1

The session of 1877 was uneventful as far as domestic affairs were concerned. Indeed, the only episode of political interest in Disraeli’s life was an attempt by some Opposition back benchers to press a charge of personal jobbery against him. The allegation was that he had appointed T. D. Pigott, a clerk at the War Office, to the post of Comptroller of the Stationery Office because his father, a clergyman, had been a political supporter and Disraeli’s appointee as Vicar of Hughenden. It was true that the older Pigott had been the incumbent of that living. But he had been chosen by the previous patron, he was a Whig supporter, he quarrelled with Disraeli about a right of way, he reproved him once for ‘Sunday travelling’ (receiving a sharp snub for his pains), and he left Hughenden in a general aura of ill will. Disraeli’s appointment of Sir Digby Pigott, as he later became, was open to some criticism in that a Select Committee had recently recommended that the post should in future go to a person retired from business, or, as Disraeli put it, ‘from whom business had retired’. But it was not a ‘job’. A snap motion of censure was carried in the House of Commons, thanks to the negligence of the Whips. Disraeli had to defend himself in the House of Lords. He had a conclusive answer, and the occasion provided him with a splendid opportunity of play acting. When he entered the House he appeared old, bent, worn out, weary, half guilty. As he spoke he gradually became alive, and the expression of horror and astonishment with which he uttered the word ‘job’ was unforgettable. By the time he had finished, his audience, frosty at first, was wholly on his side, and he himself appeared to be twenty years younger. The motion of censure in the House of Commons was quickly rescinded with apologies and without a division.1

Disraeli had one important Cabinet post to fill at this time. On July 29 Ward Hunt died at Hamburg from fatty degeneration of the heart. He had been by no means an ideal minister, though no doubt poor health accounted for much. Disraeli, whose opinion of successive Tory First Lords of the Admiralty ever since 1852 had been very unfavourable, was determined to choose a really efficient man, and after offering the post first to Lord Sandon, he resolved to promote W. H. Smith, the great bookstall proprietor, from the position of Secretary of the Treasury, where he had done very well. ‘He is purely a man of the middle class,’ he wrote to the Queen, ‘and the appointment would no doubt be popular.’2 The Queen demurred slightly in her reply. ‘She fears it may not please the Navy in which Service so many of the highest rank serve and who claim to be equal to the Army – if a man of the Middle Class is placed above them in that very high post …’3 She suggested Manners or Hicks Beach instead.

Disraeli pointed out in reply that Childers and Goschen in the previous government were socially no higher than Smith and nothing like as rich.4Hicks Beach would be satisfactory, but was wanted where he was. No one appreciated Manners as much as Disraeli – ‘his friend of more than forty years. But the appointment would not be approved – nay, it would be condemned; which would be painful as well as injurious.’ Smith made the same excellent impression on the House as Cross, and had acquired its complete confidence. Moreover, Smith sat for Westminster and there was a standing grievance that the Cabinet ministers in the House of Commons were none of them borough members. ‘Hitherto this has been a necessity, as all the leading ability of the Tory party has generally speaking been contributed by the Counties.’ Finally ‘the Admiralty requires a strong man and Mr. Smith is such.’ Faced by this barrage of arguments, which she admitted were ‘unanswerable’, the Queen gave way. ‘But he must not “lord it” over the Navy (which almost every First Lord does) and be a little modest and not act the Lord High Admiral which is offensive to the Service …’5  W. H. Smith turned out to be one of Disraeli’s most successful appointments and he became a notable source of strength in the Cabinet.

Disraeli spent the last fortnight of August and the whole of September at Hughenden. He continued to be in a low state of health, and he badly needed rest. But he got no better. Bronchitis was eased, merely to be replaced by asthma which ‘destroys my nights and makes me consequently shattered by day’. He decided to see whether three weeks at Brighton would bring an improvement. Before departing he summoned a Cabinet meeting. The Queen had indeed been pressing him to do so earlier, but Disraeli did not agree:6 ‘The system of having a great many Cabinets till its members have agreed on some policy is a bad one. Every day there are fresh difficulties. A mind like the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s, for example, would make a fresh difficulty every day.’ But the continued failure of the Russians to take Plevna had given him an idea. Why not propose British mediation, terms to be a settlement of Bulgaria on the lines of the London Protocol and the cession of Bessarabia to Russia? If the Turks agreed and Russia refused, then Britain would inform the Sultan and the Tsar that she would abandon neutrality and give Turkey material aid if Constantinople were menaced. Disraeli wrote beforehand to Derby, pressing him to put forward this proposal. ‘I am not prepared to support the proposal which you suggest, still less to put it forward,’ replied the Foreign Secretary. And on October 5 at the Cabinet, in spite of Disraeli’s ambiguously optimistic account to the Queen the plan was evidently shelved.7

The visit to Brighton was not a success. For one thing Corry was taking a well-deserved holiday from his secretarial duties on grounds of health. ‘It comes at a moment of great public anxiety for I have no substitute for him’, Disraeli grumbled to Lady Bradford.8  ‘… Whenever Monty leaves me having convinced himself that nothing can happen for a while the most pressing business immediately prevails …’9 Disraeli was apt to be an exacting master. He liked the other two secretaries: ‘faithful, able, and gentlemen; but I can’t live with them’. Then there were the lion-hunters who thrust unwanted invitations on him, but he had a means of dealing with these. He sent their cards to London to be answered by Algernon Turnor. ‘I hope this will sicken them.’10 And finally Disraeli’s health did not improve. He broke his holiday for a three-day visit to the Duke of Bedford at Woburn, where ‘I sleep in a golden bed with a golden ceiling’.11 Lord Lyons and Lord Odo Russell were also of the party. Disraeli had long talks with them both, but found them, so he told the Queen, ‘absolutely cowed by Prince Bismarck’.12 Disraeli seldom failed to include in his letters those pen portraits which delighted the Queen. ‘The Duke of Bedford is a strange man’, he wrote. ‘He enjoys his power and prosperity, and yet seems to hold a lower opinion of human nature than any man Lord Beaconsfield was ever acquainted with. He is a joyous cynic … Lord Beaconsfield has seen Lord Derby, a cynic also but not a joyous one …’

Disraeli was in a state of acute depression at the end of October. ‘I am very ill …’ he told Lady Bradford on October 23. ‘If I could only face the scene which would occur at headquarters if I resigned, I would do so at once; but I never could bear scenes and have no pluck for the occasion.’13 And two days later he wrote: ‘I can’t lead a House of Parlt. even H of L without a voice witht health. And Lord Mayor’s Day when my words may govern the world, what am I to do? If it were not for the Fairy I would at once retire but I await her return before I broach it.’ It is never easy to know how seriously Disraeli meant remarks of this sort. But a fortunate chance altered the situation very soon after. He had been pressed by Cairns and others to try a new physician, Dr Kidd, who had a large practice in bronchial and similar cases. On November 1 he was examined by the new doctor, who reported that there was ‘no organic deficiency’ and managed to make Disraeli well enough for the Guildhall speech. Kidd was a homoeopath and so was not persona grata with his professional colleagues, but he undoubtedly managed to effect a real improvement in his patient’s health.

According to Kidd,14 Disraeli was suffering from Bright’s disease, bronchitis and asthma, and his condition was aggravated by the remedies of previous physicians, who had prescribed ipecacuanha for asthma, and ‘steel [probably some medicine containing iron] and port wine’ to cure his ‘debility’. The ipecacuanha merely made him feel sick; the ‘steel’ and port gave him a headache and accentuated his tendency towards gout. He suffered badly from insomnia owing to coughing at night, and this brought on depression and a general inability to work or concentrate.

Dr Kidd at once stopped the ipecacuanha and the ‘steel’, substituting potassium iodide. This is still used today and would certainly have been an improvement. He also wisely forbade port and prescribed instead ‘the finest Château Lafite’ – a change which suited Disraeli, who disliked port but was devoted to claret. Another prudent measure was to insist on a light dinner ‘without pastry pudding or fruit’. ‘A mild course of arsenic’ to clear the bronchial tubes would not, however, meet with modern approval. It probably did more harm than good. Nor would a doctor today try to encourage perspiration before going to bed.15 Dr Kidd attached much importance to this. The most that can be said is that it may have helped Disraeli to sleep. To aid his digestion – although this seems to have been his own idea, not Kidd’s – he had a concordat with his cook that when he dined alone there should be ten minutes between each course, during which he would read one of the classics. The upshot of these changes in his regimen seems to have been highly beneficial. Nausea disappeared, he recovered his appetite for breakfast and lunch, he slept well, and felt more cheerful and vigorous than for a long while past. But any deviation from his routine was liable to be disturbing. For example, it is not surprising that the round of festivities at the Congress of Berlin made it necessary to summon Kidd urgently.

Disraeli was a co-operative patient, but a shrewd observer of doctors – a class of whom he had had much experience. Dr Kidd confirms that basically Disraeli had a tough and hardy constitution, but Kidd regretted his inability to persuade him to take exercise. ‘My grandfather lived to ninety years,’ Disraeli said to him on one occasion. ‘He took much open-air exercise. My father lived to eighty, yet he never took any.’16 He could only be induced to go for a walk if he had an amusing companion, and even then sauntered so slowly that as exercise it was useless.

Disraeli needed all the improvement in health that he could obtain, for the impasse to which Plevna had brought the Russo-Turkish war was showing ominous signs of ending in defeat for the Turks. Even while Disraeli was at Woburn news came through of a great Russian victory on the Transcaucasian front, and it was clear that Osman could not hold indefinitely against the reinforcements arriving on the Balkan front. But the Cabinet seemed more hopelessly divided than ever. It was two days after he saw Dr Kidd that Disraeli furnished the Queen with the analysis mentioned earlier, which began: ‘In a Cabinet of twelve members there are seven parties or policies as to the course which should be pursued.’17

On December 9 Plevna fell, and it was clear that there would now be no question of a second campaign. The struggle between the war and peace parties in the Cabinet became acute. Disraeli pressed for an early summoning of Parliament, a vote of credit for the forces and British mediation between the belligerents. The Cabinet hesitated, Derby strongly opposing the proposal. On December 15 the Queen, who had only once before been the guest of one of her Prime Ministers (Melbourne), published her support of Disraeli to the world by the most unusual step of lunching with him at Hughenden, thus occasioning Freeman’s deplorable comment quoted above.18 She was accompanied by Princess Beatrice, and each of them planted a tree in the grounds. She chose by ill chance an unfortunate day, the anniversary of Mary Anne’s death, and when she discovered it too late her contrition was heartfelt. Two days later Disraeli partially won the battle in the Cabinet. ‘The three recusant peers surrendered’, he told the Queen. The Cabinet agreed to his proposals, but only provisionally.

At about the same time the trouble over Derby’s communications with Shuvalov came to a head. Colonel Wellesley had for some months past been reporting on the remarkably detailed information about Cabinet discussions regularly passed on by the Ambassador to St Petersburg. The favour shown by the Foreign Secretary to the Russian Ambassador was so marked that it had created comment in society, and those who were aware of the leakages could not fail to put two and two together. Both the Queen and Disraeli were even more disturbed than they had been in the summer. All Disraeli’s efforts would be nullified if the Tsar, in possession of secret information which he ought never to have had, reckoned on Cabinet dissensions paralysing British action when it came to the point.

The Queen wrote to Disraeli on the matter.19 She principally blamed Lady Derby, and he considered reading her letter to the Cabinet, but decided to consult Salisbury, who was Lady Derby’s stepson – an additional complication in an affair difficult enough already. He advised Disraeli to approach Derby first. Disraeli replied to the Queen: ‘Lord Salisbury said Lord Derby would bow to any suggestion made by his Sovereign but that he might be seriously offended if such delicate matters touching himself were brought forward to be discussed by Mr. Smith, Mr. Cross, etc. etc.’20  Derby raised the question himself ‘very formally’ and ‘Lord Salisbury as the husband of the only other wife who could interfere in such matters expressed himself without reserve’.

Disraeli’s letter to the Queen does not tell us what Derby said, but presumably he gave some sort of assurances about Shuvalov. Whatever he said or did, the matter was not finished with, for about three weeks later the Queen charged Dean Wellesley (significantly not Ponsonby, whom she regarded as too Gladstonian) to write to Lady Derby. The Dean did so and told the Queen that ‘as she [Lady Derby] has taken in good part the very stringent advice the Dean has ventured to give her as to the exclusiveness and familiarity which have marked her receptions of the Russian Ambassador and which (even if there was nothing more) would in themselves give occasion for the spreading of rumours against her, the Dean feels assured that there will be an end of any intelligence abroad that might be traded to that source’.21 In fact, Lady Derby did not take the advice in good part at all, and wrote to the Dean in a very hurt tone.22 Returning her letter to the Queen, who had sent it on to him, Disraeli replied: ‘The letter of the Lady is not satisfactory; but then it could not be. The step taken afforded the only means of arresting the evil, if that be possible.’23

Disraeli’s misgivings about Derby were heartily reciprocated. Sensing perhaps that Salisbury was no longer the reliable ally that he had been, Derby wrote to him on December 23 a letter of appeal. In this the full measure of his suspicion of Disraeli comes out very clearly.

