Chapter III

Nearly a quarter of a century passed, during which Disraeli slowly rose to the highest honours in the State. Lord Derby died, and the novelist, already Leader of the House of Commons, found himself called to be Prime Minister of England. His first administration, however, was brief, and in the last days of 1868 he resigned in favour of Mr. Gladstone. The Liberals were in for five years, and Disraeli, in opposition, found a sort of tableland stretch in front of him after so much arduous climbing. It was at this moment, shortly after the resignation of the Tory Minister, that the publisher of a magazine approached him with the request that he would write a novel to appear in its pages. He was offered, it is said, a sum of money far in excess of what any one, at that time, had ever received for "serial rights." Disraeli refused the offer, but it may have drawn his thoughts back to literature, and in the course of 1869, after the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland was completed, he found time to write what is unquestionably the greatest of his literary works--the superb ironic romance of _Lothair_.

Eminent as he was and eminently successful, Disraeli was far, in 1870, from having conquered public opinion in England. The reception of his new novel was noisy, and enjoyed to the full the clamours of advertisement, but it was not favourable. The critics laughed it to scorn, and called it a farce and a failure. The _Quarterly Review_, in the course of a savage diatribe, declared that it was "as dull as ditch-water and as flat as a flounder," and in a graver mood reproved it as a mere "bid for the bigoted voices of Exeter Hall." Some of the criticisms were not wanting in acumen. It was perceived at once that, as Theodora Campion is the heroine of the book, it was an error in art to kill her off in the middle of it. Moreover, it is only fair to admit that if the stormy Parliamentarian life Disraeli had led so long had given him immense personal advantages, it had also developed some defects. It had taught him boundless independence and courage, it had given him a rare experience of men and manners, and it had lifted his satire far above petty or narrow personal considerations. But it had encouraged a looseness of utterance, a mixture of the colloquial and the bombastic, which was unfortunate. In the best parts of _Coningsby_ and of _Tancred_ he had shown himself a very careless writer of English. But _Lothair_, even in its corrected form--and the first edition is a miracle of laxity--is curiously incorrect. It reads as though it were taken down from the flowing speech of a fine orator, not as though it were painfully composed in a study; it contains surprising ellipses, strange freaks of grammar. There was all this, and more, to encourage the critics, whom Disraeli had gone out of his way to affront in a violent epigram, to attack _Lothair_ with contempt and resentment.

The critics took irony for timidity; they thought that the sardonic novelist was the dupe of the splendours which he invented and gloated over. But if one thing is more evident than another to-day it is that this gorgeous story of a noble boy, whose guardians, a Presbyterian earl and a Roman cardinal, quarrelled for his soul and for his acres, is an immense satire from first to last. In Disraeli's own words, used in another sense, the keynote of _Lothair_ is "mockery blended with Ionian splendour." Never had he mocked so dauntlessly, never had his fancy been more exuberant, and those who criticise the magnificence must realise that it was intentional. It was thus that Disraeli loved to see life, and, most of all, the life he laughed at. He had always been gorgeous, but he let himself go in _Lothair_; all is like the dream of a Lorenzo dei Medicis or an Aurungzebe. Nothing is done by halves. Muriel Towers was set on "the largest natural lake that inland England boasts"--some lake far larger than Windermere and entirely unsuspected by geographers. This piece of water is studded with "green islands," which is natural. But the author cannot stay his hand: this largest of the English lakes is also alive with "golden gondolas," which are rarer objects. In one of the odd little flashes of self-criticism which illuminate the book Lothair says of a certain northern garden, with its fanes and its fountains, its glittering statues and its Babylonian terraces, that there are "perhaps too many temples."

There are perhaps too many temples in the landscape of _Lothair_, but they were put in on purpose. The splendour is part of the satire. When the hero has ordered an architect to make some plans for a building, the door opens and servants enter bearing "a large and magnificent portfolio of morocco, made of prelatial purple with broad bands of gold and alternate ornaments of a cross and a coronet." It is the sort of portfolio that Belshazzar might have used, but no English master-builder since time began ever launched forth into such splendour. This is characteristic of Disraeli and of his book; it pleased him to wrap all his fancies in jewelled cloth of gold. He chose that the world should consist of nothing but Tudor palaces in colossal parks, and that time should be no other than a perpetual Holy Week of golden ceremonial. He knew his public, and that it adored these follies. He spoke to them in the language that they loved, but in a tone of the most seraphical disdain and irony.

What marks the whole of Disraeli's writings more than any other quality is the buoyant and radiant temperament of their author. In _Lothair_ he is like an inspired and enfranchised boy, set free from all the trammels of reality, and yet bringing to the service of his theme the results of an extraordinary inherited experience. If the picture is not real, we may take courage to say that it is far better than reality--more rich, more entertaining, more intoxicating. We have said that it is carelessly written, but that is part of the author's superb self-confidence, and when he is fortunately inspired, he obtains here an ease of style, a mastery which he had never found before. The sureness of his touch is seen in the epigrams which strew the pages of _Lothair_, and have become part of our habitual speech--the phrase about eating "a little fruit on a green bank with music"; that which describes the hansom cab, "'Tis the gondola of London." This may lead us on to the consideration that Disraeli is one of those who have felt most vividly and expressed most gaily the peculiar physical beauty of London. He saw the Park as the true Londoner sees it--when "the chestnuts are in silver bloom, and the pink may has flushed the thorns, and banks of sloping turf are radiant with plots of gorgeous flowers; when the water glitters in the sun, and the air is fragrant with that spell which only can be found in metropolitan mignonette." He describes as no one else has ever done with equal mastery a stately and successful house-party in a great country mansion. He had developed, when he composed _Lothair_, a fuller sense of beauty than he had ever possessed before, but it revelled in forms that were partly artificial and partly fabulous. An example of these forms may now be welcome:--

"Mr. Giles took an early easy opportunity of apprising Lady
Farringford that she had nearly met Cardinal Grandison at dinner,
and that his Eminence would certainly pay his respects to Mrs.
Putney Giles in the evening. As Lady Farringford was at present a
high ritualist, and had even been talked of as 'going to Rome,'
this intelligence was stunning, and it was observed that her
Ladyship was unusually subdued during the whole of the second
course.

"On the right of Lothair sate the wife of a Vice-Chancellor, a
quiet and pleasing lady, to whom Lothair, with natural good
breeding, paid snatches of happy attention, when he could for a
moment with propriety withdraw himself from the blaze of
Apollonia's coruscating conversation. Then there was a rather
fierce-looking Red Ribbon, medalled as well as be-starred, and the
Red Ribbon's wife, with a blushing daughter, in spite of her
parentage not yet accustomed to stand fire. A partner and his
unusually numerous family had the pleasure also of seeing Lothair
for the first time, and there were no less than four M.P.'s, one of
whom was even in office.

"Apollonia was stating to Lothair, with brilliant perspicuity, the
reasons which quite induced her to believe that the Gulf Stream had
changed its course, and the political and social consequences that
might accrue.

"'The religious sentiment of the Southern races must be wonderfully
affected by a more rigorous climate,' said Apollonia. 'I cannot
doubt,' she continued, 'that a series of severe winters at Rome
might put an end to Romanism.

"'But is there any fear that a reciprocal influence might be
exercised on the Northern nations?' inquired Lothair. 'Would there
be any apprehension of our Protestantism becoming proportionately
relaxed?'

"'Of course not,' said Apollonia. 'Truth cannot be affected by
climate. Truth is truth alike in Palestine and Scandinavia.'

"'I wonder what the Cardinal would think of this,' said Lothair,
'who, you tell me, is coming to you this evening.'

"'Yes, I am most interested to see him, though he is the most
puissant of our foes. Of course he would take refuge in sophistry;
and science, you know, they deny.'

"'Cardinal Grandison is giving some lectures on science,' said the
Vice-Chancellor's lady, quietly.

"'It is remorse,' said Apollonia. 'Their clever men can never
forget that unfortunate affair of Galileo, and think they can
divert the indignation of the nineteenth century by mock zeal about
red sandstone or the origin of species.'

"'And are you afraid of the Gulf Stream?' inquired Lothair of his
calmer neighbour.

"'I think we want more evidence of a change. The Vice-Chancellor
and I went down to a place we have near town on Saturday, where
there is a very nice piece of water; indeed, some people call it a
lake; it was quite frozen, and my boys wanted to skate, but that I
would not permit.'

"'You believe in the Gulf Stream to that extent,' said Lothair; 'no
skating.'

"The Cardinal came early; the ladies had not long left the
dining-room. They were agitated when his name was announced; even
Apollonia's heart beat; but then that might be accounted for by the
inopportune recollection of an occasional correspondence with
Caprera.

"Nothing could exceed the simple suavity with which the Cardinal
appeared, approached, and greeted them. He thanked Apollonia for
her permission to pay his respects to her, which he had long
wished to do; and then they were all presented, and he said exactly
the right thing to every one."

Disraeli began his career, as I have pointed out in the earlier part of this essay, as a purveyor of entertainment to the public in a popular and not very dignified kind. He contended with the crowd of fashionable novelists whose books consoled the leisure of Mrs. Wititterly as she reclined on the drawing-room sofa. He found rivals in Bulwer and Mrs. Gore, and a master in Plumer Ward. His brilliant stories sold, but at first they won him little advantage. Slowly, by dint of his inherent force of genius, his books have not merely survived their innumerable fellows, but they have come to represent to us the form and character of a whole school; nay, more, they have come to take the place in our memories of a school which, but for them, would have utterly passed away and been forgotten. Disraeli, accordingly, is unique, not merely because his are the only fashionable novels of the pre-Victorian era which any one ever reads nowadays, but because in his person that ineffable manner of the "thirties" reaches an isolated sublimity and finds a permanent place in literature. But if we take a still wider view of the literary career of Disraeli, we are bound to perceive that the real source of the interest which his brilliant books continue to possess is the evidence their pages reveal of the astonishing personal genius of the man. Do what we will, we find ourselves looking beyond Contarini Fleming and Sidonia and Vivian Grey to the adventurous Jew who, by dint of infinite resolution and an energy which never slept, conquered all the prejudices of convention, and trod English society beneath his foot in the triumphant irony of success. It is the living Disraeli who is always more salient than the most fascinating of his printed pages.

THREE EXPERIMENTS IN PORTRAITURE