Seeing, understanding, and explaining Ireland was a significant preoccupation for Lever, especially so in Lord Kilgobbin. The novel has several references to William Ewart
Gladstone, someone for whom Ireland was also a preoccupation. In 1835, Lever wrote a short piece, with the title ‘Political Essay – W. E. Gladstone’. At this stage, Gladstone was a High Tory who had been elected as Member of Parliament for Newark in December 1832. In a somewhat meteoric rise, he was appointed as Junior Lord of the Treasury for Robert Peel’s government at the end of 1834, and then appointed Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies in 1835. In that same year Lever wrote this early, unpublished, hand-written essay on
Gladstone and remarked:
in other words, why should not the Irish Whigs take a lesson from what has happened [?]61 with reference to the Whig party. The stampede among the followers of Mr. Gladstone is just remarkable, if it be not as dangerous as that with befel [sic] the [?].62 The Liberals, like the [?]63 had been submitted to a new mode of tethering –
they have been hobbed [sic] in a fashion which made escape seem impossible’.64 This sentence appears to refer to the Lichfield House Compact between the Whigs, Radicals and O’Connell’s Irish Repeal Party, an alliance formed in opposition to the Peelites, of whom Gladstone was a member, and who would later merge into the Liberal party. The
Conservative government of 1835 was short lived. Although this was relatively early in Gladstone’s political career, he was certainly a well-established member of the Conservative party and was at this stage opposed to Liberal values; a position apparently analogous with Lever’s as a young man. Yet Lever already seemed concerned about Gladstone, even at this early stage in each man’s career.65 Both men were of a similar age, Gladstone was less than
three years younger than Lever. Lever had political aspirations too, so perhaps this explains
61 This word is undecipherable. 62 Two undecipherable words. 63 This word is undecipherable.
64 The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. MmsHM 78408, Political Essay – W.E. Gladstone (1835),
Charles James Lever Papers.
his interest in the young Gladstone’s career. Edmund Downey, however, did not include much of Lever’s correspondence for this period of Lever’s life in his biography. Neither did he allude to this essay or include any reference from Lever regarding Gladstone in the first volume of Charles Lever: His Life in Letters. The first of Lever’s references to Gladstone, that Downey published was in a letter dated March 1864. Lever remarked to Dr. Burbidge that ‘Even Gladstone, so able in subterfuge, was not equal to the task assigned him of showing Black to be very frequently, but not naturally, White.’66 Lever poked fun at
Gladstone in two of his O’Dowd Papers in 1865, and wrote to Blackwood in 1866 saying that he was ‘more puzzled than enlightened’ at hearing ‘that the country will stand at present no Ministry of which Gladstone is not a part’.67 This letter was written just two days after Lever had complained to Blackwood, ‘It is so like the Conservatives! They certainly are more deficient in the skill required to manage a party than any section in the House.’68 Lever was right. In the 1868 election Gladstone swept to victory with the promise of Irish reform at the forefront the of the Liberal party’s agenda. On learning he was to be Prime Minister,
Gladstone told Evelyn Ashley that ‘My mission is to pacify Ireland.’69
Lever had serious misgivings regarding Gladstone’s support for disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. In an earlier letter to Blackwood dated 6 February 1867, he had explained:
I don’t say Ireland is sound, but she is no sicker than she ever was. As to the
Established Church in Ireland, I am convinced that they who urge its destruction are less amicably disposed towards the Catholics than that they hate the Protestants. They always remind me of what Macaulay said of the Puritans, who put down bear-baiting not because it was cruel to the bear, but because it amused the people.
“There are many in Ireland who think that to abolish the Church would at once cut the tie that attaches Ireland to England. I myself think it would weaken it. There
66 Lever, in Downey, Life in Letters, II, p. 11. This was in reference to Lord Palmerston’s response to questions
regarding the proposed terms of a Conference regarding Denmark during the Second Schleswig War, in the House of Commons on11 March 1864.
67 Lever, in Downey, Life in Letters, II, p. 140. 68 Ibid, p. 139.
69 Evelyn Ashley, National Review, June 1898; see Roy Jenkins, Gladstone (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), p.
was assuredly a time in which, if Protestants could only have been assured their religion would be respected, they would have joined O’Connell in Repeal. Though too loyal and too self-respecting to make outcry upon it, the Protestants in Ireland are far from thinking they are fairly dealt with.”70
Lever’s comment, ‘if Protestants could only have been assured their religion would be respected, they would have joined O’Connell in Repeal’, is significant. His perception of Gladstone’s campaign to ‘pacify Ireland’ was that it was simply a bid to attract Irish Catholic voters to the Liberal. Lever also ascribed similar motivations to Disraeli:
I hope that the mode in which Gladstone proposes to endow Maynooth (while
effecting mere compensation) will give the Tories a strong ground of attack. The Bill is a palpable project to buy everyone at the expense of the Irish Church. The landlord, the tenant, the priest, the Presbyterian, even the Consolidated Fund, are to be relieved of their charge for Irish charities; and yet it will pass, if for no other reason that the nation sees one party to be as dishonest as the other, and that if Gladstone were beaten by Dizzy, Dizzy would carry the measure afterwards.71
Charles Lever did not admire either party’s leader. In a letter to John Blackwood from the British Consulate in Trieste, in December 1867, Lever had written: “Did I tell you that I met Gladstone here? I don’t think I ever saw a more consummate actor, - what the French call
poseur, - with all outward semblance of perfect indifference to display and complete
forgetfulness of self. Even Disraeli himself is less artificial.”72 Beyond his concern over
disestablishment the Church of Ireland, Lever was also troubled over how Gladstone, who at this stage had no first-hand experience of Ireland approached the Irish Land Question.