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Lord Russell, though he must have been among the few who knew the Prime Minister had been failing lately, writes that his death came with a shock of surprise, he was so full of heart and health to the last.
Lord Russell now became Prime Minister, and Lord Clarendon took his place at the Foreign Office.
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 2, 1865
John to town at twelve, back at half-past five, having taken leave of the dear old Foreign Office and left Lord Clarendon there. Happy, happy days, so full of reality—the hours of work so cheerfully got through, the hours of leisure so delightful. Sometimes when I walk with my dear, dear husband and see my lovely Agatha bounding along with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks, and the bright sun shining on the red and yellow trees, I can only feel the sunshine of life and forget its autumn leaves. Or when we sit together by our evening fire and talk, as our moods or fancies lead us, of things grave or gay, trifling or solemn, my heart seems to leap within me from the sense of happiness, and I can only utter silent and humble thanks to the Almighty Giver. It must end, oh, fearful thought!—parting and death must come; fearfully yet not despairingly I think of that end. Come when or how it will, it cannot take all away—this happiness, this unutterable gratitude is not for time only, but is mine for ever.
The succession of Lord Russell to Palmerston's place at the head of the Government implied a change in its character and policy. It was not merely a continuation of an old, but practically the formation of a new Government. Lord Russell was bent upon introducing a Reform Bill, and thus closing his career in forwarding the cause in which he had won his earliest and most famous laurels, and for which he had on two other occasions striven without success. But though the country was now in a mood for such measures, and Gladstone's speeches in favour of an extension of the franchise had been well received, the party which had been elected in support of Palmerston was largely composed of men who shared his indifference, if not his dislike, to all such proposals. In all probability the Ministry was therefore doomed to a short life. "Palmerston," wrote Lord Clarendon to Lord Granville, "held a great bundle of sticks together. They are now loosened and there is nobody to tie them up." [58] In any case such a Bill would require very careful steering. The first ominous sign of a split occurred when it became necessary to fill the vacancy caused by the retirement of Sir Charles Wood. A place in the Cabinet was offered to Mr. Lowe, but he refused on the ground that he could not support Reform. Lord Russell, with characteristic abruptness and without consulting his colleagues, then offered the place to Mr. Goschen, who was quite unknown to the public; he had only been three years in Parliament, and held a subordinate office. [59] The choice was an admirable one, but to those who had not read Mr. Goschen's book upon Foreign Exchanges the appointment might well seem inexplicable.
[58] "Life of Lord Granville," by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice.
[59] Promotion so rapid has only occurred once or twice in Parliamentary history. See note, Morley's "Life of Gladstone," vol. ii, p. 156.
LONDON, February 3, 1866
Sir Charles Wood [60] called—wished to see me alone—chiefly in order to talk about John, his occasional sudden acts without consulting colleagues, and the bad effect of so acting. He gave some instances, in which he was quite mistaken, some in which he was right. The subject was a difficult one for me—but his intentions were very kind, and as I heartily agree with him in the main, we got on very well, and as a wife I was glad to have the opportunity of saying some things of my dearest, dearest John, who is not always understood. Sir Charles took my hand, kissed it, and said: "God bless you."
[60] Sir Charles Wood retired with the title of Lord Halifax.
Early in March Lady Russell writes to her son Rollo, at Harrow, of a very agreeable evening at Chesham Place, when Mr. Froude and Mr. Bright were among her guests.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
March 1, 1866
I wish you had been here at the Friday dinner.... It was such a pleasant little dinner. Bright was between Johnny and me; ... his conversation is interesting; he is warm hearted and very much in earnest. We talked of Milton, Shakespeare, and poetry in general; he has intense admiration for Milton, as a man and as a poet, as he ought to have; but agreed with me that it is less improbable that the world should produce another Milton than another Shakespeare. He said reading poetry was the next to the greatest pleasure he had in life—the greatest was little children. These refined and amiable tastes are not what the common world would attribute to Bright, who is better known for determination and pugnacity.
Although Lord Russell and Lord Derby were the two leaders of their respective parties, they were no longer the principal men on either side. The centre of interest lay in the House of Commons, and Gladstone and Disraeli were now the antagonists whom everybody watched. On March 12th the Government's Reform Bill was introduced in a speech by Gladstone, which was chiefly remarkable for lacking his usual fervour. The cause of this want of ardour on his part lay in the nature of the Bill itself. In order to conciliate the apathetic or hostile section of the party, the Cabinet, against the advice of Lord Russell and the inclinations of Gladstone had separated the franchise question from their redistribution scheme, which ought to have been an integral part of any Reform Bill capable of meeting the needs of the country. The grievances which such a Bill would aim at mitigating, although less gigantic than those which called for removal at the time of the first Reform Bill, were still serious enough. In 1865 "there was not one elector for each four inhabited houses, and five out of every six adult males were without a vote." [61] But in addition to this the large increase in population had been very unevenly distributed, with the result that large towns like Liverpool were palpably under-represented. The franchise had been fixed by the first Reform Bill at L10 a year rental. The Bill which Gladstone brought forward in the Commons proposed to reduce the county franchise from L50 to L14, and the borough franchise from L10 to L7 rental. Gladstone wished to make the payment of rates qualify a man for a vote; but this change was thought to be too radical, and any lowering of the qualifying sum of L7 rental would, it was found, place the working-classes in command of a majority in the towns—a result which the Cabinet was not ready to face. Moderate as the measure was, it was received with bitter hostility, while its half-heartedness roused little enthusiasm among the keener Liberals of the party. The debates upon the first and second readings were remarkable for energy of attack from the disaffected section of the old Palmerstonian party, nicknamed the "Adullamites." Mr. Lowe's speeches from "the cave of Adullam," "to which every one was invited who was distressed, and every one who was discontented," are still [62] remembered as among the most eloquent ever delivered in the House of Commons. The second reading passed by so narrow a majority that the Government thought it prudent to rally their reliable supporters, and meet just criticisms upon the inadequacy of their Bill, by bringing forward a redistribution measure and incorporating it with their franchise proposals. For a time this served to help them. By declaring that they would also stand or fall by the redistribution clauses of their Bill, they at any rate showed a better front to the Opposition. Towards the end of June, however, they were beaten in committee by eleven; their defeat being principally due to the attacks and manoeuvres of Mr. Lowe and Mr. Horsman, who had been Irish Secretary in Palmerston's first Ministry.
[61] Spencer Walpole, "The History of Twenty-five Years."
[62] John Bright's speech.
Lady Russell to her two sons at Harrow
March 15, 1866
...Horsman and Lowe are both Liberals; Horsman used, I think, to be reckoned Radical. But both have taken a violent dislike to Parliamentary Reform, and certainly one would not guess by their speeches that they were liberal in anything. Mr. Lowe's was a very clever speech; Bright's very clever too, and very good. Of course the Bill does not satisfy him; but his honest support of it, being all in the right direction, is creditable to him and very useful to the measure. Your Papa is much pleased with the whole debate, thinking it a very good one (excellent speeches for and against the measure), and the result probably favourable to it. As to the likelihood of its passing, opinions vary. I hear that Lord Eversley (the late Speaker) says he would take a good big bet that it won't pass. Your Papa says he is ready to bet against him that it will. Will Ministers dissolve Parliament if beaten? To that I must answer I don't know. I heard Mr. Gladstone's speech. As Willy says, the latter part was very eloquent. It was all good; but the details of a Suffrage Act are tiresome, and the apparent indifference, or even apathy, of our side of the House allowed even the striking passages with which the speech was interspersed to fall dead. The passages were striking, but nobody seemed to be struck. I don't believe the real feeling is one of dislike to Reform; but that, of course, they don't like to show, as the greater part of them, in spite of dislike, will support it. Your classical hearts must have enjoyed Mr. Gladstone's "ligneus equus" quotation; but I am afraid Mr. Lowe's continuation was better. I never, or seldom, like quotations that merely illustrate what the subject of discussion does not resemble—they are forced and without much point; but when Mr. Lowe likens our Reform Bill to the "monstrum infelix," and hopes it will not succeed in penetrating the "muros" of the Constitution (isn't that pretty nearly what he said?) there is wit and point in the quotation. [63]
[63] Gladstone, in his apologetic introductory speech, had declared that no one could regard the Bill as a Trojan horse, which the Government was introducing surreptitiously within the citadel of the Constitution. "We cannot say:
"'Scandit fatalis machina muros Foeta armis.'" (The fated engine climbs our walls, big with arms.)
Mr. Lowe retorted:
"That was not a very apt quotation; but there was a curious felicity about it which he [Mr. Gladstone] little dreamt of. The House remembers that, among other proofs of the degree in which public opinion is enlisted in the cause of Reform, is this—that this is now the fifth Reform Bill which has been brought in since 1851. Now, just attend to the sequel of the passage quoted by the right honourable gentleman:
"'O Divum domus Ilium et inclyta bello Mcenia Dardanidum! Quater ipso in limine portae Sustitit, atque utero sonitum quater arma dedere.' (O Troy, house of gods and Dardanian city famous in war! four times in the very gateway it stood, and four times the clash of arms sounded in its womb.)
"But that is not all:
"'Instamus tarn en immemores, caecique furore, Et monstrum infelix sacrata sistimus arce.' (Yet we, thoughtless and blind with enthusiasm, urged it on, and in our hallowed citadel stationed the ill-omened monster.)"
Mr. Charles Dickens to Lady Russell
GLASGOW, April 17, 1866
MY DEAR LADY RUSSELL,—...In sending my kindest regards to Lord Russell, let me congratulate you on the culminating victory before him, and on the faith and constancy with which the country carries him in its great heart. I have never felt so certain of any public event as I have been from the first that the national honour would feel itself stung to the quick if he were in danger of being deserted....
