The Novels of Benjamin Disraeli and Oscar Wilde

Very glad to see that there is such a robust interest in Oscar Wilde

and perhaps Benjamin Disraeli. Let’s say Tom Cable is here representing

the English department’s interest in Oscar Wilde.

We’re also want to thank the HRC. It’s our connection with the HRC

that we’re able to have literary as well as historical and political topics

in this group. And today, it’s Sandra Maya who who’s speaking about the novels

of Benjamin Disraeli and Oscar Wilde. She

is a research fellow in English literature at the University of Vienna

and in Oxford at Wolfson College. She is the author of

the book Oscar Wilde in Vienna. And she’s now writing

another book that will explore a literary celebrity and

politics from the 19th century to the present. Sandra, we

look forward to the. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much, Roger, for this extremely kind introduction. And it is absolutely

overwhelming to speak in front of such a wonderful audience. Thank you so much for

spending the time this way on the honor on a hot Friday afternoon, which is

probably the thing to do. Now, I would like to thank Roger and the entire

British studies team and also especially Mary Ann, where she was

with Mary full force, really taking so much time and effort and putting

so much time and effort into making me feel so incredibly welcome here. And this is definitely

a great honor and a great joy to be back in Austin and to talk about

some of my research and kind of which kind of brings together Oscar Wilde

and Benjamin Disraeli. Now, I already said this over lunch, but it is actually something I would like to repeat

because I think that the British Studies seminar fulfills an important function as a port of

call for the many wandering scholars like myself who cross the center’s

threshold each year and who might otherwise feel slightly sort of uprooted

and this oriented. So I think, you know, this is really a place that brings people

together, people of all backgrounds, of all disciplines, and literally

from all over the globe. And I think this is really a unique institution

and therefore, it is an enormous honor for me to be part of it and to be talking

about some of my research and in the way I was thinking today. It does feel a little bit like things

coming full circle. It is certainly something I would not have dreamed of when many years ago

in the early 2000s when I was still a student. I picked up one of the early

Britannia volumes and I check just before I left Vienna. It was the green, still

more adventures with Britannia. And I remember being hugely impressed

by this. And so obviously it’s wonderful to be back so many years later to be

part of this fantastic project. Now, I will have to slightly disappoint

you and other novels of Benjamin Disraeli and Oscar Wilde. I’m not going to

feature all that much in this talk. As you can see, celebrity is going

to make an entrance here. The performances of the celebrity

self in a kind of ill matched looking pair that is

Benjamin Disraeli and Oscar Wilde Brothers. I’m going to argue the two got

more in common than initially meets the eye. Now, when it comes

to performing the celebrity herself, I think we would all agree that someone

like Oscar Wilde, whose papers, of course, are amongst the most popular and therefore also

digitally available collections preserved right here at the Harry Ransom Center,

must count as a true virtuoso player whose genius for sale fashioning

himself advertising turned him into a well-nigh universally recognized

figure, actually long before he made his name as a writer. More than that,

his preparedness to turn himself into a brand and to make himself

available for consumption paved the way to his status as

a global cultural icon off and for our time, someone whose

work and whose name and image have been endlessly reappropriated reinvented,

reworked across media, across Sean Ru’s, and literally from every

conceivable ideological angle, which is something that I think attests to Wilde’s remarkable

ability to be everything to everyone and

also to serve as a kind of projection screen. I think for a nearly inexhaustible

array of agendas. Now, Oscar Wilde certainly is without doubt

and quite clearly one of the most market-rate English language writers.

Obviously, someone who alongside Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens

has become a public property. Feeding a never ending Oscar

Wilde industry, as it were, of literary criticism, of biography,

of television, film, all sorts of things,

as well as, of course, the more mundane realms of popular entertainment culture.

And I mean, mind you, the examples that are put up here on this slide only represent a tiny selection

of the most recent appropriations of the so-called wild myths,

and which, of course, is a taste to by the fact that he has conquered the more

mundane readers of popular entertainment and consumer culture with his name and image being

used to just about sale. Anything from. Luxury fountain pens

to literary toys like this Oscar Wilde action figure that you can see up here

to East Anglian Ale, which is one of the more recent examples that they came

up with. And I think we could find dozens, if not hundreds of more curious examples

if we just keep digging and browsing the Web anyway. So while Oscar Wilde’s

turbulent lives and afterlives bear all the recognizable hallmarks of modern

celebrity, including scandal, commodification and multimedia

reproduction. Benjamin Disraeli, statesman and novelist

and of course, today primarily remembered as one of the defining political figures

