BULLETIN 
 
 OF 
 
 Randolph-Macon 
 Woman’s College 
 
 THE EARL OF BEACON SFIELD 
 
 BY 
 
 B. W, Arnold, Jr., Ph. D. 
 
 Professor of History , Randolph-Maeon Woman *s College 
 
 Published by Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 Lynchburg, Va. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/earlofbeaconsfie00arno_0 
 
8 L S 
 
 f* 
 
 > 
 
 b Ow 
 
 The Earl of Beaconsfield* 
 
 By B. W. ARNOLD, Jr , Ph. D. 
 
 Professor of History, Randolph-Macon Woman s College 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 It is my pleasure to present for your consideration this evening 
 an exceptionally unique personality. Whatever may be the criti¬ 
 cisms or compliments paid Benjamin Disraeli; however much you 
 may like or dislike this proud “aristocr at of aristocrats/’ the Earl 
 of Beaconsfield, none, can deny that the man, studied from any 
 point of view, is out of the ordinary. Unusual he is in feature, 
 dress, manner; in mental and spiritual equipment; in character 
 and career, both private and public. Few men have been during 
 their lives as strongly opposed, as heartily hated, as bitterly as¬ 
 sailed, as savagely and openly abused as he; and, per contra, few 
 have attacked and abused their detractors, opponents and foes as 
 terrifically as he did his own, matching invective with invective 
 in full measure and to spare. Few have had to overcome, in their 
 upward struggle, as formidable obstacles, have encountered as 
 peculiar difficulties and have had as grave disappointments, as 
 many setbacks and seeming failures as he experienced; and few 
 have dared to conceive more nobly of themselves and of the work 
 of their hands; have had as clear and high ambition; have had 
 as sure faith in themselves; and, having once selected their life’s 
 purpose, have exhibited in their efforts to attain it more of pa¬ 
 tience, industry, courage, and self-reliance, than he. And he won 
 the goal of his ambition. He succeeded. His labors have gained 
 
 *A lecture delivered in the chapel before an audience of the students, 
 faculty and friends of the college on March 20, 1915. Books used in its 
 composition: 
 
 W. F. Monypenny: Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, 
 Vols. 1 and 2. 
 
 T. E. Kebbel: Lord Beaconsfield and Other Tory Memories. 
 
 T. P. O’Connor: Lord Beaconsfield, a Biography. 
 
 G. M. Towle: . Benjamin Disraeli. 
 
 Disraeli’s Novels: Vivian Grey, Coningsby and Contarini Fleming. 
 
 Sidney Lee: Queen Victoria, a Biography. 
 
 A. L. Cross: History of England and Greater Britain. 
 
 Welford: Earl of Beaconsfield. 
 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 3. 
 
 Fawcett: Woman Suffrage. 
 
4 
 
 Bulletin 
 
 for his name, shall I say immortality? Well, so long as England’s 
 empire exists, or that gone, so long as history tells of the wide 
 expanse and glories of Anglo-Saxon rule and influence, just so 
 long will the name of Disraeli be known and respected, if not 
 revered. 
 
 And yet this man is the Semite, the Hebrew. His race is one 
 that British rulers and people time out of mind have hated and 
 persecuted, a sect whose members during the middle ages were 
 despised as usurers and extortioners. Detested they were as 
 aliens and heretics, not permitted membership in merchant or trade 
 guilds, required to live in special wards of the city, and forced to 
 wear a special dress. On occasion when popular passions flamed 
 high in times of revelry and riot, the Jewries would be sacked and 
 their inhabitants beaten, robbed, murdered, roasted or driven into 
 exile. At the close of the 13th century under Edward I, popular 
 hatred of the Jews, justifiable only in part, banished about 17,000 
 of them from England. Their political disabilities were not 
 removed in England until the middle of the nineteenth century. 
 It was as late as 1845 before they were admitted to municipal 
 corporations, and as late as 1858 when the Relief Act admitting 
 them to seats in Parliament was passed. Disraeli at this time 
 was in middle life. True, having been brought into the Anglican 
 Church as a child, he, as a member of this Christian communion 
 had escaped the legal barriers to public office, and had come into 
 parliament as early as 1837; but the tardy relief acts show the 
 slight political esteem long accorded his race. In 1847 Baron de 
 Rothschild, who had been elected to the House of Commons by 
 the City of London, had been refused his seat, because prohibited 
 by his faith from taking the prescribed formal oath of office. 
 Among the very first discussions Disraeli heard on entrance into 
 parliament was one that concerned the rights of his people. The 
 social ostracism experienced in England seems to have been much 
 felt by, and to have embittered Grandmother D’lsraeli, who was, 
 says her brilliant grandson, “so mortified by her social position 
 that she lived until eighty without indulging a tender expression.” 
 Yes to me it is amazing that this young Israelite, scion of a race, 
 long ill-used, and in his own day so generally ignored, should 
 have conquered the deeply set race prejudice; should have become 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 
 5 
 
 the idol of an important and influential coterie of social and lit¬ 
 erary leaders; should have come to be recognized as the chief 
 apostle of Conservatism; should have been made a Knight of the 
 Garter, and an Earl; should have won the leadership of the Con¬ 
 servative party, the Premiership, and an authority at the Con¬ 
 gress of Berlin in J878, that enabled him to dictate the European 
 peace. 
 
 Disraeli was exceedingly proud of his race, deeming the He¬ 
 brew infinitely superior to the Anglo-Saxon, knowing that his 
 ancestors had enjoyed an advanced culture many centuries when 
 the Angles, Saxons and Danes first appeared as pirates and ma¬ 
 rauders invading the shores of Britain. He thought of his people 
 as the favored of God, to whom belonged the covenants and the 
 oracles of deity, the heroes of faith, the law-givers, prophets, and 
 apostles. He believed there coursed through his body the fine 
 strain of David and Isaiah. According to his account, he was of 
 the Sephardim sect of Hebrews, "the only caste extant which can 
 boast of gentle blood in all its generations to the present time,” 
 that noble group of the Children of Israel "who had never quitted 
 the shores of the Midland Ocean until Torquemada had driven 
 them from their pleasant residences and rich estates in Arragon, 
 and Portugal to seek greater blessings amid the swamps of Hol¬ 
 land and the fogs of Britain.” All the positive knowledge we 
 have as to his origin is that the D’Israelis "were of the seed of 
 Abraham and that they came approximately from Italy.” Plis 
 grandfather, possibly a descendant of a Hebrew family forced out 
 of Spain and settling in Italy, came from Cento in Ferrara, 
 Italy, to England in 1748; began work as a clerk in an Anglo- 
 Italian house; later became a prosperous Italian merchant, had 
 some success as a stockbroker, becoming a member of the Stock 
 Exchange Committee, and added to his good fortune by marrying 
 Sarah Siprut de Gabay, his second wife, who brought him capital 
 and credit, being descended from the Villa Reals—a wealthy 
 branch of Hebrews that had, says Disraeli, "twice allied them¬ 
 selves with the English aristocracy.” After experiencing several 
 decades of substantial prosperity the grandfather died at the age 
 of 86 in 1816, leaving an estate real and personal valued at 
 £35,000, and only one child, a son, Isaac D’Israeli to make use of 
 
