Lady John Russell herself is an abiding example of the best type of woman, quick to sympathise, ready to counsel, who, while admiring her husband as a statesman and giving him every assistance in his public career, admired the man more than the politician. After the birth of their eldest son, she wrote:
“Millions thy patriot voice attend, Mine, only mine, thy gentler tone; With thee in blissful gaze to bend This flow’ret o’er is mine alone.”
It was the quiet, retired life she loved and preferred. Sir Henry Taylor met her in 1852--she was approaching forty--for the first time since her girlhood, when he had known her very well indeed. Of their meeting he wrote: “I recollect some years ago, in going through the heart of the city, somewhere behind Cheapside, to have come upon the courtyard of an antique house, with grass and flowers and green trees growing as quietly as if it was the garden of a farmhouse in Northumberland. Lady John reminds me of it.” The words fitly sum up Lady Russell’s character.
“Full of vivacity, she surprises and interests; she finds her chief pleasure in conversing with persons of worth and reputation, and this not so much to be known to them, as to know them.”
Lady Palmerston was one of the favourites of fortune. Born of a distinguished family, sister of one Prime Minister and wife of another, the trusted confidante of both, endowed by nature with beauty and charm, with keen intelligence and sprightly wit, she was a queen of society from eighteen to eighty, and for the last thirty years of that period an important factor, through her husband, in the great political affairs of the world.
Emily Mary Lamb was born in 1787. She was the only daughter of Peniston, first Viscount Melbourne, by his wife, Elizabeth Milbanke, a remarkable woman who exercised a great influence over the members of her family and of her immediate circle. Lord Byron had great respect and admiration for her. “If she had been a few years younger,” he used to say, “what a fool she would have made of me had she thought it worth her while.” As it was, she remained a valuable and most agreeable friend to him. Emily Lamb’s brother William, who was later, as the second Lord Melbourne, to play so great a part in his country’s history, was eight years her senior. Her education was chiefly directed to perfecting her in those accomplishments that would add to her charm and gracefulness, and render her fit to take her place in society. To dance well, to sing, and to play some musical instrument, to read aloud in a pleasantly intelligent manner, to have knowledge enough of books to be able to converse easily on most subjects, to write a letter in a clear hand and with grace of expression, to understand the use of the needle and the keeping of simple accounts, would be deemed sufficient. All this could be accomplished by a governess of modern attainments, but the best education of girls highly placed in society was obtained from the conversation of those around them, of the distinguished men and women who frequented their parents’ houses, and that sort of education Emily Lamb had in perfection. The young people of that day had a merry time. At Brocket, the Melbourne’s country house, there were plenty of outdoor amusements and occupations; the girls did not play hockey and cricket like their twentieth-century descendants, but they rode and hunted, fished and walked. In the early years of the nineteenth century there were the new dances, waltzes and quadrilles, to be learned, and Emily Lamb must have joined the parties given at Devonshire House or in her own home, Melbourne House, for the purpose of practising them. They would assemble at three o’clock in the afternoon at what was called a “morning” dance, with a cold dinner laid in one of the back drawing-rooms. The Tango teas of the twentieth century are not quite such an innovation as has been supposed.