The troubles that beset the last two years of his administration did not prevent Disraeli from enjoying his post as Prime Minister. For one thing, his health, though far from good, was better than it had been. Dr Kidd was a sensible diagnostician and his belief in homoeopathy was not a disadvantage. One of the tenets of that school is to give medicines and drugs only in very minute quantities. At a time when physicians were all too liable to prescribe a positively deleterious remedy, this at least limited the harm that could be done. Disraeli remained prone to both bronchitis and gout, and was always liable to catch a cold leading to bronchial trouble after country-house visits in the late autumn or winter. It is easy to forget how much even the rich were prepared to endure in the way of chilly living-rooms, icy bedrooms and draughty corridors only a century ago, and as Disraeli never took any exercise if he could help it, he suffered particularly from this discomfort. The Queen, who seems to have been wholly impervious to cold, was one of the worst hostesses in this respect. ‘That castle of the winds’ was Disraeli’s description of Windsor, and, if he was right, it was a breach of etiquette even to blow one’s nose during an audience. Fortunately he was safer at Hughenden, where he had installed a primitive form of central heating a few years earlier, and the house was tolerably warm.

Despite the misgivings of the Queen, who, apart from anything else, disapproved of London society on moral grounds, and all the more strongly because it revolved round the Prince of Wales, Disraeli attended the dinners and receptions of the beau-monde with the assiduity of a man of half his age. Prime Ministers of England have seldom been fashionable figures, although they have often been rich and sometimes grand. In the nineteenth century Disraeli, along with Rosebery and perhaps Melbourne, was an exception. He was not only at the top of the political pyramid, he was very close to the top of the social pyramid, too. He was sought by every great hostess. He knew exactly who was who in that restricted world, their incomes, their love affairs, their past or impending scandals. He was not infrequently called upon to arbitrate in delicate social matters, and he managed to avert more than one social disaster. It is odd to think of this gaunt wheezing figure, the pallor of his lined face accentuated rather than relieved by the rouge which, like Palmerston in old age, he regularly applied, dining night after night during the season amidst the glitter of the great London houses, listening impassively to the gay rattle of duchesses and the social gossip of men-about-town. And, although from our more austere and egalitarian standpoint we may tend to dismiss such conduct as mere frivolity, it is worth remembering that on one occasion in very recent times a Prime Minister might have averted a major scandal if he had been slightly more in touch with the modern equivalent of Disraeli’s social world. Gossip may be reprehensible, but it can sometimes put even a statesman on his guard.

From Disraeli’s published letters to the Forester sisters, to Queen Victoria and to others, a vivid picture emerges of him, his tastes and the circles in which he moved as seen through his eyes. One is struck at once by the sheer pleasure in society which his great position gave him. Of course, he grumbled about the food at one dinner party, the wine at another, the company at a third, the cold rooms at a fourth. Although his own table was notoriously bad, and had been so even in Mary Anne’s time, he was a critical gourmet when it came to other people’s hospitality. His comment at one establishment when the champagne arrived is well known, ‘Thank God for something warm’, and his letters abound with similar acid observations. But his complaints, which were largely designed to elicit sympathy, somewhat unforthcoming, from Lady Bradford, seldom resulted in any interruption in his social round of receptions and dinner parties during the season and country-house visits after it was over.

Other functions which he seldom missed were weddings. Here he was like Asquith, whose assiduity in this respect was the subject of a slightly carping comment by Lloyd George. Disraeli regularly attended these occasions, and it was very appropriate that he should have been a central figure at the grandest wedding of the decade, that of Lord Rosebery to Miss Hannah Rothschild, the greatest heiress of the day, with a fortune of two million pounds. On March 20, 1878, at the height of the Eastern crisis, only a week before Derby’s resignation, he gave away the bride, who was married in the fashionable Christ Church, Down Street. ‘The Premier’, wrote the Morning Post, ‘acted the heavy father à ravir.’1

If at times we feel surprised at the amount of leisure which Disraeli seemed to have, it is necessary to remember first the very different tempo of political life in those days, and secondly the fact, true in a sense even now, that the Prime Minister has no departmental office to tie him to a particular routine. The heads of the Foreign or Home Office, or the service departments, were far busier. His job was then, and is now, very much what he chooses to make it, within certain limits, of course. Disraeli, as we saw earlier, was not an energetic Prime Minister, and he expected his three private secretaries, Corry, Algernon Turnor and James Daly, to do a great deal of his work for him. What strained his strength and patience most was the only major departmental matter in which he felt he had to interfere, foreign policy while Derby was Foreign Secretary. When Salisbury took over, life became far easier and he could enjoy the pleasures of society.