of Victorian Britain. And here we’ve got this famous portrait, my John Everett Millais,

that was finished after his death might at first glance seem to be an odd bedfellow

in this context. And yet in 2016, a small temporary exhibition

display at Hughenden Manor, which is Disraeli’s former country

estate near High Wickham in Buckinghamshire, which was acquired by Israel in 1848

but is now owned by the National Trust, was actually dedicated to

the Israeli celebrity. Well, there you go. So this exhibition

display was centered around a handful of objects from the shoe and then

collections that would all sort of shed a light on one specific

aspect of Disraeli’s celebrity status, such as, for instance,

a presentation copy of his last published novel, Endymion, which came out

in the wake of his second term in office as prime minister in 1880. And it is actually

inscribed and dedicated to Disraeli by his publisher, Thomas Long Them.

Now, it was a novel for which Disraeli received, at least for the

standards of the day, a staggering advance payment of 10000 pounds.

Ralph Love roughly equaling something like a quarter of a million US dollars in

today’s money. And again, it’s probably nothing compared to what some people received today.

But in those days, it was believed to be, at least by his publisher, the largest

sum ever paid for a work of fiction. And it was certainly only

the second novel published by a former prime minister. Now

the first novel published by a former prime minister was, of course, also by Disraeli

and his first post premier novel, low-fare came out in 1870.

And it was a similarly extraordinary literary coup. And there is

a scrap of paper preserved amongst Israelis papers in the Bodleian Library,

which I have the pleasure to unearth. And so spend some time there working my

way through those hundreds and hundreds of boxes and leaders to say you can spend the rest of your life there,

which is not what I intend to do, but it is certainly something that it

would be a lifetime’s work, not even that. But anyway, I came across

a little scrap of paper, which looks like this, and it is actually

quite an astonishing document of all forreal, self-assertion and pride,

because it lists in Disraeli’s own handwriting some of the items and commodities

that have been named after the hero and the heroine of his then newly published

novel, low-fare and Corrie sonde. And you’ve got a very eclectic mix here.

You’ve got, for instance, Mr Stevens is called you’ve got a

Mr Malloy’s song. You’ve also got a Greenwich ship that was named after

low-fare, apparently a low-fare gallop, a low-fare perfume, a low fare street.

So it really gives us an indication of some of the dimensions of the low fare mania that was

triggered by the publication of this book. And then if you take a look at the right hand side

column, you’ll find Corey sonde, Baron Rothschild’s Fili,

which if we are to believe some of the telegrams preserved amongst Israelis personal

papers, wasn’t actually doing so badly in the racecourses.

But anyway, the object, therefore, very much alludes to the Israelis literary celebrity status

and the fact that to this day, the Israeli remains the only British prime minister

who both started off and ended his career as a highly prolific

author of no less than 17 novels. I mean, mind you, these

days, anything is possible in British politics, which has sort of

disintegrated into madness and chaos.

But it is interesting that these days there is another novel writing prime

minister who in his own personal self mythologize nation, not coincidentally

citing both Israeli and Churchill amongst his literary and

political forebears. Who is at the helm of British politics or well, at least tries to

be. Now, I’m not sure if anyone here in this room is familiar with Boris Johnson’s

literary masterpiece, which is entitled 72 Virgins A Comedy

of Errors, published apparently in 2004, which is,

mind you, I haven’t read it. So this is all secondary knowledge is apparently a hostage

Friedler with a group of suicide bombers targeting the

visiting US president who can only be saved, apparently by a bicycle

riding tousled Tory MP. Surprise, surprise.

Anyway, we won’t go into that. A commentator and the Guardian has said that all excellent copies of

the book should be quietly and mercifully be destroyed. So I think that should be the end of it

here. Right. What else was there? This exhibition display. There was also

a pair of political cartoons from Punch as representative

of a political celebrity culture growing from the mid 19th

century on the wars, when party politics and party ideologies began to be increasingly

personified through party leaders who became the subject of a plethora

of commercially produced visual and material representations such

as cartoons, caricatures. But then all sorts of other paraphernalia,

commemorative plates and marks and Staffordshire figurines in order to forge a more effective

bond between those leading figures and a gradually expanding

electorate. Now, in the course of his career, the Israeli featured in over 200

and 80 of those cartoons was designed for a mass audience and very much

breaching the areas of art, politics and popular culture were hugely

influential in raising his public profile and in shaping his

reputation. And there’s actually a folder amongst Israelis of personal papers

that is entitled Humorous News Cuttings. Under these found examples

from the 1830s to the 1870s and the assumption of Causey’s that

he started collecting these little scraps of paper and these caricatures,

and then later on they got collected by his private secretaries as a means of keeping some kind

of control or at least knowing how he was being perceived by the public.

