secret treaties signed with Russia and Turkey.

During the third act the British public went mad. Crowds patrolled the London streets shrieking for war, howling over Gladstone as a traitor and threatening to pull down his house brick by brick, so that a force of police had to be kept in readiness to prevent disaster. One Sunday three different parties arrived, one friendly, the others hostile, and in spite of the police all the windows were broken. There were other and worse demonstrations, on one occasion Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone being dragged from the steps and mobbed. “There is strange work behind the curtain,” said Gladstone; “the instigators are really those guilty; no one can wonder at the tools.” (It was by many believed that Disraeli’s hatred of Gladstone had caused these personal attacks.)

A few days after the breaking of his windows Gladstone received a post-office order for £3 10_s._, the sender, a working man, saying that he was so ashamed of what had happened that he, his wife and family had scraped together money to repair the damage.

At this time Beaconsfield said to a friend, “I have got the Parliament and the nation at my back, and if I were ten years younger I could settle all Europe.” Yet his fall, the result of his own Imperialism, was not far off, for the inevitable reaction against a too enthusiastic jingoism had set in.

But before that happened his career was to receive its crown at that European Congress at Berlin suggested by Bismarck. He attained the dream of his life, and one feels glad that, whatever his faults, this ambitious man of “dissolving views,” this “melancholy harlequin,” as Carlyle dubbed him, should have attained to that fugitive glory which appealed to his soul. He made himself plenipotentiary with Lord Salisbury at the Berlin Congress, and through Germany his journey was a progress in the midst of a curious, gratified and acclamatory people. This hollow fraud of a congress had its humorous incidents, for Beaconsfield, knowing that the official language would be French, but speaking that language very badly, determined to make his speech in that tongue, and he learned it by heart under the tuition of his fellow minister. Lord Odo Russell, the ambassador in Berlin, was in despair, and had the wit, on being appealed to, to say--

“But that will be a great disappointment.”

“Why?”

“Because, knowing that you are a great master of English eloquence, every one has been looking forward to your addressing the Congress in English as to an intellectual treat.”

“You don’t say so!” replied Beaconsfield musingly, and the French speech was torn up. His French was so poor that he found it very difficult to follow the other speakers, and each day before setting out drank three tumblers of good port to steady his nerves.

To the public the Conference seemed a great thing, but in reality it was a pretence. Two secret treaties had already been signed, and in face of Victoria’s insistence upon her right to pass every detail of diplomatic affairs, it must be supposed that this was done with her sanction. One treaty gave Russia part of what it wanted, approximating to Gladstone’s “bag and baggage” policy; the other was a convention with Turkey, promising to defend that country in Asia, and demanding the cession of Cyprus.

These treaties were published in the _Globe_ four days after the plenipotentiaries had started for Berlin, through the instrumentality of a clerk, engaged temporarily in copying at the Foreign Office. He was accused at Bow Street of stealing information, but the charge was quashed as the Government dared not risk publicity. Thus, as Moncure Conway wrote, “the whole theatric display ended with the grand London Ballet, _Aphrodite_, of which Cyprus was the scene, Beaconsfield and the Queen of Cyprus the hero and heroine.”

At the Conference the Russian minister and Beaconsfield had a sparring match to keep up appearances, and then came to an agreement, upon which the English hero telegraphed to his sovereign that he had secured peace with honour. Joyous meetings were held all over the country. No one understood anything about it, except that the Prime Minister had in some wonderful way assured a glorious peace to our land, and some people did not even comprehend that. For at one gathering, when a great transparency of Beaconsfield and Salisbury was shown, a woman accosted the sitting member of the place with--

“Please, sir, will you tell me which is Peace?” (the murderer).

But the “peace with honour” was only three weeks old when “the bloody overture was being played all over again,” and the newspapers were filled with accounts of a new campaign, involving Austria, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina. As _The Hornet_, of Conservative politics said, the phrase was “a claptrap euphemism for rapine, pillage and slaughter.”

Gladstone, who knew the inner workings of this wonderful diplomatic affair, angered Beaconsfield by describing the Conference as an insane convention; so the latter gave utterance at a dinner to the famous retort that Gladstone was “a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with that egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.”

The Queen honoured Beaconsfield on his return to England by conferring on him the Order of the Garter.

