Against "All that rowdy lot": Trollope's grudge against Disraeli

Victorian Newsletter, Fall, 2007 by Karen Kurt Teal

Benjamin Disraeli suffered under Anthony Trollope's pen. Trollope attacked the respected and popular prime minister in three well-known characterizations: Ferdinand Lopez in The Prime Minister (1876), Augustus Melmotte in The Way We Live Now (1874), and Joseph Emilius of The Eustace Diamonds (1873) and Phineas Redux (1874). The most obvious reason for these attacks appeared to be the prime minister's Jewish heritage. However, the types of attack were varied. The less well-known characterization of Disraeli in the person of Mr. Daubeny, the opportunistic prime minister of the Palliser novels, is emptied of anti-semitic slurs. The first three depictions were memorable and damaging, like boxing, without the gloves. Trollope's narrator tended to leaven all negative characterizations with a bit of good; even Emilius has a "manliness" about him. Nevertheless, in these depictions of Disraeli, the mediating qualities are quite thin, which causes readers to wonder about Trollope's narrator, who is usually ready to give every character his due. A closer examination of Trollope's letters, journalism, and public speeches reveals more about his long-standing distrust of Benjamin Disraeli.

Each of these characterizations contains the programmatic antisemitism of the era. Scott's Ivanhoe dismisses the Jewish characters from England at the close of the action; Dickens's Fagin leaves a lurid impression; Mark Lemmon, a Jewish confrere of Dickens who should have known better, published antisemitic cartoons in Punch; even Disraeli, who fought a life-long battle against the old prejudices, wrote some of the most surprising antisemitic literature of all in the character Sidonia of Tancred (1847), who insists that "All is race." Antisemitism was as common in the Victorian age as ambition and coal smoke. Jewish newcomers settling in London were lumped together with all the other recent arrivals, forming an exotic encampment of humanity in the City and east of Gracechurch and Bishopsgate Streets, and inspiring strong literary reactions. In Oliver Twist (1838), the narrator reminds the reader in an eerie passage that, as the wealthy class moved to the west end of London, they abandoned their noble family houses in the City to the undeserving masses engaged in nefarious activities. Thus Dickens describes the house of Fagin:

   It was a very dirty place. The rooms upstairs had great high wooden
   chimney-pieces and large doors, with paneled walls and cornices to
   the ceiling; which, although they were black with neglect and dust,
   were ornamented in various ways. From all of these tokens Oliver
   concluded that a long time ago, before the Jew was born, it had
   belonged to better people, and had perhaps been quite gay and
   handsome: dismal and dreary as it looked now. (88)

In Dickens's works, this no-man's land was a place to which one was abducted; in the works of Doyle, the disorderly east-London was a place to be probed and policed. In the East End, William Booth found a degenerating swamp of subhumanity and wrote about it in his book, In Darkest England. Trollope's work reflects these widespread attitudes. But I want to argue that, at least for Trollope's narrator, antisemitism was a cover for the author's jealousy of Disraeli, indicating a philosophical dismay over the politician's policies and showing a great difference in the two men's world-views as they are revealed in their novels about the privileged classes.

At the outset of Disraeli's second term as prime minister, Trollope parodied him in Phineas Redux (1874). Because of the scrutiny given in the press to the politicians of the day, readers were well aware of Disraeli's particular speaking style and personal history.Trollope capitalized on this awareness, and his characterizations of Disraeli would have been instantly recognized by his public (Hertz 385). In Phineas Redux, the preacher Joseph Emilius is a fashionable minister to the aristocracy. It is suspected that he is a converted Jew. Through an eloquence and charm that the narrator dubs "greasy," Emilius has made his way into the circles of social prominence, and he marries a wealthy English widow. Disraeli was noted for his magnificent and quick-witted speeches and debates, for his personal charm, and for a preacher-like manner at the podium. He also married a wealthy widow. Trollope's narrator warns the reader that Emilius assumes qualities that he really does not have, and once he is revealed to be of undistinguished background--a ci-devant Jew from Prague, a bigamist, and also a murderer--he is dropped from the text.

The second notable representation is the character Augustus Melmotte, a financier in The Way We Live Now (1875). Characterized as a "fat alien Jew" with blurry nationality, Melmotte bursts suddenly on the scene. He involves many impoverished English aristocrats in his effort to establish a dubious financial operation in London, and his brief financial reign involves hosting an expensive dinner for the King of China and buying a seat in Parliament. When Melmotte's real estate swindles are discovered, he takes his life. The depiction seethes with abuse of power, falseness on a gargantuan scale, and an implication that its subject does not know his place. Trollope's fictional treatment of Disraeli is brutal and tasteless. Mullen remarks that in his depictions of Disraeli, Trollope was "at times quite irrational" (560). The Spectator called the novel "a sewage farm" (Smalley 397). Trollope admitted that the satire was too harsh, but he never completely understood what angered readers (Autobiography 295-96).