Disraeli's Disciple: The Scandalous Life of George Smythe [1 ed.] 9781442673977, 9780802090928

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DISRAELI'S DISCIPLE: THE SCANDALOUS LIFE OF GEORGE SMYTHE

George Smythe about 1847, by Richard Buckner. (National Trust, Hugheiiden Manor)

MARYS. MILLAR

Disraeli's Disciple: The Scandalous Life of George Smythe

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2006 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN-13: 978-08020-9092-8 ISBN-10: 0-8020-9092-3

? Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Millar, Mary S., 1939Disraeli's disciple : the scandalous life of George Smythe / Mary S. Millar. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8020-9092-8 ISBN-10: 0-8020-9092-3 1. Strangford, George Augustus Frederick Percy Sydney Smythe, Viscount, 1818-1857. 2. Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, 1804–1881 Friends and associates. 3. Young England movement. 4. Politicians — England - Biography. 5. Nobility - England - Biography. I. Title. DA565.S865M54 2006

941.081'092

C2005-907221-0

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Chronology 1818-75 xi Abbreviations xiii Prologue: The Wild Ass's Skin 3 1 A Splendid Failure? 5 2 1400–1817: The Strangford Inheritance 14 3 1818–26: Cradled in Commotions 21 4 1826–35: George Smythe's Schooldays 32 5 1836–7: Herstmonceux and Cambridge 50 6 1837-8: Faber 63 7 1838–9: Pearls and Swine 76 8 1840: Lady Tankerville 88 9 1841: Heaven-Born Statesman or Devil-Born Orator 105 10 1841:I Am a Very Zero 118 11 1842: Young England 135 12 1843: Worrying Peel – and Reading Casanova 149 13 1844: Coningsby and Historic Fancies 166 14 1844: The Pursuit of Psyche 181

vi Contents 15 1845: The Double Game 195 16 1846: Falling Upstairs - and Down 206 17 1847: With a Tongue and a Pen of His Own 220 18 1848–9: Very Like Assassination 231 19 1850-2: Diplomatic Moves 244 20 1852: Something about the Duke 256 21 1853-5: The Stage-Box of My Soul 268 22 1856-7: Bed-Ridden Lovelace 284 Afterwards 297 Notes 305 Bibliography 345 Index 357 Illustrations follow page 192

Acknowledgments

Every effort has been made to trace owners of copyright material used, and I apologize for any that I have not found. For permission to publish passages from family papers and archival holdings, I am grateful to: James Russell of Aden; Mrs Anthea Cammell; the late Viscount Whitelaw; A. Stirling of Keir; the Trustees of the Broadlands Archive Trust; the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Master and Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge; the Belvoir Estate; University of Durham; Strathclyde Regional Archives; The Huntington Library; Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library, Duke University; Londonderry Estate Archives, Durham Record Office; The Provost and Fellows of Eton College; The Bodleian Library; Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone; the British Library; Wellington Papers, Her Majesty's Stationery Office and University of Southampton; Patricia Aske and the Trustees of the Cambridge Union Society; The Duke of Northumberland and Trustees of the Northumberland Estate; Viscount Esher, Watlington Park; Rare Book and Special Collections Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; The Board of Trustees of the Chevening Estate; Julia Walworth, Mierton College, Oxford; James Rothwell and staff, National Trust, Dunham Massey Hall, Cheshire. Some passages appeared earlier in the introductions and notes to the Benjamin Disraeli Letters, volumes III–VII (University of Toronto Press, 1987-2004). An outline appears in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). Sections of chapter 18 appear in different form in Victorian Periodicals Review (Fall 2003). I am most grateful to M.G. Wiebe, superlative Editor of the Disraeli Letters Project at Queen's University, who gave me not only unlimited access to the Project's holdings but the benefit of his expertise and fund

viii

Acknowledgments

of knowledge on Disraeli and the Victorians. He also read the entire manuscript at various stages with many valuable suggestions. I owe a great debt to Susan Dick, friend, scholar, and discriminating critic, who read numerous early drafts over the years, as well as the final version, and without whose unfailing encouragement I might well have abandoned it. Catherine R. Harland's advice and enthusiasm at an early stage were also invaluable. Ellen Hawman, at the Disraeli Project, found information for me and enabled me to follow up leads to sources. To the descendants of George Smythe's sister Philippa Baillie – James Russell, CBE, Mrs Anthea Cammell, and the late Viscount Whitelaw – my thanks for interest and help. In addition to those named in notes to the text, I thank: Derrick Baxby, University of Liverpool; Peter Beal, Sotheby's; Heather and David Bonham, Kingston; Claire Baxter, the Northumberland Estate; Dr Brosius, Nederschäsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover; Annette Burton, Northumberland CRO; Charles Casimiro, Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site; Paul Chamberlain; Diana Chardin, Trinity College Library, Cambridge; Pamela Clarke, Royal Archives, Windsor; Brenda Cluer, Grampian Regional Council; J.M. Cook, Librarian, Tonbridge School; Belinda Cousens, Mercia Regional Office, The National Trust; David Cousens, Canterbury Public Library; Penny Dearsley, National Portrait Gallery Archives; Claudia Dovman, Historic Hudson Valley, Tarrytown; Eileen and John Elce, Glanvilles Wootton; Joseph Fewster, Durham University Library; Maurice Fleming, The Scots Magazine; Mark Fleming, Queen's University; Amanda Foreman; Lady Antonia Fraser; Stephen Freeth, Guildhall Library; Donald Gibson, Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone; Jennifer Gill, Durham CRO; Penny Hatfield, Eton College Library; Edna Healey; John Hodgson, John Rylands Library; A.M. Jackson, Strathclyde Archives; C.C.Johnston, National Archives of Scotland; Jean M. Keay, Stirling University Library; Jill Kelsey, Royal Archives, Windsor; Heather Langlotz; Iain Mclver, National Library of Scotland; Janie C. Morris, Duke University Library; Irene O'Brien, Mitchell Library, Glasgow; Alison Pearn, St John's College Library, Cambridge; Paul Pollak, King's School, Canterbury; Mary Robertson, Huntington Library; Nicholas Rogers, Cambridge Union Society; Barbara Roth, Archives d'Etat, Geneva; Colin Shrimpton, Archivist, Alnwick Castle; Michael Smith, Rottingdean Preservation Society; Sheila M. Smith; A.H. Stirling

Acknowledgments

ix

of Keir; A.C. Thompson, Agent, Belvoir Estate; Luc Wauters, Queen's University. Special thanks to my editors at University of Toronto Press, Jill McConkey, Barbara Porter, and Judith Williams, who imposed muchneeded order on my original MS. Most of all, my warmest gratitude to my children, Ann and Keith Millar, for unfailing support, help, and interest, and to my husband, Ken Millar, who has lived in menage a trois with George Smythe far longer than we could originally have imagined.

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Chronology 1818-75

1818 1821-6 1826 1828 1830-5 1832-3 1834 1835

George Augustus Frederick Percy Sydney Smythe born at Stockholm In Constantinople during Greek revolt; St Petersburg during Decembrist revolt Mother dies of tuberculosis; George starts at Tonbridge school Leaves Tonbridge; goes to Dr Hooker at Rottingdean Eton: riots, near expulsion; hears Reform Bill debates Poems published in Literary Souvenir, meets Disraeli? Brother Lionel dies of tuberculosis Eton: Debating Society maiden speech, Montem, Address to King

1836

Herstmonceux; St John's, Cambridge; Quarterly article; first Union speech

1837 1838

Meets Frederick Faber in Lake District Passionate relationship with Faber; starts Young England; royalist speech at Canterbury; Union speech on 1688 revolution Quarterly article; Cambridge Union dispute; near expulsion Affair with Lady Tankerville; BA; votes for Lyndhurst in Cambridge Election Elected at Canterbury; maiden speech; tour to Midlands and Ireland Supports Peel on free trade, income tax; in Paris, organizes Young England as parliamentary group; meets Balzac; Quarterly article Attacks Peel on Ireland; at Deepdene inspires Disraeli to write

1839 1840-3 1841 1842

1843

xii Chronology Coningsby; affairs with Eugenie Mayer, Mlle Stackelberg; Quarterly article 1844 New Monthly satires; challenges Roebuck; hero of Coningsby; Historic Fancies; pursues Angela Burdett Coutts; Manchester Athenaeum speech 1845 Speeches on Ireland, Corn Laws, break with Young England; gonorrhea; Oxford and Cambridge article; Geneva, disastrous love affair in Paris; Venice 1846 Under-secretary for foreign affairs; Lady Dorothy Walpole scandal 1847 Affair with equestrienne Catherine Cocks; villain of Tancred; re-elected for Canterbury 1848 Joins Morning Chronicle; covers Paris revolution; writes on politics, France, Disraeli; attacked in Morning Post 1849 Attacks Milnes in Chronicle; challenged to duel 1850 Poor health; visits Charlotte Bronte; scouts Aberdeen for Disraeli; friendship with Metternich 1851 Germany, Vienna; friendship with Schwartzenberg; last speech in Commons 1852 Plots with Disraeli in Canterbury election; duel with Romilly; satires against Disraeli; supplies material for Wellington eulogy; Disraeli attacked for plagiarism, resigns; sister Ellen dies of tuberculosis 1853 Not in Aberdeen government; Press articles; Canterbury Inquiry; poor health; resents Disraeli's relationship with Henry Lennox 1854 Defends Disraeli in Press; visits Faber; sister Philippa dies; withdraws Canterbury 1855 Researches Disraeli's speeches; calls off elopement with Charlotte Capel; becomes 7th Viscount Strangford; poor health; writes for Saturday Review 1856 Health deteriorates; in Egypt, affair with Margaret Lennox 1857 Marries Margaret; dies at Bradgate of tuberculosis 1861 Margaret remarries 1873-5 Emily Strangford (sister-in-law) edits, publishes GSS's Angela Pisani; renewed scandal

Abbreviations

Addington Alnwick AP Aspinall, George III Bel BIFR

Bindoff Bourne BL Blake BLC BLG Broadlands Canning

Chandos Cherwell Ca

Cradock

Faber: Poet and Priest, ed. Raleigh Addington Northumberland Papers, Alnwick Castle George Smythe, Angela, Pisani The Later Correspondence of George III, ed. Arthur Aspinall Rutland Papers, Belvoir Castle Burke's Irish Family Records, ed. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd Stanley T. Bindoff, British Diplomatic Representatives 1789–1852 H.R. Fox Bourne, English Newspapers: Chapters in the History of Journalism British Library Robert Blake, Disraeli British Library Catalogue John Burke, Burke's Landed Gentry Broadlands Papers, University of Southampton George Canning and His Friends, ed. Joscelin Bagot Jonathan Chandos, Boys Together: English Public Schools 1800-1864 Frederick Faber, The Cherwell Water Lily and Other Poems G.E. Cokayne, Complete Peerage of... the United Kingdom, ed. Vicary Gibbs Percy Cradock, Recollections of the Cambridge Union 1815-1939

xiv

Abbreviations

Thomas Creevey, The Creevey Papers, ed. Sir Herbert Maxwell The Croker Papers, ed. Louis B.Jennings Croker Allan Cunningham, Anglo-Ottoman Encounters Cunningham in the Age of Revolution, ed. Edward Ingram The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Madeline Dickens Letters House, Graham Storey, et al. [Charlotte A.A.] Disbrowe, Old Days in Disbrowe Diplomacy Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby, Disraeli, Disraeli, Derby Derby and the Conservative Party, ed. John Vincent Benjamin Disraeli Letters, ed. M.G. Wiebe, Mary DL S. Millar, et al. Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sir Leslie DNB Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee Percy Strangford Papers, Duke University Duke Londonderry Estate Archives D/Lo/Cl00, Dur Durham County Record Office Edinburgh Review ER Foreign Office Papers, UK National Archives, FO Kew Edward Barrington de Fonblanque, Lives of the Fonblanque Lords Strangford Thomas V. Sadleir, 'The Burkes of Marble Hill' Galway The Gladstone Diaries, ed. M.R.D. Foot and Gladstone Diaries H.C.G. Matthew Gregory, Autobiography Sir William Gregory: An Autobiography, ed. Lady Gregory Charles Greville, The Greville Memoirs, ed. Greville Lytton Strachey and Roger Fulford George Augustus Frederick Percy Sydney GSS Smythe, 7th Viscount Strangford Hughenden Papers, Bodleian Library H Mary Anne Disraeli's Account Books, H WMA H Accounts 4498 Hanover Letters of the King of Hanover to Viscount Strangford, ed. Charles Whibley George Smythe, Historic Fancies HF Illinois Bentley Papers RBU1, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana Creevey

Abbreviations

JHC Lady Lyttelton LJMJ Lodge Longford Malmesbury

M and B M. Brown MacAndrew MC McCalmont Moore Morley Morrow

MP New DNB

NMM NUC Orateurs

OR

Reid, Milnes Report Romilly Russell

xv

Journal of the House of Commons Correspondence of ... Lady Lyttelton 1787-1870, ed. Hon. Mrs Hugh Wyndham Lord John Manners, Journal, MS, Belvoir Castle Edmund Lodge, Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire Elizabeth Longford, Wellington: Pillar of State 3rd Earl of Malmesbury, Memoirs of an ExMinister: An Autobiography W.F. Monypenny and G.E. Buckle, Life of Benjamin Disraeli Journal of Margaretta Brown, MS, Eton College Donald MacAndrew, 'Equestrienne' Morning Chronicle McCalmont's Parliamentary Poll-Book 1832-1918, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton The Journal of Thomas Moore, ed. Wilfred S. Dowden John Morley, Life of William Ewart Gladstone Young England: The New Generation: A Selection of Primary Texts, ed. John Morrow Morning Post Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Colin Matthew and Brian Harrison New Monthly Magazine National Union Catalogue of the Library of Congress [George Smythe], review of Etudes sur les Orateurs, Oxford and Cambridge Review Quarterly Review T. Wemyss Reid, The Life, Letters and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes Report of Royal Commission of Inquiry into Corrupt Practices in the City of Canterbury Joseph Romilly, Romilly's Cambridge Diary 183242, ed. J.P.T.Bury Philippa (Mrs Frank) Russell, Fragments of Auld Lang Syne

xvi

Abbreviations

Searby Stanhope Stirling-Maxwell Strathclyde Temperley Teffeteller Venn Vincent, Selection Wellesley Index Wellington Whibley

Peter Searby, A History of the University of Cambridge: III 1750–31850 Stanhope Papers, Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone Stirling-Maxwell Papers, Mitchell Library, Glasgow Strathclyde Archives, Mitchell Library, Glasgow Harold Temperley, England and the Near East Gordon L. Teffeteller, 'England and Brazil: Strangford and Joao VI' Alumni Cantabrigienses, ed. John Venn and John Archibald Venn A Selection from the Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, ed. John Vincent The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, ed. Walter E. Houghton et al. Wellington Papers, University of Southampton Charles Whibley, Lord John Manners and His Friends

DISRAELI'S DISCIPLE

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Prologue: The Wild Ass's Skin

'Yes, yes indeed! Excess! I want to live to excess!' the stranger cried as he grasped the skin. Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

On 9 November 1857, at Bradgate Park, Leicestershire, an emaciated young man was helped from the bed where he had lain for the last week and, although it was a Monday, went to church. He still had his startling blue eyes, but his good looks were gone and both face and body were wasted away to the bones. George Smythe, 7th Viscount Strangford, was thirty-nine, he was dying of consumption, and he was about to get married. He had known since he was eight years old what his end would be. He had even forecast approximately when - quoting Napoleon's words (in quite another context) to Josephine: 'Quarante ans sont quarante ans.' Because of that, he had lived each day quite literally as though it were his last, taking as his text Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin, in which a young man's life is tied to a steadily shrinking piece of donkey hide. In his brilliant youth, and in his recent years of disability, he had packed as much as he could into frantic excess, keeping only one jump ahead of his illness. His last two weeks were no exception. Bradgate was the house of a former mistress, now wife of one of his best friends, both of them as far outside the pale of decent Victorian society as he had by this time put himself. That day, in the local church at Ratby, almost too weak to write his name, he married his current mistress, leaving his last surviving sibling to read the notice in The Times as he hurried back from Turkey. In the evening, his valet exchanged insults and then fisticuffs with the house servants over the reputations of bridegroom, bride, and hostess.

4

Disraeli's Disciple

By the next week, he was too weak to move. On Friday the 20th, he dictated a will for his scanty estate, which left personal mementos to former mistresses, settlement of tradesmen's debts, a legacy to the Grand Duke of Modena as the last representative of the House of Stuart, and nothing at all to his wife. On Sunday the 22nd, he asked her to read one of the passionate poems written to him twenty years before by a man who was then a priest in training but was now a pillar of the Catholic Church in England. On Monday the 23rd, a fine day with a brisk wind and a falling barometer, he died, the magical donkey hide at last used up. Although he had specifically requested burial among his Kent ancestors at Ashford, with a plain gravestone, his wife and his brother had him interred in the fashionable Kensal Green cemetery in London, under an elaborate Gothic structure decorated with sorrowing angels.

1 A Splendid Failure?

'Coningsby' was published in June last; Smythe as hero LJMJ 7 May 1845

One of the most intriguing relationships in Victorian history is that between George Smythe, aristocrat, iconoclast, and riveting speaker, and Benjamin Disraeli, Jewish outsider, novelist, and future prime minister. A complex and often hidden one, it is central to Disraeli's rise to political power in the 1840s and 1850s, and yet, because the sources which allow examination of it have been so scattered, it has remained unplumbed beyond a few over-familiar paragraphs in biographies of Disraeli. In an intimacy that lasted nearly twenty years, surviving betrayals, insults, and estrangements before Smythe's early death in 1857, the chemistry between them was immediate, intense, and permanent. Smythe founded Young England, the political group with which Disraeli allied himself in the 1840s in order to attack the Conservative leader, Sir Robert Peel. At one point, in anonymous newspaper articles, Smythe boosted Disraeli's bid to become leader of the party; at another, he was instrumental in damaging his career, and yet they remained intimate friends who shared each other's secrets. Each had an unshakeable hold on the other's imagination; they brought out the best and the worst in one another, and at crucial stages of their lives in those twenty years each had a significant effect on the other. To the end, Disraeli was Smythe's leader, his 'Cid & Captain'; Smythe was Disraeli's disciple, his inspiration and his muse. What if, around 1837 or 1838, Percy Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford, had not introduced George, his precocious son and heir, to his amusing friend Disraeli? He might well not have done so. He was a possessive

6 Disraeli's Disciple

man, unwilling to share his influence over his son; furthermore, he was preparing George's future by throwing him in with an entrenched political establishment far removed from Disraeli's reputation at the time as an adventurer and turncoat. In this second year of Victoria's reign, both George and Disraeli were bent on political careers - George at his ambitious father's orders, Disraeli relentlessly following his destiny even after four previous election failures - but neither had yet made an impression on British governing circles characterized more by distrust of newcomers and fresh ideas than by willingness to adapt to the new era ostensibly ushered in by the 1832 Reform Act. George at twenty had not fully embarked on his parallel paths of social reform and serial seduction. He was at Cambridge, acting the enfant terrible part in which he had cast himself at ten, alternately flattering and shocking the authorities, brilliantly provocative in Union debates but consistently disappointing the forecasts of academic glory with which he had gone up. Disraeli at thirty-four was an MP as new to the job as the young Queen to her throne. He had been elected at Maidstone the previous summer thanks to his growing intimacy with the sitting member's wife, Mary Anne Lewis. In London society he was notorious rather than respectable, author of seven silver-fork novels, a dandy and a debt-ridden philanderer who had shared his previous mistress, a baronet's wife, with the former lord chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst. Politicians knew him primarily as a theorist, irrepressible writer of political letters, satires, and a Vindication of the Constitution that got Peel's attention. In practical terms he was distinguished only for an embarrassing debacle in his maiden speech and a spirited prediction that the time would come when Parliament would hear him. Well out of his own political discipleship as Lyndhurst's private secretary, he intended to make an independent name for himself, but had not yet settled on a definite platform and was casting about for sympathizers who would identify with his own inclination for social changes more hard-hitting than Peel's caution seemed likely to allow. There was no immediate reason for him and George to join political forces. Indeed, they did not until more than three years later, although in that time their personal relationship flourished. By mid-1839, they were on Christian name terms; by the end of 1840 they were dining regularly together. If Disraeli had a focus, it was on social causes like abuses of the New Poor Law or Chartist rights. George and his close friend Lord John Manners were contemplating the idealistic principles of what later became Young England, based on a return to values of the

A Splendid Failure? 7

past and adherence to High Anglicanism. George was preparing to contest the key constituency of Canterbury by appealing to its voters' royalist sympathies. Even by the time George was elected in January 1841, Disraeli held aloof, refusing to campaign with Young England. It was not until after Peel's return to power in the general election of July 1841 that he took the opportunity to join the coterie of young up-andcoming MPs and began the association that brought him to political prominence in the 1840s. Here again there might have been a very different scenario. George was then leader of the group, and his determination to attack Peel over free trade and minority rights fitted Disraeli's own approach. Had Disraeli, however, first encountered either of the other principal Young Englanders, John Manners or Alexander Cochrane, his acceptance into the group would not have been so ready. Both were uneasy with the anti-Peel stance, sceptical of Disraeli and his motives, and initially hesitant to trust him, politically or personally. For George's part, though he was easily the best Young England speaker, he lacked confidence in his ability to lead a political group. Prior to his election, his every move had been overseen by his domineering father and Tory backroom strategists. Without Disraeli, he would have remained a backbencher longer, distinguished for Quixotic causes like the succession to the Spanish throne or unpopular ones like Catholic rights in Ireland. When he ceded group leadership to Disraeli, he found a new mentor - older, clever, stylish, Byronically cynical - to replace his father and remove the constraints that chafed him. Together they turned Young England from an earnest trio of imprecise idealists into a political splinter group, a new generation expressing their disillusion with the old leaders and resolving to reshape the Conservative party. Their manifesto appeared in 1844 in the form of Disraeli's best-selling novel Coningsby. Without George, however, there would have been no Coningsby, the first political novel, the work that decisively marked Disraeli's break with Peel and got him the attention of both the political and literary worlds. As Young England leader Disraeli would certainly have written something to lash at the failings in British politics, but it would more likely have been another open letter or treatise. It was George who prevailed on him to write a polemical work of fiction, specifically on the Swiftian model of satirical roman a clef. It was George who served as heroic model and provided factual details from his own life for the hero's biography. Not least, the author's deep attachment to his model gave the novel the romantic charge that got it read by people who did

8 Disraeli's Disciple

not normally read political manifestos. Conversely, in the later Tancred, it was Disraeli's outrage at the real-life George that brought that novel to life with the scathing portrayal of the scheming Arab sheik Fakredeen. Coningsby was the high point of their relationship, Tancred the nadir. Disraeli would go on from strength to strength; George, at least in worldly terms, would not. But what sort of man created such a hold on Disraeli? George Smythe's life was as full of paradox as his death. His most serious mistake was to outlive his brilliant youth. He had the other credentials for a romantic hero: sensual good looks, impossibly high ideals, and an abundance of passion. In his childhood he was, as he put it, 'cradled in commotions' in post-Napoleonic Europe.1 He thrived on flouting convention. His love affairs were innumerable, turbulent, and scandalous. He fought duels, or at least issued challenges to them. He was an inspired speaker, whose wit and passion drew applause from unsophisticated audiences and respect from his peers. He was a polished writer, displaying deep feeling in his poems and political acumen in his prose. But he did not die young enough, or dramatically enough, to keep the public sympathy of his times. Like Keats he died the most romantic death of all - of consumption - but it took most of his life, too long to be considered romantic. He knew it. Two short years after Coningsby, he wrote to Manners: 'I never shall know half as much, feel half so well, be capable of such great actions as I was at twenty.'2 If he had died like Arthur Hallam at twentytwo, his posthumous reputation would have been brighter. In some ways, Disraeli's portrait of him in Coningsby became an In Memoriam for what he then was, an idolized young man whose characteristic was his potential, who could inspire those around him with his own fire, and who planned huge social and political reforms. George Smythe's tragedy was not to die like Hallam with his potential intact, but to live on with it unrealized. When he was twenty-six, he was a hero. At twenty-eight he was shunned as a villain, and by the time he died he was an embarrassment. His story is that of a man rigorously groomed for political success, who briefly attained it and then rejected it. Politics forgot him; betrayals and temper alienated former friends; the idealistic Coningsby became the conniving Fakredeen. The obligatory obituaries were distant, grudging, and disapproving. 'Alas!' said his brother-in-law; 'what a sad life and waste of great abilities, which if well managed might have done anything.'3 George Smythe's secret was his immense charm. It captivated both men and women, but he had another side - incurable romantic and

A Splendid Failure? 9

compulsive Don Juan, lofty idealist and two-faced opportunist. As it happens, his two surviving likenesses embody these contradictions. In the first, around 1837, he is a mild Victorian undergraduate, goodlooking but bland and priggish as the fictional Coningsby - brushed, shaved, and stiff-collared to the chin as he tries to convince himself of the importance of being earnest. In hindsight, the most interesting thing about it is the position; like his politics, his body angles to his right, but the eyes gaze off to his left. The second portrait, ten years on, has a glowing presence lacking in the first. The earlier image is reversed. In soft collar and stock, he inclines on one negligent elbow to his left while his head turns sharply to his right. One hand rests on a weighty tome, the other behind the head, but the profile belies the statesmanlike prop and attitude. It has become Byronic, romantic, from its golden background to the dark lock of hair tumbling over the pale brow.4 He once forecast that he would be remembered as a mere footnote to history. 'Were I to die to morrow,' he said at twenty-eight, T should occupy three lines in a biographical dictionary as a '"might have been."'5 In the summer of 1844, however, when he was twenty-six, everybody knew who he was. He had already made his mark in the House of Commons with speeches inclined to tilt at windmills but always fiery and knowledgeable. He had challenged a senior MP to a duel, titillated London society by an affair with a French countess of sixty-two and published Historic Fancies, a collection of historical sketches and essays widely reviewed by such as Thackeray. The real reason, however, for his fame that summer was his appearance in Coningsby, or The New Generation, as the hero — charismatic, high-principled, and incredibly attractive.6 Coningsby was the sensation of the year. Everyone read it, from Gladstone to Wordsworth to Lyndhurst. Elegant women fought for it at the circulating libraries, while political circles reverberated in uproar. Its timing was exquisite. Twelve years after the great Reform Act, Disraeli caustically described a moribund political establishment which had forgotten it ever had ideals, let alone how to put them into practice. Dropped into this milieu, dashing Harry Coningsby is offered an easy political career as his grandfather's yes-man, but rejects a life that would be dominated by patronage and party lines. '"Then what the devil do you want to see?" said Lord Monmouth. "Political faith," said Coningsby, "instead of political infidelity.'"7 After the inevitable vicissitudes, integrity prevails and Harry heads for Parliament as an independent MP who will rejuvenate the decayed Conservative party. As Disraeli depicts him, he is a political Galahad shining in the dust and heat of a very murky arena, a fictional

10 Disraeli's Disciple

incarnation widely identified with its original. George, always inclined to believe the worst of himself, was knocked off balance. 'I am dazzled, bewildered, tipsy with admiration,' he told Disraeli, but the admiration was at least in part for a heroic portrait which he had trouble recognizing as himself.8 Almost at once, he began his own novel, Angela Pisani, his literary counter to the extreme idealism of Coningsby. As the London season went on, the fame grew bitter. Literary apotheosis turned him from a promising young politician with something of his own to say into a sentimental icon, something he knew he was not. Every day for months something alluded to Coningsby - a speech in Parliament, a newspaper editorial, a Punch cartoon, a play, a popular song - and George's initial euphoria turned to annoyance. In September, pursued to Paris by yet another enamoured young woman, who hung around his haunts when she could not hang around his neck, he wrote in mock exasperation to Disraeli: 'See what you do; she confesses "Coningsby" fascinated her.'9 People always did find him fascinating, even when they were appalled at his behaviour. His father idolized him as a child, 'a glorious fellow, and the pride of my heart.'10 To Disraeli, GSS (as he was known to his friends) was 'a man of brilliant gifts, of dazzling wit, infinite culture, and fascinating manners,' 'one of the joys of my existence.'11 Even a straitlaced contemporary like Edward Stanley, his successor as foreign undersecretary, acknowledged his flair. GSS seemed to have done nothing while in office; he got disgracefully drunk, and he carried on scandalous affairs, but his grasp of European politics and his writing showed 'something like genius.'12 Eighteen years after his death, Gladstone remembered his eloquence: '"ah! George Smythe! oh what a beautiful speaker he was!"'13 Like Oscar Wilde (in whose company he would have flourished), he was at his best in conversation. Many of the bans mots attributed to Disraeli in fact originated with Smythe -for example, the famous witticism about the public banquet where the soup was cold and the champagne 'something warm at last.' In Disraeli's last novel, Endymion (1880), published thirty-six years after Coningsby, the witty flow of talk he gives the character of Waldershare is a last affectionate tribute to GSS, '"the only man who never bored [me]."'14 His contemporaries were intoxicated by him. At Cambridge he was 'the sun and centre' for his coterie, who 'never tired of auguring for him a dazzling career of glory.'15 He was 'the Alcibiades and Bolingbroke of our circle. The man who ran through every mode of life, and was master of all.'16 At fourteen he published poems in the literary annuals, at eighteen an article in the Quarterly Review. At nineteen he threw the

A Splendid Failure?

11

Cambridge Union into hubbub, and with his power as an orator seemed headed straight for the top, an able, passionate politician with the potential of a William Pitt. At twenty-two, he won two elections at Canterbury crucial to the Conservatives' return to power, and for eleven more years, despite scandals and changes of government, his personal popularity and reputation for independence regularly re-elected him there. From 1842 to 1845 he was the most outspoken Young Englander, harrying Peel's government ranks and aiming his most pointed attacks at the leader himself. His wit could entertain a bored back bench, his fervour rouse Midlands artisans to a standing ovation. 'A man who can speak like that,' prophesied one prominent Tory, 'may aspire to the highest position in the Government.'17 By January 1846, when Peel appointed him foreign under-secretary, he seemed on the fast track to political success. By the time he died, however, all that had changed. He died ostracized, his early reputation gone. Obituaries were obligatory - he was an aristocrat, after all - but they were conspicuously formal and distant. The Morning Post, for example, focused studiously on GSS as 'son of,' 'MP for,' 'husband of - in effect, on anything but its subject. The discrepancy between the shining figure in Coningsby and the one carefully obscured in the obituaries raises all sorts of biographical questions. What gave him the iconic quality that Disraeli seized on for his novel, and what happened to transform a man with all the credentials of a romantic hero, and all the potential for a Victorian one, into someone whose identity polite society preferred to muffle in details of relatives, ancestors, titles, and public appointments? He knew all the prominent Victorians: Disraeli, Wellington, Shaftesbury, Peel, Aberdeen, Brougham, Metternich, Dickens, Thackeray, Monckton Milnes, Thomas Moore, Caroline Norton, Angela Burdett Coutts, Dorothy Nevill. Yet Victorian society preferred to obliterate his name. Certainly he was hotheaded and uncontrolled. Society frowned on a man who issued challenges and who actually fought an inglorious duel in 1852 (reputedly the last in England). More significantly, he refused to conform. Because he knew that his time was short, he spent it on the edge, dodging the Paris mob in the 1848 revolution instead of debating in Parliament, visiting the brothels of Paris or Venice instead of marrying a suitable heiress, selling out his constituents instead of bowing in the anterooms of the political establishment. In his own writing he chose the unconventional or the lost cause. His subjects were revolutionaries like Robespierre or Marat, rebels like the Jacobites, or plain men fighting for their rights. His poem 'The Jacobin of Paris' was so fiery that the

12 Disraeli's Disciple

Chartists took it up like an anthem to recite at their meetings.18 When he virtually abandoned politics for dailyjournalism, society drew in its skirts at such an unsavoury career, a particular betrayal of rank by a future viscount. For the last ten years of his life, he worked at Angela Pisani, a huge Balzacian novel set in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Fragmentary and highly autobiographical, it explores the concept of heroism in a chaotic, changing world and, though lacking an ending, asserts that the accepted standards of 'success' - power, position, wealth - are not necessarily valid for private lives. At the end of his life, in marrying and in dying, he chose unconventional companions because they too lived to suit themselves rather than social edicts. Too often, however, he coupled his charm with callous self-interest that affected his friendships and his love affairs. In Tancred, three years after Coningsby, Disraeli vented the bitterness of betrayal in his portrait of Fakredeen, at once totally charming and utterly unscrupulous. Monckton Milnes repudiated GSS after being pilloried by him in the Chronicle. Even the tolerant Manners ultimately ended their friendship over his sexual escapades. On the other hand, the very women whose reputations he destroyed before abandoning them remembered him fondly and came to his aid in his last days. Margaret Lennox, his mistress before he married her at the last possible moment, cherished his memory. Eighteen years after his death, his sister-in-law (who never met him) spent months sorting out the jumbled manuscript of Angela Pisani and badgering George Bentley into publishing it, at some personal cost to herself. Scandal after scandal showed that the man who was Coningsby had two sides. Princess Metternich, wife of the great Austrian chancellor, shrewdly dubbed him a 'loup-garou' (werewolf).19 He was a divided personality, an early Victorian Hyde in Jekyll's clothing who drew energy from the interplay between his two selves. He loved the double game that was European politics and practised it on friend and foe alike. He deserted Disraeli for Peel and office, and he supplied Disraeli with a plagiarized eulogy for the Duke of Wellington that still taints Disraeli's name and contributed to the fall of the Disraeli-Derby government. A Royal Commission revealed that his glorious victories at Canterbury were won with flagrant bribery. Nevertheless, affection lingered, in memory of what he once was. Disraeli forgave him again and again. His Cambridge friend Lord Lyttelton, whom he had grossly betrayed years before, expressed Victorian opinion when he typified him as a fallen Icarus: 'Poor George!' he wrote, coining the oxymoron which has ever since been applied. 'Poor George! He was a splendid failure!'20 For one

A Splendid Failure?

13

anonymous reviewer of Angela Pisani, however, GSS's charm and capacity for friendship outweighed assessments of 'failure': 'Is the success of the world's esteem such an invariable test of worth? Is it not just possible that Lord Strangford's life was, in the best and truest sense, a splendid success?'21

2 1400-1817: The Strangford Inheritance

What is the use of belonging to an old family unless to have the authority of an ancestor ready for any prejudice, religious or political, which your combinations may require? Tancred

GSS was as ambivalent about family tradition as about everything else; his pedigree was both inspiration and burden. Except for the disease that killed him, it was the only legacy he would ever have, but the mocking tone he adopted for it betrayed divided feelings. He knew the history recorded in the vast family archive, and before his health broke down planned a book about it.1 The ancestral roll-call included famous names from all political factions, royalists like Endymion Porter, gentleman of the bedchamber to James I and confidential agent to Charles I, and republicans like Oliver Cromwell. GSS's namesake, 'St. George' Porter, with impeccable political timing, successfully preserved the family lands under Cromwell's Protectorate and then again at the Restoration. Another republican, Algernon Sidney, was beheaded in 1683 for plotting against Charles II.2 But the ancestor who appealed most to GSS was Sir Philip Sidney, quintessential Elizabethan gentleman - courtier, soldier, scholar, and poet. The Sidneys' hallmark was the unostentatious nobility that Ben Jonson praised in his poem to 'Penshurst,' their country seat in Kent. A later Sidney, Lady Dorothy, eventually married a Smythe, but only after she had been immortalized as the 'Sacharissa' to whom Edmund Waller wrote his delicate love poems.3 GSS's father, 6th Viscount Strangford, a distinguished career diplomat, verged on the obsessive about the family history. When he was ennobled for his services, he took the title of 'Baron Penshurst,' and

1400-1817: The Strangford Inheritance 15

though he was not wealthy, he made it his personal mission to buy back the long-lost family property, Westenhanger, in Kent, and strayed family pictures. For him, personal achievements had always to be measured against those of his forebears - recorded in the church at Ashford, where the gorgeous stained-glass commemorative window and brass plaque he installed hold their own among the marble tombs of his medieval ancestors. GSS inherited the family pride but showed it in his own way. Like the hero in a fairy tale, he was endowed with ambitious names: 'George' for George IV, from whom Strangford at one time hoped for advancement, 'Augustus' for another royal friend, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and King of Hanover, 'Frederick' for Strangford's godfather, Frederick, Duke of York, and 'Percy' for GSS's godfather, Hugh Percy, the influential Tory Duke of Northumberland. By the time he was eighteen, however, he had picked out from this battery of Christian names the remaining one for his own identity. From then on, even at his most discourteous and ungentlemanly, he was 'George Sydney Smythe.' Nevertheless, paternal great expectations weighted his fragile psyche. He frequently tried to point this out to a father who constantly urged him to greater efforts: 'It seems to me that I am in the position of a horse who, from his pedigree, ought to run well, but I am very much out of condition.'4 Physically and psychologically, he was correct; he was already debilitated by tuberculosis, and his father's refusal to recognize the fact increased his sense of inadequacy. When he published Historic Fancies, with its sketches of great men of the past, his diffident Introduction stressed his own unworthiness. That several of them were his ancestors only increased his consciousness 'that, without the idea which their memories suggest, I should be unable to carry out some thought which in me is only a feeble tendency, but in their lives has been fulfilled.'5 On both sides of the family, the array of successes by astute, politically aware entrepreneurs might have daunted anyone. Strangford equated ability with breeding, confidently observing of one noble parliamentary speaker, 'In him you see his 64 quarterings.'6 GSS, who once described hereditary aristocracy as 'the pale ghosts of departed criminals,' was less dazzled.7 In Angela Pisani, the hero, Lionel Averanche, is heir to sixty quarterings, but in his era, pedigree is no guarantee of success; indeed, in a revolution that executes aristocrats it is a liability.8 By the end, the French lords appear effete and the English ones intellectually challenged beside the solid practical mind of Oakworth, the middle-class entrepreneur. In the final poem of Historic Fancies, GSS expressed the radical view that British prosperity was built, not on blue blood and title,

16 Disraeli's Disciple

but on practical merchant enterprise, an opinion inimical to his father but amply confirmed in the family history.9 From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, the fortunes of the Smythes moved only upwards. Their growing prosperity and prominence reflected the aggressive way they seized the opportunities their times presented, with few significant deviations. They began as Wiltshire yeoman farmers, but by Elizabeth I's time, Thomas Smythe was customs agent for the Port of London and wealthy enough to marry the lord mayor's daughter, Alice Judde.10 Elizabeth bestowed on her 'Great Customer' the royal manor of Westenhanger, at one time the refuge for Henry II's mistress, 'Fair Rosamond' de Clifford. The customer's third son, another Thomas, became the British East India Company's first governor, and financed voyages in search of the Northwest Passage; Smith Sound, between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, is named after him. In 1614 he was appointed British ambassador to the distant court of Muscovy.11 In the next generation, in 1628, yet another Thomas was created the 1st Viscount Strangford, a title in the Irish peerage with a seat in the Irish parliament.12 After the family achieved aristocratic rank, however, their fortunes began to decline. Habits of industry and enterprise gave way to random, even bizarre, behaviour. Philip, the 2nd Viscount, married a Sidney, Sacharissa's younger sister Isabelle, but, dissipated, extravagant and perpetually drunk, he gambled away the capital his forebears had built up, which gave him an income of the then astounding figure of £4,000 a year.13 When Westenhanger had to be sold, the destitute 3rd Viscount, another Endymion, married a Frenchwoman, Anne Larget, and retired to France. His son Philip, the 4th Viscount, entered the Church, took an LL D from Trinity College, Dublin, and eventually rose to dean of Londonderry, before his poverty unmade him. In a murky financial transaction with another cleric in 1769 he exchanged his position for an archdeaconry. He defrauded his parishioners, solicited a bribe in 1784 in return for his vote in the Irish Parliament (a family ghost that would come back to haunt GSS), and was forced to resign both his seat and the archdeaconry.14 To this reduced and seedy situation GSS's grandfather Lionel, the 5th Viscount, restored some of the early dash. In 1769, the year of Napoleon's birth, sixteen-year-old Lionel left Ireland, joined the army, rose rapidly, and served with distinction in the American War of Independence.15 While quartered in New York during the winter of 1776-7, he courted

1400-1817: The Strangford Inheritance

17

Maria Eliza Philipse, daughter of Frederick Philipse of Tarrytown, head of a wealthy loyalist family descended from the city's Dutch founders. The Philipses initially rejected his suit, but when their property was confiscated by the Revolutionary Congress, Frederick prudently changed his mind, and in September 1779 Lionel married Maria in Trinity Church, New York, making her one of the earliest in a long line of beautiful Americans who married British titles.16 Unlike her later counterparts, however, she brought no dowry, and Lionel eventually abandoned the army to follow his father into penurious Irish clerical life. When he became Viscount Strangford in 1787, his situation was somewhat relieved by a government pension, but when, with astonishing naivete, he voted against the government on the Regency Bill, his pension was promptly revoked and was not restored until 1801, a few months before his death. The resulting stringent poverty at unfeeling official hands strongly impressed itself on his eldest son, GSS's father, Percy, whose first recorded literary work, at nine years old, was some plaintive 'Lines on the Anniversary of the Loss of my Father's Pension, July, 1790.'17 Somehow the means were found for Percy's education, private tutoring and at sixteen - Lionel's age when he joined the army - his grandfather's university, Trinity College, Dublin, where he won the gold medal, and graduated BA in 1800 before becoming a clerk in the Foreign Office. In October 1801 he became the 6th Viscount, in effect a titled pauper of twenty-one with responsibility for his mother and two sisters, Eliza and Louisa. Like his son, he was an attractive young man, and he knew it. In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Byron addressed him sardonically as 'Hibernian Strangford with thine eyes of blue, / And boasted locks of red, or auburn hue.' Twenty years later Disraeli put him into his novel Contarini Fleming as Baron Fleming, 'handsome and elegant,' with a 'clear broad brow, [and] aquiline, but delicately chiselled nose.'18 He had lustrous, deep-set eyes, with an eagerness in them which (in public at least) he offset by compressing a distinctly sensual mouth. Tightlipped as his future profession required, his muscular control was symptomatic of the discipline he imposed on himself and on his family.19 Much pf his time was spent writing letters about pensions for his family and better employment for himself, and poems and articles for London periodicals.20 He shared a house at 28 Bury Street with a Dublin classmate, the poet Thomas Moore, who later nostalgically recalled the time 'when he and I were gay young gentlem[e]n (and both almost equally

18 Disraeli's Disciple

penniless) about town.'21 In the lax atmosphere of the Regency period, Percy moved from affair to affair. Moore once scolded him for levity about a Mrs Walpole: Whatever a man may think of a woman, he should seem to respect her for indulging him, or he will hardly be indulged by any other - no, no -1 agree with my friend Tom Brown that Of all the crimes on this side hell, The blackest sure's to — and tell.22

His main work was a translation of love lyrics by the Portuguese poet Camoens, perhaps a means of teaching himself Portuguese, with a diplomatic post in mind, or perhaps from appeal to his own 'amorous disposition.' It was not a very faithful translation, the versification was rather easy, and he had inserted passages which some contemporary sensibilities thought amounted to erotic invention, 'the extravagant creations of a prurient imagination.'23 By now, however, his constant letters had won him his first diplomatic posting, legation secretary to Lisbon.24 This achieved, he renounced literature and applied himself to advancement with as much tenacity as his Tudor ancestors. Steadily he worked his way up; even his enemies had to admit his cleverness as a diplomat. Over twenty-five years he fully earned his appointments in five successively more important embassies, but he was also prickly, paranoid, bad-tempered with superiors and subordinates, and, like Lionel, impatient of authority. Even at a period when Foreign Office orders could take months to reach a distant embassy, ambassadors were not expected to make their own policy decisions, and Strangford too often did. Nor did he observe proper modesty about his achievements, a tendency that acquired him a contemporary reputation for taking credit where credit was not due.25 Modern opinion, however, has largely reinstated him.26 The exploit that made his name occurred in 1807, when, with Napoleon's army about to invade Portugal, he persuaded the vacillating regent to retreat to Brazil with the entire royal family and was rewarded with the Order of the Bath from Britain and a peerage from Portugal. In his next appointment, to the exiled Portuguese court in Brazil, he successfully negotiated trade treaties and the sale of Portuguese crown lands for £1 million, to be applied to Britain's costs from the Peninsular War.27 When he returned to England in 1815, there was talk of appointing him to the important Turkish embassy, but

1400-1817: The Strangford Inheritance 19

the Foreign Office decided to prove him further with a posting as minister plenipotentiary to Sweden.28 On 17 July 1817, the day before his appointment was officially announced, he married, by special licence in London, Eleanor ('Ellen') Browne, widow of a Trinity College contemporary. Ellen had been a widow for barely a year. She came from the strongly Catholic family of an Irish baronet, Sir Thomas Burke, of Marble Hill, County Galway, and his wife, Christian Browne, kin to several aristocratic families. The Burkes had survived political purges and civil wars and were now prominent landed gentry. Sir Thomas was a respected magistrate who received his baronetcy for loyalty to the Crown in the troubled 1790s, and was noted for his kindness and urbanity, traits that he handed on to his youngest daughter. In 1804, at sixteen, she married Nicholas Browne, of Mount Hazel, County Galway, and had two children, Andrew Nicholas and Katherine Eleanor, before he died at only thirty-eight in 1816.29 How or when she met Strangford is not known. In Angela Pisani, GSS, who heard from his father many tales about the marriage, describes the meeting of the hero's parents as a coup defoudre. The fictional version is undoubtedly romanticized, but there are enough echoes of facts to suggest a relation to reality. Many characters have family names translated into French. Those of the hero and his father, Lionel and Philippe, are those of GSS's grandfather and great-grandfather; their surname, Averanche, is that of a former Smythe property in France.30 Like Strangford, Philippe is visiting England when he meets Margaret Clifford, who has the same surname as Fair Rosamond and is, like Ellen, the daughter of a Catholic baronet. Her volatile sister is actually called Eleanore. Philippe, as susceptible as Strangford, is first struck by Margaret's beauty at matins, 'in her simple dress, with a cross depending from her long white throat, while her delicate head drooped half hidden by taper fingers which Vandyke might have painted.' At dinner the same day, he is even more taken by her mind, as her interests range from art and literature to history and politics. 'She could talk ... deeply but lightly... of Italy and its pictures, of Clarissa ... of Franklin.' Nor is she timid. When he carelessly tosses out 'some philosophic flippancy,' she demolishes him with a look, and he rises from the table smitten, 'a lost man ... utterly gone.'31 The surviving source material on Ellen underwent Victorian prettifying and omits any reference to education or informed opinions, preferring to emphasize her beauty, sweetness, good works, and complete

20 Disraeli's Disciple

devotion to her husband. In Coningsby, Harry's mother is also a stereotypical Victorian wife, not unlike Vanity Fair's Amelia Sedley, loving but passive, and overcome with grief at losing her son to his domineering grandfather. Strangford, however, like GSS, was attracted by intellect even more than by beauty, and he would never have married mere meekness. Ellen shared Mrs Coningsby's devotion to husband and family, but she had, as the story of her marriage reveals, considerably more spirit. What she did not have was money. Her first husband's estates seem to have been tied up for their children's benefit, and the usual procedure of the time allowed a widow only a life income that terminated on remarriage. In marrying her, therefore, Strangford was repeating Lionel's fateful choice in the previous generation, although an heiress or daughter of a political family would have been more practical. Instead, as GSS would remind him in one of their periodic battles over a suitable bride, 'You indulged your own fancy and married a widow Brown for love.'32 Such a marriage, which made Strangford's drive for success even more compulsive, in fact created some of the problems that troubled it, such as money difficulties and Ellen's feelings of neglect. It pushed him to achieve, but, in an age of calculated alliances, it could do nothing concrete for his career. When in 1826 he pleaded poverty as a reason for reappointment, he was mortified at the severely practical response of Canning, the foreign minister: 'You should have thought of that when you married, Lord S.'33 In 1817, however, events caught them up. They had to embark at once for Sweden, and their honeymoon was the trying ten- or twelve-day voyage. Lady Lyttelton, who made it four years earlier, described its privations with a verbal shudder at the 'narrow quarters, bad air, water ditto, and a thousand awkward circumstances, the least of which would have driven a fine lady mad.'34 It was the first of the Strangfords' many voyages together, since Ellen insisted, even when her health was precarious, on accompanying her husband to all his postings.35 They went, however, without her two children, the germ of the situation in Coningsby when Mrs Coningsby gives up her son to his grandfather. Most likely, her Catholic relatives objected to the children being reared under Strangford's fervent Protestantism. One can imagine the stress on Ellen, widowed, remarried, and separated from her children in little more than a year. On top of that were the immediate move to a foreign country and the new duties of an ambassador's wife, and there was yet another responsibility. Within a month of their marriage, she was pregnant with her third child and Strangford's first.

3 1818-26: Cradled in Commotions

The character of Fakredeen was formed amid the excitement of the Syrian invasion ... Everything was spoken before him; he lived in the centre of intrigues which were to shake thrones, and perhaps to form them. Tancred

George's early years were marked by highly unusual events which, along with his parents' difficult personalities, are the key to his later character. Three foreign postings by the time he was eight made the family unit a particularly closed one in which the enforced intimacy of long voyages or embassies under virtual siege fostered a focus on themselves. In all five children, self-absorption coupled with high intelligence resulted in a sometimes destructive capacity for self-analysis remarkable in a family of their class and time. Given the pattern of these years, it is not surprising that George grew up rootless and restless, addicted to novelty and excitement, and constantly moving in search of them. From the time of George's birth the family was posted to prime European trouble spots. Like Locart in Angela Pisani, he was 'cradled in commotions. He had heard cannon firing at four years old.'1 He was exposed to two of the bloodiest insurrections of the post-Napoleonic era, experiences that gave him a permanent taste for battle, real or imagined, and the adrenaline of excitement. Even when he was born in Stockholm on 13 April 1818, it was not into a warm and nurturing spring. After the worst hurricane in two hundred years devastated whole towns and ancient forests, cold kept the country snow-bound till late April. The coronation of Sweden's new king had to be postponed until the roads cleared in mid-May.2 It was a prophetic start to a life that would be practically all storm. In GSS's writing, storms

22 Disraeli's Disciple

accompany political subjects: James II is a tempest-tossed Lear figure, the 1688 revolution a storm-lashed sea.3 Legacy of the long voyages of his childhood, wind, waves, and lightning recur as images in his poems, allusions in his prose, and in Angela Pisani as the extended metaphor for the personal shipwreck that constantly threatens Lionel Averanche.4 In George's early years shipwreck was a real danger, as the Strangfords travelled back and forth across Europe with their 'cosmopolitan family,' although travelled sophistication came at the expense of stability for them all. Political storms broke in each new posting. George was born into a Europe still in upheaval after twenty-five years of war, and his characteristic mixture of idealism and aggressiveness had its beginnings here. Three years after Waterloo, the air was full of revolution, with a new spirit of nationalism that often flared into violent insurrection. The Congress of Vienna settlements had brought about tremendous changes in frontiers, political tectonic shifts that made the old map of Europe unrecognizable. Strangford's Stockholm mission concerned a territorial issue, Sweden's 1814 annexation of Norway from Denmark. In post-war Europe Britain saw Sweden as an important bulwark against Russian aggression, with Strangford's task to persuade the King, Charles XIV, to settle amicably with Denmark. Life in Stockholm had none of the brilliance of London. Apart from the magnificent city centre and the Palace, there were few fine houses, and one Scottish traveller sourly wondered 'where the [a] mbassadors of foreign powers have contrived to lodge themselves suitably to the dignity they represent.' 'The whole style of society is limited and borne,' wrote Lady Elizabeth Belgrave in 1827. 'All the foreign diplomats hate it.'5 Unlike London, where social life started at ten or midnight, in Stockholm it began and ended early. Lady Lyttelton was surprised that balls began at six and everything ceased before midnight. Rank and title were suitably observed in diplomatic circles, but some of the etiquette was quite novel: 'Being kissed by the ladies every morning and evening, at every parting and meeting, still seems strange enough; but I shall soon be up to it, I dare say.'6 In the months before her confinement, Ellen proved equally adaptable. She and her husband dined with the royal family and visited them at Rosendahl, outside Stockholm, with its rustic retreat, Bellevue. When George was born, Strangford complacently told his mother how the house was 'literally besieged with royal and noble visitors.' Some of the response was etiquette, the due of a foreign ambassador's family, but there was personal warmth as well: Ellen had made friends. Yet her

1818-26: Cradled in Commotions 23

husband's tone is slightly unsettling: 'Ellen, in spite of her gibberish, has certainly managed to make herself very popular here.'7 It is not the unqualified sentiment expected from a husband in the first year of a love match. The fact was that, though public affairs went well, there were private difficulties. Strangford, authoritarian and controlled, expected the same in his household. Ellen was warm and volatile, her emotions lay on the surface, and she was unused to running a government residence. The pair clashed violently. The family chronicler put the blame squarely on Ellen's sex and nationality. 'Her greatest faults,' he wrote sententiously, 'arose from the impulsive and excitable temper so often found in her countrywomen,' evidence based on her lost diaries, 'taken,' he alleged, 'at random.' A modern viewpoint might well be different. Ellen did not conform to accepted standards any more than GSS did. The 'Angel in the House' stereotype of decorous self-effacing womanhood that was later superimposed on her simply does not fit. Without the diaries we cannot knowjust how 'random' the excerpts were, or to what extent they confirmed this picture of an Irish termagant whose behaviour often made her husband's 'better disciplined and more conventional nature' wince. (That Strangford was also Irish is not mentioned.) The excerpts depict her life as a constant conflict with her husband and with those other people on whom a Victorian household's comfort depended, the servants. 'These servants will drive me mad' (12June); 'nothing was ever so terrific as the insolence of the servants' (1 October).8 Strangford, whose diplomatic work left little time for distractions, invariably took the servants' side, something difficult to account for. Her anger, however, probably had another cause than temper. The quoted diary entries, from June to September 1818, date from the period immediately following George's birth; the last is for 21 October, about when she conceived their second child, Philippa. By the end of the year she had recovered her sense of humour enough to send her relative Lady Eleanor Butler a 'ludicrous letter about the blue pill.' All summer and autumn, however, she suffered a recurring 'madness' (12 September) which irritated her husband intensely but which may well have been a depressive state, more severe post partum arid tipping her towards suicide. 'Oh, the agony, misery, and horror I suffer I trust will soon put an end to the existence of the most wretched being who walks the earth' (2 September). Her state was acute enough to be harmful for her baby. On one occasion, when he was four months old (the age at which babies were often weaned), the servants refused to provide milk for

24 Disraeli's Disciple

him (22 August), highly stressful for both mother and child. A month later she recorded, more ominously: 'The whole of this day I have been in a state of madness, from which baby suffers' (12 September).9 The very lack of detail in these last four words is telling. It was a situation with all the potential for child abuse and self-destruction. Besides diplomatic negotiations, Strangford's irritability stemmed from a painful liver ailment contracted in Rio and treated with massive doses of mercury compounds (also a major component in the 'blue pill').10 Soon after Philippa's birth, however, in July 1819, matters improved when he unexpectedly brought about the Swedish-Danish settlement, another triumph for him. The kings of all three countries conveyed their satisfaction in effusive letters and snuffboxes studded with diamonds. Castlereagh, the foreign minister, notified him that in the spring he would take charge of the most important embassy in Europe, Constantinople. 'If I were a vain man,' he wrote to his mother, 'the circumstances of the last three months would have turned my head.'11 After a brief English leave, they set sail again in November 1820 for Turkey, a terrible voyage at that time of year. They were fifteen weeks at sea, during which Ellen became pregnant with their third child. By midDecember they had got only as far as Corfu; in the Dardanelles they were detained for political reasons and had to transfer to a government vessel. They finally arrived in Constantinople, totally exhausted, in February 1821.12 GSS remembered these years in idealized 'visions of old Byzantium.'13 The reality was not quite so entrancing. Constantinople, Strangford told Londonderry, was 'agigantic humbug-well to talk about, and read about, and write about - but when seen, a poor concern.' Foreigners lived in what amounted to a ghetto across the Golden Horn in Pera, which Strangford described in one dispatch as 'the most disreputable spot upon the face of the earth' and where the British palace was dilapidated, dirty, and far too close to a noisy, very doubtful section of the Grande Rue. Fire and disease were constant threats.14 They barely had time to recover from their voyage before a crisis was on them. The Ottoman empire was crumbling to decline while its various peoples prepared to fight for independence, and Russia waited to move in. Within two weeks of the family's arrival, Christian Greeks began the moves against their Islamic rulers that would evolve into the Greek revolution. By the end of March Strangford reported that Turkey's terrorizing of its Greek subjects had begun with public executions.15 George's third birthday arrived in an atmosphere of violence, atrocity,

1818-26: Cradled in Commotions 25

murder, and his parents' associated anxieties. Ellen was again depressive and Strangford frustrated because Sultan Mahmoud deliberately delayed the formal reception without which he could not begin his official duties.16 He vented his feelings on those around him, and there were more scenes involving servants. By April physical danger had been added as armed gangs roamed the streets, attacking Greeks and foreigners. A joint complaint by several ambassadors about break-ins had no effect whatever.17 A few days after George's birthday, Ellen on her way to mass was attacked by Turkish thugs, 'insulted' (whatever that may mean for a Western woman in a Muslim country), and, in her sixth month of pregnancy, physically beaten before she could to get back to the embassy. Strangford remained unmoved but Ellen's own response was spirited.18 Like Byron, she was stirred by the Greeks' plight, and she secretly began to send help to persecuted families and redeem rebels sold into slavery. Had the Turks got wind, the consequences would have been disastrous; they would have jeopardized her husband's negotiations, his position, and all their lives. Fortunately, secrecy was maintained, and 'even the objects never knew to whose kind heart and liberal hand they were indebted.'19 As spring gave way to summer, the streets became unsafe. Strangford saw bodies hung on gateways, heads stuck up on poles, and baskets of ears and noses publicly displayed every day. On Easter Sunday the Greek Patriarch was hanged; three days later the horrified embassy chaplain witnessed the body dragged through the Jewish quarter and flung into the Bosphorus.20 Strangford had simultaneously to protect British interests and placate belligerent Turks and Russians, and when in August Russia withdrew its ambassador it further complicated his position by leaving its interests to him. All these stresses and convolutions in the embassy left a deep impression on three-year-old George.21 In the midst of this, on 5 August a younger brother was born, named Lionel after his grandfather, but he contracted tuberculosis, which in April of the next year almost killed him.22 It is the first reference to the disease that over the next twenty-five years would kill five (probably six) of the family's seven. Tuberculosis in those days was not well understood, nor that it was infectious. Urban crowding and lack of hygiene (both prevalent in Constantinople) were key factors, and, though treatments such as rest, diet, or change of climate could produce temporary improvements, there was no cure. Ellen had already brushed with the disease in Ireland, where her seventeen-year-old brother James had died of it ten years before.23 'Consumption,' as it was called, was a deadly

26 Disraeli's Disciple

scourge with none of the romantic aura surrounding Dumas's Camille or Verdi's Violetta, and Lionel's condition worried his parents. When Strangford himself contracted a cough, he made much of it in his correspondence, and no doubt at home too.24 The effects were even darker for George. His medical history, in which robust health was often interrupted by coughs, fevers, and debility, suggests that all his life he suffered from chronic tuberculosis, probably contracted from his mother.25 This was certainly the case with his sister Ellen, whose health was always fragile and followed a similar pattern. His other sister, Philippa, was stronger, but nevertheless died young. The only child who seemed largely unaffected was Percy, the youngest, who had minimal contact with his mother, although he too had a lasting weakness of the chest. For George, a hypersensitive, intelligent child aware of the crisis with Lionel and later watching the disease make its deadly progress through his family, tuberculosis became a fate that lay in wait at his own door. It haunted his mind and cast a shadow of impending doom from which there was no escape. Hence his attraction to Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin and the ever-diminishing piece of ass's hide. When in his teens he read Contarini Fleming, he immediately identified with one sentence which he repeated again and again: 'And Contarini wrote, "Tmg."'26 Time, he recognized early, was what he did not have. Lionel's malady decided Ellen to have the children inoculated against another deadly disease, smallpox. Vaccination was widely accepted by the 1820s, a quarter of a century after Jenner's first successful trials. The principle had been introduced into England in 1721 by another ambassadress to Constantinople, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, after she observed Turkish gatherings at which old women inoculated children from vials of serum. Ellen chose to import the virus 'matter' for her children from England, probably dried between small glass plates. She then in her generous way made it available to Greek children and their families.27 Strangford, however, had little time for his family. His devotion to work established him as a rigid, preoccupied, frequently absent man, who overcompensated when he was at home. This is reflected in Angela Pisani, where Averanche's self-esteem is permanently damaged by his adoptive father's relentless drive for success: 'He was naturally very proud of his son's beauty and accomplishments, but while he was sparing of praise, and even of kindness, he corrected and punished him by the most dangerous as well as cruel of all chastisements, irony.'28 George's early education introduced him to similar scorn, as Strangford, the classical medallist, insisted on teaching his children himself. In the

1818-26: Cradled in Commotions 27

polyglot ambience of Pera, children, especially one as intelligent as George, became easily multilingual. GSS was later fluent in French, German, and Italian, and for Greek and Latin Strangford drilled him rigorously from an early age. Ellen, however, rightly feared that George would be irretrievably spoilt by his father's inconsistency, lenient at one moment and over-strict the next, and it afflicted him with a 'morbid fear of ridicule' that incapacitated him in adulthood.29 The diplomatic circumstances, however, dictated Strangford's preoccupation. To add to his troubles, in August Castlereagh, his sympathetic Foreign Office chief, committed suicide and was succeeded by the dictatorial George Canning. In October at the Congress of Verona he worked closely with Metternich before undertaking a mission with Wellington for Czar Alexander at Vienna. Canning praised him for these efforts, but abruptly changed to harsh reproof when Strangford forwarded a dispatch to the Foreign Office without showing it to Wellington.30 Once again, though, his ability pulled him out of this scrape, and by January he was back in Constantinople with increased duties, now representing Britain, Russia, the Ionian Islands, and Sardinia. He was just in time for the birth of George's second sister, Louisa (called Ellen in the family), on 21 February, which he jauntily reported to his mother along with recent events, 'several storms, an earthquake, much strangling of janissaries, various fires, and not a few cases of plague.'31 For the rest of the year he was heavily involved in covert international negotiations, in which the participants never showed their hands openly. It was from this time that George, like Disraeli's Fakredeen, acquired his penchant for secrecy and intrigue, as diplomats played double games with each other amid eternal plotting and paranoia. He saw how the Russians (with Canning's knowledge) used Strangford for their own political ends, how they leaked information, and how often promises were broken. Even the actions of Strangford's own side complicated his job. Byron's dramatic championing of the Greek cause in 1823, for example, produced large sums of British money, sent out in British ships, facts which, however glamorous the crusade, inflamed Turkish suspicions of the British diplomat on the spot.32 The impressions of those years on George were permanent. It was now that, in self-defence, he learned how to charm, Strangford himself admitted, 'his hold over my affections becomes hourly so painfully strong that I feel and fear the sinfulness of my adoration for that child, and dread the awful punishment that may one day attend it.'33 We know less about his relationship with his mother, whose pleasant nature and lack

28 Disraeli's Disciple

of affectation made her popular in Constantinople.34 There was still friction with her husband over her religion; she did agree not to observe Catholic fast days, but she would not give up going to mass, even after the attack. In this domestic war, Strangford ruthlessly manipulated George against his mother, encouraging him to display Methodist devotions learned from his father and to show contempt for Catholicism. The other day,' Strangford gleefully wrote to his mother, 'George danced before her on a picture of the Pope.'35 It was hardly a kindly joke. Typically, he made an impression on the embassy staff. The wife of William Turner, the embassy secretary, remembered George well, and years later spoke of him at length and with noticeable affection.36 A more obscure connection was with the family of Count Alexander Pisani, Strangford's private secretary at the embassy and later a diplomat himself. Other Pisanis were dragomans at the embassy, and the wife of one, Marian, was a successful novelist in the 1830s and 1840s.37 The family, who kept in touch with Strangford into the 1850s, exerted a hold on GSS's imagination strong enough for him to use their surname in Angela Pisani?8 Everything about Constantinople fired his ambitions. Watching his brilliant father handle the great powers and direct European nations, he wanted to copy this power over political change. He saw it happen at his father's hands and registered the approval that followed. By April 1824, after months of clandestine talks with both sides, Strangford persuaded Russia to resume relations with Turkey, a coup praised by the Czar, the Sultan, the Foreign Office, and the King, and rewarded with a diamond-studded portrait from the Sultan and promotion from the Foreign Office. 'Be his faults what they may,' Canning acknowledged, 'he is a singularly clever fellow. He has done great service; and I mean to reward him substantially. He has earned the succession at St Petersburgh.' He was bound for Russia, where two centuries before, his ancestor Thomas Smythe had also been ambassador.39 The months of leave were a welcome respite. In January 1825, to his intense gratification, he was made a British peer, Baron Penshurst of Penshurst. As an ultra-Tory, he opposed virtually all liberal reforms, and in May he cast one of the 48 votes that defeated a proposal for Catholic Emancipation.40 There is no record of Ellen's feelings, but his action had consequences that irresistibly recall his father's rash opposition to the Regency Bill. The day after the defeat, Canning, who supported Emancipation, irascibly ordered him off without more delay to Russia. 'Hinc illae irae,' Strangford dolefully scribbled on the dispatch, and for the rest of his diplomatic career attributed Canning's hostility to this 'no-

1818-26: Cradled in Commotions

29

popery' vote.41 Others did too. Shaftesbury recalled Canning's 'Menaces' and threats to remove Strangford from the diplomatic corps.42 Despite all this, it was not until October that he received his instructions. They were terse: in a three-minute interview Canning told him, 'Go, do the best you can, and be guided by events,' confirmed in a short note when he was already on board ship.43 Canning's brevity seemed to allow him autonomy, but it would lead later to considerable embarrassment. There were personal reasons too for the delay. In the spring, Ellen, once again pregnant, had fallen seriously ill and by autumn her condition was unmistakable - tuberculosis had overtaken her too. But she would not be left behind.44 Heavily pregnant, consumptive, and with four young children, she endured a ghastly repetition of the honeymoon trip to Stockholm eight years before, racing the Russian winter, when the Neva river and delta normally froze over by mid-November. The Baltic was tempestuous, the weather was frigid, and when the family arrived in St Petersburg on 7 November, she was so ill that Strangford wanted to take her back immediately. She was so weak, however, after their third son, Percy, was born three weeks later, that he postponed the idea until spring.Af.° In any case, he could not, as ambassador, leave at this juncture. Five days after Percy's birth, Czar Alexander I died and the question of his successor disrupted the city. Strangford joked that this must be the Imperial year: first two emperors of Brazil and now two of Russia.46 On 14 December he reported the city 'in a state of consternation not to be described,' though 'Lady S. and her young Russian, and the rest of my cosmopolitan family, Swedes and Turks, are I bless God, perfectly well.'47 When, however, on the 26th a group of Russian army officers attempted what became known as the Decembrist uprising, it was put down with bloodshed. The new Czar Nicholas ordered the guns out and the main square cleared with roundshot. One member of the British Embassy found it 'dreadful to hear the firing. Every round went to my heart.'48 Final casualties were eight hundred killed, wounded, or missing, and on the 28th Strangford, who had been an eyewitness, wrote to his friend Earl Stanhope with something less than his usual understatement, 'merely to say that we are all alive... We have had a most tremendous and a most sanguinary scene ... Our adventures at Constple. in 1821 [sic], were a mere box-hobby now in comparison with the events of Monday last.' The renewed calm was, he felt, only temporary, and the atmosphere was tense at the British embassy.49 Other storms were also brewing. On his own initiative, Strangford

30

Disraeli's Disciple

allied with the Russian foreign minister, Count Nesselrode, to pressure Turkey into a Greek settlement and, at the wily Nesselrode's suggestion, notified the Austrian and French ambassadors. Canning was furious, and Strangford had to renounce the agreement while Canning withdrew his power to act.50 More humiliation followed. Canning dispatched Wellington to St Petersburg, ostensibly to establish relations with Nicholas, but effectively sidelining Strangford. George, now nearly eight and sensitive to atmosphere, temporarily cheered his gloomy father with 'a very decent version of Virgil's fine description of a northern winter. He is a glorious fellow, and the pride of my heart!'51 Later, however, when Strangford was excluded from talks with Russia, he had had enough.52 He gave in his resignation and prepared to take his family home. But Ellen was too ill. For a time after Percy's birth, her disease had been quiescent, but the winter was long and cold, and she had persistent bronchial infections as well as some internal malady. She was unable to attend official functions in February and March, and at a later one she 'looked just like a ghost.' Yet on 19 April, a week after George's eighth birthday, she was presented at Court, looking 'quite young and beautiful, so much so that everyone was quite astonished.'53 It was clear, however, that she was dying, though George later implied that the children were not told. Her husband gave no hint of it in his official correspondence and told friends only that she was unwell. Perhaps he went through a period of denial. On 21 May, he asked his wife to leave her sickroom and help him entertain a Swedish visitor. She reluctantly agreed, though 'it might be my death,' she told him. Two days later, there was an eerie occurrence. As Strangford stood at a window watching the funeral of the embassy cook, he heard a long sigh and turned to find Ellen white-faced behind him. 'I am come,' she said, 'to see poor Graeme's funeral, and, Lord Strangford, mine will be the next funeral that will leave this house.'54 On the evening of 25 May her prediction came true. Sitting in the embassy with a visitor, she suddenly went into violent convulsions that ended in coma. Eighteen hours later, without regaining consciousness, she quietly died in her husband's arms.55 She was thirty-eight. Stunned with grief, Strangford had her body taken to the Roman Catholic chapel, where the funeral was held next day. She had requested a private, informal service, but a huge uninvited congregation insisted on attending - ambassadors, embassy staffs, and acquaintances who, even in her few months at St Petersburg, had responded to her charm and who came not as officials, but to pay their respects as personal friends. The embassy chaplain, Robert Walsh, preached an affecting

1818-26: Cradled in Commotions 31

sermon, and she was buried as she had wished in the graveyard reserved for foreigners. The Russian spring had come at last; the grass was green again, and the leaves on the young trees were thick enough to cast their shade over the place. For a time, Strangford was inconsolable. Their married life had been as stormy as the seas they had sailed together, but that was now forgotten. Apart from his loss, he was consumed with guilt. How could he not have known how ill she was? Why had he allowed her to come with him to Russia? Why had he not taken her south to a less harsh climate? Now, when it was too late, he recognized her qualities. 'Oh Lord Stanhope,' he unburdened himself the day after her death, 'whatfriend l have lost in this affectionate and noble-minded woman! She lived and thought but for meV His marriage was over; so for the moment was his career. He and the children sailed for England early in June.56 George never recovered from her death. At eight he was old enough to feel his own loss and his father's heavy mourning to the full. His father told Stanhope, 'the gentle and tender heart of my excellent George is, as you may suppose, deeply and most acutely wounded.' Later GSS must have told all this to Disraeli, since young Harry Coningsby too loses his mother at the same age, the most vulnerable period for a child to lose a parent. George became abnormally sensitive to illness in himself, his father or siblings, and especially apprehensive about coughs and fevers. He developed separation anxiety and self-doubt. He became volatile, violently angry or deeply depressed, and acted out his feelings in unruliness - symptoms which are a typical reaction to maternal bereavement.57 It is also significant that, apart from his consistent refusal to commit himself in his relations with women, his adult emotional life began and ended with mother-caregiver figures. Ellen's death left a gap in his life that he could never fill.

4 1826-35: George Smythe's Schooldays

George ... has many faults, but, they are of temperament, rather than Heart. A public school, The University, The Company into wh. he must be thrown, with the world, as a further dead weight, will set [him] to rights T.R. Hooker to Strangford, 1829

When George returned to England in 1826, the change from the close family unit was extreme. He was enrolled at Tonbridge School in Kent, while the other children alternated between their father in London and their grandmother in Clifton, near Bristol.1 Subsequently, he spent many vacations away from home - with the Stanhopes at Chevening in Kent, with relatives, the Darells at Colehill, or with his grandmother.2 George was close to her and to his younger aunt, Louisa Eld, wife of a Staffordshire landowner. What stability he knew came from these four households. At Chevening he had the run of the library; he heard stories of the Earl's sister, the Eastern traveller Lady Hester Stanhope, and met Stanhope's heir, Viscount Mahon (the historian Philip Henry Stanhope) .3 His grandmother, survivor of the American Revolution, gave him an awareness of North America that he later used well in his speeches and journalism. His affection for her also significantly influenced his relationships with women. 'I adore all old women - as you know,' he once wrote to Manners, mischievously referring to his first adult love affair, a distinctly Oedipal passion for a beautiful emigree countess literally old enough to be his grandmother.4 Strangford's arrangements were eminently practical. Eight was a perfectly acceptable age for a boy of George's era to be sent away. (Eton records one unfortunate child of four.)5 Strangford's private education had been usual for gentlemen's sons at the turn of the century, but by

1826-35: George Smythe's Schooldays 33

1826 most went to public schools.6 Tonbridge, near Penshurst, had been founded in 1553 by Sir Andrew Judde, father of the Alice Judde who married Customer Smythe, and their son Thomas had been a generous benefactor. Though it was now governed by the Skinners Company, Judd and Smythe scholarships were available for Oxford and Cambridge, if George stayed the necessary five years. There may have been another financial factor. In family lore, while Strangford was in Brazil, the last direct Judde descendant died, and the estate advertised for claimants, with a cutoff date after which it passed to the Skinners. Strangford arrived back in London too late. The Skinners later elected him a member, small compensation for an income supposedly worth £30,000 a year. The reliability of this anecdote is unclear. It is not mentioned in Strangford's correspondence, but if it occurred when the statutes for the Judde endowment were revised during his Russian term in 1825, George's admission in 1826 could have been a favour to a descendant. Whenever this unfortunate episode occurred (if it did), it can only have further convinced Strangford that George must be trained for a career. It would be up to him, as Strangford put it, to 'bring honey to the hive.'7 The revised regulations benefited George in the form of updated facilities and larger enrolment. He arrived to a new Lower School and the next year a new dining hall, dormitories for 110 boys, and an enlarged library.8 The curriculum, the usual gentlemanly immersion in Greek and Latin read, translated, and learned by heart, introduced newer subjects like mathematics, French, and Hebrew. (Many boys went into the Church.) These studies trained the minds and the memories of the pupils, as they had for over three hundred years, and forged a bond of common knowledge.9 GSS at eighteen would assure his father that 'a commerce with the writers of antiquity raises and purifies the mind' (though even then the theory's applicability to himself is doubtful).10 Classics denoted class, even if the living conditions at some schools were primitive. Tonbridge was better than most. Breakfast and tea were bread and butter; pupils provided their own plates, pots, cutlery, coffee, tea, and milk, but there was a joint of meat with vegetables for dinner every day.11 School hours were 6:45 to 8:30 before breakfast, 9:30 to 12:30, and 2 to 4. As well as six weeks' holiday at Christmas and midsummer, the headmaster, Dr Knox, could give twelve more days (such as the King's birthday or Guy Fawkes day), announced by a cricket ball tossed into the schoolroom.12 The school registers list GSS as a notable former pupil but provide no details of his two years there. He must have found them a shock after the tight family unit. At school, his environment was 'public'

34 Disraeli's Disciple

in every way. Eating, sleeping, studying, and playing were communal, and he was expected to adopt a uniform, rather than individual, set of ideas, behaviour patterns, and values. Along with the classics went an emphasis on empire, war, sacrifice for the state, and heroic masculinity. Here his individualism encountered institutionalized ideas and was only temporarily absorbed into them. Why he left is unclear. Perhaps it was his health, which began to be poor about now; where his siblings caught the usual childhood colds, he developed fevers and persistent coughs. At Easter 1828, he was sent to Chevening to gain strength.13 The stress of Strangford's insistent pressure also showed in physical symptoms. His father's references to him as 'our learned and honourable friend' (a parliamentary term) suggest that even then a political career was mapped out for him.14 His initiation was like that of Fakredeen, the Smythe character in Tancred: 'At ten years of age he was initiated in all the mysteries of political intrigue. His startling vivacity and the keen relish of his infant intelligence for all the passionate interests of men amused and sometimes delighted.'15 The picture is of a boy too old for his years, who has learned that precociousness pleases. Holidays gave no relief. At home his father coached him, and most of his visits were strategic ones to influential people. Besides Chevening, he visited Walmer Castle at Dover, Wellington's official residence as warden of the Cinque Ports; Wynyard Park, the Marquess of Londonderry's mansion at Stockton-on-Tees; Baron Ravensworth's Ravensworth Castle, near Durham; and the Duke of Northumberland's Alnwick Castle. Like Contarini Fleming, he was bidden to social events with the brief paternal instruction, 'There are several persons whom you should know,' and his youthful reactions may well be reflected in Contarini's fright and Coningsby's tears.16 Strangford was himself under stress, hard up and worried about his children. If anything happened to him, there was only £7,000 to divide among them, and his mother had only her government pension.17 When in April 1827 Canning became prime minister, Strangford swallowed his pride and applied for a post. 'A step to which,' he hinted broadly to Wellington, 'I am strongly impelled by my duty to my five children.'18 But because he was one of the ultra-Tory peers who had campaigned for Wellington, Canning gave him the cold refusal mentioned earlier.19 When Wellington did become prime minister the next year, Strangford, who had hopes of the Foreign Office, had to be told that diplomatic experience was not enough; the foreign minister must be a known party statesman. Like Disraeli's Baron Fleming, Strangford

1826-35: George Smythe's Schooldays

35

bitterly resented that, after a career based on initiative, he was now seen as insufficiently establishment.20 Disdainfully, he turned down the sop that was offered, governorship of Jamaica, telling Wellington 'he never would take rum when he could get claret.'21 Then a public spat blew up when Napier's History of the Peninsular War alleged that not Strangford but Admiral Sidney Smith had effected the 1807 coup with the Portuguese royal family. An outraged exchange followed, with Strangford eventually bringing a libel suit against a hostile newspaper but failing to win.22 This was odd, since officialdom clearly supported him to the point in July of making him liaison with the Portuguese royal family in Brazil. Here there was a complex situation involving the emperor, Don Pedro, his sister, Maria, named regent of Portugal in 1826, and their brother, Don Miguel, made regent in 1827 and now claiming the throne. One suggestion was to marry Pedro's seven-year-old daughter, another Maria, to her uncle Miguel, at which Strangford (who always liked a coarse joke) passed on Pedro's blunt assessment: '"In the first place his — won't — ... All that about his —ing my sister is quite false."'23 George's exit from Tonbridge was another worry. While Strangford and the other children spent Easter at Clifton, he misbehaved at Chevening so badly that the Stanhopes' daughter, Lady Wilhelmina, later told him: T used to look on you with awe not unmingled with horror.'24 In late spring he and Lionel went to a Sussex establishment run by a clergyman, Dr Thomas Hooker, at The Grange, Rottingdean.25 GSS had good experiences at The Grange, whose former pupils included Edward Bulwer (Bulwer Lytton, the novelist) and Henry Manning, later Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. Hooker's wife, Emma, was a cultured woman to whom J.C. Bach dedicated six sonatas. Hooker himself was a kindly, conscientious man who abhorred corporal punishment and had a real affection for his pupils. He also had enough of the renegade to appeal to George: he frequently acted as lookout for the local smugglers, the Rottingdean Gang.26 Like everyone who felt George's charm, he thought he could influence his talented pupil to change his ways. Like everyone else, he failed. His reports show that already George's behaviour had fallen into its lifelong pattern. Unlike Lionel, who was 'sullen, & very contentious,' George was amiable and charming. He had enormous talent but exercised it only when interested, and he lacked perseverance. In the daily drill of writing verses, he was careless and slovenly, until Hooker showed him how a word or phrase could charge a sentence with meaning. It was to Hooker that he

36 Disraeli's Disciple

owed the excitement of writing, and it was Hooker too who made the summation that still best sums him up. 'His besetting Sin, is impetuousness of Character. Whatever he chuses to do, he does, without a thought of consequences, & without a Regard to where his arrows fly, or whom he may wound.'27 Other friends of his father's now began to appear. Lady Hester Stanhope's servant, Michal, sometimes looked after him when Strangford was away in Brazil, as did a Dublin classmate, John Wilson Croker. In Coningsby Croker is the toadying Rigby, who in the absences of Harry's grandfather, Lord Monmouth, decides Harry's schooling, sends him to agreeable schoolfellows for the holidays, and invites him up to London. 'Compared with his former forlorn existence, these were happy days, when he was placed under the gallery [in Parliament] as a member's son, or went to the play with the butler.' George did hear debates in Parliament, and wrote a vivid account of those on the 1832 Reform Bill.28 There also appeared Benjamin Disraeli, the man who would supersede his father as the strongest influence on his life. Disraeli's letters first mention Strangford in March 1832, but the evidence in Contarini Fleming shows they had known each other earlier. Disraeli wrote this novel between 1830 and 1832.29 When Strangford read it in May 1832, soon after publication, he told Disraeli that he had not read anything for years that pleased him so much. 'Some of it is startling, but I like to be startled.'30 What probably startled him most was his own literary portrait. To a modern reader, the most impressive character in Contarini Fleming is not the angst-ridden hero but Baron Fleming, his 'cold, worldly, practical' father, whose appearance, personality, and career are Strangford's.31 Disraeli's method of writing fiction was always one of metamorphosis, turning friends and acquaintances into his characters; as an aide-memoire, he kept lists of their names under various classifications in his commonplace books.32 Vivian Grey is himself, and Contarini's 'psychological autobiography' also reflects him, while the Baron has been taken to be a maturer self, or even Disraeli's father, the literary scholar Isaac DTsraeli.33 The Baron's biographical details are strikingly inappropriate to Isaac, but they do fit Strangford, whose name appears in the commonplace books. Like Strangford (now a baron), Baron Fleming is a 'Saxon nobleman of ancient family' and a distinguished diplomat. Energetic, clever, and distant, he has risen to foreign minister of a Scandinavian country. Contemptuous of theory, he requires men 'not to think but to act, not to examine but to obey.' His politics are severely practical: 'The minister of an emperor, he would have maintained his system by

1826-35: George Smythe's Schooldays 37

armies; in the cabinet of a small kingdom, he compensated for his deficiency by intrigue.' Schooled by Metternich, he handles European negotiations as delicate as those on which Strangford worked at Vienna and Verona; one instance involving dynastic rights to a European throne is a close parallel to Strangford's handling of the Portuguese royal family in 1807. He is also a linguist, a socialite, and a voluptuary who passes to his son his fascination with and contempt for women. The conclusive parallel, however, is the Baron's failure to succeed his prime minister because of Cabinet opposition. They reject him in terms identical to Wellington's rejection of Strangford: 'Although not unwilling to profit by his labours, they were chary of allowing them too uncontrolled a scope. He was talked of as a new man; he was treated as scarcely national.'34 Oddly enough, the Baron's strained relationship with Contarini has many elements of Strangford's with George. Contarini is motherless, but later converts to her Catholicism. His relationship with his coldly pragmatic father combines George's admiration and fear with Strangford's distance and professional preoccupation. Contarini's training is planned as rigorously as George's. He is pushed into society for its useful contacts and must ride, dance, and fence, improve his languages, practise speaking, and learn how to associate with women. He follows a prescribed reading program and becomes so infected with his father's scepticism that he decides 'no man was to be trusted, and no woman to be loved.'35 He is lectured on self-control and firmly guided into a political career. All these parallels with George's early years suggest that, if Disraeli did not met him then, he at least heard of him from Strangford.36 George was still at Rottingdean when Strangford returned from Brazil in May 1829 and settled into a London house, 68 Harley Street.37 Effectively retired at forty-nine, he took over four-year-old Percy, whom he thought his grandmother babied: 'A father can manage a boy better than any woman in the world.'38 This was not quite true. At home for Christmas, George and Lionel were so unruly that he consulted Hooker, who had the answer: 'Two places for Rottingdean direct... a School is a support not to be obtain'd at home. If they really believe two Places are ready, They will be quiet.'39 Strangford also consulted Stanhope about having them re-vaccinated.40 Health was on his mind. At Rio he had suffered a bladder inflammation that still kept him housebound and groaning aloud from the pain.41 Benjamin Brodie, the royal surgeon, came to perform the excruciating procedure for bladder stones, in which a rigid catheter was inserted through the penis to the bladder to

38 Disraeli's Disciple

crush the stones enough to be passed in the urine, 'a most minute and torturing examination' that lasted an hour and a quarter.42 George's reaction to his father's distress indicates the strength of his phobia about illness. 'My poor George,' Strangford told Stanhope, 'is laid up with one of his old fevers - it seems that this affectionate and kindhearted little boy has been in the practice, during my illness, of getting up in the night, and coming down stairs, to listen at my bedroom door - and he has thus laid the foundation of his present sufferings.'43 Hooker suggested folk remedies for George: 'Where there is any probability of weakness in the chest I always think a small Bergamy Patch Plaister about the size of a crown Peice, placed at the top of the Breast Bone is a most ex[cell]ent Defence.'44 By Easter, however, George had left Rottingdean and was back in London being rigorously prepared for the next stage in his education, the entrance examinations for Eton. By that time, the family finances were easing a little as Strangford began to draw a diplomatic pension. By early July he was negotiating for some of the ancestral acres at Westenhanger, and on the 20th there appeared in the Eton entrance book a beautifully clear signature, 'George Percy Sydney Smythe (Mr) ,'45 In the week of examinations that followed, his father boasted, he outdid all other candidates: 'he has even satisfied me - who am not easily satisfied with his exertions.' No amount of achievement, however, was enough. While the other children went to Clifton for the summer holidays, Strangford subjected George to more cramming: 'My heir apparent remains with me, to read Thucydides during the dog-days ... I am vain enough to think that one hour with me is worth to him more than a week with a preceptor whom he has not the same reasons for loving and obeying.'46 At twelve, George was as strikingly attractive as his own Lionel Averanche or Disraeli's Coningsby at the same age: 'radiant with health and the lustre of innocence ... The expression of his deep blue eyes was serious. Without extreme regularity of features, the face was one that would never have passed unobserved. His short upper lip indicated a good breed; and his chestnut curls clustered over his open brow ... Add to this, a limber and graceful figure, which the jacket of his boyish dress exhibited to great advantage.'47 Emotionally, he was as volatile as his parents, but, like Coningsby and Averanche, his charm made him friends. The nucleus of the Young England group - GSS, John Manners, and 'Kok' Cochrane - was formed at Eton. Alexander Cochrane-Baillie, son of Admiral Thomas Cochrane of a famous naval family, was the eldest and most pragmatic of the group. He arrived just after George in

1826-35: George Smythe's Schooldays 39

October 1830, but, because he stayed only two years, he later saw himself as an outsider to the close-knit Eton and Cambridge group. This is not borne out by their continued affection for Kok - Buckhurst in Coningsby, energetic, kindly, convivial, with gourmet pretensions. He 'gave his opinion on the most refined dishes with all the intrepidity of saucy ignorance, and occasionally shook his head over a glass of Hermitage or Cote Rotie with a dissatisfaction which a satiated Sybarite could not have exceeded.'48 George's closest friend, Lord John Manners, son of the Duke of Rutland, arrived the year after the other two. Tall, handsome, and courteous, he could not have had a more suitable surname, except the one he acquired as Henry Sydney in Coningsby. GSS later dedicated Historic Fancies to him, 'whose gentle blood is only an illustration of his gentler conduct, and whose whole life may well remind us that the only child of Philip Sydney became a Manners, because he is himself, as true and blameless, the Philip Sydney of our generation.' Manners was an elegant boy with dark romantic looks; a portrait at fourteen shows him, gun over his shoulder, in a shootingjacket as immaculate as his perfectly wound stock.49 His diffident air reflects his shyness, due to a bad stammer. Because so much of Eton schooling involved speaking in class, his tutor once advised him to leave, but Manners refused and gradually conquered his handicap. He was a good pupil, who advanced through hard work rather than the flair George possessed, and a dutiful son whose occasional kicking over the traces was due to the company he kept.50 George was welcomed at the Rutland family seat, Belvoir Casde, just as Harry Coningsby is at the Sydneys' Beaumanoir, where he becomes a favourite with Henry's older sisters and his mother, who 'hardly ever knew a more interesting boy.'51 Beaumanoir is a centre for political affairs and discussion, as was Belvoir; Rutland was a powerful Tory whose three sons all became Conservative MPs. In spite of his auspicious start, George's five years at Eton fulfilled no one's expectations. Later he coloured his schooldays with a pleasurable nostalgia, from friendships to breakfasts and dinners at the Christopher Hotel and even the infamous mass floggings inflicted by the headmaster, Dr Keate. 'Do you remember,' GSS reminisced to Manners, 'how I used to copy your themes week after week? And above all, do you recollect a certain passage of those times, which is even now ... before my eyes, when I read your Vale, at the door of Keates old house, then your Tutors, at the bottom of the lane?'52 It is GSS's nostalgia that similarly colours the lyrical descriptions of Eton in Coningsby, written from the point of view of an ex-pupil, which Disraeli never was. That delicious plain,

40

Disraeli's Disciple

studded with every creation of graceful culture ... that castle-palace, grey with glorious ages; those antique spires, hoar with faith and wisdom, the chapel and the college; that river winding through the shady meads; the sunny glade and the solemn avenue; the room in the Dame's house where we first order our own breakfast and first feel we are free.'53 Disraeli's Etonians blithely follow the school rituals, which confirm their membership in an exclusive coterie, speaking the language of privilege in its slang, boating on its own stretch of river, playing its esoteric games, forming aristocratic cliques that pointedly exclude the sons of businessmen. They are hardly boys at all but little men, preparing for lives in the ruling class. Less pleasant rituals, such as fagging and bullying, are quickly passed over, and activities like cock-fighting, drinking, gambling, and rioting are never mentioned. The reality of George's Eton years was not as rosy. The family chronicler hints at conduct 'the reverse of satisfactory': defiance of authority and two near-expulsions, saved each time by his charm. On the first occasion, soon after he arrived, an alarmed Dr Hooker wrote him a long recapitulation of his earlier warnings: 'you was ever moved by the impulse of the Moment... you are becoming distinguished, but not to your Credit, & the sneer is hurled back on those who speak & speak kindly of you, 'Yes a very clever Boy, but - .'" George was endangering his future: 'Expulsion may take place, a disgrace never to be wiped off. Beware. You stand on a Precipice. Beware.'54 The warning had no more effect than the multitude of later ones. To provoke such reaction, his behaviour must have been remarkable. In Keate's time, Eton town was often placarded, not with the school motto, 'Floreat Etona,' but with slogans such as 'Floreat seditio,' and the manly independence praised in Coningsby often translated into total anarchy that was brutally punished.55 George encountered at Eton the same mix of latitude and strictness that Strangford meted out, but now, ready to rebel, he had plenty of company. Boys routinely expressed contempt for the masters by hissing, shouting, or stamping their feet; they refused to obey orders; and there were actual riots, some of which coincide suspiciously with George's time. The most famous, in June 1832 when Keate personally caned all one hundred and fifty of George's Fifth Form in the middle of the night, found its way into Angela Pisani, where Averanche's French school closely resembles George's Eton. When Senazet [the usher] appeared in De Vegnes' room, there could not have been more astonishment, not even on that memorable hour of the

1826-35: George Smythe's Schooldays 41 great fifth form row - how memorable in Etonian annals, 'When Keate appeared in the dead of night,' as it was sung afterwards: and the alarm of the couple of hundred mutineers whom he flogged at midnight could not have been greater than that of the young rebels of the Eleutheria.56

In October that same year, boys assaulted a Windsor Fair showman and a local hairdresser named Fox, who reported them to school authorities. The next year, Manners and six others set out for revenge, attacked Fox, and partially demolished his house and shop. On this occasion, Keate flogged eighty boys, while the seven were charged in court, although the case was dismissed.57 Another side of Eton life was bullying. Since George was an Oppidan, boarding in the town, he was spared the notorious Eton dormitory, the Long Chamber, where conditions as late as 1833 were worse than a parish workhouse and the violence among the boys nightly incarcerated there outdid anything in Tom Brown's Schooldays.58 George's housemaster was assistant master Edward Pickering, and his tutor was William Cookesley, an eccentric but brilliant man who always remembered him fondly.59 Angela Pisani, however, shows that George knew what bullying was like. None of the boys there complain about routine 'lickings' by seniors, but the sadistic Denain goes too far. He makes the little boys fight, cracks dirty jokes about their sisters, and employs a muscle-man ('big Balzac') to beat up the disobedient. When Averanche's friend Locart, based on Manners, shows his bruises, they decide to take revenge. Yet this is in itself a breach of the system. Denain, like Keate, represents accepted ideology; the school expects total obedience, just as nineteenth-century political and social hierarchies expected it from junior members, and Locart's revolt gets him expelled. Averanche 'peaches' to the authorities, the prime schoolboy sin, and his agonies of remorse suggest a source in GSS's own experience.60 Most of his friends came from prominent families. Lord Edward Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, was initially a fourth in the group in Coningsby he is Lord Vere, later a Whig MR 61 In the Fifth Form with George in 1832 were Frank Villiers, the Earl of Jersey's son, Mortimer Drummond of the Drummonds Bank family, and William Herries, son of politician J.C. Herries. George Lyttelton (soon Baron Lyttelton) was George's idol; a year older and a better scholar, he moved up quickly to Cambridge in 1834 with the prestigious Newcastle scholarship. In 1835 George's Sixth Form classmates included Stafford Northcote and John Walter, son of The Times proprietor, and sometimes identified in Coningsby

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as Oswald Millbank, son of a Midlands manufacturer. Coningsby is initially disdainful of an Etonian with a background in 'trade,' but, after he saves Oswald from drowning, they become close friends. Oswald and his father assist Coningsby in his political career, as John Walter in the 1840s would give Young England helpful publicity in The Times.62 In Coningsby, it is Oswald who makes Harry aware of non-aristocratic political interests determined to acquire power, and, like GSS, Harry is impressed by a perspective very different from the one he has acquired.63 Yet, if Strangford sent George to Eton to join an influential Establishment network, he succeeded. Twelve of George's Sixth Form became clergymen and one merely succeeded to a title, but six became politicians, five lawyers, one a soldier, and one a banker.64 As Cochrane later put it, 'It is remarkable how much the public education of England influences the lives of public men. The associates of public schools, and then of college, survive even political rivalries ... The present century has seen many parties which have had their origin in and gained their strength by the ties of college sympathies.'65 GSS himself drew a similar parallel between Young England and another idol of his, the Whig prime minister Lord Grey, whose success in politics came as head of an Eton and Cambridge contingent who intermarried and became colleagues.66 In an era of intense friendships, GSS and his friends were particularly intimate, exchanging endearments, embraces, and expressions of 'love' and 'idolatry.' Disraeli's famous eulogy in Coningsby idealizes this adolescent affection: 'At school, friendship is a passion. It entrances the being; it tears the soul. All loves of after-life can never bring the rapture, or its wretchedness; no bliss so absorbing, no pangs of jealousy or despair so crushing or so keen! ... What earthquakes of the heart and whirlwinds of the soul are confined in that simple phrase, a schoolboy's friendship!'67 Although our more knowing age detects homoeroticism in such heightened language and demonstrative behaviour, they did not necessarily denote a physical side to the emotional attachment. George and his friends could not have avoided knowing what went on between boys, or even with masters, but homosexuality at boarding schools was accepted as a stage in male development, a substitute for family love that would give way later to heterosexual relationships.68 When they talked of 'purity' or 'vice,' they meant indulgence of all kinds, not merely sexual. George, contemplating confirmation in 1836, piously expressed himself 'in a healthier and purer state of mind than when exposed to the profligacy which, with most boys, goes hand in hand with the upper parts of a public school.'69 A Freudian might remark on his language here

1826-35: George Smythe's Schooldays 43

('hand in hand' with the 'upper parts'), and George's delicate looks were of the sort that often led to a younger boy being 'taken up' by a senior, but if the profligacy was sexual, it was just as likely to involve local girls or college maids. In Angela Pisani, Denain sneers at Averanche's attempt to catch smallpox because he was 'insanely in love with some pastoral Lisette' and wanted to stay over the holidays. In Cochrane's Ernest Vane, the precocious Luttrell (based in part on GSS) has an affair at sixteen with an older woman.70 The Quarterly Journal of Education in 1834 lambasted the public schools for offering 'opportunities for the indulgence of every sensual inclination ... a taste for gluttony and drunkenness, an aptitude for brutal sports and a passion for female society of the most degrading kind.' Forty years on, John Walter shocked the headmaster of Wellington School with his sordid reminiscences of Eton, and one source claims that GSS was known for sexual misconduct at college.71 In his essay on Mirabeau, a figure with whom he identified, he refers to 'all those excesses, which those who have been over-strictly educated, commonly indulge in, when they first leave their paternal home.'72 Strangford himself was indulgent towards licentious behaviour at Eton: 'wild oats should be sown there [rather] than at Oxford or Cambridge. Sown they must be. One of the most powerful ingredients in temptation is novelty - and I therefore think that many follies are committed by young men at the University mainly because they have not the previous knowledge of the consequences of them, which they could have acquired had they been at a public school.'73 He himself set no celibate example, something that in Ernest Vane underlies Cochrane's characterization of Luttrell's father, Lord Linton, who passes on his profligate ways to his son. Strangford was dallying with 'fair friends' in high life and low, with ladies of the royal bedchamber at the Brighton Pavilion, with actresses at the theatre, and perhaps with others. Soon after his bladder surgery, he joked to Stanhope: 'Penis reminds me of clitoris, and that again reminds me of the departure of a certain Ambassadress for Vienna.'74 Intellectual life at Eton was predictable. Again, the curriculum was mostly Greek and Latin authors in monotonous repetition. Punch acidly remarked: 'It is true that public schools teach only Latin and Greek, which may account for the fact that Eton cannot write English.'75 The first mathematics master did not arrive until 1836, too late for George, whose lack of mathematics would prevent his taking the Cambridge Tripos. School reading listed the Iliad, the Aeneid, and Latin prose authors in the anthology Scriptores Romani, compiled as training in 'ora-

44

Disraeli's Disciple

tory and public virtue' for young men going into Parliament. (Fortunately, it was also 'a great relief to the intellect.')76 The boys learned passages by heart and repeated them in class. They prepared Latin 'themes' on prescribed subjects, and they composed Latin and Greek verses. In Coningsby, Harry owes his real education to the Eton Library, where in his last year he reads exhaustively in history, theology, and political theory and acquires enough parliamentary history to assess the Tory ideology to which the school is subjected. George also read Koch's Revolutions in Europe, Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, and Hallam's Europe during the Middle Ages. Sixth Form boys got by heart (not necessarily accompanied by understanding) a selection of gems of eloquence known as 'the Speech book,' and Keate coached them in speech making, including hints for delivery and the 'Elements of Gesture' prescribed in John Walker's 1801 Academic Speaker.^ It was expected that many would use these skills when they went into Parliament. To get there, they would also need connections, which Strangford cultivated throughout the Eton years. He and George spent Christmas and New Year 1832-3, for instance, with George's godfather, the Duke of Northumberland, at Alnwick, and diplomatically visited again, 'very virtuous and very cold,' at New Year 1834.78 When the Lords debated the Reform Bill in October 1831, George, aged thirteen, was shoehorned into the packed chamber among an audience perched on specially constructed seating for nine or ten hours every evening with the thermometer at 85 degrees. Though Strangford and Wellington opposed Reform, the speaker who most impressed George was the Whig prime minister, Lord Grey. Years later he recalled the impact Grey's appearance made on his young imagination. 'He seemed to come out, so, out of all that lordly assembly, to belong to another generation, another school, another age,' a figure from chivalric tradition, 'some baron of Runnymede, a Paladin at the head of the people,' evoking a more principled past than the acrimonious present. The seeds of Young England medievalism, encouraged by Scott's historical romances, were starting to sprout. Grey was also an exemplar as a parliamentary orator: 'The grave inflections of his voice in his reply to one of Lord Lyndhurst's keen attacks on the reform Bill, as of a patrician who has been outraged, are still lingering in our ear.'79 Already George was learning how a speaker brought emotion to his eloquence. For the time being, his own speaking was confined to the Eton Society, which debated political and historical topics like Ts duelling beneficial to society?' or 'Are revolutions generally beneficial?' Any assessment of

1826-35: George Smythe's Schooldays

45

the ideas that inspired Young England must consider Eton's almost total focus on the past. The curriculum was classical; school holidays marked the anniversaries of Charles I's execution (30 January) or Charles IFs restoration (29 May); the Eton Society could not debate a subject less than fifty years old. As one irreverent history puts it, in George's day 'Attila the Hun still marked the closing-point of 90 per cent of all studies.'80 To be fair, Disraeli points out in Coningsby, the pupils were not totally debarred from current politics: 'They read their newspapers with a keen relish, canvassed debates, and criticised speeches; and although in their debating society, which had been instituted more than a quarter of a century, discussion on topics of the day was prohibited, still by fixing on periods of our history when affairs were analogous to the present, many a youthful orator contrived very effectively to reply to Lord John [Russell], or to refute the fallacies of his rival.'81 This was the strategy GSS would later use effectively in the political sketches in Historic Fancies, knowing his readers had been educated to recognize the parallels with contemporary politics. George is listed as a member of the Society in December 1833, but when Walter proposed him as an active member he was blackballed, and it was not till September 1835 that he and Manners were elected. Manners spoke almost at once, but George, always nervous, delayed until November, when cheers greeted his argument that the Athenians deserved more admiration than the Spartans. Interestingly for an embryo politician, it stressed, not the democratic government of Athens, but its wealth of writers, without whom the modern world would know very little about either Athens or Sparta. It also had, like GSS's best speeches, an extempore element that dealt briskly with points raised by the opposition. Subsequently, however, he lost interest. He moved removal of a ban on gambling (he was defeated), and, scheduled in December to open on Roman patricians' treatment of plebeians, he ducked out completely: 'it was his opinion that the conduct of the Patricians was not justifiable and that he would not detain the House by any discussion on the subject.'82 It sounds like schoolboy arrogance, but it may have been nerves, his 'ductile and unstable mind, with a morbid fear of ridicule.'83 Eton also had an active Literary Society, but George left no trace in any of the anonymous school publications. It was at Eton, however, that at fourteen he first made a reputation as a writer. His poems attracted considerable attention, but none have previously been identified.84 He began with three poems in the Literary Souvenir for 1833 (published at Christmas 1832), and two more in the 1834 number. They are signed

46 Disraeli's Disciple

only with the Greek '£' that he used for his magazine pieces in the 1840s, but one poem, a Wordsworthian rhapsody on 'The Fellowship of Nature,' survives in manuscript among his poems sent to Manners. The Literary Souvenir was one of the illustrated annuals so popular in that decade. Some were part almanac; some, like Lady Blessington's Book of Beauty, were part social register, with poems written to accompany engravings of aristocratic women; but the Souvenir under its editor A.A. Watts prided itself on being literary, and George's 1833 poems show considerable sophistication. The first, 'The Prayer of Childhood,' is a conventional celebration of the family circle, though no more so than other contributions. Written for an engraving of 'Children at Prayer,' it looks back from present sadness to past innocence in the children at their mother's knee. The point of view, however, is disturbingly adult; storm-tossed on waves of trouble, the speaker sees the group as 'Children of pale mortality' in a broken family circle. In 'The Fellowship of Nature,' he flies to Nature as a refuge from pain, sordid 'dreams that meet not mortal eye, / Yet held in cold and stern control, / That shake and rend the inmost soul.' By far the most arresting is the third poem, 'To a Phantom,' which irresistibly recalls his mother's ghost-like appearance in St Petersburg just before her death - a visual image so clear as to suggest that George had actually seen her that day 'standing by, / With marble brow and glassy eye.' Because there was no farewell, he cannot exorcise the ghost, whose presence 'casts a blight / All earthly beauty o'er; / ... There's not on earth a single spot / Where I may turn and meet thee not!' This poem is no conventional imitation, but personal, deeply felt emotion, still raw and wrung out of him in strong, spare language: Thy grave is in my aching breast, I dug it long ago: Return, return, and take thy rest, Where Hope is lying low ... There lie thee down, and come not back, My lone and loveless path to track.

