From the French of Theophile 
 Gautier. Paper cover, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 IV.— THE TOWEB, OF PERCEMONT. From the French 
 of George Sand. Paper cover, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 v.— META HOLDENIS. A Novel. From the French of 
 Victor Cherbuliez. Paper cover, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 VI.— ROMANCES OF THE EAST. From the French of 
 CoMTE DE GoEiNEAu. Paper cover, 60 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 
 
 VII.— RENEE AND FRANZ (Le Bleuet). From the French 
 of Gust AVE Haller, Paper cover, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 YIIL— MADAME GOSSELIN. From the French of Loms 
 
 Ulbach. Paper cover, 60 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 
 
 IX.— THE GODSON OF A MARaXHS. From the French of 
 Andre Theuriet. Paper cover, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 X.— ARI ADNEo From the French of Henry Gr£;ville. Paper 
 
 cover, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 XL— SAFAB-HADGI ; or, Rnss and Turcoman. From 
 
 the French of Prince Lubomirski. Paper cover, 60 cents ; 
 cloth, $1.00. 
 
 XII.— IN PARADISE. From the German of Paul Hetse. In 
 Two Volumes. Per vol;, paper cover, 60 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 
 
 XIII.— REMORSE. From the French of Th. Bentzon. Paper 
 cover, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 XIV.— JEAN TETEROIi'S IDEA. From the French of Victob 
 Cherbuliez, author of " Samuel Brohl and Company." Pa- 
 per cover, 60 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 
 
 D. APPLETON <St- CO., 549 & 551 Broadway, N, V, 
 
Christian Reid's Novels. 
 
 " The author has wrought with care and with a good ethical and 
 artistic purpose ; and these are the essential needs in the building up 
 of an American literature." 
 
 Valerie Aylmer. 
 
 1 vol., 8vo. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 Morton House. 
 
 1 vol., 8vo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.25. 
 Mabel Lee. 
 
 1 vol., 8vo. Paper, 75 Qents; cloth, $1.25. 
 Ebb-Tide. 
 
 1 vol., 8vo. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 Nina's Atonement, and other Stories. 
 
 1 vol., Bvo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.25. ^ 
 
 A Daughter of Bohemia. 
 
 1 vol., 8vo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.25. 
 Hearts and Hands. 
 
 8vo. Paper, 50 cents. 
 The Land of the Sky. 
 
 Illustrated. 8vo. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 A Question of Honor. 
 
 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth, $1.25. 
 After Many Days. 
 
 1 vol., 8vo. Paper, 75 cents; cloth, $1.25. 
 Bonny Kate. 
 
 1 vol., Bvo. Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 A Summer Idyl. 
 
 (Eorming No. XII. in Appletons' "New Handy -Yolum 
 
 Series.") 1 vol., ISmo. Paper, 30 cents. 
 
 *** Either of the above mailed to any address in the United States, 
 postage paid, on receipt of the price. 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. T, 
 
Julian Hawthorne's lovels. 
 
 I. GARTH. A Novel. 1 vol., 8vo. Paper cover, 75 cents ; 
 
 cloth, $1.26. 
 
 " ' Garth ' is Mr. Julian Hawthorne's most elaborate and preten- 
 tious book. It is on many accounts also his best book, though it con- 
 tains nothing so good as the character of the hero in 'Bressant.' At 
 least his genius is unmistakable. And we are disposed to venture the 
 suggestion that, if ' Garth ' had not been a serial, it would have been 
 more compact and closely written, and so its situations more effec- 
 tive, its characters better sustained."— i\7i3W York World. 
 
 II. BRESSANT. A Novel. 1 vol., 8vo. Paper cover, '75 
 cents ; cloth, |1.25. 
 
 " We will not say that Mr. Julian Hawthorne has received a doable 
 
 Eortion of his father's spirit, but 'Bressant' proves that he has in- 
 erited the distinctive tone and fibre of a gift which was altogether 
 exceptional, and moved the author of ' The Scarlet Letter ' beyond the 
 reach of imitators. 
 
 "Bressant, Sophie, and Cornelia, appear to us invested with a sort 
 of enchantment which we should find it difficult to account for by any 
 reference to any special passage in their story."— ionrfon Examxner. 
 
 •' ' Bressant ' is a work that demonstrates the fitness of its author 
 to bear the name of Hawthorne. More in praise need not be said ; but, 
 if the promise of the book shall not utterly fade and vanish, Julian 
 Hawthorne, in the maturity of his power, will rank side by side with 
 him who has hitherto been peerless, but whom we must hereafter 
 can the 'Elder Hawthorne.' ""—New York Times. 
 
 "It will take high rank among the best American novels ever 
 •WTitten."— Boston Globe. 
 
 " There is a strength in the book which takes it in a marked degree 
 out of the range of ordinary works of fiction. It is substantially an 
 original story. There are freshness and vigor in every part."— Boston 
 
 Gazette. 
 
 III. MRS. GAINSBOROUGH'S DIAMONDS. (Form- 
 ing No. XIV. of Appletons' " New Handy-Volume Se- 
 ries.") 1 vol., 18mo. Paper cover, 20 cents. 
 
 4"^ 
 
 D. APPLBTON & CO., 549 & 551 Bboadway, New York. 
 
OLLECTION OF FoREIGN AuTHORS. 
 
 The design of the *' Collection of Foreign Authors " is to vive selections from 
 the better current light literature of France, Germany, and other countries of the 
 European Continent, translated by competent hands. The series is published in 
 unifornt i6mo volumes, at a low price, and bound in paper covers and in cloth. 
 
 PAIER. CI.OTH. 
 
