ἀγωνίζεται γὰρ ὥσπερ ἀθλητὴς κατὰ τὸν βίον, ὅταν δὲ διαγωνίσηται,
τότε τυγχάνει τῶν προσηκόντων.—PLUTARCH, _Moralia_, c. 18.
He strives like an athlete all his life long, and then when he
comes to the end of his striving, he has what is meet.
ἐπάμεροι: τί δέ τις; τί δ᾽ οὔ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρ
ἄνθρωπος. ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν αἴγλα διόσδοτος ἔλθῃ,
λαμπρὸν φέγγος ἔπεστιν ἀνδρῶν καὶ μείλικος αἰών.
—PINDAR, _Pyth._ viii. 135.
Things of a day! What is a man? What, when he is not? A dream of
shadow is mankind. Yet when there comes down glory imparted from
God, radiant light shines among men and genial days.
θανεῖν δ᾽ οἷσιν ἀνάγκα, τί κέ τις ἀνώνυμον γῆρας ὲν σκότῳ
καθήμενος ἔψοι μάταν;—_Ol._ i. 131.
Die since we must, wherefore should a man sit idle and nurse in
the gloom days of long life without aim, without name?
I
The words from “antique books” that I have just translated and
transcribed, were written out by Mr. Gladstone inside the cover of the
little diary for 1882-3. To what the old world had to say, he added
Dante’s majestic commonplace: “You were not to live like brutes, but to
pursue virtue and knowledge.”(54) These meditations on the human lot, on
the mingling of our great hopes with the implacable realities, made the
vital air in which all through his life he drew deep breath. Adjusted to
his ever vivid religious creed, amid all the turbid business of the
worldly elements, they were the sedative and the restorer. Yet here and
always the last word was Effort. The moods that in less strenuous natures
ended in melancholy, philosophic or poetic, to him were fresh incentives
to redeem the time.
The middle of December 1882 marked his political jubilee. It was now half
a century since he had entered public life, and the youthful graduate from
Oxford had grown to be the foremost man in his country. Yet these fifty
courses of the sun and all the pageant of the world had in some ways made
but little difference in him. In some ways, it seemed as if time had
rolled over him in vain. He had learned many lessons. He had changed his
party, his horizons were far wider, new social truths had made their way
into his impressionable mind, he recognised new social forces. His aims
for the church, that he loved as ardently as he gloried in a powerful and
beneficent state, had undergone a revolution. Since 1866 he had come into
contact with democracy at close quarters; the Bulgarian campaign and
Midlothian lighting up his early faith in liberty, had inflamed him with
new feeling for the voice of the people. As much as in the early time when
he had prayed to be allowed to go into orders, he was moved by a
dominating sense of the common claims and interests of mankind. ’The
contagion of the world’s slow stain’ had not infected him; the lustre and
long continuity of his public performances still left all his innermost
ideals constant and undimmed.
His fifty years of public life had wrought his early habits of severe
toil, method, exactness, concentration, into cast-iron. Whether they had
sharpened what is called knowledge of the world, or taught him insight
into men and skill in discrimination among men, it is hard to say. He
always talked as if he found the world pretty much what he had expected.
Man, he used often to say, is the least comprehensible of creatures, and
of men the most incomprehensible are the politicians. Yet nobody was less
of the cynic. As for Weltschmerz, world-weariness, ennui, tedium (M34)
vitæ—that enervating family were no acquaintances of his, now nor at any
time. None of the vicissitudes of long experience ever tempted him either
into the shallow satire on life that is so often the solace of the little
and the weak; or on the other hand into the _saeva indignatio_, the sombre
brooding reprobation, that has haunted some strong souls from Tacitus and
Dante to Pascal, Butler, Swift, Turgot. We may, indeed, be sure that
neither of these two moods can ever hold a place in the breast of a
commanding orator.
II
I have spoken of his new feeling for democracy. At the point of time at
which we have arrived, it was heartily reciprocated. The many difficulties
in the course of public affairs that confronted parliament and the nation
for two years or more after Mr. Gladstone’s second accession to power, did
little to weaken either his personal popularity or his hold upon the
confidence of the constituencies. For many years he and Mr. Disraeli had
stood out above the level of their adherents; they were the centre of
every political storm. Disraeli was gone (April 19, 1881), commemorated by
Mr. Gladstone in a parliamentary tribute that cost him much searching of
heart beforehand, and was a masterpiece of grace and good feeling. Mr.
Gladstone stood alone, concentrating upon himself by his personal
ascendency and public history the bitter antagonism of his opponents, only
matched by the enthusiasm and devotion of his followers. The rage of
faction had seldom been more unbridled. The Irish and the young fourth
party were rivals in malicious vituperation; of the two, the Irish on the
whole observed the better manners. Once Mr. Gladstone was wounded to the
quick, as letters show, when a member of the fourth party denounced as “a
government of infamy” the ministry with whose head he had long been on
terms of more than friendship alike as host and guest. He could not fell
his trees, he could not read the lessons in Hawarden church, without
finding these innocent habits turned into material for platform mockery.
“In the eyes of the opposition, as indeed of the country,” said a great
print that was never much his friend, “he is the government and he is the
liberal party,” and the writer went on to scold Lord Salisbury for wasting
his time in the concoction of angry epigrams and pungent phrases that were
neither new nor instructive.(55) They pierced no joint in the mail of the
warrior at whom they were levelled. The nation at large knew nothing of
difficulties at Windsor, nothing of awkward passages in the cabinet,
nothing of the trying egotisms of gentlemen out of the cabinet who
insisted that they ought to be in. Nor would such things have made any
difference except in his favour, if the public had known all about them.
The Duke of Argyll and Lord Lansdowne had left him; his Irish policy had
cost him his Irish secretary, and his Egyptian policy had cost him Mr.
Bright. They had got into a war, they had been baffled in legislation,
they had to raise the most unpopular of taxes, there had been the
frightful tragedy in Ireland. Yet all seemed to have been completely
overcome in the public mind by the power of Mr. Gladstone in uniting his
friends and frustrating his foes, and the more bitterly he was hated by
society, the more warmly attached were the mass of the people. Anybody who
had foreseen all this would have concluded that the government must be in
extremity, but he went to the Guildhall on the 9th of November 1882, and
had the best possible reception on that famous stage. One tory newspaper
felt bound to admit that Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues had
rehabilitated themselves in the public judgment with astounding rapidity,
and were now almost as strong in popular and parliamentary support as when
they first took office.(56) Another tory print declared Mr. Gladstone to
be stronger, more popular, more despotic, than at any time since the
policy to carry out which he was placed in office was disclosed.(57) The
session of 1882 had only been exceeded in duration by two sessions for
fifty years.
The reader has had pictures enough from friendly hands, so here is one
from a persistent foe, one of the most brilliant journalists of that time,
who listened to him from (M35) the gallery for years. The words are from
an imaginary dialogue, and are put into the mouth of a well-known whig in
parliament:—
Sir, I can only tell you that, profoundly as I distrusted him, and
lightly as on the whole I valued the external qualities of his
eloquence, I have never listened to him even for a few minutes
without ceasing to marvel at his influence over men. That
white-hot face, stern as a Covenanter’s yet mobile as a
comedian’s; those restless, flashing eyes; that wondrous voice,
whose richness its northern burr enriched as the tang of the wood
brings out the mellowness of a rare old wine; the masterly cadence
of his elocution; the vivid energy of his attitudes; the fine
animation of his gestures;—sir, when I am assailed through eye and
ear by this compacted phalanx of assailants, what wonder that the
stormed outposts of the senses should spread the contagion of
their own surrender through the main encampment of the mind, and
that against my judgment, in contempt of my conscience, nay, in
defiance of my very will, I should exclaim, “This is indeed the
voice of truth and wisdom. This man is honest and sagacious beyond
his fellows. He must be believed, he must be obeyed!”(58)
On the day of his political jubilee (Dec. 13), the event was celebrated in
many parts of the country, and he received congratulatory telegrams from
all parts of the world; for it was not only two hundred and forty liberal
associations who sent him joyful addresses. The Roumelians poured out
aloud their gratitude to him for the interest he constantly manifested in
their cause, and for his powerful and persistent efforts for their
emancipation. From Athens came the news that they had subscribed for the
erection of his statue, and from the Greeks also came a splendid casket.
In his letter of thanks,(59) after remonstrating against its too great
material value, he said:—
I know not well how to accept it, yet I am still less able to
decline it, when I read the touching lines of the accompanying
address, in itself an ample token, in which you have so closely
associated my name with the history and destinies of your country.
I am not vain enough to think that I have deserved any of the
numerous acknowledgments which I have received, especially from
Greeks, on completing half a century of parliamentary life. Your
over-estimate of my deeds ought rather to humble than to inflate
me. But to have laboured within the measure of justice for the
Greece of the future, is one of my happiest political
recollections, and to have been trained in a partial knowledge of
the Greece of the past has largely contributed to whatever slender
faculties I possess for serving my own country or my kind. I
earnestly thank you for your indulgent judgment and for your too
costly gifts, and I have the honour to remain, etc.
What was deeper to him than statues or caskets was found in letters from
comparative newcomers into the political arena thanking him not only for
his long roll of public service, but much more for the example and
encouragement that his life gave to younger men endeavouring to do
something for the public good. To one of these he wrote (Dec. 15):—
I thank you most sincerely for your kind and friendly letter. As
regards the prospective part of it, I can assure you that I should
be slow to plead the mere title to retirement which long labour is
supposed to earn. But I have always watched, and worked according
to what I felt to be the measure of my own mental force. A monitor
from within tells me that though I may still be equal to some
portions of my duties, or as little unequal as heretofore, there
are others which I cannot face. I fear therefore I must keep in
view an issue which cannot be evaded.
III
As it happened, this volume of testimony to the affection, gratitude, and
admiration thus ready to go out to him from so many quarters coincided in
point of time with one or two extreme vexations in the conduct of his
daily business as head of the government. Some of them were aggravated by
the loss of a man whom he regarded as one of his two or three most
important friends. In September 1882 the Dean of Windsor died, and in his
death Mr. Gladstone (M36) suffered a heavy blow. To the end he always
spoke of Dr. Wellesley’s friendship, and the value of his sagacity and
honest service, with a warmth by this time given to few.
_Death of the Dean of Windsor._
_To Lord Granville, Sept. 18, 1882._—My belief is that he has been
cognizant of every crown appointment in the church for nearly a
quarter of a century, and that the whole of his influence has been
exercised with a deep insight and a large heart for the best
interests of the crown and the church. If their character during
this period has been in the main more satisfactory to the general
mind of the country than at some former periods, it has been in no
small degree owing to him.
It has been my duty to recommend I think for fully forty of the
higher appointments, including twelve which were episcopal. I
rejoice to say that every one of them has had his approval. But I
do not scruple to own that he has been in no small degree a help
and guide to me; and as to the Queen, whose heart I am sure is at
this moment bleeding, I do not believe she can possibly fill his
place as a friendly adviser either in ecclesiastical or other
matters.
_To the Duchess of Wellington, Sept. 24._—He might, if he had
chosen, have been on his way to the Archbishopric of Canterbury.
Ten or eleven years ago, when the present primate was not expected
to recover, the question of the succession was considered, and I
had her Majesty’s consent to the idea I have now mentioned. But,
governed I think by his great modesty, he at once refused.
_To Mrs. Wellesley, Nov. 19, 1882._—I have remained silent, at
least to you, on a subject which for no day has been absent from
my thoughts, because I felt that I could add nothing to your
consolations and could take away nothing from your grief under
your great calamity. But the time has perhaps come when I may
record my sense of a loss of which even a small share is so large.
The recollections of nearly sixty years are upon my mind, and
through all that period I have felt more and more the force and
value of your husband’s simple and noble character. No less have I
entertained an ever-growing sense of his great sagacity and the
singularly true and just balance of his mind. We owe much indeed
to you both for your constantly renewed kindness, but I have
another debt to acknowledge in the invaluable assistance which he
afforded me in the discharge of one among the most important and
most delicate of my duties. This void never can be filled, and it
helps me in some degree to feel what must be the void to you.
Certainly he was happy in the enjoyment of love and honour from
all who knew him; yet these were few in comparison with those whom
he so wisely and so warmly served without their knowing it; and
the love and honour paid him, great as they were, could not be as
great as he deserved. His memory is blessed—may his rest be deep
and sweet, and may the memory and example of him ever help you in
your onward pilgrimage.
The same week Dr. Pusey died—a name that filled so large a space in the
religious history of England for some thirty years of the century. Between
Mr. Gladstone and him the old relations of affectionate friendship
subsisted unbroken, notwithstanding the emancipation, as we may call it,
of the statesman from maxims and principles, though not, so far as I know,
from any of the leading dogmatic beliefs cherished by the divine. “I
hope,” he wrote to Phillimore (Sept. 20, 1882), “to attend Dr. Pusey’s
funeral to-morrow at Oxford.... I shall have another mournful office to
discharge in attending the funeral of the Dean of Windsor, more mournful
than the first. Dr. Pusey’s death is the ingathering of a ripe shock, and
I go to his obsequies in token of deep respect and in memory of much
kindness from him early in my life. But the death of Dean Wellesley is to
my wife and me an unexpected and very heavy blow, also to me an
irreparable loss. I had honoured and loved him from Eton days.”
The loss of Dean Wellesley’s counsels was especially felt in
ecclesiastical appointments, and the greatest of these was made necessary
by the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury at the beginning of December.
That the prime minister should regard so sage, conciliatory, and
large-minded a steersman as Dr. Tait with esteem was certain, and their
relations were easy and manly. Still, Tait had been an active liberal when
Mr. Gladstone was a tory, and (M37) from the distant days of the _Tracts
for the Times_, when Tait had stood amongst the foremost in open dislike
of the new tenets, their paths in the region of theology lay wide apart.
“I well remember,” says Dean Lake, “a conversation with Mr. Gladstone on
Tait’s appointment to London in 1856, when he was much annoyed at Tait’s
being preferred to Bishop Wilberforce, and of which he reminded me nearly
thirty years afterwards, at the time of the archbishop’s death, by saying,
‘Ah! I remember you maintaining to me at that time that his σεμνότης and
his judgment would make him a great bishop.’ ”(60) And so, from the point
of ecclesiastical statesmanship, he unquestionably was.
The recommendation of a successor in the historic see of Canterbury, we
may be very certain, was no common event to Mr. Gladstone. Tait on his
deathbed had given his opinion that Dr. Harold Browne, the Bishop of
Winchester, would do more than any other man to keep the peace of the
church. The Queen was strong in the same sense, thinking that the bishop
might resign in a year or two, if he could not do the work. He was now
seventy-one years old, and Mr. Gladstone judged this to be too advanced an
age for the metropolitan throne. He was himself now seventy-three, and
though his sense of humour was not always of the protective kind, he felt
the necessity of some explanatory reason, and with him to seek a plea was
to find one. He wrote to the Bishop of Winchester:—
... It may seem strange that I, who in my own person exhibit so
conspicuously the anomaly of a disparate conjunction between years
and duties, should be thus forward in interpreting the
circumstances of another case certainly more mitigated in many
respects, yet differing from my own case in one vital point, the
newness of the duties of the English, or rather anglican or
British, primacy to a diocesan bishop, however able and
experienced, and the newness of mental attitude and action, which
they would require. Among the materials of judgment in such an
instance, it seems right to reckon precedents for what they are
worth; and I cannot find that from the time of Archbishop Sheldon
any one has assumed the primacy at so great an age as seventy.
Juxon, the predecessor of Sheldon, was much older; but his case
was altogether peculiar. I cannot say how pleasant it would have
been to me personally, but for the barrier I have named, to mark
my respect and affection for your lordship by making to you such a
proposal. What is more important is, that I am directly authorised
by her Majesty to state that this has been the single impediment
to her conferring the honour, and imposing the burden, upon you of
such an offer.(61)
The world made free with the honoured name of Church, the Dean of Saint
Paul’s, and it has constantly been said that he declined the august
preferment to Canterbury on this occasion. In that story there is no
truth. “Formal offer,” the Dean himself wrote to a friend, “there was
none, and could not be, for I had already on another occasion told my mind
to Gladstone, and said that reasons of health, apart from other reasons,
made it impossible for me to think of anything, except a retirement
altogether from office.”(62)
When it was rumoured that Mr. Gladstone intended to recommend Dr. Benson,
then Bishop of Truro, to the archbishopric, a political supporter came to
remonstrate with him. “The Bishop of Truro is a strong tory,” he said,
“but that is not all. He has joined Mr. Raikes’s election committee at
Cambridge; and it was only last week that Raikes made a violent personal
attack on yourself.” “Do you know,” replied Mr. Gladstone, “you have just
supplied me with a strong argument in Dr. Benson’s favour? For if he had
been a worldly man or self-seeker, he would not have done anything so
imprudent.” Perhaps we cannot wonder that whips and wirepullers deemed
this to be somewhat over-ingenious, a Christianity out of season. Even
liberals who took another point of view, still asked themselves how it was
(M38) that when church preferment came his way, the prime minister so
often found the best clergymen in the worst politicians. They should have
remembered that he was of those who believed “no more glorious church in
Christendom to exist than the church of England”; and its official
ordering was in his eyes not any less, even if it was not infinitely more,
important in the highest interests of the nation than the construction of
a cabinet or the appointment of permanent heads of departments. The church
was at this moment, moreover, in one of those angry and perilous crises
that came of the Elizabethan settlement and the Act of Uniformity, and the
anglican revival forty years ago, and all the other things that mark the
arrested progress of the Reformation in England. The anti-ritualist hunt
was up. Civil courts were busy with the conscience and conduct of the
clergy. Harmless but contumacious priests were under lock and key. It
seemed as if more might follow them, or else as if the shock of the great
tractarian catastrophe of the forties might in some new shape recur. To
recommend an archbishop in times like these could to a churchman be no
light responsibility.
With such thoughts in his mind, however we may judge them, it is not
altogether surprising that in seeking an ecclesiastical governor for an
institution to him the most sacred and beloved of all forms of human
association, Mr. Gladstone should have cared very little whether the
personage best fitted in spirituals was quite of the right shade as to
state temporals. The labour that he now expended on finding the best man
is attested by voluminous correspondence. Dean Church, who was perhaps the
most freely consulted by the prime minister, says, “Of one thing I am
quite certain, that never for hundreds of years has so much honest
disinterested pains been taken to fill the primacy—such inquiry and
trouble resolutely followed out to find the really fittest man, apart from
every personal and political consideration, as in this case.”(63)
Another ecclesiastical vacancy that led to volumes of correspondence was
the deanery of Westminster the year before. In the summer of 1881 Dean
Stanley died, and it is interesting to note how easy Mr. Gladstone found
it to do full justice to one for whom as erastian and latitudinarian he
could in opinion have such moderate approval. In offering to the Queen his
“cordial sympathy” for the friend whom she had lost, he told her how early
in his own life and earlier still in the dean’s he had opportunities of
watching the development of his powers, for they had both been educated at
a small school near the home of Mr. Gladstone’s boyhood.(64) He went on to
speak of Stanley’s boundless generosity and brilliant gifts, his genial
and attaching disposition. “There may be,” he said, “and must be much
diversity as to parts of the opinions of Dean Stanley, but he will be long
remembered as one who was capable of the deepest and widest love, and who
received it in return.”
Far away from these regions of what he irreverently called the shovel hat,
about this time Carlyle died (Feb. 4, 1881), a firm sympathiser with Mr.
Gladstone in his views of the unspeakable Turk, but in all else the rather
boisterous preacher of a gospel directly antipathetic. “Carlyle is at
least a great fact in the literature of his time; and has contributed
largely, in some respects too largely, towards forming its characteristic
habits of thought.” So Mr. Gladstone wrote in 1876, in a highly
interesting parallel between Carlyle and Macaulay—both of them honest, he
said, both notwithstanding their honesty partisans; both of them, though
variously, poets using the vehicle of prose; both having the power of
painting portraits extraordinary for vividness and strength; each of them
vastly though diversely powerful in expression, each more powerful in
expression than in thought; neither of them to be resorted to for
comprehensive disquisition, nor for balanced and impartial judgments.(65)
Perhaps it was too early in 1876 to speak of Carlyle as forming the
characteristic habits of thought of his time, but undoubtedly now when he
died, his influence was beginning to tell heavily against the speculative
liberalism that had reigned in England for two generations, with enormous
advantage to the peace, prosperity and power of (M39) the country and the
two generations concerned. Half lights and half truths are, as Mr.
Gladstone implies, the utmost that Carlyle’s works were found to yield in
philosophy and history, but his half lights pointed in the direction in
which men for more material reasons thought that they desired to go.
IV
A reconstruction of the ministry had become necessary by his own
abandonment of the exchequer. For one moment it was thought that Lord
Hartington might become chancellor, leaving room for Lord Derby at the
India office, but Lord Derby was not yet ready to join. In inviting Mr.
Childers to take his place as chancellor of the exchequer, Mr. Gladstone
told him (Dec. 1, 1882): “The basis of my action is not so much a desire
to be relieved from labour, as an anxiety to give the country a much
better finance minister than myself,—one whose eyes will be always ranging
freely and vigilantly over the whole area of the great establishments, the
public service and the laws connected with his office, for the purposes of
improvement and of good husbandry.”
The claim of Sir Charles Dilke to a seat in the cabinet had become
irresistible alike by his good service as undersecretary at the foreign
office, and by his position out of doors; and as the admission of a
radical must be balanced by a whig—so at least it was judged—Mr. Gladstone
succeeded in inducing Lord Derby to join, though he had failed with him
not long before.(66)
Apart from general objections at court, difficulties arose about the
distribution of office. Mr. Chamberlain, who has always had his full share
of the virtues of staunch friendship, agreed to give up to Sir C. Dilke
his own office, which he much liked, and take the duchy, which he did not
like at all. In acknowledging Mr. Chamberlain’s letter (Dec. 14) Mr.
Gladstone wrote to him, “I shall be glad, if I can, to avoid acting upon
it. But I cannot refrain from at once writing a hearty line to acknowledge
the self-sacrificing spirit in which it is written; and which, I am sure,
you will never see cause to repent or change.” This, however, was found to
be no improvement, for Mr. Chamberlain’s language about ransoms to be paid
by possessors of property, the offence of not toiling and spinning, and
the services rendered by courtiers to kings, was not much less repugnant
than rash assertions about the monarch evading the income-tax. All
contention on personal points was a severe trial to Mr. Gladstone, and any
conflict with the wishes of the Queen tried him most of all. One of his
audiences upon these affairs Mr. Gladstone mentions in his diary: “Dec.
11.—Off at 12.45 to Windsor in the frost and fog. Audience of her Majesty
at 3. Most difficult ground, but aided by her beautiful manners, we got
over it better than might have been expected.” The dispute was stubborn,
but like all else it came to an end; colleagues were obliging, holes and
pegs were accommodated, and Lord Derby went to the colonial office, and
Sir C. Dilke to the local government board. An officer of the court, who
was in all the secrets and had foreseen all the difficulties, wrote that
the actual result was due “to the judicious manner in which Mr. Gladstone
managed everything. He argued in a friendly way, urging his views with
moderation, and appealed to the Queen’s sense of courtesy.”
In the course of his correspondence with the Queen, the prime minister
drew her attention (Dec. 18) to the fact that when the cabinet was formed
it included three ministers reputed to belong to the radical section, Mr.
Bright, Mr. Forster, and Mr. Chamberlain, and of these only the last
remained. The addition of Lord Derby was an addition drawn from the other
wing of the party. Another point presented itself. The cabinet originally
contained eight commoners and six peers. There were now seven peers and
six commoners. This made it requisite to add a commoner. As for Mr.
Chamberlain, the minister assured the Queen that though he had not yet,
like Mr. Bright, undergone the mollifying influence of age and experience,
his leanings on foreign policy would be far more acceptable to her Majesty
than those of Mr. Bright, while his views were not known to be any more
democratic in principle. He further expressed his firm opinion (Dec. 22)
(M40) that though Lord Derby might on questions of peace and war be some
shades nearer to the views of Mr. Bright than the other members of the
cabinet, yet he would never go anything like the length of Mr. Bright in
such matters. In fact, said Mr. Gladstone, the cabinet must be deemed a
little less pacific now than it was at its first formation. This at least
was a consolatory reflection.
Ministerial reconstruction is a trying moment for the politician who
thinks himself “not a favourite with his stars,” and is in a hurry for a
box seat before his time has come. Mr. Gladstone was now harassed with
some importunities of this kind.(67) Personal collision with any who stood
in the place of friends was always terrible to him. His gift of sleep
deserted him. “It is disagreeable to talk of oneself,” he wrote to Lord
Granville (Jan. 2, 1883), “when there is so much of more importance to
think and speak about, but I am sorry to say that the incessant strain and
pressure of work, and especially the multiplication of these personal
questions, is overdoing me, and for the first time my power of sleep is
seriously giving way. I dare say it would soon right itself if I could
offer it any other medicine than the medicine in Hood’s ‘Song of the
Shirt.’ ” And the next day he wrote: “Last night I improved, 3-½-hours to
4-½, but this is different from 7 and 8, my uniform standard through
life.” And two days later: “The matter of sleep is with me a very grave
one. I am afraid I may have to go up and consult Clark. My habit has
always been to reckon my hours rather exultingly, and say how little I am
awake. It is not impossible that I may have to ask you to meet me in
London, but I will not do this except in necessity. I think that, to
convey a clear idea, I should say I attach no importance to the broken
sleep itself; it is the state of the brain, tested by my own sensations,
when I begin my work in the morning, which may make me need higher
assurance.” Sir Andrew Clark, “overflowing with kindness, as always,” went
down to Hawarden (Jan. 7), examined, and listened to the tale of heavy
wakeful nights. While treating the case as one of temporary and accidental
derangement, he instantly forbade a projected expedition to Midlothian,
and urged change of air and scene.
This prohibition eased some of the difficulties at Windsor, where
Midlothian was a name of dubious association, and in announcing to the
Queen the abandonment by Dr. Clark’s orders of the intended journey to the
north, Mr. Gladstone wrote (Jan. 8, 1883):—
In your Majesty’s very kind reference on the 5th to his former
visits to Midlothian, and to his own observations on the 24th
April 1880, your Majesty remarked that he had said he did not then
think himself a responsible person. He prays leave to fill up the
outline which these words convey by saying he at that time (to the
best of his recollection) humbly submitted to your Majesty his
admission that he must personally bear the consequences of all
that he had said, and that he thought some things suitable to be
said by a person out of office which could not suitably be said by
a person in office; also that, as is intimated by your Majesty’s
words, the responsibilities of the two positions severally were
different. With respect to the political changes named by your
Majesty, Mr. Gladstone considers that the very safe measure of
extending to the counties the franchise enjoyed by the boroughs
stands in all likelihood for early consideration; but he doubts
whether there can be any serious dealing of a general character
with the land laws by the present parliament, and so far as
Scottish disestablishment is concerned he does not conceive that
that question has made progress during recent years; and he may
state that in making arrangements recently for his expected visit
to Midlothian, he had received various overtures for deputations
on this subject, which he had been able to put aside.
V
On January 17, along with Mrs. Gladstone, at Charing Cross he said
good-bye to many friends, and at Dover to Lord Granville, and the
following afternoon he found himself at Cannes, the guest of the
Wolvertons at the Château (M41) Scott, “nobly situated, admirably planned,
and the kindness exceeded even the beauty and the comfort.” “Here,” he
says, “we fell in with the foreign hours, the snack early, déjeuner at
noon, dinner at seven, break-up at ten.... I am stunned by this wonderful
place, and so vast a change at a moment’s notice in the conditions of
life.” He read steadily through the _Odyssey_, Dixon’s _History of the
Church of England_, Scherer’s _Miscellanies_, and _The Life of
Clerk-Maxwell_, and every day he had long talks and walks with Lord Acton
on themes personal, political and religious—and we may believe what a
restorative he found in communion with that deep and well-filled mind—that
“most satisfactory mind,” as Mr. Gladstone here one day calls it. He took
drives to gardens that struck him as fairyland. The Prince of Wales paid
him kindly attentions as always. He had long conversations with the Comte
de Paris, and with M. Clémenceau, and with the Duke of Argyll, the oldest
of his surviving friends. In the evening he played whist. Home affairs he
kept at bay pretty successfully, though a speech of Lord Hartington’s
about local government in Ireland drew from him a longish letter to Lord
Granville that the reader, if he likes, will find elsewhere.(68) His
conversation with M. Clémenceau (whom he found “decidedly pleasing”) was
thought indiscreet, but though the most circumspect of men, the buckram of
a spurious discretion was no favourite wear with Mr. Gladstone. As for the
report of his conversation with the French radical, he wrote to Lord
Granville, “It includes much which Clémenceau did not say to me, and omits
much which he did, for our principal conversation was on Egypt, about
which he spoke in a most temperate and reasonable manner.” He read the
“harrowing details” of the terrible scene in the court-house at
Kilmainham, where the murderous Invincibles were found out. “About Carey,”
he said to Lord Granville, “the spectacle is indeed loathsome, but I
cannot doubt that the Irish government are distinctly _right_. In
accepting an approver you do not incite him to do what is in itself wrong;
only his own bad mind can make it wrong to him. The government looks for
the truth. Approvers are, I suppose, for the most part base, but I do not
see how you could act on a distinction of degree between them. Still, one
would have heard the hiss from the dock with sympathy.”
Lord Granville wrote to him (Jan. 31, 1883) that the Queen insisted much
upon his diminishing the amount of labour thrown upon him, and expressed
her opinion that his acceptance of a peerage would relieve him of the
heavy strain. Lord Granville told her that personally he should be
delighted to see him in the Lords, but that he had great doubts whether
Mr. Gladstone would be willing. From Cannes Mr. Gladstone replied (Feb.
3):—
As to removal into the House of Lords, I think the reasons against
it of general application are conclusive. At least I cannot see my
way in regard to them. But at any rate it is obvious that such a
step is quite inapplicable to the circumstances created by the
present difficulty. It is really most kind of the Queen to testify
such an interest, and the question is how to answer her. You would
do this better and perhaps more easily than I.
Perhaps he remembered the case of Pulteney and of the Great Commoner.
He was not without remorse at the thought of his colleagues in harness
while he was lotus-eating. On the day before the opening of the session he
writes, “I feel dual: I am at Cannes, and in Downing Street eating my
parliamentary dinner.” By February 21 he was able to write to Lord
Granville:—
As regards my health there is no excuse. It has got better and
better as I have stayed on, and is now, I think, on a higher level
than for a long time past. My sleep, for example, is now about as
good as it can be, and far better than it was during the autumn
sittings, _after_ which it got so bad. The pleasure I have had in
staying does not make an argument at all; it is a mere expression
or anticipation of my desire to be turned out to grass for
good....
At last the end of the holiday came. “I part from Cannes with a heavy
heart,” he records on Feb. 26:—
Read the _Iliad_, copiously. Off by the 12.30 train. We exchanged
bright sun, splendid views, and a little dust at the beginning of
our journey, for frost and fog, which however hid no scenery, at
the end. _27th, Tuesday._—Reached Paris at 8, and drove to the
Embassy, where we had a most kind reception [from Lord Lyons].
Wrote to Lord Granville, Lord Spencer, Sir W. Harcourt. Went with
Lord L. to see M. Grévy; also Challemel-Lacour in his most
palatial abode. Looked about among the shops; and at the sad face
of the Tuileries. An embassy party to dinner; excellent company.
_To Lord Granville._
_Feb. 27th._—I have been with Lord Lyons to see Grévy and
Challemel-Lacour. Grevy’s conversation consisted of civilities and
a mournful lecture on the political history of France, with many
compliments to the superiority of England. Challemel thought the
burdens of public life intolerable and greater here than in
England, which is rather strong. Neither made the smallest
allusion to present questions, and it was none of my business to
introduce them....
After three days of bookstalls, ivory-hunting, and conversation, by the
evening of March 2 the travellers were once more after a bright day and
rapid passage safe in Downing Street.
Shortly after their return from the south of France the Gladstones paid a
visit to the Prince and Princess of Wales:—
_March 30, 1883._—Off at 11.30 to Sandringham. Reception kinder if
possible even than heretofore. Wrote.... Read and worked on London
municipality. _31, Saturday_.—Wrote. Root-cut a small tree in the
forenoon; then measured oaks in the park; one of 30 feet. In the
afternoon we drove to Houghton, a stately house and place, but
woe-begone. Conversation with Archbishop of Canterbury, Prince of
Wales and others. Read ... _Life of Hatherley_, Law’s account of
Craig. _April 1._—Sandringham church, morning. West Newton,
evening. Good services and sermons from the archbishop. The Prince
bade me read the lessons. Much conversation with the archbishop,
also Duke of Cambridge. Read _Nineteenth Century_ on Revised
Version; Manning on Education; _Life of Hatherley_; Craig’s
_Catechism_. Wrote, etc. 2.—Off at 11. D. Street 3.15. Wrote to
the Queen. Long conversation with the archbishop in the train.
Here a short letter or two may find a place:—
_To Lady Jessel on her husband’s death._
_March 30._—Though I am reluctant to intrude upon your sorrow
still so fresh, and while I beg of you on no account to
acknowledge this note, I cannot refrain from writing to assure you
not only of my sympathy with your grief, but of my profound sense
of the loss which the country and its judiciary have sustained by
the death of your distinguished husband. From the time of his
first entrance into parliament I followed his legal expositions
with an ignorant but fervid admiration, and could not help placing
him in the first rank, a rank held by few, of the many able and
powerful lawyers whom during half a century I have known and heard
in parliament. When I came to know him as a colleague, I found
reason to admire no less sincerely his superiority to
considerations of pecuniary interest, his strong and tenacious
sense of the dignity of his office, and his thoroughly frank,
resolute, and manly character. These few words, if they be a
feeble, yet I assure you are also a genuine, tribute to a memory
which I trust will long be cherished. Earnestly anxious that you
may have every consolation in your heavy bereavement.
_To Cardinal Manning._
_April 19._—I thank you much for your kind note, though I am sorry
to have given you the trouble of writing it. Both of us have much
to be thankful for in the way of health, but I should have, hoped
that your extremely spare living would have saved you from the
action of anything like gouty tendencies. As for myself, I can in
no way understand how it is that for a full half century I have
been permitted and enabled to resist a pressure of special
liabilities attaching to my path of life, to which so many have
given way. I am left as a solitary, surviving all his compeers.
But I trust it may not be long ere I escape into some position
better suited to declining years.
_To Sir W. V. Harcourt._
_April 27._—A separate line to thank you for your more than kind
words about my rather Alexandrine speech last night; as to which I
can only admit that it contained one fine passage—six lines in
length.(69) Your “instincts” of kindliness in all personal matters
are known to all the world. I should be glad, on selfish grounds,
if I could feel sure that they had not a little warped your
judicial faculty for the moment. But this misgiving abates nothing
from my grateful acknowledgment.
An application was made to him on behalf of a member of the opposite party
for a political pension, and here is his reply, to which it may be added
that ten years later he had come rather strongly to the view that
political pensions should be abolished, and he was only deterred from
trying to carry out his view by the reminder from younger ministers, not
themselves applicants nor ever likely to be, that it would hardly be a
gracious thing to cut off benefactions at a time when the bestowal of them
was passing away from him, though he had used them freely while that
bestowal was within his reach.
_Political Pensions._
_July 4, 1883._—You are probably aware that during the fifty years
which have passed since the system of political and civil pensions
was essentially remodelled, no political pension has been granted
by any minister except to one of those with whom he stood on terms
of general confidence and co-operation. It is needless to refer to
older practice.
This is not to be accounted for by the fact that after meeting the
just claims of political adherents, there has been nothing left to
bestow. For, although it has happened that the list of pensions of
the first class has usually been full, it has not been so with
political pensions of the other classes, which have, I think,
rarely if ever been granted to the fullest extent that the Acts
have allowed. At the present time, out of twelve pensions which
may legally be conferred, only seven have been actually given, if
I reckon rightly. I do not think that this state of facts can have
been due to the absence of cases entitled to consideration, and I
am quite certain that it is not to be accounted for by what are
commonly termed party motives. It was obvious to me that I could
not create a precedent of deviation from a course undeviatingly
pursued by my predecessors of all parties, without satisfying
myself that a new form of proceeding would be reasonable and safe.
The examination of private circumstances, such as I consider the
Act to require, is from its own nature difficult and invidious:
but the examination of competing cases in the ex-official corps is
a function that could not, I think, be discharged with the
necessary combination of free responsible action, and of exemption
from offence and suspicion. Such cases plainly may occur.(70)
_To H.R.H. the Prince of Wales._
_August 14th._—I am much shocked at an omission which I made last
night in failing to ask your royal Highness’s leave to be the
first to quit Lord Alcester’s agreeable party, in order that I
might attend to my duties in the House of Commons. In my early
days not only did the whole company remain united, if a member of
the royal family were present, until the exalted personage had
departed; but I well recollect the application of the same rule in
the case of the Archbishop (Howley) of Canterbury. I am sorry to
say that I reached the House of Commons in time to hear some
outrageous speeches from the ultra Irish members. I will not say
that they were meant to encourage crime, but they tended directly
to teach the Irish people to withhold their confidence from the
law and its administrators; and they seemed to exhibit Lord
Spencer as the enemy to the mass of the community—a sad and
disgraceful fact, though I need not qualify what I told your royal
Highness, that they had for some time past not been guilty of
obstruction.
Even in pieces that were in their nature more or less official, he touched
the occasions of life by a note that was not merely official, or was
official in its best form. To Mrs. Garfield he wrote (July 21, 1881):—
You will, I am sure, excuse me, though a personal stranger, for
addressing you by letter, to convey to you the assurance of my own
feelings and those of my countrymen on the occasion of the late
horrible attempt to murder the President of the United States, in
a form more palpable at least than that of messages conveyed by
telegraph. Those feelings have been feelings in the first instance
of sympathy, and afterwards of joy and thankfulness, almost
comparable, and I venture to say only second to the strong
emotions of the great nation, of which he is the appointed head.
Individually I have, let me beg you to believe, had my full share
in the sentiments which have possessed the British nation. They
have been prompted and quickened largely by what I venture to
think is the ever-growing sense of harmony and mutual respect and
affection between the two countries, and of a relationship which
from year to year becomes more and more a practical bond of union
between us. But they have also drawn much of their strength from a
cordial admiration of the simple heroism which has marked the
personal conduct of the President, for we have not yet wholly lost
the capacity of appreciating such an example of Christian faith
and manly fortitude. This exemplary picture has been made complete
by your own contribution to its noble and touching features, on
which I only forbear to dwell because I am directly addressing
you.
Under all the conventional solemnities in Mr. Gladstone on such occasions,
we are conscious of a sincere feeling that they were in real relation to
human life and all its chances and changes.