THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
(After the Portrait by Count D’Orsay.)
deemed that a solemn vote of Parliament would confer additional distinction on the ceremony. It was thus determined that the body of the Duke should lie in the custody of a Guard of Honour until both Houses of Parliament could meet in November and pass a resolution in favour of burying, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Victor of Waterloo by the side of the Victor of the Nile. The pages of Hansard are full of the glowing tributes to the memory of the great Duke, paid by the foremost orators of the Senate. Of these, one of the most brilliant came from Mr. Disraeli, and it subsequently gave rise to a good deal of scandal. A morning paper published a translation—said to come from the pen of the late Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C.—of the eulogium passed by M. Thiers in the French Chamber on the Emperor Napoleon I. This certainly bore such a suspiciously close resemblance to Mr. Disraeli’s oration, that the English orator was accused of plagiarism. But the highest tribute of homage to the Duke of Wellington came from the English people, to whom the Duke seemed to embody all the manly virtues of their race. To this fact Mr. Cobden himself bears striking, though grudging, testimony in a letter to his friend Mr. Thomasson, of Bolton, condemning the militant policy which led to an ever-increasing war expenditure. “Let as ask ourselves candidly,” he writes, “whether the country at large is in favour of any other policy than that which has been pursued by the aristocracy, Whig and Tory, for a century and a half? The man who impersonated that policy more than any other was the Duke of Wellington, and I had the daily opportunity of witnessing, at the Great Exhibition last year, that all other objects of interest sank to insignificance, even in that collection of a world’s wonders, when he made his entry into the Crystal Palace. The frenzy of admiration and enthusiasm which took possession of a hundred thousand people of all classes at the very announcement of his name, was one of the most impressive lessons I ever had of the real tendencies of the English character.”[61]
On the announcement of the Duke’s death every town in England displayed the customary emblems of mourning. When, on the 10th of November, the arrangements for the public funeral were well advanced, the corpse was removed, under military escort, from Walmer Castle to the great hall in Chelsea Hospital, where it was received by the Lord Chamberlain, and laid in state on a bier prepared for the purpose. On the 11th, the Queen, Prince Albert, and their family privately visited the Hospital, and paid their last respects to their dead friend. After they left, the Chelsea Pensioners, the Life Guards and Grenadiers, and the children of the Duke of York’s Schools were admitted. On the 12th, the nobility and gentry who held tickets of admission from the Lord Chamberlain came, and then there ensued a scene of deplorable confusion. Eighteen thousand persons passed before the bier between nine o’clock in the morning and five in the afternoon, and many thousands more, after waiting wearily outside in rain and gusty weather, turned away hopelessly when darkness set in.
When the public appeared next day (Saturday) claiming admission, the crowd before the Hospital gates in the morning simply overwhelmed the police. As it grew and gathered, the press became unbearable, and a surging mass of spectators fought and struggled with each other for their lives. Yells of agony rent the air; men and women were knocked down, or fell fainting for want of breath. Screaming children were held aloft in the air to escape suffocation by mothers, who themselves disappeared every minute in the struggle. A great cloud of steam exhaled from the heaving multitude, and far and near the approaches were impassable. After some time the police, reinforced by soldiery, gained control over the crowd, and some 50,000 persons then passed through the hall. On Monday better arrangements prevailed, and 50,000 persons passed the body with the greatest ease. On Tuesday 60,000, and on Wednesday 65,000 persons were admitted. On Saturday three persons, and on Tuesday two, perished in the crush.
On Wednesday a squadron of cavalry conveyed the corpse to the Horse Guards.
As it became clear that the day of the funeral (the 18th of November) would be kept as one of almost religious solemnity, and that no business would be done in London, the Bills of Exchange and Notes (Metropolis) Bill was passed quickly through Parliament. It enacted that bills falling due on the 18th of November should become payable and be presented on the 17th, but that, if paid before 2 p.m. on the 19th, they should not be subject to charges for notarial protest.
On the morning of the 18th of November the great funeral pageant, which Charles Dickens irreverently termed “a masquerade dipped in ink,” passed to St. Paul’s, through streets draped in black. Heavy rain and biting wind did not prevent spectators from perching themselves all through the preceding night on every spot where a glimpse of the procession could be obtained. Windows, roofs of houses, porticoes, balconies, every “coign of vantage” were covered with mourners. A million and a half of spectators gazed at the procession, and few ever forgot the strange and sudden silence into which the multitude was everywhere hushed, when the head of the column appeared, led by the dark, frowning masses of the Rifle Brigade, marching to the beat of muffled drum and the wail of the “Dead March” in Saul. Solemnly,
“Sad and slow,
As fits an universal woe,”
one of the most wondrous of military pageants filed past to the strains of mournful martial music. When the car with the remains of the Duke appeared, a thrill of sorrowful emotion surged through the crowd at each point of the route, as they saw “warriors carry the warrior’s pall.” Strange unutterable thoughts were aroused at the sight of the narrow and curiously emblazoned tenement which contained all that Time and Death had left of him who had overcome the master of modern Europe, but who, in turn, had himself fallen before a Conqueror unconquerable by the mightiest. To this exaltation of feeling succeeded an outburst of homely grief when the Duke’s favourite charger, led by his venerable groom, appeared following his master’s coffin. When the procession came to Temple Bar it was received by the Lord Mayor and Corporation, and at ten minutes to twelve it reached St. Paul’s.