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SYMPATHY WITH CROWDS !149
and Inexplicable divisions among his followers. So Lord
W. about 10 p.m. dissuaded him from going down again
to the House. " But I must," said Gladstone ; " I
must speak to clear my brain." Down he went, asked
what was on, spoke with astonishing vigour and precision
of knowledge on a Church measure--the name of
which I may not now recall-for a full three-quarters
of an hour, and came back tranquillized and happy and
alept like a child. Very rarely did his sleep fail him.
When it did, he threw up the sponge at once and went to
Lord Rendel's villa at Cannes. Punch had a pelicious
picture of the amazement of the French laundry-women
at the size of his collars.
As to his physical gifts his late-learned woodcraft was
nothing wonderful. Indeed, a story was told of an infelicitous
attack he made on three alder-trees in a row, one
only of which was rotten. He selected a sound one, felled
it so that it ruined the other sound one, and the only
survivor of the group was the dead tree. Willie, the eldest
son, was quite first-rate, and Herbert nearly as good,
Stephen, the clergyman,. inherited the great walking powers
of his father, accomplishing sixty miles on his sixtieth
birthday, with a preparatory thirty three days before.
One more paradox in Gladstone's temperament may be
noted. Wonderful though his orator's power was of
catching and playing upon the humour of a crowd, for
which he must have had the liveliest sympathy, it cannot
be said that for individuals the same gift was noticeable,
He never seemed to know what his interlocutor was thinking
of unless the latter made it plain by speech. This
disability made him curiously impersonal in argument.
The late Lady Ribblesdale once took on herself to impugn
some statement or opinion of his at a very small dinnerparty.
The challenge evoked-as challenges invariably
did from him-a thunderous rejoinder of facts and arguments,
with wealth of eloquence and formidable play of
feature. But her account of it was that it was not nearly
so disturbing as she expected because it was so impersonal.