Chapter IX: The Close. (1894-1898)

Natural death is as it were a haven and a rest to us after long
navigation. And the noble Soul is like a good mariner; for he,
when he draws near the port, lowers his sails and enters it softly
with gentle steerage.... And herein we have from our own nature a
great lesson of suavity; for in such a death as this there is no
grief nor any bitterness: but as a ripe apple is lightly and
without violence loosened from its branch, so our soul without
grieving departs from the body in which it hath been.—DANTE,
_Convito_.(308)

I

After the first wrench was over, and an end had come to the demands, pursuits, duties, glories, of powerful and active station held for a long lifetime, Mr. Gladstone soon settled to the new conditions of his existence, knowing that for him all that could be left was, in the figure of his great Italian poet,“to lower sails and gather in his ropes.”(309) He was not much in London, and when he came he stayed in the pleasant retreat to which his affectionate and ever-attached friends, Lord and Lady Aberdeen, so often invited him at Dollis Hill. Much against his will, he did not resign his seat in the House, and he held it until the dissolution of 1895.(310) In June (1895) he took a final cruise in one of Sir Donald Currie’s ships, visiting Hamburg, the new North Sea canal, and Copenhagen once more. His injured sight was a far deadlier breach in the habit of his days than withdrawal from office or from parliament. His own tranquil words written in the year in which he laid down his part in the shows of the world’s huge stage, tell the story:—

_July 25, 1894._—For the first time in my life there has been
given to me by the providence of God a period of comparative
leisure, reckoning at the present date to four and a half months.
Such a period drives the mind in upon itself, and invites, almost
constrains, to recollection, and the rendering at least internally
an account of life; further it lays the basis of a habit of
meditation, to the formation of which the course of my existence,
packed and crammed with occupation outwards, never stagnant,
oft-times overdriven, has been extremely hostile. As there is no
life which in its detail does not seem to afford intervals of
brief leisure, or what is termed “waiting” for others engaged with
us in some common action, these are commonly spent in murmurs and
in petulant desire for their termination. But in reality they
supply excellent opportunities for brief or ejaculatory prayer.

As this new period of my life has brought with it my retirement
from active business in the world, it affords a good opportunity
for breaking off the commonly dry daily journal, or ledger as it
might almost be called, in which for seventy years I have recorded
the chief details of my outward life. If life be continued I
propose to note in it henceforward only principal events or
occupations. This first breach since the latter part of May in
this year has been involuntary. When the operation on my eye for
cataract came, it was necessary for a time to suspend all use of
vision. Before that, from the beginning of March, it was only my
out-of-door activity or intercourse that had been paralysed....
For my own part, _suave mari magno_ steals upon me; or at any
rate, an inexpressible sense of relief from an exhausting life of
incessant contention. A great revolution has been operated in my
correspondence, which had for many years been a serious burden,
and at times one almost intolerable. During the last months of
partial incapacity I have not written with my own hand probably so
much as one letter per day. Few people have had a smaller number
of _otiose_ conversations probably than I in the last fifty years;
but I have of late seen more friends and more freely, though
without practical objects in view. Many kind friends have read
books to me; I must place Lady Sarah Spencer at the head of the
proficients in that difficult art; in distinctness of
articulation, with low clear voice, she is supreme. Dearest
Catherine has been my chaplain from morning to morning. My
church-going has been almost confined to mid-day communions, which
have not required my abandonment of the reclining posture for long
periods of time. Authorship has not been quite in abeyance; I have
been able to write what I was not allowed to read, and have
composed two theological articles for the _Nineteenth Century_ of
August and September respectively.(311)

Independently of the days of blindness after the operation, the
visits of doctors have become a noticeable item of demand upon
time. Of physic I incline to believe I have had as much, in 1894
as in my whole previous life. I have learned for the first time
the extraordinary comfort of the aid which the attendance of a
nurse can give. My health will now be matter of little interest
except to myself. But I have not yet abandoned the hope that I may
be permitted to grapple with that considerable armful of work,
which had been long marked out for my old age; the question of my
recovering sight being for the present in abeyance.

