Gladstone: A Biography
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pro-Turkish stance ref 1
and Disraeli’s 1880 defeat ref 1, ref 2
resists WEG as 1880 government leader ref 1
and WEG’s 1880 government ref 1, ref 2
and Bradlaugh ref 1
congratulates WEG on Disraeli monument speech ref 1
and ecclesiastical appointments ref 1
interference in WEG’s conduct of business ref 1, ref 2
disapproves of WEG’s Scandinavian cruise ref 1
supports Lords’ rejection of 1884 Reform Bill ref 1
letter from WEG on Lords ref 1
imperial expansionist policy ref 1
rebukes WEG over Gordon affair ref 1
and WEG’s 1886 premiership and government ref 1
and Dilke’s divorce case ref 1
accepts WEG’s 1886 dissolution and resignation ref 1, ref 2
objects to Prime Ministers participating in elections ref 1
accepts WEG’s final premiership ref 1
WEG’s memoranda for ref 1
and honour for Lansdowne ref 1, ref 2
and WEG’s final resignation ref 1
Diamond Jubilee (1897) ref 1
meets WEG on Côte d’Azur ref 1
and WEG’s death and funeral ref 1
Highland Journal ref 1
Victoria, Crown Princess of Prussia (later Empress Frederick) ref 1, ref 2
Vienna ref 1, ref 2
Villiers, Charles Pelham ref 1, ref 2n
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire ref 1
Waldegrave, Frances Elizabeth Anne, Countess ref 1
Wales: Church disestablishment ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
Walewski, André-Florian-Joseph-Colonna, Count ref 1
Walmer Castle, Kent ref 1, ref 2
Walpole, Horatio William, Lord (later 4th Earl of Orford): Lady Lincoln runs off with ref 1
Walpole, Spencer Horatio ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5
Walsh, William J., Archbishop of Dublin ref 1
Walters, Catherine (‘Skittles’) ref 1n
Ward, William George ref 1, ref 2
Waterhouse, Alfred ref 1
Waterhouse, Edwin ref 1
Watkin, Sir Edward William ref 1
Watts, George Frederic: paints WEG ref 1
Waugh, Evelyn: Decline and Fall ref 1
Webster, Sir Richard ref 1
Welby, Sir Reginald Erle (later 1st Lord) ref 1, ref 2 & n, ref 2
Wellesley, Gerald Valerian, Dean of Windsor
at Eton with WEG ref 1
at Cambridge ref 1
advises WEG on dealings with Queen ref 1
death ref 1
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of
on Disraeli-Bentinck group ref 1
as Chancellor of Oxford University ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
on Russell’s 1851 government ref 1
death and funeral ref 1, ref 2
experience ref 1
Wenlock, Beilby Richard Lawley, 2nd Lord ref 1
Wesley, Charles, John and Samuel ref 1
West, Sir Algernon ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5
Westbury, Richard Bethell, 1st Lord ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
Westminster, Constance Gertrude, Duchess of ref 1
Westminster, Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of
moves amendment on Russell’s Reform Bill ref 1
dukedom ref 1
supports WEG against Sutherland’s attack ref 1
chairs meeting on Eastern Question ref 1
WEG rebukes for electionéering ref 1
declines to contribute to Granville estate ref 1
Westminster School ref 1
Whitby ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
Whitefield, George ref 1
Whitehall Court, London ref 1
Whitelaw, William, Viscount ref 1, ref 2
Whittinghame (house), East Lothian ref 1
Wickham, Agnes (née Gladstone; WEG’s daughter)
erysipelas ref 1, ref 2
rides with father ref 1
with WEG in Ionian Islands ref 1
Arthur Gordon’s infatuation with ref 1n
children ref 1
visits to Hawarden ref 1
appearance ref 1
Wickham, Edward Charles, Dean of Lincoln ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
Wigan: parliamentary seat ref 1
Wilberforce, Samuel, Bishop of Oxford, then of Winchester
at Oriel College ref 1
Evangelicalism ref 1
