Lady Russell to Lady Agatha Russell
PEMBROKE LODGE, June, 1883
... I have been regaling myself on Sydney Smith's Life and Letters--the wisdom and the wit, the large-hearted and wide-minded piety, the love of God and man set forth in word and deed, and the unlikeness to anybody else, make it delightful companionship.... I long to talk of things deep and high with you, but if I once began I should go on and on, and "of writing of letters there would be no end." That is a grand passage of Hinton's [on music]. I always feel that music means much more than just music, born of earth--joy and sorrow, agony and rapture, are so mysteriously blended in its glorious magic.
Lady Russell's Recollections
In July, 1883, I went with Agatha to see Dunrozel for the first time ... I was simply enchanted--it was love at first sight, which only deepened year after year.... We had a good many pleasant neighbours; the Tennysons were more than pleasant, and welcomed us with the utmost cordiality, and we loved them all.
At that time Professor Tyndall and Louisa[103] were almost the only inhabitants of Hindhead. They were not yet in their house, but till it was built and furnished lived in their "hut," where they used to receive us with the most cheering, as well as cheerful, friendliness.
Lady Russell to Miss Lilian Blyth[104][Mrs. Wilfred Praeger]
DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, November 16, 1883
Your letter is just like you, and that means all that is dear and good and loving.... Indeed, past years are full of happy memories of you all, not on marked days only, but on all days. At my age, however, it is better to look forward to the renewal of all earthly ties and all earth's best joys in an enduring home, than to look back to the past--to the days before the blanks were left in the earthly home which nothing here below can ever fill, and this it is my prayer and my constant endeavour to do. We go home to dear Pembroke Lodge next Tuesday ... going there must always be a happiness to us all, yet this lovely little Dunrozel is not a place to leave without many a pang.
Lady Russell to Miss Bühler[105]
PEMBROKE LODGE, December, 1883
... I find my head will not bear more than a certain amount of writing without giddiness and dull headache ... and there are so many correspondents who must be answered; friends, relations, business people, that I am often quite bewildered; ... so, please, understand that I shall always write when I can, but not nearly always when I would like to do so. Go on letting yourself out whether sadly or happily, or in mingled sadness and happiness, and believe how very much I like to see into your thoughts and your heart as much as letters can enable me to do so.... As for Scotland, oh! Scotland, my own, my bonny Scotland! if you associate that best and dearest of countries with your present ennui and unhappiness, I shall turn my back upon you for good and all and give you up as a bad job! So make haste and tell me that you entirely separate the two things, and if you don't admire "mine own romantic town" and feel its beauty thrill through and through you, you must find the cause in anything rather than in Edinburgh itself! Such are my commands.... In the meantime let it be a consolation and a support to you to remember that it is by trials and difficulties that our characters are raised, developed, strengthened, made more Christ-like.... Good-bye, good-bye. God bless you.
Lady Russell to Sir Henry Taylor
February 29, 1884
I have just been reading with painful interest "Mémoires d'un Protestant condamné aux Galères" in the days of that terribly little great man Louis XIV. I ask myself at every page, "Did man really so treat his fellow-man? or is it all historical nightmare?" I never can make the slightest allowance for persecutors on the ground that "they thought it right to persecute." They had no business so to think.
Mr. Gladstone to Lady Russell
December 14, 1884
I thank you for and return Dr. Westcott's interesting and weighty letter.... A very clever man, a Bampton lecturer, evidently writing with good and upright intention, sends me a lecture in which he lays down the qualities he thinks necessary to make theological study fruitful. They are courage, patience, and sympathy. He omits one quality, in my opinion even more important than any of them, and that is reverence. Without a great stock of reverence mankind, as I believe, will go to the bad....
During the strife and heat of the controversy on Home Rule, Lady Russell received the following letter from Mr. Gladstone:
10, DOWNING STREET, WHITEHALL,
June 10, 1886
MY DEAR LADY RUSSELL,--I am not less gratified than touched by your most acceptable note. It is most kind in you personally to give me at a critical time the assurance of your sympathy and approval. And I value it as a reflected indication of what would, I believe, have been the course, had he been still among us, of one who was the truest disciple of Mr. Fox, and was like him ever forward in the cause of Ireland, a right handling of which he knew lay at the root of all sound and truly Imperial policy. It was the more kind of you to write at a time when domestic trial has been lying heavily upon you. Believe me,
Very sincerely yours,
W. E. GLADSTONE
Lady Russell to Lady Agatha Russell
DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, August 30, 1886
... Our Sunday, mine especially, was a peaceful, lovely Sabbath--mine especially because I didn't go to any church built with hands, but held my silent, solitary worship in God's own glorious temple, with no walls to limit my view, no lower roof than the blue heavens over my head. The lawn, the green walk, the Sunday bench in the triangle, each and all seemed filled with holiness and prayer--sadness and sorrow. Visions of more than one beautiful past which those spots have known and which never can return, were there too; but the Eternal Love was around to hallow them....
Lady Russell to Miss Bühler
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 24, 1886
MY DEAREST DORA,--I am afraid you will say that I have forgotten you and your most loving and welcome birthday letter, but as I know you will not think it, I don't so very much mind. Nobody at seventy-one and with many still to love and leave on earth, can hail a birthday with much gladness.... The real sadness to me of birthdays, and of all marked days, is in the bitterly disappointing answer I am obliged to make to myself to the question: "Am I nearer to God than a year ago?" ... I never answered your long-ago letter about your doubts and difficulties and speculations on those subjects which are of deepest import to us all, yet upon which it sometimes seems that we are doomed to work our minds in vain--to seek, and not to find--to exult one moment in the fullness of bright hope and the coming fulfilment of our highest aspirations, and the next to grope in darkness and say, "Was it not a beautiful dream, and only a dream? Is it not too good to be true that we are the children of a loving Father who stretches out His hands to guide us to Himself, who has spoken to us in a thousand ways from the beginning of the world by His wondrous works, by the unity of creation, by the voices of our fellow-creatures, by that voice, most inspired of all, that life and death most beautiful and glorious of all, which 'brought life and immortality to light,' and chiefly by that which we feel to be immortal within us--love--the beginning and end of God's own nature, the supreme capability which He has breathed into our souls?" No, it is not too good to be true. Nothing perishes--not the smallest particle of the most worthless material thing. Is immortality denied to the one thing most worthy of it?
I sent you "The Utopian," because I thought some of the little essays would fall in with all that filled your mind, and perhaps help you to a spirit of hopefulness and confidence which will come to you and abide with you, I am sure. You will soon receive another book written by several Unitarians, of which I have only read very little as yet, but which seems to me full of strength and comfort and holiness.... Good-bye, and God bless you.
Your ever affectionate,
F. RUSSELL