None the less, Disraeli had too vivid an imagination, too keen a sense of the picturesque, not to be affected to a certain extent by the current Romanticism. We see this in the Eastern novels of Tancred and Alroy, also in Contarini Fleming, the English Wilhelm Meister, which exhibits the weaker and more morbid side of the author's character, and is a useful supplement to Vivian Grey. But it is the latter, however, who represents most accurately the ideals and aspirations of the young Disraeli, and, taken generally, is a broad adumbration of his subsequent career. But the Disraeli of Vivian Grey was not so unique as is usually considered, and an analogy between him and the celebrated Frenchman, who wrote a novel about the same period, and one, moreover, singularly typical of his age, proves instructive. Benjamin Disraeli and Henri Beyle were in all superficial details so absolutely different that one might well hesitate before making the comparison, yet they were radically similar in many of their larger outlines, and in particular their characters, as revealed in the heroes of two novels, Vivian Grey and Le Rouge et le Noir, show an extraordinary resemblance. Both Julien Sorel and Vivian Grey are impelled by a violent and overwhelming ambition; both, originally excluded by their status from participation in the great prizes of the world, set out undaunted to conquer, the one as a priest, the other as a politician. Cynical, with that extreme and savage species of cynicism which is the reaction from intense sensitiveness, they both wage war on society in their passion for success, while the nobler and more generous instincts with which nature had endowed them perish in the struggle.
But this Time-Spirit of individualism was no mere cold-blooded philosophy of egoism. It was, after all, an age of genuine poetry, of fresh ideals. The halo of romance played around the most abandoned sinners. Individualism found, in addition, an æsthetic sanction, as was seen in the prodigious vogue of Byron, where the picturesque pose of the one man pitted against society appealed strongly to the popular imagination. How deeply Disraeli was imbued with Byronism is evidenced not only by the whole tone and manner of his early life, but by his resuscitation of the Byronic legend in Venetia.
This spirit of combined idealism and intense practical energy is met with again in Disraeli's race and ancestry. The Jewish race is a compound of materialism and idealism. The Jew is the dreamer in action, combining fluid imagination with adamantine purpose. These two phases of the Jewish character are seen excellently in Disraeli's father and paternal grandfather. The latter, an Italian Jew, came over to England about the middle of the eighteenth century, and quickly made a fortune by dint of his shrewd business talent and fixity. His son Isaac was gifted with an unfortunate superfluity of the poetic temperament. His youth was erratic and unhappy, but when close on thirty he found a secure refuge in the quiet waters of literature. To his Semitic blood is also to be traced Disraeli's prodigious tenacity of purpose. He came of a stiff-necked people, so that opposition stimulated him, and his early failures served but to render sweeter his eventual success. He had, too, the calculating foresight of the Jew, and could pierce the future, if not with prophetic vision, at any rate, with marvellous intuition. His Oriental strain of mysticism served him in good stead. He never forgot that he was a scion of the Chosen People, and came of a race which had never sullied its purity of lineage by changing its blood. Was he not the chosen man of the chosen race? Could he not read his future, if not in the stars, "which are the brain of heaven," yet in his own brilliant and meteoric brain? He had a full measure of the pride of race, and plumed himself to the last on what he may well have called "the Oriental ichor in his veins." If his enemies dubbed him a parvenu he would fling the wretched taunt back in their faces, bidding them realise that they came from a parvenu and hybrid race, while he himself was sprung from the purest blood in Europe. How keen was this genealogical Judaism we can see from the classic letter to O'Connell, where he wrote that "the hereditary bondsman had forgotten the clank of his fetters," and from his masterpiece of character-drawing, Sidonia, who, with wealth, intellect, and power at his command, yet found his chief "source of interest in his descent and in the fortunes of his race." Disraeli's Judaism, however, did not extend to the religious tenets of the creed. Few, no doubt, are the instances of a converted Jew proving a genuine Christian, but Disraeli had too much of the mystic in him to be an atheist, and if we take into account the elasticity of his imagination, there is little reason to doubt that he was at any rate reasonably sincere in his belief that Christianity was merely completed Judaism, Calvary but the logical corollary of Sinai; he would also, no doubt, find a malicious joy in reminding those who taunted him with his origin, that "one half of Christendom worships a Jew and the other half a Jewess." Anyway, the Christian religion played nothing approaching an integral part in his life; while an amiable acquiescence in its dogmas was, at the best, as it has been with so many, but an intellectual habit. His Jewish origin helped him, moreover, in that he approached the problems of politics with a mind free from conventional British prejudices. He was never a thorough Englishman, and was proud of the fact, instead of thanking God "that he was born an Englishman," as do many of his race, who betray in their every word and action their Jewish nationality. His admirable expert knowledge of the English character was throughout professional, not sympathetic.
