Lady John Russell Part 45

The American States have now long been absolutely reunited; there is no difference of opinion whatever in this country with regard to the question of slavery, and yet it is quite certain that during the American Civil War a large number of conscientious, humane, and educated Englishmen were firmly convinced that the American Republic was about to break in two, and that the sympathies of England ought to go with the rebelling Southern States. It is well, therefore, that we should all be reminded of Lord Russell's att.i.tude on these subjects.

I had much to tell Lady Russell of the various impressions made on me during my wanderings through the States, and by the distinguished American authors, statesmen, soldiers--Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, General Grant, General Sherman.

With the public career of each of these men Lady Russell was thoroughly acquainted, but she was much interested in hearing all that I could tell her about their ways of life and their personal habits and characteristics.

Then there were, of course, political questions at home concerning which there was deep sympathy between Lady Russell and me, and on which we had many long conversations. She had the most intense and enlightened sympathy with the great movements going on in these countries for the spread of political equality and of popular education.

Every statesman who sincerely and actively supported the principles and measures tending towards these ends was regarded as a friend by this n.o.ble-hearted woman.

I had been for many years a leader-writer and more recently editor of the _Morning Star_, the London daily newspaper which advocated the views of Cobden and Bright, and I had more recently still been elected to the House of Commons as a member of the Irish Nationalist Party, and thus again I found myself in thorough sympathy with the opinions and the feelings of my hostess.

Lady Russell had long been an advocate of that truly Liberal policy towards Ireland which is now accepted as the only principle by all really enlightened Liberal English men and women; and she thoroughly understood the condition, the grievances, the needs, and the aspirations of Ireland.

The readers of this volume will see in some pa.s.sages extracted from Lady Russell's diaries and letters how deep and strong were her feelings on the subject. She followed with the most intense interest and with the most penetrating observation the whole movement of Ireland's national struggle down to the very close of her life. Her letters on this question alone--letters addressed to me--would in themselves serve to illumine even now the minds of many English readers on this whole subject. Lady Russell was in no sense a partisan on any political question--I mean she never gave her approval to everything said or done by the leaders of any political party merely because the one main object of that party had her full sympathy and approval. Reading over many of her letters to me on various pa.s.sages of the Home Rule agitation inside and outside Parliament, I have been once again filled with admiration and with wonder at the keen sagacity, the prophetic instinct, which she displayed with regard to this or that political movement or political man.

All through these letters it becomes more and more manifest that Lady Russell's devotedness was in every instance to principle rather than to party, to measures rather than to men. By these words I do not mean to convey the idea that her nature led her habitually into any cold and over-calculating criticism of political leaders whom she admired, and in whom she had been led to feel confidence.

Her generous nature was enthusiastic in its admiration of the men whose leadership in some great political movement had won her sympathy from the first; but even with these her admiration was overruled and kept in order by her devotion to the principles which they were undertaking to carry into effect, and by the fidelity with which they adhered to these principles.

Even among intelligent and enlightened men and women we often find in our observation of public affairs that there are instances in which the followers of a trusted leader are carried away by their personal devotion into the championship of absolute errors which the leader is committing--errors that might prove perilous or even, for the time, fatal to the cause of which he is the recognised advocate.

Lady Russell always set the cause above the man, regarding him mainly as the instrument of the cause; and if the alternative were pressed upon her, would have withdrawn from his leadership rather than tacitly allow the cause to be misled. This, however, would have been done only as a last resort and after the most full, patient, and generous consideration of the personal as well as the public question.

We men do not expect to find in an enthusiastic, tender, and what may be called exquisitely feminine woman the quality of clear and guiding discrimination between the policy of the leader and the principles of the cause which he undertakes to lead. We are inclined to a.s.sume that the woman in such a case, if she has already made a hero of the man, will be apt to think that everything he proposes to do must be the right thing to do, and that any question raised as to the wisdom and justice of any course adopted by him is a treason against his leadership.

Lady Russell never seemed to me to yield for a moment to any such sentiment of mere hero-worship. She set, as I have said, the cause above the man, and she measured the man according to her interpretation of his policy towards the cause.

