Punctuality was a rule of the house for all. Dinner was at 8 p.m., and no late-comer was waited for, unless he or she happened to be some distinguished stranger. As soon as three were assembled Mr. Gladstone would cry, “Quorum! Quorum!” and march into the dining-room.
Gladstone always notified where he himself wished to be entertained, and Mrs. Gladstone showed great dexterity and tact in arranging such invitations. She was similarly skilful in the general management of her husband. She secured that he should enjoy all his little peculiarities, such as eating slowly, and supplying him with the glass of good port he liked to drink after dinner, and allowing him to see the friends he preferred, both men and women—an excellent way, if wives in general would only believe and practise it, to keep husbands young and fresh.
They were both fond of walking, and very often walked home after dining out. Mrs. Gladstone was indifferent to dress, and her general untidiness and absence of method in minor matters occasionally got her into trouble. But she managed dexterously to escape it. Mr. Gladstone used to say, “My wife has a marvellous faculty for getting into scrapes, but also a marvellous faculty for getting out of them.” She had a regal carriage, and her movements were swift and light. Her eyes were of a deep sapphire blue, long in shape, set well apart, in expression according to her mood, merry or tender or mischievous. Abundant soft brown hair waved on her forehead.
After the first few years of married life, when children were born in quick succession and her health was therefore somewhat delicate, she enjoyed for the rest of her existence wonderfully fine health. She took a daily cold bath until the year of her death. One winter, when she was over eighty, a mission was held at Hawarden. As the service began at 4 a.m. she consented to sleep at the Rectory. Her son, the Rector, got up at three, made some water hot, and took it to his mother’s room. She opened her door fully dressed and ready, having taken her cold bath as usual.
One reason of Mrs. Gladstone’s ability to resist fatigue and to get through so large an amount of work was her practice of sleeping for short periods. She could lie down on a sofa and go to sleep at will for ten or fifteen minutes, and awake perfectly refreshed. Sometimes, too, in the House of Commons, during one of her husband’s long speeches, she would take a short nap, for as she always sat with her head bent and eyes looking down on Mr. Gladstone, her companions never detected that she was asleep, and indeed were lost in admiration at the rapt way in which she listened, and the manner in which she endured the fatigue of sitting there so many hours.
Amid all her activities she found time for much letter-writing, and corresponded with numbers of interesting people. With the slightest materials she contrived to get an atmosphere into her letters that made them delightful reading.
One who knew Mrs. Gladstone well writes:
“Helpfulness, that was the note of her character; in any difficulty, in the most impossible case, Mrs. Gladstone would plan, contrive, arrange, enlist others, and never rest until the difficulty was solved, and the persons put in the way of helping themselves—nay more, supported, befriended, encouraged, till they could stand alone. Perhaps few persons were so often consulted and appealed to as was Mrs. Gladstone. It might be young girls entering on life in the first joy of a marriage engagement, or young beauties to whom she would gently suggest thoughts that were unworldly. Very often it would be some hard-worked London priest toiling single-handed amongst his thousands, and thinking no one cared, who found in Mrs. Gladstone a listener not only sympathetic but suggestive, one who did not forget, but would forward his plans, and who had the rare gift of setting other people to work.
“Mrs. Gladstone had the genius of charity. Good or to be helped to be good, that was the essence of it all. Religion not forced, not obtruded, but as natural and vital as fresh air, was, not an adjunct of life, but life itself. In her own devotions, in the daily services of the Church, in many a Eucharist did Catherine Gladstone renew her soul’s life, and increase the charity and the delightful gaiety of her temperament, and from the spirit of wisdom learn those intuitions which so rarely failed her. It seemed but natural that her last spoken words were, ‘I must not be late for Church.’”
In these days of storm and stress and feverish excitement and unrest among women, it is well to recall the life of a woman like Mrs. Gladstone who, in a period when such mechanical aids to activity as motor-cars and telephones were non-existent, yet contrived to be a devoted wife, smoothing her husband’s path in every direction, accompanying him everywhere, an equally devoted mother, as well as a charming hostess of country-house parties at Hawarden and of the more formal entertainments in London consequent on her position as the wife of a great Minister of State. In addition to such domestic and social duties she engaged in philanthropic work, and in no dilettante spirit; she visited hospitals, founded convalescent homes, and refuges and orphanages; she played her part in the public political work then undertaken by women. She accomplished all these things without an idea that she was doing anything worthy of note or of record, and yet quietly, unostentatiously, and unconsciously leaving an ineffaceable mark on every phase of life with which she came in contact.