PREFACE

Extract

It is generally recognized that Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, fourth Earl of Carnarvon, figured prominently in Conservative politics during four decades of the second half of the nineteenth century. It is remarkable, therefore, that it is more than eighty years since the only biographical work on him, Sir Arthur Hardinge's The Life of Lord Carnarvon, was published. As one historian has recently remarked, ‘[This work] is all we have’.¹ The three-volume set well summarizes Carnarvon's achievements but suffers from a number of defects. After his death, his second wife, Elsie, commissioned the work, determined (as she wrote in the Preface) to ‘endeavour faithfully to portray the character, thoughts, words and deeds of one who amidst the shifting sense of politics, held honour to be the soul of public and private life; it seeks whilst presenting the facts to hurt no feelings’.² As the self-appointed guardian of her husband's reputation, she was concerned to show him in the best possible light. Carnarvon's contemporaries, whose writings contained references to his political career, often received detailed letters from the Countess, pointing out factual errors and unwelcome criticism and demanding changes in the text. The correspondence with Sir Charles Gavan Duffy after the publication of R. Barry O'Brien's book on Parnell,³ to which the former had contributed a chapter on Carnarvon's secret meeting with Parnell in August 1885, is a good example. Duffy's criticism of Carnarvon's attitude towards the Irish question was strongly challenged by Lady Carnarvon.⁴ She was also ‘less than helpful’ in allowing Gwendolen Cecil access to her father's correspondence with Carnarvon when she was writing Salisbury's biography.⁵