BENJAMIN DISRAELI, 1ST EARL OF BEACONSFIELD,

AND THE YOUNG ENGLAND MOVEMENT

Everything comes if a man will only wait.—TANCRED, book iv. chap. viii

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Benjamin D’Israeli

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December 21, Friday: Benjamin Disraeli was born in London. This male infant would be ritually circumcised. (His father Isaac C. D’Israeli, a well-known author, would have Ben baptized into the Church of England when he turned 13 despite his mother Maria Basevi D’Israeli’s desire that he continue as a Jew.)

The Requiem of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was performed in France for the initial time, in Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, directed by Luigi Cherubini.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

6 day 21 of 12 M 1804 / My mind has been so void of life for several days as to render it unfit for me to write in my journal, but being this morning a little favor’d, am free to insert that Yesterday I was at our preparative Meeting, & in the first was under good impressions which continued in the last. The Queries were answered, & the second which respects love & unity occasioned some exercise, feeling but too little prevailing among us. —

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NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

1804

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Benjamin Disraeli “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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Isaac C. D’Israeli’s and Maria Basevi D’Israeli’s children bore Jewish names (Sarah, Benjamin, Raphael, Jacobus) and the sons had been ritually circumcised. However, at this point due to an 8-year dispute with Synagogue Bevis Marks and upon the advice of a friend Sharon Turner, the family had itself baptized into the Church of England. Sarah would henceforward be known as “Sa,” Benjamin as Ben (or “Dizzy” while prime minister of England), Raphael as Ralph, and Jacobus as James or “Jem.”

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.

LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

1817

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Benjamin D’Israeli

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Benjamin Disraeli’s novel VIVIAN GREY.

1826

ENGLISH EVENTS OF 1826

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Benjamin Disraeli’s novel THE YOUNG DUKE.

1831

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Benjamin Disraeli’s CONTRARINI FLEMING. The author stood for election to Parliament as a radical at High Wycombe, was defeated, and was again defeated in the general election.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1832

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Benjamin D’Israeli

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Benjamin Disraeli’s novel ALROY, and his “Rise of Iskander.”

1833

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Benjamin Disraeli was defeated at High Wycombe by the election of a Tory.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1834

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Benjamin D’Israeli

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William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli met for the 1st time. Disraeli was defeated at Taunton as a Tory.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1835

Benjamin Disraeli “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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Benjamin Disraeli’s HENRIETTA TEMPLE.

1836

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After four failed attempts, Benjamin Disraeli was elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative (Tory) MP for Maidstone. He would oppose repeal of the Corn Laws which taxed British imports of grain. His VENETIA.

Ebenezer Elliott’s business again failed, and again he lost a great deal of money. His attitude was that it was all due to those darned Corn Laws.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MINDYOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

1837

Benjamin Disraeli “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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William Gladstone married Catherine Glynne and Benjamin Disraeli married Mary Anne Lewis.

1839

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Benjamin Disraeli’s CONINGSBY, OR THE NEW GENERATION, which satirized the historian Sir Archibald Alison as “Mr. Wordy.”

1844

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Benjamin Disraeli’s novel SYBIL.

1845

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Benjamin Disraeli became chancellor of the exchequer in Conservative governments that the Earl of Derby headed from the House of Lords.

1846

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Lola Montez fled her situation as countess of Landsfeld and mistress to King Ludwig I in the midst of riotous demonstrations against her; the furor she had helped to create by her liberal and anti-Jesuitical influence upon him then forced his own abdication.

Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz (1821-1894) articulated a doctrine that would later travel under the rubric “Conservation of Energy,” in his ÜBER DIE ERHALTUNG DER KRAFT (“ON THE CONSERVATION OF FORCE”). The heat generated by muscles can be accounted for as the result of a complex chemical reaction that is more similar to than dissimilar from any of the very simple heat-producing chemical reactions that might occur when a chemist pours some one non-organic chemical into some other non-organic chemical in a test tube in a lab. There is therefore no need for any inventive or elaborate or special “vitalistic” explanation. In this same year, using a device that continuously measured blood pressure, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm found that the circulation of the blood was a mere fluidic process that could be fully explained in ordinary physical terms.

Benjamin Disraeli, future prime minister, proposed in TANCRED, OR THE NEW CRUSADE that

In other words, white is right and (–oh, incidentally, you must know that) Jews are Caucasians rather than

1847

THE SCIENCE OF 1847

All is race; there is no other truth.

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Semites.

Professor Louis Agassiz accepted a professorship of zoology at Harvard College. In this year, also, appeared his AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY, IN A SERIES OF LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE HALL OF THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS, NEW YORK. BY PROFESSOR AGASSIZ. ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS. ALSO, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR (New-York: Greeley & McElrath, Tribune Buildings).

