You make me happy by allowing me to conclude that I gave no offence by what I wrote of our exalted House. I don't mean that your uneasiness was quite unreasonable. When a Bill[[41]] gets knocked about in Committee, even when an artful Minister means it to be knocked about, it can never go up to the Lords harmonious, consistent, and the genuine expression of a policy. There are not two sides to every question, but there is always an opening, in such cases, for sincere criticism. The way out of that is to pass the second reading, and to correct in Committee what was done wrong in Committee. What I mean in this case is that the Bill involved a principle of infinite force and value, which the Ministry probably veiled to their own eyes, and which the Lords were right to resist as a private association, which they are not; wrong to resist as a disinterested national institution, which is their claim to exist.
It is impossible to exaggerate the depth of aversion the Bill has evoked. You must have heard enough of it. One man has spent two days here for the purpose of telling me how wrong it was. Another writes to me that he has paired for the session, feeling that Government will be obliged to those who help them when they are hopelessly wrong, although the help consists in pairing and going to Vichy. These are idle men, representative of thousands.
It reminds me of the great landowner, Bedford, who reminds me of Arthur,[[42]] who reminds me of Maine. I suppose it was a refuge in Piccadilly that revealed the secret to me. Arthur's one fault is a delight in secrets. Although Maine is unfitted to be P.M. (under any but a despotic monarch), nobody has so large a conception of all questions relating to the tenure of land. I dare say he has been asked to say what he knows about Ireland. What pure reason and boundless knowledge can do, without sympathy or throb, Maine can do better than any man in England.
I am sorry to think of Lowell's sun sinking behind your horizon. At first sight one always fancies that those who question the certainty of history sap the certainty of religion, or are the victims of those who do, and I fancy I should have had a word (with corners) to throw at him. The Rémusat volumes are one of my landmarks in judging Napoleon. It is, of all accounts by competent people, the most injurious to his memory, as Segur's are the most favourable. Until I read them, I thought the fixed intention to put Enghien to death, the charge of murder, not proven. If the authority of these recollections breaks down, I must invent for myself a new Napoleon. After allowing for the fact that they were written, or re-written, years later, like the Diary of John Adams, the Memoirs of S. Simon, the History of Burnet, of Clarendon, the Annals of Tacitus, the Nine Muses of Herodotus, the Eight Books of Thucydides, which are the most conspicuous sources of all history, and for the suspicion that there was a great secret she not only could not tell, but wrote in order to obliterate, and after giving whatever weight it deserves to the little joke that calls it: "Souvenir d'une femme de chambre renvoyée," I am so persuaded that the book is authentic and true, that I should have liked to hear the argument. But this is true, history does not stand or fall with historians. From the thirteenth century we rely much more on letters than on histories written for the public. I need not add that the history of our Lord which we find in the Epistles is one most valuable testimony in favour of the Gospels. So that even if Lowell can damage the reports in this book, we can restore the certainty of history by the aid of letters, of documents and of those facts in which independent witnesses agree.
Is it not heroic of your sister renouncing a life like your own for the toil of Newnham? I wish her success and happiness in her pilgrimage most sincerely. By-the-bye your other sister is the real pilgrim, and I wish I had known in time to warn my belongings of her movements.
My time here is up, and I go home to-morrow. As a proper P.M.'s daughter you ought to say you hope I was really ill, to justify fifty-one.... It is absurd to come all the way to England and not to see you; so I shall come only if I am ideally wanted. I write at once to discover whether and when. Your telegram is a great disappointment. I wonder where they will go. Cannes is the place I recommend, but not till October. If I am not summoned home from Tegernsee for Hares or Burials,[[43]] I look forward to Ammergau, and wish you were coming.
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Tegernsee Sept. 21, 1880
I ought to write no more. I ought to hide my useless hand altogether. There was a week during which I looked forward to a summons home, a summons that never came; and after having persistently applied for it, I thought that it was better not to make the offer of my vote more urgent than the demand for it. I know how much I have missed and lost. Circumstances over which I have no control would probably have arrested my maritime enterprise at Gravesend.[[44]] But how pleasant Holmbury would have been! And then there was, and is, so much to talk to you about, so much that evaporates in writing and will not keep, so much that will. As there can hardly be an autumn session after prorogation in September, I must wait for the end of January. Meanwhile I hope you will cultivate the notion of Tegernsee. Such a break with the great world would do Mr. Gladstone good, and I fancy we could make you like the place once more. Let me have that hope before me.
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