_Sept. 13._—I am not yet thoroughly accustomed to my new stage of
existence, in part because the remains of my influenza have not
yet allowed me wholly to resume the habits of health. But I am
thoroughly content with my retirement; and I cast no longing,
lingering look behind. I pass onward from it _oculo irretorto_.
There is plenty of work before me, peaceful work and work directed
to the supreme, _i.e._ the spiritual cultivation of mankind, if it
pleases God to give me time and vision to perform it.

_Oct. 1._—As far as I can at present judge, all the signs of the
eye being favourable, the new form of vision will enable me to get
through in a given time about half the amount of work which would
have been practicable under the old. I speak of reading and
writing work, which have been principal with me when I had the
option. In conversation there is no difference, although there are
various drawbacks in what we call society. On the 20th of last
month when I had gone through my crises of trials, Mr. Nettleship,
[the oculist], at once declared that any further operation would
be superfluous.

I am unable to continue attendance at the daily morning service,
not on account of the eyesight but because I may not rise before
ten at the earliest. And so a Hawarden practice of over fifty
years is interrupted; not without some degree of hope that it may
be resumed. Two evening services, one at 5 P.M. and the other at
7, afford me a limited consolation. I drive almost every day, and
thus grow to my dissatisfaction more burdensome. My walking powers
are limited; once I have exceeded two miles by a little. A large
part of the day remains available at my table; daylight is
especially precious; my correspondence is still a weary weight,
though I have admirable help from children. Upon the whole the
change is considerable. In early and mature life a man walks to
his daily work with a sense of the duty and capacity of
self-provision, a certain αὐτάρκεια [independence] (which the
Greeks carried into the moral world). Now that sense is reversed;
it seems as if I must, God knows how reluctantly, lay burdens upon
others; and as if capacity were, so to speak, dealt out to me
mercifully—but by armfuls.

Old age until the very end brought no grave changes in physical conditions. He missed sorely his devoted friend, Sir Andrew Clark, to whose worth as man and skill as healer he had borne public testimony in May 1894. But for physician’s service there was no special need. His ordinary life, though of diminished power, suffered little interruption. “The attitude,” he wrote, “in which I endeavoured to fix myself was that of a soldier on parade, in a line of men drawn up ready to march and waiting for the word of command. I sought to be in preparation for prompt obedience, feeling no desire to go, but on the other hand without reluctance because firmly convinced that whatever He ordains for us is best, best both for us and for all.”

He worked with all his old zest at his edition of Bishop Butler, and his volume of studies subsidiary to Butler. He wrote to the Duke of Argyll (Dec. 5, 1895):—

I find my Butler a weighty undertaking, but I hope it will be
useful at least for the important improvements of form which I am
making.

It is very difficult to keep one’s temper in dealing with M.
Arnold when he touches on religious matters. His patronage of a
Christianity fashioned by himself is to me more offensive and
trying than rank unbelief. But I try, or seem to myself to try, to
shrink from controversy of which I have had so much. Organic
evolution sounds to me a Butlerish idea, but I doubt if he ever
employed either term, certainly he has not the phrase, and I
cannot as yet identify the passage to which you may refer.

_Dec. 9._—Many thanks for your letter. The idea of evolution is
without doubt deeply ingrained in Butler. The case of the animal
creation had a charm for him, and in his first chapter he opens,
without committing himself, the idea of their possible elevation
to a much higher state. I have always been struck by the glee with
which negative writers strive to get rid of “special creation,” as
if by that method they got the idea of God out of their way,
whereas I know not what right they have to say that the small
increments effected by the divine workman are not as truly special
as the large. It is remarkable that Butler has taken such hold
both on nonconformists in England and outside of England,
especially on those bodies in America which are descended from
English non-conformists.

