Biography

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Ben Marries

In August 1839, Disraeli married Mary-Anne Wyndham Lewis, a widow who was twelve years his senior.

Disraeli's views on marriage: 22 May 1833

By the bye, would you like Lady Z for a sister-in-law, very clever, £25,000, and domestic? As for ‘love’, all my friends who married for love and beauty either beat their wives or live apart from them. This is literally the case. I may commit many follies in life, but I never intend to marry for ‘love’, which I am sure is a guarantee of infelicity.

***

from James George Ashworth, Imperial Ben, A Jew d’esprit (Remington & Co., 1879).

Sir Wyndham Lewis had a wife;
But stupid-like, Sir Wyndham died,
And left her lonesome in the strife
Of this most miserable life,
So she became Ben’s bride

Her weight I can’t exactly gauge.
Nor can I tell her tale of years;
But she was over Dizzy’s age
By fifteen summers, I’ll engage,
Tho’ such a tale appears!

For who could fancy Ben would choose
A woman much his senior
With whom to tie th’ eternal noose?
But then you know ‘tis like the Jews
To value golden ore!

And she possessed a mass of coin
That made her younger by a score:
And all but rendered her divine!
The daughter of old Pluto’s line,
The God whom most adore!

‘Ha! Ha!’ said Dizzy ‘I want power!
What gives it? what but yellow coin?
Good! I may clasp it any hour
For that dear widow has a dower,
And she is wholly mine.’