High Minds

by Simon Heffer

  The Tories were no match for him. The election was fought on the ground of Gladstone’s choosing. Once it was called he broadened his attack, mainly through speeches in his constituency: domestic policy had been neglected, international instability had harmed business, the public finances had gone into deficit. Not just foreign policy, but Beaconsfield’s whole conduct of government, became a moral question. This idealism, this infusion of the business of the State by fundamental Christian teaching, was what Dr Arnold had dreamed of. In the 1880 election campaign, the doctrine, for once and once only, held back the tide of secularism, and prevailed. It also, incidentally, established Gladstonism as the preponderant strain in Liberal politics, and ensured his second premiership.

  Gladstone’s faith, constant since his youth, continued to shape his public life in this increasingly secular society. When he was returned in Midlothian on 5 April he wrote in his diary: ‘Wonderful, & nothing less, has been the disposing guiding hand of God in all this matter.’99 The next day, going back to Hawarden, he wrote: ‘travelled all night & had time to ruminate on the great hand of God so evidently displayed.’ On 8 April he heard that Samuel Plimsoll, the Liberal MP, and others were planning a rally in London, effectively to demand he be made Prime Minister. ‘The triumph grows & grows,’ he recorded. ‘To God be the praise.’100 Plimsoll – ‘an original and childlike man’ – came to see Gladstone the next day, and Gladstone talked him out of the idea of a rally.101 On 10 April Gladstone had word that Hartington and Granville wanted to see him. ‘God will provide,’ he observed. Gladstone’s whole life had, to an extent, been a religious experience: and this moment appeared to be its climax, a self-justification he portrayed to himself as divine.

  Three days later Gladstone made it clear to Lord Wolverton – who had brought the message from the Whig grandees – that there was ‘only one form and ground of application’ to him that could work, namely that he should become Prime Minister.102 He recognised he was the dominant figure in his party’s politics, and saw no reason to pretend otherwise: and so much of his writing at this time advances his belief that he was in God’s hands, doing God’s will, on a divine mission to reinforce the moral foundations, and moral purpose, of the nation. As the editor of his diaries, H. C. G. Matthew, has pointed out, this was the era of The Way We Live Now, Trollope’s novel of 1875 that detailed the corruption apparently inherent in capitalism. Matthew interpreted Gladstone as lamenting ‘the failures of moral education to match the progress of capitalism’.103 The failure of his opponents, including the Queen, to understand this was not all that made them think he was mad, and a demagogue: but for Gladstone it had become the only tone in which he could conduct politics.

  The general election was a disaster for Beaconsfield and his party. The Liberals won 352 of the 652 seats in the Commons; the Conservatives lost almost a third of their MPs, returning only 237, one of the worst results in their history. The party machine that had worked so well in 1874 had operated only superficially in 1880. It was Beaconsfield’s political death knell: the literal one followed a year later, when he died on 19 April 1881, in his seventy-seventh year. Hartington had led his party since January 1875 and in the election campaign: but no one, inside or outside the party, was in any doubt that it was Gladstone who had given the moral lead. It was he, and not Hartington, who had the authority to lead the country.

  The Midlothian campaign had signalled Gladstone’s resurrection, and in it he showed himself, finally, not only as the towering politician of the age, but the towering moral force too. His denunciations of the failures of the Conservative government seemed to overwhelm the country with their sense of conviction. Beaconsfield, old, in poor health and demoralised, could fool the public no longer. That was not, of course, how he saw it. Cross described him as being ‘mortified’ and added that ‘he felt that the country had given him a rebuke which he had not deserved’. From the size of the rebuke, the country plainly did not agree.104

  All through April 1880 there was speculation about what would happen if the Liberals won. Beaconsfield briefed Lord Barrington, a Conservative, that ‘the Queen would certainly send for Granville, and he and Hartington would certainly form a Government whether Gladstone liked it or not.’105 Beaconsfield assumed Gladstone would refuse to serve under Granville, Foreign Secretary from 1868 to 1874, but that he would depose him after a year or so. Gladstone he denounced as having acted like ‘an irresponsible demagogue’. Whether or not Beaconsfield had shared these feelings with the Queen she was said to be ‘in despair’. She had been ‘disgusted’ by the ‘crude appeal’ of the Midlothian campaign, and had not imagined her people would feel any differently.106 Now, as she told Beaconsfield, ‘nothing more than trouble and trial await me. I consider it a great public misfortune.’

