Appendix Iii.

The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., to Miss Hope-Scott [now the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell Scott].

Hawarden: Sept. 13, 1873.

My Dear Miss Hope-Scott,--I found awaiting me, through your kindness, on my return from Scotland, Dr. Newman's Address on your much-loved father's death. I need not say that one of my first acts was to read it. It does not discourage me from attempting to put on paper my recollections of him, as my free intervals of time may permit. It is well that a character of such extraordinary grace as his should have been portrayed by one who could scarcely, I think, even if he tried, compose a sentence that would not be 'a thing of beauty.' His means and materials for undertaking that labour of love were as superior to mine as his power of performing it. I will only say that I countersign, with full assent, to the best of my knowledge, the several traits which Dr. Newman has given. He must have much more to say. I shall at once lay before you all my little store of knowledge, in addition to that worthier tribute of your father's own letters, to which you are not less welcome. Lights upon his mental history my memory may, I hope, serve here and there to throw; but those will be principally for the period antecedent to what he himself described as 'the great change of his life.'

Few men, perhaps, have had a wider contact with their generation, or a more varied experience of personal friendships, than myself. Among the large numbers of estimable and remarkable people whom I have known, and who have now passed away, there is in my memory an inner circle, and within it are the forms of those who were marked off from the comparative crowd even of the estimable and the remarkable by the peculiarity and privilege of their type. Of these very few, some four or five I think only, your father was one: and with regard to them it always seemed to me as if the type in each case was that of the individual exclusively, and as if there could be but one such person in our world at a time. After the early death of Arthur Hallam, I used to regard your father distinctly as at the head of all his contemporaries in the brightness and beauty of his gifts.

We were at Eton at the same time, but he was considerably my junior, so that we were not in the way of being drawn together. At Christ Church we were again contemporaries, but acquaintances only, scarcely friends. I find he did not belong to the 'Oxford Essay Club,' in which I took an active part, and which included not only several of his friends, but one with whom, unless my memory deceives me, he was most intimate--I mean Mr. Leader. And yet I have to record our partnership on two occasions in a proceeding which in Oxford was at that time, and perhaps would have been at any time, singular enough. At the hazard of severe notice, and perhaps punishment, we went together to the Baptist chapel of the place, once to hear Dr. Chalmers, and the other time to hear Mr. Rowland Hill. I had myself been brought up in what may be termed an atmosphere of Low Church; and, though I cannot positively say why, I believe this to have been the case with him; and questions of communion or conformity at that date presented themselves to us not unnaturally as questions of academic discipline, so that we did not, I imagine, enter upon any inquiry whether we in any degree compromised our religious position by the act, or by any intention with which it was done.

After Oxford (which I quitted in December 1831) the next occasion on which I remember to have seen him was in his sitting-room at Chelsea Hospital. There must, however, have been some shortly preceding contact, or I should not have gone there to visit him. I found him among folios and books of grave appearance. It must have been about the year 1836. He opened a conversation on the controversies which were then agitated in the Church of England, and which had Oxford for their centre. I do not think I had paid them much attention; but I was an ardent student of Dante, and likewise of Saint Augustine; both of them had acted powerfully upon my mind; and this was in truth the best preparation I had for anything like mental communion with a person of his elevation. He then told me that he had been seriously studying the controversy, and that in his opinion the Oxford authors were right. He spoke not only with seriousness, but with solemnity, as if this was for him a great epoch; not merely the adoption of a speculative opinion, but the reception of a profound and powerful religious impulse. Very strongly do I feel the force of Dr. Newman's statements as to the religious character of his mind. It is difficult in retrospect to conceive of this, except as growing up with him from infancy. But it appeared to me as if at this period, in some very special manner, his attention had been seized, his intellect exercised and enlarged in a new field; and as if the idea of the Church of Christ had then once for all dawned upon him as the power which, under whatever form, was from thenceforward to be the central object of his affections, in subordination only to Christ Himself, and as His continuing representative.

