In 1856 the whole family took a longer and more interesting excursion. On July 16 Lady John and her four children crossed from London to Rotterdam, spending the next eight days with her sister, Lady Mary Abercromby, whose husband represented this country at the Hague. On the 25th they joined Lord John and his two eldest daughters at Antwerp. The family thence travelled slowly to Switzerland, resting on their way at Bonn, Mayence, and Heidelberg. They reached Basle on August 4, and Lucerne on the 5th, and settled in a villa near Lausanne on Lord John's sixty-fourth birthday. The villa was delightfully situated on elevated ground, with a chestnut wood at its back and a glorious view of the mountains in front; and the children were naturally in raptures at a place and at a life so new to them. Lord John was equally pleased with his abode. Revolving in his own mind his projected 'Life of Fox,' and meditating on the advice of Sir G. Lewis to enlarge it into a greater work, he wrote I have got some books here, and a terrace-which I walk up and down, preparing to appear as a second Gibbon. The Russells remained at Lausanne till the end of September, when they set out for Italy, crossing the Simplon in merciless rain; staying a few days in Piedmont, and dining with Sir James Hudson to meet men so well known in Italian story as Cavour, Azeglio, Massari, Farini, La Marmora, Rattazzi, and Mamiami. From Turin they proceded to Florence, where Lord Minto had already arrived, and where they occupied for to you. We were so very sorry to hear that Rollo was ill, and that you would not be home for such a long time. The weather has been very cold, but to-day is a most beautiful day. . . . At eleven we drove in the brougham to Mr. Lycett. His room upstairs was very cold. We walked home very quick and got nice and warm. My feet now are itching dreadfully, which makes me write badly. ... I had a very nice letter from Rollo, and I shall write one to him to-morrow. It had no stop all the way through, but was full of little lines, which is a very funny plan of Georgy's. Good-bye, dear papa. From your affectionate son, J. RUSSELL. If Lord Amberley had been spared to undertake the task, which I have attempted to discharge, of writing his father's life, he would hardly have pitied his 'poor papa' for getting so very few letters. the next three months the Villa Capponi, the property of the old Marquis Gino Capponi. We looked from our beautiful villa 1 upon the glorious town on one side, and Fiesole and the Apennines on the other; and we soon forgot the dreariness of our neglected garden with its mouldering statues and weedy walks. Lady John had never before been at Florence. Thirty years had passed since Lord John-to use his own expression -had last seen the Raphaels; and his wife and he had therefore ample to occupy their time in visiting and revisiting the galleries and churches of the City of Flowers. But they had also other interest to occupy them. The Villa Capponi soon became the centre of all that was liberal in Florence; while at Lord Normanby's, who represented the United Kingdom at the Court of Tuscany, the Russells had the opportunity. of meeting all that was reactionary. The Tuscan Government regarded the presence of Lord John with grave uneasiness, and is said actually to have set a watch at the Porta San Gallo to spy out his visitors. Yet the Government may have been almost pardoned for its suspicion, for Count Capponi himself thought that the visit of Lord John had a political object, and that he had come to Florence to ascertain the chances of revolution in Tuscany. The Russells remained at Florence till January 12, when they bade adieu to their Italian friends and English relations, and turned their faces homewards. They travelled to Pisa, and thence drove for no railway had at that time penetrated one of the most beautiful roads in the world-through Spezzia, Sestri, and Genoa, to Nice. As they passed Carrara, Lord John delivered the following impromptu : O'er these beautiful regions the German bears sway: See yonder his fortress all frowningly stand. His hand is the iron his soldiers display, His heart is the marble that whitens the land. 1 The villa Capponi stands outside the Porto San Gallo, nearly due north of Florence. 