… It is difficult to give a definite reason for suspicions however strongly one may entertain them; but I know our chief of old, and from various things that have dropped from him I am fully convinced – not indeed that he wants a war – but that he has made up his mind to large military preparations, to an extremely warlike speech, to an agitation in favour of armed intervention (recollect that he said in Cabinet: ‘The country is asleep and I want to wake it up’), and if possible to an expedition that shall occupy Constantinople or Gallipoli.

Now I am not inclined to any of these things, and I believe others among us are not so either, but if we don’t take care, we shall find ourselves, as you said last year about the vote of credit, ‘on a slippery incline’ …

I have no feeling towards the Premier but one of personal friendship and good will and would make any personal sacrifices to help him out of a difficulty, but his views are different from mine where such matters are concerned, not in detail but in principle. He believes thoroughly in ‘prestige’ as all foreigners do, and would think it (quite sincerely) in the interests of the country to spend 200 millions on a war if the result was to make foreign States think more highly of us as a military power. These ideas are intelligible but they are not mine nor yours and their being sincerely held does not make them less dangerous. We are in real danger and it is impossible to be too careful. I write without any more specific object than that of a general warning: but I know what the pressure of the court is on our Chief. I am convinced that the Queen has satisfied herself that she will have her way (it is not disguised that she wishes for a war): and the conviction is universal among the diplomatists that the Premier will leave no stone unturned to accomplish their purpose.

The first thing is to see that nothing shall be done without the Cabinet being consulted. That I can ensure as far as diplomatic business is concerned …24

Salisbury was the key to the political situation. Everything depended on the way he went. A day later Disraeli, too, appealed to him.

If every resolution of every council is regularly reported by Count S. it seems inevitable that our very endeavours to secure peace will land us in the reverse.

I have endeavoured to arrest this evil by some remarks I made in Cabinet and I have been told that Lady Salisbury with the wise courage which distinguishes her has socially expressed her sentiments to the great culprit. But more decisive means are requisite.

We must put an end to all this gossip about war and peace parties in the Cabinet and we must come to decisions which may be, and will be, betrayed but which may convince Russia that we are agreed and determined. You and I must go together into the depth of the affair and settle what we are prepared to do. I dare say we shall not differ when we talk the matter over as becomes public men with so great a responsibility …25

Salisbury was sympathetic on the leakages, but he did not commit himself to Disraeli or to Derby, although his mind was for a number of reasons moving more and more against the latter. He saw that the now headlong Russian advance had created a situation in which Britain might have to threaten, or even go to, war for reasons other than Disraeli’s alleged bellicosity. It was no longer a matter of bolstering up a Turkey morally condemned by the whole of Europe. Turkey’s prewar ‘territorial integrity’ had gone for ever by now. It was a question of Russian designs on the Straits, and of the right of the Concert of Europe to have a say in the final settlement.

As the Russian advance continued, passions reached new heights in England. This was the time when the Duke of Sutherland called Gladstone a Russian agent and Freeman called Hughenden a ghetto. It was the time of the famous music-hall song, and night after night the numbers swelled of those who did not want to fight, but by jingo if they did … Gladstone was hooted in the street and ‘patriotic’ ruffians broke the windows of his house. Carnarvon made an imprudent speech on January 2 to the effect that a repetition of the Crimean War would be ‘insane’. He received a cutting reprimand from Disraeli in Cabinet and a rebuke from the Queen. He consulted Salisbury, who advised him not to resign ‘on account of a rude phrase by a man whose insolence is proverbial’. He also wrote to Derby propounding various courses as ninepins to be knocked down, one of which was to announce that he stood by his views and would remain ‘in the Cabinet contregré malgré to carry them’.26 Derby to his surprise advised him to do precisely this. Carnarvon stayed.

On January 20 the Queen offered Disraeli the Garter. He declined, feeling the moment inopportune, but wrote a letter which she described as ‘beautiful’. As for the Russians, the Queen went on, ‘Oh if the Queen were a man, she would like to go and give those horrid Russians whose word one cannot trust such a beating.’ Parliament had opened on January 17. At a series of Cabinet meetings on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd Disraeli carried three proposals: to begin negotiations with Vienna; to give public notice of the request for a £6m vote of credit (the Cabinet’s previous decision was provisional and private); to send Admiral Hornby’s ironclads through the Dardanelles. Carnarvon at once resigned – on the second and third proposals. So did Derby, but on the third only. Disraeli secured the Queen’s consent to Salisbury as his successor. There followed the often-told comedy of errors about the fleet. The order had to be revoked when it was revealed that a ciphering error had given the wrong impression that Russia intended to exclude the question of the Straits from any subsequent European Congress. The revocation made it possible, though not necessary, to bring Derby back into the Cabinet. Great pressure was put on Disraeli to do so. It was said that the whole of Lancashire would be lost and even the vote of credit jeopardized if Derby went. Disraeli gave way. The Queen, whose glee at the resignations of both ‘Lords’ was immense, received a bitter blow. It required all Disraeli’s tact and a letter in the first person beginning ‘Madam and Most Beloved Sovereign’ to mollify her.

Disraeli had made a serious error in surrendering to this electoral alarmism. Derby returned with the sole object of doing what he earlier advised Carnarvon to do. His object was to prevent ‘mischief’. The truth was that the strain of events had produced something little short of a nervous breakdown; he was drinking heavily and he seems to have relapsed into a state of paralysed apathy. In effect foreign policy passed out of his hands. Control fell into the hands of a committee of three, Disraeli, Cairns and Salisbury. Derby signed papers in a curiously detached way almost as if he was a clerk in the Foreign Office with no final responsibility. Yet all the while his resignation with its allegedly portentous consequences hung like a thunder cloud over the Cabinet. This was an impossible situation. No wonder that the very colleagues who had agitated for his recall now began to wish him away, to the point of personal rudeness.

