STATESMEN AT HOME.
DCXLIII. The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., at Hawarden.
S you approach the historic home of the great English Statesman who is to be your host to-day, you become conscious of the fact that there are two Hawarden Castles. Moreover, as young Herbert pleasantly remarks a little later in the day, "You must draw a Hawarden-fast line between the two." One, standing on a hill dominating a far-reaching tract of level country, was already so old in the time of Edward the First that it was found necessary to rebuild it. Looking through your Domesday Book (which you always carry with you on these excursions), you find the mansion referred to under the style of Haordine. This, antiquarians assume, is the Saxonised form of the earlier British Y Garthddin, which, being translated, means "The hill-fort on the projecting ridge."
When William the Conqueror came over, bringing with him a following the numerical proportions of which increase as the years roll by, he found the Fort on the Hill held by Edward of Mercia, and deemed it convenient to leave it in his possession. The Castle played its part in English history down to the time, now 130 years gone by, when it came into the hands of Sir John Glynn, and thence through long descent became an inheritance of the gracious lady who, with cambric cap-strings streaming in the free air of the Marches, joins your host in welcoming you.
It is, however, not on the steps of the old castle of which Prince Llewellyn was once lord that you are thus received. By the side of the old ruin has grown up another Hawarden Castle, a roomy mansion, statelily stuccoed, with sham turrets run up, buttresses, embrasures, portholes, and portcullises, putting to shame the rugged, looped and windowless ruin that still stands on the projecting ridge. This dates only from the beginning of the century, and, looking upon it, your face glows with honest pride, as you think how much better the generation near your own made for itself dwelling-houses compared with the earlier English.
Whilst you stand musing on these things you are conscious of a whishing sound, and a breath of swiftly moving cool air wantonly strikes your cheek. You look up and behold! there is your host, axe in hand, playfully performing a number of passes over your unconscious head. His dress is designed admirably to suit the exercise. Coat and waistcoat are doffed; the immortal collars are turned down, displaying the columnar throat and the brawny chest; the snow-white shirt-sleeves are turned up to the elbow, disclosing biceps that Samson would envy and Sandow covet. His braces are looped on either side of his supple hips, and his right hand grasps the axe which, a moment ago had been performing over your head a series of evolutions which, remarkable for the strength and agility displayed, were, perhaps, scarcely desirable for daily repetition.
"Don't be frightened, Toby M.P.," said the full rich voice so familiar in the House of Commons; "it's our wild woodsman's way of welcoming the coming guest. What do you think of my costume? Seen it before? Ah! yes, the photographs. Carte de visite style, 10s. 6d. a dozen; Cabinet size, a guinea. I have been photographed several times as you will observe."
And, indeed, as your host leads you along the stately passages, through the storied rooms, you find his photograph everywhere. The tables are covered with them, showing your host in all attitudes and costumes. "Yes," he says, with a sigh, "I think I have marched up to the camera's mouth as often as most men of my years."
Ascending the rustic staircase which leads from the garden, William Ewart Gladstone takes you past the library into the drawing-room, in the upper parts of the leaded windows of which are inserted panels of rare old glass, cunningly obtained by melting superfluous Welsh ale bottles. He leads you to a table, as round as that at which a famous Conference was held, and points to a little ivory painting. It shows a chubby little boy some two years of age, with rather large head and broad shoulders, sitting at the knee of a young nymph approaching her fifth year. On her knee is a book, and the chubby boy, with dark hair falling low over his forehead, his great brown eyes staring frankly at you, points with his finger to a passage. When you learn that this is a portrait of your host and his sister taken in the year 1811, you naturally come to the conclusion that the young lady has, for party purposes, been misquoting some passages in her brother's speech, and that he, having produced an authorised record of his address, is triumphantly pointing to the text in controversion of her statement.
Your host, chopping grimly at the furniture as he passes along—here dexterously severing the leg of a Chippendale chair, and there hacking a piece off a Louis Quatorze couch—leads the way to an annexe he has just built for the reception of his treasured books. From the outside this excrescence on the Castle has but a poverty-stricken look. It is, to tell the truth, made of corrugated iron. But that is a cloak that cunningly covers an interior of rare beauty and rich design. Arras of cloth of gold hangs loosely on the walls, whilst here and there, on the far-reaching floor, gleams the low light of a faded Turkey carpet. Open tables, covered with broad cloths of crimson velvet, embroidered and fringed with gold, carry innumerable Blue Books. On marble tables, supported on carved and gilded frames, stand priceless vases, filled with rare flowers. In crystal flagons you detect the sheen of amber light (which may be sherry wine), whilst the ear is lulled with the sound of fountains dispensing perfumes as of Araby. In an alcove, chastely draped with violent violet velvet, the grey apes swing, and the peacocks preen, on fretted pillar and jewelled screen. Horologes, to chime the hours, and even the quarters, uprise from tables of ebony-and-mother-of-pearl. Cabinets from Ind and Venice, of filligree gold and silver, enclose complete sets of Hansard's Parliamentary Debates; whilst lamps of silver, suspended from pendant pinnacles in the fretted ceiling, shed a soft light over the varied mass of colour.
Casting himself down lightly by a cabinet worked with Dutch beads interspersed with seed-pearls, and toying with the gnarled handle of the axe, the Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone tells you the story of his life. At the outset you are a little puzzled to gather where exactly he was born. At first you think it was in Scotland. Anon some town in England claims the honour. Then Wales is incidentally mentioned, and next the tearful voice of Erin claims her son. But, as the story goes forward with long majestic stride, these difficulties fade in the glamour of the Old Man's eloquence, and when you awake and find your host has not yet got beyond the second course—the fish, as it were, of the intellectual banquet—you say you will call again.
Mention of the three courses naturally suggests dinner, and as you evidently enjoy the monopoly of the mental association, you take your leave, perhaps regretting that among his wild woodsman accessories your host does not seem to include the midday chop.
Gold-tipped cigarettes seem just now to be "the swagger thing." "Ah!" Master Tommy sighed, as he set off for school with only five shillings in his pocket, in consequence of all his dearest—and nearest—relatives being laid up with the prevailing epidemic, "Ah, how I should like to be one of those cigarettes, and then I should be tipped with gold."
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