6 
 
 Bulletin 
 
 it. This boy grown to manhood was the very antithesis of his 
 father. The writing of a poem rather than the selling of a bale 
 of goods interested him, to whom “commerce was the corruption 
 of man,” and when the young scribbler was sent to Amsterdam 
 to be prepared by a tutor for carrying on his father’s business, 
 instead of devoting his time to the study of economic and com¬ 
 mercial topics, to learning better the ways of men and banks and 
 markets, and the methods of handling with profit stocks and 
 bonds, money and credits, he went to the library shelves, and filled 
 his head with Voltaire and Rousseau. Having traveled some in 
 France, he returned to England in his twenty-second year, wrote 
 some satire in verse that attracted the attention of the minor liter¬ 
 ary celebrities of the day; published two or three years later his 
 “Curiosities of Literature,” a volume of anecdotes, sketches and 
 observations,! married in 1802 when thirty-six years of age an 
 Italian JewfMaria Basevi; and from this time on devoted the rest 
 of his life To literary pursuits. For ten years he accumulated 
 matter for publication, prosecuting his researches every morning 
 among the MSS. of the British museum. From 1812 to 1822 well 
 received works from his pen frequently appeared in the press; 
 such as his “Calamities of Authors,” “Memoirs of Literary Con¬ 
 troversy,” “Essay on the Literary Character,” “Inquiry into the 
 1 iter ary and Political Character of James I,” and “Commentaries 
 on the Life and Reign of Charles I,” the latter winning for him 
 an honorary degree from Oxford University. As a writer he 
 was admired by Byron, Scott, Southey and Rogers. He was a 
 complete literary character and was the furthest remo\ed from a 
 business man, or a society man, or a politician. “His only amuse¬ 
 ment,” says his son, “was to ramble among booksellers If he 
 entered a club it was only to go into the library, tn the countrv, 
 he scarcely ever left his room but to saunter in abst-action upon 
 a terrace; muse over a chapter or coin a sentence, * * * Fie 
 
 not only never entered into the politics of the day, bur he could 
 never understand them. He never was connected with anv par¬ 
 ticular body or set of men; comrades of school or college, or con 
 federates in that public life which, in England, is, perhaps, the 
 only foundation of real friendship.” He was blessed with five 
 children, one girl Sarah, and four boys, Benjamin, Naphtali, 
 
Randolpii-Macon Woman's College 
 
 7 
 
 Raphael and Jacobus, none of whom except Benjamin seems to 
 have been possessed of remarkable powers, though Sarah was de¬ 
 cidedly above the ordinary, as is revealed in the nature of the 
 correspondence which she kept up with her talented brother all 
 through his life. 
 
 The home of the D’lsraelis where Benjamin was born on De¬ 
 cember 21, 1804, and where he was “duly initiated into the Cov¬ 
 enant of Abraham” was 6 King’s Road, Bedford Row, London. 
 In 1816, when the boy was twelve years of age, his father now 
 more affluent by reason of the fortune left at the death of the 
 grandfather in this year, moved to 6 Bloomsbury Square, London, 
 a finer residence and in close proximity to the British Museum. 
 Here he had at his table a few men of distinction—publishers, 
 and political and literary friends who had become interested in 
 him through his ingenious publications, the young Benjamin no 
 doubt profiting from their conversation and acquaintance. In 
 1826, just as Benjamin had come to manhood’s estate the father 
 moved again, this time out of London to the country, to Braden- 
 hem, an old manor house he had bought in Bucks a few miles 
 west of the town of High Wycombe at the foot of the Chiltern 
 hills. The precarious health of several members of his family 
 seems to have been the chief cause for moving to this old estate. 
 As this place was long the home of our coming statesman and one 
 that gave him roots in the soil of England, no small matter in the 
 eyes of the British gentry, let his facile pen describe the peaceful 
 spot. 
 
 “At the foot of the Berkshire Downs, and itself on a gentle ele¬ 
 vation, there is an old hall with gable ends and lattice windows, 
 standing in grounds which once were stately, and where there are 
 yet glade-like terraces of yew trees which give an air of dignity 
 to a neglected scene. In front of the hall huge gates of iron, 
 highly wrought, and bearing an ancient date as well as the shield 
 of a noble house, opened on a village green, round which were 
 clustered the cottages of the parish with only one exception, and 
 that was the vicarage house, a modern building and without taste, 
 surrounded by a small but brilliant garden. The church was con¬ 
 tiguous to the hall, and had been raised by the lord on a portion 
 of his domain. Behind the hall the country was common land 
 
8 
 
 Bulletin 
 
 but picturesque.” At quiet Bradenham Isaac Disraeli passed the 
 remainder of his life, growing blind in his later years, dying in 
 1848 at the advanced age of 82, leaving nearly the whole of his 
 estate to Benjamin, of whom the father was justly proud, for by 
 this date the son had held a seat in the House of Commons for 
 ten years. 
 
 Isaac Disraeli cannot be dismissed from this account without 
 a word concerning his relation to the synagogue. He was an 
 ultra-liberal and, though a member of the congregation, disliked 
 its narrow orthodoxy. He allowed his children to be brought up 
 in the Jewish faith, paid his church dues regularly, and, though 
 his free thought did not accord with the traditions, made no stir, 
 but maintained his nominal connection with the congregation 
 until an effort was made to make him serve as an official, and 
 until on his outright refusal he had been fined forty pounds ster¬ 
 ling. The quarrel was long drawn out but issued finally in the 
 severance of his connection with the synagogue. But while 
 ceasing to be a Jew, he did not become a Christian. On the 
 insistence, however, of a Mr. Sharon Turner the father was 
 half persuaded to let his children join the Anglican Church, and, 
 as the story goes, on his half-consent “Mr. Turner called the day 
 following and took us off to St. Andrews, Holburn, to be bap¬ 
 tized.” A case of sudden or instantaneous conversion, to be sure, 
 and quite fortunate for the boy it turned out to be; but one he 
 apparently had little volitional part in. He developed, however, 
 into the staunchest protagonist for the rights of the Church Es¬ 
 tablishment. And though alien in race he certainly proved a 
 British patriot in heart. 
 