Now, many of those punch cartoons were actually produced by John Tenure, the famous illustrator of

the Alice books. And so the uncanny israelian resemblance

spawned by the traveler in the white paper sued. Sharing a railway

carriage with Alice would not have been lost upon readers of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking

Glass, which came out in 1871. Now, actually, some scholarship has focused

quite extensively on the ways in which

these cartoons sometimes reflect the rampantly anti-Semitic

representations of Israelis Jewishness. And this is something that relates to another item

on display, namely the Israelis seal stamp bearing his

crest, which made his first appearance in the early 1840s and which bears in the image of

the Sicilian castle, the Sicilian tower, as a tribute to the Israeli SSAFA,

the Jewish lineage. And this points us towards two things. First of

all, he points us towards the exotic appeal of the Israelis otherness. And second

of all, it also points us towards the way in which romanticized or glamorized

versions of this otherness featured as a key element

in the fashioning of the Israeli self image. Throughout his life, despite the

fact that he had been baptized into the Church of England at the age of 13. Together with

his siblings and as a matter of fact, the current exhibition display

at Hughenden starting this month is dedicated to the Israelis

very complex religious identity, which has the curators of this exhibition claim

is sort of positioned between two faves Israelis Life

as a Jew and the Christian. So this is an exhibition currently

open and running until June next year. Now, all of these objects are

linked to the Israeli celebrity status because they flag the anomaly of his life

and career, which tranced. Graced contemporary norms of categorization

and have lasting they rendered him the most unlikely Victorian prime minister.

Which is as he’s being marketed by the National Trust. So this is the banner that greets visitors

as they enter the grounds of Hewent and Manor. It’s certainly true that his mercurial public

image captured the popular imagination, and not least, Oscar

Wilde’s was 50 years younger, and with whom he’s got decidedly

more in common than the postion was career as a testimonial for alcoholic

beverages. This is the Benjamin Disraeli and an

ale with which you can fortify yourself before or after taking a tour of

Hughenden. But in any case, in 1886,

five years after the Israelis death, Wilde was asked to review to their newly

published copies or to the newly published editions of Disraeli’s

correspondence. And that is a crucial moment also in Wild’s career. And he is

trying to sort of reinvent himself and transform his image

from the kind of high prophet of the aesthetic movement and turn himself into

a critically acclaimed writer with serious literary credentials.

Now, in this review, he noted admiringly, Lord Beaconsfield

plays a brilliant comedy to a pit full of kings and was immensely pleased

at his own performance. He began by leading Mayfair as a dandy. He

ended by leading the House of Commons as a diplomatist. His life was the most

brilliant of paradoxes. But like many of

his contemporaries, Oscar Wilde was clearly struck by the ways in which Disraeli’s

image combine the roles and personae of bestselling novelist,

Jewish born upstart political opportunist, flamboyant Dandi,

an icon of conservative politics, in quite a remarkable feat

of fluently migrating between different social fields and contexts.

Like many others whiled also remained puzzled by the elusiveness of his reputation,

which certainly acted as a model for someone who, as an Irishman and as an

aspiring literary celebrity in many ways shared Israelies outsider status.

His by Rolnick dandyism his rhetorical skills, his mastery of the quotable

epigrams, as well as his quest for fame and acceptance amongst the

English establishment. They’re both Wild and Disraeli before him exploit it.

And at the same time represented a new type of celebrity, which, as

cultural historians of fame have convincingly shown, have made significant inroads

into virtually every sphere of public life. I mean, including art,

entertainment, politics, a royalty, at least from the late 18th century onwards.

To such an extent. That’s one of the narrators in Wilkie Collins. His novel, The Moonshine,

which was first published in 1868, by the way, also the year when the Israeli first

became prime minister notes’ with barely disguised incredulity

in our modern system of civilisation, celebrity, no matter of what kind,

is the lever that will move anything. And I think there’s common points us

towards that demographic, social, economic and technological transformations

that contributed. If not. And we also need to caution ourselves against

Anna Chronicity when talking about celebrity in pre 20th century contexts

that contributed, if not to some kind of proto democratic public

sphere where everyone had equal access to participation, at least

to a wider attain ability of fame through dextrous image

management, through skillful social networking and the cultivation of a notorious

public persona. There’s actually something to be said for the argument put forward by the historian

Simon Morgan, who has studied the role of celebrity and personality in popular

British politics between 1815 and 1867.

