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Two Grand Old Williams:
Mr Gladstone Meets General Booth
by
Tom Aitken
Gladstone Umbrella, St Deiniol’s Library, 14
July 2007
On 29 October
1890, William Booth, General of The Salvation Army, wrote from
his headquarters at 101 Queen Victoria Street, London, to
William Gladstone, four times Prime Minister, at the castle
across the road:
‘My Dear Sir,
‘I have the
pleasure to forward you by this post my book “In Darkest
England” with the full assurance that the subject of which it
treats and the “Scheme” it sets forth will be regarded by you
as of sufficient importance to ensure your careful
consideration.
‘With sincere
respect,
‘Yours
faithfully…’
The copy is in
the library here, inscribed ‘With faith and hope, William
Booth”.
You may think
that Booth was presumptuous in that he does not crave the
Grand Old Man’s indulgence or otherwise grovel. Rather, he
asserts ‘full assurance’ of Gladstone’s ‘careful attention’.
Was he
merely writing according to the conventions? Or was he
actually confident? The answers to those questions will tell
us much about Booth but also something about Gladstone.
Perhaps I should settle questions about my baseline in advance
by saying unequivocally that I share with Roy Hattersley the
view that, for all their faults, William Booth and his wife
Catherine ‘deserve a place in the pantheon of Great
Victorians’.
Back to
1890: Until not long before that time the press, when
referring to Booth, had habitually fenced the designation
‘General’ with inverted commas. In this they were following
the lead of Queen Victoria, who in 1878, when what had been
the ‘Christian Mission’ was renamed ‘The Salvation Army’,
complained that Booth’s assumption of the title ‘General’ and
his foundation of an Army within her realm usurped
prerogatives that were hers alone. But––and this illustrates
one of his remarkable abilities––he turned the tables on her
four years later. He had invited Her Majesty to contribute to
an appeal for funds and received a message regretting her
inability to do so. The brush off, however, included
mollifying words of glacial approval: Her Majesty felt ‘much
satisfaction that you have, with other members of your
society, been successful in your efforts to win many thousands
to the ways of temperance, virtue and religion’. Booth,
scenting a PR coup, published the letter, in well-spaced type
with bold headlines, on the front page of The War Cry.
It was read out to thousands of cheering Salvationists
assembled in the Alexandra Palace to celebrate the 17th
anniversary of the foundation of the Christian Mission. As St
John Ervine writes, this was ‘an example of Booth’s
extraordinary ability for turning a snub into a compliment and
almost persuaded people that the Queen had contributed to the
Fund or that her refusal to do so was…due to… sheer shortness
of cash’. (Later,
after Victoria’s death Edward VII showed an interest in The
Salvation Army––after which Booth was welcomed by royalty and
heads of state all over the world.)
Meanwhile,
in 1890, the year when he wrote to Gladstone, he pulled off
another, albeit rather different, PR coup. He had been
planning for some time a scheme of social regeneration and to
launch it by publishing a book. Casting about for a title he
happened to read a book published that year by Henry Morton
Stanley, intrepid Welsh explorer and finder of Livingstone.
Stanley called his book In Darkest Africa, and Booth
immediately put the concept to his own use. His book and the
associated scheme were called In Darkest England and the
Way Out.
Nowadays, I
suppose, we would blench at any reference to ‘darkest Africa’.
Booth did not blench and was blunt about his reason for
appropriating the opprobrious word:
‘…while
brooding over the awful presentation of life as it exists in
the vast African forest, it seemed to me only too vivid a
picture of many parts of our own land. As there is a darkest
Africa is there not also a darkest England… May we not find a
parallel at our own doors, and discover within a stone’s throw
of our cathedrals and palaces similar horrors to those which
Stanley has found existing in the great equatorial forest? …As
in Africa it is all trees, trees, trees, with no other world
conceivable; so is it here––it is all vice and poverty and
crime.’
It was this
book he sent to Gladstone in late October and this scheme for
which he sought his aid as sponsor. The book took hold of the
public’s conscience and imagination, selling 200,000 copies in
its first year. It was also savagely attacked. Booth’s use of
statistics, it was claimed was loose, exaggerated and
tendentious. He gave the impression of believing that he was
the first person ever to notice the condition and sufferings
of what he called ‘the submerged tenth’. Furthermore, his
passion for systematic social amelioration was strangely
new-fangled: until about 1887 he had set his face against
taking his evangelical army in the direction of large scale
social work. Worst of all, although his name appeared alone on
spine and title page, he had not written the book himself.
Hostile
critics made much of this alleged deception of the public.
There is still some disagreement among historians as to who
wrote what, but it seems clear that Booth had in fact written
a good deal of the material at the bedside of his dying wife,
Catherine. After her appallingly painful death early in 1890
(she had refused an operation for breast cancer) he asked the
crusading journalist and friend of the Army W.T. Stead to
recommend a competent journalist who could pull it into shape.
Stead volunteered to do it himself. Later he wrote to a friend
that phrases written by him appeared in every chapter and he
had enriched Booth’s material with quotations from historians
(especially Carlyle) and other writers whom Booth had almost
certainly never read. But Stead also asserted publicly that to
claim that book and scheme were his or anybody else’s but
Booth’s was absurd. (However I must stop talking about Stead,
however, or we’ll never get to Gladstone; suffice to say that
Stead was a red-bearded ball of energy, self-styled pope of
journalism whose telegraphic address was ‘Vatican, London’ and
add that his association with The Salvation Army over many
decades was colourful, to say the least. He lost his life
aboard the Titanic.) To be fair to Booth, he did include an
acknowledgement of ‘literary help’ in the 1890 Preface.
Two
relatively junior Salvation Army officers were also involved.
Frank Smith, a committed socialist known to his fellows as
‘the red Major’, was one. The other was an American woman
called Suzie Swift. It seems clear that it was these two who
pushed Booth towards social work. Both, however, have tended
to be written out of the story by Salvationist historians.
Partly this was because Booth was nothing if not an egotist.
The pronoun ‘I’ appears over and again in the text in contexts
where a more sensitive man would have written ‘We’. It is also
the case that Smith and Swift in a manner of speaking wrote
themselves out of it, blotting their copybooks seriously and
quite soon, by leaving the Salvation Army. Smith henceforward
pursued social reform as a socialist rather than a
Salvationist, serving on the London County Council and, at the
age of 75, as MP for Nuneaton. Swift went back to America and
became a nun.
By the time
Gladstone and Booth met, shortly before Christmas, Gladstone
may or may not have read In Darkest England. Certainly,
however, he would have read the four long letters written to
The Times by T.H. Huxley, excoriating Booth, his book and the
scheme. Huxley, the Richard Dawkins of his day, known as
‘Darwin’s bulldog’ wrote 12 letters to the Thunderer, some of
them very long, between December 1 and and January 22. These
letters would, if anything, have caused Gladstone to look on
Booth with benevolence, since he himself had tangled publicly
with Huxley on the subjects of Darwinism and religion.
A few
quotations will give you Huxley’s tone:
Booth’s leading
propositions, he writes, include the notion that ‘the only
adequate means to… reformation of the individual man is the
adoption of that form of somewhat corybantic Christianity of
which the soldiers of the Salvation Army are the militant
missionaries.’
‘Whoever becomes a Salvation officer is henceforth a slave,
helplessly exposed to the caprice of his superiors.’
‘Few social
evils are of greater magnitude than uninstructed and unchastened religious fanaticism; no personal habit more
surely degrades the conscience and the intellect than blind
and unhesitating obedience to unlimited authority.’
As well as
this torrent of correspondence Huxley wrote a pamphlet about
the Darkest England scheme under the catchy title The Wrong
Way to do the Wrong Thing.
What was the
scheme and was it any good? Its intention was to end
unemployment in Britain by progressively by taking the jobless
into city workshops and moving them thence to farm colonies
and, finally, to overseas colonies. Thus, people from the
kingdom’s worst slums and hell-holes could be helped to find
their way out. This idea, as Booth had acknowledged early in
1889, was taken from a pamphlet on poverty by the Earl of Meath, which the noble Irish lord, developed in his book.
Social Arrows (1886)
Booth had
borrowed ideas from other secular reformists as well as from
religious sources. You will notice that that the scheme to an
extent posits the continuing extent and power of the British
Empire, a point that made it less than universally popular
amongst American Salvationists. Gladstone, perhaps, could have
heard echoes of his own much earlier scheme for settling
British transportees in Queensland, which I talked about here
three years ago.
Were scheme
and book any good? For a long time after Booth’s death
sociologists and social historians tended to discount it,
preferring their disciplines to be uncontaminated by religious
revivalism. Undeniably William’s namesake, Charles Booth wrote
in Life and Labour of the People (1889) a more measured
and even-handed book. And, by interviewing the people
themselves he gave his readers the truth of their attitudes
and feeling, whereas. William Booth’s equivalent was reports
written by Salvationist officers, who naturally interpreted
what they described according to their Salvationist mind-set.
One of the things that academics most disliked about Booth’s
book is that they have spotted that it is not in any real
sense a sociological account. Rather, as Roger Joseph Green,
one of Booth’s many biographers explains, it develops a
Wesleyan theology of personal and social redemption, seen
intially side by side as equally necessary but different in
kind, later as two sides of the same coin.
Some
institutions set up in connection with the scheme, still exist
but have evolved. There is a farm at Hadleigh in Essex owned
and run by the Salvation Army. The farm is a commercial
venture, a rare breeds centre which subsidises the Army’s
social fund. It also houses an Employment Training Centre for
people with learning disabilities and long-term unemployed,
teaching them carpentry, catering, office skills and
computing, estate management, horticulture, retail and
graphics. The city workshops––now called Adult Rehabilitation
Centres––are still to be found, particularly in the United
States.
The Overseas
Colonies have gone the way of the British Empire.
But the
principal legacy of the scheme is the irreversible trend it
set in motion whereby the Salvation Army became known in all
of the 111 countries where it operates as providers of care
and emergency support rather than as the evangelical mission
it originally was. This is often regarded as a mixed
blessing. It is ruefully admitted to be the case that without
subsidies from governments and donors the Salvation Army might
by now have ceased to exist, or at least dwindled almost to
vanishing point. Nevertheless, these tensions have their
constructive side. And, despite Huxley’s complaints about the
supremacy of William Booth, it was the loyalty and obedience
he inspired which allowed the Army to survive the radical
change from revivalist movement into something altogether more
original.
But insofar as
there was a ‘darkest England’ in 1890, I suppose we must
accept that it is still there.
We will
hear later on some of what Gladstone said to Booth on the
subject but we will also see that, as often happened when
Booth was hob-nobbing with royalty and public figures, he does
not always seem to understand exactly what is going on.
The Booths
had tried to enlist Gladstone’s aid twice previously. In 1881,
during a wave of violent attacks on Salvationists all over the
country, the magistrates of Stamford in Lincolnshire wrote to
the Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt asking for advice as
to what they should do if the Salvation Army appeared on their
patch and was attacked by roughs. Harcourt, evidently not much
committed to defending of rights of assembly, opined that
‘…while Salvation Army processions not being illegal in
themselves… cannot be legally prevented’, the magistrates,
might obtain a sworn information from the Chief Constable that
such a demonstration ‘might provoke hostility’ and intervene
forcibly to prevent it. (Demo in Parliament Square, anyone?)
Booth wrote indignantly to Gladstone. The Times and the
Solicitors’ Journal reproved Harcourt on legal grounds.
There was a widespread storm of protest which in the long run
did the Army good. Meanwhile, however, the violence continued,
apparently with the blessing of the authorities, who continued
to send Salvationists to jail because they had been attacked.
Gladstone
appears not have responded. He may well have been preoccupied,
since that was the month in which Charles Stewart Parnell was
arrested and held without trial. Even Gladstone might have
found it difficult to reprove the Home Secretary for a
putative suppression of civil rights in Stamford when a real
one was taking place in Dublin.
Fourteen
years later, in 1885, national affairs once again prevented
Gladstone from acceding to a request from the Booths. Mrs
Booth wrote to him asking that a bill which had been talked
out earlier in the year be reintroduced so that the age of
consent could be raised to sixteen, which would make it easier
to combat the trade in very young prostitutes which W.T. Stead
had dubbed ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’. Gladstone
replied that he sympathized and the government had introduced
the bill in the first place. But ‘at a moment like the
present’ he could only regret that he ‘could not undertake to
examine personally the questions you touch on’. The ‘moment
like the present’ was the moment when Gladstone’s government
fell in the wake of the fall of Khartoum and the death of
Gordon, and mounting violence in Ireland. It was Lord
Salisbury’s Conservative government which presided over the
scandalous period when Stead mounted his newspaper campaign
and he and Bramwell Booth staged a mock abduction to show how
easy it was to trade in young girls. Both ended up in court
and Bramwell barely escaped a jail sentence.
