Page 255. Lady Russell survived her husband nearly twenty years. From the time of Lord Russell's death in May, 1878, till 1890, she kept no diary, but not long before her death she wrote for her children a few recollections of some of the events during those twelve years. In May, 1880, Lady Victoria Villiers died, leaving a widowed husband and many children. Her death was a great sorrow to Lady Russell, who wrote of her as "a perfect wife and mother." In the summer of 1883 her son Rollo bought a place--Dunrozel--near Haslemere, and from this time till 1891 Lady Russell spent a few months every year at Dunrozel.96 In 1891 and 1892 she took a house on Hindhead--some miles from Haslemere--for a few months. She enjoyed and loved the beautiful wild heather country, which reminded her of Scotland, but after 1892 she felt that home was best for her, and never again left Pembroke Lodge. In 1885 the marriage of her son Rollo to Miss Alice Godfrey was a great happiness to her. But in little more than a year, soon after the birth of a son, Mrs. Rollo Russell died, and again Lady Russell suffered deeply, for she always found the sorrows of her children harder to bear than her own. Page 256. To retire more and more from the world of many engagements and important affairs was easy to her, easier than it proves to many who have figured there with less distinction. Playing a prominent part in that world does not make people happy; but, as a rule, it prevents them from being contented with anything else. It was not so with her; in the days most crowded with successes and excitements her thoughts kept flying home. She had always felt that a quiet, busy family life was the one most natural to her. When she was a girl at Minto, helping to educate her younger brothers and sisters, she had written in her diary: August 26, 1836
Chiefly unto children, O Lord, do I feel myself called; in them I see Thy image reflected more pure than in anything else in this sinful though beautiful world, and in serving them my love to Thee increases.
Her wish was fulfilled to an unusual degree. One of a large family of brothers and sisters, she was still helping in the education of the younger ones when she married, and her marriage at once brought her the care of a young family; soon, too, children of her own; while her old age brought her the charge of successive grandchildren. During the lifetime of Lord and Lady Amberley their children often spent many months at Pembroke Lodge while their parents were abroad, and when both father and mother had died the two boys came to live with their grandparents. Ten years later her youngest son's boy was brought to her on the day of his mother's death, when he was two months old, and remained with her till her son's second marriage in 1891. The children of her stepdaughters were also loving grandchildren to her, and often came for long visits to Pembroke Lodge. Lady Russell had sometimes thought that when days of leisure came, she would give some of her time to literary work, and write reminiscences of the many interesting men and women she had known and the stirring events she had lived through; but the unexpected and daily cares and duties which came upon her made this impossible.97 She was one who would never neglect the living needs of those around her, and she gave her time and thoughts to the care of her grandchildren with glad and loving devotion. Page 257. One of her greatest pleasures was to see her own ideals and enthusiasms reflected in the young; and next to the care of her family the prosperity of the village school at Petersham was perhaps nearest her heart. It grew and flourished through her devotion. In 1891 it was generously taken over by the British and Foreign School Society, but the change made no difference to her interest nor to the time she gave to it. The warm affection of the people of Petersham was a great happiness to her; after long illness and enforced absence from the village she wrote to her daughter: "You can't think what good it did me to see a village friend again." The feeling among the villagers may be gathered from two brief passages in letters written after her death: a gardener in Petersham alluded to her as "our much-loved friend, Countess Russell," and another man--who had been educated at Petersham School--wrote: "She was really like a mother to many of we 'Old Scholars.'" Lady Russell's letters will show that her interest in politics remained as keen as ever to the end; and she eagerly watched the changes which affected Ireland. To the end of her life she retained the fervour of her youthful Radicalism, and with advancing years her religious opinions became more and more broad. To her there was no infallibility in any Bible, any prophet, any Church. With an ever-deepening reverence for the life and teaching of Jesus, she yet felt that "The highest Revelation is not made by Christ, but comes directly from the Universal Mind to our minds."98 Her last public appearance in Richmond was at the opening of the new Free Church, on April 16, 1896, which she had joined some years before as being the community holding views nearer to her own than any other. There is a side of Lady Russell's mind which her letters do not adequately represent. She was a great reader, and in her letters (written off with surprising rapidity) she does not often say much about the books she was so fond of discussing in talk. Among novelists, Sir Walter Scott was perhaps the one she read most often; Jane Austen too was a favourite; but she also much enjoyed many of the later novelists, especially Charles Dickens and George Eliot. Page 258. In poetry her taste was in some respects the taste of an earlier generation; she could not join, for instance, in the depreciation of Byron, nor could she sympathize with the unbounded admiration for Keats which she met with among the young. Milton, Cowper, Burns, Byron, and Longfellow were among those oftenest read, but Shakespeare always remained supreme, and as the years went by her wonder and admiration seemed only to grow stronger and deeper with every fresh reading of his greatest plays; and the intervals without some Shakespeare reading, either aloud or to herself, were short and rare. She had not an intimate knowledge of Shelley, but in the later years of her life she became deeply impressed by the beauty and music of his poetry, which she liked best to hear read aloud. Tennyson she loved, and latterly also Browning, with protests against his obscurity and his occasionally most unmusical English. The inspiration of his brave and optimistic philosophy she felt strongly. She was extremely fond of reading Dante, and she was better acquainted with German and Italian poetry than most cultivated women. But though she read much and often in the works of famous writers, this did not prevent her keeping abreast with the literature of the day. She was strongly attracted by speculative books, not too technical, and by the works of theologians whose views were broad and tolerant of doubt. In 1847 she mentions reading some of Dr. Channing's writings "with the greatest delight"; and some years afterwards she wrote: "Began 'Life of Channing'; interesting in the highest degree--an echo of all those high and noble thoughts of which this earth is not yet worthy, but which I firmly believe will one day reign on it supreme." In later years she was deeply impressed by the writings of Dr. Martineau, and read many of his books. But she was not interested in philosophical inquiry for its own sake; it was the importance of the moral and religious issues at stake in such discussions that attracted her. History and biography it was natural she should read eagerly, and it was characteristic of her to praise and condemn actions long past with an intensity such as is usually excited by contemporary events. Until a few years before her death she rose early to secure a space of time for reading and meditation before the duties of the day began. Unless ill-health could be pleaded, fiction and light reading were banished from the morning hours. She believed in strict adherence to such self-imposed sumptuary regulations, whether they applied to the body or to the pleasures of the mind. Page 259. In the course of her long life she became personally acquainted with nearly all the principal writers of the Victorian era, and some of them she knew well. Among the earliest friends of Lord and Lady John Russell were Sydney Smith, Thomas Moore, and Macaulay. There is a note in verse written by Lady John to Samuel Rogers, which will serve at least to suggest how readily her fancy and good spirits might run into rhyme on the occasion of some family rejoicing or for a children's play. To Mr. Rogers, who was expected to breakfast and forgot to come
CHESHAM PLACE, 1843
When a poet a lady offends
Is it prose her forgiveness obtains?
And from Rogers can less make amends
Than the humblest and sweetest of strains?
In glad expectation our board
With roses and lilies we graced;
But alas! the bard kept not his word,
He came not for whom they were placed.
Sad and silent our toast we bespread,
At the empty chair looked we and sighed;
All insipid tea, butter, and bread,
For the salt of his wit was denied.
Now in wrath we acknowledge how well
He the "Pleasures of Memory" who drew,
For mankind from his magical shell
Gives the "Pains of Forgetfulness" too.