Especially figures like Richard Compton and the representatives of the Anti Corn Law

League that we ought to look upon celebrity not so much

as a product of modernity, but actually one of the key drivers of the modernisation

process itself, a process that goes hand-in-hand with the proliferation of mass markets

and mass media with revolutionary advances in communication

print. And of course, image, reproduction technologies, the arrival

and flourishing of consumer and commodity cultures and the exponential

growth of literate mass audiences. Now, if we accept that these are

the factors that aid the production and the consumption of

celebrity, then the following extract taken from a 40 page character sketch

of Disraeli that appeared in 1853 in the Edinburgh Review,

sheds some light on the considerable amount of celebrity capital that has been accumulated

by this Reilly at that point. In the wake of his first term in office as Chancellor

of the Exchequer. So what does it say here?

If a prize were offered at Oxford or Cambridge for a dissertation on the question

what individual from February 1852 to January 1853

has most occupied the Penns tongues and ears of Englishmen? The

answer would be given by acclamation. The right Honorable Benjamin Disraeli, late Chancellor

of the Exchequer, is indisputably the man. His portrait was painted by one fashionable

artist. His boss was taken in marble by another. What were called likenesses

of him appeared in Illustrated newspapers by the dozen, and above

all, he was placed in Madame Tussaud’s repository that British

Valhalla, in which it is difficult for a civilian to gain a Netsch without being hanged.

But looking upon the Disraeli phenomenon with a mixture of

disbelief and complete incredulity and also barely disguised. And in

this case, also, of course, politically motivated distaste. The passage, of course, very

much reveals the intense media ties, Asian circulation

and commodification of Disraeli’s public image. This slide

here just gives you a kind of sketchy overview of some of the media

visual textual material through which Disraeli’s image circulated

within the public sphere. I mean, from biographical sketches, literary reviews to

sheet music caricatures and of course, the sort

of obligatory Staffordshire figurines and all kinds of commemorative plates

and what have you. Now, entering the wider arena of popular culture

was, of course, crucial in enhancing the scope of an individual’s appeal,

which became increasingly more important to politicians in the course of the 19th century,

as as they needed to forge despond with with expanding electorates. But they also entailed

risks and formers among those risk because, of course, the loss of control over the meanings

attached to one’s name and image. As it becomes a collective construction

of journalists, of artists, of satirists, engravers, entrepreneurs

and of course, a wide range of different audiences. Now, a few notable

and appropriation. More poignantly than Oscar Wilde

was carefully staged, performance of the self was very much attuned to the

needs and desires of an increasingly pervasive Victorian celebrity culture.

Now, the fact that his celebrity status very much preceded his success

as a writer identifies Wilde, as one could always say, a prototypical

modern celebrity which just disparagingly described by Daniel Boorstin

as a person who is known for his well known as a public

persona whose renown is founded upon notoriety.

Perhaps even the whiff of outrageousness rather than the specific type of

talent of merit or achievement. And that comes into being primarily

through the intense circulation in the media. So there’s still this idea,

which, of course is still prevalent now, this idea of celebrity primarily being

a product of the media, of the mass media as that.

Now, Oscar Wilde self publicizing performance art is, I think, quite strikingly

encapsulated and visually encapsulated in this iconic painting

that you might be familiar with, which is actually called The Private View at the Royal

Academy 1881 by William Powell. Frith recently

sold at auction to a UK collector who is apparently planning to make it available

to the public. And here, of course, we see Oscar Wilde.

So the would be poet, the dandy aesthete is of course, a prominent

presence here amongst this panoramic vision of all the great and the good

of late Victorian fashionable society that we’ve got here. And

the painting has very often been read. And I would very much agree as a satirical commentary

on the forces at play in the production and consumption of celebrity.

