Consciously defying analysis
John Vincent
THE SELF-FASHIONING OF DISRAELI, 1818-1851 edited by Charles Richmond and Paul Smith CUP, £30, pp. 212 This collection of eight interpretative essays by seven different hands explores different aspects of Disraeli's personality. It does so for the period when least is known about him. As with Shakespeare, the less it is possible to know, the more ardently we wish to know. We do not, we cannot, admit to ourselves the simple truth that the first half of Disraeli's life is exceedingly obscure and likely always to remain so — partly, of course, because Dis- raeli himself wished it to be so. Deeply learned though these essayists are, they can do little more than rearrange the existing limited stock of printed information in slightly more portentous ways. False notes may be absent, but though the different contributors achieve a unity of tone, which is good, that unity owes rather too much to North American psychotherapy, which is not so good. Readers who seek a study in psychological history which treats Disraeli as a romantic artist fashioning his identity may do better to stay with Paul Smith's Disraeli: A Brief Life (CUP paperback, 1999).
Charles Richmond on Disraeli's educa- tion shows that if not deep or linguistically disciplined, it was wide and to the purpose. Few can come away from Disraeli's library without feeling that he was an homme serieux. Schwarz, on Disraeli's romanticism, shows the streak of modern self-analysis permeating the 'autobiographical' novels. Brantlinger on Disraeli's orientalism, argu- ing the toss with Edward Said, shows Disraeli giving a positive value to the East and blending it into his personal identity, though not, however, to the extent of ever revisiting it even when tourism grew more practicable. Endelman looks at the many- faceted nature of Disraeli's Jewishness: was it a momentary literary pose of his forties, or a necessary means of dipping into Rothschild's pockets? Niall Ferguson's recent 1200-page doorstopper on the Rothschilds is not short of references to Disraeli, but for all that the inner meaning of the Disraeli-Rothschild relationship does not quite emerge, and there may be much more evidence to come. Peter Jupp looks efficiently at Disraeli's interpretation of English history and how it was specifical- ly tailored to pre-Victorian conditions. This makes rather better sense of some of Disraeli's doctrinal absurdities. Jupp also shows, I think for the first time, that much of Disraeli's history was simply lifted from the leading authorities. The central Disraeli doctrine of a Whig oligarchy ruling over a Tory silent majority seems to be both true and something rediscovered by each generation of historians. Disraeli may have found it in such a classic Whig writer as Hallam.
The chapter which perplexes most is that on Disraeli's Crucial Illness' and is written jointly by a medical man and a member of the New York Bar. Disraeli was indeed seriously ill from the age of 22 to 25, per- haps a good deal longer, following a spell of indubitably manic excitement His father also suffered from a long depressive break- down in his twenties, and such things can be inherited. But with no patient to exam- ine it is not easy to know if Disraeli's `brainfever' was mainly neurological or psy- chiatric, and still more difficult to know if manic-depressive tendencies underlay his personality in some sense through adult life. One cannot rule out some quite banal nervous condition: meningitis, ME and epilepsy are possible candidates. (He had a convulsive seizure at least once in his thir- ties.) The fact that Disraeli himself thought he had a psychological condition helps lit- tle; this was the chic ailment of the day. And many of his symptoms, like palpita- tions and shaking fits, were physical enough. Any diagnosis is difficult. What makes matters worse here is the attempt to construct a straightforward relationship between purely medical symptoms and Dis- raeli's personality traits, such as narcissism, messianism and deprivation of maternal affection. Mental illness is surely too autonomous for personality traits to shed much light on it.
I was a little concerned by the emphasis placed on Disraeli lacking male friends. I am not sure this is right. True, he was the least clubbable of men; true, he found a lit- tle of his colleagues went a long way. Noth- ing unusual in that; but in his idiosyncratic way he was actively sociable and discursive- ly friendly. The difficulty is that we would not necessarily know which now little- known figures meant something to him. A short list might include Rothschild, his solicitor Rose, Lord John Manners, the Duc d'Aumale, Harcourt, Rosebery, Stan- ley, Lennox, Smyth, Beauchamp, Lytton, Bernal Osborne and Lord Ronald Gower, the 'wickedest man in London' before Oscar. (If only the Hughenden visitors' book would turn up.) The odd thing about this study of rela- tively secondary parts of Disraeli's psyche is that it leaves out his sexuality. Perhaps there was hardly any; he may have fallen in love only once before 40. The big (if hugely anachronistic) question remains: was Dis- raeli gay? Lest this bring a pallor to the cheeks of all those modern Tories who claim to model themselves on Disraeli, let me say at once that it is a matter on which there may be more than one opinion. On the one hand, a recent biographer, Wein- traub, has painted a Disraeli who (while married) begat two illegitimate children by different mothers. Indeed a gentleman in the Australian outback claims direct descent from one of these liaisons. The evidence, in one case at least, looks com- pelling. Disraeli's admirers owe it to him to clear his good name by whatever means are to hand. It is not so much a matter of out- ing him as of seeking to restore him safely to the closet. The central, indeed only, piece of hard evidence lies hidden in the best possible place for a dark secret, in the third volume of the official life. Disraeli, chancellor of the exchequer at the time, wrote to his boyfriend, a junior whip, with whom he was undoubtedly infatuated, 'I am so tired that I can only tell you that I love you.' The boyfriend, a worthless charmer, became a fraudulent company promoter, was disgraced, organised Dis- raeli's 'Peace with Honour' celebrations, and in the end, grown fat and fiftyish, was offered the post of First Civil Service Com- missioner, charged with enforcing Victori- an values.
These are deep waters. Even Lord Blake, the guardian of the shrine, allows himself some mellow ambiguities on this issue, if I am not mistaken. But psychological history, generally, on the evidence of this volume, seems to be an odd mixture of paucity of evidence, illuminating conjectures and the language of therapy. Its justification here is that it is hard to see how else to handle the first half of Disraeli's life in any continu- ously discursive way.
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