BALDWIN PAPERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 107, 2 November 1938, Page 9

BALDWIN PAPERS

MR. GLADSTONE'S EXAMPLE

It may be supposed that Lord Bald« win in going through his paptrs this autumn will shpw a sterner determination.to destroy than an earlier Prim« Minister possessed, says the "Manchester Guardian." In some reminiscences Morley once told how he had to call up all his powers of resolution when he faced the "vast accumulation" of papers that had to be read before his biography of Mr. Gladstone could be written. At the end of his task he estimated that between two and three hundred thousand papers had pass- * ed under \ his view. Mr. Glad- .. stone seems, indeed, to have been a record hoarder of the manuscript word: he even secured his collection by building for it a special fireproof annexe to his home *at ; Hawarden. .

From a chapter which supplies occasional light reading to the otherwise staid biography the reader might infer that Morley would not have griev- ' ed unduly if flames had taken a heavy toll of the collection. In particular there were preserved sixty thousand "selected letters" addressed to Mr. Gladstone, about which his biographer remarks that probably no single pei> son ever received sixty thousands letters worth keeping; three-quarters of them might just as well have been destroyed when read; very many of theni might just as well never have ■ been written or read. He .mildly censures "this slightly improvident thrift" ofMr. Gladstone, and says it "recalls the jealous persons who will not suffer the /„'■ British Museum to burn its rubbish, on the curious principle that what is noi worth producing must be worth px^ serving." ' > '