Was Disraeli a spanko?

According to a brief note in this week's Time Out, when in 1839 future Brit prime minister Benjamin Disraeli proposed - in writing - to Mary Anne Lewis, he told her that a refusal would lead her to "a penal hour of retribution". Now just what did he mean by that, d'you think?

Whatever it was, the idea evidently didn't put her off. The happy couple were married soon afterwards at the highly fashionable church of St George's, Hanover Square.

I can only hope that Mary Anne enjoyed everything she had coming to her.

My favourite anecdote about the 1st Earl of Beaconsfield:

"A member of Parliament to Disraeli: 'Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.'

That depends, Sir,' said Disraeli, 'whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

Nice quote, Hotspur, but I think misattributed. That kind of bawdy rough-and-tumble is much more 18th than 19th century. It was actually the Earl of Sandwich who said to the great radical John Wilkes: "You will die of a pox, Sir, or on the gallows!", to which Wilkes responded, "That depends Sir, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."

@PhilK
That's what comes of relying on a failing memory rather than Google.

Perhaps so, but i have surely read this as attributed to Disraeli

However my favorite alleged Disraeli quote:

Someone asked Disraeli whether there was a difference between a misfortune and a calamity. He replied:

"Oh there is a vast difference. If, say, Mr Gladstone were to fall into the Thames, that would be a misfortune. However, if someone were to pull him OUT--"

So have I, Don, but it's right there in every biography of Wilkes I've ever read. Besides, the whole tone is wrong for mid-Victorian Britain - but utterly right for the far rougher atmosphere of 18th-century political debate. The Gladstone quote sounds much more like Dizzy.

You may well be right, although some of that tone was definitely still around. But mostly not Dizzy's style, that is true. I know rather less about Wilkes than i do about Dizzy -- a very odd and complex man. Perhaps he quoted the Wilkes episode once -- he would have surely read of it -- and so it became associated with him.

I also love his "When the *honorable* gentleman's ancestors were savages in the forest, mine were priests in Solomon's temple" (from memory so may be inaccurate, but the gist is correct).

From about the same period, but the other side of the ocean:

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." Representative (later Speaker) Thomas B. Reed referring to two of his colleagues in the House of Representatives.

This immediately reminded me of almost all the politicians appearing on C21 TV!

Also on this side of the pond, in the 1800s -

Politician Thaddeus Stevens, who was small of stature, encountered Alexander Harris, a political rival, on a narrow sidewalk. Harris refused to give way, saying "I never get out of the way of a skunk." Stevens stepped down into the muddy street to avoid the physically imposing Harris, with the rejoinder, "I always do."