Dear Lady Russell,
Ever faithfully yours,
CHARLES DICKENS
LONDON, April 19, 1866
Political prospects not brightening. John and his Ministry will be in such an honourable position, whether they stand or fall, that no serious danger threatens the country if they fall. My only anxiety is lest John should be disappointed and depressed; and it was with a sense of relief of which he was little aware that I heard him say yesterday of his own accord, as he looked out of window at the bright sunshine, "I shall not be very sorry—it's such fine weather to go out in."
LONDON, June 19, 1866
At 7.30 a note was brought to John from Mr. Gladstone. Government beaten by eleven. Happily Gladstone, though ambiguous in one sentence as to the importance of the vote, was not so in others—or at all events was understood to mean "stand or fall."
Cabinet at 2.30 resolved that John should write to the Queen to offer resignations. Queen meantime writes from Balmoral, foreseeing the defeat, that she will not accept the resignations.
Dearest John not depressed, though very sorry for this defeat of his hopes. He will stand well with the country, and that he feels.
The Queen could not understand the necessity of her Ministers' resignation. The amendment upon which they had been defeated by so small a majority seemed to her a matter of small importance compared with events which made continuance in office desirable. For Bismarck had just declared war upon Austria, and the failure of Overend and Gurney had thrown the City into confusion. After a delay of more than a week, however, she was compelled to accept their resignations, which had been tendered as early as June 19th.
PEMBROKE LODGE, June 28, 1866
John so well and happy that my joy in his release becomes greater every hour. There is a sense of repose that can hardly be described—abounding happiness in his honourable downfall that cannot be uttered.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
PEMBROKE LODGE, June 30, 1866
As I wrote to you last in a doubting and disagreeable state of mind, I am in a hurry to write again, being now perfectly certain that the blessings of the resignation far outweigh its pains. I do not care for the charge of fickleness which may with justice be made against me. I can only confirm it. The defeat made me very sad. I hoped for many days that John could honourably remain in office.... On the day of the resignation he was serious—perhaps sad—and so was I. The next day everything, including his face, looked brighter, and has gone on brightening; so that now I am only afraid of being too much uplifted by our downfall, and hardly have words enough to describe my relief and joy. All the best men are full of approbation of his conduct. He and Mr. Gladstone have given an example to the country worth more than a Reform Bill. A short Tory reign will strengthen the Whig party; a good strong Whig Opposition will prevent much Tory mischief, so that there is little regret on public grounds to mix with my unbounded joy on our private account. Seven years of office had made me aware of its advantages and its interest, and I saw that John liked it, and I thought I did; but now I see that he has had enough of it, and any fear I may have had that he might regret it is for ever gone, and I have found out how entirely it was an acquired taste with me. I can't say how often we have already said to one another, "Now that we are out," as a preface to something pleasant to be done. He said to me this morning, "The days will not be long enough now." That "now" would surprise those people who may imagine that time will hang heavy on his hands. He is in excellent spirits.... We feel as if fetters had been struck off our minds and bodies. If God grants us health, how happy we may be, dearest Mary! I have said far too much on this subject, but you will understand how I have reason to be both sadder and gladder than other Ministers' wives.
Prussia and Italy had declared war against Austria, Hanover, Bavaria, and Hesse on the day the Russell Government was defeated. At Custozza the Italians were badly beaten by the Austrians, under the Archduke Charles.
Alas, alas! for poor Italy! Alas for everybody engaged in this most wicked and terrible German war! Surely it is all wrong that two or three bad, ambitious—men should be able to cause the death and misery of thousands upon thousands. Our day at Harrow, Agatha with us, was very happy. I never had heard John so heartily cheered by the boys.
He was in his seventy-fourth year, and he was never again to bear the cares of office. That summer they went down to Endsleigh, which they had not visited since the first years of their marriage,
ENDSLEIGH, August 4, 1866
John, Georgy, and I here about 7.30, after a beautiful journey. Lovely Endsleigh! it is like a dream to be here.... Thoughts of the old happy days haunting me continually. To church, to Fairy Dell. Places all the same—everything else altered.
CHAPTER XI
1866-70
During 1866 Lord Russell finished his "Life of Fox." In the autumn and winter he and his family travelled in Italy, where they were often feted by the people of the towns through which they passed. At the close of the seven weeks' war Austria had ceded Venetia to Italy, and on November 7th they witnessed the entry of Victor Emmanuel into Venice as King of all Italy. It was a magnificent and most impressive sight. Lord Russell was full of thankfulness and joy at the deliverance of Venetia from foreign rule, and the triumph of a free and united Italy.
In the memoir of Count Pasolini by his son (translated by the Countess of Dalhousie) the following passage occurs:
Lord John Russell was then in Venice, and came to view the pageant from our windows in Palazzo Corner. When my mother saw this old friend appear with the tricolor upon his breast, she said, "Fort bien, Milord! nos couleurs italiennes sur votre coeur!" He shook her by the hand, and answered, "Pour moi je les ai toujours portees, Comtesse. Je suis bien content de vous trouver ici aujourd'hui; c'est un des plus beaux jours de notre siecle!"
Somebody then said to Lord Russell what a pity it was that the sun of Italy did not shine more brightly to gild the historical solemnity. "As for that," said he, "England shows her sympathy by sending you her beloved fog from the Thames."
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
VENICE, November 8, 1866
We are all enchanted with this enchanting place.... Thursday (yesterday) was the grand and glorious sight—how grand and glorious nobody who has not been here and probably nobody who has can conceive.... Newspapers will tell you of the countless gondolas decorated with every variety of brilliant colours—alike only in the tricolor flag waving from every one of them—and rowed by gondoliers in every variety of brilliant and picturesque garb—and they will tell you a great deal more; but they cannot describe the thrill of thousands and thousands of Italian hearts at the moment when their King, "il sospirato nostro Re," appeared, the winged Lion of St. Mark at one end of his magnificent gondola, a statue of Italy crowned by Venice at the other. So spirit-stirring a celebration of so great an event we shall never see again, and I rejoice that our children were there.
Lord Russell to Lady Minto
VENICE, November 11, 1866
... We have been delighted with this place, but especially with being here to see the crowning of the edifice of Italian Independence. The people have rather their hearts full than their voices loud. When the Italian flag was first raised none of the crowd could cheer for weeping and sobbing. It is a mighty change.... We have seen many pictures. I am exceedingly struck with the number of fine pictures, the magnificent colouring, and the large conceptions of the Venetian painters—faulty in drawing very often, as Michelangelo said long ago, but wonderfully satisfying to the imagination.
They returned to England early in 1867.
It was a critical time in the history of the franchise. Neither Lord Derby nor his followers liked Reform, but the workmen of England were at last set upon it, and Disraeli realized that only a party prepared to enlarge the franchise had any chance of power. Unlike his colleagues, he had no fear or dislike of the people. His imagination enabled him to foresee what hardly another statesman, Conservative or Radical, supposed possible, that the power of the Democracy might be increased without kindling in the people any desire to use it. He divined that the glamour which wealth and riches have for the majority of voters would make it easy to put a hook in the nose of Leviathan, and that the monster might be ultimately taken in tow by the Conservative party. His first move in the process of "educating his party" was to offer the House a series of Resolutions upon the principles of representation. These were intended to foreshadow the nature of the Government's proposals and also to prepare their way. By this device he hoped to raise the Bill above party conflict, and to lead the more Conservative of his followers up a gently graduated slope of generalities till they found themselves committed to accepting a somewhat democratic measure. His plan was frustrated by the determination of the Opposition to force the Government to show their hand at once.
He consequently placed before his colleagues a measure which based the franchise on the occupation of houses rated at L5, coupled with several antidotes to the democratic tendencies of such a change in the shape of "fancy franchises," which gave votes to men of certain educational and financial qualifications. His proposals seem to have been accepted by the Cabinet with reluctant and hesitating approval. On examining more carefully the effects of the L5 franchise upon town constituencies Lord Cranborne (afterwards Lord Salisbury) retracted his previous assent, and Lord Carnarvon followed his lead.
On the very day that Lord Derby and Disraeli were pledged to define their measure they found themselves threatened with the resignation of two most important members of the Government. At a hasty Cabinet Council, held just before they were to speak, it was agreed, after about twenty minutes' discussion, that the borough rental should be raised to L6. The Opposition, however, declared a L6 franchise to be still too high, and they were now backed by a considerable section of the Conservative party itself, who felt that when once they were committed to Reform it would at least be wise to introduce a measure likely to win them popularity as reformers. Lord Derby and Disraeli yielded to pressure from within their party, and Lord Cranborne, Lord Carnarvon, and General Peel resigned. The subsequent history of the Bill consisted in a series of surrenders on the part of Disraeli. All the clauses and qualifications which had originally modified its democratic character were dropped, and Gladstone succeeded in carrying nearly all the amendments his first speech upon the Bill had suggested.
When the Bill finally passed Lord Salisbury described it as a measure based upon the principles of Bright and dictated by Gladstone; and what many Conservatives thought of Disraeli's conduct is reflected in the speeches of their ally Lowe: "Never, never was tergiversation so complete. Such conduct may fail or not; it may lead to the retention or loss of office; but it merits alike the contempt of all honest men and the execration of posterity." [64] Gladstone, writing to Dr. Pusey at the end of the year, said: "We have been passing through a strange, eventful year: a deplorable one, I think, for the character and conduct of the House of Commons; but yet one of promise for the country, though of a promise not unmixed with evils." The feeling of romantic Tories in the country is expressed in Coventry Patmore's poem "1867," which begins:
In the year of the great crime, When the false English Nobles and their Jew, By God demented, slew The Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong.