When we turn to Disraeli's early environment, we find that it was one calculated to foster both ambition and a literary imagination. He breathed from his earliest days the atmosphere of books, and almost from the cradle imbibed avidly the many volumes of Voltaire. Nothing is so stimulating to the youthful mind as the unchecked run of a library, with its delightful excursions into the unexplored country of literature. His natural sensitiveness was hardened by his experiences at school, where his nationality and cleverness rendered him unpopular. The reaction intensified his already precocious ambition, and gave him that consciousness of semi-isolation which formed one of the chief parts of his strength. His ambition was further heightened by the smart literary set which he met constantly at his father's house, and his early glimpses of the great world. Disraeli is palpably exaggerating when he says, apropos of Vivian Grey, that "he was a tender plant in a moral hot-house," but the following passage is significant:
"He became habituated to the idea that everything could be achieved by dexterity, that there was no test of conduct except success; to be ready to advance any opinion, to possess none; to look upon every man as a tool, and never to do anything which had not a definite though circuitous purpose."
It is this trait of doing things with an object which supplied the true clue to Disraeli as a man of letters. We admit, of course, the verve and brilliancy of the novels, their claim to rank as classic, but it is impossible to arrive at a correct appreciation of them unless they be taken in the closest conjunction with their author's political career. Vivian Grey, for instance, no doubt afforded an excellent outlet for the fermenting passion of Disraeli's youth; it was itself one of the best society novels ever written, but it was something more. Before that time the future Premier had been hiding his light. How could he obtain a free field for the exercise of his gifts? His father's Bohemian clique scarcely answered his purpose. How could he burst open the doors of society? The bombshell was supplied by Vivian Grey. It was a case of self-advertisement raised to the level of a fine art, and Disraeli introduced himself to the public with a bow of most elaborate flourishes. Contarini Fleming strikes a slightly different note, exhibiting the more poetic side of its author's character; but we must not forget that at the time when it was published Disraeli's long absence in the East had temporarily obscured his fame in London, and that it was the success of Contarini Fleming which secured for him once more the entrée into society. Similarly, Coningsby, Sybil, and Tancred were, in the main, but the gospels in which, in the rôle of a political saviour, he propagated the new creed of Young England. Lothair and Endymion were partly written to replenish his empty exchequer. The protagonists, moreover, in all his chief novels were fashioned in the image of himself, and even Lord Cadurcis in Venetia, who is theoretically Byron, is portrayed with the physical features of the author, so as to ensure a vivid impression on the public mind of his own personality. Not that Disraeli did not experience a genuine joy in the wielding of the pen. He could soar high in his flights of mysticism and romance; could describe the picturesque and the beautiful in passages of inspired rhetoric, though it was in the dash and brilliancy of his satire which at its best equalled that of Heine, or Voltaire, or Byron, that he was most himself. His style is redolent of his race. It possesses the genuine Oriental glamour, the Oriental love of gorgeous and grandiose magnificence, the Oriental lack of symmetry and proportion. His prodigious genius for sarcasm was also Semitic, if we are to believe Mr. Bryce, who considers that gift a peculiar property of the race, instancing, as examples, Lucian and Heine, the greatest satirists of ancient and modern times.
