I do feel it, yet I know it was more appropriate to such a man than the deathbed where friends and relations weep.

Henry Irving belonged to England, not to a family.  England showed that she knew it when she buried him in Westminster Abbey.

Years before I had discussed, half in joke, the possibility of this honor.  I remember his saying to me with great simplicity, when I asked him what he expected of the public after his death:  “I should like them to do their duty by me.  And they will—­they will!”

There was not a touch of arrogance in this, just as I hope there was no touch of heartlessness in me because my chief thought during the funeral in Westminster Abbey was:  “How Henry would have liked it!” The right note was struck, as I think was not the case at Tennyson’s funeral thirteen years earlier.

“Tennyson is buried to-day in Westminster Abbey,” I wrote in my diary, October 12, 1892.  “His majestic life and death spoke of him better than the service....  The music was poor and dull and weak, while he was strong.  The triumphant should have been the sentiment expressed....  Faces one knew everywhere.  Lord Salisbury looked fine.  His massive head and sad eyes were remarkable.  No face there, however, looked anything by the side of Henry’s....  He looked very pale and slim and wonderful!”

How terribly I missed that face at Henry’s own funeral!  I kept on expecting to see it, for indeed it seemed to me that he was directing the whole most moving and impressive ceremony.  I could almost hear him saying, “Get on! get on!” in the parts of the service that dragged.  When the sun—­such a splendid, tawny sun—­burst across the solemn misty gray of the Abbey, at the very moment when the coffin, under its superb pall of laurel leaves,[1] was carried up the choir, I felt that it was an effect which he would have loved.

[Footnote 1:  Every lover of beauty and every lover of Henry Irving must have breathed a silent thanksgiving that day to the friends who had that inspiration and made the pall with their own hands.]

I can understand any one who was present at Henry Irving’s funeral thinking that this was his best memorial, and that any attempt to honor him afterwards would be superfluous and inadequate.

Yet when some further memorial was discussed, it was not always easy to sympathize with those who said:  “We got him buried in Westminster Abbey.  What more do you want?”

After all it was Henry Irving’s commanding genius, and his devotion of it to high objects, his personal influence on the English people, which secured him burial among England’s great dead.  The petition for the burial presented to the Dean and Chapter, and signed, on the initiative of Henry Irving’s leading fellow-actors, by representative personages of influence, succeeded only because of Henry’s unique position.

“We worked very hard to get it done,” I heard said—­more than once.  And I often longed to answer:  “Yes, and all honor to your efforts, but you worked for it between Henry’s death and his funeral. He worked for it all his life!”