The Life of King Edward VII
beautiful in their varied colours and illuminations. The Lord Mayor and
Lady Mayoress entertained the Lord Mayor of Dublin and the Provincial
Mayors to a banquet at the Mansion House and, all over the United
Kingdom, celebrations of a popular or religious character, holiday
gatherings, crowded meetings and illuminations, marked the day and the
pleasure of the people. Addresses poured in by hundreds and rejoicings
were not confined to the Island portion of the Empire. An incident of
this celebration was the collection of a Thanksgiving Fund for the
completion of St. Paul's Cathedral. To it the Queen gave L1000 and the
Prince of Wales L500. Another feature of the event was the splendid
behaviour of the millions of people who lined the seven-mile route of
the procession and paid loyal tribute to their Queen and to the son who
was heir to all the traditions of his race and the greatness of the
Royal name. On February 29th Her Majesty wrote to Mr. Gladstone a
message intended for the nation:
"The Queen is anxious, as on a previous occasion, to express
publicly her own personal very deep sense of the reception she and
her dear children met with on Tuesday, February the 27th, from
millions of her subjects on her way to and from St. Paul's. Words
are too weak for the Queen to say how very deeply touched and
gratified she has been by the immense enthusiasm and affection
exhibited towards her dear son and herself, from the highest down
to the lowest, on the long progress through the Capital, and she
would earnestly wish to convey her warmest and most heartfelt
thanks to the whole nation for this great demonstration of loyalty.
The Queen, as well as her son and dear daughter-in-law, felt that
the whole nation joined with them in thanking God for sparing the
beloved Prince of Wales's life."
Perhaps the most beautiful and effective presentations of popular
feeling and hopes in connection with this now historic sickness of the
Heir Apparent were the sermons preached by Dean Stanley. No one has ever
been closer in friendship and in personal knowledge to the Prince of
Wales than had this eloquent and saintly ecclesiastic. No one has been
more admired and respected in the Church of England in modern days than
he; nor has any of its clergy possessed a wider view or more generous
heart. Speaking in Westminster Abbey on December 10th, 1871, when the
nation was awaiting in deep anxiety the issue of a struggle which seemed
to be almost fatally and surely decided, he embodied the popular feeling
in beautiful and appropriate words: "On a day like this when there is
one topic in every household, one question on every lip, it is
impossible to stand in this place and not endeavour to give some
expression to that of which every heart is full. We all press, as it
were, round one darkened chamber, we all feel that with the mourning
family, mother, wife, brothers, sisters, who are there assembled, we are
indeed one. The thrill of their fears or hopes passes through and
through the differences of rank and station; we feel that, while they
represent the whole people they also represent and are that which each
family and each member of each family, is separately. In the fierce
battle between life and death, for the issues of which we are all
looking with such eager expectation, we see the likeness of what will
befall every individual soul amongst us; and the reflection which this
struggle, with all its manifold uncertainties suggests, concerns us all
alike."
The sermon which followed was a skillful presentation of thoughts
suggested by the text, "To live is Christ and to die is gain." It
concluded with an earnest hope that the Royal life which might so
greatly influence the national destinies might still be preserved--"a
life which, if duly appreciated and fitly used, contains within it
special opportunities for good such as no other existence in this great
community possesses; a life which may, if worthily employed, stimulate
all that is noble and beneficent and discourage all that is low and base
and frivolous." In these and other words he concluded a sermon which
could not but have had its influence in after days upon the life and
character of the Prince who so greatly respected and regarded the
preacher. A week later the cloud had lifted from Sandringham and the
life which had been so much prayed for in so many lands was slowly
passing into the region of safety and strength. It gave the opportunity
to Dean Stanley to speak again at the historic Abbey in a strain of
instruction and to draw a national moral from the events of the past few
months. He referred to the spontaneous outburst of every class and every
party which had, to his mind, proved the permanent supremacy of the
British Crown in a Christian State. "There are nations and there have
been times in which the devotion to the reigning family has been a thing
separate and apart from the love of country. There have been times and
places when the love of country has existed with no loyal feeling to the
reigning family. Let us thank God that in England it is not so. Loyalty
with us is the personal, romantic side of patriotism. Patriotism with us
is the Christian, philosophic side of loyalty. Long may the two flourish
together, each supporting and sustaining the other."
On the Sunday following the Thanksgiving Service at St. Paul's--March
3rd--the Dean preached for the last time upon this subject in
Westminster Abbey. After stirring references to the wonderful scene of
national enthusiasm lately witnessed and to the gathering in St. Paul's
Cathedral of representatives of every creed and religious division in
Great Britain (except those of one exclusive body) to offer
thanksgivings in "the venerable forms of the National Church" he
expressed his belief that the demonstration as a whole was "the response
in every English heart to the sense of union--too subtle for analysis
yet true and simple as the primitive instincts of our race--which binds
the people of England to their Monarchy and the Monarchy to the people."
