Dinner with Mr. Gladstone is the stately ceremonial meal which it has
become to the upper and upper-middle class Englishman. Mr. Gladstone
invariably dresses for it, wearing the high crest collar which Harry
Furniss has immortalized, and a cutaway coat which strikes one as of a
slightly old-fashioned pattern. His digestion never fails him, and he
eats and drinks with the healthy appetite of a man of thirty. A glass
of champagne is agreeable to him, and if he does not take his glass or
two of port at dinner, he makes it up by two or three glasses of
claret, which he considers an equivalent. Oysters he never could
endure, but, like Schopenhauer and Goethe and many another great man,
he is a consistently hearty and unfastidious eater. He talks much in
an animated monologue, though the common complaint that he monopolizes
the conversation is not a just one. You cannot easily turn Mr.
Gladstone into a train of ideas which does not interest him, but he is
a courteous and even eager listener; and if the subject is of general
interest, he does not bear in it any more than the commanding part
which the rest of the company invariably allows him. His speaking
voice is a little gruffer and less musical than his oratorical notes,
which, in spite of the invading hoarseness, still at times ring out
with their old clearness. As a rule he does not talk on politics. On
ecclesiastical matters he is a never wearied disputant. Poetry has
also a singular charm for him, and no modern topic has interested him
more keenly than the discussion as to Tennyson's successor to the
laureateship. I remember that at a small dinner at which I recently
met him, the conversation ran almost entirely on the two subjects of
old English hymns and young English poets. His favorite religious poet
is, I should say, Cardinal Newman, and his favorite hymn, Toplady's
"Rock of Ages," of which his Latin rendering is to my mind far
stronger and purer than the original English. When he is in town, he
dines out almost every day, though, as I have said, he eschews formal
and mixed gatherings, and affects the small and early dinner party at
which he can meet an old friend or two, and see a young face which he
may be interested in seeing. One habit of his is quite unvarying. He
likes to walk home, and to walk home alone. He declines escort, and
slips away for his quiet stroll under the stars, or even through the
fog and mist on a London winter's night. Midnight usually brings his
busy, happy day to a close. Sleeplessness never has and never does
trouble him, and at eighty-three his nights are as dreamless and
untroubled as those of a boy of ten.