On January 31 an armistice was signed at Adrianople, together with the preliminary bases of peace. These were at once ambiguous and elastic. Lord Tenterden was stirred into sending a formal memorandum to the Cabinet of the most foreboding nature. Even Derby seemed less irresolute than usual, and when a rumour, untrue as it happens, reached London that the Russians were cheating over the armistice and had crossed the demarcation lines, the Cabinet at last took the decision to send the fleet to Constantinople. The Sultan now panicked, fearing that this would precipitate the Russian seizure of the city. But the Cabinet decided to disregard his plea. Salisbury was one of the strongest supporters of the decision. On February 15 Hornby’s six ironclads anchored at the island of Prinkipo within sight of the city. The atmosphere in London was one of excitement and mounting war hysteria.

For the next ten weeks an Anglo-Russian war seemed likely to break out at any moment. The Cabinet was now at last ready to face the realities of the situation. The vote of credit was carried. Preparations were made for an expeditionary force. Lord Napier of Magdala was appointed as commander, with Sir Garnet Wolseley as his chief of staff. How far did this belatedly tough policy succeed in preventing Russia from seizing the Straits? There is no simple answer. As far as the Dardanelles were concerned it undoubtedly did succeed. Derby warned Shuvalov on February 12 that if the Russians entered the Bulair lines or occupied Gallipoli war would follow. Hornby was instructed to resist such a move by force. On February 21 Gorchakov agreed to refrain as long as Britain did so, too.

The situation regarding Constantinople was different. Hornby was told not to open fire if the Russians entered the city, and the words casus belli were at no stage used in communications with Shuvalov. He was simply informed that Britain would break off diplomatic relations if the Russians occupied the city without the Sultan’s permission. The Tsar, who considered war inevitable now and distrusted English perfidy, was anxious to seize the city, but, with that curious indecisiveness to which he was almost as prone as Derby, he never gave his brother, the Grand Duke Nicholas, who commanded the army, a direct order.28 Yet even so it is surprising that the Grand Duke failed to take this last crucial step when he knew the Tsar’s wishes and was urged on by Ignatyev and the whole Panslav party. The explanation seems to lie in events in London. On March 27, in reply to Gorchakov’s refusal to allow all the terms of the treaty to be open to revision by the forthcoming congress, Disraeli carried further drastic measures in the Cabinet. It was decided to move troops from India to the Mediterranean and use them to seize a place d’armes, either Cyprus or Alexandretta. It was also decided to call up the reserves in England. This second step was the only one publicly announced, but it was quite enough to show that British threats were not bluff. Derby now at last resigned, and Salisbury took his place – a clear indication of a firmer policy.

To the Tsar at St Petersburg these developments rendered it more important, not less, to occupy Constantinople. But this was not the reaction of the Grand Duke. He was now convinced that the course pressed on him would cause a complete breach with England, and that in such circumstances the Turks would resist. He believed that the forces at his disposal were not strong enough to defeat a Turkish army of 100,000 men. He refused to act without orders, and these never came. On April 1 the Tsar decided to remove his brother from command, ill health being the excuse. It was not until April 27 that his successor Totleben arrived at San Stefano. By then tension had slackened. The threat of hostilities with Austria-Hungary as well as England loomed large. The war fever at St Petersburg began to abate. On May 9 Totleben dealt a final blow to the war party by reporting to the Tsar in favour of a purely defensive policy. The report was accepted, and the danger of war at once receded. In this somewhat fortuitous manner the military preparations on which Disraeli insisted may be said to have done the trick, not by intimidating the Tsar, but by frightening his brother.

Derby’s resignation led to a complete breach with Disraeli. At first all was smooth: generous and polite letters exchanged; an offer of the Garter declined but appreciated. Yet in the end all parties concerned, including Disraeli, behaved badly. Disraeli caused Derby much umbrage by promoting his brother Frederick to Cabinet rank in the ensuing reshuffle – a very palpable move to secure some residue of the Stanley influence in Lancashire. Derby, moreover, was annoyed because the public assumed naturally enough that he had resigned on account of the call-up of the reserve, which seemed a poor reason; whereas, in fact, he felt far more strongly about the other and still secret measures. On April 8 Disraeli made ill-advised and unfair remarks in the House of Lords, which implied that Derby had resigned on a triviality. Derby riposted by hinting at darker causes. No further letters passed between them from that day on. Three months later Derby revealed, as he had permission to do, the decision to seize Cyprus or Alexandretta with an Indian expeditionary force. Since this had in the event proved unnecessary and delicate negotiations concerning the peaceful transfer of Cyprus were still going on with Turkey, the revelation was embarrassing. In the House of Lords, Salisbury compared Derby to Titus Oates and denied, quite incorrectly, that the decision had ever been taken. The Queen wrote a stiff letter which Derby wrongly believed to have been prompted by Disraeli. No rapprochement was now possible. Derby resigned from the Conservative party just before the election of 1880 and supported Gladstone. It was a sad end to a personal and political friendship of over thirty years.

2

The Treaty of San Stefano imposed by Ignatyev on the Turks at the pistol point was wholly unacceptable in London. It included a big Bulgaria in the most odious form stretching south of the Balkans to the Aegean Sea and west as far as the Albanian frontier. This provision was as offensive to Austria-Hungary as it was to Britain, and it enraged the numerous non-Bulgar Slav peoples, many of whom would be incorporated into this grandiose new creation. The Asiatic clauses of the treaty were equally disagreeable to the British Government. The Russo-Turkish frontier in Asia Minor was advanced some fifty miles south-west along the Black Sea coast, and nearly a hundred miles in places inland. The Russians acquired Batum, Ardahan, Kars and Bayazid, and they controlled a vital section of the important Trebizond–Erzerum–Tabriz caravan route.

There was only one consolation: the Russian Government conceded at the end of January – they could scarcely do otherwise – that the great powers had a right to be consulted on such modifications of the 1856 and 1871 treaties as were of ‘general European interest’, and early in March agreement in principle was reached to hold a congress, or conference, at some time in the future. Andrassy proposed Vienna as the venue. Gorchakov would only accept Berlin, and, in spite of the Queen’s violent protests, Berlin was chosen. But what was meant by ‘general European interest’? It had been Gorchakov’s apparent determination to reserve the right to exclude whatever Russia saw fit, which prompted Disraeli to propose the measures that finally drove Derby out of the Cabinet. The British Government could not concede unilateral reservation by Russia of any of the clauses of the treaty. The prospect of a congress receded into the indefinite future. On April 1 Salisbury issued his famous ‘circular’ setting out the reasons why Britain could not enter one on Gorchakov’s terms, and also why she objected to the Treaty of San Stefano.

The change at the Foreign Office made an immense difference to Disraeli’s life. The atmosphere of sullen fog was rapidly dissipated by a mind as sharp and bracing as an east wind. Whereas policy had drifted aimlessly with the ebb and flow of torpid uncertain tides, now it was borne upon a swift current heading for a definite destination. Instead of the confusion and inaction which, in so far as they did not spring from Derby’s congenital defects, were symptoms of a fundamental antipathy to the Prime Minister’s opinions, clarity, speed and energy characterized the new Foreign Secretary, perhaps the cleverest man to hold that office during the nineteenth century. Disraeli greatly admired his incisive style of writing, his quickness of apprehension, his grasp of detail. Above all he admired his courage – the quality he himself possessed in so pre-eminent a degree. Shortly before his death he said to Salisbury’s daughter and biographer, Lady Gwendolen Cecil: ‘You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public men. Your father is the only man of real courage that it has ever been my lot to work with.’29

Salisbury reciprocated this admiration. He could never be an intimate friend of Disraeli, but he found quite suddenly that he no longer distrusted him. He respected Disraeli’s lack of hesitation, his readiness to take responsibility, his refusal to shirk the big issues, and he admired the indomitable pluck with which the old statesman overcame age and illness. Moreover, he was touched by Disraeli’s gratitude and obvious dependence on him. Salisbury was in the very prime of life. Disraeli was approaching the twilight. He could not be expected to display the energy, the mastery of detail, the command of facts, which are needed in the conduct of diplomacy. Salisbury could and did, and he was determined not to let his chief down. There were other bonds: a common dislike of humbug; the same love of a mordant phrase or a vivid metaphor. It was a most fruitful alliance.

Detailed diplomacy during the next two months was conducted by Salisbury rather than by Disraeli, although Disraeli kept in the closest touch with the Foreign Secretary and conferred with him alone before every Cabinet meeting. Feeling the load lifted to some extent from his shoulders, he began to enjoy dinner parties again, pleading to the Queen, always solicitous for his health, that it was essential because of Corry’s absence. ‘Lord Beaconsfield assures your Majesty that he is prudent in his social movements … There is a certain tact in the management of even great affairs which only can be acquired by feeling the pulse of society. Mr. Corry, who went everywhere, used to perform this office for him, but now he is alone!’30 Corry’s illness prevented Disraeli from carrying out a plan to take a house in Richmond or Wimbledon for the Easter holiday in order to be nearer to London than Hughenden and yet have some country air. Hopeless as always in dealing with domestic affairs, he decided to stay at Hatfield for a few days instead. He thus got to know the Cecil family with some intimacy for the first time. But the country air was not a success: ‘A north east blast with a sprinkling of hail’, he told Lady Bradford.

Disraeli was determined to force drastic amendments to the Treaty of San Stefano. Accordingly there was no slackening in war preparations, which were pressed on with ostentatious lack of concealment. On April 17 he announced that 7,000 Indian troops had been ordered to Malta – a move which was denounced as unconstitutional by the Opposition, but which impressed St Petersburg. A number of separate influences were now converging to make the Russians less obstinate than hitherto. Throughout April Ignatyev’s star was on the wane. Moderate opinion began to see the Treaty of San Stefano not as a triumph of Panslav policy but as the reckless seizure of a position which Russia could not relinquish without humiliation, but could not in the long run hold without a war against England and possibly Austria-Hungary, too. Even Ignatyev saw that some kind of agreement must be reached with one of those powers, but his total failure to secure an accommodation with Andrassy was another stage in his downfall. He faced, too, the unremitting hostility of Gorchakov and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At the end of May he faded from the scene, and departed into angry retirement on his estates at Kiev.

Meanwhile at St Petersburg confusion grew more confounded. Gorchakov was ill and took to his bed, but he was not ill enough to give up responsibility. The Tsar vacillated hopelessly. All initiative ceased. But there was one man who had clear views about what should be done. Shuvalov regarded the Treaty of San Stefano as a disastrous error, and he was convinced by the resignation of Derby, which he deplored, and by the war preparations in London that the British Government really would fight in the last resort. He now seized the strategic opportunity created by the anarchy at St Petersburg to come forward with a policy of his own for an accommodation with England before the Congress met. If he were successful might he not snatch the coveted reversion of the Chancellorship from Ignatyev? He persuaded the Tsar and for several months he was the dictator of Russian foreign policy. Then he, too, was toppled from power and like Ignatyev disappeared into the shadows.

Disraeli and Salisbury considered that the two worst features of San Stefano were the big Bulgaria and Russia’s Asiatic gains. In the complicated negotiations with Shuvalov which began on April 29 and ended in the Anglo-Russian Conventions signed at the end of May, Salisbury was concerned above all to reverse or neutralize these. It became clear very early that although the Bulgarian settlement might be drastically changed, there were two things which the Tsar would never surrender, Bessarabia and his acquisition of Batum and Kars. The former was a matter of indifference to Britain. The latter was not, for it was feared to be a jumping off ground for Russian penetration either into Asia Minor or south-east towards the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, it might be possible to neutralize this danger if Britain had a base at the eastern end of the Mediterranean from which she could extend her own military and political influence into Anatolia. Therefore, while negotiating very stiffly with Shuvalov over Transcaucasia, Disraeli and Salisbury pursued at the same time in the utmost secrecy the negotiations with the Sultan which culminated in the Cyprus Convention. If these were successful they would give way on Batum and Kars. If not they would resist to the end. It was not until May 26 that the Sultan, in return for a defensive alliance with England, agreed to the cession of Cyprus and to safeguards for his Christian subjects in Asia Minor, and it was only then that Salisbury could bring the negotiations with Shuvalov to a satisfactory conclusion.

The Anglo-Russian Conventions are described by the leading historian on the subject as ‘a very notable success for British diplomacy’.31 Shuvalov gave way to all the important demands of Salisbury as regards Bulgaria. It was to be divided into two parts, the Balkan range being the boundary. The northern part was to be an autonomous principality, the southern was to remain, with stringent safeguards, subject to Turkish rule, and its access to the Aegean was to be cut off. The precise line of the Balkan frontier and the precise military rights of the Sultan in southern Bulgaria were left for the Congress, as also was the question of the Straits, the degree of European participation in organizing the two Bulgarias, and the length of Russian occupation. In Asia, Salisbury agreed to the cession of Batum and Kars in return for a Russian promise to acquire no more territory in Asiatic Turkey. But he did succeed in moving the Russians out of Bayazid, so that they no longer bestrode the Trebizond–Tabriz caravan route. Nothing was said about the Cyprus Convention. At the same time what Andrassy called ‘a general agreement as between gentlemen’ was made with Austria-Hungary. The western frontier of north Bulgaria was not to extend beyond the Morava River. England would undertake to support the annexation of Bosnia, but Salisbury preferred not to commit himself about Herzegovina.

