Snob as Statesman

...Yet in this area, too, Disraeli's credentials are suspect He faked the family tree to make it seem more venerable than the aristocrats' Later, in his biography of Lord George Bentinck, he declared that the doctrine of the equality of man was pernicious because it threatened racial purity...

...It is in these closing chapters, and especially in her moving account of Disraeli's lifelong devotion to his unattractive, elderly wife, and of his almost passionate friendship with Queen Victoria, that Bradford manages at last to make us respect, if not admire, her dislikeable hero For that achievement, and for the piquant intricacy of detail she marshals in bringing imperial England back to life, we are her debtors...

...Snob as Statesman Disraeli By Sarah Bradford Stem and Day 432 pp $19 95 Reviewed by Selden Rodman Author, "Tongues of Fallen Angels," "Artists in Tune with Their World' After finishing a long and heavily documented biography, it is sometimes interesting to turn to the jacket flap and compare what one has just read to what is written there In this case "Benjamin Disraeli's life seems to fascinate Americans Eighteen years ago Lord Blake's biography of Disraeli was a national bestseller We can see Disraeli as a contemporary might have viewed him, live through the steeplechase of his volatile career until its culmination as one of Britain's greatest prime ministers a book to read and read again and remember ". I wonder whether Americans were ever fascinated by Disraeli, even when he was alive, and whether he really could be considered one of Britain's "greatest" statesmen On the evidence of this book itself, his contemporaries Robert Peel, Henry Palmerston and William Gladstone were more consistent, purposeful and committed to the public welfare As an addition to my education, I am grateful to Sarah Bradford for her minutely specific chronicle of the parliamentary infighting and political shenaningans of those four, but to read it "again"-God forbid...

...The problem an honest biographer must face with Disraeli's life-and Bradford qualifies admirably on this count-is how to make his dubious imperial successes as Prime Minister outweigh the name-dropping, social climbing character firmly established during his first 50 years vain, snobbish, tasteless, vengeful, without conscience or principle Bradford, for example, does her best to put her subject's connection with Judaism in a favorable light In the beginning the young Disraeli exhibited an endearing pride in Jewish history and made a seemingly noble decision to flaunt his family's religion (his father had him baptized a Christian) in the face of the British ruling class' traditional anti-Semitism...

...What would be the consequence on the great Anglo-Saxon republic, for instance, were its citizens to secede from their sound principle of reserve, and mingle with their Negro and colored populations9 In the course of time they would become so deteriorated that their states would probably be reconquered and regained by the aborigines whom they have expelled and who then would be their superiors ". If it is doubtful that Disraeli should be described, in Bradford's words, as a "romantic Zionist," he was at least certainly a romantic He patterned his life and his style on Lord Byron, though he preferred Turks to Greeks, and had none of the poet's flamboyant sexuality, headlong lack of caution or genius for self-mockery The portrait of Byron's childhood relations with his mother in Venetia (where Byron is Lord Carducis, not "Cadurcis" as Bradford has it, while also wrongly identifying the character with Shelley) is brilliantly perceptive And in fact Disraeli's romans a clef are filled with such perceptions and the kind of wicked invective that made his parliamentary Philippics so feared...

...Late in life, Disraeli ironically achieved enduring fame as a Victorian statesman and the most unromantic of conformists Presumably-although the author makes no mention of it-Disraeli stood firm with Palmerston in supporting the Confederacy and in regarding Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, to quote Blackwood's Magazine, as "monstrous, reckless and devilish " Disraeli also was instrumental in seizing Cyprus as the gateway to the Suez and India Similarly, at the Congress of Berlin he worked hand in glove with his good friend Bismarck to turn over the Slavic peoples of the Balkans to Austria, thus setting the stage for Sarajevo 30 years later...