Lord John Russell, born in 1792, was the third son of John, sixth Duke of Bedford.  He was only nine years old when he lost his mother, whom he remembered to the end of his life with tender affection.  He always spoke gratefully of the invariable kindness and affection of his father, who married again in 1803, and of his stepmother, but he felt that the shyness and reserve which often caused him to be misunderstood and thought cold were largely due to the loss of his mother in his childhood.  He was educated at Westminster, but he was not robust enough to stand a rough life, and it was decidedly rough.  His education was continued at Woburn under a tutor.  He was a book-loving boy, and the earliest exercise of his powers was in verses, prologues, and plays.  Going to the play was one of the chief enjoyments of his childhood, and he never lost his liking for the drama.  Travelling was also a great delight to him, either by coach in England or in foreign countries, and this enjoyment, with a wonderfully keen observation of all that he saw of different places and peoples, lasted to old age.

In 1835 Lord John married Lady Ribblesdale, widow of the second Lord Ribblesdale.

She had by her first husband four children; one son and three daughters. [21] After her marriage with Lord John Russell she had two daughters, Georgiana Adelaide, born in 1836, and Victoria, born in 1838.  The marriage had been a most happy one, and her death on November 1, 1838, was a severe blow to Lord John.

[21] Lord Ribblesdale, Adelaide Lister (Mrs. Drummond), Isabel Lister (Mrs. Warburton), Elizabeth Lister (Lady Melvill).

A slight sketch of the more public side of his career will be enough here.  A visit to Fox in June, 1806, was perhaps the first experience which turned his interests and ambitions towards politics.  All his life he looked up to the memory of Fox.  There was in Fox an element which made him more akin to the Liberals, who succeeded him, than to the old Whig party.  Lord John, as different from Fox in temperament as a man could be, was the inheritor of the spirit which leavened the old Whig tradition.  In Lord John the sentiments of Fox took on a more deliberate air.  He was a more intellectual man than his lavish, emotional, imposing forbear; and if it is remembered that he had, in addition, the diffidence of a sensitive man, these facts go far to explain an apparent contradiction in his character which puzzled contemporaries.  To the observer at a distance there seemed to be two John Russells:  the man who appeared to stand off coldly from his colleagues and backers (he was certainly as incapable as the younger Pitt of throwing round him those heartening glances of good-fellowship which made the followers of Fox feel like a band of brothers); and again, the man who, to the rapture of adherents, could lift debate at moments to a level where passionate principles swept all hesitation away.  It was surprising to find, in one who commonly wore the air of picking his steps with care, the dash and anger of the fighter.  Bulwer Lytton has described such moments in “The New Timon”—­