QUEEN VICTORIA AND GLADSTONE.

Evening Star, Issue 12067, 12 December 1903, Page 4

QUEEN VICTORIA AND GLADSTONE.

Another tlrread in the story of y~x Gladstone's re'ations to Queen Victoria, ?.s narrated by Mr John Morley; will be piquant- and novel to the guneivi raader. Mr Gladstone had throughout his life a cbivalvcus devotion to the 'Throne. E:< revered (die ir.3titi.-t.ion, and to ita representative and these netr to her he ever paid deferential homage, Mbst kind at find- was Queen Victoria. She wrote to Lord Aberdeen in 185\ "hoping ii vrn-y b* possible to eive the Ohnnoeiioiship of the Kveherjnor to Mr Gir.i-tone." The Oov!t followed the nircuss cf hi; Budget with lively satisfaction. Ten ye ; -.rs later, when ib? Queen was in vhe iim. ihar-d-nnm-nt of hr-r uricf, Mr Gladstone found tine wr.y to her hc.,rt. "Of nil her 'Ministers/' wrote Dean Weilesley to him, "she seemed lome to third; that you had mo:-t entered into her sorrows, and she dweh; especially upon the manner in which you had parted from her." They talked 'about Schiller together, for one thing, and Mr Glad.'tone, in a letter to his wife, wished he had found courage to direct the Queen's attention to those lines in the prologue, to ' Vvhdlenstein' which tell how ab;-orbing grief may find relief in strenuous duties. It- is clear that during these earlier yc-vrs Mr Gladstone was in favor at Court, and that he and his Royal mistress were on ea.sy terms. —Bisrwli as Marplot.—

The DisraelL-in era. changed all this, and no sm.i.ll part of Mr Gladstone's second, third, and fourth Premierships was occupied with jars, not to say contests, b<=twc;;x, him and the Co-irt, 'it began early in 3.830, when the- Queen strongly resented the recall of Sir Bartle Frere. 'The reconstruction of the Government in 18"2 led to a stubborn dispute over the inclusion, it would scan, of"the P.:;dic?.l Sir Charles Dilke in the Cabinet. In 1883 Mr Gladstone projected a visit to Midlothian—n name of evil omen to the Queen. She seems 1.0 have written to him, and trusted that ho would remember that he now spoke with the responsibility of a Minister. The Q-jeen at this time becsied him to go up to the Howe of Lord.*. Mr Gladstone thought it " really raost kind of the Queen to testify such ;;n interest" in the decrease of h : s labors, but he respect fully preferred to stay where he was. Mr Gladstone a little later had. to answer in high places for the pro nouneed radicalism of Mr Chamberlain's speeches; which was hard, for it seem? from the correspondence thai the Prime Minister disliked them qu'ie as much as the Sovereign. In September (1883) the Minister took a holiday aud wont abroad. Ue had not asked the Sovereign's leave, and she was further disturbed lest he should make the occasion one for speechifying. The tone of the thunders from Balmoral may be inferred from Mr Gladstone's deprecatory apologies: "In the. North Sea, September 35. Posted at Copenhagen, September 16. 3883.—Mr Gladstone presents his humble apology for not having sought from your Majesty the usual gracious permission before setting foot on a foreign shore. He embarked on the Bth in a steamer of the Castles Company, under the auspices of Sir Donald Currie, with no more ambitious expectation than that of a cruise among the Western Isles. But. etc, etc . . Mr Gladstone humbly trusts that, under these circumstances, the omission may be excused." "September 22, 1883.—Mr Gladstone presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and has to acknowledge your Majesty's letter of the 20th ' (giving 'him full credit for not having reflected at'the time' when he decided, as your Majesty believes, to extend his recent cruise to" Norway and Sweden. Ho may humbly state that he had no desire, or idea beyond a glance, if only for a few hours, at a little of the fine and peculiar scenery of Norway. But he is also responsible for having accmieseed in the proposal (which originated with Mr Tennyson) to spend a day at Copenhagen, etc., etc . . . Mr "Gladstone ouVht perhaps to have foreseen that . . . Ins momentary and unpremeditated contact with the Sovereigns at Fredensborg would be denounced, or suspected of a mischievous design. He has, however, some consolation in finding that, in En eland at lea.st, such a suspicion appears to have been confined to two secondary journals, neither of which has ever found (so far as he is aware 4 in any act of his anything but giiilt ?nd folly. Thus, adopting' to a ereat extent your Majesty's view, Mr Gladstone can confirm your Majesty's belief thai (with the exception of a sentence addressed to the King of the Hellenes singly respecting Bulgaria) there was on all hands an absolute silence in regard to public affairs, —The Queen's Hostility.— We need not pursue the story tbxonsh the times of the Soudan troubles and the Home Rule agitation. The Queen's hostility to Mr Gladstone in these years is already known from the ' Life of Tennyson.' We must not, however, leave a false 'impression. Mr Gladstone, while resenting no doubt, What he calls "the armed neutrality*' at

