The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume III Part 35

On the other side, a clever lady having suggested to Browning that he should write an inscription for her to some gift for Mr. Gladstone, received an answer that has interest, both by the genius and fame of its writer, and as a sign of widespread feeling in certain circles in those days:-

Surely your kindness, even your sympathy, will be extended to me when I say, with sorrow indeed, that I am unable now conscientiously to do what, but a few years ago, I would have at least attempted with such pleasure and pride as might almost promise success. I have received much kindness from that extraordinary personage, and what my admiration for his transcendent abilities was and ever will be, there is no need to speak of. But I am forced to altogether deplore his present att.i.tude with respect to the liberal party, of which I, the humblest unit, am still a member, and as such grieved to the heart by every fresh utterance of his which comes to my knowledge. Were I in a position to explain publicly how much the personal feeling is independent of the political aversion, all would be easy; but I am a mere man of letters, and by the simple inscription which would truly testify to what is enduring, unalterable in my esteem, I should lead people-as well those who know me as those who do not-to believe my approbation extended far beyond the bounds which unfortunately circ.u.mscribe it now. All this-even more-was on my mind as I sat, last evening, at the same table with the brilliantly-gifted man whom once-but that "once" is too sad to remember.

At a gathering at Spencer House in the summer of 1888, when this year of felicitation opened, Lord Granville, on behalf of a number of subscribers, presented Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone with two portraits, and in his address spoke of the long span of years through, which, they had enjoyed "the unclouded blessings of the home." The expression was a just one. The extraordinary splendour and exalted joys of an outer life so ill.u.s.trious were matched in the inner circle of the hearth by a happy order, affectionate reciprocal attachments, a genial round of kindliness and duty, that from year to year went on untarnished, unstrained, unbroken.

Visitors at Hawarden noticed that, though the two heads of the house were now old, the whole atmosphere seemed somehow to be alive with the freshness and vigour of youth; it was one of the youngest of households in its interests and activities. The constant tension of his mind never impaired his tenderness and wise solicitude for family and kinsfolk, and for all about him; and no man ever had such observance of decorum with such entire freedom from pharisaism.

Nor did the order and moral prosperity of his own home (M149) leave him complacently forgetful of fellow-creatures to whom life's cup had been dealt in another measure. On his first entry upon the field of responsible life, he had formed a serious and solemn engagement with a friend-I suppose it was Hope-Scott-that each would devote himself to active service in some branch of religious work.(259) He could not, without treason to his gifts, go forth like Selwyn or Patteson to Melanesia to convert the savages. He sought a missionary field at home, and he found it among the unfortunate ministers to "the great sin of great cities." In these humane efforts at reclamation he persevered all through his life, fearless of misconstruction, fearless of the levity or baseness of men's tongues, regardless almost of the possible mischiefs to the public policies that depended on him. Greville(260) tells the story how in 1853 a man made an attempt one night to extort money from Mr. Gladstone, then in office as chancellor of the exchequer, by threats of exposure; and how he instantly gave the offender into custody, and met the case at the police office.

Greville could not complete the story. The man was committed for trial.

Mr. Gladstone directed his solicitors to see that the accused was properly defended. He was convicted and sent to prison. By and by Mr. Gladstone inquired from the governor of the prison how the delinquent was conducting himself. The report being satisfactory, he next wrote to Lord Palmerston, then at the home office, asking that the prisoner should be let out. There was no worldly wisdom in it, we all know. But then what are people Christians for?

We have already seen(261) his admonition to a son, and how much importance he attached to the dedication of a certain portion of our means to purposes of charity and religion. His example backed his precept. He kept detailed accounts under these heads from 1831 to 1897, and from these it appears that from 1831 to the end of 1890 he had devoted to objects of charity and religion upwards of seventy thousand pounds, and in the remaining years of his life the figure in this account stands at thirteen thousand five hundred-this besides thirty thousand pounds for his cherished object of founding the hostel and library at Saint Deiniol's.

His friend of early days, Henry Taylor, says in one of his notes on life that if you know how a man deals with money, how he gets it, spends it, keeps it, shares it, you know some of the most important things about him.

His old chief at the colonial office in 1846 stands the test most n.o.bly.

III

Near the end of 1889 among the visitors to Hawarden was Mr. Parnell. His air of good breeding and easy composure pleased everybody. Mr. Gladstone's own record is simple enough, and contains the substance of the affair as he told me of it later:-

_Dec. 18, 1889._-Reviewed and threw into form all the points of possible amendment or change in the plan of Irish government, etc., for my meeting with Mr. Parnell. He arrived at 5.30, and we had two hours of satisfactory conversation; but he put off the _gros_ of it. 19.-Two hours more with Mr. P. on points in Irish government plans. He is certainly one of the very best people to deal with that I have ever known. Took him to the old castle. He seems to notice and appreciate everything.

Thinking of all that had gone before, and all that was so soon to come after, anybody with a turn for imaginary dialogue might easily upon this theme compose a striking piece.

In the spring of 1890 Mr. Gladstone spent a week at Oxford of which he spoke with immense enthusiasm. He was an honorary fellow of All Souls, and here he went into residence in his own right with all the zest of a virtuous freshman bent upon a first cla.s.s. Though, I daresay, pretty nearly unanimous against his recent policies, they were all fascinated by his simplicity, his freedom from a.s.sumption or parade, his eagerness to know how leading branches of Oxford study fared, his naturalness and pleasant manners. He wrote to Mrs. Gladstone (Feb. 1):-

Here I am safe and sound, and launched anew on my university career, all my days laid out and occupied until the morning of this day week, when I am to return to London. They press me to stay over the Sunday, but this cannot be thought of. I am received with infinite kindness, and the rooms they have given me are delightful. Weather dull, and light a medium between London and Hawarden. I have seen many already, including Liddon and Acland, who goes up to-morrow for a funeral early on Monday. Actually I have engaged to give a kind of Homeric lecture on Wednesday to the members of the union. The warden and his sisters are courteous and hospitable to the last degree. He is a unionist. The living here is very good, perhaps some put on for a guest, but I like the tone of the college; the fellows are men of a high cla.s.s, and their conversation is that of men with work to do. I had a most special purpose in coming here which will be more than answered. It was to make myself safe so far as might be, in the articles(262) which eighteen months ago I undertook to write about the Old Testament.

This, as you know perhaps, is now far more than the New, the battle-ground of belief. There are here most able and instructed men, and I am already deriving great benefit.

Something that fell from him one morning at breakfast in the common room led in due time to the election of Lord Acton to be also an honorary member of this distinguished society. "If my suggestion," Mr. Gladstone wrote to one of the fellows, "really contributed to this election, then I feel that in the dregs of my life I have at least rendered one service to the college. My ambition is to visit it and Oxford in company with him."

IV

In 1890 both Newman and Dollinger died.

I have been asked from many quarters, Mr. Gladstone said to Acton, to write about the Cardinal. But I dare not. First, I do not know enough. Secondly, I should be puzzled to use the little knowledge that I have. I was not a friend of his, but only an acquaintance treated with extraordinary kindness whom it would ill become to note what he thinks defects, while the great powers and qualities have been and will be described far better by others. Ever since he published his University Sermons in 1843, I have thought him unsafe in philosophy, and no Butlerian though a warm admirer of Butler. No; it was before 1843, in 1841 when he published Tract XC. The _general_ argument of that tract was unquestionable; but he put in sophistical matter without the smallest necessity. What I recollect is about General Councils: where in treating the declaration that they may err he virtually says, "No doubt they may-unless the Holy Ghost prevents them." But he was a wonderful man, a holy man, a very refined man, and (to me) a most kindly man.

Of Dr. Dollinger he contributed a charming account to a weekly print,(263) and to Acton he wrote:-

I have the fear that my Dollinger letters will disappoint you.

When I was with him, he spoke to me with the utmost freedom; and so I think he wrote, but our correspondence was only occasional. I think nine-tenths of my intercourse with him was oral; with Cardinal Newman nothing like one-tenth. But with neither was the mere _corpus_ of my intercourse great, though in D.'s case it was very precious, most of all the very first of it in 1845.... With my inferior faculty and means of observation, I have long adopted your main proposition. His att.i.tude of mind was more historical than theological. When I first knew him in 1845, and he honoured me with very long and interesting conversations, they turned very much upon theology, and I derived from him what I thought very valuable and steadying knowledge. Again in 1874 during a long walk, when we spoke of the shocks and agitation of our time, he told me how the Vatican decrees had required him to reperuse and retry the whole circle of his thought. He did not make known to me any general result; but he had by that time found himself wholly detached from the Council of Trent, which was indeed a logical necessity from his preceding action. The Bonn Conference appeared to show him nearly at the standing-point of anglican theology. I thought him more liberal as a theologian than as a politician. On the point of church establishment he was as impenetrable as if he had been a Newdegate. He would not see that there were two sides to the question. I long earnestly to know what progress he had made at the last towards redeeming the pledge given in one of his letters to me, that the evening of his life was to be devoted to a great theological construction.... I should have called him an anti-Jesuit, but in _no_ other sense, that is in no sense, a Jansenist. I never saw the least sign of leaning in that direction.

V

Here the reader may care to have a note or two of talk with him in these days:-

_At Dollis Hill, Sunday, Feb. 22, 1891_.... A few minutes after eight Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone came in from church, and we three sat down to dinner. A delightful talk, he was in full force, plenty of energy without vehemence. The range of topics was pretty wide, yet marvellous to say, we had not a single word about Ireland.

Certainly no harm in that.

_J. M._-A friend set me on a hunt this morning through Wordsworth for the words about France standing on the top of golden hours. I did not find them, but I came across a good line of Hartley Coleridge's about the Thames:-

"And the thronged river toiling to the main."

_Mr. G._-Yes, a good line. Toiling to the main recalls Dante:-

"Su la marina, dove'l Po discende, Per aver pace co' seguaci sui."(264)

_J. M._-Have you seen Symonds's re-issued volume on Dante? 'Tis very good. Shall I lend it to you?

_Mr. G._-Sure to be good, but not in the session. I never look at Dante unless I can have a great continuous draught of him. He's too big, he seizes and masters you.

_J. M._-Oh, I like the picturesque bits, if it's only for half-an-hour before dinner; the bird looking out of its nest for the dawn, the afternoon bell, the trembling of the water in the morning light, and the rest that everybody knows.

_Mr. G._-No, I cannot do it. By the way, ladies nowadays keep question books, and among other things ask their friends for the finest line in poetry. I think I'm divided between three, perhaps the most glorious is Milton's-[_Somehow this line slipped from memory, but the reader might possibly do worse than turn over Milton in search for his finest line._] Or else Wordsworth's-"Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." Yet what so splendid as Penelope's about not rejoicing the heart of anybody less than Odysseus?

?d? t? ?e?????? ??d??? e?f?a????? ???a.(265)

He talked a great deal to-night about Homer; very confident that he had done something to drive away the idea that Homer was an Asiatic Greek. Then we turned to Scott, whom he held to be by far the greatest of his countrymen. I suggested John Knox. No, the line must be drawn firm between the writer and the man of action; no comparisons there.

_J. M._-Well, then, though I love Scott so much that if any man chooses to put him first, I won't put him second, yet is there not a vein of pure gold in Burns that gives you pause?

_Mr. G._-Burns very fine and true, no doubt; but to imagine a whole group of characters, to marshal them, to set them to work, to sustain the action-I must count that the test of highest and most diversified quality.

We spoke of the new Shakespeare coming out. I said I had been taking the opportunity of reading vol. i., and should go over it all in successive volumes. _Mr. G._-"Falstaff is wonderful-one of the most wonderful things in literature."

Full of interest in _Hamlet_, and enthusiasm for it-comes closer than any other play to some of the strangest secrets of human nature-what _is_ the key to the mysterious hold of this play on the world's mind? I produced my favourite proposition that _Measure for Measure_ is one of the most modern of all the plays; the profound a.n.a.lysis of Angelo and his moral catastrophe, the strange figure of the duke, the deep irony of our modern time in it all. But I do not think he cared at all for this sort of criticism. He is too healthy, too objective, too simple, for all the complexities of modern morbid a.n.a.lysis.

Talked of historians; Lecky's two last volumes he had not yet read, but-had told him that, save for one or two blots due to contemporary pa.s.sion, they were perfectly honourable to Lecky in every way. Lecky, said Mr. G., "has real insight into the motives of statesmen. Now Carlyle, so mighty as he is in flash and penetration, has no eye for motives. Macaulay, too, is so caught by a picture, by colour, by surface, that he is seldom to be counted on for just account of motive."

He had been reading with immense interest and satisfaction Sainte-Beuve's _History of Port Royal_, which for that matter deserves all his praise and more, though different parts of it are written from antagonistic points of view. Vastly struck by Saint-Cyran. When did the notion of the spiritual director make its appearance in Europe? Had asked both Dollinger and Acton on this curious point. For his own part, he doubted whether the office existed before the Reformation.

_J. M._-Whom do you reckon the greatest Pope?