Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. Part 52

Lorsque j'ai recu votre lettre j'allais vous ecrire, ainsi qu'a Madame Reeve, de vouloir bien venir ici le 30 mai dans l'apres-midi: nous recevons entre 2 et 5 tous les amis qui viendront feter cet anniversaire avec nous.

Je me souviens bien que Madame Reeve etait avec vous a la chapelle de Kingston, mais ma memoire n'est pas sure en ce qui concerne Madame votre fille. Je vous serais bien reconnaissant de me faire savoir si elle etait avec vous ce jour-la. En attendant je vous prie de me croire Votre bien affectionne,

PHILIPPE COMTE DE PARIS.

The Journal notes:--

_May 7th._--The Club: Due d'Aumale, Lord Salisbury, Wolseley, Carlisle, A.

Russell, Hewett, Stephen--very brilliant.

_8th_.--Returned to Foxholes.

_16th_.--Drove to Heron Court. Lord Malmesbury dying.

_17th_.--Lord Malmesbury died. 22nd, attended his funeral in Priory Church.

29th, to London.

_30th_.--The silver wedding of the Comte and Comtesse de Paris at Sheen.

All the French Royalties, Prince of Wales, &c. About five hundred people; 169 persons still alive who were at the wedding in 1864. A silver medal was sent to all the survivors.

_From M. B. St.-Hilaire_

_Paris, June 6th_.--If I am free in the autumn, it will give me great pleasure to pay you another visit at Foxholes; the first has left a pleasant memory, and I ask no better than to repeat it. But, without having to complain of old age, I find more difficulty in going about. I am not exactly ill, but my strength gradually fails--a sign that the end is not far off.

I foresaw that General Boulanger would have no success in England; you are much too serious for such a nature as his. His popularity diminishes daily; and if the Cabinet act with judgement from now to the October elections, I have no doubt they may regain public favour. The triumph of Boulangism would be the signal for horrible anarchy at home and war abroad, provoked by the madmen who had climbed into power.

Monarchy, in the person of the Comte de Paris, is losing rather than gaining ground here. If France should ever return to a dynasty, it would be more likely to be the Bonapartes. The terrible name of Napoleon has still an immense _prestige_, however unworthy his successors.

M. St.-Hilaire's visit did not come off. The Journal mentions many dinners, receptions, and garden parties in town during June and July, and eleven days in August on board Mrs. Watney's yacht 'Palatine,' to see the naval review on the 5th. 'Very rough weather all the time.' In September a journey to Edinburgh and on the 14th to Chesters, chronicled as 'my first visit to my daughter.' A week later Reeve returned south; and, paying a few short visits on the way, including a day at Knowsley, was back at Foxholes by the 26th.

_From Count Vitzthum_

Villa Vitzthum, Baden Baden, August 30th.

My dear Mr. Reeve,--I beg to send you the proofs of the preface and contents, in order to show you the plan of my book.

I am very sorry that you do not approve of the account I have given of our interview in September 1866. It was unfortunately too late to cancel the letter, but nothing would prevent leaving it out if those memoirs should ever be translated. On further consideration, and after reading the foregoing pages, you will find, I am sure, that your comment on the situation in September 1866 was not only correct, but very valuable. The peace of Europe then was threatened by two eventualities, of which one happened: by an ostensible alliance between Prussia and France, or by an immediate war between both. Rouher and Lavalette worked very hard for the alliance, and your sound judgement indicated the consequences which such an alliance would have had. I quite agree with you about these relations. But the opinion of a man like you is a fact, and an important fact; because you have been in those days what they call a representative man; because you represented a great portion of the Liberal party. It does not take one iota off the value of your opinion--which, you may depend upon it, was correctly recorded--if the course of events took another turn, and if this monster alliance remained a dream of adventurous French politicians. The thing was on the cards.

As for Napoleon's malady, all I can say [is] that Nelaton, who then was consulted for the first time, wrote a letter to King Leopold of Belgium, stating that it was very probable the Emperor of the French would be found any morning dead in his bed, and that he would most likely die before the end of November. Very truly yours,

VITZTHUM.

In consequence of this letter Mr. Reeve wrote to Mr. T. Norton Longman:--

_Foxholes, September 3rd._--Count Vitzthum is about to publish two more volumes of his political reminiscences during his mission in London. I send you the index of the work, from which you will see that it contains a good deal of matter, anecdotes, &c., of interest to English readers. You will judge from the result of the former work whether you think it worth while to engage in the publication of a translation of these later volumes. But, as I am going away till the end of the month, I cannot negotiate with Count Vitzthum or with the translator, and I must beg you to take that upon yourself.

A month later, however, on October 2nd, he wrote that, after seeing the book, he was of opinion that it would not stand translation. It was reviewed in the 'Edinburgh' of January 1890, but was not translated.

_From Lord Derby_

_November 11th_.--I have only begun the Life of Lord John. It would be a very difficult one to write in a spirit at once of fairness and friends.h.i.+p.

My impression of the man was and is that he was more thoroughly and essentially a partisan than anyone I have known; and sometimes open to the comment, that he seemed to consider the Universe as existing for the sake of the Whig party. Perhaps this would not strike anyone who was trained up in the same school, as strongly as it did me. On the other hand, I think he was more generally consistent, and had fewer of his own words to eat, than any politician of his time or of ours. His religious politics were his weak part; they were rather narrow and sectarian. I suppose he was forced by the Court into his quarrel with Palmerston; which was the trouble of his later official life, and caused these uneasy struggles to recover a lost position which did him harm. But with all drawbacks he has left an honoured and distinguished name. Do you think there is any ground for the idea which Lady Russell puts about that, if he had lived till now, he would have gone for Home Rule?

