The calm of satisfied ambition—A new novel—‘Lothair’—Survey of English society—The modern aristocracy—Forces working on the surface and below it—Worship of rank—Cardinal Grandison—Revolutionary socialism—Romeward drift of the higher classes—‘Lothair’ by far the most remarkable of all Disraeli’s writings.

Once again in Opposition, Disraeli found leisure to return to his early occupations. As a politician, and at the head of a minority for the time hopelessly weak, he had merely to look on and assist, by opportune sarcasms, the ebb of Liberal popularity.

In this comparative calm he resumed his profession as a novelist, which he had laid aside for more than twenty years, and delivered himself of a work immeasurably superior to anything of the kind which he had hitherto produced. ‘Vivian Grey’ and ‘Contarini Fleming’ were portraits of himself, drawn at an age of vanity and self-consciousness. ‘Henrietta Temple’ and ‘Venetia’ were clever stories—written, probably, because he wanted money—but without the merit or the interest which would have given them a permanent place in English literature. The famous trilogy, ‘Coningsby,’ ‘Sybil,’ and ‘Tancred,’ though of far greater value, have the fatal defect, as works of art, that they were avowedly written for a purpose. ‘Lothair’ has none of these faults—Disraeli himself is imperceptible; the inner meaning of the book does not lie upon the surface. It was supposed, on its first appearance, to be a vulgar glorification of the splendours of the great English nobles into whose society he had been admitted as a parvenu, and whose condescension he rewarded by painting them in their indolent magnificence. The glitter and tinsel was ascribed to a Jewish taste for tawdry decoration, while he, individually, was thought to be glutted to satiation in the social Paradise, like ‘Ixion at the feasts of the gods.’ The divinities themselves were amused and forgiving. They did not resent—perhaps they secretly liked—the coloured photographs in which they saw themselves depicted. The life which Disraeli described was really their own, drawn naturally, without envy or malice; a life in which they enjoyed every pleasure which art could invent or fortune bestow, where they could discharge their duties to society by simply existing, and where they had the satisfaction of knowing that, by the mere gratification of their wishes, they were providing employment for multitudes of dependents. They had cultivated the graces of perfected humanity in these splendid surroundings, and ‘Lothair’ was accepted as a voluntary offering of not undeserved homage.

In all Disraeli’s writings, from his earliest age, there is traceable a conviction that no country could prosper under a free Constitution, without an aristocracy with great duties and great privileges; an aristocracy who, as leaders of the people, should be their examples also of manliness and nobility of character. He had observed how, as political power had passed away from the English peers, while their wealth remained, and increased, their habits had become more self-indulgent—they had become a superior but socially exclusive caste. They were still an estate of the realm, but they had become, like the gods of Epicurus, lifted above the toils and troubles of this mortal world, still feeding on the offerings which continued to smoke upon the altars, but of no definite use, and likely, it might be, to lose their celestial thrones, should mankind cease to believe in them. The occupation of the Elysians in the ‘Infernal Marriage’ was to go to operas and plays and balls, to wander in the green shades of the forest, to canter in light-hearted cavalcades over breezy downs, to banquet with the beautiful and the witty, to send care to the devil, and indulge the whim of the moment. It was easy to see who were meant by the Elysians. Privileged mortals they might be, but mortals out of whom, unless they roused themselves, no future rulers would ever rise to govern again the English nation. The Emperor Julian imagined that he could galvanise the dead gods of Paganism; Disraeli, believing that an aristocracy of some kind was a political necessity, had dreamt of an awakening of the young generation of English nobles to the heroic virtues of the age of the Plantagenets.

