A Swinger for All Seasons

DISRAELI by Robert Blake. 819 pages. St. Martin's. $12.50.

In Britain's political pantheon stands one statue raffishly askew, absurd finger-curls atop a drooping, oversized head, a sardonic smile on its decidedly un-English face. Benjamin Disraeli was as unlikely a Prime Minister as England ever had, as prodigal a son as the mother of parliaments ever spawned. During nearly 40 years of Tory leadership, he was hated with rare passion by his enemies, notably Liberal Leader William Gladstone, and often only barely trusted by his own lieutenants. Intrigued more by power than principle, too cynically clever by half in an age craving sober dignity in its statesmen, forever trailing a rake's reputation, Disrael was the great gate crasher of his times.

All "Dizzy" had going for him, as Oxford Historian Robert Blake makes abundantly clear, was genius. Not only was he a man of spectacular deeds, he was also a racy and prolific author of social and political fiction (twelve novels), master of the epigram rivaled only by Oscar Wilde and, says Blake with the refreshing lack of equivocation that distinguishes his book, "the best letter writer among all English statesmen."

Survival Factor. The best but not necessarily the most truthful. "Throughout his life," Blake warns, "Benjamin Disraeli was addicted to romance and care less about facts." He was invariably the hero of his own self-created myth, and because he could write all his contem poraries under the table, his version of events tended to survive longer than anyone else's. The famous, ponderous six-volume biography by Moneypenny and Buckle, published in 1920, often fell prey to this charm beyond the grave. It also abetted the myth--later given its crudest expression in the George Arliss film of 1929--of Dizzy as a brilliant theatrical Jew, triumphing over early poverty and snobbery to create the British empire singlehanded and present it to Queen Victoria like a posy of primroses.

Blake peels the petals off this flowery picture with loving precision. Disraeli was born in 1804, in no sense underprivileged. His father Isaac was a well-known, successful anthologist with a pleasant country house and an entree into at least the second rank of English society. Dizzy could have gone to the Establishment schools if he had wanted to--both his younger brothers attended Winchester--but he skipped school to get on with the great game of life, for already ambition was burning a hole in his dandy's pockets.

Almost any career would do. He tried law, but it bored him. He tried speculation (South American mining shares), and was soon saddled with a load of debts that plagued him nearly all his life. He took to writing, but his first novel, Vivian Grey, scandalized the haul monde, without winning a large public or making much money. Politics became his ladder of last resort. Even then he slipped four times on the first rung before finally winning a seat in Parliament on his fifth try.

A Message for Albert. In the arena, he soon was tagged the "jew d'esprit." Only a childhood conversion to Christianity arranged by his father made Dizzy eligible for Parliament, but prejudice, as Blake points out, played very little part in his difficulties. Dizzy himself was his own worst enemy.

His youthful reputation as a scandalous womanizer (deserved) and as a financial charlatan (undeserved) haunted his career. All his life he was candid to the point of impudence and imprudence and maintained a totally un-Victorian intolerance of humbug and hypocrisy. His pen dripped venom. He once endowed an opponent with "the crabbed malice of a maundering witch." Justifying his casual inconsistency on an issue in Parliament, he bluntly said: "We came here for fame." When friends congratulated him on his first accession to the prime ministership, Disraeli said cynically: "Yes, I've climbed to the top of the greasy pole."

In his twilight of honor, he was made Earl of Beaconsfield and moved to the House of Lords. "I am dead," said Dizzy, "dead but in the Elysian fields." The irreverence reached right to the brink of the grave. All his life he had captivated older women; he married and lived happily with one twelve years his senior. Queen Victoria, grieving over her lost Prince Albert, was his last and greatest spiritual conquest. As Disraeli lay dying at 76, a courier from the Queen asked if she could come visit him. "It is better not," he said. "She would only ask me to take a message to Albert."

No Sacred Cows. In his summing up, Blake suggests that it was this profound disdain for all the sacred cows of English life and government that fed Dizzy's antagonists. Yet, his opportunism and imagination created an impressive political legacy. It was he who first formulated the now-obvious parliamentary principle that "it is the duty of the opposition to oppose." It was Dizzy who wrought the Reform Bill of 1867, giving the vote for the first time to large numbers of the emerging industrial class in Britain. He shaped and dramatized the Tory sense of larger world responsibilities. With Bismarck at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, he headed off a potential clash among European powers in the Balkans, creating the Continental peace that lasted until 1914.

Beyond all this, the reader may well conclude that Disraeli's greatest gift was for acupuncture, which he practiced with matchless skill on all the pomposities of his era. He was a swinger for all seasons.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.