Many of Lady Russell's letters to me on the events and the fortunes, the hopes and the disasters of our Irish National movement have in them an actual historical interest, such as the one dated November 27, 1890, which is quoted in this volume. It was written during the crisis which came upon our Irish National party at the time when the hopes of Mr. Parnell's most devoted friends in England as well as in Ireland were that after the result of a recent divorce suit Parnell would resign, for a time at least, the leadership of the party and only seek to return to it when he should have made what reparation was in his power to his own honour and to public feeling. In a letter of December 26, 1891, Lady Russell says: "Your poor country has risen victorious from many a worse fall, and will not be disheartened now, nor bate a jot of heart or hope."
Lady Russell's letters not merely illustrate her deep and noble sympathy with the cause and the hopes of Ireland, but also they are evidence of the clear judgment and foresight which were qualities at once of her intellect and of her feeling. Scattered throughout her letters to me are many other evidences of the same kind with regard to other great political and social questions then coming up at home or abroad. I wish to say, however, that her letters do not by any means occupy themselves only with political questions, with Parliamentary debates, and with legislative measures. To paraphrase the words of the great Latin poet, whatever men and women were doing in arts and letters, in social progress, and in all that concerns humanity, supplied congenial subjects for the letters written by this most gifted, most observant, most intellectual woman to her friends.
One certainly has not lived in vain who has had the honour of being admitted to that friendship for some twenty years.
I have no words, literally none, in which to express adequately the admiration and the affection and the devotion which I felt for Lady Russell. No higher type of womanhood has yet been born into our modern world.
Lady Agatha Russell is rendering a most valuable service to humanity in preparing and giving to the world the records of her mother's life which appear in this volume. A monument more appropriate and more noble could not be raised over any grave than that which the daughter is thus raising to the memory of her mother.