There was, however, one aspect of a Prime Minister’s duties which could not be delegated and which Disraeli would not have wished to delegate. It happened to be one in which his friends in society were particularly interested.

Like all Prime Ministers, Disraeli spent a great deal of his time on patronage. He regarded it as an important element in party management. There were two aspects of it, places and honours. Honours, of course, have always been and still are bestowed in part as rewards for political services, but by the 1870s there was a change in the climate of opinion regarding places. For some time past it had been felt that ecclesiastical preferment should not be dictated solely by political partisanship or personal connexions. A similar change was affecting civil patronage. Meritocracy was beginning to be the shibboleth. In 1870 Gladstone made the Order-in-Council which introduced competitive examination into the Civil Service.

Disraeli had no sympathy whatever with these trends, and was, as might have been expected of one who would probably have been a very bad examinee himself, sceptical about the new tests of merit. ‘I want a man of the world and of breeding, culture and station to be Chief of the Civil Service Commission, ‘he wrote, ‘so that if any  absurd or pedantic schemes of qualification are put before him he may integrate and modify them and infuse a necessary element of common sense.’ On one occasion the Queen was anxious for a Mr Maude to get into the Treasury. Disraeli told her that it was difficult, ‘the late Ministry having established open competition for places in the Treasury. Mr Disraeli thinks this an unwise step. Posts in the Treasury and Foreign Office require so much trust in their holders that some social experience is requisite of those who hold them. There should be a moral security for their honour and trustworthiness.’ Luckily in this particular case a loophole in the Order-in Council ‘enables him to accomplish Your Majesty’s wishes’.2

The truth is that Disraeli’s attitude to patronage had not altered since his words to Stanley in 1858. It was ‘the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, and that is Power’. This point of view was, perhaps, to be expected in the leader of a minority party. The Tories had been in office so little since 1846 that they were inevitably all the hungrier for its fruits when they did get in, resembling in this respect the Republicans after Eisenhower’s victory in 1952 or the Labour party in 1964. Moreover, Disraeli’s whole official experience had been under Derby, whose essentially eighteenth-century outlook on matters of this sort was singularly impervious to the wind of change. Last but not least, Disraeli was devoid of that perverse rectitude which consists in refusing to reward friends for fear of what may be said by foes. He liked rewarding his friends.

Naturally he could not openly reverse the measures of previous governments, but there still remained an area of uncertainty where the criteria for appointments were matters of custom or usage not yet definitively established. Here he did not hesitate to use his discretion in quite the opposite sense to his predecessors. For example, of a dozen posts which were in the gift of the First Lord of the Treasury, and which under Gladstone had virtually become the perquisites of permanent Civil Servants, Disraeli bestowed ten as partisan rewards.3 His attitude was summed up in his words in 1877 to Sir William Stephenson, the retiring Chairman of the Inland Revenue Board: ‘These appointments [on the Board] should be considered not as official promotions but as political prizes.’ When Sir Algernon West, who hoped for the Deputy Chairmanship, reported this to Gladstone, his comment was an unusually terse, ‘Damn him’ – maintained by West to be one of the only two occasions on which Gladstone ever used this expletive.4 But one should add that in this instance Disraeli played fair by the Civil Service, appointing Charles Herries, the Deputy Chairman and a son of J. C. Herries, to the Chairmanship and, after an agonizing interval, West to the place vacated by Herries. However, he was firm in filling West’s place with a straight political choice: Walter Northcote, son of Sir Stafford. A typical appointment as Commissioner of Inland Revenue was that of the Hon. Charles Keith Falconer in 1874, a former soldier and currently Secretary to the Conservative Central Office. Disraeli discreetly recommended him to the Queen, saying that since he had left her service, ‘his labors in favor of constitutional principles both by his pen and his organising power have been of an eminent character and entitle him to general confidence and respect’.5 Altogether Disraeli looked after four ex-ministers and three party officials in this way. Moreover, to Gladstone’s great indignation he created in 1875 the post of First Civil Service Commissioner at £2,000 p.a., and gave it to Lord Hampton, the former Sir John Pakington, who was hard up and needed the money.

