REVIEWS

Christopher Hibbert. Disraeli: The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. pp. xii + 401. William Kuhn. The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli. London: Free Press, 2006. pp. xiv + 402.

Disraeli Again . . . and Again

Biographers are drawn to their subjects for a number of reasons. The most obvious is the subjects historical significance, but there are other reasons that are at least as important, if not more so, such as availability of information, the intrinsic dramatic shape and narratability of the subjects life its biographyfriendliness and the subjects retrospective celebrity status, which increases with the number of biographies written. People in the book business know that biographies sell. If I had to make a living as a free-lance historian, thats what Id write. And if I had to choose a subject, it would be Benjamin Disraeli, who must be second only to Winston Churchill among British prime ministers in the number of biographies written about him. Whereas Churchills life has all the above attributes, Disraelis is perhaps most deficient in historical significance. What he actually did in the course of his political career was arguably not all that important to the course of British history. What is perennially interesting about Disraeli is who he was. Disraeli was the archetypal Outsider who got Inside and made it to the Top. He was the novelist who became prime minister of the worlds most powerful nation. That in itself makes him a particularly appealing subject to professional writers: he was one of them. Viewed from the academic perspective, he has another peculiar advantage: he enjoys the attention of two disciplines history, and the much more populous English literature. At least ten biographies of Disraeli were written six of them while he was still alive, and only one by a historian (J.A. Froude)

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before the six-volume official biography by W.F. Monypenny and G. E. Buckle was completed in 1920. Notable subsequent biographies include Andr Maurois stylish best-seller, translated from the French in 1927, and Hesketh Pearsons highly readable 1951 work. With the publication of Robert Blakes Disraeli in 1967, professional historians entered the field. This outstanding biography was the first since Monypenny and Buckles to be based on deep research and full access to the Disraeli papers. Since Blake, a number of professional historians have taken up the challenge of writing his biography, among them R.W. Davis, Edgar Feuchtwanger, J. R. Vincent and Paul Smith. In addition to these are the fine recent biographies by Stanley Weintraub, Sarah Bradford and Jane Ridley. The work of Disraelis biographers has been greatly facilitated by the publication of the Benjamin Disraeli Letters by the Disraeli Project at Queens University. The remarkable scholarship and comprehensiveness of these volumes, which have now reached the late 1850s in Disraelis life, have almost certainly spurred the current boom in Disraeli studies. The two books under review are the latest additions to the pile. The prolific Christopher Hibbert is the doyen of British historical biographers and non-academic historians. He has done Queen Victoria, the Duke of Wellington and Charles Dickens, just to name some of his nineteenth century British lives. Now into his eighties, he remains a polished practitioner of the biographers art. The intelligent general reader wont be disappointed by this smoothly readable book. It is Hibberts second bite at this cherry, since in 1978 he published the extensively illustrated Disraeli and His World. Those with some prior knowledge of Disraeli wont find all that much new in it. Hibbert chooses to tell the story of Disraelis life, as much as possible, in Disraelis own words. It is a tempting strategy, since Disraeli was a vivid letterwriter. In his letters to his sister Sarah, to the Marchioness of Londonderry, Lady Bradford, Lady Chesterfield, Sarah Brydges Willyams, and, of course, Queen Victoria, he gave his correspondents entertaining vignettes of himself and the world in which he

