Part 18 (1/2)
He often recited them with disapproval when any occurrence made him feel how false they were.'
[Sidenote: KINGLAKE'S DESCRIPTION]
Lord John's manner of life, like his personal tastes, was simple. He contrived to set the guests who gathered around him at his wife's receptions perfectly at their ease, by his old-fas.h.i.+oned gallantry, happy humour, and bright, vigorous talk. One room in Pembroke Lodge, from the windows of which a glorious view of the wooded valley is obtained, has been rendered famous by Kinglake's description[44] of a certain drowsy summer evening in June 1854, when the Aberdeen Cabinet a.s.sembled in it, at the very moment when they were drifting into war.
Other rooms in the house are full of memories of Garibaldi and Livingstone, of statesmen, amba.s.sadors, authors, and, indeed, of men distinguished in every walk of life, but chiefly of Lord John himself, in days of intellectual toil, as well as in hours of friendly intercourse and happy relaxation.
Charles d.i.c.kens, speaking in 1869 at a banquet in Liverpool, held in his honour, over which Lord Dufferin presided, refused to allow what he regarded as a covert sneer against the House of Lords to pa.s.s unchallenged. He repelled the insinuation with unusual warmth, and laid stress on his own regard for individual members of that a.s.sembly. Then, on the spur of the moment, came an unexpected personal tribute. He declared that 'there was no man in England whom he respected more in his public capacity, loved more in his private capacity, or from whom he had received more remarkable proofs of his honour and love of literature than Lord John Russell.' The compliment took Lord Russell by surprise; but if s.p.a.ce allowed, or necessity claimed, it would be easy to prove that it was not undeserved. From the days of his youth, when he lived under the roof of Dr. Playfair, and attended the cla.s.ses of Professor Dugald Stewart in Edinburgh, and took his part, as a _protege_ of Lord Holland, in the brilliant society of Holland House, Lord John's leanings towards literature, and friends.h.i.+p with other literary men had been marked. As in the case of other Prime Ministers of the Queen's reign, and notably of Derby, Beaconsfield, and Mr. Gladstone, literature was his pastime, if politics was his pursuit, for his interests were always wider than the question of the hour. He was the friend of Sir James Mackintosh and of Sydney Smith, who playfully termed him 'Lord John Reformer,' of Moore and Rogers, Jeffrey and Macaulay, d.i.c.kens and Thackeray, Tyndall and Sir Richard Owen, Motley and Sir Henry Taylor, Browning and Tennyson, to mention only a few representative men.
[Sidenote: LITERARY FRIENDs.h.i.+PS]
When the students of Glasgow University wished, in 1846, to do him honour, Lord John gracefully begged them to appoint as Lord Rector a man of creative genius, like Wordsworth, rather than himself. As Prime Minister he honoured science by selecting Sir John Herschel as Master of the Mint, and literature, by the recommendation of Alfred Tennyson as Poet Laureate. When Sir Walter Scott was creeping back in broken health from Naples to die at Abbotsford it was Lord John who cheered the sad hours of illness in the St. James's Hotel, Jermyn Street, by a delicately worded offer of financial help from the public funds. Leigh Hunt, Christopher North, Sheridan Knowles, Father Mathew, the widow of Dr. Chalmers, and the children of Tom Hood are names which suggest the direction in which he used his patronage as First Minister of the Crown.
He was in the habit of enlivening his political dinner parties by invoking the aid of literary men of wit and distinction, and nothing delighted him more than to bring, in this pleasant fas.h.i.+on, literature and politics to close quarters. The final pages of his 'Recollections and Suggestions' were written in Lord Tennyson's study at Aldworth, and his relations with Moore at an earlier stage of his life were even more intimate.
Lord John Russell was twice married: first, on April 11, 1835, to Adelaide, daughter of Mr. Thomas Lister, of Armitage Park, Staffords.h.i.+re, the young widow of Thomas, second Lord Ribblesdale; and second, on July 20, 1841, to Lady Frances Anna Maria Elliot, second daughter of Gilbert, second Earl of Minto. By his first wife he had two daughters, the late Lady Victoria Villiers, and Lady Georgiana Peel; and by his second three sons and one daughter--John, Viscount Amberley, the Hon. George William Gilbert, formerly of the 9th Lancers, the Hon.
Francis Albert Rollo, and Lady Mary Agatha. Viscount Amberley married, on November 8, 1864, the fifth daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley.
Lord Amberley died two years before his father, and the peerage descended to the elder of his two sons, the present Earl Russell.
Lady Russell states: 'Our way of life during the session, from the time we first settled in Pembroke Lodge till John ceased to take any active part in politics, was to be there from Wednesday to Thursday and from Sat.u.r.day to Monday. This made him spend much time on the road; but he always said the good it did him to s.n.a.t.c.h all he could of the delight of his own quiet country home, to breathe its pure air, and be cheered by the sight of his merry children, far outweighed the time and trouble it cost him. When he was able to leave town tolerably early, he used sometimes to ride down all the way; but he oftener drove to Hammersmith Bridge, where his horse, and such of our children as were old enough to ride met him, and how joyfully I used to catch the first sight of the happy riders--he on his roan ”Surrey” and they on their pretty ponies--from the little mount in our grounds! He was very fond of riding, and in far later days, when age and infirmity obliged him to give it up, used often to say in a sad tone, pointing to some of his favourite gra.s.sy rides, as we drove together in the park, ”Ah! what pleasant gallops we used to have along there!”' Lord John was seen to great advantage in his own home and with his children. Even when the cares of State pressed most heavily on him he always seemed to the children about him to have leisure to enter with gay alacrity into their plans and amus.e.m.e.nts. When at home, no matter how urgent the business in hand, he always saw them either in the house or the garden every day, and took the liveliest interest in the round of their life, alike in work and play. He had conquered the art of bearing care lightly. He seldom allowed public affairs to distract him in moments of leisure. He was able to throw aside the cares of office, and to enter with vivacity and humour into social diversions. His equable temper and placid disposition served him in good stead amid the turmoil and excitement of political life.
[Sidenote: A PACKET OF OLD LETTERS]
Sorrows, neither few nor light, fell upon the household at Pembroke Lodge in the closing years of Lord Russell's life; but 'trials,' as Lady Russell puts it in her journal, 'had taught Lord John to feel for others, and age had but deepened his religion of love.' In reply to a birthday letter from Mr. Archibald Peel, his son-in-law, and nephew of his great political rival he said: '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.' Two or three extracts from a packet of letters addressed by Lord John to his daughter, Lady Georgiana Peel, will be read with interest. The majority of them are of too intimate and personal a kind for quotation. Yet the whole of them leave the impression that Lord John, who reproaches himself in one instance as a bad correspondent, was at least a singularly good father. They cover a considerable term of years, and though for the most part dealing with private affairs, and often in a spirit of pleasant raillery, here and there allusions to public events occur in pa.s.sing. In one of them, written from Gotha in the autumn of 1862, when Lord John was in attendance on her Majesty, he says: 'We have been dull here, but the time has never hung heavy on our hands. Four boxes of despatches and then telegrams, all requiring answers, have been our daily food.' He refers touchingly to the Queen's grief, and there is also an allusion to the minor tribulation of a certain little boy in England who had just crossed the threshold of school-life. Probably Lord John was thinking of his own harsh treatment at Westminster, more than sixty years before, when he wrote: 'Poor w.i.l.l.y! He will find a public school a rough place, and the tears will come into his eyes when he thinks of the very soft nest he left at home.'
Ecclesiastical affairs never lost their interest to the author of the Durham Letter, and the following comments show his att.i.tude on Church questions. The first is from a letter written on May 23, 1867: 'The Church has been greatly disturbed. The Bishop of Salisbury has claimed for the English clergy all the power of the Roman priests. The question whether they are to wear white surplices, or blue, green, yellow, or red, becomes a minor question in comparison. Of course the Bishop and those who think with him throw off the authority of our excellent Thirty-nine Articles altogether, and ought to leave the Church to the Protestant clergy and laity.' England just then, in Carlyle's judgment, was 'shooting Niagara,' and Disraeli's reform proposals were making a stir in the opposite camp. In the letter above quoted Lord John says: 'Happily, we are about to get rid of the compound householder. I am told Dizzy expects to be the first President of the British Republic.' Mr.
Gladstone, according to Lord Houghton, seemed at the same moment 'quite awed with the diabolical cleverness of Dizzy.' The second bears date Woburn Abbey, September 29, 1868: 'Dr. Temple is a man I greatly admire, and he has become more valuable to his country since the death of our admirable Dean of St. Paul's. If I had any voice in the appointment, Temple is the man I should wish to see succeed to Milman; but I suppose the ”Essays and Reviews” will tell heavily against him.' 'We lead a very quiet life here and a very happy one. I sometimes regret not seeing my old political friends a little oftener.' 'In June [1869] I expect d.i.c.kens to visit us. We went to see him last night in the murder of Nancy by Sikes, and Mrs. Gamp. He acts like a great actor, and writes like a great author. Irish Church is looming very near in the Commons, and, in June, in the Lords. The Archbishops and Bishops do not wish to oppose the second reading, but Lord Cairns is prepared to hack and hew in committee.'
