Theakston K. After Number 10. Former Prime Ministers in British Politics

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Gladstone – whom he saw as the great future hope of the Liberals – from

rejoining the Conservative Party, something he came near to doing before

eventually becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Liberal govern-

ment formed by Palmerston in 1859. Gladstone would later describe his

mentor Aberdeen as ‘the man in public life of all others whom I have

loved’.

‘The People must have a victim’, Aberdeen had remarked when he was

ousted in 1855. He understood he had been judged a ‘failure’ and hounded

out of ofﬁce because of the war. But he stuck to his view that the war

may have been just but it was also unwise and unnecessary. He did not

fear history’s eventual verdict and had kept all his papers, instructing his

youngest son to publish them after his death. Unfortunately, to avoid

indiscretions, he had also given Gladstone and another old political friend

a power of veto over publication, and could not have anticipated the way

in which Gladstone later unscrupulously blocked the project to suppress

disclosures about his opposition to parliamentary reform in the 1850s

which would have been politically embarrassing to him.

The Crimean

war certainly weighed on his mind, but as Muriel Chamberlain warns,

Aberdeen’s sense of guilt or remorse about it should not be exaggerated.

The strange story about him refusing to rebuild a church on his Scottish

estates and then his relatives ﬁnding various scraps of paper on which he

had scribbled a biblical text about God commanding King David not to

build a temple ‘because thou hast shed much blood’, comes from the end

period of Aberdeen’s life when he seems to have suffered some sort of

breakdown and was in a state of ‘senile depression’ and confusion.

His

health had been failing for two or three years before he died in London on

14 December 1860, aged 76.

Lord Palmerston (died in ofﬁce 18 October 1865)

Palmerston was the last prime minister to die in ofﬁce, passing away

two days short of his 81st birthday on 18 October 1865 at Brocket Hall, his

wife’s country house in Hertfordshire. He had spent 58 years as an MP (his

peerage being an Irish one) and a record total of 48 years as a minister,

including being Foreign Secretary for 16 years and prime minister for over

nine years (1855–58 and 1859–65). He was the oldest person ever to become

prime minister for the ﬁrst time when he became PM in 1855 aged a few

months over 71 (18 of our prime ministers had died before reaching the

age he was then). He was 75 when he started his second term.

Only a man of Palmerston’s amazing zest, vitality and resilience could

have kept going in active politics for so long. Some had written him off

politically when he was defeated in 1858 but he came back. In the 1860s he

was clearly ageing and his health was starting to fail, with absences because

of illness, gout, frequent colds, kidney problems and bladder trouble, deaf-

82 After Number 10

9780230_202184_05_cha04.pdf 3/5/10 2:27 PM Page 82

10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston

ness, forgetfulness, and times when he fell asleep on the frontbench in par-

liament and during Cabinet meetings.

But he remained popular in the

country, winning re-election with an increased majority in July 1865. And

to the end he remained forceful and in control of his government. Sup-

porters and opponents alike knew that as long as he was prime minister

there would be no further instalment of parliamentary reform – it came

two years after he died.

‘There is no evidence that Palmerston was about to leave ofﬁce [in 1865]

and much less quit politics’, says Ziegler. ‘It never occurred to Palmerston

to resign’, according to Southgate.

He was planning for the new session

and working on papers and administrative issues right up to his death.

There is a popular story that he died in the act of seducing a maid on his

billiard table.

He was a notorious womaniser and had been cited in a

divorce case – which eventually collapsed – in 1863, when he was aged 79.

But the truth is more prosaic: he caught a severe chill while out driving

in his carriage, which turned into a fever and complications set in. He was

still capable of eating mutton chops and drinking port for breakfast in

his ﬁnal illness, and an open dispatch box was by his side when he died.

One suspects that, having spent his entire adult life in politics, this end

was the sort he would have wanted: he did not want to be a ‘former prime

minister’.

