Lord John Russell by Stuart J. Reid (books that read to you .txt) 📕
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His personal relations with his political opponents, from the Duke of Wellington to Lord Salisbury, were cordial. His friendship with Lord Derby was intimate, and he visited him at Knowsley, and in his closing years he had much pleasant intercourse with Lord Salisbury at Dieppe. His association with Lord Beaconsfield was slight; but one of the kindest letters which Lady Russell received on the death of her husband was written by a statesman with whom Lord Russell had little in common. Sir Robert Peel, in spite of the encounters of party warfare, always maintained towards Lord John the most friendly attitude. ‘The idea which the stranger or casual acquaintance,’ states his brother-in-law and former private secretary, Mr. George Elliot, ‘conceived of Lord Russell was very unlike the real man as seen in his own home or among his intimates. There he was lively, playful, and uniformily good-humoured, full of anecdote, and a good teller of a story.... In conversation he was easy and pleasant, and the reverse of disputatious. Even in the worst of his political difficulties—and he had some pretty hard trials in this way—he had the power of throwing off public cares for the time, and in his house retained his cheerfulness and good-humour.... In matters of business he was an easy master to serve, and the duties of his private secretary were light as compared to others in the same position. He never made work and never was fussy, and even at the busiest times never seemed in a hurry.... Large matters he never neglected, but the difficulty of the private secretary was to get him to attend to the trifling and unimportant ones with which he had chiefly to deal.’
The Hon. Charles Gore, who was also private secretary to Lord John when the latter held the Home Office in the Melbourne Administration, gives in the following words his recollections: ‘Often members of Parliament and others used to come into my room adjoining, after their interview with Lord John, looking, and seeming, much dissatisfied with their reception. His manner was cold and shy, and, even when he intended to comply with the request made, in his answer he rather implied no than yes. He often used to say to me that he liked to hear the laugh which came to him through the door which separated us, as proof that I had been able to soothe the disappointed feelings with which his interviewer had left him. As a companion, when not feeling shy, no one was more agreeable or full of anecdote than Lord John—simple in his manner, never assuming superiority, and always ready to listen to what others had to say.’ This impression is confirmed by Sir Villiers Lister, who served under Lord John at the Foreign Office. He states that his old chief, whilst always quick to seize great problems, was somewhat inclined to treat the humdrum details of official life with fitful attention.
[43] Contemporary Review, vol. 56, p. 814.
CHAPTER XVIIIPEMBROKE LODGE
1847-1878
Looking back—Society at Pembroke Lodge—Home life—The house and its memories—Charles Dickens’s speech at Liverpool—Literary friendships—Lady Russell’s description of her husband—A packet of letters—His children’s recollections—A glimpse of Carlyle—A witty impromptu—Closing days—Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone—The jubilee of the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts—‘Punch’ on the ‘Golden Wedding’—Death—The Queen’s letter—Lord Shaftesbury’s estimate of Lord John’s career—His great qualities.
Peace with honour—a phrase which Lord John used long before Lord Beaconsfield made it famous—sums up the settled tranquillity and simple dignity of the life at Pembroke Lodge. No man was more entitled to rest on his laurels than Lord John Russell. He was in the House of Commons, and made his first proposals for Parliamentary redress, in the reign of George III. His great victory on behalf of the rights of conscience was won by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in the reign of George IV. He had piloted the first Reform Bill through the storms of prejudice and passion which had assailed that great measure in the reign of William IV. He was Home Secretary when Queen Victoria’s reign began, and since then he had served her Majesty and the nation with unwearied devotion for almost the life-time of a generation. He was Secretary for the Colonies during a period when the expansion of England brought delicate constitutional questions to the front, and was Minister of Foreign Affairs when struggling nationalities looked to England, and did not seek her help in vain. Twice Prime Minister in periods of storm and stress, he had left his mark, directly or indirectly, on the statute-book in much progressive legislation, and, in spite of mistakes in policy, had at length quitted office with the reputation of an honest and enlightened statesman.
Peel at the age of fifty-eight had judged himself worthy of retirement; but Russell was almost seventy-four, and only his indomitable spirit had enabled him to hold his own in public life against uncertain health during the whole course of his career. In this respect, at least, Lord John possessed that ‘strong patience which outwearies fate.’ He was always delicate, and in his closing years he was accustomed to tell, with great glee, those about him an incident in his own experience, which happened when the century was entering its teens and he was just leaving his own. Three physicians were summoned in consultation, for his life appeared to be hanging on a thread. He described how they carefully thumped him, and put him through the usual ordeal. Then they looked extremely grave and retired to an adjoining room. The young invalid could hear them talking quite plainly, and dreaded their return with the sentence of death. Presently the conversation grew animated, and Lord John found, to his surprise, they were talking about anything in the world except himself. On coming back, all the advice they gave was that he ought to travel abroad for a time. It jumped with his mood, and he took it, and to the end of his days travel never failed to restore his energies.
‘For some years after his retirement from Ministerial life,’ says Mr. Lecky, ‘he gathered round 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. Unhappily, this did not last to the end. Failing memory and the weakness of extreme old age at last withdrew him completely from the society he was so eminently fitted to adorn, but to those who had known him in his brighter days he has left a memory which can never be effaced.’
Pembroke Lodge, on the fringe of Richmond Park, was, for more than thirty years, Lord John Russell’s home. In his busiest years, whenever he could escape from town, the rambling, picturesque old house, which the Queen had given him, was his chosen and greatly loved place of retreat. ‘Happy days,’ records Lady Russell, ‘so full of reality. The hours of work so cheerfully got through, the hours of leisure so delightful.’ When in office much of each week was of necessity passed at his house in Chesham Place, but he appreciated the freedom and seclusion of Pembroke Lodge, and took a keen delight in its beautiful garden, with its winding walks, magnificent views, and spreading forest trees—truly a haunt of ancient peace, as well as of modern fellowship. There, in old age, Lord Russell loved to wander with wife or child or friend, and there, through the loop-holes of retreat amid his books and flowers, he watched the great world, and occasionally sallied forth, so long as strength remained, to bear his part in its affairs.
Lord John Russell in his closing years thoroughly distrusted Turkish rule in Europe. He declared that he had formerly tried with Lord Palmerston’s aid to improve the Turks, but came to the conclusion that the task was hopeless, and he witnessed with gladness the various movements to throw off their control in South-Eastern Europe. He was one of the first to call attention to the Bulgarian atrocities, and he joined the national protest with the political ardour which moral indignation was still able to kindle in a statesman who cherished his old ideals at the age of eighty-four. Two passages from Lady Russell’s journal in the year 1876 speak for themselves:—‘August 18. My dearest husband eighty-four. The year has left its mark upon him, a deeper mark than most years ... but he is happy, even merry. Seventy or eighty of our school children came up and sang in front of his window. They had made a gay flag on which were written four lines of a little poem to him. He was much pleased and moved with the pretty sight and pretty sound. I may say the same of Lord Granville, who happened to be here at the time.’ Two months later occurs the following entry: ‘Interesting visit from the Bulgarian delegates, who called to thank John for the part he has taken. They utterly deny the probability of civil war or bloodshed between different Christian sects, or between Christian and Mussulman, in case of Bulgaria and the other insurgent provinces obtaining self-government. Their simple, heart-felt words of gratitude to John were touching to us all.’
History repeats itself at Pembroke Lodge. On May 16, 1895, a party of Armenian refugees went thither on the ground that ‘the name of Lord John Russell is honoured by every Christian under the rule of the Turk.’ It recalled to Lady Russell the incident just recorded, and the interview, she states, was ‘a heart-breaking one, although gratitude for British sympathy seemed uppermost in what they wished to express. After they were gone I thought, as I have often thought before, how right my husband was in feeling and in saying, as he often did, that Goldsmith was quite wrong
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