Lord Melbourne

“ Lord Melbourne is very glad to hear that the King of the Belgians is reassured by his journey to Mons and his reception upon it. He need not mind the King of Holland, if he can keep all right at Paris.
The railway smash163 is awful and tremendous, as all railway mishaps are, and Lord Melbourne fears must always be. These slips and falls of earth from the banks are the greatest danger that now impends over them, and if they take place suddenly and in the dark, Lord Melbourne does not see how the fatal consequences of them are to be effectually guarded against. ”

“ Lord Melbourne was always human, supremely human—too human, perhaps. [23]
And now, with old age upon him, his life took a sudden, new, extraordinary turn. He became, in the twinkling of an eye, the intimate adviser and the daily companion of a young girl who had stepped all at once from a nursery to a throne. His relations with women had been, like everything else about him, ambiguous. Nobody had ever been able quite to gauge the shifting, emotional complexities of his married life ”

“ Lord Melbourne lamented the loss of a most gracious master, and said that the world had lost a man of the best intentions, the most uncompromising honour, and the strictest integrity. After adverting to the naval education of the late king, to the part which he had occasionally taken in the debates of that house, Lord Melbourne moved an address of condolence to her majesty upon the death of the late king, and of congratulation upon her accession to the throne. ”

“ It is a lovely place, with the greatest beauty that a place can have, a very swift, clear, natural stream, running and winding in front of the house. The whole place is much improved since Lord Melbourne saw it last; a great deal of new pleasure-ground has been made. The trees, cypresses, elders, planes, elms, white poplars and acacias are very fine indeed....
Lord Melbourne thinks of staying here six or seven days, and then returning to London and going to Brocket Hall and Panshanger, but he has not fixed his plans decidedly, which he is never very fond of doing. ”

“ It was named after Lord Melbourne, who was Prime Minister of England at the time it was founded, in the year 1836. It had then only a handful of enterprising settlers, and its remarkable growth has been one of the wonders of the century; for in fifty years it has developed into a city of nearly half a million inhabitants, with property of the net annual value of £15,000,000. The latest estimate, for 1897, gives the population of Melbourne and suburbs at 458,610 (as against Sydney's 417,250) . During the boom period of a few years ago it rose to 470,000. ”

“ Lord Melbourne will easily understand what a change it is, after these four years when she had the happiness of having Lord Melbourne always about her. But it will not be so long till we meet again. Happier and brighter times will come again. We anxiously hope Lord Melbourne is well, and got up well and safe. The Queen trusts he will take care of his valuable health, now more than ever. ”

“ Spoke of Irish and Italian servants, who Lord Melbourne says are very uncertain and not to be trusted. I asked Lord Melbourne if he had good servants; he said, “Not very”; he added, “I’m told that great drunkenness prevails in my house,” but that he never saw it, and as long as that was the case, he could not much complain; he, of course, can’t look after them. The man he always takes about with him, when he comes here, he says is a very steady, exact man, and always ready; he has risen from being a steward’s boy in his house. ”

“ Lord Melbourne is going there again to-morrow to stay until Monday. The place is beautiful; it is not like Claremont, but it is quite of the same character, and always puts Lord Melbourne in mind of it. The Duchess has many merits, but amongst them is the not small one of having one of the best cooks in England.
Footnote 104: Madame de Lieven wrote to Aberdeen, 12th September 1841: "Ne jugez pas cet Ambassadeur par son exterieur; il personnifie un peu les Marquis de Molière.... Passez-lui ses cheveux poudrés, son air galant et papillon auprès des femmes. He cannot help it." ”

“ Is there a father in the Empire who would endure such a person as Lord Melbourne to be perpetually by the side of a young girl? Lord Melbourne may [245] smile, because he had cast aside manly generosity, but we tell him that if loyalty is becoming dull, and sneers are taking the place of blessings; if, where the land would honour, it begins to censure, and where it would pay homage it passes an unwelcome jest ”