Like Bismarck, Beaconsfield was drunk with Imperialism, which inevitably means war. He had sent Sir Bartle Frere to South Africa and Lord Lytton to India, first imbuing both with his policy, and both obeyed not wisely but too well. South African affairs are so little known that it is difficult to judge what was or was not necessary in regard to the Zulus or the Boers, but general opinion decried Bartle Frere’s Zulu War as unnecessary. The withdrawal of Indian troops to Malta caused a threatening movement by Russia upon Afghanistan, and Lytton retaliated by taking steps to establish English influence in that country, and so came the Afghan War.

The sensation of the South African War, apart from the later event of Majuba Hill, was the death of the Prince Imperial. It was his own fault from beginning to end, for he was a wilful, masterful person. He insisted upon joining the English force that, by proving himself on the field, he might make himself acceptable to France; yet there were hints that one motive was said to be a love affair with a girl at Chislehurst. Popular report, however, insisted that there was an attachment between him and Princess Beatrice, and much sympathy was felt for her when the news came.

Though the Prince was only allowed to go as a spectator in the war area, he joined, in spite of remonstrance, in reconnaissance work, and further, when the little force was starting on the morning of the fatality, he insisted upon going away with half of it, refusing to wait for the others, who were late. In the afternoon, when Lieutenant Carey urged the necessity of returning, he refused to shorten his siesta, and so was caught. It was almost as though the gods intended his death. To his mother at Chislehurst it brought terrible sorrow, and no one showed her such sympathy and loving-kindness as Queen Victoria, who had learned through grief how to assuage grief. The latter wanted Parliament to put up a statue to him in Westminster, and even visited the Abbey to select a spot, persuading Gladstone, ever pliant to her in sentimental matters, to support the idea; but it was refused on the grounds of policy and nationality, so she had to withdraw the request, contenting herself with putting a memorial in St. George’s Chapel.

These two wars were the death-knell to Beaconsfield’s political life. The people were beginning to tire of Jingoism, to feel a distrust of the Prime Minister’s foreign policy, and there was an alarming deficit in finance, for glory had to be paid for. However, neither the Queen nor Beaconsfield scented danger, for the latter’s love of show and power had run away with him. Without the inflexibility of Bismarck, he still further emulated that “blood and iron” statesman by declaring to his mistress that he desired to make her (poor little woman!) the Dictatress of Europe (and poor Europe!), writing, “Many things are preparing, which for the sake of peace and civilization render it most necessary that your Majesty should occupy that position.”

“Who knows what dreams of domination these two gave themselves up to in the communion of their souls, this subjugated woman and this prodigious actor?”[21]

London still applauded the Prime Minister, the clubs entertaining him, and neither he nor the Queen looked for signs into the country or among those who felt the economic pinch. Her anger was still hot against Gladstone for his opposition to Beaconsfield. In the spring, when Arthur of Connaught was married to Princess Louise Margaret, third daughter of Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, she offered the public affront to Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone of refusing to ask them to the wedding, though Beaconsfield himself urged it, and though Gladstone had again thrown his influence on her side in the matter of settlements. But she did more than this. Knowing that the Gladstones often visited the Wellesleys at the Deanery at Windsor, Victoria wrote to the Dean suggesting that, as Mr. Gladstone was making violent attacks on the Government, it would be as well to cause these visits to be discontinued. “Whereupon,” said the stout old Dean, “I wrote her a tickler.” Imagination boggles at the thought, says Mr. G. W. E. Russell, who tells the story.

In the autumn of 1879 Gladstone was invited to contest Midlothian, and he started at the end of November on that remarkable campaign which, for a man who a year before had congratulated himself if he walked a short distance in London without being insulted, whose very friends feared his eloquence and his energy, was a bewildering and enthusiastic progress through town after town, ever surrounded by cheering crowds. Beaconsfield called it the Pilgrimage of Passion.

Viscount Esher tells a story, which is hardly parliamentary, of George Hamilton attacking Gladstone in a public speech during this campaign. “And why did Mr. Gladstone do this, and why did he do the other? I will tell you why. Mr. Gladstone has an eye on the Treasury Bench.” Upon this a man in the crowd cried out, “Yes, and if you don’t look out he will have his b--m on it soon.”

In his speeches Gladstone did not spare either the Prime Minister or the Government, and Victoria’s indignation was intense, she declaring both in conversation and in letters that his attacks on her favourite were shameful and disgraceful. It is certain that, had the case been reversed, she would have thought Beaconsfield justified in using the highest and lowest of his enormous range of rhetoric and invective against Gladstone. But with high hearts, still sure that the people must see with their eyes and look forward to a glorious future under their foreign policy, the Queen and Beaconsfield decided in March 1880 that the Government must go to the country; and Victoria went to visit Germany, to stay in the home of her dear lost daughter, in thorough confidence as to the result. But from the very first day of the elections it was evident that a tremendous reaction had set in, and when all was done the Liberals had a majority in England, Wales and Scotland of 119. Thus ended what Madame Blaze de Bury described as “the reign of the mad Caliph.”

