Lady John Russell: A Memoir with Selections from Her Diaries and Correspondence. Various
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not having seen her once more.
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When the new Queen's Parliament met after the General Election the strength of the Conservatives was 315 and of the Liberals 342. The Melbourne Ministry was in a weaker position; they could only hold a majority through the support of the Radical and Irish groups, and troubles were brewing in the country. On the other hand, Peel's position was not an easy one; the split among the Conservatives on Catholic Emancipation had left bitterness behind, and in addition to this complication, his followers in the Commons included both men like Stanley, who had voted for Parliamentary reform, and its implacable opponents. But in spite of this flaw in the solidarity of the Opposition, the Ministers were far from secure. There were the troubles in Canada, which Lord Durham had been sent out to deal with (the Canadian patriots had a great deal of Lady Fanny's sympathy), and in England the grievances of the poor were in the process of being formulated into the famous People's Charter. During the parliamentary sessions the Mintos remained in London, with only occasional very short absences.
ADMIRALTY, December 26, 1837 People all seem pleased with the news from Canada because we are beating the poor patriots--let people say what they will I must wish them success and pity them with all my heart. EASTBOURNE, April 14, 1838 It is not only the out of doors pleasures, the sea, the air, etc., that we find here, but the way of living takes a weight from one's mind, of which one does not know the burden till one leaves London and is freed from it. "I love not man the less" from feeling as I do the great faults, to us at least, of our London society. It is because I love man, because I daily see people whose thoughts I long to share and profit by, that I am so disappointed in being unable to do so. Oh, why, why do people not all live in the country--or if towns must be, why must they bring stiffness and coldness on everybody? ADMIRALTY, May 10, 1838 Court Ball. … Beautiful ball of beautiful people dancing to beautiful music. Queen dancing a great deal, looking very happy. ADMIRALTY, June 22, 1838 Evening at a Concert at the Palace--all the good singers. … All the foreigners there, Soult and the Duke of Wellington shaking hands more heartily than any other two people there.
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ADMIRALTY, June 28, 1838 Day ever memorable in the annals of Great Britain! Day of the coronation of Queen Victoria! … We were up at six, and Lizzy, Bob'm, and I, being the Abbey party, dressed in all our grandeur. The ceremony was much what I expected, but less solemn and impressive from the mixture of religion with worldly vanities and distinctions. The sight was far more brilliant and beautiful than I had supposed it would be. Walked home in our fine gowns through the crowd; found the stand here well filled, and were quite in time to see the procession pass back. Nothing could be more beautiful, the streets either way being lined with the common people, as close as they could stand, and the windows, house-tops, balconies, and stands crowded with the better dressed. Great cheering when Soult's carriage passed, but really magnificent for the Duchess of Kent and the Queen. The carriages splendid. Did not feel in the Abbey one quarter of what I felt on the stand. MINTO, November 4, 1838 This morning brought us the sad, sad news of the death of Lady John Russell. God give strength to her poor unhappy husband, and watch over his dear little motherless children.
The only event of importance which occurred in the family during 1838 was the marriage of the eldest daughter, Mary, to Ralph Abercromby, son of the Speaker and afterwards Lord Dunfermline. It was a very happy marriage, but Lady Fanny missed her sister very much, and her accounts of the wedding and the last days before it are mixed with regrets. She speaks of it as "an awful day," though it seems to have ended merrily enough in dancing and rejoicings.
In May, 1839, the Government resigned in consequence of the opposition to the Jamaica Bill. The object of the Bill was to suspend the constitution of Jamaica for five years, since difficulties had been made by the Jamaica Assembly in connection with the emancipation of slaves. The Radicals voted with the Conservatives against the Government and the Bill was lost.
ADMIRALTY, May 7, 1839 We are all out!!!! Papa was summoned to a Cabinet at twelve this morning. Mama and I in the meantime drove to some shops, and when we came home found him anxiously expecting us with this overpowering news. We bore, and are still bearing it with tolerable fortitude; but we are all very, very sorry, and every moment find something new to regret. Mama, notwithstanding all she has said, is not better pleased than the rest of us. Papa looks very grave, or else tries to joke it off.
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FRIDAY, May 10, 1839, ADMIRALTY Agitating morning--one report following another every hour. Sir Robert Peel refused to form a Ministry unless the Queen would part with some of her household. To this she would not consent. To-day she sent for Lord Melbourne. … We went to the first Queen's ball, very anxious to see how she and other people looked, and to try to foresee coming events by the expression of faces. … I spoke to scarcely one Tory, but our Whig friends were in excellent spirits--the Queen also seemed to be so. TUESDAY, May 14, 1839, ADMIRALTY Papa and Bill12 came from the House of Lords quite delighted with Lord Melbourne's speech in explanation of what has passed--manner, matter, everything perfect.
Thus, within the week, the Whig Ministry had resigned and accepted office again: this is what had happened.
On his return from Italy to take office Sir Robert Peel requested the Queen to change the ladies of her household, and on her refusal to do so, the Melbourne Ministry had come in again. Their return to power has been generally considered a blunder, from the party point of view; but their action in this case was not the result of tactical calculations. The young Queen was strange as yet to the throne, and she could not bear to be deprived of her personal friends. When Peel made a change in her household the condition of accepting office, she turned to the Whigs, who felt they could not desert her. "My dear Melbourne," wrote Lord John, "I have seen Spencer, who says that we could not have done otherwise than we have done as gentlemen, but that bur difficulties with the Radicals are not diminished. … "
They were, indeed, hard put to it to carry on the Government at all, and they only succeeded in passing their Education Bill by a majority of two.
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On August 12th the Mintos were still kept in London. "Oh for the boys and guns and dogs, a heathery moor, and a blue Scotch heaven above me!" she writes. When they did get away home, they remained there until the beginning of the new year. At home she seems to have been much happier. She taught her young brothers and sisters, she visited her village friends, and rambled and read a great deal. In short, it was Minto!--all she found so hard to part from when marriage took her away.
Many of the extracts from the diaries quoted in this chapter must be read in the light of the reader's own recollections of the process of getting used to life. They show that if Lady Russell afterwards attained a happy confidence in action, she was not in youth without experience of bewilderment and doubts about herself. Following one another quickly, these extracts may seem to imply that she was gloomy and self-centred during these years; but that was never the impression she made on others. Like many at her age, when she wrote in a diary she dwelt most on the feelings about which she found it hardest to talk. Her diary was not so much the mirror of the days as they passed as the repository of her unspoken confidences. "Looked over my journals, with reflections," she writes later; "inclined to burn them all. It seems I have only written [on days] when I was not happy, which is very wrong--as if I had forgotten to be grateful for happy ones."
Mrs. Drummond, Lord John Russell's stepdaughter (who was then Miss Adelaide Lister), has recorded, in a letter to Lady Agatha Russell, her recollections of the Minto family at that time.
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I think (she writes) my first visit to the Admiralty, where I was invited to children's parties, must have been in the winter before my mother's death. I have no distinct first impressions of the grown-up part of the family, except perhaps of your grandmother, Lady Minto. Although children exaggerate the age of their elders, and seldom appreciate beauty except that of people near their own age, I did realize her great good looks. She had very regular features and a beautiful skin, with a soft rose-colour in her cheeks. Her hair was brown, worn in loops standing out