Beaconsfield

“ But who was the leader to be? Sir Berdmore frankly confessed that he had none to propose; and the Viscount and the Baron were quite silent.
“Gentlemen!” exclaimed the Marquess, “Gentlemen! there is a man who could do our bidding,” The eyes of every guest were fixed on the haranguing host.
“Gentlemen, fill your glasses, I give you our leader, Mr. Frederick Cleveland!”
“Cleveland”’ every one exclaimed. A glass of claret fell from Lord Courtown’s hand; Lord Beaconsfield stopped as he was about to fill his glass, and stood gaping at the Marquess with the decanter in his hand ”

“ Who is the mover of the party?”
“My Lord Courtown is a distinguished member of it.”
“Courtown, Courtown; powerful enough: but surely the good Viscount’s skull is not exactly the head for the chief of a cabal?”
“There is my Lord Beaconsfield.”
“Powerful, too; but a dolt.”
“Well,” thought Vivian, “it must out at last; and so to it boldly. And, Mr. Cleveland, there is little fear that we may secure the great influence and tried talents of the Marquess of Carabas.” ”

“ The Benjamin D’Israeli, Lord Beaconsfield’s grandfather, who came to England in 1748, was a younger son sent at eighteen to try his fortune in London. “A man of ardent character, sanguine, courageous, speculative, fortunate, with a temper which no disappointment could disturb” (so Lord Beaconsfield described him) , he soon made the beginnings of a handsome fortune and turned country gentleman. That his grandson exaggerated his prosperity is highly probable; but that he became a man of wealth and consideration is certain. ”

“ Women whose political influence changes the map of Europe, irresistible Catholic priests are mingled with impudent adventurers and professional toad-eaters. And over every thing is cast, by d'Israeli's Eastern imagination, a glamour of unlimited wealth, of numberless coronets, and of soaring ambitions. The political career of the Earl of Beaconsfield is one of the most remarkable in history, and even his opponents cannot withhold admiration from the great abilities and undaunted resolution which brought that career to its triumphant close. ”

“ London is happy in possessing not a few hostesses, excellently accomplished, and not more accomplished than gracious, of whom it is no flattery to say that to know them is a liberal education. But, as Lord Beaconsfield observes in a more than usually grotesque passage of Lothair, "We must not profane the mysteries of Bona Dea." We will not "peep and botanize" on sacred soil, nor submit our most refined delights to the impertinences of critical analysis. ”

“ Never a soul appeared in the door-yard, and if smoke came from the chimney it was a thin, blue wisp as from dying embers. The land was asleep, under the spell of the white touch. To knock at one of those houses would have been, as it seemed, to call its occupants from their winter trance.
We traveled slowly, for the roads were sticky, and there were many hills. We could not ask Lord Beaconsfield to do more than walk, which he did sturdily enough, [Pg 155] tugging up the long hills, though they were probably the first he had ever seen, for his part of Long Island had been level ground. ”

“ Not to be brilliant would be against their nature; in fact, shine is their peculiarity. Moreover, standing now behind the event, we seem to see Lord Beaconsfield in Mr. Disraeli from the very beginning. Those who had the privilege of beholding him on his very first appearances in London high society, in, say, the Countess of Blessington's salon, where he would be grouped with Count D'Orsay, Prince Napoleon, and Count Morny, give a gorgeous description of him. ”

“ The National Secular Society consequently increased largely in membership, and a general impulse towards Freethought was manifest throughout the land.
The year 1878, so far as lecturing work was concerned, was largely taken up with a crusade against the Beaconsfield Government and in favor of peace. Lord Beaconsfield's hired roughs broke up several peace meetings during the winter, and on February 24th Mr. Bradlaugh and Mr. Auberon Herbert, at the request of a meeting of working-class delegates, held in Hyde Park a "Demonstration in favor of Peace". ”

“ The case of The Northfield and The Hunter is applicable to the present question in regard to the management of the Beaconsfield. There, the Northfield, a Staten Island ferryboat, had left her slip to go west of Governor's island, and was swinging round from south to southwest. The Hunter was coming down the North river, and heading south to go down west of Governor's island. ”