But at the same time she was never one of those who cannot be convinced that some particular course is not the wisest and most just to adopt without at once rushing to the conclusion that the leader who makes any mistakes must be in the wrong because of wilfulness or mere incapacity, and is therefore not worthy any longer of admiration and trust.

I have many letters from her, written at the time of some serious crisis in the fortunes of the Irish National movement, which show the keenest and the earliest intelligence of some mistake in the policy of the party on this or that immediate question without showing the slightest inclination to diminish her confidence in the sincerity and the purposes of its leaders, any more than in the justice of the cause. I can well recollect that in many instances she proved to be absolutely in the right when she thus gave me her opinion, and that events afterwards fully maintained the wisdom and the justice of her criticism. The reason why so many of Lady Russell's opinions were conveyed to me by letter was that I had to be, like all my companions of the Irish Parliamentary Party, a constant attendant at the debates in the House of Commons, and that many days often pa.s.sed without my having an opportunity to visit Lady Russell and converse with her on the subjects which had so deep an interest for her as well as for me. I therefore was in the habit of writing often to her from the House of Commons in order to give her my own ideas as to the significance and importance of this or that debate, of this or that speech and its probable effect on the House and on the outer public. Lady Russell never failed to favour me with her own views on such subjects, and the views were always her own, and were never a mere good-natured and friendly adoption of the opinions thus offered to her.

Then, when I had the opportunity of visiting her at Pembroke Lodge, we were sure to compare and discuss our views in the conversations which she made so delightful and so inspiring.

One of her marvellous qualities was that her interest and her intellect were never wholly absorbed in the pa.s.sing political questions, but that she could still keep her mind open to other and entirely different subjects.

The chamber of her mind seemed to me to be like one of those mysterious apartments about which we read in fairy stories, which were endowed with a magical capacity of expansion and reception.

I have come to her home at a time when, for those whose lives were mainly pa.s.sed in political work, there was some subject then engaging the attention of all politicians in these countries--some subject in which I well knew that Lady Russell was deeply and thoroughly interested.

But it sometimes happened that there were friends just then with her who did not profess any interest in politics, and who were mainly concerned about some new topic in letters or art or science, and I often observed with admiration the manner in which Lady Russell could give herself up for the time to the question in which those visitors were chiefly interested, and could show her sympathy and knowledge as if she had not lately been thinking of anything else. About this there was evidently no mere desire to please her latest visitors, no sense of obligation to submit herself for the time to their especial subject, but a genuine sympathy with every effort of human intellect, and a sincere desire to gather all that could be gathered from every garden of human culture.

Many of Lady Russell's letters to me on the events and the fortunes, the hopes and the disasters of our Irish National movement have in them an actual historical interest, such as the one dated November 27, 1890, which is quoted in this volume. It was written during the crisis which came upon our Irish National party at the time when the hopes of Mr. Parnell's most devoted friends in England as well as in Ireland were that after the result of a recent divorce suit Parnell would resign, for a time at least, the leadership of the party and only seek to return to it when he should have made what reparation was in his power to his own honour and to public feeling. In a letter of December 26, 1891, Lady Russell says: "Your poor country has risen victorious from many a worse fall, and will not be disheartened now, nor bate a jot of heart or hope."

Lady Russell's letters not merely ill.u.s.trate her deep and n.o.ble sympathy with the cause and the hopes of Ireland, but also they are evidence of the clear judgment and foresight which were qualities at once of her intellect and of her feeling. Scattered throughout her letters to me are many other evidences of the same kind with regard to other great political and social questions then coming up at home or abroad. I wish to say, however, that her letters do not by any means occupy themselves only with political questions, with Parliamentary debates, and with legislative measures. To paraphrase the words of the great Latin poet, whatever men and women were doing in arts and letters, in social progress, and in all that concerns humanity, supplied congenial subjects for the letters written by this most gifted, most observant, most intellectual woman to her friends.

One certainly has not lived in vain who has had the honour of being admitted to that friendship for some twenty years.

