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“Dizzi-Ben-Dizzi”: Disraeli as Alien

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Anthony S. Wohl
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Most of Disraeli's recent biographers have drawn attention to the anti-Semitism which he experienced as a schoolboy and as an aspiring politician at the raucous free-for-all of the early Victorian hustings. But the barrage of anti-Semitism directed at him when he was prime minister between 1874 and 1880 has not received the same scholarly attention. Lord Blake, for example, in a work of almost 800 pages, devotes only three short sentences to the anti-Semitism of this period. To some degree it is easy to see why this is so. Although Disraeli was baptized into Christianity just before he turned thirteen, he was so harangued and ridiculed as a Jew during his early election campaigns that the anti-Semitic mood of the public could not be ignored, either by contemporary observers or by historians. The anti-Semitism he faced as prime minister, however, was not literally thrust in his face, and it did not intrude on his public appearances. It is perhaps understandable then that historians, contemplating the marked contrast between the vigorous Jew baiting of Disraeli's early elections and the absence of it in his later ones, would assume that, whatever prejudices might lurk in private diaries, letters, and memoirs, expressions of anti-Semitism in that most public of all arenas, the world of politics, were now unacceptable. Increasing political decorum, the triumph of liberal and nonconformist ideologies, the Emancipation of the Jews in 1858, their continuing acculturation and assimilation, their greater role in public life, and of course Disraeli's own prominence as leader of the “national” party combined, it might be argued, to create a political and social climate in which public expressions of anti-Semitism were neither profitable nor respectable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 3: Victorian Subjects , July 1995 , pp. 375 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1995

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References

1 Throughout the notes, unless stated otherwise, the place of publication is London. The title of this article is taken from Weldon's Christmas Annual, Dizzi-Ben-Dizzi, or the Orphan of Bagdad (1878). Disraeli was also called Ben-Dizzy the Bold (Ben-Dizzy the Bold. A Retrospect, in Verse by a True Briton Dedicated to the Electors of England [n.d.]), Ben Ju ju (Fun [August 27, 1876]), and Hasch, Ben Sad (Truth, Xmas Number [December 25, 1879])Google Scholar. The term “anti-Semitism” is of course subject to a wide variety of interpretations. In this essay I suggest that the anti-Semitism directed against Disraeli went beyond a general antipathy toward Jews, a generalized Judeophobia or xenophobia. It developed, to apply one definition employed by Levy, Richard S. in his excellent brief essay, Antisemitism in the Modern World: An Anthology of Texts (Lexington, Mass., 1991), pp. 2–3Google Scholar, from “a casual prejudice, a peripheral concern” to become, for many cited in this essay, “a central and life-shaping force, the means by which they have come to understand the world.” The hold of liberal ideas, however, on the men discussed in this essay was sufficiently strong for them to hold back from advocating any concrete political or constitutional solutions for the ills they attributed to Anglo-Jewish power and influence. I also suggest that the anti-Semitism during the Eastern Crisis went beyond “ethnic prejudice” and “xenophobic hostility” to take on some of the “significant chimerical” or mythic qualities which Langmuir, Gavin, in his superb Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1990)Google Scholar, regards as a crucial feature of anti-Semitism (see Langmuir, pp. 315, 338, 341).

2 Blake, Robert, Disraeli (New York, 1967), pp. 604–5Google Scholar. Both Shannon, R. T. in his Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, 1876 (1963)Google Scholar, and Holmes, Colin in his very important Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1876–1939 (1979)Google Scholar and “Goldwin Smith (1823–1910): A ‘Liberal’ Antisemite,” Patterns of Prejudice 6, no. 5 (September-October 1972): 25–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, drew attention to the anti-Semitic strains of the period but do not focus on either the depth of passion leveled against Disraeli at this time or the language of the diatribes. The same applies to recent biographies of Disraeli, among them Bradford, Sarah, Disraeli (1985)Google Scholar; Vincent, John R., Disraeli (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar; and Walton, John K., Disraeli (1990)Google Scholar. Weintraub's, StanleyDisraeli: A Biography (New York, 1993)Google Scholar, which has more references to anti-Semitism than any other recent biography, appeared after this article was accepted for publication. Although Weintraub has much new material on expressions of Victorian anti-Semitism, inevitably he does not have the time or space, in a comprehensive personal and political biography, to analyze in depth the anti-Semitism Disraeli faced as prime minister. Feldman's, DavidEnglishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, 1840–1914 (New Haven, Conn., 1994)Google Scholar was published after my article was accepted. Although I cover very similar ground to that in his chapter “Disraeli, Jews and the English Question,” I am more interested than he in the imagery and associations contained in the attacks on Disraeli and their relationship to the literature, language, and iconography of anti-Semitism. Even specialized studies of Disraeli's Jewishness do not deal with the latter period. See Endelman, Todd M., “Disraeli as Jew,” Jewish Chronicle Literary Supplement, vol. 7 (December 23, 1966)Google Scholar; Rieff, P., “Disraeli: The Chosen of History,” Commentary, vol. 13, no. 1 (January 1952)Google Scholar; Berlin, Isaiah, “Benjamin Disraeli, Karl Marx, and the Search for Identity,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 22 (1968–1969)Google Scholar; Jaffe, B., “A Reassessment of Benjamin Disraeli's Jewish Aspects,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 27 (1982)Google Scholar; Fisch, H., “Disraeli's Hebraic Compulsions,” in Essays Presented to Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Zimmels, H. J., Rabbinowitz, J., and Finestein, I. (1967)Google Scholar; and Smith, P., “Disraeli's Politics,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 37 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An especially sensitive treatment of Disraeli is R. W. Davis, Disraeli (1976).

3 “Prejudice,” like “anti-Semitism,” has been used to cover a wide variety of sentiments and actions and requires careful definition. Throughout this essay I use “prejudice” as the unfavorable stereotyping or contempt for and hatred of a subordinate minority. See Rose, Arnold, “The Roots of Prejudice,” in Race and Science (New York, 1969), p. 397Google Scholar. I also suggest that Victorian prejudice against Jews had within it the element of displaced anger projected onto a “socially provided target, a scapegoat” stressed by Freudians. See Langmuir, p. 322. I use the term “prejudice” in a manner similar to Colin Holmes, for whom prejudice is unfavorable prejudgment of individuals or groups “in defiance of manifest differences” and involves “an expectation and evaluation of behaviour” (Holmes, Colin, “J. A. Hobson and the Jews,” in Immigrants and Minorities in British Society, ed. Holmes, Colin [1978], p. 134)Google Scholar.

4 In 1871, by which time Jews had been elected aldermen to several towns, two Jews, Sir David Salomons in 1855 and Sir Benjamin Phillips in 1865, had served as Lord Mayor of London; there were several Jewish Q.C.s.; and the last few remaining disabilities had been removed by Gladstone. Jews, from the opening days of the struggle for Emancipation in the early 1830s, had, for the most part, been loyal Liberals. By acculturation is meant “a minority group's emulation of a dominant culture's values and mores,” by assimilation, “a minority group's absorption into a dominant culture.” See Zatlin, Linda, The Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Jewish Novel (Boston, 1981), p. 22Google Scholar. Unlike acculturation, assimilation in Victorian England implied intermarriage and conversion to Christianity. Of course both acculturation and assimilation were often viewed critically in this period, the former because of its alleged continued tribalism or separateness, the latter because it was alleged to be insincere. A frequent cry after Emancipation was that Jews were simply “going too fast.” See Burton, Richard, Lord Beaconsfield: A Sketch (1882), p. 6Google Scholar. See also Levy, p. 5.

5 For the expressibility of prejudice, see Ehrlich, Howard J., The Social Psychology of Prejudice (New York, 1973), p. 12Google Scholar.

6 Fun (August 27, 1876).

7 The Reverend Chester, Greville J., quoted in the Jewish Chronicle (September 8, 1876), p. 363Google Scholar.

8 See esp. Stephens, W. R. W., The Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman, 2 vols. (1895)Google Scholar; and the Bryce Papers, Bodleian Library. See also Holmes, , “Goldwin Smith,” p. 27Google Scholar. For this variety of epithets with the ring of Shakespeare or Marlowe to them, see Ashworth, James, Imperial Ben: A Jew d'Esprit (1879), pp. 56, 76, 78Google Scholar.

9 Burton, p. 6; Beaconsfield: A Mock-Heroic Poem and Political Satire (1878), p. 23Google Scholar.

10 Peace or War! An Indictment of the Policy of the Government (n.d.), pp. 2–3.

11 “Benjamin Disraeli's success took place in an established, deeply status-conscious society, that was by and large unthinkingly anti-Semitic” (John Plumb, introduction to Davis [n. 2 above], p. xii).

12 Bucks Gazette (Saturday, November 10, 1832). It identified Disraeli as the “Israelitish writer.”

13 For the Taunton by-election, see Russell, W. E., Afterthoughts (1912)Google Scholar, quoted on p. 125. For the O'Connell incident, see Gunn, J. A. W., Matthews, John, Schurman, Donald, and Wiebe, M. S., eds., Benjamin Disraeli Letters, vol. 11, 1835–1837 (Toronto, 1982), quoted at n. 1, pp. 41–42Google Scholar. This led to a famous retort by Disraeli and his challenge, to O'Connell's son, Morgan, to a duel; see Blake (n. 2. above), pp. 124–26. Blake calls O'Connell's “one of the most ferocious pieces of invective which the annals of British politics can furnish” (p. 124).

14 Fraser, William, Disraeli and his Day (1891), pp. 473–74Google Scholar. For the Shrewsbury election, see the Disraeli Papers, Bodleian Library, B/1/B/29.

15 Fraser, p. 473.

16 See, e.g., Vanity Fair (November 21, 1874), pp. 278–79Google Scholar; Cornelius Brown, An Appreciative Life of the Right Hon., the Earl of Beaconsfield (1882), 1:10Google Scholar; Geffoken, F. H., The British Empire, trans. Macmillen, S.J. (1889), p. 237Google Scholar; Rendall, Magnus, Gladstone, Disraeli and the Whig and Tory Parties: A Lecture (1867), p. 6Google Scholar.

