LADY OF HUGHENDEN

Evening Star, Issue 20024, 15 November 1928, Page 9

LADY OF HUGHENDEN

LEGEND V. FACT THE PERFECT WIFE A friend asked Disraeli what he saw in his elderly and unattractive wile that induced him to shower so much affection on her. “ George, came the retort, “ there is one word m the D g lish language of which you aie norant.” .“What is that?” demanded the friend. “Gratitudel replied Disraeli curtly. . , . +h/ . Gratitude indeed he owed te J-be woman who for thirty-three years gave liim inspiration and affection v 3 a ‘John o’ Loudon’s.’ writer), served him as a mental tonic, and with he worldly goods enabled him to reaeh t e pinnacle of fame. To her be owed everything—and gracefully he acknowledged it. “ Tho most severe ofmtms -but a perfect wife’’-such w description of her. Throughon long union Mrs Disraeli, herself cut liei husband’s hair every fortnight, carefully preserving the famous curl ov his brow; not until alter her d° atll > however, did ho discover that < shorn looks had been . treasured, by her in a secret drawer! Even the pencilled notes they wrote each other when i 1noss confined them to lied m separate rooms were hoarded as a precious bundle. Such was domestic bliss at Hughcnden! • A ROMANTIC PORTRAIT. Few persons have been the subject of so much legend and gossip as Mrs Disraeli. Many are the fairy tales concerning her alleged humble parentage, her early struggles, her conversational indiscretions; even her age was lormerly veiled in mystery; and there can bo little doubt that she herself was responsible for much of the romantic notion about her early days. Mr Janies Sykes has set himself the task or winnowing fact from legend, and in Mary Anne Disraeli ’ he has given us a taitliful and nneiubellished, but none the less romantic, portrait of the woman whom Henry Greville described as “ beggaring all description.” Mary Anne Evans was born at Brampford Speke, in Devon, in November, 1792 Mr Sykes has established that. He has also exploded the stories of her pauper parentage and of the meagre existence eked out by licr and her first husband in an East End haberdashery shop until rescued by a timely legacy. In fact, her father was a naval officer, her mother of good county family, and when in Waterloo year she married Wyndham Lewis he was already a wealthy member of Parliament with a pretentious house at Grosvenor Gate. ’ , FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

' It was from the drawing room window of this house that Mrs Lewis caught sight of young Disraeli driving in the Park. The impression was sufficient | to determine her to secure his introduction. Disraeli, however, was not so favourably impressed on mooting her. “A pretty little woman, a flirt, and a rattle; gifted with a volubility I should think unequalled ” —such was his verdict. Nevertheless, they became fast, friends, and Disraeli was assisted into - the representation of Maidstone jointly , with Lewis. Count d’Orsay sensed 1 danger in the friendship. “Do not make love,” be counselled; “do not intrigue. Yon have your seat; do not risk anything. If a widow, then marry.” When in 1833 Mary Anne did become a widow Disraeli at once pressed his suit. . 1 Caustic comments greeted their marriage in August, 1839. Ho was thirty, four, she forty-six; lie was hopelessly involved financially, she had obtained the Grosvenor Gate bouse and an annuity of £5,000 under Lewis’s will. Yet it was no mere money match. Disraeli was already a celebrity, and could have made as good financial marriages elsewhere; whilst in her seniority' to him there was nothing .strange, for, as the Russian Ambassador observed, Ins women friends were invariably “all grandmothers.” True, she was by no means a cultured woman—her spelling was atrocious, and she did not know “whether the Greeks or Romans came f irs t ” —but her judgment was sound, and her power of literary 7 criticism of rare value to an author husband, j DOMESTIC HAPPINESS. From the first (he union was ideal. Mary Anne superintended tho household accounts, paid oil debts, found money for election campaigns, _ pampered* mothered, and became his bulwark. Their happiness was crowned when, by the help of Lord George Bentinck, Disraeli urns enabled to purchase a country estate and write to his wife: “It is all done, and you are now tho ' Lady of Hughenden.” She, like her husband, had to wage war against prejudice. Gradually, however, the great houses were opened to her: gradually her indiscreet remarks came to be accepted as inevitable. Indiscreet, indeed, many of them were. On congratulating the Baroness de Rothschild on the birth of a son she gaily 7 remarked: “My dear, . that beautiful baby may 7 be the future Messiah whom wo aro led to expect — who knows?” On another visit she horrified her hostess at breakfast with: “Oh, Ladv , you have the most in- 1 decent pictures! ‘ There is a horrible picture in our bedroom. Dizzy says l it is Venus and Adonis. I have been awake half the night trying to prevent him looking at it.” , DANCING A JIG. Old age failed to dim their bliss. Quaint is the picture of the Prime Minlister and his wife dancing a jig in their nightgowns to celebrate good news from a friend! Quaint she herself remained to the last. On a visit to Ashridge:— “ She was not at her best, going to sleep after dinner in the drawing room 1 and waking up rather cross and asking all manner of random questions. Tho younger members of the party rather made fun of the gallant old lady and of her queer wig. so oi ten awry, her llame-coloured dresses, her vain attempts at a somewhat youthful appearancej but her husband never seemed cognisant of such a state of things, and preserved Lis sphinx-like immutability of countenance and his gracious, halfprotective. half-deferential manner to his yvife.” I At last tho tragic curtain. Bent, I bereft, and bare-beaded in the _ rainstorm, Benjamin Disraeli, still himself but a commoner, followed to the grave the body of the devoted wife for whom he had obtained ennoblement as Viscountess Beaconsfield. “Ah!” murmured one onlooker ; with unaffected feeling. “He’ll have no one to dye his hair for him now she’s gone,-’