'He submitted copies of the correspondence to me and to all the representatives of the friendly powers.'
CHAPTER IX
POLITICS AND LAST YEARS. 1850-1873
Having resumed the profession to which he had always been devoted, it was the ambition of Lord Hardwicke's life to continue his naval career, and to complete a period of active service afloat which would have entitled him to promotion to flag rank. He was encouraged in this desire by all his friends, even by those who, like John Wilson Croker, had opposed his return to active service. In a letter written by that gentleman to Lady Hardwicke in 1849, he said: 'I never was very favourable to his going to sea, but I am now decidedly against his not going through with it, and I cannot but believe that his services are appreciated, if not at their full value at least with respect, on the part of the Whigs. But however that may be, and however glad I shall be to see you all again at Wimpole, I earnestly advise him to play his hand out.'
Unhappily, Lord Hardwicke was prevented from carrying out his intention by the very serious illness of Lady Hardwicke, which caused him the gravest anxiety, shortly after the termination of his arduous responsibilities at Genoa. Lady Hardwicke was brought to death's door by an attack of fever at Naples, and he immediately resigned his command of the Vengeance, and hurried to her bedside. She happily recovered, and after her convalescence the whole family returned to England.
Apart, however, from this urgent private trouble, it is doubtful whether Lord Hardwicke would have continued his service in the Mediterranean. He felt, indeed, that the approval of his conduct at Genoa by the Whig Government was less hearty than Mr. Croker believed was the case, confined as it was to the barest official acknowledgment of services which to everyone else appeared not only creditable to Lord Hardwicke as a captain of a British ship of war, but of the highest value to Italy, to the cause of good order, and, by the havoc and bloodshed his tact and firmness had certainly prevented, to humanity itself. As the documents set out in the appendix to the last chapter fully show, all this was highly appreciated abroad. King Victor hastened to confer on Lord Hardwicke the order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus for what were described by General de Launay, his foreign secretary, as 'les importans services que vous avez rendus à Son Gouvernement pendant les graves évènemens qui ont affligé la ville de Gênes et l'empressement efficace avec lequel vous avez puissamment secondé M. le Général de La Marmora pour y ramener l'ordre'; Lord Normanby, the British Ambassador at Paris, reported to his government that the French Minister at Turin had more than once expressed his conviction 'that during the late troubles at Genoa that city was in great part saved from pillage and destruction by the energetic attitude assumed by the British naval force in that port, and that the French consuls had stated to him that there were moments when the lives and properties of the peaceable inhabitants would have been in great danger, but for the dread inspired by the position taken up by H.M.S. Vengeance, and the effective support given by Lord Hardwicke to the consular authorities.' There was less value perhaps in the thanks given by 'the Count and Colonel, Director of the Bagni Maritim,' whose gratitude was mingled with a sense of favours to come, in the possible exertion of Lord Hardwicke's good offices with King Victor Emmanuel for clemency for the convicts under the Count's charge, whose conduct had added so much to the dangers of the situation. But of the foreign testimony to Lord Hardwicke's service at Genoa perhaps the most eloquent was that of Mazzini, who admitted to Lord Malmesbury that his career in Italy had been spoiled 'by one English sailor at Genoa called Hardvick.'
This universal approbation of the part played by Lord Hardwicke was of course perfectly well known to the Government; it was also more or less known to the public from the letters written by the Times correspondent at Genoa. 'But for the decision and judgment Lord Hardwicke manifested,' he wrote, 'Genoa would, in all probability, have been at this moment a ruined and pillaged city. The very worst vagabonds were hired to mount guard and man the walls, since the National Guards had retired for the most part to their own dwellings. It was indeed a reign of terror, and it was most fortunate for Genoa that the Vengeance was in the port to prevent its being a reign of blood.'
Under these circumstances Lord John Russell's government could scarcely withhold official recognition of Lord Hardwicke's success in having virtually saved a great and historic city from destruction. His conduct, moreover, was such as would certainly appeal to Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, who took the occasion to inform the Admiralty 'that Lord Hardwicke's conduct seemed to him highly praiseworthy, and that he was of opinion that the Earl of Hardwicke by his promptitude, energy and decision saved the city of Genoa from the calamities of further bombardment, and prevented a great effusion of blood and much destruction of property and life.'
This official approval, as we have seen, was conveyed to Lord Hardwicke by his admiral, Sir William Parker, who had already indicated his own rather tepid approval accompanied, however, by the hope that there had been 'no actual infraction of the neutral position of Her Majesty's ship, or undue interference in the political contention of the opponents.'
But it seems clear that both political and professional influences were already at work against Lord Hardwicke. On the happy conclusion of the trouble at Genoa by what he truly described in a letter to Lady Hardwicke as 'the only English interference that has been successful in Europe since the affair began,' he had already detected a certain faintness in the praise he received from Admiral Parker: 'The good admiral gives me negative praise,' he writes, 'but I leave it all to him to judge my acts. I have no fear of results; I have a good reason for all I did.' But from a memorandum written by Lady Hardwicke after his death, it appears that he felt very acutely the grudging spirit in which his services had been received by a section, at least, of the Cabinet. Upon reporting himself at the Admiralty on his arrival in London he was greeted by Sir Francis Baring, the First Lord, with these words: 'Well, Lord Hardwicke, you certainly did do well at Genoa, and it was lucky that you succeeded, for if you had failed you certainly would have been broke.' He made no complaint, however, but returned to Wimpole, resumed his life of a country gentleman, and renewed all his interest in the affairs of his estate and his county.