“ The existence of Lord Melbourne’s second Ministry was precarious. It was said that Lord Melbourne had against him the King, the Church, the Bar, the Agricultural and Monied interest, and a large minority in the House of Commons; whereas he only had in his favour a small majority in the House of Commons, the manufacturing towns, and a portion of the rabble. This was the Tory analysis of the political situation in 1835. “Threatened men and threatened Ministries enjoy a long life,” and Lord Melbourne’s was no exception. ”

“ They also learned that the city took its name in honor of Lord Melbourne, who was then Premier of Great Britain. Frank suggested that perhaps Shakespeare had Melbourne in mind as the "bourne whence no traveller returns," since a great many deaths occurred there during the gold rush. Fred reproved his cousin for using this antiquated "chestnut," and the topic was indefinitely postponed.
PUBLIC LIBRARY, MELBOURNE.
The first thing to attract the attention of the youths was the width of the streets (ninety-nine feet, or a chain and a half) in contrast with the narrow streets of Sydney. ”

“ Spoke of the fighting there, and that the Masters should never allow it to go on long. “I always yielded directly,” he said, “if I found the boy too much for me; after the first round if I found I could not lick the fellow, I gave it up, and said, ‘Come, this won’t do, I’ll go away, it’s no use standing to be knocked to pieces.’” All this and a great deal more Lord Melbourne told us in the funniest, most delightful way possible; he is so amusing about himself, and so clever and sensible about education. ”

“ How time flies when pleasantly spent!! Lord Melbourne also was much better for this quiet life and liked it too. He is a great friend of Lehzen’s which makes me more fond of him still. I always saw Lord Melbourne in my little sitting-room; I being seated on a sofa, and he in an armchair near or close opposite me; the other ministers and visitors I saw in another little room just the same 232size as this one, where Lehzen always sits; it is close to the other, one little room only being between the two....
Buckingham Palace, Saturday, 4th November.—Got up at 1⁄2 p. 7. ”

“ Lord Grey, wearied with political life, resigned the premiership, and Lord Melbourne succeeded him,--a statesman who cared next to nothing for reform; not an incapable man, but lazy, genial, and easy, whose watchword was, "Can't you let it alone?" But he did not long retain office, the king being dissatisfied with his ministers; and Sir Robert Peel, being then at Rome, was sent for to head the new administration in July, 1834. It may be here remarked that Mr. Gladstone first took office under this government. Parliament, of course, was dissolved, and a new election took place. ”

“ The Earl of Liverpool to Baron Stockmar. 5th July 1837.
Went about half-past ten o'clock to Apsley House, and told the Duke of Wellington the whole of my communication with the Queen, Duchess of Kent, and Sir John Conroy on 15th June, also of my communication subsequently with Lord Melbourne, all of which he very much approved of. He said that he was quite sure that the Queen would find Lord Melbourne an honourable man, and one in whom Her Majesty might put confidence ”

“ The senses of the musing spectator are filled to saturation with the sights and sounds proper to the largest, the most highly civilised, the most prosperous city in the world, for the years of its existence. Stranger than fiction does it not seem, that in the month of April, in the year of grace 1840, we should have migrated en famille from Sydney to assist in the colonisation of Port Phillip, in the founding of this city of Melbourne? ”

“ An extensive mud swamp and tea-tree scrub seem to surround you, till the fog, in which it is constantly enveloped during the early part of the day, has cleared away, and you see the very beautiful city of Melbourne, not two miles distant, built on a gentle acclivity, well relieved by the wooded backgrounds stretched out before you. You can trace the meanderings of the Yarra-yarra as it winds through the scrub, and partly encircles the city in a tortuous course, making six miles, which by railway is barely two. ”

“ Let us sum up. “The Anglo-Saxon race, the Norman blood:” a colony made of this: a city into whose hands wealth and its power is suddenly phenomenally cast: a general sense of movement, of progress, of conscious power. This, I say, is Melbourne—Melbourne with its fine public buildings and tendency towards banality, with its hideous houses and tendency towards anarchy. And Melbourne is, after all, the Melbournians. Alas, then, how will this city and its civilization stand the test of a really fine city and fine civilization? how far will they answer the requirements of such a civilization? ”

“ These men were the makers of Victoria, the fathers of the proud and populous city which lay widespread about us. There is no need to be eloquent about Melbourne. Too many people have sung its praises already. But it is one of the cities of the world; it has a population of over half a million; it has its churches, its chapels, its synagogues, its theatres, its hotels; it is as well furnished in most respects as any other city of its size; and these grey men yet staunch in body, bronzed and bright-eyed, were among the beginners of it. ”

“ But this appearance and mannerism of the Queen city—it clings to the name, though the boom era which gave the name a meaning has departed—must be lived through, and lived down. Presently the sun will shine again. Presently the holiday will be over; and the people who have been abroad in the suburbs, or cultivating their garden patches, or hiding themselves in their own houses, will be once more visible, and the pavement will once more echo to the sound of feet. By a seeming miracle the streets have become almost full. Melbourne has become an intelligible place to live in. ”

“ That is what Melbourne is. It is a city, a city where money is made, and big business goes on. It is to Melbourne and to Collins Street that you must come if you are to talk to the men who are planning and financing and ordering the Australia of the future.
There is a Melbourne of another kind, just as there are many Londons. There is Melbourne of the University, nestling in its gardens and secure in the strongest foundation a University can have, the solid research of its professors and teachers. ”

“ Still, when I recollect that I have been here for more than eight years; and that even now less than ten times that number of years has actually passed since the natives ceded to Batman, for knives, and beads, and looking-glasses, the present site of Melbourne, and much of the surrounding country, I am filled with the most abject shame at my own achievements and unlimited admiration for these people, so often dismissed by the ignorant at home and abroad as only “colonials,” who have built up such a town as Melbourne and such a country as Victoria is to-day. ”

“ In rapidity and at the same time solidity, of growth there is no city of modern days, I believe, to be placed beside Melbourne. Fifty years ago it did not exist. Now with the suburbs the population is 300,000, and in such a liberal manner have the streets and roads been laid out, that on the present area there is at least room for a million. Since 1842 Melbourne has had municipal institutions. In 1851, Victoria was separated from New South Wales, with Melbourne for the seat of government. Such rapid increase has been equalled only in America, but there is nothing American about Melbourne. ”

“ It is more settled, more homogeneous,131 more cosmopolitan than elsewhere in Australia, so that here, if anywhere, one loses the sense of a new country, which is at the same time part of its charm. The women and girls in Melbourne are also prettier, and more prettily dressed than elsewhere, and it makes a cult of charming-looking, elderly, white-haired matrons, wearing the dignity of their years becomingly. Not that pretty women and girls are not to be found everywhere, but Melbourne has a colder, more bracing climate, and is more in touch with the outside world. ”

“ One thing struck me especially—the very few old or grey-haired people one meets with in the streets of Melbourne. They are mostly young people; and there are comparatively few who have got beyond the middle stage of life. And no wonder. For how young a city Melbourne is! Forty years since there was not a house in the place.
Where the Melbourne University now stands, a few miserable Australian blacks would meet and hold a corroboree; but, except it might be a refugee bush-ranger from Sydney, there was not a white man in all Victoria. ”

“ Large and massive stores of dark-blue stone arrest the gaze in every direction; they form a conspicuous part in a view of the city, and suggest, far more tellingly than words, the weight and importance of the great commercial interest of Victoria. These continue to be built, demonstrating the hope entertained, that Melbourne will maintain her position as the commercial metropolis of the south. Melbourne is tolerably supplied with places of public amusement, adapted for the tastes of all classes. The Theatre Royal, in Bourke-street, can vie in extent and interior arrangement with any in London. ”