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The Grand Old Man

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At the time of his father's death, William E. Gladstone was still an
adherent of the Tory party, yet his steps indicated that he was
advancing towards Liberalism; and he had already reached distinction as
a statesman, both in Parliament and in the Cabinet, while as yet he was
but 42 years old, which was about half of his age when called for the
fourth time to be Prime Minister of England.

Sir John Gladstone and his wife had six children--four sons, Thomas
Gladstone, afterwards baronet; John Gladstone, who became a captain, and
died in 1863; Robert Gladstone, brought up a merchant, who died in 1875,
and two daughters, Annie McKenzie Gladstone, who died years ago, and
Helen Jane Gladstone. William E. Gladstone was the fourth son. The
following is from the pen of the son, who says of his aged father, Sir
John Gladstone: "His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated; he
was full of bodily and mental vigor; whatsoever his hand found to do he
did it with his might; he could not understand or tolerate those who,
perceiving an object to be good, did not at once and actively pursue it;
and with all this energy he gained a corresponding warmth, and, so to
speak, eagerness of affection, a keen appreciation of humor, in which he
found a rest, and an indescribable frankness and simplicity of
character, which, crowning his other qualities, made him, I think, and I
strive to think impartially, nearly or quite the most interesting old
man I ever knew."

Personally, Sir John Gladstone was a man of much intelligence and of
sterling principle, of high moral and religious character, and his
house consequently was a model home. "His house was by all accounts a
home pre-eminently calculated to mould the thoughts and direct the
course of an intelligent and receptive nature. There was a father's
masterful will and keen perception, the sweetness and piety of the
mother, wealth with all its substantial advantages and few of its
mischiefs, a strong sense of the value of money, a rigid avoidance of
extravagance and excesses; everywhere a strenuous purpose in life,
constant employment, and concentrated ambition."

Mrs. John Gladstone, the wife and mother, is described by one who knew
her intimately as "a lady of very great accomplishments; of fascinating
manners, of commanding presence and high intellect; one to grace any
home and endear any heart."

The following picture of the everyday life of the family is interesting
and instructive, on account of Sir John Gladstone, as well as on that of
his more distinguished son, and is from the pen of an eye-witness:
"Nothing was ever taken for granted between him and his sons. A
succession of arguments on great topics and small topics
alike--arguments conducted with perfect good humor, but also with the
most implicable logic--formed the staple of the family conversation. The
children and their parents argued upon everything. They would debate as
to whether a window should be opened, and whether it was likely to be
fair or wet the next day. It was all perfectly good-humored, but curious
to a stranger, because of the evident care which all the disputants took
to advance no proposition, even as to the prospect of rain, rashly."

In such a home as this was William E. Gladstone in training as the great
Parliamentary debater and leader, and for the highest office under the
British crown. This reminds us of a story of Burke. The king one day,
unexpectedly entering the office of his minister, found the elder Burke
sitting at his desk, with his eyes fixed upon his young son, who was
standing on his father's desk in the attitude of speaking. "What are you
doing?" asked the astonished king. "I am making the greatest minister
England ever saw," was the reply. And so in fact, and yet all
unconsciously, was Sir John doing for his son, William.

William E. Gladstone "was born," says his biographer, G.W.E. Russell,
"at a critical moment in the fortunes of England and of Europe. Abroad
the greatest genius that the world has ever seen was wading through
slaughter to a universal throne, and no effectual resistance had as yet
been offered to a progress which menaced the liberty of Europe and the
existence of its States. At home, a crazy king and a profligate
heir-apparent presided over a social system in which all civil evils
were harmoniously combined. A despotic administration was supported by a
parliamentary representation as corrupt as illusory; a church, in which
spiritual religion was all but extinct, had sold herself as a bondslave
to the governing classes. Rank and wealth and territorial ascendency
were divorced from public duty, and even learning had become the
handmaid of tyranny. The sacred name of justice was prostituted to
sanction a system of legal murder. Commercial enterprise was paralyzed
by prohibitive legislation; public credit was shaken to its base; the
prime necessaries of life were ruinously dear. The pangs of poverty were
aggravated by the concurrent evils of war and famine, and the common
people, fast bound in misery and iron, were powerless to make their
sufferings known or to seek redress, except by the desperate methods of
conspiracy and insurrection. None of the elements of revolution were
wanting, and the fates seemed to be hurrying England to the brink of a
civil catastrophe.