He dealt with the functions and character of that institution in most
striking words. "No other existing throne in Europe reaches back to the
same antiquity, none other combines with such an undivided charm the
associations of the past with the interests of the present. It is the
one name and place which, being beyond the reach of personal ambition,
beyond the need of private gain, has the inestimable chance of guiding,
moulding, elevating the tastes, the customs, the morals of the whole
community. It is the one name and place which, being raised high above
all party struggles, all local jealousies, over all classes,
ecclesiastical as well as civil, is the supreme controlling spring which
binds together in their widest meaning all the forces of the State and
all the forces of the Church. It is the one institution which by very
nature of its existence unites the abstract idea of country and of duty
with the personal endearments of family life, of domestic love, of
individual character."
It was the greatness of this national possession--one which had steadied
national progress and promoted peace in the midst of tumults and freedom
in the midst of disorder--which had, Dean Stanley thought, helped to
make the people pray that its destined heir should be worthy of his
noble inheritance. And then the speaker pointedly and clearly pictured
the increased and increasing responsibilities of the Prince of Wales
upon whom, henceforth, "as by a new consecration and confirmation,
devolves the glorious task of devoting to his country's service that
life which is in a special sense no longer his but ours, for which his
country's prayers, his country's thanksgivings, have been so earnestly
offered." The sermon concluded with a description of these great
responsibilities; an appeal to the Prince to begin life afresh and to
take the lead in all that was true and holy, just and good; a warning
that "of him to whom much has been given, much shall be required;" a
picture of a Christian England fighting evil in every form and in every
place and growing greater in all the elements of higher national and
individual life.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Prince of Wales in India
To make a Royal tour of the vast British possessions in Hindostan was an
inspiring idea. To constitute the Crown a tangible evidence of Imperial
power and a living object and centre of Eastern loyalty and respect was
a policy worthy of Mr. Disraeli and of the statecraft in which he had
once declared imagination to be an essential ingredient. To precede this
action by the purchase of the Suez Canal shares in order to safe-guard
the pathway to the Indian Empire and to succeed it with such an
impressive appeal to Oriental individualism and personal loyalty as the
proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India were strokes of
statesmanship such as no other Englishman of that time was capable of
initiating.
INCEPTION OF THE PROJECT
In Bombay, when the project was finally in full fruition, the Prince of
Wales told a distinguished audience that "it had long been the dream of
his life to visit India," and there seems no room to doubt that it was a
part of the original plan mapped out by the keen perceptions of the
Prince Consort for the education of his eldest son. It was
unquestionably suggested to the former by Lord Canning, when
Governor-General of India in the wild days of the Mutiny, but the idea
necessarily slumbered until the young Prince was old enough to undertake
the heavy duties involved.
By that time his father had passed away; the old-time rule of the East
India Company was gone; a new and greater India had expanded in
territory and population; while the loyalty of its native Princes had
become a constant marvel to other peoples. Yet there were causes of
discontent and grounds for trouble. The myriad masses of Hindostan did
not yet fully understand who was ruling over them, nor had they ever
fully comprehended how the rule of the Company passed away. The word
"Queen" had to them an Eastern significance which did not exactly compel
respect, and that personal side of Government which means so much to the
Oriental mind had never been brought home to them. The assassination of
Lord Mayo proved the possibilities of greater trouble, and there was
always the danger of Russian aggression and the existence of border
warfare. In the winter of 1874, therefore, the question of a Royal tour
was seriously considered, and some correspondence passed between the
authorities concerned. To send the Heir to the Throne on such a visit
was a unique project, and there were various difficulties to overcome.
India was accustomed to visitors of the type of Alexander the Great, of
Timour, Baber, Mahmoud of Ghuznee and Nadir Shah; but a peaceful
progress of the foreign Heir to its Throne was another matter. Brief and
hasty visits to some of its Princes had been made in recent times by
Prince Adalbert of Prussia, the King of the Belgians and the Duke of
Edinburgh, but there had never been a state tour of the country with all
its accompaniments of splendour and costliness, the danger from fanatics
and the trying changes of climatic conditions.
ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE TOUR
It was not an easy matter to arrange, and the probabilities are, that if
the Prince of Wales had not himself insisted that it was his duty to go,
the project might ultimately have been abandoned. He had by this time
come to fill so important a place in the public eye and in the external
functions of Sovereignty that his absence for six months, or more was a
serious consideration. The preliminary obstacles, however, were