“ It is finely said by Bacon of death that "it openeth the gate to good fame and extinguisheth envy...." It is singularly true of Lord Beaconsfield, whose fate it was to interest all men, to puzzle most, and to provoke the antagonism of many. ”

“ Even in England and America a process of self-instruction is rapidly going on in the best journals. Lord Beaconsfield, in Lothair, has shown that he is awake to the social and scenic aspects of the Ultramontane movement, and has displayed more insight into the genealogy of its cult than have the men in this nation to whom the country has a right to look for something better than slipshod arguments, and well-played parodies. ”

“ I have no especial veneration for Lord Beaconsfield as a politician, but I admire him for his unconventionality. How many young men possess the pluck to appear at a dinner party in green velvet trousers, a canary-coloured waistcoat, low [Pg 101] shoes with silver buckles, lace at their wrists, and their hair in ringlets? On another occasion, Disraeli turned up at a diocesan gathering at Oxford clad in a black velveteen shooting jacket, with a wideawake hat. ”

“ It is hardly worth while to go again through the whole tale of ministerial incapacity, to use the mildest words. Lord Beaconsfield is true to his creed of Asian mysteries. He seeks his models among the ancient worthies of his own people. ”

“ His contemporary, Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881) , for a man so active in politics, wrote a great mass of fiction, from the "Vivian Grey" of his boyhood, to more mature works in which many of the characters were easily recognized by contemporaries. The political novels, such as "Coningsby" abound in satire, "Sybil" in reflections on society; all are full of a fantasy rather Oriental, and "Lothair," in 1870, was as personal in its allusions as "Coningsby". "Ixion" and "The Infernal Marriage" are brief apologues, full of mocking mirth; everywhere there is brilliance ”

“ Therefore, whatever frivolous persons in society may have done on insufficient information, Mr. Justin McCarthy, in his History of our Own Times, should have avoided the inaccuracy of writing: “He (Lord Beaconsfield) wound up by proclaiming that ‘the standard of St. George was hoisted upon the mountains of Rasselas’. All England smiled at the mountains of Rasselas. ”

“ Lord Beaconsfield seems to have been as pleased as we were at my father’s accepting the bishopric, for he wrote exultantly to a friend, saying, “Well, we have got a Bishop.”
The fresh move came in the spring of 1877, and in that loveliest of all seasons the train slid one evening across the tall wooden viaducts with the lights of Truro pricking the dusk, where the town lay below, and the enchantment of Cornwall instantly began to weave its{63} spell. The new home was the Vicarage of Kenwyn, a small village high on the western hills and perhaps a mile from the centre of the town. ”

“ On the defeat of the Conservatives in 1880, Corry was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Rowton, of Rowton Castle, Shropshire. He had rendered service of an exceptional order to his chief, and after Beaconsfield’s removal to the House of Lords his private secretary became invaluable in keeping him in touch with the rank and file of his party. Lord Rowton was in Algiers when Beaconsfield was stricken with his last illness in the spring of 1881 ”

“ The ceremony took place in a kind of shed with corrugated iron roof and wooden walls—a part of the Railway Hotel, for at this time Beaconsfield had no Catholic Church. Father Ignatius Rice, O.S.B., another old and dear friend, came over from the Abbey at Douai, to join Father O'Connor at breakfast at the Inn and they afterwards walked up together to Top Meadow. What follows is from notes made by my husband of a conversation with Father Rice. They found Gilbert in an armchair reading the catechism "pulling faces and making noises as he used to do when reading." ”

“ There is some meaning in the old theory about wild oats; and a man who has not had his greensickness and got done with it for good, is as little to be depended on as an unvaccinated infant. "It is extraordinary," says Lord Beaconsfield, one of the brightest and best preserved of youths up to the date of his last novel, [1] "it is extraordinary how hourly and how violently change the feelings of an inexperienced young man." ”

