Chapter XIV

The immense number of letters received by Lady Russell's son and daughter, from men and women of all classes and creeds, bore striking testimony to the widespread and reverent devotion felt for her memory. Only very few selections will be given here. The first letter--written on the day of her death--is from Mr. Farrington, the respected minister of the Richmond Free Church, who had known Lady Russell intimately for many years.

_Rev. Silas Farrington to Lady Agatha Russell_

_January_ 17, 1898

To me your mother has become more and more an inspiration--a kind
of tower of cheerful courage and strength. By her steadfast mental
and moral bravery, by the sunshine she has been beneath the heavy
clouds that have been sweeping over her, she has made one ashamed
of the small things that troubled him and rebuked his petty
discontent and repining. No one can ever be told how much I both
have honoured and loved her for the very greatness of her noble
spirit.

_Rev. Stopford A. Brooke to Lady Agatha Russell_

_January_ 18, 1898

How little I thought when I saw Lady Russell last [118] that I
should see her no more! She looked so full of life, and her
interest in all things was so keen and eager that I never for a
moment thought her old or linked to her lite the imagination of
death. It is a sore loss to lose one so fresh, so alive, so ardent
in all good and beautiful things, and it must leave you in a great
loneliness.... How well, how nobly she lived her life! It shames us
to think of all she did, and yet it kindles us so much that we lose
our shame in its inspiration.

[118] On October 31, 1897.

_Mr. Frederic Harrison to Lady Agatha Russell_

_February_ 16, 1898

...The news of the great sorrow which has fallen on you came upon
my wife and myself as a dreadful surprise.... Over and over again I
tried to say to the world outside all that I felt of the noble
nature and the grand life of your mother, but every time I tried my
pen fell from my hand. I was too sad to think or write; full only
of the sense of the friend whom I had lost, and of the great
example she has left to our generation. She has fulfilled her
mission on earth, and all those who have known her--and they are
very many--will all their lives be sustained by the memory of her
courage, dignity, and truth. She had so much of the character of
the Roman matron--a type we know so little nowadays--who, being
perfect in all the beauty of domestic life, yet even more
conspicuously raised the public life of her time. I shall never,
while I have life, forget the occasions this last summer and autumn
when I had been able to see more of her than ever before, and
especially that last hour I spent with her, when you were away at
Weston, the memory of which now comes back to me like a death-bed
parting. To have known her was to ride above the wretched party
politics to which our age is condemned. I cannot bear to think of
all that this bereavement means to you. It must be, and will
remain, irreparable.

_Mr. James Bryce [119] to Lady Agatha Russell_

_March_ 10, 1898

Your mother always seemed to me one of the most noble and beautiful
characters I had ever known--there was in her so much gentleness,
so much firmness, so much earnestness, so ardent a love for all
high things and all the best causes. One always came away from
seeing her struck afresh by these charms of nature, and feeling the
better for having seen how old age had in no way lessened her
interest in the progress of the world, her faith in the triumph of
good.

[119] The Right Hon. James Bryce, British Ambassador at Washington.

_Mrs. Sinclair to Mr. Rollo Russell_

_January_, 1900

I loved and honoured my dear lady more than any one I ever served.
In my long life of service, where all had been good and kind to me,
she was the dearest and best.

The funeral service was held on the 21st of January in the village church at Chenies, where her husband had been buried among his ancestors. The Burial Service of the Church of England, the solemnity and beauty of which she had always deeply felt, was read in the presence of many friends and relations assembled to pay their last tribute of respect to her memory.

Not long before her death Lady Russell had written these lines:

O shadowy form majestic, nearer gliding,
And ever nearer! Thou whose silent tread
Not ocean, chasm, or mountain can delay,
Not even hands in agony outstretched,
Or bitterest tears of breaking hearts, that fain
Would stay thy dread approach to those most dear.
Vainly from thee we seek to hide; thou wield'st
A sceptred power that none below may challenge;
Yet no true monarch thou--but Messenger
Of Him, Monarch supreme and Love eternal,
Who holdeth of all mysteries the key;--
And in thy dark unfathomable eyes
A star of promise lieth.
Then O! despite all failure, guilt and error,
Crushing beneath their weight my faltering soul,
When my hour striketh, when with Time I part,
When face to face we stand, with naught between,
Come as a friend, O Death!
Lay gently thy cold hand upon my brow,
And still the fevered throb of this blind life,
This fragment, mournful yet so fair--this dream,
Aspiring, earth-bound, passionate--and waft me
Where broken harmonies will blend once more,
And severed hearts once more together beat;
Where, in our Father's fold, all, all shall be fulfilled.

