His afternoons when in town and during the season are, of course,
given up pretty exclusively to public business and the House of
Commons, which he usually reaches about four o'clock. He goes by a
side door straight to his private room, where he receives his
colleagues, and hears of endless questions and motions, which fall
like leaves in Vallambrosa around the head of a prime minister.
Probably steps will be taken to remove much of this irksome and
somewhat petty burden from the shoulders of the aged minister. But
leader Mr. Gladstone must and will be at eighty-three, quite as fully
as he was at sixty. Indeed, the complaint of him always has been that
he does too much, both for his own health and the smooth manipulation
of the great machine which, as was once remarked, creaks and moves
rather lumberingly under his masterful but over-minute guidance.
During the last two or three years it has been customary for the Whigs
to so arrange that Mr. Gladstone speaks early in the evening. He is
not always able to do this while the Home Rule Bill is under
discussion, but I do not think he will ever again find it necessary to
follow the entire course of a Parliamentary debate. He never needed to
do as much listening from the Treasury Bench as he was wont to do in
his first and second ministries. I do not think that any prime
minister ever spent half as much time in the House of Commons as did
Mr. Gladstone; certainly no one ever made one-tenth part as many
speeches. Indeed, it requires all Mrs. Gladstone's vigilance to avert
the physical strain consequent upon overwork. With this purpose she
invariably watches him in the House of Commons, from a corner seat in
the right hand of the Ladies' Gallery which is always reserved for
her, and which I have never known her to miss occupying on any
occasion of the slightest importance.