 Briefly sketched, the career of Benjamin Disraeli is as follows: 
 Born, 1804, London; as a child “unruly and disturbing,” sent for 
 some years to a school of no special merit at Blackheath, con¬ 
 ducted by an independent minister, where the child, still a pro¬ 
 fessing Jew, was allowed the privilege of standing back at prayer¬ 
 time ; and where he busied himself with reading stories of rob¬ 
 bers and caves, more than with hard study, and with amusing his 
 companions with rough pencil sketches, playing at parliament and 
 “presenting on half holidays a little extemporized drama.” Quite 
 child-like his first letter home, “Dear mama, I have arrived safe. 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 
 9 
 
 B. Disraeli/’ At thirteen he was sent for two or three years to 
 a better school in Epping Forest directed by a Unitarian Minister, 
 Rev. Eli Cogan, where there were fifty or sixty boys and where, 
 “nothing was thought of but two dead languages.” He never 
 could reach the first class in this school which dealt with Aeschy¬ 
 lus, Aristophanes, Plato and other Greek orators. But he claims 
 to have read a great deal in those years. “In Greek all of Herod¬ 
 otus, much of Thycidides, the greater part of the Iliad; some of 
 the Odyssey; the Ajax , Oedipus Rex and Antigone of Sophocles; 
 the Media, Hippolytus and Alcestis of Euripides; Theocritus, the 
 Idylls, and Xenophon, the Retreat and part of the Cyropaedia. 
 In Latin, Cicero, Caesar, much of Livy, something in Tacitus, 
 all of Virgil and Horace; some of the best things in Catullus and 
 the elegiac poets; the first book of Lucretius , and all Terence” 
 Leaving Cogan’s about his fifteenth year, he cotninued his educa¬ 
 tion for two years longer at home, possibly under the guidance 
 of a tutor, reading, he says, about twelve hours a day. At'seven¬ 
 teen he was “articled” by his father who hoped to make a lawyer 
 out of him, to a firm of solicitors in London, where for three 
 years nearly he was most assiduous in his attention to business, 
 learned some law, and gained much-needed information concern¬ 
 ing human nature and practical affairs; but where he never felt 
 content. His employers were disgusted to find him reading 
 Chaucer during business hours. Literature was claiming his in¬ 
 terest and at twenty, while still in the law office, he submitted 
 (1824) to the publishers a short satire on the present state of 
 society. His manuscript was promptly rejected, but the disap¬ 
 pointment did not balk him—in fact nearly all his successes in 
 life were founded on previous failures. Taken on account of 
 failing health just at this time by his father on a six weeks’ tour 
 of the continent, and thus gaining a larger vision of the world 
 (for till this time he had probably not been a hundred miles from 
 home) and gaining too a better realization of his own natural 
 bent and innate powers, he had soon settled in his own mind, as 
 did Edmund Burke, quite contrary too to his father’s earnest in¬ 
 sistence, that the office of a clerk or solicitor was too small a place 
 for his expanding life. Nine years later recalling his visit to the 
 
IO 
 
 Bulletin 
 
 Rhine, he said, “I determined when descending those magical 
 waters that I would not be a lawyer.” 
 
 Bigger things this adventurous young man would have. First 
 he would make a fortune in a day. Credulous of the stories of 
 the immense mineral riches of the New World, then circulating, 
 and believing that the companies being formed to exploit these 
 new lands would have immediate and marvelous success, he, 
 with a confederate, Evans, who had most of the cash at the start, 
 began a series of speculative operations in Spanish American 
 shares, which resulted in a few months in involving them in a 
 debt of £7,000, a debt that burdened Disraeli for the better part 
 of his after life, not being finally “liquidated until nearly thirty 
 years later when he had already led the House of Commons and 
 had been Chancellor of the Exchequer.” During most of his life 
 he was in the grip of the money-lenders. “What should I be 
 without my debts,” he makes one of his characters in Tancred 
 say, “dear companions of my life? All my knowledge of human 
 nature is owing to them. Yes, among my creditors, I have disci¬ 
 plined that diplomatic ability that shall some day confound and 
 control cabinets. Oh my debts, I feel your presence like that of 
 guardian angels!” But from his letters to the solicitor, who nego¬ 
 tiated his loans and handled his debts, it is clear that his financial 
 obligations were grievous burdens to him. On several occasions 
 he is afraid to appear in public in London lest he be arrested, and 
 at such times, he is laboring hard too, hid away in his den at his 
 country home, in finishing a novel to get the funds to settle an 
 account of some hundreds of pounds falling due six weeks or 
 three months hence. He writes his lawyer: “I enclose the blasted 
 bills.” “Peel has asked me to dine with a party of the late gov¬ 
 ernment at the Carlton to-day. Is it safe? I fear not.” * * * 
 
 And again, “Bradenham, September 25th, 1836: Your letter 
 alarms me, I scarcely think it safe to remain here as any pro¬ 
 ceedings of the kind would be confusion.” 
 
 The next magnitudinous project of Disraeli was journalistic. 
 With a leading publisher of the day, Murray, one of his father’s 
 friends, and with another partner, Powles, who had money, he 
 would print a great daily, “The Representative,” that was to be 
 the chief news agency of the metropolis. He secured the son-in- 
 
Randolpi-i-Macon Woman's College ii 
 
 law of Sir Walter Scott as an editor, and provided for reporters 
 for all South America, the United States, Mexico, the Levant and 
 for most important places in Europe. Journalism was not so 
 respectable then as now, and it was declared that the editor would 
 be not just the usual newspaper man but the “Director-General 
 of an immense organ and at the head of a band of gentlemen and 
 important interests.” Well, the paper had hardly started before 
 there came a financial panic in London, and “The Representative,” 
 along with many other newspapers, collapsed, the experiment cost¬ 
 ing Murray, the proprietor, about £26,000, and causing a life-long 
 breach in his friendship for Disraeli. 
 
 But our adventurer was not to be downed by this second fail¬ 
 ure. He turned to literature again, and within four months pro¬ 
 duced a book that became the talk of London. Vivian Grey, a 
 product in chief of his vivid imagination, politcal reading, and 
 social observations^but in small part quite probably also the pro¬ 
 duct oFEelpful suggestions from his frien^Mrs. Austen^ clever, 
 experienced woman of the world, was a fashiofiable novel “giving 
 strangely vivid pictures of high life, portraying political and social 
 leaders under fictitious names, boldly critical, revealing aristoc¬ 
 racy’s faults and foibles, full of high-sounding maxims, praising 
 power and authority.” The book was anonymous, had been skill¬ 
 fully advertised by the publishers just before its appearance as the 
 work of some remarkable man of fashion, and at once stirred a 
 curiosity and interest among the literati and elite that gave the 
 work immediate and wide sale. Fierce criticism was not lacking 
 on account of the cheap “puffing”; but the literary effort meant 
 for its author £700 in money, entree into high society, acquaint¬ 
 ance with not a few persons of genius and reputation, and also 
 not a little of abuse. In Contarini Fleming’s words on reading 
 the review of his novel “Manstein,” Disraeli’s feelings at this 
 time as to the abuse are probably reflected: “With what horror, 
 with what supreme, appalling astonishment, did I find myself for 
 the first time in my life a subject of the most ruthless, the most 
 malignant, and the most adroit ridicule. I was sacrificed, . . . 
 
 scalped. I felt that sickness of heart that we experience in our 
 first serious scrape. I was ridiculous, it was time to die.” But 
 the success you may be sure, is what this optimist made the most 
 
12 
 
 Bulletin 
 
 of, and as Towle says in his sketch of the man, “To elbow dukes 
 descended from the Conquest, gartered earls and powerful min¬ 
 isters, popular poets, and famous men of wit and fashion, to be 
 listened to with pleasant attention by the belles and beauties of 
 the West End, to find his table covered with coroneted invitations, 
 to be sought for at all the social festivities and literary reunions 
 of patrician London, was indeed a triumph to this almost beard¬ 
 less youth/'* 
 
