The Fenian drama had its ghastly closing tableau in the hanging of the ringleaders, and the explosion at Clerkenwell. The hanging of those Fenians must have been about the last of that sort of a public entertainment, as a law was soon passed making all future executions strictly private. Among a certain class of Her Majesty's subjects this was a most unpopular measure. Pot-house politicians and gin-palace courtiers, both ladies and gentlemen, discussed it hotly and denounced it sternly, as an infringement on the sacred immemorial rights of British freemen and a blow to the British Constitution.
In 1874 Mr. Disraeli had become Prime Minister. He died in 1880—Lord Beaconsfield, sincerely lamented by the Queen, who was much attached to him as a friend, and greatly admired him as a man of genius. He was a brilliant novelist and a famous statesman; but the best things I know of him are the tender love and manly gratitude he always testified towards his devoted wife, and his pathetic mourning for her loss. He might have adopted for her tombstone the quaint, terse epitaph of an American husband—"Think what a wife should be, and she was that."
Through his means, the title of "Empress of India" was conferred on the Queen by act of Parliament. Some English people opposed it as superfluous, a sort of anti-climax of dignity, as "gilding the refined gold" of English Sovereignty with baser metal, as "painting the lily" of the noblest of English royal titles with India-ink; but it did no harm. It did not hurt the Radicals and it pleased the Rajahs.
Then came the Zulu war, with its awful disasters in the inglorious slaughter of some thousands of gallant young soldiers, among which, because of the power of romantic, historic associations, the death of the young Prince Imperial stands out in woful relief. This was a severe personal shock to the Queen. With all her tender sympathy she tried to console the inconsolable Empress, and with her sons paid funeral honors to the memory of the Prince, who had been almost as one of her family. The only time I ever saw him he was in their company, driving away from a royal garden-party.
The Prince of Wales visited India, traveled and hunted extensively, was fêted after the most gorgeous Oriental style, and brought home rich presents enough to set up a grand Eastern bazaar in Marlborough House, and animals enough to start a respectable menagerie. Everywhere he went he inclined the hearts of the people to peace and loyalty, by his frank and genial ways. Does His Royal Highness ever propose such a tour in Ireland? He would not probably receive as tribute so much jewelry and gorgeous merchandise—so many tigers, pythons and other little things; but there is a fine chance for giving over there, and we read: "It is more blessed to give, than to receive."
I come now to that period of our national history with which the Queen of England so kindly, so "gently and humanly" associated herself—I mean the illness and death of President Garfield. To this day, that association is a drop of sweetness in the bitter cup of our sorrow and humiliation. From the 2d of July, 1881, the date of her first telegram of anxious inquiry addressed to our Minister, to the 27th of the following September, when she telegraphed her tender solicitude as to the condition of "the late President's mother," not a week went by that she did not send to Mr. Lowell sympathetic messages, asking for the latest news—congratulating or condoling, as the state of "the world's patient" fluctuated between life and death—and when all was over, she at once telegraphed directly to Mrs. Garfield in these words of tenderest commiseration, so worthy of her great heart:
"Words cannot express the deep sympathy I feel with you at this terrible moment. May God support and comfort you as He alone can."
She afterwards sent an autograph letter to Mrs. Garfield, and also asked for a photograph of the President.
No American who was in London at that time, especially on the day of or President's funeral, so universally observed throughout Great Britain, can ever forget the generous, whole-souled sympathy of the English people, in part at least, inspired by the words 'and acts of the English Queen. The intense interest with which she had watched that melancholy struggle between "the Two Angels," over that distant death-bed, and the grief with which she beheld the issue were known and responded to, and so the noble contagion spread. It was not needed, perhaps, that signs of mourning should be shown in her Palace windows, to have them appear as they did, all over the vast city, but it was something strange and affecting to see those blinds of a proud royal abode lowered out of respect for the memory of a republican ruler, and sympathy for an untitled "sister-widow."
We respected all those signs of mourning about us then—were grateful for them all, from the flag at half-mast and the tolling bell, to the closing of the shop of the small tradesman, and the bit of crape on the whip of the cabman.