In the spring the shadow of mourning fell over the nation. On the morning of the 19th of April Lord Beaconsfield, who had been ailing for some days, passed away peacefully to his last rest. Mr. Gladstone at once telegraphed to his relatives offering a public funeral in Westminster Abbey, but the executors were compelled to decline the honour. Lord Beaconsfield’s will directed that he should be buried beside his wife, and there were also legal obstacles that even the Queen’s personal wishes could not overcome.[173] His life, to use a favourite phrase of his own, was “really a romance,” and his career a long and brilliant adventure. His strength lay in his freedom from prejudices, in his intellectual detachment from English insularity, in his consummate knowledge of the foibles of the lower middle class whom he enfranchised. He achieved success by skilfully avoiding the mistake of Peel, who led his Party without educating it. Lord Beaconsfield did both. His fame as a writer of sparkling political burlesques, his command of invective, his wit, and his audacity won for him the ear of a Senate which loves men who can amuse it. The defection of the Peelites left the Tory Party, in 1846, intellectually poverty-stricken, and though a proud aristocracy long refused to recognise their most brilliant swordsman as their leader, they had to accept him at last.
At this period of his career the chief obstacle in Mr. Disraeli’s path was believed to be the hostility of the Queen, who, however, nobly atoned for it by subsequently loading him with favours. With the exception, perhaps, of Lord Aberdeen, no Minister of the present generation has been more sincerely beloved as a friend by his Sovereign than Lord Beaconsfield. He had the subtle tact and the delicate refinement of a woman, with the stubborn courage and iron will of a man. As for his policy and his principles, the time has not yet come to judge them fairly. He was no more to blame for bringing his generous democratic impulses to the service of the Tory Party than the eldest son of a Whig Peer is to blame for limping after the Radicals on the crutch of Conservative instincts. In the one case it is the tyranny of chance and opportunity, in the other the accident of birth, that determines the choice. All through life Mr. Disraeli had to fight his battle from false positions, and this gave his efforts an air of gladiatorial insincerity. Not till 1874, when he came to power with a large majority, was he entirely a free agent; and then it was seen that, though comparatively indifferent to questions of administration and questions involving the mere forms of Government, he took an eager and practical interest in social reform. For nearly two years he was at the zenith of his power. The House of Commons he managed with bright urbanity, easy grace, conciliatory dexterity, and a light but firm touch which had never been seen before. Suddenly and without the least warning his spell seemed broken. His fine tact disappeared; his touch grew hard and was felt to be a little irresolute; faint traces of irritability ruffled the clear surface of his serene intelligence; and in a sudden emergency he seemed to grow maladroit. The change first became obvious when he attempted to deal with Mr. Plimsoll’s case in 1875, and, as it grew, his personal ascendency over the House of Commons slowly decayed. He seemed to live more and more in dreams, and to grow less and less sensitive to the pulse of popular opinion. It was in this mood that he fell into the two disastrous blunders of his life.
LORD BEACONSFIELD’S HOUSE, 19, CURZON STREET, MAYFAIR.