Bismarck, informed of all these preliminary arrangements, now agreed to the fixing of a definite date for the Congress. Important matters were still left open, and it is a myth to suggest that the Congress was a mere façade registering decisions already taken in secret between the principal powers concerned. But there seemed a sufficient measure of agreement for Bismarck to run the remote risk that the Congress might fail, and he was determined to use all his own strength and prestige to see that it did not. The first meeting of the Congress of Berlin was fixed to take place at two o’clock on June 13.

3

There could be no question who would represent England. When it had been merely a matter of a conference the Cabinet had selected Lord Lyons, but at a full-scale congress attended by the imperial chancellors of the Northern Courts Disraeli and Salisbury were bound to be the English plenipotentiaries. Disraeli was seventy-three, by no means robust even before he left, and towards the end of the Congress he was in a state of semi-collapse. But he was determined to go, and he politely brushed aside the Queen’s anxiety about his health. He travelled with the utmost leisure, taking four days on the journey, stopping first at Calais, then at Brussels, where he dined with the King of the Belgians, and finally at Cologne, before arriving at the Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin at eight o’clock on June 11. He was therefore fresh and well able to cope with an unexpected request to call on Bismarck that same evening. The preliminary meeting did not go too well. ‘Not unsatisfactory’, Disraeli describes it to the Queen, which can be translated a good deal less favourably. But this state of affairs soon ended. Bismarck and Disraeli came to respect each other, and none of the many anecdotes about the Congress is better known than Bismarck’s famous words: ‘Der alte Jude, das ist der Mann.’

In many respects the alliance could have been predicted. Both men prided themselves on realpolitik, and had a sovereign contempt for anything that smacked of cant, especially religious cant, which they were all too ready to suspect in any humanitarian movement. Both were quite indifferent to the claims of the Balkan Slavs, regarding them either as hostile pieces in a great game of diplomatic chess or as tiresome disturbers of the European balance of power. Bismarck, like Disraeli, had been a Byronic romantic in the past, and thought in those terms still. Both men loved sweeping phrases, high-flown generalities, cynical asides. They were impatient of detail, bored by the humdrum. They shared the same broad views on policy: at home the preservation of an aristocratic settlement, Junker supremacy in Prussia, the ascendancy of the landed class in England; abroad the bold assertion of those national interests of which they seemed to be the incarnation in their respective countries. Bismarck admired Disraeli’s courage, power of decision and refusal to be bogged down in details. In contrast he disliked Salisbury, who had the ungrateful task of negotiating on all the secondary matters, and who lacked the pliability and bonhomie to make his obduracy acceptable. There was another bond between Disraeli and Bismarck: neither of them could abide Gladstone.

Disraeli was from the start ‘the lion of the Congress’, as Sumner calls him. Everyone wanted to see him and talk to him. His extraordinary  career and mysterious origins fascinated the whole of the cosmopolitan world assembled at Berlin. Stories of the long-vanished romance of his youth were revived again and Henrietta Temple became the rage in the fashionable world. Disraeli’s vitality was astounding. The social life at Berlin, to judge from his own account, would alone have been enough to exhaust most men. Bismarck and the Crown Princess fêted him incessantly, and every delegation gave grand parties. There were receptions and dinners night after night. Disraeli scarcely missed a single one. He was indefatigable in making the acquaintance of every person who mattered, and he never relaxed for a moment in his struggle for British interests. Then there were the long and tiring meetings of the Congress itself and, although it is true that most of the really tedious work fell on Salisbury, Disraeli’s presence was essential. His was the personality that alone could enforce British claims. Yet in spite of all this he found time to write lengthy accounts of each day to Queen Victoria in his most scintillating vein, packed with vivid pictures, incisive pen portraits and amusing stories. Nor, it need scarcely be said, did his correspondence with Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield ever

The Russian plenipotentiaries were Gorchakov and Shuvalov. The former, vain, semi-senile and addicted to making absurd scenes, was a very dubious asset to his own side. But Disraeli hated to quarrel with him. Long ago he had been Lady Londonderry’s lover. Later she had told him that Disraeli would one day be Prime Minister, and she hoped that they would be friends.32 Shuvalov, however, made up for some of his master’s deficiencies, for he was the ablest and best tempered of all the diplomats present. ‘Schou fights a difficult and losing battle with marvellous talent and temper’, wrote Disraeli to Lady Bradford. ‘He is a first rate parliamentary debater, never takes a note, and yet in his reply never misses a point.’ His battle was made no easier by the malignant jealousy of Gorchakov, who denounced him incessantly behind his back to St Petersburg. In the circumstances the Russian delegation was severely handicapped. It had to contend not only with Britain but with Austria-Hungary, represented by Andrassy and a formidable team of assistants. Andrassy was perhaps the most successful of the plenipotentiaries, and in the end secured nearly all Vienna’s objectives with the minimum of demonstration or fuss.

The literature on the Berlin Congress is immense. We are concerned here only with Disraeli’s role. He concentrated primarily on three matters left open by the Anglo-Russian Conventions: first that the Sultan should have full military rights in the southern of the two Bulgarias; secondly that the Balkan frontier should be so drawn that the Turks controlled the vital passes; thirdly that the province should be called Eastern Roumelia, not Southern Bulgaria, so as to strike a blow at any subsequent moves for unification. Disraeli caused a great sensation by making his opening address to the Congress in English, not French – thus offending the Russians. According to a well-known story, he was persuaded into doing so by Lord Odo Russell. The Ambassador, acutely conscious of the Prime Minister’s atrocious French accent, urged him not to disappoint the delegates who were looking forward to hearing a master of the English language. But this explanation is unhappily by no means certain.33 Whatever Disraeli’s motive – it was probably sheer ignorance of French – his action set a note of British intransigence from the start.

Intransigence sometimes pays. Disraeli got his way over Bulgaria in almost all essentials. He did so by allowing it to be known that he would break up the Congress if the Russians resisted. But the other well-known story, that they only came to heel because he told Corry to order a special train, and that Bismarck alarmed at the prospect of a total collapse put pressure on them to give way, seems to be a myth. Disraeli may have ordered, or said he would order, the train. Bismarck undoubtedly did do all he could to avert a breach. But these events occurred on June 21, whereas the Tsar’s instructions to yield were sent by special messenger from St Petersburg on the 20th. It was probably Disraeli’s strong language earlier to Shuvalov, reported no doubt to the Tsar, which determined the nature of the instructions.

