The priest and the playboy: Disraeli's Lothair, Monsignor Catesby, and 'Boy' Capel

Disraeli's Lothair, published in 1870 and reprinted seven times that year, was the sensation of the literary decade, avidly read by a wide readership on both sides of the Atlantic. "I was the first to read it", Queen Victoria boasted to the Duchess of Edinburgh. It could be seen as a forerunner of Downton Abbey, allowing the public a privileged view of Disraeli's "paladins of high degree" as they move between their many stately homes or sup on truffles and ortolans. Readers were eager to identify the original models for characters such as Lord and Lady St Jerome, Lord St Aldegonde and Mr Bacchus. Lothair himself was easily identifiable as John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, the young Marquess of Bute, heir to a vast fortune and an object of interest to the titled mothers of marriageable daughters. In 1870 both "Lothair" and Bute were in their early twenties, yet to discover their life's mission. Beyond that, fact and fiction become confused.