He had his “bright days,” when he would hear business discussed, though a very little of it was wearisome.  It was impossible to bring before him half the wants and wishes of his correspondents, who could not yet realise his weakness, and besought the notice they fancied so easily given.  Yet in that weakness one could trace no delusions, none of the mental break-down which was taken for granted.  If he gave an opinion it was clear and sound enough; of course with the old Ruskinian waywardness of idea which always puzzled his public.  But he knew what he was about, and knew what was going on.  He was like the aged Queen Aud in the saga, who “rose late and went to bed early, and if anyone asked after her health she answered sharply.”

But all the love and care spent on him could not keep him with us.  There came the Green Yule that makes a fat kirkyard, and in January of 1900 hardly a house in the neighbourhood was free from the plague of influenza.  In spite of strictest precautions it invaded Brantwood.

On the 18th of January he was remarkably well, as people often are before an illness—­“fey,” as the old Northern folk-lore has it.  Towards evening, when Mrs. Severn went to him for the usual reading—­it was Edna Lyall’s “In the Golden Days”—­his throat was irritable and he “ached all over.”  They put him to bed and sent for Dr. Parsons, his constant medical attendant, who found his temperature as high as 102 deg., and feared the consequences.  But the patient, as he always did, refused to be considered ill, and ate his dinner, and seemed next day to be really better.  There was no great cause for alarm, though naturally some for anxiety; and in reasonable hopes of amendment, the slight attack was not made public.

On Saturday morning, the 20th, all appeared to be going well until about half-past ten.  Suddenly he collapsed and became unconscious.  It was the dreaded failure of heart after influenza.  His breathing weakened, and through the morning and through the afternoon in that historic little room, lined with his Turners, he lay, falling softly asleep.  No efforts could revive him.  There was no struggle; there were no words.  The bitterness of death was spared him.  And when it was all over, and those who had watched through the day turned at last from his bedside, “sunset and evening star” shone bright above the heavenly lake and the clear-cut blue of Coniston fells.

Next morning brought messages of hurried condolence, and the Monday such a chorus from the press as made all the praises of his lifetime seem trifling and all its blame forgotten.  If only, in his years of struggle and despair, he had known the place he should win!

On the Tuesday came a telegram offering a grave in Westminster Abbey, the highest honour our nation can give to its dead.  But his own mind had long since been made plain on that point, and his wishes had not been forgotten.  “If I die here,” he used to say, “bury me at Coniston.  I should have liked, if it happened at Herne Hill, to lie with my father and mother in Shirley churchyard, as I should have wished, if I died among the Alps, to be buried in the snow.”