Lady John Russell - Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
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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 attitude 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
noble-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 passages 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
passages 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 assume 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 passed 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 passing 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
passed 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 illustrate her deep and noble 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 noble 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 gratitude to God for her noble 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 nobility of soul, and
her benefactions.
I do not presume to speak of that beauty of nature which Frances
Countess Russell showed in the sanctity 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 title 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 circumstances, 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 passed 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 noble
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 surpassed 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, _noblesse
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 assuredly 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 passing 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 nobler world and of a higher truth.
Yes! she has passed into a nobler 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
noble 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 fortiter_, "with all the gentleness
of a woman and all the fortitude of a man."
INDEX
Abbotsford
Abercromby, Lady Mary (_see also_ Dunfermline, Lady)--
Marriage
letters from Lady John Russell
letters from Lady Minto
correspondence with Lord John Russell
letter from Lord Minto
visit of Lady John Russell
_mentioned_ in the letters
Abercromby, Mr. Ralph, afterwards Lord Dunfermline
Minister at the Hague
Aberdeen, Lord--
The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill
consents to form a Ministry
and Lord John Russell
and the Eastern Question
and Reform
Lord John's resignation
Lord John's appreciation of
resignation
Abergeldie Castle
Acton, Lord, "Historical Essays and Studies"
Adams, Mr.
Adelaide, queen of William IV
Admiralty, the,
Lord Minto at
Mrs. Drummond's description
"Adullamites," the
Affirmation Bill, Gladstone's
_Alabama_, case of the
Albert Hall, foundation stone laid
Albert, Prince Consort--
and Lord John
Prussian sympathies
visit to Pembroke Lodge
and Italy
at Coburg
death
"Trent" affair
"Life of Prince Albert,"
_otherwise mentioned_
Aldworth
Allen, Grant, "Science in Arcady"
Althorp, Lord
and the Irish Coercion Bill
Amberley, Lady
death of
Amberley, Lord, _see also_ Russell, John--
Engagement
defeated at Leeds
returned for Nottingham
maiden speech
defeat in 1868
letters from Lady Russell
death of
_otherwise mentioned_
American Civil War, the--
England's position
seizure of the Southern Commissioners
Lord Russell's speech on
feeling in England
Anderson, Dr., of Richmond
Anti-Corn Law League bazaar at Manchester
Armenian refugees at Pembroke Lodge
_Arrow_, the, coasting vessel
Athanasian Creed, the
Aumale, Duc d'
Austen, Jane
"Emma,"
Austria--
Influence in Germany
unpopularity of the Government
and Denmark
Palmerston's policy towards
Conference of Vienna
proposals of, and resignation of Lord John Russell
and Italy
after Solferino
Peace of Villafranca
and the proposed Congress at Zurich
Prussian war on
cession of Venetia
cause of the Franco-German War
Azeglio, Marquis d', Piedmontese Minister
Balmoral
Lord John Russell at
Baring, Mr., Chancellor of the Exchequer
tariff proposals
Beaumont, Lord
Bedford, (6th) Duke of
Bedford, (7th) Duke of,
letters from Lord Russell
visit of Lord and Lady John Russell
on the attacks on Lord John
letter from Lady John
death
Bedford, (9th) Duke of
Bennett, Rev. W.J.E., of St. Paul's
Berlin, Lord Minto appointed Minister
Bernard, Dr., acquitted
Bernstorff, Count
Berrys, the Miss
Bessborough, Lord, Irish opinions
on the Coercion Bill
Birmingham,
enfranchisement
bombs manufactured in
Bismarck, Count--
In Berlin
and Palmerston
declares war on Austria
the Franco-German War
Blyth, Miss Lilian [Mrs. Wilfred Praeger]
letter from Lady Russell
Blyth, Rev. F.C.
Bognor, news of Reform at
Boileau, Mr., letters to Lady Melgund
Bonaparte, Louis
Bourbons, the
Napoleon's questions concerning
Bowhill
Bowood, Lady John Russell at
Bowring, Sir John, cause of the war with China
Bradlaugh
Braico, Dr. Cesare
Brazil, Emperor of, at Pembroke Lodge
Bright, John--
Defeat of
at Chesham Place
speeches
and Reform
letter to Lady Russell
_otherwise mentioned_
British and Foreign School Society
Broadstairs, visit of the Russells
Brooke, Rev. A. Stopford,
letter to Lady Agatha Russell
Brooks's,
news of Lord John's acceptance of the Colonial Seals
Brougham, Lord--
and Lord Melbourne's dismissal
and the Corn Law
and William IV
Browning, Robert
Brunow, Baron, Russian ambassador
Bryant, W.C.
Bryce, Mr. James, letter to Lady Agatha Russell
Brydone, Mrs., death
Buccleuch, Duke of
lends Bowhill to Lord John
on Disraeli
Buehler, Miss
letters from Lady Russell
Buller, Charles
Buol, Count, Austrian Minister
Burdett, Sir Francis, and Lord John Russell
Burnet, Bishop
Burns, Robert
Byron, Lady
Byron, Lord
"Giaour,"
"Childe Harold," _quoted_