SIR ROBERT PEEL'S PRIVATE LIFE.*
MIL 050505 PEEL has made a most attractive book out of Lis grandfather's private correspondence with his wife and family. Peel the statesman was, to the outer world, an austere figure, inspiring profound respect even in his opponents, but exciting no great personal enthusiasm among his followers. He had assumed the extremely difficult task of transforming the old Tory party into the modern Conservative party with a programme of cautious reform, and he trusted to reason rather than sentiment to effect the gradual conversion. He never unbent in public, but in private life he was very human. His letters to his wife reveal him as a most affectionate husband and father. lie married Miss Julia Floyd, the daughter of a general officer, in 1820, when he was thirty-two, and until his death in 1860 their happiness was unclouded. Whenever Peel was away from home he wrote daily to his wife. Whether he was absorbed in Cabinet business in London, or fulfilling his official duties at Windsor, or paying more or less ceremonious visits to the country houses of his supporters, he never failed to send the daily letter. Once, as the editor notes, the young wife grew impatient at her hus- band's absence and hinted that Peel was not insensible to the charms of the ladies of high rank whom he described to her.
• The Private Letters of Six [tolled Peel. Edited by me non. °arse Pout Louden: Murray. (18.- sal Peel was very much hurt and expressed his annoyance by signing himself merely as " Your attached husband." But this passing coolness emphasizes by contrast the warmth of their affection. It is pleasant to find that the stern Prime Minister had to spend part of his mornings in executing small commissions for his wife in the country, and that he could find time, in the very strenuous session of 1843, to buy her some plants and seeds and to see that a violet which she had sent him was watered. He took a deep interest in his children. When his son Frederick, as head of a house at Harrow, was giving himself airs and openly disregarding the head-master's orders, he received an earnest reproof from his father. But Peel was just as quick to praise the boy's progress in classical studies and to give him hints for a set of prize verses as he was to blame the boy's passing insubordination. When, in 1839, his eldest child, Julia, came out, the hard-worked Leader of the Opposition made it his business to escort her to fashionable assemblies, and to stay there for hours, however " insufferably dull'' he found them. Julia, as the proud father told his wife, was " very much admired," and was soon engaged and married to Lord Villiers, son of the Earl of Jersey. Peel's happy family life helped him to bear the strain of the Parliamentary conflict and of the violent dissensions within his own party which eventually caused his fall.
The editor has framed the letters in a brief and dispassionate biography, with witty notes on some of the less obvious allusions. From a political standpoint the letters are not important, but here and there they illustrate an episode. Thus it is worth while to know that Peel's father, the old Lancashire cotton- spinner, very nearly quarrelled with his son for proposing Roman Catholic Emancipation in 1829. Peel, in introducing the Bill, had spoken of the painful necessity of forfeiting " private friendships and affections." His hearers probably did not know that Peel was gravely concerned at the possibility of alienating his own father by a Bill which distressed many good Protestants and rent the Tory party. Happily, the old man was mollified by fuller explanations and, before he died in 1830, was reconciled to the son in whom he took great pride. There is little about the Reform Bill in the letters, except repeated complaints about the interminable debates in Committee in the slimmer of 1831. Peel, being a practical Englishman, saw that it was idle to waste time and strength in resisting the inevitable, and he told his colleagues that he would not continue a useless battle. On the other hand, men like Lord Chandos and the indefatigable Wetherell were prepared to go on interminably on the present system." In the Reformed Parliament Peel led the Opposition with great prudence. He was "in the greatest fright," he told his wife in July, 1834, when he found the Duke of Wellington proposing amendments to a Coercion Bill which would have brought the two Houses into collision and probably broken up the Whig Ministry prematurely. When the King dismissed the Whigs in 1834 and, at the instance of the Duke of Wellington, summoned Peel home from Italy to become Prime Minister, Peel brought his wife and daughter with him on his famous journey of twelve days from Rome to London. They " had only slept four nights out'of twelve, but were as well as could be expected after such fatigue." Peel's first administration soon came to an end. When, seven years later, the Whigs were thoroughly discredited, Peel formed his great Ministry. But the letters of that date are mainly concerned with social matters. .A reference in 1842 to a mislaid paper by Gladstone on Free Trade may possess significance. Of more importance are the references to grave social unrest in the summer of 1842, especially at Manches- ter and in the Potteries. Peel thought it necessary to send arms and ammunition to his house at Drayton, but nothing happened there except a false alarm one night. When the Queen visited Edinburgh in September, 1842, with Peel in attendance, " the Chartists did what they could by following the carriage to make a hooting and groaning." Peel was confirmed in his belief that economic reforms were necessary to avert revolution. Writing to his wife on December 16th, 1845, when he had resigned office over the Repeal of the Corn Laws and was waiting to know whether Lord John Russell would or would not form a Whig Ministry, Peel said :- " Of course, we most be prepared for the gross injustice of people condemning before they have heard one single word. How can those, who spend their time in hunting and shooting and eating and drinking, know what were the motives of those who are responsible for the public security, who have access to the best information, and have no other object under Heaven but to provide against danger, and consult the general interests of all classes Y "
it is clear from Lady Peel's letters that she was as much puzzled
as any Conservative at Peel's sudden adoption of Repeal, but she resented the abuse showered on her husband, notably by " the horrid Mr. Ricardo."
Peel's descriptions of the house-parties and the dinners that he attended are often amusing. In his younger days he prided himself on his shooting, though in later life he seems to have found it somewhat tiresome to be commanded to accompany the Prince Consort for a shoot, whether he was in the humour or not. He writes to his wife in 1823 from Sudbum, to say that Henry Baring bet Lord Hertford a hundred guineas that he (Peel) could not kill in the course of a day specimens of nine kinds of game, from a pheasant to a hare, and that he shot the required number in less than three hours. He tells his wife of the splen- dours of Belvoir and of the extreme discomfort of Apthorpe in 1833. He records a strange occurrence at Apsley House in 1843. The Duke of Wellington was giving a dinner-party in honour of the King of Hanover, when an unknown lady, "covered with finery and jewels," suddenly appeared in the dining-room, saying that she had been invited. The company stared at her for some minutes, and then Lord Charles Wellesley, regaining his presence of mind, escorted her from the room and sent for her carriage. The incident, as so often happens in real life, is left unexplained. The lady was a Mrs. Severn, the wife of a Member of Parliament. We are left wondering whether she had been hoaxed or whether she had persuaded herself, in a fit of temporary aberration, that the Duke wanted to see her. The King of Hanover, whom we remember as the Duke of Cumber- land, was not an engaging personality. Peel notes, a few weeks later, that :— " The King of Hanover grievously offended Lady Londonderry the other day by one of those speeches which he is in the habit of making apparently for the purpose of giving pain. Lord and Lady Londonderry were dining with him at Hew with a large party. The King said to her, ' This is the very spot in which forty years since Charles Stuart proposed to his first wife. You are sitting for anything I know in the very chair in which she was sitting, and a very fine woman she was.' Lady Londonderry was very sulky the whole evening, and the King seemed to enjoy her annoyance."
We may also quote a characteristic passage which men who have held high office will understand :—
" We had a most vulgar dinner yesterday at Sir James Flowers' house—a bad repetition of the Fish Dinner. Eternal puffing of had wine ! But the host is the most remarkable Wender in the House of Commons of all the Members. He has dined every day at 2 o'clock, arrived at the House at 4, has never left it, and out of 221 Divisions has been in 211, more than any Member of the Government By his dinners he has gained considerable influence, has never asked a favour, and has never voted against the Government. He deserves from me, therefore, that I should undergo the penance of sitting next to him at dinner, and hearing his remonstrances against mixing water with wine."
Peel detested vulgarity and, as his earlier letters show, he shrank from the kind of men and women whom George the Fourth delighted to have about him. There lay the secret of his power. His countrymen revered him as a man of honour with a spotless reputation and an unswerving devotion to the public welfare.
Whatever men thought of Peel's policy, they knew that he woe absolutely honest and sincere. It is good to study the lives of such statesmen as he.
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