 \. SAMUEL BROHL AND COMPANY. A 
 Novel. From the French of Victor Cher- 
 
 BULIEZ $0.60 $1.00 
 
 TI. GERARD'S MARRIAGE. A Novel. From 
 
 the French of Andre Theuriet 50 .75 
 
 III. S PI RITE. A Fantasy. From the French of 
 
 Theophile Gautier 50 .75 
 
 IV. THE TOWER OF PERCEMONT. From 
 
 the French of George Sand , . , . . .50 .75 
 
 V. META IIOLDENIS. A Novel. From the 
 
 French of Victor Cherbuliez 50 .75 
 
 VI. ROMANCES OF THE EAST. From the 
 
 French of CoMTE de Gobineau 60 i.oo 
 
 yir. RE NEE AND FRANZ. From the French 
 
 of Gustave Haller 50 .75 
 
 ' '" -r A DAME GOSSEUN. From the French 
 
 of Louis Ulbach 60 i.oo 
 
 !\. IHE GODSON OF A MARQUIS. From 
 
 the French of Andre Theuriet 50 .75 
 
 X. ARIADNE. From the French of Henry 
 
 Greville . .50 .75 
 
 Xr. SAFAR-HADGI ; OR, RUSS AND TUR- 
 COMAN. From the French of Prince 
 LUBOMIRSKI 60 I.oo 
 
 XII. IN PARADISE. From the German of Paul 
 
 Heyse. In Two Volumes . . Per vol., .60 i.oo 
 
 XIII. REMORSE. A Novel. From the French of 
 
 Th. Bentzon 50 .75 
 
 XIV. JEAN TETEROUS IDEA. A Novel From 
 
 the Frqjpch of Victor Cherbuliez. . . . (In press,) 
 XV. TALES FROM THE GERMAN OF PAUL 
 
 HEYSE (hi press.) 
 
 D. APPIiETON & CO., Publishers, New York. 
 
 f#* F.ither of the above volumes sent by"1nail, post-paid, to any address in the 
 United States or Canada, upon receipt of the price. 
 
APPLETONS' 
 
 New Handy -Volume Series. 
 
 Brilliant Novelettes ; Bomance, Adventure, Travel, Humor ; 
 Historic, Idterary, and Society Monographs. 
 
 1. Jet: Her Face or her Fortune? A Story. By Mrs. An'sn 
 Edwardes. Price, 30 cts. 
 
 3. A Struggle. A Story. By Barnet Phillips. Price, 25 cts. 
 
 3. Misericordia. A Story. By Ethel Lynn Linton. Price, 20 cts. 
 
 4. Gordon Baldwin, aud The Philosopher's Pendulum. B\ 
 
 KuDon'H LiNDAU. Prlce, 25 cts. 
 
 5. The Fisherman of Auge. A Story. By Katharine S. Macquoii* 
 
 Price, 20 cts. 
 
 6. The Essays of Elia. First Series. By Charles Lamb. Price, 30 ct^ 
 
 7. The Bird ot Passage. By J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Price, 25 cts. 
 
 8. The House of the Two Barbels. By Andrk Theuriet. Price 
 
 20 cts. 
 
 9. Lights of the Old English Stage. Price, 30 cts. 
 
 10. Impressions of America. By R. W. Dale. Price, 25 cts. 
 
 11. The Goldsmith's Wife. A Story. By Madame Charles Rev 
 
 BAUD. Price, 25 cts. 
 
 12. A Summer Idyl. A Story. By Christian Reid. Price, 30 cts. 
 
 13. The Arab Wife. A Romance of the Polynesian Seas. Price, 26 cts 
 
 14. Mrs. Gainsborough's Diamonds. A Story. By Julian Haw 
 
 thorne. Price, 20 cts. 
 
 15. Liquidated, and The Seer. By Rudolph Lindau. Price, 25 cts. 
 
 16. The Great German Composers. Price, 30 cts. 
 
 17. Antoinette. A Story. By Andre Theuriet. Price, 20 cts. 
 
 1 8. John-a-Dreams. A Tale. Price, 30 cts. 
 
 19. Mrs. Jack. A Story. By Frances Eleanor Trollope. Price, 20 cts. 
 
 20. English Literature. By T. Arnold. From the Encydopccdi' 
 
 Britannica. Price, 25 cts. 
 
 21. Raymonde. A Tale. • By Andre Theuriet. Price, 30 cts. 
 
 22. Beaconsfield. By George Makepeace Towle. Price, 25 cts. 
 
 Any volume in the series mailed post-paid, to any address within the Dnitci 
 States, on receipt of the price. 
 
 D. APPLETON <k CO. ,"649 & 551 Broadway, N. Y 
 
'■TTORnnnn 
 
 '^f^m 
 
 uj^Mdi^ 
 
 '^.AA 
 
 
 Af\f\l 
 
 ,A/^AWr\A 
 
 f^At^A^^M 
 
 f^./^ r-A^ 
 
 'r^nAnnri^ 
 
 iAA/r\A.S'».A 
 
 mmkfffHM^ 
 
 ^^fSf\^f\f\:^^f^^ 
 
 
 *Af^f^t^K^^^^^^^^ 
 
 ^ftr\'^OAA<sAAAI 
 
 A^N^^fhf^ 
 
 Aaa/^i 
 
imi f--:tnn 
 
 -Af^/^)*(*>'«\A^A^^A/^/^^/^A: 
 
 '/^'^.^AAA■'>■j.^'W^ 
 
 AaA/^A; 
 
 
 
 ■^. ■'-N r^ .^-r\r\r\ 
 
 ^>mm 
 
 MM^* 
 
 '^kfm^ffm^^f0^ 
 
 
 ^AA^Ar^^AA 
 
 .««««?^«8r^^^