He was no sooner back at Hawarden than he fell to work on subsidiary branches of the question of questions.
Oct. 22.—Worked hard and finished my paper on Russia in Turkestan, and sent it off. Criminal justice on Sunday! But it is for peace. 24.—To London. 27.—Up at 6. Went with Harry to Dover, saw him off on board the packet and pier [on his way to India]. Drove over to Walmer, reviewed the place, saw Lord Granville and Sir W. James. Returned to London, and at 9.30 to the Gaiety, saw a miserable burlesque of which I had heard a most inviting but false account. 28.—To Hawarden. 31.—Tennyson and H. T. came. Nov. 1.—Tennyson read to us his Harold. It took near 2-½ hours. Walk with him and a party. 2.—Read [pg 558] Bagehot on Lord Spencer's Life—very clever, very imperfect. Conversation with Tennyson on future retribution and other matters of theology. He has not thought, I conceive, systematically or thoroughly upon them, but is much alarmed at the prospect of the loss of belief. He left us at one. Walk and long conversation with Lord Acton, who seems in opinion to go beyond Döllinger, though in certain things he stops short of him. 8.—Read aloud the debate of the first Iliad from Pope. 9.—Read aloud my version of the Assembly—Iliad i. 10.—Read aloud Lord Derby's and Cowper's version of the Assembly. 14.—The Olympian part of Iliad I. in Pope's version aloud, and then my own. 17.—We went to Liverpool, where we attended the theatre to see Pennington in Hamlet. It was really excellent. I never was so well received in that town. 21.—Finished revision of my ms., “The Hellenic Factor in the Eastern Problem,” and sent it to press.
III
At the Lord Mayor's feast in November, the prime minister used menacing language. The policy of England, he said, was peace, but no country was so well prepared for war as ours. If England were to enter into a righteous war, her resources were inexhaustible. “She is not a country that, when she enters into a campaign, has to ask herself whether she can support a second or a third campaign. She enters into a campaign which she will not terminate till right is done.” This was a hardly veiled threat to Russia, it was encouragement to Turkey, it was incitement to a war party in Great Britain. “The provocation offered by Disraeli at the Guildhall,” wrote Mr. Gladstone, “is almost incredible. Some new lights about his Judaic feeling in which he is both consistent and conscientious have come in upon me.”
Still the general feeling was strongly adverse to any action on behalf of Turkey. Mr. Gladstone eagerly noted even the most trivial incident that pointed this way. “Yesterday night,” he wrote (Nov. 26), “in the tory town of Liverpool, when Othello was being acted, and the words were reached ‘The Turks are drowned,’ the audience rose in enthusiasm and [pg 559] interrupted the performance for some time with their cheering. These things are not without meaning.” Men who commonly stood aside from political activity were roused. “Mr. Carlyle,” says Mr. Ruskin, “Mr. Froude, and several other men of creditable name gathered together at call of Mr. Gladstone as for a great national need, together with other men of more retired mind—Edward Burne-Jones for one, and myself for another.”
Conference At St. James's Hall
The reply to the Guildhall speech was a conference at St. James's Hall (Dec. 8), one of the most remarkable gatherings of representative men of every type and from every part of the kingdom ever held in this country. “I have most flourishing accounts of the progress of preparations for the conference of which I have been a promoter from the beginning. They urge me to speak on the 8th, but I should much prefer that others should put themselves in the foreground.” Besides the eminent politicians, great territorial magnates were there, and men of letters, and divines of various churches, and men who had never been to a militant assembly in their lives before,—all with a resolute purpose expressed by Mr. Trevelyan, “No matter how the prime minister may finger the hilt of the sword, the nation will take care that it never leaves the scabbard.” Mr. Gladstone reached London a day or two before. On the 8th, he enters:—
8.—Made notes and extracts for speech. Attended the meetings at St. James's Hall, 12-1-½ and 4-8. Spoke (I fear) 1-½ hours with some exertion, far from wholly to my satisfaction. The meetings were great, notable, almost historical.
The day after this important and impressive gathering he was back at Hawarden, busy at his article upon the life of the Prince Consort. Then came Christmas day,—“The most solemn I have known for long; I see that eastward sky of storm and of underlight!”
At a suggestion from the London foreign office, a conference of the great Powers met at Constantinople in the middle of December. Lord Salisbury went as the representative [pg 560] of England. To a correspondent Mr. Gladstone spoke of this as an excellent selection:—