LADY DILKE--76, SLOANE STREET
Sir Charles Dilke's marriage in 1885 extended rather than modified his
sphere of work. Lady Dilke, the Emilia Strong who was studying drawing
in 1859 at South Kensington, [Footnote: See Chapter 11. (Vol. 1., p.
17).] had submitted herself in these long intervening years to such
scholarly training and discipline as gave her weight and authority on
the subjects which she handled.
The brilliant girl's desire to take all knowledge for her kingdom had
been intensified by her marriage at twenty-one to the scholar more than
twice her age. In the words of Sir Charles's Memoir: 'She widened her
conception of art by the teaching of the philosopher and by the study of
the literatures to which the schooling of Mark Pattison admitted her.
She saw, too, men and things, travelled largely with him, became
mistress of many tongues, and gained above all a breadth of desire for
human knowledge, destined only to grow with the advance of years.'
[Footnote: _The Book of the Spiritual Life_, by the late Lady Dilke,
with a Memoir of the Author by Sir Charles W. Dilke, p. 18.]
At twenty-five years of age she was contributing philosophical articles
to the _Westminster Review_, and for years she wrote the review of
foreign politics for the _Annual Register_. Later she furnished art
criticisms to the _Portfolio_, the _Saturday Review_, and the _Academy_,
of which last she was art editor. It was as an art critic that she had
come to be known, and to this work she brought a remarkable equipment;
for to her technical knowledge and artist's training was added a deep
study of the tendencies of history and of human thought. _Art in the
Modern State_, in which she wrote of the art of the 'Grand Siècle' in
its bearing on modern political and social organizations, has been
quoted as the book most characteristic of the philosophical tendency of
her writing, but this did not appear till 1888. The _Renaissance of Art
in France_, which had been published in 1879, was illustrated by
drawings from her own pencil, and in 1884 had appeared _Claude Lorrain_,
written by herself in the pure and graceful French of which she was
mistress.
She had been a pupil of Mulready, whose portrait still decorates the
mantelpiece of her Pyrford home, and in the early South Kensington days
had come much under the influence of Watts and Ruskin. There were
numbered among her friends many who had achieved distinction in the art,
literature, or politics of Europe. Her letters on art to Eugène Müntz,
preserved in the Manuscript Department of the Bibliothèque Nationale,
commemorate the friendship and assistance given to her by the author of
the _History of the Italian Renaissance_, whose admiration for her work
made him persuade her to undertake her _Claude_. It was Taine who bore
witness to her 'veritable erudition on the fine arts of the
Renaissance,' when in 1871, lecturing in Oxford, he used to visit Mark
Pattison and his young wife at Lincoln College, and described the 'toute
jeune femme, charmante, gracieuse, à visage frais et presque mutin, dans
le plus joli nid de vieille architecture, avec lierre et grands arbres.'
[Footnote: 'The Art Work of Lady Dilke,' _Quarterly Review_, October,
1906.] It was Renan, a friend of later years, whom as yet she did not
know, who 'presented' her _Renaissance_ to the Académie des Inscriptions
et Belles-Lettres.
But there was another side to her activities, as intense. Public service
was to her a duty of citizenship, and her keen sympathy with suffering
had inspired her to such study of economic and industrial questions
that, in her effort for the development of organization among women
workers, she was for years 'the practical director of a considerable
social movement.' Her four volumes on Art in France in the Eighteenth
Century, which occupied her from this time onwards, were not more
absorbing to her than was the growth of the Women's Trade Union League.
She had concentrated her powers on a special period of French art, just
as she concentrated them on a certain phase of industrial development;
but her reverence for and pursuit of all learning persisted, and, in the
words of the Memoir written by Sir Charles, 'she was master enough of
human knowledge in its principal branches to know the relation of almost
every part of it to every other.' [Footnote: _Book of the Spiritual
Life,_ Memoir, p. 70.]
The intense mental training of the years of her first marriage had given
her a grasp of essential facts and a breadth of outlook most unusual in
women, and rare among men. She always correlated her own special work to
that of the larger world. She found in the Women's Protective and
Provident Union a little close corporation, full of sex antagonism and
opposition to legislative protection, but under her sway these
limitations gradually disappeared, and the Women's Trade Union movement
became an integral part of industrial progress. It is difficult to
realize now the breadth of vision which was then required to see that
the industrial interests of the sexes are identical, and that protective
legislation does not hamper, but emancipates. It was this attitude which
brought to her in this field of work the friendship and support of all
that was best in the Labour world of her day henceforth to the end.
'It is delightful to talk to Mrs. Mark Pattison,' said Sir Charles Dilke
years before to Sir Henry James. 'She says such wonderful things.' She
had the rare power of revealing to others by a few words things in their
true values, and those who came within the sphere of her influence try
still to recover the attitude of mind which she inspired, to remember
how she would have looked at the fresh problems which confront them, and
to view them in relation to all work and life.
It was this knowledge and breadth of view which told. A perfect speaker,
with tremendous force of personality, charm of manner, beauty of voice,
and command of emotional oratory, her power was greatest when she
preferred to these methods the force of a reasoned appeal. Conviction
waited on these appeals, and in early days, at a public meeting, a group
of youthful cynics, 'out' for entertainment, dispersed with the comment:
'That was wonderful--you couldn't heckle a woman like that.'
Her serious work never detracted from her social charm, which was
influenced by her love and study of eighteenth century French art. Her
wit, gaiety, and the sensitive fancy which manifested itself in her
stories, [Footnote: _The Shrine of Love, and Other Stories_; and _The
Shrine of Death, and Other Stories_.] made up this charm, which was
reflected in the distinction and finish of her appearance. Some touches
seemed subtly to differentiate her dress from the prevailing fashion,
and to make it the expression of a personality which belonged to a
century more dignified, more leisured, and less superficial, than our
own. [Footnote: _Book of the Spiritual Life,_ p. 120.] Her dress
recalled the canvases of Boucher, Van Loo, and Watteau, which she loved.
She played as she worked, with all her heart, delivering herself
completely to the enjoyment of the moment. 'Vous devez bien vous amuser,
Monsieur, tous les jours chez vous,' said a Frenchwoman to Sir Charles
one night at a dinner in Paris. [Footnote: _Book of the Spiritual Life,_
Memoir, p. 96.] In this power of complete relaxation their natures
coincided. Her gaiety matched Sir Charles's own. This perhaps was the
least of the bonds between them. The same high courage, the same
capacity for tireless work, the same sense of public duty, characterized
both.
Sir Charles's real home was the home of all his life, of his father and
grandfather--No. 76, Sloane Street. Pyrford and Dockett were, like La
Sainte Campagne at Toulon, mainly places for rest and play. This home
was a house of treasures--of many things precious in themselves, and
more that were precious to the owners from memory and association.
Through successive generations one member of the family after another
had added to the collection. Many had been accumulated by the last
owner, who slept always in the room that had been his nursery. He
believed he would die, and desired to die, in the house where he was
born. The desire was accomplished, for he died there, on January 26th,
1911, a few months before the long lease expired.
Partly from its dull rich colouring of deep blues and reds and greens,
its old carpets and tapestries, partly from the pictures that crowded
its walls, the interior had the air rather of a family country-house
than of a London dwelling in a busy street.
