Edinburgh, and she felt deeply the enforced absence from her husband’s
side. But they managed to keep up each other’s spirits; many a rhymed
nonsense letter passed between them, and Lord John would sometimes
send his wife little notes in dog-Latin. Lady John was able to read
and talk, and much enjoyed the visits of her Edinburgh friends, among
them Lord Jeffrey. She found that conversation there had more calmness
and fairness and depth than was the rule in London, where people
were too much occupied with the present to trouble themselves much
about the past or future. Holland House was the only place where good
conversation might really be heard, and the death of Lady Holland in
November 1845 had been a great blow.
As a general rule, Lady John agreed and sympathised with her husband’s
views and acts. But there were exceptions when her instinct and her
judgment caused her to differ. The Irish Coercion Bill of 1846 was
one. She frankly wrote to him from Edinburgh on 12th March 1846 that
she was convinced it would not do the slightest good, and would
embitter the Irish against the English. She deplored the continual
outrages and murders in Ireland, but saw a remedy only in a long
course of mild and good government. Lord John replied that the best
authorities thought the Bill would tend to stop the crime and murder,
and that he was disinclined to throw out a Bill that might have that
good effect. It was probably due to his wife’s influence that he
determined to move a resolution which should at the same time pledge
the House to measures of remedy and conciliation. It will be remembered
that the Government was defeated on the Bill, a circumstance which led
to Lord John Russell’s first period of office as Prime Minister from
July 1846 to February 1852.
His wife was now sufficiently recovered to join him, and he leased a
country house, Chorley Wood, near Chenies, so that she might have a
quiet retreat in the neighbourhood of London. Early in the New Year she
had another bad bout of illness. On 1st March 1847 the Queen offered
Lord John Pembroke Lodge, in Richmond Park, for a residence for his
life. The place had become vacant through the death of its occupant,
the Earl of Erroll, the husband of a natural daughter of William IV.
The offer was gladly accepted by the Prime Minister, and the house
became their permanent abode. Strangely enough, a year or two before
they had gone with some of the children for a few days’ change of air
to the Star and Garter at Richmond. While strolling in the park they
sat down on a bench under a big oak, whence they could look into the
grounds of Pembroke Lodge, and said that it would be just the place for
them. Now the wish had come true. They always managed to be there, when
the House was in session, from Wednesday to Thursday and from Saturday
to Monday. Sometimes Lord John rode all the way, but often when
returning from town he would drive to Hammersmith Bridge, where his
horse would be brought to meet him, accompanied by all the children old
enough to ride on their ponies. Lady John would watch for the return of
the cavalcade from a hill in the garden.
Pembroke Lodge stood in a bit of the old forest that had been enclosed
with its grand old oaks and bracken. The grounds were lovely at all
seasons, but especially in May, with their wealth of white lilac,
laburnum, hawthorn, and wild hyacinths, the blue of which under the
tender green of the trees made an enchanting sight. The house stood
on rising ground and commanded lovely views of the Thames valley. The
flower-garden in its setting of greenery was a delight. The lawn under
the spreading cedar was the scene of many enjoyable gatherings and
memorable talks, for, as has well been said, Pembroke Lodge, while
in the occupation of the Russells, was “a haunt of ancient peace as
well as of modern fellowship.” All who were distinguished in English
politics or English literature, with eminent foreigners of every
walk in life, would gather there on Sunday afternoons in summer, and
from 1847 onwards a long stream of celebrities passed the portals of
Pembroke Lodge, which, while it was the scene of an ideal family life,
dispensed also much pleasant hospitality. Although Lady John loved
a secluded life among her family, she fully realised that it would
not do to go on long cut off from the world and its ways, and from
the blessing of the society of real friends; she knew, too, that as
things are ordered it was impossible to enjoy that blessing without
some intermixture of wearisome acquaintance. But she was occasionally
cast down by the weight of the tiresome conventions imposed on such
hospitality. “Why,” she asks, “cannot human nature find out and rejoice
in blessings of civilisation and society without encumbering them with
petty etiquettes and fashions and forms which deprive them of half
their value? Human nature strives and struggles and gives life itself
for political freedom, while it forges social chains and fetters for
itself.”
