Disraeli and His Women Friends

WHEN Mr. Buckle was writing his Life of Disraeli he had access to the very curious letters which Disraeli wrote in his old age to his friends Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield, and which are printed fully for the first time with appropriate remarks in the two volumes before us. Mr. Buckle made an admirable choice of such among these letters as served his high purpose, and for the rest contented himself with discreet references to the nature of the correspondence. Nothing that he said could have prepared the reader for the strange and astonishing entertainment which he will find in Lord Zetland's volumes.

In the whole range of the private correspondence of states- men there cannot be anything quite so baffling as Disraeli's emotional letters to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield. Disraeli had known these admired daughters of Lord Forester when he was young, but their friendship did not ripen until Disraeli's wife died. Then began his strange correspondence and his meetings with them—particularly with Lady Bradford —which never flagged until his last illness prevented him from either keeping an appointment or writing a letter. Day after day he would snatch an opportunity, even if he went without food or left his place in Parliament or kept a Royal person waiting, to scribble a few lines to one or both. As the correspondence went on his language became more romantic—one might say more loverlike. Secrets of State were sent like bouquets to the sisters. The Duke of Richmond told Lord Cairns in 1876 that Lady Bradford seemed " to know everything down to the most minute details." Naturally ! " Odd," says Lord Zetland in his introduction, " how youthful were the emotions which burned within his worn and fragile frame, haunting his mind like grim spectres of that saddest of all worlds—rthe world of might have been ; chasing one, another in a wild and devastating dance across the echoing chamber of his heart."

How finally to solve the psychological problem of these letters is beyond us, but it is possible to piece together some sort of explanation from the letters themselves. Disraeli, although London society was at his command, was almost a lonely man. To him love, and it may be supposed friendship also, was an exclusive passion. He could not be half-hearted in either the one or the other. He was never truly com- fortable in what seemed to be his friendships with men, though there were A very few notable exceptions, as, for example, his friendship with Monty Corry, afterwards Lord Rowton. Perhaps he never shook off the memories of his younger days when he was derided by men as a political adventurer and when fashionable London looked askance at the over-dressed young man with the alien name. He confesses frankly that. he could not understand men and that he was at ease only in the company of women.

After all, as he was fond of saying, he owed everything in his life to ,a woman—Queen Victoria, whom he called the Faery. Politically that was the truth. But he was never slow to acknowledge—for he was the soul of loyalty in his marriage—that he owed everything in another category to his wife. She had brought him material comfort and unending sympathy and affectionate support. There is a legend that some unwise friend once hinted to Disraeli that his wife was an inadequate intellectual companion for him, whereupon Disraeli exclaimed, " I know what gratitude

means ! Disraeli's mourning for his Mary Anne was deep and apparently sincere. He was almost lost without her—and yet he- was able not many months after her death to begin writing these yearning and admiring letters to the sisters. Perhaps the oddest fact is that every letter was written upon paper with a broad border of black. Lady. Bradford once teased him about the incongruity, but he continued unabashed. The continuance must have seemed to her the more irrational because he had himself pointed out that Queen Victoria's mourning for Prince Albert had been persisted in to the point of morbidity.

Unquestionably he was attractive to women. But what woman would not be attracted, if only in the sense that she was flattered, by the ardent attentions of one of the greatest figures of his day ? There are signs that sometimes Lady Bradford was a little embarrassed by his pressing attentions to her in public and suitably rebuked him. For instance, Disraeli wrote to her :— " I observe that you have changed the tone of ' your letters as you threatened. I thought at the time it was only a bitter joke.... It is not strategy on my part to notice this, but I have never had any strategy with you, and if it be a satisfaction to you that at a moment when I have many cares and a horrible despondency you have added to my trouble and depression you really may triumph."

Her snubs plunged Disraeli into despair. He could not live without the sympathy and understanding of some -women, and particularly of this woman. In - some letters he would protest, but in others he would throw himself at her feet in abject apology. In the result he is forgiven and the correspondence is pursued.

What a curse it was, as he, in effect, exclaims again and again, that his heart remained young in his old body !

affairs had little' power to shake him greatly, though they might exhaust him, but affairS of the heart left him trembling like a leaf. It may, then,. be said with some safety that Disraeli faithfully lamented his Mary Anne to the end of his days, but that it was a 'need Of his nature to put in her place some woman who satisfied his fastidious taste. Ile must have played quite innocently in practice this fantastic game of ardently adoring Lady Bradford, for her husband was still alive, and he and Disraeli were always good friends. And it must be remembered that he was sixty-nine when he began writing his long' series of letters to the sisters: Lady Bradford was then little over fifty, but Lady Chesterfield, who was a widow, was a year or two older than- Disraeli himself. These statements lead us to the surprising fact that he 'proposed marriage to Lady Chesterfield, although his 'feelings for her were not so deep as for her younger sister, with whom marriage was, anyhow, out of the question. A reason has been suggested. He thought that thus he would obtain more frequent and less easily-questioned opportunities

for seeing Lady Bradford: -

The letters which are most important politically were rightly printed in Mr. Buckle's Life. It seems fairest to the character of Lord Zetland's volumes to quote letters which are about nothing important, but which are- fair samples of Disraeli's unwearying zest in jotting down any thoughts which were whirling in his brain: Thus :—

To " Lady Chesterfield, Hughenden Manor, -May 19th, 1875.

Dear Darling, I must write you a hurried line ; a poor return for your agree able letters.

I can give a good account of myself which I could not have done three days ago ; but my Medico came opportunely and did me a great deal of good ; so I walked to-day nearly three miles and returned without the least sense of fatigue. Half of this

would hive knocked me up when I arrived here. - • I am here like a man on a desert isle : Robinson Crusoe before he found ' Friday.' The sound of human voice is strange to me ; but I have plenty of public work and in the evening I read Gil Bias. What a book ! It is human 'nature itself. I read it when a boy for the adventures : now I read it after a large and varied experience of existence and relish every. line.

I go to town to-morrow where I shall not love you more than I do here.

Our last quotation shall be some revealing remarks of Disraeli. when he was provoked by the Spectator into giving his own opinion of his writings :— " However, I was amused by observing that my old and kind' friend the Spectator says. the praise of the Fortnightly .is unreasonable and excessive. What my works are I will not stop to consider. I will be content to remember what Mr: Beckford said of them— and the best were not then, perhaps, written—that at -any 'rate they are unlike anyone else's. I think I have some clear descriptive power which is not very common, and dramatic propriety which is rarer ; and, perhaps, they are a picture of an age when opinion4 on great subjects were shaken to the centre and the public mind, if not involved in anarchy, was at least in sight of it. All this too, I hope, ia a style which is not entirely void of grace and music."

It is inevitable that these letters should be read mainly as a puzzling study in friendship, but the reader will OW much else in them—lightning descriptions of men and affairs by a very brilliant man who was directing the storm as he wrote. In this sense they have historical importance.