I don’t intend
to suggest that Gladstone can be held to account for these
events, merely to point out that when in 1890 William Booth
asked once more for Gladstone’s help with his Darkest England
scheme, his ‘full assurance’ that consideration would be given
was something of a triumph of hope over experience. But, he
may have reasoned that since Gladstone was now out of office
he might, if he retained any of his former prodigious energy,
be pleased by the idea of another cause to fight for.
There appears,
however, to have been no very swift response. Less than a
fortnight after his first letter, on 11 November, Booth wrote
again asking specifically for financial support for his
scheme––or for an endorsement of some kind to encourage other
possible donors. He appended a list of existing donors and the
amounts they had subscribed, with ranged from £50 to
£1500––not insignificant sums––which was just as well, given
that Booth required £100,000 to commence operations. (He had
immediate second thoughts about “required”, substituting the
less peremptory “needed”. Both letters, you will understand,
were written in his own hand, with occasional crossings out.)
Whether Mr
Gladstone responded to Booth’s suggestions I do not know.
Time passes.
Some time in November or early December, Gladstone heard from
Booth again. The General would be conducting meetings at Keighly on Sunday 20 December and would like if Gladstone
agreed, to call on him at Hawarden on his way back to London.
(As you know, this requires a noticeable detour and Booth was
at this date still traveling everywhere by train.)
So, to the
meeting… (I quote) ‘Three o’clock on Monday afternoon,
December 21st, had been fixed by Mr Gladstone for
my interview with him at Hawarden Castle, and passing over
from Keighly… I reached the beautiful park in which it is
situated a few minutes before that time’.
Mrs Gladstone
made him feel at home. ‘I was cold through, and Mrs Gladstone
saw it. Putting one of those delightful old-fashioned easy
chairs––the manufacture of which is a lost art so far as this
country is concerned––before the great, open fire, she
insisted upon my getting a thorough warm, and we were soon
talking away as though we had been acquainted for years.
‘In a few
moments the door of the adjoining room opened, and in walked Mr Gladstone, stretching out his hand, greeting me in the
heartiest manner, and putting an end to the little colloquy
with the ladies by summoning me forthwith to the library.’ Mrs
Gladstone remarked how cold Booth was and Gladstone told her
that he would find the library warmer.
Studying
Gladstone’s appearance as they talked Booth found no trace of
the hardness he had detected in photographs: ‘…intelligent,
expressive quick and commanding in a high degree, his face
appeared equally sympathetic’.
Gladstone
made sure the fire was well stoked then asked Booth if he
preferred to be addressed as ‘General’. The reply Booth says
he gave is a masterpiece of disingenuity:
I replied
‘Yes,’ that was the appellation ordinarily given me, that I
thought it duly signified my position, and I accepted it for
that reason. I explained that I had not sought it, and was at
the beginning strongly opposed to its use; but that having
come to be the head of what was known as an Army, there seemed
to be no alternative but to accept the title.
How I wish I
could have watched Gladstone listening to this. But I should
add that not long after, when he read and annotated Catherine
Booth’s book The Salvation Army in Relation to Church and
State, he approved of her statement that ‘with an Army no
other method could be better’.
Gladstone
agreed that titles had value. Booth enlarged on the theme that
military ranks were everywhere understood: ‘No matter how
poor, untrained, or undisciplined a man might be, he knew the
meaning of “Captain” when he joined a corps, and that it
implied authority and obedience.
‘”Yes,”
remarked Mr Gladstone, “everybody knows the meaning of
‘Captain.’”’
After this,
Gladstone may have narrowed his eyes a little, asking a series
of searching questions about the Army’s organization and
methods. How did its central leadership keep control in so
many distant parts of the world without stifling local action
and initiative? Were many of the officers in
non-English-speaking countries sent out from England? How many
such officers were there? He was surprised by the answer that
between two and five hundred were sent out every year,
commenting that this was remarkable evidence of the strength
and vitality of the movement. He was further impressed by the
news there were over 12,000 Salvation Army officers worldwide
and that something considerably over a million sterling, made
up from collections from Salvationists and donations by well
wishers, was necessary to keep the organization going.
Interestingly Booth was unable to be sure of precise figures
of membership and financial figures. He did not tell Gladstone
that the person who would have had such facts at his
fingertips was his son and Chief of Staff, Bramwell.
They
discussed the Army’s impact in Europe, touching on the gradual
improvement of relations with initially hostile governments
and Booth’s view that they had received no more opposition
from Catholic than from Protestant clergy. Gladstone was
particularly interested in the Army’s impact in Italy where,
it may surprise you to know, it has been permanently
established––after one false start––since 1893. They discussed
conversion, self-denial, Cardinal Manning, Salvation Army
publications and self-righteousness. Gladstone was dismayed at
how often this last was criticised by religious folk. He could
not imagine how anyone could ever suppose that anything he had
done was worthy of being set before God, but for all that, any
form of righteousness was better than none.
In the middle
of the conversation Gladstone asked, with apologies, the
question which makes this amiable conversation historically
important. Had arrangements been made for choosing Booth’s
successor and if so, what were they? He was clearly amazed by
the answer, that Booth had nominated his successor and the
name, known to no one but himself, was held in a sealed
envelope. He could if he saw fit change it at any time. His
successor’s first duty would be to nominate his own successor,
following the same procedure. This had been formalized in a
Foundation Deed enrolled in the High Court.
Gladstone
thought this legal precaution wise but his mind clearly
boggled at the strangeness of the provision. As Booth puts it,
‘…he seemed to wander over the whole world, looking in upon
every work––Religious, Philanthropic and Secular’––in order to
find a similar instance. He thought there might be some as
late as the sixteenth century. ‘Even the Pope is elected by a
conclave of Cardinals’, he said with what, I would guess, was
a certain asperity.
Booth admitted
that there was a scheme, ‘now being completed, for providing
against the possible contingency of a General passing away who
had neglected the appointment of his successor, or who, for
some calamitous reason, had been proved incapable for, or
unworthy of, his position, and for soliciting a new General in
an Assembly of all our Commissioners throughout the world.’ He
mentioned some possible reasons which might make this
necessary, to which Gladstone added, interestingly, heresy.
It is hard
to tell, of course, but there is a possibility that Booth was
rather pleased that the conversation took this turn. When,
nearly eight years later, another Deed Poll was drawn, it was
said to have been the result of Gladstone’s advice. Three
clauses provided for the removal of a General from office by a
specially summoned High Council of Commissioners) on grounds
of (to summarise) lunacy or physical infirmity (four to one
majority required), misconduct (nine to one majority
required), or unfitness for office (75% of votes required).
By one of
those very sad ironies that stud human history, this provision
has only once been invoked, and the hapless victim was William
Booth’s son, Bramwell. This is not the occasion to go into
what happened in detail but I will offer two comments. The
first is that Bramwell felt bound to preserve The Salvation
Army as the organization his father had conceived and created.
This included the sealed envelope. He refused to contemplate
an election instead and this in the end did for him. We do not
know who his choice of successor was because his enveloped was
burned unopened. However it is salutary to note that it was
widely thought that he had chosen his daughter Catherine. Some
of you may remember the sparky old lady who enlivened
Parkinson’s and other television chat shows in the late
1970s. She died aged one hundred. Had she become General she
would undoubtedly stayed in post until her death as William
had done and as Bramwell intended to do. Whether almost one
hundred and twenty years of continuous Booth leadership would
have been a Good Thing many Salvationists would doubt. The
other point I would make that the politics of deposing
Bramwell and eliminating the sealed envelope required him to
be deposed under clause 3––unfitness for office. This,
unsurprisingly, was savagely resented by the Booth family and
remains a sensitive issue within the Army.
Before William
Booth left the castle that December afternoon Gladstone asked
whether there was a book giving an account of the Army’s
history and methods. Booth said he would send one. Gladstone
may have been surprised and less than pleased when the package
arrived. It contained 17 books, many of them thick ones. Quite
a few were by William himself. However, General did have the
grace to enclose enclosed a note indicating which specific
parts of each book might be of most use to Gladstone.
(Three of
these books, incidentally, are on the shelves in the library
here. One has annotations. Others may be over at the castle. I
hope to find out this afternoon—and see whether they show any
sign of having been looked through.)
You may be
interested in Booth’s assessment of his host. The General was
a shrewd and blunt judge of his fellow human beings, but he
never quite got over the fact he was a former pawnbroker’s
apprentice who in old age found himself taking tea with
royalty and statesmen. Whenever such a conversation took place
an account of it would be published in The War Cry or,
as in this case, as a small book. Booth’s account of his
meeting, at Buckingham Palace in 1909, with Queen Alexandra,
the Dowager Empress of Russia and Princess Victoria is a
classic of unconscious comedy.
Here is some of
what he has to say about Gladstone:
‘Mr
Gladstone is as rapid as he is a forcible and interesting
talker. He scarcely paused for a moment in his friendly
cross-examination, every question bearing directly and
intelligently either on one of our principles of action, or
some important aspect of the results that follow. There was
not a wasted word. There was not a vestige of that conceited
method of interrogation which is intended to assert the
superiority of the nterrogator and to mark his condescension
in being willing to receive the information one has to convey.
Nor was there a hint of that impatience which is so common in
the manner of some men when dealing with what they are pleased
to call “emotional religion”. Nothing could have been more
impressive or more charming than the quiet dignity and the
thoughtful gentleness, and yet lightning penetration, with
which Mr Gladstone discussed with me the Salvation Army, its
system, its peculiarities, its principles, its future, that
afternoon.’
Note the use
of the term ‘cross-examination’. Booth occasionally seems to
suggest that he may have asked questions of Gladstone but he
records none. The overwhelming impression given by his account
(I think unintentionally) is that Gladstone asked all the
questions, shaping the discussion as he wished. Indeed, since
Booth makes no mention of the Darkest England scheme being
discussed, it may be that Gladstone deliberately kept it at
bay, not wantin to have to make a direct refusal to become
overtly a supporter.
Apart from
his conversational acuity Gladstone impressed Booth in other
ways. His ‘unaffected earnestness’ tops the list. Booth
was used enough to important people asking ‘commonplace
questions’ with only languid interest’. In contrast,
Gladstone’s unmistakable concern to hear and know what the
Army was doing and what was the inner meaning of it all moved
him deeply. The way Gladstone went straight to ‘the very
vitals’ of each subject as it came up and the
disinterestedness of his questions and manner also impressed
him. He had no ulterior motive of personal axe to grind.
(That’s my cliché, not Booth’s––and I suppose that in this
context it’s unfortunate!)
He was carried
away by Gladstone’s unhesitating flow of beautiful and
expressive words, exact shades of meaning and mellifluous
delivery. ‘It is a luxury to listen to him. It is a shame for
him to be silent.’
How unlike the
views of their own dear Queen!
Booth concluded
with A SALVATIONIST QUESTION––AND THE ANSWER:
‘My
Salvationist friends will ask me how far I was impressed with Mr Gladstone’s religious realizations? I shall answer that I
had not much opportunity for judging; but I may say that not
only was the whole tenour of that conversation favourable to
such a conclusion, but that there were passages in that
interchange of thought, views and feelings, and feelings that
produced on my mind very forcibly the impression that, among
the many things carefully considered and experimentally known
to W.E. Gladstone, are the governing influences of the Holy
Spirit and the saving grace of God.’
When Booth
returned to London he produced an account of the conversation
for publication. He says in a letter to Gladstone that he had
originally had no intention of publishing their talk. This may
indeed have been the first time he had done such a thing; if
so he made up for lost time in the following two decades.
Meanwhile, he assured Gladstone that his interest in the
Army’s work would be ‘a cheer to my people throughout the
world… in their desperate struggle with sin and misery; and
what may be far more important may induce others possessing
influence and authority in this and other countries to look
more closely into our doings.’
Gladstone wrote
in reply that their talk had helped him ‘to look out upon the
wide world and reflect with reverence on the singular
diversity of the instruments which are in operation for
recovering mankind, according to the sense of those who use
them, from their condition of sin and misery; and encourages
hearty good will towards all that, under whatever name, is
done with a genuine purpose to promote the work of God in the
world…’
I don’t
think that Roy Hattersley is right when he writes that Booth’s
account ‘showed every sign of Mr Gladstone fulfilling an
unwelcome commitment with patience and courtesy’. Gladstone
could easily enough have avoided the commitment had he wanted
to. However I agree with Hattersley that the conclusion of
Gladstone’s letter to Booth, which is printed in the pamphlet
comes very close to being a reproof:
‘Your account will go forth on your own responsibility, and
will not, I apprehend, require me to take any step with regard
to it.
‘Believe me to remain, with all good wishes,
Faithfully
yours,
‘W.E.
Gladstone
‘Hawarden
‘Jan. 2,
1897’
Things moved
quickly in those days. The conversation took place on December
21. Booth’s published introductory note is dated Jan 6 and the
book was in print soon after.
Perhaps the
meeting between the two can best be summed up by the remark
that Isaiah Berlin borrowed from the Greek poet Archilocus:
‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big
thing’. We all know about the many things Gladstone knew. The
one big thing that Booth knew was that mankind needed to be
saved.
Thank you.
Bibliography
Berlin, Isaiah,
The Hedgehog and the Fox: An essay on Tolstoy’s view of
history, London, 1999
Booth,
Catherine, The Salvation Army in Relation to Church and State,
London, 1883
Booth, William,
A Talk with Mr Gladstone at His Own Fireside, London, 1897
In Darkest England and the Way
Out, London 1890
Ervine,
St John, God’s Soldier: General William Booth, London, 1934
Hattersley,
Roy, Blood and Fire: William and Catherine Booth and Their
Salvation Army, London, 1999
Murdoch, Norman
H., Origins of The Salvation Army, Knoxville, 1994
William Booth’s
In Darkest England and the Way Out: A Reappraisal, Nampa
Sandall,
Robert, The History of The Salvation Army, vol. Two, London,
1950
The History of the Salvation Army,
vol. Three, London, 1955
had no
intention of publishing teir talk. This may indeed have been
the first time he had done such a thing; if so he made up for
lost time in the following two decades. Meanwhile, he assured
Gladstone that his interest in the Army’s work would be ‘a
cheer to my people throughout the world… in their desperate
struggle with sin and misery; and what may be far more
important may induce others possessing influence and authority
in this and other countries to look more closely into our
doings.’
Gladstone
wrote in reply that their talk had helped him ‘to look out
upon the wide world and reflect with reverence on the singular
diversity of the instruments which are in operation for
recovering mankind, according to the sense of those who use
them, from their condition of sin and misery; and encourages
hearty good will towards all that, under whatever name, is
done with a genuine purpose to promote the work of God in the
world…’
For all
that, I cannot argue that Roy Hattersley is wrong when he
writes that Booth’s account ‘showed every sign of Mr Gladstone
fulfilling an unwelcome commitment with patience and courtesy.
And, as Hattersley also writes, the conclusion of Gladstone’s
letter to Booth, which is printed in the pamphlet comes very
close to being a reproof:
‘Your
account will go forth on your own responsibility, and will
not, I apprehend, require me to take any step with regard to
it.
‘Believe me
to remain, with all good wishes,
Faithfully
yours,
‘W.E.
Gladstone
‘Hawarden
‘Jan. 2,
1897’
Things moved
quickly in those days. The conversation took place on December
21. Booth’s published introductory note is dated Jan 6 and the
book was in print soon after.
Thank you.
Bibliography
Booth, William,
A Talk with Mr Gladstone at His Own Fireside, London, 1897
In Darkest England and the Way
Out, London 1890
Ervine,
St John, God’s Soldier: General William Booth, London, 1934
Green, Roger
Joseph, Theological Roots of In Darkest England and the Way
Out, Nampa
Hattersley,
Roy, Blood and Fire: William and Catherine Booth and Their
Salvation Army, London, 1999
Murdoch, Norman
H., Origins of The Salvation Army, Knoxville, 1994
William Booth’s
In Darkest England and the Way Out: A Reappraisal, Nampa
Sandall,
Robert, The History of The Salvation Army, vol. Two, London,
1950
The History of the Salvation Army,
vol. Three, London, 1955
ERVINE, ST JOHN GREER
1883-1971
St John Ervine was born in Ballymacarret,
Belfast. After working for three years in an insurance office
he emigrated to London at the age of eighteen. For a short
period in 1915 he was manager of the Abbey Theatre, where his
plays Mixed Marriage, June Clegg and John Ferguson had already
been succesful. He was wounded as a lieutenant in the Dublin
Fusiliers, and had a leg amputated. He settled in the south
west of England. He wrote biographies of Craigavon and Carson,
of William Booth, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, as well
as publishing seven novels including The First Mrs Fraser and
some plays, such as Boyd's Shop and Friends and Relations.
Until 1939 he was drama critic for the Observer. He became a
member of the Irish Academy of Letters and from 1933 to 1936
was Professor of Dramatic Literature for the Royal Society of
Literature. His work reflects the change in his political
stance away from nationalism and socialism towards unionism.
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