 This “open sesame” to high circles would have done him no 
 good though had he not possessed the wit to hold his own in the 
 brilliant company. One of Disraeli’s early made literary friends 
 was Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, who once gave a dinner in one 
 of the Piccadilly hotels with the purpose of acquainting his 
 brother, Sir Henry Bulwer, a Mr. Milnes and Alexander Cock- 
 burn with his new friend of whose talent and character they 
 were rather skeptical. Disraeli was late, probably on purpose, 
 which did not tend to enhance the regard of the other guests for 
 him; nor were they better pleased with his dandified appearance 
 when he did come. “He wore green velvet trousers, a canary- 
 coloured waistcoat, low shoes, silver buckles, lace at his wrists 
 and his hair in ringlets.” ”We sat down,” said Henry Bulwer, 
 “not one more than five and twenty years. We were all—if you 
 will allow me to include myself—on the road to distinction, all 
 clever, all ambitious, and all with a perfect conceit of ourselves. 
 Yet if on leaving the table we had been severally taken aside and 
 asked which was the cleverest of the party, we should have been 
 obliged to say the man in the green velvet trousers.” His wit had 
 conquered their pride and social prejudices. 
 
 In his youth the notoriety that comes from being overdressed 
 or flashily dressed, and through all his later days the benefit that 
 came from being well attired were his. Dandies and fops were 
 the fashion, ’tis true; but no sooner does this young writer come 
 to public notice than everybody is remarking on his eccentricities 
 of dress and demeanour, “his laces and colognes, rings over gloves, 
 bejeweled satin shirt fronts, his marvelous waistcoats embroid¬ 
 ered with gorgeous gold flowers, his patent leather pumps, parti¬ 
 colored socks, and his two canes—a morning and evening cane, 
 used when at Gibraltar and changed at noon when the gun fired.” 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 
 i3 
 
 He wore a most peculiar, dandified make-up at the delivery of his 
 maiden speech in the House of Commons; and as to his appear¬ 
 ance when presenting to a few friends for criticism at Mrs. Aus¬ 
 ten's home the opening passages of his ambitious Revolutionary 
 Epic which he modestly desired to be classed with the Iliad and 
 Divine Comedy, hear Sir Henry Layard’s description: 
 
 “There was something irressistibly comic in the young man 
 dressed in the fantastic, coxcombical costume that he then af¬ 
 fected—velvet coat of an original cut thrown wide open, and ruf¬ 
 fles to its sleeves, shirt collars turned down in Byronic fashion, an 
 elaborately embroidered waistcoat whence issued voluminous folds 
 of frills, and shoes adorned with red rosettes—his black hair poma¬ 
 tumed and elaborately curled, and his person redolent with per¬ 
 fume—announcing himself as the Homer or Dante of the age.” 
 But that's Disraeli; never comparing himself or the members of 
 his family except with the notables of earth. His prosperous, 
 energetic grandfather is like a Rothschild; he played “whist too 
 with Sir Horace Mann and had his macaroni dressed by the Vene¬ 
 tian Consul”; his father he tells us much resembles in moral 
 character Goldsmith, the gifted friend of Burke and Johnson, and 
 his irascible grandmother, was a “demon only equalled by Sarah 
 the Duchess of Marlborough, Frances Ann (marchioness of Lon¬ 
 donderry), and perhaps Queen Catherine of Russia.” 
 
 His peculiar manner of dress must not be regarded as an ex¬ 
 pression of unadulterated affectation, inspired solely by the de¬ 
 sire for notoriety. His letters home to his sister when on a tour 
 of the Orient about three years after the publication of “Vivian 
 Grey” show that all these trappings were to him things of beauty; 
 that they were in the main a spontaneous expression; “leaping,” 
 one has said “by a natural impulse from an overcharged source 
 and sprung from an unfeigned delight in gauds of attire, gauds 
 of fancy and expression.” Says Jeremiah, stating a fundamental 
 law of the world: “Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride 
 her attire?” Disraeli couldn’t. Why, he would go to a fancy 
 ball or masquerade, retire late at night, seize his pen the next 
 morning and write a lengthy letter to “Dearest Sister Sarah,” 
 describing most minutely and completely all the different man- 
 
14 
 
 Bulletin 
 
 ners of colors, draperies, ribbons, costumes, furbelows, and orna¬ 
 mentations worn by the various ladies present. 
 
 And just here it may be in point to remark that he was a favor¬ 
 ite with women; and that he most highly esteemed them, es¬ 
 pecially as a factor in molding public opinion. While the senti¬ 
 ment “woman is a toy” is expressed by a character in one of his 
 novels, and in another book is found “Talk to Women; this is 
 the way to gain fluency, because you need not care what you say.” 
 Disraeli’s real view was that “Nothing was of so much impor¬ 
 tance and of so much use to a young man entering life as to be 
 criticised by women.” He was aided all his days by women 
 friends. It was Mrs. Austen who encouraged him in his first suc¬ 
 cessful literary effort; it was Lady Blessington who threw open 
 her drawing-rooms to him, and introduced him into a society “in 
 whose composition were found embassadors, princes, foreign 
 Counts, successful authors, and such notables as Lord Lyndhurst, 
 Sir Robert Peel, Lord Strangford and Hon. W. R. Spencer”; it 
 was Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, who first put strong faith in his politi¬ 
 cal ability, who, two years after her husband’s death, became his 
 wife, and whose love and fortune were tremendous factors in his 
 parliamentary career; and it was the women who called him 
 handsome, who enjoyed his conversation, who would have him at 
 all the brilliant social functions, who lionized him in public, who 
 enjoyed most his repartee, and who bought and read his books. 
 Lady Cork “doted on the D’lsraelis” we are told. Lunching with 
 her one day was pompous Lord Carrington who liked the quiet, 
 sedate father, Isaac D’lsraeli, but had no use for young Disraeli, 
 regarding him as an agitator. The Lord had just remarked that 
 he believed the adventurer was now abroad. “You old fool,” said 
 the Lady Cork, “Why he sent me this book this morning. You 
 need not look at it; you can’t understand it. It is the finest book 
 ever written. Gone abroad indeed! Why he is the best ton in 
 London! There is not a party that goes down without him. The 
 Duchess of Hamilton says there is nothing like (him). Lady 
 Lonsdale would give her head and shoulders for him. He would 
 not dine at your house if you were to ask him. He does not 
 care for people because they are lords: he must have fashion, or 
 beauty, or wit or something; and you are a very good sort of a 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 
 15 
 
