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THE LIFE OF THE RT. HON. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE, BART., M.P.
[Illustration: RT. HON. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE, BART., M.P., IN THE
YEAR 1873.
From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery.
Frontispiece, Vol. I.]
THE LIFE OF THE RT. HON. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE
BART., M.P.
BEGUN BY STEPHEN GWYNN, M.P.
COMPLETED AND EDITED BY
GERTRUDE M. TUCKWELL.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
PREFACE
The following Life of Sir Charles W. Dilke consists mainly of his own
Memoirs and of correspondence left by him or furnished by his friends.
The Memoirs were compiled by Sir Charles Dilke from his private diaries
and letters between the years 1888 and his return to Parliament in 1892.
The private diaries consisted of entries made daily at the dates dealt
with. Of the Memoirs he says: "These notes are bald, but I thought it best
not to try, as the phrase goes, 'to write them up.'" In some cases the
Memoirs have been condensed into narrative, for Sir Charles says of the
periods his "notes" cover: "These chapters contain everything that can be
used, and more than is needed, and changes should be by way of 'boiling
down.'" The Memoirs were unfinished. He writes in May, 1893: "From this
time forward I shall not name my speeches and ordinary action in the
House, as I had now regained the position which I held up to 1878, though
not my position of 1878-1880, nor that of 1884-85;" and as from this point
onwards there are few entries, chapters treating of his varied activities
have been contributed by those competent to deal with them.
Sir Charles Dilke's will, after giving full discretionary powers to his
literary executrix, contains these words: "I would suggest that, as
regards those parts relating to Ireland, Egypt, and South Africa, the same
shall be made use of (if at all) without editing, as they have been agreed
to by a Cabinet colleague chiefly concerned." A further note shows that,
so far as Ireland was concerned, the years 1884-85 cover the dates to
which Sir Charles Dilke alludes. The part of the Memoirs dealing with
these subjects has therefore been printed _in extenso_, except in the case
of some detailed portions of a discussion on Egyptian finance.
The closing words of this part of Sir Charles Dilke's will point out to
his executrix that "it would be inconsistent with my lifelong views that
she should seek assistance in editing from anyone closely connected with
either the Liberal or Conservative party, so as to import into the
publications any of the conventional attitude of the old parties. The same
objection will not apply to members of the other parties." In consequence
of this direction, Mr. Stephen Gwynn, M.P., whose name was among those
suggested by Sir Charles Dilke, was asked to undertake the work of
arranging the Memoirs, and supplementing them where necessary. This work
was already far advanced when Mr. Gwynn joined the British forces on the
outbreak of the War. His able and sympathetic assistance was thus
withdrawn from the work entailed in the final editing of this book--a work
which has occupied the Editor until going to press.
A deep debt of gratitude is due to Mr. Spenser Wilkinson, who has
contributed the chapters on "The British Army" and "Imperial Defence." Sir
George Askwith was good enough, amidst almost overwhelming pressure of
public duties, to read and revise the chapter entitled "The Turning-
Point." Sir George Barnes and Sir John Mellor have also freely given
expert advice and criticism. Mrs. H. J. Tennant, Miss Constance Smith, Mr.
E. S. Grew, Mr. H. K. Hudson and Mr. John Randall have given much valuable
assistance. The work of reading proofs and verifying references was made
easy by their help.
While thanking all those who have placed letters at her disposal, the
Editor would specially acknowledge the kindness with which Mr. Austen
Chamberlain has met applications for leave to publish much correspondence.
Mr. John Murray's great experience has made his constant counsel of the
utmost value; and from the beginning to the close of the Editor's task the
literary judgment of the Rev. W. Tuck well has been placed unsparingly at
her service. Sir H. H. Lee and Mr. Bodley, who were Sir Charles Dilke's
official secretaries when he was a Minister, have given her useful
information as to political events and dates.
To the many other friends, too numerous to name, who have contributed
"recollections" and aid, grateful acknowledgments must be made.
Finally, the Editor expresses her warmest thanks to Lord Fitzmaurice, who
has laid under contribution, for the benefit of Sir Charles Dilke's Life,
his great knowledge of contemporary history and of foreign affairs,
without which invaluable aid the work of editing could not have been
completed.
INTRODUCTION
The papers from which the following Memoir is written were left to my
exclusive care because for twenty-five years I was intimately associated
with Sir Charles Dilke's home and work and life. Before the year 1885 I
had met him only once or twice, but I recall how his kindness and
consideration dissipated a young girl's awe of the great political figure.
From the year 1885, when my aunt, Mrs. Mark Pattison, married Sir Charles,
I was constantly with them, acting from 1893 as secretary in their trade-
union work. Death came to her in 1904, and till January, 1911, he fought
alone.
In the earlier days there was much young life about the house. Mrs. H. J.
Tennant, that most loyal of friends, stands out as one who, hardly less
than I, used to look on 76, Sloane Street, as a home. There is no need to
bear witness to the happiness of that home. _The Book of the Spiritual
Life_, in which are collected my aunt's last essays, contains also the
Memoir of her written by her husband, and the spirit which breathes
through those pages bears perfect testimony to an abiding love.
The atmosphere of the house was one of work, and the impression left upon
the mind was that no life was truly lived unless it was largely dedicated
to public service. To the labours of his wife, a "Benedictine, working
always and everywhere," Sir Charles bears testimony. But what of his own
labours? "Nothing will ever come before my work," were his initial words
to me in the days when I first became their secretary. Through the years
realization of this fact became complete, so that, towards the last,
remonstrances at his ceaseless labour were made with hopeless hearts; we
knew he would not purchase length of life by the abatement of one jot of
his energy. He did not expect long life, and death was ever without terror
for him. For years he anticipated a heart seizure, so that in the complete
ordering of his days he lived each one as if it were his last.
The house was a fine school, for in it no waste of force was permitted. He
had drilled himself to the suppression of emotion, and he would not
tolerate it in those who worked with him except as an inspiration to
action. "Keep your tears for your speeches, so that you make others act;
leave off crying and think what you can do," was the characteristic rebuke
bestowed upon one of us who had reported a case of acute industrial
suffering. He never indulged in rhetoric or talked of first principles,
and one divined from chance words of encouragement the deep feeling and
passion for justice which formed the inspiration of his work.
He utilized every moment. The rapidity of his transition from one kind of
work to another, and his immediate concentration on a subject totally
different from that which he had previously handled, were only equalled by
the rapidity with which he turned from work to play.
With the same unerring quickness he would gather up the contents of a book
or appreciate the drift of a question. This latter characteristic, I fear,
often disconcerted disputants, who objected to leave their nicely turned
periods incomplete because he had grasped the point involved before they
were halfway through a sentence; but his delight in finding this same
rapidity of thought in others was great, and I remember his instancing it
as a characteristic of Mr. Asquith.
His wide grasp of every question with which he dealt was accompanied by so
complete a knowledge of its smallest details that vague or inaccurate
statements were intolerable to him; but I think the patience with which he
sifted such statements was amongst the finest features in the discipline
of working under him. One felt it a crime to have wasted that time of
which no moment was ever deliberately wasted by himself.
The spirit in which he approached his work was one of detachment from all
personal considerations; the introduction of private feuds or dislikes
into public service was a thing impossible to him and to be severely
rebuked in those who helped him. He never belittled antagonists,
underrated his opponents' ability, or hesitated to admit a mistake. Others
will testify in the pages which follow to the warmth and generosity of his
friendship, but that which stands out in memory is his forbearance to his
foes.
Just as his knowledge was complete in its general grasp as in its smallest
detail, so was his sympathy all-embracing. No suffering, says the
Secretary of the Anti-Sweating League, was too small for his help; the
early atrocities of Congo misrule did not meet with a readier response
than did the wrongs of some heavily fined factory girl or the sufferings
of the victim of a dangerous trade.
For his own achievements he was curiously regardless of fame. He gave
ungrudgingly of his knowledge to all who claimed his help and direction,
and he trained many other men to great public service. In Mr. Alfred
Lyttelton's happy phrase, he possessed "rare self-effacement." There are
many instances in his early career of this habit of self-effacement, and
the habit increased with years. Remonstrance met with the reply: "What
does it matter who gets the credit so long as the work is done?"
It is for this reason that we who love him shall ever bear in affectionate
memory those who brought his laurels home to him in their celebration of
the passing of the Trade Boards Act in 1910--that first instalment of the
principle of the minimum wage, on which he united all parties and of which
he had been the earliest advocate.
It has been said of his public life that he knew too much and interested
himself in too many things; but those coming after who regard his life as
a whole will see the connecting link which ran through all. I can speak
only of that side of his activities in which I served him. He saw the
cause of labour in Great Britain as it is linked with the conditions of
labour throughout the globe; his fight against slavery in the Congo, his
constant pressure for enlightened government in India, his championship of
the native races everywhere, were all part and parcel of the objects to
which he had pledged himself from the first. For progress and development
it is necessary that a country should be at peace, and his study of
military and naval problems was dictated by the consideration of the best
means under existing conditions to obtain that end for England.
Yet to imagine that his life was all work would be to wrong the balance of
his nature. He turned from letters and papers to his fencing bout, his
morning gallop, or his morning scull on the river, with equal enthusiasm,
and his great resonant boyish laugh sounded across the reach at Dockett or
echoed through the house after a successful "touch." His keenness for
athletic exercises, dating from his early Cambridge days, lasted, as his
work did, to the end. In spite of the warnings of an overtaxed heart, he
sculled each morning of the last summer at Dockett, and in Paris he handed
over his foils to his fencing-school only a month before his death,
leaving, like Mr. Valiant-for-Truth before he crossed the river, his arms
to those who could wield them. It was well for him; he could not have
borne long years of failing strength and ebbing mental energy. Anything
less than life at its full was death to him.
Released from work, he was intensely gay, and his tastes were sufficiently
simple for him to find enjoyment everywhere. He loved all beautiful
things, and, though he had seen everything, the gleam of the sinking sun
through the pine aisles at his Pyrford cottage would hold him spellbound;
and in summer he would spend hours trying to distinguish the bird notes,
naming the river flora, or watching the creature life upon the river
banks. So in the Forest of Dean, that constituency which he loved well and
which well deserved his love, his greatest pleasure was to set himself as
guide to all its pleasant places, rehearsing the name of each blue hill on
the far horizon, tracing the windings and meeting of the rivers, loving
all best, I think, when the ground was like a sea of bluebells and
anemones in the early year. He watched eagerly each season for the first
signs of spring, and when he was very ill he told me that it must ever be
a joy untouched by advancing years. But indeed he had in him the heart of
the spring. I think it was largely this simple love of nature which kept
him always strong and sweet even after the deep blow of his wife's death
in 1904.
Wherever he was, life took on warmth and colour. Travel with him was a
revelation, trodden and hackneyed though the road might be. In his vivid
narrative the past lived again. Once more troops fought and manoeuvred as
we passed through stretches of peaceful country which were the
battlefields of France; Provence broke on us out of a mist of legendary
lore, the enchantment deepening as we reached the little-traversed
highlands near the coast--those Mountains of the Moors where in past days,
_connu comme le loup blanc_ among the people, he had wandered on foot with
his old Provençal servant before motors and light railways were.
His care for the _Athenaeum_, inspired by the more than filial love he
bore his grandfather, its earlier proprietor, led to continual reading and
reviewing, and he would note with interest those few Parliamentarians who,
keeping themselves fresh for their work of routine by some touch with the
world of Literature, thereby, as he phrased it, "saved their souls."
Of the events which cut his public life asunder it is sufficient to say
here that those nearest him never believed in the truth of the charges
brought, finding it almost inconceivable that they should have been made;
while the letters and records in my hands bear testimony to that great
outer circle of friends, known and unknown, who have expressed by spoken
or by written word, in public and in private, their share in that absolute
belief in him which was a cardinal fact of our work and life.
The fortitude which gave to his country, after the crash of 1886, twenty-
five years of tireless work, was inspired, for those who knew him best, by
that consciousness of rectitude which holds a man above the clamour of
tongues, and finds its reward in the fulfilment of his life's purpose.
"To have an end, a purpose, an object pursued through all vicissitudes of
fortune, through heart's anguish and shame, through humiliation and
disaster and defeat--that is the great distinction, the supreme
justification of a life." So wrote his wife in her preface for _The Shrine
of Death_.
The service of his country was the purpose of his life. Nor was that life
justified alone by his unswerving pursuit of its great aim; it was
justified also in its fulfilment, for his service was entirely fruitful--
he wrested success from failure, gain from loss.
It has been said that in 1886 the nation lost one who would have been
among its greatest administrators. Yet when we look back on all that was
inspired and done by him, on the thousand avenues of usefulness into which
his boundless energy was directed, there is no waste, only magnificent
achievement.
An independent critic both by pen and speech inside and outside the House
of Commons, the consolidator of whatever Radical forces that chamber held,
the representative of labour before the Labour Party was, he stood for all
the forces of progress, and when his great figure passed into the silence
his place was left unfilled.
One writing for an African journal the record of his funeral, dreamed that
as the strains of the anthem poured their blessings on "him that hath
endured," there rose behind the crowd which gathered round him dead a
greater band of mourners. "A vast unseen concourse of oppressed mankind
were there, coming to do homage to one who had ever found time, amidst his
manifold activities, to plead their cause with wisdom, unfailing
knowledge, and with keen sympathy of heart."
I commit his memory to the people whom he loved and served.
G. M. T.
CONTENTS OF VOL. 1
I. EARLY LIFE
II. EDUCATION
III. CAMBRIDGE
IV. CAMBRIDGE (_continued_)
V. LAST TERMS AT THE UNIVERSITY
VI. "GREATER BRITAIN"
VII. ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT
VIII. THE EDUCATION BILL OF 1870--THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
IX. THE BLACK SEA TREATY--THE COMMUNE
X. THE CIVIL LIST
XI. PERIOD OF FIRST MARRIAGE
XII. RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT--DEATH OF LADY DILKE
XIII. RENEWAL OF ACTIVITY
XIV. REVIVAL OF THE EASTERN QUESTION
XV. HOME POLITICS AND PERSONAL SURROUNDINGS
XVI. THE EASTERN QUESTION--TREATY OF SAN STEFANO AND CONGRESS OF BERLIN
XVII. POLITICS AND PERSONS
XVIII. THE ZULU WAR AND THE GREEK COMMITTEE
XIX. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INTERESTS
XX. THE FORMATION OF A MINISTRY
XXI. AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE
XXII. HOME POLITICS--COMMERCIAL TREATY--PERSONAL MATTERS
XXIII. COERCION--CLOSURE--MAJUBA
XXIV. EUROPEAN POLITICS
XXV. COMMERCIAL RELATIONS WITH FRANCE
XXVI. GAMBETTA, DISRAELI, ROYAL PERSONAGES, MORIER
XXVII. DIFFICULTIES OF THE LIBERAL GOVERNMENT
XXVIII. THE PHOENIX PARK MURDERS
XXIX. EGYPT (JANUARY TO SEPTEMBER, 1882)
XXX. ENTRY INTO THE CABINET (SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER, 1882)
XXXI. AT THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD
XXXII. FOREIGN AND COLONIAL AFFAIRS (OCTOBER, 1882, TO DECEMBER, 1883)
XXXIII. EGYPT AFTER TEL-EL-KEBIR (SEPTEMBER, 1882, TO DECEMBER, 1883)
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I
RT. HON. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE, M.P., IN THE YEAR 1873
Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A., in the
National Portrait Gallery.
SIR CHARLES W. DILKE AS A CHILD
From the miniature by Fanny Corbaux.
MR. CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE (SIR CHARLES W. DILKE'S GRANDFATHER)
Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by Arthur Hughes.
SIR C. WENTWORTH DILKE (SIR CHARLES W. DILKE'S) FATHER
Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by Arthur Hughes.
LADY DILKE (MISS KATHERINE SHEIL)
From a photograph by Hills and Saunders.
JOHN STUART MILL
Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A.,
bequeathed by Sir Charles W. Dilke to the Westminster Town Hall.
RT. HON, JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P.
Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by Frank Holl, R.A.,
bequeathed by Sir Charles W. Dilke to the National Portrait Gallery.
LÉON GAMBETTA
Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by Legros, bequeathed by Sir
Charles W. Dilke to the Luxembourg and Louvre Museums.
THE LIFE OF SIR CHARLES DILKE
CHAPTER I
EARLY LIFE
The man whose history is here recorded was for more than forty years a
commanding figure upon the theatre of English public life; a politician,
who in the councils of a powerful Ministry exercised an influence more
than proportioned to the offices he held; a statesman, who brought to
triumphant issue many wise projects, and whose authority, even when he was
a private member of Parliament, continued to be recognized not only among
all parties of his countrymen, but also throughout Europe: yet, when he
died, all thought and spoke not of what he had achieved, but of what he
had missed.
To write the biography of one so marked by a special malignity of fate is
a difficult task. That bare justice may be done, it is necessary not only
to follow out his openly recorded successes, things done in his own name
and of his own right, but also to disentangle, as far as may be, the part
which his authority, his knowledge, and his ceaseless industry played in
framing and securing measures whose enactment redounded to the credit of
other men. But above all, since a man's personality signifies far more
than his achievements, and this man stands before the world overshadowed
by a dishonouring accusation, it is necessary to establish by facts and by
testimony not so much what he did as what he was.
Yet it must not be supposed that he himself counted his career among
life's failures. The record will tell of close and affectionate family
ties; of a wonderfully vivid and varied experience acquired in many lands
and through many phases of activity; and, even in his blackest hour, of a
noble love retained and richly repaid. No trace will be found of a nature
soured or warped by balked ambition, nor any resentful withdrawal from the
public stage.
In the story that has to be told, proof will emerge indisputably that,
without affected indifference to the prizes of a public career, his
passion was for work, not for its attendant honours; that he valued office
as an opportunity to advance, not himself, but the causes which he had at
heart; and that when further tenure of power was denied him, he abated no
jot of his lifelong labours. The main purpose of his life was 'to revive
true courage in the democracy of his country,' [Footnote: Throughout these
volumes single quotation marks without further indication signify an
excerpt from the Manuscript Memoir (compiled by Sir Charles, as explained
in the Preface, from original diaries and letters), or (as here) from
notes left with that document, but not embodied in it. Double quotation
marks signify Correspondence and Memoranda found in the despatch-cases and
letters sent by correspondents, etc.] and his immediate object always and
everywhere to defend the weak. For the protection of toilers from their
taskmasters at home and abroad, in the slums of industrial England and in
the dark places of Africa, he effected much directly; but indirectly,
through his help and guidance of others, he effected more; and in the
recognition of his services by those for whom he worked and those who
worked with him he received his reward.
Charles Wentworth Dilke was born into a family of English gentlefolk,
which after a considerable period of comparative obscurity had won back
prosperous days. The baronetcy to which he succeeded was recent, the
reward of his father's public services; but a long line of ancestors
linked him to a notable landed stock, the Dilkes of Maxstoke.
This family was divided against itself in the Civil Wars; and the brother
of the inheritor of Maxstoke, Fisher Dilke, from whom Sir Charles
descended, was a fanatical Puritan, and married into a great Puritan
house. His wife, Sybil Wentworth, was granddaughter to Peter Wentworth,
who led the Puritan party of Elizabeth's reign: she was sister to Sir
Peter Wentworth, a distinguished member of Cromwell's Council of State.
Property was inherited through her under condition that the Dilke heirs to
it should assume the Wentworth name; and in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries Fisher Dilke's descendants were Wentworth Dilke or Dilke
Wentworth from time to time.
In George II.'s reign one Wentworth Dilke was clerk to the Board of Green
Cloth at Kew Palace: his only son, Wentworth Dilke Wentworth, was
secretary to the Earl of Litchfield of the first creation, and left an
only son, Charles Wentworth Dilke, who was a clerk in the Admiralty. This
Dilke was the first of five who successively have borne this combination
of names. [Footnote: For convenience a partial table of descent is
inserted, showing the five Dilkes who bore the same combination of names.
CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, b. 1742, d. 1826.
---------------------------------------------
| |
Charles Wentworth Dilke = Maria Dover William Dilke, b. 1796,
b. 1789, d. 1864. | Walker. d. 1885.
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------
| |
Charles Wentworth Dilke = M. Mary William Wentworth
first Baronet, b. 1810, Chatfield. Grant Dilke, killed in
d. 1869. Crimea, b. 1826, d. 1854
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------
| |
Charles Wentworth Dilke = (1) Katherine Ashton Dilke,
second Baronet, | M. E. Sheil. b. 1850, d. 1883.
b. 1843, d. 1911. | (2) Emilia F. S.
| Pattison.
|
Charles Wentworth Dilke,
present Baronet, b. 1874.]
The second of them, Charles Wentworth Dilke, his eldest son, and
grandfather to the subject of the memoir, was, like his father, a clerk in
the Admiralty; but early in life showed qualities which fitted him to
succeed in another sphere of work--qualities through which he exercised a
remarkable influence over the character and career of his grandson. So
potent was this influence in moulding the life which has to be chronicled,
that it is necessary to give some clear idea of the person who exercised
it.
Mr. Dilke--who shall be so called to distinguish him from his son
Wentworth Dilke, and from his grandson Charles Dilke--at an early period
added the pursuit of literature to his duties as a civil servant. By 1815,
when he was only twenty-six, Gifford, the editor of the _Quarterly
Review_, already spoke highly of him; and between that date and 1830 he
was contributing largely to the monthly and quarterly reviews. In 1830 he
acquired a main share in the _Athenaeum_, a journal 'but just born yet
nevertheless dying,' and quickly raised it into the high position of
critical authority which it maintained, not only throughout his own life,
but throughout his grandson's. So careful was Mr. Dilke to preserve its
reputation for impartial judgment, that during the sixteen years in which
he had virtually entire control of the paper, he withdrew altogether from
general society "in order to avoid making literary acquaintances which
might either prove annoying to him, or be supposed to compromise the
independence of his journal." [Footnote: From _Papers of a Critic_, a
selection of Mr. Dilke's essays, edited, with a memoir, by Sir Charles
Dilke, See _infra_, p. 184.]
After 1846 the editorship of the _Athenaeum_ was in other hands, but the
proprietor's vigilant interest in it never abated, and was transmitted to
his grandson, who continued to the end of his days not only to write for
it, but also to read the proofs every week, and repeatedly for brief
periods to act as editor.
When in 1846 Mr. Dilke curtailed his work on the _Athenaeum_, it was to
take up other duties. For three years he was manager of the recently
established _Daily News_, working in close fellowship with his friends
John Forster and Charles Dickens.
From the time when he gave up this task till his death in 1864 Mr. Dilke's
life had one all-engrossing preoccupation--the training of his grandson
Charles. But to the last, literary research employed him. In 1849 he
helped to establish _Notes and Queries_ 'to be a paper in which literary
men could answer each other's questions'; and his contributions to this
paper [Footnote: Its founder and first editor, Mr. W. J. Thorns
(afterwards Librarian of the House of Lords), had for three years been
contributing to the _Athenaeum_ columns headed "Folk-Lore"--a word coined
by him for the purpose. The correspondence which grew out of this
threatened to swamp other departments of the paper, and so the project was
formed of starting a journal entirely devoted to the subjects which he had
been treating. Mr. Dilke, being consulted, approved the plan, and lent it
his full support. In 1872, when Mr. Thorns retired from control of the
paper, Sir Charles Dilke bought it, putting in Dr. Doran as editor; and
thenceforward it was published from the same office as the _Athenaeum_.]
and to the _Athenaeum_ never ceased; though so unambitious of any personal
repute was he that in all his long career he never signed an article with
his own name, nor identified himself with a pseudonym. A man of letters,
he loved learning and literature for their own sake; yet stronger still
than this love was his desire to transmit to his heirs his own gathered
knowledge, experience, and convictions.
He had become early 'an antiquary and a Radical,' and this combination
rightly indicated unusual breadth of sympathy. The period in which he was
born favoured it: for, keen student as he was of the eighteenth century--
preserving in his own style, perhaps later than any other man who wrote in
England, that dignified but simple manner which Swift and Bolingbroke had
perfected--he yet was intimately in touch with the young genius of an age
in revolt against all the eighteenth-century tradition. Keats, only a few
years his junior, was his close friend; so was John Hamilton Reynolds, the
comrade of Keats, and author of poems known to every student of that
literary group. Thomas Hood and Charles Lamb had long and near association
with him. Lover of the old, he had always an open heart for the new; and,
bookish though he was, no one could be less a bookworm. The antiquary in
him never mastered the Radical: he had an unflagging interest in the large
facts of life, an undying faith in human progress. Slighting his own
lifework as he evidently did--for he never spoke of it to his son or his
son's son--he was yet prompted by instinct to kindle and tend a torch
which one after him should carry, and perhaps should carry high. It would
be difficult to name any man who had a stronger sense of the family bond.
He had married very young--before he was nineteen--Maria Dover Walker, the
beautiful daughter of a Yorkshire yeoman, still younger than he. This
couple, who lived together "in a most complete happiness" for forty years,
had one child only, born in 1810, Charles Wentworth Dilke, commonly called
Wentworth. [Footnote: _Papers of a Critic_, vol. i., p. 13.] Mr. Dilke
sent his son to Westminster, and removed him at the age of sixteen,
arranging--because his theory of education laid great stress on the
advantage of travel--that the lad should live for a while with Baron
Kirkup, British Consul and miniature painter, in Florence, as a
preparatory discipline before going to Cambridge. What he hoped and
intended is notably expressed in a letter written by him at Genoa on his
return journey to his son in Florence in 1826: [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 18.]
"I ought to be in bed, but somehow you are always first in my thoughts
and last, and I prefer five minutes of gossiping with you.... How,
indeed, could it be otherwise than that you should be first and last
in my thoughts, who for so many years have _occupied all_ my thoughts.
For fifteen years at least it has been my pleasure to watch over you,
to direct and to advise. Now, direct and personal interference has
ceased.... It is natural, perhaps, that I should take a greater
interest than other fathers, for I have a greater interest at stake. I
have _but one _son. That son, too, I have brought up differently from
others, and if he be not better than others, it will be urged against
me, not as a misfortune, but as a shame. From the first hour I never
taught you to believe what I did not myself believe. I have been a
thousand times censured for it, but I had that confidence in truth
that I dared put my faith in it and in you. And you will not fail me.
I am sure you will return home to do me honour, and to make me respect
you, as I do, and ever shall, love you."
It was a singular letter for a man of thirty-seven to write--singular in
its self-effacement before the rising generation, singular, too, in the
intensity of its forecast. Yet, after all, a measure of disappointment was
to be his return for that first venture. The son to whom so great a cargo
of hopes had been committed was a vigorous lad, backed when he was fifteen
'to swim or shoot or throw against any boy of his age in England,' and he
developed these and kindred energies, accepting culture only in so far as
it ministered to his fine natural faculty for enjoyment. He acquired a
knowledge of Italian and of operatic music at Florence; but when
afterwards at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he was, to his father's despair,
very idle, and during his early years in London 'was principally known to
his friends for never missing a night at the Opera.'
That interest in things of the mind which he could hardly have failed to
inherit had made of him a dilettante rather than a scholar; but later he
became very active in promoting those ideals which appealed to his taste.
He had a shrewd business eye, and showed it in founding the _Gardeners'
Chronicle_ and the _Agricultural Gazette_, both paying properties. He had,
moreover, a talent for organization, and a zeal in getting things done,
acknowledged in many letters from persons of authority in their
recognition of those services to the International Exhibitions of 1851 and
1862 which were rewarded by his baronetcy. An interesting National
Exhibition of 'Art Manufactures' had already been held by the Society of
Arts, on whose Council Wentworth Dilke was an active worker, at the time
when he, with two other members of the Council and the secretary, Mr.
Scott Russell, met the Prince Consort on June 30th, 1849, and decided to
renew the venture on a scale which should include foreign nations. When
the executive committee of four (to whom were added a secretary and a
representative of the contractors) was named in January, 1850, the work
practically fell on three persons--Sir William Reid communicating with the
public departments, Mr. Henry Cole settling questions of space and
arrangement, [Footnote: Mr. Cole, afterwards Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B., was,
says the Memoir, 'commonly known as King Cole,' and was afterwards
secretary to the South Kensington School of Design.] and Wentworth Dilke
'having charge of the correspondence and general superintendence,' and
attending 'every meeting of the executive except the first.'
Wentworth Dilke worked hard for this and for other objects. But his public
activities had to be fitted in with a great deal of shooting and other
sport at Alice Holt, the small house in Hampshire, with adjacent
preserves, which he rented, and which became the family's country home.
In 1840 he married, and, after the birth of Charles Wentworth Dilke, the
subject of this Memoir, on September 4th, 1843, all the grandfather's
thought centred on the child. His daughter-in-law became, from then till
her death, his chief correspondent, and the master of the house was
'completely overshadowed' in the family group.
That group was so large as to be almost patriarchal. Wentworth Dilke, when
he married, and established himself at 76, Sloane Street, took under his
roof his wife's mother, Mrs. Chatfield, her grandmother, Mrs. Duncombe,
and also her unmarried cousin, Miss Folkard. All these ladies lived out
their lives there, Mrs. Chatfield and Miss Folkard surviving till Charles
Dilke had become a Minister of State.
Up to 1850 old Mr. Dilke and his wife lived at their house in Lower
Grosvenor Place, which was a second home for their grandson Charles. But
in 1850 the wife died, and Mr. Dilke 'spent sixteen months in wandering
through the remoter parts of Scotland, and along the north and west coast
of Ireland, but corresponded ceaselessly with his daughter-in-law, to whom
he was much attached.' During a great part of this time he was accompanied
by his grandson. Mrs. Wentworth Dilke, after giving birth in 1850 to her
second child, Ashton Dilke, had 'fallen into a deep decline'; and Charles
Dilke, at the age of seven, was handed over to his grandfather's charge,
partly to solace the old widower's loneliness, partly to relieve the
strain on his mother.
The peculiar relation between grandfather, mother, and son, stands out
clearly from the letter which that mother wrote shortly before her death
in September, 1853, to be delivered to the boy Charles. After some tender
exhortation, she added:
"But moral discipline your grandfather will teach you. What I wish
particularly to impress on you is the _necessity_ of worshipping God."
And at the end:
"My own boy, there is another thing still to name, for none can say
whether this letter may be required soon, or whether I may have the
delight of seeing my children grow up, but this last and cherished
subject is my little Ashton. When he is old enough, dear, to
understand, let him read this letter, and by his mother's blessing
teach him to think and feel that all that I have said applies equally
to him. Set him a good example in your own conduct, and be always
affectionate brothers."
Of the father, not a word--and for care of the younger boy, the dying
woman's hope is in his brother. It will be shown how studiously the ten-
year-old boy, on whom his mother so leant, fulfilled that charge. But he
himself felt, in later life, that scant justice had been done to the man
who was 'overshadowed' in his home, and wrote in 1890:
'My father loved my grandfather deeply, but my grandfather was greatly
disappointed in him, and always a little hard towards him: my father
suffered through life under a constant sense of his inferiority. He
suffered also later from the fact that while his elder son was the
grandfather's and not the father's boy, his younger son was as
completely under my influence in most matters, as I was under the
influence of my grandfather.'
Yet in a sense the relation between old Mr. Dilke and the son whom he
unconsciously slighted was strangely intimate and confiding. For in 1853
the elder man gave up his own house in Lower Grosvenor Place, made over
all his money to his son, and came to live under the son's roof in Sloane
Street for the remainder of his life. His confidence in the patriarchal
principle justified itself. 'My father,' writes Sir Charles, 'for eleven
years consulted his father--dependent on him for bread--in every act of
his life.'
To the world at large, Wentworth Dilke was a vastly more important person
than the old antiquary and scholar. After his services in organizing the
Great Exhibition of 1851, he declined a knighthood and rewards in money;
but he accepted from the French Government a gift of Sèvres china; from
the King of Saxony, the Collar of the Order of Albertus Animosus; from the
King of Sweden and from the Prince Consort, medals; and from Queen
Victoria, a bracelet for his wife. These remained among the treasures of
76, Sloane Street. But he acquired something far more important in the
establishment of friendly relations with persons of mark and influence all
over the Continent; for these relations were destined to be developed by
Charles Dilke, then a pretty-mannered boy, who was taken everywhere, and
saw, for instance, in 1851, the Duke of Wellington walk through the
Exhibition buildings on a day when more than a hundred thousand people
were present. He could remember how the Duke's 'shrivelled little form'
and 'white ducks' 'disappeared in the throng which almost crushed him to
death' before the police could effect his rescue.
Wentworth Dilke's association in the Prince Consort's most cherished
schemes had brought him on a footing of friendship with the Royal Family;
and on July 25th, 1851, his wife wrote that the Queen had come over and
talked to her in the Exhibition ground. Long afterwards, when the pretty-
mannered boy had grown into a Radical, who avowed his theoretical
preference for republican institutions, Queen Victoria said that "she
remembered having stroked his head, and supposed she had stroked it the
wrong way."
[Illustration: Sir Charles as a child from the miniature by Fanny Corbin.]
CHAPTER II
EDUCATION
The earliest memory that Sir Charles Dilke could date was 'of April 10th,
1848, when the Chartist meeting led to military preparations, during which
I' (a boy in his fifth year) 'saw the Duke of Wellington riding through
the street, attended by his staff, but all in plain clothes.' In 1850 'No
Popery chalked on the walls attracted my attention, but failed to excite
my interest'; he was not of an age to be troubled by the appointment of
Dr. Wiseman to be Archbishop of Westminster. In 1851 he was taken to a
meeting to hear Kossuth.
From this year--1851--date the earliest letters preserved in the series of
thirty-four boxes which contain the sortings of his vast correspondence.
There is a childish scrap to his grandfather, and a long letter from the
grandfather to him written from Dublin, which lovingly conjures up a
picture of the interior at Sloane Street, with 'Cousin' (Miss Folkard)
stirring the fire, 'Charley-boy' settling down his head on his mother's
lap, and 'grandmamma' (his mother's mother, Mrs. Chatfield) sitting in the
chimney-corner.
For the year 1852 there are no letters to the boy; it was the time of his
mother's failing health, and he was journeying with his grandfather all
over England, 'reading Shakespeare, and studying church architecture,
especially Norman.' It was a delightful way of learning history for a
quick child of nine:
'We followed Charles II. in his flight, and visited every spot that has
ever been mentioned in connection with his escape--a pilgrimage which took
me among other places to my future constituency of the Forest of Dean. We
went to every English cathedral, and when my grandfather was at work upon
his Pope investigations, saw every place which was connected with the
history of the Carylls.' [Footnote: John Caryll suggested to Pope the idea
of the "Rape of the Look"; and many of the poet's letters were written to
his son, a younger John Caryll. They were an ancient and distinguished
Roman Catholic family, devoted partisans of, and centres of correspondence
with, the exiled Stuarts.]
Mr. Dilke combined his desire to instruct the child with the frankest
interest in his play. Here, for instance, is a letter to Charles of
October 15th, 1853:
"DEAR OLD ADMIRAL,
"Hope you found all right and tight: a gallant vessel--tackle trim--
noble crew of true blue waters--guns shining and serving for looking--
glasses to shave by--powder dry--plenty in the locker. Wishing you
favourable gales,
"I remain,
"Your old friend and rough and tough
"GRANDFATHER."
It is worth while giving the reply--precocious for a boy of ten:
"BEDHAMPTON,
"HAVANT,
"_October 16th, 1853._
"MY DEAR GRANDPAPA,
"We arrived quite safely on Friday night, and were astonished to find
that my Aunt and Uncle and Cousin Letitia were gone to Brighton and
then to Hastings, and Godpapa had a letter this morning to say that
they found it so hot at Hastings that they went on to Folkestone, and
they are there now. The Admiral has to report for the information of
his Cockney readers that he hoisted his Flag yesterday at the main
peak. The weather was, however, so windy and wet that after hiding
himself with his honoured father under the cuddy for half an hour, the
Admiral thought that prudence was part of his duty, therefore struck
his Pocket-handkerchief and retired to luncheon. A Salute from a black
cloud hastened his departure.
"Your affectionate grandson,
"C. W. DILKE."
The boy was his grandfather's to educate, and there has not often been
such an education. A man ripe in years, still vigorous--for Mr. Dilke was
only fifty-three when his elder grandson was born--yet retired from the
business of life, and full of leisure, full of charm, full of experience,
full of knowledge, devoted his remaining years to the education of his
grandson. It may be held that he created a forcing-house of feeling, no
less than of knowledge, under which the boy's nature was prematurely drawn
up; but there can be no doubt as to the efficacy of the method. It was not
coddling--Mr. Dilke was too shrewd for that--and if at a certain stage it
seemed as though excessive stimulus had been given, maturity went far to
contradict that impression.
'After my mother's death I began classics and mathematics with Mr.
Bickmore, at that time a Chelsea curate and afterwards Vicar of
Kenilworth. At the same time I took charge of teaching letters to my
brother. I had few child friends, and used to see more of grown-up
people, such as Chorley, [Footnote: Musical critic for the
_Athenaeum._] Thackeray, and Dickens, of whom the latter was known to
us as "young Charles Dickens," owing to my great-grandfather having
known "Micawber."'
Old Mr. Dilke's father had been employed in the Admiralty along with the
father of Dickens. As for Thackeray, it was probably about this time that
he came on the boy stretched out upon grass in the garden of Gore House,
resting on elbows, deep in a book, and looked over his shoulder. "Is it
any good?" he asked. "Rather!" said the boy. "Lend it me," said Thackeray.
The book was _The Three Musketeers_, and we all know _The Roundabout
Papers_ which came out of that loan.
Charles Dilke had his free run of novels as a boy, and not of novels only.
In 1854, when he was only eleven:
'I began my regular theatre-going, which became a passion with me for
many years, and burnt itself out, I may add, like most passions, for I
almost entirely ceased to go near a theatre when I went to Cambridge
at nineteen. Charles Kean, and Madame Vestris, and Charles Mathews,
were my delight, with Wright and Paul Bedford at the Adelphi, Webster
and Buckstone at the Haymarket, and Mrs. Keeley. Phelps came later,
but Charles Kean's Shakespearian revivals at the Princess's from the
first had no more regular attendant. My earliest theatrical
recollection is Rachel.
'I was a nervous, and, therefore, in some things a backward child,
because my nervousness led to my being forbidden for some years to
read and work, as I was given to read and work too much, and during
this long period of forced leisure I was set to music and drawing,
with the result that I took none of the ordinary boy's interest in
politics, and never formed an opinion upon a political question until
the breaking-out of the American Civil War when I was eighteen. I then
sided strongly with the Union, as I showed at the Cambridge Union when
I reached the University. Even in this question, however, I only
followed my grandfather's lead, although, for the first time, in this
case intelligently. So far indeed as character can be moulded in
childhood, mine was fashioned by my grandfather Dilke.'
It was not only character that Mr. Dilke formed. He made the boy the
constant companion of his own intellectual pursuits, imbued him deeply
with his own tastes, his own store of knowledge. In the summer of 1854 he
had taken his pupil to 'Windsor, Canterbury, Rochester, Bury St. Edmunds,
St. Albans, and many other interesting towns.' That autumn the pair went
to France together--apparently the beginning of Charles Dilke's close
acquaintance with that country, which was extended in the following year,
1855, when Wentworth Dilke was named one of the English Commissioners for
the French International Exhibition, and took his family to live in Paris
from April to August.
'We were all with him at Paris for some time, and I acquired a
considerable knowledge of the antiquities of the town, before the
changes associated with the name of Haussmann, by rambling about it
with my grandfather, who, however, soon got sick of Paris and went
home to his books, while we remained there for four months. I was at
the party given at the Quai d'Orsay by Walewski, the son of Napoleon;
at that given at the "Legion of Honour" by Flahaut, the father of
Morny; at the Ball at the Hôtel de Ville to the Emperor and Empress
and Queen Victoria; at the review; and at the Queen's entry and
departure. The entry was the finest display of troops which I ever
witnessed, as the National Guard of the City and its outskirts turned
out in great form, and raised the numbers to 120,000, while the
costumes both of the Guard and of the National Guard were very showy.
There paraded also two hundred veterans of the wars of the First
Empire in all the uniforms of the period. I heard Lablache in his last
great part, and in this year I think I also saw Rachel for the last
time; but I had seen her in England, I believe, in 1853. I certainly
had seen her in a part in which many years later I remember Sarah
Bernhardt, and can recall Rachel well enough to be able to institute a
comparison entirely to Rachel's advantage.
'After our visit to Paris in 1855 my brother and I had taken to
speaking and to writing to one another in French, and this practice we
kept up until his death, even when he was Member of Parliament for
Newcastle-on-Tyne, and I a member of the Government.'
One memory of that year never left Sir Charles Dilke. In the evenings he
used to go to the Place Vendôme to hear the Guards' combined tattoo. Every
regiment was represented, and the drummers were a wonderful show in their
different brilliant uniforms--Chasseurs of the Garde, Dragoons, Lancers,
Voltigeurs, and many more. In the midst was the gigantic sergeant-major
waiting, with baton uplifted, for the clock to strike. At the first stroke
he gave the signal with a twirl and a drop of his baton, and the long
thundering roll began, taken up all round the great square. Sir Charles,
as he told of this, would repeat the tambour-major's gesture; and the
boy's tense, eager look of waiting, and flash of satisfaction when the
roll broke out, revived on the countenance of the man.
'In 1856 I became half attached to a day-school, which had for its
masters, in mathematics a Mr. Acland, a Cambridge man, and in classics
a Mr. Holme, a fellow of Durham, and for several years I used to do
the work which they set in the school without regularly attending the
school, which, however, my brother attended. My health at that time
was not supposed to be sufficiently strong to enable me even to attend
a day-school, and still less to go to a public school; but there was
nothing the matter with me except a nervous turn of mind,
overexcitable and overstrained by the slightest circumstance. This
lasted until I was eighteen, when it suddenly disappeared, and left me
strong and well; but the form which this weakness took may be
illustrated by the fact that, although I did not believe in ghosts, I
have known myself at the age of sixteen walk many miles round to avoid
passing through a "haunted" meadow.'
Also he made the experiments in literature common with clever lads:
'In 1856 I wrote a novel called _Friston Place_, and I have a sketch
which I made of Friston Place in Sussex in August of that year, but
the novel I have destroyed, as it was worthless.'
Another aspect of his education is recalled by drawings preserved in the
boxes from 1854 onwards--conscientious delineations of buildings visited,
representing an excellent training for the eye and observation.
In 1857 his grandfather took him to Oxford (where he rambled happily about
the meadows while Mr. Dilke read in the Bodleian) and to Cambridge, going
on thence to Ely, Peterborough, and Norwich. Later in the same year the
pair travelled all over South Wales, everywhere rehearsing the historical
memories of the place, everywhere mastering the details of whatever
architecture presented itself.
Each return home brought experiences of a different kind. 'I have known,'
he says, 'everyone worth knowing from 1850 to my death.' At seven years
old he was seeing and hearing the famous persons of that time, either at
the home in Sloane Street, to which Wentworth Dilke's connection with the
Exhibition drew men eminent in the world of physical science and
industrial enterprise, as well as the artists with whom his
connoisseurship brought him into touch; or else at old Mr. Dilke's house
in Lower Grosvenor Place. He remembered visits with his grandfather to
Gore House, 'before Soyer turned it into the Symposium,' and to Lady
Morgan's. The brilliant little Irishwoman was a familiar friend, and her
pen, of bog-oak and gold, the gift to her of the Irish people, came at
last to lie among the treasures of 76, Sloane Street. Also there remained
with him
"memories from about 1851 of the bright eyes of little Louis Blanc, of
Milner-Gibson's pleasant smile, of Bowring's silver locks, of
Thackeray's tall stooping figure, of Dickens's goatee, of Paxton's
white hat, of Barry Cornwall and his wife, of Robert Stephenson the
engineer, to whom I wanted to be bound apprentice, of Browning (then
known as 'Mrs. Browning's husband'), of Joseph Cooke (another
engineer), of Cubitt the builder (one of the promoters of the
Exhibition), of John Forster the historian, of the Redgraves, and of
that greater painter, John Martin. Also of the Rowland Hills, at
Hampstead.
"1859 was the height of my rage for our South Kensington Trap-Bat
Club, which I think had invented the name South Kensington. It was at
it that I first met Emilia Francis Strong. We played in the garden of
Gore House where the Conservatory of the Horticultural Society, behind
the Albert Hall, was afterwards built."
In the memoir of the second Lady Dilke, prefixed to _The Book of the
Spiritual Life_, Sir Charles writes of this time, 1859 to 1860, when he
"loved to be patronized by her, regarding her with the awe of a
hobbledehoy of sixteen or seventeen towards a beautiful girl of nineteen
or twenty." But at one point she bewildered him; for in those days Emilia
Strong was devout to the verge of fanaticism:
"We were all puzzled by the apparent conflict between the vitality and
the impish pranks of the brilliant student, expounding to us the most
heterodox of social views, and the 'bigotry' which we seemed to
discern when we touched her spiritual side." [Footnote: _Book of the
Spiritual Life_, Memoir, p. 10.]
No doubt the fastings and mortifications which Emilia Strong practised at
that period of her youth would seem 'bigotry' to a lad brought up under
influences which, in so far as theology entered into them, had an
Evangelical bent. Charles Dilke thus summed up his early prepossessions
and practices in this respect:
'My mother had been a strong Low Church woman, and those of her
letters which I have destroyed very clearly show that her chief fear
in meeting death was that she would leave me without that class of
religious training which she thought essential. My grandfather and my
father, although both of them in their way religious men (and my
grandfather, a man of the highest feeling of duty), were neither of
them churchgoers, nor of her school of thought; and ... as I was till
the age of twenty a regular church attendant and somewhat devout for a
boy of that age, it was a grief to me to find that my brother's turn
of mind as he grew up was different, and that he naturally thought his
judgment on the subject as good as that of the mother whom he had lost
at three years old, and could hardly be said to have known.'
But the true spiritual influence on Charles Dilke's early life was derived
from his grandfather, whose nature had in it much of the serenity and wise
happiness which go to the making of a saint. This influence was no doubt
ethical in its character rather than religious; but it can be traced, for
example, in a humane scruple which links it with Dilke's affectionate cult
of St. Francis of Assisi:
'In 1856 I had begun to shoot, my father being passionately fond of
the sport, and I suppose that few people ever shot more before they
were nineteen than I did. But about the time I went to Cambridge I
found the interference with my work considerable, and I also began to
have doubts as to considerations of cruelty, and on points affecting
the Game Laws, which led me to give up shooting, and from 1862 I
hardly ever shot at all, except, in travelling, for food.'
The taste for travel, always in search of knowledge, but followed with an
increasing delight in the quest, began for him in the rovings through
England with his grandfather. As early as his seventeenth year he was out
on the road by himself; and this letter written from Plymouth, April 5th,
1860 after a night spent at Exeter, indicates the results of his training:
"This morning we got up early, and went to the Northerny [Footnote:
Northernhay, or Northfield, a pleasure-ground at Exeter.] and
Cathedral. Nothing much. Took the train at quarter before ten. Railway
runs along the shore under the cliffs and in the cliffs. We saw a
rather large vessel wrecked on the sands. Teignmouth pretty. Got to
Totnes before twelve. Hired a boat and two men, 10s. 6d. Down the
river to Dartmouth, twelve miles. The Dart is more like a series of
lakes than a river; in some of the reaches it is impossible to see
what way you are to get out. Very like the Wye until you get low down,
then it opens into a lake about two miles across, free from all mud,
nothing but hills and cliffs. Then it again contracts, and passes
through a gorge, which is said to be very like parts of the Rhine.
"The scene here is splendid. Dartmouth now comes, but the river,
instead of spreading and becoming ugly, as most tidal rivers do,
remains narrow and between cliffs, until you have the great sea waves
thundering up against them. Dartmouth contains a church more curious
than half the cathedrals in the kingdom: Norman (Late), fine brasses,
barrel roof with the paint on, and stone pulpit painted, etc., etc.
There are some very fine old houses also. The place is the most lovely
by far of any that I ever saw--Paradise.
"We have had a bad day--real Devonshire--where they say that they must
have one shower every day and two on Sundays. 'Shower' means about six
hours' quiet rain, _vide_ 'Murray' and our experience of to-day. The
boatmen say 'it rains most days.' I hope Mrs. Jackson is going on
well. Trusting you are all well, I send my love to all and remain
"Your affectionate grandson,
"CHARLES W. DILKE."
A scrap from one of the grandfather's letters, April 25th, 1859, which
points to the terms of intellectual equality that existed in the
correspondence between the two, has also some historical interest:
"Hope your news of the French troops landing in Genoa is premature.
War, however, seems inevitable; but I hope on, hope ever. I should be
sorry to see the Austrians triumph over the Sardinians, for then they
would fasten the chains on Italy tighter than ever. Yet I cannot hope
that the worst man in Europe, the Emperor of the French, should
triumph."
At the close of 1860, the lad set out on a more adventurous excursion to
France, in a storm of snow so tremendous that trains were blocked in many
places. However, he reached Amiens safely, saw and described it dutifully,
then made for Paris.
Charles Dilke's familiarity with France was destined to be extended year
by year till the end of his life. This visit of Christmas 1860 was the
first which he made alone to that country; but part of the summer of 1859
had been spent by him with his family at Trouville, whence he wandered
over Normandy, adding detail to his knowledge of Norman architecture.
But even stronger than the interest in historic architecture which his
grandfather had imparted to him was the interest in men and affairs; above
all, in those men who had assisted at great events. Throughout his life
his love of travel, his taste for society, and his pursuit of first-hand
information upon political matters helped to enlarge his list of
remarkable acquaintances; and during this stay in France a new name was
added to the collection of celebrities:
'At Havre I got to know King Jerome, father to "Plon-Plon" and father-
in-law to my friend Princess Clothilde, and was duly interested in
this last of the brothers of Napoleon. The ex-King of Westphalia was a
wicked old gentleman; but he did not let a boy find this out, and he
was courteous and talkative. We long had in both years, I think, the
next rooms to his at Frascati's; and he used to walk in the garden
with me, finding me a good listener. The old Queen of Sweden was still
alive, and he told me how Désirée Clary [Footnote: Eugénie Bernardine
Désirée Clary married, August 16th, 1798, Marshal Jean-Baptiste
Bernadotte, afterwards Charles XIV., King of Sweden. Her elder sister
Julie had become the wife of Joseph Bonaparte in 1794.] had thrown
Bonaparte over for him, and then had thrown him over for Bernadotte.
He also described riding through Paris with Bonaparte on the day of
Brumaire.'
Having completely outgrown the nervous invalidishness of his earlier
boyhood, Dilke at eighteen years of age was extending his activities in
all directions.
'In 1861 I find by my diaries that I was at the very height of my
theatre-going, attending theatres in Paris and in London with equal
regularity; and in this year I wrote an elaborate criticism of
Fechter's Hamlet, which is the first thing I ever wrote in the least
worth reading, but it is not worth preservation, and has now been
destroyed by me. At Easter, 1861, I walked to Brighton in a single day
from London, and the next day attended the volunteer review. I was a
great walker, and frequently walked my fifty miles within the day. My
interest in military affairs continued, and I find among my letters of
1861 passages which might have formed part of my writings on military
subjects of 1887 to 1889. I went down to see the new Tilbury forts,
criticized the system of the distribution of strength in the Thames
defences, advocated "a mile of vigorous peppering as against a slight
dusting of feathers every half-hour"; and went to Shoeburyness to see
the trial of the Whitworth guns.'
His cousin, William Wentworth Grant Dilke, was Captain and Adjutant of the
77th Regiment, and Charles Dilke remembered the young officer's visit to
bid good-bye before he departed for the Crimea, where he met his death.
Though old Mr. Dilke had sympathized with the wonderful manoeuvres of the
child's armies of leaden soldiers, and had added to them large
reinforcements, he became troubled by his grandson's keen and excited
following of all the reports from the Crimea. He had a terror of the boy's
becoming a soldier, and 'used to do his best to point out the foolish side
of war.' But this, as the passage already quoted shows, did not deter his
pupil from beginning, while still a growing youth, detailed study of
military matters.
Under normal conditions, an undergraduate going up to an English
University without public school friendships is at a disadvantage: and
this was Charles Dilke's case. But he went to his father's college,
Trinity Hall; and his father was a very well known and powerfully
connected man. Offer of a baronetcy had been made to Wentworth Dilke in
very unusual and gratifying terms. General Grey, the Queen's secretary,
wrote:
"ST. JAMES'S PALACE,
"_January 1st_, 1862.
"MY DEAR DILKE,
"The Queen cannot forget for how many years you have been associated
with her beloved husband in the promotion of objects which were dear
to his heart; and she would fain mark her sense of the valuable
assistance you have ever given him in his labours in some manner that
would be gratifying to your feelings.
"I am therefore commanded by Her Majesty to express the hope that the
offer of a Baronetcy which she has informed Lord Palmerston of her
desire to confer upon you, coming direct from Her Majesty herself, and
as her own personal act, may be one which it will be agreeable to you
to accept."
Proof of the Queen's strong feeling for the man who had been so closely
associated with the Prince Consort in his work of popularizing the arts
and crafts had already been given by the fact that Wentworth Dilke was,
except for those whom she was obliged to meet on business, the first
person from the outside world whom she saw after the Prince Consort's
death. And indeed, but for his sense of a personal graciousness in the
offer, Wentworth Dilke would scarcely have departed from his lifelong
habit of deference to his father's wish and judgment. Old Mr. Dilke,
though gratified by the compliment, wrote to a friend:
"My son's fortune is not strong enough to enable his children to carry
such a burthen with ease; and as to the waifs and strays which it may
help them to, I would rather see them fight their good fight
unshackled."
There came a time when the baronetcy was something of an encumbrance to
one of these children:
'When I was accused of attacking the Queen, which I never did,
somebody--I forget who--went further, and said I had "bitten the hand
which fed me," and I really believe that this metaphor expressed
publicly a private belief of some people that my father had made money
by his labours. All I can say is that he never made a farthing by them
in any form at any time, and that in '51 and in '62 he spent far more
than his income on entertainments.... He wished for no reward, and he
knew the conditions under which his life was given to public rather
than to private service: but he killed himself at it; he left me much
less rich than I should otherwise have been, and it is somewhat hard
to find myself told that if I call attention to notorious illegalities
I am "biting the hand that fed me." The Queen herself has, as I happen
to know, always spoken in a very different sense.'
The newly made Baronet, in the course of his labours for the second
Great Exhibition, added to his already very numerous friendships.
'My father's chief foreign friends in '62 were Prince Napoleon,
Montésinos, Baron Schwartz (Austria), Baron von Brünen von Grootelind
(Holland), Prince Oscar (afterwards King of Sweden), and Senator
Fortamps (Belgium).'
Finally, there is this entry, written in 1890:
'Just as I had made the acquaintance of the Duke of Wellington through
father in the Exhibition of 1851, so I made that of Palmerston in the
Exhibition of 1862. He was still bright and lively in walk and talk,
and was extremely kind in his manner to me, and asked me to one of
Lady Palmerston's Saturday nights at Cambridge House, to which I duly
went. I should think that there is no one living but myself who was at
the Ball to the Queen at the Hotel de Ville in 1855, at the famous
Guards' Ball in 1862, and also at one of Lady Palmerston's evenings.'
Charles Dilke matriculated at Trinity Hall in October 1862.
CHAPTER III
CAMBRIDGE
Charles Dilke was sent in 1862, as in later days he sent his own son, to
his father's college. Trinity Hall in the early sixties was a community
possessing in typical development the combination of qualities which
Cambridge has always fostered. Neither very large nor very small, it had
two distinguishing characteristics: it was a rowing college, and it was a
college of lawyers. Although not as a rule distinguished in the Tripos
Lists, it was then in a brilliant period.
The Memoir will show that in Dilke's first year a Hall man was Senior
Wrangler, and that the boat started head of the river. Such things do not
happen without a cause; and the college at this moment numbered on its
staff some of the most notable figures in the University. The Vice-Master,
Ben Latham, for thirty-five years connected with the Hall, was of those
men whose reputation scarcely reaches the outside world; but he had found
the college weak, he had made it strong, and he was one of the
institutions of Cambridge.
Among the junior Fellows were Fawcett and Leslie Stephen. Both were
profound believers in hard tonic discipline of mind and body, inculcating
their belief by doctrine and example; and both, with great diversity of
gifts, had the rough strong directness of intellectual attack which
Cambridge, then perhaps more than at any other time, set in contrast to
the subtleties of Oxford culture.
Leslie Stephen in particular, who had been a tutor and who was still a
clerical Fellow, made it his business to meet undergraduates on their own
ground. Hard work and hard bodily exercise--but, above all, hard bodily
exercise--made up the gospel which he preached by example. No one ever did
more to develop the cult of athletics, and there is no doubt that he
thought these ideals the best antidote to drunkenness and other vices,
which were far more rife in the University of that day than of this.
Both he and Fawcett were strenuous Radicals, and contact with them was
well fitted to infuse fresh vitality into the political beliefs which
Charles Dilke had assumed by inheritance from his grandfather. In these
ways of thought he met them on ground already familiar and attractive to
him. His introduction to Fawcett was at the Economics and Statistics
Section of the British Association, which he attended at Cambridge in the
first week of his first term. "I am one of the few people who really enjoy
statistics," he said, long years after this, in a presidential address to
the Statistical Society. But it was early at nineteen to develop this
exceptional taste.
In another domain of modern thought these elder men affected his mind
considerably and with a new order of ideas. Old Mr. Dilke seems to have
left theology out of his purview altogether; and it was at Cambridge that
Charles Dilke first met the current of definitely sceptical thought on
religious matters.
Fawcett was aggressively unorthodox. But far more potent was the influence
of Leslie Stephen, then with infinite pain struggling under the yoke that
he had taken on himself at ordination, and had not yet shaken off. The
effect of Stephen's talk--though he influenced young men as much by his
dry critical silence as by his utterances--was heightened by admiration
for his athletic prowess. He coached the college Eights: anyone who has
been at a rowing college will realize how commanding an ascendancy is
implied. But his athletics covered every phase of muscular activity; and
Fawcett joined him in encouraging the fashion of long walks.
Another of the long-walkers whom the Memoir notes as among the chief
influences of those days was Leslie Stephen's pupil Romer, the Admirable
Crichton of that moment--oarsman, cricketer, and Trinity Hall's hope in
the Mathematical Tripos. The future Lord Justice of Appeal was then
reading for the Tripos, in which he was to be Senior Wrangler; and,
according to Cambridge custom, took a certain amount of coaching as part
of his work. Charles Dilke was one of those whom he instructed, and it was
the beginning of a friendship which lasted many years.
Looking back, Sir Robert Romer says that most undergraduates are simply
grown-up boys, and that at Trinity Hall in his day there was no variation
from this type till Dilke came there--a lad who, to all appearance, had
never associated with other lads, whose companions had been grown-up
people, and who had mature ideas and information on everything. But,
thrown among other young men, the young man found himself with surprising
rapidity. Elements in his nature that had never been brought out developed
at once; and one of these was a great sense of fun. Much stronger than he
looked, he plunged into athletics with a perfectly simple delight.
"Nobody," says Sir Robert Romer, "could make more noise at a boating
supper." This frank natural glee remained with him to the end. Always
disputatious, always a lover of the encounter of wits, he had none the
less a lifelong gift for comradeship in which there was little clash of
controversy and much hearty laughter.
One of the eight-and-twenty freshmen who matriculated at Trinity Hall
along with Charles Dilke in 1862 was David Fenwick Steavenson, a dalesman
from Northumberland, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. The two had
seemingly little in common. Dilke to all appearance was "very serious,"
and in disposition of mind ten years older than his fellows, while the
young Northumbrian's whole preoccupation was to maintain and enlarge the
fame of his college on the river. If the friendship was to develop,
Steavenson must undoubtedly become interested in intellectual matters, but
not less certainly Dilke must learn to row. It was a very useful
discipleship for the future politician. Sloping shoulders, flat and narrow
chest, height too great for his build: these were things that Cambridge
helped to correct. Dilke, a willing pupil, was diligently coached by the
stronger man, until he became an accomplished and effective oar. In
general Judge Steavenson's recollection confirms Sir Robert Romer's, and
gives precision to one detail. In their second year, upon the occasion of
some triumph on the river, there was to be a bump supper, but the college
authorities forbade, whereupon an irregular feast was arranged--this one
bringing a ham, that a chicken, and so on. When the heroes had put from
them desire of eating and drinking, they sallied out, and after a vigorous
demonstration in the court, proceeded to make music from commanding
windows. It was Charles Dilke who had provided the whistles and toy drums
for this ceremony, and Judge Steavenson retains a vision of the future
statesman at his window [Footnote: Dilke's rooms were on Staircase A, on
the first floor, above the buttery. They have not for very many years been
let to an undergraduate, as they are too near the Fellows' Combination
Room.] blowing on a whistle with all his might. The authorities were
vindictive, and Dilke suffered deprivation of the scholarship which he had
won at the close of his freshman year.
Such penalties carry no stigma with them. It should be noted, too, that at
a period of University history when casual excess in drink was no
reproach, but rather the contrary, Charles Dilke, living with boating men
in a college where people were not squeamish, drank no wine. Judge
Steavenson adds that the dislike of coarse talk which was marked with him
later was equally evident in undergraduate days.
Charles Dilke's own ambition and industry were reinforced by the keen
anxiety of his people. Concealing nothing of their eagerness for him to
win distinction, those who watched his career with such passionate
interest set their heart, it would seem, on purely academic successes. Sir
Wentworth Dilke may well have feared, from his own experience, that old
Mr. Dilke's expectations might again be disappointed by a student who
found University life too full of pleasure. At all events it was to his
father that the freshman wrote, October 24th, 1862, a fortnight after he
had matriculated:
"I am very sorry to see by your letter of this morning that you have
taken it into your head that I am not reading hard. I can assure you,
on the contrary, that I read harder than any freshman except Osborn,
who takes no exercise whatever; and that I have made the rowing-men
very dissatisfied by reading all day three days a week. On the other
three I never read less than six hours, besides four hours of lectures
and papers. I have not missed reading a single evening yet since I
have been here; that is, either from six, or seven, till eleven,
except Saturday at Latham's. This--except for a fourth-year man--is
more than even the tutors ask for.... I hope I have said enough to
convince you that you are entirely wrong; what has made you so has
been my account of breakfasts, which are universal, and neither
consume time nor attract attention. I was at one this morning--I left
my rooms at twenty-five minutes to nine, and returned to them at five
minutes to nine, everything being over."
This scrupulous economy of time was to be characteristic of Charles
Dilke's whole life, and nothing impressed his contemporaries more at all
times than the "methodical bee-like industry" attributed to him by the
present Master of Trinity Hall. Mr. Beck, who came up to the college just
after Dilke left it, thus expands the impression:
"There remained in Trinity Hall in 1867 a vivid tradition that he was
one of the few men who never lost a minute, would even get in ten
minutes of work between river and Hall (which was in those days at
five o'clock); and much resembled the Roman who learned Greek in the
time saved from shaving. On the doorpost inside his bedroom over the
Buttery there remained in pencil the details of many days of work thus
pieced together." [Footnote: _Cambridge Review_, February 2nd, 1911.]
Judge Steavenson recalls how he used to be "bundled out" of his friend's
rooms the instant that the appointed hour for beginning to read had
arrived, and he did his best to mitigate the strenuousness of that
application. But there were stronger influences at work than his: Sir
Wentworth Dilke was fully satisfied with the assurance he had received, as
well he might be; but the grandfather never ceased to enforce the claims
of study. He wrote ceaselessly, but with constant exhortations that he
should be answered only when work and play allowed.
When the letters from Cambridge told of success in athletics, he
responded, but with a temperate rejoicing. Here, for instance, is his
reference to the news that the freshman had rowed in the winning boat of
the scratch fours on March 14th, 1863:
"I am glad that you have won your 'pewter'--as I was glad when you
took rank among the best of the boating freshmen--although I have not
set my heart on your plying at Blackfriars Bridge, nor winning the
hand of the daughters of Horse-ferry as the 'jolly young waterman,' or
old Doggett's Coat and Badge. But all things in degree; and therefore
I rejoice a hundred times more at your position in the college Euclid
examination."
There was no mistaking old Mr. Dilke's distaste for all these athletics,
and it was to his father, on this one point more sympathetic, that the
freshman wrote this characteristic announcement of a great promotion:
"Edwards" (captain of the Trinity Hall Boat Club) "has just called to
inform me that I am to row in the head-of-the-river boat to-
morrow, and to go into training for it.
"The time wasted if I row in it will not be greater than in the 2nd,
but there is one difference--namely, that it may make me more sleepy
at nights. I must read hard before breakfast. Romer--who is my master
and pastor--tells me of all things to row in it,--this year at all
events."
He did row in the May races of his first year, and with so little
detriment to his work that in the following month he secured the first
mathematical scholarship in the college examination. This triumph may well
have disposed old Mr. Dilke to accept a suggestion which is recorded in
the correspondence. On June 2nd it was decided that Trinity Hall should
send an eight to Henley, and the letter adds: "I should think my
grandfather would like to come and stay at or near Henley while I am
there."
Before the date fixed, the oarsman had been inducted scholar, and so Mr.
Dilke could go with a free heart to see his grandson row in the Grand
Challenge against Brasenose and Kingston, where Trinity Hall defeated
Kingston, but were themselves defeated by Brasenose in a very fast race.
It was not only in the examination halls and on the river that Charles
Dilke was winning reputation. He had joined the Volunteers, and proved
himself among the crack rifleshots of the University corps; he had won
walking races, but especially he had begun to seek distinction in a path
which led straight to his natural goal.
The impression left on Sir Robert Romer's mind was that Dilke came up to
the University elaborately trained with a view to a political career. This
is to read into the facts a wrong construction; the purpose, if it existed
at all, was latent only in his mind. The training which he had received
from his grandfather lent itself admirably, it is true, to the making of a
statesman; but it was the pupil's temperament which determined the
application of that rich culture.
The first debate which he had the chance to attend at the Union was on
October 28th, 1862, the motion being: "That the cause of the Northern
States is the cause of humanity and progress, and that the widespread
sympathy with the Confederates is the result of ignorance and
misrepresentation."
The discussion gained in actuality from the fact that the President of the
Union was Mr. Everett, son of the distinguished literary man who had been
America's representative in London, and was at this time Secretary of
State in the Federal Government. But the South had a notable ally. Mr.
George Otto Trevelyan, author of some of the best light verse ever written
by an undergraduate, was still in residence, though he had before this
taken his degree; and he shared in those days the sentimental preference
for the South. Dilke reported to his grandfather: "Trevelyan's speech was
mere flash, but very witty." "Mere flash" the freshman was likely to think
it, for he shared his grandfather's opinions, and gave his first Union
vote for the North--in a minority of 34 against 117. "Very witty" it was
sure to be, and its most effective hit was a topical allusion. The Union
Society of those days had its quarters in what had originally been a
Wesleyan chapel--a large room in Green Street, the floor of which is now
used as a public billiard saloon, while the galleries from which applause
and interruption used to come freely now stand empty. There had long been
complaint of its inadequacy; Oxford had set the example of a special
edifice, and as far back as 1857 a Building Fund had been started, which,
however, dragged on an abortive existence from year to year, a constant
matter of gibes. 'Can the North restore the Union?' Mr. Trevelyan asked.
'Never, sir; they have no Building Fund'; and the punning jest brought
down a storm of applause.
But when Mr. Trevelyan, after a year spent in India, came back to England
and to Cambridge gossip in the beginning of 1864, he learnt that this
despised Building Fund had been taken seriously in hand, that one
undergraduate in particular was corresponding with all manner of persons,
and that this Union also was going to be restored. That was how the
present Sir George Trevelyan first heard the name of Charles Dilke.
Even in his earliest term Dilke soon passed out of the rôle of a mere
listener and critic. The Commissioners of the International Exhibition of
1862 were then being sharply criticized, and on November 25th "a man of
the name of Hyndman" (so the undergraduate's letter described this other
undergraduate, afterwards to be well known as the Socialist writer and
speaker) moved "a kind of vote of censure" upon them. It was natural
enough that Sir Wentworth Dilke's son should brief the defence, and among
the papers of 1862 is a bundle of "Notes by me for Everett's speech." Next
he was trying his own mettle; and opposed a motion "that Prince Alfred
should be permitted to accept the throne of Greece." His own note is:
'On the 8th December I made my first speech, advocating a Greek
Republic, and suggesting that if they must have a King, they had
better look to the northern nations to supply one. I was named by
Everett, the President, as one of the tellers in the Division.'
Probably the speech had been no more of a success than most maiden
speeches, for Mr. Dilke's letter reads like a consolation:
"The Greek debate I care little about. I would much rather have _read_
a paper on the subject. _Till a man can write he cannot speak_--
except, as Carlyle would say, 'in a confused babble of words and
ideas.'"
The main part of the grandson's letters were concerned with the topics
handled and the speeches made at the Union.
"_November 7th_, 1862.
"How wavering and shortsighted the policy of England in Turco-Grecian
matters has been of late! Compare Navarino and Sebastopol. Palmerston
will, if he has his way, oblige the Greeks to continue in much the
same state of degradation as hitherto, and will go on holding up the
crumbling Turkish Empire till some rising of Christians occurs at a
time when we have our hands full and cannot afford to help our 'old
friend.' Then Turkey-in-Europe will vanish. I do not myself believe in
the Pan-Slavonic Empire. The Moldavians, Hungarians, and Greeks could
never be long united; but I think that Greece might hold the whole of
the coast and mountain provinces without containing in itself fatal
elements of disunion.
"Brown--No. 3 of our four--broke from his training to-day, and spent
the whole day with the hounds. That will never do."
Mr. Dilke in reply did not conceal the amusement which was awakened in him
by the rowing man's deadly seriousness:
"_November 9th_, 1862.
"I agree with you. No Browns, no hunting fellows, no divided love!! If
'a man' goes in 'our boat' he goes in to win. "Broke from his
training!" Abominable! Had he 'broke from his training' when standing
out for Wrangler, why so be it, _his_ honour only would be concerned;
but here it is _our_ honour, T. H. for ever, and no fox-hunting!
"After this, the Greek question falls flat on the ears, but I will
suggest..."
and thereupon he goes into hints for research, very characteristic in
their thoroughness, ending with a practical admonition:
"Now comes 'The Moral.' As you could not speak on the great Ionian
question, why not _write_ on it? Write down what you would or could
have said on the subject. Take two or three hours of leisure and
quiet; write with great deliberation, but _write on_ till the subject
is concluded. No deferring, no bit by bit piecework, but all offhand.
No _correction_, not a word to be altered; once written let it stand.
Put the Essay aside for a month. Then criticize it with your best
judgment--the order and sequence of facts, its verbal defects, its
want or superabundance of illustration, its want or superabundance of
detail, etc., etc."
Another letter of Dilke's in his freshman year concerns the art of debate:
"What is wanted is common-sense discussion in well-worded speeches
with connected argument, the whole to be spoken loud enough to be
heard, and with sufficient liveliness to convince the hearers of the
speaker's interest in what he is saying. So far as this is oratory, it
is cultivated (with very moderate success) at the Union."
From the ideal here indicated--an accurate analysis of 'the House of
Commons manner'--Charles Dilke never departed, and his grandfather in
replying eagerly reinforced the estimate:
"I agree to all you say about that same Union, and about the Orators
and Oratory. I should have said it myself, but thought it necessary to
_clear the way_. I rejoice that no such preliminary labour was
required. I agree that even Chatham was a 'Stump'--what he was in
addition is not our question. I hope and believe he was the last of
our Stumpers. Burke, so far as he was an Orator, was a Stump and
something more, and the more may be attributed to the fact that he was
a practised _writer,_ where Chatham was not, and that he reported his
own speeches. Latterly his _writings_ were all Stump. I had not
intended to have written for a week or more, for you have so many
correspondents and are so punctual in reply that I fear the waste of
precious time; but I am as pleased with your letter as an old dog-
fancier when a terrier-pup catches his first rat--it is something to
see my boy hunt out and hunt down that old humbug Oratory."
Charles Dilke's own mature judgment on the matters concerned was expressed
in a letter to the _Cantab_ of October 27th, 1893:
"The value of Union debates as a training for political life? Yes, if
they are debates. There is probably little debate in the Union. There
was little in my time. There is little real debating in the House of
Commons. But debating is mastery. The gift of debate means the gift of
making your opinion prevail. Set speaking is useless and worse than
useless in these days."
Dilke was elected to the Library Committee of the Union in his second
term, and in his third to the Standing Committee. At this moment a
decision was taken to make a determined effort for new buildings, and it
was suggested that he should stand for the secretaryship. Declining this
as likely to engross more time than he could spare, he was put forward for
the Vice-Presidency, and elected at the beginning of October, 1863. His
prominence in the negotiations which followed may be inferred from the
fact that he was re-elected. This was in itself a rare honour; but in his
case was followed by election and re-election to the Presidency, a record
unique in the Society's annals.
It was through this phase of his activity that Charles Dilke took part in
the general life of the University. At the Union he was closely associated
with men outside his own college, one of whom, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice,
was destined to be a lifelong friend and fellow-worker. But his College
meant more to him than the University. A conservative in this, he
resented, and resisted later on, all tendencies to make the teaching of
the place communal by an opening of college lectures to students from
other colleges; he valued the distinctiveness of type which went with the
older usage, under which he himself was nurtured. Trinity Hall was a
lawyers' college; it had a library specially stored with law books, and it
was early determined that he should conform to the _genius loci_ so far at
least as to be called to the Bar. In his first Christmas vacation he began
to eat his dinners at the Middle Temple, where his nomination paper was
signed by John Forster; and in June, 1863, after he had spent a year at
mathematics and won his college scholarship, he took stock of his
position, and felt clear as to his own powers. He might, he thought,
attain to about a tenth wranglership in the Mathematical Tripos, which
would insure him a fellowship at his college; but this, although he valued
academic distinctions very highly, did not seem an end worth two years of
work, and he determined to devote the remainder of his time at the
University to the study of law and history.
He had not at any time limited himself to mathematics. Both before his
freshman year and during it he had read hard and deeply on general
subjects. His habit was to analyze on paper whatever he studied, and he
had dealt thus in 1861 (aged eighteen) with all Sir Thomas More,
Bolingbroke, and Hobbes. Among the papers for 1862 there is preserved such
an analysis of Coleridge's political system; a note on the views of the
Abbé Morellet, with essays on comparative psychology, the association of
ideas, and the originality of the anti-selfish affections. These are
deposits of that course of philosophic reading over which, says the
Memoir, 'I wasted a good deal of time in 1862, but managed also to give
myself much mental training.'
The determination to abandon mathematics for a line of study more germane
to that career of which he already had some vision met with no resistance
from his people; but it did not altogether please the college authorities.
He wrote to old Mr. Dilke:
"When I told Hopkins" (his tutor) "that I was not going out in
mathematics, he was taken aback, and seemed very sorry. He urged me to
_read law_, but still to go out as a high senior optime, which he says
I could be, without reading more than a very small quantity of
mathematics every day. My objection to this was that I knew myself
better than he did; that were I to go in for mathematics, I should be
as high in that tripos as my talents would let me, and that my law and
my life's purpose would suffer in consequence.
"He said--'You will be very sorry if it happens that you are not first
legalist of your year--that is the only place in the Law Tripos that
you can be content with--and yet remember you have Shee in your year,
who is always a dangerous adversary, and who starts with some little
knowledge on the subject.'
"I said I should read with Shee, and make him understand that I was
intended by Nature to beat him."
The dangerous Shee had been thus announced in a letter of February, 1863:
"Shee--son of the well-known Serjeant, [Footnote: Mr. Serjeant Shee was
later a Judge--the first Roman Catholic since the time of the Stuarts to
sit on the English Bench.] has come up and taken the rooms over me. He
seems a nice kind of fellow; of course, a strong Romanist."
Shee remained till the end Dilke's chief competitor, and he was also one
of the band of friends who met each other incessantly, and incessantly
talked over first principles till the small hours of morning. Perhaps it
is not without importance that Charles Dilke should have had the
experience, not very common for Englishmen, of living on terms of intimacy
with an Irish Roman Catholic: at all events, his relations in after-life,
both with Irishmen and with Roman Catholics, were more friendly than is
common. For the moment Shee made one factor in the discussions upon
theology which are inevitable among undergraduates, and which went on with
vigour in this little group, according to the recollection of Judge
Steavenson, who in those days, faithful to the orthodoxy of his Low Church
upbringing, found himself ranged by the side of the 'strong Romanist'
against a general onslaught upon Christianity. Charley Dilke himself had
come under the influences of the place and the time. There is an entry
headed May, 1863: "I find a fair argument against miracles in my notes for
this month." He had abandoned attendance at Communion, but, according to
Judge Steavenson, did not go further in opinions or in talk than a vague
agnosticism--which was also the attitude of another subtle and agile
intelligence in that circle.
Turning over, in 1891, the boxes which held his letters and papers of
college days, Charles Dilke wrote:
"1863.
"In every page of the destroyed notebooks of this year I could see the
influence of two men--my grandfather and H. D. Warr." [Footnote: Mr.
H. D. Warr became a journalist. In 1880 Sir Charles secured him the
post of Secretary to the Royal Commission upon City Companies, of
which Lord Derby was Chairman.]
Warr was a classical exhibitioner of Trinity Hall in Dilke's year, and was
not among the few who are named at first as likely friends,
though he figures early as a competitor in the Euclid and Algebra 'fights'
at his tutor's. In February, 1863, his name must have been on Dilke's
tongue or pen, since this is evidently a reply to inquiries:
"Warr is a clergyman's son. He will probably be about fourth or fifth
for the Bell (Scholarship)."
It is not till the October term of his second year that more explicit
notice of this friend occurs, when Dilke is giving an account of his first
speech as Vice-President of the Union. He opened a debate on the metric
system, concerning which he had solid and well-thought-out opinions:
"My speech was logical but not fluent. Warr says it was the best
opening speech he ever listened to, but by no means the best speech.
Warr is a candid critic whom I dread, so that I am glad he was
satisfied."
Of this candour Dilke has preserved some specimens which show that Warr's
influence was mainly used in laughing his friend out of his solemnity.
Thus Warr characterizes him as a dealer in logic," and, breaking off from
some fantastic speculation as to the future of all their college set,
January 9th, 1864, moralizes.
"I am an ass, my friend, a great ass, to write in this silly strain to
you, but you must not be very angry, though I own now to a feeling of
_having half insulted your kind serious ways by talking nonsense to
them on paper_."
APPENDIX
Sir Charles Dilke's association with the river and with rowing men was so
constant that we ate justified in preserving this contemporary report of
his first race for the Grand Challenge, on which he always looked back
with pride:
"It was," says the report, which Dilke preserved, "one of the finest
and fastest races ever seen at Henley, and the losers deserve as much
credit as the winners. The Oxford crew were on the Berks side,
Kingston on the Oxon, and Cambridge in the middle. It was a very fine
and even start, and they continued level for about 50 yards, when
Brasenose began to show the bow of their boat in front, the others
still remaining oar and oar, rowing in fine form and at a great pace.
So finely were the three crews matched, that, although Brasenose
continued to increase their lead, it was only inch by inch. At the end
of about 400 yards Brasenose were about a quarter of a length only
ahead. The race was continued with unabated vigour, Brasenose now
going more in front, and being a length ahead at the Poplars, where
they began to ease slightly. The contest between Cambridge and
Kingston was still admirable; Cambridge had made some fine bursts to
get away from them, but they were not to be shaken off, and the
gallant effort of the one crew was met by a no less gallant effort on
the part of the other. The Cambridge crew began to show in front as
they neared Remenham, and a most determined race was continued to the
end. Brasenose won by a length clear, and the Cambridge boat was not
clear of the Kingston, only having got her about three-quarters of
their length."
The time--seven minutes, twenty-six seconds--was the fastest that had been
rowed over that course, and more than half a minute faster than that of
the final heat, in which Brasenose were beaten by University. But next day
in the Ladies' Plate University brought down the record by three seconds.
Trinity Hall had the worst station, and if they were beaten by only a
length, must have been as fast as Brasenose. Kingston was stroked by L.
Pugh Evans, Brasenose by D. Pocklington (W. B. Woodgate rowing 4). The
Trinity Hall eight were as follows:
st. lb.
E. F. Dyke 9 12
H. W. Edwardes 10 13
W. H. Darton 11 2
C. W. Dilke 11 5
D. F. Steavenson 12 1
R. E. Neane 11 0
W. J. S. Cadman 10 6
R. Richardson 9 10
A. A. Berens (cox.) 9 8
CHAPTER IV
CAMBRIDGE (_Continued_)
In these years of all-round training Cambridge was doing for Charles Dilke
what it has done for hundreds of other young men. The exceptional in his
case sprang from the tie which linked this young athlete to the old
scholar who, in his library at Sloane Street, or among his flowers at
Alice Holt, was ceaselessly preoccupied with detail of the undergraduate's
life and work. From the first there was a pathos in his eagerness to
follow and understand all the minutiae of an unfamiliar scene. At the
close of Charles Dilke's first term he wrote (December 1st, 1862):
"Your letter gave me great pleasure, as indeed for one reason or
another, or for no reason if you please, your letters always do;
though not being a Cambridge man, I am at times a little puzzled....
What a bore I shall be after the 13th with my endless enquiries."
Ten days later he is jubilant over the results of the college examination
which closed the first term:
"Hurrah! hurrah! my dear grandson. Ninety-seven out of a hundred--
eleven above the second 'man'--is a position that would satisfy a
whole family of loving friends, even if they were all grandfathers."
After every college examination the grandson sent lists of results,
compiled with elaborate detail. The grandfather studied them, treasured
them, compared them, wanted to know why this man had fallen back, how the
other had advanced, and always with the same warm outflow of sympathy and
pride over his own pupil. There they lie to-day in the despatch-boxes,
preserved as a memorial of that love by the man on whom it was expended.
On one is noted:
"Many scraps such as this, and his letters, show the loving care with
which my grandfather watched over my progress at the University."
The beginning of his first Long Vacation he spent in travelling through
Germany, Holland, and Belgium with his father. Later, in August, he
visited Jersey and Guernsey, and went to France alone, making pilgrimage
from Cherbourg to Tocqueville's two houses, and filling notebooks with
observations on Norman architecture at St. Lô, Coutances, and elsewhere.
He was perfecting his mastery of the language, too, and notes long after:
"On this journey I was once taken for a Frenchman, but my French was not
so good as it was about 1870." But always and everywhere he observed; and
sent back the results of his observation to the man who had trained it. On
June 30th, 1863, he writes:
"I have been all over Brussels to-day. My previous estimate of the
place is confirmed. It apes Paris without having any of the Parisian
charms, just as its people speak French without being able to
pronounce it.
"The two modern pictures in the Palais de Justice are to me worth all
the so-called Rubenses in the place. They are by Gallait and de
Biefve, and the one is our old friend of last year in London, 'The
Abdication of Charles V.'
"Rogier--the great Belgian Minister--has failed to secure his return
in the late elections, owing to his having given a vote unpopular to
his constituents on the fortification scheme. The Catholics lost three
votes (regained by the advanced party) in the Senate these elections.
"The names of the sides of the chambers are significant:
"Liberals. -- Catholics.
"What a fine country Belgium would be if it could get rid of its
priests a little more. The people understand freedom. In Ghent the
priests are rich, but utterly powerless owing to the extent of the
manufacturing interest."
When he returned to Cambridge for the October term of 1863, his hard
reading did not satisfy his prodigious power for work. He was Vice-
President of the Union, and he undertook the more arduous duties of
Secretary and Treasurer of the College Boat Club. When at the beginning of
1864 he was re-elected Vice-President of the Union, his grandfather wrote:
"Your University career has proved to me that you have a happiness of
manner that wins friends." Mr. Dilke's health began to decline notably in
the early part of 1864, and loss of sight menaced him. He took the
doctor's sentence, that he must refrain altogether from reading, with
characteristic philosophy, but added: "I have ordered that newspapers are
not to be sent here, so you must excuse it if, when we meet, I am a little
in arrear of the course of life."
Early in February, 1864, Charles Dilke had entered without training for a
walking race, and had beaten the University champion, Patrick, covering
the mile ("in a gale of wind and over heavy slush") in eight minutes and
forty-two seconds. [Footnote: Mr. Patrick, afterwards member of
Parliament, and from 1886 Permanent Under-Secretary for Scotland.] To this
announcement his grandfather made pleasant reply, threatening to come up
and compete in person, but three days later wrote:
"I wish you had sent me a Cambridge paper which contained an account
of your Olympic games. It is not too late now if you can get one; _I
reserve the right of reading everything that relates to you and your
concerns_."
Meanwhile Charles Dilke's reading went on with feverish energy. The
dangerous rival was closely watched. "Shee has been sitting up till
ominously late hours for some nights past. His father came up last night
and left again to-night, but I fear he did not make his son waste much
time." The competitors were straining then for a college law prize, but
the letter goes on to observe very sagely:
"The law is of little consequence, as neither of us can know anything
about it at present; but I should like to win the essay prize."
The prize was the annual college prize for the best English essay, and
that year's subject was "Sir Robert Walpole." Compositions were presumably
sent in after the Christmas vacation, for on February 29th, 1864, a
fortnight after the announcement as to the walking race, comes this
laconic bulletin:
"MY DEAR GRANDFATHER,
"English Essay Prize: Dilke.
Honourably mentioned: Osborn, Shee.
Latin Essay Prize: Warr.
Honourably mentioned: Casswell. [Footnote: A scholar of Sir Charles's
year, and one of his most frequent associates in undergraduate days.]
"They say that parts of my essay were vulgar.
"Your affectionate grandson,
"CHAS. W. DILKE."
That last sentence roused the old critic:
"I should like to read the _whole_ essay. My especial interest is
aroused by the charge of occasional _vulgarity_. If it be true, it is
not improbable that the writer caught the infection from his
grandfather. With one half the world, in its judgment of literature
and of life, vulgarity is the opposite of gentility, and gentility is
merely negative, and implies _the absence of all character_, and, in
language, of all idiom, all bone and muscle. I have a notion--only do
not whisper such heresy within college walls--that a college tutor
must be genteel in his _college judgments_, that 'The Polite Letter
Writer' was the work of an M.A. in the 'Augustan Age.' You may find in
Shakespeare household words and phrases from every condition and walk
in life--as much coarseness as you please to look for--anything and
everything except gentility and vulgarity. Occasional vulgarity is,
therefore, a question on which _I_ refuse to take the opinion of any
man not well known to me."
On one matter the pupil was recalcitrant. Mr. Dilke begged him to give
"one hour or one half-hour a day" to mastering Greek, so as to be able to
read it with pleasure--a mastery which could only be acquired "before you
enter on the direct purpose and business of life." But "insuperable
difficulties" presented themselves. "It is of considerable importance that
I should be first in the college Law May examination." Hopes of compliance
in a later period were held out, to which Mr. Dilke replied shrewdly that
"insuperable difficulties" were often temperamental, and that during the
whole period of study equally strong reasons for postponement would
continue to present themselves; and then would come "the all-engrossing
business of life, and there is an end of half-hours."
In May, 1864, Mr. Dilke was present on the bank at 'Grassy' when, on the
second night of the races, Trinity Hall, with his grandson rowing at No.
3, went head of the river.
"_The ever-memorable May 12th_, 1864.
"MY DEAR FATHER,
"Last night we gained on 3rd Trinity all the way to Ditton Corner,
where we were overlapping. Our coxswain made a shot, missed them, and
we went into the mid-stream. After our misfortune we paddled slowly
over the long reach, and came in half a length behind 3rd Trinity and
2 lengths ahead of 1st Trinity. To-night we did not gain much up to
the Plough, where we spurted and caught up 3rd directly; we rowed
round Ditton Corner overlapping, and so for 100 yds. more, and then
made our bump. The whole of the crew and Stephen were chaired and
carried round the quad. [Footnote: Leslie Stephen had coached the
boat, which stayed head throughout the races. Judge Steavenson rowed
in it at No. 5, where he had rowed earlier in the year for the
University. In 1868 it was settled that 'the outrigger which was rowed
head of the river in 1864 should be cut up, and the pieces distributed
amongst the members of the crew who rowed in her in that year.'
Dilke's piece always hung against the wall in his study in Sloane
Street.] Our 2nd has made its bump each night, and is 8th on the
river!!!"
Hardly were the May races over before the college Law examination began.
On May 31st Charles Dilke wrote to his grandfather:
"The results will be known to-morrow. I have worked as hard as it is
possible for me to do, for I have worked till I became almost deprived
of memory.... Shee has worked, too, as hard as he could, and was in a
dreadful state of nervous excitement this evening. I almost hope that
he is first, for I should like to see him get his scholarship. Warr
tried to get me to refuse to go in for the examination, or find some
pretext for being away, in order to let our common friend get his
scholarship; but I said that I thought he would beat me, and that he
should have the glory of beating my _best_ efforts if he beat me at
all."
An underlying reason against his acceptance of Warr's advice may be found
in this letter from Mr. Dilke at Alice Holt to his son Wentworth:
"_June 3rd_, 1864.
"If you carried out your intention of going to and returning from
Cambridge this day, you know, and all in Sloane Street know, that our
noble fellow has again won the prize. But the weather may have
deterred you, and on the possible chance I copy the results:
"1. Chas. Dilke, 570 marks. Prize.
Shee, 440
"What a blessing that boy has been to my old age! May God reward him!
I feel for Shee! for he has laboured long and zealously. I wish there
had been two prizes.
"I will not mix the subject with baser matter, so shall write my
memoranda on another sheet.
"Your affectionate father,
"C. W. D."
After the May term came Henley Regatta, and Trinity Hall was again entered
for the Grand Challenge. Many of the friends, Shee amongst them, had taken
up their quarters there, along with the oarsmen; and Warr, who was not at
Henley, wrote pressing a prompt return to Cambridge for the Long Vacation
term. As the Henley week progressed [Footnote: Dilke rowed again both for
the Grand Challenge and the Ladies' Plate. In each Trinity Hall met the
ultimate winner in the trial heat, and were defeated by Kingston and by
Eton, but beat London and Radley.] Mr. Dilke writes:
"My movements may be absolutely regulated by your wishes or
convenience. If you desire to pay a visit to the Holt, I have there
the chance of a quicker recovery, if I am to go on well; whereas if
there be more inducements to visit London, why here I have the benefit
of the doctors should I not make progress. The pleasure and the
advantages being _equal_ to me, you have only to decide. Let me know
your decision by return of post."
Charles Dilke decided for London, and there spent three or four days in
the company of his family, and, above all, of his grandfather. Then he
went back to Cambridge, and lived the life of strenuous, healthy young men
in the summer weather; getting up at five o'clock in the mornings,
bathing, reading long hours, walking long walks, talking the long talks of
youth. The correspondence with his grandfather centred chiefly now on the
subject for the next year's essay competition, which had been announced at
the close of the May term, and which, as Charles Dilke said, "seems to be
rather in my line."
It was Pope's couplet:
"For forms of government let fools contest,
Whatever is best administered is best."
It was no less in old Mr. Dilke's line than in his grandson's. He wrote on
July 14th from Alice Holt a page of admirable criticism on the scheme as
outlined by his grandson, and concludes in his habitual tone of
affectionate self-depreciation:
"This is another of my old prosings--another proof that love and good
will and good wishes remain when power to serve is gone...."
With the precocious maturity of Charles Dilke's intellect had gone a
slowness of development in other directions. It is true that those
Cambridge men who remember him as an undergraduate remember him as
serious, but full of high animal spirits and sense of fun; while everyone
speaks of his charm and gaiety. "We were all in love with him," says one
vivacious old lady, who belonged to the circle of connections and
relatives that frequented 76, Sloane Street. But the letters of his early
days at Cambridge hardly show that 'happiness of manner' which his
grandfather attributed to him. Only now does the whole personality begin
to emerge, as in a letter of 1864, in which he begs his grandfather,
because "writing is irksome to you," to send two very short letters rather
than one longer one; "for the receipt of a letter gives me an excuse to
write again, while on the other hand I can by habit catch your meaning by
the first words of your shortest criticisms."
The rest of the sheet was occupied by very able analysis of an article
which had been published in the _Athenaeum_--criticism mature and manly
both in thought and expression. The change did not escape the shrewd
observer. Mr. Dilke replied:
"ALICE HOLT,
"BY FARNHAM, SURREY,
"_July 28th_, 1864.
"MY VERY DEAR GRANDSON,
"Your letters give me very great pleasure, not because they are kind
and considerate, of which I had evidence enough long since, not
because they flatter the vanity of the old man by asking his opinion,
which few now regard, but because I see in them a gradual development
of your own mind."
He added a few words in praise of the analysis, but pointed out that the
reviewer, whom Charles Dilke censured, was treating a well-worn subject--
Bentham's Philosophy--and therefore needed to aim at freshness of view
rather than thoroughness of exposition. He added:
"I, however, am delighted with the Article, which is full of promise
of a coming man by which the old journal may benefit."
Save for a final "God bless you!" from "as ever, your affectionate
Grand.," that was the last word written by Mr. Dilke to his grandson.
Within a week he was struck down by what proved to be his fatal illness.
Early on August 8th Charles Dilke wrote to his father that he was deterred
from coming home only by the fear lest his sudden arrival might "frighten
grandfather about himself and make him worse." A few hours later he was
summoned. The rest may be given in his own words:
'_August 8th, Monday_.--I received a telegram from my father at noon:
"You had better come here." I left by the 1.30 train, and reached
Alice Holt at half-past six. My Father met me on the lawn: he was
crying bitterly, and said, "He lives only to see you." I went upstairs
and sat down by the sofa, on which lay the Grand., looking haggard,
but still a noble wreck. I took his hand, and he began to talk of very
trivial matters--of Cambridge everyday life--his favourite theme of
old. He seemed to be testing his strength, for at last he said: "I
shall be able to talk to-morrow; I may last some weeks; but were it
not for the pang that all of you would feel, I should prefer that it
should end at once. I have had a good time of it."
'He had been saying all that morning: "Is that a carriage I hear?" or
"I shall live to see him."
'_Tuesday_.--When I went in to him, he sent away the others, and told
me to look for an envelope and a key. I failed to find it, and fetched
Morris, who after a careful search found the key, but no envelope. We
had both passed over my last letter (August 6th), which lay on the
table. He made us both leave the room, but recalled me directly, and
when I entered had banknotes in his hand, which he must have taken
from the envelope of my letter. (This involved rising.) He said: "I
cannot live, I fear, to your birthday--I want to make you a present--I
think I have heard you say that you should like a stop-watch--I have
made careful inquiries as to the price--and have saved--as I believe--
sufficient." He then gave me notes, and the key of a desk in London,
in the secret drawer of which I should find the remaining money. He
then gave me the disposition of his papers and manuscripts, directing
that what I did not want should go to the British Museum. He then
said: "I have nothing more to say but that you have fulfilled--my
every hope--beyond all measure--and--I am deeply--grateful."
'He died in my presence on Wednesday, 10th, at half-past one, in
perfect peace.'
[Illustration: MR. C. W. DILKE.
From the painting by Arthur Hughes ]
CHAPTER V
LAST TERMS AT THE UNIVERSITY
After his grandfather's death Charles Dilke went away alone on a walking
tour in Devon. The death of his grandfather was hardly realized at first;
'the sense of loss' deepened: 'it has been greater with me every year that
followed.' He corresponded with his college friends, and of this date is a
letter of remonstrance at his overstudious habits from the sententious H.
D. Warr:
"My dear Dilke will forgive me if I say that, though I honour him much
for his many strong and good qualities, I think he is far too given to
laborious processes in work and social life.... My warm regard for you
rests to some extent on my very high appreciation of your strength and
consistency of character: you have always appeared to me to be a
supremely honest man, almost comically so, at least when I am in a
profane humour: I do not know that anything you could do would
possibly make me like you better. But I think if you gave yourself a
little wider fling and liberty, and did not walk always as it were on
the seam of the carpet, it would be better; there would be less to
lean on in you, perhaps, but if possible more to love."
Charles Dilke used to say that Fawcett and Warr had between them cured him
of that priggishness which he often recalled with amusement. Almost
inevitably his grandfather's devotion, the absolute engrossment of so
considerable a personality in his least important concerns, would
emphasize the inclination to take himself over-seriously which is marked
in every clever and resolute young man.
In the beginning of 1865 he won the college essay prize for the second
time. A pile of dockets from the British Museum shows that, as soon as
coming of age qualified him to be a reader there, he plunged deep into all
the works on ideal commonwealths to complete his survey of 'forms of
government'--the subject indicated by Pope's couplet, which had appealed
so strongly both to his grandfather and himself. This was a side issue.
Beading for his Tripos went on with unremitting energy, and he had in use
ninety-four notebooks crammed with analyses. In June, 1865, he was
announced Senior Legalist, easily at the head of the law students of his
year, thus crowning his college successes by the highest University
distinction open to a man who followed that course.
A month before he entered for the Tripos, he had stroked the college boat,
which was head of the river. Trinity Hall, however, retained its pride of
place only for one day, and it was no small achievement to accomplish even
this, since Third Trinity, who bumped them on the second night, were a
wonderful crew, with five University oars, 'including some of the most
distinguished Eton oars that ever rowed.' [Footnote: The Memoir details
them: 'Chambers, the winner of the pairs, sculls, and "walk," President of
the University Boat Club, and afterwards Secretary of the Amateur Athletic
Club; Kinglake, afterwards President of the University Boat Club; W. E.
Griffith, afterwards President of the University Boat Club, and
formerly stroke of the finest Eton eight ever seen; Selwyn, afterwards
Bishop of Melanesia, stroke of the University eight; and C. B. Lawes,
afterwards the well-known sculptor, who had been captain of the Boats at
Eton, and who had won the Diamond Sculls and the amateur championship of
the Thames, and had rowed stroke of the University crew the year after
Selwyn.'] The Hall had only one 'blue,' Steavenson, but to Charles Dilke
himself had been offered in February, 1865, and was offered again in 1866,
the place of 'seven' in the University eight. He declined on grounds of
health, fearing the strain of the four-mile course on his heart. A note
added later says regretfully: 'I believe that I was unduly frightened by
my doctor, and that I might have rowed.'
To be Senior Legalist and to stroke the first boat on the river in the
same term was an unusual combination: in the next Charles Dilke added to
it the Presidency of the Union. The new Union buildings were now in
process of construction, and he had done more than any other man to bring
them from a derisive by-word into solid realization of brick and mortar.
He took credit to himself for 'the selection of Waterhouse as architect
against Gilbert Scott and Digby Wyatt.' Care to see this business fully
through was one of the reasons which determined him to come up for a
fourth year, and to hold the Presidency a second time in the Lent term of
1866. On his retirement he proposed Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice for his
successor, and thus left the lead in hands he could trust.
Of his own speeches he has preserved some detail, showing how early his
opinions displayed the character which was to be constant in them:
'In 1864-65 I spoke twice at the Union [Footnote: After Dilke's death,
when a resolution of regret was carried at the Union, the Vice-
President, Mr. J. H. Allen of Jesus, said in moving it: "Sir Charles
was in a double sense the architect of the fortunes of the Society,
because he was responsible for the superintendence of the change from
the old inadequate home in Queens' Street into the more glorious
building which they now enjoyed. It was for that reason that on two
occasions the Society elected him to the highest position which they
could confer."] in favour of the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston,
opposing several of my friends who were condemning it. Cobden at the
time was attacking supposed extravagance, based, as he thought, on
panic, and I sided with Palmerston in thinking that the enormous
increase of the French Navy could only be intended for an anti-English
policy, while in the event of even the temporary loss of the command
of the Channel, invasion by an immense French army would become
possible. To Poland I was friendly, but unwilling to contemplate, as
Lord Palmerston was unwilling to contemplate, interference by England
in alliance with the Emperor Napoleon. I was so far from strongly
taking the Danish side in the war that I chose the opportunity to put
up in my rooms at Cambridge a photograph of Bismarck, for whom I had a
considerable admiration. I had made Lord Palmerston's acquaintance
during the Exhibition in '62 (to the ceremonies of which I also owed
that of Auber, Meyerbeer, and many other distinguished people), but I
do not think that the chat of the jaunty old gentleman in his last
days had had any effect upon my views, and I was certainly more pro-
German than was Palmerston, who was not pro-anything except pro-
English.'[Footnote: For Sir Charles's opinion of Lord Palmerston, see
vol. ii., p. 493. ]
The best speech, in Dilke's own opinion, that he made during 1866 was in
opposition to the proposal to congratulate Governor Eyre upon his
suppression of 'the supposed insurrection in Jamaica.' This was the first
of the many occasions on which Sir Charles Dilke criticized the severity
of white men towards natives in the name of civilized government.
Fuller anticipation of the views he supported in Parliament is to be found
in his speeches on home politics. In the spring of 1866 the country was
violently agitated over the Reform Bill introduced by Lord Russell, who
had become Prime Minister on the death of Lord Palmerston in 1865. Of
course there was a debate at the Union, and it was prolonged to a second
night. Dilke writes:
'I took up for the first time broad democratic ground. Attacking the
famous speech of Mr. Lowe, [Footnote: Mr. Lowe had asked in the debate
on the "Representation of the People Bill," as reported in Hansard, on
March 13th, 1866: "If you want venality, ignorance, drunkenness; if
you want impulsive, unreflecting, violent people, where do you look
for them? Do you go to the top, or to the bottom?"] I declared that so
far was I from agreement with these calumnies, that I was of opinion
that those homely and truly English qualities which had to some slight
extent grown slack among the upper classes were to be met with in all
their strength as much in the more intelligent portion of the now
unrepresented classes, as among those familiarly styled "their
betters." With regard to the question of the fitness of the artisans
for the franchise, I argued that they had not to decide for themselves
between Austria and Prussia in the Holstein question, but had to
decide between candidates who would settle the more abstruse questions
for them. The middle classes, I contended, could as a body do no more,
and the artisan was just as competent to judge of honesty and ability
as the £10 householder; and less likely to be influenced by bribery
and intimidation, as being more independent and more fearless of
consequences. Moreover, any attempt to keep the great mass of the
people from all share of political power seemed to me idle: whether we
liked their advent to government or whether we feared it, it was
inevitable, and the longer we delayed to prepare for it the worse it
would be for so-called Conservative interests when it came. I
contended that the working man had proportionately a greater stake in
the country than the rich; that the taxes which he paid were a vastly
more serious matter to him than those which the rich paid were to
them, and that a hundred of the laws passed by Parliament vitally
affected the interests of the working people to one which injured
those of the upper class.'
For a young man whose political views were so maturely thought out, debate
was no mere exercitation; his education was fast passing into
apprenticeship for public life; and in February, 1865, his father, Sir
Wentworth Dilke, coming forward at a by-election in the Liberal interest
for Wallingford, gave the Union debater his first chance on a public
platform.
Long afterwards, when Sir Charles Dilke was travelling down to the Forest
of Dean with a party of guests and friends, one of them, looking out as
the train swept along the Thames Valley, caught sight of a little white
church nestling under a hill and asked, "Is that Cholsey?" Sir Charles
turned round in his eager way: "What, do you know this district? Yes, that
is Cholsey;" and went on to tell how intimate he had become with all the
villages round Wallingford when speaking and canvassing for his father,
and how the experience gained among the Berkshire peasants had supplied
valuable lessons for his own contests in later years.
Sir Wentworth was elected, and Lord Granville, who had a real friendship
for him, wrote, in a spirit very typical of the traditional view: "I know
no one to whom Parliamentary life will afford more interest and
amusement." Charles Dilke's conception of Parliamentary life was very
different from that of his father, and from that which Lord Granville
indicated. On the other hand, the son seemed to the father deficient in
appreciation of the pleasures acceptable to himself:
'One of the difficulties between my father and myself about this
period arose from his vexation at my refusing to take part in the
shooting-parties at Alice Holt. He was passionately fond of
shooting; ... I had now but little sympathy with the amusement, and
had shown my dislike for it in many ways.'
Yet despite differences, the father was immensely proud of his son, and
consulted him in regard to the younger brother's education. In his reply
Charles Dilke discussed the view of certain Dons who held that the
cultivated English gentleman ought not to go in for honours at all, and
admitted that "reading for a high place here involves loss of many
pleasures, of almost all society; it makes a man fretful, and often leaves
him behind the world; as an education for the mind it is not so good as
the self-education of a non-honours man ought to be, _but never is_." He
thought, nevertheless, that classics--of which he avowed himself "more
ignorant than an English gentleman ought to be"--offered the field in
which success was best worth having. He himself "would gladly be put back
to fourteen or fifteen, and 'grind my life out' till two-and-twenty, in
order to get a high place in the first-class classics." But it must be all
or nothing. A second-class he dismissed as not worth winning. Moreover,
"if the boy has not a high standard set up for him, he will do nothing
whatever, which is far worse than doing too much."
Meanwhile, in the midst of all that full college life which was becoming
more and more definitely a preparation for the political career, he was
trying his strength in the field of journalism.
His grandfather had never ceased to impress upon him that every public man
should have learned and practised thoroughly the craft of writing. This
precept allied itself with the inherited ownership of a great literary
journal; and very shortly after old Mr. Dilke's death the undergraduate,
as he then was, began to associate himself actively with the work of the
_Athenaeum_. His first published writing in it appeared on October 22nd,
1864, when he reviewed a well-known work on economics by the writer whom
the Memoir styles 'that dull Frenchman, Le Play.' [Footnote: French
Senator, son-in-law of the celebrated economist Michel Chevalier. He wrote
works on the principles of agriculture, the application of chemistry to
agriculture, and kindred subjects.] Le Play wrote from Paris to thank Sir
Wentworth Dilke for a copy of the article which had been sent him, and had
already attracted attention in France:
"On y trouve un sentiment de vrai progrès et une intelligence de la
vie pratique qui se rencontrent rarement chez nos critiques."
The British Museum tickets show the course of reading which Charles Dilke
was pursuing at this period: Bacon, Filmer, Mandeville, Hume, represent
the older English writers on Commonwealths, ideal and actual; Crousaz,
Condorcet, Diderot, Linguet, Fénelon, Helvétius, stood for the influences
of eighteenth-century France. With them were writers more recondite; the
_Mundus Alter et Idem_ of "Britannicus," _Barclay his Argenis_, Holberg's
_Journey in the Underworld_, Sadeur's _Terre Australe Connue_, Ned Lane's
_Excellencie of a Free State_, were all out-of-the-way books with an
antiquarian flavour. Of recent or contemporary authors, Montalembert was
included, with Proudhon, as were men whom Charles Dilke came to know
personally--Émile de Girardin, Michel Chevalier, and, a close friend
afterwards, Louis Blanc. Works of Mohl and Willick brought in the Germans,
and a volume of the _Federalist_ introduced him to that great American
commonwealth which he was soon to visit. A sheaf of dockets for works upon
the Swedenborgian Association and theories complete this very extensive
range of reading, which may be supplemented by the following note of his
own:
"Favourite books, 1864 (in themselves--for no object):
"Shakespeare.
"The Bible.
"J. S. Mill: _Political Economy; On Liberty; Dissertations._
"Longfellow: _Evangeline_ and _Miles Standish_.
"Homer: _Works_.
"Tennyson: nearly all.
"Plato: _Republic_.
"Sir P. Sidney: _Arcadia_.
"Claude Adrien Helvétius: _Works_.
"Victor Hugo: _Les Misérables_.
"William Godwin: _Political Justice_."
He notes also in the Memoir that the reading of Mill at this period marked
the beginning of Mill's influence over him. This influence was a great
factor in Dilke's life, and, when it passed into a personal relation,
became almost one of discipleship.
His taste for Victor Hugo led him to write in the _Athenaeum_ a long
notice of _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_ in 1866, when that romance
appeared; but another article about the same period on international law
indicates the main bent of his studies.
As early as the Long Vacation of 1864, in the course of preparing his
essay on forms of government, he had found himself tracing 'the future of
the Anglo-Saxon race both in the United States and Australasia'; and he
thus, without knowing it, laid the foundation lines of _Greater Britain_.
Also, in 1865, 'I had already dreamt of visiting and writing upon Russia,
a country which always had a great hold on my imagination.' Another
project of these undergraduate years was less his own than his
grandfather's. Old Mr. Dilke contemplated a universal catalogue of books,
to be prepared by international action. This scheme was completely
abandoned, yet it is interesting that the grandson entertained it. The
scholar, not merely the lover, but the active servant, of learning, was
always present in Charles Dilke's many-sided personality, though never
dominant. We approach the central preoccupations of his mind with the
_History of Prevalent Opinions in Politics_, towards which 'a great deal
of work' was done by him in the winter of 1864-65. In 1866 the same
underlying group of ideas took form in the outline of a treatise on
_Radicalism_.
In working for this he read 'most of the writers upon the theory of
politics--Hooker, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Linguet, Locke, Bentham, and many
more.' 'Many more' included some very unusual reading; for the plan of his
book was in three chapters, 'the first chapter being upon the Radicalism
of the days before the coming of Jesus; the second chapter upon the period
between the teaching of our Lord and 1789; and the third on Radicalism in
modern history.' In the second part he 'gave much space to Arius, Huss,
Wyclif, Savonarola, Vane, Roger Williams, Baxter, Fox, Zinzendorf, and
other religious reformers.' All this reading taught him the 'extent to
which forgotten doctrines come up again, and are known by the names of men
who have but revived them'; and, on the other hand, how doctrines change
and degenerate while keeping the original name.
'In the sketch of my book, so far as it was worked out, I gave much
space to the falling-off in the Church from the Radicalism of
primitive Christianity.... It began with a definition of Radicalism as
a going to the root of things, which naturally led to the doctrine of
the perfectibility of man, and, quoting the gospels freely, I
attempted to prove the essential Radicalism of Christ's teaching.'
Here, then, is suggested another aspect of his mind's history. He notes:
'As I rejected at this period of my life the Divinity of Christ, I
sought, under Renan's guidance, more fully than I need have done, the
origin of Christ's teaching and of that of Paul, in the doctrines
previously taught by the Essenes and the Sadducees.'
Elsewhere a manuscript note describes his varying attitude towards
Christianity:
'In the course of 1863 I ceased my attendance upon Holy Communion, and
fell into a sceptical frame of mind which lasted for several years,
was modified in 1874, and came to an end in 1875. I had been a very
strong believer, and in the loss of my belief in the supernatural, as
it is called--_i.e._, in the Divinity of our Blessed Lord--I kept an
unbounded admiration for His words, as recorded in the Sermon on the
Mount, and belief in duty towards others. From 1885 to 1888 the Holy
Sacrament was a profound blessing to me, but in 1905 I ceased again to
find any help in forms.'
To what he called in 1865 the essential Radicalism of Christ's teaching--
to-day it would be called Christian Socialism--he was always constant. It
was the guiding principle of that inner idealism which underlay his whole
life and which strengthened with his maturity. The world was for him 'a
Christian' world. But acceptance not so much of the dogma as of the
mystical faith of Christians would seem to have varied with him from time
to time, and to have varied also in its formal expression. His mind was
too positive, too much occupied in the detail of life, to have time either
for brooding meditation or for the metaphysics of religious inquiry; and,
at least in 1866, Christianity interested him mainly as one of the most
potent shaping forces of human society. The desire to follow out and
investigate at first hand certain of its modern manifestations helped to
direct the impulse for travel which was already prompting him.
The Long Vacation of 1865 had found him tramping, first with Warr in
Guernsey, afterwards alone 'through Brittany and Normandy and partly into
the provinces south of the Loire,' eloquent on the charms of travelling
without luggage, sketching also, and increasing his carefully gathered
knowledge of French architecture.
He had explored France very thoroughly before he found the part of it
which was to become almost a second homeland in his affections; and he had
the Frenchman's appreciation of what was most characteristically France.
"I think the better of the French," he wrote at this time, "for their
admiration of the scenery of the Loire, the Indre, and the Vienne. Few
English people are capable of appreciating the scenery of Anjou.... I
never saw anything more lovely than the scenery of the Vilaine south of
Guichen and Bourg des Comptes."
But this was only an excursion. The whole bent of his desire lay towards
serious travel, in which he should pass from the training-
ground of the University to that wider school where knowledge was to be
gained, applied, and perfected. In the early part of 1866 he was talking
only of a journey in America, and it was a journey with a literary
purpose. In his _History of Radicalism_ he had given much space to the
Revivals in Prussia led by Ebel, and also to the rise in America of the
school of the Perfectionists in 1834. He proposed to take with him the
sketch of this book, and work into it the results of inquiry made on the
spot as regards the communistic experiments which had been tried in the
United States.
But travel for its own sake tempted him, and even before he set out, 'I
fancy,' he writes, 'my intention was already to go round the world: but if
I had asked my father's leave to do so, I should have been refused.'
At all events, when once fairly launched, the interest of travelling
absorbed his mind; and accordingly the book on Radicalism was finally put
aside, though not before some work had been done on it at Quebec and
Ottawa. Nor was it altogether abandoned; for, he says, in treating of
'Radicalism in modern history':
'I discussed it under various heads, of which the first was Great
Britain, the second the British Colonies, the third the United States,
showing, as this table was made before I left England, the
predominance which Colonial questions were already assuming in my
mind.' Also: 'In the last part of the sketch of the work I dealt with
the political Radicalism of the future. I wrote strongly in favour of
the removal of the disabilities of sex. I took the Irish Catholic view
of the Irish question, and I commenced the discussion of some of those
questions which made the freshness and the success of _Greater
Britain_--for example, "Effects upon Radicalism of Increased Facility
of Communication," and "Development of the Principle of Love of
Country into that of Love of Man."'
'Such,' he writes, at the end of that passage which describes the purposes
and the labours of his last academic terms--'such were the dispositions in
which I commenced my journey round the world.'
CHAPTER VI
"GREATER BRITAIN"
In June, 1866, Charles Dilke, not yet twenty-three, started on the travels
which are recorded in the first and most popular of his books, _Greater
Britain_. Its original draft was in reality the numbered series of long
descriptive letters which he sent home to Sloane Street.
His first prolonged absence, coupled with the unspent shock of his
grandfather's death, had bred in him a homesickness, which under the
influence of a Virginian summer he tried to dissipate by an outburst of
verse; but the medium was unsuited to his pen, and he soon returned to the
'dispositions' with which he started on his journey.
'Leaving England as I did with my mind in this kind of ferment, my
visit to Boston became deeply interesting to me, as I met there a
group of men undoubtedly, on the whole, the most distinguished then
collected at any city in the world. At one party of nine people, at
Cambridge, I met Emerson, Agassiz, Longfellow, Wendell Holmes, Asa
Gray, Lowell ("Hosea Biglow"), Dr. Collyer the Radical Unitarian, and
Dr. Hedge the great preacher. It is hard to say by which of them I was
the most charmed. Emerson, Longfellow, Asa Gray, and Wendell Holmes
seemed to me equal in the perfection of their courtesy, the grace of
their manner, and the interest of their conversation, while Hedge and
Collyer were full of an intellectual energy which was new to me, and
which had a powerful effect upon my work of the time; to be traced
indeed through the whole of the American portion of _Greater
Britain_.'
There is no need here to attempt any sketch of a journey which is
described in a book which is still read after half a century. Charles
Dilke began with the South, where the earth had scarcely closed over the
graves of the great war, where the rebel spirit still smouldered fiercely,
and where reorganization was only beginning to establish itself. He went
on to New York, to New England, and to Canada; then, crossing the line of
the Great Lakes, followed that other highway of the northern continent,
the Mississippi, to St. Louis. Here he met with Mr. Hepworth Dixon, then
editor of the _Athenaeum_, and the character of his journey changed: he
travelled in company, and he travelled for the first time under privations
and in real danger. Together they crossed the plains from the eastern head
of the Pacific Railway at a period of Indian war, and parted at Salt Lake
City.
This is a marking-point in the experience. Before Charles Dilke set out to
cross a land still debatable, where travel still was what travel had been
for the pioneers, he wrote home two letters. Both are dated August 26th,
1866, from Leavenworth in Kansas, now a sober town of twenty thousand
inhabitants, then carrying recent memories of the days "when the Southern
'Border Ruffians' were in the habit of parading its streets, bearing the
scalps of Abolitionists stuck on poles," and even after the war basing its
repute for health on the story that, when it became necessary to
"inaugurate" the new graveyard, "they had to shoot a man on purpose."
The first of these letters is to his father:
"MY DEAR FATHER,
"I have been for some days considering whether I would write to you
upon my present theme before or after my journey across the plains,
but I have come to the conclusion that it is in every way better that
I should do it now. Before leaving you, I had prepared, with the
knowledge only of Casswell" (one of his Trinity Hall set), "elaborate
plans for my long-thought-of visit to Australia.
"After landing in the States, I came to think that, in spite of the
evident advantages to be gleaned by taking the two tours in one, you
might be seriously averse to my more lengthy absence. When, however, I
came to sketch out plans for the great work which I have long intended
some day to write, and of which I completed the first map during my
stay at Ottawa, I found that I must go to Australia before getting
very far through with the book, and that I could not be even so much
as certain of my basement and groundwork until after such a visit.
"Were I to postpone my trip to Australia, I might find it impossible
ever to go there, remembering that it is not a tour which can be made
from England, at any time, much more quickly than I shall have made it
now; and whenever I did make it, you would have to expect an absence
more prolonged than that for which this letter will prepare you. Of
course that absence is fully as grievous to me as to you, and nothing
but necessity would drive me to it. Of course my going will depend
upon my health, and upon the letters I shall receive at San Francisco.
I have ample funds to take me as far as Sydney, and to enable me to
live there a long time, were anything to prevent your letters reaching
there as soon as I do. I enclose a letter to Knight for Tasmanian
introductions; you can no doubt get me Australian from Sir Daniel
Cooper and others. I propose to visit Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne,
Geelong, Adelaide, Hobart Town, Wellington, and Auckland, but the
order in which I take them, of course, depends on local circumstances.
Will you send me some money to Sydney, with such introductions as you
can get? If they don't turn up, I shall start a Shaker colony, or a
newspaper, or row people ashore from the emigrant ships."
When the travellers halted to rest for some time at Denver, after six
days' journey across the plains, Charles Dilke, with a brain excited by
the keen atmosphere of the prairie, "sketched out many projects of a
literary kind."
'In addition to my book on Radicalism, there was a plan for a book of
"Political Geography" based on the doctrine that geographical centres
ultimately become political centres--ideas which are also to be traced
in _Greater Britain_ under the name of Omphalism; and a scheme for a
book to be called "The Anglo-Saxon Race or The English World," which
is noted as dating from June, 1862, and being a head under which
should be treated the infusion of foreign elements into the Saxon
world--such as, for example, Chinese immigration. A fifth work was to
be on "International Law," in two parts--"As it is," and "As it might
be." Another was to be on the offer to an unembodied soul of the
alternatives of non-existence, or of birth accompanied by free-will,
followed by life in sin or life in Godliness.'
But all the time literature figured in his mind only as an accompaniment
to political life. There was more than jest in the young man's answer to
Governor Gilpin of Colorado, when that dignitary suggested permanent stay
in Denver, with promise of all sorts of honours and rewards in his infant
state. Charles Dilke writes home:
"I told him that unless he would carry a constitutional amendment
allowing a foreign-born subject to be President of the United States,
he would not receive my services. This he said he would 'see about.'"
What underlay the jesting is set out in this letter to his brother Ashton,
sent by the same mail that carried to his father news of the projected
journey to Australia:
"MY DEAR ASHTON,
"I write in English [Footnote: The brothers usually corresponded with
each other in French; see Chap. II., p. 15.] because I write of
serious matters, best to be talked over in our serious mother-tongue.
I shall also write very simply, saying exactly what I want you to
hear, and that in the plainest manner.
"I have been thinking of late that in talking to you I may have failed
to make you comprehend why 'I wanted to make you do things that would
pay,' and that if I failed to lead you to look at these things as I
do, I must have debased your mind and done you as much harm as any man
can do his dearest friend. I will, then, in this memorandum explain my
views about you and your future, leaving it to you, my dear brother,
to apply or reject them as your judgment prompts, without letting your
love for me bias you in favour of my argument.
"I believe that the bent of your mind is not unlike that of mine. My
aim in life is to be of the greatest use I can to the world at large,
not because that is my duty, but because that is the course which will
make my life happiest--_i.e._, my motives are selfish in the wide and
unusual sense of that word. I believe that, on account of my
temperament and education, I can be most useful as a statesman and as
a writer. I have, therefore, educated myself with a view to getting
such power as to make me able at all events to teach men my views,
whether or not they follow them. I believe that you and I together
would be more than twice as strong as each of us alone; I, therefore,
if you are not disinclined, wish to see you acting with me and ever
standing by my side in all love and happiness. To do this you must
make a name, and you must begin by making a name at Cambridge. If you
can go up to college 'a certain future first-class man'--then you can
give up classics if you like, and read other and more immediately
useful things--be President of the Union, and so on; but you cannot do
that from a god-like height unless you are 'a certain first.' So with
music, if you play at all, you must play like a whole band of seraphs
(as, indeed, you seem in a fair way to do). Of course, it is very easy
to say--Music is an art which, if cultivated merely because it will
'pay,' ceases to be either art or music. True! Quite true!! But only
true if you insert merely--merely because it will 'pay.' I think (I
may be wrong) that it is possible to cultivate it so as to 'pay,' and
yet love and reverence it (and yourself in it) as the highest form of
art.
"Now I come to riding. I do most earnestly suggest that if you can
bring yourself to learn to ride so as to be able to ride an ordinary
horse along a road with perfect safety, you should do so. I am clear
that you cannot go into the diplomatic service without it. In travel
you must ride. If you can bring yourself to it at all, it must be at
once.
"Now for my absence. Part of my plan is the writing of serious and
grave works, neither of which can be written until I have seen
Australia as well as America. I find it, then, a necessity to go
there; and I go there now, firstly because I have it within reach, and
secondly, because absence from all, and above all from you, dearest,
would be worse at any future time than now.
"Keep, however, constantly before you the ultimate doing good or being
useful--which is (for I firmly hold the Jesuit doctrine, if it be
rightly understood) to justify the means.
"I need hardly say that this talk is for you, and not even for father,
nor for Casswell.
"Your devoted friend and brother,
"CHARLES."
"What a prig he was!" is scrawled across the page, as Charles Dilke's
judgment on himself, when later the letter fell into his hands.
But, happily, in all the ordinary intercourse of life, ease and geniality
were native to him; he got on readily with all manner of men; and nothing
could have been better for him than the plunge into a society where all
was in the rough. He shed his priggishness once and for all somewhere on
the "Great Divide." What makes the permanent charm of _Greater Britain_ is
its sense of enjoyment, its delighted acceptance of new and unconventional
ways. In crossing the plains, he first made the experience of actual
physical privations, and for the first time saw and fell in love with "the
bright eyes of danger."
Through all the seriousness and solid concentration of _Greater Britain_
there runs a vein of high spirits. Facts are there, but with them is a
ferment of ideas and of feeling. Part of that feeling is just a contagious
delight in the joyous business of living. But the strong current which
lifted him so buoyantly was an emotion which no shyness or stiffness
hampered in the expression--in its essence an exultant patriotism of race.
Democracy meant to him in this stage of his development, not any abstract
theory of government, but the triumph of English ideas.
California, then in the full rush of mining, was the touchstone of
Democracy; where, out of the chaos of blackguardism, through lynchings and
vigilance committees, judge and jury were at work evolving decent security
and settled government.
"The wonder is" (he wrote) "not that, in such a State as California
was till lately, the machinery of government should work unevenly, but
that it should work at all. Democracy has never endured so rough a
test as that from which it has triumphantly emerged in the Golden
State and City....
"California is too British to be typically American: it would seem
that nowhere in the United States have we found the true America or
the real American. Except as abstractions, they do not exist; it is
only by looking carefully at each eccentric and irregular America--at
Irish New York, at Puritan New England, at the rowdy South, at the
rough and swaggering Far West, at the cosmopolitan Pacific States--
that we come to reject the anomalous features, and to find America in
the points they possess in common. It is when the country is left that
there rises in the mind an image that soars above all local prejudice
--that of the America of the law-abiding, mighty people who are
imposing English institutions on the world." [Footnote: _Greater
Britain_ (popular edition), p. 193.]
The same thought is summed up in the chapter where he sets down his
recollected impressions on board the ship that carried him southwards
along the shores of America from the Golden Gate towards Panama:
"A man may see American countries, from the pine-wastes of Maine to
the slopes of the Sierra; may talk with American men and women, from
the sober citizens of Boston to Digger Indians in California; may eat
of American dishes, from jerked buffalo in Colorado to clambakes on
the shores near Salem; and yet, from the time he first 'smells the
molasses' at Nantucket light-ship to the moment when the pilot quits
him at the Golden Gate, may have no idea of an America. You may have
seen the East, the South, the West, the Pacific States, and yet have
failed to find America. It is not till you have left her shores that
her image grows up in the mind.
"The first thing that strikes the Englishman just landed in New York
is the apparent Latinization of the English in America; but before he
leaves the country, he comes to see that this is at most a local fact,
and that the true moral of America is the vigour of the English race--
the defeat of the cheaper by the dearer peoples, the victory of the
man whose food costs four shillings a day over the man whose food
costs four pence."[Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 216.]
That is the governing idea of the book--an idea in which were merged those
other projects which passed before him when he halted at Denver; and it is
set forth with most fulness and vigour in the opening chapters, which deal
with a "Greater Britain" that is outside the British Empire--with the
Britain that no longer dwells under the British flag.
He left the Pacific shores in tremendous spirits, and on the voyage to New
Zealand was a provider of entertainment for his fellow-
passengers, writing an _opéra bouffe_, _Oparo, or the Enchanting Isle_, in
which he himself spoke the prologue as Neptune, 'two hundred miles west-
sou'-west of Pitcairn Island.' His head might be full of politics and of
the ethics which touch on politics; but he was in the humour to turn his
mind to jesting and to find material for comedy as well as for grave
discourse in the advent of white men to cannibal islands.
The rest of the book is a sequel or corollary. English institutions are
studied in New Zealand and in Australia, among autonomous communities of
Britons. Later on they are studied in Ceylon and India, where they have
their application to white men, living not as part of a democracy, but as
the arbiters of their fate to Orientals.
Dilke's own exposition of this governing conception was set out in the
preface to the book:
"In 1866 and 1867 I followed England round the world: everywhere I was
in English-speaking or in English-governed lands. If I remarked that
climate, soil, manners of life, that mixture with other peoples, had
modified the blood, I saw, too, that in essentials the race was
always, one.
"The idea which in all the length of my travels has been at once my
fellow and my guide--a key wherewith to unlock the hidden things of
strange new lands--is a conception, however imperfect, of the grandeur
of our race, already girdling the earth, which it is destined perhaps
eventually to overspread.
"In America the peoples of the world are being fused together, but
they are run into an English mould: Alfred's laws and Chaucer's tongue
are theirs whether they would or no. There are men who say that
Britain in her age will claim the glory of having planted greater
Englands across the seas. They fail to perceive that she has done more
than found plantations of her own--that she has imposed her
institutions upon the offshoots of Germany, of Ireland, of
Scandinavia, and of Spain. Through America, England is speaking to the
world.
"Sketches of Saxondom may be of interest even upon humbler grounds:
the development of the England of Elizabeth is to be found, not in the
Britain of Victoria, but in half the habitable globe. If two small
islands are by courtesy styled 'Great,' America, Australia, India,
must form a 'Greater Britain.'"
He wrote of this passage in his Memoir:
'The preface of _Greater Britain_, in which the title is justified and
explained, is the best piece of work of my life. It states the
doctrine on which our rule should be based--remembered in Canada--
forgotten in South Africa--the true as against the bastard
Imperialism. As will be seen from it, I included in my "Greater
Britain" our Magna Graecia of the United States. As late as 1880,
twelve years after the publication of my book, not only was the title
"Greater Britain" often used for the English world--as I used it--but,
speaking at the Lotus Club of New York, Mr. Whitelaw Reid used it
specially of the United States. Tom Hughes, he declared, "led a
pioneer English colony to this Greater Britain, to seek here a fuller
expansion." It is contracting an idea which, as its author, I think
lofty and even noble, to use "Greater Britain" only of the British
Empire, as is now done.'
The touch of enthusiasm in this book lifted his writing to its highest
plane. He himself was specially proud of the praise which P. G. Hamerton
bestowed on the landscape passages: [Footnote: See Appendix, pp. 72, 73.]
and they have the quality, which his grandfather schooled him in, of being
really descriptive. But his characteristic excellence is found far more in
such a passage as that which follows his sketch of the time when "the
thinking men of Boston and the Cambridge professors, Emerson, Russell
Lowell, Asa Gray, and a dozen more ... morally seceded from their
country's councils," because in those councils the slave-holders still had
the upper hand. Here are a few of its ringing sentences:
"In 1863 and 1864 there came the reckoning. When America was first
brought to see the things that had been done in her name, and at her
cost, and, rising in her hitherto unknown strength, struck the noblest
blow for freedom that the world has seen, the men who had been urging
on the movement from without at once re-entered the national ranks,
and marched to victory. Of the men who sat beneath Longfellow, and
Agassiz, and Emerson, whole battalions went forth to war. From Oberlin
almost every male student and professor marched, and the University
teaching was left in the women's hands. Out of 8,000 school-teachers
in Pennsylvania, of whom 300 alone were drafted, 3,000 volunteered for
the war. Everywhere the students were foremost among the Volunteers,
and from that time forward America and her thinkers were at one."
[Footnote: _Greater Britain_ (popular edition), p. 41.]
The book was written at high pressure--in twelve months of desk work,
beginning in June, 1867, when the traveller returned from his year's
wandering--and it was not written under favourable conditions. He had
contracted malaria in Ceylon, which gradually destroyed his appetite, and
so induced a state of weakness leading to delirium at night. The end was
an attack of typhoid fever, which came on while the book was still in the
press; and his father, thinking it important to hurry the publication,
took on himself to correct the proofs while his son was ill. The result
was a crop of blunders; but nothing interfered with the unforeseen success
of the book, which was published in the last months of 1868. Large
portions of the work were translated into Russian, its circulation in
America was enormous (under a pirate flag), and in England it rapidly ran
through three editions, and was praised in the newspapers almost without
exception.
In the reviews which appeared there stood out a general acceptance of the
book as fair and friendly to all. In spite of its audacious patriotism, it
was no way limited in sympathy. This fairness of mind received the homage
of Thiers in a great defence of his Protectionist budget. "Un membre du
parlement d'Angleterre, qui est certainement un des hommes les plus
éclairés de son pays, M. Wentworth Dilke, vient d'écrire un livre des plus
remarquables," he said, and pressed the argument that Charles Dilke's
defence of Protection from the American and Australian point of view
gained authority by the very fact that its author was _libre-échangiste
d'Europe_. Dilke always called himself, more accurately, "a geographical
Free Trader." He accepted, that is to say, the doctrine for Great Britain
unreservedly, only because of Great Britain's geographical conditions.
This was very different from the orthodox English Liberal's view of Free
Trade as a universal maxim to be accepted under penalty of political
excommunication.
On a matter of even wider import for Imperial statesmanship his sympathies
were at once and clearly declared. From this his first entry into the
arena of public debate he was the champion of the dark-skinned peoples--
all the more, perhaps, because he recognized clearly that the Anglo-Saxons
were "the only extirpating race." In lands where white men could rear
their children it seemed to him inevitable that the Anglo-Saxon race
should replace the coloured peoples as, to take his own illustration, the
English fly was superseding all other flies in New Zealand. Yet at least
while the American-Indians or the Maoris remained, he was determined to
secure justice for them; and he incurred angry criticism for outspoken
condemnation of English dealing with the natives in Tasmania. But a great
part of his book is devoted to discussion of questions which must be of
constant recurrence, affecting the relations of Englishmen to natives in
lands where the English are only a governing handful. These matters
received special comment in a letter from John Stuart Mill at Avignon on
February 9th, 1869. Mill, although a stranger to Dilke, was moved to write
his commendation in the most ungrudging terms:
"It is long" (he said) "since any book connected with practical
politics has been published on which I build such high hopes of the
future usefulness and distinction of the writer, showing, as it does,
that he not only possesses a most unusual amount of real knowledge on
many of the principal questions of the future, but a mind strongly
predisposed to what are (at least in my opinion) the most advanced and
enlightened views of them.
"There are so few opinions expressed in any part of your book with
which I do not, so far as my knowledge extends, fully and heartily
coincide, that I feel impelled to take the liberty of noting the small
number of points of any consequence on which I differ from you. These
relate chiefly to India; though on that subject also I agree with you
to a much greater extent than I differ. Not only do I most cordially
sympathize with all you say about the insolence of the English even in
India to the native population, which has now become not only a
disgrace, but, as you have so usefully shown, a danger to our dominion
there; but I have been much struck by the sagacity which, in so short
a stay as yours must have been, has enabled you to detect facts which
are as yet obvious to very few: as, for instance, the immense increase
of all the evils and dangers you have pointed out by the substitution
of the Queen's army for a local force of which both men and officers
had at least a comparatively permanent tie to the country; and again,
that the superior authority in England, having the records of all the
presidencies before it, and corresponding regularly with them all, is
the only authority which really knows India; the local governments and
offices only knowing, at most, their own part of it, and having
generally strong prejudices in favour of the peculiarities of the
system of government there adopted, and against those of the other
party." [Footnote: James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, was the
historian of India, and for a long time one amongst its official
rulers at the India House.]
Then followed an exhaustive and very friendly criticism, in which the most
interesting points are his challenge of Dilke's proposal to make the
Secretary of State for India a permanent office, not changing with party
upheavals, and, lastly, this:
"If there is any criticism of a somewhat broader character that I
could make, I think it would be this--that (in speaking of the
physical and moral characteristics of the populations descended from
the English) you sometimes express yourself almost as if there were no
sources of national character but race and climate, as if whatever
does not come from race must come from climate, and whatever does not
come from climate must come from race. But as you show in many parts
of your book a strong sense of the good and bad influences of
education, legislation, and social circumstances, the only inference I
draw is that you do not, perhaps, go so far as I do myself in
believing these last causes to be of prodigiously greater efficacy
than either race or climate, or the two combined."
The writing of this letter marked the beginning of a friendship which
lasted till Mill's death. If the book had done nothing but secure Dilke
this friend, it would have been well rewarded. But rewards were not
lacking. The fortunate author was crowned with a great popular success
invaluable for a young man about to enter political life. Yet more
important even than the prestige acquired was the sum of experience
gained.
APPENDIX
EXTRACT FROM "LANDSCAPE," BY PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
A traveller who did not set out with the intention of word-painting, but
to see how men of English race fared wherever they had settled, said that
'travellers soon learn, when making estimates of a country's value, to
despise no feature of the landscape.' If Sir Charles Dilke wrote that
rather from the political than the artistic point of view, it is not the
less accurate in any case, for the landscape, however uninteresting it may
seem, or even ugly, is never without its great influence on human
happiness and destiny. The interest in human affairs which Sir Charles
Dilke has in common with most men of any conspicuous ability, does not
prevent him from seeing landscape-nature as well as if his travels had no
other object. His description of the Great Plains of Colorado is an
excellent example of that valuable kind of description which is not merely
an artful arrangement of sonorous words, but perfectly conveys the
character of the landscape, and makes you feel as if you had been there.
"Now great roaring uplands of enormous sweep, now boundless grassy
plains; there is all the grandeur of monotony and yet continual
change. Sometimes the distances are broken by blue buttes, or rugged
bluffs. Over all there is a sparkling atmosphere and never-failing
breeze; the air is bracing even when most hot, the sky is cloudless,
and no rain falls. A solitude which no words can paint, the boundless
prairie swell conveys an idea of vastness which is the overpowering
feature of the Plains.... The impression is not merely one of size.
There is perfect beauty, wondrous fertility, in the lonely steppe; no
patriotism, no love of home, can prevent the traveller wishing here to
end his days.
"To those who love the sea, there is here a double charm. Not only is
the roll of the prairie as grand as that of the Atlantic, but the
crispness of the wind, the absence of trees, the multitude of tiny
blooms upon the sod, all conspire to give a feeling of nearness to the
ocean, the effect of which is that we are always expecting to hail it
from the top of the next hillock....
"The colour of the landscape is, in summer, green and flowers; in
fall-time, yellow and flowers, but flowers ever." [Footnote: _Greater
Britain_, p. 80 (popular edition).]
If the reader will take the trouble to analyze this description, he will
perceive that, although powerful, it is extremely simple and sober. The
traveller does not call in the aid of poetical comparisons (the only
comparison indulged in is the obvious one of the Atlantic), and the effect
of the description on the mind is due to the extreme care with which the
writer has put together in a short space the special and peculiar
characteristics of the scenery, not forgetting to tell us everything that
we of ourselves would naturally fail to imagine. He corrects, one after
another, all our erroneous notions, and substitutes a true idea for our
false ones. The describer has been thoroughly alive; he has travelled with
his eyes open; so that every epithet tells. The reader feels under a real
obligation; he has not been put off with mere phrases, but is enriched
with a novel and interesting landscape experience.
In a good prose description, such as these by Kingsley and Sir Charles
Dilke, the author has nothing to do but to convey, as nearly as he can, a
true impression of what he has actually seen. The greatest difficulties
that he has to contend against are the ignorance and the previous
misconceptions of his readers. He must give information without appearing
didactic, and correct what he foresees as probable false conceptions,
without ostentatiously pretending to know better. His language must be as
concise as possible, or else important sentences will be skipped; and yet
at the same time it must flow easily enough to be pleasantly readable. It
is not easy to fulfil these conditions all at once, and therefore we meet
with many books of travel in which attempted descriptions frequently
occur, which fail, nevertheless, to convey a clear idea of the country. A
weak writer wastes precious space in sentimental phrases or in vain
adjectives that would be equally applicable to many other places, and
forgets to note what is peculiarly and especially characteristic of the
one place that he is attempting to describe.
CHAPTER VII
ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT
I.
While engaged in the writing of Greater Britain, Charles Dilke entered
upon the main business of his life by coming forward as a candidate for
the House of Commons. Immediate action was necessary; for the position of
parties indicated the near approach of a General Election.
The constituency to which he addressed his candidature in the autumn of
1867 was the borough of Chelsea, a new Parliamentary division created by
the Reform Act of that year. It was of vast extent, embracing Chelsea,
Fulham, Hammersmith, Kensal Town, and Kensington. In Chelsea Charles Dilke
had his home, and, as representing the Parliamentary borough, he would
speak "backed by the vote and voice of 30,000 electors." "I would
willingly wait any time," he said in his opening address on November 25th,
in the Vestry Hall at Chelsea, "rather than enter the House of Commons a
member for some small trumpery constituency." The electors should hear his
opinions, "not upon any one subject or upon any two subjects or any three,
but as nearly as might be upon all."
His speech began with the electoral machinery of democracy--questions of
franchise and redistribution.
Purity of election he laid down as a necessary condition of reform, and to
that end two points must be assured: the removal of election petitions
from the House of Commons to a legal tribunal, [Footnote: A Bill with that
object was at the time passing through Parliament.] and, secondly, the
security of the ballot. Upon the first matter he came perhaps to doubt the
new system after he had seen it tried; upon the second he was able to tell
his audience from first-hand knowledge that in Australia opposition to the
ballot was unknown, and that in Virginia a conquered minority looked to it
as their best defence against oppression.
From the machinery of Government he passed to its application. Ireland was
then the burning question, and Dilke's attitude upon Ireland may be
indicated in a sentence. After the Church should have been disestablished,
the land system reformed, [Footnote: His views on the Irish Land Question
had been stated in _Greater Britain_ (popular edition), p. 209: "Customs
and principles of law, the natural growth of the Irish mind and the Irish
soil, can be recognized and made the basis of legislation without bringing
about the disruption of the Empire. The first Irish question that we shall
have to set ourselves to face is that of land. Permanent tenure is as
natural to the Irish as free-holding to the English people. All that is
needed of our statesmen is that they recognize in legislation that which
they cannot but admit in private talk--namely, that there may be essential
differences between race and race."] and a wide measure of Parliamentary
reform given to Ireland; after they should have passed Fawcett's Bill "for
throwing open Trinity College, Dublin, and destroying the last trace of
that sectarian spirit which has hitherto been allowed to rule in Ireland"
--they might hope "not perhaps for instant quiet in the country, but at
least for the gradual growth of a feeling that we have done our duty, and
that we may well call upon the Irish to do theirs."
There went with that a moderate censure upon the lawlessness of Fenianism.
But the Irish question did not occupy so much space in his discourse as in
those of most speakers at that moment, and this for a reason which he gave
later in his life: 'About Ireland I was never given to saying much,
because, except for a short time in 1885, when moderate Home Rule could
have been carried, I never thoroughly saw my own way.' But as early as
1869 he deplored the lack of local deliberative bodies which elsewhere did
much of the State's work, and in 1871 he advocated their creation as a
means of relieving Parliament. This, rather than any special sympathy with
Nationalism as such, was always the governing consideration with him on
the Irish question. 'I showed in this way,' he notes, 'a working of the
opinion which in 1874 caused me to vote, alone of English members
unpledged by their constituents, in support of Mr. Butt when he brought
forward his Home Rule Bill.' [Footnote: Eight in all voted; all except
Dilke represented Northern constituencies, with a large Irish vote among
miners or operatives.]
He foreshadowed also his attitude towards Labour questions. He proposed,
as early as 1867, that the Factory Acts should be extended to all
employment; the best way of compelling children to attend school was, he
thought, to prohibit their employment as premature wage-earners. Another
declaration set forth that Trade Unions must be recognized, and their
funds protected just as much as those "of any association formed for
purposes not illegal." By no means were all Liberals in 1867 ready to
distinguish between Trade Unions and criminal conspiracies.
Taxation came next. His desire to "sweep away many millions of Customs and
Excise," and to establish a system so far as possible of direct taxation,
is notable because it was put forward at the very moment when he was
explaining in _Greater Britain_ to the precisians of Free Trade that young
countries, like America and the Colonies, had reasonable grounds for
maintaining a rigid Protective system.
Questions put at this first meeting with the electors elicited a
declaration for triennial Parliaments; if these failed, then for annual;
for payment of members, with preference for the plan of payment by the
constituency, advocated by "Mr. Mill, the great leader of political
thinkers." As to manhood suffrage, the candidate held "that the burden of
proof lies on those who would exclude any man from the suffrage; but I
also hold that there is sufficient proof for the temporary exclusion of
certain classes at the present time."
This, with some other points in the exposition of his political creed,
needs to be read in the light of a passage in the Memoir:
'I tried to be moderate in order to please my father, and not to lose
the general Liberal vote; my speeches are more timid than were my
opinions.'
Yet for all his efforts after moderation he was too extreme for his
father, who probably was shocked to hear that the Game Laws "needed an
amendment, which should extend perhaps to their total abolition." Sir
Wentworth Dilke remonstrated. His son replied in December, 1867:
"I am a Radical, I know; still I have for your sake done everything I
can to speak moderately. I have spoken against Fenianism in spite of
my immense sympathy for it. For my own part, though I should immensely
like to be in Parliament, still I should feel terribly hampered there
if I went in as anything except a Radical.... Radicalism is too much a
thing of nature with me to throw it off by any effort of mine. If you
think it a waste of money for me to contest Chelsea, I will cheerfully
throw the thing up and turn to any pursuit you please."
Many other matters which were to occupy Charles Dilke later are mentioned
in this first and detailed exposition of his political faith. He dealt
with army reform: would abolish "purchase of commissions and flogging"; he
condemned "an army in which we systematically deny a man those advantages
that in entering an employment he naturally looked to receive," and the
double responsibility of the Horse Guards and the War Office as "a system
which is in its very essence costly and inefficient." On Foreign Affairs
he said: "I am very wishful indeed for peace, but a peace more dignified
than that which has of late prevailed." [Footnote: Speech in Chelsea,
November 25th, 1867.]
He spoke at Chelsea, Kensington, Hammersmith, Fulham, Brompton, Notting
Hill, and Walham Green, earning from the electors the name of Mr.
Indefatigable Dilke. The borough deserved that a man who sought to
represent it should state his case thoroughly, and there was an uncommon
degree of truth in a not uncommon compliment when he called it "the most
intelligent constituency in England." South Kensington was the home of
many judges and other important lawyers, many great merchants and men of
business; Brompton was still a literary quarter; Holland Park and Notting
Hill the home of the artists who figured largely on Dilke's committee--the
names of Leighton, Maclise, Faed, and other Academicians are among the
list. The honorary committee was made up almost entirely of resident
Members of Parliament.
In Kensal Town was a very strong artisan element, and at one time a
working-man candidate was before the electors, George Odger, who was 'the
best representative of the Trade Unions, and a man of whom the highest
opinion was entertained by Mr. Mill.' He not only withdrew, but became
also an active supporter.
Of the Tory candidates, perhaps the more important was Mr. Freake, a big
contractor who had built Cromwell Road, in which he lived, and who was not
on the best of terms with his workmen. Some of this unpopularity reflected
itself on the allied candidature of Dr. W. H. Russell, whose expenses Mr.
Freake was said to be paying. But the contest led to a lasting friendship
between Charles Dilke and the famous war correspondent. The other Liberal
candidate was Sir Henry Hoare, a Radical baronet, twenty years older than
Dilke, who had for a short time sat as member for Windsor. So long as he
represented Chelsea he voted with the extreme Radicals, and his name may
be found in many division lists in the minority along with that of his
colleague. But later in life he changed his politics, joined the Carlton
Club, and was a member of it for many years. Charles Dilke always spoke of
him in terms of cordial friendship even after their political association
had long been ended.
Their candidature was not a joint one, as Dilke put himself forward
independently; but when the election actually came the Liberal candidates
joined forces, and two picture-cards represent the contest as between
rival teams of cocks. In one the Odger cock is seen retreating; Freake is
on his back, gasping; Russell and Hoare still contend, while under the
banner "Dilke and Hoare for ever," Dilke crows victorious. In the second
card Odger has no place, and Russell is as dead as Freake.
This graphic forecast was justified by the result. Polling took place on
Wednesday, November 18th, 1868, and, according to a local paper, "the
proceedings were of a most orderly character; indeed, the absence of
vehicles, favours, etc., made the election dull." The voting was open. The
results were published from hour to hour at the booths, and the unpopular
candidates were in one or two places driven away by hisses. Even in
Cromwell Road Dilke and Hoare led, and Dilke's advantage in his own
district of Chelsea proper was conspicuous. The final figures were:
Dilke........ 7,374
Hoare........ 7,183
Russell...... 4,177
Freake....... 3,929
The triumph was all the more gratifying because it had been achieved by a
volunteer canvass. No member has ever been bound to a constituency by
closer ties of personal feeling than those which linked Charles Dilke,
first to Chelsea and later to the Forest of Dean. He worked for his
constituents, and taught them to work for him.
At this same General Election Sir Wentworth Dilke lost his seat, and Lord
Granville sent him a note "to condole with you and to congratulate you. I
suspect that the cause of the latter gives you more pleasure than the
cause of the former gives you regret. How very well your son seems to have
done!"
After the election Charles Dilke sought a rest by one of his flying trips
abroad. He stopped a day in Paris to examine the details of the French
registration system. Thence he proceeded to Toulon, 'to which I took a
fancy, which ultimately led, many years after, to my buying a property
there'; the scenery of Provence captured him from the first moment.
Parliament was summoned to meet on December 10th for the election of a
Speaker, and for the swearing-in of members. By the beginning of December
the member for Chelsea was on the eve of return, rejoicing in the news of
Mr. Gladstone's defeat in South-West Lancashire and election for
Greenwich. "He is much more likely to become a democratic leader now that
he sits for a big town."
A note preserved in one of the boxes gives Charles Dilke's first
impressions of the party and Government to which he had vowed a somewhat
qualified allegiance.
"_December 10th_, 1868.--House met for election of Speaker. The
Liberal party is more even in opinion than ever before. No
Adullamites, no Radicals but myself. The Cabinet is somewhat behind
the party, which is bad. Too many peers."
The House of Commons of 1868 was superficially very much like any of its
predecessors. Dilke notes that it 'contained some survivals of the old
days, such as Mr. Edward Ellice, son of "Bear" Ellice [Footnote: This was
Mr. Edward Ellice, who had been in the House since 1836, and who continued
to represent St. Andrews till 1879. He was sometimes called "the young
Bear." See _Life of Lord Granville_, i. 80, 81, 141, 171, 175, as to the
"old Bear."] of the days of Lord Melbourne,' a consistent and typical
Liberal. The Liberal party consisted then mainly of men born into that
governing class which Lord Melbourne had in mind when he said "that every
English gentleman is qualified to hold any post which he has influence
enough to secure." This element was accompanied by a fair sprinkling of
manufacturers and other business men, for the most part Nonconformists.
But no separate Irish party existed to complicate the grouping; indeed,
the Irish were much less a corps apart than they had been in O'Connell's
time. Labour had not one direct representative, though the importance of
the artisan vote had made itself felt; and this was recognized by the
choice of Mundella, then returned as a new member for Sheffield, to second
the address at the opening of the session.
The personal composition of the assembly had greatly altered. More than a
third of its members were new to Parliament. W. Vernon Harcourt, Henry
James, and Campbell-Bannerman, sat then for the first time, and sat, as
did Charles Dilke, below the gangway. In the same quarter was Fawcett, who
helped them in creating the new phenomenon of a House of Commons alive in
all its parts.
Sir George Trevelyan, who almost alone of living men can compare from
experience the House of Commons before the Reform Bill of 1867 and after,
holds that it would be difficult to overstate the contrast. The House was
no longer an arena for set combat between a few distinguished
parliamentarians, whose displays were watched by followers on either side,
either diffident of their ability to compete, or held silent by the
unwritten rule which imposed strict reserve upon a new member. For the
greater number promotion had come through slow and steady service in the
lobbies.
Charles Dilke from the first was always in his place--that corner seat
below the gangway which became gradually his traditional possession; and
from the first he assumed a responsible part in all Parliamentary
business. "He was the true forerunner, in his processes, his industry, his
constant attendance, and his frequent speaking, of Lord Randolph
Churchill." The revolt against 'the old gang' began on the Liberal side,
and Charles Dilke was the chief beginner of it. Although the new Reform
Act had led to far-reaching change in the quality of the House of Commons,
the choice by Mr. Gladstone of the members of the Ministry made it plain
that no break with the past was contemplated by the leaders. Lowe, whose
anti-democratic utterances on Reform had been denounced by Dilke at the
Cambridge Union, was Chancellor of the Exchequer; and only half the
Cabinet were commoners. Among these was indeed Bright; but the only other
Minister whose name carried a hint of Radicalism was Forster, Vice-
President of the Council of Education, and he was not in the Cabinet when
it was first formed.
On the other hand, Bright and Forster were to an exceptional degree
responsible for the general trend of the Government policy. The
dissolution and election had turned with more than usual definiteness on a
clear issue--the proposal to conciliate Ireland by disestablishing the
privileged Church of the minority; and behind this immediate proposal lay
a less clearly defined scheme for giving security of tenure to Irish
tenants. Ireland was the first business of Charles Dilke's first
Parliament, and it was Bright more than any other man who had stirred
English feeling with the sense that England had failed in her duty to the
smaller country, and that an attempt to do justice must be made. Yet in
both Church reform and land reform the actual brunt of the Parliamentary
struggle fell upon Mr. Gladstone. Bright had a marvellous gift for rousing
political emotion, but he had not the application necessary to give
legislative effect to his aims; and Charles Dilke, though fully sensitive
to the beauty of cadence in Bright's language, and enthusiastic for the
music of "his unmatched voice," nevertheless inherited something of his
grandfather's suspicion of "that old humbug Oratory"--at all events, when
the oratorical gift was not allied with executive capacity.
There was no lack of masterful grip and handling of detail in the other
great orator of the Liberal party, yet the young Radical's attitude to his
leader was one of admiration indeed, but always of limited sympathy. Not
only did a long generation lie between them, but Charles Dilke had been
bred a Radical, and Gladstone had been bred a Tory. The Government policy
after 1868 was dominated by the education controversy, and was dictated by
Forster. There was probably no man among his colleagues with whom Dilke
more often came into collision. Forster was a strong natural Conservative,
though he had been brought up in the traditions of Radicalism, and Mr.
Gladstone was suspected of not being willing to abolish Collegiate as well
as University tests.
On the Opposition front bench Disraeli's primacy was not less marked than
Mr. Gladstone's, and his romantic figure always fascinated Dilke. But his
special admiration was for Gathorne Hardy (afterwards Lord Cranbrook), in
whom High Toryism found its most eloquent and sincerest spokesman. Later,
in 1876, Sir Charles was to complain ironically that the Conservatives
"never will be able to employ the services of the man best fitted by
nature to be their leader. Mr. Gathorne Hardy will never lead the
Conservative party because he is not a Liberal."
In 1869 he saw little of either the Tories or the Whigs, 'but acted with
the Radicals.' He had modified his first estimate of the composition of
the House. This Radical group largely represented the industrial towns and
Nonconformist interests. It included Peter Rylands, member for Warrington;
Peter Taylor, member for Leicester; Henry Richard, member for Merthyr
Tydvil; George Anderson, member for Glasgow; and Llewellyn Dillwyn, member
for Swansea. Some, such as Peter Taylor, were theoretical Republicans, but
all were peace-at-any-price men, Bright's votaries, though when Bright
joined the Government they were ready to vote against Bright.
The group contained also some men of Charles Dilke's own stamp, with whom
Cambridge associations created a bond. 'Harcourt, of whom I saw much, was
then a below-the-gangway Radical.' He, though sixteen years Dilke's
senior, was also a newcomer, but a newcomer well known already at
Westminster by his famous letters to the _Times_, signed "Historicus," and
by his career at the Parliamentary bar. Another was Lord Edmond
Fitzmaurice, who had been Charles Dilke's contemporary and coadjutor at
the Union. A great figure in the Radical group came from Trinity Hall--
Fawcett, who had first won his seat for Brighton in 1865.
Among Government Liberals, Lord Granville in the House of Lords was an
hereditary friend, through his attachment to Dilke's father, but belonged
to a much older generation. Grant Duff, a man to whom later on Dilke came
to be strongly attached, was Under-Secretary of State for India. From the
first, however, a close alliance formed itself between Charles Dilke and a
junior member of the Government, who had still been debating at the Union
when Dilke came to Trinity Hall. Entering Parliament in 1865, Mr.
Trevelyan had distinguished himself by a vigorous campaign against the
system of purchase in the Army, and, in 1868, he was put in office as
Junior Lord of the Admiralty. Senior to Charles Dilke by five years, he
had not known him at Cambridge; but they "speedily became very intimate."
So writes Sir George Trevelyan in a letter of 1911:
"I was a very young Minister, worked hard all day by Mr. Childers, a
very strict but very friendly taskmaster, and never, according to the
Treasury Bench discipline of those heroic times, allowed to be absent
from the House of Commons for a single moment. I used to come to the
House unlunched, and desperately hungry; and I got my dinner at four
o'clock in an empty dining-room. Afternoon after afternoon, Charles
Dilke used to come and sit with me; and a greater delight than his
company, young to the young, I can hardly describe. But it does not
need description to you, for never did anyone's talk alter less as
time went on. The last time I saw him was at the swearing-in of Privy
Councillors last May (1910), when we talked for half an hour as if we
were respectively thirty and five-and-twenty years old."
An enrichment of that talk, as his friend remembers it, lay in Charles
Dilke's multifarious knowledge. "This man seems to know all about
everything in the world," someone remarked in those days. "Yes," was the
answer, "and last week we were talking about the other world: Dilke seemed
to know all about that too."
It was characteristic of Charles Dilke to choose for his maiden effort the
most highly technical of subjects, and one which lent itself as little as
possible to tricks of oratory. He would recall how Mr. George Melly, the
member for Stoke-on-Trent, had cautioned him: "Don't talk to them about
God Almighty; even Mr. Gladstone can't; they'll only stand it from John
Bright." On March 9th, 1869, Mr. William Vernon Harcourt (as he then was)
came forward with a motion for the appointment of a Select Committee to
inquire into registration in Parliamentary boroughs. Upon this Charles
Dilke made his first speech, filled with detailed knowledge, and with
suggestions drawn from French procedure. Later speakers recognized the
special competence shown, and when the Select Committee was appointed, he
was named to serve on it--thus taking his place at once in the normal
working life of the House.
'I acquired in the early months of this Session a knowledge of the
registration and rating systems which lasted for a good many years,
and the plan for the restoration of compounding, which was accepted by
Mr. Goschen and moved by him in the form of new clauses in his Bill in
April, 1869, was of my suggestion. By the joint operation of this
plan, and of the Registration Act of 1878, which was my own, an
immense increase of the electorate in boroughs was effected.'
No subject could have appeared less attractive than all this dull lore of
compound householders and lodger's franchises.
But the spirit of official Liberalism was constantly at war with Radical
views.
'My diary continually expressed my regret at what I thought the
timidity of Mr. Gladstone's Government.' Thus, when it was beaten by
the abstention of Liberals on Fawcett's Election Expenses Bill, which
proposed to throw the necessary expenses of returning officers on the
local rates, Charles Dilke 'was angry with the Government for not
having so much as named the Bill upon their Whip.' Again, when his
group had proposed to penalize a corrupt borough, the member for which
had been unseated on petition, the entry ran: 'We Radicals beaten by
Government and Tories on the Bewdley writ,' the issue of which the
Radicals had moved to postpone for twelve months.
In the case of Fawcett's motion to abolish University Tests, of whose
injustice Dilke had personal experience: [Footnote: Having taken his
Master's degree at Cambridge in this year, Dilke was 'immediately
nominated to the Senate as an examiner for the Law Tripos by the Regius
Professor of Laws.' But on further inquiry it appeared that an examiner
for honours in Law must be a member of the Senate, and that a member of
the Senate must declare himself a member of the Church of England. Dilke,
strongly objecting to this exclusiveness, had refused to make the required
profession. The 'grace,' therefore, was withdrawn, and he was not allowed
to examine. Sir Roundell Palmer became Chancellor in 1872, on the
retirement of Lord Hatherley. He was again Chancellor from 1880 to 1885.]
'My diary records a division in connection with which Sir Roundell
Palmer did us some harm, the fact being that the great lawyer, who was
afterwards Lord Selborne, was one of those gentlemen calling
themselves Liberals in whom it was difficult to find any agreement
with Liberal principles at any time or upon any subject. He was, in
fact, a High Church Tory, as I found when I served with him in a
Liberal Cabinet.'
On yet another motion of Fawcett's the Radicals found themselves in
collision with the head of the Liberal Government. This advocated open
competition for the Civil Service, and Dilke supported Fawcett by speech
as well as vote. Mr. Gladstone, following Dilke in the debate, suggested
that he had spoken without examining his facts, a charge specially
calculated to excite this conscientious worker's resentment. 'I recorded a
strong opinion as to the crushing of independent members by Mr.
Gladstone.'
Charles Dilke was already displaying that blend of opinions which made him
always a trial to the party Whips. He notes that, 'taking as I did an
independent line, I supported on the Navy Estimates the Conservative ex-
chief First Lord of the Admiralty' (Mr. Corry) 'on a motion which
deprecated the building of further turret ships till those already built
had been tested.'
[Illustration: SIR C. WENTWORTH DILKE, BART.
From the painting by Arthur Hughes.]
These outbreaks of independence led to remonstrance from his father, and
remonstrance to this reply:
"I don't mean to let either you or Glyn" (the Chief Whip, afterwards
Lord Wolverton) "frighten me into supporting the Government when I
think they are wrong, but I vote for them when I am at all doubtful."
This letter was written to Sir Wentworth Dilke, then on a tour through the
north of Europe with his son Ashton, by this time a Cambridge
undergraduate, and inclined to regard his elder brother as a very timid
politician. 'My father and my brother went to Berlin, and saw the Crown
Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick, and Prince Bismarck, who many
years later described to me the impression which they--the Whig and the
Republican--had made on him.' From Germany they passed into Russia, where
Wentworth Dilke was commissioned to represent England at the Horticultural
Congress. In May a sudden telegram called Charles Dilke to St. Petersburg.
His father had been attacked with 'that deadly form of Russian influenza,
a local degeneration of the tissues, which kills a man in three days,
without his being able to tell you that he feels anything except
weakness.' Before Charles Dilke could reach the Russian capital, his
father had been already 'embalmed and temporarily buried,' with a view to
interment in England.
His successor entered upon his position while still several months short
of the age of twenty-six. He took steps to give up at once Alice Holt--'a
mere shooting place'--and also sold Hawkley in Hampshire, keeping only the
London house, 76, Sloane Street, in which he had been born, and which was
to be his home till he died there. It was home also for his brother
Ashton, now reading classics and rowing in the Trinity Hall boat. The
house continued to be managed for the two young men by their grandmother,
Mrs. Chatfield, known to Sir Charles and to all his intimates as the
"Dragon," 'on account of the sportive old soul calling herself the Dragon
of Wantley whenever she attacked me in arms.' With her lived her niece,
Miss Folkard, a quiet little old lady. When Charles Dilke married, Mrs.
Chatfield and Miss Folkard made way for the bride, and Ashton Dilke's home
was then with his grandmother. When death cut short that marriage, the old
ladies returned, and lived out the end of their lives in Sloane Street.
Mrs. Chatfield was a very popular personage; and many letters from Sir
Charles's friends have affectionate or jesting messages to 'Dragon.'
II.
John Stuart Mill returned to England from Avignon in the spring of 1869,
and followed up his earlier letter of friendly criticism on _Greater
Britain_ by a suggestion of meeting. On Easter Sunday the meeting took
place, and the acquaintance 'rapidly ripened into a close friendship.'
Sir Charles was elected in May to the Political Economy Club, of which
Mill was a leading member, 'defeating George Shaw Lefevre, Sir Louis
Mallet, Lord Houghton, and John Morley, although, or perhaps because, I
was somewhat heterodox. Still,' a marginal note adds, 'Mallet and Houghton
were pretty heterodox too.'
The heterodoxy challenged that economic orthodoxy of which the Political
Economy Club was the special guardian. Forty years later Sir Charles
wrote, against the date May, 1869:
'This was the moment of the domination of the Ricardo
religion.[Footnote: It will be remembered that the fundamental
principle of the "Ricardian theory"--distinguishing it from that o±
Adam Smith--is the determination of wages by the law of population.
According to Ricardo, it is the influence of high or low wages on the
numbers of the population which adjusts the "market rate" to the
"natural rate."] It is admirably pointed out in Professor Ashley's
address, as President of the Economic Section of the British
Association, 1907, that this doctrine had become a complete creed,
with a stronger hold over the educated classes of England (and I
should add France) by 1821 than any creed has had. The Political
Economy Club is shown by Ashley to have been the assembly of the
elders of the Church, of which the founder assumed that they possessed
a complete code, representing just principles necessary to "diffuse."
The Club was to watch for the propagation of any doctrine hostile to
sound views. The sect grew rapidly from the small body of Utilitarian
founders, and conquered all the statesmen who rejected the other
opinions of James Mill. As I tried to show, with the support of a
majority of the Club, in April, 1907, the heresy of which I was
elected in 1869 as a representative has now (1908) triumphed. The
facts announced as "certain" by Ricardo have crumbled, and the
doctrine crumbles with them. Professor Ashley declared from the
Ricardo chair in 1907 that "the Ricardian orthodoxy is, by general
consent, ... dead to-day among the English-speaking economists."
'The son of the Club's founder, John Stuart Mill, lived to lead the
way out of the doctrine of his father, James Mill, Malthus, and
Ricardo, against the opposition of his own disciple Fawcett, into the
new land which he just lived to see.
'In the debates, which I regularly attended, Mill, who had become
semi-socialist in his views, was usually at odds with his own disciple
Fawcett, who had remained individualist. The rows which they had at
this Club were carried to the Radical Club after its formation later,
and I gradually deserted Fawcett, and, more and more influenced by
Mill's later views, finally came to march even in front of Mill in our
advance.'
Sir Charles was from the first actually _in_ political life, to which Mill
had come after more than half a lifetime spent in study; and experience
transformed the philosopher.
"The whole tone of his writings before he entered Parliament," said
Sir Charles a quarter of a century afterwards, "had been marked by a
vein of practical Conservatism, which entirely disappeared when he
found himself in touch with the destructive realities of British
politics." [Footnote: "John Stuart Mill, 1869-1873," _Cosmopolis_,
March, 1897.]
Dilke, rightly zealous for the repute of a teacher under whose influence
his own political faith developed, was always at pains to confute the
popular opinion as to Mill's hardness. Addressing the Economic Society in
1909, he said:
"John Mill's nature was far more spiritual than that of his father.
His self-training was far more permeated by what may be loosely called
Comtist-Christianity than by the utilitarian philosophy."
He cited as an example the conclusion expressed by Mill so far back as
1848 that "cheapness of goods was not desirable when the cause was that
labour is ill-remunerated." Here was one of the points where Fawcett
'fiercely differed' from Mill, denying the possibility of any 'exception
to the wage principle laid down by Malthus and Ricardo.' Sir Charles was
destined not merely to affirm the principle which Mill conceded, but to
show by infinitely patient investigation of the facts, first the need for
applying the principle, and later--far more difficult--the means by which
it could be brought into operation.
The change foreshadowed by this division among leaders of democratic
thought was no ordinary one; the whole direction of forces and tendencies
was altered; and from 1870 onwards Sir Charles was at the centre of the
movement which has established the 'semi-socialism' of Mill's last years
as the normal political opinion accepted by both parties to-day. He, more
than any other man, translated it from abstract theory into terms of
political reality.
III.
Since his undergraduate years Charles Dilke had entertained the project of
writing on Russia, and perhaps the journey to his father's death-bed
revived the plan.
While on the way to St. Petersburg in May, 1869, he chanced to share a
railway carriage with a distinguished member of the Russian Diplomatic
Service, Baron Jomini, son of the famous writer on strategy, and 'almost,'
says Sir Charles, 'the cleverest man I ever met with, and to me always an
excellent friend.' Jomini was useful even on that journey, when
difficulties arose over an irregular passport; and in later years he
rendered Sir Charles various services with officialdom--as, for example,
when the Russian Customs officers, not unnaturally, objected to the
English traveller's bringing in for his personal use 'books prohibited in
Russia, the most extraordinary collection that was probably ever got
together in that country unless in the office of the censorship of
police.'
From the first Baron Jomini was at hand to introduce Sir Charles to
society in Russia, but in other directions the traveller was not less well
equipped. He learnt Russian; and before setting out on his second visit to
St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1869 he had made a special journey to
Geneva, with an introduction from Louis Blanc to Herzen, leader of the
moderate Russian revolutionists. He knew Mazzini well, and through him had
visited Baden to make a lasting acquaintance with Tourgenief. Tourgenief
was then 'living with the Viardots, the sister and brother-in-law of
Malibran.' Long years after Dilke spoke of him as one of the finest of
talkers.
At St. Petersburg he met many of the advanced revolutionaries to whom
Herzen had commended him, and he was also received by more orthodox
Liberalism. The Political Economy Club gave a dinner in his honour, at
which he made a speech in French on the Irish Land Question; and the
Geographical Society held a reception in recognition of the author of
_Greater Britain_, with Baron von der Osten Sacken in the chair, son of a
comrade and colleague of the elder Jomini in days of Napoleonic war.
[Footnote: Nicolas Dmitrivitch von der Osten Sacken, Chamberlain of the
Imperial Court, afterwards Russian Ambassador at Berlin; born 1834, died
1912.] Osten Sacken's father was the Governor of Paris in 1815 after the
entry of the Allies.
After a visit to Taganrog, at the eastern end of the Sea of Azof, he came
back to St. Petersburg, and occupied by chance the next rooms to the great
singer Mario--"an embarrassing neighbour, as he used to come in about 2
a.m., and give me far too much of the quality of his voice." Here also Sir
Charles made friends with Governor Curtin, the American Minister,
'formerly Lincoln's Governor of Pennsylvania during the war, and the best
story-teller in the world.' 'I went about a good deal with Baron Jomini
and Baron von der Osten Sacken, and saw much of the Emperor's aunt, the
Grande Duchesse Hélène. My chief friends were at this time Princess
Galitzin, Prince Orlof Davydof, leader of the high Tory party, and the old
Princess Kotchubey, afterwards Grand Mistress of the Robes.'
Later in the year he pushed across into Siberia; and in the Christmas
vacation Ashton Dilke came out to join his brother. They met at Kazan,
whither Charles had returned from his Siberian wanderings, and went down
the Volga together to Astrakan, and thence travelled across the Don
Cossack Steppe. Sir Charles returned in the last days of 1869. He notes
that Ashton showed at this time the beginnings of consumption--symptoms
which led him to give up rowing, and became more grave in the years of his
travels in Central Asia.
Russia exercised from the first for Charles Dilke a fascination which it
never lost. A picture by Vladimir Makofsky, which he bought about this
time, hung in the breakfast-room at Sloane Street; 'it represents a scene
from one of Tourgenief's early stories, a summer's night in the government
of Toula: boys telling ghost stories while they watch horses grazing on
the lammas land.'
A chapter in _Greater Britain_ had set out the opinion which, after travel
in the East, he formed of Russia, from talk both with Englishmen and with
Orientals. The great power, which he then guessed at from the other side
of the Himalayan barrier, seemed to him essentially Asiatic, not European,
and not a civilizing power. He quoted with approval the saying of an
Egyptian under Ismail's rule: "Why, Russia is an organized barbarism,--
why--the Russians are--why, they are--why, nearly as bad as _we_ are."
This was his view of the Russian Government. The opinion which he formed
of the Russian people as a whole was in itself 'contradictory because they
are a contradictory people.' He found them 'avid of new ideas.' Yet,
'however fond half-educated Russians may be of professing a knowledge of
things they do not understand, I never doubted for one moment the
greatness of the future that lies before Russia, nor the essential
patriotism and strength of the Russian race; and it was these last
considerations that took me so often to their country.'
CHAPTER VIII
THE EDUCATION BILL OF 1870--THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
I.
From his Russian journeys Sir Charles returned to take part in an election
in which occurred his first opportunity for helping the cause of direct
Labour Representation. In 1869--
'at the extreme end of the year, I returned to London, and worked hard
for Odger in the Southwark Election, in which, opposed by a
Conservative and a Liberal (Sir Sydney Waterlow), he beat the Liberal,
with the result, however, that the Conservative got in. Lord Edmond
Fitzmaurice subscribed towards Odger's expenses, and Fawcett also
worked for him. The incident contributed a good deal towards that
separate organization of the Radicals which was attempted early in the
following year.'
Already another organization of far-reaching influence had been planned,
and it led to a great alliance.
'In the course of 1869 I became Chairman of the London Branch of the
newly formed Education League, and my friendship with Joseph
Chamberlain began, he being Chairman of the Committee of the League
and its real head.'
Dilke was seven years the junior of Chamberlain, who in 1869 was thirty-
three. But he had seven years' Parliamentary seniority over his friend,
who did not become a member of the House of Commons till 1876. Chamberlain
was in 1869, and indeed for several years later, a politician and member
of the Birmingham Town Council, known throughout the Midland area for the
boldness of his Radicalism--which did not stop short of avowing Republican
principles--and also for extraordinary ability in developing the municipal
improvements in which Birmingham under his auspices led the way. He had
conceived, and in the Education League partly carried out, the idea of a
political association independent of official party control, which should
cover the whole country with its branches, and so become a power behind
and beyond the Parliamentary leadership. Sir Charles, on his side, brought
into the partnership the resources possessed by a young man of
considerable reputation both in literature and in public life, who at an
early age had established himself in a metropolitan seat.
'The principle of the League was that of general education, and of
compulsion and freedom from fees as a consequence. The teaching of
religion was left to the Sunday-schools, and upon this head difficulties
soon arose.' The mass of English Liberals inherited the Protestant
conviction that "simple Bible teaching" could offend nobody, and must be
good for everybody, and consequently should be included in the term
"education," while the view of more sophisticated politicians was given by
Sir William Harcourt (then Mr. Vernon Harcourt). He wrote to Sir Charles
in 1870:
"We are fighting with inferior forces, and everything must depend upon
husbanding our strength, using it to the best advantage, and not
exposing ourselves to needless defeats. We must always seem to win,
even though we do not get what we want. That is what up to this point
we have accomplished. But we must not allow ourselves to be
precipitated upon destruction by men who may be philosophers, but who
are no politicians.... We must now retire on the second line of
defence. What is that to be? I lay down first that the thing to be
resisted is denominationalism. If it can be got rid of altogether--
best; but if not, then to the greatest degree--next best. Now, as a
politician (not as a philosopher) I am quite satisfied that neither in
the House of Commons nor in the country can we beat denominationalism
by secularism. If we attempt to meet the flood by this dyke it will
come over our heads. We must break the force of the wave by a slope,
and deal with its diminished weight afterwards as best we may."
'Harcourt then went on to defend that to which I was strongly opposed
--namely, Bible reading--on the ground that "we should give our
republic not the best possible laws, but the best which they will
bear. This is the essence of politics. All the rest is speculation....
We must make up our minds before the meeting on Monday, for in the
multitude of counsellors there is folly."'
A definite principle was at stake. Under this proposal the teaching,
though called undenominational, would not in fact be so. Bible reading,
subject, no doubt, to a conscience clause, would be enforced on Roman
Catholics, Jews, and secularists, and Bible reading, though
undenominational as regarded the different divisions of Protestant
Christianity, would still be denominational as regards these three: 'I
myself took the extreme and logical line of not only opposing Bible
reading, but of opposing Mr. Jacob Bright's and Mr. Cowper Temple's
amendments for excluding creeds, and for setting up a general
undenominational Protestantism of the majority.'
He was in agreement with John Stuart Mill in resisting a proposal which in
his opinion did injustice to large classes of the community for the sake
of introducing what (in his own words) "could be only religion of the
driest and baldest kind, and such as would be hardly worthy of the name."
At the beginning of 1870 Sir Charles was not openly in revolt, though
after working for Odger against the Government candidate, he had gone on
to condemn in a speech the Whig influences and fear of the House of Lords,
which in his opinion were destroying Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill. Mr.
Gladstone showed a desire to conciliate this overactive critic by inviting
him to second the Address to the Crown.
Accordingly at the opening of Parliament on February 8th, 1870, Sir
Charles had his part to play in the modest ceremonial which still
survives, rather shamefacedly, in the House of Commons, when a couple of
commoners, uniformed or in Court dress, are put forward as the spokesmen
of that sombre assembly.
His speech, advocating the European concert, dwelt on the cloudless calm
which lay--in February, 1870--over the civilized world, and for another
six months wrapped it in delusive peace.
For the moment domestic affairs held the field. In spite of Bright's
observation about driving six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar,
Forster's Education Bill was pressed forward along with the Irish Land
proposals, and the Government were at once in trouble with their advanced
wing, in which Sir Charles Dilke was a leader of revolt. He acted as
teller along with Henry Richard when Richard took sixty dissentient
Liberals into the Lobby in support of a general motion demanding that
school attendance should be compulsory, and that all religious teaching
should be separately paid for out of voluntary funds. When compromise was
accepted: [Footnote: The Cowper Temple clause practically left religious
teaching to local option. Each school was to give or not give such
religious teaching as it thought well, so long as no _Board_ School was
used to attach a child to a particular denomination.]
'I was, I believe, the only Liberal member who resisted the Cowper
Temple amendment as accepted by the Government, and I resigned my post
as Chairman of the London Branch of the Education League. I published
a letter explaining the reasons for my resignation; the Committee
wrote in reply that they fully agreed with me in matters of principle,
and asked me to reconsider my resignation.'
This, however, he refused to do, since the London Branch and the League
generally were abandoning the principle in the support they gave to
compromise.
Throughout the Committee stage his name appears in all the numerous
division lists, voting against Government as often as with it. Thus it was
from a position of complete independence that he carried two amendments of
great importance.
'The Bill as brought in made the School Boards mere committees of
Boards of Vestries, and the amendment that School Boards should be
elected by the ratepayers, which was forced on and ultimately accepted
by the Government, was mine. I also was the author of the proposal
that the School Board elections should be by ballot, which was
carried.' [Footnote: He always regretted the substitution later of the
Educational Committees of County Councils for the School Boards.]
The ballot was then the question of the hour, and it was a matter upon
which his study of foreign and Colonial institutions had made him an
authority. In 1869 he had given evidence before the Select Committee on
Parliamentary and Municipal Elections, 'explaining the working of the
ballot in France, in the United States, and, above all, in Tasmania and
Australia.' The evidence which he gave was of service in the preparation
of the Ballot Bill of 1870, which closely followed the example set by
Tasmania and South Australia.
Sir John Gorst, who was already a well-known figure in English politics,
though not yet in Parliament, remembered attending a debate specially to
hear what this newcomer had to say upon the question of the hour.
This first practical application of the ballot, 'forced on and ultimately
accepted by the Government,' did not pass unchallenged. When Sir Charles's
amendment was at last put to the vote, he was privileged to tell with
George Glyn, the Chief Whip, in a division which took place 'after the
fiercest conflict ever up to that known within the walls of Parliament, we
having sat up all night.' There was a long series of dilatory motions, a
fresh one being moved after a division had disposed of its predecessor
'This was the first birth of obstruction, and the lesson taught by Mr. G.
C. Bentinck on this occasion was afterwards applied by "the colonels" in
the proceedings on the Army Purchase Scheme in 1871, and then by Butt's
Irish after 1874.'
In all the discussions on the Ballot Bill for Parliamentary elections Sir
Charles steadily opposed the introduction of a scrutiny which involved the
numbering of the ballot papers. This appeared to him 'a pernicious
interference with the principle of secrecy, chiefly important because it
would be impossible to convince ignorant voters that their votes would not
be traced.' His view 'prevailed,' he says, 'in the House of Commons, but
the provisions of which we secured the omission from the second Ballot
Bill were once more inserted by the House of Lords' at its passage in
1871.
There was another matter connected with the franchise in which Sir Charles
had effected by an amendment an even more remarkable change, and that in
his first session. The proposal to give women ratepayers the franchise in
municipal elections, or rather 'to restore to them a right which was taken
away by the Municipal Reform Act of 1835,' was his. Two amendments were on
the paper, and though by a chance Mr. Jacob Bright's was taken first, the
suggestion, as Mr. Bright admitted, really came from Sir Charles, and it
was carried in the session of 1869. This proposal, as he explained to a
meeting of the London Society for Woman's Suffrage over which Mrs. Grote
presided, was in his opinion 'merely experimental, and only a first step
to adult suffrage.' In 1870 he seconded Jacob Bright's Woman's Suffrage
Bill, which was carried through the second reading--'the only occasion
when a majority of the House of Commons declared for the principle till
1897.' Divergencies of opinion had in the meantime arisen. The Bill of
1870 did not debar married women from obtaining the vote. When in later
years a proviso excluding them was introduced, Dilke, with Jacob Bright,
withdrew from the parent society. He held throughout his life that to
attempt compromise on this matter was to court failure, and that women
would never get the vote except as part of a scheme for universal
suffrage. This was no mere academic opinion; and he gave later on proof of
his earnestness for the principle involved in convincing fashion.
To the argument still urged against that principle--the argument that most
women are against it--he gave his answer in 1870:
"You will always find that in the case of any class which has been
despotically governed--and though I do not wish to use strong
language, it cannot be denied that women have been despotically
governed in England, although the despotism has been of a benevolent
character--the great majority of that class are content with the
system under which they live."
He pointed out that to admit women to the franchise did not compel those
to vote who did not desire to do so.
In this matter Jacob Bright was his leading associate in Parliament; but
outside Parliament he was working with Mill.
To the two questions already dealt with--Education and Woman's Suffrage--
was now added a third, which Sir Charles describes as 'chief of all the
questions I had to do with in 1870--the land question.' There is this
endorsement on one of Mill's letters written in 1870:
"I acted as his secretary for above a year on (_a_) his land movement
= taxation of land values; (_b_) the women's suffrage proposal, which
followed the carrying of his municipal franchise for women by me in
1869 and the School Boards, 1870."
The Radical Club was founded, with Sir Charles as Secretary, in 1870, and
Mill was among the original members of the Club. [Footnote: The others
were Professor Cairnes, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Frank Hill (editor of the
_Daily News_), Leslie Stephen, Mr. Leonard Courtney, Mr. Henry Sidgwick,
Mr. W. C. Sidgwick, Mr. McCullagh Torrens, and Mr. Fawcett. Sir David
Wedderburn, Mr. Peter Taylor, and Mr. Walter Morrison were added at the
first meeting, as also was Mr. Hare. At the first meeting it was decided
that women should be eligible. Half the Club was to consist of members of
Parliament, half of non-members.] From this platform Mill propounded, in
1870, his views on land--views which forty years later became the adopted
principles of the Liberal party; and at the inaugural public meeting of
the Land Tenure Association in 1870 Sir Charles for the first time
promulgated the doctrine of taxing the "unearned increment." He insisted
that England's system of land tenure was "unique in the world," and
answerable for tragic consequences.
"One who has seen our race abroad under fair conditions knows how
frank and handsome the Englishman is elsewhere, and might be here. But
when he looks around him in Sheffield or in East London, he sees none
but miserable and stunted forms. The life of the English labourer is a
steady march down a hill with a poorhouse at the bottom. At the same
time the observer finds, when he asks for the remedy, that in these
matters there is not a pin to choose between the two parties in the
State." [Footnote: A note sent to Lord Courtney in 1909 will show
exactly what Sir Charles's position had been on this fundamental
matter from the very outset of his political career:
"Mill's object was--
"To claim for the benefit of the State the interception by
taxation of a great part of the unearned increase of the value of
land which is continually accruing, without effort or outlay by
the proprietors, through the growth of population and wealth.
"To purchase land for the State, and let for co-operative
agriculture under conditions of efficiency and to smallholders on
durable cultivating interests."
He adds a reference to his own Bill "for utilizing public and quasi-
public lands under public management, with repeal of the Statute of
Mortmain and forbidding of alienation."
This Bill was introduced by him in the early seventies, but obtained
no support till 1875 (see Chapter XIII., p. 192).]
Within the previous twenty-five years over six hundred thousand acres of
common land had been enclosed, under Orders sanctioned by Parliament. Of
this vast amount only four thousand had been set apart for public
purposes. In 1866 the commons near London were threatened, and a Society
for their preservation was formed, in which Mr. Shaw Lefevre was the
moving spirit. [Footnote: Now Lord Eversley.] Sir Charles became in 1870
Chairman of the Society. Among the latest of his papers is a note from
Lord Eversley accompanying an early copy of the new edition of his
_Commons and Forests_ "which I hope will remind you of old times and of
your own great services to the cause." 'We saved Wisley Common and Epping
Forest,' says the Memoir. It was more important that on April 9th, 1869,
the annual Enclosure Bill was referred to a Select Committee,
notwithstanding the determined opposition of the Government. The date is
memorable in the history of the question, for the Committee recommended
that all further enclosures should be suspended until the general Act had
been amended, as it was in 1876.
About the same time Sir Charles became publicly committed to another
cause, barren of political advantage, into which he put, first and last,
as much labour as might have filled the whole of a creditable career. He
began to take an active part in connection with the Aborigines Protection
Society and presided at its Annual Meeting in 1870. This, says the Memoir
laconically, 'threw on me lifelong duties.'
II.
The Franco-German War broke upon Europe in July, 1870. Later, it became
one of the chief interests of Sir Charles's mind to track out the workings
of those few men who prepared what seemed a sudden outburst; here it is
important only to outline his attitude towards the combatants. In that
period of European history every politician was of necessity attracted or
repelled by the personality of the Emperor of the French. In Sir Charles's
case there was no wavering between like and dislike: he carried on his
grandfather's detestation of the lesser Napoleon. The chapter in _Greater
Britain_ which is devoted to Egypt shows this feeling; and when news of
Sadowa reached him during his American journey in the autumn of 1866, he
wrote home to say that he rejoiced in Prussia's triumph, and hoped "Louis
Napoleon would quarrel with the Germans over it, and get well thrashed,
with the result that German unity might be brought about."
'This' (he notes in the Memoir) 'is somewhat curious at a time when
everybody believed (except myself and Moltke and Bismarck, not
including, I think, the King of Prussia) that the French Army was
superior to the armies of all Germany.'
In coming down the Mexican coast he touched at Acapulco, which was under
Mexican fire, as the French still held the bay and city; and he had then,
later in 1866, 'begun to hope for the fall of Louis Napoleon, who was
piling up debt for France at the average rate of ten millions sterling
every year, and whose prestige was vanishing fast in the glare of the
publicity given to the actions of Bazaine.'
Before Sir Charles returned to Europe in 1867, Maximilian, the Austrian
Archduke sent by Napoleon III to be 'Emperor of Mexico,' had fallen, an
unlucky victim of French intrigue. But Paris was still the centre of
Europe; and the traveller on his way home from Egypt--where he had seen
French enterprise opening the Suez Canal, French language and influence
dominant--saw Louis Napoleon preside at a pageant, already darkened by the
rising storm-cloud:
'Reaching Paris' (in June, 1867), 'I attended the review held (during
the Exhibition of 1867) by the Emperors of Russia and of the French,
and the King of Prussia, at which I saw Gortschakof, Schouvalof,
Bismarck, and Moltke, on the day on which the Pole Berezowski shot at
Alexander II. Sixty thousand men marched past the three Sovereigns at
the very spot at which, three years later, one of them was, to review
a larger German force. The crash was near; Maximilian had been shot.
It is, however, not pleasant to contrast the horror with which the
news of the execution of the puppet Emperor was received in Europe,
with the indifference with which all but a handful of Radicals had
regarded the Paris executions of December, 1851.'
'In October, 1867, three months later, I again visited Paris, with my
father, and made the acquaintance of the Queen of Holland, the Queen
of Sheba to Louis Napoleon's Solomon in his glory. The Emperor of
Austria, the King of Bavaria, and Beust were also in Paris on business
which boded no good to Bismarck, and the populace were amusing
themselves in crying "Vive Garibaldi!" to the Austrian Emperor, as
three or four months earlier they had cried "Vive la Pologne!" to the
Tsar. At a banquet to the Foreign Commission to the Exhibition, at
which I dined, I heard Rouher make his famous speech, "L'Italie n'aura
jamais Rome," which he afterwards in December repeated in the Corps
Législatif--"L'Italie ne s'emparera pas de Rome--jamais" (shouts of
"Jamais!" from the Right): "Jamais la France ne supportera cette
violence faite à son honneur et à la catholicité." When I heard the
word "jamais," I believed I should live to see Italy at Rome, but
hardly so soon.'
His governing dislike of France's rulers had reflected itself in that part
of his first address to the electors of Chelsea which laid down his views
on foreign affairs. "Our true alliance," he had told them, "is not with
the Latin peoples, but with men who speak our tongue, with our brothers in
America, and with our kinsmen in Germany and Scandinavia." This
prepossession, notable in one who came afterwards to be regarded as the
closest friend of France among English politicians, shaped his action when
the crash came. It tempted him to the German side, but contact with
Prussian militarism showed where his real sympathies lay.
