Yours very truly,
Salisbury.
Lord Randolph replied as if nothing had happened:—
2 Connaught Place: June 16, 1885.
Dear Lord Salisbury,—I am deeply sensible of the extreme kindness towards myself which you show me by your letter received this morning, and if not inconvenient to you I will do myself the honour of waiting upon you about eleven o’clock to-day.
Believe me to be
Yours most sincerely,
Randolph S. Churchill.
That the interview was friendly and in the main satisfactory may be inferred from the following letter written later in the day, which shows, among other things, that in the hour of victory Lord Randolph Churchill was not inclined to desert those who had worked with him:—
2 Connaught Place: June 16, 1885.
Dear Lord Salisbury,—I do hope you will not be annoyed if I add to your many difficulties by these few lines. Of course, since I saw you this morning I have thought about little else than all that you were kind enough to say to me on many subjects. I do feel very uneasy indeed about Wolff and Gorst, and I cannot think that I have submitted to you their position as regards myself with the urgency which they are entitled to expect from me. If it were possible for you to consider whether it might not be in your power to recommend Wolff for the high dignity of a Privy Councillor I should be easy in my mind about him, and I venture to press this desire of mine upon you.
Gorst ... knows his powers, his position in the House, his hitherto barely recognised claims, and it makes me perfectly wretched to feel that it must occur to his mind that his failure to obtain that for which so many persons of knowledge consider he is fitted in every way is due to lukewarmness on my part. If I did not know what the general feeling of the House of Commons will be as regards myself on this point, I would have hesitated to trouble you; but I am certain that if with respect to these two cases things remain in the position you gave me to understand this morning they would be, I shall be considered to have failed my friends, and my powers, whatever they may be, of being useful to your Government will be impaired.
Yours most sincerely,
Randolph S. Churchill.