Pictures, lining the walls from top to bottom of the staircase,
represented a medley of date and association. Byng's Fleet at Naples on
August 1st, 1718, with Sir Thomas Dilkes second in command, hung next to
a view of the Château de la Garde, near Toulon. This picturesque ruin
rose clear in the view from Sir Charles's house at Cap Brun, 'La Sainte
Campagne,' and figures as an illustration in one of Lady Dilke's
stories; 'Reeds and Umbrella Pines' at Carqueiranne, by Pownoll
Williams, kept another memory of Provence. Next to a painting, by Horace
Vernet, of a scene on the Mediterranean coast, little Anne Fisher, born
1588, exhibited herself in hooped and embroidered petticoat, quaint cap
and costly laces, a person of great dignity at six years old. She was to
be Lady Dilke of Maxstoke Castle and a shrewd termagant, mother of two
sons who sided, one with the Commonwealth, the other with the King. The
Royalist Sir Peter Wentworth was a great friend of Milton, with whom he
came in contact on the Committee of State when Milton was Secretary for
the Council of Foreign Tongues. But Cromwell turned him off the Council,
and he was arrested and brought to London for abetting his Warwickshire
tenantry in refusal to pay the Protector's war-taxes. Her Puritan son,
Fisher Dilke, followed, with a sour-faced Puritan divine, and then came
a group of water-colours by Thomas Hood, the author of 'The Song of the
Shirt,' and an intimate friend of the Dilkes.
One of the ancestors, an earlier Peter Wentworth, son of Sir Nicholas
Wentworth (who was Chief Porter of Calais, and knighted by Henry VIII.
at the siege of Boulogne), bore the distinction of having been three
times sent to the Tower. The first was for a memorable speech on behalf
of the liberties of the House of Commons, in 1575. Imprisonment does not
seem to have taught him caution, for he was last imprisoned in 1593,
because he had 'offended Her Majesty,' and a prisoner he remained till
his death in 1596, occupying the period by writing a _Pithie Exhortation
to Her Majesty for Establishing her Successor to the Crowne_.
Engravings of Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Harry Vane,
Fulk Greville, Lord Burleigh, William Warham (the friend of Erasmus,
Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chancellor), Queen Katharine Parr, Robert
Devereux (Earl of Essex), who all came into the Dilke pedigree, hung on
the walls. But the most interesting portrait might have been that of Sir
Charles himself in fancy dress, the Sir Charles of the early eighties
before trouble had lined his face or silvered his hair. This was the
painting of Sir Thomas, afterwards Lord Wentworth, who died in 1551 and
lies in Westminster Abbey. The reversion to type was so striking that
guests would often ask to see again 'the best portrait of Sir Charles.'
[Footnote: This first Baron Wentworth had been knighted for his bravery
in the taking of Braye and Montdidier in the expedition to France of
1523, and in 1529 was summoned to Parliament under the title of Lord
Wentworth of Nettlestead. He attended Henry VIII. in his interview with
the French King at Calais, and under Edward VI. was Lord Chamberlain of
the Household and a member of the Privy Council.]
Among more recent portraits and drawings were a group of trophies,
illustrating Sir Charles's experiences in the Franco-German War. Of
three passes, the first was carried when he was with the Crown Prince
Frederick and the Knights of St. John; the other two showed the change
in his sympathies from Germany to France--one from the Commune, the
other from the national headquarters at Versailles. Here lay a bullet
which struck the wall beside him at Clamart Railway Station, just
missing him; pens taken from the table of the Procureur Impérial at
Wissembourg when the first French town was entered by the Germans; and a
trophy of his birthday in 1871, a bit of the Napoleonic Eagle from the
Guard-room at the Tuileries, smashed by the crowd on that day, September
4th, when the Third Republic was proclaimed.
Then followed old photographs of members of Parliament and Cabinet
Ministers; pictures of Maxstoke Castle, where the elder branch of the
Dilkes had its home; etchings by Rajon; framed numbers of _Le Vengeur_,
printed after the entry of the Versailles army into Paris during the
'semaine sang-lante'; addresses, including some in Greek, presented to
Sir Charles on various occasions. In the double dining-room a famous
portrait of Gambetta--the only portrait taken from life--hung over one
mantelpiece. A favourite citation might have been upon the lips: 'La
France était à genoux. Je lui ai dit, "Lève-toi".' In 1875 Sir Charles
asked Professor Legros to go to Paris and paint Gambetta, who never sat
to any other artist. This portrait hangs now in the Luxembourg, and will
ultimately be transferred to the Louvre, its destination by Sir
Charles's bequest. The only other portrait of Gambetta is that by
Bonnat, painted after death. It was the property of Dilke's friend M.
Joseph Reinach, and the two had agreed to bequeath these treasured
possessions to the Louvre. But the Legros was the more authentic. M.
Bonnat said to Sir Charles: 'Mine is black and white; I never saw him.
Yours is red as a lobster. Mais il paraît qu'il était rouge comme un
homard.' Sir Charles himself wrote: 'It is Gambetta as he lives and
moves and has his being. What more can I ask for or expect?' He always
predicted that its painter, whose merit had never in his opinion been
adequately recognized, would after death come to his due place.
The rooms had been lined with the grandfather's books, but soon after he
came into possession Sir Charles disposed of them. He had a strong
belief in keeping round him only the necessary tools for his work, and a
large library was an encumbrance to him. But sentiment was strong, and
for some time they remained, till a comment of George Odger's sealed
their fate. Looking round the shelves, he remarked with wonderment on
the number of the books and the wisdom of the friend who had read them
all. Sir Charles, conscious that he had not done so, and that he never
should lead the life of a purely literary man, gave away the more
valuable, and sold the rest of the collection. Lord Carlingford profited
by the Junius papers; Mr. John Murray by the Pope manuscripts; the
British Museum by the Caryll papers; and pictures took the place of
shelves. [Footnote: See Chapter XI. (Vol. I., pp. 161, 162).]
A number of fine old prints after Raphael were there, and also a
photograph of the head of Fortune in Burne-Jones's 'Wheel.' Sir Charles
had commissioned Burne-Jones to paint a head of Fortune, and the
correspondence on the subject was sufficiently complete to suggest that
the commission had been executed, though as a fact it was never carried
out. Sir Charles, who knew something of the difficulty of tracing and
attributing pictures, used to declare laughingly that the correspondence
might go far to mislead some critic of the future into search after a
non-existent original. Anyway, the beautiful head with its closed eyes
hung there always, presiding over the varying fortunes of the last
tenants of the house.
The far dining-room opened with French windows on a paved terrace, which
led by steps to a little garden and to the stables beyond. This terrace
was the scene of the morning fencing, when the clashing of foils and Sir
Charles's shouts of laughter resounded to the neighbouring gardens. Lord
Harcourt recalls the parties in the eighties, as one of the
characteristic features of life at 76, Sloane Street. Lord Desborough,
then Mr. W. Grenfell, a first-rate fencer, came frequently, and he
chronicles the 'deadly riposte' of Sir Julian Pauncefote, a regular
attendant when he was in town. Mr. R. C. Lehmann, best known as oarsman
and boxer, but a fencer as well, came whenever he could. A great St.
Bernard, lying waiting for him in the entrance hall, announced his
master's presence.
Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, of the French Embassy, was one of the
most regular attendants. When M. d'Estournelles left London it was to go
to Tunis; and further reference in one of Sir Charles's letters betrays
the pride with which he learnt that this frequenter of his school had
done it credit by 'pinking his man' in a duel. M. Joseph Reinach came to
fence whenever he was in London; so did Italian masters--for example,
the Marchese Fabrizio Panluoci de' Calboli, 'who wants to set up here.'
The _maitre d'armes_ was senior master at the London Fencing Club, and
many young fencers joined these parties to gain experience. Sir Charles
was one of the first Englishmen to use the épée; he fenced always when
in Paris, as in London, and any famous French fencer who visited this
country received as a matter of course an invitation to the morning
meetings at No. 76. [Footnote: Sir Charles fenced whenever he was
abroad, if he could get an opponent. There is a note of 1881: 'August
29th-September 3rd, fenced with de Clairval at La Bourboule.' As late as
1907 he was fencing at Hyères with a master who came over from Toulon on
certain days in the week. Also at the end of 1881 he 'started a local
fencing club in my own street, and trained some good fencers there, and
used to get away to fence there whenever I could find time in the
evening hours.' He took part in a competition at this club, and 'won the
prize for rapier fencing, being beaten, of course, for foil fencing.']