From that time I only knew of his career as one of unwearied religious activity, pursued with an entire abnegation of self, with a deep enthusiasm, under a calm exterior, and with a grace and gentleness of manner, which, joined to the force of his inward motives, made him, I think, without doubt the most winning person of his day. It was for about fifteen years, from that time onwards, that he and I lived in close, though latterly rarer intercourse. Yet this was due, on my side, not to any faculty of attraction, but to the circumstance that my seat in Parliament, and my rather close attention to business, put me in the way of dealing with many questions relating to the Church and the universities and colleges, on which he desired freely to expand his energies and his time.

I will here insert two notices which illustrate the opposite sides of his character. It was in or about 1837 that I came to know well his sister-in- law, Lady F. Hope, then already a widow. I remember very clearly her speaking to me about the manner in which he had ministered to her sorrow. It was not merely kindness, or merely assiduity, or any particular act of which she spoke. She seemed to speak of him as endowed with some special gift, as if he had, like one of old, been 'surnamed Barnabas, which is, being interpreted, the Son of Consolation.'

I now pass to the other pole of his mind, his relish for all fun, humour, and originality of character. In one of his tranquil years he told me with immense amusement an anecdote he had brought from Oxford. He was in company with two men, Mr. Palmer, commonly called Deacon Palmer, and Arthur Kinnaird, of whom the one was not more certain to supply the material of paradox, than the other to draw it out. The deacon had been enlarging in lofty strain on the power and position of the clergy. 'Then I suppose,' said Kinnaird, 'you would hold that the most depraved and irreligious priest has a much higher standing in the sight of God than any layman?' 'Of course,' was the immediate reply. [Footnote: Of course, Mr. Palmer, who was clear-headed, knew what he was saying, and meant that, in comparing an irreligious priest with a religious layman, the priest, as such, belongs to a higher spiritual order than the layman as such, just as it is a mere truism to say that a fallen angel, as regards his degree in the order of creation, is superior to a saint.--ED.]

His correspondence with me, beginning in February 1837, truly exhibits the character of our friendship, as one founded in common interests, of a kind that gradually commanded more and more of the public attention, but that with him were absolutely paramount. The moving power was principally on his side. The main subjects on which it turned, and which also formed the basis of our general intercourse, were as follows: First, a missionary organisation for the province of Upper Canada. Then the question of the Relations of Church and State, forced into prominence at that time by a variety of causes, and among them not least by a series of lectures, which Dr. Chalmers delivered in the Hanover Square Rooms, to distinguished audiences, with a profuse eloquence, and with a noble and almost irresistible fervour. Those lectures drove me upon the hazardous enterprise of handling the same subject upon what I thought a sounder basis. Your father warmly entered into this design; and bestowed upon a careful and prolonged examination of this work in MS., and upon a searching yet most tender criticism of its details, an amount of thought and labour which it would, I am persuaded, have been intolerable to any man to supply, except for one for whom each and every day as it arose was a new and an entire sacrifice to duty. As in the year 1838, when the manuscript was ready, I had to go abroad on account mainly of some overstrain upon the eyes, he undertook the whole labour of carrying the work through the press; and he even commended me, as you will see from the letters, because I did not show an ungovernable impatience of his aid. [Footnote: J. R. Hope to Mr. Gladstone, August 29, 1838, in ch. ix. vol. i. p. 164.]

The general frame of his mind at this time, in October 1838, will be pretty clearly gathered from a letter of that month, No. 24 in the series, written when he had completed that portion of his labours. [Footnote: Ibid., October 11, 1838, ch. ix. vol. i. p. 165.] He had full, unbroken faith in the Church of England, as a true portion of the Catholic Church; to her he had vowed the service of his life; all his desire was to uphold the framework of her institutions, and to renovate their vitality. He pushed her claims, you may find from the letters, further than I did; but the difference of opinion between us was not such as to prevent our cordial co- operation then and for years afterwards; though in using such a term I seem to myself guilty of conceit and irreverence to the dead, for I well know that he served her from an immeasurably higher level.

