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Lord George Bentinck is an account of Disraeli's relation with his
parliamentary colleague and friend. It is not simply an account of
the battle over the Corn Laws with Sir Robert Peel, but a most
remarkable book, extremely readable, and full of often quoted and
apt comments and descriptions. As a vivid story of one of the great
parliamentary dramas in British history it is unsurpassed. The
portraits of both Bentinck and Peel are both sympathetic and just.
The book provides insight into mid-nineteenth century parliamentary
life that remains unsurpassed. It is hard to overstate the
bitterness and fury which Peel's decision to repeal the Corn Laws
had provoked in British politics. One biographer of Disraeli,
Robert Blake, spoke of "Home Rule in 1886 and Munich in 1938 as the
nearest parallels". Friendships were sundered, families divided,
and the feuds of politics carried into private life to a degree
quite unusual in British history. Those who are interested in the
details of parliamentary warfare which raged until Peel's fall from
power should consult Lord George Bentinck. But the worth of this
book goes beyond constitutional history or even the Irish food
famine. Disraeli helps explain the intellectual and ideological
grounds of the Young England Movement: a conservative force that
aimed at a union of discontented industrial workers with
aristocratic landowners and against factious Whigs, selfish factory
owners and dissenting shopkeepers. In forging such a policy of
principle, the Conservatives, as Disraeli's book well demonstrates,
became a minority party but one which carried the full weight of
moral politics.
The wit and wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, British statesman and
twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom - with a new foreword by
Lord Lexden. Disraeli was one of the least orthodox of Prime
Ministers. He was an adventurer who fought his way to 'the top of
the greasy pole' in a blaze of controversy, and became Queen
Victoria's favourite statesman. He was a novelist and a wit as well
as politician. He was a brilliant orator. Like Byron he was both a
romantic and a cynic. His aphorisms have become part of the
discourse of political life. This collection is based on his
novels, letters and speeches. He was never dull, but he was
fundamentally serious behind the firework display, and he had a
lasting influence on the course of party history. Seen by some of
the founder of 'one-nation' conservatism, Disraeli is today one of
the most co-opted political figures of history. For those seeking
clarity on Disraeli's views, this collection will confound and
surprise.
The private letters of a statesman are always inviting material for
historians and when he has claim to literary fame as well the
correspondence assumes a double significance. Benjamin Disraeli
(1804-1881) belonged to an age that gave pride of place to the
written word as an instrument of both business and pleasure. This
volume includes 363 letters (many previously unpublished) from his
school boy days to his establishment in the Tory camp under the
patronage of Lord Lyndhurst. Most prominent are Disraeli's letters
to his sister, Sarah, with whom he corresponded frequently over
several decades. To her he confided his hopes, interspersed with
his observations and descriptions of social, literary and political
events. The letters to Sarah supply a skeleton around which
Disraeli's young manhood can be reconstructed and shed valuable
light on the remaining documents in the volume. The correspondence
also includes accounts of his tour of the Low Countries and the
Rhine in 1824, his adventurous trip to Spain, Greece, the Near East
and Egypt in 1830, his tense negotiations with publishers and his
campaign to shine as a member of aristocratic society and win
political patronage. The letters demonstrate the fine eye for
detail and the capacity for self-dramatization and literary
conceits which mark his novels. With their annotations they also
provide a remarkably detailed account of life in the upper reaches
of English society as viewed from below, and of Disraeli's
ambitions to enter that life.
The 334 letters in this volume cover the period from Disraeli's
establishment in the Tory camp under the patronage of Lord
Lyndhurst to his election to parliament in 1837. The most important
issue to which they speak is the course of Disraeli's political
ambitions. In 1835 the road to parliament was not yet clear, for he
continued to be haunted by troubles from his past. He was beset by
charges of opportunism in his Taunton campaign of 1835, and the
longest letters here are those to Edwards Beadon written in
justification of past conduct; Disraeli had still to learn the
truth of his later dictum, 'never explain.' Also, debts contracted
many years before continued to plague him, as they would in years
to come. He was tempted by a variety of money-making schemes and
the later correspondence makes clear just how close he came to
permanent ruin at the hands of his creditors in the spring of 1837.
Had the fate of debtors' prison materialized it is doubtful that he
would ever have been eligible, in law or in reputation, for a
parliamentary career. Disraeli's eventual election for Maidstone in
the summer of 1837 marked the emergence of his formal public role.
Because he set out early and was a long time in attaining his
goals, one is tempted to laud his patience. But the record here
suggests that it was instead a matter of energy and endurance. This
volume of the Letters brings Disraeli to the threshold of the
Victorian era and the beginning of his career as a politician. In
late 1837 he failed in his maiden speech, but all major successes
lay ahead.
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Benjamin Disraeli
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