II.

LORD RUSSELL

These chapters are founded on Links with the Past.  Let me now describe in rather fuller detail three or four remarkable people with whom I had more than a cursory acquaintance, and who allowed me for many years the privilege of drawing without restriction on the rich stores of their political and social recollections.

First among these in point of date, if of nothing else, I must place John Earl Russell, the only person I have ever known who knew Napoleon the Great.  Lord Russell—­or, to give him the name by which he was most familiar to his countrymen, Lord John Russell—­was born in 1792, and when I first knew him he was already old; but it might have been said of him with perfect truth that

    “Votiva patuit veluti descripta tabella
    Vita senis.”

After he resigned the leadership of the Liberal party, at Christmas 1867, Lord Russell spent the greater part of his time at Pembroke Lodge, a house in Richmond Park which takes its name from Elizabeth Countess of Pembroke, long remembered as the object of King George the Third’s hopeless and pathetic love.  As a token of his affection the King allowed Lady Pembroke to build herself a “lodge” in the “vast wilderness” of Richmond Park, amid surroundings which went far to realize Cowper’s idea of a “boundless contiguity of shade.”

On her death, in 1831, Pembroke Lodge was assigned by William IV. to his son-in-law, Lord Erroll, and in 1847 it was offered by the Queen to her Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, who then had no home except his house in Chesham Place.  It was gratefully accepted, for indeed it had already been coveted as an ideal residence for a busy politician who wanted fresh air, and could not safely be far from the House of Commons.  As years went on Lord John spent more and more of his time in this delicious retreat, and in his declining years it was practically his only home.

A quarter of a century ago it was a curious and interesting privilege for a young man to sit in the trellised dining-room of Pembroke Lodge, or to pace its terrace-walk looking down upon the Thames, in intimate converse with a statesman who had enjoyed the genial society of Charles Fox, and had been the travelling companion of Lord Holland; had corresponded with Tom Moore, debated with Francis Jeffrey, and dined with Dr. Parr; had visited Melrose Abbey in the company of Sir Walter Scott, and criticized the acting of Mrs. Siddons; conversed with Napoleon in his seclusion at Elba, and ridden with the Duke of Wellington along the lines of Torres Vedras.