If I have not yet referred to his main occupation, it is because I desire to speak specially of what I know specially. It was, however, without doubt, in his Fellowship at Merton that he found at this period the peculiar work of his life. A wonderful combination of fertility with solidity always struck me as one of his most marked mental characteristics. Only by that facility could he have accumulated and digested the learning which he acquired in relation to Church, and especially to College History and College Law. In mastering these systems how deeply he had drunk of the essential spirit of the times which built them up, may be seen from a very striking letter (No. 9) respecting Walter de Merton. [Footnote: J. R. Hope to Mr. Gladstone, dated 'Rochester: Sunday, July 29, 1838,' in ch. viii. vol. i. p. 147.] He gave the world some idea of the extent and fruitfulness of these labours in connection with the next subject on which we had much communication together, the subject of what was termed in 1840 Cathedral Reform. My part was superficial, and was performed in the House of Commons. His was of a very different character.

As a hearer, and a rapt hearer, I can say that Dr. Newman (p. 10) has not exaggerated the description of the speech which he delivered, as counsel for the Chapters (I think) before the House of Lords in 1840.[Footnote: See ch. xi. vol. i. p. 198.] I need not say that, during the last forty years, I have heard many speeches, and many, too, in which I had reason to take interest, and yet never one which, by its solid as well as by its winning qualities, more powerfully impressed me. At this period he had (I think never or) rarely spoken in public, and he had not touched thirty years of age.

I cannot now say who was the prime mover in the next matter of interest which we pursued in common. It was the foundation of Trinity College, Glenalmond. We drew into our partnership the deceased Dean Ramsay, one of the very few men known to me who might, perhaps, compete even with your father in attracting affection, though very different in powers of mind. The Dean worked with us usefully and loyally, although, as was to a certain extent his nature, sometimes in fear and trembling.

The early prosecution of this enterprise was left for a time mainly to me, while your father paid his visit to Italy in 1840, in company with Mr, Rogers, now Lord Blachford, from whom I hope you may obtain memorials of it far better worth your having than any which I could supply, even had I been his companion. I remember that I wrote for him in bad Italian a letter of introduction to Manzoni, of whom, and of whose religious standing-ground, he gives (No. 32 [Footnote: See ch. xiii. vol. i. p. 244, Mr. Hope to Mr. Gladstone (Milan: November 18,1840).]) a remarkable account. I wish I could recover now that letter, on account of the person for whom, and the person to whom, it was written.

I think it was shortly before or shortly after this tour, that your father one day spoke to me--I well remember the spot where he stood--about his state and course of life. He had taken a resolution, with a view to the increase of his means, to apply some part of his time to the ordinary duties of his profession; whether he then said that it would be at the Parliamentary Bar or not, I am not able to say. He, on this occasion, told me that he did not intend to marry; that, giving a part of his time in the direction I have just mentioned, he meant to reserve all the rest for the Church and its institutions; and of these two several employments he said, 'I regard the first as my kitchen-garden, but the second as my flower- garden.' [Footnote: Compare letter of J. R. Hope to Mr. Gladstone, quoted in ch. xxii vol. ii. p. 94.] And so it was that, almost without a rival in social attractions, and in the springtide of his youth and promise, he laid with a cheerful heart the offering of his life upon the altar of his God.

It was, I think, the undertaking to found Trinity College which gave rise to another friendship, that it gave me the greatest pleasure to witness-- between him and my father. In 1840 my father was moving on towards fourscore years, but 'his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated;' he was full of bodily and mental vigour; 'whatsoever his hand found to do, he did it with his might;' he could not understand or tolerate those who, perceiving an object to be good, did not at once and actively pursue it; and with all this energy he joined a corresponding warmth and, so to speak, eagerness of affection, a keen appreciation of humour, in which he found a rest, and an indescribable frankness and simplicity of character, which, crowning his other qualities, made him, I think (and I strive to think impartially), nearly or quite the most interesting old man I have ever known. Nearly half a century of years separated the two; but your father, I think, appreciated mine more than I could have supposed possible, and always appeared to be lifted to a higher level of life and spirits by the contact. On one occasion we three set out on a posting expedition, to examine several sites in the midland counties of Scotland, which had been proposed for the new college. As we rolled along, wedged into one of the post-chaises of those days, through various kinds of country, and especially through the mountains between Dunkeld and Crieff, it was a perpetual play, I might almost say roar, of fun and laughter. The result of this tour, after the consideration of various sites near Perth, Dunkeld, and Dunblane, was the selection of the spot on which the college now stands. I am ashamed to recollect that we were, I do not say assisted in reaching this conclusion, but cheered up in fastening on it, by a luncheon, which Mr. Patton, the proprietor, gave us, of grouse newly killed, roasted by an apparatus for the purpose on the moment, and bedewed with what I think is called partridge-eye champagne.

