The Earl of Beaconsfield

by James Anthony Froude

POLITICAL SATIRES

Equally good is the ‘Infernal Marriage,’ the rape of Proserpine and her adventures in her dominions below. The wit which we never miss in Disraeli rises here into humour which is rare with him, and a deeper current of thought can be traced when the Queen of Hell pays a visit to Elysium, finding there the few thousand families who spend their time in the splendid luxury of absolute idleness; high-born, graceful beings without a duty to perform, supported by the toil of a million gnomes, and after exhausting every form of amusement ready to perish of ennui.

The third fragment, written in these years, which Lord Beaconsfield included in his collected works (he probably wrote others which are lost in the quicksands of keepsakes and annuals) was ‘Popanilla,’ a satire on the English Constitution. He has changed his manner from Lucian’s to Swift’s. ‘Popanilla’ might have been another venture of Mr. Lemuel Gulliver if there had been malice in it. The satire of Swift is inspired by hatred and scorn of his race. The satire of Disraeli is pleasant, laughing, and good-humoured. In all his life he never hated anybody or anything, never bore a grudge or remembered a libel against himself. Popanilla is a native of an unknown island in an unknown part of the Pacific, an island where modern civilisation had never penetrated and life was a round of ignorant and innocent enjoyment. In an evil hour a strange ship is wrecked upon the shore. A box of books is flung up upon the sands, books of useful knowledge intended for the amelioration of mankind, spiritual, social, moral, and political. Popanilla finds it, opens it, and with the help of these moral lights sets to work to regenerate his countrymen. He makes himself a nuisance, and is sent floating in a canoe which carries him to Vray Bleusia, or modern England. Being a novelty, he is enthusiastically welcomed, becomes a lion, and is introduced to the charms and wonders of complicated artificial society. The interest is in the light which is thrown on Disraeli’s studies of English politics. The chapter on ‘Fruit’ is a humorously correct sketch of the Anglican Church. Mr. Flummery Flum represents political economy, and the picture of him betrays Disraeli’s contempt for that once celebrated science, now relegated to the exterior planets. ‘Popanilla’ can be still read with pleasure as a mere work of fancy. It has more serious value to the student of Disraeli’s character. As a man of letters he shows at his best in writings of this kind. His interest in the life which he describes in his early novels was only superficial, and he could not give to others what he did not feel. In ‘Ixion,’ in the ‘Infernal Marriage,’ in ‘Popanilla’ we have his real mind, and matter, style, and manner are equally admirable.

His future was still undetermined. His father continued eager to see him at the Bar, but his health remained delicate and his disinclination more and more decided. There was a thought of buying an estate for him and setting him up as a country gentleman. But to be a small squire was a poor object of ambition. He wished to travel, travel especially in the East, to which his semi-Asiatic temperament gave him a feeling of affinity. The Holy Land, as the seat of his own race, affected his imagination. He had a romantic side in his mind in a passion for Jerusalem. His intellect had been moulded by the sceptical philosophy of his fathers; but, let sceptics say what they would, a force which had gone out from Jerusalem had governed the fate of the modern world.

His desire, when he first made it known, was not encouraged. ‘My wishes,’ he said, ‘were knocked on the head in a calmer manner than I could have expected from my somewhat rapid but too indulgent sire.’ He lingered on at Bradenham till even his literary work had to end. He could not ‘write a line without effort,’ and he wandered aimlessly about the woods; ‘solitude and silence’ not making his existence easy, but at least tolerable.

FOREIGN TOUR

The objection to his travelling had been perhaps financial. If this was the difficulty it was removed by his friends the Austens, who, we are briefly told, came to his assistance and enabled him to carry out his purpose. He found a companion ready to go with him in Mr. William Meredith, a young man of talent and good fortune who was engaged to be married to his sister. They started in June 1830, and their adventures are related in a series of brilliant and charming letters to his family, letters which show the young Disraeli no longer in the mythological drapery of ‘Vivian Grey’ and ‘Contarini Fleming,’ but under his own hand as he actually was. Spain was their first object. The Disraelis retained their pride in their Spanish descent in a dim and distant fashion, and had not forgotten that in right of blood they were still Spanish nobles. Steam navigation was in its infancy, but small paddle-wheeled vessels ran from London to Cork and Dublin, touching at Falmouth, from which outward-bound ships took their departure. They reached Falmouth with no worse adventure than a rough passage, and Disraeli was flattered to find that the family fame had so far preceded him. He met a Dr. Cornish there, who was full of admiration for ‘Vivian Grey,’ ‘knows my father’s works by heart and thinks our revered sire the greatest man that ever lived.’ From Gibraltar on July 1 he wrote to his father himself:—

‘The rock is a wonderful place, with a population infinitely diversified—Moors with costumes radiant as a rainbow in an Eastern melodrama, Jews with gabardines and skull caps, Genoese highlanders and Spaniards whose dress is as picturesque as those of the sons of Ivor.... In the garrison are all your works, in the merchants’ library the greater part. Each possesses the copy of another book supposed to be written by a member of our family which is looked upon at Gibraltar as one of the masterpieces of the nineteenth century. At first I apologised and talked of youthful blunders and all that, really being ashamed, but finding them, to my astonishment, sincere, and fearing they were stupid enough to adopt my last opinion, I shifted my position just in time, looked very grand, and passed myself off for a child of the sun, like the Spaniards in Peru.’

Government House opened its hospitalities. Sir George D——, a proud, aristocratic, but vigorous old man, was not a person likely to find such a pair of travellers particularly welcome to him. Disraeli’s affectations of dress and manner approached vulgarity, and Meredith, though a superior person, was equally absurd in this respect. But Disraeli, at any rate where he cared to please, never failed to make himself liked. Sir George was polite, Lady D. more than polite. Though she was old and infirm, ‘her eyes were so brilliant and so full of moquerie that you forgot her wrinkles.’ Of course they were welcome guests in the regimental mess-rooms, clever young civilians who could talk and were men of the world being an agreeable change in the professional monotony, though perhaps the visitors mistook to some extent the impression which they produced.

‘Tell my mother,’ Disraeli wrote, ‘that as it is the fashion among the dandies of this place (that is, the officers, for there are no others) not to wear waistcoats in the morning, her new studs come into fine play and maintain my reputation for being a great judge of costume, to the admiration and envy of many subalterns. I have also the fame of being the first who ever passed the Straits with two canes, a morning and an evening cane. I change my cane on the gun-fire and hope to carry them both on to Cairo. It is wonderful the effect those magical wands produce. I owe to them even more attention than to being the supposed author of—what is it? I forget.’