LORD BEACONSFIELD'S "DISADVANTAGES."
THERE is one popular error about Lord Beaconsfield's career which it appears to be almost impossible to correct. The public does not wish to lose an illusion which flatters its self-love, and when it is dissipated by facts waits until it has re-formed. It always re-forms, For years past writers of every shade of opinion and grade of ability have pointed to Lord Beaconsfield as a man who made his way to the top in spite of almost insuperable obstacles of birth, education, and fortune,—obstacles, they say, which would have crushed any nature less vigorous than his. This parrot-cry has been re- peated since his death by hundreds of pens, and he is even quoted as a man whose career, whatever its errors, at least proves that in England it is open for any man of ability to rise from any situation, however low, to any post, however high. The truth all the while is that Lord Beaconsfield, as a young man, was not only not unfairly weighted, but was not nearly BO heavily weighted as many men have been,—as the first Lord Truro was, for example, or Lord Eldon, or Lord Clyde. He was not the son of an unknown man, or of an uneducated man, or of a poor man. His father was a well-to-do and rather luxurious dilettante man of letters, who knew everybody, saw everybody, and cared nothing about anybody. Young Disraeli, born and bred in a library, of itself the most refining of educa- tion, met at his father's table some of the ablest men of the time, and at nineteen had received five times the " cultivation " for the world's work that is possible to Peers' sons who pass through the regular routine. It is true, he never went to a public school or to a University, but he was carefully grounded in book knowledge by a learned Uni- tarian schoolmaster, Dr. Cogan, one of the greatest scholars of hie day, he dissipated none Of his energies upon athletics or sport, and be contracted no dislike for learning from a study of Latin verse-making. In the vast, though desultory reading at which he hints in "Vivian Grey," in
the convereatiou of his father—a time " wit " in the old sense, brimming over with attractive knowledge—and in the talk of his father's guests—ono of whom, for example, was Samuel Rogers—he had the means of an excellent education for the political or literary life, and an education of the most refining kind. He took advantage of it to the full, and never through- out life suffered from any absence of original culture, unless it were a certain want of thoroughness in his knowledge of French. So far from his position as a lad being most obscure, his father ranked with cultivated country gentlemen, and but that Isaac D'Israeli was a Jew, not one word would ever have been said about his low fortunes. Whether Lord Beaconsfield's race was against him through life may be seriously questioned.
There was, no doubt, at that time, a keen prejudice against Jewish descent; but it did not operate in literary coteries, it hardly affected common people at elections, and in Mr. Disraeli's case it did not impede his entrance into the best circles. His father was an intimate friend of many of the most fastidious of mankind, and Lord Beaconsfield was in very early years a friend and pet of the highest families, and posed as an exclusive dandy of the first water. We have read somewhere that he obtained his idea of the old Catholic families, which comes out strongly in both "The Young Duke" and "Sybil," from an intimacy with a great Catholic family of the south ; the Foresters gave him his seat for Shrewsbury ; Lord John Manners was his diaciple even in salad days ; the Stanleys protected him warmly and strongly through all his earlier career. When he turned on Sir Robert Peel, he was accepted eagerly by the great Tory aristocrats; he was the chosen friend of Lord George Bentinck ; and in his later years, the prouder the House, the more submissively it bent before the Premier, who alone, it was thought, stood between the aristocracy and revolution. No man ever suffered less from his birth, which never excluded him from Parliament, or from great connections, or from his place in politics ; which did not interfere with a wealthy marriage, and, never stopped any human being from taking service under him. No doubt, he was constantly reminded of it; but that was because he was unintelligible with- out the explanation of race, as unintelligible as Ulysses would have been without the word "Greek," because many of his ideas arose from his origin, and because he himself incessantly and most honourably paraded it before the world. If he suffered from it at all, he had ample compensations. Throughout life he had the support of the only cosmopolitan clan, which is also the most influential in Europe. His early debts were paid. through assistance from a Jewish family; he was, as Minister, the cynosure of all Jew eyes; and his memory is at this moment belauded to the skies by the hundreds of Jewish journalists and newspaper proprietors, whose opinions are flashed by the agents of the Hebrew monopolist of telegraphs as those of the great communities of Europe. It is a great thing to be born an aristocrat, but it is a great thing also to be born in a clan so far persecuted that it is pleased with your social success, yet so far favoured that its approval involves most important assistance.