From a fourteen-year-old, this bleak and powerful poem is extraordinary, both for its sophistication and for its thoughts still haunted by that death six years before. His poems of 1834 are less striking, moving from death to young love. The faindy Keatsian 'Oriental Love-letter' is the first (but not the last) of his poems to feature a maiden leaning like Juliet from

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47

her window to her lover below. The 'Lament of Cino da Pistoia' (a fourteenth-century Italian poet) is polished but mechanical, coming alive only in the last stanza, quintessential GSS in its focus on sensation: Thine — thine the extremes of woe and bliss, The wild despair - the soothing balm; Yet who would change even grief like this For dull oblivion's calm?85

His preoccupation with death and loss reflects another family tragedy. Lionel, like many tubercular patients, had appeared strong and healthy, despite the worries about his chest at Rottingdean. Unlike George, he had a talent for mathematics; in 1831, aged ten and apparently without paternal assistance, he published a noteworthy article in the Mechanic's Magazine.^ In early 1834, however, he fell seriously ill, with (like his mother before him) incurable consumption. Distraught at this second family blight, Strangford hurried him off to Brighton in the hope that sea air would work a miracle, but it proved hopeless. He was brought back home to Harley Street, where, aged thirteen, he died on 13 July.87 His death was another of the intimations of mortality that already burdened the family and roused new apprehension for young Ellen, whose weak chest provoked recurrent crises requiring medical attention or trips to the seaside. Strangford became significantly depressed and at the end of the year commissioned the window and plaque in Ashford Church that were to be his memorial. One side of the plaque was inscribed to his wife, the other to Lionel; the centre was blank, ready to record his own death.88 Oppressed by this aura of family doom, it is hardly surprising that George reacted. In his last year, 1835, however, he became a school leader. In June, after the King donated enough champagne to make the whole school tipsy, George took part in Montem, the triennial Eton ceremony when boys in fancy dress waylaid guests for contributions to the Cambridge scholarship to King's College.89 The Morning Chronicle gave a jaundiced account of the costumes and rituals, and there was some truth in its criticisms. In the changing times of which parliamentary reform was one sign, Montem still reeked of patrician privilege. Only nine years later, in 1844, Disraeli would attend the very last one as the guest of George's tutor, William Cookesley.90 In Coningsby Harry, handsome in military attire and a cocked hat, holds up his grandfather's carriage, and according to the school bard George seems to have been just as smart:

48 Disraeli's Disciple Now look! And Mr. Smythe you'll see, He truly comes it to a T, With his clean white gloves, and his clean white shirt, And his clean white trousers without any dirt

(no small achievement in the chaos of Eton life).91 Rebel or not, George was becoming a dandy. He was also chosen to give the school's Address to the King on Speech Day, 27 July. Eton headmasters usually had a heavy hand in these official effusions, and, apart from a reference to George's ancestress Sacharissa, his Address is a laureate's stiff production in heroic couplets.92 It is, however, interesting for the way it foreshadows Coningsby. 'What fame of after days,' Disraeli's narrator asks, 'equals the rapture of celebrity that thrills the youthful poet, as in tones of rare emotion he recites his triumphant verses amid the devoted plaudits of the flower of England?'93 The lyrical description of Eton and its setting echoes George's poem: Who does not feel - of those who e'er have felt His heart in mild and magic softness melt; Who has not known a rapture undefined ... As long as hearts are warm, and thoughts are free, So look thy sons, fair Eton, upon thee: Well may they love thee, for a holy pow'r Breathes in the beauty of each antique tow'r.

George's peroration also foreshadows the famous conclusion to Coningsby: And here, perchance, some yet may earn a name Not all unworthy of their father's fame; For in this mimic world young hearts beat high, And feed on thoughts of bright futurity; Oh, may not all their orisons be vain! May joy ne'er change to woe - nor hope to pain!

Disraeli, too, mingles hopes and doubts for his hero and his idealistic friends: 'Will they maintain in august assemblies and high places the great truths which, in study and in solitude, they have embraced? ... Will vanity confound their fortunes, or Jealousy their sympathies? Will they remain brave, single, and true ... sensible of the greatness of their position, recognise the greatness of their duties ... and restore the

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49

happiness of their country by believing in their own energies, and daring to be great?' These high sentiments, however, were sullied by events in George's last term. On 7 November, after George's maiden speech to the Eton Society, the Upper School boys again rioted, set a bonfire in the quadrangle beside Henry VTs statue, and refused to name the ringleaders. A group that again included Manners attacked an assistant master, John Wilder, with catcalls and 'grossly insulted' his wife. Once more Manners was the scapegoat. His dignified apology is on record - Keate's sister, Margaretta Browne, thought she had never seen such a beautiful letter but soon after the incident both he and GSS left Eton for private tutors.94

5 1836-7: Herstmonceux and Cambridge

I go to Cambridge having thought long; I go there armed with that desire for distinction which I believe that I do not share less than other men. GSS to Strangford, 1836

When George left Eton for a tutor, he had no guarantee he would go on to university. In Coningsby Harry the paragon needs no more tutelage; he spends the vacation between Eton and Cambridge travelling and investigating the industrial Midlands. Most public schoolboys, however, had to fill the academic gaps their prestigious schools had ignored, and George's friends had already scattered to tutors. Cochrane and Lyttelton were now at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Manners was entered there while he worked hard at a daunting reading list. George also set his heart on Trinity, and if he had finished Eton on the high note of the Address, there would have been no difficulty, but the November riot had made Strangford dubious about a son who backslid so often. Then there was the cost. Buying Westenhanger had depleted him, and so had Eton; at the end of George's first year, Strangford had even sold off some of his rare books at a Sotheby's auction.1 Cambridge was expensive, and Trinity the most expensive college. An undergraduate could reckon on spending between £120 and £300 a year, depending on whether he had extra private tuition (nearly everyone did) and on how well he lived, wined, and dined.2 Strangford's feelings about his son ran to extremes. George, he might exult, 'has grown two inches taller than I am, and looks as strong as Hercules and as handsome as Adonis. No one is more certain to achieve a brilliant future'; another day he lacked 'application, ambition, and all those natural affections through which youth is capable of being influ-

1836-7: Herstmonceux and Cambridge 51

enced.'3 Before Strangford would commit himself to financing university, he took his usual high-level advice from three political households. Father and son celebrated Christmas 1835 with the Londonderrys at Wynyard Park. Londonderry, half-brother of Strangford's old Foreign Office chief Castlereagh, was a fiery man now growing eccentric. One of Wellington's generals, he had been British ambassador to the post-war congresses at Vienna and Verona, and, but for earlier parliamentary opposition, would have taken over the St Petersburg embassy. His political influence at this point was probably less than that of his redoubtable second wife, Frances Anne, in her mid-thirties and her prime. Disraeli memorably described her appearance at a ball as Cleopatra 'in a dress literally embroidered with emeralds and diamonds from top to toe. It looked like armor, and she like a Rhinoceros.'4 The similes matched her personality. One of the rich aristocratic women who controlled the exclusive Almack's assemblies, she was a powerful social arbiter in London and, through her enormous family estates, a formidable political force in County Durham. No would-be Conservative candidate in the area could expect success without her approval.5 On New Year's Day, Strangford and son moved on to nearby Ravensworth Castle, another Conservative stronghold. Here the family circle included the heir, Henry Thomas Liddell, former MP for Northumberland and future MP for Durham North, and his son Henry, another Etonian. Ravensworth's brother, Henry George Liddell, would later become famous as dean of Christ Church, Oxford, co-compiler of a renowned Greek lexicon, and father of Lewis Carroll's Alice. The final destination was Alnwick, where George remained, presumably for godfatherly indoctrination, while Strangford went back to London.6 George's stay on his own may not have been very exciting. Northumberland, son of his grandfather Lionel's American War commander and former lord lieutenant of Ireland, was known as 'that dullest of all Bores,' but he was as convinced a Tory as Strangford and his wealth made him much more influential.7 His estates were the most extensive in England; he and Ravensworth were among the most prominent owners of coalfields in the northeast and his property around Canterbury alone was worth £160,000.8 In the 1835 general election he had provided Wellington with £2,000 for the Conservative war chest.9 His Cambridge connections were exceptionally strong; an alumnus of St John's, he had made large donations to the university and in 1834, as a suitably stalwart Conservative, been elected its high steward. With this background he became a powerful ally in George's bid to attend university.

52 Disraeli's Disciple

Meantime, George was bound for Sussex and the Reverend Julius Hare at Herstmonceux Rectory. Then as now it was an isolated spot (the better to force George's concentration) on a hill two miles from the church and ruined castle and a mile from any village; its gardens looked over trees and sloping grassland to the coast at Pevensey and the English Channel.10 George had one fellow pupil, George Wagner, a local landowner's son, who went on to Trinity, a Church career, and a lifelong friendship with Hare. He was no thinker, but he made up for it by being 'exceedingly amiable and well-disposed ... and,' Hare thought, 'so far as bookwork, will do very fairly.'11 The two Georges seem to have got on well enough; they had at least one sporting expedition over Wagner senior's land (for which GSS tipped the gamekeeper a lordly 7s 6d), but it was not a friendship like those at Eton.12 For intellectual challenge, however, he could not have found better than Hare, gaunt and imposing, a brilliant scholar and linguist. The rectory was walled with his books in study, drawing-room, and, as the collection grew to fourteen thousand volumes, in passages and bedrooms. He was a Fellow of Trinity, anti-Catholic, and an enthusiast of Coleridge's philosophical ideas, with which he had already infected his former student, F.D. Maurice, whose sister he later married.13 He held that the Church's prime function was as an active agent for social reform, a counter to the class divisions created by burgeoning nineteenth-century commercialism and industrialization. The privileged churchmen or aristocrats - should use their advantages for the mutual benefit of rich and poor, governors and governed.14 When GSS and Manners founded their idealistic Young England movement, they would preach these same principles, in and out of Parliament. Hare, however, was happier with theory than with day-to-day practicalities; he had no idea how to communicate with lesser beings, whether rural parishioners or adolescent boys. His nephew recorded: 'Uncle Julius would have given the world to have been able to talk easily and sympathetically to his people, but he could not get the words out. Sick people in the parish used to say, "The Archdeacon he do come to us, and he do sit by the bed and hold our hands, and he do growl a little, but he do zay nowt.'" In other ways, he was not an ideal supervisor. George needed to be taught control of his feelings, but Hare's was another volatile temperament. His nephew 'never saw anyone so violent, so unmitigated in his likes and dislikes ... so furious in his approval or condemnation ... In his despotic imperiousness he had no sympathy with the feelings and weaknesses of others, though inexpressible pity for all

1836-7: Herstmonceux and Cambridge 53

their greater misfortunes or sorrows.' Every year, to illustrate the consequences of sin, he 'did' Lady Macbeth from his pulpit with the grandest of Grand Guignol. Uncongenial books were hurled furiously across his sitting room, and in one crusade, he tore church pews out of village churches with his own hands.15 Despite (or because of) this, George got along well with him. He respected genuine intellect, and Hare, he reported, was 'an enthusiastic scholar and evident gentleman, and, what is far more rare, a good man.'16 His preparation continued the classical curriculum, enough for Oxford, but for Cambridge mathematics was essential. The Classical Tripos instituted in 1824 was intended for students on the literary side, but even those who were not going for honours had first to pass in mathematics.17 George's reading included the first three books of the Iliad, the first six of the Aeneid, the first two of Xenophon's Memorabilia, Diatessaron (a compilation of the four Gospels), William Paley's Natural Theology, the first two books of Euclid, the elements of arithmetic, and the beginnings of algebra.18 Unfortunately, his stay at Herstmonceux did not improve George's grasp of the two last subjects. Since Hare had not cared for mathematics at Cambridge, he may not have pushed the subject; George's surviving letters mention only exercises in the classics, such as turning a Greek chorus into alcaics, and three years later he had still not acquired the necessary mathematics.19 Hare's enthusiasms were contagious: German books and philosophers, Gothic literature - he had translated La Motte Fouque's knightly tale Sintram - and medievalism. One of his favourite books was his former pupil Kenelm Digby's celebration of medieval chivalry, The Broad Stone of Honour (1822), which argued an indissoluble connection between chivalry and the Catholic Church, the decay of modern times having begun with the Reformation. For Hare it was 'that volume which, had I a son, I would place in his hands, charging him ... to love it next to his Bible,' and, judging by its impact on the Young England group, George loved it even more.20 For both him and Manners, its evocation of an idealized, humane feudalism became the basis for their paternalistic brand of romantic Tory politics. Yet George, who had refused to be confirmed at Eton, continued to reject at Herstmonceux what he called a 'formal mockery.' Strangford wanted Hare to prepare him, but George mistrusted the conventional route: 'It is like giving a man a broom, and telling him to sweep his mind clean.' He was already individualist enough to feel that no mere ritual, however religious, could do this: 'God alone can have, and has, the power of moulding your mind according to His

54 Disraeli's Disciple

will, and prayer is the only means by which He will be disposed to mould it.'21 For a boy not yet eighteen, it is a remarkably independent (or perverse) theological stance, indicating just how resolutely George determined to live by his own rules and not those prescribed by his father, tutor, or society. He could not, however, sustain them without money. He had only the small government pension of £104 which Strangford had won years before, and, restive under incessant paternal homilies on economy, he inserted a distinct edge into his letters home. 'No one is more fully conscious of the difficulties I entail upon you than myself. But... £3 10s. in two months is no exorbitant expenditure, more especially as (besides washing) every letter I receive costs a penny; then hair-cutting, and a pair of shoes (for I was obliged to get a good walking pair, having nothing but bad boots), as well as two pairs of gloves, have been paid out of it.' A nascent dandy, or a teenager with pretensions to sophistication, needed clothes, and his tactic was to shame his father into providing 'some new clothes, or, rather, (as what one wears here matters not as long as a decent suit is produced), some of your old ones - a coat and a pair of pumps, because, as Hare always dresses for dinner, I am obliged to take off my boots, and clap my elephants into pumps, which cotton stockings help not a little to dish, and which at present are full of holes.'22 Strangford did not yet fully realize how George manipulated him or how deeply he resented the unrelenting exhortations. Later, taxed by an unusually strident appeal, George completely lost patience. I passed a horrible night before last... your devilishly pleasant intelligence kept dancing before my eyes, and keeping them open. Maniacal laughs and dying at the top of the tree, were not agreeable topics to dwell upon, and therefore you need not wonder if I say it was the most hellish night I ever spent... For God's sake don't bugaboo me any more, unless some imperative necessity enjoins it; for, without any morbid or Byronic affectation, I give you my word that I would rather have my hand cut off than live that night again.23

Perhaps Strangford's anguish originated in the bitterness of his retirement. He certainly objected to a career in diplomacy for his son, which may be reflected in Coningsby when Harry's mentor Sidonia dissuades him from a diplomatic career with a list of Strangford's real-life rewards. '"Suppose yourself in a dozen years a Plenipotentiary at a chief court, or at a critical post, with a red ribbon and the Privy Council in immediate

1836-7: Herstmonceux and Cambridge 55

perspective; and, after a lengthened career, a pension and a peerage. Would that satisfy you? You don't look excited. I am hardly surprised."'24 George clearly thought seriously about the army.25 It is the career he gives Lionel Averanche in Angela Pisani, and he would have made as dashing an officer as his grandfather, brave and impetuous, taking risks, charging into battle or winning through enemy ranks with vital dispatches. But the times were not propitious. Averanche goes to war with Napoleon's conquering army, when medals and promotions followed every victory. The Britain of 1836 offered far fewer military opportunities, and though glory could be won on the dusty frontiers of Empire, most military advancement was by purchase, often prohibitively expensive. In 1839, for example, Mary Anne Disraeli's brother, LieutenantColonel John Viney Evans of the 29th Regiment, sold his previous rank of major for £1,600, getting £200 above the regulation amount because such steps up in rank were hard to find.26 Strangford could not run to this kind of expenditure. In the end George got his way, his first major victory in the lifelong duel with his father. His hard work at Herstmonceux looked like reform; Hare's report pronounced him 'a lad of fine promise' whom he was happy to recommend to his Trinity associates.27 George insisted that he was now devoted to study, not dissipation; Herstmonceux had matured him, and he was now capable of withstanding the temptations he had fallen to at Eton. His long, reasonable letters might be convincing if they were not so deliberately pitched: 'Your prescience,' he assured Strangford, 'of future griefs and humiliations, your reluctance and your doubts are ill grounded.'28 At this point, with the new Cambridge year only four months away, George appealed to a higher court, and Northumberland intervened as a godfather should. He would pay the cost and George would go to university, though it would not be to Trinity but to his own college, St John's. Hare commented tartly, 'Of course a Duke knows better than any one else what is the fittest place of education for his godson.'29 George could not conceal his triumph when he received Strangford's grudging permission. Unhesitatingly, unrepiningly, without one shadow of a shade of regret, do I give up Trinity. I make no merit of the sacrifice, because if you were neutral, which you say you are, but which the special pleading of your letter rather contradicts, the duke's princely offer, his noble friendship for you, and his great kindness to me, would call for a thousand times greater devotion to the slightest whisper of his will ... I am most willing to go up to St. John's,

56 Disraeli's Disciple and cannot do better in conclusion than to echo your wish that my going there may tend directly to my happiness and welfare in life, and indirectly to your own.30

At the end of May, with Cambridge secure, he went back to Harley Street but fell ill and arrived with one side of his face so severely paralysed that his father was shocked: it was 'very much drawn down, so much, indeed as to disfigure and destroy the general expression of his countenance.'31 The versatile Dr Seymour diagnosed a palsy of 'the fifth pair of facial nerves,' but the symptoms are more like a Bell's palsy (of the seventh nerve), in which one side of the face is immobile, the affected eye and mouth cannot close, and the eye sheds involuntary tears. The experience evidently made a considerable impact on George; years later, in Angela Pisani, Averanche, breaking with his lover Illyrine, callously rejects her tears with Seymour's technical explanation that they are a mere 'secretion which depends upon the more or less flexibility of the fifth pair of facial nerves.'32 At the time, George's treatment was equally painful; Seymour cupped him, applying fiercely heated glasses to the nape of the neck to create a vacuum which drew blood to the affected part. The palsy did gradually disappear (which it would have done in any case), but three weeks later Strangford was still deeply worried by George's debilitated condition.33 It did not prevent him being officially entered on 29 June as a fellowcommoner at St John's.34 Besides the connection with his beneficent godfather, St John's had congenial literary and political associations; it had been Wordsworth's and Byron's college as well as Castlereagh's and Palmerston's. Chartered in 1511, it had been staunchly royalist in the Civil War and was still strongly Conservative in politics and religion. It was also regarded - along with Christ Church, Oxford - as one of the two 'staff colleges' for young men with political ambitions.35 The thirty-yearold Cambridge Union was recognized as a training ground for speakers on the parliamentary model. Like the Eton Society, it had been restricted to topics at least twenty years old by university authorities fearful of sedition, but in the last five years it had been opened up, and now all current political and religious questions were hotly - sometimes outrageously - debated at the weekly meetings, which could end in physical violence and rioting.36 There were also arenas such as the Athenaeum and the Pitt Club for airing opinions. As a fellow-commoner, George had a few more scholastic obligations than if he had entered as a 'nobile.' Only ten years before, a peer's son could acquire a degree on the basis of

1836-7: Herstmonceux and Cambridge 57

six terms' residence without any examinations at all; even now, seven terms would get him a degree if he passed the Senate House BA examination; if he was ambitious, he could then sit for the Classical Tripos without first passing mathematics with honours.37 As a fellow-commoner, however, he could become (as it seems George initially did) a serious 'reading man,' preparing for the Senate House examination in his fifth term and then, given the required pass in mathematics, for the Classical Tripos. Academic rivalry was keen at Trinity and St John's, in scholarships and prestigious prizes such as the gold medals for classics or the prize poem.38 Only Trinity had an entrance examination, but in 1765 St John's had instituted for all undergraduates a 'double examination' which George persuaded his father was an extra intellectual challenge; in their first term and again in June, St John's men were examined in classics, Euclid, algebra, and Christian apologetics.39 Unlike Wordsworth, George left no record of his impressions on arrival at Cambridge. Averanche does not go to university at all but gets a hard schooling in the practicalities of army life arid unscrupulous associates. Coningsby arrives in Cambridge subdued, his horizons expanded by meeting the mysterious financier Sidonia (a composite of Disraeli's own ideas and Lionel de Rothschild's wealth). He is happily reunited with his Eton friends, Buckhurst/Cochrane, Vere/Howard, and Sydney/ Manners, but the passion of Eton life is missing. 'They all read a little, but not with the enthusiasm which they had once projected.' Cambridge, however, has great expectations of him. No man ever went up from whom more was expected in every way. The dons awaited a sucking member for the University, the undergraduates were prepared to welcome a new Alcibiades. He was neither: neither a prig nor a profligate; but a quiet, gentlemanlike yet spirited young man, gracious to all, but intimate only with his old friends, and giving always an impression in his general tone that his soul was not absorbed in his University.40

Neither, in the end, was GSS's, though he began with determination and the goal of an honestly earned honours degree. He matriculated on 29 September, the start of the Michaelmas term, and was allocated rooms at Ell, New Court. Only five years old, New Court was part of recent university expansion, but it was a setting idyllic enough to possess his imagination as much as Eton. St John's enveloped him in an idealized version of the past in the famous copy of Venice's Bridge of Sighs, the Gothic Revival buildings, the 'Wedding Cake' cupola, and the long

58 Disraeli's Disciple

cloister parallel to the Cam.41 Coningsby in his darkest hours is soothed and inspired by the beauty of the Cambridge buildings; the buttresses and pinnacles of nearby King's College Chapel reinforce his belief in godlike deeds and heroic principles.42 Term began on 10 October, but George did not take up residence till the end of the month, when Strangford deposited him amid expressions of good intentions. He had by then passed a 'first-rate' examination and according to Strangford was 'at the head of his college - I mean, of the young men of his year.'43 His tutor was the university's public orator, Thomas Crick, assisted by Stephen Isaacson, a cleric noted for his campaigns for retention of slavery, and W.H. Miller, professor of mineralogy specializing in crystallography, under whom GSS made a collection of crystals. His private tutor, by Hare's personal request, was J.W. Blakesley, fellow of Trinity College, friend of Tennyson, and editor of Herodotus.44 George was also busy with a project that suited him better than Euclid or algebra. Stanhope's historian son, Lord Mahon, was currently writing his magnum opus, a History of England 1713-83, the first volume of which appeared in 1836. Possibly through Croker, heavily involved in the prestigious Quarterly Review, GSS was given Mahon's book to review.45 Conservative, royalist, and Anglican, the Quarterly was the voice of the British Establishment, the heavyweight of the literary magazines. Its editor, Walter Scott's son-in-law, J.G. Lockhart, had over the last ten years rescued it from dull solidity and made it interesting as well as authoritative, with a circulation of around ten thousand per issue and a probable readership of half that again. Literary men - Macaulay, Carlyle, Thackeray- made their reputations with reviews in the quarterlies, and the Quarterly also paid quite well at £22 per sheet (sixteen pages), about the length of GSS's contribution.46 On the face of it, it may seem unlikely that Lockhart would entrust this weighty book to an eighteen-year-old, no matter how bright. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals posits that the review was written by Lockhart himself, but GSS's authorship can be proved by working back from his December 1843 review of the French historian Jean-Baptiste Capefigue's Restoration of the Bourbons and Louis XV.47 In all his writing and speeches, GSS has the habit of alluding to previous pieces he has written or delivered. The 1843 review refers back to a remark of his in a Quarterly piece of December 1842, which refers to another in January 1839, which in turn refers to the 1836 review.48 In all the articles, too, the internal evidence of style, topic, point of view, and frame of reference are further evidence of GSS's authorship. His 1836 review is perfectly competent but not particularly memo-

1836-7: Herstmonceux and Cambridge 59 rable. It sounds nervous and a little formulaic; about seven of the eighteen pages are direct quotation from Mahon's book (standard practice for the time), and the generalizations often sound second-hand, as though from textbooks or lectures. What is notable about it is the wide familiarity with politics and history attested to in the allusions, the keen interest in the relationship between party politics and history, and despite the carefully formal style - the sense of a young man's excitement at the age he lives in, an apogee 'of the development of mind, of the achievements of human intellect, of the invention of new arts, of the creation of new powers, of the vast extension of every science and every department of knowledge.' Interestingly, given the large number of biographical portraits in Historic Fancies, this article debates the distinction between biography and history and concludes that a biographical slant cannot equal the approach of a general history. Like Disraeli's pamphlet of the year before, A Vindication of the English Constitution (praised by Strangford as the best thing since Burke), GSS's review emphasizes the stability of the constitution, deprecates unprincipled government (i.e., Whig) attempts to establish 'a narrow and exclusive oligarchy,' and praises the landed class, 'the aristocracy of the lower House,' as the true upholders of social balance in the country, their sense of hereditary responsibility binding together the wealthy and the poorer classes. (So much for sixty-four quarterings.) The piece is no political manifesto; most of it is summary of Mahon's arguments; but GSS's approval of them points towards the principles of his own political career and that of Young England.49 At some point after his brilliant October examination, however, his concentration began to waver. Inevitably, there were distractions. Strangford warned Stanhope not to go to Cambridge in November, when the election of a new vice-chancellor, a 'privileged Saturnalia,' gave licence for undergraduates to take 'unusual freedoms with themselves and others.' Feelings ran high against one of the candidates for seditious language, and the college authorities, who drew 'a nice distinction between a "row" and a "riot"' would not interfere with plans to pelt him or toss him in a blanket. The candidate prudently decided to withdraw before the election began.50 Then there was the usual conviviality of university life. Despite the ennui of the Coningsby group, their real-life counterparts were young men exhilarated by freedom, ideas, and good company. The suggestion that GSS felt isolated from his Eton friends is quite erroneous.51 Trinity is the next college along the Cam from St John's, and Manners's journal is full of excited entries about their meetings, their

60 Disraeli's Disciple

plans, and their general intoxication with each other. He might complain about practical matters - 'How difficult it is to keep clean at Cambridge!' (21 October 1838) - and about lack of seriousness in religious practice - people went to evening chapel just as they would to an Opera' (4 November 1838) - but never about the flow of ideas and intellectual debate, heady with 'arguments on every conceivable metaphysical, moral topic' (3 November 1838). When, two years later, Faber and Blakesley breakfasted with Manners and GSS on Manners's twentieth birthday, the two younger men sat in admiration while future priest and fellow argued about reason: the friends 'never heard 2 men talk better' (13 December 1838).52 Cochrane's fictional version in Lucille Belmont depicts Stanley (a faintly disguised GSS) debating everything from economics to religion with his peers and the college dons but living a broad university life more convincing than the stuffy one led by the embryo politicians in Coningsby. A convivial spectrum of interests and activities come together at their parties: A boat's crew ... one man who attended to mixed sciences, and all the philosophical and geological lectures which were given in the University. Two hard-reading pale-faced cousins of Stanley; another man with pretensions to love and poetry... how glorious and jovial it was, the snug room with its strange mixture of furniture divine and profane; boxing gloves and the last new white tie; Paley, and the Sporting Magazine; Greek plays and Faublas; the Stud Book and Hallam; the last note of some college flirtation, were all paired off.53

Very quickly too the young men became active in the Union, where Cochrane was president in the 1837 Lent term. Here, not in academic studies, is where Coningsby fulfils his Eton promise and makes his Cambridge reputation, and in this Disraeli was once more faithful to his original. 'While his friends listened to his sustained argument or his impassioned declamation, the prompt reply or the apt retort, they looked forward with pride through the vista of years to the time when the hero of the youthful Club should convince or dazzle in the senate.'54 The Union records do not include reports of individual speeches, but the topics on which GSS spoke are instructive enough. As at Eton, Manners spoke first, on 1 December 1836, arguing that Tennyson's work was not that of a true poet.55 GSS plunged in two weeks later with Manners and Cochrane, to oppose any idea that Daniel O'Connell, the Irish 'Liberator' and agitator for Repeal, might be considered a benefactor to his

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country.56 Their attitude as young Tories may have been influenced by O'Connell's friendly relations at this time with Melbourne's Whig government, but GSS may also have known from his Irish half-siblings of the dangers, including death and injury, that agitation brought to landowners. When Christmas came, it was also devoted to politics. Strangford went again to chilly Alnwick, but hurried south after New Year to a West Kent Conservative dinner at Maidstone before taking to his bed with grippe.57 With Northumberland's support and Wellington's knowledge, he was nursing the Kent constituencies for GSS, and, though the 1837 election came too soon, establishing a family presence in the county. He even made judicious donations, such as 10 guineas (double the archbishop's gift) to the annual Feasts of the King's School at Canterbury.58 Back at Cambridge, GSS at once tackled an electoral topic, the secret ballot, which, in spite of Manners, he would consistently oppose throughout his political career. The ballot had been proposed by O'Connell in 1830 and included in the draft Reform Bill, but Lord Grey had rejected it. Its absence meant that, as the election scenes in Coningsby demonstrate, the agents of aristocratic or moneyed influence still dominated the open voting process at the hustings, and pre-Reform corruption and bribery continued. As an aristocrat and a potential candidate benefiting from influence, GSS naturally opposed the ballot that would undermine his position, and the Union shared his feelings: in the debate the opposition won by 46 votes to 12.59 But Union activities, as well as what he blandly referred to as other 'frolics and follies,' helped to dissipate his high purpose. He got into debt (fatally easy at Cambridge), and in the June examinations he did very badly. Knowing what Strangford's reaction would be, he decided not to go home but to stay up and win the Prize Poem competition, 'to gloss over - that & all other mishaps.' His arrogance soon collapsed. For the first time in his life, he found that innate brilliance was not enough and was mortified to be beaten by a more scholarly student, Charles John Vaughan of Trinity, though he comforted himself that Vaughan's Latin was debatable and his Platonism 'a leetle head & shouldery.' As distraction, he went off with Cochrane to Ascot races, won £10 and lost another, 'so I have not lost quite so much in the Vac: as in the Term.'60 Meantime, great events were taking place in the nation. William IV, the 'old lion' who refused to die on the anniversary of Waterloo, succumbed two days later on 20 June, and the Victorian age dawned under a girl younger than GSS.61 Not everyone shared GSS's euphoria at the new

62

Disraeli's Disciple

era, but they knew that, like the unstoppable railway engine, it was approaching at considerably more than walking pace. Fundamental changes in the social fabric were already appearing. Carlyle's pitying condescension to 'the poor little Queen' was matched by the growing conviction of experienced observers like the diarist Charles Greville: 'She will some day play a conspicuous part, and ... she has a great deal of character.'62 In the general election caused by the new reign, the Whigs hung on to power, giving Melbourne the opportunity to guide eighteenyear-old Victoria into the mysteries of governing. But the Whigs held only a majority of forty, while the Tories added thirteen seats to the eight won since 1835. One was at Maidstone, scene of Strangford's January dinner and now held by two Tories, a well-to-do Welsh industrialist called Wyndham Lewis and his flirtatious wife's new protege, Benjamin Disraeli. From this election to the next in 1841, the Tories would gather confidence and more by-elections would offer ambitious young candidates like GSS, Manners, and Cochrane chances to consolidate the party position.

6 1837-8: Faber

Dear Master - I do love thee with a love Which has with fond endeavour built a throne In my heart's holiest place. Historic Fancies

GSS had other things on his mind. His return to Strangford must have been as stressful as he feared, since he promptly fell ill with a fever that kept him in bed for his two weeks at home. He did not join the election campaign at Cambridge, though in Coningsby Disraeli makes it the occasion for the famous set piece in which Coningsby excoriates decadent English Conservatism and derides Whig supremacy as a 'dynasty of deception' on a level with a corrupt Venetian oligarchy.1 By election day, 25 July, GSS had been packed off to the Lake District for a reading stint at Ambleside with a St John's tutor, Thomas Whytehead, three years older, a classical medallist and future missionary. At first Ambleside and its associations with the Romantic poets were a pleasant change, and he read conscientiously with Whytehead for five hours a day. Soon, however, situation and company began to pall. Whytehead was very different in personality and habits and given to chanting Wordsworth to the four winds; the other men in the party were uncongenial 'beasts,' and depression crept back. Ellen was in Switzerland, still ailing, and Strangford had gone to bring her home. After the gregarious Cambridge year, GSS was lonely; the prize poem debacle had lowered his confidence, and Whytehead's brand of High Anglicanism only exacerbated his hostility to established religion.2 Discontented and unhappy, he was ready to be inspired by something or someone, who, ironically, took the form of an even Higher Anglican.

64 Disraeli's Disciple

Earlier that summer, Frederick Faber had begun preaching at Ambleside church as holiday relief for the elderly incumbent.3 He had graduated the year before from Balliol College, Oxford, with the Newdigate prize for English poetry. Although Whytehead already knew him, it was likely Faber's Oxford Union reputation and his current fame as a passionate preacher that drew GSS into a congregation that included 'twenty-one Can tabs and three Oxonians, many candidates for Holy Orders, with about thirty or forty educated gentry, ignorant but well inclined to the Church.'4 Among them were Wordsworth's wife, Mary, and Coleridge's son, Hartley, both delighted by Faber's eloquence and intellect. 'All the non gentry,' Mary Wordsworth wrote to her husband, 'who have seats are as much edified as the grandees. Mr. F. is the reigning subject - Q. Victoria has sunk into nothing among the conversationalists.'5 Like Manners and GSS, Faber was slender, graceful, and by all accounts much better looking than his surviving portraits suggest. The serenity in Disraeli's portrait of him as Aubrey St Lys in Sybil (1845) reflects a later period of his life, when his reforming fires had considerably died down. In 1837 he was striking to look at: his eyes were as vivid a blue as GSS's, set deep in an ardent face with a fierce aquiline nose and a yearning expression.6 Swept away by John Henry Newman, he was a spokesman of the Oxford Movement, the group of vertiginously High Anglicans headed by Newman and Edward Pusey who since 1833 had tried to assert Church independence against increasing state control. Their Tracts for the Times drew a direct line of spiritual authority from St Peter to the Catholic Church in England and preached a return to the principles and rituals of earlier days, which in turn revived secular interest in all aspects of medievalism. Faber's evangelical preaching style reflected his character, as energetic and exclamatory as his hymns: My God, how wonderful Thou art! Thy majesty so bright, How beautiful Thy mercy-seat In depths of burning light!

Nature's physical beauty roused him as much as its power to exalt the spirit - Wordsworth thought his eye for nature even better than his own - and his excitement transferred itself to the romantics in his audience.7 For GSS, Faber's sense of limitless possibilities in and beyond the world he inhabited chimed with his own. Faber had already dedicated himself

1837-8: Faber 65

to God and the under-privileged, his zeal expressed in images of fire and violence, the cleansing Armageddon from which the new age would emerge. Of the revolutionary spirit he wrote: 'And did it burn in all men as in me, /England should bathe in blood and so be free!' The attraction is obvious for a young man like GSS motivated by 'bitter hatred of the vile spirit of the present day' and searching for something to believe in.8 For all Faber's ferocious conviction, he was as much in need of love as GSS. Of his parents' deaths, he wrote: 'People who ... have not had "the vents of mortal feeling closed with cold earth from the grave" ... are illfitted to judge the trial of men left in early orphanhood, with hot feelings glowing in them unexpended s[t]ill.'9 His meeting with GSS permanently affected them both. 'When I came up to Cambridge,' GSS later wrote, 'I was not a Christian,' but 'in my first year at the Lakes, some stray words touched me, & I became humbled into belief.'10 Now he accepted Anglicanism and Faber became his idol. Faber's reaction was even stronger. From the moment that they met, he told Manners with a frankness remarkable for the time, his feelings for GSS were passionate. That he meant physical passion is clear from his account of what he had and had not indulged in during his wild days at school. 'At Harrow I had been kept from all commonly called great sins - swearing - drunkenness and sins of impurity ... the third are utterly and absolutely unknown to me.' At Ambleside, however, T saw Smythe and I loved him. O my dear Manners I can scarcely bring myself to write it - I have never known quietness since - not an hour.'11 He probably did not speak of his feelings to GSS that summer, but it seems he did to Whytehead, whose gentle eyes were filled with fear When looks and thoughts broke out from my controul, Bursting themselves a road with fiercest might Wide-opening secret cells of foulest sin, And all that lurks in that dark place within!12

Whytehead did not remove his pupil from a proximity another might have thought dangerous; Faber was duly ordained deacon of the Anglican Church in August at Ripon Cathedral; and GSS went back to Cambridge in September to begin the new term. It was a quieter year than the first. Strangford was unusually satisfied, and, tired for once of Walmer Castle, sat in his ruinous tower at Westenhanger looking complacently to the future and GSS's role in it. 'Wretched & forlorn as this old place is, I cannot help feeling proud that I

66 Disraeli's Disciple

have re-conquered it, and that I am now sitting in the same hall where my ancestors sat 400 years ago, though the roof be full of chinks, and the floor perforated with rat-holes. Some day or other, George must make a good marriage, and return it to something like it was in the olden time.' Another part of GSS's destiny was being mapped out, the bartering of his looks, title, and potential for an heiress who would support the family. Even with financial security, the political path held pitfalls. Two Conservatives elected at Norwich were now in serious trouble, R.C. Scarlett, son of Baron Abinger, and the Marquess of Douro, Wellington's rather dim heir. 'They, as well as the other side, have bribed so flagrantly and so palpably, that it is quite impossible to overlook it. The D[uke] was annoyed on the subject,' and they must never annoy the Duke.13 This vital consideration explains the curious slant of some of GSS's Union speeches that autumn. In October, he timed an attack on Melbourne's foreign policyjust before a visit with Strangford to Walmer.14 Wellington must have been pleased, since the Castle atmosphere was positively high-spirited. Strangford bet GSS a sovereign that the Edinburgh Review would lambaste Disraeli's new novels, Henrietta Temple and Venetia. GSS won, to which Disraeli responded with an asperity that suggests knowledge of the Cambridge debts: 'It is some satisfaction that the money is lost to the family.'15 GSS's next speech must also have pleased, since it praised the 1834 New Poor Law. Nobody but administrators liked the law. Its effect had been to centralize, limit, or abolish local assistance, reserving 'outdoor' (i.e., non-institutional) relief for the aged and infirm, and consigning the destitute to large parish workhouses ('Unions') whose harsh conditions discouraged use. By the time GSS spoke, the workhouse system had been before the public for a year, as the instalments of Dickens's denunciation in Oliver Twist appeared in Bentley's Miscellany. Manners and Faber too deplored the law for inflicting more hardship on people already unfortunate enough, but Wellington, the pragmatic general, approved of its economy and efficiency, and therefore so, for the moment, did GSS.16 Three weeks later, he and Manners were back in accord as they disapproved the political morality of the eighteenthcentury Whig statesman Charles James Fox.17 By now Cambridge was his centre. At Christmas he spent only two days in London with Strangford before heading back to study with Lyttelton and Howard. He had been tempted to go on with his family to Chevening; his childhood friendship with the Stanhopes' lively daughter, Lady Wilhelmina, had turned into a stronger attraction, and had inspired a recent sonnet.18 But his term's reading only strengthened his fascination

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with the power of the written word: 'I found in Andrew Marvell the other day an anathema on printing saying "that the lead moulded into bullets was not half so destructive as that cast into types - " & the serpents teeth which Cadmus sowed were nothing more than the letters which he invented.' He would reach for glory by writing, this time for the English Prize Poem, although the subject, Martin Luther, was uncongenial, and he felt unconfident: 'I fear being pointed at as "the man who writes Prize-Poems & never gets 'em.'"19 Accordingly, in the New Year of 1838 he cut back his debating, speaking only once to accord due admiration to Pitt's political career. As an embryo politician he could hardly have done anything else. Since his death in 1806, William Pitt the Younger had become a national icon, England's ideal politician - 'a statesman unbiased by interest or fear, / By power uncorrupted, untainted by gold.' Future prime ministers like Peel and Gladstone consciously modelled themselves on him, and his standards professedly guided every public man of Victoria's reign.20 It all helped to foster the nineteenth-century illusion that English politics were inherently principled and honest and that breaches of principle were gross anomalies which must be summarily pmnished.21 The ideal, of course, never fitted the reality in the nineteenth century any more than in the twenty-first. For every Peel or Manners there were many more Douros and Scarletts, for every Coningsby a dozen Fakredeens, but the paradox in GSS was that he could never reconcile the way he actually practised politics with the ideal that he genuinely believed in. In April, his grandmother died. In recent years Strangford had weaned him from her influence, and home was now Harley Street, not Clifton. Typically, Strangford capitalized on the occasion, grandly notifying the chancellor of the exchequer that he renounced any claim to her pension, as would GSS when he left Cambridge - a canny move to forestall accusations of government influence when he came to run for Parliament.22 Politics were again beginning to push literature aside. At the Union GSS and Manners successfully proposed John Leigh ton for president, over Lyttelton's candidate, the ubiquitous Charles Vaughan, after which GSS embarked on a subject which the Young Englanders made their own, condemning the 1688 rebellion by Protestant forces against the Catholic James II.23 This, they held, was the point in modern political history when Church had been overcome by State, a wrong that they wanted redressed. As summer approached, their minds were whirling with ideas, their energies and emotions were at a new peak, and their friendship was the

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closest it had ever been. One of GSS's poems eulogizes Manners in deliberately medieval language that reflects how the glorious past preoccupied them: Thou should'st have lived, dear friend, in those old days When deeds of high and chivalrous emprize Were guerdoned by the sympathy of eyes That smiled on Valour.

Manners is the supportive friend 'who watchest - haply with no careless eye - / The cloud that sometimes saddens on my brow. / And kindly chidest me, as thou didst but now.'24 Failure in the Prize Poem had him severely depressed; sombrely, he faced 'the accusing ghost of the dead year' and saw it 'Marshal the sins which had been done / And some few hopes - which early died.'25 In the midst of old regrets, however, he could look forward to fresh inspiration in the Lakes, where Faber would be tutoring the sons of Benson Harrison, a relative of Wordsworth's, at Green Bank, as well as preaching at Ambleside. This year they would be joined by Manners, with the exciting prospect of discussing and maybe even formulating their ideas before September. GSS's lodging was at Keswick, where he was to read with Whytehead and two other Cambridge men, Frederick Goulburn and Edward Herbert. First, however, he stopped to see Faber at Ambleside. Consequently, on Victoria's Coronation Day, 28 June, he saw none of the splendid London celebrations but listened (with unusual tolerance) to rustic speeches at the inn and watched a dance in the marketplace. When Manners was delayed by an accident, GSS lingered on at Ambleside, renewing, he said innocently, 'old associations.' On Sunday 1 July, he dashed off an insouciant letter to Manners, but neglected to post it until a second Sunday had gone by. (The postmark is Monday 9 July.)26 Although the letter makes no mention of Faber, the evidence of GSS's poem 'Ambleside Church' is that they spent the week together. Like Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, the poem compares a present occasion - Sunday 22 July, after Manners's arrival - with two earlier ones, Sunday 1 July and Sunday 8 July. Both days marked significant developments in the relationship with Faber; only the last lines expand the relationship again to include Manners. Initially, Manners knew nothing of these earlier events. He read the 1 July letter rapturously: 'I fear I am idolatrous about Smythe; what a creature he is!'27 By 21 July, he had arrived at a Windermere cottage with

1837-8: Faber 69 his tutor and been fondly reunited with GSS as the latter returned from Wordsworth's house at nearby Rydal.28 Persuaded by GSS, he went to hear Faber preach on the 22nd and by the end of the service was also under the spell, 'charmed, utterly charmed.' Faber's topic, the importance of the Old Testament, appealed strongly, and the style enthralled him, 'eloquent, earnest & gorgeous beyond what I ever anticipated; expressions and similies [sic] drawn from nature, glowing and glorious: he insisted that every word of the Bible was inspired by God, that we were able to understand it's [sic] truths much better as children than men.'29 After service, GSS introduced him to the ardent preacher, who took them off and treated them to a reading of his poetry. After such an emotional morning, the afternoon, when they visited Dr Thomas Arnold at Fox Howe, was anticlimax. Three days later, GSS sent his effusion on the church experience to Manners, who was overwhelmed: 'very poetical; beautiful feeling, and at the end kind to me: how I love that man!'30 None of the three, drunk with ideas, ambitions, and each other's company, ever forgot the euphoria of that summer. GSS at Keswick was twenty miles away from Manners at Windermere and Faber at Ambleside; in their separate households they were busy with Euclid, Homer, and Shakespeare, and it rained hard; but they took time to walk, ride, or trundle by coach to meet. Days scrambling up Helvellyn and Skiddaw or over the hills to Borrowdale and Derwentwater were followed by heated midnight arguments about Church and State and breakfasts at the inn. They visited Wordsworth, who greeted them kindly in spite of severe sciatica. By contrast, when they met a son of Southey and a nephew of Wordsworth, they found them disappointingly lacking in 'divine inflatus.' To make up, sermon after sermon from Faber stirred up Manners's inmost soul and deeply moved GSS. When halfway through their stay Lyttelton sent GSS a set of Edmund Burke, it seemed to Manners appropriately magnificent: 'What a duo they are!'31 GSS's reply to Lyttelton, however, shows how shrewdly, even then, he analysed himself, 'changeful, as I am, & capricious, & blown about by every breath, however worthless.' Everything, though, was solvable by extravagant protestations of attachment: 'You love me, I know, & most truly, most sincerely. - with much yearning of heart - do I loveyou.'^ They were all in a state of love. They breathed air that had something of Wordsworth's 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven.' Feelings and purposes, emotions and intellects, became hopelessly entangled as they envisaged the brave new world within their grasp. Manners answered GSS's poem with one of his own:

70 Disraeli's Disciple And so in thee my kindred eye can trace Fondly, bright sparks of antient fires, While glorious purposes thy actions grace, And noble aims, & loyal desires.33

Faber remembered Unworldly lakes! - Did we not dream away Part of our manhood by their inland coves, Living, like summer insects, all the day In summer winds or shade of drowsy groves.34

After a stirring sermon on education, GSS and Manners reached a crucial stage in their dedication to the betterment of England through politics. Manners, even while he realized how nebulous it was, could not help being thrilled: we have now virtually pledged ourselves to attempt to restore, what? I hardly know- but still it is a glorious attempt, and [Smythe] is well qualified to take the lead in it, but what rebuffs, sneers, & opposition must one expect: however I think a change is working for the better, and all, or nearly, the enthusiasm of the young spirits of Britain is with us, whereas 40 or 50 years ago it would have been all the other way.35

Inspired by Faber and cocooned in the romantic Lakes, they could make such lofty resolutions. It would not be so easy to put them into action in the real world of politics. Then, the grand dedication made, GSS and Faber disappeared. On 3 August GSS wrote to Manners that Faber was with him at Keswick and would not preach at Ambleside on the 5th.36 That same day, Faber composed one of his best poems, spare and powerful, language and sentiment revealing the strength of his emotion. Some men fall in love with voices, some with eyes; Some men are linked together by a tear; Others by smiles; many who cannot tell What time the Angel passed who left the spell. It comes to us among the winds that rise Scattering their gifts on all things far and near. The fields of unripe corn, the mountain lake,

1837-8: Faber 71 And the great-hearted sea - all things do take Their glory and their witchery from winds; All save the few black pools the woodman finds Far in the depths of some unsunny place, Which stand, albeit the happy winds are out In all the tossing branches round about, As silent and as fearful as a dead man's face.37

The imagery in the last lines amply reveals the nature of Faber's feeling about GSS, the physical relationship he condemns but cannot help thinking of. The title and date - 'Keswick, August 3, 1838' - identify GSS as its inspiration, and more poems by both men document as well as a diary how their relationship developed. They had fallen in love, and they had decided to go away together. Whether they actually became lovers is less clear. Over the next few days they combined religious debate with sightseeing and amatory poetry. From Keswick they went off westward to the coast at Morecambe Bay, to visit Conishead Priory and the ruined twelfth-century Cistercian Abbey at Furness. As they travelled, they shared the stories of their early lives, while physical attraction and propinquity fed the feelings roused by mutual enthusiasms. At Conishead, gazing at a portrait of Charles I, they recalled religious martyrs and discussed their own burning ambitions: 'augur-like,' wrote GSS, 'my kindling heart could see / The stalwart virtues of a Laud in thee!'38 The image of kindling fire was in both their minds; looking at GSS, Faber evoked 'the light, the power, the unsettled fires that play / Among the sleepless glancings of thine eyes,' and imagined fire's converse, a secular baptism by immersion in depths of blue. The gathering insistence of the water images in the poems of both men reflects a parallel intensification of physical desire. Now as thy heart is fondly pressed to mine In this Cistercian chapter-house, the pride Of old ancestral things awakens, - the tide Of English blood is rising fast within.39

To a post-Freudian reader the lines are almost comically naive. Both men were naive, and very young for their ages, but the embraces, the rise of primal feelings, the kindling fires in the poems, show they were aware of the passion that had developed. There is not, however, evidence of more than endearments and touch-

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ing. Faber describes how their intellectual debates tired them out and ended in juvenile horseplay. We pulled each other's hair about, Peeped in each other's eyes, And spoke the first light silly words That to our lips did rise.

('Very silly,' was one eminent critic's response.)40 Such silliness, of course, is often a kind of foreplay, especially with young inexperienced people, but against that and their secrecy is Faber's denial to Manners that he had ever committed sins of impurity.41 Faber, unsure how to deal with physical passion, might descend to silliness, but he was invariably honest. What is not in doubt is the depth of feeling and his sense of sin, expressed in metaphors of orgasm and violence: 'Where for ever now there must be blight, / Riven with burning passion's torrent course, / Shattered & splintered all with sin's mad force.' Like the Anglo-Catholics of the Civil War in Charles I's time, his temple of worship has been destroyed by an iconoclast, in the person of GSS. Thou hast broken down All mine old images, and didst uncrown The glorious things that reigned within my heart, Because thou art more glorious!

As he put it to Manners, 'five years of discipline were thrown ... to the wild winds that played in his loose hair and mine over the heaths of Cumberland.'42 Social and religious prohibitions could not, however, be thrown to the winds. Apart from Church sanctions, in the 1830s an overt physical relationship between two men intending public careers was unthinkable, political death for both.43 Homosexual relationships of course existed, but the penalty was still technically death, by hanging on a separate gallows so as not to contaminate mere murderers and thieves; it would not be reduced to imprisonment until 1861. The attitude to bisexuality was equally disapproving. It had been easier in the eighteenth century, when, for example, the MP John Wilkes had happy relationships with several men as well as his wife, but tolerance had since been replaced by idealization of love exclusively within marriage. Threat of exposure was just as fatal. The suicide of Castlereagh, Strangford's old chief, has been

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73

attributed to fear of blackmail for homosexual acts, and when Lady Caroline Lamb suggested Byron's bisexuality, he exclaimed in horror that 'even to have such a thing said is utter destruction and ruin to a man.'44 Intense relationships which seem the next thing to homosexuality were prevalent in the nineteenth century, notably among the Cambridge 'Apostles' - Tennyson's with Arthur Hallam is only the most prominent of these - but, like GSS's with Manners, they were socially permissible, and indeed praiseworthy as evidence of a man's capacity for deep affection. What is unusual is to find poems as open and intense as Faber's about his feelings for another man. It is unlikely that any of these considerations occurred to either GSS or Faber during their escapade. GSS seems at first to have responded as ardently as Faber and only afterwards to have drawn back, perhaps as the secrecy became less absolute. Manners probably sensed the situation by the time he met GSS at the end of the stolen week: 'hardly knew what to say to Smythe[,] felt quite dumbfoundered.' Three days later there was still something odd when he visited GSS, Faber, Goulburn, and Herbert at Keswick: 'want to get Smythe by himself; don't like the looks of the place, nor the style of living.' To disarm him, GSS re-established their harmony with a trip to Derwentwater, which they both associated with the 1715 Jacobite rebellion. Reminders of The Earl's Rising' in support of the Pretender roused GSS to thoughts of revolution, while Manners was content to savour the renewed friendship: 'felt quite bound up in him ... Derwentwater and Smythe - yes! Those 4 days were days indeed.' When they parted on 18 August, because GSS had been bidden to Ravensworth, Manners wrote a poem on the closeness of their relationship. Do you remember, dearest Friend, when we Stood at your window: and our hands Did link themselves in more than Friendship's bands? We spake not: but I well could see That our two hearts did throb in unison, And from that moment thou & I are one!45

In GSS's absence, Manners in his turn enjoyed tete-a-tetes with Faber, confined, however, to matters of Church and State and confirming Manners's sense of purpose: 'Of a surety something must come,' he wrote of one particularly effective discussion, 'of all I have heard this day.'46 Unfortunately, when GSS returned, his purpose was again infirm. At Newcastle he had attended the meeting of the British Association for

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the Advancement of Science, where Northumberland had presided. He may have gone out of politeness to his godfather and to the Ravensworths, both of whom gave house parties, but for a young man who had already written excitedly about the discoveries of the new age, there was plenty to stoke the fire. The city was jammed with local members and thirteen hundred outside delegates, including the redoubtable Harriet Martineau. Among the eminent speakers were Sir John Herschel on astronomy, GSS's tutor W.H. Miller on mineralogy, the geologist Charles Lyell on new findings in palaeontology, and William Whewell strenuously denying any conflict between science and religion.47 More importantly for GSS's future, there were post-conference parties at Alnwick and at Chillingham Castle, seat of the Earl and Countess of Tankerville, where political matters were aired. News had come from Canterbury of dissension between the Liberal MP, Lord Albert Conyngham, and Frederick Villiers, a Liberal defeated in the 1837 election. Villiers was accusing Conyngham of bribery, which raised the possibility of an inquiry; furthermore, Conyngham's health, always fragile, was in question.48 The Northumberland coterie therefore asked GSS, as prospective Conservative candidate, to outline his platform, and they treated his responses with disdain. He is unlikely to have mentioned more of Faber than his revolutionary ideas, but Archdeacon Singleton laughed outright at what he heard of the trio's lofty plans for their future. GSS's feeling of being pulled in two directions infected Manners: 'if he falls off, I fall too: for I have no strength in myself.' Next day, however, whether by design or accident, Faber delivered a sermon to the young men at Ambleside that stirred Manners's failing spirit and sent GSS to Carlyle's French Revolution, in which he became totally engrossed. Just the same, they argued next day when Manners approved of a newspaper report condemning expediency in public affairs while GSS growled that he was too impractical. Political expediency had been behind Singleton's derision, and it was in GSS's mind as he prepared to leave the Lakes. Northumberland and Singleton had decided to test his Conservativism by sending him down to Wellington at Walmer Castle, from which base he was to deliver his first important public speech.49 Manners was sorry to see him go and troubled by how unsettled and undetermined he seemed to be. What Manners did not know was that, instead of travelling directly south, GSS went off again to meet Faber. Between 6 and 8 September, alone together near Rydal, they said their farewells, but for some reason the meeting ended in a furious quarrel and GSS's angry rebuffing of

1837-8: Faber 75 Faber, which spoiled the last few precious hours. 'Autumn,' Faber ruefully wrote, 'is out among these woodland bowers,' but it was no passing lovers' quarrel, and his tone soon became more despairing: Ah, dearest! - wouldst thou know how much My aching heart in thee doth live? One look of thy blue eye - one touch Of thy dear hand last night could give Fresh hopes to shine amid my fears, And thoughts that shed themselves in tears.50 No such reconciliation occurred. Next morning, Sunday, Faber did not appear at Ambleside, but later Manners, off to dinner near Grasmere, unexpectedly encountered him and GSS. Both were embarrassed. Faber left abruptly to pour his regret into more poetry, while GSS lingered on beside the lake, the heavy rain and dark clouds reflecting his mood. He could still hear the voice at which in August 'the hot blood danced wildly through my veins, / Leaping with joy,' but now, he realized, the heady summer was over. At its start, he had been 'a Poet-boy, such as Faber described, full of wild and audacious aspiration's after the illimitable, and the Unreal[,] and of imaginative unhappiness because I could not master them.' Now he must face the world and its demands for expediency. Tale Grassmere, I am now/Joyless, and lone, and desolate as thou.'51

7 1838-9: Pearls and Swine

I so long to be in earnest. - so pine. - after something like Action GSS to Manners, 31 December 1838

Desolation was only part of GSS's emotional turmoil. The way the relationship had developed had roused homoerotic feelings absent from his friendships with Manners and Cochrane. The aggression with which he plunged into sexual adventures in the next few years was his way of rejecting these feelings and proving himself indubitably heterosexual. Nevertheless, Faber was still his intellectual mentor, and his equally fervid activity in political debate that autumn continued to reflect Faber's ideas, extremism, High Church sympathies, and iconoclasm. In public and in private he showed a new arrogance and intolerance, intended to demonstrate conviction but covering inner insecurity. In the world of practical politics, however, personal concerns had to yield to expediency and party line. His launch by his backers into his intended constituency at Canterbury in September was a calculated test of his father's training: could he suppress his own ideas and impulses enough to serve Conservative ends? He could - and, under close supervision, he did. He prepared his speeches at Warmer under Wellington's eye and delivered them under Strangford's, first to local notables (including the archbishop) at the King's School Feast, and then to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The speeches were well received and duly praised by the Conservative paper, the Kentish Gazette, and Manners was ecstatic: 'so he has dawned; he must shine brightly, may it not be erratically, nor for a short time.' Privately, fresh from Faber's Newmanism, GSS vented his irritation at the ultra-Protestant feeling exhibited at the meetings; he was scornful of John Plumptre, Liberal MP

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for East Kent, for attacking High Church views, and to Manners's horror called the archbishop a 'nincompoop.'1 Nevertheless, from Walmer he dutifully went on to another Protestant enclave, Eastwell Park, Maidstone, home of the Earl of Winchilsea, patron of the East Kent Conservative clubs, 'not a very able man, but... honest, frank & truly zealous in what he thinks the duty of a true Protestant.' Winchilsea would have been scandalized to learn that the guest apparently working on a prize essay was actually, in this ultra-Orange stronghold, composing a Union diatribe against William of Orange's victory in 1688. Manners, similarly occupied at Belvoir, foresaw the sensation they would make in Conservative Cambridge, and declined the office of president of the Union.2 Thus encircled in Kent by his father's connections, it was likely now that GSS wrote his second Quarterly review of the work of another Kentish friend, the second and third volumes in Mahon's History of England. It is a shorter piece than that of 1836 and bears many more signs of editorial influence. The Wellesley Index ascribes this review too to Lockhart, though, as we have seen, the chain of internal references bears out GSS's authorship while his recent activities show his expert knowledge of the subject matter. Lockhart as editor frequently altered or suppressed passages in his contributors' articles which he thought dangerous or politically offensive: GSS would complain bitterly about the mutilation of his 1843 article.3 Croker also took it on himself to 'revise' articles where he disagreed with the opinions expressed. In one instance in 1833, he so altered one of Mahon's own reviews that Mahon indignantly published the original to draw attention to the differences and vowed never to write for the Quarterly again.4 After the 1839 article appeared Mahon wrote to the Quarterly's proprietor, John Murray, asking him to thank Lockhart, but the letter is unclear whether the thanks are to Lockhart as author of the review or as the editor who ran it.5 Mahon's particular praise of the reviewer's detailed knowledge of the 1688 Revolution certainly applies to GSS at this point. The article's assured opening is in fact its most substantial section: twelve of its fifteen pages are direct quotation. Also Smythean is the focus on character studies, Mahon's use of detail to add the 'picturesqueness of Memoir' to the 'real dignity of History,' although GSS has reservations about giving complete portraits at the outset; they should be allowed to develop gradually as events unfold: 'the jury likes better to hear the evidence led before the charge is delivered.' This last is GSS's own method in the portraits of French revolutionaries - Robespierre, Mirabeau, Stjust - in Historic Fancies. Also his is the perspective on Church and State, a rela-

78 Disraeli's Disciple

tionship that is seen as endangered by both political parties, the Tory aristocrats who owe power to the Reformation and the 1688 Revolution, and their Whig opponents who hate aristocracy and monarchy. Admittedly there are untypical hits at Popery and Legitimists (English and Spanish). GSS deplored James IPs deposition and fervently supported the French Bourbon monarchy ousted in 1830, but the censored material in his 1843 article criticized the Legitimists, and his other journalism shows how capable he was of playing devil's advocate. The evidence most conclusive of his authorship is his idiosyncratic style, which must have been an editor's (and a compositor's) despair, all absolutes, exclamations, interruptions, dashes, parentheses-within-parentheses, gleeful snippets of anecdote: It appears, we must say, from the evidence here accumulated as to the ramification of Jacobite intrigues in England - the utterly contemptible imbecility of the then ministers - and the general coldness of the people (who, in Walpole's language, 'were very ready to say fight dog! fight bearl if not worse') - that, once in London, the Chevalier could hardly have failed to obtain possession of the government. James III would have been proclaimed King of England - he would have been king!6

This is not Lockhart's style, but it is the hectic style of GSS at his most excited, imagining the alternative historical scenario that was dear to all the young men who had just dedicated themselves to Young England. Back at Cambridge that autumn, GSS was president of the Pitt Club, but he was now bent on shocking everyone. T spoke to astonish, not to convince men - One by one the most sacred truths were dragged from their hidden seats, and paraded, & shown off as paradoxes.' He revelled in his own perversity. One night, with all his friends loud in praise of William Wilberforce, he chose to argue hotly against him. At a noisy Union meeting about building plans, he got into a vicious argument with Vaughan, in which even Manners realized that his friend was in the wrong; later he argued just as strenuously that Napoleon was a poor leader and that Nero was not evil. Practically a convert to Catholicism at this point, he went looking for reasons to attack the Church of England. 'I remember how pleased I was, & miserably proud, to hear that Perry [Fellow of Trinity] had said that the Vice-Chancellor ought to take notice of a violent speech which I had made agst. Luther & the Continental Reformers.'7 His violence was a symptom of unhappiness - Cambridge seemed changed; his Essay attempt was, despite suggestions from

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Faber, unsuccessful, and although he was reading classics with a St John's Fellow, Charles Merivale, his subversive activities and religious views were endangering his degree. Even after emancipation, Catholics were not admitted to Oxford or Cambridge. He knew how his father would react to an ignominious exit from university, but even more agonizing was the knowledge that he himself was rapidly dissipating the dream with which he had gone up two years before.8 He said nothing about this to Manners, although for weeks they discussed their coming Union speeches on walks and rides, at supper parties, over wine in their rooms, or en route to sermons from churchmen High and Low. On 30 October, after Beresford Hope opened the motion, 'Did the conduct of James II, and his abdication of the throne justify the revolution of 1688?' GSS rose for the opposition. His speech made all the sensation Manners had foreseen. 'Wonderfully eloquent,' he used his Luther essay to display an impressive, artfully anecdotal knowledge of religious history with which, point by point, he savagely criticized European Protestantism: 'If this be Protestantism, then, Sir, I say, would to God James had brushed its rottenness away!' Of course opinion was against him; Lord Napier, who followed, 'all blood, & liberty, glory &: tears,' was loudly cheered. Manners had to wait another week to make his contribution, his nerves not improved by Perry's inquiries: 'the leaven evidently begins to work .... are we not tho' too presumptuous?' Unsurprisingly, they were defeated, 24—40.9 Meantime, they were attending a series of lectures on GSS's pet subject, the French Revolution, given by a namesake, William Smyth, Regius Professor of Modern History. These were famous lectures, the first of which had been given in 1832. GSS particularly noticed Smyth's warning to young men against violence and impetuousness, 'shewing men what they may become, when they strive to be wiser than the God that made them.' On 13 November the two friends joined to oppose the question, 'Is the Ecclesiastical Commission as at present constituted either expedient or legal?' GSS, coasting after his earlier efforts, spoke 'not much to the point, but very eloquent and severe,' and this time they won, 23-1: 'so much for the Church Commission, if the Cambridge Union has anything to do with the matter.' Though GSS's speeches at the Pitt Club were not up to those at the Union, he was, like Harry Coningsby, making an impression. One fellow of Trinity, John James Smith, called him a 'young Chatham,' though another inquired when GSS and Manners would 'openly avow Popery ... he evidently looks on us as lost.' Blakesley commented to Lyttelton that the pair, 'bitten by one

80 Disraeli's Disciple

Faber at the lakes during the rainy weather,' showed how the Oxford Movement was infiltrating Cambridge. On 4 December they spoke, somewhat surprisingly, against universal education. GSS had prepared and spoke well; Manners spoke extempore and badly: 'heard Smythe say "bosh" when I talked of old peasant reading book of life.' Impatient because they were losing, GSS rebuffed a Low Church opponent with 'I shall take care how I again throw pearls before swine.' A few days later he actually quarrelled with Manners, though they quickly made up with a kiss, 'all as bright & joyous as before dark & gloomy - the positive ecstasy of that moment! may I never forget it!'10 His volatility was due in part to his rejection of Faber. They exchanged letters at the beginning of October, but although Faber continued to write, GSS did not reply and agreed with Manners not to send on some poems Faber asked for in November.11 Desolate, Faber tried visiting Cambridge in mid-December. He arrived in the middle of a dinner conversation between Manners and Smith, who feared the Young Englanders' ideas would split the Conservatives. Next day, at a twentieth birthday breakfast for Manners, Faber the spiritual and Blakesley the pragmatic entranced the group with an argument on reason. Manners 'never heard 2 men talk better: B. very acute: F. perhaps more ready - we sat mute and patient.' The day after, perhaps to stir memories of the summer, Faber read GSS's poems aloud with great feeling, which did not prevent their violent disagreement in a later theological discussion. GSS's determination to become a Catholic was merely strengthened by Faber's opposition. On Sunday, with Manners's help, they seemed to reconcile, but GSS soon grew moody and after church picked another fight over the archdeacon's anti-Evangelical sermon. Manners, unhappy at the breach, again tried to mediate, but when GSS left for the Christmas break he was still disturbed and all three were low-spirited. Faber recognized his rejection. He had not had one kind word from GSS or managed to see him alone and felt utterly crushed: T could have cried in the streets.'12 GSS, off for his obligatory round in the North, was no happier, 'hipped & sad, & full of wretched sick fantastic misery.' Fortunately the mood was festive at Wynyard, where he and Strangford spent Christmas shooting and hunting with Londonderry's new foxhounds, and Lady Londonderry, in high good humour, took to him. He was impressed by her nerve and energy, 'a glorious creature ... almost born to be a Queen,' while she praised him to Disraeli as 'a very clever gentlemanlike young man.' But a letter from Faber repeating his Cambridge arguments plunged him

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once more into turmoil. He dashed off a bad-tempered reply and then tore it up. He had all but decided to 'go over heart & soul to Rome, & ... strive to pull down this rotten, citadel of heresy - the Protestant Establishment - and bear a hand in raising upon its ruins, a hierarchy. - . strong &: stable.' After Wynyard, Alnwick was dull and serious; the party included the Bishop of Carlisle and Archdeacon Singleton, and by New Year's Eve he was thoroughly depressed, seeing only his own 'Blackguardisms, & past weakness, & crass obstinate blindness.' He needed some serious commitment, like bolting to Spain '& making a Campaign with the Legitimists, or living hermit-like alone in Greece. I so long to be in earnest. - so pine. - after something like Action - whether mental or physical.'13 On his last day, however, Singleton walked him over to Howick Hall, home of Lord Grey, GSS's ideal English gentleman, 'so free from humbug, so courteous, so gentle - in his manners - so mild[,] mellow-voiced, & yet withal so stately & cold.' These would be the qualities he celebrated in his 1845 article on Grey and the Reform Bill. Later at Ravensworth he was again dashed by a letter from Beresford Hope, whom he had offered to propose for president of the Union, refusing because of GSS's unpopularity. His self-esteem was deeply wounded. Though he wrote a furiously contemptuous reply, he told Manners that any belief in himself as leader of their group could be only a 'hallucination [like] Burke who firmly believed his son to be a greater man than himself.' When he was back at Wynyard for Lady Londonderry's thirty-ninth birthday, the festivities improved his spirits enough to make bearable a Grand Conservative Festival at Sunderland, where Londonderry assailed the 'horrible demon of agitation' which was sapping the country's prosperity and ancient institutions. 'We have seldom,' reported the London papers, 'had the satisfaction to record a more important manifestation of Conservative union and strength.'14 The mood did not last. Back at Cambridge he felt dreary and isolated. This would be the second year without Lyttelton; Cochrane had gone to Rome, in his geographical travels at least; another close friend, Robert Bateson, had left, and now Manners, who passed his BA on 19 January in fifty-first place. To mark the occasion, GSS sent him a present of books with an affectionate letter, remembering a former bout of depression when a kind rebuke from his friend moved him to tears. There was no such comfort in the dull prospect before him. He postponed his own examination until next year, daunted by the list of texts: St Luke's Gospel, Paley's Evidences, Books I and II of Xenophon's Anabasis, and the

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Third Satire of the Second Book of Horace. Unlike Coningsby, who gives up an honours degree in order to broaden his intellectual range, GSS had less exalted reasons. He would continue his classics with Merivale but the regulations put the Tripos out of his reach, 'unless - I find that Mathematicks come to me by intuition - of which I have no hope.'15 He must have been aware that Faber was near collapse. In the vacation Faber had written twice to him without receiving a reply and now confided to Manners the complete 'crash of mind and body' that his love for GSS had produced: 'he has destroyed years of discipline - he has left me - God help me - among my own ruins ... I have struggled against it: but I have but a slender frame: an illness was sure to be the consequence, and sin, and misery, and penitence. I have now gone through all but the last.' No blame was to attach to GSS, younger, more volatile, 'not master of his own affections (who is?) ... He must ebb, he must flow, like the sea - it is the law of his own nature, the character of his greatness. Besides our friendship was unsound, he fell in love with my intellect not with my heart.' Perhaps because Manners was now Faber's confidant, GSS lashed out a few days later, accusing him of betraying his New Year confidence about fighting for the Legitimists in Spain. With Lyttelton, who had refused to move the Parliamentary Address on the Queen's Speech, he was brutally cynical. Lyttelton should not let 'anything so obsolete & rococo as principle stand in the way of ... advancement ... Boy-patriots went out with Pitt.' And when he finally asked Manners's pardon for his 'wretched crookedness & perversity of temper,' on the same day there came a long letter from Faber again urging him not to convert, a dressing-down that did nothing to smooth his feelings.16 In this state of loneliness and sexual confusion, an outburst of some kind was inevitable. Before Easter, two visits from Manners calmed him enough to correspond with Gladstone, likely about a petition against Church reform which Blakesley eventually persuaded him to drop.17 Manners gone, however, GSS's juvenile behaviour precipitated a Union crisis which cost Hope his presidency. At the Winchilseas' GSS had been amused to hear of a joke at Goodwood in which various noblemen had run on foot under the names of racehorses. The Union, he thought, was too respectable; it ought 'to be rough-rode over,' and in mid-March, seeing the signatures of Vaughan and a previous secretary, WJ. Butler, on a requisition, he added the names of 'five other brutes,' the horses. This insult to the Society drew furious censure, Hope's resignation, and repeated motions for GSS's expulsion.18

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In the furore GSS took further offence at being called dishonourable by Butler and a future secretary, Edward Craufurd, demanding apologies 'or else that satisfaction which one gentleman is bound to give another whom he has so wantonly insulted.' Even the suggestion of a duel would have got him expelled from the university, but, despite the evident bewilderment of Butler, Craufurd, and others, he was determined on it until Strangford, arriving on 28 March, persuaded him to back down.19 He then tried to recruit Manners and thirty others into resigning wholesale from the Union.20 He did not simmer down until Lyttelton intervened and whisked him off to his home at Hagley, nobly interrupting his own courtship of Mary Glynne, sister of the future Mrs Gladstone.21 The cooling-offended with a week in London, escorting Philippa to the balls and parties of her London season.22 If there were celebrations of his twenty-first birthday on the 13th, the society columns do not record them; the reason may be found in Ernest Vane, where the colossal university debts of Luttrell, the GSS character, prohibit any coming-of-age festivities. In all this he temporarily reconciled with Faber. They, Hope, and Manners spent a glorious week in Cambridge at the end of April, idling about and (in a hit at the Union fracas) going racing at Newmarket.23 His friends, however, were concerned about him; Manners and Faber agreed he ought to leave Cambridge and start a career. In early May he wrote penitently to Lyttelton professing renewed faith and resolve to learn self-restraint, but Faber was sceptical: he perceived 'even less of that grave inward life which such faith should breed than before,' though he felt that any more lecturing would completely alienate GSS. Instead he sent a sonnet of gentle warning recalling their days in the Lakes, for too well I know, Be what thou wilt, thou must be dear to me. And lo! thou art in utter bondage now, Whence I would have thy manly spirit free.24

Among these earnest young men, GSS was an anomaly, passionate about the wrong things, frivolous about the right ones. He responded in another sonnet, 'Dear Master I do love thee,' that his feelings still burned 'With a most passionate fire, and ever yearn / And cleave to thee, as ne'er before they clove, / Dearest, to others.' But this affirmation is countered by self-knowledge.

84 Disraeli's Disciple Oh for some strong spell To give me back my childish heart, to shrine Treasures I love too dearly and too well To mar by contact with this life of mine. Yet am I full of fears. Alas - beware For knowing me, is ever knowing care!25

If this was a warning-off, he revoked it again. Three weeks later he sat in the congregation while Faber, recently ordained at Christ Church, Oxford, celebrated his first Eucharist at the church of St Andrew in nearby Sandford.26 Dedication, however, was for others. For the rest of that summer he ignored the example of his mentor and friends. Perhaps London life was too tempting, or the family atmosphere overwhelming; dancing with Philippa at Almack's, Manners was offended at her disapproval of her brother: 'she surely ought to appreciate him, if no one else does.'27 In June Manners and his brother, Lord Granby, departed, ostensibly for a Continental tour but actually bound for six weeks with the Spanish Legitimist armies. Though GSS had longed for just this, he did not accompany them. Instead he indulged in 'late hours & seedy mornings' in London, relaying to the travellers social gossip such as Howard's courting of the wealthy Angela Burdett Coutts and joining in the public indignation when the Queen's waiting lady, Lady Flora Hastings, was dismissed because of her supposed pregnancy. (The swelling was a tumour, from which she died.)28 While Faber in the Lakes was mourning the absence of the man who had so stirred him the previous summer, Strangford kept GSS on leash in London, introducing him to social and political circles.29 In early July, at a banquet given by Lord Lyndhurst for US Senator Daniel Webster, GSS encountered Disraeli. The inevitable storm was raging overhead. This is the first documented meeting with the man whose disciple he would become, but the intimate tone of Disraeli's description indicates they had met before; by now he was on first-name terms with 'George.' GSS and Strangford slyly compared the storm to one in Disraeli's (rather bad) verse-drama, Alarcos, though Disraeli took their comments as compliments, telling his sister, Sarah, that the only passages they disliked were the comic ones.30 A few weeks later they met again at a party given by the Londonderrys.31 Given the tight social circles in London and Strangford's friendship with Disraeli, it was inevitable that they would keep on encountering one another.

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In August, however, GSS escaped to Oxford, where he spent time with Faber, who had decided to quit temptation for exile abroad. Oxford and meeting Newman renewed GSS's attraction to Catholicism. 'What a great man ... So simple, more so, than any man I ever met except the Duke of Wellington.' He steeped himself in Stuart history and composed ballads on Charles I and James II from the point of view of Catholic loyalists, condemning the Reformation and its 'work of spoil.'32 This immersion in the past was not unique to him. On 28 August at Eglinton Castle in Ayrshire, the Earl of Eglinton held his celebrated Tournament, an enactment of the principles in Digby's Broad Stone of Honour to which an astonishing one hundred thousand spectators travelled to see thirteen armoured knights (reduced from 150) joust in pouring rain.33 There is no evidence that GSS attended - neither (despite his descrip tion in Endymiori) did Disraeli, who got married instead. Such an example of Victorian medievalism, however, chimed with their ideas and helped propel GSS into current politics at Cambridge, where he helped Manners's cousin, J.H. Manners Sutton, fight a by-election. The Tories won handily, but it was hardly chivalry in action. The future model for Coningsby 'canvassed, bribed, intimidated, lied[,] blarneyed & patrolled,' as presumably did everyone on Sutton's side, since his election was declared void the next year.34 GSS's reading of history was soon useful for another political occasion. T am doing all I can,' he told Lyttelton, 'to become a Conservative,' and on 19 September, as steward of the King's School Feast, he delivered at the Fountain Inn, Canterbury, a confident and eloquent speech to prepare his way as the next Conservative candidate.35 It was short on substance but long on emotional appeal. To loud cheering, he conjured up the names from the city's illustrious past - archbishops, mayors, and country gentlemen - which should evoke present-day loyalty to the ancient institutions of monarchy and Church. He used material from others - Faber's sermon on education, Marvell's words on printing - and he pressed all the right stops: the school as training ground for manly endeavour, the men of Kent as 'vanguard of liberty,' Trafalgar and Waterloo as emblems of English freedom, and the victor of Waterloo, Canterbury's greatest neighbour, 'our Wellington, the greatest and simplest ... the wisest man whom Christendom in all her eighteen hundred years has seen.'36 This wildly popular peroration was also tactful; GSS and Strangford went on to Walmer for three days, where 'Caesar' (as they called Wellington behind his back) was exceptionally gracious. When GSS

86 Disraeli's Disciple admitted to nerves before his speech, the Duke amiably observed that in a long public life he could remember only two speakers who were quite sure of themselves, Pitt and Liverpool. This may also have been the occasion when Wellington, about to take his razors to be sharpened, refused the offer of GSS's dilapidated set - 'something like miniature saws' - and gave him a benevolent homily on personal grooming. Quite charmed, GSS fell completely under the Duke's 'Vive L'Empereur sort of spell.'37 It was worrying when Wellington had a stroke at Walmer in November - GSS needed his backing at Canterbury - but by Christma he seemed fully recovered. Alone again at Cambridge, GSS spent October and November in a 'dense, crass, idle, selfish state,' neglecting his studies for a heavy correspondence with Lyttelton on separation of Church and State, critical of Gladstone's recent book, The State in Its Relations with the Church, arguing for a theocratic state. 'Were I so persuaded,' he declared in an echo of Faber, 'I should undoubtedly vote for the destruction & abrogation of the Establishment.' The ballot he thought a 'cumbrous, clumsy, inefficacious theory,' but he stoutly defended the Queen's politics, pointing out that, though she was currently surrounded by Whig ministers, she was too independent to fall in meekly with their principles. Her own outlook fitted with paternalistic Toryism: 'if her object was the assertion of the complete prerogative - there are many things favourable & preparative thereunto ... I should not be surprised, if she not only reigns but governs. Like James the first, she will care more for the Common Weal, than the Common Will.' Only two years into Victoria's reign, this was a remarkably accurate forecast.38 The reasonableness of his letters to Lyttelton, however, belied his inner volatility. Instead of studying, he spent much of November at Powis Castle in Wales for the coming-of-age of his friend Viscount Clive, a lavish occasion of banquets, fireworks, public holidays, and dinners to the poor, all presenting, as one newspaper approvingly put it, a 'fine picture of feudal grandeur.' The birthday itself was 5 November but the party lasted until the 20th.39 Even then he did not settle, and decided again to put off his January examinations: T cant for the life of me stomach being 123d. in the Poll - for which post - unless haply plucked I should infallibly be destined. - were I to go out now.'40 What followed was tied to his decision, but it had risks. On Sunday 8 December, he was one of an unruly crowd of student protesters who mobbed the unpopular senior proctor of Caius College, John James Smith (the same who had earlier praised his speaking). Next day, using a heavy wooden beam,

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they battered down the gate of the college. On the llth, GSS and James Balfour of Trinity were tried in Vice-Chancellor's Court 'for disobeying the Proctors orders, for resisting his authority & for creating a disturbance.' Balfour cannot have had a large role, since he was merely admonished, while another Trinity man, William Crouch, was rusticated for two years.41 GSS got what he wanted, suspension for a term, with postponement of his examinations. The episode, like his Eton outbursts, repeated a familiar pattern, perpetual rebellion against authority, even when it put his prospects in jeopardy. He was leaving Cambridge behind him and moving on to the hub of Victorian life, London.

8 1840: Lady Tankerville

There is something fascinating in the first idea that your career interests a charming woman ... A woman who likes ambitious men must be no ordinary character; clearly a sort of heroine. Coningsby

When GSS quit Cambridge to make London his new centre, it was for a secret reason. Outwardly contrite, he told Whytehead, 'I became sadly conscious, how weighed down - I was - by the burden of dross & dirt which I had imposed on myself.'1 In actuality, life acquired an intensity in London that it had not had since the two summers in the Lakes with Faber. The January cold brought on another facial palsy, but he refused to be dispirited. He was nominally studying for his degree, while Manners read for the Bar - 'algebra,' Manners commented bitterly, 'was a joke to the legal language.'2 As well, they went to debates in the Commons and Lords, induction to their planned parliamentary careers. Three times in February they were excited by defeat of Melbourne's government; it was obvious that the Whigs could not continue in office for long. It was easy, however, to throw aside study and politics. Victoria's wedding in February to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg opened an unusually glittering London season, the ballrooms and salons filled with exotic foreign visitors. Even Manners joined GSS in frivolity. With Cochrane, they dined out every night and went noisily on to the theatres. In one friend's box at Drury Lane they behaved so outrageously that they drew the attention of other theatre-goers: 'Stokes magnificent ... knew every actress & danseuse: shocking conversation, with Smythe's occasional glorious glimpses: yet so absurd with Stokes & Cochrane that I tired with

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laughing.' Over dinner at Cochrane's, they astonished his bluff naval father, Admiral Sir Thomas, with a tremendous intellectual argument on Divine Right and passive obedience.3 At Lady Londonderry's ball they danced with Philippa, as pretty as ever and with spirits to match her brother's, in spite of serious romantic problems. Strangford was negotiating her marriage to Henry Baillie, a Scottish Tory MP fourteen years her senior, although for the last two years she and Cochrane had been in love, and she spent much of that season desperately hoping that he would propose. Upset by her distress, Manners agonized whether he should intervene in some way.4 GSS's latest romance disquieted Manners even more, his friend's 'odd love' for Lady Tankerville. 'Odd' because GSS was twenty-one while Lady Tankerville was fifty-eight, six years older than GSS's mother would have been had she lived and only two years younger than Strangford; her daughter, Lady Malmesbury, was eleven years older than GSS. This passionate affair would over the next few years obsess GSS, thwart Strangford's plans for marrying off his son, puzzle his friends, and titillate London society. How and when it began is unclear; Manners later cut out the relevant pages of his diary. GSS would have met Lady Tankerville two years before, at her house party after the Newcastle Conference, but there were many other opportunities, since she was a prominent London hostess; indeed, she had been one of the august powers at Almack's since before GSS was born. Corisande ('Corise') Armandine Sophie Leonice Helene, daughter of the great French Due de Grammont, was as much a charmer as GSS. In 1793, when she was eleven, her parents had sent her to England for safety from the French Revolution. Family connections, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, took her in and for the next ten years treated her as one of their own. This was less wholesome than it sounds, since the Devonshires' household was notoriously irregular. After the Duke's relationship with his wife, the famous Duchess Georgiana, became distant, her friend Lady Elizabeth Foster amiably substituted in the ducal bed, even bearing some of the children who made up the Devonshire family circle. Georgiana's third daughter was fathered by Lord Grey, the man GSS admired as a model of gentlemanly behaviour.5 House parties at Chatsworth saw couples changing partners, and children's surnames did not necessarily denote their true parentage. Two of Corise's companions in those years were Caroline St Jules, the Duke's daughter by Lady Elizabeth, and Georgiana's niece, Caroline Ponsonby - the future Lady Caroline Lamb, Lord Melbourne's wife and notorious for her affair with

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Byron. Lady Elizabeth's son Augustus Foster fell violently in love with Corise and wanted to marry her, but by then she was engaged to Lord Ossulston, heir to the 4th Earl of Tankerville, a disagreeable, obstinate man who was contemptuous of dispossessed French nobility but finally consented to their marriage in 1806. In 1840, Ossulston was the 5th Earl, and had acquired the family grumpiness as well; from being a 'sour, malignant little Whig,' he veered over to become an ultra-Tory.6 Both he and his wife, however, kept up their Whig acquaintances; Corise was particularly friendly with Lady Palmerston, Melbourne's sister and a prominent Whig hostess. Much of the time the Tankervilles led their busy social lives separately; their theatre box, for example, was used by him one week and by her the next. 'Is not that the image of them both?' remarked one contemporary chronicler.7 At her town parties, dandies and aristocrats gambled as lavishly as at Georgiana's. She appeared at the salons of Lady Holland (a divorcee) at Holland House. Her brother-in-law, Count D'Orsay, had a much-talked-about relationship with Lady Blessington, his stepmotherin-law and companion, but at their Gore House entertainments Lady Tankerville was one of the few women in the predominantly male company.8 Like GSS, she was engaging and impulsive, her love affairs perhaps compensating for her sour husband. Her social position was typical of the paradoxes at this transitional period in the nineteenth century, between the excesses of the Regency and the moral strait-lacing of the Victorian era. Like other Almack's patronesses, Lady Palmerston and Lady Jersey, she was a social arbiter even though her liaisons were common knowledge. In his 'Mutilated Diary' for 1833-4 Disraeli noted: 'Lady Tankerville and her lovers. How much I cd. write of this singular coterie!'9 Her reputation even reached royal ears: Melbourne described her to Queen Victoria (who had obviously asked) as a 'flirtatious little woman, who doesn't know what she is about.'10 By the time she met GSS, Tankerville's vision was clouded by cataracts, which prompted predictable jokes in the satirical press. '"Has Tankerville been blind long?" asked Lady Jersey consolingly of her friend. "Long!" exclaimed Lady T, "no, but I have kept him in the dark ever since we were married!"'11 Gossip still boiled about her last affair, with the younger Charles Poulett Thomson (future Lord Sydenham), although the affair had cooled off before he left for Canada as governor in September 1839. In a sense, then, both she (after Thomson) and GSS (after Faber) met on the rebound. It would be simplistic to define her as the mother figure missing from

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his life - their relationship was openly sexual, and she may have been the seducer. There were, however, aspects of maternal guidance on her part and dependency on his. To judge by an early portrait, she even looked like GSS's portrait of Ellen in Angela Pisani- slender, fine-necked, drooping head supported on slim fingers. Her delicate features, rosebud mouth, huge dark eyes, and flowing raven hair were sensual, though her profile, with forehead and nose in one long line, could give her a formidable look.12 For a young man doubtful as GSS was about his sexual identity, this mature, powerful woman with a 'past' confirmed his heterosexuality. In addition, she was French, convivial, and a sparkling conversationalist. Even the hostile Strangford described her as 'Ninon,' the brilliant seventeenth-century courtesan and intellectual.13 For his part, GSS at twenty-one was as strikingly attractive as Harry Coningsby: [He] was above the middle height, and time had fulfilled that promise of symmetry in his figure, and grace in his mien, then so largely intimated. Time, too, which had not yet robbed his countenance of any of its physical beauty, had strongly developed the intellectual charm by which it had ever been distinguished ... it would have been difficult to imagine a youth of a mien more prepossessing and a manner more finished.

'"Devilish good-looking,"' says Mr Cassilis. '"All the women are in love with him.'"14 For a beautiful woman nearing sixty, the conquest of this desirable young man attested to her continuing sexual appeal. His interest in France was another bond; out of their conversations came his essay on 'The Aristocracy of France' with its sympathetic account of the proscribed aristocrats.15 When he pushed aside friends, career, and younger women for her, the attraction was complete. GSS identified her with Madame de Longueville, the French noblewoman who influenced seventeenth-century French politics and whom he celebrated in a Quarterly review in 1842.16 The four sonnets in Historic Fancies addressed to 'Anne Genevieve de Longueville' by her younger lover, Francois de la Rochefoucauld, are in fact GSS's love poems to Corise, combining the sexuality and intellectual stimulation that marked his relationship with her. In the language of courtly love, the beloved is an unattainable idol while the lover is rewarded with a smile or the touch of a hand.17 This, however, was only a literary conceit. What shocked Manners and intrigued London society was that the real-life relationship between GSS and Corise was ostentatiously physical, even in public. Moore, sighting them together at a fashionable concert, was fascinated,

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though quick to add society's usual derision of an older woman's sexuality. Moore noted that it was she who took the initiative, making 'fierce love' to the youthful GSS - 'their flirtation very amusing, and, as I sat behind them, her back & shoulders looked quite young enough for any thing - but when she turned round her face - alas! it wasn't even "Ancient Phillis with new graces," for the "graces" were to me full as old as herself.'18 Other young men - Manners reluctantly and Cochrane readily found her alluring. In Cochrane's Lucille Belmont and Ernest Vane she appears as the gracious, sophisticated Lady Symington, 'all that is gentlest in image and fascinating in intellect,' with an irresistible French accent. She seemed ageless: 'Over her ... twelve years had passed as though they had been constant summers. Hers was the secret of perpetual youth - perpetual heart; where the countenance is not ruffled by any of those passions which tear some delicate frames to pieces, by any of those envyings which make life to many one prolonged regret.'19 Perhaps this mattered most of all to GSS, haunted by doom and tormented by passions. Her defiance of time nullified the shrinking of the wild ass's skin. Related to this was the freedom in the liaison; it offered adult sexuality and childlike irresponsibility, and a barrier to marriage. For him, growing up, entering a profession, and marrying meant the end of youth, a stage closer to his fate. She too appears in Coningsby, as Lady Everingham, the bewitching older woman and female mentor who smooths Harry's way into society. She gave him every instruction, every intimation that was necessary; cleared the social difficulties which in some degree are experienced on their entrance into the world even by the most highly connected, unless they have this benign assistance; planted him immediately in the position which was expedient; took care that he was invited at once to the right houses; and with the aid of her husband, that he should become a member of the right clubs.

'"I should not be surprised,"' says the knowing Mr Ormsby, '"if, some day or another, we have a history about Lady Everingham and young Coningsby."'20 Meanwhile, London had the history of Lady Tankerville and young GSS. She introduced him into influential society, something every politician of the time needed. Lady Palmerston, though a Whig, included both parliamentary parties at her assemblies, important in a political culture which functioned as intensely in aristocratic town houses

1840: Lady Tankerville 93 as it did at Westminster. Socially prominent women not only provided venues for informal political introductions and discussion, they also influenced politicians' decisions, appointments, and candidacies.21 Despite his absorption in this affair, GSS could not delay much longer the Cambridge final examinations. As usual, he fretted himself into nervous exhaustion, culminating in a fever that kept him in bed at the end of February. By mid-March he was able to travel to Cambridge, although, since he was not well enough to study late into the night, the dreaded examination would be 'a devil of a shave.' In early April, completely exhausted, he wrote tersely to Manners: 'I have got "through."' There was no brilliant degree; in May he was awarded an Honorary MA, as the son of a peer.22 He later explained away his failure: 'I took my degree, one which, if utterly unworthy of my talents and university reputation, was yet no proof that I did not read, and hard too; but... the false system of fee-exacting mathematics was much to blame.'23 It is doubtful, however, if adding mathematics would have broken the pattern of unrealistic ambition quickly followed by discouragement, as happened with both the Prize Poem and the Essay. Nevertheless, once he was in the outside world, his academic results would not matter much; his extra-curricular pursuits were more important to the career he was headed for. An embryo Victorian politician's rise depended on the political acumen and sense of history he had shown in the Quarterly, and the oratorical flair that had marked his appearances at the Union. Strangford immediately began preparing for his son's political debut. Renouncing his and GSS's government pensions in April drew official approval and the Queen's appreciation of their honourable motives. GSS's own motives for engaging again with the London social calendar were less honourable. He forgot to acknowledge Manners's congratulations on his degree, giving as his excuse, 'in London, as you know, it is very difficult to find time, to do anything, except what you ought not to do.'24 He knew this deliberate reference to Corise would make Manners acutely uncomfortable, but, ardently in love, he wanted his friends to know it. As before, the euphoria of love fired up his mental energy for literary effort, and he set to writing for a planned collection (probably Historic Fancies).^ Now that they were finished with Cambridge, the nascent Young Englanders had decided to make their ideas more widely known. Faber's Cherwell Water Lily would appear in September, including the passionate poems of his love for GSS. Cochrane had produced his second book, The Morea, a collection of prose and poetry on Greece that also contained adulatory lines to GSS, with the anapaestic wish that

94 Disraeli's Disciple The blue eye so sparkling at records of glory Shed its beam on the altar of virtue alone; Sure and true is that heart that shall lead thee to story For honour and principle reared thee their own.26

Manners, the most prolific, regularly published on social and Church issues, and an account of his Spanish trip appeared in Eraser's Magazine. Jealous, GSS sniffed that he preferred the original diary form.27 At Beresford Hope's for Easter, both Hope and GSS opted for poetry. Hope composed a long blank-verse poem on the early Christian priest-king Prester John, while GSS wrote a dramatic monologue by the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots before her execution. The deliberate adoption of Tennyson's 'May Queen' metre for this more exalted subject reflects his and Manners's rejection of Tennyson's 'ordinary' subject-matter as the stuff of poetry. Whatever a modern reader may think of the poem's readability, one has to admire the ingenuity with which he adapted it to the group's pet topics of royal martyrdom, warring religions, and divine right.28 Writing and loving were what he liked best, but the political world, led by Strangford and the Tory executive, was about to intervene. The Conservatives' prospects looked brighter every day. In May they won two by-elections, at Cambridge and Ludlow, heralded in the Tory press under the banner: 'TWO CONSERVATIVE VICTORIES!!'29 Still, the conflict between his personal preferences and the course mapped out for him developed into a serious crisis, which he afterwards blamed for the course his life took in the next six years. He had come up to London, he told his father, my boyhood over, with extravagant habits, and owing about £1,200. Now, what I ought to have done was to have told you this, paid my debts out of income, lived economically, and, I humbly think, have travelled. For many good reasons, and for one very bad one, you objected to this ... After your refusal I stayed in England, owing a great deal of money, much dunned and harassed, and ready to jump at the first expression of sympathy.30

The bitter summation is part of what has been aptly called his 'tendency to moral vivisection ... it was as often upon himself as upon others that he turned the dissecting-knife.'31 The letter is not, however, factually accurate; like Tancred's Fakredeen, GSS could expertly twist the facts to create his own version. The debts were real enough, but what we know of his

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life that summer shows little sign of persecution by bailiffs, at a time when gentlemen like Count D'Orsay were often so pursued by debt collectors that they could leave the house only on Sundays, when they were legally safe. From Disraeli's account of GSS as Fakredeen, GSS was skilful in dodging or managing his creditors and derived considerable frisson from his ingenuity with them. Fakredeen was fond of his debts; they were the source indeed of his only real excitement, and he was grateful to them for their stirring powers ... Fakredeen studied [usurers] unceasingly with a fine and profound investigation, and found in their society a deep psychological interest ... 'What should I be without my debts?' he would exclaim; 'dear companions of my life that never desert me ... Yes, among my creditors, I have disciplined that diplomatic ability, that shall some day confound and control cabinets.'32

His life showed every sign of pure enjoyment, from hearing Carlyle lecture on heroes to attending Madame Vestris's benefit night at Covent Garden, from dances and dinners to cricket and the Epsom races. He did stay in England that summer while Manners and Cochrane set off for Europe, but staying behind was his own decision, prompted by infatuation, and Wellington himself would not have budged him. The affair ('the first expression of sympathy') did not result from his being unfairly bottled up in London but, as we have seen, had begun months earlier and was his reason for being in London at all. By now, he was seeing more of Disraeli, thanks to the latter's warm friendship with Strangford in 1838 and 1839.33 Neither Disraeli nor Strangford had illusions about the other, but each was stimulated by the other's conversation and ideas. Increasingly, Disraeli was expressing views independent of the official Tory party line, something that appealed to GSS. Corise might guide him socially but he needed another mentor for the labyrinth of parliamentary politics. 'Dis,' as GSS began to call him, was also a literary model - seven novels (including the talismanic Contarini Fleming), plus assorted verse, political manifestos, minor prose pieces. Quite apart from the ideas they shared about rejuvenating the Conservative party, they had friends in common, such as Henry Baillie and Lord Walpole, heir to the 3rd Earl of Orford. Disraeli knew Corise and D'Orsay well: he was an habitue of Gore House and she had approved his entry to Almack's.34 He had a penchant for handsome young men, particularly if they were intelligent and vivacious. The Young England group would be only the first in a succession of proteges and

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private secretaries whose relationship with him included the subtle interplay of physical attraction. In Coningsby, for example, Disraeli continually emphasizes the hero's physical beauty. Tancred's reaction to the young Fakredeen is also based on looks: 'while he was struck by his earnest gaze, [he] was attracted by his physiognomy, which, indeed, from its refined beauty and cast of impassioned intelligence, was highly interesting.'35 By 1840, GSS's and Disraeli's emotional partnerships showed a striking similarity. For the past few years, Disraeli too had been having an affair with an older woman, Mary Anne Lewis, wife and then widow of his Maidstone colleague Wyndham Lewis; six months earlier he had married her. Throughout his sometimes scandalous bachelor years, Disraeli had always turned to older women for comfort and support. One recent mistress, Henrietta Sykes, had regularly signed her love letters to him, 'Your Mother,' and during his courtship of Mary Anne, both referred to themselves as 'Your child.'36 Mary Anne gave him financial security, care, and affection while sharing his high ambitions. Though not at the same level of social power as Corise, she had useful connections, such as her friendship with Peel's sister, Mary Dawson. Her life with Wyndham Lewis had made her an experienced and skilful hostess, and in early 1840 she was boosting Disraeli's as yet uncertain parliamentary career with grand political dinners at Grosvenor Gate, the house Lewis had left her in Park Lane. GSS became a regular dinner guest and was soon admitted more intimately to their little blue boudoir for tea and confidential chats about the political future. Years later in the character of Waldershare in Endymion Disraeli recreated the charm that brought him under GSS's spell: 'Waldershare was one of those vivid and brilliant organizations which exercise a peculiarly attractive influence on youth ... He was witty and fanciful, and though capricious and bad-tempered, could flatter and caress.' GSS's manner was winning, but above all, it was his talk that captivated. Tt was a rhapsody of fancy, fun, knowledge, anecdote, brilliant badinage - even passionate seriousness. Sometimes he recited poetry, and his voice was musical; and then, when he had attuned his companions to a sentimental pitch, he would break into mockery, and touch with delicate satire every mood of human feeling. Endymion ... had never heard anybody like him.' Waldershare's romantic idealism is that shared by GSS and Disraeli: 'Is not the Tory party,' Waldershare would exclaim, 'a succession of noble spirits, "beautiful and swift," ever in the van, and foremost of their age? Hobbes and Bolingbroke, Hume and Adam Smith, Wyndham and Cobham,

1840: Lady Tankerville 97 Pitt and Grenville, Canning and Huskisson? - Are not the ... traditions of the Tory party the noblest pedigree in the world? Are not its illustrations that glorious martyrology, that opens with the name of Falkland and closes with the name of Canning?'37 GSS was also working out ideas with Manners that would eventually be expressed by Young England. Immersed in serious reading - Hallam's Europe during the Middle Ages and Constitutional History of England — Manners worried that the lower classes were worse off than centuries ago: 'There must be a change for the better, to avoid a change for the worse; the different orders must be brought nearer together, and brought to feel a greater community of interests both here and hereafter.'38 In May they heard Carlyle lecture on Heroes and Hero Worship. GSS, who had devoured Carlyle's French Revolution, was more impressed than Manners, who thought Carlyle a 'low, cunning looking man with an intense black eye, a nervous manner, and bad Scotch accent: he ... said what Hallam has written, ending with a grand denunciation of Paley & Bentham comparing his severe and sharp Hell for evil with their put down one, & carry one comparison of good & evil.'39 The influence of Carlyle's 'Great Man' concept - The History of the World is but the Biography of great men' - would reappear in GSS's essays on the leaders of the French Revolution which make up half of Historic Fancies. What especially appealed to him was the hero as one who challenges the status quo and/or subverts convention while ridding society of corruption. GSS's essays are not about the accepted heroes of the era - say, Nelson or Wellington but revolutionaries like Robespierre or Marat, whom nineteenth-century England regarded as murderous criminals. Unfortunately, we cannot know his reaction to an actual attempt at political murder, Edward Oxford's shooting at Queen Victoria in her carriage on 10 June. It excited GSS enough that he galloped over with the news to Corise's sonin-law, Lord Malmesbury, but one doubts if he approved of Oxford, an anarchist who claimed membership in an armed secret society called 'Young England.'40 By now, GSS's group was known by that name, though its Cambridge origins antedate the vows of action GSS, Manners, and Faber took in the summer of 1838. Milnes, one of the Cambridge 'Apostles,' used it in 1837-8 to describe his politics as a Conservative MP and to refer to other members, including Gladstone.41 The name echoes similarly titled European movements, made up of idealists inspired generally by the French Revolution and particularly by the 1830 revolution. Of varying degrees of

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militancy and romanticism, they aimed at removing autocracy and instituting social reforms. Young Italy, a secret society with outright insurrection as its goal, had been begun by Mazzini in 1834, about the same time as Young Germany, less nationalistic and more philosophical, with Heinrich Heine its most prominent member. These, with Young France and Young Poland, were loosely associated as Young Europe; the more violent Young Ireland was still several years in the future. Apart from Faber's zeal for cleansing, Young England's aims were not extreme; its precepts of religious tolerance, feudal, paternalistic principles of benevolent guidance, and mutual support between classes went along with non-violent agitation for political reform. Yet the very lack of extremism created the main problem that dogged Young England, a public perception that its members were effete socialites who could not be taken seriously, since, in their white waistcoats, they were nothing more than a dining club. Again, Milnes had something to do with the misconception; he set up such a club in 1838, 'Twenty of the most charming men in the universe ... They won't call it Young England, however.'42 Manners too set up a dining club in October 1840, for which each core member recruited five more, 'all the elite of our old Cambridge set.' Since this was months before any of them was elected to parliament, the topics for discussion were purely theoretical. That they met on the first Monday of each month during the parliamentary session indicates their intention to deal with current political issues; still, being young men, they sometimes lapsed from heavy argument into sheer high spirits: 'fair dinner, bad wines, and capital fun' was Manners's verdict on one meeting.43 They were not tainted by any association with the would-be assassin of the Queen, but they would always be haunted by the dining club and the white waistcoats. As 1840 progressed, it seemed that GSS's brand of Young England would soon be called into action. In Parliament, where the Tories continued to hammer Melbourne's government, Disraeli was one of many who thought that a Tory-Radical coalition could defeat the 'domestic oligarchy' of the Whigs.44 On 12 June the Conservative Morning Post trumpeted the 'Sixth Defeat of Ministers in the House of Commons this Session.' As Whig collapse neared, GSS (at Strangford's urging) went to Canterbury in August to act as steward of the local races. As Lord Monmouth reminds Coningsby, 'We must anticipate it... It may be next month; it may be in the autumn. But ... our course is clear. We must declare our intentions immediately.'45 Neither politics nor ideas, however, could impede his companionship with Corise, at social events and

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increasingly at the Tankervilles' house in Maddox Street. He gloated over each young man from his circle of friends drawn into the toils of marriage, cracking the inevitable risque jokes: 'Norreys says of Levesons match that the way to Acton was not through Maidenhead!'46 Walpole was courting the millionairess Angela Burdett Coutts, who, GSS had heard from her duenna, Hannah Meredith, had refused their friend Lord Claud Hamilton. Cochrane was tolerant of GSS's entanglement with Corise: 'he has,' GSS wrote, 'too much heart not to appreciate my feeling, how little soever he may understand it.' Manners continued to disapprove, despite being 'more wrapped up than ever' in GSS himself. In August the affair clearly reached a new peak, which GSS could not resist proclaiming to his friend at Lausanne. Dearest Manners, there is only one feeling - in which I shall not meet with your sympathy ... all my hopes, thoughts, dreams - have been therein centred & engrossed ... the one thought in which all others had merged, was as it were tabooed & barred between us ... [W]ithin these last days - my feelings have been so highly wrought, that everything that was in & about me, - seems to have been quickened - heightened, enhanced, to stand out in stronger & bolder relief. - Life Death Eternity Friendship, have become household thoughts ... How long this state of exuberan[ce] may last I know not. - but while it does ... I cannot check it.47

The letter went to Lucerne instead of Lausanne, leaving Manners apprehensive about such an ominous silence. Seeing GSS again in October, he nearly wept with relief, but almost at once learned that his fears were justified - GSS had now moved into the Tankervilles' London house. Tacitly the friends agreed to discuss more congenial topics like Faber's poems, newly published. Reading them, GSS softened again towards their author, while Manners thought them a 'volume of such real poetry as [has] not appeared for years.' For a week after Manners's return they walked, talked, and dined together in close harmony. Then on 11 October, at the Tory stronghold of the Carlton Club, came news that led to a real breach, the election of a new high steward for Cambridge University. Such honorary offices carried immense prestige and were closely tied to political and religious factions. The current steward, GSS's godfather Northumberland, was, by an earlier gentlemen's agreement, to succeed to the vacant chancellorship, focusing the real interest on the stewardship race. Lyttelton, calling himself non-political and taking the moral high ground against an opponent with a less than impeccable

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reputation, decided to run against Strangford's and Disraeli's friend Lyndhurst- 'alias,' remarked Manners, 'principle v. politics: hurrah for the former!'48 He immediately joined Lyttelton and became the anxious chairman of his election committee: 'such a jumble! ... Tories & Whigs, High Churchmen & Dissenters.'49 Since GSS was so intimate with Lyttelton, Manners invited him to join and was severely hurt to get a refusal, not much convinced by the reasons he was given. GSS alleged he would not join Blakesley, who had publicly declared that Lyndhurst would drag the university 'at the wheels of party spirit through the dirt' and would equate conservatism with placehunting.50 For friendship's sake, GSS said, he would probably vote for Lyttelton, though he would prefer Lyndhurst, 'were it only out of detestation to the doctrine that because a man's wife makes him a cuckold, she also makes him a bad subject. Besides the morality argument, social or political - is always an abomination, only fit for the Publicolas & Junius Brutus's of the Press.' As usual, he was under pressure. The day GSS rejected Manners, 21 October, Wellington declared for Lyndhurst; four days later Peel did the same, making the contest overtly political; now, since Lyttelton was a Whig and Lyndhurst a Tory, Lyndhurst's defeat would hurt the Conservatives.51 At first GSS refused to join the Tories, proudly asserting that he was unwilling to start off his life in politics with 'a rascally action,' to which Strangford crisply pointed out that 'he had better commence it by one than finish it by one.'52 Here is another episode in which Coningsby's career reflects GSS's, though in reverse. When Lord Monmouth orders Coningsby to stand for Parliament as a Conservative, Coningsby refuses, since such commitment would betray the woman he loves, daughter of the Whig candidate. GSS, ordered to betray his friend, gave way to the Tory backroom. In a long interview at Northumberland's London estate, Syon House, Archdeacon Singleton turned the first screw, impressing on him that Northumberland expected him to vote for Lyndhurst. Next day, Northumberland made the situation even clearer: 'He intimated to me, his perfect inability to do anything for a man, who deserted or failed to support his party. - as he termed it.' Like Monmouth, Northumberland expected his godson to act 'like a man of sense ... who is not prepared to sacrifice all the objects of life for the pursuit of some fantastical puerilities.'53 The timing was all. The newspapers were predicting an imminent byelection at Canterbury because of Lord Albert Conyngham's health, and GSS's candidacy depended on Northumberland's patronage. His deci-

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sion, too, would affect more than his own political future; it might well jeopardize the projected group action by Young England. The prospect was exactly Coningsby's: 'After eight years of initiation was he to lose that favour then so highly prized, when the results which they had so long counted on were on the very eve of accomplishment?'54 It is not surprising, then, that GSS did as instructed and told Manners he could not vote for Lyttelton. Manners, who had just resisted his own father's orders to support Lyndhurst, reacted to this volte-face with uncharacteristic anger: 'alas, alas, of what different stuff did I fancy him composed; have I been bowing down, & worshipping, literally, such a weak idol as that? ... I was quite chilled, & spoke & walked like an automaton; but it threw me into such agitation that I felt quite ill.' He wrote a 'cool, stinging, malicious note to Smythe, which he answered highly: averring that when he told me he meant to vote for Ly[ttelton] he told it me as a friend & not as L's chairman: the miserable sophist!'55 GSS's anger was followed by guilt. In an overwrought mea culpa to Lyttelton, GSS flagellated himself for having 'sacrificed my truth to my interest - my principles to greed. I am ashamed & lowered in my own estimation, & when these convictions first dawned upon me, I felt almost broken-hearted.'56 Self-abasement, however, never prevented him playing to both sides; simultaneously he was denigrating Lyttelton to Disraeli, alleging that the man perceived as so moral was 'one of the greatest roues at Cambridge.'57 Predictably, at the election on 13 November Lyndhurst defeated Lyttelton by a margin of almost two to one. Next day Strangford turned his formal congratulations to Wellington into a reminder of GSS's obedience: 'George Smythe is quietly doing the thing at Canterbury — and will succeed.'^ Actually, GSS was doing nothing of the kind. Sequestered at the Tankervilles' villa at Walton-on-Thames, he was accusing Manners of betraying his confidence to Milnes. 'I bitterly repent,' he wrote, 'that my hands are so tied by my letter to Lyttelton, as to prevent my chastising Milnes,' and he concluded stiffly: 'Please see, as Chairman of Lytteltons committee, that my vote is properly recorded against him.' Manners, upset at both the defeat and the accusation, retorted angrily. The next week, however, Corise successfully reconciled the friends at the Palmerstons': 'Smythe very affectionate; I hope now we have safely weathered this confounded election.'59 For GSS, however, the waters were still stormy, private life dashed by politics. Strangford's letter to Wellington also announced Philippa's official engagement to Henry Baillie, 'what the world calls an extremely eligible, and what I feel to be, an extremely satisfactory, marriage ... He is

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a good Tory - Had he been otherwise, he might have sighed himself into an asthma before he should have had a daughter of mine.' With the wedding only weeks away, Cochrane was distraught, wondering if even now he should propose. Appalled, Manners persuaded him that this was an impossible breach of etiquette: 'he ought to have proposed, & would probably have been accepted 2 years ago.'60 Nine years later (and five after his own marriage), Cochrane would put the amatory triangle into Lucille Belmont, with Philippa as the Catholic Lucille, Baillie as her older suitor, Vavasour, and himself as Graham, who never declares his love and suffers agonies when he loses her to Vavasour. Ellen too fretted about Philippa's future happiness and the prospect of separation. GSS, almost as emotional as after the break with Faber, told Manners that, if party considerations entailed these conflicts, politics might not be for him: 'with almost tears in his eyes he said he would give half his allowance not to stand for Canterbury, "for politics look so different when you get near them to what they did at a distance": 'tis sadly true, but what would he do without them? I shudder to think.'61 Become further entangled with Corise, perhaps? In spite of his qualms, however, GSS accepted Disraeli's invitation to a celebration dinner for Lyndhurst, and joined the Tories present in drinking Lyndhurst's health in a silver flagon of mulled port and cherry brandy. The Tankervilles were also there - Tankerville struck Disraeli as 'very affable and agreeable ... very cultivated in manners and mind.' But it was a political occasion, drawing GSS further into the Tory fold. Another guest, Cecil Forester, son of 1st Baron Forester, was influential at the Carlton and had been busying himself for the past year organizing a new constituency for Disraeli; he was also Lord Conyngham's brother-in-law, with inside knowledge of his health. Just before the dinner, Strangford sent Wellington a list of Lyttelton's committee, making sure there was no doubt in Wellington's mind about GSS's loyalty. From now on GSS had to hold himself in readiness for an election campaign.62 An emotional outburst of some kind was inevitable. The evening after Strangford's memo to Wellington, Manners noticed Corise at Lady Palmerston's alone. When he called on her shortly after, he found a moody GSS also there, in an atmosphere so charged that Manners became acutely uncomfortable and quickly left, slamming the door behind him. He obviously thought that what he had felt in the air was sexual tension: 'Alas, alas for him! and I am almost a consenting party, I have never dared say a word to him, tho' in letters I have spoken out, but still I call on her, and - oh for courage, courage.' A few days later at the

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Carl ton, he noticed that GSS 'wrote & tore up a good deal in the evening: but little thought what was to come of it.' Next day, to Manners's surprise, a note arrived, begging him to go to Corise. Inexperienced but suspicious, he leapt to completely the wrong conclusion: did this French seductress of young men now have designs on him? 'Surmising all manner of things but the right one, I went: she seized my hand & burst into tears: & then in broken accents began to say something about Smythe, I hardly knew & still hardly know what. What a situation for me! hating the guilty alliance, praying that he might be freed from it, and now made the confidant of her.'63 Manners later cut out the next page from his diary, but the issue can be guessed at. In their new propinquity at Walton, Corise had allowed GSS to read her letters, including one to her previous lover, Poulett Thomson, inviting him to visit. Jealous, he berated her and threatened to end their relationship. She now asked Manners, of all people, to mend the breach, which, very reluctantly, he did. GSS's thanks were as fervent as his aggression: 'I should exhaust the whole vocabulary of gratitude, were I to reply to each kind letter & kind deed of yours, as they require.' In expiation, he insisted on contributing to Lyttelton's election fund - anonymously of course, because of 'the apparent duplicity of my position.' After that night, however, Manners never lost his nervousness around Corise, often taking the first opportunity to escape.64 Euphoric at the reconciliation, GSS again began to write. On the way to Chevening, he read Manners a sketch of Melbourne and a scene (later entitled 'Versailles') featuring Madame de Maintenon, second wife of Louis XIV, and Mary of Modena, wife of James II. Inevitably, it praises older women: 'Age to [Maintenon] was but an immortality of beauty.' It concludes, however, that the fame of both women is based, not on love or politics, but on religious faith; they 'belong to a far nobler army - to the host of those who have wrought and suffered for the Holy Church.' The enthusiasm is unquestionable, but is it there out of conviction, or was it to please Manners? Another scene, 'The Tuileries,' probably reflects the reconciliation with Corise. In it, Diane de Poitiers, fearing to lose her younger lover, Henri II of France, wins him with her despair; 'when a woman ... casts away from her, pride and vanity, and selfesteem, - when she bows down and acknowledges her natural, feminine, helpless, impotence, - Man's instinct will ever teach him to cling to and support her.'65 The passage, while it shows a chivalry conspicuously missing from GSS's own behaviour, is illuminating on his attitude to women, the Victorian stereotype of male dominance and female submis-

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sion learned from Strangford rather than from the spirited woman who had been his mother. As the year ended, the reconciliation left that part of his life as blissfully exuberant as he had been savage. He smugly observed friends netted by marriage, and the timidity of Angela Burdett Coutts's latest suitor, Lord De L'Isle, amused him: 'I cant get him to muster pluck enough to call in Stratton Street' (her London address). He insisted to Manners that he was as happy in town as Manners was out of it and could not resist alluding to the reason: 'It is curious, that each successive day, should only renew & rivet closer the ties which endear me to it - If you are tempted to feel sorry for this expression, remember how happy I am.'66 The other side of euphoria, however, was ever-present, the moral vivisection with which he analysed his earlier accusations of Manners, 'through reserve, & want of confidence & caprice. - & much odious temper on my part.' Ashamed, he did not accompany Manners and Cochrane to visit Lyttelton at Hagley, where they spent some time discussing him, his political future, and his loyalties. Justifiably doubtful, Lyttelton showed them GSS's letter of the year before about joining the Conservatives, whom GSS had then called mean and disloyal while declaring sympathy with the Whigs.67 Could he channel such recent dislike into the clear-cut Conservatism needed to be elected in Canterbury? On the other hand, he was helping Manners and Cochrane raise funds to turn a failing newspaper, the Courier, into a Conservative party organ. His role was to approach the Hopes, a banking family popularly believed to have amassed their wealth by money-lending. When, however, Beresford Hope refused to contribute, GSS reacted scathingly: 'How mean all rich people are! Usury is like scrofula; it never gets out of the blood.' He had family worries as well. Philippa's marriage was imminent, on 29 December, and young Ellen had fretted herself into illness. The combined skills of three doctors could only prescribe rest and sea air, an ominous echo of young Lionel's last treatments for consumption. Finally, nothing could alleviate his 'miserable state of suspense about Lord Alberts intentions - Every other person tells you some other thing.'68 After he had done so much to placate the Tory hierarchy and ensure his Canterbury nomination, it seemed hard to be in such uncertainty about when it would come.

9 1841: Heaven-Born Statesman or Devil-Born Orator

He begged to propose to them a gentleman who bore a name which many of them greatly honoured; for himself, he knew the individual, and it was his firm opinion that whether they considered his talents, his character, or the ancient connection of his family with the district, he could not propose a candidate more worthy of their confidence than HARRY CONINGSBY, ESQ. Coningsby

In the first week of 1841, it seemed a further strand was about to weave itself into the already tangled web. Lord Tankerville fell dangerously ill, presenting to Manners's agitated imagination an appalling new scenario: 'if he dies, what may not happen?' Might the infatuated GSS commit social and political suicide by marrying the consolable widow? The thought also occurred to Strangford: 'I don't think that, then, my chance of handing down my old Viscountcy to a tenth generation, will be worth much - the days of miraculous conception, and Joanna Southcote are past and gone.'1 Both should have known there was not the slightest danger; to GSS, Corise represented escape from the conventional ties of monogamy. To the relief of friend and father, politics intervened. Lord Albert Conyngham at last retired, bringing on the expected by-election. Since Canterbury returned two MPs, the contest was for Lord Albert's Whig seat and did not involve the sitting Conservative, James Bradshaw. Canterbury thus became the fifth by-election in which a Conservative victory could tip the fragile balance of parliamentary power. In December they had taken one, Carlow County, from the Whigs, and they anticipated more gains soon at Kirkcaldy, Monmouthshire, and Walsall. 'The merest

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accidents,' exulted Disraeli, 'may give us four or five more votes ... A death or two and we are in.'2 The outcome at Canterbury, The Times pointed out on New Year's Day, was unpredictable: 'No one ... can safely reckon with confidence on the success of either party at Canterbury.' The city regularly returned one Whig and one Tory, though at the 1837 general election Lord Albert had barely scraped in behind Bradshaw and only two votes ahead of another Conservative, H.P. Gipps. This time, however, the Conservatives had to run a new candidate. In 1839, soon after GSS's popular speech at the King's School banquet, Bradshaw (rumoured to have been in his cups) had gratuitously attacked the young Queen. She tolerated, he said, profligate ministers (meaning Melbourne) in her government, she had taken a foreign princeling for her husband, and - most damning - she had betrayed her Coronation oath to the Established Church by allowing Catholics to be appointed to public office; her subjects should therefore rise in revolt as when they forced James II to abdicate in 1688.3 This was the next thing to sedition, and even the Church interests in the city were outraged. Any Conservative hoping to take Lord Albert's seat must be a declared royalist. Here his handlers' careful preparation of GSS would begin to pay off: the King's School speeches, the association with Wellington, the tutelage by Winchilsea. The Tory rallying cry 'Queen and constitution!' - would be like that at the Darlford election in Coningsby, 'Our young Queen and our ancient institutions!' With the Whig candidate, John Henniker Wilson, not yet on site, the politicos sent GSS at once into action, with instructions identical to Coningsby's from Lord Monmouth: "You will go down on Friday; feed the notabilities well; speak out; praise Peel; abuse O'Connell and the ladies of the Bed-chamber; anathematise all waverers ... and, above all... don't spare [your opponent] ."'4 On 3 January, in atrocious winter weather, GSS arrived at the Fountain Inn, and next day, supervised by a previous Tory MP, Stephen Lushington, began his campaign with a Conservative dinner and no less than three ultra-royalist speeches. This mattered much more than his sympathy with Dissenters: T spoke about the Queen,' he told Manners, 'as a npnjuror would have, & the same dullards cheered me, who cheered Bradshaw!'5 The same day Strangford notified Wellington that he was 'allowing' GSS to contest Canterbury, 'something so like a certainty, considering the immense majority which we have now on the [electoral] Registry, that I think it would be almost a sin not to make an effort to rescue old Canterbury from the Radicals.'6 Strangford's use of 'allowing' may sound odd in view of the earlier

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party pressures. In fact, though the by-election had been expected, quite so speedy an arrival put him in a dilemma. Canterbury, as a potential Conservative gain, could help oust the Whigs from power, but a change of government would necessitate a general election, and a second contest within the year, which Strangford would have to finance. Since the Reform Act, the days of patronage alone had gone; those of central party funding were still in the future. Kent constituencies were particularly expensive; 'you will undoubtedly think me insane,' Strangford told Londonderry, 'in allowing him to contest, at probably enormous expense, such a place.'7 In the early nineteenth century, large boroughs such as Canterbury or Maidstone could be contested for under £5,000 (about £300,000 in modern money), but by GSS's time the price had risen.8 At Maidstone in 1837 Disraeli had spent only £500, but that was because Wyndham Lewis footed most of the bill.9 In fiction, Coningsby is elected at Darlford with all costs met by his sweetheart's wealthy father; in real life, GSS had to contest Canterbury out of a family exchequer left bare by Philippa's marriage settlement. The deciding factor for Strangford was the relationship with Corise; the sooner GSS was busy with public life, the better: 'it may tend to disentangle him from the absurd and scarcely creditable, scarcely natural, infatuation which he now labours under.' 'All this,' he told Wellington pointedly, 'will cost me (the very poorest Peer in England) a lot of money - and I dare say I shall have to live on bread and water for the rest of the year - but I don't care a farthing for that, so I can help the good old cause.' Calculating costs at about £2,200, he tried the Tory executive at the Carlton but was refused ('a shabby thing'): what party funds existed were reserved for legal battles and disputed elections, not for primary canvassing. He then managed to raise a loan of £1,000 through his brokers and set about inviting his wealthier friends to make donations. A heavy hint had already gone to Wellington; Northumberland promised £500; Londonderry was asked outright for £50 or £100; Young England made up a subscription of smaller sums which might cover the rest. With this provisional backing, GSS began his canvass in a state of exhilaration and fright. Neither father nor godfather made appearances (though GSS took to invoking Northumberland's surname by signing himself 'George Percy Smythe'). He felt insecure and isolated, with only electoral agents to consult against the city's strong Whig factions. 'Every functionary in the place, is against me - not one Conservative in the Corporation - Police, & all people dependent on the Charities.' Initially, he fraternized with Wilson at the Fountain: 'The waiters say "they never

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seed such candidates" as we chaff each other like schoolboys - & live together like "chums."'10 The abrasive and abusive field of Victorian politics, however, did not encourage friendliness, especially once the public meetings got under way. On 6 January at the Prince of Orange Rooms, Wilson's chairman pointedly dissociated his candidate from his grandfather, the Tory Baron Henniker, and stressed Wilson's staunch adherence to 'old constitutional Whig reform principles.' Wilson himself made charges about local Tory machinations - bribery and 'treating' in the public houses - and while declaring support of reforms like a secret ballot, blamed Tory venality for making such changes necessary. GSS on the 8th made counter-charges, but phrased in genial witticisms rather than polemics. By this time he was more relaxed; working twelve and thirteen hours a day, he had covered more than half the constituency and completely charmed the voters. His effect on his audience was that of Coningsby's election speech at Darlford. He spoke; his powerful and rich tones reached every ear. In five minutes' time every one looked at his neighbour, and without speaking agreed that there never was anything like this heard in Darlford before ... He did this with so much clearness, and in a manner so pointed and popular, that the deep attention of the multitude never wavered. His lively illustrations kept them often in continued merriment.11

Speaking off the cuff to the packed Guildhall Rooms, he lightened the obligatory exposition of his principles with humorous jabs at Wilson. How, he inquired, could there possibly be 'treating' when so many dedicated Conservatives were crowded into the room that the waiters could not serve liquor? Wilson himself seemed more like a sponsor: 'he appears a sort of godfather to me - (Laughter) - and vouches for me, telling what I think, feel, and am going to do. ("Hear," and laughter.) Among other things he says that I am satisfied with the Reform Bill. Now, I am not satisfied with it. (Cheers.)' More seriously, GSS brought out his own local family history and its royalist sympathies in the Civil War, which, he said, was a very different kind of loyalty from that of the present-day Canterbury Corporation, 'with the good things of a Whig ministry falling into its hands for distribution.' Manners thought the speech 'long & eloquent, but not very good.' As a campaign curtainraiser, however, it showed GSS's cleverness and ability to think on his feet, both appreciated by his audience. 'I spoke quite at random, trusting to the inspiration of the moment, & as I fooled the buffoon to the

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top of its bent - was very successful with the pothouse people - who were my auditors!'12 It also comprehensively covered the points specified in his instructions: praise of the Queen ('more gentle than Anne - more courageous than Elizabeth'), attacks on the Whigs whose mismanagement eroded her popularity, disparagement of a government which was rumoured to have offered an official post to a rebel like O'Connell, eulogies of the Tory leaders. At the end (a virtual reprise of his King's School peroration), the applause was heard streets away: 'I have told you I am a loyalist, a Conservative, a Churchman; it only remains for me to remind you that I am a man of Kent, and venture to hope that I shall see on the day of polling a strong, overwhelming, and triumphant majority of men of Kent.'13 This demonstration of his ability to carry a crowd alarmed the Whigs into more strenuous efforts. On the 13th the Morning Chronicle launched a high-handed attack - 'Kent is the county for charlatans' - which nevertheless did little more than taint him by association with 'incompetent' Tories in general and the 'notorious' Bradshaw in particular. Local Whig agents quickly had these opinions printed on placards and posted all over the city. Wilson, who up till now may have thought that he had only an ineffectual aristocrat to deal with, became openly hostile and at a meeting that night refused to shake GSS's hand. GSS's invariable response to an insult followed, a letter asking Manners to second him in a duel with Wilson. Here was another dreadful request to harrow up Manners's God-fearing, law-abiding soul. Since duelling was illegal in Britain, a challenge would, if it became known, get GSS arrested and hand over victory to the Whigs. At this point, GSS emphasized, T will pick no quarrel. - although I shall resist all bully-blackguardism, & resent it.'14 Meantime the Whig smear campaign intensified. Failing GSS himself, the Whig Globe decided to home in on his father, specifically the 1828 dispute over rescuing the Portuguese royal family. Sneeringly it doubted the credibility of a man who had failed to win libel damages and went on to call father and son 'the greatest liar[s] since the days of Baron Munchausen.' Such tactics denoted desperation. Wilson's meetings on the 15th and 16th were poorly attended, due in part to flooding in the city after a sudden thaw, but also, crowed the Tory papers, because of GSS's energetic campaigning, his charisma and his oratory: 'the charm of his manners, combined with his talent, have rendered that canvass even more successful than he anticipated.' Alarmed by forecasts of a Conservative majority of 40-50 votes (out of a total of about 1,400), the

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Whigs drafted in Frederick Villiers, whose presence might influence voters unimpressed by Wilson. There were even rumours that the ailing Lord Albert might be called back, though to this he returned 'a positive negative.'15 In two weeks, GSS had clearly established his superiority; it seemed he had only to go on as he had begun. Exhausted by long days of canvassing, followed by evening meetings, balls, and entertainments, he took several days off to recover and revive his spirits. On the 19th he addressed a meeting that had all the appearance of a triumph before the fact.16 He spoke for two hours before seven hundred people who met every point with thunderous applause. Confidently he refuted the placards, such as the charge that he wanted repeal of the Reform Bill. Of course he was for reform in some areas, notably State intolerance towards Dissenters, but, he urged his audience, 'Let them not confound disfigurement and confiscation with amendment and reform.' Here he reversed his earlier praise of the New Poor Law to follow the party line for its revision. In a distinct foretaste of Coningsby, he criticized the Whig government for inertia, especially in foreign policy and tax relief. Wisely, he avoided specifics, covering with the witticisms he knew his audience enjoyed. 'For my own part,' he quipped, 'I would prefer a Government that went either backwards or forwards, for any horse is better than a dead horse.' In fact, he continued, on points like Palmerston's foreign policy (which one placard had attacked him for endorsing), the Whigs had stolen the Tories' own ideas: 'The Government calls themselves Whig Ministers but are Tories in practice.' Three years later in Coningsby Disraeli produced his own version of this sally to attack the moribund Tories in their turn: '"A sound Conservative government," said Taper musingly. "I understand: Tory men and Whig measures."'17 On the same night, Wilson's speech to Whig supporters (fittingly at the Black Dog) showed how vituperative he became as his audiences dwindled. After some not quite covert negotiations to buy Villiers's votes had fallen through, he launched a personal attack on GSS, charging that he was totally unfit to represent any respectable political party: all he had was a 'strain of sarcasm which was not very formidable.' Even GSS's rhetoric, Wilson said, was empty: GSS (born in Sweden of Irish descent) was 'no man of Kent, not even an Englishman.' The Times might gush that the young Conservative candidate had proved himself 'an Heavenborn statesman,' but surely a man who expressed sympathy for Dissenters in the seat of the Established Church must be condemned as 'a devil-born orator.' 'Parliament,' Wilson finished in a weak attempt to

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match his opponent's style, 'is his profession, diplomacy his trade, and humbug his language.'18 Though Wilson later denied he had used such invective, the report in the Kentish Observer broke through GSS's studied equanimity. To Manners's great relief, GSS called in a military friend, Frederick Sutton of the llth Hussars, to 'demand an apology,' as the standard duelling formula went, Wilson in turn named his second, none other than Villiers, who, hoping to have GSS arrested, began to publicize the affair. Whytehead, who had been following his former pupil's speeches - 'very clever & able' - was 'grieved sadly at his eager temper having carried him away as it did, & sent to tell him so.'19 By the time the storm reached the national newspapers, however, it had blown itself out. Wilson made a half-hearted apology, which GSS accepted. Thwarted of actual sensation, the Whigs posted placards against GSS as the 'man of blood.' 'So he is,' commented the calmer Strangford, 'and dashed good blood too!'20 With polling day now officially fixed for 2 February, both sides fired off charges of venality. GSS, on limited resources, became less sanguine about his chances: 'With a rich opponent, the Treasury, the Corporation, all patronage & much purse against me -1 shall be surprized if I am not beaten.' (His low spirits did not prevent him passing on a risque anecdote about the notorious Lord Hertford, who 'passed through here two days ago, & slept with two women! French & pretty! This beats Madame Dubarry in thunder & lightning.') 'Ben' Stanley, secretary to the Treasury, was rumoured to be promising government sinecures in return for votes for Wilson; another rumour had Stanley offering the Rothschilds government backing on the next bill for Jewish rights if they would pressure the Jewish community in Canterbury to give financial support to Wilson.21 The Conservative Morning Post put the worst interpretation on the presence in Canterbury of James Coppock, the chief Whig election agent. When some leading Canterbury Whigs made a visit to London late in the campaign, the Post implied it was to receive £10,000 in government money. 'What a practical comment on their boasted principles of purity of elections! And what a convenient thing it is to have the secret service money granted to the government to resort to!' In retaliation, the Saturday before the election, the Chronicle played an even lower card, disinterring the 1784 scandal in which GSS's greatgrandfather, Philip, had lost his Irish Parliament seat for offering to take a bribe. As evidence, it printed in its entirety Philip's original letter, a pathetic document whose only relevance to GSS's campaign was the implication that poverty-stricken Smythes were open to bribery. Why else

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had the chief Conservative agent, Joseph Croucher, been in town? Quite definitely 'for purposes the nature of which the Tories are best acquainted with.'22 As by-election after by-election was called, national attention focused on the details of the contests. At Walsall, the same day as Canterbury, Gladstone's brother John was expected to win for the Conservatives; 'the struggle,' Disraeli predicted, 'will be at Canterbury.'23 Fortunately, GSS did not have to face the polls unsupported. Two days before the election, Manners, still concerned about GSS's frame of mind, arrived with a group of Young Englanders - Cochrane, Cecil Forester, Viscount Loftus, and Captain Ryder Burton - to cheer this first of their candidates in the streets and on the hustings. Disraeli declined, partly because of the vile weather but mostly because, hoping for office under Peel, he was not ready to affiliate himself openly with an untried group. For most of the company it was their first experience of active campaigning, and their ebullience did much to fight off the dampening effects of the cold. On nomination day, 1 February, the candidates had to address the voters from open wagons in a pitiless snow storm that ruined the elaborate decorations in party colours. GSS, however, had recovered from his exhaustion. In contrast to Wilson's tirades, he was spontaneous, humorous, and friendly. Where Wilson congratulated himself on his canvass, GSS praised the electors for receiving him so warmly. Where Wilson complained of intimidation by the Cathedral, GSS made his audience laugh with witty analyses of the Whigs' political record in London and in Canterbury. He was responding to his audiences and to events, not merely lecturing, and he set up a rapport which Wilson could not match. All might have been over there and then, as a show of hands made GSS the decisive winner, but the Whigs demanded an official poll. Anticipating a Conservative triumph, the Young Englanders marched all day round the town and spent the evening canvassing as instructed by GSS's committee. This was the rowdy side of Victorian electioneering, mostly in pubs respectable and otherwise. At one inn, they joined heartily in the speeches and songs; at another, they found voters being plied with alcohol - 'beastly drunk,' groaned Manners; 'I never saw a viler scene.' Some Whig hirelings tried to pick a fight with Cochrane and next day brought a summons against him. To Manners the proceedings were a revelation: 'the mystery, the iniquity, brutality, debauchery, good humour & queerness of all these proceedings were very remarkable - half killed with smoke, brandy & water, & filth - I got to bed before 2.'24 The group rose again at 7:30 to be at the polls when they opened at 8,

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monitor the open voting booths against intimidation of electors, and head off thugs hired to get up a fracas. GSS's popularity had him mobbed every time he appeared. After the first hour he had a majority of 16, which, after a seesaw in the third hour, steadily increased as the day went on. When the polls closed at 4 o'clock, there was no room for doubt; the unofficial count put him ahead of Wilson by 163 votes. The final official results were: GSS 772, Wilson 628, Twisden Hodges (a lastminute Whig nominee) 17. It was a victory that more than fulfilled his handlers' expectations. Except for the threatened duel, he had conducted himself well; he had followed his instructions and he had carried the voters on strength of personality and ability to pitch a popular speech. He was poised for the party position that Strangford had envisaged: 'he will start into public life under the most favourable auspices and with the reputation of having fought a most gallant fight - and of having rendered a most important service to his party - for, that additional seat will give us a decided majority in the H. of C.' GSS was aware of the responsibilities to come: 'I have duties to perform, which I hope with Gods help and my friends sympathy, to perform without discredit! '25 He might have disappointed at Cambridge; he graduated with honours at Canterbury. So far, so like Coningsby. His triumphal chairing next day through the streets of Canterbury is the source of Disraeli's glowing description of Harry's victory procession at Darlford: 'Preceded and followed by thousands, with colours flying, trumpets sounding, and endless huzzas, flags and handkerchiefs waving from every window, and every balcony filled with dames and maidens bedecked with his colours, Coningsby was borne through enthusiastic Darlford like Paulus Emilius returning from Macedon.' For Manners it amounted to a religious experience, with his friend as prophet: 'when, banners & all, we entered the Cathedral Close 8c the bright sun shone cheerily out upon the old Tower & the array, I can't tell how happy & how proud I felt.' It was a first step for Young England as well as an added seat for the Conservatives. Like Coningsby, GSS seemed to bring a new spirit to English politics; 'he has that in him which will be worth more to the cause than any external advantages talent, courage, and a high tone of principle.'26 Here in the real-life GSS were embodied the qualities which so dazzled Disraeli that, three years later, he made them integral to his fictional paragon, Harry Coningsby. But even Disraeli the enamoured novelist knew that elections in the 1840s had two sides. In Coningsby, the underbelly of the Darlford election gets a comic treatment in the 'frighteners' like Bully Bluck and Magog

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Wrath, paid by their respective candidates to bribe and threaten voters. The agents too are comic, as they manipulate the voters' list, cajole indecisive electors, and add dead men's names on polling day. In actual elections, such arrangements were still significant factors, tolerated unless too blatant to be ignored. In the case of Wellington's son, Lord Douro, at Norwich which had worried Strangford in 1837, part of the problem was the clumsy management that left Douro's and Scarlett's activities out in the open, liable to investigation. Douro survived, but Scarlett lost his seat. In 1841 at Canterbury, the dark side to the victory won by GSS as political Galahad quickly revealed itself. He took his seat in the Commons on 8 February, to cheering that confirmed the general view that he was one of the party's brightest prospects, destined for the highest political offices.27 His royalist speeches sent him into Parliament on a wave of collegial enthusiasm: 'he had but to show himself to be applauded. He commenced debating as a favourite member in a triumphant Opposition.'28 Four days later, before he could launch himself with an attack on the Poor Law, two Canterbury electors presented a petition to Parliament disputing his election on grounds of treating, bribery, and corruption - 'sad work,' lamented Manners. Petitions were a standard tactic; since Reform, the defeated party always had this last recourse, and, though the Whigs were also petitioning against Conservative victors at Sudbury and Walsall, so were the Conservatives against the Whig who had won at St Albans. The Whig organization at Canterbury was no less guilty of corruption than GSS - Wilson's expenses of £4,000 were also incurred by bribes, threats, and thugs - but the House found enough grounds for referring the petition to a parliamentary committee of inquiry. The same day Strangford reported in horror that, even after Northumberland raised his contribution to £1,000, success had cost £6,000, three times what he expected. Petition and costs were closely related.29 The truth was that in 1841 it was a rare candidate, however principled, who was elected on charisma and oratory alone. Where in the preReform 'pocket' or 'rotten' boroughs patronage had been all-powerful and often sent members to Parliament unopposed, in the contests Reform made possible, patronage had been replaced by the power of cash.30 In Canterbury (as in Disraeli's Darlford or Dickens's Eatanswill) bribery lay behind the fierce competition for votes, the street fights, the drunkenness, the threats, the kidnapping of obstinate voters. GSS was caught at a time of transition, when the influence of a patron like Northumberland could now be countered by ordinary voters and when

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the public attitude towards electoral corruption maintained a double standard. On one hand it was accepted as customary, on the other (by 1841 at least) detection was punished by public examination and possible unseating. For this reason, though bribery on a large scale had persisted at Canterbury since before Reform, the Conservative agents there routinely destroyed the paper trails that would have documented what money was spent and to whom it was paid.31 GSS, like other candidates, kept a nominal purity by leaving the actual money handling to agents, but it was a fine point. Against his professed ignorance was the valid objection voiced by one MP that 'the parties who lodge three or four thousand pounds in the hands of their bankers for the purpose of corrupting the electors are the really guilty parties, and ought rather to be prosecuted than those who are detected in dealing out a fractional part of that corruption to the electors.'32 GSS tried to distance himself further by claiming that he did not employ agents in 1841, leaving management to the local Conservative committee, but the evidence contradicts his statement. In practice, funds were given to principal agents, who in turn employed local men, either to pay money up front or to promise it for services rendered. A namesake of GSS's, George Frederic Smith, a coachmaker, was the Conservative middleman in 1841 for the system of 'colour tickets,' a manoeuvre that survived the Reform Act. By this, each voter nominated two 'colourmen' (ostensibly to defend the candidate's chosen colours) for whom he received two tickets worth 10 shillings each, payable after the election. In practice the voter nominated children or other non-voting relatives and kept the money for himself.33 Votes were also bought directly for £3 or £4 each. At a general election, where each voter had two votes, he could get 3 guineas apiece and 6 guineas for 'plumping' for only one candidate. In Canterbury, many respectable men acted as agents. Two of GSS's, builders named James Kelson and John Vincent, claimed to be working for the Conservative cause, not personal profit, but many more 'sweated the bribe' as it passed from agent to middleman to voter; in Canterbury a middleman could make as much as £20 to £30 on a dozen votes.34 In this first campaign of GSS's, Lushington's supervision apparently could not prevent local organizers from taking advantage of Strangford's inexperience. They employed sixty bribers, an unusually high number and a prime cause of his tripled expenses, due to the amount that 'stuck' in the bribers' hands. Voters even complained directly to GSS about bribes embezzled en route: in one example, the manager for Whitstable voters,

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Henry Admans, kept £40 out of the £80 he was allocated. Another agent, Thomas Lunns, was less lucky; he was allocated an enterprising family called Styles, nine or ten in number, who shrewdly refused to deal with middlemen and, because they always voted as a block, were able to sell their votes for a staggering £10 each.35 The prospect of having these transactions revealed before an official committee was as dispiriting as the added expense for legal representation: T am ruined by triumphs,' GSS complained. 'All the preparations for this petition have been so costly & embarrassing.'36 His sensitivity cringed at having to testify (a comparatively new part of the procedure), but as things turned out, he was spared. The only interpretation is that the party that earlier refused him election funds now went to work behind the scenes, to keep the extra Conservative vote in the Commons. By something more than coincidence, GSS's counsel, Sergeant Wrangham, was also appearing for the Conservatives at the Sudbury and Walsall hearings, while the counsel for the Canterbury petitioners, Charles Austin, also appeared for the Whigs at the Walsall and St Albans hearings. On 31 March, the last day of St Albans evidence, the two counsel conferred in a closed court before announcing to the surprised committee that the petition against the elected Whig, Lord Listowel, was to be dropped. On the same day, scheduled to open the Canterbury hearings, they again conferred before announcing to that committee that the petition against GSS would also be dropped. Whig and Conservative, Listowel and GSS, were declared duly elected.37 This was too obvious a case of collusion (or, as it was then more delicately termed, 'compromise') to be ignored. On 2 April formal demands were made in the Commons for disclosure of the evidence, but GSS's luck held again. It was the Friday before the Easter recess, and the House, strongly urged by the Whig Lord John Russell, merely resolved that the committee proceedings for the three constituencies be printed, and the matter stood. It was not quite the way in which the Young Englanders had intended to make their mark on the new age of politics, but at least GSS still had his seat. The evidence heard against Listowel helped make St Albans so notorious for corruption that it was later disfranchised. Since, however, no actual evidence had been heard in the Canterbury proceedings, GSS was able to resume the role of standard bearer for the new generation. Asked for suggestions for poems Manners was writing on the 'Condition of England' question (published as England's Trust], GSS responded with the authority of one who has been through the fire and emerged unscathed: 'St Albans at this moment sounds like Gatton or Old Sarum

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[former 'rotten' boroughs]. I mean this seriously. Provoke abuse, scurrilitytJ blackguardism, - & you may succeed - but ridicule is fatal.'38 In the aftermath of his narrowly averted ordeal, he even contemplated publishing on a famous case of unjust accusation, the trial (1788-95) of Warren Hastings on charges of corruption brought by Whigs hoping to bring down Pitt's government. His righteous indignation, however, soon melted away in Easter revels with Hope at Bedgebury: 'I dressed Trench [a friend] up as a woman - rescued him from Esterhazy's servant, who took improper liberties - & then ushered him into the dining room, where he danced a jig!'39 It was, after all, his twenty-third birthday, and he had a whole year in which to emulate Pitt, prime minister at twenty-four.

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'Did you speak, Harry?' 'No; I voted. There was too much speaking as it was ... A majority is always the best repartee,' said Coningsby. Tancred

What was it like to be a newly elected MP in the spring of 1841? Rather (to adapt GSS's nautical style) like launching a skiff into a rapid current, only to find round the next bend a stagnant pond. The House of Commons GSS entered had 658 seats, the same as before Reform, and was characterized as much by its tenacious hold on the old model of landed privilege as by alterations to its makeup. The very building suggested looking backward in a new age: the fabric was completely new, just rebuilt after the disastrous fire of 1834, but its walls were soon to be covered with scenes from the nation's romantic past, such as Daniel Maclise's 'Spirit of Chivalry.' 'Rotten' and 'pocket' boroughs had been replaced by constituencies in growing cities and the industrial North, but the House of Lords held tremendous power while half the elected MPs were still drawn from the aristocracy, hostile to Radicals, non-conformists, and nationalists like J.A. Roebuck, MP for Bath, John Feilden, successor to William Cobbett at Oldham, or Daniel O'Connell, 'The Agitator' for Irish rights. Coningsby's Buckhurst was only one example of a landed gentleman determined to resist popular enfranchisement; conversely, legislation like the Ten Hours Movement for industrial labour increasingly brought into the House social issues involving the new electorate. The word 'reform' had previously been associated more with Whigs and Radicals than with the entrenched Tory opposition - hence the

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repeated assurances by GSS's Canterbury opponents that they stood for reform - but Peel's Tamworth Manifesto of 1834 recognized that the Tory party must shift towards a broader base of middle-class democracy, largely through treating the new underclasses with traditional aristocratic responsibility. What Disraeli called in Coningsby the 'Whig oligarchy' would theoretically give way to enlightened Conservatism, but in the meantime Parliament retained obdurate old-school Tories like Strangford and Wellington, contemptuous of shopkeepers and Dissenters.1 When, at the opening of Coningsby, Harry is found adjusting a portrait of Wellington, Disraeli nicely prefigures the task of 'setting the Duke to rights' that faced young progressives like GSS. Such a time of pivotal change called for seriousness in its legislators. GSS, always a political chameleon, entered Parliament fully aware of the importance of being earnest. After an education that imprinted on him the opposing ideals of resistance to authority and of aristocratic service, he must now make his career in a forum that voiced these principles in every debate. He desperately wanted to be committed to something, and his involvement with issues of religious freedom and social reform developed out of his political environment as much as from genuine personal concern. Earnestness, however, initially stopped him relaxing in the Commons and, coupled with nervousness, produced the stilted overformal speeches of his early months. Unrelenting earnestness is the problem with Harry Coningsby as fictional idealist; in every trial, conflict, or triumph, he comes over as an irredeemable prig. With GSS, however, earnestness coexisted with his other selves: his rakish, arrogant Regency heritage, his fear of ridicule, and his underlying sense of doom that burst out into impulse and anger. All these contradictory elements were sure to roughen the waters for him as he launched himself in Parliament. He had weathered one trial, but another, more fearsome after such publicity, still loomed - his maiden speech. While the petition was pending, he lay low, unobtrusive but diligent, a reliable Conservative vote in the nightly debates. He spent his days on a Commons committee deliberating a water supply for Bradford, amazed to hear his fellow members, in this industrial age, try to 'prove the impropriety of manufactural thirst.'2 His nerves kept him silent, even on his pet issues: 'If I had more pluck than I have now, I ought to have spoken in defence of Newman the other evening. But I feel cowed & stricken & ashamed.'3 During the Easter recess, he helped Manners revise his poems for a volume to be called England's Trust (1841). He even wrote the opening

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for the best-known, 'Spes Angliae,' while, thin-skinned himself, advising Manners not to venture into print. 'But then I am a cowardly theorist - & should have given the same counsel as Dallas, about Childe Harold.'4 When, however, Faber reappeared in London, his fiery spirit stirred GSS, who, under the name Tabricius,' wrote for the Morning Post a vehement defence of the Oxford Movement against the Edinburgh Review's attack on Newman's Tract 90, the last of Tracts for the Times.5 He thought it displayed abysmal ignorance of Church history in declaring Newman too Roman Catholic to remain in the Church of England, an apostolic institution that, 'long before the Reformation, had continually protested against the manifold and growing errors of the Papacy ... The change had come, not over us, but over Rome.' Scornfully, he belittled the reviewer: The critic upon Chinese metaphysics, who derived his information from separate articles upon "China" and "Metaphysics," was only an adumbration of yourself.' Even so, the letter as published was a toneddown version, 'full,' GSS complained to Manners, 'of misprints, & much protestantized, as for example, suppressing "ribald" &c, as applied to Luther.'6 Belligerent or peaceable, he was preoccupied with religious issues. In March his vote for a bill to allow Jews to hold municipal office infuriated his Church constituents at Canterbury; 'I shall make them frantic, I fear, about Maynooth!' (an Irish Catholic seminary supported by government grant). Two days after his Tabricius' letter, he had a long argument with Gladstone at the House of Commons, 'where I endeavoured to combat his theory of uniformity, & oppose to it, mine of progressive toleration But, of course I had no chance, with such an antagonist - . he is ... too full of scholastic abstractions ... to be a safe practical guide. And, - in the midst of these, he - loses sight, as it seems to me, of plain right & wrong.' Later that night, abandoning restraint, he had a 'devil of a row' on the Queen's role as religious leader with Claud Hamilton (now Conservative MP for Tyrone).7 By this time, as the government was defeated again and again, a dissolution was becoming more and more likely. For any hope of office under the Conservatives, GSS must confirm his ability by speaking soon, but fear of ridicule kept him procrastinating. One factor was his closeness to Disraeli; he would have known of Disraeli's famous maiden speech in 1837, which was heckled and finally shouted down. It was not till mid-May that he spoke, during debate on a bill to reduce duties on imported sugar. A seemingly dreary topic in fact involved a humanitarian issue, since increasing trade in sugar from countries like Brazil encour-

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aged the use of slave labour there at the expense of British colonies, where slavery had been abolished. The eighth night of debate, however, was leaving it too late, especially after several impressive speakers had exhausted the subject. When he did rise, he was so nervous that reporters could hardly hear him, and he spent most of his time apologizing to the House for presuming to speak at all. Faltering and repeating himself, he added nothing to the debate except to remark how 'stultifying' to Britain's national honour the measure would be after her 1833 Slave Emancipation Act. After nine or ten sentences, completely demoralized, he could do nothing but sit down. In the few accounts of his life, the episode is a crux, a fatal lack of fortitude that augured his eventual public failure.8 To him it brought humiliation as raw as an open wound; family and friends were forbidden to mention it. In a letter to Strangford several years later, he blamed himself heavily. With his election expenses, 'I had brought ruin upon you, upon my sisters, upon myself ... [With] my Cambridge debts, with interest increasing, and with a petition hanging over my head, my position was anything but enviable. It was in this situation, weighed down by a sense of all the mischief I had done, that I tried to speak. I broke down, signally and miserably, my nerves going with a sort of crash. What a position! I might have recovered myself, but this is not an heroic age, and I took to drinking as an opiate and an anodyne.'9 Again his introspection telescoped events and made the worst of the situation: the petition, for example, was six weeks behind him by the time he spoke. Strangford had certainly pressured Philippa to marry wealth, but so he did later with both GSS and Ellen, as would have every parent of the time. Philippa's marriage settlement was contracted before the by-election, and Strangford was concerned about its effects on GSS's finances, not vice versa. Strangford's rants about 'ruin' after the byelection are more significant. They were partly to induce wealthier friends to contribute, but they had a basis in the loan he was forced to take out, which by the end of the year developed into a genuine financial crisis. For the most part, though, GSS's own mortification began the myth of his maiden speech as an 'absolute failure' that started him on the downhill path. In fact, the occasion was no debacle; the House had seen first-time nerves before and understood that an unsuccessful debut could be compensated for; Peel himself came over afterwards to reassure GSS. None of the printed reports, from the official version in Hansard to the usually hostile Morning Chronicle, mention a breakdown - the Chronicle even includes some encouraging 'hear, hear's. The lateness of the hour

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and the House's fatigue at the tail end of the debate had a deadening effect on everyone; none of the speakers that night, groaned the Post reporter, rose above that level or even had any 'direct tendency to excite particular admiration, on the ground either of argument or eloquence.'10 Whether GSS took to drink at this stage is equally doubtful. He joined readily in Corise's social round, but the activities were much the same as before: the Queen's Birthday Drawing Room, the Duchess of Northumberland's Ball, a lavish dinner at Lady Beresford's, nights at Almack's and Lady Palmerston's. And almost at once politics intervened when the government was defeated on 4 June by one vote on a non-confidence motion, followed by dissolution on the 7th. Full of excitement, GSS went on to Angela Burdett Coutts's ball with Manners, whose tentative resolve to be the millionairess's next suitor was now cancelled by the imminent general election. Here was Young England's opportunity. They all had constituencies to contest: Manners with Gladstone at Newark, Cochrane at Bridport, where he and GSS had done a preliminary canvass during the Whitsun recess. Hope would campaign at Maidstone to succeed Disraeli, who, unable to pay off his outstanding bribes, moved on to Shrewsbury. Disraeli's personal debts - over £22,000 - made it imperative that he be re-elected; MPs could not be arrested for debt, something that explains GSS's earlier impatience for the Canterbury by-election and his anxiety about the petition.11 His hopes for no contest this time were disappointed; Bradshaw, the other Canterbury Conservative, was 'far too notorious & marked a politician - to be allowed to walk over - . So, I shall have to pay the piper, & perhaps lose my seat - an it come.' Two days later it did. Hodges, the last-minute Whig candidate at the by-election, announced that he would run as a Whig-Radical against 'super-loyal' Bradshaw and 'over-eloquent' GSS.12 More money was needed, though in the end Strangford had to supply only £1,000 in a cleaner post-petition campaign. The main question was whether Bradshaw, still in local disfavour, could be re-elected. The party leaders tried to dissuade him from standing at all, but failed.13 GSS's distasteful task then was to associate enough with him for his own popularity to carry Bradshaw along; in the parlance of the time, they 'coalesced' for the duration of the campaign, canvassing, speaking, and holding meetings in tandem. Even so, it was doubtful if this would be enough. On nomination day, 29 June, the show of hands made GSS and Hodges the winners, deciding the Tories, like the Whigs in February, to carry matters as far as they could by demanding a poll. Party feeling on election day therefore ran very high, with the city in 'complete uproar ...

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the usual modicum of personal abuse and a few assaults.' 'There was much fisty-cuffs in the streets,' Strangford reported, 'Bradshaw assaulted by the rad[ical]s - Smythe's Eton education was called into play.' (Had Strangford forgotten GSS's role in Eton riots, or did he look on them as battle hardening for the political arena?) GSS's own return was never in doubt. Bradshaw and Hodges ran neck and neck all day, but by night the Tory tactics prevailed. The official result put GSS, with 823 votes, nearly a hundred ahead of Bradshaw with 729, only 9 ahead of Hodges. The win elected two Conservatives at Canterbury for the first time in fifty years, and the party leaders agreed with Strangford that GSS's popularity had done it. 'Both the seats,' Strangford wrote pointedly to Wellington, 'are now made secure to the Cons. Party - so long as George Smythe shall choose to occupy one of them'; as for Bradshaw, 'but for his having been coupled with my son, he would not at this hour, be member for Canterbury.'14 Meanwhile amid similar turmoil at Bridport, even Cochrane's Eton education could not prevail. He too faced street violence and thugs who attacked him at his hotel before he finally lost at the poll. Hope, however, was decisively elected for Maidstone, along with yet another Conservative, the defeated Whig trailing by over 300 votes. At Shrewsbury, after a vicious campaign in which the details of Disraeli's debts were placarded all over town ('How accurate they are,' he dryly observed), he and his Conservative running mate, separated by only 8 votes, defeated their Whig opponents by nearly 200, out of an electorate of about 2,200. At Newark Manners, despite allegations of bribery, won splendidly with virtually the same number of votes as Gladstone, MP there since 1832. 'Sic itur ad astra,' GSS wrote in congratulation. 'Never had any young politician, since Mr. Pitt, so fair a field before him for fame, power, and high service — as you have now in the House of Commons — with no place not even the first remote from your future reach - and none more ardently desires the fulfilment of my old prophecies than myself.' In fact, he was physically exhausted by two back-to-back elections and still depressed about his maiden speech. He seems to have actually been unwell, 'the irritable debility of premature age in youth.' Even among victory celebrations, he could not believe he still had prospects, and he quoted Raphael's despairing self-assessment from La Peau de Chagrin, 'je suis un veritable zero': 'Would that I could work with you: for I am a very zero - without sympathy & friendship, & only of value, with those expressions before the long array of "round Os" I carry with me - in the shape of useless knowledge.'15 The Conservatives' majority in this general election was a conclusive

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seventy-eight seats, and though the Whigs still refused to step down, it was only a matter of time, during which the Young England group began their plans. By now Manners had met Disraeli, though he was less dazzled than GSS: 'D'Israeli talked well, but a little too well.'16 They looked for common ground on religious issues, though the Maynooth grant, GSS foresaw, would divide them as he found himself differing with Manners and quarrelling bitterly with Bateson, his Trinity contemporary. Still, when the Whig elected at Bridport resigned they changed plans for a Continental holiday in order to support Cochrane through the byelection. GSS in any case was too fragile to leave Corise. 'Met Smythe tonight at Lady T's,' recorded Manners yet again, '(alas I left him there).' The Londonderrys invited GSS to Wynyard, but, replied Strangford, T strongly suspect that the utmost limit of his peregrinations from London is likely to be - Walton on Thames! - the whole affair is a sort of insanity, on both sides.'17 Gradually she began to raise his spirits. Making the most of London, the young men met at balls and dinners and receptions; 'dined at Richmond,' Manners wrote of one evening, 'with Kok, Smythe & Teddy Howard: most boyish party - screamed & laughed - tho we did not bridle our tongues enough.' One night GSS and Corise dined with Walpole, his parents, and his vivacious sister, Lady Dorothy, only fifteen and not yet 'out' except at family gatherings. A poem, signed 'G' and in GSS's favourite metre, appeared in the Morning Post exulting (as he would soon do in his constituency) over the defeat in Northumberland North of the Whig Lord Howick, son of Earl Grey.18 Then in August, on home ground in Canterbury, he showed his calibre with 'by far the best speech I ever gave.' Remembering how he had dried up in May, he prepared rigorously, and, Strangford reported, 'it really was a splendid one.'19 The customary post-election dinner allowed local MPs to reflect on their victory, but GSS went further. He congratulated the voters, not himself, for the Whig defeat. 'Had it not been for you, that Government never would have been defeated. You must remember that a majority of one compelled the dissolution. It was the men of Canterbury who effected it - (Applause).' He had noted Peel's trick at meetings of assuming party unity ('P always said us, and we, which was very right & pretty'), and now he adopted it, asking in a confidential, intimate manner for their approval and support in the new Parliament - 'Will you give them to us?' - effectively drawing his audience into a cohesive group with the MPs 'fighting the good fight' of Conservatism against untrustworthy Whigs. In this agricultural constituency he carefully took the protectionist stance he had intended for his

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sugar duties speech, but he touched on most of the important political questions as well - the Church; commercial, shipping and manufacturing interests; the Corn Laws which kept the price of bread artificially high; the threat of social disruption by the Chartists; unrest in Ireland every point greeted with loud cheers, guaranteed to restore the most wounded self-esteem.20 His speech stirred up local and national interest as the London papers ran it in its entirety. Unfortunately, they took their text from the Morning Herald, whose drunken reporter turned in what GSS called a 'damnable burlesque' of his remarks about Ireland, just the part that 'I mean to act upon, & most wished to be properly reported.' Urging tolerance for the Irish rather than forcible repression, he had said he 'would rather legislate for Ireland in the spirit of Tyrconnell than in the spirit of a Cromwell,' but the London version rendered 'Tyrconnell,' a seventeenth-century viceroy of Ireland who supported the Catholics, as 'O'Connell,' who insisted violence was the way to force Britain to redress Irish wrongs. Identification with O'Connell was the last impression GSS wanted to make, and in addition the error provoked the 'Agitator' to three columns of response in the Chronicle, praising GSS's Irish descent and high ideals, but doubting if, when it came to parliamentary legislation, he would actually stand up for Irish rights. GSS responded courteously in the Post, carefully attaching a correct report of what he had said. 'Mr. Smythe,' the Post commented, 'must have made a rapid progress in public esteem since his recent introduction into the House of Commons' to have attracted O'Connell's attention.21 Speech, publicity, and judicious reply meant that party leaders took notice as they prepared for the opening of Parliament. Since the Whigs still refused to resign, Peel planned to frame his party's reply to the Queen's Speech as an amendment of non-confidence in the government. When he consulted Gladstone on a likely seconder - one way o noticing a promising MP - Gladstone had no hesitation: 'There are tw young speakers above all others to choose -Jem Bruce [soon 8th Earl of Elgin] and George Smythe.' Parliament opened on 19th August; GSS came back to town on the 23rd, just in time to see Manners take his seat, but on the 24th it was Bruce, first elected only six weeks before, who seconded the amendment. Peel may not have wanted to risk GSS, but the 'Memoir' implies that GSS begged off. Two years before, he had reproached Lyttelton for refusing a similar task, 'very unlike what a man of talent & ambition, would do nowadays,' but now the memory of his only other parliamentary speech was still too fresh for his fragile nerves.22

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At least he could vote to defeat the Whigs, which the Conservatives did on the 27th. Next day Melbourne resigned, and Peel was invited to form a Conservative government. The major Cabinet posts had to go to powerful figures like Wellington and Aberdeen or to valuable Whig seceders like Stanley and Sir James Graham, but there were a few spaces for which every aspiring Conservative politician had high hopes. For GSS and Disraeli this was not only a matter of ambition; although MPs were safe from imprisonment for debt, they were unpaid, and an official salary would be a start on clearing their 'obligations.' From 31 August to 6 September Disraeli lived from hour to hour, devouring rumours and unreliable newspaper reports and even going so far as to contact Peel himself before being finally dashed.23 Strangford relied on Wellington's assurance that the new regime would reward his Canterbury expenditures with a diplomatic post for himself or a minor one for GSS, but by 3 September, when Peel's full list went to the Queen, he reported bitterly, 'I shall have nothing - and George will have nothing. I am neither a rat, nor a waverer - nor a convert at the llth. hour - the 0^/31 classes who have a chance.' By the 8th all lingering hope was gone.24 The 'Memoir' presents this as another fateful crux for GSS: 'had George Smythe then come forward and spoken on the discussion which ushered in the change of Government, had he then but amplified his provincial speeches, giving them more solidity and detail, he would have secured himself some employment in the Conservative administration.' But this is unlikely. Even Disraeli's forceful speech in the debate on 24 August got him nowhere. Peel's new administration could not afford Disraeli, who had made enemies, or GSS, still an unknown quantity. The only advantage to the situation, Strangford thought, was independence. 'George Smythe is to get just what I expected - vizt. Nil. He will pay them off some day or other, I hope. He shan't stay in Parliament for nothing... However, it is all as well as it is - Smythe will feel himself unfettered, and at liberty, while giving them a general support, to act as he pleases, on isolated questions.' Being passed over also decided Disraeli to abandon the Conservative line and begin to attack a party which he saw as too slow in adapting to the changing nineteenth century. Over the next year he would place himself with the Young Englanders and use his parliamentary skill and experience to mould their mutual ideals into a working protest group. From now on, for better or worse, the threads of GSS's life were intertwined with Disraeli's. He would become Disraeli's disciple. Meantime they had to bring in Cochrane. GSS and Manners spent a week of September campaigning with him at Bridport, where, between

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the speeches and dinners, they discussed their political stance in the new Parliament. Regretfully Manners realized the divergence in their views 'the Irish Church for instance [GSS] would give up, and is against the House of Lords' - but they mixed pleasure with business: 'S[mythe] great fun, quite like a child - laughed immoderately.' One day they took an exhilarating ride over the Downs on their way to inspect a flax mill for the realities of modern manufacturing; afterwards they 'played the tomfool,' abetted by the manufacturer's pretty daughter.25 On 15 September Cochrane was elected, making the group complete, except for Disraeli.26 Thanks to a petition at Shrewsbury, he flitted to France to avoid the debt collectors if it succeeded. For the moment, GSS went with the Conservative government. On the 20th, late in the evening, he spoke, briefly but cogently, in support of the grant to Maynooth College, 'only an act of justice to the great majority of our Catholic brethren in Ireland.' Borrowing from Manners's legal studies, he pointed out that, but for mortmain, a feudal statute that prohibited transfer of property to a corporate body like a church, legacies would long ago have made the College financially independent and avoided all this acrimonious debate. Already the issue threatened Young England solidarity: the same night Cochrane spoke aggressively against the grant and quarrelled publicly in the Commons with Hope, who was strongly for it. Parliament sat only till 7 October, shelving social and religious issues until next year. GSS and Manners therefore decided to spend their autumn on a fact-finding tour in Midlands manufacturing towns, the trip that later became the basis for Coningsby's fictional journey. It was their own idea, although in Coningsby it is the omniscient Disraeli figure, Sidonia, who prompts Harry to abandon classical studies for the modern world - '"The Age of Ruins is past. Have you seen Manchester?"'27 Manchester in the 1840s was to humanitarian politicians what Africa was to Christian missionaries, terra largely incognita to be explored and its benighted peoples granted light. After an 1820s boom, its imposing public buildings only fronted economic slump and wretched poverty as De Tocqueville, who visited in 1835, put it, the difference between civilization and barbarism.28 Fewer travelled there in 1841 than would head north a few years later, and the young men's decision shows how strong the Young England principle of social responsibility already was. The news of their trip was sufficiently novel to perturb another reforming pioneer, Lord Ashley (later Lord Shaftesbury), who feared that their incursion on his territory would upset his bill to limit women's and children's hours in factories and mines.29 To Manners's exasperation,

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however, GSS kept delaying their departure: 'Can't get Smythe to settle anything about going: see how deep his infatuation is; it weighs on me when I think I shall have to answer for it: oh friendship!' Even Corise was perturbed about GSS; on top of poor health, she told Manners, he had taken as a personal insult Peel's failure to give Strangford a post and had even been openly abusing Peel. To GSS 'the withholding an offer to him alone of all our retired Conservative ambassadors' was of a piece with the offensive press during the election. The promise, however, of Manners's company persuaded him to take the journey, 'with the more delight - as I shall be soothed by your calmness & gentleness into an abandonment of all the wild impotent revenges which I nourish.'30 On 21 October they met at the York Hotel, Manchester, for their tour under the guidance of Hugh Lindsay, MP for Sandwich and son of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, who had extensive interests in mines, mills, and iron works. GSS of course knew of the Londonderrys' collieries, while Manners's family owned lead mines in the Peak district, but they now wanted to investigate the industrial side of what became known to a slowly awakening national conscience as the 'Condition of England Question.' Three years before Engels's Condition of the Working Class in Britain and four before Disraeli's graphic descriptions in Sybil, GSS and Manners intended to see for themselves the working conditions the industrial revolution had spawned. Individual factories had gone largely unregulated until the Factory Act of 1833 imposed limited rules, such as forbidding employment of children under nine, and even in 1841 conditions in the mills as well as in the spore-like slums that grew up round them varied with the enlightenment of the owner. Coningsby expresses GSS's perspective, a romantic awareness of a new age dawning. 'It was to him a new world, pregnant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought and feeling. In this unprecedented partnership between capital and science, working on a spot which Nature had indicated as the fitting theatre of their exploits, he beheld a great source of the wealth of nations which had been reserved for these times.' This was essentially the viewpoint of the owners, but, as their tour went on, GSS and Manners became acutely conscious of what this new age of coal and steam meant for the workers. Like them, Coningsby realizes 'that this wealth was rapidly developing classes whose power was imperfectly recognised in the constitutional scheme, and whose duties in the social system seemed altogether omitted.'31 At first, they attempted too much: after visiting six different sites on the first day, they realized they could take in only one. They began with

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Lindsay's agent, a Mr Henderson, who packed linens and cottons for worldwide dispatch. Taking notes on prices and wages, they went on to the benevolent Grant brothers, whom Dickens had met in 1838 and turned into the Cheerybles, del ex machina in Nicholas Nickleby. At Roberts's iron works, where seven hundred men were employed for a total wage of £1,200 a week, they saw steam engines being built and, like Turner at the same period, were enchanted by the romance of industrial process: 'fusing the liquid iron a beautiful sight; such a brilliant bright red colour; immense scissors, worked by steam to nip off iron, and puncheons to bore holes in it, as easily as tho' it were paper.' Then they visited Mr Shawbe, a German embroiderer who paid individual wages reckoned 'very high' at £1.10s to £2 a week. By the time they reached a large silk factory, their heads were too fuddled to take in more than the 'pretty sight' of clean, healthy-looking children marking each completed weaving frame for a reward of coppers from the proprietor.32 Later, reviving at their Buxton inn, the four argued into the night about the claims of agriculture and industry. On the evidence of the prosperous owners they had met, GSS reiterated his view that national power was passing from the titled landowners to the middle-class industrialists. What he had seen that day, with its implications of imperialist expansion, even spurred him into ebullient ballad in praise of 'The Merchants of Old England.' Manners, product of the extensive Rutland estates, was puzzled and a little affronted: 'Smythe seems to me to have run aristocracy-of-wealth-mad.' But GSS's reading of the changes overtaking British life was an accurate one and more relevant than Manners's notorious lines from England's Trust: 'Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, / But leave us still our old Nobility.'33 Next day was just as busy. Starting in Preston, they went on, like Coningsby, to Swainson and Birley, the largest cotton mill in Manchester with two thousand hands. Their reaction was completely Coningsby's: '"Oh! isn't it wonderful? ... it is the machinery without any interposition of manual power that overwhelms me. It haunts rne in my dreams ... I see cities peopled with machines. Certainly Manchester is the most wonderful city of modern times!"' Besides learning the technicalities of cotton spinning, they observed working conditions in the hot spinning room where, though they themselves 'suffered,' they saw nothing wrong with children working twelve hours a day crawling under the running machines to clean them, 'which is what Mrs. Trollope describes as so dangerous an operation; but there's no danger in it.' Besides, the investigators argued, in a slump these children still had food and schooling,

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while the adults were lucky to be working full hours. In the afternoon they went to Ainsworth's, with seven hundred looms, before returning to Preston, where Mr Bashall's model community set in the countryside is the original for Millbank's in Coningsby: 'a town, a Manufactory, a house where he lives, a modern feudal lord, having in fact an absolute dominion over his men, who rent their cottages at 3s a week from him; this is doubtless a great improvement on town manufactories; the cottages are well built, 2 stories with 2 rooms in each, large windows, a back yard, pure air, and at a little distance from the factory.'34 This benign feudalism was precisely what GSS and Manners envisaged as the basis for class reconciliation, a vision reinforced when they returned two days later to the Grants: 'perhaps no such establishment as this in England ... anything more perfect I never saw, and the girls and men all looked very healthy & well & clean too.' Perhaps it might be a little too perfect: 'hardly any of them work after 50; they then idle about supported by their children.' Everything seemed organized for the workers' benefit: 'they have many clubs, oddfellows, burying clubs &c; but no medical one; there is a good medical man in the neighbourhood and if the sick man can't pay him, the Grants do.' As they listened to the eldest brother, William, tell the family's history, Manners found himself beginning to agree with GSS on the romance of a successful entrepreneur. 'What a life has that man's been; from the boy wandering penniless by the banks of the uncontaminated Irwell, then without a chimney in it's valley - to the princely manufacturer-merchant; owning that very valley, and filling remotest corners of the globe with the products of his industry & wealth, and still more wonderful, retaining all the guilelessness and simpleheartedness of childhood.' Next day at Ashton's, another model town 'more powerful & compact than Feudalism in its palmiest days,' the proprietor played down Ashley's proposed reforms; Ashley, he said, had failed to visit the best mills and had relied for his information on 'the worst sort of Radicals.'35 But there was a darker side to these fine examples, overheard in an authentic Cheeryble dialogue between John Grant and old William, dispensing charity to some men on his porch. 'I doubt, brother, whether you are doing good by this' - 'Brother, brother,' answered William, 'the men can't starve you know; they would work if they could,' then turning to me to explain, 'it's the mill up yonder Sir, has stopped, no they mustn't starve, and if we who can afford it don't feed them, they will get fed somehow else, & that perhaps wouldn't be well.' Soon, in a 'tour of horrors,' the young men found out just how bad conditions were for the

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thousands of unemployed. In Stockport the streets were deserted, a 'city of the dead' where 'the great Church bell was tolling, &: that funereal sound was all we heard.' Now they recalled the bitter warning of Richard Cobden, Stockport's Radical MP, that he would soon be out of constituents; every fourth house was shut up and 'as we gazed on this mournful sight, a fellow in a fustian jacket cried out "do you want a borough gentlemen? this is to be let or sold.'" The story repeated itself in Bolton, where they were stopped again and again by jobless people with tales of misery. 'In no one of the dozen houses we went into was there a blanket, in some no fire; in the bedrooms upstairs an old mattress would be all the furniture & bedding of a family.' One woman told them she had sold her blanket for food after starving for two days. Even the doors of the churches which should have helped the poor were shut against them. Appalled, the young men gave away what money they had, although they realized it could help only individuals; it would take national efforts to avert catastrophe. Here were the roots of Chartism, whose leaders were now urging militancy against wealthy proprietors; a few months later Henderson would report that all the Manchester workers and many of the middle class had become Chartists. GSS and Manners, however, met only respect or the passivity of hopelessness: 'in all this we heard of no threats, hardly a murmur; they had got a stage beyond active despair.' When, again like Coningsby, they visited the Ashworth brothers' factory community near Bolton, they heard more radical talk as Ashworth blamed Peel for being under the thumb of the landowning aristocrats who had refused Ashworth any help the previous spring. 'I confess,' said Manners, 'I'm rather alarmed at all this hotbed intellect,' but he comforted himself that Ashworth might be 'one of those who would wage inextinguishable war against Agriculture - looking on Manufacturers as the "summum bonum" - of course then with him no satisfactory conclusion can be arrived at.'36 On 29 October GSS and Manners left the North for Ireland via Liverpool, a city they found more reassuring since, as a busy seaport, it had not suffered as much in the slump. GSS had visited his Irish relatives before, but Dublin was a revelation to Manners: 'I had no idea Dublin was so noble a City.' After two days of sightseeing with another of the Lindsays, they began their social investigations at the North Dublin workhouse, capable of holding two thousand poor, aged, and unemployed. Here they were shaken to find paupers even more wretched than those in Lancashire - 'The first fellow was as near naked as he possibly could be ... then some old women, shaking with palsy [,] & young women

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deserted by their husbands &c.' - but they were impressed by the organization: 'the neatness & exactness of discipline exceeded what I had anticipated from the Irish character.' The inmates subsisted on a frugal daily diet of stirabout (porridge) and three pounds of potatoes; the stirabout was bad but, said one, '"oh, Sir, the praties [potatoes] are very nice food for us poor people indeed."' In fact, as GSS and Manners quickly realized, the overall level of poverty in the country was so abysmal that even the able bodied preferred the restrictions of the workhouse to the precariousness of life outside it.37 Their next leg took them jaunting in an open car along the Liffey to Maynooth and the Catholic college whose future they would soon be debating in Parliament. Here again they were pioneers. Not many of the MPs who spoke heatedly on the College and voted on its survival had ever been there, not even O'Connell. Most Britons regarded Maynooth with suspicion or outright hostility - as a Catholic enclave, a bottomless pit for domestic money, a nest of treason, and a training ground for seditious priests. What GSS and Manners saw at the seminary bore out none of this; they were impressed by the devoutness, the discipline, and the economy with which it was run, this last being all-important for the parliamentary deliberations. The principal, they found, was paid £300 a year, the dean £100, with fodder allowed for both their horses. The college supported 250 student priests, 200 more paid 8 guineas entrance and £20 a year thereafter. There were no luxuries, not even butter for the bread; the joints of meat roasting in the kitchens came from their own sheep. As GSS had argued in his September speech, the principals too felt that but for mortmain they could be self-supporting; meanwhile they had no alternative but to petition Parliament for an increased grant. GSS and Manners advised them to add another petition for mortmain repeal. Nor did they find Maynooth a 'hot-bed of sedition'; the principal emphasized how much he deplored O'Council's Agitation strategies and in his homilies to his students 'he was always preaching obedience ... "what they do, after they leave us ... of course we cannot know, but while they are here they learn nothing but loyalty."'38 They wound up their Irish tour with a reunion with Bateson at his family home, another Belvoir, near Belfast. Bateson was about to swell the Young England ranks by succeeding his father as Conservative MP for Londonderry; an earlier quarrel with GSS had been forgiven and they were back on the old friendly footing. He took them sightseeing to the Giants' Causeway, as well as to more textile mills, a damask factory, and a flax mill. It was obvious that manufacturing was not as advanced as in England; a large proportion of goods was still woven in country

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cottages by piecework weavers at handlooms, earning as little as 4 or 5 shillings a week - 'wretched,' thought Manners, though he was cheered to find that the proprietors had no objections to a ten-hours bill. Like their historical research for Cambridge Union debates, all their findings were duly noted down as ammunition for their speeches when Parliament reopened.39 All three were then due to go on to a site with family associations for GSS, Lough Strangford, where they were to visit the Londonderrys at their Irish home, Mount Stuart. Before they could start, however, GSS received a summons back to London from Strangford in full crisis mode. He had received an injunction from Coutts's Bank, holding him responsible for a loan of £40,000 advanced by the bank to his longtime brokers, W. and J. Morgan. The loan, part of which covered the Canterbury election expenses, had been made on the security of Exchequer bills (forerunners of Treasury bills) provided either by Strangford or (more likely) Morgans, but Strangford, like hundreds of others, had been caught in the notorious 'Exchequer Bills' fraud, a spectacular swindle in forged bills perpetrated by a senior clerk at the Exchequer and amounting to over £1,000,000 in total.40 Morgans may or may not have been innocent parties; they seem not to have been very efficient businessmen - D'Orsay described the elder Morgan as 'an honest old fool' - and GSS thought his father should have left them after an earlier failure which lost him £15,000. On the other hand, a preliminary inquiry implied that 'Mr. Morgan ... knew what was going on.' Eventually the fraud victims were offered government compensation, but at this stage Coutts's intended to file a bill of discovery in Chancery against Strangford, as proof of efforts to recover the money. Meanwhile several newspapers used Strangford's predicament as a chance to smear him yet again, insinuating that he had a hand in the fraud.41 GSS found his father furious and suicidal, deterred only by reminders of Philippa's 'delicate condition' in pregnancy. Quickly, however, he realized that Strangford, 'as is his wont, had greatly exaggerated the embarrassments & difficulties of the case. He was also very much better than what I expected in health.' Nevertheless GSS decided to give up a planned reunion with Manners and Faber at Ambleside, claiming he must support his father through the legal hearings. Once more, family history seemed to be overtaking him, a burden from which neither he nor Strangford could loose himself. . I know my father too well, & love him too dearly not - to identify myself as much as man can - with his fortunes - & soothe him - with all the cheerful

134 Disraeli's Disciple spirits I can muster. - It is a sad thing however for an ancient & fallen House - to become the subject of pity & reproach. It did so ... once before in my great grandfathers case, who was justly guilty, I believe. It is hard, that it should again, be endeavoured to abase it in the person of one, whose whole life has been dedicated to its restoration.

It is easy to detect dramatization in GSS's tone; he had other reasons for staying in London. While at Ambleside Manners and Faber worried about him, 'talking of our dead & still living hopes, our fears & prospects,' GSS, wary of encountering Faber in the setting of their earlier escapade, retreated to Walton-on-Thames and Corise.42 He stayed sequestered there until Christmas, refusing invitations to Belvoir from Manners and to Hagley from Lyttelton, whom he could not face after the Cambridge betrayal: 'I believe people never forgive those whom they have injured - And God knows I have injured Lyttelton which accounts for all the shame I feel when I think of his virtues & attainments.' Faber too wrote, letters 'wilder than ever, & quite startle me. Besides I cant construe half of them,' but GSS, though he asked Manners to 'tell him how dearly I love him,' refused to see him. 'I feel like a criminal - in old times - when touching the hot iron - when his burning words burn into my soul... I shun the old teaching, & in my love of Faber, there is fear blent together.'43 He felt guilty, too, at inactivity while the others were busy writing. 'What a contrast my indolence is, dearest John, to your noblehearted words - so stirring & trumpet toned.' Manners was publishing articles and a book on English Catholics, Cochrane a pamphlet on the Church. 'He might as well write about Kamaschatca,' GSS commented acidly. 'But - if his only object be to put himself right with Peel - & his father - it may be of service to him in explanation of his vote on Maynooth.' As the year ended, he was once more depressed and physically run down. It seemed as though the triumphs and disasters, the emotional extremes, the demands on psyche and body, had used up more of the wild ass's skin than he could afford. 'The agitation & excitement of my spirits - had so worn me, as to have laid me quite prostrate. It is a sort of negative process by wh[ich] death & life are associated[,] extreme quickness, & extreme imbecillity ... Pity me so humiliating a Confession & pray - dearest John Manners, that the new year may bring me better counsels - and wiser.'44

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To enter the House of Commons a slave and a tool; to move according to instructions, and to labour for the low designs of petty spirits, without even the consolation of being a dupe. What sympathy could there exist between Coningsby and the 'great Conservative party,' that for ten years in an age of revolution had never promulgated a principle ... and who were at this moment, when Coningsby was formally solicited to join their ranks, in open insurrection against the prerogatives of the English Monarchy? Coningsby

For GSS it was always darkest before the dawn: 1842 would be the first year of his brief heyday. The atmosphere was right. Over the winter, after the fourth successive bad harvest, scores of requests for help flooded in to MPs from their constituents, while the papers ran daily reports of the evidence presented from manufacturing districts to the Committee for National Distress. Peel's intention to modify the Corn Laws was an open secret long before it was announced at the opening of Parliament on 3 February and formally presented to the House on the 9th. Reduction of duty on wheat imports was an issue that divided both parties. The Duke of Buckingham, the protectionist 'Farmers' Friend' who headed the agricultural lobby, had already resigned from Cabinet over it. The Radicals, such as Cobden and the free-traders, naturally wanted complete removal of duty, but so did many Whigs. In the next weeks of debate, GSS and Manners had a prime opportunity to use their firsthand investigations. Word got out about them beforehand, useful for two backbenchers without a party mandate to speak. On 10 February, a Whig, Dr John Bowring, speaking on the distress in his Bolton constituency, specifically

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referred to the 'three gentlemen of the highest respectability who ... have heard with their own ears the tales of sorrow and misery which exist in Bolton (Hear, hear).' In an unsubtle hint he went on: 'if those gentlemen are called upon, they will come forward and fully substantiate [my] statements.' Thus prompted, the Speaker recognized Manners, allowing him to confirm conditions in Bolton and to emphasize that they had not gone North as opportunists, but as sceptics that 'such distress could be allowed to exist in this country.' A week later, on a very busy night, they both failed to catch the Speaker's eye; next night, though, Manners succeeded, supporting Peel's proposal in a heartfelt speech that impressed the Conservative press.1 On the 21st group impetus wobbled when Hope, virtually inaudible against House chatter, falteringly essayed his maiden speech. Here was an occasion for more disharmony in Young England ranks. Disraeli, a friend of Hope's brother Henry, who was on bad terms with his siblings, acidly commented on 'the pleasure of seeing the great Mr. Alexander Beresford Hope make a great fool of himself... the manner & appearance of a Cretin.' The same night, however, when GSS at last spoke, he justified the reputation with which he had entered Parliament. More assured and fluent than Hope, he provoked a spectrum of reactions. Disraeli's was just as bilious as it was to Hope. For various reasons, Disraeli was holding studiously aloof from this debate, but he was not averse to a colleague expressing opinions that diverged from party policy. 'George Smythe made a most elaborate speech,' he told Mary Anne; 'very radical indeed & unprincipled as his little agreeable self but too elaborate - his manner affected & his tone artificial & pronunciation too - but still ability - tho' puerile.' Manners, always admiring, was nevertheless taken by surprise and could not decide how he felt. His friend's speech was indeed 'startlingly eloquent,' but its content worried him: 'too freetradish for me ... I fear he has rather damaged his prospects.'2 What did GSS say to prompt these reactions from his own group? For one thing, he had gone a step further than even Disraeli at this stage was prepared to go. Where Disraeli gleefully called the speech 'unprincipled,' Manners was rightly apprehensive about its effect on GSS's political future; it is notable that GSS's name does not appear on any of the published lists for Peel's customary dinners to MPs in this session. What both Manners and Disraeli registered was that GSS had combined support for Peel's Corn Law proposal with a virtual declaration of independence from party. He began with an uncomfortable fact, the inconsistencies that had so far characterized both sides in the debate, 'those

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who argue in support of repeal, because it would extend the home market, and those who support the same proposal, because it would extend the foreign market. The object of one would defeat the object of the other.' It was a debating point, but well made and hardly 'puerile,' and was cheered vigorously. That there was no clear ground of agreement, he argued, justified gradual removal of the Laws; Peel's proposal was valid as 'the first instalment - (Cheers) - of a wiser and more thoughtful policy ... that the proportions of our monster tariff will be brought within the limits of moderation and reason. (Hear, hear, hear.)' The cheers, however, were not from the Peel party but from the opposition, surprised but delighted to hear the Conservative who had won Canterbury openly declaring himself against agricultural protection and for the manufacturers; as well as praising Peel for pledging to keep compatible these two national interests, he was attacking him for his attitude to industry. It is a sad thing, indeed, when the Prime Minister of this country comes down to this House, and attributes the distress of the population to overproduction - that is, to over-industry - (Cheers from the Opposition) - to over-accommodation - that is, to over-enlightenment. (Continued cheers.) Hard is it for the manufacturers, when their own genius, their own talents, their own industry, are the very things for which they are taunted and reproached. ('Hear, hear,' from the Opposition.)

Without manufacturing, he pointed out, Britain would not be enjoying her overall prosperity. 'Manchester would be as Woodstock; Liverpool a small fishing town on the Mersey; and your own rentals what they were 100 years ago. (Cheers from the Opposition.)' He closed with a feeling account of the desolation in the North. If Peel carried through his second proposal, to introduce an income tax, GSS begged him not to impose this further burden on starving workers. In a reminder that at that moment noisy crowds were protesting outside the Commons, he urged Peel to reward 'the patience with which these distresses have been borne. (Hear, hear, hear.)'3 An immediate response came from Thomas Babington Macaulay, Whig MP for Edinburgh. His opinion (expressed more ponderously) was much the same as Disraeli's. Agreeably impressed by GSS's eloquence, he nevertheless pounced on the opening GSS had left, accusations of inconsistency by an inconsistent Conservative: 'he must be aware that many of the expressions he has used will be regarded by no means

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favourably by the majority of those with whom he will vote.' (Macaulay then spent some time explaining that he himself would not be voting at all.) At the division, GSS did cast his vote with his party, but with that speech he served notice that, as Strangford had foretold, he would not be confined by party discipline. As Disraeli (admittedly prejudiced) put it, 'Before the change of Government, political party was a tie among men, but now it is only a tie among men who are in office. The supporter of administration, who is not in place & power himself, is a solitary animal. He has neither hope, nor fear.'4 Since GSS's own hopes had been deferred, he could be fearless. Interestingly, however, the official version of his speech published in Hansard shows considerable revision and softening of his position. The whole of his opening attack on both sides for inconsistency, for example, is omitted, making unintelligible Macaulay's response, though Hansard retains that. 'Improving' the official record for posterity was fairly common in those days, but here the changes make GSS less independent and more conciliatory of Peel.5 Were they simply the result o$ Hansard's usual process of collation from several sources? A few years later, GSS was critical of it, hoping that his talent 'not be judged by those d-mnable travesties of my elaborate speeches in Hansard.'6 Or might there have been pressure from the party? If so, it did not significantly alter his approach, since in a later speech, on 22 April, he did not hesitate to repeat the charge of inconsistency. Even more interesting is Disraeli's charge of artificiality. There is unfortunately no means of recreating how GSS sounded in delivery, in pace, pitch, or tone. Nervousness might well have made him stiff and anxious, especially since parliamentary speakers, though they were allowed notes, were not permitted to speak from a prepared text. Even the printed reports, however, make it clear that on this occasion he abandoned the informal conversational style that had been such a success at Canterbury and reverted to the rhetorical precepts dinned into him at Eton: inversions, three-period repetitions, antitheses, and historical precedents. Obedient to parliamentary rules, he displayed his classical erudition by quoting only Latin, whereas Hope was hooted for quoting forbidden Greek. Disraeli, however, may have been expecting something different. For days before GSS's oration, Disraeli had been assiduously rehearsing a speech of his own on the British Consular system. Over this period, while Mary Anne was in the country nursing her mother, he and GSS were increasingly intimate, seeing each other virtually every day and sharing

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their political plans. When, two weeks after he maligned GSS's speech, he delivered his own, it was not only his refusal to join in the Corn Laws debate that was surprising. Disraeli could deliver elaborate speeches, but this one adopted a new, understated, conversational style, witty and flexible, with an air of spontaneity strikingly similar to GSS's Canterbury style. Even at this early stage in their relationship, it seems, Disraeli was ready to borrow ideas from his talented young friend. GSS's reaction to the new phenomenon was mixed. His public response, in the debate that followed Disraeli's motion, had edge as well as wit at Disraeli's expense. As one who knew at first hand more about the diplomatic establishment than Disraeli, he jabbed at features of the speech. Disraeli's effrontery in bringing the motion at all was, he said, 'something like a new edition of a very entertaining work, which is very well known by the title of "Captain Bobadillo"' (a braggart in Ben Jonson's comedy Every Man in His Humour). Furthermore, he pointed out, many of Disraeli's painstakingly gathered examples were out of date: 'Why, I think that the hon. Member might as well have alluded to the case of Caligula's horse.'7 In private, however, he bubbled with enthusiasm, both in direct conversation and over dinner at the Baillies'. ' [H]e particularly mentioned my manner,' Disraeli wrote to Mary Anne, '"exactly as you talk at the Carlton, or at your own table" he sd "particularly my voice not the least stilted but the elocution distinct, the manner easy, a little nonchalant, & always tinged with sarcasm."' When Palmerston gibed in the Morning Chronicle that Disraeli had been dull, GSS flared up:

'"Dull, Sir, dull, damme dull... the most amusing speech perhaps that ever was delivered."' With this example before him, GSS would remember in future to appear relaxed in the House, keep the style he had originated and allow his own wit to shine.8 For the rest of the session, his spirits were high and he spoke often and well. Thanks to the attention his, Manners's, and Disraeli's speeches attracted, Young England had to some extent arrived, with Disraeli now apparently at their head. 'I already find myself,' he told Mary Anne, 'with[ou]t effort the leader of a party - chiefly of the youth, & new members' as conscious of social problems as themselves.9 As well as GSS, Manners, and Cochrane, there were Claud Hamilton, who had seconded rather incompetently Disraeli's Consular motion, William Ferrand, Conservative MP for Knaresborough, Henry Baillie, Beresford Hope, and, peripherally, Milnes. GSS's dislike of Milnes, however, led to occasional spats, the antipathy of a quick, witty intelligence towards a slower, humourless mind. When Hope's speaking did not improve, Milnes, 'with

140 Disraeli's Disciple his queer face of solemn deprecation & conceit,' abruptly asked GSS, '"Why don't you interfere to prevent his speaking Smythe?"' GSS could not resist: '"Why! I don't interfere to prevent you speaking Milnes!" was the retort, & even Milnes impudence was floored.'10 GSS was also separating himself further from Faber. Before Easter he spent some days with Beresford Hope at Bedgebury, alternately infuriated and disappointed by Faber's new book, Sights and Sounds in Foreign Churches and among Foreign Peoples. In his European travels, Faber had acquired 'democratic tendencies,' political and religious, that offended GSS's strongest beliefs in monarchy and aristocracy. Back at Walton with Corise, he sounded off to Manners. 'I believe the government of the One is for the good of the many, the government of the Few, for the good of themselves, the government of the Many for the good of the One. - . From Monarchy results the Commonwealth. - From oligarchy oligarchy. From democracy - a tyranny!' He added: 'If I hate Fabers sentiments on this score, so heartily, it is because of old he taught me otherwise.' Much as he wished for moderation like Manners's, it was not in his nature. Besides, 'as my roots in truth are fewer than yours I cling to those which remain with a grasp more desperate and determined.'11 After the Easter recess, both he and Manners continued to make an impression. His vigorous impromptu speech on 22 April on Peel's income tax proposal was again cheered, as he pointed out that a tax, however repugnant, was essential. Though three previous chairmen of the Board of Trade had conspicuously failed to mention it, the ongoing war in Afghanistan endangered Britain's economic relationship with India, a threat to trade for which the country must make fiscal preparations: 'in a season of such emergency as we are now placed in, it is the most just, honourable, and efficient tax that can be suggested.' He spoke so well, 'it was quite like Cambridge,' Manners told their Trinity contemporary, William Stirling.12 Then, on 26 May, the spectre of bribery at Canterbury rose again. Amid calls for inquiry into bribery at Ipswich, Southampton, and St Albans, Thomas Buncombe, Radical MP for Finsbury, demanded an investigation into the 'disgraceful' compromise in 1841 between Canterbury and St Albans, charging that if the petitions had not been dropped, bribery would have been proved and GSS removed from the House. Buncombe specialized in political crusades, but these charges were uncomfortably close. Indignantly, GSS sprang to his feet and protested: T am not cognisant of any compromise having taken place in the Canterbury case, and never was more agreeably surprised than by hearing on the morning when the petition was to have been

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tried, that it was abandoned.' He weakened his righteous wrath by making imputations of his own: Buncombe 'would think it hard, if I accused him of exercising corrupt influence in the borough of Finsbury; and yet I have as much right to make such an attack as the hon. Gentleman has.'13 Next night, an inquiry was proposed for Cochrane's election at Bridport, but, forearmed with copious documentation, Cochrane was able to defend himself with dignity. Fortunately, the peril passed. Many other MPs sweated at the prospect of inquiries, and their unwillingness, plus a promised reforming Bill from Russell, had the motions dropped.14 For GSS, though the question had only gone to ground, the relief was tremendous. It even prompted him to an unwonted appearance at the Queen's Levee on 1 June, a token of his admiration at Victoria's courage in escaping another assassination attempt on 30 May. When Cochrane gave a celebratory dinner the following weekend, the group's ebullience had them running up and down Piccadilly afterwards, knocking on doors. GSS made such a nuisance of himself that he was actually arrested. Presumably the three MPs were sobered at the prospect of court appearances; 'how we got out of it I don't know,' Manners remarked later.15 June turned into a heavy parliamentary month, with debates on their pet issues, factory hours, Church rates, the Poor Laws. They did not have much opportunity to speak, since the big political guns had the floor; there could be no disagreement, for example, with Ashley's Mines and Collieries Bill - everyone agreed women and children should not be working in them.16 The continuation of the Poor Laws was more contentious, since there were undoubted abuses. Here, Manners's worries about their members were woefully confirmed: having got parliamentary attention, 'if we could keep together, we might be formidable,' but they could not afford individual aberrations.17 In the Poor Law debate, however, Ferrand, who had enough material to give a balanced account of abuses, chose instead to fulminate against the commissioners and to make accusations of preferential treatment of South over North. 'Waterloo!' mourned Manners; Ferrand's 'wrong, bad' speech, soundly refuted by Peel's home secretary, Sir James Graham, meant that their collective point of view, so painstakingly established at the start of the year, was now 'thrown over by everybody.'18 Though the session still had nearly two months to run, this disappointment set them back. To have any effect in future, it was clear that, despite Disraeli's earlier disparagement of political party, they must start to act as a group. Sometime at the end of June, they conferred and came

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up with an answer. Now, Manners, recorded, 'DTsraeli wishes us to form a party, with certain general principles, not to interfere with acceptance of office: he says even 6 men acting so together would have great weight.' Though the idea appealed, the Young Englanders felt too low and confused to implement it immediately. Manners constantly worried over the political situation: 'perhaps there never was a house of Commons in which there was so much young talent, frittered away - for myself, I fairly own I'm cowed: for the future: a dire commotion ... seem[s] approaching a reality.' GSS, Manners, and Cochrane, about to leave for Europe, decided to consider the idea till the autumn, when they would meet Disraeli in Paris to discuss it further.19 GSS was the first to go. On the 30th, Disraeli told his sister, 'George Smythe broke his chains this morning & has gone to Spain.'20 Disraeli was mistaken. GSS, with his friend Viscount Somerton, MP for Wilton, crossed the Channel to France, stopping first in Rouen, and then on 4 July to Paris, where Manners and Cochrane would join him in midjuly.21 Perhaps the 'chains' Disraeli alluded to were GSS's to Corise. Strangford, still disturbed about the relationship, had been interfering and had extracted a promise that she would not go to Paris herself until after GSS had left. Whatever chains he broke, GSS left in a hurry - he had to ask Manners to bring on various forgotten items. Had he stayed to finish the session, noblesse oblige would have dictated that he attend Northumberland's installation as chancellor at Cambridge, a place too painful now with its memories of his betrayal of Lyttelton. Paris, however, was unpleasantly hot, unhealthy (there was cholera in the city), and, as he kicked his heels, waiting to sightsee until Manners and Cochrane arrived, boring: 'Tuileries - Notre Dame. - nothing of the kind.' He liked the theatre but Somerton preferred the Opera; he dined with the British ambassador, Lord Cowley, '& had a d-d bad dinner.' 'I begin to think,' he wrote to Manners, 'I shall go back before you come.'22 Then on the 13th an event occurred that transfixed all of France, the death in a carriage accident of King Louis Philippe's heir, the Due d'Orleans. GSS, strolling at the Palais Royal after a solitary dinner, was stunned when his courier came running with the news. ' [This] event,' he predicted, 'may change the whole aspect of European politics.'23 He was right. Orleans had been a popular prop to Louis Philippe's twelve-yearold monarchy, but now the heir was Orleans's two-year-old son, a nonviable successor to Louis Philippe when he was deposed in 1848. Now, even though Manners and Cochrane had arrived, GSS, with his respect for monarchy, refused to leave Paris until the state funeral on 3 August.

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(There are hints that, in Corise's absence, he was consoling himself with a Miss Cunningham.)24 Manners, finding the city unbearably hot and smelly, moved out to St Germain en Laye, returning in the cooler evenings to meet GSS for dinner with Cochrane and his sister, Maria, or visits to the theatre with the entertaining, eccentric Princesse de la Tremouille.25 GSS, fluent in French, made many aristocratic acquaintances: the Due de Luxembourg, Prince and Princesse Bauffremont, Marquis des Deux Breges and his monarchist brother, historic names with chivalric associations that he found thrilling: 'The history of old France is the biography of fifty families.' Deeply moved, he witnessed the King bravely open the Chambre des Deputes less than two weeks after Orleans's death: 'touching in the extreme,' he reported to Manners; 'the King performed his part marvellously.' Later, from a window in the Champs Elysees, he and Manners, chaperoning Maria Cochrane, watched the elaborate funeral procession, the heart in a silver urn preceding the body on a decorated carriage with the royal princes following behind; 'what a melancholy drive,' thought Manners, 'slow passing through that heartless throng, who looked upon the whole affair ... as an amusement got up for them.'26 Still they did not leave Paris. First GSS fell ill, and then he delayed another week, hoping for Corise's arrival. Manners sent gloomy reports of his health home to Strangford, who, substituting for GSS in his constituency, trying to find nurses for Ellen, and apprehensive about the imminent report on the fraudulent Exchequer Bills, hardly needed more worry.2 Since their original plan to go as far as Italy was now impracticable, they decided, for GSS's health, to settle for Switzerland. Geneva, however, historically the centre of Calvinist Protestantism, was a bizarre choice for two disciples of High Anglicanism. For an ailing man, it was a rough journey.28 They met with thunderstorms and a hurricane, long days (and some nights) of coach travel, as well as fleas in the beds and surly innkeepers. Caught on the last night short of their destination, Geneva, they had to sleep at Les Rousses, 'a hideous village,' their guidebook warned, 'on the Swiss frontier, in a cold, arid, upland country.' Along the ridge of the Jura mountains, however, the views were more picturesque, 'half savage, half park-like,' although there was too much haze to glimpse Mont Blanc.29 At Geneva, at last there were hot baths and comfortable beds, and they made the city their base for expeditions into the Swiss countryside. During their stay, they read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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and tried to apply its lessons to the deadlock in British politics they hoped to resolve.30 Likewise considering the French Revolution and Voltaire's role as its 'Prophet and Precursor,' they visited his home at Fernay, where they sat reverently on the philosopher's bed. GSS, however, was still sickly and depressed. The news from home that Ellen was now too weak to walk upstairs, let alone travel, was a keen reminder of how he himself was using up the wild ass's skin. After a visit to Rousseau's town of Vevay, he wrote a monologue in the persona of Rousseau that indicates how he brooded on death. 'Shall I die? - If all my tendencies be to evil, shall I not interrupt the series, and break the chain of my misdeeds? Shall I not save myself all the responsibility of future wickedness? Shall I not die while I yet have heart enough to do it, while I have feeling to hate the cold, mean, false old age which perhaps awaits me?'31 All along, they expected Cochrane, but in early September they heard he was returning to England for Maria's imminent wedding to the Due de Luxembourg's heir.32 Friendship dictated that they attend, but their efforts to depart were frustrated. Their Swiss banker refused to advance money for the journey, and, when it did arrive, GSS seized the chance to head instead for Paris and Corise, leaving the chagrined Manners to return home alone. The entire summer seemed to him to have been wasted and their plans entirely smashed. Back in England, he concluded that the trip had been 'a sad mistaken time, and in truth I was disappointed in Smythe; he is altogether worsened by his miserable position, and I am partly the cause of it.'33 Strangford, at Ramsgate with Ellen for sea air, was also gloomy. Instead of cultivating his Canterbury constituents, GSS was lingering in Paris, spending his father's money and 'making a great fool of himself with his Ninon,'' whose reports on GSS's health continued to be very disturbing.34 In this atmosphere, when Faber wrote to Manners urging the folly of forming a party, Manners was inclined to agree. At this point he had little faith that GSS actually would discuss the idea further with Disraeli. Plans, however, were going ahead. After the Disraelis arrived in Paris at the end of September, they socialized, with the help of Henry Hope, GSS, Cochrane, and Corise, who introduced them into influential French circles: the Grammonts, of course, and Corise's brother-in-law, General Sebastiani, plus the Bauffremonts and other aristocrats. One evening, to GSS's delight, he and Disraeli went to a Bohemian literary supper where he met his idol Balzac, as well as Eugene Sue and the Dumases, pere and fils. Now an expert on Paris sightseeing, on another day, 13 October, he escorted Disraeli and Mary Anne on a tour of the Luxembourg Palace

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and its gardens.35 That evening, he and Cochrane dined with the Disraelis at their lodgings opposite the Tuileries, where, after much hard argument, they began to firm up their political plans. In the coming session, they would form, if not a party, at least an identifiable parliamentary group and would encourage others to join. 'We have settled,' GSS wrote excitedly to Manners, 'subject to your approval - to sit together - and to vote together - the majority deciding!' The agreement, however, had not been as straightforward as GSS made it sound. Cochrane had been against adding extra members, and he did not trust Disraeli. After the dinner, GSS told Disraeli, 'It cost me three hours walking over the place Vendome ... to reconcile him anew to our plan.'36 GSS himself had been dazzled by Disraeli's professions of parliamentary power, though in hard fact there were five new names, of whom only three were actually in Parliament: Richard Hodgson, MP for Berwick-onTweed, his brother, John Hinde (ne Hodgson), MP for Newcastle-onTyne, and Quintin Dick, MP for Maldon, a wealthy socialite rather elderly to be counted a 'Young' Englander. John Walter, MP for Nottingham, was more important to the new group as proprietor of The Times, whose coverage of their activities could be hugely influential. The Maecenas of the group, the wealthy Henry Hope, defeated at Gloucester in 1841, had usefully managed the compromise by which the Shrewsbury petition against Disraeli was dropped. Active MPs like Milnes, Baillie, and Beresford Hope were to be encouraged, but the group core was to be GSS, Manners, Cochrane, and Disraeli. 'You understand me?' GSS emphasized to Manners. 'We four vote - . And these men are to be played upon - & won - & wooed - for the sense in which we esoterics may have decided.' In all these grandiose plans, GSS admitted, they had settled nothing about specific principles, except for one, 'the bond of self denial and refusal of office.' Cochrane and Disraeli had been vehement that Young England should maintain independence and reject any offers of party positions, but GSS, having had expediency dinned into him for so long, demurred. Not even for Young England would he turn down office: 'I saw objections - which I will give you viva voce - and that remains on this footing. - "that any such overture shall be communicated to the party [i.e., the group] acting together - although it shall be in the option of the individual offered - to refuse or to accept. ["] '37 Manners rightly called this formulation of the group's rules 'important,' though he shared GSS's views on their general vagueness: 'this then is the germ of our party: no particular principles, but a hotchpotch: each surrendering his own to the majority.' 'Never,' agreed GSS,

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'was so much cry - with so little wool.' Cochrane was downright suspicious, GSS reported: 'His object was more a party of you, me 8c himself- . exclusively.' Cochrane himself thought 'DTs head is full of great movements, vast combinations, the importance of numbers.' 'Already,' GSS quipped, 'I have nicknamed us the Diz-Union.' By now he was back in London, since Corise too had returned: 'C'est incroyable, tout ceci, n'est-ce pas?' Strangford lamented, his plans for separation confounded.38 GSS, savouring his role as cross-Channel go-between, urged Disraeli to conciliate Cochrane: 'pray see - flatter - win ... as none know better than yourself how to do.'39 He had further practical advice: if Disraeli wanted to try to smooth Anglo-French relations, he should cultivate the French press - Varron of Le Constitutionel or Emile Girardin ofLaPresse- and get them to publish articles that could be reprinted in Britain: 'My fathers french is that of the Academy, & I could always get him to do this for me.' He, more than the others, was aware how carefully they must prepare for their debut. His chief fear was faulty organization, and he urged Manners to ensure that Disraeli came back to London at least a month before the opening of Parliament. Realistically, he noted the differences of opinion among them, especially on religion: 'Dizzies attachment to moderate Oxfordism is like Bonapartes to moderate Mohammedanism! But - I do not see any opportunity - for the assertion or rejection of Catholicism in the coming session ... If once, we get in swing - I do not doubt we shall go on bravely, & may hope to have our heads turned which I take to be the great aim of Individualism in Politics.'40 It was clearsighted advice; they must sink their differences and present a united front. The question of leadership was not yet absolutely decided. Where GSS had originally led before ceding to Manners, Disraeli was now assuming the role, though he debated it for some time. At one point he and Cochrane suggested Walter, an impolitic choice which GSS and Manners promptly scotched. As GSS pointed out, they welcomed the chance to enrol The Times on their side, but no one as prominent as Walter would 'come in - for so ridiculous a bribe, as a nominal lead ... Besides I hear that he is ... sure to contravene any line - which might promise success to the individual as distinguished from the Aggregate Obedience of our party.'41 He was canvassing possible adherents: Baillie ('the Celt') and Charles Scott Murray, MP for Buckinghamshire, both of whom were tempted but fearful of derision for joining with a splinter group, 'which,' GSS joked to Disraeli, 'I less wonder at - as sulphur has an inevitable association with 'Dis' - in all poets ancient & modern.' Beresford Hope

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mistrusted Disraeli too much; he had already loftily told Manners: The co-operation of such men as D'Israeli, though he may be clever, will not be of permanent good to any one, as he has not character to support.'42 Buoyed up by activity and Corise's companionship, GSS was busily writing the pieces that later made up Historic Fancies. For his sketch of Voltaire, the writer on tyranny who yet revered nobility, he drew on the visit to Fernay: 'See him in his study! It is hung with the portraits and needle-work of sovereigns.' His account of post-Revolution restoration brings in all the families he had just been socializing with: Grammonts, Luxembourgs, Bauffremonts, Deux Breges, 'the great names will always re-appear ... the streets of Paris still nightly echo to names which stir the heart like a trumpet.' His ballad 'The Loyalist of the Vendee' reflects his conversations with the two Deux Breges, who hailed from the Vendee.43 He was also preparing another Quarterly article on Mahon's biography of Conde, for which he had gathered material from friends in Faris during the summer, and he contributed 'A Sketch' to Lady Blessington's 1843 Book of Beauty (published late 1842). The Conde article appeared in December.44 He did well to reduce Mahon's 442 pages, in French, to a mere 60 pages of review. Wisely, he chose to summarize rather than analyse 'this delightful book,' and as usual he focused on passages and anecdotes that blended with the slighter pieces he himself was composing. Inevitably, these included the beautiful women - princesses, courtesans, and royal mistresses - of Conde's time, a list of whom Manners's friend Charles Auriol had sent him earlier. His own interests, personal and political, prompted attention to Conde's sister, Madame de Longueville, and a full 30 pages on the seventeenth-century civil war known as the Fronde, comparing the English and French of this period as he would later do, more sketchily, in 'Louis XIV and Charles II.'45 One lengthy quotation, Mahon's description of a battlefield, resembles GSS's similar one of the field of Austerlitz in Angela Pisani. It is a lively, fluent article, still readable despite its length, though GSS himself would never write anything so weighty as Mahon's study. But what of a contribution to the Young England cause? Manners published A Plea for National Holy-days, in which, remembering the relentless hours of the Northern factory workers, he argued the need for what we would now call 'personal time.' The pamphlet drew considerable attention (not all of it favourable) in the newspapers and magazines. GSS was ecstatic: 'You have gone and done it! ... It is - not only far far the best thing you ever wrote. But it - is the best modern pamphlet I

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have ever read - Is not this a firm tribute of praise - from one who would have dissuaded you from it, who thought you were making a mistake.'46 All this literary activity inspired him with ideas for promoting Young England's future. He had not been able to move Disraeli home from Paris, where he preferred to hobnob with Louis Philippe and hatch schemes for Anglo-French entente. Perhaps, though, even at that distance, Disraeli could make a start by using his proven powers as a writer. I wish you would write something, which might serve as an avant courier to your party - something presuming a. split in the ranks of Ministerialism - or a Swift-like description of the Cabinet - or its policy - a Peeliad? D-n it-don't let us be behind our ancestors in courage or wit! - Come, Dis, - Genius of V. Grey, & Contarini - arise - . There is only one walk in literature, in which you have as yet had no Triumph. - that of Anti Jacobinism ... Essay it.47

GSS was obviously suggesting a substantial piece of work here, rather than the articles he had earlier wanted Disraeli to write for French newspapers. He was appealing to Disraeli the satirist, writer of mock epic, defender of the English Constitution, above all the novelist of Vivian Grey and Contarini Fleming. None of these attributes even remotely apply to Disraeli's only piece of writing in late 1842, the exotic sketch 'Eden and Lebanon,' in the Book of Beauty. Nor is there anything else the next year that fits - except one. The terms of GSS's proposal undoubtedly do apply to the major polemic in fictional form that Disraeli would begin in mid-1843, Coningsby. Disraeli got not only his hero, but his idea, from GSS's exhortations. It would be GSS's greatest contribution to Young England and Conservative politics.

12 1843: Worrying Peel - and Reading Casanova

I am not going to change sides. I am not going to pass over to Opposition. I am not going to alter my opinion about men and measures ... And if I have voted against Sir Robert Peel's Irish policy, he at least will know, that, as I have never sought a favour at his hands, so I am not influenced by any motive of pique or disappointment GSS to Electors of Canterbury

Between political challenge and sexual adventure, 1843 fell into the typical pattern for GSS's years in politics. Strategic visits to the Hope brothers, at Henry Hope's Surrey mansion, the Deepdene, and then Beresford Hope's at Bedgebury, alternated with episodes in his deteriorating relationship with Corise. When she and GSS dined at Gore House the previous autumn, D'Orsay noticed she was anxious that no one mention de Bauffremont's name, suggesting she had something to hide.1 GSS too was beginning to look elsewhere. At one of Lady Blessington's parties (also at Gore House), he met another Frenchwoman, twentyeight-year-old Eugenie Mayer, stepdaughter of Wellington's aide-de-camp, Colonel John Gurwood.2 Her portrait had appeared in the same Book of Beauty as GSS's 'Sketch,' but her presence in the Gore House circle indicated a not entirely respectable background, something that always intrigued him. For one thing, was she legitimate? Her mother, Fanny Mayer, an apparent widow when she married Gurwood in Paris in 1827, had lived an irregular life, and is listed in Disraeli's commonplace books among 'Female Adventurers.' Thirteen-year-old Eugenie had been left in Paris after the marriage, where she mixed with intellectuals at the salons of Delphine de Girardin, wife of La Presses editor, but also with the Bohemian friends of her aunt Isabelle, a mistress of Alexandre

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Dumas. As a result, though her dark, almost Eastern beauty drew many admirers, none of them considered her a marriage partner, an attitude that persisted after she came to live with the Gurwoods in London in 1839. She was pursued by Lord Beauchamp, son of the libertine Marquess of Hertford (a model for Lord Monmouth in Coningsby), and Baron Stanley of Alderley proposed an elopement, but neither proposed marriage.3 Her Book of Beauty portrait cannot have helped, her low-cut dress revealing rather more cleavage than usual for the respectable femininity celebrated in such publications.4 In Coningsby, she is the model for Harry's virginal true love, Edith Millbank, whom Disraeli makes a distinct contrast with the demi-mondaines around Lord Monmouth. Edith's looks are Eugenie's: 'the beauty of the countenance was not the beauty of the Saxons ... One marks sometimes such faces, diaphanous with delicate splendour, in the southern regions of France. Her eye, too, was the rare eye of Aquitaine; soft and long, with lashes drooping over the cheek, dark as her clustering ringlets.' Initially, Edith is docile, shy, and utterly unresponsive to Coningsby's superficial chitchat about lapdogs. Later, however, with more justice to Eugenie, Disraeli depicts her as a quick, intelligent woman, 'with all the refinement and facility of the polished circles in which she moved.'5 Eugenie was equally at ease with French intellectuals and English writers. Thomas Moore, meeting her at the disreputable Duchess of Cannizzaro's, was greatly taken. She was a protegee of Lady Morgan (author of Woman and Her Master), who took her into society, and Edward Bulwer, who gave dinners for her and, because of her vivid colouring, nicknamed her 'Miss Titian.' She was intensely ambitious. A few years later, courted by her future husband, Baliol Brett (Viscount Esher), she insisted he must 'get on' in his law career before she would agree to marry him: 'it is not vanity I have, it is ambition, and I am every day convinced that it is the best prompter to success.'6 By a double irony, her closest friend was Corise, and she and GSS met precisely when Corise had to leave London. Money problems forced the Tankervilles at Christmas 1842 to shut up their English houses and depart to live more economically in France.7 At first, GSS chafed at the separation. On 11 January, less than three weeks before the 1843 Parliament opened, he bolted off to Paris after her. 'Really,' Strangford fumed, 'this sort of infatuation for one's grandmother is perfectly astounding & incomprehensible ... his talents and extensive acquirements fit him for a nobler and higher destiny.'8 GSS, however, made good use of his time in Paris. He mingled with French politicians and held more consultations

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with Cochrane and Disraeli, the latter now 'at the top of the tree in Paris - perpetually with [Prime Minister] Guizot - and admitted to frequent personal audiences of L[ouis] Philippe.' By the time GSS returned with Cochrane on the 21st, the group's plans were advanced enough to feed Strangford's urge for revenge: 'Peel will have some annoyance from [Disraeli] this session - heading as he does, the "young Cambridge" clique.'9 Promptly he dispatched GSS by overnight train to frigid Alnwick, where discussions of modern politics were juxtaposed with feudal distributions of food and clothing to the local population. 'It is blowing earthquakes,' GSS complained on the 27th when, unsure when he would be released, he asked Manners for an update. Disraeli would not get back until the 29th, but they should at least meet on the 1st, the day before Parliament opened. They might also worry at Peel by abstaining from the first party vote, on the Address to the Queen: 'If Peel has a majority as large as that with which he commenced last Session - it will again be the same as that melancholy passage - in Parity, annals. If on the contrary, it be a scanty shew - it will animate and justify defection.'10 The session barely began before GSS was again in absentia. Enemies had threatened Tankerville's life in Paris, and he and Corise were returning to England. On 9 February, Strangford, spluttering with rage, described how GSS 'came into my room, and to my utter astonishment, informed me that he really felt it right and proper, to go down this Evening to the Canterbury Ball tonight! - a thing which I had been continually but vainly urging him to do!' GSS's motive was no belated sense of responsibility to his constituents but a 'calculation that she will stop tonight at Canterbury, on her way from Calais! Is it not the strangest infatuation ever heard of?' Strangford's ire is understandable - GSS might now miss debate on the 13th on compensation for victims of the Exchequer Bills fraud. Because the official inquiry had been suspicious of his brokers, the Morgans, Strangford correctly foresaw that he would not be compensated.11 His only comfort was that the Canterbuiy reunion did not go well. Perhaps de Bauffremont's name at last came up, perhaps Eugenie's, but GSS made a break, leaving Corise a solitary journey to London and rooms at Mivart's Hotel. On the 14th, he sent Eugenie a Valentine's Day poem, declaring his ardent love. Two weeks later, on the 25th, he was absent from Mary Anne Disraeli's dinner at Grosvenor Gate that included Strangford, Ellen, and the Tankervilles.12 'The foolish liaison... is, I think, completely extinguished,' Strangford exulted. T wish it had happened a year ago - or at any period other than the present, when the T's are in such a miserable plight - as the world will be ill-natured

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enough to attribute the breaking-off to their ... fortunes - which is most assuredly not the case.' To his chagrin, however, GSS was soon visiting Corise again, at the modest house the Tankervilles took in Grosvenor Square. A month after the Canterbury parting, Strangford regretfully reported: 'my George and his Dragon are again, I don't know what to call it. She is his bane; and prevents him from making any one step in the road to fame and fortune - however, my only hope is that these reiterated ons and offs must finally lead to a blow-up, une fois pour toutes.' Sometime that spring they did, GSS's final rejection made with such ungentlemanly abruptness that the same society diverted by the liaison now grew indignant. 'For a time, never was there anything equal to his mad devotion, and, after completely turning her head, compromising her, and making her the talk of the whole town, he left her suddenly one day, and hardly recognized her afterwards.'13 One major consequence was that GSS temporarily lost the confidence Corise used to inspire. Though he voted regularly, his speaking record in early 1843 was sparse, compared with those of Manners, Cochrane, and Disraeli. After a short speech on 8 March supporting naturalization of foreigners, he said nothing until, just before Easter, a congenial topic came up, the establishment of an Anglican bishopric in Jerusalem to match the Catholic and Greek ones. When he rose to speak on 11 April, however, he lost his nerve, a humiliating second debacle mercifully unreported in Hansard and the newspapers. Still smarting next day, he would not see even Disraeli: T can bear everything but kindness ... I must try to get my pluck up again by reading your letter - with its flattering analogy, every day in the holidays - before I shall have the heart to add one more to this series of melancholy exhibitions!'14 Though Young England was getting some attention, ensconced immediately behind the government benches in the House, it was still essentially the original foursome, since John Walter senior had been unseated at Nottingham for bribery, and young Walter defeated in the April by-election. Manners was contemplating leaving politics for the Church but finding Disraeli more congenial than he had before, 'a very easy man to get on with, and incomparably clever.' The opinions of the other three, however, on Church government were so different from his own that only affection for GSS and Cochrane kept him with them.15 Nor were GSS's votes always cast with the group's: when Manners and Cochrane supported Peel against an inquiry into landowners' burdens, GSS perversely voted for it, and he also voted for the Nottingham inquiry that eventually ousted John Walter senior.16

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In July, however, the Cambridge three united on Ireland. Cochrane on the 7th condemned as harassment Peel's Irish Arms Bill, removing the right to own arms. Manners, who had spoken strongly about Irish destitution in June, appealed for conciliation rather than harsh repression. On the llth, GSS launched an all-out attack on Peel for failing to redress the glaring problems behind current Irish unrest. Here in the Commons he was at last able to act in the war between Protestant and Catholic his parents had waged. As a child he had been made to dance on the face of the Pope, but now he intended to support his mother's religion. English religious prejudice, he said, was entrenched, unyielding 'No-Popery'; Peel's Roman Catholic Relief Bill, for example, had been aimed at restraining 'dangerous' Catholic clergy while protecting Protestant interests. Alone of the three, he cut to a central cause, the Conservatives' rigid refusal, in this period of transition, to recognize new social and political currents and change laws accordingly. The great Tory politicians of the past, such as Pitt or Canning, would have adapted better; they would have lifted restrictions on Catholics and increased funding for Maynooth: 'Certainly such a Minister would not have come to the House with an Arms Bill as a remedy.' Conciliation would soften the Irish priests into working with Peel, and a first step would be to clear Maynooth's debt. 'If,' he reminded the House, 'there was one thing that struck me more than another in that college ... it was the decent poverty and respectable humility of its inmates.' Pressing his theme of government inconsistency, he rounded on the secretary for Ireland, Lord Eliot, first for introducing a clause that caused alarm and then for abandoning it because of that. In the current slang that Dickens would soon immortalize in Mr Micawber, he accused Eliot of 'waiting for something to turn up.' These were fighting words, each point and witticism rapturously cheered by the opposition.17 Listening that night, William Gregory, newly elected MP for Dublin, felt 'the most unbounded admiration for the courage, as well as political foresight, with which George Smythe, a young man like myself, treated Irish questions, social and religious, although he represented the extreme Tory and, indeed, retrograde element of a cathedral city.'18 For a man whose nerve had failed two months before, GSS's challenge was courageous, as he knew the kind of counter-attack it would draw in the Commons. From his own group, Milnes grabbed the opportunity to snipe back at him, while even a Whig-Radical like Roebuck capitalized on what he termed GSS's 'dishonesty'; if such liberal opinions were not followed up with a liberal vote, 'the hon. Gentleman may boast of ... a

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good opposition speech, with the comfortable assurance of having done no real harm to his party.' But the strongest proof that GSS had drawn blood was Peel's own response, his first full notice of the Young England apostates and a direct challenge to GSS. If Young England disagreed with party policy, they should vote accordingly: 'it would be a more manly and Parliamentary course, and one infinitely more friendly to the Government, that they should thus practically express their opinions than to imply a difference of opinion from the Government, whilst they lent it a hollow support.' Neither Peel nor Roebuck seems to have recognized that this was precisely the nub of the Young England position. Their object was to reform the Conservative party from within, not to leave it or destroy it. Even at their most disaffected from Peel, they would remain Conservatives. Nevertheless, this kind of attention showed the effect, acknowledged even by the Whig press, they had on the party and its leaders. O'Connell in Dublin hailed 'the high-spirited language of Mr. Smythe ... for the admirable speech that he has made in favour of Ireland,' though his praise was muddied by a gratuitous reference to the scandal that refused to die, GSS's great-grandfather's ignominious removal from the Irish Parliament.19 As Gregory foresaw, there were repercussions. GSS, with Cochrane, Manners, and Ferrand, answered Peel's challenge and voted against the Arms Bill. However, other Young England associates - Milnes, Beresford Hope, and even Bateson (who pleaded the Irish case) - voted with Peel. Disraeli neither spoke nor voted. Manners immediately regretted his disloyalty to his government and resolved to break with the group, 'but how can I ever take high moral ground again? - Oh - ambition ambition!' He allowed GSS to talk him round, but there was less said about voting as a group. '"Young England,'" Manners comforted himself, 'has achieved a great celebrity, and could I only satisfy myself that Disraeli really believed all he said, I should be more happy: his historical views are quite mine, but then does he believe them?'20 The aftermath for GSS was more career-threatening. Family connections as much as political idealism made him sympathize with Ireland and Catholics, but his Canterbury constituents angrily accused him of betraying the Tory principles on which they had elected him. He responded vigorously in an open letter, published in The Times on 19 July and other newspapers on the 20th, that he had kept to his election principles. He had voted on Ireland exactly as he had said he would, against any proposal that violated conciliation and respect, and he re-

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minded them how in August 1841 they had cheered him for saying so. When Peel offered no guidance, he had gone back to earlier Tories, in whom he found 'the exact opposite of this inaction ... and indisposition to redress grievance ... You will do me the justice to remember, that it was not to the opinions of any modern set of statesmen, but to those which the patriots of [the past] ... handed down, that I promised an adhesion.' None of this invalidated his election platform: 'I am not going to change sides. I am not going to pass over to Opposition. I am not going to alter my opinion about men and measures ... And if I have voted against Sir Robert Peel's Irish policy, he at least will know, that, as I have never sought a favour at his hands, so I am not influenced by any motive of pique or disappointment.' The increasingly distant relations between father and son prevented GSS from knowing that this proud statement might not be true. Strangford was offended by GSS's Catholic sympathies, while GSS resisted his father's insistence on a wealthy marriage (for which he had recently been provided a list of eligible heiresses), and he resented the favouring of Percy, who had just won a scholarship to Oxford and whose faultless conduct, Strangford boasted, 'has never given me a single moment's uneasiness since the very hour he was born.' These days, most communication between GSS and his father took place through Ellen, despite her own 'Puseyite mummeries.' Strangford first heard of the letter to the electors when GSS walked coolly in with The Times, bowed, and left. Strangford was aghast. Though he thought that, since in the political world 'every thing tends to Liberalism,' GSS's approach would prevail in a few years, he was more concerned with the present. ' [Wellington] has openly declared that if he [GSS] had had common patience, he would have had office at the end of the Session - and that he (Caesar) out of regard for me, who could not afford a third contest for Canterbury, had taken care that it should be such an office as could not require a new Election George has now "put his foot in it," without pleasing any party or section of a party.'21 Was this another point that might have changed GSS's future? Wellington still had political influence, and perhaps he approved of GSS's courting his aide-de-camp's stepdaughter. After GSS had held out for accepting office in Young England plans, had his attack on Peel destroyed his chances? Peel was certainly cool towards him immediately afterwards, to the point of instructing the Whip not to send him the usual party circulars. Yet, as his career shows, GSS was not the kind to work meekly up from minor office while obeying party dictates; he was

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not prepared to betray his convictions about Ireland and the Irish Church; and in 1843 he was too much Disraeli's disciple to abandon political idealism for a government post. In this declaration of war on Peel, the disciple again preceded his mentor. Disraeli did not make his own break for another month, at the third reading of the Irish Arms Bill, when he amplified many of GSS's points and similarly called for a return to the enlightened views of the great Tories of the past. GSS too went for Peel, who 'seems to think I have no right to pursue any course but that which he approves of.' What Ireland needed was tolerance, and positive action; what Peel proposed amounted to inaction, which was 'not Conservative, for who so blind as not to see that it is charged with disturbance ... not constitutional, for who so blind as not to see that it may be charged with revolution. (Expressions of dissent from the Treasury Benches.)' Stung, Peel again challenged Young England to oppose him with their votes. Government supporters reacted with distaste: 'DTsraeli and Smythe ... the principal characters ... were abusive and impertinent.' The Commons buzzed with indignation. Viscount Sandon accused them of heaping 'the grossest terms of contumely and opprobrium on those whom they affect to support.' GSS pointed out that neither he nor Disraeli had passed any insults, and wittily turned the accusation against Sandon's ignorance of foreign affairs - in contrast, of course, to his own intimacy with them. The Times defended the group, and GSS, Manners, and Disraeli were invited to Bearwood, Walter's country home in Berkshire, to discuss reforms.22 By the time Parliament rose on 24 August, the papers were full of Young England. The Satirist referred to 'Smythe, DTsraeli and Co.' as 'the tagrag squad,' but in a separate article acknowledged their sincerity. Croker in the Quarterly disapproved of how they had rattled the Conservative leaders, but the Spectator commented that if they were really as insignificant as the party papers alleged, 'whence the pertinacity in ridiculing and attacking them? ... 'Young England" ... is a type, an indication of something that is working in the public mind.'23 All this encouraged them to gather more ammunition in the recess. GSS and Manners went north to Ferrand's Yorkshire estate, Harden Grange, to view his allotments system for tenants.24 A few days later GSS came south again, to join Cochrane and Henry Hope at the Deepdene, where the party included the Disraelis, Thomas Hansard, several diplomats - and the Gurwoods. Summer lingered on through September in Hope's sumptuous mansion, where classical statuary blended with Italianate villa architecture, and the luxurious interior flowed out through

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galleries, colonnades, and loggias into landscaped gardens with terraces, fountains, lawns, and plantings calculated to cast deep romantic shadows.25 'The unclouded sky,' GSS rhapsodized, 'the dusky cedars, the stately palace, the strange fragrance, the far noise of running waters. I might have been gazing upon the Alhambra, or the Taj.' In such surroundings, the romance with Eugenie flourished. 'Propinquity,' he commented, 'makes marriages, but who in a million ever met an heiress in a country house?'26 Eugenie was no heiress, and marriage was not on his agenda. Seduction, however, was, though the Gurwoods meant to change his mind. Perhaps they suggested the occasional coolness to his advances which produced one ungrammatical poem: T stand beneath thy lattice, / My dark-eyed Eugenie. / Though standing 'neath thy lattice / Thou wilt not look at me!' At other times, however, she was more receptive: 'Nay, blame me not, I touch / Thy soft and rounded fingers, - / And my lip is pressed to one / Where the dew of childhood lingers.'27 Eugenie was hardly a child, but the language suggests the relationship had not yet gone beyond kisses. To GSS, the Deepdene shadows presented sexual opportunity; to Eugenie and the Gurwoods, the setting for a proposal. That, they would soon learn, was no chance at all. Love was like champagne to GSS; it set his brain fizzing with ideas. The host was generous, the evenings warm; intellectual argument and wine ran as freely as the fountains on the moonlit lawns. To Mary Anne's amusement, a pair of pet bear cubs roamed loose in the house, until one invaded the elegant dining room before dinner and demolished the food, the wine, and the costly china and glass. Fifty years later, Alicia Hamond, then the young daughter of Hope's diplomat cousin, could still remember GSS's delight in the episode as well as her own adoration of 'that bright happy party of enthusiastic chivalrous young men.'28 Ebulliently, GSS dramatized the meeting of minds in a mock-classical conversation, Tn the House of Maecenas,' with Hope, wealthy host and patron, as Maecenas, Disraeli as the pragmatic Emperor Augustus, and himself as the poet Horace, on fire with literature and love, calling at each lull for yet another beautiful girl: 'Send for Lalage ... Send for Lyce the auburn-haired... Send for Lydia the white-armed ...' 'Political women,' he cries, 'are Proserpines, who should be ravished into Hades by the spirits they have damned.' 'Political women' may include Corise, but specifically 'gloomy Dis' at Deepdene was 'engrossed in the two-fold occupation of conciliating his "Proserpina" - & magnetising our host.' 'Proserpine' was an unkind hit at Mary Anne. Was this also the occasion when GSS tactlessly (or tipsily) asked Disraeli why he remained so de-

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voted to his eccentric wife and was acidly rebuked? '"George, there is one word in the English language of which you are ignorant." "What is that?" asked Smythe, somewhat taken aback at his manner. "Gratitude, George," said Dizzy.'29 'Answer me, O my friends,' says Varus (Cochrane?), 'are we not drunk enough to speculate?' Perhaps it was not only wine and ideas that so exhilarated them. In Angela Pisani, when Averanche struggles to write, the sybaritic Denain (based on Disraeli) offers him a special mixture of tobacco: '"there is a dash of opium in it, which will give you ideas as wild as Hoffman's, and sell you three editions in a week."' Perhaps there was opium at the Deepdene too. It was routinely prescribed for consumptive patients to relieve their bouts of coughing, but, as analgesic or recreational drug, it was as readily available as wine, and cheaper. Disraeli took various drugs, including 'bhang' (hashish), and smoked a Turkish pipe, something he learned in his Eastern travels with Paul Emile Botta, who counted opium among his more humdrum interests. On one occasion Disraeli became ill from a strong dose of laudanum (opium in alcohol) when he had intended to take 'something quite the reverse.' During the Deepdene holiday, GSS's writing had a strange quality that suggests an opium dream, where the drug works on content already in the dreamer's mind, creating 'masques and dramas which [he] can watch with detached fascination.'30 GSS's prose piece 'Toleration,' also from this holiday, opens with an echo of his parliamentary preoccupations; its reference to intolerance between Christians and Muslims suggests the content of his aborted Jerusalem speech, but it melts into a 'Kubla Khan' kind of vision, in which a maiden (who, if not Abyssinian, has Eugenie's Eastern looks) leads him through a perspective of marble corridors lined with statues to the throne of 'the Prophet.' As the Prophet delivers a message of universal benevolence, thrones and corridors multiply, meeting again at an 'illimitable' golden staircase as the vision fades. Even more hallucinatory is 'Fantasia,' which GSS wrote for Disraeli, too busy writing to make a promised contribution to Lady Blessington's Keepsake annual. In 'Fantasia,' among 'gardens, fountains, palaces,' the Deepdene statues come to life and dance in the moonlight with masked nymphs of Diana. Yet, when one young man, at last alone with his partner, suggests, 'It is the hour of love,' the dream turns nightmare. The girl's mask is removed, to reveal, like Keats's Lamia, 'the crested head of a splendid serpent. Its eyes glittered with prismatic fire, and its tongue of blue and arrowy flame played between its ebon jaws.' "Yours is the lot of premature passion,"'

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the serpent hisses; "You have fallen in love with a masque, and obtained a monster."'31 The girl disappears; the young man is accused; the palace windows fill with blue flame and tongues of fire, and a Dionysiac crowd rushes by. Yet the young man feels no alarm, even as the metamorphosis charges the atmosphere, turning it exotic and dangerous. Was GSS, dallying with Eugenie in the Deepdene gardens, circling the dangers of his new relationship - marriage, entrapment - while recognizing its sexual allure? Something more than love and visions, however, was occupying these weeks. Disraeli may have been, as GSS later irreverently put it, brought to bed of Coningsby in the blue boudoir at Grosvenor Gate, but the act of conception (Disraeli's term) occurred at the Deepdene. The dedication was to Hope, because it began in these hospitable surroundings, stimulated by their nightly discussions. The very title came from Surrey history, Hope's adjoining estate at Brockham, owned in the sixteenth century by a family named Coningsby. Its real inspiration, however, was Disraeli's intensified relationship with GSS, the young man whose beauty appealed to him, who always struck sparks in his mind, and who had already suggested the project. The enamoured tone of Disraeli's descriptions of Coningsby, 'the very handsome young' hero, testifies to the closeness with GSS at this time. Disraeli never loses an opportunity to draw attention to Harry's physical beauty - the 'limber and graceful figure' in the short Eton jacket, the 'beautiful blue eyes' that attract men and women alike - and he rhapsodizes over the 'passionate,' even 'ardent,' relationships between male friends. In turn, Coningsby's reverence for Sidonia, the Jewish mage, reflects GSS's open admiration of his mentor, a man as charismatic and intelligent as Strangford but much more approving. One wonders whether the emotional undercurrents at Deepdene included jealousy - Disraeli's of Eugenie, which made Edith Millbank so uninteresting, and GSS's of Mary Anne, which produced the 'Proserpine' dig. Disraeli's dedication tells us that Coningsby was 'partly executed' at Hope's, and the densely biographical content of the early chapters - the physical descriptions of Coningsby, his childhood, Eton schooldays, and brilliant Cambridge career - suggests that GSS recounted it to Disraeli at Deepdene as Disraeli began the book. The rest was scheduled for Disraeli's winter seclusion at Bradenham, and it is notable that as the book develops, Coningsby becomes a more idealized and less physical presence. It might have been different if GSS had accepted Disraeli's invitation to join him at Bradenham.32 While Disraeli worked on Coningsby, GSS wrote more pieces for Historic

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Fancies. The mask theme of 'Fantasia' reappears in 'Venus & Adonis,' a transparent satire on his relationship with Strangford and Percy, the filial paragon. Titian's son, Pomponio, quarrels with his great father, reconciles and vows to focus on his career, but backslides for his dark-eyed Castilian mistress. The father is finishing his erotic painting 'Venus and Adonis' for Philip II of Spain, bitterly comparing his son's profligacy and disobedience with Philip's noted piety and innumerable virtues. His models (who have been posing naked but masked) arrive for the final session, remove their masks, and, to Titian's shock, reveal themselves as Philip and his mistress. Pomponio 'was seldom afterwards rebuked by his father. He did not therefore sin more, or less.'33 GSS had also sent off another Quarterly article, on Jean-Baptiste Capefigue's Histoire de la Restauration des Bourbons (1842) and Louis XV (1841), only to receive unwelcome news at the Deepdene. Disgustedly he wrote to Manners: 'Lockhart has deferred me, and put me off- in a letter - not the most courteous. - He gives as his reason the Article on Sismondi - saying that two French Hist[orians] in one No. won't do. But his real reason, is of course political, and fear of offending in high places.' The article that bumped GSS's was 'The Life and Works of Sismondi' in the September number by the historian Sir Francis Palgrave. Lockhart may have given Palgrave precedence as a close friend of Murray's, but more likely, in delaying an article by the most vociferous of the Young Englanders, he wanted to avoid annoying powerful Conservatives. He had in fact made his decision at the height of GSS's and Disraeli's assaults on Peel in August, when he told Croker that he was shelving GSS's review. GSS, in spite of his careless tone, gave way temporarily to depression. Even when involved in great political issues, he told Manners, T pine more & more everyday - for something to trust in - . To drift about - here & there ... this is all sad work.'34 Since Disraeli was at Bradenham, GSS looked for inspiration from sympathizers like Ambrose De Lisle Phillips, who had established a Cistercian monastery at Grace Dieu in Leicestershire, built Catholic schools and chapels, and practised medieval paternalism in the form of alms-giving ceremonies and ancient festivals. This visit too went into Coningsby, transferred to the character Eustace Lyle at his estate, St Genevieve (also featured in Cochrane's Ernest Vane).^ GSS then went with Manners to another friend, Sir John Hanmer, at Bettisfield Park in Wales, to study 'Home Colonization,' Hanmer's experiment in marshland reclaimed for villagers' allotments. By the time GSS left there, his sense of purpose had revived enough for an idealistic rededication to

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'the true / And great and old ... / We will go on - for God and for the Poor.'36 He was also hearing of others' ambitious plans. Yet another friend, Lord Ranelagh (on his gambling winnings at Crockford's), wanted to start a paper called Young England, though as GSS scathingly remarked: 'Last year - this might have done, but now with Times, Post, Spectator &c &c. - the thing would be absurd.' Bateson, in a triumph of youthful imagination, was about to outdo them all as he prepared to leave on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. With these examples, GSS might have completed Historic Fancies then and there, but Cochrane's blunt verdict, 'rot,' on his Bettisfield poem 'floored' him once again. When Disraeli invited him to share his creative seclusion at Bradenham, he sent an apology for insulting Mary Anne, 'the kindest & most goodnatured & amiable of my friends,' but refused: T am so desultory, & unfixed in all my plans.'37 Work on Coningsby continued without him. He opted instead for the unfailing distraction, love. Once more he crossed the Channel to Paris, this time pursuing Eugenie, and promptly ran into trouble with her mother and stepfather. In spite of the romantic haze in some versions of the episode, GSS's own mind was perfectly clear: T never pretended to be, or ever was, in love' with Eugenie.38 One poem he sent to her betrays this; ostensibly a loving remembrance of 'Four happy days' (an echo of Faber's 'Three Happy Days' to GSS), it ends with an ambiguous reference to other lovers: 'What - if I love more strongly, / Than they can ever do / I cannot, - love you wrongly / And therefore must not woo.' The Gurwoods, however, saw him as husband material and drew him into the family circle. He joined Eugenie and her mother, Fanny, at their house outside Paris, and later, 'all day long, & every day,' at their Paris hotel.39 As foreseen in 'Fantasia,' however, the welcoming atmosphere soon changed to menace. Perhaps GSS really did compromise Eugenie, or, as Strangford suspected, Fanny may have encouraged the appearance of it to manipulate him into marriage. In any case, Colonel Gurwood was summoned from England, and they tried to force the issue by announcing an engagement, news of which reached London in mid-October. Though Strangford feared GSS was 'caught, & committed,' the Gurwoods' manoeuvre could not have been more wrong; GSS always resisted force. His reaction can be gauged by the similar situation in Angela Pisani, where Averanche's love for Illyrine de la Val vanishes at her mother's gossip of their engagement. '"Does your mother really think that I am going to marry you?" and every hair of the young Vidame, Seneschal, Marshal of the armies of God and the holy Church stood on end with

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horror, at the supposition that he, a son of Adam, should marry Illyrine, a daughter of Eve.'40 Strangford, Baillie, and Ellen urged GSS back to England, where a lawyer might break off the marriage by threatening to publicize Fanny's and Eugenie's past 'iniquities.' In a peculiar response, however, GSS threatened, unless Strangford paid his debts (now over £1,200), to go through with marriage - if not to Eugenie, then 'the first woman with £8,000 or £10,000 whom I may find willing to exchange the same for the hand of a young M.P. and heir-apparent to a coronet... as my recklessness has a certain selfishness in it, I might prefer to marry Miss [Mayer], for, with her £2,000 I would only be reduced to suicide or a consulship a little sooner, and I would rather have a pretty and fascinating woman than not. After all, it would only be another La Largette marriage in the family pedigree.'41 Strangford's great friends were no help. Londonderry melodramatically outlined a dismal future, 'Abandoned by your Parent - cut off from your Connections[,] separated from yr Brother & Sister[,] ensconced in an upstairs apartment in some unknown Sejour with your unhappy wife[,] cut off from Parliament[,] future distinction & working perhaps solely for your own & her existence.' The King of Hanover, confusing this latest French amour with the previous one, merely commented: 'What a pity that a young man like him, full of talent, and who might in time become a useful Member of the Government, should thus fool away his time, and thus destroy all his future hopes.' Ever gentle, Manners sent a 'nuptial benediction,' which GSS waited two months to refute.42 All these exchanges did nothing for the relationship between father and son, but they did end GSS's threats to marry Eugenie and Gurwood's to pistol him if he did not. Quite why is not apparent, but by November, the marriage was off. Gossip had it that Corise persuaded GSS to give Eugenie up, either out of jealousy or at Strangford's request, but the continuing warmth of her relationship with Eugenie makes this unlikely.43 Eugenie took the rupture badly: 'Poor Miss M- certainly looks ill and careworn,' Arethusa Gibson reported to Mary Anne. As late as June 1844, Eugenie confided her sorrows to Sir William Molesworth: 'her engagement to Mr Smythe, his extravagant demonstrations of love, and his subsequent infamous conduct ... the poor girl, whose great beauty more than any other fault has harmed her.' On the other hand, the satirical papers unkindly branded her a husband hunter who had failed with GSS, Cecil Forester, and Molesworth: 'To be sold - Eugenie, a mare, warranted to carry double.'44 GSS was as brutal as with Corise. 'Seriously,' he wrote unfeelingly to

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163

Disraeli, 'you have never, I think, thought me a d-d fool, & if you ever hear a report that I am to marry in the exquisitely absurd way, the world has been wise enough to believe, I was going to tread pray - contradict it - stoutly - were it only out of respect to my wits.'45 This part of the episode too found its way into Coningsby, where Edith is heartbroken to hear Harry is to marry Lady Theresa. GSS himself passed the days at Fontainebleau, having 'charming little dinners' with his male friends, writing furious letters to his father, and beginning a novel - 'his own adventures, I suppose,' Strangford sneered. As he often liked to do, GSS claimed he had 'done nothing - thought of nothing - read nothing except 50 pages of Casanova,' but he had been writing: a sentimental ballad, The Aristocracy of France,' to celebrate the visit to England of the Due de Bordeaux, claimant to the French throne. He also concocted 'The Serenade,' a comic account of the courtship of Mirabeau, which reverses his own situation with Eugenie. Here the male lover, Mirabeau, is ardent while the female, now called Emilie, is reluctant; ignoring her resistance, Mirabeau loudly sings GSS's poem beneath her lattice to incite her gun-brandishing father into forcing a marriage. The 'novel' may be Angela Pisani, highly autobiographical, with himself as the wavering anti-hero, Lionel Averanche, and his friends and lovers as the various characters. It is impossible to know how far he got with it at this stage; he would work on it at intervals over at least the next nine years, incorporating the latest events in his life.46 Or it may have been a lighter tale of manners in high society, which he would plunder next year for magazine contributions. Strangford remained adamant about his son's debts: 'I will not give him an opportunity of boasting to Messrs. Gronow, Auriol &c. &c. and the host of insolvent & disreputable English at Paris that he has succeeded in "bullying the Governor."' Ellen, however, again acted as peacemaker. Gradually, GSS's tone became less high-handed, and he had promised to return to England for Christmas when his incurable susceptibility intervened. In mid-December, he announced to his astounded father that he had fallen 'gravely, seriously, deeply, desperately in love' and now wanted to marry. His new love was Mile Stackelberg, fair-haired and dark-eyed, seventeen-year-old daughter of a Russian diplomat, Count Stackelberg, ambassador to the Congress of Vienna, and his wife, Caroline, daughter of the Neapolitan ambassador to Russia. There was no question of a 'past' or a 'reputation.' 'She is not pretty, but the most patrician-like girl you ever saw, with hands and feet Ali Pasha might have envied. She has never been in Russia, but always lived within the last

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three years at Naples, where she was born. She adores London, is brought up like a Cinderella ... and when she comes to England, if you are not the first to fall in love with her, I shall be surprised.'47 GSS liked her European background and her lack of worldly experience. For the first time, he would be mentor, while she would be a foil for his brilliance. She had the equivalent of £30,000, which would please Strangford but might be an obstacle for a man who had 'not a five-franc piece to his name': 'all marriages here are questions of settlement, & advocates, & notaries, & I fear my love will not go far towards the conquest of all these difficulties.'48 He was right. Strangford, still intent on an English heiress, at first refused to do any negotiation. GSS did his best to present counter-arguments, which, for all their humour, were more realistic about his marital prospects than Strangford. In the Victorian marriage market, GSS knew he was what a later generation called a 'detrimental' - 'a young man that all the women are mad about, but who's too poor to marry.' The moneyed young ladies of England require being waltzed with, and I don't waltz. They require being followed from party to party, dangled after, and that does not suit my habits or my health either. Nor have I a temper that can endure the comments of chaperons and dowagers. 'Will it be a match?' 'He has not a penny!' 'There, it is on again, or off!' ... You must see that not I, specially, but no man of my standing, has a chance with these people. Now, here is a young girl of inexpensive habits, who would live quietly in Harley Street, well born, who brings more money to me than I could ever hope to meet her with.49

Temporizing was, he knew from the past, a better approach than hostility, and he meekly agreed to return to England. 'If it be, as you think, only a fantasy, absence and London will soon cure it. If not, I think, and perhaps you may be brought to look at it differently for my sake, the introducing a young lady with £1,000 a year into the family, even if it were settled upon her, will scarcely add to the decay of our house.' Unfairly, he also played on his health, a manipulative reminder of Strangford's guilt over his wife's death: 'If you knew how ill, and in what dejection I have been, I do not think you would do anything to loosen my not very strong hold upon life.'50 Strangford, however, was even wilier. When GSS announced that he and Mile Stackelberg had pledged a year's engagement to each other, Strangford immediately informed the Stackelbergs of GSS's financial position - 'the moon ... is

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not made of green cheese - as he foolishly & fondly imagines.' After confirmation from Londonderry, the Stackelbergs rejected GSS, saying they would not accept any man with less than £5,000 a year. That GSS kept his temper perhaps indicates his reluctance to lose this relationship. Of course this throws me on my back, and much cuts me up ... For three days I have made no attempt to see her, and nothing should induce me for one moment to try and engage her affections, or even to try to see her again. I don't want to make myself out a Lovelace, but it is something of the feeling I would not love thee, love, so well, Loved I not honour more.51

This from a man whose conduct towards his last two loves had been so strikingly dishonourable. He was much more upset about his Quarterly article. Assuming that Lockhart had rejected it, he asked Disraeli to get The Times to publish it instead. '/ wish you would manage this for me — as whatever gets me talked about for anything else - but all this dnd Gurwood mess, may be of much service to me ... for the world - always holds by the "last thing."' Almost immediately, however, it appeared in the December Quarterly, but mangled and truncated. 'Lockhart,' he complained bitterly to Manners, 'has assassinated my Article - & taken all the marrow out of its back - the end. - although you will less regret this - as it was though with deep reverence & sympathy - expostulating with the Legitimists.' The excisions seem to have been of passages that reflected Young England views on French affairs: GSS said they were 'exactly in the sense of the Times policy' and that they included a eulogy of the unpopular French. As published, it retains many Young England preoccupations - the significance of monarchy, the power of the press - but all that remains of the 'eulogy' is a contrast between English history, where 'the evidence is carefully weighed and minutely sifted; but the language is unintelligible to the vulgar,' and French: 'sacrificed to passionate and transient animosities ... what it loses in truth it gains in spirit and vivacity.'52 If GSS had intended it to be political propaganda, a further worrying of Peel, there was nothing now here to disturb one Conservative feather. That would be left for Coningsby to do in the coming year.

13 1844: Coningsby and Historic Fancies

I am so dazzled, bewildered, tipsy with admiration the most passionate & wild! GSS to Disraeli, 9 May 1844

The year 1844 began badly. Like Disraeli's Tancred, Bateson realized his dream of reaching Jerusalem, but in the New Year word came that he had died there of a fever. The Young England circle was profoundly shocked. 'Of all our Cambridge set,' Manners thought, 'he was the most unspoilt by the world, the most true.' To Cochrane, the death marked 'the first blank in the happy circle ... the first touch of frost, which tells us that the summer is gone, and that there is a certain winter approaching.' For GSS, the deaths of Bateson and Whytehead, his former tutor, brought mortality closer, the relentless threat to his own dreams. Lines of Whytehead's became a kind of mantra: 'This world I deem / But a beautiful dream / Of things which are not what they seem.' More and more, the words 'dream,' 'fancy,' 'fantasy,' 'vision,' and 'quest' appeared in his letters and writing, interchangeable terms denoting goals attainable in imagination, if not in fact. This would be a year in which dream and reality tugged hard at each other.1 He promised Strangford that reality would rule, 'as well matrimonially as politically - his speculations in both having hitherto so absurdly failed.' He would come home, tackle his debts, smooth relations with Canterbury, and generally make an 'entirely new start in life, under the direction of common sense.'2 Still, reluctant to let go of dream completely, he lingered in Paris till the end of January, hoping the Stackelbergs would relent and ignoring letters from his neglected constituents. Strangford and Ellen had to substitute for him at the County Ball and plead illness to excuse his non-appearance at the Canterbury Conservative dinner.

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His absence gave his enemies a prime opportunity. Bradshaw sanctimoniously contrasted his own conduct with his colleague's: 'I have ever tried to discharge my duties honestly and faithfully, though, perhaps, I have not appeared so ready as some, who are designated orators, and talk nineteen to the dozen. (Laughter.)'3 At the national level, Peel instructed the party Whip not to send GSS and Disraeli the usual presession circular. Disraeli protested directly to Peel and was allowed to remain nominally under his leadership; GSS, more defiant, did not.4 In fact, at the start of the new session, they were both intent on writing rather than politics, though their approaches were different. Disraeli was practising the Swiftian satire GSS had urged - the saeva indignatio that marks the chapters of political commentary interleaved with plot in Coningsby. Alongside the broad Dickensian satire on corrupt elections, self-serving candidates, and party opportunists, he was writing withering criticism of Peel's leadership. In contrast, GSS did not transfer his parliamentary aggressiveness to his satires, which began to appear anonymously in the New Monthly Magazine in February.5 The New Monthly's proprietor and current supervising editor was Henry Colburn, Disraeli's publisher and Thackeray's original for the vulgar Mr Bungay in Pendennis. He was known for his 'silver-fork' list - novels of fashionable society and for 'puffing,' lavishly promoting his publications for weeks before and after they appeared. He had started the New Monthly thirty years before as a political mouthpiece but gradually watered down the content for a more general readership. By 1844, he preferred articles to be light and amusing, rather than biting. GSS's first piece, invoking 'Divina Nonsensia,' hit the level well enough for Colburn to 'puff it separately from his usual advertisements: 'THE MONSTER MEETING. - An accurate REPORT of this extraordinary Meeting will appear in the February Number of COLBURN'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.'6 In satire, things are never 'what they seem.' GSS would not fully develop his theme of duplicity until the later chapters of Angela Pisani, but his writing in 1844 was already notable for the insistence on semblance, deceptive appearances serious and playful behind which actuality lurked. Both GSS and Disraeli satirized current events and prominent people, but, while Coningsby is a full-scale roman a clef, GSS's short articles are in the more genial style of Punch (three years old and the most popular weekly in London). The satire in 'The Monster Meeting' was as topical as it could be, spoofing 'Monster Meetings,' the newly coined phrase for O'Connell's Irish gatherings agitating for Repeal of the Union. Since O'Connell's month-long trial for sedition was currently going on,

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it may be that GSS's piece parodies the proceedings, though the identities of the contemporary figures who people it are now lost in their disguises as mythical beasts and literary characters. Is 'Polyphemus,' ousted from the chair because no debater can hope to catch the single eye of a Cyclops, the Speaker of the Commons who passed over Young England so often in the beginning? Is 'His Highness the Colossus of Rhodes,' who will not stop speaking, the loquacious O'Connell himself? When the beasts howl down Pope's principled 'Man of Ross,' do their cries of 'No Popery' echo the prejudice in the Irish debates?7 The frisson for GSS's readers lay in recognizing the identities, among more obvious topical allusions to popular entertainments like the Singing Mouse, the Learned Pig, and 'General' Tom Thumb, or novel London sights like the five-year-old National Gallery ('a Monster of Stone') and municipal experiments with wooden pavements. Just as playful is the conclusion in a chaotic banquet, as full of punning whimsy as the Mad Hatter's Tea Party or the Lobster Quadrille. GSS's 'Monsterland' is not very far from Carroll's Wonderland. The New Monthly contributions are another indication of GSS's talent and versatility. Slowly, he was realizing that he preferred writing to politics, and he was trying to create a niche for himself. (It would take another three years for him to recognize that his liking for spontaneity made journalism the ideal metier.} But if he was to pay off his debts, New Monthly articles at 12 guineas a sheet (sixteen pages) would barely dent the interest - he estimated he earned about £100 a year from writing.8 A book had more potential, especially if marketed as the latest from a notorious Young England rebel, and therefore, though he still had to find a publisher, he was working hard on the French Revolution biographies that would lend gravitas to Historic Fancies. His literary work kept his parliamentary profile low in February and March, when he generally voted with Peel's government. His only sizeable speech, made 'merely for the sake of mischief,' backed up Manners's call for British action on the French imprisonment of Don Carlos, claimant to the Spanish throne. 'Governments,' GSS accused, 'have one justice for the strong, and another justice for the weak; one justice for the poor, and another for the rich.' Though the Commons audience cheered loudly, Strangford (like Bradshaw) saw 'little use in these exhibitions, which lead to nothing, however clever they may be.'9 Two weeks later, Manners was stunned when GSS voted against Ashley's bill to cut workers' hours to ten, a proposal which 'all our young men, but Smythe - shame! - supported.' This vote has been taken as evidence of GSS's inconsistency, a betrayal of

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Young England under pressure from Strangford.10 Yet there is no inconsistency if GSS, who saw no contradiction in admiring entrepreneurs and sympathizing with workers, accepted Peel's view that reduction would handicap the manufacturers (already fighting foreign competition) and thus affect the workers. His next vote, three days later, against protecting imported corn, suggests that he remained consistent, if more pragmatic than his colleagues.11 By the end of March, when Disraeli was correcting the proofs of Coningsby, GSS had finished a draft of Historic Fancies and published two more essays in the April New Monthly.1^ These are again light pieces, their allusive, jocular, extempore style providing glimpses of the easy conversational wit that made him such an engaging companion. 'Social Nuisances: The Lap-Dog' is the kind of burlesque on contemporary manners that Thackeray (to take only one example) was currently writing for Punch, Fraser's, and the New Monthly. GSS's July story, 'The Perfidious Engineer,' would appear side by side with one by 'Michael Angelo Titmarsh' (Thackeray's nom de plume}. 'Social Nuisances' has comic echoes of the Deepdene: Coningsby's babble about lapdogs as he tries to chat up Edith Millbank, or GSS's nicknames for Mary Anne and Disraeli, now augmented by Cerberus, 'the Fido of Queen Proserpine,' who 'draws "iron tears down Pluto's cheek," by snapping at his sable majesty's nose.'13 The other April essay, 'The Duty of Self-Commemoration,' satirizes ambition in a context of extreme topicality. Two weeks earlier, the case of a Mr Hobart, who had bequeathed £4,425 for an equestrian statue of himself, had been used in Punch to lampoon Disraeli, suggesting he leave £10 for a statue of Young England.14 With Wildean panache, GSS pounced on this chance to subvert conventional modesty. 'The only effectual course is to take care of our monuments in our lifetime ... Who will care to immortalize me, if I myself am reckless of immortality?' Heeding his own advice, he sent off Historic Fancies to John Murray, publisher of the Quarterly, though he doubted whether Murray, for all the prestige of his imprint, was the most suitable promoter for the book. Murray might 'be too heavy for it, as he wants dash in advertising - and his class of readers are too pure and respectable for the incoherent rhapsodies of my little volume.'15 While he waited for Murray's decision, he spent Easter at the Deepdene with Hope, the Disraelis, Ranelagh, and Milnes, acting charades and exchanging witticisms.16 Memories of Bateson, however, prompted him to repair current friendships, a stronger reality than a contrary vote on the Factory Bill, by composing an elaborate dedication for Historic Fan-

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ties: 'To The Lord John Manners, M.P. ... the Philip Sydney of our Generation.' The dedication, however, was premature. As predicted, Murray turned him down, and with something like relief he approached Colburn, now vigorously advertising Coningsby as 'The New Political Novel.' This was the kind of promotion he wanted, as he saw the advertisements 'come like a bomb upon the Carl ton. Not a Bonham [chief Conservative agent] but expects annihilation.' Besides, any approach must be good that discomfited Milnes: 'Hanmer shewed him the advertisement, and he said, "Good God - the very book I have been intending all my life to write." Is not this delicious?' The slipstream of Coningsby was the perfect placing for Historic Fancies, provided Disraeli boosted it without revealing Murray's rejection, 'to C[olburn], or to the world, or to anybody, as it may raise a prejudice against my abortion and prevent its being Xened [christened] by any publisher soever.'17 His next move, another outburst of the 'gunpowder temperament' he had inherited from both parents, may not have been consciously aimed at the notoriety Colburn liked to capitalize on, but it certainly had that effect. The occasion was a Commons furore over allegations by Ferrand that the government, via Graham, the home secretary, had pressured the Nottingham bribery committee to unseat John Walter senior. During days of wrangling, about which even Peel cracked jokes, Roebuck, MP for Bath, kept insisting on a formal inquiry. Exasperated at the waste of time meant for the Factories Bill and the Poor Law, GSS attacked Roebuck for firing off at everyone but Peel: T am not to be deceived by the mock severity of a spurious patriotism (great cheering and laughter) ... perpetually inferring that, were one not the Diogenes of Bath, one would wish to be the Alexander of Tamworth (general cheers and laughter).' So far, he was completely in the right, but next day, reading reports of Roebuck's reply, he detected insults to himself, called in his second, the long-suffering Captain Darell, and demanded a duel or a retraction. Roebuck dodged both challenges by airing them in the House, thus turning a personal squabble into a question of parliamentary privilege, under the Speaker's jurisdiction. Under protest, GSS eventually agreed to the Speaker's ruling that he drop 'hostile proceedings.'18 The affair caught public attention, from the Chronicles vilifying GSS for a 'puerile exhibition' to Punch's applause for him and derision of Roebuck as 'a decided case of shirk.' Punch also repeated GSS's point about waste of parliamentary time: 'The Poor-Law Bill is standing still, / While Gentlemen are jawing, oh! / At fist and foils, in private broils, / Each other clapper-clawing, oh!' It was perhaps not pure coincidence

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that the Chronicle also saw fit to reproduce the latest regulations against duelling.19 Soon after this latest eruption into the public eye, GSS's lasting claim to fame materialized, though it was not due to anything of his own. On 9 May, Coningsby reached the bookshops, 'Smythe as hero,' Manners wrote, 'myself Henry Sidney, Cochrane Buckhurst &c. &c.' Disraeli sent GSS an advance copy, which produced an ecstatic note the same night. 'What can I say, or write, or think? I am so dazzled, bewildered, tipsy with admiration the most passionate & wild! I never read anything, thought of anything, felt anything, believed in anything, before. Thank God I have a faith at last!'20 The reading public shared his enthusiasm. It was 'the novel of the season.' 'In every literary circle, the first question you are asked ... is "Have you read Coningsby?'" 'The circulating libraries are dinned for copies; the volumes are snatched off the tables at the club reading-rooms, and every body recognises every body's portrait.' It came up in Commons debates; magazines reviewed it at length; newspapers stole phrases, used quotations, alluded to characters; there was even a song. 'Every day,' Disraeli gloated, 'every hour, something is said, or heard, or written.'21 The first printing of a thousand copies sold in three weeks, by July it was in its third, and foreign editions were underway. What was all the fuss about? Briefly, a book that brought off an unprecedented trick, firing popular imagination with discussions of political philosophy. The political novel that mixes juicy personal scandal with governmental decision-making is now such a familiar genre that it is worth emphasizing that Coningsby was the first of its kind. Politics occupied the place in Victorian life that entertainment and pop stars do in ours. In the London dailies, two-thirds of the space (and not much less in the provincial papers) brought politics to the people with verbatim parliamentary reports and lengthy editorials, while the society columns documented the after-hours lives of those who had already appeared in the parliamentary pages. Even dinner guest-lists in the social pages reflected who was in or out of the corridors of power. Disraeli's trick was to combine social and political. Through his Young England hero, he presented the central question facing his party: 'What is a Conservative?' But if this had been all, Coningsby would not have made the sensation it did. Political tracts, after all, were published every day. Coningsby combined a political message with an adroit mixture of Bildungsroman, silverfork dandyism, social satire, and - not least of its attractions - the titillation of roman a clef. Coningsby s authorship was no secret - 'By B. Disraeli, M.P.' featured

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prominently in Colburn's advertisements, often timed for Disraeli's latest foray in Parliament. But even before the various 'Keys' to the novel appeared, a major part of its fascination was guessing the characters' identities - something Disraeli encouraged by mixing real people (Wellington, Peel, Russell) with fictitious ones. Some portraits were immediately recognizable. Only two years earlier, the dissolute life and death of the Marquess of Hertford had sparked enough lurid gossip to stamp him as a model for Coningsby's grandfather, Lord Monmouth.22 Thackeray would later use him for Lord Steyne, Becky Sharp's seducer in Vanity Fair. Part of Monmouth's characterization, however, is drawn from Strangford - the old-style Tory aristocrat who insists his heir enter politics under party orders and who contemptuously dismisses Young England ideals as trivial nonsense. Even Monmouth's womanizing lifestyle reflects Strangford, by now in a liaison that produced several illegitimate children. He evidently did not enjoy the depiction as he had that of Baron Fleming in Contarini Fleming; from this point his relationship with Disraeli grew more hostile. Then there was the portrait of his friend Croker as Monmouth's toady Rigby, so acidly drawn that GSS's old Eton tutor, William Cookesley, commented: 'I should think Croker must commit suicide.'23 Speculation vacillated about Edith Millbank, for some time wrongly identified as a Miss McTavish, an American butterfly currently flitting about London and Paris. Mr Millbank, Edith's father, was generally equated with John Walter senior, though his manufacturing empire recalls Henry Ashworth's cotton factory that GSS visited in 1841. Sidonia, the enigmatic, multi-talented Jewish magnate, has resemblances to Disraeli's friend, the fabulously wealthy Lionel Rothschild, but readers quickly recognized a wishful portrait of Disraeli himself. Initially, there was some puzzlement about Coningsby. Disraeli so airbrushed his hero that one wag suggested his original must be Lord Blandford. Some decided a young man so scrupulously upright must be based on Lyttelton, who, like Coningsby, married the sister of his best friend (Gladstone) but who was a lifelong Whig. The biographical facts, however, match no one but GSS. Part of the problem with Coningsby as character is the sentimental style Disraeli adopts for him, in distinct contrast to the tough decisive prose of the political passages. The virtuous prig depicted by Disraeli matches the colourless portrait of GSS from 1837, but GSS had changed in those seven years. Except in Harry's refusal to enter Parliament under his grandfather's control, his passivity reflects none of the volatility and aggression that now typified GSS's public appearances. Nor does Harry's hopeless fidelity to Edith have any

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equivalent in GSS's recent escapades, well known to London society. The fictional disguise, however, was soon penetrated, and both original and author dined out for months on their fame.24 GSS was now invited into circles that pleased Strangford and that included such social pillars as the aptly named Baring Wall, Charles Greville, clerk of the Privy Council, and Sydney Smith, journalist and wit.25 Whether his antipathy to elaborate social occasions allowed him to tolerate the formal dinners and refined company is another question; his surviving letters to Disraeli dodge as many invitations as they accept. He showed much more enthusiasm about rowdy nights like the one with Disraeli and Ferrand when, tipsily traversing Piccadilly in the small hours, they chanced on Moore and spontaneously broke into noisy applause. 'How fine our cheer of Moore was,' GSS crowed, 'Young England & ould Ireland,' adding on a less elevated note, 'for which last I have lost all sympathy since I lost 5£ to that infernal Serjeant.'26 Being known as the hero of a best-seller was an even headier experience than love. Mile Stackelberg was forgotten in the delights of fame and the relationship with Disraeli, which was close to love at this point. Coningsby's adulation of Sidonia - "You seem to me a hero"' - encapsulates GSS's feelings, while the kind of spell he cast over Disraeli appears not only in Coningsby, but in the infatuation between Tancred and Fakredeen: 'As we must not compare Tancred and Fakredeen to Damon and Pythias, and as we cannot easily find in Pall Mall or Park Lane a parallel more modish, we must be content to say, that youth, sympathy, and occasion combined to create between them that intimacy which each was prompt to recognise as one of the principal sources of his happiness.'27 In this kind of euphoria anything seemed possible - political success, authorship, fulfilment of 'that desire for personal glory.' Looking back, GSS's sister-in-law thought all this adulation premature and unhealthy; the identification with Coningsby was 'one of his worst misfortunes ... the idealised and glorified picture supposed to be there painted by his friend and master was very unwholesome to a mind that required bracing rather than humouring and panegyrising.'28 In fact, Disraeli seems to have been well aware that 'Damn braces, Bless relaxes.' To counterbalance the eulogistic portrayal of his hero, the famous last paragraph of Coningsby explicitly warns that talent, charisma, and even ideals are not enough in themselves without insight and unwavering commitment. 'Will their courage exhaust itself in the struggle, their enthusiasm evaporate before hollow-hearted ridicule, their generous impulses yield with a vulgar catastrophe to the tawdry temptations of a

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low ambition? Will their skilled intelligence subside into being the adroit tool of a corrupt party?' Only time would tell. For the moment, GSS's rise seemed confirmed by his literary success. In addition to his journalism, he had a publisher for Historic Fancies. T have gone to Colbourne [sic],' he told Disraeli, 'and told him byway of a recommendation, "that I belonged to your school.'"29 Colburn read the manuscript and cautiously agreed: GSS's contract stipulated that he pay the difference if sales did not cover costs. The document is dated 3 July (three days before publication), but he had been struggling with proofs since the end of May, complicated by the typesetters' misreading of his atrocious handwriting. Here too, he depended on Disraeli, the experienced author. 'I have just got from Colburn for you - the first part. The first fifty pages are very incorrect, as I have had a revise since, & these are proofs, which I never saw or corrected. I will send you others, as I go on as I pant for your counsels & advice.'30 Colburn, banking on sensation, was unlikely to copy Lockhart and cut passages that might give political offence. Quite the reverse. With Colburn's agreement, GSS enlarged the essays on the French Revolution at the proof stage, to drive home his point that beneath the portraits his fancy created of France in the 1790s - when political turmoil brought about the fall of a rotten social system lay important historical parallels with Britain in the 1840s. T shall come to see you,' he told Disraeli, 'if I am unequal to Robespierre - to which I am settling. I have seen Colburn & the printer. If you have any proofs of mine let me have 'em. I shall have 20 more in the morrow.' In return, he did literary favours for Disraeli. As well as supplying some unidentified material for Cochrane's use, 'I shall be delighted to meet your Critic dear Dis ... D-n. honorarium. — it is the very book I would do for love.'31 This sounds like reviewing, perhaps even (in the incestuous way of Victorian publishing) of Coningsby. The review in the actual Critic is too disparaging to be by GSS; that in the New Monthly, however, is more favourable and echoes GSS in seeing the novel as 'the confession of Faith of Young England ... the greatest work Mr. D'Israeli has produced.'32 The most tempting possibility, however, would be a probability if the dating were firmer: GSS's willingness to 'do' a book is in the same undated letter as his mention of 'Robespierre,' one of the last essays in Historic Fancies. In mid-May, The Times, although it had promised to support Coningsby, published two nondescript reviews; after Disraeli protested strongly, the editor, John Delane, threw in another writer for a further three, markedly more enthusiastic.33 If GSS was the substitute, it would not be the first or last time he wrote for Disraeli's benefit.

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On the crest of his new fame, GSS was increasingly prolific. In the July New Monthly he published a mildly comic satire on marital jealousy entitled The Perfidious Engineer: A Tale of the Iron Age.' Again it was highly topical. The full boom of the railway age in Britain began in 1844, along with the associated rise of the 'railway kings,' promoters like George Hudson and engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunei. GSS's engineer is a 'railway-Brummell,' a cut-price D'Orsay whose passion for opulent dress is matched only by his passion for steam-engines. Here again, 'things are not what they seem.' The infidelity imagined by the engineer's neglected wife, Louisa, turns out to be his obsessive work on a new engine, 'Adelaide.' GSS's descent into middle-class manners, however, is not comfortable; he may be imitating Thackeray or popular Punch series like Douglas Jerrold's 'Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures',' but the result is flat and unconvincing.34 His August contribution, however, is much more successful. 'Le Peuple Souriquois' took its odd title from the contemporary craze for North American Indians, several groups of which had recently visited and entertained London, including performances for the Queen. GSS probably knew of Mary Anne's breakfast party plans for 16 August, when a number of 'loway' Indians would appear for her guests' pleasure at Grosvenor Gate. He had also adopted Indian metaphors in discussing political plans with Disraeli: 'Cannot we tomahawk & scalp, & direct all sorts of annoyances & indecencies - with a war-whoop so novel and so aboriginally wild?'35 His latest article was an amiably reductive satire on those chapters in Coningsby in which Disraeli had celebrated the achievements of the Jews. The people GSS's parody celebrates, however, are neither Indians nor Jews but another persecuted race - mice. Mice too are of ancient origin. They have experienced diasporas, driven out of Rome by the 'Catiline conspiracy' and scattering across Europe and England, 'chiefly in Gloucestershire and Cheshire.' Mice infiltrate the Church (avoiding 'La Trappe') but, like Jews, they cannot sit in Parliament, which is controlled by rats. Their generals' dispatches have, like Wellington's, been edited by Colonel Gurwood. The list of illustrious mice includes scholars, philosophers, and even Shakespeare himself, the Singing Mouse of his day. In an interesting subtext, the lowly mice even threaten the gods on Olympus. In the light of later developments, it is significant that, at the peak of Coningsby's popularity and the most intense period of his relationship with Disraeli, the disciple was confident enough to poke fun at his mentor - a foretaste of his later journalism.36 What is noticeable about GSS's writing in 1844 is his gradual move

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towards narrative fiction. His last three pieces, seventeen chapters of a story called 'Social Piracy,' have the makings of a novel.37 They may have been taken from the 'very amusing novel' he began at Fontainebleau in 1843. Again, there are clear affinities with Thackeray. 'Social Piracy,' three years before Vanity Fair, is an illustration of 'how to live well on nothing a year.' Mrs Hawke, predator on other people's reluctant hospitality, is a materfamilias Becky Sharp, while the timid Mr Hawke's job with the shady insurance company comes (diamond and all) from The Great Hoggarty Diamond, serialized in Eraser's three years before. GSS intended other parallels, though suspecting that New Monthly readers 'will never make head or tail of the Devil-Scapine of my Balzacian and Rabelaisian laugh.'38 In GSS's story, Joe Chatterley, instigator of the Hawkes's comeuppance, is, like Moliere's Scapin (or GSS himself), a mischief maker in an increasingly hectic farce involving a comic policeman, an abortive duel, and much racing in and out of doors.39 GSS may have been too pessimistic. New Monthly readers might not have perceived these esoteric allusions, but the very detailed description of Mrs Hawke ('the Gipsy') seems to imply a recognition factor: 'not above the middle height, but looking taller than she actually was, in consequence of her stately and commanding carriage ... Her complexion was Egyptian, almost Creole; her hair was black, her nose slightly aquiline; her lips small and compressed; her eyes bright, dark, piercing, busy, practical.' They would certainly appreciate the pace of the comedy and would grasp the point of a satire that starts with an epigraph from Byron's romantic Corsair and immediately descends to the Hawkes as freebooters of London society. Meanwhile, Colburn was diligently advertising Historic Fancies, though not as lavishly as Coningsby. He plugged GSS's formal titles, 'the Honourable George Sydney Smythe, M.P.,' possibly to fit with his recent publication of Burke's History of the Landed Gentry. (Colburn dearly loved a lord, or a reasonable facsimile.) Shrewdly, he ran the first advertisement in tandem with a huge one for the second edition of Coningsby, and later on in lists where GSS's book appeared second after Disraeli's.40 One of GSS's first copies went to Manners: T ought to apologise for dedicating it to you; I foresee the elements of so much abuse to be provoked by it.' He was fearful of reviewers'jibes like those at Manners's England's Trust, with its notorious lines: 'Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, / But leave us still our old nobility!' The other went, not to Disraeli (who hardly needed one) but to placate Mary Anne, 'in the certainty that I shall find an indulgent reader; and in the hope that I may now, and ever more call myself, dear Mrs. Disraeli, Your attached friend.'41 The reviews

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were prompt. The Times gave it an extremely warm pre-publication reception; the Post praised the strength of personal feeling it revealed, 'the outpouring of a youthful, brave, affectionate spirit,' and there was a satisfying amount of general interest and critical praise.42 Reading Historic Fancies now, after 150 years, is like trying to identify the targets of GSS's topical satires. Here and there, a contemporary reviewer spotted his point, that his examples from past history were intended as parallels or contrasts with the contemporary political and social scenes, but for twenty-first-century readers, their oblique presentations, and in some cases, inappropriate verse forms, render them impossibly opaque. It is fairly easy to see in 'The Earl's Rising' (about the Jacobite rebellion of 1715) or The Catholic Cavalier' (about Charles Fs royalist supporters) GSS's belief in hereditary monarchy and admiration for principle in the face of punitive regimes. 'King James IF dramatizes the usurpation of power from the rightful holder. 'The Merchants of Old England,' celebrating British mercantile achievement, appropriately rollicks along in Kiplingesque fashion, yet in the 'Mary Stuart' ballad, set on the eve of her execution by her rival Elizabeth, the pathos is vitiated by the jigging 'Queen of the May' metre. As one reviewer pointed out, GSS had a 'fatal facility of versifying' that resulted in merely 'pretty' sonnets, like the one to Wilhelmina Stanhope, and thumping iambic heptameters for poems like 'The Aristocracy of France,' where argument calls for metric smoothness.43 As a poet, he never progressed much beyond imitation ballad. His prose, however, is much more effective - energetic and straightforward. The Times praised his style as 'sparkling and always exact.' The New Monthly's reviewer (so very perceptive he had to be another Young Englander, maybe Cochrane) outlined GSS's approach of presenting political opinions in a 'fanciful and attractive' dress. 'By throwing upon other countries and other times the action of his proverbs, he is enabled to express their full significance freely, without offending the prejudices or awakening the bigotry of party.'44 GSS made this quite clear in a joke to Disraeli about his proofs of one sketch, 'A Cabinet Dinner in the Last Century': 'What you have got - is very early, & bad - and ends with "a Damn" for Sir Robert - not uncharacteristic of ones existence hitherto.'45 The 'Damn' occurs at the bottom of page 112 and the 'Sir Robert' is Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole from the eighteenth century, but GSS is intentionally highlighting ministerial topics that had also been discussed by Sir Robert Peel's government in recent sessions: 'Cannot you fancy you hear a confused murmur of voices, through

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which, ever and anon, you catch the words, "Right of Search," "Peace," "War," "Spain," "the Regent," "Balance of Power," and "Sir Robert?"' The self-serving obsequiousness of the Cabinet ministers, flattering and jockeying for place in luxurious surroundings, directly contrasts with another scene, where, like two Lears exposed to the elements, Dr Johnson and Richard Savage pursue the greater topics of truth and goodness.46 Between slippery politicians and literary intellectuals, there is no question where GSS's sympathies lay. An even more effective piece is an attractive dramatization (its verse a distinct improvement on Disraeli's Alarcos) still noticed by historians today. In 'An Opposition Scene in the Last Century,' Lord Bolingbroke (a statesman with whom GSS closely identified), although broken by Walpole, yet forecasts the fall of political oligarchy in Britain: 'There shall come a day, when a yet greater, / The Greatest Class of all, shall know its strength: / And the poor trampled people rise at last.'47 In this piece, GSS drew heavily on his own aspirations, and on Disraeli too. Some lines given to Bolingbroke are directly from GSS's Cambridge days: 'That I - I - ... should be remembered / As one who could do all things but succeed'; T so yearn for action.' Others reflect Disraeli's speaking style, 'Polite and grave in his atrocities, / And with a circumstantial savageness.'48 When GSS says of Bolingbroke, 'His manhood had been one unchequered series of disappointments. His old age was made up of schemes and regrets,' did he write the passage before or after Sidonia's similar epigram in Coningsby, "Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret'"?49 What struck contemporary reviewers most, however, was the series of sketches dealing with leaders of the French Revolution: Robespierre, Mirabeau, Danton, St Just, and others. Thackeray, reviewing the book in the Morning Chronicle, particularly praised these portraits.50 A writer for Eraser's thought they exemplified GSS's personality, 'at once daring, original and highly cultivated ... He is not afraid to do justice even to criminals.'51 Once again, GSS's focus was topical. The French Revolution, fifty years in the past (about the same as World War II from us), still resonated in British minds, particularly with the continuing threat the Chartists represented. Several of the poems in Historic Fancies are distinctly inflammatory. 'The Jacobin of Paris,' which introduces the French Revolution essays, exults as much as Faber did in bloody revenge on oppressors: 'No - By Great Heaven, we have not riven - the mighty chains of old, /...To starve upon their Corn Laws, but to live upon their

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rules.' The application to modern times was obvious. One Chartist, Gerald Massey, in fact appropriated the poem and became famous for reciting it at Chartist meetings.52 'Armand Carrel' extols another rebel, the French journalist who fought on the Paris barricades in the 1830 revolution and died in a duel with Emile Girardin. GSS's emphasis, however, here and in the violent early scenes of Angela Pisani, is on the consequences of society's obliviousness to unrest; the other face of Young England's focus on aristocratic responsibility is the brutal hostility its absence breeds in the oppressed. He had studied the Revolution intently, absorbed in Professor Smyth's lectures at Cambridge, 'wrapped up' in Carlyle's French Revolution (published only seven years before), studying Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution from Lyttelton's gift. One reviewer accused him of borrowing wholesale from Thiers's massive Histoire de la Revolution Franfaise, but he had studied all the French historians - Lamartine, Louis Blanc, Dumont - and combined them with his own analysis to make what is still an impressive array of historical portraits: Robespierre's frantic leaps to the rostrum to avoid being condemned, the 'melancholy fire' in the eyes of St Just, the multi-talented Mirabeau's descent into viciousness, in a sentence that prefigures GSS's own later career: 'what more extraordinary than a person so admirable for his talents, and so contemptible for his conduct - professing in his writings principles so excellent, and in all the offices of public and private life putting into practice those which are so detestable.'53 With hindsight too, there is a personal poignancy in his description of the death of a young French general, Lazare Hoche, at twenty-nine. 'In the prime of youth, vigour, beauty, and talents, Hoche was suddenly taken ill. A dry, racking cough, a hectic flush, a constant perspiration - all the signs of a consumption ... he had always seen his career interrupted by some unexpected accident.'54 GSS realized that his book was no best-seller (though there was a second edition) but, like his character Lionel Averanche's first book in Angela Pisani, it had a fair amount of general success, despite (or because of) its autobiographical content and its political agenda. There was 'a freshness and earnestness about it, a truth which won upon the generous and gentle judging,' and GSS too was buoyed up that, despite having 'bared secrets and exposed conscience,' especially in the pieces from his relationship with Faber, he had not met with ridicule or contempt.55 With first Coningsby and now Historic Fancies, he had for once outshone Manners. Unfortunately, none of this media success was likely to pay his

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debts, let alone fund any kind of a war chest for Young England in the next session. Disraeli, experienced in managing debt, negotiated bridge financing for him with a tradesman, a Jewish shoemaker, through an insurance policy guaranteed by Disraeli. A much more ambitious plan, however, was being hatched. The man who was Coningsby must marry.

14 1844: The Pursuit of Psyche

What would they not give for our correspondence? GSS to Disraeli, 20 September 1844

All the media and social attention had an unexpected side effect. Coningsby, Disraeli observed, was 'wonderfully popular with the ladies,' and GSS's own book (thanks to those 'pretty' sonnets) further attracted women smitten with his fictional counterpart. In Angela Pisani, Averanche's first book has a similar effect on the 'butterflies and moths who flutter towards flash and ephemeral flames.'1 Like Averanche, GSS received numerous billets doux (which he used to light his cigars), but the fan mail suggested to Disraeli that Strangford's hopes for GSS's marriage might be feasible after all. Obviously, GSS was no longer a 'detrimental' but a romantic figure, a catch. Why not then make life imitate art? The model for Coningsby must fulfil the plot and marry money. Brimming with confidence in himself and his mentor, GSS agreed to the very plan he had fought for years. 'Although,' he wrote to Strangford, 'the life of a clever adventurer without a sou is less distasteful than the hellish bondage of English matrimony, I will, if we can possibly keep the ball rolling some time longer, choose the latter.' Disraeli's later version (obscuring his own role) portrays GSS as brash enthusiast. 'When he had made up his mind to marry an heiress, [he] gave his instructions to all the ladies who were, & who had been, in love with him, to work for his benefit. "Family" he used to say "I don't care the least for: would rather like to marry into a rich, vulgar family. Madness, no objection. As for scrofula, why should I care for it more than a King? All this ought to be a great pull in my favour."'2 Though they kept their plans secret to the point of using code names, the reference to scrofula is the giveaway. Their target

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suffered from a similar skin condition, but she was the wealthiest woman in England. Angela Burdett Coutts was a millionairess in her own right. Disraeli and GSS had both known her father, Radical MP for Westminster, but, more to the point, her grandfather had been Thomas Coutts, head of the royal banking firm, Coutts and Company (who had given Strangford such trouble over the Exchequer Bills fraud). In 1837, at the age of twenty-three, she inherited his entire estate, including houses, property, and his half-share in the bank. The fortune was estimated at £1,800,000 (around £100 million in modern money), so far beyond average comprehension that one newspaper explained it as a line of gold sovereigns stretching for twenty-four miles. The background of this huge inheritance was unconventional enough to suggest success for someone like GSS. When Thomas Coutts had died in 1822, he had left everything to his second wife, Harriott, a former actress and the original for 'Mrs Millions' in Disraeli's Vivian Grey. Stout, uncultured, eccentric, something of a figure of fun to London society, she knew her own worth. Five years after Thomas's death, she remarried, to the 9th Duke of St Albans. He was half her age and worlds above her in social status, but their bargain worked: his title and position in return for her money.3 She spent the next ten years happily enjoying all three and gently impressing her teenaged step-granddaughter, Angela, into becoming her companion and eventual heiress. Outwardly, Angela was as Disraeli described her, 'a very quiet and unpretending person,' but she was both resolute and independent.4 Though unmarried, and conspicuously unattached when Harriott died, she left her parents' protection and set up her own establishment in her grandfather's house in Stratton Street, off Piccadilly, chaperoned by her former governess, Hannah Meredith. Here she was continually harassed by suitors, sane and insane. The most notorious, Richard Dunn, stalked her for eighteen years, in spite of court cases and restraining orders. For the hopeful men-about-town who regularly came to propose, she and Hannah evolved an efficient system: ten minutes maximum audience, a gentle refusal, before Hannah appeared and firmly ushered them out. In GSS's circle, Disraeli himself had contemplated courting her; so had Louis Napoleon (future Napoleon III of France), Gladstone, and Manners. Milnes, Walpole, and Claud Hamilton had actually tried their luck. GSS, who had applauded Walpole's nerve, was enough, in Hannah's confidence to be told of these failures.5 By 1844, Angela had grown wary, channelling her energies into charity

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projects with Dickens and an emotional fixation on the seventy-five-yearold Duke of Wellington. She was not beautiful, and under stress her skin broke out into rosacea, the red rash that prompted gossip of scrofula. Still, she was intelligent, well read, and her social conscience as well as her millions would fit the Young England agenda. She and GSS often met, despite their shared dislike of ballrooms and salons, but the problem was to find a means of proposing. Her London life, closely guarded by friends and relatives, had become even more secluded since January, when, after losing both parents within eleven days, she had been devastated to discover that her father had an illegitimate daughter. She had spent the spring recovering from these shocks in Brighton, and then Clifton, home of a close friend, Annie Pulleine, daughter of a Courts partner, Edward Marjoribanks.6 Disraeli and GSS originally planned to lay siege to her in Brighton or London. In the hope that Historic Fancies would have the same effect as on his other female readers, GSS sent an inscribed copy to Stratton Street, along with new poems addressed to her and carefully back-dated to 1842, as if evidence of his long-standing attachment - 'the idea of a "passion malheureuse."' However, she was not there. At the end of June, she had departed to recoup her health in the spas of Germany and Switzerland, accompanied by Hannah and her personal physician, Hannah's fiance, Dr William Brown. Following her to Europe, Disraeli decreed, was his protege's chance. GSS would rather have gone to France than back to Switzerland, such a bore in 1842. 'Certainly,' he wrote later, 'if I had thought of my own pleasure only I should not have stayed three weeks in the most infernal city [Geneva] I know, Brighton not excepted, but as matters stood it was the best speculation open to me.'7 Typically, he procrastinated. What with publishing Historic Fancies and earning funds with three more New Monthly pieces, it was August before he set out after her, but on the 2nd, the day of Thackeray's review of Historic Fancies, he sailed from Dover with his valet, George Squire, for Brussels and Germany. Squire, he liked to say, was a willing Leporello to his own consumptive Don Juan. 'Psyche,' or 'Fedora,' or 'the Pisani,' his various code names for Angela, was bound for Wiesbaden, a spa on the Rhine. If she was Psyche, he must be Eros and Don Juan both. 'Thither,' he wrote in a mixture of the grandiose and the bathetic, 'tends my love chase - to terminate ... at some such spa, in Wirtemburg [sic] on the edge of the Black Forest.' His letters to Disraeli describing his Quixotic adventures are some of the most entertaining he wrote, graphic illustrations of the contradic-

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tions in him: dryly witty and sloppily sentimental, pretentious and selfdeflating, chivalrous and coarse, always interesting. They were for him a vital 'semblance of intercommunication,' an umbilical cord to the organizing intelligence through which he drew sustenance as his resolve wavered. When he arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle, the mere act of writing was 'the first pleasure I have had on my journey - almost as dear as being in the little blue room, or over a cutlet and peeled potato with Madame and yourself.' It had been a rough crossing that 'for scenes of sickness, and disgust beat "the Lisbon packet" hollow,' but he himself stayed well: 'it must have been a sense of the heroic which supported me, so if I have gained nothing else by my fantasies - I am at any rate thus far beholden to them.' On the way, he had been reading Balzac's David Sechard, his sole consolation in Disraeli's absence, and revelling in Balzacian opinions that matched his own preference for literature over politics: '"These four or five hundred legislators France enjoys mustbe taught that Literature is above them."' He especially liked 'the sort of free impudence which characterizes Balzac.' Alone at the inn, except for his valet, he was very conscious of his dependence on Disraeli: 'You are like the Good Genie one reads of in your own Oriental tales - and I am very like some of their madder heroes. My imagination preys on itself as I go on, and I am as nervous as if I were making love in a room full of Dowagers. I must restore myself by thought of the quest of old.'8 From Frankfort he expanded these 'lecheries of self-examination,' confidences he could reveal to Disraeli alone; Mary Anne 'must not (for the love of my poor shred of a character) see a line of this! ... I write it to you as to a second self, because I belong even more to you, somehow or other, than I do - to George Sydney Smythe.' The opportunity to expose himself was a divesting of inhibition, 'the last stage of debauchery, a moral satiriasis; the same feeling which flings whores into devotion, and Louis XIVs into the arms of Maintenons.' What he had to report, however, was the first dragon in his heroic path - in fact, three. Boarding the Rhine steamer at Cologne, he met a female acquaintance, tantalizingly identified only as 'Cochranes Green Gage,' whose 'desperate advances' over dinner at Coblentz GSS claimed he had virtuously repelled. One sentence in this letter suggests the kind of confidences Disraeli too had made. T was,' GSS wrote, 'even more inexorably Joseph, than you ever were with the Osborne,' a reference to a hitherto unsuspected incident involving Catherine Osborne, shortly to become the wife of Disraeli's and GSS's parliamentary colleague Ralph Bernal. Cologne safely left behind, he was dismayed at Bonn to see another passenger,

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none other than Angela's friend Annie Pulleine, who was actually travelling to join her at Wildbad, near Baden. 'Is not this the very devil?' he complained.9 Annie was fiercely defensive of Angela. She and her father had rushed to Harrogate in 1838 to protect her from Richard Dunn's importunities, and she knew a suitor when she saw one. GSS panicked, burbled inanities to her about a writing holiday, and abandoned going to Wildbad: 'after my speech to the Pulleyn[,] it would have been too Dunn-like!' Instead, after she disembarked, he stayed on the steamer and allowed himself to be distracted.10 Disraeli, in the thick of constituency affairs at Shrewsbury, was annoyed. 'I have hardly had time,' he told Mary Anne, 'to accurately decypher Smythe, this time particularly illegible, but he has NOT seen Psyche, & seems to have made a complete failure. All from meeting that Mrs. Pullen, & not having readiness of mind to say he was going on to Wildbad ... Now he is going after her to Geneva; but I see no hope of anything but harum scarum results - all the consequences of the first error.'11 By that time, Disraeli knew why GSS was procrastinating. On the deck of the Rhine steamer he had met 'oh such a Frenchwoman!' Unfortunately she was with her mother, but GSS was enchanted: 'Long eyelashes, the girl - fringing eyes, like Calypso's in witchery - teeth like pearls - the tone of a Siren.' Not only was she beautiful, he was further captivated to find that she was a fluent linguist: 'All of a sudden, she spoke English - without an accent - a German newspaper was on her knee ... she spoke Latin - Greek. She rallied Lord Clarendon in Spanish. Where was this to end?' She was, GSS discovered, a professional pianist and singer, on her way to engagements at Ems and Spa, and when she turned out to be also witty and something of an actress, he was lost. 'I could not help myself. I got out where she did ... She positively fenced at a soldier, the right step - attitude - everything - en garde - and he dropped his musquet for laughing.' He followed her to Frankfort, where 'alas - I could not sleep with her!' At Homburg, he noted, there were rooms available next to hers, 'which would just suit me.' 'But - am I not an ass, idiot, fool, nidering? I have her print, her glove, and yet have not even kissed her. This was all very well for sixteen, you will say, but for six and twenty!' He knew he was shirking his real purpose, and he wallowed in it. 'What are we Poets after all / But men whom no one knows? Men, - no[,] children, victims [,] dupes, the vilest of the Creation, with a soubresaut [somersault], every now and then, which chucks us into heroism.'12 His abominable handwriting, however, misled Disraeli; he had caught

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up with 'Psyche.' From Homburg, he steeled himself to go on to Baden, where, in the small English community, he manoeuvred an ostensibly casual meeting with 'the Pisani' and actually took a stroll with her.13 She was about to leave for Switzerland, but, because he had no word from Disraeli and Annie Pulleine's presence unnerved him, he got cold feet and fled back to the pleasures of the Rhine. By Spa, a week later, his quest had progressed no further, though in his paranoia about secrecy he was now adopting code names for both his pianist, as 'Delphine,' and himself, as plain 'George Sydney - the name by which she knows me.' Ecstatically he recounted to Disraeli how he had allowed himself to be sidetracked into 'days of Heaven,' now followed by the nights after her concerts. He had 'never been so happy.' 'The only person by whom I have yet been found out - is Douro, at Ems, but he fell in love with her himself, and although he was even on the steamer, he never could get into her room, owing to my Esper Georges precautions. And, he dare not shew me up, or I would do the same, to his wifeV Together Delphine and GSS wrote Latin verses 'on the Rhine, & on herself; and she tries to teach me German, & improves my French, & gives me hints for "Angela Pisani", of which I have written two wee chapters.'14 We can guess which chapters they were: Book I, chapters 6 and 7, introduce the actress Illyrine de la Val, wondrous eyelashes and all, and her redoubtable mother. Lionel, of course, is besotted with Illyrine, but a minor character, also an actress, is named Delphine.15 By Mannheim, however, the idyll had to give way to Delphine's musical engagements, while GSS commemorated their parting in the inevitable ballad: 'Farewell dearest dream / From the first could I deem / That thou wert no more to me[.] / Yet of life's chequered range / There are years I would change / For the days that I lived with thee.'16 The ten days' delay effectively thwarted his courtship of Angela. If he had heard from Disraeli, perhaps he might have gone on to Geneva more promptly, but a letter went astray and the silence unnerved him. T have done nothing - thought of nothing - dreamed of nothing - so joyous has been my fortnights folly.' (Disraeli's reaction to this announcement has not survived.) When he did hear, he had reached Geneva, but it was already September. The letter invigorated him - T must begin anew' - and alarmed him at the same time, since it told him that one of his highly confidential letters, about meeting Angela at Baden, had never reached Disraeli. T shall be in despair - for it gives a particular description of a walk with the Pisani, and is full of those flippancies - the Aristophanic mask beneath which we disguise our

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feelings - but which the vulgar believe to be our genuine and natural feelings.' Might the loss lead to discovery? 'If you have it not, and it is in any blackguards hands - he has only to send it in a blank cover to her, and he ruins me, without compromising himself.' His own report was dismal. He had missed Angela at Geneva by a day, an irrecoverable opportunity, even though he proposed to follow her to her next destination, Paris. 'In one word,' he groused, comparing himself to Hannibal, 'I have had my Capua, and lost my Rome! I may - however find it in Paris. Once - in conversation with her - I shall be able to talk over the same scenes - and give her to feel that I have followed only for her.'17 There was another potential complication - newspaper reports that Mile Stackelberg and her mother were visiting England. Not that he still pined: 'What luck that I was not in England,' he wrote breezily to Strangford, who was once more dumbfounded: 'Did you ever know any thing like this? After all his Paris madness about the girl - to cool down in this way, from the boiling point to zero.'18 GSS, however, imagined a fresh threat to the secrecy of his current 'love chase.' 'I see my Russian inamorata has been to Brighton, & thence - with Nesselrode on a visit to Arundel. This is unlucky: (an there has been any talk) for the Duchess [of Norfolk] is the Pisanis great friend and Chaperon!' Nevertheless, the renewed contact with Disraeli, 'Dear Cid and Captain,' had primed him again for the hunt. 'Va done pour Paris!'19 There was no sign of Angela on the road, or for three days after he arrived in Paris. To dodge acquaintances he imagined might smell the plot, he filled his time with more Balzac - Ursule Mirouet and once more the book that he decided mirrored his own life, La Peau de Chagrin. In the hero, Raphael, he recognized the conflicts in his own nature, between dissipation and control, hope and despair, free will and fate. In the shrinking ass's skin, he saw a frightening symbol of the way in which the family disease, consumption, always threatened to shorten his life. He was now twenty-six. His mother had died at thirty-nine. Did he have only thirteen more years? Dispiritedly, he began to refer to Angela (who knew nothing of his hopes) as Balzac's Fedora, the wealthy socialite, 'woman without a heart,' whose demands use up Raphael's meagre resources and give nothing in return: T had in the three days studied & mastered the character.' When, escorted by Hannah, Annie, and Dr Brown, she finally arrived at his hotel, the Bristol, he again delayed, covering his irresolution with semi-coherent excuses: 'Known at the hotel &c Sec. I cannot lay before the windows &c.' Nor did he want to be found dawdling about obvious meeting places: T have not the courage to

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saunter into Louvre, or Invalides, or Madeleine - because - Duenna & P[ullei]n must have seen through it— I an habitue of Paris sight seeing!' It was not till five days later that he managed an encounter, and then he over-interpreted everything: 'we bowed, 8c I saw by her surprise - by that indescribable language - which you or I cannot fail to read, that she was greatly astonished to see me ... in her look, there was that sort of interest that flatters, piques, excites, tenses, and encourages.' Too late again, however. She was off to Rouen to look at Norman cathedrals, leaving him kicking his heels until she returned. 'This is rather a fiasco... Dn it!'20 In this mood, he was ready to gallop off on any distraction, and of course found one, 'an adventure,' he claimed (blowing it up beyond proportion), 'which beats anything I ever even read, & would, I suspect, surprise even you, with your vile estimate of mans nature in general, & English in particular.' The 'adventure' was in fact a rather pathetic piece of Coningsby worship. Catherine Maynard, daughter of Viscount Maynard, somehow found out where GSS was and engineered an elaborate assignation near his hotel. In marked contrast to Delphine, she seems to have been totally unchaperoned, except for the maid who acted as gobetween.21 Lovelorn in the Place Vendome, confessing '"Coningsby" fascinate[d] her,' she burst into tears when he did not propose another meeting: '"Am I never then to see you again?"' The appeal was too much. 'Well, pardon me, but I could not help - to see where the devil this would lead.' Not to Angela, obviously, but, intrigued ('Is she with child? Has she got into a scrape?') and flattered, to the theatre, a day's excursion, and yet another rendezvous. Non-intellectual, passive, the complete opposite of the multi-talented Delphine, she was not his type at all and rather baffled him. 'She offers to go back with me; she offers to go to Egypt with me; I changed to Spain - she said yes ... She is like a baby, I say "do this["], and she does it. - Take my arm & she takes it - Sit down here, and she sits down there! - There is no Life, no dash, no self, no will, nothing by heaven - in her of individualism!' He was perfectly willing to toy with her, but she struck no sexual spark: T like the perfume of her long hair, and kiss it - and am satisfied. She is like marble herselfand feel she ever so strongly does not shew it - and that - I am too knocked up, and blase to like. Even - if I travel homeward with her, I shall be as chaste as Scipio - and be virtuous - partly out of funk, and partly out of- an absence of the magnetism necessary to my exhausted & therefore fastidious passions.'22 'Do not be afraid,' he blithely assured Disraeli, 'of my getting into a

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row, or letting this interfere with Fedora!' The trysts with Catherine would be dovetailed with Angela's timetable: 'I fix my meeting with the Runaway at Fedoras dinner hour.' But a man who wants excuses will soon find one. GSS had met Angela's physician, Dr Brown, at Baden and, unaware that he was Hannah's fiance, instantly disliked him, 'scarcely middle-aged - fine eyes - polite & smooth as Blifil.' After Rouen, GSS learned from George Squire's snooping that they had gone on to Dieppe, a decayed coastal resort best known to the English as a handy foreign site for duels and clandestine affairs. Brown was actually leaving Dieppe for Brighton, but GSS, his mind obsessed with secrets and sex, leapt to the startling conclusion that Angela and her doctor had slipped away on an illicit assignation. Her footman seemed to confirm his suspicions. 'At Wildbad, here, wherever she has been the Dr. has had a bed room next hers in case she should be ill in the night. My servant said broadly "Does he have her? ["] - And as broadly the fellow answered "Upon my soul... I believe he does."'23 Considering his own record, GSS's reaction was a blatant outburst of double standards. He perpetrated a sanctimonious ballad mourning the loss of illusion: 'O it is hard when man believes / With a faith that will not die / To be told your Ladye love deceives / And ah her truth's a lie.'24 To Disraeli, he burst out angrily: 'By heaven! I could go naked as in the Plague time, and wail & shout, & weep, for the wickedness of our corrupt Generation. Talk of us - the men of imagination - brand us, as idiots do - as having no principle. Match me the secret sins, the hellish hypocrisy, the gnawing guilt, which is at the very heart of a society, where all seems so fair and pure!' Angela now seemed no better than Catherine Maynard, whom he had dubbed 'Lindabrides' originally a character in one of Don Quixote's books but now a synonym for a prostitute. 'I have seen two women - for whose virtue there is not a man in England who would not pledge his life & honour. And lo whether their persons have been debauched or not - what can be so vicious - so Venetian - so Casa Novaish, - as their stories ... Dieppe Dieppe - Dieppe - of all places. Does it not look like the ravening lust of a maidenhead lost too late?' This, he grandly decided, was no fit object for a knightly quest and he was abandoning it. ' Create something new,' he demanded of Disraeli, 'for me to love, and to trust, and to have faith in.'25 If Disraeli continued amazingly patient, it was because he needed GSS. He and Manners had been invited by a group of manufacturers and artisans to what amounted to a Young England symposium, the October Soiree of their cultural club, the Manchester Athenaeum. 'What am I to

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do for Manchester,' GSS demanded from Paris. 'I have not a thought - a segment of a thought - in me. What [with] the Rhine, Fedora, and this poor Perdita, I will be d-d if I shall not make another fiasco.' Initially, neither Strangford nor Rutland would allow his son to take part. The venue and the choice of chairman sounded far too Radical for them; they distrusted Disraeli and, like the King of Hanover, could not understand 'what is meant by attempting to turn mechanics into poets and philosophers' and making 'the lower orders too big for their boots.' Rutland wrote: 'It is grievous that two young men such as John and Mr. Smythe, should be led by one of whose integrity of purpose I have an opinion similar to your own, though I can judge only by his public career. The admirable character of our sons only makes them the more assailable by the arts of a designing person.'26 Finally, however, the fathers accepted that this was a 'literary tea,' not a political occasion. When GSS reached London on 2 October, he persuaded Strangford: 'My solemn word of honour is pledged to this Manchester meeting to Disraeli ... but you shall decide, if, having given my word of honour to a man to whom I am under obligations, who knows many of my secrets, and who ... [ellipsis in text] whether I can get out of this pledge and covenant.'27 The delay in London meant that he arrived in Manchester only shortly before the meeting, but it turned out a triumph. The Free Trade Hall in Peter Street was crammed with over three thousand people, serenaded by two military bands and Horabin's Double Quadrille Band. On the podium with Disraeli, Manners, and GSS were radicals like Milner Gibson, Cobden, and Bright, but everyone kept scrupulously to cultural topics. Disraeli led off with a eulogy to the liberalizing effects of the pursuit of knowledge, which, in a famous image, he compared to Jacob's ladder: 'Its base rests upon the primeval earth - its crest is lost in the shadowy splendour of the empyrean.' Cobden followed, then Manners, who stressed the importance of a historical perspective and urged his listeners to refute the taunt that manufacturers were men of a 'dry, harsh, unpoetical material spirit.' GSS spoke late, and therefore under the disadvantage of having to find fresh material, but, to a well-primed audience ready to cheer his every remark, he rose to the occasion with one of his best impromptus. The throng loved the informality of his tone, his references to themselves as a 'brilliant' audience, and his ability to point out notables like the actor Charles Kemble, comment off the cuff on the earlier speakers, and, in a particularly agreeable homage, extol the beautiful women

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among them. With their own thirst for learning, they applauded his outline of 'an old, an intimate, and a natural alliance between literature and commerce.' They cheered his thesis that meetings like this proved England was capable of matching material achievements with creative ones. Dependent on trade themselves, they were enraptured by the historical illustrations he drew from his Rhine journey, comparing Manchester to Mainz, where the prosperity of free trade had allowed Gutenberg to develop printing: 'the destruction of monopolies in trade proved the destruction of monopolies in knowledge - (Cheers).' They understood the historic fancy in which, without actually mentioning Disraeli by name, he drew a parallel with Canning, once similarly condemned as an 'adventurer' but now recognized as a great statesman. They would not, however, have known that the matrimonial metaphors of his peroration came from a subconscious still brooding over his unsuccessful quest: 'We are proclaiming the banns of an alliance, which represents the primeval marriage between the spirit and the matter; it is a marriage which has conquered the world and overspread it "as the waters cover the sea," and of intellect which is young, of the people, and which by God's help, shall continue pure.' Its reception, however, confirmed the complete success of his speech, as 'the Hon. Gentleman resumed his seat amidst loud and long continued cheering.'28 By general agreement, his speech was the 'great hit' of the night. Even the grumpy King of Hanover liked it. The Times (in six columns) and Morning Post (in eight) described it as 'brilliant,' the Satirist 'altogether the best.' Rutland acknowledged it read 'like a masterpiece of eloquent and beautiful language ... its effect upon the assembled multitude was extraordinary.' Manners told Cochrane: 'Smythe's eloquence was really surpassing, and electrified the audience. They rose like one man, or one woman, when he had finished.'29 Even better, Strangford was won over. 'My father,' GSS told Disraeli, 'was in a splendid mood, and did not seem to have read our speeches with any other feeling than that of pleasure.' GSS was supposed to accompany Disraeli and Manners to another meeting at Ferrand's in Bingley, but now withdrew with many excuses: his debts, his father's good humour, his fear of marring the Manchester triumph: 'you will see that it is better not.'30 He did agree, rather halfheartedly, to resume the pursuit of Angela, who would soon be back in England and had taken a house near the Pulleines in Clifton. Meanwhile, he was still pestered by Catherine Maynard. She 'persecuted' him with notes, even though, he maintained, T have manqued all the rendezvous- and not answered any of her letters.' Coyly, she invited him to call

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at the family mansion in Grosvenor Square: 'This really beats cockfighting - but I cannot for many reasons fight.' Gradually he unbent, meeting her in public places and going to lunch with her mother and her brother, a Guards officer who made him distinctly nervous. He planned, however, to escape her soon by departing to a friend's house at Clifton, only five miles from Angela's new abode: 'I can't write here - & my spirits suffer with the weather in town,' already wrapped in heavy fogs.31 As usual, he was sidetracked. London, foggy or not, had too many attractions. 'The Life of Capitals! I can live no other,' he declared. Disraeli thought Manchester lifted his spirits: 'All has gone well with him, & he is sanguine & spirited as the dawn. Indeed it is difficult to believe him the same being he was two short years ago.'32 He frequented his clubs, gossiped, smoked, and drank brandy with his cronies, while Strangford fumed about his neglected constituents but at last agreed to pay off his debts. On one uproarious occasion after dinner at Grosvenor Gate, Mary Anne offered to show her guests the famous blue boudoir where Disraeli wrote his novels. GSS led the rush upstairs, but they were tipsy and the upper floors were dark: he burst into the wrong room and fell into Dizzy's bath. Dripping, he returned to the drawing room. Peering short-sightedly at him, Mary Anne benignly inquired if he had seen where Coningsby was born. '"I know nothing of his place of birth," said Smythe, "but I know I have been in the room where he was recently baptized."'33 At the end of October came another matrimonial opportunity. Lady Henrietta Drummond, wife of Henry Drummond, senior partner in Drummonds' Bank, confirmed his new eligibility with an invitation to visit their Surrey home, Albury Park. She made no secret that their daughters, Louisa and Adelaide, were to compete for him, a contest he had already put into his July story, 'The Perfidious Engineer,' where Louisa, the engineer's wife, is jealous of her husband's attentions to 'Adelaide,' the steam-engine. At Albury, his reception was frankly overwhelming. On the first night, 'Madame mere asked me to stay with them at Brighton.' By the last night, when she saw no significant progress, she sent him a surreptitious note begging him to stay another day, 'which I did, Everything couleur de rose.' Louisa, agreeable, clever, and heiress to the Drummond fortune, was within his grasp - but perversely he then began to fret about Angela, about to go to Clifton. T fashed [worried] so much ... that the Pisani would leave London before I came, that I despatched my Leporello from Albury to town with the old Baden verses and other very indifferent, writ at D[rummond]'s house.' With the

1. Thomas Smythe, the 'Customer,' GSS's ancestor, beside whom he wished to be buried. (An Illustrated Guide to Ashford Parish Church.)

2. GSS's father, Percy Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford, accomplished diplomat. (National Portrait Gallery.)

3. GSS's sister, Philippa Baillie. (Reproduced from a portrait in her daughter's book, Fragments ofAuld Lang Syne.}

4. GSS at Cambridge (c. 1837), gentlemanly and bland as Harry Coningsby. (Reproduced from a portrait in Charles Whibley, Lord John Manners and His Friends.)

5. St John's College, Cambridge, where GSS made his reputation as a speaker. (Photo: Kenneth Millar.)

6. Lord John Manners, GSS's closest friend, by Richard Buckner. (National Trust, Hughenden Manor.)

7. Frederick Faber (c. 1840), who fell in love with GSS. (Portrait reproduced by permission of Sir Richard Fabcr)

8. Benjamin Disraeli, GSS's mentor and the most important man in GSS's life, by Sir Francis Grant. (National Trust, Hughenden Manor.)

9. Corisande, Countess of Tankerville, with whom GSS had an affair when he was twenty-one and she was fiftyeight. (National Portrait Gallery.)

10. Eugenie Mayer, later Viscountess Esher, whom GSS refused to marry. (Reproduced from a portrait in Dudley Ward, A Romance of the Nineteenth Century.}

11. Young England climbing the flimsy trellis to Downing Street: Manners, Disraeli, Milnes, and GSS. (Punch, 'Almanack for 1844' (detail), 1845.)

12. Young England at the charge: Manners on horseback, Disraeli as herald, GSS on foot in armour. (Punch, 23 January 1847, 41.)

13. GSS as he looked when speaking in Parliament. (Illustrated London News, 4 May 1844.)

14. Angela Burdett Coutts, millionairess, whom GSS pursued across Europe without proposing. (National Portrait Gallery.)

15. Lady Dorothy Walpole, whose reputation GSS almost ruined, by Richard Buckner. (Reproduced from Lady Dorothy Nevill, My Own Times (London: Methuen, 1912)

16. Catherine Cocks, 'pretty horsebreaker,' who was GSS's mistress in 1847, later Countess of Stamford. (The Stamford Collection, Dunham Massey Hall, The National Trust, Cheshire.)

17. GSS's last letter to Disraeli, written between the lines: 'brooding over ... what is, alas, an irrecoverable pleasure? I fear so with every night.' (MS, Belvoir Estate.)

18. GSS's elaborate grave, Kensal Green Gemetery, London. (Photo: John and Eileen Elce.)

19. GSS's tombstone, with the incorrect dates of birth and death. (Photo, John and Eileen Elce.)

1844: The Pursuit of Psyche 193

prospect of a Drummond daughter, however, 'to go, or not to go, that is the question ... is it worth while going to Brighton and clinching this other affair and not dallying any more with the vision[?] ...I fear falling between the two stools, or rather thrones.'34 Only his mentor could resolve such indecision, and he planned to meet Disraeli near Bradenham, where he was working on his next novel, Sybil 'You must give up the two Nations for me, and talk to me only about myself; as never man needed more counsel & never was there a more psycholo [g] ical puzzle - not even Contarini - than to read me & my fortunes at this moment.' Disraeli, however, refused to suggest more than that he keep juggling his three potential brides. Consequently, he went with Lady Henrietta, Louisa, and Adelaide to Brighton, where, very conveniently, Angela was also expected to visit friends. Still undecided, he further fulminated over poor Dr Brown, who, he discovered, had dined with Angela, 'every day a trois - with the Meredith - in Stratton St. that she was in town.'35 Was this further evidence of sexual impropriety? With irresolution came stress, which, coupled with an overnight stay in the fogs of London, led to physical collapse, 'a violent cold & fever to boot. Imagine your head a belfry, with all its nerves ringing in it - one having the sort of predominance that Great Tom has at Xt Church, and you can guess what I have suffered.' George Squire nursed him devotedly, 'with the tenderness of a sister, and the devotion of a mistress ... up in all hours of the night.' At this low point, Catherine Maynard also appeared in Brighton, an unwelcome presence among his marital plans. What would Lady Henrietta or Angela think of her arrival? 'Here is this d-d Lindabrides - arrived last night — lodging in a pot-house. I never wrote to her a note the last while; but I get billets by scores.' Exasperated, he drew up a cease-and-desist letter that demanded, under threat of exposure, that she leave him alone. 'She never will forgive me - but anything better than this mad, half-wicked chase - here tool Alas - were it [not] for my intellect, she is what I am to the Pisani.' The result of these complexities was predictable. Ill, confused, lacking Disraeli's bracing presence, he decided he could not face a direct approach to Angela. T collect my thoughts for a neck or nothing letter - which I shall have by me - and despatch in case my system gives way again, and I dare not accost her.'36 It was just as he feared. He did see Angela in Brighton, on the opposite side of the street, but was too faint-hearted even to bow. Now he gave up the vision for good, 'pluck all gone.' T behaved like a bourgeois, and a cub,' he groaned to Disraeli's undoubted agreement. 'You should have known me five years ago - now I am fit for nothing, but to be kicked like

194 Disraeli's Disciple

Dicky Milnes.' Although Milnes had been rejected, he had at least been brave enough to propose. Years later, in Endymion, long after Disraeli had got over his frustration at his friend's failure, he would fulfil their 1844 ambitions by marrying off the GSS character, Waldershare, to the fabulously wealthy Adriana Neufchatel. For now, though, GSS had missed all his chances. Louisa Drummond swallowed her attraction to GSS and settled for Lord Lovaine, second in succession to the Northumberland title and estates. Adelaide was still available, but GSS was clearly dragging his feet. Lady Henrietta's efforts to push Adelaide on GSS made Louisa, according to her maid, cry all night. In his physical condition, weakened and depressed, it was easier to play hard-to-get for a while and ignore the repeated notes inviting him to call. His heart was not in it. This game is clearly to be won, with patience and perseverance - but alas - I have no pluck of any kind.'37 Escape to the amusements of Paris might set him up, but he was genuinely ill. On the last day of the year, back in London, he refused even Disraeli's invitations: 'I am too ill to go to Paris, and the fog of this infernal place plunges me into abysmally low spirits.'38 For the moment, the quest for Psyche, whoever she was, was over.

15 1845: The Double Game

I am one of those miserable entities born since 1815, who believe in all things; who can see the virtues of absolutism, democracy, autocracy, without a preference; who think the Tories quite as right as the Whigs, the Catholics as the Protestants, the Buddhists as the Christians, the Atheists as the Theists GSS to Strangford, 1845

The gap between GSS's public and his private lives was widening. People knew about the scandals of Corise and Eugenie, but only Disraeli, Strangford, and possibly Londonderry knew about the courtship fiascos of 1844. During his latest illness, he went to ground in respectable Harley Street, under Strangford's heavy thumb but conveniently close to Mayfair and Disraeli at Grosvenor Gate. In the New Year Strangford implored Londonderry not to blab 'Georges follies and freaks' to Northumberland, who would have been furious at GSS's dallying with Lovaine's intended, Louisa Drummond.1 No one but Disraeli and Cochrane knew that GSS, despite his cough and fever, was ending his Christmas recess with attempts to reach the bewitching Delphine in Paris, prevented only by winter gales in the Channel.2 Admittedly, Dickens in his 1844 Christmas story, The Chimes, imputed rotten personal lives to unnamed gentry (obviously Young Englanders) who eulogized 'the good old times' while failing to relieve the present-day poor, but his contempt was for the group, not any one member in particular. (Dickens failed to recognize that, though their philosophy was decidedly not his, their goals of social betterment were almost identical to his own.) The published version was in fact considerably toned down, from a manuscript that had originally featured a 'Young England gentleman' in a white waistcoat, who told the miserable Trotty Veck to seek 'Faith in the Ideal and the Vague' rather than food and shelter.3

196 Disraeli's Disciple

To the public, GSS was a Young England champion, fiery, slightly misguided but well-motivated, guilty at worst of sharing his leader's ambition. Punch led off 1845 with a cartoon of GSS and company clambering up a flimsy trellis towards Downing Street. Disraeli, Coningsby conveniently to hand, is already three-quarters of the way there; GSS, curly-haired with 'Poems' in his pocket, hauls himself up on Milnes's coattails; Manners, in full armour, brandishes a standard labelled 'Historic Fancies.' They should, Punch helpfully suggested, apply their literary talents to the theatre, 'Sidonia [Disraeli] to write the pieces and Smythe to do the songs!' - an apt analogy for their current relationship. The cartoon for the opening of the 1845 Parliament assumed that GSS had spent his 1844 summer holidays harmlessly writing, a plump-faced aesthete in black coat and flowing hair, penning 'Poems By M.P.'4 Other media poured out approval. On New Year's Day, the Critic announced that his Manchester speech had decided it to become the 'Literary Journal of Young England,' while on the 4th (completely unauthorized by the group) Ranelagh launched his weekly Young England with a editorial lauding GSS as champion of the Irish Catholic Church. The publication of the Manchester speeches as a pamphlet on the 15th more than counterbalanced the Pictorial Times, which called Young England 'the Prince of Infidels' - 'n'importe,' commented GSS, 'so long as we believe in the Real Times!'5 It was probably the group's low profile at the end of 1844 that prompted Dickens's charges of ineffectuality; an outsider might have thought they were merely marking time. After Manchester, when GSS decided not to risk adulterating the triumph with more public meetings, Disraeli and Manners too agreed to keep quiet till next session and allow their impact to penetrate the national soil. Cochrane had married Manners's niece in December and was not to be disturbed.6 Milnes had gone to Berlin. Manners was in the country, although in fact he was working on eminently practical proposals, like a graduated income tax to benefit the poor. Disraeli at Bradenham was wading through Parliamentary Blue Books for Sybil: or, The Two Nations, the basis for his graphic descriptions of abuses in the manufacturing districts. GSS, between futile trips to the steamer berth at Dover, claimed to be continuing his book, while privately concocting plans that he refused to share even with Disraeli. Group activity did not resume until shortly before the opening of the 1845 Parliament, when Disraeli, recognizing that deadlines made GSS most productive, impressed him into regular meetings at Grosvenor Gate to which he had to bring specific quotas of notes and suggestions

1845: The Double Game 197

for attacks on Peel's government.7 Disraeli's plan was to bombard Peel with speeches and a series of articles in The Times, to which GSS was to apply both his wit and his knowledge of parliamentary history.8 Strangford, motivated by visits the previous autumn to Wellington at Walmer Castle, had different ideas.9 When the session opened, it could be arranged for GSS to second the Address to the Queen, an opportunity, Strangford maintained, for GSS to display his brilliance and convince Peel to consider him for office. With all the scorn of a seasoned parliamentarian, GSS retorted that, whatever might have happened in earlier times, the modern Commons did not work like that. All the requirements for a proposer and a seconder which you indicate do not exist. On the contrary, it is generally the proposer who launches out, and the seconder who is content with a few phrases of echo. To second an address is the most marked proof of allegiance, and when Peel has gained his point, has bought me, and secured my independence, and blazoned my adhesion and its object, do you think he could give me anything out of consideration?10

Within the year, these last words would prove prophetic. It was now, however, that he began to play a double game, dividing loyalty between Disraeli and Peel. For all his proud independence, in this session he avoided overt opposition to Peel. He may have been obeying Strangford, though it was obviously less stressful for his physical and emotional well-being to prompt Disraeli behind the scenes rather than speak publicly himself. In February, when Manners started a debate castigating the government for opening letters in the Post Office and Disraeli launched into full attack on Peel and Graham, GSS confined himself to vetting and rewording Disraeli's speech to focus it and sharpen the style.11 Nevertheless, some days later he gave Disraeli a real opportunity. In a famous exchange before a roaring Commons, Disraeli accused Peel of treasonous conspiracy. But Disraeli was wrong with his facts, and Peel easily refuted the charge, finishing off this party rebel with a sardonic quotation: Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe; Bold I can meet, perhaps may turn the blow; But of all plagues, good Heaven, Thy wrath can send, Save, oh, save me, from the candid friend.

198 Disraeli's Disciple

Disraeli, publicly humiliated, had already apologized when GSS found the source of the quotation - a poem, 'The New Morality,' written years before by Canning for the satirical Tory periodical the Anti-Jacobin. It could not have been more appropriate. Peel's riposte had emphasized loyalty to one's leader, yet, as Disraeli noted in Coningsby, when Canning became prime minister in 1827, Peel notoriously abandoned him.12 They had Peel on the hip. GSS, though 'all for Action,' cautioned Disraeli to wait for the right moment: 'husband your vengeance - as Gall is ever the stronger for keeping.' A week later, the chance came, and Disraeli turned his earlier mistake into a victory: 'The theme - the poet the speaker - what a felicitous combination!' Peel, he charged in Smythean imagery, had deserted not only his former leader but his Tory principles: 'The right hon. Gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes.' Peel could make only a formal reply. Delighted, GSS listened to the whole attack and the minute it was over wrote jubilantly to Mary Anne waiting at home: 'It would have made you cry with delight to have heard the thunders of cheering from Opposition &; our front bench. As for Peel - I hardly dare trust myself to write - but he will never forget the 27th of February.'13 He was right. The response from MPs increasingly dissatisfied with Peel marked a leap forward in Disraeli's career, characterized, as Peel's biographer comments, by 'a new style of oratory, cool, mocking, oblique.'14 Nobody was aware what, uncredited, GSS had contributed. In private, GSS might revel in cutting Peel down, but his public manner towards him was now markedly non-confrontational. When he spoke in mid-March, he made it clear to the Commons that, as always, he endorsed free trade - even when the policy was Peel's - and would vote against Disraeli and Protectionism.15 He was also ready to support Peel on Maynooth, since Peel, in a radical shift, proposed to triple the college's inadequate grant. Contention ran high over a bill perceived as truckling to Roman Catholicism, and Strangford was in despair: 'whatever the progress of liberal opinions may be, this Country will not stand Popish measures - they blew up the Whigs in 1806 - and the Tories in 1829.' GSS, he feared, would lose Canterbury if he supported it.16 The bill also divided Young England. Manners naturally was for it, but Disraeli, in another thundering philippic, opposed it as an unacceptable reversal by the former 'Orange' Peel, who in the past had planned to revoke Maynooth's charter altogether: 'It is not from him you ought to accept it.' GSS found himself in an unprecedented situation, in accord with his prime minister and satisfyingly vindicated for his earlier pro-Maynooth

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position. With some irony he announced to the Commons that he would vote with Peel: 'I am not among those who believe that the right hon. Gentleman is the enemy of Ireland; although it is susceptible of some doubt whether Ireland is not the enemy of the right hon. Gentleman.' He praised Peel's present position on the college, but with a twist of the dagger: 'Among the many contrasts which the right hon. Gentleman's long career affords, there is none which history will record more favourably than the contrast between Mr. Secretary Peel and Sir Robert Peel the Prime Minister of England.'17 Was this, as it struck Brougham, a eulogy of Peel, or, as others claimed, another personal attack? GSS's words left leeway for either interpretation, but that he left it at all was a new departure. This was a speech that confirmed his command of parliamentary language now more often associated with Disraeli. Wittily but bitingly, he reminded the House of the vicious attacks he had endured there two years before, especially from Lord Sandon: 'Unfortunately,' he wryly commented, 'my watch was upon this, as upon other occasions, five minutes too fast... If I was a worse courtier than the noble Lord, I was a better judge.' On Gladstone, who had resigned from Peel's Cabinet over the issue in February but now supported it with two and a half hours of more than usual opacity, GSS quipped that he had spoken from 'that cloud of variegated phraseology in which he wrapped and enshrouded his mysterious divinity.' In GSS's view, the former 'No Popery' faction was rushing to embrace the newest political fashion, just as society picked up the latest dance craze, or 'as religion acts upon a Dervish; he goes round — he kicks a little — but still he goes round; it is a Parliamentary polka, now practising by the whole of that [Government] Bench.'18 He had, he pointed out, proved himself both consistent arid truly independent, since his vote would bring him only obloquy from archiepiscopal Canterbury. Though his speech was loudly applauded in Parliament, once again his father's associates were divided. Hanover, blinkered as usual, was shocked 'to see a young man possessing such brilliant talents and eloquence thus throwing them away.'19 But GSS was doing no such thing. 'If I were Peel,' said the shrewd Brougham, T should lose no time in obtaining his useful support as a man in good office,' and Peel was taking notice. He might have room for a man so contemptuous of 'the imposture of the great game between Whig and Tory - the solemn farce wherein they fence with buttons on their foils.' Whatever his other faults, GSS fought with a naked blade.20 It would be his last parliamentary speech for over a year. Peel eventu-

200 Disraeli's Disciple

ally carried his bill, but at the expense of party solidarity. The vote noticeably showed Young England at odds. Amongst 'Young England' what a split! Against Maynooth votes Ben; While Manners, Milne [s], and Sniythe, to wit, Support the grant, like men. What can the cause of difference be? Ben votes 'gainst Peel, not Popery!21

The split with Disraeli lasted into the summer. When Sybil came out in May, GSS offended both him and Mary Anne (then in a fragile emotional state) with his opinion that, however worthy, as literature it fell short of Coningsby. Mary Anne dashed off a stiff note, but GSS knew well enough who had dictated it. 'If you were not such an infant,' he flared back at Disraeli, 'I would be angry with you! Why were you so sulky the other day; & then, you make Mrs. Dis write me a letter saying our friendship is over, & then - you ask me to do, what you know I cant.'22 The nature of the request is unclear. Since Ranelagh's Young England had died in April, Disraeli had published his attacks on Peel in The Times, but he co-opted Manners and GSS to contribute articles with a Young England bias to a new journal, the Oxford and Cambridge Review. Manners provided a rather pedestrian review of Sybil for the first number in July, and for the second in August GSS produced his powerful and perceptive article on the virtues of his paladin, Lord Grey, who had died earlier in the year. This 'most remarkable art[icle],' Disraeli wrote, 'has made a great noise & quite established the Review.'23 It would have suited him for Manners and GSS to write more, but, occupied with personal plans, both refused. 'So much,' Disraeli fumed, 'for Dandies as Critics.'24 GSS pleaded his imminent travels and poor health: 'I have been infernally ill - the last few days, and never out till 5.' The reason, Disraeli knew (though Mary Anne did not), was that, apart from his usual bad chest, GSS had contracted gonorrhea. When Mary Anne, always sympathetic to illness, softened enough to invite him to one of her society breakfasts at Grosvenor Gate, he had to offend her further by refusing, since Dr Seymour had him on a prohibitive regimen. This was some sort of purge, for, he told Disraeli privately, T had had a double dose of floral syrup ... and it was impossible unless like the young lieutenant in the Physiologic, I had performed in my shako, and gone after it - to Algiers to be shot.'25 He had probably been prescribed calomel, a routine nineteenth-century

1845: The Double Game

201

treatment for venereal disease, composed of mercurous chloride dissolved in a syrup often flavoured with fruit juice or rose-scented essence. Taken orally, often with the added insult of Epsom salts, it had drastic gastro-intestinal effects. Over long periods, it could also result in mercury poisoning, whose side effects markedly resemble GSS's complaints: pain, fever, muscle weakness, mental depression, and morbid fears. One complication, swelling of the gums and salivary glands, may explain the sketches at this period that show him uncharacteristically 'moon-faced.'26 By September, when the Disraelis left for France to recoup Mary Anne's nerves and their equally strained finances, the breach was partially healed. 'Like all warm hearted people,' GSS wrote to Mary Anne, 'you were angry with me because I sympathized less with Diz in Sybil than in Coningsby; but you must not think that I love or admire him less.' He still counted himself Dis's 'very affectionate friend,' and confided his personal problems. He was supposed to be courting another heiress of Strangford's choosing, perhaps the 'Lady' with whom, he coarsely told Disraeli, 'I rode like an ass - not seriously.' His lack of health and motivation, however, made him half-hearted; courtship was a chore that tired him out. There was no banter, as there had been last year about 'Fedora' or 'the Pisani.' The chosen quarry this time may have been a Northumberland connection. After Quintin Dick 'blew me up about the heiress,' GSS dutifully rode out to Syon, Northumberland's estate outside London, 'to make up for my long negligence,' but after his illness (and its cure) the eight-mile horseback ride from Harley Street to Syon completely exhausted him.27 The solution again was Paris. Safely there, he vowed to pursue the latest prospect to Switzerland - 'not however, very seriously,' he told Disraeli, '& more to reconnoitre than anything else. Then I shall go on to Venice, and see Rome - if it may be so before I die or marry - the death of Adventure which is life.' Aware that Dizzy would take this last remark as an insult to Mary Anne, he hastily added good wishes to her, 'whom I love for her good heart, although I often reject her injustice & the quarrels owing to our common quickness of temper alas.' Protestations of enduring affection went to Dizzy too, 'because of late you have been as sensitive - as Byron when idealizing Clare & Delawarr at Harrow.' I treat you, like a Confessor, and shall probably disgust you of a friendship you have often foresworn but which will never die, (although it may become enervated) because we are friends, independently of our will, and inclina-

202 Disraeli's Disciple tion - by the Law of our Nature. Imagination - in you fulfilled in noble Creations, in me fizzing now in Champagne, & now in tisane- but fulfilment & tendency have alike one course, one goal, one starting place, & this makes affinity and affection.28

Naturally, he was delaying as long as possible retracing last year's route to Switzerland. In frustration Strangford remarked how Baron MacDonald's new wife had paid off £40,000 of his debts: 'I wish George could fall in with such a help-mate.' The admirable Percy had pleased his father with a good Oxford degree followed by a diplomatic posting to Strangford's old embassy at Constantinople, but GSS was once again 'squandering away health, time, and money at Paris.' He had rejoined Delphine, though he was anything but faithful to her. 'My life,' he wrote with an ear for an epigram, 'is made up of Cafes, whores, headaches and sentiment with my Rhenish beauty of polyglot memory to whom I dedicate my mornings.' (One should always remember that to aristocratic Victorians, 'mornings' meant 'afternoons.') Another complication was the imminent arrival in Paris of 'the Maynard,' still unchaperoned and persistent in her slavish adoration. He swore he never answered her letters, though if he did not, how did she know where to find him? He justified himself by claiming interest in her as a case history: 'I shall be curious to see how far her madness can push her.' His mind, however, was only partly on these women, and more on bragging to Disraeli about his dissolute life. He was deliberately creating a persona like Raphael's in The Wild Ass's Skin: '"Excess! I want to live to excess!"' 'I am,' he told Disraeli, 'indemnifying myself for my accident in London, and for my long course of the Elixir by outrageous excesses for which I shall probably suffer again; but my beauty of Hamburg, Ems, & Spa has had the misfortune to sprain her knee, & there is no resistance so furious, no virtue so impregnable as the consciousness of a bandage.' After a night at the Comedie Fran^aise, he suggested he and Disraeli should write a comedy about Young England: 'it is an immediate farce It must be pleasant to hear oneself Clapped! who are used to another sense of the term.' As for progress on his own book, 'orgies are not favourable to metaphors, and I was as drunk last night as a penny a liner when his month is up.' It was all very melodramatic and shocking, and distinctly overdone.29 In fact, he got more than even he looked for in Paris. As he had predicted, Catherine Maynard arrived, but as yet she was only a minor nuisance. More important, he became seriously involved in a disastrous

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love affair that developed during September and accounted for the dearth of letters until the end of the year. Disraeli, hankering for contact, was not the only one to ask, 'Where is GSS? I have not heard from him for months, & expected to find him here [Paris], but in vain. Has he gone on to Stamboul?'30 Even when GSS did break his silence, he gave few details. 'I got hellishly & damnably entangled with another woman who gave me mortification, and heart-eating enough - all which I wrote in a book.'31 Such terseness is atypical enough to imply a serious disappointment. It is unlikely that she was Delphine, whom GSS usually identified by name. Perhaps, like Averanche in Angela Pisani, he rejected his lover and later regretted it. 'The misery, the tears, the sleepless nights, the madness, the illusion, and the delusion, all these happen, perhaps, only to the passionate and sensitive.'32 Averanche and Illyrine do reconcile, but he refuses to marry her, she refuses to elope with him and finally leaves him for a wealthy Spanish grandee. Perhaps GSS, like Averanche, was left standing in an empty Paris street. In any event, there was no further mention of Delphine, while GSS, frustrated and desolate, abruptly remembered the heiress and left for Geneva in pursuit of her. The lady's name occurs only in an illegible scrawl; it may have been 'Massin' or 'Massini.' Having found her, he very soon abandoned his languid pursuit, when she 'turned out an adopted daughter - not a real daughter - a very different thing.'33 Doubly disillusioned, he set off in October for Italy - not for Florence or Rome, but for Venice, a city then tantalizingly on the frontiers between civilized Europe and the exotic East and as dangerous and decadent as in Byron's day.34 Besides its remoteness from mundane English life, it was also congenial to GSS as a home to lost causes: Henri V, the legitimist claimant to the French throne, lived there, as did the comte de Montemolin, pretender to the Spanish throne. Living was still cheap and even luxurious in the crumbling palazzos along the romantic canals, and he still had £200 won betting on the Derby. Consumptives were sometimes sent there by their doctors for the moist soothing air, though the general atmosphere was supposed to be debilitating. Even in winter, it was a city to linger in. There GSS seemed to recover his health and find plenty of energy for 'other affairs of debauch' into which he flung himself as compensation for his misadventures in Paris. Contrary to his usual habit, he barely mentioned these to Disraeli, but for some perverse reason insisted on describing them minutely to Manners. Manners was already shaken by the news in November that Faber had followed Newman into the Catholic Church, and he was thoroughly shocked to receive a

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letter 'detailing sins from Smythe: oh! That I could pray him to a better mind.'35 GSS also wrote to Strangford assuring him, in Miltonic tones, he had not been wasting his time. 'I have written 500 pages of a novel [Angela Pisani], which I have begun with high dreams of elevating fiction, and of achieving a work of art which should endure. Colossal portraits, imagine, of Canning and Napoleon!' Tongue in cheek, he remarked that he could not understand why it seemed to have become 'as licentious as your Camoens ... It is, however, not coarse; in fact, so fine that I am in great hopes that that big beast, the English public, will not find it out.'36 Alarmed, Strangford launched into precepts and admonitions, reminding him that, for one who had 'not brought one ounce of honey to the hive,' licentious novels would hardly do much for his political standing. GSS responded with chapter and verse. 'As Macchiavel said, long ago, of Cosmo de Medici, "the only way to do right is to pre-occupy the popular grounds." I say there is no other way of getting money now-a-days, because, suppose I were to write a respectable biography, a work of time, it will not sell, and my publisher will give me nothing for it.' With some inconsistency and considerable asperity, he repeated his intention to marry: 'I cannot work for that damned poet's temper of mine, but I will marry for money. Surely there cannot be a more self-denying proposition!' These letters to his father are an uneasy mixture of cynicism and self- righteousness. 'In politics I have had only one idea - what opinion is likely to turn up trumps.' 'Speaking morally, I do not pretend to any virtues, but I have few vices. I am too fond of wine, and I like women ... There is bad in this, and I must try to mend.' On the other hand, 'there must be some good in me, for the most virtuous and amiable of my contemporaries are my friends.' Respected writers like Macaulay and Rogers praised his literary efforts, and as for politics, 'Peel and Graham prophesy my eminence ... It has certainly not been my fault if I have not got [a post], nor, as all must acknowledge, could I have played my cards better ^apolitical questions.'37 History, however, was about to shake him out of this Italian limbo. Though GSS never mentioned them, Peel's autumn attempts to relieve the Irish potato famine included suspending the Corn Laws, a proposal that so split his Cabinet that on 6 December he tendered his resignation to the Queen. For three weeks, GSS, short of news from Britain, nervously expected 'the Whigs in, a dissolution impending, a certain loss of seats, and a quarrel with my father about my tutors bill at Cambridge, which grossly exaggerated he sent in, precisely because there was pros-

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pect of a dissolution.' His position in Canterbury was particularly precarious after his stance on Maynooth; the Kent newspapers were abusive, and Strangford was already 'persecuted to death' by his son's constituents.38 But Lord John Russell, the Whig leader, was unable to form a government, and Peel was recalled five days before Christmas. 'What exciting times!' Disraeli commented. 'All agree that tho' Peel may return, he has lost his prestige.'39 GSS was extremely relieved. Had there been a dissolution the other day I would have lost my election, have had to raise money to pay my debts, which are about £800, and sunk so much income ... But now that politics look a little better, it seems to me that I have from February to July to work for two things, for a place and a marriage. This is a very difficult game to combine, for both exact time, and to save time - the night.40

Nevertheless, when Peel formed his new government, the impossible happened. On New Year's Eve, Strangford, hearing from Wellington about appointments and placements, fussed that other candidates were diligently lobbying for junior offices while his son was still in Europe: 'George's conduct in being out of the way at this moment is perfect insanity - I have not the slightest guess where he is, nor when, nor even whether, he is coming over.'41 On 9 January, anxiety became panic. The long-awaited opportunity had come, but where was GSS? Frantically he sent off letters to all GSS's known destinations - Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome - with copies of an offer from the foreign secretary, Lord Aberdeen, of the post of under-secretary for foreign affairs. Neither Aberdeen nor Peel seems to have been aware how singularly appropriate to GSS's recent activities this title was.

16 1846: Falling Upstairs - and Down

If we had been born in heroic times, you would have been a Brutus & I a Cassius GSS to Manners, 6 November 1846

Here was a familiar dilemma: personal loyalty or political expediency? Seven years ago, in the Cambridge Stewardship election, GSS had abandoned Lyttelton, his friend, for Lyndhurst, the political power. On the other hand, for four years he had resisted his father's pressure to leave Young England. What would he do now? Should he stay loyal to Disraeli, his 'Cid & Captain,' or shift camps to the man who had been their joint target, Prime Minister Peel? More than he could possibly have known, his decision would affect his entire future. In 1846, hardly anyone would have predicted Disraeli's subsequent political success, let alone its rapidity. Despite his heightened profile, he was still regarded as a rabble-rouser and sneered at as a Jewish outsider. To an ambitious young man like GSS, the chance to leap from back bench to administration under Peel, respected statesman and leader of the established Conservative party, put him on the first rung on the ladder of power. It was the kind of opportunity seized by his contemporary Edward Stanley four years later, a chance to show administrative ability and grasp of foreign affairs - and much more substantial than the Young England trellis Punch had earlier pictured him climbing, picturesque but flimsy.1 Four years before, he alone of the group had held out for freedom to accept a government offer, and now he was the first to receive one. By saying 'Yes,' he would acquire position, salary, constituency approval, and paternal respect. The prospect was virtually irresistible. It was not an empty gesture on Peel's part, although GSS's backers were highly influential: Wellington, national hero and leader of the

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House of Lords; Northumberland, wealthy patron and vote-gatherer. Lyndhurst may also have had a hand, in return for GSS's support in the Cambridge Stewardship.2 GSS would be joining a number of promising young men: Lyttelton, colonial under-secretary, and Mahon, secretary for India. In and out of the Commons, there was no doubt of GSS's ability; at this point he had more credibility as a rising politician and speaker than any of the Young England group. Milnes was dull, Cochrane volatile, Disraeli unacceptably hostile. Manners fulfilled the official requirements - 'high birth, bearing &c. ... fine & gracious manners for reception of For: Ministers' - but, observed the Illustrated London News, he appeared 'more the accomplished scholar and gentleman than the clever ready debater.'3 GSS, however, in the past session had kept up the fire and confidence people now associated with his name, and (not once but twice) he had publicly endorsed Peel over Maynooth and free trade. His Oxford and Cambridge Review article on Lord Grey came late enough in 1845 to linger in readers' minds. Its veneration of Grey attracted wide approval, as did his analyses of Reform politics and Grey's oratory. The solid research and easy mastery of international affairs he showed in debate would make him a useful assistant to Aberdeen, who as foreign secretary faced in 1846 issues as diverse as the River Plate war in Brazil, accord with French and African rulers on the slave trade, and an ongoing dispute over the boundary between the USA and Canada. Finally - a prime consideration for the beleaguered Peel - once gathered into the main party fold, GSS would cease to be a threat. As under-secretary he was bound to toe the party line. Two weeks into the New Year, however, he was still incommunicado somewhere in Europe. When the offer arrived, Strangford had preened himself: T have played his cards well for him, during his absence - far better than I could have done, had he not been out of England for the last 6 months ... his gabbling & scribbling Young Englandism, would have upset all my movements in his favour.' By the 19th he was distraught, not knowing where GSS was, 'nor when he is coming over - nor where to write to him - any more than any of his creditors.'4 Peel had held his first Cabinet on the 12th with the under-secretaryship vacant, but he would not wait for ever, and other candidates were on the spot. News of the offer leaked out: Cochrane knew almost as soon as Strangford. Milnes, who had always coveted the post and was desperate not to be ousted by GSS, asked Gladstone to intercede with Peel, stiffly intimating that he would otherwise quit politics. Gladstone did approach Peel, but it resulted only in Milnes's complete mortification. By that time, GSS had

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arrived in Paris, found Aberdeen's letter waiting, and sent his acceptance. 'No ingenuity,' Milnes responded bitterly, 'could have made the blow more provoking from the hands of the man to whom I have shown the most public respect, through those of the one for whom I entertain the most private dislike.'5 Strangford would have been even more upset if he had known that GSS's first letter from Paris, on the 16th, was not to Aberdeen but to Disraeli. GSS's dependency was so great that, arriving late that evening from the winter rigours of the Simplon Pass, he went straight off to consult Disraeli at the hotel where he had been staying. The Disraelis, however, had already left for London; a few hours earlier, and his mentor might well have encouraged him to stay with the dissident faction. As it was, alone, exhausted, and unsure, he gave in to Strangford's exhortations. He would accept the post, but not before telling Disraeli. Since there was now no chance of a personal interview where his charm might soften the betrayal, self-abasement would have to do. Caro mio [he began with an Italian flourish from his weeks in Venice], Everything conspires to make you think me a blackguard - first of all - my never writing - and Aberdeen's offer to my father ... I cannot accept, without first acknowledging all I owe to you ... A prudent man would be silent on the eve of a passage in our lives - which must irk and hurt and make you sorrowful but I am not prudent - and I shall never forget how you found me low, abased in my own esteem & that of other's, morbidly distrusting my own powers, and how you made a man of me ... and set me on my legs at Manchester, and have ever been to me the kindest and gentlest of counsellors.6

To soften the outrage he could foresee, he heaped up his gratitude to the 'Man of Genius, who succoured and solaced and strengthened me, when I was deserted even by myself.' For the moment at least, this was a personal as well as a political farewell: 'God bless you dear Dis,' he ended, and then, with a flash of the wit that he knew attracted Disraeli, 'Think as gently as you can of my fall upstairs.' Disraeli did not reply. 'Few men,' GSS later reminded him, 'ever threw me over more than you.'7 Disraeli was so chagrined that he did not tell even his closest confidante, his sister, Sarah. After Parliament opened on the 22nd, she had to ask Mary Anne in amazement: Ts it true that Mr. Smythe is Under Secretary? & is he here? & who did he cheer on Thursday[,] his old Master or his new one?'8 In fact, GSS was dodging exactly that choice, whether to cheer Peel's

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opening policy statement or Disraeli's immediate attack on it. Where most men would have returned at once to London, he delayed even writing to Aberdeen until the 18th, when he claimed he had only just arrived and that travel fatigue would prevent his return until the 22nd. Again he played the unworthy acolyte, his syntax hesitant and formal. 'If I venture to accept without hesitation a post which I shall feel to be, in many ways, greatly beyond my powers, your Lordship will, I hope, permit me to say that I am animated not only by a sense of ambition, but by a sympathy long ago expressed with the Commercial opinions, with which recent events have connected the Government of Sir Robert Peel.'9 His letter to Peel was equally formal, overflowing with gratitude, professions of inadequacy, and apologies for past differences, 'passages of my political life, which I shall reflect upon with the more remorse, that you in your Greatness have been pleased to overlook them.'10 The reference was not as tactless as it appears. He had often argued with his father that the way to succeed with Peel was to be independent and aggressive, and now Strangford had to agree. 'From the very day he entered Parliament, he badgered, banged, and bumped Peel, (aye, even personally) more than any man -and with greater talent, and greater bitterness ... and he was in the right, and I was in the wrong, as it turned out.'11 Peel's reply was characteristically courteous. 'I have no recollection of the past which can in the slightest degree abate the satisfaction with which I contemplate the devotion of your great Talents and acquirements - or the cordiality with which I shall render you any assistance that it may be in my power to render at the outset of your official career.' Only historical hindsight can find an irony in his final benediction: 'I hope it may be a long -1 am sure it will be an honorable one.'12 Peel was well aware that his period of office would likely be short. Corn Law repeal was rousing such intense opposition that it was splitting the party, and members of the new Cabinet were asking how long they could expect to hold their posts.13 Strangford acknowledged, T would not give him much for his lease of office.' Even so, when GSS finally arrived, Peel and Aberdeen immediately called him in for long meetings. (Strangford was shocked to find that Aberdeen had never met GSS until now.) Next day he spent another 'entire hour with Peel ... who discussed at great length, & with the utmost abandon, his past, present, & above all, his future policy.' All of which was, of course, confidential, 'but it is clear 7° that the battle-cry is war to the Aristocracy, 2° Free Trade to its fullest extent... 3° that P's Government is not worth 2 months' purchase.'14 Perhaps it was Peel who suggested that GSS spend his first weekend

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trying to bring over other Young Englanders. Cochrane, always a feather in the wind, did switch, but neither Manners nor his brother Granby would budge. Manners, already distressed at GSS's defection, refused to abandon his protectionist principles. To him, changing the ideology on which he had been elected amounted to betrayal of his constituents. Coldly, he told GSS he would vote against repeal and then, despairing of his disunited party, resign his seat.15 According to Gladstone, 'all Young England' consented to appear at Peel's first official reception of the session, but one doubts if Manners was one.16 The breach between the friends was widening. On 26 January GSS, now officially instated, took his seat near Peel on the front benches. Two weeks later, at the Queen's first levee of the year, he was formally presented to her. Did she remember his impassioned defence of her and the British monarchy over the years since 1841, or was she still indignant at Young England for endangering Peel's leadership?17 Some were openly contemptuous of GSS's move. Dickens told a friend: 'It does not surprise me that Young England should be glad to get hold of anything in which it can exhibit itself. But it does surprise me very much, that anybody should give it the chance.'18 GSS's constituents generally applauded his shift to Peel, though some demanded, in deputations and newspaper articles, that he resign for betraying his election promises. Canterbury voters, the Kentish Observer warned darkly, would remember.19 Technically, his appointment should have been followed by a by-election. Cochrane, who merely switched sides, had to take the Chiltern Hundreds and fight one in March. None, however, was held in Canterbury. Peel certainly felt strongly that an MP was entitled to change his mind without being challenged at election, but the real reason, according to Strangford, was a quiet arrangement to spare him and GSS yet more election expenses.20 An under-secretaryship at twenty-seven was hardly to be compared with Pitt, but it was a start. The year promised to be momentous, deciding nothing less than the future course of the parties. In Endymion, Waldershare, appointed to the same post, dreams of power. He was delighted with his office; it was much the most important in the government, and more important because it was not in the cabinet. Well managed, it was power without responsibility. He explained ... that an Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with his chief in the House of Lords, was 'master of the situation.' What the situation was, and what the Under-Secretary was to master, he did not yet deign to [say] .21

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211

In real life, GSS quickly found it was not what he expected. Outside the Commons, the workings of the Foreign Office were mostly clerical, and Byzantine in their complexity. One of his successors, Edward Stanley, observed that in fact 'nothing important was done' in the Downing Street offices; conversely, 'the variety of subjects became to an unpractised person almost perplexing.'22 GSS owed his promotion to his brilliance as a speaker; now he found that he was required to become a bureaucrat. The under-secretary was not free to research parliamentary topics that suited him but must satisfy the needs of his leaders. In the office, he was nominally in charge of a large staff, some of them - notably the collector of state papers and the chief librarian and keeper, the respected Lewis Hertslet - considerably his senior in age and standing. There were also a sub-librarian, a precis writer, a translator, and thirty-three clerks, who toiled to receive, sort, and docket a huge number of incoming and outgoing international dispatches.23 For 1849 alone, the correspondence, classified by country and topic in the massive leather folios it still occupies today, filled 450 volumes, one and a half for each day, excluding Sundays. In 1851, the dispatches totalled thirty thousand, a rate of one hundred for every working day. GSS maintained that he was kept busy outside the offices, partly because he got on so well with his superiors. With Aberdeen he established an immediate rapport that continued for years. Unlike the majority of Britons at that time, they shared an enthusiastic Francophilia which, thanks to the cordiality of Aberdeen's relationship with his French counterpart, Guizot, was helping to dispel the traditional enmity between Britain and France. It was probably through the friendship with Aberdeen that GSS too gained Guizot's confidence and began to visit him whenever he was in Paris. In the morning, he told Gregory, he called on Peel, before the day's parliamentary sitting, for instructions which often spilled over into unreserved discussions of the questions of the day with a good-humoured prime minister who seemed to like his company as much as Disraeli had done.24 Yet, presumably on the basis of family knowledge, his sister-in-law's severe conclusion was that he 'did not exert himself much' as under-secretary. Gregory, several years after his initial enthusiasm for GSS had waned, maintained that 'he paid no attention to his work, and was thought very little of at the Foreign Office.'25 Edward Stanley in 1852, looking over the work of his predecessors, could find no evidence that GSS had done anything in the office. These conclusions were undoubtedly due to the fact that, despite Dickens's forecast, GSS suddenly was doing nothing at all in the Com-

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mons. To Manners's biographer, GSS as a Peelite maintained an 'obstinate' silence on the Treasury bench.26 While his colleagues, old friends, and enemies all delivered emotional speeches in the tumultuous Corn Law debates that filled the next few months, while Disraeli thundered his condemnations, while Peel's government tottered and the Conservative party split, GSS dutifully voted for Peel's measures but never rose to speak. He was not, however, sulking. In an adverse way, his treatment set a parliamentary precedent, as Disraeli made perfectly clear in 1858, when, as leader of the House, he was about to fill the post. GSS's silence had been imposed. 'The For: Und Sec: does not represent the F.O. in the Ho: of Commons, except in matters of petty detail. The Leader of the House always represents the F.O. This was settled definitively by Peel, who never wd. permit Strangford (G. Smythe) to answer any question of F.O.'27 Peel might genially engage GSS in political discussions, entertain him at Cabinet dinners and receptions, and treat him at other times like one of his family, but by making him a junior minister he had effectively strangled him as a parliamentary presence. From one point of view, it was a valuable lesson for GSS, forced to recognize that public office involved everyday grind as well as occasions for brilliant oratory. It was not, however, a way of life he was willing to adapt to. Initially unfamiliar with official requirements, he did not know, and apparently never learned, how to produce promptly and economically what his superiors needed. On one occasion towards the end of his tenure, he did far too much laborious research on a memorandum urgently needed for debate on the sugar trade. Faced with a lengthy document, Peel responded crisply that such detail was overkill; an efficient under-secretary produced a quick, usable summary, not an exhaustive retrieval of the entire archive on the subject.28 For GSS, this was not what he had entered politics for. The time he had left was too precious to be spent labouring in a government office. Forbidden to use his debating talents, ineffectual as an administrator, he felt stifled and useless. What was the point, he asked his father, of obeying all his orders from his managers, if he was only to find himself 'fettered by party ties and muzzled by office'?29 From the front bench, he began to glance longingly over his shoulder at what Disraeli and his fellow dissidents were up to in the back benches much more exciting than his own administrative duties. In March, Disraeli began covert approaches to dissatisfied Conservatives and Whigs (including Palmerston) for a possible political alliance that would oust Peel. As April progressed, he even broached a coalition government through

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his Whig liaison, Lord Ponsonby, former ambassador to Constantinople. Though the proposals for alliance failed, the junta got as far as drawing up a memorandum for a 'Grand Junction Ministry' to take over after they defeated the Peelites.30 No doubt Disraeli's sense of humour nominated his debt-ridden self as paymaster general. Other positions were more appropriate: Lord George Bentinck, rapidly emerging as leader of the Protectionist faction, as chancellor of the Exchequer, Manners under-secretary to the Home Office, and, rather surprisingly, GSS to continue as foreign under-secretary. Maybe Disraeli intended revenge by keeping him in his uncongenial position; more likely, GSS was once more ingratiating himself. Disraeli had no illusions about his loyalty - he was already planning his next novel, Tancred, with its devastating portrayal of GSS as the slippery Fakredeen - but by the Easter recess, they were back on bantering terms. When Milnes (who had not quit politics after all) signalled his defection from Peelite ranks by appearing in the Commons in the green coat of a Protectionist squire instead of the regulation black, GSS was sitting close enough to Disraeli to pass a quip at his enemy's expense: '"See Dicky, - Protection looking up!"'31 It was. In going with Peel, GSS's watch had this time been five minutes too slow. By early summer, Peel's struggle was over. He succeeded in getting Corn Law Repeal through a hostile and bitterly divided Commons in May, but on 25 June, mere hours after it passed the Lords, a temporary alliance of Whigs, Protectionists, and Radicals defeated him on quite another issue, the question of Irish weapons rights that GSS had fought in 1843. On the 29th Disraeli wrote jubilantly to Mary Anne from celebrations at the Carlton Club: 'The Ministry have resigned. All "Coningsby" and 'Young England" the general exclamation here.'32 He was overstating it - there had been many other factors - but the group's constant sniping at Peel had contributed, and GSS had to reflect on the ironies. He had been the model for Coningsby, the icon of new Conservatism, and he had sold out to the old. Now the very dissatisfaction he had helped to foment since 1842 had put him out of the office he had so recently achieved. Though no one yet knew it., it was the end of a political era, for Peel, for the shattered Conservative party, and for himself. With an almost audible sigh, Strangford turned his attention to Ellen. Fragile though she was, he had decided it was time for her to marry, and he set out to engineer as wealthy a match for her as for Philippa. He succeeded as he never could for GSS. One suitor, the Earl of Howth, a widower in his forties, seemed eminently acceptable and Strangford had

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taken negotiations almost too far to be rescinded when a more exciting prospect emerged, the younger and even more eligible Marquess of Sligo, who could count on an annual income of £14,000 with prospects of more. Ellen, whose own preferences seem not to have been consulted, at first demurred at the change of prospective husband - and was it entirely honourable to dismiss the earlier suitor for a wealthier one? To some extent Sligo himself reassured her, his many protestations of unchanging fidelity decorously communicated via Philippa. By July, Howth had bowed out gracefully, Sligo was accepted, and his prospective fatherin-law had convinced himself he had made a very good match: 'he is an excellent & very clever fellow, and they will make, I doubt not, a very happy couple.' Only the financial arrangements remained to be made. These would take a few months to finalize, since Sligo had to settle money on a number of relatives and dependents, but Strangford could congratulate himself that the 'transaction' was in place. He reckoned without GSS - and Lady Dorothy Walpole.33 Lady Dorothy - 'Dolly' to family and friends - pretty, snub-nosed sister of GSS's friend Lord Walpole, was now twenty and flirting her way through the London season. "The most captivating little creature"' one besotted admirer ever saw, '"sun in her eye and mischief in all her thoughts,"' she enjoyed attracting attention and had no inhibitions at all about mixing in Bohemian society. In Italy three years before, she had acquired some notoriety for visiting the infamous Lord Hertford's exmistress, Lady Strachan (original of Lucretia Colonna in Coningsby), and holding court to male admirers, from the papal governor, Cardinal Zacchia, to the Indian philosopher Dwarkanauth Tagore. So many men flocked round her that one artistic friend drew her as winged Queen Mab, saucily perched on a flower while numerous coroneted lovers clambered up the stem. According to one source, Disraeli was one of them.34 Already society scandalmongers were buzzing in disapproval about the way she attracted men. In March they clucked about the infatuated Viscount Goderich, heir to Lord Ripon, only nineteen but 'well on the high road to being entangled by Lady Dolly.' There were rumours of an engagement to the even younger William Duncombe, son of Lord Feversham. In June, strongly attracted to Louis Napoleon, raffish nephew of the great Bonaparte and glamorous escapee from a French political prison, she made her feelings too obvious, and the Orfords, her parents, sternly warned her not to encourage such an unpromising lover.35 (How could they have foreseen that a mere six years later he would be Emperor of France?) Male sexuality always

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sparked an equal response in her, and it was probably inevitable that, with their family and social connections, she and GSS drew together. They were two of a kind: attractive, spirited, unconventional, impulsive. Her cheerful confidence more than compensated for GSS's self-doubts, and she had enough money to satisfy Strangford. Might this be the match he dreamed of for his son? In the spring and summer, as GSS and Dorothy met at breakfasts and soirees, the relationship ignited, though outsiders did not as yet know about it. In early August, Mary Anne, basking in GSS's graceful attentions to herself at a society party, completely missed the significance of his long intimate conversations with Dorothy during the evening.36 It was probably the last time their affair remained a secret. There are two versions of what happened next. GSS claimed he was accepted as a legitimate suitor of Dorothy's; after the fact, her parents insisted that he was unsanctioned and unwelcome. In mid-August, when everyone left London, they took her to visit a relative, a Mr Gawler, at his country cottage near Andover in Hampshire.37 A few days later, covering his tracks since Dorothy was a favourite of the Disraelis, GSS wrote to them that he was in Andover for a little quiet and cricket before going abroad.38 Nothing so innocuous. The day after Orford left his wife and daughter at the cottage, GSS went to see Dorothy late in the evening after her mother had gone to bed. Regardless of his intentions, such unchaperoned visits could not be allowed. Amiably, he agreed to Gawler's and Lady Orford's requests that he leave Andover at once. Actually he stayed on at a hotel a mile away where, to complicate the plot, another woman (presumably Catherine Maynard) had followed him and, to neighbourhood scandal, also taken up residence. Later on, Lady Orford insisted that any woman seen with GSS must have been this one, but the course of events does not bear her out. Neither Catherine's presence nor Lady Orford's warnings deterred GSS and Dorothy in the slightest from clandestine meetings, long walks, and rides out into the Hampshire countryside. When, however, they were discovered in a compromising position in a summerhouse, Lady Orford summoned her husband, who peremptorily ordered GSS to leave. Somehow, Dorothy slipped onto GSS's departing train for Brighton, where they misspent ten days. So far, the Orfords could comfort themselves that the episode had not become public. Whether freely or by coercion, Dorothy came home, while the papers reported that GSS had left England for Wiesbaden. At the end of September, Strangford (who seems not then to have known about his son's latest escapade) confidently told his friends that Ellen's

216 Disraeli's Disciple

marriage to Sligo was finally arranged to the approval of both families and would take place in the early spring.39 Less than a week after the announcement, a bombshell blew up in everyone's faces. The Orfords, like Eugenie's father three years before, made the tactical error of trying to force GSS into preserving their daughter's reputation, a move that suggests it had already been lost. First, they began private negotiations with Strangford to pressure GSS into marrying her.40 When this produced no quick result, they threatened legal action, valuing her good name at £18,000. Finally they tried publicity as a lever. On 2 October, the Morning Post austerely reported 'a very painful occurrence, affecting the members of two noble families, which is likely at no distant period to form the subject of legal proceedings in one of the Civil Courts.' The Satirist pounced on the story at once, not quite naming names. 'The parties who will be compromised in the expose are the daughter of a noble Earl, now in her twenty-first year, and the son of a noble Viscount... by no means the oldest of the twenty-seven on the roll of peers ... The gay seducer boasts senatorial honours, prefixes an "honourable" to his name, and is representative of a saintly electoral body.' This was bad enough, but the Orfords must have been appalled when it added more salacious insinuations, that the young lady in question had 'not been unfamiliarised with the intriguing experience likely to produce such a consummation.'41 What else did the gutter press know? In the midst of innuendos they evidently had not expected, the Orfords made matters worse. Next day the Morning Post carried an item of the innocuous kind regularly inserted by society people. 'The Earl and Countess of Orford and Lady Dorothy Walpole have arrived at Wolterton Park, Norfolk.' Unfortunately, the paragraph did not end there. 'The Lady Dorothy has, we are informed, been a prisoner to her room some days, owing to a fall her Ladyship received while riding a few weeks since. Her Ladyship is now progressing favourably.' Surely the Orfords themselves could not have perpetrated such sexually ambiguous wording? Lady Orford's attempt at damage control was to insist that Dorothy had fallen down some stairs, injured her back, and been treated by a Norwich surgeon with leeches and warm baths.42 If, however, her parents had wanted to avoid a scandal, they had signally failed. Avid readers of the Post and the Satirist concluded only that the euphemisms covered unmentionable events: Dorothy had been made pregnant, had an abortion, and was now convalescing while her seducer had fled to the Continent. The gossips revelled in these 'pretty doings indeed of aristocratic young ladies ... [Some say] the report of Ly. Dolly cannot be true

1846: Falling Upstairs - and Down 217 as she is going to balls in the neighbourhood & riding every day. But that does not prove she has not miscarried.'^ Even in the best families, such mishaps occurred, but they were customarily managed with complete silence. The Orfords' only comfort was that polite society closed ranks against GSS. His friend Lord Exmouth condemned his departure from England: 'in a case of that kind, a man should always be present' to make reparations to the family; 'it will stop his career at once & for ever.'44 The Queen, it was said, had expressed herself disgusted at his behaviour, and it was rumoured that both GSS and Dorothy would be banned from court. Even the Satirist declared 'the honourable gentleman's' conduct, especially his refusal to marry Dorothy, 'revolting and ^honourable' even while it flung more mud: GSS's reason for refusing, it claimed, was that he had not been the first to seduce her.45 Lord George Bentinck took full advantage of an opportunity to blacken a political opponent. 'It is much discussed whether Smythe will be received in Society after such an outrage as getting an Earl's Daughter with child (if she be with child) & then casting her off & refusing to marry her. This is quite a modern description of profligacy reserved for a Member of Peel's moral Government[,] the contagion of its political bad faith spreading into private life.'46 By this time, rumours were proliferating that GSS had also had an affair with Dorothy's sister-in-law, Walpole's estranged wife, Harriet, and likely her sister, Lady Pollington, too. This was a little too much for even a social arbiter like Lady Londonderry to believe. T am very sorry,' she told Disraeli, 'for G. Smythe & pity Ld. Strangford sincerely.'47 Dickens, too, despite his contempt for GSS's politics, felt the story was getting out of hand. GSS by this time had reached Geneva, where Dickens, writing his 1846 Christmas story, 'The Battle of Life,' met and apparently liked him. Certain elements of the convoluted plot of 'The Battle of Life,' notably the handsome Kentish libertine who turns out to be no such thing, resemble what Dickens inferred about GSS's situation. In Geneva GSS certainly visited Harriet Walpole, whom Dickens also liked, but in Dickens's opinion this additional rumour must have arisen solely from her unconventionality, her 'free and careless' manner, and her separation from her husband.48 Initially Strangford thought the situation could be recouped if GSS married, though he deplored the mess that publicity had created. GSS and Dorothy had been extremely imprudent, but so had Orford. 'The folly, the inconceivable folly of the father! - in bruiting about what ought to have been buried ... and in making marriage almost impossible, by

218 Disraeli's Disciple

dishonoring the reputation of his own child.' He was inclined to believe what GSS had told him, that someone else was actually the seducer and GSS had been victim of an ingenious trap in a family conspiracy to save Dorothy's name. Nevertheless, desperate not to have Ellen's engagement endangered, Strangford enlisted Londonderry's help to persuade GSS that marriage was the only way to rescue his own character as well as Dorothy's.49 Safely beyond reach in Europe, GSS never replied, 'out of a Quixotic idea of absurdly strained delicacy. For I cd. not answer it without compromising other people [the Orfordsj - who God knows enough compromised themselves!'50 After Geneva, he moved restlessly about Italy, to Genoa (a city supposedly beneficial for consumptive patients) to Turin to Naples, where he spent the winter, always maintaining his innocence to friends and acquaintances. Manners's friend Lord Napier jokingly described how they went up Vesuvius together during an eruption: 'as he was not consumed I presume he is innocent. Providence ought to have snapped him up in the Crater if like Tarquin "he wrought the deed of shame."'51 When Manners, with his customary kindness, wrote to him, GSS refused to be persuaded, making it (with some sophistry) a matter of personal honour against social hypocrisy, 'the virtue of the Middle Class bristling with quills.' 'I will accept the infamy - the calumnies - the exile: but I will not be bullied into doing what in my conscience I believe is wrong.' A little too piteously, he dwelt on what refusal would cost him: 'A Parliamentary career - some early fame - the society of dear friends & relations in England.' He was even prepared to fight Walpole, who was on his way to Italy for the purpose. (Rumour had it that they had already fought and that Walpole had shot GSS in the wrist.) The only factor that could sway him would be jeopardy to Ellen's marriage - 'who can resist such torture?' In that case, he would not rule out marrying Dorothy in the end, but it would be his choice, not a bending to social pressures. 'Do you know,' he went on, dropping into whimsy: 'We have had before in our pedigree, a Lady Dorothy Smythe - and she was Waller's Sacharissa. My matrimonial fate will probably be curious enough. There are three women, one of whom, if I live, will most likely be my wife. And yet, she, whom I am really in love with, if/dare propose such a word by using it, is not One. I have worshipped her as a Poet only could - and - do not laugh dearest friend - never spoke to her in my life.'52 The unattainable one may have been nineteen-year-old Virginia Pattle, later Lady Somers and great-aunt of Virginia Woolf. Gregory recounts how he and GSS 'worshipped at the shrine of the most beautiful woman'

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they had ever seen.53 One of seven sisters, half-English, half-French, she was nicknamed 'Beauty.' Another sister, Julia ('Talent'), was later the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Pale and slender as GSS's mother, Virginia's looks made her a celebrity. At receptions people climbed on chairs to catch a glimpse of her. Thackeray was in love with her; Tennyson, Ruskin, and Edward Lear admired her; G.F.Watts adopted her as his Muse and painted her over and over again. But she hated the way her beauty set her on a pedestal. 'They all tell me that,' she complained, 'nobody cares for anything but that.' It would be another four years after GSS's confession that, the last of the sisters, she married Viscount Eastnor (later Earl Somers). Typically, he fell in love with her portrait first, but how could she have resisted his family motto, 'To be useful, rather than conspicuous'?54 In a Victorian novel, a heroine's fight against a forced marriage would evoke pity, but the self-absorbed tone of GSS's complaint to Manners is off-putting. He knew perfectly well that public exposure had been followed by indignant outcry in England. He had left Strangford to deal with a daily pile of letters, mostly anonymous, vilifying his conduct and berating his father for failing to see justice done. Dorothy herself, her reputation in shreds, was spending the winter in isolation in the country. Although his assertions strike an uncomfortable echo of his accusations against Eugenie's family, he firmly believed that once more he had been entrapped, and he determined to resist to the end, which he believed was not far off. His ambitions were crumbling. The fire is out - & I never can say what I have done in the pluck of my young earnestness again ... I have only one regret, that I did not die younger - I never shall know half so much, feel half so well, be capable of such great actions as I was at twenty ... I shall perhaps say at forty, that at 30 or before it, I was not unfit to die. This is my great hope: all the rest is leather & prunella.55

Worst of all, at the end of November Strangford reported that Ellen's marriage would not now take place for two or three months. Ostensibly the delay was due to her precarious health, but a tactful postponement would at least allow the dust of GSS's disgrace to settle.56 For GSS, in selfimposed exile in disreputable Naples, it was a sad end to 'that unfortunate year of 1846.'57

17 1847: With a Tongue and

a Pen of His Own

We should indeed be fools to sacrifice ourselves to the conventional Endymion

Yet by spring GSS was back in London. As often happened, his health improved with rest, and defiance conquered despondency. He knew that this was a turning point. If he were willing to retreat into decent obscurity for a year or two until the scandal died down, he might resume a conventional political career, but he refused. Every bout of ill health reminded him that time was too short. As Waldershare puts it in Endymion: '"One of my constituents sent me a homily this morning, the burthen of which was, I never thought of death. The idiot! I never think of anything else. It is my weakness."'1 Intimations of mortality drove GSS, a compulsion to live life to the full beside which nothing mattered - social rejection, persecution, or the strictures of organized politics. In 1847 he decisively abandoned conventional Victorian morality - where sex was acceptable under official sanction - and party politics, too bound by outmoded rules to allow for individual talents. Like Waldershare's, his experience as a gagged junior minister embittered him. Out of office, Waldershare reviles his former government: 'he lavished all his powers of invective and ridicule alike on the imbecility of their policy and their individual absurdities,' and he vows to speak out against them at every opportunity. Even in the Conservative sanctum of the Carlton, GSS too burned his political boats, regaling Gregory and other young party members with 'his fierce attacks on conventionalities, and his scorn of the men whom we regarded as the Olympian gods of the party to which we belonged, and still more of the political creed to which we subscribed.'2 It took equal anger and determination to speak publicly, with the

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scandal so fresh in people's minds. His name featured weekly in the gutter press, and the Satirist was not the only paper to wonder 'How Canterbury Smythe will face the Parliament.'3 Strangford, desperate to clear the family name for Ellen's sake, put his faith in 'what Dickens, in his Oliver Twist calls, "theperfect innocence dodge,"' blaming everything on machiavellian plotting by Lady Orford and Lady Pollington: 'Two more infernal b-tches than the mother and sister do not exist.'4 Naturally, the Orfords were also protesting perfect innocence. To Mary Anne (whose influence she wanted), Lady Orford denied every horrible story; six months after the scandal broke, she claimed she had only just heard them. Tn honour,' she wrote, GSS really ought to have returned home and refuted 'these atrocious inventions.' Evidently she was still angling for him to marry Dorothy, for she tracked his movements as reported in the press and inquired pointedly when he was returning, particularly if he would be back for Ellen's wedding (now postponed till May). When a false rumour spread that Northumberland, who died in February, had left him £20,000, she hinted strongly that now was the time for him to make amends: 'I think Mr S must feel very sorry that through him Dorothy has been made so very uncomfortable.'5 GSS, however, resisted: he would not try to exonerate himself. He intended to brave the initial reaction and allow his words and actions to show what he thought of society and party alike. This was the point when his friends, while keeping their affection for him, were forced to recognize that, by their standards, he was an unrepentant immoralist. In 1847 there is no correspondence with Manners until August; there is none at all with Disraeli. Cochrane was shortly to start Ernest Vane, dedicated to GSS as a paragon of intelligence and wit, but wrestling with the problem of the unprincipled man who at the same time is extremely likeable. He addressed it by creating two opposing characters, George Percy, the brilliant conversationalist beloved by all, and Luttrell, the unscrupulous seducer who refuses to marry his victim and fights a duel with her brother.6 The general perception was that GSS would not be received in society, even if he wanted it. Lady Orford predicted: 'people who have daughters surely will not admit him to their houses.' 'The ban,' he later remembered, 'was ... universal.' Even Lady Londonderry 'withdrew from me ... in 1846-47 what had always been the kindest, the most considerate [,] the most unvarying of constant friendships and protection's.'7 Nevertheless, when he returned to London in early March (the Morning Post trumpeting the occasion) he defiantly resumed his seat in the

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Commons.8 He and Disraeli had changed positions. Now he was on the back benches, while Disraeli and Bentinck, as the Protectionist leaders, shared his old place on the opposition front bench with Peel. GSS duly cast his votes, but as he, not the party whips, decided. He intended to make his presence felt, to remind his fellow parliamentarians of his brilliance after the enforced silence last session. On 16 March, he rose to deliver what even his sister-in-law admitted was a fine speech, censuring the Three Powers - Austria, Prussia, and Russia - for their November annexation of Cracow, the last free Polish republic. He was at his best fluent, witty, imaginative, free for the first time since 1845 to voice his opinions and showcase his command of European affairs and their international implications. Even the usually flat newspaper summaries roused next day to remark on its 'classical elegance and striking antithesis.' He started so quietly that reporters could barely hear him, but as he assailed Russell, the new prime minister, for discouraging debate on the question, he gathered strength, while murmurs of agreement swelled into cheers that finally punctuated every sentence. He cited every provision of the 1815 Treaty of Vienna that guaranteed Cracow's independence '(Hear, hear),' enumerated all the stages (complete with dates and names) leading up to the annexation, and put it forcefully that inaction from Britain and France coupled with lack of rapport had allowed the Three Powers such ominous latitude. No nation, he emphasized, could afford isolationism in the current state of Europe. With great feeling, he described Poland's 'dying agonies' and the poignant saying her plight had inspired, 'that in the hour of her necessity God was too high and France was too far. (Cheers.)' At the end, high on the crest of the wave, he called on Palmerston, the foreign secretary, to renew the entente cordiale in the interests of peace all over Europe. '("Hear, hear, hear," and cheers.)' Disraeli, who followed, did his best to erase some of the impression GSS had made, delivering his putdown in his most sardonic tones. T am scarcely entitled,' he sneered, 'to address the House upon this question, for I can only appeal to its reason and not to its passion.'9 The rest of Disraeli's speech, however, was less effective, as it rested on his argument that the Treaty of Vienna had not been violated, when it undoubtedly had. GSS went home that night knowing that, on this occasion at least, he had bested his former leader. But he did not have long to enjoy it. By one of those twists that continually overtook him, the very next day Disraeli's new novel, Tancred, was published. .

Tancred, or The New Crusade, was Coningsby revisited and translated to

1847: With a Tongue and a Pen of His Own 223

the spiritual sphere. The young hero, Tancred (probably suggested by Bateson and his fateful pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1843), rejects the superficiality of London society and seeks religious enlightenment in the Holy Land. In the novel's development, one can trace the changing relationship between Disraeli and GSS. In the early passages - probably written in the winter of 1845 before GSS absconded to the Peelites and certainly before the Lady Dorothy scandal - Conirtgsby reappears, more experienced, harder, more cynical, and infinitely more attractive, a fresh characterization that sparks these early pages with satirical wit. (Carlyle thought Tancred 'readable to the end of the first volume.') 10 This Coningsby is much closer to the real-life GSS. Instead of his former sententious priggishness, he has GSS's 'native vein of sauciness which it required all the solemnity of the senate to repress. Indeed, even there, upon the benches, with a grave face, he often indulged in quips and cranks, that convulsed his neighbouring audience, who often, amid the long dreary nights of statistical imposture, sought refuge in his gay sarcasms, his airy personalities, and happy quotations.' Like GSS too, he interprets the course of history as 'the influence of individual character.'11 It looks, in fact, as though he is to be a major character, if not the hero again. Between 1845 and 1847, however, Disraeli clearly changed his focus. In the completed novel, the major contrast is between Tancred, another priggish hero, and the most fully drawn character in the book, Fakredeen - a name drawn from 'fake,' 'fakir,' and 'Aberdeen.' Fakredeen is a duplicitous Arab emir, beautiful, irresistible, and utterly unscrupulous, wheedling and threatening by turns, lying, continually shifting ground, using people entirely for his own ends. At first appearance, he is invisible, his presence marked only by 'a mass of brilliant garments huddled together ... his face hid, his form not to be traced.' Out of this amorphous heap, as if in warning of his true nature, 'like some wily and dangerous reptile, glided the spiral involutions of his pipe.'12 Fakredeen is full of schemes and what he calls the 'political combinations' that will realize them. He contracts to sell weapons to the Bedouin, though he has no money to pay for them in the first place. He makes elaborate plans, only to abandon them. He has delusions of grandeur: '"I want Europe to talk of me. I am wearied of hearing nothing but Ibrahim Pacha, Louis Philippe, and Palmerston."' Like GSS, he is a temperamental chameleon, taking on 'the colour of his companions.' In addition, he is 'vain, susceptible, endowed with a brilliant though frothy imagination, and a love of action so unrestrained that restlessness deprived it of energy, with so fine a taste that he was always capricious, and

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Disraeli's Disciple

so ingenious that he seemed ever inconsistent.' Disraeli's dissection of his character is unnervingly perceptive and completely merciless. To dissemble and to simulate; to conduct confidential negotiations with contending powers and parties at the same time; to be ready to adopt any opinion and to possess none; to fall into the public humour of the moment, and to evade the impending catastrophe; to look upon every man as a tool, and never to do anything which had not a definite though circuitous purpose; these were his political accomplishments; and, while he recognised them as the best means of success, he found in their exercise excitement and delight. To be the centre of a maze of manoeuvres was his empyrean.13

At first, not knowing that Fakredeen has already betrayed him, Tancred is attracted to this handsome young man whose winning professions of love and admiration prompt him to reciprocate: '"I will not be a cruel gaoler; I could not be to you."' In the end, however, Fakredeen's plots and counter-plots are uncovered, whereupon he admits all in an ecstasy of self-abasement aimed at averting punishment: "Yes, I am that villain and that idiot, who has brought about all this misery, misery enough to turn me mad, and which, by a just retribution, has destroyed all the brilliant fortunes which were at last opening on me ... I am a villain, a fool; all villains are. I know it. But I cannot help it. I did not make myself."'14 The tone is all too familiar. It could be a passage straight out of one of GSS's self-recriminating letters. As a public revenge, it was devastating. Tancred was a 'humiliation which you did all things - and you alone successfully - to make me feel.'15 All London seemed to know who had modelled for Fakredeen. The Times?, reviewer even admonished: 'It is not well to caricature one's friends.' Lady Blessington confirmed the accuracy of the characterization: 'Never was there so true a portrait of a misapplied Genius, and an unprincipled mind. With what wonderful skill have you managed this character forcing your readers to love, while they cannot esteem him.' Milnes, himself smarting at Disraeli's parody of him as the affected Vavasour, reviewed Fakredeen as 'a sort of prurient graft of eastern subtlety on western politics.' The Times thought his character 'the most elaborately drawn in the work. He is a Christian Prince of the East devoid of all principle, yet full of natural feeling and emotions. Mr. Disraeli exhibits a master hand in his delineation.' Even Manners recognized the portrait's effectiveness: 'I see it all; Fakredeen KvSei yaiuv [exulting in his strength], welcoming each new comer with all the more frank hearti-

1847: With a Tongue and a Pen of His Own 225

ness because he hoped the more successfully to bind him to his purpose.'16 In spite of the damage to his feelings, however, GSS refused to be crushed. 'He has a tongue and a pen of his own,' Strangford wrote to Londonderry, 'and he can defend himself against all and every one who seeks to injure him - as one day they may find to their cost.'17 He would wait for the opportunity to repay Disraeli in full, and meantime, as he had done so often before, he went to ground, burying himself in the distractions London offered. And again as before, he found female consolation. In some ways, Catherine Cocks was another Delphine in her intelligence and independence, though she lacked education and was at this time hardly a linguist. 'In '47,' GSS later told Disraeli, 'I found the lady much in the condition of Madlle. L'Ange: afterward Madame du Barri.'18 In making the comparison with Louis XV's mistress, GSS paid tribute to Catherine's brains and determination to move up in the world, as well as to her beauty. Statuesque, with black hair, deep brown eyes, and a steely will, she had already pulled herself and several siblings out of the poverty of their Dorset origins as children of a farmhand and a gypsy.19 When GSS met her, she was twenty, newly come to London, and on the fringes of the demi-monde. She had found work for herself and her two sisters, Susan and Polly, with Jem Mason (a famous steeplechase rider) at his Oxford Street stables, as what were called 'pretty horse-breakers,' handsome women who made their living by showing off horses to buyers and breeders in the stable yard or in nearby Hyde Park. Like a more famous horse-breaker, Catherine Walters (known as 'Skittles'), she impressed the gentry with her horsemanship and tight riding habit, and acquired several aristocratic 'protectors.' Under an alias, the three sisters went on to became circus equestriennes, 'the celebrated sisters Fleming' of Astley's Royal Amphitheatre and the Cremorne Gardens, who curvetted on their resplendent horses nightly in the main ring and finished the performance by jumping them through sheets of real flames. 'Kitty, Sue and Poll Fleming' had their healths drunk in regimental messes and exclusive clubs, among them earning enough to establish themselves in a villa in St John's Wood, where Catherine (known as 'the Bird of Paradise') cared for another sister's illegitimate daughter and, to ready them all for the prestigious marriages she planned, arranged tuition in reading, writing, French, music, and drawing.20 Her plans in fact grew out of the relationship with GSS, who appointed himself her early tutor, much as Raphael in La Peau de Chagrin does with Pauline, his landlady's daughter and his future mistress, and as

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Waldershare in Endymion does with Imogene, his landlady's sister, whom he undertakes to educate in his spare time. Even on his travels, Waldershare keeps up a correspondence with Imogene, 'occasionally sending her a choice volume, which she was not only to read, but to prove her perusal of it by forwarding to him a criticism of its contents.' Imogene, initially dazzled by her high-born teacher, is a quick learner and soon can hold her own in good society, just as Catherine rapidly learned to do. On the other hand, Catherine's strength of character was a large part of her attraction for GSS. Quite apart from her looks and the frisson in her masterful control of a fine horse, she was blunt where he quibbled, decisive where he vacillated, practical as opposed to imaginative, physically strong while he was debilitated. The relationship is mirrored exactly in Waldershare's with Imogene. If he were only financially independent, Waldershare vows, '"I would marry her myself. But that is impossible. That would only be asking her to share my ruin. I want her to live in palaces, and perhaps, in my decline of life, make me her librarian, like Casanova."'21 Eventually, Imogene's natural refinement and acquired education fit her to marry an earl and live, if not in palaces, in stately homes as an accepted member of high society - a destiny that, Disraeli knew by the time he wrote Endymion, Catherine too had realized, thanks to her own perseverance and GSS's friendship. In turn she remained devoted to him, even while she went on to richer lovers and her titled husband, and she proved, over the vicissitudes of the next ten years, one of his most faithful friends. Meanwhile, in May, Ellen's very quiet marriage to Lord Sligo at last took place, with the couple taking up residence at Sligo's Irish estate at Westport.22 About the same time, a long article on GSS appeared in Eraser's Magazine, an attention that confirmed his decision to remain independent. Quoting his Cracow speech, it proclaimed him one of the great parliamentary orators, always guaranteed to enliven the stodgy House of Commons, more brilliant than either Peel or Russell, and equalled only by Macaulay and Disraeli. All that remained to prove, the article contended, was that he could persevere: there was a masculine vigour in his speeches, but, said the writer, it was undercut by an 'almost effeminacy ... and juvenility of appearance.' Without more maturity, in appearance and attitude, would he 'be able to curb and tame his Pegasus, and make him do shaft work?'23 Had the author only known it, GSS would soon show that he could, but it would not be in the political ring. The article reinforced his decision to run again for Canterbury in the

1847: With a Tongue and a Pen of His Own 227

July general election. The 'perfect innocence dodge,' Strangford confided to Londonderry, made it 'of the utmost importance to him to get into Parliament, and for the self-same seat, if possible.' To this end, Strangford said, he would again pay his expenses, 'but, being now... alone in the world,' he lamented, 'I can accomplish it with less difficulty than ... a year ago.'24 That election was one of the most acrimonious GSS ever fought. Repeated accusations were hurled at him about his political consistency, he faced name-calling in which 'Turncoat Smythe' was one of the more polite epithets, and for the entire campaign he waged verbal battles with the editor of the Conservative Kentish Gazette, Willoughby Smithson, over GSS's alleged conversion to Liberalism. After members of the local Conservative Club decided that his votes for the Maynooth grant and Jewish rights made him 'anti-Protestant' and therefore debarred from re-election, he descended on Canterbury like a destroying angel, with repartee his weapon rather than the bludgeon of insults his opponents wielded. At the Victoria Rooms, in fine form before a huge crowd, he proceeded to rout his civic enemies with a parallel wittily drawn from local history. His critics, he joked to a receptive audience, were direct descendants of the sixteenth-century Canterbury worthies who, determined to burn a heretic, paid 14s.8d. to transport him from London, with an extra 2d. for wood to burn him with, Id. for gunpowder, and 8d. for a stake and staple. 'I doubt not but there are some corporators in Canterbury who would not begrudge me the 14s. 8d.' The victim of old days, he said, suffered heroically for a creed he held, but the victim of modern times (himself) suffered because he refused a political creed 'which he does not, cannot, will not, entertain. (Loud cheers.)' Peppering his speech with anecdotes, jokes, and local references, he won the electors completely over before he seriously addressed the charges of apostasy with chapter and verse from his past six years as their representative. He told them feelingly how disappointment with Peel and the government's ineffectual policies had mostly prompted his parliamentary conduct, and he reminded them of his 1841 trip to the industrial Midlands that had shown him how inadequate Peel's measures were. Free Trade, he told them again, was the way to liberate the markets of a commercial country from 'an unnatural and enervating Protection. (Cheers.) What we want is a little Puseyism in agriculture - (Laughter) a little infusion of new spirit ... (Cheers.)' His audience, however, must have been a little surprised at his conclusion, when, having defended his conduct in Parliament, he hinted that his next move might be to a second career. 'I must admit that we men of theory make indifferent

228 Disraeli's Disciple

Parliament men. My own temper is such that I will frankly say that in these last vicissitudes I would rather have been one of the journalists who led than one of the statesmen who followed.'25 This prescient view of the growing power of the press is amplified in Angela Pisani, where Lionel too becomes a journalist, acting on his conviction that it is 'the journalists who, in the first instance, give you the idea which finds its way into the Legislature, but whose names you never hear and scarcely whisper.'26 He might have added that the Lady Dorothy scandal had taught him how the newspapers could damage a career. Persuasive and self-justifying it was, but it was not the speech of a Fakredeen. It made such an impression that, within the week, it had been published as a pamphlet, attacked or praised in all the London papers. Hanover again commiserated with Strangford over the 'damnable radical speech ... which... disgusted me as I read it.' Lady Dorothy, now released from seclusion and being escorted to dinner parties by her cousin, Reginald Nevill, sent on a copy of the speech to Mary Anne. It also drew the special attention of Lord George Bentinck, writing as 'AntiPeel' in the Morning Post, where he challenged GSS to prove he had not left the Conservative party.27 There were some grounds for asking the question. In a March by-election caused by Bradshaw's death, the Liberal Lord Albert Conyngham had won back the vacant Conservative seat. In the July election campaign, the Conservative party management, alarmed that GSS was expressing sentiments too Liberal for their comfort, enraged him by sending down two additional Conservative candidates to contest the seat. They were neophytes and soon proved themselves ineffectual, but in protest GSS agreed to 'coalesce' his forces with those of Lord Albert, an absentee candidate. GSS later told a Royal Commission that, since he could see no appreciable difference between the two parties, he had run in this election as a Liberal. The Commission also found that there had been bribery, the means largely supplied by Lord Albert's team.28 There were, though, intangible costs, 'professions & proclamations of liberalism on the part of George, which I deeply deplore - and which he could only have learned in a school of politics where the end is thought to justify the means.'29 On nomination day GSS told the crowd, with some justice, that one of Peel's achievements had been to 'extinguish party in this country' and invited them to vote, not for party colours, blue (Liberal) or pink (Conservative), but for individual preference. The crowd liked this, and they roared when he adapted a well-known racy story in advising the two Conservatives to withdraw: '"My Lord, we

1847: With a Tongue and a Pen of His Own 229 must retire; you have no intelligence, and I have not enough for two."' He could not, however, suppress his contempt for Smithson, calling him a 'brazen, brainless, bloodless booby' for the 'drivelling slaver of his idiotic Gazette,' language that met with hisses and cries of 'You turncoat.' Still, on polling day, the voters took his advice. Lord Albert and GSS won, much applauded and especially cheered by 'some two dozen enthusiastic females, bedecked with pale blue and pink ribbons,' at the windows of the adjoining houses, women who cared nothing about GSS's past scandals, but 'ever and anon encouraged the Hon. Candidate with glances of perfect admiration and smiles of encouraging approval.'30 Bentinck, tasting sour grapes, maintained that a number of so-called Conservatives had abandoned Conservatism and 'crawled into the House of Commons under the gabardine of the Whigs.' GSS in particular, he said, 'was brought in upon Albert Conyngham's back.'31 This was unfair: Lord Albert had provided the money, but GSS had done the campaigning, and his popularity was as high as ever. But, more and more, exertions of this kind completely exhausted him. By this time, Catherine Cocks, intent on upward mobility, had moved on to a more moneyed protector, and in September he retreated to Paris for rest and to contemplate his future. Here he got the news from Manners that Dorothy was engaged to Reginald Nevill: 'he was,' GSS remembered, 'a great friend of mine in 1846, & is a great foe now; but nevertheless a very good fellow. He was desperately in love with the sister when I was intimate with him: you may well write "what a strange world it is."'32 A month later, Disraeli (probably knowing the information would reach GSS) wrote to Manners: 'Lady Dorothy Walpole went down to Wolterton to day to be married, which makes me very glad: an excellent match. Reginald Nevill with a good 8000£ pr ann. & a real good fellow.'33 Perhaps, in spite of his resistance, GSS had cared for her after all. He certainly entered one of his more pronounced downward spirals after the news. In Paris, weak and depressed, he looked back at 'all the material & crass stupidity of my life.' 'I am without energy,' he told Manners; 'how changed I am, I hardly know myself ... with my intellect all gone, without ambition, without a desire ... If you love me, pray, as I do, that I may die.' Still, he had enough strength to boast of his Parisian excesses, 'a mere incarnation of Claret and Cigars' in which his evenings were devoted 'to all the idle men, & idle women, vagabonds and actresses who choose to usurp it.' Like Fakredeen, he maintained his behaviour was not his fault: 'you know how facile I am, & how impossible "a no" is with me.' He considered taking a horseback trip on through

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France. (Horse exercise was frequently advised for consumptives; Keats, barely able to move in his last days in Rome, was urged to ride.)34 Unsurprisingly, Manners did not accept the invitation to join him and recoup health as well as some of their old companionship. Without the stimulus of Manners's company, GSS stayed where he was, mulling the future and 'still tossing about & playing with first principles.' His apprehension in his Cracow speech about the balance of power in Europe and the possibility of some radical upheaval still weighed on him, bringing back Faber's line from the summers in the Lakes, 'England should bathe in blood, & so be free.' 'I hardly see my way,' GSS mused, 'out of all the torpid egotism, & snoring plethora of the present system, except by some such elemental medicine.'35 The coming year of 1848 would bear him out, and it would open up his new career. He was about to become a journalist.

18 1848-9: Very Like Assassination

The lead moulded into bullets was not half so destructive as that cast into type GSS, quoting Andrew Marvell

Eighteen forty-eight became known as 'the year of revolutions.' From Sicily in January, they spread across Europe, to the German and Italian states, Poland, and other smaller principalities. The Austrian attache in Paris, Comte Rodolphe Apponyi, predicted: 'Europe appears to be on the eve of a general combustion. It can only end in disorder and pillage.'1 For all his own forecast, GSS thought that France would escape: Guizot, he told Manners, was 'stronger than ever, & the [royal] dynasty inexpugnable.' He could see how critical affairs were - socialism was rousing an industrial class as exploited as that in the English Midlands; his friend Louis Blanc had already published his Organisation du travail, and at the end of 1847 workers were holding reform meetings euphemistically termed 'banquets.' As late as New Year, however, he found Guizot unworried - as he put it, 'transcendentally bumptious' - and by the time he returned to London for the opening of Parliament on 3 February, he still shared the French prime minister's optimism.2 But they had misread the situation. Only three weeks later, from the wreckage of the Paris streets, GSS was reporting Guizot's departure and the deposing of King Louis Philippe. When the Morning Chronicle recruited GSS as an editorial writer, he could hardly have foreseen an immediate stint as a war correspondent. To British parliamentarians, the important conflict seemed to be the one between parties on the floor of the Commons. In anticipation of this, in February 1848 a consortium headed by the Earl of Lincoln, heir to the wealthy Duke of Newcastle, took over the Chronicle - a Whig

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mouthpiece for the last fourteen years - and turned it into a militantly Conservative organ under a new editor, John Douglas Cook, a former Times journalist.3 GSS and Lincoln had been colleagues under Peel, while John Walter, son of The Times'?, proprietor, was still a close friend. The real link, however, may have been GSS's relative by marriage, Matthew James Higgins, the writer Jacob Omnium,' who also joined the Chronicle in 1848. Cook had a talent for spotting promising young writers and, though permanently irascible, knew how to manage them. His jocular description of the new editorial cohort as 'the press-gang' was apt; another of his recruits, Eliza Lynn Linton, recorded his peremptory instructions about the point of view she must take in an article or which passages of a Parliamentary Blue Book she should comment on. On the other hand, his liking for 'a rattling, vigorous sort of paper' often allowed leader writers their heads, and his principles were practical: 'Keep to the text; write with strength; and don't talk nonsense.'4 When GSS began, his speciality was France, but he was given a remarkably free hand to address other topics that interested him. Though the paper's politics were specifically Peelite, aimed against Disraeli and his unruly Protectionists, GSS was frequently able to 'puff his former mentor. He told Manners that he had 'carte blanche qua their Foreign Policy, & receive[d] a considerable salary.' Furthermore, Manners recorded with some surprise, it appeared 'quite to absorb him.'5 In fact, GSS had found his metier, one that allowed him to express his knowledge and opinions and exercise his wit without the ordeal of speaking in Parliament. Daily journalism suited him. He was never short of ideas, and, as Disraeli had already found, he was most productive given a short assignment and a strict deadline. (Longer projects, like Angela Pisani or his family history, never were finished.) His change of career broke new ground. According to his sister-in-law, he was 'the first member of the aristocracy who became a steady contributor to the press; the first man of rank who became definitely and habitually connected with a daily newspaper.'6 In this, as in his earlier recognition of the industrial and merchant classes, he was in the van of nineteenth-century socio-political change. As an aristocrat, of a class whose power was traditionally founded on land (though only marginally in GSS's case), he was now influencing political opinion through a medium primarily owned by and aimed at an urban and increasingly middle-class public. In addition, he was working for a salary, not drawing on property rentals, and he was practising a profession that was still regarded as 'low,' a particular betrayal of rank for a future viscount.7 Consequently, there were those who strongly disap-

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proved. Noble parliamentarians, such as Palmerston or Brougham, did (protected by anonymity) publish articles to suit particular political ends, but they did not become salaried journalists. The family memoir saw his writing as 'misplaced industry,' a diversion of aristocratic energies that ought to have gone into his duties as an MR Edward Stanley, remarking on his infrequent speeches in the Commons, contemptuously put his absences down to an 'incurable habit of indolence.'8 Between 1848 and 1850, however, the pace of his writing bears no resemblance to indolence. In these first two years he averaged two to three long editorials a week, which at contemporary rates would earn him about £350 a year, a comfortable salary for a single man.9 Early in his employment, he told Disraeli (with whom he was for the moment reconciled): I am working like a galley slave. To day I wrote two Articles, and both began with you: but they cut out your name and the citation particularly from Sybil. Yet strange to say, I don't dislike my work, and it is something in this crossgrained, & cross-purpose age to have stumbled on a metier which, although it is very like assassination, yet involves labour, & is therefore good pro tanto, and true and hard.10

With 'assassination,' he may have been thinking of the Andrew Marvell passage he had read at Cambridge on the power of the printed word: 'the lead moulded into bullets was not half as destructive as that cast into type.'11 The word, though, was current in the newspaper world: Cook instructed Linton which people she should or should not 'assassinate.' It meant that in a party paper many editorials amounted to character assassination, of political opponents or unfriendly foreign rulers. Initially, though GSS certainly shared Cook's bellicose approach, he had some scruples about putting it into practice, safely under cover of press anonymity. In the Commons, he had traded vitriolic insults with opponents, but it had been face to face - the honourable way under the code of a gentleman. Like Lionel in Angela Pisani, he saw the dangers in 'the anonymous part of the English system ... and its principles of assassination made easy.'12 Later on in his journalistic career, however, he would take advantage of it. As matters in France worsened in February, revolutionary songs from 1789 were heard again; de Tocqueville declared, 'we are sleeping on a volcano.'13 GSS wrote almost daily on the situation, comparing it to the eve of the 1789 Revolution and Guizot ('a Minister at bay') to a bull in

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the ring. If Guizot fell, he wrote, the whole French political system fell, with ominous implications for European peace.14 These were competent articles, energetic, knowledgeable, and enlivened by his fund of literary allusions and historical parallels. But when, in late February, French unrest came to a head, he unexpectedly made his journalistic name with on-the-spot reporting, his 'famous articles in the Chronicle, where he describes the cuirassiers camping in the streets of Paris during the revolutionary days of 1848.'15 On 22 February, French workers, forbidden by nervous authorities to hold their political 'banquets,' began to assemble in growing crowds. By the 23rd they had blocked the streets with the paving-stone and handcart barricades familiar from 1830, Guizot had resigned, and mobs were marching on the government ministries to demand their rights. That evening, on the Boulevard des Capucines outside the Foreign Ministry (where Guizot lived), the army opened fire, killing fifty-two people and sparking full-scale revolt. British alarm was enough in itself to boost the Chronicles sales, since its new policy of several daily editions allowed for stop-press communiques from its Paris correspondents. It is unclear why GSS joined them. He may have volunteered - Disraeli later told Manners that GSS had gone specifically to meet Louis Blanc - or the paper may have thought his French connections would add inside information to its regular correspondent's reports.16 By the 22nd he was in Paris and had sent back a graphic eyewitness report on the growing ferment, as well as a solidly reasoned editorial praising Guizot's restraint and again evoking!789 and 1830. On the morning of the 23rd, thirsty for the action he had found at last, he readily risked his own assassination in the dangerous streets. Instead of fashionable strollers in the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysees, he found 'the troops bivou[a]cked in the Place de Carousel all night.' In the narrow alleys of Montmartre, he mingled with huge crowds of rioters and at 3 p.m. reported a worsening situation dissension between National and Municipal Guards, dragoons sweeping the boulevard between the Porte St Denis and the Porte St Martin, and more cavalry posted in the Champs Elysees with hay and provisions for that night. At 4 p.m., having managed to squeeze into the Chamber of Deputies, he witnessed Guizot's resignation.17 He may have actually seen the later shootings at the Foreign Ministry, the 'volley [that] decided the fate of Louis Philippe's dynasty.' His lodgings were nearby in the Rue de la Paix, and his description in the Chronicle is that of an eyewitness: after 'the whole line of troops fired along the Boulevard, and killed and wounded a vast number ... the people fled in consternation, and for a

1848-9: Very Like Assassination 235 few minutes the scene was a most heart-rending one ... On all sides you heard the cries of aux armes! a has les assassin[s]! a has Louis Philippe! a has toute la race! AUK barracades [sic] .r Thanks to the comparatively new electric telegraph, his first dispatches arrived promptly in London. By the 24th, however, postal services and railways had ceased to function, and even couriers could not get his reports through. Writing 'from a city in the complete possession of the mob,' he reported that the fighting continued, the crowd had seized the Hotel de Ville, and, in face of their advance on the Tuileries demanding a republic, Louis Philippe had abdicated. Prudently for once, GSS waited until the firing outside died down ('and not one moment sooner') before venturing out again towards the royal palaces. Clambering over barricades in the Rue Vivienne, he came upon the sacking of the Palais Royal, where rioters were at the windows flinging down gilded chairs, fine pictures, velvet curtains, and finally Louis Philippe's throne into a bonfire in the courtyard. Walking on, he found a similar scene at the Tuileries, heaps of women's clothing in the gardens, more bonfires in the Rue de Rivoli, and rioters in the royal cellars, 'in all stages of drunkenness, from the muzzy to the dead.' Interviewing, or even observing, was risky; Anglophobia ran high, many British had followed Louis Philippe out of the city, and there were reports of violence against those who remained. Characteristically, when he wrote about his most dangerous encounter, he turned it into a humorous anecdote against himself. Faced with an armed Republican gendarme surrounded by drunken ruffians who suspected he was English, he quick-wittedly answered, 'truly enough, that I was no Englishman[.] I am ashamed to own I repudiated her Majesty Queen Victoria.' Technically, of course, his birth in Stockholm did make this true - he must have remembered the similar gibes against him in 1841 at Canterbury. He got away with telling the mob he was actually American, a safely republican nationality he could just claim through his New York grandmother.18 As a provisional government was formed and quiet returned, he sent back more articles, including one on ceremonies on 4 March at the tomb of his hero, Armand Carrel, on which he quoted his own poem on Carrel. Soberly, he outlined the precariousness of the new government, predicted (correctly) that the poet Lamartine could not last as foreign minister, and feared the effect this enforced democracy would have on the rest of Europe.19 Again, he was right: within a few weeks, events in France inspired revolution in Prussia, and even forced the great Austrian chancellor, Metternich, into exile in England. In the heart of the revolu-

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tion he and Faber had envisioned ten years before - a revolution as bloody as those of his childhood in Constantinople and St Petersburg GSS had established his credentials as a journalist of professionalism as well as daring. Now, with the rest of Europe in turmoil, would he next be covering revolution in Britain? Some of his allusions indicate that he thought so: 'When Johnson pressed Boswell's father to say what good had been done by the decapitation of Charles I, the sturdy old Presbyterian replied, "Gad, doctor, it gart kings ken that they had a lith (joint) in their necks."'20 On the whole, however, GSS explained with a tinge of disappointment, Britain was safe; the roots of her traditions were sunk deeper and balanced her class system better than did the political 'experiments' on the Continent. Again he was right. Though London prepared with apprehension and fifteen thousand special constables for the arrival of two hundred thousand Chartists with their petition on 10 April, all ended peaceably. By June, the only evidence of revolution in England was an invasion of eminent European exiles, from Louis Philippe and Guizot to Metternich and Karl Marx. Prospects of war gone, GSS diverted his energies to literary assassinations of domestic politicians, always returning, with either praise or blame, to Disraeli. Later he would remind his friend, 'I was more loyal to you, in the M. Chronicle, & otherwise, than you think.'21 It was a strange dialogue, from which Disraeli's side (if he ever committed it to paper) is missing, although it can be deduced from GSS's letters and articles. Once again it was the double game; it allowed GSS to toe his paper's party line and overtly attack his old mentor, while at other times he colluded with him. At first he seemed to be returning the insults he had received in Tancred. He compared Lamartine's temporary power in France with Disraeli's insecure status with the British public, 'sparkling, amusing, perorating, with every man's laugh, every man's cheer, but with no man's confidence, and no man's love.' [England] can take pleasure and even pride in her Tennyson, in her Dickens, in her Disraeli. But she reserves her confidence for practical men ... for men whose works and deeds bear some proportion to their words, who have shown more desire to be trusted than to be cheered; who have given more time to the training of their minds than to the preparation of their speeches; who have spent more oil in studying the interests of the country than in pointingjokes and polishing metaphors; whose names are associated with a principle and not with a simile.

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Disraeli must have winced, though his sister, Sarah, shrewdly noted that there was 'something spicy and flattering in the malignity ... is it the hand of Fakredeen?'22 In the double game, overt malignity had a hidden purpose. GSS went on to characterize Disraeli as an 'adventurer,' but at the same time to question his secondary role to Bentinck, the Protectionist figurehead. 'In this parasitic servility of genius to dul[l]ness we see most manifestly betrayed the sense of an incurable weakness and the prophetic apprehension of an inevitable fall ... the desire of an ambitious man to govern his country, not for her sake but for his own - the story, in a word, of "Vivian Grey."' Disraeli, partner in the game, acted on the criticism. Six months later, when after Bentinck's death the Protectionist leadership was being decided, Disraeli refused his previous secondary role in words that echo GSS's: '"I am Disraeli the adventurer,"' he asserted, '"and I will not acquiesce in a position which will enable the party to make use of me in debate and then throw me aside.'"23 When GSS dropped Disraeli's name too often into his articles, he was sometimes blue-pencilled by his editor, but often was not. In a July article defending the French general Cavaignac for his ruthless suppression of a second Paris uprising, the casual reference to ' (what Mr. Disraeli nicknamed) "the military mind"' was really irrelevant to his theme, that ability in a military leader was not confined to the battlefield: 'there never was a great captain who was not also a great civilian.' He took the opportunity to praise his patron Wellington, prime minister and general, and bolstered his argument with a long quotation from Thiers's 1829 praise of Marshal St Cyr.24 As things later turned out, it may have been the most significant editorial he ever wrote; it certainly became the most notorious, when he passed it on at a time of crisis to the unsuspecting Disraeli. In 1848, it was merely a part of their collusion, probably arranged in conversation at meetings like the Disraelis' breakfast for Guizot. (A 'perfect party,' thought Lord Shelburne. 'Wives without their husbands & husbands without their wives.')25 For Disraeli's Summary of the Session speech on 30 August - 'the speech,' Disraeli later declared, 'that made me leader' - GSS even supplied material. 'Here,' he wrot apologetically four days before, 'is the summary I ought to have sent ages ago, but I have been to my Ca[nter]bury races - and there were delays before I went, about the paper.' Such collusion, if discovered, was highly dangerous, but GSS was willing to take the risk. 'I have no object, as you will see: on the contrary, I disarm myself for the future (as politics go) out of love, admiration, & sympathy.' The day after the speech, Disraeli

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sent Lady Londonderry a copy of the Chronicle, drawing her attention to its 'leading article of great ability,' i.e., GSS's lauding of Disraeli's oratory, an important boost to Disraeli's standing in the party. 26 A month later, GSS was able to help again. Although Disraeli was the obvious successor to Bentinck, the party still did not trust him. They postponed a decision until Parliament met in February 1849, which left time for GSS, just before the Christmas holiday, to publish in the Chronicle 'a very remarkable art[icle] on the Protectionist leadership,' declaring Disraeli 'their only man of genius ... the only speaker of their party who rescues their doctrines from contempt.' Even in an article written to Disraeli's order, however, GSS slipped in his own 'malignity,' cleverly turning back on Disraeli the close of Coningsby, which questions the hero's ability to maintain his principles. What will be his fate? Will he maintain, in august assemblies and high places the great truths which in study and solitude he has embraced? or will his skilled intelligence subside into being the adroit tool of a corrupt party? Will vanity confound his fortunes or jealousy wither his sympathies? Or will he remain brave, single and true, believing in his own energies and daring to be great?27

Nor did he spare Disraeli when the leadership tussle resulted in an ineffectual triumvirate of Disraeli, Granby, and John Herries: 'It is obviously borrowed from the idea of the Abbe Sieyes: it is Cambaceres, Lebrun, and Bonaparte over again.' Disraeli may have liked the comparison of himself to Napoleon, but GSS had seen the night before how badly the compromise actually worked in Parliament. 'The scheme, we fear, must return to the pigeon-hole from which it was extracted, if it does not work better than last night, when one member got up seriatim after the other, on the question of adjournment; the first to speak, the second to apologize for speaking at all, and the third to prevent it altogether.'28 The astonishing thing is that the Chronicle's proprietors and editor, committed as they were to a Peelite policy, allowed GSS this kind of latitude. By then, however, his reputation as a journalist was well established, and his knack for rousing controversy drew readers. In the intense rivalry with the Protectionist Post, his articles regularly drew the Post's fire all through September and October of 1848 and into 1849. These exchanges could go on for four or five days, with GSS usually getting the better of his rivals, either ignoring or politely confuting

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them. Even the Post acknowledged that his writing was solid and effective - more so, in fact, than the Lincolnites' efforts in the Commons: You have Canterbury brilliance and Oxford subtlety ... You have bought the old Whig paper, and have made it rat like you; Let someone speak at evening what one each morning writes; Take courage in your carping, chronicled Lincolnites. 29

Politicians on both sides were impressed with the quality of his articles. George Cornewall Lewis, home under-secretary, thought them Very ably written.' Crotchety Lord Brougham took to reading the Chronicle for its 'good opinions on foreign affairs' and sent GSS material for use in the paper. When GSS's editorial of 13 October 1848 predicted (correctly) that the leadership vacuum in France would allow an unscrupulous dictator like Louis Napoleon to take over, and likened the current European situation to 'dancing on volcanoes,' Metternich was so taken with it that he wrote to Disraeli for the writer's name and had this and other pieces translated and republished in German newspapers.30 By early 1849, in fact, his carte blanche was allowing him to assassinate personal enemies. The feud with Milnes had, if anything, intensified since Milnes crossed the floor to the Liberals, making him fair game for the Lincolnites. GSS openly ridiculed him as 'Sancho Panza,' while he still resented GSS's appointment to Foreign Affairs. It was probably because of GSS's attacks in the Chronicle that, thirty years later, Milnes described GSS as 'the most perfectly vicious man he had ever known' (a risky remark from one notorious, as Milnes was, for his collection of pornography).31 In early 1849, Milnes published The Events of 1848, a pamphlet endorsing Palmerston's over-optimistic view of European stability after the revolutions. The pamphlet got guarded praise from men as eminent as Gladstone and Carlyle (privately the Carlyles referred to Milnes as 'the little Tick'); but Brougham told Milnes: 'I have read it, and I do not find any word in it with which I can in the least degree concur.'32 On 22 February, GSS published in the Chronicle a critique which, if not 'perfectly vicious,' was acidly contemptuous. After the levity of Lord Palmerston's characteristic defence of his own peculiar foreign policy, there was wanting nothing more than a pamphlet in its eulogy from Mr. Monckton Milnes. The professional jester has a prescriptive claim to break his bulrush (after the danger has passed away) where the lance of the knight had been ruefully shivered. Or, to use a metaphor more

240 Disraeli's Disciple germane to both performers, if the venerable Harlequin has escaped cleverly and nimbly ... there remains a Pantaloon ... Immethodic, absurd and illogical as is this pamphlet of Mr. Milnes ... we propose to gibbet him, in front of every country of which he has written with universal ignorance and omniscient pretensions.

Mercilessly GSS mocked Milnes's habits of noting down conversations a 'boy-Boswell at Cambridge' - and changing political sides, ' (unsuccessfully) Boswell to Lord Melbourne, Boswell to Sir Robert Peel (until his fall) and Boswell to Lord John Russell.' He ended by tearing apart, word byword, eleven passages showing Milnes's misunderstanding of foreign affairs: 'Indeed, there is only one observation of Mr. Milnes (at p. 58) in which we can entirely agree, when he speaks of long years of repose, indolence, flattery ... and folly - "fattening men for destruction."' Unwisely, Milnes replied, objecting to being judged on excerpts: 'I think it not unfit to direct your attention, and that of your readers, to the fact, that ... four are not even expressed in my words, and four or five more are garbled by dissociation from the context.' Immediately below, the Chronicle ran GSS's delighted riposte. 'When we stated that he had affirmed (p. 53), "that the empire in France was the best type of conciliation between town and country," it would have taken three pages of his rambling, loose, and immethodic phraseology to have expressed his meaning; and we yesterday regretted "that weightier matter" did not afford us the space.' This was too much for Milnes, goaded to physical assassination of his tormentor. His biographers record that he challenged GSS to a duel, a highly uncharacteristic action more typical of GSS. The encounter, however, kept being postponed. When, to mutual embarrassment, they found themselves fellow guests at a country house, GSS dashed off a note, 'out of regard for Hope, pray, keep as secret as possible our difference in this house.'33 Eventually the fire went out. On 24 April, two full months after the offending articles, their seconds, the writer Eliot Warburton and GSS's cousin Captain Darell, issued an official statement that the difference had been 'terminated with satisfaction and honour to both parties.'34 Pistols do not appear ever to have been drawn. As 1849 went on, GSS's tone became more strident. In his articles on Disraeli, he was probably still following his mentor's instructions in suggesting that, in spite of Disraeli's tenuous hold on the leadership, he begin acting as leader. Sometimes, however, he bluntly expressed his own opinions, as in his editorials in May on the Bill for Jewish rights. It was

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not his usual subject, but their style is his, and his colleague Abraham Hayward confirmed that he had not written them.35 Disraeli had supported a similar bill in 1848 and, although he had not spoken at the first reading in February, GSS eagerly anticipated what he would have to say in May. But Disraeli again did not speak: 'I am silent about the Jews,' he later told Henry Drummond, 'because no single member of the house of Commons agrees with me ... What use in addressing an Assembly where there is not a single sympathiser?'36 GSS did not agree. On the 9th he castigated Disraeli's silence as 'genius stooping to political cowardice ... For the founder of the Asian mystery [in Coningsby], to sit tongue-tied in the British House of Commons when the repeal of Jewish disabilities is the order of the day, is carrying self-denial too far not only for moral dignity but even for the commonest political prudence.' As always, he found the effective dart: Disraeli must be under the party pontiffs' thumb. 'They have taught him to "know his place" - and trust them for seeing that he keeps it.' The goad worked. Disraeli did respond - not in Parliament, but in his preface to a new edition of Coningsby, written in May sometime before publication on the 26th and emphatically reaffirming the greatness of the Jewish race. That he chose this aspect of Coningsby, at precisely this time, when he could have picked other topics or indeed written no new preface at all, was directly due to GSS's prodding in the Chronicle. In this and other articles GSS, as he had hoped, did show how a journalist could influence legislators. Pleasure in his work made him more content than at any time since Cambridge. His friendship with Manners was restored, and once again he was welcomed by the Disraelis at Grosvenor Gate. Disraeli even tried to effect a friendship with his latest political protege, Edward Stanley, but though they dined dutifully a trois with their mutual mentor, they were temperamentally at odds. There even seems to have been some jealousy between them. In October Cochrane fulsomely dedicated Ernest Vane to GSS and lauded him as 'GeOrge Percy, the beloved of all, with his ready wit, his retentive memory, and his abundant reading. Brilliant, above all, where none were wanting in brilliancy.'37 His press connections gave him a congenial social life. He had even been received at court (so had Lady Dorothy), and he was now invited to the Speaker's levees as well as other prominent gatherings.38 Hayward, for example, often made him one of the carefully selected guests at his 'delightful' dinner parties: 'They used to include, perhaps three, sometimes perhaps only two, of the loveliest and most gifted women that London society boasted; and of men, perhaps, about five.

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You might meet Lockhart... or Macaulay, or Sydney Smith ... or Sidney Herbert and Graham, and the lawless, engaging, George Smythe.' Hayward often arranged his dinners to showcase a particular guest - Macaulay, perhaps, though he exasperated GSS with his lengthy monologues. On one occasion, GSS, finding a momentary opening, tried to prod the great man into debate, 'and then, all at once, flung a paradox across the dinner-table, at the head of Macaulay, saying boldly that tobacco had done more for the human race than intellect.' But Macaulay ran magisterially on: "You prefer," he said, "a cow ruminating to Plato philosophising;" and then having regained what in Parliament they call the "possession of the house," he went on to make use of his ownership.' Another time it was the poet and novelist Caroline Norton, whom GSS generally did not admire, 'but her wit, humour, anecdote, satire on this occasion were worthy of her grandfather [the playwright Sheridan] ... She was really divine, & the more so as for once she was not coarse.'39 Once more GSS was a man about town, and, though Catherine Cocks was now living with his old friend Lord Ranelagh, he always found female company. In 1848 and 1849, his penchant for older women led to a flirtation with Frances, Dowager Countess of Morley. Disraeli calls her 'old Lady Morley,' although she was in her fifties, about the same age as Mary Anne. Daughter of a Norfolk surgeon, she had married the 1st Earl in 1809 (nine years before GSS was born) and quickly made herself popular in her new aristocratic milieu with her liveliness and witty sayings. Any country house party or London dinner was made more agreeable when she was there, but she was also sympathetic. 'Lady Morley is delightful in any frame of mind,' wrote her friend Lady Dover; 'she is extraordinary in her power of keeping up her spirits, and it might look as if she did not feel so much; tho' it is impossible to be with her alone as much as I have been without knowing to the contrary.' She liked a risque joke or story, and on one outing to the theatre enjoyed an intimate encounter with an importunate elephant, whose trunk, commented the Duchess of Sutherland enigmatically, 'was particularly well disposed.' Her sense of humour, like GSS's, ran to the satirical. In 1828, she published a 'clever jeu d'esprit, a Petition on behalf of the Hens to Parliament against the importation of foreign Eggs ... very clever nonsense.' She and GSS had known each other at least since 1844, but their friendship had now grown closer, to Disraeli's amusement. With a joking reference to her earlier friendship with Sydney Smith, the wit and conversationalist, Disraeli told Lady Londonderry how, at Lady Carrington's, Frances made no secret of her attraction to GSS: she

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'laughs up to Sydney Smythe, &,' he added dryly, 'I think, will soon dress like him.'40 As 1849 went on, however, GSS became distinctly disillusioned with Grub Street. When Manners ran as a Conservative forlorn hope against the popular Lionel de Rothschild in the City of London election, GSS was disgusted at the way the Chronicle made fun of him: 'there is some sinister influence at work,' he told Manners, 'to attack those men whom I love or admire the best in the world.' Where he had exulted to Disraeli in 1848, 'what I am doing is manly and good,' by July 1849 he was grumbling to Manners, 'I have been in conditions when I ought perhaps to have committed suicide, rather than have lived on the elephantiasis 8c mud eating of literature.'41 He had begun his journalism career as an idealist, but now he saw himself as a Grub Street hack, the anonymous assassin available for anyone's hire. What is more (though he did not admit it to Manners), he was enjoying it. Barely a year later, he asked Aberdeen: 'Is there any particular atrocity of Lord P[almerston']s - as yet unknown to the publick. - which you would desire to be flagellated in the Chronicle ... if I could be of any service in any one particular case for its exposure -1 would gladly give it some time - in so good a cause.'42 Despite the crusading language, this was the offer of a journalistic 'Jackal' - a specialist in political assassination. Perhaps after all his sisterin-law's assessment had some justification. Though his years at the Chronicle were the most intensely productive in his life, and the quality of what he wrote on international relations was a brilliant fulfilment of his capabilities, the dangers he had foreseen were also fulfilled in the frequent misuse of those same capabilities. He knew it as well as his friends did. Cochrane's enthusiastic dedication to GSS's virtues in Ernest Vane goes along with more sombre observations: 'We too well know that every single virtue has its corresponding vice running parallel with it, and disputing every inch of the way ... the spirit of liberty, the dogmas of license - laudable ambition, and the anxiety to drag down others to our own level.'43 Ernest Vane is not a great novel, but parts are so clearly modelled on GSS's life - the good and the bad - that the theme of the double becomes a caution to him. In many ways he had, as Coningsby predicted, allowed his 'skilled intelligence' to subside into being 'the adroit tool' of not one, but two party factions, a shrewd editor, and an ambitious politician.

19 1850-2: Diplomatic Moves

Coffins ... carry their silver plates GSS to Manners

In the early months of the new decade illness seemed all about GSS, and hyperactivity gave way to exhaustion and depression. The excitement of his frenetic new life, which had powered him for the last two years, was ebbing, and he was starting to sink into another trough. He was nearing a more serious phase of his disease, and his low spirits were not helped by the ailments of those closest to him. Older family members had recently died: his aunt Eliza Sullivan (Strangford's sister) and his uncle Sir John Burke (his mother's brother), In Constantinople, family history was repeating itself as Percy, as well as working himself into a nervous breakdown, found the climate over-taxing the weak chest he had inherited and took sick leave for the spring and summer. In London, GSS had to comfort Manners, heartbroken at the death of his sister, Lady Katherine Jermyn. GSS knew how near he was himself to losing a sister. Since her marriage and the move to Ireland, Ellen had been constantly ill. Sligo was a considerate and loving husband, but consumption enfeebled her, and she refused to leave her family and travel to resorts or mountains to recover. In early 1849, she had a daughter, Catherine Ellen Philippa, but now she was pregnant again and failing. 'We have very bad accounts,' GSS told Disraeli in April, 'of my poor little younger sister in her couches at Westport... she is not yet brought to bed, nor in positive danger but so feeble that I hardly dare to think what may happen.'1 GSS was close to both his sisters, and in Ellen's debilitated state he could see a mirror of his own future. Disease affected his political life too. At Canterbury, Lord Albert

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Conyngham (now Lord Denison) again fell seriously ill, took the Chiltern Hundreds, and resigned, with important consequences for GSS. In the March by-election, unwilling to lose the convenient rapport he had enjoyed with Lord Albert, he endorsed the new Liberal candidate, Colonel Frederick Romilly, who had exceptionally strong Whig connections. Romilly himself was son of an illustrious solicitor-general and brother of the current one; his wife, Lady Elizabeth, was Lord John Russell's sister-in-law. In the face of such formidable credentials, a Protectionist candidate who was more or less dragooned into the constituency campaigned half-heartedly for two days and retired, muttering darkly about Liberal influence. Romilly was declared elected on nomination day, paying his personal thanks to GSS, although later he was to prove much less friendly.2 While GSS was nurturing his connections in Canterbury, Disraeli fell seriously ill, with what was finally diagnosed as influenza, but which (judging from the symptoms of chest congestion, cough, and shoulder pain) may have been pneumonia. He hardly ever allowed himself to be ill during the parliamentary session, but this bout kept him away from the Commons for six weeks, with a crisis of some sort on 6 March, when his doctor called at Grosvenor Gate no fewer than six times. When GSS returned to London, he initially treated his mentor's condition lightly: 'I... had almost hoped that Dis was only ill a la Richelieu - for the sake of reconciling mortals to all his greatness and success by one little dash of politic infirmity.' When, however, Manners told him how ill Disraeli really was - letters and advice from friends and colleagues pouring in and the Queen's own doctor now on call — GSS wrote in genuine alarm to Mary Anne: 'John Manners ... rather frightened me and you will readily understand how anxious I have been.' The thought that his mentor too might be in danger shook him severely, but the fright soon went when he found Disraeli recovering, though still too weak to go out. 'A month in a room,' Disraeli wryly joked to his sister, 'is alone enough to make one seriously ill.' Admitted to the sickroom, GSS took up his old role of acolyte and gossip-monger: 'I will come & tell Dis the gossip on the Debate of the Lords - if he will let me - to morrow. To day I should only bore him with Newsless sympathies.'3 His concern was genuine, but, as always, he had an ulterior motive. Whether the strain of daily journalism was beginning to tell or he simply wanted a change, he was thinking about branching into foreign diplomacy. This in spite of the fact that Percy, stressed out and taking the waters at Malvern, wanted to escape from the diplomatic

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corps, 'a sort of life in death ... Real physical suicide would perhaps be better for all parties.' Yet Percy's main objection was to the intrigue practised in the important embassies, while intrigue was second nature to GSS. When Strangford kept insisting on the brilliant opportunities Percy's profession offered, GSS decided to move in that direction himself. He would make an opportunity out of a motion Disraeli was to bring before Parliament on the salaries paid to British diplomats and consuls; his attendance at Disraeli's bedside was an attempt to nose out Disraeli's plans. It strikes me since, that you might have meant (as two or three times before you have meant) to do all that might be, to lift me out of the slough of despondency, into which, inverting nature, my levity has gravitated. And, that, legitimately enough, in regard to party, you might have desired to prepare me as to the details of the motion (that I might at least make one speech) ... I need not say that I write in pure confidence, & that neither to Lord A[berdee]n, nor to any other human being will I breathe a syllable.4

In the event, GSS neither spoke nor wrote on the subject, but that the two were in collusion appeared later, when GSS was one of only two Peelites to vote for Disraeli's amendment.5 Instead, Disraeli and he began to concoct a secret plan to be implemented sometime after the summer recess. This had to do with Disraeli's unceasing efforts to gather enough votes - Conservative and Liberal - to defeat Russell and form a government under Lord Stanley. To this end, they had an understanding that GSS would assist when asked, in return for a diplomatic appointment. GSS, revelling as much as Fakredeen in stratagems and plots, wrote confidentially from Canterbury for further instructions to Mary Anne, 'because I do not wish his Secretaries to know that I write from here to him.'6 Nothing was to be committed to paper, but the hint that it concerned Canterbury is a foretaste of the nefarious plot they did hatch for the 1852 election. Meanwhile, he wrote from time to time his distinctive articles in the Chronicle- on Russell's visit to Manchester he good-humouredly enumerated the great men who shared the Whig leader's diminutive stature and he did deliver one scintillating speech on 23 May (the same night as Disraeli) on the 'Don Pacifico' affair, an ideal subject for a would-be diplomat. Greece had confiscated a British citizen's property, for which Britain had blockaded the port of Piraeus.7 Palmerston first agreed to French mediation but then broke the agreement, provoking France's

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indignant withdrawal of her ambassador. GSS's and Disraeli's speeches coincided on several points, though GSS was much more critical of Palmerston's handling of the affair. How often, he demanded, must Palmerston be told how essential Britain was to the European balance of power or that her hidebound foreign policy was perceived abroad as insular and hostile, 'a worn-out vulture in its isolated eyrie'? 'The last time I presumed to address a few words within these walls, in 1847, I remember that I ventured to implore the noble Lord not lightly to throw away that intimate and cordial understanding with France, which had been bequeathed him by his predecessor the Earl of Aberdeen.' He rose to a climax with a plea for Palmerston to honour the earlier agreement, a step that would do justice to England's honour. '(Cheers.)' Even the strait-laced Edward Stanley remarked on the speech, though from the lofty height of his twenty-four years he preferred to deplore the infrequency of GSS's speeches rather than praise their quality: 'He is, or rather was, a young man of great promise, but an incurable habit of indolence has marred his prospects.' Stanley's supercilious attitude, however, could change with GSS's subject matter. A bare month later, he quoted approvingly GSS's praise in the Chronicle of the elder Stanley's forceful contribution to the Greek debate, '"accurate as an official precis, luminous and graceful as a chapter of Macaulay, terse and close as one of Sir James Graham's state papers, and as entertaining as the last new novel."'8 This last analogy may owe something to a persistent rumour in London that spring and summer. These days, whenever a scandal broke, GSS's name came up. It was perhaps inevitable when the pregnant Lady Lincoln eloped to Europe in 1848 with Lord Walpole, so recently his sister's champion in her imbroglio with GSS, but when Lincoln's lurid divorce case came before the Lords in 1850, people still thought of GSS. Even before the elopement, Lady Lincoln had entertained several lovers, though there is no surviving evidence that GSS was one of them. Still, Hanover commented suggestively: 'Walpole ... appears to be a chip of the old block and a fellow-labourer in the vineyard with Smythe.'9 About the same time, at a dinner at the Londonderrys' where everyone was speculating about the authorship of a sensational new novel, Sin and Sorrow, Disraeli was amused when his table companion, Lady Blandford, passed on society's general opinion that it 'was the joint prod[ucti]on of G. Smythe & Lady Sligo.' Three years earlier GSS had been writing a novel, though Strangford's description of a 'very amusing novel - which will... create some laughter in London Society' hardly fits 5m and Sorrow,

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a melodramatic production featuring seduction, illegitimacy, madness, and the heroine's death from consumption. The risque content, however, was enough to conjure up the Lady Dorothy scandal and couple GSS's name with the title. 'I think,' Disraeli commented acidly, 'if I saw it I shd. find him out. I suppose he supplied the sin, & his sister the rest.'10 Rather more kindly, Manners took GSS off for a holiday in August to raise both their spirits: 'the delight,' Manners confided to his diary, 'with which I found myself once more with "my heart's brother" was intense.' They deliberately set out to recapture their earlier joy in the Lakes, retracing their footsteps in the North and making their base at Ferrand's in Yorkshire. From there they revisited the scene of Sybil, Bolton Abbey, where they had been eight years before. Another day, when the object of their quest refused to go to them, they made a day-long 'expedition after "Jane Eyre" whom we found to be the unmarried daughter of an old moorland clergyman of the name of Bronte - a shy pale, sharp featured lady of 35 or so, living in an almost inaccessible village on the side of a hill.'11 Manners elsewhere 'expanded on the visit: 'She is very shy and retiring ... pale, thin, pretty manners, very intelligent countenance. A drawing of her hung on the wall, rather like her, but far more like "Becky Sharp" in "Vanity Fair." She had been a month this year in London, but was glad to get back to her Yorkshire solitude. Her father is a tipsy old Tory parson.' Charlotte Bronte also recorded the lion hunters' visit, when she was greatly taken with Manners, a Mr Rochester type, 'tall, stately - black-haired and whiskered.' GSS, however, nervous face-to-face with the celebrity, was not at his best, and she was considerably more reserved about him: 'not so distinguished-looking - shy and a little queer.'12 From Yorkshire they went on to join Hayward at Lamington, Cochrane's Scottish estate, where they indulged in undergraduate festivities, from rowdy picnics to demonstrations of 'Biology' (hypnotism): 'such merriment and noise, arguments & expeditions, nights turned into days.' After a week Manners began to understand why people said no one could last the pace in the country for more than a few days. GSS benefited from the complete change and the accepting companionship, and he left unwillingly. T never remember to have passed a more charming or happy fortnight in my life than with you,' he wrote to Cochrane, though his instant nostalgia owed something to the intervening journey north to Aberdeen 'during a pouring rain, incessant change of trains, & no change of dispiritude & regret.'13 At Haddo House, where Philippa and Henry Baillie briefly joined

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them, he at first enthused about his host: 'Lord Aberdeen is Perfection it is the only word to describe his kindness, wit, humour, anecdote, courtesy, love of children & grandchildren.' Here too he had an ulterior motive, a confidential mission from Disraeli to sound out Aberdeen on allying with the Protectionists to form a government, but his approaches made little impression. The best Manners could report was 'G.S.'s idea of Aberdeen's politics is that he ... would offer no opposition to a Protectionist government provided it's foreign policy was Conservative.'14 Soon, with no prospect of a Fakredeen 'combination,' worship at the feet of the sage began to pall. 'As for JM he is miserable: the silences are so awful as the whole family hang in fanatical adoration 8c mute idolatry on the rare pearls that fall as in a Fairy tale from Lord As lips - while JM believes, I verily believe, that for his sin's ... he has been condemned to La Trappe.' Manners and the Baillies quickly decamped, but GSS hung on until a morning at the local Kirk and a testy Presbyterian sermon roused his old Catholic sympathies: 'Such a discourse as we had agst. Puseyism, Prelacy, & "beggarly Crucifixes" - old Aberdeen asleep! ... I should like to take the vows of St. John of Jerusalem: & intend to go over to Lord Lovat's (where the [Catholic] Fieldings are staying) to discover the exact process of mind by which one glides to Rome - & immediately to Heaven ... A week more would have sent me to La Trappe.'15 But safely out of there, he went straight into the double game. T have no news,' he wrote to Aberdeen, 'unless that it may perhaps amuse you to know that Lord and Lady Feilding are staying in this neighbourhood with Lord Lovat already: so strong and rapid are Roman Catholick sympathies.' His childhood in the embassies of Europe had left him convinced that duplicity was the essence of diplomatic intrigue. Even while colluding with Disraeli, he was perfectly ready to vilify him as a non-aristocratic upstart with no breeding. Henry Baillie, he told Aberdeen with huge relish, 'was standing with Disraeli at the fireplace of the lobby in the H of C: when Lord Palmerston went by, & to his horror & amazement, Disi. actually went up to him & slapped him on the back. I shd. be ashamed of retailing this gossip, if it was not so expressive & significant.' On his way south to enjoy Brougham's hospitality at Penrith, he promised to keep Aberdeen informed 'of the particular line, for the nonce, of [Brougham's] chamelion politics.'16 After the visit, he went on to sneer at his host's touchiness: 'he was like a child in his exposure of his vanity and its sores,' and joked that 'the only hot water Lord B probably ever kept out of [was] that perpetually seething around him in the chronic feud between his relations, & Lady Brougham's.' In his own eyes,

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his only faux pas was leaving in his Penrith bedroom a volume presented and inscribed to him by Brougham: 'Shall I ever be forgiven?'17 The euphoria lasted until after he joined the Baillies at the family estate, Redcastle in Inverness. Getting there was not easy in those days. Access was across the Moray Firth by small open ferryboat, where a traveller's carriage stood on planks and the horses side by side with the passengers. Still, once it was reached, the views were magnificent. But soon more sobering news came from Ireland. 'You will be sorry,' he wrote to Manners, 'to hear that I have again not good accounts of my poor darling Irish sister. Alas - how brief is happiness & how long is life.' Seen off by her brother, Philippa left at once to be with Ellen, while GSS travelled south in deep depression again. 'I am low,' he told Manners, 'dejected, miserable, heart-shrouded, funereal - all out of reaction from a time so charged with intermittent light & careless Elysium. Coffins however carry their silver plates, & the main relief to my melancholy is the thought of our old brotherhood so gloriously renewed, & the memory of you.'18 By now, his health had forced him to give up writing regularly for the Chronicle, though he still contributed from time to time. Since Disraeli had not yet rounded up a parliamentary majority, the diplomatic post had not materialized and the absence of occupation weighed on him. As solace he got in with a 'fast' London set, who spent their time in all the idle occupations he used to scorn: days in country house visits and town luncheons, nights at dinners, theatres, and clubs, languidly abusing their acquaintances to each other. 'How miserably "nidering" I am,' he complained to Manners. 'I neither hunt, shoot, fish, draw, dance, sing or play - am without the endowments of either sex - can every now & then in five year's make an indifferent speech, & write a worse sonnet.' He saw little of Disraeli, who was immersed in a hagiography of Lord George Bentinck, and perhaps for that reason, he kept sneering at him behind his back. When both Manners and Disraeli published letters on the Pope's appointment of Cardinal Wiseman as Catholic Archbishop of Westminster - the first establishment of Catholic titles in Britain since the Reformation and widely regarded by Anglicans as religious 'aggression' - GSS praised Manners's as 'a party leader's manifesto - much more than that terrible fiasco of our Dis.'19 In December, probably the worst time of year for it, he decided to hone his diplomatic connections with a trip to Germany. By accident or design, in Brussels he met with the great Metternich, the man who had epitomized European conservatism for half a century, who had been the

1850-2: Diplomatic Moves 251 supreme negotiator at the Congress of Vienna, and whose working principle, like GSS's own, had always been the balance of power. Diffident at first, GSS was profoundly gratified to be greeted as a friend and equal. 'Certes,' he wrote to Manners, 'the Chronicle brought me much infamous fortune [but] it played a good card for me in that quarter. For Prince Metternich told me that he had himself caused my articles to be translated (in 48) in the German paper's still under his influence.'20 As always, he rose to the challenge of a great mind, while Metternich, as Disraeli had found two years before, loved an audience to hear over again the exploits of his glorious past. The hospitable Metternichs gave GSS free run of their house and hours of the ex-chancellor's time. 'I am drunk,' he wrote mischievously to Manners - but it was on political history. He gave me five hours yesterday in a course of German politics. And to night he read to me alone a charade of Napoleon & the precis of his interview with him in 1813. Upon my word, dearest John, I am so flattered & made much of that I don't know whether I am standing on my head or feet. But this I know - I would have both cut off for one smile of the Princess. Not that she would awaken love (in one presumptuous particle) in me (tho' I adore all old women - as you know) but because she arouses me to all the enthusiasm of 17, in adoration of all the genius which illustrates her decadent position but uncomplaining grandeur of Soul. She has the gift of heroes to attach & rivet at first sight. And I believe - much as I hate that Parliament on horseback, Hungary - if she (a Zichy) bade me become one I should cast away my reason in unhesitating fanaticism. Princess Metternich sensed GSS's attraction to her and, obviously aware of his reputation, dubbed him a loup garou. Metternich wrote letters of introduction for him to notables in Germany, and GSS as a would-be diplomat was particularly proud of one sentence, 'saying (what praise from what a man!) that in his long life he never knew so complete an homme d'Etat.'21 After such heady dialogue, Dresden, where all the art and treasures had been sent away for safe-keeping during the revolutions, could be only anti-climax. Thanks to Metternich, he was presented to Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, who had restored the Hapsburg empire after the 1848 revolutions, and to the Emperor Franz Josef, but his main interest was hunting romance outside the disapproving confines of English society. In Dresden he was sorely disappointed: 'The women here are ugly, ill-

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dressed, dowdy, & talk infamous French ... Ah - if they were all like that grand Pr[ince]sse Metternich, & 25 year's younger than she!' When he reached Vienna, however, it came up to expectations, and when he met Schwarzenberg again the earlier acquaintance unexpectedly ripened into a warm personal relationship. 'I come from dining with him,' he told Manners in mid-January, '& almost my last words to him were 'Your Highness represents the word thorough of our Strafford - but you have ecrasethe Revolutionary spirit." "No" said he with energy. "It is not ecrase but I will pursue it with fire & with sword." Verbatim his words, but nothing ever gave you an idea of the manner. His contempt for words, diplomacy, speechifying, Constitutions is so marked, so frequent, & so trenchant that it would offend any Englishman not of our old Young England school.' Conversations with the Austrian politicos only confirmed what he had told Parliament about Palmerston's foreign policy, that it had 'driven them to consider us as outlaws beyond the pale (of what is of more importance than Civilisation) of Truth. Prince S said ["there is] nothing Lord Palmerston will not deny - even when the proofs to the contrary are in my hands.'"22 Parliament and England, however, were far away, and all the time, he was restlessly eyeing the women he met, and finding them more to his liking than at Dresden. Princess Esterhazy, the Jerseys' daughter, was surprisingly attractive, considering she was heavily pregnant (she had her third son, Prince Nicolas, that night). He was completely bowled over by the beauty of Princess Clary, who, fortunately for her, was as virtuous as she was good-natured. But the woman who finally stole his heart at Vienna brought, by astonishing coincidence, an acutely painful episode from his past vividly to his mind. 'The most beautiful girl,' he rhapsodized to Manners,' (don't laugh) I have seen ... is 17 & beautiful... She has light hair like moonbeams, & eyes dark as the Lago da Garda.' This was another Mile Stackelberg, young cousin of the Mile Stackelberg he desperately wanted to marry in Paris in 1843. Deeply stirred by the encounter, he was nevertheless wise enough by this time not to let history repeat itself: apart from his health, his finances, and his reputation, he could not deny, even to himself, that he was 'just old enough to be her father.' Nevertheless, she kept him dallying in Vienna, long after he was due to pay a visit to the King of Hanover. His last conversation with the King had been a frustrating wrangle about Catholicism in England, and he preferred the attractions in Vienna. Before he left, he made a point of dining with the British ambassador there, a man Hanover disliked in-

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tensely. 'I hear,' the King wrote testily in February, 'that George Smythe has returned home, but cannot conceive what road he can have taken, as he did not pass through Hanover.'23 Quite apart from avoiding another unpleasant discussion, GSS wanted to be back in London, where suddenly it began to look as if Disraeli might soon be in a position to dole out public appointments. On 20 February, Russell's government was defeated and the Queen invited Lord Stanley to form a government. He at first demurred and then agreed, only (to Disraeli's disgust) to refuse to renounce the Protectionism that deterred Peelites from joining his Cabinet. Russell was recalled, while Disraeli and GSS bemoaned the lost opportunity. 'It is rare in parties that such opportunities are offered as we have rejected, or rather been unequal to.'24 Perhaps, however, there might be another opening in the debate over Russell's Bill to prohibit Catholic ecclesiastical titles in Britain. GSS seized it. In language that still sounds familiar in the twenty-first century, he assailed it as 'a sham Bill, of sham pains and sham penalties, against a sham aggression. (Hear, hear.)' Had the government thought, he asked, that it would mean repudiating Britain's relationship with the Catholic Church in Ireland, shabby as that was, 'a left-handed and morganatic alliance'? Historic tradition applied to Britain's colonies: since she ruled St Lucia by French laws, Trinidad by Spanish laws, and allowed Malta Catholic bishops, 'why then should not Catholic laws and Catholic bishops be given to the Catholics in Ireland, and Catholic laws and bishops to Catholics in England? (Hear.)' Britain had tolerated for centuries the presence of the Jesuit Order; why then 'strain at this gnat of an episcopate, while you have so long swallowed, without one wry face, such a monastic order? (Hear, hear.)' Besides, the Pope had only titles to dispense, no actual territorial rights, and Britain prided herself as the home of liberty, religious as well as political. As if he knew that this would be his last speech in the Commons, he ended on a stirring patriotic note with his favourite matrimonial metaphors: they had heard 'read in England the first bans of those free nuptials between liberty and faith between modern liberty and ancient faith, which, in my conscience I believe, in no remote age will yet regenerate mankind. (Cheers.)' Unfortunately the cheers were not so much for the points he made - they had heard most of them from him before - as for the relief of an elegant, witty speech in the course of a long, monotonous debate. As Edward Stanley put it, GSS's speech was merely 'quaint, brilliant, desultory, yet carefully prepared. All admired, no one was convinced. It was the failure of a clever man. He spoke about twenty minutes: his best point, a

254 Disraeli's Disciple

defence of the Catholic hierarchy as combining the freedom of a voluntary system with external magnificence and religious discipline.'25 Was he already seen as yesterday's man? Yet the Liberals' demise was in the wind, and he must wait until it swung in his direction. To distract himself, and make some money now he was no longer a regular with the Chronicle, he went back to occasional writing. In response to a request from W.E. Aytoun, he wrote 'The Rhine of the Franks,' a polemical essay-poem (complete with learned footnotes) which appeared in Fraser's Magazine in July. Both style (his favourite ballad metre) and subject matter were highly topical. Ballads genuine and imitation were even more in fashion than they had been when Historic Fancies was published, especially after Aytoun's own Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers (1848). GSS's poem, however, was original in that its words were spoken not by a person but by a country, France, and it dramatized the vexed history of the Rhine, by the Treaty of Vienna the frontier between France and Germany but currently threatened with takeover by Prussia. GSS's public loved its mingling of ancient history and modern politics. The Morning Post reprinted it in full, calling it 'graceful and erudite' and an outstanding attraction in that issue of the magazine.26 Later in the year, Richard Bentley, publisher of Bentley 's Miscellany and of the short-lived Young England, reminded him that they had agreed years ago to publish Angela Pisani. Was there a chance it could be ready for his spring list? GSS dusted off the manuscript, adding the later chapters in which Lionel becomes a journalist but eventually, like his creator, scorns his new profession as mere hack work, and dirty at that.27 These are also the chapters in which Lionel decisively turns his back on society and career to care tenderly for the consumptive Angela in her last days, and they are based on personal experience. In September Lady Dorothy wrote sadly to Mary Anne: 'I hear that young Lady Sligo is dying. I am very sorry for she was such a nice person.'28 The graphic descriptions of the dying Angela sound as though he had visited Ellen and later translated into fiction his distress at her physical deterioration. 'She was suffering acutely; her poor thin white arms were pressed convulsively across her bosom, and drops of agony stood on her contracted forehead, while her long dark lashes were stained and heavy with involuntary tears.' In spite of her pain, Angela, like Ellen, is supported by her faith. 'Strange was it to see her pale and emaciated features at one moment convulsed and distorted by spasmodic tortures, and in another by the mastery of the soul, by the conquest of Spirit over matter, all alight with

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the beauty of holy and impassioned resignation.' GSS no longer had any such faith to sustain him, something that had been a serious issue between him and his sister. 'Ellen once said to me not long before her death, "you will never be religious again." And I asked "Why?" "Because you have known the truth, felt it, and rejected it."'29 As she faded from him, it seemed that he was increasingly alone. Manners had married in June and their companionship could never be the same. Now that his sister was leaving him, when would his own turn come?

20 1852: Something about the Duke

As he has betrayed me, so shall you be betrayed GSS to electors of Canterbury

There was still something to hope for in the political world. 'Rather earlier than usual,' The Times wearily reported on 21 February 1852, 'the Ministry is out.'1 In the seesaw of political power, once again Disraeli and his chief (now Lord Derby) defeated Russell's government, and this time Derby rose to the challenge. By 11 pm on the 22nd, he and Disraeli had put together a cabinet, and on the 23rd Derby was prime minister and Disraeli chancellor of the Exchequer. GSS, who had been travelling in Normandy and Brittany, scented the news and made a point of being back in time. In the general upset, he must particularly have enjoyed some schadenfreude at the extremely short tenure of the Eastern traveller A.H. Layard in his old post of foreign under-secretary. 'How very extraordinary,' Sarah Disraeli remarked to Mary Anne, 'that Mr. Layard should be Under-Secy. Of State ... One would think we were going to negotiate with Fakredeen a great Asian Movement, rather than to appease Austria & Russia' - but Layard, appointed on the 15th, was out again by the 20th.2 With the Derbyites in power, GSS fully expected to take Layard's place. While he had been away he had carefully kept in touch with Aberdeen, sending him little pieces of news about foreign affairs and amusing him by running down Russell for visiting Paris in November: 'Won't it make Austria angry? ... Won't it make a sensation among the Absolutist Powers &c &c.' And what if (as seemed increasingly likely) Louis Napoleon executed a coup d'etat and seized absolute power in France? And did Aberdeen know that Kossuth, the exiled Hungarian leader, was 'stark, staring mad. Not metaphorically but really said to be "under surveil-

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land"?3 Now, however, all this preparatory groundwork was completely dashed. Aberdeen's rejection of Protection meant that he would not be foreign minister. Derby and Disraeli tried to lure Palmerston to them and when he refused, appointed Lord Malmesbury, Corisande's son-inlaw. As leader of a fractious Commons, Disraeli could not afford anyone but a diligent under-secretary in Foreign Affairs;; he had little enough confidence in Malmesbury as it was. They therefore named Derby's son, Edward Stanley, although he was absent in India and would not return until May. The appointment indicated, all nepotism apart, how Stanley had taken the place that used to be GSS's. In Stanley, Disraeli found the able young colleague he had tried to create out of the Young England triumvirate in the 1840s, and out of several more or less disappointing candidates since. Educated and articulate, Stanley had Manners's idealism and dedication, GSS's intelligence with none of his neuroses, and vastly more capability than Disraeli's current favourite, the good-looking but vapid Lord Henry Lennox. To rub in the rejection, Manners was given a Cabinet post, as commissioner of woods and forests, while Lennox became a Treasury commissioner. It was a shock to GSS's hopes. Later, in the Saturday Review, he expressed his feelings about the launch of Stanley's official career, and how 'the heir of the house of Derby, fresh from the Cambridge Class List, was introduced into political life under auspices which fall to the lot of few aspirants in the lists of ambition.' At the time, he swallowed his disappointment enough to send Disraeli a note of congratulation: Those who hailed the dawn have the best right to salute the meridian. Believe therefore dear Dis, in the sincere congratulations with which I kiss Mrs. Disraelis hand and am Your affectionate opponent G Sydney Smythe

In private, he felt rejected and defeated: T have eaten my heart away in utter indigence of action.'4 But only a few weeks later, he revived when Disraeli took him aside at Malmesbury's and reassured him that their pact still existed and that he had a 'most secret' mission for him. The proposition was complicated and distinctly underhand. Since the Derbyites did not have a clear majority, they were already planning for a July general election, when they must significantly increase their numbers or risk defeat in their turn. GSS was as popular as ever in Canterbury, but Strangford, totally disgusted with his son, refused to finance a fourth

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election. Disraeli suggested that the Derbyites meet expenses for GSS to run as a Conservative, under the two-vote system depriving Romilly or any other Liberal of the second votes of GSS's supporters. Having bought the promises of his constituents to vote Conservative, he was then to withdraw on election day in favour of two other Conservatives. In return, Disraeli offered the elusive diplomatic post. It was a verbal arrangement, though GSS later put it into writing, to hold Disraeli to his promise: Let me recapitulate it. You asked me at Malmesbury's whether I was going 'to bring in the Tories.' I said 'Yes.' You said 'You will have strong claims on us.' I answered 'If I have, I will negotiate only with you.'5

Accordingly, in the run up to July, he paid more attention than usual to his constituency. One of his mandates was to alert Conservative voters that he no longer endorsed Romilly, and at his candidacy meeting in May, he made that brutally clear. Before a crowd of six hundred at the Guildhall, with more crammed on to the stairs and landings, he began with his usual engaging witticisms at his own expense. 'It has been my singular - perhaps throughout England unique - fortune, in my relations with your borough, to have polled the whole of your constituency one half successfully upon one side, and the other half successfully upon the other. (Cheers.)' Having got their sympathy, he launched an outright attack on Romilly for refusing to coalesce in this election - what a painful contrast between Lord Albert's gentlemanly behaviour in the past and Romilly's now. '"His name is Perfidy," said a great man of a minister duke, who was a minister because he was a duke,' a hit at Romilly's close Liberal connections. 'My colleague's name,' he went on dramatically, 'is also Perfidy, but it is perfidy in the smallest of ways, by the paltriest of practices on the meanest of scales. (Hear, hear.)' This was bad enough, but he continued, 'I had forgotten that Col. Romilly derived his principles probably from the same source whence he derived his origin, and that he held, perhaps, with his Genevan ancestors, that when once you are elect, you may discard all honourable sanctions, and dispense with all obligations whatsoever. (Cheers.)' Yes, Romilly had attended Parliament more than he had, but, given Parliament's present stagnant state, that was no testimonial; 'I do not think that because a man has been choked with chickweed that he is therefore better able to swim. (Loud laughter.)' His most serious charge was one that breached

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parliamentary codes for addressing an opponent. He alleged that Romilly was guilty of caballing against a colleague, himself, and, he went on, 'I am bound to say I believe ... that as Colonel Romilly has betrayed me, so you will be betrayed.' At this, the meeting dissolved in uproar - boos, hisses, and cheers. The noise took some time to die down, before GSS concluded with a melancholy foretaste of his own defeat, in words that could have been his own epitaph: 'Here was one, they will say, who had a vision of his own - a crotchet, if you will, in politics - who loved an ideal liberty, as poets love their mistresses - (cheers) -whose worship, through good report or bad report, he idolised alone.' Then like a good orator, he left them laughing over a topical joke: 'Not the liberty of certain Tories, who regard her as a sort of housekeeper, perpetually mourning over the ruins of a "Bleak House" of her own, always to let unfurnished, with nobody to bid.'6 Whether GSS intended things to go as far as they then did is not clear. It was no surprise, however, that the gallant colonel responded in military manner to the smirches on his scutcheon and demanded a retraction. GSS, his blood thoroughly up, refused, they called out their seconds, and on 21 May the duel that GSS had so often threatened actually took place - reputedly the last fought on English soil. It was a somewhat ignoble affair, though probably not as ridiculous as The Times $ correspondent, clearly enjoying himself, alleged. Since duelling was illegal in England, GSS proposed a meeting on the French side of the Channel, but Romilly refused. So, very early in the morning, long before high society was awake, the two principals and their seconds left town prosaically by the South-West Railway for Weybridge, territory GSS knew well from romantic days with Corisande at Walton. On the train, the Times man recounted, they made a bizarre sight, huddled in cloaks with their pistol-cases awkwardly camouflaged inside large sketch-books. At Weybridge station, there was only one carriage for hire, and they rode out into the country in stony silence, GSS on the box and Romilly inside. Once in the woods, and the distance duly marked out by their seconds, Romilly's second was about to ask the traditional question, 'Are you ready, gentlemen?' when a pheasant rocketed up, making them think the police had arrived and driving them ignomiriiously into the shrubbery. Finally, they resumed their places, and exchanged shots without hitting each other. Romilly declared himself satisfied and they all went back to London. The day after the Times account appeared, it was stiffly requested to deny everything that had been said, 'with one exception.' What that was is not explained.7

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No one, however, could be in any doubt that GSS did not endorse the Liberal. Two more Conservative candidates were sent down to Canterbury, while Strangford's friends commiserated with him over his son's rashness. 'One immediate effect it has had,' Strangford wrote tersely to Londonderry, 'that of losing his seat for Canterbury.'8 He had no idea how true his words were. Meanwhile, as election day approached, GSS began to regret the step he was about to take. Up until election week, he followed Disraeli's advice to put a bold face on campaigning and kept his tone at meetings 'as audacious as ever.' Now, rather too late, he began to bewail what people would think, 'if, out of ancient sympathies, you were willing to give me a place abroad: neither you nor I would like to face the publick abuse inevitable upon, what, to its plain brute sense, would so flagrantly have all the appearance of a bargain.' Then there was the damage to his self-esteem. 'Having always represented Canterbury, by majorities over a hundred, on three several occasions - never polling less than 780, I should now poll barely the number of votes which formerly represented my majority.' To avoid the embarrassment of retiring on polling day, he wanted to announce it before the election, a change which, he cannily pointed out, would save the Derbyites some money, the 'expense of going to the hustings (Mob, colours, cheque-clerks &c &c) if - which I believe they will do - fifty ultra-radicals, pledged to me, to vote coute qu'il coutefor the two Tories - continue true and firm to that resolve.' But he always came back to the loss of reputation, with an apt Shakespearean parallel: Although unlike Coriolanus, my heart is with the Volscians, because you are their Aufldius, I am not prepared for present enrolment in their ranks ... And altho' you might understand that my position is not black, I doubt whether JM thinks so, or whether anybody else would think so, who did not know what passed between us ... It would be cruel in you - with your genius, your great qualities - your old affection for myself even if inverted now - to stab a corpse.9

Disraeli rallied him, reminding him that the party was depending on him and telling him he was unduly morbid. 'Morbid!' GSS replied. 'D-n it you ought to have said, moribund, mortuary, everything of the earth earthy ... You - in your pride of place, cannot imagine what it is to be pitched for a Const[ituenc]y, where one has reigned so long, and by a curious infelicity - to give offence to all parties at the last.' Still, he would carry on. 'My resignation comes out this evening, at a last meeting which

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I hold: but you need not be alarmed about your men, as my staunchest people are all stout and true in their determination to vote for them.'10 Neither GSS nor Disraeli had reckoned quite how staunch. By polling time, GSS had to issue three separate statements of his withdrawal, since his constituents simply would not believe him. Even at that, seven electors cast their votes for him, rather than for the two replacement Conservatives. The result was exactly what Disraeli and GSS had planned - seats for two new Conservative MPs and defeat for Romilly and his Liberal running mate. Once more life imitated art in this reversal of the end of Coningsby, when Millbank, the Liberal candidate at Darlford, unexpectedly withdraws and persuades his supporters to vote instead for Coningsby. As the Suns headline in the novel reads: '"Extraordinary Affair! Withdrawal of the Liberal Candidate! Two Tory candidates in the field!!!"' In real life, GSS was out of Parliament, although he had the comfort of knowing he had contributed to the Conservative victory. 'It does look d-d like the beginnings of a Systeme,' he wrote to Disraeli, carefully reminding him of his promises of patronage positions for 'my fellows in Cy. who certainly have played a most difficult game, with incomparable staunchness - it would be only treating them according to their deserts.'11 The Derbyites were in, yet once again the weeks went by while GSS provided material for Disraeli's speeches without any sign of a diplomatic post, and he became resentful. In October, when it was evident there would be a petition against the election, he had to remind Disraeli about the promised rewards for his Canterbury supporters and himself. All this hinges on your wanting me, & on your being not so violently Conservative as to preclude my coming at your call. But I am so hard up, my inclinations, my interest's, even my name all point to a foreign mission as the natural haven of my fortunes. To get this from Malmesbury, I shall require all your assistance, offices, & aid. As George the 3d. once said to Lord Chatham 'Poor George Grenville you loved him once.' In the same spirit I prefer my suit, I hope with better luck.'

The co-operative tone of his letter was deceptive. Tired of being overlooked, he was hatching a plot - possibly at the instigation of the Peelites at the Chronicle - to show Disraeli that, in or out of Parliament, he still had the power to affect public opinion. His postscript read innocently: 'You asked me for something about the Duke - I send you what is very bad: but I will do Claviere to your Mirabeau - better - before Park. meets.'12

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'The Duke' was Wellington, who had died in his favourite chair at Walmer in September and whose passing, as conqueror of Napoleon and former prime minister, would be suitably observed with the most elaborate state obsequies ever seen in Britain when Parliament reconvened in November. Disraeli had the task of composing the official eulogy while he fought his way through the intricacies of his first major budget as chancellor. Harassed, constantly interrupted, overruled, and overworked, he accepted unquestioningly what GSS sent him. It seemed ideal; it struck the required sonorous note and it paid tribute to the many talents of the man who was gone, who had been much more than a military leader. An engineer, a geographer, a man of the world, a metaphysician, knowing men, knowing how to govern them, an administrator in great things, a clerk in small - all these things it is necessary to be, but these are as yet nothing. All this vast knowledge must be exercised on the instant, in the midst of extraordinary circumstances. At every moment you must think of the yesterday and the morrow; of your flank and of your rear - calculate at the same time on the atmosphere and on the temper of your men; and all these elements, so various and diverse, which are ceaselessly changing and renewed, you must combine in the midst of cold, heat, hunger, bullets.13

There was more, of course, and Disraeli worked it over to suit himself, but when, on 15 November, he rose in the Commons to deliver the nation's sentiments on its great departed leader, the passage was essentially what GSS had sent. For a great general, Disraeli intoned, it is not enough to say that he must be an engineer, a geographer, learned in human nature, adroit in managing mankind — that he must be able to fulfil the highest duty of a Minister of State, and then to descend to the humblest office of a commissary and a clerk; but he has to display all this knowledge and to exercise all those duties at the same time, and under extraordinary circumstances. At every moment he has to think of the eve and the morrow - of his flank and of his rear - he has to calculate at the same time the state of the weather and the moral qualities of men; and all those elements that are perpetually changing he has to combine, sometimes under overwhelming heat, sometimes under overpowering cold - oftentimes in famine, and frequently amidst the roar of artillery.

He sat down to the sombre plaudits of his Commons colleagues. Russell praised his eloquence and said he could not add a single word more.

1852: Something about the Duke 263 But the satisfaction was short-lived. Next day, the Liberal Globe (Palmerston's paper) triumphantly ran a feature under the ironic heading, 'Mr. Disraeli's Originality.' Disraeli, it said, had perpetrated a sad indignity on the memory of the great Duke with an 'impudent and vulgar theft'; on this national occasion he had plagiarized, passing off another's words as his own, and in parallel columns it carefully listed the word-for-word similarities between Disraeli's panegyric and the passages from Thiers's 1829 article on Marshal St Cyr which GSS had quoted in his Chronicle leader on 4 July 1848. By the following day, every newspaper in London had reprinted or paraphrased the Globes discovery and, with the notable exception of The Times, used the opportunity to vilify Disraeli's already battered reputation. Even the Queen thought he had been 'imprudent and blundering, and ha[d] done himself harm.'14 It was an embarrassment neither Disraeli nor the Derby government needed at that juncture. It led to reproaches and vicious jokes in the Commons, and, more important, it increased the general distrust of Disraeli to the extent that it affected the defeat of his budget and of Derby's government a month later. How culpable was GSS? It has often been assumed that he passed on his old editorial out of carelessness or laziness, but there is considerable evidence that he acted deliberately. From whom else would the Globe have learned so quickly that the passage was a quotation, and that its source was a four-year-old editorial? And who else in the Chronicle's subsequent contribution to the furore would have commented disparagingly - as GSS had done in the 1849 spat with Milnes - on the changes Disraeli made to the original Thiers text? 'It is bad enough to have our property stolen; but to have it spoiled into the bargain makes the matter worse. In the hands of the English orator, the pathos of the original becomes bombast - its terseness, verbosity. The bullets of M. Thiers are exaggerated "into a roar of artillery" - his "hunger" becomes "famine" his "heat" "overwhelming" - his "cold" absolutely "overpowering."15 Under the cloak of anonymity, this particular assassination became perfectly possible. At Disraeli's request, GSS then published a disingenuous letter (signed this time) acknowledging authorship of the 1848 article. He further muddied the issue, however, by claiming he originally heard the quotation from Disraeli himself, so that 'instead of Mr. Disraeli being indebted to the Morning Chronicle ... the Morning Chronicle is indebted to Mr. Disraeli.' The Chronicle's response had all GSS's hallmarks as it pointed out the fallacy in this latest twist: The charge ... is not that he is indebted to the Morning Chronicle, but that he has plagiarised from M. Thiers.'16

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There is also evidence that GSS was responsible for another attack on Disraeli. Before and during the plagiarism scandal, the Chronicle, as if preparing the ground, ran a series of clever but anti-Semitic parodies of Coningsby and Tancred called 'Benjamin Dejuda. A Political-Psychological Biography.'17 The target was obviously Disraeli; as one Chronicle correspondent remarked, 'A name may be transmogrified for a purpose as easily as a panegyric on a French marshal.'18 The subtitle was a conflation of Disraeli's recent Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography and Contarini Fleming: A Psychological Romance. GSS's authorship can be deduced from style, content, and a number of surprisingly pointed references in the text. In the first instalment, quite apart from the exhaustive knowledge of Coningsby his parody shows, he professes years of 'intimate' friendship with Dejuda, and goes on to describe a meeting at a Greenwich banquet during a storm, that is, the 1839 occasion when Disraeli made much of hob-nobbing with 'George,' who wickedly told him that the storm was as grand as that in Disraeli's Alarcos.19 The third instalment specifically refers to GSS's 1846 defection, after Dejuda had 'the rare facility ... to make a Cabinet Minister out of a very interesting young nobleman whose reputation had been originally made by Dejuda.' The fourth instalment repeats, in style and content, GSS's editorial of 29 June 1848 about Disraeli's subordinate relationship with Bentinck, in which 'the illustrious Benjamin was always the mainspring.' It then hits at the plagiarism, remarking how Dejuda's mastery of rhetorical styles allowed him to adopt at will those of others, such as Burke or Pitt. 'Sometimes, and perhaps in his happiest moments, Dejuda spoke with the classic elegance and finished wit of George Canning,' a reference to the 1845 incident when GSS supplied Disraeli with the Canning poem used to crush Peel.20 The last instalment accurately records Disraeli's strategic use of newspapers 'either to intimidate his colleagues or to disarm his opponents,' and draws attention to the praise in the Chronicle, which 'daily bespattered him with three columns of fulsome eulogy' - most of it GSS's work.21 In style, the Dejuda series is very similar to the New Monthly squibs GSS had published in 1844-5. It remarkably combines its anti-Semitic satire with genuine admiration of Dejuda's accomplishments. This last may explain GSS's virtual advertising of his identity- a flag to Disraeli that the renegade in the enemy camp was a double agent. Like 'Le Peuple Souriquois,' the early instalments make fun of Coningsby?, and Tancred'?, claims for Jewish greatness: 'For four thousand years, the creative genius of Israel has fashioned mankind; the Semitic principle has triumphed

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over the barbarous races of the West.' As the pages of Punch attest, Victorian anti-Semitism was not subtle, and neither is GSS's, any more than it is with his Jewish villain, Malatesta, in Angela Pisani. Dejuda's 'thick Semitic complexion was never coloured with a blush - his heavy Oriental features were unmoved in the midst of the fiercest conflicts.' The articles bluntly accuse Dejuda of political inconsistency: '"What are principles to me, when I can invent them at pleasure?'" But other passages are funny, particularly on literary matters. The ending is a genial parody of the cryptic close of Tancred- the bare statement that the hero's parents have followed him to the Holy Land. In 'Dejuda,' the Commons await him expectantly, but he does not appear: he too has gone to Jerusalem. Even in passages intended to be satirical, there is always a large proportion of truth: 'Fielding had written the novel of adventure, Richardson that of sentiment, and Walter Scott created the historical novel; but Dejuda invented the romance of politics ... a great political weapon, and conferred enormous advantages upon him who could wield it with skill and dexterity.' GSS may have been taking revenge for Fakredeen and for the non-existent diplomatic position, but even his assassination of his former leader could not conceal his lasting admiration. What are we to make of this devious political and personal relationship? Both the Dejuda series and the plagiarism did Disraeli real harm the plagiarism still haunts his reputation. In the short run, 'Dejuda' played on the Victorian distrust of Jews that produced such parliamentary sallies as that from the usually gentlemanly Sidney Herbert, who asked, amid roars of laughter from his colleagues, how any man could adopt 'a faith the profession of which must begin with a surgical operation?'22 Since trust was essentially what Disraeli would be asking with his budget, seeking a mandate for future tax proposals, this concerted assault was damaging. Even Prince Albert asked whether Derby could trust Disraeli as House leader.23 It also harmed GSS. He seems to have written nothing for the Chronicle after this, probably because his signed letter had blown his and Disraeli's cover about their collusion. In a stiff letter to the Chronicle, another MP, R.B. Christopher, cited GSS as precedent for revealing his own authorship of articles in The Times. Professional etiquette, sir - for there is etiquette even amongst penny-aliners - has hitherto prevented me from making this disclosure; but I now conceive that there can be no dishonour in following a lead given by such a distinguished member of the pen and ink corps as the Hon. George Sydney

266 Disraeli's Disciple Smythe, and I therefore beg you will publish this letter, in order to set me right with those who are narrow-minded enough to suppose that an English country gentleman could condescend to barter his convictions for the sake of mere place and salary.24

One triumphant Liberal passed on what was said in Peelite circles, that Dizzy had so much influence over 'That d-d GS' that he could ask anything.25 Yet the personal relationship with Disraeli continued apparently unruffled by the defeat of Dizzy's budget or the Derby government's resignation. Three days later, Disraeli was inviting GSS to visit. Neither physical attraction nor personal fondness can completely account for Disraeli's readiness to forgive, and to keep forgiving, such destruction of his ambitions. Perhaps the most plausible explanation lies in the understanding - familiar from every election campaign - that political opponents may violently attack each other on the hustings or in debate as inconsistent, untrustworthy, or fatally lacking in judgment, but that it is not to be taken personally outside these arenas. Disraeli's leave-taking speech, and the opposition's responses, on 20 December made precisely this point, as they courteously apologized to one another for the invective that had characterized the budget debate but that did not apply outside the House. On this occasion, however, GSS did not visit Disraeli. Aberdeen had agreed to form a coalition government and was busy forming his cabinet, while GSS waited in suspense. I can't tell whether Lord A. will offer me office or not: he may plead my being out of Parlt: but I know that he likes me, and I cannot conceive his not writing, or sending to me ... Of course it wd. be a coup for me to be offered place; and almost (without much modesty) a coup for you that I shd. refuse: so let nothing of my real, & I hope renewed relations with you, pass beyond Madame.26

Family tradition has it that Aberdeen did offer him a position, but that he made the fatal error of turning it down.27 There is, however, absolutely no evidence to support the assertion, and he was in such disfavour with both Conservatives and Liberals that neither party in the coalition would have relished working with him. Nor would it have been tactful to make him under-secretary to Palmerston, after his many attacks on the new foreign minister's international policies. After the proselytizing visit to Haddo last year and now the Chronicle revelations, Aberdeen clearly

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regarded him as Disraeli's man and chose instead to reappoint A.H. Layard. If GSS had any consolation, it was that Milnes had been passed over too. So the year ended in frustrated hopes and personal sorrow. On the other side of the Irish sea, Ellen had been fighting her own physical battle. Philippa had been with her since August, and by the end of October it was obvious that there was no more hope. She had obstinately resisted being moved to a warmer climate and now, Strangford told Londonderry, 'she is [in] such a deplorable state of weakness 8c atrophy that the thing is impossible ... It is a mere question of time. One lung is completely gone, & the other attacked. I am not allowed to go over as she could not bear the agitation of seeing me.'28 While the plagiarism row reached its peak in London, and the expected Canterbury petition was confirmed in Parliament, she died quite peacefully at Westport on the morning of 23 November. It was her mother's death all over again the lingering consumption, the religious faith, the grief-stricken husband. At the family service on the 28th, in a church hung with black, GSS and Philippa heard an affecting eulogy that echoed their mother's: Ellen's goodness to the poor, the example she set in bearing her illness. The weather, dark and gloomy, closed in to match the occasion. The Post's correspondent found it quite unforgettable. After the funeral on 3 December, GSS and Philippa travelled home to a cheerless Christmas.29 In his mind ran lines from William Browne's epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke: Underneath this sable hearse Lies the subject of all verse, Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother; Death! ere thou hast slain another, Fair and learn'd, and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee.30

Time, he would find, still had darts to throw at him.

21 1853-5: The Stage-Box of My Soul

I see now how vain an ass I must have been in our Young England days, when I attributed to my intellect the favour which I see, [Dizzy] must have accorded, to his personal friendship only for myself GSS to Manners

There was no question that GSS's health was deteriorating; all through 1853 it was 'miserable.'1 His doctor could prescribe little beyond seaside resorts - Torquay, Brighton, Eastbourne, the Isle of Wight. He had energy only to look out extracts of material for Dizzy to use in Parliament, mostly pieces that worked against Aberdeen, accusing him of inconsistency and duplicity. Disraeli, on the other hand, was brimming with energy, ready to attack the coalition, inappropriately nicknamed, after an earlier government, the 'Ministry of all the Talents.' 'You,' GSS told him, 'are the One talent... and - like Canning in '27, you will rally all the sense around you.'2 Now Disraeli had another task for him. Over dinner at Grosvenor Gate in midJanuary, they discussed Disraeli's plans to start his own weekly newspaper, The Press, his mouthpiece for reconstructing his fragmented party and formulating future policy. 'Tho' Tory,' he told the sympathetic Henry Hope, it was to have 'a very progressive & enlightened design.'3 He envisaged a paper with cutting editorials, written by himself, Edward Stanley, and others, as well as several pages of Punch-ish satire for which GSS, with his journalistic experience, was to be a major contributor. For a satirical illustrator, GSS began negotiations with Richard Doyle, Punch cartoonist and originator of its regular mock-medieval feature, 'Manners and Customs of ye Englyshe.' GSS left Grosvenor Gate full of enthusiasm. 'I have been ever, in my

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own mind ... meditating an inroad on poems without end, which I should have dressed up anew, & made you pay me for, in "the Press."'4 Almost at once, however, the Canterbury petition demanded his attention. The investigating committee wasted no time. Within a week of its first sitting on 15 February, it declared the Conservatives' election null and void on grounds of bribery and corruption. It also suspended the writ for a new election, initially from month to month but finally until 1854, leaving the constituency unrepresented for virtually two years.5 If there had been an immediate by-election, GSS had intended to run again, but the committee's action left him uncomfortably in limbo. By the end of March, confidence on the wane, he was hedging his promise to lead the Press's literary charge, leaving the editor, Samuel Lucas, in the lurch while Doyle sat waiting for satirical pieces to illustrate. 'Should Mr Smythe have anything done or any definite conception of what he may be about to do I wish he would communicate it at once to D[oyle],' Lucas complained to Disraeli. Lucas, a professional newspaperman faced with a staff largely composed of amateurs, tried everything to tempt GSS into producing. Perhaps with his learning he could write a comprehensive essay on the value of John Murray's new enterprise, a series of English Classics? 'He might open the eyes of the pensive public and propitiate an important Publisher at the same moment.' Or, with his talent for satire, he could write an incisive review of Thackeray's forthcoming English Humourists. 'I should be very glad,' Lucas added plaintively, 'if you would aid me in inciting him to some work of this kind.'6 As publication day, 30 April, approached, Lucas grew more harried. Doyle resigned before he started, saying that he was finding political cartooning now too distasteful to continue. An attempt to enrol his father, John Doyle, the famous cartoonist 'HB,' also fell through.7 Four days before the first number was due, Lucas's situation was dire. He had a substitute illustrator, but no copy. 'If I could feel as safe about the political satire as about the artistic illustrations I should be content. But I now finally know that I can expect nothing of this kind from Bulwer or Aytoun ... As soon as Mr Smythe has anything done which may suggest illustration I shall be glad of it.' Two days later, his carefully controlled tone was giving way: 'But I have not heard yet from Mr Smythe. From him or from somebody I must have at the last moment some little satirical paragraphs to fill up interstices in the Inner Sheet. I have written tonight to Lord Maidstone[.] But I don't like to rely on him alone. Pray remember me here if you have any means of helping me.' By next day they knew they must postpone publication for a week, while Lucas gathered in the

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necessary material. 'If Mr Smythe also and Lord Maidstone do not fail us I think the inner sheet of the paper will open very gaily.'8 For a wonder, it did - on 7 May, priced sixpence, although the lastminute rush showed in the numerous errors and misprints. On page 3 one of GSS's contributions, a satirical piece on Gladstone as merely a 'Pony Peel,' had its mid-section brutally excised by a recalcitrant printer. Lucas recounted the snap decisions that had occupied his small hours: Between two and three last night the Printer discovered ... that the Canadian Poetic dialogue must be docked. 'I want fifteen lines out' he said without reference to the odd Rhyme. As soon as something to this effect was done for him - he came asking me to deduct five lines from 'the Pony Peel' a little thing of Mr Smythe's coherent and completely without redundancy. He might as reasonably have asked me to cut him a strip from a soap bubble.9

GSS's second contribution, on page 12, survived intact, the first of a projected series of 'Probationary Odes.' A verse satire complete with footnotes in the style of Pope, it was a scornful attack on Aberdeen for his role in the infamous 'Spanish Marriages' seven years before which forcibly married the teenaged Queen Isabella of Spain to her cousin the Duke of Seville. 'Black as black Morton,' GSS began, 'near a happier Queen, / Lo! where he fawns - Athenian Aberdeen,' and went on from there to smear his old chief and recent host as 'cipher,' 'betrayer,' and 'dotard.' Palmerston, for the occasion, became the honourable opposite, the 'One voice ... raised in chivalrous disgust / At a child's choice constrained, 'twixt impotence and lust.'10 But, unless GSS was the 'English Gentleman' writing from Harley Street in the second issue on the opening of private letters, these two pieces were his only contributions. It was not until June 'that he got in touch again with Disraeli, rightly supposing that he would have been cursed for not producing his original quota but swearing that more would be forthcoming soon. I have been trying agst. every disadvantage, which, even your imagination can suggest, to recall something like a burst of inspiration. I want to write, & have written in part, some Contrast's in a sort of Keepsake-Plutarch style. I thought a Derbyjohn Russell; in the highest style of Rhodian panegyrism might do no disservice just now, when the last must be savage, & dissatisfied. The other I have in hand is yourself & Guizot. Afterwards I was thinking of

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Schwartzenberg & Louis Napoleon. I mean to sign the notices 'Theophrastus.' As they must be short, I may not be ready as soon as you may wish, but I will send the first two to you, when they are complete. Only do not cut out, without interpolating.

Though the concept is tantalizing, no pieces by 'Theophrastus,' cut or uncut, ever emerged. Edward Stanley recorded with grim satisfaction that, while he wrote about a third of the first two volumes of the Press and Dizzy about the same, 'Smythe did nothing.'11 Stanley, however, gave GSS no credit for the very real 'disadvantages' he faced in those weeks. The implications of the Canterbury election occupied Parliament in April, and Derby and Malmesbury discussed whether they should intervene.12 Since the quashed petition after GSS's first election in 1841, attitudes to bribery had hardened and legislation passed that made interference more risky. Not only could candidates and their agents now be compelled to give testimony, but whole constituencies had been disfranchised, and indeed this latter possibility likely explains the long suspension of Canterbury's writ. Quite properly, Derby decided against trying to screen out a case of corruption in their own party, and even agreed to support a new bill for more effectual inquiry into corrupt practices in general. On 14 May - the day the second issue of the Press appeared - a Royal Commission convened its first session of inquiry in Canterbury Town Hall. It was admirably thorough, investigating every election from 1820 on, in spite of the efforts of some local politicians. Alderman Brent, for example, Liberal chairman in 1847 and 1850, actually asked the commissioners not to probe further back than 1850, though the request was refused while they concluded severely that election, even though uncontested, had been 'not so pure as was represented.' The hearings were conducted with a mixture of righteous indignation (from commissioners and politicos) and unblinking protestations of innocence (from candidates and agents). When the commission looked at previous elections, it discovered two main problems: bribery at Canterbury had always been indirect, done through middlemen, and the paper trails on the Conservative side had been systematically destroyed. 'We had,' the commissioners reported with masterly understatement, 'considerable difficulty in arriving at the truth of several of the transactions into which we felt it our duty to inquire ... it not infrequently happened that we were referred for information to parties who were either dead or had left the country.' When they tried to summon Lord Albert over the

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murky 1847 coalition with GSS, he claimed he was too ill to come, and when they finally allowed him to give evidence in London, he 'appeared to have a very imperfect recollection of some parts of the case.' Nevertheless, their insistent probing eventually found extensive evidence of bribery by cash payment going back for thirty-two years.13 What the practices at Canterbury did was effectively exonerate the principals - candidates and agents - from culpability. Both could and did plead that they had merely provided campaign money to their assistants in the field, many of whom were mysteriously unavailable for testimony. When GSS was called to testify on 16 May, he was nervous enough to bring his friend Montagu Peacocke with him, presumably for moral support, since Peacocke too was under petition after his election at Harwich. GSS followed Romilly, who steadfastly admitted only to having heard rumours of a Liberal election fund at the Reform Club. Jonathan Rutter, a Liberal agent, was less coy. He caused a sensation when he unhesitatingly stated that, although he had never bribed a single voter himself, he had given cash to other men knowing they would use it for bribes. GSS initially hedged about his own role in 1852, saying that friends had canvassed for him against his wishes. He then, however, asked the commissioners if he would be incriminating himself by giving evidence, and when he was assured that he would not, became astonishingly open with them. In his ten years' experience, he told them, he had never found any appreciable difference in 'electoral purity' between Liberals and Conservatives. His own accounts had been destroyed, but he estimated that he paid out more for bribes as a Conservative in 1841 than as a Liberal in 1847. The Liberals, he said, generally managed their money better, while more cash 'stuck' in the hands of Conservative agents. The Liberals' twelve main bribery agents were even listed in their election accounts, with the amounts paid out. Here Alderman Brent tried to foist responsibility for 1847 onto GSS, saying that the money was managed by a secret committee and that the payments were made and accounts audited 'by the sole authority of the Hon. G.P.S. Smythe.' Brent's handwriting, however, was on the vouchers, and the commissioners sternly reprimanded such a smirch upon the honour of a gentleman who had sworn he never knew who distributed his money. This attempt to lay upon one candidate the undivided responsibility for the acts of a committee indifferently representing both candidates did not long succeed. Mr. Smythe repudiates the position thus assigned to him, and declares his entire ignorance of the particular appropriation of the sums paid by him for bribery purposes.' They also opted to ignore William

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Pilcher, steward to Lord Albert's wife, who insisted there had been no bribery before 1847, only 'charitable donations': 'When Mr. Smythe came over, there was then quite another system.'14 At no time during the inquiry did Disraeli's name come up, but the commission trod very close when it probed funding by the respective parties in 1852. Both Liberals and Conservatives had received large sums from their central organizations in London. Romilly's came, if not direct from the Reform Club, from a fund managed by the Liberals' secretary to the Treasury, Henry Tufnell, through a chain ranging from their national agent, James Coppock, to the slippery Alderman Brent. The two Conservatives, Johnstone and Gipps, received half of their money in instalments from London, £500 of it from a bank on the guarantee of Forbes Mackenzie, secretary to the Treasury in Disraeli and Derby's government. The total sum, the commissioners found, was 'too large to admit of any doubt that it was intended to be applied to other than legal expenses.' They concluded that a considerable amount had been promised 'by some influential member of the Conservative party.' They had no difficulty, however, in accepting GSS's claim that he had no committee and no canvass, and he got off remarkably lightly, with comparatively little comment about his sudden withdrawal despite testimony that his supporters had always expected him to go to the poll. The commissioners did note, however, the evidence of the city clerk that if GSS had not run the two Liberals would have been returned.15 Was this an implicit recognition of the Conservative party's part in his withdrawal? In one final irony, though GSS was never instrumental in having legislation of his own passed in Parliament, this last election of his did just that. Its dubious legacy was the Corrupt Practices Act of 1854, which imposed fines for bribery and treating, and instituted auditors to make and keep the election accounts which had been so conspicuously missing in the inquiry. The strain of the inquiry took a physical toll. It came on the heels of a new love affair that had already emotionally drained him, 'my own recklessness - in being in love-lunacy about a woman, and therefore utterly careless about life, and that at an age, when one is only less absurd than Gentz at the feet of Fanny Elssler.'16 (Friedrich von Gentz, Austrian diplomat and friend of Metternich, began a romantic affair with the ballerina Fanny Elssler in 1829, when he was sixty-three and she was nineteen. Their involvement reputedly hastened his death in 1832.) It seemed GSS was determined to prove the popular myth of the consumptive's rampant sexuality. The previous year, recuperating at

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Torquay, he had flirted madly with a 'charming' Mrs Yorke, but his current inamorata remains anonymous. Manners, perhaps alarmed at his multitude of affairs, urged him to marry, but 'Caro mio,' he replied, 'where can I find in the sex any one sufficiently unworthy, to be unworthy enough to become my wife? When I find one, I will act upon your counsels.' The woman he was now in love with was a mere stockbroker's daughter, who, although she possessed 'the most beautiful eyes in the world,' had no money, 'and, upon the whole, I think Suicide more respectable than that.'1^ All his exertions, literary, political, and amatory, produced a complete collapse. His doctor ordered the inevitable sea air and complete rest, and he flitted from resort to resort before settling at Eastbourne in August. At Brighton, he saw something of Manners and his wife, Louisa, whose second pregnancy was not progressing well. With his own heightened perceptions of illness, he was disturbed to see how attenuated, almost ethereal, she looked, but on his own condition, as usual, he put a flippant front. Here I have been off & on for a month: for being like Lady Spirituelle 'all soul' - I naturally developed into its extreme antithesis: and have been suffering from something very like the great visitation, of which Prime Minister Lord Rockingham died: which, by the way, served him quite right, as he was in love with America. However having been deluged by drafts, I begin to find, that I & my Doctor were all wrong, and Nature not the stepmother which she appeared ... However I am now I hope spiritually as well as physically convalescent.18

By September, he was well enough to travel, to Peacocke's country home in Essex, and later to Disraeli at Hughenden, his first visit there. If he expected a tete-a-tete, however, he was disappointed, since he found he had to share his host with Lord Henry Lennox. Disraeli had a penchant for showing off his young men to one another, whether or not they would actually mix well. In this case, they did not. No matter how fine the weather and how magnificent the views from the Chiltern Hills up which Dizzy dragged his visitors, the presence of such a fellow guest gnawed at GSS. Lennox was handsome enough but certainly not GSS's intellectual match. Did Disraeli really think of them as equals? It seems Disraeli did, to judge by his version of the visit. Two living statesmen ... appeared on Tuesday week last and stayed till Saturday; Lord Henry Lennox, one of my aid-de-camps & whom I had the

1853-5: The Stage-Box of My Soul 275 pleasure of making a Lord of the Treasury for ten months, & Mr Smythe, the eldest son of Ld. Strangford, & who, both as to ability & acquirements, is perhaps the most brilliant man of the day; tho' more adapted to social & literary pursuits, than the stern business of politics.19 To GSS, with the clarity of illness, it was a stunning moment of truth. He did not go so far as to say that Dizzy was making a fool of himself over Lennox, but he could see that Lord Henry exercised a disproportionate, 'almost tyrannical influence over so great a man as Disraeli has proved.' Later, with astonishing lack of insight into his own habits, he would warn Disraeli against Lennox's way of vilifying friends behind their backs. Thus, once before, he brought me a message, as from you, which you flatly denied.' He also warned Disraeli of the homosexual insinuations in some of Lennox's stories. 'Thus at Paris he said to me - "Disi and I are always wondering what can be the relation's between you and Peacocke" - I said "what the hell do you mean?" - "Oh, nothing - but we always say - what can you see in him? - where is the attraction? But of course he sends you [presents] of one or two thousand pounds at a time."' The warnings undoubtedly owed something to his own jealousy of Lennox, but they were sincerely meant. Dizzy 'must see - that he (HL) is very dangerous - in this sort of loose accusation.' Dizzy seems to have taken no action on the advice.20 The Hughenden episode prompted a more sober retrospective than mere nostalgia over past glories. GSS felt he was gradually separating from the active world; 'Life seem[s] to me a surreal panorama, in which I have no share, & which I judge from the stage-box of my soul — apart — amused - & unselfishly appreciating.' He had hoped to revive the Young England idealism when he turned back to Disraeli, only to find Manners side-tracked into domesticity and Disraeli 'with views, office-spurred, of the immediate & the practical, rather than with those of more difficult attainment, but of grander inspiration.' The Hughenden visit radically increased his disillusion with politics and with himself. Coningsby, after all, had been mere fiction. 'I see now how vain an ass I must have been in our Young England days, when I attributed to my intellect the favour which I see, he must have accorded, to his personal friendship only for myself.'21 For all that, when his Captain called, GSS still answered. In December an anonymous book was published, The Right Honourable Benjamin Disraeli. A Literary and Political Biography; Addressed to the New Generation. Its subtitle, with its echoes of Coningsby, was misleading; its author, Thomas

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MacKnight, editor of the Belfast Northern Whig, had written no straightforward biography, but a violent attack on Disraeli's probity, political consistency, and treatment of Peel. To add insult to injury, it had been well advertised in the Press, and Disraeli's patroness Sarah Brydges Willyams was not the only one of his supporters who ordered a copy only to find 'a most horrid malignant compilation of misrepresentations.' To counter MacKnight's charges (and maybe atone for the Wellington plagiarism), Disraeli asked GSS to write a review for the Press in refutation. GSS was supposedly working on a project with Richard Bentley (an edition of Lord Chesterfield's letters), but, probably glad of the excuse, he dropped it to tackle MacKnight's seven hundred pages of vitriol over the Christmas holidays.22 To create the appearance of an unbiased review, Disraeli took elaborate precautions to conceal his connection with it. When GSS handed it in, on 5 January 1854, Disraeli added some passages on the Jews, had it copied (or copied it himself) to remove GSS's unmistakable handwriting, and rushed it to Lucas for publication in the Press on the 7th. Lucas at first demurred at such short notice - 'On account of the making up of the forms it will be exceedingly difficult to insert the Review this week' and then gave way. T can only say it will not be impossible to insert it if I have it by twelve tomorrow - and I will call at Grosvenor Gate myself before that hour.' Instructed to destroy the manuscript after the article was set in type, he reassured Disraeli, T invariably have all "Copy" which reaches me from Grosvenor Gate and whoever may be the author, brought up from the Printing Room with the Proof and I myself burn it directly the Proof is read.'23 As late as 1860, Disraeli still professed detachment from the review, though he recommended it to writers on his career. The late Ld. Strangford, unknown to me, drew a sketch of my character & career, especially with reference to my political position, wh. is written with great power - & worth looking at. It appeared, I believe, in some periodical - & anonymously ... Coming from one, who tho' a personal friend, was a follower of Sir Robert Peel, & who had a very fine taste & quick perception, & was behind the scenes of political life, it is very interesting.24

Only someone completely unacquainted with GSS could have failed to detect his authorship. In the course of his apologia for Disraeli, he revealed himself as a Cambridge man, a political and social intimate, and a Peelite who continued to be one after Peel's 1846 defeat. When he

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refuted the charge that Peel disliked Disraeli, he described how he had sat on the front opposition bench with Peel on 28 Junel850, and heard Peel's cheer of Disraeli's speech that day. As a blind, however, to assiduous Morning Chronicle readers who might remember his articles of 1848-9, he condemned those who described Disraeli as a politician who was used but not trusted. His admiring conclusion was predictable: that Disraeli invariably overcame obstacles in his way, and that 'when the world has believed him beaten, he has always been on the eve of his greatest victories.' The ease of the writing, however, belied the difficulty of GSS's task. He hated anything boring, and after the review appeared sent Disraeli his condolences on having provoked 'the dullest of all abusive brochures in neo-English.'25 Only for his 'Cid and Captain' would he have undertaken to be bored. It also made him ill. The burst of writing drained his physical resources and sent him back to Brighton for rest, where he reflected moodily on Contarini Fleming and its ominous line: 'And Contarini wrote: Time.' Time was inexorably advancing on him. Shortly before Easter, Lady Clanricarde, his mother's sister, died. A few days later, he was horribly shaken to learn that Manners too had been unexpectedly plunged into mourning. First his new daughter, born on 12 March, lived only a few days, and then his wife, who caught scarlet fever after the birth, died after an agonizing illness of three weeks, leaving her husband utterly bereft. 'Shut up this book,' Manners wrote in his journal: 'my sky is darkened; the sun is taken from my heaven - all is gloom & hopeless sorrow so far as this earth is concerned; & how am I to hope for happiness in another?'26 GSS could offer only words to comfort his oldest friend. This is terrible, terrible. But you are good, and gentle, and true, and great without one single enemy in the world, and with one more Angel to guide & guard you in the next. Therein, must lie your consolation. How much must you now understand the Idea of the Real Presence. What have Space, or Time, or the Elements, or the Finite, or Finite changes, in them, to affect the intercommunion, which with your strong feelings, will and must now exist -, day after day, - to strengthen & increase?

These sentiments, however, did nothing for his own forebodings. Desperate for some consolation, he reached out to the Roman Catholic Church he had abandoned, for the comfort it had given his mother at the end of her life. On an impulse, 'a restless desire to snatch back a

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fragment of our sunny boyhood' and the rapture of belief, he went up to London and attended Sunday mass at the Brornpton Oratory, which Faber had founded five years before. Faber was there, but their encounter only deepened the atmosphere of mortality. It had been fifteen years since they had seen each other, and they were both sadly changed - GSS debilitated, coughing, and depressed, Faber 'so altered, so aged, so different' that GSS barely recognized him. They would not meet again.27 There was one more blow to come. In early June, Philippa too had a daughter, but, exhausted by labour and almost certainly consumptive, she died at her London home in Lowndes Street. She was thirty-four, two years younger than her brother, and his closest relative. Her death set off a storm of regrets for the past they had shared, and he belaboured himself with his faults as a brother and as a man. With Ellen too gone, Percy in distant Constantinople, and Strangford alienated, he felt completely alone, and the trip to Brompton only reinforced his agnosticism: 'the school of Voltaire in youth and manhood may lead to faith, but the school of Faith leads without discipline to Death without belief.' After seeing Faber, he had recognized that recapturing the past was impossible. 'You,' he told Manners, 'are the only link now with the past which seems likely to chain on to the future. Separate or hostile as our destinies may be in that future, we have known a friendship together which has far passed that of ordinary comrades.'28 Manners, struggling with his own tragedy, tried to pull him out of his depression. The long-delayed writ for Canterbury was about to be issued, and he suggested that GSS run again as a Conservative. Amid the disasters and mismanagement of the Crimean War, the Aberdeen coalition was constantly on the verge of breaking up - indeed, Russell, after a particularly stinging attack from Disraeli on 13 July on the government's ineffectiveness, asked to be relieved as House leader. Manners put it to GSS that an extra Conservative vote in the Commons at this point would be immensely helpful. GSS was initially reluctant; he felt he had already said his farewell to active politics, but he also wanted to repay Manners for his kindness. 'Your ever vigilant affection for me, is what I am all unworthy of, but which, I never can with sufficient gratitude repay.' After interviews with party organizers, and with Disraeli, he decided to run 'with what remains of energy I have.'29 The party's legal counsel, Fitzroy Kelly, cleared him of any lingering blame resulting from the Royal Commission, and on 25 July he issued a militant notice to his electors, reminding them of his years as their representative and the bonds

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(geographic and personal) between them. He dwelt particularly on the penalty they had recently shared: 'the withdrawal of Legislative confidence in you being immediately subsequent to the withdrawal of your confidence in me; our joint misadventure in coerced submission to an absurd and useless Inquisition; all these circumstances, several and combined, embolden me to solicit the renewal of those functions which, if imperfectly, at least honestly, I endeavoured to fulfil.'30 In two years, however, things had changed at Canterbury, where the electors now groused about their lost 'retaining fees,' and the bullies about the new teetotal regime.31 There were five other candidates, three of them Liberals and a fourth a Liberal-Conservative, none of whom were willing, since the Inquiry and the new anti-bribery Act, to 'coalesce' in the old way with the Conservatives. Within days, it became obvious that no amount of personal canvassing could win him a seat. Gloomily, he issued another notice announcing his withdrawal: 'It is unhappily the case that whatever contributions I may have gained over to the furtherance of my purpose, upon the Conservative side, have been subsequently counterbalanced by a more than equivalent loss among the ranks of my former Liberal allies.'32 So ended his last campaign. There was nothing for it but to retire to the lethargic life of seaside resorts. At this point in his life he was palliating his troubles with the heavy drinking that alienated old friends like William Gregory and that affected his posthumous reputation. Gregory's sour allegation that he wore himself out with dissipation and brandy and water has found its way into what few accounts there are.33 Stanley seems not to have known about GSS's tuberculosis but, because he had once helped him home from a party in a helpless condition, decided he had drunk himself to death.34 Then in the New Year of 1855, while he was in Brighton, the Derby parry again had a chance to take over the government. Russell resigned, and GSS, adopting the role of elder statesman, immediately wrote to Disraeli urging him to seize the opportunity. He excused his effrontery in offering advice: 'This may seem very conceited, & so it is - But, I once heard that you had said of me "that I was the only man who never had bored you."' He predicted that Derby would be sent for, and 'I have been singularly accurate, & true, in all my speculations to myself, & to the few people, with whom I have lived, & live, during all these recent vicissitudes.' 'The Reality,' he concluded, 'is yourself - you & yours.' Two days later, Disraeli hammered at the Liberals, particularly Russell, using verbatim material GSS had worked up and sent.

280 Disraeli's Disciple Was there ever such an exposure as John Russell's speech [of resignation] ? It is a page of Bubb Doddington. Nay, it is even worse, in its all unconscious admission of profligate intrigue than any record of days, when the opposition to the Duke of Newcastle's friend, Sir Thomas Robinson, the leader of the House of Commons, was headed by Mr. William Pitt the Paymaster g[eneral]; and Mr. Henry Fox, the Secretary ...35

But if GSS still hankered for a position under Derby, he was disappointed. For the third time in six years, Derby failed to form a government, leaving Disraeli exhausted and exasperated, and GSS still out in the political cold. His personal life, however, was as active as ever. In the spring of 1855, he became deeply involved with a new love, a married woman, for whom he was willing to sacrifice health, reputation and considerable cash by eloping abroad with her. She is named in the surviving correspondence only as as 'Mrs C 1,' but other evidence indicates that she was Charlotte Capel, elder sister of GSS's perpetual follower, the mournful Catherine Maynard. Charlotte, herself daughter of a viscount, was married to Adolphus Capel, brother of the sixth Earl of Essex, and would need to be run away with in some style. GSS therefore approached his wealthy friend Peacocke (coincidentally the holder of Disraeli's mortgage on Hughenden) for a loan of £1,000, which, in those days of cheap Continental living, would be enough for several years — a degree of commitment he had never shown before. By the end of April everything was in place; their passports had been obtained (under whose name is not evident), and GSS had already joined her at Viscount Maynard's country seat, Easton Lodge, at Dunmow in Essex, in preparation for the journey across the Channel. Yet even then he did not conclusively burn his boats. From Easton Lodge, he took time to write anxiously to Disraeli about the unpaid club subscriptions of their mutual friend Frank Villiers, the Earl of Jersey's son, who had absconded abroad, leaving a financial mess in his wake.36 No gentleman let these vital memberships lapse; they were considered debts of honour, the non-payment of which would bar him from society. GSS, himself about to decamp, was obviously identifying with Villiers in keeping the way open for a future return. On the eve of departure, however, the careful plans were disrupted when Strangford fell seriously ill. He was something of a hypochondriac and he had suffered on and off from various internal ailments for years, but it was quickly apparent that this would be his last illness. GSS, the heir and the last surviving child in England, was summoned to his

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father's bedside, while the elopement was called permanently off. The promptness with which he paid back the £1,000 to Peacocke - the very next week - suggests some relief as well as regret, and no more was heard of 'Mrs C 1.' Strangford's decline lasted only a month longer. For the first two weeks, he was conscious but in agonies as he struggled painfully for each breath. Mercifully, in his last ten days he fell into a coma from which he never emerged. On 29 May, he died at Harley Street, aged seventy-four, and GSS was now the seventh Viscount Strangford and second Baron Penshurst.37 For the next month, he was overwhelmed with legal matters, clearing up his father's estate as well as that of a cousin, Henry Darell's mother, in Essex. His father's affairs were a huge shock. As eldest son, he inherited the (rather modest) properties in Kent, including Westenhanger, and what rental they brought in. He also got the leasehold on the Harley Street house, along with its furniture, pictures, plate, and books. A yearly allowance of £50 went to Percy, as well as a portion of any residue, but on the whole there was alarmingly little actual money. Maybe he had been premature in repaying Peacocke's £1,000. What also came to light was that Strangford had all along been supporting a common-law wife and a brood of illegitimate children to whom, despairing of GSS's financial irresponsibility, he had sequestered everything he could, 'considerable savings,' Disraeli told Lady Londonderry. In effect GSS inherited the viscountcyjust as his father had done fifty years before, as a titled pauper, 'literally worse off, than he was with his pocket money.' To Disraeli's condolences and Mary Anne's offers of help he replied, 'I am wearied out, by the infinitesimal distraction's, of what are alas very infinitesimal affairs - and may have a lawyer or a dun here.' On top of that, in the train on the way back from Essex, a live coal from the engine blew into his eye, and only the immediate care of another Royal doctor, the surgeon Sir Caesar Hawkins, saved his sight.38 Inevitably, all this led to another collapse, and he was ordered to a popular resort for consumptives, Ventnor, Isle of Wight. 'I was so ill, that I was recommended to go at once, instead of pothering on, with old fashioned lawyers, who can't even find my fathers marriage certificate, (I suppose he did marry my mother!).' Here he recovered enough to spend significant time with Catherine Cocks, though by this time she was indisputably another's. Handsome Kitty Fleming, the Astley's equestrienne, had made her biggest catch yet, 'the largest fish in the Social Ocean - A sort of Erie-King, in flesh & blood: with two Court Coronets, the blood of Plantagenet, Kent, Dorset & Delapole; a Chateau, a park,

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and a forest, and all his chamber-pots in silver. The Head of the Greys, Lord Stamford & Warrington.' GSS was not exaggerating. Stamford had a rent-roll of £90,000 a year and enormous estates: Enville in Staffordshire, Bradgate Park in Leicestershire, Dunham Massey in Cheshire, Ashton-under-Lyme in Lancashire, Glenmore in Inverness, Kinrara in Ireland, smaller properties in Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Yorkshire, a house in Newmarket, and a town mansion at 33 Hill Street. He was an all-round sportsman, a Master of Fox Hounds (with the illustrious Quorn), and a crack shot. He also preferred independent, experienced women to the gently nurtured maidens that society mamas eagerly thrust at him. His mistress at Cambridge had been Bessie Billage, daughter of the Trinity College bootman; to save her from the clutches of two other Cambridge men, in 1848 he horrified aristocratic circles by eloping with her to Brighton, where he married her. When Catherine hooked him, he had been a widower for a year and was ready to marry again. Nine years before, GSS had begun her education; now his self-imposed task was to while away the seaside hours instructing her in the finer points of the station she was to occupy. That may not have been their only pastime. He recounted to Disraeli a ribald story of an earlier Lady Maynard, who had lived with her husband only a short time before departing to Paris with a settlement of £5,000 a year, the family diamonds, and her former lover, the Duke of Grafton. 'Your quick genius will have already appreciated ... I am much given to ponder over the example, and the story of the Duke of Bedford & Grafton. And I am not without a very sanguine hope to emulate their fame. This is of course in the strictest confidence, to my old Captain, and Confessor.'39 With this kind of pleasant stimulus, by early July he had regained his spirits, if not his health, and was keeping a close eye on the seesaws of Parliament. On the 14th, when it again looked as though Aberdeen's government would be defeated, GSS wrote to Disraeli with the old request, now made more urgent by the financial position Strangford had left him in. Tf you come in, I tell you, without any false delicacy, what I want: in three words - my old place.' He had no more patience for mere promises of a diplomatic post: 'Altho' my real object is a mission, yet once Under Secy, in the F. Office, I shall be able to look about me, see what is likely to be vacant, & with your influence, help myself.'40 How he would be able to function in a government department when his doctor forbade him to exert himself or even leave town was left unanswered. But the question never came up. The coalition survived, and Disraeli would not be in office again in GSS's lifetime.

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To make ends meet, GSS went back to Bentley, and proposed a series of articles on some of his ancestors: 'Henry Sydney, Philip Sydney, Algernon Sydney, Endymion Porter, Endymion 3d Lord Strangford (whose life is a romance) - & then a light, general, not detailed memoir, of the late Lord Strangfords life. But before that, I shall have another proposal to make to you - at least I expect so - about another publication.' The 'other publication' was likely the still unfinished Angela Pisani. But, even though Bentley kept up his interest, GSS was not strong enough: in late July he had to tell Bentley, 'I can hold out to you no prospect of any immediate work, but I never shall forget your good intention's.'41 Later in the year, however, he regained energy, when his old Chronicle editor, John Douglas Cook, started a new periodical, the Saturday Review, and recruited him along with most of his former writers.42 In the second number, on 10 November, he contributed the article on Edward Stanley's political ascent, and in December probably the review of his friend Louis Blanc's Histoire de la Revolution Franfaise that echoed much of the content in Historic Fancies, notably the comments on Revolutionary leaders. Those were apparently all his health would allow him to produce. His stamina was rapidly giving out, and he was too weak for such concerted effort.

22 1856-7: Bed-Ridden Lovelace

My part is over, and he who remains on the stage after his part is over, deserves to be hissed off Historic Fancies

Still the list of GSS's affairs kept growing. Sometime in 1856 his promiscuity finally cost him Manners's sympathy. Manners could just bring himself to overlook his friend's philandering with single women, but not (as his attitude to the liaison with Corise shows) with married ones. This latest adventure concerned the wife of a mutual friend; the husband's name (possibly a nickname) is indecipherable in GSS's atrocious handwriting. GSS himself waxed righteously indignant when Manners - 'that funereal Pharisee' - indicated his disapproval: 'I flirted once with Sp[ossle]s wife,' he snorted. 'As if he (Sp.) had not as many flirtation's connived at, & profited by, as he has freckles in his Judas-coloured face: and red roots in his Judas coloured hair. And as if I did not do him as much good as if I had entertained him at a Country house.' English was clearly not the unlucky husband's native language, since GSS's benevolence extended to 'laughing with his inarticulate absurdity: and "in washing his dirty linen" - into occasional decency, and in masking it if not in the mother tongue, at least in the English of Mother Goose.'1 Whoever she was, GSS's exertions predictably brought on another relapse, bad enough this time for him to be ordered abroad at the end of the year. The visitation concentrated his mind wonderfully. T am like Smollett, in his last voyage, and see all things through the medium of my miserable health: for which, I fear, I care more, than for anything else in this world.'2 Probably remembering how rapidly Ellen had declined because she refused to move to a healthier climate, her kindly widower

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Lord Sligo, who enjoyed exotic travel, persuaded him to join him in a trip to Egypt. At this time, many consumptives who could afford it travelled there, where the hot, dry climate of the interior was believed to be beneficial - if the long journey did not kill them first, let alone dirt, parasites, and polluted water. Lucie Duff Gordon, for example, daughter of Disraeli's acquaintance Sarah Austin, spent her last seven years (1862-9) in Egypt nursing her consumption. Edward Lear went twice, in 1853 and 1866, to relieve congestion in his lungs.3 By the 1850s, invalids had to compete for transport up the Nile and for local servants with the tourists who poured in on the wave of nineteenth-century Egyptomania that had begun with Napoleon's campaigns. The Khedive, Ismail Pasha, had recently made things easier for visitors with roads and railways built by forced-labour gangs of wretched fellaheen, though his thirst for modernization would eventually drive him to near-bankruptcy and the sale of the Suez Canal to Britain. The slow coach trip of 130 miles from the port of Alexandria to Cairo had now been replaced by a train that took four to six hours.4 Herman Melville, who was there at the same time as GSS and Sligo, found Cairo exciting, a colourful Bartholomew Fair made up of 'splendor 8c squalor, gloom & gayety,' but for invalids the European sector of the city was lethally damp and unhealthy.5 Upriver, however, the desert air was clear, dry, and exhilarating, and local entrepreneurs were quick to charge exorbitant prices to the wealthy visitors for boats that sailed the Nile in convoys. Lear was entranced by the sight of these dahabeeyahs with their triangular sails, flitting like giant moths over the water alongside the multitudes of graceful birds. At Luxor, site of the ancient city of Thebes, there were so many tourist boats tied up that Lucie Duff Gordon complained that it had become an English watering-place: 'the great object is to do the Nik as fast as possible. It is a race up to Wady Halfeh or Assouan,' roughly eight days' sail from Cairo.6 Where Disraeli twenty-five years before had been overwhelmed by the grandeur of Thebes - a 'tumultuous dream full of triumphal gates, processions of paintings, interminable walls of heroic sculpture, granite colossi of Gods and Kings'7 - now the great monuments were defaced with graffiti, not only by unthinking Smiths and Joneses, but by distinguished travellers who should have known better. The German Prince Piickler Muskau actually carved his name in huge letters across the chest of a giant figure at Abu Simbel. For these oriental delights, GSS and Sligo set out at the end of 1856. About a month ahead of them was another British party - two ladies, an

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army officer, and a servant - who left the South Eastern Pavilion Hotel, Folkestone, for the Boulogne steamer on 3 November and made their leisurely way south via Paris (where the ladies bought scarves), Dijon (where they bought corsets), and Lyons (where the officer played chemin defer) to Marseilles, which they reached on the 10th. Like GSS, the three gentlefolk - Scottish mother, daughter, and consumptive son - were travelling in the faint hope of saving the consumptive's life. The mother, Frances Kincaid Lennox of Lennox Castle, Stirling, was an imperious woman in her fifties who rode rough-shod over all her family except her equally strong-minded eldest daughter, Margaret, now twenty-seven, a year older than her brother. John Lennox, a captain in the 12th regiment of Lancers, had contracted tuberculosis on campaign five years before in South Africa (ironically, another popular resort for consumptives). They went well stocked with tropical clothing, kitchen equipment for their Nile voyage, and nostrums for the invalid, including cod liver oil, sal volatile, rhubarb and magnesia, and a bottle of 'Solution Mureate Morphia' to ease his cough and help him sleep. From Marseilles they took ship for Malta, where they had to delay for two weeks, presumably for John's health, since they bought more cod liver oil, as well as spirits of wine, quinine, jujubes for the throat, and a waterproof 'casimere' greatcoat for him. On 1 December they embarked on the P & O steamer 'Colombo' for Alexandria; on the 9th they arrived at the famous Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, where they stayed until Christmas.8 Somewhere along the route, GSS and Sligo overtook them, since in the New Year of 1857 the two parties met each other, quite by chance, on the Nile between Cairo and the first cataract at Aswan. The Lennoxes were friends of Manners, who had stayed with them at Lennox Castle and Margaret recalled seeing and admiring GSS years before at the height of Young England, 'those bright days of Youth & Hope.'9 The Lennoxes seem to have had some problems with the transport they had hired, and were relieved when GSS and Sligo offered to take them on to the falls in their more comfortable boat. There was an immediate attraction between GSS and Margaret, heightened by the close quarters on board and GSS's common plight with her brother, and they very soon became lovers. 'You know the Nile familiarity,' he confided to Disraeli.10 Despite those same close quarters, Mrs Lennox seems to have turned a blind eye. During his first night with Margaret, GSS, with his usual bias towards the double standard, was surprised (though not deterred) to find he was not her first lover, though it was not till later that she told him any details. Meanwhile, they cruised on upriver, as GSS regained

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some health and John grew gradually weaker. By the time they reached Luxor, it was obvious that he was dying. The English community there rallied to give them what help they could, in gratitude for which Mrs Lennox later sent generous presents to the Bishop, the Sheik, and Mustapha Aga, the consular agent. By coincidence, GSS actually found the doctor who was currently treating the tragic actress Elisa Rachel for consumption, but all the traditional remedies had already been tried and he could do no more. On 28 February, John died and was buried at Luxor.11 Almost against his will, GSS realized that he had fallen in love with Margaret, and he did all he could to help her and her mother in their bereavement. He abandoned the rest of his cruise to escort them back down the river, looked after their comfort at Shepheard's on the sad return to Cairo, and even lent them money, since they had had to pay for John's funeral and other expenses. In their week in Cairo, he and Margaret became intimate enough for her to divulge her earlier liaison, 'name, seduction, details all - no, not all - with certain reservation's.' In Alexandria, where they spent another week at the end of March, he paid their bill at the Hotel d'Europe. At the beginning of April, they embarked for Marseilles. The weather, however, was atrocious, and their ship was driven off course in storms in the Mediterranean. 'Coming home - we were shipwrecked together: or what was equivalent - for 66 hours, expecting every moment, to go to the bottom, driving three times a minute agst. a sand-bank.' In this crisis Margaret showed a courage and protectiveness of him and her mother that forced his admiration: 'Her devotion won my affection's — . It was as heroic as anything I ever heard o[r] read of.' Safely back in Marseilles, they parted with many promises; according to one source, he had actually proposed and been accepted by that time. When, however, they met again in Paris three weeks later, the sexual double standard once more did its work. When they renewed their affair, this time Margaret revealed too much of her past experience for GSS. T was staggered by the Confession - . I broke off relation's.' His own past history does not seem to have come into play, though she must have known it. She had to go home to Scotland with her mother to buy mourning instead of a bridal gown, while GSS retired in displeasure to his bachelor rooms at 19 Mansfield Street. His decision to part was, he felt, only confirmed in talking to Henry Baillie ('that astute factor manque'}, who informed him Margaret was not the heiress he had thought her.12 GSS, however, reckoned without the indomitable Mrs Lennox. Twenty

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years before, she had been the driving force behind her meeker husband's petition to have the ancient title of Earl of Lennox revived in his favour, and she had been bitterly disappointed when the building of Lennox Castle left too little money to pursue the case.13 From time to time thereafter her husband mildly remonstrated about her temper and her permanent irritation with him, but, with all England and half Scotland safely between them, GSS found he had almost to admire her determination to get what she wanted, in this case a title for her daughter. 'You would delight' in her, he told Disraeli, 'quarried out of the hardest part of the Devils heart - the most unscrupulous of straightforward liars, the Erynnys [Fury] of Calvinism, starched in cleanliness, religion, phrase, as if she was the reproduction in metempsychosis of one of the women connected in Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, - with the great Genevan Institute on one hand, sword-embossed: and a phial of Raggieri prescription [poison] in the other - she is grand! - Worth almost all the time, health, monies I have lost in this unfortunate affair.'14 Like Eugenie's and Dorothy's mothers before her, she began to spread the news of Margaret's forthcoming marriage, while GSS just as strenuously spread his denials. Margaret's uncle was relieved, for her sake, that no marriage was in the offing: 'His health is so very bad I think poor Maggie would have been a sacrifice and brought much sorrow on herself.'15 Mrs Lennox, however, did not give up. In early June, as soon as she heard GSS had arrived back in London, she took Margaret firmly in hand and travelled south. She was perhaps intending her favourite tactic, bullying confrontation, when Margaret escaped custody and arrived on his doorstep begging for refuge from her mother on any terms. GSS took her in. He confided in no one - not even Disraeli - what they said to each other, though in the two weeks she spent in Mansfield Street they clearly reached an agreement acceptable to them both. The servants were given strict orders not to let anyone in, while GSS negotiated long and hard with Mrs Lennox. '"Alone I did it,"' he crowed to Disraeli. T reduced "the Erynnys" to terms - which my father "in his happier hour" could not have surpassed.' With a combination of persuasion and moral blackmail, in the end he got her to agree to a clandestine relationship. 'She went to Scotland - leaving the girl for a fortnight with me ... Otherwise the girl declared herself as my mistress, and we went abroad for ever.'16 GSS's obvious pleasure at outwitting Mrs Lennox cannot mitigate this distasteful transaction: his own effrontery, his treatment of Margaret as damaged goods, Mrs Lennox's acquiescence for the sake of a possible title. Marginally in his favour is his initial observance of the absolute

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secrecy Mrs Lennox required - hence his careful omission of names. First he took Margaret to Oxford, where, he joked, since his fall from religious grace he was sure not to meet anyone he knew. It was a brief idyll of happiness, 'among the grave groves of Oxford ... where all the world, except the Dead, and the Nightingales seemed to have passed away.' Inevitably, he had a physical relapse, which sent them north to the therapeutic air of the Lakes 'in the hope's of picking up some relic of my broken health.' (Was it also in the hope of reliving the passion he had found there twenty years before with Faber?) Then, with the greatest bravado yet, they moved on to Lennox Castle, where GSS forced Mrs Lennox to make good her agreement 'that if I came to Scotland we shd. not be interfered with, & that the word "marriage" shd. never be mentioned,' with no nonsense about separate bedrooms: 'all the night was arranged by the mother, so as to avoid a scandal.' 'After such diplomacy,' he wrote in triumph to Disraeli, 'I think you ought to give me a mission, whenever you come in.' In the midst of these Machiavellian manoeuvres, it was almost shamefacedly that he confessed to the most heinous sin in his philandering book. The worst of it is, that I am very horribly in love with this pastiche heiress.'17 The news, of course, did get out. He told Corise when he met her (for the first time in years) at a dinner party and was touched by her unreserved sympathy. He dated a letter to Lady Londonderry's son Adolphus from Lennox Castle while strenuously denying his impending marriage 'because I cannot afford it ... If you hear the rumour, pray contradict it.'18 The Disraelis were also asked to deny the story, though this was likely asking too much of Mary Anne. After all his confessions, it is a pity that Disraeli's response is lost; the wit of its last sentence alone, said GSS, was Disraeli at his satirical best.19 Back in London, he was drawn into Percy's affairs in an attempt to get compassionate leave from Constantinople; his list of influential friends included Sligo, Henry Bulwer (soon to become Turkish ambassador), John Delane of The Times, Viscount Eastnor, now husband of the lovely Virginia Pattle - but not, interestingly enough, Disraeli. His stay in London, however, was short. Every day in that polluted atmosphere, his health grew worse; to Matthew Higgins, who met him on this visit, he already looked like a dying man.20 In desperation, he told Disraeli, T want to go to Paris, for a day or so, to consult, the only Doctor, in whom I have the slightest faith (my Bianchon) one Rayner of Paris. - He pulled Henry Bulwer through - and that is miracle enough for one reputation.' GSS was clearly brooding again on La Peau de Chagrin, where Horace Bianchon is the kindly doctor

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who, amid the precious theorizing of so-called specialists, prescribes rest for the dying Raphael to keep the ass's skin from disappearing altogether.21 Rayner was anything but a Bianchon. An Englishman, he was now a fashionable doctor and surgeon with offices on the Champs Elysees. He assured his patients that he worked on a basis of 'No cure, no fee,' but his idea of a cure was not shared by other physicians. In a recent court case, no fewer than seven French doctors had testified that he had not cured a prominent racehorse owner's kidney disease, and yet Rayner walked off with 5,000 francs plus costs. When GSS fell into his clutches, the treatment given him brought him closer to death than ever. Even reputable medical men still did not understand consumption. Beyond prescribing fresh air and sunshine, methods had advanced very little since GSS's mother's death thirty years earlier, and it would be another thirty before Robert Koch identified the deadly bacillus. Newspapers were full of advertisements for useless patent medicines: Du Barry's Revalenta Arabica Food claimed it would cure coughs, asthma, and consumption; Alfred Beaumont Maddock MD claimed the same for his Medicated Inhalations. Rayner likely applied to GSS the standard 'cures' of regular bleeding and starvation diet, and he certainly prescribed large doses of mercury, with all the usual results. GSS became so weakened that he could not get out of bed, 'all but a hopeless ideot -. No sleep! No food! Chronic diarrhoea - Chronic vomiting. Spasm's[.J Mercury paralysis.' Reduced to this helpless state, he was then fleeced by the good doctor. Rayner took not only his agreed fees in cash but GSS's apartment, his nurse, and his servant; in short, said GSS, 'he wasted me.' Somehow, GSS managed to escape to his old haunt, the Hotel Bristol, from where he dragged himself onto a coach for Amiens, a three-hour journey north towards the Channel. Barely an hour out of Paris, he fainted, hit his head on the window, and came round some time later to find himself being studiously ignored by his fellow passengers. He was obviously too sick to continue, but the driver's solution was as brutal as Rayner's. GSS was put out of the coach in the middle of nowhere and without his baggage. Luckily some locals came to his aid, and helped him, though he could hardly walk, the mile and a half to the nearest inn at Clermont sur Oise, 'a gitein an infernal onion shop.' It took him five days to struggle to Boulogne, where he collapsed again at the Hotel des Bains. The doctor who was called told him curtly that he was a dead man, 'un homme perdu,' and refused to treat a case so far gone - 'all faculties smashed.' On top of this, he was trying to put off the

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threatened arrival of the Lennoxes - father, mother, and daughter, but particularly mother. On his second day in Boulogne, he got word that Mrs Lennox was on her way. 'I telegraphed to Folkestone: what only a sick man can do to a woman [:] "I have nurses enough," "I cant and won't see you. I wont."' The hotel staff rallied in his defence, even telegraphing to her that he had left for Calais, but 'nothing can or could defeat this most extraordinary of coarse, & energetic, & hellish limbs of the Devil ... she got in! What can resist a woman, who believes ... [in] the assured success, 8c the assured absolution, of every act of her volition.' In the wake of the termagant, however, came Margaret, who took charge and nursed him devotedly while fending off her mother. GSS was duly grateful, though privately he complained that her presence might, 'yet, even in my few remaining month's, be of great embarrassment to me.' Even in this state, he played the double game that had become second nature, keeping up with Margaret the appearance of absolute secrecy while he spilled everything to Disraeli, literally between the lines. His letters from Boulogne were dictated to her - partly out of weakness but partly to impress on sceptical correspondents how ill he was: 'I am so a-weary, a weary of advice "to take care of myself", & then I receive second letter's, sulky & offended, because I don't answer. When Ican't[,] can't.' In between the innocuous statements in Margaret's elegant script about the anonymous lady kindly nursing him, he interpolated passages afterwards in his own shaky hand giving Disraeli the more dramatic side of the picture: Mrs Lennox's obduracy, his physical relationship with Margaret, and his ambivalence about her. Once she had finished his dictation, he took the letter back and wrote along the side and top of the first page, 'I shan't do myself justice - if I don't tell you more, in narrative, about these Scotches['] still uninterested Cause.' However, he added, with the blackest of graveyard humour, 'Only if I die of a sudden, have me opened!' In a cri de coeur that, in spite of his behaviour, is still affecting, he went on: 'How terrible even before 40, to be - croak - croak - croak - ever over ... a wretched matter of a carcase.' He was clearly thinking of his mother's age when she died.22 He had intended to return to London at the beginning of September, but two weeks later he was still laid up at Boulogne, and still trying to convince his friends that he was terminally ill. Frank Villiers at least was dismayed that he had to dictate his letters. Peacocke recognized that he was sick, but thought he represented himself as being worse than he was. Disraeli, perhaps trying to cheer him up, sent a joking letter, calling him a 'fool of quality' for the embroilment with Mrs Lennox and a 'bed-

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ridden Lovelace' for his involvement with Margaret. 'No friend could have stabbed so severely,' GSS responded, hoping, 'nay, I am sure,' the satire was well intended. But he implored Disraeli not to spread the story, especially to Manners, who would pass it on to the unpleasant 'Spossle,' 'the meanest and basest of my enemies!' In his own handwriting, he tried once again to impress his condition on Dizzy. 'You must not treat me, as anybody, but one, who has no hour of day, or night, unoccupied by terrible and ceaseless pain: night and day alternating ... for the prize of agony.' Some people had been deceived by the Henry Vlll-ish red beard he had grown, 'which fills up the cavities of jaws & cheeks more lanthorn-like than Gobbo's.' After all, he joked bleakly, returning to his age again, '"Quarante Ans sont quarante Ans," as Buonoparte was used to write to Josephine when she had professedly reached that limit.' But there is nothing at all humorous in the terrible symptoms he and Margaret recounted between them. [Margaret:} I am sustained in life, only by my nervous system, which was what has [ GSS:] also [Margaret:] killed me -1 have no stamina - My legs and arms are not larger than lead pencils - I have had chronic [GSS:] diarrhoea for three months: from the same time, vomitings at night, fetid, regular, and hellish - [Margaret:] My lungs[,] Kidneys, liver - & the d-d thing I thought was abolished, called, the Spleen--are all [GSS:] more or less mortally, according to the variations of Doc [to] rs, affected & hit hard. When I came [Margaret:} here all was Stomach - bile - ceaseless cough diarraeha [sic] - night vomitings - At last opium & chalk conquered Stomach [.] Cough changed its character at the moment. All disease [GSS:] flew to the lungs. There I am now. I spit blood night & day. My feet are swol'n, & I can't put on boot's [Margaret:] My cough is horrible to hear and all but intolerable to resist - I always awake, always in a passion of hysterical cough [ GSS:] and in a deluge of night-sweat. Now you have some of my symptom's - Will you give me till November?

His forecast was uncannily correct. He had exactly ten weeks to live. Part of his dictation to Margaret included his excuses for not marrying her. 'What can I do? Marriage would make my present position still more blackguard, because it would at once be exposed to the Public.' Alongside those, however, he also dictated a request for the address of Disraeli's lawyer, Philip Rose, 'as in case I have to give away a Coronet upon a Deathbed, (my lawyer being a "fool" not "of quality") there is evidently

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no time to lose. Ill as I am - of course I look only to my Brother's Interests.'23 This last remark goes some way toward explaining his determined procrastination about marrying her. As long as he and Margaret continued a sexual relationship, there was the possibility it might produce an heir whose birth, even if posthumous, would disinherit Percy from the family title. He may also have been thinking of Strangford's illegitimate brood, if it included a son. Quite apart from the Lennoxes' own attempted claim to a title, GSS would have been familiar with other disputed claims such as those over the Berkeley barony, which derived from the illegitimacy of half the family of the 13th Baron and which periodically occupied the Lords throughout the nineteenth century.24 Difficult though it is to imagine that he remained capable of sexual relations so long, he could secure Percy's succession only if he remained unmarried or if he was no longer potent. His letter of 14 September describing all these bizarre circumstances was the last he would ever write to Disraeli. Sometime in early October, Margaret was able to move him back to London, where he barely clung to life. Percy was summoned from Constantinople. Peacocke visited and shook his head: 'Nothing short of a miracle can save him.'25 Mary Anne, in her fussy way, came often with delicacies and kindly chatter. Wilhelmina Stanhope, now Lady Harry Vane, remembered their childhood attachment and called frequently. Corise forgave the way he had ended their affair and was a constant presence in Mansfield Street. But Mrs Lennox was still pushing for marriage and determined to save face. On 16 October, London society was bemused to open its Morning Post and read: 'We are requested to state that the Viscount Strangford's marriage to Miss Kincaid Lennox is postponed on account of his lordship's severe illness.' If anything, the announcement simply stirred the rumour mill more. Disraeli had to explain as best he could: 'I apprehend that he does not want to marry her unless he is sure of dying. He means the Coronet for a legacy.' 'God grant,' he added, 'that he may yet be spared to us, & not mar a future with any sentimental tomfoolery.' Even now Dizzy had not grasped that GSS's illness was beyond cure. Peacocke told Disraeli that he did not believe the marriage would go ahead: 'should it be true it will be about as you suppose, only there [are] a good many previous claimants for the legacy.'26 Handed this legal conundrum, the level-headed Philip Rose made an appointment to discuss it with GSS, on 26 October.27 When he called at Mansfield Street, however, he found that Catherine Cocks, now Countess of Stamford, had taken matters into her own hands. In her practical

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way, she had summed up the situation, seen the impossible pressures it put on GSS, and decisively moved him to the quiet of her Leicestershire estate at Bradgate Park. It was a courageous act on her part that shows the strength of her feelings for GSS. Since her marriage, she had expended considerable energy on charities and good works in order to erase memories of her earlier career, and sheltering her former lover merely revived them.28 How she got him in his enfeebled state from London to Leicestershire is not known. Some train companies ran special railway carriages equipped with beds for invalids. Sarah Disraeli earlier that year had successfully transported her sister-in-law (also dying of consumption) to the seaside in this way, commenting that the patient's only exertion was the step from her own carriage into the train.29 Margaret went with GSS to Bradgate, where, still valiantly keeping up appearances, Mrs Lennox joined her. The weather was fine, and GSS bore the journey well, Lord Stamford reported, amiably taking time from the new hunting season as Master of the Quorn. A few days later, Mr Lennox's arrival suggested something was about to happen. On 9 November, a dull and misty day in Leicestershire, GSS at last, after all the years of avoidance, became a married man. There is complete silence on what had taken place in the preceding days, though several theories have been advanced. Lady Gregory (presumably echoing her husband) maintained that Mrs Lennox forced the hand of a dying man: 'Mrs. [sic] Lennox insisted on marrying him on his deathbed in his Mistress's house,' a charge made even more disturbing if 'Mrs.' is a misprint for 'Miss.' Equally distasteful is the implication that GSS had learned Margaret did have money after all, one which Disraeli later made: 'Strange to say, he succeeded & married an heiress - but literally on his deathbed.' Disraeli's opinion, however, came many years later; both in 1857 and at the time of her remarriage in 1861, her personal income was still considerably encumbered by her father's debts and entails on land. In the light of GSS's anxiety about due succession of the title, it is clear the date of the wedding was decided by nothing more sinister than his physical decline and acceptance that his death was imminent.30 There is also ambiguity about where the wedding actually took place. The marriage certificate states both that it was solemnized at the nearby church at Ratby and that the couple were married at Bradgate, by special licence, by the Ratby curate, Peregrine Allan. Perhaps GSS was capable of being helped to church; he was certainly able to sign his name above Margaret's in the register. The witnesses were Stamford and Sarah Payne,

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the Countess's niece. In the evening, the Stamfords gave a dinner to the little group of guests, but below stairs the celebration ended abruptly when GSS's valet, Joseph Lane, who had been privy to GSS's relationship with the Countess, refused to drink her health, fought with a Stamford servant, and was sacked for his sudden onset of morality.31 Two days later, when the terse notice of the marriage appeared in The Times and the Morning Post, London society was again agog for details of this latest scandal surrounding GSS. Matthew Higgiris applied to Manners's friend William Stirling, voicing the questions everyone was asking: I am surprised not so much at his marriage as at the locality in which it was announced to have taken place ... Lady S having been in bygone days kept by George Smythe ... Can you give me news on this curious affair and why he has so publicly dipped in the gutter the woman he was about to marry?... I can only imagine it to be an atrocious rouerie of his - it seems such an objectless insult to respectable people.32

Percy, changing trains in Paris en route from Constantinople, fearfully scanned The Times for his brother's death notice and was astounded to read instead of his marriage. A family friend, WJ. Alexander, asked William Stirling: Half the conversation of the Town is upon Lord Strangford's recent marriage, & I am asked so many questions about it that I am tempted to seek a little information from you, should you possess it. The scene of the ceremony was so extraordinary a place for his bride &: her parents to visit, that the mystery of the affair is thusly increased ... In short, the gossiping world are very much puzzled in the matter, & I know of nothing which excites more interest in the intervals between the Indian Telegraph.33

'What a romantic story,' Sarah Disraeli wrote to Mary Anne, 'is the marriage of the dying Lord Strangford - is it true that the Lady has £100,000; & for his sake dared a dingy lodging in London, & Bradgate Park!?'34 The new Viscountess Strangford herself was extremely conscious of society's attitude. When she wrote to the Disraelis on GSS's behalf a few days later, she dutifully thanked them for their kind inquiries but also requested with some urgency that they return the series of letters in which he had confided the full details of his affair with her. Obviously the Disraelis never did. Her letter made it clear her husband had not long to live. 'I wish I

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could tell you of any improvement in his health, but all I can with truth say, is, that he does not now suffer pain, though it is exquisitely distressing to me, day by day, to watch his increasing weakness, & to know that all I can do, all that is done, can only soothe, not save.'Z5 He was lucid enough on the 20th to make his will, witnessed by Stamford's valet, George Pack, and by Joseph Lane, obviously now forgiven for his insult to Lady Stamford. Stamford was to be executor. On one of those last days, as GSS sank towards lethargy and coma, he asked Margaret to read to him and, his mind ranging over the past, chose one of Faber's poems.36 Which one was it? One of the inspirational religious poems from their involvement with the Oxford Movement? An exuberant one from their summers in the Lakes, when they were drunk on each other's company and their nightly plans for bettering English society? Or perhaps it was one of the passionate poems to GSS himself, celebrating his beauty, his intellect, and their love for one another in a time when every dream seemed possible. The weather had been unseasonably fine, 'more like June than November; many plants in bloom, and the brimstone butterfly flitting about.'37 There was morning fog, however, on the 20th, with an overcast sky. On Sunday the 22nd, clouds began to move in, with light rain, and a wind picked up as the barometer rapidly fell. On Monday, a fine day with a brisk wind and a falling barometer, George Smythe, seventh Viscount Strangford, at last gave up his rage to live. He was thirty-nine, the age at which he had always prophesied he would die. The ass's skin had finally shrivelled to nothing. A few minutes before midnight, a brilliant meteor fell across the sky and left a vivid streak of light behind it that glowed for nearly five minutes before it vanished from sight into the dark.

Afterwards

What is it, Life? - a little strife, where victories are vain, Where those who conquer do not win, nor those receive who gain. Historic Fancies

The obituaries were few, brief, and non-committal. Almost uniformly they struck a note of pious regret: what a pity that GSS's early promise had never been fulfilled. The longest - two-thirds of a column on the Morning Post social page - was also the least judgmental, a feat it accomplished by shifting its focus away from its subject at every opportunity. The few words on his work in politics and literature were eclipsed by as many more lines on his father's achievements, while the details of his birth occupied less than a fifth of a sentence documenting his mother's genealogy. His election for Canterbury took second place to Lord Albert Conyngham, while the last third of the notice recounted his father's choice of titles, his widow's family, and Percy's curriculum vitae. The Times was more direct, if more austere. It noted Young England, his shift to Peel, and the Romilly duel, which (ignorant of the real reasons) it blamed for his political demise. It was grudging on his oratory in Parliament, 'characterized by much smartness and originality, which always commanded the attention, if it did not influence the judgment of that assembly.'1 The Morning Chronicle (which had changed hands) gave its former writer exceedingly short shrift; in fact, it ignored his journalism completely, along with Young England and his entire political life.2 The obituary in the Press was run-of-the-mill, a condensed version of the Post's, but it also printed a sympathetic editorial written, if not by Disraeli himself, then by someone close to GSS. It expressed a genuine sense of loss: 'The race of rising public men is not so numerous that we can

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afford to lose Lord Strangford.' It was judiciously even-handed, but finally decided that his ability outweighed his failings. 'Like other gifted men, Lord Strangford scattered his talents, and it would have been better for his fame if his mind, in Johnson's words, had been "determined in some particular direction." Yet, undoubtedly, he was a most accomplished man, and had a brilliant nature, which aspired to soar with the instincts of his blood.'3 Disraeli was out of town when the news came, though he heard it soon enough. Philippa's widower, Henry Baillie, wrote to him on 26 November, 'Alas! Our poor dear George is gone, what a sad life and waste of great abilities, which if well managed might have done anything.'4 Disraeli's feelings at the time are unrecorded, possibly because he fell ill with influenza, but a few years later he wrote regretfully: 'Poor dear Smythe! Had he lived, after all, he would have succeeded. Alas! He has gone!'5 More extensively, his memories appear in the sparkling portrait of Waldershare in Endymion, in his Reminiscences, and in his Preface to the 1870 edition of his novels, where he describes GSS as 'a man of brilliant gifts, of dazzling wit, of infinite culture, and of fascinating manners.' The news hit Faber hard. He had actually written to GSS the day before he died - too late; it reached Bradgate on the 24th. A fellow priest at the Oratory, Father Philip Gordon, recorded that Faber was 'much cut up by poor Lord Strangford's (George Smythe's) death,' and Faber heaped himself with reproaches for past differences: 'Strangford gone too — my letter reaching him the day after his death - and I hindered his being a Catholic in 1839.'6 Manners too was sorrowful. Characteristically, his mind returned to the good years, blotting out the alienation that had soured their friendship near the end. He wrote to their Cambridge friend Lyttelton: 'Memory overlooks the last few years, and settles upon those joyous days at Cambridge, when he was the sun and centre of my happiness, and when we never tired of auguring for him a dazzling career of glory.' But it was Lyttelton who coined the phrase that would always be associated with GSS: 'Poor George! He was a splendid failure.'7 The will was typically quixotic. There was less than £7,000, £1,000 of it tied up in an insurance policy with an £800 lien against it, and £1,000 in another to cover his and Margaret's joint account at Child's Bank. There were also payments of debts to 'honest Tradesmen,' such as his hatter, Mr York of St James Street. Most of the bequests were keepsakes of sentimental value to friends and former loves. To the Stamfords he left a pair of porphyry jars, originally presented to his father for concluding a treaty, and a small ivory hand. Susan Morier, Lady Stamford's sister, had

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a Chelsea tea set and coffeepot.8 Wilhelmina Vane, his childhood companion, received a filigree basket and miniatures of herself, her dead brother, and Ellen; Corise, his first great love, got another basket and two dozen 'choice old Cyprus wine'; Mary Anne, partner of his 'Cid & Captain,' acquired his collections of birds, butterflies, and crystals. These last three bequests were in recognition of the legatees' kindness in his final days, 'which kindness I can never sufficiently appreciate.' To Disraeli, with whom he had shared a passion for the East, he gave two Turkish swords and an antique jasper cup. Evidently moved by the gift, Disraeli later showed the cup to Sir William Eraser 'with much feeling,' saying, 'It is not a great thing: but for a man to remember one at all at such a time is most gratifying.'9 Some of the will's provisions were decidedly quirky. To GSS's cousin and loyal second, Major Henry Darell, went a Vandyke portrait of GSS's ancestor Endymion Porter. If Darell had no male heirs, it was to go to the Grand Duke of Modena 'as the last representative of the House of Stuart'; failing him, it went to the Duke of Hamilton, a descendant by marriage of the Stuart line. Margaret was to retain all her clothes, jewels, books, and 'paraphernalia,' but she was specifically not to be entitled to the customary widow's allowance out of real estate, which would go to Percy. Fortunately GSS added an explanatory sentence. T have not made any larger provision for my wife than that hereinbefore contained in consequence of her express desire that I should leave my property in the same way as I should have done in case I had never married her so that my own relations may not be in any way prejudiced by such marriage.' George Squire, GSS's old servant who had begun with his father in 1825, was to have his entire wardrobe, 'with certain exceptions.' Presumably Stamford, the executor, would have known what these exceptions were. Another mysterious provision left any residue, after all the bequests had been made, to Stamford, 'who will know how to dispose of it.' One of his dearest wishes, however, was not carried out. He left instructions that he was to be buried with his Smythe ancestors among the tombs and catafalques in Ashford Church, and, if this was impossible in the church itself, then somewhere near them. This was not done, although his name was added to Strangford's memorial plaque. Margaret and Percy kept the funeral private, and they had him buried in London, in the fashionable cemetery at Kensal Green. The next year, Margaret had an elaborate monument designed by the sculptor Richard Westmacott, which, though its piety would have been anathema to its occupant, she told Manners 'completely realizes my feelings & wishes.'10

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She was claustrophobic and had a horror of weighty monuments, thinking they would prevent the soul's escape at resurrection, and the resulting memorial's decorated Gothic arches and miniature pinnacles shelter only a white stone slab and a symbolic rock. Two sorrowing angels stand at the head, representing life on earth and life hereafter. The inscription reads: In Memory Of George Augustus Frederick Percy Sydney Smythe Seventh Viscount Strangford And Second Baron Penshurst Born 16th April 1818 Died 28th November 1857

Both dates are wrong. It is perhaps too harsh to say that Margaret was a social climber; like Catherine Cocks, having acquired a title, she was intent on expunging through proper behaviour society's memories of her unconventional past. She particularly cultivated the Disraelis, who, apart from her family, were the only people who knew the details of her liaison with GSS. At the end of 1858, she arranged for copies of a portrait of GSS which had originally been done for Philippa in 1847 and which Henry Baillie had subsequently given to her. This was the Byronic portrait by Buckner, according to her the only good likeness ever done. One of the copies was to go to the Disraelis, whom she had never met, although, she told them, T do not feel as if one, of whom my dear Husband so often spoke, is a stranger to me.'11 The Disraelis took her up, to such an extent that they became regular visitors to each other in town. Margaret's health was very poor in the years immediately after GSS's death - she may have been touched by the disease that killed her brother and husband - but by 1861 she was well enough to enjoy the London season, chaperoned by Mary Anne and presented by her at court in June that year.12 In July the promised portrait was sent, eliciting a graceful reply from Disraeli for 'the living likeness of one who rendered the most interesting period of my life more delightful by the splendour of his cultured & imaginative intellect & by his vivid & impassioned friendship. He absorbs a great part of my memory.'13 During this season, she met her second husband, Charles Bateman Hanbury, MP for Leominster and brother of the Disraelis' friend Baron Bateman. After a great deal of dickering over marriage settlements with

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family lawyers, and much interference from Mrs Lennox, they were married in October. Margaret gave up her title, and both took the cumbersome surname of Bateman Hanbury Kincaid Lennox.14 Disraeli made his usual sardonic comment. Dear George Smythe, with characteristic romance, married Miss Lennox on his deathbed, & left her as a legacy to my wife. Mrs. D. presented her & launched her in society. She is a woman of ability[,] sufficiently well-looking, & has £8000 pr. annm.... Her first husband was all soul - her second all body. But I believe he is a good fellow, as well as good-looking.15 Margaret died childless in 1892. Percy retired from the diplomatic service when he became 8th Viscount Strangford, devoted himself to Eastern studies and languages, on which he was an authority, and became a great friend of the explorer Sir Richard Burton. In 1862, Percy married Emily Beaufort, daughter of a distinguished admiral and inheritor of her father's spirit. They met over a review he wrote of her book Egyptian Shrines and Syrian Sepulchres, only one sign that she shared his antiquarian and literary interests. After he died (probably of the family consumption) in 1869, she busied herself with publishing his writings and GSS's 'In the House of Maecenas,' from the glowing Young England days at the Deepdene. In May 1874, when she met Disraeli (now prime minister) at a party, conversation naturally turned to GSS, and he inquired if Angela Pisani had ever been finished. Emily retrieved the manuscript from her husband's papers and found it 'in an indescribable state of illegible confusion.' Undeterred, she tackled it and over the next months managed to put its scattered pages and fragments into a credible order, although it lacked an ending. It is solely thanks to her that we still have this wide-ranging, curiously powerful novel. In September, she asked George Bentley (successor to his father, Richard) to put it into type so that Disraeli could read it and perhaps write a few passages to bridge the gaps. Bentley agreed, and in December she sent it to Disraeli, asking him to write an introductory memoir of GSS, 'enough to make the picture clear to those who knew not the day or the man.' Disraeli, heading his second government and in failing health, asked Manners to refuse on his behalf, but Emily returned to the attack, asking for ' three lines - just to assure me that the friend once loved yet lives in his heart.'16 In the meantime, nervous about the readability of a novel peppered with allusions and quotations and featuring risque passages in which dissolute

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young men dally with actresses, exchange mistresses, and entertain prostitutes, she sent a set of pages to her friend Lady Holland in Italy for an opinion. Lady Holland's response was almost overwhelmingly enthusiastic. 'I have not read - but devoured all! never left it, but to dine grumbling and to sleep dreaming! if there is a fault to find it is - that it is too cleverl' As for the theme of a young man who renounces fame and career to nurse another man's cast-off mistress, Lady Holland replied that it would make a sensation but, along with the scandalous sections, was permissible because written by a man. 'I avow to you that I should be sorry to see them in any book of your writing.'1^ In the end, Disraeli made no contribution, and Emily wrote a short memoir herself, which became the preface to Angela Pisani when it was published in March 1875.18 She immediately became the subject of vicious attacks for publishing an 'immoral and indecent' book, many of them anonymous, but some from old enemies such as Milnes (now Lord Houghton). Though it was favourably reviewed in all the major newspapers and periodicals, Delane of The Times initially refused to run a review out of personal animosity towards GSS. Emily was upset by the hostility but stoutly maintained that any kind of publicity could only improve sales. Indeed she urged Bentley to mention to the Spectator and Academy reviewers that the subject was 'illegitimate love,' reckoning it would rouse readers' interest.19 Matters, however, came to an unexpected head in May, the day after the Morning Post's generous review. At the end of February Emily had courteously notified Margaret that the book was about to appear and asked where she would like a copy sent. Margaret, clearly dismayed by the resurrection of this ghost from her past, replied with considerable hauteur that her Scottish address was 'to be found in any modern Peerage or Court Guide' and expressed her displeasure at the whole enterprise. 'I may surely be pardoned for feeling anxious lest any writings unworthy of (George) Lord Strangford's brilliant talents (all unrevised by himself) should be strung together and given to the world in his name by a lady not even personally acquainted with him.' Emily countered, still courteously, that Percy had given her the authority before he died. A few weeks after publication, Margaret was even more put out to find that the public, confused between the two Ladies Strangford, were attributing the book to her. On 6 May her husband wrote to the Morning Post pointing out that his wife was technically the Dowager Viscountess Strangford and had nothing to do with the publication. This was harmless enough, but he foolishly enclosed Margaret's acid correspondence with Emily, which the Post then pub-

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lished in full. Emily's indignation at having private letters made public was shared by almost everyone, including for once Lord Houghton, and she wrote a reply, which the Post published only in part, omitting her sharp retort that her husband and his friends 'were more likely to know the real wishes of the author than one who had married him after a short engagement only fourteen days before his death.'20 The furore motivated the highest lady in the land to acquire a copy. A few weeks later, Emily received a note from Lady Ely, Queen Victoria's lady of the bedchamber, saying the Queen wanted 'so much to read it & was vexed that Lady Ely had not got it.'21 A copy went off at once from Bentley to Balmoral, along with a letter from Emily. Unfortunately, the Queen's reaction to the novel will never be known, as there is now no trace of either book or correspondence in the Royal Archives. GSS, however, with his enthusiasm for the monarchy, would have been immensely gratified by this sign of royal approval. Emily herself turned from editing to philanthropy, in the hospital work she had already begun before taking on her brother-in-law's literary remains. She had already published Hospital Training for Ladies (1874), with its practical message that the cure for sorrow was a year in nursing. She followed her own advice with personally run relief operations in the war-torn Balkans from 1876 to 1879, was temporarily imprisoned by the Russians in Sofia, established a military hospital in Cairo, and died of a stroke on board the Lusitaniain 1887.22 Faber did not live long after GSS. He died in 1863, fat and debilitated by ill health but revered as founder of the Brompton Oratory. Manners remarried very happily, became a stalwart member of Disraeli's subsequent governments, succeeded his brother as 7th Duke of Rutland, and died, gentle and courteous to the last, in 1906. Cochrane was MP for various constituencies in the 1870s, before Disraeli (for no apparent reason other than old friendship) made him Baron Lamington in 1880. Corise died in 1865. Catherine Maynard never married. Catherine, Countess of Stamford, established herself as an aristocratic lady and died in 1905 at the good old age of seventy-eight. At Percy's death, the Strangford titles became extinct, but the family line survived in Philippa and Henry Baillie's children, who have consistently taken prominent parts in public affairs and politics. In 1888, their youngest daughter, another Philippa, lady in waiting to the Duchess of Albany, married Major-General Francis Russell, of Aden, Aberdeenshire, former MP for Cheltenham, and published a family history, Fragments of Auld Lang Syne. The Russells' younger daughter, Winnifred, married in

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1914 William Whitelaw of Gartshore, and their son, William, became Viscount Whitelaw, the eminent politician in the Thatcher government. The Russells' eldest son, Alexander, worked for the League of Nations in Geneva (where the family papers were unfortunately lost on his death), and their grandson, James Cumine Russell, CBE, continues the remarkable tradition of public service today. Over the generations, since Thomas Smythe was ambassador to Russia, politics has been in the blood. T could here admire the genius of great men.'23

Notes

1. A Splendid Failure?

1 2 3 4

5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

API 125. GSS to Manners, 3 November 1846, Bel. Henry Baillie to Disraeli, 26 November 1857, H B/XXI/B/31. For the first portrait (artist unknown) see illustration 4. The second (by Richard Buckner) was painted for GSS's sister Philippa Baillie around 1847 and passed to his widow after his death. H D/III/C/2532. See cover illustration. It is now in the entrance of Disraeli's country house, Hughenden. GSS to Strangford, [January? 1846], Fonblanque 237-8. Though others, such as Lord Lyttelton, have been suggested, GSS was clearly identified as Coningsby by his immediate circle and by London society. See Manners, epigraph above; Cochrane, In the Days of the Dandies 148; Anon., New Key to ... Coningsby; Lady Holland, 4 June 1844, in Elizabeth, Lady Holland to Her Son 1821-1845 216; GSS to Disraeli, 25 September 1844, Bel; Emily, Viscountess Strangford, 'Memoir,' APxiii. See also Sheila M. Smith's edition of Coningsby 426-7; Richard Faber, Young England^ and passim. Coningsby VIII chapter 3. GSS to Disraeli, [9] May 1844, H E/VI/O/20. GSS to Disraeli, 25 September 1844, Bel. Strangford to 4th Earl Stanhope, I7january 1826, Stanhope C138/3. Disraeli, Preface to Lothair(187Q); Disraeli to Earl Beauchamp, 28 September 1863, DLVlll [in progress]. Vincent, Selection 529. Quoted in Emily Strangford to George Bentley, 12 March 1875, Illinois RBU1 (L41).

306 Notes to pages 10-18 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Whibley II 95. Quoted in GSS to Disraeli, 26 January 1855, Bel. Manners, quoted in Whibley II99. Cochrane, Lucille Belmont 1122. [Duke of Rutland?] to Strangford, [October 1844], Fonblanque 227. G.M.Young, Victorian England 172 note. Princess Metternich, quoted in GSS to Manners, 2January 1851, Bel. Apparently first quoted in 'Memoir,' APxxix. MP 7 May 1875.

2.1400-1817: The Strangford Inheritance 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22

GSS to Richard Bentley, 3 July 1855, Illinois RBU1 (L4). Fonblanque 16-83. Fonblanque 82-92. Julia Cartwright, Sacharissa 10,120. GSS to Strangford, [January 1846?], Fonblanque 239. HFiv. LJMJ 6 February 1840. 'Quarterings' in heraldry indicate the aristocratic blood from one generation to another. Sixty-four quarterings go back to the subject's great-great-great-grandparents. GSS, commonplace book, Whibley II 95. API 151. The Merchants of Old England,' HF381. Fonblanque 1-2. See also chapter 4 below. Alice Judde, of the mercantile family, was great-aunt of Cromwell, the republican. Russell 157. CP-DNB. CP. One method for estimating twenty-first-century monetary equivalents is to multiply by sixty. Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire 4. CP;MC 30January 1841. CP. Stefan Bielinski, An American Loyalist, kindly supplied by Charles Casimiro, Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site. MS 'Sketch of the Philipse Family' and Genealogy, Philipse Papers, Rhual, Wales, kindly supplied by Claudia Dovman, Historic Hudson Valley, Tarrytown, New York. CP. Fonblanque 109. Contarini Fleming I chapter 21. For Strangford's portrait, see illustration 2. CP.Aspinall, George HI W 502. Moore V 2075 (19June 1839), III 1120 (19 February 1828). Moore's ellipsis. Moore to Strangford, Moore I 36 (20 June 1802).

Notes to pages 18-25

307

23 Anon., review of Camoens, ER6 (April 1805) 43-50. 24 Aspinall, George III W 502. 25 In 1828, Sir W.F.P. Napier's History of the Peninsular War denied him credit for the Portuguese exploit, countered by Strangford's two pamphlets in defence. 26 CPXII 362 n(a). Teffeteller; Cunningham; Temperley. 27 Strangford to Northumberland, 24 December 1812, Alnwick vol. 67, 221 ff. 28 Strangford to Northumberland, 1 July 1815, Alnwick vol. 68, 56 ff. Bindoff. 29 Galway4. 30 Emily Strangford to George Bentley, 4 May 1875, Illinois RBU1 (L51). 31 API 155. 32 GSS to Strangford, [January? 1846], Fonblanque 240. 33 Moore III 963 (15 September 1826). 34 Lady Lyttelton 144 (July 1813). 35 Lady Strangford's obituary. MP13 July 1826. 3. 1818-26: Cradled in Commotions

1 API 125. 2 Times 24 April-23 May 1818. 3 'KingJames the Second,' HF98. 4 Leonard, the Smythe figure in Cochrane's novel A Young Artist's Life, actually dies in a storm at sea. 5 Laing, Tour in Sweden 74. Gervas Huxley, Lady Elizabeth and the Grosvenors 137. 6 Lady Lyttelton 151. 7 Strangford to Dowager Lady Strangford, [April 1818], Fonblanque 123.

8 Fonblanque 121-3. 9 Fonblanque 120. Lady Eleanor Butler, Journal, 5 January 1819, in Elizabeth Mavor, The Ladies ofLlangollen 182. The 'blue pill' was a remedy for digestive problems. 10 Fonblanque 120. Dr William Dick to Duke of Northumberland, 12 November 1812, Alnwick vol. 67, 211 ff. 11 Strangford to Dowager Lady Strangford, October 1819, Fonblanque 121. 12 Strangford to Castlereagh, 26 February 1821, FO 78/89. 13 Faber, 'Furness Abbey,' Cherwellpoem 38. 14 Strangford to Londonderry, I7january 1841, Durham Record Office, Londonderry Estate Archives, D/Lo/C 100 (201). Strangford to [FO, n.d.], Fonblanque 126; Cunningham 195. 15 Strangford to Castlereagh, 31 March 1821, FO 78/98. 16 Strangford to Castlereagh, 24 March, 25 May 1821, FO 78/98.

308 Notes to pages 25-8 17 Strangford to Castlereagh, 10, 21 April 1821, FO 78/98. 18 Strangford to Dowager Lady Strangford, 21 April 1821, Fonblanque 126. 19 Obituary, MP13 July 1826. Her actions are dated only in 'the first fury of the insurrection.' 20 Strangford to Castlereagh, 25 May, 25 April 1821, FO 78/98. 21 Strangford to Castlereagh, 25 July 1821, FO 78/99, 6, 10,18 August 1821, FO 78/100. Castlereagh to Strangford, [October?] 1819, Fonblanque 120. 22 Strangford to Castlereagh, 25 April 1822, FO 78/107, cited in Cunningham, chapter 6. Strangford does not name his son in this dispatch, but from his later medical history and early death it was almost certainly Lionel. George seems to have been in good health at this time. 23 Galwayb. 24 Dowager Lady Jersey to Strangford, 11 August 1822, Fonblanque 144. For the literary romanticizing of tuberculosis, see Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor. 25 For these characteristic symptoms, see William Osier, The Principles and Practice of Medicine 214-31. 26 Contarini FlemingVl chapter 7. GSS used the phrase as the epigraph to APII 3. 27 Information kindly supplied by Dr Derrick Baxby, senior lecturer in medical microbiology, University of Liverpool, and historian of vaccination. See his Thejenner Bicentenary' and 'The End of Smallpox.' The Turkish inoculation parties are described in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters, in Embassy to Constantinople 121. Ellen's obituary, MP 13 July 1826. Strangford to Stanhope, 21 December 1829, Stanhope C138/1. 28 API 161. 29 Lady Strangford, [n.d.], Fonblanque 140. Strangford to Dowager Lady Strangford, [1830?], Fonblanque 249. GSS to Strangford, [April?] 1836, Fonblanque 211. 30 Canning to Strangford, 22 October 1822, Fonblanque 131. Canning to Strangford, Strangford to Canning, November 1822, Broadlands BD/TU/ 12. FO 78/100. 31 Strangford to Dowager Lady Strangford, 28 February 1822, Fonblanque 132. 32 Canning to Bagot, 20 August 1823, Strangford to Henry Wellesley, 11 February, 12 May, 1824, Strangford to Bagot, 29June 1824, Canningll 196, 229, 243. 33 Strangford to Dowager Lady Strangford, Fonblanque 140-1. 34 Ellen's obituary, MP 13 July 1826. 35 Strangford to Dowager Lady Strangford, [n.d.], Fonblanque 141. 36 LJMJ 13 September 1838.

Notes to pages 28-32 309 37 FO Records, UK National Archives, Kew. Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography. NUC. 38 A theme in Angela Pisani and Cochrane's Lucille Belmont and A Young Artist's Life is a childish love affair ending fatally in adulthood, but a connection to the real-life Pisanis is missing. 39 Fonblanque 135-6. Canning to Bagot, 29 July 1824, Canningll 266. 40 Fonblanque 146-8. Longford 120. 41 Fonblanque 147-8. Strangford to Bagot, 4 February 1826, Canningll 329. 42 Shaftesbury to Wellington, 17 February 1829, Wellington WP1/997/12. 43 Bindoff. Strangford to Bagot, 4 February 1826, Canningll 329-31. 44 Fonblanque (158) says they travelled separately, but Strangford describes her refusal and the terrible effects of 'our' voyage. They arrived on 7 November, and Percy was born 'shortly after,' on 26 November. Strangford to Stanhope, 27 May 1826, Stanhope C/128/3. Bindoff. 45 Fonblanque 158, 248. 46 Disbrowe97. 47 Strangford to Stanhope, 14 December 1825, Stanhope C138/3. 48 Disbrowe99. 49 Strangford to Stanhope, 28 December 1825, 17 January 1826, Stanhope C138/3. 50 Canning to Strangford, [January] 1826, Canningll 313. Fonblanque 149-50. 51 Strangford to Stanhope, 17January 1826, Stanhope C138/3. 52 Strangford to Bagot, 27 April 1826, Canningll 348. 53 Disbrowe 116-29. 54 Strangford's verbatim account to Moore, 10 September 1826, Moore III 963. 55 She probably died of tuberculous meningitis, a not uncommon complication of her illness in those days. Information supplied by Dr Baxby and Professor Gerald Evans, consultant in infectious diseases, Queen's University. 56 Strangford to Stanhope, 27 May 1826, Stanhope C138/3. Disbrowe 131. 57 See Bernard Schoenberg, et al., eds., Bereavement. 4. 1826-35: George Smythe's Schooldays 1 Register of Tonbridge School. 2 Stanhope to Strangford [draft], 7July 1826, Stanhope C138/3. A cancelled passage offers to care for one child if Strangford is posted abroad, but it is unclear if the offer was actually made. 3 Strangford corresponded with Lady Hester while in Constantinople. Fonblanque 141-4. 4 GSS to Manners, 22 December 1850, Bel.

310 Notes to pages 32-7 5 Chandos 64. 6 Linda Colley, Britons 167-70. 7 Russell 157. The Skinners record Strangford's admission as ajudde descendant on 4 December 1834, four years after he retired from diplomacy. Information supplied by Stephen Freeth of the Guildhall Libraries. GL MSS 30722, 30708/23. GSS to Strangford, [January? 1846], Fonblanque 240. 8 Septimus Rivington, The History of Tonbridge School \ 79-83. 9 Chandos 32-3. 10 GSS to Strangford, [1836], Fonblanque 206. 11 Rivington, Tonbridge 183-4. 12 Rivington, Tonbridge 181. 13 Strangford to Stanhope, 30 December 1826, 6January, 23 April 1827, 19 April, 26 May 1828, Stanhope C138/1. 14 Strangford to Stanhope, 1 April 1828, Stanhope C138/1. 15 Tancred III chapter 6. 16 ContariniFleminglll chapters 21, 22; Coningsby I chapter 3. 17 Moore III 963 (15 September 1826). 18 Strangford to Wellington, 20 April 1827, Wellington WP1/887/37. 19 See chapter 2, p. 20. Canningl 382-3. Longford 134. 20 Fonblanque 160-1. 21 Moore III 1141 (31 May 1828). 22 Moore III 1132-3 (21 May 1828), 1144 (4June 1828), 1145 (6 June 1828), 1232-3 (6July 1828). Canningl 288-9. 23 Moore's ellipses. Moore III 1232-3 (6 July 1828). 24 LJMJ 14 December 1840. 25 Strangford to Stanhope, 1 April, 21-26 May 1828, Stanhope C138/1. Hooker to Strangford, October 1829-December 1830, Duke. 26 Information kindly supplied by Michael Smith of the Rottingdean Preservation Society, and his pamphlet on the Grange. 27 Hooker to Strangford, 10, 19, 28 October, 3 December 1829, Duke. 28 Coningsby I chapter 2. Orateurs 214. 29 Z)LI120nl. 30 DLl 159. Strangford to Disraeli, 9June 1832, H B/XXI/S/637. 31 See chapter 2 above. 32 Two of these are reproduced in DLIV appendix V. 33 Jane Ridley, Young Disraeli 105. 34 ContariniFlemingll chapter 11. Fonblanque 161. 35 Contarini Flemingll chapter 10. 36 Margaret Pawley, in Faith and Family 148, states that Disraeli had known GSS

Notes to pages 37-42

311

in childhood through the friendship with Strangford, but does not cite a source. 37 Strangford to Stanhope, 10 February 1829, Stanhope C138/1. 38 Strangford to Dowager Lady Strangford, [1829], Fonblanque 249-50. 39 Hooker to Strangford, 3 December 1829, Duke. 40 Strangford to Stanhope, 21 December 1829, Stanhope C138/1. 41 Strangford to Stanhope, 13 December 1828, Stanhope C138/1. 42 Strangford to Stanhope, 3 March, 9,14, 18 April 1830, Stanhope C138/2. 43 Strangford to Stanhope, 14January 1830, Stanhope C138/2. 44 Hooker to Strangford, 9 March 1830, Duke. 45 Strangford to Stanhope, 6July 1830, Stanhope C138/2. MS entrance book, Eton College. 46 Strangford to Stanhope, 25 July, 5 August 1830, Stanhope C138/2. 47 Coningsby I chapter 1. API 81-2. 48 Cochrane, In theDays of the Dandies 143. Coningsby I chapter 11. 49 Reproduced in Whibley I, facing 44. 50 Whibley I 44-7. 51 Coningsby II chapter 3. 52 GSS to Manners, 14 January 1842, Bel. 53 Coningsby I chapter 2. 54 DNB. Fonblanque 205. Hooker to GSS, 17 December 1830, Duke. 55 Eton Microcosm 41. 56 API 114-15. M. Brown, 29-30 June 1832. Whibley I 45. 57 M. Brown, 24-8 October 1833. Whibley I 51-2 (wrongly dated 1835). Wasey Sterry, Annals of... Eton 233-4. Times 5 November 1833 (naming only Manners). 58 'A Reformer,' Times 25 February 1833. 59 Fonblanque 233. DLIV 1341 n3. Dickens Letters V 664. 60 API 70-164. 61 Smith, ed., Coningsby 437 n35. 62 DL IV 1399 n2, 1608, etc. 63 Coningsby II chapter 7. 64 H.E. Stapylton, The Eton School Lists 152. 65 Cochrane, Dandies 143-4. 66 Orateursl98. 67 Coningsby I chapter 9. See also R. Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment 112-14. 68 Davenport-Hines, 111. Catherine Peters The King ofInventors 49. 69 GSS to Strangford, [1836], Fonblanque 206.

312 Notes to pages 43-51 70 71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

APII 97. Ernest Vane II 66. Chandos 42, 286. Satirist 25 October 1846. 'Mirabeau,' //F194. Strangford to Londonderry, 10 January 1834, Dur (55). Strangford to Londonderry, 17 January 1832, Dur (43). Strangford to Stanhope, 18 April 1830, 26 March, 9 April 1831, Stanhope C138/2. In April 1830 the British ambassadress to Vienna was Georgiana, Baroness Cowley, wife of Henry Wellesley, 1st Baron Cowley. Punch 27 July 1844, 51. Stapylton, Eton Lists x. Whibley II92,1 47. H.C.M. Lyte, History of Eton College 364-6. Whibley I 47. Gladstone Diaries II 102 ff. Strangford to Stanhope, 21 December 1832, Stanhope C138/2. Strangford to Londonderry, 7 January 1834, Dur (54). OrateursZU, 199, 215. Gladstone Diaries I 385-7 (3-8 October 1831). A. Aspinall, ed., Three Early Nineteenth-Century Diaries 147. Eton Microcosm 24. Coningsby II chapter 7. Eton Society Journal, MS, Eton College. GSS to Strangford, [1836], Fonblanque 211. 'Memoir,' APxviii. DNB.J.G. Lockhart to Croker, [1842], Croker8-9. Bel. Literary Souvenir (1833) 2, 68, 211, (1834) 190, 250. Fonblanque 202. Strangford to Londonderry, 31 March 1834, Dur (58). Strangford to Stanhope, 5 May 1834, Stanhope C138/2. Strangford to Londonderry, 26 September 1834, Dur (59). Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 7 September 1839, DL III 999 & n3. M. Brown, 21 February 1835. Whibley I 49. DLIV1341 nn2&3. Coningsby I chapter 11. James Irvine, Montem Ode 1835, MS Eton College. Eton Addresses A.D. 1831-1836 43-7. Coningsby II chapter 7. Eton Addresses 47'. Coningsby IX chapter 7. M. Brown 7-10 November 1835. Whibley I 52.

5. 1836-7: Herstmonceux and Cambridge 1 2 3 4

Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue. Searby 76-81. Both quotations undated in Fonblanque 204. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 27 June 1835, DLII 408.

Notes to pages 51-7 313 5 K.D. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain 141. 6 Strangford to Stanhope, 30 December 1835, Stanhope C130/2. 7 £>LIII97ln5. 8 J.V. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England 1660-191451, 216. MP 3 August 1847. 9 DNB. Longford 306. 10 Augustus Hare, The Story of My Life I 80. U N . Merrill Distad, Guessing at Truth 127-8. J.C. Hare to William Whewell, 13 July 1836, Trinity College, Cambridge, Add.MS. a206 [169]. 12 GSS to Strangford, 1836, Fonblanque 209. 13 Searby 352-3. 14 Desmond Bowen, The Idea of the Victorian Church 364-7. 15 Hare, Story 1156, 253, 467, 68, 113. 16 GSS to Strangford, 1836, Fonblanque 205. 17 Searby 186. 18 List quoted in Whibley I 53. 19 Distad, Guessing 32. GSS to Strangford, April 1836, Fonblanque 207. GSS to Lyttelton, 26 January 1839, Bel. 20 J.C. and A.W. Hare, Guesses at Truth 206, quoted in Mark Girouard, The Return to Camelot 63. Part 2 of the Broad Stone, 'Tancredus,' may have suggested Disraeli's title for Tancred. 21 GSS to Strangford, 1836, Fonblanque 207. 22 GSS to Strangford, 1836, Fonblanque 208-9. 23 GSS to Strangford, April 1836, Fonblanque 208-9. 24 Coningsby IX chapter 3. 25 GSS to Strangford, [Spring] 1836, Fonblanque 209-10. 26 Z>LIII950nl. 27 Hare to Whewell, 13 July 1836, Trinity MS. 28 GSS to Strangford, [Spring] 1836, Fonblanque 211-12. 29 Hare to Whewell, 13 July 1836, Trinity MS. 30 GSS to Strangford, [May?] 1836, Fonblanque 212. 31 Strangford to Stanhope, 1 June 1836, Stanhope C138/2. 32 APII133-4. 33 Strangford to Stanhope, 24 June 1836, Stanhope C138/2. 34 Information kindly supplied by Dr Alison Pearn, St John's College Library, Cambridge. Venn. 35 Kenneth R. Johnston, The Hidden Wordsworth 116. Michael Bentley, Politics without Democracy 1815-191432. 36 D.A.Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge 25-7; Searby 718-24. 37 Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge 150-9, 167, 414. 38 Searby 601-2. 39 Searby 566. Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: The Early Years 89.

314 Notes to pages 57-62 40 Coningsby V chapter 1. 41 StJohn's College pamphlet (n.d.). StJohn's College Library information. No specific dates are available for his occupation of these rooms. 42 Coningsby V chapter 3. 43 Strangford to Stanhope, 24 October 1836, Stanhope C138/2. Romilly 103. 44 St John's College Library. DLIV 1426 & nl. Winstanley, Early Victorian Cambridge I I I . GSS's will, Family Records Centre, London. 45 QR 57 (December 1836) 330-49. 46 Joanne Shattock, Politics and Reviewers 44-7'5, 12, 98, 96. 47 Lockhart to Croker, 21 August 1843, in J.D. Kern et al., 'Lockhart to Croker on the Quarterly.' GSS to Manners, 7 September 1843, Bel. GSS to Disraeli [before 26 December 1843], Bel. 48 See the Capefigue review, QR73 (December 1843) 76: 'In a former number we had occasion to remark how exactly the tone of M. de St. Aulaire's "History of the Fronde" is in accordance with the prospective fortunes of a courtier of the citizen-king.' Cf. the review of Mahon's Essai surla Vie du Grand Conde, QRll (December 1842) 124: 'M. De Saint Aulaire's book was published in 1827; and it is curious now to see how completely he had anticipated the tone that would have suited a courtier of the King of the French in writing a history of the Fronde.' The last paragraph of this review refers to the author's review of volumes II and III of Mahon's History of England, QR63 (January 1839) 151-65, which in turn refers to his review of volume I. 49 QR57 (December 1836) 331. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 21 December 1835, DLll 454. QR57 (December 1836) 347. 50 Strangford to Stanhope, 24 October 1836, Stanhope C138/2. Romilly 105. 51 See, e.g., Whibley I 56. 52 LJMJ 21 October, 4, 3 November, 13 December 1838. 53 Lucille Belmont 1123-5. 54 Coningsby V chapter 7. 55 Cambridge Union Minutes, 1 December 1836. 56 Cambridge Union Minutes, 13 December 1836. 57 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 25 January 1837, DL II 562 & n3. 58 This and later information on the King's School kindly supplied by its archivist, Paul Pollak. 59 Cambridge Union Minutes, 7 February 1837. 60 GSS to Lyttelton, 30 July 1837, Bel. 61 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 19 June 1837, DL II 622. 62 Carlyle to his mother, 12 April 1838, Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle X 69. Greville III 393.

Notes to pages 63-70 315 6. 1837-8: Faber 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Coningsby V chapter 2. GSS to Lyttelton, 30 July 1837, Bel. R. Faber, Young England 29. Faber toJ.B. Morris, 31 August 1837, Ronald Chapman, Father Faber 44-5. Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: The Later Years 1803-1850479. Mary Wordsworth, Letters of Mary Wordsworth 1800-1855 176. Duke of Argyll, descriptions dated 1841, Autobiography and Memoirs 1182. Disraeli, Sybill chapters 11-12. See illustration 7. Frederick Faber, 'The Eternal Father,' Oratory Hymns. Faber to J.B. Morris, 26 June 1837, Chapman, Father Faber 44. Moorman, Later Wordsworth 479. LJMJ 18, 29, 30 August 1838. R. Faber, Young England 43. Faber to J.B. Morris [n.d.], quoted in Pawley, Faith and Family 155. GSS to Lyttelton, 5 May 1839, Bel. Faber to Manners, 16 May 1839, Addington 17-18. Faber, 'Memorials of a Happy Time' II: 'The Confessional,' Cherwell. Strangford to Londonderry, 19 October [1837], Dur (382). Cambridge Union Minutes, 31 October 1837. Disraeli to Lady Caroline Maxse, [7? November 1837], DLII 669 & n4. Cambridge Union Minutes, 7 November 1837. Longford 293. Whibley I 60. Cambridge Union Minutes, 28 November 1837. 'Sonnet,' HF145. GSS to Manners, 30 December 1837, Bel. Cambridge Union Minutes, 12 January 1838. Colley, Britons 189-90. Paul Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform 12. The correspondence is reported in MP11 April 1840. Cambridge Union Minutes, 30 April, 8 May 1838. 'Cambridge 1837,' HF151. 'Ambleside Church,' written 24July 1838, HF155-7. GSS to Manners, 1 July 1838, Bel. LJMJ 11 July 1838. LJMJ 21 July 1838. LJMJ 22 July 1838. 'Ambleside Church,' sent to Manners 25 July 1838, HF155. LJMJ 25 July 1838. LJMJ 25 July-17 August 1838. GSS's emphasis. GSS to Lyttelton, 29 July 1838, Bel. Manners to GSS, 2 August 1838, Bel. Faber, 'The Feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross,' [3 May 1839], Cherwell poem 67.

316 Notes to pages 70-9 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

LJMJ 4 August 1838. GSS to Manners, [3] August 1838, Bel. LJMJ 5 August 1838. Faber, 'Keswick, August 3, 1838,' quoted in R. Faber, Young England 43. 'Charles Stuart - Conishead Priory,' HF59. Faber, 'To G.S.S.,' 'A Dream of Blue Eyes,' 'Furness Abbey,' Cherwell poems 31,32, and 38. Faber, 'Three Happy Days,' Cherwell poem 42. Mark Pattison, Saturday Review 10 October 1863, quoted in R. Faber, Young England 51-2. See note 11 above. Faber, 'The Iconoclast,' Cherwell poem 40. Faber to Manners, 6 May 1839, Addington 73. For an interesting fictional parallel involving a modern Smythe and Faber, see Antonia Fraser, Political Death. Lady Antonia has assured me that her choice of names was accidental. Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment 64—96. Doris Langley Moore, The Late Lord Byron 244. LJMJ 10, 13, 17 August 1838, To G.P.S. August 19th,' Bel. LJMJ 29 August 1838. MP17-27 August 1838. MP 23 August 1838. LJMJ 1-2 September 1838. Faber, 'A Conversation Near Rydal Sept. 8, 1838,' To G.S.S., Sept. 8, 1838,' Cherwell poems 49, 48. GSS to Manners, 17 October 1847, Bel. LJMJ 9 September 1838. Faber, 'Green Bank,' Cherwellpoem 50. GSS, 'Grassmere,' HF146.

7. 1838-9: Pearls and Swine 1 MP22 September 1838. GSS to Manners, 26 September 1838, Bel. LJMJ 30 September 1838. 2 MP 13 January 1841. Holland, Lady Holland 96. GSS to Manners, 5 October 1838, Bel. LJMJ 3, 22 October 1838. 3 GSS to Manners, 26 December 1843, Bel. 4 William Thomas, The Quarrel of Macaulay and Crokerl&O, 171. The Mahon incident is described in Shattock, Politics and Reviewers 15-18. 5 Samuel Smiles, A Publisher and His Friends II 439. 6 QR 63 (January 1839) 151-65; here 151-2, 157. 7 LJMJ 24, 29 October, 7, 22 November, 9 December 1838. St John's College information. GSS to Lyttelton, 5 May 1839, Bel. 8 Colley, Britons 334. GSS to Lyttelton, 26 October 1838, 26 January 1839, Bel.

Notes to pages 79-85 317 9 Cambridge Union Minutes. LJMJ 30 October, 3,7 November 1838. 10 LJMJ 1, 13, 18, 26, 27 November, 4, 9 December 1838. Whibley I 75. 11 GSS to Manners, 5 October 1838, Bel. Faber to Manners, 19 January 1839, Addington 68-70. LJMJ 7 November 1838. 12 LJMJ 13-18 December 1838. Faber to Manners, 19January 1839, Addington 68-70. 13 GSS to Manners, 31 December 1838, Bel. Lady Londonderry to Disraeli, 2 February [1839], H B/XX/V/245. 14 GSS to Manners, 12January, 1 February 1839, Bel. MP24 January 1839. 15 ConingsbyV chapter 7. MP21 January 1839. GSS to Manners [n.d., 1839], Bel. GSS to Lyttelton, 26 January 1839, Bel. 16 Faber to Manners, 19 January 1839, Addington 68-70. GSS to Manners, 1, 7 February 1839, Bel. GSS to Lyttelton, 26 January 1839, Bel. Faber to A. Beresford Hope, 28 February 1839, Addington 72. 17 LJMJ 23, 24 February, 2 April 1839. Gladstone Diaries 11 581 (14 February 1839). 18 GSS to Manners, 5 October 1838, 12 January 1839, Bel. Cambridge Union Minutes, 20, 21 March, 15 April 1839. Cradock 27-30. 19 GSS to James Hemery, 29 March 1839, copy enclosed in GSS to Manners, 6 April 1839, Bel. Strangford to Londonderry, 3 April 1839, Dur (385). 20 LJMJ 7-15 April 1839. GSS to Manners, 6 April 1839, with copies of the correspondence with Butler and Craufurd, Bel. 21 GSS to Manners, 8 April 1839, Bel. 22 MPl 1,13 April 1839. 23 LJMJ 26, 29 April 1839. 24 LJMJ 7 May 1839. GSS to Lyttelton, 5 May 1839, Bel. Faber to Manners, 6 May 1839, Addington 73. Faber, 'To G.S.S.,' Cherwellpoem 62. 25 HF102. 26 Addington 75. 27 LJMJ 15 May 1839. 28 GSS to Manners, 20June 1839, Bel. MP5, ISJuly 1839. 29 Faber, 'Llynsyvaddon,' Cherwellpoem 64. 30 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 8 July 1839, DL III 956. 31 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 26 July 1839, DL III 973. 32 GSS to Manners, 11 September 1839, Bel. HF61, 98. 33 The Tournament and its vicissitudes are recounted in Ian Anstruther, The Knight and the Umbrella. 34 MP3, 6 September 1839. McCalmont 42. 35 GSS to Lyttelton, 16 September 1839, Bel. 36 Kentish Gazette, 24 September 1839. This and other information kindly supplied by Paul Pollak, King's School archivist.

318 Notes to pages 86-94 37 Philip Henry Stanhope, 5th Earl, Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington 1831-1852 163. Captain R.H. Gronow, Captain Gronow 214-15. GSS to Lyttelton, 19 September 1839, Bel. 38 GSS to Manners, 24 December 1839, Bel. GSS to Lyttelton, 24 October 1839, Bel. 39 MP 8, 20 November 1839. 40 GSS to Manners, 24 December 1839, Bel. 41 Romillyl84. 8. 1840: Lady Tankervffle 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Reported in GSS to Manners, 24 December 1839, Bel. LJMJ 15 January 1840. LJMJ 16 January, 7, 16, 18 February 1840. LJMJ 9 February 1840. Arthur Calder-Marshall, The Two Duchesses 130-56. Brian Masters, Georgiana 226-7, 248. Foreman, Georgiana 170-2, 351-2. GrevillellZl (31 July 1830). CreeveyII98, 152. Willard Connely, CountD'Orsay 332. DLI appendix III. Quoted in CP635. Satirist 1 November 1840; see also 4 April, 29 August 1841, etc. Connely, D'Orsay 405. See illustration 9. Strangford to Londonderry, 28 September 1842, Dur (223). Coningsby III chapter 2, VIII chapter 1. HF20-5. QR 71 (December 1842) 106-69. HF 68-74. Moore V 2146 (31 July 1840). LJMJ 29 October 1840. LucilleBelmontll 105, 209. Ernest Vanell 160. Coningsby VIII chapter 1. K.D. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain 155 ff. LJMJ 23, 24 February 1840. GSS to Manners, 17 March and [undated] 1840, Bel. GSS to Strangford, [late 1846], Fonblanque 214. GSS to Manners, 19 April 1840, Bel. Presumably this is HF, though a joint publication with Manners and Cochrane seems at one point to have been considered. Quoted in R. Faber, Young England 16.

Notes to pages 94-102 319 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

GSS to Manners, 8 August 1840, Bel. HF56-8. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 23 May 1840, DL III 1060 & nl. GSS to Strangford, [late 1846], Fonblanque 214. Fonblanque 214. TancredV chapter 3. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 16January, 7 February, 12 March, 12 November 1838, 16July 1839, DLlll 703 & nl, 723 & nl, 742, 838 & n8, 966 nl. DL III, Introduction xi-xii, 1045 & n5,1 338 & n5. Tancred IV chapter 2. See their courtship letters in DL III and appendix VI. Endymion chapters 5, 22, 40. LJMJ 30 July 1840. LJMJ 8 May 1840. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 12 June 1840, DL III 1069 & n4. Malmesbury, 1117. Reid, Milnes I 205, 207. See Disraeli's summary of hostile opinions of this kind to Lady Blessington, 11 September 1843, DL W 1323 n6. For Milnes's club, see Reid, Milnes I 229. LJMJ 16 October 1840, 1 March 1841. Disraeli to Charles Attwood, 7 June 1840, DL III 1065. Coningsby VIII chapter 3. GSS to Manners, 8 August 1840, Bel. In 1840 Granville Leveson Gower married Marie Louise Acton; Cliveden House, Maidenhead, was owned by the family. LJMJ 1 June 1840. GSS to Manners, 8 August 1840, Bel. LJMJ 3, 4, 11 October 1840. LJMJ 23 October 1840. Whibley I 87. GSS to Manners, 21 October 1840, Bel. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 28 October 1840, DL III 1107. LJMJ 26 October 1840. Whibley I 87. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 14 November 1840, DL III 1116. GSS to Lyttelton, 4 November 1840, Bel. Coningsby VIII chapter 3. Coningsby VIII chapter 4. Whibley I 88-90. LJMJ 29, 30 October 1840. GSS to Lyttelton, 4 November 1840, Bel. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 9 November 1840, DL III 1111. Strangford to Wellington, 14 November 1840, Wellington WP2/72/114. GSS to Manners, 18 November 1840, Bel. LJMJ 19, 23, 24 November 1840. LJMJ 24 November 1840. Strangford to Wellington, 14 November 1840, Wellington WP2/72/114.

320 Notes to pages 102-11 61 LJMJ 24 November 1840. 62 GSS to Disraeli, 27 November 1840, Bel. H Accounts, 17 May, 31 October, 3 December 1840. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 5 December 1840, DL III 1122. Disraeli to Rice Wynne, 27 May 1841, DL III 1158 n6. Strangford to Wellington, 26 November 1840, Wellington WP2/72/144. 63 LJMJ 26 November, 1, 5, 6 December 1840. 64 GSS to Manners, [6?] December 1840, Bel. LJMJ 14 December 1840. 65 HF103-5, 52-3. 66 GSS to Manners, 24 December 1840, Bel. 67 LJMJ 15, 20 December 1840. GSS to Lyttelton, 16 October 1839, Bel. 68 GSS to Manners, 24 December 1840, Bel. 9. 1841: Heaven-Born Statesman or Devil-Born Orator 1 LJMJ 5 January 1841. Strangford to Londonderry, 17 January 1841, Dur (201). 2 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 3 March 1841, DL III 1132. 3 Kentish Gazette, 29 October 1839. MP1-7 November 1839. 4 Coningsby VIII chapter 3. 5 GSS to Manners, 5 January 1841, Bel. 6 Strangford to Wellington, 4 January 1841, Wellington WP2/73/94. 7 Strangford to Londonderry, I7january 1841, Dur (201). 8 Frank O'Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties 147.

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Disraeli to MP, 5 June 1838, DL III 776 & nnl-3. GSS to Manners, 5, lOJanuary 1841, Bel. Coningsby IX chapter 6. MP 13January 1841. LJMJ 12January 1841. GSS to Manners, lOJanuary 1841, Bel. MC11 January, Times 12, HJanuary, MP13January 1841. GSS to Manners, ISJanuary 1841, Bel. The population of Canterbury at this time was about fifteen thousand (McCalmont). Globe, reported in MP16, 22 January, Times 19 January 1841. Technically, election day could not be set before the new writ had been issued when Parliament met on the 26th. MP22 January 1841. Coningsby II chapter 6. Kent Herald, Kentish Observer 21 January, both reported in MP 22 January 1841. Whytehead to his sister, 24 February 1841, MS StJohn's College, Cambridge, U23No 2. MP22, 23, 25, 26January, MC25 January 1841. Strangford to Londonderry, 28 January 1841, Dur (200).

Notes to pages 111-22 321 21 GSS to Manners, 24 January 1841, Bel. Strangford to Londonderry, 28 January 1841, Dur (200). 22 MP29January, MC30January, 2 February 1841. 23 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 30January 1841, DLIV 1126R. 24 MC2 February 1841. LJMJ 6February 1841. 25 Strangford to Londonderry, iVjanuary 1841, Dur (201). GSS to Manners, 28 January 1841, Bel. 26 Coningsby IX chapter 6. LJMJ 6 February 1841. Times 15 January 1841. 27 S.R. Lushington, 19 January, quoted in MP 22 January 1841. 28 'Memoir,' APix. 29 Strangford to Stanhope, 11 February 1841, Stanhope C 138/4. JHC12 February, MCI5 February, LJMJ 12 February 1841. 30 Charles Seymour, Electoral Reform in England and Wales 166. 31 Reportv-vii, xiii, xxiii. 32 Reportxvii. H.G. Ward, 11 June 1841, reported in MP12June 1841. 33 Report xii. Seymour, Electoral Reform 176. 34 Reportvii, viii-ix. 35 Report vii-xxin. 36 GSS to Manners, 2 April 1841, Bel. 37 MC 20-31 March, 1 April 1841 38 GSS to Manners, 2 April 1841, Bel. 39 GSS to Manners, 18 April 1841, Bel. 10. 1841:1 Am a Very Zero 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8

9 10

Bentley, Politics 86 ff. GSS to Manners, 14 May 1841, Bel. GSS to Manners, 2 April 1841, Bel. LJMJ 19 March 1841. GSS to Manners, 13 March 1841, Bel. Robert Dallas doubted Byron's chance of success with Childe Harold. Leslie Marchand, Byron chapter 9. MP24 April 1841. ERApril 1841. GSS to Manners, 27 April 1841, Bel. GSS to Manners, 18, 27 April 1841, Bel. Harry Graham, Splendid Failures 197. Gregory, Autobiography 88-9. R. Faber, YoungEngland 10. Hansard LVIII, cols. 508-9. Times, MP, MC 18 May 1841 (perhaps because he was inaudible, these reports give different versions of what he said). GSS to Strangford, 1846, Fonblanque 216. Strangford to Londonderry, 17January 1841, Dur (201). MP18 May 1841.

322 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26

27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Notes to pages 122-31 Disraeli to Henry Richards, 24 June 1841, DL III 1167. GSS to Manners, 19June 1841, Bel. MC21 June 1841. Strangford to Stanhope, 14July 1841, Stanhope C138/4. MP1, 2July 1841. Strangford to Londonderry, 1 July 1841, Dur (190). Strangford to Wellington, 21 October 1841, Wellington WP2/80/40. Disraeli quoted in £>LIII 1167 nl. GSS to Manners, [2 July] 1841, Bel. GSS to Strangford [1846], Fonblanque 239. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 19 February 1841, DL III 1129. LJMJ 17 February 1841. LJMJ 11 July 1841. Strangford to Londonderry, 28 August 1841, Dur (187). LJMJ 10 July 1841. MP17,19 July 1841. GSS to Manners, 8 August 1841, Bel. Strangford to Londonderry, 5 August 1841, Dur (188). GSS to Manners, 27 April 1841, Bel. MP5 August 1841. For immediacy, here and elsewhere GSS's speeches are rendered in the first person and the present tense, from the third person and past tense sometimes used in newspaper and parliamentary reports. GSS to Manners, 8 August 1841, Bel. MC17 August, MP20 August 1841. 'Memoir,' APx. GSS to Lyttelton, 26 January 1839, Bel. LJMJ 14 October 1841. DL III 1184-8. Strangford to Londonderry, 3, 8 September 1841, Dur (186,188). LJMJ 9-16 September 1841. In family tradition, Peel offered Cochrane a government post, but this seems unlikely. Cochrane was out of Parliament when Peel made up his list and had done nothing to merit an offer. Times 17, 25 February 1890. Information kindly supplied by M.G. Wiebe, author of the article on Cochrane in NewDNB. Hansard 20 September 1841. Coningsby IV chapters 1-3. The parallels with LJMJ descriptions make this trip the source, rather than Disraeli's brief 1843 visit to address the Manchester Athenaeum. Whibley 107. DL TV 1326 n3. Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities 115. Georgina Battiscombe, Shaftesbury 145-6. LJMJ 2, 4 October 1841. GSS to Manners, 13 October 1841, Bel. Coningsby IV chapters 1-3. LJMJ 22, 23 October 1841. HF385. LJMJ 22 October 1841. Coningsby IV chapter 2. LJMJ 23 October 1841. LJMJ 25 October 1841. Also excerpted at length in Whibley 99-104. LJMJ 25, 27, 28 October 1841, 5 January 1842.

Notes to pages 132-42 323 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44

LJMJ 1 November 1841. LJMJ 2 November 1841. LJMJ 3-10 November 1841. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 13 February 1843, DLIV 1278 & nn3&4. Brian Jenkins, Henry Goulburn, 1784-1856 290-1. Strangford to Messrs. Coutts, 15 November 1841 (copy of printed letter) Dur (203). Strangford to Londonderry, 17 November 1841, Dur (204). D'Orsay to Disraeli, [1842], H B/XXI/D/308. Times 3, 22, 26 November, 6 December 1841. Observer 21 November 1841. GSS to Manners, 15 November 1841, Bel. LJMJ 15 November 1841. GSS to Manners, 17 November, 1, 31 December 1841, Bel. GSS to Manners, 31 December 1841,1 January 1842, Bel.

11. 1842: Young England 1 MP11, 19 February 1842. 2 DL IV 1213 & n7. LJMJ 21 February 1842. 3 MP22 February 1842. Hansard 21 February 1842. Text taken from the MP report, which, unlike Hansard, includes the applause and that it was the opposition who made it. 4 Hansard 21 February 1842. DLW 1217. 5 For Hansard's reports, see John M. Robson, What Did He Say ? 10 ff. 6 GSS to Manners, 3 November 1846, quoted in DL TV 1512 nl. 7 Hansard 8 March 1842. 8 DL IV 1213 & nn7&8,1224, 1225,1226. 9 Disraeli to Mary Anne Disraeli, 11 March 1842, DL TV 1229. 10 Disraeli to Mary Anne Disraeli, 10 March 1842, DL TV 1226. 11 GSS to Manners, 3 April 1842, Bel. 12 MP22 April 1842. Manners to Stirling, Stirling-Maxwell T-SK 29/4/54. 13 //awsard26May!842. 14 MP30 May 1842. 15 MP2June 1842. LJMJ 5 June 1842. 16 LJMJ 7june 1842. 17 LJMJ 7june 1842. 18 LJMJ I7june 1842. 19 LJMJ 7july 1842. 20 £>LIV1252&n8. 21 Manners, Travel Diary, 14July 1842, Bel. 22 GSS to Manners, 11 July 1842, Bel. 23 GSS, 'On the Death of the Duke of Orleans,' //F374.

324 Notes to pages 143-9 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47

Charles Auriol to Manners, 31 August 1842, Bel. LJMJ 26July-5 August 1842. The Aristocracy of France,' HF8. LJMJ 26 July 1842. Strangford to Londonderry, 8 August 1842, Dur (227). Manners, Travel Diary, 9-14 August 1842, Bel. Murray's Handbook for Travellers in France 524. WhibleyI138. GSS, The Aristocracy of France,' The Question,' HF18, 164. Strangford to Londonderry, 13 August 1842, Dur (225). The marriage never took place. Maria Cochrane married Alexander Sutherland in 1851. CP. Manners, Travel Diary, 10-12 September 1842, Bel. LJMJ 4 October 1842. Strangford to Londonderry, 18, 27, 28 September 1842, Dur (224, 223). Disraeli's Reminiscences, quoted in DL VI appendix IX [d], GSS to Manners, 19 October 1842, Bel. GSS to Disraeli, 20 October 1842, H B/XXI/S/648. GSS to Manners, 19 October 1842, Bel. LJMJ 21 October 1842. GSS to Manners, 19 October 1842, Bel. Cochrane to Manners, quoted in Whibley I 148-9. GSS to Manners, 22 October 1842, Bel. Strangford to Londonderry, 15 October 1842, Dur (222). GSS to Disraeli, 20 October 1842, H B/XXI/S/648. GSS to Manners, 22 October 1842, Bel. GSS to Manners, 23 November 1842, Bel. GSS to Disraeli, 14 November 1842, H B/XXI/S/649. GSS to Manners, 22 October 1842, Bel. Beresford Hope to Manners, Whibley 1146. GSS, The Aristocracy of France,' The Loyalist of the Vendee,' HF18, 25, 27-8,172-81. QR71 (December 1842) 106-69. The Wellesley Index ascribes authorship to either Lockhart, on the 'probable' basis of Murray's list (which, as noted above, often had errors), or Croker, though it does not appear on Croker's own list of his QR contributions. Myron F. Brightfield,/0/m Wilson Croker 458. Charles Auriol to Manners, 31 August 1842, Bel. HF67-9. GSS to Manners, 29 December 1842, Bel. GSS to Disraeli, 14 November 1842, H B/XXI/S/649. The Anti-Jacobins opposed the ultra-democratic parties during the French Revolution.

12. 1843: Worrying Peel - and Reading Casanova 1 D'Orsay to Disraeli, 24 October 1842, H B/XXI/D/307. 2 C.H. Dudley Ward, A Romance of the Nineteenth Century 209.

Notes to pages 150-7

325

3 Disraeli, commonplace book 1842, DLIV appendix v [B] 18. Ward, Romance 112 ff. James Lees-Milne, The Enigmatic Edwardian 2-5. Peter Fraser, Lord Esher404 n6. 4 For a social analysis of Eugenie's portrait, see Glenriis Stephenson, Letitia Landon 143, 145, 163. 5 Coningsby IV chapter 4, VI chapter 3. 6 Moore V 2143 (27 July 1840). Eugenie Mayer to William Baliol Brett, c. 1850, quoted in Ward 259, 266. 7 Strangford to Londonderry, 25 December 1842, Dur (217). 8 Strangford to Londonderry, ISJanuary 1843, Dur (251, 250). 9 DL TV 1266-72 and appendix III. Strangford to Londonderry, 24 January 1843, Dur (250, 248:2). 10 GSS to Manners, 27 January 1843, Bel. GSS to Disraeli, 27 January 1843, Bel. In the event, there was no vote on the Address, which was forwarded to the Queen on 3 February. 11 Strangford to Londonderry, 9 February 1843, [February] 1843, Dur (246, 254)./)LIV1278n3. 12 GSS to Eugenie, 14 February 184[3], MS, Esher Papers (envelope dated 1845, though the romance ended in late 1843). Maiy Anne's guest list is in H D/IX/D/35. 13 Strangford to Londonderry, 4, 16 March 1843, Dur (244, 243). Gregory, Autobiography 88. 14 GSS to Disraeli, 12 April 1843, Bel. 15 LJMJ 10 January 1843. Whibley 1158. Manners to Stirling, 7 April 1843, Stirling-Maxwell Papers T-SK 29/4/55. LJMJ 18 April 1843. 16 Hansardl4, 23 March 1843. 17 Since, because of noise, GSS's speech was hard to hear in the reporters' gallery, this summary combines Hansard, The Times, and MP. Excerpted in Morrow 103-4. 18 Gregory, Autobiography 123. 19 MC, Spectator, MP 18 July 1843. Times 13 July 1843. MP17 July 1843. 20 LJMJ 13 July, 28 August 1843. 21 Strangford to Londonderry, 19 September, 15 August, 22 July 1843, Dur (269,239,241). 22 MP 10 August 1843. GrevilleV 127, 11 August 1843. DL IV Introduction xviii, 1321 n2. LJMJ 28 August 1843. 23 Satirist 20 August 1843. Other sources quoted in DL IV 1323 n6. 24 LJMJ 1 September 1843. 25 David Watkin, Thomas Hope 1769-1831 and the Neo-Classical Ideal*], 183-6. John Harris, Georgian Country Houses 55.

326 Notes to pages 157-62 26 GSS, Toleration,' //F376-7. GSS to Strangford, [December? 1843], Fonblanque 217. 27 MS poem, 'Sep. 16 1843,' Esher Papers, and Ward 210. GSS frugally recycled it into 'The Serenade,' altering 'dark eyed Eugenie' to 'fair-haired Emilie.' HF166-8. 28 She also records that she later became 'very intimate' with GSS. A[licia] M[ary] F[alls], Foreign Courts and Foreign Homes 37-42. DLIV 1324 & n4. 29 GSS, 'In the House of Maecenas,' Temple BarM (January 1872) 186-91. GSS to Manners, 7 September 1843, Bel. Gregory, Autobiography 95. 30 APII105. DL V 2000 & n21, 2155, III appendix I, 418X. Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli 109. Alethea Hayter, Opium and the Romantic Imagination 47. 31 'Fantasia' would not be the last piece that GSS would write for Disraeli. It appeared under Disraeli's name in the 1845 Keepsake, but stylistic comparison with other pieces by GSS, e.g., 'Venus and Adonis' and 'New Athens' (//F39-43, 353-5), makes it clearly his. DL IV 1324 & nl and appendix IX [4]. 32 Victoria History of the Counties: Surrey III 169. Coningsby I chapters 1, 4, 9, III chapter 2. 33 'Venus and Adonis,'/£F39-43. 34 QR73 (December 1843) 68-87. GSS to Manners, 7 September 1843, Bel. Lockhart to Croker, 21 August 1843, in John D. Kern et al., 'Lockhart to Croker on the Quarterly' 186. 35 Pawley, Faith and Family 150 ff. Coningsby III chapters 4-5. Ernest Vane I 26 ff, II 89 ff. 36 GSS to Manners, 26 September 1843, Bel. 37 GSS to Disraeli, 21 September 1843, Bel. GSS to Manners, 26 September 1843, Bel. See also Ernest Vanel 119-20. GSS to Manners, 26 December 1843, Bel. 38 Ward 209-11. GSS to Strangford, [January? 1844], Fonblanque 217. 39 'In Memory of the Past,' MS, Esher Papers. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 22 January 1844, DL IV 1336 & n5. 40 Strangford to Londonderry, 17 October 1843, Dur (266). APII 139. 41 GSS to Strangford, [October? 1843], Fonblanque 221 (where the names are blanked out). For Anne Larget, French wife of the impoverished 3rd Viscount Strangford, see chapter 2. 42 Londonderry to GSS [draft], 18 October 1843, Dur (258). Hanover to Strangford, 28 October 1843, Hanover9-10. GSS to Manners, 26 December 1843, Bel. 43 Arethusa Milner Gibson to Mary Anne Disraeli, 2 January 1844, H D/III/C/ 834a. MSS, Esher Papers. 44 Arethusa Gibson to Mary Anne Disraeli, 29 December 1843, H D/III/C/

Notes to pages 163-9 327

45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52

833. Sir William Molesworth to Mary Molesworth, 4 June 1844, in Alison Adburgham, A Radical Aristocrat 81. Satirist 28 July, 11, 18 August 1844. GSS to Disraeli, December 1843, Bel. Coningsby VIII chapter 2. Strangford to Londonderry, 7 November 1843, Dur (260). GSS to Disraeli, December 1843, Bel. 'Aristocracy of France,' MP30 December 1843, and .HF33-8. The Serenade,' see note 27. Strangford to Londonderry, [31 October 1843], Dur (262). GSS to Strangford, [December] 1843, Fonblanque 217. GSS to Manners, 26 December 1843, Bel. Edith Wharton, The Buccaneers, chapter 11. GSS to Strangford, [December?] 1843, Fonblanque 216. GSS to Strangford, [December?] 1843, Fonblanque 218-19. Strangford to Londonderry, 12,19 January 1844, Dur (295, 294). GSS to Strangford, (January] 1844, Fonblanque 218. GSS to Disraeli, December 1843, Bel. GSS to Manners, 26 December 1843, Bel. QR73 (December 1843) 71-2.

13. 1844: Coningsby and Historic Fancies 1 LJMJ 11 April 1844 (catch-up entry). Ernest Vanel 119. GSS to Manners, 12 April 184[4] [wrongly dated 1843], Bel. 2 Strangford to Londonderry, 9, 12 January 1844, Dur (296, 295). 3 MP 31 January 1844. 4 Disraeli to Peel, 4 February 1844, DLIV 1337 & nl, Introduction xx. 5 The Monster Meeting,' NMM70 (February 1844) 250-4. This is the first of eight signed with the 'X' he used in the Literary Souvenir in the 1830s. The evidence for his authorship is GSS to Disraeli, 4 November 1844 (Bel), referring to his NMM piece for November. 6 MP 26January 1844. 7 Alexander Pope, 'Epistle to Bathurst,' Moral Essays III 1.250 ff. 8 GSS to Strangford, [1846?], Fonblanque 239. 9 Hansard 27 February 1844. Strangford to Londonderry, 24 February, 8 March 1844, Dur (291, 289). 10 Hansard?? March 1844. LJMJ 11 April 1844 (catch-up entry). Blake, Disraeli 179. 11 Richard Faber suggests that Peel was also anxious not to antagonize the manufacturers. Young England 132-3. 12 Disraeli to Colburn, 29 March 1844, DL IV 1341 &nl. GSS, 'Social Nuisances: The Lap-Dog,' The Duty of Self-Commemoration,' NMM 70 (April 1844)511-14,529-32. 13 Disraeli had used the 'iron tears' quotation (from 'II Penseroso') in 1841 to

328 Notes to pages 169-76

14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39

describe Peel's reaction to a speech. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 15 May 1841, DL III 1156. 'Law and Lunacy,' Punch 6 (16 March 1844) 119. The minimal gap between this piece and GSS's (published 1 April) shows how extempore his contributions were. (It also testifies to the speed with which magazine issues could be produced in the 1840s.) GSS to Manners, 12 April 184[4], Bel. GSS to Manners, 12 April 184 [4], Bel. GSS to Disraeli, [20?] April 1844, Bel. Hansard 23-6 April 1844. Times, 25 April 1844. MC26, 27 April 1844. Punch 4, 25 May 1844. LJMJ, 7 May 1845 (catch-up entry). GSS to Disraeli, Thursday night' [9 May 1844],HE/VI/O/20. Naval and Military GazetteMay 1844. Anon., Strictures on Coningsby 5. Pictorial Times 25 May 1844. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 10 June 1844, DL IV 1356. Disraeli to Mary Anne Disraeli, 4, 11 March 1842, DL TV 1220 & n3, 1229 & n6. Cookesley to Disraeli, 10 May 1844, DL IV 1341 n3. For some of the recognition of GSS as Coningsby, see chapter 1. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 13 June 1844, DL TV 1358. GSS, notebook, 30 May 1844, Whibley II 97. GSS to Disraeli, [after 30 May 1844], Bel. Coningsby III chapter 1. TancredV chapter 1. Emily Strangford, 'Memoir,' APxiii. GSS to Disraeli, [20? April] 1844, Bel. GSS to Disraeli, [after 30 May 1844], Bel. GSS to Disraeli, [June 1844], Bel. Critic 1 (15 May 1844) 186-8. NMM71 (June 1844) 206-15. Times, 11, 15, 16, 20, 28 May 1844. Disraeli to Delane, 15 May 1844, DL IV 1345 & n l . The Perfidious Engineer,' NMM71 (July 1844) 279-97. DL 1367 nl. GSS to Disraeli, December 1843, Bel. 'Le Peuple Souriquois,' NMMll (August 1844) 426-30. Coningsby IV chapters 10 and 15. The reference to Gurwood is surprisingly cheerful, considering GSS's experiences during the relationship with Eugenie. 7VMM72 (September 1844) 1-17, (October 1844) 168-79, (November 1844) 351-62. GSS to Disraeli, 4 November 1844, Bel. Moliere, Les Fourberies de Scapin. Other references occur, e.g., to an Hotel Facheux (cf. Moliere's LesFdcheux).

Notes to pages 176-86 329 40 MP26June, 2, 4, 6 (publication day), 9,10, 11 July 1844. 41 GSS to Manners, GSS to Mary Anne Disraeli, both Tuesday' [2 July 1844], Bel. 42 Times4July 1844; MP6, ISJuly 1844; MC2 August 1844; NMM71 (August 1844) 527-34; Eraser's (September 1844) 310-21. 43 Critic 1 (August 1844) 4-5. 44 NMM71 (August 1844) 528-9. 45 GSS to Disraeli, [after 30 May 1844], Bel. 46 'A Cabinet Dinner in the Last Century,' HF113-17. 47 HF 118-44. 48 For notes on this dramatization, GSS's 'imaginative reproduction' of the debate in which Walpole attacked Bolingbroke, see Cambridge History of English and American Literature, volume 9, VIII:8, p. 13, n20, and VIII: 11, p. 20, n34. 49 Coningsby III chapter 1. 50 MC 2 August 1844; reprinted in W.M. Thackeray, Contributions to the Morning Chronicle 55-64. 51 'Literary Legislators V,' Eraser's (May 1847), 529-38. 52 G.M. Young, Victorian England 17'2 nl. 53 'Mirabeau,'HF201. 54 #F241-2. 55 GSS to Disraeli, 5 September 1844, Bel. APII122. 14. 1844: The Pursuit of Psyche 1 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 10 June 1844, DLIV 1356. APII 129-30. 2 GSS to Strangford, 1844, Fonblanque 228. Disraeli, Disraeli's Reminiscences 120-1. 3 Edna Healey, Lady Unknown 17-24. 4 DL III 748. 5 GSS to Manners, 8 August 1840, Bel. 6 Healey, Lady Unknown 70-2. 7 GSS to Disraeli, 16 August, 5 September 1844, both Bel. GSS to [Strangford, 1846?], Fonblanque 228. 8 GSS to Disraeli, 4 August 1844, Bel. 9 GSS to Disraeli, 8 August 1844, Bel. 10 GSS to Disraeli, 16 August 1844, Bel. 11 Disraeli to Mary Anne Disraeli, 27 August 1844, DL IV 1370 & n6. 12 GSS to Disraeli, 8 August 1844, Bel. 13 GSS to Disraeli, 5 September 1844, Bel.

330 Notes to pages 186-94 14 GSS to Disraeli, 16 August 1844, Bel. Esper George is Vivian Grey's resourceful valet. 15 API 174-90. 16 GSS, MS dated 'Sep.12 - Mannheim,' Bel. 17 GSS to Disraeli, 5 September 1844, Bel. 18 Strangford to Londonderry, 11 September 1844, Dur (283). 19 GSS to Disraeli, 5 September 1844. Bel. The Stackelbergs' English visit is recorded in MP27, 29 August 1844. 20 GSS to Disraeli, 20 September 1844, Bel. 21 GSS to Disraeli, 20 September 1844, Bel. For European surprise at the premarital freedom, indeed licence, of young upper-class Englishwomen, see Michael Mason, The Making of Victorian Sexuality 116-18. 22 GSS to Disraeli, 20 September 1844, Bel. Besides her obsession with GSS, the name 'Coningsby' ran in the family. Her sister, Charlotte Capel, was wife of the brother of the Earl of Essex, descended from the Earl of Coningsby. 23 GSS to Disraeli, 25 September 1844, Bel. 24 GSS, MS initialled and dated 'Coblentz. September 26 1844,' Bel. 25 GSS to Disraeli, 25 September 1844, Bel. 26 GSS to Disraeli, 20 September 1844, Bel. Hanover to Strangford, [n.d.], Rutland to Strangford, 6 September 1844, Fonblanque 224-7. 27 GSS to Strangford, 2[?] October 1844, Fonblanque 226. 28 Young England: Addresses; also excerpted in Morrow 136-7. 29 Times 5 October, MP8 October, Satirist 13 October 1844. Rutland to Strangford, [October 1844], Fonblanque 227. Manners to Cochrane, [October 1844], Whibley 1179. 30 GSS to Strangford, 1846, Fonblanque 228. GSS to Disraeli, 9 October 1844, Bel. 31 GSS to Disraeli, 9 October, 14 October, 25 September 1844, Bel. Captain Charles Maynard, distinguished at the Eglinton Tournament dress rehearsal for jumping his charger several times, in full armour, over the barrier in the lists (Anstruther, Knight 162-3). His beautiful daughter Frances was, as Daisy, Countess of Warwick, mistress of Edward VII. 32 GSS to Disraeli, 4 November 1844, Bel. Disraeli to Manners, 27 October 1844, DL 1379. 33 Gregory, Autobiography 94. 34 GSS to Disraeli, 4 November 1844, Bel. Leporello is Don Giovanni's servant. 35 GSS to Disraeli, 21 November 1844, Bel. . 36 GSS to Disraeli, 3 December 1844, Bel. 37 GSS to Disraeli, fragment [n.d.], 24 December 1844, both Bel. 38 GSS to Disraeli, 31 December 1844, Bel.

Notes to pages 195-200 331 15. 1845: The Double Game 1 Strangford to Londonderry, 1 January 1845, Dur (324). Louisa married Lovaine this year. 2 GSS to Cochrane, 24 February 1845, Bel. 3 Charles Dickens, The Chimes, 'First Quarter,' in Michael Slater, 'The Deleted 'Young England" Passages from The Chimes appendix A, 249-50. Dickens to John Forster, [?l-2 November 1844], Dickens Letters IV. 4 PunchS (January-June 1845): 'Mr. Punch's Almanack: February 1844' (pages unnumbered), 'Actors in High Life' (4January 1845) 15, 'Black Monday' (February 1845) 70. This is not the only image at this time of GSS with an uncharacteristically plump face. See illustration 13. For a possible medical explanation, see p. 201 below. 5 GSS to Disraeli, 25 January 1845, Bel. 6 Disraeli to Manners, 27 October 1844, DLIV 1379 & nnl-4, Introduction xxiv-v. 7 GSS to Disraeli, [January], 25, 30January 1845, DL IV 1434 n7. 8 Disraeli to the Editor of The Times, 5 April 1845, DL IV 1399 n2. 9 Stanhope, Notes of Conversations with ... Wellington 30(5-7. 10 GSS to Strangford, [January?] 1845, Fonblanque 230. 11 GSS to Disraeli, 30 January 1845 (Bel), has many similarities to Disraeli's speech of 20 February 1845. See DL IV 1394 n2, Introduction xxv. 12 Coningsby II chapter 1. 13 GSS to Disraeli, [21?] February 1845, Bel. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 3 March 1845, DLW 1396 & n2. GSS to Mary Anne Disraeli, [28] February 1845, HE/VI/O/21. 14 Norman Gash, Sir Robert Peel 469. 15 Hansard 17 March 1845. 16 Strangford to Londonderry, 7, 15 April 1845, Dur (318, 317). 17 Hansard 16 April 1845. 18 Ibid. The newly introduced polka was currently the craze of the London season. 19 Hanover to Strangford, [1845], Fonblanque 231. 20 Brougham to Strangford, [1845], GSS to Strangford, [1845], Fonblanque 232, 236. 21 Satirist 20 April 1845. 22 GSS to Disraeli, [August 1845], Bel. 23 Oxford and Cambridge Review 1 (July 1845) 1-11, 2 (August 1845) 195-219. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 23 August 1845, DL TV 1434 & n7. For the article's content, see chapters 4, 7, 8, and 10 above. Excerpts are published in

332 Notes to pages 200-5 Morrow 149-52. The pleased reactions of Grey's family can be found in handwritten notes and marginalia in the copy held by Durham University Library (Earl Grey Papers: Pamphlet 1451 [!]).! am grateful toJ.M. Fewster, librarian of the Diplomatic Library at Durham, for making this pamphlet available to me. 24 An article on Canning in the October number of the Review was wrongly ascribed to GSS but was actually written by Miles Keon. Editor of the Oxford and Cambridge Review to Manners, 4 November 1845, Bel. MP2 October, 4, 6, 7, 10 November 1845. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 23 August 1845, J DLIV1434&n7. 25 GSS to Disraeli, [3?] August 1845, Bel. 'Physiologies' were pocket anthologies of character sketches from Paris life popular in the 1840s. Walter Benjamin, 'The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire' 35-7. 26 John Glaister, Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology 524; David Lees, Practical Methods in Diagnosis and Treatment of Venereal Disease 352; Jay Cassel, The Secret Plague 46-54. 27 GSS to Mary Anne Disraeli, [September?] 1845. GSS to Disraeli, [August] 1845, 3 September 1845, all Bel. 28 GSS to Disraeli, 3 September 1845, Bel. Lords Clare and Delawarr were handsome favourites of Byron's at Harrow School. Byron's 'erotic imagination brought him back inevitably to the idealised image of the boy.' Fiona MacCarthy, Byron xii. 29 Strangford to Londonderry, 18 August, [September] 1845, Dur (313, 311). GSS to Disraeli, 3 September 1845, Bel. 30 Disraeli to Manners, 17 December 1845, DLIV 1455 & nl. 31 GSS to Disraeli, 16 [January] 1846, H B/XXI/S/650. 32 APII108-9. 33 GSS to Disraeli, 16 [January] 1846, H B/XXI/S/650. Among possible names are Mazzini, head of Young Italy, the novelist Manzoni, or even Daniel Manin, future president of Venice. A Princess Morosini appears in AP. 34 All access was by sea. There was no rail link from the mainland until after GSS left in January 1846. John Pemble, Venice Rediscovered 9, 15. 35 GSS to Disraeli, 16 [January] 1846, H B/XXI/S/650. LJMJ 12 December 1845. 36 GSS to Strangford, [late 1845], Fonblanque 233-41. 37 GSS to Strangford, [December] 1845, Fonblanque 238-41. 38 Strangford to Londonderry, 31 December 1845, Dur (297). 39 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 16 December 1845, DL IV 1454 & n5.

Notes to pages 205-12

333

40 GSS to Strangford, [December 1845], Fonblanque 238-9. 41 Strangford to Londonderry, 31 December 1845, Dur (297). 16. 1846: Falling Upstairs - and Down 1 See illustration 11. 2 Disraeli to Manners, 17 December 1845, DLIV 1455 nl. 3 Disraeli to William Jolliffe, 24 February 1858, DL VII 3031. 'Parliamentary Portraits,' Illustrated London News (7 February 1846) 97. 4 Strangford to Londonderry, 10, 19 January 1846, Dur (300, 301). 5 Milnes to Gladstone, 14, 19 January 1846, Reid, MUnesI 361-3, 365. 6 GSS to Disraeli, 16 IJanuary, misdated December] 1846, H B/XXI/S/650. 7 GSS to Disraeli, 29 August 1848, Bel. 8 Sarah Disraeli to Mary Anne Disraeli, [25 January 1846], H D/III/A/574a. 9 GSS to Aberdeen, 18 January 1846, BL Add. Mss. 43245 ff. 219-20. 10 GSS to Peel, 18 January 1846, BL Add. Mss. 40582 ff. 367-8. 11 Strangford to Londonderry, [25? March 1846] Dur (308). 12 Peel to GSS, 20 January 1846, BL Add. Mss. 40582 ff. 369-70. 13 E.g., Lord St Germans (postmaster general), cited in Gash, Peel566. 14 Strangford to Londonderry, [22, 24January 1846], Dur (302, 303). 15 Strangford to Londonderry, [26January 1846], Dur (304). Whibley I 202-3. In the end Manners was persuaded by other friends not to resign. 16 Gladstone Diaries III 518 (11 February 1846). 17 'We were really in the greatest possible danger of having a resignation of the Government without knowing to whom to turn, and this from the recklessness of a handful of foolish half "Puseyite," half'Young England" people.' Queen Victoria to King Leopold of Belgium, 18 June 1844, Letters of Queen Victoria 1837-186116. 18 Dickens to J.H. Stocqueler, 24 February 1846, Dickens Letters TV. 19 Strangford to Londonderry, [26 January, 3 February 1846], Dur (304, 305). Kentish Gazetted March 1846. Kentish Observer5 March 1846. 20 Strangford to Londonderry, 10 January 1846, Dur (300) 21 Endymion chapter 74. 22 Disraeli, Derby (17 August 1852) 80. 23 London Post Office Directory 1845. 24 Gregory, Autobiography 80. 25 Emily Strangford, 'Memoir' xxii. Gregory, Autobiography 89. 26 Whibley I 209. 27 Disraeli to Sir William Jolliffe, 24 February 1858, DL VII 3031. 28 GSS to Peel, Peel to GSS, 3 June 1846, BL Add. Mss. ff. 86, 88.

334 Notes to pages 212-20 29 GSS to Strangford, [1846] Fonblanque 242. 30 Disraeli to Sir George Sinclair, 13 March 1846, DLIV 1475 n3 and appendix VII. For Protectionist approaches to Russell, the Whig leader, see Gash, Peel 583-4,591. 31 Disraeli's Reminiscences 5 8. 32 £>LIV1499. 33 Strangford to Stanhope, 20 July 1846, Stanhope C/138 [4]. Strangford to Londonderry, 27 September 1846, Dur (328). 34 Nevill, Exotic Groves 42-7. E.F. Benson, As We Were 248. 35 Mrs (later Lady) Stanley of Alderley, 7 March 1846, The Ladies ofAlderley 123. 36 Mary Anne Disraeli to Disraeli, 4 August 1846, H A/I/A/478. 37 Lady Orford to Mary Anne Disraeli, 2 February 1847, 20 March 1848, H D/III/C/2784a, 2798. 38 GSS to Disraeli, 22[?] August 1846, Bel. 39 Strangford to Stanhope, 23 September 1846, Stanhope C138/3. Strangford to Londonderry, 27 September 1846, Dur (328). 40 Strangford to Londonderry, 23 January 1847, Dur (340). 41 Satirist 4, 11 October 1846. 42 Lady Orford to Mary Anne Disraeli, 2 February 1847, H D/III/C/2784a. 43 Lady Stanley to Mrs Stanley, 26 September 1846, Ladies ofAlderley 137. 44 Exmouth to Disraeli, 10 November 1846, H B/XXI/E/333. 45 Satirist 18 October, 29 November 1846. 46 Bentinck to Disraeli, 9 November 1846, H B/XX/Be/12. 47 Lady Londonderry to Disraeli, 9 November [1846], H B/XX/V/147. 48 Dickens to William Macready, 24 October 1846, Dickens Letters IV 647 & n. 49 Strangford to Londonderry, [16?], [24?] October, 4 November 1846, Dur (326,325,330). 50 GSS to Adolphus Vane, 24 June 1857, Dur D/Lo/C230 (3). 51 Napier to William Stirling, 16 April 1847, Stirling-Maxwell T-SK 29/5/6. 52 GSS to Manners, 3 November 1846, Bel. 53 Gregory, Autobiography 117. 54 Brian Hi\\, Julia Margaret Cameron 16, 60-5. 55 GSS to Manners, 3 November 1846, Bel. 56 Strangford to Stanhope, 30 November 1846, Stanhope C138/3. 57 GSS to Adolphus Vane, 30 June 1857, Dur D/Lo/C230 (4). 17. 1847: With a Tongue and a Pen of His Own 1 Endymion chapter 27. 2 Endymion chapter 80. Gregory, Autobiography 231-2.

Notes to pages 221-9

335

3 Satirist 3January 1847. 4 Strangford's ellipsis. Strangford to Londonderry, 23 January 1847, Dur (340). 5 Lady Orford to Mary Anne Disraeli, 2, 15 February, 11 March 1847, H D/ III/C/2784a, 2785-6. 6 Ernest Vane I 39-40, 118, 124-9, II 249 ff. 7 Lady Orford to Mary Anne Disraeli, 15 February 1847, H D/III/C/2785. GSS to Lord Adolphus Vane, 24, 30 June 1857, Dur D/Lo/C230 (3, 4). Lady Londonderry later denied this. 8 MP 5 March 1847. 9 MP 17 March 1847. 10 Thomas Carlyle to Robert Browning, 23 June 1847, Carlyle, Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle XXI 241. 11 Tancred II chapter 14. 12 Tancred III chapter 2. 13 Tancred III chapters 5 and 6. 14 Tancred VI chapter 7. 15 GSS to Disraeli, 2July 1852, H D/III/A/197. 16 Times 2 April 1847. Lady Blessington to Disraeli, 22 March 1847, H E/VI/Q/ 36. Milnes, Eft 86 (July 1847) 138-55. Manners to Disraeli, 25 March 1847, H E/VI/Q/7. 17 Strangford to Londonderry, 18 July 1847, Dur (334a). 18 GSS to Disraeli, 27 June 1855, Bel. 19 Donald MacAndrew, 'Equestrienne' (article, kindly supplied by Belinda Cousens, Mercia Regional Office, The National Trust and identified by James Rothwell, Cheshire Regional Office, The National Trust) 94-5. 20 MacAndrew 95. Katie Hickman, Courtesans 281. 21 Endymion chapters 49, 48. 22 MP 5July 1847. 23 'Literary Legislators V,' Eraser's Magazine (May 1847) 529-38. 24 Strangford to Londonderry, 8 August 1847, Dur (334). 25 MPSJuly 1847. Also excerpted in Morrow 113-14. 26 APIII211. 27 Hanover to Strangford, 20 July 1847, Hanover 118. Lady Dorothy Walpole to Mary Anne Disraeli, 15 July 1847, H D/III/C/1429. The pamphlet was advertised in, e.g., The Times 13 July, MP13,16, 20 July 1847. 'Anti-Peel' appeared in MP 15, 20 July 1847. 28 Report xv, xx, xxii. 29 Strangford to Londonderry, 19 September 1847, Dur (336). 30 MP 30, 31 July 1847. 31 Bentinck to Croker, 8 September 1847, Croker II130.

336 Notes to pages 229-37 32 GSS to Manners, 17 October 1847, Bel. 33 Disraeli's emphasis. Disraeli to Manners, 16 November 1847, DLIV 1607. 34 GSS to Manners, 17 October 1847, Bel. Rene and Jean Dubos, The White Plague 146-8. Andrew Motion, Keats555. 35 GSS to Manners, 20 August 1847, Bel. 18. 1848-9: Very Like Assassination 1 Comte Rodolphe Apponyi (18 February 1848),/0Mrmz/iV 134, quoted in Philip Mansel, Paris between Empires 1814-1852 398. 2 GSS to Manners, 17 October 1847, Bel. Disraeli's Reminiscences 22. 3 The takeover is described in my article '"Very Like Assassination."' 4 DNB. G.S. Layard, Mrs. Lynn Linton 59. 5 LJMJ 17 April 1848. 6 'Memoir,' APxxvii. 7 E.g., the upper-class distaste expressed for Hugh Stanbury's profession of journalism in Trollope's He Knew He Was Right (1869). 8 Edward Stanley, 23 May 1850, Disraeli, Derby 19. 9 Cook lured Thackeray back to the Chronicle with five guineas an article. He paid Linton twenty guineas for six articles a month. Layard, Mrs. Linton 59. 10 GSS to Disraeli, [docketed '184-'], DL TV 1434 n7, there dated 1845. 11 GSS to Manners, 30 December 1837, Bel. 12 Layard, Mrs. Linton 59. APIII 190-1. 13 29 January 1848, quoted in Mansel, Paris 397. 14 MC15, 21 February 1848. For GSS's authorship, see '"Very Like Assassination"' 246 ff. 15 Gregory, quoted in Fonblanque 233. 16 Disraeli to Manners, 8 March 1848, DL V 1636. 17 MC 23, 24 February 1848. 18 MC28 February 1848 (dated 24th). The breakdown of transport likely delayed his report. 19 'Armand Carrel,' #F370-1. MC, 1-4, 6, 8 March 1848. 20 'It made kings know they had a joint in their necks.' MC8 March 1848. 21 GSS to Disraeli, 2 July 1852, H B/XXI/S/652. 22 MC 26 June 1848. Sarah Disraeli to Mary Anne Disraeli, [4?] July 1848, HD/III/A/197. 23 MC29June 1848. Edward Stanley, 31 January 1849, Disraeli, Derby 1-2. 24 MC 4July 1848. 25 GSS to Disraeli, 23 July 1848, Bel. Disraeli to Lady Londonderry, 17 July 1848,DLV1668n3.

Notes to pages 238-45 337 26 Disraeli to Lord Rowton, [1878?], quoted in M and B III 103. GSS to Disraeli, 26, 29 August 1848, Bel. Disraeli to Lady Londonderry, 31 August 1848, DLV 1703. 27 GSS's emphasis. MC16 December 1848. DL V 1754 n4. 28 MC 3 February 1849. 29 MC4, 8, 9, 11 September, MP11,13, 16 September 1848. MP19 February 1849. 30 DL V 1837 n3,1737 and n5. GSS to Manners, 2 January 1851, Bel. Fonblanque 245. 31 Disraeli's Reminiscences 58, 60-1. James Pope-Hennessy, Monckton Milnes 277, 248-9. Edward Stanley, 20 March 1878, Vincent, Selection 529. Steven Marcus, The Other Victorians 37. Matthew Sweet, Inventing the Victorians 204. 32 Reid,Mt7w«sI414-16. 33 Milnes to Editor of MC, 23 February 1849; GSS to same, 23 February 1849. GSS to Milnes, [n.d.], Pope-Hennessy, Milnes 289. The reference is probably to A. Beresford Hope rather than Henry Hope. 34 Reid, Milnes 418. 35 Hayward to his sisters, 15 May 1849, A Selection from the Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, QC.from 1834 to 18841139. 36 MC7 May 1849. Disraeli to Henry Drummond, 3 December 1849, DL VII appendix 11929X. 37 Ernest Vane 1118. 38 MC23 March 1848. MP12 May, 12 April, 17 May 1848. Lady Dorothy's reception at court refutes the story that the GSS scandal had her banned from court for life. Nevill, Exotic Groves 59. 39 Hayward, Selection I 55-6. GSS to Manners, 13 December 1850, Bel. 40 Georgiana, Countess Dover, 16 August 1827, Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, 26 February 1830, Three Howard Sisters 85,120. Lady Holland, 19-20 May 1828, Lady Holland 85. Disraeli to Lady Londonderry, 3 August 1848, DL VI675. 41 GSS to Disraeli, [29 August 1848], GSS to Manners, 2 July 1849, both Bel. 42 GSS to Aberdeen, 14 October 1850, BL Add MSS 43247 ff. 174-7. 43 Ernest Vane I 24. 19. 1850-2: Diplomatic Moves 1 GSS to Disraeli, 3 April 1850, Bel. 2 Times 5 March 1850. 3 DLV 1975 nl. GSS to Mary Anne Disraeli, 15 March 1850, H D/III/C/2529. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 25 March 1850, DLV 1977.

338 Notes to pages 246-57 4 Percy Smythe to Strangford, 1852, Fonblanque 263-4. GSS to Disraeli, 31 March 1850, Bel. 5 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 13 April 1850, DL V 1991. 6 GSS to Mary Anne Disraeli, 2 July [1850], Bel. 7 MC 5 April 1850. 8 Edward Stanley, 23 May, 17 June 1850, Disraeli, Derby 19-20. MC 18 June 1850. Stanley's and MC's versions are slightly different. 9 Hanover to Strangford, 15 May 1850, Hanover 206. 10 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 13 May 1850, DL V 2000 and nl7. Strangford to Londonderry, 19 September 1847, Dur (336). 11 LJMJ 10 October 1850 [catch-up entry], Bel. 12 Manners to Granby, 1850, Whibley II 28. Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey, 26 August 1850, Juliet Barker, The Brontes 650. 13 GSS to Cochrane, 5 September 1850, Bel. 14 Manners to Disraeli, 10 September 1850, DL V 2042 nl. 15 GSS to Cochrane, 5 September 1850, Bel. GSS to Manners, 10 September 1850, Bel. The Cistercian monastery of La Trappe imposed strict silence. 16 GSS to Aberdeen, 12 September 1850, BL Add. Mss 43247 ff. 170-1. 17 GSS to Aberdeen, 14 October 1850, BL Add. Mss 43247 ff. 174-7. 18 Russell 82-8. GSS to Manners, 8 October 1850, Bel. 19 GSS to Manners, 8 October, 13 December 1850, both Bel. 20 GSS to Manners, 2 January 1851, Bel. 21 GSS to Manners, 22 December 1850, Bel, and, with variations, Whibley II 32-3. 22 GSS to Manners, 2January, 16January 1851, both Bel. 23 GSS to Manners, 16January 1851, Bel. Hanover to Strangford, 26 December 1850, 14 February 1851, Hanover 215, 220-1. 24 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 8 March 1851, DL V 2105. 25 Hansard 24 March 1851. Times 22, 25 March 1851. Edward Stanley, 24 March 1851, Disraeli, Derby 59. 26 MP 3 July 1851. 27 GSS to Richard Bendey, 17 December 1851,17 February 1852, Illinois (LI, L2) 28 Lady Dorothy Nevill to Mary Anne Disraeli, [September] 1851, H D/III/C/ 1447. 29 APIII164-5. GSS to Manners, 13 June 1854, Whibley II 98-9. 20. 1852: Something about the Duke 1 Times, 21 February 1852. 2 Sarah Disraeli to Mary Anne Disraeli, 14 February [1852], H D/III/A/273. 3 GSS to Aberdeen, 14 October 1851, BL Add. Mss. 43247 ff. 225-8.

Notes to pages 257-67 339 4 [GSS], 'Lord Stanley,' Saturday Review (10 November 1855) 25. GSS to Disraeli, 24 February 1852, H B/XXI/S/651. GSS to Disraeli, 2 July 1852, H B/XXI/S/652. 5 GSS to Disraeli, 2 July 1852, H B/XXI/S/652. 6 MP, MC, 19 May 1852. The third part of Bleak House (chapters 8-10) was published in May. 7 Tiroes, 24 May 1852. 8 Strangford to Londonderry, 1 July 1852, Dur (365). 9 GSS to Disraeli, 2 July 1852, H B/XXI/S/652. 10 GSS to Disraeli, [6July 1852], Bel. 11 Times 8 July 1852. MP8, 9 July 1852. Canterbury Poll Book 1852. Coningsby IX chapter 6. GSS to Disraeli, 9 July 1852, Bel. 12 GSS to Disraeli, 12 October 1852, Bel. Claviere wrote speeches for Mirabeau to deliver as his own. This episode is also discussed in DL VI 2442 n4, 2438, 2441, 2442-4 & notes, Introduction xv-xvi, and M and B III 393-5 and appendix C. 13 Quoted by GSS, MC4July 1848 14 M and B III 578. Queen Victoria to King Leopold, 23 November 1852, Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals 90. 15 MC 20 November 1852. 16 MC 22 November 1852. 17 MC8, 10, 15, 22, 25 November 1852. The series has been discussed from a Disraelian point of view by M.G. Wiebe, 'Benjamin Dejuda: Disraeli's Plagiarism and the Matter of His Integrity in 1852,' a paper given at the conference on 'Disraeli's Jewishness' at University of Southampton, July 1994. 18 'A Caucasian Genealogist,' 'A Pair of Benjamins,' MC 18 November 1852. A 'benjamin' was a man's overcoat. 19 DL11195Q. 20 DLW 1396 and n2. 21 For Disraeli's use of newspapers, see Mary S. Millar and M.G. Wiebe, '"This power so vast... and so generally misunderstood."' 22 Quoted in DL VI Introduction xv. 23 DL\T2447nl. 24 MC 24 November 1852 25 GSS's ellipsis. GSS to Disraeli, [December 1852], Bel. 26 GSS to Disraeli, 'Monday' [20? December 1852], Bel. 27 'Memoir,' APxxviii. 28 Strangford to Londonderry, 27 October 1852, Dur (359). 29 Strangford to Stanhope, 25 November 1852, Stanhope C138/4. MP25 November, 3 December 1852. 30 GSS to Manners, 17 April 1854, Bel.

340 Notes to pages 268-78 21. 1853-5: The Stage-Box of My Soul 1 GSS to Manners, 18 October 1853, Bel. 2 GSS to Disraeli, 11 January 1853, Bel. 3 Disraeli to Henry Hope, 22 March 1853, DL VI 2512. 4 GSS to Disraeli, 16 January 1853, Bel. 5 JHC15, 16, 21, 22 February, 5-6 August 1853. 6 Lucas to Disraeli, 31 March, 7 April 1853, H B/VI/161,164. A review of Thackeray's book appeared on 18 June, but it is stylistically unlike GSS's work. 7 Richard Doyle to GSS, 22 April 1853, H B/VI/167b, c. 8 Lucas to Disraeli, 25, 27, 28 April 1853, H B/VI/167a, 169, 168. 9 Lucas to Disraeli, 7 May 1853, H B/VI/171. 10 Identified as GSS's in Edward Stanley's annotated copy of the Press. Disraeli Project, Queen's University. 11 GSS to Disraeli, 30 June 1853, H B/VI/30. Edward Stanley, 14 March 1853, Disraeli, Derby 102. 12 Malmesbury I 397. 13 Report v-vii. For details of specific bribery, see chapter 8. 14 Report xvii-xix, 80-1. 15 Report viii, ix. 16 GSS to Disraeli, 15 September 1853, Bel. 17 GSS to Manners, 18 October 1853, Bel. 18 GSS to Disraeli, 15 September 1853, Bel. Lord Rockingham strenuously opposed the foreign policies of Lord North that provoked the American Revolution. 19 Disraeli to Sarah Brydges Willyams, 29 September 1853, DL VI 2560. 20 GSS to Manners, 18 October 1853, Bel. GSS to Disraeli, 6 July 1857, Bel. 21 GSS to Manners, 18 October 1853, Bel. 22 Sarah Brydges Willyams to Disraeli, 13 January 1854, DL VI 2609 n4. GSS to Bentley, 2 January 1854, Illinois (L3). No such edition by GSS ever appeared. 23 Lucas to Disraeli, [5 January 1854], DL VI 2613 nl. 24 Disraeli to Francis Espinasse, 27 March 1860, H A/X/B/1, DL VIII (in progress). 25 Press, 7january 1854,15-16. GSS to Disraeli, 12January 1854, Bel. 26 LJMJ 11 April 1854. 27 GSS to Manners, 17 April 1854, Bel. 28 GSS to Manners, 13 June 1854, Whibley II 99. 29 DLVl 2661 and n7, 2662 and nl. GSS to Manners, [July 1854], Bel.

Notes to pages 279-86 341 30 Kentish Observer, 27 July 1854. Information kindly supplied by David Cousins, Heritage Officer, Canterbury Library. 31 MP17 August 1854. 32 Kentish Observer, 12 August 1854. Oddly enough, the notice itself was dated 18 August, the day of the election. Had he intended another last-minute withdrawal? 33 Gregory, Autobiography, 89. Blake, Disraeli 169 and Nevill, Exotic Groves 64 repeat the charge almost word for word: GSS 'died of his excesses, hastened by potations of brandy.' R. Faber, Young England 238, and Graham, Splendid Failures 218, quote Gregory. 34 Edward Stanley, 20 March 1878, Vincent, Selection 529. 35 GSS to Disraeli, 26 January 1855, Bel. GSS to Disraeli, 28 January 1855, including the draft of this part of Disraeli's speech, Bel. George Bubb Dodington, parliamentarian and diarist, was noted for constantly changing sides. 36 GSS to Disraeli, 6 July 1857, 28 April 1855, both Bel. 37 GSS to Croker, 30 May 1855, Croker III 358. 38 Strangford's will, Family Records Centre, London. Disraeli to Lady Londonderry, 2 September 1855, DLVl 2775 and n5. GSS to Disraeli, 20June 1855, Bel. 39 GSS to Disraeli, 27 June 1855, Bel. MacAndrew, 'Equestrienne,' 93. 40 GSS to Disraeli, 14July 1855, Bel. 41 GSS to Bentley, 3, 28 July 1855, Illinois (L4, L5). 42 Bourne II 248. 22. 1856-7: Bed-Ridden Lovelace 1 GSS to Disraeli, 6 July 1857 [apparently the first letter in nearly two years], Bel. The name looks like nothing so much as 'Spossle' (the first two letters are repeated in the next sentence, the last three, quite clear, on 14 September). It may be a nickname, like 'Caesar' for Wellington or 'Psyche' and 'Fedora' for Angela Burdett Coutts. 2 GSS to Disraeli, 6 July 1857, Bel. 3 Lucie Duff Gordon, Letters from Egypt. Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear. 4 James Stevens Curl, Egyptomania 118-92. 5 Herman Melville, Journal up the Straits 52-3 6 Duff Gordon, Letters 36-8 7 Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 28 May 1831, DLI 111. 8 Lennox of Woodhead papers, Strathclyde T-LX 13/7. There is apparently no extant portrait of Margaret. One untitled portrait in the Lennox papers

342 Notes to pages 286-94 depicts a woman of the period, a grave, smooth-haired brunette with small determined mouth and large grey eyes. 9 John Cameron, The Parish ofCampsie 164-5. Margaret Strangford to Mary Anne Disraeli, 11 December 1858, H D/III/C/2532. 10 GSS to Disraeli, 6 July 1857, Bel. 11 Marian Daniel to Frances Lennox, 3 July 1857,16 September, 24 December 1858, Lennox Papers, Strathclyde T-LX 13/6. Matthew James Higgins to William Stirling, 13 November 1857, Stirling-Maxwell T-SK 29/7/217. 12 GSS to Disraeli, 6July 1857, Bel. Times, MP6-20 April 1857. Cameron, Campsiel65 13 The Lennox papers contain detailed genealogical trees for claiming relationship by marriage to Lord Darnley, husband of Mary Queen of Scots, and thus to James VT and his descendants, including (which would please GSS) the Old and Young Pretenders. Strathclyde T-LX 15/22. 14 GSS to Disraeli, 6 July 1857, Bel. 15 John Cunninghame to Frances Lennox, 18 June [1857], Lennox Papers, Strathclyde T-LX 13/6. 16 GSS to Disraeli, 6July 1857, Bel. 17 GSS to Disraeli, 6, 9 July 1857, 14 September 1857, Bel. GSS to Mary Anne Disraeli, 29 June 1857, Bel. 18 GSS to Adolphus Vane, 30 June 1857, Dur D/Lo/C230 (4). 19 GSS to Disraeli, 9 July 1857, Bel. 20 MJ. Higgins to William Stirling, 13 November [1857], Stirling Maxwell T-SK 29/7/217. 21 GSS to Disraeli, 9 July 1857, Bel. 22 GSS to Disraeli, 2 September 1857, Bel. 23 Villiers to Disraeli, 27 September 1857, H A/IV/J/58. Peacocke to Disraeli, 25 October 1857, H B/XXI/P/139. GSS to Disraeli, 14 September 1857, Bel. 24 The latest developments in the Berkeley dispute appear in DL VII, 3222 and n5. 25 Peacocke to Disraeli, 25 October 1857, H B/XXI/P/139. 26 Disraeli to Peacocke, 20 October 1857, DL VII 2982. Peacocke to Disraeli, 25 October 1857, H B/XXI/P/139. Peacocke presumably meant Margaret's predecessors, but it is not impossible that GSS had fathered children. 27 Rose to Disraeli, 28 October 1857, H R/I/B/I/35a. 28 On one occasion in the hunting field she refused to acknowledge 'Skittles' and requested her to leave. 'Skittles' agreed, but shouted out: 'What the hell is the good of Lady Stamford giving herself such airs? She is not the head of our profession, and never will be. Lady [Cardigan] is the head of our profession!' [Amy C.B. Menzies] Further Indiscretions by a Woman of No Importance

Notes to pages 294-301 343

29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37

306-7. The story is also told in Hickman, Courtesans 282, and (with even more colourful language) in MacAndrew, 'Equestrienne' 102. Sarah Disraeli to Mary Anne Disraeli, 8 March 1857, DL VII 2914 and nl. Lady Gregory, Seventy Years 107. Disraeli's Reminiscences, 120. Lennox Papers, Strathclyde T-LX3/54. MJ. Higgins to William Stirling, 13 November 1857, Stirling Maxwell T-SK 29/7/217. MJ. Higgins to William Stirling, 13 November 1857, Stirling Maxwell T-SK 29/7/217. WJ. Alexander to Stirling, 24 November 1857, Stirling Maxwell T-SK 29/7/ 198. The newspapers were running daily bulletins on the progress of the Indian Mutiny. Sarah Disraeli to Mary Anne Disraeli, 26 November 1857, H D/III/A/439. Margaret Strangford to Disraeli, 19 November 1857, H B/XXI/S/653. Addington 18. Times, 18 November 1857.

Afterwards 1 MP, Times, 26 November 1857. 2 MC, 27 November 1857. It also blundered in stating that Philippa survived her brother. 3 Press, 28 November 1857. 4 Henry Baillie to Disraeli, 26 November 1857, H B/XXI/B/31. 5 Disraeli to Sarah Brydges Willyams, 2 October 1861, H R/IV/D/6e[c]. 6 Faber to die Duke of Norfolk, Addington 289. R. Faber, Young England 224. 7 Manners to Lyttelton, [November 1857], Whibley II 99. Lyttelton to [Manners? November 1857], 'Memoir,' APxxix. 8 Was Susan Morier the mysterious 'Mrs M-' who reportedly asked to be buried next to GSS? Lady Gregory, Seventy Years 107. 9 Quoted in Sarah Bradford, Disraeli 219. 10 Margaret Strangford to Manners, 6 December 1858, Bel. 11 Margaret Strangford to Mary Anne Disraeli, 11 December 1858, H D/III/C/ 2532. 12 Margaret Strangford to Mary Anne Disraeli, 12 June 1861, H D/III/C/2537. MP20June 1861. 13 Disraeli to Margaret Strangford, [July 1861], H B/II/64a. 14 Cameron, Campsie 165. Lennox Papers, Strathclyde T-LX3/54. 15 Disraeli to Sarah Brydges Willyams, 2 October 1861, H R/IV/D/6e[c], DL VIII (in progress).

344 Notes to pages 301-4 16 Emily Strangford to Disraeli, 23 December 1874, H B/XXI/S/654. Emily Strangford to George Bentley, 4,15 September 1874, Illinois (L20, L21). Emily Strangford to Manners, 23 January 1875, H B/XXI/S/655a. 17 Lady Holland to Emily Strangford, 18 January 1875, Strangford Papers, Huntington Library, FB1818. 18 The laborious process, involving at least two assistant editors and the advice of apparently the entire political establishment from Manners to Gladstone, is recorded in the Bentley/Strangford Papers, Illinois RBUI (L21-56). 19 Emily Strangford to Bentley, 20 April 1875, Illinois (L49). 20 MP7, 8, 11 May 1875. Emily Strangford to Bentley,! 1 May 1875, Illinois (L52). 21 Emily Strangford to Bentley, 1, 5 June 1875, Illinois (L53, 54). 22 Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens 142-50. NewDNB. 23 HFPrefaceii.

Bibliography

Note on Sources The Strangford family papers were lost in the 1950s and have resisted all efforts to recover them. Selected family letters are in two published sources: E.B. de Fonblanque, Lives of the Lords Strangford (1877) and Charles Whibley, Lord John Manners and His Friends (1925). Fonblanque quotes extensively, but his dating (where it exists) is often questionable, as are his renderings of Smythe's difficult handwriting. Whibley is accurate, but since Smythe was not his main focus the selection is limited. Primary Sources Aberdeen Papers: British Library, London Aytoun Papers: National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh Bentley Papers: University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana Broadlands Papers: Southampton University Library Cambridge Union Records: Cambridge University Library Canterbury Public Library: Canterbury Poll Book Disraeli Papers: Hughenden Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford Esher Papers: Watlington Park, Oxford Eton College Library Family Records Centre: London Foreign Office Records: UK National Archives, London Grey Papers: Durham University Library Guildhall Library, London Houghton Papers: Trinity College Library, Cambridge Huntington Library, Pasadena, California

346 Bibliography The King's School, Canterbury Lennox of Woodhead Papers: Strathclyde Archives, Mitchell Library, Glasgow Londonderry Estate Archives: Durham County Record Office, Durham Niedersachsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv: Hanover Northumberland Papers: Alnwick Castle, Northumberland Peel Papers: British Library, London Philipse Papers: Historic Hudson Valley, Tarrytown, New York Rutland Papers: Belvoir Castle, Lincolnshire St John's College Library, Cambridge Stanhope Papers: Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone Stirling-Maxwell Papers: Strathclyde Archives, Mitchell Library, Glasgow Strangford Papers: Duke University Library Trinity College Library, Cambridge Wellington Papers: Southampton University Library Secondary Sources Periodicals and Newspapers The Book of Beauty The Critic The Edinburgh Review Fraser 's Magazine Illustrated London News The Kentish Gazette The Kentish Observer The Literary Souvenir The Morning Chronicle The Morning Post Naval and Military Gazette

The New Monthly Magazine Oxford and Cambridge Review Pictorial Times The Press Punch The Quarterly Review The Satirist The Saturday Review Temple Bar The Times Young England

Writings by George Smythe In addition to numerous editorials in MC1848-52, the following are GSS's known publications. The Prayer of Childhood.' Literary Souvenir (1833) 2. 'The Fellowship of Nature.' Literary Souvenir (1833) 68. To a Phantom.' Literary Souvenir (1833) 211. 'Lament of Cino da Pistoia.' Literary Souvenir (1834) 190.

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'The Oriental Love-letter.' Literary Souvenir (1834) 250. Review of History of England: /by Viscount Mahon. QRbl (December 1836) 330-49. Review of History of England: II, ///by Viscount Mahon. QR63 (January 1839) 151-65. Review ofEssai sur la Vie du Grand Conde by Viscount Mahon. QR 71 (December 1842) 106-69. 'A Sketch.' Book of Beauty (1843) 76. Review of Histoire de la Restauration des Bourbons and Louis XVby Jean-Baptiste Capefigue. QR73 (December 1843) 68-87. 'The Monster Meeting.' NMM70 (February 1844) 250-4. 'Social Nuisances: The Lap-Dog.' 7VMM70 (April 1844) 511-14. The Duty of Self-Commemoration.' 7VMM70 (April 1844) 529-32. The Perfidious Engineer.' A/MM71 (July 1844) 279-97. Historic Fancies. London: Colburn, 1844. 'Le Peuple Souriquois.' A/MM 71 (August 1844) 425-30. 'Social Piracy' I, II, III. NMM72 (September 1844) 1-17, (October 1844) 16879, (November 1844) 351-62. 'Fantasia' [under Disraeli's name]. The Keepsake (1845) 163-5. Review of Etudes sur les Orateurs. Oxford and Cambridge Review 2:7 (August 1845) 195-219; also as Pamphlet 1451 (1), Earl Grey Papers, Durham University Library. 'Dante at the Court of Philippe le Bel.' Book of Beauty (1846) 169. The Rhine of the Franks.' Eraser's Magazine 44 (July 1851) 44-6. 'Benjamin Dejuda.' MC (8, 10, 15, 22, 25 November 1852). The Pony Peel.' Press (7 May 1853) 3. 'Probationary Odes' I. Press (7 May 1853) 12. Review of The Right Honourable Benjamin Disraeli, M.P. by Thomas MacKnight. Press (7 January 1854) 15-16. 'Lord Stanley.' Saturday Review 1 (10 November 1855) 25-6. Review of Histoire de la Revolution Franc.aise by Louis Blanc. Saturday Review (8 December 1855) 98-9. Tn the House of Maecenas.' Temple Bar 34 (January 1872) 186-91. Angela Pisani: A Novel. London: Richard Bentley, 1875. Books and Articles Adburgham, Alison. A Radical Aristocrat: Sir William Molesworth ofPencarrow. Padstow: Tabb House, 1990. Addington, Raleigh, ed. Faber: Poet and Priest: Selected Letters by Frederick William

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354 Bibliography Pemble, John. Venice Rediscovered. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Peters, Catherine. The King of Inventors: A LifeofWilkie Collins. 1991. London: Minerva, 1992. Pope-Hennessy, James. Monckton Milnes: The Years of Promise 1809-1851. London: Constable, 1949. Puckler-Muskau, Hermann. Puckler's Progress: The Adventures of Prince PucklerMuskau in England, Wales and Ireland 1826-9. Tr. Flora Brennan. London: Collins, 1987. The Register of Tonbridge School from 1826 to 1910. Ed. H.E. Steed. London: Rivingtons, 1911. Reid, T. Wemyss. The Life, Letters and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes. London: Cassell, 1890. Reynolds, K.D. Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1998. Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Corrupt Practices in the City of Canterbury (British Sessional Papers: 1853). London: Stationery Office, 1853. Ridley, Jane. Young Disraeli 1804-1846. New York: Crown, 1995. Rivington, Septimus. The History of Tonbridge School 1869. London: Rivingtons, 1925. Robson, John M. What Did He Say? Editing Nineteenth-Century Speeches from Hansard and the Newspapers. Lethbridge: U of Lethbridge P, 1988. Romilly, Joseph. Romilly's Cambridge Diary 1832-42. Ed.J.P.T. Bury. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1967. Russell, Philippa (Mrs Frank). Fragments of Auld Lang Syne. London: Hutchinson, 1925. Sadleir, Thomas V. 'The Burkes of Marble Hill.' Proceedings of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society 8:1 (1913-14) 1-11. Schoenberg, Bernard, et al. Bereavement: Its Psychosocial Aspects. New York: Columbia UP, 1975. Searby, Peter. A History of the University of Cambridge: III 1750-1850. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1997. Seymour, Charles. Electoral Reform in England and Wales. New Haven: Yale UP, 1915. Shattock, Joanne. Politics and Reviewers: The 'Edinburgh' and the 'Quarterly. 'London: Leicester UP, 1989. Slater, Michael. 'The Deleted "Young England" Passages from The Chimes.' Charles Dickens, The Christmas Books: Volume One. Ed. Michael Slater. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971. Appendix A. Smiles, Samuel. A Publisher and His Friends: Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray. London: John Murray, 1891.

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Index

Aberdeen, George, 4th Earl of, 11, 126, 205, 207, 208, 209, 211, 223, 243, 246, 247, 249, 256, 266, 268, 270, 278, 282 Abinger, James, 1st Baron, 66 Academy, 302 Admans, Henry, 116 Ainsworth, Mr, 130 Albert, Prince, 88, 106, 265 AlburyPark, 192 Alexander I, of Russia, 27, 28, 29 Alexander, W.J., 295 Alexandria, 285, 286, 287 Allan, Peregrine, 294 Almack's, 51, 84, 89, 90, 95,122 Alnwick, 34, 44, 51, 61, 74, 81, 151 Ambleside, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 70, 74, 75, 133, 134 Andover (Hants), 215 Anglicanism. See Church of England Anti-Jacobin, 198 Apponyi, Comte Rodolphe, 231 Arnold, Thomas, 69 Ascot, 61 Ashford, 4, 15, 47, 299 Ashworth, Henry and Edmund, 131, 172

Ashley, Baron. See Shaftesbury, 7th Earl of Ash ton, Mr, 130 Astley's Royal Amphitheatre, 225, 281 Athenaeum (Cambridge), 56 Auriol, Charles, 147, 163 Austin, Charles, 116 Austin, Sarah, 285 Aytoun, W.E., 254, 269 Bach, J.C., 35 Baillie, Henry, 8, 89, 95, 162, 249, 287, 298, 300; marriage to Philippa Smythe, 101-2; and Young England, 139,145-6 Baillie, Philippa (GSS's sister), 83, 84, 214, 267, 298, 300; birth, 23, 24; health, 26, 133; in love with Cochrane, 89; marriage to Baillie, 101-2, 104, 107, 121, 213; death, 278 Baillies, 139, 248-50, 303 Balfour, James, 87 Balzac, Honore de, 12, 144, 176; David Sechard, 184; La Peau de Chagrin (The Wild Ass's Skin), 3,

358

Index

26, 92,123,134,187, 202, 225, 289-90, 296; Ursule Mirouet, 187 Bashall, Mr, 130 Bateman, William, 2nd Baron, 300 Bateson, Robert, 81,124,132-3, 161, 166, 223 Bateson, Sir Robert, 1st baronet, 132 Bauffremont, Prince, 143-4,147, 149, 151 Bauffremont, Princesse, 143-4, 147 Beauchamp, Richard, Viscount (4th Marquess of Hertford), 150 Bedgebury, 140 Belgrave, Lady Elizabeth, Marchioness of Westminster (2nd Marquess), 22 Belvoir Castle, 39, 77, 134 Bentinck, Lord George, 213, 217, 222, 228, 229, 237, 238, 250 Bentley, George: publishes AP, 12, 301-3 Bentley, Richard, 254, 276, 283 Bentley's Miscellany, 66, 254 Beresford, Lady, 122 Berkeley, Frederick, 13th Baron (5th Earl), 293, 342n24 Billage, Bessie. See Stamford and Warrington, Elizabeth, Countess of Blakesley, Joseph, 58, 60, 79-80, 82, 100 Blanc, Louis, 179, 231, 234, 283 Blandford, Frances, Marchioness of (Duchess of Marlborough, 7th Duke), 247 Blandford, John, Marquess of (7th Duke of Marlborough), 172 Blessington, Marguerite, Countess of (1st Earl), 46, 90, 147, 149, 158, 224

Bolingbroke, Henry, 1st Viscount, 10, 178 Bonaparte, Josephine, of France, 3, 292 Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III of France), 182, 271; and Lady Dorothy Walpole, 214; takes power, 239, 256 Bonaparte, Napoleon I of France, 3,

18, 78, 204, 214, 238, 251, 262, 285, 292 Bonham, Francis, 170 Book of Beauty, 46,147,148,149-50 Boswell, Alexander (Lord Auchinleck),236 Boswell, James, 236, 240 Botta, Paul, 158 Bowring,John, 135 Bradgate Park, 3, 282, 294-5, 298 Bradshaw, James, 105,106, 109, 122-3,167,168, 228 Brent, Alderman, 271-3 Brett, William Baliol (1st Viscount Esher),150 bribery, 85, 111-16, 140-1, 271-3 Bright, John, 190 Brighton, 183, 188,192-3, 215, 268, 277, 279, 282 Brodie, Sir Benjamin, 1st baronet,

37-8 Bronte, Charlotte: GSS visits, 248 Bronte, Patrick, 248 Brougham and Vaux, Henry, 1st Baron, 11, 199, 233, 239, 249-50 Brougham and Vaux, Mary Anne, Baroness (1st Baron), 249 Brown, Hannah. See Meredith, Hannah Brown, William, 183, 187,189, 193 Browne, Andrew, 19, 20

Index Browne, Lady Catherine Ellen, 244 Browne, Eleanor. See Strangford, Eleanor ('Ellen'), Viscountess Browne, Katherine (later ffrench), 19,20 Browne, Margaretta, 49 Browne, Nicholas, 19, 20 Browne, William: 'On the Countess of Pembroke,' 267 Brucejames (8th Earl of Elgin), 125 Brunei, Isambard Kingdom, 175 Buckingham, Richard, 2nd Duke of, 135 Buckner, Richard, 300, 305n4 Bulwer, Edward Lytton (1st Baron Lytton),35, 150, 269 Bulwer, Sir Henry, 289 Burdett, Sir Francis, 5th baronet, 182 Burke, Christian, Lady (1st baronet), 19 Burke, Edmund, 59, 69, 81, 179, 264 Burke, James, 25 Burke, Sir John, 2nd baronet, 244 Burke, Sir Thomas, 1st baronet, 19 Burton, Sir Richard, 301 Burton, Captain Ryder, 112 Butler, Lady Eleanor, 23 Butler, WJ., 82-3 Byron, George Gordon, 6th Baron, 7, 9, 25, 27, 56, 73, 90, 201, 203, 300, 332n28; Childe Harold, 120, 321n4; Corsair, 176; English Bards, 17 'Caesar.' See Wellington, Arthur, 1st Duke of Cairo, 285-7 Cambaceres, Jean Jacques de, 238 Cambridge University, 6, 10, 50, 55-61, 66, 67, 78-80, 81-3, 85, 86-7, 93, 142; High Steward

359

election, 99-101, 206, 207. See also Smythe, George: speeches at Cambridge Union Cameron, Julia Margaret, 219 Camoens, Luis, 18, 204 Canning, George, 20, 27, 28, 29, 30, 34, 153, 191,197-8, 204, 264, 268 Cannizzaro, Duchess of, 150 Canterbury, 61, 76, 85, 98, 100, 120, 124-5, 151, 154-5, 166, 205, 210, 235, 239, 246, 320nnl5,16; elections at, 7,11,105-16,122-3, 226-9, 244-5, 257-8, 278-9, 297; bribery at, 111-16, 140-1; petitions at, 114, 121, 261, 267, 269; inquiry at, 12, 228, 271-3, 278; GSS withdraws at, 260-1. See also Smythe, George: speeches Canterbury, Archbishop of. See Howley, William Capefigue, Jean-Baptiste, 58-9, 160 Capel, Adolphus, 280 Capel, Charlotte, 280-1 Carlisle, Bishop of. See Percy, Hugh Carlylejane, 239 Carlyle, Thomas, 58, 62, 74, 95, 179, 223, 239 Carrel, Armand, 179, 235 Carrington, Charlotte, Baroness (2nd Baron), 242 Carroll, Lewis, 51, 168 Casanova, Giacomo, 163, 189, 226 Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Viscount. See Londonderry, Robert, 2nd Marquess of Catholics, 7, 53, 78, 106, 125, 134, 146, 153, 198, 203, 277; and Maynooth.,120, 124, 127 Cavaignac, Louis Eugene, 237 Charles I, 14, 45, 236

360 Index Charles II, 14,45 Charles XIV of Sweden, 21, 22 Chartists, 6,12, 131, 178-9, 236 Chatham, William Pitt, 1st Earl of, 79, 261 Chesterfield, Philip Dormer, 4th Earl of, 276 Chevening, 32, 34, 35, 66, 103 Christopher, R.B., 265 Church of England, 7, 52, 53, 63, 65, 76-8, 82, 86,106,120,134,143, 152 Clanricarde, Elizabeth, Countess of (13th Earl), 277 Clare, John, 2nd Earl of, 201 Clarendon, George, 4th Earl of, 185 Clary, Princesse Mathilde, 252 Claviere, Etienne, 261, 339nl2 Clifford, Rosamond de, 16, 19 Clive, Edward (3rd Earl of Powis), 86 Cobbett, William, 118 Cobden, Richard, 131, 135, 190 Cochrane, Alexander Baillie- (1st Baron Lamington), 50, 62, 81, 88, 95, 99, 104, 112, 134, 141, 142-3, 151-2, 153, 156, 158, 161, 166, 174, 177, 191, 195, 196, 207, 248, 303; at Eton, 42, 61; in Coningsby, 39; 57; and Young England, 7, 38, 139, 145-6, 210; in love with Philippa Smythe, 89, 102; elections, 122-4, 126-7,141, 322n26; his 'Green Gage,' 184 - works: Ernest Vane, 43,92,160, 221, 241,243; LucilkBdmont, 60,92; Morea, 93; A.Young Artist's Life, 307n4 Cochrane, Annabella (Baroness Lamington, 1st Baron), 196 Cochrane, Maria, 143,144, 324n32 Cochrane, Admiral Sir Thomas, 38, 89,134

Cocks, Catherine. See Stamford and Warrington, Catherine, Countess of Cocks, Susan. See Morier, Susan Cocks, Polly, 225 Colburn, Henry, 167,170, 174, 176 Coleridge, Hardey, 64 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 52,158 Conde, Prince Louis de, 147, 314n48 'Condition of England' question, 116, 128-31 Coningsby family, 159 Conservatives, 7, 11, 51, 62, 63, 78, 85, 94, 98,100,102,105,106,107, 109,110,112,113,119,120,122, 123,126,171, 206, 212, 220, 228, 229, 261, 266, 271; and bribery, 114-16, 273; and reform, 118-19, 126, 153 Constantinople, 21, 24-8, 29, 236, 244 consumption. See tuberculosis Conyngham, Lord Albert (1st Baron Londesborough), 74, 100, 102, 104, 105, 106, 110, 228, 229, 245, 258,271,273,297 Conyngham, Lady Henrietta, 273 Cook, John Douglas, 232, 233, 237, 283 Cookesley, William, 41, 47, 172 Coppock,James, 111, 273 'Corise.' S^Tankerville, Corisande, Countess of corn laws, 135, 136-7, 178, 204, 209, 212,213 Courier, 104 Coutts, Angela Burdett ('Fedora,' 'the Pisani,' 'Psyche'), 11, 84, 99,104, 122; GSS pursues, 181-94, 195, 201 Coutts, Harriott, 182 Coutts, Thomas, 182

Index Coutts's Bank, 133-4, 182, 183 Cowley, Georgiana, Baroness (1st Baron), 43, 312n74 Cowley, Henry, 1st Baron, 142 Craufurd, Edward, 83 Crawford, James, 24th Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, 128 Crick, Thomas, 58 Crimean War, 278 Critic, 174, 196 Croker, John Wilson, 36, 58, 77, 160, 172 Cromwell, Oliver, 14, 306nlO Crouch, William, 87 Croucher, Joseph, 112 Cunningham, Miss, 143 Cunninghame, John, 288 Dallas, Robert, 120, 321n4 Dan ton, Georges, 178 Darell, Henry, 170, 281, 299 Darell, Mary Anne, 281 Darells, 32 Dawson, Mary, 96 Deepdene, 149, 156-9, 169, 301 Delanejohn, 174, 289, 302 Delawarr, George, 5th Earl, 201 De L'Isle, Philip Sidney, 1st Baron, 104 Delphine: GSS in love with, 185-6, 188, 195, 202-3, 225 Derby, Edward, 14th Earl of, 12, 126, 246, 247, 253, 256-7, 263, 265, 266, 270,271,279,280 Derbyites, 257, 258, 260, 261 Deux Breges, Marquis de, 143, 147 Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of (5th Duke), 89 Devonshire, William, 5th Duke of, 89 Dick, Quintin, 145, 201

361

Dickens, Charles, 11, 167, 183, 236; on GSS's under-secretaryship, 210, 211 - works: The Battle of Life, 217; Bleak House, 259; The Chimes, 195-6; David Copperfield, 153; Nicholas Nickleby, 129; Oliver Twist, 66, 221 Digby, Kenelm: Broad Stone of Honour, 53,85 Disraeli, Benjamin, 47, 51, 80, 100, 106,107,123,124, 199, 205, 206, 207, 209, 239, 242, 243, 245-6, 251, 253, 278, 280, 281, 282, 285, 297, 300; and Strangford, 5, 36-7, 95, 172, 281; and GSS, 5-7, 11, 36-7, 66, 84, 95-7,102,112, 120,126, 136-9, 142, 144, 146-7, 148, 151, 152, 157-9, 161, 162-3, 165,169, 173,175,177, 180,181-8,189, 192-4,195,196-8, 200-3, 208, 211, 221, 223, 232, 233, 234, 236-8, 240-1, 245-6, 247-8, 249, 257-8, 260-1, 264-5, 266, 274-5, 279-80, 286, 288-9, 291, 310n36, 341n35; marriage, 62, 85, 96; Shrewsbury election, 102, 122-3, 127, 145; debts, 123, 126-7; and Young England, 126, 138, 139, 141-2, 145-7, 154, 156-9, 200, 299; GSS's 'Cid and Captain,' 5, 187, 206, 276; at Manchester Athenaeum, 18992; attacks Peel, 197-8, 209, 212; proposes 'Grand Junction Ministry,' 212-13, 334n30; on Peel's defeat, 213; on Lady Dorothy Walpole, 229; 'Disraeli the adventurer,' 237; and Wellington eulogy, 12, 237, 261-4; colludes with GSS, 246, 249, 257-8, 260-1, 273; in government, 256; and 'Benjamin

362

Index

Dejuda,' 264-5; and Press, 268-71, 275-7; calls GSS 'bedridden Lovelace,' 292; GSS's last letter to, 292-3; on GSS's death, 297-8, 299; on Margaret Strangford, 301 - works: Alarcos, 84, 178, 264; Coningsby, 5, 7-8, 9-10,11, 20, 31, 36, 38, 39-40, 41-2, 44, 47, 48-9, 50, 54-5, 57, 57-8, 60, 61, 63, 88, 91, 92, 96, 98-9, 100-1,105, 106, 108, 110,113-14,118, 119, 127-30, 135, 148,150,159, 161, 163, 165, 167,169,170-4,176,178-9,181, 188,192,196,198, 200, 213, 214, 238, 241, 243, 261, 264, 275, 322n27; Contarini Fleming, 17, 26, 34, 36-7, 95,148,172, 264, 277; 'Eden and Lebanon,' 148; Endymion, 85, 96-7,194, 210, 220, 226, 298; 'Fantasia,'158-9; Henrietta Temple, 66; Lord George Bentinck, 250, 264; 'Mutilated Diary,' 90; Reminiscences, 298; Sybil, 64,128, 193, 196, 200, 233, 248; Tancred, 8, 12, 14, 21, 34, 94-5, 118, 166, 173, 213, 222-5, 236, 256, 264, 265; Venetia, 66; Vindication of the English Constitution, 6, 59, 148; Vivian Grey, 36,148,182, 237 D'Israeli, Isaac, 36 Disraeli, Mary Anne, 6, 55, 62, 136, 138,139,144,151,159,161,162, 176,185,192,198, 208, 213, 215, 221, 228, 237, 241, 242, 245, 246, 254, 256, 257, 266, 289, 295; marries Disraeli, 96; as 'Proserpine,' 157-8,169; entertains Indians, 175; not to see GSS's letters, 184; quarrels with GSS, 200-1; helps GSS, 281, 293, 299; GSS's legacy to,

300; presents Margaret Strangford at court, 301 Disraeli, Sarah, 84, 142, 208, 237, 245, 256, 294, 295 Disraelis, 300 Dodington, George Bubb, 280 Don Juan, 9,183 Don Quixote, 189 D'Orsay, Count Alfred, 90, 95,133, 149,175 Douro, Arthur Richard, Marquess of (2nd Duke of Wellington), 66, 114, 186 Douro, Elizabeth, Marchioness of, 186 Dover, Lady Georgiana (1st Baron), 242 Doyle, John, 269 Doyle, Richard, 268, 269 Drummond, Adelaide, 192-4 Drummond, Lady Henrietta, 192-4 Drummond, Henry, 192, 241 Drummond, Louisa (Lady Lovaine, Duchess of Northumberland, 6th Duke), 192-4, 195 Drummond, Mortimer, 41 Drummonds' Bank, 41, 192 Du Barry, Marie, Comtesse, 111, 225 Dublin, 131-2 Dumas, Alexandreyi/s, 144; La Dame aux Camellias, 26 Dumas, Alexandre pere, 144,149 Dumont, Pierre, 179 Duncombe, Thomas, 140 Duncombe, William (2nd Baron Feversham), 214 Dunn, Richard, 182, 185 Eastnor, Charles, Viscount (3rd Earl Somers),219, 289

Index 363 Edinburgh Review, 66, 120 Eglinton, Archibald William, 13th Earl of: Eglinton Tournament, 85, 317n33 Egypt, 284-7 Eld, John, 32 Eld, Louisa Sarah, 32 elections, 61, 63, 98, 105, 106, 107, 167, 227, 228, 243, 261. See also Canterbury Eliot, Lord Edward (3rd Earl of StGermans), 153 Elizabeth I, 16 Elssler, Fanny, 273 Ely, Jane, Marchioness of (3rd Marquess), 303 Engels, Friedrich, 128 Esher, 1st Viscount. See Brett, William Baliol Essex, Arthur, 6th Earl of, 280 Esterhazy, Prince Nicholas, 117 Esterhazy, Princess Sarah, 252 Esterhazy, Prince Nicolas (son of above), 252 Eton College, 32, 38-45, 47-9, 50, 51, 52, 53, 57, 59, 60, 123; Eton Society, 44-5, 49, 56 Evans, John Viney, 55 Exchequer Bills fraud, 133-4, 143, 151, 182 Exmouth, Edward, 3rd Viscount, 217 Faber, Frederick, 60, 64, 66, 79, 97, 98, 144, 203, 230, 236, 303; passion for GSS, 4, 63-5, 68-76, 80-1, 82, 83-4, 85, 90, 93, 99, 133-4, 140, 179, 278, 289, 296, 298, 316n43 'Fabricius.' S^Smythe, George: writings and works 'Fedora.' SeeCoutts, Angela Burdett

Feildenjohn, 118 Feilding, Louisa, Viscountess (Countess of Denbigh, 8th Earl), 249 Feilding, Rudolph, Viscount (8th Earl of Denbigh), 249 Ferrand, William, 139, 141, 170, 173, 191, 248 Feversham, William, 2nd Baron, 214 Fielding, Henry, 265 'Fleming, Kitty.' See Stamford and Warrington, Catherine, Countess of Fonblanque, E.B. de, 23 Foreign Office, 18, 19, 27, 28, 211 Forester, Cecil (3rd Baron Forester), 102,112, 162 Forester, Cecil, 1st Baron Forester, 102 Foster, Augustus, 90 Foster, Lady Elizabeth (Duchess of Devonshire, 5th Duke), 89-90 Fouque, Friedrich de la Motte: Sintram, 53 Fox, Charles James, 66 Fox, Henry, 1st Baron Holland, 280 Fox, Mr, 41 Franz Josef, of Austria, 251 Eraser's Magazine, 169, 176, 178, 226, 254 Fraser, Sir William, 4th baronet, 299 free trade, 7, 135, 136-7, 198, 207, 227 French Revolution, 12, 97, 144, 168, 178-9,233,283 'Fronde,' 147 Gatton, 116 Gawler, Mr, 215 Geneva, 143-4,183, 186, 203, 217 Gentz, Friedrich von, 273 George III, 261

364 Index George IV, 15, 28 Gibson, Susanna Arethusa, 162 Gibson, Thomas Milner, 190 Gipps, H.P., 106, 273 Girardin, Delphine de, 149 Girardin, Emile, 146,179 Gladstone, William, 9, 67, 82, 86, 97, 120,122,123,125,172,182,199, 210, 239, 270; on GSS's speeches, 10; intercedes for Milnes, 207-8 Gladstone, Catherine, 83 Globe, 109, 263 Glynne, Mary. SegLyttelton, Mary, Baroness Goderich, George, Viscount (2nd EarlofRipon),214 Gordon, Lucie Duff, 285 Gordon, Philip, 298 Gore House, 90, 149 Goulburn, Frederick, 68, 73 Gower, Granville Leveson, 99, 319n46 Graeme (embassy cook), 30 Grafton, Duke of, 282 Graham, Sir James, 2nd baronet, 126, 141,170,197, 204, 242, 247 Grammont, Anne, Duchesse de, 89, 144, 147 Grammont, Antoine, Due de, 89, 144, 147 Granby, Charles Cecil, Marquess of (6th Duke of Rutland), 84, 210, 238 The Grange, Rottingdean, 35-6, 37-8 Grant brothers, 129-30 'Green Gage,' Cochrane's, 184 Gregory, Augusta, Lady, 294 Gregory, Sir William, 153-4, 211, 218, 220, 279 Grenville, George, 261 Greville, Charles, 62,173

Grey, Charles, 2nd Earl, 42, 44, 81, 89,124, 200, 207 Gronow, R.H., 163 Grosvenor Gate, 96, 151, 175, 192, 195,196, 200, 241, 245, 268, 276 GSS. See Smythe, George Guizot, Francois, 151, 211, 231, 233, 234, 236, 237, 270 Gurwood, Fanny, 149, 288 Gurwood, John, 149,175, 216, 328n36 Gurwoods, 150,156-7,161-2,165, 219 Gutenberg, Johannes, 191 Hagley, 83, 104,134 Hallam, Arthur, 8, 73 Hamilton, Lord Claud, 99, 120, 139, 182 Hamilton, William, llth Duke of, 299 Hamond, Alicia: and GSS, 157, 326n28 Hanbury, Charles Bateman, 300-1, 302-3 Hanmer, Sir John, 3rd baronet, 160, 170 Hanover, Ernest Augustus, King of, 15, 162, 190, 191,199, 228, 247, 252-3 Hansard, 121, 138, 152 Hansard, Thomas, 156 Hare, Augustus, 52 Hare, Julius, 58; tutors GSS, 52-5 Harrison, Benson, 68 Harrow School, 65 Hastings, Lady Flora, 84 Hastings, Warren, 117 Hawkins, Sir Caesar, 281 Hayward, Abraham, 241-2, 248 Heine, Heinrich, 98

Index 365

Henderson, Mr, 129, 131 Henri II, of France, 103 Henri V, of France, 203 Henry II, 16 Henry VIII, 292 Herbert, Edward, 68, 73 Herbert, Sidney (1st Baron Herbert), 242, 265 Herriesjohn Charles, 41, 238 Herries, William, 41 Herschel, Sir John, 1st baronet, 74 Herstmonceux, 52-5 Hertford, Francis, 3rd Marquess of, 111,150,172,214 Hertslet, Lewis, 211 Higgins, Matthew ('Jacob Omnium'), 232, 289 Hinde,John, 145 Hoche, Lazare, 179 Hodges, Twisden, 113, 122-3 Hodgson, Richard, 145 Holland, Augusta, Baroness (4th Baron), 302 Holland, Elizabeth, Baroness (3rd Baron), 90 homosexuality: Byron's, 73; at Eton, 42-3; social taboos against, 72-3 Hooker, Emma, 35 Hooker, Thomas: GSS at his school, The Grange, 35-6, 37-8; warns GSS, 40 Hope, Alexander Beresford, 79, 81, 82, 83, 94, 104, 117, 127, 140, 149, 240; Maidstone election, 122-3; maiden speech, 136, 138; and Young England, 139, 145-6 Hope, Henry, 136, 144, 145, 149, 156-9, 169, 268 Houghton, 1st Baron. toMilnes, Richard Monckton

Howard, Lord Edward (1st Baron Howard), 41, 57, 66, 84, 124 Howick, Henry, Viscount (3rd Earl Grey), 124 Howley, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 76-7 Howth, Thomas, 3rd Earl of, 213-14 Hudson, George, 175 Hughenden Manor, 274-5, 280 Illustrated London News, 207 Indians: Mary Anne Disraeli hosts, 175 Ireland: Catholic rights, 7, 125, 153, 156, 167, 196, 198, 204, 253. See also Maynooth college Irvine, James, 47-8 Isaacson, Stephen, 58 Isabella II, of Spain, 270 Isabelle (Eugenie Mayer's aunt), 149 Ismail Pasha, of Egypt, 285 James I, 14, 86 James II, 22, 103, 106; and 1688 revolution, 67, 77-9 Jermyn, Lady Katherine, 244 Jerrold, Douglas, 175 Jersey, George, 5th Earl of, 41, 280 Jersey, Sarah, Countess of (5th Earl), 90 Jerseys, 252 Jesuits, 253 Jews: GSS supports, 120, 227; in Coningsby, 175; GSS satirizes, 240-1, 264-5 Joano VI, of Portugal, 18 Johnson, Samuel, 178, 236, 298 Johnstone, H. Butler, 273 Jonson, Ben, 14, 139

366

Index

Judde, Alice, 16, 33, 306nlO Judde, Sir Andrew, 33 Keate, John, 39, 40, 41, 44, 49 Keats, John, 8, 46, 230; Lamia, 158 Keepsake, 158, 270 Kelly, Fitzroy, 278 Kelson, James, 115 Kemble, Charles, 190 Kensal Green cemetery, 4, 299-300 Kentish Gazette, 76, 227, 229 Kentish Observer, 111, 210 Keswick, 68, 69, 70, 71,73 King's School, Canterbury, 61, 76, 85, 106 Knox, Thomas, 33 Koch, Robert, 290 Kossuth, Lajos, 256 Lake District, 63-5, 68-72, 73-5, 289, 296 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 235, 236 Lamb, Lady Caroline, 73, 89-90 Lamington, 248 Lane, Joseph (GSS's valet), 3, 295, 296 Larget (Largette), Anne. See Strangford, Anne, Viscountess Layard, A.H., 256, 267 Lear, Edward, 219, 285 Lebrun, Charles, Due de Plaisance, 238 Leigh ton, John, 67 Lennox Castle, 286, 288, 289 Lennox, Frances Kincaid, 286-9, 291, 293, 294-5, 301, 342nl3 Lennox, Lord Henry, 257, 274-5 Lennox, John, 286-7 Lennox, John Kincaid, 288, 291, 293, 294

Lennox, Margaret. See Strangford, Margaret, Viscountess Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 2nd baronet, 239 Lewis, Mary Anne. See Disraeli, Mary Anne Lewis, Wyndham, 6, 62, 96,107 Liberals, 62, 63, 78, 86, 98,109, 110, 116,118,135, 204, 213, 227, 229, 266, 273; petitions, 114,121; defeated, 120,122,126, 254, 256; GSS 'coalesces' with, 228, 245, 272 Liddell, Alice, 51 Liddell, Henry George (dean of Christ Church), 51 Liddell, Henry George (2nd Earl of Ravensworth), 51 Liddell, Henry Thomas (2nd Baron Ravensworth), 51 Lincoln, Henry, Earl of (5th Duke of Newcastle), 231, 232, 247 Lincoln, Susan, Countess of, 247 Lincolnites, 239 'Lindabrides.' SeeMaynard, Catherine Lindsay, Charles Hugh, 128 Linton, Eliza Lynn, 232, 233 Listowel, William, 2nd Earl of, 116 Literary Souvenir, 10, 45-7 Liverpool, Robert, 2nd Earl of, 86 Lockhartjohn Gibson, 58, 77,160, 165,174, 242 Loftus, John, Viscount (3rd Marquess of Ely), 112 Londonderry, Charles, 3rd Marquess of, 24, 34, 51, 80, 81,107,162,165, 195, 225, 227, 260, 267; warns GSS, 218 Londonderry, Frances Anne, Marchioness of (3rd Marquess), 51, 80,

Index 367 81, 238, 242, 247, 281, 289; on GSSWalpole scandal, 217, 221, 335n7 Londonderry, Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of, 24, 56; suicide, 27; and homosexuality, 72 Londonderrys, 84, 124, 128, 133 Longueville, Anne Genevieve de, 91, 147 Louis XIV, of France, 103, 184 Louis XV, of France, 225 Louis Philippe, of France, 142-3, 148, 151, 231, 236; abdication, 234, 235 Lovaine, Lord George (6th Duke of Northumberland), 194, 195 Lovat, Thomas, 1st Baron, 249 Lovelace, Richard, 165, 292 Lucas, Samuel, 269-70, 276 Lunns, Thomas, 116 Lushington, Stephen, 106, 115 Luther, Martin, 67, 78, 79, 120 Luxembourg, Due de, 143, 144, 147 Luxor, 285, 287 Lyell, Charles, 74 Lyndhurst,John, 1st Baron, 6, 9, 44, 84; Cambridge Steward election, 100-1, 102, 206, 207 Lyttelton, George, 4th Baron, 41, 50, 66, 67, 69, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 104, 125, 134, 142, 172, 179, 207, 305n6; Cambridge Steward election, 99-101, 206; GSS a 'splendid failure,' 12, 298 Lyttelton, Mary, Baroness (4th Baron), 83, 172 Lyttelton, Sarah, Baroness (3rd Baron), 20, 22

Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1st Baron), 58, 137, 204, 226, 247; silences GSS, 242

Macdonald, Godfrey, 4th Baron, 202 Machiavelli, Niccolo di, 204 Mackenzie, Forbes, 273 MacKnight, Thomas, 276 Mahmoud, Sultan of Turkey, 25, 28 Mahon, Philip, Viscount (5th Earl Stanhope), 32, 206; GSS reviews, 58-9, 77-8, 147 Maidstone, 6, 61, 62, 77, 107, 122-3 Maidstone, George, Viscount (llth Earl of Winchilsea), 269-70 Maintenon, Francoise, Marquise de, 103, 184 Malmesbury, Emma, Countess of (3rd Earl), 89 Malmesbury. James, 3rd Earl of, 97, 257, 258, 261, 271 Manchester: GSS visits, 127-31, 135, 137, 227 Manchester Athenaeum: GSS speaks at, 189-92, 196, 208 Manners, Lord John (7th Duke of Rutland), 61, 62, 64, 88, 93, 94, 95, 125, 152, 166, 171, 182, 197-.8, 200, 207, 212, 213, 231, 243, 244, 245, 249, 251, 252, 257, 286, 301; and GSS (seebelow); /iFdedicated to, 39, 170, 176; at Eton, 38, 41, 45, 49; at Cambridge, 50, 53, 59-60, 66, 77, 79, 80, 82; and Faber, 65, 73-5, 82; and Young England, 7, 38, 70, 76, 97-8, 139, 144-8, 168, 196, 275; and GSS-Tankerville affair, 89, 92, 99, 102-3, 104, 105, 124, 144; arid Cambridge Steward election, 99-101; England's Trust, 116, 119, 129, 176; meets Disraeli, 124; on National Holy-days, 147; refuses to join Peel, 210; visits Brontes, 248; marriages, 255, 277, 303

368

Index

- and GSS, 6,12, 32, 46, 57, 67-70, 83, 84, 108,109, 111, 112-13,126; factories tour, 127-32, 134,135-6, 140; European trip, 142-4, 153-4, 156, 160, 162, 179; Manchester Athenaeum, 189-91,196, 203; and Walpole scandal, 218, 221, 224, 230, 232, 234, 241, 250, 274, 278, 292; break with GSS, 294; GSS's death, 298 Manners, Louisa, Lady, 274, 277 Manning, Henry (Cardinal of Westminster), 35 Marat, Jean Paul, 11, 97 Maria, Regent of Portugal, 35 Maria de Gloria, of Portugal, 35 Marjoribanks, Edward, 183, 185 Marseilles, 286, 287 Martineau, Harriet, 74 Marvell, Andrew: GSS reads (The Rehearsal Transposed), 67, 85, 231, 233 Marx, Karl, 236 Mason, Jem, 225 Massey, Gerald: adopts GSS's 'Jacobin of Paris,' 179 'Massin,' 203, 332n33 Maurice, F.D., 52 Mayer, Eugenie (Viscountess Esher, 1st Viscount): and GSS, 149-50, 151, 155,157-8, 159, 161-3, 172, 195, 216, 219, 288, 326n27 Mayer, Fanny. See Gurwood, Fanny Maynard, Catherine ('Lindabrides'), 303; pursues GSS, 10, 188-90, 191-3, 202, 215, 280, 330n21 Maynard, Charles (4th Viscount Maynard), 192, 330n31 Maynard, Henry, 3rd Viscount, 188, 280

Maynard, Mary, Viscountess (3rd Viscount), 192 Maynard, [unidentified], Viscountess, 282 Maynooth college: GSS supports grant for, 120, 132, 153, 196, 205, 207, 227; splits Young England, 124,127,198, 200 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 98 Mechanic's Magazine, 47 Medici, Cosimo de, 204 Melville, Herman, 285 mercury, 290; poisoning, 201 Melbourne, William, 2nd Viscount, 61,62,88,89,90,98,106,126, 240 Meredith, Hannah, 99,182,183, 187-8, 193 Merivale, Charles, 79, 82 Metternich, Prince Clemens Lothar, 11, 27, 37, 235, 236, 239, 250-1 Metternich, Princess Pauline, 12, 251, 252 Michal (a servant), 36 Miguel de Braganca, King of Portugal, 35 Miller, William Hallowes, 58, 74, Milnes, Richard Monckton, 1st Baron Houghton, 11,169,194, 196, 200, 224, 267, 302, 303; and GSS, 12, 101,139-40,153,170, 207-8, 213, 239-40, 263; and Young England, 97-8,145; courts Angela Burdett Coutts, 182,194; challenges GSS to duel, 239-40 Mirabeau, Comte Honore, 163, 261 Modena, Grand Duke of, 4, 299 Modena, Mary of, 103 Molesworth, Sir William, 8th baronet, 162

Index 369 Moliere,Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 176 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 26 Montemolin, Comte de, 203 Moore, Thomas, 11, 17-18; on Lady Tankerville, 91-2; on Eugenie Mayer, 150; GSS cheers, 173 Morgan, Lady Sydney, 150 Morgan, W. and J.: and Exchequer Bills fraud, 133-4, 151 Morier, Susan, 225, 298-9, 343n8 Morley, Frances, Countess of (1st Earl): flirts with GSS, 242-3 Morley, John, 1st Earl of, 242 Morning Chronicle, 47, 121, 125, 139, 261; attacks GSS, 111, 170; reviews HF, 178; GSS writes in, 231-41, 243, 246, 250, 251, 254, 277, 283; on Milnes, 12, 239-40; GSS's obituary in, 297 - on Disraeli, 232, 236-8; Wellington eulogy, 261-4; 'Benjamin Dejuda,' 264-5 Morning Herald: misreports GSS, 125 Morning Post, 98, 111, 122, 191, 221, 228, 267, 293, 295; GSS writes in, 120, 124, 125, 254; reviews HF, 177; on GSS-Walpole scandal, 216; attacks GSS, 238-9; GSS's obituary in, 11, 297; reviews AP, 302; Strangford correspondence, 303 Morton, James, 4th Earl, 270 Murray, Charles Scott, 146 Murray, John, 77, 160, 269; rejects HF, 169-70 Mustapha Aga, 287 Napier, Francis (9th Baron Napier), 79, 218 Napier, Sir William Francis, 35, 307n25

Nelson, Horatio, 1st Earl, 97 Nesselrode, Count Karl, 30, 187 Nevill, Lady Dorothy. SeeWslpole, Lady Dorothy Nevill, Reginald, 228, 229 Newcastle, Henry, 4th Duke of, 231 Newcastle, Thomas, 1st Duke of, 280 Newman, John Henry, 64, 85, 119, 120, 203 New Monthly Magazine. GSS writes in,

167-8, 169, 174, 175, 176, 183, 192, 264; reviews HF, 177 Nicholas I, of Russia, 29, 30 'Ninon.' See Tankerville, Corisande, Countess of Norfolk, Charlotte, Duchess of (13th Duke), 187 Norfolk, Henry Charles, 13th Duke of, 41 Northcote, Stafford (1st Earl of Iddesleigh), 41 Northern Whig, 276 Northumberland, Charlotte, Duchess of (3rd Duke), 122 Northumberland, Hugh, 2nd Duke of, 51 Northumberland, Hugh, 3rd Duke of, 15, 34, 44, 51, 56, 61, 74, 107, 114, 142, 194, 195, 201, 207, 221; pays for GSS at Cambridge, 55; makes GSS vote for Lyndhurst, 100-1 Norton, Caroline, 11, 242 O'Connell, Daniel, 60-1, 106, 109, 118, 132; praises GSS, 125, 154; GSS satirizes, 167-8 OldSarum, 116 opium, 158-9, 292 Orford, Horatio, 3rd Earl of, 95

370

Index

Orford, Mary, Countess of (3rd Earl), 215,221,288 Orfords, 124, 214, 215-18, 221 Orleans, Due d': death, 142-3 Osborne, Catherine, 184 Osborne, Ralph Bernal, 184 Ossulston, Charles, Baron. See Tankerville, Charles, 5th Earl of Overbury, Sir Thomas, 288 Oxford and Cambridge Review, 200, 207 Oxford, Edward: shoots at Queen Victoria, 97-8 Oxford Movement, 64, 80, 296; GSS defends, 120; Disraeli and, 146 Pack, George, 296 Palgrave, Sir Francis, 160 Palmerston, Emily, Countess (3rd Viscount), 90, 92,101,102,122 Palmerston, Henry John, 3rd Viscount, 56,139, 212, 222, 233, 239, 243, 246-7, 249, 252, 257, 266, 270 Paris, 11, 142-3,144-5, 150-1, 161-5, 187-9, 201-2, 229, 231, 234-6 parliamentary bills and acts: Regency, 17, 28; Reform, 6, 9, 44, 61,107, 207; Factories, 118, 127, 128, 141, 168-9,170; Sugar duties, 120-1, 212; Poor law, 6, 66,110,114, 141, 170; Irish arms, 153-4,156, 213; Maynooth grant, 120, 127,132, 153,196,198-9, 205, 207; Church rates, 141; Ecclesiastical titles, 253; Corrupt practices, 273, 279 Pattle, Virginia (Viscountess Eastnor, Countess Somers, 3rd Earl), 289; GSS in love with, 218-19 Payne, Sarah, 225, 294 Peacocke, Montagu, 272, 274, 275, 280-1,291,293, 342n26

Pedro I, of Brazil, 35 Peel, Sir Robert, 2nd baronet, 5, 6, 67, 96,100,106,112,124,131, 134, 135,140,152,160,168,170, 204, 213, 217, 222, 226, 228, 232, 240, 264, 270, 276, 277; Tamworth Manifesto, 119; and GSS, 121, 125, 126,128,138,153,154,155,156, 160,167,177, 227; Young England attack, 151,165,197-8, 200; and Maynooth, 198-9, 207; appoints GSS, 11, 205-6, 209, 210, 211-12, 297 Peelites, 223, 238, 253, 261, 266 Pembroke, Mary, Countess of (2nd Earl), 267 Penshurst, 14, 33 Percy, Hugh, Bishop of Carlisle, 81 Perry, Charles, 78 Philipse, Frederick, 17 Philipse, Maria Eliza. See Strangford, Maria Eliza, Viscountess (5th Viscount) Phillips, Ambrose De Lisle, 160 Physiologies, 200, 332n25 Pickering, Edward, 41 Pictorial Times, 196 Pilcher, William, 273 'Pisani, the.' &0Coutts, Angela Burdett Pisani, Count Alexander, 28, 309n38 Pisani, Marian, 28 Pitt, William, the Younger, 11, 67, 82, 86,117,123,153,210,264,280 Pitt Club (Cambridge), 56, 78, 79 Plumptre,John, 76 Plutarch, 270 Poitiers, Diane de, 103 Pollington, Rachel, Viscountess, 229; and GSS, 217, 221

Index 371 Ponsonby, Caroline. S^Lamb, Lady Caroline Ponsonby, John, 1st Viscount, 213 Pope, Alexander, 168, 270 Porter, Endymion, 14, 283, 299 Porter, 'St George,' 14 Portugal: royal family's escape, 18, 35, 37, 109 Press: GSS writes in, 268-71, 275-7; GSS's obituary in, 297-8 Protectionism, 198, 213, 237, 249, 253 'Psyche.' SeeCoutts, Angela Burdett Puckler Muskau, Prince Hermann von, 285 Pulleine, Annie, 183, 185, 186, 187-8, 191 Punch, 43, 167, 169, 170, 175, 196, 206, 265, 268 Pusey, Edward, 64, 155, 227 Quarterly Journal of Education, 43 Quarterly Review, 169; GSS writes in, 10, 58-9, 77-8, 91, 93, 147, 160, 165 Quorn, the, 282, 294 Rabelais, Francois, 176 Rachel, Elisa, 287 Ranelagh, Thomas, 7th Viscount, 169, 242; and Young England, 161, 196, 200 Ravensworth, Maria-Susannah, Baroness (1st Baron), 74 Ravensworth, Thomas Henry, 1st Baron, 34, 51, 74 Ravensworth Castle, 34, 51, 73, 81 Rayner, Dr, 289-90 Redcasde, 250 Revolutions: (1688), 67, 77-9,106; (1848), 231-6, 239

Rhine, 183-6, 190, 191, 254 Richardson, Samuel, 265 Richelieu, Cardinal Armand de, 245 Ripon, Frederick, 1st Earl of, 214 Roberts, Mr, 129 Robespierre, Maximilien, 11, 77, 97, 174, 178, 179 Robinson, Thomas, 1st Baron Grantham, 280 Rochefoucauld, Francois de la, 91 Rockingham, Charles, 2nd Marquess of, 274, 340nl8 Roebuck, John, 118, 153, 170-1 Rogers, Samuel, 204 Romilly, Lady Elizabeth, 245 Romilly, Frederick, 245, 258, 260, 272-3; duel with GSS, 11, 259, 297 Rosamond, 'Fair.' See Clifford, Rosamond de Rose, Philip, 292, 293 Rothschild, Baron Lionel de, 57, 172, 243 Rothschilds, 111 Rottingdean, 35, 37, 47 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 144 Ruskinjohn, 219 Russell, Alexander, 304 Russell, Francis, 303 Russell, James, 304 Russell, Lord John (1st Earl Russell), 45,116,141,172, 205, 222, 226, 240, 245, 246, 253, 256, 262, 270, 278, 279, 280 Russell, Philippa: Fragments ofAuld Lang Syne, 303 Rutland, John, 5th Duke of, 11, 39, 190-1 Rutter, Jonathan, 272

372

Index

'S.' See Smythe, George: writings and works 'Sacharissa.' See Sidney, Lady Dorothy StAlbans, 114,116,140 St Albans, William, 9th Duke of, 182 St Cyr, Gouvion de, 237, 263 St Jules, Caroline, 89 Stjust, Louis Antoine de, 77, 178, 179 St Petersburg, 28, 29-31, 236 Sandon, Viscount (2nd Earl of Harrowby),156, 199 Satirist, 162,191; on GSS-Walpole scandal, 216-17, 221 Saturday Review, 257, 283 Savage, Richard, 178 Scarlett, Robert Campbell (2nd Baron Abinger), 66, 114 Schwarzenberg, Prince Felix, 251, 252,271 Scott, Sir Walter, 1st baronet, 44, 58, 265 Sebastiani, Comte Francois, 144 secret ballot: GSS against, 61 Seville, Francisco, Duke of, 270 Seymour, Dr Edward, 56, 200 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley, 7th Earl of, 11,29, 127,141 Shakespeare, William: Coriolanus, 260 Shawbe, Mr, 129 Shelburne, Henry, Earl of (1st Marquess of Lansdowne), 237 Sheridan, Richard, 242 Shrewsbury: Disraeli elected at, 122-3,127,145 Sidney, Algernon, 14, 283 Sidney, Lady Dorothy (Countess of Sunderland),14, 16, 218 Sidney, Sir Philip, 267, 283; GSS's ideal, 14,170

Sieyes, Comte Emmanuel, 238 Singleton, Thomas, 74, 81, 100 Skinners Company: and Strangford inheritance, 33 Sligo, Ellen (GSS's sister), Marchioness of (3rd Marquess), 102,151, 162,163,166, 247, 299; birth, 27; tuberculosis, 26, 47, 63, 104,143, 144, 244, 250, 254-5, 284; Catholic sympathies, 155; marriage, 121, 213-14, 215, 218, 219, 221, 226; death, 267, 278 Sligo, George, 3rd Marquess of, 284-5, 289; marriage, 214, 216, 226, 244 Smith, George Frederic, 115 Smith, John James, 79, 80, 86 Smith, Admiral Sir Sidney, 35 Smith, Sydney, 173, 242 Smithson, Willoughby, 227, 229 Smollett, Tobias, 284 Smyth, William: French Revolution lectures, 79, 179 Smythe, Lady Dorothy. See Sidney, Lady Dorothy Smythe, Eliza. See Sullivan, Eliza Smythe, Ellen (GSS's sister). See Sligo, Ellen, Marchioness of (3rd Marquess) Smythe, George ('GSS'), 7th Viscount Strangford: and Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin, 3, 26, 92, 123, 134, 144,187, 202, 225, 289-90, 296; appearance, 8-9, 38, 50, 91, 96, 159, 331n4; portraits, 9, 172, 300, 305n4; brilliant future, 10, 11, 55, 57-8,114; family, 4,14-16,134, 160, 218, 283; birth, 21-4, 235; mother's influence, 23-4, 26-8, 31, 46,104, 187, 277; and his father

Index 373 (seebelow); Constantinople, 21, 24-8; St Petersburg, 21, 29-31; Cambridge Steward election, 99101, 102; debts, 61, 66, 83, 94-5, 121, 122,162, 166, 168, 180, 192, 202, 204-5; and Manners (seebelow); and Young England, 5, 7, 38, 45, 52-3, 59, 67, 70, 74, 97-8, 112-13, 116, 145-7, 148,165, 166, 169, 171, 172, 174, 177, 179, 180, 183, 189, 195-6, 200, 206-7, 210, 268, 275, 286, 296, 297; wants to become Catholic, 78, 80, 81, 82, 85, 277; and revolution, 179, 230, 231-6; and Disraeli (see below); hears Carlyle, 97, 179; and Milnes, 12, 101,139-40, 153,170, 194, 207-8, 208-9, 239-40, 263; becomes Conservative, 85, 98, 105-16; 'not an Englishman,' 110,112-13, 122-3, 235; bribery, 113-17, 120-1, 133, 140-1; petition against 114, 116, 121; elected, 113, 122-4, 155, 210, 227-9, 297; supports Maynooth, 120, 127, 196, 198-9, 205, 207; helps Cochrane, 122-4, 126-7; and O'Connell, 60-1, 106, 109, 125, 154, 167-8; and Peel, 11, 121, 125, 126, 128, 138, 153, 154, 155, 156, 160, 167, 177, 227, 297; Macaulay praises, 137; arrested, 141; at Deepdene, 157-9; reads Casanova, 163; and Bateson's death, 166, 169; against Ten Hours bill, 168; cheers Moore, 173; and ' the two Nations,' 193; newspapers on, 196, 206, 226; double game, 101, 197, 236-7, 249, 291; 'five minutes too fast,' 199; under-secretary for foreign affairs, 11, 205, 206-13, 220, 264, 282;

society bars him, 217; journalism his metier, 12, 228, 230, 231-41, 243; 'coalesces' with Liberal, 228, 272;journalistic 'assassinations,' 233, 236-7, 239-41, 243, 265; and Hayward's parties, 241-2; and Wellington plagiarism, 12, 237, 261-4, 267, 276; MP attacks, 238-9; considers diplomacy, 245-7, 250, 253; and Sin and Sorrow, 247-8; visits Brontes, 248; and Metternich, 250-1; Derby omits, 256-7; attacks Romilly, 258-9; withdraws at Canterbury, 260, 272, 278-9, 341 n32; Aberdeen omits, 266; and Canterbury inquiry, 271-3; jealous of Lennox, 275; becomes 7th Viscount Strangford, 281; Egypt, 285-7; death, 4, 296, 299-300; will, 4, 296, 298-9; obituaries, 11, 297-8; a 'splendid failure,'12, 298; AP scandals, 302-3 character: 'daring, original and highly cultivated,' 178; multilingual, 27; two sides, 8-9,12, 22,101, 183-4, 195, 204, 206; wit, 10, 99, 108, 110, 112, 140, 146, 169, 170, 178, 199, 208, 213, 223, 228-9, 241, 258, 259, 292, 298; callousness, 12, 152, 162, 219; 'moral vivisection,' 69, 94, 101, 104, 121, 224; drinking, 10, 121-2, 279, 341n33; double standard, 189, 286, 287; depression, 63, 80, 81, 123, 134, 144, 160, 244, 250; charm, 8, 27-8, 38; need for excitement, 21, 244; idealism, 22, 96,119,156, 160, 275; aggression, 22, 76, 119, 172, 229, 233; unconventional, 23, 53-4, 220; 'morbid fear of ridicule,' 27,

374 Index 116, 119,120,125; and intrigue, 27, 34, 246, 249; volatility, 31, 38, 52, 76, 78, 80,119,155,170, 223; sexuality, 6, 8, 42-3, 76, 82, 91, 103-4,163, 202-3, 215, 273, 284, 293; loves old women, 32, 43, 89, 103, 242-3, 251, 252; homoeroticism, 63-5, 68-75,173, 275; marriage 'the death of Adventure,' 201; and expediency, 74, 82,145, 155; inconsistent, 168-9, 327nll; consciousness of death, 26, 47, 119, 144,179, 219, 220, 229, 244, 277-8; knack for controversy, 238; 'the most perfectly vicious man,' 239; 'lawless, engaging,' 242; 'shy and a little queer,' 248; loss of faith, 255, 278 - and Disraeli, 5, 7, 11, 36-7, 66, 84, 95-7,102,112,120,126,136-9, 142,144,146-7,148,151,152,158, 159,161,162-3,165,169,175,177, 180, 181-8, 189, 192-4, 195, 196-8, 200-3, 208, 211, 221, 223, 232, 233, 234, 236-8, 240-1, 245-6, 247-8, 249, 257-8, 260-1, 264-5, 266, 274-5, 279-80, 286, 288-9, 291, 310n36, 341n35 - duels, 8; threatened, 82-3, (Butler), 83 (Craufurd), 109, 111, 113 (Wilson), 9,170-1 (Roebuck), 218 (Walpole), 240 (Milnes); actual, ll,259(Romilly) - education, 8, 36, 37, 44, 76; Tonbridge School, 32-5; Rottingdean, 35-6, 37-8; Eton, 38, 40-5, 47-9, 53,138; Herstmonceux, 52-5; Cambridge, 55, 56-61, 66-8, 77, 78-80, 81-4, 85, 86-7, 93

- and his father, 5, 6, 10, 15, 20, 25, 26-8, 30, 34, 37-8, 42-4, 47, 50-1, 54-5, 61, 65-6, 76, 80, 83, 84, 85, 89, 93, 94, 98, 100-1, 102,104, 106-7,109,121-3, 133-4,142, 143-4, 146, 151-2,155, 161-6,168, 172-3,181,190-2,195,197, 201-2, 204-8, 216-18, 221, 227, 260, 281 - fictional treatments: Coningsby, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 31, 36, 38, 44, 47, 48, 54-5, 57-8, 60, 79, 96,100,101,108, 113, 119,130-1,159,163,173,174, 213, 243, 261, 275, 305n6; Contarini Fleming, 26, 34, 37, 277; Endymion, 10, 96-7, 220, 226, 298; Ernest Vane, 43, 83, 221, 241, 243; Tancred, 8, 12, 34, 94-5, 96, 213, 222-5, 236, 246, 265 - health: tuberculosis, 3, 8, 15, 26, 179,187, 203, 230, 244, 279, 286, 290-2; cough, 34,195, 292; fever, 38, 63, 93,193, 292; debility, 143, 164, 201, 229, 244, 268, 273, 277-8, 281, 283, 284, 289-3; facial palsy, 56, 88; in AP, 56, 158; stress, 34, 93, 134; phobia about illness, 26, 31, 38; takes opium, 158-9, 292; gonorrhea, 200-2; duped by Rayner, 289-90 - liaisons, 8, 10; with Faber, 4, 63-5, 68-76, 80-1, 82, 83-4, 85, 90, 93, 99,133-4,140,179, 278, 289, 296, 316n43; with Lady Tankerville, 9, 32, 89-95, 98-9,102-3, 104, 105, 107,122,124,128,134,140,142, 143,144,146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152,195, 259, 284; with Eugenie Mayer, 149-50,151, 155, 157-9, 161-3,172,195, 216, 219, 288, 326n27; with Mile Stackelberg,

Index 375 163-5, 173, 187, 252; with Miss Cunningham, 143; pursues Angela Burdett Coutts, 181-94, 195, 201; resists 'Cochrane's Green Gage,' 184; with 'Delphine,' 185-6,188, 195, 202-3, 225; with Catherine Maynard, 10, 188-90, 191-3, 202, 215, 280, 330n21; courts Drummonds, 192-4; with [PMassin], 203, 332n33; unhappy, 202-3; with Lady Dorothy Walpole, 124, 214-21, 223, 225, 228, 247, 248; with Catherine Cocks, 3, 225-6, 281-2; adores Virginia Pattle, 218-19; flirts with Lady Morley, 242-3; rumoured, with Lady Lincoln, 247; with stockbroker's daughter, 273-4; with Mrs Yorke, 274; with Charlotte Capel, 280-1; with Mrs Sp[ossle?], 284; with Margaret Lennox, 3, 286-9, 291-4; marriage, 3, 12, 294-6, 301 and Manners, 6, 12, 32, 46, 57, 67-70, 83, 84, 89, 92, 99,102-4, 105, 108,109, 111, 112-13,122, 124, 126, factories tour, 127-32, 134, 135-6, 140; European trip, 142-5, 144, 153-4, 156, 160, 162, 171, 176, 179; Manchester Athenaeum, 189-91, 196, 203, 224, 227, 230, 232, 234, 241, 250, 274, 278, 284, 292, 298 speeches: style, 107, 112, 119, 124, 138-9, 140, 322n20; at Eton Society, 45, 49; oratory lessons, 44; Gladstone on, 10; Eton Address, 48, 50; at Cambridge Union (see below); at Canterbury, 76, 85, 106, 108-9, 110, 112, 124-5; maiden speech, 119, 120-1; misreported,

125; on Maynooth, 127; on industrial distress, 136-7, 323n3; on income tax, 140; on naturalization of foreigners, 152; on Jerusalem, 152, 158; on Irish Arms, 153-4, 156, 213; on Don Carlos, 168; attacks Peel, 11, 227; at Manchester Athenaeum, 189-91; on Cracow, 222, 226, 230; at Canterbury (1847) published, 227-8; on Don Pacifico, 246-7; on ecclesiastical titles, 253-4; against Romilly, 258-9 speeches at Cambridge Union: against O'Connell, 60-1; against secret ballot, 61, 86; against Melbourne, 66; for poor law, 66; against Fox, 66; praises Pitt, 67; against 1688 revolution, 67, 77, 79; scandalize, 78; against Reformation, 78; against ecclesiastical commission, 79-80; against universal education. 80 visits: Chevening, 32, 34, 35, 103; Walmer, 34, 66, 74, 76, 85-6; Wynyard, 34, 51, 80-1; Ravensworth, 34, 51, 73, 81; Alnwick, 34, 44, 51, 74, 81, 151; Maidstone, 77; Powis, 86; Bedgebury, 117, 140, 149; Deepdene, 149, 156-9, 169; Harden, 156; Grace Dieu, 160; Bettisfield, 160; Albury, 192; Syon, 100, 201; Lamington, 248; Haddo, 248-9, 266; Redcastle, 250; Hughenden, 274-5; Lennox Castle, 289 writing, 103, 117, 161-3; style, 78, 169; poems to Manners, 68, 69; rewrites Manners's poems, 119; topical satire, 167-8, 174-8, 264, 328nl4; proposed family history, 283

376 Index - writings and works: Angela Pisani, 10,12,13,15,19, 21, 22, 28, 38, 40, 41, 43, 55,147,163,167,181,186, 202, 204, 228, 232, 233, 254, 265, 283, 301-3; in Book of Beauty, 'A Sketch,' 147, 149; in Eraser's, 254; Historic Fancies, 9,11,12,15-16, 22, 39, 43, 45, 59, 63, 68, 73, 75, 77, 83-4, 85, 91, 93, 94, 97, 103, 129, 144, 147,157,158, 159-60, 163, 168,169-70,174,176-9,183, 235, 254, 283, 318n25, 327nl3, 329n48; in Keepsake, 'Fantasia,' 158-9; in Literary Souvenir (as 'S'), 10, 46-7; in MC, 167-8, 169,175, 231-41, 243, 246, 250, 251, 261-4 (Wellington eulogy), 264-5 ('Benjamin Dejuda'), 336n3; in MP (as 'Fabricius,' 'G'), 120,124; in NMM (as 'S'), 167-8,169,175,176,183, 192; in 'Orateurs,' 81, 200, 207, 331n23, 332n24; in Press, 268-71, 275-7, 340n6; in QR, 10, 58-9, 77-8,147,160, 165, 314n48, 324n44; in Saturday Review, 257, 283; in Temple Bar, 157-8, 301; Times, 154-5, 174 Smythe, Lionel (GSS's brother): tuberculosis, 25-6, 308n4; at Rottingdean, 35, 37; death, 47, 104 Smythe, Louisa Sarah. SeeEld, Louisa Sarah Smythe, Percy Ellen (GSS's brother). See Strangford, Percy Ellen Smythe, Philippa (GSS's sister). See Baillie, Philippa Smythe, Sir Thomas (benefactor of Tonbridge School), 33 Smythe, Thomas (ambassador to Russia), 16, 28, 304

Smythe, Thomas ('the Customer'), 16,33 Society for Propagation of the Gospel, 76 Somerton, James, Viscount (3rd Earl of Norman ton), 142 Sotheby's: auction Strangford's books, 50 Spain, 7; Legitimists, 81, 84,168; 'Spanish Marriages,' 270 Spectator, 302 Sp[?ossle], Mr, 284, 292, 341nl Sp[?ossle],Mrs, 284 Squire, George (GSS's valet), 193, 299; as 'Leporello,'183-4,189, 192 Stackelberg, Caroline, Countess, 163, 166, 187 Stackelberg, Count, 163,165,166 Stackelberg, Mile: GSS in love with, 163-5,173,187, 252 Stackelberg, Mile (cousin of above), 252 Stamford and Warrington, Catherine, Countess of (2nd wife of 7th Earl), 3, 225-6, 229, 242, 281-2, 293-6, 298, 300, 303, 342n28 Stamford and Warrington, Elizabeth, Countess of (1st wife of 7th Earl), 282 Stamford and Warrington, George Harry, 7th Earl of, 3, 226, 281-2, 294-5, 299 Stanhope, Catherine, Countess (4th Earl), 32, 35, 66 Stanhope, Lady Hester, 32, 36 Stanhope, Philip Henry, 4th Earl, 29, 31, 37, 38, 43, 59 Stanhope, Lady Wilhelmina (Duchess of Cleveland, 4th Duke), 35, 66,

177, 293, 299

Index Stanley, Edward (14th Earl of Derby). See Derby, Edward, 14th Earl of Stanley, Edward (15th Earl of Derby), 206, 211, 241, 257, 283; contempt for GSS, 10, 233, 247, 253-4, 271, 279 Stanley, Edward ('Ben') (2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley), 111, 149 Stewart, Prince Charles Edward, 78 Stirling, William (-Maxwell, 9th baronet), 140,295 Stockholm, 22-3 Stokes (afriend), 88 Strachan, Mary Anne, Lady (8th baronet), 214 Strafford, Thomas, 1st Earl of, 252 Strangford, Anne, Viscountess (3rd Viscount), 16, 162 Strangford, Eleanor ('Ellen'), Viscountess (6th Viscount), 91, 104, 219, 244, 277, 297; marriages, 1920; volatility, 23-4; and GSS's birth, 22-3; helps Greeks, 25; inoculates children, 26; fears Strangford's influence on GSS, 27; Catholicism, 28; tuberculosis, 25-6, 29; death, 30-1, 46, 47, 187, 267, 290, 309n55 Strangford, Emily, Viscountess (8th Viscount): 'Memoir' of GSS, 125, 126, 173, 211, 222, 233, 243; edits AP, 12,301-3,344nl8 Strangford, Endymion, 3rd Viscount, 16, 283 Strangford, George, 7th Viscount. See Smythe, George Strangford, Isabelle, Viscountess (2nd Viscount), 16 Strangford, Lionel, 5th Viscount, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 28 Strangford, Margaret, Viscountess

377

(7th Viscount), 297, 298, 299, 341n8; affair with GSS, 286-9, 291-4; marriage, 3, 12, 294-6; second marriage, 300-1 Strangford, Maria Eliza, Viscountess (5th Viscount), 17, 22, 24, 27, 32, 34, 37, 67, 235 Strangford, Percy Clinton, 6th Viscount, 14, 15, 24, 28, 38, 47, 53, 57, 58, 62, 63, 67, 79, 94, 98, 114, 168,173, 244, 247, 260, 267, 275, 278, 283, 297, 299; and GSS (see below); character, 6, 17-18, 23-7, 32; poverty, 17, 20, 34, 41, 54, 55; translates Camoens, 18; envoy at Lisbon, 18; escape of Portuguese royal family, 18, 37, 109; envoy to Brazil, 18, 35, 36; minister to Sweden, 19, 22; marriage, 19; marital conflict, 23; health, 26, 37, 61; ambassador to Constantinople, 24; teaches children, 26, 37, 38; anti-Catholic, 28, 119, 155, 198; ambassador at St Petersburg, 2930; and wife's death, 30-1; Canning refuses post, 20, 34; and Judde estate, 33, 310n7; Wellington refuses post, 34, 37; and Napier, 35; and Disraeli, 5, 36, 95, 172; in Contarini Fleming, 17, 34, 36-7, 172; in Ernest Vane, 43; against reform bill, 44; in Coningsby, 172; and Lionel's death, 47; sexuality, 18, 37, 43, 104, 172; auctions books, 50; and daughters' marriages, 89, 1012, 121, 213-14, 219, 226; and Peel, 126, 128, 151; favours Percy, 155, 160, 202, 246; death, 280-1, 282; illegitimate children, 281, 293 - and GSS, 5, 6, 10, 15, 20, 22, 25,

378 Index 26-8, 30, 34, 37-8, 42-4, 47, 50-1, 54-5, 61, 65-6, 76, 80, 83, 84, 85, 89, 91, 93, 94, 98,100-1, 102,104, 105, 106-7,109,113, 114-15, 121-3,124,133-4,142,143-4, 146, 150,151,155,161-6,168,172-3, 181,187,190-2,195,197, 201-2, 203, 204-10, 212, 215-19, 221, 225, 227, 228, 257 Strangford, Percy Ellen (GSS's brother), 8th Viscount, 3, 29, 37, 155,160, 202, 278, 281, 295, 297, 299, 302, 303; health, 26, 244, 245-6, 289; succession to title, 293, 301 Strangford, Philip, 2nd Viscount, 16 Strangford, Philip, 4th Viscount, 16, 19,111 Strangford, Thomas, 1st Viscount, 16 Styles, family, 116 Sudbury, 114, 116 Sue, Eugene, 144 Suez Canal, 285 Sullivan, Eliza, 244 Sutherland, Elizabeth, Duchess of (1st Duke), 242 Sutton, Frederick (llth Hussars), 111 Sutton, J.H. Manners, 85 Swainson and Birley, 129 Sweden, 19, 20, 21,22, 24 Switzerland, 143-4, 183,186, 201-2 Sydney, Henry, Earl of Romney, 283 Sykes, Henrietta, Lady, 6, 96 Syon House, 100, 201 Tagore, Dwarkanauth, 214 Tankerville, Charles, 4th Earl of, 90 Tankerville, Charles, 5th Earl of, 74, 90, 102, 105, 150, 151

Tankerville, Corisande ('Corise,' 'Ninon'), Countess of (5th Earl), 74, 95, 96,162, 257, 289, 293, 299, 303; affair with GSS, 9, 32, 89-95, 98-9,102-3,104,105,122,124, 128, 134, 140, 142, 143,144,146, 147, 149,150, 151, 152, 195, 259, 284 Tennyson, Alfred (1st Baron), 58, 60, 73, 219, 236; In Memoriam, 8; 'May Queen,' 94 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 11, 58, 169, 175, 219, 336n9; reviews HF,9,178,183 — works: English Humourists, 269; Pendennis, 167; Vanity Fair, 176, 248 Thatcher, Margaret, Baroness, 304 Thiers, Louis Adolphe, 179, 237, 263 Thomson, Charles Poulett, Baron Sydenham, 90,103 The Times, 106, 165, 232, 256, 263, 265, 289, 295; and GSS, 110, 1545, 174, 191, 224, 259; and Young England, 41, 145-6, 156; reviews HF, 177; attacks Peel, 200; GSS's obituary in, 297; refuses to review AP,302 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 127; 233 Tonbridge School, 32-5 Tories. See Conservatives Tremouille, Princesse de la, 143 Trench (afriend), 117 Trollope, Frances, 129 tuberculosis, 3, 25-6, 29, 47,104, 143,144,187, 203, 230, 285, 286-7, 290-2, 300, 308n24. See also Smythe, George: health Tufnell, Henry, 273 Turner, J.M., 129

Index Turner, Mrs, 28 Turner, William, 28 Tyrconnell, Richard, 1st Earl of, 125 Van Dyck, Sir Anthony, 299 Vane-Tempest, Lord Adolphus, 289 Vaughan, Charles, 61, 67, 82 Venice, 11, 201, 203, 208, 332n34 Verona, Congress of, 27, 37, 51 Vestris, Lucia Elizabeth, 95 Victoria, Queen, 6, 61, 62, 64, 84, 88, 90, 93, 98,106, 120,122, 125, 126, 151, 175,197, 204, 235, 245, 253, 263, 270, 333nl7; assassination attempts, 97-8, 141; GSS praises, 86, 109; GSS presented to, 210; deplores GSS-Walpole scandal, 217; wants to read AP, 303 Vienna, Congress of, 22, 37, 51, 222, 251,254 Villiers, Frank, 41, 280, 291 Villiers, Frederick, 74, 110, 111 Vincent, John, 115 Voltaire, Frangois de, 144, 278 Wagner, George, 52 Wall, Charles Baring, 173 Waller, Edmund, 14, 218 Walmer Castle, 34, 66, 74, 76, 85, 197 Walpole, Lady Dorothy (Nevill), 11, 229, 254; affair with GSS, 124, 214-21, 223, 225, 228, 247, 248; received at court, 241, 337n38 Walpole, Harriet, Baroness (Countess of Orford, 4th Earl): and GSS, 217 Walpole, Horatio, Baron (4th Earl of Orford), 95,124, 214, 217, 247; courts Angela Burdett Coutts, 99, 182; threatens duel with GSS, 218 Walpole, Mrs, 18

379

Walpole, Sir Robert (1st Earl of Orford), 177-8 Walsall, 112, 114, 116 Walsh, Robert, 30 Walter, John (Sr), 41-2, 145-6, 152, 156, 170, 172, 232 Walter, John (Jr), 41-2, 43, 45, 152, 232 Walters, Catherine ('Skittles'), 225, 342n28 Watts, Alaric, 46 Watts, G.F., 219 Webster, Daniel, 84 Wellington, Arthur, 1st Duke of ('Caesar'), 11, 27, 30, 34, 35, 37, 44, 51, 61, 66, 74, 76, 85, 97,100, 101, 106, 114, 119, 123, 126, 149, 172, 175, 183, 197, 205, 206, 237; lectures GSS, 86; promises GSS a post, 155; Disraeli's eulogy of, 12, 261-4, 267, 276 Westenhanger, Kent, 15, 16, 38, 65, 281 Westmacott, Richard, 299 Whewell, William, 74 Whibley, Charles, 212 Whigs. See Liberals Whitelaw, William, of Gartshore, 304 Whitelaw, William, Viscount, 304 Whitelaw, Winnifred, 303 Whytehead, Thomas, 63, 64, 65, 68, 88,111,166 Wilberforce, William, 78 Wilde, Oscar, 10, 169 Wilder, John, 49 Wilder, Mrs, 49 Wilkes, John, 72 William III, 77 William IV, 47, 48, 61 Willyams, Sarah Brydges, 276

380 Index Wilson, John Henniker, 106,107, 109,112; GSS 'not an Englishman,' 110-11 Winchilsea, George, 9th Earl of, 77, 82,106 Windermere, 68, 69 Wiseman, Nicholas, Cardinal, 250 Woolf, Viriginia, 218 Wordsworth, Mary, 64 Wordsworth, William, 9, 56, 57, 64; GSS visits, 69; Tintern Abbey,' 68 Wrangham, Sergeant, 116 Wynyard Park, 34, 51, 80-1 York, Frederick Augustus, Duke of, 15 York, Mr, 298 'Young Chevalier.' See Stewart, Prince Charles Edward

Young England, 5, 38, 41-2, 69-70, 73, 74, 80, 93, 97-8,101,127,136, 141-2,144-7,151, 154, 160, 165, 166, 180,196, 198, 202, 206, 207, 210, 213, 256, 268, 286, 297, 301; medievalism of, 6-7, 44, 45, 53, 85; principles, 59,130,179,183, 275; support GSS, 107, 112-13; membership, 139,145; 'the Diz-Union,' 146; celebrity, 152,156; at Manchester Athenaeum, 189-91; and The Chimes, 195-6; newspapers on, 169, 196 Young England (periodical), 161, 196, 200, 254 'Young England' (secret society), 97 Zacchia, Cardinal, 214