Page 260. Rogers wrote in answer:-- CARA, CARISSIMA, CRUDELISSIMA,--If such is to be the reward for my transgressions, what crimes shall I not commit before I die? I shall shoot Victoria to-day, and Louis Philippe to-morrow.
But to be serious, I am at a loss how to thank you as I ought. How I lament that I have hung my harp upon the willow!
Yours ever,
S. R.
In later years Thackeray and Charles Dickens were welcome guests, and the cordial friendship between Lord and Lady John and Dickens lasted till his death in 1870. Dickens said in a speech at Liverpool in 1869 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." Among poets, Tennyson and Browning were true friends; Longfellow also visited Pembroke Lodge, and impressed Lady Russell by his gentle and spiritual nature; and Lowell was one of her most agreeable guests. With Sir Henry Taylor, whose "Philip van Artevelde" she admired, the intercourse was, from her youth to old age, intimate and affectionate. Mr. Lecky, a faithful friend, gave a picture of the society at Pembroke Lodge, which may be quoted here: For some years after Lord Russell's retirement from ministerial life he gathered around him at Pembroke Lodge a society that could hardly be equalled--certainly not surpassed--in England. In the summer Sunday afternoons there might be seen beneath the shade of those majestic oaks nearly all that was distinguished in English politics, and much that was distinguished in English literature, and few eminent foreigners visited England without making a pilgrimage to the old statesman.99 Mr. Frederic Harrison was one of Lady Russell's best friends in the last years of her life, and her keen interest in the Irish Question brought her into close and intimate intercourse with Mr. Justin McCarthy, who knew her so well in these days of busy and sequestered old age that his recollections, given in the last chapter of this volume, are valuable. Page 261. Among the men of science she knew best were Sir Richard Owen, a near neighbour in Richmond Park, Sir Joseph Hooker, and Professor Tyndall, one of the most genial and delightful of her guests. There is a passage in Sir Henry Taylor's autobiography which speaks of her in earlier times, but it expresses an impression she made till her death on many who met her: I have been rather social lately, ... and went to a party at Lord John Russell's, where I met the Archbishop of York.... A better meeting was with Lady Lotty Elliot, the one of the Minto Elliots who is now about the age that her elder sisters were when I first knew them some sixteen or eighteen years ago.... They are a fine set of girls and women, those Minto Elliots, full of literature and poetry and nature; and Lady John, whom I knew best in former days, is still very attractive to me; and now that she is relieved from the social toils of a First Minister's wife, I mean to renew and improve my relations with her, if she has no objection.... She is very interesting to me, as having kept herself pure from the world with a fresh and natural and not ungifted mind in the world's most crowded ways. I recollect some years ago going through the heart of the City, somewhere behind Cheapside, to have come upon a courtyard of an antique house, with grass and flowers and green trees growing as quietly as if it was the garden of a farm-house in Northumberland. Lady John reminds me of it.
Page 262. The charm of her company, apart from the kindliness of her manner, lay in an immediate responsiveness to all that was going on around her, and the sense her talk and presence conveyed of a life controlled by a homely, dignified, strenuous tradition. It was the spontaneity of her sympathy which all her life long drew to her defenders, dispirited or hopeful, of struggling causes, and so many idealists, confident or resigned, shabby or admired. Any with a cause at heart, an end to aim at beyond personal ends, found in her a companion who seemed at once to understand how bitter were the checks or how important the triumphs they had met, and to them her company was a singular refreshment and inspiration, amid the polite or undisguised indifference of the world. She could listen with ardour; and if this sympathy was there for comparative strangers, still more was it at the service of those who possessed her affection. She reflected instantaneously their joys and troubles; indeed, she made both so much her own that those she loved were often tempted at first to hide their troubles from her. Such natures cannot usually disguise their emotions, and though she could conceal her own physical sufferings so as almost to mislead those with whom she lived, her feelings were plainly legible. If anything was said in her presence which pained her, her distress was visible in a moment; and as a beautiful consequence of this transparent expressiveness, her gaiety was infectious and her affection shone out upon those she loved with tenderest radiance.
After Lord Russell's death political events can no longer be used as a thread to connect her letters and other writings together; but the following passages, chosen over many years, will, it is hoped, give to those who never knew her some idea of her as she is remembered by those who did. On Lady Georgiana Peel's first birthday after the death of her father Lady Russell sent her the following verses: To GEORGY
For her Birthday, February 6, 1879.
TUNE: "Lochnagar."
What music so early, so gently awakes me,
And why as I listen these fast falling tears;
And what is the magic that so swiftly takes me
Far back on my road, o'er the dust of dead years?
Voice of the past, in thy sweetness and sadness
Thy magic enthralling, thy beauty and power,
Oh voice of the past! in thy deep holy sadness,
I know thee and yield to thee one little hour.
Page 263. Once more rings the birthday with merry young laughter, Our bairnies once more are around us at play; Their little hearts reck not of what may come after, As lightly they weave the fresh flowers of to-day. Now to thy father's loved hand gaily clinging, To ask for the kiss he stoops fondly to gi'e; To his care-laden spirit once more thou art bringing The freshness of thine, bonny winsome wee Gee! 100 Thy rosy young cheek to my own thou art pressing, Thy little arms twining around me I feel. And thy Father in Heaven to thank for each blessing, I see thee beside me in innocence kneel. When the dread shadow of sickness is o'er me, I see thee, a lassie all brightness and bloom; Still, still through thy tears strewing blossoms before me, Still watching beside me through silence and gloom. Hushed now is the music! and hushed be my weeping For days that return not and light that hath fled. No more from their rest may I summon the sleeping, Or linger to gaze on the years that are dead. Fadeth my dream--and my day is declining, But love lifts the gloamin' and smooths the rough way; And I hail the bright midday o'er thee that is shining, And think of a home that will ne'er pass away.
Early in 1879 Lady Russell began again to have more intercourse with her friends in London, and in May she went with her son and daughter to the Alexandra Hotel for a short stay in town. She writes in her Recollections: In May (1879) we spent ten days at the Alexandra Hotel, in the midst of many kind friends and acquaintances. It was strange to be once more in "the crowd, the hum, the shock of men" as of old--and all so changed, so solitary within.... We there first saw Mr. Justin McCarthy--he has since become a true friend, and his companionship and conversation are always delightful; as with so warm a heart and so bright an intellect they could not fail to be.
Page 264. In April, 1880, when Mr. Gladstone's candidature in Midlothian was causing the greatest excitement and enthusiasm, Lady Russell received this letter from Mrs. Gladstone. 120, GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH, April 4, 1880 MY DEAR LADY RUSSELL,--We are so much touched by your letter and all the warmth and kindness you have shown to ourselves and Mary and Herbert. How can I thank you enough? I see in your letter all the memories of the past, and that you can throw your kind heart into the present moment lovingly. The old precious memories only make you more alive to what is going on, as you think of him who had gone before and shown so noble an example to my husband. No doubt it did not escape you, words of my husband about Lord Russell.... All here goes on splendidly; the enthusiasm continues to increase, and all the returns have thrown us into a wild state of ecstasy and thankfulness. It is, indeed, a blessing passing all expectations, and I look back to all the time of anxiety beginning with the Bulgarian horrors, all my husband's anxious hard work of the past three or four years--how he was ridiculed and insulted--and now, thank God, we are seeing the extraordinary result of the elections, and listening to the goodness and greatness of the policy so shamefully slandered; righteous indignation has burst forth.... I loved to hear him saying aloud some of the beautiful psalms of thanksgiving as his mind became overwhelmed with gratitude and relieved with the great and good news. Thank you again and again for your letter. Yours affectionately, CATHERINE GLADSTONE Sir Mount Stuart Grant Duff101 to Lady Russell June 8, 1883 As to the public questions at home--alas! I can say nothing but echo what you and some other wise people tell me. One is far too much out of the whole thing. I do not fear the Radical, I greatly fear the Radical, or crotchet-monger.... Your phrase about the division on the Affirmation Bill 102 rises to the dignity of a mot, and will be treasured by me as such. "The triumph of all that is worst in the name of all that is best."