 person but you are nothing more.” Old Mrs. Brydges Willyams, 
 a Spanish Jewess and wealthy widow of a Cornish squire, con¬ 
 ceived a restless admiration for him, began writing him letters, 
 asking him to meet her at the fountain in Crystal Palace, Hyde 
 Park, to whose importunity he finally yielded, and from whose 
 friendship both he and Mrs. Disraeli derived great pleasure. 
 When Mrs. Willyams died, which was twelve years after the Plyde 
 Park meeting, she left the statesman all her fortune which was 
 valued at £30,600, and, strange to say, was buried at her request, 
 at Hughenden, close to the grave where Disraeli was to lie. Our 
 statesman was the favorite minister of Queen Victoria, who 
 raised him to the peerage in 1878. Disraeli gave as his explana¬ 
 tion of the fact that he was more popular as a minister with the 
 Queen than Gladstone, that he treated the Queen as a woman 
 while Gladstone treated her as a public department. Quite 
 pleased was she with the addition Disraeli had Parliament make 
 to the royal title, “Empress of India.” The anniversary of 
 Disraeli’s death, April 19, 1881, is kept as Primrose Day by that 
 efficient political organization of women, the Primrose League. 
 He is claimed too by the Suffragettes. In 1848, he said in the 
 House of Commons, “In a country governed by a woman, where 
 you allow women to form part of the other estate of the realm,— 
 peeresses in their own right for example—where you allow 
 women, not only to hold land, but to be ladies of the manor and 
 hold legal courts, where a woman by law may be a church warden 
 and overseer of the poor, I do not see where she has so much 
 to do with the State and Church, on what reasons, if you come 
 to right, she has not a right to vote.” 
 
 And while woman is being considered, what of Disraeli’s view- 
 on love and marriage? Well, as in the Bible, so in his multifar¬ 
 ious writings appear statements that will prove almost anything 
 you like, if taken by themselves. Once, for example, he writes 
 home “as for dove’ all my friends who married for love and 
 beauty either beat their wives or live apart from them. This is 
 literally the case. I may commit many follies in life, but I never 
 intend to marry for dove,’ which I am sure is a guarantee of in¬ 
 felicity.” But in Henrietta Temple he declares “There is no love 
 but love at first sight. . . The passions that endure flash 
 
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 Bulletin 
 
 like lightning; they scorch the soul, but it is warmed forever. . . . 
 Love is inspiration . . . it is woman whose prescient admi¬ 
 ration strings the lyre of the desponding poet. . . . How 
 
 many an official portfolio would never have been carried had it 
 not been for her sanguine spirit. How many a despairing advo¬ 
 cate has clutched the Great Seal and taken precedence before 
 princes borne onward by the breeze of her inspiring hope.” 
 
 Now what Disraeli actually did in this matter (and here as 
 elsewhere deeds count for more than words), was to fall desper¬ 
 ately in love with Wyndham Lewis’ wealthy widow, forty-five 
 years old and about fifteen years his senior, almost before Mr. 
 Lewis was cold in his grave. She had admired him from the 
 first, prophesying his future eminence at the time he, with her 
 husband, Disraeli’s providential friend and political colleague, 
 were elected to parliament from Maidstone; but she seemed to 
 feel that Disraeli’s ardor was previous and possibly calculating, 
 and held him off for some months. But he, vowing, “I am mad 
 with love, my passion is frenzy, and if any two persons on earth 
 were made for one another, certainly we are the two,” continually 
 stormed the citadel of her affections, and within a year received 
 this note from her patching up a rent in their friendship made in 
 a recent quarrel, which missive shows he is making headway. 
 
 “For God’s sake come to me. I am ill and almost distracted. 
 I will answer all you wish. I never desired you to leave the 
 house or thought a word about money. ... I am devoted to 
 you.” About six months later they were married, August 27, 
 1839, an d none can study their subsequent history without be¬ 
 coming convinced of their genuine devotion, and complete com- 
 patability. Disraeli could have loved a poor woman, but not 
 enough to marry her. Mrs. Lewis brought to him a house in 
 London, No. 1 Grosvenor Gate, and added to the family income 
 an annuity of £4,000. She told a visitor on one occasion (when 
 her husband had been in parliament for 33 years about) that she 
 had spent on electioneering down to that date, 1864, a hundred 
 thousand pounds, but “was well rewarded by the devotion of so 
 brilliant a husband.” She has listed their opposing qualities and 
 from this record the harmony of their lives would seem based on 
 the law of contrasts: First his, then her traits are given : “Very 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 17 
 
 calm, very effervescent; grave, gay; never irritable, very irritable; 
 very patient, no patience; very studious, very idle; conceited, no 
 conceit; he is a genius, she is a dunce.” Disraeli spoke of her 
 once as a most lovable creature but one that had difficulty in re¬ 
 membering which came first, the Greeks or the Romans. 
 
 Disraeli was a prolific writer, a novel issuing from his thought 
 every year or two, his creative imagination pouring fourth mat¬ 
 ter until the very last: 1826, Vivian Grey; by 1829, Ixion in 
 Heaven, The Infernal Marriage , Pompanilla; between 1831-36, 
 Contarini Fleming, the Young Duke, the Revolutionary Epic, 
 Alroy, Henrietta Temple, The Runnymede Letters, A Vindication 
 of the British Constitution; 1844, Coningsby; 1845, Sybil; 1852, 
 Life of Lord George Bentinck; after 1868, Lothair; about 1880, 
 Endymion; these, besides the History of Paul Jones which he 
 edited when at the very first of his career, and sundry pamphlets 
 and newspaper articles. 
 
 Now as to the merit of these works, those who have a right to 
 an opinion declare that the productions fall short of being perfect 
 works of art, owing to the direct political purpose seen in most 
 of them. His novels are full of original thought, fine humor, 
 daring sarcasm, happy surprises and brilliant statements; but the 
 art in them is often sacrificed to the politics, signs of earnestness 
 and struggle marring the fineness and pure beauty of his style. 
 
 Monypenny, his chief biographer, says, "‘Disraeli’s most con¬ 
 spicuous limitations as an artist are, a certain lack of emotional 
 •depth, of warmth in his sympathy, and geniality in his laughter, 
 all associated with a tendency to look at life too exclusively 
 through the eyes of ambition.” His earlier works were the em- 
 bodification of his feelings. “In Vivian Grey, I have portrayed 
 my active and real ambition; in Alroy my ideal ambition; Con¬ 
 tarini Fleming is a development of my poetic character.” Con¬ 
 ingsby was a manifesto furnishing a political creed to Young 
 England; Sybil was an indictment of the social relations of the 
 rich and poor, and in nearly all his books appear philosophical 
 discussions concerning economic, civic, and ecclesiastical insti¬ 
 tutions. Defence of the settled institutions of England in Church 
 and State, the vindication of his own race, and the delineation of 
 
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 Bulletin 
 
 the life and manners of the English aristrocracy are leading 
 characteristics of his books, and by reason of this last feature 
 alone his writings will always be highly treasured by historians of 
 nineteenth century England. 
 
