The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli

by Richard Aldous

Sex was one of many frustrations for the Gladstones. Between 1840 and 1854, Catherine bore William eight children and had at least one miscarriage. Her pregnancies were often very difficult; on at least one occasion she almost died giving birth. The convention of the day was that husbands did not sleep with their wives during pregnancy. Gladstone, between the births of his first and last children, was therefore excluded from the marital bed for prolonged periods in nine out of fourteen years. His late thirties and early forties thus entailed his own ‘period of confinement’. The result was implosion. Crisis revealed itself through a cycle of sexual temptation, sin and reproach. The young Gladstone had been tortured by guilt about his obsession with masturbation. Later he enjoyed a ‘long and shameful experience of the snares of sin’ after becoming fixated on pornography. This fascination was so overwhelming that in 1845, while in Baden-Baden in Germany, he had drawn up a memorandum of his own sexual depravity. In painstaking if opaque detail Gladstone listed the ways in which he was open to ‘my chief besetting sin’. The resulting self-portrait is of a man in the grip of a mania about sex. The ‘channels’ through which it came included ‘1. Thought, 2. Conversation, 3. Hearing, 4. Seeing, 5. Touch, 6. Company’. Temptation was irresistible when he was bored or else found himself confronted by the unfamiliar. He was particularly receptive, he deduced, in times of ‘1. Idleness, 2....

As Wellington slumbered in the Lords, the 14th Earl of Derby (as we must now call Stanley) joined him on the Tory benches. This was an act of fealty and respect. Almost exactly a year earlier Derby’s attempt to form a government had ended in failure. Now he had just accepted the Queen’s invitation to become prime minister. The new premier had come in person to tell Wellington the names of his cabinet. As Derby read from his list, a look of bewilderment crossed the Iron Duke’s face. He craned his neck forward to catch the names. ‘Who? Who?’ he roared. Even when Derby was able to get the duke to understand, it made little difference. ‘Sir John Pakington,’ shouted Derby. ‘Who is he?’ bellowed Wellington again. ‘Never heard of him.’ It was an inauspicious beginning to Lord Derby’s first administration. History forever afterwards would recall this as the ‘Who? Who?’ government. Most who served in cabinet were nonentities. Once in office they achieved very little. Yet the 1852 Conservative government marked a turning point. For it was here that active hostilities began between the two men set to dominate British politics for the next thirty years.

The sixty-seven-year-old Irish peer was among Britain’s most colourful politicians. For many years Palmerston had been known primarily as a ‘man about town’. A wonderful conversationalist, he was in demand at every salon in London. Women in particular found it hard to resist his charms, winning him the nickname ‘Lord Cupid’. He was also a great outdoorsman. Invitations to shooting parties at his estates, Broadlands in Hampshire and Brocket in Hertfordshire, were highly prized. In politics, he served both in Tory and Whig cabinets. His métier was foreign affairs, in which he developed a British policy of divide and rule among the great powers. In addition, he believed that Britain should, by force if necessary, ‘extend, as far and as fast as possible, civilization’. It was this last attitude, when added to his personal charisma, that made him such a popular figure in the country.

Few doubted that the chancellor had initiated a radical budget, but most did not understand why. Disraeli’s aim, suggestive of his later philosophy, was to broaden the party’s appeal to include the urban middle class, and even the working class. This meant a fundamental reorganisation of the financial system to create a more integrated, stable equilibrium between competing interests. Farmers and landowners were offered compensation for the abandonment of Protection by a reduction in malt duties, which also appealed to poorer beer drinkers. He then proposed to ease the burden of urban, commercial and industrial interests by differentiating income tax. Those relying on ‘earned’ (or ‘industrious’) income would pay at a lower rate than those ‘unearned’ (or ‘spontaneous’) incomes. The other main development proposed was an increase in the inhabited house duty in order to pay for greater defence expenditure.

Part of the problem was Disraeli’s innovation. Rank-and-file Tories in the mid-century did more than most to justify the Conservatives’ earlier reputation as the ‘stupid party’. What they failed to grasp, or least appreciate, was Disraeli’s original approach to opposition. He was perhaps the first political leader to demand that the foremost role of the opposition was to oppose. This may seem obvious now, but it was a novel approach in Victorian Britain. Even his most recent predecessors, Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel, had maintained a gentlemanly and statesmanlike detachment in the House, challenging legislation only if they really thought ill of it. Disraeli’s view was that there would always be something to criticise. His job was to exploit any weakness, to make the life of the government as difficult as possible, to wear them down and win back power. This was highly unpopular with his own MPs, not least because it demanded that they attend the House more regularly. Foremost among the advice the whips had passed to Disraeli was the warning that ‘however it may be adverse to his own inclinations to sit inactive on the front opposition bench, he has really not any choice left, but must if he cares for his own authority, and our continued existence, bide his time’.

