Chapter 12: The Final Summit, 1874-80

Item 137
'...Power and the Affections'
Letter from Disraeli to Lady Bradford, 2 Sept. 1876, published in The Marquis of Zetland (ed.), The Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield, 1876-1881, Vol. II (London, 1929), pp. 70-1
2288 d.381

Disraeli took Mary Anne at her word (when she encouraged him to remarry if she should die before him - see No. 160, below) and looked for a new partner. In 1873 he fell in love with the married Lady Bradford, the younger of the surviving daughters of Lord Forester, whom he had known since the 1830s. The extent to which his affection was reciprocated is unclear since most of her letters to Disraeli no longer survive - perhaps weeded out by Corry or Rose. In his letters to her, and to Lady Chesterfield, her widowed sister to whom he proposed, Disraeli vividly describes his daily life. Disraeli wrote roughly a thousand letters to Lady Bradford and half as many to her sister, prefiguring the highly descriptive letters H.H. Asquith wrote to the Stanley sisters forty years later. In this letter written in September 1876, he notes how the arrival of a letter from her '... generally rewards me and supports me for the whole day - but not always' and refers to his demanding schedule and the situation in the Bulkans.