CHAPTER L

INDIA AND FRANCE--RHODES AND BISMARCK

1886-1892

I.

In the period covered by the earlier portion of the previous chapter,

Sir Charles Dilke had used his freedom as an opportunity for travel.

'During a visit to Paris, in the winter of 1886, paid in order to

discuss the question of the work which ultimately appeared in France

as _L'Europe en 1887_, I saw a good deal of Castelar, who was

visiting Paris at the same time; and it was to us that he made a

speech, which has become famous, about Boulanger, who was beginning

to attract great notice, declaring in French, "I know that General

Boulanger--he is a Spanish General;" meaning that the Spanish habit

of the military insurrection under the leadership of a showy General

was extending to France. [Footnote: In 1889 Sir Charles notes: 'My

wife and I were asked to dinner to meet General Boulanger; and I

decided that I would not go, neither did she.']

'Chamberlain, during his journey abroad, had seen a good deal of Sir

William White, the Ambassador at Constantinople, who wrote to me

about him: "We became friends, and spoke naturally of you, our

mutual friend. I could not help seeing Chamberlain's immense

quickness of observation and talents. In foreign politics he

appeared to me to be beginning his ABC, but disposed to learn...."

The Ambassador went on to say that the intimacy between France and

Russia was coming to the front at Constantinople, and that

Bismarck's Ambassador did not seem to take umbrage at it.

'In September, 1887, we went to France, where our journey had

nothing of great interest, except a visit to Vaux-le-Vicomte,

Fouquet's house, [Footnote: Near Melun, in the Seine-et-Marne, where

Fouquet gave the celebrated fête referred to. See _Mémoires de

Fouquet_, by A. Chéruel, vol. ii., chap. xxxv.] which remains very

much as Fouquet left it, although the gardens in which he received

Louis XIV. in the great féte recounted by Dumas have been completed

by their present proprietor, with whom we stayed. We afterwards

visited Constantinople, and stayed for ten days at Therapia, and

then at Athens, where I had a great reception, as indeed throughout

Greece, on account of my previous services to the Greek cause; in

some cases payment was refused on this ground. [Footnote: A letter

from Lady Dilke of October 29th, 1887, written to Cardinal Manning,

a constant correspondent, deals with one of these episodes:

"We were received at the Piraeus by an order not to open our boxes,

an ignorant underling being severely rebuked, and bid to 'look at

the name on the boxes. Would you ask money from one who has done so

much for Greece?' In short, we had a royal reception. The Prime

Minister, the Metropolitan, and the other Ministers and their

families, and all dignitaries, ecclesiastical, academical,

political, military, all vied in showing Charles honour. The crowd

watched outside for a glimpse of him, and M. Ralli, when I said how

touched he was at their faithful gratitude, said: 'It is not only

our gratitude we wish to show him. You have no idea of the intense

sympathy felt for him in Athens.' We had but three days to give, and

so missed the great public banquet and the torchlight procession

which the students wished to organize. At Corinth the King and Queen

were equally kind."]

'Our journey to Turkey and Greece was full of interest. The Sultan

showed us immense courtesy. Greece after twenty-five years seemed to

me as lovely as ever. The Eastern Church were very civil to us, and

the reception at the Phanar at Constantinople by the Oecumenical

Patriarch, the Archbishop of Constantinople, Dionysius V., in Synod

was striking. I wrote from Constantinople to Chesson: "The

Bulgarians and the Greeks are both now on excellent terms with the

Turks, although, unfortunately, they still detest one another. The

Sultan does not care two straws about Bulgaria now, and will do

nothing in the matter except mark time. The Greek Patriarch gave us

an official reception, with some Archbishops present, who

represented the Churches of Asia and of the Islands, and showed us

their splendid Byzantine treasures. It is extraordinarily

interesting to see all the effects of St. Chrysostom; but I cannot

help feeling that the Church sold the Empire to the Turks, and would

have been more estimable had it _lost_ its jewels. The last

Constantine tried to reunite the Eastern and Western Churches, and

the poor man was denounced as a heretic, and surrounded only by

Latins when he was killed on the breach. The Church, however, went

through a small martyrdom later on, and was glorified by suffering

at the beginning of the Greek War of Independence, when the then

Patriarch was hanged by the Turks and dragged about for three days

by the Jews. They all seem on very good terms now, and the Patriarch

sang the praises of the present Sultan loudly. The Sultan has been

very civil. I did not want to see him, which doubtless made him the

more anxious to see me. He sent for me twice, and, besides the

audience at the Selamlik, had us to a state dinner given in our

honour at the Haremlik. I refused the Grand Cordon of the Médjidieh,

but Emilia accepted the Grand Cordon of the Chefkat for herself. He

is very anxious to make a good impression, and is having the _Shrine

of Death_ done into Turk!"

'I received a letter of thanks from the Secretary of the Trustees of

the National Portrait Gallery for having obtained for them from the

Sultan a copy of the portrait of Nelson which is in the Treasury at

Constantinople; but what I really tried to obtain was the original,

inasmuch as no one ever sees it where it is.'

Sir Charles Dilke, writing to Mr. Chamberlain an amused account of the

Sultan's advances, says: 'Lady White told Emilia that she heard I was to

be Grand Vizier.'

'My riding tour along the Baluch and Afghan frontiers was,' Sir

Charles notes, 'one of the pleasantest and most interesting

experiences of my life.' [Footnote: He adds, 'I described so fully

in the _Fortnightly Review_, in two articles of March 1st and April

1st, 1889, my riding tour ... that I shall say no more about it.'

This account of the journey is summarized from those articles, the

criticism on military questions being dealt with by Mr. Spenser

Wilkinson in the chapter on Defence (LV.).] Leaving England in

October, 1888, he landed with Lady Dilke at Karachi in November.

They were met by the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Frederick Roberts, and

went on over the broad-gauge line, then not officially open, through

the Bolan Pass to Quetta. 'When we reached the picturesque portion

of the pass, we left our carriages for an open truck placed at the

head of the train, in front of two engines, and there we sat with

the fore part of the truck occupied by the paws and head of His

Excellency's dog; next came the one lady of the party and Sir

Frederick Roberts, and then myself and all the staff. The long-

haired warriors and tribesmen, who occupied every point of vantage

on the crags, doubtless thought, and have since told their tribesmen

on their return, that the whole scene was devised to do honour to a

dog.'

They were travelling over part of 'the great strategic railroad

constructed after the Penjdeh incident, on orders given by the

Government of which I was a member.'

At Quetta he was among the guests of Sir Robert Sandeman, Agent for

British Baluchistan, ruler in all but name of those nominally

independent frontier principalities and clans. 'Quetta conversations

soon brought back reminiscences of far-off days. When I had last seen

Sir Robert Sandeman it had been in London, during the discussion of the

occupation of the Khojak position, in which I sided with him.... We

brought with us or found gathered here all the men who best understood

the problem of frontier defence--a very grave problem, too.'

The party assembled under the roof of the Residency included the

Commander-in-Chief, of whom Sir Charles says: 'Sir Frederick Roberts

knows India as no one else knows it, and knows the Indian Army as no one

else has ever known it'; the Adjutant-General; the Quartermaster-

General, who was Director of Military Intelligence; the Military Member

of Council, General Chesney; and Sir Charles Elliott, the Member of

Council for Public Works, who had charge of the strategic railways. With

them were the Inspectors-General of Artillery and of Military Works, the

Secretary of the Defence Commission, and the General in Command at

Quetta, as well as his predecessor, who had not yet vacated the post.

He saw manoeuvres outside Quetta in the valleys that lead from the

Afghan side, and he had the experience of riding up and down those stony

hill slopes beside the Commander-in-Chief. He explored the Khojak

tunnel, then under process of construction, running through 'a wall-like

range which reminds one of the solitude of Sainte-Baume in Provence,'

surveyed all the defences of Quetta, and then, while Lady Dilke went on

by rail to Simla, he set out to ride, in company with Sir Frederick

Roberts and Sir Robert Sandeman, from Harnai, through the Bori and Zhob

Valleys, towards the Gomul Pass. On that journey he saw great gatherings

of chiefs and tribesmen come in to meet and salute the representatives

of British rule. He watched Sir Robert Sandeman parleying with the

borderers, and was introduced to them as the statesman who had

sanctioned the new road. These were regions beyond the reach of

telegraph, where outposts maintained communications by a pigeon post, of

which the mountain hawk took heavy toll; and each day's journey was a

hard and heavy ride.

The ride continued for twelve days, through scorching sun by day and

bitter cold at night; and every march brought its full portion of

strange and beautiful sights. All the romance of border rule, outposts

among robber tribes, order maintained through the agency of subsidized

chiefs, were disclosed; and even when the conditions of travel changed,

when a train took them from the Upper Indus to Nowshera and Peshawur, it

brought to Sir Charles the opportunity of seeing what interested him no

less than the wild tribal levies--namely, the pick of British regulars

in India, both native and European.

The splendour and beauty of the pageant pleased the eye, and there was

not lacking a dramatic interest. He had seen by Sir Frederick Roberts's

side the mountain battle-ground where the day of Maiwand was avenged and

British prestige restored; now he was present when Ayub Khan, the victor

of Maiwand, voluntarily came forward to hold speech for the first time

with the conqueror who so swiftly blotted out the Afghan's victory.

'On our way back (from India) we stayed at Cairo, and saw much of

Sir Evelyn Baring, Riaz, Mustapha Fehmy, the Khedive, Tigrane,

Yakoub Artin, and the other leading men. At Rome, as we passed

through Italy, I made the acquaintance of many of my wife's friends,

the most interesting of whom was, perhaps, Madame Minghetti, known

to her friends as Donna Laura, and previously Princess Camporeale;

and I obtained through Bonghi, whom we saw both at Naples and at

Rome, an order to see Spezia--an order which was refused by the War

Office, and granted by the Admiralty. The Admiral commanding the

Fleet and the Préfet Maritime were both very kind, and I thoroughly

saw the arsenal, fleet, and forts, with the two Admirals.'

In 1905 Sir Charles writes:

'On September 7th in the year 1891 I started for the French

manoeuvres, to which I had been invited by Galliffet. By sending

over my horses I was able to see the manoeuvres extremely well....

'The Marquis de Galliffet was an interesting figure, a soldier of

the time of Louis XV., who, however, had thoroughly learned his

modern work. There were 125,000 men in the field, but, looking back

to my adventures, I am now more struck by the strange future of the

friends I made than by the interest, great as it was, of the

tactics. We had on the staff almost all those who afterwards became

leading men in the Dreyfus case, on both sides of that affair.

Saussier, the Generalissimo, had with him, to look after the foreign

officers, Colonel (afterwards Sir) Reginald Talbot, Huehne' (German

Military Attaché), 'and others--Maurice Weil (the Jew friend of

Esterhazy), who was in the Rennes trial named by the defence as the

real spy, though, I am convinced, innocent. We now know, of course,

that Esterhazy should have been the villain of the play.... General

Billot, afterwards Minister of War, was present, living with

Saussier, as a spectator. Galliffet had under him nearly 120,000

men, but the skeleton enemy was commanded by General Boisdeffre,

afterwards Chief of the Staff, and the leader of the clerical party

in the Ministry of War, and friend, throughout the "affair," of

Billot. General Brault, also afterwards Chief of the Staff, was in

the manoeuvres Chief of the Staff to Galliffet. He, it will be

remembered, also played his part in the "affair," as did Huehne,

named above. On Galliffet's staff, besides General Brault, were

Colonel Bailloud, also concerned in the Dreyfus case; Captain

Picquart, afterwards the youngest Lieutenant-Colonel in the French

army, a brilliant and most thoughtful military scholar, the hero of

the Dreyfus case in its later aspects; the Comte d'Alsace,

afterwards a deputy, and, although a clerical Conservative, a

witness for Dreyfus; and Joseph Reinach, the real author of the

virtual rehabilitation of Dreyfus. It was a singularly brilliant

staff. Bailloud, it may be remembered, afterwards became

Commander-in-Chief of the China Expedition.

