It is right to say that there are many persons still alive who will not be pleased at having their portraits drawn by so strong a hand—Mrs. Procter, for instance.
Altogether, I think the book is eminently interesting and valuable, and will have a very large circulation indeed. It is the sort of book everybody likes to read, and in this case it is backed by names of great celebrity. I will send the MS. back to you on Monday. What a wonderful thing it is that Froude should have had the patience to copy all this out in his own handwriting!
I dined last night with the Chancellor, and found both him and the Home Secretary deep in 'Endymion.' Everybody abuses it more or less, but everybody reads it, so the abuse does not go for much. Only Lady Stanley (the dowager) declares she could not get through the first volume. Such is the strength of party feeling.
From the Duc d'Aumale
Chantilly, 2 décembre.
Mon cher Monsieur Reeve,—Je me fais une fête de vous revoir. J'ai vendu mon hôtel de Paris et n'ai pas encore pu y reconstituer d'établissement. Mais Chantilly [Footnote: During the next few years, before he was again exiled, the Duc d'Aumale restored Chantilly on a magnificent scale (see post, pp. 319, 320), making it a repository for his splendid collection of pictures, works of art, and library, which included many precious MSS. By a will dated June 3,1884, he bequeathed the whole to the 'Institut de France,' in trust for the nation.] est si près! Dès que vous pourrez, donnez-moi votre adresse de Paris, et indiquez-moi quels jours vous serez libre, afin que je puisse en choisir un et vous demander de venir à Chantilly. Dites-moi aussi quels jours il vous serait agréable d'avoir ma loge aux Français.
J'espère bien avoir lu 'Endymion' d'ici là. Je vous serre la main.
H. D'ORLÉANS.
Reeve was thus meditating a visit to Paris for Christmas, as soon as the Court rose. Its session ended in the death of one of its most esteemed members. Sir James Colvile, formerly Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Bengal, had a house in Rutland Gate, and a great intimacy had grown up between the two. On Friday, December 3rd, he had dined with the Reeves, 'in fair health and excellent spirits,' as Mrs. Reeve wrote a few days later. 'He, with Lady Colvile and his brother-in-law, Lord Blachford, sat on for quite half an hour after the other guests left' On Saturday morning he went down to the office with Reeve. On the Monday he was dead. Sir Lawrence Peel,[Footnote: First cousin of Sir Robert Peel (the statesman), formerly Chief Justice of Calcutta, and since 1856 a member of the Judicial Committee. He died in 1884, in his 85th year.] one of his colleagues in the Judicial Committee, himself now old and feeble, wrote, apparently the same day:—
My dear Reeve,—A blow terrible indeed to all of us, to me most terrible. A man so close to death as I think myself feels more deeply the awe a sudden death causes. I know not the man to whom a sudden death could come and find more well prepared than he was. I thank you for your kind forethought. Say for me to his late colleagues that I feel his loss to them and to all of us irreparable. That he should go first! Oh God, preserve me and bless you all. Ever yours truly,