  In her petulance the Queen found it easy to dismiss facts. She wrote to Beaconsfield on 4 April, when it was already obvious his party was being trounced, to say that she felt sure the Liberals would have ‘the very greatest difficulty’ forming a government.107 If she did have to part with her beloved Prime Minister it would, she said with what she hoped was certainty, be ‘for a very short time’. Five days later, as the Liberal majority rose, she told him that ‘of course I shall not take any notice of . . . Mr Gladstone’.108 That day she also told Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, that she preferred Hartington to Granville, even though the latter was older and more experienced, because Granville ‘would be too pliable to Radical influence’.109 Hicks-Beach warned her that that would create a dangerous position for Gladstone – dangerous to the Queen, that is. He suggested that, with Hartington as Prime Minister, Gladstone would have power without responsibility.

  The Queen felt Gladstone would take nothing but the top job, and she was right: but she also felt from some remarks in his recent speeches that he did not even want that, which was a delusion. Whatever happened, she would not send for Gladstone in the first instance. Nor did she need to; he had resigned the leadership in 1875, had passed the baton to Granville, whom he regarded as his successor, and Liberal MPs had chosen Hartington to lead them in the Commons. Her choice, therefore, was between the leaders of the two houses. Yet, as everyone knew – though she would be the last to admit it – the moral leader of the Liberal party was Gladstone. John Bright went to see him on 16 April, and they spent the day discussing the situation: Bright told his diary that evening that Gladstone would not serve except as Prime Minister.

  The Queen was not constitutionally obliged to seek Beaconsfield’s advice: but such was her degree of trust in him that, inevitably, she did. They met on 18 April. In a note of their meeting, the Queen wrote that Beaconsfield advised her to send for Hartington. ‘He was in his heart a conservative, a gentleman, and very straightforward in his conduct.’110 Granville, by comparison, was ‘less disinterested’; Gladstone ‘was only clung to by the Radicals’. Beaconsfield told her that while some ‘dreadful people’ like Bradlaugh had been elected, many Liberals were old-fashioned Whigs; and were a Whig asked to lead the party, he would have his own people around him. The Queen confirmed to her Prime Minister that on no account would she send for Gladstone: it was ‘impossible’.111 To her he was a cause of mischief who had done all he could to weaken her government in a time of trial. She felt sure, she consoled herself, that in any case he would not wish it. ‘This was no ordinary change of government,’ she continued. It ‘had been brought about by the most unjust and shameful persecution of [i.e. by] Mr Gladstone’. Beaconsfield’s advice was prejudiced and factually wrong: Hartington had far fewer supporters in the party than Gladstone.

  Gladstone returned to London on 19 April, still in God’s hands: ‘May He who has of late so wonderfully guided, guide me still in the critical days about to come,’ he wrote in his diary.112 He was in no doubt why the constitutional process had slowed down. ‘This blank day is, I think,’ he wrote on 20 April, ‘probably due to the Queen’s hesitation or reluctance, which the Ministers have to fi
nd means of covering.’ He saw Hartington, Granville and Wolverton for talks, as all the Liberal leadership awaited word from Windsor.

  The Queen sent for Hartington on 22 April. After living according to the fantasies of her retiring Prime Minister for the best part of three weeks, she was jolted into reality by her conversation with the Liberal leader. She appeared ‘embarrassed’ and ‘pressed upon him strongly his duty to assist her as a responsible leader of the party now in a large majority.’113 She emphasised to Hartington that what especially commended him was his ‘moderation’, a phrase Gladstone noted had often been used about him in recent days in the Daily Telegraph, which had since 1877 become the house journal of Beaconsfieldism. He told her bluntly that no Liberal government could be formed unless Gladstone were a member of it, and the only position he would accept was that of her first minister. He advised her to send for him. The Queen was horrified, and charged Hartington to ask Gladstone directly whether he would serve under him or Granville. Hartington met Gladstone at 7.00 that evening back in London, and Gladstone gave him the expected answer. He would not serve, but would promise not to interfere if they went ahead without him

  The following day both Hartington and Granville went to Windsor at lunchtime and told the Queen she must send for Gladstone. Her horror deepened, for she realised she had no choice. She asked Beaconsfield, privately, what she should do. He advised her, outrageously, to send for Gladstone and ask him whether he could form a government, but to make it clear in the audience that she was doing so ‘in the spirit of the constitution’, not because she had any personal desire to do so.114 She sent for Gladstone on St George’s Day 1880, her message to him conveyed by Granville in the presence of Hartington.

  He presented himself at Windsor at 6.30 p.m., having spent the afternoon writing a memorandum on his meeting with Hartington the previous day. The Queen kept him waiting for twenty minutes. She received him ‘with perfect courtesy, from which she never deviates.’115 She justified not having sent for him first, and he agreed with her decision. He accepted her commission. The Queen asked whether he would definitely form a government, or whether he would attempt to do so. He undertook to do the former. She could not resist, or perhaps it was that she could not help, ticking him off. As Gladstone recalled the meeting: ‘She said I must be frank with you Mr Gladstone and must fairly say that there have been some expressions, I think she said some little things, which had caused her concern or pain.’

  He assured her he was sensible of his responsibility, was grateful for her frankness, and admitted having ‘used a mode of speech and language different in some degree from what I should have employed had I been the leader of a party or a candidate for office.’ No doubt what cheered her most was Gladstone’s assertion that, because of his advanced years – he was seventy – ‘I could only look to the short term of active exertion and a personal retirement comparatively early.’ The Queen warned him ‘with some good-natured archness’ that he would have to bear the consequences of his rhetorical excesses. ‘All things considered I was much pleased. I ended by kissing HM’s hand.’

  ‘He said he accepts all facts,’ the Queen told Beaconsfield in a telegram, ‘and that bitterness of feeling is past.’116 Later that day, in a letter, she wailed that ‘her trial is great . . . Mr Gladstone looks very ill, very old and haggard and his voice feeble.’ With utter impropriety, she maintained a private correspondence with Beaconsfield until his death, confiding in him her feelings about Gladstone, and never ceasing her lamentations that her adored Dizzy was not still her first minister. Hartington, by his refusal to take office, might have caused the Queen distress, but he had forced her to recognise the consequences of democracy. Gladstone’s second premiership was, ironically, a dividend of the very 1867 Reform Act he had opposed.

  Thus it was that the highest mind of all returned to lead British political life, and to steer the State. In his second ministry, in times radically different from his first, Gladstone would once more bring to bear all the Arnoldian virtues that informed his humanity as a statesman. If Culture and Anarchy had been a blueprint for the humane and wise governance and civilisation of a people, Gladstone was the finest imaginable man to implement it. He retained the highest opinion of Arnold: to Arnold’s surprise, he had him awarded a civil list pension of £250 a year in 1883, which allowed him to retire in 1886. The pension was not a reward for his services as an inspector: it was offered ‘in public recognition of service to the poetry and literature of England’.117 It may have been prompted by a pamphlet Arnold sent Gladstone in April 1882 about the need to extend copyright for authors’ works after their deaths: Arnold was not yet sixty, but had been told he had the same heart defect that had killed his father. His financial position was precarious: yet he had many works in print and a large reading public, and wished his family to benefit from his work after his death, if it came early.118 The pension would help stave off some of these worries. Gladstone saw that, in the interests of sweetness and light, patronage of literary men and women was as important as any social measures that he might champion.

