In March they began once more to see their friends. "Seeing those I have not yet seen," she writes, "is like meeting them after years--so changed is our world."
PEMBROKE LODGE, March 15, 1876
The dear old beech-tree in the wood blown down, and with it countless recollections of happy hours under its shade with merry boys climbing it above our heads, and little Agatha playing at our feet, and her elder sisters chatting with us and looking for nests and flowers. All, all gone. The bitter gales of sorrow have blown down our fair hopes and turned our joys to sorrow. Poor old beech-tree! Like us, it had lost its fair boughs; like it, we shall soon lay down our stripped and shattered stems.
PEMBROKE LODGE, April 25, 1876
The loveliness of early spring--its nameless, countless tints, its music and its flowers, never went deeper into my soul--but oh! the happy springtide of life, where is that?
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
PEMBROKE LODGE, January 27, 1877
Do not grieve too much over all our trials, dear Lotty. We have not long to bear them now, and all will be made clear by and by. All the sorrows of all the world will be seen in their true light, and tears will be wiped from all eyes for ever. I often think, though I try to drive away the thought, how unspeakably soothing and happy it would have been to look back upon blows as must fall to the lot of all who live long, instead of to a life of many strange and unexpected and terrible shocks of many kinds. But oftener, far oftener, I feel the brightness and blessedness of my lot; so bright and so blessed in many wonderful ways; and never, never at any moment would I have exchanged it for another. Dearest Lotty, your loving letter has brought all this upon you, and it shall go with all its selfishness to Laverstoke, and not into the fire, where I am inclined to put it.... God bless you, dear Lotty.
Your loving sister,
F. R.
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
PEMBROKE LODGE, January 4, 1878
I am reading the third volume of Prince Albert, and love and admire him more and more--but am very angry with the book as regards John: the unfairness from omission of all particulars which he alone could have given with regard to his resignation on Roebuck's motion, and his non-resignation after Vienna, is something I cannot forgive.
Early in this year, 1878, Lady Russell writes of a dinner-party at Lord Selborne's:
Agatha and I dined in town, with the Selbornes. I between Lord Selborne and Gladstone, who was as usual most agreeable and most eloquent, giving life and fervour to conversation whatever was the subject. "The Eastern Question," the "Life of Prince Albert," the comedy of "Diplomacy," the different degrees of "parliamentary courage" in different statesmen, etc. He said that in his opinion Sir Robert Peel, my husband, and, "I must give the devil his due," Disraeli, were the three statesmen whom he had known who had the most "parliamentary courage."
In the summer of 1877 Lord Russell had taken a house overlooking the sea near Broadstairs. But he was falling into a gradual decline, the consequence of great age, and after they came home from Broadstairs, he never again left Pembroke Lodge.
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
PEMBROKE LODGE, January 11, 1878
Do not think too much of the pain to me, but of the mercy of there being none to him, in this gradual extinction of a mind which gave light to so many, of affections which made home so happy. My worst pain is over--was over long ago--the pain of first acknowledging to myself my own loneliness, without the guide, the example, the support, which so long were mine--without those golden joys of perfect companionship which made the hours fly when we sat and talked together on many an evening of blessed memory, or strolled together among our trees and our flowers, or snatched a few moments together from his days and nights of noble toil in London. All this is over, all this and much more, but gratitude that it has been remains, and the bright hope of a renewal of companionship hereafter gives strength and courage for present duties and passing trials.
Mr. George W. E. Russell, in the closing passage of an article on his uncle,[95] wrote of these last years of his life: "... Thus in peace and dignity that long life of public and private virtue neared its close; in a home made bright by the love of friends and children, and tended by the devotion of her who for more than five-and-thirty years had been the good angel of her husband's house."