Detail of "Very Odd!" Punch, XXIV, New Library Series (London: Punch, 1853-54) 120. Google Books. Public domain. Non-commercial use.

Real Ladies Don't Applaud

March 7, 2018

What?! “Ladies don't applaud”? I found this statement while looking through composer C. Hubert H. Parry's unpublished diaries. He was writing about the fortnightly musical salons held at the London home of his teacher, Edward Dannreuther. Tucked away in the middle of the entry about this concert, ...

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Mar 2, 2018

What to Call a Political Salon in Victorian London

Mar 2, 2018

When guests accepted the invitation to a “Thursday Breakfast” at 10 Downing Street, clearly they thought of it as the prime minister’s salon. Wouldn’t you, if you were one of the lucky nine invited to Downing Street?

Mar 2, 2018

Jun 7, 2016

Gladstone, Liberalism and Music: Political Leadership and Popular Legacy

Jun 7, 2016

Arthur Balfour’s baiting of W.E. Gladstone in the House of Commons may be what we most remember about how these two British Prime Ministers interacted. Gladstone, almost forty years older than Balfour, was the epitome of the passionately earnest Victorian statesman, while Balfour was among the first of a new type of modern British politician: suave and publicly reserved. How surprising that they frequently met socially, coming together in rollicking fun and music-making.

Jun 7, 2016

Dec 17, 2015

The Tennysons at Home: Farringford

Dec 17, 2015

The wind is whipping around me as I write this at Farringford, the home of Alfred Lord Tennyson on the Isle of Wight. Being here brings Tennyson's poetry alive for me in a new way. It had a similar impact on Mary Gladstone, the thirty-one-year-old daughter of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. She visited the poet and his family in 1879, and walked the downs with Tennyson while he recited his poetry. Despite being used to socializing with celebrated men and women of her day, Mary still felt nervous exhilaration at staying with Britain’s Poet Laureate. She wrote in detail about this noteworthy event, including the layout of Farringford and its garden. Such descriptions inform us about the lives of Mary Gladstone and the Tennysons, situate Tennyson's poetry in the landscape that he loved, and contextualize Farringford itself, which will open to the public as a museum in 2017.

Dec 17, 2015

Nov 23, 2015

A Victorian Birthday Celebration: Turning 28 in Musical Oxford

Nov 23, 2015

Although we often associate Victorians with seriousness, such gravitas is only half the story. This post traces what happened on the 28th birthday of Prime Minister Gladstone's daughter, showing how she thrilled to the gorgeousness of music by request played at Magdalen College, Oxford; her reaction to the new Keble College Chapel; the house party that she attended at Ashridge; and the birthday thank you letter that she wrote to her father. At the end, it briefly considers Gladstone's connections to Pre-Raphaelite art.

Nov 23, 2015

Sep 18, 2015

A 25th Musical Birthday in Oxford

Sep 18, 2015

"My 25th birthday, how beastly to be a quarter of a century," Mary Gladstone wrote in her diary. And yet what an exciting time it was to have a birthday in Oxford. Mary's diary and twenty-fifth birthday letter reveals her participation in musical life at Oxford, and her close association with educational pioneers in the earliest days of Keble College and Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford, and Newnham and Selwyn Colleges, Cambridge. Women may not have been able to take degrees at Oxbridge, but their positions as sisters, wives and cousins allowed them frequent access to college parlors where they wielded influence as bright conversationalists and enthusiastic music-makers.

Sep 18, 2015

Gladstone's Daughter: Living Liberalism

A blog by Phyllis Weliver

Mary Gladstone's extensive manuscript writings show a living liberalism through the intimate details of Victorian family life. Born in 1847, this daughter of British Prime Minister Gladstone was the only woman among his private secretariat. The blog posts transcriptions and annotations of Mary Gladstone's unpublished life writing along with relevant images. Comments remain open for a fortnight.

All manuscript images are copyright material. They may not be reproduced without the permission of the Gladstone family, c/o Gladstone's Library. Quoting or paraphrasing the intellectual content on this blog must acknowledge Phyllis Weliver as the author.