RECOLLECTIONS OF FRANCES, COUNTESS RUSSELL

BY JUSTIN McCARTHY

Some of the dearest and most treasured memories of my lifetime are those belonging to the years during which I had the honour of being received among her friends by the late Countess Russell.

That friendship lasted more than twenty years, and its close on this earth was only brought about by Lady Russell's death.

There hangs now in my study, seeming to look down upon me while I write, a photograph of Lady Russell with her name written on it in her own handwriting. That photograph I received but a short time before her death, and it is to be with me so long as I live and look upon this earth.

I had some slight, very slight, acquaintance with the late Earl Russell, ever best known to fame as Lord John Russell, some years before I became one of his wife's friends. I met Lord John Russell for the first time in 1858, when he was attending a meeting of the Social Science Association, held in Liverpool, where I was then a young journalist, and I had the good fortune to be presented to him. After that, when I settled in London, I met him occasionally in the precincts of Westminster Palace, and I had some interesting conversations with him which I have mentioned in published recollections of mine. During all that time I had, however, but a merely slight and formal acquaintanceship with his gifted wife.

When I came to know her more closely she had settled herself in her home at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park, and it is with that delightful home that my memories of her are mainly associated. She received her friends and acquaintances in general there on certain appointed days in each week. I need hardly say how gladly I availed myself of every opportunity for the enjoyment of such a visit, and especially for the enjoyment of Lady Russell's conversation and companionship.

I have known many gifted women, among them many gifted authoresses, but I have not known any woman who could have surpassed Lady Russell in the varied charms of her conversation. Most of us, men and women, have usually the habit of carrying our occupations with us, metaphorically at least, wherever we go, and therefore have some difficulty in entering with full appreciation into conversational fields in which we do not find ourselves quite at home.

Lady Russell was not like most of us in that quality. Her chief natural interest, one might readily suppose, would have been centred in questions belonging to the domain of politics, national and international, she having been for so great a part of her life the wife and the close companion of one of England's leading statesmen.

But Lady Russell was endowed with a peculiarly receptive mind, and she felt an interest quite natural and spontaneous in every subject which could interest educated and rational human beings--in art, literature, and science; in the history and the growth of all countries; in the condition of the poor and the struggling throughout the world; in every effort made by knowledge, benevolence, and enlightened purpose for the benefit of humanity. She had evidently also a strong desire to add to her own large stock of information, and she appears to have felt that whenever she came into converse with any fellow-being she was in communication with one who could tell her something which she did not already know.

In this characteristic she reminded me strongly of William Ewart Gladstone.

There is, or there used to be, a common impression throughout many social circles in this country, that when Gladstone in private was the centre of any company, he generally contrived to keep most of the talk to himself. This always seemed to me an entire misconception, for I had many opportunities of observing that Gladstone in social companionship seemed much more anxious to get some new ideas from those around him than to pour out to them from his own treasures of information.

Lady Russell loved to draw forth from the artist something about his art, from the scholar something about his books, to compare the ideas of the politician with her own, to lead the traveller into accounts of his travels, to get from the scientific student some of his experiences in this or that domain of science, and from those who visited the poor some suggestions which might serve her during her constant work in the same direction.

Even on subjects concerning which the greatest and sharpest divisions of opinion might naturally arise--political questions, for instance--Lady Russell seemed as much interested in listening to the clear exposition and defence of a political opponent's views as she might have been in the cordial exchange of sympathetic and encouraging opinions. When I first began to make one of Lady Russell's frequent visitors, there was, of course, between us a natural sympathy of political opinion which was made all the stronger because of momentous events that had lately passed, or were then passing, in the world around.

The great Civil War in the North American States had come to an end many years before I began to visit Lady Russell at her home, and I need hardly remind my readers that by far the larger proportion of what we call "society" in England had given its sympathies entirely to the cause of the South, and had firmly maintained, almost to the very end, that the South was destined to have a complete victory over its opponents. Lady Russell gave her sympathies to the side of the Northern States, as was but natural, seeing that the success of the North would mean the abolition of that system of slavery which was to her heart and to her conscience incapable of defence or of palliation.

I had paid my first visit to the United States not many years after the end of the Civil War--a visit prolonged for nearly two years and extending from New York to San Francisco and from Maine to Louisiana. I had therefore a good deal to tell Lady Russell about the various experiences I had had during this my first visit to the now reunited States, and the lights which they threw for me on the origin and causes of the Civil War.

I may say here that Lady Russell was always very anxious that the public should fully understand and appreciate the attitude taken by her late husband with regard to the Civil War. In a letter written to me on October 20, 1879, Lady Russell refers me to a speech made by her husband on March 23, 1863, and she goes on to say:

It shows unanswerably how strong was his opinion against the recognition of the Southern States, even at a moment when the tide of battle was so much in their favour that he, in common, I think, with most others, looked upon separation as likely to be the final issue. As long as the abolition of slavery was not openly announced, as he thought it ought to have been, as one of the main objects of the war on the part of the Federals, he felt no warm sympathy with their cause. But after President Lincoln's proclamation it was quite different, and no man rejoiced with deeper thankfulness than he did at the final triumph of the Northern States, for no man held slavery in more utter abhorrence.

I have thought it well to introduce this quotation just here because it is associated at once with my earliest recollections of Lady Russell, and at the same time with a subject of controversy which may almost be said to have passed out of the realms of disputation since that day.

The American States have now long been absolutely reunited; there is no difference of opinion whatever in this country with regard to the question of slavery, and yet it is quite certain that during the American Civil War a large number of conscientious, humane, and educated Englishmen were firmly convinced that the American Republic was about to break in two, and that the sympathies of England ought to go with the rebelling Southern States. It is well, therefore, that we should all be reminded of Lord Russell's attitude on these subjects.

I had much to tell Lady Russell of the various impressions made on me during my wanderings through the States, and by the distinguished American authors, statesmen, soldiers--Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, General Grant, General Sherman. With the public career of each of these men Lady Russell was thoroughly acquainted, but she was much interested in hearing all that I could tell her about their ways of life and their personal habits and characteristics.

Then there were, of course, political questions at home concerning which there was deep sympathy between Lady Russell and me, and on which we had many long conversations. She had the most intense and enlightened sympathy with the great movements going on in these countries for the spread of political equality and of popular education.

Every statesman who sincerely and actively supported the principles and measures tending towards these ends was regarded as a friend by this noble-hearted woman.

I had been for many years a leader-writer and more recently editor of the _Morning Star_, the London daily newspaper which advocated the views of Cobden and Bright, and I had more recently still been elected to the House of Commons as a member of the Irish Nationalist Party, and thus again I found myself in thorough sympathy with the opinions and the feelings of my hostess.

Lady Russell had long been an advocate of that truly Liberal policy towards Ireland which is now accepted as the only principle by all really enlightened Liberal English men and women; and she thoroughly understood the condition, the grievances, the needs, and the aspirations of Ireland. The readers of this volume will see in some passages extracted from Lady Russell's diaries and letters how deep and strong were her feelings on the subject. She followed with the most intense interest and with the most penetrating observation the whole movement of Ireland's national struggle down to the very close of her life. Her letters on this question alone--letters addressed to me--would in themselves serve to illumine even now the minds of many English readers on this whole subject. Lady Russell was in no sense a partisan on any political question--I mean she never gave her approval to everything said or done by the leaders of any political party merely because the one main object of that party had her full sympathy and approval. Reading over many of her letters to me on various passages of the Home Rule agitation inside and outside Parliament, I have been once again filled with admiration and with wonder at the keen sagacity, the prophetic instinct, which she displayed with regard to this or that political movement or political man.

All through these letters it becomes more and more manifest that Lady Russell's devotedness was in every instance to principle rather than to party, to measures rather than to men. By these words I do not mean to convey the idea that her nature led her habitually into any cold and over-calculating criticism of political leaders whom she admired, and in whom she had been led to feel confidence.

Her generous nature was enthusiastic in its admiration of the men whose leadership in some great political movement had won her sympathy from the first; but even with these her admiration was overruled and kept in order by her devotion to the principles which they were undertaking to carry into effect, and by the fidelity with which they adhered to these principles. Even among intelligent and enlightened men and women we often find in our observation of public affairs that there are instances in which the followers of a trusted leader are carried away by their personal devotion into the championship of absolute errors which the leader is committing--errors that might prove perilous or even, for the time, fatal to the cause of which he is the recognised advocate.

Lady Russell always set the cause above the man, regarding him mainly as the instrument of the cause; and if the alternative were pressed upon her, would have withdrawn from his leadership rather than tacitly allow the cause to be misled. This, however, would have been done only as a last resort and after the most full, patient, and generous consideration of the personal as well as the public question.

We men do not expect to find in an enthusiastic, tender, and what may be called exquisitely feminine woman the quality of clear and guiding discrimination between the policy of the leader and the principles of the cause which he undertakes to lead. We are inclined to assume that the woman in such a case, if she has already made a hero of the man, will be apt to think that everything he proposes to do must be the right thing to do, and that any question raised as to the wisdom and justice of any course adopted by him is a treason against his leadership.

Lady Russell never seemed to me to yield for a moment to any such sentiment of mere hero-worship. She set, as I have said, the cause above the man, and she measured the man according to her interpretation of his policy towards the cause.

But at the same time she was never one of those who cannot be convinced that some particular course is not the wisest and most just to adopt without at once rushing to the conclusion that the leader who makes any mistakes must be in the wrong because of wilfulness or mere incapacity, and is therefore not worthy any longer of admiration and trust.

I have many letters from her, written at the time of some serious crisis in the fortunes of the Irish National movement, which show the keenest and the earliest intelligence of some mistake in the policy of the party on this or that immediate question without showing the slightest inclination to diminish her confidence in the sincerity and the purposes of its leaders, any more than in the justice of the cause. I can well recollect that in many instances she proved to be absolutely in the right when she thus gave me her opinion, and that events afterwards fully maintained the wisdom and the justice of her criticism. The reason why so many of Lady Russell's opinions were conveyed to me by letter was that I had to be, like all my companions of the Irish Parliamentary Party, a constant attendant at the debates in the House of Commons, and that many days often passed without my having an opportunity to visit Lady Russell and converse with her on the subjects which had so deep an interest for her as well as for me. I therefore was in the habit of writing often to her from the House of Commons in order to give her my own ideas as to the significance and importance of this or that debate, of this or that speech and its probable effect on the House and on the outer public. Lady Russell never failed to favour me with her own views on such subjects, and the views were always her own, and were never a mere good-natured and friendly adoption of the opinions thus offered to her.

Then, when I had the opportunity of visiting her at Pembroke Lodge, we were sure to compare and discuss our views in the conversations which she made so delightful and so inspiring.

One of her marvellous qualities was that her interest and her intellect were never wholly absorbed in the passing political questions, but that she could still keep her mind open to other and entirely different subjects. The chamber of her mind seemed to me to be like one of those mysterious apartments about which we read in fairy stories, which were endowed with a magical capacity of expansion and reception.

I have come to her home at a time when, for those whose lives were mainly passed in political work, there was some subject then engaging the attention of all politicians in these countries--some subject in which I well knew that Lady Russell was deeply and thoroughly interested.

But it sometimes happened that there were friends just then with her who did not profess any interest in politics, and who were mainly concerned about some new topic in letters or art or science, and I often observed with admiration the manner in which Lady Russell could give herself up for the time to the question in which those visitors were chiefly interested, and could show her sympathy and knowledge as if she had not lately been thinking of anything else. About this there was evidently no mere desire to please her latest visitors, no sense of obligation to submit herself for the time to their especial subject, but a genuine sympathy with every effort of human intellect, and a sincere desire to gather all that could be gathered from every garden of human culture.

Many of Lady Russell's letters to me on the events and the fortunes, the hopes and the disasters of our Irish National movement have in them an actual historical interest, such as the one dated November 27, 1890, which is quoted in this volume. It was written during the crisis which came upon our Irish National party at the time when the hopes of Mr. Parnell's most devoted friends in England as well as in Ireland were that after the result of a recent divorce suit Parnell would resign, for a time at least, the leadership of the party and only seek to return to it when he should have made what reparation was in his power to his own honour and to public feeling. In a letter of December 26, 1891, Lady Russell says: "Your poor country has risen victorious from many a worse fall, and will not be disheartened now, nor bate a jot of heart or hope."

Lady Russell's letters not merely illustrate her deep and noble sympathy with the cause and the hopes of Ireland, but also they are evidence of the clear judgment and foresight which were qualities at once of her intellect and of her feeling. Scattered throughout her letters to me are many other evidences of the same kind with regard to other great political and social questions then coming up at home or abroad. I wish to say, however, that her letters do not by any means occupy themselves only with political questions, with Parliamentary debates, and with legislative measures. To paraphrase the words of the great Latin poet, whatever men and women were doing in arts and letters, in social progress, and in all that concerns humanity, supplied congenial subjects for the letters written by this most gifted, most observant, most intellectual woman to her friends.

One certainly has not lived in vain who has had the honour of being admitted to that friendship for some twenty years.

I have no words, literally none, in which to express adequately the admiration and the affection and the devotion which I felt for Lady Russell. No higher type of womanhood has yet been born into our modern world.

Lady Agatha Russell is rendering a most valuable service to humanity in preparing and giving to the world the records of her mother's life which appear in this volume. A monument more appropriate and more noble could not be raised over any grave than that which the daughter is thus raising to the memory of her mother.