Disraeli was clearly attracted to this young woman and, a few days later, asked his sister if she would like her as a sister-in-law. She was, he said, ‘very clever, [had] £25,000, and [was] domestic. As for “love” and beauty all my friends who married for love and beauty either beat their wives or live apart from them. This is literally the case. I may commit many follies in life, but I never intend to marry for “love”, which I am sure is a guarantee of infidelity.’3
Sarah did not like the idea of Lady Charlotte as a sister-in-law and thought it unlikely that she had as much money as her brother supposed. She suggested that he should make another proposal to William Meredith’s sister, Ellen, whom he had already asked and by whom he had been refused.
For the moment, however, while looking about for a suitable wife, Disraeli was content to have a married woman as a mistress; and his family supposed that he had found such a mistress in Clara Bolton, the wife of his doctor, George Buckley Bolton.
Mrs Bolton was another woman whom Sarah did not care for. Nor did other women who knew her, for she was considered socially pretentious, conceited, devious and unprincipled, though by no means stupid, while her husband, the doctor, was ill-bred, cocky and, it was supposed, as a mari complaisant, not above accepting money from his wife’s admirers. These admirers, so Clara Bolton was anxious to assure Disraeli, were many and diverse, not a ‘formal set’, she told him, listing their names. ‘I give them nothing to do,’ she said, ‘& nothing to eat and yet they come.’ Disraeli often went. ‘We all agree,’ he said, ‘it’s better than a club.’
The other woman, Henrietta Sykes, who was in the box at the theatre with Lady Charlotte Bertie, was the wife of Sir Francis Sykes, the third baronet, owner of Basildon Park in Berkshire as well as a town house in Upper Grosvenor Street. His grandfather had become extremely rich in the service of the East India Company; his father, a Member of Parliament, had married a daughter of the first Lord Henniker. His wife was the daughter of Henry Villebois of Martham Hall, Norfolk, also a rich man, a partner in the brewery firm of Truman and Hanbury. Lady Sykes herself, according to her friend, Lady Charlotte Bertie, was ‘a fine woman and very pleasant and good-natured’. She was also extremely pretty, wilful, impetuous, sensual and susceptible. She had four young children.
The prospect of meeting this woman, with whom her brother had soon fallen in love, elicited a worried letter from Sarah Disraeli when her brother proposed bringing her down to Bradenham:
I am so afraid it will rain & then Lady Sykes will die of ennui, for how can we amuse her of an evening as it is, & then the long mornings too. She will hate us. Let us know as well as you can what établissement travels with her…
Send the claret directly as we want that at any rate & it will not be good if it have not time to settle…I write in the greatest haste4…I am somewhat nervous at the idea of entertaining our visitors whose tastes I cannot even guess at.5
The next day Disraeli replied:
I received yours this morning. We come on Saturday but at what hour very doubtful. I sho[uld] think about 3. Lady Sykes will venture to bring her only daughter [Eva] aged three. But no nurserymaid. I assured her my mother wo[uld] not disapprove of a pretty child. For the rest her page and soubrette, [Isabella Margaret] Munro…I shall send my groom with my horse in Munro’s gig. Be not alarmed about amusement; our guests are indolent and loungy.6
Sarah need not have been so worried. Apparently the visit was not such a strain as she had feared it might be; and, when Lady Sykes and her lover returned to London, they were evidently more deeply in love than ever. She wrote him a series of passionate letters assuring him of her devotion, telling him how much she missed him when he left her, how she could not restrain her tears. ‘If you knew how desolate this house is – your white stick on the sopha, a ghost of departed joy…’
It is the night Dearest the night that we used to pass so happily together…I cannot sleep. I love you…I love you indeed I do…The dear head, is it better? That it were pillowed on my bosom for ever. I would be such an affectionate old Nurse to my child and kiss and soothe every pain…Good Angels guard my dearest. A thousand and a thousand kisses – Good night. Sleep and dream of – your Mother.7 Love me, my Soul, love me and be assured that the measure of my idolatry for you is full to the brim [she wrote in another letter]. Every breath I draw is yours, even now your kisses live on my lips and face and I feel the passion of your embrace…Best beloved, do you love me? Do you indeed? How often have I asked you that question, how often been soothed by your assurance of devotion to me. I do not doubt you, oh no, I dare not – it would drive me mad.8
When Sir Francis heard of his wife’s affair with Disraeli – being told of it, Lady Sykes supposed, by Mrs Bolton, with whom Sir Francis himself was by now having an affair – he forbade his wife ever to see Disraeli again.
Lady Sykes had no doubt as to how to deal with her husband and the woman she called ‘Madame’. She stormed round to Mrs Bolton’s house, where she found her husband’s carriage waiting in the street outside. ‘I walked in [she told Disraeli] sans knocking and up to the drawing room sans being announced. Fancy their consternation. I really thought Francis would have fainted.’
‘We are victorious,’ she closed her version of this encounter. ‘Madame cried and wrung her hands. F[rancis] cried and begged me to be merciful. I did not cry and had apologies from both.’
Mrs Bolton, who had once, so she said, received letters from Disraeli, protesting ‘undying, unspeakable, obligation’, now told Lady Sykes that she had heard on excellent authority that no one would visit her any more and that Disraeli himself would leave her. ‘Indeed, he has left you already,’ she said, ‘I know him well. He is everywhere despised.’
Ignoring such outbursts from Mrs Bolton, Henrietta Sykes agreed to go for a few days with her husband to France, whence she wrote to Disraeli: ‘Think of the happy ten minutes on the sopha…and how delicious would be…the happiness of returning to the peaceful cot and reposing in each other’s arms. It would be bliss, bliss beyond compare, and hope whispers it will be realized – most idolized, I love you, I adore you, I worship you with fond idolatry.’9
On her return from the Continent, Disraeli left Bradenham almost immediately to see Henrietta again; and one day in London her father saw them together in the street and walked past, ignoring them: a slight which, in their absorption with each other, they did not notice. Mr Villebois, however, instructed one of Henrietta’s sisters to let her know that he would continue to ignore them until their intimacy ceased. His heart was ‘almost broken’ by the scandal, he said; and he trusted that she would end the disgraceful relationship.
‘I wrote back’, Henrietta told her lover, ‘to say…I was agonized by his displeasure but so long as Francis allowed me your society I should enjoy it.’10
The scandal which so distressed Mr Villebois was exacerbated when Disraeli accepted an invitation to stay with the Sykeses at Southend – where they had taken a house, Poulter’s Grange – Sir Francis having invited him on the implied condition that the Boltons were to stay there too. ‘I think…you will like the quiet of this place,’ Henrietta wrote. ‘The greatest drawback will be the damnable Boltons. They poison