XIII

The Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey were memorialised by a number of persons of importance to have a Public Funeral with burial in the Abbey. So important were the signatories that no difficulty was experienced. The only condition made was that the body should be cremated, as a rule had been established that henceforth no actual body should be buried in the Abbey. The ground had in the past been so broken that for new graves it would be necessary to go down into the concrete, which might injure the structure. The Abbey authorities were most kind in all ways. Dean Armitage Robinson gave from his sick-bed his approval, and Sub-Dean Duckworth and Archdeacon Wilberforce made all arrangements. Indeed the Dean on the day of the funeral got up in order to perform the burial service.

The Baroness and Mr. Burdett-Coutts, knowing that Irving’s flat in 17 Stratton Street was not suited to receive the crowds who would wish to pay their respects, kindly placed at the disposal of his family their spacious house in Piccadilly and Stratton Street. Here on Thursday, the 19th, he lay in state. The great dining-room was made a Chapelle ardente, and here were placed the many, many flowers that were sent. There was a veritable sea of them—wreaths, crosses, symbolic forms of all kinds. On the coffin over the heart lay the floral cross sent by the Queen. Attached to it was a broad ribbon on which she had written as her tribute to the dead the last words he had spoken on the stage:

“Into Thy hands, O Lord! into Thy hands!”

On a little table in front of the coffin lay the wreath sent by Ellen Terry. Behind, hung high along the end wall of the lofty room, was the pall—“sent anonymously,” as the card on it declared. Surely such a pall was never before seen. It was entirely wrought of leaves of fresh laurel. Thousands upon thousands of them went to its making up. It was so large that at the funeral when fourteen pall-bearers marched with the coffin it covered all the space and hung to the ground, before, behind, and on either side.

Through that room all day long passed a silent and mournful crowd of all classes and degrees; and at any moment of the time a single glance at their faces would have shown what love and sorrow had brought them there.