'Of those who have not been named, in addition to the remarkable men

who figured in the Dreyfus case, and among the few on this staff who

were not concerned in it, were other interesting persons: the Prince

d'Hénin, M. de la Guiche, and a man who was interesting, and figures

largely in memoirs, Galliffet's bosom friend, the Marquis du Lau

d'Allemans. "Old Du Lau," as he is generally called, was a rich _bon

vivant_, with a big house in Paris, who throughout life has been a

sort of perpetual "providence" to Galliffet, going with him

everywhere, even to the Courts where Galliffet was a favourite

guest. Reinach and Du Lau were not soldiers in the strict sense of

the term, although members of Galliffet's staff. Maurice Weil,

though a great military writer, was himself not a soldier, although

on Saussier's headquarters staff in Paris and in the field. Weil and

Reinach were both officers of the territorial army: Weil a Colonel

of artillery, Reinach a Lieutenant of Chasseurs à Cheval. Du Lau was

a dragoon Lieutenant of stupendous age--possibly an ex-Lieutenant,

with the right to wear his uniform when out as a volunteer on

service. I was walking with him one day in a village, when a small

boy passing said to a companion "What a jolly old chap for a

Lieutenant!" And it was strange indeed to see the long white hair of

the old Marquis streaming from beneath his helmet. He was older, I

think, than Galliffet, who was retiring, and who received during

these manoeuvres the plain military medal, which is the joy of

French hall-porters, but the highest distinction which can be

conferred by the Republic on a General who is a member of the

Supreme Council of War and at the top of the tree in the Legion of

Honour. Joseph Reinach was, of course, young enough to be the son of

old Du Lau, but since leaving the regular regiment of Chasseurs--in

which he had done his service at Nancy, while Gyp (his future enemy

and that of his race) was the reigning Nancy beauty--he had expanded

in figure so that his sky-blue-and-silver and fine horse did not

save him from comments by the children who had noted Du Lau's age.

The Duc d'Aumale was also present on horseback as a spectator, but

his official friends, and their friends, were forced to ignore him,

as he had not yet made his peace with the Republic.

'As soon as I had joined Galliffet, I wrote to my wife: "Conduct of

troops most orderly. It is now, of course, here, as it was already

in 1870 with the Germans, that, the soldier being Guy Boys

[Footnote: Guy Boys was Lady Dilke's nephew; Jim Haslett the

ferryman at Dockett. Sir Charles was illustrating the fact that all

classes serve together both in the ranks and as officers.] and Jim

Haslett and all of us, and not a class apart, there is no 'military

tone.' Discipline, nevertheless, seems perfect, but are the officers

as good as the non-commissioned officers and the men? I doubt.

Promotion from the ranks combined with special promotion to the

highest ranks for birth of all nobles who have any brains at all is

a combination which gives results inferior to either the Swiss

democratic plan or the Prussian aristocratic. Perhaps a fifth of the

officers are noble, but more than half the powerful officers are

noble; and here we are with the sides commanded by the Prince

d'Eckmühl and the Prince de Sartigues." (During the first days of

the manoeuvres the four army corps and the two cavalry divisions

were combined under Galliffet; half the army was commanded by

General Davoust, who, of course, is the first of these two Princes;

and Galliffet had for "second title" the name of his Provençal

principality near Marseilles.) "You may say, 'The Generalissimo,

sausage-maker, restores the balance.' But the real Generalissimo is

Miribel, Aristo of the Aristos--for he is a poor noble of the South.

Another of the army corps is commanded by a Breton, Kerhuel, and the

other by a man of army descent for ever and ever, Négrier, son and

nephew of Napoleonic Generals."'

'An amusing billet adventure was named in another letter to my wife:

'"I am in a Legitimist chàteau: one side of the room, Callots; the

other, Comte de Chambord. Over the bed a large crucifix. The room

belongs to 'Mathilde.' But as I live with the staff I do not see the

family. The butler is charming, and the fat coachman turned out two

of _his_ horses to make room for 'Madame' and 'W'f'd'r.' I had to

write a letter to a French newspaper, which had charged me with

turning my back on the standard of a regiment instead of bowing to

it, and dated from this place: 'Château de Boussencourt.'"'

His observations were summed up in an article for the _Fortnightly_,

which was later translated into French by an officer on the staff of

the Commander-in-Chief, and, after appearing in a review, was published

separately by the military library. His strictures on the handling of

the cavalry led to a controversy in France into which he was obliged

later to enter.

'As I passed through Paris on my return, Galliffet wrote: "You are

as a writer full of kindness, but very dangerous as an observer, and

next time I shall certainly put you on the treatment of the military

attachés--plenty of dinners, plenty of close carriages, plenty of

gendarmes, no information, and a total privation of field-glasses.

This will be a change for you, especially in the matter of dinners.

Lady Dilke cannot have forgiven me for sending you back in such

wretched condition."'

M. Joseph Beinach wrote in 1911:

'Nous recommandions tous deux le rajeunissement des cadres. II s'est

trouvé enfin un ministre de la guerre, M. le général Brun, pour

aborder résolument le problème. Comme nos souvenirs revenaient

fréquemment aux belles journées de ces manoeuvres de l'Est! Je

revois encore Dilke chevauchant avec nous dans l'état-major de

Gallififet. II y avait la le général Brault, le général Darras, le

général Zurlinden, le "commandant" Picquart, Thierry d'Alsace, le

marquis Du Lau.... Ah! la "bataille" de Margerie-Haucourt, sous le

grand soleil qui, dissipant les nuages de la matinée, fit scintiller

tout à coup comme une moisson d'acier les milliers de fusils des

armées réunies! Comme c'est loin! Que de tombeaux!... Mais nous

sommes bien encore quelques-uns à avoir gardé intactes nos âmes

d'alors!' [Footnote: An article in the _Figaro_ written after Sir

Charles Dilke's death.]

II.

It was in 1889 that Sir Charles Dilke came into touch with Cecil Rhodes

during a visit paid by the latter to England.

'In July, 1889, I saw a good deal of Cecil Rhodes, who was brought

to my house by Sir Charles Mills, [Footnote: Then Agent-General for

the Cape and a great personal friend.] and afterwards came back

several times. He was at this moment interesting, full of life and

vigour, but when he returned to England after the British South

Africa Company had been started he seemed to have become half torpid

and at the same time dogmatic. The simplicity which had

distinguished him up to the end of his visit of 1889 seemed to have

disappeared when he came back in 1891; and his avowed intention of

ultimately coming to England to take part in English politics seemed

also a strange mistake, as he was essentially a man fitted for

colonial life, and had none of the knowledge, or the mode of

concealing want of knowledge, one or other of which is required for

English public work.'

'In August, 1889, I received a note from Rhodes from Lisbon which

constitutes, I believe, a valuable autograph, for his friends all

say he "never writes." I had asked him to clear up an extraordinary

passage in one of Kruger's speeches (on which I afterwards commented

in _Problems of Greater Britain_), and Rhodes wrote:

'"The fates were unpropitious to my day on the river, as matters

required me in South Africa, from which place I propose to send you

the famous speech you want. I quite see the importance, if true, of

his utterance, but I can hardly think Kruger would have said it. I

hope you will still hold to your intention of visiting the Cape, and

I can only say I will do all I can to assist you in seeing those

parts with which I am connected. I am afraid Matabeleland will be in

too chaotic a state to share in your visit, but between the diamonds

and the gold there is a good extent to travel over. I am doubtful

about your getting Kruger's speech before you publish, but it will

be the first thing I will attend to on my arrival at the Cape.

Kindly remember me to Lady Dilke.

'"Yours truly,

'"C. J. Rhodes."

'At the beginning of November, 1889, I heard again from Rhodes, who

wrote from Kimberley:

'"Dear Sir Charles Dilke,

'"I have come to the conclusion that Kruger never made use of the

expression attributed to him, as I can find no trace of it in the

reports of his speech on the Second Chamber. I send you a copy of

the draft law....

'"Thanks for your news of Bismarck's map. Their true boundary is the

20th degree of longitude, and it will take them all their time to

retain even that, as the Damaras are entirely opposed to them, and

the German company which nominally holds that territory will soon

have to liquidate for lack of funds. It is one thing to paint a map,

and it is quite another to really occupy and govern a new territory.

I am still waiting for the news of the signature of the charter,

which I hope will not be much longer delayed. I think Kruger will

find his hands quite full enough without interfering with me. He is

still trying to get them to give him Swaziland in return for

non-interference in Matabeleland. The Matabele King (Lobengula)

still continues to slaughter his subjects, and makes the minds of

our representatives at times very uncomfortable. It is undoubtedly a

difficult problem to solve; but the plain fact remains that a savage

chief with about 8,000 warriors is not going to keep out the huge

wave of white men now moving north, and so I feel it will come all

right.

'"Yours,

'"C. J. Rhodes."

'In March, 1890, I received a letter from Rhodes from the Kimberley

Club, in which, after giving some facts with regard to the state of

South Africa, he went on: "I see that Home Rule is gaining ground.

[Footnote: Rhodes had given Mr. Parnell a subscription of £10,000.]

It really means the American Constitution. It is rather a big

change, and the doubt is whether the conservative nature of the

English people will face it when they understand what Home Rule

means. Schnadhorst is here, but is still suffering very acutely from

rheumatism."'

The reference to 'Bismarck's map' in the second of these communications

shows that Sir Charles had reported to Rhodes some of the observations

made by the Chancellor in the course of the visit of which an account

here follows.

'In September, 1889, having settled to take my son to Germany to a

gymnasium, and having told Herbert Bismarck my intention when he was

in London, I was asked by him in his father's name to stay at

Friedrichsruh with the Prince. I started for Germany with my son at

the same moment at which my wife started for the Trades Congress at

Dundee.'

He wrote to M. Joseph Reinach in August, 1889: 'I'm going to

Friedrichsruh the week after next to stay with Prince Bismarck, who

seems very anxious to see me--about colonial matters, I think. I will

tell you what he says, for your private information, if he talks of

anything else, which is not, however, likely, as he knows my views about

that Alsace question which lies at the root of all others. But I had

sooner my going there was not mentioned in advance, and I shall not be

there until September 7th-9th.'

'Herbert Bismarck wrote: "I hope you will accept my father's

invitation, because he is anxious to make your personal

acquaintance. I am greatly disappointed that I shall be deprived of

the pleasure of introducing you myself to my father, owing to my

absence, but, then, I am sure that you will find yourself at your

ease in Friedrichsruh, whether I am there or not. Hoping to see you

before long in England, believe me,

'"Very truly yours,

'"H. Bismarck."

'The son was still called Count von Bismarck by himself, and

popularly Herbert Bismarck, but shortly afterwards his father gave

him the family castle of Schoenhausen, and from that time forward he

used on his cards the name of Graf Bismarck-Schoenhausen. When I got

to Ratzeburg, where I left my son, I found a telegram from

Friedrichsruh: "Prince Bismarck looks forward to your visit

to-morrow with great pleasure"; and then it went on to tell me about

trains.

'I was met at the station by Prince Bismarck's official

secretary--Rottenburg of the Foreign Office--with an open carriage,

although the house was formerly the railway hotel (Frascati) and

adjoins the station. I wrote to my wife on Saturday, September 7th:

"The great man has been very sweet to me, though he is in pain from

his sinews. We had an hour's walk before lunch together. Then

Hatzfeldt, the Ambassador in London, came, and all the afternoon we

have been driving, and went to the harvest-home, where the Bismarck

grandchildren danced with the peasants on the grass. The daughter,

and mother of these children, does the honours, and is the only

lady; and at dinner we shall be the Prince, Hatzfeldt, self,

Countess von Rantzau, Count von Rantzau, Rottenburg the secretary, a

tutor and another secretary, the two last 'dumb persons.' The forest

is a Pyrford of 25,000 acres, but the house is in the situation of a

Dockett, and must be damp in winter till the great January frost

sets in, when the Baltic is hard frozen."'

Sir Charles notes upon this: 'Hatzfeldt was the Chancellor's right-hand

man--of action. But Bismarck did not consult him: he said, "Do," and

Hatzfeldt did.'

The letter continues:

'"When Bismarck's Reichshund died, a successor was appointed, but

the Emperor, who had heard of the death and not of the appointment

to fill the vacancy, gave another, and the Prince says: 'Courtier as

I am, I sent away my dog to my head-forester's and kept the gift

one, but as I do not like him I leave him at Berlin.' Here the

favourite reigns, and her name is Rebekkah, and she answers very

prettily to the name of Bex. The old gentleman is dear in his polite

ways.... The daughter is equally pleasant, and the son-in-law as

well. We were loudly cheered at the harvest festival, of course....

You can write to our friend J. R. [Reinach] of the R.F. [_République

Française_] that I found the Chancellor very determined on peace as

long as he lives, which he fears will not be long, and afraid of

Prussian action after his death."

'In another letter the next day, Sunday, September 8th 1889, I

wrote: "I expected the extreme simplicity of life. The coachman

alone wears livery, and that only a plain blue with ordinary black

trousers and ordinary black hat--no cockades and no stripes. There

are only two indoor men-servants: a groom of the chambers, and one

other not in livery--the one shown in the photograph of Bismarck

receiving the Emperor, but there, for this occasion only, dressed in

a state livery. [Footnote: Photographs which Bismarck gave Sir

Charles, showing the Chancellor with his hound receiving the young

Kaiser, and Bismarck alone with his dog, always hung on the wall at

Dockett.] The family all drink beer at lunch, and offer the thinnest

of thin Mosel. Bismarck has never put on a swallow-tail coat but

once, which he says was in 1835, and which is of peculiar shape. A

tall hat he does not possess, and he proscribes tall hats and

evening dress among his guests. His view is that a Court and an army

should be in uniform, but that when people are not on duty at Court

or in war, or preparation for war, they should wear a comfortable

dress, and each man that form of dress that he finds most agreeable

to himself, provided that it be not that which he calls evening

dress and tall hats--a sort of 'sham uniform.' Countess von Rantzau,

however, dresses in a high, short evening gown like other people.

