Chapter II: Part 2

Later on he was invited to Brocket for the purpose of attending a ball at Panshanger. He arrived at three or four in the afternoon and found the house full of company. He did not see Lady Caroline until dinner. To his surprise and chagrin she avoided speaking to him, and did not allow him to drive to the ball in her carriage. She had, in the meantime, found another admirer in the person of Mr. Russell,[9] a natural son of the Duke of Bedford, a very handsome man, very fashionable, in the prime of life. She took no notice of Bulwer until the end of the evening, and by that time he was furiously angry. As they all went up to bed he said to her, “I shall be gone to-morrow before you are up. Good-bye.” About nine o’clock the next morning she sent a little note to his room imploring him not to go till he had seen her. He then went to her room, and was received with affection. Lady Caroline wept, entreated forgiveness, and finally persuaded Bulwer to stay on. He went out riding with her and Mr. Russell, but felt so miserable he soon returned to the house, retired to his room, and gave way to his feelings. In this state she found him, and again tried to pacify him. On rejoining the party downstairs he noticed that Mr. Russell was wearing a ring which Byron had given Lady Caroline, and which she only allowed those she loved to wear. Bulwer had had the privilege of wearing it; Lady Caroline had even wanted him to accept it, but he would not on account of its costliness. Bulwer’s resentment increased. The rest must be told in his own words: “After dinner I threw myself upon the sofa. Music was playing. Lady Caroline came to me. ‘Are you mad?’ said she. I looked up. The tears stood in my eyes. I could not have spoken a word for the world. What do you think she said aloud? ‘Don’t play this melancholy air. It affects Mr. Bulwer so that he is actually weeping.’ My tears, my softness, my _love_ were over in a moment. I sprang up, laughed, talked, and was the life of the company. But when we broke up for the evening, I went to her and said: ‘Farewell for ever. It is over. Now I see you in your true light. Vain and heartless, you have only trifled with my feelings in order to betray me. I despise as well as leave you. Instead of jealousy I only feel contempt. Farewell. Go, and be happy.’”

Bulwer records that a fever ensued and that he lost twenty ounces of blood, but that he endeavoured and with success to forget the whole episode, an easy feat since his feeling had chiefly been a mixture of vanity and imagination. He also testified to Lamb’s kindness to him. “I think he saw my feelings. He is a singularly fine character for a man of the world.”

The episode, however, left a deep impression on Bulwer, for he drew her in several of his early sketches for novels.[10] He also described her in a satirical sketch of Almack’s, which expresses Bulwer’s belief that her attachments were as innocent as they were fickle:

“But all thy woes have sprung from feeling;
Thine only guilt was not concealing;
And now mine unforgotten friend,
Though thou art half estranged from me,
My softened spirit fain would send
One pure and pitying sigh to thee.”

For a time Lady Caroline continued to correspond with him, and her letters give a picture of her life at Brocket. “Happy, healthy, quiet, contented, I get up at half-past four, ride about with Haggard, and see harvest men at work in this pretty, confined green country, read a few old books, see no one, hear from no one, and occasionally play at chess with Dr. Goddard, or listen to the faint high warblings of Miss Richardson. This contrast to my sometime hurried life delights me. Besides, I am well. And that is a real blessing to one’s self and one’s companions.”[11] She also says that she now, in her soothed and chastened spirit, detests wit and humour and satire. Bulwer seems to have made Lady Caroline his confidante in his love affair with Rosina Wheeler, the haughty, brilliant, and beautiful girl whom he married. For a time she sat at Lady Caroline’s feet, and in some ways resembled her model in temperament.

Lady Caroline affected or more probably sincerely imagined that she possessed a love of literature, and frequented the literary salons of the day, and was to be seen at Lady Cork’s, Lady Charleville’s, Miss Spence’s, and Miss Lydia White’s. Again, any one who had known Byron possessed a passport to her favour. Thus she made the acquaintance of Isaac Nathan, the musical composer who had been intimate with Byron, and for whom Byron wrote the “Hebrew Melodies” for Nathan to set to music, and asked him to come and sing to her. “Come,” she writes, “and soothe one who ought to be happy but is not.” Nathan composed the music to many of her own verses, which he published in 1829 in a curious little volume entitled _Fugitive Pieces_. It contains the lines written by Lady Caroline that form a strange comment on her husband’s well-known inveterate and incurable habit of decorating his conversation with oaths:

“Yes, I adore thee, William Lamb,
But hate to hear thee say God d----:
Frenchmen say English cry d---- d----,
But why swear’st thou? thou art a _Lamb_.”

Hobhouse went to see her at Melbourne House, in 1824, and had a two hours’ talk with her, and found her furious at what she considered the misrepresentation of her and of her attachment to Byron in Medwin’s _Conversations with Byron_. She wrote Medwin a long letter which, making allowance for her vivid imagination, may be regarded as her _apologia_. She also sent Hobhouse sixteen quarto volumes of journals kept by her since 1806, which he returned, assuring her that no purpose would be served by their publication.

