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 Copyright © 2006 by Jim Dawson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except
brief excerpts for the purpose of review, without written permission of the
publisher.

Ten Speed Press

PO Box 7123
Berkeley, California 94707
www.tenspeed.com

Distributed in Australia by Simon & Schuster Australia, in Canada by Ten Speed

Press Canada, in New Zealand by Southern Publishers Group, in South Africa by
Real Books, and in the United Kingdom and Europe by Publishers Group UK.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dawson, Jim.
Blame it on the dog : a modern history of the fart / Jim Dawson.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77877-2
1. Flatulence—Humor. I. Title.
PN6231.F55D39 2006
818′.6o2—dc22
2006011433

v3.1
 CONTENTS

Cover
Title Page
Copyright

Introduction

The Powerful Little Fart: A Refresher

A Beer Fart (Almost) Heard Round the World
The Man with the Singing Sphincter!
Crepitus Ex Machina
Faux Farts in a Flask
Award-Winning Wind-Cutting for Kids
The Farting Femmes of Non-Virtuous Reality
SpongeButt FartyPants
Superman = Superfart!
It Was a Dark and Stinky Night
The Earth Farts Back
 The Fickle Finger of Farts
Best-Selling Dog Farts at Man!
It’s Stinky, It’s Yucky, It’s Icky, It’s You!
Here I Sit All Brokenhearted
Good Old Hollywood Razzmatazz
Habit-Forming Fritters
Wanted: Fart Sni ers, No Experience Necessary
A Blast from the Pasture
A Couple of Hollywood Stinkers
Feets, Don’t Fart at Me Now!
Running with the Wind at His Back
Pull My Fin
When Is a Fart Indecent?
War Stinks … and It’s Getting Stinkier!
Meet the Dumfarts
Kirk to Spock: Mind-Meld This!
The Sweet Smell of Success
Our Farts Were Happy and Gay!
Who Cut the Oligosaccharides?
Roses Are Red, Farts Are Blue, but Only If You Light Them,
Too!
Le Petomane–Flatal Attraction
Curing Farts the Old-Fashioned Way
 Thank You for Not Farting
The Derriere Diva: Flatulence Meets Elegance
DVD, the Fart A cionado’s Best Friend
Not So Quiet on the Set
Law & Odor: Crepitating Intent
Stinking, Yes! Sinking, No!
An Interplanetary Whi
Two Farts Waft into a Bar …
Fartzilla Attacks Iowa!
Old Farts Just Fade Away
Moby Crack
Breaking the Wind Record
I Tawt I Taw a Pooty Butt
Hey, Farthead, What’s the Big Idea?
Master Stink Blasters of the Universe!
Windy Winners Take All
Blame It on the Robot

Postscript: A Farting, Er, Parting Shot

 INTRODUCTION

A fart is just a turd with all the shit scraped o ,” a sage told me
several years ago, implying that atulence wasn’t a subject
worthy of lling a book—or at least a book worth a hill of
beans. But what did he know? The idea of writing the de nitive
history of farting had been nagging at me for thirty years, since my
student days and wayward nights at West Virginia University, a
notorious party school. It wasn’t the all-night keggers and marijuana
binges that inspired me (though they certainly helped), but rather
the English literature class where I discovered the fart jokes in
Chaucer’s fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales. And by 1998, when
the time—like a good fart—seemed ripe, I approached Ten Speed
Press with a co ee-stained, thumb-smudged, and altogether
unsavory-looking manuscript called Who Cut the Cheese? A Cultural
History of the Fart. (All right, it was actually an email attachment,
but a mysteriously soiled manuscript sounds much more romantic;
and if nothing else, this sordid saga of a grown man obsessing on
butt stink could use some romance.)
The rest is history, and that’s probably where it belongs, but I’ve
never been one to leave well enough alone. After all, I’m still
psychologically smarting from the humiliation of being tarred,
feathered, and run out of my home town of Parkersburg, West
Virginia, for hosting an art gallery exhibit of X-rays of my lower
colon, with superimposed green arrows pointing out that the little
gray blobby areas were farts about to happen.
On the eve of the publication of Who Cut the Cheese? my editor
solemnly sat me down and told me, “Jim, when this thing comes
out, your life is going to change. I mean really change. People will
revile you, call you a sick bastard. Pretty women will shun you like
the plague.”
“I know all that,” I said, “but how is my life gonna change?”
 (Actually, several attractive women did stop me on the street after
the publication of Who Cut the Cheese? They asked me questions like
“Why are you following me?”)
Anyway, when the book came out at the beginning of February
1999, none of the major magazines or newspapers would touch it. A
columnist I knew at the Los Angeles Times told me that no family
newspaper would dare print the word fart. But fortunately there was
one corner of the media that greeted me with open arms: morning
drive-time radio, where shock jocks and wacky zoo triplets were
waiting for an excuse to air the second F word (the FCC having
expressly prohibited the rst) and discuss its many facets. For six or
seven months I was up almost every weekday morning around 4:00
or 5:00 A.M., Los Angeles time, standing in my kitchen in my
underwear or sweatpants, pumping co ee down my throat in hopes
of ratcheting up my ability to engage with motormouth deejays in
the eastern time zones without falling back on a slight stutter I’ve
had since childhood. Being a night owl who normally didn’t get to
bed before 2:00 A.M., I had a tough time with this schedule and
stumbled around in a perpetual state of jet lag, yet still I pursued my
new mission as America’s emissary of toilet humor with doo-doo
diligence.
I think I did a phoner with every A.M. radio program in America
except Howard Stern’s. (Howard’s sta pre-interviewed me, and
Howard talked about Who Cut the Cheese? on the air, remarking
pointedly that no way could a book about farts be as funny as the
real thing, but I never got to speak to him personally.) First I’d get a
call from the producer, who would give me a last-minute prep, put
me on hold, and let me listen to the commercials and the bumper
music on the feed until the on-air personalities introduced me to the
audience and punched me into the show. I couldn’t help but notice
the similarities between them, whether they were in Birmingham,
New York, or Birmingham, Alabama. Most of the jocks came in
threes, with monikers like Frosty, Tammi, and the Bean, and
approached me one of two ways: I was either this cool guy who had
come up with the greatest book idea ever (the “I’m too sexy for my
farts” Jim) or some creep who’d crawled out from under a rock (the
“Yes, I really do stink!” Jim). I would gure out which one they
were looking for—cool or creepy—and play along. During one
phone-in, the girl of the team dramatically evacuated herself from
the studio before my voice came on. But who cared, as long as
listeners bought my book.
As it turned out, many people did. The book has sold many tens of
thousands of copies, has gone into its tenth printing, and continues
to sell at a steady pace seven years later. Two other books called
Who Cut the Cheese? (with di erent subtitles) came out a year or so
after mine. They were both parodies of Dr. Spencer Johnson’s best
seller, Who Moved My Cheese? In England, where I’d done several
phoners and appeared on a BBC radio special, Michael O’Mara
Books, a publisher of novelties and knocko s, commandeered the
clever cover art from Who Cut the Cheese? and printed a somewhat
faded facsimile on two of its own paperbacks, including The Little
Book of Farting. The cover, a detail of Thirty-Six Faces of Expression
by Louis Boilly, had been painted in France some 150 years earlier,
so nobody was in a position to sue. Besides, isn’t imitation a sincere
form of atulence?
Since I had become the national crepitation clearinghouse, not to
mention the only American who could bet that the words “who cut
the cheese?” would be in the rst sentence of his obituary, many
radio callers and letter writers were anxious to give me new
material or correct some of my information. For example, I had
written about the “blue dart”—the methane ame-up you get when
you light a fart—without mentioning “blue angel,” the term most
popular in Canada and England. Someone else added to my list of
atulent food items by informing me that the then-popular diet drug
Fen-Phen would make you fart-phart. A Latin scholar chastised me
for mistranslating crepitus ventris as a “crackling wind.” I had made
crepitus an adjective, he said, when in fact it’s a noun, and ventris
has nothing to do with wind—it’s the genitive singular of venter
(belly, stomach)—so the phrase means “a crackling or rumbling of
the stomach.” “Crackling wind in Latin would be crepitans ventus,”
he scolded with the nger-wagging authority of an Oxford don.
 In addition, new fart factoids kept arriving every week from
magazines, newspapers, the Internet, and enlightened friends and
acquaintances. After a while, all that stu just piled up, and like a
big gas bubble in the lower intestine, it had only one place to go: in
this case, a sequel to Who Cut the Cheese? featuring sound bites (a
term rather suspicious in this context) from the past several years.
There were some serious discussions about what to call the new
book. Somebody suggested the clever Son of Who Cut the Cheese. I
lobbied for a title that broke the (cheese) mold: Farts and the Men
Who Let Them. But my editor said, “That’s a kicker, not a title,”
which means we would have ended up with something like Butt
Blasts! Farts and the Men Who Let Them. Ultimately, it was decided
that men really didn’t need any extra encouragement to express
their masculinity by pushing blunt air through their anuses. In that
case, I suggested, shouldn’t we call it All Right, Guys, Let’s Cut the
Ma-cheeze-mo?
Well, nobody likes a smart-ass. Especially a farting one.
Then someone (a guilt-ridden pet owner, no doubt) suggested I
pay homage to our four-legged best friends, who loyally and silently
bear our human shame whenever we’re too cowardly to take
responsibility ourselves. Voilà! There was our title.
But then, just a few days later, I saw a news item about an Iowa
company, Flat-D Inventions, that’s marketing an antifart thong for
canines called the Dogone (www. at-d.com/canineproducts.html).
It’s basically an activated-charcoal strip—the company refers to it as
a Dog Gas Neutralizing Pad—that straps over the canine’s ass, with
a hole for the tail to stick through. The Dogone comes in large (Saint
Bernards), medium (spaniels), and small (Pomeranians). When I
contacted owner Frank Morosky, he told me, “The unfortunate thing
about the product is that you cannot blame it on the dog anymore.”
What’s he trying to do, kill my book before it’s even o the press?
We cannot know what the future holds for canine atulence odor
control products, but for now, I hope you enjoy Blame It on the Dog.
 THE POWERFUL LITTLE FART: A REFRESHER

