Private and public communication
Gladstone was a prolific diarist who began to maintain a daily journal as an Eton schoolboy, in 1825, and continued the habit, almost without interruption, until 1896. For the most part, entries record his reading habits, list people he has corresponded with, and make reference to secular and religious activities but offer little by way of reflection.19They account for how Gladstone spent his time but cross-referencing a letter in the Manuscript Album with the corresponding diary entry achieves nothing more than confirming that Gladstone wrote to the recipient that day; there is nothing that provides further elucidation of the letter's content.
The letter is addressed to Cyril Flower, a Liberal politician:
I received the inclosed [sic] this morning from a stranger. You will know whether it is worth any attention. Do not have the trouble to reply.
I receive with pleasure your prediction as to the North Bucks Election for which I had previously had only favourable anticipations to rely on.
Hubbard …[?] very handsomely about the scandalous leaflet.
Gladstone, W.E. Letter to Cyril Flower, 10th October 1889.
Manuscript Album, 58
Gladstone was famed as an orator, his skills having been refined in the Oxford Union Debating Society. W.T. Stead wrote “Mr. Gladstone is great in Parliamentary cut and thrust and parry. He is wonderful in a great debate, and beyond all rivalry as a platform orator”.21 Writing in the New York Times, on the other hand, Walter Bagshot accused Gladstone of delivering “nearly perfect expression[s] of intellectualized sentiment, but [wanting] the volcanic power of primitive passion”.22
As mentioned in the section on letter writing in history, pamphlets were a common form of public communication in the Nineteenth Century. They were not subjected to the same censure as newspaper articles and published books and could be written pseudonymously or anonymously thereby allowing pamphleteers to confront inflammatory issues. Circulation was widespread. Not only was Gladstone an impressive speaker but he was also an effective and prolific pamphleteer. In November 1874 he produced an anti-Catholic pamphlet, The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, in which he refuted papal infallibility. By the end of the year, 100,000 copies had been sold.23His emotional pamphlet campaign opposing Disraeli's pro-Turkish foreign policy ignited popular public opinion, turning the British against the Turks when they massacred the population of Batak in retribution for an uprising by the Bulgarian nationalists in 1876. He authored many more pamphlets on the papacy, Balkans, and on the Irish question.
