And it does not seem to me that the modification of her
opinions in that direction, which was doubtless largely operated by
conversation with the great Conservative statesman and his _alter
ego_, the Princess, needs to be in any degree attributed to the
"graciousness" of people in high position either male or female. Is
it not very intelligible and very likely that such opinions, so set
forth, as she from day to day heard them, should have honestly and
legitimately influenced her own?
But I think that I should be speaking, if perhaps presumptuously, yet
truly, if I were to add that there was also one very far from great
personage, whose influence in the same direction was greater than even
that of Prince Metternich or of any other great folks whatever; and
that was the son in daily and almost hourly communion and conversation
with whom she lived. I also had begun life as a "Liberal," and was
such in the days when Mr. Gladstone was a high Tory. But my mind had
long been travelling in an inverse direction to his. And far too large
a number of my contemporaries distinguished and undistinguished have
been moving in the same direction for it to be at all necessary to
say that most assuredly my slowly maturing convictions were neither
generated nor fostered by any "graciousness" or other influence of
dukes or duchesses or great people of any sort.
That my mother's political ideas were in no degree "an affair of the
heart," I will not say, and by no means regret not being able to say.
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