But the commanding figure in Harley Street in my early years was not to be found among the doctors: it was Mr. Gladstone, while Mrs. Gladstone’s individuality was hardly second to that of her husband.
When Mr. Gladstone first came to live there the mob broke his windows, and shouted and yelled outside his house because of his hostility to Disraeli’s policy in the Russo-Turkish War (1876-8). The Jingo fever was at its height. There was tremendous excitement, and ultimately the street had to be cleared by mounted police. To the surprise of everyone, in the full tide of the tumult, the Gladstones’ front door opened, and out walked the old couple, arm-in-arm, and passed right into the midst of the very people who had been hurling stones through their windows. With the grand manner of an old courtier the statesman took off his hat, made a profound bow to the populace, and before the mob had recovered from its astonishment, he had walked away down the street with his wife.
It was a plucky act, and one which so surprised the boisterous assembly that they utterly subsided, and soon dispersed quietly.
Mr. Gladstone’s habit every morning was to leave home about half-past nine or ten o’clock and walk down to his work. My sister Olga (wife of Dr. Francis Goodbody), then a very little girl, used to go out with her nurse about the same time to Regent’s Park for her airing in a “pram.” Some twenty or thirty houses divided my father’s from Mr. Gladstone’s, and therefore, as the elderly statesman and the little girl both left home about the same time, they often met.
“Well, how is dolly this morning?” he would say, and then he would chaff the child on not having washed dolly’s face, or tell her that the prized treasure wanted a new bonnet. In fact, he never passed her without stopping to pat her on the head, and make some little joke such as children love. She became very fond of her acquaintance and came home quite disappointed if she had not seen “my friend Mr. Gladstone,” as she always called him.
Years afterwards, when Mr. Gladstone had ceased all association with Harley Street, and was Prime Minister, I fell a victim to the desire to possess his autograph. Few people now realise how difficult a thing it was to secure, for the public imagined that the statesman showered post cards, then a somewhat new invention, on his correspondents by hundreds and thousands. I asked his friend Sir Thomas Bond what was best to do. His advice was shrewdness itself. Mr. Gladstone, he assured me, had great objections to giving his autograph. He could not himself ask him point-blank for his signature. “But if,” said he, “you will send one of your books as a presentation copy to him, with a little note on the title page, ‘To Mr. Gladstone, from the Author,’ I will take it across and ask him to write you an acknowledgment.”
I did so, and Mr. Gladstone wrote me a charming little letter in his own hand:
“10 Downing Street, Whitehall.
“To convey his best thanks for Mrs. Alec Tweedie’s kindness in sending him a book of so much interest.
“W. E. Gladstone.”