Your father's influence operated materially in procuring a preference for this beautiful but somewhat isolated site on the banks of the Almond. The general plan of the buildings was, I think, conceived by Mr. Dyce--another rare specimen of the human being--a master of Art and Thought in every form, and one whose mind was stocked to repletion with images of Beauty. I need not tell you what was your father's estimate of him. As to the site, the introduction of railways, which did not then exist for Scotland, has essentially altered the scale for relative advantage for all situations, in proportion as they are near to or removed from these channels of communication, and has caused us, in estimating remoteness from centres, to think of a mile as much as we should formerly have thought of ten. But I ought to record that, in all questions relating to the college, your father's mind instinctively leaned to what may be called the ecclesiastical side; and though the idea of a great school was incorporated in the plan, his desire was that even this should not be too near any considerable town. I remember also his saying to me, with reference to Glenalmond, and the opportunities which the college chapel would afford, 'You know it will plant the Church in a new district.'

He laboured much for the college; and had, if my memory serves, a great hand in framing the Constitution, with respect to which his academic learning gave him a just authority. He laboured for it at first in love and enthusiasm, afterwards in duty, at last perhaps in honour: but after a few years it necessarily vanished from his thoughts, and he became unable to share in facing the difficulties through which it had to pass. Events were now impending which profoundly agitated, not only what is termed the religious world, but the general mind of the country. I need not here refer to the unwise proceedings of great and ardent Churchmen, which darkened the skies over their heads, and brought their cause from calm and peaceful progress to storm, and in some senses to shipwreck. I do not think that, with his solid judgment, he was a party to any of those proceedings. They seem to have gradually brought about an opinion on the part of the ruling authorities of the English Church that some effort should be made to counteract the excesses of the party, and to confront the tendencies, or supposed tendencies, now first disclosed, towards the Church of Rome, by presenting to the public mind a telling idea of Catholicity under some other form. I am now construing events, not relating them; but they are events which it will be a prime duty of the future historian to study, for they have (I think) sensibly affected in its religious aspects the history of this country, nay, even the history of Western Christendom.

About this time Baron Bunsen became the representative of Prussia at the British Court. I remember that your father used to strike me by his suspicions and apprehensions of particular persons; and Bunsen, if I recollect right, was among them. That distinguished person felt an intense interest in England; he was of a pious and an enthusiastic mind, a mind of almost preternatural activity, vivacity, and rapidity, a bright imagination, and a wide rather than a deep range of knowledge. He was in the strongest sympathy, both personal and ecclesiastical, with the then reigning King of Prussia, who visited England in the autumn, I think, of 1841. Sir Robert Peel, however loyal to the entente with France, had a strong desire for close relations of friendship with Germany; and the marriage of the Queen, then recent, told in the same sense. All these circumstances opened the way for the singular project of the Anglican Bishopric of Jerusalem, which I believe to have been the child of Bunsen's fertile and energetic brain, and which received at that particular juncture a welcome due, I think, to special circumstances such as those which I have enumerated.

Wide as was the range of Bunsen's subsequent changes, he at this time represented the opinions of the Evangelical German Church, with the strong leaning of an amateur towards the Episcopate as a form of Government, not as the vehicle of the continuous, corporate, and visible life of the Christian Church. He had, beyond all men I ever knew, the faculty of persuading himself that he had reconciled opposites; and this persuasion he entertained with such fervour that it became contagious. From some of these letters (in accordance with my recollections) it would appear that in the early stages of this really fantastic plan (see No. 48) [Footnote: See ch. xvi. (vol. i. p. 313), J. R. Hope to Mr. Gladstone, November 19, 1841.] your father's aid had been enlisted. I must not conceal that my own was somewhat longer continued. The accompanying correspondence amply shows his speedy and strong dissatisfaction and even disgust. I do not know whether the one personal influence, which alone, I think, ever seriously affected his career, was brought to bear upon him at this time. But the movement of his mind, from this juncture onwards, was traceably parallel to, though at a certain distance from, that of Dr. Newman. My opinion is (I put it no higher) that the Jerusalem Bishopric snapped the link which bound Dr. Newman to the English Church. I have a conviction that it cut away the ground on which your father had hitherto most firmly and undoubtingly stood. Assuredly, from 1841 or 1842 onwards, his most fond, most faithful, most ideal love progressively decayed, and doubt nestled and gnawed in his soul. He was, however, of a nature in which levity could find no place. Without question, he estimated highly, as it deserves to be estimated, the tremendous nature of a change of religious profession, as between the Church of England and the Church of Rome; a change dividing asunder bone and marrow. Nearly ten years passed, I think, from 1841, during which he never wrote or spoke to me a positive word indicating the possibility of this great transition. Long he harboured his misgivings in silence, and ruminated upon them. They even, it seemed to me, weighed heavily upon his bodily health. I remember that in 1843 I wrote an article in a review (mentioned in the correspondence) which referred to the remarkable words of Archbishop Laud respecting the Church of Rome as it was; and applied to the case those other remarkable words of Lord Chatham respecting America, 'Never, never, never.' He said to me, half playfully (for the article took some hold upon his sympathies), 'What, Gladstone, never, never, never?'

It must have been about this time that I had another conversation with him about religion, of which, again, I exactly recollect the spot. Regarding (forgive me) the adoption of the Roman religion by members of the Church of England as nearly the greatest calamity that could befall Christian faith in this country, I rapidly became alarmed when these changes began; and very long before the great luminary, Dr. Newman, drew after him, it may well be said, 'the third part of the stars of heaven.' This alarm I naturally and freely expressed to the man upon whom I most relied, your father. On the occasion to which I refer he replied to me with some admission that they were calamitous; 'but,' he said, 'pray remember an important compensation, in the influence which the English mind will bring to bear upon the Church of Rome itself. Should there be in this country any considerable amount of secession to that Church, it cannot fail to operate sensibly in mitigating whatever gives most offence in its practices or temper.' I do not pretend to give the exact words, but their spirit and effect I never can forget. I then thought there was great force in them.

When I learned that he was to be married, my opinion was that he had only allowed his thoughts to turn in the direction of the bright and pure attachment he had formed, because the object to which they had first been pledged had vanished or been hidden from his view. I think that his feelings underwent a rally, rather, perhaps, than his understanding, when I was first put forward as a candidate for the University of Oxford in 1847. At least, I recollect his speaking with a real zest and interest at that time of my wife, as a skilful canvasser, hard to resist.

I have just spoken of your father as the man on whom I most relied; and so it was. I relied on one other, also a remarkable man, who took the same course, at nearly the same time; but on him most, from my opinion of his sagacity. From the correspondence of 1838 you might suppose that he relied upon me, that he had almost given himself to me. But whatever expressions his warm feelings combined with his humility may have prompted, it really was not so; nor ought it to have been so, for I always felt and knew my own position beside him to be one of mental as well as moral inferiority. I cannot remember any occasion on which I exercised an influence over him. I remember many on which I tried; and especially when I saw his mind shaken, and, so to speak, on the slide. But these attempts (of which you may possibly have some written record) completely failed, and drove him into reserve. Never, on any one occasion, would he enter freely into the question with me. I think the fault lay much on my side. My touch was not fine enough for his delicate spirit. But I do not conceal from you that I think there was a certain amount of fault on his side also. Notwithstanding what I have said of his humility, notwithstanding what Dr. Newman has most truly said of his self-renouncing turn, and total freedom from ambition, there was in him, I think, a subtle form of self-will, which led him, where he had a foregone conclusion or a latent tendency, to indulge it, and to refuse to throw his mind into free partnership with others upon questions of doubt and difficulty. Yet I must after all admit his right to be silent, unless where he thought he was to receive real aid; and of this he alone could be the judge.

