1. Bernard Glassman, Benjamin Disraeli: The Fabricated Jew in Myth and Memory (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002), 111–44. For examples of this mode see Nahum Sokolow, A History of Zionism, vol. 1 (London: Longmans Green, 1919), 140–45; André Maurois, Disraeli, A Picture of the Victorian Age, trans. Hamish Miles (London: John Lane, 1927); Cecil Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), 20; Harold Fisch, “Disraeli’s Hebrew Compulsions,” in H. J. Zimmels, J. Rabbinowitz, I. Finestein, eds., Essays Presented to Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (London: Soncino Press, 1967), 81–94.
2. T. E. Kebbel, Life of Lord Beaconsfield (London: W. H. Allen, 1888); J. A. Froude, Lord Beaconsfield (London: Sampson Low, 1890); William Flaville Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, rev. ed. (London: John Murray, 1929); Earl of Cromer, Disraeli (London: Macmillan, 1912), originally published in the Spectator. See also Sir Edward Clarke, Benjamin Disraeli: The Romance of a Great Career, 1804–1881 (London: John Murray, 1926).
3. For analysis of these trends, see Todd M. Endelman and Tony Kushner, introduction to Todd M. Endelman and Tony Kushner, eds., Disraeli’s Jewishness (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2002), 1–19, and Tony Kushner, “One of Us? Contesting Disraeli’s Jewishness and Englishness in the Twentieth Century,” in ibid., 201–61.
4. B. R. Jerman, The Young Disraeli (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960); Robert Blake, Disraeli (London: Methuen, 1966); Maurice Cowling, Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution: The Passing of the Second Reform Act (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967); R. W. Davis, Disraeli (London: Hutchinson, 1976); Daniel Schwarz, Disraeli’s Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1979); Thomas Braun, Disraeli the Novelist (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981); Christopher Hibbert, Disraeli: A Personal History (London: Harper Collins, 2004); Douglas Hurd and Edward Young, Disraeli, or The Two Lives ((London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2013); Robert O’Kell, Disraeli: The Romance of Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).
5. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, 1951), 68–79; Isaiah Berlin, “Benjamin Disraeli, Karl Marx and the Search for Identity,” in Henry Hardy, ed., Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 260–73, first delivered as a lecture in 1967 and published in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 22 (1968–69).
6. Sarah Bradford, Disraeli (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982); John Vincent, Disraeli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993); Jane Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 1804–1846 (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995); Paul Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Edgar Feuchtwanger, Disraeli (London: Arnold, 2000); William Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli (London: Pocket Books, 2007); Adam Kirsch, Benjamin Disraeli (New York: Nextbook, 2008). See especially Colin Richmond and Paul Smith, eds., The Self-Fashioning of Disraeli, 1818–1851 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and Endelman and Kushner, eds., Disraeli’s Jewishness. An exception to this trend is Hurd and Young, Disraeli, or The Two Lives, which reverts to the earlier type of political biography that marginalised Disraeli’s Jewishness.
1. Cecil Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), 20. For full information about Disraeli’s lineage (on which Roth depended), see original, pioneering research by Lucien Wolf, “The Disraeli Family,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 5 (1902–5), 202–18.
2. David Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 114–40; Todd Endelman, The Jews of Britain 1656–2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 18–27; Edgar Samuel, “The First Fifty Years,” in V. D. Lipman, ed., Three Centuries of Anglo-Jewish History (London: Jewish Historical Society of England, 1961), 27–44.
3. Endelman, Jews of Britain, 29–38, 41–67. Albert Hyamson, The Sephardim of England: A History of the Spanish and Portuguese Community, 1492–1951 (London: Methuen, 1951), 36–95.
4. T. W. Perry, Public Opinion, Propaganda and Politics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study of the Jew Bill of 1753 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). There is considerable disagreement amongst historians as to how to interpret the opposition to the Jew Bill. Cf. Katz, The Jews, 240–53; Frank Felsenstein, Anti-Semitic Stereotypes: A Paradigm of Otherness in English Popular Culture, 1660–1830 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 187–214; Todd Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 1714–1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), 59–64.
5. Benjamin Disraeli’s almost wholly invented version of his family history is set out in the memoir of his father that prefaces his edition of his father’s most famous literary work: Isaac Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature (London: Moxon, 1849), vii–x.
6. Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, 1–2; Wolf, “The Disraeli Family,” 207–10.
7. Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, 2–8. Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993), 12–16.
8. Gedalia Yogev, Diamonds and Coral: Anglo-Dutch Jews and Eighteenth-Century Trade (Leicester: University of Leicester Press, 1978), 137–38, 174, 299, for Disraeli’s family and in general for the Jewish commercial milieu of his great-grandparents and grandparents.
9. Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, 8–9; Wolf, “The Disraeli Family,” 212–13.
10. Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, 5–9. Endelman, Jews of Georgian England, 126–28.
11. Endelman, Jews of Britain, 4, 120–42.
12. Francesca Trivellato, “The Port Jews of Livorno and Their Global Networks of Trade in the Early Modern Period,” in David Cesarani and Gemma Romain, eds., Jews and Port Cities, 1590–1990: Commerce, Community and Cosmopolitanism (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006), 31–48.
13. Todd Endelman, Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 10–12, 17, 20–24; Endelman, Jews of Georgian England, 142–54.
14. David Cesarani, “The Forgotten Port Jews of London: Court Jews Who Were Also Port Jews,” in David Cesarani, ed., Port Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centers, 1550–1950 (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 111–24.
15. Endelman, Jews of Britain, 20–84, on the relative acceptance and toleration of Jews; Endelman, Radical Assimilation, 21.
16. For Disraeli’s unreliable portrait of his father and his family, see the “Memoir” that prefaces Isaac Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature (London: Moxon, 1849), xi–xxxvii.
17. Compare the “Memoir” to Wolf, “The Disraeli Family.”
18. “Memoir,” x. William Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli (London; Pocket Books, 2007), 18–20.
19. “Memoir,” xvi–xx.
20. Ibid., xxx–xxxiii.
21. Ibid., xxxi.
22. James Ogden, Isaac D’Israeli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 4–7.
23. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England, 197; Ogden, Isaac D’Israeli, 16–24.
24. Ogden, Isaac D’Israeli, 16–24.
25. M. O. Grenby, The Anti-Jacobin Novel: British Conservatism and the French Revolution (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 2001), 80–82, 90–96, 111–20.
26. Ogden, Isaac D’Israeli, 60–68, 74–79.
27. Isaac D’Israeli, Curiosities of Literature, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1858), 113–20, 120–26; vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 1858), 75–79.
28. Isaac D’Israeli, “A Biographical Sketch of the Jewish Socrates,” Monthly Magazine, part 2 (July–December 1798), 34–35, 35–44. The “national character of the Hebrews,” he explained, was so “averse to letters” that they had produced “few memorable authors.” Nevertheless, circumstances contrived to throw up a few. He listed several exceptions, including Solomon Maimon and Leon Gompertz. This tally showed an impressive familiarity with contemporary Jewish thought.
29. On Mendelssohn’s conservative rehabilitation and modernisation of Judaism, see David Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
30. “On the Late Installation of a Grand Sanhedrin of the Jews in Paris,” Monthly Magazine 24 (1807), 34–38; “Acts of the Grand Sanhedrin at Paris,” Monthly Magazine 24, (1807), 134–46, 243–48. Much of this second piece consists of a summary of the closing statement by the president of the Sanhedrin, his kinsman Abraham Furtado.
31. S. Schwarzfuchs, Napoleon, the Jews, and the Sanhedrin (London: Routledge, 1979). For a recent assessment, see Lionel Kochan, The Making of Western Jewry, 1600–1819 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004), 251–52, 276–85.
32. Endelman, Radical Assimilation, 28–31.
33. For this and following paragraphs, see James Picciotto, Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History (London: Trübner, 1875), 295–301, and Hyamson, The Sephardim of England, 242–44.
34. Endelman, Jews of Britain, 152–54. Isaac’s nephew George Basevi resigned at the same time. Isaac eventually paid the back fees in 1821, in return for copies of his family’s birth certificates that he needed. But he never paid the fine. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England, 245–46.
35. William Flaville Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, rev. ed., 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1929), vol. 1 [hereafter MB, 1], 27; Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, 22–23.
36. Benjamin Disraeli [hereafter BD] to Francis Espinasse, 27 March 1860, in Helen M. Swartz and Marvin Swartz, eds., Disraeli’s Reminiscences (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975), 144–48. BD to Rose, 27 October 1847, Benjamin Disraeli Letters, Vol. 4, 1842–1847, ed. M. G. Wiebe et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989) [hereafter BDL, 4] 315–16.
37. MB, 1:27; Robert Blake, Disraeli (London: Methuen, 1966), 11.
38. Hugh A. MacDougall, Racial Myth in English History: Trojans, Teutons, and Anglo-Saxons (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1982), 92–95. See also Michael Ragussis, Figures of Conversion: “The Jewish Question” and English National Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 94–95, 175, who argues persuasively that Turner had a vested interest in conversion and, less convincingly, that Disraeli’s critique of “Teutonism” and his assertion of a Jewish identity was a tacit rejoinder to the worldview of his father’s colleague.
39. Ogden, Isaac D’Israeli, 156–60.
40. Ibid., 115–37. See also Blake, Disraeli, 3–9, who notes that Disraeli’s origins were “neither as humble nor as alien as some people believe”; Davis, Disraeli (London: Methuen, 1966), 3–6; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 17–28, stresses Isaac’s bookishness; Jane Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 1804–1846 (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995), 8–14. No. 6 Bloomsbury Square is still standing and was for a time during the 1990s occupied by the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
41. David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 130–33. More generally, see David Sorkin, The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought: Orphans of Knowledge (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000), 95–124, and Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).
42. Isaac D’Israeli, The Genius of Judaism (London: Edward Moxon, 1833), 1–2, 4, 26, 70–71, 77–78, 91–95.
43. Ibid., 146–47, 214, 231–32.
44. Ibid., 238, 251–57.
45. Ibid., 14.
46. Marvin Spevak, “In the Shadow of the Son: Isaac D’Israeli and Benjamin Disraeli,” Jewish Culture and History 8:2 (2006), 73–92, identifies the “proximity” but sees the two as “secret sharers” rather than accomplices in a very public endeavour.
47. “The Mutilated Diary,” in Benjamin Disraeli Letters, Vol. 1, 1815–1834, ed. J. A. W. Gunn et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982) [hereafter BDL, 1], appendix III, 447.
48. Georg Brandes, Lord Beaconsfield: A Study, trans. George Sturge (London: Richard Bently, 1880), began the trend; André Maurois, Disraeli: A Picture of the Victorian Age, trans. Hamish Miles (London: Bodley Head, 1927), 323; B. R. Jerman, The Young Disraeli (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 40ff., draws feely on the novels for autobiographical insights, although he downplays their usefulness for illustrating specific Jewish preoccupations in favour of more generic psychological drives. See also Daniel Schwarz, Disraeli’s Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1979), 2–3; but compare to Thomas Braun, Disraeli the Novelist (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), 14–15.
49. Benjamin Disraeli, Vivian Grey, parts 1, 2, ed. Lucien Wolf (London: Alexander Moring, 1904), part 1, 4–7. Wolf restored and reprinted the original 1826 text.
50. Benjamin Disraeli, Contarini Fleming: A Psychological Autobiography (London: Longmans Green, 1845), 1–15.
51. Ibid., 17–40, 100–102.
52. Brandes, Lord Beaconsfield, 20–23, 29–33, 40–45. Cf. Blake, Disraeli, 18–22; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 28–30.
53. MB, 1:28. See also the caveat by a contemporary of Disraeli, J. A. Froude, Lord Beaconsfield (London: Sampson Low, 1890), 15: “Neither ‘Vivian Grey’ nor ‘Contarini Fleming’ can be trusted for autobiographical details.” Cf. Blake, Disraeli, 16–17.
54. Contarini Fleming, 29; Vivian Grey, 29.
55. MB, 1:23–25.
56. Charles Richmond, “Disraeli’s Education,” in Colin Richmond and Paul Smith, eds., The Self-Fashioning of Disraeli, 1818–1851 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 16–41. Richmond’s acute observations concerning Disraeli’s reading and the influence of his father are rather more convincing than his speculation about his school days.
57. Swartz and Swartz, Disraeli’s Reminiscences, 145; MB, I, 28–35.
58. Swartz and Swartz, Disraeli’s Reminiscences, 145; MB, I, 36–38.
59. BD to Sarah D’Israeli [hereafter SD], 29 July; 2, 6, 14, 19, 23, 29 August 1824, BDL, 1:9–23. Christhard Hoffman, “From Heinrich Heine to Isidor Kracauer: The Frankfurt Ghetto in German-Historical Culture and Historiography,” Jewish Culture and History 10:2/3 (2008), 45–64.
60. MB, 1:58–63.
61. BD to Murray, October 1825, BDL, 1:45. Blake, Disraeli, 24–26.
62. BD to Murray, 1 April 1835, 23–26; 17, 21 September 1825, BDL, 1:34–35, 37–40.
63. MB, 1:64–82.
64. Blake, Disraeli, 27–33; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 50–62; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 32–41.
65. Jerman, The Young Disraeli, 45–46, 53–59. On Colburn, see Annabel Joss, “Fame and Reputation: A Novelist and His Publishers,” in Helen Langley, ed., Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: Scenes from an Extraordinary Life (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2003), 21–28.
66. Vivian Grey, 41–60, 64.
67. Ibid., 123–30, 143–44, 151–54, 213–14.
68. Blake, Disraeli, 34–48; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 42–51.
69. Jerman, The Young Disraeli, 45.
70. BD to Isaac D’Israeli [hereafter ID], 9 and 21 August 1826, BDL, 1:67–69, 69–72; 2 September 1826, BDL, 1:72–77. Blake, Disraeli, 51–52, notes the importance of Byron to the young Disraeli; for an insightful analysis of Byron’s influence and the impact of romanticism, see Paul Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 13–16, and Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure, 48–49, 75–76.
71. MB, 1:109–10; see also Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, 30.
72. BD to ID, 29 September 1826, BDL, 1:86–90.
73. Vivian Grey, part 2. In the novel Vivian notices signage with Hebrew lettering in Frankfurt which may have been a confused recollection of Yiddish on shop fronts in the Judengasse. But Disraeli was more interested in his own psychological and artistic development than what he saw around him.
74. The Voyage of Captain Popanilla, in vol. 8 of the Hughendon Edition of Disraeli’s fiction (London: Longmans Green, 1882), 365–463.
75. BD to Turner, 10 March 1828, BDL, 1:102–4.
76. BD to Benjamin Austen, 8 December 1829, BDL, 1:112–13.
77. Schwarz, Disraeli’s Fiction, 42; Braun, Disraeli the Novelist, 43; Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure, 97. BD to Colburn, 14 February 1830, BDL, 1:115–16.
78. Benjamin Disraeli, The Young Duke (London: Longmans Green, 1881). BD to SD, 28 May 1831, BDL, 1:189–95. MB, 1:137; Schwarz, Disraeli’s Fiction, 28–29.
79. BD to Catherine Gore, 14 February 1830, BDL, 1:113–14; to Sarah Austen, 7 March 1830, BDL, 1:116–17.
80. Donald Sultana, Benjamin Disraeli in Spain, Malta and Albania, 1830–32: A Monograph (London: Taesis Books, 1976), 1; Robert Blake, Disraeli’s Grand Tour: Benjamin Disraeli and the Holy Land (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), 69–70; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 82, 100–112; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 94–96; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 25–27, who argues that Disraeli went to the East looking for the “historic cradle of his race to find nobility in his blood” despite the fact that Disraeli does not come up with the myth of his noble origins for another decade.
81. Swartz and Swartz, Disraeli’s Reminiscences, 146; Benjamin Disraeli, “General Preface” to The Collected Edition of the Novels and Tales, I, Lothair (London: Longman, 1881), xx. In this preface Disraeli mistakenly asserts that he was abroad for two years, when in fact the trip lasted sixteen months, including two monthlong periods of quarantine.
82. MB, 1:125.
83. Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, 31–32.
84. BD to ID, 1, 26 July 1830, BDL, 1:128–33, 137–39; to SD, 9 August 1830, BDL, 1:144–47. Sultana, Benjamin Disraeli in Spain, 19, detects in one letter an allusion to the Christian reconquest of Spain that led to the downfall of the supposed Spanish branch of his family.
85. BD to Benjamin Austen, 18 November 1830, BDL, 1:172–74.
86. BD to Edward Lytton Bulwer, 27 December 1830, BDL, 1:179–80. Miloš Ković, Disraeli and the Eastern Question, trans. Miloš Damnjanović (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 17–20.
87. BD to ID, 25 October 1830, BDL, 1:165–72.
88. BD to ID, 11 January 1831, BDL, 1:182–85.
89. BD to SD, 20 March, 28 May 1831, BDL, 1:185–95.
90. BD to SD, 20 March 1831, BDL, 1:185–89.
91. Tudor Parfitt, The Jews in Palestine, 1800–1882 (London: Boydell Press, 1987), 12–32. For other visitors at around this time and what they wrote, see Naomi Shepherd, The Zealous Intruders: The Western Rediscovery of Palestine (London: Collins, 1987), 13–72. For his novels Disraeli drew upon the writings and paintings of other visitors as much as on his own memories.
92. There is a reference to the escapade on Temple Mount in the notes to Alroy; but, rather suspiciously, he did not mention it in his letter home. Cf. Blake, Disraeli’s Grand Tour, 63–69.
93. BD to SD, 28 May 1831, BDL, 1:189–95.
94. BD to ID, SD, and Georgina Meredith, 20 July 1831, BDL, 1:195–201.
95. For his attention to home news, see BD to SD, 28 May 1831, BDL, 1:189–95. John Cannon, Parliamentary Reform, 1640–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 187–241.
96. BD to ID, 23 October 1831, BDL, 1:203–4; to Benjamin Austen, 3 November 1831, 19 March 1832, BDL, 1:206–7, 242–44.
97. BD to SD, 31 March, 14 April, 27 July 1832, BDL, 1:252–54, 265–66, 296–97. For a sample of his social activities, BD to SD, 2 April, 15 May 1832, BDL, 1:256–58, 274–75.
98. For the description by N. P. Willis published in the New York Mirror on 11 August 1838 recalling a dinner in June 1834, see MB, 1:253. Blake, Disraeli, 73–77; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 121–25; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 108–9; and especially Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure, 44, 144–71.
99. BD to SD, 20, 22 February 1832, BDL, 1:226–29.
100. BD to SD, 9 March 1832, BDL, 1:240–41. MB, 1:210.
101. England and France, or a Cure for the Ministerial Gallomania (London: John Murray, 1832), 72, 50–51.
102. Gallomania, 40–43. Blake, Disraeli, 85–86, suggests that it showed a “lack of any fixed ideas”; Davis, Disraeli, 27, dismisses it as “no more than a Tory Tract”; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 111–14, interprets it as “a clever double-game.”
103. BD to SD, 27 February 1832, BDL, 1:232–33. The Saint Simonians were followers of the Count of Saint-Simon, who advanced the belief that scientific advances would erode traditional values while rational economic planning could promote a more equal society.
104. Contarini Fleming, 1–4.
105. Ibid., 100–128, 154–56.
106. Ibid., 157–59, 160–64.
107. Ibid., 168–88.
108. Ibid., 192–328.
109. Ibid., 287–350, 355–57, 361–73.
110. Cf. Schwarz, Disraeli’s Fiction, 38–39, arguing that Disraeli’s glorification of Arabs is a “metaphor for illustrating the importance of the Jewish race.”
111. Derek Beales, From Castlereagh to Gladstone, 1815–1885 (New York: Norton, 1965), 26–27. MB, 1:214–15. BD to Benjamin Austen, 6, 19 January, 2 June 1832, BDL, 1:220, 221–22, 284–86. Blake, Disraeli, 88–89; Davis, Disraeli, 29–34, treats Disraeli’s claim to independence as genuine; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 118–19; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 40–42, argues that he was up for sale to the highest bidder.
112. BD to SD, 10 June 1832, BDL, 1:288–89. MB, 1:215–19.
113. Jerman, The Young Disraeli, 191–93.
114. BD to SD, 18 January 1833, BDL, 1:317.
115. Benjamin Disraeli, The Wondrous Tale of Alroy (London: Longmans Green, 1878), i–v. William Beckford’s Vathek (1789) was one of the first orientalist novels to sport scholarly apparatus. Isaac D’Israeli had tried his hand at the genre, too, with “Mejnoun and Leila, the Arabian Petrarch and Laura,” in Romances (London: Cadel and Davis, 1799), 1–209. Schwarz, Disraeli’s Fiction, 49, wonders if the notes are just a joke.
116. Alroy, 5–11.
117. Ibid., 11–19, 26–33, 52–55, 59–61.
118. Ibid., 76–93, 135–36, 152–55.
119. Ibid., 169–88, 196–230, 241.
120. Braun, Disraeli the Novelist, 56–59, 60–62; Schwarz, Disraeli’s Fiction, 42–51; Adam Kirsch, Benjamin Disraeli (New York: Nextbook, 2008), 82–91.
121. Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, “Orientalism and the Jews: An Introduction,” in Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, eds., Orientalism and the Jews (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2005), xxv–xxxv, and Ivan Davidson Kalmar, “Jesus Did Not Wear a Turban: Orientalism, the Jews, and Christian Art,” in Kalmar and Penslar, eds., Orientalism and the Jews, 10–24.
122. Alroy, 25, 42–43, 117–18, 130–31. In a letter of 6 November 1867 to Reginald Stuart Poole, who had sent him an article from Quarterly Review by Emmanuel Deutsch vindicating the Talmud, he said, “The matter was not so new to me, as it must prove to the general [sic]: for tho I never mastered the Talmud, I have read Pirkeh Avoth, & many other works of that kind, & was familiar with Lightfoot as a boy,” in Michel Pharand et al., eds., Benjamin Disraeli Letters, vol. 9, 1865–1867 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 407. Todd Endelman, “Disraeli’s Jewishness Reconsidered,” Modern Judaism 5:2 (1989), 102–23, comments that Disraeli was “obsessed with his Jewishness” but that what he wrote about Jewish matters “was not especially intelligent; more often it was silly, ill-informed, and even a little insulting.” Robert O’Kell, Disraeli: The Romance of Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 68–72, interprets Alroy as a compensatory fantasy for his failure at High Wycombe.
123. BD to SD, 18, 29 January 1833, BDL, 1:317, 320–1; MB, 1:203–4; Ković, Disraeli and the Eastern Question, 36–38. Bernard Glassman, Benjamin Disraeli: The Fabricated Jew in Myth and Memory (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002), 42–47.
