616 



The Book of the Month. 



OUR LAST GREAT AMBASSADOR. 

 THE MEMOIRS AND LETTERS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER, G.C.B.* 



THE late Lord Derby once said to me that Sir 

 Robert Morier, then Her Majesty's Ambas- 

 sador at St. Petersburg, carried more brains 

 in his head than all our other Ambassadors put 

 together. "But," he added, "he has such a fatal gift 

 of writing that he is constantly sending lengthy 

 despatches upon all kinds of subjects which no one 

 ever has time to read." 



It was not only to the Foreign Office that Sir 

 Robert Morier poured 

 out an unending flood 

 of written matter. He 

 once read to me a pri- 

 vate letter which he was 

 sending to Queen Vic- 

 toria, describing my 

 interview with the Em- 

 peror Alexander HI , 

 which would have gone 

 far to fill a Times 

 column. He constantly 

 wrote to the Queen, 

 and if these epistles 

 ever see the light they 

 will form an invaluable 

 contribution to the inner 

 history of the last half of 

 the nineteenth century. 

 Besides his correspond- 

 ence with the Queen 

 and Foreign Office, Sir 

 Robert Morier wrote 

 letters, long and vigorous 

 letters, to many corre- 

 sjiondents, the style and 

 quality of which may he 

 seen in the two volumes 

 edited by his daughter, 

 which, however, do not 

 bring the story further 

 down than 1876. 



L— SOME PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 



I never met Sir Robert till the spring of 1888, 

 when I paid my first visit to St. Petersburg. 

 During the six weeks I spent in the Russian capital 

 I enjoyed the rare privilege of constant and con- 

 fidential intercourse with the Ambassador. Night 

 after night I dined at the limbassy and sat uj) 

 with my host till the early dawn, listening to his 

 eager and eloquent reminiscences of the stirring 



* "Memoirs and Letters of the Right Hon. .Sir l<oI)crt 

 Morier, G.C.B., from 1826 to 1876." Edited by his Daughter, 

 Mrs. Rosslyn Wemyss. Two volumes. (Arnold. 32.S. net.) 



rh,^t,^t:,.iphh) 



scenes in European history in which he had played 

 no inconsiderable part. How often since then have 

 I regretted that I had no stenographer at the hotel to 

 whom I could have dictated the substance of these 

 interesting monologues I " You make me renew my 

 youth," he exclaimed on one occasion. " Ta'.iving 

 over these things I feel as if I lived again in the 

 ])ast." He ransacked his archives for material to 

 refresh his memory, which needed litrie refreshing, 



and I ^at entranced 

 hour after hour listening 

 to his graphic and fiery 

 delineations of the great 

 men and pygmies with 

 whom he had to do 

 from his youth up. 



IF HE HAD BEEN AN 

 EDITOR ! 



On one occasion 

 when I had pleased him 

 by what he thought was 

 an adroit and discreet 

 handling of a delicate 

 diplomatic difficulty, he 

 burst out : " W'e ought 

 to have changed places \ 

 It is you who ought to 

 have been an ambassa- 

 dor and I who ought to 

 have been a journalist. 

 And it was the merest 

 chance in the world," he 

 went on to say, " that 

 I did not become a 

 journalist. In the early 

 days when I was chafing 

 at the delay in obtain- 

 ing a foothold in the 

 Diplomjitic Service I 

 was offered an appointment on the Morning Post, 

 to go round the Empire as a kind of special com- 

 missioner to see things and report. I had made 

 up my mind to accept it when, at the eleventh 

 hour, I was offered a diplomatic appointment. 

 I abandoned my journalistic aspirations, and here I 

 am ! But I have often regretted it." And no 

 wonder, for Sir Robert Morier was journalist born. 

 No man in affairs whom I have ever met appre- 

 ciated so fully the immense latent potentialities of 

 the newspaper, especially of the Times ; and no man, 

 I must frankly admit, blasphemed more forcibly con- 

 cerning the infamous way in which journalists in 

 general, and the Times in particular, fell below the 



The late Sir Robert Morier. 



