"Gladstone's Seraglio"

Captain Peter Emmanuel Wright, onetime Assistant Secretary to the Allied Supreme War Council, now a London journalist, ripped open not long ago a crisp envelope, read:

Mr. Peter Wright:

Your garbage about Mr. Gladstone in your book, Portraits and Criticisms'/- has come to my knowledge. You are a liar.

Because you slander a dead man, you are a coward.

And because you think the public will accept inventions from such as you, you are a fool.

(Signed) GLADSTONE.

As Captain Wright perused this letter from Viscount Gladstone, son of the great "Mr. Gladstone," another letter from Viscount Gladstone was delivered to the Secretary of the exclusive Bath Club, to which both Captain Wright and Lord Gladstone belonged. "Mr. Wright is a foul fellow!" ran this second letter; and as a result Captain Wright was dropped from the Bath Club.

Irate, Captain Wright sued the Club, and recovered $625 damages "for loss of club amenities, and injury to his reputation." Said Justice Horridge, in awarding damages: "Captain Wright is justified in thinking that in calling him 'a liar, a coward and a fool,' Viscount Gladstone employed the language of the pantry rather than that of the House of Lords."

Americans who read this exchange of compliments in the press pictured Viscount Gladstone as a young pup, for all his peerage, a loud and foul-mouthed lord. Had Captain Wright rested content with $625 damages, he and his charges against the late Prime Minister would have seemed vindicated. But Captain Wright, having drawn blood, or rather golden damages, tried for more. He brought suit for libel against Viscount Gladstone, who happens not to be "a young pup," is aged 73.

The whole complexion of the affair altered as Captain Wright testified last week on his own behalf and was cross-examined by Lord Gladstone's attorneys. At the trial Lord and Lady Gladstone sat together, venerable, glacial; and in the visitors' gallery sat famed (though slightly passE) dramatist Sir Arthur Wing Pinero; the Rt. Hon. Thomas P. O'Connor, "Father of the House of Commons"; Lady Milner and many another.

Testimony. Said Captain Wright: "The late Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone was a gross sensualist. ... At a meeting of the Supreme War Council Lord Milner said of Mr. Gladstone that his policies were governed by 'his seraglio'. . . . Lord Morley once told me that Lord Granville told him he had known five of Queen Victoria's Prime Ministers who had committed adultery. I am sure that Mr. Gladstone must have been one of these.* . . . The actress Lillie Langtry, 'The Jersey Lily,' was well-known in the U. S. to be Mr. Gladstone's mistress. . . . Another was Olga Novikov whom the Tsarist Government sent to England especially to fascinate him, in the '70s. ... I have even talked with a former steeplechase jockey who said that Mr. Gladstone once tried to flirt with his girl. ... I once met a man called Cecil Gladstone who is said to be Mr. Gladstone's 'illegitimate son'. . . ."

Cross Examination. Lord Gladstone's attorney, Mr. Norman Birkett, began to cross examine. Said he: "Captain Wright, you quote Lord Milner, who is now dead, as saying that Mr. Gladstone had a 'seraglio'. . . . Do you know that Mr. T. P. O'Connor once quoted that same phrase from Lord Milner with the comment: 'It was with this disrespectful word ["seraglio"] uttered with a laugh, that Lord Milner spoke of Mr. Gladstone's devoted wife and daughter."

Captain Wright: "'Seraglio,' could not mean 'wife and daughter.' Here is a dictionary to prove it. [Shouting] It never did mean such a thing, does not and never will!". . .

Mr. B: "Captain, do you know that at the time you allege these amours on the part of Mr. Gladstone he was over 70 years of age?"

Captain W: "Yes, that was the astonishing thing about Mr. Gladstone. He had these affairs between 70 and 80."

Mr. B: "Apart from the fact that a man now dead told you that Mr. Gladstone, in his old age, had this intrigue with an actress [Lillie Langtry] did you make any further inquiry?"

Captain W: "No. Why should I?"

Mr. B: "Can you adduce any proof that Olga Novikov was ever Mr. Gladstone's mistress?"

Captain W: "Lord Malmesbury once told me that detectives assigned to guard Mr. Gladstone were incensed at having to stand outside her house all night and then accompany him to early morning prayer."

Mr. B: "Your 'evidence' appears to be mere gossip. . . . May I ask if it is really Mr. Cecil Gladstone who, you claim to have heard, is Mr. Gladstone's 'illegitimate son'?"

Captain W: "Yes. I made no investigation, naturally. But several people in Eastbourne, where he lived, told me that."

Mr. B: (after producing Cecil Gladstone's birth certificate, showing him to be the son of a cousin of the Prime Minister) : "Now, Captain, do you still maintain that Cecil Gladstone is an illegitimate son of William Ewart Gladstone?"

Captain W: "Why, no. Not after that entry."

The Presiding Justice: "It is scandalous that such a charge should have been so lightly made and is now withdrawn with such levity. ... Do you, Captain Wright, explicitly withdraw all you have said about Mr. Cecil Gladstone's legitimacy?"

Captain W: "Certainly, my Lord, entirely. ..."

Reaction. Though the hearing continued last week, public sympathy ebbed sharply from Captain Wright. Public curiosity was aroused, however, by a cryptic statement from Bishop Talbot in the Liverpool Post:

"I know perfectly well what was Mr. Gladstone's attitude, at once stainless, austere and chivalrous, regarding the relations between men and women. I know also perfectly well what actions of his, noble in purpose, gave occasion for odious suggestions. . . ."

/-TIME, July 26, 1926, quoted the passage referred to : "Mr. Gladstone . . . [i. e. Queen Victoria's great prime minister] founded the great tradition, since observed by so many of his followers and successors with such pious fidelity: in public to speak the language of the highest and strictest principles and in private to pursue and possess every sort of woman."

*Queen Victoria's Prime Ministers: PRIME MINISTERS

NUMBER OF MINISTRIES

Sir Robert Peel 1

Earl Russell 2

Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby 3

George Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen 1

Viscount Henry Palmerston 2

Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield 2

William Ewart Gladstone 5

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury 4

Archibald Philip Primrose, Earl of Rosebery 1