One day Baroness Bunsen would drive with the Russells from their
London house in Chesham Place to Kew, make the tour of the gardens and
hothouses, and then go to Pembroke Lodge to lunch, where the other
guests included the Duke of Wellington, the Duc de Broglie, Lord and
Lady Palmerston, and Lord Lansdowne. Indeed, the list of their guests
at different times would fill several pages: Thiers and Garibaldi,
Baron and Baroness Bunsen, Macaulay, Froude and Lecky, Thackeray and
Dickens, Thomas Moore and Rogers, Tennyson and Browning, Mrs. Beecher
Stowe, Longfellow and Lowell, Sir Richard Owen, John Tyndall and
Herbert Spencer, Frederic Harrison and Justin McCarthy, Sydney Smith,
Dean Stanley, and Mr. Stopford Brooke--every shade of opinion, every
type of mind, was at one time or another represented.
It will be clear that Lady John was never at any period of her life a
leader of political society in the sense in which Lady Palmerston was.
Lady John had neither the temperament, the inclination, nor the health
required for such a rôle in the world of politics. Some are of opinion
that Lord John Russell’s position as a statesman suffered, that he
allowed himself to be too much absorbed by his domestic affairs, and
that the illnesses of his wife and the care of his young family weighed
too heavily upon him. This is as it may be, but the ideal domestic life
of the Russells did not prevent a perfect sympathy and understanding
between husband and wife in the larger affairs in which the great
statesman was engaged. Lady John possessed his fullest confidence,
and shared in all his hopes of progress and improvement. She could,
on occasion, give him shrewd advice. As regards her own personal
attitude to politics, she cared much more for the great questions of
the day themselves than for the details and personalities belonging
to them. She much disliked the conversation of those whom she dubbed
the “regular hardened lady politicians,” who were chiefly concerned
with such details and personalities, and quickly lost sight of the
great problems themselves. Lady John preferred the humdrum domestic
talk of ordinary womenkind. But she was not wholly condemned to endure
the weariness of political discussion by the wrong people in the wrong
way, or to listen to domestic chatter. Opportunities of discussing
pleasanter topics often occurred. Her sympathetic charm, her receptive
mind, her intellectual equipment, enabled her to gather round her
friends and acquaintances of a kind that almost realised the ideal of
social intercourse. She did not, as is a common practice with hostesses
occupying a prominent position in society, issue an invitation to a
celebrated writer or artist or scholar only when a big entertainment
was toward. Such men formed an integral part of the Pembroke Lodge
circle. Rogers was a frequent guest, and used to declare that he would
rather share a crust with the Russells in their paradise than sup with
Lucullus. Thackeray read them his lectures on Sterne and Goldsmith, and
Dickens often spent the day, going to luncheon and remaining to dinner.
During the session some evenings had to be spent in town, and some
social functions had to be attended. All the more enjoyable, then,
were the evenings spent quietly in the domestic circle. Reading
aloud--they would each read in turn--was then their chief recreation.
Among the books they read were Lamartine’s _History of the Girondins_,
Mackintosh’s _History of the Revolution_, Prescott’s _History of Peru_,
Cowper’s _Task_, Wordsworth’s _Excursion_--reading that nowadays would
scarcely come under the head of relaxation; so it is satisfactory to
know that they cried over _David Copperfield_ until they were ashamed.
Lord John’s Premiership was not lacking in excitement. The Irish famine
gave natural cause for anxiety throughout 1847. In February 1848 came
the news of the deposition of Louis-Philippe. The Chartist movement
was gaining ground in England, and fears of a serious outbreak were
entertained. The Chartists were preparing a great demonstration for
10th April, when, after assembling on Kennington Common, they were to
march to the House of Commons to present a petition. There was much
discussion as to where the Prime Minister’s wife would be safest on
the fateful Monday (10th April 1848). It was finally decided that
Downing Street would be best. But after all nothing happened, the
monster Chartist meeting dispersed quietly at the persuasion of its
promoters, and the services of the 150,000 special constables, among
them Louis Napoleon (afterwards Napoleon III.), were not called
into requisition. Lord Palmerston, writing next day to the English
ambassador in Paris, reported that the Chartists made a poor figure,
and their leaders were thoroughly frightened to find the streets
swarming with men of all ranks and classes blended together to defend
law and property. The Prime Minister and his wife spent the Tuesday in
receiving congratulations “without end.” Four days later their second
son was born.