 While there is a good deal of gush and empty chitchat in his 
 novels, it is asserted that there is hardly to be found a dull page 
 in all the 5,000 or more that came from his pen; he wrote he said 
 to be read by the living and not for posterity, and what he wrote 
 he could sell. The Young Duke , one of the least worthy of his 
 productions was sold to the publishers for £500. The first edi¬ 
 tion of 3,000 copies of Coningsby, brought him £1,000 and in 
 a very brief period as many as 50,000 copies were wanted in 
 the United States. For his Life of Lord George Bentinck 
 (1852) he received, we are told, “a large sum from a private 
 hand, while a conservative millionaire took upon himself the 
 debt of the usurers, 3 per cent, being exchanged for 10 per cent, 
 interest, under which Disraeli had been staggering.” All_jif his 
 works are original, and creative. Through his literature and wit, 
 like Johnson, he rose to eminence. Among his literary honors 
 were a D. C. L. of Oxford University, the Lord Rectorship of 
 Glasgow University and an L. L. D. of Edinburgh University. 
 His compositions certainly do not lack life or vigor; his charac¬ 
 ters moving on and off the stage of action with celerity and grace. 
 A tone of grandeur is often heard as in the opening words of 
 Cantarini Fleming: ( T came,” he says, “to the river Nile, to that 
 ancient and mighty and famous stream, whose waters yielded us 
 our earliest civilization, and which after having witnessed the 
 formation of so many states, and the invention of so many creeds, 
 still flow on with the same serene beneficence, like all that we can 
 conceive of Deity: in form sublime, in action systematic, in nature 
 bountiful, in source unknown. . . . My solitary step sound¬ 
 
 ed in the halls of the Pharoahs.” And how rare some of his 
 descriptive phrases ! The sunset sky is “like the neck of a dove;” 
 the view of the Euxine “like gazing upon eternity.” He beholds 
 in Venice “pillars of rare marble ranged in majestic order and 
 streaming with the liquid moonlight.” He describes a certain 
 youth of fifteen years as “one of the most affected, conceited, in¬ 
 tolerable atoms that ever peopled the sumbeam of society.” And 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 
 19 
 
 as to the sweet radiant face and shapely form of a noble Countess, 
 he says, '‘all the freshness of an innocent heart had embalmed 
 their perennial loveliness.” 
 
 Having snatched at and secured just at his majority the rare 
 pearl of literary fame, the young notable would now go to Parlia¬ 
 ment. He had never held an office of any sort in his life, but he 
 would attempt at the first nothing lower than the highest. He an¬ 
 nounced himself a candidate (1832) against the brother of the 
 noted Sir Edward Grey (who later carried through the famous 
 Reform Bill of 1832), for the borough of High Wycombe, a close 
 corporation near Bradenham. It was before the Reform Bill had 
 been passed, and only the corporation and burgesses numbering 
 about thirty-two persons had votes, the population in general 
 having no electoral power. The poll was, Grey, 20, Disraeli 12. 
 Undaunted by this defeat, he tried again six months later, when 
 the Reform Bill having been passed, more of the townspeople 
 could now vote. There were three candidates and the poll stood, 
 Smith 179, Grey 140, Disraeli 119. Still not disheartened he 
 tried again two years later (January 7, 1835), the poll stood, 
 Smith 289, Grey 147, Disraeli 128; again he tried contesting 
 another seat at Taunton (1835), the poll stood, Labouchere 452, 
 Disraeli 282, a fourth failure; but in his fifth attempt two years 
 later he won. In the Maidstone election (July 27, 1837) where 
 two out of three candidates were to be chosen; the poll stood 
 Wyndham Lewis 707, Disraeli 616, Col. Thompson 412. He was 
 in parliament at last. 
 
 But that’s no final goal with him, as is revealed in his quite 
 grave answer to Lord Melbourne, the Home Secretary, four years 
 earlier, who, impressed with Disraeli’s abilities, and thinking of 
 employing him as his private secretary, had asked the aspiring 
 young man one day when dining together, how he might advance 
 him in life and what was his objective anyhow? "To be Prime 
 Minister, My Lord.” Melbourne set to work to prove how vain 
 and impossible was the realization of such an ambition, but fifteen 
 years later when Melbourne heard that Disraeli had been ele¬ 
 vated to the headship of the Tory party he expressed a different 
 faith on that score. "The fellow will do it yet!” he exclaimed 
 with surprise. Disraeli rose to the leadership of the House of 
 
20 
 
 Bulletin 
 
 Commons, to the high office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 three times, and to the Prime Ministership twice, first when sixty- 
 two years of age in 1868, and second when sixty-eight in 1874. 
 And note the type of men he contended with in the House of 
 Commons. O’Connell, the Irish chief; Edward Bulwer, the 
 novelist; Grote, the historian of Greece; Molesworth, Joseph 
 Hume, the Earl of Shaftsbury, Macaulay, Sir Robt. Peel, Lord 
 John Russell, Lord Palmerston, Lord Stanley, and Wm. E. 
 Gladstone. 
 
 I-Iis first speech, carefully composed and memorized, proved a 
 lamentable failure, so far as gaining the ear of the House was 
 concerned, though it was a success in the sense that he would not 
 yield the floor in the face of unfair, loud, disorderly and con¬ 
 tinued interruption, planned to disconcert him, and to force him 
 to his seat. The Irish and Radicals, who had no faith in him be¬ 
 cause in his first effort at High Wycombe to get to parliament he 
 had seemed to be with them and the reformers and in his suc¬ 
 cessful election later had come in as a Tory and against them, 
 made all manner of noises such as “hisses, groans, hoots, cat¬ 
 calls, drumming with the feet, loud conversation, and imitation of 
 animals,” but the speaker stood on his legs just exactly the num¬ 
 ber of minutes he intended; and as he took his seat declared in 
 terrific tones: “I sit down now, but the time will come when you 
 will hear me.” This hard experience in the end helped him. His 
 dandified dress, un-English appearance, affected manner of de¬ 
 livery, overwrought literary style, and strange metaphors were 
 distasteful to many members of the House. 
 
 The advice of his friend Shiel, was not without its effect “get 
 rid of your genius for a session; speak often but shortly; be quiet, 
 try to be dull, argue, reason, quote figures, dates, calculations, nad 
 in a short while the House will sigh for the wit and eloquence 
 which they all know are in you. . . . you have a fine organ, 
 
 an unlimited command of language and courage, temper, readi¬ 
 ness. You will be a favorite.” And the Duke of Wellington’s 
 rule for successful speech-making in parliament would have been 
 in point. “What you have to say, speak plainly, quote no Latin, 
 and sit down.” Studying and correcting his faults, though not 
 abandoning the classics, he did become in eighteen months a 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 
 21 
 
 speaker that held the House in wrapt attention for hours at the 
 time. In a letter to his wife in February, 1842, he reports, “The 
 affair last night realized all my hopes; the success was complete 
 and brilliant. I rose at 5 o’clock to one of the most disagreeable 
 audiences that ever welcomed a speaker. Everybody seemed not 
 to be aware of my existence, and there was a general buzz and 
 chatter. Nevertheless, not losing my head, I proceeded without 
 hesitation, and ... in about ten minutes affairs began to 
 mend; five minutes later an attentive audience, and from that 
 time until near half past seven, two hours and twenty minutes, I 
 can say without the slightest exaggeration that you might have 
 heard a pin fall in the House.” 
 
 Disraeli entered political life just at the time the Tory party 
 had been wrecked, the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 having 
 placed authority in the hands of the Whigs and Radicals which 
 groups soon emerged into a new party, the Liberals, while the 
 Tory group began to call itself the Conservative party. A decade 
 about after the Reform Bill, 1841, the Conservatives came into 
 power under Peel as Prime Minister, “the readiest, easiest and 
 most flexible, most adroit of men, who played upon the House of 
 Commons as upon an old fiddle.” Plis ministry lasted five years, 
 1841-46, but on Peel’s advocacy of free trade and support of the 
 repeal of tiwrtwii laws his'party-w^nt to pieces, the free traders 
 and liberal Conservatives following Gladstone, the protectionists 
 and old Conservatives following Disraeli. 
 
 On entering parliament Disraeli had first followed the leader¬ 
 ship of Peel, who evidently highly esteemed the new member. He 
 had pronounced lofty encomiums on the character of the Prime 
 Minister possibly in part with the hope of gaining promotion by 
 his good will. In fact in a letter from Mrs. Disraeli to Peel 
 when he is forming his ministry Peel is virtually asked to give 
 her husband office in the government, though Disraeli may not 
 have known that his wife wrote it; and later he denied on the 
 floor of the House of Commons ever having asked Peel for place, 
 which statement the Prime Minister seemed to regard as untrue. 
 But though friendly on the start it was not long before Disraeli 
 showed himself the determined and open foe of Peel. He did 
 not like Peel’s patronizing air, nor his deserting his principles on 
 
22 
 
 Bulletin 
 
 the protection question, gaining the election on high tariff and 
 then making use of his office to carry free trade, nor his coales¬ 
 cing with the Liberals in this matter, nor his being at the head of 
 a group they would call the Conservative Party which had no 
 definite political creed. His mind once made up against Peel, he 
 pursued for years a deliberate plan for underminding his author¬ 
 ity and in the end took his place at the head of the Conservative 
 hosts now instructed and disciplined in his own principles and 
 thought. 
 
 His attacks on Peel in the House of Commons were savage. 
 “Sir, the Right Hon. gentleman has been accused of treachery 
 . . . of 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 parliamentary history of the country, that for be¬ 
 tween thirty and forty years, the right hon. gentleman has traded 
 on the ideas and intelligence of others. His life has been one great 
 appropriation clause. He is a burglar of others’ intellects. There 
 is no other statesman who has committed petty larceny on so great 
 a scale.” 
 
 After Disraeli came to the headship of the Conservative Party, 
 which he had in fact made over again out of the wreck of the old 
 Tory party, infusing it with new life and purpose, it was the 
 mighty mind of Gladstone, the Liberal Chief, that was pitted 
 against his own the rest of his days in the Commons, and many a 
 time was the peace of that mind disturbed by the vigilant, critical, 
 dynamic Disraeli. With no other opponent was Gladstone so 
 unbending, so unchivalrous, showing so little magnanimity, at 
 times all but rude, as with Disraeli. In one of their fiery con¬ 
 troversies in the House, Disraeli noting the bitterness of Glad¬ 
 stone’s hostility and the terror of his looks as he attacked in de¬ 
 bate, quietly interrupted to congratulate himself on the existence 
 of “this strong table between us.” His hardness of spirit toward 
 the man seems to have been due to his belief that Disraeli was 
 not sincere. But let us remember that very respectable men arc 
 often put in the Ananias Club by their opponents. Gladstone 
 once lectured him on proper manners in the House of Commons; 
 
23 
 
 
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 Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 
 A 
 
 but whether his man ners/ 1 and morals pleased Gladstone or not, 
 Disraeli was able in ^181*7)to turn him out of office and to hold 
 the premiership in his sfead for five years. 
 
 As to Disraeli’s services not much in the way of advanced 
 legislation was done by him,—some labor laws and the important 
 Reform Act of 1867 increasing the number of voters, which meas¬ 
 ure he got, to use his own phrase, by “dishing the Whigs”—but he 
 secured control of the Suez Canal, added to the Queen’s title, 
 checked Russia’s aggressions in Turkey, revising the San Stefano 
 treaty at the Congress of Berlin, thus the better securing India for 
 England, and he rebuilt a great political party after it had been 
 shattered by the defection of its own leader, and raised it in spite 
 of its unpopular antecedents, to such a height of public favor that 
 for the thirty-nine years which followed (his great measure) the 
 Tories were in power with large majorities for twenty-three of 
 them. He gave his party a three-fold creed: preservation of the 
 constitution, social betterment, and imperialism. To him the Tory 
 party represented the nation, as over against the Whigs repre¬ 
 senting chiefly the commercial classes, or against the Liberals and 
 Radicals representing the so-called people or masses, and he 
 w T ould have it revert to its old principles. “Gentlemen,” he declared, 
 “The Tory party unless it is a national party, is nothing. It is not 
 a confederacy of nobles, it is a party formed from all the numer¬ 
 ous classes in the realm—classes alike and equal before the law, 
 but whose different conditions and different aims give vigor and 
 variety to our national life; its objects are three-fold; to maintain 
 our national institutions, to improve the condition of the people, 
 and to preserve the Empire.” He has been acknowledged as the 
 regenerator and representative of the Imperial idea in England, 
 and for that one reason alone his name will ever live in English 
 
 History. The political principles he espoused in the opening years 
 of his public career are the principles held to till the last, a period 
 of over forty years: faith in democracy on the one hand, rever¬ 
 ence for tradition and traditional institutions on the other; dislike 
 of the selfish Whig oligarchy; concern for the people; and de¬ 
 fence of Crown, House of Lords, Courts, and Church, as well as 
 Commons, all upon the principles of nationality. To allow the 
 class spirit or the cosmopolitan spirit to overrule the national 
 
24 
 
 Bulletin 
 
 spirit was to him unpatriotic and detestable; and like Burke, he 
 made much of prescription and experience; like him he con¬ 
 ceived of the nation as having a personality, a soul; it was a cor¬ 
 poration, a partnership of living and dead and unborn, a fact 
 overlooked by utilitarian and theoretical legislators. With him 
 sentiment counted for much, and was rightfully appraised as a 
 force in ruling men, even their prejudices being valued. 
 
 And now a few words as to the qualities of his character. He 
 has been called turn-coat, traitor, adventurer, schemer, mystery 
 man, inscrutable, insincere, undependable—I do not so make him 
 out. Some inconsistencies to be sure, but few of the greater 
 statesmen show an absolutely consistent party record—neither 
 Chatham, Pitt, Burke, Canning, Peel, Palmerston or Gladstone. 
 As to the mystery part—he kept his own counsel and had few 
 intimacies. Garrulous enough to be sure when subjects are trite, 
 but serious business on, thinking more than he talked, and spring¬ 
 ing on occasion many a surprise. “Cold and impenetrable as a 
 statue,” he appeared in the Commons seated on the Opposition 
 bench, “eyes cast down, hands folded,” as the debate rolled on 
 about him, but let some foe make a false step or charge, “he is on 
 his feet and at him, boiling with real or affected indignation.” “A 
 sneer for an enemy, a smile for a friend” was his unchristian 
 maxim. He would yield to no slight or personal attack without 
 instant resentment. He did not accept, I think, the beatitude 
 “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth”; but like 
 the princes of the Gentiles did delight in exercising dominion 
 and authority. Power he coveted above all things. “Power,” 
 says Vivian Grey, “oh what sleepless nights, what days of hot 
 anxiety, what exertions of mind and body, what travels what 
 hatred would I not endure to get it!” He could stand abuse, and 
 no public man is worth his salt who cannot stand it. O’Connell 
 once applied these epithets to him: “A vile creature, a reptile, 
 the lineal descendant of the blasphemous robber who ended his 
 career beside the Founder of the Christian faith”; and for doing 
 so was called by Disraeli in reply, “A systematic liar, a beggarly 
 cheat, a swindler and a poltroon, . . . whose public and pri¬ 
 
 vate life are equally profligate, and who has committed every 
 crime that does not require courage.” Over against this ugly 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 
 25 
 
 statement of his let us place this one, which his sister regarded as 
 sublime, from his speech at the Mancheter Athenaeum: 
 
 “Knowledge is like the mystic ladder in the patriarch’s dream; 
 its base rests on the primeval earth, its crest is lost in the shadowy 
 splendors of the empyrean, while the great authors who for tradi¬ 
 tional ages have held the chain of science and philosophy, of 
 poesy and erudition, are the angels ascending and descending the 
 social scale, and maintaining, as it were, the communication be¬ 
 tween man and heaven.” 
 
 Grit is in this man’s make-up. There were three years in his 
 early manhood when his constitution seemed about to go to pieces 
 and his mind appeared all but unbalanced. On two occasions he 
 experienced something like fits or swoons, once dropping in his 
 tracks in the street at the end of a hard day’s campaigning,— 
 nervous exhaustion probably. He was sure of himself—self- 
 reliant, drawing his power from within. “The breath of man has 
 never influenced me much, for I depend more upon myself than 
 upon others.” In one of his letters, when twenty-nine years of 
 ago, he wrote, “I have not gained much in conversation with men 
 
 . . . I make it a rule now never to throw myself open to 
 
 men. I do not grudge them the knowledge I could impart, but I 
 am always exhausted by composition when I enter society, and 
 little inclined to talk, and as I never get anything in return, I do 
 not think the exertion necessary.” When ill and despondent, he 
 wrote just before starting on his tour of the East in which he 
 visited chief centers of interest in Spain, Egypt, Syria, Malta, Tur¬ 
 key, Cyprus, “For there is something within me, which, in spite of 
 all the dicta of the faculty and in the face of the prostrate state 
 in which I be, whispers to me, I shall yet weather this fearful 
 storm.” Again, “What I am, I know not, nor do I care. I have 
 that within me, which man can neither give nor take away, which 
 can throw light on the darkest passages of life, and draw, from a 
 discordant world, a melody divine. For it I would live, and for it 
 alone.” 
 
 As to ambition, he once openly declared in the House of Com¬ 
 mons, “I love fame, I love public reputation. I love to live in the 
 eyes of the country, and it is a glorious thing for a man to do who 
 has had my difficulties to contend against.” 
 
26 
 
 Bulletin 
 
 In perceptive imagination he was possibly without a peer 
 among the statesmen of his day. Taking the pains, time and 
 study necessary to master a political question the Commons had r 
 
 to handle, so that he might back his position on the matter with as 
 accurate and full information as any other man, he had still in 
 his rare imaginative faculty a special advantage over his rivals, 
 in that he often saw deeper and farther into the future conse¬ 
 quences of a principle or proposed bill than they. In our Civil 
 Strife of 1861-65, Disraeli, contrary to Gladstone and the leading 
 men of the Conservative party, saw from the first what was to be 
 the final issue. “His great merit,” says Monypenny, “as a politi¬ 
 cal thinker was his ability to penetrate through manner and ap¬ 
 pearances to the realities beneath, thus ernancipting us from 
 formula.” His keen insight was quick to pierce to the heart and 
 hidden life of any popular phrase, shibboleth, or symbol. “Rid 
 yourself,” he says in an early speech “of all that political jargon 
 and facetious slang of Whig and Tory—two names with one 
 meaning, used only to delude you and unite to form a great na¬ 
 tional party which can alone save the country from impending ^ 
 
 destruction.” Quite impressive his statement, “The Utilitarians 
 in politics are like the Unitarians in religion: both omit imagi¬ 
 nation in their systems, and imaginaton governs mankind.” And 
 this one, “Modern philosophy, with its superficial discoveries has 
 infused into the breast of man a spirit of skepticism; but I think 
 that ere long, science will again become imaginative, and that as 
 we become more profound, we may become also more credulous.” 
 
 In accounting for his successes in life, of course may be men¬ 
 tioned his literary environment, studious habits, wide travels, 
 command of language, gift of coining terse phrases, his patience, 
 power of application and the like, but one word and that word 
 inexplicable alone tells why he could and did forge to the front. 
 
 Disraeli was a genius . 
 
 He does not credit the school-teachers with having led him to 
 triumph. “They considered their pupils as machines, which were 
 to fulfill a certain operation, and this operation was word-learn¬ 
 ing. . . . the human mind was with them always the same 
 
 soil, and one to which they brought ever the same tillage. And 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 27 
 
 mine was considered a sterile one, for they found that their 
 thistles did not flourish where they should have planted roses.” 
 
 And as to his religion and creed? Well, you are more im¬ 
 pressed with his worldly than with his heavenly ways. Like Jef¬ 
 ferson, he did not wear his religion on his sleeve, considering this 
 his own private affair. He was, as has been said, a member of 
 the Anglican Episcopal Establishment, attended its services, and 
 boldly championed its union with the State. “His instincts, tradi¬ 
 tions, and imagination,” says Mr. Kebbel, “making him respect a 
 great national hierarchy founded on great mysteries and storied 
 with a solemn grandeur; like its own old abbeys and cathedrals.” 
 As to his position on the evolutionist’s theory of man’s origin, he 
 says, “Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, am on the side of 
 the angels.” You do not find in him any mean, base, vulgar 
 traits. No small thing, person or idea seems worthy of his atten¬ 
 tion; though the sins of pride, conceit, hatred, vengeance, and of 
 an unbridled tongue seem to be his. The man who over¬ 
 came the obstacles he surmounted, who mastered the men he 
 mastered, and who taught and led a nation as he did, standing too 
 from first to last in the locality in which he was born, must have 
 had strong pabulum somewhere upon which he fed his soul. 
 And one morning when I crossed this brief but noble passage 
 of Disraeli’s, I said, in there somewhere I believe this genius got 
 spiritual sustenance: It read, “The Word of God is eternal and 
 will survive the spheres. . . . We may analyze the sun and 
 
 penetrate the stars, but man is conscious that he is made in God’s 
 own image, and in his perplexity he will ever appeal to our Father 
 which art in Heaven.”