Eighteenth-century Toryism, a smitten cause espousing popular privileges, taught that unless the Crown ruled for the people as well as reigned over them, unless the nobles led them independently to high issues, unless the people themselves recognised that they were the privileged order in a nation, and that their representatives should form “a senate supported by the sympathy of millions,” the traditional principles of England had dwindled into a sham.
“No one,” says Disraeli in Coningsby, again adverting to the critical issues of 1834, “had arisen either in Parliament, the Universities, or the Press, to lead the public mind to the investigation of principles; and not to mistake in their reformations the corruption of practice for fundamental ideas. It was this perplexed, ill-informed, jaded, shallow generation, repeating cries which they did not comprehend, and wearied with the endless ebullitions of their own barren conceit, that Sir Robert Peel was summoned to govern. It was from such materials, ample in quantity, but in all spiritual qualities most deficient; with great numbers, largely acred, consoled up to their chins, but without knowledge, genius, thought, truth, or faith, that Sir Robert Peel was to form ‘a great Conservative party on a comprehensive basis....’” Even Sir Robert’s single-mindedness and supremacy over Parliament failed to secure strength of Government. By universal consent, including his own avowal, he wrecked a great party in a country where great parties form the main pledge for the due representation of political opinion, and under a system where they remain the chief preventive against public corruption.
The first two Georges had reigned over the towns, but not over the country. After the Reform Bill it seemed as though the great cities themselves would swamp the land. How was Sir Robert to save the situation in 1834? Speaking with respect for Sir Robert, but with contempt for his “Tamworth Manifesto,” Disraeli, in his discussion of that famous document, repeats his message once more: “... There was indeed considerable shouting about what they called Conservative principles; but the awkward question naturally arose, ‘What will you conserve?’ The prerogatives of a Crown, provided they are not exercised; the independence of the House of Lords, provided it is not asserted; the ecclesiastical estate, provided it is regulated by a commission of laymen. Everything, in short, that is established, as long as it is a phrase and not a fact.”[4]
It is thus that the man of ideas is, in the long run, eminently practical; and it is thus, too, that in the realm of art ideas are the surest realities. But here also the immediate appeal constantly falls to the lot of what is called “realism,” and few feel what they cannot touch until the popular voice tells them that it is “real.” “Madame,” says Heine in his “Buch Legrand,” “have you the ghost of an idea what an idea is? ‘I have put my best ideas into this coat,’ says my tailor. My washerwoman says the parson has filled her daughter’s head with ideas, and unfitted her for anything sensible; and coachman Pattensen mumbles on every occasion, ‘That is an idea.’ But yesterday, when I inquired what he meant, he snarled out, ‘An idea is just an idea; it is any silly stuff that comes into one’s head.’”
No memorial of Disraeli’s magical career can be adequate without access to the papers confided to the late Lord Rowton, as well as to much private and unpublished correspondence. It is no slur on the “Lives” that have already appeared to say that they lack the materials for a complete picture. The best of these beyond question is Mr. Froude’s; but not only is it tinged with considerable prejudice, but it is very faulty in its facts; and, moreover, in common with Mr. Bryce’s cursory essay and Herr Brandes’s minuter study, it has perhaps fallen into the error of misreading Disraeli’s mature character and career from isolated and indiscriminate use of such sidelights as they are pleased to discover in his earliest novels. To trace Disraeli’s development, it is necessary to follow the long and continuous thread of his words and actions, to consider the changes experienced during the fifty years of his political outlook in England and in Europe, and to ascertain how many of these tendencies were foreseen, produced, or modified by him. The criticisms current are either those of men (often partisans) who lack this length of view, and interpret the latter manifestations of Disraeli’s genius, with which alone they are even outwardly acquainted, in the light of preconceived notions, or the few circulated comparatively early in his career, before its eventual drift was revealed, and while the full blaze of hostile bitterness was raging. There exists, it is true, a most able, a most appreciative, a most detailed account of his political career, compiled by Mr. Ewald shortly after Lord Beaconsfield’s death, but this is mainly a long parliamentary chronicle. Mr. Kebbel’s enlightening edition of selected speeches is illustrative though limited. To both of these, among many other sources, direct and indirect, I here gratefully acknowledge my obligation.
A real biography, therefore, is at present impossible. Disraeli’s acknowledged debt to his darling sister and devoted wife (“Women,” he has said, “are the priestesses of pre-destination”); his correspondence and commerce with many eminent men, including both Louis Philippe and Napoleon III.; his letters to our late Queen; his notes of policy; the rough drafts for compositions, both literary and parliamentary; his State papers and official memoranda; his relations to many men of letters and leading; such known, though unpublished, correspondence as even that with Mrs. Williams; the glimpses of him as a youth through Mrs. Austin, Bulwer, Lord Strangford, the Sheridans, with many others; in his age, through a privileged circle of distinguished and devoted associates—all these, and many more, must be pressed into service if even the rudiments are to be portrayed. And none of these are yet available.
I have therefore thought that, pending such an enterprise, some account, however imperfect, of the ideas that governed him throughout—a slight biography, as it were, of his mind—might prove acceptable. It will endeavour to depict the spirit of his attitude to the world in which he moved and for which he worked. It will aim at representing the temperature of his opinions immanent alike in his writings and speeches. His utterance was never bounded by the mere occasion, and light and guidance may be found in it for the problems of to-day. In most that he wrote or said, a certain swell of soul, a sweep and stretch of mind are strikingly manifest.
“How very seldom,” he has written, “do you encounter in the world a man of great abilities, acquirements, experience, who will unmask his mind, unbutton his brains, and pour forth in careless and picturesque phrase all the results of his studies and observations, his knowledge of men, books, and nature!”
Such a contribution is anyhow feasible, and is fraught with more than even the glamour linked with the person by whom these ideas were clothed in words and deeds. For principles are applied ideas; habits are applied principles. Disraeli’s ideas have, to some extent, become ruling principles, several of them are at this moment national habits; while some of them, unachieved during his lifetime, seem in process of accomplishment. Disraeli was a poet—one of those “unacknowledged legislators of the world” described by “Herbert” in Venetia; but his imaginative fancy was allied to a very strong character. It is a rare combination. To Bolingbroke’s youthful genius he united that force of will and purpose for which Bolingbroke had long to wait, and which, perhaps, he never fully attained. This analogy was pressed on Disraeli on the threshold of his career by a distinguished friend.
Above all things Disraeli was a personality. Personality is independent of training, except in the rare cases where education accords with predisposition. It is the will. And in authorship, when expression chimes with intention, it is the style. Personality is the clue to history, for events proceed from character, more than character from events. Commenting on the adoption of the “Charter” by non-chartists groaning under the injustice of industrial slavery, Disraeli observes most truly: “... But all this had been brought about, as most of the great events of history, by the unexpected and unobserved influence of individual character.” Personality is the salt of politics; it is the spirit of our party system; and woe betide every era in England when figure-heads replace head-figures. It is an atmosphere enchanting the landscape. “... It is the personal that interests mankind, that fires their imagination and wins their hearts. A cause is a great abstraction, and fit only for students: embodied in a party, it stirs men to action; but place at the head of that party a leader who can inspire enthusiasm, he commands the world....” Association, groups, co-operative principles, these are the mechanisms invented by the brain, and guided by the hand of individuality, the fuel that individuality gathers and enkindles. Without it they remain dead lumber, and can never of themselves prove originative forces. What men crave is, once more in Disraeli’s parlance, “... A primordial and creative mind; one that will say to his fellows, ‘Behold, God has given me thought, I have discovered truth, and you shall believe.’” Personality is the contradiction of the mechanical and of the dead level; it is the soul of influence. How depressing is the reverse side of the medal!—“Duncan Macmorrogh” (the utilitarian in The Young Duke), “cut up the Creation and got a name. His attack upon mountains was most violent, and proved, by its personality that he had come from the lowlands. He demonstrated the inability of all elevation, and declared that the Andes were the aristocracy of the globe. Rivers he rather patronised, but flowers he quite pulled to pieces, and proved them to be the most useless of existences.... He informed us that we were quite wrong in supposing ourselves to be the miracle of the Creation. On the contrary, he avowed that already there were various pieces of machinery of far more importance than man; and he had no doubt in time that a superior race would arise, got by a steam-engine on a spinning-jenny....”