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1857

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2009

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Extract

During this Session I have become intimate with some persons of whom I knew comparatively little before. The Dunravens1 I have seen constantly and a great intimacy has from peculiar causes grown up there.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Royal Historical Society Camden Fifth Series , Volume 35 , December 2009, pp. 93 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2009

Wednesday 16 September

During this Session I have become intimate with some persons of whom I knew comparatively little before. The DunravensFootnote 1 I have seen constantly and a great intimacy has from peculiar causes grown up there.

I spent several days with Sir E. B. Lytton,Footnote 2 with whom I found many points in common. He has been very agreeable and I have known him better than I expected. StanleyFootnote 3 sought me out – for his character is so peculiar that I have always feared to be the first to make advances – this summer in London to propose various plans of foreign travel together. These, from the divorce bill,Footnote 4 the lateness of the Session and other reasons, fell through: but he subsequently paid me a visit of several days at Highclere, where I learnt to know more of him than any former occasion permitted.

Many old friends have married this year – Robert Cecil, Lothian, Shaw Stewart, H. Jenkinson, Egerton etc, but others such as Lygon and SandonFootnote 5 I have often seen from their now being in Parliament. This concentration of those for whom I have a real affection has been a great source of pleasure during my London life [. . .]. If I live to the close of another 12 months, the comparison of that year with the past will be interesting and I hope useful to me.

When I review the last six or seven months as a whole and compare them with my first Session of Parliament in 1854 I do not think I am mistaken in supposing that I have made an advance. How far I am myself capable of doing more than I was able to do is another question: but even there I think there has been considerable progress and certainly greater self-confidence, the absolute condition to success in life. I have acquired valent quantum – a certain position in the House of Lords and generally, and though now exiled from all chance of office by adherence to a broken and mastless party I am expected, as I cannot avoid knowing, to succeed eventually; and this is no mean auxiliary to success. For myself I scarcely know whether to wish for success or not.

References

1 Edwin Richard Wyndham-Quin (1812–1871), 3rd Earl of Dunraven (1850), archaeologist and antiquarian; and his wife, Augusta.

2 Edward George Earle Lytton-Bulwer (1803–1873), 1st Baron Lytton (1866), novelist and statesman. Con. MP for Hertfordshire (1852–1866), Colonial Secretary (May 1858–June 1859). Among his many novels are The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and Rienzi (1835).

3 Edward Henry Stanley (1826–1893), 15th Earl of Derby (1869). Con. MP for Kings Lynn (1848–1869), Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1852), Colonial Secretary (February–May 1858), Secretary of State for India (1859), Foreign Secretary (1868 and 1874–1878). Left Conservative Party in 1880; Colonial Secretary in Gladstone's government (1882–1885), Leader of Liberal Unionists, House of Lords (1886–1889).

4 The Matrimonial Causes Bill, popularly known as the Divorce Bill, introduced in the spring of 1857 by Palmerston, would allow, for the first time, for a divorce to be obtained in a court of law. It was much opposed by the Church and Gladstone, but was eventually passed by the Commons on 25 August (see S. Walpole, The History of Twenty-five Years, 4 vols (London, 1904), I, pp. 94–105). Carnarvon spoke against the bill several times during its passage.

5 Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil (1830–1903), Viscount Cranborne (1865) 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1868); Secretary of State for India (1866–1867, 1874–1876), Foreign Secretary (1878–1880), Leader of Opposition, House of Lords (1881–1885), Leader of the Conservative Party (1885–1902), Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary (1885–1886), Prime Minister (1886), Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary (1887–1892, 1895–1900), Prime Minister and Lord Privy Seal (1900–1902). William Schomberg Robert Kerr (1832–1870), 8th Marquess of Lothian (1841). Sir Michael Robert Shaw-Stewart (1836–1903), Con. MP for Renfrewshire (1855–1865). Henry T. Jenkinson, barrister, Carnarvon's cousin. Hon. Wilbraham Egerton (1832–1909), 2nd Baron Egerton (1883), 1st Earl Egerton (1897); Con. MP for Cheshire North (1858–1868) and for Cheshire Mid-division (1868–1883). Frederick Lygon (1831–1890), 6th Earl of Beauchamp (1866), Con. MP for Tewkesbury (1857–1863) and for Worcestershire West (1863–1866), Lord of the Admiralty (March–June 1859). Dudley Francis Stuart Ryder (1831–1900), Viscount Sandon (1847), 3rd Earl of Harrowby (1882); Con. MP for Lichfield (1856–1859) and for Liverpool (1868–1882), Vice-President, Committee of Council on Education (1874–1878), President of the Board of Trade (1878–1880), Lord Privy Seal (1885–1886). The majority of these were Carnarvon's Eton and/or Christ Church, Oxford contemporaries.