The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume III Part 45

II

While the House after so many months of toil was still labouring manfully upon English bills, two of them of no secondary importance, it was decided by his family and their advisers that Mr. Gladstone should again try the effects of Biarritz, and thither they went on January 13. Distance, however, could not efface from his mind all thought of the decision that the end of the session would exact from him. (M183) Rumours began to fly about in London that the prime minister upon his return intended to resign, and they were naturally clad with intrinsic probability. From Biarritz a communication was made to the press with his authority. It was to this effect, that the statement that Mr. Gladstone had definitely decided, or had decided at all, on resigning office was untrue. It was true that for many months past his age and the condition of his sight and hearing had in his judgment made relief from public cares desirable, and that accordingly his tenure of office had been at any moment liable to interruption from these causes, in their nature permanent.

Nature meanwhile could not set back the shadow on the dial. On his coming back from Biarritz (February 10) neither eyes nor ears were better. How should they be at eighty-five? The session was ending, the prorogation speech was to be composed, and the time had come for that "natural break"

between the cessation and renewal of his official obligations, of which we have already heard him speak. His colleagues carried almost to importunity their appeals to him to stay; to postpone what one of them called, and many of them truly felt to be, this "moment of anguish." The division of opinion on estimates remained, but even if that could have been bridged, his sight and hearing could not be made whole. The rational and sufficient cause of resignation, as he only too justly described it, was strong as ever. Whether if the cabinet had come to his view on estimates, he would in spite of his great age and infirmities have come to their view of the importance of his remaining, we cannot tell. According to his wont, he avoided decision until the time had come when decision was necessary, and then he made up his mind, "without the appearance of an arbitrary choice,"

that the time had come for accepting the natural break, and quitting office.

On Feb. 27, arriving in the evening at Euston from Ireland, I found a messenger with a note from Mr. Gladstone begging me to call on my way home. I found him busy as usual at his table in Downing Street. "I suppose 'tis the long habit of a life," he said cheerily, "but even in the midst of these pa.s.sages, if ever I have half or quarter of an hour to spare, I find myself turning to my Horace translation." He said the prorogation speech would be settled on Thursday; the Queen would consider it on Friday; the council would be held on Sat.u.r.day, and on that evening or afternoon he should send in his letter of resignation.

The next day he had an audience at Buckingham Palace, and indirectly conveyed to the Queen what she might soon expect to learn from him. His rigorous sense of loyalty to colleagues made it improper and impossible to bring either before the Queen or the public his difference of judgment on matters for which his colleagues, not he, would be responsible, and on which they, not he, would have to take action. He derived certain impressions at his audience, he told me, one of them being that the Sovereign would not seek his advice as to a successor.

He wrote to inform the Prince of Wales of the approaching event:-

In thus making it known to your royal Highness, he concluded, I desire to convey, on my own and my wife's part our fervent thanks for the unbounded kindness which we have at all times received from your royal Highness and not less from the beloved Princess of Wales. The devotion of an old man is little worth; but if at any time there be the smallest service which by information or suggestion your royal Highness may believe me capable of rendering, I shall remain as much at your command as if I had continued to be an active and responsible servant of the Queen. I remain with heartfelt loyalty and grat.i.tude, etc.

The Prince expressed his sincere regret, said how deeply the Princess and he were touched by the kind words about them, and how greatly for a long number of years they had valued his friends.h.i.+p and that of Mrs. Gladstone.

Mr. Balfour, to whom he also confidentially told the news, communicated among other graceful words, "the special debt of grat.i.tude that was due to him for the immense public service he had performed in fostering and keeping alive the great traditions of the House of Commons." The day after that (March 1) was his last cabinet council, and a painful day it (M184) was. The business of the speech and other matters were discussed as usual, then came the end. In his report to the Queen-his last-he said:-

Looking forward to the likelihood that this might be the last occasion on which Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues might meet in the cabinet, Lord Kimberley and Sir William Harcourt on their own part and on that of the ministers generally, used words undeservedly kind of acknowledgment and farewell. Lord Kimberley will pray your Majesty to appoint a council for Sat.u.r.day, at as early an hour as may be convenient.

Mr. Gladstone sat composed and still as marble, and the emotion of the cabinet did not gain him for an instant. He followed the "words of acknowledgment and farewell" in a little speech of four or five minutes, his voice unbroken and serene, the tone low, grave, and steady. He was glad to know that he had justification in the condition of his senses. He was glad to think that notwithstanding difference upon a public question, private friends.h.i.+ps would remain unaltered and unimpaired. Then hardly above a breath, but every accent heard, he said "G.o.d bless you all." He rose slowly and went out of one door, while his colleagues with minds oppressed filed out by the other. In his diary he enters-"A really moving scene."

A little later in the afternoon he made his last speech in the House of Commons. It was a vigorous a.s.sault upon the House of Lords. His mind had changed since the day in September 1884 when he had declared to an emissary from the court that he hated organic change in the House of Lords, and would do much to avert that mischief.(306) Circ.u.mstances had now altered the case; we had come to a more acute stage. Were they to accept the changes made by the Lords in the bill for parish councils, or were they to drop it? The question, he said, is whether the work of the House of Lords is not merely to modify, but to annihilate the whole work of the House of Commons, work which has been performed at an amount of sacrifice-of time, of labour, of convenience, and perhaps of health-but at any rate an amount of sacrifice totally unknown to the House of Lords. The government had resolved that great as were the objections to acceptance of the changes made by the Lords, the arguments against rejection were still weightier. Then he struck a note of pa.s.sion, and spoke with rising fire:-

We are compelled to accompany that acceptance with the sorrowful declaration that the differences, not of a temporary or casual nature merely, but differences of conviction, differences of prepossession, differences of mental habit, and differences of fundamental tendency, between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, appear to have reached a development in the present year such as to create a state of things of which we are compelled to say that, in our judgment, it cannot continue. Sir, I do not wish to use hard words, which are easily employed and as easily retorted-it is a game that two can play at-but without using hard words, without presuming to judge of motives, without desiring or venturing to allege imputations, I have felt it a duty to state what appeared to me to be indisputable facts. The issue which is raised between a deliberative a.s.sembly, elected by the votes of more than 6,000,000 people, and a deliberative a.s.sembly occupied by many men of virtue, by many men of talent, of course with considerable diversities and varieties, is a controversy which, when once raised, must go forward to an issue.

Men did not know that they were listening to his last speech, but his words fell in with the eager humour of his followers around him, and he sat down amid vehement plaudits. Then when the business was at an end, he rose, and for the last time walked away from the House of Commons. He had first addressed it sixty-one years before.

III

The following day (March 2) he busied himself in packing his papers, and working at intervals on his translation of Horace. He told me that he had now reason to suppose that the Queen might ask him for advice as to his successor. After some talk, he said that if asked he should advise her to send for Lord Spencer. As it happened, his advice was not sought. That evening he went to Windsor to dine and (M185) sleep. The next day was to be the council. Here is his memorandum of the last audience on Sat.u.r.day, March 3(307):-

As I crossed the quadrangle at 10.20 on my way to St. George's Chapel, I met Sir H. Ponsonby, who said he was anxious to speak to me about the future. He was much impressed with the movement among a body of members of parliament against having any peer for prime minister. I signified briefly that I did not think there should be too ready a submission to such a movement. There was not time to say a great deal, and I had something serious to say, so we adjourned the conversation till half past eleven, when I should return from St. George's.

He came at that time and opened on the same lines, desiring to obtain from me whatever I thought proper to say as to persons in the arrangements for the future. I replied to him that this was in my view a most serious matter. All my thoughts on it were absolutely at the command of the Queen. And I should be equally at his command, if he inquired of me from her and in her name; but that otherwise my lips must be sealed. I knew from him that he was in search of information to report to the Queen, but this was a totally different matter.