17 Cited in Public Opinion (April 30, 1881), p. 537Google Scholar.

18 For the anti-Semitism contained in the literature and drama of the period, see esp. Zatlin (n. 4 above); Modder, Montagu Frank, The Jew in the Literature of England: To the End of the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1960)Google Scholar; Fisch, Harold, The Dual Image: The Figure of the Jew in English and American Literature (New York, 1971)Google Scholar; and Rosenberg, Edgar, From Shylock to Svengali: Jewish Stereotypes in English Fiction (Stanford, Calif., 1960)Google Scholar.

19 Here and later in the essay I am clearly referring to what amounts to a conspiracy theory. In both language and attitude of mind, it has much in common with the anti-Semitic writings of Hobson and others during the Boer War (a war caused, it was alleged, by world Jewry) and with the notorious The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, published in Russia in 1898 and introduced into England after the First World War. For Hobson, see Holmes, , “J. A. Hobson and the Jews,” in Holmes, , ed. (n. 19 above)Google Scholar. For the Protocols, see Levy (n. 1 above), p. 147; and Cohn, Norman, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (New York, 1967)Google Scholar.

20 During the Emancipation struggle, the Reverend George Croly, for example, had asked, rhetorically, “What Christian could consider his religious rights safe, under a Jew Chancellor or a Jew Premier?” (my emphasis). But the way he continued, “The Jew, to this hour, holds the Christian in contempt. The Jews are a people under Divine Condemnation” (his emphasis), certainly had implications beyond the religious. See Croly, George, The Claims of the Jews Incompatible with the National Profession of Christianity (1848), p. 5Google Scholar.

21 Adler, Hermann, “Can Jews be Patriots?” Nineteenth Century 3 (April 1878): 637–49Google Scholar; and Smith, Goldwin, “Can Jews be Patriots? Nineteenth Century 3 (May 1878): 875–87Google Scholar. See also Smith, Goldwin, “The Jewish Question,” Nineteenth Century 10 (October 1881): 494–515Google Scholar, and his “The Jews: A Deferred Rejoinder,” Nineteenth Century 12 (November 1882): 687–709Google Scholar. For a brief discussion of this interchange, see Holmes, , “Goldwin Smith” (n. 2 above), pp. 27 ffGoogle Scholar. For a critical analysis of Goldwin Smith on both sides of the Atlantic, see Tulchinsky, Gerald, “Goldwin Smith: Victorian Liberal Antisemite,” in Antisemitism in Canada: History and Interpretation, ed. Davies, Alan (Waterloo, 1992)Google Scholar.

22 Jewish Chronicle (August 3, 1877), p. 2Google Scholar. It spelled Disraeli “D'Israeli” to accent his Jewishness in the eyes of his critics.

23 Arthur Sketchley's popular and opinionated Mrs Brown, referring specifically to “Disreely,” proclaimed herself “one as don't believe in converted Jews” (Sketchley, Arthur, Mrs Brown on “Dizzy” [1874], p. 55)Google Scholar.

24 See Tancred, chaps. 17 and 29; and Blake (n. 2 above), p. 203. Blake calls Sidonia, in whose mouth Disraeli placed the phrase about “tattooed savages,” “Disraeli's revenge for Fagin.” “Flat-nosed Frank” was a crushing phrase vibrant with demeaning physiognomical import that would certainly be picked up by his contemporaries: flat, pug, or snub noses were, in the science of physiognomy, a sign of mental inferiority, low moral standing, and arrested development. Jews were generally caricatured as “hook nosed.” For a recent discussion of this, see Gilman, Sander, “The Jewish Nose,” in The Jew's Body (New York, 1991), pp. 169–93Google Scholar. The psychological impulses behind the Jewish and racial content of Disraeli's early writings have received extensive attention. Besides Blake, Endelman, Rieff, Berlin, Jaffe, Fisch, P. Smith, and Davis (see n. 2 above), see Gilam, Abraham, “Benjamin Disraeli and Jewish Identity,” Wiener Library Bulletin, n.s., 33, nos. 51–52 (1980): 2–8Google Scholar. Contemporaries were of course startled and angered by what one called his “inflated Judaism” as well as what they regarded as his studied slur on English racial characteristics. See, e.g., “The Religious Creed and Opinions of the Caucasian Champion of the Church,” in Fraser's Magazine 78 (September 1868): 364Google Scholar.

25 Repeatedly during the Eastern Question, Disraeli's earlier writings were cited as evidence of his contempt for things English and so of his suspect loyalty. See, e.g., Smith, Goldwin, “A Word for Indignation Meetings,” Fortnightly Review 24, no. 139 (July 1878): 94 ffGoogle Scholar; “The Political Adventures of Lord Beaconsfield,” Fortnightly Review 23, no. 142 (May 1878): 691–709Google Scholar.