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moved. Hibbert places his reader in the interesting position of these female recipients of Disraelis flagrantly self-aggrandizing gossip, but at the price of giving less attention to the details of the more remarkable story that has to be teased out of less colourful sources the story of how Disraeli tenaciously and resourcefully fought to the top of a party that found his leadership even less congenial than that of Sir Robert Peel, which Disraeli had first made his mark by destroying. Hibbert does provide the basic elements of this wellknown story. For an aspiring political leader, Disraeli began with unpromising cards: a middle-class literary background, a weak formal education, a poor head for business, and an overheated imagination. He seemed almost wilfully to multiply his disadvantages by dressing with over-the-top flamboyance, flaunting his Jewish ancestry, and falling deep into the clutches of money lenders. Despite lying to the electors about his finances, he managed to scramble into Parliament, where his status as an MP gave him immunity from arrest for debt. Here, his maiden speech was legendary for the hostility with which it was received. He lied to the House of Commons when he denied having asked Peel for office, gambling that the gentlemanly Peel wouldnt quote from a letter in which he had, in fact, asked. He brought Peel down for abandoning agricultural protection, and shortly after Peels death, abandoned agricultural protection himself. And throughout his seemingly all too resistible political rise, he lent additional hostages to fortune in the form of a succession of heavily autobiographical novels. Oh that my enemy would write a book, said Job. Disraeli certainly obliged his enemies. But he enjoyed the great luck that circumstances eventually left the Tory party with few alternatives to his unwelcome leadership. Though Hibbert provides these elements, he doesnt adequately convey the gritty political activity and high courage that enabled Disraeli to cash in his luck. In addition to his good eye for the juicy quotation from Disraelis letters, Hibbert also has a good eye for illuminating

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comments from Disraelis contemporaries. After hearing Disraeli constantly heap hyperbolic praise on his own speeches for the edification of his female correspondents, the sceptical reader is grateful when Hibbert finally quotes the diarist Charles Grevilles restrained but telling praise of a Disraeli speech. One of the things an effective biographer of Disraeli must do is to convey the peculiar ascendancy he eventually achieved in the unique political micro-climate of the House of Commons. Here too, Disraelis success was paradoxical. According to conventional wisdom, the most effective style for commanding the sympathies of that House was a bluff, manly style, not too fluent, ornate, or contrived. Not the first two, but the last three, adjectives applied to Disraelis style. There was something feline to it perhaps even feminine? Hibbert doesnt say that. But he does note Disraelis distaste for some of the conventionally manly activities of those he aspired to lead. As a young exquisite, he affected to be unable to throw a ball, and later, as a visitor to country houses, he didnt join the men in their shooting parties, which left him to the female company he so much enjoyed. Although he duly joined the Tory Carlton Club, taking advantage of it as a retreat from the jealous anger of his wife, and asking his sister to address her letters to him at the club when he was concerned that his wife was reading them, he called it a tombeau vivant. He similarly called the exclusive Grillions Club a bore, and told his sister, I hate men parties, except for eating. The House of Commons was famously called the best club in London, and Disraeli certainly enjoyed being in that all-male space, that theatre of power capturing attention while opponents spoke by his famous sphinx-like immobility, and, on one occasion, upstaging Gladstone in full oratorical flight by taking a piece of paper from his pocket, scrutinizing it intently, and then carefully tearing it to pieces. A curious member who picked up the pieces discovered that the paper was blank. But the House wasnt, for him, a place of male bonding, even with his own party, whose uneasy sense of his alienness

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he never bent over backward to assuage. To what extent might this alienness have extended to his sexuality? Hibbert addresses the question, but fleetingly. He notes the painter Benjamin Haydons suspicion that Disraelis odd manner betokened odd feelings, for which he ought to be kicked.(66) He briefly mentions Disraelis intense relationships with certain young men, particularly Lord Henry Lennox, an amusing, impetuous, rather frivolous and gossipy young man of no particular talent to whom he has become devoted.(206) On the nature of this relationship, he contents himself with quoting the views of Blake, of Weintraub, who considers it from the evidence [to have been] entirely unphysical if marginally homoerotic, and of Sarah Bradford, who ventures a bit further in remarking: The latent homosexual element in Disraelis friendship with younger men cannot be ignored in the case of Lennox, even if their relationship was almost certainly not physical.(207) Despite his books subtitle, The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister, Hibbert doesnt make any use of the extensive scholarship on dandyism, which has made a significant contribution to our understanding of Victorian masculinity. But he makes pinpricks in Disraelis cherished reputation as a man of taste: he notes that his country house, Hughenden, was tastelessly decorated and, quoting Blake, that his dinners were notoriously bad (though two hundred pages earlier Hibbert told us that guests considered them excellent). We learn that he was one of the first to give catered dinners, paying a guinea per guest. Despite voluminous quotation from Disraelis extensive correspondence with women, not least Queen Victoria, Hibbert makes virtually no attempt to analyze its psychological implications. Of his marriage to Mary Anne Lewis, he merely comments, he had always been attracted by older women.(133) Hibberts book is a skilfully assembled collage of quotations tied together by an economical commentary. It has a fine index, thanks to his wife. William Kuhn, by contrast, offers us a well researched and highly original portrait of Disraeli that

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doesnt pussyfoot around the question of his sexual orientation, but puts it front and centre. Kuhn makes it pretty clear that, in his judgement, Disraeli was what today we might call gay.(11) Such previous discussions of the matter as exist, including those noted above, tend to hide behind the absence of a smoking gun. Presumably, they need a letter from Disraeli to one of his lovers expressing passionate physical desire and confirming its consummation such a letter as is very unlikely to have survived, if it ever existed. Kuhn looks at the surviving evidence of Disraelis life, paying particularly close attention to Disraelis novels, which he sees as intentionally revealing documents about his inner nature. He brings to them an eye that is alert to the sorts of codification by which a homosexual sensibility might be signalled. Biographers who view homosexuality as derogatory might be understandably reluctant to attribute it to their subjects and might impose an excessively high standard of proof. In contrast, one who views it sympathetically might set the threshold too low. This seems not to be the case with Kuhn. Unlike Hibbert, he is familiar with the historiography of gender and masculinity, and uses it effectively to identify and situate Disraelis sexuality in the context of his times. He emphasizes the importance of Byrons influence for the young Disraeli. He comments on the ubiquity of homoerotic themes in his novels, which he doesnt simply dismiss as fantasies. He discusses his dandyism particularly in terms of his outrageous dress as a young man. Disraeli, in fact, went well beyond the classic dandyism of Brummell, which prescribed an elegantly economical and masculine style of dress, as Kuhn seems insufficiently to appreciate, though Disraelis friend Bulwer Lytton did, warning Disraeli about the risks of stylistic effeminacy to which they were both drawn. As he matured, Disraeli came to appreciate and practice the true dandyism of restraint, not just in dress (though the later Disraeli seems not to have dressed with notable taste), but in manner, and particularly speech. The difficulties of avoiding anachronism in the discus-

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sion of Victorian homosexuality are well known. Terms like manliness and effeminacy did heavy work then, from which they have now largely been retired (though some vulgar terms persist: Bulwers estranged wife venomously called Disraeli a Queer). Kuhn evidently wishes to remind his readers that male homosexuality is a variety of masculinity. He quotes an interesting passage from an 1829 article in which Disraeli speaks through a character who declares, some people think that a love for jewels indicates an effeminate mind. On the contrary, I am of the opinion that there is no taste more magnificent and more manly.(93) Kuhn suggests that Disraeli hated the dogged middle-class pragmatism, the insufficient appreciation of impractical style, that marked the ascendant ideology of the utilitarians. Disraeli wanted to highlight the importance for a man of a feminine variety of being, rather than incessant, mindless doing.(95) A cardinal attribute of masculinity has always been the siring of children, but Kuhn zealously defends Disraelis attraction to women beyond their child-bearing years, claiming that his relationships with women were one of the most untroubled parts of Disraelis biography, and one of the best features of his personality. That women responded to him as deeply and as warmly as they did is a tribute to the sort of man he was, and a truer test of his masculinity than the sidewind sneers of those who wished to attack him.(267) Kuhn has particularly interesting views on the topic of Disraelis relationship with Queen Victoria, whose needs he recognized and addressed, both out of personal sympathy and for political advantage. A central theme of this book is Disraelis Orientalism, which Kuhn effectively relates to both his sexuality and his Jewishness, and which he shows to have provided the basis for a particularly important bond between Disraeli and his Queen. Kuhns appreciation of Disraelis fascination with the grandeur and absurdity of the monarchy is captured in this quirkily astute comment: He was like an adolescent boy who discovers that a picture of a naked woman is good, but even better if the model is wearing silly white socks.(273)

