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"genius is prolonged patience".
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“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”
... Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81), British Prime Minister at the height of British Vistorian imperialism. Indeed, the man was idolized by Queen Victoria herself. It was also the heyday of the mechanical industrial revolution, but well before electric power grids, instant communications, and the car with its all pervasive infrastructure and inherent oil dependence. Even then, the very seeds of present day political turmoil in Asia and the Middle East are arguably linked directly to the policies of his government almost 150 years ago. Curiously the British at the time, yielding to imperialist prerogatives, were stridently meddling in Afghanistan with a massive invading contingent of some 30,000 troops, stultifying and dismantling the fledgling country's established order, deepening the fractious tribal nature of the region that persists to this day.
Mary Anne Disraeli, wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, and 12 years his senior, was roundly ridiculed as unworthy of her clever husband. Queen Victoria once thought her "very vulgar", inclined to say "odd and startling things". Disraeli wedded her soon after her husband's death frankly for her money. His political career required it. But what began in calculation grew into mutual love. By the end the queen herself was hardly more devoted. At Disraeli's suggestion, she made Marie Anne Vis-countess Beaconsfield - her prize, perhaps, for at last looking something like an ideal Victorian wife.
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