[Sidenote: LADY GEORGIANA PEEL]
The recollections of Lord John's children reveal, by incidents too trivial in themselves to quote, how completely he entered into their life. Lady Georgiana Peel recalls her childish tears when her father arrived too late from London one evening to see one of the glorious sunsets which he had taught her to admire. 'I can feel now his hand on my forehead in any childish illness, or clasping mine in the garden, as he led me out to forget some trifling sorrow.' She lays stress on his patience and serene temper, on his tender heart, and on the fact that he always found leisure on the busiest day to enter into the daily life of his little girls. Half heartedness, either in work or play, was not to his mind. '_Do_ what you are doing' was the advice he gave to his children.
One of the elder children in far-off days at Pembroke Lodge, Mrs.
Warburton, Lord John's step-daughter, recalls wet days in the country, when her father would break the tedium of temporary imprisonment indoors by romping with his children. 'I have never forgotten his expression of horror when in a game of hide-and-seek he banged the door accidentally in my elder sister's face and we heard her fall. Looking back to the home life, its regularity always astonishes me. The daily walks, prayers, and meals regular and punctual as a rule.... He was shy and we were shy, but I think we spoke quite freely with him, and he seldom said more than ”Foolish child” when we ventured on any startling views on things. Once I remember rousing his indignation when I gave out, with sententious priggishness, that the Duke of Wellington laboured under great difficulties in Spain caused by the ”factious opposition at home;”
that was beyond ”Foolish child,” but my discomforted distress was soon soothed by a pat on the cheek, and an amused twinkle in his kind eyes.'
Lord Amberley, four days before his death, declared that he had all his life 'met with nothing but kindness and gentleness' from his father. He added: 'I do earnestly hope that at the end of his long and n.o.ble life he may be spared the pain of losing a son.'
Mr. Rollo Russell says: 'My father was very fond of history, and I can remember his often turning back to Hume, Macaulay, Hallam, and other historical works. He read various books on the French Revolution with great interest. He had several cla.s.sics always near him, such as Homer and Virgil; and he always carried about with him a small edition of Horace. Of Shakespeare he could repeat much, and knew the plays well, entering into and discussing the characters. He admired Milton very greatly and was fond of reading ”Paradise Lost.” He was very fond of several Italian and Spanish books, by the greatest authors of those countries. Of lighter reading, he admired most, I think, ”Don Quixote,”
Sir Walter Scott's novels, Miss Evans' (”George Eliot”) novels, Miss Austen's, and d.i.c.kens and Thackeray. Scott especially he loved to read over again. He told me he bought ”Waverley” when it first came out, and was so interested in it that he sat up a great part of the night till he had finished it.'
[Sidenote: THE FRIENDs.h.i.+P OF BOOKS]
Lady Russell states that Grote's 'History of Greece' was one of the last books her husband read, and she adds: 'Many of his friends must have seen its volumes open before him on the desk of his blue armchair in his sitting-room at Pembroke Lodge in the last year or two of his life. It was often exchanged for Jowett's ”Plato,” in which he took great delight, and which he persevered in trying to read, when, alas!
the worn-out brain refused to take in the meaning.'
Lord John was a delightful travelling companion, and he liked to journey with his children about him. His cheerfulness and merriment on these occasions is a happy memory. Dr. Anderson, of Richmond, who has been for many years on intimate terms at Pembroke Lodge, and was much abroad with Lord John in the capacity of physician and friend, states that all who came in contact personally with him became deeply attached to him. This arose not only from the charm of his manner and conversation, but from the fact that he felt they trusted him implicitly. 'I never saw anyone laugh so heartily. He seemed almost convulsed with merriment, and he once told me that after a supper with Tom Moore, the recollection of some of the witty things said during the course of the evening so tickled him, that he had to stop and hold by the railings while laughing on his way home. I once asked which of all the merry pictures in ”Punch”
referring to himself amused him the most, and he at once replied: ”The little boy who has written 'No Popery' on a wall and is running away because he sees a policeman coming. I think that was very funny!”' Dr.
Anderson says that Lord John was generous to a fault and easily moved to tears, and adds: 'I never knew any one more tender in illness or more anxious to help.' He states that Lord John told him that he had encountered Carlyle one day in Regent Street. He stopped, and asked him if he had seen a paragraph in that morning's 'Times' about the Pope.
'What!' exclaimed Carlyle, 'the Pope, the Pope! The back of ma han' for that auld chimera!'