SEVENTY YEARS AGO.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 20, 25 January 1939, Page 7

SEVENTY YEARS AGO.

GLADSTONE'S FIRST CABINET. DESCENDANTS FORGATHER. V— (By Air Mail.) LONDON, January B. A dinner unique in the annals of London clubland was held when the j descendants of Gladstone's first Cabinet, formed on December «, 1868, were the guests of honour at a house dinner of the Devonshire Club, St. James' Street, S.W.I, in commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of the foundation of that Cabinet. "Sons and grandltons of statesmen who, two generations ago, governed England wisely and well for six eventful years," as Sir Arthur Goldfinch referred to them, they were:— '■ The Duke of Devonshire, grand-nephew <>l the Marquess of Hartington, and president of the club, who was in the chair; the Duke of Argyll, grandson of the Duke of Argyll; the Earl of Clarendon, grandson of the Earl of Clarendon; Earl Granville, son of the Earl of Granville; the Earl of Kimberley, grandson of the Earl of Kimberley; -Viscount Goschen, son of Mr. G. Gosohen; Lord Aberdare, grandson of Mr. H. C. Bruce; Mr. Albert G" a ds tone and Mr. Charles Gladstone, grandsons of W. E. Gladstone; and Mr. Philip Bright, son of Mr. John Bright. The eleventh guest of honour was Mr. Gladstone Wickham. He is the eldest surviving grandson of Mr. Gladstone by his eldest daughter. As the guests mounted the club's main stairway to the dining room they passed beneath the large oil painting of the 15 members of the Gladstone Ministry. The painting has lately been cleaned and. restored. Some of the descendants of the famous statesmen had. not met before the dinner, when they posed specially for a photograph before the. dinner, grouped about' a. table, as were the Ministers depicted in the painting. The dinner took place in the impressive dining room preserved in much the same condition as Gladstone knew it —high. carved ceiling, dark panelled walls, and wrought-iron chandeliers. Viscount Goschen recalled that his father used to insist on writing all his notes himself, and did so quite illegibly. He would return from making a speech in the Commons remarking, "I've got a note here —I know it was a most excellent point, but what it was I couldn't for the life of me make out." The Earl of Clarendon recalled that the earlier and notoriously absentminded Lord Clarendon, while Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had one day been strolling in Phoenix Park when he encountered a perambulator containing a bouncing baby boy. "That is a fine child," he remarked to the nursemaid. "Whose is it!" "Yours, sir," was the reply. Later, when he was Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon absentmindedly placed .in his dispatch box for Queen Victoria, not State papers, but a bundle of cigars. The Queen, who'did not like tobacco, was greatly annoyed. She showed her displeasure when next Lord Clarendon Visited Windsor by relegating him to rooms in "the farthest and most remote corner of the caatie."