One of the best of the many stories connected with Mr. Gladstone’s many residences in the South of France tells how one Sunday he and his wife were seated in the church at Cannes near the pulpit. The Grand Old Man, turning to his wife, said, in an irritable tone: ‘I can’t hear.’ ‘Never mind, my dear,’ said the lady. ‘Go to sleep; it will do you much more good.’
In a chapter of his autobiography Mr. Gladstone wrote: ‘In theory, and at least for others, I am a purist with respect to what touches the consistency of statesmen. Change of opinion in those to whom the public look more or less to assert its own is an evil to the country at large, though a much smaller one than their persistency in a course which they know to be wrong. It is not always to be blamed, but it is to be watched with vigilance—always to be challenged and put upon trial.’
In 1881 Mr. Gladstone told the electors of Leeds he had been a Liberal since 1846. The fact is, as Mr. Jennings has shown, that he held office under a Conservative Premier, that he was returned for Oxford as a Conservative, and that in 1858 he canvassed the county of Flint for Sir Stephen Glynne, who was a strong supporter of Lord Derby’s Government.
In 1855, when Lord Aberdeen, who was certainly no Whig, retired, Mr. Gladstone wrote a most effective letter of regret, which incidentally throws a little light on his correspondent’s character. Mr. Gladstone writes: ‘You make too much of services I have rendered you. I wish it were in my power to do justice in return for the benefits I have received from you. Your whole demeanour has been a living lesson to me, and I have never gone, with my vulnerable temper and impetuous moods, into your presence without feeling the strong influence of your calm and settled spirit.’
_Pearson’s Magazine_ tells some interesting things about the Grand Old Man. Though possessing strict views on Sunday observance, he does not disapprove of Sunday cycling. The bicycle, he says, is no more than a perfect means of locomotion. Hawarden Park, which is closed to ordinary tourists on Sunday, is open to cyclists. He gives the first place among living writers of fiction to Zola, but his favourite English books are the Waverley Novels. Of his once large collection of axes only thirty or forty now remain. ‘In bygone days admirers were constantly sending him axes as marks of their esteem, and now other admirers quite as constantly smuggle them away as treasured mementoes of their visits.’ A silver pencil, axe-shaped, presented by the Princess of Wales ‘for axing questions,’ is among the treasures of the G.O.M. Fifty or sixty walking-sticks, part of a once unique collection, adorn a rack outside Mr. Gladstone’s study, but the number of these also ‘is being diminished by visitors whose enthusiasm is in advance of their scruples.’ Alluding to Mr. Gladstone’s fondness for fresh air, the writer (Mr. W. A. Woodward) says: ‘I have seen him, with Mrs. Gladstone at his side, a ridiculously small umbrella held between them, set forth for a pleasure drive in such torrents of rain as no ordinary mortal would have faced save on some vital purpose.’ Books on divorce and marriage—judging by the number of annotations in his neat, distinct handwriting in such volumes in his library—receive his closest attention, but he has no very great interest in the modern analytical novel. ‘It is natural,’ says the writer, ‘that the subject of marriage, in its middle relation to politics and religion, should have exercised a large fascination over so ardent a student of theology and sociology.’