On the other hand, many stories are told of his devotion to her. When he received his D.C.L. at Oxford there was a great ovation. As he returned to his seat, he put up his eyeglass and sought his wife. He dropped it as soon as he saw her, and kissed his hand to her. He always wrote her a set of verses on the anniversary of their wedding day.
Her favourite topic of conversation was her husband, and she would descant on his merits and virtues in and out of season. She considered him handsome, and one evening when in the company of some ladies who began to talk about certain men who had fine figures, Mrs. Disraeli said in a tone of pity for those who could not possibly know what a fine figure of a man really meant, “Oh! you should see my Dizzy in his bath!” On another occasion after a dinner-party, one of the guests present took her to her carriage and said, “Mr. Disraeli spoke most eloquently in the House to-night; how well he is looking.” Mrs. Disraeli, hugely delighted, replied, “Ah! you think he looks well—you think him handsome, yet people call him ugly; but he is not, he is handsome; they should see him asleep.”
In 1866 Mrs. Disraeli fell very ill, and her husband was much disturbed about her health. These later years have an element of pathos in them, for she was really suffering from an incurable cancer. She never told her husband, although of course he knew, and he did not let her guess that he knew, and took care throughout to conceal from her his great distress at her condition. In November 1867 she was dangerously ill, and in consequence the Opposition refrained from attacking the Government, and on the 19th Gladstone referred to her illness in the House of Commons. Mrs. Disraeli had a strong personal regard for Gladstone; she could understand his great gifts and qualities.
Mrs. Disraeli was created a peeress in her own right on 30th November 1868. Queen Victoria wished to confer some mark of favour on Disraeli, and offered him a peerage, but he declined because he felt that he ought to remain in the House of Commons. The Queen, knowing his devotion to his wife, suggested that a peerage should be conferred on her instead, a mark of appreciation that delighted Disraeli. Notwithstanding her illness, and at times the suffering was very great, Mrs. Disraeli went on with her usual life. She entertained a small party at Hughenden at the end of November 1872. The guests were Sir William Harcourt, Lord and Lady John Manners, and Lord Ronald Gower. Although she was sadly altered, indeed death was written in her face, and Disraeli was terribly depressed about her, she was gorgeously dressed, and on the Sunday afternoon accompanied the party on a walk, in her pony carriage, talking brightly about her pets—horses and peacocks. The next morning she came down after eleven o’clock, wonderfully brisk and lively after a bad night, and had her breakfast brought to the library where the others were sitting.[47] On 19th December she died at Hughenden, where she was buried.
Disraeli’s grief was profound. He declared there never was a better wife. “She believed in me when men despised me. She relieved my wants when I was poor and persecuted by the world.” In his reply to Gladstone’s note of sympathy, he said, “Marriage is the greatest earthly happiness when founded on complete sympathy; that hallowed lot was mine for a moiety of existence.”[48] He used to say how in thirty-three years of married life she had never given him a dull moment. To Gathorne Hardy he wrote: “To lose such a friend is to lose half one’s existence.”[49] The marriage had been the making of Disraeli, and he fully recognised the fact. Replying in 1867 to the toast of his wife’s health, he had said:
“I do owe to that lady all, I think, that I have ever accomplished, because she has supported me by her counsel, and consoled me by the sweetness of her mind and disposition.”
Another time he said of her:
“There was no care which she could not mitigate, and no difficulty which she could not face. She was the most cheerful and the most courageous woman I ever knew.”
She brought Disraeli unclouded domestic happiness. She loved him and believed in him. Her oddities were more superficial than people thought, for although she was so voluble and so indiscreet a talker, and absolutely in her husband’s confidence, she never betrayed it. She was no social leader as Lady Palmerston was; what influence she had was passive rather than active, yet without her single-minded devotion, it is doubtful if Disraeli would have had so great a career. To paraphrase his own words in Coningsby on marriage, he found in her one who gave him perfect and profound sympathy, could share his joys and often his sorrows, aid him in his projects, respond to his fancies, counsel him in his cares and support him in dangers, and “make life charming by her charms, interesting by her intelligence, and sweet by the vigilant variety of her tenderness.”
Mrs. Dawson, wife of the Right Hon. George Dawson and sister of Sir Robert Peel, was one of Mrs. Disraeli’s greatest friends. George Dawson wrote the following lines to accompany a reproduction of Mrs. Disraeli’s portrait by A. E. Chalon, published in Heath’s Book of Beauty (1841). They probably reflect what those who knew Mrs. Disraeli best felt with regard to her: