Fate was more merciful to him. He returned to his adoring wife at Brighton, but in spite of all her care and devotion, died in her arms in October, 1891, aged just 45. They had been lovers eleven years.
Parnell was a great character, if not a great intellect. But it was natural that England, which couldn't use the far greater man, Burton, couldn't use Charles Parnell. And the whole misery and disunion in Ireland today conies from this fact. Parnell ought to have been an English hero. His love for Mrs. O'Shea was the love of his whole life, and he gave himself to her with the same singlehearted devotion he had vowed in political life to the cause of Ireland.
Almost everyone took for granted that Gladstone was the greatest Englishman of his century, but in my heart I have always regarded him as negligible. His political achievements were merely parochial.
The insane misjudgment of Gladstone reminds me of a dinner I was asked to in London where Mr. Chauncey Depew was to appear for the first time. Every one was agog to hear the man who came to London with the reputation of being the best after-dinner speaker in America.
After dinner Mr. Depew got up, heralded with fantastic praise and applause, and began a long series of platitudes punctuated with age-worn anecdotes, chestnuts familiar to me in boyhood. He went on interminably while the applause grew fainter and fainter. At length, I said to my vis-d-vis, a wellknown judge, "Haven't you had enough of this?" He replied, "Enough for a life tune," and we both got up and left the room.
Years later I told this to a young friend from New York, one Allan Bowling. "I once heard Depew," he said, "in New York, say the most stupid thing conceivable. 'The greatest American I ever met,' he said, 'was undoubtedly Abraham Lincoln; the greatest man was William Gladstone!'" For monumental stupidity, the remark would be hard to beat.
When I told Lord Wolverton, a great friend of mine, how Chamberlain had cast me off, and the Fortnightly Review, because of my views against Free Trade, he immediately proposed that I should see Gladstone and put him in Chamberlain's place. "Then," the banker said, "you can have whatever money you want, and I think you will have a much greater success with Gladstone behind you than you have had with Chamberlain." That I admitted at once. So it was arranged that I should go out to Combe and meet Gladstone and have a talk.
I went out in due course, but I was not impressed much with Gladstone's talk at the dinner. He held forth on every subject that came up, and talked well, but his eagle face and luminous eyes were finer than anything he said. He had read widely, I saw, but it seemed to me that he had thought very little for himself.
At the end of the dinner he went off with an Eton boy and played "Beggar My Neighbor." About ten o'clock the Eton boy went up to bed, and Gladstone came over to half a dozen of us standing in front of the fireplace.
"Did you get much out of the game?" asked his host, Lord Wolverton.
"A great deal," said Gladstone. "The boy taught me that four knaves can beat the whole pack."
I could not resist the temptation. "Good God," I interjected, "I should have thought that your experience, Sir, would have shown that one knave was able to do that." He glowered at me and said nothing; he evidently took my jesting remark personally, though I had not so meant it.
Lord Wolverton told me, afterwards, that I had spoiled my chances with Gladstone. I said I thought I should survive, though I did not excuse myself for my foolish repartee.
A little while ago (I am writing in 1926), a Captain Peter Wright got into great trouble for stating that Gladstone was always running after women in the loosest way. The story of course was contradicted by his son, Herbert Gladstone, who is now Lord Gladstone; but Herbert Gladstone's denial should not be taken seriously.
It was common talk in the House of Commons that Gladstone was perpetually after women. It was said, too, that girls used to write him love letters, and that all such letters were brought to Mrs. Gladstone who, after reading them, tore them up, taking care that they shouldn't reach the Grand Old Man.
I distinctly remember Sir Charles Dilke telling me that Gladstone couldn't oppose him because he was known to be still looser himself. But my belief in Gladstone's libertinism was better founded.
But why should I prove it now? An English jury has declared its belief in Mr.
Gladstone's goodness: what more is wanted? An Irish M. P., too, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, has asserted that in his judgment Mr. Gladstone knew nothing about Parnell's intrigue with Mrs. O'Shea till the libel suit revealed it, though Mrs. O'Shea, in her book, has stated positively that Gladstone knew all about it years before the scandal. For good reasons I agree with Mrs. O'Shea, and can only regret that Mr. T. P. O'Connor's memory was so strangely subservient to English prejudice.
But, after all, what do the O'Connors matter when the Avorys sit as judges?
The height of the joke was reached when Mr. Justice Avory asserted, from his knowledge of English and Italian, that Lord Milner's allusion to "Gladstone, as governed by his Seraglio," was quite innocent and conveyed "no hint that such a man was a gross sensualist." Pity that Mr. Justice Avory didn't strengthen his knowledge by a glance at Dr. Johnson's dictionary! Thanks to this judicial freak, Gladstone has received, in correct English fashion, plenary absolution, and thus hypocrisy is justified of its professors, and the sepulchre of English life has enjoyed a new coat of cheap whitewash.
I don't pretend that my opinion has any objective validity; yet, I give it in corroboration of Captain Wright's boldness. But I should never have quarreled with Gladstone without mentioning his judgments, which reveal the essential mediocrity of the man. His heroes were Washington and Burke; the most interesting modern statesmen to him were Lord Randolph Churchill and Parnell. His favorite country after Britain was naturally the United States. Even in his chosen field of words and literary art, all his judgings were mediocre. The modern author he placed highest was Sir Walter Scott; the greatest modern masters of English prose in his opinion were Ruskin and Cardinal Newman; the best biography was Lockhart's Life of Scott, He thought Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe the four greatest writers, but he omitted Cervantes altogether, and never seems to have heard of Turgenev. Fancy putting Newman as a writer of prose above Swift or Pater, and fancy a Prime Minister who could write a review article on the genius of Marie Bashkirtseff.
My quarrel with Gladstone was not so bad as another blunder which I must now relate. In due time I found that my knowledge of Pigott had had a great effect upon Arthur Walter. His father and Mr. MacDonald, the manager of The Times had been utterly misled by Pigott, whereas I had got to know him and had soon judged him rightly. The first consequence of The Times fiasco was that John Walter practically withdrew from the management of the paper and asked his son Arthur to take his place. Arthur, it seems, after my talk, had told his father that he thought Pigott absolutely untrustworthy. As soon as Arthur Walter got power on The Times he sent for me. He had gone down, I remember, to stay with Mrs. Walter at the Hotel Metropole in Brighton. I went down, took a room, put my belongings straight and then went up to him. I found him washing his hands before lunch.
"I sent for you," he said, "because I think now I can offer you the editorship of The Times. I believe you would do it greatly, but I wanted to know first of all what you think of Buckle, the present editor, and what you would do with him!"
"I would keep him on as political editor," I replied; "he seems to suit the conservative opinion that is the backbone of The Times, and I have so many new things to do that I don't want to make any break with the past that isn't absolutely necessary."