Nobody can regret more than I do any differences between old friends; but my duty is to look solely to the consistency and integrity of the 'Review,' without which criticism is worthless; and this consideration leaves me no other course.
Another point, of a similar nature, I can illustrate by my own experience. I had undertaken, at Reeve's request, to review a rather important historical work published by Longmans, but on reading it was so unfavourably impressed by it that I wrote to say that the best thing I could do would be to return the volumes; that the book was bad, and if I reviewed it I must say so; but that doing this in the publisher's own Review would have a certain resemblance to seething a kid in its mother's milk, and might probably be objected to. 'Not a bit of it,' was the sense of the reply I received by return of post: 'a bad book may be the text for an interesting article, and we have nothing to do with who published it.' So I expressed my opinion of the book in very plain terms; the review was printed exactly as I wrote it, and the editor thanked me warmly for what he was pleased to speak of as an 'excellent article.' It may, perhaps, be assumed that this was not an isolated case; but written evidence of any others is not before me.
After returning from Oxford, Reeve spent the rest of the year at Foxholes, He had intended going to London and possibly to Scotland in October, but an accidental stumble in his library over a heavy despatch box made a nasty wound on the left shin, which took many weeks in healing and prevented his travelling till the middle of December. On the 19th he went to town, where, with the exception of some short visits to Bath or to Foxholes, he remained till June, dining several times at The Club, entertaining at home in his customary manner, and keeping up a constant—almost daily—correspondence, such as has been indicated, with the Longmans, for the most part with the head of the firm, whom he had known from childhood and habitually addressed by his Christian name.
As he returned to Foxholes the country was in the throes of a general election. Tired, it would seem, of steady and consistent government, it longed for a change—anything for a change; and so opened the door for an administration whose almost avowed object was to play skittles with the Constitution—to bowl down the Union, the Established Church, the House of Lords, the rights of property, and any other little trifles that were sacred to law and religion. It was with deep regret that Reeve watched the overthrow of what he considered the true Liberal party, and he wrote to Mr. T. Norton Longman:—
Foxholes, July 14th—The results of the elections are far worse than could be expected. Some of them are very odd. I have to deplore the defeat of many of my friends. I suppose the Queen will have to make up her mind to a ministry composed of men she abhors; but the majority will have in it inherent weakness and the seeds of dissolution.
I have found it difficult to say anything about the elections and have been as short as possible.
From a somewhat different point of view, he wrote a few days later to Lord
Derby:—
Foxholes, July 22nd.—I have, of course, been watching with great interest the progress of the elections, and I am happy to say that Hampshire, like all the southern counties, comes out with a clean Unionist bill. If the ultimate majority was to be small, is it not better to be in opposition than in power? Mr. Gladstone's position, as the man responsible for the conduct of affairs, is much less desirable than that of Lord Salisbury, for he has the better half of the country dead against him. How curious it is to trace on the map in the 'Times' the old traditions of Saxon, Celtic, Mercian, and Danish origin in the counties of England, Ireland, and Wales! Are the Celts to govern the Saxons?
Early in August Reeve was visited at Foxholes by Count Adam Krasinski [Footnote: Son of Ladislas and grandson of Reeve's early friend Sigismond Krasinski. He was born in 1870, and married at Vienna in 1897.]—a connecting link with the past, the merry days when he was young; and on Krasinski's departure, he went north to visit some friends in Wales and thence on to Chesters.
Parliament met on August 4th, and on a simple motion of want of confidence, as an amendment to the Address, the Ministry was defeated. Lord Salisbury resigned, and Mr. Gladstone came into office with a Cabinet in which every shade of unconstitutional opinion and every socially destructive fad were fully represented. Reeve consoled himself with the belief that such a ministry could not last. To Mr. T. Norton Longman he wrote:—