Chapter II: The Hawarden Estate

(_1847_)

It is no Baseness for the Greatest to descend and looke into their
owne Estate. Some forbeare it, not upon Negligence alone, But
doubting to bring themselves into Melancholy in respect they shall
finde it Broken. But wounds cannot be cured without Searching. Hee
that cleareth by Degrees induceth a habit of Frugalitie, and
gaineth as well upon his Minde, as upon his Estate.--BACON.

I must here pause for material affairs of money and business, with which, as a rule, in the case of its heroes the public is considered to have little concern. They can no more be altogether omitted here than the bills, acceptances, renewals, notes of hand, and all the other financial apparatus of his printers and publishers can be left out of the story of Sir Walter Scott. Not many pages will be needed, though this brevity will give the reader little idea of the pre-occupations with which they beset a not inconsiderable proportion of Mr. Gladstone's days. A few sentences in a biography many a time mean long chapters in a life, and what looked like an incident turns out to be an epoch.

Sir Stephen Glynne possessed a small property in Staffordshire of something less than a hundred acres of land, named the Oak Farm, near Stourbridge, and under these acres were valuable seams of coal and ironstone. For this he refused an offer of five-and-thirty thousand pounds in 1835, and under the advice of an energetic and sanguine agent proceeded to its rapid development. On the double marriage in 1839, Sir Stephen associated his two brothers-in-law with himself to the modest extent of one-tenth share each in an enterprise that seemed of high prospective value. Their interests were acquired through their wives, and it is to be presumed that they had no opportunity of making a personal examination of the concern. The adventurous agent, now manager-in-chief of the business, rapidly extended operations, setting up furnaces, forges, rolling-mills, and all the machinery for producing tools and hardware for which he foresaw a roaring foreign market. The agent's confidence and enthusiasm mastered his principal, and large capital was raised solely on the security of the Hawarden fortune and credit. Whether Oak Farm was irrationally inflated or not, we cannot say, though the impression is that it had the material of a sound property if carefully worked; but it was evidently pushed in excess of its realisable capital. The whole basis of its credit was the Hawarden estate, and a forced stoppage of Oak Farm would be the death-blow to Hawarden. As early as 1844 clouds rose on the horizon. The position of Sir Stephen Glynne had become seriously compromised, while under the system of unlimited partnership the liability of his two brothers-in-law extended in proportion. In 1845 the three brothers-in-law by agreement retired, each retaining an equitable mortgage on the concern. Two years later, one of our historic panics shook the money-market, and in its course brought down Oak Farm.[203] A great accountant reported, a meeting was held at Freshfield's, the company was found hopelessly insolvent, and it was determined to wind up. The court directed a sale. In April 1849, at Birmingham, Mr. Gladstone purchased the concern on behalf of himself and his two brothers-in-law, subject to certain existing interests; and in May Sir Stephen Glynne resumed legal possession of the wreck of Oak Farm. The burden on Hawarden was over £250,000, leaving its owner with no margin to live upon.

Into this far-spreading entanglement Mr. Gladstone for several years threw himself with the whole weight of his untiring tenacity and force. He plunged into masses of accounts, mastered the coil of interests and parties, studied legal intricacies, did daily battle with human unreason, and year after year carried on a voluminous correspondence.

OAK FARM

There are a hundred and forty of his letters to Mr. Freshfield on Oak Farm alone. Let us note in passing what is, I think, a not unimportant biographic fact. These circumstances brought him into close and responsible contact with a side of the material interests of the country that was new to him. At home he had been bred in the atmosphere of commerce. At the board of trade, in the reform of the tariff, in connection with the Bank act and in the growth of the railway system, he had been well trained in high economics. Now he came to serve an arduous apprenticeship in the motions and machinery of industrial life. The labour was immense, prolonged, uncongenial; but it completed his knowledge of the customs, rules, maxims, and currents of trade and it bore good fruit in future days at the exchequer. He manfully and deliberately took up the burden as if the errors had been his own, and as if the financial sacrifice that he was called to make both now and later were matter of direct and inexorable obligation. These, indeed, are the things in life that test whether a man be made of gold or clay. 'The weight,' he writes to his father (June 16, 1849), 'of the private demands upon my mind has been such, since the Oak Farm broke down, as frequently to disqualify me for my duties in the House of Commons.' The load even tempted him, along with the working of other considerations, to think of total withdrawal from parliament and public life. Yet without a trace of the frozen stoicism or cynical apathy that sometimes passes muster for true resignation, he kept himself nobly free from vexation, murmur, repining, and complaint. Here is a moving passage from a letter of the time to Mrs. Gladstone:--