Lord John Russell (resigned 26 June 1866)

Russell was a front-rank player in 19th century politics for nearly 40 years,

a leading reformer who had a big role in pushing through the 1832 Great

Reform Act and a central ﬁgure in the development of liberalism and the

Victorian Liberal Party. His two terms as prime minister were not parti-

cularly successful, and his career had an unusual shape. Thirteen years sep-

arated his two stints in Number 10 (1846–52 and 1865–66), during which

time he held ministerial ofﬁce for nearly nine years under two other prime

ministers, lost the leadership of his party, twice resigned ofﬁce, made no

progress with his reformist agenda, and saw his reputation reach its nadir.

When he made it back into the premiership, he lasted only eight months

before having to resign after being defeated when rebels on his own side

combined with the Tories to destroy his reform bill. Nearly 74 he ﬁnally

left ofﬁce on 26 June 1866, living as a retired elder statesman until his

death in 1878.

Writing his memoirs as an old man, Russell admitted to having made

many ‘errors’ and even ‘very gross blunders’.

Problems of character and

temperament, as well as tactical mistakes, contributed to the rough political

ride he had in the 1850s and in his later career generally. Shy, proud

and insecure, elitist, cold, untactful, restless and impulsive, and a moral-

istic ‘conviction politician’, Russell was a difﬁcult leader and a still more

Peel to Rosebery 83

9780230_202184_05_cha04.pdf 3/5/10 2:27 PM Page 83

10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston

difﬁcult follower. He often seemed not to realise in the 1850s how unpopular

he had become and why other politicians would not at any price serve

under him. Ambitious to return to Number 10, Russell often played his

cards badly, particularly in the Aberdeen coalition 1852–55. He seemed

aloof and cocooned in his uncritical family circle, too much inﬂuenced by

his ‘protective, unworldly and cloyingly religious’ second wife, who prob-

ably exacerbated rather than helped to smooth over his political and per-

sonal differences with colleagues (who unkindly nicknamed her ‘deadly

nightshade’), supporters and the Queen.

Changes, realignments and instability in party politics and the party

system in this period shaped and constrained his opportunities and frus-

trated his ambitions. With the Liberals (themselves internally divided)

unable to win a majority on their own, and the Conservatives split, the

Peelites’ position was critical. Russell lost out on the one side because the

Peelites disliked his radical reformism and preferred more centrist leader-

ship. On the other side he was overtaken as Liberal leader by his rival

Palmerston, with whom he had fallen out as Foreign Secretary and who

had engineered the fall of his government in 1852 after Russell had dis-

missed him, and who courted the press more successfully and stood for

a tough and populist foreign policy and a more pragmatic, cautious and

consensual approach at home.

When he lost ofﬁce in 1852 Russell was nearly 60: he was someone

whose health was always delicate, but he had a large ‘hinterland’ and

enjoyed a happy family life. If he had retired then he might have been able

to play a constructive elder statesmen role and done more for his reput-

ation with his political contemporaries and historically. But he did not

want to hand the party over to Palmerston, ‘believed he had a divine right

to go on leading’, remained strongly committed to the cause of further par-

liamentary reform, and believed he would be a better prime minister than

anyone else.

The next few years were a mix of the frustrating and the disastrous

for him. He was brieﬂy Foreign Secretary, then Minister without Portfolio,

and then Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Com-

mons in Lord Aberdeen’s coalition (1852–55), resentful at being ousted and

believing there was an agreement that Aberdeen would shortly make way

for him to return to his rightful position as prime minister, and an unset-

tled and unsettling presence in the Cabinet. His petulant conduct during

the government and then the way in which his resignation brought about

its overthrow made him seem, to everyone but himself, treacherous and

disloyal. In the aftermath the Queen did at one stage ask him to see if

he could form a government but he immediately met with point-blank

refusals to serve under him from his former colleagues. Under Palmerston,

he was brieﬂy Colonial Secretary (February–July 1855) but was forced out

after an outcry over his role in failed talks at Vienna on a way out of the

84 After Number 10

9780230_202184_05_cha04.pdf 3/5/10 2:27 PM Page 84

10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston

Crimean War at which he had represented the British government. Palmer-

ston (who had thought that if Russell came back from the talks with a suc-

cess ‘he would be more inconvenient to the government than he would

otherwise be’, and who wanted to see him packed off to the Lords)

did

not ﬁght hard to resist the storm and keep him in the government.