2 Gino Capponi: Memorie, raccolte da Marco Tabarrini, pp. 304, 305. The Russells rested for a few days at Nice, where Lord John had a private interview with Count Cavour; and, travelling slowly, only reached London on February 3. During 1857 and 1858 they made no such long excursions as in 1856. They passed most of these years at Pembroke Lodge; and such change as they obtained they gained from visits to friends in various parts of England. Changes, in the meanwhile, were occurring in Lord John's domestic circle. His sister-in-law, the Duchess of Bedford, died in the summer of 1857. His father-in-law, Lord Minto, showed symptoms in 1858 of the gradual decay to which he succumbed in 1859. But, while its older members were gradually dropping like the leaves in autumn, the younger branches of the old Russell tree were green with budding foliage. In April 1857 Lord John's eldest son was sent to Harrow, where his two younger brothers subsequently followed him. The future Lord Amberley gladdened his father's heart by taking a good place in the school, and by maintaining his position. The few letters which he wrote from Harrow, and which have still been preserved, show that he appreciated, in a manner rare in a boy, the books that he was reading: while he formed a warm friendship for Dr. Vaughan, the head master, addressing him, on his resignation in 1860, in a poem which, if it cannot be compared with his father's similar address to Professor Stewart, was the work of a younger pen. Dr. Vaughan won the boy's affection in another way. For Lord John, recollecting his own education, and the advantages which he had derived from Professor Playfair's society, thought of removing his son in 1858 from Harrow and of sending him to Edinburgh. And Dr. Vaughan's advice coincided with the boy's wishes, and induced his father to leave him at the school. 2 Count Cavour wrote to him Jeudi, 22. MON CHER LORD JOHN,-Désirant causer quelques instants avec vous sans crainte d'être dérangé, j'irai aujourd'hui à trois heures vous chercher à votre hôtel avec mon collègue, M Rattazzi, &c. C. CAVOUR. MY DEAR PAPA,— my list of work. HARROW ON THE HILL: October 2, 1858. I have just been to the doctor with He sent for me to come into his study, and He wished to know whether I was He thought it was principally spoke to me very kindly. going to leave, and I said I was. on the ground of health: I believed it was, but added that, in the fifth form, I had plenty of time to go out, and did not suffer in health at all. He advised me to tell you this, as he thought it might have some weight with you. Dear old Vaughan! I am very fond of him, and should very much like to stay. I am sure the beautiful sermons we have from him every Sunday might hide a multitude of other disadvantages in the school. I do not mean that there are many disadvantages. The longer I stay, the fonder I get of Harrow; the higher I am when I leave, the more pleased shall I be on looking back to my school-life when I am an old Harrovian. But, if I go to Edinburgh, it would give me all the trouble and awkwardness of a new boy over again. But, whatever your decision on the point may be, I shall, I hope, be satisfied with it, and trust to your superior wisdom to do what is best. . . . -Good-bye, from your most affectionate son, J. RUSSELL. Like father, like son. The letter bears much resemblance to that which Lord John himself had written to his father the Duke from Spain nearly fifty years before. It was no difficult matter, however, to trace the hereditary! likeness between Lord John and many of his children. In his eldest son's appreciation of the books which he was reading at school, in the interest which he was taking in politics, in his criticisms of the masters he was under, and of the sermons which he heard, he was unconsciously displaying all the qualities which his father had shown fifty years before. Like his father, too, he was writing poetry. His present to his mother on her birthday in 1857 was a poem on the Pembroke Lodge gardener. The boy, too, as well as his brothers and sisters, was displaying that taste for the drama which had been so strong in Lord John. In 1856, while they were at Florence, they acted a drama 'The Three Golden Hairs,' which had been specially arranged by the two elder sisters. It was reproduced at Pembroke Lodge on the last day of 1857, and its success suggested in 1858 a more ambitious performance. 'Dewdrop and Glorio, or the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,' was written, and dedicated to Lord J. Russell, by his wife, his eldest son, and his two eldest daughters. It was subsequently privately printed with some illustrations from the pencil of Lord John's eldest step-daughter (Mrs. Maurice Drummond), and copies of it have probably reached some of the hands into which this memoir may fall. For this play Lord John wrote the epilogue, which was spoken by his daughter Victoria in the character of Rainbow:: The Princess Dewdrop bids me reappear To ask you how you like our Christmas cheer : And some, 'tis whispered, of their faces thrifty, Still without spectacles her books she'll read, Lord John was delighted with his children's performance; and he wrote to Lord Minto Our play answered very well. My six bairns are all good actors, and can earn their living on the stage if Bright destroys our old nobility! |
