'I was very much struck with your husband's wonderful patience when I saw him, and the calm way in which he was able to face the future—whatever it had in store for him. It is some consolation to know that he did not suffer much, and that perhaps, had he recovered from the illness, his health would have been so affected that great valetudinarianism would have been inevitable. To him, this would have been suffering; and for his sake we are thankful that he was spared it.'
His remains were interred in the Brookwood cemetery at Woking on October 24th.
He died, literally in harness. On Saturday, October 12th, he dictated a last letter on the business of the 'Review;' and his indistinct words during the few days of partial unconsciousness showed that his mind was still endeavouring to fix itself on what had occupied it for so many years.
It was in his editorial capacity that I, who write these lines, first knew him in 1866, though I did not make his personal acquaintance till 1877, when he was a few months over 63. I found him a tall, stout, and—though not strictly handsome—a good-looking man, who might very well have passed for ten years younger than he actually was, and whose burly figure might have seemed more at home in the covers or the turnip-fields than in the Privy Council Office; his weight, which cannot, even then, have been much under eighteen stone, must have stopped his hunting some time before. But in his manner there was no trace of this fancied rusticity—how could there be, indeed, in one trained in society almost from the cradle?—and his voice was soft and musical. I have seen it stated that he was pompous, self-assertive, and dictatorial. That his manners, formed by his mother and his aunt on eighteenth-century models, and perfected in Paris among the traditions of the ancien regime, had about them nothing of the 'hail fellow, well met' fashion of the present day is very certain, and, joined to his height (about 6 ft. 1 in.) and his great bulk, may sometimes have given him the appearance of speaking de haut en bas, and must, unquestionably, have enabled him to repress any unwelcome or undue familiarity. As an editor, of course, he was dictatorial. We may talk of the Republic of Letters; but in point of fact a successful journal is and must be an autocracy. In his private capacity, I never found in his conversation that habit of 'laying down the law' which some, with probably inferior opportunities of judging, have complained of. Of his untiring application and power of work enough has already been said; but the uniform good luck which attended him through life is worthy of notice. In the course of eighty-two years he experienced no reverse of fortune, no great disappointment, and—with the one, though terrible, exception of the death of his first wife—no great sorrow beyond what is the lot of all men. We know that fortune favours the brave. It favours also those who to ability and temper join prudence, courtesy, and careful, systematic, painstaking industry.
At the age of 82 Reeve had outlived all of his contemporaries—the men who had associated with him and worked with him in his youth. Their opinion of him is only to be gauged by the fact that, with but few and easily explained exceptions, the friendships of his early manhood were broken only by the grave. The number of friends of forty or fifty years' standing who died during the last decade of his life is very remarkable. As these are wanting, I am happy in being able to conclude this tribute to his memory by two appreciations, one English, the other French; the first, from and representing the 'Edinburgh Review' to which it was contributed in January 1896, by Mr. W. E. H. Lecky.
'Although it has never been the custom of this "Review" to withdraw the veil of anonymity from its writers and its administration, it would be mere affectation to suffer this number to appear before the public without some allusion to the great Editor whom we have just lost, and who for forty years has watched with indefatigable care over our pages.
'The career of Mr. Henry Reeve is perhaps the most striking illustration in our time of how little in English life influence is measured by notoriety. To the outer world his name was but little known. He is remembered as the translator of Tocqueville, as the editor of the "Greville Memoirs," as the author of a not quite forgotten book on Royal and Republican France, showing much knowledge of French literature and politics; as the holder during fifty years of the respectable, but not very prominent, post of Registrar of the Privy Council. To those who have a more intimate knowledge of the political and literary life of England, it is well known that during nearly the whole of his long life he was a powerful and living force in English literature; that few men of his time have filled a larger place in some of the most select circles of English social life; and that he exercised during many years a political influence such as rarely falls to the lot of any Englishman outside Parliament, or indeed outside the Cabinet.
'He was born at Norwich in 1813, and brought up in a highly cultivated, and even brilliant, literary circle. His father, Dr. Reeve, was one of the earliest contributors to this Review. The Austins, the Opies, the Taylors, and the Aldersons were closely related to him, and he is said to have been indebted to his gifted aunt, Sarah Austin, for his appointment in the Privy Council. The family income was not large, and a great part of Mr. Reeve's education took place on the Continent, chiefly at Geneva and Munich. He went with excellent introductions, and the years he spent abroad were abundantly fruitful. He learned German so well that he was at one time a contributor to a German periodical. He was one of the rare Englishmen who spoke French almost like a Frenchman, and at a very early age he formed friendships with several eminent French writers. His translation of the "Democracy in America," by Tocqueville, which appeared in 1835, strengthened his hold on French society. Two years later he obtained the appointment in the Privy Council, which he held until 1887. It was in this office that he became the colleague and fast friend of Charles Greville, who on his death-bed entrusted him with the publication of his "Memoirs."
'Mr. Reeve had now obtained an assured income and a steady occupation, but it was far from satisfying his desire for work. He became a contributor, and very soon a leading contributor, to the "Times," while his close and confidential intercourse with Mr. Delane gave him a considerable voice in its management. The penny newspaper was still unborn, and the "Times" at this period was the undisputed monarch of the press, and exercised an influence over public opinion, both in England and on the Continent, such as no existing paper can be said to possess. It is, we believe, no exaggeration to say that for the space of fifteen years nearly every article that appeared in its columns on foreign politics was written by Mr. Reeve, and the period during which he wrote for it included the year 1848,—when foreign politics were of transcendent importance.
'The great political influence which he at this time exercised naturally drew him into close connexion with many of the chief statesmen of his time. With Lord Clarendon especially his friendship was close and confidential, and he received from that statesman almost weekly letters during his Viceroyalty in Ireland and during other of the more critical periods of his career. In France Mr. Reeve's connexions were scarcely less numerous than in England. Guizot, Thiers, Cousin, Tocqueville, Villemain, Circourt—in fact, nearly all the leading figures in French literature and politics during the reign of Louis Philippe were among his friends or correspondents. He was at all times singularly international in his sympathies and friendships, and he appears to have been more than once made the channel of confidential communications between English and French statesmen.