An address to Rowland Hill was voted at a town's meeting at Liverpool, and this was followed by the gift of some valuable pictures. Their selection being left to my father himself, he chose three, one work each, by friends of long standing—his ex-pupil Creswick, and Messrs Cooke and Clarkson Stanfield, all famous Royal Academicians. Three statues of the postal reformer have been erected, the first at Birmingham, where, soon after his resignation, a town's meeting was held to consider how to do honour to the man whose home had once been there, the originator of the movement being another ex-pupil, Mr James Lloyd of the well-known banking family. From Kidderminster his fellow-townsmen sent my father word that they were about to pay him the same compliment they had already paid to another Kidderminster man, the famous preacher, Richard Baxter. But this newer statue, like the one by Onslow Ford in London,[238] was not put up till after the reformer's death. Of the three, the Kidderminster statue, by Thomas Brock, R.A., is by far the best, the portrait being good and the pose characteristic. Mr Brock has also done justice to his subject's strongest point, the broad, massive head suggestive of the large, well-balanced brain within. That the others were not successful as likenesses is not surprising. Even when living he was difficult to portray, a little bust by Brodie, R.S.A., when Rowland Hill was about fifty, being perhaps next best to Brock's. The small bust in Westminster Abbey set up in the side chapel where my father lies is absolutely unrecognisable. Another posthumous portrait was the engraving published by Vinter (Lithographer to the Queen). It was taken from a photograph then quite a quarter-century old. Photography in the early 'fifties was comparatively a young art. Portraits were often woeful caricatures; and the photograph in our possession was rather faded, so that the lithographer had no easy task before him. Still, the likeness was a fair one, though the best of all—and they were admirable—were an engraving published by Messrs Kelly of the “Post Office Directory,” and one which appeared in the Graphic.

THE STATUE, KIDDERMINSTER.
By Thomas Brock, R.A.
From a Photograph by the late T. Ball.

In June 1879, less than three months before his death, the Freedom of the City of London was bestowed upon the veteran reformer. By this time he had grown much too infirm to go to the Guildhall to receive the honour in accordance with long-established custom. The Court of Common Council therefore considerately waived precedent, and sent to Hampstead a deputation of five gentlemen,[239] headed by the City Chamberlain, who made an eloquent address, briefly describing the benefits achieved by the postal reform, while offering its dying author “the right hand of fellowship in the name of the Corporation.” My father was just able to sign the Register, but the autograph is evidence of the near approach to dissolution of the hand that traced it.

On the 27th of August in the same year he passed away in the presence of his devoted wife, who, barely a year his junior, had borne up bravely and hardly left his bedside, and of one other person. Almost his last act of consciousness was, while holding her hand in his, to feel for the wedding ring he had placed upon it nearly fifty-two years before.

My father's noblest monument is his reform which outlives him, and which no reactionary Administration should be permitted to sweep away. The next noblest is the “Rowland Hill Benevolent Fund,” whose chief promoters were Sir James Whitehead and Mr R. K. Causton, and was the fruit of a subscription raised soon after the postal reformer's death, doubled, eleven years later, by the proceeds of the two Penny Postage Jubilee celebrations, the one at the Guildhall and the other at the South Kensington Museum, in 1890. Had it been possible to consult the dead man's wishes as to the use to be made of this fund, he would certainly have given his voice for the purpose to which it is dedicated—the relief of those among the Post Office employees who, through ill-health, old age, or other causes, have broken down, and are wholly or nearly destitute. For, having himself graduated in the stern school of poverty, he too had known its pinch, and could feel for the poor as the poor are ever readiest to feel.

My father's fittest epitaph is contained in the following poem which appeared in Punch soon after his death. His family have always, and rightly, considered that no more eloquent or appreciative obituary notice could have been penned.

In Memoriam

ROWLAND HILL