Russell was left isolated, depressed, on the verge of a breakdown and

ﬁghting for his political life. For a while he went abroad and devoted him-

self to editing the correspondence and starting work on the life of his great

Whig hero, Charles James Fox. He was out of ofﬁce for four years, slowly

rebuilding his position. He underlined his reputation as a reformer and was

active in making public appearances and trying to rally opinion and win

support for proposals for educational, social and legal reform, helped by

and exploiting the Palmerston government’s inactivity on these fronts.

Despite his tit-for-tat role in 1857 and again in 1858 in helping to defeat

and overthrow Palmerston, Queen Victoria’s ‘two terrible old men’ managed

to make their peace and sink their differences to oust Derby’s minority

Conservative government in 1859. Each now agreed to serve under the

other, but not under a third person, and the Queen opted for Palmerston. It

is possible Russell might have become prime minister if parliamentary

reform rather than foreign affairs had dominated the political agenda at

that point.

Russell became Foreign Secretary and served in that role for six years

(1859–65). The Home Ofﬁce might have been a better post for him, allow-

ing him to display his reforming instincts. But Russell had wanted the

Foreign Ofﬁce and it suited Palmerston – more experienced in foreign

policy – to have him corralled there under his watchful eye. Russell’s judg-

ment could be poor but his ‘views on foreign affairs were little more than

an echo of Palmerston’s’, says Norman Gash, and he ‘was happy in the illu-

sion of power and activity.’

He was 67 in 1859 and probably did not

expect or hope that a prime minister eight years older than him would last

as long in Downing Street as he did. The failure of another parliamentary

reform bill in 1860 disappointed him and, with his own energies ﬂagging,

conscious of Palmerston’s continuing vigour and that Gladstone was emer-

ging as the leader of the next generation of Liberals, he decided to go to the

Lords, becoming Earl Russell in 1861.

Russell was 73 when Palmerston’s death ﬁnally put him back in Number

10 in 1865. But his tenure was brief. The old-parliamentary-reformer-in-a-

hurry had no chance to end his career on a high note, faced as he was with

a divided Cabinet and party, and blocked and defeated by an alliance

between right-wing, anti-reform Liberals and the Conservatives, resigning

in June 1866 after losing a key vote in parliament on an amendment to his

reform bill.

Not until Gladstone formed his ﬁrst government, in December 1868, was

it clear that Russell was out for good and would not hold ministerial ofﬁce

Peel to Rosebery 85

9780230_202184_05_cha04.pdf 3/5/10 2:27 PM Page 85

10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston

again. Over those 18 months, as his latest biographer says, while politically

active in the Lords attacking the Conservative government’s policies, ‘increas-

ingly, Russell seemed to defer to Gladstone’s leadership, although he

was not yet ready to retire completely’. They worked together to oppose,

unsuccessfully, Derby’s reform bill, which extended the franchise further

than the Liberals liked. Russell was no radical democrat and sounded off

to Bright about giving the vote to ‘many of the most unﬁt class; men

dependent on their landlords and employers, or open to the temptation of

bribes and beer’. Looking ahead, he tried in 1867–68 to set out an agenda

for the next Liberal government, publishing pamphlets proposing Irish

church reform and introducing resolutions in the House of Lords calling

for a minister of education and improved education for the working classes.

Gladstone thought his initiative was premature but now masses of working

men had the vote, Russell argued, it was ‘the question of the day’ and his

efforts helped strengthen the hand of those in the party pushing for edu-

cational reform, something which culminated in the 1870 Education Act.