I entered, however, freely on the general question of the movement among a section of the House of Commons. I thought it impossible to say at the moment, but I should not take for granted that it would be formidable or regard it as _in limine_ disposing of the question. Up to a certain point, I thought it a duty to strengthen the hands of our small minority and little knot of ministers in the Lords, by providing these ministers with such weight as attaches to high office. All this, or rather all that touched the main point, namely the point of a peer prime minister, he without doubt reported.

The council train came down and I joined the ministers in the drawing-room. I received various messages as to the time when I was to see the Queen, and when it would be most convenient to me.

I interpret this variety as showing that she was nervous. It ended in fixing the time after the council and before luncheon. I carried with me a box containing my resignation, and, the council being over, handed it to her immediately, and told her that it contained my tender of resignation. She asked whether she ought then to read it. I said there was nothing in the letter to require it. It repeated my former letter of notice, with the requisite additions.

I must notice what, though slight, supplied the only incident of any interest in this perhaps rather memorable audience, which closed a service that would reach to fifty-three years on September 3, when I was sworn privy councillor before the Queen at Claremont. When I came into the room and came near to take the seat she has now for some time courteously commanded, I did think she was going to "break down." If I was not mistaken, at any rate she rallied herself, as I thought, by a prompt effort, and remained collected and at her ease. Then came the conversation, which may be called neither here nor there. Its only material feature was negative. There was not one syllable on the past, except a repet.i.tion, an emphatic repet.i.tion, of the thanks she had long ago amply rendered for what I had done, a service of no great merit, in the matter of the Duke of Coburg, and which I a.s.sured her would not now escape my notice if occasion should arise. There was the question of eyes and ears, of German _versus_ English oculists, she believing in the German as decidedly superior. Some reference to my wife, with whom, she had had an interview and had ended it affectionately,-and various nothings. No touch on the subject of the last Ponsonby conversation. Was I wrong in not tendering orally my best wishes? I was afraid that anything said by me should have the appearance of _touting_. A departing servant has some t.i.tle to offer his hopes and prayers for the future; but a servant is one who has done, or tried to do, service in the past. There is in all this a great sincerity. There also seems to be some little mystery as to my own case with her. I saw no sign of embarra.s.sment or preoccupation. The Empress Frederick was outside in the corridor. She bade me a most kind and warm farewell, which I had done nothing to deserve.

The letter tendered to the Queen in the box was this:-

Mr. Gladstone presents his most humble duty to your Majesty. The close of the session and the approach of a new one have offered Mr. Gladstone a suitable opportunity for considering the condition of his sight and hearing, both of them impaired, in relation to his official obligations. As they now place serious and also growing obstacles in the way of the efficient discharge of those obligations, the result has been that he has found it his duty humbly to tender to your Majesty his resignation of the high offices which your Majesty has been pleased to intrust to him. His desire to make this surrender is accompanied with a grateful sense of the condescending kindnesses, which your Majesty has graciously shown him on so many occasions during the various periods for which he has had the honour to serve your Majesty. Mr. Gladstone will not needlessly burden your Majesty with a recital of particulars. He may, however, say that although at eighty-four years of age he is sensible of a diminished capacity for prolonged labour, this is not of itself such as would justify his praying to be relieved from the restraints and exigencies of official life.

But his deafness has become in parliament, and even in the cabinet, a serious inconvenience, of which he must reckon on more progressive increase. More grave than this, and more rapid in its growth, is the obstruction of vision which arises from cataract in both his eyes. It has cut him off in substance from the newspapers, and from all except the best types in the best lights, while even as to these he cannot master them with that ordinary facility and despatch which he deems absolutely required for the due despatch of his public duties. In other respects than reading the operation of the complaint is not as yet so serious, but this one he deems to be vital. Accordingly he brings together these two facts, the condition of his sight and hearing, and the break in the course of public affairs brought about in the ordinary way by the close of the session. He has therefore felt that this is the fitting opportunity for the resignation which by this letter he humbly prays your Majesty to accept.

In the course of the day the Queen wrote what I take to be her last letter to him:-

_Windsor Castle, March 3, 1894._-Though the Queen has already accepted Mr. Gladstone's resignation, and has taken leave of him, she does not like to leave his letter tendering his resignation unanswered. She therefore writes these few lines to say that she thinks that after so many years of arduous labour and responsibility he is right in wis.h.i.+ng to be relieved at his age of these arduous duties. And she trusts he will be able to enjoy peace and quiet with his excellent and devoted wife in health and happiness, and that his eyesight may improve.

The Queen would gladly have conferred a peerage on Mr. Gladstone, but she knows he would not accept it.

His last act in relation to this closing scene of the great official drama was a letter to General Ponsonby (March 5):-

The first entrance of a man to Windsor Castle in a responsible character, is a great event in his life; and his last departure from it is not less moving. But in and during the process which led up to this transaction on Sat.u.r.day, my action has been in the strictest sense sole, and it has required me in circ.u.mstances partly known to harden my heart into a flint. However, it is not even now so hard, but that I can feel what you have most kindly written; nor do I fail to observe with pleasure that you do not speak absolutely in the singular. If there were feelings that made the occasion sad, such feelings do not die with the occasion. But this letter must not be wholly one of egotism. I have known and have liked and admired all the men who have served the Queen in your delicate and responsible office; and have liked most, probably because I knew him most, the last of them, that most true-hearted man, General Grey. But forgive me for saying you are "to the manner born"; and such a combination of tact and temper with loyalty, intelligence, and truth I cannot expect to see again. Pray remember these are words which can only pa.s.s from an old man to one much younger, though trained in a long experience.

It is hardly in human nature, in spite of Charles V., Sulla, and some other historic persons, to lay down power beyond recall, without a secret pang. In Prior's lines that came to the mind of brave Sir Walter Scott, as he saw the curtain falling on his days,-

The man in graver tragic known, (Though his best part long since was done,) Still on the stage desires to tarry....

Unwilling to retire, though weary.

Whether the departing minister had a lingering thought that in the dispensations of the world, purposes and services would still arise to which even yet he might one day be summoned, we do not know. Those who were nearest to him believe not, and a.s.suredly he made no outer sign.

Chapter IX. The Close. (1894-1898)

Natural death is as it were a haven and a rest to us after long navigation. And the n.o.ble Soul is like a good mariner; for he, when he draws near the port, lowers his sails and enters it softly with gentle steerage.... And herein we have from our own nature a great lesson of suavity; for in such a death as this there is no grief nor any bitterness: but as a ripe apple is lightly and without violence loosened from its branch, so our soul without grieving departs from the body in which it hath been.-DANTE, _Convito_.(308)

I

After the first wrench was over, and an end had come to the demands, pursuits, duties, glories, of powerful and active station held for a long lifetime, Mr. Gladstone soon settled to the new conditions of his existence, knowing that for him all that could be left was, in the figure of his great Italian poet,"to lower sails and gather in his ropes."(309) He was not much in London, and when he came he stayed in the pleasant retreat to which his affectionate and ever-attached friends, Lord and Lady Aberdeen, so often invited him at Dollis Hill. Much against his will, he did not resign his seat in the House, and he held it until the dissolution of 1895.(310) In June (1895) he took a final cruise in one of Sir Donald Currie's s.h.i.+ps, visiting Hamburg, the new North Sea ca.n.a.l, and Copenhagen once more. His injured sight was a far deadlier breach in the habit of his days than withdrawal from office or from parliament. His own tranquil words written in the year in which he laid down his part in the shows of the world's huge stage, tell the story:-