On the 22nd of June the Queen returned to Windsor, where she was visited by the Crown Prince and Princess of Germany and their family in July. A brilliant Review of 50,000 Volunteers was held before her on the 9th of July in Windsor Great Park. On the 18th her Majesty lost one of the most cherished friends of her family, the amiable Dean Stanley, who died somewhat suddenly of erysipelas. Dean Stanley, it has been well said, was the impersonation of the “sweetness and light” which the disciples of Mr. Matthew Arnold strive to impart to modern culture. His biography of the great Dr. Arnold has an assured place among the classical works of the Victorian age. His influence on the Anglican Church was that of a leader at once conciliatory and tolerant, and singularly susceptible to popular impulses and aspirations. His relations to the Royal Family were always close and intimate, and, as the husband of Lady Augusta Bruce, the Queen’s faithful personal friend and attendant for many years, his career was watched with great interest and sympathy by her Majesty. Churchmen and dissenters of all shades attended his funeral in Westminster Abbey, where he was buried in Henry VII.’s Chapel under a mountain of floral wreaths, one of the most superb being sent by the Queen. It was through Dean Stanley that the Queen made the personal acquaintance of Mr. Carlyle, who had died earlier in the year (the 5th of February), but without leaving behind him the sweet and sunny memories that cluster round Stanley’s name.
On the 24th of August the Queen arrived at Edinburgh, and took up her quarters at Holyrood Palace. In the afternoon she visited the Royal Infirmary, and on the following day she reviewed 40,000 Scottish Volunteers (who had come from the remotest parts of the country) in the great natural amphitheatre of the Queen’s Park. The spectacle was marred by the torrents of rain that fell all day, and the troops had to march past the saluting-point in a sea of slush and mud which reached nearly to their knees. The fine appearance and discipline of the men, the patience and hardihood with which they carried out their programme through all the miseries of the day, deeply touched the Queen. In spite of entreaties to the contrary, she persisted in sharing these discomforts with them, holding the review in an open carriage, in which she remained seated under a deluge of rain till the last regiment had defiled before her. From Edinburgh the Court proceeded to Balmoral. There the Queen received the melancholy news of the death of Mr. James A. Garfield, President of the United States, who had been shot by an assassin named Guiteau on the 2nd of July at the railway station at Washington. The wound was a mortal one, and, after lingering for many weeks in great pain, the President died on the 19th of September. The Queen sent a touching letter of sympathy to Mrs. Garfield, and ordered the Court to go into mourning, as if Mr. Garfield had been a member of the Royal caste. In this she had the concurrence of the people, who were profoundly moved by his tragic fate. His career, beginning in a log-hut in the backwoods of Ohio, and ending in the White House at Washington, was one of heroic achievement and independence, illustrating, in its various phases of vicissitude, the best qualities of Anglo-Saxon manhood.
At Balmoral the Royal holiday was marked by the appearance of the Queen at some of the local sports. The Prince and Princess of Wales were at Abergeldie, and the retainers of the two families were frequently in the habit of playing cricket matches with each other. One of these took place at Abergeldie in September, when the Queen and her family and a brilliant suite attended and witnessed the play, her Majesty taking a keen interest in the varying fortunes of the day, and eagerly stimulating her own people to strive for victory. After the cricket match there were “tugs of war.” In this struggle the Abergeldie team, who had lost the cricket match, retrieved their defeat by conquering the Queen’s retainers. On the 23rd of November the Court returned to Windsor, and soon afterwards it was announced that the Duke of Albany was to be married to the Princess Hélène of Waldeck-Pyrmont. On the 16th of December her Majesty left Windsor for Osborne.
The political movements of the Recess had been followed with growing anxiety by the Queen. Bye-elections and municipal elections seemed to show, not only that the hold of the Government on the country was becoming feebler, but that a working alliance between the Tories and the Irish Party had been formed. Mr. Parnell’s followers had been divided in opinion as to how they should treat the Land Act, some declaring that they should impede its working, others urging that every advantage should be taken of it. Mr. Parnell, after some hesitancy, united his Party on the policy of “testing” the Act. The Land League was directed to push into the Land Courts a series of “test cases,” that is to say, of cases where average rents were levied, so that a clear idea might be gained of the practical working of the Act. At the same time, the Irish people were led to believe that, unless the Act reduced the rent of Ireland from £17,000,000 to £3,000,000, that is to say, unless it reduced rent to “prairie value,” it would not do justice. The tenantry were warned by the Land League not to go into Court, but to stand aside till the decisions on the test cases were given. When Mr. Gladstone visited Leeds in the first week of October, he fiercely attacked Mr. Parnell for interfering between the tenants and the Law Courts. Mr. Parnell retorted in an acrid and contemptuous speech at Wexford on the 9th of October. On the 13th of October Mr. Parnell was arrested in Dublin as a “suspect” under the Coercion Act, and all his more prominent followers were in quick succession lodged in Kilmainham Jail. Mr. Healy was in England, and Mr. Biggar and Mr. Arthur O’Connor escaped the vigilance of the police and joined him. This coup d’état was somewhat theatrically contrived. It was so timed that Mr. Gladstone was able to announce it at a municipal banquet at the Guildhall, where he declared that the enemy had fallen, amidst rapturous shouts of applause. The Land Leaguers retaliated by issuing a manifesto to the Irish people to pay no rent whilst their leaders were in prison—a false step, for, in view of the opposition of the clergy, a strike against rent was not feasible. The Land League was then suppressed by Mr. Forster as an unlawful association, and agrarian outrages began to increase every day. According to the Nationalists, this was the natural and necessary result of locking up popular leaders, who could alone restrain the people. Mr. Forster, however, regarded the growth of the outrages as an act of vengeance on the part of the League, whose leaders secretly encouraged them. In Ulster, however, the Land Act worked well, and rents were reduced from 20 to 30 per cent. all round. Every week fresh drafts of “suspects” were lodged in jail, and as the year closed it became evident that Ireland was fast falling under the terrorism of the old secret societies.
THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE HIGHLANDS: TUG OF WAR—BALMORAL v. ABERGELDIE.
CHAPTER XXV.
ENGLAND IN EGYPT.
The Duke of Albany’s Marriage Announced—Mr. Bradlaugh Again—Procedure Reform—The Closure at Last—The Peers Co-operate with the Parnellites—Their Attacks on the Land Act—Mr. Forster’s Policy of “Thorough”—A Nation under Arrest—Increase in Outrages—Sir J. D. Hay and Mr. W. H. Smith bid for the Parnellite Vote—A Political Dutch Auction—The Radicals Outbid the Tories—Release of Mr. Parnell and the Suspects—The Kilmainham Treaty—Victory of Mr. Chamberlain—Resignation of Mr. Forster and Lord Cowper—The Tragedy in the Phœnix Park—Ireland Under Lord Spencer—Firm and Resolute Government—Coercion Revived—The Arrears Bill—The Budget—England in Egypt—How Ismail Pasha “Kissed the Carpet”—Spoiling the Egyptians—Mr. Goschen’s Scheme for Collecting the Debt—The Dual Control—The Ascendency of France—“Egypt for the Egyptians”—The Rule of Arabi—Riots in Alexandria—The Egyptian War—Murder of Professor Palmer—British Occupation of Egypt—The Queen’s Monument to Lord Beaconsfield—Attempt to Assassinate Her Majesty—The Queen’s Visit to Mentone—Marriage of the Duke of Albany.