For many the question was not if Gladstone would serve with his friends, but whether he might ever go into government with those he detested on both sides of the House. Few doubted that Gladstone had a visceral, personal dislike of both Palmerston and Disraeli. He had remained in government with Palmerston for a matter of weeks before private distaste made him quit. Three times now he had refused to work with Disraeli. He was, suggested the Spectator, on his way to becoming ‘a mere Bedouin of parliament, a noble being full of spirit and power, but not to be tamed into the ordinary ways of civil life’.

concurring who had not been reckoned on.’ This new party was at first sight a curious alliance. On the one hand there were the parliamentary Radicals. For much of the century they had led the charge against the outdated pre-industrial system, particularly ‘land monopoly’ – the special legal, financial and political privileges given to landowners – and the Church of England. Although they were a small cabal within the Commons, and even within this new political union, the Radicals provided much of the flavour and individuality of the Liberal message. Most of their leading figures, such as Bright and Richard Cobden, were rich businessmen who wanted to modernise the nation’s political practices in line with its economic and trading base. They masked this capitalist purpose behind the egalitarian language of ‘progress’ and of promoting the interests of ‘the people’ against ‘monopoly’ and ‘privilege’. Yet at heart, their politics came down to redefining the place of wealth-generating industrialists in a modern political society. ‘They cannot endure,’ summed up the constitutionalist Walter Bagehot, ‘they ought not to endure, that a rich, able manufacturer should be a less man than a stupid small squire.’

Although in many ways a canny, even devious, political operator, he was above all a gut-instinct politician. There had been his resignations, and many more threats of resignation, from governments on points of principle. Add to this the honourable loyalty first to Peel, and then to Aberdeen, that had kept him out of successive Conservative administrations, the last of which had been Gladstonian in mentality. Even his forays into scholarship – State and Church and Homer – had been published in the face of advice that his political reputation would be damaged. Gladstone was a man unable to act without self-justification accompanied by credible public rationalisation. In short, if he was going to abandon the Conservative party for the Liberals on a permanent basis, he needed in his own mind and on the national stage a cast-iron explanation for his actions.

For Gladstone the answer to the question ‘why have you become a Liberal?’ would be one word: Italy. On his journey back from Corfu, he had dined with Count Cavour, the prime minister of Piedmont. This turned out to be his own ‘Willis’s Rooms’ moment of conversion. The Italian Question – namely, what position would Britain take on the inevitable war for Italian independence against the Austrian Hapsburg Empire – would quickly establish itself as one of the greatest and most contested ideological divides in nineteenth-century politics. This alone gave Gladstone a plausible reason to identify himself publicly with the pro-nationalist Liberal administration that took office in June 1859. When Palmerston invited him to join the government as chancellor, Gladstone could justify his acceptance by pointing to the prime minister’s impeccable position on Italy. ‘Never had I an easier question to determine than when I was asked to join the government,’ Gladstone said; ‘I can hardly now think how I could have looked any one in the face, had I refused my aid (such as it is) at such a time and under such circumstances.’ Never again would Gladstone be invited to, or consider, joining a Conservative administration. As the youngest of the government triumvirate that also included Palmerston and Russell, his eventual succession to the Liberal leadership would soon appear inevitable. For the first time Gladstone and Disraeli genuinely found themselves separated by party. ‘The great battle co...

The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 had signalled the adoption of free trade as an article of faith in British politics, but Britain did not become a free-trading nation overnight. Only with the budget of 1860 was Peel’s vision completed, appropriately enough by his greatest apprentice.

Few in the House, whether members or observers, doubted that as much as a ‘triumph’ for Gladstone, the budget was ‘a defeat of Disraeli’. The full importance of this defeat became apparent weeks afterwards in a savage personal attack on Disraeli in the Quarterly Review. Disraeli was derided as a ‘favourite of misfortune’, who ‘went forth blundering and to blunder’, and had ‘unrivalled powers of conducting his party into the ditch’. He had ‘never led the Conservatives to victory as Sir Robert Peel had led them to victory. He had never procured the triumphant assertion of any Conservative principle, or shielded from imminent ruin any ancient institution.’ Disraeli was instead a destroyer, a man whose ‘tactics were so various, so flexible, so shameless’ that he made government by any party ‘an impossibility’. The Tories might only regain the nation’s trust by removing him. The article was anonymous, but there was no secret as to its author: Lord Robert Cecil (later Lord Salisbury) a future prime minister and one of Disraeli’s own backbench MPs. ‘I dislike and despise the man,’ Cecil told his father, who had threatened not to pay any further election expenses unless he desisted from attacking Disraeli. ‘I have merely put into print what all the county gentlemen were saying in private.’

