Sarah Brydges-Willyams Politicians and Primroses
In 1863 a childless Torquay widow died and left her house and much of her estate to an aspiring politician who was on the verge of bankruptcy. That kindness changed Britain and the world. Kevin Dixon tells us more.
An early meeting of the Primrose League Mount Braddon
Benjamin Disraeli
M
ount Braddon is an imposing Grade II villa just above Torquay harbour. It was built in 1827 for Sarah Brydges-Willyams, the wealthy widow of a colonel in the Cornish militia. Sarah was born Sarah Mendez da Costa and was of Spanish-Jewish descent; she believed that she might be related to the famous politician Benjamin Disraeli who had Italian-Sephardic Jewish ancestry. She then began writing to him. Initially Disraeli regarded Sarah as an elderly eccentric and even sought legal advice. However, when one of the letters included a donation of £1,000, he agreed to a meeting. This led to a long-term friendship between Disraeli, his wife Anne and the childless widow. The Disraelis then visited Torquay every year and corresponded with the owner in between – about 250 letters survive. When Sarah died in 1863, she was buried at Disraeli’s home Hughenden Manor in High Wycombe. In recognition of his efforts to further the cause of Zionism, Sarah had bequeathed Disraeli £30,000, three quarters of her estate and Mount Braddon. This bequest probably saved him from bankruptcy as he had debts resulting from his lavish lifestyle and poor investments. However, he never wanted to move to Torquay and sold Mount Braddon for £1,850.
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The story goes that Disraeli’s favourite flower was the primrose and that he greatly admired and was inspired by those growing at Mount Braddon. Recognising this enthusiasm, Queen Victoria frequently sent him bunches of primroses; he wrote back that the primrose was, “the ambassador of spring”. When the twiceelected Conservative Prime Minister died in April 1881 it caused widespread popular grief and Victoria sent a wreath of primroses to his funeral. On the anniversaries of his death the flower came to be worn by Conservative Party members. In the 1880 election, the Conservatives lost badly to Gladstone’s Liberals and the Tories recognised that they needed to reach out to new voters. And so in 1883, Lord Randolph Churchill and John Gorst launched a new mass movement to promote the spread of Conservative principles. As Disraeli had been the hero of Popular Conservatism and had done so much to expand the franchise to working class men in the cities, the movement was named the Primrose League in his honour. The Primrose League had more support than the trades’ union movement and in 1910, when the entire national electorate was only 7.7 million, it had a membership of almost two million. Dedicated to spreading Conservative principles, it transformed how
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