Online Encyclopedia
Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
EARL OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI BEACONSFIELD
Online EncyclopediaEncyclopedia Home :: BAR-BEC
del.icio.us it!
|
See also:EARL OF See also:BENJAMIN DISRAELI See also:BEACONSFIELD
(1804-
1881), See also:British statesman, second See also:child and eldest son of See also:Isaac D'See also:Israeli (q.v.) and Maria Basevi, who were married in 1802, was See also:born at No
.
6 See also:
And though a mind like Disraeli's might See also:work to See also:satisfaction with See also:Christianity as " completed Judaism," it could but dwell on a See also:breach of continuity which means so much to Jews and which he was never allowed to forget amongst Christians
.
With all, he was proud of his See also:race as truly, if not as vehemently, as his paternal grandmother detested it
.
Family See also:pride contributed to the feeling in his See also:case; for in his more speculative moods he could look back upon an ancestry which was of those, perhaps, who colonized the shores of the Mediterranean from before the time of the Captivity
.
More definite is the See also:history of descent from an ennobled See also:Spanish family which escaped from the See also:Torquemada persecutions to See also:Venice, there found a new See also:home, took a new name, and prospered for six generations
.
The Benjamin D'Israeli, See also:Lord Beacons-See also: As a child—unruly and disturbing no doubt—he was sent to a school of small See also:account at See also:Blackheath, and was there " for years " before he *as recalled at the See also:age of twelve on the See also:death of his grandfather . Isaac D'Israeli was his father's See also:sole heritor, but See also:change of fortune seems to have awakened in him no ambitions for the most hopeful of his sons . At fifteen, not before, Benjamin was sent to a Unitarian school at See also:Walthamstow—a well-known school, populous enough to be a little See also:world of emulation and conflict but otherwise unfit . Not there, nor in any similar institution at that illiberal time, perhaps, was a Jewish boy likely to make a fortunate entry into " the great family of mankind." His name, the See also:foreign look of him, and some pronounced incompatibilities not all chargeable to See also:young Disraeli (as afterwards the name came to be spelt), soon raised a See also:crop of troubles . His stay at Walthamstow was brief, his departure abrupt, and he went to school no more . With the run of his father's library, and the benefits of that born bookman's guidance, he now set out to educate himself . This he did with an See also:industry stiffened by matchless self-confidence and by ambitions fully mature before he was eighteen . Yet he yielded to an See also:attempt to make a man of business of him . He was barely seventeen when (in See also:November 1821) he was taken into the See also:office of Messrs Swain, See also:Stevens and Co., solicitors, in See also:Frederick's See also:Place, Old Jewry . Here he remained for three years—" most assiduous in his See also:attention to business," said one of the partners, " and showing great ability in the transaction of it." It was then determined that he should go to the See also:bar; and accordingly he was entered at See also:Lincoln's See also:Inn in 1824 . But Disraeli had found other studies and an See also:alien use for his See also:pen . Though " assiduous in his attention to business " in Frederick's Place, he found time to write for the printer .
Dr See also:Smiles, in his See also:Memoirs of John Hurray, tells of certain See also:pamphlets on the brightening prospects of the Spanish See also:South See also:American colonies, then in the first enjoyment of emancipation—pamphlets seemingly written for a Mr Powles, See also:head of a great See also:financial See also:firm, whose acquaintance Disraeli had made
.
In the same See also:year, apparently, he wrote a novel—his first, and never published
.
See also:Aylmer Papillon was the See also:title of it, Dr Smiles informs us; and he prints a See also:letter from Disraeli to the John See also:
Many years afterwards (18J3) Disraeli took an active See also:interest in The See also:Press, a weekly See also:journal of considerable merit but meagre fortunes
.
At the death of the See also:elder Benjamin (1817), his son Isaac had moved from the See also:
The success of this insolently clever novel, the immediate introduction of its author to the great world, and the daring eccentricities of See also:dress, demeanour, and See also:opinion by which he fixed 'attention on himself there, have always been among the most favourite morsels of Disraeli's history
.
With them it began, and successive generations of inquirers into a See also:strange career and a character still shrouded and baffling refer to them as settled starting-points of investigation
.
What was the man who, in such a society and with political aspirations to serve, could thrive by such vagaries as these, or in spite of them
?
If unaffected, what is to be thought of them as keys to character
?
If affected, what then
?
Inquiry still takes this shape, and when any See also:part of Disraeli's career is studied, the laces and essences, the rings over gloves, the jewelled satin See also:shirt-fronts, the guitareries and chibouqueries of his See also:early days are never remote from memory
.
The See also:report of them can hardly be doubted; and as the last relation was made (to the writer of this See also:article) not with See also:intent to ridicule Mr Disraeli's See also:taste but to illustrate his conquering abilities, the See also:story is repeated here
.
One of Disraeli's first friends in the world of See also:fashion and genius was See also:Sir See also:Edward See also:Lytton Bulwer
.
" And," said Sir See also:
He wore See also:green See also:velvet See also:trousers, a See also:canary-coloured waistcoat, See also:low shoes, See also:silver buckles, See also:lace at his wrists, and his See also:hair in ringlets." The description of the coat is forgotten
.
" We sat down
.
Not one of us was more than five-and-twenty years old
.
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.' " This story is a little See also:lamp that throws much See also:light
.
Here we see at their sharpest the social prejudices that Disraeli had to fight against, provocation of. them carried to its utmost in every way open to him, and See also:complete See also:conquest in a See also:company of young men less likely to admit superiority in a wit of their own years, probably, than any other that could have been brought together at that time
.
Soon after the publication of Vivian Grey, Disraeli, who is said by See also:Fronde to have been " overtaken by a singular disorder," marked by fits of giddiness (" once he See also:fell into a See also:trance, and did not recover for a See also:week "), went with the Austens on a See also:long summer tour in See also:France, See also:Switzerland and See also:Italy
.