He tried to solve the Eastern Question by applying to it the obsolete ideas of Palmerston. When this mistake led him from one embarrassment to another, he tried to retrieve the situation by applying his own ideas to it. Unfortunately, when he went to find them he looked, not into the depths of his own clear intelligence, but into a romance written by one whom he had known in his youth, and who was styled “D’Israeli the Younger.” “Yes,” he said to a friend who put the question to him in those days, “I sometimes do read ‘Tancred’ now—for instruction.” Because the stolid English people grew sick of vainly trying to shape their destinies according to the Tancredian scheme of the universe, Lord Beaconsfield fell from power at the moment when he was most fully persuaded that monarch and multitude were alike under the spell of his picturesque personality. Had he been ten years younger when he obtained the majority of 1874, the crash of 1880 would probably have been averted. There is a strange pathos in the close of this dazzling career. According to Sir Stafford Northcote, the last words he was understood to utter were these: “Is there any bad news in the Gazette?”[174]
On the 26th of April a spectacle, at once affecting and beautiful, took place in the church at Hughenden, where Lord Beaconsfield’s funeral was solemnised. His body had been transferred from London to High Wycombe, and thence conveyed to Hughenden Manor, without the slightest pomp or display of any kind. He, on whose accents the world was wont to hang breathlessly at supreme moments in its fate, received what is known in Bucks as “a walking funeral.” Nothing was to be seen of the ghastly mummery of undertakers. Only one feature in the simple obsequies gave any hint as to the place which the deceased had filled in the State. Before the bier walked his faithful servant, carrying on a cushion of crimson velvet an Earl’s coronet and the insignia of the Order of the Garter. Thus was he laid, as he wished, beside his wife. Notwithstanding his desire for privacy, nothing could prevent vast numbers of persons of wholly unofficial position, and in many cases indifferent to political partisanship, from attending to pay the illustrious dead the last homage of affection and respect. Uninvited guests in serried masses swarmed around the churchyard, and lined the road to Hughenden Manor. Royalty was present in the persons of the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Connaught, and Prince Leopold, the last-named representing the Queen.[175] Behind the Princes came the Ambassadors and representatives of foreign Powers, the friends of the deceased nobleman who were his colleagues in the Governments of 1868 and 1874, and the general body of invited friends. Among these Lord Beaconsfield left not a dry eye behind him. Not since the death of Fox had any Statesman been so affectionately mourned by the people to whom he had consecrated the powers of his brilliant genius.[176]
On the 30th of April the Queen and Princess Beatrice visited Lord Beaconsfield’s tomb, every precaution having been observed to prevent the fact of the Royal movements from becoming known in the district. At four o’clock Lord Rowton and Sir Philip Rose, with the Vicar of Hughenden, completed the arrangements for her Majesty’s reception. At half-past four her outriders passed through the lodge gate of Hughenden Manor, being followed rapidly by her carriage, which proceeded to the wicket gate, and stopped immediately at the entrance to the churchyard. Here the Queen and Princess Beatrice were received by Lord Rowton, with whom they walked to the south porch of the church. Her Majesty proceeded to the tomb, and, with tearful eyes, placed a votive wreath and cross of white camellias and other flowers beside the other offerings, which completely covered the lid of the coffin. She then drove through the grounds to the Manor House, and partook of tea in the saloon; after which she inspected the late Earl’s study and other apartments, and left Hughenden for Windsor.
Although diplomatic controversies had created much ill-feeling between the Governments of England and Russia, the Queen and the Czar had ever maintained the friendliest personal relations. It was, therefore, with the deepest pain that her Majesty was informed, on the 14th of March, of the assassination of Alexander II. The Czar was returning from a military review near St. Petersburg on Sunday, the 13th of March, when a bomb was thrown, which exploded behind the Imperial carriage, killing several soldiers. The Czar jumped out of the carriage to see to the poor men who were hurt, and it was to this kindly act that he owed his death. Another bomb was flung at his feet, which exploded and mangled his body in the most cruel manner. The Queen did what she could to console the Duchess of Edinburgh, who was prostrated with grief by her father’s death. The Court was ordered to go into mourning for a month. Both Houses of Parliament addressed messages of condolence to her Majesty and the Duchess of Edinburgh. The nation, with hardly a dissentient voice, echoed the sentiments of their representatives, and the Press was filled with generous tributes of admiration and respect for the Czar Emancipator. It was now recognised that Alexander II. would live in history as one of the most enlightened and humane of European Sovereigns. The great act of his life, the liberation of the Serfs, had converted them into communal peasant proprietors, and put them in a more secure position than any other peasantry in Europe. His devotion to the highest interests of Russia knew no limits, and no European Sovereign has, in our time, excelled him in the skill and wisdom with which he guided and moderated the aspirations of his excitable subjects. It was notorious that he was forced into the Turkish War by a current of popular feeling he could not withstand. On the other hand, when engaged in the war he quitted himself like a man. Tales of his well-known kindness of heart and sympathy for suffering spread from the camps and hospitals through Russia, and invested him in the eyes of the Slav race with the mystic halo of a Divine Figure. His firmness and