I have no words, literally none, in which to express adequately the admiration and the affection and the devotion which I felt for Lady Russell. No higher type of womanhood has yet been born into our modern world.

Lady Agatha Russell is rendering a most valuable service to humanity in preparing and giving to the world the records of her mother's life which appear in this volume. A monument more appropriate and more n.o.ble could not be raised over any grave than that which the daughter is thus raising to the memory of her mother.

APPENDIX

MEMORIAL ADDRESS

BY FREDERIC HARRISON

After Lady Russell's death a few friends decided--unknown to her family, who were touched by this mark of respect--to put up a tablet to her memory and hold a Memorial Service in the Free Church at Richmond, Surrey. The tablet, which is of beaten copper, beautifully worked, bears the following inscription:--

In memory of Frances Anna Maria, daughter of Gilbert, second Earl of Minto, and widow of Lord John Russell, who was born November 15, 1815, and died January 17, 1898. In grat.i.tude to G.o.d for her n.o.ble life this tablet is placed by her fellow-worshippers.

The Memorial Service was held on July 14, 1900, when the tablet was unveiled and the following address was delivered by Mr. Frederic Harrison.

Now that our gathering of to-day has given full scope to the loving sorrow and filial piety of the children, descendants, and family of her whom we meet to commemorate and honour--now that the minister, whom she was accustomed to hear, and the worshippers, with whom she was wont to join in praise and prayer, have recorded their solemn union in the same sacred memory, I crave leave to offer my humble tribute of devotion as representing the general circle of her friends, and the far wider circle of the public to whom she was known only by her life, her character, her n.o.bility of soul, and her benefactions.

I do not presume to speak of that beauty of nature which Frances Countess Russell showed in the sanct.i.ty of the family, in the close intimacy of her private friends. Others have done this far more truly, and will continue to bear witness to her life whilst this generation and the next shall survive. My only t.i.tle to join my voice to-day with that of her children and of this congregation resides in the fact that my memory of her goes back over so long a period; that I have known her under circ.u.mstances, first, of the highest public activity, and then again, in a time of severe retirement and private simplicity; that I have seen her in days of happiness and in days of mourning; at the height of her influence and dignity in the eyes of our nation and of the nations about us, as well as in her days of grief and disappointment at the failure of her hopes, and the break up of the causes she had at heart. And I have known her always, in light or in gloom, in joy or in misery, the same brave, fearless, natural, and true heart--come fair or foul, come triumph or defeat.

Yes! it was my privilege to have known Lady Russell in the lifetime of the eminent statesman whose name she bore, and whose life of toil in the public service she inspired; I knew them five-and-thirty years ago, when he was at the head of the State Government and immersed in public cares. And I am one of those who can bear witness to the simple dignity with which she adorned that high station and office, and the beautiful affection and quiet peace of the home-life she maintained, like a Roman matron, when her husband was called to serve the State. And it so happened that I pa.s.sed part of the last summer that she lived to see, here in Richmond, within a short walk of her house. There I saw her constantly and held many conversations with her upon public affairs; and perhaps those were amongst the last occasions on which her powerful sense and heroic spirit had full play before the fatal illness which supervened in that very autumn.

I do not hesitate to speak of her powerful sense and her heroic spirit, for she united the statesman-like insight into political problems with the unflinching courage to stand by the cause of truth, humanity, and justice. She was not impulsive at all, not hasty in forming her decisions, still less did she seek publicity or take pleasure in heading a movement. But, with the great experience of politicians and of political things which in her long life and her rare opportunities she had acquired, she saw straight to the heart of so many vexed problems of our day; and when once convinced of the truth, she held fast to it with a n.o.ble intrepidity of soul. In a life more or less conversant with public men now for forty years past, I have rarely known either man or woman who had a more sound judgment in great public questions. And I have known none who surpa.s.sed her in courage, in directness, and in fixity of purpose. No sense that she and her friends had to meet overwhelming odds would ever make her faint-hearted. No desertion by friends and old comrades ever caused her to waver. No despair ever touched that stalwart soul, however dark the outlook might appear; for it was her faith that no right or just cause was ever really lost, however for the time it were defeated and contemned.