124. Address to the Electors of Chepping Wycombe, BDL, 1:303–5.
125. MB, 1:221–24; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 135–36.
126. MB, 1:224–25. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 40–42, suggests that Disraeli would have happily entered Parliament as a Whig had the Whigs opened a way for him. In the event, his gyrations “added a good deal to his reputation for insincerity, not to say cynicism.” Cf. Blake, Disraeli, 89–91; Davis, Disraeli, 40–41; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 119–22.
127. BD to SD, 7 February 1833, BDL, 1:322–23.
128. To the Electors of the Borough of Marylebone, 9, March, 9 April 1833, BDL, 1:337–38, 349–50. BD to SD, 6, 8 April 1833, BDL, 1:346–47.
129. Benjamin Disraeli, “What Is He?,” in Benjamin Disraeli, Whigs and Whiggism: Political Writings, ed. William Hutcheon (New York: Macmillan, 1914) [hereafter Whigs], 16–20. Blake, Disraeli, 92; Davis, Disraeli, 35, dismisses it as “utter nonsense.”
130. [Benjamin and Sarah Disraeli], A Year at Hartlebury, or the Election, ed. Ellen Henderson and John P. Matthews (London: John Murray, 1983), 63–65, 103–5. The novel was originally published under the pseudonyms Cherry and Fair Star by Saunders and Otley in 1834. For the history of the novel, see the appendix by Henderson and Matthews, 212–21. Also O’Kell, Disraeli: The Romance of Politics, 75–81.
131. A Year at Hartlebury, 106, 170–73.
132. BD to SD, 30 April, 22 May, 5 June, 19 June 1833, BDL, 1:353–55, 357–58, 361–62, 364. Jerman, The Young Disraeli, 194–280. See also Blake, Disraeli, 36–38; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 142–46; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 133–38; Daisy Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli: A Strange Romance (London: Chatto and Windus, 2015), 64–66.
133. “The Mutilated Diary,” BDL, 1: appendix II, 445–46.
134. Benjamin Disraeli, The Revolutionary Epick (1834; reprint, London: Longmans Green, 1864).
135. BD to Austen, 30 November; Austen to Disraeli, 3 December 1833, BDL, 1:378–79, 381–83.
136. Beales, From Castlereagh to Gladstone, 101–2.
137. BD to SD, 4, 24 November 1834, BDL, 1:432, 434; to Durham, 17 November; to Lyndhurst, 4 December 1834, BDL, 1:433, 435. Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 149–50.
138. MB, 1:259–60, 265–72.
139. “The Crisis Examined,” in Whigs, 23–40.
140. Davis, Disraeli, 42; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 160–61.
141. MB, 1:291–92. Froude, Lord Beaconsfield, 59–64, remarked, “All the world shouted with laughter. The hit was good and the provocation, it was generally felt, had been on Disraeli’s side. But there are limits to licence of tongue even in political recrimination, and it was felt that O’Connell had transgressed those limits.”
142. BD to Morgan O’Connell, 5, 6 May 1835, BDL, 2:36–37, 38–39.
143. BD to Daniel O’Connell, 5 May 1835, BDL, 2:36–37; BD to SD, 6, 9 May 1835, BDL, 2:38, 39–41. See open letter of 12 May 1835, “To the Electors of Taunton,” BDL, 2:41–43. Blake, Disraeli, 123–26; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 161.
144. BD to SD, 20 August 1835, BDL, 2:91–92. For the letters, see “Peers and the People,” in Whigs, 42–110.
145. “Peers and the People,” in Whigs, 42–66 (quote, 65).
146. Ibid., Whigs, 80–97 (quote, 96).
147. Ibid., Whigs, 81, 103. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 44–51.
148. Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 153–54; Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli, 64–66.
149. Vindication, in Whigs, 111–27. Blake, Disraeli, 44; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 166–71; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 163.
150. Vindication, in Whigs, 173–214.
151. Ibid., in Whigs, 206–19.
152. Ibid., in Whigs, 219, 228–29. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 47–51, argues that Disraeli was practicing a technique of “radical inversion” in order to delegitimize the Whigs, rehabilitate the Tories, and make the party fit his purposes. “The popular, not to say populist line . . . opened the way to almost any degree of manoeuvre in the interest of maintaining political stability or securing political power.”
153. BD to Peel, 16 December 1835, BDL, 2:110; to ID, 28 December 1835, BDL, 2:112–13.
154. “Letters of Runnymede,” in Whigs, 233–326. “The Mutilated Diary,” in BDL, 2: appendix III, 416.
155. BD to SD, 1 July 1836; to Colburn, 9 October 1836, BDL, 2:172–73, 185.
156. BD to Benjamin Austen, 9 December 1835; 9 January, 14 January, 10 February, 10 March 1836 BDL, 2:107, 127, 136, 148–49, 154; to William Pyne, 21 July, 21, 25 September 1836, BDL, 2:175, 183, 184.
157. BD to Pyne, 5 December 1836, BDL, 2:196.
158. BD to Pyne, 27 November 1836, BDL, 2:195–96; to Count D’Orsay and to Bulwer, 18, 22 December 1836, BDL, 2:200–201, 202.
159. Benjamin Disraeli, Henrietta Temple, A Love Story (London: David Bryce, 1853).
160. Henrietta Temple, 248–59, 264–87, 295–317.
161. Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure, 165–66. See also Davis, Disraeli, 53, who calls the depiction of Levison a “savage caricature,” and Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 180–83, who identifies Levison as Jewish but leaves it at that. Cf. the benign interpretation of this scene by Kirsch, Benjamin Disraeli, 41–43, who argues that Disraeli was attempting to identify himself with the “reality” of aristocrats who were driven to predominantly Jewish moneylenders. He does not depict Levison as a vicious Shylock; he is merely shown to be vulgar. It is peculiar to congratulate Disraeli on choosing the lesser of two obnoxious stereotypes.
162. BD to Pyne, 7, 23 March 1837, BDL, 2:241–42, 245–46.
163. BD to Pyne, 19, 23 April and 29 May 1837, BDL, 2:255–57, 265–66; to D’Orsay, 2 May 1837, BDL, 2:259–60.
164. Venetia (London: Longmans Green, 1871). Brandes, Lord Beaconsfield, 150–56, calls it “a very peculiar book.”
165. BD to SD, 2 April 1832; 3 June 1833, BDL, 1:256–58, 360; BD to SD, 30 June 1837, BDL, 2:275. Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli, 10–11, 51–54, 72–74.
166. Election address, 1 July 1837, BDL, 2:275–76; BD to SD, 4, 27 July 1837, BDL, 2:277, 284.
167. MB, 1:375–80.
168. BDL, 2:281, 284
169. BD to D’Orsay, 31 August 1837, BDL, 2:299–300. Jerman, The Young Disraeli, 281–82.
170. BD to SD, 25 October 1837, BDL, 2:304–6. Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure, expertly locates Disraeli’s conduct in contemporary mores. However, even though he enjoyed the relaxed moral standards of the day there were limits, and Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli, 58, 187–90, notes his sensitivity when Rosina Bulwer charged him with sodomy.
171. BD to SD, 15 November 1837 BDL, 2:312–13. Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 3d series, [hereafter HC Debs], vol. 39, 4 December 1837, cols. 508–21. For the background and course of the campaign, see H. S. Q. Henriques, The Jews and the English Law (Oxford: Hart, 1908), 246–53, 265–67.
172. Abigail Green, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 108–9. BD to SD, 5 December 1837, BDL, 2:323–24. Disraeli’s name is listed amongst the “Noes” recorded at the end of the debate.
173. For evidence of his early social success, “The Mutilated Diary,” in BDL, 1: appendix II, 448. MB, 1:132.
1. HC Debs, 7 December 1837, cols. 802–7; MB, 1:409.
2. BD to SD, 8 December 1837, BDL, 2:326–28. MB, 1:425–26. Robert Blake, Disraeli (London: Methuen, 1966), 148–50; Jane Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 1804–1846 (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995), 207–9, notes that Disraeli was repaid for his explicit hostility to the Irish in general, but that members of his own party also appear to have relished his discomfiture.
3. See the classic account, G. M. Young, Portrait of an Age: Victorian England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 30–76; David Thomson, England in the Nineteenth Century (London: Penguin, 1977), 35–98; Derek Beales, From Castlereagh to Gladstone, 1815–1885 (New York: Norton, 1965), 101–68. J. P. Parry, “Disraeli and England,” Historical Journal 43:3 (2000), 699–728.
4. BD to SD, 13 July 1839, BDL, 3:197. MB, 1:473–76; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 211–12, 228–37; Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993), 188.
5. BD to SD, 6 August 1839, BDL, 3:204; to Charles Attwood, 7 June 1840, BDL, 3:272. MB, 1:486–87. Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 235.
6. See P. Kennedy and A. J. Nicholls, eds., Nationalist and Racist Movements in Britain and Germany before 1914 (London: Croom Helm, 1981). The only political groups in England to describe themselves in their nomenclature as well as their orientation as “national” have been and are parties of the extreme right: the National Party, the National Front, and the British National Party: see Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: From Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts to the National Front (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998).
7. Introduction, BDL, 2:ix–xiv. Daisy Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli: A Strange Romance (London: Chatto and Windus, 2015), 77–103; Molly Hardwick, Mrs Dizzy: The Life of Mary Anne Disraeli, Viscountess Beaconsfield (London: Cassell 1972), 37–47, 76–82. Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 129.
8. BD to SD, 14 March; to Mary Anne Lewis [hereafter MAL], 27 April, 20 May, 6 June, 26 July 1838, BDL, 3:35–36, 53–54, 58–59, 61, 78–79; to Pyne, 30 September 1838, BDL, 3:87.
9. BD to MAL, 7 February 1839, BDL, 3:137–38. For Mary Anne’s letters to Disraeli, see BDL, 3:appendix 4, 398–411. MB, 1:434–45; Blake, Disraeli, 156; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 216–17, 226.
10. Disraeli to MAL, 8, 27 February 1839, BDL, 3:140–41, 140, 149–50; to George Basevi, 25 August 1839; to SD, 26 August 1839; to Maria D’Israeli, 30 August 1839, BDL, 3:214–15, 217–18; Blake, Disraeli, 156–58; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 233–34, 237; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 179–86; Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli, 119, 126–27, 138–40, 158–63, on the financial dimension of the union.
11. Blake, Disraeli, 159–60. For a fine account of their marriage, see Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli.
12. BD to SD, 28 February, 9 December 1839, BDL, 3:160–61, 236–38. See also BD to SD, 26 March 1839, BDL, 3:159–60. 1839, BDL, 3:24–25. Hardwick, Mrs Dizzy, 158–59; Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli, 130, 138–39, remarks on Mary Anne’s close friendship with several Rothschild wives and daughters but does not explore the contrast between her unalloyed affection and her husband’s equivocal, sometimes instrumental relations with the family.
13. MB, 1:258–59, 287, 473–76.
14. Address to the Electors of Shrewsbury, 8 June 1841; BD to Henry Richards, 24 June 1841, BDL, 3:338–39, 342. See reproduction of poster in Ridley, The Young Disraeli, facing page 119, also in BDL, 3:343.
15. Address to the Electors of Shrewsbury, 25 June 1841, BDL, 3:344–45. Blake, Disraeli, 163; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 196–97; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 250–51.