  He had tried to persuade Tennyson to take a baronetcy in March 1873: but Tennyson had written back and said ‘not only on account of my feeling for yourself, but also for the sake of that memory which we share, I speak frankly to you, when I say, that I had rather we should remain plain Mr and Mrs, and that, if it were possible, the title should first be assumed by our son at any age it may be thought right to fix upon.’119 He added: ‘But like enough this is against all precedent and could not be managed; and on no account would I have suggested it were there the least chance of the Queen’s construing it into a slight of the proffered honour.’ He enclosed a second letter accepting the honour, which he instructed Gladstone to act upon if the Queen would be offended otherwise. Gladstone was prepared to negotiate this unprecedented procedure; but then Tennyson wrote to him a fortnight later to say that ‘Hallam . . . would not like to wear the honour during my lifetime.’120

  He offered Harriet Martineau a pension, which she declined. ‘The work of my busy years has supplied the needs and desires of a quiet old age. On the former occasions of my declining a pension I was poor . . . now, I have a competence, and there would be no excuse for my touching the public money.’121 But Gladstone also brought the trained critic’s keen appreciation of life to his considerations, as Matthew Arnold would have wanted. After Carlyle died, early in 1881, Gladstone wrote: ‘If Carlyle was vain it was not with a vulgar vanity. If he was selfish, if intolerant, or whatever faults they were always idiosyncratic: so powerful an individuality overspread them all. It is this individuality which attracts, even more than genius.’122 He read Froude’s Life on publication and annotated it: this set him further thinking about the Sage and, while staying with Lord Rosebery at Durdans, he scribbled down that ‘he wanted reverence, resignation, tolerance, patience; he was reckless.’123

  The cultural world, however, was changing too, as everything else was. A letter of July 1881 – a year into the second ministry – asks: ‘Will you do me the honour of accepting my first volume of poems – as a very small token of my deep admiration and loyalty to one who has always loved what is noble and beautiful and true in life and art, and is the mirror of the Greek ideal of a statesman.’124 It is signed ‘Your most obedient servant, Oscar Wilde.’

  EPILOGUE

  Writing in 1948, Basil Willey, the King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge, reflected that ‘in our own unpleasant century we are mostly displaced persons, and many feel tempted to take flight into the nineteenth as into a promised land, and settle there like illegal immigrants for the rest of their lives. In that distant mountain country, all that we now lack seems present in abundance: not only peace, prosperity, plenty and freedom, but faith, purpose and buoyancy.’ Reflecting during a period of austerity, with two catastrophic world wars in his experience, Willey can be forgiven this burst of nostalgia. There is no doubt he and many others felt this: that the generatio
n that had greedily devoured Strachey and others who sought to mock and undermine the Victorians in the heady period after the Great War now began to realise that they had perhaps been unfair to their predecessors.

  Yet there is a rose tint to Willey’s spectacles. As we have seen, there may have been international peace (though one should not forget the Crimea, and imperial skirmishes in Africa and on the Indian sub-continent, and the tribulations of Ireland), but prosperity came in interludes between the hungry forties and the great depression of the mid to late seventies. Plenty, as such, was an experience not shared by all; and faith was constantly under assault: for the educated classes, from the Oxford Movement onwards; and for the rest, as a consequence of the upheaval brought by industrialisation.

  Purpose, though, the Victorians had in abundance, and it was the key to their achievements. The years between the late 1830s and the early 1880s did not merely include radical change in the abstract; they included radical change of a physical nature. What underpins the revolutionary nature of life in the mid-nineteenth century was the determination by people of intelligence and will not to accept the status quo, and to move society in time with technology. Many more men obtained the vote; women began to obtain something approaching their rights; children were more widely educated and less widely exploited; the tone of human relations had changed. These abstract changes reflected – and were in some measure accelerated by – visible ones. Britain had shrunk because of the railway and the telegraph. Its prosperity, and the political consciousness of its working class, had been supercharged by continued industrialisation. Linear miles of sewers and drains and square miles of sanitary, well ventilated housing improved the health and welfare of the people. A flourishing press, and growing literacy, not only informed the masses about the decisions their rulers took for them, but assisted their participation in that process.