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.