There is, in the diary, a rare political observation. ‘The Belgians’, he wrote, ‘seem extremely hostile against the Dutch. It may be questioned whether, in case of a war, they may not rebel against the present authorities.’
This seems to have been the first comment of its kind that he made. He had not at that time seriously considered a career in politics. He had, however, come to one decision that was to upset ‘the Governor’: ‘I determined when descending those magical waters [of the Rhine] that I would not be a lawyer.’ ‘The hour of adventure had arrived. I was unmanageable.’9
Although determined not to return to the office in Frederick’s Place, or to go up to Oxford as his father had wanted him to do, Benjamin, on his return to London, did submit to his father’s wishes by not abandoning his legal training altogether: he followed Meredith in reading for the bar at Lincoln’s Inn. But he did not relish the thought of becoming a barrister any more than he had taken to the idea of becoming a solicitor. ‘Pooh!’ he has his character Vivian Grey say. ‘Pooh! THE BAR! Law and bad jokes till we are forty, and then, with the most brilliant success, the prospect of gout and a coronet. Besides, to succeed as an advocate, I must be a great lawyer, and, to be a great lawyer, I must give up my chance of being a great man.’10 And, as though to emphasize his rejection of the idea of becoming successful as an advocate, he appeared one day in the Old Square chambers of his precise and pedantic cousin, Nathaniel Basevi, with a copy of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene prominently displayed.
He was soon to decide that ‘in England personal distinction is the only passport to the society of the great. Whether the distinction arises from fortune, family or talent is immaterial; but certain it is, to enter high society, a man must either have blood, a million or be a genius.’ He also decided that he himself must have both ‘Riches and Power’.
On his return to England Disraeli had found London’s financial houses and moneyed classes excited by that prospect of making such fortunes as they had hoped to do at the time of the fever of speculation resulting in the financial crisis known as the South Sea Bubble in 1720. On this later occasion, the excitement arose from the perceived opportunity of acquiring great riches from the exploitation of the gold and silver mines of South America and the profits to be derived from such companies as the Columbian Mining Association, the Chilean Mining Association and the Anglo-Mexican Mining Association which were promoted by John Powles, a persuasive merchant banker of rather dubious reputation whom Disraeli had come across while working in Frederick’s Place and who appears as the character Premium in Vivian Grey. ‘It immediately struck me’, Disraeli was later to say, ‘that, if fortunes were ever to be made, this was the moment and I accordingly paid great attention to American affairs.’
He threw himself into the business of acquiring a fortune with almost demonic energy. Although he had so very little money of his own, he bought shares in South American companies on credit, and further shares on John Murray’s behalf. The value of the shares increased enormously; but Disraeli declined to take an immediate profit in the hope of making yet more money; and then, inevitably, the share prices fell dramatically. Disraeli, however, remained optimistic and he wrote an anonymous and seriously misleading pamphlet, published by Murray, contradicting gloomy reports that drew a parallel between the present speculation and the South Sea Bubble. He produced accounts claiming that both he and John Murray had made handsome profits. He hoped to make more with money borrowed from both his uncle, George Basevi, and Robert Messer, the son of a rich stockbroker.
Not content with his endeavours to make a fortune, Disraeli planned at the same time to found a daily newspaper with the help of John Powles’s money and John Murray’s publishing expertise. With extraordinary rashness, Disraeli himself undertook to put up a quarter of the necessary capital. Meanwhile, he set out on the four-day journey to Scotland to see Sir Walter Scott and Scott’s shy and crabby son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, a journalist who had trained as a lawyer, whom he hoped to persuade to become the proposed newspaper’s editor. It was no wonder that he felt, as he told Robert Messer, ‘acutely dizzy’.
He found both Scott and Lockhart initially wary of committing themselves to the fortunes of a non-existent newspaper; and Disraeli, spending almost three weeks in Scotland – and ‘revelling in the various beauties of a Scotch breakfast of cold grouse and marmalade’11 – did all he could to persuade them that the editor of this new paper would not be just an editor but the ‘Director General of an Immense Organ and at the head of a band of high-bred gentlemen and important interests’. A seat in Parliament would also surely be found for him.
To give authority and encouragement to Disraeli’s approach, John Murray wrote to Lockhart:
I left my young friend Disraeli to make his own way with you…But as you have received him with so much kindness and favour, I think it right to confirm my good opinion which you appear so early to have formed of him, by communicating to you a little of my own. And I may frankly say that I never met with a young man of greater promise…He is a good scholar, hard student, a deep thinker, of great energy, equal perseverance and indefatigable application, and a complete man of business. His knowledge of human nature…[has] often surprised me in a young man who has hardly passed his twentieth year, and, above all, his mind and heart are as pure as when they were first formed.12
John Murray’s high opinion of Disraeli was reinforced by the young man’s father:
I know nothing against him but his youth, a fault which a few seasons of experience will infallibly correct; but I have observed that the habits and experience he has acquired as a lawyer often greatly serve him on matters of business. His views are vast, but they are based on good sense and he is most determinedly serious when he sets to work.13
A more cautious note was sounded by one of Murray’s legal advisers, William Wright, who warned Lockhart that, while Disraeli was ‘a clever young fellow’, his judgement wanted ‘settling down’. ‘He has never had to struggle with a single difficulty,’ Wright continued. ‘Nor has he been called on to act in any affairs in which his mind has been necessarily forced to decide and choose in difficult circumstances. At present his chief exertions as to matters of decision have been with regard to the selection of his food, his enjoyment and his clothing. I take it that he is wiser than his father but he is inexperienced and untried in the world…You cannot prudently trust much to his judgement.’14
Wright went on to suggest that ‘whatever our friend D’Israeli [might] say…on this subject’, Lockhart’s acceptance of the editorship of a newspaper ‘would be infra dig, and a losing of caste’. This was ‘not the case in being editor of a Review like the Quarterly [Review, Murray’s Tory journal]. That was the office of a scholar and a gentleman.’
The longer Disraeli remained in Scotland, the closer he grew to Lockhart.* Scott, however, was less sure about the young man. He described him as a ‘sprig of the rod of Aaron’, ‘a young coxcomb’; and, when Lockhart came down to London to meet Murray, the meeting with the publisher was not a success since Murray was rather drunk – as he not infrequently was in moments of stress.
Eventually, however, it was arranged that Lockhart, who declined the editorship of the proposed new newspaper, should become editor of the Quarterly Review at a handsome salary of £1,000 a year while at the same time contributing articles for an even more generous sum to the newspaper.
Meanwhile, Disraeli occupied himself with the establishment of this paper, writing to proposed correspondents in Britain and abroad,* searching for premises, settling