Chapter IV: An Interim. (1889-1891)

The nobler a soul is, the more objects of compassion it hath.

—BACON.

I

At the end of 1888 Mr. Gladstone with his wife and others of his house was carried off by Mr. Rendel’s friendly care to Naples. Hereto, he told Lord Acton, “we have been induced by three circumstances. First, a warm invitation from the Dufferins to Rome; as to which, however, there are _cons_ as well as _pros_, for a man who like me is neither Italian nor Curial in the view of present policies. Secondly, our kind friend Mr. Stuart Rendel has actually offered to be our conductor thither and back, to perform for us the great service which you rendered us in the trip to Munich and Saint-Martin. Thirdly, I have the hope that the stimulating climate of Naples, together with an abstention from speech greater than any I have before enjoyed, might act upon my ‘vocal cord,’ and partially at least restore it.”

At Naples he was much concerned with Italian policy.

_To Lord Granville._

_Jan. 13, 1889._—My stay here where the people really seem to
regard me as not a foreigner, has brought Italian affairs and
policy very much home to me, and given additional force and
vividness to the belief I have always had, that it was sadly
impolitic for Italy to make enemies for herself beyond the Alps.
Though I might try and keep back this sentiment in Rome, even my
silence might betray it and I could not promise to keep silence
altogether. I think the impolicy amounts almost to madness
especially for a country which carries with her, nestling in her
bosom, the “standing menace” of the popedom....

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_To J. Morley._

_Jan. 10._—I hope you have had faith enough not to be troubled
about my supposed utterances on the temporal power.... I will not
trouble you with details, but you may rest assured I have never
said the question of the temporal power was anything except an
Italian question. I have a much greater anxiety than this about
the Italian alliance with Germany. It is in my opinion an awful
error and constitutes the great danger of the country. It may be
asked, “What have you to do with it?” More than people might
suppose. I find myself hardly regarded here as a foreigner. They
look upon me as having had a real though insignificant part in the
Liberation. It will hardly be possible for me to get through the
affair of this visit without making my mind known. On this account
mainly I am verging towards the conclusion that it will be best
for me not to visit Rome, and my wife as it happens is not anxious
to go there. If you happen to see Granville or Rosebery please let
them know this.

We have had on the whole a good season here thus far. Many of the
days delicious. We have been subjected here as well as in London
to a course of social kindnesses as abundant as the waters which
the visitor has to drink at a watering place, and so enervating
from the abstraction of cares that I am continually thinking of
the historical Capuan writer. I am in fact totally demoralised,
and cannot wish not to continue so. Under the circumstances
Fortune has administered a slight, a very slight physical
correction. A land-slip, or rather a Tufo rock-slip of 50,000
tons, has come down and blocked the proper road between us and
Naples.

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_To Lord Acton._

_Jan. 23, 1889._—Rome is I think definitely given up. I shall be
curious to know your reasons for approving this _gran rifiuto_.
Meantime I will just glance at mine. I am not so much afraid of
the Pope as of the Italian government and court. My sentiments are
so very strong about the present foreign policy. The foreign
policy of the government but not I fear of the government only. If
I went to Rome, and saw the King and the minister, as I must, I
should be treading upon eggs all the time with them. I could not
speak out uninvited; and it is not satisfactory to be silent in
the presence of those interested, when the feelings are very
strong....

These feelings broke out in time in at least one anonymous article.(258) He told Lord Granville how anxious he was that no acknowledgment of authorship, direct or indirect, should come from any of his friends. “Such an article of necessity lectures the European states. As one of a public of three hundred and more millions, I have a right to do this, but not in my own person.” This strange simplicity rather provoked his friends, for it ignored two things—first, the certainty that the secret of authorship would get out; second, if it did not get out, the certainty that the European states would pay no attention to such a lecture backed by no name of weight—perhaps even whether it were so backed or not. Faith in lectures, sermons, articles, even books, is one of the things most easily overdone.

Most of my reading, he went on to Acton, has been about the Jews
and the Old Testament. I have not looked at the books you kindly
sent me, except a little before leaving Hawarden; but I want to
get a hold on the broader side of the Mosaic dispensation and the
Jewish history. The great historic features seem to me in a large
degree independent of the critical questions which have been
raised about the _redaction_ of the Mosaic books. Setting aside
Genesis, and the Exodus proper, it seems difficult to understand
how either Moses or any one else could have advisedly published
them in their present form; and most of all difficult to believe
that men going to work deliberately after the captivity would not
have managed a more orderly execution. My thoughts are always
running back to the parallel question about Homer. In that case,
those who hold that Peisistratos or some one of his date was the
compiler, have at least this to say, that the poems in their
present form are such as a compiler, having liberty of action,
might have aimed at putting out from his workshop. Can that be
said of the Mosaic books? Again, are we not to believe in the
second and third Temples as centres of worship because there was a
temple at Leontopolis, as we are told? Out of the frying-pan, into
the fire.

When he left Amalfi (Feb. 14) for the north, he found himself, he says, in a public procession, with great crowds at the stations, including Crispi at Rome, who had once been his guest at Hawarden.

After his return home, he wrote again to Lord Acton:—

_April 28, 1889._—I have long been wishing to write to you. But as
a rule I never can write any letters that I wish to write. My
volition of that kind is from day to day exhausted by the worrying
demand of letters that I do not wish to write. Every year brings
me, as I reckon, from three to five thousand new correspondents,
of whom I could gladly dispense with 99 per cent. May you never be
in a like plight.

Mary showed me a letter of recent date from you, which referred to
the idea of my writing on the Old Testament. The matter stands
thus: An appeal was made to me to write something on the general
position and claims of the holy scriptures for the working men. I
gave no pledge but read (what was for me) a good deal on the laws
and history of the Jews with only two results: first, deepened
impressions of the vast interest and importance attaching to them,
and of their fitness to be made the subject of a telling popular
account; secondly, a discovery of the necessity of reading much
more. But I have never in this connection thought much about what
is called the criticism of the Old Testament, only seeking to
learn how far it impinged upon the matters that I really was
thinking of. It seems to me that it does not impinge much.... It
is the fact that among other things I wish to make some sort of
record of my life. You say truly it has been very full. I add
fearfully full. But it has been in a most remarkable degree the
reverse of self-guided and self-suggested, with reference I mean
to all its best known aims. Under this surface, and in its daily
habit no doubt it has been selfish enough. Whether anything of
this kind will ever come off is most doubtful. Until I am released
from politics by the solution of the Irish problem, I cannot even
survey the field.

I turn to the world of action. It has long been in my mind to
found something of which a library would be the nucleus. I incline
to begin with a temporary building here. Can you, who have built a
library, give me any advice? On account of fire I have half a mind
to corrugated iron, with felt sheets to regulate the temperature.

Have you read any of the works of Dr. Salmon? I have just finished
his volume on Infallibility, which fills me with admiration of its
easy movement, command of knowledge, singular faculty of
disentanglement, and great skill and point in argument; though he
does not quite make one love him. He touches much ground trodden
by Dr. Döllinger; almost invariably agreeing with him.

II

July 25, 1889, was the fiftieth anniversary of his marriage. The Prince and Princess of Wales sent him what he calls a beautiful and splendid gift. The humblest were as ready as the highest with their tributes, and comparative strangers as ready as the nearest. Among countless others who wrote was Bishop Lightfoot, great master of so much learning:—

I hope you will receive this tribute from one who regards your
private friendship as one of the great privileges of his life.

And Döllinger:—

If I were fifteen years younger than I am, how happy I would be to
come over to my beloved England once more, and see you surrounded
by your sons and daughters, loved, admired, I would almost say
worshipped, by a whole grateful nation.

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
attitude 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 circumscribe 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 illustrious 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 nobly.

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 class. Though, I daresay, pretty nearly unanimous against his recent policies, they were all fascinated by his simplicity, his freedom from assumption 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 class, 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 Döllinger 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. Döllinger he contributed a charming account to a weekly print,(263) and to Acton he wrote:—

I have the fear that my Döllinger 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 attitude 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 wreathèd horn.” Yet what so splendid as
Penelope’s about not rejoicing the heart of anybody less than
Odysseus?

μηδέ τι χείρονος ἀνδρὸς εὐφραίνοιμι νόημα.(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 analysis 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 analysis.

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 passion, 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 Döllinger 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?

_Mr. G._—I think on the whole, Innocent III. But his greatness was
not for good. What did he do? He imposed the dogma of
transubstantiation; he is responsible for the Albigensian
persecutions; he is responsible for the crusade which ended in the
conquest of Byzantium. Have you ever realised what a deadly blow
was the ruin of Byzantium by the Latins, how wonderful a fabric
the Eastern Empire was?

_J. M._—Oh, yes, I used to know my Finlay better than most books.
Mill used to say a page of Finlay was worth a chapter of Gibbon:
he explains how decline and fall came about.

_Mr. G._—Of course. Finlay has it all.

He tried then to make out that the eastern empire was more
wonderful than anything done by the Romans; it stood out for
eleven centuries, while Rome fell in three. I pointed out to him
that the whole solid framework of the eastern empire was after all
built up by the Romans. But he is philhellene all through past and
present.