Collections and Recollections | Page 6

was easily upset by hot rooms, late hours, and bad air. These
circumstances, combined with his love of domestic life and his
fondness for the country, led him to spend every evening that he could
spare in his seclusion at Pembroke Lodge, and consequently cut him off,
very much to his political disadvantage, from constant and intimate
associations with official colleagues and parliamentary supporters.
There were other characteristics which enhanced this unfortunate
impression of aloofness. His voice had what used to be described in
satirical writings of the first half of the century as "an aristocratic
drawl," and his pronunciation was archaic. Like other high-bred people
of his time, he talked of "cowcumbers" and "laylocks," called a woman
an "'ooman," and was "much obleeged" where a degenerate age is
content to be obliged. The frigidity of his address and the seeming
stiffness of his manner, due really to an innate and incurable shyness,
produced even among people who ought to have known him well a

totally erroneous notion of his character and temperament. To Bulwer
Lytton he seemed--
"How formed to lead, if not to proud to please! His fame would fire
you, but his manners freeze. Like or dislike, he does not care a jot; He
wants your vote, but your affections not; Vet human hearts need sun as
well as oats-- So cold a climate plays the deuce with votes."
It must be admitted that in some of the small social arts which are so
valuable an equipment for a political leader Lord John was funnily
deficient. He had no memory for faces, and was painfully apt to ignore
his political followers when he met them beyond the walls of
Parliament. Once, staying in a Scotch country-house, he found himself
thrown with young Lord D----, now Earl of S----. He liked the young
man's conversation, and was pleased to find that he was a Whig. When
the party broke up, Lord John conquered his shyness sufficiently to say
to his new friend, "Well, Lord D----, I am very glad to have made your
acquaintance, and now you must come into the House of Commons and
support me there." "I have been doing that for the last ten years, Lord
John," was the reply of the gratified follower.
This inability to remember faces was allied in Lord John with a curious
artlessness of disposition which made it impossible for him to feign a
cordiality he did not feel. Once, at a concert at Buckingham Palace, he
was seen to get up suddenly, turn his back on the Duchess of
Sutherland, by whom he had been sitting, walk to the remotest part of
the room, and sit down by the Duchess of Inverness. When questioned
afterwards as to the cause of his unceremonious move, which had the
look of a quarrel, he said, "I could not have sate any longer by that
great fire; I should have fainted."
"Oh, that was a very good reason for moving; but I hope you told the
Duchess of Sutherland why you left her."
"Well--no; I don't think I did that. But I told the Duchess of Inverness
why I came and sate by her!"
Thus were opportunities of paying harmless compliments recklessly

thrown away.
It was once remarked by a competent critic that "there have been
Ministers who knew the springs of that public opinion which is
delivered ready digested to the nation every morning, and who have not
scrupled to work them for their own diurnal glorification, even
although the recoil might injure their colleagues. But Lord Russell has
never bowed the knee to the potentates of the Press; he has offered no
sacrifice of invitations to social editors; and social editors have
accordingly failed to discover the merits of a statesman who so little
appreciated them, until they have almost made the nation forget the
services that Lord Russell has so faithfully and courageously rendered."
Be this as it may, there is no doubt that the old Whig statesman lacked
those gifts or arts which make a man widely popular in a large society
of superficial acquaintances. On his deathbed he said with touching
pathos, "I have seemed cold to my friends, but it was not in my heart."
The friends needed no such assurance. He was the idol of those who
were most closely associated with him by the ties of blood or duty.
Even to people outside the innermost circle of intimacy there was
something peculiarly attractive in his singular mixture of gentleness
and dignity. He excelled as a host, doing the honours of his table with
the old-fashioned grace which he had learned at Woburn Abbey and at
Holland House when the century was young; and in the charm of his
conversation he was not easily equalled--never, in my experience,