"The general sense of insecurity and apprehension, inseparable from such
a condition of affairs, produced its effect upon even the robust minds.
Sir John Gladstone was not a likely victim of panic, but he was a man
with a large stake in the country, the more precious because acquired by
his own exertion; he believed that the safeguards of property and order
were imperilled by foreign arms and domestic sedition; and he had seen
with indignation and disgust the excesses of a factious Whiggery, which
was not ashamed to exult in the triumph of the French over the English
Government. Under the pressure of these influences Sir John Gladstone
gradually separated himself from the Whigs, with whom in earlier life he
had acted, and became the close ally of Canning, whose return for
Liverpool he actually promoted."

With such surroundings it is not to be wondered at that William E.
Gladstone entered political life a Tory, contending against the
principles he afterwards espoused. His original bent, however, was not
towards politics, but the church; and it was only at the earnest desire
of his father that he ultimately decided to enter Parliament, and serve
his country in the Legislature.

His subsequent life proved the wisdom of the choice. In the Legislature
of his country was begun, carried on and consummated grandly, one of the
most remarkable careers in the annals of history for versatility,
brilliancy, solidity and long continuance. Rarely has there been
exhibited so complete a combination of qualities in statesmanship. His
intellectual endowments were almost without a parallel, and his
achievements without a precedent. In him seemed to be centered a rich
collection of the highest gifts of genius, great learning and readiness
in debate and discourse in the House of Commons, and extraordinary
wisdom in the administration of the affairs of the nation. His financial
talent, his business aptitude, his classical attainments, and above all
his moral fervor, and religious spirit were conspicuous. Some men would
have been contented with political power, or classical learning, or
literary distinction, but he excelled in all these--not only as a
statesman, but as a man of letters and a classical scholar. Neither has
held him exclusively as its own--he belongs to all, or rather they
belong to him--for he explored and conquered them. His literary
productions equal in merit his papers of State, while his knowledge of
the classics would do credit to any scholar.

He possessed the unusual quality of throwing the light of his own mind
on the greatest questions of national and international importance, of
bringing them down to the understanding and appreciation of the masses
of the people, of infusing, by his earnestness, the fire of his own soul
in the people, and of arousing in them the greatest enthusiasm.

In the biography of this wonderful person we propose to set before the
reader the man himself--his words and his deeds. This method enables him
to speak for himself, and thus the reader may study him and know him,
and because thereof be lifted into a higher plane of nobler and better
being. The acts and utterances of such a character are his best
biography, and especially for one differing so largely from all other
men as to have none to be compared with him.

In this record we simply spread before the reader his private life and
public services, connected together through many startling changes, from
home to school, from university to Parliament, from Tory follower to
Liberal leader, from the early start in his political course to the
grand consummation of the statesman's success in his attainment to the
fourth Premiership of this Grand Old Man, and the glorious end of an
eventful life.

We could not do better, in closing this chapter, than to reproduce a
part of the character sketch of William E. Gladstone, from the pen of
William T. Stead, and published in the "Review of Reviews:"

"So much has been written about Mr. Gladstone that it was with some
sinking of heart I ventured to select him as a subject for my next
character sketch. But I took heart of grace when I remembered that the
object of these sketches is to describe their subject as he appears to
himself at his best, and his countrymen. There are plenty of other
people ready to fill in the shadows. This paper claims in no way to be a
critical estimate or a judicial summing up of the merits and demerits
of the most remarkable of all living Englishmen. It is merely an attempt
to catch, as it were, the outline of the heroic figure which has
dominated English politics for the lifetime of this generation, and
thereby to explain something of the fascination which his personality
has exercised and still exercises over the men and women of his time. If
his enemies, and they are many, say that I have idealized a wily old
opportunist out of all recognition, I answer that to the majority of his
fellow-subjects my portrait is not overdrawn. The real Gladstone may be
other than this, but this is probably more like the Gladstone for whom
the electors believe they are voting, than a picture of Gladstone,
'warts and all,' would be. And when I am abused, as I know I shall be,
for printing such a sketch, I shall reply that there is at least one
thing to be said in its favor. To those who know him best, in his own
household, and to those who only know him as a great name in history, my
sketch will only appear faulty because it does not do full justice to
the character and genius of this extraordinary man."

Mr. Gladstone appeals to the men of to-day from the vantage point of
extreme old age. Age is so frequently dotage, that when a veteran
appears who preserves the heart of a boy and the happy audacity of
youth, under the 'lyart haffets wearing thin and bare' of aged manhood,
it seems as if there is something supernatural about it, and all men
feel the fascination and the charm. Mr. Gladstone, as he gleefully
remarked the other day, has broken the record. He has outlived Lord
Palmerston, who died when eighty-one, and Thiers, who only lived to be
eighty. The blind old Dandolo in Byron's familiar verse--

The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe,

had not more energy than the Liberal leader, who, now in his
eighty-third year, has more nerve and spring and go than any of his
lieutenants, not excluding the youngest recruit. There is something
imposing and even sublime in the long procession of years which bridge
as with eighty-two arches the abyss of past time, and carry us back to
the days of Canning, and of Castlereagh, of Napoleon, and of Wellington.
His parliamentary career extends over sixty years--the lifetime of two
generations. He is the custodian of all the traditions, the hero of the
experience of successive administrations, from a time dating back longer
than most of his colleagues can remember. For nearly forty years he has
had a leading part in making or unmaking of Cabinets; he has served his
Queen and his country in almost every capacity in office and in
opposition, and yet to-day, despite his prolonged sojourn in the malaria
of political wire-pulling, his heart seems to be as the heart of a
little child. If some who remember 'the old Parliamentary hand' should
whisper that innocence of the dove is sometimes compatible with the
wisdom of the serpent, I make no dissent. It is easy to be a dove, and
to be as silly as a dove. It is easy to be as wise as a serpent, and as
wicked, let us say, as Mr. Governor Hill or Lord Beaconsfield. But it is
the combination that is difficult, and in Mr. Gladstone the combination
is almost ideally complete.

"Mr. Gladstone is old enough to be the grandfather of the younger race
of politicians, but still his courage, his faith, his versatility, put
the youngest of them to shame. It is this ebullience of youthful energy,
this inexhaustible vitality, which is the admiration and despair of his
contemporaries. Surely when a schoolboy at Eton he must somewhere have
discovered the elixir of life, or have been bathed by some beneficent
fairy in the well of perpetual youth. Gladly would many a man of fifty
exchange physique with this hale and hearty octogenarian. Only in one
respect does he show any trace of advancing years. His hearing is not
quite so good as it was, but still it is far better than that of
Cardinal Manning, who became very deaf in his closing years. Otherwise
Mr. Gladstone is hale and hearty. His eye is not dim, neither is his
natural force abated. A splendid physical frame, carefully preserved,
gives every promise of a continuance of his green old age.

"His political opponents, who began this Parliament by confidently
calculating upon his death before the dissolution, are now beginning to
admit that it is by no means improbable that Mr. Gladstone may survive
the century. Nor was it quite so fantastic as it appears at first sight,
when an ingenious disciple told him the other day that by the fitness of
things he ought to live for twenty years yet. 'For,' said this political
arithmetician, 'you have been twenty-six years a Tory, twenty-six years
a Whig Liberal, and you have been only six years a Radical Home Ruler.
To make the balance even you have twenty years still to serve.'

"Sir Provo Wallis, the Admiral of the Fleet, who died the other day at
the age of one hundred, had not a better constitution than Mr.
Gladstone, nor had it been more carefully preserved in the rough and
tumble of our naval war. If the man who smelt powder in the famous fight
between the Chesapeake and the Shannon lived to read the reports of the
preparations for the exhibition at Chicago, it is not so incredible that
Mr. Gladstone may at least be in the foretop of the State at the dawn of
the twentieth century.

"The thought is enough to turn the Tories green with sickening despair,
that the chances of his life, from a life insurance office point of
view, are probably much better than Lord Salisbury's. But that is one of
the attributes of Mr. Gladstone which endear him so much to his party.
He is always making his enemies sick with despairing jealousy. He is the
great political evergreen, who seems, even in his political life, to
have borrowed something of immortality from the fame which he has won.
He has long been the Grand Old Man. If he lives much longer he bids fair
to be known as the immortal old man in more senses than one."