16. BD to Colburn, 31 August 1845, BDL, 4:187–88. Introduction, BDL, 4:l–li and appendix V, for list of creditors. Blake, Disraeli, 159–60; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 256–57, 259–60, 271–72. See also Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli, 126–27, 138–40, 158–63.
17. BD to Philip Rose, 28 April 1846, BDL, 4:226.
18. Norman Gash, Peel (London: Longman, 1976), 205–10.
19. BD to Peel, 5 September 1841, BDL, 3:356.
20. Mary Anne Disraeli [hereafter MAD] to Peel, 4 September 1841, BDL, 3:356. Blake, Disraeli, 165–66, observes that such letters were not unusual at the time. Compare Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 253–56. Both vindicate Peel’s response.
21. Peel to Disraeli, 8 September 1841, BDL, 3:358. MB, 1:515–20. R. W. Davis, Disraeli (London: Hutchinson, 1976), 60, calls the letter an “abject plea” reflecting Disraeli’s “own inflated opinion of himself and his services.”
22. BD to SD, 17 January1837, BDL, 2:212–13.
23. BD to MAD, 25, 26 February, 9, 11 March 1842, BDL, 4:17–18, 20–21, 25–27, 31–32. Robert Stewart, The Foundations of the Conservative Party, 1830–1867 (London: Longman, 1978), 185–86; Paul Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 57–58.
24. MB, 1:360–63. Blake, Disraeli, 168–72. See Gash, Peel, 175–81, 209–10.
25. MB, 1:544–59, 563–65, 579–80; Introduction, BDL, 4:xi–xx; Blake, Disraeli, 177–78; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 206–9; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 268–69, 270, 272–74; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 55–56. See also Miloš Ković, Disraeli and the Eastern Question, trans. Miloš Damnjanović (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 39–46.
26. BD to SD, 28 September 1843, BDL, 4:108–9.
27. BD to Peel, 4 February 1844, BDL, 4:116–18; MB, 1:582–86; Introduction, BDL, 4:xx–xxv. Gash, Peel, 243–80; Blake, Disraeli, 178.
28. Benjamin Disraeli, Coningsby, or the New Generation (London: Colburn, 1844), preface and 1849 preface.
29. Coningsby, 52, 56. Blake, Disraeli, 190–200; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 277–79; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 59–80, 161–74.
30. Coningsby, 257. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 66, notes Disraeli’s ambiguous attitude to the nobility, which means that parts of the novel can be read as an assault on aristocratic rule rather than advocacy of it.
31. For interpretations of the novel, see Davis, Disraeli, 65–69, and Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 277–79. See also John Vincent, Disraeli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 83, 87–88, who observes that the novel is “venomously anti-Tory” and rather more sympathetic to manufacturers than to landed paternalists. The range of interpretations indicates the ambiguity and vagueness of Disraeli’s politics. Kirsch, Benjamin Disraeli (New York: Nextbook, 2008), 114–16, notes the tension between Disraeli’s panaceas and the “irreconcilable differences” implicit in his own descriptions of society.
32. Richard Davis, The English Rothschilds (London: Collins, 1987), 87, warns against assuming that Sidonia was modelled on Lionel de Rothschild, whom at this stage Disraeli hardly knew. Kirsch, Benjamin Disraeli, 124–30, suggests that Disraeli based Sidonia on himself, thereby expressing his longing for power and his sense of exclusion after being shut out of Peel’s cabinet. He even gave Sidonia the same lineage he invented for himself. This explanation ignores the fact that Disraeli was hardly a social pariah and had not yet composed his mythic origins. Robert O’Kell, Disraeli: The Romance of Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 217–21, argues that he based the character on Baron Salomon de Rothschild, whom he had recently met in Paris. He, too, suggests that in bestowing enormous power on this Jewish figure Disraeli was compensating for the rejection he had suffered at Peel’s hands and for his own powerlessness.
33. Coningsby, 159, 260.
34. Ibid., 176, 220, 259. Mussolini’s slogan was Credere Obbedere Combattere (Believe, Obey, Fight). For discussion of the illiberal elements in Disraeli’s political thought, see Blake, Disraeli, 209, and Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 277–79; cf. Vincent, Disraeli, 17–24.
35. Coningsby, 161. For divergent analysis of Disraeli’s racial thought, see Blake, Disraeli, 202–3; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 279–83; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 66–71; Vincent, Disraeli, 27–37.
36. Coningsby, 160–61, 183–84.
37. Ibid., 182.
38. Blake, Disraeli, 209, advises that Disraeli’s racial posturing should not be taken too seriously, while Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 279–83, argues that it was essential to overcoming his feelings of rejection in 1841 and a way of turning the tables on those who denigrated the Jews. More recently Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 66–71, has located Disraeli in the commonplace thinking of the day, but Edgar Feuchtwanger, Disraeli (London: Arnold, 2000), 51–52, cautions that Coningsby was “written before the rise of modern racial anti-semitism, but might well serve as a bible for it.” O’Kell, Disraeli: The Romance of Politics, 217–21, detects “Disraeli’s voice” in Sidonia’s utterances and sees him personifying the dilemma between impotent purity and compromised expediency. O’Kell astutely notes that Sidonia never actually advocates political equality for Jews. See also I. Finestein, “A Modern Examination of Macaulay’s Case for the Civil Emancipation of the Jews,” in I. Finestein, Jewish Society in Victorian England (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1993), 78–103, and Bernard Glassman, Benjamin Disraeli: The Fabricated Jew in Myth and Memory (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002), 50–54.
39. BD to John Delane, 15 May 1844; to SD, 16 May, 13 June 1844; to Milnes, 29 December 1844, BDL, 4:122, 123–24, 129–30, 152–53. Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 214–19, 220–25, 227–29.
40. BD to Lord John Manners, 27 October 1844, BDL, 4:146–47. Introduction to BDL, 4:xx–xxv.
41. MB, 1:708–16. Introduction to BDL, 4: xxv–xxxi. MB, 1:718–25. Gash, Peel, 245–50; Blake, Disraeli, 183–89; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 303–8.
42. BD to Palmerston, 14 December, to Lord John Manners, 17 December 1845, BDL, 4:204–6, 207–9. MB, 1:743–44. Blake, Disraeli, 220–22.
43. Introduction to BDL, 4:xxxi–xxxvi. MB, 1:746–55. Gash, Peel, 266–70, 273–75; Stewart, The Foundations of the Conservative Party, 202–4; Blake, Disraeli, 226–27, 228–30; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 320–25.
44. MB, 1:787–90. Davis, Disraeli, 71, comments, “He hunted Peel and destroyed him.” On Disraeli’s “reckless mendacity,” see Blake, Disraeli, 236–39; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 330–31; Gash, Peel, 278–79.
45. Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil, or, the Two Nations (London: Henry Colburn, 1845). Thomas Braun, Disraeli the Novelist (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), 102, notes that “there is not much of the democrat here.” See also Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 298–302, who regards its message as “profoundly, despairingly antidemocratic,” and Davis, Disraeli, 65–69.
46. Sybil, 2:256.
47. MB, 1:817–829. Blake, Disraeli, 248–9.
48. Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred, or, the New Crusade (London: Henry Colburn, 1847). Blake, Disraeli, 214–15, 218–19, comments, “The truth is that Disraeli lacked imagination.”
49. Tancred, 1:281, 302–3. Blake, Disraeli, 209–10; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 317–17, comments on Disraeli’s rejection of liberalism and progress, parliamentary democracy, and constitutionalism, replacing them with “a deterministic theory of race, an aristocratic clerisy in place of parliament, and in place of reason, faith.” Davis, Disraeli, 87, is simply dismissive of the politics.
50. Tancred, 1:309. On Roberts, see Uzi Baram, “Images of the Holy Land: The David Roberts Paintings as Artifacts of 1830s Palestine,” Historical Archaeology 41:1 (2007), 106–17.
51. Tancred, 1:1–10.
52. Tancred, 2:16; 3:98. Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 260–64, adduces this farrago as evidence that Disraeli knew and cared about Jewish tradition.
53. Tancred, 2:44–45, 47–58.
54. Tancred, 2:121–24, 170, 193–95. Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 263–64, notes that Baroni’s family history resembles the one Disraeli constructed for himself.
55. Tancred, 2:182–83, 241–46. On the bizarre ending, see Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 88–90, who speculates that since Disraeli couldn’t translate the book’s message into policy he left Tancred “marooned” in Jerusalem. No less pertinently, he ran out of time to finish it.
56. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 86–90; Blake, Disraeli, 409. O’Kell, Disraeli: The Romance of Politics, 316–35, argues that the apposition between Tancred and Fakredeen allows Disraeli to explore the tension between principle and expediency as well as to weigh the relative merits of trustworthiness as against insincerity. The plotline suggests Disraeli’s acceptance that altruism was futile, that faithfulness to a Jewish identity would doom him.
57. Tancred, 2:381–82.
58. Ibid., 391, 398. Blake, Disraeli, 201–4, comments, “Disraeli had unknowingly given both here and elsewhere a formidable weapon to the fanatical enemies of his race.” He may have intended “revenge for Fagin,” but he achieved the opposite. At best he came up with a personal solution to his dual identity as a Jew and a Christian, devising a muddled theory to validate both at the same time.
59. Tancred, 2:398.
60. Abigail Green, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 133–35. Jonathan Frankel, The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder,” Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
61. Green, Moses Montefiore, 135–39.
62. Ibid., 140–48.
63. HC Debs, 19, 22 June 1840, vol. 54, cols. 1305–6, 1383–86. Frankel, The Damascus Affair, 194–96.
64. Tancred, 2:426–28. Cf. Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 280, who treats the theory as Disraeli’s personal solution to the dilemma of the convert who feels he belongs in both camps.
65. BD to Manners, 30 December 1847, BDL, 4:329–31; to SD, 28 February 1839, 28 January 1840, BDL, 3:150–51, 253; Disraeli to SD, 27 July 1843, BDL, 4:102.
66. Abraham Gilam, The Emancipation of the Jews in England 1830–1860 (New York: Garland, 1982), 88–96.
67. Tancred, 2:421–22, for the “grovelling tyranny of self-government.” Blake, Disraeli, 209–10; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 314–17.
68. Blake, Disraeli, 256; Thomson, England in the Nineteenth, 119–26.
69. To the Electors of Buckinghamshire, 22 May; 4 August 1847, BDL, 4:280–83, 285–76; London Times, 5 August 1847, 2. MB, 1:829–30, 835–42; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 272–73; Davis, Disraeli, 93–95, argues that Disraeli encountered less hostility than the Rothschilds.
70. BD to Rose, 8 December 1847, BDL, 4:325–26. Blake, Disraeli, 25–54; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 338–39.
71. MB, 1:842–45. Stewart, The Foundations of the Conservative Party, 213–14, on backbench hostility to Disraeli.
72. BD to Manners, 16 November 1847, BDL, 4: 318–21.
73. BD to SD, 15 February, 26, 28 March, 2 May 1839; BDL, 3:21–22, 159–61, 168–69.
74. BD to SD, 3 April 1841, BDL, 3:329; 14 October, 2 December 1842; 4 February, 21 July 1843, 16 May 1844; 23 August 1845; to Lionel de Rothschild, 3 December 1845; to SD, 11 January, 12 December 1846, BDL, 4:58–61, 67–69, 74–75, 101–2, 123–24, 184–86, 190, 201–2, 212–13, 265. Hannah de Rothschild to Charlotte de Rothschild, 3 June 1844, quoted in Niall Ferguson, The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), 539. Cf. Davis, Disraeli, 80–81, 87, on the initial wariness towards one another and a caveat against assuming that Sidonia was based on Lionel de Rothschild.