Page 265. Lady Russell to Lady Agatha Russell PEMBROKE LODGE, June, 1883 ... I have been regaling myself on Sydney Smith's Life and Letters--the wisdom and the wit, the large-hearted and wide-minded piety, the love of God and man set forth in word and deed, and the unlikeness to anybody else, make it delightful companionship.... I long to talk of things deep and high with you, but if I once began I should go on and on, and "of writing of letters there would be no end." That is a grand passage of Hinton's [on music]. I always feel that music means much more than just music, born of earth--joy and sorrow, agony and rapture, are so mysteriously blended in its glorious magic. Lady Russell's Recollections In July, 1883, I went with Agatha to see Dunrozel for the first time ... I was simply enchanted--it was love at first sight, which only deepened year after year.... We had a good many pleasant neighbours; the Tennysons were more than pleasant, and welcomed us with the utmost cordiality, and we loved them all. At that time Professor Tyndall and Louisa 103 were almost the only inhabitants of Hindhead. They were not yet in their house, but till it was built and furnished lived in their "hut," where they used to receive us with the most cheering, as well as cheerful, friendliness. Lady Russell to Miss Lilian Blyth104[Mrs. Wilfred Praeger] DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, November 16, 1883 Your letter is just like you, and that means all that is dear and good and loving.... Indeed, past years are full of happy memories of you all, not on marked days only, but on all days. At my age, however, it is better to look forward to the renewal of all earthly ties and all earth's best joys in an enduring home, than to look back to the past--to the days before the blanks were left in the earthly home which nothing here below can ever fill, and this it is my prayer and my constant endeavour to do. We go home to dear Pembroke Lodge next Tuesday ... going there must always be a happiness to us all, yet this lovely little Dunrozel is not a place to leave without many a pang.
Page 266. Lady Russell to Miss BÜhler105 PEMBROKE LODGE, December, 1883 ... I find my head will not bear more than a certain amount of writing without giddiness and dull headache ... and there are so many correspondents who must be answered; friends, relations, business people, that I am often quite bewildered; ... so, please, understand that I shall always write when I can, but not nearly always when I would like to do so. Go on letting yourself out whether sadly or happily, or in mingled sadness and happiness, and believe how very much I like to see into your thoughts and your heart as much as letters can enable me to do so.... As for Scotland, oh! Scotland, my own, my bonny Scotland! if you associate that best and dearest of countries with your present ennui and unhappiness, I shall turn my back upon you for good and all and give you up as a bad job! So make haste and tell me that you entirely separate the two things, and if you don't admire "mine own romantic town" and feel its beauty thrill through and through you, you must find the cause in anything rather than in Edinburgh itself! Such are my commands.... In the meantime let it be a consolation and a support to you to remember that it is by trials and difficulties that our characters are raised, developed, strengthened, made more Christ-like.... Good-bye, good-bye. God bless you. Lady Russell to Sir Henry Taylor February 29, 1884 I have just been reading with painful interest "MÉmoires d'un Protestant condamnÉ aux GalÈres" in the days of that terribly little great man Louis XIV. I ask myself at every page, "Did man really so treat his fellow-man? or is it all historical nightmare?" I never can make the slightest allowance for persecutors on the ground that "they thought it right to persecute." They had no business so to think. Mr. Gladstone to Lady Russell December 14, 1884 I thank you for and return Dr. Westcott's interesting and weighty letter.... A very clever man, a Bampton lecturer, evidently writing with good and upright intention, sends me a lecture in which he lays down the qualities he thinks necessary to make theological study fruitful. They are courage, patience, and sympathy. He omits one quality, in my opinion even more important than any of them, and that is reverence. Without a great stock of reverence mankind, as I believe, will go to the bad....
Page 267. During the strife and heat of the controversy on Home Rule, Lady Russell received the following letter from Mr. Gladstone: 10, DOWNING STREET, WHITEHALL,
June 10, 1886
MY DEAR LADY RUSSELL,--I am not less gratified than touched by your most acceptable note. It is most kind in you personally to give me at a critical time the assurance of your sympathy and approval. And I value it as a reflected indication of what would, I believe, have been the course, had he been still among us, of one who was the truest disciple of Mr. Fox, and was like him ever forward in the cause of Ireland, a right handling of which he knew lay at the root of all sound and truly Imperial policy. It was the more kind of you to write at a time when domestic trial has been lying heavily upon you. Believe me,
Very sincerely yours,
W. E. GLADSTONE
Lady Russell to Lady Agatha Russell
DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, August 30, 1886
... Our Sunday, mine especially, was a peaceful, lovely Sabbath--mine especially because I didn't go to any church built with hands, but held my silent, solitary worship in God's own glorious temple, with no walls to limit my view, no lower roof than the blue heavens over my head. The lawn, the green walk, the Sunday bench in the triangle, each and all seemed filled with holiness and prayer--sadness and sorrow. Visions of more than one beautiful past which those spots have known and which never can return, were there too; but the Eternal Love was around to hallow them....
Page 268. Lady Russell to Miss BÜhler
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 24, 1886
MY DEAREST DORA,--I am afraid you will say that I have forgotten you and your most loving and welcome birthday letter, but as I know you will not think it, I don't so very much mind. Nobody at seventy-one and with many still to love and leave on earth, can hail a birthday with much gladness.... The real sadness to me of birthdays, and of all marked days, is in the bitterly disappointing answer I am obliged to make to myself to the question: "Am I nearer to God than a year ago?" ... I never answered your long-ago letter about your doubts and difficulties and speculations on those subjects which are of deepest import to us all, yet upon which it sometimes seems that we are doomed to work our minds in vain--to seek, and not to find--to exult one moment in the fullness of bright hope and the coming fulfilment of our highest aspirations, and the next to grope in darkness and say, "Was it not a beautiful dream, and only a dream? Is it not too good to be true that we are the children of a loving Father who stretches out His hands to guide us to Himself, who has spoken to us in a thousand ways from the beginning of the world by His wondrous works, by the unity of creation, by the voices of our fellow-creatures, by that voice, most inspired of all, that life and death most beautiful and glorious of all, which 'brought life and immortality to light,' and chiefly by that which we feel to be immortal within us--love--the beginning and end of God's own nature, the supreme capability which He has breathed into our souls?" No, it is not too good to be true. Nothing perishes--not the smallest particle of the most worthless material thing. Is immortality denied to the one thing most worthy of it?
I sent you "The Utopian," because I thought some of the little essays would fall in with all that filled your mind, and perhaps help you to a spirit of hopefulness and confidence which will come to you and abide with you, I am sure. You will soon receive another book written by several Unitarians, of which I have only read very little as yet, but which seems to me full of strength and comfort and holiness.... Good-bye, and God bless you.