On 11 June Disraeli wrote to the senior Tory backbencher, Sir William Miles, who only days before had taken him aside to express concern at the level of dissent in the ranks. Disraeli’s answer to this criticism was a masterpiece of self-justification, mock wounded pride and political gamesmanship. He reminded Miles he had taken on the leadership after the death of Lord George Bentinck at great financial sacrifice to restore the ‘shattered remnants of the country party’. Personal pride had been set aside in the many attempts to bring the Peelites back into the fold, including offers ‘of a flattering nature … made to Mr Gladstone’. Disraeli had returned the Conservatives to office ‘in order to save the party from political annihilation’ despite the inevitability that those efforts must conclude in failure. This restored the fortunes of the party while leaving him ‘to bear the brunt of disaster’ when defeat came. Criticism and ridicule from political opponents was only to be expected, but from those on the same side this was intolerable behaviour. The letter was a heartfelt if calculated rebuke to his party. ‘So long as they were in distress, I have borne without a murmur the neglect, the desertion, the personal insults, that I have experienced,’ he protested. ‘But the Tories are no longer in distress – they have abundance of friends; and, with respect to the privacy of their feelings towards me, they chalk the walls in the market-place with my opprobrium.’ And so to the knoc...

Gladstone, too, had obligingly played his part in Disraeli’s rehabilitation. Tucked away in the letter to Miles was the boast that ‘the finance of Mr Gladstone has blown up’. For in the months since delivering his budget, the chancellor had suffered a crushing reverse. Although an overwhelming majority had passed the budget as a whole, these changes still had to be debated in separate individual bills. On Paper Duties, this opened up dissent within the government and gave Disraeli an opportunity to exploit. It was an open secret that Palmerston opposed the measure. Disraeli in office had planned a similar measure, but now he rallied his own forces with a spirited defence of a reactionary position that would humiliate the loathsome chancellor without bringing down the government. When the measure came before the Commons in early May, Disraeli launched a blistering assault. The Radical Trelawny described him ‘attacking Gladstone with more vehemence and with ad hominem arguments – alleging rashness, inconsistency, intolerance and self contradictions’. When the vote was taken, the chancellor found that his majority of 116 had shrivelled to just nine. The question then became what the Lords would do with it. They certainly had the right to reject the bill, but for more than two hundred years the upper house had stayed its hand on financial matters. Radicals noisily proclaimed that a constitutional crisis would inevitably ensue if the bill were rejected. Palmerston, however, sec...

Victorian statesmen enjoyed a civilised existence. Not overly concerned with being seen always at their desks, politicians organised their lives with time to recover their verve and peace of mind away from the Westminster hothouse. Each year the main business of the House of Commons was conducted in the first seven months. In August, MPs would disappear for the summer and autumn, occasionally returning in late November for a few weeks’ business before Christmas. Then the cycle would begin again in earnest in the middle of January. The business of government during the long recess was generally conducted by post from landed estates around the country. Summits, endless committees, constituency surgeries and meetings with delegations were definitely not on the agenda – no wonder that every man of ambition wanted to be a member of the House of Commons.

Her lack of education and modest social background led many in their circle to think Mrs Disraeli ‘common’. Occasionally she would astound fellow guests at parties with outlandish remarks, such as telling ladies admiring a painting of a nude Greek god, ‘You should see my Dizzy in the bath!’ Yet for all her flightiness and occasional gaffes, Mary Anne could show steely resolve in protecting and nurturing her husband’s genius. Often by the 1860s this meant downplaying her own increasingly poor health. Even when a clumsy footman shut her hand in the carriage door while accompanying Disraeli to the Commons for a vital debate, she would not tell her husband lest it put him off his stroke.

The budgets of 1860 and 1861 had transformed William Gladstone into a hero of industrial workers. Slashing duties encouraged an immediate boom in popular consumption, which earned him the reputation as the champion of the people’s breakfast table. Even more admired was the chancellor’s defeat of the House of Lords on paper duties – ‘don’t tax knowledge’ – that provided him with a new national constituency and grateful newspapers willing to promote him. Increasingly literate workers eagerly followed his speeches in the reports of the penny press. His couching of economic policy in moral tones, with an emphasis on prudence and balancing the books, chimed with the everyday reality of working families, who understood only too well the demands of prudent housekeeping. ‘There is not a man who labours and sweats for his daily bread,’ suggested John Bright, ‘there is not a woman living in a cottage who strives to make her home happy for husband and children, to whom the words of the chancellor of the exchequer have not brought hope, and to whom his measures, which have been defended with an eloquence few can equal and with a logic none can contest, have not administered consolation.’

Following the deaths of Aberdeen, Graham and Herbert, the Peelite caucus of which he was a prime mover was no more. His sudden elevation among the labouring poor as the bringer of prosperity and cheap food – a man of the people – came just at a moment when Gladstone was dangerously isolated at Westminster. Presented with the chance to create a new power base, Gladstone seized the mantle of ‘the People’s William’ with alacrity.