Irish affairs continued very disquieting through the session, and the
repose for which Lady John was ever longing seemed very far off. At the
end of August she accompanied her husband on a brief visit to Ireland.
They were much interested in the newly completed tubular bridge over
the Conway; they walked through it, proceeding by train to Bangor,
where they spent the night. Next day they crossed the Menai Straits,
driving over the Suspension Bridge, took train to Holyhead whence they
reached Kingstown by steamer, and finally arrived at the Viceregal
Lodge, Dublin. Thus, in 1848, a journey to Ireland was something of an
adventure, and one not to be undertaken lightly. They returned by way
of Scotland, landing at Greenock, visited Oban and the Trossachs, and
of course Minto, and by October were back again at Pembroke Lodge. Next
month they received a visit from the exiled Louis-Philippe, who, with
his family, was spending some weeks at the Star and Garter, Richmond;
he gave them an account of his “chute,” apparently quite innocent of
the unconscious humour of such a narrative in the house of the Minister
he had been so proud of outwitting.
In July 1849 a third son was born, and in August Lady John was able
to carry out a project she had long had at heart. Both she and her
husband had from the first taken great interest in the affairs of the
inhabitants of Petersham, the little village at their gates. They
had been greatly concerned at the lack of means of education for the
children, and now succeeded in actually founding there a little school.
It had small beginnings; it was first held in a room in the village,
but in 1852 a proper building was erected. The school remained a great
interest to the Russells, and many a family birthday was celebrated
with a tea to the school-children under the cedar on the lawn, followed
by dancing.
At the opening of the new session Lady John was in London, greatly
dissatisfied as she always was when she found her time filled with
visiting and parties and general entertaining, yet recognising that
her troubles, such as they were, were the result of many blessings.
But compensation came in the shape of an autumn visit to Minto and a
Christmas at Woburn, where her boy joined in the amateur theatricals,
speaking, in the character of a page, the epilogue to the play
performed.
The autumn session of 1851 was spent in Wales. The next year Lord John
was out of office. From February to December 1852 the Tories were in
power under Lord Derby. The Whigs came back again under Lord Aberdeen,
and for a short time (Dec. 1852-Feb. 1853) Lord John was at the Foreign
Office.
The year 1853 was marked by various domestic events. Lady John’s
daughter, Mary Agatha, was born in March. In May Lord John’s stepson,
Lord Ribblesdale, was married to Miss Mure of Caldwell; and in June his
step-daughter, Isabel, married Mr. Warburton. In July occurred the
death of Lady Minto, Lady John’s mother. During these months the world
of politics had been going its way. In April both husband and wife
expressed their delight in Gladstone’s budget, and it seemed that after
the excursions and alarms of 1851 and 1852 there was a chance of things
going quietly and prosperously. But by the autumn the circumstances
that led to the Crimean War became acute, and a holiday in Scotland was
suddenly broken up by the necessity for Lord John’s presence in London,
where his wife joined him in October.
In the session of 1854 Lord John Russell found himself obliged to
withdraw his Reform Bill. Lady John’s letters well show her feeling
towards political life, and form indeed a comment on the dangers and
difficulties of that career for sincere and disinterested persons.
Official friends made it their business to go to see her and to lay
before her all the arguments for dropping the Bill, so that she might
repeat them to her husband. She was assured that her husband had such
a quantity of spare character that it could bear a little damaging.
