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Program Title
Credits Producer: Cecil Clarke Director: Claude Whaltham Intro DISRAELI/Episode 1/Intro by Alistair Cooke Good evening, I'm Alistair Cooke. Tonight we begin a four-part drama about an English statesman who was as considerable in his time as Winston Churchill. He had a wit as sharp as Oscar Wilde's, was a novelist of almost the first rank, and was a clothes horse the likes of which have not been seen before or since. He was a man about whose character nobody could agree, then or now. When Benjamin Disraeli was born in London in 1804, the Jews of Europe were living in the Dark Ages. Only in France had the Revolution given them the vote. In England, they were barred from all professions, the universities, and most crafts; they could not hold government office, and it would be fifty-four years before a practicing Jew could become a Member of Parliament. The odds against young Disraeli ever becoming Prime Minister were so ludicrous that the wildest gambler wouldn't have taken them. His mother was a descendant of one of the Sephardic Jewish families that were run out of Spain in 1492. His father was a Jew of Italian descent, was wealthy, a scholar, in fact an imminent critic whose life moved between three sets of rooms: the dining room, his library, and the public libraries. However there is statistical evidence that he moved into the bedroom often enough to produce four children, the second of whom was Benjamin Disraeli, the first son. Probably the most important thing that happened to Disraeli as a boy was the fact that his father quarreled with the local synagogue and decided to have his boy baptized as a Christian at the age of thirteen. Now young Ben was not very good at school; he didn't take to it, except for Latin, but he did take to his father's library. And then he became a sort of family nuisance: he dressed absurdly, he speculated disastrously in mining stocks, and he tried to run a newspaper, which failed miserably. But even as a ne'er do well, he was an oddity. He wrote a huge novel and he burnt it. Then he produced two more novels in eight volumes, one of which got a very good reception until the critics discovered that it was written by a middle-class Jew. Then they panned it as being effected and pretentious. It was about a fanciful picture of high society. He received an advance on another novel, and he went abroad where his health broke and he went into depression. Disraeli then came back to England, wrote another novel, and got another advance. This time he went on a sixteen-month tour of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He went through Spain, Greece, Albania, Egypt, and Jerusalem and everywhere he went he added some article of native dress to his costume. Everywhere he astonished the natives. He said, The people made way for me as I passed; it was like the opening of the Red Sea. And while he was on that trip his travelling companion, who was his sister's fiancé, suddenly dropped dead from smallpox. His sister never recovered and she devoted the rest of her life to her brother. This shook Disraeli--and steadied him. Still a dandy, he came back to London to drop a mistress and pick up a new one. Loaded with debts, we see him as he is about to appear at a party given by the established novelist, Edward Bulwer.
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