S ince this is a book about atulence, I should probably begin by

going back over a few of the basics. After all, some of you may
have never noticed those little hot bubbles coming out of your
butt, and maybe you’ve misidenti ed the noises as chair squeaks,
mice in the walls, or the family dog. Sorry to inform you, but you
fart just like everyone else. Sure, you were born with a sterile gut,
but it didn’t take you long to pick up a few intestinal bacteria and
join the human family of farters. A guy with a healthy diet lets out
about a quart of gas every day, broken up into anywhere from ten to
fteen farts of various magnitudes; women fart slightly less, maybe
only eight or nine times a day, but their gas is more concentrated.
Still, many women will tell you they never fart at all, or if they do,
their dainty poofs have only a slight fragrance, pleasant to the nose.
It’s probably best if you just agree with them.
Flatulence, or intestinal gas, is composed of roughly three- fths
nitrogen, one- fth hydrogen, one-tenth carbon dioxide, and small
amounts of methane and oxygen—all of which are essentially
odorless. What creates the unpleasantness are trace amounts of
other chemicals, especially ammonia, hydrogen sul de, and skatole
(from the Greek skatos, meaning excrement), that stink so
pungently, people can smell them at levels of 1 part per 100 million
parts of air. The human colon—according to Dr. Paul Eckburg,
Stanford University DNA researcher—has at least 395 di erent types
of bacteria, but E. coli is the main culprit, creating gas by munching
away at that meal you ate a few hours ago and then microfarting
what it doesn’t need. The nitrogen comes from blood di usion
through the stomach walls, and the oxygen is mostly swallowed air.
Indeed, dogs are very atulent—and easy to blame your farts on—
because they gulp lots of air as they’re lapping up their food and
water.
Beans, mushrooms, cabbages, and onions are among the main gas-
producing foods because they contain complex sugars that your
body simply can’t break down. These sugars ferment inside you like
grapes in a wine vat, the only di erence being that there’s never a
good year for farts.
Your atus (that’s the Latin word) initially has a temperature of
98.6°F, just like you, but it cools quickly as it ies away from
“ground zero” at ten feet per second. If someone is standing nearby,
your fart nds him like a heat-seeking missile and goes right up his
nose, where millions of receptor cells in the mucous lining transform
the molecules into electrical signals and send them along through
nerve bers right into his brain. If you’ve ever thought I’d sure like to
get inside that guy’s head, well, now you know how to do it.
Along with le persistance (the lingering e ect), a fart has what
French perfumers call sillage—the wake that follows you, whispering
“j’accuse” as you leave the room. The only way to stop it from
stalking you is to inconspicuously drop your hand behind your back
and wave it back and forth with a gentle wrist motion. In English,
this is called “breaking the trail,” though I’m sure the French have a
fancier term for it. If your fart has lots of persistance and plenty of
sillage, it’s the next best thing to being in several places at once, for
even after you’ve gone, everyone else will swear you’re still there.
It’s never much fun catching a whi or a blast of somebody else’s
fart, but believe it or not, there’s an upside. According to an early
2004 item in Science Daily, Dr. Richard Doty at the University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that one of the rst things to
go as people get Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other
neurodegenerative diseases is the sense of smell. In fact, he and
other researchers are hoping to devise a smell test to detect early
clinical signs of these maladies. So take heart every time you’re
suddenly overwhelmed by someone’s anal fumes. You might feel
like you’re losing consciousness, but at least you’re not losing your
mind.
So there you have it in a nutshell: the fart, your funny little
friend. Now let’s get to the good stu .
 A BEER FART (ALMOST) HEARD ROUND THE WORLD

O n Super Bowl Sunday, ninety million people all over the world
tune in to television’s most overhyped event, not simply to
watch professional football’s championship game, but also to
see what clever advertising Madison Avenue has dreamed up for this
special day. Spectacular commercials have been a tradition at Super
Bowls since 1984, when Apple, announcing its new personal
Macintosh computer, set the bar high for eye-catching creativity
with a $1.6 million Orwellian production by Blade Runner director
Ridley Scott. By February 1, 2004, twenty years later, ad rates for
the Super Bowl had risen to $2 million a minute. With that kind of
money, advertisers needed a lot of bang for the buck.
One of the commercials that CBS ran that day was a Bud Light
beer moment called “Sleigh Ride,” based loosely on a 1996 Seinfeld
TV episode called “The Rye,” in which a atulent horse, pulling one
of New York’s famous Central Park carriages, unleashed an unholy
wind upon several unsuspecting passengers. (The episode,
incidentally, was written by a woman—comedian Carol Leifer—so
let’s hear none of that stu about just guys farting around.) In
“Sleigh Ride,” a young man is taking his girlfriend on a romantic
horse-drawn spin around the park. Hoping to celebrate a treasured
harmony of two hearts beating as one, he lights a candle, hands it to
his beloved, and, bending down to reach into a cooler of cold Bud
Lights, says, “We need something to make this moment really
wonderful.” The horse takes this opportunity to lift its tail and rip a
silent-but-deadly Clydesdale-worthy fart directly into the girl’s face.
When our hero raises back up with the two cans of beer, his
girlfriend is still holding the now-smoldering candle, but her eyes
are dazed and her hair and eyebrows have been singed by the
methane are.
According to instant polls by USA Today, America Online (AOL),
and the ad agency website ADBOWL (http://adbowl.com), “Sleigh
Ride” ranked among the most popular commercials aired during the
game. Yet “Sleigh Ride” was almost forgotten in the aftermath of the
halftime show, during which alleged singer Justin Timberlake
yanked on R&B superstar Janet Jackson’s breakaway bustier and
exposed her right boob (though her nipple remained hidden under a
pasty) for a second or two, bringing the world to the type of sudden
standstill that would follow a loud fart at a presidential funeral. The
twenty-four-hour cable news networks were shocked, shocked that
such a thing could happen during the only television program that
routinely attracts viewers from every demographic—from apple-
cheeked kids to kindly grandmothers—which may account for why
they indignantly reran the boob ash several dozen times an hour
for the next two weeks straight. Outraged Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) chairman Michael Powell denounced the incident
as “classless, crass, and deplorable,” and slapped a $550,000 ne on
CBS, the largest ever imposed for indecency. If that weren’t bad
enough, the stunt spurred a media outcry against all the smut and
degeneracy that had been creeping into TV and radio over the past
two decades. Clear Channel Communications, a powerful media
conglomerate of over 1,200 radio stations, ordered the cancellation
of several morning shock jocks, including Bubba the Love Sponge
and Howard Stern. By March 8, the FCC said it had received
530,828 complaints about Ms. Jackson’s breast (and apparently
none about the equine beer fart)—though most of them came from
email mills like the Parents Television Council in Los Angeles.
(Perhaps H. L. Mencken’s word for the general American public,
“booboisie,” would apply here.) Under pressure from angry
conservatives, Congress passed new regulations upping FCC nes
tenfold, from $32,500 per incident to $350,000. To escape any
further fartwas from the FCC ayatollahs, Howard Stern eventually
bolted for Sirius Radio, a subscription satellite operation that
broadcasts beyond the agency’s bailiwick. Ultimately, the
government’s response to the hooter hullabaloo chilled free speech
and instituted the policy of “When in doubt, leave it out”—not the
best idea in a democracy that depends on open discussion.
Behind all this postgame hysteria is the FCC’s ambiguous
de nition of indecency, de ned as “language or material that, in
context, depicts or describes, in terms patently o ensive as
measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast
medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities.” Though indecency
by that standard applies equally to tits and farts, the FCC
determined that a semi-bare breast in your face is more indecent
than a horse fart in some poor girl’s face. Maybe it had something to
do with the fact that the commission is overseen by the House
Committee on Energy and Commerce, known for its cozy
relationship with gas industry lobbyists. Or maybe it’s because
Americans are more frightened of sex than anal eruptions. In any
event, fart lovers should be thankful that Janet Jackson ashed her
mam instead of baring her right gluteus and ripping o a atus
maximus at the audience.
 THE MAN WITH THE SINGING SPHINCTER!

