PEMBROKE LODGE, October 19, 1865
Letter from the Queen at Balmoral to John telling him she means to ask him to carry on the Government in case of Lord Palmerston’s death. Dearest John very calm and without the oppressed look and manner I always dread to see.
On the 18th of October Palmerston died. Had he taken the precautions usual at the age of eighty, he might have lived longer, but in private as in public life, he despised caution. He was one of those statesmen whom modern critics, on the watch for the partially obsolete and with the complexity of present problems always before them, tend to depreciate. He had the first quality which is necessary for popularity: he was readily intelligible. In addition he was prompt, combative, and magnanimous; shrewd, but never subtle; sensible, but not imaginative. He had no ideas which he wished to carry out; he did not like ideas. He wanted England to dominate in Europe and to use her power good-naturedly afterwards; to be, in fact, what a nobleman may be in his home-country, where he is universally looked up to and ready to take immense trouble to settle fairly disputes between inferiors. Opposition from a direction making it savour of impertinence he stamped upon at once, without imagining the provocation or ideas from which it might possibly spring; he could not understand, for instance, that there might be two sides to the Chinese War. It is probable, too, that had not the Prince Consort intervened to soften the asperity of the Government’s protest against the seizure of the Confederate emissaries on board the Trent, we should have had war with the Northern States. This menacing, peremptory attitude in diplomacy served him well, till Bismarck crossed his path. In the encounter between the man with a great idea to carry out, who had taken the measure of the forces against him, and the man who had only, as it were, a dignified attitude to support in the eyes of Europe, the odds were uneven, and Palmerston was beaten.
Lord Russell, though he must have been among the few who knew the Prime Minister had been failing lately, writes that his death came with a shock of surprise, he was so full of heart and health to the last.
Lord Russell now became Prime Minister, and Lord Clarendon took his place at the Foreign Office.
PEMBROKE LODGE, November 2, 1865
John to town at twelve, back at half-past five, having taken leave of the dear old Foreign Office and left Lord Clarendon there. Happy, happy days, so full of reality—the hours of work so cheerfully got through, the hours of leisure so delightful. Sometimes when I walk with my dear, dear husband and see my lovely Agatha bounding along with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks, and the bright sun shining on the red and yellow trees, I can only feel the sunshine of life and forget its autumn leaves. Or when we sit together by our evening fire and talk, as our moods or fancies