and reclamation of prostitutes ref 1
relations with WEG ref 1, ref 2
accompanies WEG on Manchester visit ref 1
opposes divorce reform ref 1
confirms Stephen Gladstone ref 1
receives honorary Cambridge degree ref 1
WEG suggests for Archbishopric of York ref 1n
and succession to Palmerston ref 1
on rise of Disraeli ref 1
and Irish Church Bill ref 1
visits WEG at Walmer ref 1
translated to Winchester ref 1n
death ref 1n
mocks T.H. Huxley ref 1
letters from WEG ref 1
Wilhelm I, Emperor of Germany ref 1n, ref 2
William IV, King ref 1
Willis’s Rooms, London ref 1, ref 2
Wilson, William: attempts to blackmail WEG ref 1
Wilson, Woodrow ref 1
Wilton House, Wiltshire: WEG visits ref 1 & n
Winchilsea and Nottingham, George William Finch-Hatton, 10th Earl of ref 1
Windsor: WEG visits ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7, ref 8, ref 9, ref 10
Wiseman, Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Stephen, Archbishop of Westminster
in Rome ref 1
and Helen Gladstone’s conversion ref 1, ref 2
visits and cures Helen ref 1
appointed Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster ref 1
burned in effigy ref 1
Helen Gladstone entertains ref 1
Wolseley, General Sir Garnet Joseph (later Field Marshal Viscount) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4
Wolverhampton, 1st Viscount see Fowler, Henry Hartley
Wolverton, George Grenfell Glyn, 2nd Lord
and WEG in Balmoral ref 1
and WEG’s need to seek re-election on taking office ref 1
buys WEG’s paintings and books ref 1
at Royal Academy dinner ref 1
visits WEG at Hawarden ref 1, ref 2, ref 3
WEG stays at Cannes villa ref 1
WEG stays with at Kingston ref 1
declines viscountcy ref 1n
Wood, Sir Charles see Halifax, 1st Viscount
Wordsworth, Charles ref 1
Wright, Captain Peter ref 1, ref 2
Wyatt, James ref 1
Young, Sir John ref 1, ref 2
Zetland, Lawrence Dundas, 3rd Earl (later 1st Marquess) of ref 1
Zola, Emile ref 1
Zulu War (1879) ref 1, ref 2
The two new Liverpool houses of Gladstone’s childhood:
62 Rodney Steet, sixteen years old when it became his birthplace.
Seaforth House, five miles down river, which John Gladstone began building in 1811 and to which he removed his family in the summer of Waterloo.
George Canning (by Lawrence), Member for Liverpool 1812-22, and an early and continuing Gladstone family hero. A striking declamatory picture, but why is he addressing an empty House of Commons from the middle of the floor?
Arthur Hallam, the jeune homme fatal, who excited Gladstone, Tennyson and several others before his early death in 1833.
The Oxford, and in particular the Christ Church (on the left, Merton College on the right) at which Gladstone arrived in 1828.
Fasque, the fine Kincardineshire mansion which John Gladstone acquired in 1829, when it was twenty years old, and in which William Gladstone spent many autumns in his twenties and thirties.
Hawarden, Flintshire, older but much remodelled at about the time of the creation of Fasque. Gladstone marri
ed into the Hawarden estate in 1839 and increasingly made it his home for the remaining fifty-eight years of his life.
Catherine Gladstone (formerly Glynne) painted by F. R. Say around the time of her marriage in 1839.
Gladstone (second from left) as the new MP for Newark seated alongside his elder brother, Thomas (third from left), in one of the last (1834) pictures of the old House of Commons, which was destroyed by fire within a few months.
Gladstone as a young man, a possibly flattering portrait done in 1838 by William Bradley
The founder of the fortune and the dynasty, and by then the hard laird of Fasque: Sir John Gladstone, painted by Bradley about the time of his 1846 baronetcy.
