These lines always recurred to my memory when circumstances brought me into contact with the second Lord Ripon, whose friendship I enjoyed from my first entrance into public life.
I know few careers in the political life of modern England more interesting or more admirable than his, and none more exactly consonant with Wordsworth's eulogy:
"Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast."
The first Lord Ripon, who was born in 1782 and died in 1859, entered public life as soon as he had done with Cambridge, filled pretty nearly every office of honour and profit under the Crown (including, for four troubled months, the Premiership), and served impartially under moderate Whigs and crusted Tories, finding, perhaps, no very material difference between their respective creeds. The experiences of the hen that hatches the duckling are proverbially pathetic; and great must have been the perplexity of this indeterminate statesman when he discovered that his only son was a young man of the most robust convictions, and that those convictions were frankly democratic. To men possessed by birth of rank and wealth, one has sometimes heard the question addressed, in the sheer simplicity of snobbery, "Why are you a Liberal?" and to such a question Lord Goderich (for so the second Lord Ripon was called till he succeeded to his father's title) would probably have replied, "Because I can't help it." He was an only child, educated at home, and therefore free to form his own opinions at an age when most boys are subject to the stereotyping forces of a Public School and a University. Almost before his arrival at man's estate, he had clearly marked out his line of political action, and to that line he adhered with undeviating consistency.
He was supremely fortunate in an early and ideally happy marriage. Tennyson might well have drawn the heroine of The Talking Oak from Henrietta, Lady Ripon:
"Yet, since I first could cast a shade,
Did never creature pass,
So slightly, musically made,
So light upon the grass."
Her mental constitution corresponded to her physical frame; she was the brightest of companions and the most sympathetic of friends. She shared to the full her husband's zeal for the popular cause, and stimulated his efforts for social as well as political reform.
From the earliest days of their married life, Lord and Lady Goderich made their home a centre and a rallying-point for all the scattered forces which, within the Liberal party or beyond its pale, were labouring to promote the betterment of human life. There the "Christian Socialists," recovering from the shocks and disasters of '48, re-gathered their shattered hosts, and reminded a mocking world that the People's Cause was not yet lost. There was Maurice with his mystical eloquence, and Kingsley with his fiery zeal, and Hughes and Vansittart and Ludlow with their economic knowledge and powerful pens. They were reinforced by William Edward Forster, a young Radical M.P., whose zeal for social service had already marked him out from the ruck of mechanical politicians; and from time to time Carlyle himself would vouchsafe a growl of leonine approval to enterprises which, whether wise or foolish, were at least not shams. In 1852 the Amalgamated Society of Engineers conducted in London and Lancashire a strike which had begun in some engineering works at Oldham. The Christian Socialists gave it their support, and Lord Goderich subscribed £500 to the maintenance of the strikers. But, although he lived in this highly idealistic society, surrounded by young men who saw visions and old men who dreamed dreams, Lord Goderich was neither visionary nor dreamer. He passed, under Lord Russell, Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Gladstone, through a long series of practical and laborious offices. He became Secretary of State for India, and for War; and, when Lord President of the Council, attained perhaps the highest honour of his life in being appointed Chairman of the Joint Commission on American Affairs, which in 1871 saved us from the unimaginable calamity of war with the United States. Ten years later, as Viceroy of India, he made his permanent mark on the history of the British Empire; and from that day forward no Liberal Government would have been considered complete unless it could show the sanction of his honoured name. When, in February, 1886, Gladstone formed the Administration which was to establish Home Rule, Lord Ripon, who became First Lord of the Admiralty, explained his position to me with happy candour: "I have always been in favour of the most advanced thing in the Liberal Programme. Just now the most advanced thing is Home Rule; so I'm a Home Ruler."
In the last year of Lord Ripon's life, when he had just retired from the Cabinet and the leadership of the House of Lords, he was entertained at luncheon by the Eighty Club, and the occasion was marked by some more than usually interesting speeches. It always is satisfactory to see public honours rendered, not to a monument or a tomb, but to the living man; and, in Lord Ripon's case, the honours, though ripe, were not belated. George Eliot has reminded us that "to all ripeness under the sun there comes a further stage of development which is less esteemed in the market." The Eighty Club avoided that latent peril, and paid its honours, while they were still fresh and worth having, to the living representative of a Liberalism "more high and heroical than the present age affecteth." One could not help feeling that the audience which Lord Ripon faced when he was addressing the Club was Radical to the backbone. Radicals themselves, and eager to set the world right, they paid reverence to a Radical who, sixty years ago, was inspired by the same passion, and in all that long stretch of time has never failed the cause. The applause, hearty, genuine, emotional, was even more expressive than the oratory, for it was evoked by the presence of a man who, in his earliest youth, had burst the trammels of station and environment, and had sworn himself to the service of the poor, the ill-fed, and the unrepresented, in days when such devotion was far more difficult than now. It is probable that not a few of Lord Ripon's hearers, while they acclaimed his words and waved their salutations, may have added in the depths of their hearts some aspiration such as this: "When I come to my eightieth year, may I be able to look back upon a career as consistent, as unselfish, and as beneficent."
Thrice happy is the man, be he Warrior or Statesman, who, in spite of lessened activity and increasing burdens and the loss of much that once made life enjoyable, still