by Roy Jenkins
A month later Hamilton saw Gladstone in London on his way to Cannes. Hamilton sounds more breezy than sympathetic:
When I began talking to Mr. G. and asking him about himself he was very glum, put on his well known black-look and complained that the neuralgia which had taken hold of one side of his face was most distressing and completely incapacitated him from serious writing or reading. He has always made the most of his ailments, partly due to the extraordinary immunity from troubles which he has enjoyed during his long life; so one must make allowance for some exaggeration; and I tried to persuade him that all his neuralgia would fly at the sight of Cannes.’13
It did not. That Cannes visit, which lasted nearly three months, was miserable for Gladstone, and must have been so too for his wife (who was herself better than a year before, although perhaps moving into a world of her own), his host (Rendel) and others of the party. He returned to England on 22 February 1898, and went straight to Bournemouth. Why? He had never been there before in his life, and it is a most unGladstonian place. If it was in search of a mild winter climate, why did he not stay at Cannes, or even go to the place which frequently records the warmest winter temperatures in Britain – Hawarden, rivalled only by Colwyn Bay a few miles further along the coast? Or was it in search of a particular doctor? It was certainly the case that at Bournemouth he was for the first time diagnosed properly and hopelessly. When he left there on 22 March it was consciously to return home to die. He wanted the end, and if he was not exactly stoical about the pain, he was so about the outcome. The prognosis also brought out his theatrical side. When the party left Bournemouth he turned to the assembled crowd at the railway station and said: ‘God bless you all, and this place, and the land you love.’
He and his party arrived at Hawarden on a beautiful early-spring evening, but his perception of this or anything else was becoming confused. After the fatal diagnosis he was heavily sustained by pain-killing drugs. Music also helped, although the recordings to which he listened must have been almost as scratchy as those of his own voice which survive from the epoch. There were nine weeks between his return and the end. There were a few upward spirals. He last walked out of the castle on 9 April, and he last came down to dinner on the 18th, when he talked with animation of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, his mind going back to the first one, which he had seen rowed at Henley sixty-nine years before. His family were in constant attendance. Rosebery and Morley paid farewell visits. Messages of goodwill were abundant, the most welcome being a felicitously drafted one from the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford. Gladstone roused himself to dictate to his daughter Helen a reply in at least equally memorable terms to ‘the God-fearing and God-sustaining University of Oxford. I served her, perhaps mistakenly, but to the best of my ability. My most earnest prayers are hers to the uttermost and to the last.’ He died in the early morning of Ascension Day, which that year fell on 19 May.
The obsequies were magnificent. He who had been so sparing of honours for himself in life was allowed by his family and without any sign of attempted prior prohibition by himself to be treated in death far more grandly than Peel or Disraeli before him, or Asquith or Lloyd George after him. The only comparable non-royal funerals of the past 150 years have been those of the Duke of Wellington and of Churchill. The House of Commons adjourned immediately on receipt of the news, and on the following day tributes were paid by Balfour and Harcourt in the Commons and by Salisbury and Rosebery in the Lords. All four were notable. Resolutions for a Westminster Abbey burial were carried unanimously. The body was brought by special train to the adjacent Underground station before lying in state in Westminster Hall, with a great file-past of the famous and the obscure alike. The Abbey funeral was on Saturday, 28 May. The pall-bearers were the Prince of Wales and his son the Duke of York (later King George V); Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery; Lord Kimberley and Sir William Harcourt; Arthur Balfour and the Duke of Rutland (who as Lord John Manners had been Gladstone’s fellow member for Newark during the Peel government; and Lord Rendel and Mr Armitstead. It was a nicely balanced ten, although among Liberals both Spencer and Morley (the latter presumably excluded as a non-believer) would have been more appropriate than Harcourt, and Rutland was a substitute for Argyll, who was unable to be present, and defensively explained to The Times that it was not because of recent political differences. The Queen, unfailing to the last, telegraphed to the Prince of Wales to ask what was the precedent he had followed and whose advice he had taken in acting in such a capacity. He rather splendidly replied that he knew of no precedent and had taken no advice.
Even in her relatively warm telegram to Catherine Gladstone the Queen could not bring herself to refer to Gladstone as more than ‘one of the most distinguished statesmen of my reign’.14 What she could not recognize was that he was the quintessential statesman of her reign, its epitome and, almost as much as herself, its symbol. His death announced the conclusion of the Victorian age only a little less clearly than did her own two and a half years later.
