Benjamin Disraeli wrote Lothair 23 years after his last novel, Tancred (1847). His political career had prevented his pursuit of fiction, but when the general election of 1868 propelled Gladstone to power in Disraeli’s place, he decided to return to writing. The prospects of the new novel caused tremendous anticipation. The public wondered whether he would produce another work of social consciousness, like Sybil (1845), or whether the novel might focus on the political world. Even his secretary knew no details, and when the novel appeared, it proved everyone wrong in their guesses regarding its plot.

While Disraeli did base his novel on real-life events that featured political favoritism, it was not set in Parliament. Rather, he chose the Vatican as the power seeking to procure the favor of a wealthy nobleman. In 1868, one Monsignor Capel had influenced the enormously wealthy Third Marquess of Bute to convert to Catholicism, in hopes of manipulating his political influence on behalf of the church, offering Disraeli the seed of his plot.

Benjamin Disraeli

The fact that the machinations of Cardinal Manning, Catholic archbishop of Westminster, had probably cost Disraeli the 1868 election likely added fuel to his literary fire. Lothair became highly successful, allowing Disraeli revenge through his characterization of the despicable Cardinal Grandison. The first English edition of the novel sold out in 48 hours, and eight more editions were issued in 1870. When the novel appeared in the United States, 15,000 copies sold in a single day, rivaling in popularity Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

While critics did not blast the novel, they also withheld praise for a story they found to be of little substance, containing no hint at what they termed the “author’s principles” or “convictions.” Disraeli’s political cronies did not appreciate his efforts as the first prime minister ever to publish a novel; it did not seem a suitable activity. Modern readers find the novel melodramatic in a way less acceptable than the same type of hyperbolic excess characteristic of Charles Dickens. Vernon Bogdanor suggests that this is because Dickens used preposterous plot twists as a “vehicle” for crucial “revelation,” whereas Disraeli employed them simply to advance an otherwise fairly realistic plot. Later readers also did not enjoy the novel as satire, due to its gentle nature.

The novel features an orphaned nobleman of immense wealth named Lothair. He is raised by Lord Culloden and by Cardinal Grandison, at first a mere clergyman who manipulates his way to high office. Lothair matures as a Scots Protestant, taking part in Garibaldi’s Italian campaign as an adult. Clare Arundel joins forces with Grandison and Monsignor Catesby to lure Lothair into conversion. On the other side of the private battle are Lord Culloden, the admirable Lady Corisande, and the highly dramatized Italian Garibaldi champion, Theodora, whom Lothair finds fascinating.

While his thoughts focused regularly “on religion, the Churches, the solar system, the cosmical order, the purpose of creation, and the destiny of man,” he was so enthralled with Theodora that they always returned to her, although she married an American. The Catholic forces felt her influence on Lothair, but, as the narrator notes, “Jesuits are wise men; they never lose their temper. They know when to avoid scenes as well as when to make them.”

When Lothair presents her with an anonymous gift of priceless pearls, she returns them to him, explaining that an unknown admirer did not realize that she did not wear jewelry. She asks him to take charge of them for one year, and the astounded Lothair departs “with his own gift.”

Disraeli makes abundantly clear Theodora’s position as an ideal when, like the Virgin Mary, she rides a beautiful mule during a military campaign through the Apennines. The setting adds to the fantasy atmosphere, as the group halts “in a green nook, near a beautiful cascade that descended in a mist down a sylvan cleft, and poured its pellucid stream, for their delightful use, into a natural basin of water.” The mist and water foreshadow an as yet unclear change in Lothair’s future. A short time later, Theodora suffers a “theatrical” death, killed by papal supporters. As she dies, Lothair pledges he will never convert to Catholicism, “the scarlet lady,” and he suddenly matures into a determined man.

Despite his own later wounding and the cardinal’s attempts to sway him, Lothair returns to England still a Protestant, where he marries Lady Corisande. While Disraeli appreciated the historic significance of the Catholic Church and even admired its ideology, he also realized that it could usurp individual independence and creativity, encouraging instead conformity. He had written in various political works of the importance of religious ideology to politics.

In an article that appeared in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1868, he wrote that religion “instills some sense of responsibility even into the depositories of absolute power”; however, he recognized the danger to civil rights that religious edict posed. Although by the time he wrote Lothair he no longer championed the liberal ideals expressed in his earlier novels, he handled the characterizations of the politically idealistic Theodora and Clare Arundel with respect. Whether their motives proved “right” or “wrong,” they remained pure. However, Clare proves unrealistically saintly and Theodora becomes a martyr, leaving Lady Corisande as the practical female voice, that of an English woman proud to represent her country.

Lothair offers her the box of pearls one year after Theodora’s death, and she presents him with a rose. Readers then understand he has at last found the treasure he sought in his religious and military quest. Upon opening the case, they find on the jewels a slip of paper written by Theodora, which prophetically reads, “The Offering of Theodora to Lothair’s Bride.” When Lothair fastens the pearl ropes around her neck, Corisande tells him, “I will wear them as your chains,” symbolizing that the past will not be forgotten.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bogdanor, Vernon. Introduction to Lothair, by Benjamin Disraeli. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975, vii–xvii.
Masefield, Muriel Agnes. Peacocks and Primroses: A Survey of Disraeli’s Novels. 1953. Reprint, Millwood, N.Y.: Krause Reprints, 1973.