A quarter of a century had gone by since he had sent Tancred for inspiration to Mount Sinai. During all that time he had lived himself within the privileged circle. He had not over-estimated the high native qualities of the patrician lords and dames, but he had recognised the futility of his imaginations. They were as little capable of change as Venus and Apollo, and in his enforced leisure he drew their likenesses, with a light satire—so light that they failed to perceive it. The students of English history in time to come, who would know what the nobles of England were like in the days of Queen Victoria, will read ‘Lothair’ with the same interest with which they read ‘Horace’ and ‘Juvenal.’ When Disraeli wrote, they were in the zenith of their magnificence. The industrial energy of the age had doubled their already princely revenues without effort of their own. They were the objects of universal homage—partly a vulgar adulation of rank, partly the traditionary reverence for their order, which had not yet begun to wane. Though idleness and flattery had done their work to spoil them, they retained much of the characteristics of a high-born race. Even Carlyle thought that they were the best surviving specimens of the ancient English. But their self-indulgence had expanded with their incomes. Compared with the manners of the modern palace or castle, the habits of their grandfathers and grandmothers had been frugality and simplicity: and they had no duties—or none which they had been taught to understand. So they stand before us in ‘Lothair.’ Those whom Elysian pleasures could not satisfy were weary of the rolling hours, and for want of occupation are seen drifting among the seductions of the Roman harlot; while from below the surface is heard the deep ground-tone of the European revolution, which may sweep them all away. We have no longer the bombast and unreality of the revolutionary epic. Disraeli has still the same subject before him, but he treats it with the mellow calmness of matured experience. He writes as a man of the world, with perfect mastery of his material, without a taint of ill-nature—with a frank perception of the many and great excellences of the patrician families, of the charm and spirit of the high-born matrons and girls, of the noble capabilities of their fathers and brothers, paralysed by the enchantment which condemns them to uselessness. They stand on the canvas like the heroes and heroines of Vandyck; yet the sense never leaves us that they are but flowers of the hothouse, artificially forced into splendour, with no root in outer nature, and therefore of no continuance.

The period of the story was the immediate year in which Disraeli was writing. The characters, though in but few instances portraits of living men and women, were exactly, even ludicrously, true to the prevailing type. We are introduced on the first page into a dukery the grandest of its kind; the owner of it, the duke, being too great to require a name, while minor dukes move like secondary planets in the surrounding ether.

The duke has but one sorrow—that he has no home, his many palaces requiring a periodic residence at each. He is consoled each morning in his dressing-room, when he reviews his faultless person, by the reflection that his family were worthy of him. The hero is an ingenuous, pure-minded youth, still under age, though fast approaching his majority, the heir of enormous possessions, which, great as they descended from his father, have been increased to fabulous proportions by the progress of the country. His expectations rather oppress than give him pleasure, for he is full of generous aspirations, to which he knows not how to give effect. He feels only that his wealth will give him boundless powers for good or evil, and all that his natural piety and simplicity can tell him is that he ought to do something good with it. In an ordinary novel, a youth so furnished would be the natural prey of scheming mothers. Disraeli makes him the intended victim of a far more subtle conspiracy. His rank is vaguely indicated as only second to that of the duke himself. An absurd and unnatural consequence attaches to him in society, and he is marked as a prey by the power which aims at recovering England to the Church of Rome by the conversion of lords and ladies. He is exposed to temptation through the innocence of his nature. Of his guardians, one is a Scotch Presbyterian earl, narrow, rugged, and honest; the other, a distinguished clergyman of the Anglican Church, an early friend of his father, who has ‘gone over’ to Rome, risen to high rank, and is at the head of the English Mission. The personality of this eminent man is visibly composed of the late Cardinal Wiseman and his successor, who is still present among us, and is so favourably known by his exertions for the improvement of the people. The function of Cardinal Grandison, as Disraeli represents him, is the propagation of Catholic truth among patrician circles. He has operated successfully on young and beautiful countesses, who, in turn, have worked upon their husbands.

