Contarini is Disraeli thus launched into a school epitome of the world after the Unitarian pattern. It was a poor substitute for Eton. The young Disraeli soon asserted his superiority. He made enemies, he made friends, at all events he distinguished himself from his comrades. School work did not interest him, and he paid but slight attention to it. He wanted ideas, and he was given what seemed to him to be but words. He lost the opportunity of becoming an exact scholar. On the other hand in thought, in imagination, in general attainments, he was superior to everyone about him, masters included. Superiority begets jealousy. Boys never pardon a comrade who is unlike themselves. He was taunted with his birth, as it was inevitable that he would be. As inevitably he resented the insult. Contarini Fleming and Vivian Grey both fight and thrash the biggest boy in their school. The incident in the novels is evidently taken from the writer’s experience. Disraeli was a fighter from his youth, with his fist first, as with his tongue afterwards. It was characteristic of him that he had studied the art of self-defence, and was easily able to protect himself. But both his heroes were unpopular, and it may be inferred that he was not popular any more than they. The school experiment was not a success and came to an abrupt end. Vivian Grey was expelled; Contarini left of his own accord, because he learnt nothing which he thought would be of use to him, and because he ‘detested school more than he ever abhorred the world in the darkest moment of experienced manhood.’ The precise circumstances under which Disraeli himself made his exit are not known to me, but his stay at Walthamstow was a brief one, and he left to complete his education at home. His father, recollecting the troubles of his own youth, abstained from rebukes or reproaches, left him to himself, helped him when he could, and now and then, if we may identify him with Vivian, gave him shrewd and useful advice. Disraeli wanted no spurring. He worked for twelve hours a day, conscious that he had singular powers and passionately ambitious to make use of them. He was absolutely free from the loose habits so common in the years between boyhood and youth; his father had no fault to find with his conduct, which he admitted had been absolutely correct. The anxiety was of another kind. He did not wish to interfere with his son’s direction of himself, but warned him, very wisely, ‘not to consider himself a peculiar boy.’ ‘Take the advice,’ said Mr. Grey to Vivian, ‘of one who has committed as many—aye, more—follies than yourself. Try to ascertain what may be the chief objects of your existence in this world. I want you to take no theological dogmas for granted, nor to satisfy your doubts by ceasing to think; but whether we are in this world in a state of probation for another, or whether at death we cease altogether, human feelings tell me that we have some duties to perform to our fellow-creatures, to our friends, and to ourselves.’
THE YOUNG DISRAELI
Disraeli’s conception of himself was that he had it in him to be a great man, and that the end of his existence was to make himself a great man. With his father’s example before him literature appeared the readiest road. Contarini when a boy wrote romances and threw them into the river, and composed pages of satire or sentiment ‘and grew intoxicated with his own eloquence.’ He pondered over the music of language, studied the cultivation of sweet words, and constructed elaborate sentences in lonely walks, and passed his days in constant struggle to qualify himself for the part which he was determined to play in the game of life. Boyish pursuits and amusements had no interest for him. In athletic games he excelled if he chose to exert himself, but he rarely did choose unless it was in the science of self-defence. He rode well and hard, for the motion stimulated his spirits; but in galloping across the country he was charging in imagination the brooks and fences in the way of his more ambitious career.
This was one side of him in those early years; another was equally remarkable. He intended to excel among his fellow-creatures, and to understand what men and women were like was as important to him as to understand books. The reputation of Vivian Grey’s father—in other words, his own father—had always made him an honoured guest in the great world. For this reason he had been anxious that his son should be as little at home as possible, for he feared for a youth the fascination of London society. This particular society was what Disraeli was most anxious to study, and was in less danger from it than his father fancied. He was handsome, audacious, and readily made his way into the circle of the family acquaintances. ‘Contarini was a graceful, lively lad, with enough of dandyism to prevent him from committing gaucheries, and with a devil of a tongue.’ ‘He was never at a loss for a compliment or a repartee,’ and ‘was absolutely unchecked by foolish modesty.’ ‘The nervous vapidity of my first rattle,’ says the alter ego Vivian, ‘soon subsided into a continuous flow of easy nonsense. Impertinent and flippant, I was universally hailed as an original and a wit. I became one of the most affected, conceited, and intolerable atoms that ever peopled the sunbeam of society.’ The purpose which lay behind Disraeli’s frivolous outside was as little suspected by those who saw him in the world as the energy with which he was always working in his laborious hours. The stripling of seventeen was the same person as the statesman of seventy, with this difference only, that the affectation which was natural in the boy was itself affected in the matured politician, whom it served well as a mask or as a suit of impenetrable armour.
[CHAPTER III]
The Austen Family—Choice of a Profession—Restlessness—Enters a Solicitor’s Office—‘Vivian Grey’—Illness—Travels Abroad—Migration of the Disraelis to Bradenham—Literary Satires—‘Popanilla’—Tour in the East—Gibraltar—Cadiz—Seville—Mountain Adventures—Improved Health—Malta—James Clay—Greece—Yanina—Redshid Pasha—Athens—Constantinople—Plains of Troy and Revolutionary Epic—Jaffa—Jerusalem—Egypt—Home Letters—Death of William Meredith—Return to England.
DREAMS AND AMBITIONS
In the neighbourhood of the square in which the Disraelis now resided there lived a family named Austen, with whom the young Benjamin became closely intimate. Mr. Austen was a solicitor in large practice; his wife was the daughter of a Northamptonshire country gentleman—still beautiful, though she had been for some years married, a brilliant conversationalist, a fine musician, and an amateur artist of considerable power. The house of this lady was the gathering-place of the young men of talent of the age. She early recognised the unusual character of her friend’s boy. She invited him to her salons, talked to him, advised and helped him. A writer in the ‘Quarterly Review’ (January 1889), apparently a connection of the Austens, remembers having been taken by them as a child to call on the Disraelis. ‘Ben, then perhaps a school-boy returned for the holidays, was sent for, and appeared in his shirt-sleeves with boxing gloves.’ His future destination was still uncertain. Isaac Disraeli, who had no great belief in youthful genius, disencouraged his literary ambition, and was anxious to see him travelling along one of the beaten roads. Mr. Austen was probably of the same opinion. ‘Ben’s’ own views on this momentous subject are not likely to have been much caricatured in the meditations of Vivian Grey.