who had developed into a very beautiful girl, was married to Robert
Peel,[17] now a rising statesman. He had already held office, having
been Chief Secretary for Ireland in Lord Liverpool’s Government from
1812 to 1818. He was thus glad of a period of comparative repose, and
for a while he and his bride led a retired life, spending a good deal
of their time in the country, at Lulworth Castle, whence in November
1821 he writes to Lord Liverpool of the happiness of his domestic
life and of his enjoyment of living as a private individual. They
entertained their friends at Lulworth, and among their early visitors
was Sir Humphry Davy. In 1822, the year in which Peel had accepted
the office of Home Secretary under Lord Liverpool, his happiness was
increased by the birth of his eldest son.
The part played by Peel’s wife in his political career is best
described by herself, in a letter written in 1846 on Peel’s retirement
from office, to her friend Sir Robert Wilson. The original is in the
British Museum, and is here printed for the first time.
“_Friday Morning_ (1846).
“MY DEAR SIR ROBERT WILSON,--I thank you very much for your
kind note. I cannot affect regret at the termination of our
Political life! The undertaking was an arduous and an anxious
one for my husband, and indeed I shared fully in all the
anxieties attached to it. I feel that he has well fulfilled
his task throughout, and I take with much welcome and many
thanks all the kind and flattering things you say. I have every
hope that a safe and good government may be formed. I do not
dread anything much, for (amidst other reliances which I have)
I feel sure that they will find a Powerful and a Successful
opponent in my husband to any dangerous measures they might
be induced to attempt, but I am _no Politician_, and will
not bore you with talking about that, which I profess not to
understand.--Always, believe me, dear Sir Robert, yours very
truly,
“JULIA PEEL.”
Thus, while she fully shared the anxieties of her husband’s public
life, and was his companion and confidante in every sense, Mrs.
Peel was, as she says, no politician. It was hers to cast upon the
statesman’s path “the quiet sunshine of domestic gladness” and to
solace by her “beauty’s spell” and the “soft kindness” of her “pure
affection”
“The life of him, whose deeds shall ever dwell
With a grateful country’s recollection!”[18]
With a very short break Peel remained in office from 1822 till 1830,
and from 1828 he combined the duties of leader of the House of Commons
with those of Home Secretary.
In May 1830 Peel’s father died, and he succeeded to the baronetcy, to a
large fortune, and to Drayton Manor, the famous residence at Tamworth.
He had before this built himself a fine house in Whitehall Gardens,
London, with a gallery for the splendid collection of pictures he had
formed. These pictures, chiefly of the Dutch and Flemish Schools,
are now in the National Gallery. Peel was the friend and patron of
Sir Thomas Lawrence, who painted two portraits of Lady Peel. One, a
three-quarter length, seated, was painted in 1824, and the other, a
half-length in a hat, a pendant to Rubens’ “Chapeau de Paille,” painted
in 1826, is regarded as the finest portrait Lawrence ever produced.
In October 1834 Peel, with his wife and his daughter Julia, went
to Italy; they had been about ten days in Rome, when a messenger,
who found Sir Robert at a ball of the Duchess of Torlonia, arrived
post-haste from the King, asking Sir Robert to return without loss of
time and put himself at the head of the Government. Peel acquiesced and
travelled back as rapidly as possible, becoming Prime Minister from
December 1834 to April 1835. In the intervals of public business he
was with his family at Drayton, accompanying his wife and daughter to
balls and doing prodigious feats of shooting, his favourite recreation.
It was in opposition, after his resignation, that Peel began to build
up the Conservative party in order to maintain intact the established
Constitution of Church and State. In the autumn of 1837 he again went
abroad with his wife and daughter. They visited the King at Paris, and
in their progress through Germany the Kings of Hanover, Würtemberg, and
Bavaria seem each to have consulted Peel.
Lady Peel had a large family to bring up, five sons and two daughters.
The sons were all more or less distinguished, but the most notable was
the fifth, Arthur, who became Speaker of the House of Commons and was
raised to the peerage as Viscount Peel in 1895. The elder daughter,
Julia, married on 12th July 1841 Lord Villiers, afterwards sixth
Earl of Jersey, and the younger, Eliza, became the wife of the Hon.
