A SUNSHINE BEARER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3581, 31 October 1922, Page 54

A SUNSHINE BEARER.

Among recently 'published biographies few can be more interesting than .Mrs Drew's commemoration of nor mother, Catherine Gladstone, wife for nearly 6U years of the great English statesman, Wiliiam Ewart Gladstone. it is not a systematic biography ; to write a complete record of such a long and full life would, as .Mrs Drew says, occupy several volumes. But its selection of scenes and incidents and of letters gives more insight into the real lives of .Mrs Gladstone and her husband than more formal biographies would do, and places in full light a very beautiful and unique personality previously very inadequately known by those outside her own sphere of personal influence. All old enough to remember the latter Victorian period have known that Mrs Gladstone was a devoted wife and mother, indefatigable in philanthropic work, deeply religious ; in the fullest sense of the word 3 a good woman. But the revelation given in these pages of her originality, independence, unconve.ntionality, vivacity, humour, and fun, comes as a surprise. There is too much readiness to class very good people as made much on the same pattern and rather colourless. But no modern revolter against convention and morals was ever fuller of vitality and more thoroughly individual than Mrs Gladstone, and this presentment of her life may stand as a disproof of the idea that goodness is associated with tameness and rigidity. In her girlhood Catherine and her sister Mary, only divided in age by a year, were known as “the beautiful Miss Glynnes. ” Queen Victoria long aiter referred in a letter to her memory to having seen the beautiful Miss Glynnes at York in 1885. Hawarden Castle was their parents’ home, and there Catherine was born in January, 1812. On both sides she came of aristocratic lineage, and along one line could trace her descent from Charlemagne, crowned Emperor of the West 800 A. 1).. Egbert, William the. Conqueror, ITarrv Hotspur, and Edward I were other ancestors. Her father was Sir Stephen Glynne, of the Percy Barony ; her mother united the two famous houses of t.he Nevilles and Grenvilles. Sir Stephen died at the earlv age of 33, and his beautiful voung widow was left with four young children. Catherine was a beautiful child, overflowing with health and spirits, passionate, but as her mother’s diary records, “really good and docile.” She and her sister were carefully educated, Lady Glynne being herself a clever, highly cultured woman. Catherine seems to have read widely and seriously in her youth, but in later years her life was too crowded with social duties and with personal service to allow of much reading, she was seldom seen with a book or even a newspaper, says her daughter. But she had a wonderful memory ’for what she did read. She and her sister Mary were wedded on the same day, the latter marrying Lord Lyttelton, j Both marriages were most happv. The j two sisters were united by the closest j affection, and the death of Lady Lyttelton in 1857 was one cf tlhe three great I griefs of Mrs Gladstone’s life. After i marriage the two sisters continued to see ! much of one another, paying many family visits accompanied with a flock of j children. And after her sister’s death, j Mrs Gladstone took the place of a mother to the large family of nephews and nieces, who loved “Aunt Pussy” equally with her own children. Never was a life fuller than that of Mrs Gladstone. She had the cares of a house full of children and nephews and nieces, later of grandchildren, the social duties of a great lady and wife of a statesman, and charitable activities of all I kinds. But her vitality and her enthusiasm j for helpfulness enabled her to crowd more into an hour than most women would into a day. Mrs Drew gives an account of one day’s work at Hawarden, after she was 80. “She had been to early service nearly a mile uphill, walking both ways; she had read family prayers at home; she was at her breakfast when word came that a nurse looking after typhoid patients in a distant part of the estate had sickened with the fever. Not a moment did she lose, and in her pony carriage she hurried off to where the j nurse was lodging. Having made full arrangements, she came back to the Castle to explain to her family, then returned to the station at Queen’s Ferry (two and a-half miles off) and whipped the nurse off by train to Chester. Arrived there she supported the patient up and down the long stairs at the railway station, carrying her bags and parcels in a fly with her all round Chester, in vain seeking admittance. At length, partly cajoling, partly scolding, she persuaded the j Infirmary authorities to take her in, and, having seen her comfortably tucked tip, she returned to the station, with a sandwich from the matron, and reached home about 4 o’clock. The grandchildren were coming to tea. First she prepared a stage —she had promised them charades—arranging screens, furniture lights, then collected and arranged the rows of seats. Flew across to the Orphanage and Home j of Rest (Gladstone charities) to charter an 1 audience from the inmates, among whom she placed the Prime Minister, wheedled j out of his Temple of Peace : gathered the ! children around her in the green-room, and. after a rapid coaching and coaxing, put them through their parts, taking a | prominent part herself—and somehow or | other contrived to get them through ! creditably. Afterwards she presided at their tea party, finishing up by playing spirited dances for them till it was time for them to leave. Still there remained dressing and dinner and the normal evening, till bed welcomed her to well j earned rest.” She was a born communist. I says Mrs Drew, what she had she would j share or give even to her personal apparel. ] And she cave not only things or money, hut herself. She would plan, contrive, I and enlist others, and never rest till the

persons in need were relieved and put in the way of self help. "In 1893 the head mistress of a school near Tavistock in despair how to dispose of one of her teachers—ill, poor, and friendless—as a forlorn hope wrote to Mrs Gladstone because she had heard of her as kind, and then to the Duchess of Bedford as wife of the landowner. From the Duchess of Bedford she received a £lO cheque; from Mrs Gladstone a letter, 'Send her off to Hawarden to morrow. . . ” “From the House of Charity in Soho she carried off a poor parson sick with scarlet fever, and established him in her own house at Carlton Terrace.” Such instances might be multiplied. Something, but not much has been made known of the work which she and her husband did together in striving to rescue women of the unfortuu4*bß class. Once, walking home with a friend in London, Mr Gladstone turned aside to rescue one of these unfortunates. “But what will Mrs Gladstone say if you take this woman home?'’ inquired the friend. “Why,” said Mr Gladstone in surprise, “it is to Mrs Gladstone 1 am taking her." By nature Mrs Gladstone was unmethodical, and impatient of rule and constraint. But she never neglected a duty or an opportunity to serve others, though she might ha careless about conventional social claims. She was far too unworldly to ho an ideal politician’s wife. The Gladstone household was one of the brightest and most unconstrained possible. Strangers were sometimes surprised at the freedom of the young people in arguing with and contradicting their father. Mrs Drew records that in early life they scarcely thought of their father’s public standing, and that it was a revelation to her to find how deeply he was revered by many of the outside world. One of Mrs Gladstone's nieces says of her power to cheer all in trouble:—“At such dark times, dear Aunty Pussy would come as a fresh breeze in summer, bringing life and courage to old and young. I can hear now the gay voice at the door, before she had turned the handle, ‘Well darlings!’ and I see her come in with arms outstretched, into which we all tumbled. .-and she would sit among us and laugh and joke and tell us stories, all in her queer, humorous, family slang, which has been immortalised by her brother-in-law.” The allusion is to a sort of family dialect current among the Glynnes, with odd elliptical turns of expression and original slang words. In her familiar circle Mrs Gladstone used this both in speech and in letter writing. In both ways she had a remarkable gift of vivid picturing. She was a native impressionist in language, says Mrs Drew. Her gaiety, the airy grace of her movements were all infectious. “Her presence brought an atmosphere” said Mr George Russell, “all brightness, freshness, like sunshine and sea air.”