“Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
  But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.”

III

LORD DERBY

My opportunities of observing Lord Derby at close quarters, were comparatively scanty.  When, in June, 1866, he kissed hands as Prime Minister for the third time, I was a boy of thirteen, and I was only sixteen when he died.  I had known Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons and Lord Russell in private life; but my infant footsteps were seldom guided towards the House of Lords, and it was only there that “the Rupert of debate” could at that time be heard.

The Whigs, among whom I was reared, detested Derby with the peculiar detestation which partisans always feel for a renegade.  In 1836 Charles Dickens, in his capacity of Parliamentary reporter, had conversed with an ancient M.P. who allowed that Lord Stanley—­who became Lord Derby in 1851—­might do something one of these days, but “he’s too young, sir—­too young.”  The active politicians of the sixties did not forget that this too-young Stanley, heir of a great Whig house, had flung himself with ardour into the popular cause, and, when the Lords threw out the first Reform Bill, had jumped on to the table at Brooks’s and had proclaimed the great constitutional truth—­reaffirmed over the Parliament Bill in 1911—­that “His Majesty can clap coronets on the heads of a whole company of his Foot Guards.”

The question of the influences which had changed Stanley from a Whig to a Tory lies outside the purview of a sketch like this.  For my present purpose it must suffice to say that, as he had absolutely nothing to gain by the change, we may fairly assume that it was due to conviction.  But whether it was due to conviction, or to ambition, or to temper, or to anything else, it made the Whigs who remained Whigs, very sore.  Lord Clarendon, a typical Whig placeman, said that Stanley was “a great aristocrat, proud of family and wealth, but had no generosity for friend or foe, and never acknowledged help.”  Some allowance must be made for the ruffled feelings of a party which sees its most brilliant recruit absorbed into the opposing ranks, and certainly Stanley was such a recruit as any party would have been thankful to claim.

He was the future head of one of the few English families which the exacting genealogists of the Continent recognize as noble.  To pedigree he added great possessions, and wealth which the industrial development of Lancashire was increasing every day.  He was a graceful and tasteful scholar, who won the Chanceller’s prize for Latin verse at Oxford, and translated the Iliad into fluent hexameters.  Good as a scholar, he was, as became the grandson of the founder of “The Derby,” even better as a sportsman; and in private life he was the best companion in the world, playful and reckless, as a schoolboy, and never letting prudence or propriety stand between him and his jest.  “Oh, Johnny, what fun we shall have!” was his characteristic greeting to Lord John Russell, when that ancient rival entered the House of Lords.