The Prince eats nothing at all except young partridges and

salt-herring, and the result is that the cookery is feeble, though

for game-eaters there is no hardship. The table groans with red-deer

venison, ham, grouse, woodcock, and the inevitable partridges--

roast, boiled, with white sauce, cold, pickled in vinegar. A French

cook would hang himself. There is no sweet at dinner except fruit,

stewed German fashion with the game. Trout, which the family

themselves replace by raw salt-herring, and game, form the whole

dinner. Of wines and beer they drink at dinner a most extraordinary

mixture, but as the wine is all the gift of Emperors and merchant

princes it is good. The cellar card was handed to the Prince with

the fish, and, after consultation with me, and with Hatzfeldt, we

started on sweet champagne, not suggested by me, followed by

Bordeaux, followed by still Mosel, followed by Johannesberg (which I

did suggest), followed by black beer, followed by corn brandy. When

I reached the Johannesberg I stopped, and went on with that only, so

that I got a second bottle drawn for dessert. When the Chancellor

got to his row of great pipes, standing against the wall ready

stuffed for him, we went back to black beer. The railway-station is

in the garden, and the expresses shake the house."

'Other points which struck me in the manners and customs of

Friedrichsruh were that the Chancellor invariably took a barrel of

beer out driving, and stopped halfway in the afternoon and insisted

on his guests consuming it out of a two-handled mug which appeared

from under the coachman's seat. I had some talk with him about the

wisdom of his going unprotected for great distances through the

woods, and he answered, "But I am not unprotected," and showed me a

pistol which he carried, but, of course, a man with a blunderbuss

behind a tree might easily have killed him. He never takes a servant

on the box by the side of the coachman, and generally drives

entirely alone. He rides alone without a groom, and walks alone with

only his dog, or rather the forester's dog, the daughter of the

Reichshund, who walks six or seven miles every morning to go out

with him, and six or seven miles every night to come to dinner.

'The Prince was evidently discontented with the Emperor, but wholly

unable to believe that he himself could be done without. He told me

that he must work each day and could never take a holiday, but that

even a few minutes' work was sufficient, as all that was necessary

was that he should keep an eye on what was going on. All was now so

well arranged that the only thing which gave him trouble was the

internal condition of Alsace, which as a Reichsland had him alone as

a Minister. In the evening he chatted much about the past; told me

of his visit to London in 1842, of how a cabman tried to cheat him,

and how at last he held out all his money in his hand and said to

the man, "Pay yourself"; how then the man took less than that which

he had refused, his right fare, and then with every sign of scorn

ejaculated, "What I say is, God damn all Frenchmen!" Bismarck speaks

admirable English, with hardly any trace of accent, but spoken very

slowly. French he speaks more rapidly but less well; and of Russian

he has a fair knowledge. He told me how (also in 1842) he had

visited Barclay and Perkins's, and had been offered an enormous

tankard of their strongest ale. "Thinking of my country, I drank it

slowly to the last drop, and then left them, courteously I hope; I

got as far as London Bridge, and there I sat down in a recess, and

for hours the bridge went round." He told me how he had striven to

keep the peace through the time of Napoleon III., but finding it

useless had prepared for war; and he made no secret of the fact that

he had brought the war about. He told me himself, in so many words,

that at the last moment he had made war by cutting down a telegram

from the King of Prussia, as I have said above; [Footnote: See

Chapter XL (Vol. I., p. 157).] "the alteration of the telegram from

one of two hundred words to one of twenty words" had "made it into a

trumpet blast"--as Moltke and Von Roon, who were with him at dinner

when it came, had said--"a trumpet blast which" had "roused all

Germany." As he mellowed with his pipes he told me that, though he

was a high Tory, he had come to see the ills of absolutism, which,

to work, required the King to be an angel. "Now," he said, "Kings,

even when good, have women round them, who, even if Queens, govern

them to their personal ends." It was very plain that he was on bad

terms with the Emperor, and equally clear that he did not believe

that the Emperor would dare dismiss him.'

A commentary on the last sentence follows at no long interval, when

_Problems of Greater Britain_ appeared and 'Herbert Bismarck, in

thanking me for a copy of my book, said: "My father ... sends you

his kindest regards. He is just going to disentangle himself from

the Prussian administration altogether, and will resign the post as

Prime Minister, so that he will only remain Chancellor of the

Empire." This was on February 10th, 1890, and before long Bismarck

had been still further "disentangled," not by his own act,' but by a

blow almost as sudden and dramatic as that which, in 1661, had

struck down the owner of Vaux. [Footnote: See the _Mémoires de

Fouquet_, by A. Chéruel, vol.ii., chap, xxxviii.]

'In a second letter that young Bismarck wrote, he thanked me for

sending him the famous sketch from _Punch_ (Tenniel's cartoon) of

the captain of the ship sending away the pilot. He wrote:

'"My Dear Dilke,

'"I thank you very much for your kind note, which warmed my heart,

and for the sketch you have cut out of _Punch_. It is indeed a fine

one, and my father, to whom I showed it yesterday when your letter

reached me, was pleased with its acuteness, as well as with the kind

messages you sent him and which he requites. He has left last night

for good, and I follow to-night to Friedrichsruh. It was a rather

melancholy historical event, when my father stepped out of the house

in which he has lived for the benefit of my country for nearly

twenty-eight years. When I wrote you last, my father thought only of

leaving the offices he held in Prussia, but things went on so

rapidly that he did not see his way to remain as Chancellor in

Berlin after the Emperor had let him know that His Majesty wished

him to resign. I had no choice what course to take after he had been

dismissed. My health is so much shaken that I am not able to take

upon my shoulders alone the tremendous amount of responsibility for

the foreign affairs of Germany which hitherto fell upon my father.

When we drove to the station yesterday, our carriage was almost

upset by the enthusiastic crowd of many thousand people who thronged

the streets and cheered him on his passage in a deafening way; but

it was satisfactory for my father to see that there are people left

who regret his departure. I shall come back to Berlin after April

1st to clear my house and to pack my things, and then I shall stay

with my father till the end of April. In May I hope to come to

England, and I look forward to the pleasure of seeing you then.

'"Believe me,

'"Ever yours sincerely,

'"H. Bismarck."

'He dined with me on May 15th, 1890, when Arnold Morley, Borthwick,

Jeune, Fitzmaurice, Harry Lawson, and others, came to meet him; and

from this time forward he came frequently to England.'

Sir Charles, while meeting the younger man thus often, never again had

sight or speech of the old Chancellor. 'In Christmas week [1892] I had a

general invitation from Prince Bismarck to stay with him again at

Friedrichsruh. But the chance never came.' Immediately on his return

from Germany Sir Charles wrote to his friend Reinach:

'Pyrford by Maybury,

'Near Woking,

'_September_ l3_th_, 1889.

'My Dear Reinach,

'Bismarck c'est la paix. As long as he lives, which he thinks will

not be long, he expects no movement. He agrees with me that the

first movement will come from Russia. He expects the Republic to

last in France. Bleichröder tells him that Ferry is the one man of

energy and power.

'Yours,

'Chs. W. D.'

Three weeks later, in answer to a question by M. Reinach, this is added:

'Health as good as he says. But he does _not_ say that. He says he

suffers very much. The fact is that he looks very much older than he

is, and his hands look like ninety instead of seventy-four.'

What Bismarck thought of his guest may be gathered from a saying quoted

in public by Dr. Stephen Bauer. Baron Rottenburg, Bismarck's first

secretary, had told him that, after Sir Charles's visit to

Friedrichsruh, the Chancellor spoke of him as 'the most interesting of

living English statesmen.' [Footnote: At the banquet given to Sir

Charles Dilke in April, 1910.]

In spite of Bismarck's efforts to bring about another meeting, this

visit was the only occasion on which the two men met. It was at a time

when the great maker of United Germany was nearing his fall. He was

becoming the bitter adversary of the Kaiser and of his policy, a policy

which he foresaw might imperil 'the strength and glory of the German

Empire.' In the often-quoted words of his instructions to diplomatic

representatives abroad--'Do all in your power to keep up good

relationship with the English. You need not even use a secret cipher in

cabling. We have nothing to conceal from the English, for it would be

the greatest possible folly to antagonize England'--is to be found one

main point of Bismarck's diplomacy; and feeling thus, he welcomed a

conference with the English statesman of that generation whom he had

looked upon as certain to be a force in the approaching years. When at

last the meeting took place, Dilke had been overtaken by circumstances

which altered his political position in England. But neither Bismarck

nor any other statesman on the Continent anticipated that they could

possibly have the result of excluding permanently from office one of the

very few English statesmen whose names carried weight with foreign

Powers on military and international politics.

CHAPTER LI

PERSONAL LIFE--IN OPPOSITION

1895 TO 1904

Few members of the House of Commons can have been sorry to see the last

of the Parliament which ended in June, 1895; and Sir Charles had nothing

to regret in its disappearance. In respect of foreign affairs, he saw

little to choose between the Liberal and Tory Ministers except that, of

the two, Lord Salisbury was 'the less wildly Jingo.' On questions of

Imperial Defence many of his old friends in the Liberal Government were

arrayed against him; and with matters standing as they stood between the

two Houses, there was no hope of any important Labour legislation. Lord

Salisbury had again become Prime Minister, and under the new

Conservative Administration everything went more easily. Sir Charles

testified in one of his speeches that Mr. Balfour's leadership, 'by his

unfailing courtesy to all members, made the House of Commons a pleasant

place'; and Mr. Balfour's leadership was well assured of several years'

continuance.

A great Parliamentarian, Sir Charles nevertheless held no brief for

Parliament. As a practical statesman, he realized the advantages in a

strong hand of such a machine as Bismarck controlled; while his

democratic instincts made him favour the Swiss methods, with direct

intervention of the people through the Referendum.

'I trained a whole generation of professional politicians to respect the

House of Commons,' he said, 'but I was never favourable to the

Parliamentary, and I was even hostile to the Party, system.'

Nevertheless, since England was wedded to its traditional system, to

work this efficiently was the first duty of an English politician. A

note from Sir Reginald Palgrave in 1893 acknowledges gratefully some

criticisms of the tenth edition of the classical work which deals with

this subject. No one was ever better qualified than Sir Charles to say

what could or could not be done by the rules of order, and he would

certainly have inculcated upon every politician the necessity of this

knowledge as a practical equipment.

'What Dilke did,' writes Mr. McKenna, 'was to impress upon me the

importance of a thorough understanding of the procedure and business of

the House of Commons, a branch of knowledge in which he was an

accomplished master.'

Sir Charles's whole scheme of existence was arranged with reference to

the work of Parliament. Of it he wrote on December 15th, 1905, in reply

to Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, who had dwelt on the interest of county

government:

'The development of character in politics and the human side of the

House of Commons have an extraordinary dramatic interest for me, and

an attraction so strong that Harcourt told me that, knowing it, he

did not see how I could live out of the House of Commons. I managed

to do so, but only by shutting it for a time absolutely out of my

mind, as though it did not exist. Having the happiness of being able

to interest myself in everything, I suppose I am born to be

generally happy. You have known me so long and so closely that few

men are more aware of the kind of suffering I have gone through, but

the happiness of interest in life has rarely been wanting for long

in me, and if it were, I should go out--not of Parliament--but of

life.' [Footnote: Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice was Chairman of the

Wiltshire County Council. He had re-entered Parliament as M.P. for

North Wilts in 1898.]

Sir Charles never left London while the House was sitting, except for

the annual gathering of the Forest miners at the Speech House. On all

other working days of the session he was to be found in the House of

Commons. He held that the House offered the extremest form of interest

or of boredom, according as a man did or did not follow closely all that

was going on. For this reason, the smoking-room, where most

Parliamentary idling is transacted, saw little of him; cigars, of which

he was a great consumer, were for periods of leisure, and he was at the

House for business. He might be seen in the passages, going by with

coat-tails streaming behind him, most often in the members' lobby on his

way to the first corridor, where was his locker--marvellously stuffed

with papers, yet kept in a methodical order that made it a general

centre of reference for himself and his colleagues, who consulted him on

all subjects; or sometimes in the library, with multifarious

correspondence and documents outspread, snipping away with a pair of

scissors, after his habit, all in them that was not vitally important.

[Footnote: Mr. Hudson tells how in February, 1911, after Sir Charles's

death, he went down to clear his locker in the House of Commons, and

found it empty. Mr. Hudson surmised that, foreseeing his need for it was

over, Sir Charles had himself prepared it for his successor in its use.]

Again, since one form of relaxation which he permitted himself was his

afternoon cup--or cups, for they were many--of tea, the tea-room also

offered a chance to those who sought him. But whoever wanted Sir Charles

went first into the Chamber itself, and in five cases out of six would

find him there alert in his corner seat below the gangway, primed and

armed with documented information, and ready at any minute to interpose.

Every day he went through the whole bewildering mass of papers from

which members are presumed to instruct themselves concerning the

business of the sittings and to keep a check upon the general

proceedings of Government. In his case the presumption was realized.

Probably no private member ever equalled him in demands for 'papers to

be laid,' and certainly none was ever better able to justify his

requests for additional information. If these requests were refused, it

was never because he wanted what was superfluous, but that which, in his

hands, might become inconveniently serviceable.

One habit of his may be traced to his hatred of wasting time. The

instant a division was announced he was on his feet, hurrying so as to

avoid long minutes of waiting in a crush; and it came to be regarded as

part of the natural order that Sir Charles should be first through the

lobby.

With all this industry, the record of divisions so carefully chronicled

by the hard-working M.P. was not of moment to him. If the business did

not seem to him important, he had no objection to absent himself and

dine at home. He was weatherwise in the assembly, and knew the

conditions which might lead to unforeseen disturbance.

In questions raised by alteration of rules or standing orders, he was

never averse from innovation, and even generally an advocate of change.

But while the rules were there he insisted rigorously on their

observance, in so far as they affected the larger interests of division

or debate. Also he fulfilled punctiliously the prescribed courtesies,

making it a usage to be down early and to secure his place, although no

one ever thought of appropriating it. He rigidly observed the rule,

transgressed by others, which prescribes the wearing of a tall hat by

members in the House. The hat which was thus endeared to him by

traditional usage is therefore inseparable from Parliamentary memory of

him. He was generally to be seen handling a sheaf of papers more than

Ministerial in dimensions; and he made his hat the receptacle for them;

often it would be crammed to bursting before the speech had concluded.

Yet there remained with him always the trace of his younger days of

grave dandyism; he never abandoned the Parliamentary frock-coat, and

sketches of him in the illustrated papers convey the austere correctness

of its folds; and the hat from which so much service was exacted

appeared each day unsurpassable in gloss.

The intricate mass of historical associations delighted his imagination

at Westminster. He took pleasure in all the quaint survivals, from the

long-transmitted ceremonial of the Speaker's entrance, the formal

knockings of Black Rod, the cry of 'Who goes home?' down to the still

continued search before each session for some possible Guy Fawkes.

Keenly alive to the past and to the present, he saw with special

pleasure any happy grafting of a new usage on to that old stock of

memories. Speaking in his constituency after the lying in state of King

Edward, which he had attended (standing next to the Prime Minister as

the senior Privy Councillor present), he welcomed the precedent which

gave a new association to Westminster Hall--that 'epitome of English

history.' He recalled to his hearers the outstanding incidents and

persons whose record had then come into his mind. His habit of tracing

out links with the past made him at Westminster the best and most

animated of guides.

So it was in Provence, in the Forest of Dean, on the road down from

London to Surrey; so it was always in the neighbourhood of his Chelsea

home.

There could be no such companion for a ramble through its streets. His

memory, astounding in its recollections of his own time, held stories of

older records; in his eager, vivid talk the past lived again. As we

passed along Cheyne Walk, George Eliot held court in her house once

more, while a few doors off Rossetti's servant pushed aside the little

grating to inspect his visitors before admission. Carlyle dwelt again in

the house in Cheyne Row, with Whistler for his neighbour. Sir Charles

would tell how earlier the Kingsley brothers lived with their father in

the old rectory, and one at least of their novels was founded afterwards

on the traditions of the place. Then, as layer after layer of history

was lifted, Smollett wrote his novels or walked the Chelsea streets with

John Wilkes; Sir Richard Steele and 'his dear Prue' reinhabited their

house, and Dr. Johnson worked at the furnaces in the cellars where

Chelsea china was made. [Footnote: 'Sir Charles Dilke, in hunting about

for materials for his lecture on "Old Chelsea" to-morrow, has made some

very interesting discoveries. He has found that part of the building

once occupied by the famous Chelsea china works, which was thought to

have gone for ever, exists as part of a public-house with a modern

frontage looking out on the Embankment. The cellars are in an admirable

state of preservation. Another interesting point has been the

exploration of the old Moravian cemetery, which is now completely

enclosed by houses, the ironwork of the gate worn, and, as it were,

eaten out by age. Here lie the bones of Count von Zinzendorf, one of the

founders of the Moravian sect, and many other famous folk. This, again,

has led to some interesting discoveries about Sir Thomas More, all of

which will find a place in Wednesday's lecture' (Extract from _Leicester

Daily Post_, January 11th, 1888, on lecture to be delivered in Town

Hall, Chelsea).]

He would give, as a curious illustration of the way in which many years

may be covered by a few generations, the fact that he himself had known

intimately the daughter of Woodfall, printer of the _Letters of Junius_;

while Woodfall's acquaintance included Smollett as a resident, and Pope

as a visitor to Chelsea. He would talk long of Sir Thomas More,

[Footnote: He writes: 'On December 18th, 1886, Cardinal Manning wrote to

me: "On Saturday last Sir Thomas More was declared both martyr and

saint, to my great joy. We have bought a house and garden, 28, Beaufort

Street, which is said to be a piece of Sir Thomas More's garden. The

tradition seems probable. If you can give me any light about it, I shall

be very thankful."' Later (January, 1888) Sir Charles writes: 'In the

course of this same month I lectured on Old Chelsea, and made a

considerable attempt to clear up some points in the life of Sir Thomas

More, for whom I have a great admiration. The result was that Cardinal

Manning asked me to visit Father Vaughan at the house which stands on

the site of Old Beaufort House, which the Roman Catholics have purchased

as a house of expiation for the martyrdom of Sir Thomas More.'] 'the

first of Chelsea worthies,' whose memory is loved and commemorated by

every true inhabitant, and to whose voluntary poorhouse for the parish

he pointed, as the direct progenitor of the Chelsea Benevolent Society

and the Board of Guardians. But one episode in More's career specially

fascinated him: it was when two great lives touched, and More,

journeying to Calais, met that famous lady, Margaret of Austria, the

first Governess of the Netherlands, and negotiated the treaty between

the Emperor, England, and France, 1527. Great as was his respect for Sir

Hans Sloane, after whom the street in which he lived was named, and who

gave to Chelsea its beautiful Physic Garden, he never forgave him the

destruction of More's house or the removal of its water gateway.

He would describe the tidal shore, as it lies in the picture which he

bequeathed to the Chelsea Free Library, and which hangs on its

staircase, when below the old church the bank sloped to the water's

edge; or he would pass back to the earlier time when the boats of the

nobles lay there in such numbers that Charles II. described the river as

'Hyde Park upon the Thames.' Once more Bess of Hardwick lived at

Shrewsbury House, Princess Elizabeth sheltered under the Queen's Elm; at

the old Swan in Swan Walk, Doggett founded the coat and badge to be

rowed for by the watermen's apprentices 'when the tide shall be full.'

These things may be found in many a guide-book and in the lectures which

he delivered more than once in Chelsea, but told as he told them they

will never be told again.

This habit of associating the prosaic business of his daily work in

Parliament with picturesque traditions, and of peopling the dingy

streets of London with great figures of the past, gave colour and

character to his town life. He entertained still--at 76, Sloane Street,

or at the House of Commons.

For exercise he relied on fencing, rowing, and his morning ride. Busy

men, he held, needed what 'good exercise as contrasted with mere chamber

gymnastics' could give them: 'a second life, a life in another world--

one which takes them entirely out of themselves, and causes them to

cease to trouble others or to be troubled by the vexations of working

life.' [Footnote: _Athletics for Politicians_, reprinted from _North

American Review_.]

He was nowhere more characteristically English than through his faith in

this regimen, and in the pages of the _North American Review_ he

addressed to American public men in 1900 an advocacy of 'Athletics for

Politicians.' This exists as a pamphlet, and some of the friends who

received it were surprised to find themselves cited in confirmation of

the theory that nearly all English politicians, 'having been athletes as

boys, have found it wise as well as pleasant to keep to some sport in

later life.' But Mr. Chamberlain, 'the most distinguished debater in the

Government of the United Kingdom, who has an excellent seat on a horse,

but is never now seen on one, and who is no mean hand at lawn tennis,

which he scarcely ever plays,' had to be cited as a heretic who thought

himself 'better without such gymnastics.'

Sculling on sliding-seats [Footnote: In 1873 'sliding-seats' had just

taken the place of fixed ones, and Sir Charles, having gone as usual to

see the Boat Race, criticized the crews, in a notice which he wrote, as

not having yet learnt to make the best possible use of the slide.] and

rapier fencing were the exercises which Sir Charles recommended to men

no longer young. He continued his fencing in London and Paris. In Paris

he frequented chiefly the school of Leconte in the Rue Saint Lazare, and

always kept an outfit there. Teachers of this school remember with

wonder Sir Charles's habit of announcing, at the termination of each

stay in Paris, the precise day and hour, perhaps many months ahead, at

which he would appear--and at which, like Monte Cristo, he never failed

to be exactly punctual--to the joy and amusement of the expectant

school.

It was at his riverside home that he found the exercise which beyond all

others pleased him best.

'1890 I took a good deal of holiday in the summer and early autumn,

doing much rowing with McKenna and others in a racing pair; we

challenged any pair of our united ages.'

'On my fifty-third birthday,' he notes, 'I began to learn sculling. My

rowing, to judge by the "clock," still improves. Fencing, stationary or

declining.'

He timed himself regularly in his daily burst up and down the reach with

some first-rate oarsman, very often 'Bill' East, now the King's

Waterman, whose photograph stood with one or two others on the

mantelpiece of his study in Sloane Street. In the same way he kept a

daily record of his weight, which up to 1904 ranged between fourteen

stone and thirteen.

Dockett was essentially a boating-place, a place for sun and air, where

life was lived in the open or in the wide verandah hailed by Cecil

Rhodes and others as the only 'stoep' in England. His son, who was

travelling abroad much at this time, shared Sir Charles Dilke's love for

Dockett, and was frequently there in the intervals of his journeyings.

Other than boating friends came to lunch or to dine and sleep, for the

mere pleasure of talk. Such were the Arnold-Forsters, the H. J.

Tennants, Lady Abinger (the daughter of his old friend Sir William

White) and her husband: and there came also members of Parliament--Mr.

Lloyd George, or in a later day Mr. Masterman; and the knights errant of

politics, Mr. Cunninghame Graham and Mr. Schreiner. Many nationalities

were represented--often, indeed, through official personages such as M.

Cambon, the French Ambassador, or some member of the French Embassy.

Baron Hayashi and his wife came with many other Japanese friends, and

the various representatives of the Balkan States met in pleasant

converse. It was one of these who afterwards wrote: 'I never pass the

house in Sloane Street without raising my hat to the memory of its

former inmates.' That close friend M. Gennadius came also, and his

predecessors in the Greek Legation, M. Metaxas, M. Athos Romanes, and

half a score of other diplomatists, including Tigrane Pasha, and even

Ras Makonnen, who was brought to Dockett by the British representative

in Abyssinia, Sir John Harrington, a friend and correspondent of Dilke.

Thither also for leisure, not for athletics, came Cecil Rhodes,

described in _Problems of Greater Britain_ as a 'modest, strong man';

there came Prince Roland Bonaparte, Coquelin, and Jules Claretie, with a

host of others, politicians, wits, and artists, English and foreign. M.

Claretie thus, after Sir Charles's death, chronicled one visit:

'Nous avons canoté, mon fils et moi, sur la Tamise avec Sir Charles,

un de ces "Sundays" de liberté. Quand il avait bien ramé, il

rentrait au logis, et s'étendant en un petit kiosque au seuil duquel

il plaçait des sandales, l'homme d'état, ami du sport, accrochait à

la porte un écriteau où se lisait ces mots: "Prière de faire

silence. Je dors." Hélas! Il dort à tout jamais maintenant le cher

Sir Charles. Ce fut une énergie, un cerveau, un coeur, une force.'

[Footnote: _Le Temps_, February, 1911.]

Then there were men illustrious in another sphere, the famous oars of

their generation. Mr. S. D. Muttlebury, most illustrious of them all,

has compiled a list of Cambridge 'blues,' young and old, who rowed with

Sir Charles at his riverside home. These were--

_School_ _College_

Bell, A. S. .. .. Eton .. .. Trinity Hall.

Bristowe, C. J. .. Repton .. .. "

Escombe, F. J. .. Clifton .. .. "

Fernie, W. J. .. Malvern .. .. "

Howell, B. H. .. -- "

McKenna, R. .. King's College "

London

Maugham, F. H. .. Dover College .. "

Muttlebury, S. D. .. Eton .. .. Trinity College.

Rowlatt, J. F. .. Fettes .. .. Trinity Hall.

Steavenson, D. F. .. -- "

Wauchope, D. A. .. Repton .. .. "

Wood, W. W. .. Eton .. .. University

College, Oxford.

In the list here given, Judge Steavenson was Sir Charles's contemporary.

Judge Wood, [Footnote: He was the son of Dilke's friend and constituent,

the Rector of Newent.] his neighbour at Chertsey, known among Etonians

as 'Sheep' Wood, was a University oar of the sixties, and rowed for Eton

at Henley against the Trinity Hall crew which included Steavenson and

Dilke. But most of the others were young. Mr. Charles Boyd [Footnote:

Mr. Charles Boyd, C.M.G., sometime political secretary to Cecil Rhodes.]

sketched the life in an article written just after Sir Charles's death:

'To know Dilke as he was you had to be with him at Dockett Eddy, on

the river. Dilke's ability is praised everywhere, but almost, one

thinks, his manly, ungushing kindness exceeded it. He could never do

enough for people, or too stealthily, as it were. He had a special

kindness for young men, for Trinity Hall men perhaps by preference;

the black and white blazer of his old college carried a certain

prescriptive right to share in every belonging of the most famous of

old Hall men. But many, oars or others, at different times in the

past fifteen to twenty years, as sons of the house, spent between

Shepperton and Chertsey Locks, or on the tennis lawns among Sir

Charles's famous willows, or lying on deck-chairs on the long, deep

verandah, the happiest and healthiest of week-ends or more extended

summer holidays. There are few pleasanter reaches of our river, and

none quieter, than this, for the rush and the intolerable crowds are

above stream or below stream, but not here. And there is no such

holiday house for young men as Dockett, hidden in its willow walks

and islanded by the Thames in front and by the expanse of Chertsey

Mead behind.

'Less a country-house, indeed, than a camp of exercise. You did as

you pleased, but under Sir Charles's guidance you were pleased to be

strenuous. He called everybody to bathe at 7 a.m., and where was

ever better fresh-water bathing-place than the floating raft below

the boat-house at Dockett? Etiquette required you to dive in and go

straight across to the other bank, touch, and return; when, like as

not, Sir Charles, in shorts and sweater, might be seen very

precisely preparing tea on the landing-stage for the deserving

valiant. His little kindnesses had an added and affecting quality

from his reserve and sternness. A rare figure of an athlete he was,

and a rare athlete's day his was in that retreat. For hours before

he called and turned out the morning guard he had been up busy

gardening, or reading, or writing. At a quarter to nine he

breakfasted. Very shortly after breakfast an ex-champion sculler the

admirable Bill East, would arrive from Richmond, and he and Sir

Charles would row in a racing skiff a measured mile or more of the

river. One summer at least he changed from rowing kit to boots and

breeches after his rowing, and rode till luncheon. At four o'clock

there would be a second bout with East, and thereafter, having

changed from his rowing kit into flannels and his Hall cap, he would

take Lady Dilke in her dinghy, which nobody else has ever used or

will use.

'After these exercises came dinner, and after dinner talk; and what

talk! How his intellectual weight and equipment affected those who

were much with him as young men, and who had a chance to revise

their impressions after years of close observation of the world and

its big men, a scrap of dialogue may illustrate. One who in his

"twenties" was much at Sloane Street and Dockett, and who passed

later into close working relations with several at least of the most

conspicuous, so to say, of Front Bench men in the Empire, after an

interval of thirteen years sat once more for a whole long evening

with three others at the feet of Gamaliel. A well-known scholar and

historian put questions which drew Sir Charles out; and all were

amazed and delighted by the result. After Sir Charles had gone, one

of the others, a distinguished editor, said to the wanderer: "Come,

you have known the Mandarins as well as anybody. Where do you put

Dilke with them?" "Well, I rule Lord Milner out," said ----: "but

all the others, compared to Sir Charles, strike me in point of

knowledge, if you must know, as insufficiently informed school-

boys." That is how his brain struck this contemporary. As for the

moral qualities observed, you get to know a man well when you see

him constantly and over years at play. And what intimate's affection

and respect for Sir Charles, and confidence in him, did not grow

greater with every year? It seems admitted that he was a great man.

Well, if there is anything in the intimate, not undiscerning

impression of nearly eighteen years, he was a good man, or goodness

is an empty name.'

Another account of his talk and ways comes from Mr. Spenser Wilkinson:

'I moved to London in 1892, and from that time on found the intimacy

with Dilke one of the delights of life. We used always to meet,

either for breakfast or lunch, at Dilke's house in Sloane Street, or

for lunch at the Prince's Restaurant in Piccadilly, or at 2.30 in

the lobby of the House of Commons. I was also frequently a guest at

the dinner-parties either at Sloane Street on Wednesdays, when Lady

Dilke was alive, or at the House of Commons. Then there were small

house-parties on Saturday and Sunday at Dockett Eddy, near

Shepperton on the Thames, where Sir Charles had built two cottages,

and where a guest was expected to do exactly what he pleased from

the time when he was punted across the river on arrival until he

left the punt on departing. In winter I used to bicycle over to the

cottage at Pyrford, where Dilke and his wife were always to be found

alone and where I spent many a charming afternoon.

'Every man takes a certain tinge from the medium in which he is, and

is therefore different in different company and different

surroundings. I knew three Dilkes. First there was the statesman,

the man of infinite information which he was ever working to

increase. When you went to see him it was on some particular

subject; he wanted precise information, and knew exactly what he

wanted. With him my business was always finished in five minutes,

after which I used to feel that I should be wasting his time if I

stayed. This Dilke, in this particular form of intercourse, was by

far the ablest man I ever met.

'Then came Dilke the host, the Dilke of general conversation. Here

again he towered above his fellows. The man who had been everywhere

and knew everybody--for there seemed to be no public man of great

importance in any country with whom Dilke was not acquainted and

with whom he had not corresponded--a man who was almost always in

high spirits and full of fun, had an inexhaustible fund of

delightful conversation, about which the only drawback was that, in

order to appreciate it, you had to be uncommonly well informed

yourself.

'But the Dilke I liked best was the one I used to have to myself

when I spent a day with him either in the country or on the river,

when neither of us had anything to do, when there was no business in

hand, and when we either talked or were silent according to the

mood. In these circumstances Dilke was as natural and simple as a

civilized man can be. If one started an uncongenial subject, he

would say. "It does not interest me," but the moment one approached

any of the matters he cared for he mobilized all his resources and

gave himself with as little reserve as possible.

'Dilke was a past-master in the art of ordering his time, and this

was the secret of the vast quantity of work which he was able to do.

He was a voracious and quick reader, as is proved by the number of

books which he used to review for the _Athenaeum_, of which he was

proprietor. Yet he was an early riser and went to bed early, and a

part of his day was given to exercise.

'A great deal of time was consumed in interviews with all sorts and

conditions of men, and his attendance at the House of Commons,

constant and assiduous, accounted for a large part of half the days

in the year. But everything was mapped out in advance; he would make

appointments weeks, or even months, in advance, and keep them to the

minute. His self-control was complete, his courtesy constant and

unvarying; he was entirely free from sentimentality and the least

demonstrative of mankind, yet he was capable of delicate and tender

feelings, not always detected by those towards whom they were

directed. He was simple, straightforward, frank, and generous. It

was delightful to do business with him, for he never hesitated nor

went back upon himself. Modest and free from self-consciousness, he

was aware both of his powers and of their limitations. I once tried

to persuade him to change the manner of his Parliamentary speeches,

to stop his minute expositions of facts and to make some appeal to

the emotions of his hearers--at any rate in cases where he had

strong feelings of his own. He made one experiment in accord with

this suggestion, and told me that it had been most successful; but

he said that he would not try it again, because it was not in accord

with his natural bent, and he was unwilling to be anything but

himself.'

Dockett was the home of the Birds. Sir Charles's evidence before the

Select Committee on the Thames as to the destruction of kingfishers led

to a prohibition of all shooting on the river, and to an increase of

these lovely birds. In 1897 he had two of their nests at Dockett Eddy.

His acres of willow-grown all-but-island were made a sanctuary for

birds, and therefore from Dockett only, of all his homes, cats were kept

away. Nests were counted and cherished; it was a great year when a

cuckoo's egg was discovered among the linnet's clutch, and its

development was watched in breathless interest. Owls were welcome

visitors; and the swans had no better nesting-place on the Thames than

the lower end of Dockett. They and their annual progeny of cygnets were

the appointed charge of Jim Haslett, Dilke's ferryman and friend.

Pensioners upon the house, they used to appear in stately progress

before the landing raft--the mother perhaps with several little ones

swarming on her back or nestling in her wings, and from time to time

splashing off into the water. Always at their appearance, in answer to

Sir Charles's special call, a cry of 'Swan's bread' would be raised, and

loaf after loaf would disappear down their capacious throats. A place

with such privileges was not likely to be undisputed, and many times

there were battles royal against 'invaders from the north,' as Sir

Charles called the Chertsey swans who came to possess themselves of the

Dockett reach and its amenities. Swan charged swan, with plumage

bristling and wings dilated, but not alone they fought; Jim Haslett and

his employer took part against the invaders, beating them off with

sticks; and even in the night, when sound of that warfare rose, the

master of Dockett was known to scull out in a dinghy, in his night gear,

carrying a bedroom candlestick to guide his blows in the fray.

Evening and morning he would steal along the bank in his dinghy,

counting and observing the water-voles, which he was accustomed to feed

with stewed prunes and other dishes, while they sat nibbling,

squirrel-like, with the dainty clasped in their hands.

A few gay beds of annuals by the house, a purple clematis on the

verandah, and a mass of syringa at the landing-stage, were all the

garden permitted; roughly mown grass paths here and there led through

the wild growth of nature, where the willows met overhead.

Such was his summer home, described in the lines of Tibullus which were

carved on the doorway of the larger house:

'Jam modo iners possim epntentus vivere parvo

Nec semper longae deditus esse viae,

Sed canis aestivos ortus vitare sub umbra

Arboris, ad rivos praetereuntis aquae.'

[Footnote: Thus translated by the Rev. W. Tuckwell:

'Here, fancy-free, and scorning needless show,

Let me from Life's dull round awhile retreat,

Lulled by the full-charged stream's unceasing flow,

Screened by tall willows from the dog-star's heat.']

He guarded its quiet, and, champion as he had always been of the public

right of common on land and on the river, he was resentful when its

privilege was carelessly abused. He rebuked those who broke the rules of

the river in his marches--above all, such as disturbed swans or pulled

water-lilies. After every Bank Holiday he would spend a laborious day

gathering up the ugly leavings.

Many associations endeared to him what he thus defended. When he was out

in the skiff, darting here and there, Lady Dilke, in the little dinghy

which he had caused to be built for her--called from its pleasant round

lines the _Bumble Bee_--would paddle about the reach. After her death he

would paddle out in the dinghy which no one else might take out, and lie

for hours watching the light change on that familiar and tranquil beauty

of green mead and shining water, of high-waving poplar and willow, with

drooping boughs awash. When he also was gone, the little boat was not

suffered to pass into the use of strangers, but burnt there on the bank.

In his other home at Pyrford, all the day's relaxations were of this

intimate kind. [Footnote: Here, too, work was disturbed by his natural

history researches. He writes apologetically to Mr. Hudson as to some

mistake in a letter: 'I can plead as a disturbing cause three young

brown owls, quite tame; one barks, and two whistle, squeak--between a

railway guard and a door-hinge. The barker lets me get within four or

five feet before he leaves off yapping. He worries the cuckoo into

shouting very late. I leave the owls unwillingly, late--one night 1 a.m.

They are still going strong.'] Here also was no formal garden; Nature

had her way, but under superintendence of a student of forestry. Sir

Charles was a planter of pines; great notebooks carefully filled tell

how he studied, before the planting, the history of each species, how he

watched over the experiments and extended them. [Footnote: Here is a

detail entered concerning Lawson's cypress--_Erecta vividis_: 'I

remember Andrew Murray, of the Royal Horticultural, first describing

Lawson's cypress, introduced by his brother in 1862, when my father was

chairman of the society of which Murray was secretary. Our two are

gardener's varieties, one greener and the other bluer than the true

Lawson. The American name is Port Orford cedar. It will not do very well

on our bad soil, but I've given it a pretty good place. It is said that

Murray _first_ sent it to Lawson of Edinburgh in 1854. This variety was

made by A. Waterer in 1870.']

