From The Edinburgh Review.
MEMOIRS OF THE EARL OF

MALMESBURY.*

memory, and at the velocity with which these events have succeeded each other and passed away. Hardly in any age has ENGLISH literature is not rich in politi- the world lived so fast and seen so much, cal memoirs. We can hardly recall an and undergone such vicissitudes. The instance, since the times of Lord Claren- conditions of time and space have been don and Bishop Burnet, in which an En- altered. Almost every action of our daily glish statesman, having filled offices of the lives would have been impracticable sevfirst rank, has left behind him an autobio-enty years ago. The forms, and even the graphical record of the events in which he substance, of social and political life are played a part. It might be added, by way changed. of contrast, that there is scarcely a French

statesman or soldier of eminence who has

et nos mutamur in illis. The

more important is it to trace, even in slight and fugitive lines, the process of this amazing transmutation, in which the younger generation rising about us finds it hard to believe.

not left some such record for the benefit of posterity; and the history of France for hundreds of years, from St. Louis and Philippe le Bel to the present time, may But Lord Malmesbury's recollections be read in the incomparable series of me- have a higher character and purport than moirs which are one of the most valua- the record of common things. He has ble possessions of the French language. been through life a consistent member of Those who are curious in national charac- the Tory party. He became, upon the teristics might draw some inference from termination of Sir Robert Peel's adminis the fact; but we content ourselves with tration, and the rupture of the Conservaacknowledging that the French memoir- tive body, one of the leaders of the Prowriters are far more numerous and bril-tectionist section of it, the trusted and liant than our own. We are, therefore, valued colleague of its chief. He held the more grateful to a veteran statesman, the office of foreign secretary in the Cabilike Lord Malmesbury, who consents to nets of Lord Derby in 1852 and 1858, make his personal reminiscences and and the privy seal in that of 1866. He diaries the property of the public, and to supplies, therefore, an important element retrace the incidents of a long and busy hitherto entirely wanting to the historian life, with entire truth and simplicity, in the of these times, for he lets us into the language in which he recorded them at councils of the Tory leaders themselves; the time. Lord Malmesbury says, mod- he produces with very little reserve their estly enough, that the readers of these correspondence with himself, which was memoirs are not to expect a continuous at the time confidential, and is now histornarrative, but rather a macédoine of mem-ical. Our own knowledge of these transoranda, diary, and correspondence, recalling the social and political events of a life of seventy-seven years. As he wrote at the time of men, events, and common things, so he publishes his remarks, which have therefore the freshness and reality of a contemporaneous impression, for the most part brief, but essentially clear and

true.

And what a vista of incident and change does a retrospect of seventy years open to the view! Every reader of these volumes must be astonished at the prodigious number of events they revive in the

Memoirs of an Ex-Minister. An Autobiography,

by the Right Hon. the Earl of MALMESBURY, G.C.B. a vols., 8vo. London: 1884.

actions is naturally derived from the opposite sources of information, which have been more freely published to the world by other hands. Nothing is more curious than to compare the impression produced by a given event or act of policy on the minds of those who were antagonists, and viewed the opposite side of the

shield.

In his youth Lord Malmesbury lived a good deal with the Whigs. His father-inlaw, Lord Tankerville, had been a Whig. He visited the family of Lord Grey at Howick, and it was at Bowood that he first met Mr. Stanley, the future Lord Derby, then wearing, like his host, Lord Lansdowne, the blue coat and yellow

smile. Such was his personal appearance in

waistcoat which were the appropriate | remarkable talent or any fixed idea but the one dress of the friends and followers of Mr. I mention. It grew upon him with his growth, Fox. Later in life this acquaintance rip- and increased daily until it ripened into a cerened into the closest intimacy, and the tainty. He was a very good horseman and record of Lord Malmesbury's political proficient at athletic games, being short, but His face was grave relations with Lord Derby is the chief ob- very active and muscular. and dark, but redeemed by a singularly bright ject and the most important result of this publication. It supplies us, for the first time, with authentic materials for the biography of that remarkable man, especially during his short administrations of 1852 and 1858, to which we shall presently have occasion to revert. Lord Derby's numer ous letters are of the utmost interest and

1829, at twenty-one years of age.

Lord Malmesbury's intimacy with these remarkable men would suffice to give a peculiar interest to his memoirs, and indeed his principal object appears to have been to sketch their characters. But his own public career entitles him to a distinvalue, and they do honor to his industry, guished place in our political history. foresight, and patriotism. It is a pleasing He speaks of it with becoming modesty, characteristic of English political life, or and with no wish to exaggerate its imporat least of what has been English political tance. But the reader of these volumes life, that its asperities are tempered by will be satisfied that he deserves a higher almost unbroken personal and social rela- rank than that previously awarded to him tions. Lord Malmesbury has been all his by public opinion. It was not till 1846, life a strong Tory, but Lord Sydenham, after the disruption of the Tory party, and Lord Canning, and Sidney Herbert were the fall of Sir Robert Peel, that Lord his most intimate friends; Lord LansMalmesbury entered upon active political downe writes him an affectionate letter life, and he entered upon it as the warm on his leaving office; Lord Palmerston partisan of a lost cause. He never sat in and Lord Clarendon assist him with their the House of Commons, for although he counsels, and the battle of the night be- once stood for Portsmouth and was a canfore on the opposing benches of Parlia- didate for the borough of Wilton in 1841, ment is forgotten the next day at the his father's death at that very time placed dinner-table. Now and then a little ex-him in the House of Peers. The strong plosion of temper takes place, but it is excitement caused by the repeal of the laughed away, and inflicts no lasting wound on the friendships of a life.

It was Lord Malmesbury's good fortune to contract in his earlier years another intimacy which had a considerable influence on his after life. In the course of a Continental tour which he made in 1829, he was introduced at Rome by Madame de Guiccioli to the Duchesse de St. Leu, Queen Hortense, whose house was one of the most agreeable resorts in the city.

Corn Laws roused his political energy,

and he threw himself with ardor into the Protectionist party, led by Lord Derby, but condemned at the outset to abandon the cause of protection. In 1852, when Lord Derby rallied the forlorn hope of the Tories and formed a government, the Foreign Office was placed in his hands, although he was entirely without official experience, and his knowledge of diplomacy was derived from the careful study Here for the first time I met Hortense's son, of his grandfather's despatches and corre Louis Napoleon, then just of age. Nor would spondence, which he had recently pubanybody at that time have predicted his great lished. But the love of letters and a and romantic career. He was a wild, harum-ready appreciation of the foreign relations scarum youth, or what the French call un of the country and of the character of crâne, riding at full gallop down the streets to the peril of the public, fencing, and pistol- foreigners, with whose language and manshooting, and apparently without serious ners he was extremely familiar, were hethoughts of any kind, although even then hereditary in the Harris family, and there was possessed with the conviction that he would some day rule over France. We became friends, but at that time he evinced no

is no trace in his correspondence of the hand of a novice. It was the opinion of his successors in office, Lord John Rus

sell and Lord Clarendon, that the business | trophe. Lord Malmesbury applied himof the department had been conducted self with success to localize the war, which with ability and dignity. Lord Malmes- he had not the power to prevent; but his bury was never an ambitious politician. exertions, at the time, were singularly He accepted, more than he sought, the misrepresented and misunderstood. functions he was called upon to discharge, Before we enter upon the more imporactuated mainly by a sense of duty to the tant passages to be found in these volHouse in which he sat, to the party which | umes, it is just to pay our tribute to their he had adopted, and to his country. When literary merit. The mere jottings of a he took office in 1852, the recent coup d'état in France, which placed Louis Napoleon near the throne, had shaken the confidence of Europe, and raised in this country the liveliest apprehensions of what the renovated empire might bring forth. Lord Malmesbury himself was viewed with suspicion from his known intimacy with the author of a revolution which was regarded in England as a detestable aggression on the liberties of France, and as an act dangerous to the peace of Europe. Here, however, his knowledge of the character and opinions of the future emperor stood him in good stead. He firmly adhered to the conviction that peace and good-will to England were the basis of the imperial policy, and he was right; but at that moment a friendly reliance on the intentions of the ruler of France was unpopular in an English minister.

diary have, of course, no literary pretensions, yet they sparkle with anecdote and incident, and they recall to memory a prodigious number of persons and occur. rences, extremely amusing to those who, like ourselves, can remember the greater part of them, and perhaps not less interesting to later generations, who see these ghosts and shadows of the nineteenth century flit before their eyes. But when Lord Malmesbury allows his pen to run freely, no one writes more pleasantly. In his introductory chapter he brings before us the naval review of 1814 which Prince Metternich also witnessed in the Solent, and we mount the ancient galley of the governor of the Isle of Wight, with its lofty gilded poop, dating from the days of William III. He describes with an "eternal affection" that wild tract of moorland, stretching between Christchurch and Poole, in which the old manor house of Heron Court was planted by the priors of Christchurch a region now invaded by a thousand villas, but on which sixty years ago blackcock might be shot where the largest church in Bournemouth now stands, and where even the eagle and the bustard were not unknown. The last lesser bustard was shot there by Lord Palmerston.

As in 1852 Lord Malmesbury was accused of a leaning to France, so in 1859, when the Franco-Austrian war broke out in Italy, he was accused of a leaning to Austria, because at that time he strongly opposed the aggressive policy of Napoleon III., in the interest of the general peace. That war was more popular in England than it was in France, because it had for its object the independence of At two-and-twenty he starts for the Italy. But, however desirable that object Continent, and escapes by a hair's breadth was to the Italians, more than one states- from the wound of a fencing-master at man thought that it might be too dearly Geneva, who runs him through the body purchased by the overthrow of the exist with a broken foil; and again in the Siing settlement of Europe. Lord Malmes- cilian seas from the wreck of a vessel in bury foresaw that this was the letting out which he had all but embarked. Conof waters. He even predicted that in the nected by his marriage with the family of long run it would cost the emperor his the Duc de Gramont (Lady Malmesbury crown or his life. And it would not be was a granddaughter of the old Duc de difficult to show that the series of events Gramont, who arrested the Cardinal de which followed in succession the first out- Rohan at Versailles, and lived to tell the break of the military ambition and activity story fifty years afterwards); received as of France did in fact lead up to that catas-a confidential friend by the heir of the

Bonapartes, whom he saw in all the vicis- | sail on his own account, and by the time he situdes of fortune, in England, at Ham, upon the throne in Paris, and upon his deathbed at Chislehurst; acquainted, as few Englishmen are, with every province of France by frequent excursions to that country, Lord Malmesbury's notes of French society and manners are of extraordinary variety and interest.*

And if we turn from courts and Cabinets to his life in the Highlands, where he rented for many years the shootings of Achnacarry from Cameron of Lochiel, on the west coast, our author becomes the ardent and successful sportsman, passing months in that wild scenery which he knew how to describe and to enjoy. We must cite the following passage, which has something of the lightness of touch of our old friend Mrs. Barbauld: —

September 29th.-A tremendous gale and rain. The whole party sat together in the drawing-room, each obliged to tell a story. Mine was as follows, and was founded on the fact that Richelieu had refused to shoot with Loughborough in consequence of his always hunting his pointers down wind:

was thirty, the rapid voyages he invariably made cut out everybody else, and gave him such advantages that he realized a large fortune. He then remembered his native hills, This he did, but he felt that he was not really and determined to buy an estate upon them. a Highland gentleman without a deer-forest, and therefore he extended his domain, took off the sheep, and hired the best stalker in Scotland. All this being prepared for his happiness and amusement, he started with him to stalk in his own forest, but day after day he was disappointed by the perverseness of the weather, the wind constantly changing the mohe found himself always going down wind, so ment he went out. Whatever circuits he took that, whether as single deer or herds, no animal allowed him to approach within a quarter of a mile. He looked upon this merely as a piece of bad luck, till by chance, crossing the burn on which he had seen the pixie fifteen years before, he heard a tiny giggle and then a little woman, and then the terrible truth broke long low laugh. Turning round, he saw the upon him that if he lived to a thousand years he never could possibly kill a stag.

We must here intercalate - - for in this kaleidoscope diary incidents occur in a perplexing variety-Lord Malmesbury's very curious account of his visit to Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, then a prisoner at Ham, in April, 1845:

April, London. the Castle of Ham, on the Somme, where I I am just returned from have been to see Prince Louis Napoleon in the prison in which he has been confined since 1840. Early last January he sent M. Ornano to London to ask me to come and see him on ing a small almanack for the year, with a a matter of vital importance to himself, bringvignette of the fortress of Ham painted in miniature on the cover. I was unable to go till now, and having obtained with some diffi. Prince, I went to Ham on April 20. culty a permission from M. Guizot to see the I found him little changed, although he had been imprisoned five years, and very much pleased to see an old friend fresh from the outer world,

There was once a young Highland shepherd, who was drinking at a burn, and being in the humor of desiring all sorts of things that he had never seen or possessed, he wished that one of the fairies he had heard of, who haunted the place, would appear and give him whatAt that moment his dog ever he wanted. howled, and a pixie stood before him. have heard you," she said, "as I sat under that pebble in the burn, and I will give you whatever you wish for, but it must be one thing only and forever." "Thank you," said the lad, not at all alarmed, "I have only one desire in the world, and that is to go to sea and become a rich merchant." This happened before steamers were invented, and the fairy answered most graciously, "Mr. MacGuffog, will give you what is the most essential thing for a prosperous voyage and successful trading -namely, wherever you go you shall have a fair wind whichever way you turn yourself or your ship." The young MacGuffog fell on his knees with gratitude, and having given the fairy a pull at his whiskey-flask, went forth-day allowed me for the interview, he confessed with to Fort William, and enlisted as a cabin-mained unabated, he was weary of his prison, that, although his confidence and courage reboy on board a merchantman. It was not very long before the fact became known that whatever ship he was on board always had the wind astern; all the trading captains hired him at any price, but he soon gained enough to

* Sometimes his transitions are rather abrupt, as if he thought that his readers had as good a memory as his own. Thus, after saying that Lady Tankerville, his mother-in-law, was a Gramont, he passes immediately to Count d'Orsay without explaining the connection. The young Duchesse de Guiche, afterwards Duchesse de Gramont a lady still alive-was Count d'Orsay's sister; the count was therefore allied by marriage to Lady Tankerville's family.

and that world London. As I had only half a

from which he saw no chance of escaping, as he knew that the French Government gave him opportunities of doing so that they might shoot him in the act. He stated that a depu tation had arrived from Ecuador offering him Philippe would release him, and in that case the Presidency of that Republic if Louis he would give the King his parole never to return to Europe. He had, therefore, sent for me as a supporter and friend of Sir R. Peel, at that time our Prime Minister, to urge Sir Robert to intercede with Louis Philippe to comply with his wishes, promising every pos

ceed to the more substantial portions of his work, which are the fit subjects of discussion and criticism.

