Many stories are told of Mrs. Disraeli’s outspokenness and deficiency in tact.
When on a visit to a country house it happened that Lord Hardinge’s room was next to the Disraelis’, and the next morning Mrs. Disraeli said to Lord Hardinge at breakfast, “Oh, Lord Hardinge, I consider myself the most fortunate of women. I said to myself when I woke this morning, ‘What a lucky woman I am! here I have been sleeping between the greatest orator and the greatest warrior of the day!’” Lady Hardinge, it was stated, did not look specially delighted. On the occasion of another visit it so happened that a former occupier of the house having possessed a number of fine paintings of the nude figure, the hostess had carefully removed from the walls all the pictures which she considered of doubtful propriety. One, however, had been overlooked and hung, as it chanced, in the room allotted to the Disraelis. Addressing her hostess, a lady of strictly puritanical views, Mrs. Disraeli said the first morning, “I find your house full of indecent pictures, there’s a horrible one in our room: Disraeli says it is Venus and Adonis; I’ve been awake half the night trying to prevent him looking at it!” Again, when her host apologised for a dish having too much onion in it, she said, “I prefer them raw.” At a concert at Buckingham Palace she sat next to a lady whom she did not know, and talked much of her own married happiness, and then remarked, “But perhaps, my dear, you do not know what it is to have an affectionate husband.”
She had little respect of persons and always spoke her mind. Soon after her marriage, she and Disraeli went to a luncheon-party given by Bulwer at Craven Cottage on the Thames. They arrived late, and found that the party had already gone with their host up the river in a steamer. Another late arrival was Louis Napoleon.[37] He said he would get a boat and row them to meet the others. His rowing, however, turned out to be of an amateurish character, and he only succeeded in rowing them on to a mudbank in the middle of the river. Help was fortunately procured, and a serious mishap narrowly avoided. Mrs. Disraeli rated Louis Napoleon roundly: “You should not undertake things you cannot accomplish,” she told him. “You are always too adventurous.” In 1856, when Mrs. Disraeli was dining at the Tuileries, she reminded the Emperor of the incident, and the Empress Eugénie, who overheard, said, “Just like him.”
Disraeli was now, thanks to his wife, able to give dinner-parties. She understood such matters and took care that they should be brilliant and successful. With her husband she paid many visits to the Maxses at Woolbeding, and the Hopes at Deepdene, where the Christmas of 1840 was spent. Next year he contested Shrewsbury. His wife undoubtedly helped him to win the election, and she became most popular with the electors, who retained their admiration for her; Disraeli used to tell them that she was a perfect wife. She was always, on his visits to his constituents there, the heroine of the occasion, and he informs his sister that “M. A. (Mary Anne) got even more cheering than I did.”
At the end of August 1841 Peel became Prime Minister, and Disraeli was full of hope that he would obtain office. Mrs. Disraeli was a great friend of Peel’s sister, Mrs. George Dawson. But no call came, and on September 4 Mrs. Disraeli, without her husband’s knowledge, wrote to Peel the famous letter in which she told him, “my husband’s political career is for ever crushed if you do not appreciate him.” She pointed out that Disraeli, for Peel’s sake, had made personal enemies of Peel’s opponents, that he had stood four most expensive elections, in two of which he had gained seats from Whigs, and that he had abandoned literature for politics. “Do not destroy all his hopes, and make him feel his life has been a mistake.” She then pointed out her own “humble but enthusiastic exertions” for the party, and how through her influence alone more than £40,000 had been spent at Maidstone. Disraeli also wrote himself appealing for recognition, but neither application was of any avail. After the brief autumn session the Disraelis went to Normandy, making Caen their headquarters. When Parliament met in February, Mrs. Disraeli was at Bradenham, and her husband wrote to her every day, recounting all that was going on.
From 1842 Disraeli was the recognised leader of the Tory party. In the autumn of 1842 they went to Paris, did some sight-seeing and met all the most distinguished people, French and English, in the capital from Louis-Philippe downwards. The next year in the recess Disraeli had a great reception at what his wife called “a grand literary meeting” at the Free Trade Hall at Manchester, with Charles Dickens in the chair. She accompanied her husband everywhere; when some one asked Disraeli if he were going somewhere alone, that is, without the other Ministers, he replied, “No, Mary Anne is going. I cannot leave her quite in the lurch.” She was always a great admirer of her husband’s speeches and actions. In 1844 Disraeli himself presided at a similar meeting, and when an acquaintance in helping her on with her cloak one evening afterwards remarked on Disraeli’s wonderful reception at Manchester, she began straightway to tell Disraeli’s triumphs as if she were a girl of eighteen. On the visit to the Duke of Buckingham at Stowe in 1845, when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were the honoured guests, Mrs. Disraeli’s greatest delight in the whole affair was that “Her Majesty had pointed Dizzy out, saying, ‘There’s Mr. Disraeli.’” It was the first time Her Majesty had met Disraeli privately. Both he and his wife were much delighted with the attention they received during the visit.
The autumn holiday of 1845 was spent at Cassel in French Flanders, where they lived a simple rural life, getting up at 5.30 a.m. and going to bed at 9 p.m. Walking was their only exercise and chief amusement. Mrs. Disraeli reckoned that in two months she had walked 300 miles. It was in this year that Sybil was published. Disraeli dedicated the novel to his wife in the following terms:
“I would inscribe this book to one whose noble spirit and gentle nature ever prompt her to sympathise with the suffering; to one whose sweet voice has often encouraged, and whose taste and judgment have ever guided, its pages; the most severe of critics, but—a perfect wife!”
Disraeli liked to consult his wife on points that arose in his work either political or literary, and would send up little notes to her asking her to come to the study and discuss them. He would also draw her into any conversation being carried on when she was present, and expected others to defer to her as he did.
Among her friends was Lady de Rothschild, wife of Sir Anthony de Rothschild, and her letters to Lady de Rothschild, some of which are here printed, well illustrate Mrs. Disraeli’s warmth of heart in relation to her friends and her admiration of and devotion to her husband. It is usual to say that Mrs. Disraeli took no interest in politics. Undoubtedly politics in the abstract bored her, but in the political questions in which her husband was personally concerned she evinced the strongest interest, and, as her letters prove, could comment on them with much shrewdness.