Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography

Part 1

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FIFTEEN CHAPTERS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

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UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME.

THE GREAT BOER WAR. Arthur Conan Doyle.

COLLECTIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS. G. W. E. Russell.

FROM THE CAPE TO CAIRO. E. S. Grogan.

SPURGEON'S SERMONS. Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, LL.D.

SIR FRANK LOCKWOOD. Augustine Birrell, K.C., M.P.

THE MAKING OF A FRONTIER. Colonel Durand.

LIFE OF RICHARD COBDEN. Lord Morley.

LIFE OF PARNELL. R. Barry O'Brien.

MEMORIES GRAVE AND GAY. Dr. John Kerr.

A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. S. Reynolds Hole.

RANDOM REMINISCENCES. Charles Brookfield.

AT THE WORKS. Lady Bell.

MEXICO AS I SAW IT. Mrs. Alec Tweedie.

PARIS TO NEW YORK BY LAND. Harry de Windt.

LIFE OF LEWIS CARROLL. Stuart Dodgson Collingwood.

THE MANTLE OF THE EAST. Edmund Candler.

LETTERS OF DR. JOHN BROWN.

JUBILEE BOOK OF CRICKET. Prince Ranjitsinhji.

BY DESERT WAYS TO BAGHDAD. Louisa Jebb.

SOME OLD LOVE STORIES. T. P. O'Connor.

FIELDS, FACTORIES, & WORKSHOPS. Prince Kropotkin.

PROBLEMS OF POVERTY. Dr. Chalmers.

THE BURDEN OF THE BALKANS. M. E. Durham.

LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MACAULAY.--I. & II. Sir George O. Trevelyan, Bart.

Part 2

WHAT I SAW IN RUSSIA. Hon. Maurice Baring.

WILD ENGLAND OF TO-DAY. C. J. Cornish.

THROUGH FINLAND IN CARTS. Mrs. Alec Tweedie.

THE VOYAGE OF THE "DISCOVERY."--I. & II. Captain Scott.

FELICITY IN FRANCE. Constance E. Maud.

MY CLIMBS IN THE ALPS AND CAUCASUS. A. F. Mummery.

JOHN BRIGHT. R. Barry O'Brien.

POVERTY. B. Seebohm Rowntree.

SEA WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN. Commander E. Hamilton Currey, R.N.

FAMOUS MODERN BATTLES. A. Hilliard Atteridge.

THE CRUISE OF THE "FALCON." E. F. Knight.

A.K.H.B. (A Volume of Selections).

THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS. Jack London.

GRAIN OR CHAFF? A. Chichele Plowden.

LIFE AT THE ZOO. C. J. Cornish.

THE FOUR MEN. Hilaire Belloc.

CRUISE OF THE "ALERTE." E. F. Knight.

FOUR FRENCH ADVENTURERS. Stoddard Dewey.

A REAPING. E. F. Benson.

Etc., etc.

Others to follow.

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Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography

BY THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL

THOMAS NELSON AND SONS LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN AND NEW YORK

NOTE.

This book was originally published under the title of "One Look Back."

HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND

Part 3

IN HONOUR OF THE BEST GIFT WHICH OXFORD GAVE ME

CONTENTS

I. BEGINNINGS 9

II. HARROW 35

III. HARROVIANA 56

IV. OXFORD 82

V. OXONIANA 102

VI. HOME 125

VII. LONDON 143

VIII. HOSPITALITY 171

IX. ELECTIONEERING 195

X. PARLIAMENT 222

XI. POLITICS 246

XII. ORATORY 283

XIII. LITERATURE 309

XIV. SERVICE 338

XV. ECCLESIASTICA 365

FIFTEEN CHAPTERS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

BEGINNINGS

One look back--as we hurry o'er the plain, Man's years speeding us along-- One look back! From the hollow past again, Youth, come flooding into song! Tell how once, in the breath of summer air, Winds blew fresher than they blow; Times long hid, with their triumph and their care, Yesterday--many years ago! E. E. BOWEN.

The wayfarer who crosses Lincoln's Inn Fields perceives in the midst of them a kind of wooden temple, and passes by it unmoved. But, if his curiosity tempts him to enter it, he sees, through an aperture in the boarded floor, a slab of stone bearing this inscription:

"On this spot was beheaded William Lord Russell, A lover of constitutional liberty, 21st July, A.D. 1683."

Of the martyr thus temperately eulogized I am the great-great-great-great-grandson, and I agree with The Antiquary, that "it's a shame to the English language that we have not a less clumsy way of expressing a relationship of which we have occasion to think and speak so frequently."

