Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/171

MRS. DISRAELI Mrs. Disraeli lacked taste both in those matters and in her dress, which at all times was odd and strange, out of keeping with her age and the occasion. When she was eighty she would wear a bright crimson velvet tunic high to the throat, Disraeli's miniature fastened like an order on the left breast; at a great party at Stowe in 1845, when Queen Victoria was present, she wore black velvet, with hanging sleeves looped up with knots of blue and diamond buttons, the head-dress being blue velvet bows and buttons. She evidently had no eye for beauty, for she once said that she did not care in the least for looks in men, and would as soon have married a black man as not. Yet she had taste in landscape gardening, for the laying out of the woodland paths at Hughenden and the aspect of the whole of that portion of the grounds are due to her.

Disraeli expected great things from the marriage. The union was to seal his career: his wife was to console him in sorrow and disappointment, her "quick and accurate sense" to guide him in prosperity and triumph. All his hopes were fulfilled, in spite of great differences in their characters. Mrs. Disraeli had no ambition, hated politics in themselves, though 137