T he chapter in Who Cut the Cheese? that got the most reaction
from readers was the story of Joseph Pujol, better known as Le
Petomane, whose amazing rectum could sing and mimic an
assortment of sounds, including, he claimed, the voice of his
mother-in-law. In the early 1890s, his farting displays at the Moulin
Rouge in Paris brought in more customers than even the soliloquies
of the great actress Sarah Bernhardt. But Le Petomane’s act was
apparently never lmed or recorded, an oversight that left a void in
Western culture and entertainment.
Until now.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Le Petomane’s rightful descendant,
Mr. Methane, England’s Prince of Poots, who has dedicated his life
to following in the footsteps of the great man—though not too
closely.
One day in 1982, a fteen-year-old boy in Maccles eld, Cheshire,
named Paul Old eld, was practicing yoga when he accidentally
discovered that if he rolled onto his back from the lotus position, he
could suck air into his anus and, better yet, blow it back out again.
Le Petomane had likewise stumbled onto his gift a century earlier,
while wading in the ocean and suddenly feeling his lower colon
lling up with cold water. Looking back now, Old eld says, it didn’t
cross his mind at the time that farting could bring him fame and
fortune, or at least a little bit of each, so he con ned his talents to
amusing his buddies. “Apart from a few performances in the school
squash court, I did not make use of it,” he says in his normal,
punctilious way. He followed a more practical path and became a
locomotive engineer for British Railways. Still, whenever he showed
o at a party or a backyard barbecue, he always got a big laugh.
One day a fellow railroad worker shot some video footage and
showed it around. Next thing you know, a local rock and roll band
called the Macc Lads invited him to open for them at a joint called
the Screaming Beavers Club. Just as the great Le Petomane had
performed in an elegant out t—tails, dark pants (with a trap door in
back), and stockings—as a counterpoint to the vulgarity of his act,
Old eld spruced up his thin, six-foot-seven frame in a pinstripe suit
for his stage debut. His rectal renditions of “Twinkle Twinkle Little
Star” and the theme song from a British sports show brought down
the house. He rushed out and made up some business cards. He
began showing up at parties all around Maccles eld, farting “Happy
Birthday.”
He developed his Mr. Methane character—a caped hero in a green
mask and a matching out t with an M on the chest—when the Macc
Lads took him out on the road. “The Mr. Methane idea came about
as a result of needing a name and persona to go on tour,” Old eld
says. “Until then I had been billed as ‘The Incredible Farting Man
from Buxton Shunting Yards’ and traded as ‘The Bum Notes Fart-a-
Gram.’ Somehow from all the brainstorming, the idea for Mr.
Methane emerged and I had a costume made.” He claims he wasn’t
in uenced by Rodger Bumpass’s Fartman character from the 1980
National Lampoon record album, or by Howard Stern’s subsequent
purchase of the rights to the character in 1986. “I had never heard
of Fartman then.” (For a detailed history of Fartman, see the
Howard Stern chapter in Who Cut the Cheese?)
By 1993, Paul Old eld had quit the railway and his alter ego, Mr.
Methane, had begun touring the pubs of England, billing himself as
“The World’s Only Performing Flatulist.” He even trumpeted “God
Save the Queen” on Swedish television. Figuring that maybe his act
could use a little extra class, he borrowed some symphonic CDs from
the library and practiced farting along with the classics. And yet he
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 She had fair hair and bright blue eyes, with a clear pink-and-
white complexion. Her expression showed her good-nature and
kindliness of temper. Lady Palmerston had no idea of making herself
of importance. She was deeply and sincerely in love with her
husband—to the end of his life she began her letters to him, “My
dearest love,” and thought it a terrible thing to be separated from
him even for a few days—and it was his career alone that filled her
mind. It and it only was the fixed purpose of her life. She spent
herself in helping him, in furthering his interests and upholding his
political views and acts. She employed her wit and charm and good
taste to justify all he did, and sometimes to soften the bitterness his
acts provoked. She conciliated those whom it was well for him to
have on his side, and sought where possible to render opposition
less hostile. Lord Palmerston took his bride to Carlton Terrace, and in
March 1840 he writes: “We have been giving some dinner and
evening parties which have had a very good political effect, have
helped the party, and have pleased many individuals belonging to it.”
Disraeli, in his striking fashion, has described the difference
between society in Lady Palmerston’s day and in the last decade of
the nineteenth century:
“The great world then, compared with the huge society of the
present period, was limited in its proportions, and composed of
elements more refined though far less various. It consisted mainly of
the great landed aristocracy, who had quite absorbed the nabobs of
India, and had nearly appropriated the huge West Indian fortunes.
Occasionally an eminent banker or merchant invested a large portion
of his accumulations in land, and in the purchase of parliamentary
influence, and was in time duly admitted into the sanctuary. But
those vast and successful invasions of society by new classes which
have since occurred, though impending, had not yet commenced.
The manufacturers, the railway kings, the colossal contractors, the
discoverers of nuggets, had not yet found their place in society and
the senate. There were then, perhaps, more great houses open than
27
at the present day, but there were very few little ones.
 “The season then was brilliant and sustained, but it was not
flurried. People did not go to various parties on the same night. They
remained where they were assembled, and, not being in a hurry,
were more agreeable than they are at the present day. Conversation
was more cultivated; manners, though unconstrained, were more
stately; and the world, being limited, knew itself much better.”
Lady Palmerston’s salon became the headquarters of the Liberal
party and the best barometer as to affairs. She took care, however,
that, while her gatherings retained their exclusiveness, they should
not be limited to politicians of her husband’s party. Distinguished
foreigners, the whole of the diplomatic circle, a sprinkling of men of
letters, were to be seen at her Saturday evening receptions as well
as at Broadlands, Lord Palmerston’s country seat. Lady Palmerston’s
drawing-rooms were neutral ground where men and women of all
shades of opinion met in friendly intercourse. It was this neutrality
that foreigners found so remarkable. A French diplomatist once said
to Disraeli at Lady Palmerston’s reception, “What a wonderful system
of society you have in England! I have not been on speaking terms
with Lord Palmerston for three weeks, and yet here I am; but you
see I am paying a visit to Lady Palmerston.”
She knew all the State secrets, and often acted as her husband’s
private secretary, copying the private letters with her own hand. The
work was enormous, but she never flinched from it. Such was her
discretion that there was no fear of revelations, though she would
sometimes quarrel with the ambassadors or their wives. On one
28
occasion Persigny, the French ambassador, had to apologise to her.
She talked quite freely about affairs, and wrote of them to her
friends, but always with great astuteness. Thus she would reveal
just enough in order to draw her interlocutor on, knowing full well
how and in what direction the information she gave would work.
Many discussions took place in her drawing-rooms that influenced
European affairs. Her tact and intuition were infallible, and Lord
Palmerston always paid attention to her suggestions.
 She had, moreover, keen insight into character. People soon
came to know her influence with her husband, and when they
wanted anything of him, tried to accomplish it through her. She said
impatiently in 1846 that they had nothing to give, but were
tormented with applications. Yet she was sometimes instrumental in
obtaining posts for those who sought them. It did happen now and
again that her outspoken comments on current affairs gave
annoyance. In 1860, when the Paper Duties Bill was under
discussion, she was present in the gallery during the debate, and
openly expressed her wishes that it might be rejected by a large
majority. Her language so shocked some of the Whigs that the Duke
of Bedford was asked to remonstrate with her on the way she
talked. But there was method in her madness, for when her husband
thought as she did, and was debarred from speaking openly, she
voiced his opinions as her own, and so gained a hearing for them. It
will be remembered that the rejection of the Bill by the House of
Lords caused a collision with the Commons, and Palmerston had, as
his biographer puts it, to vindicate “the rights of the Commons while
sparing the susceptibilities of the Lords.” The duties were repealed in
1861.
In 1841 Lady Palmerston’s daughter, Lady Frances Cowper, who
was a great beauty, and had been one of the train-bearers at Queen
Victoria’s coronation, became engaged to Lord Jocelyn, eldest son of
the Earl of Roden, a clever handsome young man of twenty-eight
and a great traveller. He had been in love with her for three years.
He sent his proposal from Calcutta, but could not wait for the reply,
as he had to start at once for Chusan. He did not return until a year
and a half later, and reached Liverpool without knowing whether he
might not find her married to some one else. But his fair lady had
loyally waited. Lord Jocelyn’s father was a great Tory, but Lady
Palmerston did not allow herself to be disturbed by what she called a
trifle, since she put her daughter’s happiness first, and declared that
“love and politics do not go together.” The marriage took place on
25th April, and the same year Lady Jocelyn was appointed extra
Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Victoria. It meant, of course, that
the bride and bridegroom would be much separated, but the Queen
promised that the waiting should be as much as possible in London.
Lady Jocelyn was early left a widow. When, in 1854, her
husband’s militia regiment was quartered at the Tower there was an
outbreak of cholera. Finding him unwell one morning, the doctor
advised Jocelyn to join his wife at Kew, where they were living. In
the cab he felt so much worse that he stopped it at Lady
Palmerston’s house in Piccadilly. He had taken cholera, and died in
the back drawing-room. Lady Jocelyn, who had by chance driven
into town, found him in a dying condition.
In the autumn of 1844 Lady Palmerston made a tour in Germany
with her husband, dining with the King of the Belgians at Laeken,
with the King of Prussia at Berlin, and the King of Saxony at
Dresden. The next year her friend Lady Holland died, leaving her
29
£300, a portrait of Lord Melbourne by Landseer, and all her fans.
A pleasing incident, which showed in what estimation Lady
Palmerston was held by the party, occurred in 1850, when a hundred
and twenty Liberal Members of Parliament presented her with a full-
length portrait of her husband by Partridge. She was extremely
proud of the compliment paid her. The painting, now at Broadlands,
was hung on the staircase of their town house.
Lady Palmerston could not bear, as I have said, to be separated
from her husband. In January 1851 she went to Brighton with Lady
Ashley and her children, leaving him in town, and her letters to her
“dearest love”—she was sixty-four and he was sixty-seven—show
how not to see him even for the space of a fortnight was
unthinkable. One day she wrote: “Whenever you write me word that
you have opened your carpet bags I shall make a bonfire on the
Steyne.” When he was away from her her letters to him are filled
with adjurations to take care of himself, not to go sailing on Luggan
30
Lake, or if he bathes, not to go out of his depth.
She wrote to him nearly every day while she was at Brighton,
and the following extracts from her letters are of interest:
 “Brighton,
17th January 1851.
“I got down very safely yesterday, but I never was in a
more shaky train, however. The Ashleys and I were together,
and we got down in an hour and ten minutes, but I think for
the future I shall always avoid express trains. There is
something so awful in the notion of not stopping anywhere,
so that if unfortunately there should occur anything wrong
about your carriage you would have to go on fifty miles
without any help or the least power of getting your distress
known. It is like the horror of a bad dream to imagine the
possibility of such a casualty.”

