Personally Mr. Gladstone is an example of the most winning, the most delicate, and the most minute courtesy. He is a gentleman of the elder English school, and his manners are grand and urbane, always stately, never condescending, and genuinely modest. He affects even the dress of the old school, and I have seen him in the morning wearing an old black evening coat, such as Professor Jowett still affects. The humblest passer-by in Piccadilly, raising his hat to Mr. Gladstone, is sure to get a sweeping salute in return. This courtliness is all the more remarkable, because it accompanies and adorns a very strong temper, a will of iron, and a habit of being regarded for the greater part of his lifetime as a personal force of unequalled magnitude. Yet the most foolish, and perhaps one may add the most impertinent, of Mr. Gladstone’s dinner-table questioners is sure of an 45 elaborate reply, delivered with the air of a student in deferential talk with his master. To the cloth Mr. Gladstone shows a reverence that occasionally woos the observer to a smile. The callowest curate is sure of a respectful listener in the foremost Englishman of the day. On the other hand, in private conversation the premier does not often brook contradiction. His temper is high, and though, as George Russell has said, it is under vigilant control, there are subjects on which it is easy to arouse the old lion. Then the grand eyes flash, the torrent of brilliant monologue flows with more rapid sweep, and the dinner table is breathless at the spectacle of Mr. Gladstone angry. As to his relations with his family, they are very charming. It is a pleasure to hear Herbert Gladstone—his youngest, and possibly his favorite son—speak of “my father.” All of them, sons and daughters, are absolutely devoted to his cause, wrapped up in his personality, and enthusiastic as to every side of his character. Of children Mr. Gladstone has always been fond, and he has more than one favorite among his grandchildren.
MR. GLADSTONE’S MORNING.
Mr. Gladstone’s day begins about 7.30, after seven hours and a half of sound, dreamless sleep, which no disturbing crisis in public affairs was ever known to spoil. At Hawarden it usually opens with a morning walk to church, with which no kind of weather—hail, rain, snow, or frost—is ever allowed to interfere. In his rough slouch hat and gray Inverness cape, the old man plods sturdily to his devotions. To the rain, the danger of sitting in wet clothes, and small troubles of this kind, he is absolutely impervious, and Mrs. Gladstone’s solicitude has never availed to change his lifelong custom in this respect. Breakfast over, working time commences. I am often astonished at the manner in which Mr. Gladstone manages to crowd his almost endlessly varied occupations into the forenoon, for when he is in the country he has practically no other continuous and regular work-time. Yet into this space he has to condense his enormous correspondence—for which, when no private secretary is available, he seeks the help 46 of his sons and daughters—his political work, and his varied literary pursuits. The explanation of this extreme orderliness of mind is probably to be found in his unequaled habit of concentration on the business before him. As in matters of policy, so in all his private habits, Mr. Gladstone thinks of one thing and of one thing only at a time. When home rule was up, he had no eyes or ears for any political subject but Ireland, of course excepting his favorite excursions into the twin subjects of Homer and Christian theology. Enter the room when Mr. Gladstone is reading a book; you may move noisily about the chamber, ransack the books on the shelves, stir the furniture, but never for one moment will the reader be conscious of your presence. At Downing Street, during his earlier ministries, these hours of study were often, I might say usually, preceded by the famous breakfast at which the celebrated actor or actress, the rising poet, the well-known artist, the diplomatist halting on his way from one station of the kingdom to another, were welcome guests. Madame Bernhardt, Miss Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, Madame Modjeska, have all assisted at these pleasant feasts.
HAWARDEN CASTLE.