Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/69

 the Tories a long hold of power. Such a success will be less difficult, he says, than Peel's was after the deluge of the Reform Bill, but it only needed patience to succeed. G. H. Moore declares that the popular idea that Disraeli created Lord George Bentinck is a mistake. Bentinck was untrained in politics when the Corn Laws were repealed, but he was a man of prodigious will. In one of his horsey cases it was necessary to produce a livery stable keeper of whom he had no trace; he took up the London Directory and determined to go to every livery stable in the city until he had found' his man, and he found him. Some of the young bucks on the Liberal side are fond of sneering at Disraeli's devotion to his wife, who would not, perhaps, be a suitable Queen of Beauty at a new Eglington Tournament, but to whom he owes everything. M'Cullagh Torrens says he saw them one night leaving the opera; when descending the grand escalier one of the lady's shoes got untied, she stopped suddenly, and cried, 'Dizzy, tie my shoe.' Dizzy dropped on his knee and performed the service required. And why not? It is the devoir of a cavalier to his lady.

"One of my friends told me of an adventure he witnessed at Bellamy's. Olivera, who has a craze for the introduction of French wines at a nominal duty, stalked up to the table where Disraeli was dining, and, picking up a little flask of red wine and glancing at it between him and the light, demanded, 'Do you know what you are drinking, Mr. Disraeli? You think it is port wine, but it isn't.' 'No,' replied the man of the world, who was determined not to be bored, 'I have no doubt it was made at Holywell Street, but I like it.'

"On the opposite side of the House the eye was caught by a figure diminutive and insignificant to deformity. Ill-dressed, ill-posed, with unsympathetic, melancholy face, timid gestures, and feeble gait, he seemed an intruder on the scene, and was in fact a leader who for twenty years had shivered at the head of a great party. But it was my conviction then, and it remains my conviction, that if he were not the son and brother of a duke he would not have distinguished himself in a parish vestry. Around and behind him were the Whig and Peelite leaders, for whom all strangers in the gallery and newcomers in the House inquired.