Disraeli at Home

1895

Hardly a week passed in which I did not dine with him and Mrs. Disraeli. His dinners were small, not overgood, but always gay and amusing — not that he was himself at all brilliant in conversation. On the contrary, he was generally silent unless there was an opening for some epigrammatic or paradoxical or startling observation. Though bitterly sarcastic if it suited his purpose, he was far from being cynical from nature. On the contrary, he was remarkably placable, and, though he had few strong dislikes, he had many strong friendships.

Disraeli was eminently Bohemian, imaginative, without a particle of belief in anything, totally unprincipled — I do not use the word in an offensive sense, but as being devoid of all principles of policy. That he was a man of immense talent not even his greatest enemy can deny, but even I, his personal friend, must confess that from his entrance into public life until his last hour he lived and died a charlatan. — "Autobiography of Sir William Gregory."