75. Bentinck to Croker, September 1847, quoted in Ferguson, The World’s Banker, 540. Blake, Disraeli, 258–59.
76. Bentinck to BD, 3 November 1847, BDL, 4:320. MB, 1:845–46. Blake, Disraeli, 259–60.
77. BD to Manners, 16 November 1847, BDL, 4:318–21.
78. HC Debs, 16 December 1847, vol. 95, cols. 1234–1322.
79. Blake, Disraeli, 258–59; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 275–78.
80. HC Debs, 16 December 1847, vol. 95, cols. 1321–30.
81. HC Debs, 17 December 1847, vol. 95, cols. 1381–90. Bentinck confessed to Croker, “I never saw anything like the prejudice which exists against them,” Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 275–78.
82. BD to Manners, 26 December; Bentinck to Croker, 28 December 1847, BDL, 4:319–20, 327–29.
83. BD to Lionel de Rothschild, 26 December 1847, 3 January 1848, BDL, 8:395, 396.
84. The Progress of Jewish Emancipation Since 1829, BDL, 8:419–27. Bentinck also remained involved: BD to Lionel de Rothschild, 3, 7, 9 January 1848, BDL, 8:396–98.
85. HC Debs, 7 February 1848, vol. 96, cols. 220–83; HC Debs, 3 April 1848, vol. 967, cols. 1213–46; HC Debs, 4 May 1848, vol. 98, cols. 606–70. BD to MAD, 25 May 1848, BDL, 5:31–32.
86. Hansard, House of Lords Debates, 3rd series [hereafter HL Debs], 25 May 1848, vol. 98, cols. 1330–1409. BDL, 5:31–32.
87. Introduction, BDL, 5:x–xi; MB, 1:899. Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 280–81.
88. Bentinck to Lord Stanley, 9 February 1848, MB, 1:902–3.
89. MB, 1:908–15, 932. Blake, Disraeli, 189–94.
90. BD to Count D’Orsay, 7 October 1848, BDL, 5:90. Sarah Bradford, Disraeli (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), 189–94; Stewart, The Foundations of the Conservative Party, 222–23, 231–38.
91. MB, 1:934–37. Blake, Disraeli, 265.
92. MB, 1:937–40. BD to Lord Stanley, 26 December 1848, BDL, 5:118–19. Blake, Disraeli, 265–68.
93. MB, 1:944–45, 945–50. Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 286–87.
94. MB, 1:943. BD to Prince Metternich, 13 January 1849, BDL, 5:131.
95. BD to SD, 20 January; to Prince Metternich, 25 January; to Lord John Manners, 29 January; to MAD, 31 January 1849; to SD, 22 February; to Prince Metternich, 23 February 1849, BDL, 5:133, 136, 139–41, 141, 145, 145–46.
96. MB, 1:888–93, 952. T. A. Jenkins, Disraeli and Victorian Conservatism (London: Macmillan, 1996), 45–51, 59, 86.
97. BD to Philip Wroughton, 14 August, 2 September; to George Frederick Smith, 8 September; to MAD, 18 October 1848, BDL, 5:60, 77, 82–83, 95. MB, 1:958, 963–69. Blake, Disraeli, 250–54; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 238; Davis, Disraeli, 93–94; Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, 71–72; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 85, who bluntly states, “Disraeli was being hired.” Parry, “Disraeli and England,” 700–701, cautions against seeing Disraeli as merely a “hireling,” showing how far his personal ideas accorded with the views of much of the political class and illustrating his genuine identification with the causes championed by the Conservatives. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 107, goes so far as to dub Disraeli a “court Jew.”
98. Introduction, BDL, 5:xvi; MB, 1:968, 976–79. On Disraeli as a local figure, see Blake, Disraeli, 413–14; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 293–94; Davis, Disraeli, 93–95. On his financial and marital crisis, Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli, 155–63.
99. Blake, Disraeli, 285–301; Davis, Disraeli, 96–107.
100. BD to Stanley, 21 January; to SD, 26 February 1851, BDL, 5:402–3, 414. For Stanley’s conversation with Victoria, see Helen M. Swartz and Marvin Swartz, eds., Disraeli’s Reminiscences (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975), 43. MB, 1:1100–12. Blake, Disraeli, 301–5.
101. MB, 1:1130–34. Blake, Disraeli, 306–7; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 303–5; Davis, Disraeli, 107–8.
102. BD to Manners, 13 September, 16 October 1850, BDL, 5:355–56, 360–61. Notes of Edward Stanley, 17–18 January 1851, BDL, 6:535–36.
103. Benjamin Disraeli, Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (London: Colburn, 1852), 303–19. Blake, Disraeli, 229–30, 309–10; Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 322–24; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 308–12.
104. Bentinck, 323–24, 325, 330, 475–76.
105. Ibid., 481, 482–83.
106. Ibid., 481, 487–88. Bradford, Disraeli, 203–4; Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, 88–89. See Hyam Maccoby, The Sacred Executioner: Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Guilt (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982), for a discussion of the notion that the Jews were instrumental in bringing forth the messiah. However, Maccoby omits Disraeli’s revivification of the myth for modern times.
107. Bentinck, 490–91.
108. Ibid., 495–96.
109. Ibid.
110. Ibid., 497–99 and 553–57 on secret societies. Cf. Edgar Feuchtwanger, “The Jewishness of Conservative Politicians,” in M. Brenner, R. Leidtke, D. Rechter, eds., Two Nations: British and German Jews in Comparative Perspective (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1999), 235, who maintains that Disraeli challenged the association of Jews with subversion.
111. Bentinck, 499–512. To Glassman, Benjamin Disraeli: The Fabricated Jew, 65–67, chapter 24 “resembles a missionary tract” and contains “an exhortation to convert.”
112. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 102–3, points out that the French anti-Semitic agitator Drumont quoted Disraeli; Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, 88–89, suggests that chapter 24 could “serve as a text for later racists, Jewish world conspiracy theorists and genocidal anti-semites.”
113. Bentinck, 512–52; for the book’s reception, see BDL, 5:502. BD to William Partridge, 25 February 1852, BDL, 6:23–25.
114. BD to Derby, 21 February 1852, MB, 1:1158 and 1156–68 passim. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 119–22, observes that Disraeli was “probably the least solvent chancellor of the exchequer in British history”; Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, 90–93.
115. Election report, 1 March 1852, BDL, 6:31–32. For a sample of despatches to the queen: BD to Queen Victoria, 29 March, 30 May 1852, BDL, 6:44, 52. For Victoria’s remark to the Belgian king, BDL, 6:44. Blake, Disraeli, 312–20; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 314–17; Davis, Disraeli, 112–14; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 128–29. See also Stewart, The Foundations of the Conservative Party, 258–63.
116. Introduction, BDL, 6:xv–xvii; MB, 1:1176–1267. Blake, Disraeli, 328–48; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 315–20. Richard Shannon, Gladstone: God and Politics (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), 78–79, 80–81, sees the vituperative exchange over the 1852 budget as marking a fundamental shift in Gladstone’s appreciation of his rival, “fitting Disraeli as a demonic element into his general interpretation of the shape of politics.”
117. BD to Mrs Sara Brydges Willyams [hereafter SBW], 2 August 1851; BD to SBW, 21 December 1851; SBW to BD, 10 March 1852, BDL, 5:460–61, 502. MB, 1:1268–89. Blake, Disraeli, 414–21; Bradford, Disraeli, 219–21; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 307–8, 376–78.
118. BD to SBW, 28 February 1853, BDL, 6:215–16.
119. BD to SBW, 29 September 1853, 23 April, 16 August 1854, BDL, 6:261–63, 337, 434. See also BD to SBW, 1, 13 April, 13 July, January 1857; 16 June, 13, 23 July 1859, BDL, 7:3, 37–38, 52–53, 398, 405–6, 407–8, 346–47. For his disparaging view of Torquay, see Disraeli to Lady Chesterfield, 6 December 1874, Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield, vol. 1, 1873–1875, ed. Marquis of Zetland (London: Ernest Benn, 1929) [hereafter LOD, 1], 177–79.
120. BD to SD, 10 July 1849, 26 April 1850; to Charlotte de Rothschild, 26 March 1850; to Anthony de Rothschild, 18 August 1850, BDL, 5:195–96, 306, 323. See also BDL, 5:317, 322. On Mary Anne’s interventions and the loans from Lionel to Disraeli, see Charlotte de Rothschild’s diary, 19, 28 May 1848, cited in Ferguson, The World’s Banker, 541. Ronald Quinault, “Disraeli and Buckinghamshire,” in Helen Langley, ed., Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: Scenes from an Extraordinary Life (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2003), 35–41, argues that Disraeli’s relations with the Greville family and the Marquess of Chandos especially were of equal if not greater importance in the context of county affairs at least.
121. BD to SD, 10 July 1849, 26 April, 1 August 1851, BDL, 5:195–96, 323, 459–60. BD to Lady Londonderry, 22 October 1851, BDL, 5:363–65; on Mentmore, BD to Lady Londonderry, 29 April 1857, BDL, 7:43.
122. Louisa de Rothschild journal, 1 December 1847, quoted in Ferguson, The World’s Banker, 540; BD to Henry Drummond, 3 December 1849, BDL, 7:489. Davis, Rothschilds, 81.
123. Charlotte de Rothschild diary, 19 May 1848, quoted in Ferguson, The World’s Banker, 541; Davis, Rothschilds, 88. MB, 1:886–87. For an important critical evaluation of Disraeli’s record on Jewish emancipation, see Gilam, The Emancipation of the Jews, 155–71.
124. HC Debs, 14 May 1849, vol. 105, cols. 431–64. For Disraeli’s interventions, see cols. 450–51, 460, 462; 11 June 1849, vol. 105, cols. 1373–1443. For Newdegate’s speech, see cols. 1388–95.
125. Davis, Rothschilds, 88–89; Morning Chronicle report in BDL, 5:179. John Vincent ed., Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party. Journals and Memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley 1849–1869 (Hussocks, Surrey: Harvester, 1978) [hereafter Disraeli, Derby], 7, 10. Punch, 16 (1849), 198, cited in Glassman, Benjamin Disraeli: The Fabricated Jew, 64.
126. BD to Henry Drummond, 3 December 1849, BDL, 7:489.
127. BD to Newcastle, 23 February 1849, BDL, 5:146–47.
128. HC Debs, 26 July 1850, vol. 113, cols. 297–331; 29 July 1850, cols. 396–437; 30 July 1850, 486–533. BD to MAD, 29 July 1850, BDL, 5:340. H. S. Q. Henriques, The Jews and the English Law (Oxford: Hart, 1908), 269–71; Gilam, The Emancipation of the Jews, 99–100.
129. HC Debs, 30 July 1850, vol. 113, cols. 486–533. BD to Lady Londonderry, 2 August 1850, Letters from Benjamin Disraeli to Frances Anne Marchioness of Londonderry, 1837–1861 ed. Marchioness of Londonderry (London: Macmillan, 1938), 91–93.
130. HC Debs, 5 August 1850, vol. 113, cols. 788–96. HC Debs, 1 May, 3 June 1851, vol. 116, cols. 367–409, 3 July 1851, vol. 118, 142–47. BD to MAD, 5 August 1850, BDL, 5:342–43. Jewish Chronicle, 9 August 1850.
