Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/243

MRS. GLADSTONE fifth to her eighty-first year. She disliked publicity, though she was quite ready to accept the share of it inevitable from her husband's great position, but she had no idea of aggrandising women as women, of setting sex against sex; she believed that organisation would enable women to take their share of the larger life of the world without any risk of hurting "distinctive womanhood," and her own life set an example of the possibility for a woman to gain mental breadth without failing in "childward care" or losing "the childlike in the larger mind."

On 25th July 1889 Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone celebrated their golden wedding, completing fifty years of a married life in which they had abundantly realised "all the unclouded blessings of the home." The year before, on entering their fiftieth year of married life, colleagues and personal friends presented them with their portraits, that of Mr. Gladstone painted by Holl and of his wife by Herkomer, and three massive silver cups. In thanking them Mr. Gladstone said that it was difficult for him to give an adequate idea of the domestic happiness he had enjoyed during the fifty years of his married 207