Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences

George William Erskine Russell

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• Publié par: nushong
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 12
• Langue: English

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Title: Prime Ministers and Some Others
A Book of Reminiscences
Author: George W. E. Russell
Release Date: August 12, 2005 [EBook #16519]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIME MINISTERS AND SOME OTHERS ***
Produced by Robert J. Hall
PRIME MINISTERS
AND SOME OTHERS
A BOOK OF REMINISCENCES BY THE
RIGHT HONOURABLE
GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL

Page 5TO
THE EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON,
K.G.,
I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK,
NOT SHARING HIS OPINIONS BUT
PRIZING HIS FRIENDSHIP

Page 7NOTE
My cordial thanks for leave to reproduce papersalready published are due to my friend Mr. John
Murray, and to the Editors of the Cornhill
Magazine, the Spectator, the Daily News, the
Manchester Guardian, the Church Family
Newspaper, and the Red Triangle.
G. W. E. R.
July, 1918.
Page 9CONTENTS
I.—PRIME MINISTERS
I. LORD PALMERSTON
II. LORD RUSSELL
III. LORD DERBY
IV. BENJAMIN DISRAELI
V. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
VI. LORD SALISBURY
VIII. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
IX. HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN
II.—IN HONOUR OF FRIENDSHIP
I. GLADSTONE—AFTER TWENTY YEARS
II. HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND
III. LORD HALLIFAX
IV. LORD AND LADY RIPON
V. "FREDDY LEVESON"
VI. SAMUEL WHITBREAD
VII. HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER
VIII. BASIL WILBERFORCE
IX. EDITH SICHEL
X. "WILL" GLADSTONE
XI. LORD CHARLES RUSSELL
Page 10III.—RELIGION AND THE CHURCH
I. A STRANGE EPIPHANY
II. THE ROMANCE OF RENUNCIATION
III. PAN-ANGLICANISM
IV. LIFE AND LIBERTY
V. LOVE AND PUNISHMENT
VI. HATRED AND LOVE
VII. THE TRIUMPHS OF ENDURANCE
VIII. A SOLEMN FARCE
IV.—POLITICSI. MIRAGE
II. MIST
III. "DISSOLVING THROES"
IV. INSTITUTIONS AND CHARACTER
V. REVOLUTION—AND RATIONS
VI. "THE INCOMPATIBLES"
VII. FREEDOM'S NEW FRIENDS
V.—EDUCATION
I. EDUCATION AND THE JUDGE
II. THE GOLDEN LADDER
III. OASES
IV. LIFE, LIBERTY, AND JUSTICE
V. THE STATE AND THE BOY
VI. A PLEA FOR INNOCENTS
Page 11VI.—MISCELLANEA
I. THE "HUMOROUS STAGE"
II. THE JEWISH REGIMENT
III. INDURATION
IV. FLACCIDITY
V. THE PROMISE OF MAY
VI. PAGEANTRY AND PATRIOTISM
VII.—FACT AND FICTION
I. A FORGOTTEN PANIC
II. A CRIMEAN EPISODE
Page 13I
PRIME MINISTERS
Page 15PRIME MINISTERS AND SOME OTHERS
I
LORD PALMERSTON
I remember ten Prime Ministers, and I know an eleventh. Some have passed
beyond earshot of our criticism; but some remain, pale and ineffectual ghosts of
former greatness, yet still touched by that human infirmity which prefers praiseto blame. It will behove me to walk warily when I reach the present day; but, in
dealing with figures which are already historical, one's judgments may be
comparatively untrammelled.
I trace my paternal ancestry direct to a Russell who entered the House of
Commons at the General Election of 1441, and since 1538 some of us have
always sat in one or other of the two Houses of Parliament; so I may be fairly
said to have the Parliamentary tradition in my blood. But I cannot profess to
have taken any intelligent interest in political persons or doings before I was six
years old; my retrospect, therefore, shall begin with Lord Palmerston, whom I
can recall in his last Administration, 1859-1865.
I must confess that I chiefly remember his outward characteristics—his large,
Page 16dyed, carefully brushed whiskers; his broad-shouldered figure, which always
seemed struggling to be upright; his huge and rather distorted feet—"each foot,
to describe it mathematically, was a four-sided irregular figure"—his strong and
comfortable seat on the old white hack which carried him daily to the House of
Commons. Lord Granville described him to a nicety: "I saw him the other night
looking very well, but old, and wearing a green shade, which he afterwards
concealed. He looked like a retired old croupier from Baden."
Having frequented the Gallery of the House of Commons, or the more
privileged seats "under the Gallery," from my days of knickerbockers, I often
heard Palmerston speak. I remember his abrupt, jerky, rather "bow-wow"-like
style, full of "hums" and "hahs"; and the sort of good-tempered but unyielding
