DIZZY THE DEATHLESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19406, 14 August 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

DIZZY THE DEATHLESS.

THE VICTORIOUS JEW.

m KEV. J. 3. NOB/iH.

Sir Edward Clarke has published at the age of 85, and published so lately as last month, the biography of one whom he calls " the greatest Englishman of the nineteenth century." But that Englishman was a full-blooded Jew, a Spanish Jew, whose blood and bravery were alike tropic. Carlyle in one of his bilious turns asked how long John Bull "would allow this absurd monkey to dance on his stomach." Dizzy is danc ing still. His novels have enjoyed a renaissance. His party is on the Treasury bench just now. His partisans do for him what is done for no other statesman ancient or modern, for every year on his death day the blue bloods of England vi tar primroses and the quizzical face in bionze looks down in Parliament Square on banks of " his favourite flower." The joke is that nobody knew it was " his favourite flower." The Queen, who was more intimate with Disraeli than with any other of her subjects, sent to his funeral a great wreath of them with the cryptic legend " his favourite flower." Whether "he " was the dead statesmar or the Prince Consort nobody was unite sure. That may be taken as part of the mystery that surrounds a very remarkable man. The whole of Disraeli's life is an epitome of the struggle of his deathless nation. It has taken a precious time to get it all pieced together. The last of Moneypenny's six volumes appeared so lately as 1921. Every one of them is worth reading, though one rises from them with a feeling far removed from reverence. Dizzy' represents fanatical success. Clarke's'new book is not v by the critics supposed to add anything very material, beyond some useful personal memories. The man who stole Gladstone's clothes while he was bathing, who turned his Queen into an Empress, who euchred the French out of control of • the canal they so brilliantly dug, and who came back from the lion's den in Berlin after dashing Bismarck, his pocket full of " peace with honour," is not a man who lets himself be forgotten for long.

An Acclimatised Englishman. Tropical flowers grow under glass in Kew Gardens, but no such tropical man as Disraeli ever acclimatised himself at Westminster. He was far removed in habit and temper from the average Englishman. He played no game—save poker with old ladies. He did nothing with bat, ball, or gun. He never followed the fox over the fence. His supreme concern seemed to be his dress, and that was unique. He appeared at Malta in his callow days in green velvet pantaloons and strawberry waistcoat, wearing half ■ a dozen heavy rings outside his lavender kid gloves. "A damned bumptious Jew boy" was the vigorous verdict passed upon him by the officers of the garrison. The old fop, in the last stages of decrepitude was .content to spend his morning before going down to the Lords with a yellow bandana handkerchief tied tightly round his head, beneath which the famous love-lock was drying into shape. The airs of Asia, from,which his ancient race sprang, clung to all he did. He is nerpetually, says his biographer, "coming down to breakfast in full Garter robes 7 while the-Union Jack is -run up the flagstaff on the Norman keep, and the National Anthem is crashed out by a brass band in the dining, room.". The. old Queen's Indian summer came "when' Dizzy became Prime Minister. No sultana was ever mpre obsequiously addressed. It was a sheer victory. For, the Prince Consort had declared that Dizzy had not one single element of the gentleman in his composition. But the Prince who knew him so well was no sooner dead than the wily one was assuring the. widow that -"the Prince is the only man whom Mr. D.'has known who has realised the Ideal. None with whom he is acquainted has even approached it. " So delicately did, he conduct the siege that very soon he was addressing her as "Faery" and "Gloriana," and he was safely installed in her esteem as her chiefest councillor. He put it on "with a trowel,". as he candidly admits.

Ambition and Success. The undying mystery about Disraeli is his success. No man ever faced so terrific a handicap. His race, his manners, his foppery all seemed to bar the way toward the goal to which he early set his face. No Jew had ever been chief minister to the English Crown. We do not remember that one had been any sort of a minister of State. And he was a Jew without those particular qualities that carried Rufus Isaacs and Samuel so far in our own day. His father was a literary man, whose "Curiosities of Literature" is ,something of a classic. He had no great wealth. He had followed no profession, and his looks were so unEnglish that on his first rising to speak in the Commons he was greeted with roars of laughter, mingled with anger. That stung him into the famous retort heard, because spoken in a voice almost terrific, above the clamour, "I sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me." It came. The proudest Tory ate tamely from those hands. It should be remembered, when thoughts are turned by Sir Edward's book to Disraeli, that he announced his ambition in extreme youth and followed it up with pertinacity till success came. He entered Parliament in 1834. Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister and gave an interview to his last recruit. After gazing a moment at that amazing figure, Melbourne asked him what he wanted to be, and was taken aback by the astonishing answer quietly announced, "I want to be Prime Minister of England." Shortly before his death Melbourne heard of the Jew's elevation to the leadership of that proud party of the landed aristocracy, and cried out in the greatest excitement, "By G-d, the fellow will do it yet." He did. He did the impossible.

Those who love the unique will find among Disraeli's women something to think about. He married a woman much his senior and was wholly loyal to her and she to him. It is on record that one day when he was to male a speech in the House and they went out to the carriage to drive down together, the coachman shut her hand in the door and crashed a finger. She suppressed so much as a cry of pain, though her glove was full of blood, and she delivered her idol to the House with unruffled mind for his speech, and as he vanished the plucky woman fainted. By his side at liughenden lies a corpulent Jewess whom he and his wife attached to themselves and whose fortune thev ultimately enjoyed. When his wife died two elderly ladies of title became the daily recipients of his communications. He was no rake but he was very funny on that side ,of his nature.

It was a brilliant wit and an endless patience, and a complete mastery of Hansard that gave Dizzy his power. No gallant ever served a jealous mistress more loyally than he served the Commons. How his wit coruscated. One of the gems is this. Everyone knows how he and Gladstone hated" each other. Eut Dizzy cultivated the Gladstone women. At a reception Miss G. asked him the name of a foreign diplomat! "That," said he, "is the most dangerous man in, Europe, except myself, as your father would say, and except your 'father as I would say." He is gone, but the tradition lasts.