Another literary acquaintance was a man she was pleased to call a rising poet, Wilmington Fleming. His works have not survived, and judging by the verses he wrote describing the eccentric fashion in which Lady Caroline celebrated her wedding-day at Brocket, the world is scarcely the loser. He may have helped Lady Caroline to some extent, probably in the capacity of secretary, with her own literary work. For this assistance she seems to have paid him when she had any money,--she was the most extravagant of women, her father-in-law always called her “Her Lavishship,”--and there is a curious letter in which she tells Fleming, who has evidently asked for payment: “I received no money but just what the servants got for their food. I have been much too ill to write or see you.” She evidently tried to help him to get his poems published.

But Lady Caroline’s health was shattered, and despite the separation she turned more and more to her husband as her best protector and truest friend. The last years were spent at Brocket, and under wise surveillance, or more probably on account of enfeebled vitality, she had grown calmer and more reasonable. In November 1827 she underwent an operation, and in the middle of December alarming symptoms set in, and she was brought from Brocket to London (to Melbourne House) in order to have better medical assistance. She herself was in a state of calmness and resignation, complaining little, and unwilling to see many people. Her husband had been appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland in May, and was of course resident at Dublin. He was kept informed of her condition. She knew she had no chance of recovery, and was only anxious to live long enough to see Lamb again. He was summoned in time, and she was able to talk to him and enjoy his society. She died peacefully about nine o’clock on Sunday evening, 26th January 1828, and was buried at Hatfield. Lamb felt her death deeply, and her influence over him never quite died away. Years later he used to ask, “Shall we meet in another world?”

* * * * *

Something must be said of Lady Caroline Lamb as a writer. She published three novels, of which _Glenarvon_ is the most important, and some fugitive verse.

_Glenarvon_ was published by Colburn anonymously--though uncontradicted rumour attributed it to her--in three volumes in 1816. An Italian translation appeared in Venice in 1817, and it was reprinted in one volume in London in 1865 under the title of _The Fatal Passion_. It is an autobiographical novel, of which the hero is Byron (Glenarvon) and the heroine herself (Lady Calantha Avondale), whose character she thus describes:

“Her feelings, indeed, swelled into a tide too powerful for the unequal resistance of her understanding; her motives appeared the very best; but the actions which resulted from them were absurd and exaggerated. Thoughts swift as lightning hurried through her brain; projects, seducing but visionary, crowded upon her view; without a curb she followed the impulse of her feelings, and those feelings varied with every varying interest and impression.

“Calantha turned with disgust from the slavish followers of prejudice. She disdained the beaten track, and she thought that virtue would be for her a safe, a sufficient, guide ... a fearless spirit raised her, as she fondly imagined, above the common herd.”[12]

She actually printed in the novel, without alteration or disguise, the farewell letter that Byron had sent her, but in other directions her portrait of Byron is a mere caricature. In a letter to Moore he said: “The picture can’t be good. I did not sit long enough.” Lady Holland is introduced into the story as the Princess of Madagascar, Rogers as the pale poet, William Lamb as Lord Avondale, Lord and Lady Melbourne as Sir Richard and Lady Mowbray, Lady Oxford as Lady Mandeville. Barbary House is Holland House, and Monteith House, Brocket Hall. It is a rhapsodical tale, sentimental and melodramatic, yet written with eloquence and vivacity. The scene in which one of the women characters commits suicide by wrapping her cloak over her horse’s eyes and calmly riding over the cliff is almost fine. The novel contains a song, “The Waters of Elle,” that is the best poem Lady Caroline wrote.

In 1822 she published, also anonymously, in two volumes, her second novel, _Graham Hamilton_, in which she endeavours to show the difficulties and dangers involved in weakness and irresolution. The manuscript was placed in Colburn’s hands two years earlier, with the injunction not to publish it then or to name the author. It contains the following verses, which had been written many years before:

“If thou couldst know what ’tis to weep,
To weep unpitied and alone,
The livelong night, whilst others sleep,
Silent and mournful watch to keep,
Thou wouldst not do what I have done.

If thou couldst know what ’tis to smile,
To smile whilst scorn’d by every one,
To hide, by many an artful wile,
A heart that knows more grief than guile,
Thou wouldst not do what I have done.

And oh! if thou couldst think how drear,
When friends are changed, and health is gone,
The world would to thine eyes appear,
If thou, like me, to none wert dear,
Thou wouldst not do what I have done.”

Her last excursion into fiction was _Ada Reis_, published in three volumes in 1823, a fantastic Eastern tale, very Byronic in character. Her husband, somewhat disturbed by his wife’s literary labours, wrote to John Murray severely criticising this book before publication, and begging him to prevail on the author to amend it. It contains two songs, one of which, beginning, “Weep for what thou’st lost, love,” is accompanied by the music specially composed for it by Isaac Nathan. Another edition of the book, in two volumes, was published the next year in Paris.

In “A New Canto,” published anonymously in 1819, she made an attempt at satire, obviously on the Byronic model. The poem describes the end of the world, and opens thus:

“I’m sick of fame--I’m gorged with it--so full
I almost could regret the happier hour
When northern oracles proclaimed me dull,
Grieving my Lord should so mistake his power--
E’en they, who now my consequence would lull,
And vaunt they hail’d and nurs’d the opening flower
Vile cheats! He knew not, impudent Reviewer,
Clear spring of Helicon from common sewer.”