One of the most surprising charges made against Disraeli is Sir William Fraser’s allegation that he displayed ingratitude towards old friends in these matters. Buckle rightly expresses astonishment at this criticism, and indeed, if Disraeli’s use of patronage deserves censure it would be for the opposite reason: he was too lavish in rewarding people whose chief, though doubtless not their only, merit was their claim on his friendship or gratitude. We have seen how he procured a pension for ‘Tita’s’ relict, omitting incidentally to mention to the Queen that Tita had been his father’s factotum for so many years. He also obtained a pension for the widow of his cousin, Captain Basevi, and on a more exalted plane one for Lord John Manners, who suffered from the impecuniosity endemic in those days among the younger sons of millionaire dukes. He did his best for another victim, Lord Henry Lennox, who had been obliged to resign the post of First Commissioner of Works owing to a financial scandal. Disraeli offered him numerous positions which he foolishly refused.

The list of Disraeli’s efforts to reward friends and relations could be extended almost indefinitely. He caused something of a scandal by making his friend Lord Rosslyn, who was a society figure and man of pleasure, High Commissioner of the Church of Scotland. But when Lord Rosslyn angled for the Thistle Disraeli jibbed. He took much trouble over his brothers, and his successful effort, after the most complicated negotiations, to obtain for Ralph in 1875 the post of Clerk Assistant in the House of Lords elicited a letter of genuine gratitude from that touchy and ungracious figure. He offered the Viceroyalty of India to two people who had little obvious claim except that of sentiment: Lord Powis, a former Young Englander, who declined, and Lord Lytton, who accepted. He conferred a peerage on Baillie-Cochrane, another Young Englander, but long estranged from Disraeli and very unpopular. He made Lord Exmouth, with whom he had had financial dealings thirty years earlier, a Lord in Waiting. He offered a peerage to Andrew Montagu, who only refused because his heir was a natural son. He made Philip Rose a baronet. He offered numerous posts, including that of Clerk of Parliament, to Monty Corry, whose loyalty made him decline them all.

Nor was his sense of gratitude restricted to the lay field. He secured the Deanery of Ripon for the Reverend Sydney Turner, an unimportant clergyman whom he had earlier pressed on the Queen in vain for a canonry of Westminster which she was determined to give to the Reverend Mr Duckworth, Prince Leopold’s former Governor.6 Dean Wellesley was puzzled at this persistence.7 He would have been less puzzled had he appreciated that Sydney Turner’s father, Sharon Turner, had been a great friend of Isaac d’Israeli and was responsible for insisting upon the d’Israeli children being baptized when Isaac quarrelled with the Sephardic synagogue of Bevis Marks.8

Disraeli also obtained promotion for another clergyman of no special eminence, the Reverend and Honourable Orlando Forester. He was a brother of Lady Chesterfield and Lady Bradford. ‘Dearest Lady C, Don’t be later than five o’clock. There is a vacant canonry at York. You shall give it to Orlando. Yours ever D.’9 To the Queen he wrote in a graver vein:

The Queen, who disliked the Evangelicals as much as she disliked the Ritualists, evidently had doubts about this recommendation. She asked Ponsonby to consult Dean Wellesley, who replied that there was no objection to the appointment, although ‘Mr Forester is a quiet clergyman quite undistinguished’. He suggested that when she gave her approval she ‘might possibly hint that in selecting men of good family for those Cathedral dignitaries, it would be well if Mr Disraeli could choose men of distinction and eminence’.11 The Queen was too outspoken to confine herself to a mere ‘hint’. She passed on the Dean’s views more or less verbatim, adding: ‘… it is very important that merit and true liberal broad views should be the recommendation. It is by such appointments alone that one can hope to strengthen the very tottering fabric of the Established Church. The extreme Evangelical School do the Established Church as much harm as the High Church.’12

It is fair to say that in general Disraeli was a good deal more cautious about ecclesiastical patronage than he had been in 1868, when the battle over the Irish Church was imminent. He did not place such emphasis on the Low Church party, and tried to hold a more even balance between the various factions, for example recommending Canon Lightfoot to the See of Durham as a recognition of ‘that powerful party of the Anglican Church, which Lord Beaconsfield would describe as the “right centre”: those who, though High Churchmen, firmly resist, or hitherto have resisted the deleterious designs of Canon Lyddon [sic] and the Dean of S Pauls,13 who wish to terminate the connection between the Crown and the Church, and ultimately, unite with the Greek Church.’14 Nevertheless, Disraeli almost invariably thought of clerical patronage in political terms, and it was after a year of his second Premiership that Dean Wellesley made the observation quoted in an earlier chapter: ‘He regards the Church as a great State-engine of the Conservatives.’