_Fasque, Jan. 20, 1849._--Do not suppose for a moment that if I
could by waving my hand strike out for ever from my cares and
occupations those which relate to the Oak Farm and Stephen's
affairs, I would do so; I have never felt that, have never asked
it; and if my language seems to look that way, it is the mere
impatience of weakness comforting itself by finding a vent. It has
evidently come to me by the ordinance of God; and I am rather
frightened to think how light my lot would be, were it removed, so
light that something else would surely come in its place. I do not
confound it with visitations and afflictions; it is merely a drain
on strength and a peculiar one, because it asks for a kind of
strength and skill and habits which I have not, but it falls
altogether short of the category of high trials. Least of all
suppose that the subject can ever associate itself painfully with
the idea of you. No persons who have been in contact with it can be
so absolutely blameless as you and Mary, nor can _our_ relation
together be rendered in the very smallest degree less or more a
blessing by the addition or the subtraction of worldly wealth. I
have abundant comfort _now_ in the thought that at any rate I am
the means of keeping a load off the minds of others; and I shall
have much more hereafter when Stephen is brought through, and once
more firmly planted in the place of his fathers, provided I can
conscientiously feel that the restoration of his affairs has at any
rate not been impeded by indolence, obstinacy, or blunders on my
part. Nor can anything be more generous than the confidence placed
in me by all concerned. Indeed, I can only regret that it is too
free and absolute.

LETTER TO HIS SON

I may as well now tell the story to the end, though in anticipation of remote dates, for in truth it held a marked place in Mr. Gladstone's whole life, and made a standing background amid the vast throng of varying interests and transient commotions of his great career. Here is his own narrative as told in a letter written to his eldest son for a definite purpose in 1885:--

_To W. H. Gladstone._

_Hawarden, Oct. 3, 1885._--Down to the latter part of that year
(1847), your uncle Stephen was regarded by all as a wealthy country
gentleman with say £10,000 a year or more (subject, however, to his
mother's jointure) to spend, and great prospects from iron in a
Midland estate. In the bank crisis of that year the whole truth was
revealed; and it came out that his agent at the Oak Farm (and
formerly also at Hawarden) had involved him to the extent of
£250,000; to say nothing of minor blows to your uncle Lyttelton and
myself.

At a conversation in the library of 13 Carlton House Terrace, it
was considered whether Hawarden should be sold. Every obvious
argument was in favour of it, for example the comparison between
the income and the liabilities I have named. How was Lady Glynne's
jointure (£2500) to be paid? How was Sir Stephen to be supported?
There was _no_ income, even less than none. Oak Farm, the iron
property, was under lease to an insolvent company, and could not be
relied on. Your grandfather, who had in some degree surveyed the
state of affairs, thought the case was hopeless. But the family
were unanimously set upon making any and every effort and sacrifice
to avoid the necessity of sale. Mr. Barker, their lawyer, and Mr.
Burnett, the land agent, entirely sympathised; and it was resolved
to persevere. But the first effect was that Sir Stephen had to
close the house (which it was hoped, but hoped in vain, to let); to
give up carriages, horses, and I think for several years his
personal servant; and to take an allowance of £700 a year out of
which, I believe, he continued to pay the heavy subvention of the
family to the schools of the parish, which was certainly counted by
hundreds. Had the estate been sold, it was estimated that he would
have come out a wealthy bachelor, possessed of from a hundred to a
hundred and twenty thousands pounds free from all encumbrance but
the jointure.

In order to give effect to the nearly hopeless resolution thus
taken at the meeting in London, it was determined to clip the
estate by selling £200,000 worth of land. Of this, nearly one-half
was to be taken by your uncle Lyttelton and myself, in the
proportion of about two parts for me and one for him. Neither of us
had the power to buy this, but my father enabled me, and Lord
Spencer took over his portion. The rest of the sales were effected,
a number of fortunate secondary incidents occurred, and the great
business of recovering and realising from the Oak Farm was
laboriously set about.

Considerable relief was obtained by these and other measures. By
1852, there was a partial but perceptible improvement in the
position. The house was reopened in a very quiet way by
arrangement, and the allowance for Sir Stephen's expenditure was
rather more than doubled. But there was nothing like ease for him
until the purchase of the reversion was effected by me in 1865. I
paid £57,000 for the bulk of the property, subject to debts not
exceeding £150,000, and after the lives of the two brothers, the
table value of which was, I think, twenty-two and a-half years.
From this time your uncle had an income to spend of, I think,
£2200, or not more than half what he probably would have had since
1847 had the estate been sold, which it would only have been
through the grievous fault of others.

