Concluding remarks
The Prime Minister’s physician, Protheroe Smith was blunt. “You are dying, my lord,” he declared. The British premier, Lord Palmerston, was incredulous. “Die, my dear doctor!” he replied. “Why, that’s the last thing I’m going to do!”
Just two days short of his eighty-first birthday at the time of his death on October 18, 1865, Palmerston was, of course, right in almost every way. Setting aside the vexed question of our conduct in the after-life, Death is our finale (grand or otherwise). It is annoying to report therefore that witnesses at the bedside don’t confirm Palmerston’s last words, and they first come into circulation a decade or so after his death. Even a rival version, which has the Prime Minister stoically focused on legislative matters and uttering the far less memorable line: “That’s Article 98, now go on to the next.” — is not based on authenticated testimony. Doctor Smith, who had diagnosed Palmerston as suffering not just from his usual gout, but from a condition Smith termed “catarrh of the bladder,” offered a much blander summary of their final exchange. Smith enquired if the nation’s leader was hungry or in pain and to each question, the PM said: “No.” Based on the documentary record, Palmerston’s last words were thus: “No;” repeated.
Occasionally, truth does prove duller than fiction.
And Palmerston, like his formidable Anglo-Irish contemporary, the Duke of Wellington, was not a dull man. Wellington, when informed that lurid details (exposing his payments to prostitutes for bondage-style sex) were about to be put into print, famously declared: “Publish, and be damned!” Palmerston, himself occasionally referred to as “Lord Cupid” for his sexual escapades, was equally a politician whose conduct might make even New York Governor Andrew Cuomo blush.
In 1839, while serving as foreign secretary, Palmerston is said to have permanently alienated Queen Victoria by attempting to force his attentions on one of her ladies-in-waiting. His claim to have entered the latter’s bedroom in error was seriously undermined by the fact that he had used a chair to barricade the door before the lady’s screams brought help. A quarter of a century later, the then seventy-nine-year-old premier stood accused of adultery. An Irish journalist, Thaddeus O’Kane, claimed that Palmerston had seduced his actress wife, Margaret. Palmerston denied knowledge of Margaret, while Margaret herself hardly helped her husband’s cause by noting ambiguously that her meetings with the noble Lord at his Piccadilly home predated her marriage, and hence could not be termed adulterous. The judge dismissed the case.
As the country eagerly followed this court action, Palmerston’s political rival, Benjamin Disraeli quipped that the real question was not did O’Kane? But was Palmerston able? Politicians of the time could coin their own lines better than their latter-day successors. When a prominent journalist accused Lincoln of being “two-faced,” Abe responded: “If I had two faces, would I be wearing this one?” Ultimately, Disraeli had his own death-bed moment. In 1881, as he lay fatally ill with a bronchial infection, Queen Victoria visited his London home to ask that she might speak with him privately. Famously, Disraeli told his staff not to admit her, declaring that she was only here to insist that he take a message to her beloved Albert.
Disraeli had previously remarked that flattery was a vital tool in public life since so few people took exception to it, and he added that with royalty, one should lay it on with a trowel. Queen Victoria generally appreciated his plastering. But Disraeli was no fan of her protracted mourning for Prince Albert, who died of typhoid fever in 1861, due to the dreadful state of Windsor Castle’s sewers. Rather pointedly, Disraeli declared that while “Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief [is] the blunder of a life.” Since the Queen had become renowned for her conspicuous grief decades after her bereavement, she was clearly Disraeli’s target.
Taken together, the deathbeds of Palmerston and Disraeli raise interesting questions. If you knew that your next sentence would be your last, what would you say? Probably, more than “no” and “no,” but in reality, would you get a chance to say anything of note? Many deaths now are in clinical settings with tubes and tranquillisers that inhibit eloquence, to say the least, and will there be anyone to write your words down? The modern solution, even offered by some funeral plans, is to shoot your video well in advance, and then stipulate that it be aired at the ceremony. Who know, there may be a whole range of TikTok examples?
As for Disraeli: was he right? Does grief that goes beyond the instant (which Queen Victoria’s certainly did, consuming the last four decades of her long life), amount to an irretrievable blunder? Probably. We honour the dead best by the way we cherish the living. Certainly, my sympathies are with Disraeli when he hears that Victoria wants to speak with him; who would want someone at their sickbed with messages for the already departed?
And now a confession. Many years ago, it occurred to me, during one of my meanderings around English country churchyards, that there was a curious absence of pyramids. Angels, obelisks, crosses and lozenge-shaped slabs predominate. Mausoleums tend to be predictably neo-classical, but not even the Tutankhamun craze of the 1920s brought the pyramid back into as a monument.
The younger me quite fancied a pyramid — not on the scale of Giza, of course — but strikingly triangular nonetheless. And with an important twist: no cryptic hieroglyphics; no sacred texts. Instead, inscribed around the outside would be a collection of my favourite jokes. My idea was essentially that the pyramid itself would draw the random passerby. Once there, she or he would read the inscriptions and with luck, there would be a gag that drew a chuckle. And this unusual spectacle of hilarity in a graveyard, would in turn attract others, and so the joy would multiple. What better way to be recalled, if not remembered, I thought, than happy laughter? But have you seen the cost of pyramids? I cling to the faint possibility of digital remembrance, even if it’s the last thing I do.