"best of the sovereign, repeatedly bears tribute to her efforts at seif-restraint and her personal kindness. The fact is that the Minister and the Sovereign did not understand each other. Mr Gladstone never found—perhaps no Minister could find—a way of giving the Queen unpalatable advice without offence. Again, Mr Gladstone expected from the Queen a greater devotion to the minutis of legislation than sha was capable of bestowing. Says Mr Motley: "The letters contain a hundred instances. One may suffice. On the occasiog of the Irish Church Bill of 1859 the Prime Minister sent to the Queen a print of its clauses, and along with this draft a letter, covering over a dozen closely-written quarto pages, in explanation. Himself intensely absorbed, and his whole soul possessed by the vital importance of what he was doing, he could not conceive that the sovereign, nursinf a decided dislike of his policy, should not eagerly desire to get to the bottom of the provisions for carying the policy out The Queen read the letter, and re-read it; and then, in despair, desired a gentleman practised in dealing with Parliamentary Bills, happening at that time to be at Osborne, to supply her with a summary. . . '. Neither of these two illustrious personages was without humor, and it seems at once a wonder and a pity that the monarch did less than justice to this laborious and almost military sense of discipline and duty in the Minister ; while the Minister failed in genial allowance for the moderation of a Royal lady's appetite for bread and honey from the draughtsman's kitchen." Disraeli's secret was never to forget that the Queen was a woman. Mr Morley does not tell us whether another siying atributed on the same authority to the Queen in a moment of wrath be authentic: "I am no longer Queen; Mr Gladstone is King."

—A Visit to the Queen.— There is an interesting account of Mr Gladstone's visit to Windsor when he was sent for owing to the indisposition of Lord Hartington and Lord Granville to form a Ministry. It is told by the G.O.M. himself:—"At 6.50 I went to the Queen, who received me with perfect courtesy, from which she never deviates. Her 'Majesty presumed I was in possession of the purport of her communications with Lord Granville and with Lord Hartington, and which to know, as the Administration of Lord Beaconsfield had been 'turned out,' whether I was prepared to form a Government. She thought she had acted constitutionally hi sending for the recognised leaders of the party and referring the matter to them in the first instance. I said that, if I might presume to speak, nothing could in my views be more correct than Her Majesty's view that the application should be so made (I did not refer to the case as between Lord Granville and Lord Hartington), and that it would have been an error to pass them by and refer to me- They Uad stood, I said, in the position of a candidate for office, and it was only their advisin"Her Majesty to lay her commands upon me which could warrant my thinking of it after all that had occurred. But, eince they had given this advice, it was not consistent with my duty to shrink from any responsibility which I had incurred, and I was aware that I had incurred a very great responsibility. I therefore humbly accepted Her Majestv's commission. Her Majesty wished to know, in order that she might acquaint Lord Beaconsfield, whether • I conld undertake to form a Goremmsnt, or whether I only meant that I would make the attempt. I said I had obtained the co-operation of Lord Granville and Lord Hartington, and that my knowledge and belief as to prevailing dispositions would, I think, warrant me in undertaking to form a Government, it being Her Majesty's pleasure. She referred to general action, and hoped it would be conciUatory. I said that everyone who had served the Crown for even a much smaller term of years than I Lad the good or ill iortuTKi to reckon would know well that an incoming Government must recognise existing esgsgernents, and mnr.t tahe up, irre.~pective_ of its preferences, whatever was required by the character and honor of the coit-ntry. I referred to the case of Scinde r-.yl Six R. Peel':-: Cabinet in 1845, which she recjgni-ed as if it. had been recently before her. She said -. ' 1 must be frank with you, Mr Gladstone, and must fairly say t.'iat tk' - -re have been sorae expressions''—" I Jt-.-jJ:: she said some little things—which had cawed her concern or pain. I said that i'er Majesty's frankness, so well known, was a main grouud of the entire reliance of her Ministers upon her; that I was conscious of having incurred a great responsibility, and kit the difJlcr.lry which yjisea vhen great issues are raised, and a man can only act and speak upon the best lights he possesses, aware all the time that he may be in error; thai I had undoubtedly ured a mode of speech and language different in some de-gr.-i from what I should have employed had I been the leader of a party or a candidate for office. Then, as. regarded conciliation, in my opinion the occasion for what I had described had wholly passed away; and that, so far as I was concerned, it was my hope that Her Majesty would not find anything to disapprove in my general tone; that my desire and effort would be to diminish her cares, in any case not to aggravate them: that, however, .considering mv rears, I could only look to a short term of "active exertion and a personal retirement comparatively early. With regard to the freedom of language, I had admitted, she said, with :x>me good-natured archness: " But you will have to bear the consequences " ; to which I entirely assented. She seemed to me, if I may so say, "natural under effort." All things considered, I was much pleased. I ended by kissing Her Majesty's hand. —A Painful Scene.— The last scene of all in this strange history- is memorable and painful. seribe a portion of Mr Gladstone's diarv for March 3, 1894: " I must notice what, though elieht, supplied the only interest in this & perhaps rather memorable, audience, which closed a service that would reach to fifty-three years on September 3, when I was sworn Priw Councillor before the Queen at Claremont V>nen I came into the room, and came near to take the seat she has now for some time courteously commanded, I did think she was going to 'break down.' If I T as not mistaken, at any rate she rallied herself, ao I thought, by a prompt effort, and remained collected and at her ease. Then came the conversation, which may be called neither here nor there. Its only material feature was negative. There was not one syllable on the past, except a repetition, an emphatic repetition, of the thanks she had long ago amply rendered for what I had done—a service of no great merit—in the matter of the Duke of Coburg." And that was all, except "various nothings," that passed between the Minister and the Monarch upon whose reign he had shed 6o much lustre.