Politics as an aphrodisiac: the secret of the Disraelis’ happy marriage

The long, happy and unlikely marriage of the great Conservative leader Disraeli and his wife Mary Anne, 12 years his senior, is analysed thoughtfully in Daisy Hay’s new book. Reading between the lines, it is possible to see the Disraelis as a Victorian power couple not unlike the Underwoods in Netflix’s remade House of Cards — he, high on his own oratory; she, a valuable campaign asset; together, a marriage that is child-free and (with his sexuality in question) built on blackberries at bedtime. Yet — here’s the twist — they truly loved one another.

The Underwoods are bound together in sinister ambition, but the Disraelis make an inspiring emblem of marriage as a virtuous circle. Benjamin’s extraordinary achievements in politics and literature were made possible by Mary Anne’s support, financial, emotional and practical. In return he dedicated his two nations novel, Sibyl, to ‘a perfect wife’ and saw to it that she was ennobled before he was — Viscountess Beaconsfield in her own right, as it reads on her tombstone.

And yet in her day, Mary Anne was something of a joke, always overdressed in feathers and diamonds, and famous for her off-colour remarks. ‘You should see my Dizzy in his bath!’ she once exclaimed during a conversation about pallid skin. Queen Victoria, on their first meeting, called her ‘very vulgar’. Hay never refutes these denigrations, but cleverly allows us gradually to see that they were in fact strengths. Mary Anne’s taste for costume meant that, out canvassing or at balls, she never went unnoticed (Disraeli himself with his white coat had a similar modus operandi) and her lack of airs made her popular with constituents, while her fast and witty conversation inspired the future Earl of Rosebery to take extensive notes.