Some persons will sympathise with her feelings in an express

train.
In the following letter she refers to the Bull issued by the Pope in
September 1850, creating Roman Catholic Bishops in England. It
roused great excitement and hostility in the country.

“31st January 1851.

“I hope you read the Times leading article yesterday on
the dangers of Popery, so very true, and all so well described.
It is impossible for the well-being of any Protestant country to
allow the system which the Pope is trying to introduce here.
To have such a band of conspirators leagued together to
overthrow Protestantism in England, and leaving no means
untried to compass their ends and to work on the weak-
minded by the most unscrupulous agents.... The Pope
starting a new Pope in Ireland after all the rout made about
bishops here shows that he is not inclined to go back an inch,
but rather to force on and increase his aggressions.”

The Ecclesiastical Titles Act declaring the Papal Bull null and void
was passed in July 1851. As a legislative measure it was, however, a
dead letter, and was repealed in 1871.
 In December 1851 Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister,
required Lord Palmerston to resign his office of Foreign Secretary, on
the ground that he had exceeded his authority as Secretary of State
in his communications on his own authority to France with reference
to the recognition of the coup d’état of Louis Napoleon. Lord
Palmerston had personally expressed his approval of the action to
the French ambassador in London. The affair has passed into history
and only concerns us here because Lady Palmerston fancied her
husband was the victim of a conspiracy. She wrote angrily to this
effect to Lord John, whom she had known since 1830, and who was
one of her oldest friends. In his reply he told her that the tone of her
letter would justify him in not answering it, but it was necessary for
him to assure her that there had been no conspiracy, that he had
acted alone to save others from responsibility. He further said that
the loss of Lady Palmerston’s friendship added to the weight of his
regret at the whole business. As a matter of fact, Lord Palmerston
was soon asked to go back, and it is quite certain that it was Lady
Palmerston who contrived to let it be known in the proper quarter
that he was willing and anxious to do so. In 1868 Lady Palmerston
asked Lord John, as Palmerston’s oldest and best friend—the italics
are hers—to unveil the statue and window to Lord Palmerston’s
memory in the town and abbey of Romsey. Lord John was only
prevented from acceding to her request by the death of his brother-
in-law, Lord Dunfermline. So that the difference between Lady
Palmerston and Lord John was not very serious or lasting.
Lady Palmerston thought her husband always in the right, and
when he resigned in 1853 because he did not consider the
Government’s policy towards Russia sufficiently decided, she wrote
to Charles Greville to explain his reasons. Greville called on her, and
found her in high good humour, and pleased at the testimonies of
approbation her husband had received. But she was again careful to
make it known in the right quarters that he had acted hastily and
was ready to return, and thus it was in great measure due to her
that the difficulty was adjusted. She had written to Monckton Milnes
on 2nd December 1853: “Nobody looks very comfortable here; the
Turkish question worries a great many, and Reform others, and I
believe both might have been avoided.” She used to say that every
event in which her husband was concerned left him standing higher
than he did before. She was immensely proud of him, liked him to
be first, was provoked at Gladstone’s enormous success in 1853, and
always hated the idea of her husband being out of office. Therefore,
notwithstanding the far harder work entailed both on himself and on
herself, she was greatly elated when he became Prime Minister for
the first time in 1855. Yet later on she confessed, “I would rather
that my husband was only Foreign Minister or Home Secretary, for
since he became Prime Minister I see nothing of him. He never
comes to bed till four or five o’clock.” Except on Saturdays and
Sundays, he hardly ever dined with her. He had his dinner at three
p.m., went down to the House at four, and except some tea had
nothing till he came home, seldom before one a.m.
Every Saturday evening in the season Lady Palmerston held a
reception. In 1858 they left Carlton Gardens for Cambridge House,
31
94 Piccadilly, and both she and Lord Palmerston took the greatest
interest in fitting up and arranging their new abode. At her parties
were to be met the best society, consisting almost entirely of
distinguished people, for in those days there were not more than
about five hundred persons who were what is known as “in Society.”
Indeed, Lady Palmerston always wrote the name of the guest on the
invitation cards with her own hand, so that she really did know who
came to her receptions. Yet, in spite of these precautions, there
occasionally appeared a few people who had not been invited. She
never betrayed herself, and used to say that, if it amused them to
come, they were quite welcome. She was good-natured and patient
with bores. But if any member of his own party spoke or voted
against Palmerston in the House, he would receive no invitation, and
his name would not be replaced on the list until he had thought
better of his disloyalty. She could also be very angry with any one
who caballed against Lord Palmerston or overstepped the bounds of
fair party warfare in attacking him. But even so her anger was
shortlived, and she was quick to pardon. Lady Palmerston took much
trouble to please the wives of those it was politic to conciliate.
Disraeli in Sybil ironically summed up the general rules by which
political hostesses were guided when he wrote: “Ask them (i.e.
Members of Parliament) to a ball, and they will give you their votes;
invite them to a dinner, and if necessary they will rescind them; but
cultivate them, remember their wives at assemblies, and call their
daughters if possible by their right names, and they will not only
change their principles or desert the party for you, but subscribe
their fortunes, if necessary, and lay down their lives in your service.”
If there happened to be a political crisis the greatest excitement
would prevail at these parties. Sometimes the lion of the evening
would be a man who was not generally to be met at fashionable
gatherings. In 1859 Cobden was present one evening, and the
fashionable ladies stared at him through their glasses as if he had
been some strange curiosity, and brought up their friends to stare
also.
The Palmerstons also gave dinners which were noted for the
sumptuousness of the fare and the distinction of the guests. The
only drawback was the extraordinary unpunctuality of the host and
hostess. It was useless to arrive at the time stated in the invitation;
neither would be ready, not even if it was a big diplomatic dinner.
How the cook managed to send up an excellent meal all the same
seemed a miracle to the waiting and long-suffering guests, but it is
to be supposed that Lady Palmerston named one hour to her guests
and another to her cook. A guest relates how, on arriving at 8.30
p.m., he found Lord Palmerston just going out for a ride before
dinner in Rotten Row. The grey horse that Palmerston always rode
was his wife’s despair, for she had four grey carriage horses, and
feared lest people should think he rode one of them. Similar
unpunctuality was practised by the Palmerstons when they dined
out. At a dinner given by Guizot, when he was Ambassador in
London, Lady Holland was a guest. It happened that she had had no
lunch and was dying with hunger. All the guests were assembled
except the Palmerstons. Lady Holland was at first out of temper,
then in despair, and lastly subsided into inanition. When at last the
defaulters arrived and a move was made, Lady Holland asked Lord
Duncannon to take care of her, as she was sure she should not reach
the dining-room without fainting.
Perhaps the social side of Lord and Lady Palmerston was seen at
its best in the country-house parties at Broadlands. Broadlands is
near Romsey in Hampshire. The house is situated in a fine park, and
the river Test flows through the grounds, passing near the house,
and adding greatly to the charm of the view from the windows. The
architecture is Elizabethan, one room still preserving the beautiful
oak panelling, but in the eighteenth century the front was cased in
classic architecture with huge porticoes. The interior is commodious
and comfortable, and the rooms, which are all of a pleasant size and
shape, are full of treasures. The present owner, Mr. Wilfrid W. Ashley,
M.P., great-grandson of Lady Palmerston, has arranged the library as
it was in Lord Palmerston’s day, with the high desk—he always wrote
standing up—and other articles by which the great statesman was
habitually surrounded. A billiard-room is a feature of the house, for
Palmerston was very fond of the game, and liked to win if his wife
was looking on.
In the country Lady Palmerston was a perfect hostess. She
understood that foreigners expected to be entertained and not to be
left more or less to their own devices, as is the English custom, and
was always ready to drive or walk with them. The habit of leaving
guests in a country house to look after themselves has grown now
almost to an abuse, and sometimes, except that there is no bill to
settle at the end, it often seems almost as if one had been staying at
an hotel where one chanced to know a few of the other visitors. The
parties must have been very interesting. Among the guests at
different times were all the ambassadors to Great Britain and their
wives, members of all the great English families, and writers like
Laurence Oliphant, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), and Mrs.
Augustus Craven, author of Récit d’une sœur.
The same unpunctuality, however, prevailed at Broadlands as in
London. Dinner was nominally at eight, but was seldom on the table
before nine. This indifference to time seems to have been innate in
Lady Palmerston’s family, for even at Panshanger in 1841, when
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were on a visit there, it is recorded
that though there was an agreeable absence of formality, everything
was immensely unpunctual, and the poor Queen was made to wait
for dinner and drives “till anybody but herself would be furious.”
Besides managing the household at Broadlands and Cambridge
House, Lady Palmerston had her own property to look after: Brocket,
left to her by her brother, Lord Melbourne, and her Scottish estates.
She saw into everything herself, inspected all the accounts, and
never left anything to servants that was not properly within their
province. This gave her constant occupation, and the business
connected with her possessions was often of an arduous character.
In 1860 there was a good deal of correspondence and trouble over
the sale of a mill at Brocket, and in 1862 she paid a visit to her
“Scotland estates,” which she had not looked over for nine years.
She described it as “something like the treadmill,” with the talking,
“walking, inspecting farms and fields and mines, making the
agreeable, and listening to all the various conflicting reports on the
same subject.” Her labours, she declares, were much increased by
“all the glorification and popularity of Palmerston, which burst out on
every opportunity.”
In 1861 Palmerston was made Warden of the Cinque Ports. Lady
Palmerston evidently went to Walmer Castle, the residence
belonging to the office, before her husband had seen it, for she
wrote to him that the place was splendid, “so large a house and
such a quantity of gardens and trees. I am sure you will be delighted
with the place, and the sea is covered with shipping and a beautiful
setting sun to light them up.” The beauty of the gardens at Walmer
Castle is proverbial.
Lady Palmerston was fond of the theatre, and it is interesting to
find in 1863 the following impression of a new play that was to have
a great vogue:
 “Such a good play, written by Tom Taylor, called The Ticket-of-
Leave Man, so affecting that everybody in the theatre was touched
by it, some quite crying.”
In old age the Palmerstons were devoted to each other. To the
end of his life Palmerston’s attitude to his wife was that of an ardent
lover; he was always full of loving attentions. He had few intimate
friends; her close companionship seemed to make it unnecessary,
and it is most probable that no other person at any time shared his
confidence. His consideration for her was pathetic, and he did all in
his power to conceal from her how ill he really was during the
months before his death. He always assumed cheerfulness in her
presence. He died on 18th October 1865 at Brocket, and was buried
in Westminster Abbey near the grave of Pitt.
Lord Palmerston left his property to his wife for her life, and it
was then to go to William Cowper. She gave up the house in
Piccadilly, and Bulwer Lytton sold her Breadalbane House, 21 Park
Lane, where she settled in February 1866. She was now seventy-
eight, almost unaltered in appearance, indeed a very handsome old
lady, and, though subdued at times, she preserved her cheerful
spirits. Age had not dulled her sensibility nor her susceptibility to
impressions of more than ordinary keenness. She took the same
vivid interest as of old in things and in people. Very rarely did she
show any sign of the despondency common to age. In thanking
Abraham Hayward for his pamphlet on the Junius Letters, a subject
in which she had always taken great interest, she wrote: “There are
so many disagreeable things nowadays in every way that it is
32
pleasant to be able to take shelter in the past.” She liked at all
times to surround herself with young and pretty people. The very
year of her death she would go to her grandson Jocelyn’s room
between eleven and twelve at night, taking with her the Times or
some other newspaper, and read out to him long speeches without
spectacles, with only a couple of candles for light. She was keenly
opposed to Gladstone’s Bill for the Disestablishment of the Irish
 33
Church, and would talk about it, standing the while, with all the
fire and energy of a young girl.
She was saddened by the deaths of her old friends, Lady Jersey
in 1867 and Lady Tankerville in 1865, intimates of more than fifty
years’ standing, for Lady Palmerston was loyal in her friendships.
She was only ill for a fortnight before her death, which occurred
at Brocket on 11th September 1869. She was buried in Westminster
Abbey by the side of her husband.
Lady Palmerston affords an example of the influence wielded by
a woman of intelligence, beauty, and charm through the first half of
the nineteenth century. She had “l’habitude et l’intelligence des
grandes affaires” that were openly discussed before her. She was
past-mistress in the art of conversation, and thoroughly understood
that a good talker must both originate and sympathise, must impart
information and elicit it from others. Her tact was perfect. While she
had a passionate feeling for her own party, she could be gracious to
those opposed to it. Her salon was for a long series of years the
pleasantest and most brilliant in London. She had many friends and
few enemies. Her influence on society was direct, that on politics
indirect, because it worked through her husband. When a woman is
already in so high a position that no one can think she is seeking her
own advancement, when she is eminently high-minded and warm-
hearted, when she is never petty or false or ungenerous or
uncharitable, then such an influence as she may exercise either
directly or indirectly can only make for good. There is no doubt that
Lady Palmerston, by her personal amiability, her vivacity of mind,
charm of manner, and experience of the world, helped to strengthen
the position of her husband.
 V
MRS. DISRAELI
“It is the spirit of man that says, ‘I will be great,’ but it is the
sympathy of woman that usually makes him so.”