[64] Morley's "Life of Gladstone," vol. ii, p. 235.
The last and longest struggle took place over the compound householder. On May 17th Mr. Hodgkinson proposed and carried an amendment that in a Parliamentary borough only the occupier should be rated, thus basing, in effect, the franchise upon household suffrage, and forcing upon Disraeli a principle which he had begun by announcing he would never accept. To make the following letters intelligible it is only necessary to add that in 1866 Lord Amberley had been returned to Parliament as Radical member for Nottingham:
Lord Russell to Lady Georgiana Russell [65]
PEMBROKE LODGE, January 22, 1867
MY DEAREST GEORGY,—I have been very negligent in not writing to you before, as I meant to do, but laziness after exertion is very pleasant. My exertion was not small, as, besides speaking at the beginning of the evening, I sate up for the division, and did not get home till near four in the morning. The triumph was very great; Derby and Cairns and the foolish and wicked Tories were beat, and the wise and honest Tories, like Salisbury and Carnarvon, helped the Liberals to defeat them.... We shall have a great fight in Committee; but I still trust in a reasonable majority for not pushing amendments too far, and then the Bill will be a great triumph of sense over nonsense.... We had Dickens Saturday and Sunday—very agreeable and amiable....
Your affectionate father, R.
[65] This letter ought to be dated July 22, 1869, and addressed to Lady Georgiana Peel. It refers to the debate on the Irish Church Bill.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
37 CHESHAM PLACE, BELGRAVE SQUARE, S.W.,
February 21, 1867
... Your Papa and I dined yesterday with Lord and Lady Cork. I heard some funny stories of Mrs. Lowe.... Here's the best. Mr. Lowe was talking of the marriage service, of the absurdity of making everybody say, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow"—"For instance, I had not a penny." Mrs. L.: "Oh, but Robert, you had your brains!" Mr. L. (sharply): "I'm sure I didn't endow you with them." Very funny; but very cruel, too, in answer to what was meant so affectionately.... Now, I must get ready to walk with your Papa. He keeps well and strong, in spite of the cloudy political atmosphere (hazy, perhaps, rather than cloudy)—nobody thinking or feeling anything clearly or warmly, except him and Gladstone and a score or two of others. He feels that the Government has so discredited itself and the Tory party generally, that the Whig party might be in a capital position if it chose. But the general indifference of Whig M.P.'s to Reform, and their selfish fear of dissolution, come in the way of public spirit and combined action.
Your Papa is writing to Mr. Gladstone, from whom he has just received an account of the debate. Disraeli's clever and artful speech appears to have had more effect on the House (and even on our side of it) than is creditable.... Johnny has made a very good impression—so we hear from Mr. Brand, Hastings, [66] Mr. Huguesson, and Gladstone—by his maiden speech. All these, except Gladstone, heard it, and concur in warm praise, both of matter and manner. It is a great event in his life, and I am so thankful it is well over.
[66] Afterwards Duke of Bedford.
Lord Russell to Lady Minto
LONDON, May 21, 1867
MY DEAR NINA,—As you have been so much bothered with the compound householder, you will be glad to learn that he is dead and is to be buried on Thursday. It was supposed he was the last and best product of civilization; but it has been found out that he was a son of Old Nick, and a valiant knight of the name of Hodgkinson has run him through the body.
The Duke of Buccleuch, with whom Fanny and I have been having luncheon, says that Dizzy is like a clever conjuror. "Is that the card you wished for, sir?-and is that yours, and yours, and yours?" But politics are rather disgusting than otherwise. ... Fanny and I went yesterday to see the Queen lay the first stone of the Hall of Science and Art. [67] It was a grand sight—great respect, but no enthusiasm, nor occasion for it.
Lotty is going to give us dinner to-morrow. I call her and Mary, L'Allegra e la Penserosa. Fanny: "And what am I?" "L'Allegra e Penserosa." I have no more nonsense to tell you. I should like to go to Paris in July or August, but can we? Let me know when you will be there.
Your faithful
TRUSTY TOMKINS
[67] The Albert Hall.
A few weeks later he wrote again to Lady Minto: "Our Reform Bill is now brought to that exact shape in which Bright put it in 1858, and which he thought too large and democratic a change to be accepted by the moderate Liberal party. However, nothing is too much for the swallow of our modern Tories."
In August, 1867, Lord Russell's eldest daughter, Georgiana, married Mr. Archibald Peel, [68] son of General Peel, and nephew of the statesman, Sir Robert Peel.
[68] The marriage service was at Petersham, in the quaint old village Church, hallowed by many sacred memories.
The daughters, who had now left the old home, were sadly missed, but intimate and affectionate intercourse with them never ceased. Lady Russell's own daughter, the youngest of three families—ten in all—thought in her early childhood that they were all real brothers and sisters, a striking proof of the harmonious happiness of the home. In November, 1867, Lady Victoria Villiers wrote to Lady Russell: "How I long to make our home as pure, as high in its tone and aims, as free from all that is low or even useless for our children, as our dear home was to us."
On Lord Russell's birthday, August 18, 1867, Lady Russell wrote in her diary:
My dear, dear husband's birthday. Each year, each day, makes me feel more deeply all the wonderful goodness of God in giving me one so noble, so gentle, so loving, to be my example, my happiness, my stay. How often his strength makes me feel, but try to conquer, my own weakness; how often his cheerfulness and calmness are a reproach to my anxieties. Experience has not hardened but only given him wisdom. Trials have taught him to feel for others; age has deepened his religion of love. All that so often lowers commoner natures has but raised his.
In February, 1868, Lord Derby resigned, owing to ill health. "With Lord Derby [says Sir Spencer Walpole [69]] a whole race of statesmen disappeared. He was the last of the Prime Ministers who had held high office before the Reform Act of 1832; and power, on his fall, was to be transferred to men not much younger in point of years, but whose characters and opinions had been moulded by other influences. He was, moreover, the last of the Tories. He had, indeed, by his own concluding action made Toryism impossible; for, in 1867, he had thrown the ramparts of Toryism into a heap, and had himself mounted the structure and fired the funeral pile." Disraeli succeeded him as Prime Minister.
[69] "The History of Twenty-five Years," vol. ii, p. 287.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
CHESHAM PLACE, February 18, 1868
...Lord Derby is supposed to be dying, I am sorry to say. It is horrible to hear the street criers bawling out in their catchpenny voices, "Serious illness of Lord Derby." I feel for his wife and all belonging to him without any of the flutter and anxiety about your father which a probable change of Ministry would have caused a few years ago. He will never accept office again. This is right, I know, and I am thankful that on the conviction of its being so he has calmly made up his mind—yet there is deep sadness in it. The newspapers are not favourable to his pamphlets on Ireland [three pamphlets published together afterwards under the title, "A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue"]. He does not care much about this, provided men in Parliament adopt his views or something like them.
We find London very sociable and pleasant ... people all looking glad to meet, and fresh and pleasant from their country life, quite different from what they will be in July....
Lady Russell, as well as her husband, was always anxious to encourage perfect freedom and independence of thought in her children. The following passages are from a letter to her daughter on her fifteenth birthday:
37 CHESHAM PLACE, March 28, 1868
... Every day will now bring you more independence of mind, more capacity to understand, not merely to adopt the thoughts of others, to reason and to form opinions of your own. I am the more sure of this, that yours is a thoughtful and reflective mind. The voice of God may sometimes sound differently to you from what it sounds even to your father or to me; if so, never be afraid to say so—never close your mind against any but bad thoughts; for although we are all one in as far as we all partake of God's spirit, which is the breath of life, still the communion of each soul with Him is, and must be, for that soul alone.... Nothing great is easy, and the greatest and most difficult of all things is to overcome ourselves.... Life is short, and we do well to remember it, but each moment is eternal, and we do still better to remember that.... Heaven bless you and guide you through the pleasures and perplexities, the sorrows and the joys, of this strange and beautiful world, to the source of all light, and life, and goodness, to that Being whose highest name is Love.
The everlasting Irish question had been coming again to the front. During 1867 the Fenians had attempted to get the grievances of Ireland redressed by adopting violent measures. There had been an attempt upon the arsenal at Chester, numerous outrages in Ireland, an attack at Manchester upon the prison van, in which two Fenian leaders were being taken to prison, and a subsequent attempt to blow up Clerkenwell jail. The crisis had been met by suspending the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland. Lord Russell, when Prime Minister, had replaced Sir Robert Peel, as Chief Secretary, by Mr. Chichester Fortescue, who later received the same office from Mr. Gladstone. In February, 1868, Lord Russell published his letter to Mr. Fortescue advocating Disestablishment in Ireland, but declaring himself in favour of endowing the Catholic Church with part of the revenues of the disestablished Church. In April Gladstone succeeded in carrying three Resolutions against the Government on the Irish Church question, and though Disraeli tendered his resignation, dissolution was postponed until the autumn. The same month Lord Russell presided at a meeting in St. James's Hall in support of Disestablishment. At the general election in the autumn the Liberals came in with a large majority; Gladstone became Prime Minister, and in the following year carried his Bill for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. [70] Lady Russell's views on the question of Church and State are shown in the following letter:
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
PEMBROKE LODGE, May 20, 1868
MY DEAREST MARY,—...How can one write letters in such weather as we have had? A fine May is surely the loveliest of lovely things, and the most enjoyable, at least to lucky mortals like ourselves who are not obliged to be "in populous city pent"—and those who have never seen Pemmy Lodge in its May garments of lilac, laburnum, wild hyacinth, hawthorn, and the tender greens of countless shades on trees and shrubs, are not really acquainted with it.... I have been going through the contrary change from you as regards Church and State. I thought I was strongly for the connection (at least of a Church with the State, certainly not the Church of England as it now is), but reflection on what the history of our State Churches has been, the speeches in St. James's Hall of the Bishops fostered by the State, and Arthur Stanley's pamphlet, which says the best that can be said for connection, and yet seems to open my eyes to the fallacy of that best, and the conversations I hear, have opened my eyes to the bad principle at the very root of a State Church. If all who call themselves teachers of religion could be paid, it might be very well, best of all perhaps; but I'm afraid there are difficulties not to be got over, and the objections to the voluntary system diminish on reflection.... This new political crisis raises John's hopes a little; but he has small faith in the public spirit of the Liberal party, and even now fears some manoeuvre to keep Dizzy in.
