Mary Gladstone Drew
Mary Gladstone, the third of the four daughters and fifth in the family of eight children of William Ewart Gladstone and his wife, Catherine Gladstone, née Glynne was born at 13 Carlton House Terrace, on 23rd November 1847. Her childhood and youth were spent between Hawarden Castle in Flintshire and their London home. According to her biographer, K. D. Reynolds: "Unlike the rigorous educational standards that Gladstone applied to his sons, his daughters' schooling was haphazard, and in later life Mary admitted that she always found it difficult to concentrate on a sustained piece of work."
Mary had several suitors, including Edward Bickersteth Ottley, who eventually married Maude Isabel Mary Hamilton. She was also involved with with Hallam Tennyson, the son of Alfred Tennyson, the poet laureate, Arthur Balfour and was at least twice in love, unrequitedly, with Arthur Balfour and John Campbell (9th Duke of Argyll). She also had a long-standing relationship with John Dalberg-Acton.
Mary took a close interest in politics and recorded in her diary meeting John Ruskin in October, 1878: "Mr Ruskin delightful at coffee on standing armies, etc.... At dinner the talk on Homer, Dante, Shakespeare very delightful... the talk on taxation and mercantile morality rather painful, for the experienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, and visionary idealist came into conflict. All ended with a lovely prayer for forgiveness at goodnight." Mary found Ruskin charming but had doubts about his political ideas: "Ruskin spoke just as he writes. Every word might be profitably written down. He has the most gentle and chivalrous manner and reminded me a good deal of Carlyle - the slow and soft stream of beautiful yet unaffected words, the sudden lighting up and splendid laugh... heaps of what he says is purely visionary and unpractical, and it is the ideal beauty of it, is so entrancing."
In 1880 William Ewart Gladstone became prime minister. His wife found the duties associated with managing a political household onerous and uninteresting and Mary, now aged 33 years old, became the primary hostess. played the main role as the hostess at the family residences. Susan K. Harris, the author of The Cultural Work of the Late Nineteenth-Century Hostess (2004) has pointed out: "Once Gladstone resumed office his daughter's influence would be a major attraction for many people, who saw her as a way to reach her powerful father."
Mary was extremely interested in political ideas. In August 1883 she began reading Progress and Poverty, a book by Henry George. Mary wrote in her diary that the book is "supposed to be the most upsetting, revolutionary book of the age. At present Maggie and I both agree with it, and most brilliantly written it is. We had long discussions. He (her father) is reading it too." Gladstone later remarked "it is well-written but a wild book". Mary also asked Edward Burne-Jones for his thoughts on the book: "Yes, I know Progress and Poverty and I admire greatly its nobility of temper and style. But its deductions... I knew all that long ago. It is a book that couldn't more persuade me of a thing I knew already... How can some men help having an ideal of the world they want, a feeling for it as for a religion, and sometimes being fanatical for it and unwise, as men are too for for the religion that they love?"Susan K. Harris has argued: "One of the late nineteenth century's most influential works of political economy, Progress and Poverty (1879) attacks the premises of land ownership, rejecting Malthus and arguing that nationalization of rents would remedy all economic ills because the money accruing to the government would enable all other taxes to be repealed... In England, it fell into a vigorous British conversation about land, wages, taxes, and the nature of labour; a conversation that was being conducted on a number of levels, from radical Socialists, who loved the book, to landed aristocrats, who didn't. Everyone, however, recognized that this was a work with which it was necessary to contend, and most understood that it was one of the signal texts for trying to think through solutions to the gap between rich and poor that had manifested itself politically - especially through the Chartist movement - in mid-century, and had remained a source of anxiety for the privileged classes over the remainder of the century."
Mary Gladstone loyally supported her father's policies. This included his objection to women's suffrage and had many discussions with Liberal Party members over this issue. In March, 1884, James Stuart, the MP for Cambridge University, replied to a letter he received from Mary. He suggested that female franchisement should follow lines already established by those municipalities that did allow women to vote: "To make women more independent of men is, I am convinced, one of the great fundamental means of bringing about justice, morality, and happiness both for married and unmarried men and women. If all Parliament were like the three men you mention, would there be no need for women's votes? Yes, I think there would. There is only one perfectly just, perfectly understanding Being - and that is God." He added: "No man is all-wise enough to select rightly - it is the people's voice thrust upon us, not elicited by us, that guides us rightly."
On 25th December, 1885, Mary became engaged to the curate of Hawarden, Harry Drew, nine years her senior. They were married in Westminster Abbey on 2nd February 1886. In August 1886 she miscarried a son and was dangerously ill for five months. Mary now became involved in a debate with her father on the subject of birth-control. Her biographer, Susan K. Harris, has argued: "Still mindful of her father's high moral standards, Mary was negotiating not so much the issue as the propriety of discussing such sensitive material across generational and gender lines. She and her father were agreed as to the wrongfulness of preventing conception and birth here; Mary Gladstone was very much her father's daughter her opposition to any kind of family planning. Knowing that her stance was embattled even among the clergy, she sought as much ammunition as possible to continue her fight. The irony was that her father's feelings about the issue were so strong that broaching it took considerable courage even when they were on the same side. Mary's argument here is that she must know the details of the debate in order to counsel friends and parishioners, but she must continually reassure W. G. Gladstone that she has not gone over to what he saw as an anti-life campaign."
Mary discovered that her father had been sent a copy of The Ethics of Marriage by Hiram Sterling Pomeroy. She wrote to her father about the book on 27th October, 1887: "Dearest Father: I saw that a book called Ethics of Marriage was sent to you, & I am writing this to ask you to lend it me. You may think it an unfitting book to lend, but perhaps you do not know of the great battle we of this generation have to fight, on behalf of morality in marriage. If I did not know that this book deals with what I am referring to, I should not open the subject at all, as I think it sad & useless for any one to know of these horrors unless the, are obliged to try & counteract them. For when one once knows of an evil in our midst, one is partly responsible for it. I do not wish to speak to Mama about it, because when I did, she in her innocence, thought that by ignoring it, the evil would cease to exist."
In the letter Mary pointed out that it was becoming clear that society was changing. "What is called the American sin is now almost universally practised in the upper classes; one sign of it easily seen is the Peerage, where you will see that among those married in the last 15 years, the children of the large majority are under 5 in number, & it is spreading even among the clergy, & from them to the poorer classes. The Church of England Purity Society has been driven to take up the question, & it was openly dealt with at tile Church Congress. As a clergyman's wife, I have been a good deal consulted, & have found myself almost alone amongst my friends & contemporaries, in the line I have taken ... everything that hacks up this line strengthens this line, is of inestimable value to me, & therefore this book will be a help to me ... It is almost impossible to make people see it is a sin against nature as well as against God."
In March 1890, at the age of forty-two, she gave birth to a daughter, Dorothy. She had a further miscarriage in May 1893. In 1897 Harry Drew accepted the living of Buckley, 3 miles from Hawarden, and for the first time Mary had her own home. The death of her father in 1898 was a terrible blow. She continued to carry on her role as a clergyman's wife.
In 1903 Mary agreed for the publication of the letters that she had received from John Dalberg-Acton. As K. D. Reynolds has pointed out: "Mary had urged Acton to allow her to publish his letters but he had refused; now that he was dead the volume was hurried into print, with disastrous consequences for Acton's reputation. Although personal material had been removed from the letters enough was left to offend members of his family, and both Catholics and Anglicans found matter for concern in his freely expressed views on his own church and on the affairs of the other."
Harry Drew died in 1910. Her daughter married Francis Parish two years later and over the next few years saw the births of five grandchildren. In 1919 Mary Drew produced a biography of her mother, Catherine Gladstone. This was followed by Acton, Gladstone and Others (1924), a collection of essays and reviews, including an account of Ruskin's infatuation with Rose La Touche.
Mary Gladstone Drew died at Hawarden Castle on 1st January 1927.
