Lady Charlotte Portal to Lady Russell
January 26, 1887
DEAREST FANNY,--I wonder if you are quite easy in your conscience, or whatever mechanism takes the place with you of that rococo old article. Do you think you have behaved to me as an elder ought?--to me, a poor young thing, looking for and sadly requiring the guidance of my white-headed sister? Our last communications were at Christmas-time--a month ago. Are you all well? Are you all entirely at the feet of the dear baby boy?[106] Or have your republican principles begun to rebel against his autocratic sway? ... I have been amusing myself with an obscure author named William Shakespeare, and enjoying him immensely. Amusing myself is not the right expression, for I have been in the tragedies only. I had not read "Othello" for ages. How wonderful, great, and beautiful and painful it is (oh dear, why is it so coarse?). Then I also read "Lear" and "Henry VIII," and being delightfully ignorant I had the great interest of reading the same period (Henry VIII) in Holinshed, and in finding Katharine's and Wolsey's speeches there! Then I have tried a little Ben Jonson and Lord Chesterfield's letters. What a worldling, and what a destroyer of a young mind that man was. Can you tell me how the son turned out? I cannot find any information about him. The language is delightful, and I wish I could remember any of his expressions.... Now give me a volume of Pembroke Lodge news in return for this. Public matters, the fear of war, the arming of all nations, make me sick at heart. How wonderful and admirable the conduct of that poor friendless little Bulgaria has been. Then Ireland, oh me! but on that topic I won't write to the Home Ruler!
Your affectionate sister,
C. M. P.
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
PEMBROKE LODGE, January 27, 1887
DEAREST LOTTY,--It was but yesterday that there rose dimly to my memory the vision of a lady with the initials--C. M. P., and who knows how long I might have remained in the dark as to who and what she might be but for this letter, in which she claims me as a sister! and moreover an elder and a wiser sister! one therefore whose doings and not-doings, writing and not-writing, must not be questioned by the younger....
We have imagined ourselves living in a state of isolation from our fellow-creatures, but yours far exceeds ours and makes it almost into a life of gaiety. I'm most extremely sorry to hear of it, though most extremely glad to hear that your minds to you a kingdom are. What good and wholesome and delightful food your mind has been living on. Isn't that Shakespeare too much of a marvel to have really been a man? "Othello" is indeed all you say of it, and more than anybody can say of it, and so are all the great plays. I am reading the historical ones with Bertie.... Alas, indeed, for the coarseness! I never can understand the objections to Bowdlerism. It seems to me so right and natural to prune away what can do nobody good--what it pains eyes to look upon and ears to hear--and to leave all the glories and beauties untouched.... The little Autocrat is beginning to master some of the maxims of Constitutional Monarchy--for instance, to find out that we do not always leave the room the moment he waves his hand by way of dismissal and utters the command of "Tata." I waste too much time upon him, in spite of daily resolutions to neglect him.... I don't at all know whether Lord Chesterfield succeeded in making his son like his own clever, worldly, contemptible self, but will try to find out. Have you read "Dean Maitland"?[107] Now, Fanny, do stop, you know you have many other letters to write....
Ever thine,
F. R.
Lady Russell to Lady Georgiana Peel
DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, SURREY, September 9 [1887]
... Your account of the Queen and her visit interested us much.... I often wish she could ever know all my gratitude to her and the nation for the unspeakable blessing and happiness Pembroke Lodge has been, and is; joys and sorrows, hopes fulfilled, and hopes faded and crushed, chances and changes, and memories unnumbered, are sacredly bound up with that dear home. Will it ever be loved by others as we have loved it? It seems impossible....
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, September 12, 1887
DEAREST LOTTY,--I don't think I am writing because your clock is on the stroke of Sixty-three, for these clocks of ours become obtrusive, and the less they are listened to the better for our spirits. I wonder whether it's wrong and unnatural not to rejoice in their rapid movements as regards myself. I often think so. There is so much, or rather there are so many, oh, so many! to go to when it has struck for the last time, and the longing and the yearning to be with them is so unspeakable--and yet, dear Lotty, I cling to those here, not less and less, but more and more, as the time for leaving them draws nearer. God grant you many and many another birthday of happiness, as I trust this one is to you and your home.... Your letter was an echo of much that we had been saying to one another, as we read our novel--not only does nobody, man or even woman, see every change and know its meaning in the human countenance, and interpret rightly the slight flush, the hidden tremor, the shade of pallor, the faint tinge, etc.; but we don't think there are perceptible changes to such an extent except in novels.... I think a great evil of novels for girls, mingled with great good, is the false expectation they raise that somebody will know and understand their every thought, look, emotion.... How glad I am that you have a rival baby to worship--ours is beyond all praise--oh, so comical and so lovely in all his little ways and words....
Your most affectionate sister,
F. R.
Lady Russell to Lady Georgiana Peel
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 28, 1887
... We have been having such a delightful visit from Lotty ... we did talk; and yet it seems as if all the talk had only made me wish for a great deal more. Books and babies and dress and almsgiving and amusements and the nineteenth century, its merits and its faults, high things and low things, and big things and trifles, and sense and nonsense, and everything except Home Rule, on which we don't agree and couldn't spare time to fight. We did thoroughly agree, however, as I think people of all parties must have done, in admiration of a lecture, or rather speech, made at our school by a very good and clever Mr. Wicksteed, a Nonconformist (I believe Unitarian) minister on Politics and Morals. The principle on which he founded it was that politics are a branch of morals; accordingly he placed them on as high a level as any other duty of life, and spoke with withering indignation of the too common practice, and even theory, that a little insincerity, a little trickery, is allowable in politics, whereas it would not be in other matters.[108] We were all delighted.
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
PEMBROKE LODGE, March 7, 1888
"Adam Bede" was as interesting a sofa companion as you could have found; a very lovely book--wit and pathos almost equally good, pathos quite the best though, to my mind. We are reading aloud another charming book of Lowell's, "Democracy," and other essays in the same volume; and I flutter about from book to book by myself, and have still two books of "Paradise Lost" to read, and am wondering what is going to happen to Adam and Eve. I was very miserable when I found she ate the forbidden fruit. She had made such fair promises to be good. Alas, alas! why did she break them? That story of the Fall, though I suppose nobody thinks it verbally true, is always to me most full of deep meaning, and seems to be the story of every mortal man and woman born into this wondrous world.
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, October 3, 1888
Agatha gone yesterday to Pembroke Lodge--Rollo gone to-day to join her, so my wee bairnie and I are "left by our lone," as you used to say. "Einsam nein, dass bin ich nicht, denn die Geister meiner Lieben, Sie umschweben mich."[109] I think it's good now and then to let the blessed and beautiful memories of the past have their way and float in waking dreams before our eyes, and not be forced down beneath daily duties and occupations and enjoyments, till the pain of keeping them there becomes hard to bear. Yet, "act, act in the living present" is very, very much the rightest thing; though I don't think I quite like the past to be called the dead past, when it is so fearfully full of keenest life.
Lady Russell to Lady Georgiana Peel
DUNROZEL, HASLEMERE, SURREY, October 8, 1888
... We have had Rollo's old Oxford friend, Dr. Drewitt, here for two nights--the very cheerfulest of guests. He is head of the Victoria Hospital for Children, and what with keen interest in his profession, and intense love of nature, animate and inanimate, I don't think he would know how to be bored. Hard-worked men have far the best of it here below, although we are accustomed to look upon "men of leisure" as those to be envied; but how seldom one finds a man or woman, who lives a life in earnest, and who has eyes to see and observe, taking a gloomy view of human nature and its destinies. I wonder what you have been reading? I have taken up lately that delightful book, Lockhart's "Life of Sir Walter Scott," and dipping into many besides.... Some of our pleasantest neighbours have paid us good-bye visits; Frederic Harrisons, and the charming and wonderful old Miss Swanwick[110]....
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
PEMBROKE LODGE, March 13, 1889
How could you, could you, could you think that my mental vow not to write on the all-absorbing political catastrophe was because I sing "God save, Ireland" in one sense, and you in another! The vow was made because if once the flood-gates of my eloquence are let loose on that subject, there is a danger that the stream will Tennysonially "go on for ever." It is, however, a vow made to be broken from time to time, when I allow a little ripple to flow a little way and make a little noise, and then return to the usual attitude towards non-sympathizers; and, like David, keep silence and refrain even from good words, though it is pain and grief to me, and my heart is hot within me. I am speaking of the mere acquaintance non-sympathizers, or those known to be too bitter to bear difference of opinion; but don't be afraid, or do be afraid, as you may put it, and be prepared for total removal of the flood-gates when you come. Don't you often feel yourself in David's trying condition, knowing that your words would be very good, yet had better not be spoken? I don't like it at all.
Lady Russell to Lady Charlotte Portal
DUNROZEL, September 4, 1889
DEAREST LOTTY,--It was nice to hear from you from Minto. What a strange sensation it always gives me to write or to hear that word of Minto.[111] I am sure you know it too--impossible to define, but like something beautiful and holy, not belonging to this world. I like to hope that such memories have been stored up by the younger spirits who have succeeded us, while "children not hers have trod our nursery floor." But in this restless, fly-about age can they ever be quite the same? ... I see that luckily I have no room to go on about lovely, lovable, sorrowful Ireland. Alas! that England has ever had anything to do with her; but better times are coming, and she will be understood by her conquerors at last, and be the better for them. Hush! Fanny, no more; even that is too much. God bless thee.
Ever thine,
F. R.
In 1889 the "Life of Lord John Russell" by Mr. Spencer Walpole, was published.