Tales from Westminster Abbey Told to Children

by Mrs. Frewen Lord; Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

Handel was the son of a German doctor, and was born in a little German town. As a boy he was very fond of music, but as his father meant him to be a lawyer, he would not let him hear any for fear that he would want to be a musician. Once,[23] when George was seven years old, his father went to visit another son who lived at the court of the Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. The little boy, who had most likely heard his brother speak of the court concerts, begged to go too, but of course he was told that it was impossible. His father drove off, but still George determined to go. He managed to slip out, and ran as long as he could after the carriage. At last he was seen and taken in, and as there was no time to bring him home, he went with his father to the court. He soon made friends among the duke’s musicians, who let him try the organ. One day after the service he was lifted on to the organ-stool, and played so wonderfully that the duke, who was in church, asked who it was. When he heard that it was the little seven-year-old Handel, he sent for his father, and told him that his son would one day be such a great musician that it would be quite wrong to make him a lawyer. So from that day George was regularly taught music. When he was older he came to England, and here he lived most of his life, and here he wrote most of the music which is known almost all over the world. He used to give concerts at the English court, to which the Prince of Wales, the son of George II., and the princess, and many great people came. Sometimes at these concerts ladies would talk instead of listening to the music, and then Handel quite lost his temper. “His rage was uncontrollable,” so we are told, “and sometimes carried him to the length of swearing and calling names; whereupon the gentle princess would say to the offenders, ‘Hush, hush! Handel is angry;’ and when all was quiet the concert would go on again.” Handel, when he was old, became quite blind, but he still played the organ up to the very end of his life. He died on Good Friday, April 13, 1759, and was buried in the Abbey, and on his monument are written the words, “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” from the Book of Job, which he had set to most beautiful music, and had asked to have written upon his tomb.

I have only spoken to you of Geoffrey Chaucer and of Alfred Tennyson, the first and the last poets who were buried in the Abbey; of Shakespeare, the greatest of all English poets, and of George Frederick Handel, the musician; but very many others are remembered in Poets’ Corner. And when you some day walk round the Abbey you will see there the graves or monuments of most of the great English writers.

The north transept is full of the graves and monuments of statesmen. A great many of them you must have heard of, and some of you perhaps belong to the Primrose League, which was founded in 1881 in memory of Benjamin Disraeli,[24] Lord Beaconsfield, whose monument is in the Abbey. He was twice Prime Minister of England, and when he died the Primrose League (the badge of which is a primrose, and which was chosen because it was said to be his favourite flower) was started to band people together to carry on the work and help on the political party to which he had belonged. Then there are monuments to three members of one family—the family of Canning—who were all great statesmen. George Canning,[25] who was born as long ago as 1770, became known as a wonderful orator. When he was quite a small boy at school he used to say that he meant some day to be a member of Parliament, and at Eton he helped to start a debating society which was modelled on the House of Commons. Here his speeches soon became famous among the boys. He lived to be not only a member of Parliament, but Prime Minister of England. His youngest son Charles,[26] who was also a great man, became Earl Canning and first Viceroy of India.

“The third great Canning” was Stratford Canning[27] (a cousin of Charles), who has been called “the greatest ambassador of our time,” and who before he died was made Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, by which name he is best known. Each of these three great men gave all his time and all his strength to work for the good of his country. Two of them, George Canning and his son, the Viceroy of India, are buried in one grave here in the Abbey. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, although his statue stands side by side with the monuments to his uncle and cousin, is buried in the little country churchyard of Frant, in Kent.

Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was an old man of ninety-three when he died. He had done so much, and known so many great and interesting people, that the story of his life is a book you will all like to read some day. One of the first things he remembered was how, when he was a little boy at school, he had seen Lord Nelson. It was at Eton, and Nelson, “with all his wounds and all his honours”—for so Lord Stratford describes him—came down to see the boys, and asked that they might have a whole holiday. More than eighty years afterwards, when Lord Stratford de Redcliffe died, there was found in his room a little picture of Lord Nelson, which he had kept ever since those far-off school days.

I remember Dean Stanley telling us that when Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was a very old man he remembered quite clearly what he had learnt and done when he was a little child at home. “Not long ago,” the Dean said, “I was visiting this aged and famous statesman, and he repeated to me, word for word, the Evening Hymn beginning ‘Glory to Thee, my God, this night,’ as he had learnt it, he told me, from his nurse ninety years before.”

I must not end this chapter without telling you the names of three more great statesmen. You will often hear the two Pitts and William Wilberforce spoken of, and I should like to say a few words about all three before beginning the stories of the kings and queens.

William Pitt[28] was Prime Minister of England, and was made Lord Chatham by King George III. He and his son, the younger William Pitt,[29] are as well known to all Englishmen as George Canning and his son Earl Canning, about whom I have told you. Lord Chatham was, like George Canning, a great orator, and even when he was very old and very ill, he would come down to the Houses of Parliament and make wonderful speeches, which sometimes lasted as long as three hours and a half, but which were so interesting that they were listened to in perfect silence; “the stillness,” it is said, “was so deep that the dropping of a handkerchief would have been heard.” When he died he was buried in the Abbey; and in the same grave, twenty-eight years afterwards, was buried his son William, the second Pitt, who was an even greater statesman than his father. This William was, when quite a little boy, astonishingly clever. “The fineness of William’s mind,” wrote his mother, in the old-fashioned words of those times, “makes him enjoy with the greatest pleasure what would be above the reach of any other creature of his small age.” He was too delicate to be sent to school, but he was made to work hard at home till he was old enough to be sent to Cambridge. Although a very young man when he became a member of Parliament, his first speech in the House was a great success. “It is not a chip of the old block,” said some one who heard him—“it is the old block himself;” meaning that this speech of young William Pitt was as good as any his father had made. When he first became Prime Minister he was only just twenty-four years old, and from that time until he died (twenty-four years afterwards) he was one of the most illustrious men in Europe. He and Wilberforce,[30] the last of the statesmen about whom I must tell you, were both very much interested in one thing—and this was the abolition of (or doing away with) slavery. The name of Wilberforce will never be forgotten, for he it was who first thought and said that slavery ought to be put an end to, all over the world, wherever Englishmen were the rulers. Wilberforce and William Pitt were once staying together in a country house not far from London, and sitting together one day under an old tree in the park, they began to talk about slavery, and to say how terrible a thing it was that the lives of hundreds and thousands of men and women and children were made full of misery by cruel masters who worked their slaves far harder than they worked their horses or their oxen. “I well remember,” wrote Mr. Wilberforce in his Diary, “after this conversation with Mr. Pitt I resolved to give notice in the House of Commons of my intention to bring forward the abolition of the slave-trade.” And not long afterwards Wilberforce made a great speech in the House of Commons about slavery, and in the end a law was passed to do away with the slave-trade. Wherever the English flag was flying there should be no slavery, and a slave who could once set foot on any land held by Englishmen became a free man.

When Pitt died Wilberforce was one of those who carried a banner in the great funeral procession, when he was buried, as I have told you, in the same grave with his father, the first Pitt. Many years afterwards Wilberforce too “was buried there amongst his friends,” and in another part of the Abbey there is a large statue of him, as an old and bent man, sitting in an armchair. When you go round the Abbey you must look for this monument, for it is said to be very like him during the last part of his life.

But we can spend no more time now in telling stories of statesmen, and must in the next chapter go on to the kings and queens.