Her notion was that many members were afraid of losing their seats by
dissolution, and many others hated any sort of Reform Bill and were
glad of an excuse to stifle it. She almost despaired of her country,
and wondered how she could prevent her boys growing up cowardly and
selfish. But she listened to all, and said nothing, “because there is
not time to begin at the first rudiments of morality, and there would
be no use in anything higher up.” Another time she wrote: “Politics
have never yet been what they ought to be: men who would do nothing
mean themselves do not punish meanness in others when it can serve
their party or their country, and excuse their connivance on that
ground.”
When Lord John resigned office in 1855, after his mission as British
Plenipotentiary at the Vienna Conference, his wife disapproved his
action of writing to Lord Aberdeen, instead of announcing his intention
in the usual way at a meeting of the Cabinet. She did her best to
persuade him, if he would not do that, at least to tell some of his
colleagues before writing to Lord Aberdeen, but without avail.
For four years now Lord John was out of office, and his wife was
therefore less burdened with anxieties and irksome duties. The autumn
and winter of 1856-57 were spent on the Continent. A visit was paid
to Lady John’s sister, Lady Mary Abercromby, at The Hague, where her
husband was British Minister. They went on to Switzerland, settling
in a villa near Lausanne. At the end of September they crossed the
Simplon, and after a few days’ halt at Turin, where they made the
personal acquaintance of Cavour, proceeded to Florence and took up
their residence for the winter in the Villa Capponi outside the Porta
San Gallo. It was Lady John’s first visit to Florence, and it can
readily be imagined that she quickly fell under its charm. Besides
the natural beauty of the situation of the city of flowers and its
wonderful buildings and art treasures, Lady John thoroughly enjoyed the
society there, finding in it more cordiality and ease than in London.
There were dancing and amateur theatricals for the young people, and
for their parents intercourse with the men who were working for Italy’s
independence, men who would “greatly dare and greatlier persevere,” and
who became welcome guests at Pembroke Lodge when they visited England.
It is beyond the scope of this little sketch to describe the large
part played by Lord John Russell in the making of Italy, but it is
quite certain that his wife’s enthusiasm in the cause infected him,
and urged him to action. Although Lady John was not inspired to write
a “Casa Guidi (or rather a Villa Capponi) Windows” her championship
of the cause of Italian liberty was as warm as that of Mrs. Browning
or of Swinburne, and it has been told before, how in 1859, when Lord
John was Foreign Secretary under Palmerston, the finishing stroke that
gave Italy her independence was really due to Lady John’s agency.
Lord John understood through Cavour that Garibaldi would only retard
matters if he followed up his success in Sicily by landing in Naples.
As a matter of fact this was not so, Cavour being anxious for matters
to come to a head without delay. Lacaita, an Italian politician who
had become naturalised in England in 1855, was asked by Cavour to
tell Lord John the true state of affairs so that he might use his
influence with France that Garibaldi’s expedition should go forward.
Lacaita immediately called on Lord John, and found him engaged with
the French and Neapolitan ambassadors and unable to see him at the
moment. He then insisted on seeing Lady John, who was ill in bed, told
her his business, and she sent down a little pencilled note to her
husband asking him to come to her at once. He arrived at her bedside
immediately, in a great state of alarm, thinking she had suddenly
become worse. And so England did nothing to hinder Garibaldi, and
Victor Emmanuel was saluted as King of Italy in October 1860.
In 1861 Lord John accepted a peerage. He was sixty-nine years of age
and had been forty-seven years in the House of Commons. He took the
title of Earl Russell, as he desired to retain the name by which he had
been so long known. In the spring of 1864 Garibaldi lunched at Pembroke
Lodge. It was a lovely sunny day, Richmond was _en fête_, the Park
full of people, and the approach to Pembroke Lodge was lined by the
school-children waving flags and cheering. Lady Russell recorded in her
diary that they had much interesting conversation with him, and that
there was simple dignity in every word he uttered.
On Palmerston’s death in 1865 Earl Russell once again became Prime
Minister. In June 1866 the Ministry were defeated, Russell resigned
and was never again in office. The autumn and winter (1866-67) were
spent in Italy. While in Venice the Russells witnessed the entry of
Victor Emmanuel by water as the King of all Italy, and felt the thrill
that went through thousands and thousands of Italian hearts as the
Sovereign passed before them in his gondola.
