GLADSTONE (William Ewart, 1809-1898, Prime Minister)

Early Autograph letter signed to F. F. Courtenay asking him “to send me by return of post my ‘special list’ of applications for appointments. I should be glad also to have a quire of letter paper & a couple of quires of note paper. The former might be... length-wise for convenience of carriage. I cannot think more lightly of your aid in consequence of a note so kind & which does you so much honour as that I have just received from you. Be so good as to let the letters to Mr Rogers go immediately...”, 2 sides 8vo., Fasque, 23rd September

Possibly the recipient is F.F. Courtenay, Private Secretary to the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, (James Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess, 1812-1860, Governor General of India).
Fasque House was bought by John Gladstone in 1829, a Scottish merchant from Liverpool. He had built up a business empire in property and international trade and become extremely wealthy. By the time of the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 Gladstone was one of the largest slaveholders in Scotland. In December 1851, Sir John Gladstone died, passing the house on to his oldest son, Thomas, the eldest brother of William. Thomas's sibling rivalry had been strong over the years, but now, as the second Baronet (and from 1876, Lord Lieutenant of Kincardineshire), Thomas Gladstone and his wife Louisa Fellows, a relative of Queen Victoria, ran Fasque as an effective house for nearly 40 years, adding servants' quarters to the building itself, along with a school in the grounds. During that time, William Ewart Gladstone (who had come into possession of Hawarden Castle in North Wales, through his wife's family, the Glynns) visited his elder brother many times, and practised his hobbies of walking and tree-felling across the moors of the estate. The estate lands had slowly expanded during Thomas's tenure to encompass 80,000 acres (320 km2), bordering Balmoral to the north. Sir Thomas died in 1889, passing the Baronetcy on to his eldest son John, a bachelor soldier, who came home to run the estate with his sister Mary in the 1890s. After Thomas' death, William did not visit his nephew's estate again, and himself died in May 1898.

Item Date:  1844

Stock No:  41773      £175

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