Hughenden Revisited

28th May 1898; Queen Victoria attends William Gladstone’s State funeral in Westminster Abbey,

There had not been a State funeral since William Pitt the Younger’s in 1806. Subsequently a statue of Gladstone is erected in the North Transept, adjacent to one of Disraeli who had died in 1881, the penultimate statue to be put in the Abbey. (The last was of Lord Salisbury and thereafter memorials take the form of tablets, floor stones and windows.) William IV was the last monarch to attend funerals; after that a convention has been observed that monarchs attend only funerals of their family members and State funerals.

Queen Victoria detested Gladstone, although he went to Eton and Oxford but that didn’t cut any mustard with a daughter of Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. He “addresses me as though I were a public meeting”, she harrumphed, and called him “a half-mad firebrand”. Gladstone’s contemporary and political rival the upstart Disraeli, was obviously her favourite. His family declined a State funeral and funeral and burial took place at the Church of St Michael and All Angels in the grounds of his home, Hughenden Manor, Buckinghamshire.

Queen Victoria, by convention, did not attend but four days later paid a private visit to the church to express her grief and lay a wreath. She also accorded him a unique honour. She paid for a marble memorial to him in the chancel of the church; the only instance of a reigning British monarch erecting a memorial to a subject.

The Disraelis are buried in a vault beneath the church. There is an elaborate monument outside. The inscription is worth noting: “In memory of Mary Anne Disraeli Viscountess Beaconsfield in her own right … “

“In recognition of Disraeli’s services to the nation, Queen Victoria desired to ennoble him at the end of his first ministry (1868). However, as he wished to remain in the House of Commons, his wife accepted the title in his place and was created Viscountess Beaconsfield, of Beaconsfield in the County of Buckingham, on 30 November 1868. (After Mary’s death, Disraeli accepted the title of Earl of Beaconsfield.)” (Wikipedia)

In the 19th century it was popular to put up headstones to beloved dogs. There is a dogs’ graveyard outside the kitchen garden at Barmeath. At Hughenden the graves are on the ridge of a hill some way from the house. They were put up by Coningsby, Disraeli’s nephew and heir in 1899, after he had died, although articles on the internet attribute them to Benjamin Disraeli. Bertie only took a passing interest.

The house and estate at Hughenden are owned by the National Trust. The house is closed in Winter but the estate is popular with walkers with or without dogs. Bertie had a lovely time running around off a lead. I had last been to Hughenden more than fifty years ago on a school trip.