The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume II Part 15

You have given me credit for your own activity and power of work: an estimate far beyond the truth. I am one of those who work very hard while they are at it, and are then left in much exhaustion. I have been for four months overdone, and though my general health, thank G.o.d, is good, yet my brain warns me so distinctly that it must not be too much pressed, as to leave me in prudence no course to take except that which I have reluctantly indicated.

We might be tempted to call good letter-writing one of "the little handicraft of an idle man"; but then two of the most perfect masters of the art were Cicero and Voltaire, two of the most occupied personages that ever lived. Of course, sentences emerge in Mr. Gladstone's letters that are the fruits of his experience, well worthy of a note, as when he says to Dr. Pusey: "I doubt from your letter whether you are aware of the virulence and intensity with which the poison of suspicion acts in public life. All that you say in your letter of yesterday I can readily believe, but I a.s.sure you it does not alter in the slightest degree the grounds on which my last letter was written."

He thanks Bulwer Lytton for a volume of his republished poems, but chides him for not indicating dates:-

This I grant is not always easy for a conscientious man, for example when he has almost re-written. But I need not remind you how much the public, if I may judge from one of its number, would desire it when it can be done. For in the case of those whom it has learned to honour and admire, there is a biography of the mind that is thus signified, and that is matter of deep interest.

On external incidents, he never fails in a graceful, apt, or feeling word.

When the author of _The Christian Year_ dies (1866), he says: "Mr. Liddon sent me very early information of Mr. Keble's death. The church of England has lost in him a poet, a scholar, a philosopher, and a saint. I must add that he always appeared to me, since I had the honour and pleasure of knowing him, a person of most liberal mind. I hope early steps will be taken to do honour to his pure and n.o.ble memory."

To the widow of a valued official in his financial department he writes in commemorative sentences that testify to his warm appreciation of zeal in public duty:-

The civil service of the crown has beyond all question lost in Mr.

Arbuthnot one of the highest ornaments it ever possessed. His devotion to his duties, his identification at every point of his own feelings with the public interests, will, I trust, not die with him, but will stimulate others, and especially the inheritors of his name, to follow his bright example.... Nor is it with a thought of anything but thankfulness on his account, that I contemplate the close of his labours; but it will be long indeed before we cease to miss his great experience, his varied powers, his indefatigable energy, and that high-minded loyal tone which he carried into all the parts of business.

In another letter, by the way, he says (1866): "I am far from thinking very highly of our rank as a nation of administrators, but perhaps if we could be judged by the post office alone, we might claim the very first place in this respect." In time even this 'most wonderful establishment'

was to give him trouble enough.

(M54) Among the letters in which Mr. Gladstone exhibits the easier and less strenuous side, and that have the indefinable attraction of intimacy, pleasantness, and the light hand, are those written in the ten years between 1858 and 1868 to the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland. She was the close and lifelong friend of the Queen. She is, said the Queen to Stockmar, "so anxious to do good, so liberal-minded, so superior to prejudice, and so eager to learn, and to improve herself and others."(133) The centre of a brilliant and powerful social circle, she was an ardent sympathiser with Italy, with Poland, with the Abolitionists and the North, and with humane causes at home. She was accomplished, a lover of books meritorious in aim though too often slight in work-in short, with emotions and sentiments sometimes a little in advance of definite ideas, yet a high representative of the virtue, purity, simplicity, and sympathetic spirit of the Tennysonian epoch. Tennyson himself was one of her idols, and Mr.

Gladstone was another. Bishop Wilberforce too was often of the company, and the Duke of Argyll, who had married a daughter of the house. Her admiration for Gladstone, says the son of the d.u.c.h.ess, "was boundless, and the last years of her life were certainly made happier by this friends.h.i.+p.

