R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

Lord Houghton and his Circle 11character was, in fact, unbounded. He enjoyed fromtime to time writing critical notes to his friend on someissue of policy, and he always received at once reasonedreplies, with the detailed arguments needed in support ofthe particular case. My father's visits to Ha warden alwaysgave him keen pleasure, which, I believe, his hosts entirelyshared.Such, in brief outline, is the history of my father'sactivities in public life. Disappointing to himself, as Ivery well know, but always inspired by a deep humanity,and not altogether unfruitful in themselves.Though he would have enjoyed success in political lifemore than anything else, yet it was in the world of lettersthat he was most thoroughly at home, and his real intimacywas rather with writers and thinkers than withstatesmen who might be neither. Certainly the mostremarkable of these friendships was that with Carlyle.It was an attraction of opposites, for on the surface twomen more utterly unlike could hardly have been found.It was Charles Buller who brought them together, in1836, when the French Revolution was being written. Alittle later Carlyle paid several visits to Fryston, and afrequent though irregular correspondence passed betweenthe two. They often argued, but, in the well-known phrasewhich Carlyle used in another connection, 'except inopinion not disagreeing'; and in the words of Venableswritten after my father's death: ' His cheerful paradoxesoften dissipated the moral indignation of Carlyle'. Bothmust have met frequently at The Grange, and, as theMilnes Notebooks show, he appreciated the charm andwit of Lady Ashburton as highly as did the philosopherhimself, though, with his wider experience of salons, theymay not have seemed to him so absolutely unique as theydid to his friend. Altogether his relation with the Carlylesstood on a footing of its own.