Later Gladstone would adapt Blair’s advice into a brief set of suggestions of his own on public speaking: ‘1. Study plainness of language, always preferring the simpler word. 2. Shortness of sentences. 3. Distinctness of articulation. 4. Test and question your own arguments beforehand, not waiting for critic or opponent. 5. Seek a thorough digestion of, and familiarity with, your subject, and rely mainly on these to prompt the proper words. 6. Remember that if you are to sway an audience you must besides thinking out your matter, watch them all along.’

Added to Blair’s lessons on rhetoric, young William had been trained in the visuals of public speaking, particularly posture and gesture. His key text was John Walker’s The Elements of Gesture, which provided a practical guide for eager younger statesmen – a nineteenth-century version of How to Make Friends and Influence People. The speaker ‘shall always keep the body in a graceful position, and shall so carry its motions at proper intervals, as to seem the subject operating upon the words, and not the speaker on the subject’. Specific instructions were then offered on the positioning of the head, legs, arms, wrists and hands, with explanations as to how changes of position ‘if they keep time will be in tune as it were to each other, and to force and energy add harmony and variety’.

Gladstone was a great actor on the stage, then he was also a shrewd manager behind the scenes. From the beginning his visits to various provincial cities were carefully planned to extract the maximum advantage. The pattern, established early on, rarely changed. Visits usually lasted three or four days. Whatever his popular appeal, he would inevitably stay in lavish comfort at the house of a local aristocrat or wealthy magnate to escape the public eye. The first day or so was spent inspecting factories and poor urban quarters. In the evening, Gladstone would be the guest of honour at large dinner parties for the rich and well connected, at which he would hold forth, or ‘converse’, on the great issues of the day. Then on the third evening came a grandstanding address at the biggest venue available, such as the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Having brought events to fever pitch, Gladstone would conclude the visit with a triumphal civic event – perhaps a speech on the steps of the town hall, or a special service of thanksgiving at the cathedral – before boarding his train for a tumultuous send-off by cheering fans crowded on to the station platform. All in all, it was guaranteed to be quite a performance.

THE DOOR OF the Billiard Room flew open. From inside came rushing a pretty young chambermaid in a state of wild panic. Running through the house calling for help, she tried hastily to rearrange her clothes. What happened next is anyone’s guess. No doubt she found a senior member of the household staff who went back with her to the Billiard Room to assess the situation. What confronted them could hardly have been more obvious: sprawled across the green baize of the table was the lifeless body of an elderly gentleman in a state of considerable undress. Quick thinking was needed. The butler was immediately called, his duty to eradicate all evidence of the circumstances of this untimely demise. Together with the valet, he hurriedly reassembled his master’s clothes and hauled the corpse upstairs to the bedchamber. From there these loyal servants proceeded quickly to the lady of the house to report the sad news: Lord Palmerston had died ‘peacefully in bed’, just two days short of his eighty-first birthday.

When the unusually mild-mannered Gladstone sat down after introducing the bill, a fierce debate erupted. High Tories such as Lord Cranborne (formerly Lord Robert Cecil) attacked the bill as democracy by the back door. From Gladstone’s own benches, Robert Lowe led the Whig assault. Lowe was among the most extraordinary characters in the House. He was an albino, with extremely poor eyesight. Reading was a struggle, particularly in the murky gaslight of late night debates, so he undertook exceptional preparation to commit vast amounts of information to memory. At Winchester College he had initially been tormented, but the boy soon learnt that a quick mind and an acid tongue won admiration and a reputation for fearlessness. It was a technique that transferred effortlessly to the chamber of the House of Commons, where he was respected as a formidable, often cruel, debater. Lowe’s attack on the Reform Bill would become notorious. ‘If you want venality, if you want drunkenness, and facility for being intimidated; or if, on the other hand, you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where do you look for them?’ he demanded. ‘Do you go to the top or the bottom? … The effect will manifestly be to add a large number of persons to our constituencies of the class from which if there is to be anything wrong going on we may naturally expect to find it.’

Throughout these opening skirmishes Benjamin Disraeli leered menacingly from the opposition front bench, but said nothing. In the lead up to the debate he had waited impassively to see how best to undermine the government. Lord Derby’s gout, which left him persistently bedridden, gave Disraeli licence to follow his own instincts at Westminster. Only after viewing the disarray on the Liberal benches did he decide to oppose the Reform Bill. Bright’s intemperate outburst had scandalised Whigs on the Liberal backbenches. Here then was an opportunity to work with them to smash Gladstone.

appeared weak and irresolute. With Russell on the verge of retirement from public life, Gladstone’s position to succeed him, which until the previous months had seemed inevitable, was now in serious doubt. Gladstone’s reputation had rested both on his competence and his authoritative presence. During the reform debates he had appeared to possess neither. Senior Liberals began to wonder if someone else might do the job better. That autumn Brand predicted that ‘Granville will be the next prime minister’. Granville himself thought Sir George Grey was the man. Clarendon wanted anyone other than Gladstone who seemed to him close to a nervous breakdown. He gleefully reported to Russell, his brother-in-law, the bizarre story of Gladstone buying the entire contents of a toyshop, and Mrs Gladstone having to rush to the store to cancel the order. ‘I have heard of her having had to do this several times within the last few months,’ he wrote unkindly, ‘a melancholy proof of his tendency and of what [those] who knew him well always told me would be his destiny if he lived long enough and gave himself no rest.’

