*****
Cannes April 10, 1880
There is nothing to regret. Your brother has held a conspicuous place[[15]] in the most wonderful election contest of this century. He has held it in a manner which will never be forgotten in his lifetime, and which will do as much for him as victory; and the picture of the young untried son bursting into sudden popularity and turning men's thoughts from the absorbing exploits of his father adds an affecting domestic feature to that great biography. That meeting at Hawarden, after such a revolution and such a growth, is a thing I cannot think of without emotion.
So I cannot offer you anything sincere, except congratulation. We know now, indeed, that the British Democracy is neither Liberal nor Conservative in its permanent convictions, and therefore the party triumph is not as altogether satisfactory and secure as it should be. But the individual triumph, the homage rendered to a single name, could not be greater; and there could not be a fuller atonement for the desertion of 1874, than a success so personal as to convey dictatorial authority, apart from party merits and combinations.
Your idea has this advantage, that one must strike when the iron is hot, and it is now at white heat, and our legislative measures, even though they involve an early dissolution, ought to be begun soon. What I should fear most would be that, content with the intense reality of power, Mr. Gladstone should repeat the unhappy declarations of five years since in a way that would commit him for all future time; absolute abdication would be a misfortune all round, and the Conservative reaction would soon set in. But if an eventual return to power is not absolutely excluded, if no word is said of what might happen under certain contingencies, then we should still feel that we have an invincible reserve force, that, when our first line is broken, we can proclaim the Jehad and unfurl the green flag of the Prophet. For the patchwork settlement of 1875 depends on the life of a man who is several years older than your father,[[16]] who is a duke, and who has a deplorable habit of falling asleep early in the afternoon. But I only express this premature fear in view of circumstances which I am sure every influence in the country, except, perhaps, the influence of Windsor, will be strained to avert.
Your description of Lowe's generous and feeling sympathy is really touching. How little I thought, fourteen years ago,[[17]] when he was the hardest hitter your father had to meet, and when your father said he might well shrink from crossing swords with such a man, that he would close his active life as your brother's sponsor before vast constituencies, or that we should come to think of him listening with tears in his eyes to your brother's speeches, and muttering the words you tell.
Please tell Herbert that I have followed his proceedings as carefully as one could at a distance, that I don't think much of his defeat, that, in short, I go halves with Lowe.[[18]]
I see that your sister made her way into the fray. I trust all the worry and toil was not too much for Mrs. Gladstone.
We are ending the season here, not as far out of the world as you would suppose; for I just saw your neighbour Westminster, and here are Argyll, Cardwell, and Goldsmid.
If Disraeli waits to meet Parliament, and to fall in the daylight, I may hope to have an opportunity of expressing to you myself all my sense of the meaning of the victory, and my want of sympathy for you in your defeat.[[19]]