In December 1867 he wrote to Gladstone saying he had pretty well made

up his mind not to take ofﬁce again – and the younger man did not demur

– but there were rumours a few months later that he wanted to be Foreign

Secretary again if the Liberals got back in. He took no part in the 1868 elec-

tion which saw Gladstone swept into Number 10. Knowing how trouble-

some the independent-minded Russell could be, Gladstone thought it

might be safer to have him on the inside and offered a seat in the Cabinet

without portfolio. Russell declined but later complained that had he been

offered a post such as Lord President of the Council or Lord Privy Seal he

might have accepted – which was rather hair-splitting and inconsistent.

‘Russell had never understood restraints’, wrote John Prest, ‘and it was

now too late to learn.’ Some government policies he supported: the Edu-

cation Act, the Irish Land Act. He introduced a proposal for life peers that

Gladstone backed. But he was often unhelpful and a nuisance, criticising

the government or quibbling over the details of its measures in the Lords or

the press. He opposed the introduction of the secret ballot in elections, and

though he favoured the abolition of the purchase of commissions in the

army he opposed the way in which the government went about it – by royal

warrant rather than by legislation. He was often critical of Gladstone’s

foreign policy, venting his dislike of his successor’s attitude towards the

colonies, the empire and the armed forces in his memoirs. He tried to raise

a motion of censure over the actions of the government in settling the

Alabama case with arbitration and compensation to the USA (he was

personally involved, having failed as Foreign Secretary to prevent the Con-

federate warship, built in Liverpool, from putting out to sea). In 1872

he ﬂoated a proposal for Irish and Scottish provincial assemblies (four for

Ireland, two for Scotland) to deal with the ‘local wants’ of those areas but

was strongly opposed to Home Rule for Ireland.

86 After Number 10

9780230_202184_05_cha04.pdf 3/5/10 2:27 PM Page 86

10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston

Gladstone handled the erratic and crotchety ex-PM as tactfully as he

could, writing to keep him in touch, giving Russell credit for his achieve-

ments and arguing he was building on them, and claiming he looked upon

him as his ‘oracle and master’ on constitutional questions. Gladstone saw

that Russell was declining – ‘the victim of inﬁrmities’ – and resolved it

would be best to give him only ever ‘a soft answer’. He made the gesture of

offering a peerage to Russell’s son, Amberley, who was unable to ﬁnd a seat

in the Commons. But he complained to Lord Granville about Russell’s

‘petulant acts’ and about him ‘leading the mad’.

Russell had always loved travel, and France and Italy in particular, but

after 1873 he never went abroad again. Now in his eighties he was increas-

ingly feeble, living mainly at Pembroke Lodge, the house in Richmond Park

which the Queen had given the Russells in the 1840s for their lifetime use.

As a younger son Russell was for most of his life at the ﬁnancially hard-

pressed end of the upper classes, admitting at one point that he had never

been in debt before becoming prime minister, feeling the loss of a min-

isterial salary, dependent on an annuity from his brother (the Duke of

Bedford), and unable to afford a country house of his own beﬁtting his

prime-ministerial status, though his position had been helped by inheriting

an estate in Ireland (in 1861). His grandson, the philosopher Bertrand

Russell, recalled him as an old man: warm, kindly and affectionate in his

family circle, being wheeled around his overgrown garden in a bath chair

and sitting in his room reading Hansard.

For a practicising politician Russell wrote much over his lifetime – his-

tories, biographies, and constitutional studies and, as a young man, a

novel and a play. He was well-acquainted with many notable writers. For

some years after his retirement from ofﬁce, he still attracted distinguished

political and literary ﬁgures, and eminent foreign visitors to Pembroke

Lodge, but withdrew more and more from society with extreme old age.

His memoirs, published in 1875, described as ‘disappointing’ and ‘sour’ by

one biographer, were written after his memory had begun to fail.

