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‘Mr Disraeli sparkles spontaneously with epigram,’ it lamented, ‘but Mr Gladstone’s wit it must be confessed is somewhat elephantine.’
‘That is the most dangerous statesman in Europe,’ he remarked to one of Gladstone’s daughters at a reception to honour a foreign diplomat. ‘Except, as your father would say, myself, or, as I should prefer to put it, your father.’
Nor was Disraeli immune from criticism, in particular that he was too soft in not immediately declaring war on Russia. ‘What are you waiting for, Lord Beaconsfield?’ shouted one pro-war supporter at a banquet. ‘At this moment for the potatoes, Madam,’ the prime minister shot back smoothly.
Disraeli retired to the country once serious campaigning began. Lord Salisbury put Hatfield House at his disposal (along with several cases of 1870 Château Margaux, ‘because I mentioned once my detestation of hosts who give you an inferior claret at dinner’). So Disraeli surrendered himself to fate, the will of the people and the delights of Salisbury’s wine cellar.
the Queen discovered that Disraeli’s illness was potentially life threatening. She asked if she might visit him at Curzon Street. ‘No it is better not,’ he told his doctors. ‘She would only ask me to take a message to Albert.’
