Disraeli: A Personal History

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In the spring of 1836, Disraeli had gone down to Lewes to speak in favour of a friend who was a candidate for the borough. His speech there was as effective as his writings had been in the past year; and when he sat down, according to The Times – which described him as ‘already well known for his literary talents and his opposition to the O’Connell influence in the Government’ – ‘the most deafening applause prevailed for the space of several minutes’.

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Despite this success, a subsequent energetic canvassing in support of the Conservative candidate in a by-election caused by the death of one of the members for Buckinghamshire, and a fine and witty speech delivered at a Conservative banquet in Aylesbury – which, reported in The Times, led Sarah to write, ‘You have succeeded in doing that which you so much desired, viz., to make a speech that would be talked of all over England’ – Disraeli was less concerned with politics in the late 1830s than with the problems occasioned by his debts.

These debts had now risen to over £20,000 (the equivalent in today’s money of about £600,000); and there seemed no way of settling them. There had been a time when he could always borrow from Benjamin Austen, but Austen had come to feel that Disraeli was no longer much interested in him now that he had found other more influential friends in smarter circles. When Disraeli asked for a loan of £1,200 in return for an assignment of his copyrights, Austen replied that, as Disraeli already owed him £300 – which he would not ask to be repaid for the moment – he did not feel able to lend him a further £1,200. Austen’s wife eventually persuaded her husband to change his mind; but when the time came to repay the money and Disraeli could not do so, Austen again, understandably, became extremely cross. Tired of receiving such letters as a characteristic one in which Disraeli expressed himself ‘mortified’ by being unable to redeem his pledge but he was ‘really TOO ILL’,

(#litres_trial_promo) Austen threatened to go to law, and so at length Disraeli was forced to appeal to his father. The debt was repaid. The friendship with the Austens, however, was irrevocably broken, and they were left suffering under what Sir Philip Rose described as ‘a morbid feeling of slight and neglect’.

Although the debts to Austen were settled at last, this was far from being the end of Disraeli’s financial distress. For a time he was helped by the solicitor, William Pyne, who performed ‘singular good services’. But by February 1836, the situation had once more become desperate. His creditors were now so clamorous that he was again reluctantly compelled to appeal to his father, to whom he did not care to reveal the full amount of his indebtedness – of which, in any case, he could hazard no more than a rough guess. In a painful interview at Bradenham he ‘ventured to say £2,000 might be required’. But this did not go far. He had to return for more. He was given more. Yet, even so, only the more importunate of the creditors were paid. Other debts still loomed and mounted. He found money, however, to bribe the sheriff’s officer.

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Further debts were blithely contemplated. ‘On Saturday,’ he had written to Pyne in May 1836, ‘the “Carlton Chronicle”, a new weekly journal, will be started. I have been offered & have provisionally accepted half the proprietorship which…will require £500. This speculation may turn out & quickly a considerable property…I think I could scrape enough tog[eth]er. The object is CONSIDERABLE.’

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His debts apparently did not cause Disraeli any excessive worry. It was as though he accepted these as part of the necessary accoutrements of a man of fashion. A character in one of his novels expresses himself as being actually ‘fond of his debts’, one of ‘the two greatest stimulants in the world’, the other being youth. What would he be without them?