Dizzy

YOUNG MR. DISRAELI--Elswyth Thane --Harcourt, Brace ($3).

"No novelist could possibly improve on the drama of Disraeli's life exactly as he lived it." Author Elswyth Thane (Mrs. William Beebe) has a neat thesis which demands more than ordinary biographical skill, but readers of Young Mr. Disraeli last week agreed that she had it. Her biography of Disraeli read like a novel, and a good one. Not a full-length life, it ended with her hero's young manhood. Like a good novelist, Author Thane knew when and where to stop.

If Shylock ever existed in the flesh, he might have known Disraeli's family, for they too were once merchants of Venice. Disraeli's grandfather was the first of his tribe to settle in England, where he belonged to London's congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Disraeli's father, who withdrew from the Jewish Church, had plenty of money, a respectable position in the literary world; his brilliant, handsome son, Benjamin, was under no compulsion to work for his living. But young Ben was consumed with ambition; he panted for Fame.

His father got him a job as solicitor's clerk in one of London's grimiest, soundest law firms, but Ben never intended to be anything so humdrum to him as a lawyer. Byron, lately dead at Missolonghi, was his hero. While still a law clerk, he began what he intended to be a brilliant literary career by writing a satirical society novel. Famed Publisher Murray fought shy of it, and Ben was cut to the quick. Wanting to get rich very quickly, he took a flyer in South American mining shares. was soon over his ears in debt. Leaving his stuffy law office, he persuaded Murray to start a daily paper to rival the great London Times. The paper appeared just as the market crashed, petered out in a few months. All this happened before Ben was 21. He thought his career was ruined, his life over.

Women always came to Ben's rescue. He was a handsome young fellow, in an excitingly un-English style ; he was one of the greatest dandies of his post-Byronic day; he had beautiful manners and a pretty wit. One Mrs. Austen now played ministering angel to Ben's despair, ar ranged for the anonymous publication of an other society novel, better than his abortive first. Vivian Grey's success soared quickly to notoriety: the reviewers accused Ben of everything from blackmail down. Ben's sensitive soul was crushed again, and Mrs. Austen whisked him off to Italy with her self and her husband. Of course Ben fell in love with her, but she kept him at a platonic distance. Ben stood it as long as he could, then went abroad for a year's tour with his sister's fiance, Meredith, to get atmosphere for a really good novel. On the eve of their return Meredith died. Ben had one more catastrophe to lay to his conscience.

Things had been happening in England while he was away. The agitation for Reform of Parliamentary representation had reached a dangerous high. Party lines were crumbling, there was sinister talk of revolution, civil war. Ben saw his chance. He went more than ever into society, turned his pen to Tory pamphleteering, got himself favorably known by the right people, finally stood for Parliament. He was four times defeated before he got in, but since he had made the sacrosanct Carlton Club he knew he had practically ar rived. Meantime he had made another conquest, of the beautiful Henrietta who was his mistress for two years. He broke with her at last because she would not understand that the Career came first.

At 33 it looked as if Ben was to go partnerless. The only woman in his life, besides his beloved sister, was Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, wife of his close friend and almost like a mother to him. But when Lewis died Ben discovered a more than filial affection for Mary Anne, and it took him less than the traditional widow's year to overcome her scruples. Author Thane leaves him on the threshold of his career and on her doorstep, with the Premiership in the future and Mary Anne's answer just inside the door.

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