a sudden attack cut him off, for his remaining years, from active life. He did not, indeed, lose the control of his faculties, but the aphasia which had come upon him made further public life impossible. He died at Highbury, Birmingham, 2 July 1914. A funeral in Westminster Abbey was offered, but the family preferred that he should be buried near his home.
Turning from the statesman to the man, we find a unanimity of opinion among those who knew Chamberlain intimately. If, in Lord Morley’s words, he had the ‘genius of friendship’, he had no less the genius both of family and of official life. Chamberlain was married three times: first, in 1861 to Harriet (died 1863), daughter of Archibald Kenrick, of Berrow Court, Edgbaston; secondly, in 1868 to Florence (died 1875), daughter of Timothy Kenrick, of Birmingham, and a cousin of his first wife; thirdly, in 1888 to Mary, only daughter of William Crowninshield Endicott, a distinguished American judge and statesman, belonging to a family well known in New England history. Chamberlain had become engaged to Miss Endicott when he was working on the fisheries commission, but the marriage could not be announced or take place until after the American presidential election, for fear of prejudicing the chances of the democrats. By his first wife Chamberlain had one son (Joseph) Austen, and one daughter; by his second, one son (Arthur) Neville, and three daughters. He was a devoted husband and father, and perhaps one of the happiest moments of his life was when Mr. Gladstone gracefully alluded to the merits of his elder son’s maiden speech; when he and Mr. Ritchie both resigned in 1903, it must have been some consolation that the latter was succeeded by the same son, (Sir) Austen Chamberlain, as chancellor of the exchequer. Mr. Neville Chamberlain. also, entered the Cabinet as chancellor of the exchequer in Mr. Baldwin’s ministry in 1928.
Although on one occasion Chamberlain lamented the loss of a university education, the loss was made up by intercourse with the best books and with a few choice spirits at Birmingham. According to Mr. T. H. S. Escott, the writer who, more than any other, formed his mind and style, was the French publicist, Paul Louis Courier. Lord Morley, who went abroad with him frequently, bore witness to his interest in pictures, buildings, and history. In 1896 he was elected lord rector of Glasgow University, and delivered a characteristic address on patriotism, in which he protested his faith in one race and one nation: ‘I believe that with all the force and enthusiasm of which democracy alone is capable they will complete and maintain that splendid edifice of our greatness,’ Further, he was in a yet closer way connected with the university of Birmingham, the foundation of which in 1900 was largely due to his efforts; he became, as was meet, its first chancellor.
Chamberlain belonged to a Unitarian family, and seems always to have remained faithful to the creed of his fathers. Lord Morley has given a vivid picture of him as a companion, ‘alert, not without a pleasant squeeze of lemon, to add savour to the daily dish’, Spare of body, sharp and pronounced in feature, careful of dress, Chamberlain looked ever ready. Caricaturists everywhere fixed eagerly on the monocle in his eye and the rare orchid bloom, culled from his favourite greenhouse, habitually worn in his button-hole. No physiognomy was better known to contemporaries, either at home or abroad. Gladstone, who was by no means a friendly critic, bore witness to Chamberlain’s merits in serious discussions. What impressed Froude about him was that he knew his own mind. There was no dust in his eyes; and he threw no dust in the eyes of others. He was naturally open and spontaneous; and, in Lord Morley’s words, ‘when he encountered a current of doubt, dislike, suspicion, prejudice, his one and first impulse was to hasten to put his case, to explain, to have it out’. He was a hard hitter, and not always careful to remember that others were more thin-skinned than himself, but he was of a nature essentially generous and forgiving. After a temporary quarrel with Lord Randolph Churchill, at the time of the Aston riots (1884), he wrote to Lord Randolph who was starting for India, a characteristic letter, burying the hatchet, which received a cordial response. He seems to have been totally devoid of jealousy; and he carried loyalty to those who had once obtained his confidence to its extreme limits. With these qualities he naturally attracted friendship; and his relations with men so different as were Dilke, Churchill, Morley, and Balfour, were the best witness to that attraction. ‘To him’, again in Lord Morley’s words, ‘the friend was not merely a comrade in a campaign. He was an innermost element in his existence; whilst, if he stood by his friend, he counted on his friend to stand by him,’
The same loyalty that endeared him to his friends called forth the devoted attach-
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