His former student Charles Frédéric Girard followed Professor Agassiz to Harvard, as an assistant.

In this year, also, the German traveler Johann J. von Tschudi was offering in his TRAVELS IN PERU, DURING THE YEARS 1838-1842 ON THE COAST, AND IN THE SIERRA, ACROSS THE CORDILLERAS AND THE ANDES, INTO THE PRIMEVAL FORESTS, just then being published in London in English translation, racist remarks which would subsequently be brought forward in such accounts as Dr. Josiah Clark Nott’s and George Robins Gliddon’s foundational textbook of the new racialist American anthropology, to be published in London in 1854, TYPES OF MANKIND: OR, ETHNOLOGICAL RESEARCHES, BASED UPON THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS, PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES, AND CRANIA OF RACES, AND UPON THEIR NATURAL, GEOGRAPHICAL, PHILOLOGICAL, AND BIBLICAL HISTORY: ILLUSTRATED BY SELECTIONS FROM THE UNEDITED PAPERS OF SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON, M.D., AND BY ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PROF. L. AGASSIZ, LL.D., W. USHER, M.D.; AND PROF. H.S. PATTERSON, M.D., and again subsequently be brought forward in 1876

AGASSIZ’S INTRODUCTION

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by Herbert Spencer in Volume I of his THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY, and again subsequently to be brought forward by an Austrian politician imprisoned in Germany in 1925-1926, in his book about his struggles, entitled MEIN KAMPF. Some lies are so choice, they can never die.

Professor Samuel George Morton’s “Hybridity in Plants and Animals considered in reference to the Question of the Unity of the Human Species” appeared in Silliman’s Journal. The author concluded that from the standpoint of the science of biology, all members of our species needed to be considered to be parts of the same human family — regardless of race.

Jakob Mathias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann announced that cells were the basic units of all living structures.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

Spring: Maria Basevi D’Israeli, wife of Isaac C. D’Israeli and mother of Benjamin D’Israeli, died.

EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

Benjamin Disraeli “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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March-April: Waldo Emerson, in his journal, determined that successful life amounted to the predation of other human beings — and expressed contempt for any of us who fail to be adequate as predators:

(As someone once said, this is a very German attitude.)

I feel ... that those who succeed in life, in civilized society, are beasts of prey.... I hate vulnerable people.... Novels, Poetry, Mythology must be well allowed for an imaginative being. You do us great wrong, Henry T., in railing at the novel reading. The novel is that allowance & frolic their imagination gets. Everything else pins it down. And I see traces of Byron & D’Israeli & Walter Scott & George Sand in the deportment of these stately young clerks in the streets & hotels. Their education is neglected but the ballroom & the circulating library, the fishing excursion & Trenton Falls make such amends as they can.

WALTER SCOTT

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

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January 19, Thursday: Isaac C. D’Israeli died of the flu at age 81, at the family home, Bradenham House in Buckinghamshire.

1848

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April 15, Sunday: Benjamin Disraeli journeyed to London “between the morning & the afternoon services.” For this moral turpitude he would be publicly castigated by the Reverend John Pigott, Vicar of Hughenden near Disraeli’s home in Buckinghamshire.

1849

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Fall: There was a good grain harvest in England, alleviating distress. The year of the Crystal Palace would turn out not to be a year of general starvation, and the ruling classes sighed with relief. Benjamin Disraeli regarded the Great Exhibition as “a godsend to the Government” in “diverting public attention from their blunders.” The Queen commented that she could “never remember anything before that everyone was so pleased with.”

1851

ALL ENGLAND WAS HAPPY.

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Benjamin Disraeli delivered to the House of Commons a eulogium upon the Duke of Wellington and someone noticed that his speech bore a very strong resemblance to an obituary article on Marshal St Cyr, that had been written many years previously by the French politician Adolph Thiers. Robert Blake would attribute this “unconscious” plagiarism to “a curious trick of memory.”

(The Iron Duke had died at his home, Walmer Castle in Kent, on September 14th, and was being buried in Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London.)

1852

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Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton entered Lord Derby’s government as Secretary of State for the Colonies, to serve alongside his old friend Benjamin Disraeli.