All Lady Caroline’s works, both prose and verse, are forgotten and repose unread on the topmost shelves of old libraries. But they form an index to her mind and character, and should be studied side by side with her recorded actions. It is usual to dismiss her as mad and unaccountable for her actions. That is the easiest way, but is it the justest? Her gifts were by no means inconsiderable, but in the circle into which she was born there was, in the early nineteenth century, no outlet for the special activities and for the original turn of mind she possessed. Even her capacity for feeling degenerated into sentimentality. She lacked training. Under wise, skilful, and gentle guidance she would most probably have developed into a fine woman. As it was, she certainly did not help and probably retarded her husband’s political career. But vivacity, high spirits, originality, courage combined with sensibility, are not too common in this world, and when such qualities run to waste, it is an irreparable loss out of life.

II

LADY PEEL

“... thou upon the statesman’s path hast cast
The quiet sunshine of domestic gladness.”

Julia Floyd, the third child and second daughter of General Sir John Floyd, Bart., K.B., was born in India, on 19th November 1795. Her father had a distinguished military career and came of a family of soldiers.--Documentary evidence points to a certain Thomas Floyd as an ancestor of the family who obtained a commission in the 1st Dragoon Guards in 1680. His son John became a captain in the same regiment and was present at the battle of Minden on 1st August 1759, and died on duty in Germany in the following September. He left two sons, John and Thomas, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Caroline. Thomas went into the Navy, and as a midshipman volunteered for the expedition to the North Pole in 1773 under the command of Captain Constantine Phipps. Horatio Nelson, also as a midshipman, took part in the expedition. Thomas Floyd kept a journal of his adventures in the Arctic regions.[13] He told his brother that “it was always his opinion that in favourable years--and at the proper season--it was very possible to approach much nearer the Pole than they did.” Thomas died in 1778.

_After the painting by Lawrence_]

Of the daughters, Elizabeth never married, and Caroline became the wife of John Christopher Rideout of Banghurst House, Hants.

In accordance with the custom in the eighteenth century, John Floyd received his commission as Cornet in Elliott’s Light Horse in 1760, when he was only twelve years old. He had lost his father two years before. He saw active service that year, having his horse shot under him at the battle of Emsdorf, and was only saved from death at the hand of a French dragoon by the intervention of Captain (afterwards General) Ainslie. The boy then had two years’ leave of absence and finished his education at Utrecht under Lord Pembroke’s care, who saw to it that he should also become proficient in horsemanship. He was gazetted Lieutenant in 1763 and Captain-Lieutenant in 1770. He made the grand tour of Europe, 1777-79, with Lord Herbert. In 1781 he was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of the 23rd (afterwards the 19th) Light Dragoons, the “glorious old XIXth” of Indian history. In February 1782 the regiment sailed for India, arriving at Madras eight months later; Floyd wrote a long and most interesting letter describing the voyage to Lady Pembroke. Warren Hastings was Governor-General of India.

John Floyd’s letters are delightful and instructive reading. They reveal a highly intelligent and observant man, a keen soldier, possessing great gentleness of character and a strong affection for his family and friends. He describes the country, its flora and fauna, and writes himself down a pre-Darwinian when he tells Lord Pembroke, “The monkeys are far the most innocent part of the _human species_--for I hope you do not doubt that they are a branch of our family.” He was not wholly dissatisfied with his life in India, though he longed for active service. “When I am to return to England God only knows; I endeavour to avoid thinking of it. I am sensible the chances are against my returning at all. I aim indeed at a little fame, and I would fain return so as to venture to marry.”

When in 1790 he was at length ordered to the field, he writes to his sister Elizabeth that he has made all provision for her, “but I do not think I shall die a bit the sooner on this account, for I propose marrying when I go back to England, and having a prodigious number of children.”

Floyd commanded the cavalry with distinguished ability during the Mysore campaigns of 1790, 1791, 1792, and 1799. It had always been his opinion that the first military miracle to be performed in India would be wrought by cavalry, that a small body of well-disciplined Europeans on horseback, judiciously led, would defeat and destroy myriads of Indian enemies.

During the lull between the campaigns of 1790 and 1791 Floyd found time to carry out the wish that had long been in his heart. He was now forty-three years of age, and had fallen in love with Rebecca Juliana, the beautiful daughter of Charles Darke, a free merchant of Madras. The wedding took place at Madras, 29th January 1791, and in February Floyd was in the field again. There were four children of the marriage, all born in India, three girls--Miranda born in 1792, Julia (the future Lady Peel) in 1795, and Flavia in 1797--and one boy, Henry, born in 1793. Both parents were devoted to their children. Mrs. Floyd attended to them entirely herself, and would not allow a native servant to go near them, for her husband writes: “She unfortunately dislikes all natives, from His Highness the Nawab to the meanest of them.” The children were all healthy and good looking. Mrs. Floyd used to send her husband affectionate little notes about herself--her health was not good--and the children, referring to Julia as a delightful little kitten. These notes, in accordance with the regulations then in force for private letters sent to the army in the field, had to be 2 inches wide by 6-3/8 inches long, and to be rolled, not folded.

