The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume III Part 40

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 n.o.ble qualities."

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

_J. M._-tape???t??? But that has an a.s.sociation of meanness.

_Mr. G._-Yes; a shabby sort of humility. Humility as a sovereign grace is the creation of Christianity.

_Friday, December 18._-Brilliant suns.h.i.+ne, 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 Gottliche_?

_Mr. G._-Dollinger used to confront me with the _Iphigenie_ as a great drama of duty.

He wished that I had known Dollinger-"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.

_Sat.u.r.day, 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 circ.u.mstance 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 n.o.body 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 a.s.sented. 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 modic.u.m 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 tripart.i.te 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 const.i.tutional 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 a.s.sembly arguing that it was useless to withstand the sovereign will of Zeus, and that they had better flee into their s.h.i.+ps, 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 s.h.i.+eld, 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 pa.s.sion. 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 att.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sed. 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 gla.s.s 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, ign.o.ble. 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 compa.s.s. 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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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 f???e?? t? ?s?a.

_Sat.u.r.day, Dec. 26._-Once more a n.o.ble day. We started in a couple of carriages for the Negress 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.ser-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.