The Tory deities of Gladstone’s early political years. Sir Robert Peel towers over the Duke of Wellington in this 1844 drawing by Winterhalter.
The delicate features of religious intensity:
John Keble
John Henry Newman, later Cardinal
James Hope Scott
Two prelates, also of roughly Gladstone’s generation at Oxford who, in widely differing ways, were more worldly.
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce of Oxford and Winchester.
Henry Manning, Anglican Archdeacon of Chichester, later (but only fourteen years so) Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, and then after another ten years, Cardinal.
Gladstone in 1858: trim of figure, fierce of eye and smart of dress (in ‘Brougham’ trousers, white waistcoat and fancy cravat). In reality his career and not merely his tie was then at a loose end.
The fourth Earl of Aberdeen, the most elusive of all post-1832 Prime Ministers but to Gladstone ‘the man in public life of all others whom I have loved’.
Lord John Russell, from 1860 first Earl Russell, the quintessential Whig, whom Gladstone did not love but whom he placed, together with Peel (a high tribute) and Disraeli (a less high one) in a triptych of those with outstanding political courage.
Sidney Herbert, Gladstone’s friend and short-lived contemporary, a man who aroused his intense affection as did Aberdeen and Hope-Scott and no one else, but with whom he constantly disagreed in Cabinet.
Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, a close friend of Gladstone’s from the middle 1850s until her death in 1868 (painted by Winterhalter about 1850).
Lady with the Coronet of Jasmine, the portrait of Maria Summerhayes, one of his ‘rescue’ cases, which Gladstone commissioned from William Dyce in 1859 and which today reposes in the Aberdeen Art Gallery.
Laura Thistlethwayte, former courtesan who became a proselytizing theosophist as well as a Grosvenor Square and Dorset lady of substance, with whom Gladstone was considerably infatuated during his first premiership.
Palmerston
Disraeli
Palmerston and Disraeli, were Gladstone’s only political rivals as post-1850 Victorian stars. He disapproved of them both but wisely although almost accidentally settled in 1859 for a reluctant partnership with Palmerston (who was twenty-five years his senior) and a symbiotic opposition to Disraeli. As a result he eventually outshone them both.
Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort towards the end of Albert’s life. While their marriage lasted (he died in 1861) she approved of Gladstone.
Afterwards, as in this 1890s picture, she did not.
Gladstone family photograph taken on the west side of Hawarden Castle circa 1868. Catherine Gladstone seated at the table in the centre; back row: Agnes Gladstone, W.E.G., Sir Stephen Glynne (looking very faintly askance at ‘the great man’) and Lucy Lyttelton (Cavendish); seated: unknown boy, Helen Gladstone, Willy Gladstone, Herbert Gladstone, Henry Gladstone, Lord Frederick Cavendish.
Tree-felling scene at Hawarden, probably in a mid-1880s autumn, although it was not until 1891, after thirty-three years of the pursuit, that Gladstone hung up his axe. Mrs Gladstone is looking unusually diva-like centre-stage. Willy Gladstone is sitting lugubriously on the trunk.
Arthur James Balfour, in whom Gladstone ‘simply delighted’ in the early 1870s and by whose attacks on him in the 1880s he was therefore much upset. (Picture by Richmond done in 1876 when Balfour was twenty-eight.)
The eighth Duke of Argyll, a close colleague of Gladstone’s for a quarter of a century until he resigned over Irish land in 1881.
The Cabinet in 1883 (a contrived picture): from left to right: Dodson, Kimberley, Hartington, Harcourt, Derby, Granville, Gladstone, Selborne, Carlingford, Dilke, Childers, Northbrook, Chamberlain, Spencer.
The Prince of Wales circa 1875 looks benignly self-indulgent.
The second Earl Granville, ‘a vital ball-bearing’ of three Gladstone governments.
The Edinburgh of the Midlothian Campaign.
Two Whigs:
Lord Hartington, later eighth Duke of Devonshire.
