The Earl of Beaconsfield

by James Anthony Froude

CHOICE OF A PROFESSION

The law had not been finally abandoned—perhaps in deference to Isaac Disraeli’s continued anxiety on the subject. Schemes and projects, however, which had shaped themselves in Disraeli’s own mind during his travels had to be executed first. He brought home with him a brain restored to energy, though with saddened spirits. There was the ‘Revolutionary Epic’ to be written, and an Eastern story which was brought out afterwards as the tale of ‘Alroy.’ Before undertaking either of them, however, he drew a second portrait of himself in ‘Contarini Fleming.’ Vivian Grey was a clever, independent youth, with the world before him, with no purpose save to make himself conspicuous. Disraeli now hoped to be a poet, and in ‘Contarini’ his aim, he said, was to trace the development and function of the poetic character. The flippancy of ‘Vivian’ is gone. The tone is calm, tender, and at times morbid. The hero is taken through a series of adventures. He tries politics, but politics do not interest him. He falls in love. The lady of his affections dies and leaves him in despair. Contarini revives to find a desire, and perhaps a capacity—for he cannot be confident that he is not deceiving himself—to become the poet which Disraeli was then aspiring to make himself. The outward characteristics of that character could at least be assumed. Contarini becomes a wanderer like Byron, and visits the same scenes from which Disraeli had just returned. The book contains passages of striking beauty, so striking that Goethe sent praises and compliments, and Milman, who reviewed it, said it was a work in no way inferior to ‘Childe Harold,’ and equally calculated to arrest public attention. Yet the story ends in nothing. The river loses itself in the sands. Contarini is but Disraeli himself in the sick period of undetermined energies. He meditates on the great problems of life, and arrives at the conclusions adopted almost universally by intellectual men before they have learnt to strike out their course and to control circumstances and their own nature.

‘I believe in that destiny before which the ancients bowed. Modern philosophy has infused into the breast of man a spirit of scepticism, but I think that ere long science will become again imaginative, and that as we become more profound we may also become more credulous. Destiny is our will, and our will is nature. The son who inherits the organisation of the father will be doomed to the same fortunes as his sire, and again the mysterious matter in which his ancestors were moulded may in other forms, by a necessary attraction, act upon his fate. All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the mystery.’

Such passages as this were not ominous of much success in the high functions to which Contarini was aspiring. Much more interesting, because more natural, is a dialogue which was probably an exact reproduction of a conversation between Disraeli and his father. The father of Contarini entirely objects to his son’s proposed destination of himself.

‘A poet!’ exclaims the old man. ‘What were the great poets in their lifetime? The most miserable of their species—depressed, doubtful, obscure, or involved in petty quarrels and petty persecutions; often unappreciated, utterly uninfluential, beggars, flatterers of men, unworthy even of their recognition. What a train of disgustful incidents! what a record of degrading circumstances is the life of a great poet! A man of great energies aspires that they should be felt in his lifetime; that his existence should be rendered more intensely vital by the constant consciousness of his multiplied and multiplying powers. Is posthumous fame a substitute for all this? Try the greatest by this test, and what is the result? Would you rather have been Homer or Julius Cæsar, Shakespeare or Napoleon? No one doubts. We are active beings, and our sympathy, above all other sympathies, is with great actions. Remember that all this time I am taking for granted you may be a Homer. Let us now recollect that it is perhaps the most impossible incident that can occur. The high poetic talent, as if to prove that the poet is only at the best a wild, although beautiful, error of nature, is the rarest in creation. What you have felt is what I have felt myself. Mix in society and I will answer for it that you lose your poetic feeling; for in you, as in the great majority, it is not a matter of faculty originating in a peculiar organisation, but simply the consequence of nervous susceptibility that is common to us all.’

Contarini admits the truth of what his father said, but answers that his ambition is great, as if he must find some means to satisfy it. He did not think he would find life tolerable unless he was in an eminent position, and was conscious that he deserved it. Fame, and not posthumous fame, was necessary to his felicity. Such a feeling might lead to exertion, and on some roads might lead to success; but poetry is a jealous mistress and must be pursued for her own sake if her favours are ever to be won. Disraeli would not part with his hope till the experiment had been tried. He destroyed a tragedy which he had already composed; but he was better satisfied with his ‘Revolutionary Epic.’ Three cantos were written, and fifty copies were printed. These he resolved to submit to the judgment of his friends. If the verdict was unfavourable he would burn his lyre.

THE REVOLUTIONARY EPIC

The recitation was at a party at Mrs. Austen’s, and a scene is thus described which ‘was never to be forgotten’ by those who witnessed it. ‘There was something irresistibly comic in the young man dressed in the fantastic coxcombical costume that he then affected—velvet coat thrown wide open, ruffles on the sleeves, shirt collars turned down in Byronic fashion, an elaborate embroidered waistcoat from which issued voluminous folds of frill, shoes adorned with red rosettes, his black hair pomatumed and elaborately curled, and his person redolent with perfume. Standing with his back to the fire, he explained the purpose of his poem. It was to be to the revolutionary age what the ‘Iliad,’ the ‘Æneid,’ and ‘Paradise Lost’ had been to their respective epochs. He had imagined the genius of feudalism and the genius of federation appearing before the almightly throne and pleading their respective and antagonistic causes.’[1]

With this prelude he recited his first canto. It was not without passages sonorous and even grand, but the subject itself was hopeless. Disraeli had not yet discerned that modern revolution had nothing grand about it, that it was merely the resolution of society into its component atoms, that centuries would have to pass before any new arrangement possessing worth or dignity would rise out of the ruin. The audience was favourably disposed, but when the poet left the room a gentleman present declaimed an impromptu burlesque of the opening lines, which caused infinite merriment to those present. Disraeli said afterwards of himself that in his life he had tried many things, and though he had at first failed he succeeded at last. This was true; but poetry was not one of these many things. He was wise enough to accept the unfavourable verdict, and to recognise that, although his ambition was feverish as ever, on this road there were no triumphs before him. The dream that he could become a great poet was broken.

POLITICAL AMBITION