The Novels of Benjamin Disraeli a Critical Study
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THE NOVELS OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI A CRITICAL STUDY Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh By SAKINA A. HASAN Department of English ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY, ALIGARH 1975 f %, \ \ 3 ^ J y<t </ T1800 CHEC^D 1995-97 CONTENTS Page Introduction 1 CHAPTER - I, The Socio-Economic Scene and the Political Scene CHAPTER - II. The outstanding facts and ma;jor formative influences of Disraeli's life 29 CHAPTER - III. The Introspective Novels 46 CHAPTER - rv. The Novels of High Society and the Shorter Tales 81 CHAPTER - V. The Political Trilogy 122 CHAPTER - VI. The Last Phase 184 CHAPTER - VII. (a) Disraeli's Art of Characteri sation 231 (b) Structtire and Style 241 (c) Disraeli's Political philosophy and his relevance today 249 Conclusion 258 Bibliography 265 INTRODUCTION In all the annals ot literature, there never has heen a Prime Mnister who began and ended his career by writing novels. This is not the only xmique quality about Disraeli. He lived in nineteenth century England (1804-1881) when the government of the country was exclusively monopolised by an aristocracy of birth and riches. J3y the standards of that age, he possessed neither. He had no roots in the country, and his Jewish origin was the greatest handicap witn which he had to contend almost till the end of his career. Yet he managed to break "his birth's invidious bar" , and he rose to fame by sheer genius, will power and good fortune. There have been innujuerable biographical studies of Disraeli, but his literary achievements have inevitably been overshadowed by his political eminence. The two roles are so inextricably interwined that it is not possible to understand one without relating it to the other. According to Walter Allen, Disraeli had to become a politician before he could become a novelist, while Sir Leslie Stephen is of opinion that the merit of the novels is limited because the writer subordinated his literary to his political career. 1, Tennyson's "In Memoriam". - 2 - There were other contemporaries of Disraeli, who were politicians as well as men of letters, for ezample, tiacaulay and Bulwer Lytton. But their political careers were obviously of secondary importance. So much prestige was attached to politics and administration in this period that even Trollope and Bagehot made unsuccessful attempts to enter the House of Commons. In the case of Disraeli "there is a singular intimacy of relation between the literary phase and the political phase of his work - - - the remarkable blending of the two phases, the shading of one into the other, the sense he imparts that the man of letters is a statesman, and that the statesman never ceases to be a man of letters" • This is something which places Disraeli in a category all by himself. While presiding over the anniversary of the Royal Literary Fund in 1853, Disraeli said in a speech - - - "'literature and politics were like night and morning, each had its alluring charm and dazzling attributes', and he declined 2 to give a decision in favour of either" • Disraeli's father had commented in 1836, when informed that his son was writing another novel, "How will the fictionist assort with the politician"?-^ It should be remembered that the literary world was by no 1. Hugh Walker - The Literature of the Victorian era - p. 653. 2. M & B, Vol. I, p. 1325. 3. tt tt P» 342. - 3 - means remote from the social and political world in the early nineteenth century. "Literature was more socially honoured in those days than in ours" . There was also a close connection between the social and the political world, which continued throughout Disraeli's life time. Mnistries were made and un made in the dazzling salons of the great society hostesses in London, or amidst the sylvan surroiindings of their luxurious country houses. Zenobia, a character in Endymion, modelled on the celebrated Tory hostess, Lady Jersey, remarks in the novel, "Tell me the names of the Eadical members who want to turn out 2 the government, and I will invite them directly" . "Lady Palmerston contributed considerably to the size of her husDana's majorities in the House of Commons by a judicious distribution of her visiting cards" . Disraeli's talents, temperament and the circumstances of his career, placed him in a better position to tell us about liigh society and politics than any other novelist of the age. "Genius is rare, anyhow :the combination of political with literary genius necessarily rarer. - - - Not one man of letters in ten thousand can match Disraeli's close inner acquaintance with his subject" . Thus it was that he became the father of a new "genre" in literature - the political novel. His novels are "the first essays in our fiction in which politics and public affairs are 1. T.P.O'Connor - Benjamin Disraeli, p. 35. 