Now, most of the individuals in this painting have actually been identified. And

we’ve got representatives of some of the traditional elites in here. We’ve got politicians,

we’ve got clergy with gold aristocracy. We’ve also got

some of the most iconic actors of the Victorian age. And I’m just going to sort of very

sketchily point into the direction L.A. and Henry Irving. We’ve

got artists, John Edward Millais here in the foreground scrutinising the work

of some of his rivals. One imagines Ben here. We’ve also got

Frederick Leighton, the president of the Royal Academy. Some of the giants of

Victorian literature, for instance, Robert Browning and Anthony Trollope,

sort of suspiciously eyeing this sort of self-promoting upstart here who’s

preaching to this crowd of star-struck largely female admirers.

And we’ve also got representatives of, as I would say, this sort of new ish type

of celebrities, self-promoting social climbers like Oscar Wilde or

Lily Langtry, professional beauty, known in her day as

an aspiring actress, but probably better known as a mistress to the Prince of Wales.

In any case, I think the painting here presents us with a young Oscar Wilde in a formative moment

of authoring his celebrity as he invents himself as

a self-declared apostle of the aesthetic movement. Now,

quite clearly absorbed in an act of blatant

self display, Wilde here willingly makes himself available for consumption,

and he turns himself into an artifact who turns himself

into an object to be studied, to be gazed

at, to be scrutinised in much the same way as the paintings on the wall.

So the important thing, of course, is to go there to see. But even more important to be

seen very clearly now, Wilde’s pose as the self-styled

arbiter of taste and an eccentrically dressed, quick witted conversationalist was

certainly part of a carefully choreographed self advertising campaign

and very much transformed this young no body into

somebody. And this transformation, I would argue, was very much facilitated

by the advent of a public culture that no longer viewed linage,

wealth or feats of heroism as the exclusive and the necessary cornerstones

of public preeminence, but instead rewarded an entrepreneurial spirit

and genius for self fashioning for self-branding and well-managed

mass mediated visibility. Now, a lot of accounts of sort

of Wilde’s transformation into this iconic figures

have very much focused on the spectacular success of Oscar Wilde’s North American

lecture tour in 1882 and 1883, which I’m sure many

of you know was instigated by the impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte

as a publicity stunt that would help him to promote the New York City premiere

production of the Gilbert and Sullivan operator patients. And it was very much a turning point

in Wild’s career as Wilde became an artifact of consumption

whose name and image was traded through all kinds of different mediums from photographs.

We’re all familiar with the iconic series of photographs produced by Napoleon Scaroni

himself, a celebrity, a celebrity photographer at the time. All sorts

of illustrations, caricatures, sheet music again, and a string of aesthetic

advertisements with Wild’s image and also the emblems of asceticism being used

to sell just about anything from cigars to stoves,

corsets. As you can see, and bosom beauty fires. Well, that

is very much left up to our imagination. That would have been all about

a playful letter sent back home. By Oscar Wilde in May

media society, celebrity capital could be made and unmade by the

forces of commerce and media circulation. And this letter

here is accompanied by quite a charming, hand-drawn illustration

of Wilde’s view from his window. At that point. So here he says,

I am now six feet high. My name on the placards printed.

It is true in those primary colors against which I pass my life protesting.

But still it is fame and anything is better than virtues, obscurity,

even one’s own name in alternate colors of Albert blue and magenta and six

feet high. Now Wilde’s humorous dismissal

of virtues obscurity in this case anticipates one of the most famous

epigrams from the picture of Dorian Gray. His only novel, whose timeless

appeal, I think, can partly be explained through the perceptive meditations that it

makes on the modern condition of fame and celebrity.

For example, when Lord Henry muses, there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked

about, and that is not being talked about.

So the fact that this novel, the picture of Dorian Gray with its heady mix of celebrity

sensationalism, scandal and of course, autobiographical revelation

is likely to have drawn inspiration from Disraeli’s own literary

debut, Vivien Gray Reserve Silver Fork potboiler that caused quite

a sensation when it was first published anonymously in 1826, because it was thought

that the author must have access to all the glittering social circles of the rich and the beautiful

that were being described very much indicates that Wilde had his own models

to look up to and sort his forerunners amongst fictionalized self, fashioning

dandies and aspiring men of letters. And this becomes particularly obvious

when we look at the letter that Oscar Wilde wrote again from his American

lecture tour to George Curzon, the future viceroy of India, whom he

knew from his days at Oxford. And in this letter, he describes

the sensation of being a universally feted literary lion as follows.

As for myself, I feel like tancred or loath air I travel in such a state

for in a free country. One can not live without slaves.

