Gladstone's Death and Funeral

Gladstone’s Death and Funeral H. C. G. Matthew marks the centenary of Gladstone’s death. Few political deaths can have been so anticipated as came known as the ‘Declaration’ (on his sexual life and the extent of its improprieties); and he that of William Ewart Gladstone on May . wrote the final entry in the daily diary he had Though years old when he died, Gladstone had begun while a schoolboy in . All was thus been in harness until March , when he resigned in order. But death was not to be so neat. Gladstone’s remarkably tough body put up a for the fourth and last time as prime minister. He strong fight. His habit of tree-felling – so de- had first been in office in , so his was a -year rided bv his contemporaries and subsequently long career which began before the reign of Queen – had kept him in excellent shape. His main problem was his eyesight, for which he had an Victoria and lasted almost to the end of it. Moreover; operation for cataract in his right eye in May though in his last administration he had clearly been ; this helped in that eye, but cataract near to retirement, his government had been no quickly developed in the left eye, and a further operation was thought inadvisable. Apart from nostalgic parade. He had carried through the House this difficulty, Gladstone remained apparently of Commons a Home Rule for Ireland Bill, and healthy. When he and his wife left to winter in Cannes in November , with Gladstone had thus demonstrated that such a thing was possible, feeling pain from neuralgia on one side of his even though it was immediately thrown out by the face, his former secretary noted: ‘He has always House of Lords almost without debate. Nor had made the most of his ailments ... one must make allowance for some exaggeration ... Apart from Gladstone been silent once he had retired. His last glumness and depression I could see no sign campaign was an appeal for justice for the Armenians of increased failure either mentally or physi- against persecution, made during a great speech at cally.’ In fact Gladstone was suffering from the cancer which killed him. While in France, he Hengler’s Circus in Liverpool, the town of his birth, had to take opiates but he refused close medi- on September , which had occasioned the cal examination until he came home. He lis- resignation of Lord Rosebery from the leadership tened a great deal to music and his family no- ticed that his usual daily round of reading and of the Liberal Party. Gladstone’s final illness and death correspondence was in effect abandoned. Even was that of an old man, but one still very much in so, he was able to give an interview to the Daily Telegraph on Arthur Hallam, his Eton friend in the public eye. the s and the subject of Tennyson’s In A slow and semi-public death Memoriam; the Telegraph published it on Janu- ary in the form of an article, the last of After retirement from politics – he did not his many literary publications. stand for his Midlothian constituency at the The Gladstones in March returned to general election of – Gladstone rather sys- Britain a disconsolate party, and went to tematically prepared himself and his affairs for Bournemouth, as an intermediate temperature death. In the same month as his retirement from between the balmy Mediterranean and the the premiership he discussed with his wife bracing cold of wintery Hawarden Castle, the Catherine arrangements for their funerals (un- family home in North Wales where Gladstone fortunately, no details of this conversation re- had told his family he wished to die. He was main). At the end of he wrote his third examined in Bournemouth by his doctor; and final will; he made what in his familv be- Samuel Habershon, who found a swelling on 38 journal of liberal democrat history 20: autumn 1998 the palate; the leading cancer sur- to press; but this meant the profit- rangements which followed and in- geon, Sir Thomas Smith, diagnosed able sell-out of extra special editions deed proceedings were already in cancer; but it was decided not to op- mid-morning. The press had had place before Gladstone died. In his erate. An announcement was made ample time to prepare: special sup- will Gladstone gave three directives: to the press which made it clear that plements were issued with the main an absolute requirement that he death was imminent. papers and memorial books and should not be buried where his wife Gladstone returned to Hawarden pamphlets of photographs were at might not subsequently be laid also; on March, but he did not die once on sale. Newspapers could not the instruction that ‘no laudatory in- quickly. His final months occasioned then print photographs, and had to scription’ be