The full process of recovery was still incomplete, but the means of
carrying it forward were now comparatively simple. Since the
reversion came in, I have, as you know, forwarded that process; but
it has been retarded by agricultural depression and by the
disastrous condition through so many years of coal-mining; so that
there still remains a considerable work to be done before the end
can be attained, which I hope will never be lost sight of, namely,
that of extinguishing the debt upon the property, though for family
purposes the estate may still remain subject to charges in the way
of annuity.

The full history of the Hawarden estate from 1847 would run to a
volume. For some years after 1847, it and the Oak Farm supplied my
principal employment[204]; but I was amply repaid by the value of
it a little later on as a home, and by the unbroken domestic
happiness there enjoyed. What I think you will see, as clearly
resulting from this narrative, is the high obligation not only to
keep the estate in the family, and as I trust in its natural course
of descent, but to raise it to the best condition by thrift and
care, and to promote by all reasonable means the aim of diminishing
and finally extinguishing its debt.

This I found partly on a high estimate of the general duty to
promote the permanence of families having estates in land, but very
specially on the sacrifices made, through his remaining
twenty-seven years of life, by your uncle Stephen, without a
murmur, and with the concurrence of us all....

Before closing I will repair one omission. When I concurred in the
decision to struggle for the retention of Hawarden, I had not the
least idea that my children would have an interest in the
succession. In 1847 your uncle Stephen was only forty; your uncle
Henry, at thirty-seven, was married, and had a child almost every
year. It was not until 1865 that I had any title to look forward to
your becoming at a future time the proprietor.--Ever your
affectionate father.

FINAL SETTLEMENT

The upshot is this, that Mr. Gladstone, with his father's consent and support, threw the bulk of his own fortune into the assets of Hawarden. By this, and the wise realisation of everything convertible to advantage, including, in 1865, the reversion after the lives of Sir Stephen Glynne and his brother, he succeeded in making what was left of Hawarden solvent. His own expenditure from first to last upon the Hawarden estate as now existing, he noted at £267,000. 'It has been for thirty-five years,' he wrote to W. H. Gladstone in 1882, '_i.e._, since the breakdown in 1847, a great object of my life, in conjunction with your mother and your uncle Stephen, to keep the Hawarden estate together (or replace what was alienated), to keep it in the family, and to relieve it from debt with which it was ruinously loaded.'

In 1867 a settlement was made, to which Sir Stephen Glynne and his brother, and Mr. Gladstone and his wife, were the parties, by which the estate was conveyed in trust for one or more of the Gladstone children as Mr. Gladstone might appoint.[205] This was subject to a power of determining the settlement by either of the Glynne brothers, on repaying with interest the sum paid for the reversion. As the transaction touched matters in which he might be supposed liable to bias, Mr. Gladstone required that its terms should be referred to two men of perfect competence and probity--Lord Devon and Sir Robert Phillimore--for their judgment and approval. Phillimore visited Hawarden (August 19-26, 1865) to meet Lord Devon, and to confer with him upon Sir Stephen Glynne's affairs. Here are a couple of entries from his diary:--

_Aug. 26._--The whole morning was occupied with the investigation
of S. G.'s affairs by Lord Devon and myself. We examined at some
length the solicitor and the agent. Lord D. and I perfectly agreed
in the opinion expressed in a memorandum signed by us both.
Gladstone, as might have been expected, has behaved very well.
_Sept. 19_ [_London_].--Correspondence between Lyttelton and
Gladstone, contained in Lord Devon's letter. Same subject as that
which Lord D. and I came to consult upon at Hawarden. _Sept.
24._--I wrote to Stephen Glynne to the effect that Henry entirely
approved of the scheme agreed upon by Lord D. and myself, after a
new consideration of all the circumstances, and after reading the
Lyttelton-Gladstone correspondence. I showed Henry Glynne the
letter, of which he entirely approved.

In 1874 the death of Sir Stephen Glynne, following that of his brother two years before, made Mr. Gladstone owner in possession of the Hawarden estate, under the transaction of 1865. With as little delay as possible (April 1875) he took the necessary steps to make his eldest son the owner in fee, and seven years after that (October 1882) he further transferred to the same son his own lands in the county, acquired by purchase, as we have seen, after the crash in 1847. By agreement, the possession and control of the castle and its contents remained with Mrs. Gladstone for life, as if she were taking a life-interest in it under settlement or will.