Your ever affectionate,
F. RUSSELL
Page 269. Lady Charlotte Portal to Lady Russell January 26, 1887 DEAREST FANNY,--I wonder if you are quite easy in your conscience, or whatever mechanism takes the place with you of that rococo old article. Do you think you have behaved to me as an elder ought?--to me, a poor young thing, looking for and sadly requiring the guidance of my white-headed sister? Our last communications were at Christmas-time--a month ago. Are you all well? Are you all entirely at the feet of the dear baby boy? 106 Or have your republican principles begun to rebel against his autocratic sway? ... I have been amusing myself with an obscure author named William Shakespeare, and enjoying him immensely. Amusing myself is not the right expression, for I have been in the tragedies only. I had not read "Othello" for ages. How wonderful, great, and beautiful and painful it is (oh dear, why is it so coarse?). Then I also read "Lear" and "Henry VIII," and being delightfully ignorant I had the great interest of reading the same period (Henry VIII) in Holinshed, and in finding Katharine's and Wolsey's speeches there! Then I have tried a little Ben Jonson and Lord Chesterfield's letters. What a worldling, and what a destroyer of a young mind that man was. Can you tell me how the son turned out? I cannot find any information about him. The language is delightful, and I wish I could remember any of his expressions.... Now give me a volume of Pembroke Lodge news in return for this. Public matters, the fear of war, the arming of all nations, make me sick at heart. How wonderful and admirable the conduct of that poor friendless little Bulgaria has been. Then Ireland, oh me! but on that topic I won't write to the Home Ruler! Your affectionate sister, C. M. P. Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal PEMBROKE LODGE, January 27, 1887 DEAREST LOTTY,--It was but yesterday that there rose dimly to my memory the vision of a lady with the initials--C. M. P., and who knows how long I might have remained in the dark as to who and what she might be but for this letter, in which she claims me as a sister! and moreover an elder and a wiser sister! one therefore whose doings and not-doings, writing and not-writing, must not be questioned by the younger.... We have imagined ourselves living in a state of isolation from our fellow-creatures, but yours far exceeds ours and makes it almost into a life of gaiety. I'm most extremely sorry to hear of it, though most extremely glad to hear that your minds to you a kingdom are. What good and wholesome and delightful food your mind has been living on. Isn't that Shakespeare too much of a marvel to have really been a man? "Othello" is indeed all you say of it, and more than anybody can say of it, and so are all the great plays. I am reading the historical ones with Bertie.... Alas, indeed, for the coarseness! I never can understand the objections to Bowdlerism. It seems to me so right and natural to prune away what can do nobody good--what it pains eyes to look upon and ears to hear--and to leave all the glories and beauties untouched.... The little Autocrat is beginning to master some of the maxims of Constitutional Monarchy--for instance, to find out that we do not always leave the room the moment he waves his hand by way of dismissal and utters the command of "Tata." I waste too much time upon him, in spite of daily resolutions to neglect him.... I don't at all know whether Lord Chesterfield succeeded in making his son like his own clever, worldly, contemptible self, but will try to find out. Have you read "Dean Maitland"? 107 Now, Fanny, do stop, you know you have many other letters to write.... Ever thine, F. R.
Page 270. Lady Russell to Lady Georgiana Peel
DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, SURREY, September 9 [1887]
... Your account of the Queen and her visit interested us much.... I often wish she could ever know all my gratitude to her and the nation for the unspeakable blessing and happiness Pembroke Lodge has been, and is; joys and sorrows, hopes fulfilled, and hopes faded and crushed, chances and changes, and memories unnumbered, are sacredly bound up with that dear home. Will it ever be loved by others as we have loved it? It seems impossible....
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, September 12, 1887
DEAREST LOTTY,--I don't think I am writing because your clock is on the stroke of Sixty-three, for these clocks of ours become obtrusive, and the less they are listened to the better for our spirits. I wonder whether it's wrong and unnatural not to rejoice in their rapid movements as regards myself. I often think so. There is so much, or rather there are so many, oh, so many! to go to when it has struck for the last time, and the longing and the yearning to be with them is so unspeakable--and yet, dear Lotty, I cling to those here, not less and less, but more and more, as the time for leaving them draws nearer. God grant you many and many another birthday of happiness, as I trust this one is to you and your home.... Your letter was an echo of much that we had been saying to one another, as we read our novel--not only does nobody, man or even woman, see every change and know its meaning in the human countenance, and interpret rightly the slight flush, the hidden tremor, the shade of pallor, the faint tinge, etc.; but we don't think there are perceptible changes to such an extent except in novels.... I think a great evil of novels for girls, mingled with great good, is the false expectation they raise that somebody will know and understand their every thought, look, emotion.... How glad I am that you have a rival baby to worship--ours is beyond all praise--oh, so comical and so lovely in all his little ways and words....
Your most affectionate sister,
F. R.
Page 271. Lady Russell to Lady Georgiana Peel PEMBROKE LODGE, November 28, 1887 ... We have been having such a delightful visit from Lotty ... we did talk; and yet it seems as if all the talk had only made me wish for a great deal more. Books and babies and dress and almsgiving and amusements and the nineteenth century, its merits and its faults, high things and low things, and big things and trifles, and sense and nonsense, and everything except Home Rule, on which we don't agree and couldn't spare time to fight. We did thoroughly agree, however, as I think people of all parties must have done, in admiration of a lecture, or rather speech, made at our school by a very good and clever Mr. Wicksteed, a Nonconformist (I believe Unitarian) minister on Politics and Morals. The principle on which he founded it was that politics are a branch of morals; accordingly he placed them on as high a level as any other duty of life, and spoke with withering indignation of the too common practice, and even theory, that a little insincerity, a little trickery, is allowable in politics, whereas it would not be in other matters. 108 We were all delighted. Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal PEMBROKE LODGE, March 7, 1888 "Adam Bede" was as interesting a sofa companion as you could have found; a very lovely book--wit and pathos almost equally good, pathos quite the best though, to my mind. We are reading aloud another charming book of Lowell's, "Democracy," and other essays in the same volume; and I flutter about from book to book by myself, and have still two books of "Paradise Lost" to read, and am wondering what is going to happen to Adam and Eve. I was very miserable when I found she ate the forbidden fruit. She had made such fair promises to be good. Alas, alas! why did she break them? That story of the Fall, though I suppose nobody thinks it verbally true, is always to me most full of deep meaning, and seems to be the story of every mortal man and woman born into this wondrous world. Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, October 3, 1888 Agatha gone yesterday to Pembroke Lodge--Rollo gone to-day to join her, so my wee bairnie and I are "left by our lone," as you used to say. "Einsam nein, dass bin ich nicht, denn die Geister meiner Lieben, Sie umschweben mich." 109 I think it's good now and then to let the blessed and beautiful memories of the past have their way and float in waking dreams before our eyes, and not be forced down beneath daily duties and occupations and enjoyments, till the pain of keeping them there becomes hard to bear. Yet, "act, act in the living present" is very, very much the rightest thing; though I don't think I quite like the past to be called the dead past, when it is so fearfully full of keenest life.
