The Unknown Gladstone

The Life of Herbert Gladstone, 1854-1930

Kenneth D. Brown

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780755600922
• eBook ISBN: 9781786722980
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

Herbert Gladstone (1854-1930) was the only one of the sons of the renowned nineteenth-century Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone to enjoy a significant political career in his own right. Yet he has been generally relegated to the wings of history's stage, destined, it seems, to remain permanently in the shadow of his illustrious parent. Such an outcome would not have troubled him unduly, for his whole life was shaped by deep affection and respect for his father while as a political actor he was happiest operating in the political shadows rather than in the limelight - serving for 30 years as a Liberal MP for Leeds with short periods as Home Secretary (1905-1910) and, as Viscount Gladstone, Governor-General of South Africa (1910-1914). In exploring the intimate connection between Herbert Gladstone's public and private lives this new biography, the first for eighty years, reveals an unambitious, self-effacing man of faith and throws new light not only on his own career but also on significant episodes in British Victorian and early-twentieth century history.

CHAPTER 1

Hawarden to Westminster

In the flickering light the father’s shadow, distorted by the presence on his back of an excited 11-year-old, lay dark and heavy over the cradle in which lay his newest-born son, peacefully sleeping, the light occasionally glimmering on his barely discernible ruddy gold hair. It was a shadow which the baby, soon to be christened Herbert John, was never fully to escape even though his future was to include stints as under-secretary for Ireland, commissioner of works, chief Liberal whip, home secretary, and first governor-general of South Africa. This was by most standards an impressive record until set against that of the father, William Ewart Gladstone, who at the time of Herbert’s birth in January 1854 was chancellor of the exchequer and was eventually to serve as prime minister on four occasions, the dominant figure in British public life for the better part of half a century. A more difficult act to follow would be hard to imagine, even allowing for the fact that in British politics very few sons, Winston Churchill certainly and William Pitt the Younger and Neville Chamberlain possibly being the exceptions, have outshone their fathers. Nor in fact did Herbert Gladstone ever show any inclination to eclipse his parent. The intense emotional and psychological empathy between the two men fuelled the son’s lifetime commitment to honouring and defending the name, principles and achievements of the father, a word which he invariably capitalised in his own correspondence. Even his autobiography was mostly a spirited defence of the Grand Old Man’s actions, wrapped up in some personal reminiscences of his own.¹

Destiny may have decreed that Herbert Gladstone should be forever overshadowed by his illustrious father but temperament also ensured that he was happiest working behind the scenes. Most have been content to leave him there, agreeing, if only tacitly, with the dictum that politicians like actors appear taller before the footlights than offstage. Herbert’s relatively peripheral role in his own published recollections was a matter of personal choice but it was mirrored in the memoirs of his many political contemporaries in which he was rarely deemed worthy of more than a passing reference. As Liberal chief whip he was by definition working backstage. As a minister between 1905 and 1910 he was, in common it must be said with most of his cabinet colleagues, overshadowed by the personalities and policies of more extrovert characters like Churchill and Lloyd George, while his departure to South Africa in 1910 removed him for the most part from the British public gaze. Subsequently, neither his wartime work with Belgian refugees nor his intriguing against Lloyd George for the soul of the Liberal Party in the 1920s attracted much contemporary interest. With the passage of time Herbert Gladstone slipped even further into the shadows and he was almost alone among those holding office in the pre-war Liberal Governments in failing to attract a later biographer, unlike several comparatively junior colleagues.² His sole monument in the graveyard of historiography remains that penned in 1932 by Sir Charles Mallet, a sometime Liberal MP and a writer of modest ability who was not Lady Gladstone’s first choice author and whose book is coloured throughout by its author’s intense dislike of Lloyd George.³

For Agnes Gladstone, the excited 11-year-old perched on her father’s back in January 1854, that first shadowy glimpse of her newborn brother always remained a special memory and she referred to it frequently in later years because, as she put it, ‘I never before had entered into the intense joy that such a sunbeam brought to an old sister’s heart.’⁴ If that sentiment now seems mawkish and overblown the new infant’s arrival was certainly a matter for great family rejoicing, which somehow never dissipated and bathed him in warm and loving surroundings throughout his childhood and beyond. Victorian politics were still a relatively leisurely affair, allowing Gladstone senior time for scholarly work but as chancellor he was still much engaged in affairs of state, not least the outbreak of the Crimean War shortly after Herbert’s birth. Furthermore, like most Victorian fathers, he was content to leave the daily responsibility for his seven surviving children to his wife Catherine (nee Glynne). Nevertheless, his diaries reveal that he kept a keen and affectionate eye on their progress. ‘God bless him’, he wrote on Herbert’s third birthday in 1857, ‘he is at this moment a remarkable child whatever he may hereafter be.’⁵ A similar pride was evident when the boy reached his eighth birthday, Gladstone predicting that ‘he will hardly be an ordinary man but seems to have both breadth and depth’, a comment perhaps prompted by his recent discovery of Herbert engrossed in reading the latest news from America.⁶

Gladstone had a lofty view of paternal duty, especially when it came to religion. A high Anglican, his sense of the Divine presence and purpose shaped every aspect of his own personal life and frequently informed his public utterances. His piety was more than matched by his wife’s and while their beliefs could not be forced upon the children, family prayers, regular biblical instruction from Gladstone himself and church attendance twice on Sundays left no doubts as to the Gladstones’ convictions or their aspirations for their children. In this as in all other matters the parents together set the tone for the family. Gladstone also instructed all his sons in arithmetic, languages and geography, although by the time Herbert came along politics were depriving him of the necessary time. Even so, he did what he could and after one lesson he again noted that Herbert ‘has very considerable gifts’.⁷ For his part, Herbert was certainly not conscious of any neglect by his father. Even in old age he could still write vividly of the delight he and his siblings experienced when Gladstone joined them for tree-felling, games, a seaside trip or an impromptu concert, the latter instilling in Herbert a lifelong love of music and singing. When their father abandoned, however briefly, the outside world of public affairs and entered theirs, the children, Herbert remembered, were ‘like little dogs who never resent exclusion but are overjoyed when they are allowed in. Our affection was secured.’⁸

In 1868 Gladstone became prime minister for the first time. Personally involved with several of his government’s major measures, he maintained a comprehensive eye on all its business and regularly attended the House of Commons. For her part Catherine tried to be present when he spoke in parliament and to accompany him at the numerous official and social functions required of a prime minister. But if the parents were thus often and increasingly occupied or absent there was still plenty of fun and affection to go round, for the ties between the children were also strong and reinforced the secure surroundings in which Herbert’s formative years were spent. He himself was just about entering puberty when his father became prime minister but older brothers Willy and Stephen, born respectively in 1840 and 1844, both took an almost paternal interest in him, particularly after he started school. With Harry (formally Henry), his senior by only 18 months or so, Herbert formed almost from birth a fraternal bond of astonishing strength and durability which, as their voluminous correspondence indicates, survived all the vicissitudes of adult life and was severed only by death. As boys they were inseparable, delighting in exploiting the possibilities of the family home and estate at Hawarden Castle, just outside Chester. Together they roamed the nearby countryside, climbing trees and learning to shoot and fish, activities which seeded in Herbert a love of field sports and the outdoors which he was never to lose. Predictably, he never cared much for the chancellor’s Downing Street residence, his birth place, complaining because it was ‘so dirty’ and ‘we can’t climb any trees’.⁹ Of his sisters, he was probably closest to Mary who watched over his early career with particular interest and in whom he tended to confide his most intimate thoughts on those rare occasions when he chose to express them at all. But affection for Agnes and Helen also bubbles through the surviving family letters. They wrote frequently to each other, effusive and mutual expressions of birthday wishes; concerns for Herbert’s health, magnified no doubt by memories of the meningitis which had carried off another sister, Jessy, in 1850; regrets that a particular family treat had been missed; and exchanges of gifts and cards, including on one occasion rather thinly disguised Valentines received by both Mary and Stephen, behind which they immediately detected Herbert’s boyishly mischievous hand. Outside the immediate family, similarly close ties developed between the Gladstones’ offspring and the 12 children of Catherine’s sister, Mary Glynne, wife of the fourth Lord Lyttelton. The cousins were frequently in each others’ company for holidays, games, outings and parties. The families were so close that they even developed their own private language, Glynnese, and the Gladstone children saw far more of their Glynne and Lyttelton relatives than they ever did of their father’s Gladstone kin.¹⁰

The constant at the heart of this vibrant family dynamic was Catherine Gladstone, not merely the wife of a rising politician but a remarkable woman in her own right. She was no stranger to the world of high politics since the Glynne family itself was related to a number of important political dynasties. She well understood, therefore, the demands of government on her husband. A devout woman, Catherine was outgoing and gregarious, sympathetic to those in less fortuitous circumstances than her own. Domestically she was untidy and not much interested in externals, but little escaped her with regard to the children. After Mary Lyttelton’s unexpectedly early death in 1857 Catherine became virtually a surrogate mother to the Lyttelton nieces and nephews, one of whom recalled that, with her, ‘children felt always, especially in times of anxiety or distress, that somebody had arrived who was going to help to solve difficulties, to light up the road and incidentally to make fun for all concerned. She radiated tenderness.’¹¹ A grandson noted similarly that she had the gift of being able to reinforce a child’s self-respect and self-belief.¹² While none of her extended family was excluded from her capacious affections, her own two youngest boys, her ‘sugar plums’ as she called them, undoubtedly claimed a special place in her heart and about Herbert especially, she once said, there was something so special that it ‘seems to go my soul’.¹³ As his correspondence with her confirms, that intensity was reciprocated and together with her husband Catherine remained Herbert’s emotional focus well into his adult years.

Not surprisingly, therefore, she found it difficult when William arranged for Herbert and Harry to go to Hunstanton in Norfolk to be tutored by the Rev Church, who had taught the older Gladstone boys and five Lytteltons during his previous incumbency near Kettering. Catherine wanted to keep them at home with a tutor but, the decision made, she affirmed to her sister that she meant to be very brave ‘but it is trying, the going away of the younger pair […] I own to crying at the very thought.’¹⁴ What the nine-year-old Herbert thought about the decision is not recorded. He could not have been particularly keen on leaving the freedom of Hawarden, the warmth of his family or the company of their dogs to whom he was particularly attached. On the other hand he appreciated that most Victorian boys from his social background followed a similar educational path. There was also the not inconsiderable consolation that Harry was going with him.

Church’s school was a small affair with never more than a handful of pupils. The regime required them to rise at 6.30 a.m. and work for seven to eight hours. Herbert was not particularly studious and preferred games but he was an outgoing child who made friends quickly enough. Not all of them, however, were to his father’s taste, Gladstone finding it necessary in April 1863 to chastise both his sons for their bad language, a habit acquired, he suggested in his diary, from a boy at Church’s school. ‘They seem sorry and their culpability is not great’, he added.¹⁵ In all probability their remorse was genuine, springing from the great respect which they had for their father but for all his artless charm and openness, Herbert at least was not above being disingenuous, or perhaps politic. Notwithstanding his teacher’s inclination to bad temper and frequent recourse to corporal punishment, he told his father in October 1863 that Church was very kind and that he liked him very much.¹⁶ Harry, however, told Willy that while they were getting on as well as could be expected they were ‘not very happy yet’.¹⁷ Herbert confided to Catherine that school was not very nice compared with the comforts of home, adding rather plaintively that he and Harry had no flannel on which to grow their mustard and cress, except for the very small piece which they shared for the purposes of washing.¹⁸ From September 1864, however, Herbert had the piece of flannel to himself, for Harry followed the family tradition by moving on to Eton, leaving his brother to make the long journey to Hunstanton on his own for the first time. He seemed to cope better than his family. Gladstone noted in his diary that the boy went off ‘in a brave and manful spirit’.¹⁹ Mary wrote the next day saying that they had all stayed on the platform waving their handkerchiefs until the train disappeared into the tunnel.²⁰ Stephen summed up the general family feeling. ‘We were all sorry to lose you though we were very glad to see how bravely you went off.’²¹ Herbert appears to have reconciled himself easily enough to his brother’s absence and by Christmas 1864 positive reports on his academic progress prompted a serious conversation with his father about following in Harry’s footsteps.

By the time Herbert actually got to Eton in the summer of 1865 reform of Britain’s great public schools was very much in the air following publication of the Clarendon Commission’s report a year before. The incumbent headmaster of Eton, Edward Balston, was hostile to its recommendations but in 1868 he was succeeded by John James Hornby, who was more favourably disposed to change. By this time and with constant letters of encouragement from home, especially from Stephen, who wished that he ‘knew enough grammar to be able to give you more help in it & in Latin prose’, Herbert had successfully negotiated his way into the ‘remove’, notwithstanding a period of serious illness in 1866.²² Thereafter, and despite several offers of help and visits, mainly from Stephen since Willy had been elected to parliament in 1865 and held minor office from 1869, Herbert does not appear to have done much more than necessary to keep up in school, even though Hornby was widening the curriculum to include science and extra-curricular subjects for the senior boys. There is no evidence, for example, that Herbert ever attended any of the voluntary science lectures introduced in the 1860s and while even as a schoolboy he was an eloquent and copious letter writer, those surviving from his Eton days suggest that his primary enthusiasms lay outside the classroom. The only current of educational reform that did seem to catch him up was the growing emphasis on sport, for he greatly enjoyed cricket although he was no more than a modest player, averaging ten runs an innings for the school’s lower club in 1870. He also rowed a little and joined both the music society and the rifle club, shooting so frequently during the school holidays that on more than one occasion Harry expressed concern that there would soon be no rabbits left in the Hawarden countryside for anyone else to bag. Herbert even contemplated joining the Eton Volunteers in 1870 but decided against it because the uniform cost £4-10-0d, an interesting comment on the relatively parsimonious allowance he was receiving from home, even though his father had, from 1868, been prime minister. He also developed a great liking for mountaineering, whose hazards, graphically described in his letters, caused considerable anxieties to his sisters. ‘I was hourly in dread on the arrival of your stick dipped in your blood’, wrote Mary in September 1869, and Helen conceded that while his expeditions sounded delightful, she was all too glad that he had not ‘tumbled over precipices & cracked your precious skull’.²³

She did have reason for concern the following year, however, when Herbert, away climbing in Wales, became so unwell that Catherine’s maternal instincts drove her urgently to his bedside at Dolgelly, where she slept on the floor, casting aside all the considerations of decorum or dignity which might have been expected of a prime minister’s wife. A few months later Herbert was again taken ill, this time at school. The problem, about which he was subsequently conventionally discreet apart from one passing reference to his ‘bread basket’ appears to have been some sort of bowel obstruction. Towards the end of September a second doctor was called in to ‘have a look & a poke’ and extended rest was recommended. Personally Herbert seems to have been more concerned for his mother who, he told Harry, was ‘missing Papa and all of you’ and that he had caused her ‘dreadful worry’. In the same letter he did concede that it was ‘horrid missing all the fun at Hawarden’, adding almost incidentally that while the latest medical reports were good he was still confined to bed since the doctors feared the development of an abscess which could cripple him for tw...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Plates
• 1. Hawarden to Westminster
• 2. Ireland and Back
• 3. Into the Wilderness
• 4. Resurgence
• 5. The Home Office
• 6. South Africa
• 7. Wars to the Death
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography