In my last post, I quoted Queen Victoria’s complaint about her prime minister, William Gladstone: “He speaks to me as if I were a public meeting.”

That is a complaint she would never have made about Gladstone’s great rival, Benjamin Disraeli.

Disraeli was an outsider in proper British society, and knew it. He realized that Victoria viewed him, at least initially, with suspicion if not outright disapproval. His method of winning over his prickly sovereign was simple, but ingenious. He was deferential, he was amusing and he flattered. “We all love flattery," he used to say, "and where royalty is concerned, you should lay it on with a trowel.”

But it was flattery of the most exalted kind. Disraeli was shrewd enough to know that even sovereigns needed to have their egos stroked. When he became prime minister for the first time in 1868, Victoria was still in mourning for her beloved husband, Prince Albert, who had died seven years before. Albert had been more than her consort. He had been her principal advisor and source of strength. Without him, she felt lonely and insecure. Worse, she had withdrawn from public life, putting the whole institution of the monarchy at risk.

Disraeli recognized that the Victoria would not be bullied out of her seclusion. She needed to be coaxed. Hence his extravagant flattery. In every possible way, Disraeli encouraged Victoria to believe that he depended on her advice, rather than the other way around, and that it was she who inspired all his successful policy initiatives. When, for example, he secured the Suez Canal for Britain by a brilliant stroke of personal diplomacy, he immediately congratulated to his royal mistress on her achievement: “It is just settled; you have it, Madame …”

(As a speechwriter, I’ve often found it expedient to attribute the success of a speech entirely to the brilliant insights and touching personal anecdotes that the client gave me in the interview that preceded the writing of the first draft.)

On another occasion, Disraeli visited the queen shortly after she had published selections from her Highland journals. Disraeli, who at the time had over a dozen novels to his credit, gave Victoria a conspiratorial wink and remarked, “We authors, Ma’am …”

By cultivating the trust, interest and friendship of Queen Victoria, Disraeli gained both easy access to her presence and her enthusiastic cooperation with many of his pet projects. Victoria gained, too. By allowing Disraeli to coax her out of her seclusion, she won back the popularity she had lost by remaining for so long out of the public eye.

Between the two of them, these unlikely partners reestablished the British monarchy on a firmer footing, and added romance and glamour to the British Empire. On a much more modest scale, a speechwriter who approaches his client with the right combination of tact and initiative can achieve the same kind of satisfying success.