He made progress with his writings on the Olympian Religion, without regard to Acton’s warnings and exhortations to read a score of volumes by learned explorers with uncouth names. He collected a new series of his _Gleanings_. By 1896 he had got his cherished project of hostel and library at St. Deiniol’s in Hawarden village, near to its launch. He was drawn into a discussion on the validity of anglican orders, and even wrote a letter to Cardinal Rampolla, in his effort to realise the dream of Christian unity. The Vatican replied in such language as might have been expected by anybody with less than Mr. Gladstone’s inextinguishable faith in the virtues of argumentative persuasion. Soon he saw the effects of Christian disunion upon a bloodier stage. In the autumn of this year he was roused to one more vehement protest like that twenty years before against the abominations of Turkish rule, this time in Armenia. He had been induced to address a meeting in Chester in August 1895, and now a year later he travelled to Liverpool (Sept. 24) to a non-party gathering at Hengler’s Circus. He always described this as the place most agreeable to the speaker of all those with which he was acquainted. “Had I the years of 1876 upon me,” he said to one of his sons, “gladly would I start another campaign, even if as long as that.”

To discuss, almost even to describe, the course of his policy and proceedings in the matter of Armenia, would bring us into a mixed controversy affecting statesmen now living, who played an unexpected part, and that controversy may well stand over for another, and let us hope a very distant, day. Whether we had a right to interfere single-handed; whether we were bound as a duty to interfere under the Cyprus Convention; whether our intervention would provoke hostilities on the part of other Powers and even kindle a general conflagration in Europe; whether our severance of diplomatic relations with the Sultan or our withdrawal from the concert of Europe would do any good; what possible form armed intervention could take—all these are questions on which both liberals and tories vehemently differed from one another then, and will vehemently differ again. Mr. Gladstone was bold and firm in his replies. As to the idea, he said, that all independent action on the part of this great country was to be made chargeable for producing war in Europe, “that is in my opinion a mistake almost more deplorable than almost any committed in the history of diplomacy.” We had a right under the convention. We had a duty under the responsibilities incurred at Paris in 1856, at Berlin in 1878. The upshot of his arguments at Liverpool was that we should break off relations with the Sultan; that we should undertake not to turn hostilities to our private advantage; that we should limit our proceedings to the suppression of mischief in its aggravated form; and if Europe threatened us with war it might be necessary to recede, as France had receded under parallel circumstances from her individual policy on the eastern question in 1840,—receded without loss either of honour or power, believing that she had been right and wise and others wrong and unwise.

If Mr. Gladstone had still had, as he puts it, “the years of 1876,” he might have made as deep a mark. As it was, his speech at Liverpool was his last great deliverance to a public audience. As the year ended this was his birthday entry:—

_Dec. 29, 1896._—My long and tangled life this day concludes its
87th year. My father died four days short of that term. I know of
no other life so long in the Gladstone family, and my profession
has been that of politician, or, more strictly, minister of state,
an extremely short-lived race when their scene of action has been
in the House of Commons, Lord Palmerston being the only complete
exception. In the last twelve months eyes and ears may have
declined, but not materially. The occasional contraction of the
chest is the only inconvenience that can be called new. I am not
without hope that Cannes may have a [illegible] to act upon it.
The blessings of family life continue to be poured in the largest
measure upon my unworthy head. Even my temporal affairs have
thriven. Still old age is appointed for the gradual loosening and
succeeding snapping of the threads. I visited Lord Stratford when
he was, say, 90 or 91 or thereabouts. He said to me, “It is not a
blessing.” As to politics, I think the basis of my mind is laid
principally in finance and philanthropy. The prospects of the
first are darker than I have ever known them. Those of the second
are black also, but with more hope of some early dawn. I do not
enter on interior matters. It is so easy to write, but to write
honestly nearly impossible. Lady Grosvenor gave me to-day a
delightful present of a small crucifix. I am rather too
independent of symbol.

This is the last entry in the diaries of seventy years.

At the end of January 1897, the Gladstones betook themselves once more to Lord Rendel’s _palazzetto_, as they called it, at Cannes.

I had hoped during this excursion, he journalises, to make much
way with my autobiographica. But this was in a large degree
frustrated, first by invalidism, next by the eastern question, on
which I was finally obliged to write something.(312) Lastly, and
not least, by a growing sense of decline in my daily amount of
brain force available for serious work. My power to read (but to
read very slowly indeed since the cataract came) for a
considerable number of hours daily, thank God, continues. This is
a great mercy. While on my outing, I may have read, of one kind
and another, twenty volumes. Novels enter into this list rather
considerably. I have begun seriously to ask myself whether I shall
ever be able to face “The Olympian Religion.”

The Queen happened to be resident at Cimiez at this time, and Mr. Gladstone wrote about their last meeting:—

A message came down to us inviting us to go into the hotel and
take tea with the Princess Louise. We repaired to the hotel, and
had our tea with Miss Paget, who was in attendance. The Princess
soon came in, and after a short delay we were summoned into the
Queen’s presence. No other English people were on the ground. We
were shown into a room tolerably, but not brilliantly lighted,
much of which was populated by a copious supply of Hanoverian
royalties. The Queen was in the inner part of the room, and behind
her stood the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge.
Notwithstanding my enfeebled sight, my vision is not much impaired
for practical purposes in cases such as this, where I am
thoroughly familiar with the countenance and whole contour of any
person to be seen. My wife preceded, and Mary followed me. The
Queen’s manner did not show the old and usual vitality. It was
still, but at the same time very decidedly kind, such as I had not
seen it for a good while before my final resignation. She gave me
her hand, a thing which is, I apprehended, rather rare with men,
and which had never happened with me during all my life, though
that life, be it remembered, had included some periods of rather
decided favour. Catherine sat down near her, and I at a little
distance. For a good many years she had habitually asked me to
sit. My wife spoke freely and a good deal to the Queen, but the
answers appeared to me to be very slight. As to myself, I
expressed satisfaction at the favourable accounts I had heard of
the accommodation at Cimiez, and perhaps a few more words of
routine. To speak frankly, it seemed to me that the Queen’s
peculiar faculty and habit of conversation had disappeared. It was
a faculty, not so much the free offspring of a rich and powerful
mind, as the fruit of assiduous care with long practice and much
opportunity. After about ten minutes, it was signified to us that
we had to be presented to all the other royalties, and so passed
the remainder of this meeting.

In the early autumn of 1897 he found himself affected by (M186) what was supposed to be a peculiar form of catarrh. He went to stay with Mr. Armitstead at Butterstone in Perthshire. I saw him on several occasions afterwards, but this was the last time when I found him with all the freedom, full self-possession, and kind geniality of old days. He was keenly interested at my telling him that I had seen James Martineau a few days before, in his cottage further north in Inverness-shire; that Martineau, though he had now passed his ninety-second milestone on life’s road, was able to walk five or six hundred feet up his hillside every day, was at his desk at eight each morning, and read theology a good many hours before he went to bed at night. Mr. Gladstone’s conversation was varied, glowing, full of reminiscence. He had written me in the previous May, hoping among other kind things that “we may live more and more in sympathy and communion.” I never saw him more attractive than in the short pleasant talks of these three or four days. He discussed some of the sixty or seventy men with whom he had been associated in cabinet life,(313) freely but charitably, though he named two whom he thought to have behaved worse to him than others. He repeated his expression of enormous admiration for Graham. Talked about his own voice. After he had made his long budget speech in 1860, a certain member, supposed to be an operatic expert, came to him and said, “You must take great care, or else you will destroy the _colour_ in your voice.” He had kept a watch on general affairs. The speech of a foreign ruler upon divine right much incensed him. He thought that Lord Salisbury had managed to set the Turk up higher than he had reached since the Crimean war; and his policy had weakened Greece, the most liberal of the eastern communities. We fought over again some old battles of 1886 and 1892-4. Mr. Armitstead had said to him—“Oh, sir, you’ll live ten years to come.” “I do trust,” he answered as he told me this, “that God in his mercy will spare me that.”

II

Then came months of distress. The facial annoyance grew into acute and continued pain, and to pain he proved to be exceedingly sensitive. It did not master him, but there were moments that seemed almost of collapse and defeat. At last the night was gathering

About the burning crest
Of the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun.(314)

They took him at the end of November (1897) to Cannes, to the house of Lord Rendel.