In one field Disraeli found it hard to bring in politics – surprisingly, that of legal appointments. ‘Unfortunately,’ he told the Queen, ‘the promising lawyers are on the Opposition side of the House of Commons, several of them by no means opposed to Conservative views, but unhappily not anticipating the result of the last General Election.’15 This was one of the penalties of being the minority party. Disraeli was making a virtue of necessity when he wrote to the Queen advising the appointment of Lord Moncrieff as a Scottish Lord of Appeal, although a Liberal. ‘Lord Beaconsfield could not allow for a moment that in the high administration of justice such a consideration should prevail.’

Honours were recognized by everyone to be a legitimate source of oil for the political wheels. Disraeli was, perhaps, more candid than Gladstone in admitting this when he submitted recommendations to the Queen, but his motives were not basically different. He was less lavish than Gladstone, although more so than Palmerston. In the six years of Palmerston’s last administration fifteen peerages were created. In Gladstone’s first ministry, which lasted barely more than five years, the figure was thirty-seven. Disraeli, who was in office for slightly over six years, made twenty-two new peers, of whom one was a royal duke. Gladstone’s second administration, which again only just exceeded five years, saw the creation of twenty-eight peers.16

Disraeli’s programme of honours at the end of 1875 may be regarded as typical. He advised four peerages: R. Ormsby Gore, MP for Shropshire; M. G. Sturt, MP for Dorset; John Tollemache, who owned property in Suffolk and Cheshire; and Sir Robert Gerard, the scion of an old Lancashire Roman Catholic family. The last three had £45,000 to £60,000 p.a. each, and the first possessed large estates, though not as large as these. Disraeli proposed the Earl of Abergavenny for a marquisate. He had £70,000 p.a. and as Lord Neville, before his accession to the earldom in 1870, he had been one of the ablest managers of the Conservative party. An English peerage was to be conferred on the Earl of Erne, the richest of those whom Disraeli was wont to call ‘the mere Irish Peers’. Finally, Lord Wharncliffe, who had restored his family fortunes by a combination of hard work and good luck in the matter of mineral resources on his property, was recommended for an earldom.

After that came the list of baronets, which included representatives of Scotland, Manchester, Staffordshire, Bedford, Surrey, Lancashire and Devon.

The Queen agreed to these honours. Disraeli was pleased and wrote in reply:

All seemed well, and the peerages went through without a hitch. The baronetcies, however, caused difficulties. Disraeli had to withdraw the name of the Scottish representative

who wants to be a peer and unreasonably. [His] main claim for that distinction is his having given half a million to the Scotch Church. As Mr. Disraeli is informed, [he] is not particularly devoted to the Scotch Church, or any other Church, and if in this age of vast and rapidly formed fortunes it is to be understood that anyone who gives half a million to a public purpose should have a claim on the exercise of Your Majesty’s highest prerogative, the House of Lords will soon be more numerous than the House of Commons.18

This turned out to be a correct prophecy. Disraeli had to look elsewhere, but it was no good. ‘Mr. Disraeli failed in finding a Scotchman of sufficient importance to fill the post … Almost all Scotchmen, at least Conservative Scotchmen, are Baronets. That title abounds in Scotia.’19

The Queen was much more accommodating towards Disraeli than towards Gladstone, who often had to argue at length for his recommendations. The reason was not solely personal. The Queen welcomed Disraeli’s relative frugality in the matter of honours, and frugality was by no means easy. No one who reads the correspondence of a Prime Minister for the first time can fail to be surprised at the importunacy of applicants for places and honours, and the frankness with which they canvass their claims. There is a vast number of such letters among the Hughenden Papers. One taken at random out of hundreds may be quoted. It is dated April 22, 1868, from a Mr Mackinnon of Aryse Park, Kent, whose lack of verbal fertility does not obscure his meaning.

Dear Sir – In the course of my life I have entertained a great respect and kind feeling towards you. I have been desired by Lord Derby to address you when any object was desired by me. I am very desirous to have a Peerage conferred on me. My income is upwards of twenty thousand a year. The conferring of such an honour will bind me to you for life – Always faithfully yours W. A. Mackinnon.20

And he followed this up three months later with the assurance that ‘I can command fifty votes in Kent and a good many in Lancashire’.21 Evidently they were not enough: Mr Mackinnon remained a commoner.