In 1798 Floyd, who was now a Major-General, began to wish to return to England as soon as all was quiet, and he could be spared, but it was July 1800 before, with his wife and four children, he reached England. Julia, with Miranda and Henry, were placed with the Rev. M. Sketchley at Parson’s Green, while a permanent abode for the family was searched for and made ready for their reception. Floyd was prepared to spend a sum of £10,000 to £15,000 on the purchase of a suitable country house. He took the very greatest interest in his children’s education from their earliest years, and when Miranda was only seven we find his wife telling him that she is trying all possible ways to bring her on in her reading, and that she sketches quite prettily, and turns a letter with her pen better than her mother can do. Floyd’s letters to his children when he was separated from them are delightful. In May 1801--he had become Lieutenant-General in January--he went to Tunbridge Wells with his wife and little daughter Flavia, and his sister Elizabeth, and wrote to Miranda:

“Harry’s[14] desire was told his mamma that she should buy
him a wife, but as that is thought to be an affair of great
consequence, Harry must be very exact in describing the sort of
wife he would like, whether long or short, thick or thin, young
or old. Handsome, no doubt. There are some sweet creatures in a
pastry-cook’s shop from three inches to a matter of six inches
tall. But if one of these wives is sent I am afraid he will be
so fond that he will quite eat her up. In the meantime, he may
consider the matter....

“You must read my letters to Harry and Julia, for though I
address them to you as a young lady considerably advanced in
her education, they in part belong to you all, for I love you
all most tenderly.”

A house had been found at Farnborough Hill, and at the end of the month the family settled there. But unhappily it was not to be for long. At the end of January 1802 the little Flavia was taken ill with scarlet fever. Her mother insisted on nursing her herself, and took the infection. The child died on 1st February, and Mrs. Floyd, who was only thirty years of age, on 3rd February. They were buried at Farnborough, and there is a tablet to their memory in the church. The three remaining children were now taken care of by their aunt, Miss Elizabeth Floyd, who lived at Chalk Farm, near Bromley, Kent. Their father, when away from them on duty, continued to exhort the children to attend to their studies, counselled them to take great pains with their writing, for “you will find it becomes fully as easy to write well as to scrawl so that nobody can read what you say,” and promised if they made good progress to take them to Sidmouth for a reward. Besides the writing of a clear hand[15] he laid much stress on good reading aloud, and also on reading to improve their minds and to form their style of writing. They are not to read novels, “for ninety-nine times in a hundred they are sad stuff, and very poor in thought. Read solid sense--history, poetry, Shakespeare’s plays, Pliny’s letters,” and this to children of whom the eldest was only twelve, the very age, her father reminded her, at which he set out from home to seek his fortune. They are to study arithmetic, geography, and music, especially singing. Needlework and, above all, dancing--“I think, with such insteps and ankles as some folks have, it would be sad indeed if _some folks_ did not skip over the ground in true airy style of a fairy, preserving always the beautiful _aplomb_, or plumb line, without stiffness”--are not to be neglected.

On 29th July 1805 Floyd took a second wife, Anna, daughter of Crosbie Morgell of Castle Morgell, Ireland, and widow of Sir Barry Denny, Bart., of Tralee Castle, Co. Kerry. The children still remained with their aunt in England, and Lady Denny--Floyd never calls her anything else in his letters--with her husband in Dublin, where he was now on duty. He became a full General on 1st January 1812, and was appointed Governor of Gravesend and Tilbury Forts in 1814. His elder daughter Miranda married, 18th November 1815, General Sir Joseph Fuller.[16] In 1816 Floyd was created a baronet for his services in India seventeen years before. He died at his house in London, 10 Mansfield Street, 10th January 1818, aged seventy, and was buried in St. James’s Church, Hampstead Road, London. His wife survived him until 4th December 1844.

Two years after her father’s death, on 8th June 1820, Julia Floyd, who had developed into a very beautiful girl, was married to Robert Peel,[17] now a rising statesman. He had already held office, having been Chief Secretary for Ireland in Lord Liverpool’s Government from 1812 to 1818. He was thus glad of a period of comparative repose, and for a while he and his bride led a retired life, spending a good deal of their time in the country, at Lulworth Castle, whence in November 1821 he writes to Lord Liverpool of the happiness of his domestic life and of his enjoyment of living as a private individual. They entertained their friends at Lulworth, and among their early visitors was Sir Humphry Davy. In 1822, the year in which Peel had accepted the office of Home Secretary under Lord Liverpool, his happiness was increased by the birth of his eldest son.

The part played by Peel’s wife in his political career is best described by herself, in a letter written in 1846 on Peel’s retirement from office, to her friend Sir Robert Wilson. The original is in the British Museum, and is here printed for the first time.

“_Friday Morning_ (1846).

“MY DEAR SIR ROBERT WILSON,--I thank you very much for your
kind note. I cannot affect regret at the termination of our
Political life! The undertaking was an arduous and an anxious
one for my husband, and indeed I shared fully in all the
anxieties attached to it. I feel that he has well fulfilled
his task throughout, and I take with much welcome and many
thanks all the kind and flattering things you say. I have every
hope that a safe and good government may be formed. I do not
dread anything much, for (amidst other reliances which I have)
I feel sure that they will find a Powerful and a Successful
opponent in my husband to any dangerous measures they might
be induced to attempt, but I am _no Politician_, and will
not bore you with talking about that, which I profess not to
understand.--Always, believe me, dear Sir Robert, yours very
truly,

“JULIA PEEL.”

Thus, while she fully shared the anxieties of her husband’s public life, and was his companion and confidante in every sense, Mrs. Peel was, as she says, no politician. It was hers to cast upon the statesman’s path “the quiet sunshine of domestic gladness” and to solace by her “beauty’s spell” and the “soft kindness” of her “pure affection”

“The life of him, whose deeds shall ever dwell
With a grateful country’s recollection!”[18]

With a very short break Peel remained in office from 1822 till 1830, and from 1828 he combined the duties of leader of the House of Commons with those of Home Secretary.

In May 1830 Peel’s father died, and he succeeded to the baronetcy, to a large fortune, and to Drayton Manor, the famous residence at Tamworth. He had before this built himself a fine house in Whitehall Gardens, London, with a gallery for the splendid collection of pictures he had formed. These pictures, chiefly of the Dutch and Flemish Schools, are now in the National Gallery. Peel was the friend and patron of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who painted two portraits of Lady Peel. One, a three-quarter length, seated, was painted in 1824, and the other, a half-length in a hat, a pendant to Rubens’ “Chapeau de Paille,” painted in 1826, is regarded as the finest portrait Lawrence ever produced.

In October 1834 Peel, with his wife and his daughter Julia, went to Italy; they had been about ten days in Rome, when a messenger, who found Sir Robert at a ball of the Duchess of Torlonia, arrived post-haste from the King, asking Sir Robert to return without loss of time and put himself at the head of the Government. Peel acquiesced and travelled back as rapidly as possible, becoming Prime Minister from December 1834 to April 1835. In the intervals of public business he was with his family at Drayton, accompanying his wife and daughter to balls and doing prodigious feats of shooting, his favourite recreation. It was in opposition, after his resignation, that Peel began to build up the Conservative party in order to maintain intact the established Constitution of Church and State. In the autumn of 1837 he again went abroad with his wife and daughter. They visited the King at Paris, and in their progress through Germany the Kings of Hanover, Würtemberg, and Bavaria seem each to have consulted Peel.

Lady Peel had a large family to bring up, five sons and two daughters. The sons were all more or less distinguished, but the most notable was the fifth, Arthur, who became Speaker of the House of Commons and was raised to the peerage as Viscount Peel in 1895. The elder daughter, Julia, married on 12th July 1841 Lord Villiers, afterwards sixth Earl of Jersey, and the younger, Eliza, became the wife of the Hon. Francis Stonor, son of Lord Camoys. Lady Peel found happiness in the companionship of her husband and children; she also took great delight in the grounds at Drayton, where she laid out a flower garden herself, and interested herself in all the outdoor arrangements. She told a country neighbour that she had a great mind to have an apiary. “Lord, ma’am, where will you get your apes from? For my part, I never could ’bide a monkey.”

The tragic death during the Free Trade agitation of Edward Drummond, Peel’s private secretary, was a terrible shock to Lady Peel. Drummond, who was a very able Civil Servant and a man of retiring and modest nature, had been seen travelling alone in Scotland in Peel’s carriage, and of course often coming out of Peel’s house in London, by a madman named Daniel Macnaghten, who fancied he had a grudge against Peel. Mistaking Drummond for Peel, he shot him as he was walking between the Admiralty and the Horse Guards on his way to Downing Street, 20th January 1843. Drummond lingered for some days, but death occurred on the 25th. Queen Victoria was deeply distressed and wrote daily to Peel for news of the dying man. The sad event and the circumstances attending it had a very bad effect on Lady Peel’s health, and her husband asked the Queen to permit them to remain in London for the present. For some time Peel went about followed by two policemen in plain clothes.

From 28th November to 1st December 1843 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert went on a visit to Sir Robert and Lady Peel at Drayton Manor. Both in town and country the Peels were noted for the sumptuousness of their entertainments and at the same time for the good taste invariably displayed. “On dîne remarquablement bien chez vous,” was the observation of a foreign guest, and Disraeli is loud in the praises of the bounteous hospitality of the Peels. The interiors of both houses were attractive and delightful in every way. The London house was especially charming, beautifully arranged, with a wealth of flowers, balconies looking on to the river. In the rooms were valuable furniture and fine pictures; some of the best of the Dutch and Flemish pictures hung in the family sitting-room.

Lady Peel felt the delights of a respite from the anxieties inseparable from public life, and enjoyed a period of repose alone with her husband at Drayton in the summer of 1846. But he was strenuous in opposition and was almost as indefatigable in his attendance at the House as when he was in office.

On the night of 28th June 1850 there was a great and memorable debate in the House of Commons on Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy. Peel criticised it unfavourably in a speech that considerably reduced the majority in favour of the resolution approving the foreign policy of the Government. The debate lasted till past daybreak on the 29th, and Peel walked home in the bright midsummer morning. During the day he attended a meeting of the Commissioners of the Great Exhibition, but both he and Lady Peel felt unaccountably depressed and despondent. She suggested as a means of distraction and refreshment that her husband should go for a ride in Hyde Park. He left his name in the visitors’ book at Buckingham Palace, rode on up Constitution Hill, saluted a lady of his acquaintance who was also riding, when his horse became restive and threw him. He was placed in a passing carriage and driven home. He was taken into the dining-room, and never again left it alive. After suffering terrible pain he died on 2nd July. Burial was offered in Westminster Abbey, but in accordance with Peel’s wish he was laid to rest in Drayton Church.

A peerage was offered Lady Peel by Lord John Russell. This she refused in a well-known letter to Lord John. She declared “that the solace (if any such remains for me) for the deplored bereavement I sustain will be that I bear the same unaltered honoured name that lives for ever distinguished by his virtues and his services.” And if the refusal had not been founded on her own feeling she went on to say that her husband had expressly desired that no members of his family should accept, if offered, any title, distinction, or reward on account of his services to his country.

Lady Peel’s grief was profound. She wrote to Lord Aberdeen, who himself had suffered greatly from the loss of so close a friend, a month later: “He was the light of my life, my brightest joy and pride. I am desolate and most unhappy. Still I am his; our union is but suspended, not dissolved.”

If anything could have consoled her, it would have been the public grief at her husband’s death. All the time he lingered a crowd hung night and day about the house; such general gloom and regret had scarcely ever before been known. As the body was being taken through London to the station, weeping women ran out from the alleys to pay their last respects to him who was veritably the “People’s Minister.” Lady Peel, too, had the deep sympathy of her Sovereign. When the Queen passed through London on 9th December 1850 she asked Lady Peel to go and see her at Buckingham Palace. She found the widowed lady broken-hearted, and crushed by the agony of her grief. In the May of the next year the Queen sent her a copy of the portrait of Peel in her possession, in acknowledging which Lady Peel referred to her husband as “the once bright, lost joy of my past life.”

Lady Peel received letters of condolence from Marie Amélie, Queen of France, the Czar of Russia, and the Grand Duke of Saxony. Guizot, writing to Lord Aberdeen, said in referring to Lady Peel, “J’ai vu leur intérieur. Le bonheur le plus pur n’en est pas moins fragile.”

The house in town with all its contents was left to Lady Peel, as well as a large sum of money under the deed of settlement. The remainder of her life was spent quietly in the society of her children and grandchildren and her intimate friends.

Lady Peel died suddenly of heart failure at her house in London on 28th October 1859. She spent the evening with her daughter, Lady Jersey, whose husband had died on the 24th. She returned home, went to bed seemingly in her usual health, but when her maid went to call her the next morning she found her dead. Many griefs had told on her. The deaths of her husband, of her sailor son, Captain William Peel, who, severely wounded at the second relief of Lucknow and while still weak, succumbed to an attack of small-pox at Cawnpore in 1858, and of her son-in-law, Lord Jersey, had been too much for her naturally delicate constitution. She was buried at Drayton beside her husband.

Lady Peel’s individuality scarcely stands out apart from her husband. She was ever the gracious presence by his side, lightening his cares, cheering him when discouraged, merging her wishes and hopes in his. Her special qualities of heart and head made her the right companion for a man of Peel’s temperament.

III

LADY JOHN RUSSELL

“A wife with all those qualities, virtues, and graces which not
only adorn life, but make life worth living.”

Frances Anna Maria Elliot, the second daughter of the second Earl of Minto, was born at Minto House, Roxburghshire, on 15th November 1815. Her mother was Mary, eldest daughter of Patrick Brydone. Lady Fanny, as she was generally known before her marriage, was one of a family of ten, five boys and five girls. She had the education usual at the time for English girls in her position. She had the run of the standard books in her father’s library, so that good literature was available for her at will. Reading aloud in the evening was a family custom, and sometimes a new book from London would be enjoyed in that way. But the most important part of the girl’s education was not derived from books. Her training was the wholesome discipline of a large family of brothers and sisters, with the free outdoor life possible for children brought up in the depths of the country, and, removed as they were from a town and its ready-made distractions, with the necessity of making their own amusements. Culture and knowledge were absorbed almost unconsciously in listening to the talk of the distinguished men who were frequent guests at Minto. Lady Fanny learnt to write good English, displayed throughout her life a pretty gift for making verses, and very early began to take a deep and highly intelligent interest in contemporary politics. Perhaps she loved more than all the free life in the open air amid the beautiful scenery surrounding Minto House. Scott mentions Minto Crags, which were not far from the house, as rocks

“Where falcons hang their giddy nest.”

She would ride among the hills, fish in “Teviot’s tide,” accompany her brothers on their hunting or shooting expeditions among the rocks, and now and again with one or the other of them would get up before dawn, climb to the top of a neighbouring hill, and watch till the sun “brightened Cheviot grey” and

“The wild birds told their warbling tale,
And waken’d every flower that blows.”

She was throughout her life peculiarly susceptible to the beauties of external nature, and was never really happy in a town. She used to say later that Minto was the happiest and most perfect home that children ever had.

_After Thorburn’s miniature, by courtesy of Messrs. Methuen & Co. Ltd._]

Not only did Lady Fanny Elliot hear politics freely discussed, and with childish enthusiasm enter into the great causes which the leaders with whom she came in contact had so much at heart, but early in life she began to have experience of affairs in her own person and at close quarters. At fourteen years of age she commenced keeping a journal. In 1830 the family were in Paris, and she has recorded the aspect of things there in the months following the deposition of Charles X. At a children’s ball at the Palais Royal she saw the King and Queen,[19] and described them as “nice-looking old bodies.” She heard the people in the streets singing Casimir Delavigne’s “Parisienne,” the Marseillaise of 1830. But, notwithstanding all the glories and excitements of the French capital at that period, Lady Fanny was delighted to get back to Scotland in June 1831.

