“Friday Morning (1846).
“My dear Sir Robert Wilson,—I thank you very much for your kind note. I cannot affect regret at the termination of our Political life! The undertaking was an arduous and an anxious one for my husband, and indeed I shared fully in all the anxieties attached to it. I feel that he has well fulfilled his task throughout, and I take with much welcome and many thanks all the kind and flattering things you say. I have every hope that a safe and good government may be formed. I do not dread anything much, for (amidst other reliances which I have) I feel sure that they will find a Powerful and a Successful opponent in my husband to any dangerous measures they might be induced to attempt, but I am no Politician, and will not bore you with talking about that, which I profess not to understand.—Always, believe me, dear Sir Robert, yours very truly,
“Julia Peel.”
Thus, while she fully shared the anxieties of her husband’s public life, and was his companion and confidante in every sense, Mrs. Peel was, as she says, no politician. It was hers to cast upon the statesman’s path “the quiet sunshine of domestic gladness” and to solace by her “beauty’s spell” and the “soft kindness” of her “pure affection”
“The life of him, whose deeds shall ever dwell
With a grateful country’s recollection!”[18]
With a very short break Peel remained in office from 1822 till 1830, and from 1828 he combined the duties of leader of the House of Commons with those of Home Secretary.
In May 1830 Peel’s father died, and he succeeded to the baronetcy, to a large fortune, and to Drayton Manor, the famous residence at Tamworth. He had before this built himself a fine house in Whitehall Gardens, London, with a gallery for the splendid collection of pictures he had formed. These pictures, chiefly of the Dutch and Flemish Schools, are now in the National Gallery. Peel was the friend and patron of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who painted two portraits of Lady Peel. One, a three-quarter length, seated, was painted in 1824, and the other, a half-length in a hat, a pendant to Rubens’ “Chapeau de Paille,” painted in 1826, is regarded as the finest portrait Lawrence ever produced.
In October 1834 Peel, with his wife and his daughter Julia, went to Italy; they had been about ten days in Rome, when a messenger, who found Sir Robert at a ball of the Duchess of Torlonia, arrived post-haste from the King, asking Sir Robert to return without loss of time and put himself at the head of the Government. Peel acquiesced and travelled back as rapidly as possible, becoming Prime Minister from December 1834 to April 1835. In the intervals of public business he was with his family at Drayton, accompanying his wife and daughter to balls and doing prodigious feats of shooting, his favourite recreation. It was in opposition, after his resignation, that Peel began to build up the Conservative party in order to maintain intact the established Constitution of Church and State. In the autumn of 1837 he again went abroad with his wife and daughter. They visited the King at Paris, and in their progress through Germany the Kings of Hanover, Würtemberg, and Bavaria seem each to have consulted Peel.
Lady Peel had a large family to bring up, five sons and two daughters. The sons were all more or less distinguished, but the most notable was the fifth, Arthur, who became Speaker of the House of Commons and was raised to the peerage as Viscount Peel in 1895. The elder daughter, Julia, married on 12th July 1841 Lord Villiers, afterwards sixth Earl of Jersey, and the younger, Eliza, became the wife of the Hon. Francis Stonor, son of Lord Camoys. Lady Peel found happiness in the companionship of her husband and children; she also took great delight in the grounds at Drayton, where she laid out a flower garden herself, and interested herself in all the outdoor arrangements. She told a country neighbour that she had a great mind to have an apiary. “Lord, ma’am, where will you get your apes from? For my part, I never could ’bide a monkey.”
The tragic death during the Free Trade agitation of Edward Drummond, Peel’s private secretary, was a terrible shock to Lady Peel. Drummond, who was a very able Civil Servant and a man of retiring and modest nature, had been seen travelling alone in Scotland in Peel’s carriage, and of course often coming out of Peel’s house in London, by a madman named Daniel Macnaghten, who fancied he had a grudge against Peel. Mistaking Drummond for Peel, he shot him as he was walking between the Admiralty and the Horse Guards on his way to Downing Street, 20th January 1843. Drummond lingered for some days, but death occurred on the 25th. Queen Victoria was deeply distressed and wrote daily to Peel for news of the dying man. The sad event and the circumstances attending it had a very bad effect on Lady Peel’s health, and her husband asked the Queen to permit them to remain in London for the present. For some time Peel went about followed by two policemen in plain clothes.
From 28th November to 1st December 1843 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert went on a visit to Sir Robert and Lady Peel at Drayton Manor. Both in town and country the Peels were noted for the sumptuousness of their entertainments and at the same time for the good taste invariably displayed. “On dîne remarquablement bien chez vous,” was the observation of a foreign guest, and Disraeli is loud in the praises of the bounteous hospitality of the Peels. The interiors of both houses were attractive and delightful in every way. The London house was especially charming, beautifully arranged, with a wealth of flowers, balconies looking on to the river. In the rooms were valuable furniture and fine pictures; some of the best of the Dutch and Flemish pictures hung in the family sitting-room.