Disraeli succeeded over Bulgaria, but not over a secondary matter which he also strongly pressed. This was the question of Batum. Under the Anglo-Russian Conventions, England promised not to make a casus belli of Batum. Unfortunately the Foreign Office, true to form as regards security, surpassed all previous efforts by allowing the leakage of the text of the Conventions. It appeared in the Globe on June 14 owing to the scandalous laxity of the Foreign Office in employing as a copyist a temporary and underpaid clerk who sold it to the Press. This was highly embarrassing, because the Cyprus Convention which was to be the British compensation for the cession of Batum could not yet be announced. The jingo party in England, already half convinced that Disraeli and Salisbury would give too much away, was up in arms at once. Accordingly Disraeli and Salisbury tried to limit the damage by at least securing that Batum should not become a naval base. The Russians agreed that Batum should be ‘a free port’, but this was not enough. Salisbury wanted to add the words ‘exclusivement commerciel’, but Gorchakov, catching Disraeli when he was ill, managed to get his agreement to the word “essentiellement’ instead of ‘exclusivement’. Eight years later the Russians turned Batum into a fortified base, arguing that this was not prohibited by the new wording. Gorchakov also tricked Disraeli over the precise frontier by some jiggery-pokery with maps – a favourite manoeuvre in Russian diplomacy. But this was not really of great importance and by now the Cyprus Convention had been announced. It placated the jingoes at home, although it made a bad impression on some of the delegations at Berlin, especially the Russians. Bismarck, however, was delighted. ‘This is progress,’ he said, and Disraeli commented to the Queen, ‘Evidently his idea of progress is seizing something.’34 Cyprus was a sensational stroke, and Disraeli was again the focus of all attention.

The Treaty of Berlin was formally signed at four o’clock on July 13. Disraeli had been seriously ill during the later stages of the congress, and Dr Kidd had to be sent for. He was able to put his patient on his feet to attend the final act of formal ratification, and Disraeli added his own signature to the document. But he was too exhausted to attend the farewell banquet that night. He set out with Salisbury on the return journey to England next day. To the cheering crowd which, thanks partly to some organization by Lord Henry Lennox, greeted them as they drove to Downing Street he declared that he had brought back ‘peace with honour’. The Queen offered him the Garter, a dukedom, and the settlement of a peerage on his brother or nephew. He declined everything except the Garter and made it a condition that Salisbury should receive the same honour. It was a triumphant moment. ‘High and low’, wrote the Queen, ‘are delighted, excepting Mr. Gladstone who is frantic …’35

Disraeli was in no mood to care about Gladstone. When the latter denounced the Cyprus Convention as an ‘insane covenant’ and an ‘act of duplicity’, Disraeli in a speech at a public banquet described Gladstone as ‘a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and glorify himself’. Not perhaps a very felicitous choice of epithets, but the provocation was considerable. Disraeli made some remarks of the same tenor a few days later in the House of Lords and declared that Gladstone had described him as ‘devilish’. Gladstone, by now very excited, imprudently asked him to supply a list of the personal epithets which he was alleged to have used together with the occasions. Disraeli replied in the third person that he was busy and that the research would take some time. Meanwhile he instanced one or two of Gladstone’s speeches, but he conceded that the word ‘devilish’ which he had attributed to Gladstone was used by ‘one of Mr. Gladstone’s friends, kindly enquiring of Mr. Gladstone how they were “to get rid of this Mephistopheles”: but as Mr. Gladstone proceeded to explain the mode, probably the Birmingham Caucus, Lord Beaconsfield may perhaps be excused for assuming that Mr. Gladstone sanctioned the propriety of the scarcely complimentary appellation’.36

Disraeli was now at the height of his fame and fortune. The Treaty of Berlin was regarded throughout the country as a major victory for British diplomacy. The old Jew was indeed the man. But achievements of this sort cannot be judged simply by popular applause. What sort of balance sheet can be drawn eighty years later?

There will probably never be any agreement about the rights and wrongs of English policy during the Eastern crisis even when it is viewed in the longer perspective of history. On the debit side it can be said that the Berlin settlement deprived the Sultan of far more territory than the British Government would have considered tolerable when the crisis began: that Balkan nationalism was to be a more effective barrier to Russian advance than the Sick Man of Europe could be; in particular that the apprehensions felt at the creation of a Big Bulgaria were falsified less than ten years later by the anti-Russian attitude which the country then adopted. Then, there are wider questions. Was it really necessary to bolster up Turkey in order to protect the route to India? Was the disruption of the Dreikaiserbund – Disraeli’s other defence – worth all the trouble? Could any supposed British interest outweigh the moral issues raised by the atrocities? What was the justification for annexing Cyprus, a possession destined to cause nothing but difficulty in the long run?

Yet there are powerful points on the credit side, too. Russian troops almost certainly would have entered Constantinople but for British threats, even though these threats contained a large element of bluff. For good or ill Russia is not in Constantinople yet. A Big Bulgaria with frontiers comprising a polyglot population in which the Bulgars were a minority would have given far more scope for Russian penetration than the Bulgaria created at Berlin. Cyprus made sense as a naval base when Britain had none east of Malta, and as a point d’appui for the British military consuls in Asia Minor to whom Salisbury attached genuine importance and who were perhaps the only hope of enforcing some degree of reform in Asiatic Turkey. But the occupation of Alexandria in 1882 changed the situation; there was now no need for a naval base and no one bothered to deepen the harbour at Famagusta for ironclads – an omission which was to be embarrassing nearly eighty years later when the Suez expedition was being planned. As for the military consuls, Gladstone recalled them after his victory in 1880, thus extinguishing the last flicker of hope that Turkey might reform. These developments were not predictable in 1878, and in any case they still left one item on the credit side: there was at least that much less of the world governed by the unspeakable Turk, a fact which ought logically to have pleased the ‘atrocitarians’; but somehow it did not.

