Part 45 (1/2)

The American States have now long been absolutely reunited; there is no difference of opinion whatever in this country with regard to the question of slavery, and yet it is quite certain that during the American Civil War a large number of conscientious, humane, and educated Englishmen were firmly convinced that the American Republic was about to break in two, and that the sympathies of England ought to go with the rebelling Southern States. It is well, therefore, that we should all be reminded of Lord Russell's att.i.tude on these subjects.

I had much to tell Lady Russell of the various impressions made on me during my wanderings through the States, and by the distinguished American authors, statesmen, soldiers--Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, General Grant, General Sherman.

With the public career of each of these men Lady Russell was thoroughly acquainted, but she was much interested in hearing all that I could tell her about their ways of life and their personal habits and characteristics.

Then there were, of course, political questions at home concerning which there was deep sympathy between Lady Russell and me, and on which we had many long conversations. She had the most intense and enlightened sympathy with the great movements going on in these countries for the spread of political equality and of popular education.

Every statesman who sincerely and actively supported the principles and measures tending towards these ends was regarded as a friend by this n.o.ble-hearted woman.

I had been for many years a leader-writer and more recently editor of the _Morning Star_, the London daily newspaper which advocated the views of Cobden and Bright, and I had more recently still been elected to the House of Commons as a member of the Irish Nationalist Party, and thus again I found myself in thorough sympathy with the opinions and the feelings of my hostess.

Lady Russell had long been an advocate of that truly Liberal policy towards Ireland which is now accepted as the only principle by all really enlightened Liberal English men and women; and she thoroughly understood the condition, the grievances, the needs, and the aspirations of Ireland.

The readers of this volume will see in some pa.s.sages extracted from Lady Russell's diaries and letters how deep and strong were her feelings on the subject. She followed with the most intense interest and with the most penetrating observation the whole movement of Ireland's national struggle down to the very close of her life. Her letters on this question alone--letters addressed to me--would in themselves serve to illumine even now the minds of many English readers on this whole subject. Lady Russell was in no sense a partisan on any political question--I mean she never gave her approval to everything said or done by the leaders of any political party merely because the one main object of that party had her full sympathy and approval. Reading over many of her letters to me on various pa.s.sages of the Home Rule agitation inside and outside Parliament, I have been once again filled with admiration and with wonder at the keen sagacity, the prophetic instinct, which she displayed with regard to this or that political movement or political man.

All through these letters it becomes more and more manifest that Lady Russell's devotedness was in every instance to principle rather than to party, to measures rather than to men. By these words I do not mean to convey the idea that her nature led her habitually into any cold and over-calculating criticism of political leaders whom she admired, and in whom she had been led to feel confidence.

Her generous nature was enthusiastic in its admiration of the men whose leaders.h.i.+p in some great political movement had won her sympathy from the first; but even with these her admiration was overruled and kept in order by her devotion to the principles which they were undertaking to carry into effect, and by the fidelity with which they adhered to these principles.

Even among intelligent and enlightened men and women we often find in our observation of public affairs that there are instances in which the followers of a trusted leader are carried away by their personal devotion into the champions.h.i.+p of absolute errors which the leader is committing--errors that might prove perilous or even, for the time, fatal to the cause of which he is the recognised advocate.

Lady Russell always set the cause above the man, regarding him mainly as the instrument of the cause; and if the alternative were pressed upon her, would have withdrawn from his leaders.h.i.+p rather than tacitly allow the cause to be misled. This, however, would have been done only as a last resort and after the most full, patient, and generous consideration of the personal as well as the public question.

We men do not expect to find in an enthusiastic, tender, and what may be called exquisitely feminine woman the quality of clear and guiding discrimination between the policy of the leader and the principles of the cause which he undertakes to lead. We are inclined to a.s.sume that the woman in such a case, if she has already made a hero of the man, will be apt to think that everything he proposes to do must be the right thing to do, and that any question raised as to the wisdom and justice of any course adopted by him is a treason against his leaders.h.i.+p.

Lady Russell never seemed to me to yield for a moment to any such sentiment of mere hero-wors.h.i.+p. She set, as I have said, the cause above the man, and she measured the man according to her interpretation of his policy towards the cause.

But at the same time she was never one of those who cannot be convinced that some particular course is not the wisest and most just to adopt without at once rus.h.i.+ng to the conclusion that the leader who makes any mistakes must be in the wrong because of wilfulness or mere incapacity, and is therefore not worthy any longer of admiration and trust.

I have many letters from her, written at the time of some serious crisis in the fortunes of the Irish National movement, which show the keenest and the earliest intelligence of some mistake in the policy of the party on this or that immediate question without showing the slightest inclination to diminish her confidence in the sincerity and the purposes of its leaders, any more than in the justice of the cause. I can well recollect that in many instances she proved to be absolutely in the right when she thus gave me her opinion, and that events afterwards fully maintained the wisdom and the justice of her criticism. The reason why so many of Lady Russell's opinions were conveyed to me by letter was that I had to be, like all my companions of the Irish Parliamentary Party, a constant attendant at the debates in the House of Commons, and that many days often pa.s.sed without my having an opportunity to visit Lady Russell and converse with her on the subjects which had so deep an interest for her as well as for me. I therefore was in the habit of writing often to her from the House of Commons in order to give her my own ideas as to the significance and importance of this or that debate, of this or that speech and its probable effect on the House and on the outer public. Lady Russell never failed to favour me with her own views on such subjects, and the views were always her own, and were never a mere good-natured and friendly adoption of the opinions thus offered to her.

Then, when I had the opportunity of visiting her at Pembroke Lodge, we were sure to compare and discuss our views in the conversations which she made so delightful and so inspiring.

One of her marvellous qualities was that her interest and her intellect were never wholly absorbed in the pa.s.sing political questions, but that she could still keep her mind open to other and entirely different subjects.

The chamber of her mind seemed to me to be like one of those mysterious apartments about which we read in fairy stories, which were endowed with a magical capacity of expansion and reception.

I have come to her home at a time when, for those whose lives were mainly pa.s.sed in political work, there was some subject then engaging the attention of all politicians in these countries--some subject in which I well knew that Lady Russell was deeply and thoroughly interested.

But it sometimes happened that there were friends just then with her who did not profess any interest in politics, and who were mainly concerned about some new topic in letters or art or science, and I often observed with admiration the manner in which Lady Russell could give herself up for the time to the question in which those visitors were chiefly interested, and could show her sympathy and knowledge as if she had not lately been thinking of anything else. About this there was evidently no mere desire to please her latest visitors, no sense of obligation to submit herself for the time to their especial subject, but a genuine sympathy with every effort of human intellect, and a sincere desire to gather all that could be gathered from every garden of human culture.