banter with which he fobbed off an inconvenient enquiry, or repressed the
simple-minded ardour of a Radical supporter.
Of course, a boy's attention was attracted rather by appearance and manner
than by the substance of a speech; so, for a frank estimate of Palmerston's
policy at the period which I am discussing, I turn to Bishop Wilberforce (whom
he had just refused to make Archbishop of York).
"That wretched Pam seems to me to get worse and worse. There is not a
particle of veracity or noble feeling that I have ever been able to trace in him.
He manages the House of Commons by debauching it, making all parties laugh
Page 17at one another; the Tories at the Liberals, by his defeating all Liberal measures;
the Liberals at the Tories, by their consciousness of getting everything that is to
be got in Church and State; and all at one another, by substituting low ribaldry
for argument, bad jokes for principle, and an openly avowed, vainglorious,
imbecile vanity as a panoply to guard himself from the attacks of all thoughtful
men."
But what I remember even more clearly than Palmers ton is appearance or
manner—perhaps because it did not end with his death—is the estimation in
which he was held by that "Sacred Circle of the Great-Grandmotherhood" to
which I myself belong.
In the first place, it was always asserted, with emphasis and even with
acrimony, that he was not a Whig. Gladstone, who did not much like Whiggery,
though he often used Whigs, laid it down that "to be a Whig a man must be a
born Whig," and I believe that the doctrine is absolutely sound. But Palmerston
was born and bred a Tory, and from 1807 to 1830 held office in Tory
Administrations. The remaining thirty-five years of his life he spent, for the most
part, in Whig Administrations, but a Whig he was not. The one thing in the world
which he loved supremely was power, and, as long as this was secured, he did
not trouble himself much about the political complexion of his associates.
"Palmerston does not care how much dirt he eats, so long as it is gilded dirt;"
and, if gilded dirt be the right description of office procured by flexible politics,
Palmerston ate, in his long career, an extraordinary amount of it.Page 18Then, again, I remember that the Whigs thought Palmerston very vulgar. The
newspapers always spoke of him as an aristocrat, but the Whigs knew better.
He had been, in all senses of the word, a man of fashion; he had won the
nickname of "Cupid," and had figured, far beyond the term of youth, in a raffish
kind of smart society which the Whigs regarded with a mixture of contempt and
horror. His bearing towards the Queen, who abhorred him—not without good
reason—was considered to be lamentably lacking in that ceremonious respect
for the Crown which the Whigs always maintained even when they were
dethroning Kings. Disraeli likened his manner to that of "a favourite footman on
easy terms with his mistress," and one who was in official relations with him
wrote: "He left on my recollection the impression of a strong character, with an
intellect with a coarse vein in it, verging sometimes on brutality, and of a mind
little exercised on subjects of thought beyond the immediate interests of public
and private life, little cultivated, and drawing its stores, not from reading but from
experience, and long and varied intercourse with men and women."
Having come rather late in life to the chief place in politics, Palmerston kept it
to the end. He was an indomitable fighter, and had extraordinary health. At the
opening of the Session of 1865 he gave the customary Full-Dress Dinner, and
Page 19Mr. Speaker Denison,[*] who sat beside him, made this curious memorandum
of his performance at table: "He ate two plates of turtle soup; he was then
served very amply to cod and oyster sauce; he then took a pacirc;té; afterwards
he was helped to two very greasy-looking entrées; he then despatched a plate
of roast mutton; there then appeared before him the largest, and to my mind the
hardest, slice of ham that ever figured on the table of a nobleman, yet it
disappeared just in time to answer the enquiry of the butler, 'Snipe or pheasant,
my lord?' He instantly replied, 'Pheasant,' thus completing his ninth dish of
meat at that meal." A few weeks later the Speaker, in conversation with
Palmerston, expressed a hope that he was taking care of his health, to which
the octogenarian Premier replied: "Oh yes—indeed I am. I very often take a cab
at night,