The Red (and fifth) Earl Spencer, but red in beard rather than in politics, who however remained faithful to Gladstone on Home Rule.
Two Radicals:
Joseph Chamberlain, looking glossy and sharp.
Sir Charles Dilke, looking opulent and sad.
A Gladstone family group at Hawarden in the mid-1880s (see p. 462). Standing from left to right: Mrs Willy Gladstone, Willy Gladstone, Mary Gladstone, W.E.G.; seated: Henry Gladstone, Herbert Gladstone, Agnes (nee Gladstone) Wickham with child, Catherine Gladstone, Edward Wickham, Stephen Gladstone, Helen Gladstone.
Belabouring a wily Egyptian gentleman: an 1882 Punch cartoon illustrating the incongruity of Gladstone in ‘the most civilian and almost parsonical of habits’ indulging in a rare burst of militarism.
Gladstone flanked by his official family of private secretaries, circa 1883: Horace Seymour, Spencer Lyttelton, George Leveson Gower and Edward Hamilton.
General Charles Gordon, the prototype of a Boy’s Own Paper hero, whose grip on public opinion Gladstone gravely underestimated.
Dinner at Haddo House in September, 1884. The hosts are the seventh Earl (later first Marquess) of Aberdeen, the grandson of Gladstone’s old chief, and his wife. Lady Aberdeen has Gladstone on her right and Rosebery on her left. (Painting by A. E. Emslie, now in the National Portrait Gallery.)
Gladstone and Döllinger photographed by Lehnbach in Bavaria, September 1886. Lord Acton (far right) and Helen Gladstone (seated at the table in white) are also in the picture.
A constant but fatal attraction:
Charles Stewart Parnell
Katherine O’Shea
Gladstone reading in the Temple of Peace, his Hawarden library (probably late 1880s).
And writing, with great difficulty, seven or so years later. Sight was one ‘door of the senses’ which was indeed closing.
Tennyson in 1890, six years after accepting Gladstone’s peerage offer, two years before his death.
The fifth Earl of Roseberry, Gladstone’s sponsor in Midlothian and (unchosen) successor as Prime Minister: sometimes as ally, but often a tiresome one, and always pricly and self-regarding.
Sir William Harcourt, an effective parliamentary bruiser, sometimes called ‘the great gladiator’, but a difficult colleague.
John Morley, the author-statesman who, while not without his own brand of prickliness, was a more loyal prop of Gladstone in his fourth and last government than either Harcourt or Rosebery.
H. H. Asquith as a young Home. Secretary in 1894. While not intimate with the Prime Minister, he was the most successful ‘new man’ in this fourth government and, when Liberalism recovered in 1906, Gladstone’s effective long-term heir.
The third Marquess of Salisbury, who three times succeeded Gladstone as Prime Minister. He was a skilled and often partisan opponent, the founder of ‘villa’, (or suburban) Conservatism, but he and Gladstone did not much engage. They were like ships which passed (and re-passed) in the night.
The Gladstones on one of their last drives.
GLADSTONE
‘Jenkins is a master of irony . . . This helps to make the book enormous fun to read, while it is also enlightening in any number of ways.’
JOHN
GRIGG, Sunday Telegraph
‘Deliciously spiced with mordant wit, Gladstone can be read for sheer pleasure. But it is the wisdom as well as the wit that ensures this biography will live.’
PROFESSOR J. J. LEE of Cork University, Guardian
‘This biography matches one of Gladstone’s own towering performances.’
ANTHONY HOWARD, Sunday Times
‘The combination of author and subject makes Roy Jenkins’s Gladstone irresistible . . . His biography is all you need to know about Gladstone including the things you never dared ask.’
ROY HATTERSLEY, Independent
‘Roy Jenkins has written the definitive biography of William Ewart Gladstone, the “Grand Old Man” of Victorian politics. Jenkins is a consummate biographer . . . Gladstone is his chef-d’œuvre.’