Unlikely power couple’s West Country roots
He was an impoverished dandy and ambitious politician; she was an older woman described as ‘a rattle and a flirt’. Yet the marriage of Benjamin Disraeli and Mary Anne Evans would be remarkably successful. looks at the couple’s local connections
0N December 22 1815, 23-year-old Mary Anne Viney Evans walked down the aisle of St Andrew’s Church, Clifton to marry Welsh iron magnate Wyndham Lewis who, at 36, was 14 years her senior.
Mary knew he harboured a secret - an illegitimate daughter he supported. Financially Lewis was a great catch as he was worth £11,000 a year (even more than Mr Darcy!) but was notoriously mean, going so far as hiring newspapers rather than buying them.
At the time, she could have had no idea that she would marry again, and that her husband would be one of the greatest British statesmen of the 19th century - the country’s first (and only to date) Jewish prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli
Devon-born Mary was two when her father, naval surgeon Commander John Evans died at sea.
Her Bath-born mother, Eleanor Scrope Viney was related to the Lamberts of Boyton Manor, Wiltshire and the Scropes of Castle Combe.
In 1807 Eleanor, Mary Anne and her brother John moved to Cathedral House, Gloucester, where Eleanor met her second husband, Thomas Yate, who appears to have worked for Naval Ordnance Stores, and they were married the following year.
The family moved to Portsmouth and in 1814 to Bristol where they lived in a series of rented houses in Clifton. Mary Anne said she found the society here “very preferable to Portsmouth”.
Later in life she made out she had worked as a milliner in Bristol and walked barefoot to work in a factory, all of which was totally false. In reality her life in Clifton consisted of social visits, balls and teaching Sunday school at St Andrew’s.
She was a petite, pretty, and rather flashy flirt, with a mass of kiss curls. She later said she had received 32 marriage proposals and was regarded as “the belle of Clifton”.
After her marriage she was once importuned by a drunken colonel at a ball who kissed her bare shoulder and then poured his drink over her, and two gentlemen fought a duel over her after one made derogatory comments about her reputation. It was said she had numerous affairs with both married and single men.
Wyndham and Mary Anne spent summer seasons in Cheltenham and visited her mother in Bristol until her death in 1842.
Wyndham became an M.P. in 1820 and died in 1838 aged 57. They had no children.
Wyndham had been a political colleague of his fellow Tory Disraeli, with whom Mary Anne grew friendly (though he seems to have disliked her at first).
When she and Disraeli married she was a wealthy widow of 46, her husband was a debt-ridden dandy of 34. Disraeli cut a distinctive appearance with his hair in long black ringlets and flamboyant, sightly effeminate clothes.
He had been bullied at school for latent homosexuality and idolised bisexual poet Lord Byron.
Throughout his life Disraeli had several intense relationships with women and men, including Lord Henry Lennox, son of the Duke of Richmond with whom he was “strikingly intimate”, addressing him as “my beloved”. It was said Disraeli was a devotee of “Eastern love”, a euphemism of the period for male homosexuality.
Mary Anne had met Disraeli at a ball in 1832 given by M.P. Edward Bulwer Lytton and his wife Rosina. Disraeli and Lytton were political allies and also successful novelists.
It is believed they also shared a mutual passion. During the winter of 1832-33 they lodged together in Bath where Disraeli wrote The Rise of Iskander.
During Lytton and Rosina’s acrimonious separation in 1833, Rosina accused Lytton of an “unnatural connection” with Disraeli when they had lived together in Bath.
Certainly Lytton and Disraeli went to great lengths to recover letters written by them, held by Rosina.
All his life Disraeli was attracted to older women and younger men. Disraeli is believed to have had an intimate friendship with Montagu Corry, his private secretary for 15 years who was 34 years his junior.
Despite this Mary Anne and Disraeli had a happy marriage that lasted 32 years until her death aged 80 in 1872. She became a popular society hostess who dressed more grandly than Queen Victoria and moved through the social season in a dazzle of diamonds.
She scandalised staid Victorian society with her uninhibited conversation and behaviour and was looked on as a “a rattle” - loud, overpainted and overdressed.
Queen Victoria initially thought her “vulgar” but later was amused when Mary Anne commented, in response to a remark about a lady’s pale complexion, “You should see my Dizzy in his bath”.
She also informed the Queen that she always slept with her arms around Disraeli’s neck.
At a house party when Napoleonic war hero, Lord Hardinge was in the next bedroom to the Disraelis, Mary Anne announced at breakfast she had slept the night before between the greatest orator of the day (Disraeli) and the greatest soldier (Hardinge).
Lady Hardinge was not amused! In 1861 Disraeli bought 8 Brock Street, Bath, and in 1868 finally became Prime Minister for the first time, albeit briefly. He held the Premiership again from 1874-80.
Mary Anne’s brother John was a hero of the Peninsular War who fought at the Battle of Talavera (1809) and took part in the Siege of Badajoz (1811). He died in 1834 after being taken ill while leading his men on a march through Cheddar Gorge. He reached Bristol and travelled to London but died two weeks later. Disraeli wrote a preface to his 1845 novel Sybil, which was dedicated to Mary Anne describing her as “a perfect wife”.
Queen Victoria created Mary Anne Countess Beaconsfield in 1868 and Disraeli became Earl of Beaconsfield in 1876. Hughenden Manor, Buckinghamshire, became the couple’s country home in 1848 and is now a National Trust property.
Hughenden Roads in Clifton and Horfield are named after it, and Beaconsfield Road in Clifton, St George and Knowle, and Beaconsfield Street/Close in Barton Hill perpetuate the memory of Disraeli in Bristol today.