Sometimes at dinner he talked with his host, with Lord Welby, or Lord Acton, with his usual force, but most of the time he lay in extreme suffering and weariness, only glad when they soothed him with music. It was decided that he had better return, and in hope that change of air might even yet be some palliative, he went to Bournemouth, which he reached on February 22. For weeks past he had not written nor read, save one letter that he wrote in his journey home to Lady Salisbury upon a rather narrow escape of her husband’s in a carriage accident. On March 18 his malady was pronounced incurable, and he learned that it was likely to end in a few weeks. He received the verdict with perfect serenity and with a sense of unutterable relief, for his sufferings had been cruel. Four days later he started home to die. On leaving Bournemouth before stepping into the train, he turned round, and to those who were waiting on the platform to see him off, he said with quiet gravity, “God bless you and this place, and the land you love.” At Hawarden he bore the dreadful burden of his pain with fortitude, supported by the ritual ordinances of his church and faith. Music soothed him, the old composers being those he liked best to hear. Messages of sympathy were read to him, and he listened silently or with a word of thanks.

“The retinue of the whole world’s good wishes” flowed to the “large upper chamber looking to the sunrising, where the aged pilgrim lay.” Men and women of every communion offered up earnest prayers for him. Those who were of no communion thought with pity, sympathy, and sorrow of

A Power passing from the earth
To breathless Nature’s dark abyss.

(M187) From every rank in social life came outpourings in every key of reverence and admiration. People appeared—as is the way when death comes—to see his life and character as a whole, and to gather up in his personality, thus transfigured by the descending shades, all the best hopes and aspirations of their own best hours. A certain grandeur overspread the moving scene. Nothing was there for tears. It was “no importunate and heavy load.” The force was spent, but it had been nobly spent in devoted and effective service for his country and his fellow-men.

From the Prince of the Black Mountain came a telegram: “Many years ago, when Montenegro, my beloved country, was in difficulties and in danger, your eloquent voice and powerful pen successfully pleaded and worked on her behalf. At this time vigorous and prosperous, with a bright future before her, she turns with sympathetic eye to the great English statesman to whom she owes so much, and for whose present sufferings she feels so deeply.” And he answered by a message that “his interest in Montenegro had always been profound, and he prayed that it might prosper and be blessed in all its undertakings.”

Of the thousand salutations of pity and hope none went so much to his heart as one from Oxford—an expression of true feeling, in language worthy of her fame:—

At yesterday’s meeting of the hebdomadal council, wrote the
vice-chancellor, an unanimous wish was expressed that I should
convey to you the message of our profound sorrow and affection at
the sore trouble and distress which you are called upon to endure.
While we join in the universal regret with which the nation
watches the dark cloud which has fallen upon the evening of a
great and impressive life, we believe that Oxford may lay claim to
a deeper and more intimate share in this sorrow. Your brilliant
career in our university, your long political connection with it,
and your fine scholarship, kindled in this place of ancient
learning, have linked you to Oxford by no ordinary bond, and we
cannot but hope that you will receive with satisfaction this
expression of deep-seated kindliness and sympathy from us.

We pray that the Almighty may support you and those near and dear
to you in this trial, and may lighten the load of suffering which
you bear with such heroic resignation.

To this he listened more attentively and over it he brooded long, then he dictated to his youngest daughter sentence by sentence at intervals his reply:—

There is no expression of Christian sympathy that I value more
than that of the ancient university of Oxford, the God-fearing and
God-sustaining university of Oxford. I served her, perhaps
mistakenly, but to the best of my ability. My most earnest prayers
are hers to the uttermost and to the last.

When May opened, it was evident that the end was drawing near. On the 13th he was allowed to receive visits of farewell from Lord Rosebery and from myself, the last persons beyond his household to see him. He was hardly conscious. On the early morning of the 19th, his family all kneeling around the bed on which he lay in the stupor of coming death, without a struggle he ceased to breathe. Nature outside—wood and wide lawn and cloudless far-off sky—shone at her fairest.

III

On the day after his death, in each of the two Houses the leader made the motion, identical in language in both cases save the few final words about financial provision in the resolution of the Commons:—

That an humble Address be presented to her Majesty praying that
her Majesty will be graciously pleased to give directions that the
remains of the Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone be interred at
the public charge, and that a monument be erected in the
Collegiate Church of St. Peter, Westminster, with an inscription
expressive of the public admiration and attachment and of the high
sense entertained of his rare and splendid gifts, and of his
devoted labours to parliament and in great offices of state, and
to assure her Majesty that this House will make good the expenses
attending the same.