Primary Sources
(1) Mary Gladstone, diary entry at Hawarden (31st October, 1876)
At 6 came Tennyson and his son Hallam... Sat between the two at dinner. He snubbed me once or twice but was afterwards very amiable. He is really like Shakespeare to look at. The boy is nice and very light in hand and quickly interested. Worships his father and sits adoring. Some good conversations after dinner on Dante, Homer and Shakespeare.
(2) Mary Gladstone, diary entry (13th October, 1878)
Mr Ruskin delightful at coffee on standing armies, etc.... At dinner the talk on Homer, Dante, Shakespeare very delightful... the talk on taxation and mercantile morality rather painful, for the experienced Chancellor of the Exchequer, and visionary idealist came into conflict. All ended with a lovely prayer for forgiveness at goodnight.
(3) Susan K. Harris, The Cultural Work of the Late Nineteenth-Century Hostess (2004)
As William Gladstone's daughter, the doors of the famous and influential were open to her; among the people she met during their winter in Rome was Pius IX. Between tours of antiquities, she translated Dante with her father and "spouted" (read aloud) Old Mortality with the rest of the family. Although Masterman found her responses merely dutiful, in fact Mary seems to have enjoyed the trip enormously....
Although she had more than one semi-romantic relationship - at least two with men already married Mary Gladstone did not marry until 1886, when she was thirty-seven years old. Between her early twenties and the time she became wife to the Hawarden rector Harry Drew she continued to live with her parents, dividing her time between their homes in London and Hawarden and the homes of relatives and friends throughout England and Scotland. She also made several trips to the Continent. As William Ewart Gladstone began to realize the necessity for active campaigning in the wake of the Reform Bill of 1867 (which extended the franchise to a far larger proportion of the population than had ever possessed it before, and in so doing radically changed the shape and nature of British politics), Mary Gladstone, with other family members, began to accompany him, and her interest in politics increased concurrently.
The 1870s was a decade of gradual maturation, both intellectually and socially. As it opened, Mary's dominant preoccupations were social affairs and music Intellectually, she was still being mentored by her father, with whom she had been sharing reading experiences for years and who would continue to be one of her chief reading partners until his death.
(4) Lucy Materman, Mary Gladstone (1930)
If 'to be successful, it is only necessary to be beloved,' then Mary's was an eminently successful life. She had a large number of devoted friends, and a circle of recent acquaintances who were always delighted to see her. She saw and knew nearly every one in England of her generation who was worth knowing, and surprisingly many in the generations that followed. She was very happy in her marriage and her motherhood.
Yet I cannot but feel that she was bigger than the life she was called upon to live. Her mind was untrained, but she had great energy and for a large part of tier career it was confined to the role of 'Bunry pulls the strings.' It was inevitable that sometimes she broke the threads of tier schemes, and sometimes gave her less energetic friends the feeling that they were being managed for ends not their own. Yet undoubtedly in her influence on those friends, and ill the unflagging zeal with which she pressed and upheld the causes and enterprises for which she cared, she left on all who came near her, right up to the end, the impression of one of the quickest and liveliest sympathies they had ever known.
(5) Mary Gladstone Drew, letter of William Ewart Gladstone (1880)
Dearest Father. As I shall not see you today, 1 thought it just worth while to tell you that if Lord Rosebery was offered the Under Secretaryship for Home Affairs, he would be likely to accept it ... It is the only office where he thinks he could look after Scotland especially, & it is supposed it would quiet the present Scorch agitation for a Scotch Secretary. This is only for you, so I don't send it through any Secretaries.
(6) Mary Gladstone Drew, letter of William Ewart Gladstone (27th October, 1886)
Dearest Father: I saw that a book called Ethics of Marriage was sent to you, & I am writing this to ask you to lend it me. You may think it an unfitting book to lend, but perhaps you do not know of the great battle we of this generation have to fight, on behalf of morality in marriage. If I did not know that this book deals with what I am referring to, I should not open the subject at all, as I think it sad & useless for any one to know of these horrors unless the, are obliged to try & counteract them.
For when one once knows of an evil in our midst, one is partly responsible for it. I do not wish to speak to Mama about it, because when I did, she in her innocence, thought that by ignoring it, the evil would cease to exist. What is called the 'American sin' is now almost universally practised in the upper classes; one sign of it easily seen is the Peerage, where you will see that among those married in the last 15 years, the children of the large majority are under 5 in number, & it is spreading even among the clergy, & from them to the poorer classes. The Church of England Purity Society has been driven to take up the question, & it was openly dealt with at tile Church Congress. As a clergyman's wife, I have been a good deal consulted, & have found myself almost alone amongst my friends & contemporaries, in the line I have taken ... everything that hacks up this line strengthens this line, is of inestimable value to me, & therefore this book will be a help to me ... It is almost impossible to make people see it is a sin against nature as well as against God. But it is possible to impress them on the physical side. Dr. Matthews Duncan, Sir Andrew Clark & Sir James Paget utterly condemn the practice, & declare the physical consequences to be extremely bad. But they have little influence. If you quote them, the answer always is "They belong to the past generation. They cannot judge of the difficulties of this one."
I would not have dreamed of opening the subject, only that as you are reading the book, you cannot help becoming aware of the present sad state of things. It is what frightens me about England's future.
(7) Susan K. Harris, The Cultural Work of the Late Nineteenth-Century Hostess (2004)
A prime example of Mary Gladstone's role in the circulation of ideas is evident in her reading community's reception of Henry George's Progress and Poverty. One of the late nineteenth century's most influential works of political economy, Progress and Poverty (1879) attacks the premises of land ownership, rejecting Malthus and arguing that nationalization of rents would remedy all economic ills because the money accruing to the government would enable all other taxes to be repealed...
In England, it fell into a vigorous British conversation about land, wages, taxes, and the nature of labour; a conversation that was being conducted on a number of levels, from radical Socialists, who loved the book, to landed aristocrats, who didn't. Everyone, however, recognized that this was a work with which it was necessary to contend, and most understood that it was one of the signal texts for trying to think through solutions to the gap between rich and poor that had manifested itself politically - especially through the Chartist movement - in mid-century, and had remained a source of anxiety for the privileged classes over the remainder of the century.
(8) Susan K. Harris, The Cultural Work of the Late Nineteenth-Century Hostess (2004)
The Liberal Party... created an intellectual and affective ideology at once committed to change but also anxious to control the course change would take: as Christians, Gladstone's circle wanted to improve the lives of the poor; as members of the ruling class they wanted to retain the authority to determine what the poor needed and to articulate those needs through their own sets of value.
(9) Mary Gladstone Drew, diary entry (17th August, 1883)
Yesterday I began Progress and Poverty, supposed to be the most upsetting, revolutionary book of the age. At present Maggie and I both agree with it, and most brilliantly written it is. We had long discussions. He (Gladstone) is reading it too.
(10) Mary Gladstone Drew, diary entry (30th August, 1883)
Finished Progress and Poverty with feelings of deep admiration - felt desperately impressed, and is a Christian.
(11) James Stuart, letter to Mary Gladstone Drew (September, 1883)
The man (Henry George) is a true man, and that it would do one a great deal of good to spend a day or two with him. I, too, was pleased with his smashing of Malthus. I like to see anyone indignant and angry at any doctrine which makes misery and wrong a natural and inevitable and necessary consequence of the world's ordering.
(12) Edward Burne-Jones, letter to Mary Gladstone Drew (September, 1883)
Yes, I know Progress and Poverty and I admire greatly its nobility of temper and style. But its deductions... I knew all that long ago. It is a book that couldn't more persuade me of a thing I knew already... How can some men help having an ideal of the world they want, a feeling for it as for a religion, and sometimes being fanatical for it and unwise, as men are too for for the religion that they love?
(13) James Stuart, letter to Mary Gladstone Drew (March, 1884)
To make women more independent of men is, I am convinced, one of the great fundamental means of bringing about justice, morality, and happiness both for married and unmarried men and women. If all Parliament were like the three men you mention, would there be no need for women's votes? Yes, I think there would. There is only one perfectly just, perfectly understanding Being - and that is God.... No man is all-wise enough to select rightly - it is the people's voice thrust upon us, not elicited by us, that guides us rightly.