2. Endymion, p. 240. 3. Asa Briggs, Victorian People, p. 13. 4. Quiller-Couch - Charles Dickens and other Victorians, p. 197. - 4 - made to play an important and dramatic part" , They offer a brilliant commentary on the politics of the age by an active and important politician who had intimate knowledge and personal experience of political life throughout this period. 2 "Politics is history in the making" . Disraeli's novels are significant because they are a part of English history. "The real, central theme of history is not what happened, but what people felt about it when it was happening: - - - the conversation of people who coujited" . Most of Disraeli's character are drawn from life and his novels are a veritable portrait gallery of the numerous types that crowded the political and social world of the time. They reveal the inner mysteries of higher political circles, their conversation and the splendours of aristocratic living, when the aristocrats were in the heyday of their glory. Virginia Woolf has expressed a fear in her essay 'The Mece of an Earl', "that the English aristocracy will pass out of existence or be merged with the common people, without leaving any true picture of themselves behind" , In the novels of Disraeli, we come the nearest to this true picture. J.A. Froude wrote that "the students of English history, in time to come, who would know what the nobles of England were like in the days of Queen Yictoria, will read Lothair with the same 1. E.G. Church - Growth of the English Novel, p. 114. 2. J.A.R. Marriott - English History in English Fiction, p. vii. 3. G-.M. Yo\ing - Portrait of an age, p. vi. 4. Virginia Woolf - The Coimnon Reader, 2nd series, p. 217. - 5 - interest with which they read Plorace and Juvenal" . The characters in Disraeli's novels belong almost entirely to high society, though in Sybil he does venture to portray the life of the working classes - the peasantry, the factory hands, the artisans, and the Trade Union leaders. This is not surprising, because Disraeli was positively allergic to the rising middle class, witn its Utilitarian Greed, and its obsession with the Cult of Progress. He believed in a natural alliance between the aristocracy and the 'people', hence he "took a leap over the middle classes whom he left to the care of Gladstone"^. Unlike some of his other contemporaries, for example, Mrs. Gaskell, Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, Reade, and Kingsley, Disraeli remained curiously impervious to the Victorian spirit. "Disraeli was the only original thinker among them: the other 3 novelists assimilated ideas but tended not to devise new ones" . After 1832 the age which followed is described as the age of the triTxmph of the middle class and "in the main, the literature of the period is literature about the middle class, for the middle class, by the middle class" . It is also significant that in the two decades following 1848, when the middle class was enjoying an unparalleled prosperity and almost wallowing in optimism and complacency - notwithstanding a few dissident 1. J.A. Froude - Lord BeaQOQg field, p. 217-218. 2. R.G. Church - Growth of the English Novel, p. 115. 3. P. Gazamian - The Social Novel in England, p. 7. 4. E. Batho Bonamy Dobree - The Victorians and after, p. 22. - 6 - voices like those of Carlyle, Ruskin, and Mathew Arnold - Disraeli did not write a single novel, Disraeli stood apart from his contemporaries in yet another aspect. His women characters are very different from the usual Victorian proto types that we find in the novels of the period. They have minds and wills of their own and are capable of independent thinking. However, in spite of these discordant notes, the novels of Disraeli have two fundamental archetypal themes - man's search for his own identity, and for meaning in life. In the early novels, Disraeli draws largely upon his own experiences, and is not quite sure whether he will make his career in litera ture or in politics. When he wrote the political trilogy, he had been a member of Parliament for six years, and his heroes are crusaders after truth. They think about their social rights and responsibilities. An unusual feattire which imparts a peculiar flavour to the novels of Disraeli is their Oriental quality, both in style and content. This was mainly due to his obsession with the Hebrew race to which he belonged. An attempt has been made in this thesis to stuay the novels of Disraeli in their personal, social and political aspects and their relevance today. In some ways, the social and political conditions prevailing in England in tne 1840's - 7 - and 50' s have a remarJcabxe similarity to the present situation.