The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume I Part 11

In September (1835), after long suffering, his mother died amid tender care and mournful regrets. Her youngest son was a devoted nurse; her loss struck him keenly, but with a sense full of the consolations of his faith. To Gaskell he writes: 'How deeply and thoroughly her character was imbued with love; with what strong and searching processes of bodily affliction she was a.s.similated in mind and heart to her Redeemer; how above all other things she sighed for the advancement of His kingdom on earth; how few mortals suffered more pain, or more faithfully recognised it as one of the instruments by which G.o.d is pleased to forward that restoring process for which we are placed on earth.'

Then the world resumed its course for him, and things fell into their wonted ways of indefatigable study. His scheme for week-days included Blackstone, Mackintosh, Aristotle's _Politics_--'a book of immense value for all governors and public men'--Dante's _Purgatorio_, Spanish grammar, Tocqueville, Fox's _James II._, by which he was disappointed, not seeing such an acuteness in extracting and exhibiting the principles that govern from beneath the actions of men and parties, nor such a grasp of generalisation, nor such a faculty of separating minute from material particulars, nor such an abstraction from a debater's modes of thought and forms of expression, as he should have hoped. To these he added as he went along the _Genie du Christianisme_, Bolingbroke, Bacon's _Essays_, _Don Quixote_, the _Annals_ of Tacitus, Le Bas' _Life of Laud_ ('somewhat too Laudish, though right _au fond_'; unlike Lawson's _Laud_, 'a most intemperate book, the foam swallows up all the facts'), _Childe Harold_, _Jerusalem Delivered_ ('beautiful in its kind, but how can its author be placed in the same category of genius as Dante?'), Pollok's _Course of Time_ ('much talent, little culture, insufficient power to digest and construct his subject or his versification; his politics radical, his religious sentiments generally sound, though perhaps hard').

In the evenings he read aloud to his father the _Faery Queen_ and Shakespeare. On Sundays he read Chillingworth and Jewel, and, above all, he dug and delved in St. Augustine. He drew a sketch of a project touching Peculiarities in Religion. For several days he was writing something on politics. Then an outline or an essay on our colonial system. For he was no reader of the lounging, sauntering, pa.s.sively receptive species; he went forward in a sedulous process of import and export, a mind actively at work on all the topics that pa.s.sed before it.

At the beginning of the year 1836 he was invited to pay a visit to Drayton, where he found only Lord Harrowby--a link with the great men of an earlier generation, for he had acted as Pitt's second in the duel with Tierney, and had been foreign secretary in Pitt's administration of 1804; might have been prime minister in 1827 if he had liked; and he headed the Waverers who secured the pa.s.sing of the Reform bill by the Lords. Other guests followed, the host rather contracting in freedom of conversation as the party expanded.[71]

VISIT TO DRAYTON

I cannot record anything continuous, Mr. Gladstone writes in his memorandum of the visit, but commit to paper several opinions and expressions of Sir R. Peel, which bore upon interesting and practical questions. That Fox was not a man of settled, reasoned, political principle. Lord Harrowby added that he was thrown into opposition and whiggism by the insult of Lord North. That his own doctrines, both as originally declared, and as resumed when finally in office, were of a highly toned spirit of government. That Brougham was the most _powerful_ man he had ever known in the H. of C.; that no one had ever fallen so fast and so far. That the political difficulties of England might be susceptible of cure, and were not appalling; but that the state of Ireland was to all appearance hopeless. That there the great difficulty lay in procuring the ordinary administration of justice; that the very inst.i.tution of juries supposed a common interest of the juror and the state, a condition not fulfilled in the present instance; that it was quite unfit for the present state of society in Ireland.

Lord Harrowby thought that a strong conservative government might still quell agitation. And Sir B. Peel said Stanley had told him that the whig government were on the point of succeeding in putting a stop to the resistance to payment of t.i.the, when Lord Althorp, alarmed at the expense already incurred, wrote to stop its collection by the military. We should probably live to see the independence of Poland established.

The Duke of Wellington and others arrived later in the day. It was pleasing to see the deference with which he was received as he entered the library; at the sound of his name everybody rose; he is addressed by all with a respectful manner. He met Peel most cordially, and seized both Lady Peel's hands. I now recollect that it was with _glee_ Sir R. Peel said to me on Monday, 'I am glad to say you will meet the duke here,' which had reference, I doubt not, partly to the antic.i.p.ated pleasure of seeing him, partly to the dissipation of unworthy suspicions. He reported that government are still labouring at a church measure without appropriation. _Jan.

20._--The Duke of Wellington appears to speak little; and never for speaking's sake, but only to convey an idea, commonly worth conveying. He receives remarks made to him very frequently with no more than 'Ha,' a convenient, suspensive expression, which acknowledges the arrival of the observation and no more. Of the two days which he spent here he hunted on Thursday, shot on Friday, and to-day travelled to Strathfieldsay, more, I believe, than 100 miles, to entertain a party of friends to dinner. With this bodily exertion he mixes at 66 or 67 a constant attention to business. Sir R. Peel mentioned to me to-night a very remarkable example of his [the duke's] perhaps excessive precision. Whenever he signs a draft on Coutts's, he addresses to them at the same time a note apprising them that he has done so. This perfect facility of transition from one cla.s.s of occupation to their opposites, and their habitual intermixture without any apparent encroachments on either side, is, I think, a very remarkable evidence of self-command, and a mental power of singular utility. Sir Robert is also, I conceive, a thrifty dealer with his time, but in a man of his age [Peel now 48]

this is less beyond expectation.

He said good-bye on the last night with regret. In the midst of the great company he found time to read Bossuet on Variations, remarking rather oddly, 'some of Bossuet's theology seems to me very good.'

MIXED AVOCATIONS

On Jan. 30th is the entry of his journey from Liverpool, '1 to 4 to Hawarden Castle.' [I suppose his first visit to his future home.]

Got to Chester (Feb. 1) five minutes after the mail had started.

Got on by Albion. Outside all night; frost; rain; arrived at Albany 11. _Feb. 4th._--Session opens. Voted in 243-284. A good opportunity for speaking, but in my weakness did not use it. _Feb.

8th._--Stanley made a n.o.ble speech. Voted in 243 to 307 for abolition of Irish corporations. Pendulums and Nothingarians all against us. _Sunday._--Wrote on Hypocrisy. On Worship. Attempted to explain this to the servants at night. Newman's Sermons and J.

Taylor. Trench's Poems. _March 2nd._--Read to my deep sorrow of Anstice's death on Monday. His friends, his young widow, the world can spare him ill; so says at least the flesh. Stapleton.

_Paradiso_, VII. VIII. Calls. Rode. Wrote. Dined at Lord Ashbuxton's. House. Statistical Society's _Proceedings._ Verses on Anstice's death. _March 22nd._--House 5-9. Spoke 50 minutes [on negro apprenticeship; see p. 145]; kindly heard, and I should thank G.o.d for being made able to speak even thus indifferently.[72]

_March 23rd_.... Late, having been awake last night till between 4 and 5, as usual after speaking. How useful to make us feel the habitual unremembered blessing of sound sleep.... _April 7th._--_Gerus. Lib._ c. xi.... Dr. Pusey here from 12 to 3 about church building. Rode. At night 11 to 2 perusing Henry Taylor's proofs of _The Statesman_, and writing notes on it, presumptuous enough.... _Gerus._ xii. Re-perused Taylor's sheets. A batch of calls. Wrote letters. Bossuet. Dined at Henry Taylor's, a keen intellectual exercise, and thus a place of danger, especially as it is exercise seen.... _9th._--Spedding at breakfast. _Gerus._ xiii.

Finished Locke on Understanding. It appears to me on the whole a much overrated, though, in some respects, a very useful book....

_May 16th._--Mr. Wordsworth, H. Taylor, and Doyle to breakfast. Sat till 12. Conversation on Sh.e.l.ley, Trench, Tennyson; travelling, copyright, etc. _30th._--Milnes, Blakesley, Taylor, Cole, to breakfast. Church meeting at Archbishop of Armagh's. Ancient music rehearsal. House 6-8 and 9-12. _June 1st._--Read Wordsworth....

House 5-12. Spoke about 45 minutes [on t.i.thes and Church (Ireland) bill]. I had this pleasure in my speech, that I never rose more intent upon telling what I believe to be royal truth; though I did it very ill, and further than ever below the idea which I would nevertheless hold before my mind. _3rd._--West Indies Committee 1-4. Finished writing out my speech and sent it. Read Wordsworth.... Saw Sir R. Peel. Dined at Sergeant Talfourd's to meet Wordsworth.... _5th._--St. James's, Communion. Dined at Lincoln's Inn. St. Sepulchre's. Wrote. Jer. Taylor, Newman. Began Nicole's _Prejuges_. Arnold aloud. _8th._--Wordsworth, since he has been in town, has breakfasted twice and dined once with me.

Intercourse with him is, upon the whole, extremely pleasing. I was sorry to hear Sydney Smith say that he did not see very much in him, nor greatly admire his poems. He even adverted to the London Sonnet as ridiculous. Sheil thought this of the line:

'Dear G.o.d! the very houses seem asleep.'

I ventured to call his attention to that which followed as carrying out the idea:

'And all that mighty heart is lying still.'

Of which I may say _omne tulit punctum_.

Wordsworth came in to breakfast the other day before his time. I asked him to excuse me while I had my servant to prayers; but he expressed a _hearty_ wish to be present, which was delightful. He has laboured long; if for himself, yet more for men, and over all I trust for G.o.d. Will he ever be the bearer of evil thoughts to any mind? Glory is gathering round his later years on earth, and his later works especially indicate the spiritual ripening of his n.o.ble soul. I heard but few of his opinions; but these are some He was charmed with Trench's poems; liked Alford; thought Sh.e.l.ley had the greatest native powers in poetry of all the men of this age. In reading _Die Braut von Korinth_ translated, was more horrified than enchained, or rather altogether the first. Wondered how any one could translate it or the Faust, but spoke as knowing the original.

Thought little of Murillo as to the mind of painting; said he could not have painted Paul Veronese's 'Marriage of Cana.' Considered that old age in great measure disqualified him by its rigid fixity of habits from judging of the works of young poets--I must say that he was here even over liberal in self-depreciation. He defended the make of the steamboat as more poetical than otherwise to the eye (see Sonnets).[73] Thought Coleridge admired Ossian only in youth, and himself admired the spirit which Macpherson _professes_ to embody.

Sergeant Talfourd dined here to meet Wordsworth yesterday.

Wordsworth is vehement against Byron. Saw in Sh.e.l.ley the lowest form of irreligion, but a later progress towards better things.

Named the discrepancy between his creed and his imagination as the marring idea of his works, in which description I could not concur.

Spoke of the _entire_ revolution in his own poetical taste. We were agreed that a man's personal character ought to be the basis of his politics. He quoted his sonnet on the contested election [what sonnet is this?], from which I ventured to differ as regards its a.s.suming nutriment for the heart to be inherent in politics. He described to me his views; that the Reform Act had, as it were, brought out too prominently a particular muscle of the national frame: the strength of the towns; that the cure was to be found in a large further enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, I fancy, of the country chiefly; that you would thus extend the base of your pyramid and so give it strength. He wished the old inst.i.tutions of the country preserved, and thought this the way to preserve them. He thought the political franchise upon the whole a good to the ma.s.s--regard being had to the state of human nature; against me. _11th._--Read Browning's _Paracelsus_. Went to Richmond to dine with the Gaskells. A two hours' walk home at night. _16th._--Wrote two sonnets. Finished and wrote out _Brant von Korinth_. Shall I ever dare to make out a counterpart? _21st._--Breakfast at Mr. Hallam's to meet Mr.

Wordsworth and Mr. Rogers. Wordsworth spoke much and justly about copyright. Conversation with Talfourd in the evening, partly about that subject. Began something on egotism. _24th._--Breakfast with Mr. Rogers, Mr. Wordsworth only there. Very agreeable. Rogers produced an American poem, the death of Bozzaris, which Wordsworth proposed that I should read to them: of course I declined, so even did Rogers. But Wordsworth read it through in good taste, and doing it justice.

_Fasque_ in time for Aug. 12; out on the hill, but unlucky with a sprained ankle, and obliged to give up early. _Aug. 15th._--Wrote (long) to Dr. Chalmers. Orator. _Sept. 20th._--Milner, finished Vol. ii. Cic. _Acad._ Wraxall. Began Goethe's _Iphigenie_. Wrote.

_Oct. 7th._--Milner. Wraxall. A dinner-party. Wrote out a sketch for an essay on Justification. Singing, whist, shooting. Copied a paper for my father. _12th._--A day on the hill for roe. 14 guns.

[To Liverpool for public dinner at the Amphitheatre.] _18th._--Most kindly heard. Canning's debut everything that could be desired. I thought I spoke 35 minutes, but afterwards found it was 55. Read _Marco Visconti_. _21st._--Operative dinner at Amphitheatre. Spoke perhaps 16 or 18 minutes. _28th._--_Haddo_ [Lord Aberdeen's].

Finished _Marco Visconti_, a long bout, but I could not let it go.

Buckland's opening chapters. _On the whole_ satisfactory.

_30th._--Lord Aberdeen read prayers in the evening with simple and earnest pathos. _Nov. 10th._--_Wilhehm Meister_, Book i., and there I mean to leave it, unless I hear a better report of the succeeding one than I could make of the first. Next day, recommenced with great antic.i.p.ations of delight the _Divina Commedia_.

_13th._--Finished Nicole _De l'Unite_. August. _De Civ._ [Every day at this time.] _19th._--Began Cicero's _Tusculan Questions_....

_25th._--Aug. _Civ. Dei._ I am now in Book xiv. Cic. _Tusc._ finished. Book ii. _Purgatorio_, iii.-v. A dose of whist. Still snow and rain. _26th._--Aug. Cicero. Billiards. _Purgatorio_, vi.-viii. Began Dryden's _Fables._ My eyes are not in their best plight, and I am obliged to consider type a little. _Jan. 3rd_, 1837.--Breakfasted with Dr. Chalmers. How kind my father is in small matters as well as great--thoughtfully sending carriage.

_13th, Glasgow._--The pavilion astonishing, and the whole effect very grand. Near 3500. Sir E. Peel spoke 1 h. 55 m. Explicit and bold; it was a very great effort. I kept within 15 min.--quite long enough. _14th._--7-5 mail to Carlisle. On all night, _15th._ Wetherby at 7. Leeds 10. Church there. Walked over to Wakefield.

Church there. Evening at Thornes. [Milnes Gaskell's.] _17th._--To Newark. Very good meeting. Spoke hour.

In this speech, after the regulation denunciation of the reckless wickedness of O'Connell, he set about demonstrating the change that had taken place in the character of public feeling during the last few years. He pointed out that at the dissolution of 1831 the conservative members of the House of Commons amounted perhaps to 50. In 1835 they saw this small dispirited band grow into a resolute and formidable phalanx of 300. The cry was: 'Resolute attachment to the inst.i.tutions of the country.' One pa.s.sage in the speech is of interest in the history of his att.i.tude on toleration. Sir William Moles worth had been invited to come forward as candidate for the representation of Leeds. A report spread that Sir William was not a believer in the Christian articles of faith.

Somebody wrote to Molesworth, to know if this was true. He answered, that the question whether he was a believer in the Christian religion was one that no man of liberal principles ought to propose to another, or could propose without being guilty of a dereliction of duty. On this incident, Mr. Gladstone said that he would ask, 'Is it not a time for serious reflection among moderate and candid men of all parties, when such a question was actually thought impertinent interference? Surely they would say with him, that men who have no belief in the divine revelation are not the men to govern this nation, be they whigs or radicals.' Long, extraordinary, and not inglorious, was the ascent from such a position as this, to the principles so n.o.bly vindicated in the speech on the Affirmation bill in 1883.

PARTY COUNCILS

At the end of January he is back in London, arranging books and papers and making a little daylight in his chaos. 'What useful advice might a man who has been _buon pezzo_ in parliament give to one going into it, on this mechanical portion of his business.' The entries for 1837 are none of them especially interesting. Every day in the midst of full parliamentary work, social engagements, and public duties outside of the House of Commons, he was elaborating the treatise on the relations of church and state, of which we shall see more in our following chapter.

At the beginning of the session he went to a dinner at Peel's, at which Lord Stanley and some of his friends were present--a circ.u.mstance noted as a sign of the impending fusion between the whig seceders of 1834 and the conservative party. Sir Robert seems to have gone on extending his confidence in him.

I visited Sir Robert Peel (March 4th) about the Canada question, and again by appointment on the 6th, with Lord Aberdeen. On the former day he said, 'Is there anyone else to invite?' I suggested Lord Stanley. He said, perhaps he might be inclined to take a separate view. But in the interval he had apparently thought otherwise. For on Monday he read to Lord Aberdeen and myself a letter from Stanley written with the utmost frankness and in a tone of political intimacy, saying that an engagement as chairman of a committee at the House would prevent his meeting us. The business of the day was discussed in conversation, and it was agreed to be quite impossible to support the resolution on the legislative council in its existing terms, without at least a protest. Peel made the following remark: 'You have got another Ireland growing up in every colony you possess.'

A week later he was shocked by the death of Lady Canning. 'Breakfast with Gaskell' (March 23rd), 'and thence to Lady Canning's funeral in Westminster Abbey. We were but eleven in attendance. Her coffin was laid on that of her ill.u.s.trious husband. Canning showed a deep but manly sorrow. May we live as by the side of a grave and looking in.'

In the same month he spoke on Canada (March 8th) 'with insufficient possession of the subject,' and a week later on church rates, for an hour or more, 'with more success than the matter or manner deserved.' He finished his translation of the _Bride of Corinth_, and the episode of Ugolino from Dante, and read Eckermann's _Conversations with Goethe_, to which he gives the too commonplace praise of being very interesting. He learned Manzoni's n.o.ble ode on the death of Napoleon, of which he by-and-by made a n.o.ble translation; this by way of sparing his eyes, and Italian poetry not taking him nearly half the time of any other to commit to memory. He found a 'beautiful and powerful production' in Channing's letter to Clay, and he made the acquaintance of Southey, 'in appearance benignant, melancholy, and intellectual.'

II

THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1837

In June King William IV. died, 'leaving a perilous legacy to his successor.' A month later (July 14) Mr. Gladstone went up with the Oxford address, and this was, I suppose, the first occasion on which he was called to present himself before the Queen, with whose long reign his own future career and fame were destined to be so closely and so conspicuously a.s.sociated. According to the old law prescribing a dissolution of parliament within six months of the demise of the crown, Mr. Gladstone was soon in the thick of a general election. By July 17th he was at Newark, canva.s.sing, speaking, hand-shaking, and in lucid intervals reading Filicaja. He found a very strong, angry, and general sentiment, not against the principle of the poor law as regards the able-bodied, but against the regulations for separating man and wife, and sending the old compulsorily to the workhouse, with others of a like nature. With the disapprobation on these heads he in great part concurred. There was to be no contest, but arrangements of this kind still leave room for some anxiety, and in Mr. Gladstone's case a singular thing happened. Two days after his arrival at Newark he was followed by a body of gentlemen from Manchester, with an earnest invitation that he would be a candidate for that great town. He declined the invitation, absolutely as he supposed, but the Manchester tories nominated him notwithstanding. They a.s.sured the electors that he was the most promising young statesman of the day. The whigs on the other hand vowed that he was an insulter of dissent, a bigot of such dark hue as to wish to subject even the poor negroes of his father's estates to the slavery of a dominant church, a man who owed whatever wealth and consequence his family possessed to the crime of holding his fellow-creatures in bondage, a man who, though honest and consistent, was a member of that small ultra-tory minority which followed the Duke of c.u.mberland. When the votes were counted, Mr. Gladstone was at the bottom of the poll, with a majority of many hundreds against him.[74]

Meantime he was already member for Newark. His own election was no sooner over than he caught the last vacant place on the mail to Carlisle, whence he hastened to the aid of his father's patriotic labours as candidate for Dundee. Here he worked hard at canva.s.sing and meetings, often pelted with mud and stones, but encouraged by friends more buoyant than the event justified.

_Aug. 1st._--My father beaten after all, our promised votes in many cases going back or going against us.... Two hundred promises broken. Poll closed at Parnell, 666; Gladstone, 381. It is not in human approbation that the reward of right action is to be sought.

Left at 4 amid the hisses of the crowd. Perth at 7. Left at one in the morning for Glasgow. _2nd._--Glasgow 8. Steamer at 11.

Breeze; miserably sick; deck all night. _3rd._--Arrived at 11; (Liverpool), very sore. _4th._--Out at 8 to vote for S.

Lancashire. Acted as representative in the booth half the day.

Results of election excellent. _5th._--Again at the booths. A great victory here. _6th._--Wrote to Manning on the death of his wife.

_9th._--_Manchester._ Public dinner at 6; lasted till near 12.

Music excellent. Spoke 1 hours, I am told, _proh pudor!_[75]

Back at Fasque, only a day too late for the Twelfth, he found the sport bad and he shot badly, but he enjoyed the healthful walks on the hill.

His employments were curiously mixed. '_Sept. 8th._--In the bog for snipe with Sir J. Mackenzie. Read _Timaeus_. Began Byron's Life. My eyes refused progress. Verses. _15th._--Snipe-shooting with F. in the bog.

Began _Critias_. _22nd._--_Haddo._ Otter-hunting, _senz esito_. Finished Plato's _Laws_. Hunting too in the library.' The mental dispersion of country-house visiting never affects either multifarious reading or multifarious writing. Spanish grammar, _Don Quixote_ in the original, Crabbe, _Don Juan_, alternate with Augustine _de peccatorum remissione_ or _de utilitate Credendi_ ('beautiful and useful'). He works at an essay of his own upon Justification, at adversaria on Aristotle's _Ethics_, at another essay upon Rationalism, and to save his eyes, spins verse enough to fill a decent volume of a hundred and fifty pages.

He makes a circuit of calls upon the tenants, taking a farming lecture from one, praying by the sick-bed of another.

BUSINESS WITH WELLINGTON

In November he was again in London to be sworn of the new parliament, and at the end of the month he had for the first time an interview on business with the Duke of Wellington--of interest as the collocation of two famous names. 'The immediate subject was the Cape of Good Hope. His reception of me was plain but kind. He came to the door of his room.