It is said that Benjamin Disraeli was poor, but he always had means for an election, the debts—about which his biographer, Mr. O'Connor, makes so much fuss, as if Charles Fox had never lived or Mirabeau never borrowed —never crippled him, and he was only thirty-five years old when a wealthy marriage terminated all pecuniary difficulties. So far from his early struggles having been unusually severe, we should say no man ever was more fortunately placed as to education, no man ever found more powerful, and, what is more to the purpose, more persistent patrons, and no men over had less popular obloquy on account of birth. Did his birth pre- vent his being a County Member for thirty years ? Com- pare his early education with Lord Campbell's—who, if all tales be true, had never heard of Shakespeare till he criticised a performance of Romeo and Juliet—or his patrons with Burke's, or his poverty with that through which Lord Clyde had to struggle on till the very evening of life. Why, he owed to his race, and his consciousness of it, half his power ; his entire detachment from English grooves of thought, his appreciation of Britain as an Asiatic Power, which was the only original note in his" Imperial" policy ; and his sense of absolute equality with the aristocrats, who regarded him as rather presuming, for a man of such antecedents, but whom he regarded as men just emerged from the tattooed stage of civilisa- tion. If he had been the regular squire's son, passing through
Eton and Oxford, married at twenty-five to a squiress, and at thirty-five " cousolled up to his lips, acred up to his chin," he would not have been half so successful as he was. The " struggling" lad was bred as only the children of affluent scholars can be, was the proteg6 of wealthy litt6rateurs, the pet of families with boroughs to give away, the favourite of a Tory Premier, the elected chief of a great aristocracy, and we are told that he was a marked example of a protracted struggle with "disadvantages " of birth ! Look at Thiess, the locksmith's son, and Gambetta, the clothseller's son, and Lincoln, the labourer, and compare the disadvantages and the achievement. The very time of Lord Beaconsfield's birth was an advantage, for he came to the full maturity of his powers just when the supersti- tion that Cabinets should be made up of noble cadets came to an end ; while as to his party, it is Tories, not Whigs, who feel in their very bones that genius is essential to them, and that they must look for it outside the ranks of the long-descended. They did not care if Robert Peel's father had worked at the loom, and would to-morrow be only too glad to find that the son of an eccentric Jew Missionary was equal to the task of leading them. It is a great advantage still in this co untry, though the ad- vantage is declining, to be born ono of the caste, because the fact stops depreciatory comment, and because " Society " is rather friendly than hostile ; but the disadvantage of birth is very slight,—not half so great as that of a poor presence, or a slight stutter, or a defect of vision, or a Christian name which recalls ridiculous recollections or provokes invidious compari- sons. Better by far be born Levi or labourer, than possess a squint, or be a little lame, or be called Alcibiades Tomkins.
We wonder if in this country this question of " advantages " will ever be decided the reverse way, if the time will over come when Lord Randolph de Vere, seeking a grand, political career, will make it his first object to be known only as " Dolf Veare." It seems a little improbable, for the caste has still a preference at the polls, but we are not so sure that it will not come with universal suffrage. The notion that the first requisite of a statesman is sympathy with the people shows signs of development, and when education has in- creased bitterness sufficiently, the correlative idea that only equals truly sympathise with each other may very quickly spread. It reigns in America already. The career of the Adams family in politics is blocked by their descent from Presidents, and the consequent fancy that they are aristocrats,' cold and proud. The story of the rail-splitting made Mr. Lincoln President, and every American politician who read how General Garfield had worked as a labourer and taught himself to write knew that a most formidable candidate had presented himself. No party in the Union would attempt to run " Dr. Fairfax," of Maryland, for high office, if he were ever so popular, knowing that the Peerage could be produced against him ; and in Australia, we see that candidates begin to plead bands "hardened with honest toil" as qualifications for election. In France, in his recent addresses, M. Gambetta makes much of being "sprung from the ranks of the people ;" and M. niers, who had in his great brain a curious strain of "pawkiness," said, "I am of the bourgeoisie," not without an eye to electoral effect. We note in " Debrett's House of Com- mons" that the number of Members who refuse to carry arms is rapidly increasing—the refusals, too, being occasionally not only voluntary,but absurd—and we can quote in the same pub- lication more than one biography contributed by its subject in which a false impression about class has been conveyed, with the view of seeming nearer the electors. We can conceive universal suffrage in England preferring Smith to Vero, and the Times of 1950 prefacing a biography of Ivo Percy with an elaborate dis- quisition on the disadvantages with which "a Premier born in Alnwick Castle, and educated amidst the enervating influences of luxury and the demoralising effects of social position, must have had to contend." That writer may be talking nonsense, but he will be nearer the truth than the man who says that Benjamin Disraeli was at all exceptionally overweighted in his struggle to be foremost among the first. M. Gambetta would accept all his " disadvantages " in exchange for a second eye, and be immensely benefited in the struggle by the change.
Previous page