T
he parents of Mary Anne Evans lived at Bramford Speke, near
Exeter. Their daughter was probably born at Exeter, where
we know she was baptized on 14th November. Her father,
John Evans, a lieutenant in the Navy who had worked his way up
from the bottom of the Service, died on active service while his
daughter was an infant. His wife was Eleanor Viney, a member of a
family of good position in the west of England. In fact, Mrs. Disraeli
inherited part of her fortune from her uncle, Sir James Viney. The
girl was beautiful, and in 1815 married Wyndham Lewis, M.P. for
Cardiff, a man of birth and fortune. He owned considerable property
in Glamorganshire.
 MRS. DISRAELI (COUNTESS
BEACONSFIELD)
From the painting by A. E. Chalon, R.A., at
Hughenden

Mrs. Lewis was a great friend of Rosina Wheeler, the wife of

Edward Bulwer, and it was at a party at their house, on the evening
of 27th April 1832, that Disraeli first met the lady who was ultimately
to be his wife. She asked particularly to be introduced to him.
Writing next day to his sister he describes her as “a pretty little
woman, a flirt, and a rattle.” She told him that she liked silent,
melancholy men, and Disraeli, making mental note of her singular
volubility, replied that he had no doubt of it. But he went much to
her house in London the next year, and became, as time progressed,
very friendly with her and her husband. So when, at the election of
1837, a second Conservative candidate was needed for Maidstone—
Wyndham Lewis was the other—Disraeli was asked to stand. His
success was doubtless in great measure due to his friendship with
34
the Wyndham Lewises. Mrs. Lewis, in a letter to her brother,
prophesied that in a few years Disraeli would be one of the greatest
men of the day, and observed, “they call him my Parliamentary
35
protégé.” Count D’Orsay offered him the sage advice: “You will not
make love! You will not intrigue! You have your seat: do not risk
anything! If a widow, then marry!” In August Mrs. Lewis paid a first
visit to the Disraelis at Bradenham and was delighted with
everything. Another visit was paid at the end of the year. Wyndham
Lewis died suddenly of heart disease on 14th March 1838.
There is no doubt that Mrs. Lewis’s affection for Disraeli had
been steadily growing. It is said that she told a friend she was sure
Disraeli cared for her, because he had made love to her in her
husband’s lifetime. Mrs. Bulwer, who never allowed friendship to
interfere with her propensity for ill-natured gossip, declared that
Disraeli proposed even before the funeral, and that friends calling to
condole with her on her husband’s death were asked to congratulate
her, for “Disraeli has proposed.” Through April and May he wrote
constantly to her, sent her flowers from Bradenham, called himself
her faithful friend, ready to give her, if she so willed it, his advice,
assistance, and society. He signed his letters, “Your affectionate D.”
In July he saw the review in Hyde Park, in celebration of Queen
Victoria’s coronation, from Mrs. Wyndham Lewis’s house, 1
36
Grosvenor Gate. By the end of July he was telling her that she was
never a moment absent from his thoughts and how much he loved
her. He sometimes accompanied her to the theatre; he presented his
Coronation Medal to her.
 It is generally assumed that Disraeli did not marry for love. Mrs.
Lewis was forty-five, twelve years older than himself; she was also
very well off, with an income of £4000 a year and a house in
Grosvenor Gate. He had, moreover, declared that he never intended
to marry for love, which he felt sure was a guarantee for infelicity,
and that the marriages of all his friends who married for love or
beauty turned out unhappily. Men often make such statements, and
in the end act quite differently. It is certain that when Disraeli made
up his mind to win her, his attitude towards her, judging by his acts
and his letters, is very much that of a lover, and a sincere one. It
was not all quite as fair sailing as the gossips would have us believe.
When they were both in London he went to see her every day, and
describes her talk as “that bright play of fancy and affection which
welcomes me daily with such vivacious sweetness.” He dislikes being
separated from her: “My present feelings convince me of what I
have ever believed, that there is no hell on earth like separated
love.” His idea of love is the perpetual enjoyment of the loved one’s
society, and the sharing with her every thought and fancy and care;
so long as they are together it does not matter where, “in heaven or
on earth, or in the waters under the earth”; and although he
declares he is not jealous, he confesses he envies the gentlemen
about her—“When the eagle leaves you the vultures return.” His
affection grows in intensity, and he is sure that “health, his clear
brain, and her love will enable him to conquer the world.” At one
period in the courtship, which seems to have lasted practically from
the summer of 1838 to the autumn of 1839, there was a serious
quarrel, and Mrs. Lewis desired him to quit her house for ever. Later,
she seems to have reproached him with interested views, and he
enters into a long explanation how, at the first, he had not been
influenced by romantic feelings, that he wished for the solace of a
home, and was not blind to the worldly advantage of an alliance
with her, but all the same, if his heart had not been engaged he
would not have proceeded in the matter. She forgave him, said it
was all a mistake, that she had never desired him to quit the house
or thought a word about money. But Disraeli’s letters to her express
real affection, and of her devotion to him there can be no manner of
doubt. She used to declare in later days, not quite seriously perhaps,
“Dizzy married me for my money, but if he had the chance again he
would marry me for love.” Even Mrs. Bulwer, who at the time of the
engagement gossiped freely of the kind and cherishing manner in
which Dizzy behaved to Mrs. Lewis’s £4000 a year, declared in later
years that she had felt all along that Disraeli really cared for his wife,
spoke of him as the most devoted husband, and asserted her
conviction that had his wife lost all her possessions he would have
continued equally kind to her. The wedding was celebrated at St.
George’s, Hanover Square, on 28th August 1839.
They went first to Tunbridge Wells and then to Germany. Mrs.
Disraeli thought Baden-Baden not much better than Cheltenham, but
was delighted with Munich. Even the glories of Paris, which they
visited on the return journey, paled before the “features of splendour
and tasteful invention” to be seen in Munich. By the end of
November they were settled in Grosvenor Gate. The furniture and
general arrangement of the house was ugly and bizarre. Mrs. Disraeli
lacked taste both in those matters and in her dress, which at all
times was odd and strange, out of keeping with her age and the
occasion. When she was eighty she would wear a bright crimson
velvet tunic high to the throat, Disraeli’s miniature fastened like an
order on the left breast; at a great party at Stowe in 1845, when
Queen Victoria was present, she wore black velvet, with hanging
sleeves looped up with knots of blue and diamond buttons, the
head-dress being blue velvet bows and buttons. She evidently had
no eye for beauty, for she once said that she did not care in the least
for looks in men, and would as soon have married a black man as
not. Yet she had taste in landscape gardening, for the laying out of
the woodland paths at Hughenden and the aspect of the whole of
that portion of the grounds are due to her.
Disraeli expected great things from the marriage. The union was
to seal his career: his wife was to console him in sorrow and
disappointment, her “quick and accurate sense” to guide him in
prosperity and triumph. All his hopes were fulfilled, in spite of great
differences in their characters. Mrs. Disraeli had no ambition, hated
politics in themselves, though she devoted herself to her husband’s
career. She told Queen Victoria that she neither knew nor wished to
know Cabinet secrets. Yet Disraeli liked to consult her, for although