placed over him; and intense public interest, with a squad fall back on drawings; most of them the statement that his burial was ‘to of press reporters based in Hawarden therefore either produced their own be very simple unless they (his Ex- keeping the world in touch with de- photographic books or had a part- ecutors) shall consider that there are velopments by telegraph. A stream nership with a publisher heavily ad- conclusive reasons to the contrary’. of Liberal potentates visited to pay vertised in the new papers, for which This might be seen as a simple pref- their respects. Gladstone received even the most staid carried unusu- erence for a simple burial, or it might them on his sofa, still getting up each ally large advertisements. be seen a characteristic piece of day to dress and to dine. He calcu- Gladstone’s death was thus the Gladstonian ambivalence – wanting lated how many days of his working second British death which was a to appear simple while leaving the life had been lost by illness (he could media event of the modern sort (the door open for a public funeral. Even remember the dates of all significant first had been the death of Gordon before his death, the family had illnesses, for they were few) and he in , for which Gladstone was opted for the latter. refused to take many opiates despite much blamed – but that was in the A public funeral was one paid for the pain, on the grounds that he Sudan and without direct reporting, by Parliament through a resolution would be ‘falling into bad habits’. He and Gordon’s body was never to the monarch. It was, and remains, regaled his visitors with hymns, es- found). Intimate descriptions of a very rare event. In the nineteenth pecially J. H. Newman’s ‘Praise to the Gladstone’s body on the deathbed – century only Nelson, Pitt the Holiest in the Height’. On April of a sort probably unacceptable to- Younger, Charles James Fox, R. B. Gladstone went out of doors for the day – immediately appeared in the Sheridan, George Canning, the last time; on April he ceased to Daily News, the main Liberal paper Duke of Wellington, Palmerston, and come downstairs; and about this time in London: ‘the figure on which I Napier of Magdala had been so bur- he made his last communion, cel- looked down, tremulous, might be ied (several had been offered and ebrated by G. H. Wilkinson, Bishop some beautiful statue of grayish declined, for example Beaconsfield of St Andrews. Nursed by Kate Pitts, white marble lying recumbent upon and Russell). Palmerston was the best Gladstone continued to get out of a tombstone ... only a very few of precedent (and he had made the bed for a time each day, but bv mid- the intimate friends of the family same requirement about his wife), May it was clear that he would soon have passed through this dim cham- but he had died in the Parliamen- die. Just after a.m. on the morning ber of death, just pausing for a mo- tary recess and the procedures had of Ascension Day, Thursday May, ment by the bedside to cast a fleet- had to be short-circuited. The Wel- with his wife, eight other members ing, a reverent look’. But of those lington funeral had been a lavish but of the family and three doctors few, most then published their ob- rather chaotic affair; the catafalque round the bed, Gladstone was pro- servations. Sir William Blake Rich- being too heavy for the road which nounced dead. mond, who made a drawing of gave way under it in St James’ and However much anticipated, this Gladstone just after death (dedicated too large to get through the gates of was an event reported throughout to Nurse Pitts), also issued a detailed St Paul’s (where both Nelson and the world. The pressmen were wait- (if romanticised) verbal portrait of Wellington were buried) and the ing in the smoking room immedi- the dead prime minister. These re- congregation was thus kept waiting ately underneath Gladstone’s bed- ports were not regarded as intrusive for over an hour. Gladstone’s funeral room and they knew that he was nor were they resented bv the fam- was to be the first public funeral with dead when the stentorian voice of ily, for they fitted with the Victorian a recognisedly modern aspect – Stephen Gladstone intoning the view of death as something both worldwide press coverage via tel- prayers for the dying and the dead reverential and ordinary. egraph and the procession filmed. echoed around the corridors of The arrangements for a public fu- Hawarden Castle. Gladstone’s timing neral are, like those of a coronation, was in a way inconvenient, for al- Plans for the public in the hands of the Earl Marshal, the though the news was immediately funeral Duke of Norfolk.

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