Indeed, his own intellectual calibre was too large to allow him to be other than fastidious in his judgment of the capacities of other men. He had a great opinion of the solidity and tact of Denison, Bishop of Salisbury. He thought also very highly of Lord Blachford. When Archbishop (then Archdeacon) Manning produced his work on the 'Unity of the Church,' he must, I think, have seen it before the world saw it; for I remember his saying to me, 'That is going to be a great book,' or what would have been not less emphatic, 'That is going to be a book.' Again, he was struck with Mr. W. Palmer's work on the Church, to which also testimony has been borne by Dr. Newman in his 'Apologia.' But I do not recollect that he had an unreserved admiration at once of character and intellect in any case except one--that of Dr. Newman himself.

Whatever may have been the precise causes of the reticence to which I have referred (and it is possible that physical weakness was among them), the character of our friendship had during these later years completely changed. It was originally formed in common and very absorbing interests. He was not of those shallow souls which think, or persuade themselves they think, that such a relation can continue in vigour and in fruitfulness when its daily bread has been taken away. The feeling of it indeed remained on both sides, as you will see. On my side, I may say that it became more intense; but only according to that perversity, or infirmity, of human nature, according to which we seem to love truly only when we lose. My affection for him, during those later years before his change, was, I may almost say, intense; and there was hardly anything, I think, which he could have asked me to do, and which I would not have done. But as I saw more and more through the dim light what was to happen, it became more and more like the affection which is felt for one departed.

As far as narrative is concerned, I am now at the close. In 1850 came the discussions and alarms connected with the Gorham judgment; and came also the last flickering of the flame of his attachment to the Church of England. Thereafter I never found myself able to turn to account as an opening any word he spoke or wrote to me. The year had been, for my wife and me, one of sorrow and anxiety, and I was obliged to spend the winter in Italy. In the spring of 1851 I dined at his brother's and met him. He spoke a few words indicative of his state of mind, but fell back immediately into silence. I was engaged at the time in opposing with great zeal the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, but not even this circumstance led him to give me his confidence. The crisis had come. I am bound to say that relief soon became visible in its effect upon his bodily health. His road and mine were now definitively parted. After the change had taken place, it happened to me to be once, and once only, brought into contact with him in the course of his ordinary professional employment. I had been giving evidence in a committee-room on behalf of a railway. He was the opposing counsel, and had to put some questions to me in cross-examination. His manner in performing this usually harsh office was as engaging as in ordinary social intercourse; and though I have no doubt he did his duty by his clients, I thought he seemed to handle me with a peculiar tenderness.

On June 18, 1851, he wrote to me the beautiful letter, No. 95. [Footnote: See ch. xxi. (vol. ii. p. 87), where this letter is given.] It was the epitaph of our friendship, which continued to live, but only, or almost only, as it lives between those who inhabit separate worlds. On no day since that date, I think, was he absent, however, from my thoughts; and now I can scarcely tear myself from the fascination of writing about him.

And so, too, you will feel the fascination of reading about him; and it will serve to relieve the weariness with which otherwise you would have toiled through so long a letter. I hope it is really about him, and that egotism has not slily crept into the space which was meant to be devoted to him. It notices slighter as well as graver matters; for the slight touches make their contribution to the exhibition of every finely shaded character. If anything which it contains has hurt you, recollect the chasm which separates our points of view; recollect that what came to him as light and blessing and emancipation, had never offered itself to me otherwise than as a temptation and a sin; recollect that when he found what he held his 'pearl of great price,' his discovery was to me beyond what I could describe, not only a shock and a grief, but a danger too. I having given you my engagement, you having accepted it, I have felt that I must above all things be true, and that I could only be true by telling you everything. If I have traversed some of the ground in sadness, I now turn to the brighter thought of his present light and peace and progress; may they be his more and more abundantly, in that world where the shadows that our sins and follies cast no longer darken the aspect and glory of the truth; and may God ever bless you, the daughter of my friend!

Believe me always and warmly yours,

W. E. GLADSTONE.

Miss Hope-Scott.