Francis Stonor, son of Lord Camoys. Lady Peel found happiness in the
companionship of her husband and children; she also took great delight
in the grounds at Drayton, where she laid out a flower garden herself,
and interested herself in all the outdoor arrangements. She told a
country neighbour that she had a great mind to have an apiary. “Lord,
ma’am, where will you get your apes from? For my part, I never could
’bide a monkey.”
The tragic death during the Free Trade agitation of Edward Drummond,
Peel’s private secretary, was a terrible shock to Lady Peel. Drummond,
who was a very able Civil Servant and a man of retiring and modest
nature, had been seen travelling alone in Scotland in Peel’s carriage,
and of course often coming out of Peel’s house in London, by a madman
named Daniel Macnaghten, who fancied he had a grudge against Peel.
Mistaking Drummond for Peel, he shot him as he was walking between
the Admiralty and the Horse Guards on his way to Downing Street, 20th
January 1843. Drummond lingered for some days, but death occurred on
the 25th. Queen Victoria was deeply distressed and wrote daily to
Peel for news of the dying man. The sad event and the circumstances
attending it had a very bad effect on Lady Peel’s health, and her
husband asked the Queen to permit them to remain in London for the
present. For some time Peel went about followed by two policemen in
plain clothes.
From 28th November to 1st December 1843 Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert went on a visit to Sir Robert and Lady Peel at Drayton Manor.
Both in town and country the Peels were noted for the sumptuousness
of their entertainments and at the same time for the good taste
invariably displayed. “On dîne remarquablement bien chez vous,” was the
observation of a foreign guest, and Disraeli is loud in the praises of
the bounteous hospitality of the Peels. The interiors of both houses
were attractive and delightful in every way. The London house was
especially charming, beautifully arranged, with a wealth of flowers,
balconies looking on to the river. In the rooms were valuable furniture
and fine pictures; some of the best of the Dutch and Flemish pictures
hung in the family sitting-room.
Lady Peel felt the delights of a respite from the anxieties inseparable
from public life, and enjoyed a period of repose alone with her husband
at Drayton in the summer of 1846. But he was strenuous in opposition
and was almost as indefatigable in his attendance at the House as when
he was in office.
On the night of 28th June 1850 there was a great and memorable debate
in the House of Commons on Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy. Peel
criticised it unfavourably in a speech that considerably reduced the
majority in favour of the resolution approving the foreign policy of
the Government. The debate lasted till past daybreak on the 29th, and
Peel walked home in the bright midsummer morning. During the day he
attended a meeting of the Commissioners of the Great Exhibition, but
both he and Lady Peel felt unaccountably depressed and despondent. She
suggested as a means of distraction and refreshment that her husband
should go for a ride in Hyde Park. He left his name in the visitors’
book at Buckingham Palace, rode on up Constitution Hill, saluted a lady
of his acquaintance who was also riding, when his horse became restive
and threw him. He was placed in a passing carriage and driven home. He
was taken into the dining-room, and never again left it alive. After
suffering terrible pain he died on 2nd July. Burial was offered in
Westminster Abbey, but in accordance with Peel’s wish he was laid to
rest in Drayton Church.
A peerage was offered Lady Peel by Lord John Russell. This she refused
in a well-known letter to Lord John. She declared “that the solace (if
any such remains for me) for the deplored bereavement I sustain will
be that I bear the same unaltered honoured name that lives for ever
distinguished by his virtues and his services.” And if the refusal had
not been founded on her own feeling she went on to say that her husband
had expressly desired that no members of his family should accept, if
offered, any title, distinction, or reward on account of his services
to his country.
Lady Peel’s grief was profound. She wrote to Lord Aberdeen, who himself
had suffered greatly from the loss of so close a friend, a month
later: “He was the light of my life, my brightest joy and pride. I am
desolate and most unhappy. Still I am his; our union is but suspended,
not dissolved.”
If anything could have consoled her, it would have been the public
grief at her husband’s death. All the time he lingered a crowd hung
night and day about the house; such general gloom and regret had
scarcely ever before been known. As the body was being taken through
London to the station, weeping women ran out from the alleys to pay
their last respects to him who was veritably the “People’s Minister.”