During his first Premiership Disraeli was continually being told of promises or alleged promises made by Lord Derby. They were mostly the emanation of wishful thinking. One applicant was prepared to go back even farther. When Disraeli in 1868 made the Marquess of Abercorn a duke22 he received a letter from the young Marquess of Ormonde, who said that Lord Liverpool had promised to revive the dukedom which his family had once possessed. He had taken the first step and promoted his grandfather from earl to marquess in 1825, but the Prime Minister’s unfortunate ‘seizure’ had forestalled the second step. The family then decided not to press their claim, unless a new dukedom was created. Now it had been. Disraeli, however, saw no reason to act in the matter.

Another quaint and unsuccessful request came from the Marquess of Queensberry’s mother-in-law. She was, she said, anxious to guard against the ‘machinations’ of his father-in-law (her husband), who was a Liberal. Queensberry was a Scottish peerage. Could Disraeli give him a United Kingdom peerage so that he could sit in the House of Lords and remain ‘a good man and true’? ‘He is very young: only 23: with good abilities and good principles but suffering from the overwhelming weight of high rank and nothing to do.’23

The fuss made over hereditary titles may seem absurd in a more democratic age, but there are, when all is said and done, more harmful ways of recompensing supporters. Disraeli summed up the matter well in a letter to the Queen on the subject of Earl Beauchamp, who wanted to be a marquess and refused to be fobbed off with a GCB.24 Beauchamp had been Lord Steward of the Household and had apparently offended the Queen by peremptory dealings with some of the royal servants.25 Disraeli agreed to relieve him of his office, but Beauchamp was reluctant to go unless some recognition of his services was conferred on him. The Queen was not willing to agree to the marquisate. Disraeli in reply admitted that Lord Beauchamp was ‘a disagreeable man’. But he had ‘conducted for four years the business of the Home Office in the House of Lords with sustained ability’. Moreover

… he is a great partisan, fought at the last election his own county and several boroughs in his county. It is impossible to throw such men over if you wish to keep a political party together. Such men must be rewarded and if they have fancies for Marquisates, it is better that they should be Marquesses than Cabinet Ministers.26

But presumably Disraeli did not press the matter. At all events Lord Beauchamp did not become a marquess. Happily any hard feelings had died away two years later, for, in what Disraeli rather unkindly described to Lady Bradford as ‘a letter of menacing hospitality’, Beauchamp offered to put him up in his town house after the fall of the Government in 1880.

In addition to these hereditary titles such honours as the Garter and the Thistle were important counters in the political game, and in those days were bestowed on purely partisan lines. It is only recently that they have reverted to the personal gift of the Sovereign. For example, in 1868 Disraeli refused to recommend the Garter for the Duke of Northumberland. The Duke wanted the Garter badly, but insisted on sitting on the cross benches. Disraeli was not prepared to accept such terms. But dukes frequently seemed perverse. The Duke of Norfolk quixotically refused the Garter in 1878 because he was going to join the Conservative party. The Duke of Portland refused it for no reason at all – at any rate none that he would avow. Possibly he remembered calling in his loan to Disraeli nearly twenty years earlier, or perhaps it was sheer eccentricity.

Then there was the Thistle. A vacancy occurred in 1876. Should it go to the Duke of Hamilton, who had fought valiantly for the Royal Titles Bill against Lord Shaftesbury’s ‘malignant motion’, or should it go to Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, ‘the most eminent man in Scotland’, with a European reputation, ‘high social position and vast fortune’?27 It is scarcely necessary to add that he was also a redoubtable partisan and, with a gap from 1868 to 1874, had been Conservative Member for Perth since 1852. Disraeli plumped for Sir William, thereby, as we saw earlier, setting a new precedent in conferring that honour upon a commoner.

Just over a year later Sir William died, thus causing vacancies for the Thistle and both the Parliamentary representation and Lord Lieutenancy of Perthshire. This required delicate handling. Lord Lieutenancies were important counters, too, and it so happened that another one was vacant, Wiltshire. Disraeli advised giving the Thistle to the Duke of Hamilton, ‘provided he fulfils the condition which is requisite’; and, he added in a letter to Lady Bradford, he ‘must manage to go to Court – which he never yet has done’. He recommended the Duke of Athole as Lord Lieutenant, but there was no hurry in the matter. Perthshire was not a safe seat and the active efforts of all the local Conservative magnates were needed. ‘It is as well that the Perthshire election should be decided before the Ld. Lieutenant is named, as the appointment of the Duke of Athole might cool the ardor of the Earl of Mansfield.’ For differing reasons delay over Wiltshire would be a good thing, too. The position was passionately sought by Lord Bath. But ‘Considering his very offensive conduct during the agitation of last year and his banquets to Messrs. Liddon, Gladstone and Freeman Ld. Beaconsfield thinks it shd not be hastily bestowed on Lord Bath. Even if ultimately accorded to him, he ought to be kept in a period of “dread suspense”.’28