Family tragedies clouded Russell’s last years with the serious illnesses of

two of his sons, the death (in 1874) of his daughter-in-law Kate Amberley

and her daughter, and then the death (in 1876) of his eldest son and heir

Lord Amberley. Russell himself caught a fever and fell ill in 1878. Glad-

stone visited the fast-declining 85-year old, ﬁnding him a ‘noble wreck’. He

died on 28 May 1878. His family declined a Westminster Abbey funeral and

he was buried in the Russell family vault at Chenies in Buckinghamshire.

Lord Derby (resigned 25 February 1868)

Derby was the ﬁrst person to become prime minister three times but served

in that ofﬁce for less than four years in total (February–December 1852;

February 1858–June 1859; June 1866–February 1868) and never headed a

Peel to Rosebery 87

9780230_202184_05_cha04.pdf 3/5/10 2:27 PM Page 87

10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston

government with a parliamentary majority. He is the longest-serving party

leader in modern British politics, sitting atop the Conservative Party for

22 years until he retired. Almost uniquely he faced no serious rival or chal-

lenge in that time, standing down only because serious ill-health made it

impossible for him to continue. He lived for only 20 months after ﬁnally

leaving ofﬁce on 25 February 1868.

For all his well-known passion for the turf (though he had sold most

of his stud and formally retired from horse-racing in 1863) and for ﬁeld

sports, his scholarly erudition (he published well-received translations

of classical poetry and of Homer’s Iliad in the 1860s before becoming PM

for the third time), and the long periods of time he spent away from

London at his vast estates at Knowsley in Lancashire, Derby was no aristo-

cratic dilettante but a serious, determined and ambitious politician. He was

immensely rich, with an annual income estimated at between £60,000

and £110,000 (equivalent to £4–6 million today); of all the prime minis-

ters, only Rosebery, it is claimed, enjoyed a larger personal income. (That

said, Derby, like his father, left a huge estate debt of over half a million

pounds.)

Disraeli called Derby the ‘invalid chief’ because of his chronic and dis-

abling ill-health, severe and painful attacks of gout, plus other illnesses

and complications, frequently knocking him out of action for weeks and

months at a time. There is a story that a wine merchant tried to sell him his

sherry as a cure for gout, Derby retorting: ‘I have tried your sherry and prefer

the gout.’ But there does seem to have been a cyclical pattern of sickness

and bouts of deep depression, joined to a long-term decline in his health.

As an opposition leader, Derby was often pretty detached and inactive. The

stresses of his third premiership (he was 67 when it started), and parti-

cularly the intense struggle to pass the Second Reform Act (doubling the

size of the electorate), seem to have ﬁnally shattered his health and powers

of recovery.

There had been speculation about his retirement some years before but

Derby had kept going for two reasons: ﬁrst, to try to win a Tory majority

again (which he never did) and second because of uncertainties over the

succession. He had made his son, Lord Stanley, Foreign Secretary in his

ﬁnal government but he (and the party rank and ﬁle) had doubts about

his politics (later, as the 15th Earl of Derby, he switched to the Liberals

and served in Gladstone’s Cabinet). Disraeli was the leading Tory in the

Commons but also had plenty of detractors, though his close cooperation

and support made it possible for Derby to remain leader long after his

declining health would otherwise have forced him out. By late 1867, says

Hawkins, Derby was a ‘fading presence’, often unable to attend Cabinet

meetings, and Disraeli was effectively in charge of the government. Derby’s

doctors had been able to patch him up for particular occasions but were

ﬁghting a losing battle; the ailing PM was now bedridden and sedated with

88 After Number 10

9780230_202184_05_cha04.pdf 3/5/10 2:27 PM Page 88

10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston

laudanum/opium for long periods. Although the Queen wanted him to

continue, Derby insisted that leaving ofﬁce had become literally ‘a matter

of life and death’ for him.

There was some last-minute awkwardness because Derby, who had written

to the Queen of his intention to resign, wanted to wait until he was well

enough to hand over the seals of ofﬁce formally in person, and he pressed

for a handful of peerages for particular supporters and allies. She had

refused a similar request for peerages from Russell in 1866, but this time

reluctantly agreed, and Derby wrote to submit his resignation. He recom-

mended Disraeli as his successor but – though the outgoing PM did not

know it – the Queen had discreetly sounded Disraeli out a few weeks earlier

and had made it clear he would be chosen. The Queen expressed the hope

to Derby that he would remain in the Cabinet without ofﬁce, but he replied

his health would not permit it though he would use his inﬂuence to

strengthen the government.