Ever, dearest Mary, your most affectionate sister,
F. RUSSELL
[70] Mr. Froude, in a talk with an Irish peasant on the grievances of his country, remarked that one cause of complaint was removed by Disestablishment of the Church. "Och, sure, your honour, that is worse than all. It was the best gravance we had, and ye've taken it away from us!"
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
PEMBROKE LODGE, December 3, 1868
MY DEAREST MARY,—Yesterday's Pall Mall and Sir David Dundas, who dined with us, set us all agog with the news that the Ministry are to resign at once, probably have now resigned; certainly much the wisest course for themselves, and John rather thinks the best for everybody.... How different this change of Ministry is to us from any there has been before since we were married, and for John since long before! There is now only a keen and wholesome interest for the country's sake—none of the countless agitations which at all events on the formation of the three last Ministries, of which John was either the head or a prominent member, more than overpowered satisfaction and pride, perhaps not to himself, but to his wife in her secret heart. As to pride, I never was prouder of him in one position than in another, in than out, applauded than condemned; and I had learned to know the risks, not to health only or chiefly, for that, precious as it was, seemed a trifle in comparison with other things, but to the power of serving his country, to friendship, to reputation in the highest sense, which are involved in the formation of a Government. These are matters of experience, and in 1846 I was inexperienced and consequently foresaw only good to the country and increase of fame to him from his acceptance of the Prime Ministership. I now know that these seldom or never in such a state of parties as has existed for many years and still exists, can be the only consequences of high office for him, although, thank God, they have always been among the consequences, and my only reasonable and permanent regret (for I don't pretend to the absence of passing and unreasonable regrets) is for the cause of office being over for him. What a letter full of John, and just when I ought to be talking of everybody else except John; but you will guess that if he were not perfectly cheerful—and he is more, he is full of patriotic eagerness—I could not write all this.... Thanks for your sympathy about Johnny—we were very sorry, I need not say[71].... I don't at all mind the beating, which has been a glorious one in every way, but I immensely mind his not being in Parliament....
Your most affectionate sister, F.R.
[71] Lord Amberley was defeated in the General Election.
Mr. Charles Dickens to Lady Russell
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT
Saturday, December 26, 1868
MY DEAR LADY RUSSELL,—... I cannot tell you how highly I esteem your kind Christmas remembrances, or how earnestly I send all seasonable wishes to you and Lord Russell and all who are dearest to you. I am unselfishly glad that Lord Russell is out of the turmoil and worry of a new Administration, but I miss him from it sorely. I was saying only yesterday to Layard (who is staying here), that I could not get over the absence of that great Liberal name from a Liberal Government, and that I lost heart without it.
Ever faithfully yours,
CHARLES DICKENS
Lady Russell to Lady Victoria Villiers
PEMBROKE LODGE, February 4, 1869
We have had such a gay time of it—that is, from Saturday to Monday only; but we have had such a quiet life in general that that seems a great deal. The Gladstones with daughter Mary to dine. Gladstone was unanimously pronounced to be most agreeable and delightful. I never saw him in such high spirits, and he was as ready to talk about anything and everything, small and great, as if he had no Ministerial weight on his shoulders. He carries such fire and eloquence into whatever he talks about that it seems for the moment the most important subject in the world.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
37 CHESHAM PLACE, March 2, 1869
London is extremely agreeable now, not rackety, but sociable—at least to the like of us who do not attempt to mix in the very gay world....
Arthur Russell called last night after hearing Gladstone's great speech [on Irish Disestablishment], well pleased himself and expecting the country to be so—the country, Ireland, more especially. On the whole your father is satisfied, but not with the whole; he does not approve of the churches being left to the Protestants for ever, as there is nothing granted to the Roman Catholics. Neither does he like the appropriation of national money to charities. [72]
[72] The Bill transferred to the new disestablished Episcopal Church all the churches, all endowments given since 1660, while the remaining funds were to be handed over to the Government for the relief of poverty and suffering.
Lord Russell had followed up his first letter to Mr. Chichester Fortescue by two more letters, in which he again advocated both the disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Church. He warmly supported Gladstone's measure; though he again insisted that the funds of the Irish Church should be used to endow the other Churches. He was in constant attendance at the House of Lords, and during the same session he proposed, without success, a measure which would have added a limited number of life peers to the Second Chamber. These incursions into politics seem in no way to have taxed his strength.
Lady Russell to Mr. William Russell
June 3, 1869
It is a great misfortune that we have so few really eminent men among the clergy of England, Scotland, or Ireland—in any of the various communities. Such men are greatly needed to take the lead in what I cannot but look upon as a noble march of the progress of mankind, the assertion of the right to think and speak with unbounded freedom on that which concerns us all more deeply than anything else—religion. I believe that by the exercise of such unbounded freedom we shall reach to a knowledge of God and a comprehension of the all-perfect spirit of Christianity such as no Established Church has ever taught by Creeds or Articles, though individuals of all such Churches have forgotten Creeds and Articles, and taught "true religion and undefiled" out of the real Word of God and their own high and holy thoughts.
PEMBROKE LODGE, August 18, 1869
My dear husband seventy-seven this day. God be thanked for all that has made it a calm and bright and blessed one to us.
Our happiness now is chiefly in the past and present as to this world, in memory more than hope. But the best joys of the past and present are linked to that future beyond the grave to which we are hastening.... Bright and beautiful day. We sat long together in bowling-green and talked of the stir in men's minds on Christianity, on all religions and religion, our own thoughts, our hope, our trust.
Lord Russell to Lady Georgiana Peel
PEMBROKE LODGE, RICHMOND PARK, August 18, 1869
MY DEAREST GEORGY,—... Your very kind and warm congratulations delight me. It is sad that the years pass and make one older and weaker and sillier, but as they will pass all the same, it is well to have one bright day in each year when one's children can recall all the past, and feel once again gratitude to the Giver of all good.
Your affectionate Father, RUSSELL
To Mr. Archibald Peel
MY DEAR ARCHIE,—Thanks for your good wishes. Happy returns I always find them, as my children are so affectionate and loving—many I cannot expect—but I have played my part, and think the rest will be far easier than my task has been.
Your affectionate F.I.L. (Father-in-Law)
RUSSELL
On October 26th they left home for Italy, travelling across France in deep snow. They reached the Villa Garbarino, at San Remo, on November 3rd, and remained there till April, 1870. "The five months," Lady Russell writes, "were among the very happiest of our lives, and we reckon it among the three earthly paradises to which our wanderings have taken us—La Roche, St. Fillans, and San Remo. It was a very quiet life, but with a pleasant amount of society, many people we much liked passing through, or staying awhile, or, like ourselves, all the winter."
They also became friendly with several of the Italians of San Remo, whom they welcomed at little evening gatherings at their villa. Their landlord, the Marchese Garbarino, was an ardent patriot. He it was who had decorated the ceiling of his drawing-room with the four portraits: Cavour, Garibaldi, Mazzini, and Lord John Russell, so it was to him a delightful surprise to have Lord John as his tenant.
Lord Russell to Lady Minto
SAN REMO, November 23, 1869
I am very sorry that headache and neuralgia should have been added to illness and dislike of writing, as your reason for not inquiring how we were going on. We sit here in the receipt of news without any means of reciprocity, but we can speculate on France, Italy, and Ireland. Of those, the country which most interests and most concerns me, is Ireland.... I have heard much of Lady and Lord Byron, and from good sources. I can only conclude that he was half mad and loved to frighten her, and that she believed in the stories she circulated. [73] The Duke of Wellington said of George IV's story that he was at the Battle of Waterloo, "At first it was a lie, than a strong delusion, and at last downright madness."
Brougham's conversation with William IV on the dissolution was another delusion, and so on in perverse, wicked, contradictory human nature. Those who like to probe such systems may do so—the only wise conclusion is Swift's, "If you want to confute a lie, tell another in the opposite direction." Madame de Sevigne tells of a curate who put up a clock on his church. His parishioners collected stones to break it, saying it was the Gabelle. "No, my friends," he said, "it was the Jubilee," on which they all hurrahed and went away. If he had said it was a machine to mark the hour, his clock would have been broken and himself pelted.
I hope your second volume is coming out soon. [74] There are no lies in it, and therefore you must not expect a great sale. I must stop or you will think me grown a misanthrope. Fanny and Agatha are well. If the day had been fine the Crown Princess and her sister would have come here to tea, and you would have had no letter from me. Do send me a return, when your mankind is gone a-hunting.