Before we part company with my ill-fated ancestor, let me tell a story bearing on his historical position. When my father was a cornet in the Blues, he invited a brother-officer to spend some of his leave at Woburn Abbey. One day, when the weather was too bad for any kind of sport, the visitor was induced to have a look at the pictures. The Rembrandts, and Cuyps, and Van Dykes and Sir Joshuas bored him to extremity, but accidentally his eye lit on Hayter's famous picture of Lord Russell's trial, and, with a sudden gleam of intelligence, he exclaimed, "Hullo! What's this? It looks like a trial." My father answered, with modest pride--"It is a trial--the trial of my ancestor, William, Lord Russell." "Good heavens! my dear fellow--an ancestor of yours tried? What a shocking thing! I hope he got off."

So much for our Family Martyr.

In analysing one's nationality, it is natural to regard one's four grand-parents as one's component parts. Tried by this test, I am half an Englishman, one quarter a Highlander, and one quarter a Welshman, for my father's father was wholly English; my father's mother wholly Scotch; my mother's father wholly Welsh; and my mother's mother wholly English. My grandfather, the sixth Duke of Bedford, was born in 1766 and died in 1839. He married, as his second wife, Lady Georgiana Gordon, sister of the last Duke of Gordon, and herself "the last of the Gordons" of the senior line. She died just after I was born, and from her and the "gay Gordons" who preceded her, I derive my name of George. It has always been a comfort to me, when rebuked for ritualistic tendencies, to recall that I am great-great-nephew of that undeniable Protestant, Lord George Gordon, whose icon I daily revere. My grandmother had a numerous family, of whom my father was the third. He was born in Dublin Castle, his father being then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in the Ministry of "All the Talents." My grandfather had been a political and personal friend of Charles James Fox, and Fox had promised to be godfather to his next child. But Fox died on the 13th of September, 1806, and my father did not appear till the 10th of February, 1807. Fox's nephew, Henry Lord Holland, took over the sponsorship, and bestowed the names of "Charles James Fox" on the infant Whig, who, as became his father's viceregal state, was christened by the Archbishop of Dublin, with water from a golden bowl.

The life so impressively auspicated lasted till the 29th of June, 1894. So my father, who remembered an old Highlander who had been out with Prince Charlie in '45, lived to see the close of Mr. Gladstone's fourth Premiership. He was educated at Rottingdean, at Westminster, where my family had fagged and fought for many generations, and at the University of Edinburgh, where he boarded with that "paltry Pillans," who, according to Byron, "traduced his friend." From Edinburgh he passed into the Blues, then commanded by Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, and thence into the 52nd Regiment. In 1832 he was returned to the first Reformed Parliament as Whig Member for Bedfordshire. He finally retired in 1847, and from that date till 1875 was Sergeant-at-Arms attending the House of Commons. He married in 1834, and had six children, of whom I was the youngest by eight years, being born on the 3rd of February, 1853.

My birthplace (not yet marked with a blue and white medallion) was 16, Mansfield Street; but very soon afterwards the official residences at the Palace of Westminster were finished, and my father took possession of the excellent but rather gloomy house in the Speaker's Court, now (1913) occupied by Sir David Erskine.

Part 4

Here my clear memories begin. I have indeed some vague impressions of a visit to the widow of my mother's grandfather--Lady Robert Seymour--who died in her ninety-first year when I was two years old; though, as those impressions are chiefly connected with a jam-cupboard, I fancy that they must pertain less to Lady Robert than to her housekeeper. But two memories of my fourth year are perfectly defined. The first is the fire which destroyed Covent Garden Theatre on the 5th of March, 1856. "During the operatic recess, Mr. Gye, the lessee of the Theatre, had sub-let it to one Anderson, a performer of sleight-of-hand feats, and so-called 'Professor.' He brought his short season to a close by an entertainment described as a 'Grand Carnival Complimentary Benefit and Dramatic Gala, to commence on Monday morning, and terminate with a bal masque on Tuesday night.' At 3 on the Wednesday morning, the Professor thought it time to close the orgies. At this moment the gasfitter discovered the fire issuing from the cracks of the ceiling, and, amid the wildest shrieking and confusion, the drunken, panic-stricken masquers rushed to the street. The flames burst through the roof, sending high up into the air columns of fire, which threw into bright reflection every tower and spire within the circuit of the metropolis, brilliantly illuminating the whole fabric of St. Paul's, and throwing a flood of light across Waterloo Bridge, which set out in bold relief the dark outline of the Surrey hills." That "flood of light" was beheld by me, held up in my nurse's arms at a window under "Big Ben," which looks on Westminster Bridge. When in later years I have occasionally stated in a mixed company that I could remember the burning of Covent Garden Theatre, I have noticed a general expression of surprised interest, and have been told, in a tone meant to be kind and complimentary, that my hearers would hardly have thought that my memory went back so far. The explanation has been that these good people had some vague notions of Rejected Addresses floating through their minds, and confounded the burning of Covent Garden Theatre in 1856 with that of Drury Lane Theatre in 1809. Most people have no chronological sense.

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