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-fashioned 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 friendship 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 FRIENDSHIPS]
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 fashion, 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, Staffordshire, 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 FRIENDSHIP 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!"
Lady Russell says: "As far as I recollect he never but once worked after dinner. He always came up to the drawing-room with us, was able to cast off public cares, and chat and laugh, and read and be read to, or join in little games, such as capping verses, of which he was very fond."
Lord John used often to write prologues and epilogues for the drawing-room plays which they were accustomed to perform. s.p.a.ce forbids the quotation of these sparkling and often humorous verses, but the following instance of his ready wit occurred in the drawing-room at Minto, and is given on the authority of Mr. George Elliot. At a game where everyone was required to write some verses, answering the question written on a paper to be handed to him, and bringing in a word written on the same, the paper that fell to the lot of Lord John contained this question: "Do you admire Sir Robert Peel?" and "soldier" the word to be brought in. His answer was:
"I ne"er was a soldier of Peel, Or ever yet stood at his back; For while he wriggled on like an eel, I swam straight ahead like a _Jack_."
Mr. Gladstone states that perhaps the finest retort he ever heard in the House of Commons was that of Lord John in reply to Sir Francis Burdett.
The latter had abandoned his Radicalism in old age, and was foolish enough to sneer at the "cant of patriotism." "I quite agree, said Lord John, "with the honourable baronet that the cant of patriotism is a bad thing. But I can tell him a worse--the _re_cant of patriotism--which I will gladly go along with him in reprobating whenever he shows me an example of it."
[Sidenote: LORD DUFFERIN"S RECOLLECTIONS]
Lord John Russell once declared that he had no need to go far in search of happiness, as he had it at his own doors, and this was the impression left on every visitor to Pembroke Lodge. Lord Dufferin states that all his recollections gather around Lord John"s domestic life. He never possessed a kinder friend or one who was more pleasant in the retirement of his home. Lord Dufferin adds: "One of his most charming characteristics was that he was so simple, so untheatrical, so genuine, that his existence, at least when I knew him, flowed at a very high level of thought and feeling, but was unmarked by anything very dramatic. His conversation was too delightful, full of anecdote; but then his anecdotes were not like those told by the ordinary _raconteur_, and were simple reminiscences of his own personal experience and intercourse with other distinguished men. Again, his stories were told in such an unpretending way that, though you were delighted with what you had heard, you were still more delighted with the speaker himself."
The closing years of Lord Russell"s career were marked by settled peace, the consciousness of great tasks worthily accomplished, the unfaltering devotion of household love, the friendship of the Queen, the confidence of a younger race of statesmen, and the respect of the nation.
Deputations of working men found their way to Pembroke Lodge to greet the old leader of the party of progress, and school children gathered about him in summer on the lawn, and were gladdened by his kindly smile and pa.s.sing word. In good report and in evil report, in days of power and in days of weakness, the Countess Russell cheered, helped, and solaced him, and brought not only rare womanly devotion, but unusual intellectual gifts to his aid at the critical moments of his life, when bearing the strain of public responsibility, and in the simple round of common duty. The nation may recognise the services of its great men, but can never gauge to the full extent the influences which sustained them.
The uplifting a.s.sociations of a singularly happy domestic life must be taken into account in any estimate of the forces which shaped Lord John Russell"s career. It is enough to say--indeed, more cannot with propriety be added--that through the political stress and strain of nearly forty years Lady Russell proved herself to be a loyal and n.o.ble-hearted wife.
There is another subject, which cannot be paraded on the printed page, and yet, since religion was the central principle of Lord John Russell"s life, some allusion to his position on the highest of all subjects becomes imperative. His religion was thorough; it ran right through his nature. It was practical, and revealed itself in deeds which spoke louder than words. "I rest in the faith of Jeremy Taylor," were his words, "Barrow, Tillotson, Hoadly, Samuel Clarke, Middleton, Warburton, and Arnold, without attempting to reconcile points of difference between these great men. I prefer the simple words of Christ to any dogmatic interpretation of them." Dean Stanley, whom he used to call his Pope--always playfully adding, "but not an infallible one"--declared shortly before Lord Russell"s death that "he was a man who was firmly convinced that in Christianity, whether as held by the National Church or Nonconformist, there was something greater and vaster than each of the particular communions professed and advocated, something which made it worth while to develop those universal principles of religion that are common to all who accept in any real sense the fundamental truths of Christianity."
[Sidenote: MR. SPURGEON"S BLESSING]
Mr. Spurgeon, in conversation with the writer of these pages, related an incident concerning Lord John which deserves at least pa.s.sing record, as an ill.u.s.tration of his swift appreciation of ability and the reality of his recognition of religious equality. Lord John was upwards of sixty at the time, and the famous Baptist preacher, though the rage of the town, was scarcely more than twenty. The Metropolitan Tabernacle had as yet not been built. Mr. Spurgeon was at the Surrey Music Hall, and there the great congregation had gathered around this youthful master of a.s.semblies. One Sunday night, at the close of the service, Lord John Russell came into the vestry to speak a kindly word of encouragement to the young preacher. One of the children of the ex-Prime Minister was with him, and before the interview ended Lord John asked the Nonconformist minister to give his blessing to the child. Mr. Spurgeon never forgot the incident, or the bearing of the man who came to him, amid a crowd of others, on that Sunday night.
