The Earl of Beaconsfield

by James Anthony Froude

MALTA

After Spain Malta was the next halting-place; Malta, with its garrison and military society, was Gibraltar over again, with only this difference, that Disraeli fell in with a London acquaintance there in James Clay, afterwards member for Hull and a figure in the House of Commons.

The arrival of a notoriety was an incident in the uniformity of Maltese existence. ‘They have been long expecting your worship’s offspring,’ he tells his father, ‘so I was received with branches of palm.’ He accepted his honours with easy superiority. ‘To govern men,’ he said, ‘you must either excel them in their accomplishments or despise them. Clay does one, I do the other, and we are both equally popular. Affectation here tells better than wit. Yesterday at the racket court, sitting in the gallery among strangers, the ball entered and lightly struck me and fell at my feet. I picked it up, and observing a young rifleman excessively stiff, I humbly requested him to forward its passage into the court, as I really had never thrown a ball in my life.... I called on the Governor, and he was fortunately at home. I flatter myself that he passed through the most extraordinary quarter of an hour of his existence. I gave him no quarter, and at last made our nonchalant Governor roll on the sofa from his risible convulsions. Clay confesses my triumph is complete and unrivalled.’

‘I continue much the same,’ he reported of himself—‘still infirm but no longer destitute of hope. I wander in pursuit of health like the immortal exile in pursuit of that lost shore which is now almost glittering in my sight. Five years of my life have been already wasted, and sometimes I think my pilgrimage may be as long as that of Ulysses.’ Like the Greek he was exposed to temptations from the Circes and the Sirens, but he understood the symptoms and knew where to look for safety. ‘There is a Mrs. —— here in Malta,’ he writes to Ralph Disraeli, ‘with a pretty daughter, cum multis aliis; I am sorry to say, among them a beauty very dangerous to the peace of your unhappy brother. But no more of that. In a few weeks I shall be bounding, and perhaps sea-sick, upon the Egean, and then all will be over. Nothing like an emetic in these cases.’

ALBANIAN RIDE

James Clay was rich, and had provided a yacht in which, with the Byronic fever on him, he professed to intend to turn corsair. He invited Disraeli and Meredith to join him, and they sailed for Corfu in October equipped for enterprise. ‘You should see me,’ he said, ‘in the costume of a Greek pirate—a blood-red shirt with silver studs as big as shillings, an immense scarf for girdle, full of pistols and daggers, red cap, red slippers, broad blue-striped jacket and trowsers.’ ‘Adventures are to the adventurous;’ so Ixion had written in Athene’s album. Albania was in insurrection. Unlike Byron, whom he was supposed to imitate, Disraeli preferred the Turks to the Greeks whom he despised, and thought for a moment of joining Redshid’s army as a volunteer, to see what war was like. When they reached Corfu the rebellion was already crushed, but Redshid was still at Yanina, the Albanian capital, and he decided at least to pay the Grand Vizier a visit. The yacht took them to Salora. There they landed, and proceeded through the mountains with a handful of horse for an escort. They halted the first night at Arta, ‘a beautiful town now in ruins.’ ‘Here,’ he said, ‘for the first time I reposed upon a divan, and for the first time heard a muezzin from a minaret.’ In the morning they waited on the Turkish governor. ‘I cannot describe to you,’ he wrote in a humorous description of his interview, ‘the awe with which I first entered the divan of a great Turk, and the curious feeling with which I found myself squatting on the right hand of a bey, smoking an amber-mouthed chibouque, drinking coffee, and paying him compliments through an interpreter.’

The Turks had been kind to his own race at a time when Jews had no other friends, and from the first Disraeli had an evident liking for them. They set out again after a few hours. ‘We journeyed over a wild mountain pass,’ the diary continues, ‘a range of ancient Pindus, and before sunset we found ourselves at a vast but dilapidated khan as big as a Gothic castle, situated on a high range, built as a sort of half-way house for travellers by Ali Pasha, now turned into a military post.’ They were received by a bey, who provided quarters for them. They were ravenously hungry; but the bey could not understand their language, nor they his. He offered them wine; they produced brandy, and communication was thus established. ‘The bey drank all the brandy; the room turned round; the wild attendants who sat at our feet seemed dancing in strange and fantastic whirls. The bey shook hands with me; he shouted English, I Greek. “Very good,” he had caught up from us. “Kalo, kalo,” was my rejoinder. He roared; I smacked him on the back. I remember no more. In the middle of the night I woke, found a flagon of water, and drank a gallon at a draught. I looked at the wood fire and thought of the blazing blocks in the hall at Bradenham; asked myself whether I was indeed in the mountain fortress of an Albanian chief, and shrugging my shoulders went to bed and woke without a headache. We left our jolly host with regret. I gave him my pipe as a memorial of our having got tipsy together.’

YANINA

At Yanina they found the Turkish army quartered in the ruins of the town. The Grand Vizier occupied the castle with the double dignity of a prince and a general. He was surrounded with state, and they were made to wait ten minutes before they could be admitted to his presence.

‘Suddenly we are summoned to the awful presence of the pillar of the Turkish Empire, the renowned Redshid; an approved warrior, a consummate politician, unrivalled as a dissembler in a country where dissimulation is part of the moral culture.... The hall was vast, covered with gilding and arabesques.... Here, squatted up in a corner of a large divan, I bowed with all the nonchalance of St. James’s Street to a little ferocious-looking, shrivelled, careworn man, plainly dressed, with a brow covered with wrinkles and a countenance clouded with anxiety and thought.... I seated myself on the divan of the Grand Vizier, who, the Austrian consul observed, “had destroyed in the course of the last three months, not in war, upwards of 4,000 of my acquaintance,” with the self-possession of a morning call. Some compliments passed between us. Pipes and coffee were brought. Then his Highness waved his hand, and in an instant the chambers were cleared. Our conversation I need not repeat. We congratulated him on the pacification of Albania. He rejoined that the peace of the world was his only object and the happiness of mankind his only wish. This went on for the usual time. He asked us no questions about ourselves or our country, as the other Turks did, but seemed quite overwhelmed with business, moody and anxious. While we were with him three separate Tartars arrived with despatches. What a life!... I forgot to tell you that with the united assistance of my English, Spanish, and fancy wardrobe I sported a costume in Yanina which produced a most extraordinary effect on that costume-loving people. A great many Turks called on purpose to see it. “Questo vestito Inglese, o di fantasia?” asked a little Greek physician. I oracularly replied, “Inglese e fantastico.”’