It is not difficult to collect from many scattered presentments some likeness of
“The wondrous boy
That wrote Alroy.”
Imagine, then, a romantic figure, a Southern shape in a Northern setting, a kind of Mediterranean Byron; for the stock of the Disraelis hailed from the Sephardim—Semites who had never quitted the midland coasts, and were powerful in Spain before the Goths. The form is lithe and slender, with an air of repressed alertness. The stature, above middle height. The head, long and compact; its curls, fantastic. The oval face, pale rather than pallid, with dark almond eyes of unusual depth, size, and lustre under a veil of drooping lashes. The chin, pointed with decision. The expression holds one, by turns keen and pensive; about it hovers a strange sense of inner watchfulness and ambushed irony, half mocking in defiance, half eager with conscious power. A languid reserve marks his bearing; it conceals a smouldering vehemence; its observant silence prepares amazement directly interest excites intercourse. Then indeed the scimitar, as it were, flashes forth unsheathed, and dazzles by its breathless fence of words with ideas. This ardour is not always pleasant; it breathes of storm; it speaks out elemental passions and grates against the smooth edges of civilisation. In the London medley he, like his friend Bulwer, studies a purposed posture. Dandyism and listlessness mask unsleeping energy. But at Bradenham, his constant retreat, the “Hurstley” of his last novel, all is natural and unconstrained. Here at least he is free. Here he “drives the quill” with his famous father, reads and rides, meditates and is mirthful. Here, with that gifted sister “Sa”—“Sa,” a name soon afterwards doubly endeared to him through Lord Lyndhurst’s daughter; “Sa,” who, while others doubt or twit, ever believes in and heartens him—he dreams, improvises, discourses. The rest may treat him as a moonstruck Bombastes,[12] but his lofty visions are real to the gentle insight of affection. In the language of Shakespeare’s fine colloquy:—
“‘Say what thou art that talk’st of Kings and Queens?’—
‘More than I seem, and less than I was born to.’—
‘Aye, but thou talk’st as if thou wert a King!’—
‘Why, so I am in mind, and that’s enough.’”
DISRAELI THE YOUNGER
After a water colour by A. E. Chalon
Already, like one of those his biting pen had satirised, he too, it must be owned, teems with “confidence in the nation—and himself.” There was a daredevilry about him, and in those days a romantic melancholy, akin to that of the Spanish artist Goya. Far behind have faded those consuming pangs of boyish restlessness, when fevered imagination played vaguely on inexperience. Far behind, those schools of “words” which never slaked his thirst for ideas, and where he ran wild as rebel ringleader.[13] Far away now, those boxing bouts witnessed by Layard’s mother. Past, that earliest and unpublished novel of Aylmer Papillon,[14] which Murray praised but would not print. Past, that fugitive satire of the “New Dunciad,” which does not deserve to remain waste-paper.[15] Past, that abortive journal, which in transforming an old periodical while adopting its name was to have revolutionised opinion.[16] Vanished, too, those first outbursts of unchastened brilliance under the favouring auspices of the Layards’ fair kinswoman, Mrs. Austin. And the vista of his two long journeys have receded; the alternate spells of Venice, the Rhine and Rome, and afterwards of Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem. Past, also, the strange malady for which his Eastern travels proved the stranger cure. As he muses, the ball is at his feet. Yet, when the daydream fades, is he, perhaps, after all, only Alnaschar of the broken glass, bemoaning vain reveries amid the ruined litter of his overturned basket in the jeering market-place? The seed-time of reflection is over: he pants for action. No more for him the beaten tracks. Hitherto he had fed on books and dreams. The former had led him to a pondered plan, with Bolingbroke for clue and Pitt as example. The latter fired his ambition—his presumption—to realise them by restoring vanished life to a now mouldering party—by suiting old forms to new phases and heading them.
Next morning the secluded scholar, so friendly a contrast with his daring son, is bound for Oxford to receive his long delayed honours. This very day that son’s earliest election-procession starts from the doorway of the tranquil manor house.[17] Already the budding genius has descried the dim future of his country, which he has proclaimed must be governed for and through the nation; of which, too, he has already sung in halting verse:—
“... ceased the voice
Of Great Britannia; vanished as it ceased
Her glance imperial.”