And grave ecclesiastics too,
With lawyers shrewd and cunning,
Contend with squires and ladies fair
In the gay art of punning.”
The whole book is full of the atmosphere of the irresponsible years between childhood and maturity. One feels it must all have been great fun.
Georgiana “came out,” like other girls, when she grew up, and is generally believed to have enjoyed that also. Indeed, she might have taken as one of her secondary mottoes in life the old couplet:
“Pastime and good company
I love and shall until I die,”
with perhaps the rider that good company was the pastime best worth having. She had great vitality and a brilliant wit, and both made her such good company that a friend paraphrased Wilke’s famous boast on her behalf and said that, given ten minutes’ lead (to make up for her want of looks, for she was not considered pretty), she could be backed against the loveliest of her contemporaries. Undeniably some people found her formidable, for she was a person of very strong emotions and decided opinions, and was liable to come out suddenly with emphatic expression of her views in a way that less decisive natures found startling.
There are in existence some serious poems written by Miss Alderson at this date at which she used to laugh in later life, and which she was perhaps a little unreasonably proud of never having published. They are described as being characterised by a “sweet sentimental melancholy,” which was a quality no one would have suspected in her. But she probably had her “summer of green-sickness” like other people, and one of her daughters describes her as liking “to give lip-service to a pretty sentiment, though always ready to laugh at herself for the indulgence.”
Among Georgiana Alderson’s greatest friends was Mary, Lady Salisbury (later Lady Derby), and it was at her house she met Lord Robert Cecil, Lady Salisbury’s stepson. In appearance at any rate Lord Robert was very different from the massive figure familiar to the older of present-day politicians. Angular, thin, and rather ungainly, for the dozen years before he took office in 1866 he sat below the gangway in the House of Commons, the freest of free-lances, assailing his own leaders quite as often as the Liberal Government, with a bitterness and violence of language which rather scandalised his fellow-members. His elder brother, Lord Cranborne, being still alive, no one ever thought of his succeeding his father, while his constituency was one of the last of the pocket boroughs, so that he enjoyed every condition of irresponsibility and independence. Another element emphasised his detachment. The tendency of politics is to absorb the politician completely, and to shut out other interests and other questions. To Lord Robert politics was an occupation, while what old-fashioned people used to call philosophy—abstract thought on theology and science—was his abiding interest. He also was an advanced Tractarian, and this was probably the chief thing that first attracted him and Georgiana to each other.
The marriage was an extremely happy one. Both were deeply and devoutly religious; both were much interested in the philosophical questions that centred in religious controversy; both had keen, alert, and daring intelligences. Lady Robert, though a year or two older than her husband, was generally held to have the younger mind, and, if power to enjoy is the attribute of youth, then she certainly had a younger temperament. They were married in 1857, and lived in a little house in Half Moon Street. They were not at all well off, and Lord Robert supplemented a small income with his pen, writing in the Quarterly and the Saturday Review. Lady Robert also wrote in the Saturday, a fact considered more unusual then than it would be now. Owing to their both writing anonymously, rumour of course embellished the fact, and Lady Robert was credited with some of the political articles (of the type known as “trenchant”) which, as a matter of fact, were written by her husband, she having performed only the important rôle of critic. Lady Robert’s own articles, unfortunately never collected, were chiefly on literary subjects.
Their eldest son was not born till 1861, to be followed by a long family of four more sons and two daughters. The relations of the mother with her children were thoroughly characteristic. To outsiders she seemed to exercise very little restraint on them, and to give them a degree of liberty of action that most children do not get. They were also treated by both parents far more as equals than is usual, and allowed to take part and have their say in any discussion that was on foot, provided they put their points well and discussed fairly. But if she did not work her authority hard there could be no doubt of the strength of her influence, especially in the case of her sons. She was in their confidence, and her opinion had great weight with them to the end of her life. A very familiar sight in later years was Lady Salisbury driving in a high barouche with one or other of her sons, by that time grown men and public figures, absolutely absorbed in talk and both enjoying themselves.
The free-lance days came to an end in 1865, when Lord Robert’s elder brother, Lord Cranborne, died and put him in the direct succession for a great fortune and one of the historical peerages of England. Further, in 1866 the Liberal Government fell, and, when the Conservatives came in under Lord Derby, the new Lord Cranborne was made Secretary of State for India. It was an interesting Parliament, the outstanding subject of interest being Reform. The career of the Government might indeed be described as more exciting than dignified. They came in disposed to pass no Reform Bill; they rapidly discovered that the country was determined to have some Reform Bill. They started with timid and limited measures, and were hustled from one halting-place to another, until the Bill they finally passed, amid clamorous denunciations and acclamations alike, was as wide as any Liberal had ever dreamed of.