sible guarantee for his good faith. The Prince was full of a plan for a new canal in Nicaragua, that promised every kind of advantage to British commerce. As a precedent for English official interference I was to quote Earl Grey's took his seat in the House of Lords in Lord Malmesbury, as has been said, in favor of Prince Polignac's release in 1830. 1841, on the death of his father, who had I assured the Prince that I would do my best ; but added that Lord Aberdeen was our Foreign rather dissuaded than encouraged him to Secretary, and that there was nothing of ro- enter public life. He appears for some mance in his character. At this time Prince years to have taken no active part in poliLouis was deeply engaged in writing the his-tics, and although he had applauded Sir tory of Artillery, and he took an hour in Robert Peel's gallant struggle in 1835, we making me explain the meaning of several think we can trace at a later period sometechnical words in English, which he wished thing of that distrust of their great leader translated. He gave me a full account of his which the High Tory Party did not care failure at Boulogne, which he declared was to conceal, and which ultimately broke entirely owing to the sudden illness of the officer of the day whom he had secured, and out in the invectives of Mr. Disraeli. In who was to have given up the barracks at 1839 Sir Robert Peel had "implored the once. The soldiers had mostly been gained, Conservatives to be united and not to and the prestige of his name in the French split upon minor differences with respect army was universal. To prove this, he assured to the Corn Laws, declaring himself to be me that the cavalry escort of lancers who ac- in favor of the present system, against companied him to Ham made him constant fixed duty or any alteration whatever."* gestures of sympathy on the road. He then That was the shibboleth of the Tory said, "You see the sentry under my window? I do not know whether he is one of mine or Peel's accession to office, to shake their party. But many things occurred, after not; if he is he will cross his arms, if not, he

""

will do nothing when I make a sign." He faith. In 1843 Lord Malmesbury says: went to the window and stroked his moustache, Many Conservatives think that Peel but there was no response until three were re-truckles to the Radicals, and throws over lieved, when the soldier answered by crossing his friends; " and in the preceding year, his arms over his musket. The Prince then 1842, he had actually brought in a Corn said, "You see that my partisans are unknown Bill: to me, and so am I to them. My power is in an immortal name, and in that only; but I have waited long enough, and cannot endure imprisonment any longer.' I understood that Count Montholon and Dr. Conneau, with his valet, Thelin, were his fellow-prisoners at Ham. After a stay of three hours I left the prison, and returned to London deeply impressed with the calm resolution, or rather philosophy, of this man, but putting little faith as to his ever renouncing [qu.? mounting] the throne of France. Very few in a miserable prison like this, isolated and quasi forgotten, would have kept their intellect braced by constant day studies and original compositions, as Louis Bonaparte did during the last five years

in the fortress of Ham.

February 7th. Sir Robert Peel has brought in his Bill upon the Corn Laws, which is no less than taking off more than half the present duty. Nobody expected such a sweeping measure, and there is great consternation amongst the Conservatives. It is clear that he has thrown over the landed interest, as my father always said he would. . . . My steward says that the landed proprietors will lose at least 15 per cent. of their rents by Peel's Bill. (Vol. i., p. 139.)

To which Lord Malmesbury adds in a note that "experience has shown that this is far under the mark :" he does not appear to notice that rents had been artifiThe day after I arrived in London I saw Sir cially raised by the effect of the protective Robert Peel, and related my interview and system, which was precisely the grievance message to him. He seemed to be greatly in- complained of by the nation. Sir Robert terested, and certainly not averse to apply to Peel was not unconscious of the rift in the the French Government in the Prince's favor party of which he was the illustrious chief, on his conditions, but said he must consult and even when his administration was ap. Lord Aberdeen, which of course was inevitable.parently at the height of its power, he That evening he wrote to me to say that Lord Aberdeen "would not hear of it." Who can tell how this decision of the noble lord may influence future history? (Vol. i., p. 157.)

We are compelled, by the limits of this article, to pass over numerous anecdotes and incidents of sport, society, and travel, which our readers will find for themselves in Lord Malmesbury's pages, and we pro

foresaw its dissolution. The studied silence of Lord Malmesbury with reference to the head of the government in these years is significant. Lord Stanley appears to have been the only member of the Cabinet with whom he lived on confidential terms. Mr. Gladstone he did not

• Vol. i., p. 98.