131. Henriques, The Jews and the English Law, 270–77; Gilam, The Emancipation of the Jews, 102–7. Jewish Chronicle, 1 June 1851.
132. HC Debs, 24 February, vol. 124, cols. 590–622; 14 March 1853, cols. 166–72; 15 April 1853, cols. 1217–87.
133. BD to SBW, 15 September 1853, BDL, 6:257–59.
134. BDL, 6:ix, xv–xvi. Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ed. Norman Page (London: Penguin, 1971), 211. Anthony Wohl, “ ‘Dizi-Ben-Dizzi’: Disraeli as Alien,” Journal of British Studies 34:3 (1995), 375–411, notes the escalation of abuse as Disraeli rose in the political ranks and how Disraeli contributed to this discourse but argues there is a qualitative as well as a quantitative change in the 1870s.
135. T. Macknight, Benjamin Disraeli MP: A Literary and Political Biography, Addressed to the New Generation (London: Richard Bentley, 1854). Wohl, “Dizi-Ben-Dizzi,” 381–83.
136. Macknight, Disraeli MP, 7–12, 14.
137. Ibid., 352–53, 355–56, 496–531.
138. Ibid., 532–34 and 542–68 for analysis of Disraeli’s term in government.
139. Introduction to Disraeli, Derby, x–xvii.
140. Appendix, BDL, 6:535–36.
141. Entry for 1851, Disraeli, Derby, 32–33.
142. For differing interpretations of this incident, see Bradford, Disraeli, 186–88, who depicts Disraeli as “a romantic Zionist”; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 301–2; Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, 88–89; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 96–98, who saw it as evidence that “the Zionist dream was within his range of sympathy”; Kirsch, Benjamin Disraeli, 90–91, who treats the reverie as a continuation of Disraeli’s fantasy role as saviour of the Jews first expressed in Alroy.
143. BD to Drummond, 10 January 1854, BDL, 7:507.
144. Henriques, The Jews and the English Law, 279–80.
145. HC Debs, 25 May 1854, vol. 133, cols. 870–973. Gillam, The Emancipation of the Jews, 109–11; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 338.
146. HC Debs, 9 April 1856, vol. 141, cols. 703–56. Henriques, The Jews and the English Law, 280–81.
147. HC Debs, 25 June 1857, vol. 146, cols. 347–69; HL Debs, 10 July 1857, vol. 146, cols. 1209–78. Henriques, The Jews and the English Law, 281–84.
148. HC Debs, 3 August 1857, vol. 147, cols. 933–60. BD to Russell, 10 August 1857, BDL, 7:57. Henriques, The Jews and the English Law, 284–87.
149. BD to Lord Derby, 28 October 1853, BDL, 6:275–78. BD to Lady Londonderry, 7 August 1854, MB, 1:1363. Stewart, The Foundations of the Conservative Party, 289–94; Blake, Disraeli, 285–87, 303–5, 355–56; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 333–34, 340. In a striking formulation, Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 107, declares that Disraeli was “for twenty years Derby’s court Jew.”
150. BD to Lady Londonderry, 2 February 1855, BDL 6:404–5, 450–52. MB, 1:1375–81, 1444. Introduction, BDL 7:xvi. Blake, Disraeli, 361–63; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 340; Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, 95–100; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 113–14.
151. Introduction, BDL, 7:xi–xvi.
152. 28 February 1858, Disraeli, Derby, 155–56. Blake, Disraeli, 378–80.
153. Blake, Disraeli, 380–408; Bradford, Disraeli, 236–41; Shannon, Gladstone, 116–18.
154. HC Debs, 17 March 1858, vol. 149, cols. 294–305; 22 March 1858, vol. 149. cols. 465–57; 12 April 1848, vol. 149, col. 946. BD to SBW, 12 April 1858, BDL, 7:163. MB, 1:1569–70. Henriques, The Jews and the English Law, 287–88.
155. BD to Russell, 6 May, to Derby, 8 May; Derby to Disraeli, 10 May 1858, BDL, 7:180–82. Gilam, The Emancipation of the Jews, 113–21, and Henriques, The Jews and the English Law, 288–98, on the events of 1857–58.
156. Derby to Disraeli, 9 May 1858, BDL, 7:182. HC Debs, 10 May 1858, vol. 150, cols. 336–54.
157. HC Debs, 18 May 1858, vol. 150, col. 859; BD to Lord Carnarvon, 29 May 1858, BDL, 7:197.
158. HL Debs, 17 June 1858, vol. 150, cols. 2218–20. BD to Derby, 17 June 1858, BDL, 7:205–6.
159. BD to Stanley, 20 June; to Malmesbury, 23 June 1858, BDL, 7:210, 212. HL Debs, vol. 150, cols. 1257–66, 1600–1601.
160. HC Debs, 13, 16, 21, 26 July 1858, vol. 151, cols. 1371–80, 1614–36, 1902–6.
161. HC Debs, 26 July 1858, vol. 151, cols. 2105–15. Russell to Disraeli, 23 July 1858, cited in BDL, 7:180, 220. Lionel to Charlotte de Rothschild, 16 July 1858, quoted in Davis, Rothschilds, 89. See also Ferguson, The World’s Banker, 549–50; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 100–101; Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, 142, who maintains that the Rothschilds “could not help regarding him as a renegade Jew.”
162. BD to SBW, 26 July 1858, BDL 7:222–23.
163. Blake, Disraeli, 395–401; Stewart, The Foundations of the Conservative Party, 317–21; Blake, Disraeli, 395–401; Davis, Disraeli, 129; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 378–79.
164. BD to Queen Victoria, 1, 19 April 1859, BDL, 7:353, 364–65. BD to Derby, 3 April, 8 May 1859, BDL, 7:354, 372–74. BD to Queen Victoria, 11 June 1859, BDL, 7:393. MB, 1:1632–53.
1. Cecil Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), 115–62; Nahum Sokolow, A History of Zionism (London: Longmans Green, 1919), 140–45.
2. G. M. Young, Portrait of an Age: Victorian England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 88–110; David Thomson, England in the Nineteenth Century (London: Penguin, 1977), 99–180; Derek Beales, From Castlereagh to Gladstone, 1815–1885 (New York: Norton, 1965), 225–26, 232–39. See also J. P. Parry, “Disraeli and England,” Historical Journal 43:3 (2000), 710–25, for an acute analysis of Disraeli’s response to the dilemmas of the era.
3. Introduction, BDL, 8:x. MB, 2:18–19, 20. Greville diary entry, 22 February 1860 in MB, 2:19. Robert Blake, Disraeli (London: Methuen, 1966), 426–27.
4. BD to Sir William Miles, 11 June 1860; to Sir Thomas Pakington, 9 June 1861, BDL, 8:38–40, 122–24. 21 February 1858, 30 November 1861, Disraeli, Derby, 155, 179. Robert Blake, Disraeli (London: Methuen, 1966), 425–44; T. A. Jenkins, Disraeli and Victorian Conservatism (London: Macmillan, 1996), 59.
5. BD to Derby, 4, 8, 14, 18 January 1860, BDL, 8:4–5, 6–8, 9, 11–13; to SBW, 2, 24 March, 4 April, 23 July 1860, BDL, 8:21–22, 24, 29–30, 46–47. On Disraeli’s relations with Derby, see Angus Hawkins, “Disraeli and the Earls of Derby,” in Helen Langley, ed., Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: Scenes from an Extraordinary Life (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2003), 16–20.
6. Introduction, BDL, 8:xii–xiii. 30 November 1861, Disraeli, Derby, 179. BD to Wilberforce, 9 November, and to Rose, 12 December 1860, BDL, 8:66–67, 79–80. BD to Derby, 28 January, to Malmesbury, 22 February 1861, BDL, 8:91–94, 97–98.
7. BD to SBW 16 March, 27 June 1861, BDL, 8:101–3, 127–28. On Colenso, Disraeli to SBW, 23 November 1862, BDL, 8:225–26. BD to Charlotte de Rothschild, 21 October 1863, BDL, 8:309–10. See David Cesarani, “British Jews,” in Stephan Wendehorst and Rainer Liedtke, eds., The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation-State in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 33–55.
8. MB, 2:105–9. BD to Wilberforce, 29 November 1864, BDL, 8:380–82. R. W. Davis, Disraeli (London: Hutchinson, 1976), 143–44; Blake, Disraeli, 503–4.
9. MB, 2:49–59, 60, 67–68, 70–72. BD to SBW, 15 August 1860, 21 July 1863, BDL, 8:50, 286; to King Leopold, 23 August 1860, BDL, 8:52–53. Parry, “Disraeli and England,” 716–23.
10. BD to SBW, 19 January, 9 February, 16 March 1861, BDL, 8:89–90, 97, 101–3. BD to Lady Londonderry, 9 November 1861, BDL, 8:146–47. BD to Edward Bulwer Lytton, 8 February and to SBW, 23 February 1863, BDL, 8:253, 258. BD to SBW, 20 June 1860, 19 January, 16 March 1861, BDL, 8:41–42, 89–90, 101–3. Queen Victoria [hereafter QV] to Disraeli, 26 February 1862, BDL, 8:172. BD to QV, 26 April 1863, BDL, 8:270–71. BD to SBW, 27 April 1863, BDL, 8:271–72. Edgar Feuchtwanger, Disraeli (London: Arnold, 2000), 127; Blake, Disraeli, 431; Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993), 398–400.
11. BD to Palmerston, 26 March; to SBW, 25 June 1863; BDL, 8:264, 280–81. BD to T. E. Kebbel, 25 November 1860, BDL, 8:69–70, concerning a request to write a biography of Disraeli—a reflection of increased interest in him.
12. Introduction, BDL, 8:xv–xvi. BD to Rose, 21 May, 6, 7 December 1862, BDL, 8:185, 230–32; BD to Rose, 4, 5, January, 11 February 1863, BDL, 8:242–44, 254–55. Blake, Disraeli, 421–24; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 400–401.
13. BD to Revd Clubbe, 12 November 1863, BDL, 8:324–25.
14. BD to Lionel de Rothschild, 12 January 1860, 2 August and 1 November 1863, BDL, 8:8–9, 288, 316–17. On intelligence from the Rothschilds: 30 January, 12 December 1866, 11 June 1867, 29 July 1867, 14 October 1867, 23 April 1868, Disraeli, Derby, 245, 279, 311, 314, 319, 332. Niall Ferguson, The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), 603, 640, 676–78.
15. BD to Stanley, 8 November 1860, BDL, 8:66; to SBW, 9 February 1861; to Rose, 6 June and to SBW, 15 September 1862, BDL, 8:97, 191, 207–8; to Charlotte de Rothschild, 20 September 1862, BDL, 8:203; to Lionel de Rothschild, 29 August 1863, BDL, 8:298. Richard Davis, The English Rothschilds (London: Collins, 1987), 143–51.
16. David Kerzer, The Kidnapping of Edgar Mortara (London: Vintage, 1998), 89, 163–70; Abigail Green, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 258–81.
17. BD to Charlotte de Rothschild, 21 August 1863 and reply, 26 August 1863, BDL, 8:295–96. On Renan and the Jews, see Kalmar, “Jesus Did Not Wear a Turban,” 18–20.
18. Ferguson, The World’s Banker, 536.
19. BD to SBW, 23 November 1862 and 17 October 1863, BDL, 8:225–26, 307–8.
20. MB, 2:148–52. Blake, Disraeli, 437–39; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 411–13; Paul Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 130–31, 136.