CHAPTER XXIII

THE ONE MORE CHANGE

The very wide range of Reeve's studies has appeared from many indications scattered through these pages, and it has been seen how, at different times, he was occupying himself with various subjects far outside the ordinary course of reading. These were, however, connected by some general idea which pervaded the whole. Of natural science he knew little. As a boy, the study of mathematics was irksome to him and repulsive, nor was he at any later time more favourably inclined towards it. His acquaintance with astronomy, chemistry, physics, and the cognate sciences was very limited--not more, perhaps, than he picked up in his careful and intelligent study of the articles published in the 'Edinburgh Review'

during the forty years of his editors.h.i.+p. His real knowledge was confined by a band of history, but of history in its very widest sense, including not only war and politics and law, but political economy, literature, religion, and superst.i.tion. Of military science he had read sufficient to take a technical interest in the details of battles and campaigns, and he was perhaps one of the first landsmen of this age to understand the 'influence of sea-power.' His attention had been called to this at a very early period in his career by the utter collapse of Mehemet Ali in Syria; and reasoning on that, he had learned that 'sea-power,' or, as he preferred to call it, 'maritime-power,' controlled and directed affairs with which, at first sight, it seemed to have absolutely nothing to do.

Long before Captain Mahan began to teach, or to write those admirable works which came as a revelation to the English and the European public, he had opened the pages of the 'Edinburgh Review' to writers who, in different ways and in different degrees, were inculcating the same doctrine, which during the long peace, and by reason of the overwhelming superiority of the allies in the Russian war, had been almost forgotten, even by professional men. It would not be difficult to show how, during the thirty years which preceded the publication of Captain Mahan's 'Influence of Sea-Power,' its most important theories were ill.u.s.trated and discussed in the pages of the 'Review.' The following, by one of the most accomplished officers in our navy, refers to such an article in the January number:--

_From Captain Bridge, R.N._

_January 19th_.--As an Englishman and a sailor, I feel it to be a duty again to congratulate you on the article 'Naval Supremacy,' &c., in the new number of the 'Edinburgh Review.' That article and the one concerning which I previously addressed you can hardly fail to do good. The Maurician school and its 'two Army-corps and a cavalry division,' which were to be launched at the Caucasus, must have received a severe check from the earlier article. The disaster-breeding facts of the fort-builders can hardly survive many more such a.s.saults as that so sharply driven home in 'Naval Supremacy.' The opinions of the writer of the latter, I venture to think, foreshadow those of the Navy on the subject of huge s.h.i.+ps and huge guns.

I hold it to be highly beneficial to the country that the editor of the 'Edinburgh Review' should have so keen an appreciation and, for a civilian, so rare a knowledge of naval affairs.

_From Lord Derby_

_April 3rd_--What a new Europe is beginning! Bismarck dismissed; Emperors holding Socialist conferences; more attempts to murder the Tsar; strikes all over the world; Germans going to Prussianise Central Africa! No want of novelty in our time and amusing enough, if one is far enough off.

_From the Duc d'Aumale_

_Chantilly_, 14 _juin_.--Ou diable avais-je la tete, mon cher ami? (ne montrez pas ce preambule a nos amis puritains.) Je croyais bien vous avoir ecrit que je comptais pa.s.ser la mer vers le 22, diner avec le Club le 24, embra.s.ser mes neveux et nieces de toutes generations, voir quelques amis, et rentrer ici vers la fin de la semaine. Je persiste dans ce projet, _weather permitting_; c'est-a-dire sauf le cas de tempete que l'on est bien force de prevoir avec une pareille saison. A bientot donc, s'il plait a Dieu. Je finis mieux que je ne commence, et je vous serre la main.

H. D'O.

_From the Duc d'Aumale_

_Chantilly_, 26 _juillet_.--J'essaye de cha.s.ser par le travail les preoccupations qui m'obsedent. Je n'y reussis pas toujours. Est-ce l'effet de l'age? mais je suis de plus en plus anxieux sur l'avenir de mon pays et meme de l'Europe. Nous sommes dans le faux depuis 1848, et il est sorti de la guerre de '70 un etat de choses bien perilleux.

Au revoir et mille amities.

The diary and the correspondence for the rest of the year are singularly barren of interest. A troublesome attack of sciatica in the end of July led to Reeve's being advised to try Harrogate, whither he accordingly went in the beginning of August. He found the place--possibly also the water--disagreeable, and after a week's stay he went on to Bolton Abbey, to Minto, and to Chesters. By the end of the month he was back at Foxholes, where he remained throughout September. Early in October he went for a ten days' visit to Knowsley, where he met Froude and the Duc d'Aumale, with whom he returned to London. Then to Foxholes for a month, coming up to town in the middle of November, and--with the exception of a week at Easter--staying there till May 1891.

_From Lord Derby_

_Knowsley, January 20th_.--What do you think of Home Rule in its present phase? Chamberlain says it is dead; I say it is badly crippled, but capable of a good deal of mischief still. I see no new question coming forward, except that of strikes, eight-hours legislation, and Socialism generally.

Do you ever see the 'New Review'? I picked it up yesterday, and read a very pretty Socialist programme by Morris and a Mr. Bernard Shaw, whom I never heard of before, but who is apparently rather clever and rather cracked. I suspect ideas of that cla.s.s are making progress.

This letter, though not calling for any hurry, Reeve answered immediately, as was his general custom. It was indeed only by this prompt attention that, with the enormous correspondence which he carried on, he could prevent an acc.u.mulation which would have been overwhelming.

_To Lord Derby_