Lady John Russell Part 14

In the spring of this year, 1847, the Queen offered Pembroke Lodge to the Prime Minister. He accepted with thankfulness, and throughout life both he and Lady John felt deep grat.i.tude to the Queen for their beautiful home.

Pembroke Lodge is a long, low, irregular white house on the edge of the high ground which forms the western limit of Richmond Park. Added to and altered many times, it has no unity of plan, but it has kept a character of its own, an air of cheerful seclusion and homely eighteenth-century dignity. On the eastern side it is screened from the road by shrubs and trees; on the other side, standing as it does upon the top of the steep, wooded ridge above the Thames Valley, its windows overlook a thousand fields, through which the placid river winds, now flowing between flat open banks, now past groups of trees, or by gardens where here and there the corner of an old brick house shows among cedars. The grounds are long rather than wide, and comprise the slope towards the valley and the stretch along the summit of the ridge, where beech, oak, and chestnut shade with their green and solemn presences a garden of shorn turf and border flowers.

Walking beneath them, you see between their stems part of some slow-sailing cloud or glimpses of the distant plain; as you descend, the gardens, village, and river near below. There is a peculiar charm in these steep woods, where the tops of some trees are level with the eye, while the branches of others are overhead. As the paths go down the slope they lose their garden-like trimness among bracken and brambles. An oak fence separates the grounds of Pembroke Lodge from the surrounding park.

It was indeed a perfect home for a statesman. When wearied or troubled with political cares and anxieties, the fresh breezes, the natural beauties, and the peace of Pembroke Lodge often helped to bring calm and repose to his mind. What better prospect can his windows command than the valley of the Thames from Richmond Hill, the view Argyll showed Jeanie Deans, which drew from her the admission "it was braw rich feeding for the cows," though she herself would as soon have been looking at "the craigs of Arthur's Seat and the sea coming ayont them, as at a' that muckle trees." Certainly no home was ever more appreciated and loved than Pembroke Lodge, both by Lord and Lady John Russell and their children. Long afterwards Lady John wrote:

In March, 1847, the Queen offered him Pembroke Lodge for life, a deed for which we have been yearly and daily more grateful. He and I were convinced that it added years to his life, and the happiness it has given us all cannot be measured. I think it was a year or two before the Queen offered us Pembroke Lodge that we came down for a few days for a change of air for some of the children to the Star and Garter. John and I, in one of our strolls in the park, sat under a big oak-tree while the children played round us. We were at that time often in perplexity about a country home for the summer and autumn, to which we could send them before we ourselves could leave London.... From our bench under the oak we looked into the grounds of Pembroke Lodge, and we said to one another that would be the place for us. When it became ours indeed we often thought of this, and the oak has ever since been called the "Wishing Tree."

[31] ... From the time that Pembroke Lodge became ours we used only to keep the children in town from the meeting of Parliament till Easter, and settle the younger ones at Pembroke Lodge, and we ourselves slept there Wednesdays, Sat.u.r.days, and Sundays with as much regularity as other engagements allowed. This obliged us to give up most dinner engagements in London, and we regretted the consequent loss of society. At the same time he always felt the need of those evenings and mornings of rest and change and country air (besides those welcome and blessed Sundays) after Parliamentary and official toil, rather than of heated and crowded rooms and late hours; and he had the happy power of throwing off public cares and giving his whole heart to the enjoyment of his strolls in the garden, walks and rides in the park, and the little interests of the children. [32]

[31] When Pembroke Lodge was offered to them they remembered--with surprise and delight at its fulfilment--the wish of that day, known to themselves alone.

[32] Appendix at end of chapter.

The short Whitsuntide holiday was spent in settling in at Pembroke Lodge.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _October_ 29, 1847

... You would not wonder so much at his [Lord John's] silence lately, if you knew what n.o.body but English Ministers' wives _can_ know or conceive, how incessantly either his mind or body or both have been at work on financial affairs.

He has gone to town every morning early, Sunday included; worked hard the whole day in Downing Street, writing long letters and seeing one man and one deputation after another, on these most difficult and most hara.s.sing subjects--only returning here for tea, and with no time for any other correspondence but that between tea and bed, when a little rest and amus.e.m.e.nt is almost necessary for him--then waking in the night to think of bullion and Exchequer Bills till time to get up. Now this great anxiety is partly over; for when once he has taken a resolution, after all the reflection and consideration he can give to a subject, he feels that he has done his best, and awaits its success or failure with comparative ease of mind.

The difficulties of this Ministry have been briefly stated at the close of the last chapter; working with a precarious majority, they had to cope with starvation and revolt in Ireland, Chartism in England, and disturbances abroad.

In December, 1847, they pa.s.sed their Irish Coercion Bill. [33] The pa.s.sing of this Bill was one of the few occasions on which Lady John could not convince herself that her husband's policy was the wisest one.

