BENJAMIN DISRAELI SOME PRESS NOTICES. The real Disraeli. This is decidedly the most fitting work presented to admirers of Lord Beaconsfield, who have wished for a personal memoir that they could cherish with some permanent pleasure and satisfac- tion. PallMall Gazette. 1 We are able to give almost unreserved praise to Mr. Meynells captivating volume upon a fascinating, but difficult, subject. His big book is of the deepest interest, almost from the first page to the last. The great value of the work, the picture of Disraeli as a man, is, in fact, the first that we have received. Mr. Meynells Life will both be appreciated at the moment and lastingly consulted. Athenceum . vBENJAMIN DISRAELI UNCONVENTIONAL BIOGRAPHY By WILFRID MEYNELL With 40 Illustrations, including 2 Photo- gravure Plates IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II - LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOL II Facing page BENJAMIN DISRAELI. Sir F. Grant . . Photogravure Frontispiece BRADENHAM THE YEW-TREE WALK 294 BENJAMIN DISRAELI IN THE SIXTIES. Photo Stereoscopic Company. . 338 LORD BEACONSFIELD IN THE SEVENTIES. Photo W. D. Downey . 354 LORD BEACONSFIELD. Sir J. E. Millais THE MONUMENT IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. Sir Edgar Boekm . . 386 THE MONUMENT IN THE GUILDHALL. Richard Belt . . . .418 THE MONUMENT IN PARLIAMENT SQUARE. M. Raggi .... 434 LORD BEACONSFIELD IN 1879. Lord Ronald Gower .... 466 LORD BEACONSFIELD. From an ivory cameo LORD BEACONSFIELD. From a bust by Sir E. Boehm . . . . 498 A GROUP AT HUGHENDEN S 10 HUGHENDEN MANOR S 28 HUGHENDEN MANOR DISRAELIS WRITING-ROOM 538 HUGHENDEN MANOR 37 482 THE DRAWING-ROOM 5S THE QUEENS MEMORIAL IN HUGHENDEN CHURCH 566 ISAAC DISRAELI. Drummond ISAAC DISRAELI. D. Maclise THE MONUMENT TO ISAAC DISRAELI 5 88 V b 572 586 List of Illustrations FACSIMILES LETTER TO A REVIEWER OF SYBIL pp. 403-5 LETTER TO MONTAGU SCOTT p. 451 LETTER TO A. J. B. HOPE between pp. 522-3 LETTER TO THE MARCHIONESS OF ELY pp. 541-8 BENJAMIN DISRAELI AN UNCONVENTIONAL BIOGRAPHY LETTERS continued A Friendship,--Dearest Lady Blessington From 1834 until the end of her London career, which was also nearly the end of her life, Disraeli maintained a steady friendship for a lady of fame who was in some sort a leader, if not strictly of society in her own time, certainly a leader much followed by ladies, unconventional as she, who are very much in society to-day. Lady Blessington was, if not a beauty, a very pretty as Landor woman and if not a woman of genius called her to her face, a woman of talent. All allow that she left mediocrity behind her when the quality to be rated was charm. She attracted she was admired by a multitude of men and by Disraeli admired and loved as well. Who can doubt it in face of one of these letters She had the gift of friendship, little as her narrow and correct epistolary style may hint at it. These letters and stones seem to make up, in conventionalism, for the violated conventions with which unkind circumstance had associated her early womanhood. In her courage, her industry, her enter- prise not often the virtues of a rich and brilliant woman she was great. It is this slight anomaly this combination of manly qualities with luxurious life, with a conspicuously showy menage and with exceedingly insipid and sentimental literature, that makes Lady Blessington, whichever way the mood takes you, interesting or uninteresting. She was born in 1779, in Ireland, one of the six children of Edmund Power, a rollicking squire time, spirited and needy at his best of the at his worst violent and drunken. This father, on the verge of ruin, gave Marguerite in marriage, in her childhood she was little more than fifteen, to a half-insane and brutal Captain Farmer, from whom after three unhappy months she found courage to part, returning to the minor misery of her fathers house...