‘Chapters from the Old and New Testaments, the lives of Scriptural personages, isolated texts, hymns and religious books – in some cases the advice coming from the unknown authors themselves – have all been suggested for the veteran statesman’s “edification.”
‘In not a few instances poems on the same theme have been sent for his perusal, and, as the authors have generally put it, for his spiritual comfort and relief. I need hardly say that these effusions have never reached Mr. Gladstone, but they have in not a few instances, by their very suggestiveness of impending disaster, caused distress to his family.’
A representative of the Daily Mail added more on this subject: ‘Among people in touch with the Hawarden household it is being discussed with a good deal of indignant comment, and more than one well-known name is mentioned as having been appended to some of this correspondence. It is not so much the gratuitous impertinence of the amateur spiritual consoler which occasions the annoyance Mr. Gladstone’s relatives feel.
‘Mr. Gladstone has throughout his life loomed so large in the eyes of the religious public that he has always been a favourite target for the controversialists of every sect. He long ago grew accustomed to being bombarded with controversial pamphlets, and to being assailed with texts of Scripture bearing more or less obliquely upon some political question of the day. And whenever he has been suffering from some trifling indisposition, or has sustained any family loss or affliction, sackfuls of letters quoting texts of Scripture have been sent to him. It occasions neither surprise nor any great amount of annoyance, therefore, now that the sympathy of everyone is turned towards him, that in the case of fervid religionists it should find expression in passages of Scripture and extracts from devotional works from which the senders have themselves, in times of sorrow and affliction, derived comfort and consolation.
‘But there are other classes of correspondents. There are people who urge him for his soul’s sake to see the error of his ways while there is yet time; there are people who see occasion in his present illness to hasten to say that they forgive him for holding theological views differing from their own; there are people who invite him to send a subscription to something with a view to insuring to himself posthumous satisfaction, as well as the advantage of grateful prayer and intercession.
‘But, worst of all, and most painful to the relatives to bear, are the frantic efforts of the testimonial hunters in a hurry. One patent medicine has made strenuous endeavours to foist itself upon him, with an obvious view to subsequent advertisement.
‘Of course, there is another side to the picture. The kindly and sympathetic messages and inquiries which have come from people of all ranks, from her Majesty the Queen downwards, have been of great comfort.’
I conclude this rapid survey with a quotation from Mr. G. W. E. Russell’s ‘Gladstone’: ‘In order to form the highest and truest estimate of Mr. Gladstone’s character, it is necessary to see him at home. But to do this is a privilege accorded necessarily to the few. The public can only judge him by his public life; and from this point of view it may be that the judgment of one of his colleagues may be accepted when he said: “The only two things Mr. Gladstone really cares for are the Church and finance.”’ What may be the verdict of history on him as a statesman it is impossible to foretell. In England, at any rate, no man has been a power so long. To most of us, to borrow from Shakespeare, he seems to bestride this narrow world like a Colossus. He has done much to help the advent of the new democracy, but it is as a commercial reformer, apparently, that Mr. Gladstone will be best known to future ages. In that capacity he produced marvellous changes. By making paper cheap he gave an impulse to the publishing trade, of which we have not yet seen the end. By the Methuen Treaty it was deemed a heavy blow was struck at Portugal. Under Mr. Gladstone, with the aid of Richard Cobden, that treaty was got rid of, the light wines of France were introduced, the social habits of the country were changed for the better, and the commerce of the country largely increased. The anomalies of the navigation laws were perhaps more marvellous than those of the commercial treaties. Mr. Gladstone had much to do with removing those anomalies, and the result was a marvellous increase in the growth of British shipping and foreign commerce, and the revenue increased, as Mr. Gladstone stated, by leaps and bounds; and while the working man has secured better wages, his power of purchase has been largely increased. Alas! poverty, selfishness, ignorance are still at work in our midst, and Utopia seems as far off as ever.
On May 19 the end came, and all over the world, to the grief of the nation, it was known that Mr. Gladstone was no more.
Parliament unanimously voted him a Public Funeral in Westminster Abbey, where he was laid to rest May 28, 1898.