§ THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY)My Lords, I rise to move:
" That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty:
" To express the heartfelt sympathy of this House in the great affliction and loss which His Majesty has sustained by the death of Her Majesty Queen Alexandra, and to condole with His Majesty on this melancholy occasion:
" To assure His Majesty that we shall ever remember with grateful affection the love which the late Queen inspired in all classes of the people and that we participate to the utmost in the universal feeling of sympathy with His Majesty in his grievous loss."
The words which I have read to your Lordships invite the House to offer at His Majesty's feet the sincere condolences of this House, and, indeed, we all feel very deeply the loss that His Majesty has sustained. The Kings of this country have ever identified themselves with the sorrows of the people and, correspondingly, the people of this country have always been forward to share the grief of the Sovereign. In this case His Majesty the King is most deeply to be pitied. The bereavement which he has suffered, the bereavement of a son, whether he be a King or another, has always a special poignancy, and that apart from the wonderful character of the Queen whose loss we deplore. The relations of this people with the King have always been very human and we join in his sorrow.
As our minds travel back over the long years during which Queen Alexandra has been among us, I think there are two thoughts which will occur to all of us—namely, gratitude for her life's work and appreciation of her, own great personal qualities. For upwards of sixty years she has been in this country. Long
825 before King Edward ascended the throne she was already queen of the social life of this country, and when I say the social life, of course I do not mean it in the narrow sense of that community with which most of us are familiar, but I mean the great social life of the people, with its hospitals, its charities, its industrial and civic institutions, apart from the great functions and ceremonies in which, on behalf of this Kingdom and this Empire, she took part. But although on this side we remember with thankfulness all that; she was able to do as representing this country, yet I will venture to say that it is her personal qualities which are most in the minds of all of us at this moment. There was a magnetic personality about her.
I almost shrink from the effort to represent in words to your Lordships the impression which she made upon all of us. She had beauty and dignity. She had an exquisite manner and unfailing consideration; she had a winning friendliness for all with whom she came in contact. In a word, her charm was irresistible both to those who knew her well and those who knew her least. It is not surprising that with these qualities she was intensely popular and that in the main the love of the British people for her did not arise because of her mere graciousness so much as because of the beauty of her heart. She had, if I may so phrase it, the touching simplicity of a good woman, and whether she had been Queen or another she would have been equally beloved. It is said, and truly said, that an evil influence from those in high places produces much evil, but it is equally true that a good influence from those in high places produces much good, and of such was Queen Alexandra. Her life is over, she has gone upon her long journey, her trappings and jewels are as nothing, but something remains even here, graven in our heart—namely, the love and gratitude of the British people. My Lords, I beg to move.
§ Moved, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty:
§ " To express the heartfelt sympathy of this House in the great affliction and loss which His Majesty has sustained by the death of Her Majesty Queen Alexandra, and to condole with His Majesty on this melancholy occasion:
826§ " To assure His Majesty that we shall ever remember with grateful affection the love which the late Queen inspired in all classes of the people and that we participate to the utmost in the universal feeling of sympathy with His Majesty in his grievous loss."—(The Marquess of Salisbury.)
§ VISCOUNT HALDANEMy Lords, I rise to second what has been well said by the Leader of the House. The hand of death has been laid upon our Sovereign. The tie which bound him most closely to the generation that has gone has been severed. He is cut off from those who were linked to him by the living presence of his mother. The gracious lady who has passed from us was old. She had outlived the allotted span of years; but, my Lords, it is a superficial view that regards age as making a difference in that respect, or as affording any consolation. The longer the life of a mother the more close is the binding effect of the relationship to what is passed and what yet enters into the present. Now our Sovereign is older, older not merely in years but in this, that he is cut off from what went before, and no longer can speak with one in whose presence he could feel still a young man. Our human sympathy goes forth to him.
Queen Alexandra herself was a personality of an uncommon order. The gracious lady was graciousness itself. She was distinguished, not by any desire to enter into public affairs, but by a kindliness, a generosity, a sympathy with all classes, poor and rich, which endeared her to the whole people. She was their gracious lady, to whom they looked up, and now they feel the poorer. I had the honour to see a good deal of her during many years, and I remember well, when at the War Office, how she threw herself into the task of organising the nursing service, placed herself at its head, and enabled us thereby to get recruits to whom we could not otherwise have gone. She took the keenest interest in that, service, and it will be the poorer for her loss. Our sympathy goes forth to him who reigns over us, to our Sovereign thus bereaved, whom death has cut off from
the touch of a vanished hand And the sound of a voice that is still.
§ THE EARL OF OXFORD AND ASQUITHMy Lords, fifteen years ago it became my duty in another place to attempt to give expression to the national feeling on the sudden loss of King Edward VII. That was fifteen years ago. There mingled then with our gratitude for the life of a Sovereign who had proved by his example that to rule a people is to serve them a poignant sense of tragedy that he, in the plenitude of his powers, the ample tide of his public activity, should have been called by death to abandon a still uncompleted task. Our grief to-day, though not less sincere, is of a different kind. We are once more a bereaved nation. But, while we mourn a much-loved Queen, we all feel that she had gathered up the threads of life and woven them into a perfect whole. She was ready, whenever the summons should come, to depart in peace.