[73] The publication of "Astarte," by the late Lord Lovelace, containing the documents and letters relating to Byron's separation from his wife, has now made it quite clear that the grounds for separation were real.
[74] The second volume of "Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of Minto."
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
SAN REMO, December 1, 1869
Your letter of November 24th found the Amberleys here.... They were preceded by the Crown Princess of Prussia and Princess Louis of Hesse, announced by telegram in the morning, and a young Prince Albert of Prussia, son of the Prince Albert of our Berlin days, and a suite of two gentlemen and a lady, who came from Cannes, where they are living, on Friday, to pay us a visit, dined with us, slept at the nearest hotel, and were off again Saturday morning, we going With them as far as Bordighera; and on Monday arrived the Odos [75] for one night only, sleeping at an hotel. You see that our usual quiet life was for a while exchanged for one of—... Well, I beg pardon for this interruption and go back to our illustrious and non-illustrious visitors. The illustrious were as merry as if they had no royalty about them, and as simple, too, dining in their travelling garments, brushing and washing in my room and John's, enjoying their dinner, of which happily there was enough (although the suite was unexpected owing to my not having received a letter giving details), chatting and laughing afterwards till half-past eight, when they walked in darkness, and strange to say, mud! but with glorious stars overhead, the five minute' distance to their hotel, accompanied by Agatha and me. The drive to Bordighera next morning was the pleasantest part of the visit to us all—John, Princess Louis, and Prince Albert in their carriage, Crown Princess, Agatha, and I in ours. It is wonderful to hear Princesses express such widely liberal opinions and feelings on education, religion, nationality, and if we had talked politics I dare-say I should add that too. Their strong love for their Vaterland in spite of their early transplantation is also very agreeable.
The Amberleys had been ten days with Mill at Avignon—a good fortification, I should imagine, against the wiles and blandishments of priests of all degree to which they will be exposed at Rome.... Little Rachel [76]is as sweet a little bright-eyed lassie as I ever saw, hardly saying anything yet, but expressing a vast deal.
[75] Mr. Odo Russell (afterwards Lord Ampthill) and his wife.
[76] Daughter of Lord and Lady Amberley, born in February, 1868.
Lord Russell to Colonel Romilly
SAN REMO, December 4, 1869
MY DEAR FREDERICK,—I had understood from you that you wished to propose some alterations in my Introduction to the Speeches, and I was much obliged to you for so kind a thought. But it appears by a letter from Lizzy that she and you think that all discussions of the future (which are announced in my preface) ought to be omitted. In logical and literary aspects you are quite right; but I must tell you that since 1832 Ireland has been a main object of all my political career.... I am not without hope that the House of Commons will pass a reasonable Land Bill, and adhere to the plan of national education, which has been in force now for nearly forty years. At all events, the present government of Ireland gives no proofs of the infallibility of our rulers. Tell Lizzy that it is not a plate of salted cherries, but cherries ripe, without any salt, which I propose to lay before the Irish.
Yours affectionately,
RUSSELL
In the closing passage of the "Introduction" referred to in the above letter Lord Russell gives a modest estimate of his own career: "My capacity I always felt was very inferior to that of the men who have attained in past times the foremost place in our Parliament, and in the Councils of our Sovereign. I have committed many errors, some of them very gross blunders. But the generous people of England are always forbearing and forgiving to those statesmen who have the good of their country at heart; like my betters, I have been misrepresented and slandered by those who knew nothing of me, but I have been more than compensated by the confidence and the friendship of the best men of my own political connection, and by the regard and favourable interpretation of my motives which I have heard expressed by my generous opponents, from the days of Lord Castlereagh to those of Mr. Disraeli."
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
SAN REMO, February 17, 1870
How awful Paris will be after the easy, natural, unconventional life of San Remo, one delight of which is the absence of all thought about dress! Whatever may be and are the delights of Paris—and I fully intend that we should all three enjoy them—that burden is heavier there than in all the world beside—and why? oh, why? What is there to prevent human nature from finding out and rejoicing in the blessings of civilization and society without encumbering them with petty etiquettes and fashions and forms which deprive them of half their value? Human nature is a very provoking compound. It strives and struggles and gives life itself for political freedom, while it forges social chains and fetters for itself and wears them with a foolish smile. And with this fruitless lamentation I must end.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
SAN REMO, February 23, 1870
I don't know a bit whether we shall be much in London during the session—it will be session, not season, that takes us there.... The longer I live the more I condemn and deplore a rackety life for any girl, and therefore if I do what I myself think right by her and not what others may think right, she shall never be a London butterfly. Would that we could give our girls the ideal society which I suppose we all dream for them—that of the wise and the good of all ages, of the young and merry of their own. No barbarous crowds, no despotic fashions, no senseless omnipotence of custom (see "Childe Harold," somewhere).[77] I wonder in this age of revolution, which has dethroned so many monarchs and upset so many time-honoured systems of Government and broken so many chains, that Queen Fashion is left unmolested on her throne, ruling the civilized world with her rod of iron, and binding us hand and foot in her fetters.
[77] A favourite stanza of Lady Russell's in "Childe Harold":—
What from this barren being do we reap? Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale; Opinion an omnipotence, whose veil Mantles the earth with darkness, until right And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale Lest their own judgments should become too bright, And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light.
BYRON.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
SAN REMO, March 2, 1870
I am writing in my pretty bedroom, at an east window which is wide open, letting in the balmiest of airs, and the spring twittering of chaffinches and larks and other little birds, and the gentle music of the waves. Below the window I look at a very untidy bit of nondescript ground, with a few white-armed fig-trees and a number of flaunting Italian daisies—a little farther an enclosure of glossy green orange-trees laden with fruit; then an olive plantation, soft and feathery; then a bare, brownish, pleasant hill, crowned by the "Madonna della Guardia," and stretching to the sea, which I should like to call blue, but which is a dull grey. Oh dear, how sorry we shall be to leave it all! You, I know, understand the sort of shrinking there is after so quiet, so spoiling, so natural and unconventional a life (not to mention climate and beauty) from the thought of the overpowering quantity of people and business of all sorts and the artificial habits of our own country, in spite of the immense pleasure of looking forward to brothers and sisters and children and friends.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
SAN REMO, March 17, 1870
... No doubt we must always in the last resort trust to our own reason upon all subjects on which our reason is capable of helping us. On a question of language, Hebrew for instance, if we don't know it and somebody else does, we cannot of course dispute his translation, but where nobody questions the words, everybody has a right—it is indeed everybody's duty—to reflect upon their meaning and bearing and come to their own conclusions; listening to others wiser or not wiser than themselves, eagerly seeking help, but never, oh never fettering their minds by an unconditional and premeditated submission to anybody else's, or rather pretending so to fetter it, for a mind will make itself heard, and there's much false modesty in the disclaimer of all power or right to judge—that very disclaimer being in fact, as you say, an exercise of private judgment and a rebellion or protest against thousands of wise and good and learned men.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
SAN REMO, March 23, 1870
You must take John's second letter to Forster, [78] which will appear in the Times and Daily News, as my letter to you for to-day, as I had already not left myself much time for you, so that copying them, although they are not long, has left me hardly any. I think you will agree with him that now, when the moment seems come for a really national system of education, it would be a great pity not to put an end to the teaching of catechisms in rate-supported schools. People may of course always have their little pet, privately supported sectarian schools, but surely, surely, it's enough that the weary catechism should be repeated and yawned over every Sunday of the year, where there are Sunday schools. I wonder whether you are in favour of compulsory attendance. I don't like it, but I do like compulsory rating, and I wish the Bill made it general and not local, and I also want the education to be gratis.
[78] In February Mr. Forster introduced the Elementary Education Act. It passed the second reading without a division. In Committee the Cowper-Temple Clause was admitted by the Government.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
SAN REMO, April 6, 1870
We go on discussing the Education Bill and all that is written about it with immense interest, but oh, the clergy! they seem resolved to fulfil the prophecy that Christ came not to bring peace on earth, but a sword.... How true what you say of want of earnestness in London society and Parliament!
On April 7th they left San Remo, "servants [79] all in tears," she writes, "and all, high and low, showering blessings on us, and praying for our welfare in their lovely language." At Paris they stayed with Lord Lyons at the British Embassy. The Emperor Napoleon and Empress Eugenie showed them much kindness during their visit to Paris. One evening Lord and Lady Russell and their daughter dined at the Tuileries, Lady Russell sitting next the Emperor and Lord Russell next the Empress. It has been told since that at this dinner the Emperor mentioned a riddle which he had put to the Empress, and her reply.
Emperor. Quelle est la difference entre toi et un miroir? Empress. Je ne sais pas. Emperor. Le miroir reflechit; tu ne reflechis pas. Empress. Et quelle est la difference entre toi et un miroir? Emperor. Je ne sais pas. Empress. Le miroir est poli, et tu ne l'es pas.
[79] Their Italian servants.
On April 27th, after six months' absence, Lord and Lady Russell were once more at Pembroke Lodge.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
37 CHESHAM PLACE, May 26, 1870
... We came up, your father and I, on Tuesday to dine with Clarendons, and stayed all yesterday to dine with Salisburys. Many things strike me on returning to England and English society: the superiority of its best to those of any other nation; the larger proportion of vulgarity in all classes; ostentatious vulgarity, aristocratic vulgarity, coarse vulgarity; the stir and activity of mind on religion, politics, morals, all that is most worthy of thought. What is to come of it all? Will goodness and truth prevail? Is a great regeneration coming? I believe it in spite of many discouraging symptoms. I believe that a coming generation will try to be and not only call itself Christian. God grant that each of my children may add some little ray of light by thought, word, and deed to help in dispelling the darkness of error, sin, and crime in this and all other lands.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
June 2, 1870
I wish most earnestly for legal and social equality for women, but I cannot shut my eyes to what woman has already been—the equal, if not the superior, of man in all that is highest and noblest and loveliest. I don't at all approve of any appearance of setting one against the other. Let equal justice be done to both, without any spirit of antagonism.... I can well believe in all the delights of Oxford, and envy men that portion of their life.
