There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I hear very
often; that a man does not know how to pass his time. ’Twould have
been but ill spoken by Methusalem, in the nine hundred sixty-ninth
year of his life; so far it is from us, who have not time enough
to attain to the utmost perfection of any part of any science, to
have cause to complain that we are forced to be idle for want of
work.—COWLEY.
(M53) As I said in our opening pages, Mr. Gladstone’s letters are mostly
concerned with points of business. They were not with him a medium for
conveying the slighter incidents, fugitive moods, fleeting thoughts, of
life. Perhaps of these fugitive moods he may have had too few. To me, says
Crassus in Cicero, the man hardly seems to be free, who does not sometimes
do nothing.(132) In table-talk he could be as disengaged, as marked in
ease and charm, as any one; he was as willing as any one to accept topics
as they came, which is the first of all conditions for good conversation.
When alone in his temple of peace it was not his practice to take up his
pen in the same sauntering and devious humour. With him the pen was no
instrument of diversion. His correspondence has an object, and a letter
with an object is not of a piece with the effusions of Madame de Sévigné,
Cowper, Scott, FitzGerald, and other men and women whose letters of genial
satire and casual play and hints of depth below the surface, people will
read as long as they read anything. We have to remember a very
intelligible fact mentioned by him to Lord Brougham, who had asked him to
undertake some public address (April 25, 1860):—
You have given me credit for your own activity and power of work:
an estimate far beyond the truth. I am one of those who work very
hard while they are at it, and are then left in much exhaustion. I
have been for four months overdone, and though my general health,
thank God, is good, yet my brain warns me so distinctly that it
must not be too much pressed, as to leave me in prudence no course
to take except that which I have reluctantly indicated.
We might be tempted to call good letter-writing one of “the little
handicraft of an idle man”; but then two of the most perfect masters of
the art were Cicero and Voltaire, two of the most occupied personages that
ever lived. Of course, sentences emerge in Mr. Gladstone’s letters that
are the fruits of his experience, well worthy of a note, as when he says
to Dr. Pusey: “I doubt from your letter whether you are aware of the
virulence and intensity with which the poison of suspicion acts in public
life. All that you say in your letter of yesterday I can readily believe,
but I assure you it does not alter in the slightest degree the grounds on
which my last letter was written.”
He thanks Bulwer Lytton for a volume of his republished poems, but chides
him for not indicating dates:—
This I grant is not always easy for a conscientious man, for
example when he has almost re-written. But I need not remind you
how much the public, if I may judge from one of its number, would
desire it when it can be done. For in the case of those whom it
has learned to honour and admire, there is a biography of the mind
that is thus signified, and that is matter of deep interest.
On external incidents, he never fails in a graceful, apt, or feeling word.
When the author of _The Christian Year_ dies (1866), he says: “Mr. Liddon
sent me very early information of Mr. Keble’s death. The church of England
has lost in him a poet, a scholar, a philosopher, and a saint. I must add
that he always appeared to me, since I had the honour and pleasure of
knowing him, a person of most liberal mind. I hope early steps will be
taken to do honour to his pure and noble memory.”
To the widow of a valued official in his financial department he writes in
commemorative sentences that testify to his warm appreciation of zeal in
public duty:—
The civil service of the crown has beyond all question lost in Mr.
Arbuthnot one of the highest ornaments it ever possessed. His
devotion to his duties, his identification at every point of his
own feelings with the public interests, will, I trust, not die
with him, but will stimulate others, and especially the inheritors
of his name, to follow his bright example.... Nor is it with a
thought of anything but thankfulness on his account, that I
contemplate the close of his labours; but it will be long indeed
before we cease to miss his great experience, his varied powers,
his indefatigable energy, and that high-minded loyal tone which he
carried into all the parts of business.
In another letter, by the way, he says (1866): “I am far from thinking
very highly of our rank as a nation of administrators, but perhaps if we
could be judged by the post office alone, we might claim the very first
place in this respect.” In time even this ’most wonderful establishment’
was to give him trouble enough.
(M54) Among the letters in which Mr. Gladstone exhibits the easier and
less strenuous side, and that have the indefinable attraction of intimacy,
pleasantness, and the light hand, are those written in the ten years
between 1858 and 1868 to the Duchess of Sutherland. She was the close and
lifelong friend of the Queen. She is, said the Queen to Stockmar, “so
anxious to do good, so liberal-minded, so superior to prejudice, and so
eager to learn, and to improve herself and others.”(133) The centre of a
brilliant and powerful social circle, she was an ardent sympathiser with
Italy, with Poland, with the Abolitionists and the North, and with humane
causes at home. She was accomplished, a lover of books meritorious in aim
though too often slight in work—in short, with emotions and sentiments
sometimes a little in advance of definite ideas, yet a high representative
of the virtue, purity, simplicity, and sympathetic spirit of the
Tennysonian epoch. Tennyson himself was one of her idols, and Mr.
Gladstone was another. Bishop Wilberforce too was often of the company,
and the Duke of Argyll, who had married a daughter of the house. Her
admiration for Gladstone, says the son of the duchess, “was boundless, and
the last years of her life were certainly made happier by this friendship.
His visits to her were always an intense pleasure, and even when suffering
too much to receive others, she would always make an effort to appear
sufficiently well to receive him. I find in a letter from her written to
me in 1863, after meeting Mr. Gladstone when on a visit to her sister,
Lady Taunton, at Quantock, in Somersetshire, the following: ‘The
Gladstones were there; he was quite delightful, pouring out such floods of
agreeable knowledge all day long, and singing admirably in the evening.
Nobody makes me feel more the happiness of knowledge and the wish for it;
one must not forget that he has the happiness of the peace which passeth
all understanding.’ ”(134) The Gladstones were constant visitors at the
duchess’s various princely homes—Stafford House in the Green Park,
Trentham, Cliveden, and Chiswick on the Thames, Dunrobin on the Dornoch
Firth.
A little sheaf of pieces from Mr. Gladstone’s letters to her may serve to
show him as he was, in the midst of his labours in the Palmerston
government—how little his native kindliness of heart and power of sympathy
had been chilled or parched either by hard and ceaseless toil, or by the
trying atmosphere of public strife.
_1859_
_Aug. 30._—I am much concerned to lose at the last moment the
pleasure of coming to see you at Trentham—but my wife, who was not
quite well when I came away but hoped a day’s rest would make her
so, writes through Agnes to say she hopes I shall get back to-day.
The gratification promised me must, therefore, I fear, stand over.
I will write from Hawarden, and I now send this by a messenger
lest (as you might be sure I should not fail through carelessness)
you should think anything very bad had happened. Among other
things, I wanted help from you through speech about Tennyson. I
find _Maud_ takes a good deal of trouble to understand, and is
hardly worth understanding. It has many peculiar beauties, but
against them one sets the strange and nearly frantic passages
about war; which one can hardly tell whether he means to be taken
for sense or ravings. Frank Doyle, who is essentially a poet
though an unwrought one, declares _Guinevere_ the finest poem of
modern times.
_1860_
_Hawarden, Oct. 3._—We are exceedingly happy at Penmaenmawr,
between Italy, health, hill, and sea all taken together. I do not
know if you are acquainted with the Welsh coast and interior; but
I am sure you would think it well worth knowing both for the
solitary grandeur of the Snowdon group, and for the widely
diffused and almost endless beauty of detail. It is a kind of
landscape jewellery.
The Herberts send us an excellent account of Lord Aberdeen. I have
a very interesting letter from Lacaita, fresh from Panizzi, who
again was fresh from Italy, and sanguine about the Emperor. But
what a calamity for a man to think, or find himself forced to be
double faced even when he is not double minded; and this is the
best supposition. But Warsaw is surely the point at which for the
present we must look with suspicion and aversion. To-day’s papers
give good hope that Garibaldi has been misrepresented and does not
mean to play into Mazzini’s hands.
Thanks for your condolences about the _Times_. I have had it both
ways, though more, perhaps, of the one than the other. Some of the
penny press, which has now acquired an enormous expansion, go
great lengths in my favour, and I read some eulogies quite as wide
of fact as the interpretations.
_Oct. 19._—I think Mr. or Sir something Burke (how ungrateful!)
has been so kind as to discover the honours of my mother’s descent
in some book that he has published on royal descents. But the
truth is that time plays strange tricks backwards as well as
forwards, and it seems hardly fair to pick the results. The
arithmetic of those questions is very curious: at the distance of
a moderate number of centuries everybody has some hundred thousand
ancestors, subject, however, to deduction.
_Nov. 1._—... There is one proposition which the experience of
life burns into my soul; it is this, that man should beware of
letting his religion spoil his morality. In a thousand ways, some
great some small, but all subtle, we are daily tempted to that
great sin. To speak of such a thing seems dishonouring to God; but
it is not religion as it comes from Him, it is religion with the
strange and evil mixtures which it gathers from abiding in us.
This frightful evil seems to rage in the Roman church more than
anywhere else, probably from its highly wrought political spirit,
the virtues and the vices of a close organisation being much
associated with one another. That same influence which keeps the
mother from her child teaches Montalembert to glorify the
corruption, cruelty, and baseness which in the government of the
papal states put the gospel itself to shame.
_1861_
_11 Carlton H. Terrace, March 5._—I dare scarcely reply to your
letter, for although the scene at Trentham [the death of the Duke
of Sutherland] is much upon my mind, it is, amidst this crowd and
pressure of business, an image reflected in ruffled waters, while
it is also eminently one that ought to be kept true. A sacred
sorrow seems to be profaned by bringing it within the touch of
worldly cares. Still I am able, I hope not unnaturally, to speak
of the pleasure which your letter has given me, for I could not
wish it other than it is.
I am not one of those who think that after a stroke like this, it
is our duty to try and make it seem less than it is. It is great
for all, for you it is immense, for there has now been first
loosened and then removed, the central stay of such a continuation
of domestic love as I should not greatly exaggerate in calling
without rival or example; and if its stay centred in him, so did
its fire in you. I only wish and heartily pray that your sorrow
may be a tender and gentle one, even as it is great and strong. I
call it great and strong _more_ than sharp, for then only the
fierceness of Death is felt when it leaves painful and rankling
thoughts of the departed, or when it breaks the kindly process of
nature and reverses the order in which she would have us quit the
place of our pilgrimage, by ravishing away those whose life is but
just opened or is yet unfulfilled. But you are now yearning over a
Death which has come softly to your door and gone softly from it;
a death in ripeness of years, ripeness of love and honour and
peace, ripeness above all in character.... A part of your letter
brings to my mind a letter of St. Bernard on the death of his
brother (remember he was a monk and so what a brother might be to
him) which when I read it years ago seemed to me the most touching
and beautiful expression of a natural grief that I had ever
known—I will try to find it, and if I find it answers my
recollection, you shall hear of it again.(135) I always think
Thomas à Kempis a golden book for all times, but most for times
like these; for though it does not treat professedly of sorrow, it
is such a wonderful exhibition of the Man of Sorrows....
_1862_
_April 4._—I am grateful to you and to your thoughts for the
quality they so eminently possess; the Latins have a word for it,
but we have none, and I can only render it by a rude conversion
into “sequacious,” or thoughts given to following.
My labours of yesterday [budget speech] had no title to so kind a
reception as they actually met with. Quiet my office in these
times cannot be, but this year it promises me the boon of
comparative peace, at least in the outer sphere. The world
believes that this is what I cannot endure; I shall be glad of an
opportunity of putting its opinion to the test.
All words from you about the Queen are full of weight and value
even when they are not so decidedly words of consolation. In her,
I am even glad to hear of the little bit of symbolism. That
principle like others has its place, and its applications I
believe are right when they flow from and conform to what is
within. I cannot but hope she will have much refreshment in
Scotland. Such contact with Nature’s own very undisguised and
noble self, in such forms of mountain, wood, breeze, and water!
These are continual preachers, and so mild that they can bring no
weariness. They come straight from their Maker’s hand, and how
faithfully they speak of Him in their strength, their majesty, and
their calm.
As for myself I am a discharged vessel to-day, A load of figures
has a suffocating effect upon the brain until they are well
drilled and have taken their places. Then they are as digestible
as other food of that region; still it is better when they are
off, and it is always a step towards liberty.
I must at some time try to explain a little more my reference to
Thomas à Kempis. I have given that book to men of uncultivated
minds, who were _also_ presbyterians, but all relish it. I do not
believe it is possible for any one to read that book earnestly
from its beginning, and think of popish, or non-popish, or of
anything but the man whom it presents and brings to us.
_May 8._—Unfortunately I can give you no light on the question of
time. I, a bear chained to a stake, cannot tell when the principal
run will be made at me, and as I can only scratch once I must wait
if possible till then. The only person who could give you _des
renseignements suffisants_ is Disraeli. Tennyson’s note is
charming. I return it, and with it a touching note from Princess
Alice, which reached me this evening. Pray let me have it again.
_1863_
_Jan. 23._—I am so sorry to be unable to come to you, owing to an
engagement to-night at the admiralty. I am ashamed of being
utterly destitute of news—full of figures and all manner of
dulnesses.... I went, however, to the Drury Lane pantomime last
night, and laughed beyond measure; also enjoyed looking from a
third row, unseen myself, at your brother and the Blantyre party.
_Bowden Park, Chippenham, Feb. 7._—I feel as if your generous and
overflowing sympathies made it truly unkind to draw you further
into the sorrows of this darkened house. My brother [John] closed
his long and arduous battle in peace this morning at six o’clock;
and if the knowledge that he had the love of all who knew him,
together with the assurance that he is at rest in God, could
satisfy the heart, we ought not to murmur. But the visitation is
no common one. Eight children, seven of them daughters, of whom
only one is married and most are young, with one little boy of
seven, lost their mother last February, and now see their father
taken. He dies on his marriage day, we are to bury him on the
first anniversary of his wife’s death. Altogether it is piteous
beyond belief. It was affectionate anxiety in her illness that
undermined his health; it was reluctance to make his children
uneasy that made him suffer in silence, and travel to Bath for
advice and an operation when he should have been in his bed. In
this double sense he has offered up his life. The grief is very
sharp, and as yet I am hardly reconciled to it.... But enough and
too much. Only I must answer your question. He was the brother
next above me; we were not brothers only but very intimate friends
until we married, and since then we have only been separated in
the relative sense in which our marriages and my public life in
particular, implied. He was a man of high spirit and uncommon
goodness, and for _him_ I have not a thought that is not perfect
confidence and peace.
_March 1._—Even you could not, I am persuaded, do otherwise than
think me rather a savage on Wednesday evening, for the opinion I
gave about helping a bazaar for the sisters of charity of the
Roman community at some place in England. Let me say what I meant
by it and what I did not mean. I did not mean to act as one under
the influence of violent anti-Roman feeling. I rejoice to think in
community of faith among bodies externally separated, so far as it
extends, and it extends very far; most of all with ancient
churches of the greatest extent and the firmest organisation. But
the proselytising agency of the Roman church in this country I
take to be one of the worst of the religious influences of the
age. I do not mean as to its motives, for these I do not presume
to touch, nor feel in any way called upon to question. But I speak
of its effects, and they are most deplorable. The social misery
that has been caused, not for truth, but for loss of truth, is
grievous enough, but it is not all, for to those who are called
converts, and to those who have made them, we owe a very large
proportion of the mischiefs and scandals within our own communion,
that have destroyed the faith of many, and that are I fear
undermining the very principle of faith in thousands and tens of
thousands who as yet suspect neither the process nor the cause.
With this pernicious agency I for my own part wish to have nothing
whatever to do; although I am one who thinks lightly, in
comparison with most men, of the _absolute_ differences in our
belief from the formal documents of the church of Rome, and who
wish for that church, on her own ground, as for our own, all
health that she can desire, all reformation that can be good for
her. The object, however, of what I have said is not to make an
argument, but only to show that if I spoke strongly, I was not
also speaking lightly on such a subject.
_April 20._—I am afraid I shall not see you before Wednesday—when
you are to do us so great a kindness—but I must write a line to
tell you how exceedingly delighted we both are with all we have
seen at Windsor. The charm of the princess, so visible at a
distance, increases with the increase of nearness; the Queen’s
tone is delightful. All seems good, delighted, and happy in the
family. As regards the Queen’s physical strength, it must be
satisfactory. What is more fatiguing than interviews? Last night,
however, I saw her at half-past seven, after a long course of them
during the day. She was quite fresh.
_May 10._—I can answer you with a very good conscience. The affair
of Friday night [his speech on Italy] was on my part entirely
drawn forth by the speech of Disraeli and the wish of Lord
Palmerston. It is D.’s practice, in contravention of the usage of
the House, which allows the minister to wind up, to lie by until
Lord Palmerston has spoken, and then fire in upon him. So on this
occasion I was a willing instrument; but my wife, who was within
ten minutes’ drive, knew nothing.
We dined at Marlborough House last night. The charm certainly does
not wear off with renewed opportunity. Clarendon, who saw her for
the first time, _fully_ felt it. Do you know, I believe they are
actually disposed to dine with us some day. Do you think you can
_then_ be tempted? We asked the Bishop of Brechin to meet you on
Thursday. Another bishop has volunteered: the Bishop of Montreal,
who is just going off to America. You will not be frightened. Both
are rather notable men. The other guests engaged are Cobden,
Thackeray, and Mr. Evarts, the new U.S. coadjutor to Adams.
_July 10._—I knew too well the meaning of your non-appearance, and
because I knew it, was sorry for your indisposition as well as for
your absence. We had the De Greys, Granville, Sir C. Eastlake,
Fechter(136) and others, with the Comte de Paris, who is as simple
as ever, but greatly developed and come on. He talked much of
America. I hope we may come to-morrow, not later than by the 5.5
train, to which I feel a kind of grateful attachment for the
advantage and pleasure it has so often procured me. We are glad to
have a hope of you next week. All our people are charmed with Mr.
Fechter.—Yours affectionately.
_July 29._—I am greatly concerned to hear of your suffering. You
are not easily arrested in your movements, and I fear the time has
been sharp. But (while above all I trust you will not stir without
free and full permission) I do not abandon the hope of seeing you
... I have been seeing Lady Theresa Lewis. It was heartrending
woe; such as makes one ashamed of having so little to offer. She
dwells much upon employing herself.... I greatly mistrust
compulsion in the management of children, and under the
circumstances you describe, I should lean as you do. ... Many
thanks for the carnations you sent by my wife; they still live and
breathe perfume.... You spoke of our difference about slavery. I
hope it is not very wide. I stop short of war as a means of
correction. I have not heard you say that you do otherwise.
_11 Carlton House Terrace_ (_no date_).—I am glad my wife saw you
yesterday, for I hope a little that she may have been bold enough
to lecture you about not taking enough care of yourself. If this
sounds rather intrusive, pray put it down to my intense confidence
in her as a doctor. She has a kind of divining power springing
partly from a habitual gift and partly from experience, and she
hardly ever goes wrong. She is not easy about your going to Vichy
alone. The House of Commons, rude and unmannerly in its
arrangements at all times, is singularly so in its last kicks and
plunges towards the death of the session; but after to-morrow we
are free and I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday according
to the hope you give.... Soon after this reaches you I hope to be
at Hawarden. On Wednesday I am to have luncheon at Argyll Lodge to
meet Tennyson. Since I gave him my translation of the first book
of the _Iliad_, I have often remembered those words of Kingsley’s
to his friend Mr.——, “My dear friend, your verses are not good but
bad.” The Duc d’Aumale breakfasted with us on Thursday and I had
some conversation about America. He is, I think, pleased with the
good opinions which the young princes have won so largely, and
seems to have come very reluctantly to the conclusion that the war
is hopeless. Our children are gone and the vacant footfall echoes
on the stair. My wife is waiting here only to see Lady Herbert.
_Hawarden, Aug. 21._—We have had Dr. Stanley here with his sister.
He was charming, she only stayed a moment. He gave a good account
of the Queen. They go to Italy for September and October. When any
one goes there I always feel a mental process of accompanying
them. We have got Mr. Woolner here too. He took it into his head
to wish to make a bust of me, and my wife accepted his offer, at
least by her authority caused me to accept it. He has worked very
quickly and I think with much success, but he bestows immense
labour before closing. He is a poet too, it seems, and generally a
very good companion.... My journey to Balmoral will not be for
some five weeks. I am dreadfully indolent as to any exertion
beyond reading, but I look forward to it with interest.... Indeed
your scruples about writing were misplaced. There is no holiday of
mine to leave unbroken so far as post is concerned, and well would
it be with me, even in the time of an exhaustion which requires to
be felt before it can pass away, if the words of my other letters
were, I will not say like, but more like, yours. However, the
murmur which I thus let escape me is ungrateful. I ought to be
thankful for the remission that I get, but treasury business is
the most odious that I know, and hence it is that one wishes that
the wheel would for a little time cease its drive altogether,
instead of merely lowering it.
_Penmaenmawr, Sept. 20._—It was so kind of you to see our little
fellows on their way through town. I hope they were not
troublesome. Harry is rather oppressed, I think, with the
responsibilities of his captainship—he is the head of seven boys!
We went yesterday to visit the Stanleys, and saw the South Stack
Lighthouse with its grand and savage rocks. They are very
remarkable, one part for masses of sheer precipices descending in
columns to the sea, the other for the extraordinary contortions
which the rocks have undergone from igneous action and huge
compressing forces. Our weather has been and continues cold for
the season, which draws onwards, however, and the gliding days
recall to mind the busy outer world from which we are so well
defended.
_1864_
_Jan. 4._—Often as I have been struck by the Queen’s extraordinary
integrity of mind—I know of no better expression—I never felt it
more than on hearing and reading a letter of hers on Saturday (at
the cabinet) about the Danish question. Her determination in this
case as in others, not inwardly to “sell the truth” (this is
Robert Pollok) overbears all prepossessions and longings, strong
as they are, on the German side, and enables her spontaneously to
hold the balance, it seems to me, tolerably even.
_Jan. 14._—I am glad you were not scandalised about my laxity as
to the “public house.” But I expected from you this liberality. I
really had no choice. How can I who drink good wine and bitter
beer every day of my life, in a comfortable room and among
friends, coolly stand up and advise hardworking fellow-creatures
to take “the pledge”? However, I have been reading Maguire’s _Life
of Father Matthew_, with a most glowing admiration for the Father.
Every one knew him to be good, but I had no idea of the extent and
height of his goodness, and his boundless power and thirst not for
giving only but for loving.
_June 27._—Just at this time when the press and mass of ordinary
business ought to be lessening, the foreign crisis you see comes
upon us, and drowns us deeper than ever. I fully believe that
England _will_ not go to war, and I am sure she _ought_ not. Are
you not a little alarmed at Argyll on this matter? Of the fate of
the government I cannot speak with much confidence or with much
anxious desire; but on the whole I _rather_ think, and _rather_
hope, we shall come through.
Three marriages almost in as many weeks among your own immediate
kin! I look for a dinner at Woolner’s with Tennyson to-day: _a sei
occhi_. Last night Manning spent three hours with me; the
conversation must wait. He is sorely anti-Garibaldian. How
beautiful is the ending of Newman’s _Apologia_, part VII.
_Oct. 23._—Singularly happy in my old and early political
friendships, I am now stripped of every one of them. It has indeed
been my good lot to acquire friendships in later life, which I
could not have hoped for; but at this moment I seem to see the
spirits of the dead gathered thick around me, “all along the
narrow valley,” the valley of life, over and into which the sun of
a better, of a yet better life, shines narrowly. I do not think
our political annals record such a removal of a generation of
statesmen before its time as we have witnessed in the last four
years. I could say a great deal about Newcastle. He was a high and
strong character, very true, very noble, and, I think,
intelligible, which (as you know) I think rare in politicians. My
relations with him will be kept up in one sense by having to act,
and I fear act much, as his executor and trustee, with De Tabley,
an excellent colleague, who discharged the same duty for the Duke
of Hamilton and for Canning.
_Dec. 28._—I cannot give you a full account of Lord Derby’s
translation [of the _Iliad_], but there is no doubt in my mind
that it is a very notable production. He always had in a high
degree the inborn faculty of a scholar, with this he has an
enviable power of expression, and an immense command of the
English tongue; add the quality of dash which appears in his
version quite as much as in his speeches. Undoubtedly if he
_wrought_ his execution as Tennyson does, results might have been
attained beyond the actual ones; but, while I will not venture to
speak of the precision of the version, various passages in the
parts I have read are of very high excellence. Try to find out
what Tennyson thinks of it.
_1865_
_Aug. 8._—My reading has been little, but even without your
question I was going to mention that I had caught at the name of
“_L’Ami Fritz_,” seeing it was by the author of the _Conscrit_,
and had read it. I can recommend it too, though the subject does
not at first sight look ravishing: it tells how a middle-aged
middle-class German bachelor comes to marry the daughter of his
own farm bailiff. Some parts are full of grace; there is a
tax-gatherer’s speech on the duty of paying taxes, which came home
to _my_ heart. Though it a little reminds me of a sermon which I
heard preached in an aisle of the Duomo of Milan to the boys of a
Sunday school (said to have been founded by St. Charles Borromeo)
on the absolute necessity of paying tithes! The golden breadths of
harvest are now a most lively joy to me. But we have had great
official troubles in the death of Mr. Arbuthnot, a _pillar_ of the
treasury, and a really notable man.
_Sept. 12._—I am working off my post as well as I can with the
bands playing and flags fluttering outside. By and by I am going
to carve rounds of beef for some part of four hundred diners. The
ladies are only allowed tea. Our _weather_ anxieties are great,
but all is going well. The new telegram and announcement that you
will come on Friday is very welcome. Indeed, I did not say
anything about the marriage, because, without knowing more, I did
not know what to say, except that I most sincerely wish them all
good and all happiness. The rest must keep till Friday. The
characters you describe are quite, I think, on the right ground.
It was the great glory of the Greeks that they had those full and
large views of man’s nature, not the narrow and pinched ones which
are sometimes found even among Christians. Lord Palmerston’s
abandoning his trip to Bristol is rather a serious affair. There
is more in it, I fear, than gout.
_Oct. 24._—If you were well enough, and I had wings, there is
nothing I should more covet at this moment than to appear at
Inveraray and compare and correct my impressions of Lord
Palmerston’s character by yours. Death of itself produces a
certain tendency to view more warmly what was before admired, and
more slightly anything that was not. And by stirring the thought
of the nation through the press it commonly throws lights upon the
subject either new in themselves or new in their combination.
_Twelve_ cabinet ministers I have already reckoned in my mind, all
carried off by the rude hand of death in the last five years,
during which three only have been made. They are: Lord Dalhousie,
Lord Aberdeen, Lord Herbert, Sir J. Graham, Lord Canning, Lord
Elgin, Sir G. Lewis, Lord Campbell, Lord Macaulay, Mr. Ellice,
Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Palmerston. This, in the political world, and
to me especially, is an extraordinary desolation.
I hope you are at least creeping on. It was so kind of you to
think about my little neuralgic affairs; thank God, I have had no
more.
_1866_
_Hawarden, Jan. 4._—We have been pleased with some partial
accounts of improvement, and I can the better speak my wish to you
for a happy new year. Next Wednesday I hope to inquire for myself.
I have been much laden and a good deal disturbed. We have the
cattle plague in full force here, and it has even touched my small
group of tenants. To some of them it is a question of life and
death; and my brother-in-law, who is by nature one of the most
munificent persons I ever knew, is sorely straitened in mind at
not being able to do all he would like for his people. But do not
let this sound like complaint from me. Few have such cause for
ceaseless and unbounded thankfulness.
...If you come across Armstrong’s poems(137) pray look at them. An
Irish youth cut off at twenty-four. By the by, Wortley’s children
have admirable acting powers, which they showed in charades very
cleverly got up by his wife as stage manager. Grosvenor seconds
the speech, and F. Cavendish moves the address. We have had divers
thrushes singing here, a great treat at this season. I like them
better than hothouse strawberries.
_July 7._—I cannot feel unmixedly glad for yourself that you are
returning to Chiswick. For us it will be a great gain.... Disraeli
and I were affectionate at the Mansion House last night. Poor
fellow, he has been much tried about his wife’s health. The King
of the Belgians pleases me, and strikes me more as to his personal
qualities on each successive visit. God bless you, my dear duchess
and precious friend, affectionately yours.
_1867_
_Hawarden, April 29.—We both_ hope to have the pleasure of dining
at Chiswick on Wednesday. We assume that the hour will be 7.30 as
usual. I shall be so glad to see Argyll, and to tell him the
little I can about the literary department of the _Guardian_. I
write from the “Temple of Peace.” It is a sore wrench to go away.
But I am thankful to have had such a quiet Easter. The false
rumour about Paris has had a most beneficial effect, and has
spared me a multitude of demands. The birds are delightful here.
What must they be at Cliveden.—Ever affectionately yours.
_Holker Hall, Sept. 22._—We find this place very charming. It
explains at once the secret of the great affection they all have
for it. It has a singular combination of advantages—sea, hill,
home ground, and views, access, and the house such an excellent
living house; all the parts, too, in such good keeping and
proportion. We much admire your steps. The inhabitants would be
quite enough to make any place pleasant. We have just been at that
noble old church of Cartmel. These churches are really the best
champions of the men who built them.
_Nov. 23._—I cannot let the moment pass at which I would have been
enjoying a visit to you after your severe illness without one word
of sympathy.... Our prospects are uncertain; but I cling to the
hope of escaping to the country at the end of next week, unless
the proposals of the government as to the mode of providing for
the expense of this unhappy war should prove to be very
exceptionable, which at present I do not expect. I saw Lord
Russell last night. He seemed very well but more deaf. Lady
Russell has had some partial failure of eyesight. Lord R. is
determined on an educational debate, and has given notice of
resolutions; all his friends, I think, are disposed to regret it.
I am told the exchequer is deplorably poor. Poor Disraeli has been
sorely cut up; and it has not yet appeared that Mrs. Disraeli is
out of danger, though she is better. Her age seems to be at the
least seventy-six. I have been to see my china exhibited in its
new home at Liverpool, where it seemed pretty comfortable.
_1868_
_31 Bloomsbury Square, Jan. 3._—I promised to write to you in case
I found matters either bad or good. I lament to say they are bad.
He [Panizzi] is weaker, more feverish (pulse to-day at 122 about
noon), and very restless. The best will be a severe struggle and
the issue is _likely_ to be unfavourable. At the same time he is
not given over. I said, I shall come to-morrow. He said, You will
not find me alive. I replied that was wrong. I believe there is no
danger to-morrow, but what next week may do is another matter. He
is warm and affectionate as ever, and very tender. He is firm and
resigned, not stoically, but with trust in God. I am very sad at
the thought of losing this very true, trusty, hearty friend. I
must go to-morrow, though of course I should stay if I could be of
any use.(138)
This year the end came, and a few lines from his diary show the loss it
was to Mr. Gladstone:—
_Oct. 28._—The post brought a black-bordered letter which
announced the death of the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland. I have
lost in her from view the warmest and dearest friend, surely, that
ever man had. Why this noble and tender spirit should have had
such bounty for me and should have so freshened my advancing
years, my absorbed and divided mind, I cannot tell. But I feel,
strange as it might sound, ten years the older for her death. May
the rest and light and peace of God be with her ever more until
_that day_. None will fill her place for me, nor for many worthier
than I.