There was one Lord Lieutenancy which had much more than an honorific status, that of Ireland. Disraeli had a serious problem on his hands when in 1876 the Duke of Abercorn resigned. Disraeli favoured the Duke of Marlborough, ‘because he is quite at a loss to fix on any other suitable Peer’. He reviewed the various possibilities in a letter to the Queen:

Lord Brownlow will not go; Lord Bradford will not go; Lord Beauchamp, who might have done (tho he wd have been a quarrelsome Viceroy) has now lost his wife, a necessary appendage for such a post.

Tho’ the D. of Marlboro’ is not rich for a Duke, he is rich enough for the office. Of late the Duke has been parting with his outlying properties (notably in Bucks where he sold the Waddesdon Estate last year to Ferdinand de Rothschild for £240,000) and has been putting his house in order and Mr. Disraeli has been informed that His Grace has his Oxfordshire estate now quite clear. That is an affair of 22,000 acres and brings in a revenue of £35000 pr annum, at least. Lord Skelmersdale has not capacity for the office and his fortune tho’ adequate for a Baron is only half that of the D. of Marlboro’s – about £20,000 pr annum.29

The Duke of Marlborough had refused the position when Disraeli offered it to him in 1874. To fill it in proper style cost £40,000 p.a., and the salary was only half that figure. Now he decided to accept for a reason which leads one naturally to consider another time-consuming, though to Disraeli far from disagreeable, aspect of his life as Prime Minister, the problems of royalty. Throughout the early months of 1876 society had been humming with one of the juiciest scandals for years. This was the famous Aylesford affair, which caused a resounding quarrel between the Duke’s younger son, Lord Randolph Churchill, and the Prince of Wales.

The story is told in Sir Philip Magnus’s biography of the Prince.30  We are concerned here only with Disraeli’s part. Briefly the facts were that Lady Aylesford, wife of one of the Prince’s boon companions, had fallen passionately in love with Lord Blandford, the Duke’s elder son and heir. While the Prince was in India accompanied by Aylesford, Blandford, who was himself married, proposed to elope with her. Aylesford declared his intention to institute divorce proceedings, and hurried back to England ahead of the Prince. Lord Randolph Churchill, rushing impetuously to his brother’s rescue, convinced himself that the Prince had it in his power to stop Lord Aylesford and only abstained from doing so because the two were engaged in a conspiracy to throw Lady Aylesford into Blandford’s arms. Obtaining from Blandford a packet of letters written at an earlier stage to Lady Aylesford by the Prince himself and couched in indiscreet language, Lord Randolph now tried to blackmail the Prince into bringing pressure on Aylesford. Moreover, the Prince still being out of the country, he called on Princess Alexandra at Marlborough House and told her that he had letters whose publication would guarantee that the Prince ‘would never sit on the throne of England’.

The Prince was furious, issued a challenge to a duel, and meanwhile charged Lord Hardwicke to put the whole matter before Disraeli, who was now drawn, by no means reluctantly, into an affair more reminiscent of the Regency than the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

He summoned Churchill, who was obdurate, but the combined pressure of the Prime Minister and Lord Hardwicke was effective on Aylesford, who withdrew the divorce proceedings. Public scandal was thus averted, but the Prince was, not unnaturally, determined to get his own back. The Churchills were socially ostracized. They departed on a tour of America, but were pursued by letters informing them that the Prince would accept nothing less than an apology drawn up by the Lord Chancellor and approved by Disraeli and Hartington. Lord Randolph signed, deliberately choosing the anniversary of Saratoga for the date and adding in a postscript that ‘as a gentleman’ he had to accept the word of the Lord Chancellor for the drafting of the document. This action was not calculated to placate the Prince, who let it be known that he would refuse to go to any house which received the Randolph Churchills. In these circumstances the Duke of Marlborough, like an inverted Lord Lundy, resolved to go out and govern Ireland, taking his erring son with him as his private secretary.