she was pleased to call herself a dunce, and never could remember
whether the Greeks or Romans came first, and when there had been
some talk about Swift was surprised to find she could not ask him to
her parties because he had died a hundred years ago, she had great
practical ability, good judgment, and quick intuition. Above all, she
was always cheerful. She had absolute faith in her husband, and her
geniality and warmth of feeling and kindness of heart endeared her
to her friends, despite her utter want of tact and her propensity for
saying gauche things. Some one once asked Mr. Disraeli if he did not
get annoyed by the gauche things his wife so often said. He replied,
“Oh no! I am never put out by them.” “Well then,” retorted his
interlocutor, “you must be a man of most extraordinary qualities.”
“Not at all,” answered Disraeli, “I only possess one quality in which
most men are deficient—gratitude.”
Many stories are told of Mrs. Disraeli’s outspokenness and
deficiency in tact.
When on a visit to a country house it happened that Lord
Hardinge’s room was next to the Disraelis’, and the next morning
Mrs. Disraeli said to Lord Hardinge at breakfast, “Oh, Lord Hardinge,
I consider myself the most fortunate of women. I said to myself
when I woke this morning, ‘What a lucky woman I am! here I have
been sleeping between the greatest orator and the greatest warrior
of the day!’” Lady Hardinge, it was stated, did not look specially
delighted. On the occasion of another visit it so happened that a
former occupier of the house having possessed a number of fine
paintings of the nude figure, the hostess had carefully removed from
the walls all the pictures which she considered of doubtful propriety.
One, however, had been overlooked and hung, as it chanced, in the
room allotted to the Disraelis. Addressing her hostess, a lady of
strictly puritanical views, Mrs. Disraeli said the first morning, “I find
your house full of indecent pictures, there’s a horrible one in our
room: Disraeli says it is Venus and Adonis; I’ve been awake half the
night trying to prevent him looking at it!” Again, when her host
apologised for a dish having too much onion in it, she said, “I prefer
them raw.” At a concert at Buckingham Palace she sat next to a lady
whom she did not know, and talked much of her own married
happiness, and then remarked, “But perhaps, my dear, you do not
know what it is to have an affectionate husband.”
She had little respect of persons and always spoke her mind.
Soon after her marriage, she and Disraeli went to a luncheon-party
given by Bulwer at Craven Cottage on the Thames. They arrived
late, and found that the party had already gone with their host up
37
the river in a steamer. Another late arrival was Louis Napoleon. He
said he would get a boat and row them to meet the others. His
rowing, however, turned out to be of an amateurish character, and
he only succeeded in rowing them on to a mudbank in the middle of
the river. Help was fortunately procured, and a serious mishap
narrowly avoided. Mrs. Disraeli rated Louis Napoleon roundly: “You
should not undertake things you cannot accomplish,” she told him.
“You are always too adventurous.” In 1856, when Mrs. Disraeli was
dining at the Tuileries, she reminded the Emperor of the incident,
and the Empress Eugénie, who overheard, said, “Just like him.”
Disraeli was now, thanks to his wife, able to give dinner-parties.
She understood such matters and took care that they should be
brilliant and successful. With her husband she paid many visits to
the Maxses at Woolbeding, and the Hopes at Deepdene, where the
Christmas of 1840 was spent. Next year he contested Shrewsbury.
His wife undoubtedly helped him to win the election, and she
became most popular with the electors, who retained their
admiration for her; Disraeli used to tell them that she was a perfect
wife. She was always, on his visits to his constituents there, the
heroine of the occasion, and he informs his sister that “M. A. (Mary
Anne) got even more cheering than I did.”
At the end of August 1841 Peel became Prime Minister, and
Disraeli was full of hope that he would obtain office. Mrs. Disraeli
was a great friend of Peel’s sister, Mrs. George Dawson. But no call
came, and on September 4 Mrs. Disraeli, without her husband’s
knowledge, wrote to Peel the famous letter in which she told him,
“my husband’s political career is for ever crushed if you do not
appreciate him.” She pointed out that Disraeli, for Peel’s sake, had
made personal enemies of Peel’s opponents, that he had stood four
most expensive elections, in two of which he had gained seats from
Whigs, and that he had abandoned literature for politics. “Do not
destroy all his hopes, and make him feel his life has been a mistake.”
She then pointed out her own “humble but enthusiastic exertions”
for the party, and how through her influence alone more than
£40,000 had been spent at Maidstone. Disraeli also wrote himself
appealing for recognition, but neither application was of any avail.
After the brief autumn session the Disraelis went to Normandy,
making Caen their headquarters. When Parliament met in February,
Mrs. Disraeli was at Bradenham, and her husband wrote to her every
day, recounting all that was going on.
From 1842 Disraeli was the recognised leader of the Tory party.
In the autumn of 1842 they went to Paris, did some sight-seeing and
met all the most distinguished people, French and English, in the
capital from Louis-Philippe downwards. The next year in the recess
Disraeli had a great reception at what his wife called “a grand
literary meeting” at the Free Trade Hall at Manchester, with Charles
Dickens in the chair. She accompanied her husband everywhere;
when some one asked Disraeli if he were going somewhere alone,
that is, without the other Ministers, he replied, “No, Mary Anne is
going. I cannot leave her quite in the lurch.” She was always a great
admirer of her husband’s speeches and actions. In 1844 Disraeli
himself presided at a similar meeting, and when an acquaintance in
helping her on with her cloak one evening afterwards remarked on
Disraeli’s wonderful reception at Manchester, she began straightway
to tell Disraeli’s triumphs as if she were a girl of eighteen. On the
visit to the Duke of Buckingham at Stowe in 1845, when Queen
Victoria and Prince Albert were the honoured guests, Mrs. Disraeli’s
greatest delight in the whole affair was that “Her Majesty had
pointed Dizzy out, saying, ‘There’s Mr. Disraeli.’” It was the first time
Her Majesty had met Disraeli privately. Both he and his wife were
much delighted with the attention they received during the visit.
The autumn holiday of 1845 was spent at Cassel in French
Flanders, where they lived a simple rural life, getting up at 5.30 a.m.
and going to bed at 9 p.m. Walking was their only exercise and chief
amusement. Mrs. Disraeli reckoned that in two months she had
walked 300 miles. It was in this year that Sybil was published.
Disraeli dedicated the novel to his wife in the following terms:
“I would inscribe this book to one whose noble spirit and gentle
nature ever prompt her to sympathise with the suffering; to one
whose sweet voice has often encouraged, and whose taste and
judgment have ever guided, its pages; the most severe of critics, but
—a perfect wife!”
Disraeli liked to consult his wife on points that arose in his work
either political or literary, and would send up little notes to her
asking her to come to the study and discuss them. He would also
draw her into any conversation being carried on when she was
present, and expected others to defer to her as he did.
Among her friends was Lady de Rothschild, wife of Sir Anthony
de Rothschild, and her letters to Lady de Rothschild, some of which
are here printed, well illustrate Mrs. Disraeli’s warmth of heart in
relation to her friends and her admiration of and devotion to her
husband. It is usual to say that Mrs. Disraeli took no interest in
politics. Undoubtedly politics in the abstract bored her, but in the
political questions in which her husband was personally concerned
she evinced the strongest interest, and, as her letters prove, could
comment on them with much shrewdness.

Mrs. Disraeli to Lady de Rothschild

“Grosvenor Gate,
5th July [1845].
“One line, my dear Lady de Rothschild, to congratulate
you and to express my happiness at the glorious result of
 38
Thursday’s debate. I am always wishing that you were here
that we might talk it all over. Have I not for some time past
assured you of all this?
39
“Yesterday we dined with the family circle in Piccadilly.
Such a happy party. I hear you have been to a gay Ball and
that you are quite well. But your leave of absence must soon
now be over, I hope. I have all sorts of things to tell you and
only you. Parliament will be up the end of this month. The
Thames does not appear to have injured Dizzy or any of the
40
Members—they look remarkably well.
“You will see much about Lady B. Lytton. Sir Edward told
D. he had just missed a bad house. The abuse of him, we are
told, is dreadful.
“Yesterday we went to Holland House—some new rooms
and furnished beautifully. Numbers of people, but poor Lady
Holland appeared very unwell. I cannot think how she can
bear so much company.”

“Grosvenor Gate,
15th January 1847.
“On our return to Town last week our first visit was to
you, and we were sadly disappointed to find you were not
expected for some time. I hope it is pleasure that detains
you, and that you are quite recovered from your late severe
attack.
41
“Sir Anthony took us all by surprise; no one ever
expected to have seen his name in the Gazette. We drank
your healths with the most affectionate pleasure, wishing
every happiness to thee and thine, My Lady dear.
“We remained four months at Bradenham enjoying the
most perfect seclusion and our usual long walks with four or
five beautiful dogs.
 “The first proofs of Tancred are now on the table. How
much I wish you may be here when he is presented to the
public, for I am sure you will sympathise with me on my
child’s fate. What an anxious, happy time for poor me the
next six months’ situation, and politics always for and against.
42
“Ask the Baroness James de Rothschild to think of me,
and kindly, now and then. Is she not the most perfect of
women kind?
43
“How did the fire happen? Do you not observe all the
country houses are burnt down when the families are from
home? I hope none of the beautiful china, etc., was there. My
best love to your mother. I know she cares for thy precious
self more than all the houses in the world, and you are now
got quite well, and happy with the best husband in the world
44
—except one—Dizzy, who is again to dine at New Court
with his best friend—to-morrow at Lord Stanhope’s—the
Protectionists ‘feed well,’ said Mr. Horace Twiss at Mr. Quintin
Dick’s. Another dinner on Thursday—last.
“It is not thought there will be a war, notwithstanding all
the articles in the Times of yesterday and to-day.
“Lord Lincoln in his speech at Manchester declaring for
the endowment of the Roman Catholics in Ireland, both his
friends and foes say, will lose him his seat at the Election.
“It is thought Lord Dudley Stuart will stand for
Westminster.”

