Benjamin Disraeli Letters, Volume 8: 1860–1864 (review)

Like the previous parts of this series, this superbly edited volume contributes significantly to scholarly understanding of Victorian politics. The years covered in this volume, 1860 to 1864, are those when Benjamin Disraeli found himself Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, faced with the dilemma that engineering the defeat of Lord Palmerston’s administration would only force the Conservatives into yet another weak, minority government. The chief political interest of the volume is thus the way it reveals the details of Disraeli’s strategy of keeping Palmerston’s Whig/Peelite/Liberal coalition in office, while inflicting upon them as much damage as possible in the hope that eventually the Conservatives would—with dissolution and a general election—be able to form a majority government. As the many letters to Lord Derby and to Disraeli’s political friends show, this strategy was particularly difficult because it required a constant balancing of contending forces, including those within his own party.

It was in these years, too, that Disraeli became an energetic champion of the established church. As the volume’s astute introduction points out, “apart from regular attendance at St. George’s, Hanover Square,” he “had not elsewhere shown himself very religious, but his support of the Church as an institution central to national stability was perfectly consistent” (xii); something readers of his novels Sybil (1845) and Tancred (1847) would certainly have understood. With reference to his intentions in the latter he, indeed, described the church as “a remedial agency in our present state” (Collected Edition of the Novels and Tales by the Right Honorable B. Disraeli [Longmans, 1875], 1: xii). By the 1860s Disraeli believed there was a “concerted movement” (105) from humanists, evangelicals, and Catholics alike to weaken the church, and, as these letters show, he was constantly on guard in Parliament, and on other occasions, to defend its special position and its public expression of faith as key elements of the Conservative view of civil society.

This volume is also especially interesting in biographical terms because it contains a great many letters to Sarah Brydges Willyams, the elderly widow living at Torquay who became Disraeli’s friend and benefactor. With the death of his sister, Sarah, in December 1859, Disraeli lost what he had always needed, a corresponding confidante whose generous interest and unstinting admiration served as a secure source of comfort outside the hectic schedule of day-to-day events. The letters to and from Willyams are fascinating. They show that, quite naturally, their relationship lacked the special intensity and familiarity of that with his sister. But in the expressions of his courtly concern, symbolized by their constant exchange of gifts (flowers, turbot, and prawns sent to Grosvenor Gate; trout, salmon, and game from the estates of his aristocratic colleagues forwarded to Torquay), Disraeli’s letters nonetheless reveal a special closeness. This was based in part on the pleasure he felt in sharing his triumphs and political secrets with Willyams, and in part on the deep sympathies of their common religious and racial heritage. Indeed, many of these letters, especially the ones detailing his efforts to settle the details of her family crest, provide insight into the way Disraeli’s Jewish identity, though nominally displaced, remained at the core of his personality at a time when it was highly problematic in the public sphere. At some point in their friendship, which was sustained not just by letters, but also the Disraelis’ annual visits to Torquay in the winter recesses, Willyams made Disraeli a major beneficiary in her will. Skeptics may want to view this correspondence cynically, but the letters themselves reflect a mutual regard and affection that partake of the romance that informs so much of Disraeli’s life and works.

Among the most exciting of the scholarly discoveries contained in this volume is a retrospective one: that of Disraeli’s detailed involvement...