A splendid failure?(Disraeli's Disciple : The Scandalous Life of George Smythe)(Book review)

Mary S. Millar

Disraeli's Disciple: The Scandalous

Life of George Smythe.

University of Toronto, 440 pages, $75

"It is a captivating and enthralling biography that will change the way we view Victorian England." The second part of this jacket puff troubled me. Could a biography of a minor figure, even of "Disraeli's disciple," really accomplish so much?

George Augustus Frederick Percy Sydney Smythe, Viscount Strangford (1818-1857), called a "splendid failure" in one of his obituaries and reputedly the last man to fight a duel in England, unquestionably was a member of Disraeli's "Young England" group and the inspiration for several of Disraeli's fictional heroes. He was a promising member of Parliament, a first-class journalist, and the first aristocrat to become a member of the press--not to mention a handsome and dashing gentleman whose affairs are reminiscent of Byron's Don Juan. Smythe certainly deserves a biography, one that finally does him proud, after his all-too-brief appearances in biographies and histories of the period.

But why elevate Smythe's life beyond the precincts of biography? Why argue for his centrality? Mary S. Millar does so only by implication; indeed, her narrative is so modestly, if elegantly, presented that her publisher has to supply the fanfare. If reading Smythe's life does change our view of Victorian England, it is because Smythe himself wanted to be Victorian and more. He was of his period, but he also stood outside it--and came to grief because he did so. In one sense, he was a modern man, chafing at Victorian restraint; in another, hc was an aristocrat yearning for days of yore when the gentry set an example and practiced a benign feudalism. Call Smythe's vision of the past fantasy, if you like, but it had a powerful impact on his contemporaries, especially Disraeli, whose career is shown in fascinating new perspective in this biography.