His visits to her were always an intense pleasure, and even when suffering too much to receive others, she would always make an effort to appear sufficiently well to receive him. I find in a letter from her written to me in 1863, after meeting Mr. Gladstone when on a visit to her sister, Lady Taunton, at Quantock, in Somersets.h.i.+re, the following: 'The Gladstones were there; he was quite delightful, pouring out such floods of agreeable knowledge all day long, and singing admirably in the evening.

n.o.body makes me feel more the happiness of knowledge and the wish for it; one must not forget that he has the happiness of the peace which pa.s.seth all understanding.' "(134) The Gladstones were constant visitors at the d.u.c.h.ess's various princely homes-Stafford House in the Green Park, Trentham, Cliveden, and Chiswick on the Thames, Dunrobin on the Dornoch Firth.

A little sheaf of pieces from Mr. Gladstone's letters to her may serve to show him as he was, in the midst of his labours in the Palmerston government-how little his native kindliness of heart and power of sympathy had been chilled or parched either by hard and ceaseless toil, or by the trying atmosphere of public strife.

_1859_

_Aug. 30._-I am much concerned to lose at the last moment the pleasure of coming to see you at Trentham-but my wife, who was not quite well when I came away but hoped a day's rest would make her so, writes through Agnes to say she hopes I shall get back to-day.

The gratification promised me must, therefore, I fear, stand over.

I will write from Hawarden, and I now send this by a messenger lest (as you might be sure I should not fail through carelessness) you should think anything very bad had happened. Among other things, I wanted help from you through speech about Tennyson. I find _Maud_ takes a good deal of trouble to understand, and is hardly worth understanding. It has many peculiar beauties, but against them one sets the strange and nearly frantic pa.s.sages about war; which one can hardly tell whether he means to be taken for sense or ravings. Frank Doyle, who is essentially a poet though an unwrought one, declares _Guinevere_ the finest poem of modern times.

_1860_

_Hawarden, Oct. 3._-We are exceedingly happy at Penmaenmawr, between Italy, health, hill, and sea all taken together. I do not know if you are acquainted with the Welsh coast and interior; but I am sure you would think it well worth knowing both for the solitary grandeur of the Snowdon group, and for the widely diffused and almost endless beauty of detail. It is a kind of landscape jewellery.

The Herberts send us an excellent account of Lord Aberdeen. I have a very interesting letter from Lacaita, fresh from Panizzi, who again was fresh from Italy, and sanguine about the Emperor. But what a calamity for a man to think, or find himself forced to be double faced even when he is not double minded; and this is the best supposition. But Warsaw is surely the point at which for the present we must look with suspicion and aversion. To-day's papers give good hope that Garibaldi has been misrepresented and does not mean to play into Mazzini's hands.

Thanks for your condolences about the _Times_. I have had it both ways, though more, perhaps, of the one than the other. Some of the penny press, which has now acquired an enormous expansion, go great lengths in my favour, and I read some eulogies quite as wide of fact as the interpretations.

_Oct. 19._-I think Mr. or Sir something Burke (how ungrateful!) has been so kind as to discover the honours of my mother's descent in some book that he has published on royal descents. But the truth is that time plays strange tricks backwards as well as forwards, and it seems hardly fair to pick the results. The arithmetic of those questions is very curious: at the distance of a moderate number of centuries everybody has some hundred thousand ancestors, subject, however, to deduction.

_Nov. 1._-... There is one proposition which the experience of life burns into my soul; it is this, that man should beware of letting his religion spoil his morality. In a thousand ways, some great some small, but all subtle, we are daily tempted to that great sin. To speak of such a thing seems dishonouring to G.o.d; but it is not religion as it comes from Him, it is religion with the strange and evil mixtures which it gathers from abiding in us.

This frightful evil seems to rage in the Roman church more than anywhere else, probably from its highly wrought political spirit, the virtues and the vices of a close organisation being much a.s.sociated with one another. That same influence which keeps the mother from her child teaches Montalembert to glorify the corruption, cruelty, and baseness which in the government of the papal states put the gospel itself to shame.

_1861_

_11 Carlton H. Terrace, March 5._-I dare scarcely reply to your letter, for although the scene at Trentham [the death of the Duke of Sutherland] is much upon my mind, it is, amidst this crowd and pressure of business, an image reflected in ruffled waters, while it is also eminently one that ought to be kept true. A sacred sorrow seems to be profaned by bringing it within the touch of worldly cares. Still I am able, I hope not unnaturally, to speak of the pleasure which your letter has given me, for I could not wish it other than it is.

I am not one of those who think that after a stroke like this, it is our duty to try and make it seem less than it is. It is great for all, for you it is immense, for there has now been first loosened and then removed, the central stay of such a continuation of domestic love as I should not greatly exaggerate in calling without rival or example; and if its stay centred in him, so did its fire in you. I only wish and heartily pray that your sorrow may be a tender and gentle one, even as it is great and strong. I call it great and strong _more_ than sharp, for then only the fierceness of Death is felt when it leaves painful and rankling thoughts of the departed, or when it breaks the kindly process of nature and reverses the order in which she would have us quit the place of our pilgrimage, by ravis.h.i.+ng away those whose life is but just opened or is yet unfulfilled. But you are now yearning over a Death which has come softly to your door and gone softly from it; a death in ripeness of years, ripeness of love and honour and peace, ripeness above all in character.... A part of your letter brings to my mind a letter of St. Bernard on the death of his brother (remember he was a monk and so what a brother might be to him) which when I read it years ago seemed to me the most touching and beautiful expression of a natural grief that I had ever known-I will try to find it, and if I find it answers my recollection, you shall hear of it again.(135) I always think Thomas a Kempis a golden book for all times, but most for times like these; for though it does not treat professedly of sorrow, it is such a wonderful exhibition of the Man of Sorrows....

_1862_

_April 4._-I am grateful to you and to your thoughts for the quality they so eminently possess; the Latins have a word for it, but we have none, and I can only render it by a rude conversion into "sequacious," or thoughts given to following.

My labours of yesterday [budget speech] had no t.i.tle to so kind a reception as they actually met with. Quiet my office in these times cannot be, but this year it promises me the boon of comparative peace, at least in the outer sphere. The world believes that this is what I cannot endure; I shall be glad of an opportunity of putting its opinion to the test.

All words from you about the Queen are full of weight and value even when they are not so decidedly words of consolation. In her, I am even glad to hear of the little bit of symbolism. That principle like others has its place, and its applications I believe are right when they flow from and conform to what is within. I cannot but hope she will have much refreshment in Scotland. Such contact with Nature's own very undisguised and n.o.ble self, in such forms of mountain, wood, breeze, and water!

These are continual preachers, and so mild that they can bring no weariness. They come straight from their Maker's hand, and how faithfully they speak of Him in their strength, their majesty, and their calm.

As for myself I am a discharged vessel to-day, A load of figures has a suffocating effect upon the brain until they are well drilled and have taken their places. Then they are as digestible as other food of that region; still it is better when they are off, and it is always a step towards liberty.

I must at some time try to explain a little more my reference to Thomas a Kempis. I have given that book to men of uncultivated minds, who were _also_ presbyterians, but all relish it. I do not believe it is possible for any one to read that book earnestly from its beginning, and think of popish, or non-popish, or of anything but the man whom it presents and brings to us.

_May 8._-Unfortunately I can give you no light on the question of time. I, a bear chained to a stake, cannot tell when the princ.i.p.al run will be made at me, and as I can only scratch once I must wait if possible till then. The only person who could give you _des renseignements suffisants_ is Disraeli. Tennyson's note is charming. I return it, and with it a touching note from Princess Alice, which reached me this evening. Pray let me have it again.

_1863_

_Jan. 23._-I am so sorry to be unable to come to you, owing to an engagement to-night at the admiralty. I am ashamed of being utterly dest.i.tute of news-full of figures and all manner of dulnesses.... I went, however, to the Drury Lane pantomime last night, and laughed beyond measure; also enjoyed looking from a third row, unseen myself, at your brother and the Blantyre party.

_Bowden Park, Chippenham, Feb. 7._-I feel as if your generous and overflowing sympathies made it truly unkind to draw you further into the sorrows of this darkened house. My brother [John] closed his long and arduous battle in peace this morning at six o'clock; and if the knowledge that he had the love of all who knew him, together with the a.s.surance that he is at rest in G.o.d, could satisfy the heart, we ought not to murmur. But the visitation is no common one. Eight children, seven of them daughters, of whom only one is married and most are young, with one little boy of seven, lost their mother last February, and now see their father taken. He dies on his marriage day, we are to bury him on the first anniversary of his wife's death. Altogether it is piteous beyond belief. It was affectionate anxiety in her illness that undermined his health; it was reluctance to make his children uneasy that made him suffer in silence, and travel to Bath for advice and an operation when he should have been in his bed. In this double sense he has offered up his life. The grief is very sharp, and as yet I am hardly reconciled to it.... But enough and too much. Only I must answer your question. He was the brother next above me; we were not brothers only but very intimate friends until we married, and since then we have only been separated in the relative sense in which our marriages and my public life in particular, implied. He was a man of high spirit and uncommon goodness, and for _him_ I have not a thought that is not perfect confidence and peace.

_March 1._-Even you could not, I am persuaded, do otherwise than think me rather a savage on Wednesday evening, for the opinion I gave about helping a bazaar for the sisters of charity of the Roman community at some place in England. Let me say what I meant by it and what I did not mean. I did not mean to act as one under the influence of violent anti-Roman feeling. I rejoice to think in community of faith among bodies externally separated, so far as it extends, and it extends very far; most of all with ancient churches of the greatest extent and the firmest organisation. But the proselytising agency of the Roman church in this country I take to be one of the worst of the religious influences of the age. I do not mean as to its motives, for these I do not presume to touch, nor feel in any way called upon to question. But I speak of its effects, and they are most deplorable. The social misery that has been caused, not for truth, but for loss of truth, is grievous enough, but it is not all, for to those who are called converts, and to those who have made them, we owe a very large proportion of the mischiefs and scandals within our own communion, that have destroyed the faith of many, and that are I fear undermining the very principle of faith in thousands and tens of thousands who as yet suspect neither the process nor the cause.

With this pernicious agency I for my own part wish to have nothing whatever to do; although I am one who thinks lightly, in comparison with most men, of the _absolute_ differences in our belief from the formal doc.u.ments of the church of Rome, and who wish for that church, on her own ground, as for our own, all health that she can desire, all reformation that can be good for her. The object, however, of what I have said is not to make an argument, but only to show that if I spoke strongly, I was not also speaking lightly on such a subject.

_April 20._-I am afraid I shall not see you before Wednesday-when you are to do us so great a kindness-but I must write a line to tell you how exceedingly delighted we both are with all we have seen at Windsor. The charm of the princess, so visible at a distance, increases with the increase of nearness; the Queen's tone is delightful. All seems good, delighted, and happy in the family. As regards the Queen's physical strength, it must be satisfactory. What is more fatiguing than interviews? Last night, however, I saw her at half-past seven, after a long course of them during the day. She was quite fresh.

_May 10._-I can answer you with a very good conscience. The affair of Friday night [his speech on Italy] was on my part entirely drawn forth by the speech of Disraeli and the wish of Lord Palmerston. It is D.'s practice, in contravention of the usage of the House, which allows the minister to wind up, to lie by until Lord Palmerston has spoken, and then fire in upon him. So on this occasion I was a willing instrument; but my wife, who was within ten minutes' drive, knew nothing.

We dined at Marlborough House last night. The charm certainly does not wear off with renewed opportunity. Clarendon, who saw her for the first time, _fully_ felt it. Do you know, I believe they are actually disposed to dine with us some day. Do you think you can _then_ be tempted? We asked the Bishop of Brechin to meet you on Thursday. Another bishop has volunteered: the Bishop of Montreal, who is just going off to America. You will not be frightened. Both are rather notable men. The other guests engaged are Cobden, Thackeray, and Mr. Evarts, the new U.S. coadjutor to Adams.

_July 10._-I knew too well the meaning of your non-appearance, and because I knew it, was sorry for your indisposition as well as for your absence. We had the De Greys, Granville, Sir C. Eastlake, Fechter(136) and others, with the Comte de Paris, who is as simple as ever, but greatly developed and come on. He talked much of America. I hope we may come to-morrow, not later than by the 5.5 train, to which I feel a kind of grateful attachment for the advantage and pleasure it has so often procured me. We are glad to have a hope of you next week. All our people are charmed with Mr.

Fechter.-Yours affectionately.

_July 29._-I am greatly concerned to hear of your suffering. You are not easily arrested in your movements, and I fear the time has been sharp. But (while above all I trust you will not stir without free and full permission) I do not abandon the hope of seeing you ... I have been seeing Lady Theresa Lewis. It was heartrending woe; such as makes one ashamed of having so little to offer. She dwells much upon employing herself.... I greatly mistrust compulsion in the management of children, and under the circ.u.mstances you describe, I should lean as you do. ... Many thanks for the carnations you sent by my wife; they still live and breathe perfume.... You spoke of our difference about slavery. I hope it is not very wide. I stop short of war as a means of correction. I have not heard you say that you do otherwise.

_11 Carlton House Terrace_ (_no date_).-I am glad my wife saw you yesterday, for I hope a little that she may have been bold enough to lecture you about not taking enough care of yourself. If this sounds rather intrusive, pray put it down to my intense confidence in her as a doctor. She has a kind of divining power springing partly from a habitual gift and partly from experience, and she hardly ever goes wrong. She is not easy about your going to Vichy alone. The House of Commons, rude and unmannerly in its arrangements at all times, is singularly so in its last kicks and plunges towards the death of the session; but after to-morrow we are free and I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday according to the hope you give.... Soon after this reaches you I hope to be at Hawarden. On Wednesday I am to have luncheon at Argyll Lodge to meet Tennyson. Since I gave him my translation of the first book of the _Iliad_, I have often remembered those words of Kingsley's to his friend Mr.--, "My dear friend, your verses are not good but bad." The Duc d'Aumale breakfasted with us on Thursday and I had some conversation about America. He is, I think, pleased with the good opinions which the young princes have won so largely, and seems to have come very reluctantly to the conclusion that the war is hopeless. Our children are gone and the vacant footfall echoes on the stair. My wife is waiting here only to see Lady Herbert.

_Hawarden, Aug. 21._-We have had Dr. Stanley here with his sister.

He was charming, she only stayed a moment. He gave a good account of the Queen. They go to Italy for September and October. When any one goes there I always feel a mental process of accompanying them. We have got Mr. Woolner here too. He took it into his head to wish to make a bust of me, and my wife accepted his offer, at least by her authority caused me to accept it. He has worked very quickly and I think with much success, but he bestows immense labour before closing. He is a poet too, it seems, and generally a very good companion.... My journey to Balmoral will not be for some five weeks. I am dreadfully indolent as to any exertion beyond reading, but I look forward to it with interest.... Indeed your scruples about writing were misplaced. There is no holiday of mine to leave unbroken so far as post is concerned, and well would it be with me, even in the time of an exhaustion which requires to be felt before it can pa.s.s away, if the words of my other letters were, I will not say like, but more like, yours. However, the murmur which I thus let escape me is ungrateful. I ought to be thankful for the remission that I get, but treasury business is the most odious that I know, and hence it is that one wishes that the wheel would for a little time cease its drive altogether, instead of merely lowering it.

_Penmaenmawr, Sept. 20._-It was so kind of you to see our little fellows on their way through town. I hope they were not troublesome. Harry is rather oppressed, I think, with the responsibilities of his captains.h.i.+p-he is the head of seven boys!