It is hard to avoid the impression that Disraeli rather enjoyed this discreditable affair. It was a far call from his youthful obscurity that he should not only be Prime Minister of England, but – by no means a concomitant of that position – a social arbiter as well; settling disputes between the heir to the throne and a ducal house. According to Sir Philip Magnus, the slight hint of irony which was discernible in his attitude irked the Prince. Certainly the Prince, though far more sympathetic towards Conservative than Liberal policies, was less at ease socially with Disraeli than with Gladstone.31  He was not the only person to be disconcerted at the elaborate manner of the Prime Minister and to wonder, perhaps only half consciously, just what sardonic reflections might be flowing behind that cryptic countenance.

The quarrel between the Prince and Lord Randolph was not made up until after Disraeli’s death and at a time when Lord Randolph had become famous. But Disraeli was not a bad prophet. In July 1880 he told Sir Stafford Northcote that he thought the Prince had been very unfair, for it had been understood that the apology would end the matter, ‘but the Prince having got his apology still kept up the grievance; but nothing, said the Chief, will help Randolph into favour again so much as success in Parliament; the Prince is always taken by success’.32

The Aylesford affair was the most serious of royal problems during Disraeli’s Premiership, but it was far from being the only one. Another less grave, but scarcely less tiresome, was the episode in March 1877 of the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Alexander of Battenberg.33 Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, was the Queen’s second son and, though a competent naval officer, seems to have been by far the least agreeable of the royal princes. He was, moreover, married to the Tsar’s only daughter and was naturally inclined to sympathize with the Russian point of view during the Eastern crisis. In such circumstances it was scarcely sensible to give him command of Sultan, one of the ships in Admiral Hornby’s squadron destined for Constantinople. The situation was made all the more delicate because one of Sultan’s junior officers was Prince Louis of Battenberg, whose brother, Prince Alexander, was not only ADC to the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armies, the Grand Duke Nicholas, but the Russian candidate for the throne of the Big Bulgaria which the Tsar hoped to carve out of Turkey-in-Europe. In these circumstances it was, to say the least, unwise of Prince Alfred to ask Prince Alexander to dinner on board his ship.

The Queen was furious when she heard the news, and, although the episode later appeared slightly less grave when it was learnt that Prince Alexander had tactfully worn German, not Russian, uniform, she was determined to have her son officially rapped over the knuckles. Admiral Hornby seemed the obvious person to do this, but unluckily it turned out that the Admiral had himself gone to the ill-fated dinner on board Sultan. On March 16 Disraeli wrote to the Queen: ‘The more Lord Beaconsfield attempts to deal with the business of the Duke of Edinburgh the greater become the difficulties. Indeed it costs Ld Beaconsfield more trouble than the Eastern question itself.’34

Meanwhile the Queen had written to her son informing him that a letter of reprimand was on its way.35 No letter arrived and the Prince threatened to demand a Court of Inquiry. Matters were further complicated because of the danger that the Prince might return home – a contingency which greatly alarmed the Queen, who regarded him as a bad influence on her youngest son, the Duke of Connaught. Disraeli conducted a lengthy three-cornered correspondence throughout the summer with the Queen and W. H. Smith. ‘The Gentleman must not come home’, he wrote to Smith on one occasion. ‘You don’t know him.’36 Smith showed great patience, tact and good sense. There were many other difficulties, the root of the problem being the Queen’s inability to allow her son to be treated as an ordinary naval officer, which resulted in a continual crossing of wires. She was most annoyed with the unfortunate Hornby and at first refused to give him the KCB for his services in the Straits. It required the combined efforts of Disraeli and Smith to overcome her reluctance. ‘Ld B thanks yr M. for yr M’s Kindness’, wrote Disraeli on August 6. ‘It is magnanimous but for the best.’37

It was typical of Disraeli’s tact that, although acting as an umpire in these and other delicate matters he remained on excellent terms with all the parties concerned. Lord Randolph never ceased to admire the old statesman to whose mantle he later aspired. The Edinburghs invited Disraeli to a house-warming party at Clarence House, where, apart from Dr Quinn, the first homoeopath in England and as a famous wit much in demand, he was the only non-royalty present. Whatever slight uneasiness the Prince of Wales may at times have felt did not affect his conduct. Disraeli often stayed at Sandringham, not wholly to the liking of the Queen, who surveyed any intimacy between her Prime Minister and her heir with a dubious eye. In fact, Disraeli did not greatly enjoy going there, especially after the Congress of Berlin, for the King of Greece, who was Princess Alexandra’s brother, had a chronic grievance about the frontier settlement. ‘The Greek question is becoming a serious and painful question under that roof,’ Disraeli wrote to the Queen on April 4, 1879, ‘… and its [the Greek] Govt evidently counts on the support of influences which in their nature are not responsible …’38 And he managed on this occasion to excuse himself.