Page 272. Lady Russell to Lady Georgiana Peel DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, SURREY, October 8, 1888 ... We have had Rollo's old Oxford friend, Dr. Drewitt, here for two nights--the very cheerfulest of guests. He is head of the Victoria Hospital for Children, and what with keen interest in his profession, and intense love of nature, animate and inanimate, I don't think he would know how to be bored. Hard-worked men have far the best of it here below, although we are accustomed to look upon "men of leisure" as those to be envied; but how seldom one finds a man or woman, who lives a life in earnest, and who has eyes to see and observe, taking a gloomy view of human nature and its destinies. I wonder what you have been reading? I have taken up lately that delightful book, Lockhart's "Life of Sir Walter Scott," and dipping into many besides.... Some of our pleasantest neighbours have paid us good-bye visits; Frederic Harrisons, and the charming and wonderful old Miss Swanwick 110.... Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal PEMBROKE LODGE, March 13, 1889 How could you, could you, could you think that my mental vow not to write on the all-absorbing political catastrophe was because I sing "God save, Ireland" in one sense, and you in another! The vow was made because if once the flood-gates of my eloquence are let loose on that subject, there is a danger that the stream will Tennysonially "go on for ever." It is, however, a vow made to be broken from time to time, when I allow a little ripple to flow a little way and make a little noise, and then return to the usual attitude towards non-sympathizers; and, like David, keep silence and refrain even from good words, though it is pain and grief to me, and my heart is hot within me. I am speaking of the mere acquaintance non-sympathizers, or those known to be too bitter to bear difference of opinion; but don't be afraid, or do be afraid, as you may put it, and be prepared for total removal of the flood-gates when you come. Don't you often feel yourself in David's trying condition, knowing that your words would be very good, yet had better not be spoken? I don't like it at all.
Page 273. Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal DUNROZEL, September 4, 1889 DEAREST LOTTY,--It was nice to hear from you from Minto. What a strange sensation it always gives me to write or to hear that word of Minto.111 I am sure you know it too--impossible to define, but like something beautiful and holy, not belonging to this world. I like to hope that such memories have been stored up by the younger spirits who have succeeded us, while "children not hers have trod our nursery floor." But in this restless, fly-about age can they ever be quite the same? ... I see that luckily I have no room to go on about lovely, lovable, sorrowful Ireland. Alas! that England has ever had anything to do with her; but better times are coming, and she will be understood by her conquerors at last, and be the better for them. Hush! Fanny, no more; even that is too much. God bless thee. Ever thine, F. R.
In 1889 the "Life of Lord John Russell" by Mr. Spencer Walpole, was published. Mr. Gladstone to Lady Russell
HAWARDEN CASTLE, CHESTER, October 30, 1889
MY DEAR LADY RUSSELL,--The week which has elapsed since I received from Mr. Walpole's kindness a copy of his biography has been with me a busy one; but I have now completed a careful perusal of the first volume. I cannot help writing to congratulate you on its appearance. It presents a beautiful and a noble picture. Having so long admired and loved your husband (and the political characters which attract love are not very numerous), I now, with the fuller knowledge of an early period which this volume gives me, both admire and love him more. Your own personal share in the delineation is enviable. And the biographer more than vindicates the wisdom of your choice; his work is capital, but it could not have been achieved except with material of the first order. O for his aid in the present struggle, which, however, is proceeding to our heart's content. Believe me always most sincerely yours, W. E. GLADSTONE
Page 274. A little later Mr. Gladstone sent Lady Russell a proof copy of an article by him on the Melbourne Ministry,112 from which the following passages are here quoted: ... He [Lord John Russell] brought into public life, and he carried through it unimpaired, the qualities which ennoble manhood--truth, justice, fortitude, self-denial, a fund of genuine indignation against wrong, and an inexhaustible sympathy with human suffering.... With a slender store of physical power, his life was a daily assertion of the superiority of the spirit to the flesh. With the warmest domestic affections, and the keen susceptibilities of sufferings they entail, he never failed to rally under sorrow to the call of public duty. There were no bounds to the prowess or the fellow-feeling with which he would fling himself into the breach on behalf of a belaboured colleague; ... in 1852 an attack upon Lord Clarendon's conduct as Viceroy of Ireland stirred all the depths of his nature, and he replied in a series of the noblest fighting passages which I have ever heard spoken in Parliament ... At the head of all these qualities stands the moral element. I do not recollect or know the time in our own history when the two great parties in the House of Commons have been led by men who so truly and so largely as Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel identified political with personal morality. W. E. GLADSTONE
Lady Charlotte Portal to Lady Russell, after reading Mr. Walpole's "Life of Lord John Russell" December 26, 1889
... I long that every one should know as we do what the extraordinary beauty of that daily life was. I always think it was the most perfect man's life that I ever knew of; and that could better bear the full flood of light than any other.
In January, 1890, after nearly twelve years' break in her diary, Lady Russell began writing again a few words of daily record. On the 6th she mentions a "most agreeable" visit from Mr. Froude; the same day she received Mr. Justin McCarthy to dinner, and adds that the talk was "more Shakespeare than Ireland." Page 275. Lady Russell to Mr. Justin McCarthy113 November 19, 1890 DEAR MR. MCCARTHY,--I hardly know why I write to you, but this terrible sin and terrible verdict make us very, very unhappy, and we think constantly of you, who have been among his closest friends, and of all who have trusted him and refused to believe in the charge against him. You must, I know, be feeling all the keenness and bitterness of sorrow in the moral downfall of a man whose claims to the gratitude and admiration of his country in his public career nothing can cancel. It is also much to be feared that the great cause will suffer, at least in England, if he retains the leadership. It ought not, of course; but where enthusiasm and even respect for the leader can no longer be felt, there is danger of diminution of zeal for the cause. Were he to take the honourable course, which alone would show a sense of shame--that of resignation--his political enemies would be silenced, and his friends would feel that although reparation for the past is impossible, he has not been blinded by long continuance in deception and sin to his own unworthiness, and to the fact that his word can no longer be trusted as it has been, and as that of a leader ought to be. I dare not think of what his own state of mind must be; it makes me so miserable--the unlimited trust of a nation not only in his political but in his moral worth must be like a dagger in his heart. Were he to retire, the recollection of the great qualities he has shown would revive, and the proof of remorse given by his retirement would draw a veil over his guilt, and the charity, which we all need, would not be withheld from him. I know that numerous instances can be given of men in the highest positions who have retained them without opposition in spite of lives tainted with similar sin; but this has not been without evil to the nation, and I think there is a stronger sense now than there used to be of the value of high private character in public men, in spite of a great deal of remaining Pharisaism in the difference of the measure of condemnation meted out to different men. I think too that the unusual and most painful amount of low deception in this case will be felt, even more than the sin itself, by the English people. Pray forgive me, dear Mr. McCarthy, for writing on this sad topic; but I have got into the habit of writing and speaking freely to you, even when it can, as now, do no earthly good to anybody.
Page 276. There is one consolation in the thought that should he retire Ireland is not wanting in the best and highest to succeed him. Pray do not write if you prefer not, though I long to hear from you, or still better see you.
Yours most sincerely,
F. RUSSELL
Lady Russell to Mr. Justin McCarthy
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 22, 1890
DEAR MR. MCCARTHY,--I cannot rest without telling you how very sorry I shall be if my letter gave you one moment's pain. I knew how close and true a friend you were of Mr. Parnell, and how unchanging your friendship would be; but I did not know which course that unchanging friendship would lead you to take. Not a doubt can ever cross our minds of the patriotism which has dictated your action and that of your Irish colleagues. Do not allow any doubt to cross yours or theirs, that it is the intensity of love for the great cause which led many in England to wish for a different decision. Nothing would be more terrible, more fatal, than any coldness between the friends of Ireland on the two sides of the Channel. May God avert such a misfortune, and whatever happens, believe me always most sincerely yours,
F. RUSSELL
Mr. Justin McCarthy to Lady Russell
November 24, 1890
DEAR LADY RUSSELL,--I ought to have answered your kind letter before, for I value your sympathy more--much more--than I can tell you in words. I am afraid the prospect is dark for the present. Mr. Gladstone sent for me to-day and I had some talk with him. He was full of generous consideration and kindness, but he thinks there will be a catastrophe for the cause if Parnell does not retire. The Irish members cannot and would not throw over Parnell, but he may even yet decide upon retiring. All depends on to-morrow, and we have not seen him. I have the utmost faith in his singleness of public purpose and his judgment and policy, but it is a terrible crisis.