CHAPTER XII
1870-78
In July, 1870, public attention was abruptly distracted from Irish and educational questions by the outbreak of the Franco-German War, which followed immediately upon the King of Prussia's refusal to promise France that he would never, under any circumstances, countenance his cousin Prince Leopold's candidature for the Spanish throne. War came as a surprise to every one, even to the Foreign Office, and its real causes were little understood at the time. The entire blame fell on Napoleon. Only some, who had special information, knew that Bismarck had long been waiting for the opportunity which the extravagant demand of France had just given him; and very few among the well-informed guessed that he might have had a hand in contriving the cause of dispute itself. Napoleon, since his annexation of Savoy, had so bad a reputation in Europe, a reputation which Bismarck had managed to blacken still more in their recent controversy over Luxembourg, that people were ready to take it as a matter of course that Napoleon should be the aggressor. Finally, by publishing through the Times the secret document in M. Benedetti's own hand, which assured help to Germany in annexing Holland, if Germany would help Napoleon to seize Belgium, Bismarck destroyed all remaining sympathy for France.
Now, however, that the inner history of events has come to light, we know that it was Germany who fomented the quarrel, though both Austria and France must be held responsible for the conditions which made the policy of Germany possible. The significant suppression of the part of Bernhardi's memoirs dealing with his secret mission from Bismarck to Spain, and the fact that a large sum of Prussian money is now known to have passed to Spain, [80] while the Cortes was discussing the question of succession, make it probable that Bismarck not only took advantage of French hostility to Prince Leopold's candidature, but deliberately instigated the offer of the Spanish throne to a German prince, because he knew France was certain to resent it.
[80] Lord Acton, "Historical Essays and Studies."
Napoleon, however, must be held responsible, inasmuch as since the close of the Seven Weeks' War, he had intrigued with Austria to induce her to revenge herself by a joint attack with him upon Germany, hoping that he might win with Austria's help those concessions of territory along the Rhine, which Bismarck had peremptorily refused him as a pour-boire after Sadowa. Austria, too, must take a share of the responsibility, since through the secret negotiations of the Archduke Albrecht she had encouraged Napoleon in this idea. Both Napoleon and the Archduke were convinced that those South-German States which had been annexed by Prussia for siding with Austria would rise, if their attack on Prussia could be associated with the idea of liberation. Bismarck's cleverness in picking the quarrel over the question of the Spanish succession, a matter which did not in the least concern South-Germany, proved fatal to their expectations. This triumph of diplomacy, together with the success of his master-stroke of provocation, the Ems telegram, decided the fate of France. As edited by Bismarck, the King of Prussia's telegram describing his last interview with the French Ambassador at Ems, infuriated the French to the necessary pitch of recklessness, while to Germans it read like the account of an insult to German-speaking peoples, and tended to draw them together in resentment.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
SALTBURN, August 24, 1870
Don't you sometimes feel that a few weeks' delay in beginning this horrible war might have given time to Europe to discover some better means than war for settling the dispute? We are full of schemes for the prevention of future wars. The only compensation I see for all these horrors is the conviction they bring of the amount of heroism in the world and of the progress made in humanity towards enemies—especially sick and wounded.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
SALTBURN, August 30, 1870
Poor Paris! You may well say we must be sorry for it, having so lately seen it in all its gay spring beauty—and though no doubt the surface, which is all we saw of its inhabitants, is better than the groundwork, how much of good and great it contains! How the best Frenchmen everywhere, and the best Parisians in particular, must grieve over the deep corruption which has done much to bring their country to its present dreary prospects. I did not mean that any mediation or interference of other Powers would have prevented this war, but that there ought by this time to be a substitute found for all war.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
SALTBURN, September 7, 1870
Don't you find it bewildering to be hurried at express speed through such mighty pages of history? And if bewildering and overpowering to us, who from the beginning of the war could see a probability of French disaster, what must it be to Paris, to all France, fed with falsehood as they have been till from one success to another they find their Emperor and an army of 80,000 men prisoners of war! But what a people! Who would have supposed by reading the accounts of Paris on Sunday, the excess of joy, the air de fete, the wild exultation, that an immense calamity, a bitter mortification had just befallen the country! that a gigantic German army was on its way to their gates! I should like to know whether many of those who shouted "Vive l'Empereur" when he left Paris, who applauded the war and hooted down anybody who doubted its justice or attacked Imperialism, are now among the shouters of "Vive la Republique" and the new Democratic Ministry. Let us hope not. Let us hope a great many things from the downfall of a corrupt Court, and the call for heroism and self-sacrifice to a frivolous and depraved city—frivolous and depraved, and yet containing so much of noble and good—all the nobler and better, perhaps, from the constant struggle to remain so in that atmosphere. Even if, as God grant, there is no siege, the serious thoughts which the prospect of it must give will perhaps not be lost on the Parisians. I, like you, long that the King of Prussia may prove that he spoke in all sincerity when he said that he fought against the Emperor, not France, and be magnanimous in the conditions he may offer—but what does that precisely mean? John says he is right to seek for some guarantee against future French ambition. Hitherto he has acted very like a gentleman, as John in the House of Lords declared him to be, and may still be your model sovereign.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 3, 1870
Your letter is so interesting and raises so many serious thoughts that I should like to answer it as it deserves, but can't do so to-day as I am obliged to go to London on business, and have hardly a moment. The kind of "gigantic brains" which you mention are, I agree with you, often repulsive—there is a harshness of dissent from all that mankind most values, all that has raised them above this earth, which cannot be right—which is the result of deficiency in some part of their minds or hearts or both, and not of excess of intellect or any other good thing. If they are right in their contempt of Christian faith and hope, or of all other spiritual faith and hope, they ought to be "of all men most miserable"; but they are apt to reject Christian charity too, and to dance on the ruins of all that has hitherto sustained their fellow-creatures in a world of sin and sorrow. That they are not right, but wofully wrong, I firmly believe, and happily many and many a noble intellect and great heart, which have not shrunk from searching into the mysteries of life and death with all the powers and all the love of truth given them by God to be used, not to lie dormant or merely receive what other men teach, have risen from the search with a firmer faith than before in Christ and in the immortality which he brought to light. I believe that many of those who deem themselves sceptics or atheists retain, after all, enough of the divine element within them practically to refute their own words.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
PEMBROKE LODGE, January 4, 1871
I wonder whether the solemn thoughts which must belong to the end of a year, and the solemn services by which it has been celebrated both by Germans and French, will lead them to ask themselves in all earnestness whether it is really duty, really what they believe to be God's will, which guides them in the continuance of a fearful war—whether earthly passions, earthly point of honour, do not mingle with their determination. If they do ask themselves such questions, what will be the answers? I, too, am often tempted to wish peace at any price, yet neither you nor I would act upon the wish were we the people to act. It was the peace at any price doctrine that forced us into the Russian war.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
PEMBROKE LODGE, January 25, 1871
Hopes of peace at last, thank God! I can think of little else—the increasing and accumulating horrors, miseries, and desolation of this wicked war have been enough to make one despair of mankind. France alone was in the wrong at first, but both have been wrong ever since Sedan, so at least I think, but it is too long a matter to discuss in a letter. If the new Emperor [81] does not grant most honourable terms to Paris, I shall give him up altogether as a self-seeking, hard-hearted old man of fire and sword. I dare say you have not heard as many sad stories as we have of the losses and disasters and unspeakable sorrows of people in Paris, known to other people we have seen. I won't repeat any of them, as it can do no good. I am glad to know that the Crown Prince hates the war, hates the bombardment, and opposed it strongly, and then again opposed sending shells into the town, and was very angry when it began to be done. Indeed, everything that we hear of him is highly to his credit, and one may hope much for the welfare and good government of United Germany from him and his wife.
[81] King William of Prussia had just taken the title of German Emperor.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
PEMBROKE LODGE, January 26, 1871
... We are rejoicing and thanking God for the blessed news of the coming surrender of Paris. Alas for all the wasted lives—wasted, I think, on both sides, for I cannot perceive that it was on either side one of those great and holy causes in which the blood shed by one generation bears fruit for the next. The Times was too quick in drawing conclusions from Jules Favre being at Versailles, but there can be little doubt that terms are under consideration, and I hope the Germans will show that they are not so spoiled by success as to be ungenerous in their demands. As to Alsace and Lorraine, I fear that it is a settled point with them. If so, they ought to be all the more ready to grant terms honourable in other respects. Do you see that a brave man in the Berlin Parliament raised his voice against annexation of French provinces, on the discussion of address to the new Emperor on his new dignity? ... What wonderfully interesting lectures Tyndall is giving.
LONDON, July 12, 1871
We lunched yesterday, all three, with Bernstorffs, [82] to meet Crown Prince and Princess—best of Princes and Princesses. It was interesting and agreeable. John and I had the luck to sit beside her and him. I was delighted to hear him say, "I hate war," with an emphasis better than words.