Sir Theodoré Cook, now editor of the _Field_, an antagonist of a later
date, and captain of the first international fencing team of 1903,
speaks of the considerable reputation of Sir Charles as a fencer,
'taking the same place in a quiet way as that Lord Howard de Walden
takes towards the public now' (1913).
It was the 'unconventional style and the boyish enjoyment of his
pastime'--to use Lord Desborough's words--which were characteristic of
Sir Charles. His mischievous attempts to distract his adversary's
attention, his sudden drops to the ground and bewildering recoveries,
his delight at the success of his feints, and contagious merriment, must
have gained the sympathy of even the most formal fencer. Many stories of
these bouts are told. One is that, having driven an antagonist from the
terrace into the Garden Room, into which he was followed by his
favourite cat, Sir Charles caught up and threw the protesting animal at
his opponent, and dealt his final blow at a foe embarrassed by the
double onslaught. Those, however, who know his respect for the dignity
of cats will always regard the story as apocryphal.
He delighted in having near him the pictures of his friends, and there
were many on the next landing, in the vestibule and the Blue Room to
which it led. Mr. Chamberlain, keen-eyed and alert, looked out from
Frank Holl's canvas. Fawcett, [Footnote: Now in the National Portrait
Gallery, as also Holl's 'Chamberlain,' by Sir Charles's bequest.]
painted by Ford Madox Brown in 1871, recalled an earlier friendship, as
did the portrait of John Stuart Mill, who, never having sat to any
painter, just before his death allowed Watts to paint this for Sir
Charles. The picture came home on the day Mill died, and is the
original. It was left by will to the Westminster Town Hall. The picture
in the National Portrait Gallery is a replica, painted by Sir Charles's
leave. By Watts was also a beautiful portrait of Sir Charles himself,
the pendant to another which has gone. He and his first wife were
painted for each other, but the portrait of her seemed to him so
inadequately to render the 'real charm' of the dead woman that he
destroyed it. The illustrations of this book contain some reproductions
of pictures mentioned here.
Reminiscent of earlier family friendships were the Keats relics here and
in Sir Charles's own study. Many of these had been bought by old Mr.
Dilke from Keats's love, Fanny Brawne, to save them from the indignity
of an auction.
In the Blue Room also hung some extraordinarily fine pictures by Blake,
who was the friend of Sir Charles's grandfather--among them 'The
Crucifixion,' 'The Blasphemer,' and 'The Devil,' [Footnote: 'I gave four
of my Blakes to the South Kensington Museum in 1884.'] The best loved
both by the grandfather and by Sir Charles was the beautiful 'Queen
Catherine's Dream.' A precious copy of _The Songs of Innocence_,
hand-painted by Blake and his wife, completed the collection. There were
several reliefs by Dalou in the house, the finest let in over the
mantelpiece of the Blue Room, a copy of Flaxman's Mercury and Pandora.
They were executed for Sir Charles when the sculptor was in London in
great distress after the Commune, before the amnesty which retrieved his
fortunes.
Here also were reminiscences of Provence. One side of the wall was
largely covered by a picture of Fréjus by Wislin, painted in the days
when St. Raphael and Valescure did not exist, and when the old town rose
clear from the low ground as Rome rises from the Campagna, the beautiful
Roquebrune, a spur of Sir Charles's beloved Mountains of the Moors,
behind it. Sèvres china, vases, bronzes, filled the window ledges,
presents to the first Baronet from the Emperor of Austria, Napoleon
III., the Crown Prince of Prussia (afterwards the Emperor Frederick),
and other royal persons and Governments, with whom his Exhibition work
brought him into touch.
At the time when Horace Walpole's collection at Strawberry Hill was
sold, Sir Charles's grandfather had stayed at Twickenham, and had
brought away many purchases, which peopled the Red and Green
Drawing-rooms on the next landing. There was a little group of
miniatures in which the 'Beautiful Gunnings' and a charming 'Miss
Temple' figured; in another group, miniatures of Addison, of Mme. Le
Brun, of Molière, came from Lady Morgan, whose pen of bog-oak and gold,
a gift to her from the Irish people, hung in Sir Charles's own study.
The best of the miniatures were those by Peter Oliver, and portrayed
Frederick of Bohemia, Elector Palatine, and his wife Elizabeth, Princess
Royal of England, afterwards married to Lord Craven; while the finest of
all was 'a son of Sir Kenelm Digby, 1632.' It was one of 'several
others' which Walpole 'purchased at a great price,' a purchase which was
thus chronicled 'by Mason (Junius) in a letter to Walpole: 'I
congratulate you on the new miniatures, though I know one day they will
become Court property and dangle under the crimson-coloured shop-glasses
of our gracious Queen Charlotte.' The set were all brought together for
the first time since 1842 at the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition.
In these two drawing-rooms, among the medley of enamelled and inlaid
tables, royal gifts and collectors' purchases, pictures by Cranach,
Mabuse, Van Goyen, Mignard, and many more, some special objects stood
out. These were a beautiful Madonna by Memling, on a circular panel,
from Lord Northwick's collection; the Strawberry Hill marble version of
the famous Bargello relief by Donatello, of the head of the infant St.
John the Baptist; and a portrait ascribed to Cornelius Jansen, which,
owing to the fleurs-de-lis on the chair, passed by the name of 'the
Duchess,' a portly lady of some dignity, with beautiful white hands and
tapering fingers. Lady Dilke's researches, however, placed the lady as
Anne Dujardin, an innkeeper of Lyons. The painter, young Karl Dujardin,
unable to pay his reckoning, had settled it by marrying his hostess and
taking her to Amsterdam, and the fleurs-de-lis on the chair explained
that the lady was of French extraction. A Flemish head of Margaret of
Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, had come from the Gwydyr Collection.
She was much exhibited, but her main interest was due to Sir Charles's
intense admiration for the governing capacity and the overshadowed life
of the woman. He made two pilgrimages to the church at Brou, near
Bourg-en-Bresse, where her sculptured face, closely resembling that of
the portrait, looks out from tomb and windows, as she lies side by side
with Philibert le Beau, the husband of her love and of her youth, in the
magnificent shrine she built for him.
Tapestry hangings divided the rooms from each other, and in many cases
only heavy curtains divided them from the stairs.
Above these rooms, Sir Charles's little study, occupied all day by his
secretary or himself, was lined with books of reference and piles of
despatch-boxes, while every spare foot on the wall held relics of the
past. There was the Herkomer portrait of his second wife, there also a
copy of a favourite picture, Bellini's Doge Leonardo Loredano; the
portrait of Keats, the only one Severn did from the life--now on loan at
the National Portrait Gallery--old political cartoons of Chelsea days,
portraits and prints of John Wilkes, and a head of Mazzini. Felix
Moscheles (the nephew of Mendelssohn and baby of the Cradle Song)
painted Mazzini. Concerning its subject the Memoir notes: 'In the course
of 1872 I lost a good friend in Mazzini, whose enthusiasms, Italian and
religious, I at that time scarcely shared, but whose conversation and
close friendship I deeply valued.... The modernness of the Universal
Cigarette Smoking Craze may be judged by the fact that Mazzini was the
first man I ever knew who was constantly smoking cigarettes.'
The rest was a medley impossible to catalogue: portraits of Charles
Lamb, who had been the grandfather's friend; a scarce proclamation by
the Pretender; medals and other 'Caryll' relics; rapiers, pistols which
had travelled with Sir Charles through America; a section of the Trinity
Hall boat which was head of the river in 1862 and 1864; seven cups,
trophies of rowing, walking, fencing, and shooting matches, with shots
dug up on his Toulon estate which were mementoes of the British
blockades of the town. Apart from works of reference, a special case was
given to autographed books from Hood, Rogers the poet, Gambetta,
Laveleye, Louis Blanc, Castelar, Cardinal Manning, Queen Victoria, and
many more. In this collection figured all Sir Charles's college prizes,
carefully preserved; the family Bible of Lord Leicester, uncle to Sir
Philip Sidney, with Dilke family entries; and a little volume in which
his second wife had written for him some of the most beautiful passages
from 'Queens' Gardens' in _Sesame and Lilies_; it was bound in white
vellum and 'blessed by Ruskin.' Here, too, were many Keats letters and
books afterwards left by will to Hampstead.
A hoard of treasures filled a little book-room above--his mother's
sketches, drawings of his first wife driving her ponies in Sloane
Street, photographs and trinkets of hers, old family caricatures, and
also some original sketches by Leech. In the room next to it, occupied
by his grandmother till her death in 1882, was a John Collier of the
first Lady Dilke.
When the grandmother's sitting-room was used later by Sir Charles's
second wife, its main features were a small reference library of French
art and a collection of books on Labour. Before the fireplace, on the
writing-table as it was in 1885, were bowls of French porcelain filled
once a week with fresh flowers from the Toulon garden--paper white
narcissus and purple anemones or big violets of Provençal growth.
Sir Charles's bedroom above was the old nursery, connected with his
mother's room, in which he was born, and out of which opened a little
room where as a child he slept. His memories of that room were the
terrors of a nervous boy, lying alone in the dark, creeping downstairs
to sit--a tiny white-robed figure--as near as possible to the
drawing-room door, to get comfort from the hum of talk or thunder of the
four-handed piano pieces of the period.
His own room for many years was full of drawings by his second wife--her
studies under Mulready, her drawings for her _Renaissance_, and other
pen-and-ink sketches by her hand, as well as two miniatures of her by
Pollet. Some of Frank Dicey's Thames water-colours, one showing Sir
Charles's river house at Dockett Eddy, and sketches from his own pen or
brush made in his Russian, American, and world-wide wanderings, were
here also. In a tiny glazed bookcase by the fire were some 'favourite
books,' a volume or two of Kipling, two volumes of Anatole France, next
to a cookery book of 1600, Renan's _Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse_,
and a volume of Aubanel. The place of honour was given to a deeply
scored copy of Jeremy Taylor's _Golden Grove_.
Beside his great-uncle's Peninsular medal and clasps hung one of Roty's
medals, a present from the artist. There were several of Roty's
beautiful medallions in the house, the finest one of Sir Charles
himself, explained by the legend on the back as 'done for his wife.' She
had it made, and it was always with her.
There were a good many of W. E. F. Britten's pictures, painted for Sir
Charles; the finest was that of 'St. Francis preaching to the Birds,' a
thing of delicate colour and taste, which fitted with his love of the
Umbrian Holy Land and went later to the country cottage at Pyrford.
There was more force in a large crayon drawing of the Earl of
Southampton in the Tower: 'his cat had just arrived down the chimney,
probably saving his master's reason by relief of the intolerable tension
of lonely confinement.'
The painted cats, or Miss Chaplin's modelled pussies, of which there
were many, were seldom without some magnificent living representative at
76, Sloane Street. Zulu, an enormous dark long-haired cat, was very
popular; but the last of the 'Head Cats,' Calino, was so engaging that,
at his death about 1908, Sir Charles decided that he should never be
replaced. The sway of these cats was despotic, but there were occasions
on which their own territory was too limited for them, and messages
would come from far down the street demanding the removal of the
reigning favourite from some article of furniture where it had ensconced
itself with such majesty that a show of violence was out of the
question. Among his precious books was a cat story--privately printed
and bound--which his second wife had gradually evolved among the
wonderful essays in story-telling with which, when he was jaded, she
diverted him. This held so large a share in his affection that it nearly
displaced his little French copy of the _Contes de Perrault_, containing
the adventures of the Marquis of Carabas and Puss in Boots. At the
winter cottage at Pyrford, among the pines, was a cattery, where Persian
tailless cats, some ginger and some white, were bred. A list of names
was kept ready for them, and Babettes, Papillons, Pierrots and
Pierrettes, Mistigrises and Beelzebubs, were distributed to friends and
acquaintances. Among the treasured pathetic scraps kept in his father's
desk, his executors found a pencil drawing by his wife, the closed
window of a silent house, into which the perfectly sketched figure of a
little kitten was trying to enter.
In the gracious setting of this house the pervading atmosphere was that
of work. The three generations of Dilkes whom it had sheltered had each
found the sphere for which he was best fitted, and pursued it
tirelessly. The grandfather, beloved old scholar and critic; the father,
indefatigable organizer of international exhibitions, horticulturist,
newspaper proprietor, member of Parliament--both passed on the
traditions of strenuous labour to the great Parliamentarian who was now
the occupant of the house. He had absorbed those traditions and far
outvied his predecessors, working day and night, bringing down from his
bedroom almost illegible memoranda to be deciphered by his secretary in
the morning.
From 1880 to 1885 his accession to public office had intensified the
work. Messengers with official boxes waited in the hall; callers on
political or electoral business, to be interviewed by him or his
secretaries, filled the Blue and Red Rooms. After the morning's fencing
he passed rapidly from letters to interviews till the Office or the
House of Commons claimed him, and his faithful coachman, Charles Grant,
who when he died in 1901 had served his master for thirty years, waited
for him at the door. Yet with all this the house continued, as in his
father's day, to be noted for its hospitality, and the lists of guests
in the tattered diaries bear witness to the enormous and varied circle
of Sir Charles's friends. Here met foreign diplomatists and artists,
English statesmen, and men of letters. Even Cardinal Manning broke his
rule against dining out, as 'yours is a Cabinet dinner,' to come to 76,
Sloane Street; but as he met M. de Franqueville, Baron Ferdinand de
Rothschild, and the friend whom the Cardinal designated to be his
biographer, the future author of _France_, J. E. C. Bodley, there must
have been talk of other subjects than 'Housing of the Poor.' Indeed,
absence of 'shop' seems to have been one of the charms of these dinners,
and Mr. G. W. Osborn, the Chairman of the Chelsea Liberal Association,
records that, even when the local leaders met there, some outside
element was always introduced which made the talk general.
On another occasion Sir Charles notes: 'July 9th, 1884. On this day
Cardinal Manning dined with me, and gave me, in return for a Spanish
crucifix with which I had presented him, a miniature of "our patron, St.
Charles,"' which now, he adds, '(1891 and 1903) hangs in my bedroom.
Manning and H. von Bismarck met at my table--I think for the first
time.'
His first invitation to Mr. Gladstone, of October 26th, 1882, was to
meet the Duc de Broglie: 'the leader of the Conservative party in France
is at this moment a sufficiently interesting figure for me to think you
may like to come to meet him, if you are not engaged.'
Such social life, like the morning's rapid turn with the foils or the
Sunday afternoon on the river, helped to save him from breakdown under a
strain of work persistently intense. Another quality which saved him was
his power of turning at once and completely from one occupation to
another.
A friend thus describes him as he appeared in 1885: 'There was in him a
quality of boyishness I have never seen in any other man, coupled with
deep gravity and seriousness, and the transition from one mood to the
other came with lightning rapidity. Appeal to him on some question of
high politics, even at a moment of the most joyous relaxation, and his
face gravened, his bearing changed; he pulled himself together with a
trick of manner habitual to the end, and the 'boy' became the statesman
before it seemed the last echoes of his laughter had died away. We all
prophesied for him accession to the highest offices of the State; for
though so far the offices which he had held had been of but minor rank,
yet he had magnified these offices till they became of the first
importance, and his knowledge and authority were as great as were his
charm and his power of gathering round him supporters and friends. He
spoke with the authority of one who knows his value to the nation which
he serves.'
So with Sir Charles's second marriage the house entered on its last
phase, and the dark days which followed were lightened for its two
occupants by mutual confidence and the support of an abiding love.