The first converts of the apostles were the poor and the unknown. The Cardinal’s superficial, but not altogether groundless, calculation, was that if he could convert earls and countesses, the social influence of those great persons would carry the nation after them. Lothair, with his enormous fortune, would be a precious acquisition. His boyhood had been spent in Scotland, and, through his guardians’ precautions, the Cardinal has no opportunities of influencing him—indeed, had scarcely seen him. They meet when he enters the world. Their connection places them on terms of immediate intimacy, and the web is spun round the fly with exquisite skill. Lothair is naturally religious, and no direct attempts are made upon his faith. Theological differences are treated with offhand ease; but he finds himself imperceptibly drawn into Catholic society. Accomplished Monsignori are ever at his side. Great ladies treat him with affectionate confidence, and he is delighted with an element where the highest breeding is sanctified by Spiritual devotion. More delicate attractions are brought to bear—a lovely girl, so angelic that she is intended for a convent, lets him see that her destiny may, perhaps, be changed if she can find a husband with a spirit like her own. Lothair sinks rapidly under the combination of enchantments. An immense balance lies at his bankers, the accumulations of his minority. His conversations with Miss Arundel convince him that he must build a cathedral in London with it. It never occurred to him—nobody had even suggested to him—that his rent-roll entailed responsibilities towards the thousands of working families who were his own dependents, and by whose toil that wealth had been created. To build a cathedral, at any rate, would be a precious achievement—whether Catholic or Protestant might be decided when it was completed. He was, himself, the only person who seemed ignorant which it was to be.

The spell which was cast by a lady, could be broken only by another lady’s hand. Before Lothair is finally subdued, accident brings him in contact with Theodora, the wife of a rich American, dazzlingly beautiful, the incarnation of the Genius of the European revolution, to which her devotion is as intense as that of Miss Arundel to the Catholic Church. Two emotional impulses divide at present the minds of the passionate and the restless. The timid see salvation only in the reunion of Christendom and the returning protection of the Virgin. The bold and generous, weary of the cants, the conventionalisms, and unrealities of modern life, fling themselves into the revolutionary torrent, which threatens the foundations of existing civilisation.

In the convulsions of 1848, the revolutionary societies had shaken half the thrones in Europe. Disraeli, whose vision, unlike that of most contemporary statesmen, was not limited to the coming session, but looked before and after, had watched these two tendencies all through his life, well aware that they would have more to do with the future of mankind than the most ingenious Parliamentary manoeuvrings. While Premier he had learnt much of the working of the republican propaganda in France, Germany, and Russia. In the Irish Conspiracy, Catholic priests had been found, curiously, co-operating with American Fenians. Particular persons had fallen under his notice who were unknown to the outside world. At the moment when Lothair’s future is hanging in the balance, he is led into relation with the fascinating representative of the revolutionary spirit. Theodora, whom Disraeli evidently likes better than any one else in the book, had been devoted from childhood to the cause of liberty. Her father and brothers had been killed in the fights of 1848. She herself, an orphan and an exile, had wandered to Paris, had sung in the streets, had been received into the secret associations, where, for her beauty and her genius, she had been regarded as a tutelary saint.

Pure as snow, Theodora had no thought but for the cause. The women worshipped her, the men idolised her. Like Rachel, she had electrified the Paris mob by starting forward at a great moment, and singing the ‘Marseillaise.’ She was the Mary Anne of the universal conspiracy against the existing tyranny which was called order, and a word from her at any moment could kindle the fire into a blaze. At the moment when this lady, an idealised Margaret Fuller, is introduced upon the scene, her thoughts are concentrated on the delivery of Rome from the Papacy. Thus simultaneously the two enthusiasms were centred on the same spot. The Catholic devotees were dreaming of the reunion of Christendom. Pio Nono was to summon an Ecumenical Council which was to be the greatest event of the century. To the revolutionists Rome was the mystic centre of European liberty. Rome being once free, and the detested priests made an end of, the Genius of Evil would spread its wings and depart, and mankind would at last be happy. Louis Napoleon was the uncertain element in the situation. Would he continue to support the Pope, or leave him to his fate?