[33] "The state of Ireland was chaotic, and Lord Clarendon (Lord Lieutenant) was demanding a stringent measure of coercion. He did not get it.... The two Bills [Sir Robert Peel's in 1846 and the Bill of 1847] were so entirely different that to call them by a common name, though perhaps inevitable, is also inevitably misleading" ("History of Modern England,"

Herbert Paul, vol. i, chap. iv. See also Walpole's "Life of Lord John Russell," vol. i, chap, xvii.)

Subsequently, during the enforcement of the Act, the bitterness of the attacks upon her husband, who, she knew, wished Ireland well, and the sight of his anxiety, made her for a time less sympathetic with the Irish; but she did not, and could not, approve of the Government's action at the time.

Among Irishmen, a Government which had first opposed a Tory Coercion Bill, and when in power proposed one themselves, might well excite indignation.

Ireland was already in a state so miserable that the horrors of a civil war with a bare chance of better things beyond must have seemed well worth risking to her people, now the party which had hitherto befriended them had adopted the policy of their oppressors.

On February 26, 1848, the news that Louis Philippe had been deposed reached the House of Commons. "This is what would have happened here," said Sir Robert Peel, "if these gentlemen [pointing to the Protectionists] had had their way." The astonishment was great, and the fear increased that the Chartist movement and Irish troubles would lead to revolution at home.

The immediate cause of the revolution in France had been Louis Philippe's opposition to electoral reform; only one Frenchman in about a hundred and fifty possessed a vote under his reign. "Royalty having been packed off in a hackney coach," the mildest of Parisian mobs contented itself with smashing the King's bust, breaking furniture, and firing at the clock of the Tuileries that it might register permanently upon its face the propitious moment of his departure. He had embarked the next day for England, shaven and in green spectacles, and landed upon our sh.o.r.es under the modest pseudonym of "William Smith." England did not welcome him. His Spanish marriage intrigues had naturally not made him a favourite, and his enemy, Palmerston, was at the Foreign Office. Two days afterwards Louis Napoleon Bonaparte left England to pay his respects to the Provisional Government. "I hasten," he wrote in memorable words, "I hasten from exile to place myself under the flag of the Republic just proclaimed. Without other ambition than that of being useful to my country, I announce my arrival to the members of the Provisional Government, and a.s.sure them of my devotion to the cause which they represent." He was, however, courteously requested to withdraw from France, since the law banishing the Napoleon family had not yet been repealed, a circ.u.mstance which enabled him to return to England in time to enrol himself in the cause of law and order as a special constable at the Chartist meeting.

LONDON, _February_ 26, 1848

We and everybody much taken up with the startling and in some respects terrible events in France. The regency of the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans rejected by the Chambers, or rather by the Cote Gauche, and a republic proclaimed. Sad loss of life in Paris--the King and Queen fled to Eu--Guizot, it is said, to Brussels. We dined at the Palace, and found the Queen and Prince, the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent, Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Saxe Coburg, thinking of course of little else--and almost equally _of course_, full of nothing but indignation against the French nation and Guizot, nothing but pity for the King and Queen and royal family, and nothing but fears for the rest of Europe from the infection of such an example. I sat next the Duke of Coburg, who more particularly took this _cla.s.s_ view with very little reasoning and a great deal of declamation. Said he should not care if Guizot lost his head, and much in the same spirit. The Queen spoke with much good sense and good feeling, if not with perfect impartiality.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

LONDON, _March_ 3, 1848

How anxious you must be as to the effect which the extraordinary events in France will have upon Italy. They have been so rapid and unexpected that all power of reasoning upon them has been lost in wonder. Some pity must inevitably be felt for any man "fallen from his high estate"; but if, as I trust, the report of Louis Philippe's safety and arrival in England is true, his share of it will be as small as ever fell to the lot of a King in misfortune; for the opinion that he has deserved it is general. It is seldom that history gives so distinct a lesson of retribution. You know what London is in a ferment of exciting events, and can therefore pretty well imagine the constant succession of reports, true and false, from hour to hour, the unceasing cries of the newsmen with 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions of all the newspapers, the running about of friends to one another's houses, the continual crossing of notes in the streets, each asking the same questions, the hopes and fears and the conjectures one hears and utters during the course of the day, and the state of blank, weary stupidity to which one is reduced by the end of it. What _I_ mind most in it all is the immense additional anxiety and responsibility it brings upon my poor husband, who feels it even more than he would have done any other year from being still, I grieve to say, less strong and well owing to his influenza still hanging about him.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Minto_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _March_ 29, 1848

John returned to dinner, but some hours later than I expected him, which in times like these, when each hour may bring an account of a _new_ revolution _somewhere_, or worst of all, of a rebellion in Ireland, is a trial to a Minister's wife. However, the reason was simply that Prince Albert had detained him talking. ...