Derby already had an ancient title (he was

the 14th Earl) and he had been made a Knight of the Garter in 1859 after

his second premiership; to mark his ﬁnal retirement he was made a KCMG

(the Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George).

Derby had left reluctantly and only because he could not physically con-

tinue any longer. Jones put it neatly: ‘after enjoying great prominence,

[Derby] saw in retirement that he would be like some of his old thorough-

breds, with their exciting days behind them, turned out to pasture’. Disraeli

handled his old chief with care and tact. He wrote saying he would ‘always

consider myself only your deputy’ and that the ex-prime minister’s wishes

would be treated as commands. Derby had to pooh-pooh this sort of lan-

guage and said while he would, if asked, always give his frank opinion, he

would not expect it should always be adopted and would not be affronted

if the new prime minister did not act on it. Their relations in the past

had sometimes been difﬁcult and strained but now their positions were

reversed, things worked well and they dealt with each other in, says Jones,

a ‘cordial’ and ‘diplomatic’ way. Lord Stanley remained as Foreign Secretary,

and Derby managed to secure from Disraeli a junior ministerial post to

launch his younger son, Freddy Stanley’s, political career. For the rest of his

premiership Disraeli, says Blake, ‘consulted Derby on most major issues and

on the principal lay and clerical appointments’. He was consulted on par-

liamentary tactics. ‘Derby never hesitated to give advice and never took

umbrage if it was not accepted.’ Derby became, it was said at the time, the

government’s ‘Guardian Angel’. His presence ‘over Disraeli’s shoulder’

(as Hawkins puts it) and his great prestige were useful assets to the new

PM. Derby’s departure was widely regretted in the Tory party and there

was no great enthusiasm for Disraeli who was in a weak political position:

effectively a caretaker prime minister, in a minority in parliament, and able

to do little more than mark time until a general election.

Disraeli lasted

only nine months in Number 10 after he took over, going on to lose the

Peel to Rosebery 89

9780230_202184_05_cha04.pdf 3/5/10 2:27 PM Page 89

10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston

November 1868 election. Against the tide the Tories performed better than

expected and gained seats in Derby’s stronghold of Lancashire, where he

had focused his family inﬂuence and ﬁnancial resources.

For a while Derby was active in the House of Lords where he acted as the

unofﬁcial leader of the Conservative peers. His last political battle in

1868–69 was fought in defence of the protestant Church of Ireland, with

which he had been associated back in the early days of his career in the

1820s and ’30s. Gladstone had seized on the Irish Church issue to galvanise

and unite the Liberals and disrupt the Conservatives. After Disraeli’s gov-

ernment was defeated in parliamentary votes on resolutions calling for

the Irish church’s disestablishment in April 1868, Derby – at the Queen’s

behest – urged him not to resign immediately, and the Conservatives hung

on a little longer before calling an election.

Derby spoke out vehemently against the Gladstone government’s Irish

Church bill in 1869, seeing disestablishment and disendowment as the

thin end of the wedge that would ultimately threaten the Union and lead

to attacks on the position of the English Church. He struggled against crip-

pling illness to attend and speak in the Lords where, feeble and pale, it was

obvious his energy and powers as a debater had gone for good – he was ‘an

old toothless lion’, remarked one observer after his last speech there in June

1869. Derby was intransigently prepared to ﬁght to the bitter end and

hoped that Conservative peers would throw the bill out, provoking a clash

between the two Houses, though Disraeli and the Queen sought to defuse

the crisis. In the end cross-party negotiations secured a compromise, and

the measure passed through the Lords with the help of some Conservatives

voting with the government and others abstaining. Derby was among

143 Tory peers voting against. He attended the Lords for the last time on

22 July, remarking that now ‘I have nothing left but to go away’.

Three months later Derby was dead. In September 1869 he spoke gloomily

to his son about the political future, predicting Ireland would break-away

from the United Kingdom, and that the House of Lords would come under

attack and possibly the monarchy too. His health collapsed again. His death,

at age 70 on 23 October 1869, was perhaps hastened by the shock of

the excessive dose of opium administered by his doctor to relieve his pain.

Asked how he was feeling during his ﬁnal illness, as he lapsed in and out of

consciousness, he is supposed to have replied ‘bored to the utmost power

of extinction’.

Benjamin Disraeli (resigned 21 April 1880)

After Disraeli’s farewell audience with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle,

following his resignation in April 1880, he took away as her parting gifts to

him a curious set of knick-knacks: statuettes of the Queen, her favourite

ghillie John Brown, her pony and her dog. He said he was delighted with

90 After Number 10

9780230_202184_05_cha04.pdf 3/5/10 2:27 PM Page 90

10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston

them. Though he put a brave face on it, he was bitter about his eviction

from ofﬁce and the ‘crushing and unexpected disaster’ of his general elec-

tion defeat.

The Conservatives had crashed to defeat, their majority of

around 100 seats over the Liberals in the 1874 election being more or less

reversed. Disraeli was old (75), ill and weary. But he was not yet ready to

retire from the political fray. No one thought at the time this resignation

was the end of the road for the brilliant political adventurer, or anticipated

his death exactly a year later.

Disraeli was prime minister for only about half as long as his great rival

Gladstone, occupying Number 10 twice (February–December 1868, and

February 1874–April 1880) for a total of six years and 11 months. In the last

couple of years of his main premiership he was ‘master of his party, even a

venerated ﬁgure’, but his position earlier had often been more precarious. It

had been thought he would retire with Derby; after 1868 ‘he was tolerated,

rather as Palmerston had been, because he was not expected to last long’;

there had been party discontent and talk of removing him in 1872; after

1874 he had often seemed too ill to go on; in 1876 he had decided he could

continue as prime minister only if he went to the Lords (which he did as Earl

of Beaconsﬁeld).

He had set a precedent in 1868 by resigning after his general election

defeat rather than waiting to be defeated in a Commons vote in the new

parliament. Gladstone had done the same in 1874 and Disraeli followed

suit in 1880. In 1868 the Queen had offered him a peerage which he had

declined, and had instead requested one for his wife, the odd and endear-

ing Mary Anne Disraeli, who had become Viscountess Beaconsﬁeld in her

own right. In 1880 in the couple of weeks after the election results were

known and before he formally resigned (on 21 April) he had had to deal

with those he called ‘pesterers of the 11

hour’ – applicants for honours,

rewards and appointments. ‘Winding up a government [is] as hard work as

forming one, without any of its excitement’, he protested. ‘It is the last and

least glorious exercise of power, and will be followed, [which] is the only

compensation, by utter neglect and isolation.’ Disraeli wanted nothing for

himself, having received the Order of the Garter and turning down the

Queen’s offer of a dukedom in 1878. He secured a peerage for his private

secretary, Monty Cory, which was then unique and prompted Gladstone to

mutter about ‘Caligula’s horse…’.

Queen Victoria was desolate at the loss of Disraeli as her prime minister.

She was ‘shocked and ashamed at what has happened’, she told him: what

the electorate had done was ‘disgraceful’. The prospect of the return of the

‘half-mad ﬁrebrand’ Gladstone was, to her, frightful. The advice Disraeli

had given her, after it was clear the Liberals had won, to send initially for

Hartington and not the G.O.M., was constitutionally correct as Hartington

was formally the Liberal leader in the Commons, but it only put off the

evil day for a short while. Disraeli had sometimes found ‘the Faery’, as he

Peel to Rosebery 91

9780230_202184_05_cha04.pdf 3/5/10 2:27 PM Page 91

10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston