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LADY JOHN RUSSELL
A Memoir with Selections from Her Diaries and Correspondence
EDITED BY
DESMOND MACCARTHY AND AGATHA RUSSELL
WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS, OF WHICH SIX ARE IN COLOUR
SECOND EDITION
1910
PREFACE
The manuscripts which have supplied the material for a memoir of my mother
deal much more fully with the life of my father than with her own life.
Mr. Desmond MacCarthy has therefore linked into the narrative several
important incidents in my father's career.
The greater part of the memoir is written by Mr. Desmond MacCarthy; the
political and historical commentary is almost entirely his work. The
impartial and independent opinion of one outside the family, both in
writing the memoir and in selecting passages from the manuscripts for
publication, has been of great value.
My grateful thanks are due to His Majesty the King for giving permission to
publish letters from Queen Victoria.
I am also grateful to friends and relations who have placed letters at my
disposal; especially to my brother, whose helpful encouragement throughout
the work has been most valuable.
Mr. Justin McCarthy, who many years ago recorded his impressions of my
mother in his Reminiscences, has now most kindly contributed to this book a
chapter of Recollections.
My cordial thanks are also due to Mr. George Trevelyan for reading the
proof sheets, and to Mr. Frederic Harrison for giving permission to publish
his Memorial Address at the end of this volume.
AGATHA RUSSELL
ROZELDENE, HINDHEAD, SURREY
October, 1910
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. 1815-34
Early years--Paris--Lord Minto appointed Minister at Berlin--
Germany--Return to Minto
CHAPTER II. 1835-41
Lord Minto First Lord of the Admiralty--Life in London--Bowood--Mrs.
Drummond's recollections--Friendship with Lord John Russell--Putney
House--Minto--Admiralty--Her engagement
CHAPTER III. 1841
Marriage--Sketch of Lord John's career before marriage--His conversation
with Napoleon--Moore's "Remonstrance"
CHAPTER IV. 1841-45
Wilton Crescent--Endsleigh--Chesham Place--Birth of her eldest
son--Anti-Corn Law agitation--Her illness--Lord John's letter from
Edinburgh--He is summoned to Osborne--Attempts to form a Ministry
CHAPTER V. 1846-47
Illness in Edinburgh--Letters between Lord and
Lady John--Repeal of the Corn Laws--Ireland and coercion--Lord John Prime
Minister
CHAPTER VI. 1847-52
Pembroke Lodge--Difficulties of the Ministry--Revolution in France
--Chartism--Petersham School founded by Lord and Lady John--The Papal
Bull--Durham Letter--The Queen and Lord Palmerston--The _Coup
d'État_--Breach with Palmerston--Defeat of the Russell
Government--Literary friends
CHAPTER VII. 1852-55
Lord Aberdeen Prime Minister--Lord John joins Coalition Ministry--Lady
John's misgivings--Gladstone's Budget--Death of Lady Minto--Samuel
Rogers--The Reform Bill--The Crimean War--Withdrawal of Reform--Roebuck's
motion--Lord John's resignation
CHAPTER VIII. 1855
Defeat of Aberdeen Ministry--Lord John's Mission to Vienna--He accepts
Colonial Office in Palmerston Government--Vienna Conference--His
resignation--Lady John's diary and letters
CHAPTER IX. 1855-60
Retirement and foreign travel--Palmerston and China--City election
--Reception at Sheffield--Orsini's attempt upon Napoleon III--Italy and
Austria--Lord John's share in the liberation of Italy--Lady John's
enthusiasm--Garibaldi at Pembroke Lodge
CHAPTER X. 1859-66
Death of Lord Minto--Lord John accepts peerage--American Civil War--Death
of Lord Palmerston--Lord Russell Prime Minister--Reform Bill of 1866--Mr.
Lowe and the "Adullamites"--Defeat and resignation of the Russell
Government
CHAPTER XI. 1866-70
Travel in Italy--Entry of Victor Emmanuel into Venice--Disraeli's Reform
Bill--Irish Church question--Gladstone Prime Minister--Winter at San
Remo--Paris--Dinner at the Tuileries--Return to England
CHAPTER XII. 1870-78
Franco-German War--Renens-sur-Roche--Education question--Cannes--Herbert
Spencer--Letters from Queen Victoria--Herzegovina--Death of Lord
Amberley--Nonconformist deputation at Pembroke Lodge--Death of Lord Russell
CHAPTER XIII. 1878-98
Lady Russell--Her love of children--Literary tastes--Friendships--
Correspondence--Haslemere--Death of Tennyson--England and Ireland--Last
meeting of Petersham Scholars--Illness and death
CHAPTER XIV
Letters from friends--Funeral at Chenies--Poem on Death
RECOLLECTIONS OF LADY RUSSELL. By JUSTIN MCCARTHY
MEMORIAL ADDRESS BY FREDERIC HARRISON
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LADY JOHN RUSSELL AND HER ELDEST SON
From a miniature by Thorburn. 1844
Frontispiece
MINTO HOUSE, ROXBURGHSHIRE
From a photograph
THE COUNTESS OF MINTO, MOTHER OF LADY JOHN RUSSELL
From a miniature by Sir William Ross. 1851
LORD JOHN RUSSELL
From a portrait by G.F. Watts. 1852
PEMBROKE LODGE, EAST SIDE. FROM THE PARK
From a water-colour drawing by W.C. Rainbow. 1883
PEMBROKE LODGE. FROM THE SOUTH LAWN
From a photograph by Frida Jones. 1902
LADY JOHN RUSSELL AND HER DAUGHTER
From a water-colour drawing by Mary Severn. 1854
WILD HYACINTHS, PEMBROKE LODGE.
From a water-colour drawing by Fred Dixey. 1899
VIEW FROM THE WEST WALK, PEMBROKE LODGE
From an oil painting by Samuel Helstead. 1896
THE DOWAGER COUNTESS RUSSELL
From a photograph. 1884
LADY JOHN RUSSELL
CHAPTER I
1815-34
On November 15, 1815, at Minto in Roxburghshire, the home of the Elliots, a
second daughter was born to the Earl and Countess of Minto.
Frances Anna Maria Elliot, who afterwards became the first Countess
Russell, was destined to a long, eventful life. As a girl she lived among
those directing the changes of those times; as the wife of a Prime Minister
of England unusually reticent in superficial relations but open in
intimacy, in whom the qualities of administrator and politician overlay the
detachment of sensitive reflection, she came to judge men and events by
principles drawn from deep feelings and wide surveys; and in the long years
of her widowhood, possessing still great natural vitality and vivacity of
feeling, she continued open to the influences of an altered time,
delighting and astonishing many who might have expected to find between her
and them the ghostly barrier of a generation.
She died in January, 1898. The span of her life covers, then, many
important political events, and we shall catch glimpses of these as they
affect her. Though the intention of the following pages is biographical,
the story of Lady Russell's life, after marriage, coincides so closely with
her husband's public career that the thread connecting her letters together
must be the political events in which he took part. Some of her letters, by
throwing light on the sentiments and considerations which weighed with him
at doubtful junctures, are not without value to the historian. It is not,
however, the historian who has been chiefly considered in putting them
together, but rather the general reader, who may find his notions of past
politics vivified and refreshed by following history in the contemporary
comments of one so passionately and so personally interested at every turn
of events.
Another motive has also had a part in determining the possessors of Lady
Russell's letters to publish them. Memory is the most sacred, but also the
most perishable of shrines; hence it sometimes seems well worth while to
break through reticence to give greater permanence to precious
recollections. With this end also the following pages have been put
together, and many small details included to help the subject of this
memoir to live again in the imagination of the reader. For from brief and
even superficial contact with the living we may gain much; but the dead, if
they are to be known at all, must be known more intimately.
* * * * *
Minto House, where Lady Fanny was born, is beautifully situated above a
steep and wooded glen, and is only a short distance from the river Teviot.
The hills around are not like the wild rugged mountains of the Highlands,
but have a soft and tender beauty of their own. Her childhood was far more
secluded than the life that would have fallen to her lot had she been born
in the next generation, for her home in Roxburghshire, in coach and
turnpike days, was more remote from the central stir and business of life
than any spot in the United Kingdom at the present time. Lady Fanny used to
relate what a great event it was for the household at Minto when on very
rare occasions her father brought from London a parcel of new books, which
were eagerly opened by the family and read with delight. Those were not the
days of circulating libraries, and both the old standard books on the Minto
library shelves and the few new ones occasionally added were read and
re-read with a thoroughness rare among modern readers, surrounded by a
multiplicity of books old and new.
They were a large, young family, five boys and five girls, ranging from the
ages of three years old to eighteen in 1830, when her diaries begin, all
eager, high-spirited children, and exceptionally strong and healthy. In her
early diaries, describing day-long journeys in coaches, early starts and
late arrivals, she hardly ever mentions feeling tired, and she enjoyed the
old methods of travelling infinitely more than the railway journeys of
later days, about which she felt like the Frenchman who said: "On ne voyage
plus; on arrive." Long wild country walks in Scotland and mountain-climbing
in Switzerland were particularly delightful to her.
This stock of sound vitality stood her in good stead all her life; only
during those years which followed the birth of her eldest son does it seem
to have failed her. Her life was an exceptionally busy one, and her strong
feelings and sense of responsibility made even small domestic affairs
matters for close attention; yet in the diaries and letters of her later
life there are no entries which betray either the lassitude or the
restlessness of fatigue. She was not one of those busy women who only keep
pace with their interests by deputing home management to others. This power
of endurance in a deeply feeling nature is one of the first facts which any
one attempting to tell the story of her life must bring before the reader's
notice.
There was much reading aloud in the fireside circle at Minto, and for the
boys much riding and sport. Many hours were spent upon the heather or in
fishing the Teviot. Lady Fanny herself cared little for sport, or only for
its picturesque side. Near the house are the rocks known as Minto Crags,
mentioned by Sir Walter Scott in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," where many
and many a time Lady Fanny raced about on hunting days, watching the
redcoats with childish eagerness--intensely interested in the joyousness
and beauty of the sight, but in her heart always secretly thankful if the
fox escaped. Fox-hunting on Minto Crags must indeed have been a picturesque
sight, and there was a special rock overhanging a precipice upon which she
loved to sit and watch the wild chase, men and horses appearing and
disappearing with flashing rapidity among the woods and ravines beneath.
The pleasures of an open-air life meant so much to her that, in so far as
it was possible for one with her temperament to pine at all, she was often
homesick in the town, longing for the peace and freedom of the country.
There were expeditions of other kinds too.
"Gibby [1] and I," she writes towards the end of one October, "up a
little after five this morning and up the big hill to see the sun
rise. It was moonlight when we went out, and all so still and
indistinct--for it was a cloudy moon--that our steps and voices
sounded quite odd. It was mild enough, but so wet with dew that our
feet grew very cold. We waited some time on the top before he rose
and had a long talk with the Kaims shepherd. It was well worth
having gone; though there was nothing fine in the sky or clouds
compared to what I have constantly seen at sunrise. But what I
thought beautiful was the entire change that his rising made in
everything. All we were looking at suddenly became so bright and
cheerful, and a hum of people and noises of animals were heard from
the village." "I wish people," she adds impetuously, "would shake
off sleep as soon as the blushing morn does peep in at their
windows."
[1] Her brother Gilbert.
The entries in these early diaries show a quality of clear authentic
vision, which was afterwards so characteristic of her conversation. For
those who remember their own youthful feelings, even the stiff occasional
scraps of poetry she wrote at this time glow with a life not always
discernible in the deft writing of more experienced verse-makers.
The household was a brisk, cheerful, active one, and ruled by the spirit of
order necessary in a home where many different kinds of things are being
done each day by its different inmates. The children were treated with no
particular indulgence, and the elder ones were taught to be responsible not
only for their own actions, but for the good behaviour, and, in a certain
measure, for the education of the younger ones. As a girl she writes down
in her diary many hopes and fears about her younger brothers and sisters,
which resemble those afterwards awakened in her by the care of her own
children. A big family in a great house, with all the different relations
and contacts such a life implies, is in itself an education, and Lady Fanny
seems to have profited by all that such experiences can give. If she came
from such a home anticipating from everybody more loyalty and consistency
of feeling than is common in human nature, and crediting everybody with it,
that is in itself a kind of generous severity of expectation which, though
it may be sometimes the cause of mistakes, helps also to create in others
the qualities it looks to find.
The children had plenty of outlets for their high spirits. There are some
slight records left of the opening of a "Theatre Royal, Minto," and of a
glorious evening ending in an "excellent country bumpkin," with bed at two
in the morning; of reels and dances, too, and many hours laconically summed
up as "famous fun" in the diary. Then there were such September days as
this:
"Bob'm [2] and I went in the phaeton to meet the boys. They were
very successful--about twelve brace. The heather was in full blow,
and in wet parts the ground white with parnassia. I never felt such
an air--it made me feel quite wild. The sunset behind the far hills
and reflected in the lonely little shaw loch most beautiful. When
we began our walk there was a fine soft wind that felt as if it
would lift one up to the clouds, but before we got back to the
little house it had quite fallen, and all was as still as in a
desert, except now and then the wild cry of the grouse and
black-cock. Bob'm mad with spirits, and talked nonsense all the way
home. Not too dark to see the beautiful outline of the country all
the way."
[2] Her sister Charlotte, afterwards Lady Charlotte Portal.
Such tired, happy home-comings stay in the memory; drives back at the end
of long days, when scraps of talk and laughter and the pleasure of being
together mingle so kindly with the solemnity of the darkening country;
drives which end in a sudden blaze of welcome, in fire-light and candles,
tea and a hubbub of talk, when everything, though familiar, seems to
confess to a new happiness.
Here is another entry a few days later:
"Beautiful day, but a very high, warm _real Minto_ wind. We
wandered out very late and sat under the lime, playing at being at
sea, feeling the stem rock above us as we lent against it and
hearing the roaring of the waves in the trees. No summer's day can
be better than such a day and evening as this--there was a cloudy
moon, too, above the branches. I wish I could express, but I never
can, the sort of feeling I have at times--now more than I ever had
before--which would sound like affectation if one talked of it. A
fine day, or beautiful country, or very often nothing but the sky
or earth or the singing of a bird gives it. One feels too much love
and gratitude and admiration, and something swells my heart so that
I do not know how to look or listen enough."
There was another kind of romance, too, in her young life, destined in
future to be at times a source of pain and anxiety, though also of keen
gratification and permanent pride. What can equal the romance of politics
when we are quite young, when "politics" mean nothing but "serving one's
country" and have no other associations but that one, when politicians seem
necessarily great men? The love-dreams of adolescence have often been
celebrated; but among young creatures whose lives give plenty of play to
their affections in a spontaneous way, such dreams seldom vie in intensity
with the mysterious call of religion or with the emotion of patriotism. It
stands for an emotion which seems as large as the love of mankind, and its
service calls for enthusiasm and self-devotion. The Mintos were in the
thick of politics and the times were stirring times. "Throughout the last
two centuries of our history," says Sir George Trevelyan in his Life of
Macaulay, "there never was a period when a man, conscious of power,
impatient of public wrongs, and still young enough to love a fight for its
own sake, could have entered Parliament with a fairer prospect of leading a
life worth living and doing work that would requite the pains, than at the
commencement of the year 1830." Her father was not only the most genial and
kindest of fathers, but he was to her something of a hero too. His
political career had not begun during these days at Minto; still he was in
the counsel of the leaders of the day--Lord Grey, Lord John Russell, Lords
Melbourne and Althorp--great names indeed to her. And the new Cabinet was
soon to appoint him Minister at Berlin.
The country was under the personal rule of the Duke of Wellington, who had
sorted out from his Cabinet any who were tainted with sympathy for reform;
but, as the election of July which resulted in his resignation showed, the
country, however one-sided its representation might have been in the House
of Commons, had been long in a state of political ferment. This state of
affairs, the gradual breaking up of the Tory party dating from the passing
of the Catholic Emancipation Bill, the brewing social troubles, and the
prospect of power crossing to the party which was determined on meeting
them with reform, made politics everywhere the most absorbing of themes.
In a country house like Minto, which was in close communication with the
statesmen of the time, discussions were of course frequent and keen. The
guests were often important politicians; and long before Lady Fanny saw her
future husband, she frequently heard his name as one whom those she admired
looked up to as a leader. In a girl by nature very susceptible to the
appeal of great causes, whose active brain made her delight in the
arguments of her elders, these surroundings were likely to foster a
passionate interest in public affairs; while other influences round her
were tending to increase in her a natural sense of the delicacy and
preciousness of personal relations. In the course of telling her story
occasions may come for remarking again on what was one of the chief graces
of her character; but in a book of this kind the sooner the reader becomes
acquainted with the subject of it, the more he is likely to see in what
follows. So let it be said of her at once that in all relations in which
affection was complicated on one side by gratitude, or on her side by
superiority in education or social position, she was perfect. She could be
employer and benefactress without letting such circumstances deflect in the
slightest degree the stream of confidence and affection between her and
another. She had the faculty of removing a sense of obligation and of
forgetting it herself. Such a faculty is only found in its perfection where
the mind is sensitive in perceiving the delicacy of the relations between
people; and it must be added that like most people who possess that
sensitiveness, she missed it acutely in those who markedly did not.
The life at Minto, with its many contacts, was a life in which such a
faculty could grow to perfection. The daughters, while sharing much of the
boys' lives at Minto, saw a great deal of the people upon the estate.
The intercourse between the family at the House and the people of Minto
village was of an intimate and affectionate nature. Joys and sorrows were
shared in unvarying friendliness and sympathy, and to the end of her life
"Lady Fanny" remembered with warm affection the old village friends of her
youth. Kindly, true-hearted folk they were, with a sturdy and independent
spirit which she valued and respected.
She only remembered seeing Sir Walter Scott on one occasion--when he came
to visit her parents. She was quite a child, and it was the day on which
her old nurse left Minto. She had wept bitterly, and when Sir Walter Scott
came she hardly dared even look at him with her tearful countenance. She
always remembered regretfully her indifference about the great man, whose
visit was ever after connected in her mind with one of the first sorrows of
her childhood. She regretted still more that in those days political
differences unhappily prevented the close and friendly intercourse which
would otherwise have undoubtedly existed between the Minto family and Sir
Walter Scott.
A word or two must be said upon the religion in which she was brought up,
for from her childhood she was deeply religious. Like her love for those
nearest to her, it entered into everything that interested or delighted her
profoundly; into her interest in politics and social questions and into her
enjoyment of nature.
The Mintos belonged to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The doctrines
of this Church are not of significance here, but an indication of the
attitude towards dogma, history, and conduct which harmonizes with these
tenets is necessary to the understanding of her life. For this purpose it
is only necessary to say that this Church belongs to that half of
Protestantism which does not lay peculiar stress upon an inner conviction
of salvation. It differs from the evangelical persuasions in this respect,
and again from the Church of England in finding less significance in
ecclesiastical symbols, in setting less store by traditional usages, and in
a more constant and uncompromising disapproval of any doctrine which
regards the clergy as having spiritual functions or privileges different
from those of other men. In the latter half of her life she came gradually
to a Unitarian faith, which she held with earnestness to the last; and the
name "Free Church" became more significant to her through the suggestion it
carried of a religion detached from creeds and articles. Many entries occur
in her diaries protesting against what she felt as mischievous narrowness
in the books she read and in the sermons she heard. She sympathized
heartily with Lord John Russell's dislike of the Oxford movement. There are
many prayers in her diaries and many religious reflections in her letters,
and in all two emotions predominate; a trust in God and an earnest
conviction that a life of love--love to God and man--is the heart of
religion. Her religion was contemplative as well as practical; but it was a
religion of the conscience rather than one of mystical emotions.
Of personal influences, her mother's, until marriage, was the strongest.
There are only two long breaks in the diary she kept, when she had no heart
to write down her thoughts; one occurs during the year of Lady Minto's long
and serious illness at Berlin, which began in 1832, and the other after
Lord John Russell's death in 1878.
Lady Minto was not strong; bringing many sons and daughters into the world
had tried her; and her delicacy seems to have drawn her children closer
round her. Lady Fanny's references to her mother are full of an anxious,
protective devotion, as though she were always watching to see if any
shadow of physical or mental trouble were threatening her. So in imagining
the merry, active life of this large family, the presence of a mother most
tenderly loved, from whom praise seemed something almost too good to be
true, must not be forgotten.
In November, 1830 (the year Lady Fanny's diaries begin), the Duke of
Wellington resigned, having emphatically declared that the system of
representation ought to possess, and _did_ possess, the entire
confidence of the country. He had gone so far as to say that the wit of man
could not have devised a better representative system than that which Lord
John Russell, in the previous session, had attempted to alter by proposing
to enfranchise Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. But the election which
followed the death of George IV on June 26th had not borne out the Duke's
assertion; it had gone heavily against him. Lord Grey, forming his Ministry
out of the old Whigs and the followers of Canning and Grenville, at once
made Reform a Cabinet measure. During the stormy elections of July the news
came from Paris that Charles X had been deposed, and unlike the news of the
French Revolution, it acted as a stimulus, not as a check, to the reforming
party in England.
The next entry quoted from Lady Fanny's diary, begun at the age of
fourteen, is dated November 22, 1830; the family were travelling towards
Paris, matters having almost quieted down there. Louis Philippe had been
recognized by England as King of the French the month before, and the only
side of the revolution which came under her young eyes was the somewhat
vamped up enthusiasm for the Citizen King which followed his acceptance of
the crown and tricolor. It is said that any small boy in those days could
exhibit the King to curious sightseers by raising a cheer outside the
Tuileries windows, when His Majesty, to whom any manifestation of
enthusiasm was extremely precious, would appear automatically upon the
balcony and bow. But there were traces of agitation still to be felt up and
down the country, and over Paris hung that deceptive, stolid air of
indifference which is so puzzling a characteristic of crises in France.
The Mintos travelled in several carriages with a considerable retinue, with
a doctor and servants, but not with a train which, in those days, would
have been thought remarkable for an English peer.
MELUN, _November_ 22, 1830 [3]
We left Sens at half past eight and did not stop to dine, but ate
in the carriage. We passed through Fossard, Monteran, and got here
about four. The doctor is quite grave about his tricolor and has
worn it all day. We have had immense laughing at him. He was very
much frightened at Sens, because Papa told him the people of the
hotel were for the Bourbons and were angry with him for wearing the
tricolor. A great many post-boys have it on their hats and all the
fleurs-de-lis on the mile-posts are rubbed out.
[3] All extracts not otherwise specified are from Lady John Russell's
diary.
By this date Charles X, surrounded by his gloomy, ceremonial little court
of faithful followers, was playing his nightly game of whist in the
melancholy shelter of Holyrood, where he was to remain for the next two
years, an insipid, sorrowful figure, distinguished by such dignity as
unquerulous passivity can lend to the foolish and unfortunate. Meanwhile,
Paris was attempting to vamp up some interest in her new King, who walked
the streets with an umbrella under his arm.
PARIS, _December_ 23, 1830
We were in the Place Vendôme to-day, which was full of national
guards waiting for the King. We stopped to see him. It looked very
gay and pretty: the National Guard held hands in a long row and
danced for ever so long round and round the pillar, with the people
shouting as hard as they could. It looked very funny, but the King
did not come whilst we were there. We heard them singing the
Parisienne. The trial is over and the ministers are at Vincennes,
going to be put in prison. There have been several mobs about the
Luxembourg and the Palais Royal, but they think nothing more will
happen now.
Who can hum now the tune of the "Parisienne"? It has not stayed in men's
memories like the "Marseillaise"; no doubt it expressed the prosaic,
middle-class spirit of the National Guard, which kept a King upon the
throne, in his own way just as determined as his predecessors to rule in
the interests of his family.
PARIS, _February_ 5, 1831
Mama, Papa, Mary, Lizzy, [4] Charlie, Doddy [5] and I have been to
a children's ball at the Palais Royal. It was the most beautiful
thing I ever saw, and we danced all night long, but no big people
at all danced. We saw famously all the royal people; and Lizzy
danced with two of the little princes. The Duke of Orleans and M.
Duc de Nemours were in uniform and so were all the other gentlemen.
The King and Queen are nice-looking old bodies. [6] It was capital fun
and very merry indeed, the supper was beautiful. There was famous
galloping.
[4] Her sisters Mary and Elizabeth, afterwards Lady Mary Abercromby and
Lady Elizabeth Romilly.
[5] Her brothers Charles and George.
[6] The next time she was to see the "old bodies" was on her own lawn at
Pembroke Lodge, where she heard from the King the unimpressive story of "ma
chute."
PARIS, _February_ 15, 1831
This is _Mardi gras_, the last day of the Carnival. We were
out in the carriage this morning to see the masks on the
boulevards; there were a great many masks and crowds of people,
whilst there were mobs and rows going on in another part of the
town. The people have quite destroyed the poor Archbishop's house,
because on Sunday night the Duc de Bordeaux's bust was brought, and
Mass was said for the Duc de Berry. They have taken all his books,
furniture, and everything, and they wanted to throw some priests in
the Seine, and they are breaking the things in the churches and
taking down the crosses. All the National Guard is out.
These disturbances were the last struggles of the party who had not been
satisfied by the spectacle of the son of Philippe Egalité, with the
tricolor flag in one hand, embracing the ancient Lafayette on the balcony
above the Place de Grève. Their animosity against the Church was the
ground-swell of the storm which had washed away Charles X himself. The
Sacrilege Law introduced in 1825 had revived the barbarous mediaeval
penalty of amputating the hand of the offender. Charles's attempt to
reintroduce primogeniture by declaring the French principle of the equal
division of property to be inconsistent with the principle of monarchy had
irritated the people less than the encouragement he had given to monastic
corporations which were contrary to law. The controversy which followed
between the ecclesiastics and their opponents was the cause of the repeal
of the freedom of the Press; and when he had stifled controversy his next
step was the suspension of Parliament. Whence followed the events which so
abruptly disturbed his evening rubber at St. Cloud on July 25th.
These outbreaks of the republican anti-clerical party to which Lady Fanny
refers were soon calmed; a few weeks later the soldiers had no more work to
do, and a grand review was held in the Champ de Mars.
PARIS, _March_ 27, 1831
We all went in the carriage to the heights of the Trocadéro and
there got out. It was very pretty to look down at the Champ de
Mars, which was quite full of soldiers, who sometimes ranged
themselves in lines and sometimes in nice little bundles and
squares. In front of the Ecole Militaire was a fine tent for the
Queen and Princesses. The King and the Duc de Nemours rode about,
and there were some loud cries of "Vive le Roi." Less than a year
ago in the same place we saw old Charles X reviewing his soldiers
and heard "Vive le Roi" shouted for him and saw white flags waving
about the Champs de Mars instead of tricolor. It seems so odd that
it should all be changed in so short a time, and spoils the "Vive
le Roi" very much, because it makes one think they do not care
really for him.
PARIS, _April_ 2, 1831
We had a long walk with Mama to the places where the people that
were killed in July were buried. There are tricolor flags over them
all, and the flowers and crowns of everlastings were all nicely
arranged about the tombs. Amongst them was the kennel of a poor dog
whose master was one of the killed, which has come every day since
and lain on his grave. The dog itself was not in. The poor Swiss
are buried there, too, but without flowers or crowns or railings,
or even stones, to show the place.
She had been "wishing horridly for fields and trees and grass" for some
time past; on June 16, 1831, they were all back again in England.
DOVER, _June_ 16, 1831
Everything seems odd here; pokers and leather harness, all the
women and girls with bonnets and long petticoats and shawls and
flounces and comfortable poky straw bonnets, and boys so nicely
dressed, and urns and small panes (no glasses and no clocks),
trays, good bread, and everybody with clean and fresh and pretty
faces. We have been walking this evening by the sea, and all the
English look very odd; they all look hangy and loose, so different
from the Paris ladies, laced so tight they can hardly walk, and the
men and boys look ten times better.
ROCHESTER, _June_ 17, 1831
We did not leave Dover till near twelve--the country has really
been beautiful to-day; all the beautiful gentlemen's places with
large trees, and the pretty hedges all along the road full of
honeysuckle and roses; clean cows and white fat sheep feeding in
most beautiful rich green grass; the nicest little cottages with
lattice windows and thatched roofs and neat gardens, and roses,
ivy, and honeysuckle creeping to the tops of the chimneys;
everybody and everything clean and tidy.... The cart-horses are
beautiful, and even the beggars look as if they washed their faces.
_October_ 9, 1831, BOGNOR
We heard this morning of the loss of the Reform Bill, and we were
at first all very sorry, but in a little while rather glad because
it gives us a chance of Minto. When the people of Bognor heard it
was lost, they took the flowers and ribands off that they had
dressed up the coaches with, thinking it had passed, and put them
in mourning.
Lord John Russell had introduced the first Reform Bill on March 1, 1831;
this was carried by a majority of one; but in a later division the
Government was defeated by a majority of eight, and Parliament was
dissolved. The elections resulted in an emphatic verdict in favour of
Reform, and on June 24th Lord John introduced the second Reform Bill, which
was carried by a large majority in the House of Commons. He had proposed to
disfranchise partially or completely 110 boroughs; a proposition which had
seemed so revolutionary that it was at first received with laughter by the
Opposition, who were confident no such measure could ever pass. Lord Minto
had returned from France to support this Bill in the Lords, which on his
arrival he found had been rejected by them in a division on the 8th of
October. The rejection of the Bill was followed by disturbances throughout
the country. Several members of the House of Lords were mobbed, Nottingham
Castle was burnt down, and there was fighting and bloodshed in the streets
of Bristol. Before the third Reform Bill was brought forward and carried by
a huge majority in the Commons, the whole Minto family were on their way
North.
Lady Fanny announces the fact of her arrival at her beloved home with many
ecstatic exclamation marks.
_November_ 2, 1831, MINTO !!!!
Between Longtown and Langham we passed the toll that divides
England and Scotland. Harry and the coachman waved their hats and
all heads were poked out at window.
The moment we got into Scotland it felt much finer, the sun shone
brighter and the country really became far prettier. We went along
above the Esk, which is a little rattling, rumbling, clear, rocky
river, prettier than any we ever saw in England....
As we drove into Langham we were much surprised by a loud cheer
from some men and boys at the roadside, who all threw off their
caps as we passed. While we were changing, a man offered to Papa
that they would drag him through the town; Papa thanked him very
much but said he would rather not; so the man said perhaps he would
prefer three cheers, which they gave as we drove off.... The whole
town crowded round the carriages. Just as we were setting off,
however, we were very much surprised to see numbers of people take
the pole of the little carriage and run off with Papa and Mama with
all their might. They spun all through the town at a fine rate, and
did not stop for ever so long. There was immense cheering as we
drove off, and the people ran after us ever so far.... The house
all looked beautiful, and this evening we feel as if we had never
left Minto.
But she was not to stay there long, for early in 1832 they went to
Roehampton House, near London, and the same year Lord Minto was appointed
Minister at Berlin.
At this time Berlin was not a capital of sufficient dignity to entitle it
to an embassy; but considering the state of European politics, the
appointment was one of some diplomatic importance.
Germany was at the beginning of her task of consolidation. The revolution
of July had not been without its effect on her. In the southern States the
cause of representative government was not wholly powerless; but it had
been weakened by the reaction after 1815. Since the government was no
longer an undisguised tyranny and since the people themselves were growing
richer, a strong sentiment of personal loyalty to the sovereign began to
spread among them. Constitutional changes were therefore indefinitely
postponed. The great work of the next few years for Prussian statesmen was
the removal of commercial barriers between the various German States, and
the establishment of a _Zollverein_ between them. In this way the sway
of Austria was weakened, and though political union as an aim was carefully
kept in the background, the foundation for the subsequent consolidation of
the German Empire was securely laid. During the two central years of this
process, 1832-4, Lord Minto was at Berlin. The manners of the time were far
simpler and the life at the court far more informal than they were soon to
become. Law and custom still preserved some lingering barbarities: during
their stay at Wittenberg they heard of a man being broken on the wheel.
They stopped at Brussels on the way. There is a characteristic entry in
Lady Fanny's diary describing a visit to the battle-field.
NAMUR, _September_ 6, 1832
We coach-people left Brussels much earlier than the others that we
might have time to walk about Waterloo....
They showed us the house where the Duke of Wellington slept the
night before and the night after the battle and wrote home his
dispatches; then after a long and fierce dispute between a man and
woman which was to guide us, the man took us to the Church, where
we saw the monuments of immense numbers of poor common soldiers and
officers--then to the place where four hundred are buried all
together and one sees their graves just raised above the rest of
the ground. Then we drove to the field of battle, and the man
showed us everything; it was very nice and very sad to hear all
about, but as I shall always remember it, I need say nothing about
it. We are quite in a rage about a great mound that the Dutch have
put up with a great yellow lion on the top, only because the Prince
of Orange was wounded there, quite altering the ground from what it
was at the time of the battle. The monument to Lord Anglesea's leg
too, which we did not of course go to see, makes one very angry, as
if he was the only one who was wounded there--and only wounded too
when such thousands of poor men were killed and have nothing at all
to mark the place where they are buried; and I think they are the
people one feels most for, for though they do all they can, after
they are dead one never hears any more about them.
Soon after their arrival at Berlin, Lady Minto fell dangerously ill. From
September, 1832, there is a long gap in Lady Fanny's diary, for she had no
heart to set anything down. This long stretch of anxiety coming when she
was sixteen years old, if it did not change her nature, brought to light
new qualities which were to mark her character henceforward. There is a
little entry written down eight years afterwards on the birthday of her
sister Charlotte which shows that she, as well as others, looked back on
this time as a turning-point in her life.
Bob'm sixteen to-day, just the age I began to be unhappy, because I
began to think. Heaven spare her from the doubts and fears that
tormented me.
During the months of her mother's gradual recovery she seems each day to
have been happier than on the one before.
_June_ 6, 1833, POTSDAM
At a little before eleven this morning, Mary, Ginkie, Henry, [7]
Mr. Lettsom [8] and I set off from Berlin in a very curious rickety
machine of a carriage, to leave Mama for a whole day and night,
which feels very impossible, and is the best sign of her (health)
that one could have. We were very happy and we thought everything
looking very nice. We were sorry to see no friends as we left
Berlin, for we looked so beautiful in our jolting little conveyance
with four horses and a post-boy blowing the old tune on his horn.
[7] Her brother, afterwards Sir Henry Elliot.
[8] The tutor.
To escape the heat of Berlin they moved out to Freienwalde.
_June_ 14, 1833, FREIENWALDE
A beautiful morning, and at about 10 they all set off from Berlin,
leaving Mama, Papa, Bob'm and I to follow after in the coach. After
they went, there were two long hours of going backwards and
forwards through the empty rooms, then having said a sad good-bye
to Senden,[9] Hymen,[9] Mr. Lettsom and Fitz, though we know we
shall see them again soon, we got into the coach with the squirrel
in a bag and drove off. I could not help feeling very sorry to
leave it all, though it will be so very nice to be out of it, but I
knew we should never be all there again as we have been, and all
the misery we have had in that house makes one feel still more all
the happiness of the last month there.
There is nothing to say of the country, for it is the same as on
all the other sides of Berlin; the soil more horrid than anything I
ever saw, and of course all as flat as water, but just now and then
some rather nice villages.... After about two hours there we came
on, first through nice, small Scotch fir woods, then quite ugly
again till near here, when we got into really pretty banks of oak,
beech, and fir, down a real steep road and along a nice narrow lane
till we got here, where they were all standing on the steps of our
mansion ready to receive us. Mama was carried to the drawing-room
... before the house is a wee sort of border all full of weeds, but
nothing like a garden or place belonging to the house, but there
seem very few people; then there is a terrace, which is very nice
though it is public. Mama is not the least tired and quite pleased
with it all. It is very, very nice to be here, able to go out
without our things and expecting no company, and what at first one
feels more nice than everything, not having any carriages or noises
out of doors; for eight months and a half we have never been
without that horrid, constant rumbling in the streets. It is
_very_ odd to feel ourselves here; unlike any place I ever
lived in. The bath house is close by, but that is the only house
near us.
[9] German friends at Berlin.
There they lived all the summer the life that they liked best. They lost
themselves in the forest, they read aloud, and they enjoyed the rustic
theatre. The autumn brought visits to Teplitz and Dresden.
They were back in Berlin for the winter and early spring, when she began to
take more part in society.
April 1, 1834, BERLIN
Stupid dinner of old gentlemen. Mary still being rather silly[10] did
not dine at table.... It was very awful to be alone, but at dinner
I was happy enough as Löven sat on one side of me. Humboldt was on
the other. Afterwards came Fitz for a moment and Deken and
Bismarck.
April 5, 1834, BERLIN
I sat the second quadrille by my stupidity in refusing Bismarck.
[10] Scotch for unwell.
Early in May came "the hateful morning of good-byes" to friends in Berlin,
and at Marienbad. Lord Minto heard the news that Lord Grey had resigned
owing to Lord Althorp's refusal to agree to the Irish Coercion Bill. Lord
Melbourne succeeded him as Prime Minister. Lord Minto had not long returned
to England when the King summarily dismissed Lord Melbourne and a
provisional Government under the Duke of Wellington was patched together
until Sir Robert Peel should return from abroad. The governorship of Canada
had been offered meanwhile to Lord Minto, and the family started on their
home journey fearing they would have to leave England immediately for
Quebec. But this did not happen, and December found them at last once more
on the road to Minto. The girls wrote poems celebrating their return on the
journey, and tried every cure for impatience as the carriage rolled along.
MINTO, Thursday, December 25, 1834
We left Carlisle about eight, and for the three first stages were
so slowly driven that our patience was nearly gone. To make it last
a little longer Mary read some "Hamlet" aloud between Longtown and
Langholme, and I had a nap.... As soon as we entered Hawick we were
surrounded by an immense crowd.... The bells rang, there were flags
hung all along the street, and fine shouting as we set off. Papa,
which we did not know at the time, had to make a little speech, and
contradict a shameful report of his having taken office. A few
minutes on this side of Hawick we met the two boys and Robert
riding to meet us, looking lovely. Our own country looked really
beautiful; rocks, hills, and Rubers Law all seemed to have grown
higher. We passed the awful ford in safety across our own lovely
Teviot, and soon found ourselves at Nelly's Lodge, where old Nelly
opened the gate to us.... The trees looked large and fine--in
short, everything perfect. Catherine, Mrs. Fraser, and Wales
received us at the door, and in a few minutes we were scattered all
over the house. We spent a most happy evening.... This has really
been a happy Christmas. It is wonderful to be here.
At this point Lady Fanny's early girlhood may be said to end. Her life in
London society and the events which led to her marriage will be told in the
next chapter.