SOCIETY IN LONDON. MR GLADSTONE. (By the Daughter of a Duke.) [From the "Town and Country Journal."]

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 173, 9 October 1886, Page 5

SOCIETY IN LONDON. MR GLADSTONE.

(By the Daughter of a Duke.) [From the "Town and Country Journal. "]

An Interesting Disclosure. July 16.— Having despatched the principal members of the Royal Family. I had proposed to introduce my readers to a group o* courtiers. But the extraordinary course of public (t events constrains me to interrupt my series for the moment, and to say a few words about a man who has assuredly no claim to be described as a oourtier, but vrho, nevertheless, has in English public life during the lnst few yeare flayed a part second only to that of the Queen. I write " Gladstone " at the top of my column, rather than "The Prime Minister," because it is doubtful whether that title will be held by the ' man of Midlothian for more than a few days or weeks longer. Like the Queen, Mr Gladstone is the subject of a thousand and one fantastic tales Has she read the Bible beside sick-beds at Balmoral ? Mr Gladstone has done the same thing in Wales. Like her Majesty, he ie fond of showing much condescension, generally of a rather unctuous kind, to domestic eervante and to dissenting ministers, A friend of mine was once at a little country station in Buckinghamshire when Mr Gladstone alighted from a train with the late Lord Lyttelton. There, toasting his boots before a stove, sat a dissenting parson, who had no sooner recognised the Prime Minister than he gave tongue, and propounded BOire questions touching the Education Bill and the grievances of Nonconformists generally. Gladstone's painstaking efforts to convince, his frowns, his involved sentences when the parson butted at him too hard were a curious study. The Dispute Waxed Warm. And the soft and winning voice of the groat orator was becoming shrill, when, fortunatelyi the train arrived, and put a period to the controversy, from which a sense of either humour or proportion would have saved him. How differently would Lord Beaconsfield have dealt with such an aggressor ! One pleasant pomposity would have been the soft answer to turn away wrath. But the dissenting parson would, in the bosom of his family, have described Lord Beaconsfiold as " hollow and flippant," whereas Gladstone would go down as an " eminently sincere and good man !" This anecdote is a characteristic one, and it illustrates a great deal of the sort of feeling entertained for Mr Gladstone by classes of his countrymen, whom other eminent men aro dlposod to treat with a jeer or a gibe. *' We must cultivate the Wesleyans — mopt respectable body, the Wesleyans I '— said Loi-d Beaconsfield in "Coningsby." But that is just what be could never get the Tory party to do ; and Mr Gladstone and his followers have for y9ars reaped the advantage of a greater guile. On this Home Rule question there have been secessions like that of Mr Spurgeon and of Dr. Dale ; but a great mass ef the Nonconformists of England have swallowed, at the bidding of their leader, The Bitterest Political Pill which could possibly have been administered to them. In ordinary life Mr Gladstone is mild, quiet, and urbane He is unruffled when he finds that he is walking over his domain in hiB gardener's hat rather than his ervn. He takes philosophically heavy monetary losses. He sold his collection of china without a pang, when he found that his hou?e in Carlton-house Terrace cost too much ; and when he had to retire to Harley- street, where one has almost forgotten that the mob once smashed his windows. His library of books -an exceptionally fine one — would have suffered the same sale room ignominies had not Lord Wolverton privately bought it, and restored it to its owner. It is only when he is trying to convert anybody, politically or religiously, that Mr Gladstone Loses his Temper. That he has lo3t it with growing frequency and vehemence of late years, and especially of late weeks, is notorious enough. There was a time when "Gladstone in a temper " was a tpecial entertainment in the House of Commons. Now it is a corry common place almost a bore, even in the eyes of Randolph Churchill. I remember some years ago hearing how a colonial visitor had gone into the tea room of the, Houee of Commons with a Minister. As they were making their way toward some ■vacant chairs, they came to a table on which stood a nowieb hat, much ruffled and battered. '• See," eaid the Minister, " this is Gladstone's hat, and he must be in a temper. He always bangs his hat about when he is provoked." The next moment the Premier, ac he then was, returned in agit» tion to recover his head gear. His step was rapid, his eye feverish ; wisps of his scanty grey hair were tumbled over his fore,head as if he had been fighting, and upon accosting his colleague.he spoke in a querulous voice of somebody who had goaded him "beyond endurance." It was an obscure Liberal member below the gangway, who had mildly criticised some of Mr Gladstone's financial estimates, amid mocking cheers from the Opposition, and had thus caused the disturbance of his leader's equanimity. Perhaps the most passionate sentence he ever uttered in public "was when MrFawcett inaugurated an Opposition — which ended in the defeat of the Government— in a speech in which he told his leader that really he and his Radical friends below the gangway must withdraw their support. " For God's sake, no !" interrupted Mr Gladstone, half risiing from his seat. On another occasion, when Mr Hannury proposed a resolution hostile to Mr Gladstone', and then withdrew it the victor found it difficult to regain his composure, and alluded to the honourablemember having abandoned his motion "in the exercise of what, I presume, he would term hi« discretion !" The familiar "Eh?" of the last few sessions peems to concentrate in itself the fury which others would require many sentences to express. The sweet and guileless manner in which Mr Gladstone has referred during the present electoral campaign to That Arch-Rebel Hartington may seem to indicate a— shall I say solitary ? — inconsistency. But the "old parliamentary hand " possesses, as even his friends will admit, a liberal store ot artifice. He has praised Lord Hartington, not beoause he loved him, but because *he hated Mr Chamberlain more. As for his friends the Whig Dukes, they must expect no quarter. To tell the truth, by his last move, he has delivered himself into their hands. Among all " the classes " •against whom the Premier appealed to irresponsive "masses," none is so profoundly perky and happy at the moment as that of the Whig wearers ef strawberry leaves. The Duke of Argyll's nose is a distinct degree more elevated, tip-tilted like the petal of a flower, than it was a month ago. For the long pent-up wrongs of the Russels there is now * sweet revenge ; for it mußt not be for-