The language of the movers was worthy of the British parliament at its best, worthy of the station of those who (M188) used it, and worthy of the figure commemorated. Lord Salisbury was thought by most to go nearest to the core of the solemnity:—

What is the cause of this unanimous feeling? Of course, he had
qualities that distinguished him from all other men; and you may
say that it was his transcendent intellect, his astonishing power
of attaching men to him, and the great influence he was able to
exert upon the thought and convictions of his contemporaries. But
these things, which explain the attachment, the adoration of those
whose ideas he represented, would not explain why it is that
sentiments almost as fervent are felt and expressed by those whose
ideas were not carried out by his policy. My Lords, I do not think
the reason is to be found in anything so far removed from the
common feelings of mankind as the abstruse and controversial
questions of the policy of the day. They had nothing to do with
it. Whether he was right, or whether he was wrong, in all the
measures, or in most of the measures which he proposed—those are
matters of which the discussion has passed by, and would certainly
be singularly inappropriate here; they are really remitted to the
judgment of future generations, who will securely judge from
experience what we can only decide by forecast. It was on account
of considerations more common to the masses of human beings, to
the general working of the human mind, than any controversial
questions of policy that men recognised in him a man
guided—whether under mistaken impressions or not, it matters
not—but guided in all the steps he took, in all the efforts that
he made, by a high moral ideal. What he sought were the
attainments of great ideals, and, whether they were based on sound
convictions or not, they could have issued from nothing but the
greatest and the purest moral aspirations; and he is honoured by
his countrymen, because through so many years, across so many
vicissitudes and conflicts, they had recognised this one
characteristic of his action, which has never ceased to be felt.
He will leave behind him, especially to those who have followed
with deep interest the history of the later years—I might almost
say the later months of his life—he will leave behind him the
memory of a great Christian statesman. Set up necessarily on
high—the sight of his character, his motives, and his intentions
would strike all the world. They will have left a deep and most
salutary influence on the political thought and the social thought
of the generation in which he lived, and he will be long
remembered not so much for the causes in which he was engaged or
the political projects which he favoured, but as a great example,
to which history hardly furnishes a parallel, of a great Christian
man.

Mr. Balfour, the leader in the Commons, specially spoke of him as “the greatest member of the greatest deliberative assembly that the world has seen,” and most aptly pointed to Mr. Gladstone’s special service in respect of that assembly.

One service he did, in my opinion incalculable, which is
altogether apart from the judgment that we may be disposed to pass
upon particular opinions, or particular lines of policy which Mr.
Gladstone may from time to time have advocated. Sir, he added a
dignity, as he added a weight, to the deliberations of this House
by his genius, which I think it is impossible adequately to
replace. It is not enough for us to keep up simply a level, though
it be a high level, of probity and of patriotism. The mere average
of civic virtue is not sufficient to preserve this Assembly from
the fate that has overcome so many other Assemblies, products of
democratic forces. More than this is required; more than this was
given to us by Mr. Gladstone. He brought to our debates a genius
which compelled attention, he raised in the public estimation the
whole level of our proceedings, and they will be most ready to
admit the infinite value of his service who realise how much of
public prosperity is involved in the maintenance of the worth of
public life, and how perilously difficult most democracies
apparently feel it to be to avoid the opposite dangers into which
so many of them have fallen.

Sir William Harcourt spoke of him as friend and official colleague:—

I have heard men who knew him not at all, who have asserted that
the supremacy of his genius and the weight of his authority
oppressed and overbore those who lived with him and those who
worked under him. Nothing could be more untrue. Of all chiefs he
was the least exacting. He was the most kind, the most tolerant,
he was the most placable. How seldom in this House was the voice
of personal anger heard from his lips. These are the true marks of
greatness.

Lord Rosebery described his gifts and powers, his concentration, the multiplicity of his interests, his labour of every day, and almost of every hour of every day, in fashioning an intellect that was mighty by nature. And besides this panegyric on the departed warrior, he touched with felicity and sincerity a note of true feeling in recalling to his hearers

the solitary and pathetic figure, who for sixty years, shared all
the sorrows and all the joys of Mr. Gladstone’s life, who received
his confidence and every aspiration, who shared his triumphs with
him and cheered him under his defeats; who by her tender
vigilance, I firmly believe, sustained and prolonged his years.

When the memorial speeches were over the House of Commons adjourned. The Queen, when the day of the funeral came, telegraphed to Mrs. Gladstone from Balmoral:—

My thoughts are much with you to-day, when your dear husband is
laid to rest. To-day’s ceremony will be most trying and painful
for you, but it will be at the same time gratifying to you to see
the respect and regret evinced by the nation for the memory of one
whose character and intellectual abilities marked him as one of
the most distinguished statesmen of my reign. I shall ever
gratefully remember his devotion and zeal in all that concerned my
personal welfare and that of my family.

IV

It was not at Westminster only that his praise went forth. Famous men, in the immortal words of Pericles to his Athenians, have the whole world for their tomb; they are commemorated not only by columns and inscriptions in their own land; in foreign lands too a memorial of them is graven in the hearts of men. So it was here. No other statesman on our famous roll has touched the imagination of so wide a world.

The colonies through their officers or more directly, sent to Mrs. Gladstone their expression of trust that the worldwide admiration and esteem of her honoured and illustrious husband would help her to sustain her burden of sorrow. The ambassador of the United States reverently congratulated her and the English race everywhere, upon the glorious completion of a life filled with splendid achievements and consecrated to the noblest purposes. The President followed in the same vein, and in Congress words were found to celebrate a splendid life and character. The President of the French republic wished to be among the first to associate himself with Mrs. Gladstone’s grief: “By the high liberality of his character,” he said, “and by the nobility of his political ideal, Mr. Gladstone had worthily served his country and humanity.” The entire French government requested the British ambassador in Paris to convey the expression of their sympathy and assurance of their appreciation, admiration, and respect for the character of the illustrious departed. The Czar of Russia telegraphed to Mrs. Gladstone: “I have just received the painful news of Mr. Gladstone’s decease, and consider it my duty to express to you my feelings of sincere sympathy on the occasion of the cruel and irreparable bereavement which has befallen you, as well as the deep regret which this sad event has given me. The whole of the civilised world will beweep the loss of a great statesman, whose political views were so widely humane and peaceable.”

In Italy the sensation was said to be as great as when Victor Emmanuel or Garibaldi died. The Italian parliament and the prime minister telegraphed to the effect that “the cruel loss which had just struck England, was a grief sincerely shared by all who are devoted to liberty. Italy has not forgotten, and will never forget, the interest and sympathy of Mr. Gladstone in events that led to its independence.” In the same key, Greece: the King, the first minister, the university, the chamber, declared that he was entitled to the gratitude of the Greek people, and his name would be by them for ever venerated. From Roumania, Macedonia, Norway, Denmark, tributes came “to the great memory of Gladstone, one of the glories of mankind.” Never has so wide and honourable a pomp all over the globe followed an English statesman to the grave.

IV

On May 25, the remains were brought from Hawarden, and in the middle of the night the sealed coffin was placed in Westminster Hall, watched until the funeral by the piety of relays of friends. For long hours each day great multitudes filed past the bier. It was a striking demonstration of national feeling, for the procession contained every rank, and contingents came from every part of the kingdom. On Saturday, May 28, the body was committed to the grave in Westminster Abbey. No sign of high honour was absent. The heir to the throne and his son were among those who bore the pall. So were the prime minister and the two leaders of the parties in both Houses. The other pall-bearers were Lord Rosebery who had succeeded him as prime minister, the Duke of Rutland who had half a century before been Mr. Gladstone’s colleague at Newark, and Mr. Armitstead and Lord Rendel, who were his private friends. Foreign sovereigns sent their representatives, the Speaker of the House of Commons was there in state, and those were there who had done stout battle against him for long years; those also who had sat with him in council and stood by his side in frowning hours. At the head of the grave was “the solitary and pathetic figure” of his wife. Even men most averse to all pomps and shows on the occasions and scenes that declare so audibly their nothingness, here were only conscious of a deep and moving simplicity, befitting a great citizen now laid among the kings and heroes. Two years later, the tomb was opened to receive the faithful and devoted companion of his life.