Lady John to Lord John Russell
PEMBROKE LODGE, April 20, 1853
I am delighted with Gladstone's Budget. I don't pretend to judge of all its details, but such of its proposals as I understand are all to my mind, and the spirit and temper of the whole speech admirable; so bold, so benevolent, so mild, so uncompromising. I read it aloud to Lizzy and the girls, and we were in the middle of it when your letter came telling us how fine it had been.... Surely you will carry it? I feel no fear, except of your allowing it to be damaged in the carrying.
Mrs. Gladstone to Lady John Russell
April, 1853
MY DEAR LADY JOHN,--I thank you heartily for your very kind note. You know well from your own experience how happy I must be now.
We have indeed great reason to be thankful: the approbation of such men as your husband is no slight encouragement and no slight happiness. I assure you we have felt this deeply. After great anxiety one feels more as if in a happy dream than in real life and you will not laugh at the relief to me of seeing him well after such an effort and after such labour as it has been for weeks....
We have often thought of you in your illness and heard of your well-doing with sincere pleasure.
Once more thanking you, believe me, dear Lady John,
Yours sincerely,
CATHERINE GLADSTONE
I must tell you with what comfort and interest I watched Lord John's countenance during the speech.
On March 28, 1853, Lady John's daughter, Mary Agatha, was born at Pembroke Lodge. Lady Minto was well enough to write a bright and happy letter of congratulation on the birth of her granddaughter, but her health was gradually failing, and on July 21st she died at Nervi, in Italy.
PEMBROKE LODGE, August 3, 1853
The world is changed to me for ever since I last wrote. My dear, dear Mama has left it, and I shall never again see that face so long and deeply loved. Tuesday, July 26th, was the day we heard. Thursday, July 21st, the day her angel spirit was summoned to that happy home where tears are wiped from all eyes. I pray to think more of her, glorious, happy and at rest, than of ourselves. But it is hard, very, very hard to part. O Mama, Mama, I call and you do not come. I dream of you, I wake, and you are not there.
Lord John to Lady John Russell
MINTO, August 10, 1853
You will feel a melancholy pang at the date of the place from which I write. It is indeed very sorrowful to see Lord Minto and so many of his sons and daughters assembled to perform the last duties to her who was the life and comfort of them all.... The place is looking beautiful, and your mother's garden was never so lovely. It is pleasant in all these sorrows and trials to see a family so united in affection, and so totally without feelings or objects that partake of selfishness or ill-will.
The old poet Rogers, who had been attached to Lady John since her earliest days in London society, now wrote to her in her sorrow. His note is worth preserving. He was past his ninetieth year when he wrote, and it reveals a side of him which is lost sight of in the memoirs of the time, where he usually appears as saying many neat things, but few kind ones. Mrs. Norton, in a letter to Hayward, gives an authentic picture of him at this time. She begins by saying that no man ever seemed so important who did so little, even said so little:
"His god was Harmony," she wrote; "and over his life Harmony presided, sitting on a lukewarm cloud. He was not the 'poet, sage, and philosopher' people expected to find he was, but a man in whom the tastes (rare fact!) preponderated over the passions; who defrayed the expenses of his tastes as other men make outlay for the gratification of their passions; all within the limit of reason.
"... He was the very embodiment of quiet, from his voice to the last harmonious little picture that hung in his hushed room, and a curious figure he seemed--an elegant pale watch-tower, showing for ever what a quiet port literature and the fine arts might offer, in an age of 'progress,' when every one is tossing, struggling, wrecking, and foundering on a sea of commercial speculation or political adventure; when people fight over pictures, and if a man does buy a picture, it is with the burning desire to prove it is a Raphael to his yielding enemies, rather than to point it out with a slow white finger to his breakfasting friends."
Mr. Samuel Rogers to Lady John Russell
August 13, 1853
MY DEAR FRIEND,--May I break in upon you to say how much you have been in my thoughts for the last fortnight? But I was unwilling to interrupt you at such a moment when you must have been so much engaged.
May He who has made us and alone knows what is best for us support you under your great affliction. Again and again have I taken up my poor pen, but in vain, and I have only to pray that God may bless you and yours wherever you go.
Ever most affectionately yours,
SAMUEL ROGERS