Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury.
2 Connaught Place, W.: January 13, 1887.
Dear Lord Salisbury,—Although a great and wide political difference has separated me from you officially, I cannot refrain (even possibly at the risk of being misunderstood) from writing you a line to express how greatly I grieve for the shock you must have experienced owing to the melancholy occurrence of yesterday afternoon. It seems very hard on you that this grave event should have come now to add its own weight to the many other troubles and worries which circumstances purely political have occasioned.
I felt much the old Lord’s death, for he had for years past gone through much bother, disappointment, and probably vexation, nor can I conveniently repress the reflection quorum pars magna fui. But this I can say from my own knowledge, consisting of the recollection of many facts and conversations, that never in public life did any man have a truer friend and colleague than Lord Iddesleigh had in you; and certainly if rewards, honours and the praise of men are sources of satisfaction, Lord Iddesleigh enjoyed them in a fuller measure than any other contemporary, and that he did so I consider to be mainly owing to the unwavering loyalty with which you invariably supported him, checked all depreciation, and stimulated constant recognition of his public services.
I like to place this on record, though possibly it may be deemed somewhat presumptuous, for it has been my fortune in the last two or three years to see as much almost perhaps as anyone into the inner and more concealed working of our party life.
Believe me to be, with much sympathy,
Yours most sincerely,
Randolph S. Churchill.
Lord Salisbury to Lord Randolph Churchill.
Hatfield House, Hatfield, Herts: January 14, 1887.
My dear Randolph,—I am very grateful for the kind sympathy expressed in your letter of yesterday, and very much touched by it. Your testimony to my bearing towards our old friend in the past is thoughtful and generous.
It was a very painful scene that I witnessed on Wednesday in Downing Street. I had never happened to see anyone die before—and therefore, even apart from the circumstances, the suddenness of this unexpected death would have been shocking. But here was, in addition, the thought of our thirty years’ companionship in political life; and the reflection that now, just before this sudden parting, by some strange misunderstanding which it is hopeless to explain, I had, I believe for the first time in my life, seriously wounded his feelings. As I looked upon the dead body stretched before me I felt that politics was a cursed profession.