To women, moreover, he, like “Coningsby,” “instinctively bowed as to beings set apart for reverence and delicate treatment,” but disillusions chequered his experience. In maturity he could undoubtedly “conceive that there were any other women in the world than fair Geraldines and Countesses of Pembroke.” While Lord Randolph Churchill was still alive, a young man—now an eminent Liberal statesman, and then in the thick of a passionate courtship—poured out his heart to him as they walked home together from the House. Lord Randolph reminded him of what Disraeli had once observed to himself, that two of the great elements in life were passion and power; that in youth the first prevailed, but that, as years proceeded, the last proved incomparable. He once said in his early youth that most of the distinguished men of his acquaintance who had married “for love” bullied or maltreated their wives; and he also remarked at an early period that the man who wishes to rule mankind must not marry a too beautiful wife, who would divide his time and his will. Long afterwards, in the devotion of his home, Mrs. Disraeli would rally him by saying, “You know you married me for money, and I know that now, if you had to do it again, you would marry me for love.” It will be recalled, too, that “Sidonia,” though he had a heart, indulged his deeper emotions more towards causes than individuals. “In his organisation there was a peculiarity, perhaps a great deficiency.” And yet Disraeli wrote: “We know not how it is, but love at first sight is a subject of constant ridicule, but somehow we suspect that it has more to do with the affairs of this world than the world is willing to own.”—“Where we do not respect, we soon cease to love; when we cease to love, virtue weeps and flies.” I think that real love as the base of marriage is more genuinely, as well as romantically, portrayed in Venetia that in any of his works. In those pages it really moves us instead of moving before us, as it often does, even in the “love story” of Henrietta Temple. One of his early hobbies, too, was that men ought to marry early, as a source of strength and simplicity both to the affections and to the race. This is emphasised in Contarini Fleming. The passage is striking, and illustrates his deeper ideas on the whole subject: “To a man who is in love the thought of another woman is uninteresting, if not repulsive. Constancy is human nature. Instead of love being the occasion of all the misery of this world, as is sung by fantastic bards, I believe that the misery of this world is occasioned by there not being love enough.... Happiness is only to be found in a recurrence to the principles of human nature, and these will prompt very simple manners. For myself, I believe that permanent unions of the sexes should be early encouraged; nor do I conceive that general happiness can ever flourish but in societies where it is the custom for all males to marry at eighteen. This custom, I am informed, is not unusual in the United States of America, and its consequence is a simplicity of manners and purity of conduct which Europeans cannot comprehend, but to which they must ultimately have recourse. Primeval barbarism and extreme civilisation must arrive at the same results. Men under these circumstances are actuated by their structure; in the first instance instinctively, in the second philosophically. At present[168] we are all in the various gradations of the intermediate state of corruption.”
At all events, his own compositions were conspicuously spotless; and it may be said of him, as it was of Addison—so unlike otherwise—“No whiter page remains.”
Such, then, are some of Disraeli’s main ideas on the outward forms and inward spirit of society. Fashionable “society” he played with, and he used—it amused him; but he never cherished, rather he scorned it. Power he valued; and fame—“the opinion of mankind after death”—for him meant power. There was once a certain rather fussy Radical member who had long been anxious to make his acquaintance. When Lothair appeared, he rushed up to Disraeli excitedly, with many apologies for the intrusion, and begged him to receive the assurance of his daughter’s intense admiration for that work. “Thank you ever so much,” returned Disraeli, “and this is fame!”
When the gorgeous trinket was in his grasp, and he was at the zenith of his eminence, I have already recorded an impressive instance. I may contrast with this another picture, also of a fact already chronicled in the interesting recollections of a young associate of his old age. It will bear repetition. The scene was Hughenden in late autumn, the time, after Lady Beaconsfield’s death. He sat in reverie before the fire, watching the flickering embers. “Dreams, dreams, dreams,” he murmured, as the wreaths of smoke and the sparks of flame went upwards. He was thinking of his favourite Sheridans, by whose own fireside, and basking in whose sunshine of wit and beauty, so many of his happiest evenings had been spent forty years agone. And perhaps, also, he was thinking of that charming daughter of Lord Lyndhurst, whose pet name tallied with his own sister’s; and possibly, too, of that little Frances Braham, whom he had known in girlhood, and whom, after she, too, had carved a career, he still knew and admired as Frances, Lady Waldegrave.
Yet one more dissolving view—
The scene shifts again to London and a Foreign Office reception, with its gaping throng. It was the last function that Lady Beaconsfield, frail with age and bent with rheumatism, was able to attend. Step by step, all the way down that long staircase, he himself planted her feet and tenderly supported her feeble frame, till, when she reached the end, he presented to her a youth of promise, since a member of ministries, who will still remember it.
Yes, it was companionship, not “society,” that was precious to him. And trial proves friendship.
“‘Since I last met you, I heard you had seen much and suffered much.’—‘And that makes the kind thoughts of friends more precious.’—‘You have, however, a great many things which ought to make you happy.’—‘I do not deserve to be happy, for I have made so many mistakes....’—‘Take a brighter and a nobler view of your life.... Feel rather that you have been tried and not found wanting.’”
DISRAELI IN 1852