I don't know how to thank you for thinking of me at such a moment.[[35]] It was hard to bear being away just then, and you must have gone through a dreadful time. Even with the scraps of information that reach one here, I have been able to realise much of it. Almost the first consoling thing was the report of your escapade with Wolverton.
Every line of your letter is a monument of your goodness, even your disinclination to go into details. But I am afraid you must have been terribly knocked up—so soon, too, after your own illness, of which I will not speak now, but which, indeed, I was very sorry to hear of. And I do trust that Mrs. Gladstone was enabled to go through it all without excessive alarm or fatigue. She will not need words to be assured of all my sympathy. I am persuaded that your greatest pleasure, just now, comes from the expressive conduct of adversaries, not from the vain words of friends.
Our defeat in the Lords[[36]] opens a wide vista of difficulty and trouble—partly because it injures the Government, but not much, and will probably increase the ascendency of the P.M.; particularly because of the H. of Lords itself. Nobody will ever believe that such a majority was due to honest and disinterested motives. People will say, and will say truly, that an assembly which is moved by selfish and sordid motives, when there is a question of preventing ruin and starvation, is not only an injury to the poor, but a disgrace to the community, and there is no way out of it. Small majorities may give way or abstain; but after so determined a demonstration, repentance will be suicidal. And the one instance in modern times where the Lords have proved stronger than the Commons, because postponement here was prohibition, is a question of helping the poor who suffer, at a slight sacrifice and slighter danger to people immensely rich.
We are only beginning with questions of this kind. Did you hear the speech at the end of May in which Mr. Gladstone spoke of that class which is so numerous that it is virtually the entire nation? Graver words were never spoken in Parliament, for the entire land is virtually in the hands of another class. The considerations which this contrast, this contradiction suggests, have a mighty future before them, a future damaging to my boy's prospect of ever sitting on a red leather bench.
I am sorry we were not 52.[[37]] It would have been impressive, like the Doctrinaires of whom it was said: "Ils sont quatre; mais quand ils veulent imposer par le nombre, ils prétendent être cinq." Indeed, for all the reasons which Argyll repudiates, justifying my prophecy about him in the spirit, if not to the letter, there has been no measure for which I should be so anxious to vote. I wrote to Lord G.[[38]] to send me timely warning, as there was no trouble I would not take.
Having been to a doctor, without any idea that I was seriously out of order, I was sent here suddenly, and am forbidden, for reasons I must acknowledge, to move for some weeks to come. It could not have happened at a worse moment for me.
I was sorry for Frere, and should probably have allowed his daughter to come round me....
It is too kind of you to remember, after all that has passed over you and the nation, details of former letters. Unless there has been a change lately, there are two editors of the Economist, one for money matters and the other for politics. Maine will be proud and happy, and ought to be much obliged to me for supplying a topic for so pleasant a conversation. I wonder whether he showed you the luminous side of his mind, whether you saw why he always disagrees with me, and why some people are more afraid than fond of him. Whatever passes at the end of the Session, I do hope that a season of rest is included in our friend Dr. A. Clark's prescriptions. It might give me some remote chance of seeing you again.
That Dutch Interior is charming, and I hope you enjoyed the circle of widowers as much as I did your graphic account of them. It is delightful to think of the repose after the storm has been weathered so well. Argyll practising his next speech in the solitude of night, ——'s diplomatic deafness and yet more artful slumber, his brother with a hook placidly fixed in Bright's aggressive nose, the refined American[[39]] offended by the rigidity of the Democrat, the group of listening Senators, the harmless youth, the envious beauty—and then the great historic background and the one overshadowing figure—there is not a page in Mme. de Rémusat approaching it. Do you write like this to other people? Do you write at least six pages of diary every night? Please do; and let me read it now and then. And remember that one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin. If you are really going to be left at Hawarden, you ought to shut your door, shut your eyes, recall all that you have seen and heard during the last six months, and write it carefully down. You have such an opportunity and such a power. I am not like the Roman:[[40]] I envy almost as much as I admire.