Beaconsfield was staying at Hatfield alone, for Salisbury was abroad, and as the news rolled in upon him, hour by hour, he faced the ruins of his hopes as a great man, accepting with a seemingly undisturbed mind the conviction of his final downfall; and turned to the completing of his last novel, _Endymion_. He had reached to the very summit of honour, had refused a dukedom offered by his distressed queen, and felt that he had no time left in which to regret lost dreams. Lord Ronald Gower says that he gave himself two more years of life, and the Queen twenty. He also once remarked, “Bismarck and I were perfectly in accord. Had the late Government lasted we would have kept the democrats in Europe in check; but now all is over!” He did not realize that the very desire to keep a living force in check had helped to bring about his own downfall.

Exactly a year later, on April 19, 1881, Beaconsfield died of gout and bronchitis, saying during his illness, “I would confess anything, if I were a Nihilist, under my torture.” When he was dying one watching doctor said, “I think the old gentleman is gone at last,” and Dizzy, humorous to the end, quietly remarked, “Not yet.”

The Queen asked, and Gladstone offered, a public funeral, but the statesman had wished to lie by his wife. As had been her burial, so was his, the coffin being carried through the grounds of Hughenden to the churchyard; but the service was attended by many uninvited princes, ambassadors and country people.

Victoria, writing later in the year on the death of the Duchess of Westminster, said, “_I_ don’t understand the wish to be buried in a churchyard, but I _know some_ vaults are gloomy and painful.” She sent two wreaths for the grave, the one of immortelles inscribed, “With the true affection, respect and friendship of the Queen”; the other was a wreath of primroses, with a card bearing the words, “_His_ favourite flower. Gathered at Osborne. A tribute of affection from Queen Victoria.”

Only one person was ever designated in this way without a name by Victoria; to her the pronoun thus used could refer only to one, Prince Albert. But sentimentalists rushed to the idea that Beaconsfield had loved the lowly primrose, and they still dedicate the flower to his memory. He was once asked--I forget by whom--if he liked the primrose, and replied, “Yes, in a salad.” On the other hand he is reported to have said, “I like to be in the country when the primroses are out.” That Beaconsfield, with his love of colour and gorgeousness, with his eyes always raised to the stars of fame, with his wild ambition to rule Europe, had the right sentiment to love a lowly yellow blossom is unthinkable. But to Prince Albert, deeply interested in wood and field, in life animate and inanimate, such a preference was natural. The Queen, seeing in the primrose cult a new agent in strengthening Conservatism, never declared what her sentence had meant.

However, some of us still smile over Primrose Day, but many sorrow over the devastation of field, hedgerow and coppice, over the bespoiled country and the children who seek and cannot find the yellow flowers after that murderous spring day has passed.

A week after the funeral two women clad in mourning entered the churchyard at Hughenden. The elder woman was Queen Victoria, and she went alone to Beaconsfield’s grave, where, weeping, she laid a wreath and a cross of white camellias--far better emblem of the dead man’s tastes--upon it. She then joined her daughter Beatrice and went to the Manor, resting awhile in his study. The following year she ordered a monument to be put in Hughenden Church, upon which was inscribed--

“To the dear and honoured memory of Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, this memorial is raised by his grateful and affectionate Sovereign and friend, Victoria, R.I. Kings love them that speaketh right.”

Some of those who still thought of the Bulgarian atrocities made the reverse comment that “Queens love them that speaketh wrong.” Beaconsfield’s supporters were joyful over the evidence that the Queen was on their side, but a little later they found that she could be equally eulogistic about a quite different person.

The dreadful strain which had been put upon the loyalty of England for five years was over. If you read the remarkable essays already mentioned, which were written by H. Dunckley in the _Manchester Guardian_ and signed “Verax,” in 1878, it will be easier to understand how the whole constitution tottered under the combined actions of Victoria and Beaconsfield. As the Hon. G. W. E. Russell says in his _An Onlooker’s Notebook_, “That the strain did not reach bursting-point was beyond all question due to the facts that the throne was occupied by a queen, and that the real leader of the militant Opposition was the man who of all others most ardently cherished the principle of chivalrous loyalty to the Crown.”

Englishmen would never have borne from a king what they passed over as coming from a queen.