And yet, my Lords, retired as were the few last years of her life, it is hard for us to-day to realise that we have no longer with us that vivid, gracious, winning personality. I can remember well, as a schoolboy in the country, taking part in the national celebrations on the evening of her wedding day in 1863. Never was a conquest so rapidly made of the allegiance and devotion of a great people, and rarely so securely held. The same magic which for more than half-a-century, in defiance of time, kept her always a radiant figure to delight the eye, was equally potent to win the love of every class in the country where she had made her home. Nature had been good, and even lavish, to her, for, apart from personal charm, its gifts included a shrewd judgment of men and women, an elastic gaiety of spirit, a genius for tactful and understanding sympathy, and the warmest and most sensitive of hearts. And when the discipline of sorrow and bereavement came upon her it was only to enrich her rare natural faculty for sharing and soothing the sorrows of others.
It was not till after nearly forty years of married life that King Edward and Queen Alexandra mounted the Throne. At the time of their accession the vast majority of their subjects, both here and across the seas, had been born and bred and had grown up in the Victorian age, and had never known or even thought of any other Sovereign but the great Queen. What would come? That was the
828 thought which was in everybody's mind. It was one of those great experiments which inevitably recur in the annals of a hereditary Monarchy. It was a searching ordeal for them both, and not least for her who succeeded to the title of Queen. She had, as it were, to create a new conception of her office, and she did so. It is not flattery to say that she more than fulfilled even the highest hopes of those who knew her best and who loved her most. Before the expiration of ten years the end came, unforeseen, undreamt of, with a bewildering suddenness which for the moment seemed almost to strike her to the ground. But it was only for a moment; for with simple courage and unfailing faith she began a new life. Through all the anxious years which followed, notably amid the sorrows, the efforts, and the sacrifices of the War, in which the womanhood of the nation played so great a part, she was at the front in every work of beneficence and of consolation. She rests from her labours. She carries to her grave an imperishable crown and the heartfelt homage of the people whom she served and loved.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYMy Lords, the tribute due to the gracious Lady whose death we mourn has been eloquently paid by the three noble Lords who have spoken. I ask your indulgence while I add a further word drawn from me by the recollections of many years. Like the noble Earl who has just sat down, I well remember the coming of the fairy Princess to our shores and the enthusiasm with which London greeted her. I was in the crowd as a schoolboy at the time. For the last forty-three years she has honoured me with her friendship and with a confidence which sometimes, in hours of joy or sorrow, was of a very close and moving kind. As years ran on I have found myself in an increasing degree admiring and honouring a nature of exceptional beauty, the radiance of whose influence grew, I think, steadily greater as time passed and the circle spread. There are many ways in which it told on English life—the life in which at a time of no small difficulty she held, at once so tactfully and so quietly, the leading place she had firmly won in all our hearts. Some of these have already been alluded to. May I add one other word to the same effect?
829 It has always seemed to me that Queen Alexandra admirably exemplified the sort of inspiration which the influence of ladies gave to the age of chivalry. What were the characteristics which were then looked for in a lady whose potent radiance inspired the doughty knight who bore his lady's colours in field or tournament? The ideal she exemplified was, suppose, beauty and grace combined—and this was all-important—with gentleness and kindliness of soul. It was not the ideal of womanly influence which found expression in the Elizabethan age. The "Gloriana" of Edmund Spenser was of a different type—forcefulness and capacity, wit and even stern wisdom belonged to it; and these were not. what had been looked for in the days of chivalry. Most certainly it is not the modern idea of womanhood, competing, however admirably. with manhood on equal terms and in the same fields of service. But the ideal which belonged to the age of chivalry was a noble one—the softening and refining of what was rough and violent, the tending with loving care what was hurt or needy, the cheer and solace of any sorrowing heart.
These, my Lords, were the very ideals which found expression so potently in the life which has just closed on earth. She was not only queen of all our hearts but she exemplified and helped the alleviation of every human sorrow. Only yesterday one of our leading medical and social authorities, a man of ripe experience, equipped with special width of knowledge and competent in illustrating it, described Queen Alexandra as entitled to be called a "queen of compassion," whose life and work he was moved emphatically to say had rendered possible for him in a wide field the accomplishment of things dearest to his own heart, in ministration to the weakest and neediest of the countless patients, young and old, with whom he had to do.
In my view the title is singularly apt. She was, in a very real sense, a queen of compassion. The overflowing kindness
830 which marked her every act in caring for the neediest and the least-eared-for was the dominant factor in her life. The loving kindness, it may perhaps be said, was so dominant as to override those elements of caution and criticism which most of us more prosaic people think it necessary to apply if help is to be given in the wisest way. For example, I find myself irresistibly enamoured of the loving output of helpfulness which would take some such shape as this. She was wont to ask my advice, not rarely, about sonic of the many men of all sorts who were pleading with her for help. I might, in honesty, have to reply that the applicant in question had proved himself apparently irreformable and that we had been obliged, after many experiments and even years trial, to abstain from further aid, and her reply would be prompt: "If none of you will now help the poor man, certainly I must. I am sending him my gift to-day." Or, again, she would say: "of the poor man did not need the money he would not have asked for it." It may be easy to criticise, but it is not difficult to admire.
She has gone from amongst us now, and the loss to our English life is very real. I should like to apply to her the words which, as we are told, one who was called the wisest of men spoke long ago in describing the virtuous woman:
She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy…Strength and honour are her clothing…and in her tongue is the law of kindness.…Her children arise up, and call her blessed.
§ My Lords, can we describe her better than in those words?
§ On Question, Motion agreed to, nemine dissentiente
§ Ordered, That the said Address be presented to His Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.
§ House adjourned at ten minutes before five o'clock.