MRS. GLADSTONE AND HER GOOD WORKS.
By Mary G. Burnett.
The mistress of Hawarden Castle is something more than the devoted wife of the great statesman who sways the destinies of Great Britain. She has a notable personality of her own, worthy in its energy and sagacity of him with whom her life is linked. While the husband’s career has always been interwoven with the highest affairs of state, the wife has shown her genius for administration by the charitable enterprises in which she has taken so active a part. Most things come about naturally as the effect of growth; and it is interesting to go back to the childhood of Mrs. Gladstone to trace the influences which directed her mind to deeds of beneficence. Things have changed since Mrs. Gladstone was a little girl, living with her sister and brothers at Hawarden Castle, nearly eighty years ago.
Mrs. Gladstone’s father, Sir Stephen Glynne, died young, when his eldest daughter Catherine (Mrs. Gladstone) was scarcely five years old. Tradition remembers him as a very handsome, lively-minded man, and it is said that Catherine Glynne grew up very like her father. One of Mrs. Gladstone’s first vivid impressions is of the fright she got by seeing the “mutes,” then the fashion at important funerals, standing about the castle while her dead father lay in state. It gave her a life-long horror of elaborate and expensive funerals. Her father was succeeded in the baronetcy and estates by his eldest son, Stephen Richard, then but a little boy of eight. Lady Glynne, a daughter of Lord Brabrooke, was left with the sole charge of the property and the children. She was a beautiful woman of strong character. Fortunately about this time her brother, the Honorable George Neville, came to be rector of Hawarden parish. The castle and rectory were within a quarter hour’s walk of each other, and it was a precious boon for Lady Glynne to have her brother’s judicious help in the management of the large estates, and in the education of her two boys and her two girls.
This was about the year 1813. At that date Hawarden, in common with a village in Cheshire, had the deserved reputation of being the most wicked place in all the country round. Mr. Neville, with Lady Glynne’s consent, closed the worst of the public houses, and inaugurated a system of education for the parish, setting up schools in Hawarden village and in the districts round.
MRS. GLADSTONE’S EARLY TRAINING.
It was a serious problem at the outset to obtain either teachers or scholars. It was necessary to employ bribery to get the mothers to send their children to school, and the aid of Lady Glynne and her young girls was brought to bear, in the first place, to talk the mothers over; and, secondly, to prepare a store of frocks, coats, cloaks, and other useful garments. These were given away as Christmas prizes, to recompense the mothers for remitting the services of their little girls, and the pence which the boys could pick up at scaring crows and such like juvenile occupations.
It was a matter of still greater difficulty to find teachers who knew anything of the art of instruction; this was long before the day of colleges for elementary teachers. An old woman at Hawarden boasted to me that she had received for many years a Christmas prize for regular attendance at school. Naturally the question was asked: “How was it, then, Mrs. Catheral, you never learned either to read or write?”
“Oh, I never wanted to,” said she. “I never tried. But I liked the pretty frock or warm cloak the Miss Glynnes always gave us for prizes at Christmas time, if we went to school regular.” Then she added, “Bless you! you should have seen the prizes in those days! They were worth looking at; none of your books and rubbish, like what children get in these days.” In such an atmosphere did the children of Lady Glynne grow up, systematically trained to assist their mother and uncle in everything they projected for the parish good. Then came the full tide of the Oxford movement, which swept like a wave of light and heat through the sluggish heart of English religious and social reform, though it landed some of its brightest lights afterwards in Romanism. The names of Pusey, Keble, Manning, and Newman were household words at Hawarden Castle. Catherine’s brothers were then at Christ Church, Oxford; and, in the midst of it all, intimate with the leaders of the movement, amongst whom were young Gladstone and many other brilliant young men, destined to be friends through life of those two bright and beautiful young girls at Hawarden.