June 30, Wednesday: At the Parliament on the Thames, a shift in the wind drove Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, and Sir James Graham away from a window open to the river “in the greatest haste and confusion.” In the hallway outside their committee room, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were observed holding handkerchiefs over their noses while Graham repeatedly spat upon the floor in an effort to clear this stench from his throat. Within the fortnight Prime Minister Gladstone would introduce the legislation which would culminate in Sir Joseph Bazalette’s 82 miles of brick sewers beneath the city, one of the great feats of the period’s engineering. After describing this incident as occurring while “Henry David Thoreau was publishing WALDEN,” an eclectic reader went on to characterize the period’s thinking about progress in the following words:1

This summer, and the following summer of 1859, would be the years of the “Big Stink” of the Thames River running through London. (The area of downtown London had an intractable problem relative to its sewer system, as these channels ran at 30 feet below the high-tide level of the waters of the Thames River. Many of

1858

1.Hunt, Douglas. THE DOLPHIN READER. New York: Houghton Mifflin, various publication dates, pages 211-12.

Thoreau, though he was writing at the very beginning ofengineering’s golden age, didn’t doubt the power of technology butrather its pertinence to the important concerns of life: “We areeager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World someweeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leakthrough to the broad, flapping American ear will be that thePrincess Adelaide has the whooping cough.” As technology improved,it began to remove some of life’s sharper edges: exploration, NancyMitford points out, became safer and smaller; travel, E.B. Whitenotes, became very much like staying at home. Even staying at homemay have become less satisfying than it once was: as Alice Bloompoints out, affluent people in a technological society know verylittle about the processes that support them, where the lamb chopcomes from or where the waste water goes to. The result is whatDaniel Boorstin calls an “attenuation of experience”: more isavailable to us, but less seems significant, and though society’spower over the environment increases, the power of the individualmay be decreased.... Thomas Babington Macaulay’s arguments againstSeneca and Plato could be turned equally effectively on Thoreau andBoorstin: “It may be worse to be angry than to be wet. But shoeshave kept millions from being wet; and we doubt whether Seneca everkept anyone from being angry.”

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the sewers tributary to the Thames River could only physically drain during low tide. However, at low tide the river did not have enough flow to carry the waste the entire distance downstream and out to sea. The incoming tide was, therefore, pushing the waste back upstream. This cycle resulted in the river becoming virtually a wide-open-to-the-sunlight cesspool for the excrement of nearly 3,000,000 people! At times the draperies in the Parliament Building were being treated with chloride of lime to help filter out river odors, but despite this measure, sometimes the Parliament was forced to shut down during summer months. Large new sewers would be constructed to deliver wastes to a discharge point downstream of the Parliament buildings. Queen Victoria would be so impressed with the newer, larger sewer tunnels that she would order a small rail line to be installed therein, to convey visitors through the sewer. Gas lights and walkways would be installed along with booths to sell souvenirs to those who chose to walk or ride through the “tunnel under the river.”)

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Benjamin Disraeli briefly became prime minister — he would quickly lose the position to William Gladstone, leader of the Liberal Party, when in September the queen would call for a vote.

1868

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The Tory Benjamin Disraeli regained the Prime Ministership from William Gladstone, leader of the Liberals — and this time would be able to hold the leadership until 1878. He would seek to bring back the British Empire. First in 1875, he would purchase for Britain a large interest in the Suez Canal, which was a key link in the shipping route that connected Britain with its vast empire in India and the Far East.2 At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Disraeli would help prevent Russian expansion in Turkey and would award Cypress to Berlin.

Queen Victoria much preferred Disraeli’s conservatism to William Gladstone’s liberalism. She also approved of the man’s charm. The Prime Minister would later remark that: “Everyone likes flattery, and when you come to royalty, you should lay it on with a trowel.”

Macedon, New York’s Erie Canal Lock #60 was converted to a double lock.

12,424,705 barrels of wheat and corn were shipped on the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

Once again work began on Wisconsin’s Portage Canal. The US Government began rebuilding the Fort Winnebago lock.

Colonel Merrill recommended Congress authorize thirteen locks and movable dams on the Ohio River, between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Wheeling, West Virginia.

Thomas Carlyle accepted a Prussian Order of Merit proffered by Otto von Bismarck while rejecting an English baronetcy or G.C.B. proffered by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.

1874

2. The hopelessly Eurocentric term “Far East” had been created in 1852 to designate “the extreme eastern regions of the Old World.”

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Benjamin Disraeli left public life.

1879

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Queen Victoria was very upset when William Gladstone replaced Benjamin Disraeli as Prime Minister.

(When Disraeli would die during the following year, Victoria would write to his private secretary that she was devastated by the news and could not stop crying. Gladstone’s relationship with Victoria would fail to improve. As well as her objection to the 1884 Reform Act, Victoria would disagree with Gladstone’s foreign policy. Gladstone believed that Britain should never support a cause that was morally wrong! Victoria held the contrary view, that not to pursue Britain’s best interest was not only misguided, but close to treachery.)

1880

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April 19, Tuesday: Benjamin Disraeli died in his Mayfair, England home at the age of 77.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

1881

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Benjamin D’Israeli

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.

Prepared: September 12, 2014

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.