Disraeli’s own magnanimity—frankly owned by Mr. Gladstone—was conspicuous though it is unfamiliar. During the decade of the ’fifties, on at least four occasions[30] he offered to sacrifice his personal position to Graham, Palmerston, and Gladstone successively for the interests of his country and his party. In 1868 and 1869 he indignantly defended the last against the carping “tail” of his supporters, rebuking alike the “frothy spouters of sedition,” and those who preferred remembrance of “accidental errors” to gratitude for “splendid gifts and signal services.” His unstinted praise of worthy foes, his conduct even towards the ostracised Dr. Kenealy, are constant proofs of a leading trait. He always forebore to strike an opponent to please the whim or the passion of the popular breeze.
À propos of Mr. Gladstone, who himself paid a tribute to the absence of rancour in his rival, I may be permitted to recall an anecdote told me by the late Sir John Millais. When Disraeli stood (though then suffering, he refused to sit) for his last portrait, his “dear Apelles” noticed his gaze riveted on an engraving of the artist’s fine portrait of the great premier. “Would you care to have it?” he inquired. “I was rather shy of offering it to you.” “I should be delighted to have it,” was the reply. “Don’t imagine that I have ever disliked Mr. Gladstone; on the contrary, my only difficulty with him has been that I could never understand him.” And Carlyle himself thawed when Disraeli, whom he had so long hysterically abused, but many of whose ideas, as I shall prove, he shared, offered him public recognition in a letter which gave as a reason for uninheritable honours, “I have remembered that you too, like myself, are childless.” But Carlyle, who had aspersed him, never denied that he looked facts in the face without mistaking phantoms for them. Even from the first he owned length of view. In his old age a certain far-awayness of expression was very noticeable.
I have mentioned Mr. Gladstone. It was well for England that two great attitudes towards great questions should have been thrown into sharp relief for nearly a score of years by the duel between two great personalities; and it was also well for Disraeli that “England does not love coalitions.” We know from Mr. Gladstone’s own lips that much in his rival had won his respect, while from Mr. Morley we glean that Mr. Gladstone even struggled with a sort of subacid liking for one whom he too could “never comprehend.”[31] The letters of both after Lady Beaconsfield’s death are refreshing instances of how sworn enemies of the arena may grasp hands under the softening solemnity of bereavement, and for a moment forget the hard words which, under irritation, they certainly used of each other.
Disraeli was older than Gladstone, and had been early acquainted with him. In the ’thirties he sat next to “young Gladstone” at the Academy dinner, and regretted that he had been relegated from “the wits,” with whom he had been ranged in the year previous, to “the politicians.” In the ’forties Disraeli made one of his few mistakes in prognostic, when he wrote to his sister, “I doubt if he has an ‘avenir’;” but the significance of Gladstone’s resignation at this juncture on “Maynooth,” and the peculiar circumstances of the Peelites must be borne in mind. Disraeli could scarcely then divine the surprises of oscillation in store.
Except in vigour of undaunted character, and in a sort of inward loneliness, their qualities were opposed. The intensity of the one was austere, imperious, imposing, and didactic; of the other, buoyant, lively, and poignant. Frequently the flippancy of certain leaders provoked his gravity; more frequently the solemnity of others upset his own. Gladstone moved by violent reaction and hasty rebound; Disraeli, by a spring of step, it is true, but of a step measured, wary, and equal. Disraeli stamped himself on his age; it was often the “Time-Spirit” that impressed itself on Mr. Gladstone, a list of whose changeful “convictions”[32] from 1836 to 1896 might fill a small volume. Again, Disraeli’s utterance left a stronger sense of reserve power, of something serious behind the veil. Mr. Gladstone’s phases, always sincere, in the main struck more the conscience of certain sections; Disraeli’s ideas, the national feelings. Mr. Gladstone’s subtleties were those of a theologian; they did not quicken the lay mind. Disraeli’s were the subtleties of an artist; they put things in new perspectives. It might be said that by nature and unconscious bent, the one hid simplicity under the form of subtlety, while with the other the process was the converse. In oratory, Mr. Gladstone convinced by height and redundance of enthusiasm, by depth of feeling and weight or wealth of words and gestures; Disraeli, more by grasp, incisiveness, and point; his imagination played all round many sides of his subject. Gladstone’s eloquence resembled the storminess and the mist of the North Sea; Disraeli’s, the strange lights and shadows, the subtle and tideless lustre of the Mediterranean. As Mr. Gladstone warmed to his theme, he increased in eloquence; his perorations are always great. It was in peroration that Disraeli sometimes failed, except in his after-dinner speeches, which never missed fire from start to finish.
Mr. Gladstone was saturated, Disraeli tinctured, with the classics. Mr. Gladstone was essentially the scholar, and he was Homeric, while Disraeli was Horatian and Tacitean. His ready acquaintance with Latin masterpieces was shown when he first took the oaths as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and hit off a most happy quotation on the spur of the moment; nor will it be forgotten that once, when he was citing a classic in the House, he added, “Which, for the sake of the successful capitalists around me, I will now try to translate.”
Again, despite Mr. Gladstone’s immense versatility, there was always something cloistral about him. He himself confessed that till he was fifty he did not “know the world.” I venture to doubt if he ever knew it, and it was just this academic simplicity that so often led his huge brain-power to deal with unsubstantial material.
Mr. Gladstone will not live through his books. He was far more a writer than an author, though he was always distinguished in all his undertakings. But he was doctrinaire; and he was almost devoid of any real sense of humour. On the appearance of “Nicholas Nickleby” he owned its merit, but singled out its pathos with the criticism that he was grieved by the absence from it of the religious sentiment—“No Church!” In this respect Disraeli and Gladstone were brought into amusing contrast during the Bulgarian atrocity campaign. Mr. Gladstone had characterised the Premier’s attitude as “diabolical.” Disraeli, in a speech, referred to Mr. Gladstone’s having called him “a devil.” Mr. Gladstone denied the impeachment, and asked for verse and chapter. Disraeli rejoined by writing that “the gentlemen who so kindly assist me in the conduct of public affairs” had used their best endeavours to ascertain the precise time and place when the Prince of Darkness had been named, but hitherto without success.
A famous bookseller, with whom both statesmen frequently conversed, used to recount that Disraeli once inquired, as was his wont, what of new interest was forthcoming. He mentioned one of Mr. Gladstone’s Vatican pamphlets. “No,” was the answer; “please not that. Mr. Gladstone is a powerful writer, but nothing that he writes is literature.”
In the House of Commons Disraeli had schooled himself from the first to conceal the emotions of a nature naturally quick and sensitive. He early lit on two mechanical devices for this purpose: the one was to stroke his knees regularly with his hand, the other to scan the clock. When he was much angered it was only by a change of colour that his agitation was ever betrayed. It must be confessed that he loved to “draw” Mr. Gladstone, and those who remember how, when Disraeli sat down and relapsed into impassivity, Mr. Gladstone jumped up with a look of rage and a voice of thunder, will admit that both performances were perfect. But the audience expected the scene which became habitual, and even supreme actors are influenced by the expectation of their audience. Neither Gladstone nor Disraeli ever stooped to ill-nature. Great men are not petty. But the moral indignation of the one, and the intellectual indignation of the other, which sometimes exchanged places, lent the semblance of pique or of quarrel. Disraeli’s dislike of spleen is well displayed by what he once said of Abraham Hayward, the caustic reviewer: “If that man were to be run over in the streets, you would see his venom swimming in the gutters.”