“23rd March 1847.

“I cannot express to you my disappointment at not
45
finding you at Baron Lionel’s on Sunday, having fully
understood that you were arrived, or I should not have left
home that day. They assure me that you will be here soon—
but when? Do tell me that you are better—quite well. Your
 kind letter would have made me more happy had you given a
better account of yourself. With so much kindness of feeling
and being so much appreciated you must be suffering to
remain so many months in retirement.
“I hope you will feel all the affection for our new child
that I have for you. Tancred appears to be a greater favourite
than Coningsby. Is not this a great triumph? The orthodox
world have as yet made no hostile sign, but the journals have
declared it brilliant. What will the Times say? I have suffered
much anxiety.”

Until the purchase of Hughenden Manor, which was concluded

about this time with Mrs. Disraeli’s money, Bradenham, the house of
Disraeli’s father, had been practically their country home. Mrs.
Disraeli loved Hughenden; she laid out the grounds herself, and was
never tired of making improvements. She made a good many
alterations in the interior of the house, and the pretty woodland
walks and the terraced gardens are wholly due to her. In 1862 she
had twenty navvies working for her, making the terraces.
She made an admirable hostess, even if a somewhat despotic
one, and her country-house parties were always greatly enjoyed.
She took care that the dinner should be gay, even if she sent
everybody to bed at 10.30 p.m. Her kind heart and genial manners
made her guests blind to her oddities both of dress and talk.
In 1852 Disraeli became Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord
Derby. Mrs. Disraeli often drove her husband down to the House, but
she would never go in and listen to the debates because she had
made a vow that she would not do so until Disraeli was Prime
Minister, a circumstance that did not happen until 1868.
She never went to bed until Disraeli returned from the House of
Commons, and kept her own house fully lighted up—it was often 3
a.m. before he got home—so that it might present a welcoming
appearance, and always took care that a hot supper was ready for
him. He realised so well the feeling that prompted her action that
 46
after an important division in the House of Commons he refused
an invitation to supper at the Carlton in order to carry the good
news to his wife without delay. As she put it, “Dizzy came home to
me!”
Mrs. Disraeli’s consideration for her husband amounted to
heroism. On one occasion, driving down to the House with him when
he was going to make an important speech, on closing the door of
the brougham when he got out, her hand was crushed in it. She
made no sign, suppressing her suffering until Disraeli had
disappeared within the doorway, when she called to the footman to
release her. She knew how the knowledge that she had been hurt
would have distracted his mind from his speech. On another
occasion, on her way to Hatfield for a visit, Mrs. Disraeli had a fall
and cut her face severely. Her husband was to arrive later, so when
she reached the house Mrs. Disraeli told her hostess what had
happened, saying, “My husband is preparing a great speech; if he
finds out I have had an accident he will be quite upset. I want you
to take me straight to my room and say I have a headache. He has
lost his eyeglass, and if you put me a long way from him at dinner
he will never see what a condition I am in.” This was done, and
Disraeli did not find out the state of the case until the day after the
next day. But when he did he was so distressed that he asked
permission for them to go home at once.
On the other hand, many stories are told of his devotion to her.
When he received his D.C.L. at Oxford there was a great ovation. As
he returned to his seat, he put up his eyeglass and sought his wife.
He dropped it as soon as he saw her, and kissed his hand to her. He
always wrote her a set of verses on the anniversary of their wedding
day.
Her favourite topic of conversation was her husband, and she
would descant on his merits and virtues in and out of season. She
considered him handsome, and one evening when in the company of
some ladies who began to talk about certain men who had fine
figures, Mrs. Disraeli said in a tone of pity for those who could not
possibly know what a fine figure of a man really meant, “Oh! you
should see my Dizzy in his bath!” On another occasion after a
dinner-party, one of the guests present took her to her carriage and
said, “Mr. Disraeli spoke most eloquently in the House to-night; how
well he is looking.” Mrs. Disraeli, hugely delighted, replied, “Ah! you
think he looks well—you think him handsome, yet people call him
ugly; but he is not, he is handsome; they should see him asleep.”
In 1866 Mrs. Disraeli fell very ill, and her husband was much
disturbed about her health. These later years have an element of
pathos in them, for she was really suffering from an incurable
cancer. She never told her husband, although of course he knew,
and he did not let her guess that he knew, and took care throughout
to conceal from her his great distress at her condition. In November
1867 she was dangerously ill, and in consequence the Opposition
refrained from attacking the Government, and on the 19th Gladstone
referred to her illness in the House of Commons. Mrs. Disraeli had a
strong personal regard for Gladstone; she could understand his great
gifts and qualities.
Mrs. Disraeli was created a peeress in her own right on 30th
November 1868. Queen Victoria wished to confer some mark of
favour on Disraeli, and offered him a peerage, but he declined
because he felt that he ought to remain in the House of Commons.
The Queen, knowing his devotion to his wife, suggested that a
peerage should be conferred on her instead, a mark of appreciation
that delighted Disraeli. Notwithstanding her illness, and at times the
suffering was very great, Mrs. Disraeli went on with her usual life.
She entertained a small party at Hughenden at the end of November
1872. The guests were Sir William Harcourt, Lord and Lady John
Manners, and Lord Ronald Gower. Although she was sadly altered,
indeed death was written in her face, and Disraeli was terribly
depressed about her, she was gorgeously dressed, and on the
Sunday afternoon accompanied the party on a walk, in her pony
carriage, talking brightly about her pets—horses and peacocks. The
next morning she came down after eleven o’clock, wonderfully brisk
and lively after a bad night, and had her breakfast brought to the
 47
library where the others were sitting. On 19th December she died
at Hughenden, where she was buried.
Disraeli’s grief was profound. He declared there never was a
better wife. “She believed in me when men despised me. She
relieved my wants when I was poor and persecuted by the world.” In
his reply to Gladstone’s note of sympathy, he said, “Marriage is the
greatest earthly happiness when founded on complete sympathy;
48
that hallowed lot was mine for a moiety of existence.” He used to
say how in thirty-three years of married life she had never given him
a dull moment. To Gathorne Hardy he wrote: “To lose such a friend
49
is to lose half one’s existence.” The marriage had been the making
of Disraeli, and he fully recognised the fact. Replying in 1867 to the
toast of his wife’s health, he had said:
“I do owe to that lady all, I think, that I have ever accomplished,
because she has supported me by her counsel, and consoled me by
the sweetness of her mind and disposition.”
Another time he said of her:
“There was no care which she could not mitigate, and no
difficulty which she could not face. She was the most cheerful and
the most courageous woman I ever knew.”
She brought Disraeli unclouded domestic happiness. She loved
him and believed in him. Her oddities were more superficial than
people thought, for although she was so voluble and so indiscreet a
talker, and absolutely in her husband’s confidence, she never
betrayed it. She was no social leader as Lady Palmerston was; what
influence she had was passive rather than active, yet without her
single-minded devotion, it is doubtful if Disraeli would have had so
great a career. To paraphrase his own words in Coningsby on
marriage, he found in her one who gave him perfect and profound
sympathy, could share his joys and often his sorrows, aid him in his
projects, respond to his fancies, counsel him in his cares and support
him in dangers, and “make life charming by her charms, interesting
by her intelligence, and sweet by the vigilant variety of her
tenderness.”
Mrs. Dawson, wife of the Right Hon. George Dawson and sister
of Sir Robert Peel, was one of Mrs. Disraeli’s greatest friends. George
Dawson wrote the following lines to accompany a reproduction of
Mrs. Disraeli’s portrait by A. E. Chalon, published in Heath’s Book of
Beauty (1841). They probably reflect what those who knew Mrs.
Disraeli best felt with regard to her:
“The choice unfetter’d fondly turns to thee:
Still to thee turns, all-confident to find
The features but the index of the mind,
Glowing with truth, sincerity, and ease,
Stamp’d with the surest attributes to please.
Intelligent and gay, the joyous smile
Speaking a bosom free from art or guile,
Pure as the consciousness of well-spent life,
Perfect as friend, as daughter, sister, wife.”
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