26 Wemyss, Rosslyn, Memoirs and Letters of the Right Hon. Sir Robert Morier, G.C.B., from 1826 to 1876 (1911), p. 84Google Scholar. For “the great Asian mystery,” see Tancred, chap. 17, and for the statement on race, see chap. 20. Both phrases are from the mouth of Sidonia. It is important to note that Sidonia's aphorism about race follows a passage in which he praises England as “the arbiter of the world”: “A Saxon race, protected by an insular position, has stamped its diligent and methodic character on the century. And when a superior race, with a superior idea to work and order, advances, its state will be progressive.” The mid-Victorian period was saturated with anthropological and ethnographic works on races and racial characteristics, works which were extremely hierarchic, typological, and judgmental in their emphasis. See Stepan, Nancy, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (Hamden, Conn., 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stocking, G., Victorian Anthropology (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; and Biddiss, M., ed., Images of Race (New York, 1979)Google Scholar. As with his other novels, Disraeli was simply incorporating current ideas and concepts, and he was hardly as idiosyncratic as some biographers have suggested. For Disraeli as racial thinker, see the excellent thesis by Dinkin, David L., “The Social and Political Ideas of Benjamin Disraeli” (M.S. thesis, University of Bristol, 1981)Google Scholar. Horsman, Reginald, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), pp. 69 ff.Google Scholar, also puts Disraeli's views on race into a broader context.

27 Edinburgh Review 97 (April 1853): 421Google Scholar.

28 [“An English Liberal”], The Indignation Meetings of the Liberals and the Conduct of Affairs in the East (1876), p. 2Google Scholar. Information about the Bulgarian atrocities first trickled into England on May 4, 1876: by May 19 there was absolutely no doubt about the ferocity with which the Turks had suppressed the rebellion, and throughout June the newspapers were full of it (Disraeli Papers, box 67, B/xvi/A/11a).

29 Taylor, A. J. P., The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792–1939 (1957), p. 74Google Scholar. The massacres constituted, Taylor writes, “the political crime of the century.”

30 Henry Locke to Lord Lytton, December 21, 1878, India Office Library, Letters from England, quoted in Rooke, Patrick, Gladstone and Disraeli (1970), p. 12Google Scholar. The emotion of the day and the mass protest movement it inspired is best analyzed in Saab's, Ann Pottinger fascinating study, Reluctant Icon: Gladstone, Bulgaria, and the Working Classes, 1856–1878 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991)Google Scholar.

31 Disraeli told the House on July 10, 1876, that he did not believe that the Turks used torture since they were “an historical people,” “who generally, I believe, terminate their connection with culprits in a more expeditious manner.” The Spectator (July 15, 1876) rightly predicted that this “mal-a-propos levity” would alienate England—“England will be all aflame if we are to shield a Power which restores order by the wholesale use of massacre, outrages, and the sale of children into slavery,” p. 881. See also Bryce's, JamesStudies in Contemporary Biography (1903), p. 32Google Scholar.

32 For the view that both Disraeli and Gladstone had their eyes firmly focused on party cohesion and party politics in general during the Eastern Crisis, see Swartz, Marvin, The Politics of British Foreign Policy in the Era of Gladstone and Disraeli (New York, 1985), esp. chap. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Shannon, R. T., The Age of Disraeli, 1868–1881: The Rise of Tory Democracy (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

33 SirChurchill, Winston, quoted in Stansky, Peter, Gladstone: A Progress in Politics (New York, 1979), p. 3Google Scholar; Morley, John, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (New York, 1904), 2:551Google Scholar.

34 Stead, W. T., ed., The M.P. for Russia: Reminiscences and Correspondence of Madame Olga Novikoff (1909): 1:293Google Scholar.

35 For Stead, see letter of August 26, 1876, Gladstone Papers, British Library, Add. MS 44,303, vol. 219. Stead rushed to congratulate Gladstone on his “noble pamphlet” and for having “once more taken your proper place as the spokesman of the national conscience.” For Morley, see Morley, 2:555.

36 Disraeli's annoyance showed in his Aylesbury speech in which he expressed the fear that “designing politicians may take advantage of such sublime sentiments, and may apply them for the furtherance of their own sinister ends,” which, as The Times pointed out, could refer only to Gladstone! It was, it said, “one of the gravest charges ever made by one eminent English statesman against another” (The Times [September 21, 1876]). See Disraeli's dark references, a week after Gladstone's pamphlet appeared, to the world gone mad “as it does periodically,” in the letter to his secretary, Montagu Corry, September 13, 1876, Disraeli Papers, box 69, B/XVI/B/1.

37 Emotions were heightened by widespread concern for the safety of India. As one contemporary observer succinctly put it: “The Eastern Question …, as seen from London, is, ‘Shall the English be driven out of India?’ And after all that resolves itself into another question: ‘Can Russia frighten or drive us out?’” (Mill, John, The Ottomans in Europe; or Turkey in the Present Crisis [1876], p. 31)Google Scholar.

38 The Times said Disraeli's policy “would have appeared inevitable to a Chatham or a Pitt” (Public Opinion [April 23, 1881], p. 507)Google Scholar. Richard Millman, in what is the best diplomatic history of the Eastern Crisis, comments on Disraeli's pragmatism: he was, he says, “prepared for any Ottoman sacrifice consistent with British prestige,” and Millman concludes, after 450 closely reasoned pages, “Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, a Russian occupation of Constantinople would have been a serious blow to British prestige in the Near East, India, Europe and London” (Millman, Richard, Britain and the Eastern Question, 1875–1878 [Oxford, 1979], pp. 454, 455Google Scholar).

39 Ashcroft, T., The Turko-Servian War; its Prominent Features and Probable Results (1876), p. 3Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., pp. 3, 20–21.

41 [“An English Liberal”] (n. 28 above), pp. 4, 9–10. The Turks represented “moral filth” (p. 10).