In opening the new buildings of Cheshunt College in 1871, Lord John alluded to the foundress of that seat of theological learning, Lady Huntingdon, as a woman who was far in advance of her times, since, a century before the abolition of University tests, she made it possible to divinity students to obtain academical training without binding themselves at the outset to any religious community.
During the early months of 1878 Lord John"s strength failed rapidly, and it became more and more apparent that the plough was nearing the end of the furrow. His old courage and calmness remained to the end. Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone called at Pembroke Lodge on April 20, and he sent down word that he wished to see them. "I took them to him for a few minutes,"
relates Lady Russell. "Happily, he was clear in his mind, and said to Mr. Gladstone, "I am sorry you are not in the Ministry," and kissed her affectionately, and was so cordial to both that they were greatly touched." He told Lady Russell that he had enjoyed his life. "I have made mistakes, but in all I did my object was the public good!" Then after a pause: "I have sometimes seemed cold to my friends, but it was not in my heart." A change for the worse set in on May 1, and the last sands of life were slipping quietly through the gla.s.s when the Nonconformist deputation came on the 9th of that month to present Lord Russell with an address of congratulation on the occasion of the jubilee of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts.[45] Lady Russell and her children received the Deputation. In the course of her reply to the address Lady Russell said that of all the "victories won by that great party to which in his later as in his earlier years Lord John had been inseparably attached," there was none dearer to his memory at that moment than that which they had called to remembrance. "It was a proud and a sad day," is the entry in Lady Russell"s journal. "We had hoped some time ago that he might perhaps see the Deputation for a moment in his room, but he was too ill for that to be possible."
A few days later, there appeared in the columns of "Punch" some commemorative verses ent.i.tled "A Golden Wedding." They expressed the feeling that was uppermost in the heart of the nation, and two or three verses may here be recorded:--
The Golden Wedding of Lord John and Liberty his love-- "Twixt the Russells" House and Liberty, "twas ever hand and glove-- His love in those dark ages, he has lived through with his bride, To look back on them from the sunset of his quiet eventide.
His love when he that loved her and sought her for his own Must do more than suit and service, must do battle, trumpet blown, Must slay the fiery dragons that guarded every gate On the roads by which men travelled for work of Church and State.
Now time brings its revenges, and all are loud to own How beautiful a bride she was, how fond, how faithful shown; But she knows the man who loved her when lovers were but few, And she hails this golden wedding--fifty years of tried and true.
Look and listen, my Lord Russell: "tis your golden wedding-day; We may not press your brave old hand, but you hear what we"ve to say.
A blessing on the bridal that has known its fifty years, But never known its fallings-out, delusions, doubt, or fears.
[Sidenote: VICTORIOUS PEACE]
The end came softly. "I fall back on the faith of my childhood," were the words he uttered to Dr. Anderson. The closing scene is thus recorded in Mr. Rollo Russell"s journal: "May 28 [1878].--He was better this morning, though still in a very weak state. He spoke more distinctly, called me by my name, and said something which I could not understand.
He did not seem to be suffering ... and has, all through his long illness, been cheerful to a degree that surprises everybody about him, not complaining of anything, but seeming to feel that he was being well cared for. About midday he became worse ... but bore it all calmly. My mother was with him continually.... Towards ten he was much worse, and in a few minutes, while my mother was holding his hand, he breathed out gently the remainder of life." Westminster Abbey was offered as a place of burial, but, in accordance with his own expressed wish, Lord John Russell was gathered to his fathers at Chenies. The Queen"s sympathy and her sense of loss were expressed in the following letter:--
"Balmoral: May 30, 1878.
"DEAR LADY RUSSELL,--It was only yesterday afternoon that I heard through the papers that your dear husband had left this world of sorrows and trials peacefully and full of years the night before, or I would have telegraphed and written sooner. You will believe that I truly regret an old friend of forty years" standing, and whose personal kindness in trying and anxious times I shall _ever_ remember. "Lord John," as I knew him best, was one of my _first_ and _most distinguished_ Ministers, and his departure recalls many eventful times.
"To you, dear Lady Russell, who were ever one of the most devoted of wives, this must be a terrible blow, though you must have for some time been prepared for it. But one is _never_ prepared for the blow when it comes, and you have had such trials and sorrows of late years that I most truly sympathise with you. Your dear and devoted daughter will, I know, be the greatest possible comfort to you, and I trust that your grandsons will grow up to be all you could wish.
"Believe me always, yours affectionately, "VICTORIA R. AND I."