[82] Count Bernstorff was German Ambassador in London.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
PEMBROKE LODGE, July 27, 1871
... I suppose Agatha told you of the Emperor of Brazil's visit to us at 7 a.m.—it was amusing to get up at six to receive an Emperor, impossible to put on much ceremony with one's garments at that unceremonious hour, and fortunately unnecessary, for His Majesty was chatty and easy. He took a turn along West walk, admired the view, had a cup of chocolate, thanked us for our courtesy, and was off again before eight with his sallow-faced, grimy gentleman in waiting, who looked as if the little sleep he ever had was with his clothes on. We tried to see another Emperor [83] on Tuesday, having at last made out our journey to Chislehurst. Unluckily he and his son had gone to town, but we found the Empress. How unlike the splendid, bejewelled, pomp-and-gloryfied Empress of the Tuileries: her dress careless and common, her face little, if at all, painted, and thereby to my eye improved—but so altered. She seemed, however, in good spirits. She did not talk of France, but feared for England anything tending to diminish authority of "powers that be."
[83] Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie were living at Chislehurst.
On August 18, 1871, Lord Russell's seventy-ninth birthday was celebrated at Pembroke Lodge by the school children under the cedar in the garden. "His serene and cheerful mind, a greater blessing year by year as enjoyments one by one drop away. He looks back with gratitude, he accepts the present with contentment. He looks forward, I think, without dread." In September they went abroad, and took for the second time the house at Renens-sur-Roche, in Switzerland, where they had stayed in 1855. Lady Russell's mind was still full of horror of the recent war.
The first morning at Glyon (she writes to her sister, Lady Dunfermline) was one of merciless rain, but the afternoon did well enough for Chillon, to which use we all put it, and very interesting, grimly and horribly so, we found it. Men are less wicked and less cruel, tyrants are less tyrannical nowadays than when so-called criminals, often the best men in their country, were chained by iron rings to dungeon stones for years and years, or fastened to pillars and tortured by slow fires, or thrown down "oubliettes" into the lake below, falling first on a revolving machine stuck full of sharp blades—of all which horrors we were shown the scene and the remains. But I hope that some centuries hence travellers will wonder at even the present use to which Chillon is put, that of an arsenal, and thank God that they did not live in an age when sovereigns and rulers could command man to destroy his brother-man.
From Switzerland they moved down to the South of France to get to a warmer climate. They had taken a villa for the winter at Cannes, where they had a happy time, brightened during the Christmas vacation by the visits of their sons with friends from Oxford. In his old age Lord Russell seemed to enjoy more and more the companionship of the young, and entered with spirit into their merry jests and their eager conversations on great subjects, discussed with the freshness and enthusiasm of youth.
Lord Russell, as the following letters show, was still taking keen interest in education questions:
Lord Russell to Colonel Romilly
RENENS, September 27, 1871
I see the Bishop of Manchester has been speaking in favour of "a very moderate form of dogmatism" to be imposed on Dissenters who wish their children to have religious teaching. I am quite against this moderate form, which consists in making a Baptist child own that he is to believe what his godfathers and godmothers promised for him—he having neither godfathers nor godmothers. Every form of persecution is in my eyes detestable, so that I shall have to fight a new fight for freedom of education.
Lord Russell to Lady Minto
CANNES, January 6, 1872
MY DEAREST NINA,—Your New Year's Day letter shows that you write as well as a volunteer as on compulsion.... I am sorry to have annoyed Maggie by my allusion to the Hertfordshire incumbent. Here is my case. Sixty-three years ago my father, with others founded a Society to teach the Bible to young boys and girls, which they called "Schools for all." One should have thought there was no harm in the project, and that they might have been left alone. Not so. The clergy were furious. Sixty years ago they founded the National Society, and ever since they have libelled our schools.... Last year or the year before the H.I. [Hertfordshire Incumbent] attacked my proposals. I left him alone, but I carried the day, and excluded formularies from schools provided by rates. Still the bishops and clergy fulminate against us, shut out Baptists from the schools where they have influence, and declaim against us. Now I happen to have a great respect for the Bible, and while I have life will not cease to defend our Bible schools. You will say, if I do not, that in time the world will come round to Christianity, which is at a low ebb at present. Men will understand at last that they ought to love God and to love their neighbour as themselves, not to steal, or commit murder, or cheat their neighbours. The Athanasian Creed is making a pretty hubbub. It was invented as a substitute for Christianity, and taken from Aristotle....
Ever yours affectionately,
RUSSELL
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
CANNES, November 29, 1871
What is to be the result of the Republican ferment in our country? It may not be widespread, and it certainly hardly exists above the working classes, yet I feel that the germ is there—and who can say how far it is doomed to flourish, or whether it will die away.... Ours has been so free and independent and prosperous a nation, that the notion of any fundamental change in the Constitution is awful. Yet when we boast of our freedom and prosperity we should not forget the enormous mass of misery, vice, filth, and all evil which disgraces all our large towns—nor the brutish ignorance and apathy which pervades much of our rural population. And it is well worth the most earnest thought and study, on the part of all Englishmen and women, to find out whether our form of government has or has not any share of the blame and to act accordingly. I have great confidence in the British people. They have never liked hasty, ill-considered changes; they hate revolution; and I hope I am not too trustful in believing that we shall go on in the wise and the right path, whatever that may be, and in spite of the freaks and follies of many a man whose aims are more selfish than patriotic.
While at Cannes Lord and Lady Russell saw a great deal of Princess Christian, who was living near them, and was in great anxiety and sorrow about the illness of her brother, the Prince of Wales, who nearly died in December, 1871. His illness was the occasion of a display of loyalty and sympathy from thousands of British subjects. Lady Russell received the following reply to a letter she wrote from Cannes to the Queen:
Queen Victoria to Lady Russell
OSBORNE, January 22, 1872
DEAR LADY RUSSELL,—I meant ere this to have thanked you for your very kind letter of the 1st, but my dear son's illness brought with it much writing besides much to do, in addition to which, there is the correspondence with four absent married daughters, which is no light task. I thank you now both most warmly for the great kindness of your expressions about my own long and severe illness, when you so kindly wrote to Lady Ely to inquire, and relative to this last dreadful illness of my dear son's, coming, as it did, when I was far from strong myself. Thank God! I was able to be near him and with my beloved daughter, the Princess of Wales (who behaved so beautifully and admirably), during that terrible time, when for nearly a week his life hung on a thread. Indeed, for a whole month at least, if not for five weeks, his state was one of the greatest anxiety and indeed of danger. Since the 4th we may look on his progress as steady and good, and I hear that he was able to drive out yesterday for a little while. But great quiet will be necessary for a long while to come. You are very kind in your accounts of Helena, who no doubt must have suffered much from being so far off.... I hear that she is really better and stronger. She speaks often of the pleasure it is to her to see you and Lord Russell, of whom I am delighted to hear so good an account. Though not very strong and not free from rheumatic pains at times, I am much better and able to walk again out of doors, much as usual.
With kind remembrances to Lord Russell and Agatha,
Ever yours affectionately, V.R.
In the spring they all came back to England. Lord John had benefited in health by wintering abroad; he was still vigorous enough to resist in the House of Lords the claim of the United States for the Alabama indemnity, and to give a presidential address to the Historical Society; but the years were beginning to tell on him.
PEMBROKE LODGE, April 18, 1872
John did not venture out—still looks tired and not as he did when we arrived, but no cold. Sad, most sad to me, that when I take a brisk turn in the garden, it is no longer with him—that his enjoyments, his active powers, yearly dwindle away—that it is scarcely possible he should not at times feel the hours too long from the difficulty of finding variety of occupation. Writing, walking, even reading very long or talking much with friends and visitors all tire him. He never complains, and I thank God for his patience, and oh! so heartily that he has no pain, no chronic ailment. But alas for the days of his vigour when he was out and in twenty times a day, when life had a zest which nothing can restore!
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
PEMBROKE LODGE, August 8, 1872
Filled with wonder, shame, remorse, I begin on a Thursday to write to you. What possessed me to let Wednesday pass without doing so I can't tell, but I think it happens about once a year, and I dare say it's a statistical mystery—the averages must be kept right, and my mind is not to blame—no free will in the matter. This brings me to an essay in one of the magazines for August—I forget which—on the statistics of prayer. Not a nice name (perhaps it's not correct, but nearly so), and not a nice article, it seemed to me—but I only glanced at it; produced, like many other faulty things of the kind, by illogical superstition on the part of Christian clergy, most of whom preach a half-belief, some a whole belief, on the efficacy of prayer for temporal good. Then comes the hard unbeliever, delighted to prove, as any child can do, that such prayer cannot be proved to avail anything. He is incapable of understanding the deeper and truer kind of prayer, but he convinces many that all communion with God is fruitless, or perhaps that there is no God with whom to hold it. This may not be the drift of the article, for, as I said, I have not read it, but it is the drift of much that is talked and written nowadays by men and women of the author's school. I wish there were no schools in that sense. They always have done and always will do harm, and prevent the independence of thought which they are by way of encouraging.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
PEMBROKE LODGE, Christmas Day, 1872
I do indeed feel with you how wonderful the goodness and the contented spirit of many thousands of poor, pent-up, toiling human beings, who live in God's glorious world and leave it without ever knowing its glories, whose lives are one struggle to maintain life; and I think with you how easy it ought to be for us who have leisure for the beauty of life, in nature and in books, in conversation and in art. And yet, it was to the rich that Christ gave His most frequent warnings. Is it then, after all, easiest for the poor to do His will and love Him and trust Him in all things?
