CHAPTER XIII
1878-98
Lady Russell survived her husband nearly twenty years. From the time of Lord Russell's death in May, 1878, till 1890, she kept no diary, but not long before her death she wrote for her children a few recollections of some of the events during those twelve years.
In May, 1880, Lady Victoria Villiers died, leaving a widowed husband and many children. Her death was a great sorrow to Lady Russell, who wrote of her as "a perfect wife and mother."
In the summer of 1883 her son Rollo bought a place--Dunrozel--near Haslemere, and from this time till 1891 Lady Russell spent a few months every year at Dunrozel.[96] In 1891 and 1892 she took a house on Hindhead--some miles from Haslemere--for a few months. She enjoyed and loved the beautiful wild heather country, which reminded her of Scotland, but after 1892 she felt that home was best for her, and never again left Pembroke Lodge.
In 1885 the marriage of her son Rollo to Miss Alice Godfrey was a great happiness to her. But in little more than a year, soon after the birth of a son, Mrs. Rollo Russell died, and again Lady Russell suffered deeply, for she always found the sorrows of her children harder to bear than her own.
To retire more and more from the world of many engagements and important affairs was easy to her, easier than it proves to many who have figured there with less distinction. Playing a prominent part in that world does not make people happy; but, as a rule, it prevents them from being contented with anything else. It was not so with her; in the days most crowded with successes and excitements her thoughts kept flying home. She had always felt that a quiet, busy family life was the one most natural to her. When she was a girl at Minto, helping to educate her younger brothers and sisters, she had written in her diary: