Tag Archives: Benjamin Disraeli

Disraeli at Hughenden Manor

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I can’t really leave Benjamin Disraeli without posting some more pictures from his country home, Hughenden Manor. It’s the most quintessentially Victorian place I can think of. In those days, it must have seemed perfectly natural to hang side-by-side portraits of the Prime Minister and his Queen above the fireplace–in the bedroom Mr. Disraeli shared with his loving wife, Mary Anne. She decorated the room herself.

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In the House of Lords during the height of the British Empire, politicians wore red velvet robes on ceremonial occasions, without irony or having to wade through rude protests outside. Becoming the Earl of Beaconsfield was a proud accomplishment for a man born into a modest Jewish family in 1804. Disraeli became an Anglican at age 12, and remained one for the rest of his long life.

We tend to think that Britain has a fairly rigid class system, but even in Victorian times it was possible for an unlikely man to rise to the height of power, through luck, connections, charm and sheer hard work.

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Queen Victoria has a reputation for sternness, but she knew how to be amused, too. And her trusted friend Benjamin Disraeli amused her.

The Queen set an example of happy, respectable family life for her subjects. Mary Anne Disraeli created a peaceful refuge at home for her busy husband.

Why did Victorians stuff their homes with so much stuff? In a restored Victorian home like Hughenden, every surface is occupied: baubles, bibelots, and knickknacks carefully arranged on top of curlicued whatnots. In Victorian times, minimalism was an unknown concept. And old photos seem even more crowded than restored rooms. Why? Here’s my theory: the British ruled an empire that spanned the entire globe. Victorian rooms seem crowded and stuffy to the modern sensibility, but I think all those possessions were an exuberant expression of Victorian confidence and optimism. If you’ve got it, flaunt it!

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Mary Anne Disraeli presided over a lively dinner table. She was practical, too–which her husband was not. Household records show that after one dinner party, she sent two big unused blocks of cheese back to the cheesemonger. Waste not, want not!

Disraeli loved trees. In fact, while Mary Anne was busy inside finding just the right places for her trinkets and doodads, Disraeli was busy outside planting trees–the more the better. He brought in specimens from the far-flung empire and created a forest that lives on today. He spent hours walking among his trees, taking solace from their growth and variety. He once remarked, “I am not surprised that the ancients worshipped trees.”

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I was so interested in the house–with its Victorian history as well as the amazing part it played in World War II–that I didn’t get into the gardens and the forest. Next time!

The three posts just before this one described the vital history of Hughenden in more detail. Join me next time for more explorations in the art and history of Europe and the British Isles!

No More Red Boxes? What Would Disraeli Say?

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At Hughenden Manor last spring, I was thrilled to spot Prime Minister Disraeli’s famous “red box” in his study. It’s a kind of box used for the last 150 years or so by British government officials. It’s really just a briefcase, but so much more romantic–and quintessentially British. These boxes were first used in the 1860s. They were covered in red-dyed rams’ leather, embossed with the Royal Cypher and lined with lead–reportedly so that if the carrier were captured at sea, the box would sink with all its secrets intact. The lead also made the boxes pretty strong in the event of bombing or other catastrophe. The lock is on the bottom of the box, guaranteeing that nobody will walk off without locking it. (Does anyone ever forget, grab the handle and spill the important documents? Let’s hope not).

Photo from “Daily Mail” article cited below

Until very recently, important government officials proudly carried their red boxes wherever they went. (Naturally, a government official is always hard at work, so the box is necessary at all times). Any man or woman would walk a little taller carrying the jaunty red case. And what a status symbol to casually place on one’s table on the train!

Queen Elizabeth, like Disraeli’s Queen Victoria, receives her own royal red box daily. It contains documents the sovereign must sign before they become law. I’d like to think the Queen’s red box will exist for a long time.

But now, the British government is phasing out the revered symbol of power in favor of secure smartphones. For one thing, ministers have developed the wasteful habit of having their boxes shuttled from place to place in chauffeured limousines, as described in an article from The Independent. Then there’s the problem of security. A fingerprint-activated smartphone is apparently safer (at least until it’s hacked.)

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So in England, red ministerial boxes are going the way of red curbside telephone boxes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli lived in a slower-moving world. His red box came with him to his country home, where he worked in his quiet study between long walks inspecting his grounds. There was time for him to think, to read actual books, to reflect on the weighty problems of state. I fear that Britain’s government ministers will now be more like the rest of us: constantly intent on a pocket-sized screen.

Somehow, I can’t see the elegant Mr. Disrael hunched over a smartphone.

I wouldn’t give up my own smartphone for anything, of course. It’s my only camera, as well as my window into the wider world. I can look up most anything with a few thumbstrokes. But if I were a British government minister, I would miss my elegant red ramskin box with the Royal Cypher and the lock on the bottom.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2958851/Traditional-government-red-boxes-phased-150-years-ministers-given-thumbprint-activated-smartphones.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-government-ferried-briefcases-around-alone-in-chauffeur-driven-cars-3000-times-in-the-last-three-a6812851.html

Join me next time for more explorations in the art and history of Europe and the British Isles!

Hughenden Manor: Winning the War in the Icehouse

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Who was the man getting the surprise ice-water bath above, and what did he have to do with victory in World War II? One day in 2004, a National Trust guide at Hughenden Manor overheard an intriguing conversation. An old man was very quietly describing to his grandchild how he had once worked in the very room they were standing in. Hughenden Manor was the country home of Benjamin Disraeli, the Prime Minister and friend of Queen Victoria.

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The house was a dusty relic of Victorian times. But it turned out that the house played a pivotal role in the Second World War, totally unknown to anyone except the 100 or so people who secretly worked there in the 1940s.

When the Battle of Britain and the London Blitz ended in late 1940, Britain’s Royal Air Force, the RAF, had overcome all the odds and held off the German Luftwaffe. Adolf Hitler had believed that the British would fold under heavy bombing, negotiate a peace treaty, and become his allies. How wrong he was. About 3,000 young pilots, averaging 20 years of age, did battle daily over the Channel, outnumbered by 5 to 1 in both equipment and flyers. They were not all British; some of them were Polish, Czech, Belgian and French. According to the RAF, 544 of them were killed in the Battle of Britain, and another 814 died later in the war. Winston Churchill famously summed up the Battle of Britain: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” To this day, pilots who fought are referred to as “The Few.”

But the war was just beginning. It was necessary for Allied forces, soon including the United States, to knock out German infrastructure. The only maps available at the time were made for tourists. They showed roads, cities, railways and sightseeing destinations like castles and cathedrals. Bombers needed detailed maps to accomplish their missions of destroying armament factories and other strategic targets.

Hughenden Manor became a secret command center for the vital mission of creating detailed maps for bomber pilots to use. British Spitfires and later Mosquitos were dispatched across the Channel with automatic cameras in their gun bays. Since the gun bays had no guns, the planes had no protection. The pilots, as brave as any of The Few, flew thousands of surveillance missions over Germany. Over the course of the war, they took 36 million photos. The camera film was carried by courier to Hughenden Manor, where the 100 or so top-secret mapmakers went to work.

The old Hughenden icehouse was the darkroom.

Mapmakers were on duty at all times; someone always slept in the icehouse.

Inside, mapmakers worked day and night, translating the surveillance photos into maps for bomber pilots. Target maps were drawn by hand, with the target in the middle, surrounded by concentric circles one mile apart.

Today, the visitor can try out the equipment, which in its day was high-tech. Completed maps, thousands of them, were sent seven miles up the road to Bomber Command. Often, couriers used bicycles, so as not to draw attention.

The entire map-making operation was a military secret, protected by the Official Secrets Act. People who worked at Hughenden, military and civilian, took an oath to keep the operation secret for their entire lifetimes. When the National Trust accidentally learned a little about the amazing World War II history of Hughenden, they went to Parliament and eventually received permission to make the secrets public. Today, the icehouse and the basement of Hughenden hold an enthralling museum of this vital part of victory for the Allies in World War II.

Veterans of the secret operation were tracked down and interviewed on video, before their stories were lost forever. People sent in their personal diaries and photos. The almost-lost history came alive.

And the man getting the surprise ice bath? Newbies were invited into the icehouse to have a wartime picture taken, to send to the folks at home (of course, the location was always kept secret). The helpful icehouse staff posed the unsuspecting person under an icy water outlet in the brick ceiling. Someone pulled a lever at the exact moment the camera snapped. Everyone, including the victim, laughed uproariously.

The result was a nice wartime keepsake, and a personal reminder of undaunted British spirit when the odds of victory seemed slim. British self-deprecating humor and camaraderie were a big part of that spirit.

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I’d recommend a visit to Hughenden Manor. Join me next time for more explorations in the art and history of Europe and the British Isles!

Mary Anne Disraeli: the Woman Behind the Man

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Why is a Victorian carriage door prominently displayed on a wall at Hughenden, the country home of Queen Victoria’s friend and Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli? The Prime Minister himself removed it from the carriage and preserved it as a tribute to his wife, Mary Anne. One evening the ambitious politician and his doting wife set off from his London house to Parliament, where he was to deliver a very important speech. When the carriage door was closed, it slammed shut on Mary Anne’s thumb. What did she do? She suffered in silence, all the way to Westminster. She didn’t want to upset the man before his speech. A placard next to the carriage door explains that Mary Anne said not a word until Disraeli was safely out of the carriage and on his way into the corridors of power. The placard remarks drily that her words when her thumb was released were not recorded.

Mary Anne was 12 years older than her husband, and the marriage began as one of convenience. But it grew into a true love match.

According to the guidebook sold at Hughenden, Disraeli was a novelist and something of a playboy in 1830s London. He had written a novel, Vivian Grey, which was a thinly veiled self-portrait of a young man on the make. His friend Bulwer-Lytton described him thus: he wore “green velvet trousers, a canary coloured waistcoat, low sleeves, silver buckles, lace at his wrists, his hair in ringlets.” He cut a wide swath through bohemian London salons, finally gaining an entree into the highest circles. He tried five times for a seat in Parliament before he won an election. His maiden speech was a disaster; he was shouted down. What worked in drawing rooms did not work in the House of Commons. He famously ended by saying, “I will sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me.”

Mary Anne, my photo from Hughenden guidebook

What Disraeli needed was a rich wife. He met Mary Anne Wyndham Lewis in 1832, when she was just another older married woman he enjoyed flirting with. He thought her “a pretty little woman, a flirt and a rattle” which according to the guidebook meant “incessant chatterer.” But her deep-pocketed husband obligingly died in 1838, leaving her a rich widow. Her appeal increased and Disraeli married her in 1839.
Disraeli soon learned what a treasure he had found. He wrote, “There was no care which she could not mitigate, and no difficulty which she could not face. She was the most cheerful and the most courageous woman I ever knew.” High praise indeed; Disraeli had known and depended on many, many women in his rise to power in Victorian England.

A visit to Hughenden is a window into the Victorian past.

The estate is under the care of the National Trust, and beyond the quintessentially Victorian rooms there’s a surprise, new since I first visited years ago. The estate was a secret location for surveillance work which was crucial to victory in World War II. This work was so secret that not even the National Trust knew a thing about it until very recently. I’ll be writing about what went on in the wartime rooms and the icehouse soon.

Join me next time for more explorations in the art and history of Europe and the British Isles!