Gladstone was a masochist

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33806, 1 April 1975, Page 13

Gladstone was a masochist

(N.Z. Press Assn—Copyright) LONDON.

Prime Minister William Gladstone, a pillar of Britain’s Victorian society, was a masochist whose welfare work with prostitutes drove him to whip himself and commit other “strange and humbling acts,” according to the latest volumes of his diaries.

“Has it been sufficiently considered how far pain may become a ground of enjoyment? How far satisfaction md even an action delighting m pain may be a true experimental phenomenon of the human mind?” the statesman wrote. However, Gladstone insisted he was never guilty of “infidelity to the marriage bed.” The third and fourth volumes of the diaries, edited by Dr Colin Matthew, a lecturer at Oxford University, will be published 11 ' by the ' Oxford University Press. They put a new perspective on the man lauded as one of Britain’s greatest statesmen at a time when the sun never set on the British Empire.

“The Times” described the diaries as “the most monumental ever kept ... and one of the most important documents for the study of Victorian society.” When he died in 1898, aged 89, Gladstone entrusted his record of 29,915 days — in 41 journals — to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Gladstone diaries co ver the years between 1840 and 1854 when his political fate was in the balance and he was undergoing political and religious traumas. Matthew said this “put great strain upon him, and this I strain manifested itself in his rescue work with prostitutes.” DEEPLY ASHAMED Gladstone’s zeal in trying to reform prostitutes was, Matthew indicated, only one aspect of a complex attempt to overcome sexual longings of which he was deeply ashamed. Until now, this welfare work had been considered eccentric, but purely philanthropic. Gladstone’s taste for beating himself — flagellation was not uncommon among religious zealots in the sexually-suppressed Victorian society — is clearly disclosed in the 1500-page diaries.

After visiting prostitutes and indulging in “strange and humbling acts” — a typically veiled Victorian phrase for sexual indulgence — “he used to flagellate himself when he got home,” Matthew wrote.