At the end of 1879 the Prince intimated that he would like to stay en garçon at Hughenden for a night, and on Disraeli’s request nominated as co-guests Lord Salisbury and Sir William Hart-Dyke, the Chief Whip, from the world of politics, Lord Rosslyn and Bernal Osborne from that of fashion. The task of preserving the Prince from boredom was one that taxed the united efforts of the English and Continental haut monde for over forty years. Disraeli anticipated the visit with some apprehension; the more so since it was to occur in mid-January, he could only accommodate a small house party, and there were no ladies. But all went off well, although Disraeli had to make up a four of whist with his august guest – he hated cards except with one or other of the beloved sisters – and there was a snowstorm the next morning. Rosslyn and Osborne played the part of court jesters; ‘expressed and elicited many a flashing phrase’, as Disraeli told the Queen, or, as he put it to Lady Bradford, ‘the dinner was like a pantomime where there are two clowns, and both capital ones’.

1 R. R. James, Rosebery, 86.

2 Royal Archives, A.47.84, Disraeli to the Queen, December 18, 1874.

3 Hanham, ‘Political Patronage at the Treasury, 1870–1912’, Historical Journal (1960–1), iii, 77.

4 Algernon West, Recollections, ii, 78.

5 Royal Archives, A.47.11, Disraeli to the Queen, March 24, 1874.

6 Letters of Queen Victoria, 2nd Series, ii, 374–7.

7 Royal Archives, D.6.12, Wellesley to Queen Victoria, January 30, 1875.

8 See above, 1.

9 Zetland, i, 115, July 8, 1874.

10 Royal Archives D.85, July 8, 1874.

11 ibid., D.5.3, Ponsonby to the Queen, July 10, 1874.

12 The Letters of Queen Victoria, 2nd Series, ii, 342.

13 Dean Church.

14 M. & B., vi, 407, Disraeli to the Queen, January 27, 1879.

15 Royal Archives, A.49.31, Disraeli to the Queen, July 30, 1875.

16 These figures exclude eldest sons called up in their fathers’ lifetime, and, of course, promotions within the existing peerage. Between 1830 and 1874 there had been 163 Liberal creations of peerages and 39 Conservative. As the Conservatives had been in office for only ten out of forty-four years, this seems fair enough, but, not surprisingly, few Conservatives regarded it in that light. The corresponding figures for baronetcies were 201 and 48.

17 Royal Archives, A.50.12, Disraeli to the Queen, November 28, 1875. 

18 ibid., A.50.22, Disraeli to the Queen, January 21, 1876.

19 ibid., A.50.23, Disraeli to the Queen, January 28, 1876.

20 Hughenden Papers, Box 148, C/I/A/54a.

21 ibid., C/I/A/68, July 31, 1868.

22 The last non-royal creation of a duke except one, Westminster made by Gladstone in 1874.

23 Hughenden Papers, Box 148, C/5/A/76, August 31, 1868.

24 ibid., Box 83/B/XIX/C/528, Disraeli to the Queen, April 10, 1878 (copy),

25 ibid., Box 101, B/XX/Ln/84, Beauchamp to Disraeli, May 15, 1878.

26 ibid., Box 83, B/XIX/C/533, April 12, 1878 (copy).

27 Royal Archives, A.51.10, Disraeli to the Queen, November 8, 1876.

28 Royal Archives, A.62.1, Disraeli to the Queen, January 20, 1878. Lord Lieutenancies were important in England not only as honours for those chosen but because of their patronage in recommending the appointment of JPs.

29 Royal Archives, A.50.56, Disraeli to the Queen, August 7, 1876.

30 Sir Philip Magnus, King Edward the Seventh (1964), 143–50.

31 Magnus, 147.

32 British Museum, Add. MSS, 50063A, Northcote’s diary, July 12, 1880.

33 Viscount Chilston, W. H. Smith (1965), 112–14.

34 Royal Archives, B.57.11.

35 Quoted by Viscount Chilston, W. H. Smith (1965), 114.

36 op. cit., 118.

37 Royal Archives, B.58.54.

38 ibid., B.60.45, Disraeli to the Queen, April 4, 1879.