Disraeli’s fear about the route to India was widely held, though it may have been unwarranted. Certainly Constantinople was a long way from the Suez Canal. Yet, improbable though the menace now seems, the fact remains that armies had in the past made the journey, notably Mehemet Ali’s over forty years earlier, though in the reverse direction. It was hard to predict quite what the consequences of a complete disruption of the Ottoman Empire at the hands of Russia would be. Salisbury, most sceptical of all the Cabinet in regard to the Indian argument, was convinced that Britain must prevent the fall of Constantinople, at the cost of war if necessary. Although the Tsar, Gorchakov and Shuvalov now appear from their published correspondence to have had moderate aims, it was impossible for Disraeli to see into their hands, and if he had, how could he have been sure that some sudden gust of Panslav enthusiasm would not have blown the cards out of the window. It is hard to believe that the Russian army, once in Constantinople, would ever have retired save under duress, which in spite of Disraeli’s confidence Britain was in no position to apply. Disraeli’s ignorance of military matters was an asset when it came to bluff, for he genuinely believed what he said, and being convinced he sounded convincing. It might have been disastrous if there had been a real war.

As for the aim of disrupting the Dreikaiserbund, it must be judged in the light of what one considers to be the general aims of British policy. To isolationists it no doubt seemed pointless. But Disraeli was emphatically not an isolationist, and statesmen must to some extent, though not exclusively, be judged by their own intentions. He believed that Britain was not only a great power but a great European power. It was by no means an unreasonable objective in the aftermath of French defeat to endeavour to shake the alliance between the three ‘Northern Courts’ which seemed bent on excluding all the other powers from an effective say in the affairs of Europe. The Dreikaiserbund never did recover from the Eastern crisis while Disraeli was in office, and its later revival after Gladstone put ‘Beaconsfieldism’ into reverse took a different and less stable form. It is true that Disraeli’s strong emphasis on this aspect of his policy was in some measure retrospective, but there is plenty of evidence to show that it played a part, if not the major part, in his calculations all along.

Disraeli’s policy was not always consistent. Foreign policy seldom is. He took opportunities as they came. He sometimes contradicted himself. He sometimes veered with changing winds. But on the whole one can say of British policy over the Eastern question that it was more fully the personal responsibility of the Prime Minister than any of the other policies associated with his régime. Some of these, like the successful measures of social reform, had his benevolent support, but were essentially the work of his colleagues. Others like the Bill ‘to put down Ritualism’ and the Royal Titles Bill were forced on him by the Queen. Others again, such as the disastrous Afghan and South African wars, were the result of disobedience  or impetuosity by men on the spot whom he had to defend. But there is no doubt that foreign policy from the Suez Canal purchase to the Berlin Congress and beyond, was essentially Disraeli’s. He can neither be denied the credit nor escape the blame.

Whichever view is taken of the merits of that policy, it is hard to dispute the skill with which he steered his way through the uproar of the Gladstonian hurricane, between the Scylla of the ‘three Lords’ and the charybdis of the Queen and the war party. It should not be forgotten that as well as the pro-Russians there was an extremist pro-Turk right-wing group which regarded him as too soft. ‘What are you waiting for, Lord Beaconsfield?’ cried an indignant lady of fashion at the height of the crisis during a banquet. ‘At this moment for the potatoes, madam,’ he calmly replied. But, although he could put people like that in their places it was not so easy when the Queen herself seemed to be threatening abdication unless he declared war on Russia. Disraeli did not want war. He wished to preserve as much of Turkey as he could, stop the Russians entering Constantinople, break up the Dreikaiserbund, if possible without war, though he did not flinch at war if there was no alternative. He succeeded in his object, despite the divisions of the Cabinet, despite the opposition of Derby, who was not only Foreign Secretary but one of the most powerful figures in the Conservative party, despite the deep divisions in the country, despite Gladstone and despite his own bad health.

Of course he made mistakes, the worst being total failure to feel and therefore comprehend the indignation caused by the Bulgarian atrocities. Refusal to make any concession to the humanitarians was a disadvantage even from his own point of view. It meant that anything like a national consensus was unobtainable, and by stimulating the fury of the Opposition he put unnecessary difficulties in the way of his own chosen course. No wonder Cairns could write to Cross: ‘I wish D. had a touch even of the slightest sentiment.’37 This attitude was honest, a part of his dislike of humbug and hypocrisy, but it seemed heartless, and in some quarters it was never forgiven.

None the less, judged by the criteria of tactical skill and achievement of objectives, Disraeli’s foreign policy was an undoubted success. As for the Berlin settlement, of course it was not perfect, No treaty ever is. But it was followed by almost as long a period of peace between the European great powers as the interval separating the Crimean War from the Congress of Vienna. As one of the two principal plenipotentiaries at Berlin Disraeli must share with Bismarck some part of the credit.

1 M. & B., vi, 163–7.

2 Royal Archives, E.53.37, August 3, 1877.

3 ibid., E.53.38, August 4.

4 ibid., E.53.43, August 6.

5 ibid., E.53.44, August 7, 1877.

6 ibid., B.53.3, September 24.

7 Contrast M. & B., vi, 183 (Disraeli to the Queen) with Cecil, Salisbury, ii, 161 (Salisbury to Lady Salisbury).

8 M. & B., vi, 187, October 11.

9 loc. cit., October 13.

10 M. & B., vi, 190, October 25.

11 ibid., 188, October 17.

12 ibid., 188–9, October 18.

13 ibid., 190.

14 Joseph Kidd, ‘The Last Illness of Lord Beaconsfield’, The Nineteenth Century, 26 (July 1889), 65–71.

15 I am obliged to my colleague, Dr P. B. C. Matthews, M.D., for his comments on Dr Kidd’s treatment.

16 Kidd, 66.

17 M. & B., vi, 193–5, November 3.

18 See 1.

19 Hughenden Papers, Box 80, B/XIX/B/971, December 7, 1877.

20 Royal Archives, B.54.7, Disraeli to the Queen, December 8, 1877.

21 ibid., H.18.57, December 29, 1877.

22 ibid., H.18.69, December 29, 1877.

23 ibid., B.54.42, January 3, 1878.

24 Salisbury Papers. All except the sentences in italics appears in Cecil, Salisbury, ii, 170–1.

25 Salisbury Papers. The italicized portion is omitted by both Buckle and Lady Gwendolen Cecil.

26 ibid., January 4, 1878.

27 Sumner, 380, quoting Seton-Watson transcripts in the British Museum.

28 ibid., 374–98.

29 Cecil, Salisbury, ii, 205.

30 M. & B., vi, 282.

31 Sumner, 495.

32 Zetland, ii, 174–5, Disraeli to Lady Bradford, June 26, 1878.

33 Lord Odo undoubtedly did make such representations, but it is quite likely that Disraeli had already made up his mind.

34 M. & B., vi, 332.

35 ibid., 347.

36 ibid., 356–8.

37 Cross, A Political History, 38.