The next year her father was appointed minister at Berlin, and here again in the Prussian capital the girl came in contact with interesting people, Humboldt and Bismarck among them. At a ball Lady Fanny refused to dance with the latter, a circumstance she afterwards regretted.

The family returned to England in 1834, and the next year Lord Minto was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in Lord Melbourne’s Government. Part of each year was now necessarily spent in London, and Lady Fanny entered into society in good earnest. Breakfast-parties at the house of Rogers or of the Duchess of Buccleuch, luncheon-parties at Holland House, dinner-parties at all the leading Whig houses, assemblies at Miss Berry’s, and balls everywhere kept her time well filled. She was present at the opening of Parliament in 1836 and pitied the poor old King, who could not see to read his speech until Lord Melbourne, looking “very like a Prime Minister”--she always had a great admiration for him--held a candle for him. Lord Minto retained office at the accession of Queen Victoria, and Lady Fanny witnessed the coronation in Westminster Abbey. After the ceremony she walked through the crowd in her fine gown and reached the Admiralty in time to see the procession go past.

Lady Fanny had of course heard much of Lord John Russell. He was still the hero of the Reform Bill, of which Sydney Smith had said that:

“All young ladies expect that, as soon as this Bill is carried, they will be instantly married; schoolboys believe that gerunds and supines will be abolished, and that currant tarts must ultimately come down in price; the Corporal and Sergeant are sure of double pay; bad poets expect a demand for their epics; and fools will be disappointed, as they always are.”[20]

Lord John Russell married in 1835 Lady Ribblesdale, widow of the second Lord, and mother of four children by her first husband. At the time when Lord Minto was at the Admiralty Lord John was leader of the House of Commons, and Lady Fanny often met him and his wife, and records that she was always glad to see them. Two daughters were the issue of that marriage. The younger, born in October 1838, was named Victoria by the Queen’s desire, but unhappily the mother was seized with fever and died on 1st November. Lady Fanny, guileless of what was to come, grieved much over “the poor unhappy husband and his dear little motherless children.” Lord John, doubtless finding such sympathy pleasant, became a frequent visitor at Putney, where Lord Minto had taken a house in order to have a quiet refuge from the stir of the Admiralty. Putney was then quite in the country; the banks of the river were beautiful with azaleas, lilac, and hawthorn, the garden was full of nightingales, and the young people lingered there late on summer evenings to listen to their song. Miss Lister, a sister-in-law of Lord John, used fairly often to bring her nephews and nieces, six children, ranging in age from fourteen years to two, out to Putney; Lady Fanny would play games with them and amuse them, and Lord John, who was now Colonial Secretary and was often consulted by his colleague, would join in the sport. Informal little cabinet meetings would be held after dinner, when, according to Lady Fanny, the nation’s affairs would be discussed and the three Ministers, Lord John, Lord Minto, and Lord Palmerston, would “talk war with France till bedtime.” This was in 1840. In one way or another Lord John managed to see a good deal of Lady Fanny, who was approaching the age of twenty-five. Lord John Russell was forty-eight, but Lord Minto used to declare that he never thought of him as old until he proposed to his daughter.

In spite of her youth, Lady Fanny was serious-minded, wholly without self-consciousness, never realising her beauty and attractiveness, very intelligent and observant, full of enthusiasm for every good cause that made for progress and improvement, delighting in literature and poetry, and indeed in every way suited to become the life companion of a great statesman. Lord Minto evidently saw how the land lay, and invited Lord John to accompany them to Minto when Parliament rose. Accordingly he travelled there in their company, taking with him his stepson, Lord Ribblesdale. Lady Fanny began now to realise what was in Lord John’s mind. During the visit, however, he said nothing definite, but on his departure he left a letter for her in which he asked her to marry him. She answered it immediately with a refusal. This saddened him greatly, although he declared that it had been a foolish notion of his to think that she might throw herself away on a person of broken spirits, worn out by time and trouble. The girl was evidently bewildered at the honour paid her by so distinguished a man. She owned to her mother that she liked him very much, but “not in that way.” As often happens in such cases, no sooner had Lady Fanny, as she thought, put her lover out of her reach and her mind for ever than she began to think and to dream about him. Miss Lister pleaded his cause by praising him; she assured Lady Fanny that his equal was not to be found in the whole world, and told her much that forced her to admire and like him still more. Despite the girl’s refusal, when the family returned to London at the beginning of 1841, Lord John continued to be a frequent visitor at the Admiralty, and to pay her attention when he met her in society at Holland House and elsewhere. And Fanny told her sister that, although she took care not to understand when he said anything to reopen the matter, she did begin to wonder if she had decided rashly. She considered herself too old to make it necessary to be desperately in love, but too young to take for her husband a man double her age, and saddled with a family of six children. Lord John probably felt that she was wavering, and took the wisest course in such circumstances. He kept out of her way for nearly two months. The result was that on 8th June 1841 they became engaged, and were married on 20th July in the drawing-room at Minto.[21] The Duke of Buccleuch, who had married a first cousin of Lord John, lent them Bowhill for the honeymoon, and there the bride received from her mother a charming Border ballad giving the history of the wooing of the lover who

“Cam’ na wi’ horses,
He cam’ na wi’ men,
Like the bauld English knights lang syne;
But he thought that he could fleech
Wi’ his bonny Southron speech
And wile awa’ this lassie o’ mine.”

