MRS GLADSTONE'S INTERESTING PERSONALITY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 31, 2 August 1890, Page 15

MRS GLADSTONE'S INTERESTING PERSONALITY.

Mrs Catherine Gladstone, wife of the Grand Old Man, was a Miss < Hynne half a century ago. At her marriage she brought her husband Hawarden castle, over which she has reigned a firm but quiet queen. She is the mother, as her illustrious husband puts it, of a quartette of sons and a quartette of (’laughters, and is described as a woman of great moral and mental strength whom a stranger would worship, but never presume to love save at a distance. Her hair is gray but abundant, and resembles satin in texture, so carefully is it brushed over her ears and under a snowy little cap of fine lace and black velvet loops that fall over her neck in the back. She dresses always in black, and her velvet basques are made very high in the collar and finished with a lace ruche that reaches quite to the pointed, slightly dimpled chin. The only sort of trimming she wears is a set of lace wrist rutiles with bands of the delicate web laid on the sleeve of the dress, covering it from frill to elbow. Her face is oval in form and still full in outline, the splendid height of forehead covering more than a third of the facial measurement. She has her own coiner in the Hawarden library, where she is surrounded by her favourite authors—all little, handable books Mrs Chant calls them—and statuettes that crowd space and attention. She writes with a quill, uses more visiting cards for the post than she does note paper, not daring to trust herself with so much good paper unless there is a reason for a letter. On the subject of promiscuous correspondence, to which she is as violently opposed as she is to society kissing, she quotes Thackeray, in ‘ Pendennis,’ who besought his son to never ‘write himself down an ass’ by what he might say. The expressed regret of the satirist that he did not heed such good advice made the impression indelible on this gifted lady’s mind. It is her boast that she can keep her temper under any vexation and keep cool under every circumstance. She is a great lover of flowers and bare floors, keeps her house and every room in it in liveable order by means of books, sunlight, colour, a plant or two, a fire and easy chairs, but when the family can be together without the presence of visitors she prefers the hall to any other apartment. All her life she has been a frugal eater, but an insatiable drinker, considering tea the water of life and claret food and medicine as well as a valuable but harmless tonic.