This same combination of temperament and policy which explains Disraeli, the man of letters, explains Disraeli, the dandy. Living as he did in an age which revolted, under the leadership of Count D'Orsay, against the chaste and classic traditions of Brummel, and which offered in the elaborate picturesqueness of its dress an excellent medium for the expression of personality, is it to be wondered at that so ambitious a nature as Disraeli's should, apart from other reasons, enter gaily into the sartorial arena? These early years remind us of Alcibiades, who, in his youth, his genius, his precocious political ambitions, his aristocratic lineage and superb insolence, his extravagance and irresponsibility, offers a fairly close analogy. Disraeli, however, was an Alcibiades with ballast, and his most erratic phases were governed by a consistent purpose. He had, it is true, the regular Hebrew love for the picturesque, the racial craving for flamboyant display; but the unique characteristic of the man was the ingenious method by which he exploited even his weaknesses to advance his purpose. Realising that nothing was more fatal to his career than the indifference of the public, that to be hated was better than to be ignored, and that notoriety was a passable substitute for fame, he was determined to bulk largely in the public eye. Living, fortunately, in an age when dandyism, if not an art, was at any rate a career, and when "wild, melancholy men" were still the rage among the ladies, he manipulated the dandy and Byronic pose with phenomenal success. But his social career was not all pose. Though political ambition was to him always the main point of existence, he was far too healthy to lose sight of the small change of life. He had, moreover, a genuine love of society. His remark apropos of Gladstone, "What can we do with a leader who is not even in society?" was sincere in spite of being an epigram, and the hosts of great ladies who crowd his novels attest conclusively to his social fastidiousness. But the most convincing proof of this lighter side of his nature is to be found in his correspondence with his sister. Those letters, dashed off hurriedly to his "dearest Sa," written with that complete lack of ceremony which is the sign of a perfect intimacy, show with what zest he frequented balls and water-parties, dinners and soirées. Yet his ambition is never far in the background. He goes to the House of Commons, hears the big man speak, and then writes to his sister, "But between ourselves I could floor them all." His genius for conversation is historic, and we are not surprised that he considered that the one unforgivable sin was to be a bore. He had not, it is true, Gladstone's habit of unburdening himself freely to the most casual of acquaintances. How many, indeed, were there of his intimates who had penetrated into the secret places of his heart? But over-much sincerity is a hindrance to the art of conversation; and many of his most brilliant paradoxes were thrown off as an evasive retort to an impertinent question. When, however, we come to Disraeli's social and private life, the most interesting question that presents itself is that of his relation to his wife. Even though he had discoursed in Contarini Fleming of the grand passion with all the high-flown sentimentalism of the age, it was obviously impossible for him, considering the disparity of their ages, to be seriously in love with Mrs. Disraeli; and it must have seemed that he had been forced to exchange the poetry of the mistress for the prose of the wife. Had he not, about ten years before his marriage, written to his sister, "How would you like Lady B—— for a sister-in-law? Clever, £25,000, and domestic. As for love, all my friends who have married for love either beat their wives or live apart from them. This is literally true. I may commit many follies, but never that of marrying for love, which, I am convinced, cannot but be a guarantee of infelicity." Yet this union, based originally on mere policy and camaraderie, was eventually crowned with the most faithful of loves. It was his wife's absorbing interest in his career that supplied the link. He has himself written that the most exquisite moment in a man's life was when he surprised his lady-love reading the manuscript of his first speech, and the sympathy of Mrs. Disraeli in his successes may well have given them a yet further charm. The situation is well expressed in the remark of Mrs. Disraeli's: "You know you married me for money, and I know that if you had to do it again you would do it for love."
In fact the warm and constant affection Disraeli lavished on his wife during her lifetime, and the poignant grief that he evinced at her death, furnish a more than sufficient refutation to those who persist in regarding him as a mere cynical fortune-hunter. Disraeli, like Browning, had
"Two soul sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her."
In the other departments of private life he was likewise exemplary. His hardness was limited to politics; he was the most dutiful of sons, the most affectionate of brothers, the most faithful of friends. His debts, for the most part, were incurred by backing the bills of other men. His touching and romantic friendship for Mrs. Brydges Williams, the eccentric old Cornish lady who gave him pecuniary assistance at a critical period of his career, is well known. The story, again, of the Premier and his wife dancing a Highland jig in their night apparel on hearing of the success of an old friend, shows how little the bitter struggles of politics had hardened his heart. Particularly touching, also, is the mutual affection between him and the Queen, that sweetened his last years. She was, as we read in a letter of Disraeli's to the Marchioness of Ely, "the best friend he had in the world."