THE TURNING-POINT
JULY, 1885, TO JULY, 1886
[Greek: ou thruon, ou malachaen avemos pote, tus de megistas ae druas ae
platanous oide chamai katagein.]
[Footnote: It is not the rush or mallow that the wind can lay low, but
the largest oaks and plane-trees.]
Lucian in "Anthologia."
I.
When Mr. Gladstone's Ministry left office in the summer of 1885, there
seemed to be in all England no man for whom the future held out more
assured and brilliant promise than Sir Charles Dilke. He was still
young, not having completed his forty-second year; in the Cabinet only
Lord Rosebery was his junior; he had seventeen years of unremitting
Parliamentary service to his credit, and in the House of Commons his
prestige was extraordinary. His own judgment and that of all skilled
observers regarded his party's abandonment of office as temporary: the
General Election would inevitably bring them back with a new lease of
power, and with an Administration reorganized in such fashion that the
Radicals would no longer find themselves overbalanced in the shaping of
policy. The Dilke-Chamberlain alliance, which had during the past five
years been increasingly influential, would in the next Parliament become
openly authoritative; and, as matters looked at the moment, it was Sir
Charles, and not Mr. Chamberlain, who seemed likely to take the foremost
place.
Chamberlain's dazzling popular success had been of the kind to which a
certain unpopularity attaches. Moderate men of both parties were prone
to impute it to demagogism, and Dilke was in the fortunate position of
seeing those Radical principles for which he stood advocated by his ally
with a force of combined invective and argument which has had few
parallels in political history, while to him fell the task, suited to
his temperament, of reasoned discussion. Those who denounced
Chamberlain's vehemence could hardly fail to point a comparison with
Dilke's unfailing courtesy, his steady adherence to argument, his
avoidance of the appeal to passion. Some strong natures have the quality
of making enemies, some the gift for making friends, outside their own
immediate circle, and Sir Charles Dilke possessed the more genial
endowment.
This capacity for engendering good-will in those whom he encountered
certainly did not spring from any undue respect of persons. Members of
the Royal Family, whose privileges he had assailed, were constant in
their friendliness; high Tories such as Lord Salisbury, whose principles
he combated on every platform, liked him, and were not slow to show it.
On the other hand, the friendship which Sir Charles inspired did not
proceed, as is sometimes the case, from a mere casual bounty of nature.
In Parliament his colleagues liked him, but this, assuredly, was not
without cause. No member of the Ministry had given so much service
outside his own department. Lord Granville wrote at this time: 'I have
not seen you alone since the smash, or I should have told you how much I
feel the support you have given me both when we were together at the
F.O. and quite as much since. I shall not soon forget it.' Sir William
Harcourt at the Home Office, Sir Henry James in the conduct of the
Corrupt Practices Bill, had been beholden to him for no ordinary
assistance. Moreover, as he was good to work with, so he was good to
work under. Those who served him at the Local Government Board remember
him as in no way prompt to praise; but if a suggestion was made to him,
he never failed to identify it with the suggester, recognizing its
source in adopting it. If he made a mistake and was set right, he
admitted his error--a trait very rare in Ministers, who feel that they
have constantly as amateurs to direct the decision of experts, and are
therefore chary of such admissions. Sir Charles always gave his men
their due, and he took care that they should not be treated as machines.
When colleagues called on him at his office, and found him with one of
his staff, he never allowed the subordinate to be ignored in greetings.
The Minister in a hurry would be stopped with, 'I think you know
So-and-so.' These are small matters to set down, but by such small
things men indicate their nature; and one of the oldest servants in that
office summed up the matter in a sentence which is not the less
interesting because it brings in another name. 'When Sir Charles Dilke
was at the Local Government Board,' he said, 'the feeling towards the
President, from the heads of departments down to the messengers in the
hall, was the same as it was in the time of Mr. Walter Long, and I can
say no more than that.'