Of course we talked a great deal with our visitors of France, Italy, Germany, and Ireland; but happily, engrossing as these topics are, the bright sun and blue sky and shining river and opening leaves and birds and squirrels _would_ have their share of attention, and give some rest to our minds.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _March_ 31, 1848

The preparations for rebellion in Ireland are most alarming, and John's usually calm and _hopeful_ spirit more nearly fails him on that subject than any other. The speeches and writings of the Young Ireland leaders are so _extravagantly_ seditious, and so grossly false as to the behaviour of England generally, and the present Ministry in particular to Ireland, that I cannot but hope they may defeat their own objects.... Poor people, the more deeply one feels for the starving and dest.i.tute millions among them and admires their patience and resignation, and the more bitterly one resents the misgovernment under which the whole nation suffered for hundreds of years, the fruits of which we are now reaping, the less one can excuse those reckless ones who are now misleading them, who must and _do_ know that the present Ministers have not looked on with indifference and let famine and fever rage at will; that the subject of Ireland is _not_ one to which the Houses of Parliament never give a day's or an hour's thought, but that on the contrary, _her_ interests and happiness are daily and nightly the object of more intense anxiety and earnest endeavours on the part of her rulers than any portion of the Empire. We have had a week of such real spring with all its enjoyments, and to-day is so much finer and milder than ever, that the notion of streets and smoke and noise is odious. However, we have enough to go for, private and public. May G.o.d prosper the good cause of peace and freedom all over Europe.

The European revolutionary movement of 1848 did not prove serious in England. What actually took place was a mild ma.s.s meeting on Kennington Common, well kept within the bounds of decorum by an army of citizen police. In Ireland, a rough-and-tumble fight between Smith O'Brien's followers and the police was all that came of the dreaded rebellion. But before these events took place the future looked ominous, especially to those responsible for what might happen.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

_April_ 8, 1848

John had a late night in the House, and made two speeches on the unpleasant subjects of the Chartist meeting next Monday and Sir George Grey's "Security of the Crown" Bill; both of which ought to do good, from their mild and _whiggish_ tone, in spite of the sadly _un_-whiggish nature of the topics; the very, last to which one would wish a Whig Government to have to turn its attention. All minds are full of next Monday, and at this moment we have not a manservant in the house, as they are summoned to a meeting to learn their duties as special constables for that day. I find it difficult to be in the least frightened, and I trust I am right. The only thing I dread is being long without knowing what John is about, and as he would be equally unwilling to know nothing about me, in case of any march upon this house or any other disagreeable demonstration against the Prime Minister, we have arranged that I am to go to Downing Street with him in the morning and remain all day there, as that is the place he will most easily come to from the House of Commons. My spirits have been much lowered about the whole thing this morning, as Mr. Trevelyan has been here and persuaded John that it would be madness for me either to remain in this house or go to Downing Street, both of which would be _marks_ in case of a fight.

Mr. Trevelyan is very seriously alarmed, and talks of the effect the sound of the _cannon_ might have upon me, and has persuaded Lady Mary Wood to go to his house on Clapham Common. I do not yet know what the other Ministers' wives are going to do, but I _do_ know that I think Milton quite right in saying:

"The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks, Safest and seemliest by her husband bides."

However, I must do as I am bid, or at least I must do what makes _him_ easiest.

LONDON, _April_ 9, 1848

Hardly knew how much I had been thinking of to-morrow till I had to read aloud the prayers for Queen, country, and Parliament.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

DOWNING STREET, _Monday_, 3 _o'clock_

Well, here we are after all, Lady Grey, Lady Mary Wood, and I, with much easier minds than we have had for many days.

Everything has ended quietly; the meeting has dispersed at the persuasion of its leaders, who took fright. Fergus O'Connor especially has shown himself the most abject bl.u.s.terer, and came pale and haggard and almost crying to speak to Sir George Grey--and told him how anxious he was that all should come to a peaceable end.

It seems too good to be true, after the various alarming reports and conjectures. Of course there will still be _some_ anxiety until the night is well over, and till we see whether the Chartist spirit rises again after this failure. To begin at the beginning, I ought to tell you that hearing a great clattering at six this morning I got up, and looked out, and saw immense numbers of Lancers ride from the West into Belgrave Square, which they left to go to their destination somewhere about Portland Place, after performing many pretty manoeuvres which I did not understand. Many foot soldiers pa.s.sed by. I admired the sight, but silently prayed that their services might not be required. We packed the brougham full of mattresses and blankets, as it seemed likely that we should have to sleep here. Now we have little doubt of getting home.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

LONDON, _April_ 12, 1848