The letter tendered to the Queen in the box was this:—
Mr. Gladstone presents his most humble duty to your Majesty. The close of the session and the approach of a new one have offered Mr. Gladstone a suitable opportunity for considering the condition of his sight and hearing, both of them impaired, in relation to his official obligations. As they now place serious and also growing obstacles in the way of the efficient discharge of [pg 515] those obligations, the result has been that he has found it his duty humbly to tender to your Majesty his resignation of the high offices which your Majesty has been pleased to intrust to him. His desire to make this surrender is accompanied with a grateful sense of the condescending kindnesses, which your Majesty has graciously shown him on so many occasions during the various periods for which he has had the honour to serve your Majesty. Mr. Gladstone will not needlessly burden your Majesty with a recital of particulars. He may, however, say that although at eighty-four years of age he is sensible of a diminished capacity for prolonged labour, this is not of itself such as would justify his praying to be relieved from the restraints and exigencies of official life. But his deafness has become in parliament, and even in the cabinet, a serious inconvenience, of which he must reckon on more progressive increase. More grave than this, and more rapid in its growth, is the obstruction of vision which arises from cataract in both his eyes. It has cut him off in substance from the newspapers, and from all except the best types in the best lights, while even as to these he cannot master them with that ordinary facility and despatch which he deems absolutely required for the due despatch of his public duties. In other respects than reading the operation of the complaint is not as yet so serious, but this one he deems to be vital. Accordingly he brings together these two facts, the condition of his sight and hearing, and the break in the course of public affairs brought about in the ordinary way by the close of the session. He has therefore felt that this is the fitting opportunity for the resignation which by this letter he humbly prays your Majesty to accept.
In the course of the day the Queen wrote what I take to be her last letter to him:—
Windsor Castle, March 3, 1894.—Though the Queen has already accepted Mr. Gladstone's resignation, and has taken leave of him, she does not like to leave his letter tendering his resignation unanswered. She therefore writes these few lines to say that she thinks that after so many years of arduous labour and responsibility he is right in wishing to be relieved at his age of these arduous duties. And she trusts he will be able to enjoy peace and quiet with his excellent and devoted wife in health and happiness, and that his eyesight may improve.
The Queen would gladly have conferred a peerage on Mr. Gladstone, but she knows he would not accept it.
His last act in relation to this closing scene of the great official drama was a letter to General Ponsonby (March 5):—
The first entrance of a man to Windsor Castle in a responsible character, is a great event in his life; and his last departure from it is not less moving. But in and during the process which led up to this transaction on Saturday, my action has been in the strictest sense sole, and it has required me in circumstances partly known to harden my heart into a flint. However, it is not even now so hard, but that I can feel what you have most kindly written; nor do I fail to observe with pleasure that you do not speak absolutely in the singular. If there were feelings that made the occasion sad, such feelings do not die with the occasion. But this letter must not be wholly one of egotism. I have known and have liked and admired all the men who have served the Queen in your delicate and responsible office; and have liked most, probably because I knew him most, the last of them, that most true-hearted man, General Grey. But forgive me for saying you are “to the manner born”; and such a combination of tact and temper with loyalty, intelligence, and truth I cannot expect to see again. Pray remember these are words which can only pass from an old man to one much younger, though trained in a long experience.
It is hardly in human nature, in spite of Charles v., Sulla, and some other historic persons, to lay down power beyond recall, without a secret pang. In Prior's lines that came to the mind of brave Sir Walter Scott, as he saw the curtain falling on his days,—
The man in graver tragic known,
(Though his best part long since was done,)