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‘I am considered a great popular orator’

THROUGHOUT THE TIME of his affair with Lady Sykes, Disraeli had lost no opportunity of seeking the approval of men of political standing and influence, such as the friendly Lord Lyndhurst.^*

I dined on Saturday en famille with Lyndhurst [he told his sister on 4 November 1834]. A more amiable and agreeable family I never met. The eldest daughter is just like her mother and, although only thirteen, rules everything and everybody – a most astounding little woman…I saw Chandos [Lord Chandos, eldest son of the Duke of Buckingham] today, and had a long conversation with him on politics. He has no head, but I flatter myself I opened his mind a little…D’Orsay has taken my portrait.¹

As well as with Lyndhurst and Chandos, Disraeli was closely in touch and in correspondence with Lord Durham, whom he asked to use his influence to persuade ‘young Hobhouse [Sir John Hobhouse, later Lord Broughton]’ to resign from the political contest in his favour. ‘My dear Lord,’ he wrote, ‘my affairs are black; therefore, remember me and serve me if you can. My principles you are acquainted with; as for my other qualifications, I am considered a great popular orator.’²

Lord Durham, however, replied that he was not in a position to help: he did not know Hobhouse well enough to intervene. But these were times which required the ‘presence in Parliament of every true and honest politician’ and he trusted and hoped, therefore, that Disraeli would find his way there yet. ‘If an occasion offers when I can forward your views,’ he added, ‘I shall not fail to do so.’³

These were certainly times of great political excitement; and, as Bulwer told Isaac D’Israeli, his son, Benjamin, was ‘restless and ambitious as usual’, but ‘such dispositions always carve out their way’.

It was a lively season that winter of 1834! [Disraeli wrote in his novel, Coningsby] What hopes, what fears and what bets!…People sprang up like mushrooms; town suddenly became full. Everybody who had been in office and everybody who wished to be in office…were alike visible. All of course by mere accident; one might meet the same men every day for a month, who were only ‘passing through town’…The town, through November, was in a state of excitement; clubs crowded, not only morning rooms but halls and staircases swarming with members eager to give and to receive rumours equally vain; streets lined with cabs and chariots, grooms and horses…

But, after all, who were to form the government, and what was the government to be? Was it to be a Tory government, or an Enlightenment-Spirit-of-the-Age…Liberal-Moderate-Reform government?…

Great questions these, but unfortunately there was nobody to answer them. They tried the Duke [of Wellington]; but nothing could be pumped out of him. All that he knew, which he told in his curt, husky manner, was, that he had to carry on the King’s government…‘This can’t go on much longer,’ said Taper to Tadpole [typical party wire-pullers]…At last he [Sir Robert Peel] came; the great man in a great position, summoned from Rome [where he had been on holiday] to govern England. The very day that he arrived he had his audience with the King.

In the subsequent election campaign of 1835, Disraeli decided to stand once more for High Wycombe and to do so as a Radical-leaning Tory, sworn enemy of the Whigs. ‘It is not enough to say of Mr Disraeli’, ran a letter in the Bucks Gazette, ‘that he delivered himself with his usual ability [on the day of nomination]. The difficulties that he had to encounter were most ably met and judiciously avoided; to steer between the shoals of Toryism on the one hand and the quicksands of Radicalism on the other (for he was supported by the two parties) required the utmost skill and well did he acquit himself.’

‘I stand astonishingly well at Wycombe,’ Disraeli himself assured Benjamin Austen, ‘and may beat the Colonel [Charles Grey] yet. Had I the money, I might canter over the County, for my popularity is irresistible.’⁴ It was, however, not irresistible enough: he received 128 votes as against 147 for Charles Grey and 289 for the Hon. Robert J. Smith.

‘I am not at all disheartened,’ Disraeli protested. ‘I do not in any way feel like a defeated man. Perhaps it is because I am used to it. I will say of myself like the famous Italian general, who, being asked in his old age why he was always victorious, replied, it was because he had always been beaten in his youth.’⁵

I have fought our battle and have lost it; by a majority of fourteen, [he wrote to the Duke of Wellington in a less jaunty, even servile mood]. Had I been supported as I wished, the result was certain as I anticipated. Had Lord Carrington exerted himself in the slightest degree in my favour, I must have been returned. But he certainly maintained a neutrality, a neutrality so strict that it amounted to a blockade…It is some consolation to me, even at this moment, that I have at least struggled to support your Grace. I am now a cipher; but if the devotion of my energies to your cause, in and out, can ever avail you, your Grace may count upon me, who seeks no greater satisfaction than that of serving a really great man.⁶

In writing in such terms to the arch-Tory Duke of Wellington, Disraeli was, at least, sincere in his conversion to the Conservative cause and his rejection of the radicalism with which he had endeavoured in the past to modify it. He now nailed his colours to the mast, so to speak, by asking Lord Strangford to propose him, and Lord Chandos to second him, as an applicant for membership of the Carlton Club, which had been founded in 1832 after a general election in which only 179 Tories were returned out of a total membership of the House of Commons of 658, the intention being to form a social club which could serve as a meeting-place for Conservatives anxious to restore the fortunes of their party.

‘They have opened a subscription for me at the Carlton [Club],’ Disraeli told Sarah on 27 April 1835. ‘Tomorrow is nomination day.’ He wrote from Taunton, for which he was now standing as a Tory candidate. ‘Not that I can win this time,’ he warned her, for Henry Labouchere (afterwards Lord Taunton) would surely do so, having been returned at the head of the poll in the general election of 1830 and having represented the borough ever since. ‘But come in at the general election I must,’ Disraeli continued, ‘for I have promises of two-thirds of the electors. I live in a rage of enthusiasm; even my opponents promise to vote for me next time. The fatigue is awful. Two long speeches today, and nine hours canvass on foot in a blaze of repartee. I am quite exhausted, and can scarcely see to write! I believe in point of energy, eloquence and effect I have far exceeded all my former efforts. Had I arrived twenty hours sooner the result might have been in my favour.’

In Taunton, as elsewhere, his exotic appearance was as much remarked upon as the remarkable fluency of his speeches. One of those who heard him speak was astonished by the 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’.