“High hopes are thine, oh! eldest flower;
Great duties to be greatly done;
To soothe, in many a toil-worn hour,
The noble heart which thou hast won.
Covet not then the rest of those
Who sleep through life unknown to fame;
Fate grants not passionless repose
To her who weds a glorious name.
He presses on through calm and storm
Unshaken, let what will betide;
Thou hast an office to perform,
To be his answering spirit bride.
The path appointed for his feet
Through desert wilds and rocks may go,
Where the eye looks in vain to greet
The gales that from the waters blow.
Be thou a balmy breeze to him,
A fountain singing at his side;
A star, whose light is never dim,
A pillar, through the waste to guide.”
Immediately after the ceremony Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone drove to Norton Priory, Cheshire, the seat of Sir Richard Brooke, whose daughter, Lady Brabazon, was the bride’s best friend, where the honeymoon was spent.
Neither sister had been specially accustomed to the society of highly intellectual or bookish men, and during the engagement neither Gladstone nor Lord Lyttelton, as ardent lovers, had felt the necessity of resorting to the classics when in the company of their fiancées. The young brides, when comparing notes after the honeymoon, confided to one another their dismay that at odd spare moments both husbands produced pocket editions of Horace or Sophocles (or some other classical poet), and filled the minutes by reading in them.
At the outset of their married life, Gladstone gave his wife the choice: either to know nothing of the great matters of State in which he would be involved and so be entirely free of responsibility, or to know everything and be bound to secrecy. Needless to say, she chose the latter. Fifty years later Gladstone declared, “My wife has known every political secret I have ever had, and has never betrayed my confidence.” He became a Cabinet Minister in 1843 as President of the Board of Trade, and was six times Chancellor of the Exchequer and four times Prime Minister, so that his wife had ample opportunity for intimate acquaintance with State secrets, and for a corresponding exercise of discretion. It is related that once in the early days of Cabinet office she unwittingly said something that showed she had some important knowledge of a confidential nature. She was terribly upset and immediately sent Gladstone a little note of confession and penitence,—he was engaged at work in his study in Carlton House Terrace, where they were living,—to which her husband responded with ready forgiveness, saying, “It is the only little mistake you ever made.” Once she congratulated a man on his promotion before he knew anything about it himself, but no harm was done by that, and it only serves to prove how intimate was her knowledge of affairs. As a matter of fact, no one could ever extract anything from her, though many tried to do so. When she was asked what Gladstone was going to do in some crisis or other, she would answer with the greatest naïveté, “Well, I wonder, don’t you? What do you think he ought to do?” Some undiscerning persons attributed her manner to stupidity, but Mrs. Gladstone always knew what she was doing and saying, and why she did and said it.
After the honeymoon, and a visit to Fasque, Kincardineshire (the home of Sir John Gladstone, where, so long as he lived, they spent some time each year), Gladstone and his wife when in London lived at 13 Carlton House Terrace, which he purchased in 1840. About six months after her marriage Mrs. Gladstone began to keep a fragmentary diary. Some extracts, printed here for the first time by kind permission of Mrs. Drew, form a record of her early married life, and illustrate her intelligent observation of the people around her, and her sense of humour.