42 Kendall, R. J., in Public Opinion (September 9, 1876), p. 327Google Scholar.

43 Weekly Review (August 19, 1876); Nonconformist (October 3, 1877).

44 Quoted in Johnston, John Octavius, Life and Letters of Henry Parry Liddon (1904), p. 222Google Scholar.

45 Smith, Goldwin, “England's abandonment of the Protectorate of Turkey,” Contemporary Review 31 (February 1878): 615Google Scholar.

46 Dr. Baxter Langlet at a protest meeting in Woolwich, (Daily News [September 4, 1876])Google Scholar. The ethnic hatred and prejudices contained in these diatribes would certainly lend weight to Said's, EdwardOrientalism (New York, 1978Google Scholar). Yet many Liberals preferred Islam to Russian Orthodoxy, as did the diplomatic corps out there. Parry, J. P., in his Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867–1875 (Cambridge, 1986), p. 124CrossRefGoogle Scholar, stresses this.

47 It is clear that Nonconformist Liberal radicalism did not hesitate to stereotype or damn wholesale, or heap contempt on whole cultures. Liberalism was shot through with a keen sense of sin and moral outrage and could damn and condemn without a sense of illogic or betrayal of liberal ideology.

48 “English Mahommedans,” Spectator (September 9, 1876), p. 1122Google Scholar. See also the statement of the Reverend J. Llewelyn Davies: “It is inevitable that some account should be taken of the fact that the disaffected subjects of Turkey are Christians. There are many persons in this country—others as well as Jews—to whom this fact is a reason for lending their sympathies to the Turks” (The Religious Aspect of the Eastern Question, Eastern Question Association Papers no. 2 [1877], p. 3)Google Scholar.

49 Sartre, Jean-Paul, Portrait of the Anti-Semite, trans. de Mauny, Erik (1948), pp. 33 ffGoogle Scholar, 14.

50 Rose (n. 3 above), p. 407.

51 Echo (August 16, 1879); Spectator (November 6, 1880), p. 1404. The stereotyping of English Jews as Orientals in morals and tastes was well established before the Victorian period and was not laid to rest even in our own century.

52 It was during this crisis that Carlyle coined the memorable phrase, “the unspeakable Turk” (Taylor [n. 29 above], p. 77).

53 Sinclair, J. G. Tollemache, A Defence of Russia and the Christians of Turkey (1877), pp. 113, 124, 131Google Scholar.

54 The Merchant of Venice was enormously popular in Victorian England, and even though the great Irving portrayed Shylock with a degree of humanity, the traditional view of the Jew as one obsessed with bloody revenge was not shaken. For this and Disraeli's close identity with a bloodthirsty Shylock, see discussion below; and Rosenberg (n. 18 above). For interpretations of The Merchant of Venice from Shakespeare's own day to the present, with a very important section on Victorian productions, see Gross, John, Shylock: A Legend and Its Legacy (New York, 1992)Google Scholar. Inevitably, Irving's portrayal of Shylock (he first played the role in 1879) prompted comparisons, not all uncomplimentary, with Disraeli (Gross, p. 148).

55 Smith, Goldwin, “England's abandonment of the Protectorate of Turkey” (n. 45 above), p. 617Google Scholar. Quoted also in Holmes, , Anti-Semitism in British Society (n. 2 above), p. 12Google Scholar, and “Goldwin Smith” (n. 2 above), p. 27.

56 Freeman, E. A., “The Relation of the English People to the War,” Contemporary Review 30 (August 1877): 494–95Google Scholar.

57 Freeman, E. A., The Ottoman Power in Europe (1877), pp. xviii, xix, xxGoogle Scholar.

58 Quoted in Stead, ed. (n. 34 above), 1:364.

59 Church Times (August 25, 1876).

60 Englishman (November 11, 1876), p. 97Google Scholar.

61 Crosbie, William, The Beaconsfield Policy: An Address (1879), p. 14Google Scholar. This was an address given to the Victoria Street Chapel Literary Society in Derby and to the Zion Church Young Men's Society in Sheffield, both in December 1878.

62 Kinnear, John Boyd, The Mind of England on the Eastern Question (1877), p. 14Google Scholar. The author was closer to the mark when he argued that only Disraeli spoke in public “to palliate the Turkish acts [the massacre of Bulgarians].”

63 Blake (n. 2 above), p. 6. Blake has a detailed analysis of Disraeli's family background, both the realities and the myths.

64 Beaconsfield: A Mock-Heroic Poem (n. 9 above), pp. 24, 6. For the image of the wandering Jew in Victorian England, see Modder (n. 18 above), esp. pp. 352 ff. See also Anderson, George K., The Legend of the Wandering Jew (Providence, R.I., 1965)Google Scholar. The wandering Jew was very much alive as a popular folk legend in the 1870s. See Conway, Moncure Daniel, The Wandering Jew (1881), p. 159Google Scholar.

65 Reid, T. Weymss, “Lord Beaconsfield,” Politicians of To-Day: A Series of Personal Sketches (1880), 1:38–39Google Scholar; Bryce, Lord, “Lord Beaconsfield,” Century Magazine (March 1882), p. 733Google Scholar.