The next years passed calmly and pleasantly. From October 1869 to
April 1870 the Russells took the Villa Garbarino at San Remo, enjoying
the quiet life, the beautiful scenery, the delightful climate, and
the pleasant society of English friends staying there or merely
passing through, and of some of the Italian residents. Strangely
enough their landlord, the Marchese Garbarino, was a great patriot,
and had decorated his drawing-room ceiling with portraits of Cavour,
Garibaldi, Mazzini, and Lord John Russell. Among their visitors were
the Crown Princess of Prussia and Princess Louis of Hesse. Lady John
was delighted with their informal ways; she found them as merry and as
simple as if they had had no royalty about them, and she was especially
struck with their wide liberal opinions on education.
On their way back Lord and Lady Russell halted at Paris and stayed
ten days at the English Embassy. They dined at the Tuileries with the
Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Eugénie. At the dinner the Emperor
told his guests of a riddle he had asked the Empress: “Quelle est
la différence entre toi et un miroir?” She replied that she did not
know. “Le miroir réfléchit; tu ne réfléchis pas,” explained Napoleon
with more wit than politeness. But his Consort retorted, “Et quelle
est la différence entre _toi_ et un miroir?” The Emperor could not
tell. “Le miroir est poli, et tu ne l’es pas,” was the witty answer
to that riddle. In the course of their visit the Russells met many
distinguished persons.
On her return to England and English society, Lady Russell was struck
with the superiority of its best to that of other nations, but at the
same time she found that there was in all classes in this country a
larger proportion of vulgarity--ostentatious, aristocratic, and coarse.
She was much disturbed by the Franco-German War; considered France was
in the wrong at first, but that both France and Germany were in the
wrong after Sedan, when peace ought to have been made. She hated war,
and looked forward to a day, scarcely closer now than it was in 1870,
when an arsenal would be an object of curiosity, and people would thank
God that they did not live in an age “when sovereigns and rulers could
command man to destroy his brother-man.”
The autumn was spent in Switzerland and the winter at Cannes. Lord
Russell was beginning to fail. He had no special complaint, no pain or
chronic ailment, but old age was visibly weakening both body and mind.
He was able (in 1872) to go down to the House of Lords for an important
debate, and to give the Presidential address to the Historical Society,
but writing, walking, reading, talking easily tired him. Until his
death on 28th May 1878, Lady Russell’s time was chiefly occupied in
tending him. And these last years were filled with sorrows. Besides
having to look on at the decay of her husband’s mental and physical
powers, she had to mourn in 1874 the death of her daughter-in-law, Lady
Amberley, and her little daughter. The summer of that year was spent at
Tennyson’s house at Aldworth, near Haslemere, placed at their disposal
by the poet. In January 1876 Lord Amberley died at the early age of
thirty-three, and his two sons came to live permanently at Pembroke
Lodge with their grandparents. On all these sad occasions Queen
Victoria wrote touching letters of condolence to Lady Russell. On 28th
May 1878, after thirty-seven years of happy married life, Lord Russell
died. Burial in the Abbey was offered, but, in accordance with his
wish, he was buried in the family vault at Chenies, where his first
wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, and his granddaughter were already
laid.
Lady Russell survived her husband for twenty years, but the “golden
joys of perfect companionship which made the hours fly” when they
were together were over. Yet in the children who remained to her she
found consolation, and in the care of her grandchildren she had the
occupation and interests that exactly suited her. The Queen permitted
her to remain at Pembroke Lodge, the home that had seen her joys and
sorrows and hopes, the chances and changes of her life, and that was
bound up with innumerable memories, so that she was still able to look
after the school at Petersham. Some verses written in February 1879, on
the occasion of her stepdaughter Georgiana’s[23] birthday, from which I
may quote a few lines, sufficiently indicate the state of her mind:
“Hushed now is the music! and hushed be my weeping
For days that return not and light that hath fled.
No more from their rest may I summon the sleeping,
Or linger to gaze on the years that are dead.
Fadeth my dream--and my day is declining,
But love lifts the gloamin’ and smooths the rough way.”