Gladstone Sends His Anti-Catholic Essay to The Contemporary Review
Autograph Letter Signed “(W Gladstone”) June 17, 1874 to James Thomas Knowles, editor of The Contemporary Review, conveying his manuscript.
[London?]: 1874.
Price: $750.00
About the item
Framed with a steel engraving of Gladstone. 1 vols. 12mo. Gladstone Sends His Anti-Catholic Essay to The Contemporary Review. Original folds, slight tear without loss in top margin, else fine.
Item #18196
The letter reads: “Dear Mr. Knowles / Not knowing whether this parcel sent off by post at one would find you at Clapham and not being quite sure of your London address, I send it to you for greater expedition through Mr [Matthews?]. / Ever sincerely / W Gladstone / If you print it I should like to have four [underlined] proofs sent me.”
Gladstone's first tenure as Prime Minister had ended at the beginning of 1874, when the Whigs were defeated by Disraeli's Tories. Notes the DNB: “During the [1874 summer] parliamentary recess Gladstone published in the 'Contemporary Review' an essay on ritualism, in which he surprised every one by a trenchant attack on the church of Rome, declaring that no man could now enter her communion without placing his loyalty and civil allegiance at the mercy of another. This reference to the doctrine of papal infalibility, which Pius IX had proclaimed four years before, elicited numerous replies from English catholics…”. Several pamphlets authored by Gladstone followed, until the debate eventually wound down, the image of “The Grand Old Man” now less lustrous for many constituents.
Since 1870 the editor of The Contemporary Review had been an old friend of Gladstone's, the architect and subsequent journalist James Thomas Knowles, who had formed in 1869 the Metaphysical Society, a dining-and-discussion group of which Gladstone was a charter member. It was to him that Gladstone dispatched this note, accompanied almost certainly by the manuscript of his controversal article.
AN HISTORIC COMMUNICATION.