Away from the capital, Monty Corry breathlessly reported on Easter Sunday from his aunt’s house in Shrewsbury, Rowton Castle, that ‘your name is in the mouth of every labourer, who without knowing what reform means, or caring, hears that Mr [Disraeli] has won a great victory … My private opinion is that my aunt’s carpenter, who “heard say that Mr Disraeli laid Mr Gladstone on his back” thinks that you really knocked the godly man down.’ It was a typically colourful review from Corry, who was already turning out to be a splendid private secretary. Disraeli had spotted him at a party in 1865 flirting with some attractive young women. ‘I think you must be my impresario,’ he had told him.

Thirty years later, William Gladstone would set down a memorandum on the Second Reform Bill that grudgingly recognised his own failings and the triumph of Disraeli. ‘The governing idea of the man who directed the party seemed to be not so much to consider what ought to be proposed and carried as to make sure that whatever it was it should be proposed and carried by those in power,’ he recorded. ‘The bill on which the House of Commons eventually proceeded was a measure I should suppose without precedent or parallel, as on the other hand it was for the purpose of the hour, and as a government in a decided minority, an extraordinary piece of parliamentary success.’ Few would have disagreed at the time. Disraeli had thrashed Gladstone in a display of political skill that confounded his rivals and amazed even his friends. A popular riddle of the day seemed to sum it up best: Why is Gladstone like a telescope? Because Disraeli can draw him out, look right through him, and shut him up.

While Gladstone skulked at Hawarden, Disraeli basked in the warm afterglow of his parliamentary triumph. Following recuperation at Hughenden he made one of his rare forays to Scotland (where the Tories found their ‘bitterest and most insulting foes’). There he addressed a great banquet of Tory grandees to set out in confident, ebullient terms what would soon become his defining creed of ‘one-nation’ Conservatism. ‘In a progressive country change is constant,’ he declared, ‘and the great question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines. The one is a national system; the other is, to give it an epithet, a noble epithet – which it may perhaps deserve – a philosophic system … Now my Lords and Gentlemen, I have always considered that the Tory party was the national party of England … It is formed of all classes from the highest to the most homely, and it upholds a series of institutions that are in theory, and ought to be in practice, an embodiment of the national requirements and the security of the national rights.’

Gladstone learnt the news from Derby’s son on 25 February. ‘At one heard from Lord Stanley that his father has resigned, and that D. is at work upon a cabinet.’ His thoughts on hearing this intelligence were unrecorded, but his actions speak for him. As so often, Gladstone for the next few days plunged into a frenzied stint of ‘rescue work’.

Constantly under so much pressure, it was often difficult to appreciate any real progress and achievement. After all, Gladstone wrote, ‘Swimming for his life, a man does not see much of the country through which the river winds, and I probably know little of these years through which I busily work and live.’ Yet under the guise of noting an interesting serendipity, Gladstone was able proudly to list a number of his greatest achievements. ‘This month of December has been notable in my life,’ he wrote: 1809. Born. 1827. Left Eton. 1831. [First] Classes at Oxford. 1832. Elected to Parliament. 1834. Took office: Lord of the Treasury. 1838. Work on Ch[urch] & State Published. 1846. Sec. of State. 1852. Chancellor. of Exr. 1868. First Lord [Prime Minister].’ So it was that Gladstone felt able to end his 1868 diary with the uncharacteristic, almost triumphant salutation: ‘Farewell great year of opening … and welcome new year laden with promise and with care.’

‘In doors and out of doors a disheartened opposition will be querulous and capricious,’ Disraeli had written in Bentinck. As each parliamentary session succeeded the next, that sentiment increasingly came to grip the Conservatives benches. Apart from anything else, Disraeli looked ill and jaded, and sounded worse. Years of neglecting his teeth had left him in severe discomfort. New, badly fitting dentures made speech difficult. ‘In the best part of [Disraeli’s] speech and in the middle of a sentence his teeth fell out,’ reported the Radical MP Lawrence on one occasion. ‘He caught them with extraordinary rapidity in his right hand, turned round apparently to ask a question of his neighbour, put them in, and resumed his speech at the exact word where he had left off.’ Such incidents were neither dignified nor inspiring for that sullen rank and file sitting behind him.

By early 1872, Tory MPs were mutinous. A youthful Cambridge student, Reginald Brett, best summed up their sentiments. Writing to his father, Lord Esher, solicitor general in the previous Conservative government, he shrewdly observed that ‘Dizzy’s speeches [are] brilliant enough’, but that he would never ‘frame a great opposition’ because he failed to ‘convince’. ‘He is a critic, and a capital one of a bad government,’ observed this precocious future MP, ‘but not the counter-theorist who by dint of fact and perseverance can gain his end.’ In other words, Disraeli was not Gladstone.

‘After two years of apathy he [Disraeli] is beginning to wake up, and fancy all beside are asleep,’ sympathised Lord Cairns when Richmond showed him the correspondence. ‘I know how sincerely the Duke tried to keep up free intercourse with him in vain sometimes,’ agreed Gathorne Hardy, ‘so it is clear to me how unjust [Disraeli’s] first letter was’. Nevertheless, few would have disagreed that the emergence from political hibernation of the leader of the Conservative party was both overdue and extremely welcome. Disraeli’s strategy of waiting for the Gladstone administration to run out of steam was beginning to look masterly. Observers at the St Paul’s thanksgiving service could not help noticing that Disraeli’s rapturous reception had been in marked contrast to that given to the prime minister. The Conservative leader had enjoyed cheers and waving. Gladstone met only stony silence, or even the occasional catcall. Whereas immediately afterwards Disraeli had headed to the Carlton Club to bask in this unexpected display of popularity, Gladstone had gone straight back to Carlton House Terrace for lunch alone.

Throughout his parliamentary career, Disraeli’s defining characteristics in speech had been scorn, mockery and sarcasm. Lord Curzon, a future foreign secretary, would record that Disraeli, even in his prime, ‘was not an orator by nature or art’, but was instead the master of ‘the jewelled phrase, the exquisite epigram, the stinging sneer. He was like a conjurer on a platform, whose audience with open mouths awaited the next trick.’ The success of his parliamentary speeches was inevitably judged on the number of these brilliant verbal tricks he was able to pull off. When the lines worked, they would reduce MPs on both sides of the House to helpless laughter. And they never worked better than when aimed at Gladstone. When recently the prime minister had momentarily lost the thread of his argument, stopping in mid-sentence, Disraeli had leant forward helpfully, saying: ‘Your last word? “Revolution”.’ It was a classic Disraeli moment.

The next day, an estimated thirty to forty thousand people turned up at the immense dance hall of Pomona Gardens to watch a parade of banners by hundreds of the region’s Conservative Associations. This prepared the way for the main event that night: a public address in the Free Trade Hall. (It was spectacularly ironic that Disraeli, who in 1846 had split the Conservative party on the issue of Protection, was to give one of his most famous speeches in a hall named for Free Trade.)

There were also intriguing hints about a new kind of social Conservatism aimed at poorer voters that would attract a great deal of attention in later years. ‘The first consideration of a minister should be the health of the people,’ declared Disraeli in an appealing combination of patriotism and social progressivism. ‘A land may be covered with historic trophies, with museums of science and galleries of art, with universities and with libraries: the people may be civilised and ingenious; the country may be even famous in the annals and action of the world, but, gentleman, if the population every ten years decreases, and the stature of the race every ten years diminishes, the history of that country will soon be the history of the past.’ To address this, he promised to legislate on ‘pure air, pure water, the inspection of unhealthy habitations, [and] the adulteration of food’.

This was a key moment in the development of a new kind of Conservatism, but it was barely recognised as such in Manchester that night. What set the crowd alight was a brilliantly conceived attack on Gladstone and the government that would soon resonate throughout the country. The prime minister he attacked as a treacherous radical wolf in a moderate’s clothing. A leader, Disraeli said, should ‘speak with frankness and clearness to his countrymen’. Gladstone seemed unable to be clear about anything. ‘Although the prime minister of England is always writing letters and making speeches,’ Disraeli explained, ‘he seems to me ever to send forth an “uncertain sound”.’ If Radicals called for the abolition of the monarchy, the House of Lords or the Church of England, Gladstone would slyly reveal his support with crafty nods and winks, saying it ‘was no easy task, and that he must think once or twice, or even thrice before he could undertake it’.

