Disraeli: A Personal History. Christopher Hibbert

figure he cut:

      Never in my life had I been so struck by a face as I was by that of Disraeli. It was lividly pale, and from beneath two finely arched eyebrows blazed out a pair of intensely black eyes. I never have seen such orbs in mortal sockets, either before or since. His physiognomy was strictly Jewish. Over a broad, high forehead were ringlets of coal-black, glossy hair, which, combed away from his right temple, fell in luxuriant clusters or bunches over his left cheek and ear, which it entirely concealed from view. There was a sort of half-smile, playing about his beautifully formed mouth, the upper lip of which was curved as we see it in the portraits of Lord Byron…He was very showily attired in a dark bottle-green frock-coat, a waistcoat of the most extravagant pattern, the front of which was almost covered with glittering chains, and in fancypattern pantaloons. He wore a plain black stock, but no collar was visible. Altogether he was the most intellectual-looking exquisite I had ever seen.⁷

      He did his best to dispel the reputation for inconsistency of which his enemies made great play. It was ‘absolutely essential’ for him to do so, Bulwer advised him: he must explain to the voters that ‘although a Tory you are a reforming one; because it is generally understood that you committed yourself in some degree with the other party’.⁸

      Disraeli endeavoured to do so, and in a long speech on nomination day, attacking the Whigs as an ‘anti-national party’ and elaborating their ‘incapacity’, he declared that it was his ‘duty to oppose them, to ensure their discomfiture and, if possible, their destruction’.

      Tireless and persuasive as he was on the hustings, however, Disraeli’s time as a parliamentarian had not yet come: he received 282 votes against Labouchere’s 452. By general consent, however, his eloquence and wit in presenting his version of democratic Toryism were widely admired and even among those who were initially irritated by the extravagance of his clothes and gestures there were many who were won over in the end by his apparent sincerity and the astonishing fluency of his utterance. One of those who attended a banquet given for him by the Conservatives of Taunton provided this account of his manner and eloquence:

      He commenced in a lisping, lackadaisical tone of voice…He minced his phrases in apparently the most affected manner, and, whilst he was speaking, placed his hands in all imaginable positions; not because he felt awkward and did not know, like a booby in a drawing-room, where to put them, but apparently for the purpose of exhibiting to the best advantage the glittering rings which decked his white and taper fingers. Now he would place his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and spread out his fingers on its flashing surface; then one set of digits would be released and he would lean affectedly on the table, supporting himself with his right hand; anon he would push aside the curls from his forehead…But as he proceeded all traces of this dandyism and affectation were lost. With a rapidity of utterance perfectly astonishing he referred to past events and indulged in anticipations of the future. The Whigs were, of course, the objects of his unsparing satire, and his eloquent denunciations of them were applauded to the echo. In all he said he proved himself to be the finished orator – every period was rounded with the utmost elegance, and in his most daring flights, when one trembled lest he should fall from the giddy height to which he had attained, he so gracefully descended that every hearer was wrapt in admiring surprise…His voice, at first so finical, gradually became full, musical, and sonorous, and with every varying sentiment was beautifully modulated…The dandy was transformed into a practised orator.⁹

      The sequel to this election in Taunton was a virulent quarrel with Daniel O’Connell, Member of Parliament for Dublin, who had angrily responded to reports which appeared in the press of Disraeli’s having insulted him as an incendiary and a traitor. O’Connell replied to this ‘blackguardism’ in terms equally insulting: the ‘annals of ruffianism’ did not furnish anything like the behaviour of this ‘reptile’ Disraeli.

      He is an author, I believe, of a couple of novels [O’Connell wrote], and that was all I knew about him until 1831 or 1832, when he wrote to me, being about to stand for High Wycombe, requesting a letter from me to the electors. He took the letter with him, got it printed and placarded all over the place. The next I heard of him was his being a candidate for Marylebone; in this he was also unsuccessful. He got tired of being a radical any longer after these two defeats and was determined to try his chance as a Tory. He stood the other day at Taunton, and by way of recommending himself to his electors he called me an incendiary and a traitor. Now, my answer to this piece of gratuitous impertinence is, that he is an egregious liar…What! Shall such a vile creature be tolerated in England?

      He was a ‘living liar’, O’Connell continued in ever-increasing anger. The British Empire was degraded by tolerating a ‘miscreant of his abominable description’. He possessed ‘all the necessary requisites of perfidy, selfishness, depravity, want of principle etc. which would qualify him for the change from Radical to Conservative. His name shows that he is of Jewish origin. I do not use it as a term of reproach; there are many most respectable Jews. But there are, as in every other people, some of the lowest and most disgusting grade of moral turpitude; and of those I look upon Mr Disraeli as the worst.’¹⁰

      These insults, Disraeli considered, could not go unchallenged; and he must, he felt, demand satisfaction.¹¹ Having killed a man in a duel, O’Connell had taken a vow never to fight another; so Disraeli challenged O’Connell’s son, Morgan O’Connell, who replied that he was not responsible for his father’s remarks. Thereupon Disraeli wrote to Daniel O’Connell in terms of outrage no less virulent than those in which O’Connell had addressed him:

      If it had been possible for you to act like a gentleman, you would have hesitated before you made your foul and insolent comments upon a hasty and garbled report of a speech which scarcely contains a sentence or an expression as they emanated from my mouth…Although you have long placed yourself out of the pale of civilisation, still I am one who will not be insulted, even by a Yahoo.

      When Disraeli’s long letter appeared in the press, he wrote again to O’Connell’s son:

      I deduce from your communication that you do not consider yourself responsible for any insults offered by your father, but only bound to resent the insults he may receive. Now, Sir, it is my hope that I have insulted him; assuredly it was my intention to do so. I wished to express the utter scorn in which I hold his character and the disgust with which his conduct inspires me…I shall take every opportunity of holding your father’s name up to public contempt. And I fervently pray that you, or someone of his blood, may attempt to avenge the unextinguishable hatred with which I shall pursue his existence.¹²

      There were those in his party and within his family who thought that Disraeli had gone too far. But he himself vehemently protested that his conduct was as praiseworthy as he chose to depict it. ‘It is very easy for you to criticise,’ he told his sister, ‘but I do not regret the letter: the expressions were well weighed…Others think [it] perfect…worthy of Swift…The general effect is the thing, and that is, that all men agree I have shown pluck…There is one opinion among all parties – viz: that I have squabashed them.’ In his diary he later wrote: ‘Row with O’Connell in which I greatly distinguish myself.’¹³

      Years later he told Reginald Brett (the future Lord Esher) that he never forgave an injury. When a man injured him he wrote his name down on a piece of paper and put it in a drawer and afterwards ‘something usually happened to him’.

       10 DEBTS AND DUNS

      ‘I trust there is no danger of my being nabbed.’

      

      TOWARDS THE END OF JUNE 1835, Disraeli sent his sister a long description of a