The lassie, however, told him to go home to his “ain countrie,” but the poet continues with sly humour and memories of Duncan Gray in her mind:

“But sairly did she rue
When he thought that she spak’ true,
And the tear-drop it blinded her e’e;
But he only loved her ‘mair and mair,’
For her spirit it was noble and free;
Oh, lassie dear, relent,
Nor let a heart be rent
That lives but for its country and thee.

* * * * *

And did she say him nay?
Oh no, he won the day.”

An autumn session brought the honeymoon to a close by the middle of August; Lady John settled down in her husband’s house in Wilton Crescent, and began married life in good earnest. She found absorbing occupation in the six children, and in looking after the comfort and welfare of a Cabinet Minister. But Lord Melbourne’s Government was defeated on the address, and after the general election that followed the Tories were in the majority. Thus, although Lord John was leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, he was of course much more free than when in office. He and his wife and the children went to Endsleigh, near Tavistock in Devonshire, a place lent him by the Duke of Bedford. It was a beautiful spot, and Lady John, who had now leisure to realise all that the affection and sympathy and care of such a man as her husband meant, used to accompany him on his shooting expeditions, much as she hated sport that consisted in killing, and on botanizing expeditions, in which she could take her full share. There were happy visits to Bowood and Woburn, Brocket, the Grove, and Minto. But residence for some months of the year in London was still imperative. Lord John had built himself a house at 37 Chesham Place, and there, in 1842, Lady Fanny bore him a son.[22] The claims of society, less pressing it is true than when her husband was in office, yet took up a good deal of her energy. The life was too much for her strength, and for some time her health seriously suffered. In the autumn of 1845 she was able to travel to Minto, but before the winter set in it was deemed advisable for her to go to Edinburgh in order to have competent medical advice and care. The illness turned out to be long and tedious, and it greatly irked her to be tied to her sofa while her husband was living through exciting times in London. He was summoned by the Queen on Peel’s resignation to form a ministry, but as Lord Grey refused to serve with Lord Palmerston, and as Lord John felt he could not go on without both, Peel returned to office, Lord John undertaking to support him in a measure for the repeal of the Corn Laws. Lady John knew that the assumption of office would be a blow to the quiet domestic life she so loved, but her patriotism enabled her to encourage her husband during the days of suspense. She wrote to him: “My mind is made up. My ambition is that you should be the head of the most moral and religious Government the country has ever had.” But she was not the less glad that for a short time at least Lord John should be free from the anxieties and heavy duties of the high office of Prime Minister.

In the beginning of 1846 Lady Russell was still too ill to leave Edinburgh, and she felt deeply the enforced absence from her husband’s side. But they managed to keep up each other’s spirits; many a rhymed nonsense letter passed between them, and Lord John would sometimes send his wife little notes in dog-Latin. Lady John was able to read and talk, and much enjoyed the visits of her Edinburgh friends, among them Lord Jeffrey. She found that conversation there had more calmness and fairness and depth than was the rule in London, where people were too much occupied with the present to trouble themselves much about the past or future. Holland House was the only place where good conversation might really be heard, and the death of Lady Holland in November 1845 had been a great blow.

As a general rule, Lady John agreed and sympathised with her husband’s views and acts. But there were exceptions when her instinct and her judgment caused her to differ. The Irish Coercion Bill of 1846 was one. She frankly wrote to him from Edinburgh on 12th March 1846 that she was convinced it would not do the slightest good, and would embitter the Irish against the English. She deplored the continual outrages and murders in Ireland, but saw a remedy only in a long course of mild and good government. Lord John replied that the best authorities thought the Bill would tend to stop the crime and murder, and that he was disinclined to throw out a Bill that might have that good effect. It was probably due to his wife’s influence that he determined to move a resolution which should at the same time pledge the House to measures of remedy and conciliation. It will be remembered that the Government was defeated on the Bill, a circumstance which led to Lord John Russell’s first period of office as Prime Minister from July 1846 to February 1852.

His wife was now sufficiently recovered to join him, and he leased a country house, Chorley Wood, near Chenies, so that she might have a quiet retreat in the neighbourhood of London. Early in the New Year she had another bad bout of illness. On 1st March 1847 the Queen offered Lord John Pembroke Lodge, in Richmond Park, for a residence for his life. The place had become vacant through the death of its occupant, the Earl of Erroll, the husband of a natural daughter of William IV. The offer was gladly accepted by the Prime Minister, and the house became their permanent abode. Strangely enough, a year or two before they had gone with some of the children for a few days’ change of air to the Star and Garter at Richmond. While strolling in the park they sat down on a bench under a big oak, whence they could look into the grounds of Pembroke Lodge, and said that it would be just the place for them. Now the wish had come true. They always managed to be there, when the House was in session, from Wednesday to Thursday and from Saturday to Monday. Sometimes Lord John rode all the way, but often when returning from town he would drive to Hammersmith Bridge, where his horse would be brought to meet him, accompanied by all the children old enough to ride on their ponies. Lady John would watch for the return of the cavalcade from a hill in the garden.