Nobody, perhaps, has a better right to be counted fortunate than a man
who can feel that he is strong, that he is liked, and that he is
successfully promoting principles of government for his fellow-
countrymen in which he sincerely believes. In July, 1885, Sir Charles
Dilke had all these grounds for satisfaction, and in no common measure.
Of course there were anxieties, politically speaking; Mr. Gladstone's
future course of action was uncertain, and Mr. Gladstone was so great a
force that he might at any time derange all calculations--as, in point
of fact, he did. Still, time was on the side of the Radicals, and from
day to day they held what they called 'cabals' of the group formed by
Chamberlain, Shaw-Lefevre, Trevelyan, Morley, and Dilke himself. At
these meetings Sir Charles regularly presided.
The work of the Commission on Housing was in its last stages; its
chairman was able to announce on July 1st, when laying the foundation-
stone of some artisans' dwellings in Hoxton, that the Commission's Bill
would be introduced in the Lords by Lord Salisbury, and that he himself
would have charge of it in the Commons. For a man who had so laboured
during the past five years such duties as these were child's play, and
Sir Charles was able for the first time for many months to take his
share in social enjoyments. He dined repeatedly at Grillion's; he went
to parties at famous houses both of his political allies and political
opponents; above all, he found time for restful days upon his beloved
river. He went to Henley in that July with his old rowing comrade
Steavenson 'to see Bristowe's fine Trinity Hall eight'; he spent Sunday,
July 12th, at Dockett in company with Mr. Cyril Flower; and for the next
Sunday, the 19th, he was engaged to be at Taplow Court with Mr. W. H.
Grenfell, famous among oarsmen. But of that day more has to be written.
Throughout the month one dark cloud had hung over him: Mrs. Pattison was
grievously ill in the Madras hills, and not until the fourth week in
July did he know even the nature of her illness. It was typhoid, and it
left her weak to face what had to come, like a 'bolt from the blue,'
upon her and her future husband. Her first marriage had brought her
discipline rather than happiness; now in the middle years of life her
vivid nature was blossoming out again in the promise of union with a man
before whom there lay open an illustrious career. Illness struck her
down, and while she lay convalescent there came to her as black a
message as ever tried the heart of any woman.
* * * * *
II.
On the evening of Saturday, July 18th, Sir Charles Dilke was entertained
at a dinner given by the Reform Club--a very rare distinction--to
celebrate the passing of the Redistribution Bill into law. From this
ceremony, which crowned and recognized his greatest personal
achievement, he returned late, and found at his house a letter from an
old family friend who asked him to call on the following Sunday morning
on grave business. He then learnt that the wife of a Liberal member of
Parliament had volunteered a 'confession' to her husband, in which she
stated that she had been unfaithful to him with Sir Charles immediately
after her marriage.
His note in his private diary on Sunday is: '19th.--Early heard of the
charge against me. Put myself in hands of J. B. Balfour, and afterwards
of Chamberlain and James.'
Later Sir Charles Dilke went down to Taplow, and spent the day there.
This accusation found him separated from his future wife by many
thousand miles; worse than that, she had been dangerously ill; the risk
to her of a telegraphed message must be great; yet there was the chance
from day to day that newspaper rumour might anticipate direct tidings
from him to her. He was 'in as great misery as perhaps ever fell upon a
man.'
He returned next morning to preside at the last meeting of the
Commission on Housing, when, he says, 'the Prince of Wales proposed a
vote of thanks to me in an extremely cordial speech.' From that attitude
of friendliness the future King Edward never departed.
'I had a dinner-party in the evening, which was one of several in
preparation for our Ward meetings in Chelsea, which I had to
continue to hold in spite of my private miseries.
'I was engaged on the one night for which none of these dinners had
been fixed to dine with Lord and Lady Salisbury, and to attend the
Princess of Wales's Ball at Marlborough House, and I wrote to put
off my engagements, for which I was much blamed; but I think that I
was right.'
For three or four days Sir Henry James, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. J. B.
Balfour, the Lord Advocate of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, moved to secure
a court of inquiry which would act without prejudice to the right of
legal action. But within the week it was certain that public proceedings
would be taken.
The blow had come suddenly; it came with dramatic incidence at the
moment when Sir Charles's prestige was most effectively recognized; and
from the moment that it fell he knew that the whole tenor of his life
was altered. On Thursday, July 23rd, four days afterwards, he wrote in
his Diary of the time this judgment:
'Left for the last time the House of Commons, where I have attained
some distinction. It is curious that only a week ago Chamberlain and
I had agreed, at his wish and suggestion, that I should be the
future leader, as being more popular in the House, though less in
the country, than he was, and that only three days ago Mr. Gladstone
had expressed the same wish. Such a charge, even if disproved, which
is not easy against perjured evidence picked up with care, is fatal
to supreme usefulness in politics. In the case of a public man a
charge is always believed by many, even though disproved, and I
should be weighted by it through life. I prefer, therefore, at once
to contemplate leaving public life.'
Upon the first sentence of this he added in a marginal note, written
after his marriage with Mrs. Mark Pattison, and after he had, in spite
of that first decision, returned to the House of Commons: 'Chamberlain
overpersuaded Emilia, and, through her, me, but he was wrong.'
Of honourable ambition Sir Charles Dilke had as much as any man. Yet in
the innermost record of these days--in those letters which, not yet
daring to despatch them, he wrote to his future wife--there is not a
hint of his personal loss, not a word of the career that he saw broken.
These things had no place in the rush of feeling which overwhelmed him,
and left him for the moment unable to trust his own judgment or assert
his own will.
Through the months of Mrs. Pattison's absence in India one note had been
constant in his letters--the reiterated anticipation of what he hoped to
bring her. Up to the middle of July his letters, apart from the news of
his daily life, are filled with joyful forecast, not of his own
happiness, but of his and hers together--of his happiness in seeing her
happy. When the stroke fell, the note, even though it changed, was the
same in essence: 'I feel this may kill you--and it will kill me either
if it kills you or if you don't believe me.'
That was written down within an hour after he had the news. Never
afterwards did he consider the possibility of her failing him.
The next day he wrote:
'Taplow Court, Taplow,
_July 20th._
'The only thing I can do in future is to devote myself entirely to
_you_ and helping in your work. To that the remainder of my life
must be dedicated. I fancy you will have the courage to believe me
whatever is by madness and malevolence brought against me....'
He wrote again:
'The less you turn from me, and the more you are true--and of course
you will be all true ... --the more misery and not the less is it to
me to bring these horrors on you. This thing is not true, but none
the less do I bring these horrors on you.'
So desperate was the tumult in Sir Charles Dilke's mind that Mr.
Chamberlain strove to tranquillize him by a change of scene. Some spot,
such as is to be found in Sir Charles's own holiday land of Provence, at
first occurred to his friend, though this would have meant the
cancelling of all Mr. Chamberlain's public engagements at that most
critical moment in politics. But Sir Charles instead went down to
Highbury, where he passed his days much in the open air, playing lawn
tennis and riding with his host's son, Mr Austen Chamberlain.
Here he rapidly came back to something of his normal self. As news had
been telegraphed of Mrs. Pattison's gradual recovery, it was decided to
inform her of what had happened. Mr. Chamberlain undertook the delicate
task of wording the communications. She telegraphed back at once that
full assurance of her trust and of her loyalty on which Sir Charles had
counted. But it was characteristic of her not to stop there. A telegram
from Mrs. Pattison to the _Times_ announcing her engagement to Sir
Charles Dilke immediately followed on public intimation of the
proceedings for divorce. Lord Granville wrote to Sir Charles: 'I wish
you joy most sincerely. The announcement says much for the woman whom
you have chosen.'
Yet days were to come when the storm was so fierce about Sir Charles
Dilke and 'the woman whom he had chosen' that few cared to face it in
support of the accused man and the wife who had claimed her share in his
destiny.
When those days came, they found no broken spirit to meet them. Through
his affections, and only through his affections, this man could be
driven out of his strongholds of will and judgment; when that inner life
was assured, he faced the rest with equanimity. He writes:
'_August 28th._--I continue to be much better in health and spirit.
I was five and a half weeks more or less knocked over; I am strong
and well, and really happy in you and for you, and confident and all
that you could wish me to be these last few days.'
Mrs. Pattison, before she left Ceylon on her way to England, sent him a
telegram, the reply to which was written to meet her at Port Said:
'Nothing ever made me so happy.... Though it has been a frightful blow,
I am well now; and the blow was only a blow to me because of you.'
At first sympathy and support were proffered in ample measure. On being
formally notified of proceedings in the divorce case, he wrote at once a
letter to the Liberal Association of Chelsea, in which he declared that
the charge against him was untrue and that he looked forward with
confidence to the result of a judicial inquiry; but at the same time he
offered to withdraw his candidature for the seat at the forthcoming
election, if the Council thought him in the circumstances an undesirable
candidate. To this offer the Council replied by reiterating their
confidence in him. About the same time, yielding to Chamberlain's
advice, he returned to the House of Commons while the Housing Bill was
in Committee, and took part in the proceedings as usual.
The Prince of Wales, to whom he communicated news of his engagement
before the public announcement, wrote warm congratulations and wishes
for dispersal of the overhanging trouble. Mr. Gladstone, who had
frequent occasion to write to him on public business, in one of these
political letters added congratulations on the engagement, though he had
made no allusion to the Divorce Court proceedings. But Mr. Gladstone's
chief private secretary, Sir Edward Hamilton, had written at the first
publication of them this assurance:
'You may depend upon it that your friends (among whom I hope I may
be counted) are feeling for you and will stand by you; and, if I am
not mistaken, I believe your constituents will equally befriend you;
indeed, I am convinced that the masses are much more fair and just
than the upper classes. Anything that interfered with your political
career would not only be a political calamity, but a national one;
and I do not for a moment think that any such interference need be
apprehended.'
This letter represented the attitude that was generally observed towards
Sir Charles Dilke by political associates till after the first trial.
Mr. Chamberlain's support was unwavering, though there were some who
anticipated that the misfortunes of the one man might disastrously
affect the political career of the other.
It is true that by the amazing irony of fate which interpenetrated this
whole situation the Tories gained in Mr. Chamberlain their most powerful
ally, and that Sir Charles had to encounter all the accumulated
prejudice which the 'unauthorized programme' had gathered in Tory
bosoms. But none of these things could be foreseen when Chamberlain,
then in the full flood of his Radical propaganda, invited Sir Charles to
make his temporary home at Highbury. Here, accordingly, he stayed on
through August and the early part of September, breaking his stay only
by two short absences. There still lived on at Chichester old Mr.
Dilke's brother, a survivor of the close-knit family group, preserving
the same intense affectionate interest in Charles Dilke's career. To him
this blow was mortal. Sir Charles paid him in the close of August his
yearly visit: ten days later he was recalled to attend the old man's
funeral in the Cathedral cloisters.
In the middle of September he crossed to France, and waited at Saint
Germain for Mrs. Pattison, who reached Paris in the last days of the
month. On October 1st Sir Charles crossed to London; she followed the
next day, and on the 3rd they were married at Chelsea Parish Church. Mr.
Chamberlain acted as best man.
III.
Return to England meant a return to work. The General Election was fixed
for November; and from August onwards Dilke had been drawn back by
correspondents and by consultations with Chamberlain into the stream of
politics, which then ran broken and turbulent with eddies and cross-
currents innumerable. Chamberlain, sustaining alone the advanced
campaign, wrote even before the marriage to solicit help at the earliest
moment; and from October onwards the two Radicals were as closely
associated as ever--but with a difference. Circumstances had begun the
work of Sir Charles's effacement.
When the election came, his success was personal; London went against
the Liberals, his old colleague Mr. Firth failed, so did Mr. George
Russell in another part of the borough, which was now split into several
constituencies; but Chelsea itself stood to its own man. The elections
were over on December 19th. Before that date it was apparent that the
Irish party held the balance of power, and Mr. Gladstone had already
indicated his acceptance of Home Rule. [Footnote: Chapter XLV., p. 196.]
Parliament met early, and by January 28th, 1886, the Tory Government had
resigned. Mr. Gladstone, in framing his new Administration, thought it
impossible to include a man suffering under a charge yet untried, and
wrote:
'_February 2nd_, 1886
'My Dear Dilke,
'I write you, on this first day of my going regularly to my arduous
work, to express my profound regret that any circumstances of the
moment should deprive me of the opportunity and the hope of
enlisting on behalf of a new Government the great capacity which you
have proved in a variety of spheres and forms for rendering good and
great service to Crown and country.
'You will understand how absolutely recognition on my part of an
external barrier is separate from any want of inward confidence, the
last idea I should wish to convey.
'Nor can I close without fervently expressing to you my desire that
there may be reserved you a long and honourable career of public
distinction.
'Believe me always,
'Yours sincerely,
'W. E. Gladstone.'
Less than a fortnight later the divorce case was heard: the charge
against Sir Charles was dismissed with costs, the Judge saying expressly
that there was no case for him to answer.
The Prime Minister's attitude made it inevitable that while the case was
untried Sir Charles should be excluded from the new Ministry; but not
less inevitably his position before the world was prejudiced by that
exclusion. Had Parliament met, as it usually meets, in February; had the
whole thing so happened that the judgment had been given before the
Ministry came to be formed, exclusion would have been all but
impossible. We may take it that Mr. Chamberlain would have insisted on
Sir Charles's inclusion as a condition of his own adherence; it would
have been to the interest of every Gladstonian and of every follower of
Chamberlain to maintain the judgment. As it was, the effect of Sir
Charles's exclusion had been to prepare the way for a vehement campaign
directed against him by a section of the Press.
By the law a wife's confession of misconduct is evidence against
herself, entitling the husband to a divorce; but if unsupported by other
witnesses it is no evidence against the co-respondent. But a question
arose which afterwards became of capital importance. Should Sir Charles
go into the witness-box, deny on oath the unsworn charges made against
him, and submit himself to cross-examination? His counsel decided that
there was no evidence to answer; they did not put their client into the
box, and the course was held by the Judge to be the correct one.
In reply to the Attorney-General's representation that there was no case
whatever which Sir Charles Dilke was called to answer, Mr. Justice Butt
said that he could not see the shadow of a case. In his judgment he
said: 'A statement such as has been made by the respondent in this case
is not one of those things which in common fairness ought for one moment
to be weighed in the balance against a person in the position of Sir
Charles Dilke. Under these circumstances, I have no hesitation whatever
in saying that counsel have been well advised in suggesting the course
which they have induced Sir Charles Dilke to take, and the petition, as
against him, must be dismissed with costs.'
Dilke himself notes: 'On Friday, February 12th, the trial took place,
and lasted but a short time, Sir Henry James and Sir Charles Russell not
putting me into the box, and Sir Charles Butt almost inviting them to
take that course. Lord Granville had written to me: "Will you forgive my
intruding two words of advice? Put yourself unreservedly into the hands
of someone who, like our two law officers, unites sense with knowledge
of the law." I had done this, and had throughout acted entirely through
James, Russell, and Chamberlain. In court and during the remainder of
the day, Chamberlain, James, and Russell, were triumphant....'
For the moment it seemed as if misfortune had ended in triumph.