66 Lord Bryce, pp. 733, 741. Bryce continued, “Even while imitating, as the wealthier of them [Anglo-Jewry] have latterly begun to imitate, the manners and luxuries of those nominal Christians among whom they live, they retain their feeling of detachment, and so far from sharing, regard with a coldly observant curiosity the beliefs, prejudices, enthusiasms of the nations of Europe.”

67 Baring, Evelyn, Disraeli (1912), p. 12Google Scholar; Spectator (May 1, 1875), pp. 554–55Google Scholar. See also the Spectator's obituary, “Lord Beaconsfield never thoroughly understood, or could have understood, the English people. But he understood them well, so far as the intelligent foreigner ever does understand them” (quoted in Public Opinion [April 30, 1881]).

68 Hood, E. Paxton, “Act the Citizen” (preached at Cavendish street Chapel, Manchester, November 25, 1878), in The Beaconsfield Sermons: No. 2 (Manchester 1878)Google Scholar; Fraser (n. 14 above), p. 341.

69 Pall Mall Gazette (April 19, 1881); Froude, J. A., “Lord Beaconsfield,” in The Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria, ed. Reid, Stuart J. (1890), pp. 85, 170, 261–62Google Scholar. It is interesting that to at least one organ of French opinion, Disraeli was, on the contrary, English through and through: Disraeli was “English to the very tips of his fingers in his policy” and alien “only in his oratory” (Le Temps [August 15, 1876], quoted in Public Opinion [August 9, 1876], p. 230Google Scholar). Explicit expressions in England of Disraeli's Englishness are rare, but see the obituary in the Newcastle Express: Disraeli “with all his faults, was a thorough statesman and a thorough Englishman” (Public Opinion [April 30, 1881], p. 539)Google Scholar.

70 The Spectator (July 27, 1878), pp. 954–55Google Scholar.

71 For “our Oriental Premier,” see Weldon's Christmas Annual, Dizzi-Ben-Dizzi, or the Orphan of Bagdad (n. 1 above). For “Ben Sad Hasch,” see Truth, Xmas Number (December 25, 1879); A. W. G., Dissolution of Parliament: A Statesman's Adventures in Search of a Majority: A Political Squib (Edinburgh, 1880), p. 8Google Scholar. For “Oriental Elf” and “Asian blood,” see Beaconsfield: A Mock Heroic Poem, pp. 7, 48. It is important to note that at least some references to Disraeli as Oriental were meant as light humor or as tokens of affection. The Jewish Chronicle itself declared “to the East the heart of the Jew naturally turns, as the sunflower to the sun. With the East our grandest and most glorious memories are associated” (Jewish Chronicle [April 9, 1880], p. 3)Google Scholar.

72 Echo (August 16, 1879) and (December 6, 1879); Nonconformist (August 23, 1876).

73 Freeman, , “The Relation of the English People to the War” (n. 56 above), p. 494Google Scholar.

74 Baring, p. 12.

75 Linda Colley has convincingly argued that national identity is denned against, and at the expense of, the mythic “Other.” See Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992)Google Scholar, and “Britishness and Otherness: An Argument,” Journal of British Studies 31, no. 4 (October 1992)Google Scholar.

76 Hill, Frank, Political Portraits: Characters of some of our Public Men (1873), p. 35Google Scholar. Hill's work was first published as a series in the Daily News in 1872–73. Lord Bryce was one of the few to try to pinpoint what he meant by Disraeli's “alien” qualities and his “very imperfect apprehension of the English people.” Bryce argued, without giving specific examples, that Disraeli had an inability to understand dissenters and contemporary “puritanism” (Lord Bryce [n. 65 above], p. 741).

77 Bentley's Miscellany, no. 21 (1847), p. 385Google Scholar.

78 “Lord Beaconsfield: 1. Why we follow him, by a Tory. 2. Why we disbelieve in him, by a Whig,” Contemporary Review 36 (December 1879): 680, 682Google Scholar.

79 See, e.g., Walpole, Spencer, “Disraeli,” in Studies in Biography (1907), p. 126Google Scholar.

80 O'Connor, T. P., Lord Beaconsfield: A Biography (1905), pp. 672–73Google Scholar.

81 Spectator (July 13, 1878), quoted in George C. Thompson, Public Opinion and Lord Beaconsfield, 1875–1880 (1886), 2:450Google Scholar; Lord Bryce, p. 730. Bradford ([n. 2 above], p. 472) writes that Gladstone cited portions of Tancred as proof of Disraeli's antipathy to the Eastern Christians.

82 Quoted in Ramm, Agatha, ed., The Political Correspondence of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, 1876–1886 (Oxford, 1962), 1:28Google Scholar. Gladstone said that these “Judaic feelings [were] the deepest, and truest, now his wife has gone, in his whole mind.”

83 For Gladstone's use of “crypto-Jew,” see Berlin (n. 2 above), p. 13. See also Gladstone to his friend, Arthur Gordon, September 1876, quoted in Morley (n. 33 above), 2:552; Bradford (n. 2 above), p. 472; Berlin, p. 13. Gladstone told Halifax that the real motivation behind Disraeli's Eastern diplomacy “was his Judaism” (Halifax to Bryce, in Millman [n. 38 above], quoted on p. 524, n. 63).

