Part 1 (1/2)
Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
by George William Erskine Russell
I
BEGINNINGS
One look back--as we hurry o'er the plain, Man's years speeding us along-- One look back! Fro!
Tell how once, in the breath of su hid, with their triuo!
E E BOWEN
The wayfarer who crosses Lincoln's Inn Fields perceives in the midst of them a kind of wooden temple, and passes by it unmoved But, if his curiosity teh an aperture in the boarded floor, a slab of stone bearing this inscription:
”On this spot was beheaded William Lord Russell, A lover of constitutional liberty, 21st July, AD 1683”[1]
Of the reat-grandson, and I agree with The Antiquary, that ”it's a shae that we have not a less clu a relationshi+p of which we have occasion to think and speak so frequently”
Before we part co on his historical position When my father was a cornet in the Blues, he invited a brother-officer to spend some of his leave at Woburn Abbey One day, when the weather was too bad for any kind of sport, the visitor was induced to have a look at the pictures The Rembrandts, and Cuyps, and Van dykes and Sir Joshuas bored him to extremity, but accidentally his eye lit on Hayter's faleaence, he exclaimed, ”Hullo!
What's this? It looks like a trial” My father answered, with modest pride--”It is a trial--the trial of my ancestor, William, Lord Russell”
”Good heavens!thing! _I hope he got off_”
Soone's nationality, it is natural to regard one's four grand-parents as one's colishhlander, and one quarter a Welshlish; my father's mother wholly Scotch; my mother's father wholly Welsh; and randfather, the sixth Duke of Bedford, was born in 1766 and died in 1839 He iana Gordon, sister of the last Duke of Gordon, and herself ”the last of the Gordons” of the senior line She died just after I was born, and froay Gordons” who preceded her, I derive e It has always been a comfort to me, when rebuked for ritualistic tendencies, to recall that I ae Gordon, whose icon I daily revere My grandmother had a numerous family, of whom my father was the third He was born in Dublin Castle, his father being then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in the Ministry of ”All the Talents” My grandfather had been a political and personal friend of Charles James Fox, and Fox had promised to be Godfather to his next child But Fox died on the 13th of September, 1806, and my father did not appear till the 10th of February, 1807 Fox's nephew, Henry Lord Holland, took over the sponsorshi+p, and bestowed the na, who, as becaal state, was christened by the Archbishop of Dublin, ater froolden bowl
The life so impressively auspicated lasted till the 29th of June, 1894
So hlander who had been out with Prince Charlie in '45, lived to see the close of Mr Gladstone's fourth Predean, at Westenerations, and at the University of Edinburgh, where he boarded with that ”paltry Pillans,” who, according to Byron, ”traduced his friend” Froh he passed into the Blues, then commanded by Ernest, Duke of cuiment In 1832 he was returned to the first Refor Member for Bedfordshi+re He finally retired in 1847, and fro the House of Commons He est by eight years, being born on the 3rd of February, 1853[2]
My birthplace (not yet marked with a blue and white medallion) was 16, Mansfield Street; but very soon afterwards the official residences at the Palace of Westminster were finished, and loomy house in the Speaker's Court, now (1913) occupied by Sir David Erskine
Here ue irandfather--Lady Robert Seymour--who died in her ninety-first year when I o years old; though, as those impressions are chiefly connected with a jam-cupboard, I fancy that they must pertain less to Lady Robert than to her housekeeper But two memories of my fourth year are perfectly defined The first is the fire which destroyed Covent Garden Theatre on the 5th of March, 1856 ”During the operatic recess, Mr Gye, the lessee of the Theatre, had sub-let it to one Anderson, a perforht-of-hand feats, and so-called 'Professor' He brought his short season to a close by an entertainment described as a 'Grand Carnival Complimentary Benefit and Dra, and terht' At 3 on the Wednesday ies At thisfro and confusion, the drunken, panic-stricken h the roof, sending high up into the air coluht reflection every tower and spire within the circuit of thethe whole fabric of St Paul's, and throwing a flood of light across Waterloo Bridge, which set out in bold relief the dark outline of the Surrey hills” That ”flood of light” was beheld byBen,” which looks on Weste When in later years I have occasionally stated in aof Covent Garden Theatre, I have noticed a general expression of surprised interest, and have been told, in a tone meant to be kind and coht that my ood people had soh theirof Covent Garden Theatre in 1856 with that of Drury Lane Theatre in 1809 Most people have no chronological sense
Our ho to the Duke of Bedford, but given by randfather to my parents for their joint and several lives My father's duties at the House of Co the Parliamentary Session, but arden, used to return with her fa-out” My first memory is connected with my home in London; s for the termination of the Crimean War
Under the date of May 29, 1856, we read in _Annals of Our Tido the night, illuminations and fireworks were all but universal” The banners and bands of the triumphal procession which paraded the streets of our little town--scarcelyan iration which had startled all London in the previous March
People who have only known me as a double-dyed Londoner always see that I once was a countryman; yet, for the first twenty-five years of my life, I lived almost entirely in the country ”We could never have loved the earth so well, if we had had no childhood in it--if it were not the earth where the saather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass--the saht in an elderberry bush overhanging the confused leafage of a hedgerow bank, as a ht than the finest cistus or fuchsia spreading itself on the softest undulating turf, is an entirely unjustifiable preference to a Nursery-Gardener And there is no better reason for preferring this elderberry bush than that it stirs an earlyto hcompanion of my existence, that wove itself into my joys when joys were vivid”
I had the unspeakable advantage of being reared in close contact with Nature, in an aspect beautiful and wild My father's house was rearden, laid out with the old-fashi+oned intricacy of pattern, and blazing, even into autue and absolutely syreen layers of shade,” and supplied us in suround of the garden was for trees of Woburn Park; and close by there were great tracts of woodland, which stretch far into Buckinghain forest
Having no boy-companions (for my only brother was ten years older than a hoood all-round sports and fishi+ng Indeed, I believe I can say with literal truth that I have never killed anything larger than a wasp, and that only in self-defence But Woburn is an ideal country for riding, and I spent a good deal of alloway
An hour or tith the hounds was the reward of virtue in the schoolroo in a woodland country at 7 o'clock on a Septe still remains my s are not as ill with you andto the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and now rest in unvisited to that faithful nuoverness,--Catherine Emily Runciman--who devoted forty years of her life, in one capacity or another, to us and to our parents She hat boys call ”jolly out of school,” but rather despotic in it; and, after a few trials of strength, I was eht When ere in London for the Session of Parliament, I attended a Day School, kept by two sisters of John Leech, in a curious little cottage, since destroyed, at the bottoe when, in the ordinary course, I should have gone to a boarding-school, it was discovered that I was physically unfit for the experiment; and then I had a series of tutors at home To one of these tutors my father wrote--”I must warn you of your pupil's powers of conversation, and tact in leading his teachers into it”