LORD BEACONSFIELD

(1804-1881)

BY ISA CARRINGTON CABELL

Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, born in London, December, 1804;
died there April 19th, 1881. His paternal ancestors were of the house of
Lara, and held high rank among Hebrew-Spanish nobles till the tribunal
of Torquemada drove them from Spain to Venice. There, proud of their
race and origin, they styled themselves, "Sons of Israel," and became
merchant princes. But the city's commerce failing, the grandfather of
Benjamin Disraeli removed to London with a diminished but comfortable
fortune. His son, Isaac Disraeli, was a well-known literary man, and the
author of 'The Curiosities of Literature.' On account of the political
and social ostracism of the Jews in England, he had all his family
baptized into the Church of England; but with Benjamin Disraeli
especially, Christianity was never more than Judaism developed. His
belief and his affections were in his own race.

[Illustration: Lord Beaconsfield]

Benjamin, like most Jewish youths, was educated in private schools, and
at seventeen entered a solicitor's office. At twenty-two he published
'Vivian Grey' (London, 1826), which readable and amusing take-off of
London society gave him great and instantaneous notoriety. Its minute
descriptions of the great world, its caricatures of well-known social
and political personages, its magnificent diction,--too magnificent to
be taken quite seriously,--excited inquiry; and the great world was
amazed to discover that the impertinent observer was not one of
themselves, but a boy in a lawyer's office. To add to the audacity, he
had conceived himself the hero of these diverting situations, and by his
cleverness had outwitted age, beauty, rank, diplomacy itself.

Statesmen, poets, fine ladies, were all genuinely amused; and the author
bade fair to become a lion, when he fell ill, and was compelled to leave
England for a year or more, which he spent in travel on the Continent
and in Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine. His visit to the birthplace of his
race made an impression on him that lasted through his life and
literature. It is embodied in his 'Letters to His Sister' (London,
1843), and the autobiographical novel 'Contarini Fleming' (1833), in
which he turned his adventures into fervid English, at a guinea a
volume. But although the spirit of poesy, in the form of a Childe
Harold, stalks rampant through the romance, there is both feeling and
fidelity to nat