HIS AFTERNOON.
Lunch with Mr. Gladstone is a very simple meal which neither at Hawarden nor Downing Street admits of much form or publicity. The afternoon which follows is a very much broken and less regular period. At Hawarden a portion of it is usually spent out of doors. In the old days it was devoted to the felling of some giant of the woods. Within the last few years, however, Sir Andrew Clark, Mr. Gladstone’s favorite physician and intimate friend, has recommended that tree-felling be given over; and now Mr. Gladstone’s recreation, in addition to long walks, in which he still delights, is that of lopping branches off veterans whose trunks have fallen to younger arms.
AS A READER.
Between the afternoon tea and dinner the statesman usually retires again, and gets through some of the lighter and more agreeable of his intellectual tasks. He reads rapidly, and I think I should say that, especially of late years, he does a good deal of skipping. If a book does not interest him, he does not trouble to read it through. He uses a rough kind of memoria technica to enable him to mark passages with which he agrees, from which he dissents, which he desires to qualify, or which he reserves for future reference. I should say the books he reads most of are those dealing with theology, always the first and favorite topic, and the history of Ireland before and after the Act of Union. Indeed, everything dealing with that memorable period is greatly treasured. I remember one hasty glance over Mr. Gladstone’s book table in his town house. In addition to the liberal weekly, “The Speaker,” and a few political pamphlets, there were, I should say, fifteen 47 or twenty works on theology, none of them, as far as I could see, of first-rate importance. Of science Mr. Gladstone knows little, and it cannot be said that his interest in it is keen. He belongs, in a word, to the old-fashioned Oxford ecclesiastical school, using the controversial weapons which are to be found in the works of Pusey and of Hurrell Froude. In his reading, when a question of more minute and out-of-the-way scholarship arises, he appeals to his constant friend and assistant, Lord Acton, to whose profound learning he bows with a deference which is very touching to note.
MR. GLADSTONE’S LIBRARY.
THE LIBRARY.
Mr. Gladstone’s library is not what can be called a select or really first-rate collection. It comprises an undue proportion of theological literature, of which he is a large and not over-discriminating buyer. I doubt, indeed, whether there is any larger private bookbuyer in England. All the book-sellers send him their catalogues, especially those of rare and curious books. I have seen many of these lists, with a brief order in Mr. Gladstone’s own handwriting on the flyleaf, with his tick against twenty or thirty volumes which he desires to buy. These usually range round classical works, archæology, special periods of English history, and, above all, works reconciling the Biblical record with science. Of late, as is fairly well known, Mr. Gladstone has built himself an octagonal iron house in Hawarden village, a mile and a half from the castle, for the storage of his specially valuable books and a collection of private papers which traverse a good many of the state secrets of the greater part of the century. The importance of these is great, and the chances are that before Mr. Gladstone dies they will all be grouped and indexed in his upright, a little crabbed, but perfectly plain, handwriting. By the way, a great many statements have been made about Mr. Gladstone’s library, and I may as well give the facts which have never before been made public. His original library consisted of about twenty-four thousand volumes. In the seventies, however, he parted with his entire collection of political works, amounting to some eight thousand volumes, to the late Lord Wolverton. The remaining fifteen thousand or so are now distributed between the little iron house to which I have referred, and the Hawarden library. Curiously enough, Mr. Gladstone is not a worshiper of books for the sake of their outward adornments. He loves them for what is inside rather than outside. He even occasionally sells extremely rare and costly editions for which he has no special use. In all money matters, indeed, he is a thrifty, orderly Scotchman. He has 48 never been rich, though his affairs have greatly improved since the time when in his first premiership he had to sell his valuable collection of china.