Collections and Recollections by George William Erskine Russell
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There still lives, in full possession of all her faculties, a venerable lady who can say that her husband was born at Boston when America was a British dependency. This is the widow of Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, who was born in 1772, and helped to defeat Mr. Gladstone's Paper Bill in the House of Lords on his eighty-eighth birthday. He died in 1862.[1] A conspicuous figure in my early recollections is Sir Henry Holland, M.D., father of the present Lord Knutsford. He was born in 1788, and died in 1873. The stories of his superhuman vigour and activity would fill a volume. In 1863 Bishop Wilberforce wrote to a friend abroad: "Sir Henry Holland, who got back safe from all his American rambles, has been taken by Palmerston through the river at Broadlands, and lies very ill." However, he completely threw off the effects of this mischance, and survived his aquaceous host for some eight years. I well remember his telling me in 1868 that his first famous patient was the mysterious "Pamela," who became the wife of the Irish patriot, Lord Edward FitzGerald. Every one who went about in London in the 'seventies will remember the dyed locks and crimson velvet waistcoat of William, fifth Earl Bathurst, who was born in 1791 and died in 1878. He told me that he was at a private school at Sunbury-on-Thames with William and John Russell, the latter of whom became the author of the Reform Bill and Prime Minister. At this delightful seminary, the peers' sons, including my informant, who was then the Hon. William Bathurst, had a bench to themselves. William and John Russell were not peers' sons, as their father had not then succeeded to the Dukedom of Bedford. In 1802 he succeeded, on the sudden death of his elder brother, and became sixth Duke of Bedford; and his sons, becoming _Lord_ William and _Lord_ John, were duly promoted to |
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