Lady John Russell: A Memoir with Selections from Her Diaries and Correspondence. Various

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      Of personal influences, her mother's, until marriage, was the strongest. There are only two long breaks in the diary she kept, when she had no heart to write down her thoughts; one occurs during the year of Lady Minto's long and serious illness at Berlin, which began in 1832, and the other after Lord John Russell's death in 1878.

      Lady Minto was not strong; bringing many sons and daughters into the world had tried her; and her delicacy seems to have drawn her children closer round her. Lady Fanny's references to her mother are full of an anxious, protective devotion, as though she were always watching to see if any shadow of physical or mental trouble were threatening her. So in imagining the merry, active life of this large family, the presence of a mother most tenderly loved, from whom praise seemed something almost too good to be true, must not be forgotten.

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      In November, 1830 (the year Lady Fanny's diaries begin), the Duke of Wellington resigned, having emphatically declared that the system of representation ought to possess, and did possess, the entire confidence of the country. He had gone so far as to say that the wit of man could not have devised a better representative system than that which Lord John Russell, in the previous session, had attempted to alter by proposing to enfranchise Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. But the election which followed the death of George IV on June 26th had not borne out the Duke's assertion; it had gone heavily against him. Lord Grey, forming his Ministry out of the old Whigs and the followers of Canning and Grenville, at once made Reform a Cabinet measure. During the stormy elections of July the news came from Paris that Charles X had been deposed, and unlike the news of the French Revolution, it acted as a stimulus, not as a check, to the reforming party in England.

      The next entry quoted from Lady Fanny's diary, begun at the age of fourteen, is dated November 22, 1830; the family were travelling towards Paris, matters having almost quieted down there. Louis Philippe had been recognized by England as King of the French the month before, and the only side of the revolution which came under her young eyes was the somewhat vamped up enthusiasm for the Citizen King which followed his acceptance of the crown and tricolor. It is said that any small boy in those days could exhibit the King to curious sightseers by raising a cheer outside the Tuileries windows, when His Majesty, to whom any manifestation of enthusiasm was extremely precious, would appear automatically upon the balcony and bow. But there were traces of agitation still to be felt up and down the country, and over Paris hung that deceptive, stolid air of indifference which is so puzzling a characteristic of crises in France.

      The Mintos travelled in several carriages with a considerable retinue, with a doctor and servants, but not with a train which, in those days, would have been thought remarkable for an English peer.

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      MELUN, November 22, 1830 ³ We left Sens at half past eight and did not stop to dine, but ate in the carriage. We passed through Fossard, Monteran, and got here about four. The doctor is quite grave about his tricolor and has worn it all day. We have had immense laughing at him. He was very much frightened at Sens, because Papa told him the people of the tricolor. A great many post-boys have it on their hats and all the fleurs-de-lis on the mile-posts are rubbed out.

      By this date Charles X, surrounded by his gloomy, ceremonial little court of faithful followers, was playing his nightly game of whist in the melancholy shelter of Holyrood, where he was to remain for the next two years, an insipid, sorrowful figure, distinguished by such dignity as unquerulous passivity can lend to the foolish and unfortunate. Meanwhile, Paris was attempting to vamp up some interest in her new King, who walked the streets with an umbrella under his arm.

      PARIS, December 23, 1830 We were in the Place Vendôme to-day, which was full of national guards waiting for the King. We stopped to see him. It looked very gay and pretty: the National Guard held hands in a long row and danced for ever so long round and round the pillar, with the people shouting as hard as they could. It looked very funny, but the King did not come whilst we were there. We heard them singing the Parisienne. The trial is over and the ministers are at Vincennes, going to be put in prison. There have been several mobs about the Luxembourg and the Palais Royal, but they think nothing more will happen now.

      Who can hum now the tune of the "Parisienne"? It has not stayed in men's memories like the "Marseillaise"; no doubt it expressed the prosaic, middle-class spirit of the National Guard, which kept a King upon the throne, in his own way just as determined as his predecessors to rule in the interests of his family.

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      PARIS, February 5, 1831 Mama, Papa, Mary, Lizzy,⁴ Charlie, Doddy⁵ and I have been to a children's ball at the Palais Royal. It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw, and we danced all night long, but no big people at all danced. We saw famously all the royal people; and Lizzy danced with two of the little princes. The Duke of Orleans and M. Duc de Nemours were in uniform and so were all the other gentlemen. The King and Queen are nice-looking old bodies.⁶ It was capital fun and very merry indeed, the supper was beautiful. There was famous galloping. PARIS, February 15, 1831 This is Mardi gras, the last day of the Carnival. We were out in the carriage this morning to see the masks on the boulevards; there were a great many masks and crowds of people, whilst there were mobs and rows going on in another part of the town. The people have quite destroyed the poor Archbishop's house, because on Sunday night the Duc de Bordeaux's bust was brought, and Mass was said for the Duc de Berry. They have taken all his books, furniture, and everything, and they wanted to throw some priests in the Seine, and they are breaking the things in the churches and taking down the crosses. All the National Guard is out.

      These disturbances were the last struggles of the party who had not been satisfied by the spectacle of the son of Philippe Egalité, with the tricolor flag in one hand, embracing the ancient Lafayette on the balcony above the Place de Grève. Their animosity against the Church was the ground-swell of the storm which had washed away Charles X himself. The Sacrilege Law introduced in 1825 had revived the barbarous mediaeval penalty of amputating the hand of the offender. Charles's attempt to reintroduce primogeniture by declaring the French principle of the equal division of property to be inconsistent with the principle of monarchy had irritated the people less than the encouragement he had given to monastic corporations which were contrary to law. The controversy which followed between the ecclesiastics and their opponents was the cause of the repeal of the freedom of the Press; and when he had stifled controversy his next step was the suspension of Parliament. Whence followed the events which so abruptly disturbed his evening rubber at St. Cloud on July 25th.

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      These outbreaks of the republican anti-clerical party to which Lady Fanny refers were soon calmed; a few weeks later the soldiers had no more work to do, and a grand review was held in the Champ de Mars.

      PARIS, March 27, 1831 We all went in the carriage to the heights of the Trocadéro and there got out. It was very pretty to look down at the Champ de Mars, which was quite full of soldiers, who sometimes ranged themselves in lines and sometimes in nice little bundles and squares. In front of the Ecole Militaire was a fine tent for the Queen and Princesses. The King and the Duc de Nemours rode about, and there were some loud cries of "Vive le Roi." Less than a year ago in the same place we saw old Charles X reviewing his soldiers and heard "Vive le Roi" shouted for him and saw white flags waving about the Champs de Mars instead of tricolor. It seems so odd that it should all be changed in so short a time, and spoils the "Vive le Roi" very much, because it makes one think they do not care really for him. PARIS, April 2, 1831 We had a long walk with Mama to the places where the people that were killed in July were buried. There are tricolor flags over them all, and the flowers and crowns of everlastings were all nicely arranged about the tombs. Amongst them was the kennel of a poor dog whose master was one of the killed, which has come every day since and lain on his grave. The dog itself was not in. The poor Swiss are buried СКАЧАТЬ