Congratulations poured in upon both Sir Charles and his wife; the
official leaders welcomed the judgment. Mr. Chamberlain sent an express
message to Downing Street: 'Case against Dilke dismissed with costs, but
the petitioner has got his divorce against his wife.' Mr. Gladstone
answered: 'My dear Chamberlain, I have received your prompt report with
the utmost pleasure.' Sir William Harcourt wrote direct:
'Dear Dilke,--So glad to hear of the result and of your relief from
your great trouble.--Yours ever, W. V. H.'
Lady Dilke's friends wrote to her, congratulating her on the reward that
her courage and her loyalty had reaped.
But in Sir Charles's Diary of that date, where notes of any personal
character are few indeed, this is written on the day after the case was
heard, in comment on the action of a certain section of the Press:
'Renewed attempt to drive me out of public life. But I won't go now.
In July I said to Emilia and to Chamberlain: "Here is the whole
truth--and I am an innocent man; but let me go out quietly, and some
day people will be sorry and I shall recover a different sort of
usefulness." They would not let me go. Now I won't go.'
A man other than innocent would have rested on the strong judgment in
his favour and let agitation die down, but the attacks continued and
Dilke would not wait their passing. Chamberlain was included in these
attacks, 'for having kept me out of the box,' and wrote in reply to Sir
Charles: 'I was only too glad to be able in any way to share your
burdens, and if I can act as a lightning conductor, so much the
better.... Of course, if _you_ were quite clear that you ought to go
into the box, it is still possible to do so, either by action for libel
or probably by intervention of the Queen's Proctor.'
'This was the first suggestion made to me of any possibility of a
rehearing of the case ... and though Hartington, James, and Russell,
were all under the impression that I should find no further difficulty,
it was the course which I ultimately took,' and which he pressed on with
characteristic tenacity. And here laymen may be permitted to marvel at
the fallibility of eminent lawyers. 'No one, of all these great
lawyers,' foresaw the position in which he would be placed as a result
of his application. Yet from the moment that this procedure was adopted
it was possible that he might be judged without those resources of
defence which are open to the meanest subject charged with an offence.
In March Sir Charles Dilke applied to the Queen's Proctor for his
intervention in order that the case might be reheard. The application
failed. In April he moved again, this time by a public letter, and this
time the Queen's Proctor yielded. Application was made in the Court of
Probate and Divorce to the President, Sir James Hannen, that Sir Charles
Dilke should be made a party to the intervention or reinstated in the
suit.
The President laid down that Sir Charles was no party to the suit, and
had now no right to appear except as a witness, and might not be
represented by counsel. The question was then taken to the Court of
Appeal, but, on strictly technical grounds, the Court held that Sir
Charles was no longer a party, and that he could not be allowed to
intervene. Thus the first judgment, by declaring him innocent and
awarding him costs as one unjustly accused, led straight to his undoing.
He had been struck out of the case; he was now a mere member of the
general public. There never were, probably, legal proceedings in which
from first to last law and justice were more widely asunder.
Sir Charles Dilke was, in fact, in the position from which Sir Henry
James had sought to protect him--the position described in the course of
his pleading for reinstatement:
'I have no desire to put forward any claim for my client other than
one founded on justice, but I cannot imagine a more cruel position
than that in which Sir Charles Dilke would be placed in having a
grave charge against him tried while the duty of defending his
interest was committed to hands other than those of his own
advisers.'
The consequences which flowed from the technical construction put upon
the situation were these: In reality Sir Charles Dilke was the defendant
on trial for his political life and his personal honour. Yet although
Sir Henry James and Sir Charles Russell were there in court ready
briefed, neither was allowed to speak. Dilke's case against his accuser
had to be dealt with by the counsel for the Queen's Proctor, Sir Walter
Phillimore, who, though a skilled ecclesiastical lawyer, was
comparatively inexperienced in the cross-examination of witnesses and in
Nisi Prius procedure, and was opposed by Mr. Henry Matthews, the most
skilled cross-examiner at the bar. Sir Walter Phillimore also stated
publicly, and properly, that it was not his 'duty to represent and
defend Sir Charles Dilke.' So strictly was this view acted upon that Sir
Charles did not once meet Sir Walter Phillimore in consultation; and
witnesses whom he believed to be essential to his case were never
called. But that was not all. According to the practice of that court,
all the information given by Dilke was at once communicated to the other
side; but as Sir Charles was not a party to the suit, the Queen's
Proctor did not communicate to him what he learned from that other side.
In an ordinary trial the witnesses of the accusers are heard first. And
this order is recognized as giving the greatest prospect of justice,
since if the defence is first disclosed the accuser may adjust details
in the charge so as, at the last moment, to deprive the defence of that
fair-play which the first order of hearing is designed to secure. The
only possible disproof which Sir Charles could offer was an alibi. It
was of vital importance to him that the accusation should be fixed to
dates, places, days, hours, even minutes, with the utmost possible
precision. Then he might, even after the lapse of years, establish the
falsity of a charge by proof that he was elsewhere at the time
specified. But in this case, owing to the form that the proceedings
took, the opportunity which of right belongs to the defence was given to
the accuser. The accusation being technically brought by the Queen's
Proctor, who alleged that the divorce had been obtained by false
evidence, Sir Charles Dilke was produced as his witness, and had at the
beginning of the proceedings to disclose his defence.
Further, and even more important, the issue put to the jury was limited
in the most prejudicial way.
'On the former occasion,' said Sir James Hannen, 'it was for the
petitioner to prove that his wife had committed adultery with Sir
Charles Dilke.' (This, as has been seen, the petitioner failed to
prove against Sir Charles Dilke; the petitioner had to pay Sir
Charles's costs.) 'On this occasion it is for the Queen's Proctor to
prove that the respondent did not commit adultery with Sir Charles
Dilke.'
How this negative was to be proved in any circumstances it is difficult
to see, and under the conditions Sir Charles had no chance to attack the
accusation brought against him.
Sir Charles's own comment in his Diary of the time was:
'_July 16th_--My case tried again. I not a party, and--though really
tried by a kind of Star Chamber--not represented, not allowed to
cross-examine, not allowed to call witnesses; and under such
circumstances the trial could have but one result, which was that
the jury, directed to decide if they were in doubt that the Queen's
Proctor had not established his case, would take that negative
course. The trial lasted from Friday, 16th, to Friday, 23rd,
inclusive, and the jury decided, as they could not have helped
deciding, and as I should have decided had I been one of them.'
The situation may be thus summed up:
In the first trial the petitioner failed to produce any legal evidence
whatever of the guilt of Sir Charles Dilke; in the second the Queen's
Proctor failed to prove his innocence. [Footnote: Technically the
verdict, by dismissing the Queen's Proctor's intervention, confirmed the
original judgment, which dismissed Sir Charles from the case.]
The verdict of the jury at the second trial was not a verdict of Guilty
against Sir Charles; it was a declaration that his innocence was not
proven, the question put to the Jury by the clerk after their return
into Court following the words of the Act of Parliament, and being
whether the decree nisi for the dissolution of the marriage of the
petitioner and the respondent was obtained contrary to the justice of
the case by reason of material facts not being brought to the knowledge
of the Court. The Jury's answer followed the same words. [Footnote: See
report in _Daily News_, Saturday, July 24th, 1886.] When we add to that
the conditions under which the question was tried, we see that they were
such as to make the proof of innocence impossible.
Those about Sir Charles at this time remember how even at that bitter
moment he began to look round for any method by which his case might be
reheard. He wrote to Sir Henry James that it would be a proper course
for himself to invite a trial for perjury; and though Lady Dilke was so
ill 'from sick and sleepless nights' that she had been ordered at once
to Royat, he waited for three weeks before accompanying her abroad, to
give time for action to be taken, and wrote to Sir Richard Webster (then
Attorney-General) practically inviting a prosecution.
He did not abandon hope of a rehearing, and worked for many years in the
trust that the evidence accumulated by himself and his friends might be
so used, nor did he cease his efforts till counsel in consultation
finally assured him 'that no means were open to Sir Charles Dilke to
retry his case.'
Sir Eyre Crowe, a friend valued for his own as well as for his father's
sake (Sir Joseph Crowe, to whom Sir Charles was much attached), wrote at
the time of Sir Charles's death: 'How he bore for long years the sorrow
and misfortunes of his lot had something heroic about it. I only once
talked to him about these things, and was intensely struck by his Roman
attitude.' It was the only attitude possible to such a man. Placed by
his country's laws in the situation of one officially acquitted by a
decision which was interpreted into a charge of guilt; forced then, in
defence of his honour, into the position of a defendant who is debarred
from means of defence; assured after long effort that no legal means
were open to him to attempt again that defence, he solemnly declared his
innocence, and was thereafter silent.
'By-and-by it will be remembered that as a fact the issue was never
fairly represented and never fairly met,' was the estimate of Sir
Francis Jeune, afterwards President of the Divorce Court. And from the
first there were many lawyers and thinking men and women who would have
endorsed it. From the first also there were those who believed Sir
Charles's word. Among such faithful friends, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice,
Sir Robert Collins, Mr. Cyril Flower, Mrs. Westlake and Mr. Westlake,
Q.C., Mr. Thursfield of the _Times_, Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Francis and
Lady Jeune, Sir Charles's old college friend Judge Steavenson, stand out
in memory. He himself says: 'I received after the trial ... a vast
number of letters from people who wrote to express their belief in me.
Some, as, for example, from Dr. Hatch' (the eminent Oxford theologian)
'and his wife, and from Dr. Percival, Head-master of Rugby, [Footnote:
Dr. Percival was President of Trinity College, Oxford, till 1887, when
he went to Rugby. He became Bishop of Hereford.] and his wife, were from
firm friends of Emilia, brought to me by their belief in her; some from
friends, some from political foes, of all sorts--all breathing
confidence and devotion.'
Mr. Chamberlain wrote: 'I feel bitterly my powerlessness to do or say
anything useful at the present time.' In such a case the testimony of
intimates is weighty, and Sir John Gorst sent in June, 1913, his
recollection of words used by Mr. Chamberlain in the autumn of 1886: 'I
assure you that, as a man of honour, I don't believe the charges made
against him. If you had been in and out of his house at all times as I
have been, you would see they were impossible.'
Then as now there existed a certain body of opinion which would have
discriminated between a man's private honour and his public usefulness,
holding that the nation which throws aside a great public servant
because of charges of personal immorality is confusing issues, and
sacrificing the country's welfare to private questions. Whatever is to
be said for this view, it was one to which Sir Charles Dilke wished to
owe nothing. He did not share it, and those whose adherence he
acknowledged were those who believed his word. From different sources,
then, Sir Charles had found confidence and support, but they were small
stay in that gradually accumulating torrent of misfortune.
As the Press campaign had developed in the spring, he found himself
avoided in Parliament and in society. In the House, where a few months
before he had again and again been the Government spokesman and
representative, he was retired into the ranks of private members. This
short Parliament of 1886 came to an end in June, and, in the General
Election which followed, London went solidly against Home Rule; and Sir
Charles, though as compared with other Gladstonian Liberals he did well,
found himself rejected by the constituency which had stood by him in
four contests. Such a reverse occurs in the life of almost every
prominent politician, and, though harassing, is of no determining
import. For Sir Charles Dilke at this moment it was a cruel blow. The
personal discredit against which he had to fight coincided with the
discredit of his party; and when the jury came to their decision in
July, after a week in which the newspapers had been filled daily with
columns of scandalous detail, public feeling assumed a character of
bitter personal hostility.
'Sir Charles's fall,' says the chronicler of that period, Mr. Justin
McCarthy, 'is like that of a tower. He stood high above every rising
English statesman, and but for what has happened he must have been Prime
Minister after Gladstone.' [Footnote: This article appeared in a
Canadian journal after the second trial.]