21. MB, 2:162–72.
22. MB, 2:175–84. Blake, Disraeli, 444–45.
23. MB, 2:186–96. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 136–39.
24. MB, 2:227–46. 11 February 1867, 25 February 1867, Disraeli, Derby, 288–89, 290–91. Asa Briggs, Victorian People (London: Penguin, 1967), 272–82. For divergent interpretations, see Maurice Cowling, 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution, The Passing of the Second Reform Bill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), which argues that Disraeli was animated purely by opportunism and party advantage; Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 333–92, who sees Disraeli as flexible and vaguely inspired by the ideals spelled out in Coningsby and Sibyl to make the Tories into a popular, national party; while Paul Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform (London: Rutledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), 86–87, 88–97, points out that neither of the two main parties desired a greatly expanded democracy; and Robert Stewart, The Foundations of the Conservative Party, 1830–1867 (London: Longman, 1978), 352–62, who derides the notion that Derby and Disraeli were inspired by anything more than short-term party political gain, not least because Tory backbenchers had no interest in Disraeli’s literary nostrums and would not have fought under such a banner.
25. MB, 2:270–86, 292–93. Briggs, Victorian People, 290–92; Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform, 88–112; Blake, Disraeli, 469–73; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 439–40; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 138–47, notes the bravura quality of Disraeli’s intellectual and physical performance. For stereotypical cartoons, see BDL, 9:lxvi–lxxiii.
26. MB, 2:291–308, 312–19, 320–23. Blake, Disraeli, 486–87.
27. BD to QV, 26 February; QV to Disraeli, 27 February; BD to MAD, 28 February 1868, in MB, 2:325–26. 18, 24 February 1868, Disraeli, Derby, 329–30.
28. Derby to Disraeli, 19, 28 February 1868, MB, 2:317–19, 323–24. John Bright diary, quoted in MB, 2:331; Pall Mall Gazette, 6 March 1868, in MB, 2:343. Clarendon diary, June 1868, in MB, 2:396. Blake, Disraeli, 487–88; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 150–51; Richard Shannon, The Age of Disraeli, 1868–1881: The Rise of Tory Democracy (London: Longman, 1992), maintains that Disraeli was “smuggled into the Conservative leadership.” Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 451–56, analyses the range of reactions and the virulent anti-Jewish strain.
29. MB, 2:341–43, 351–61, 370–73. Blake, Disraeli, 487–95; Sarah Bradford, Disraeli (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), 274–84; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 468–77; Daisy Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli: A Strange Romance (London: Chatto and Windus, 2015), 229–30.
30. MB, 2:386–88, 426–37. Blake, Disraeli, 512–13. See also John Vincent, Disraeli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 50–51, on Disraeli as a practical politician.
31. BD to QV, and reply, 23, 24 November 1868, MB, 2:438–39. Hay, Mr and Mrs Disraeli, 238.
32. 13 January 1869, 23 December 1869, Disraeli, Derby, 339, 347. MB, 2:450–55. Blake, Disraeli, 515–16, 520–21; Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 83–86; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 153–54, remarks that he clung on to the leadership because “he knew no other life” than politics.
33. MB, 2:512–22. Blake, Disraeli, 520–21; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 479, 495; Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 111–13.
34. MB, 2:489, 504–5. Benjamin Disraeli, Lothair (London: Longman, 1870).
35. Lothair, 99–100.
36. Ibid., 136–39. Michael Ragussis, Figures of Conversion: “The Jewish Question” and English National Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 225–27. Adam Kirsch, Benjamin Disraeli (New York: Nextbook, 2008), 193, notes the peculiar affinity between this passage and Nazi thought.
37. Lothair, 409.
38. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (London: Smith, Elder, 1869); originally published in Cornhill Magazine between July 1867 and August 1868. Ragussis, Figures of Conversion, 214–33, on the relationship between Arnold’s thinking and Disraeli’s.
39. Lothair, 123–27, 197–98. See Vincent, Disraeli, 41, on Disraeli’s belief in the necessity of religion.
40. For a selection of reviews, see R. W. Stewart, ed., Disraeli’s Novels Reviewed, 1826–1868 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1975), 246–73. Blackwood’s magazine provoked indignation by publishing a hostile review by Sir Edward Hamley that concluded with a spoof sequel in which Judaism trumps the other creeds in the competition for Lothair’s conscience.
41. Benjamin Disraeli, “General Preface” to the 1870 Longman Collected Edition, Lothair, x–xii.
42. MB, 2:603–6. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 157–65, on the nexus between race, imperialism, and social reform; Vincent, Disraeli, 27–37, is a forthright defence of Disraeli as a racial thinker and, by eschewing the intellectual contortions necessary for apologetics, is also the most lucid exposition.
43. 18, 19, 27, 30 November 1867, Disraeli, Derby, 322–23. BD to MAD, 25 July, to Corry, 13 October 1872; QV to Disraeli, 15 December 1872, quoted in MB, 2:563–72, 572–73. Shannon, Gladstone, 209, 250.
44. Lionel de Rothschild to Charlotte, 2 and 4 March 1868, in Ferguson, The World’s Banker, 844–45, and BD to Charlotte de Rothschild, 17 October 1870, ibid., 537; to Stanley, 23 April 1868; to Corry, 10 February 1873, MB, 2:423–25, 573–74. Davis, Rothschilds, 151.
45. MB, 2:578–86. See Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield, ed. Marquis of Zetland, Vol. 1, 1873–1875 (London: Ernest Benn, 1929) [hereafter LOD]. Blake, Disraeli, 530–33; Bradford, Disraeli, 306–12; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 512–15.
46. MB, 2:521–36. Blake, Disraeli, 522–24; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 500–505; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 155–65. Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform, 159–81, corrects the impression that Disraeli had any long-term social vision or that the Conservatives embraced it. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 164–65, discusses his accidental discovery of imperialism as a symbolic cause. The classic analysis of Disraeli’s imperialism is C. C. Eldridge, England’s Mission: The Imperial Idea in the Age of Gladstone and Disraeli 1868–1880 (London: Macmillan, 1973), 172–205.
47. MB, 2:550–58, 612–23. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 169–70.
48. BD to Lady Bradford, 27 February 1874, LOD, 1:55–56. MB, 2:628–29, 643–44. Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 189–93, notes that it was an overwhelmingly aristocratic government, fulfilling Disraeli’s aspirations for rule by the landed elite and his attachment to the nobility. Blake, Disraeli, 535–57; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 519–20.
49. MB, 2:644, 656–70, 703–23. Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform, 174–80, is unable to detect any coherent policy of leadership from the top; Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 211–15, notes that Disraeli took little personal interest in social reform; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 524, 531–32.
50. BD to Lady Bradford, 26 February, 29 June, 10 August 1875, LOD, 1:208–9, 260, 273. Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, 116–22, claimed to see Judaic inspiration in Disraeli’s social reform programme; Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform, 199–200, saw little personal interest and only a “piecemeal” approach that avoided really tough issues in favour of permissive legislation on uncontentious issues that did not commit central government to heavy expenditure; Blake, Disraeli, 538–58; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 519–31. However, Davis, Disraeli, 170–78, sees continuity from Disraeli’s early sentiments towards the working poor and a genuine conjunction of feeling with opportunism. See also Vincent, Disraeli, 51–54.
51. Eldridge, England’s Mission, 206–33; Naomi Shepherd, The Zealous Intruders: The Western Rediscovery of Palestine (London: Collins, 1987), 198–200. MB, 2:747–49.
52. BD to Derby, 23, 24 April 1874, in MB, 2:752–53; BD to Lady Bradford, 25 April 1874, LOD, 1:76–78.
53. BD to QV, 18, 19, 24 November 1875; QV to Disraeli, 19 November 1875 in MB, 2:781–94. Blake, Disraeli, 581–87; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 541–46; Davis, Rothschilds, 153–54; Davis, Disraeli, 189–94, saw the intervention as a signal that after a period of relative isolationism under Gladstone Britain was back as a world player.
54. BD to Lady Bradford, 25, 26 November 1875, LOD, 1: 305–6; BD to Lady Bradford, 25, 26 November 1875, LOD, 2:21. Ferguson, The World’s Banker, 819–25.
55. BD to Lady Bradford, 17, 29, January, 1 October 1875; to Lady Chesterfield, nd., June 1875, LOD, 1:192, 256, 288–89; BD to Lady Bradford, 26 January 1876; to Lady Chesterfield, 11 June 1876 LOD, 2:53, 105. BD to Lady Bradford, 18 August 1875, nd., January 1876, 5 May 1876; to Lady Chesterfield, 30 September 1875, in MB, 2:739, 741, 770, 780, 816, 817. Davis, Disraeli, Rothschilds, 176–86.
56. BD to QV, 9, 22 February 1876 in MB, 2:796–820. BD to Lady Bradford, 10, 13, 21, 22 March 1876, LOD, 2:23, 24–25, 26–27, 27. Blake, Disraeli, 562–63; Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 269–70.
57. QV to Disraeli, 5 June 1876, MB, 2:653, 678. Blake, Disraeli, 561, 564.
58. BD to Lady Bradford, 8 June, 20 August 1875, LOD, 1:252, 275. Disraeli to Derby, 24 August 1875, MB, 2:884. For the authoritative account, see Richard Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 1875–78 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979).
59. MB, 2:885–89. Blake, Disraeli, 575–81; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 564–66, 566–98.
60. MB, 2:890–93, 895–96. Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 270–78; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 87–106; Davis, Disraeli, 194–207; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 186–87.
61. MB, 2:901–11, 913–16; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 107–17.
62. BD to Lady Bradford, 13 July 1876, LOD, 2:58. MB, 2:913–16. Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 124–36.
63. BD to Derby, 14 July, 7 August 1876 in MB, 2:916–19. John Vincent, ed., The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826–93) Between September 1869 and March 1878), Camden Fifth Series, Vol. 4 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1994) [hereafter Derby Diaries], 8, 9 August 1876, 316–77. R. T. Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, 1876 (London: Thomas Nelson, 1963), 36–48. Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 137–38.
64. 8, 11, 14 July; 26, 31 August, 2 September 1876, Derby Diaries, 307–9, 316–17, 321, 322–23. Blake, Disraeli, 591–95; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 146–64. See also Ković, Disraeli and the Eastern Question, which stresses Britain’s flexibility on Turkish matters.
65. Ann Pottinger Saab, Reluctant Icon: Gladstone, Bulgaria, and the Working Classes, 1856–1878 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 80–95; Ković, Disraeli and the Eastern Question, 144–45. Cf. Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, 99–112, and Shannon, Gladstone, 274–303.
66. BD to Lady Bradford, 9 September 1876, LOD, 2:72–73; MB, 2:943–51. Blake, Disraeli, 598–603; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 176–85.
67. MB, 2:932–34, 943–62. Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 190–93.
68. BD to Lady Chesterfield, 12, 20 October; to Lady Bradford, 1 November 1876, LOD, 2:79, 82–83, 84, 85–86.
69. 24 May 1867, 28 January 1868, Derby Diary, 310, 327; Michael Clark, Albion and Jerusalem: The Anglo-Jewish Community in the Post-Emancipation Era, 1858–1887 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 99–101.
70. Jewish Chronicle, 18 December 1868, 4; 22 October 1875, 76; 28 July 1876, 258; 4 August 1876, 275, 280–81.
71. Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 576–77; Shannon, Gladstone, 286–86. Ković, Disraeli and the Eastern Question, 146–47; MB, 2:930–31.
