He had plenty of ambition, and brains, talent and wit too. But Benjamin Disraeli knew that if he was ever truly to succeed in politics, he would need the house. That house was Hughenden Manor.
Hughenden was to enable Disraeli to win a safe seat, become Prime Minister twice, change the face of both the Tory Party, the country and the empire, become the Earl of Beaconsfield, and be a place where this Jew of immigrant stock would write to and even feed his good friend Queen Victoria.
Now the High Wycombe home of Britain’s first and only Jewish-born Prime Minister is to come under the microscope, along with a number of other stately homes, in BBC2’s Hidden Treasures of the National Trust.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), Conservative Prime Minister and novelist. (Engraving from a photograph). (Photo by John Jabez Edwin Mayall/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The series looks at special items within some of these historic houses that have been saved for the nation and shows how they are restored. And there are some incredibly meaningful items at Hughenden, objects which tell us so much about Britain’s first ethnic-minority PM.
“The house was all about appearances for Disraeli,” says Hughenden’s curator Robert Bandy. “He wasn’t particularly interested in the countryside; he didn’t hunt or shoot or fish or any of that business. But he needed to look like a respectable local landowner, an aristocrat. He felt he would be an excellent leader of the country but to be a leader you had to be part of the landowning gentry and that is where the house came in.”
North facade of the manor house at Hughenden, Buckinghamshire (Photo: National Trust)
The eldest son of literary critic Isaac D’Israeli and Maria Basevi, Benjamin was also a novelist and a speculator with a mountain of debt, and was prone to dark moods. He was baptised at the age of 12 when his father fell out with his synagogue and being an official Christian meant he was able to enter Parliament when other Jews weren’t. But the baptism didn’t stop him falling prey to antisemitism all his life.
By the time he bought Hughenden in 1847, thanks to a large loan from his banker friends the Bentincks, he was already the leader of the Conservatives – the rump of a party which had split over the Corn Laws. But his political backers had decided that he needed to be a county MP and that meant buying a manor house and some land. The house was required to stay at the top what he first called “the greasy pole” of politics.
The Entrance Hall at Hughenden, Buckinghamshire (Photo: National Trust)
One of the items showcased in the episode on Hughenden Manor is a special wood and rattan gothic-style pink and white sedan chair which Disraeli had made when he first tried to become an MP. At the time the fashion for new MPs was to be lifted aloft in the piece of furniture but as Disraeli’s early political ambitions were thwarted, the chair went unused on three separate occasions. The series shows the rattan being fixed.
“It is the only item in the house that speaks to failure,” says the house’s curator Robert Bandy. “The chair was meant to be carried through the town in victory but after he failed three times the chair was never used again.”
The Study used by Disraeli for his political work and his later novels, at Hughenden Manor, Buckinghamshire, home of prime minister Benjamin Disraeli between 1848 and 1881. The Study has changed little since Disraeli's death. (photo: National Trust)
While failure is part of a politician’s life, Disraeli had another disadvantage; he was born a Jew. “There were posters and stories about ‘this child of Israel’ that said he was ‘too Jewish’,” says Bandy. “When you see some of the things that were written at the time, it’s hard to believe that that’s how politics worked.
“People would describe him as a ‘Jew moneylender’ who owed money everywhere. When he first stood people even threw old clothes at him – it was a trope at the time as so many Jewish people were engaged in trade around second-hand tailoring. They would shout ‘old clothes! Old clothes!’ at him. Throughout his career he was always depicted as this slightly beguiling Jewish character.”
Disraeli's writing desk in the Study at Hughenden Manor, Buckinghamshire, home of prime minister Benjamin Disraeli between 1848 and 1881. The gilt bronze inkstand was a gift from his lifelong friend Lady Londonderry. The black-edged notepaper on the desk was always used after his wife's death in 1872. (Photo: National Trust)
Disraeli knew that he could either pretend the antisemitism didn’t exist or he could own it. He chose the latter, embracing his slightly exotic “otherness” and famously telling Queen Victoria that he was the “blank page” separating the Old and the New Testaments. He would also fall out with his own party when he voted to change the rules to allow Jews who had not converted into the House of Commons.
But at the same time, he romanticised his background, claiming to come from aristocratic Spanish Jews when the truth was arguably more mundane; his forebears were merchants from Venice. That storytelling can be seen in the gates at Hughenden – repainted gold in the series – which features the Castillian Castle that were also in his coat of arms.
Black and white photograph of the Study at Hughenden Manor by Edward Sweetland. (Photo: National Trust)
“There’s this slightly invented Jewish continental history,” says Bandy. “Getting the coat of arms, becoming earl, it meant he had the ultimate seal of approval from the British establishment but within that there is this clever token of his otherness – the castle. He’s declaring, ‘I’m special and I’m exotic and you still have to accept me.’”
There are hints of his Jewish story at Hughenden, where he lived with his wife Mary Anne; a rich widow who was 12 years older than him who he’d married for money but with whom he gradually fell in love. They include Disraeli family portraits and Hebrew books he inherited from his scholar father. “The books are all mixed up on the shelves and some of them have marginalia – vivid scribblings in the margins. Some of them are his father’s books but many of them are his too. He certainly wasn’t in any rush to hide these Hebrew books and in the library you feel like this is the room where he is not being performative. There is nobody he is trying to influence; it is just him and his thoughts.”
Another of the items explored in the series is a chair he had specially designed for the Queen of England; it was a normal dining chair but with the legs chopped down so that the diminutive Victoria could keep her feet on the ground. “Her chin was probably in her soup though,” adds Bandy. At first, the Queen was not a fan of Disraeli. But by the end of his life, they were the best of friends and he was, famously, the only PM allowed to sit in her presence.
“When she first saw him at a ball, she was very unimpressed,” says Bandy. “She wrote all sorts of very unpleasant things about him in her diary, about how thoroughly untrustworthy he looked, how Jewish he looked, how dark his hair was. She didn’t like him. But he was a clever chap and realised the best way to get into the Queen’s good books was to flatter the memory of her dead husband, Albert.
“When he died, he did a long over-the-top tribute to him and he also worked very hard to help her get permission for the Albert Memorial. When he pushed that through, she sent an entwined painting of her and Albert to Disraeli, which is still at Hughenden. And he used to send her little messages, hundreds of them, that were a bit like the texts of today – snippets of gossip that she wouldn’t get in her red box.
“Apart from John Brown [her servant], there was almost nobody who closer to the Queen.
“They just loved each other and when he died, Victoria is said to have become hysterical.
“And although tradition didn’t permit her to go to his funeral, she visited Hughenden a few days later and wrote about how she was going through the house sobbing.
“She was devastated. In many ways they were both outsiders.”
Disraeli died in 1881, aged 76, still the leader of the Tories, a party which to this day reveres his notion of “one nation”.
He also died one of the most beguiling prime ministers in British history who, with the help of a house, managed to reach a station no Jew has since.
Hidden Treasures of the National Trust is on BBC2 and iPlayer with the episode about Hughenden Manor becoming available on June 7.