Lady Peel, too, had the deep sympathy of her Sovereign. When the
Queen passed through London on 9th December 1850 she asked Lady Peel
to go and see her at Buckingham Palace. She found the widowed lady
broken-hearted, and crushed by the agony of her grief. In the May of
the next year the Queen sent her a copy of the portrait of Peel in her
possession, in acknowledging which Lady Peel referred to her husband as
“the once bright, lost joy of my past life.”
Lady Peel received letters of condolence from Marie Amélie, Queen of
France, the Czar of Russia, and the Grand Duke of Saxony. Guizot,
writing to Lord Aberdeen, said in referring to Lady Peel, “J’ai vu leur
intérieur. Le bonheur le plus pur n’en est pas moins fragile.”
The house in town with all its contents was left to Lady Peel, as well
as a large sum of money under the deed of settlement. The remainder
of her life was spent quietly in the society of her children and
grandchildren and her intimate friends.
Lady Peel died suddenly of heart failure at her house in London on 28th
October 1859. She spent the evening with her daughter, Lady Jersey,
whose husband had died on the 24th. She returned home, went to bed
seemingly in her usual health, but when her maid went to call her the
next morning she found her dead. Many griefs had told on her. The
deaths of her husband, of her sailor son, Captain William Peel, who,
severely wounded at the second relief of Lucknow and while still weak,
succumbed to an attack of small-pox at Cawnpore in 1858, and of her
son-in-law, Lord Jersey, had been too much for her naturally delicate
constitution. She was buried at Drayton beside her husband.
Lady Peel’s individuality scarcely stands out apart from her husband.
She was ever the gracious presence by his side, lightening his cares,
cheering him when discouraged, merging her wishes and hopes in his. Her
special qualities of heart and head made her the right companion for a
man of Peel’s temperament.
III
LADY JOHN RUSSELL
“A wife with all those qualities, virtues, and graces which not
only adorn life, but make life worth living.”
Frances Anna Maria Elliot, the second daughter of the second Earl of
Minto, was born at Minto House, Roxburghshire, on 15th November 1815.
Her mother was Mary, eldest daughter of Patrick Brydone. Lady Fanny,
as she was generally known before her marriage, was one of a family
of ten, five boys and five girls. She had the education usual at the
time for English girls in her position. She had the run of the standard
books in her father’s library, so that good literature was available
for her at will. Reading aloud in the evening was a family custom, and
sometimes a new book from London would be enjoyed in that way. But the
most important part of the girl’s education was not derived from books.
Her training was the wholesome discipline of a large family of brothers
and sisters, with the free outdoor life possible for children brought
up in the depths of the country, and, removed as they were from a town
and its ready-made distractions, with the necessity of making their own
amusements. Culture and knowledge were absorbed almost unconsciously in
listening to the talk of the distinguished men who were frequent guests
at Minto. Lady Fanny learnt to write good English, displayed throughout
her life a pretty gift for making verses, and very early began to
take a deep and highly intelligent interest in contemporary politics.
Perhaps she loved more than all the free life in the open air amid the
beautiful scenery surrounding Minto House. Scott mentions Minto Crags,
which were not far from the house, as rocks
“Where falcons hang their giddy nest.”
She would ride among the hills, fish in “Teviot’s tide,” accompany her
brothers on their hunting or shooting expeditions among the rocks,
and now and again with one or the other of them would get up before
dawn, climb to the top of a neighbouring hill, and watch till the sun
“brightened Cheviot grey” and
“The wild birds told their warbling tale,
And waken’d every flower that blows.”
She was throughout her life peculiarly susceptible to the beauties of
external nature, and was never really happy in a town. She used to say
later that Minto was the happiest and most perfect home that children
ever had.
[Illustration: LADY JOHN RUSSELL WITH HER ELDEST SON
_After Thorburn’s miniature, by courtesy of Messrs. Methuen & Co.
Ltd._]
Not only did Lady Fanny Elliot hear politics freely discussed, and
with childish enthusiasm enter into the great causes which the leaders
with whom she came in contact had so much at heart, but early in life
she began to have experience of affairs in her own person and at close
quarters. At fourteen years of age she commenced keeping a journal.
In 1830 the family were in Paris, and she has recorded the aspect of
things there in the months following the deposition of Charles X. At a
children’s ball at the Palais Royal she saw the King and Queen,[19] and
described them as “nice-looking old bodies.” She heard the people in
the streets singing Casimir Delavigne’s “Parisienne,” the Marseillaise
of 1830. But, notwithstanding all the glories and excitements of the
French capital at that period, Lady Fanny was delighted to get back to
Scotland in June 1831.
The next year her father was appointed minister at Berlin, and
here again in the Prussian capital the girl came in contact with
interesting people, Humboldt and Bismarck among them. At a ball Lady
Fanny refused to dance with the latter, a circumstance she afterwards
regretted.
The family returned to England in 1834, and the next year Lord
Minto was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in Lord Melbourne’s
Government. Part of each year was now necessarily spent in London, and
Lady Fanny entered into society in good earnest. Breakfast-parties at
the house of Rogers or of the Duchess of Buccleuch, luncheon-parties
at Holland House, dinner-parties at all the leading Whig houses,
assemblies at Miss Berry’s, and balls everywhere kept her time well
filled. She was present at the opening of Parliament in 1836 and
pitied the poor old King, who could not see to read his speech until
Lord Melbourne, looking “very like a Prime Minister”--she always had a
great admiration for him--held a candle for him. Lord Minto retained
office at the accession of Queen Victoria, and Lady Fanny witnessed the
coronation in Westminster Abbey. After the ceremony she walked through
the crowd in her fine gown and reached the Admiralty in time to see the
procession go past.
Lady Fanny had of course heard much of Lord John Russell. He was still
the hero of the Reform Bill, of which Sydney Smith had said that:
“All young ladies expect that, as soon as this Bill is carried, they
will be instantly married; schoolboys believe that gerunds and supines
will be abolished, and that currant tarts must ultimately come down
in price; the Corporal and Sergeant are sure of double pay; bad poets
expect a demand for their epics; and fools will be disappointed, as
they always are.”[20]
Lord John Russell married in 1835 Lady Ribblesdale, widow of the
second Lord, and mother of four children by her first husband. At the
time when Lord Minto was at the Admiralty Lord John was leader of
the House of Commons, and Lady Fanny often met him and his wife, and
records that she was always glad to see them. Two daughters were the
issue of that marriage. The younger, born in October 1838, was named
Victoria by the Queen’s desire, but unhappily the mother was seized
with fever and died on 1st November. Lady Fanny, guileless of what
was to come, grieved much over “the poor unhappy husband and his dear
little motherless children.” Lord John, doubtless finding such sympathy
pleasant, became a frequent visitor at Putney, where Lord Minto had
taken a house in order to have a quiet refuge from the stir of the
Admiralty. Putney was then quite in the country; the banks of the river
were beautiful with azaleas, lilac, and hawthorn, the garden was full
of nightingales, and the young people lingered there late on summer
evenings to listen to their song. Miss Lister, a sister-in-law of Lord
John, used fairly often to bring her nephews and nieces, six children,
ranging in age from fourteen years to two, out to Putney; Lady Fanny
would play games with them and amuse them, and Lord John, who was now
Colonial Secretary and was often consulted by his colleague, would
join in the sport. Informal little cabinet meetings would be held
after dinner, when, according to Lady Fanny, the nation’s affairs
would be discussed and the three Ministers, Lord John, Lord Minto, and
Lord Palmerston, would “talk war with France till bedtime.” This was
in 1840. In one way or another Lord John managed to see a good deal
of Lady Fanny, who was approaching the age of twenty-five. Lord John
Russell was forty-eight, but Lord Minto used to declare that he never
thought of him as old until he proposed to his daughter.
In spite of her youth, Lady Fanny was serious-minded, wholly without
self-consciousness, never realising her beauty and attractiveness, very
intelligent and observant, full of enthusiasm for every good cause
that made for progress and improvement, delighting in literature and
poetry, and indeed in every way suited to become the life companion
of a great statesman. Lord Minto evidently saw how the land lay, and
invited Lord John to accompany them to Minto when Parliament rose.
Accordingly he travelled there in their company, taking with him his
stepson, Lord Ribblesdale. Lady Fanny began now to realise what was in
Lord John’s mind. During the visit, however, he said nothing definite,
but on his departure he left a letter for her in which he asked her to
marry him. She answered it immediately with a refusal. This saddened
him greatly, although he declared that it had been a foolish notion
of his to think that she might throw herself away on a person of
broken spirits, worn out by time and trouble. The girl was evidently
bewildered at the honour paid her by so distinguished a man. She owned
to her mother that she liked him very much, but “not in that way.” As
often happens in such cases, no sooner had Lady Fanny, as she thought,
put her lover out of her reach and her mind for ever than she began to
think and to dream about him. Miss Lister pleaded his cause by praising
him; she assured Lady Fanny that his equal was not to be found in the
whole world, and told her much that forced her to admire and like him
still more. Despite the girl’s refusal, when the family returned to
London at the beginning of 1841, Lord John continued to be a frequent
visitor at the Admiralty, and to pay her attention when he met her
in society at Holland House and elsewhere. And Fanny told her sister
that, although she took care not to understand when he said anything to
reopen the matter, she did begin to wonder if she had decided rashly.
She considered herself too old to make it necessary to be desperately
in love, but too young to take for her husband a man double her age,
and saddled with a family of six children. Lord John probably felt that
she was wavering, and took the wisest course in such circumstances.
He kept out of her way for nearly two months. The result was that on
8th June 1841 they became engaged, and were married on 20th July in
the drawing-room at Minto.[21] The Duke of Buccleuch, who had married
a first cousin of Lord John, lent them Bowhill for the honeymoon, and
there the bride received from her mother a charming Border ballad
giving the history of the wooing of the lover who
“Cam’ na wi’ horses,
He cam’ na wi’ men,
Like the bauld English knights lang syne;
But he thought that he could fleech
Wi’ his bonny Southron speech
And wile awa’ this lassie o’ mine.”
The lassie, however, told him to go home to his “ain countrie,” but the
poet continues with sly humour and memories of Duncan Gray in her mind:
“But sairly did she rue
When he thought that she spak’ true,
And the tear-drop it blinded her e’e;
But he only loved her ‘mair and mair,’
For her spirit it was noble and free;
Oh, lassie dear, relent,
Nor let a heart be rent
That lives but for its country and thee.
* * * * *
And did she say him nay?
Oh no, he won the day.”
An autumn session brought the honeymoon to a close by the middle
of August; Lady John settled down in her husband’s house in Wilton
Crescent, and began married life in good earnest. She found absorbing
occupation in the six children, and in looking after the comfort and
welfare of a Cabinet Minister. But Lord Melbourne’s Government was
defeated on the address, and after the general election that followed
the Tories were in the majority. Thus, although Lord John was leader
of the Opposition in the House of Commons, he was of course much
more free than when in office. He and his wife and the children went
to Endsleigh, near Tavistock in Devonshire, a place lent him by the
Duke of Bedford. It was a beautiful spot, and Lady John, who had now
leisure to realise all that the affection and sympathy and care of
such a man as her husband meant, used to accompany him on his shooting
expeditions, much as she hated sport that consisted in killing, and
on botanizing expeditions, in which she could take her full share.
There were happy visits to Bowood and Woburn, Brocket, the Grove, and
Minto. But residence for some months of the year in London was still
imperative. Lord John had built himself a house at 37 Chesham Place,
and there, in 1842, Lady Fanny bore him a son.[22] The claims of
society, less pressing it is true than when her husband was in office,
yet took up a good deal of her energy. The life was too much for her
strength, and for some time her health seriously suffered. In the
autumn of 1845 she was able to travel to Minto, but before the winter
set in it was deemed advisable for her to go to Edinburgh in order
to have competent medical advice and care. The illness turned out to
be long and tedious, and it greatly irked her to be tied to her sofa
while her husband was living through exciting times in London. He was
summoned by the Queen on Peel’s resignation to form a ministry, but
as Lord Grey refused to serve with Lord Palmerston, and as Lord John
felt he could not go on without both, Peel returned to office, Lord
John undertaking to support him in a measure for the repeal of the Corn
Laws. Lady John knew that the assumption of office would be a blow to
the quiet domestic life she so loved, but her patriotism enabled her to
encourage her husband during the days of suspense. She wrote to him:
“My mind is made up. My ambition is that you should be the head of the
most moral and religious Government the country has ever had.” But she
was not the less glad that for a short time at least Lord John should
be free from the anxieties and heavy duties of the high office of Prime
Minister.