On August 18, 1871, Lord Russell's seventy-ninth birthday was celebrated at Pembroke Lodge by the school children under the cedar in the garden. "His serene and cheerful mind, a greater blessing year by year as enjoyments one by one drop away. He looks back with gratitude, he accepts the present with contentment. He looks forward, I think, without dread." In September they went abroad, and took for the second time the house at Renens-sur-Roche, in Switzerland, where they had stayed in 1855. Lady Russell's mind was still full of horror of the recent war.
The first morning at Glyon (she writes to her sister, Lady Dunfermline) was one of merciless rain, but the afternoon did well enough for Chillon, to which use we all put it, and very interesting, grimly and horribly so, we found it. Men are less wicked and less cruel, tyrants are less tyrannical nowadays than when so-called criminals, often the best men in their country, were chained by iron rings to dungeon stones for years and years, or fastened to pillars and tortured by slow fires, or thrown down "oubliettes" into the lake below, falling first on a revolving machine stuck full of sharp blades--of all which horrors we were shown the scene and the remains. But I hope that some centuries hence travellers will wonder at even the present use to which Chillon is put, that of an arsenal, and thank God that they did not live in an age when sovereigns and rulers could command man to destroy his brother-man.
From Switzerland they moved down to the South of France to get to a warmer climate. They had taken a villa for the winter at Cannes, where they had a happy time, brightened during the Christmas vacation by the visits of their sons with friends from Oxford. In his old age Lord Russell seemed to enjoy more and more the companionship of the young, and entered with spirit into their merry jests and their eager conversations on great subjects, discussed with the freshness and enthusiasm of youth.
Lord Russell, as the following letters show, was still taking keen interest in education questions:
Lord Russell to Colonel Romilly
RENENS, September 27, 1871
I see the Bishop of Manchester has been speaking in favour of "a very moderate form of dogmatism" to be imposed on Dissenters who wish their children to have religious teaching. I am quite against this moderate form, which consists in making a Baptist child own that he is to believe what his godfathers and godmothers promised for him--he having neither godfathers nor godmothers. Every form of persecution is in my eyes detestable, so that I shall have to fight a new fight for freedom of education.
Lord Russell to Lady Minto
CANNES, January 6, 1872
MY DEAREST NINA,--Your New Year's Day letter shows that you write as well as a volunteer as on compulsion.... I am sorry to have annoyed Maggie by my allusion to the Hertfordshire incumbent. Here is my case. Sixty-three years ago my father, with others founded a Society to teach the Bible to young boys and girls, which they called "Schools for all." One should have thought there was no harm in the project, and that they might have been left alone. Not so. The clergy were furious. Sixty years ago they founded the National Society, and ever since they have libelled our schools.... Last year or the year before the H.I. [Hertfordshire Incumbent] attacked my proposals. I left him alone, but I carried the day, and excluded formularies from schools provided by rates. Still the bishops and clergy fulminate against us, shut out Baptists from the schools where they have influence, and declaim against us. Now I happen to have a great respect for the Bible, and while I have life will not cease to defend our Bible schools. You will say, if I do not, that in time the world will come round to Christianity, which is at a low ebb at present. Men will understand at last that they ought to love God and to love their neighbour as themselves, not to steal, or commit murder, or cheat their neighbours. The Athanasian Creed is making a pretty hubbub. It was invented as a substitute for Christianity, and taken from Aristotle....
Ever yours affectionately,
RUSSELL
Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline
CANNES, November 29, 1871
What is to be the result of the Republican ferment in our country? It may not be widespread, and it certainly hardly exists above the working classes, yet I feel that the germ is there--and who can say how far it is doomed to flourish, or whether it will die away.... Ours has been so free and independent and prosperous a nation, that the notion of any fundamental change in the Constitution is awful. Yet when we boast of our freedom and prosperity we should not forget the enormous mass of misery, vice, filth, and all evil which disgraces all our large towns--nor the brutish ignorance and apathy which pervades much of our rural population. And it is well worth the most earnest thought and study, on the part of all Englishmen and women, to find out whether our form of government has or has not any share of the blame and to act accordingly. I have great confidence in the British people. They have never liked hasty, ill-considered changes; they hate revolution; and I hope I am not too trustful in believing that we shall go on in the wise and the right path, whatever that may be, and in spite of the freaks and follies of many a man whose aims are more selfish than patriotic.
While at Cannes Lord and Lady Russell saw a great deal of Princess Christian, who was living near them, and was in great anxiety and sorrow about the illness of her brother, the Prince of Wales, who nearly died in December, 1871. His illness was the occasion of a display of loyalty and sympathy from thousands of British subjects. Lady Russell received the following reply to a letter she wrote from Cannes to the Queen: