Henrietta Temple - Benjamin Disraeli

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) was a British bon viveur, statesman, and author, praised by Edgar Allan Poe for his "brilliant... lofty, and... delicate... imagination." Henrietta Temple (1837) is his semi-autobiographical novel dramatizing his affair with lady Henrietta Sykes; Disraeli's friend, Count d'Orsay (to whom the book is dedicated), is the basis for the character Count Mirabel.

The story follows Ferdinand Armine, a member of a high-born but financially imperiled family. When Ferdinand is denied his much-anticipated inheritance, he attempts to secure his outstanding debts by becoming engaged to his wealthy cousin Katherine. However, a love-at-first-sight encounter with the daughter of a neighboring estate (Henrietta Temple) throws his plan into crisis.

Henrietta Temple is typically classified as a "silver-fork" novel, featuring aristocratic manors and manners, and glamorizing upper-class life and romance. The term was coined by William Hazlett in ridicule, writing: "The first thing a dandy scribbler does is to let us know that he is dressed in the height of fashion... and the next thing he does is to make a supercilious allusion to some one who is not so well dressed as himself." "A writer of this accomplished stamp comes forward to tell you, not how his hero feels on any occasion--for he is above that--but how he was dressed.... Then he gives you the address of his heroine's milliner, lest any shocking surmise should arise in your mind of the possibility of her dealing with a person of less approved taste..."

Melville critic Henry A. Murray asserts that "the autobiographical novels of Disraeli... seem to have provided more raw material for Pierre than any other author" besides Byron--adding that Disraeli was "himself a Byronist."

Recommended selections:

• Part 1: Chapters 4, 9, 10
• Part 2: Chapters 1, 2, 4, 9, 13
• Part 3: Chapters 1, 2
• Part 4: Chapters 3, 6, 8, 9, 10
• Part 5: Chapters 5, 6
• Part 6: Chapters 10, 18-25

Henrietta Temple:

• PDF with above selections
• Kindle
• Google books
• Gutenberg
• Librivox 6h16m (out of 17h30m)

Supplemental:

• The Dandy School by William Hazlitt
• Impressions of Disraeli

Extracts:

• "But where are the...Count d’Orsays, which, from all my reading, I had been in the habit of associating with England? Not the most distant glimpse of them was to be seen." (Redburn, 28)
• "Sad sight! at which any one but a barber or a Tartar would have wept! Beards three years old; goatees that would have graced a Chamois of the Alps; imperials that Count D’Orsay would have envied; and love-curls and man-of-war ringlets that would have measured, inch for inch, with the longest tresses of The Fair One with the Golden Locks—all went by the board!" (White-Jacket, 85)

This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.