Mouth the tongue in cheek quality of this common aside,

it makes sense, particularly when you view it in connection with a common that he

makes in another letter. Free years later, again written to Kurson, who at that point

was about to become Assistant Private Secretary to Prime Minister Saulsberry,

and were wild, addresses him as you Brillion young Corning’s.

Now, not coincidentally, calling sbe tancred and low fare

are the eponymous heroes of Free of Benjamin Disraeli’s novels,

published in 1844, 1847 and 1870,

respectively. And I’m going to come to that

in a little while. But here I would also like to say that the novels and the fiction in Disraeli’s

case was very much a kind of workshop of the cell for which he tried to

negotiate and articulate his public and private identities at various

points in his life. And in these novels, in particular,

how he tried to sort of, you know, provide people with an image of the ideal

leader figure who would combine both action and creative

imagination. So these novels present the kind of all generic mix of

buildings, horsemen of romance, of satire, fantasy,

fairy tale. Ramana Clay was sort of

a kind of odd autobiographical elements that we find in those

novels, and they’re very much charred the spiritual pilgrimages for dashing

Lee, handsome, fabulously wealthy and kind of naive, but pure

hearted heroes usually in the throes of political and constitutional

struggle. And sometimes I have to say, it’s also a bit of a struggle to work your way through

those novels. But anyway, I think they also

very much appealed to a reading public. That was fascinated

by this potent mix of Eastern mysticism. There’s usually also some kind

of eastern wisdom figure that we find in those novels,

political conspiracy. Then, of course, we also have the kind of promise

of autobiographical disclosure. Readers would feel that they will get some kind

of privileged insight into the workings of a genius mind, a hard headed

politician. And, of course, a salacious gossip. This was a reading public

increasingly obsessed with sort of prying or setting their eyes on

the kind of glittering social world of the rich and the beautiful.

Now, playfully ironic as they might be, Wildes evocations of Israel, Israelis

novels and their heroes suggests a certain affinity and acclaimed intellectual

kinship with the novel writing statesman who, not surprisingly, is also

a looming presence by absence in the fifth painting. Now, obviously,

it’s a little bit hard to see from from the back, but you might have discovered Disraeli

here now as an ironic commentary on Victorian celebrity culture. This

is a painting that sets up a contrast between celebrity

is a kind of lesser type of fame that is commodified, that is

transitory, that is ephemeral, that has no lasting cultural value, something

that is dismissed by Carlyle in the hero as man of letters, as common lion ism,

and on the other hand, enduring posthumous greatness that is defined by

genius, by merit, by heroism. But the former category is clearly represented

by those self-promoting social climbers as Wilde and Lily Langtry,

while the other one is sort of reserved to those immortalized

by art. And it is significant, therefore, that we’ve got not just one, but actually

two portraits that are dedicated to Disraeli.

And one of them is the famous portrait by Millais that I included in one of my opening

slides there was actually completed at the request of Queen Victoria

and included here in this exhibition. Now their presence marks the imminent

transformation of the Israeli into a national and, of course, a political

icon. The center of a mythmaking cult of memorialization under the banner of

the primrose set to be Disraeli’s favorite flower and about to become

the populist emblem of the Israelis political values. And it also goes back

to the kind of iconography of a romantic gesture by Queen Victoria. There was very

much reported in the in the papers at the time of Disraeli’s death that

a wreath of wild primroses, which the queen had hand picked

on the lawns of Osborne House, was eventually placed on his grave

at Hughenden when the queen visited it four days after his funeral.

And of course, at this point here, as you can see from the date, it shows the opening of the summer exhibition

of the Royal Academy 1881. Disraeli had died only

a short while previously. In April 1881. Now, what this indicates

is also that many of the Israelis contemporaries look upon Disraeli’s career

as a straight forward. And there’s a tell you a logical progression

from the Chimera course celebrity of the literary lion to the venerable gravitas

of this distinguished elder statesman. However, I think a more complex picture emerges

with one takes into consideration how Disraeli responded to and also exploited

the growing impact of celebrity culture in the 19th century, which can

at least partly be explained by his lifelong indebtedness to romantic traditions

of artistic self-conception and public image construction. Now, even though lacking

an aristocratic title and a formal public school or university education,

I think we need to keep in mind that Israeli grew up in a literary household.

There was, as he often said himself. I was born in a library. There was

presided over by one of the most distinguished early 19th century

English men of letters, namely Isaac Disraeli, who had made a name for himself

through the curiosities of literature. Actually, quite her best selling work

at the time, and whose circle of friends and literary acquaintances included

people like John Murray. Thomas Moore. Samuel Rogers. Lady Blessington.

