Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/38

 '4 1 6 THE ANCESTOR who was of far too ' amiable ' a nature to have thought, much less to have written, such a philippic upon any man, especially upon men of worth, as were Samuel Johnson and his com- panion ; it is Mrs. Harris, the wife of ' Hermes,' who sends to her only son, then in Berlin, this very unattractive, nay, almost repellent, picture of this strange prodigy and his shadow. Mrs. Harris, wife of James Harris and mother of another James Harris, destined to be the first Lord Malmesbury, was certainly a woman of great strength of character, and her let- ters, which are very numerous, indicate a sequence of thought and power of logical expression — qualities rather alien to the feminine nature. She had been Elizabeth Clarke, only daughter and eventually sole heir of John Clarke of Sandford, in the county of Somerset, M.P. for Bridgwater. Five children were born to her, of whom three alone lived to grow up — one son, James, Lord Malmesbury, and two daughters, Catherine Gertrude, wife of the Honourable Frederick Robinson, a son of Thomas, first Lord Grantham, and Louisa Margaret, who died unmarried. Mrs. Harris threw herself into the social and political life of her husband with an energy which well deserves commenda- tion, and it is to her that thanks are due for many of by far the most amusing stories of people and things as told in the Harris Papers. These anecdotes are in most instances racy, spirited and full of humour ; though at times, be it said, they are unquestion- ably ' risky ' in tone — a fault always pardonable when accom- panied by genuine wit. The first Lord Malmesbury was in every respect an aifec- tionate and dutiful son to both his parents, but to his father he was bound by ties of a very special and life-long devotion.-^ ' To my father's precepts and example,' he states in a letter written in the year 1800, 'I owe every good quality I have. To his reputation, to his character, I attribute my more than common success in life. It was these that introduced me with peculiar advantage into the world ; it was as his son that I first obtained friends and patrons.' And there is a ring of deep mournfulness in the latter part of the same letter when he goes on to say — ^ Diaries and Correspondence of J antes Harris, Jirst Earl of Malmesbury (Bentley), vol. i. p. vii.