DISRAELI.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19892, 10 March 1928, Page 7 (Supplement)

DISRAELI.

THE ALIEN PATRtOT,

Mr. Lytton Strachey once said that it was almost as difficult to write ft good life as to live one. Evidently the rigours of the strait and narrow path have beon overestimated, for good " Lives" aro now as common as blackberries, the latest and not the least attractive being " Disraeli," by that brilliant Frenchman, Andre Maurois, whoso uncanny comprehension of English character was as clearly shown iu " The Silenco of Colonel Bramble" as his consummate grace and delicacy of touch iu the Shelley romance, " Ariel."

All these qualities arc united in the delineation of that contradictory and fascinating character whom Mr. E. T. Raymond has well named tho " Alien Patriot." It is quite clear, too, that M. Maurois has fallen under tho spell of his model, and whilo his- lovo is unproverbially clear-sighted, it yet imparts a warmth and radiance which are noticeably absent from the glacial beams of the Strachey and Guedalla searchlights. Perhaps no public man has even been more misunderstood that Disraeli, admirers and his detractors alike. "It was a commonplace among summary judges to explain Disraeli by saying: 'He is an Oriental!' It was an inaccurate label, a judgment too scanty in light and shade. Brought up as an Englishman, shaped by English thought, surrounded by English friends, passionately attached to England, ho was much further removed from a Jew of the East than from ;i man like George Bentinck. Yet ho was very different too from his friends of English blood. In particular lie shared with the Oriental that doublo sentiment of a desire for the good things of this world and a perception of their hollow emptiness." The son of Isanc D'lsraeli, the wealthy, polished litterateur, by race a Jew, in belief a. sceptic, and by inclination a bookworm who " loved books as other men love women or opium or tobacco," Benjamin, at tho age of thirteen, was baptised into tho iCnglish church and sent to an English school. He was not popular at first. ".Ho was aggressively welldressed. His costume too carefully arranged, his dull, olive complexion and his attractive but foreign features were all astonishing." But with that courage which all his life long concealed a natural timidity, he " faced up to his schoolfellows with boldness and gave back look for look. ' They're nothing but boys,' he repeated to himself when emotion welled up too strongly, ' nothing but boys, like myself, and I must be master over them.' " His ardent imagination was intoxicated by the vision of leadership; his cold and indomitable will transformed the dream into reality.

So time went by anrl the vision changfld. At twenty, Disraeli was a. constant visitor to both Houses 'of Parliament, criticising the speeches with astonishingly mature judgment. " M'*Peel improves as a speaker, though like most of the rest he is fluent without the least style. . . I have heard Canning. Ho was' a consummate rhetorician, but there seemed to me to be a dash of commonplace in all he said, . . In the Lords, I admire the Duke. There is a gruff, husky sort of .1 downright Montaiguish naivete about him which is quaint and unusual and tells . And he could go home absorbed in the vision of himself swaying both Houses with his eloquence though with " two distinct styles, In the Lower Houses Don Juan may, perhaps, be our model: in the Upper House, Paradise Lost." Yet it was thirteen years before Benjamin Disraeli actually entered Parliament. and another fifteen before he attained cabinet rank. Even political defeat and disappointment sent him to the consolations of authorship. In his novels he couid make his dreams come true more quickly. When he was at 'ast official leader of the opposition, Lord Melbourne, no>v an- old man,remembered the ringleted young man who had answered him at Caroline Norton's: ' I wish to be Prime Minister.' "By Cod," said lie, the fellow will do it yet." He did, and in doing so came into perpetual conflict with Gladstone, that spirit so antithetical to Disraeli's,

M. Maurois frankly views the G.O.M. " through the Disraelian lens," though he maintains that " critics and admirers alike, if their intentions are sincere, are at one in discovering the same traits in their subject." "It was said of Gladstone," says M. Maurois, " thuji he could convince others of many things and himself of anything at all. Disraeli could persuade others but was powerless over himself. Gladstone liked to choose an abstract principle and from that to deduce his preferences. And his tendency was to believe that his desires were those of the Almighty. lie was reproached, not so much for always haying the ace of trumps up his sleeve as for claiming that God had put it there. Disraeli had a horror of abstract principles. He liked certain ideas because they appealed to his imagination. Ho loft to action the cure of putting them to the test. . . Disraeli was sure that Gladstone was no saint, but Gladstone was far from certain that Disraeli was not the Devil."

So wo pass on to tho apotheosis of " Dizzy," worshipped till her death by his faithful Mary Anne, a .'person grata with the Queen and many noble ladies accepted as the " chief" by Parliament and people alike. " There were many who still associated with his name some confused notion of Oriental mystery, but not so as to take fright. Just as a beautiful Moorish doorway, brought back stone by stone by, some colonist returned home, reconstructed on a timely mown lawn . , . will shortly acquire a grace that is altogether English and blend discreetly with the green harmony of its setting, so too the old Disraeli, laden with British virtues, British whims, British prejudices, had become a natural ornament of Parliament and Society."

The dominating impression left by the book is of a generous and honest spirit, of an almost feminine softness beneath a defensive crust of bravado, of romantic ardour quenched in suffering! A saint? " No, Disraeli was very far from being a.saint. But perhaps as some old Spirit of Spring ever vanquished and ever alive, and as a symbol of what can bo accomplished, in a cold and hostile universe, by a long youthfulncss of, heart."

" Pinraeli: A Picture of the Victorian Age," Ly Andre Maurois (The Bodley Head).