Lord Wriothesley Russell, the vacant Bishopric
of Oxford. Much to the credit of my clergyman-uncle, he declined
the Bishopric, saying that he had neither the eloquence nor the
administrative ability necessary for so high an office in the
Church, and that he preferred to remain a plain country parson in
his little parish, of which, at the time of his death, he had been
Rector for fifty-six years. All of which only goes to show what
absurdly erroneous ideas a child, anxious to learn, may pick up
from listening to the conversation of his elders, even when one of
those elders happened to be Mr. Disraeli himself.
Another ex-Prime Minister who was often at our house was the
fourth Earl of Aberdeen, who had held office many times, and had
been Prime Minister during the Crimean War. He must have been a
very old man then, for he was born in 1784. I have no very
distinct recollection of him. Oddly enough, Lord Aberdeen was both
my great-uncle and my step-grandfather, for his first wife had
been my grandfather's sister, and after her death, he married my
grandfather's widow, his two wives thus being sisters-in-law.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53