Before taking up his appointment abroad, Clare Ford was summoned home, and began work at the Foreign Office in London. “The young diplomat,” says his father, August 13th, 1852, “works hard at the desk, and is, I am sure, in real and right earnest, and I hope by 1882 will be G.C.B.” The hope was realised in the spirit, if not in the actual date. Sir Clare Ford became a G.C.B. April 29th, 1889.
Hopeful of his son’s career and gratified by Lord Malmesbury’s recognition of the young man as one of his “cleverest youngsters,” easy in his own circumstances, established in his literary reputation, preserving much of his extraordinary capacity for enjoyment, retaining the freshness of his varied interests, a welcome guest everywhere in society, counting his friends by the hundred, Ford seemed to have before him many years of happiness. His pen was not idle. He wrote frequently in the Athenæum on subjects connected with art. He contributed several articles to the Quarterly Review, notably that on “Apsley House” (March 1853), in which he paid a fine tribute to the Duke of Wellington.[54] He prepared a third edition of the Handbook, which was in great part rewritten. He also was again busy with bricks and mortar at Heavitree.
We have been (he writes to Addington, September 14th, 1854) ruralising and rusticating ever since we fled from the thick-pent, pestilence-stricken city. The days and weeks flit past with wings, and fast as my ducats, for, to the raw material of ruin (farming), I have in my dotage superadded building, and towers and domes are rising while the bankers’ balance comes down. We are great in pigs and pears, but only so-so in potatoes, which are cruelly diseased; all my fond hopes of getting home by these tubers are dissipated.
I am pretty well, barring pocket;—early to bed and early to rise, without, however, being wealthy or wise. Handbook is at a standstill; in fact, it is impossible to dip in the inkstand, or remain indoors, when there is so much going on out of doors, and, as I never admit either architects or nursery gardeners, there is plenty for the master’s head to devise and eye to superintend.
In the autumn of 1855 Ford and his wife were hastily summoned to London by the dangerous illness of her only brother. Sir William Molesworth had won for himself a brilliant position in English politics. To his advocacy had been mainly due the abolition of transportation, and his speeches on colonial questions were marked by profound knowledge of the subject and a statesmanlike breadth of view. In January 1853 he was appointed First Commissioner of Works, with a seat in Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet. Two years later (July 1855), when he succeeded Lord John Russell as Colonial Secretary, he had gained the legitimate object of his ambition, and held an office for which he was acknowledged to be peculiarly qualified. But his health, always weak, broke down under the strain.
His system (writes Ford to Addington, October 21st, 1855), never very strong, has succumbed to a long and late session, to which the overwork of a new office was added just at the moment when repose and the country were most wanting. He is in a very critical state; but I do not quite despair, and I hope to-morrow to be able to report progress.
I have no heart now to enter on those matters which would have filled my pages. Oh the vanity of vanities! Look at poor Sir William, a young man, stretched on his bed and wrestling with death with the heart of a lion, and this just at the moment when all his honours were budding thick and the object of a life’s honourable ambition gained.
Sir William Molesworth died October 22nd, 1855. Ford’s own health was now rapidly breaking down. His eyesight began to fail. He slept badly. The fatal malady which ultimately caused his death—Bright’s disease—was already developed in his system, and affected his nervous condition. His letters lost their gaiety. A visit to Paris in September 1856, where his son was now an attaché, did not revive his spirits. Writing to Addington, he says:
One line from the most palatial Paris, the capital and centre of general civilisation, where gold and gastric juice and the insolence of health and intellect seem to be the things wanting, and where the lust of the eye is indeed gratified. To those who have not seen it for many years, the transformations are magical, and the slaves of the lamp are at work day and night. Diruit—edificat is the imperial mandate.
We, I fear, must mark No. 2 in many things, not only in political matters. Our prestige has sadly fallen on the Continent, and the French, who claim all the glory of the Crimea, almost fancy we exist at their sufferance, and that by saving us at Inkerman, etc., they have wiped out Waterloo. Not a few call the English medal which figures on the breast of many a Zouave La Medaille de sauvetage, and compare it to that given by the Humane Society to those who have rescued others from death and danger.