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who sat behind him after having been abandoned by Peel and Glad–
stone. More than that: he made himself their leader by taking up what
had become a lost cause. Peel's "betrayal" in 1846 (his abandonment of
the Corn Laws on which the predominance of the landowners rested)
opened the way for Disraeli. His meteoric rise from the back-benches was
effected by a single speech: a three-hour oration, improvised on the spur
of the moment, which more than a century later still casts a spell upon
the reader. In the hour of defeat Toryism had found a new leader.
It
was an amazing achievement, and only an adventurer with a
touch of genius could have brought it off. That genius Disraeli possessed,
and for the sake of it generations of Conservatives have forgiven him
everything, from his shady tactics to his novel-writing. At the time,
though, what they chiefly felt was bewilderment. Their leaders had
abandoned them. Their ancient cause lay in ruins. Instinctively they
clung to the orator who put into words their dull resentment and their
secret conviction that they alone could govern England. They were a
defeated party and Disraeli restored their self-confidence. In exchange
they gave him, not their trust (that he never received), but the backing
he required to reach the top.
It was a bargain, and Disraeli soon made his supporters feel that
they had not lost by it. In an age of accomplished parliamentary debaters
he outshone all his rivals. Moreover, the record makes it clear that from
a languid amateur he gradually turned himself into a hard-working pro–
fessional. Skill in debate and maneuver was matched by organizing
ability and a genuine gift for public administration. But at the heart of
the phenomenon there lay something more elusive-something Disraeli
allowed to emerge only in his novels and in the more outrageous of his
letters. Mr. Blake has caught the Luciferian note which surrounds the
performance. A latter-day Byronist, and for good measure a Jewish con–
vert of the generation which on the Continent produced Heine and Las–
salle, Disraeli from an early age had fixed a sardonic gaze, half amused,
half contemptuous, upon the society he was determined to conquer. His
fantastic novels light up an interior landscape remote from the familiar
iconography of Victorian politics. The heir of the Regency wits, with
his carefully cultivated Mephistophelian appearance, is seen to drag a
metaphorical clubfoot across the stage. His family background (Spanish
according to him, Italian in reality), his highly personal and altogether
unorthodox Judaeo-Christianity, his saturnine looks and mordant turn
of speech, repelled and fascinated . All in all, Disraeli appealed to the
submerged romanticism of the English. The faint whiff of brimstone that
clung to his figure alarmed the pious Gladstone. It did not bother Victo-
ria, and it enchanted the audience of the great illusionist.
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