The two parties watched each other, waiting the decision, and Theodora and her husband are in England, living at Belmont, a villa on the edge of Wimbledon, with an artistic and intellectual circle of friends. Here Lothair is introduced. He finds himself in an atmosphere delightful, yet entirely strange to him, presided over by a divine being. The lady is ten years older than himself, on the best terms with her American, and without further room in her heart for any but ideal objects. Disraeli contrives, with extraordinary skill, to let the fascination exercise its full power without degenerating into a vulgar intrigue. All is airy and spiritual. Lothair was on the edge of becoming a Catholic, because ‘society ought to be religious.’ Theodora is as ‘religious’ as Miss Arundel, but with a religion independent of dogma. He confides in her, tells her of his struggles, confesses his devotion to herself. When his passion takes too warm a tone she gently waves it aside with a grace which intensifies the affection without allowing it to degrade itself.

Cardinal Grandison and his countesses are watching for their council, which is to be the ‘event of the century.’ To Lothair the great ‘event’ is his own coming of age, and the celebration of it at his magnificent castle. Dukes and earls, bishops and cardinals, Monsignori and English clergy, sheriffs and county magistrates, gather at Muriel for the occasion, and Theodora and her husband are specially-invited guests. All that is loyallest and brightest in the English nation is brought out in Lothair’s welcome to his inheritance. The object is to show the unadulterated respect which still remains for our great nobles, the future which is still within their reach if they know how to seize it—a respect, however, tinged slightly with artificiality and unreality in the exaggeration of the outward splendour. As a by-play, the chiefs of the two Churches continue their struggle for Lothair’s soul. The ‘Bishop,’ a well-known prelate of those days, and a college friend of Cardinal Grandison before their creed had divided them, now meet in the lists, followed by their respective acolytes. The Bishop and the Anglican countesses arrange an early ‘celebration’ in the chapel, where Lothair is to renew his vows to the Church of his fathers. The Catholics look at it as a magical rite, which may spoil the work which they are hoping to accomplish. The sureness of foot with which Disraeli moves in these intricate labyrinths, the easy grace with which the various actors play their parts, might tempt one to forget what a piece of gilded tinsel it all is, but for the disbelieving interjections of common sense from less devout spectators. St. Aldegonde, the most attractive of all the male characters in the book, a patrician of the patricians and the heir of a dukedom, affects Radicalism of the reddest kind. Bored with the emptiness of an existence which he knows not how to amend, a man who in other times might have ridden beside King Richard at Ascalon, or charged with the Black Prince at Poitiers, lounges through life in good-humoured weariness of amusements which will not amuse, and outrages conventionalism by his frank contempt for humbug. Him they had not dared to invite to be present at the ‘celebration.’ On a Sunday morning, when the party generally were observing the ordinary proprieties, he appears in the breakfast-room in rough and loose weekday costume, pushes his hands through his dishevelled locks, and exclaims, as he stands before the fire, regardless of the Bishop’s presence, ‘How I hate Sundays!’ The Bishop makes a dignified retreat. When St. Aldegonde’s wife gently reproves him, he adds impenitently to his sins, saying, ‘I don’t like bishops, I don’t see the use of them; but I have no objection to him personally. I think him an agreeable man, not at all a bore. Just put it right, Bertha,’ &c. St. Aldegonde is a perfect specimen of a young English noble, who will not cant or lie; the wisest and truest when counsel or action is needed of him, yet with his fine qualities all running to waste in a world where there is no employment for them.

Neither Bishop nor Cardinal secure their prey. Theodora carries the day. The French withdraw from Rome; she has secret information that they are not to return, and that the secret societies are ready to move. The opportunity has arrived. Nothing is wanted but arms and money. The cathedral is abandoned, the accumulations of Lothair’s minority are thrown into Theodora’s hands, and he himself enters into the campaign for the liberation of Rome.

A republican general, who has been incidentally seen before, a friend of Mazzini and Garibaldi, now appears on the scene. From Muriel we pass to an Italian valley on the Roman frontier, where a force is collecting to join Garibaldi and advance on the Holy City. Theodora is in the camp. Rome itself is ready to rise on the first glinting of their lances. The General moves forward, and fights and wins a battle at Viterbo; but in the moment of victory all is lost. Louis Napoleon has changed his mind, and the French return; a stray shot strikes Theodora, and mortally wounds her. The sound of the guns at Civita Vecchia saluting the arrival of the French ships reaches her ears as she hangs between life and death. Her heart breaks; her last words are to tell Lothair that ‘another and a more powerful attempt will be made to gain him to the Church of Rome,’ and she demands and obtains a promise from him that ‘he will never enter that communion.’