REFERENCES
1. A Liverpool Gentleman?
1 Bagehot, Biographical Studies, p. 86.
2 Checkland, The Gladstones, pp. 414–15.
3 Ibid., p. 129.
4 Brooke and Sorenson (eds), The Prime Ministers’ Papers: W. E. Gladstone, I. p. 21.
5 Ibid., pp. 18–19.
6 Diaries, I, p. 74.
7 Diaries, I, p. 74.
8 Brooke and Sorenson (eds), The Prime Ministers’ Papers: W. E. Gladstone, I, p. 28.
9 Ibid., pp. 24–5.
10 Diaries, I, p. 360.
11 Brooke and Sorenson (eds), The Prime Ministers’ Papers: W. E. Gladstone, I, p. 30.
12 Diaries, I, p. 259.
13 Magnus, Gladstone, p. 9.
14 Diaries, II, p. 63.
15 Tennyson, In Memoriam.
16 Martin, Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart, p. 74.
17 Diaries, I, pp. 290–1.
18 Ibid., p. 386.
19 Ibid., p. 347.
20 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 74.
21 Commons Hansard for 22 April 1866.
22 Brooke and Sorenson (eds), The Prime Ministers’ Papers: W. E. Gladstone, I, p. 40.
2. A Grand Tour Ending at Newark
1 Diaries, I, p. 551.
2 Ibid., pp. 562–3.
3 Magnus, Gladstone, p. 4.
4 Matthew, Gladstone 1809–1874, p. 6.
5 Diaries, I, p. 97.
6 Ibid., I, p. 272.
7 Gleamings of Past Years, VII, p. 219.
8 Diaries, I, p. 413.
9 Ibid., p. 453.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., p. 460.
12 Ibid., p. 462.
13 Ibid., p. 428.
14 Ibid., p. 463.
15 Ibid., p. 495.
16 Brooke and Sorenson (eds), The Prime Ministers’ Papers: W. E. Gladstone, I, pp. 142–3.
17 Magnus, Gladstone, p. 16.
18 Shannon, Gladstone, p. 40.
19 Diaries, I, p. 592.
20 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 93.
21 Diaries, II, p. 33.
3. A Clumsy Suitor
1 Gordon, The Earl of Aberdeen, p. 111.
2 Ibid., p. 116.
3 Ibid., p. 176.
4 Shannon, Gladstone, p. 224–50.
5 Diaries, I, p. 338.
6 Ibid., p. 139.
7 Maxwell, Clarendon, II, p. 224.
8 Goldwin Smith, My Memory of Gladstone, p. 18.
9 Commons Hansard for 30 July 1838.
10 Diaries, II, p. 502.
11 Harris, Attlee, p. 525.
4. Peel’s Apprentice
1 Diaries, II, p. 580.
2 Battiscombe, Mrs Gladstone, p. 31.
3 Ibid., p. 82.
4 Diaries, II, pp. 639–40.
5 Ibid., p. 608n.
6 Ibid., p. 614.
7 Ibid., III, p. 5.
8 Ibid., p. 21.
9 Ibid., p. 29.
10 Bagehot, Biogra
phical Studies, p. 6.
11 Gash, Sir Robert Peel, II, pp. 185–6.
12 Ibid., p. 186.
13 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. ??
14 Commons Hansard for 3 July 1850.
15 Diaries, IV, p. 224.
16 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 372.
17 Ibid., p. 373.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid., p. 374.
21 Ibid., p. 613.
22 Shannon, Gladstone, . 62.
23 Diaries, III, p. 422.
24 Ibid., IV, p. 200.
25 Ibid., p. 20–2.
26 Ibid., III, p. 130.
27 Fletcher, Mr Gladstone at Oxford, p. 83.
28 Brooke and Sorenson (eds), The Prime Ministers’ Papers: W. E. Gladstone, I, pp 247.
5. Orator, Zealot and Debtor
1 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, pp. 191–2.
2 Ibid., p. 280.
3 Lathbury, Letters on Church and Religion of William Ewart Gladstone, I, p 339.
4 Diaries, III, p. 483.
5 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 311.
6 Faber, The Oxford Apostles, pp. 170–1.
7 Ker, John Henry Newman, p. 90.
8 Faber, The Oxford Apostles, p. 170.
9 Matthew, Gladstone 1809–1874, p. 70.
10 Ibid.
11 Diaries, III, pp. 416–70.
6. Mid-Century Frenzy
1 Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, II, p. 55.
2 Tilney Bassett (ed.), Gladstone to His Wife, p. 68.
3 Diaries, III, pp. 506–7.
4 Ibid., p. 530.
5 Morley, Life of Gladstone, III, p. 485.
6 Ibid., I, p. 350.
7 Shannon, Gladstone, I, p. 201.
8 Diaries, III, p. 653.
9 Ibid., p. 655.
10 Ibid., p. 658.
11 Commons Hansard for 16 December 1847.
12 Diaries, IV, pp. 47–8.
13 Ibid., p. 146.
14 Ibid., p. 142.
15 Ibid., p. 142
16 Ibid., p. 144.
17 Ibid., pp. 174–5.
18 Brooke and Sorenson (eds), The Prime Ministers’ Papers: W. E. Gladstone, I.
19 Diaries, IV, p. 353.
7. Ladies of the Night
1 Diaries, III, p. 491.
2 Ibid., pp. 492–3.
3 Ibid., IV, p. 36n.
4 Ibid., p. 37.
5 Ibid., p. 55.
6 Ibid., p. 117.
7 Ivor (Bulmer-)Thomas, Gladstone of Hawarden pp. 241–2.
8 Magnus, Gladstone, p. 107.
9 Diaries, IV, p. 319.
10 Ibid., p. 586.
11 Ibid., p. 124.
12 Ibid., p. 133.
13 Ibid., p. 207.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., p. 210.
16 Ibid., pp. 214–15.
17 Ibid., p. 229.
18 Ibid., p. 230.
19 Ibid., p. 233.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., p. 235.
22 Ibid., pp. 295–6.
23 Ibid., p. 319.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., p. 325.
26 Ibid., p. 336.
27 Ibid., p. 342.
28 Ibid., p. 344.
29 Ibid., p. 346.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., V, p. 422.
32 Ibid., IV, p. 586.
33 Mathew, Gladstone 1809–1874, p 93.
8. The Tremendous Projectile
1 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 261.
2 Shannon, Gladstone, I, p. 223.
3 Tilney Bassett (ed.), Gladstone’s Speeches, pp. 109–54.
4 Diaries, p. 304–6.
5 Ibid., IV, p. 305.
6 Ibid., pp. 306–7.
7 Ibid., pp. 307–8.
8 Ibid., p. 322.
9 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 400.
10 Ibid., p. 411.
11 Diaries, IV, pp. 317–18.
12 Chadwick, The Victorian Church, I, p. 296.
13 Letters of Queen Victoria, 1st Series, II, pp. 325–6.
14 Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, II, pp. 120–1.
15 Chadwick, The Victorian Church, I, p. 303.
16 Commons Hansard for 25 March 1851.
17 Letter from Gladstone to Richard Gressell, his Oxford University constituency chairman.
9. The Chancellor Who Made the Job
1 Blake, Disraeli, p. 305.
2 Ibid.
3 Diaries, IV, p. 475.
4 Blake, Disraeli, p. 345.
5 Tilney Bassett (ed.), Gladstone to His Wife, p. 94.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Commons Hansard for 16 December 1852.
9 Diaries, IV, p. 477.
10 Full correspondence published in Monypenny and Buckle, Life of Disraeli, III, pp. 476–80.
11 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 451.
12 Ibid., p. 466.
13 Diaries, IV, p. 515.
14 Ibid.
15 Commons Hansard for 18 April 1853.
16 Letters of Queen Victoria, 1st Series, p. 542.
17 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 469.
18 Shannon, Gladstone, p. 272.
19 Greville, Diaries, 3rd Series, I, p. 59.
20 Brooke and Sorenson (eds), The Prime Ministers’ Papers: W. E. Gladstone, I, p. 65.
21 Diaries, IV, p. 579.
22 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, pp. 511–12.
10. The Decline and Fall of the Aberdeen Coalition
1 Letter from Aberdeen to Gladstone, 5 December 1856.
2 Protheroe, Life of A. P. Stanley, I, p. 434.
3 See the essay by V. H. H. Green, former Rector of Lincoln College in the (1993) Illustrated History of the University of Oxford.
4 Letters of Queen Victoria, 3rd Series, III, p. 11.
5 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 511.
6 Ibid., I, p. 510.
7 Diaries, IV, p. 621.
8 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 540.
9 Brooke and Sorenson (eds), The Prime Ministers’ Papers: W. E. Gladstone, I, p. 82.
10 Diaries., V, p. 21.
11 Ibid.
11. Health and Wealth
1 Diaries, IV, p. 522.
2 Ibid., p. 525.
3 Ibid., V, p. 42.
4 Ibid., IV, p. 562.
5 Ibid.
6 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 483.
7 Diaries, IV, p. 621.
8 Ibid., p. 568.
9 Ibid., p. 579.
10 Ibid., V, p. 423.
11 Ibid., p. 62.
12 Ibid., p. 68.
13 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 563.
12. A Short Odyssey for a British Ulysses
1 Diaries, V, p. 279.
2 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, pp. 587–8.
3 G. W . E. Russell, Gladstone, p. 140.
4 Morley, Life of Gladstone, I, p. 589.
5 Diaries, V, p. 315.
6 Speech at Blackpool, 24 January 1884 (James, Lord Randolph Churchill, pp. 136–7.
7 Diaries, V, p. 339.
8 Ibid., p. 340.
9 Ibid., p. 343.
10 Ibid., p. 349.
11 Ibid., p. 367.
12 Ibid., pp. 351–8
13 Ibid., p. 373.
13. The Hostile Partnership with Palmerston
1 Magnus, Gladstone, p. 144.
2 Blake, Disraeli, p. 396.
3 Southgate, The Most English Minister, p. 453.
4 Ibid., p. 452.
5 Parker, Life and Letters of Sir James Graham, II, p. 388.
6 Diaries, V, p. 399.
7 Maxwell, Life of Clarendon, II, p. 186.
8 Bailey (ed.), The Diary of Lady Frederick Cavendish, I, pp. 92–3.
9 Diaries, V, p. 402.
10 Guedalla, Palmerston, p. 453.
11 Diaries, V, p. 410.
12 Ibid., p. 410n.
13 Republished in 1879 in Gleanings of Past Years, pp. 131–79.
1
4 Diaries, V, p. 418.
15 Ibid., pp. 434–5.
16 Ibid., VI, p. 47.
17 Guedalla, Palmerston, p. 453.
18 Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, p. 126.
14. God’s Vicar in the Treasury
1 Diaries, V, p. 410.
2 Ibid., p. 415.
3 Ibid., p. 421.
4 Hinde, Richard Cobden, p. 285.
5 Diaries, V, p. 424.
6 Hinde, Richard Cobden, pp. 285–95.
7 Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, pp. 115–18.
8 Ibid., p. 123.
9 Ibid., p. 124.
10 Diaries, V, p. 463.
11 Ibid., p. 462.
12 Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, p. 123.
13 Diaries, V, p. 464.
14 Tilney Bassett (ed.), Gladstone’s Speeches, pp. 288–90.
15 Ibid., p. 273.
16 Diaries, V, p. 485.
17 Ibid., p. 495.
18 Ibid., p. 506.
19 Ibid., p. 541.
15. The People’s William
1 Diaries, VI, p. 51.
2 Ibid., p. 163.
3 Ibid., p. 179.
4 Ibid., p. 24.
5 Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, pp. 169–70.
6 Ibid., p. 176.
7 Diaries, VI, p. 48.
8 Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, pp. 176–9.
9 Shannon, Gladstone, I, p. 423.
10 Morley, Life of Gladstone, II, p. 79.
11 The Times, 9 October 1862.
12 Morley, Life of Gladstone, II, p. 80.
13 Brooke and Sorenson (eds), The Prime Ministers’ Papers: W. E. Gladstone, I, pp. 133–4 and 250
14 Magnus, Gladstone, p. 152.
15 Diaries, VI, pp. 152–3.
16 Ibid., p. 153.
17 Gladstone’s ‘Secret Account Book’, finally tabulated in 1897, the last year of his life.
18 Diaries, VI, p. 199.
19 Tilney Bassett (ed.), Gladstone to His Wife, pp. 160–3.
20 Diaries, VI, p. 170.
21 Ibid., p. 246.
22 Ibid., p. 127.
23 Ibid., p. 167.
24 Ibid., p. 18.
25 Commons Hansard for 11 May 1864.
26 Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, pp. 279–87.
27 Ibid., p. 318.
28 Ibid., pp. 297–8.
29 Ibid., p. 300.
30 Diaries, VI, pp. 326–32.
31 Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, p. 335.
32 Diaries, VI, p. 370.
33 Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, p. 348.
16. Disraeli’s Foil