72. Jewish Chronicle, 13 October 1876, 438. Blake, Disraeli, 612.
73. See the selection of press coverage and commentary in George Carlake Thompson, Public Opinion and Lord Beaconsfield, 1875–1880, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1886), 1:310–39, 374–75, 382–440. For an important corrective to Thompson’s bland selection and also some of the narratives that play down the extent and depth of the anti-Jewish animosity that Disraeli now attracted, see Anthony Wohl, “ ‘Ben JuJu’: Representations of Disraeli’s Jewishness in the Victorian Political Cartoon,” in Endelman and Kushner, eds., Disraeli’s Jewishness, 105–61. See also Blake, Disraeli, 604–5; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 566–68, 573–74, 579–80; and Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, 180–93.
74. 22, 24, 28 October 1876, Derby Diaries, 332–36. MB, 2:964, 971–78. Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, 184; Ković, Disraeli and the Eastern Question, 169–70; Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 269–70; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 208–31.
75. MB, 2:983–84, 994–95.
76. MB, 2:998–1003. Blake, Disraeli, 611–12, 614–17; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 254–56.
77. QV to Disraeli, 17, 19, 25 April 1877, MB, 2:1004–5. 21, 25, 28 April, 16, 26 May 1877, Derby Diaries, 391–92, 393–94, 395–996, 401, 403. QV to Disraeli, 7, 25, 27 June 1877, and BD to QV, 5 May, 23, 26, 28 June 1877, in MB, 2:1007–21. Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 273–81, 284–86; Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 294–303; Saab, Reluctant Icon, 131–32.
78. 28, 30 June, 11, 14, July 1877, Derby Diaries, 412–13, 417, 418–20. BD to QV, 12, 16, 21, 26, 29 July 1877; QV to Disraeli, 16, 20, 26, 28 July 1877, in MB, 2:1006, 1022–30. Blake, Disraeli, 620–28; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 305–29.
79. 14, 17 December 1877, Derby Diaries, 464–65. MB, 2:1043–79. Blake, Disraeli, 630–34; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 235–63.
80. 18 December 1877, Derby Diaries, 465–66. Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 460–61.
81. 1 January 1878, Derby Diaries, 475.
82. BD to Lady Bradford, 3, 6 January 1878, LOD, 2:152, 153. 2, 3, 6, 8 January 1878, Derby Diaries, 477–78, 479, 480–81. BD to QV, in MB, 2:1085–87.
83. QV to Disraeli, 10 January 1878, and memorandum 11 January 1878, BD to QV, 12 January 1878, MB, 2:1090–91. 12 January 1878, Derby Diaries, 483. Blake, Disraeli, 623–24.
84. 15, 18, 21, 23 January 1878, Derby Diaries, 483–84, 485–86, 488–89, 489–90. Disraeli to Lady Bradford, 24 January 1878, LOD, 2:156–57. MB, 2:1091–101. Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 263–65.
85. 24, 25, 27 January 1878, Derby Diaries, 490–91.
86. MB, 2:1112–15. Blake, Disraeli, 638–41; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 364–70.
87. 6, 7, 11, 14, 15, 23 February 1878, Derby Diaries, 501, 504–5, 505, 507–8, 508–9, 517. BD to Lady Bradford, 7 February 1878, LOD, 2:159. BD to QV, 9, 16 February 1878, in MB, 2:1116–21. Saab, Reluctant Icon, 156–66, 167–74; Ković, Disraeli and the Eastern Question, 238–40.
88. 7, 10 March 1878, Derby Diaries, 522, 524–25. BD to QV, 1, 6, 8 March 1878 in MB, 2:1121–28. Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 372–83.
89. 23, 24, 27, 28 March 1878, Derby Diaries, 530–33. QV to Disraeli, 27 March 1878, MB, 2:1129–35. Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 413–14.
90. BD to QV, 9, 12 April, 26 May 1878, in MB, 2:1155–67. Blake, Disraeli, 642–45; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 416–17.
91. Disraeli to QV, 5 May 1878, in MB, 2:1163, 1167–78. Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 303–7.
92. BD to QV, 12 June 1878, MB, 2:1178–87. Blake, Disraeli, 645–50; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 591–95; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 433–51.
93. BD to Lady Bradford, 15 June 1878, LOD, 2:170–71. Disraeli daily reports 12–17, 17–21 June 1878, MB, 2:1188–89, 193–96.
94. 27 December 1876, Derby Diaries, 357; Jewish Chronicle, 29 December 1876, 619. Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, 152; Ković, Disraeli and the Eastern Question, 276.
95. Carole Fink, Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 24–28.
96. Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, 154. The Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, ed. L. Loewe (London: Griffith, Farran, Okedon and Welsh, 1890), 290–91; Green, Moses Montefiore, 401–2.
97. Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, 145, 152–54; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 189–90; Saab, Reluctant Icon, 80–87; Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, 24; Fritz Stern, Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1977), 338–39, 377–80.
98. MB, 2:1024. BD to Lady Bradford, 6 July 1878, LOD, 2:177–78.
99. MB, 2:1215–16, 1216–20. Kosić, Disraeli and the Eastern Question, 282, citing London Times, 18 July 1878.
100. Spectator, 20 July 1878, quoted in Thompson, Public Opinion, 479–80. MB, 2:1230–33.
101. Thompson, Public Opinion, 486. Eldridge, England’s Mission, 226, 228; Shannon, Gladstone, 303; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 605–8.
102. Thompson, Public Opinion, 490; BD to Gladstone, MB, 2:1227–28.
103. Jewish Chronicle, 11 May 1877, 10 and 18 May 1877, 3–4.
104. Colin Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1876–1939 (London: Edward Arnold, 1979), 11–55; David Feldman, Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, 1840–1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 94–102.
105. MB, 2:978–79. E. A. Freeman, The Ottoman Power in Europe (London: Macmillan, 1877), 61, 71. See Ragussis, Figures of Conversion, 107–10, 206–10; Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 180–81; and Feldman, Englishmen and Jews, 90–93, 100–102.
106. Freeman, Ottoman Power, xiii. See also Jewish Chronicle, 1 June 1877, 3–4; 24 August 1877, 9–10; 21 September, 3.
107. Freeman, Ottoman Power, xvii–xix.
108. Ibid., xix–xx.
109. Ibid., 6.
110. Goldwin Smith, “England’s Abandonment of the Protectorate of Turkey,” Contemporary Review, February 1878, 603–19.
111. Hermann Adler, “Can Jews Be Patriots?,” Nineteenth Century, April 1878, 637–46; Goldwin Smith, “Can Jews Be Patriots?,” Nineteenth Century, May 1878, 874–87.
112. Smith, “Can Jews Be Patriots?,” 876–77.
113. T. P. O’Connor, Lord Beaconsfield: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 1879).
114. Ibid., 1–20, 25, 26, 41–42.
115. Ibid., 46–67, 69, 114, 142–43.
116. Ibid., 373–83.
117. Ibid., 233–34, 602–10.
118. Ibid., 611, 616, 633–34, 652–53.
119. Shepherd, The Zealous Intruders, 253–54; Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 604–5.
120. Geoffrey Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1883), 37–38; Davis, Rothschilds, 185–200.
121. Lionel de Rothschild to Disraeli, 31 March 1877; Nathaniel de Rothschild to Montagu Corry, 31 August 1877; BD to QV, 17 August 1877, in Ferguson, The World’s Banker, 826–27, 829, 846–47; 29 December 1877, 20 March 1878, Derby Diaries, 473, 529; on shock over death of Lionel de Rothschild, BD to Lady Chesterfield, 3 June 1879, LOD, 2:220; MB, 2:1449–50. Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 611–12.
122. MB, 2:1233–34. Blake, Disraeli, 657–63, 665–74; Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 314–21, 332–41, 354–56.
123. MB, 2:1269–70, 1274, 1350–57; Blake, Disraeli, 657–63, 665–74; Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 354–56; Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, 194–203.
124. Blake, Disraeli, 707–18; Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 369–81; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 295–301.
125. MB, 2:1395–403.
126. MB, 2:1480.
127. Benjamin Disraeli, Endymion (London: Longmans Green, 1881), 156, 300, 327, 388.
128. Endymion, 31, 249.
129. Ibid., 249.
130. MB, 2:1492–94.
131. MB, 2:1498–99. Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, 650–51.
1. Lucien Wolf, “The Disraeli Family,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 5 (1902–5), 202–18.
2. J. A. Froude, Lord Beaconsfield (London: Sampson Low, 1890), 84–85, 104, 193
3. Earl of Cromer, Disraeli (London: Macmillan, 1912), 7–8, 12.
4. MB, 1:249; MB, 2:1507.
5. Sander Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 1–21, 139–88.
6. Todd Endelman, Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 50–51, and for the phenomenon in general.
7. Bernard Glassman, Benjamin Disraeli: The Fabricated Jew in Myth and Memory (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002), 38–42.
8. R. W. Davis, Disraeli (London: Hutchinson, 1976), xii, 38–39, argues he benefited from being seen as a Jew thanks to the “overcompensation” of those he encountered, though his initial breakthrough was in “raffish” circles; William Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli (London: Pocket Books, 2007), 46–174.
9. Jane Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 1804–1846 (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995), 2, 189, notes that he conducted himself as a young man with “a fecklessness that is truly breathtaking,” storing up problems for himself, while as a chronic debtor “Disraeli was a leech, borrowing unscrupulously from his friends . . . blind to the moral consequences of his behaviour.”
10. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, 1951), 68–79; Berlin, “Benjamin Disraeli, Karl Marx and the Search for Identity,” in Henry Hardy, ed., Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 260–73; Robert Blake, Disraeli (London: Methuen, 1966), 202; Sarah Bradford, Disraeli (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982); John Vincent, Disraeli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 1–2, 59–60; Todd Endelman, ‘Disraeli’s Jewishness Reconsidered,’ Modern Judaism 5:2 (1985), 109–123; Paul Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 68.
11. Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 126, 255; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 25–27.
12. Ridley, The Young Disraeli, 283, writes, “With Sidonia Disraeli sought to woo Lionel de Rothschild.”
13. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 68. Also Blake, Disraeli, 202; Bradford, Disraeli, 188; Endelman, “Disraeli’s Jewishness,” 110.
14. Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, Disraeli, 109; J. P. Parry, “Disraeli and England,” Historical Journal 43:3 (2000), 700–701.
15. Edgar Feuchtwanger, “The Jewishness of Conservative Politicians,” in M. Brenner, R. Liedtke, D. Rechter, eds., Two Nations: British and German Jews in Comparative Perspective (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1999), 223–40.
16. Richard Shannon, Gladstone: God and Politics (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), 173.
17. Michael Ragussis, Figures of Conversion: “The Jewish Question” and English National Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 234–38.
18. Cecil Roth, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), 118–19; Harold Fisch, “Disraeli’s Hebrew Compulsions,” in H. J. Zimmels, J. Rabbinowitz, I. Finestein, eds., Essays Presented to Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (London: Soncino Press, 1967), 90.
19. For a sample, see Davis, Disraeli, 182–221; Smith, Disraeli: A Brief Life, 179–80, 186–90; Parry, “Disraeli and England,” 716–28.
20. Glassman, Benjamin Disraeli: The Fabricated Jew, 151–54, 161–64, 168–69, is an indispensable source for anti-Semitic appropriations of Disraeli’s utterances; Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 71; Fisch, “Disraeli’s Hebrew Compulsions,” 91–92.