By JOHN MARTIN
Roy Jenkins, British lord, parliamentarian and biographer, spoke Feb. 10 on "Politicians and Their Reading." His talk focused on the book-learning of William Ewart Gladstone, four-time British prime minister, totemic Victorian, godfather of modern political liberalism, and the subject of Lord Jenkins's new award-winning biography.
According to Lord Jenkins, Gladstone (1809-98) was "one of the most remarkable human beings" of his or any time.
Introduced by Dr. Billington in the Mumford Room, Lord Jenkins spoke as part of the Center for the Book's "Books and Beyond" lecture series.
He sketched a man of matchless energy who devoured books, with a private library of 20,000 volumes drawn from theology and the classics, as well as specialized works like American inventor Samuel Colt's On Revolvers.
Gladstone's prodigious reading habits drew scorn as well as praise. A political rival observed that "Gladstone would rather read a second-rate book than give himself the chance to think first-rate thoughts." Jenkins, however, explained Gladstone's preoccupation with books as a way for a busy and powerful man to shut out the daily hurly-burly of politics.
The British statesman's reading included the popular fiction of his day, especially the novels of Eliot and Trollope, some Dickens and a solid foundation of Austen and the Brontes. Gladstone devoted himself heavily to theology and religious history after losing office in 1874, a time when he considered entering the ministry. The sermons and homilies Gladstone encountered in his religious reading probably influenced the inspired oratory which, combined with his energy and wide knowledge, made him one of the dominant figures of his time. His stump speeches to large audiences, Lord Jenkins said, established mass oratory as an art form.
Gladstone's pulpit-style speaking and apparent pedantry served him less well with Queen Victoria who, according to Lord Jenkins, said of her prime minister, "He addressed me like a public meeting."
Lord Jenkins hesitated when Dr. Billington asked him to name a particular book that may have shaped Gladstone's position on a given issue. Gladstone's famous denunciation of the Turks for the Bulgarian atrocities may have been influenced by a certain work, he offered, "but more likely grew out of what a lifetime of reading had made him, like a stalagmite building to a point."
Concluding with a quick survey of other leaders' reading habits, Lord Jenkins contrasted Winston Churchill, who read and wrote history with a sense of grand drama, to Clement Attlee, who brusquely cut men and events down to size.
Turning to America, he named Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as champion readers and writers, while suggesting the opposite of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. Of John F. Kennedy's reputation for reading, Lord Jenkins commented, "He liked knowing about books."
Mr. Martin is a copyright examiner in the Copyright Office.