84 Matthew, H. C. G., ed., The Gladstone Diaries, vol. 9, January 1875–December 1880 (Oxford, 1986), p. 161Google Scholar, n. 4. Gladstone's statement was made in correspondence with Leopold Gluckstein and continued that he, Gladstone, was “aware that as regards the Jews themselves, there may be much to account for it [their support of Turkey].”

85 Jewish Chronicle (December 26, 1879), p. 9Google Scholar. For other examples of its fears, see the Jewish Chronicle (December 7, 1877), p. 3Google Scholar, and (January 17, 1879), p. 4 (a very powerful leader entitled “Mr. Gladstone and the Jews”). See also Jewish World (December 26, 1879), in a leader also entitled “Mr. Gladstone and the Jews.”

86 The phrase “Turkophile press of Vienna” is Goldwin Smith's. For this and his conviction that it was dominated by Jewry, , see Contemporary Review (February 1878), p. 618Google Scholar. For Bright's, John epithet, see Echo (March 2, 1878)Google Scholar; and for the “Daily Levy,” see Truth (October 16, 1879), pp. 468–69Google Scholar. Labouchere, the proprietor of Truth, and Lawson were engaged in a bitter and much-publicized lawsuit in 1879 when Labouchere claimed that he had been physically assaulted by Lawson.

87 Truth (January 3, 1878), pp. 17–18Google Scholar; Truth (April 4, 1878), p. 452Google Scholar.

88 O'Connor, p. 654.

89 Nonconformist, quoted in the Pall Mall Gazette (April 29, 1881).

90 For the portrayal in this period of the Irish as Neanderthal men, as throwbacks, or as victims of arrested development, see esp. Curtis, L. P., Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (Newton Abbot, 1971)Google Scholar.

91 Gilman, Sander, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca, N.Y., 1985), p. 20Google Scholar.

92 For Stead's revealing phrase, see Gladstone Papers, Add. MS 44,303, vol. 218, W. T. Stead papers, April 9, 1880.

93 Saab (n. 30 above), p. 63.

94 Hermann Adler (n. 21 above). See also Adler, Hermann, “Jews and Judaism: A Rejoinder,” Nineteenth Century 4 (July 1878): 133–50Google Scholar, and “Recent Phases of Judaeophobia,” Nineteenth Century 10 (December 1881): 813–29Google Scholar; G. Smith, “Can Jews be Patriots?,” “The Jewish Question,” and “The Jews: A Deferred Rejoinder” (all at n. 21 above). See also Holmes (n. 2 above), pp. 27 ff.

95 The Spectator (November 28, 1880), quoted in the Jewish Chronicle (December 3, 1880), p. 5Google Scholar.

96 Jewish Chronicle (December 3, 1880), p. 5Google Scholar.

97 For an analysis of the medieval and Renaissance concepts of the Jews' “evil eye” and use of astrology and alchemy and association with the devil, see Trachtenberg, Joshua, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modem Anti-Semitism (New Haven, Conn., 1943), esp. pp. 57 ff.Google Scholar

98 Freeman, , “The Relation of the English People to the War” (n. 56 above), p. 495Google Scholar; Freeman to Mme. Olga Novikoff, March 4, 1877, in Stead, ed (n. 34 above), 1:334. Freeman also thought England was “Jew-ridden” (Freeman to Bryce, June 5, 1878, Bryce Papers, MS 6, fol. 167).

99 Spectator (July 20, 1878), p. 915Google Scholar; (August 24, 1878), p. 1061; and (November 2, 1878), p. 1357. In its obituary the Spectator argued that he “displayed the genius of a political magician in making English nobles, and English squires, and English merchants prostrate themselves before the image of the policy which he had set up” (Public Opinion [April 30, 1881], p. 538)Google Scholar. Similarly, the obituary in the Sheffield Telegraph: “The success of Mr. Disraeli would in ancient times have been attributed to supernatural aid” (Public Opinion [April 30, 1881], p. 539Google Scholar.

100 Roth, Cecil, Benjamin Disraeli: Earl of Beaconsfield (New York, 1952), quoted on pp. 84–85Google Scholar. Carlyle also called him “a cursed old Jew, not worth his weight in cold bacon” (p. 85).

101 Jenkins, Edward, Haverholme, or the Apotheosis of Jingo (1878), p. 51Google Scholar. In 1867 when he became prime minister, Disraeli was called “the potent Wizard” (Skelton, , The Table-Talk of Shirley [1895], p. 257)Google Scholar. See also Arendt, H., The Origins of Totalitarianism, quoted in Holmes, , “Goldwin Smith,” p. 26Google Scholar.

102 Britain at the Bar: A Scene from the Judgment of Nations: A Domestic Poem (1877), p. 14Google Scholar. See also O'Connor (n. 80 above), p. 467; Birmingham Daily Post (April 20, 1881); and the Nonconformist (April 10, 1878).

103 Two Imperial Policies (1878), pp. 21–22Google Scholar; Gosse, Edmund, Books on the Table (1921), p. 7Google Scholar.

104 Gould, J. W., “The grand old Pilot,” Liberal World, A Monthly Journal and Review for young Men 1, no. 7 (July 1880): 105Google Scholar.

105 Public Opinion (September 6, 1876), pp. 359–60Google Scholar.

106 The devil image was tapped, consciously or unconsciously, by Dickens in his portrayal of Fagin. For a most convincing analysis of Fagin as devil, see Zatlin (n. 4 above), esp. pp. 124–25.

107 Freeman to Bryce, October 22, 1876, Bryce Papers, MS 6, fol. 125; E. A. Freeman to the Rev. G. C. Boase, March 26, 1877, Bryce Papers, Add. MS, Rev. G. C. Boase, 35,073, fol. 61. “Synagogue of Satan” occurs in Revelations; see Trachtenberg (n. 97 above), p. 20. In view of the popularity of The Merchant of Venice (MV) in nineteenth-century England, it is worth noting that Trachtenberg points out, on page 26, that there are two references in it to the association of Jews and the devil: “Let me say ‘Amen’ betimes lest the devil cross my prayer, for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew,” (MV 2.1.22), and “Certainly the Jew is the very devil incarnate” (MV 2.2.27). See Freeman to Bryce, April 10, 1881, Bryce Papers, MS 7, fol. 11. To Freeman, Disraeli was the “Arch-Deceiver” (Stead, , ed., 1:371)Google Scholar.

108 Stephens (n. 8 above), 2:389; Bryce Papers, MS 6, fol. 137, April 8, 1877; Bryce Papers, MS 6, fol. 125, October 22, 1876.

109 [“Comus”], The Devil's Visit to Bulgaria and Other Lands (Brighton, 1876), p.5Google Scholar.

110 Cuckson, J., Earl Beaconsfield: A Political Sketch (Birmingham: Birmingham Liberal Association, 1878), p. 18Google Scholar.

111 Morley to Frederick Harrison, November 23, 1876, quoted in Hirst, F. W., Early Life and Letters of John Morley (1927), 2:35Google Scholar.

112 Gladstone asked Disraeli to document the charge and also his alleged verbal abuse of Disraeli during the entire Eastern Crisis, a cold response which further irked Disraeli who replied that he was far too busy with matters of state to go through the entire record! Gladstone stuck to his guns and said he criticized Disraeli's policies, not his character. He did in fact generally avoid slandering Disraeli's character and would not be drawn into the mudslinging of the 1870s. For all this, see Gladstone Papers, Add. MS 44,457, fol. 168, letters of July 30, 1878.

113 Quoted in Battiscombe, Georgina, Mrs Gladstone. The Portrait of a Marriage (1956), pp. 158, 174Google Scholar. See also the Nonconformist (June 13, 1877). For “foetor judaicus,” the unwholesome smell of the Jew, associated in part with the devil and the devil's favorite animal, the goat, see Trachtenberg, pp. 48 ff.

114 Quoted in Battiscombe, p. 174.

115 Stead, William T., Gladstone in Contemporary Caricature (1898), p. 49Google Scholar. Disraeli's Continental goatee (always emphasized in hostile cartoons), the Ziegenbart, assisted in the association of Disraeli with the devil. In John Tenniel's cartoon of Alice in the railway carriage for Carroll's, LewisAlice through the Looking Glass, published in 1871Google Scholar, Disraeli is actually accompanied by a goat. See Engen, R., Sir John Tenniel: Alice's White Knight (Aldershot, Hants, 1991), p. 94Google Scholar.

116 Fun, vol. 20 (Summer 1874)Google Scholar, frontispiece.

117 Echo (April 25, 1878).

118 For “earned reputation” and prejudice, see Allport, Gordon W., The Nature of Prejudice (Garden City, N.Y., 1958)Google Scholar, passim.

119 Boyle, A., The Sympathy and Action of England in the Late Eastern Crisis and What Came of Them (1878), p. 11Google Scholar.

120 Spectator (October 12, 1878), p. 1259Google Scholar.

121 Jewish World (December 19, 1879); Jewish Chronicle (February 22, 1878), p. 10Google Scholar; Jewish Chronicle (March 1, 1878), pp. 9–10Google Scholar; Jewish Chronicle (October 7, 1881), p. 6Google Scholar.

122 Gladstone Papers, Add. MS 44,665, account in the Daily News (April 19, 1878). At the meeting, organized by the Nonconformist Vigilance Committee, Gladstone, who came in after Tucker's remarks, was presented with a memorial address, praising him for his “manly avowal of the great principle of righteousness as the only true basis for Christian statesmanship,” the “noble courage with which you have defied the malignant opposition you have had to encounter,” and the “purity of your patriotism.”

123 Holmes, , “Goldwin Smith” (n. 2 above), p. 28Google Scholar.

124 Biddiss, Michael D., “Myths of the Blood,” Patterns of Prejudice 9, no. 5 (September-October 1975): 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 Vivien Grey: A Romance of Youth (1904), 1:14Google Scholar. For Vivien Grey and Disraeli's other early novels as a portrayal of his “own complex and varied experience as a Jewish patriot in Victorian England,” see Modder, Montagu F., “The Alien Patriot in Disraeli's Novels,” London Quarterly and Holborn Review 159 (July 1934): 366Google Scholar.

126 The Spectator actually argued that, with the exception of perhaps a hundred or so families, “There are no English Jews, properly speaking,” for all other Jews had foreign elements still in them. Maybe those elements, it continued, would one day evaporate, “But as yet there are no distinctively English Jews” (Spectator [December 25, 1875], p. 1622Google Scholar).