From Lord Derby
23 St. James's Square, March 15th.—Many thanks for your book on France. Most of the articles were familiar to me, but all will bear reading again. You here show up the weakness of French public life and the faults of French parties as no one else has done; and I do not recollect to have seen anywhere else pointed out the intimate connexion between the social state of modern France—with every old tradition destroyed, and the continuance of a family, as we understand the word here, rendered impossible—and the political condition, in which every public man is either fighting for his own personal interest and nothing else, or for the triumph of his particular theory of politics, which, if successful, is to be enforced despotically by all the power of a centralised administration. I have never thought so badly of the French future as now—no energy except among the Reds, no power of united action; general apathy even as to the present, and utter indifference to the future.
The Journal continues:—
March 31st.—Came down to Bournemouth for the first time with Hopie and the horses.
April 8th.—Rode to Hengistbury Head and saw for the first time the Southbourne estate. Dined with Lord Cairns. Back to town on the 9th.
17th.—Dined at Lord Derby's. Sat next Lady Clanricarde, who, à propos of Sir H. Holland's 'Past Life,' talked about her father [Footnote: George Canning, d. 1827.] and his last illness. She said that in truth Holland saw Canning very little at Chiswick, and that it was Sir Matthew Tierney who really attended him; and then she told me the following story of Tierney:—News came from Clumber that the Duke of Newcastle was dangerously ill with typhus fever. Tierney was sent down as fast as post-horses could carry him. It was about 1823, in the pre-railway days; and when he arrived he was informed that the Duke had been dead about two hours. Shocked at this intelligence, he desired to see the corpse, which was already laid out. At his first glance he thought he was dead. At the second he doubted it. At the third he cried out, 'Bring me up a bucket of brandy!' They tore the clothes off the body and swathed it in a sheet imbibed with brandy, and then resorted to friction with brandy. In rather more than an hour symptoms of life began to manifest themselves, and in two hours the Duke was able to swallow. He recovered, and lived twenty-five years afterwards. Certainly this triumph over death beats even Dr. Gull's nursing of the Prince of Wales. It is the myth of Hercules and Alcestis.
May 4th.—Visit to Drummond Wolff at Boscombe. A further look at Southbourne. I chose the site I afterwards purchased.
8th.—The King of the Belgians presided at the Literary Fund dinner. Disraeli made a capital speech.
18th.—Visit to Mrs. Grote at Sheire. Called at Albury. Many London dinners.
The Bennett case was heard at this time by the Judicial Committee. Long deliberation on the judgement at the Chancellor's on June 1st. It was delivered on June 8th. [Footnote: See 'The Bennett Judgement' in Edinburgh Review, October 1872.]