Disraeli kept most of the letters of condolence on the death of his wife, but Gladstone’s he threw away. Mary Anne’s death marked the beginning of a transition in the rivalry from contempt and hostility to detestation and open, vitriolic hatred.

to Buckingham Palace to see the Queen. He explained simply that, after taking a day to consider the matter, cabinet had decided the ‘safest and best course’ was to resign. He suggested that she send for Disraeli. ‘As for himself,’ Victoria recorded afterwards, ‘he wished to retire altogether for a time … [said] that he longed for rest, for the work and exertion for body and mind were beyond what human nature could bear.’ Leaving the Palace at half past three, Gladstone went straight to the Commons to make a brief announcement that he had offered his resignation to the Queen, who was sending for the leader of the opposition. By six o’clock he was back in Downing Street already looking forward to the first relaxation of his post-premiership: a visit to the studio of the artist John Everett Millais. Gladstone had been at home barely fifty minutes when a message came that Colonel Henry Ponsonby, now private secretary to the Queen, wanted to see him urgently. ‘Any news?’ Gladstone asked when the court official was shown in. ‘A great deal,’ the colonel replied. Disraeli had refused to take office. The Queen was ‘sending for you anew’. For a moment Disraeli had wavered, but after meeting Gathorne Hardy (his most trusted lieutenant) they had agreed on ‘the impracticability of office’. Certainly there were electoral advantages in declining. Disraeli had long been convinced that the Liberals would collapse and that the people would grow weary of reforming zeal. By 1873 these predict...

For the first time in modern politics the decision in front of the electorate had become a choice about individuals. ‘The contest has been in an unusual degree a personal one,’ concluded The Times, ‘and it must have been perfectly well understood that the issue to be decided was whether the country should be in the hands of Mr Gladstone or Mr Disraeli.’

Gladstone remained the dominant Liberal in parliament and beyond, with no rivals to his reluctantly worn crown. Even though he could spectacularly misjudge the public mood, he retained that gossamer ability to define an issue in a way that caught public opinion. In this he remained unmatched by any other figure in public life. He had found himself on the wrong side of popular opinion during the debate on ritualism, but this was immediately forgiven and forgotten in the wake of his attack on Catholics for their lack of patriotism. In October 1874, he had included in an essay for Contemporary Review the assertion on Roman Catholicism that ‘no one can become her convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another’. This drew an immediate response from prominent Catholics, including Newman and Ripon, which in turn prompted Gladstone to develop his theme that conversion to Rome put civil allegiance in doubt. The resulting pamphlet, The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, was a huge popular success, selling more than seventy thousand copies in a month.

She had ‘strongly’ advised him to keep his nerve on the Eastern Question and to ‘bring things to an issue’. Only the previous week, the town of Plevna in Bulgaria had fallen to the Russians, a decisive moment in their war against Turkey. A Russian advance on Constantinople now seemed inevitable. Disraeli’s ominous warnings of the previous year about the threat Russia posed to British interests in Egypt and India now more than ever seemed incredibly astute. He needed no prompting by the Queen. ‘The country is asleep and I want to wake it,’ he told her. In fact, the fall of Plevna did the job for him. The issue dominated the newspapers for weeks. A great wave of popular opinion rose up to counter the anti-Turkish sentiment that had held sway since the ‘Bulgarian atrocities’. The new demand was that ‘something’ be done to counter Russian expansionism even if that involved sending British troops to war.

This central relationship of the Congress of Berlin would quickly develop into genuine mutual admiration, liking and respect. For years afterwards Bismarck would point to three pictures on the wall in his office. ‘There hangs the portrait of my Sovereign, there on the right that of my wife,’ he would tell visitors, ‘and on the left, there, that of Lord Beaconsfield.’ Indisputable synergy existed between the two statesmen. Both men were skilled in the art of realpolitik. Neither had time for what they considered the moral bleating of those espousing humanitarian causes or an ethical foreign policy. Each was cynical yet romantic. Both revelled in flamboyant gestures and lofty statements, concerning themselves with grand strategy while minions worked out the details.

Disraeli had come to power in 1874 on a programme of moderate social reform wedded to ‘a little more energy in foreign affairs’. Few, not even Gladstone, would have doubted that their overseas policy had been ‘a little’ more animated. Even on domestic issues, Disraeli could claim to have delivered on his modest promise. Measures such as the Trades Union Acts, Artisans Dwellings Act, Sale of Food and Drink Act and Public Health Act had laid down benchmarks for the enhancement of national life, particularly in urban areas, and made funds available for their implementation (albeit at the discretion of local councils). These were not radical measures, but they did show that the Conservatives were engaging seriously with questions of how to improve the condition of the people.