Lady Frances Elliot, as she was before marriage, came of a race of soldiers, governors, and tried servants of the State, and she married into a race which has long stood in the front rank of the historic servants of the Crown and of the people. But neither the house of Elliot nor that of Russell in so many generations ever bred man or woman with a keener sense of public duty, a more generous nature, and a more magnanimous soul. In the annals of that famous house, whose traditions are part of the history of England, there has been no finer example of the old motto, _n.o.blesse oblige_, if we understand it to mean--those who have high place inherit with it heavy responsibilities. That idea was the breath of her life to Countess Russell, as a.s.suredly it was also to her husband, and she whose memory we keep sacred to-day is worthy to take her place beside that Rachel Lady Russell of old, who, more than two centuries ago, suffered so deeply in the cause of freedom and of conscience; she whose blood runs in the veins of the children who to-day revere the memory of their mother.

The Italians call a man of heroic nature--a Garibaldi or a Manin--_uomo antico_--"one of the ancient type"--one whom we rarely see in our modern days of getting on in the world and following the popular cry. I have never heard the phrase applied to a lady, and, perhaps, _donna antica_ might be held to bear a double sense. But we need some such phrase to describe the fine quality of the spirit which lit up the whole nature of Frances Countess Russell. She had within her that rare flame which we attribute to the martyrs of our sacred and secular histories--that power of inspiring those whom she impressed with the resolve to do the right, to seek the truth, to defend the oppressed, at all cost, and against all odds.

It has been my privilege to have listened to many men and to some women who in various countries and in different causes have been held to have exerted great influence, and to have forced ideas, principles, and reforms on the men of their time. But I have listened to none in our country or abroad who seemed to me to inspire the spirit more purely with the desire to hold fast by the right, to thrust aside the wrong, to be just, faithful, considerate, and honourable, to feel for the fatherless and the poor, and not to despise the humble and the meek. I know that all my remaining term of life there will remain deeply engraven on my memory all that she said, all that she felt, in the last conversation I ever held with her at the very commencement of her last fatal illness. Weak and suffering as she was, unable to rise from her invalid chair, she asked me to come and tell her what I knew, and to hear what she felt about the public crisis of that time (I speak of the end of 1897). The storm of South Africa was even then rising like a cloud no bigger than a man's hand out of the southern seas. I listened to her: and her deep and thrilling words of indignation, shame, pity, and honour sank into my mind, as if they had been the last words of some pure and higher spirit that was about to leave us, but would not leave us without words of warning and exhortation to follow honour, to serve truth, to eschew evil and to do good, to seek peace and ensue it. I knew well that I was listening to her for the last time; for her life was visibly ebbing away. But I listened to her as to one who was pa.s.sing into a world of greater permanence and of more spiritual meaning than our fleeting and too material world of sense and sight. And for the rest of my life I shall continue to bear in my heart this message as it seemed to me of a n.o.bler world and of a higher truth.

Yes! she has pa.s.sed into a n.o.bler world and to a higher truth--the world of the good and just men and women whose memory survives their mortal career, and whose inspiring influence works for good ever in generations to come. In this Free Church I can speak freely, for I too profoundly believe in a future life of every good and pure soul beyond the grave, in the perpetuity of every just and n.o.ble life in the sum of human progress and enlightenment. And in a sense that is quite as real as yours, even if it differ from your sense in form, I also make bold to say, this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality--Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of Humanity, for as much as ye know that your labour is not in vain in Humanity.

Surely we have before us a high example of what it is to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in good work, in the memory of Frances Elliot Countess Russell, who united in herself principles typified in the historic mottoes of her own house and that of her husband's--who kept her high courage under all adversities and opposition, in the spirit of _che sara sara_, "stand fast come what may"--in the spirit of that other motto of the Elliots, _suaviter el fort.i.ter_, "with all the gentleness of a woman and all the fort.i.tude of a man."