It is now forty-six years since we lost a child,(285) and he who

has now passed away from our eyes, leaves to us only blessed

recollections. I suppose all feel that those deaths which reverse

the order of nature have a sharpness of their own. But setting

this apart, there is nothing lacking to us in consolations human

or divine. I can only wish that I may become less unworthy to have

been his father.

To me he wrote (July 10):—

We feel deeply the kindness and tenderness of your letter. It

supplies one more link in a long chain of recollection which I

deeply prize. Yes, ours is a tribulation, and a sore one, but yet

we feel we ought to find ourselves carried out of ourselves by

sympathy with the wife whose noble and absorbing devotion had

become like an entire life of itself, and who is now face to face

with the void. The grief of children too, which passes, is very

sharp while it remains. The case has been very remarkable. Though

with abatement of some powers, my son has not been without many

among the signs and comforts of health during a period of nearly

two and a half years. All this time the terrible enemy was lodged

in the royal seat, and only his healthy and unyielding

constitution kept it at defiance, and maintained his mental and

inward life intact.... And most largely has human, as well as

divine compassion, flowed in upon us, from none more conspicuously

than from yourself, whom we hope to count among near friends for

the short remainder of our lives.

To another correspondent who did not share his own religious beliefs, he

said (July 5):—

When I received your last kind note, I fully intended to write to

you with freedom on the subject of _The Agnostic Island_. But

since then I have been at close quarters, so to speak, with the

dispensations of God, for yesterday morning my dearly beloved

eldest son was taken from the sight of our eyes. At this moment of

bleeding hearts, I will only say what I hope you will in

consideration of the motives take without offence, namely this: I

would from the bottom of my heart that whenever the hour of

bereavement shall befall you or those whom you love, you and they

may enjoy the immeasurable consolation of believing, with all the

mind and all the heart, that the beloved one is gone into eternal

rest, and that those who remain behind may through the same mighty

Deliverer hope at their appointed time to rejoin him.

All this language on the great occasions of human life was not

with him the tone of convention. Whatever the synthesis, as they

call it,—whatever the form, whatever the creed and faith may be,

he was one of that high and favoured household who, in Emerson’s

noble phrase, “live from a great depth of being.”

Earlier in the year Lord Granville, who so long had been his best friend,

died. The loss by his death was severe. As Acton, who knew of their

relations well and from within, wrote to Mr. Gladstone (April 1):—

There was an admirable fitness in your union, and I had been able

to watch how it became closer and easier, in spite of so much to

separate you, in mental habits, in early affinities, and even in

the form of fundamental convictions, since he came home from your

budget, overwhelmed, thirty-eight years ago. I saw all the

connections which had their root in social habit fade before the

one which took its rise from public life and proved more firm and

more enduring than the rest.

II

In September he paid a visit to his relatives at Fasque, and thence he

went to Glenalmond—spots that in his tenacious memory must have awakened

hosts of old and dear associations. On October 1, he found himself after a

long and busy day, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he had never stayed since

his too memorable visit in 1862.(286) Since the defeat of the Irish policy

in 1886, he had attended the annual meeting of the chief liberal

organisation at Nottingham (1887), Birmingham (1888), and Manchester

(1889). This year it was the turn of Newcastle. On October 2, he gave his

blessing to various measures that afterwards came to be known as the

Newcastle programme. After the shock caused by the Irish quarrel, every

politician knew that it would be necessary to balance home rule by reforms

expected in England and Scotland. No liberal, whatever his particular

shade, thought that it would be either honourable or practical to throw

the Irish policy overboard, and if there (M162) were any who thought such

a course honourable, they knew it would not be safe. The principle and

expediency of home rule had taken a much deeper root in the party than it

suited some of the trimming tribe later to admit. On the other hand, after

five years of pretty exclusive devotion to the Irish case, to pass by the

British case and its various demands for an indefinite time longer, would

have been absurd.

III

In the eighties Mr. Gladstone grew into close friendship with one who had

for many years been his faithful supporter in the House of Commons as

member for Dundee. Nobody ever showed him devotion more considerate,

loyal, and unselfish than did Mr. Armitstead, from about the close of the

parliament of 1880 down to the end of this story.(287) In the middle of

December 1891 Mr. Armitstead planned a foreign trip for his hero, and

persuaded me to join. Biarritz was to be our destination, and the

expedition proved a wonderful success. Some notes of mine, though intended

only for domestic consumption, may help to bring Mr. Gladstone in his

easiest moods before the reader’s eye. No new ideas struck fire, no

particular contribution was made to grand themes. But a great statesman on

a holiday may be forgiven for not trying to discover brand-new keys to

philosophy, history, and “all the mythologies.” As a sketch from life of

the veteran’s buoyancy, vigour, genial freshness of heart and brain, after

four-score strenuous years, these few pages may be found of interest.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

We left Paris at nine in the morning (Dec. 16), and were listening to the

swell of the mighty Bay resounding under our windows at Biarritz soon

after midnight.

The long day’s journey left no signs of fatigue on either Mr. or Mrs.

Gladstone, and his only regret was that we had not come straight through

instead of staying a night in Paris. I’m always for going straight on, he

said. For some odd reason in spite of the late hour he was full of stories

of American humour, which he told with extraordinary verve and enjoyment.

I contributed one that amused him much, of the Bostonian who, having read

Shakespeare for the first time, observed, “I call that a very clever book.

Now, I don’t suppose there are twenty men in Boston to-day who could have

written that book!”

_Thursday, Dec. 17._—Splendid morning for making acquaintance with a new

place. Saw the western spur of the Pyrenees falling down to the Bidassoa

and the first glimpse of the giant wall, beyond which, according to

Michelet, Africa begins, and our first glimpse of Spain.

After breakfast we all sallied forth to look into the shops and to see the

lie of the land. Mr. G. as interested as a child in all the objects in the

shops—many of them showing that we are not far from Spain. The consul very

polite, showed us about, and told us the hundred trifles that bring a

place really into one’s mind. Nothing is like a first morning’s stroll in

a foreign town. By afternoon the spell dissolves, and the mood comes of

Dante’s lines, “_Era già l’ora_,” etc.(288)

Some mention was made of Charles Austin, the famous lawyer: it brought up

the case of men who are suddenly torn from lives of great activity to

complete idleness.

_Mr. G._—I don’t know how to reconcile it with what I’ve always regarded

as the foundation of character—Bishop Butler’s view of habit. How comes it

that during the hundreds of years in which priests and fellows of Eton

College have retired from hard work to college livings and leisure, not

one of them has ever done anything whatever for either scholarship or

divinity—not one?

Mr. G. did not know Mazzini, but Armellini, another of the Roman

triumvirs, taught him Italian in 1832. (M163) I spoke a word for Gambetta,

but he would not have it. “Gambetta was _autoritaire_; I do not feel as if

he were a true liberal in the old and best sense. I cannot forget how

hostile he was to the movement for freedom in the Balkans.”

Said he only once saw Lord Liverpool. He went to call on Canning at

Glos’ter House (close to our Glos’ter Road Station), and there through a

glass door he saw Canning and Lord Liverpool talking together.

_Peel._—Had a good deal of temper; not hot; but perhaps sulky. Not a

farsighted man, but fairly clear-sighted. “I called upon him after the

election in 1847. The Janissaries, as Bentinck called us, that is the men

who had stood by Peel, had been 110 before the election; we came back only

50. Peel said to me that what he looked forward to was a long and fierce

struggle on behalf of protection. I must say I thought this foolish. If

Bentinck had lived, with his strong will and dogged industry, there might

have been a wide rally for protection, but everybody knew that Dizzy did

not care a straw about it, and Derby had not constancy and force enough.”

Mr. G. said Disraeli’s performances against Peel were quite as wonderful

as report makes them. Peel altogether helpless in reply. Dealt with them

with a kind of “righteous dulness.” The Protectionist secession due to

three men: Derby contributed prestige; Bentinck backbone; and Dizzy

parliamentary brains.

The golden age of administrative reform was from 1832 to the Crimean War;

Peel was always keenly interested in the progress of these reforms.

_Northcote._—“He was my private secretary; and one of the very best

imaginable; pliant, ready, diligent, quick, acute, with plenty of humour,

and a temper simply perfect. But as a leader, I think ill of him; you had

a conversation; he saw the reason of your case; and when he left, you

supposed all was right. But at the second interview, you always found that

he had been unable to persuade his friends. What could be weaker than his

conduct on the Bradlaugh affair! You could not wonder that the rank and

file of his men should be caught by the proposition that an atheist ought

not to sit in parliament. But what is a leader good for, if he dare not

tell his party that in a matter like this they are wrong, and of course

nobody knew better than N. that they were wrong. A clever, quick man with

fine temper. By the way, how is it that we have no word, no respectable

word, for backbone?”

_J. M._—Character?

_Mr. G._—Well, character; yes; but that’s vague. It means will, I suppose.

(I ought to have thought of Novalis’s well-known definition of character

as “a completely fashioned will.”)

_J. M._—Our inferiority to the Greeks in discriminations of language shown

by our lack of precise equivalents for φρόνησις, σοφία, σωφροσύνη, etc.,

of which we used to hear so much when coached in the _Ethics_.

Mr. G. went on to argue that because the Greeks drew these fine

distinctions in words, they were superior in conduct. “You cannot beat the

Greeks in noble qualities.”

_Mr. G._—I admit there is no Greek word of good credit for the virtue of

humility.

_J. M._—ταπεινότης? But that has an association of meanness.

_Mr. G._—Yes; a shabby sort of humility. Humility as a sovereign grace is

the creation of Christianity.

_Friday, December 18._—Brilliant sunshine, but bitterly cold; an east wind

blowing straight from the Maritime Alps. Walking, reading, talking. Mr. G.

after breakfast took me into his room, where he is reading Heine, Butcher

on Greek genius, and Marbot. Thought Thiers’s well-known remark on Heine’s

death capital,—“To-day the wittiest Frenchman alive has died.”

_Mr. G._—We have talked about the best line in poetry, etc. How do you

answer this question—Which century of English history produced the

greatest men?

_J. M._—What do you say to the sixteenth?

_Mr. G._—Yes, I think so. Gardiner was a great man. Henry VIII. was great.

But bad. Poor Cranmer. Like Northcote, he’d no backbone. Do you remember

Jeremy Collier’s sentence about his bravery at the stake, which (M164) I

count one of the grandest in English prose—“He seemed to repel the force

of the fire and to overlook the torture, by strength of thought.”(289)

Thucydides could not beat that.

The old man twice declaimed the sentence with deep sonorous voice, and his

usual incomparable modulation.

Mr. G. talked of a certain General ——. He was thought to be a first-rate

man; neglected nothing, looked to things himself, conceived admirable

plans, and at last got an important command. Then to the universal

surprise, nothing came of it; —— they said, “could do everything that a

commander should do, except say, _Quick march_.” There are plenty of

politicians of that stamp, but Mr. G. decidedly not one of them. I

mentioned a farewell dinner given to —— in the spring, by some rich man or

other. It cost £560 for forty-eight guests! Flowers alone £150. Mr. G. on

this enormity, recalled a dinner to Talfourd about copyright at the old

Clarendon Hotel in Bond Street, and the price was £2, 17s. 6d. a head. The

old East India Company used to give dinners at a cost of seven guineas a

head. He has a wonderfully lively interest for these matters, and his

curiosity as to the prices of things in the shop-windows is inexhaustible.

We got round to Goethe. Goethe, he said, never gave prominence to duty.

_J. M._—Surely, surely in that fine psalm of life, _Das Göttliche_?

_Mr. G._—Döllinger used to confront me with the _Iphigenie_ as a great

drama of duty.

He wished that I had known Döllinger—“a man thoroughly from beginning to

end of his life _purged of self_.” Mistook the nature of the Irish

questions, from the erroneous view that Irish Catholicism is ultramontane,

which it certainly is not.

_Saturday, Dec. 19._—

What is extraordinary is that all Mr. G.’s versatility, buoyancy, and the

rest goes with the most profound accuracy and intense concentration when

any point of public business is raised. Something was said of the salaries

of bishops. He was ready in an instant with every figure and detail, and

every circumstance of the history of the foundation of the Ecclesiastical

Commission in 1835-6. Then his _savoir faire_ and wisdom of parliamentary

conduct. “I always made it a rule in the H. of C. to allow nobody to

suppose that I did not like him, and to say as little as I could to

prevent anybody from liking me. Considering the intense friction and

contention of public life, it is a saving of wear and tear that as many as

possible even among opponents should think well of one.”

_Sunday, Dec. 20._—At table, a little discussion as to the happiness and

misery of animal creation. Outside of man Mr. G. argued against Tennyson’s

description of Nature as red in tooth and claw. Apart from man, he said,

and the action of man, sentient beings are happy and not miserable. But

Fear? we said. No; they are unaware of impending doom; when hawk or kite

pounces on its prey, the small bird has little or no apprehension; ’tis

death, but death by appointed and unforeseen lot.

_J. M._—There is Hunger. Is not the probability that most creatures are

always hungry, not excepting Man?

To this he rather assented. Of course optimism like this is indispensable

as the basis of natural theology.

Talked to Mr. G. about Michelet’s Tableau de la France, which I had just

finished in vol. 2 of the history. A brilliant tour de force, but strains

the relations of soil to character; compels words and facts to be the

slaves of his phantasy; the modicum of reality overlaid with violent

paradox and foregone conclusion. Mr. G. not very much interested—seems

only to care for political and church history.

_Monday, Dec. 31._—Mr. G. did not appear at table to-day, suffering from a

surfeit of wild strawberries the day before. But he dined in his dressing

gown, and I had some chat with him in his room after lunch.

_Mr. G._—“’Tis a hard law of political things that if a man shows special

competence in a department, that is the very thing most likely to keep him

there, and prevent his promotion.”

(M165) _Mr. G._—I consider Burke a tripartite man: America, France,

Ireland—right as to two, wrong in one.

_J. M._—Must you not add home affairs and India? His _Thoughts on the

Discontents_ is a masterpiece of civil wisdom, and the right defence in a

great constitutional struggle. Then he gave fourteen years of industry to

Warren Hastings, and teaching England the rights of the natives, princes

and people, and her own duties. So he was right in four out of five.

_Mr. G._—Yes, yes—quite true. Those two ought to be added to my three.

There is a saying of Burke’s from which I must utterly dissent. “Property

is sluggish and inert.” Quite the contrary. Property is vigilant, active,

sleepless; if ever it seems to slumber, be sure that one eye is open.

_Marie Antoinette._ I once read the three volumes of letters from Mercy

d’Argenteau to Maria Theresa. He seems to have performed the duty imposed

upon him with fidelity.

_J. M._—Don’t you think the Empress comes out well in the correspondence?

_Mr. G._—Yes, she shows always judgment and sagacity.

_J. M._—Ah, but besides sagacity, worth and as much integrity as those

slippery times allowed.

_Mr. G._—Yes (but rather reluctantly, I thought). As for Marie Antoinette,

she was not a striking character in any senses she was horribly frivolous;

and, I suppose, we must say she was, what shall I call it—a very

considerable flirt?

_J. M._—The only case with real foundation seems to be that of the _beau

Fersen_, the Swedish secretary. He too came to as tragic an end as the

Queen.

_Tuesday, Dec. 22._—Mr. G. still somewhat indisposed—but reading away all

day long. Full of Marbot. Delighted with the story of the battle of

Castiglione: how when Napoleon held a council of war, and they all said

they were hemmed in, and that their only chance was to back out, Augereau

roughly cried that they might all do what they liked, but he would attack

the enemy cost what it might. “Exactly like a place in the _Iliad_; when

Agamemnon and the rest sit sorrowful in the assembly arguing that it was

useless to withstand the sovereign will of Zeus, and that they had better

flee into their ships, Diomed bursts out that whatever others think, in

any event he and Sthenelus, his squire, will hold firm, and never desist

from the onslaught until they have laid waste the walls of Troy.”(290) A

large dose of Diomed in Mr. G. himself.

Talk about the dangerous isolation in which the monarchy will find itself

in England if the hereditary principle goes down in the House of Lords;

“it will stand bare, naked, with no shelter or shield, only endured as the

better of two evils.” “I once asked,” he said, “who besides myself in the

party cares for the hereditary principle? The answer was, That perhaps ——

cared for it!!”—naming a member of the party supposed to be rather sapient

than sage.

News in the paper that the Comte de Paris in his discouragement was about

to renounce his claims, and break up his party. Somehow this brought us

round to Tocqueville, of whom Mr. G. spoke as the nearest French approach

to Burke.

_J. M._—But pale and without passion. Who was it that said of him that he

was an aristocrat who accepted his defeat? That is, he knew democracy to

be the conqueror, but he doubted how far it would be an improvement, he

saw its perils, etc.

_Mr. G._—I have not much faith in these estimates, whether in favour of

progress or against it. I don’t believe in comparisons of age with age.

How can a man strike a balance between one government and another? How can

he place himself in such an attitude, and with such comprehensive sureness

of vision, as to say that the thirteenth century was better or higher or

worse or lower than the nineteenth?

_Thursday, Dec. 24._—At lunch we had the news of the Parnellite victory at

Waterford. A disagreeable reverse for us. Mr. G. did not say many words

about it, only that it would give heart to the mischief makers—only too

certain. But we said no more about it. He and I took a walk on the sands

in the afternoon, and had a curious talk (considering), about the

prospects of the church of England. He was (M166) anxious to know about my

talk some time ago with the Bishop of —— whom I had met at a feast at

Lincoln’s Inn. I gave him as good an account as I could of what had

passed. Mr. G. doubted that this prelate was fundamentally an Erastian, as

Tait was. Mr. G. is eager to read the signs of the times as to the

prospects of Anglican Christianity, to which his heart is given; and he

fears the peril of Erastianism to the spiritual life of the church, which

is naturally the only thing worth caring about. Hence, he talked with much

interest of the question whether the clever fellows at Oxford and

Cambridge now take orders. He wants to know what kind of defenders his

church is likely to have in days to come. Said that for the first time

interest has moved away both from politics and theology, towards the vague

something which they call social reform; and he thinks they won’t make

much out of that in the way of permanent results. The establishment he

considers safer than it has been for a long time.

As to Welsh disestablishment, he said it was a pity that where the

national sentiment was so unanimous as it was in Wales, the operation

itself should not be as simple as in Scotland. In Scotland sentiment is

not unanimous, but the operation is easy. In Wales sentiment is all one

way, but the operation difficult—a good deal more difficult than people

suppose, as they will find out when they come to tackle it.

[Perhaps it may be mentioned here that, though we always talked freely and

abundantly together upon ecclesiastical affairs and persons, we never once

exchanged a word upon theology or religious creed, either at Biarritz or

anywhere else.]

_Pitt._—A strong denunciation of Pitt for the French war. People don’t

realise what the French war meant. In 1812 wheat at Liverpool was 20s. (?)

the imperial bushel of 65 pounds (?)! Think of that, when you bring it

into figures of the cost of a loaf. And that was the time when Eaton,

Eastnor, and other great palaces were built by the landlords out of the

high rents which the war and war prices enabled them to exact.

Wished we knew more of Melbourne. He was in many ways a very fine fellow.

“In two of the most important of all the relations of a prime minister, he

was perfect; I mean first, his relations to the Queen, second to his

colleagues.”

Somebody at dinner quoted a capital description of the perverse fashion of

talking that prevailed at Oxford soon after my time, and prevails there

now, I fancy—“hunting for epigrammatic ways of saying what you don’t

think.” —— was the father of this pestilent mode.

Rather puzzled him by repeating a saying of mine that used to amuse

Fitzjames Stephen, that Love of Truth is more often than we think only a

fine name for Temper. I think Mr. G. has a thorough dislike for anything

that has a cynical or sardonic flavour about it. I wish I had thought, by

the way, of asking him what he had to say of that piece of Swift’s, about

all objects being insipid that do not come by delusion, and everything

being shrunken as it appears in the glass of nature, so that if it were

not for artificial mediums, refracted angles, false lights, varnish and

tinsel, there would be pretty much of a level in the felicity of mortal

man.

Am always feeling how strong is his aversion to seeing more than he can

help of what is sordid, mean, ignoble. He has not been in public life all

these years without rubbing shoulders with plenty of baseness on every

scale, and plenty of pettiness in every hue, but he has always kept his

eyes well above it. Never was a man more wholly free of the starch of the

censor, more ready to make allowance, nor more indulgent even; he enters

into human nature in all its compass. But he won’t linger a minute longer

than he must in the dingy places of life and character.

_Christmas Day, 1891._—A divine day, brilliant sunshine, and mild spring

air. Mr. G. heard what he called an admirable sermon from an English

preacher, “with a great command of his art.” A quietish day, Mr. G. no

doubt engaged in φρονεῖν τὰ ὅσια.

_Saturday, Dec. 26._—Once more a noble day. We started in a couple of

carriages for the Négress station, a couple of miles away or more, I with

the G.’s. Occasion produced the Greek epitaph of the nameless drowned

sailor (M167) who wished for others kinder seas.(291) Mr. G. felt its

pathos and its noble charm—so direct and simple, such benignity, such a

good lesson to men to forget their own misdeeds and mischance, and to pray

for the passer-by a happier star. He repaid me by two epigrams of a

different vein, and one admirable translation into Greek, of Tennyson on

Sir John Franklin, which I do not carry in my mind; another on a

boisterous Eton fellow—

Didactic, dry, declamatory, dull,

The bursar —— bellows like a bull.

Just in the tone of Greek epigram, a sort of point, but not too much

point.

_Parliamentary Wit._—Thought Disraeli had never been surpassed, nor even

equalled, in this line. He had a contest with General Grey, who stood upon

the general merits of the whig government, after both Lord Grey and

Stanley had left it. D. drew a picture of a circus man who advertised his

show with its incomparable team of six grey horses. One died, he replaced

it by a mule. Another died, and he put in a donkey, still he went on

advertising his team of greys all the same. Canning’s wit not to be found

conspicuously in his speeches, but highly agreeable pleasantries, though

many of them in a vein which would jar horribly on modern taste.

Some English redcoats and a pack of hounds passed us as we neared the

station. They saluted Mr. G. with a politeness that astonished him, but

was pleasant. Took the train for Irun, the fields and mountain slopes

delightful in the sun, and the sea on our right a superb blue such as we

never see in English waters. At Irun we found carriages waiting to take us

on to Fuentarabia. From the balcony of the church had a beautiful view

over the scene of Wellington’s operations when he crossed the Bidassoa, in

the presence of the astonished Soult. A lovely picture, made none the

worse by this excellent historic association. The alcalde was extremely

polite and intelligent. The consul who was with us showed a board on the

old tower, in which _v_ in some words was _b_, and I noted that the

alcalde spoke of Viarritz. I reminded Mr. G. of Scaliger’s epigram—

Haud temere antiquas mutat Vasconia voces,

Cui nihil est alind vivere quam bibere.

Pretty cold driving home, but Mr. G. seemed not to care. He found both the

churches at St. Jean and at Fuentarabia very noteworthy, though the latter

very popish, but both, he felt, “had a certain association with grandeur.”

_Sunday, Dec. 27._—After some quarter of an hour of travellers’ topics, we

plunged into one of the most interesting talks we have yet had. _Apropos_

of I do not know what, Mr. G. said that he had not advised his son to

enter public life. “No doubt there are some men to whom station, wealth,

and family traditions make it a duty. But I have never advised any

individual, as to whom I have been consulted, to enter the H. of C.”

_J. M._—But isn’t that rather to encourage self-indulgence? Nobody who

cares for ease or mental composure would seek public life?

_Mr. G._—Ah, I don’t know that. Surely politics open up a great field for

the natural man. Self-seeking, pride, domination, power—all these passions

are gratified in politics.

_J. M._—You cannot be sure of achievement in politics, whether personal or

public?

_Mr. G._—No; to use Bacon’s pregnant phrase, they are too immersed in

matter. Then as new matter, that is, new details and particulars, come

into view, men change their judgment.

_J. M._—You have spoken just now of somebody as a thorough good tory. You

know the saying that nobody is worth much who has not been a bit of a

radical in his youth, and a bit of a tory in his fuller age.

_Mr. G._ (laughing)—Ah, I’m afraid that hits me rather hard. But for

myself, I think I can truly put up all the change that has come into my

politics into a sentence; I (M168) was brought up to distrust and dislike

liberty, I learned to believe in it. That is the key to all my changes.

_J. M._—According to my observation, the change in my own generation is

different. They have ceased either to trust or to distrust liberty, and

have come to the mind that it matters little either way. Men are

disenchanted. They have got what they wanted in the days of their youth,

yet what of it, they ask? France has thrown off the Empire, but the

statesmen of the republic are not a great breed. Italy has gained her

unity, yet unity has not been followed by thrift, wisdom, or large

increase of public virtue or happiness. America has purged herself of

slavery, yet life in America is material, prosaic,—so say some of her own

rarest sons. Don’t think that I say all these things. But I know able and

high-minded men who suffer from this disenchantment.

_Mr. G._—Italy would have been very different if Cavour had only lived—and

even Ricasoli. Men ought not to suffer from disenchantment. They ought to

know that _ideals in politics are never realised_. And don’t let us forget

in eastern Europe the rescue in our time of some ten millions of men from

the harrowing domination of the Turk. (On this he expatiated, and very

justly, with much energy.)

We turned to our own country. Here he insisted that democracy had

certainly not saved us from a distinct decline in the standard of public

men.... Look at the whole conduct of opposition from ’80 to ’85—every

principle was flung overboard, if they could manufacture a combination

against the government. For all this deterioration one man and one man

alone is responsible, Disraeli. He is the grand corrupter. He it was who

sowed the seed.

_J. M._—Ought not Palmerston to bear some share in this?

_Mr. G._—No, no; Pam. had many strong and liberal convictions. On one

subject Dizzy had them too—the Jews. There he was much more than rational,

he was fanatical. He said once that Providence would deal good or ill

fortune to nations, according as they dealt well or ill by the Jews. I

remember once sitting next to John Russell when D. was making a speech on

Jewish emancipation. “Look at him,” said J. R., “how manfully he sticks to

it, tho’ he knows that every word he says is gall and wormwood to every

man who sits around him and behind him.” A curious irony, was it not, that

it should have fallen to me to propose a motion for a memorial both to

Pam. and Dizzy?

A superb scene upon the ocean, with a grand wind from the west. Mr. G. and

I walked on the shore; he has a passion for tumultuous seas. I have never

seen such huge masses of water shattering themselves among the rocks.

In the evening Mr. G. remarked on our debt to Macaulay, for guarding the

purity of the English tongue. I recalled a favourite passage from Milton,

that next to the man who gives wise and intrepid counsels of government,

he places the man who cares for the purity of his mother tongue. Mr. G.

liked this. Said he only knew Bright once slip into an error in this

respect, when he used “transpire” for “happen.” Macaulay of good example

also in rigorously abstaining from the inclusion of matter in footnotes.

Hallam an offender in this respect. I pointed out that he offended in

company with Gibbon.

_Monday, Dec. 28._—We had an animated hour at breakfast.

_Oxford and Cambridge._—Curious how, like two buckets, whenever one was

up, the other was down. Cambridge has never produced four such men of

action in successive ages as Wolsey, Laud, Wesley, and Newman.

_J. M._—In the region of thought Cambridge has produced the greatest of

all names, Newton.

_Mr. G._—In the earlier times Oxford has it—with Wycliff, Occam, above all

Roger Bacon. And then in the eighteenth century, Butler.

_J. M._—But why not Locke, too, in the century before?

This brought on a tremendous tussle, for Mr. G. was of the same mind, and

perhaps for the same sort of reason, as Joseph de Maistre, that contempt

for Locke is the beginning of knowledge. All very well for De Maistre, but

not for a man in line with European liberalism. I pressed the very obvious

point that you must take into account not only a man’s intellectual

product or his general stature, but also (M169) his influence as a

historic force. From the point of view of influence Locke was the origin

of the emancipatory movement of the eighteenth century abroad, and laid

the philosophic foundations of liberalism in civil government at home. Mr.

G. insisted on a passage of Hume’s which he believed to be in the history,

disparaging Locke as a metaphysical thinker.(292) “That may be,” said I,

“though Hume in his _Essays_ is not above paying many compliments to ‘the

great reasoner,’ etc., to whom, for that matter, I fancy that he stood in

pretty direct relation. But far be it from me to deny that Hume saw deeper

than Locke into the metaphysical millstone. That is not the point. I’m

only thinking of his historic place, and, after all, the history of

philosophy is itself a philosophy.” To minds nursed in dogmatic schools,

all this is both unpalatable and incredible.

Somehow we slid into the freedom of the will and Jonathan Edwards. I told

him that Mill had often told us how Edwards argued the necessarian or

determinist case as keenly as any modern.

_Tuesday, Dec. 29._—Mr. G. 82 to-day. I gave him Mackail’s Greek Epigrams,

and if it affords him half as much pleasure as it has given me, he will be

very grateful. Various people brought Mr. G. bouquets and addresses. Mr.

G. went to church in the morning, and in the afternoon took a walk with

me.... _Land Question._ As you go through France you see the soil

cultivated by the population. In our little dash into Spain the other day,

we saw again the soil cultivated by the population. In England it is

cultivated by the capitalist, for the farmer is capitalist. Some

astonishing views recently propounded by D. of Argyll on this matter.

Unearned increment—so terribly difficult to catch it. Perhaps best try to

get at it through the death duties. Physical condition of our

people—always a subject of great anxiety—their stature, colour, and so on.

Feared the atmosphere of cotton factories, etc., very deleterious. As

against bad air, I said, you must set good food; the Lancashire operative

in decent times lives uncommonly well, as he deserves to do. He agreed

there might be something in this.

The day was humid and muggy, but the tumult of the sea was most majestic.

Mr. G. delighted in it. He has a passion for the sound of the sea; would

like to have it in his ear all day and all night. Again and again he

recurred to this.

After dinner, long talk about Mazzini, of whom Mr. G. thought poorly in

comparison with Poerio and the others who for freedom sacrificed their

lives. I stood up for Mazzini, as one of the most morally impressive men I

had ever known, or that his age knew; he breathed a soul into democracy.

Then we fell into a discussion as to the eastern and western churches. He

thought the western popes by their proffered alliance with the mahometans,

etc., had betrayed Christianity in the east. I offered De Maistre’s view.

Mr. G. strongly assented to old Chatham’s dictum that vacancy is worse

than even the most anxious work. He has less to reproach himself with than

most men under that head.

He repeated an observation that I have heard him make before, that he

thought politicians are more _rapid_ than other people. I told him that

Bowen once said to me on this that he did not agree; that he thought

rapidity the mark of all successful men in the practical line of life,

merchants and stockbrokers, etc.

_Wednesday, Dec. 30._—A very muggy day. A divine sunset, with the

loveliest pink and opal tints in the sky. Mr. G. reading Gleig’s

_Subaltern_. Not a very entertaining book in itself, but the incidents

belong to Wellington’s Pyrenean campaign, and, for my own part, I rather

enjoyed it on the principle on which one likes reading _Romola_ at

Florence, _Transformation_ at Rome, _Sylvia’s Lovers_ at Whitby, and

_Hurrish_ on the northern edge of Clare.

_Thursday, Dec. 31._—Down to the pier, and found all the party watching

the breakers, and superb they were. Mr. G. exulting in the huge force of

the Atlantic swell and the beat of the rollers on the shore, like a

Titanic pulse.

After dinner Mr. G. raised the question of payment of members. He had been

asked by somebody whether he meant at Newcastle to indicate that everybody

should be paid, or only those who chose to take it or to ask (M170) for

it. He produced the same extraordinary plan as he had described to me on

the morning of his Newcastle speech—_i.e._ that the Inland Revenue should

ascertain from their own books the income of every M.P., and if they found

any below the limit of exemption, should notify the same to the Speaker,

and the Speaker should thereupon send to the said M.P. below the limit an

annual cheque for, say, £300, the name to appear in an annual return to

Parliament of all the M.P.’s in receipt of public money on any grounds

whatever. I demurred to this altogether, as drawing an invidious

distinction between paid and unpaid members; said it was idle to ignore

the theory on which the demand for paid members is based, namely, that it

is desirable in the public interest that poor men should have access to

the H. of C.; and that the poor man should stand there on the same footing

as anybody else.

_Friday, Jan. 1, 1892._—After breakfast Mrs. Gladstone came to my room and

said how glad she was that I had not scrupled to put unpleasant points;

that Mr. G. must not be shielded and sheltered as some great people are,

who hear all the pleasant things and none of the unpleasant; that the

perturbation from what is disagreeable only lasts an hour. I said I hoped

that I was faithful with him, but of course I could not be always putting

myself in an attitude of perpetual controversy. She said, “He is never

made angry by what you say.” And so she went away, and —— and I had a good

and most useful set-to about Irish finance.

At luncheon Mr. G. asked what we had made out of our morning’s work. When

we told him he showed a good deal of impatience and vehemence, and, to my

dismay, he came upon union finance and the general subject of the

treatment of Ireland by England....

In the afternoon we took a walk, he and I, afterwards joined by the rest.

He was as delighted as ever with the swell of the waves, as they bounded

over one another, with every variety of grace and tumultuous power. He

wondered if we had not more and better words for the sea than the

French—“breaker,” “billow,” “roller,” as against “flot,” “vague,” “onde,”

“lame,” etc.

At dinner he asked me whether I had made up my mind on the burning

question of compulsory Greek for a university degree. I said, No, that as

then advised I was half inclined to be against compulsory Greek, but it is

so important that I would not decide before I was obliged. “So with me,”

he said, “the question is one with many subtle and deep-reaching

consequences.” He dwelt on the folly of striking Italian out of the course

of modern education, thus cutting European history in two, and setting an

artificial gulf between the ancient and modern worlds.

_Saturday, Jan. 2._—Superb morning, and all the better for being much

cooler. At breakfast somebody started the idle topic of quill pens. When

they came to the length of time that so-and-so made a quill serve, “De

Retz,” said I, “made up his mind that Cardinal Chigi was a poor creature,

_maximus in minimis_, because at their first interview Chigi boasted that

he had used one pen for three years.” That recalled another saying of

Retz’s about Cromwell’s famous dictum, that nobody goes so far as the man

who does not know where he is going. Mr. G. gave his deep and eager Ah! to

this. He could not recall that Cromwell had produced many dicta of such

quality. “I don’t love him, but he was a mighty big fellow. But he was

intolerant. He was intolerant of the episcopalians.”

_Mr. G._—Do you know whom I find the most tolerant churchman of that time?

_Laud!_ Laud got Davenant made Bishop of Salisbury, and he zealously

befriended Chillingworth and Hales. (There was some other case, which I

forget.)

_The execution of Charles._—I told him of Gardiner’s new volume which I

had just been reading. “Charles,” he said, “was no doubt a dreadful liar;

Cromwell perhaps did not always tell the truth; Elizabeth was a tremendous

liar.”

_J. M._—Charles was not wholly inexcusable, being what he was, for

thinking that he had a good game in his hands, by playing off the

parliament against the army, etc.

_Mr. G._—There was less excuse for cutting off his head than in the case

of poor Louis XVI., for Louis was the excuse for foreign invasion.

(M171) _J. M._—Could you call foreign invasion the intervention of the

Scotch?

_Mr. G._—Well, not quite. I suppose it is certain that it was Cromwell who

cut off Charles’s head? Not one in a hundred in the nation desired it.

_J. M._—No, nor one in twenty in the parliament. But then, ninety-nine in

a hundred in the army.

In the afternoon we all drove towards Bayonne to watch the ships struggle

over the bar at high water. As it happened we only saw one pass out, a

countryman for Cardiff. A string of others were waiting to go, but a

little steamer from Nantes came first, and having secured her station,

found she had not force enough to make the bar, and the others remained

swearing impatiently behind her. The Nantes steamer was like Ireland. The

scene was very fresh and fine, and the cold most exhilarating after the

mugginess of the last two or three days. Mr. G., who has a dizzy head, did

not venture on the jetty, but watched things from the sands. He and I

drove home together, at a good pace. “I am inclined,” he said laughingly,

“to agree with Dr. Johnson that there is no pleasure greater than sitting

behind four fast-going horses.”(293) Talking of Johnson generally, “I

suppose we may take him as the best product of the eighteenth century.”

Perhaps so, but is he its most characteristic product?

_Wellington._—Curious that there should be no general estimate of W.’s

character; his character not merely as a general but as a man. No love of

freedom. His sense of duty very strong, but military rather than civil.

_Montalembert._—Had often come into contact with him. A very amiable and

attractive man. But less remarkable than Rio.

_Latin Poets._—Would you place Virgil first?

_J. M._—Oh, no, Lucretius much the first for the greatest and sublimest of

poetic qualities. Mr. G. seemed to assent to this, though disposed to make

a fight for the second _Aeneid_ as equal to anything. He expressed his

admiration for Catullus, and then he was strong that Horace would run

anybody else very hard, breaking out with the lines about Regulus—

“Atqui sciebat quæ sibi barbarus

Tortor pararet;” etc.(294)

_Blunders in Government._—How right Napoleon was when he said, reflecting

on all the vast complexities of government, that the best to be said of a

statesman is that he has avoided the biggest blunders.

It is not easy to define the charm of these conversations. Is charm the

right word? They are in the highest degree stimulating, bracing, widening.

That is certain. I return to my room with the sensations of a man who has

taken delightful exercise in fresh air. He is so wholly free from the

_ergoteur_. There’s all the difference between the _ergoteur_ and the

great debater. He fits his tone to the thing; he can be as playful as

anybody. In truth I have many a time seen him in London and at Hawarden

not far from trivial. But here at Biarritz all is appropriate, and though,

as I say, he can be playful and gay as youth, he cannot resist rising in

an instant to the general point of view—to grasp the elemental

considerations of character, history, belief, conduct, affairs. There he

is at home, there he is most himself. I never knew anybody less guilty of

the tiresome sin of arguing for victory. It is not his knowledge that

attracts; it is not his ethical tests and standards; it is not that

dialectical strength of arm which, as Mark Pattison said of him, could

twist a bar of iron to its purpose. It is the combination of these with

elevation, with true sincerity, with extraordinary mental force.

_Sunday, Jan. 3._—Vauvenargues is right when he says that to carry through

great undertakings, one must act as though one could never die. My

wonderful companion is a wonderful illustration. He is like M. Angelo,

who, just before he died on the very edge of ninety, made an allegorical

figure, and inscribed upon it, _ancora impara_, “still learning.”

At dinner he showed in full force.

(M172) _Heroes of the Old Testament._—He could not honestly say that he

thought there was any figure in the O. T. comparable to the heroes of

Homer. Moses was a fine fellow. But the others were of secondary

quality—not great high personages, of commanding nature.

_Thinkers._—Rather an absurd word—to call a man a thinker (and he repeated

the word with gay mockery in his tone). When did it come into use? Not

until quite our own times, eh? I said, I believed both Hobbes and Locke

spoke of thinkers, and was pretty sure that _penseur_, as in _libre

penseur_, had established itself in the last century. [Quite true;

Voltaire used it, but it was not common.]

_Dr. Arnold._—A high, large, impressive figure—perhaps more important by

his character and personality than his actual work. I mentioned M. A.’s

poem on his father, _Rugby Chapel_, with admiration. Rather to my

surprise, Mr. G. knew the poem well, and shared my admiration to the full.

This brought us on to poetry generally, and he expatiated with much

eloquence and sincerity for the rest of the talk. The wonderful continuity

of fine poetry in England for five whole centuries, stretching from

Chaucer to Tennyson, always a proof to his mind of the soundness, the sap,

and the vitality of our nation and its character. What people, beginning

with such a poet as Chaucer 500 years ago, could have burst forth into

such astonishing production of poetry as marked the first quarter of the

century, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, etc.

_J. M._—It is true that Germany has nothing, save Goethe, Schiller, Heine,

that’s her whole list. But I should say a word for the poetic movement in

France: Hugo, Gautier, etc. Mr. G. evidently knew but little, or even

nothing, of modern French poetry. He spoke up for Leopardi, on whom he had

written an article first introducing him to the British public, ever so

many years ago—in the _Quarterly_.

_Mr. G._—Wordsworth used occasionally to dine with me when I lived in the

Albany. A most agreeable man. I always found him amiable, polite, and

sympathetic. Only once did he jar upon me, when he spoke slightingly of

Tennyson’s first performance.

_J. M._—But he was not so wrong as he would be now. Tennyson’s Juvenilia

are terribly artificial.

_Mr. G._—Yes, perhaps. Tennyson has himself withdrawn some of them. I

remember W., when he dined with me, used on leaving to change his silk

stockings in the anteroom and put on grey worsted.

_J. M._—I once said to M. Arnold that I’d rather have been Wordsworth than

anybody [not exactly a modest ambition]; and Arnold, who knew him well in

the Grasmere country, said, “Oh no, you would not; you would wish you were

dining with me at the Athenæum. He was too much of the peasant for you.”

_Mr. G._—No, I never felt that; I always thought him a polite and an

amiable man.

Mentioned Macaulay’s strange judgment in a note in the _History_, that

Dryden’s famous lines,

“... Fool’d with hope, men favour the deceit;

Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.

To-morrow’s falser than the former day;

Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest

With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.

Strange cozenage!...”

are as fine as any eight lines in Lucretius. Told him of an excellent

remark of —— on this, that Dryden’s passage wholly lacks the mystery and

great superhuman air of Lucretius. Mr. G. warmly agreed.

He regards it as a remarkable sign of the closeness of the church of

England to the roots of life and feeling in the country, that so many

clergymen should have written so much good poetry. Who, for instance? I

asked. He named Heber, Moultrie, Newman (_Dream of Gerontius_), and Faber

in at least one good poem, “The poor Labourer” (or some such title),

Charles Tennyson. I doubt if this thesis has much body in it. He was for

Shelley as the most musical of all our poets. I told him that I had once

asked M. to get Tennyson to write an autograph line for a friend of mine,

and Tennyson had sent this:—

“Coldly on the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day.”

So I suppose the poet must think well of it himself. ’Tis (M173) from the

second _Locksley Hall_, and describes a man after passions have gone cool.

_Mr. G._—Yes, in melody, in the picturesque, and as apt simile, a fine

line.

Had been trying his hand at a translation of his favourite lines of

Penelope about Odysseus. Said that, of course, you could translate similes

and set passages, but to translate Homer as a whole, impossible. He was

inclined, when all is said, to think Scott the nearest approach to a

model.

_Monday, Jan. 4._—At luncheon, Mr. Gladstone recalled the well-known story

of Talleyrand on the death of Napoleon. The news was brought when T.

chanced to be dining with Wellington. “Quel événement!” they all cried.

“Non, ce n’est pas un événement,” said Talleyrand, “c’est une

nouvelle”—’Tis no event, ’tis a piece of news. “Imagine such a way,” said

Mr. G., “of taking the disappearance of that colossal man! Compare it with

the opening of Manzoni’s ode, which makes the whole earth stand still. Yet

both points of view are right. In one sense, the giant’s death was only

news; in another, when we think of his history, it was enough to shake the

world.” At the moment, he could not recall Manzoni’s words, but at dinner

he told me that he had succeeded in piecing them together, and after

dinner he went to his room and wrote them down for me on a piece of paper.

Curiously enough, he could not recall the passage in his own splendid

translation.(295)

Talk about handsome men of the past; Sidney Herbert one of the handsomest

and most attractive. But the Duke of Hamilton bore away the palm, as

glorious as a Greek god. “One day in Rotten Row, I said this to the

Duchess of C. She set up James Hope-Scott against my Duke. No doubt he had

an intellectual element which the Duke lacked.” Then we discussed the

best-looking man in the H. of C. to-day....

_Duke of Wellington._—Somebody was expatiating on the incomparable

position of the Duke; his popularity with kings, with nobles, with common

people. Mr. G. remembered that immediately after the formation of

Canning’s government in 1827, when it was generally thought that he had

been most unfairly and factiously treated (as Mr. G. still thinks, always

saving Peel) by the Duke and his friends, the Duke made an expedition to

the north of England, and had an overwhelming reception. Of course, he was

then only twelve years from Waterloo, and yet only four or five years

later he had to put up his iron shutters.

Approved a remark that a friend of ours was not simple enough, not ready

enough to take things as they come.

_Mr. G._—Unless a man has a considerable gift for taking things as they

come, he may make up his mind that political life will be sheer torment to

him. He must meet fortune in all its moods.

_Tuesday, Jan. 5._—After dinner to-day, Mr. G. extraordinarily gay. He had

bought a present of silver for his wife. She tried to guess the price, and

after the manner of wives in such a case, put the figure provokingly low.

Mr. G. then put on the deprecating air of the tradesman with wounded

feelings—and it was as capital fun as we could desire. That over, he fell

to his backgammon with our host.

_Wednesday, Jan. 6._—Mrs. Gladstone eighty to-day! What a marvel....

Léon Say called to see Mr. G. Long and most interesting conversation about

all sorts of aspects of French politics, the concordat, the schools, and

all the rest of it.

He illustrated the ignorance of French peasantry as to current affairs.

Thiers, long after he had become famous, went on a visit to his native

region; and there met a friend of his youth. “Eh bien,” said his friend,

“tu as fait ton chemin.” “Mais oui, j’ai fait un peu mon chemin. J’ai été

ministre même.” “Ah, tiens! je ne savais pas que tu étais protestant.”

I am constantly struck by his solicitude for the well-being and right

doing of Oxford and Cambridge—“the two eyes of the country.” This

connection between the higher education and the general movement of the

national mind engages his profound attention, and no doubt deserves such

attention (M174) in any statesman who looks beyond the mere surface

problems of the day. To perceive the bearings of such matters as these,

makes Mr. G. a statesman of the highest class, as distinguished from men

of clever expedients.

Mr. G. had been reading the Greek epigrams on religion in Mackail; quoted

the last of them as illustrating the description of the dead as the

inhabitants of the more populous world:—

τῶν ἄπο κὴν ζωοῖσιν ἀκηδέα, κευτ᾽ ἄν ἵκηαι

ὲς πλεόνων, ἕξεις θυμὸν ἐλαφρότερον.(296)

A more impressive epigram contains the same thought, where the old man,

leaning on his staff, likens himself to the withered vine on its dry pole,

and goes on to ask himself what advantage it would be to warm himself for

three or four more years in the sun; and on that reflection without

heroics put off his life, and changed his home to the greater company,

κὴς πλεόνων ἦλθε μετοικεσίην.

All the rest of the evening he kept us alive by a stock of infinite

drolleries. A scene of a dish of over-boiled tea at West Calder after a

meeting, would have made the fortune of a comedian.

I said that in the all-important quality of co-operation, —— was only good

on condition of being in front. Mr. G. read him in the same sense.

Reminded of a mare he once had—admirable, provided you kept off spur,

curb, or whip; show her one of these things, and she would do nothing. Mr.

G. more of a judge of men than is commonly thought.

Told us of a Chinese despatch which came under his notice when he was at

the board of trade, and gave him food for reflection. A ship laden with

grain came to Canton. The administrator wrote to the central government at

Pekin to know whether the ship was to pay duty and land its cargo. The

answer was to the effect that the central government of the Flowery Land

was quite indifferent as a rule to the goings and comings of the

Barbarians; whether they brought a cargo or brought no cargo was a thing

of supreme unconcern. “But this cargo, you say, is food for the people.

There ought to be no obstacle to the entry of food for the people. So let

it in. Your Younger Brother commends himself to you, etc. etc.”

_Friday, Jan. 8._—A quiet evening. We were all rather piano at the end of

an episode which had been thoroughly delightful. When Mr. G. bade me

good-night, he said with real feeling, “More sorry than I can say that

this is our last evening together at Biarritz.” He is painfully grieved to

lose the sound of the sea in his ears.

_Saturday, Jan. 9._—Strolled about all the forenoon. “What a time of

blessed composure it has been,” said Mr. G. with a heavy sigh. The distant

hills covered with snow, and the voice of the storm gradually swelling.

Still the savage fury of the sea was yet some hours off, so we had to

leave Biarritz without the spectacle of Atlantic rage at its fiercest.

Found comfortable saloon awaiting us at Bayonne, and so under weeping

skies we made our way to Pau. The landscape must be pretty, weather

permitting. As it was, we saw but little. Mr. G. dozed and read Max

Müller’s book on Anthropological Religions.

Arrived at Pau towards 5.30; drenching rain: nothing to be seen.

At tea time, a good little discussion raised by a protest against Dante

being praised for a complete survey of human nature and the many phases of

human lot. Intensity he has, but insight over the whole field of character

and life? Mr. G. did not make any stand against this, and made the curious

admission that Dante was too optimist to be placed on a level with

Shakespeare, or even with Homer.

Then we turned to lighter themes. He had once said to Henry Taylor, “I

should have thought he was the sort of man to have a good strong grasp of

a subject,” speaking of Lord Grey, who had been one of Taylor’s many

chiefs at the Colonial Office. “I should have thought,” replied Taylor

slowly and with a dreamy look, “he was the sort of man to have a good

strong _nip_ of a subject.” Witty, and very applicable to many men.

Wordsworth once gave Mr. G. with much complacency, as an example of his

own readiness and resource, this story. A man came up to him at Rydal and

said, “Do you happen to have seen my wife.” “Why,” replied the Sage, “I

did not know you had a wife!” This peculiarly modest attempt at pointed

repartee much tickled Mr. G., as well it might.

_Tuesday, Jan. 12._—Mr. G. completely recovered from two days of

indisposition. We had about an hour’s talk on things in general, including

policy in the approaching session. He did not expect a dissolution, at the

same time a dissolution would not surprise him.

At noon they started for Périgord and Carcassonne, Nismes, Arles, and so

on to the Riviera full of kind things at our parting.

Chapter VII. The Fourth Administration. (1892-1894)

Τῷ δ᾽ ἤδη δύο μὲν γενεαὶ μερόπων ἀνθρώπων

ἐφθίαθ, οἷ οἱ πρόσθεν ἅμα τράφεν ἠδὲ γένοντο

ἐν Πύλῳ ἠγαθέῃ, μετὰ δὲ τριτάτοισιν ἄνασσεν.

_Iliad_, i. 250.

Two generations of mortal men had he already seen pass away, who

with him of old had been born and bred in sacred Pylos, and among

the third generation he held rule.

I

In 1892 the general election came, after a session that was not very long

nor at all remarkable. Everybody knew that we should soon be dismissed,

and everybody knew that the liberals would have a majority, but the size

of it was beyond prognostication. Mr. Gladstone did not talk much about

it, but in fact he reckoned on winning by eighty or a hundred. A leading

liberal-unionist at whose table we met (May 24) gave us forty. That

afternoon by the way the House had heard a speech of great power and

splendour. An Irish tory peer in the gallery said afterwards, “That old

hero of yours is a miracle. When he set off in that high pitch, I said

that won’t last. Yet he kept it up all through as grand as ever, and came

in fresher and stronger than when he began.” His sight failed him in

reading an extract, and he asked me to read it for him, so he sat down

amid sympathetic cheers while it was read out from the box.

After listening to a strong and undaunted reply from Mr. Balfour, he asked

me to go with him into the tea-room; he was fresh, unperturbed, and in

high spirits. He told me he had once sat at table with Lord Melbourne, but

regretted that he had never known him. Said that of the sixty men or so

who had been his colleagues in cabinet, the (M175) very easiest and most

attractive was Clarendon. Constantly regretted that he had never met nor

known Sir Walter Scott, as of course he might have done. Thought the

effect of diplomacy to be bad on the character; to train yourself to

practise the airs of genial friendship towards men from whom you are doing

your best to hide yourself, and out of whom you are striving to worm that

which they wish to conceal. Said that he was often asked for advice by

young men as to objects of study. He bade them study and ponder, first,

the history and working of freedom in America; second, the history of

absolutism in France from Louis XIV. to the Revolution. It was suggested

that if the great thing with the young is to attract them to fine types of

character, the Huguenots had some grave, free, heroic figures, and in the

eighteenth century Turgot was the one inspiring example: when Mill was in

low spirits, he restored himself by Condorcet’s life of Turgot. This

reminded him that Canning had once praised Turgot in the House of Commons,

though most likely nobody but himself knew anything at all about Turgot.

Talking of the great centuries, the thirteenth, and the sixteenth, and the

seventeenth, Mr. Gladstone let drop what for him seems the remarkable

judgment that “Man as a type has not improved since those great times; he

is not so big, so grand, so heroic as he has been.” This, the reader will

agree, demands a good deal of consideration.

Then he began to talk about offices, in view of what were now pretty

obvious possibilities. After discussing more important people, he asked

whether, after a recent conversation, I had thought more of my own office,

and I told him that I fancied like Regulus I had better go back to the

Irish department. “Yes,” he answered with a flash of his eye, “I think so.

The truth is that we’re both chained to the oar; I am chained to the oar;

you are chained.”

II

The electoral period, when it arrived, he passed once more at Dalmeny. In

a conversation the morning after I was allowed to join him there, he

seemed already to have a grand majority of three figures, to have kissed

hands, and to be installed in Downing Street. This confidence was

indispensable to him. At the end of his talk he went up to prepare some

notes for the speech that he was to make in the afternoon at Glasgow. Just

before the carriage came to take him to the train, I heard him calling

from the library. In I went, and found him hurriedly thumbing the leaves

of a Horace. “Tell me,” he cried, “can you put your finger on the passage

about Castor and Pollux? I’ve just thought of something; Castor and Pollux

will finish my speech at Glasgow.” “Isn’t it in the Third Book?” said I.

“No, no; I’m pretty sure it is in the First Book”—busily turning over the

pages. “Ah, here it is,” and then he read out the noble lines with

animated modulation, shut the book with a bang, and rushed off exultant to

the carriage. This became one of the finest of his perorations.(297) His

delivery of it that afternoon, they said, was most majestic—the picture of

the wreck, and then the calm that gradually brought down the towering

billows to the surface of the deep, entrancing the audience like magic.

Then came a depressing week. The polls flowed in, all day long, day after

day. The illusory hopes of many months faded into night. The three-figure

majority by the end of the week had vanished so completely, that one

wondered how it could ever have been thought of. On July 13 his own

Midlothian poll was declared, and instead of his old majority of 4000, or

the 3000 on which he counted, he was only in by 690. His chagrin was

undoubtedly intense, for he had put forth every atom of his strength in

the campaign. But with that splendid suppression of vexation which is one

of the good lessons that men learn in public life, he put a brave face on

it, was perfectly cheery all through the luncheon, and afterwards took me

to the music-room, where instead of constructing a triumphant cabinet with

a majority of a hundred, he had to try to adjust an Irish policy to a

parliament with hardly a majority at all. These topics exhausted, with a

curiously quiet gravity of tone he told me (M176) that cataract had formed

over one eye, that its sight was gone, and that in the other eye he was

infested with a white speck. “One white speck,” he said, almost laughing,

“I can do with, but if the one becomes many, it will be a bad business.

They tell me that perhaps the fresh air of Braemar will do me good.” To

Braemar the ever loyal Mr. Armitstead piloted them, in company with Lord

Acton of whose society Mr. Gladstone could never have too much.

III

It has sometimes been made a matter of blame by friends no less than foes,

that he should have undertaken the task of government, depending on a

majority not large enough to coerce the House of Lords. One or two short

observations on this would seem to be enough. How could he refuse to try

to work his Irish policy through parliament, after the bulk of the Irish

members had quitted their own leader four years before in absolute

reliance on the sincerity and good faith of Mr. Gladstone and his party?

After all the confidence that Ireland had shown in him at the end of 1890,

how could he in honour throw up the attempt that had been the only object

of his public life since 1886? To do this would have been to justify

indeed the embittered warnings of Mr. Parnell in his most reckless hour.

How could either refusal of office or the postponement of an Irish bill

after taking office, be made intelligible in Ireland itself? Again, the

path of honour in Ireland was equally the path of honour and of safety in

Great Britain. Were British liberals, who had given him a majority, partly

from disgust at Irish coercion, partly from faith that he could produce a

working plan of Irish government, and partly from hopes of reforms of

their own—were they to learn that their leaders could do nothing for any

of their special objects?

Mr. Gladstone found some consolation in a precedent. In 1835, he argued,

“the Melbourne government came in with a British minority, swelled into a

majority hardly touching thirty by the O’Connell contingent of forty. And

they staid in for six years and a half, the longest lived government since

Lord Liverpool’s.(298) But the Irish were under the command of a master;

and Ireland, scarcely beginning her political life, had to be content with

small mercies. Lastly, that government was rather slack, and on this

ground perhaps could not well be taken as a pattern.” In the present case,

the attitude of the Parnellite group who continued the schism that began

in the events of the winter of 1890, was not likely to prove a grave

difficulty in parliament, and in fact it did not. The mischief here was in

the effect of Irish feuds upon public opinion in the country. As Mr.

Gladstone put it in the course of a letter that he had occasion to write

to me (November 26, 1892):—

Until the schism arose, we had every prospect of a majority

approaching those of 1868 and 1880. With the death of Mr. Parnell

it was supposed that it must perforce close. But this expectation

has been disappointed. The existence and working of it have to no

small extent puzzled and bewildered the English people. They

cannot comprehend how a quarrel, to them utterly unintelligible

(some even think it discreditable), should be allowed to divide

the host in the face of the enemy; and their unity and zeal have

been deadened in proportion. Herein we see the main cause why our

majority is not more than double what it actually numbers, and the

difference between these two scales of majority represents, as I

apprehend, the difference between power to carry the bill as the

Church and Land bills were carried into law, and the default of

such power. The main mischief has already been done; but it

receives additional confirmation with the lapse of every week or

month.

In forming his fourth administration Mr. Gladstone found one or two

obstacles on which he had not reckoned, and perhaps could not have been

expected to reckon. By that forbearance of which he was a master, they

were in good time surmounted. New men, of a promise soon amply fulfilled,

were taken in, including, to Mr. Gladstone’s own particular satisfaction,

the son of the oldest (M177) of all the surviving friends of his youth,

Sir Thomas Acland.(299)

Mr. Gladstone remained as head of the government for a year and a few

months (Aug. 1892 to March 3, 1894). In that time several decisions of

pith and moment were taken, one measure of high importance became law,

operations began against the Welsh establishment, but far the most

conspicuous biographic element of this short period was his own

incomparable display of power of every kind in carrying the new bill for

the better government of Ireland through the House of Commons.

In foreign affairs it was impossible that he should forget the case of

Egypt. Lord Salisbury in 1887 had pressed forward an arrangement by which

the British occupation was under definite conditions and at a definite

date to come to an end. If this convention had been accepted by the

Sultan, the British troops would probably have been home by the time of

the change of government in this country. French diplomacy, however, at

Constantinople, working as it might seem against its own professed aims,

hindered the ratification of the convention, and Lord Salisbury’s policy

was frustrated. Negotiations did not entirely drop, and they had not

passed out of existence when Lord Salisbury resigned. In the autumn of

1892 the French ambassador addressed a friendly inquiry to the new

government as to the reception likely to be given to overtures for

re-opening the negotiations. The answer was that if France had suggestions

to offer, they would be received in the same friendly spirit in which they

were tendered. When any communications were received, Mr. Gladstone said

in the House of Commons, there would be no indisposition on our part to

extend to them our friendly consideration. Of all this nothing came. A

rather serious ministerial crisis in Egypt in January 1893, followed by a

ministerial crisis in Paris in April, arrested whatever projects of

negotiation France may have entertained.(300)

IV

In December (1892), at Hawarden, Mr. Gladstone said to me one day after we

had been working for five or six hours at the heads of the new Home Rule

bill, that his general health was good and sound, but his sight and his

hearing were so rapidly declining, that he thought he might almost any day

have to retire from office. It was no moment for banal deprecation. He sat

silently pondering this vision in his own mind, of coming fate. It seemed

like Tennyson’s famous simile—

So dark a forethought rolled about his brain,

As on a dull day in an ocean cave

The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall

In silence.

It would have been preternatural if he had shown the same overwhelming

interest that had animated him when the Irish policy was fresh in 1886.

Yet the instinct of a strong mind and the lifelong habit of ardent

industry carried him through his Sisyphean toil. The routine business of

head of a government he attended to, with all his usual assiduity, and in

cabinet he was clear, careful, methodical, as always.

The preparation of the bill was carefully and elaborately worked by Mr.

Gladstone through an excellent committee (M178) of the cabinet.(301) Here

he was acute, adroit, patient, full of device, expedient, and the art of

construction; now and then vehement and bearing down like a three-decker

upon craft of more modest tonnage. But the vehemence was rare, and here as

everywhere else he was eager to do justice to all the points and arguments

of other people. He sought opportunities of deliberation in order to

deliberate, and not under that excellent name to cultivate the art of the

harangue, or to overwork secondary points, least of all to treat the many

as made for one. That is to say, he went into counsel for the sake of

counsel, and not to cajole, or bully, or insist on his own way because it

was his own way. In the high article of finance, he would wrestle like a

tiger. It was an intricate and difficult business by the necessity of the

case, and among the aggravations of it was the discovery at one point that

a wrong figure had been furnished to him by some department. He declared

this truly heinous crime to be without a precedent in his huge experience.

The crucial difficulty was the Irish representation at Westminster. In the

first bill of 1886, the Irish members were to come no more to the imperial

parliament, except for one or two special purposes. The two alternatives

to the policy of exclusion were either inclusion of the Irish members for

all purposes, or else their inclusion for imperial purposes only. In his

speech at Swansea in 1887, Mr. Gladstone favoured provisional inclusion,

without prejudice to a return to the earlier plan of exclusion if that

should be recommended by subsequent experience.(302) In the bill now

introduced (Feb. 13, 1893), eighty representatives from Ireland were to

have seats at Westminster, but they were not to vote upon motions or bills

expressly confined to England or Scotland, and there were other

limitations. This plan was soon found to be wholly intolerable to the

House of Commons. Exclusion having failed, and inclusion of reduced

numbers for limited purposes having failed, the only course left open was

what was called _omnes omnia_, or rather the inclusion of eighty Irish

members, with power of voting on all purposes.

Each of the three courses was open to at least one single, but very

direct, objection. Exclusion, along with the exaction of revenue from

Ireland by the parliament at Westminster, was taxation without

representation. Inclusion for all purposes was to allow the Irish to

meddle in our affairs, while we were no longer to meddle in theirs.

Inclusion for limited purposes still left them invested with the power of

turning out a British government by a vote against it on an imperial

question. Each plan, therefore, ended in a paradox. There was a fourth

paradox, namely, that whenever the British supporters of a government did

not suffice to build up a decisive majority, then the Irish vote

descending into one or other scale of the parliamentary balance might

decide who should be our rulers. This paradox—the most glaring of them

all—habit and custom have made familiar, and familiarity might almost seem

to have actually endeared it to us. In 1893 Mr. Gladstone and his

colleagues thought themselves compelled to change clause 9 of the new

bill, just as they had thought themselves forced to drop clause 24 of the

old bill.

V

It was Mr. Gladstone’s performances in the days of committee on the bill,

that stirred the wonder and admiration of the House. If he had been fifty

they would have been astonishing; at eighty-four they were indeed a

marvel. He made speeches of powerful argument, of high constitutional

reasoning, of trenchant debating force. No emergency arose for which he

was not ready, no demand that his versatility was not adequate to meet.

His energy never flagged. When the bill came on, he would put on his

glasses, pick up the paper of amendments, and running through them like

lightning, would say, “Of course, that’s absurd—that will never do—we can

never accept that—is there any harm in this?” Too many concessions made on

the spur of the (M179) moment to the unionists stirred resentment in the

nationalists, and once or twice they exploded. These rapid splendours of

his had their perils. I pointed out to him the pretty obvious drawbacks of

settling delicate questions as we went along with no chance of sounding

the Irishmen, and asked him to spare me quarter of an hour before

luncheon, when the draftsman and I, having threshed out the amendments of

the day, could put the bare points for his consideration. He was horrified

at the very thought. “Out of the question. Do you want to kill me? I must

have the whole of the morning for general government business. Don’t ask

me.”(303)

Obstruction was freely practised and without remorse. The chief fighting

debater against the government made a long second-reading speech, on the

motion that the clause stand part of the bill. A little before eight

o’clock when the fighting debater was winding up, Mr. Gladstone was

undecided about speaking. “What do you advise?” he asked of a friend. “I

am afraid it will take too much out of you,” the friend replied; “but

still, speak for twenty minutes and no more.” Up he rose, and for half an

hour a delighted House was treated to one of the most remarkable

performances that ever was known. “I have never seen Mr. Gladstone,” says

one observer, “so dramatic, so prolific of all the resources of the

actor’s art. The courage, the audacity, and the melodrama of it were

irresistible” (May 11).

For ten minutes, writes another chronicler, Mr. Gladstone spoke,

holding his audience spell-bound by his force. Then came a sudden

change, and it seemed that he was about to collapse from sheer

physical exhaustion. His voice failed, huskiness and

indistinctness took the place of clearness and lucidity. Then

pulling himself together for a great effort, Mr. Gladstone

pointing the deprecatory finger at Mr. Chamberlain, warned the

Irishmen to beware of him; to watch the fowler who would inveigle

them in his snare. Loud and long rang the liberal cheers. In plain

words he told the unionists that Mr. Chamberlain’s purpose was

none other than obstruction, and he conveyed the intimation with a

delicate expressiveness, a superabundant good feeling, a dramatic

action and a marvellous music of voice that conspired in their

various qualities to produce a _tour de force_. By sheer strength

of enthusiasm and an overflowing wealth of eloquence, Mr.

Gladstone literally conquered every physical weakness and secured

an effect electric in its influence even on seasoned “old hands.”

Amidst high excitement and the sound of cheering that promised

never to die away the House gradually melted into the lobbies. Mr.

Gladstone, exhausted with his effort, chatted to Mr. Morley on the

treasury bench. Except for these two the government side was

deserted, and the conservatives had already disappeared. The

nationalists sat shoulder to shoulder, a solid phalanx. They eyed

the prime minister with eager intent, and as soon as the venerable

statesman rose to walk out of the House, they sprang to their feet

and rent the air with wild hurrahs.

No wonder if the talk downstairs at dinner among his colleagues that

night, all turned upon their chief, his art and power, his union of the

highest qualities of brain and heart with extraordinary practical

penetration, and close watchfulness of incident and trait and personality,

disclosed in many a racy aside and pungent sally. The orator was fatigued,

but full of keen enjoyment. This was one of the three or four occasions

when he was induced not to return to the House after dinner. It had always

been his habit in taking charge of bills to work the ship himself. No

wonder that he held to this habit in this case.

On another occasion ministers had taken ground that, as the debate went

on, everybody saw they could not hold. An official spokesman for the bill

had expressed an opinion, or intention, that, as very speedily appeared,

Irish opposition would not allow to be maintained. There was no great

substance in the point, but even a small dose of humiliation will make a

parliamentary dish as bitter to one side as it is savoury to the other.

The opposition grew more and more radiant, as it grew more certain that

the official spokesman (M180) must be thrown over. The discomfiture of the

ministerialists at the prospect of the public mortification of their

leaders was extreme in the same degree. “I suppose we must give it up,”

said Mr. Gladstone. This was clear; and when he rose, he was greeted with

mocking cheers from the enemy, though the enemy’s chief men who had long

experience of his Protean resources were less confident. Beginning in a

tone of easy gravity and candour, he went on to points of pleasant banter,

got his audience interested and amused and a little bewildered; carried

men with him in graceful arguments on the merits; and finally, with

bye-play of consummate sport, showed in triumph that the concession that

we consented to make was so right and natural, that it must have been

inevitable from the very first. Never were tables more effectively turned;

the opposition watched first with amazement, then with excitement and

delight as children watch a wizard; and he sat down victorious. Not

another word was said or could be said. “Never in all my parliamentary

years,” said a powerful veteran on the front bench opposite, as he passed

behind the Speaker’s chair, “never have I seen so wonderful a thing done

as that.”

The state of the county of Clare was a godsend to the obstructive. Clare

was not at that moment quite as innocent as the garden of Eden before the

fall, but the condition was not serious; it had been twenty times worse

before without occupying the House of Commons five minutes. Now an evening

a week was not thought too much for a hollow debate on disorder in Clare.

It was described as a definite matter of urgent importance, though it had

slept for years, and though three times in succession the judge of assize

(travelling entirely out of his proper business) had denounced the state

of things. It was made to support five votes of censure in eight weeks.

On one of these votes of censure on Irish administration, moved by Mr.

Balfour (March 27), Mr. Gladstone listened to the debate. At 8 we begged

him not to stay and not to take the trouble to speak, so trumpery was the

whole affair. He said he must, if only for five minutes, to show that he

identified himself with his Irish minister. He left to dine, and then

before ten was on his feet, making what Lord Randolph Churchill rightly

called “a most impressive and entrancing speech.” He talked of Pat this

and Michael that, and Father the other, as if he had pondered their cases

for a month, clenching every point with extraordinary strength as well as

consummate ease and grace, and winding up with some phrases of wonderful

simplicity and concentration.

A distinguished member made a motion for the exclusion of Irish cabinet

ministers from their chamber. Mr. Gladstone was reminded on the bench just

before he rose, that the same proposal had been inserted in the Act of

Settlement, and repealed in 1705. He wove this into his speech with a

skill, and amplified confidence, that must have made everybody suppose

that it was a historic fact present every day to his mind. The attention

of a law-officer sitting by was called to this rapid amplification. “I

never saw anything like it in all my whole life,” said the law-officer;

and he was a man who had been accustomed to deal with some of the

strongest and quickest minds of the day as judges and advocates.

One day when a tremendous afternoon of obstruction had almost worn him

down, the adjournment came at seven o’clock. He was haggard and depressed.

On returning at ten we found him making a most lively and amusing speech

upon procedure. He sat down as blithe as dawn. “To make a speech of that

sort,” he said in deprecation of compliment, “a man does best to dine out;

’tis no use to lie on a sofa and think about it.”

Undoubtedly Mr. Gladstone’s method in this long committee carried with it

some disadvantages. His discursive treatment exposed an enormous surface.

His abundance of illustration multiplied points for debate. His fertility

in improvised arguments encouraged improvisation in disputants without the

gift. Mr. Gladstone always supposed that a great theme needs to be

copiously handled, which is perhaps doubtful, and indeed is often an exact

inversion of the true state of things. However that may be, copiousness is

a game at which two can play, as a patriotic opposition now and at other

times has effectually disclosed. Some thought in these days that a man

like Lord Althorp, for (M181) instance, would have given the obstructives

much more trouble in their pursuits than did Mr. Gladstone.

That Mr. Gladstone’s supporters should become restive at the slow motion

of business was natural enough. They came to ministers, calling out for a

drastic closure, as simple tribes might clamour to a rain-maker. It was

the end of June, and with a reasonable opposition conducted in decent good

faith, it was computed that the bill might be through committee in

nineteen days. But the hypothesis of reason and good faith was not thought

to be substantial, and the cabinet resolved on resort to closure on a

scale like that on which it had been used by the late government in the

case of the Crimes Act of 1887, and of the Special Commission. It has been

said since on excellent authority, that without speaking of their good

faith, Mr. Gladstone’s principal opponents were now running absolutely

short of new ammunition, and having used the same arguments and made the

same speeches for so many weeks, they were so worn out that the guillotine

was superfluous. Of these straits, however, there was little evidence. Mr.

Gladstone entered into the operation with a good deal of chagrin. He saw

that the House of Commons in which he did his work and rose to glory was

swiftly fading out of sight, and a new institution of different habits of

responsibility and practice taking its place.

The stage of committee lasted for sixty-three sittings. The whole

proceedings occupied eighty-two. It is not necessary to hold that the time

was too long for the size of the task, if it had been well spent. The

spirit of the debate was aptly illustrated by the plea of a brilliant

tory, that he voted for a certain motion against a principle that he

approved, because he thought the carrying of the motion “would make the

bill more detestable.” Opposition rested on a view of Irish character and

Irish feeling about England, that can hardly have been very deeply thought

out, because ten years later the most bitter opponents of the Irish claim

launched a policy, that was to make Irish peasants direct debtors to the

hated England to the tune of one hundred million pounds, and was to

dislodge by imperial cash those who were persistently called the only

friends of the imperial connection. The bill passed its second reading by

347 against 304, or a majority of 43. In some critical divisions, the

majority ran down to 27. The third reading was carried by 301 against 267,

or a majority of 34. It was estimated that excluding the Irish, there was

a majority against the bill of 23. If we counted England and Wales alone,

the adverse majority was 48. When it reached them, the Lords incontinently

threw it out. The roll of the Lords held 560 names, beyond the peers of

the royal house. Of this body of 560, no fewer than 419 voted against the

bill, and only 41 voted for it.

VI

The session was protracted until it became the longest in the history of

parliament. The House was sitting when Mr. Gladstone’s eighty-fourth

birthday arrived. “Before putting a question,” said Mr. Balfour in a tone

that, after the heat and exasperations of so many months, was refreshing

to hear, “perhaps the right honourable gentleman will allow me, on my own

part and on that of my friends, to offer him our most sincere

congratulations.” “Allow me to thank him,” said Mr. Gladstone, “for his

great courtesy and kindness.” The government pressed forward and carried

through the House of Commons a measure dealing with the liability of

employers for accidents, and a more important measure setting up elective

bodies for certain purposes in parishes. Into the first the Lords

introduced such changes as were taken to nullify all the advantages of the

bill, and the cabinet approved of its abandonment. Into the second they

forced back certain provisions that the Commons had with full deliberation

decisively rejected.

Mr. Gladstone was at Biarritz, he records, when this happened in January

of 1894. He had gone there to recruit after the incomparable exertions of

the session, and also to consider at a cool distance and in changed scenes

other topics that had for some weeks caused him some agitation. He now

thought that there was a decisive case against the House of Lords. Apart

from the Irish bill to which the (M182) Commons had given eighty-two days,

the Lords had maimed the bill for parish councils, to which had gone the

labour of forty-one days. Other bills they had mutilated or defeated. Upon

the whole, he argued, it was not too much to say that for practical

purposes the Lords had destroyed the work of the House of Commons,

unexampled as that work was in the time and pains bestowed upon it. “I

suggested dissolution to my colleagues in London, where half, or more than

half, the cabinet were found at the moment. I received by telegraph a

hopelessly adverse reply.” Reluctantly he let the idea drop, always

maintaining, however, that a signal opportunity had been lost. Even in my

last conversation with him in 1897, he held to his text that we ought to

have dissolved at this moment. The case, he said, was clear, thorough, and

complete. As has been already mentioned, there were four occasions on

which he believed that he had divined the right moment for a searching

appeal to public opinion on a great question.(304) The renewal of the

income tax in 1853 was the first; the proposal of religious equality for

Ireland in 1868 was the second; home rule was the third, and here he was

justified by the astonishing and real progress that he had made up to the

catastrophe at the end of 1890. The fourth case was this, of a dissolution

upon the question of the relations of the two Houses.

Chapter VIII. Retirement From Public Life. (1894)

O, ’tis a burden, Cromwell, ’tis a burden

Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven.

_Henry VIII._ iii. 2.

I

“Politics,” wrote Mr. Gladstone in one of his private memoranda in March

1894, “are like a labyrinth, from the inner intricacies of which it is

even more difficult to find the way of escape, than it was to find the way

into them. My age did something but not enough. The deterioration of my

hearing helped, but insufficiently. It is the state of my sight which has

supplied me with effectual aid in exchanging my imperious public

obligations for what seems to be a free place on ‘the breezy common of

humanity.’ And it has only been within the last eight months, or

thereabouts, that the decay of working sight has advanced at such a pace

as to present the likelihood of its becoming stringently operative at an

early date. It would have been very difficult to fix that date at this or

that precise point, without the appearance of making an arbitrary choice;

but then the closing of the parliamentary session (1893-4) offered a

natural break between the cessation and renewal of engagements, which was

admirably suited to the design. And yet I think it, if not certain, yet

very highly probable at the least, that any disposition of mine to profit

by this break would—but for the naval scheme of my colleagues in the naval

estimates—have been frustrated by their desire to avoid the inconveniences

of a change, and by the pressure which they would have brought to bear

upon me in consequence. The effect of that scheme was not to bring about

the construction of an artificial cause, or pretext rather, of

resignation, but to compel me to act upon one that was rational,

sufficient, and ready to hand.”

This is the short, plain, and intelligible truth as to what now happened.

There can be no reason to-day for not stating what was for a long time

matter of common surmise, if not of common knowledge, that Mr. Gladstone

did not regard the naval estimates, opened but not settled in December

1893, as justified by the circumstances of the time. He made a speech that

month in parliament in reply to a motion from the front bench opposite,

and there he took a position undoubtedly antagonistic to the new scheme

that found favour with his cabinet, though not with all its members. The

present writer is of course not free to go into details, beyond those that

anybody else not a member of the cabinet would discover from Mr.

Gladstone’s papers. Nor does the public lose anything of real interest by

this necessary reserve. Mr. Gladstone said he wished to make me “his

depositary” as things gradually moved on, and he wrote me a series of

short letters from day to day. If they could be read aloud in Westminster

Hall, no harm would be done either to surviving colleagues or to others;

they would furnish no new reason for thinking either better or worse of

anybody; and no one with a decent sense of the value of time would concern

himself in all the minor detail of an ineffectual controversy. The central

facts were simple. Two things weighed with him, first his infirmities, and

second his disapproval of the policy. How, he asked himself, could he turn

his back on his former self by becoming a party to swollen expenditure?

True he had changed from conservative to liberal in general politics, but

when he was conservative, that party was the economic party, “Peel its

leader being a Cobdenite.” To assent to this new outlay in time of peace

was to revolutionise policy. Then he would go on—“Owing to the part which

I was drawn to take, first in Italy, then as to Greece, then on the

eastern question, I have come to be considered not only an English but a

European statesman. My name stands in Europe as a symbol of the policy of

peace, moderation, and non-aggression. What would be said of my active

participation in a policy that will be taken as plunging England into the

whirlpool of militarism? Third, I have been in active public life for a

period nearly as long as the time between the beginning of Mr. Pitt’s

first ministry and the close of Sir Robert Peel’s; between 1783 and

1846—sixty-two years and a half. During that time I have uniformly opposed

militarism.” Thus he would put his case.

After the naval estimates were brought forward, attempts were naturally

made at accommodation, for whether he availed himself of the end of the

session as a proper occasion of retirement or not, he was bound to try to

get the estimates down if he could. He laboured hard at the task of

conversion, and though some of his colleagues needed no conversion, with

the majority he did not prevail. He admitted that he had made limited

concessions to scares in 1860 and in 1884, and that he had besides been

repeatedly responsible for extraordinary financial provisions having

reference to some crisis of the day:—

I did this, (1) By a preliminary budget in 1854; (2) By the final

budget of July 1859; by the vote of credit in July 1870; and again

by the vote of credit in 1884. Every one of these was special, and

was shown in each case respectively to be special by the sequel:

no one of them had reference to the notion of establishing

dominant military or even naval power in Europe. Their amounts

were various, but were adapted to the view taken, at least by me,

of the exigency actually present.(305)

II

While the House after so many months of toil was still labouring manfully

upon English bills, two of them of no secondary importance, it was decided

by his family and their advisers that Mr. Gladstone should again try the

effects of Biarritz, and thither they went on January 13. Distance,

however, could not efface from his mind all thought of the decision that

the end of the session would exact from him. (M183) Rumours began to fly

about in London that the prime minister upon his return intended to

resign, and they were naturally clad with intrinsic probability. From

Biarritz a communication was made to the press with his authority. It was

to this effect, that the statement that Mr. Gladstone had definitely

decided, or had decided at all, on resigning office was untrue. It was

true that for many months past his age and the condition of his sight and

hearing had in his judgment made relief from public cares desirable, and

that accordingly his tenure of office had been at any moment liable to

interruption from these causes, in their nature permanent.

Nature meanwhile could not set back the shadow on the dial. On his coming

back from Biarritz (February 10) neither eyes nor ears were better. How

should they be at eighty-five? The session was ending, the prorogation

speech was to be composed, and the time had come for that “natural break”

between the cessation and renewal of his official obligations, of which we

have already heard him speak. His colleagues carried almost to importunity

their appeals to him to stay; to postpone what one of them called, and

many of them truly felt to be, this “moment of anguish.” The division of

opinion on estimates remained, but even if that could have been bridged,

his sight and hearing could not be made whole. The rational and sufficient

cause of resignation, as he only too justly described it, was strong as

ever. Whether if the cabinet had come to his view on estimates, he would

in spite of his great age and infirmities have come to their view of the

importance of his remaining, we cannot tell. According to his wont, he

avoided decision until the time had come when decision was necessary, and

then he made up his mind, “without the appearance of an arbitrary choice,”

that the time had come for accepting the natural break, and quitting

office.

On Feb. 27, arriving in the evening at Euston from Ireland, I found a

messenger with a note from Mr. Gladstone begging me to call on my way

home. I found him busy as usual at his table in Downing Street. “I suppose

’tis the long habit of a life,” he said cheerily, “but even in the midst

of these passages, if ever I have half or quarter of an hour to spare, I

find myself turning to my Horace translation.” He said the prorogation

speech would be settled on Thursday; the Queen would consider it on

Friday; the council would be held on Saturday, and on that evening or

afternoon he should send in his letter of resignation.

The next day he had an audience at Buckingham Palace, and indirectly

conveyed to the Queen what she might soon expect to learn from him. His

rigorous sense of loyalty to colleagues made it improper and impossible to

bring either before the Queen or the public his difference of judgment on

matters for which his colleagues, not he, would be responsible, and on

which they, not he, would have to take action. He derived certain

impressions at his audience, he told me, one of them being that the

Sovereign would not seek his advice as to a successor.

He wrote to inform the Prince of Wales of the approaching event:—

In thus making it known to your royal Highness, he concluded, I

desire to convey, on my own and my wife’s part our fervent thanks

for the unbounded kindness which we have at all times received

from your royal Highness and not less from the beloved Princess of

Wales. The devotion of an old man is little worth; but if at any

time there be the smallest service which by information or

suggestion your royal Highness may believe me capable of

rendering, I shall remain as much at your command as if I had

continued to be an active and responsible servant of the Queen. I

remain with heartfelt loyalty and gratitude, etc.

The Prince expressed his sincere regret, said how deeply the Princess and

he were touched by the kind words about them, and how greatly for a long

number of years they had valued his friendship and that of Mrs. Gladstone.

Mr. Balfour, to whom he also confidentially told the news, communicated

among other graceful words, “the special debt of gratitude that was due to

him for the immense public service he had performed in fostering and

keeping alive the great traditions of the House of Commons.” The day after

that (March 1) was his last cabinet council, and a painful day it (M184)

was. The business of the speech and other matters were discussed as usual,

then came the end. In his report to the Queen—his last—he said:—

Looking forward to the likelihood that this might be the last

occasion on which Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues might meet in

the cabinet, Lord Kimberley and Sir William Harcourt on their own

part and on that of the ministers generally, used words

undeservedly kind of acknowledgment and farewell. Lord Kimberley

will pray your Majesty to appoint a council for Saturday, at as

early an hour as may be convenient.

Mr. Gladstone sat composed and still as marble, and the emotion of the

cabinet did not gain him for an instant. He followed the “words of

acknowledgment and farewell” in a little speech of four or five minutes,

his voice unbroken and serene, the tone low, grave, and steady. He was

glad to know that he had justification in the condition of his senses. He

was glad to think that notwithstanding difference upon a public question,

private friendships would remain unaltered and unimpaired. Then hardly

above a breath, but every accent heard, he said “God bless you all.” He

rose slowly and went out of one door, while his colleagues with minds

oppressed filed out by the other. In his diary he enters—“A really moving

scene.”

A little later in the afternoon he made his last speech in the House of

Commons. It was a vigorous assault upon the House of Lords. His mind had

changed since the day in September 1884 when he had declared to an

emissary from the court that he hated organic change in the House of

Lords, and would do much to avert that mischief.(306) Circumstances had

now altered the case; we had come to a more acute stage. Were they to

accept the changes made by the Lords in the bill for parish councils, or

were they to drop it? The question, he said, is whether the work of the

House of Lords is not merely to modify, but to annihilate the whole work

of the House of Commons, work which has been performed at an amount of

sacrifice—of time, of labour, of convenience, and perhaps of health—but at

any rate an amount of sacrifice totally unknown to the House of Lords. The

government had resolved that great as were the objections to acceptance of

the changes made by the Lords, the arguments against rejection were still

weightier. Then he struck a note of passion, and spoke with rising fire:—

We are compelled to accompany that acceptance with the sorrowful

declaration that the differences, not of a temporary or casual

nature merely, but differences of conviction, differences of

prepossession, differences of mental habit, and differences of

fundamental tendency, between the House of Lords and the House of

Commons, appear to have reached a development in the present year

such as to create a state of things of which we are compelled to

say that, in our judgment, it cannot continue. Sir, I do not wish

to use hard words, which are easily employed and as easily

retorted—it is a game that two can play at—but without using hard

words, without presuming to judge of motives, without desiring or

venturing to allege imputations, I have felt it a duty to state

what appeared to me to be indisputable facts. The issue which is

raised between a deliberative assembly, elected by the votes of

more than 6,000,000 people, and a deliberative assembly occupied

by many men of virtue, by many men of talent, of course with

considerable diversities and varieties, is a controversy which,

when once raised, must go forward to an issue.

Men did not know that they were listening to his last speech, but his

words fell in with the eager humour of his followers around him, and he

sat down amid vehement plaudits. Then when the business was at an end, he

rose, and for the last time walked away from the House of Commons. He had

first addressed it sixty-one years before.

III

The following day (March 2) he busied himself in packing his papers, and

working at intervals on his translation of Horace. He told me that he had

now reason to suppose that the Queen might ask him for advice as to his

successor. After some talk, he said that if asked he should advise her to

send for Lord Spencer. As it happened, his advice was not sought. That

evening he went to Windsor to dine and (M185) sleep. The next day was to

be the council. Here is his memorandum of the last audience on Saturday,

March 3(307):—

As I crossed the quadrangle at 10.20 on my way to St. George’s

Chapel, I met Sir H. Ponsonby, who said he was anxious to speak to

me about the future. He was much impressed with the movement among

a body of members of parliament against having any peer for prime

minister. I signified briefly that I did not think there should be

too ready a submission to such a movement. There was not time to

say a great deal, and I had something serious to say, so we

adjourned the conversation till half past eleven, when I should

return from St. George’s.

He came at that time and opened on the same lines, desiring to

obtain from me whatever I thought proper to say as to persons in

the arrangements for the future. I replied to him that this was in

my view a most serious matter. All my thoughts on it were

absolutely at the command of the Queen. And I should be equally at

his command, if he inquired of me from her and in her name; but

that otherwise my lips must be sealed. I knew from him that he was

in search of information to report to the Queen, but this was a

totally different matter.

I entered, however, freely on the general question of the movement

among a section of the House of Commons. I thought it impossible

to say at the moment, but I should not take for granted that it

would be formidable or regard it as _in limine_ disposing of the

question. Up to a certain point, I thought it a duty to strengthen

the hands of our small minority and little knot of ministers in

the Lords, by providing these ministers with such weight as

attaches to high office. All this, or rather all that touched the

main point, namely the point of a peer prime minister, he without

doubt reported.

The council train came down and I joined the ministers in the

drawing-room. I received various messages as to the time when I

was to see the Queen, and when it would be most convenient to me.

I interpret this variety as showing that she was nervous. It ended

in fixing the time after the council and before luncheon. I

carried with me a box containing my resignation, and, the council

being over, handed it to her immediately, and told her that it

contained my tender of resignation. She asked whether she ought

then to read it. I said there was nothing in the letter to require

it. It repeated my former letter of notice, with the requisite

additions.

I must notice what, though slight, supplied the only incident of

any interest in this perhaps rather memorable audience, which

closed a service that would reach to fifty-three years on

September 3, when I was sworn privy councillor before the Queen at

Claremont. When I came into the room and came near to take the

seat she has now for some time courteously commanded, I did think

she was going to “break down.” If I was not mistaken, at any rate

she rallied herself, as I thought, by a prompt effort, and

remained collected and at her ease. Then came the conversation,

which may be called neither here nor there. Its only material

feature was negative. There was not one syllable on the past,

except a repetition, an emphatic repetition, of the thanks she had

long ago amply rendered for what I had done, a service of no great

merit, in the matter of the Duke of Coburg, and which I assured

her would not now escape my notice if occasion should arise. There

was the question of eyes and ears, of German _versus_ English

oculists, she believing in the German as decidedly superior. Some

reference to my wife, with whom, she had had an interview and had

ended it affectionately,—and various nothings. No touch on the

subject of the last Ponsonby conversation. Was I wrong in not

tendering orally my best wishes? I was afraid that anything said

by me should have the appearance of _touting_. A departing servant

has some title to offer his hopes and prayers for the future; but

a servant is one who has done, or tried to do, service in the

past. There is in all this a great sincerity. There also seems to

be some little mystery as to my own case with her. I saw no sign

of embarrassment or preoccupation. The Empress Frederick was

outside in the corridor. She bade me a most kind and warm

farewell, which I had done nothing to deserve.

The letter tendered to the Queen in the box was this:—

Mr. Gladstone presents his most humble duty to your Majesty. The

close of the session and the approach of a new one have offered

Mr. Gladstone a suitable opportunity for considering the condition

of his sight and hearing, both of them impaired, in relation to

his official obligations. As they now place serious and also

growing obstacles in the way of the efficient discharge of those

obligations, the result has been that he has found it his duty

humbly to tender to your Majesty his resignation of the high

offices which your Majesty has been pleased to intrust to him. His

desire to make this surrender is accompanied with a grateful sense

of the condescending kindnesses, which your Majesty has graciously

shown him on so many occasions during the various periods for

which he has had the honour to serve your Majesty. Mr. Gladstone

will not needlessly burden your Majesty with a recital of

particulars. He may, however, say that although at eighty-four

years of age he is sensible of a diminished capacity for prolonged

labour, this is not of itself such as would justify his praying to

be relieved from the restraints and exigencies of official life.

But his deafness has become in parliament, and even in the

cabinet, a serious inconvenience, of which he must reckon on more

progressive increase. More grave than this, and more rapid in its

growth, is the obstruction of vision which arises from cataract in

both his eyes. It has cut him off in substance from the

newspapers, and from all except the best types in the best lights,

while even as to these he cannot master them with that ordinary

facility and despatch which he deems absolutely required for the

due despatch of his public duties. In other respects than reading

the operation of the complaint is not as yet so serious, but this

one he deems to be vital. Accordingly he brings together these two

facts, the condition of his sight and hearing, and the break in

the course of public affairs brought about in the ordinary way by

the close of the session. He has therefore felt that this is the

fitting opportunity for the resignation which by this letter he

humbly prays your Majesty to accept.

In the course of the day the Queen wrote what I take to be her last letter

to him:—

_Windsor Castle, March 3, 1894._—Though the Queen has already

accepted Mr. Gladstone’s resignation, and has taken leave of him,

she does not like to leave his letter tendering his resignation

unanswered. She therefore writes these few lines to say that she

thinks that after so many years of arduous labour and

responsibility he is right in wishing to be relieved at his age of

these arduous duties. And she trusts he will be able to enjoy

peace and quiet with his excellent and devoted wife in health and

happiness, and that his eyesight may improve.

The Queen would gladly have conferred a peerage on Mr. Gladstone,

but she knows he would not accept it.

His last act in relation to this closing scene of the great official drama

was a letter to General Ponsonby (March 5):—

The first entrance of a man to Windsor Castle in a responsible

character, is a great event in his life; and his last departure

from it is not less moving. But in and during the process which

led up to this transaction on Saturday, my action has been in the

strictest sense sole, and it has required me in circumstances

partly known to harden my heart into a flint. However, it is not

even now so hard, but that I can feel what you have most kindly

written; nor do I fail to observe with pleasure that you do not

speak absolutely in the singular. If there were feelings that made

the occasion sad, such feelings do not die with the occasion. But

this letter must not be wholly one of egotism. I have known and

have liked and admired all the men who have served the Queen in

your delicate and responsible office; and have liked most,

probably because I knew him most, the last of them, that most

true-hearted man, General Grey. But forgive me for saying you are

“to the manner born”; and such a combination of tact and temper

with loyalty, intelligence, and truth I cannot expect to see

again. Pray remember these are words which can only pass from an

old man to one much younger, though trained in a long experience.

It is hardly in human nature, in spite of Charles V., Sulla, and some

other historic persons, to lay down power beyond recall, without a secret

pang. In Prior’s lines that came to the mind of brave Sir Walter Scott, as

he saw the curtain falling on his days,—

The man in graver tragic known,

(Though his best part long since was done,)

Still on the stage desires to tarry....

Unwilling to retire, though weary.

Whether the departing minister had a lingering thought that in the

dispensations of the world, purposes and services would still arise to

which even yet he might one day be summoned, we do not know. Those who

were nearest to him believe not, and assuredly he made no outer sign.

Chapter IX. The Close. (1894-1898)

Natural death is as it were a haven and a rest to us after long

navigation. And the noble Soul is like a good mariner; for he,

when he draws near the port, lowers his sails and enters it softly

with gentle steerage.... And herein we have from our own nature a

great lesson of suavity; for in such a death as this there is no

grief nor any bitterness: but as a ripe apple is lightly and

without violence loosened from its branch, so our soul without

grieving departs from the body in which it hath been.—DANTE,

_Convito_.(308)

I

After the first wrench was over, and an end had come to the demands,

pursuits, duties, glories, of powerful and active station held for a long

lifetime, Mr. Gladstone soon settled to the new conditions of his

existence, knowing that for him all that could be left was, in the figure

of his great Italian poet,“to lower sails and gather in his ropes.”(309)

He was not much in London, and when he came he stayed in the pleasant

retreat to which his affectionate and ever-attached friends, Lord and Lady

Aberdeen, so often invited him at Dollis Hill. Much against his will, he

did not resign his seat in the House, and he held it until the dissolution

of 1895.(310) In June (1895) he took a final cruise in one of Sir Donald

Currie’s ships, visiting Hamburg, the new North Sea canal, and Copenhagen

once more. His injured sight was a far deadlier breach in the habit of his

days than withdrawal from office or from parliament. His own tranquil

words written in the year in which he laid down his part in the shows of

the world’s huge stage, tell the story:—

_July 25, 1894._—For the first time in my life there has been

given to me by the providence of God a period of comparative

leisure, reckoning at the present date to four and a half months.

Such a period drives the mind in upon itself, and invites, almost

constrains, to recollection, and the rendering at least internally

an account of life; further it lays the basis of a habit of

meditation, to the formation of which the course of my existence,

packed and crammed with occupation outwards, never stagnant,

oft-times overdriven, has been extremely hostile. As there is no

life which in its detail does not seem to afford intervals of

brief leisure, or what is termed “waiting” for others engaged with

us in some common action, these are commonly spent in murmurs and

in petulant desire for their termination. But in reality they

supply excellent opportunities for brief or ejaculatory prayer.

As this new period of my life has brought with it my retirement

from active business in the world, it affords a good opportunity

for breaking off the commonly dry daily journal, or ledger as it

might almost be called, in which for seventy years I have recorded

the chief details of my outward life. If life be continued I

propose to note in it henceforward only principal events or

occupations. This first breach since the latter part of May in

this year has been involuntary. When the operation on my eye for

cataract came, it was necessary for a time to suspend all use of

vision. Before that, from the beginning of March, it was only my

out-of-door activity or intercourse that had been paralysed....

For my own part, _suave mari magno_ steals upon me; or at any

rate, an inexpressible sense of relief from an exhausting life of

incessant contention. A great revolution has been operated in my

correspondence, which had for many years been a serious burden,

and at times one almost intolerable. During the last months of

partial incapacity I have not written with my own hand probably so

much as one letter per day. Few people have had a smaller number

of _otiose_ conversations probably than I in the last fifty years;

but I have of late seen more friends and more freely, though

without practical objects in view. Many kind friends have read

books to me; I must place Lady Sarah Spencer at the head of the

proficients in that difficult art; in distinctness of

articulation, with low clear voice, she is supreme. Dearest

Catherine has been my chaplain from morning to morning. My

church-going has been almost confined to mid-day communions, which

have not required my abandonment of the reclining posture for long

periods of time. Authorship has not been quite in abeyance; I have

been able to write what I was not allowed to read, and have

composed two theological articles for the _Nineteenth Century_ of

August and September respectively.(311)

Independently of the days of blindness after the operation, the

visits of doctors have become a noticeable item of demand upon

time. Of physic I incline to believe I have had as much, in 1894

as in my whole previous life. I have learned for the first time

the extraordinary comfort of the aid which the attendance of a

nurse can give. My health will now be matter of little interest

except to myself. But I have not yet abandoned the hope that I may

be permitted to grapple with that considerable armful of work,

which had been long marked out for my old age; the question of my

recovering sight being for the present in abeyance.

_Sept. 13._—I am not yet thoroughly accustomed to my new stage of

existence, in part because the remains of my influenza have not

yet allowed me wholly to resume the habits of health. But I am

thoroughly content with my retirement; and I cast no longing,

lingering look behind. I pass onward from it _oculo irretorto_.

There is plenty of work before me, peaceful work and work directed

to the supreme, _i.e._ the spiritual cultivation of mankind, if it

pleases God to give me time and vision to perform it.

_Oct. 1._—As far as I can at present judge, all the signs of the

eye being favourable, the new form of vision will enable me to get

through in a given time about half the amount of work which would

have been practicable under the old. I speak of reading and

writing work, which have been principal with me when I had the

option. In conversation there is no difference, although there are

various drawbacks in what we call society. On the 20th of last

month when I had gone through my crises of trials, Mr. Nettleship,

[the oculist], at once declared that any further operation would

be superfluous.

I am unable to continue attendance at the daily morning service,

not on account of the eyesight but because I may not rise before

ten at the earliest. And so a Hawarden practice of over fifty

years is interrupted; not without some degree of hope that it may

be resumed. Two evening services, one at 5 P.M. and the other at

7, afford me a limited consolation. I drive almost every day, and

thus grow to my dissatisfaction more burdensome. My walking powers

are limited; once I have exceeded two miles by a little. A large

part of the day remains available at my table; daylight is

especially precious; my correspondence is still a weary weight,

though I have admirable help from children. Upon the whole the

change is considerable. In early and mature life a man walks to

his daily work with a sense of the duty and capacity of

self-provision, a certain αὐτάρκεια [independence] (which the

Greeks carried into the moral world). Now that sense is reversed;

it seems as if I must, God knows how reluctantly, lay burdens upon

others; and as if capacity were, so to speak, dealt out to me

mercifully—but by armfuls.

Old age until the very end brought no grave changes in physical

conditions. He missed sorely his devoted friend, Sir Andrew Clark, to

whose worth as man and skill as healer he had borne public testimony in

May 1894. But for physician’s service there was no special need. His

ordinary life, though of diminished power, suffered little interruption.

“The attitude,” he wrote, “in which I endeavoured to fix myself was that

of a soldier on parade, in a line of men drawn up ready to march and

waiting for the word of command. I sought to be in preparation for prompt

obedience, feeling no desire to go, but on the other hand without

reluctance because firmly convinced that whatever He ordains for us is

best, best both for us and for all.”

He worked with all his old zest at his edition of Bishop Butler, and his

volume of studies subsidiary to Butler. He wrote to the Duke of Argyll

(Dec. 5, 1895):—

I find my Butler a weighty undertaking, but I hope it will be

useful at least for the important improvements of form which I am

making.

It is very difficult to keep one’s temper in dealing with M.

Arnold when he touches on religious matters. His patronage of a

Christianity fashioned by himself is to me more offensive and

trying than rank unbelief. But I try, or seem to myself to try, to

shrink from controversy of which I have had so much. Organic

evolution sounds to me a Butlerish idea, but I doubt if he ever

employed either term, certainly he has not the phrase, and I

cannot as yet identify the passage to which you may refer.

_Dec. 9._—Many thanks for your letter. The idea of evolution is

without doubt deeply ingrained in Butler. The case of the animal

creation had a charm for him, and in his first chapter he opens,

without committing himself, the idea of their possible elevation

to a much higher state. I have always been struck by the glee with

which negative writers strive to get rid of “special creation,” as

if by that method they got the idea of God out of their way,

whereas I know not what right they have to say that the small

increments effected by the divine workman are not as truly special

as the large. It is remarkable that Butler has taken such hold

both on nonconformists in England and outside of England,

especially on those bodies in America which are descended from

English non-conformists.

He made progress with his writings on the Olympian Religion, without

regard to Acton’s warnings and exhortations to read a score of volumes by

learned explorers with uncouth names. He collected a new series of his

_Gleanings_. By 1896 he had got his cherished project of hostel and

library at St. Deiniol’s in Hawarden village, near to its launch. He was

drawn into a discussion on the validity of anglican orders, and even wrote

a letter to Cardinal Rampolla, in his effort to realise the dream of

Christian unity. The Vatican replied in such language as might have been

expected by anybody with less than Mr. Gladstone’s inextinguishable faith

in the virtues of argumentative persuasion. Soon he saw the effects of

Christian disunion upon a bloodier stage. In the autumn of this year he

was roused to one more vehement protest like that twenty years before

against the abominations of Turkish rule, this time in Armenia. He had

been induced to address a meeting in Chester in August 1895, and now a

year later he travelled to Liverpool (Sept. 24) to a non-party gathering

at Hengler’s Circus. He always described this as the place most agreeable

to the speaker of all those with which he was acquainted. “Had I the years

of 1876 upon me,” he said to one of his sons, “gladly would I start

another campaign, even if as long as that.”

To discuss, almost even to describe, the course of his policy and

proceedings in the matter of Armenia, would bring us into a mixed

controversy affecting statesmen now living, who played an unexpected part,

and that controversy may well stand over for another, and let us hope a

very distant, day. Whether we had a right to interfere single-handed;

whether we were bound as a duty to interfere under the Cyprus Convention;

whether our intervention would provoke hostilities on the part of other

Powers and even kindle a general conflagration in Europe; whether our

severance of diplomatic relations with the Sultan or our withdrawal from

the concert of Europe would do any good; what possible form armed

intervention could take—all these are questions on which both liberals and

tories vehemently differed from one another then, and will vehemently

differ again. Mr. Gladstone was bold and firm in his replies. As to the

idea, he said, that all independent action on the part of this great

country was to be made chargeable for producing war in Europe, “that is in

my opinion a mistake almost more deplorable than almost any committed in

the history of diplomacy.” We had a right under the convention. We had a

duty under the responsibilities incurred at Paris in 1856, at Berlin in

1878. The upshot of his arguments at Liverpool was that we should break

off relations with the Sultan; that we should undertake not to turn

hostilities to our private advantage; that we should limit our proceedings

to the suppression of mischief in its aggravated form; and if Europe

threatened us with war it might be necessary to recede, as France had

receded under parallel circumstances from her individual policy on the

eastern question in 1840,—receded without loss either of honour or power,

believing that she had been right and wise and others wrong and unwise.

If Mr. Gladstone had still had, as he puts it, “the years of 1876,” he

might have made as deep a mark. As it was, his speech at Liverpool was his

last great deliverance to a public audience. As the year ended this was

his birthday entry:—