When he wrote ‘Coningsby’ and ‘Sybil,’ Disraeli regretted the Reformation. The most ardent admirer of the Middle Ages did not regard the overthrow of the ecclesiastical rule, and the suppression of the religious houses, with more displeasure, or believed more devotedly in the virtues of the abbots and the beneficent working of the monastic system. In his ‘Life of Lord George Bentinck’ he had so far changed his mind that he refuses to Roman Catholic the dignity of capital letters. Twenty additional years of experience had taught him that the modern Roman hierarchy was as unscrupulous as the Reformers had described their predecessors, and that, of the many dangers which threatened England, there was none more insidious than the intrigues of ultramontane proselytisers.

The battle of Mentana follows, and Garibaldi’s defeat by the French. Lothair is shot down at the General’s side, and is left for dead on the field. Being found breathing, he is taken up with the other wounded. His English Catholic friends are in Rome for the winter, and devote themselves to the care of the hospitals. An Italian woman brings word to Miss Arundel that one of her countrymen is lying at the point of death, who may be recovered if she takes charge of him. He is found to be Lothair, and the opportunity is seized for a thaumaturgical performance as remarkable as the miracle-working at Lourdes. The woman who brought the account is discovered, by a halo round her head, to have been the Virgin in person; Lothair, unknown to himself, to have fallen not as a Garibaldian but as a volunteer in the Papal army. He is carried, unconscious, to the enchanter’s cave, in the shape of a room in the Agostini Palace. He is watched over while in danger by a beautiful veiled figure. He is surrounded in convalescence by adroit Monsignori, and prevailed on to assist in a ceremony which is represented to him as a mere thanksgiving for his recovery, but in which he finds himself walking first in a procession, candle in hand, at Miss Arundel’s side, she and he the special objects of the Virgin’s care. The next morning the whole performance is published in full in the ‘Papal Gazette,’ and his Cardinal guardian then appears on the stage, to tell him that he is ‘the most favoured of men,’ and that the Holy Father in person will immediately receive him into the Church.

Too weak from illness to express his indignation in more than words, he protests against the insolent deceit. Nowhere in English fiction is there any passage where the satire is more delicate than in the Cardinal’s rejoinder. Lothair opens a window into Disraeli’s mind, revealing the inner workings of it more completely than anything else which he wrote or said. For this reason I have given so many pages to the analysis of it, and must give one or two more.

‘“I know there are two narratives of your relations with the battle of Mentana,” observed the Cardinal, quietly. “The one accepted as authentic is that which appears in this Journal; the other account, which can only be traced to yourself, has, no doubt, a somewhat different character. But considering that it is in the highest degree improbable, and that there is not a tittle of collateral or confirmatory evidence to extenuate its absolute unlikelihood, I hardly think you are justified in using, with reference to the statements in this article the harsh expressions which I am persuaded on reflection you will feel you have hastily used.”

‘“I think,” said Lothair, with a kindling eye and a burning Cheek, “that I am the best judge of what I did at Mentana.”