“ And the worthy man goes on to theorize about the cause, and suggests that Lord Beaconsfield was in the habit of taking doses of opium which were so timed that their effect passed off at a certain moment!
This freedom from self-knowledge which bores enjoy is one of their most striking characteristics. One of the principal clubs in London has the misfortune to be frequented by a gentleman who is by common consent the greatest bore and buttonholer in London. He always reminds me of the philosopher described by Sir George Trevelyan, who used to wander about asking, "Why are we created? ”

“ The good wife brought a table and placed it in the porch, and covered it with a napkin purer than snow. Her viands were fresh eggs, milk warm from the cow, and bread she had herself baked. Even a lover might feed on such sweet food. This happy valley and this cheerful settlement wonderfully touched the fancy of Ferdinand. The season was mild and sunny, the air scented by the flowers that rustled in the breeze, the bees soon came to rifle their sweetness, and flights of white and blue pigeons ever and anon skimmed along the sky from the neighbouring gables that were their dovecotes. ”

“ Cliveden and Hedsor, two among the many beautifully situated mansions by the bank of the Thames; and Claydon House in the west of the county. Among the Chiltern Hills, also, there are several [v.04 p.0731] splendid domains. Associations with eminent men have given a high fame to several towns or villages of Buckinghamshire. Such are the connexion of Beaconsfield with Edmund Waller and Edmund Burke, that of Hughenden near Wycombe with Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, whose father's residence was at Bradenham; of Olney and Stoke Pogis with the poets Cowper and Gray respectively. ”

“ The table was arranged, the lights brought, the cards produced, and the Prince of Little Lilliput, greatly to his surprise, found himself playing whist with Mr. Beckendorff. Nothing could be more dull. The Minister would neither bet nor stake, and the immense interest which he took in every card that was played ludicrously contrasted with the rather sullen looks of the Prince and the very sleepy ones of Vivian. Whenever Mr. Beckendorff played for dummy he always looked with the most searching eye into the next adversary’s face, as if he would read his cards in his features. ”

“ Lives all the blisse of eares—inchaunting men.”
A visit to Beaconsfield gives us a sketch from authority of Abbé Raynal, reputed author of a one famous work, History of the East and West Indies. The account of him while in England sufficiently explains why his work has lost credit as an authority with us, and even in France. The other anecdotes I had long since noted in another place.
“At Mr. Burke’s, near Beaconsfeld, Sept. ”

“ Alone, Egremont mused much over the daughter of Gerard, but shrinking from the precise and the definite, his dreams were delightful, but vague. All that he asked was, that his present life should go on for ever; he wished for no change, and at length almost persuaded himself that no change could arrive; as men who are basking in a summer sun, surrounded by bright and beautiful objects, cannot comprehend how the seasons can ever alter; that the sparkling foliage should shrivel and fall away, the foaming waters become icebound, and the blue serene, a dark and howling space. ”

“ A clouded flame licks up the offering of our ruined souls, and the sacrifice vanishes in the sable smoke of Death.
But where are his thoughts wandering? Had he forgotten that day of darkest despair? There had that happened to him which had happened to no other man. He was roused from his reverie by the sound of a trotting horse. He looked up, but the winding road prevented him at first from seeing the steed which evidently was approaching. The sound came nearer and nearer; and at length, turning a corner, Mr. Beckendorff came in sight. ”

“ Beckendorff,” said the Prince, with great dignity, making this slight mistake in the name, either from being unused to converse with such low people as had not the nominal mark of nobility, or to vent his spleen at being so unnecessarily kept from the refreshment which he so much required.
“Mr. von Philipson,” said Beckendorff, suddenly turning round, “all my fruits and all my vegetables are from my own garden. Let us sit down and help ourselves.” ”

“ But Lord Beaumaris was a little freakish. Sometimes he would sail in his yacht to odd places, and was at Algiers or in Egypt when, according to Tadpole, he ought to have been at Piccadilly Terrace. Then he occasionally got crusty about his hunting. He would hunt, whatever were the political consequences, but whether he were in Africa or Leicestershire, Imogene must be with him. He could not exist without her constant presence. There was something in her gentleness, combined with her quick and ready sympathy and playfulness of mind and manner, which alike pleased and soothed his life. ”