Edward Willett. Roberts saw the William Godwin and also his daughter,

Mary Shelley, now, Mary Shelley professed to be an order that Myra of the young

Disraeli’s novels. And she certainly knew him well enough to send him a letter

around 1837, the time of his maiden speech in parliament as a newly

elected member of parliament for Maidstone. And it is quite an interesting letter.

It is a small it is a short letter that sets out a very interesting B8

for the Israeli because she speculates on his ability to make a name for himself.

Are you meditating your maiden speech? I wonder if you will be what you can

be. Were your heart in your career? It would be a brilliant one,

and we can only speculate what kind of impact such a taunt or

a baize must have made on the Israeli at the time, as he was about to reinvent

himself as a respectable politician at the time, to kind of make

that leap into social respectability from being regarded as this flippant

and insubstantial literary lion, now hers and others. First

hand accounts certainly nurtured a lifelong fascination in Disraeli for

Lord Byron, who, along with Shelley, is the kind of

very thinly veiled subject of his 1837 novel, Venetia,

which has often been dismissed by critics as a kind of money-making operation

to fend off the bailiffs. But I think something more complicated is going on in this novel.

It is a very complicated by a fictional engagement with his romantic idealism

and the literary heroes of his his youth. But

in any case, Disraeli’s European and Middle Eastern travels in the 1820s,

in the 1830s, basically amount to buy ironic pilgrimages in which he

tried to retrace his idol’s footsteps. Where he eventually

secured his most highly prized living by Romick souvenir.

A man with the glamorous sounding name of Giovani, but his cellphone cheery,

known as Teater Byron servant, who was with him at the time of his death,

and whose very charmingly described here by the Israelis in a letter to his brother Ralph,

as someone who is Mr Archos touched the Earth with all mild as a lamb, though

he has to dagger’s always about his person. Now he clearly

knew how to ingratiate himself with an impassioned by Rolnick acolyte as

Disraeli, by supplying him with a lock of this of of Byron’s hair, which he claimed

to have cut off the corpse of Mr Longley. And he was then duly

whisked off and installed at ISOF Disraeli’s household in Braddon, them

in the High Wickham as well. However, as Andrew Eltham by those argue,

Disraeli’s admiration for Byron was more complicated than mere fan

worship. And from Byron’s career, he learned something about becoming

a celebrity at a time when fame was no longer the exclusive prerogative of those

commanding high rank and power and position. Ambitious young men like Disraeli

could hope to build a career on a capital of notoriety by

performing an ever so slightly, perhaps even sexually risque pose

of effeminate by Ronnie dandyism. Though the young Disraeli pictured here

by Daniel Merkley’s for the May 1833 issue of

Frazer’s magazines, gallery of illustrious literary characters is, of course,

a truly by Rolnick disciple with his elaborately quaffed ringlets

and the frills and laces under his sort of, you know, propped up against

the mantelpiece here, which is cluttered by visiting cards and invitations. And again,

the implication is that this is someone who’s sort of a social network, an operator is trying

to make a name for himself. And then, of course, he’s also appropriately accessorized

with the oriental slippers and pipe and the dagger

in the background as a piece of home decoration, though his carefully

cultivated ax of by Rolnick Sail fashioning served as a means of gaining

public attention, but also as a kind of symbolic capital

that would make up for the lack of more traditional forms of social capital.

Moreover, his by Ronny Collegians was firmly rooted in his self

identification with the boundary breaking rebel genius who defied

convention and morality and who transgressed quite clearly social norms.

And indeed, Biron scandalous celebrity served Disraeli as a kind of blueprint

for turning the potential obstacle of his ethnic, his political, his social

outsider status into an asset by reinventing himself as a chosen

prophet hero and the visionary who would react to the considerable anti-Semitic

sneers and antagonisms and adversities that he faced throughout his life with a kind

of haughty, self-protecting arrogance. Now here, this raid, his personal

notebooks and diaries, provide us with some intriguing insights into his

self-affirming identity construction. So, for example, this one here is his commonplace

book from eighteen forty two, which is characterised by

an almost obsessive need on the Israelis part for namedropping. So

it is a notebook that almost exclusively consists of long

lists of names that he grouped together into sometimes

bizarrely themed categories that would allow for an astonishing psychological

insights. One of them is called eccentric characters.