[Illustration: GLADSTONE'S BIRTHPLACE, RODNEY STREET, LIVERPOOL.]




CHAPTER II


AT ETON AND OXFORD

There is very little recorded of the boyhood of some great men, and this
is true of the childhood of William E. Gladstone, until he leaves the
parental home for school, which he does in 1821, at the early age of
eleven. He was fortunate in his parentage, but no less so in his early
associations, both in and out of school. We refer particularly to his
private preceptors, two of whom, the venerable Archdeacon Jones and the
Rev. William Rawson, first Vicar of Seaforth, a watering-place near
Liverpool, were both men of high character and great ability. Mr.
Gladstone always highly esteemed Mr. Rawson, his earliest preceptor, and
visited him on his death-bed. Dr. Turner, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta,
was for two years young Gladstone's private tutor, beginning his
instruction when his pupil left Eton in 1827.

Besides these associations of his early life there were Canning, a
frequent visitor, as has been mentioned, at his father's house, and
Hannah More--"Holy Hannah," as Horace Walpole called her. She singled
out "Billy" Gladstone for her especial pet out of the group of eleven
children in whom her warm heart delighted, and it has been asked
wonderingly if Miss More could preternaturally have lengthened her days
until William E. Gladstone's present glory, whether she would have gone
on dubbing him "Billy" in undignified brevity until the end.

William E. Gladstone, when very young, gave such evidence of uncommon
intellectual ability and promise of future greatness that his father
resolved upon educating him in the best schools of England. There are
four or five great schools in England in which the English youth are
prepared in four or five years for Cambridge or Oxford. "Eton, the
largest and the most celebrated of the public schools of England, ranks
as the second in point of antiquity, Winchester alone being older."
After the preparation at home, under private teachers, to which we have
referred, William E. Gladstone was sent to Eton, in September, 1821. His
biographer, George W.E. Russell, writes, "From a provincial town, from
mercantile surroundings, from an atmosphere of money-making, from a
strictly regulated life, the impressible boy was transplanted, at the
age of eleven, to the shadow of Windsor and the banks of the Thames, to
an institution which belongs to history, to scenes haunted by the
memory of the most illustrious Englishmen, to a free and independent
existence among companions who were the very flower of English boyhood.
A transition so violent and yet so delightful was bound to produce an
impression which lapse of time was powerless to efface, and no one who
knows the man and the school can wonder that for seventy years Mr.
Gladstone has been the most enthusiastic of Etonians."

Eton of to-day is not in all respects the Eton of three-quarters of a
century ago, and yet in some particulars it is as it was when young
"Billy" Gladstone studied within its walls. The system of education and
discipline pursued has undergone some modifications in recent
years--notably during the provostship of the Rev. Francis Hodgson; but
radical defects are still alleged against it. It is not remarkable,
however, that every Eton boy becomes deeply attached to the school,
notwithstanding the apprenticeship to hardships he may have been
compelled to undergo.

The "hardships" there must have been particularly great when young
Gladstone entered Eton, at the close of the summer holidays of 1821. The
school was under the head-mastership of "the terrific Dr. Keate." He was
not the man to spare even the scholar who, upon the emphatic testimony
of Sir Roderick Murchison, was "the prettiest boy that ever went to
Eton," and who was as studious and well-behaved as he was good-looking.

The town of Eton, in which the school is located, about 22 miles from
London, in Berkshire, is beautifully situated on the banks of the river
Thames, opposite Windsor Castle, the residence of the Queen of England.

Eton College is one of the most famous and best endowed educational
institutions of learning in England. It was founded in 1440 by Henry VI.
The king was very solicitous that the work should be of a durable kind,
and he provided for free scholarships. Eton of Mr. Gladstone's day,
according to a critic, was divided into two schools--the upper and the
lower. It also had two kinds of scholars, namely, seventy called king's
scholars or "collegers," who are maintained gratuitously, sleep in the
college, and wear a peculiar dress; and another class--the
majority--called "oppidans," who live in the town. Between these two
classes of students there prevails perpetual hostility. At Cambridge,
there was founded, in connection with Eton, what is called King's
College, to receive as fellows students from Eton, and to give them
gratuitously an education. The ground on which students of Eton were
promoted to King's College and these fellowships was, strangely to say,
upon that of seniority, or long residence, and not of merit. Because
there was no competition, scholars who were deficient in education at
Eton were promoted to Cambridge, where they had no incentive to work,
being exempt from the ordinary university examination.

At Eton "no instruction was given in any branch of mathematical,
physical, metaphysical or moral science, nor in the evidences of
Christianity. The only subjects which it professed to impart a knowledge
of were the Greek and Latin languages; as much divinity as can be gained
from construing the Greek Testament, and reading a portion of Tomline on
the Thirty-nine Articles, and a little ancient and modern geography." So
much for the instruction imparted. As regards the hours of tuition,
there seems to have been fault there, in that they were too few and
insufficient, there being in all only eleven hours a week study. Then as
to the manner of study, no time was given the scholar to study the style
of an author; he was "hurried from Herodotus to Thucydides, from
Thucydides to Xenophon, from Xenophon to Lucian, without being
habituated to the style of any one author--without gaining an interest
in the history, or even catching the thread of the narrative; and when
the whole book is finished he has probably collected only a few vague
ideas about Darius crying over a great army, Abydos and Nicias and
Demosthenes being routed with a great army near Syracuse, mixed up with
a recollection of the death of Cyrus and Socrates, some moral precept
from Socrates, and some jokes against false philosophers and heathen
gods." Hence the Eton student who goes to Cambridge finds he has done
but a little desultory reading, and that he must begin again. It was
charged that the system of education at Eton failed in every point. The
moral discipline of the school was also called in question. The number
of scholars was so great that the proper control of them seemed
impossible under the management. Great laxity prevailed among the larger
boys, while the younger and weaker students were exposed to the tyranny
of the older and stronger ones without hope of redress. The result was
that the system of "fagging," or the acting of some boys as drudges for
the others, flourished. "The right" of fagging depended upon the place
in the school; all boys in the sixth and fifth forms had the power of
ordering--all below the latter form being bound to obey. This system of
fagging has a very injurious effect upon most of the boys; "it finds
them slaves and leaves them despots. A boy who has suffered himself,
insensibly learns to see no harm in making others suffer in turn. The
whole thing is wrong in principle, and engenders passions which should
be stifled and not encouraged." Why free and enlightened England should
tolerate, even then, such barbarous slavery cannot be understood and
yet there are outrageous customs prevailing among college students of
our day in every civilized land that should be suppressed.

Flogging was in vogue, too, at Eton, with all its degrading and
demoralizing effects, and was performed by the Head-Master himself. In
1820, the year before Mr. Gladstone entered Eton, there were 280 upper
students and 319 lower, a total of 612, and none were exempt.

Some curious stories are told of flogging, which has ever existed at
Eton, and from which even the largest boys were not exempt. Mr. Lewis
relates how a young man of twenty, just upon the point of leaving
school, and engaged to be married to a lady at Windsor, was well and
soundly whipped by Dr. Goodford, for arriving one evening at his tutor's
house after the specified time. And it is related that Arthur Wellesley,
afterwards the Iron Duke of Wellington, was flogged at Eton for having
been "barred out." At the same time there were eighty boys who
were whipped.

And the Eton of twenty years later was very little improved over its
condition in Mr. Gladstone's time there, or in 1845. John D. Lewis,
speaking of this period, says that after the boys reached the fifth
form, then began "some of the greatest anomalies and absurdities of the
then Etonian system." The student was now safe from the ordeal of
examinations, and that the higher classes, including ten senior
collegers and ten senior oppidans, contained some of the very worst
scholars. "A boy's place on the general roll was no more a criterion of
his acquirements and his industry than would be the 'year' of a young
man at Oxford or Cambridge." The collegers, however, were required to
pass some kind of examination, in accordance with which their place on
the list for the King's college was fixed. But the evils regarding the
hours of study and the nature of the studies were as bad. "The regular
holidays and Saints' days, two whole holidays in a week, and two
half-holidays, were a matter of common occurrence."

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