The impression Gladstone made on his schoolfellows at Eton is clearly shown in a letter of Miles Gaskell to his mother, pleading for his going to Oxford rather than Cambridge: ‘Gladstone is no ordinary individual… If you finally decide in favour of Cambridge, my separation from Gladstone will be a source of great sorrow to me.’ And Arthur Hallam wrote: ‘Whatever may be our lot, I am very confident that he is a bud that will blossom with a richer fragrance than almost any whose early promise I have witnessed.’
Gladstone, as has already been shown, was one of the principal members of the staff of the Eton Miscellany. He was then seventeen, and in one of the articles signed by him he expressed his fear that he would not be able to direct public opinion into the right channel. He was aware that merit was always rewarded, but he asked himself if he possessed that merit. He dared not presume that he did possess it, though he felt within him a something which made him hope to be able, without much hindrance, to gain public favour, and, as Virgil said, ‘celerare viam rumore secundo.’ We find Gladstone the Etonian expressing similar hopes in an article on ‘Eloquence.’ The young author shows us himself and his school-colleagues fascinated by the resounding debates in the House of Commons, and dreaming, boy-like, of making a successful Parliamentary début, perhaps being offered a Government berth – a Secretaryship of State, even the post of Prime Minister. While entertaining these ambitious views Mr. Gladstone calmed his mind by ‘taking to poetry.’ Several poetical pieces, including some verses on ‘Richard Cœur-de-Lion,’ and an ode to ‘The Shade of Wat Tyler,’ date from this period.
As a pendant to this fragmentary sketch of Mr. Gladstone’s schooldays, we may quote the lively description of the young editor given by Sir Francis Doyle in ‘A Familiar Epistle to W. E. Gladstone, Esq., M.P.,’ published in 1841. Sir Francis paints a delightful picture of the rédacteur-en-chef:
‘Who, in his editorial den,
Clenched grimly an eradicating pen,
Confronting frantic poets with calm eye,
And dooming hardened metaphors to die.
Who, if he found his young adherents fail,
The ode unfinished, uncommenced the tale,
With the next number bawling to be fed,
And its false feeders latitant or fled,
Sat down unflinchingly to write it all,
And kept the staggering project from a fall.’
Dr. Furnivall, president of the Maurice Rowing Club, lately sent Mr. Gladstone a copy of his letter on ‘Sculls or Oars.’ The ex-Prime Minister, in returning his thanks for the letter, says: ‘When I was at Eton, and during the season, I sculled constantly, more than almost any other boy in the school. Our boats then were not so light as they now are, but they went along merrily, with no fear of getting them under water.’
CHAPTER II
GLADSTONE AT OXFORD
After spending six months with private tutors, in October, 1828, he went up to Christ Church, Oxford, and the following year was nominated to a studentship. ‘As for Gladstone,’ writes Sir Francis Doyle, ‘in the earlier part of his undergraduateship he read steadily, and did not exert himself to shine as a speaker; in point of fact, he did not attempt to distinguish himself in the Debating Society till he had pretty well made sure of his distinction in the Schools. I used often to walk with him in the afternoon, but I never recollect riding or boating in his company, and I believe that he was seldom diverted from his normal constitutional between two and five along one of the Oxford roads. The most adventurous thing I ever did at Oxford in Mr. Gladstone’s company, if it really were as adventurous as I find he still asserts it to have been, was when I allowed myself to be taken to Dissenting chapels. We were rewarded by hearing Dr. Chalmers preach on two occasions, and Rowland Hill at another time.’
Gladstone seems to have delighted in these escapades. His mother was an occasional attendant on the ministrations of the celebrated Dissenting preacher Dr. Raffles, of Liverpool, and possibly might have taken the future Premier with her. His attendance at church was very regular. ‘He used rather to mount guard over my religious observances,’ writes Sir Francis Doyle, ‘and habitually marched me off after luncheon to the University sermon at two o’clock. Now, I have not the gift of snoring comfortably under a dull preacher; instead of a narcotic he acts on my nerves as an irritant, but with Mr. Gladstone the case was different. One afternoon I looked up, and discovered, not without a glow of triumph, that although the reverend gentleman above me had not yet arrived at his “Thirdly,” my Mentor was sleeping the sleep of the just. “Hullo!” said I to myself, “no more two-o’clock sermons for me.” Accordingly, on the very next occasion when he came to carry me off, my answer was ready: “No, thank you, not to-day. I can sleep just as well in my arm-chair as at St. Mary’s.” The great man was discomfited, and retired, shaking his head, but he acknowledged his defeat by troubling me no more in that matter.’
Cardinal Manning had been the principal leader in the Oxford Debating Society till Mr. Gladstone appeared upon the scene. At once he and Gaskell became the leading Christ Church orators, and the great oratorical event of the time was Mr. Gladstone’s speech against the first Reform Bill. ‘Most of the speakers,’ writes Sir Francis Doyle, who was present on the occasion, ‘rose more or less above their ordinary level, but when Mr. Gladstone sat down we all of us felt that an epoch in our lives had arrived. It was certainly the finest speech of his that I ever heard. The effect produced by that great speech led to his being returned to Parliament as M.P. for Newark by the Tory Duke of Newcastle, who is remembered for his question, “May I not do what I like with my own?”’
To return to Mr. Gladstone’s career at the University. In 1831 he took a double first-class, and would easily have attained a Fellowship in any college where Fellowships depended upon a competitive examination. He held with Scott, the foremost scholar of the day, the second place in the Ireland for 1829. In that year a deputation from the Union of Cambridge went to Oxford to take part in a debate on the respective merits of Byron and Shelley. One of the Cambridge party was Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton. He writes: ‘The man that took me most was the youngest Gladstone, of Liverpool – I am sure a very superior person.’ On all he seems to have exercised a beneficial influence. He deprecated the example of the gentlemen commoners, and did much to check the pernicious habit prevalent at that time in the University, of over-indulgence in wine. His tutor was the Rev. Robert Briscoe. He also attended the lectures of the Rev. Dr. Benton on divinity and Dr. Pusey on Hebrew. He read classics privately with a tutor of the Bishop of St. Andrews. In 1830 he was at Cuddesdon Vicarage with a small reading-party, where he seems to have mastered Hooker’s ‘Ecclesiastical Polity.’ He founded and presided over an essay society called after his name, of which he was successively secretary and president. In his maiden speech at the Union in 1830 he defended Catholic emancipation; declared the Duke of Wellington’s Government unworthy of the confidence of the nation; opposed the removal of Jewish disabilities; and argued for the gradual emancipation of slavery rather than immediate abolition.
It is evident that all the time of his University career Mr. Gladstone had a profoundly religious bias, and at one time seems to have contemplated taking Holy Orders. Bishop Wordsworth declared that no man of his standing read the Bible more or knew it better. One of his fellow-students writes: ‘Poor Gladstone mixed himself up with the St. Mary Hall and Oriel set, who are really for the most part only fit to live with maiden aunts and keep tame rabbits.’ At this time Mr. Gladstone’s High Churchmanship does not seem to have been so pronounced as it afterwards became. He was a disciple of Canning, and rejoiced at Catholic emancipation. ‘When in Scotland,