Lord Minto by John Buchan

AFTER his six strenuous Canadian years Minto hoped for a rest at home, and longed especially for that Border country life which lay always nearest to his heart. But a retiring Governor-General is not readily permitted to sink into the ease of a private citizen; he became the quarry of a thousand organizations in quest of a president or an apologist; and even when he escaped to Minto he found leisure hard to come by. He was busy with improvements on his estate, including the installation of electric light and the building of a new wing, and these, with a little hunting and a number of visits, filled his time in the winter and spring of 1904-5. In May he went to Rome, at the request of the Board of Agriculture, as one of the British delegates to the International Agricultural Congress, and after a brief stay returned in July to politics and dinners in London, including a banquet to his old tutor, Dr. Warre, on his retirement from the headmastership of Eton. By the 12th of August he was back at Minto, filling his days, like Sir Walter Scott, with the overseeing of his improvements. The place was in the hands of workmen, and he and his wife were installed in the factor's little house at Cleughhead.

Absorbed in domestic plans, and already half drawn into the machine of British affairs, Minto had almost forgotten the possibility of the Indian viceroyalty which had been mooted a year ago before he left Canada. There seemed to be many candidates, and it had been his fashion to wait in these matters upon the hand of Providence. Therefore it was with a real surprise that, on the morning of 18th August, as he was walking down to Minto before breakfast, he opened a letter from Mr. St. John Brodrick, which told him that Lord Curzon had resigned and that he was nominated as his successor. In the garden afterwards, when the hot August sun was beginning to drive the mist from the hills, he told his wife. "The greatest appointment I have ever hoped for," he wrote in his journal, "and still what a pang to leave the dear old place again -- and all the difficulties about the children. Mary took it so well. I know she feels the same as I do, and it is a recognition of all her good work quite as much as of anything I have ever done. But it is a very high trial."