‘“Well, well,” said the Cardinal, with dulcet calmness, “you naturally think so; but you must remember you have been very ill, my dear young friend, and labouring under much excitement. If I was you—and I speak as your friend—I would not dwell too much on this fancy of yours about the battle of Mentana. I would, myself, always deal tenderly with a fixed idea. Nevertheless, in the case of a public event, a matter of fact, if a man finds that he is of one opinion, and all orders of society of another, he should not be encouraged to dwell on a perverted creed. Your case is by no means an uncommon one. It will wear off with returning health. King George IV. believed he commanded at the battle of Waterloo, and his friends were at one time a little alarmed; but Knighton, who was a sensible man, said, ‘His Majesty has only to leave off CuraÇoa, and, rest assured, he will gain no more victories.’ Remember, sir, where you are. You are in the centre of Christendom, where truth, and alone truth, resides. Divine authority has perused this paper, and approved it. It is published for the joy and satisfaction of two hundred millions of Christians, and for the salvation of all those who, unhappily for themselves, are not yet converted to the faith. It records the most memorable event of this century. Our Blessed Lady has personally appeared to her votaries before during that period, but never at Rome; wisely and well she has worked, in villages, as did her Divine Son. But the time is now ripe for terminating the infidelity of the world. In the Eternal City, amid all its matchless learning and profound theology, in the sight of thousands, this great act has been accomplished in a manner which can admit of no doubt and lead to no controversy. Some of the most notorious atheists of Rome have already solicited to be admitted to the offices of the Church. The secret societies have received their deathblow. I look to the alienation of England as virtually over. I am panting to see you return to the home of your fathers, and recover it for the Church in the name of the Lord God of Sabaoth. Never was a man in a greater position since Godfrey or Ignatius. The eyes of all Christendom are upon you, as the most favoured of men, and you stand there like St. Thomas.”

‘“Perhaps he was bewildered, as I am,” said Lothair.

‘“Well, his bewilderment ended in his becoming an apostle, as yours will. I am glad we have had this conversation, and that we agree. I knew we should. To-morrow the Holy Father will himself receive you into the bosom of the Church. Christendom will then hail you as its champion and regenerator.”’

Conscious that he was the victim of a lying conspiracy, yet as if his will was magnetised, he finds himself driven to the slaughter, ‘a renegade without conviction.’ He is virtually a prisoner, but he contrives at night to pass the Palace gate, wander about the ghostly city, and at last into the Coliseum, where Benvenuto Cellini had seen a vision of devils, and Lothair imagines that he sees Theodora, who reminds him of her warning. He is brought back, senseless, by a spiritual sleuth-hound who had been sent after him; and the result was, that on the morning which was to have made the unfortunate Lord of Muriel a Papist against his will, he is visited by an English doctor, ‘who abhorred priests, and did not particularly admire ladies.’ He is ordered instant change of scene, and is sent to Sicily—still in the custody of ‘familiars’; but he evades their vigilance, embarks in a fishing-boat, reaches Malta and an English yacht—and thenceforward his fortunes brighten again. He visits the Greek islands. Of course he must go to Jerusalem—all Disraeli’s heroes who want spiritual comfort are sent to Jerusalem—not, however, any longer to see visions of angels, but to find a ‘Paraclete’ in a Syrian Christian from the Lake of Gennesaret, an Ebionite of the primitive type, whose religion was a simple following of Christ.

In recovered health of mind and body, Lothair returns to England, where he finds the world as he had left it. He supposes his adventures would be on everyone’s lips. His acquaintances ask him, coolly, what he has been doing with himself, and how long he has been in town. The Cardinal is again gliding through the gilded drawing-rooms, but ignores the Roman incident as if it had never been. Miss Arundel subsides into her sacred vocation. The hero, freed from further persecution, marries the beautiful daughter of the duke, who had been the object of his boyish affection—a lady, needless to say, of staunchest Protestant integrity.

Such is ‘Lothair,’ perhaps the first novel ever written by a man who had previously been Prime Minister of England. Every page glitters with wit or shines with humour. Special scenes and sentences are never to be forgotten: the Tournament of Doves at the Putney Villa, where the ladies gather to see their lords at their favourite summer amusement; the wounded blue rock, which was contented to die by the hand of a duke, but rose and fluttered over a paling, disdaining to be worried by a terrier; the artist who hesitates over a mission to Egypt, but reflects that no one has ever drawn a camel, and that, if he went, a camel would at last be drawn; the definition of critics—as those who had failed in literature and art. But the true value of the book is the perfect representation of patrician society in England in the year which was then passing over; the full appreciation of all that was good and noble in it; yet the recognition, also, that it was a society without a purpose, and with no claim to endurance. It was then in its most brilliant period, like the full bloom of a flower which opens fully only to fade.