Gladstone: A Biography

C
ONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Preface

PART ONE
A T
ALENTED AND
T
ORTURED
Y
OUNG
M
AN
1809–1852

1.
A Liverpool Gentleman?

2.
A Grand Tour Ending at Newark

3.
A Clumsy Suitor

4.
Peel’s Apprentice

5.
Orator, Zealot and Debtor

6.
Mid-Century Frenzy

7.
Ladies of the Night

8.
The Tremendous Projectile

PART TWO
A M
IDDLE
-A
GED
M
ID
-V
ICTORIAN
S
TATESMAN
1852–1868

9.
The Chancellor Who Made the Job

10.
The Decline and Fall of the Aberdeen Coalition

11.
Health and Wealth

12.
A Short Odyssey for a British Ulysses

13.
The Hostile Partnership with Palmerston

14.
God’s Vicar in the Treasury

15.
The People’s William

16.
Disraeli’s Foil

PART THREE
T
HE
F
IRST
P
REMIERSHIP AND THE
F
IRST
R
ETIREMENT
1868–1876

17.
‘My Mission is to Pacify Ireland’

18.
A Commanding Prime Minister

19.
Irish Land and European War

20.
Sovereign and Prime Minister

21.
‘Ever and Anon the Dark Rumbling of the Sea’

22.
Defeat and Retirement

23.
The Temporary Withdrawal

PART FOUR
T
HE
R
EBOUND INTO THE
S
ECOND
P
REMIERSHIP
1876–1885

24.
‘Of All the Bulgarian Horrors Perhaps the Greatest’

25.
Midlothian Beckons

26.
Victory, Where Are Thy Fruits?

27.
Gladstone Becomes the Grand Old Man

28.
The Cloud in the West Darkens

29.
The Third Reform Bill

30.
Murderer of Gordon?

PART FIVE
I
RELAND
D
OMINATES AND
A
GE
W
ITHERS
1885–1898

31.
Slow Road to Damascus

32.
Schism and Failure

33.
‘The Union – and Disunion – of Hearts’

34.
The Leaden Victory

35.
Last Exit to Hawarden

36.
The Closing of the Doors of the Senses

References

Select Bibliography

Index

L
IST OF
I
LLUSTRATIONS

Section One

Gladstone’s birthplace, Rodney Street, Liverpool (
Topham
)

Seaforth House

George Canning (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Arthur Hallam (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Christ Church, Oxford

Fasque, Kincardineshire

Hawarden, Flintshire

Catherine Gladstone (formerly Glynne) by F. R. Say (
John Mills Photography
)

Gladstone as the new MP for Newark with his brother, Thomas

Gladstone as a young man by William Bradley (
Sir William Gladstone
)

Sir John Gladstone by William Bradley

Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington by Winterhalter (
The House of Lords
)

Section Two

John Keble (
By permission of the Wardens and Fellows of Keble College, Oxford
)

John Henry Newman, later Cardinal, by Sir William Ross (
By permission of the Wardens and Fellows of Keble College, Oxford
)

James Hope-Scott (
National Galleries of Scotland
)

Bishop Samuel Wilberforce of Oxford and later Winchester (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Henry Manning, Anglican Archdeacon of Chichester, later Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminister, and then Cardinal (
National Portrait
Gallery
)

Gladstone in 1858 (
National Portrait Gallery
)

The fourth Earl of Aberdeen (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Lord John Russell (
National Portait Gallery
)

Sidney Herbert by G. R. Ward

Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, by Winterhalter (
In a private Scottish collection
)

Lady with the Coronet of Jasmine
, the portrait of Marion Summerhayes by William Dyce (
Aberdeen Art Gallery
)

Laura Thistlethwayte

Palmerston (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Disraeli (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Section Three

Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort towards the end of Albert’s life taken by Mayall at Windsor Castle

Queen Victoria in the 1890s

Gladstone family photograph taken at Hawarden Castle circa 1868 (
Topham
)

Tree-felling scene at Hawarden, probably in a mid-1880s autumn (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Arthur James Balfour by Richmond in 1876

The eighth Duke of Argyll (
National Portrait Gallery
)

The Cabinet in 1883 (
The House of Lords
)

The Prince of Wales
circa
1875

The second Earl Granville by G. Barnett Smith

The Edinbugh of the Midlothian Campaign (
National Monuments Record of Scotland
)

Lord Hartington, later eighth Duke of Devonshire (
National Portrait Gallery
)

The fifth Earl Spencer (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Joseph Chamberlain (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Sir Charles Dilke (
British Library
)

A Gladstone family group at Hawarden in the mid-1880s (
Clwyd Record Office
)

Belabouring an Egyptian: an 1882
Punch
cartoon

Gladstone flanked by his official family of private secretaries,
circa
1883

Section Four

General Charles Gordon (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Dinner at Haddo House in 1884 by A. E. Emslie (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Gladstone and Dollinger photographed in 1886 by Lehnbach in Bavaria

Charles Stewart Parnell

Katherine O’Shea

Gladstone reading in the Temple of Peace, his Hawarden library,
circa
1888 (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Gladstone writing with great difficulty circa 1895 (
Topham
)

Tennyson in 1890 (
National Portrait Gallery
)

The filth Earl of Rosebery (
National Portrait Gallery
)

Sir William Harcourt (
Hulton Picture Library
)

John Morley (
National Portrait Gallery
)

H. H. Asquith as a young Home Secretary in 1894

The third Marquess of Salisbury (
National Portrait Gallery
)

The Gladstones on one of their last drives (
National Portrait Gallery
)

P
REFACE

This attempt to write a full-scale but not multi-volume biography of Gladstone is by far my rashest literary enterprise. It is like suddenly deciding, at a late stage in life
and after a sedate middle age, to climb the rougher face of the Matterhorn. I hesitated for some time after the idea was suggested to me. But eventually the fascination of the subject, aided maybe
by an inherent liking for taking a risk, overcame my caution at the presumption of the task.

The fascination arises from Gladstone’s own peculiar qualities and pre-eminence. He was the quintessential Victorian statesman, fitting the reign, although not latterly the prejudices of
the Queen, like a hand into a glove. He first briefly held office two years before Victoria’s accession and he predeceased her by only two and a half years. Of the other great politicians of
the age, Peel survived little more than a fifth of the Queen’s reign, Palmerston was always more of a throwback to the Regency than a true Victorian, Disraeli was an exotic exile from lusher
civilizations cast up on the shore of England, and Salisbury, although undoubtedly English and looking like a caricature of a Victorian, practised a detached statecraft which would equally well
have been pursued at the time of the early Cecils or from such another capital as Vienna.