The summer and autumn and winter had been spent almost entirely at Pembroke Lodge, but when Parliament met early in 1873 they moved to London, where they had taken a house till Easter.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
LONDON, February 19, 1873
Scene—a drawing-room; hour 11.30 a.m. A young lady playing the pianoforte by candle-light. An old lady writing, also by candle-light. An old gentleman five minutes ago sitting reading also by candle-light, but now doing the same in a room below. Three large windows through which is seen a vast expanse of a semi-substantial material of the hue of a smoked primrose; against it is dimly visible an irregular and picturesque outline, probably of a range of mountains, some rocky and pyramidal, others horizontally banked. Altogether, a mystery replete with grandeur in the effect—none of your Southern transparency leaving nothing for the imagination. Seriously, it's laughable that human beings should congregate so as to produce these effects, and that we among others should by preference be among the congregators. Your day at Napoule is like something in a different world altogether.
You are rather hard, John says, and he is not disposed to be otherwise, on Parliamentary sayings and doings. I can say nothing from myself, as I have not read one single speech, except that I cannot bear the humiliating exclusion of any kind of useful knowledge from a University out of false consideration for religious or irreligious scruples. [84] Surely young men had better be taught boldly to face the fact that men differ than be dealt with in this ridiculously tender and most futile manner.
[84] The Irish University Bill was being discussed in the Commons, one clause of which proposed to exclude theology, philosophy, and history from the curriculum of the New University.
In August, 1873, after the publication of Lord Russell's book, "Essays on the History of the Christian Religion," they spent some six weeks at Dieppe, where Lord Russell's health again considerably improved.
Mr. Disraeli to Lord Russell
GEORGE STREET, HANOVER SQUARE, May 8, 1873
MY DEAR LORD,—I have just finished reading your book, which I was much gratified by receiving from the author.... I cannot refrain from expressing to you the great pleasure its perusal gave me. The subject is of perpetual interest, and it is treated, in many instances, with originality founded on truth, and with wonderful freshness. The remarks suggested by your own eminent career give to the general conduct of the theme additional interest, like the personal passages in Montaigne. I wish there had been more of them, or that you would favour the world with some observations on men and things, which one who is alike a statesman, a philosopher, and a scholar could alone supply. In your retirement you have the inestimable happiness of constant and accomplished sympathy, without which life is little worth. Mine is lone and dark, but still, I hope I may send my kindest remembrances to Lady Russell.
Yours with sincere respect and regard,
B. DISRAELI
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
PEMBROKE LODGE, July 3, 1873
You will not be disappointed, I do believe, with John's book, high as your expectations are. The spirit of it at all events is that of your letter: that of love and reverence for what you truly call the wonder of wonders—the Bible—as well as that of perfect freedom of thought. Had that perfect freedom always been allowed to mankind by kings, rulers, and priests, in all their disguises, we should never have had the "trash" of which you complain inundating our country and thinking itself a substitute for the simple lessons and glorious promises of Christ. Whereas in proportion as it is less "trashy," it approaches more nearly, though unconsciously, to what He taught, borrowing what is best in it from Him, only giving an earthly tone to what He made divine. I have, perhaps, more indulgence than you for some of the anti-Christian thinkers and writers of the day—those who love truth with all their souls, who would give their lives to believe that—
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul,"
but who seek a kind of proof of this which never can be found. They are very unhappy in this world, but I believe they are nearer heaven than many comfortable so-called believers, and will find their happiness beyond that death upon which they look as annihilation.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
PEMBROKE LODGE, October 22, 1873
Louisa [85] writes in such warm admiration of Minto indoors and out, it did me good to read it, and such joy in meeting you. Shall I ever be there again, I wonder?—a foolish wonder, and foolisher still when let out! Dear old oak-room—to me too Granny Brydone is always present there. I cannot think of it without her image rising before me. How perfect she was! How far above the common world she and Mama, and yet both spending their lives in the discharge of common, and what many would call, petty duties! How little it signifies what are the special duties to which we are called, how much the spirit in which we do them! I don't think I ever longed so much for long talks day after day with you. Don't say such hopes are visionary, though, alas! they have over and over again vanished before our eyes.
[85] Lady Louisa Howard, formerly Lady Louisa Fitzmaurice (daughter of Lord Lansdowne), one of Lady Russell's earliest friends.
Lady Russell to Lord Amberley
PEMBROKE LODGE, October 28, 1873
DEAREST JOHNNY,—... Rollo bought Mill's autobiography, and I have read the greater part of it. Deeply interesting it is, and his lovableness comes out in it as much as his intellect—but deeply sad too, in more ways than one. I live in dread of the possible effect on you and Kate of the account of his education by his father—the principles right, the application so wofully wrong. Mill was a learned scholar, a great thinker, a good man, partly in consequence, partly in spite of it.... Happily you have more Popes than one, as good for you as it was for the world in days of old. Happily, too, there's such a thing as love, innate, intuitive, instinctive (oh, horrible!), which is wise in proportion to its depth, and will be your best and safest guide. How strange Mill's utter silence about his mother I How beautiful and touching the pages about his wife! How melancholy to know that such high natures as his and hers generally fail to meet in close intimacy here below, and therefore live and die more than half unknown, waiting for the hereafter. God bless you, my very dear children.
Your loving MOTHER
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 9, 1873
Visit from Mr. Herbert Spencer, who stayed to dinner. Long, deep, interesting conversation; all amounting to "we know nothing," he assuring me that the prospect of annihilation has no terrors for him; I feeling that without immortality life is "all a cheat," and without a Father in heaven, right and wrong, love, conscience, joy, sorrow, are words without a meaning and the Universe, if governed at all, is governed by a malignant spirit who gives us hopes, and aspirations never to be fulfilled, affections to be wasted, a thirst for knowledge never to be quenched.
"1874 opened brightly and peacefully on our dear home," she writes; but it was to prove one of the saddest years in their lives. Only some of the heavy trials and sorrows that they were called upon to bear from this time onward will be touched upon here. They were borne by Lord and Lady Russell with heroic courage and unfaltering faith.
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
PEMBROKE LODGE, February 25, 1874
I am now just finishing the "Heart of Midlothian," and with more intense admiration for it than ever—the beauty and naturalness of every word spoken by Jeanie and Effie before the last volume, of a great deal of Davie Deans, of many of the scenes scattered through the book are, I think, not to be surpassed. More tenderness and depth and heart-breakingness I should say than in any of Sir Walter's.... I turned to Sir Walter from "The Parisians." I doubt whether I shall finish it, a false, glittering, disagreeable atmosphere.
Lady Russell to Lord and Lady Amberley
PEMBROKE LODGE, March 2, 1874
MY DEAR CHILDREN,—... We had a charming visit from Sir Henry Taylor a few days ago, a long quiet real "crack" about many books and many authors, with a little touch of the events of the day-change of Ministry, causes of our utter defeat, which he thinks obscure, so do I—not creditable to the country, so do I—in so far as Disraeli can hardly be reckoned more trustworthy or consistent than Gladstone, and Gladstone's untrustworthiness and inconsistency are supposed to have caused his overthrow. The Queen made Sir John Cowell write me a note to find out whether John would be disposed to go to the great banquet next Tuesday and sleep at Windsor. Kindly done of her—of course he declines. I read Herbert Spencer on "The Bias of Patriotism," yesterday—much of it truly excellent. To-day I am at "Progress" in the Essays ... of which I have read several here and there. Whenever I have the feeling that I, not Herbert Spencer, have written what I am reading, I have the delightful sensation of complete agreement and unqualified admiration of his (or my) wisdom. When I have not that feeling, I stop to consider, but even then have sometimes the candour to come to his conclusions; while at some passages, less frequent, I inwardly exclaim, "I never did, I do not now, and I never shall agree." The want of what Sir Henry Taylor calls "the spiritual instinct" is striking in him. It is strange to turn to him as I have done from "Memorials of a Quiet Life," which raises me into an atmosphere of heavenly calmness and joy, or ought to do so, although nobody ever felt the trials and sorrows of life more keenly than Mrs. Hare....
Good-bye, dearest children, your pets [86] are as well and as dear as pets can be.
Your loving, MOTHER.
[86] Rachel and Bertrand, who stayed for the winter at Pembroke Lodge while their parents were abroad.
In April Lady Russell lost her sister, Lady Dunfermline, who died in Rome. In May, Lord and Lady Russell's second son, who was dearly loved for his generous and noble nature, was seized with dangerous illness. He lived, but never recovered. In the summer, Lady Amberley and her little daughter Rachel, who was only six years old, died of diphtheria within a few days of each other.
There is a touching reference to Lord Russell in a letter, written many years after his death, from Miss Elliot, daughter of the Dean of Bristol, to Lady Russell.
One of the very last times I saw him you were out, and he sent word that he would see me when he knew I was at the door; when he literally bowed his head and said, "The hand of the Lord has been very heavy on us—very heavy," and spoke of little Rachel. I never remember being more touched and awed by the reverence I felt for him.
Queen Victoria to Lady Russell [87]
WINDSOR CASTLE, June 29, 1874
DEAR LADY RUSSELL,—I cannot remain silent without writing to express to you my deep and sincere sympathy with you both, and especially with your poor son on this most sad event, which has deprived him of his wife, and his little children (whom I saw so lately) of an affectionate mother, in the very prime of life! I saw the sad announcement in the papers this morning and could hardly believe it, never having heard even of her illness. This sad event will, I know, be a terrible blow to you, and to Lord Russell, and I know that you have had much sorrow and anxiety lately. Dear Lady Russell, I have known you both too long not to feel the truest and deepest interest in all that concerns you and yours—in weal and woe—and I would not delay a moment in writing to express this to you. You will, I know, look for support and for comfort where alone it can be found, and I pray that God may support and comfort you and your poor bereaved son. |
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