Grand old amanuensis
Jane Ridley
MARY GLADSTONE: A GENTLE REBEL by Shelia Gooddie Wiley, £16.99, pp. 257, ISBN 0470854235 prime ministers' families are interesting subjects for biography, and the Gladstones are more interesting than most. William Gladstone's volcanic moral energy and terrifying Anglican zeal destroyed many of those around him. He was Gordon Brown with knobs on — of Scottish family, bristling with humourless arrogance. His intelligent sister Helen went mad. She converted to Catholicism, enraging brother William by using the works of Protestant theologians as lavatory paper, and became an opium addict. Gladstone's wife Catherine survived by becoming vague to
the point of (loftiness. (She was once spotted filleting the ham out of sandwiches and stuffing it down her cleavage, only to discover that it was coated with mustard.) She turned a blind eye to Gladstone's peculiar sexual practices such as speaking to prostitutes and whipping himself afterwards.
Gladstone's sons were especially vulnerable, as he insisted on playing a large part in their education. His eldest son William was a gentle boy, lacking his father's intelligence, and the story of how Gladstone systematically bullied and undermined him (all this, of course, for Willie's good) was brilliantly told by Michael Bentley ten years ago in an article tucked away in the little-read English Historical Review.
Mary, Gladstone, the subject of this book, was Gladstone's favourite daughter. She was clever and bookish but uneducated, very musical, somewhat prim and no beauty. In her twenties she fell 'in love' with Arthur Balfour, Unreachable and possibly asexual, Balfour was interested less in Mary than in being courted by the great Mr G. who needed to recruit bright young men for the Liberal party. Nimbly ducking commitment, Balfour claimed to be 'in love' with Mary's cousin, May Lyttelton, who was conveniently in love with someone else, When May died of typhoid. Balfour put a ring in her coffin and burst into uncontrollable tears. By pretending that May was the love of his life, he managed to bury his prospects of marriage for ever.
Mary Gladstone, meanwhile, was left on the shelf. She was courted by Hallam Tennyson, son of the poet, whom she rejected. She had a flirtation with the historian Lord Acton, who was married and unavailable, and, like Arthur Balfour, really wanted her because she gave access to her father. By the age of 30 Mary was a `vocationless' spinster, pitied by her friends. As unmarried daughter, her role was to look after her aging parents, but, fortunately for her, her dad just happened to be the Grand Old Man.
To his credit, when he became prime minister for the third time in 1880 at the age of 70, Gladstone gave Mary a job (unpaid, naturally) as one of his secretaries at 10 Downing Street. Here she came into her own. She was very good at the work. Her office was a windowless broom cupboard, but she was at the hub of politics, courted by interesting men. Having failed in the marriage stakes, she was now queen at the Gladstone court, exciting the envy and annoyance of her married female friends.
In 1886, at the age of 38, Mary Gladstone surprised everyone by suddenly marrying Harry Drew, the curate at Hawarden, who was ten years her junior. She managed to squeeze out one baby, but the rest of her life was dull. Gooddie sees Mary as a 'gentle rebel' who made a bid for freedom by renouncing the great world and marrying the man she loved. It seems just as likely that Mary married Drew because he kept her close to the man she really adored — her father. Marriage to anyone else, even Arthur Balfour, would have taken her away from home.
Sheila Gooddie doesn't speculate on any of this. Reading her book, I sometimes felt that she is just too nice to be a biographer. She refuses to see the grit in the oyster, she is always bright and cheery, and she writes sentences like this: `Mary's parents were conventional parents but unconventional people which made Mary a typical and, at the same time, unique woman of her time.' She hasn't done much research either, ignoring a great deal of the vast historical and biographical literature on Gladstone and his family. But she knows how to tell a good story, and the book is a ripping read.
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