With kindest regards, very truly yours,
JUSTIN MCCARTHY
Page 277. Lady Russell to Mrs. Warburton
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 23, 1890
MY DEAREST ISABEL,--... Yes, dearie, it was a delightful visit, leaving delightful memories of all kinds; chats gay and grave trots long and short, drives, duets--will they ever come again? I am very glad this heart-breaking Irish thunderclap did not fall while you were here. It makes us so unhappy. Poor Ireland! her hopes are always dashed when about to be fulfilled. Nothing can palliate the fearful sin and almost more fearful course of miserable deception; but he might, by taking the one right and honourable course of resigning his leadership--if only for a time--at least have given a proof of shame, and have saved England and Ireland from the terrible pain of discussion and disagreement, and from the danger to Home Rule which his retention of the post must cause. His Parliamentary colleagues have done immense harm by their loud protestations in his favour. There is much to excuse them, but not him, for this course. Our poor Davitt is miserable, and is braving a storm of unpopularity by writing strongly against his (Parnell's) retention of the leadership. His whole thought is for Ireland, and he knows that his advice is that of a true friend to her--as well as to the wretched man himself....
Your ever affectionate,
MAMA
Mr. Michael Davitt had taken a house in Richmond, and was living there at this time. Some years earlier Lady Russell had read his "Prison Diary," and had written the following poem. She did not know him at that time. Written after reading Michael Davitt's "Leaves from a Prison Diary"
DUNROZEL, September, 1887
Man's justice is not Thine, O God, his scales
Uneven hang, while he with padlocked heart
Some glittering shred of human tinsel sees
Outweigh the pure bright gold of noblest souls,
Who from the mists of earth their eyes uplift
And seek to read Thy message in the stars.
Thou hearest, Lord, beneath the felon's garb
The lonely throbbing of no felon's heart,
The cry of agony--the prayer of love
By agony unconquered--love, heaven-born,
That fills with holy light the joyless cell,
As with the daybreak of his prayer fulfilled,
The glorious dawn of brotherhood for man,
And freedom to the sorrowing land that bore him,
For whose dear sake he smiles upon his chains.
Thou gatherest, Lord, his bitter nightly tears
For home, for face beloved and trusted hand,
For the green earth, the freshly blowing breeze,
The heaven of Liberty, all, all shut out.
Page 278. His vanished dreams, his withered hopes Thou knowest,
The baffled yearnings of his heart to snatch
From paths unhallowed childhood's tottering feet,
And lay a rosy smile on little lips
With homeless hunger pale, to curses trained,
Whereon no kiss hath left a memory sweet.
His chainless spirit, bruised by prison bars,
Wounded by touch of fellow-men in whom
Thy image lost he vainly sought, Thou seest
Unsullied still, lord of its own domain,
Soar in its own blue sky of faith and hope.
Such have there been and such there yet will be,
From whom the world's hard eye is turned in scorn,
But still for each a nation's tears will fall,
A nation's heart will be his earthly haven,
And when no earthly stay he needeth more,
Will he not, Father, feel Thy love enfold him,
And hear Thy voice, "Servant of God, well done."
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 26, 1890
Alas! alas! the last fortnight has indeed been one of darkness and sorrow over the country; railway and ocean horrors breaking many hundreds of hearts, disgrace to England in Africa, disgrace to a trusted leader dashing down the hopes of Ireland and bringing back disunion between the two nations. We made ourselves miserable over last night's news of the determination of his parliamentary followers to stand by him, and his acceptance of their re-election. Poor old Gladstone! I am sure you must admire his letter to Mr. Morley. To-day we are told to have a little hope that it may have influence in the right direction, but we hardly feel any. We heartily agree with every word you say on this most painful matter. The one consolation is to see such an increase of opinion that a leader must be a man of high private, as well as public, character. How often I have deplored the absence of any such opinion!
Page 279. Lady Russell to Mr. Justin McCarthy
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 27, 1890
DEAR MR. MCCARTHY,--Your most kind letter was a relief to me as regarded the spirit in which you had taken what I wrote, but also made us very, very sad, and nothing that we have heard or read in newspapers since has given more than a mere ray of hope. And why should this be? Surely the path of honour and duty is plain. It cannot be taken without pain; but such moments as this are the test of greatness in men and nations. Gratitude untold is due to Mr. Parnell. Those who have been his friends will not withdraw their friendship; but surely that very friendship ought to resolve that the vast good he has done in the past should not be undone for the future, to his own eternal discredit, by encouragement to him to retain the leadership. Surely the claims of your country stand first; and is not the impending breach between English and Irish Home Rulers a misfortune to both countries, too terrible to be calmly faced? Already there is a tone in the Freeman's Journal which I could not have believed would be adopted towards men like Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley, who have identified themselves heart and soul with Ireland. Of course, they are far above being turned for a moment from their course by any such comments, but it must be a pain to them nevertheless. It almost seems aberration of mind in Mr. Parnell to be deaf to Mr. Gladstone's words of true patriotism, echoed as they are throughout England and Scotland, and I cannot but believe in thousands of Irish hearts besides. Surely this must have gone far to convince his friends that they would be more than justified in convincing him that retirement for awhile is his duty, or, if they cannot convince him, in acting upon their own convictions, if these are such as I hope. Indignation against the terrible revelations of his guilt has driven some English newspapers into language deeply to be deplored; but on the whole the feeling, as shown in speeches and in the Press, has been healthy and just. Sir Charles Russell's words struck us as among the very best. It is the deepest and highest love for Ireland that makes men speak and write as they do.
Dear Mr. McCarthy, I think you can do much, and I know how firm, as well as how gentle, it is your nature to be. Save us all, for God's sake, from the dreaded disunion and the ruin of the cause. Do not let England and Ireland be again looked upon as separated in their hopes, interests, aspirations. May Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien help to the good work; but too much can hardly depend on men at a distance, excellent and patriotic as they are.
Good-bye, dear Mr. McCarthy. May God guide and unite our two countries on the road of justice and truth and happiness. Pray, pray forgive me once more for writing.
Ever most sincerely yours,
F. RUSSELL
Page 280. In 1891 Mr. Rollo Russell married Miss Gertrude Joachim, niece of the great violinist, Dr. Joachim, and Lady Russell found new joy in his happiness. Queen Victoria to Lady Russell
January 1, 1891
DEAR LADY RUSSELL,--You are indeed right in thinking that I should always take an interest in anything that concerned you and your family, and I rejoice to hear that your son is going to make a marriage which gives you pleasure, and trust it may conduce to your comfort as well as to his happiness. It is a long time since I have had the pleasure of seeing you, dear Lady Russell, and I trust that some day this may be possible. Past days can never be forgotten--indeed, one loves to dwell on them, though the thought is mingled with sadness. Pray remember me to Agatha, and believe me always,
Yours affectionately,
V. R. I.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
PEMBROKE LODGE, January 14, 1892
... Most truly do you say that, while we can shelter ourselves from the demands that assail our physical being, no defence has been found against the bitter blasts which batter against our mental and spiritual structure--no defence, only endurance, in hope and faith and endeavour after Marcus Aurelius's "Equanimitas," and the knowledge that the higher man's mental and moral capacity the greater is his capacity for suffering.... And nobody has shown more than you do in "Psalms of the West" that sorrow is not all sorrow, but has a heavenly sacredness that gives strength to bear its burden "in quietness and confidence" to the end. How entirely I feel with you that this has been a glorious century. Not all the evil and the misery and the vice and the meanness and pettinesses which abound on every side, as we look around, can blind me to the blessed truth that the eyes of mankind have been opening to see and to deplore these things, and to give their lives to the study of their causes, and the discovery and practice of means to put an end to them. The wonderful intellectual strides, which my long life enables me not only to be aware of, but to remember as they have one by one been made, are in close connection with this moral and religious development; and all these together will, I believe, raise the education of the people (already so far above the standard of fifty, much more of a hundred years ago) to something of the kind to which you look forward--"more high, more wide, more various, more poetic, more inspiring, more full of principles and less full of facts "--a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Page 281. PEMBROKE LODGE, June 22, 1892
Day of much weakness. The sense of failing increases rapidly. May the short time that remains to me make me less unfit to meet my God. Oh, that I could begin life again! How different it would be from what has been. I have had everything to help me upward; joys and sorrows, encouragement and disappointment, the love and example of my dearest husband and children in our daily companionship and communion, the never-failing and precious affection and help of brothers, sisters, and friends--and yet my life seems all a failure when I think what it might have been.
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
THE GRANGE, HINDHEAD, HASLEMERE, July 20, 1892
Yes, elections are hard tests of character, and there are too, too many excellent people on both sides who are led on to say hard, unjust, untrue things of their opponents.... But there is another side to elections--a grand and noble one--which makes me feel to my inmost soul the greatness and the blessed freedom of this dear old country, and always brings to my mind what John used to say with something of a boy's enthusiasm, "I love a contested election."
THE GRANGE, HINDHEAD, October 6, 1892
Tennyson died about one o'clock a.m. A great and good light extinguished.
October 7th
Agatha and I early to Aldworth. Went in by Hallam's wish to the room where he lay. I dread and shrink from the sight of death, and wish to keep the recollection of the life I have known and loved undisturbed by its soulless image. But in this case I rejoice to have seen on that noble face the perfect peace which of late years was wanting--it was really "the rapture of repose." A volume of Shakespeare which he had asked for, and the leaves of which he had turned over yesterday, I believe to find "Cymbeline," at which place it was open, lay on the bed. His hands were crossed on his breast, beautiful autumn leaves lay strewn around him on the coverlet, and white flowers at the foot of the bed.
Page 282. Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 2, 1892
Oh, Lotty, how is it that, standing as I am on the very brink of the known, with the unknown about to sweep me into its depths, how is it that there is still such intense interest in the course of this wondrous world, in all the problems now floating about unsolved, in all the social, moral, political work going on around us. It is true that these things are of eternal moment, and therefore links between earth and heaven. Yet it often seems to me foolish to care about them very much when the solution of all enigmas is so near at hand.
Lady Russell to Mrs. Rollo Russell
PEMBROKE LODGE, March 17, 1893
... The chief Pembroke Lodge event since I wrote is that I went on Monday to Windsor Castle to luncheon; after which morning meal with the household, almost all strangers to me, I saw the Queen alone and had a good long and most easy and pleasant conversation with her. She was as cordial as possible, and I am very glad to have seen her again; although there was much sadness mingled with the gladness in a meeting after a period of many, many years, which had brought their full number of changes to me--and some to her.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
PEMBROKE LODGE, RICHMOND, SURREY, July 7, 1893
I feel intensely all you say about laying aside, if it were possible, one's own personality and seeing the silent growth of all truth and goodness, without the disturbance of names and parties; but the world being as it is for the present, we can only keep our minds fixed on the good and the true, with whomsoever and with whatsoever party we may find it, and follow it with honest conviction. If I could, I would put an end to Party Government to-morrow, and my great wish for M.P.'s is that each one should, upon each subject, vote exactly according to his opinion, and no Ministry be turned out except upon a vote of want of confidence. I honour and love Mr. Gladstone, and while ardently sympathetic with him on Home Rule and all other Liberal measures, I am no less antipathetic on Church matters. Happily, however, they have become with him matters chiefly of personal attachment to Anglicanism, and no longer (I believe) likely to affect his legislation. "Gladstonian" is a word he does not admit, nor do those of whom it is used.
Page 283. July 9, 1893.--Well, to go on with our politics: "a new policy" Home Rule undoubtedly is, a new departure from the "tradition" of any English party; but not a departure from Liberal principles, only a new application of old ones, and I think it is a pity to speak of it as being against Liberal principles, for is there anybody of average intelligence who would not have predicted that if it should ever be adopted by any party it would be by the Liberals? Exactly the same thing was said about Turkey: the Whig tradition was to support her, Liberals were forsaking their principles by taking part with Bulgaria against her. It is the proud distinction of Liberals to grow perpetually, and to march on with eyes open, and to discover, as they are pretty sure to do, that they have not always in the past been true to their principles. There is no case exactly parallel with that of Ireland; but there are some in great measure analogous, and it is the Liberals who have listened to the voice of other countries, some of them our own dependencies, in their national aspirations or their desire for Parliaments of their own, expressed by Constitutional majorities. I admire the Unionists for standing by their own convictions with regard to Home Rule, and always have done so; but I cannot call it "devotion to the Union and to Liberal principles," and I am not aware of there being a single Home Ruler not a Liberal. The Unionists, especially those in Parliament, have been, and are, in a very dangerous position, and have yielded too readily to the temptation of a sudden transference of party loyalty upon almost every question from Liberal to Tory leaders. But for those, whether in or out of Parliament, who have remained Liberals--and I know several such--I don't see why, after Home Rule is carried, they should not be once more merged in the great body of Liberals, and have their chances, like others, of being chosen to serve their country in Parliament and in office....
I am reading a book by Grant Allen, "Science in Arcady." ... He brings wit and originality into these essays on plants, lakes, spiders, etc.
Lady Russell to Lady Agatha Russell
PEMBROKE LODGE, September 22, 1893
... With regard to the modern attraction of ugly subjects (not when the wish to remedy gross evils makes it a duty to study and live among them; but as common talk between young men and young women), I feel very strongly that the contemplation of God, and all that is God-like in the souls that He has created, is our best safeguard against evil, and that the contemplation of the spirit of evil, and all the hideous variety of its works, gradually taints us and weakens our powers of resistance.
Page 284. Lady Russell to Lady Agatha Russell
PEMBROKE LODGE, October 21, 1893
... I entirely agree with you, that poetry and music "teach us of the things that are unseen" as nothing else can do. Music especially, which is an unseen thing, not the product of man at all, but found from man as a gift from God's own hand. I don't know what at some periods of my life I should have done without these blessed sympathizers and outlets and uplifting friends.
Lady Russell to Mrs. Drummond
PEMBROKE LODGE, December 16, 1893
Your long interesting letter is most welcome. You are very good and brave to do so much for the good of others, while suffering yourself. How much harder it is to bear patiently, and keep up sympathy and fellow-feeling within us in spite of illness, than to do any amount of active work while in health. I always find my highest examples in those who know how to "suffer and be strong," because it is my own greatest difficulty.
Oh, my dear child, what opinions can poor I give on the almost insoluble problems you put before me? I wish I knew of any book or any man or woman who could tell me whether a Poor Law, even the very best, is on the whole a blessing or a curse, and how the "unemployed" can be chosen out for work of any useful or productive kind without injury to others equally deserving, and what are the just limits of State interference with personal liberty. The House of Lords puzzles me less. I would simply declare it, by Act of the House of Commons, injurious to the best interests of the nation and for ever dissolved. Then it may either show its attachment to the Constitution by giving its assent to its own annihilation, or oblige us to break through the worn-out Constitution and declare their assent unnecessary. It is beyond all bearing that one great measure after another should be delayed, or mutilated, year after year, by such a body, and I chafe and fret inwardly to a painful degree. Oh for a long talk with you! I will not despair of going to you, "gin I be spared" till the days are reasonably long.
Lady Russell to Lady Agatha Russell
PEMBROKE LODGE, October 10, 1894
... Alas! for our dear Oliver Wendell Holmes! He has left the world much the poorer by his death, but much the richer by his life and works.... Lord Grey gone too, and with him what recollections of my young days, before and after marriage, when he and Lady Grey and we were very much together. We loved them both. He was a very trying political colleague to your father and others, but a very faithful friend. The longer I live the more firmly I am convinced that in most cases to know people well is to like them--to forget their faults in their merits. But no doubt it is delightful to have no faults to forget.
Page 285. PEMBROKE LODGE, March 3, 1894
Touching accounts of meeting of the Cabinet--the last with dear noble old Gladstone as Minister. Tears in the eyes of his colleagues. He made his last speech as Minister in the House of Commons, a grand and stirring one.
PEMBROKE LODGE, January 23, 1895
Finished "Erasmus" a few days ago--a great intellect, much wit, clear insight into the religion "falsely so-called" of monks and clergy, but a soul not great enough to utter his convictions aloud in the face of danger, or to perceive that conciliation beginning by hypocrisy must end in worse strife and bitterness. He saw the evil of the new dogmas and creeds introduced by Luther, of any new creed the rejection of which was penal, but he did not or would not see the similar evil of the legally enforced old creeds and dogmas.
PEMBROKE LODGE, May 15, 1895
Armenian refugees here to tea--a husband and wife whose baby she had seen murdered by Turkish soldiers, and a friend who is uncertain whether his wife is alive or murdered--these three in native dress; hers very picturesque, and she herself beautiful. The three refugees, all of whom had been eye-witnesses of massacres of relations, looked intensely sad. She gave an account of some of the hardships they had suffered, but neither they nor we could have borne details of the atrocities. What they chiefly wished to express, and did express, was deep gratitude for the sympathy of our country, veneration for the memory of John as a friend of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, and thanks to ourselves.... They kissed our hands repeatedly, and the expression of their countenances as they looked at us, though without words, was very touching.
PEMBROKE LODGE, February 24, 1896
Visit from Mr. Voysey, earnest, interesting, and pathetic in accounts of Whitechapel experiences. His Theism fills him with the joy of unbounded faith in a perfect God; but his keen sense of the evil done by the worship of Jesus as another and equal God leads him to a painful blindness to that divine character and teaching.
Page 286. PEMBROKE LODGE, August 5, 1897 Sinclair 114 has been reading a great deal to me since my illness began. Miss Austen's "Emma," which kept its high ground with me although I had read it too often to find much novelty in the marvellous humour and reality of the characters. Then "Scenes of Clerical Life" ... the contrast between the minds and the brain-work of Jane Austen and George Eliot very striking. Jane Austen all ease and spontaneousness and simplicity, George Eliot wonderful in strength and passion, and fond of probing the depths of human anguish, but often ponderous in long-drawn philosophy and metaphysics, and with a tediously cynical and flippant tone underlying her portraits of human beings--and a wearisome lingering over uninteresting details. Her defects are, I think, far more prominent in this than in her best later books.
In the summer of 1897 she had a severe illness, from which, as the following letter shows, she partially recovered. Mrs. Warburton to Lady Agatha Russell PEMBROKE LODGE, October 11, 1897 You can't imagine, or rather you can, what a happiness it is to be able to record a perfect drive round the Park again with Mama this most beautiful day, she enjoying it as of yore, and as full of pleasure and observation as I ever remember. In short, it is quite difficult to me to realize how ill she has been since I saw her in June. She seems and looks so well. She is a marvellous person, so young and fresh in all her interests, sight and hearing betraying so little sign of change. She says she is out of practice, and her playing is not as easy or as vigorous as it was, I thought; but how few people of her age would return to it at all after such a long illness. (There are the sounds of music overhead as I sit here in the drawing-room--how she enjoys it!) ... About the reading--Dr. Gardiner 115 was against her being prevented from a little--she enjoys it so much. Sinclair reading to her is a great comfort.
Page 287. PEMBROKE LODGE, November 15, 1897
Eighty-two this day. God be praised for all he has given to brighten my old age. God be praised that I am still able to love, to think, to rejoice, and to mourn with those dear to me. But the burden of wasted years of a long life, in which I see failure on every side, is weighty and painful, and can never be lightened. I can only pray that the few steps left to me to take may be on a holier path--the narrow path that leads to God. My own blessings only brought more vividly to my mind the masses of toiling, struggling, poverty-stricken fellow-creatures, from whom the pressure of want shuts out the light of life.
My Agatha well, weather beautiful, and seventy very happy boys and girls from the school to see a ventriloquist and his acting dolls (drawing-room cleared for the occasion). The children's bursts and shouts of laughter delightful to hear.
Lady Russell was wonderfully well that day--her last birthday on earth--and joined in the fun and laughter as heartily as any of the children. Old age had not lessened her keen enjoyment of humour, nor dimmed the brightness of her brave spirit. PEMBROKE LODGE, December 11, 1897
A beautiful day for old scholars' meeting. Ninety-four came, a larger number than ever before; table spread in drawing-room and bow-room. Not able to go down to see them, but all went well and merrily. I was able to get to my sitting-room in the afternoon, and all came up to me by turns for a hand-shake. It was pleasant to see so many kindly, happy faces.
PEMBROKE LODGE, January 1, 1898
What will 1898 bring of joy or sorrow, good or evil, life or death, to our home, our country, the world? May we be ready for all, whatever it may be.
Six days later she was attacked by influenza, which turned to bronchitis, and very soon she became seriously ill. There was for one day a slight hope that she might recover, but the rally was only temporary, and soon it was certain that death was near. The last book that her daughter had been reading to her was the "Life of Tennyson," by his son, which she very much enjoyed. She begged her daughter to go on reading it to her in the last days of her life, and her keen interest in it was wonderful, even when she was too ill to listen to more than a few sentences at a time. Page 288. For some years Lady Russell had found great amusement and delight in the visits of a little wild squirrel--squirrels abounded among the old trees at Pembroke Lodge--which gradually became more and more tame and friendly. It used to climb up to her windows by a lilac-bush or a climbing rose-tree and look brightly in at her while enjoying the nuts she gave it on the window-sill. Before long it became very venturesome, and would enter the room daily and frisk about, or sit on her writing-table or on the tea-table in perfect content, taking food from her hand. On the last day of her life the doctor116 was sitting by her bedside when suddenly he noticed the beautiful little squirrel bounding in at her window. It was only a few hours before she died, but her face lighted up at once, and she welcomed her faithful little friend, for the last time, with her brightest smile. During her illness she had spoken confidently of recovery, but the night before her death she realized quite clearly that the end was near. Her son and daughter were with her; and just before she sank into a last sleep she spoke, in a firm clear voice, words of love and faith. Her mind had remained unclouded, and her end was as calm and peaceful as those who loved her could have wished. She died on January 17, 1898.
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