gotten that Earl Ruseel was ousted by the People's WilL How that eminently safe statesman resented his relegation to nonofficiariiferthe readers of his memoirs will remember. He called Gladstone "A .Madman," , at a time when the word was a rank blasphemy. How sweet and consoling to the ears of Mb Grace of Bedford must be that very epithet now from the tongue of Mr Bright. The severance between the Duke of Westminster and the author of his dukedom would seem to be complete, as his Grace's carriages bore to the pollingbooths the Tory and Liberal Unionist electors of Chester, despite the ardent telegrams of the great electioneering agent-in-chief, from his neighbouring Castle of Hawnrdeu, It is eaid, by the way, that Mr Gladstone's father predicted that his son would end his days in a lunatic asylum. The story is probably a mythical one. \ But it is certain that ever since Gladstone entered Parliament there have been people to apply to him the epithet of " madman," which is now upon myriads of tongues. This reminds me of a story which is too good not to be recorded for the benefit of posterity. A short time after Gladstone's furious shilling pamphlet onslaught on the Vatican, Cardinal Manning and Lord Salisbury were discussing together the character and career of the distinguished pamphleteer. In reply to some term of ! sweeping condemnation used by Lord Salisbury, Cardinal Manning almoßt tearfully protested how good, how great, how noble, wa9 his friend in those early days a* Oxford, and in that earlier political life which those attacks on the 'Papacy had come, not to crown but to deface. " You surprise me," i said Salisbury. •' I thought he had always been an Italian in the custody of a Scotsman !" Talking about " Vaticanism," I remember that Mr Gladstone sent a copy of the pamphlet to Prince Bismarck, who was then figuring ac the arch-foo of the Pope. Prince Biemarck wrote the most gratifying acknowledgment, which the author still counts among bis treasures. But what Biemarck writes does not always represent what Biemarck thinks. He glanced at a few pagea of the pamphlet, and, as he put it down, he muttered, " The man will come to grief as Prime Minister of England, and will be a cardinal in ten years." The firpt part of the prophecy has now in the opinion of the majority of hi& countrymen been fulfilled. The latter part of it has been falsified by the march of events, and not even the strongest irony of fate could ever bring it to pass. Even he — the man of many transformation?— could not at his asro accomplish this feat. Besides, did not Prince Bismarck forget Catherine ? And any sketch of England's unrivalled minister would be incomplete without a mention of His Unrivalled Wife, the lady who goes out with a slipper on one foot, and a boot— a very substantial boot — on the other, with a black glove on one hand, and a green one on the other, and ie all unconscious of the dissimilarity. The lady whose one festive frock is so well known as to have become historical, is as much a .part of her husband's career as, in a very different fashion, Lady Beacons field was of Mr Disraeli's. She has shared all his triumphs, and rejoiced over all his victories in the past. And she is the faithful companion of Mb defeat, and the solicitous minimiser of his misfortunes in the darkening close of bis career. Bkltenkbrosa.