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More effectively than does Hibbert, Kuhn relates character and politics. He suggests that, for Disraeli, recklessness was a principle of action. Financial recklessness may have nearly destroyed his political career, but political recklessness made it, as the destruction of Peel and the 1867 Reform Act demonstrated. There was also an element of recklessness in some of his friendships, with men perhaps even more than with women. A theme of Disraelis early novels was his desire for masculine friendship. Such friendships played an important role in his career, and must have been all the more important for the intense hostility with which he had to contend, even in his own party and even after his first prime ministership. Friendship played a significant role in the Young England group which gave Disraeli his first taste of the thrill of attracting disciples and deliciously posh young men they were. (Mary Millar of Queens University has just published an excellent biography of one of them, the even more reckless George Smythe.) Many of Disraelis political friends proved to be political liabilities, and his continuing loyalty to them testifies to their importance for him. Kuhn gives particular attention to the most notorious of these, Lord Henry Lennox, going deeper than any previous biographer in examining their controversial relationship. He notes their language of strong affection, one letter from Disraeli closing with I am so tired that I can only tell you that I love you.(251) Concerning the absence of surviving evidence that their relationship ever had a sexual dimension, Kuhn cautions readers from assuming that physical sex is a necessary or distinguishing feature of homosexual relationships. He tends to downplay the sexual aspect of Disraelis relationships with women, to which Hibbert gives greater attention. Thus Hibbert suggests that sexual frustration related to Sarah Austens elaborate teasing game may have contributed to Disraelis nervous breakdown, while Kuhn suggests it was he who was playing with

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her. Nor does Kuhn comment on Disraelis rumoured children, Ralph Nevill and Catherine Donovan, to whom Hibbert, following Stanley Weintraub, gives some attention, though without committing himself. The evidence of Disraelis fatherhood is certainly much weaker than of his homosexuality, though, of course, the two neednt be mutually exclusive. A number of Victorian men were both homosexual and married with children, the best known being John Addington Symonds. Kuhn makes good on the title of his biography by emphasizing Disraelis capacity for pleasure in many forms, risk-taking not least. Dealing with Queen Victoria was a chore for Gladstone, but Disraeli made it an entertainment both parties enjoyed. Writing was another pleasure, writing letters to women, and, of course, writing novels. Neither biographer reports Disraelis celebrated mot: When I want to read a novel, I write one, but Kuhn notes that his last novel Endymion, which he sprang upon a surprised world only a few months after the end of his last prime ministership and for which he received the pleasant, in fact record-breaking, advance of ten thousand pounds is particularly concerned with pleasure. He quotes the Archbishop of Canterburys private reaction to it: I have finished Endymion with the painful feeling that the writer considers all political life as mere play and gambling.(336) The pleasures of power included patronage, especially helping friends, though Kuhn notes that his appalled cabinet thwarted Disraelis attempt to give Lennox a juicy job. However, he managed to persuade the Queen to confer an unprecedented, though not perhaps undeserved, peerage on his private secretary and close friend, Monty Corry. Summing up Disraelis political achievement, Kuhn offers this interesting judgement: His politics were always more frankly selfish than Gladstones, and though his honesty is appealing, there is nothing particularly admirable about them. (322) But he also sees the politics of

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pleasure as Disraelis most important political legacy to his party, and through it, his country, a lasting reminder that, as Michael Oakeshott put it, To be conservative, then, is to prefer . . . present laughter to utopian bliss.

Christopher Kent
University of Saskatchewan
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