Returning to a quiet lifeat Bradenham—an old See also:manor-house near High See also:Wycombe, which his father had taken—Disraeli put See also:law in See also:abeyance and resumed novel-writing
.
His weakest book, and two or three other productions, brief, but in every literary sense the finest of his works, were written in the next two or three years
.
But for Ixion in See also:Heaven, The Infernal See also:Marriage, and Popanilla, Disraeli could not be placed among the greater writers of his See also:kind; yet none of his imaginative books have been so little read as these
.
The mysterious malady continued, and Disraeli set out with See also: These travels must have profited him greatly, and we have our share of the See also:advantage; not so much, however, in The Wondrous See also:Tale of Alroy or See also:Tancred, or the " Revolutionary Epic " which he was inspired to write on " the windy plains of See also:Troy," but in the letters he sent home to his See also:sister . These letters, written with the utmost freedom and fullness to the one whose See also:affection and intellect he trusted more than any, are of the greatest value for interpreting the writer . Together with other letters also published some time after Disraeli's death, they tell more of him than anything that can be found in See also:print elsewhere . They show, for example, that his extraordinary exuberances were unforced, leaping by natural impulse from an overcharged source . They also show that his See also:Oriental fopperies were not so much " purposed affectation " as Fronde and others have surmised . That they were so in great part is confessed again and again in these letters, but confessed in such a way as to reveal that they were permitted for his own enjoyment of them as much as planned . The " purposed affectation" sprang from an unaffected delight in gauds of attire, gauds of See also:fancy and expression . It was not only to startle and impress the world that he paraded his eccentricities of splendour . His family also had to be impressed by them . It was to his sober father that he wrote, at the age of twenty-six: " I like a sailor's See also:life much, though it spoils the toilette." It is in a letter from See also:Gibraltar to the same hand that we read of his two canes—" a See also:morning and an evening See also:cane "—changed as the See also:gun fires . And the same correspondent must be told that " Ralph's handkerchief which he brought me from See also:Paris is the most successful thing I ever wore." When Disraeli returned to England in 1831, all thought of the law was abandoned . The pen of See also:romance was again taken up—the poet's also and the politician's . In the next five years he wrote See also:Contarini See also:Fleming, the Revolutionary Literary produc- Epick, Alroy, Henrietta See also:Temple, What is He ? (a tion. pamphlet expository of his opinions), the Runnymede Letters, a Vindication of the British Constitution, and other matter of less See also:note . The epic, begun in great See also:hope and confidence, was ended in less, though its author was to the last unwilling that it should be forgotten . The novels revived the success he had with Vivian Grey, and restored him to his place among the brilliancies and See also:powers of the time . The political writing, too, much of it in a garish, extravagant See also:style, exercised his deeper ambitions, and stands'as See also:witness to the working of See also:original thought and foresight . Both qualities are conspicuous in What is He ? and the Vindication, of which it has been truly said that in these pages he " struck the keynote to the explanations he afterwards consistently offered of all his apparent inconsistencies." Here an See also:interpretation of Tory principles as capable of See also:running with the democratic idea, and as called upon to do so, is ingeniously attempted . The aristocratic principle of See also:government having been destroyed by the Reform See also:Bill, and the House of Lords being practically " abrogated " by that measure, it became necessary that Toryism should start from the democratic basis, from which it had never been alien . The filched liberties of the See also:crown and the people should be restored, and the nation redeemed from the oligarchies which had stolen from both . When at the beginning of all this writing Disraeli entered the political See also:arena as See also:candidate for High Wycombe (1832), he was nominated by a Tory and seconded by a See also:Radical—in vain; and vain were two subsequent attempts in the autumn of 1832 and in 1834 . In the first he was recommended to the See also:electors by See also:Daniel O'Connell and the Radical See also:Hume . In his last candidature at Wycombe he stood on more See also:independent ground, commending himself by a See also:series of speeches which fully displayed his quality, though the prescience which gemmed them with more than one prophetic passage was veiled from his contemporaries . Among Disraeli's great acquaintances were many —See also:Lyndhurst at their head—whose expectations of his future were confirmed by the Wycombe speeches . He was " thought of " for various boroughs, Marylebone among the number, but his democratic Toryism seems to have stood in his way in some places and his inborn dislike of Radicalism in others . It was an impracticable situation—no getting on from it; and so, at Lyndhurst's persuasion, as he afterwards acknowledged, he determined to See also:side with the Tories . Accordingly, when in the See also:spring of 1835 a vacancy occurred at See also:Taunton, Disraeli contested the seat in the Tory interest with Carlton See also:Club support . Here again he failed, but with enhanced reputation as a fighting politician and with other consequences See also:good for notoriety . It was at Taunton that Disraeli fell upon O'Connell, rather ungratefully; whereupon the Liberator was roused to See also:retort on his assailant vehemently as " a liar," and humorously as a probable descendant of the impenitent thief . And then followed the See also:challenge which, when O'Connell declined it, was fastened on his son See also:Morgan, and the interruption of the See also:duel by seizure of Mr Disraeli in his See also:bed, and his famous appearance in the Marylebone See also:police See also:court . He declared himself very well satisfied with this See also:episode, but nothing in it can really have pleased him, not even the See also:noise it made . Here the first period of Disraeli's public life came to an end, a period of preliminaries and flourishes, and of what he himself called See also:sowing his political See also:wild oats . It was a more enters mature Disraeli who in the See also:general See also:election of 1837 was Parlia- ment. returned for See also:Maidstone as the colleague of his provi- dential friend Mr See also:Wyndham See also:Lewis . Though the fortunes of the Tory party were fast reviving under See also: |