VICTORIA’S PRIVATE SECRETARY, Henry Ponsonby, hovered outside the rooms of the holidaying Queen in a state of anxious delight. In his hand was a telegram from the prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, reporting that the government had lost the general election. Ponsonby by now despised the ‘oriental’ Disraeli – ‘He is not one of us’ – and would be glad to see the back of him. The prime minister’s ceaseless flattery had constantly undermined his own influence at court. More than once he had suffered the indignity of the Queen sending Lady Ely to tell him, ‘She wants you to like him.’ Now Disraeli would get his comeuppance. To add to Ponsonby’s satisfaction, there was also a tantalising prospect that William Gladstone, with whom he enjoyed excellent relations, might return to the premiership. Only one aspect of this new situation was disagreeable to the private secretary: he had to deliver the news to the Queen. Her reaction was one of predictable fury and hysteria. ‘Some of the language used,’ Ponsonby said afterwards, was unrepeatable. Most of her anger was directed at Gladstone. She screamed that she would ‘sooner abdicate than send for or have any communication with that half-mad firebrand who would soon ruin everything and be a dictator’. He would never, ever, be prime minister again. ‘Others may submit to his democratic rule,’ she howled, ‘but not the Queen.’ As to Disraeli, her sense of loss was immediate and overwhelming. ‘The grief to her of having to part with the kin...

Ensconced in Buckinghamshire, Disraeli began brooding on defeat. He received few visitors, and spent most of his days in his library or walking with Monty Corry. There was some consolation that he had finally been able to reward this most loyal secretary and confidant by seeing him elevated to ‘Baron Rowton’. (‘There has been nothing like it since Caligula created his horse a consul’ was Gladstone’s ungenerous response to the news.)

Norton Longman went down to Hughenden the following month to collect the final manuscript. He found Disraeli as twitchy as a first-time author, concerned about how the publisher would transport the bulky package. No problem. ‘My Glad …,’ blurted out Longman, choking back the name just in time. ‘My bag!’

‘I don’t give my mind at all to politics,’ he told Selina dolefully, ‘the A.V. has carried everything before him.’ But that did not mean he would not give his mind to settling scores. ‘I believe he is engaged in writing something, but this he didn’t tell me,’ recorded Gower after his visit to Hughenden. That something was a roman-à-clef, whose anti-hero – Joseph Toplady Falconet – was recognisably William Gladstone. The name was artfully chosen. ‘Joseph’ was taken from Joseph Surface, the scheming hypocrite in Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. ‘Toplady’ was the hymnist of the ‘Rock of Ages’, which it was known Gladstone had Latinised in 1839. There must surely too have been some innuendo hinting at the late-night excursions that so amused and baffled Gladstone’s contemporaries. The name ‘Falconet’ conjured up Gladstone’s appearance, both in the hawk-like intensity of his eyes and the beaky shape of his face. (‘The new members trembled and fluttered like small birds when a hawk is in the air’, Disraeli had written of Gladstone to the Queen in 1875.) Disraeli spared nothing in his portrait of the young Falconet as a clever yet unappealing character. It was his most sustained assessment of his great rival’s make-up: He was a grave boy, and scarcely ever known to smile, and this … from a complete deficiency in the sense of humour, of which he seemed quite debarred. His memory was vigorous, ready, and retentive; but his chief peculiarity was his disputatious temper, and the fl...

Gladstone’s final resting place was to be the Abbey’s North Transept, popularly known as ‘Statesman’s Aisle’. Here the bodies of William Pitt, Charles James Fox and Palmerston were buried. Memorials had been raised to Canning and Peel, both heroes to Gladstone. At the head of the grave stood the grieving widow, Catherine, ‘erect … with her expression half dreaming and half wild, but triumphant’. She watched as her husband’s mortal remains were lowered into the earth, while John Henry Newman’s ‘Praise to the Holiest in the Height’ was sung. Afterwards Catherine prayed on her knees beside the grave. Then she stood to receive the condolences of the pallbearers. In another break with tradition the Prince of Wales came to her to offer commiseration, which he demonstrated very publicly by kissing the widow’s hand. As the congregation thronged out of the Abbey afterwards to Schubert’s Marche Solennelle most seemed to agree that the straightforward service, with Mrs Gladstone at its heart, had been a fitting tribute. But amid the reverential chatter – discussing the service, reminiscing about the deceased, and reflecting on his place in history – there was also a quiet, oft-repeated sense of amazement tinged with ironic amusement. Gathorne Hardy – Lord Cranbrook – felt compelled to record this immediately in his diary on returning home that afternoon: ‘Just back from the simple, solemn and impressive service over Gladstone’s grave,’ he wrote in astonishment, ‘at the foot of Disrae...

His first Home Rule Bill in March 1886 was a momentous turning point in British politics. The Liberal party split in a manner similar to the Conservatives in 1846 on the Corn Laws. A general election in June, fought on the question of whether Home Rule was Rome Rule, initiated twenty years of Conservative political dominance. Those who left the Liberals on the question of Home Rule included grand Whigs such as Hartington and new-money millionaires such as George Goschen and Joseph Chamberlain. Thus Gladstone not only emulated his hero Peel in splitting his own party and destroying it as a political force for a generation, he also inadvertently helped make the Conservative party what Disraeli had always predicted it would become: a natural home for patriotism, tradition and wealth.