Lady Russell to Lord Amberley

    PEMBROKE LODGE, March 28, 1875

This is our Agatha’s birthday, and the spirit moves me to write to you.  Every marked day, whether marked by sorrow or by joy, turns my heart, if possible, more than usual to you, and makes me feel more keenly how all the joy and perfect happiness once yours has been turned to bitter sorrow and desolation.  I find it is far, far more difficult to bear grief for one’s children than for oneself, and sometimes my heart “has been like to break” as I have followed you in thought on your long and dreary journey, and remembered what your companionship was when last you went to the sunny South, to so many of the same places.  You have indeed been sorely tried, my child, and you have not—­would that I could give it to you—­the one and only rock of refuge and consolation, of faith in the wisdom and mercy of a God of love.  But I trust in Him for you, and I know that though clouds hide Him from your sight, He will care for you and not forsake you—­and even here on earth I look forward to much peaceful happiness for you, in your children, in books, in nature, in duties zealously done, in the love and sympathy of many—­“Mutter Treu ist ewig neu,” and that you may find some rest to your aching heart in that Mutter Treue, which is always hovering round you, wherever you are, and to which every day seems to add fresh strength and renewed longing to give you comfort, is my daily, nightly hope and prayer.  May this letter find you well and cheerful and able to enjoy the loveliness of sea and sky and mountain; if so, I know it will not sadden you to get this drop out of the ocean of my thoughts about you—­thoughts which the freshness of the wounds makes it intensely difficult for me to utter....  Kiss my two precious little boys and keep us in their memory.  Is Bertrand as full of fun and merriment as he used to be?  Poor pets! they look to you for all the tenderness of father and mother combined in order to be as happy as children ought to be.  Give it them largely, my child, as it is in your nature to do....  God bless you all.

In August, 1875, Lady Russell notes in her diary that her husband had written a letter to the Times giving his support to the Herzegovina insurgents.  During the few years preceding 1876 he had become convinced that the days of Turkish misrule in the Christian provinces must be ended. [90] He frequently spoke with indignation of the systematic murders contrived by the Turkish Government and officials, and felt that the cause of the oppressed Christians deserved support, and that the time for upholding the rule of the Sultan as a cardinal principle in our policy had passed.  He threw himself with the greatest heartiness into a movement for the aid of the insurgents.  Though in his eighty-third year he was the first British statesman to break with the past and to bless the uprising of liberty in the near East.  In the following letter, written from Caprera on September 17, 1875, the generous sympathy between him and Garibaldi found fresh expression.