Another one is called Second Class Sparked Remarkable. There’s

one that’s called Dandy’s Female Adventurers. One is

interesting. One is I’m trying to to remember

it is called a verse to women. Whatever that means.

And what is actually also called literary political, in which Disraeli then includes fellow

author [INAUDIBLE] politicians as Thomas McCallie and his friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Now, this category here is interesting that you’re seeing close up. It’s called Spirit

of the Times and it’s defined by the Israeli as follows. To know it’s

the spirit of the times and oneself is the secret of success.

And what follows is a long list, an eclectic mix of

individuals, historical figures. I mean, without any kind of chronological order

alongside contemporaries. And they will include figures like Alexander

the Great Julius Caesar, Hadrian’s Secretary Socrates,

Lord Bacons, Shakespeare. And then it goes all, of course, Biron is there. Marlowe

Jesus. That’s interesting. Napoleon less surprisingly.

Leo the tenth, pope Julius the second. And so on. And also, it’s

interesting. And some people have have or what one

could argue that this is what he’s doing here is what Karl Pletcher has described as

a sort of living the autobiographical life, I mean living in anticipation of

your own biographer. And it very much reveals Disraeli’s need to place himself

in the tradition of those conventions, defying and boundary breaking men,

visionaries, transgressive by Rolnick heroes as identity shaping

models that need to be emulated before in the end they can be overcome.

Now, modeling himself on someone like Byron also means embracing a double act of art

and action. And the Israelis life and career strikingly reveal the close intersections

of the literary and the political as those as Charles Richmond has called it, workshops

of the self for which he tries to shape his identity together with a

celebrity enhancing possibilities of his otherness. They became mutually

sustaining factors in the shaping of his reputation. No recent scholarship,

including a robber. The Kale’s literary biography, entitled The Romance

of Politics, have shown how literature and politics represented closely

interconnected arenas of self-invention and self projection, from which he tried

to gain public acclaim, but also to align the lives of action and

the lives of creative imagination to the mutually formative influence of Disraeli.

The literary celebrity and the celebrity politician becomes obvious. Also, when

we look at this famous cat. Well, not yet. Not yet. The famous cartoon

first Disraeli’s own cell fashioning her. This is a line from

his mutilated diary in 1833 where he becomes

obvious how he tries to align both literature and politics, where he says poetry

is the safety valve of my passions. But I wish to act what I write. My works

are they embody ification of my feelings. So that’s how Disraeli,

at a very early stage, views himself and the sort of central project of his. Life,

but then this is what contemporaries much later when the Israeli

becomes prime minister for the first time. Make of it. So this is a cartoon published

in Fum after the Israelis first time rise to prime ministerial office in February

establishes this close connection between the Israelis life

and work, which is based on the assumption that the politically ambitious hero

of Israelis first novel also represents a fictionalized version of himself,

which is quite interesting and which is something that biographers have frequently picked up. This

is actually something that goes back to a clever marketing ploy for his

early novels. When Keys were published, a claim to identify the real life

figures behind their fictional masks. And so this is the key to Vivienne

Gray. And as you can see, vva Gray here is identified

with the author. And several scholars have actually argued

that the Israeli himself was behind the publication of those keys

and certainly was at his instigation that the publishers sort of, you know, kept puffing

his works. So by way of rounding off, I think I need to say a little bit more about Oscar Wilde, but

not much, because Oscar Wilde, as you may know. Of course, they thought launch

a political career, but he certainly tried out various other different avenues.

And of course, Justice Oscar Justice Disraeli’s Jewish origins forever defined

his public reputation. Certainly Wilde’s Irishness needs to be

considered here. And it turned him not only into a shrewd observer of English society,

but also, of course, a skillful social operator. Wilde,

much like Disraeli, actively participated in a kind of economy

of spectacle and sensation. And the celebrity capital that Wilde accumulated

was rooted in selfless play in performance. But also, I think, very kind of negotiated

and calculated combinations of elitism and populism, art

and fashion. Now, as a final quote here, I would like to present

you here with this passage from the Profundis. Of course, his

long prison letter written in the final months of

his his two year prison sentence for gross indecency, where he says, I was a man

who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. I treated art

as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction. I awoke

the imagination of my century so that they created myth and legend around

me and of course, were captured. The imagination of his own day also very much

is what turns him into a cultural icon of and for our times. And so

I think both Disraeli and Wilde very much embody the interplay

of the two forces that create fame and celebrity, and that is personal

process, agency and appropriation. Thank you very much.