FURTHER LETTERS TO HIS SON

Although, therefore, for a few months the legal owner of the whole Hawarden estate, Mr. Gladstone divested himself of that quality as soon as he could, and at no time did he assume to be its master. The letters written by him on these matters to his son are both too interesting as the expression of his views on high articles of social policy, and too characteristic of his ideas of personal duty, for me to omit them here, though much out of their strict chronological place. The first is written after the death of Sir Stephen, and the falling in of the reversion:--

_To W. H. Gladstone._

11 _Carlton House Terrace, April 5, 1875._--There are several
matters which I have to mention to you, and for which the present
moment is suitable; while they embrace the future in several of its
aspects.

1. I have given instructions to Messrs. Barker and Hignett to
convert your life interest under the Hawarden settlement into a fee
simple. Reflection and experience have brought me to favour this
latter method of holding landed property as on the whole the best,
though the arguments may not be all on one side. In the present
case, they are to my mind entirely conclusive. First, because I am
able thoroughly to repose in you an entire confidence as to your
use of the estate during your lifetime, and your capacity to
provide wisely for its future destination. Secondly, because you
have, delivered over to you with the estate, the duty and office of
progressively emancipating it from the once ruinous debt; and it is
almost necessary towards the satisfactory prosecution of this
purpose, which it may still take very many years to complete, that
you should be entire master of the property, and should feel the
full benefit of the steady care and attention which it ought to
receive from you.

2. I hope that with it you will inherit the several conterminous
properties belonging to me, and that you will receive these in such
a condition as to enjoy a large proportion of the income they
yield. Taking the two estates together, they form the most
considerable estate in the county, and give what may be termed the
first social position there. The importance of this position is
enhanced by the large population which inhabits them. You will, I
hope, familiarise your mind with this truth, that you can no more
become the proprietor of such a body of property, or of the portion
of it now accruing, than your brother Stephen could become rector
of the parish, without recognising the serious moral and social
responsibilities which belong to it. They are full of interest and
rich in pleasure, but they demand (in the absence of special cause)
residence on the spot, and a good share of time, and especially a
free and ungrudging discharge of them. Nowhere in the world is the
position of the landed proprietor so high as in this country, and
this in great part for the reason that nowhere else is the
possession of landed property so closely associated with definite
duty.

3. In truth, with this and your seat in parliament, which I hope
(whether Whitby supply it, or whether you migrate) will continue,
you will, I trust, have a well-charged, though not an
over-charged, life, and will, like professional and other
thoroughly employed men, have to regard the bulk of your time as
forestalled on behalf of duty, while a liberal residue may be
available for your special pursuits and tastes, and for
recreations. This is really the sound basis of life, which never
can be honourable or satisfactory without adequate guarantees
against frittering away, even in part, the precious gift of time.

While touching on the subject I would remind you of an old
recommendation of mine, that you should choose some parliamentary
branch or subject, to which to give special attention. The House of
Commons has always heard your voice with pleasure, and ought not to
be allowed to forget it. I say this the more freely, because I
think it is, in your case, the virtue of a real modesty, which
rather too much indisposes you to put yourself forward.

Yet another word. As years gather upon me, I naturally look forward
to what is to be after I am gone; and although I should indeed be
sorry to do or say anything having a tendency to force the action
of your mind beyond its natural course, it will indeed be a great
pleasure to me to see you well settled in life by marriage. Well
settled, I feel confident, you will be, if settled at all. In your
position at Hawarden, there would then be at once increased ease
and increased attraction in the performance of your duties; nor can
I overlook the fact that the life of the unmarried man, in this age
particularly, is under peculiar and insidious temptations to
selfishness, unless his celibacy arise from a very strong and
definite course of self-devotion to the service of God and his
fellow creatures.

The great and sad change of Hawarden [by the death of Sir Stephen]
which has forced upon us the consideration of so many subjects,
gave at the same time an opening for others, and it seemed to me to
be best to put together the few remarks I had to make. I hope the
announcement with which I began will show that I write in the
spirit of confidence as well as of affection. It is on this footing
that we have ever stood, and I trust ever shall stand. You have
acted towards me at all times up to the standard of all I could
desire. May you have the help of the Almighty to embrace as justly,
and fulfil as cheerfully, the whole conception of your duties in
the position to which it has pleased Him to call you, and which
perhaps has come upon you with somewhat the effect of a surprise;
that may, however, have the healthy influence of a stimulus to
action, and a help towards excellence. Believe me ever, my dear
son, your affectionate father.

DUTIES OF A LANDOWNER

In the second letter Mr. Gladstone informed W. H. Gladstone that he had at Chester that morning (Oct. 23, 1882), along with Mrs. Gladstone, executed the deeds that made his son the proprietor of Mr. Gladstone's lands in Flintshire, subject to the payment of annuities specified in the instrument of transfer; and he proceeds:--

I earnestly entreat that you will never, under any circumstances,
mortgage any of your land. I consider that our law has offered to
proprietors of land, under a narrow and mistaken notion of
promoting their interests, dangerous facilities and inducements to
this practice; and that its mischievous consequences have been so
terribly felt (the word is strong, but hardly too strong) in the
case of Hawarden, that they ought to operate powerfully as a
warning for the future.

You are not the son of very wealthy parents; but the income of the
estates (the Hawarden estates and mine jointly), with your prudence
and diligence, will enable you to go steadily forward in the work I
have had in hand, and after a time will in the course of nature
give considerable means for the purpose.

I have much confidence in your prudence and intelligence; I have
not the smallest fear that the rather unusual step I have taken
will in any way weaken the happy union and harmony of our family;
and I am sure you will always bear in mind the duties which attach
to you as the head of those among whom you receive a preference,
and as the landlord of a numerous tenantry, prepared to give you
their confidence and affection.

A third letter on the same topics followed three years after, and contains a narrative of the Hawarden transactions already given in an earlier page of this chapter.

_To W. H. Gladstone._

_Oct. 3, 1885._--When you first made known to me that you thought
of retiring from the general election of this year, I received the
intimation with mixed feelings. The question of money no doubt
deserves, under existing circumstances, to be kept in view; still I
must think twice before regarding this as the conclusive question.
I conceive the balance has to be struck mainly between these two
things; on the one hand, the duty of persons connected with the
proprietorship of considerable estates in land, to assume freely
the burden and responsibility of serving in parliament. On the
other hand, the peculiar position of this combined estate, which in
the first place is of a nature to demand from the proprietor an
unusual degree of care and supervision, and which in the second
place has been hit severely by recent depressions in corn and coal,
which may be termed its two pillars.

On the first point it may fairly be taken into view that in serving
for twenty years you have stood four contested elections, a number
I think decidedly beyond the average.... I will assume, for the
present, that the election has passed without bringing you back to
parliament. I should then consider that you had thus relieved
yourself, at any rate for a period, from a serious call upon your
time and mind, mainly with a view to the estate; and on this
account, and because I have constituted you its legal master, I
write this letter in order to place clearly before you some of the
circumstances which invest your relation to it with a rather
peculiar character.

I premise a few words of a general nature. An enemy to entails,
principally though not exclusively on social and domestic grounds,
I nevertheless regard it as a very high duty to labour for the
conservation of estates, and the permanence of the families in
possession of them, as a principal source of our social strength,
and as a large part of true conservatism, from the time when
Aeschylus wrote

[Greek: archaioploutôn despotôn pollê charis].[206]

But if their possession is to be prolonged by conduct, not by
factitious arrangements, we must recognise this consequence, that
conduct becomes subject to fresh demands and liabilities.

In condemning laws which tie up the _corpus_, I say nothing
against powers of charge, either by marriage settlement or
otherwise, for wife and children, although questions of degree and
circumstance may always have to be considered. But to mortgages I
am greatly opposed. Whether they ought or ought not to be
restrained by law, I do not now inquire. But I am confident that
few and rare causes only will warrant them, and that as a general
rule they are mischievous, and in many cases, as to their
consequences, anti-social and immoral. Wherever they exist they
ought to be looked upon as evils, which are to be warred upon and
got rid of. One of our financial follies has been to give them
encouragement by an excessively low tax; and one of the better
effects of the income-tax is that it is a fine upon mortgaging.

FOOTNOTES:

[203] For an account of the creditors' meeting held at Birmingham on Dec. 2, 1847, see the _Times_ of Dec. 3, 1847.

[204] To Lord Lyttelton, July 29, 1874: 'I could not devote my entire life to it; and after 1852 my attention was only occasional.'

[205] This settlement followed the lines of a will made by Sir Stephen in 1855, devising the estate to his brother for life, with the remainder to his brother's sons in tail male; and next to W. H. Gladstone and his sons in tail male, and then to W. E. Gladstone's other sons; and in default of male issue of W. E. Gladstone, then to the eldest and other sons of Lord Lyttelton, and so forth in the ordinary form of an entailed estate.

[206] _Agam._ 1043, 'A great blessing are masters with, ancient riches.'