In summer, on the dry heathy commons of Surrey, there is always danger

of a chance fire spreading, and it was part of his care to maintain a

cleared belt for fending off this danger. Much of his day went in

gathering débris and undergrowth, so as to keep clear ground about the

trees, and then the heaped-up gatherings rewarded him with a bonfire in

which he had a child's pleasure, mingled with an artist's appreciation

of the shapes and colours of flame. It was for praise of this beauty

that he specially loved Anatole France's _Rôtisserie de la Reine

Pédauque_, with its celebrations of the salamanders and their vivid

element.

The heath blossom in all its kinds was cultivated, and it was his

invariable custom to come up on a Monday from Pyrford with a spray of

his favourite white heather in his buttonhole.

Here, too, were associations, interesting if not exactly historic. The

Battle of Dorking was fought close by, and in this neighbourhood the

Martians descended.

Chief of Pyrford's distinctions was the discovery on Sir Charles's own

land, by Mr. Horace Donisthorpe, of a beetle (Lomechusa) which in Queen

Anne's day Sir Hans Sloane had first identified in Hampstead, parasitic

in a nest of red ants. A second specimen was found in 1710 in the mail-

coach between Gloucester and Cheltenham; but from Queen Anne's day till

1906 it was regarded as extinct, until once more it was discovered, and

discovered in its true place among the ants, on whose gestures and

behaviour towards it, whether as indicating worship or serfdom, Sir

Charles dilated with such rhetoric of description that the beetle

assumed dimensions in the mind disappointing when it was viewed in

reality.

Another rarity of insect life at Pyrford was a spider whose appearances

have been oftenest noted at Hampton Court. These creatures, large,

black, and horrific, were accordingly known as 'Hampton Courters,' but

received no welcome, being slain on sight, their slayer quoting a

characteristic saying which he had heard from Anatole France:

'We all know of dangers which seem more terrible than they are. The

spider alone suffers death for his carelessness as to this habit of

exaggeration. Many an uncle spider walks about by candlelight, and

is slain by us on account of his monstrous shadow, whereas his body,

being but small, would have escaped our rage.'

It was here that much of his Memoir was dictated, based on an enormous

mass of letters, papers, and private diaries, kept throughout his

Government career. After 1891 there is only a scattered series of

entries, increasingly sparse as time went on. Mr. Hudson recalls their

walks from the station at Woking to Pyrford across the then open common,

the lunch of eggs and milk, and the hours of work, during the period

between the publication of _Problems of Greater Britain_ and Sir

Charles's return to Parliament for the Forest of Dean.

These two country homes, Pyrford and Dockett, held Sir Charles so fast

with their simple pleasures that the once insatiable traveller ceased to

roam. At the close of 1892, after his return to Parliament, he sold his

house and garden at Toulon. Pyrford to a great extent had come to take

its place. But to the end of his days he was a constant visitor to that

Provençal country which he loved. Apart from them there was another

place where, though he neither owned nor rented house or land, he was no

less at home than among his willows or his pines. No resident in the

Forest of Dean was better known in it than its member, and nowhere had

Sir Charles more real friends. For many years he spent three periods

among them: his Whitsun holiday, which was very much a visit of

pleasure; a visit in autumn, when he attended all meetings of the

Revision Courts; and finally a month in the dead of winter, when he went

round to meetings in each polling district, at night educating his

electors in the political questions of the time, and in the day working

with his local friends at the register till it became the most accurate

record of its kind in all Great Britain--so perfect, indeed, that he was

at last able to discontinue his attendance at the Revision Courts,

though never relaxing his keen personal interest in every change.

His friendships in the Forest were not bounded by class or party. He had

the support, not merely of the Liberal and Labour groups, but of many

strong Conservatives, here as before at Chelsea. Mention has been made

of Mr. Blake, and another friend was Mr. John Probyn, who had stood as a

Liberal candidate for Devizes as far back as 1868, and had not changed

his views. Of his many faithful friends and supporters, one, the

honorary secretary of the Liberal Association for all Sir Charles's

years of membership, had as far back as 1886 proclaimed his faith in

him. [Footnote: Mr. John Cooksey, formerly proprietor of the _Dean

Forest Mercury_.] Another equally active in conveying the original

invitation to Sir Charles was the agent of the Forest miners, a Labour

leader of the wisest type, [Footnote: Mr. G. H. Rowlinson.] who writes:

'He did not live for himself; it was always others first. I never

made an appeal to him for any case of need in vain. With regard to

local matters, he seemed at the beck and call of nearly everyone.

Nothing was too small or too large for him to undertake to assist

any constituent, and oftentimes an avowed and lifelong political

opponent. In a multitude of ways he did us service with his

knowledge of affairs, his influence, his experience, his ability and

work.

'In the matters of commoners' right, the right of "turnout" on the

Forest, free miners' rights, questions of colliery owners, matters

relating to the Crown, the development of the lower coal seams--in

all these (and many of them are local intricate historical questions

involving a mass of detail) he rendered valuable service.

'In his electoral battles he was always a keen fighter and a

courteous opponent. In every campaign he seemed more anxious to beat

his opponent by sheer weight of reason and argument, and intellect

and knowledge, than by any appeal to party passion or feeling.

'I have been at a great many of his meetings, and never saw him

shirk a question, nor saw one put to him that he did not, nine times

out of ten, know more about than the questioner, however local the

point might be.

'As an example, he was holding a meeting at Newnham. Questions were

invited; none asked. Sir Charles looked disappointed; so Mr. King,

of the "Victoria," in a friendly way, thought he would put him a

poser, and asked his opinion about Sir Cuthbert Quilter's Pure Beer

Bill.

'For about twenty minutes Sir Charles talked beer--the origin,

ingredients, what it should be, what it often is and what it is not,

what it is in other countries. As Mr. King remarked afterwards, he

told him more about beer than he ever knew before, though he had

been in the trade all his life.'

Probably none was more rejoiced at the unexpected display than the

genial Tory host of the Victoria, who lived to deplore his friend and to

quote especially one of his observations: 'If you see a man put on

"side," Sir Charles once said to me, you may be sure he feels the need

of it.' [Footnote: Among those who worked with him and for him best and

longest should be named at least Mr. Charles Ridler and Mr. T. A. H.

Smith of Lydney, Mr. Henry Davis of Newent, Mr. B. H. Taylor, and Mr. S.

J. Elsom.]

Part of the service which he rendered to the constituency was by means

of the honorary presidency of the Liberal Four Hundred, first created,

to be held by himself, in 1889. Under this title the foremost spokesmen

of Liberalism were in successive years brought into the Forest;

[Footnote: The list included Mr. Asquith, Lord Morley, Mr. McKenna, Mr.

Lloyd George, and Lord Loreburn.] and thus member and constituents

worked together alike in political and in personal friendship. He hailed

the little clump of trees on the conical top of Mayhill, the first

landmark which indicated the Forest, almost as if it stood above his

home. All was homelike to him as he drove from the pastoral country by

the Severn, with its apple and pear orchards, to the typical mining town

of Cinderford, and on to the great expanse of Forest in whose midmost

glade was the Speech House Hotel, more ancient than the hollies about

it, which had been planted to mark Charles II.'s Restoration. The

Panelled Room, always reserved for his use during his stay there, had

been for many generations the place in which the free miners met to hold

their courts; it had been built for the purpose, as the gallery for

speakers showed.

He loved the Forest--not only the distant spots of interest, but every

tree, delighting to act as guide to all its pleasant places. So each new

guest was taken to see High Beeches and the great wind-swept row of

Scots firs by Clearwell Court. The aged oak-tree, which at a distance

resembled a barn--for nothing was left but its great trunk above the

roots--was another point of pilgrimage; so were the dwarf thorns on

Wigpool Common, which reminded him of the tiny Japanese trees centuries

old, as, indeed, probably were these.

Then there were the expeditions to the rocking stone called the

Buckstone, a relic of the Druids; to the Scowles, the wonderful Roman

iron workings like the Syracusan quarries; to Symons Yat, where the old

military earthworks ended in a triple dyke, with the Severn and the Wye

on either side; to Newland Church, in which a fifteenth-century brass

shows the free miner of those days equipped for work; or to the lovely

valley by Flaxley Abbey, once in the precincts of the Forest, where the

monks had their fish-ponds, and where on the side of the hills their old

ironworks may still be seen.

He and Lady Dilke rode early in their stay to all these outlying places,

with Miss Monck as their constant companion. She was President of the

Women's Liberal Association, stayed with them during their long visits

to the Forest, and was with him for the election at the end. [Footnote:

Miss Emilia Monck, sister of Mr. Berkeley Monck, of Coley Park, Heading,

of which he was several times Mayor, and which he contested as a Liberal

in 1886.]

These were far rides, but close about the Speech House the place teems

with interest. In the last years he would walk every evening to look at

the great stag-headed ruins of the oaks, which thrust their gnarled and

crooked limbs fantastically into the closing night, or stand watching

the shadows fall on the spruce rides which stretch out near the old inn,

till, in the fading light, it seemed as though figures were moving in

and out on the greensward of the great vistas. In the bright sunshine,

imposing silence on himself and his companions, he would watch for long

together the life in one of the forest glades, the moving creatures in

the grass, the tits playing on the branches of a silver birch

silhouetted against the sky, the little blue butterflies chasing each

other over the pink crab-apple bloom. He would follow the tapping of a

woodpecker, and wait in the evening for the owl's cry to begin; and

here, as elsewhere, to be with him was to see in everything unsuspected

things.

In the winter, Speech House was at first Sir Charles's headquarters for

part of January, but there, 500 feet above the sea, the roads were

sometimes impassable from snow. At last Lady Dilke became too delicate

to face the mid-winter visit, and, except for elections, Whitsuntide and

the autumn were the two occasions for their stay. He went also each year

to the miners' demonstration--in 1908 so ill that it seemed impossible

that even his power of endurance could enable him to bear the strain,

and in 1910 again because he said he 'would not fail Rowlinson and the

miners,' though he fainted after the meeting there.

One of their early headquarters in the Forest was Lindors, the home of

two among their first and warmest friends--Mr. Frederick Martin and his

wife. It is in a lovely little valley with sheltered lawns, the rush of

the water sounding always behind the house, above which the old castle

of St. Briavels stands. The ancient prison is still there, and the

castle dates back to the thirteenth century, and claims an almost

unbroken succession of Constables of the Castle and Wardens of the

Forest of Dean, beginning with John de Monmouth.

After Speech House the Victoria at Newnham saw them oftenest. Its

interior is fascinating, with a low hall and fine old oak stairway,

broad and shallow; a bit of quaint French glass let into the staircase

window bears an illustrated version of La Fourmi et la Cigale. Lady

Dilke found there a remnant of fine tapestry--a battle scene with a bold

picture of horses and their riders. She traced and located this as

belonging to a great panel which is in the Palace at Madrid. At each

election, after the declaration of the poll, Sir Charles made from a

balcony of the Victoria or from a motor-car his speech to the cheering

constituents, who had followed him from the town-hall, first under

happiest circumstance, with his wife waiting for him in the porch, later

alone, till the last occasion, in December, 1910, when he fought and won

the election, dying, but with dogged courage; and as he spoke of the

long term of Liberal government which would ensue before a new electoral

struggle, friends standing near caught the words, 'When I shall not be

here.'

* * * * *

Sir Charles had given up the habit of travel except for some special

purpose, as when in 1897 he journeyed with Lady Dilke to see the

Nattiers at Stockholm, or in another year to Bordeaux for her work on

French Art in the Eighteenth Century. But every Christmas they went for

a month to Paris. It was the great holiday of their year, and all the

engagements were made far ahead. There was interest in their Parisian

associations, for their differing attainments made them part of various

separate coteries not familiarly accessible to English people.

Their friends were of all worlds, political, literary, artistic, and

social; and since Sir Charles's intimacy with France dated back to

boyhood, and Lady Dilke's to the days of her first close study of French

art, which, beginning in the sixties with the French Renaissance,

terminated in her big work on French Art in the Eighteenth Century,

their friendships extended over a long period of years, though each

fresh visit enlarged their circle of friends and acquaintances.

In the memoir prefixed to her _Book of the Spiritual Life_ Sir Charles

says of his wife:

'Those who are familiar with several languages learn instinctively to

take the natural manners of the people who are for the moment their

companions. So it was with Lady Dilke.... In Paris she was French with

sufficient difference to give distinction.' As to himself, his great

friend M. Joseph Reinach wrote, 'Dilke connaissait la France mieux que

beaucoup d'entre nous.' But while his command of the French language and

his knowledge of many sides of French life quickened his genial

intercourse with the French, he never failed to impress them as an

English statesman. He paid his French friends the compliment of adopting

many little mannerisms; and however pure the French he spoke, he always

entertained himself by keeping up to date his acquaintance with French

slang, so that the latest developments of fashionable Paris jargon were

familiar to him. Yet that never could be said of him which he himself

noted of his friend M. Richard Waddington, brother to William

Waddington, for many years Ambassador in London, and, in Sir Charles's

opinion, a man of even higher ability than the Ambassador. Of this

friend, half French, half English, he said that he had two mentalities,

and that among Englishmen he was English, among Frenchmen French. Sir

Charles's talk with Frenchmen was unrestrained; as Bismarck felt of

England, so he of France: 'We have nothing to conceal from the French;

they are our natural allies.' But it was always the Englishman who

spoke; no slight veneer of manner in his social intercourse could

conceal that.

There are many scattered entries in his Diary which show how great a

relaxation the Paris holiday yielded.

'At Christmas at Paris we were always gay, though often among the

aged. The gayest dinner I remember was at Henri Germain's with

Gérôme, Gaston Boissier, Laboulaye, and others, all about eighty, I

being the chicken of the party.'

Gérôme, the painter, is often mentioned. Laboulaye must have been Paul

Laboulaye, born 1833, the diplomatist who had been Ambassador to St.

Petersburg in 1886. It was during his embassy that the _rapprochement_

took place between France and Russia which was announced to Europe by

the welcome of the French fleet to Cronstadt.

Gaston Boissier, Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy, and a great

classical scholar, figures again with another friend, M. Bonnat, in Sir

Charles's memoir of his wife; for he notes that during their last

Christmas in Paris, in 1903, 'the gaiety of their meetings' with these

two friends and others 'had been as unrestrained as ever.' Earlier

memories recall the sculptors Christophe and Gustave Moreau.

Christophe's beautiful 'Mask,' of which Lady Dilke had written, stands

in the Tuileries Garden, and was some time ago horribly disfigured by

inkstain. One of Sir Charles's late letters was written to M. Joseph

Reinach, to ask whether anything had yet been done to cleanse this work

of the sculptor she venerated. Only two small casts were made by

Christophe from the statue, and one of these, given to her by him,

decorated the Pyrford home. So did a picture by François Louis Français,

another artist friend, chief in his day of the water-colour school, a

picture which had inspired one of her stories, and gave the motto,

'Dites-moi un Pater,' to her _Shrine of Death_. In all the later and in

some of the earlier friendships Sir Charles shared, as he did in those

of the great custodians of art treasures. M. de Nolhac, the poet and the

Curator of Versailles, was prominent among them, and Eugène Müntz, head

of the École des Beaux Arts. Lady Dilke's correspondence with the

latter, extending over a period of twenty-three years, is preserved at

the Bibliothèque Nationale.

One great friend among collectors was M. Gustave Dreyfus, a high

authority on Donatello and on the medallists of the Italian Renaissance.

At his house there was another attraction in the shape of the

concierge's cat, on whom Sir Charles would call before paying his

respects upstairs. At another house a cat named Pouf was held in great

honour by him, and his feelings were deeply wounded when, with feline

capriciousness, it turned, on Paul Hervieu's entrance, to bestow all its

blandishments on the writer. His love of cats was as well known to his

French as to his English friends, Émile Ollivier writes in 1891 from La

Moutte: 'Campion lui-même cherche d'un regard affligé son protecteur

disparu'; and M. André Chevrillon, being 'touché par la façon dont je

vous ai entendu parler de ce divin animal,' sent him Taine's sonnets 'A

trois chats, Puss, Ébène, et Mitonne, dédiés par leur ami, maître, et

serviteur.'

Memorials of dinners with the well-known collector Camille Groult were

preserved in the shape of some sketches, one of a cavalier in peruke and

cravat, another an excellent crayon head of the host, by Domingo, the

Spanish artist, drawn on the back of a torn menu and given by him to

Lady Dilke.

The Groults' admiration of the beauty of Dockett Eddy was testified in

the gift of a little reflecting mirror, a 'camera obscura,' which, held

to the light, made exquisite vignettes of river, clematis, and syringa;

and a dinner at 76, Sloane Street was marked by the gift of little

copies of M. Groult's famous lately acquired Fragonard, in which Cupid

levels his arrows at the dainty feet of a well-known dancer of the time.

The sculptor Rodin was an acquaintance of late years, and a Christmas

card sent to 76, Sloane Street, in the form of a framed and signed

pencil sketch of a female head, was that master's tribute to Sir

Charles's heresy that Rodin drew much better than he sculptured.

'For old Français,' says Sir Charles, 'Lady Dilke had the veneration she

felt for Christophe among sculptors,' and for a few women, such as Mme.

Renan. To both the Renans they were bound by ties of familiar

friendship, and some of their pleasantest hours were spent at the

Collège de France. On November 11th, 1880, there is a note of Sir

Charles's of a talk with Gambetta: 'They discussed Renan's "Souvenirs,"

which were appearing in the _Revue_ for November, wonderfully

entertaining, and perfectly beautiful in style.' It was Renan who had

presented Lady Dilke's two volumes on the French Renaissance, in 1880,

to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, with an admiring

report, and Sir Charles's admiration for Renan's writing was great. Of

Mme. Renan he says: 'This homely-looking old dame was not only a good

wife, but a woman of the soundest sense and the most upright judgment.'

The same feeling of attachment and respect bound them to Mme. de

Franqueville, [Footnote: Mlle. Érard.] the first wife of Sir Charles's

old friend M. de Franqueville, whom he saw often both in Paris and

London. They visited them at La Muette, famous for its memories of Marie

Antoinette, where in the early years of her prosperity she would take

her companions to play at dairying with dainty emblazoned milkpails.

One whose friendship dated far back was Émile Ollivier, and with him Sir

Charles often discussed, both in Paris and at St. Tropez, a vanished era

in France's history, that of the 'Liberal Empire.' To these talks the

Prime Minister of Napoleon III. would bring such wealth of oratory and

such fertility of gesticulation that his hearers felt themselves

transported to a crowded chamber, of which he occupied the rostrum, and

woke with bewilderment to find themselves in the tranquil calm of his

sun-flooded Southern home. There were those who said that the point of

view urged with such conviction varied, and Sir Charles retains a _mot_

of M. Jusserand: 'Émile Ollivier change souvent d'idée fixe.' Mme. Émile

Ollivier, his devoted second wife and helper, was also a great friend,

and her photograph was one of those which Lady Dilke kept near her.

'Relations of the pleasantest kind,' says Sir Charles, were formed with

the Due d'Aumale, in Mr. Bodley's phrase 'last of the grands seigneurs

of France.' On September 25th, 1895, the Duke wrote asking them 'to

spend a whole day going through the books at Chantilly.' 'The charm of

these books, however, and of these repeated visits of 1895 and 1896, lay

in the fact that books and drawings alike excited historic memory.'

'In October, 1895, we were in Paris, and took Went [Footnote: Sir

Charles Dilke's son, the present Sir C. Wentworth Dilke.] to stay at

Vaux, that he might see the finest of the châteaux, and also the

room where, according to Dumas, Aramis and Porthos carried off Louis

XIV., though d'Artagnan saved him again. We also went ourselves to

lunch at Chantilly with the Due d'Aumale, who told us how Mme.

Adélaïde, his aunt, used to slap his brother, the Prince de

Joinville, already a distinguished naval officer, and stop his

talking politics with, "Tais-toi, méchant morveux, qui oses

critiquer la politique de ton père." Comtesse Berthe de Clinchamp

has looked after the house since the days of the Duchesse d'Aumale,

though she lives in another house. This distinguished old dame was

also there. A daughter of the Due de Chartres was once slapped by

her aunt, the Comtesse de Paris, in public, for asking to be taken

to stay at Chantilly with "tante de Clinchamp." In 1896 to 1897 we

were a great deal at Chantilly, finding the Duke interesting with

his reminiscences of his father's account of the Court of Louis XVI.

With the ex-King of Westphalia, and Bismarck, the Duc d'Aumale was

in old age the most interesting companion that I have known. It was

the projecting of his stories into a newer generation that made them

good. Sir S. Smith ("Long Acre") was a bore at the Congress of

Vienna, but would have been delightful to us could we have known

him.' [Footnote: Sir Sidney Smith must have been prolix over his

achievements at the siege of Acre and elsewhere. It is certain that

a reputation for bombast injured his career and caused his

remarkable achievements to be underrated.]

When in May, 1897, the Duke suddenly died, Lady Dilke wrote a little

article which, in spite of the sadness of the circumstances of his death

and the consequent deep note of pathos, in certain parts of the obituary

recalled very happily the brightness of their talks. Letters of the time

speak of the losses which the Dilkes and their friends had sustained by

the fire at the charity bazaar which had indirectly caused the Duke's

death, through that of the Duchesse d'Alençon, his favourite niece. One

of Lady Dilke's dearest friends in France, the Marquise de Sassenaye,

had escaped, but several of her relations who were with her had died a

dreadful death. The tie with these friends was very close, and the

daughter of the Marquise de Sassenaye, the Baronne de Laumont, and her

granddaughter, the Comtesse Marquiset, were among Sir Charles's last

guests at the House of Commons. But he did not live to know that his

friend the Baron de Laumont and his only son laid down their lives for

France in 1915.

Colonel Picquart Sir Charles had met in 1891 during the 'belles journees

de ces manoeuvres de l'Est,' chronicled by M. Joseph Reinach. He deeply

admired the character of this noble and chivalrous gentleman, who,

convinced that wrong had been done to an innocent man, sacrificed his

fine career to save him, and suffered for his Dreyfusism by imprisonment

and military degradation. Sir Charles met Picquart often at the table of

M. Labori and elsewhere, and at one dinner when Emile Zola was present

in 1899 there were also two English friends, the genial Sir Campbell

Clarke, Paris correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_, and his kind wife,

at whose house in Paris the Dilkes dined almost every Christmas Day. He

touched in this way the struggle over the Dreyfus affair, and his

attitude is summed up in a letter conveying through M. Reinach to

Colonel Picquart 'that intense sympathy which I do not express publicly

only because all we English say does more harm than good.' [Footnote:

'At Christmas, 1900, in Paris we met Labori and Colonel Picquart two

nights running, and heard fully the reasons of their quarrel with the

Dreyfus family, which will probably all come out. Labori with great

eloquence, and Picquart quietly, developed the view that Dreyfus, by

virtually accepting the amnesty along with his own freedom, has taken up

the position of a guilty man and sacrificed all those who have

sacrificed everything for him. When, during the season of 1901, Labori

came to London, and we saw much of him, he had toned down this view, or

did not think it wise to express it. But it came out in November,

1901.']

His friendship with M. Joseph Reinach, so often mentioned, dates back to

the days when the latter was Gambetta's secretary. 'C'est par Gambetta

que j'ai connu Dilke,' says M. Reinach. 'Gambetta avait pour lui une

vive affection.' In London and in Paris they met and talked and fenced,

and kept in touch by close political correspondence. 'Dilke was a great

friend of mine, and I thought him a true and intrepid patriot and

citizen,' said M. Reinach; and perhaps of all M. Reinach's great

qualities it was his courage which most provoked the admiration of Sir

Charles and of his wife. They knew all the three brothers, and M.

Salomon Reinach, asking Sir Charles to come and discuss manuscripts,

signs himself 'in admiration of your enormous knowledge'--a happy

tribute from one of whom it was said 'il sait tout.' 'Salomon Reinach,

the outgoing President of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles

Lettres,' writes Sir Charles in 1908 to Lord Fitzmaurice, 'is what

Arthur Strong (Librarian of House of Lords) was, and Acton tried to be,

"universal." He asked me to listen to him for two whole evenings, till

we became a nuisance to our hosts--on the way in which, despite our

Historical Manuscripts Commission, we still lock up papers. His

strongest examples were Horace Mann's letters to Horace Walpole, and the

letters received by the Duke of Wellington (the loss of nearly all the

letters written by J. S. Mill moves me more).'

M. Pallain, Regent of the Bank of France, was another friend whose

acquaintance with Sir Charles dated back to the days when he was

Gambetta's secretary. His book on Talleyrand, the 'fameux livre de

Pallain,' as Sir Charles calls it in a letter to M. Jusserand, was

hardly less interesting to him than his mastership of French finance.

The Siegfrieds, representatives of the wealthy and serious Protestant

world, were friends who shared Sir Charles' interest in questions of

social reform, as was that wisest of permanent officials, M. Fontaine,

head of the French Labour Department; and he discussed these matters

also with the great representative of Roman Catholic Socialism, Count

Albert de Mun. The list of his Diary engagements, ranging over a long

period of time, is filled with the names of French writers, from Ludovic

Halevy, the novelist and dramatist (passages from whose _Belle Helene_

he would recite and whistle), to Anatole France; and of politicians of

every school of thought, from Leon Say, 'a statesman of rare

competence,' to M. Delcasse, whom he saw often, Deschanel, Leon

Bourgeois, Millerand, Viviani, and that great friend of Greece--M. Denys

Cochin; Calmette, the editor of the _Figaro_, assassinated by Mme.

Caillaux; and Lepine, the Prefect of Police; while Jaures was a London

as well as a Paris guest.

The excellence of much French acting attracted Sir Charles and his wife

to the theatre in Paris, though in London their visits to a play were

rare. M. Jules Claretie, the Academician, and for nearly thirty years,

till his death in 1913, the distinguished Director of the Theatre

Francais, constantly put his box at their disposal, and rarely failed to

join them for a talk between the acts.

There is a reply from General de Galliffet, the 'beau sabreur'--that

brilliant soldier whom Sir Charles had followed through the French

manoeuvres accepting a theatre invitation in 1892: 'J'ai, en principe,

l'horreur du theatre; j'en benis le ciel puisque je pourrai ainsi mieux

jouir de votre societe et de celle de Lady Dilke.'

In these visits to Paris they went always to the Hotel St. James, in the

Rue St. Honore, attracted by the beauty and interest of their rooms

there. It is the old Hotel de Noailles, and the staircase and landing,

and several of the rooms, are still as they were when three members of

the family--grandmother, mother, and daughter--were guillotined at the

time of the French Revolution. The guardroom at the head of the stairs,

with its great folding doors, and the paved landing with its old

_dalles_, are intact, as are some of the state-rooms. Their sitting-room

and the great bedroom opening from it looked out on to the courtyard,

where in old days, before it became a courtyard and when the garden

stretched away to the Seine, Marie Antoinette walked and talked, the

story goes, with La Fayette, with whom her friend Mme. de Noailles had

arranged an interview. The windows and balconies here, and part of the

garden front, resemble exactly their representations in pictures of the

period.

They saw many of their friends during the year both at the House of

Commons and at Dockett. Describing them in London, dining in the room

decorated by Gambetta's portrait, M. Jules Claretie writes: 'La premiere

fois que j'eus l'honneur d'etre l'hote de Sir Charles la charmante Lady

Dilke me dit, souriante, "Ici vous êtes en France. Savez-vous qui est

notre cuisinier? L'ancien brosseur de Général Chanzy."' And among Sir

Charles's collection of Dockett photographs was one in which the chef,

accompanied by the greater artist, the elder Coquelin, was fishing from

a punt on the Thames.

'Je me rappelle avec tristesse,' says the same friend in February, 1911,

'les beaux soirs où, sur la terrasse du Parlement, en regardant, de

l'autre côté de la Tamise, les silhouettes des hauts monuments, là-bas,

sous les étoiles, dans la nuit, nous causions avec Sir Charles de cet

_Athenæum_, la revue hebdomadaire oú il accumulait tant de science, et

dont j'avais été un moment, après Philarète Chasles et Edmond About, le

correspondant Parisien; puis de Paris, de la France de Pavenir-du passé

aussi.'

When M. Jules Claretie came to London to deliver a lecture in 1899 on

the French and English theatre, Sir Charles was asked to preside, and

also to assist in welcoming him at the Ambassador's table. The charming

and unfailing friendship of that Ambassador, M. Paul Cambon, is worthy

of record, and Sir Charles's admiration for him was very marked. He used

to say that so long as a great Ambassador, either French or English,

represented his nation in Paris or London, the other representative

might be a cipher, and M. Cambon's embassy in London sufficed for both

countries. 'He is a man,' he wrote to Mr. Morley in 1892, 'who (with his

brother Jules) will survive Ribot, and even Freycinet.'

Another close friend was M. Jusserand, whose graceful studies of English

literary history adorned the Pyrford bookshelves. While he was

counsellor to the Embassy in London he was a frequent guest at 76,

Sloane Street, and when he became Ambassador at Washington he still kept

in constant touch with Sir Charles.

'Dès qu'on nous parle d'un homme d'état étranger, ministre ou

diplomate,' says M. Joseph Reinach, writing of Sir Charles, 'c'est notre

première question: Aime-t-il la France? C'est une sottise. Un Italien

n'aime que l'Italie, un Russe n'aime que la Russie, un Anglais n'aime

que l'Angleterre.' It may be so. In 1887 Sir Charles wrote to M. Reinach

concerning the possibility that Bismarck would attack France, which, he

added, 'everybody thinks likely except your humble servant, Lord Lyons,

and Sir E. Malet, our new man at Berlin.' If it did happen, said he,

'whatever use I can be I shall be, either if I can best serve France by

writing here, or by coming to be a private of volunteers and by giving

all I can to the French ambulances.' Some there are who can recall Sir

Charles's face as he turned over the pages of M. Boutet de Monvel's

_Jeanne d'Arc_, and dwelt on that first picture in which the little

'piou-pious' of the modern army advance, under the flag on which are

inscribed the battles of the past; while the Old Guard rises from the

earth to reinforce their ranks, and the ghostly figure of Jeanne d'Arc,

symbolizing the spirit of France, leads on to victory. Listening as he

talked, his hearers became infected with Sir Charles's spirit, and

thinking of the past, looking to the future, he so kindled them that

when he closed the book they all were 'lovers of France.'

CHAPTER LII

LABOUR

1870-1911

I.

'From 1870 to this date one man has stood for all the great causes of

industrial progress, whether for the agricultural labourers, or in the

textile trades, or in the mining industries, or with the shop

assistants. That man is Sir Charles Dilke.' So, in 1910, spoke Dr. Gore,

the present Bishop of Oxford, at that time Bishop of Birmingham.

In Sir Charles's early days, economists were still governed by

individualist doctrines. The school of _laissez faire_ was the

prevailing school of thought, and in its teaching he was trained. "We

were all Tory anarchists once," was his own summary of the views which

characterized that economic theory. But to "let alone" industrial misery

early became for Sir Charles a counsel of despair. _Greater Britain_,

published in 1868, when he was twenty-five, gave indications of a change

of view, and his close friendship with John Stuart Mill directly

furthered this development. Mill's lapses into heresy from the orthodox

economics of the day were notable, and Sir Charles was wont to point to

a passage written by Mill in the forties showing that sweated wages

depressed all wages, and to claim him as the pioneer of the minimum

wage.

It was left for Mill's disciple to become one of the foremost champions

of the legislation which now protects the industrial conditions of the

worker, and also the guardian of its effective administration.

His policy was distinguished by his determination to act with those for

whom the legislation was created, and to induce them to inspire and to

demand measures for their own protection. The education of the

industrial class, the object of "helping the workers to help

themselves," was never absent from his mind. This view went farther than

the interest of a class: he held the stability of the State itself to be

menaced by the existence of an unorganized and depressed body of

workers. An organized and intelligent corporate demand put forward by

trained leaders chosen from the workers' own ranks was essential to the

development and stability of industrial conditions and to appropriate

legislation. Sir Charles was therefore the unwavering advocate of

trade-unionism. It is worth while to emphasize his attitude, since views

now generally accepted were not popular in the sixties. His first speech

to his Chelsea electors in 1867 dealt with his trade-union position, as

it did with the need for strengthening the Factory Acts.

Violent utterances on the part of certain sections of Labour did not

affect his advocacy of its claims, for he would have endorsed the words

of Cardinal Manning written to him on September 13th, 1884: "It is the

cause of the people mismanaged by imprudent and rough words and deeds;

but a people suffering long and stung by want of sympathy cannot speak

like county magistrates." During the later period of his life he tried,

at innumerable meetings all over Great Britain, to help trade-unionists

to make their claims understood. So he came to fill "a unique position

as counsellor, friend, and adviser to the Labour cause." [Footnote:

Letter from the Rt. Hon. George Barnes, Labour M.P. for the Blackfriars

division of Glasgow, and Minister for Pensions in Mr. Lloyd George's

Government of 1916, once general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of

Engineers.]

His belief in trade-unionism was never shaken; for though he did not

pretend that in the distant future trade-unionism would be sufficient to

redress all social ills, holding it, as Lady Dilke did, to be, not "the

gospel of the future, but salvation for the present," he believed that

during his lifetime it was far from having perfected its work. He was a

strong municipal Socialist, but with regard to State Socialism he would

never bind himself to any general theory; he was in favour of large

experiments and of noting those made elsewhere; beyond this he "did not

see his way."

His faith in the maintenance of all safeguards for trade-unions was well

demonstrated by his action on the occasion of the Taff Vale judgment and

its sequel. [Footnote: _Taff Vale Judgment_.--As trade-unions were not

incorporated, it was generally assumed that they could not be sued, but

in 1900 Mr. Justice Farwell decided that a trade-union registered under

the Trade-Union Acts, 1871 and 1876, might be sued in its registered

name; and this decision, after being reversed in the Court of Appeal,

was restored by the House of Lords in 1901. The result of this case (the

Taff Vale Railway Company _v_. the Amalgamated Society of Railway

Servants) was that damages could be obtained against a trade-union for

the acts of their officials in "picketing" during a strike; and by

making the trustees in whom the funds were vested defendants, an order

could be obtained for the payment of damages and costs out of the

accumulated funds of the trade-union.] He wished to keep for them the

inviolability of corporate funds which formed their strength and staying

power. While he admitted that theoretically a good case could be made

out against such inviolability, he was clear that in practice it was

essential to the continued existence of Labour as an organized force,

capable of self-defensive action. The conference on the effect of the

Taff Vale decision held in October, 1901, was arranged by him after

consultation with Mr. Asquith, who suggested Sir Robert Reid and Mr.

Haldane as legal assessors. How grave was the position which the

judgment had created may be gathered from the declaration of Mr. Asquith

in a letter to Sir Charles written on December 5th, 1901: "How to

conduct a strike legally now, I do not know." He advised the

introduction of two Bills, one to deal with the question of trade-union

funds, the other with picketing, etc. In April, 1902, Sir Charles Dilke

introduced the deputation, organized to ask for special facilities for

discussion, to Lord James of Hereford, who received it on behalf of the

Cabinet, and to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as Leader of the

Opposition.

In an article contributed by him to the _Independent Review_ of June,

1904, he notes a private offer of the Government for dealing with the

matter by a small Royal Commission of experts, whose recommendations

should be immediately followed by legislation. This was refused by the

Labour leaders, and he thought it a lost opportunity for what might have

been a favourable settlement. [Footnote: Mr. D. J. Shackleton, an

Insurance Commissioner, and appointed Permanent Under-Secretary of the

Ministry of Labour in December, 1916, was in 1906 M.P. for Clitheroe,

and a prominent member of the Labour party. He writes of the passing of

the Trade Disputes Act, which reversed the Taff Vale judgment: "It was

my privilege to be the spokesman for the Labour party and Joint Board on

the Trade Disputes Bill in the House of Commons. On the evening when the

Bill was read a third time in the House of Lords, the three National

Committees gave me a complimentary dinner at the House of Commons. In

the course of my speech in reply to the toast, I expressed, on behalf of

the Labour movement and myself, our sincere and grateful thanks to Sir

Charles for the very valuable help he had given us through all our

Parliamentary fights. My consultations with him whilst the Bill was

before the House were almost daily. On many occasions he crossed the

floor to give me points in answer to speeches that were made in

opposition to the Labour position."] But at the same time 'the Taff Vale

judgment virtually brought the separate Labour party into existence, and

the difficulty of upsetting the judgment and of amending the law of

conspiracy will,' he said, 'nurture, develop, and fortify it in the

future.' To him this was matter for satisfaction. [Footnote: A full

account of the action taken by Sir Charles on the Taff Vale judgment and

the Trade Disputes Act which reversed its decision will be found in

Appendix II. to this chapter, furnished by Miss Mary Macarthur (now Mrs.

W. C. Anderson). Miss Macarthur, secretary of the Women's Trade-Union

League from 1903, worked with Sir Charles on many questions.]

His absence from the House of Commons from 1886 to 1892 gave him leisure

for deep study of industrial questions, and he drew much of illustration

and advice from his knowledge of colonial enterprise in social reform.

Thus, in his advocacy of a general eight-hour day, observation of

colonial politics largely guided his suggestions. In his first speech in

the Forest of Dean in 1889, he said: "Australia has tried experiments

for us, and we have the advantage of being able to note their success or

failure before we imitate or vary them at home." The experiments in

regard to regulation of hours and wages which colonial analogy justified

should, he urged, be carried out by Government and by the municipalities

as employers and in their contracts. His visits to our Colonies were

followed by constant correspondence with Colonial statesmen, especially

with Mr. Deakin, and the introduction here of minimum-wage legislation

may be traced to Sir Charles's close study of Colonial experiment.