The Duke of Buccleuch, with whom Fanny and I have been having luncheon, says that Dizzy is like a clever conjuror. "Is that the card you wished for, sir?-and is that yours, and yours, and yours?" But politics are rather disgusting than otherwise. ... Fanny and I went yesterday to see the Queen lay the first stone of the Hall of Science and Art.[67] It was a grand sight--great respect, but no enthusiasm, nor occasion for it.
Lotty is going to give us dinner to-morrow. I call her and Mary, L'Allegra e la Penserosa. Fanny: "And what am I?" "L'Allegra e Penserosa." I have no more nonsense to tell you. I should like to go to Paris in July or August, but can we? Let me know when you will be there.
Your faithful
TRUSTY TOMKINS
A few weeks later he wrote again to Lady Minto: "Our Reform Bill is now brought to that exact shape in which Bright put it in 1858, and which he thought too large and democratic a change to be accepted by the moderate Liberal party. However, nothing is too much for the swallow of our modern Tories."
In August, 1867, Lord Russell's eldest daughter, Georgiana, married Mr. Archibald Peel,[68] son of General Peel, and nephew of the statesman, Sir Robert Peel.
The daughters, who had now left the old home, were sadly missed, but intimate and affectionate intercourse with them never ceased. Lady Russell's own daughter, the youngest of three families--ten in all--thought in her early childhood that they were all real brothers and sisters, a striking proof of the harmonious happiness of the home. In November, 1867, Lady Victoria Villiers wrote to Lady Russell: "How I long to make our home as pure, as high in its tone and aims, as free from all that is low or even useless for our children, as our dear home was to us."
On Lord Russell's birthday, August 18, 1867, Lady Russell wrote in her diary:
My dear, dear husband's birthday. Each year, each day, makes me feel more deeply all the wonderful goodness of God in giving me one so noble, so gentle, so loving, to be my example, my happiness, my stay. How often his strength makes me feel, but try to conquer, my own weakness; how often his cheerfulness and calmness are a reproach to my anxieties. Experience has not hardened but only given him wisdom. Trials have taught him to feel for others; age has deepened his religion of love. All that so often lowers commoner natures has but raised his.
In February, 1868, Lord Derby resigned, owing to ill health. "With Lord Derby [says Sir Spencer Walpole[69]] a whole race of statesmen disappeared. He was the last of the Prime Ministers who had held high office before the Reform Act of 1832; and power, on his fall, was to be transferred to men not much younger in point of years, but whose characters and opinions had been moulded by other influences. He was, moreover, the last of the Tories. He had, indeed, by his own concluding action made Toryism impossible; for, in 1867, he had thrown the ramparts of Toryism into a heap, and had himself mounted the structure and fired the funeral pile." Disraeli succeeded him as Prime Minister.
Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell
CHESHAM PLACE, February 18, 1868
...Lord Derby is supposed to be dying, I am sorry to say. It is horrible to hear the street criers bawling out in their catchpenny voices, "Serious illness of Lord Derby." I feel for his wife and all belonging to him without any of the flutter and anxiety about your father which a probable change of Ministry would have caused a few years ago. He will never accept office again. This is right, I know, and I am thankful that on the conviction of its being so he has calmly made up his mind--yet there is deep sadness in it. The newspapers are not favourable to his pamphlets on Ireland [three pamphlets published together afterwards under the title, "A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue">[. He does not care much about this, provided men in Parliament adopt his views or something like them.
We find London very sociable and pleasant ... people all looking glad to meet, and fresh and pleasant from their country life, quite different from what they will be in July....