The Right Honorable W. E. Gladstone. A study from life

Preface

The obvious difficulty of writing within the limits of this volume a sketch of the career of Mr. Gladstone is the superabundance of material. The task is akin to that of a builder having had placed at his disposal materials for a palace, with instructions to erect a cottage residence, leaving out nothing essential to the larger plan. I have been content, keeping this condition in mind, rapidly to sketch, in chronological order, the main course of a phenomenally busy life, enriching the narrative wherever possible with autobiographical scraps to be found in the library of Mr. Gladstone's public speeches, supplementing it by personal notes made over a period of twenty years, during which I have had unusual opportunities of studying the subject.

HENRY W. LUCY.

Reform Club,

February, 1895.

Contents

Chapter ^^^^

I. Boyhood ^^

II. His Kinsfolk ' . . . 24!

Chapter I. Boyhood

Op Mr. Gladstone's manifold moods there was none more charming to the House of Commons than that in which he sometimes chatted with it on a Tuesday or a Friday night. This happened in days when such opportunities were still reserved for private members. Neither the Leader of the House nor the Leader of the Opposition had direct concern in what was going forward. Ordinary men in Mr. Gladstone's position would have been glad to make the most of opportunity for comparative rest. For him, Parliamentary debate, of whatever character, was, up to the last, irresistible. Being present, he listened with flattering, even dangerous, interest to whosoever might be speaking, however personally unimportant. The hon. member, chilled by inattention in other parts of the House, might, in Mr. Gladstone's absence, have earlier concluded his remarks. Finding him an attentive, apparently an entranced, listener, he went on to the fullest limits, of his notes.

That was one consequence of conscientious habit on the part of the great Parliamentarian. Another, not infrequent, was that he himself was drawn into the debate, forthwith lifting it to the height of his own stature, luring into the fray other Parliamentary giants who had entered the House innocent of intention to take part in the current proceedings. Complaint was made by stern, unbending business men that debate was thus unnecessarily prolonged. Compensation was forthcoming when, as sometimes happened on these occasions, Mr. Gladstone indulged in a vein of reminiscence, chatting about old times and faded faces. With elbow leaning on the brass-bound box, he spoke, in low conversational tone, of Canning, O'Connell, Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, Cobden, and others whom he had known and worked with in years long past. The scene ever recalled Priam sitting at the Scasan gate in company with the seniors of the Trojan race who —

Leaned on the walls and basked before the sun, Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage, But wise throuofh time and narrative with age, In summer days like grasshoppers rejoice.

This charming lapse into retrospect has sometimes occurred to Mr. Gladstone outside the House of Commons, supplying his future biographer with peeps into his past, of otherwise unattainable precision and graphic force. Born in Liverpool on the 29th of December, 1809, he revisited the city eightythree years later to the very month. It was on the 3rd of December, 1892, a memorable stage in a marvellous career. Once more, after being flung into an apparently bottomless pit, Mr. Gladstone, undismayed, lightly carrying the weight of fourscore years, had, practically single-handed, his worst enemies those of his own household, stubbornly fought his way back to power. Conservative Liverpool, having done its best to defeat the abhorred statesman at the polls, welcomed the honored son, affectionately endowing him with citizenship.

It was the good fortune of the writer to be present on this occasion, as, indeed, he has, with very few exceptions, chanced to be within hearing of all the important speeches made by Mr. Gladstone in Parliament and beyond its doors during the last twenty years. A man of singularly strong affection, Mr. Gladstone has through his long life clung to his native town. " I am hardly a Liverpool man, " he once said, "but I was a Liverpool boy." Standing on the platform in St. George's Hall, facing an enthusiastic crowd, memories of long ago teemed in the brain of the youngest citizen. "Many long years, " he said, in full, rich voice that made music in the furthest recesses of the many-pillared hall, "have separated me from familiarity with the community of Liverpool, and Liverpool herself has, within these years, multiplied and transformed. When my recollections of her were most familiar, she was a town of one hundred thousand persons, and the silver cloud of smoke which floated above her resembled that which might appear over any secondary borough or village of the country. I refer to the period between 1810 and 1820, and it is especially to the latter part of that period that my memory extends. I used as a small boy to look southward along shore from my father's windows at Seaforth to the town. In those days the space between Liverpool and Seaforth was very differently occupied. Four miles of the most beautiful sands that I ever knew offered to the aspirations of the youthful rider the most delightful method of finding access to Liverpool, and he had the other inducement to pursue that road, that there was no other decent avenue to the town. Bootle I remember a wilderness of Sandhills. I have seen wild roses growing upon the very ground which is now the centre of the borough. All that land is now partly covered with residences, and partly with places of business and industry. In my time but one single house stood upon the space between Rimrose brook and the town of Liverpool. I rather think it was associated with the name of Statham, if my memory serves me right, the name of the town clerk of Liverpool."

Here is a marvellous memory. He sees again the solitary house standing between the now long-defiled Rimrose brook and the silver cloud of smoke which lay over the potentialities of Liverpool, and even remembers the name of the resident.

Mr. Gladstone's earliest recorded recollection was of a visit paid in company with his mother to Mrs.

Hannah More. "I believe," he says, "I was four years old at the time, and I remember that she presented me with one of her little books — not uninteresting for children — and that she told me she gave it me because I had just come into the world and she was just going out." Hannah More was born in 1745, the year when Prince Charlie won Edinburgh and triumphed at Prestonpans. Round her cradle there must have been whispered talk of Culloden, an epoch with which that hand-shake with Hannah More linked the greatest figure of the closing years of the nineteenth century.

Mr. Gladstone has personal recollections of a later war which had its Culloden for a far greater soldier than Charles Edward Stuart. He visited Edinburgh when he was five years old, and distinctly remembers hearing the glass in the windows of the Royal Hotel, at which his father stayed, rattle to the roar of the guns of the Castle as they announced one of the steps in the progress of Napoleon to Elba. He does not identify the particular occasion. It was in all probability the surrender of Paris to the allies, which took place on the 31st of March, 1814.

A still earlier reminiscence Mr. Gladstone once confided to me. He told me that, sprawling about on the nursery floor at an age that could not have exceeded eighteen months, he obtained, and at the time he was speaking retained over a lapse of eighty years, a vivid recollection of the pattern of his nurse's dress.

Of another member of the domestic household in Rodney Street, Liverpool, Mr. Gladstone has a charming story. She was a Welsh girl, fresh from her mountain home, and confident that all the universe moved round Snowdon. It was just after Waterloo, and all the talk was of sieges and battles, routs and victories. The patriotic Welsh girl made so clear to the little Liverpool boy the prominent part Wales had played in the Peninsular War, that he never forgot it. "She told me," Mr. Gladstone says in a voice still unconsciously awestruck, "that Sir Watkin Williams Wynn sent millions of men to fight Boney. "

"I am not slow to claim the name of Scotchman,'* Mr. Gladstone told a delighted audience at Dundee during one of the Midlothian Campaigns, " and, even if I were, there is the fact staring me in the face that not a drop of blood runs in my veins except what is derived from Scottish ancestry." Nevertheless, contiguity to Wales, early in life and late, has endeared the Principality to him. "My boyhood," he told an audience gathered at Wirral, " was passed at the mouth of the Mersey in sight of Wales. In those days I was a fervent admirer of Moel Yammau and other Welsh mountains. But as to getting into Wales, as to getting from Liverpool to Birkenhead, that was a formidable affair. You would have to hunt about to hire somebody with a little boat, and he would have had to put off from the Liverpool side and contend with the strong tide of the Mersey as best he could. In point of fact, we used to look across the Mersey in those days from the Lancashire coast to the Cheshire coast very much as a man looks now — or rather perhaps with more sense of distance than a man looks now — from the Cliffs of Dover, or from the pier at Folkestone, across to the Coast of France. "

Here is another glimpse of prehistoric Wales interesting to the sojourner at Rhyl, Llandudno, and the long line of bathing-machine towns that to-day cluster on the north coast. " I remember, " says Mr. Gladstone, "paying my first visit to North Wales, travelling along the North Wales coast as far as Bangor and Carnarvon, when there was no such thing as a watering-place, no such thing as a house to be hired for the purpose of those visits that are now paid by thousands of people to such multitudes of points all along the coast. It was supposed that if ever any body of gentlemen could be found sufficiently energetic to make a railway to Holyhead, that railway could not possibly pierce the country, and must be made along the coast, and, if carried along the coast, could not possibly be made to pay. So firm was that conviction that — I very well recollect the day — a large and important deputation of railway leaders went to London and waited upon Sir Robert Peel, who was then Prime Minister, in order to demonstrate to him that it was totally impossible for them to construct a paying line, and therefore to impress upon his mind the necessity of his agreeing to give them a considerable grant out of the consolidated fund. Sir Robert Peel was a very circumspect statesman, and not least so in those matters in which the public purse was concerned. He encouraged them to take a more sanguine view. Whether he persuaded them into a more sanguine tone of mind I do not know. This I know, the railway was made, and we now understand that this humble railway, this impossible railway, as it was then conceived, is at the present moment the most productive and remunerative part of the whole vast system of the North Western Company."

Mr. Gladstone perfectly remembers the old coaching system, the decay of which before the irresistible advance of the steam engine he speaks of not without regret. " The system was, " he says, " raised to the highest degree of perfection, far exceeding that or anything of the kind to be met with on the Continent." At Eton, between the years 1820 and 1830, he went to and from school and home by coach. The coaches were changed at Birmingham. "Our coach," he says, "used to arrive at Birmingham about three or four o'clock in the morning, when we were turned out into the open street till it might please a new coach with a new equipment to appear. There was no building in the town, great or small, public or private, at that period, upon which it was possible for a rational being to fix his eye with satisfaction. "

Of later date are his recollections of Edinburgh. "I knew Edinburgh in the days of Lord Moncreilf, of Dr. Gordon, of Dr. Thomson, of Bishop Sandford, and of many very remarkable men. I had the honor of having spent many weeks In Edinburgh and its neighborhood with a man whose name will always remain illustrious as perhaps the most distinguished son and greatest ornament of the Presbyterian system — I mean Dr. Chalmers. I have heard Dr. Chalmers preach and lecture, and I think 1 have heard him converse. Being a man entirely of Scotch blood, I am very much attached to Scotland and like even the Scotch accent. But not the Scotch accent of Dr. Chalmers. Undoubtedly in preaching and delivery it was a considerable impediment. Notwithstanding that, it was all overborne by the power of the man in preaching, overborne by his power which melted into harmony with all the adjuncts and incidents of the man as a whole ; so much so that, although I would have said that the accent of Dr. Chalmers was distasteful, yet in Dr. Chalmers himself I would not have altered it in the smallest degree. "

"It is hardly an exaggeration to say," Mr. Gladstone observed, speaking at Dundee in 1890, " that at the time when I was a youth of ten or fifteen years of age, there was hardly anything that was beautiful produced in this country. I remember at a period of my life, when I was about eighteen, I was taken over to see a silk factory in Macclesfield. At that time Mr. Huskisson, whose name ought always to be remembered with respect among all sound economists, and the Government of Lord Liverpool had been making the first efforts, not to break down — that was reserved for their happier followers — but to lessen, to modify, or perhaps I should say to mitigate, a little if possible the protective system. Down to the period of Mr. Huskisson silk handkerchiefs from France were prohibited. They were largely smuggled, and no gentleman went over to Paris without, if he could manage it, bringing back in his pockets, his purse, his portmanteau, his hat, or his great-coat, handkerchiefs and gloves. But Mr. Huskisson carried a law in which, in lieu of this prohibition o£ these French articles, a duty of thirty per cent was imposed on them, and it is in my recollection that there was a keener detestation of Mr. Huskisson, and a more violent passion roused against him in consequence of that mild, initial measure than ever was associated in the other camp, in the Protectionist camp, within the career of Cobden and Bright. I was taken to this manufactory, and they produced the English silk handkerchief they were in the habit of making, and which they thought it cruel to be competed with by the silk handkerchiefs of France, although even before they were allowed to compete the French manufacturer had to pay the fine of thirty per cent on the value. It was in that first visit to a manufactory in Macclesfield that — I will not say I became a Free Trader, for it was ten or fifteen years later when I entered into the full faith of that policy — but from what I saw then there dawned upon my mind the first ray of light. What I thought when they showed me these handkerchiefs was, ' How detestable they really are, and what in the world can be the object of coaxing, nursing, coddling up manufacturers to produce goods such as those which you ought to be ashamed of exhibiting. ' "

Chapter II. His Kinsfolk

Sir Bernard Burke, who has great success in tracing far-reaching lineages for men who achieve greatness, has been able to find the blood of Henry III. of England and Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, in the veins of Mr. Gladstone. Still more interesting, possibly more authentic, is a memorandum I find in a note addressed to me by the late Mr. W. H. Gladstone. Writing from Hawarden Rectory, under date November 13th, 1881, he says: "Through my mother's mother, who was a Neville (Mary, daughter of the second Lord Braybrooke) my father becomes connected with Lord Chatham, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Grenville, former Prime Ministers, and Mr. Windham, former Chancellor of the Exchequer."

Mr. Gladstone's father was a merchant in Liverpool, whither he had gone from Leith, where Thomas Gladstone, grandfather of William, had established himself as a corn-merchant. The Gladstones have, as far as records go, been remarkable for large families. Mr. Gladstone's great-grandfather (who, by the way, spelled his name " Gledstanes '') had eleven children. His fourth son, Thomas, had sixteen ; and it will best indicate the social and commercial position of Mr, Gladstone's grandfather to record the fact that he was able to " do something " for his seven surviving sons as they successively started in business.

John Gladstone, the father of William Ewart, did not hide his talent in a napkin. At an early age he settled in Liverpool as a sort of clerk in the house of Corrie & Co., a firm in which he presently became a partner. When, some sixteen years later, the firm of Corrie, Gladstone & Bradshaw was dissolved, John Gladstone took into partnership his brother Robert, and began with fresh ardor to extend his commercial operations. The new firm were among the earliest traders with Russia, and they snatched at the East India trade when the monopoly of the old East India Company was broken down. But their principal business was with the West Indies, where John Gladstone held large sugar plantations, — a circumstance which, as we shall see, had a good deal to do with moulding the early political career of his illustrious son.

Mr. Gladstone was proudly fond of his father. When he sojourned in St. James's Square in the closing years of his residence in London he had hung up in the dining-room a portrait of his father, brought from Hawarden, one of his few personal possessions in the hired mansion. Speaking about him at Leith, where John Gladstone had served an apprenticeship in his father's office, he said : " I will not dwell at length upon the personal portraiture of my father. I may presume perhaps to say this, that while it is only for the world to look upon him mainly in the light of an active and successful merchant, who, like many merchants of the country, distinguished himself by an energetic philanthropy, so far as his children are concerned, when they think of him they can remember nothing except his extraordinary claims upon their profound gratitude and affection."

In a later year the illustrious son drew this graphic picture of a strong individuality : " His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. He was full of bodily and mental vigor. Whatsoever his hand found to do, he did it with his might. He could not understand or tolerate those who, perceiving an object to be good, did not at once actively pursue it. With all this energy he joined a corresponding warmth and, so to speak, eagerness of affection, a keen appreciation of humor, in which he found a rest, and an indescribable frankness and simplicity of character, which, crowning his own qualities, made him, I think (and I strive to think impartially), nearly, or quite, the most interesting old man I have ever known. "

The Gladstones as a family always had a superabundance of energy, which carried their action beyond the limits of their private concerns. We find some of the earlier heads of the family responsible Kirk elders. John Gladstone, brought into contact at a critical epoch with the active life of a growing community like that of Liverpool, soon mS KINSFOLK. 27

began to take a prominent part in public affairs. When, in 1812, Canning fought a famous election in Liverpool, he threw himself heart and soul into the advocacy of the cause of the great Minister. He addressed public meetings on his behalf, and it was from the balcony of his house in Rodney Street that Mr. Canning spoke to the enthusiastic crowd who, as the result of the election, hailed him Member for Liverpool.

There was in the house at the time a little boy destined to fill a larger space in history even than Canning. William Ewart Gladstone was in his third year at this time, and doubtless from some upper window looked out with wondering eyes on the turbulent crowd, and heard the Minister talking of Catholic Emancipation and other strange matters. In fact, we have his personal testimony on this interesting point. On the 29th December, 1879, on the occasion of his reaching his seventieth year, Mr. Gladstone received at Hawarden a deputation of Liverpool gentlemen, who brought hearty congratulations and a costly present. In the course of his acknowledgment he said : " You have referred to my connection with Liverpool, and it has happened to me singularly enough to have the incidents of my personality, the association of my personality, if I may so speak, curiously divided between the Scotch extraction, which is purely and absolutely Scotch as to every drop of blood in my veins, and, on the other hand, a nativity in Liverpool, which is the scene of my earliest recollections. And very early those recollections are, for I remember, gentlemen, what none of you could possibly recollect : I remember the first election of Mr. Canning in Liverpool."

That was in 1812, a far cry to 1879. The review becomes the more imposing when we reflect what a foremost part Mr. Gladstone had taken in moulding the momentous events that have happened between the two dates. "Washington," he once said, "is to my mind the purest figure in history. " But of all the great men with whom Mr. Gladstone has at one time or another come into personal contact, he probably retained the greatest admiration and reverence for Canning. " I was bred under the shadow of the great name of Canning," he one night told the House of Commons. "Every influence connected with that name governed the politics of my childhood and of my youth. With Canning I rejoiced in the removal of religious disabilities, and in the character which he gave to our policy abroad. With Canning I rejoiced in the opening he made towards the establishment of free commercial interchanges between nations. With Canning, and under the shadow of that great name, and under the shadow of the yet more venerable name of Burke, my youthful mind and imagination were impressed."

John Gladstone entered Parliament some years later. I do not know whether he heard the maiden speech of the member for Newark, but he certainly sat in the same Parliament with his son, and lived long enough to see the magnificent promise of his youth partially realized. In 1845 Sir Robert Peel, partly in recognition of personal merit, doubtless in compliment to the brilliant young colleague who was the bright particular star of his Ministry, made the elder Gladstone a baronet. Six years later, in the year of the Great Exhibition, Sir John died, mourned by troops of friends, full of years and honors and riches.

The title went to Thomas, his eldest son. Whilst he lived no one out of the limits of the county of Kincardine knew or heard of Sir Thomas Gladstone. Sometimes during the Parliamentary Session people passing through the lobby of the House of Commons were startled at the sight of a tall spare figure, with a face singularly like Mr. Gladstone's, if one could imagine it with the fire gone out. A quiet, retiring country gentleman. Sir Thomas Gladstone, on rare visits to London, flitted about the precincts of the House of Commons, silent, unnoticing, and unnoticed, — a sort of wraith of his brother.

There was another brother, who lived in Liverpool, and maintained the commercial relations of the Gladstone family. This was Robertson, a man who, though he took a fair share of the work of local government in the town, did not aspire to deal with affairs outside the limits of the borough. There was an occasion, not likely to be forgotten by Mr. Gladstone's detractors, when Robertson, moved with honest indignation and fraternal love, employed a maladroit trope when discussing the public position of his brother. After this he was confirmed in his natural inclination to retirement from participation in political affairs and, in 1875 there passed away from human sight for all time the colossal burly figure which, with hands hidden in stupendous waistcoat pockets, long strode the streets of Liverpool.

We have hardly got William Ewart Gladstone out of petticoats yet, but having gone thus far in detailed description of his family belongings, it may be convenient finally to dispose of this branch of the subject. In 1839 he married Miss Catherine Glynne, daughter of Sir Stephen Glynne, of Hawarden Castle, Flintshire, which became in time the most familiar postal address in the world. He had eight children. One, the second daughter, died in 1850. His eldest daughter is married to the head-master of Wellington College, a younger one to the Rev. Mr. Drew. A third, unmarried, is Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge.

Of his four sons the eldest, William Henry, sat in one House of Commons as Member for Whitby, in another representing East Worcestershire. A man of gentle and retiring disposition, he did not take kindly to the turmoil of politics, and when opportunity presented itself, gratefully withdrew. The second son is Rector of Hawarden. In 1875 the torrent of abuse to which Mr. Gladstone was subjected took, in a somewhat obscure London weekly paper, the line of accusation that the ex-Premier had presented his son, ordained in 1870, to one of the richest and easiest livings of the Church. This was a statement that might well have been passed over in silence. It touched Mr. Gladstone to the quick. He wrote : " This easy living entailed the charge of 8,000 people scattered over 17,000 acres, and fast increasing in number. The living is not in the gift of the Crown. I did not present him to the living or recommend him to be presented. He was not ordained in 1870. My relations," he proudly and truthfully added, "have no special cause to thank me for any advice given by me to the Sovereign in the matter of Church patronage."

His third son, Henry, followed the early family traditions by entering upon commercial pursuits, spending some years in India. He married the daughter of Lord Rendel, and still stands apart from politics. The only born politician among the sons is the youngest. Mr. Herbert Gladstone made his first appearance in the political arena by gallantly contesting Middlesex in April, 1880. Defeated there, he was returned for Leeds two months later, and still represents a Leeds Division in the House of Commons. For a while he acted as Private Secretary to his father the Premier, though he received no salary. He became in succession a Lord of the Treasury and Financial Secretary to the War Office, the Secretaryship to the Home Office being the highest post to which his omnipotent father promoted him. Upon Mr. Gladstone's retirement in 1894, colleagues who had long worked with Mr. Herbert Gladstone made haste to do him fuller justice, promoting him to the position of First Commissioner of Works.

A singularly modest record this of the family of an illustrious statesman, four times Chief Minister of a nation whose wealth is illimitable, whose power reaches to the ends of the earth. We are, happily, so accustomed in England to find our statesmen free from the charge of nepotism, that we take Mr. Gladstone's innocence as a matter of course. But few more suggestive chapters in his history could be written than that which shows the son of a man, who has made many bishops, rector of the family parish in Flintshire ; one of his daughters married to a schoolmaster; a second herself a schoolmistress, whilst another of his sons long sat at an office desk.

When not in London engaged in Ministerial or political business Mr. Gladstone has dwelt among his own people in his Flintshire home. Of Hawarden Castle, its history and its belongings, I may quote further from an interesting communication addressed to me in 1881 by the late Mr, W. H. Gladstone : —

The estate of Hawarden was purchased by Serjeant Glynne from the agents of Sequestration after the execution of James Earl of Derby in 1651. It came first into the Stanley family in 1443, when it was granted by Henry YI. to Sir Thomas Stanley, Comptroller of his Household. This grant was recalled in 1450, but in 1454 it was restored to Sir Thomas, afterwards Lord Stanley. After his death it descended to his second wife, Margaret Countess of Richmond ; on whose decease it returned to Thomas Earl of Derby, and remained in that family till 1651.

On the Restoration, when the Commons rejected the Bill for restoring the estates of those lords which had been alienated in the late usurpation, Charles Earl of Derby compounded with Serjeant Glynne for the property of Hawarden and granted it to him and his heirs.