War was declared on Tuesday, July 19th. On the following Saturday morning
Sir Charles left London for Paris: left Paris for Strasbourg the same
evening: visited Metz on the Monday, and saw the Imperial Guard at Nancy.
Within four days from the time of leaving he was back in London, and busy
with preparations. He had decided to attach himself to the ambulances of
the Crown Prince of Prussia's army, and in this expedition two other
members of Parliament joined him:
'Auberon Herbert (physically brave, and politically the bravest,
though not politically the strongest, man of our times) and
Winterbotham, afterwards Under-Secretary of State for the Home
Department, and a man of eloquence, whose early death is still
deplored by those who knew him. We took letters from Count von
Bernstorff, the Prussian Ambassador, and following up the German
armies through the Bavarian Palatinate, a journey during which we were
arrested and marched to Kaiserslautern to the King's headquarters by
Bavarian gendarmes, as French spies, we were enrolled under the
Prussian Knights of St. John at Sulz by Count Goertz, and received
billets from that time, although we used to pay for all we had at
every place. At Wissembourg and at Sulz we were sent to the inn, and
at Lunéville I was planted on an ironmonger, but we were divided. At
Nancy only, being fixed on a legitimist Baron, I was not allowed to
pay for what I had, but I was put with him by his wish, by his friend
the Mayor, as he would not have real Prussians. He made things so
unpleasant for my companion, Count Böthmer--though, unlike his
brother, the Count was a non-combatant--that this Knight of St. John
had to go elsewhere. Auberon and Winterbotham were also put elsewhere
at Nancy. At Sarrebourg and Pont-à-Mousson I forget with whom we were,
but we were together and were nearly starved.
'We marched with the Poseners, or Fifth Army Corps, through
Froeschwilier and Reichshoffen; went off the road to Saverne to
witness the bombardment of Phalsbourg; joined again at Sarrebourg;
marched by Lunéville, and from Nancy were sent to Pont-à-Mousson
during the battles before Metz.
'The first thing that struck us much during this portion of the war
was that the grandest of the early victories in this so-called war of
races, the Battle of Worth, was won and lost in the centre of the
position by pure Poles and native Algerians. Poseners were arrayed
against Turcos, and both fought well, while hardly a German or a
Frenchman was in sight. On the field of Wörth I noted that the
Poseners had all many cartridges as well as their Polish hymn-books
with them, but the Turcos were as short of cartridges as of hymn-
books. Wanting a French cartridge, I was unable to find one in the
pouches of the dead, while of German cartridges I had at once as many
dozens as I pleased. I fancy, however, that it would not be safe to
conclude, from the fact that the French had fired away their
ammunition, that they fired carelessly because too fast; for the
Germans, vastly outnumbering the French (who ought not to have fought
a battle, but rather should have fallen back), had probably opposed at
different portions of the day different corps to the same French
regiments, who had not been relieved. After this battle all was lost
to the French cause. The scattered French spread terror where they
went, and while the railway might have been wholly destroyed by the
simple plan of blowing up some tunnels, only bridges were blown up,
which in the course of a few days were, of course, replaced even where
they were not in a few hours easily repaired....
'I was glad to have seen the beginning of the invasion. At no other
time could I have gained a real knowledge of that which every
politician ought to know--the working of the transport system of a
modern army. We were the smaller of the two invading forces, yet we
needed a stream of carts the whole way to Nancy from Bingen upon the
Rhine, perpetually moving day and, night. The French compared the
swarming in of Germany to the invasions of the Huns....
'My letters to my grandmother (by the military field post) were not
numerous. My first (written from Wissembourg) states that we are much
elated at the victory of Wissembourg; while the second is as follows:
'"I write on paper left by the French in the Palace of Justice. They
seem to have fled in haste, for... the judges' pen-and-ink portraits
of one another still adorn the blotting-paper. This place
(Wissembourg) is in much confusion.... When, by straining, and a good
deal of pressure upon the members of the old French municipal council,
a regiment is housed, in comes another with a demand for food and
lodging for six hundred horses and four hundred men; then a Prussian
infantry regiment two thousand strong, and so on all night.... We are
leaving as members of the Prussian Order of St. John for the Bavarian
camp. The whole series of French telegrams up to July 30th are still
posted here on the Sous-Préfecture, inside which is confined Baron de
Rosen, Colonel of the 2nd Cuirassiers of the French Guard." I go on to
say that the "town commandant is an English volunteer and lives in
London when at home.... He is a most accomplished man." He was
accomplished enough, but he was a lunatic; and there is no more
singular episode in the war than the fact that an unauthorized lunatic
should have appointed himself to the command of an important depot,
and been recognized for at least a week as commandant by all the
authorities. The fact was that no regiment was stopping many hours in
the town, and that each Colonel, finding a particular person
established there, although he may have thought him a curious
commandant, never thought of questioning his authority.
'One of my letters appeared in the _Daily News_. It was dated August
15th, and prophesied the complete destruction of the French armies,
and it contained a somewhat amusing paragraph:
'"In our march last night we came into a part of the country
unoccupied by either army. We were twice driven from villages by the
Mayors, who seemed at their wits' end in the mazes of international
law. One said to us: 'This town is not Prussian. It is French, and
martial law is proclaimed in this part of France. Accordingly I must
tell you that you need a French military safe-conduct. If you stop
here without it I must arrest you, and send you'--he thought for a
while--'to the Prussian Commandant at Sarrebourg.'" At Nancy I saw the
Crown Prince, Dr. Russell of the _Times_, Mr. Hilary Skinner of the
_Daily News_, and Mr. Landells of the _Illustrated London News_, who
afterwards died of rheumatism caused by exposure in the war. Lord
Ronald Gower was there on the same day, but was sent away, as his
presence with Dr. Russell as a guest was unauthorized.
'Among our adventures, in addition to our arrest near Kreuznach and to
our obtaining passes from the maniac commandant, was the adventure of
our being lost in the Vosges, and nearly coming to be murdered by some
French peasants, who in the night tried to force their way into the
village school in which we had barricaded ourselves. Another adventure
was our being nearly starved at Pont-à-Mousson, where at last we
managed to buy a bit of the King of Prussia's lunch at the kitchen of
the inn on the market-place at which it was being cooked in order to
be placed in a four-in-hand break. While we were ravenously gorging
ourselves upon it, a man burst into the room, and suddenly exclaimed:
"Winterbotham!" It was Sir Henry Havelock, who was hiding in the
place, being absent without leave from the Horse Guards, where he was,
I think, an Assistant Quartermaster-General. He had made friends with
the Prussian Military Attaché, to whom Bismarck had lent his maps, and
we thus saw them and learnt much. It was on the same day that Bismarck
himself was nearly starved. The first part of the story had appeared
in print, and I asked him about it when I was staying with him in
September, 1889. He told me that he had with him at his lodging the
Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and General Sheridan, the American cavalry
officer. Bismarck had gone out to forage, and had succeeded in finding
five eggs, for which he had paid a dollar each. He then said to
himself: "If I take home five, I must give two to the Grand Duke and
two to Sheridan, and I shall have but one." "I ate," he said, "two
upon the spot and took home three, so that the Grand Duke had one, and
Sheridan had one, and there was one for me. Sheridan died: he never
knew--but I told the Grand Duke, and he forgave me."'
No turn of fortune any longer seemed possible, and in Sir Charles's mind
hatred of the Emperor began to be replaced by sympathy for France.
'Writing on the day of Gravelotte to my grandmother, I said: "I have
no notion how I shall get back.... Perhaps I shall come from Paris
when we take it, as I suppose we shall do in a week or two." Such was
the impression made on me by the rapidity of the early successes of
the Germans. My feelings soon changed. Winterbotham continued to be
very German, but Herbert and I began to wish to desert when we saw how
overbearing success had made the Prussians, and how determined they
were to push their successes to a point at which France would have
been made impotent in Europe....
'During the week which followed Gravelotte I saw much of Gustav
Freytag, the celebrated Prussian writer and politician, who was the
guest of the Crown Prince. This "Liberal," who had the bad taste to
wear the Legion of Honour in conquered France, was odious in his
patriotic exultation.
'Bringing back with me nothing but a couple of soldiers' books from
the field of Wörth, and the pen of the Procureur-Impérial of
Wissembourg, which still hangs outside my room, I got myself sent to
Heidelberg in charge of a train full of wounded French officers of
Canrobert's Division, wounded at the Battle of Mars la Tour on August
16th, but not picked up until after Gravelotte on August 18th. It was
the first train back; and as there was no signal system, and we had to
keep a lookout ahead, it took me two days to reach the German
frontier. We halted for the night at Bischweiler, and, passing through
Hagenau, were received at the frontier of the Palatinate by a young
man who came and spoke to every French officer, and asked after his
wounds, introducing himself at each compartment by saluting and
saying: "Je suis le duc Othon de Bavière." This pleasant boy was
afterwards to show the hereditary madness of his unhappy race. One of
my prisoners was a Nancy man, and at this station I managed to find a
boy who ran to his house, and brought down his old nurse with wine and
food. It was a touching scene of a simple kind, and we were all the
gainers by the officer's hospitality.
'From Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, where I was examined as a spy, I made
my way by Switzerland and Paris to London. Almost the moment I reached
London I saw a telegram in an evening paper announcing Sedan. I
started that evening for Paris, accompanying Major Byng Hall, who
carried despatches to Lord Lyons. We were the first to bring the news
to Calais, where it was not believed, and we were mobbed in the
railway-station. Old Byng Hall put his hand on his heart, and assured
the crowd upon his honour that, though he was very sorry, it was true.
'On the morning of September 4th, my birthday and that of the French
Republic, I was standing in Paris with Labouchere, afterwards the
"Besieged Resident," in front of the Grand Hotel upon the Boulevard in
an attitude of expectation. We had not long to wait. A battalion of
fat National Guards from the centre of Paris, shopkeepers all, marched
firmly past, quietly grunting: "L'abdication! L'abdication!" They were
soon followed by a battalion from the outskirts marching faster, and
gaining on them to the cry of "Pas d'abdication! La déchéance! La
déchéance!" It was a sunny cloudless day. The bridge leading to the
Corps Législatif was guarded by a double line of mounted Gardes de
Paris, but there were few troops to be seen, and were indeed very few
in Paris. We stood just in front of the cavalry, who were perhaps
partly composed of mounted Gendarmerie of the Seine, only with their
undress _képis_ on, instead of the tall bearskins which under the
Empire that force wore.... Labouchere kept on making speeches to the
crowd in various characters--sometimes as a Marseillais, sometimes as
an Alsatian, sometimes as an American, sometimes as an English
sympathizer; I in terror all the while lest the same listeners should
catch him playing two different parts, and should take us for Prussian
spies. We kept watching the faces of the cavalry to see whether they
were likely to fire or charge, but at last the men began one by one to
sheathe their swords, and to cry "Vive la République!" and the Captain
in command at last cried "Vive la République!" too, and withdrew his
men, letting the crowd swarm across the bridge. So fell the Second
Empire, and I wished that my grandfather had lived to see the day of
the doom of the man he hated.
'The crowd marched across the bridge singing the "Marseillaise" in a
chorus such as had never been heard before, perhaps, for the throng
was enormous. After ten minutes' parley inside the Chamber the leaders
returned from it, and chalked up on one of the great columns the names
of the representatives of Paris declared to constitute the Provisional
Government, and I drew the moral--on a day of revolution always have a
bit of chalk. The crowd demanded the addition of Rochefort's name, and
it was added. We then parted, one section going off to look for Paul
de Cassagnac, [Footnote: M. Paul de Cassagnac was a conspicuous
Imperialist.] who was the only man that the crowd wanted to kill.
'I went with the others, first to the statue of Strasbourg, which was
decorated with flowers, and to which a sort of worship was paid on
account of the gallant defence of the city, Labouchere making another
speech, and then on to the Tuileries. A Turco detained us for some
time at the gates by dancing in face of the crowd. But at last they
insisted on the private gardens being thrown open, and then swept in,
and we passed through the whole of the apartments. Privates of the
National Guard stationed themselves as sentries in all the rooms, and
not a thing was touched, an inscription proclaiming "Death to thieves"
being chalked upon every wall. Precautions were necessary, for the
police, knowing themselves to be unpopular, had disappeared. Indeed
the first proof to me in the early morning of the certainty of a
revolution had been that on the boulevards the squads had passed me,
relieving themselves in the usual way, but no squads going to take
their places. The crowds were orderly, but the eagles, of course, were
broken down, and a bit of one from the principal guardroom hangs still
on the wall of my London study. The next day I wrote to my
grandmother: "I would not have missed yesterday for the world. Louis
Blanc and other exiles have come over, but I fear that the great
northern line will be cut by Wednesday, and then you will get no more
news from me."
'I had dined with Lord Lyons on the previous evening in such a costume
as had never till then been seen at dinner at the Embassy, and had
listened with him to the bands playing the "Marseillaise" and "Mourir
pour la Patrie," and on the morning of the 5th I had seen Louis Blanc.
On the 6th I wrote that I feared that my letters would be stopped. In
the course of the following days I visited all the forts with Alfred
Tresca, of the Arts et Métiers, who had been set by Government,
although a civil engineer, to organize the bastion powder-magazines,
so I saw the defences well. Alfred Tresca was afterwards arrested
while I was in Paris under the Commune, in the first week in April,
1871, for refusing to point out where his powder was.
'I did not believe in food being got in fast enough to enable Paris to
hold out long. Knowing as I do that the German cavalry were within 100
miles of Melun for a fortnight before they cut the Lyons line, I
consider that to have allowed the French its use was a great error on
the part of Germany, an error equal to that of letting Canrobert's
army join Bazaine by Frouard Junction without hindrance on August
13th, when we were already in Nancy, only five miles off. Both errors
turned out well enough, as the luck of the Germans had it; but I do
not believe that anyone now realizes the narrowness of the escape that
the Prussians had of being crushed by Gambetta. They undertook too
much when, with 210,000 men (at first), they set themselves to besiege
Paris, which had in it 500,000 (though of bad material and no
discipline), with 300,000 more French upon the Loire. The Germans
succeeded, but I believe, with the French, that if Bazaine had held
out a fortnight longer they must have failed....
'What was done in thirteen days at Paris was wonderful. It is to Jules
Favre and to Gambetta that France owed the exhaustion of the Germans
by a siege in 132 days, instead of a collapse in ten days, and it is
to them, therefore, that they nearly owed success--success which would
have crowned Gambetta a king of men, though he had done no more than
what, as it is, he did. I had an interview with Jules Favre [Footnote:
Jules Favre was at this time Vice-President of the Provisional
Government for National Defence with the Portfolio of Foreign
Affairs.] at the Foreign Office one morning at 6 a.m. I also met
Blanqui, [Footnote: Blanqui, well known as an agitator and
revolutionary writer, was elected to Parliament in 1871 for
Montmartre. He was disqualified from membership by various judicial
condemnations, but "the Chamber decided to invalidate his election by
solemn vote, instead of accepting as his disqualification the recital
of the sentences passed on him depriving him of political rights"
(_France_, by J. E. C. Bodley, vol. ii., p. 101). Theirs had him
arrested and imprisoned.] afterwards too famous, at breakfast at Louis
Blanc's restaurant (opposite the old Town Hall), the headquarters of
the Reds. Naquet, the hunchback, now known for his divorce law, was
also there.
'On one of the last sad days before the commencement of the siege
(Vinoy's or) Ducrot's army crossed Paris, and the 30,000 men which
formed it marched down the Rue Lafayette, across the Place de l'Opéra,
and down the Rue de la Paix towards the south-western heights, where
they afterwards ran away on September 19th. I never saw a more
depressing sight. I stood all day and through the evening in the rain,
comparing these wretched, draggled, weary, dejected men, on the one
hand, with the French troops I had seen at Nancy six weeks earlier,
and, on the other, with the Prussian Fifth Army Corps I now knew so
well. Troops, however, cannot be always judged by the eye alone, for
the Bavarians, who fought admirably throughout the war, when I saw
them on the march at the beginning of it looked so bad that I expected
daily to see the whole 60,000 of their two strong corps eaten up by
the single French corps which I knew was just in front of them. This
French corps was commanded by de Failly, who had commanded three years
earlier a mixed Papal and French force against Garibaldi at Mentone,
near Monte Rotondo, and reported: "Les chasse-pôts ont fait
merveille."
'The day before I left Paris I saw a sergeant of foot surrounded by a
crowd of roughs. He was explaining to them that he was an Alsatian. "I
come from down there. They have eaten my cow!" "Ah," cried the witty
Paris crowd, "if they had only eaten _Leboeuf!_" The Marshal was
looked upon in Paris as the cause of the war in virtue of his
influence with the Empress.
The investment of Paris was completed on September 15th, and on the
16th 'I parted from Louis Blanc, who was despondent, and to whom I was
able to give no reassuring words, for I had seen the wonderful
organization of the Germans. I left by the southern station for
Geneva. Thousands of packing-cases encumbered the courts, the luggage
abandoned by the women and children flying from Paris. At Villeneuve
St. Georges the French marines were drawn up in skirmishing order, and
the enemy's cavalry were in sight. Our train was the last but one
which passed, but we could, if stopped, have left Paris two days later
by the Rouen line, although on the 18th the trains by that last line
were fired at. I wrote home that I could not help thinking of one of
the plays of Aristophanes, in which a peasant wings his way to heaven
on the back of a gigantic dung-beetle in order to remonstrate with God
upon the evils which He has inflicted upon man by war, and finds that
God is out, and that His place has been taken by a devil, who is
pounding all the powers together in a mortar.
'I went to Lyons, where the red flag was flying from the Town Hall,
but where the feeling in favour of continuing the war was just as
strong as in the districts of the tricolour. I then crossed France to
Tours, where I saw M. Crémieux, a Jew, the representative of the
Government outside Paris, Gambetta not having yet descended from his
balloon....
'I visited the camp of the Army of the Loire, of which the
organization was commencing, saw Lord Lyons and Sheffield, his
secretary, near Tours, and took despatches for them to Calais by Rouen
and Amiens. They included the correspondence of Mme. de Pourtalès and
Mme. de Metternich. The railways were in terrible confusion--National
Guards moving, people flying before the Prussians, no food. I was
three days and three nights on this little bit of road, and slept on
tables in waiting-rooms at Vierzon and elsewhere. Passports were
strictly demanded at this time on leaving as well as on entering
France. When I reached Calais I found that the boat (and even that
boat one with no passengers) would leave about 4 a.m., after the
arrival of mails by sea. The inspection of my passport could only take
place, I was told, when the boat was starting. It was midnight, the
gates of the town were shut and drawbridges up, and the hotel at the
station had been closed for lack of visitors. Watching my time, I
dropped on board the steamer from off the quay, when the
coastguardsman's head was turned, and, finding a deck-cabin unlocked,
I popped in and bolted the door, going fast asleep, and woke only when
we were outside the harbour in the grey light of early morning, which
shows that passport regulations can be evaded. All through the war
Prussian spies could get into France with ease, without any need of
false papers, by visiting the Savoy coast of Lake Leman as Swiss
peasants. I was not called upon to show my papers when I passed from
the Germans to the French by way of Basle, Ouchy, and Evian.'
Sir Charles here concludes the story of his French adventures of this year
by giving his judgment of that moment upon the--
'events which will never be forgotten by those of my time ... the
downfall of the most magnificent imposture of any age--the Second
Empire....
'As I noted in my diary at the time, "it is possible that the
Bonapartists may raise their heads again, though if so, it is more
likely to be under Plon-Plon than under the Empress, an impossible
woman, whom even her son would have to exile should he come to the
throne. But the 'Sphinx' who dominated Europe for so long is fallen,
and it seems that my grandfather and dear old Kinglake were right, who
always said that he had long ears and was a sorry beast after all. Now
Europe thinks so, except the Rothschilds and the _Daily Telegraph_.
What will future ages say of the shameful story of the _coup d'état_
of 1851, of the undermining of the honour of every officer in the
French Army by promises of promotion for treachery to the nation, of
France ruined by the denying of all advancement to those who had not
Court favour, of the Morny war in Mexico--of Maximilian, abandoned
after having been betrayed, of the splendour of the Guards and of the
Imperial stables, of the plundering, of the degradation of justice, of
the spying by everybody on everybody else? What a sad farce the whole
thing was, but how seriously Europe took it at the time!"'
CHAPTER IX
THE BLACK SEA TREATY--THE COMMUNE
I.
In September, 1870, shortly after the Siege of Paris had begun, the
Russian Chancellor, Gortschakof, intimated to the Powers that the Tsar
proposed to repudiate that article in the Treaty of Paris which declared
the Black Sea neutral, forbade Russia to build arsenals on it, and limited
her fleet there to six small vessels. [Footnote: Treaty of Paris, July
13th, 1856 (Hertslet's _Treaties_, vol. xiv., p. 1172).] This particular
article had been specially demanded by England; and when France, desirous
of closing the Crimean War, spoke of yielding to Russia's resistance,
Palmerston had declared that without this stipulation England and Turkey
must carry on the war alone.
Sir Charles, on this matter as on many others, inclined to the
Palmerstonian tradition, which was certainly neither that of Mr. Gladstone
nor of Lord Granville. But Lord Granville gave him introductions for his
projected second journey to Russia, and charged the young Liberal member
with the task of representing the Cabinet's views:
"In talking to Russians I hope that you will say that we are about the
most peaceable Ministry it is possible for England to have, but we are
determined not to put up with any indignity. On the other hand, we
greatly regret any stop to increasing good relations between the two
countries, and shall be glad to make them even more cordial than
before if we are properly treated."
He added the request that Sir Charles would write him first-hand
impressions of the situation in Russia.
From St. Petersburg Sir Charles, in November, 1870, went to Moscow, where
he lived with the Mayor, Prince Tcherkasky, 'who afterwards became
Governor of Bulgaria, and died at San Stefano, just after the signature of
the Treaty.' He was thus brought into touch with 'the political intrigues'
of the moment:
'The Imperial Prince, who was afterwards Alexander III., was no
stranger to them. Alexander II. was, like his grandfather Alexander
I., a German and a dreamer, as well as melancholy mad. His son, the
Imperial Prince, like his grandfather Nicholas and like Paul, was both
violent and sulky; but he was patriotic, and had at this time the
sense to put himself in the hands of the Moscow men.'
"It is satisfactory to know that the antagonism of an heir-apparent to the
reigning Sovereign docs not depend on race or climate," was, says Sir
Charles, Lord Granville's comment on this description.
'It was an interesting moment, and no foreign residence of my life was
ever more full of the charm which attaches to the development of new
political situations. The Emperor Alexander II. had fallen back from a
most brilliant early part of his reign into its second period, which
saw the rise of his unpopularity and the birth of Nihilism. He had
become frightened, had not perhaps lost all his good intentions, but
become too terrified to escape political reaction. His son, afterwards
Alexander III., was, as often happens in despotisms, glorified by a
popularity which he afterwards did not retain. When I saw the heir-
apparent at his palace he seemed to me to be a hard-working, stupid
man, and I never afterwards was able during his reign to divest myself
of this first impression.
'Of all those that I met in Russia, the ablest were the two brothers
Miliutine. The General, I think, survived his brother by a long time,
and continued to be Minister of War for years after his brother's
death; but the brother, the Miliutine of the reorganization of Poland
after the last Polish insurrection, who was when I knew him half
paralyzed in body but most brilliant in mind, struck me as being more
full of ideas than any man I have ever met. His inferior brother was,
though inferior, nevertheless a good Minister of War.
'The Miliutines were Liberals. The leader of the high Tory party of my
time was an equally remarkable man, Count Tolstoi, the iron
representative of iron Toryism, of perfect honesty, in whom energy and
strength were not destroyed by prejudice. He was the most ideal
minister of despotism that autocracy has produced, representing the
principles of order and authority with more ability than is generally
found in leaders of his type. He was intensely hated by the
Universities and by most of those, chiefly Liberals, with whom he
lived. But although he is said by his terrorism to have created
Nihilism, I am far from being convinced that any other course was
possible to the Russian Empire, and if this course was to be taken, he
took it well. In modern times there never was so unpopular a Minister,
and when, in after years, Alexander III. recalled him to power as
Minister of the Interior, one could not but feel that the break
between the principles acted on by this Sovereign as Emperor, and
those which he had honestly professed when heir-apparent, was
complete.
'I not only well knew Jomini, but I had made the acquaintance in 1868
in London (and renewed it at a later date) of his colleague Vlangali,
at that time as truly brilliant and as supple as Jomini himself,
though as silent as Jomini was talkative; ... and between them and
their marvellous subordinates, Hamburger the hunchback Jew, and his
head of the Asiatic Department, Westmann, I do not wonder that two
stupid men, the vain Gortschakof and the drill-sergeant de Giers, were
able successively to pretend to rule the Foreign Office without the
policy of the country suffering.
'In Katkof I was greatly disappointed. The man was very powerful under
two reigns, and with the exception of Count Tolstoi, he was the only
man who was so, since otherwise all the adherents of Alexander II.
were in disgrace during the reign of Alexander III.; but I could see
nothing in Katkof except strength of will and obstinacy. He was
entirely without judgment or measure or charm. The two Vassiltchikofs
were men of what is called in Russia a "European" type, or
"civilized." There was nothing specially Russian about them, but they
were far pleasanter than as a rule are able Russians, and this was
also the case with Madame Novikof's brothers, the two Kiriefs. In
general it may be said that in the Moscow chiefs of the Slav
Committees there was more European give and take, and less obstinacy
or pig-headed Toryism of Russian character, than among any other set.
One of the Vassiltchikofs had an art collection, and afterwards
became, I think, Art Director at St. Petersburg, while the other, who
was the greater Slav, and who was the son-in-law of Prince Orlof
Davydof of St. Petersburg, who sent me to him at Moscow, was chiefly
given to good works in Moscow. I think, if I remember right, that my
hostess, Princess Tcherkasky, with whom I lodged, was their sister.
'I saw a good deal of Peter Schouvalof, known as "all-powerful," of
whom I afterwards again saw a great deal when I was at the Foreign
Office and he was Ambassador in London. He was the bitter enemy of
Count Tolstoi all through life; but his complete fall, and it may even
be said utter destruction, during the reign of Alexander III., was, I
think, not owing to this fact, but because he was easygoing and had
made friends with the morganatic wife of Alexander II. in his last
years. Alexander III. never forgave anyone who had shown this
disrespect to the memory of his mother, although as soon as his son in
time succeeded to the throne, the members of the Imperial family
visiting France, who had never acknowledged the existence of the
Princess during all the years of Alexander III.'s reign, immediately
began to revisit her at Biarritz or in Paris.
'Peter Schouvalof represented the French Regency in our times, with
all its wit, with all its half-refined coarseness--the coarseness of
great gentlemen--with the drunkenness of the companions of the Regent,
and with their courage. At the time that I knew him in St. Petersburg
he was as much hated as his enemy Count Tolstoi, but that was because
he held the terrible office of head of the Third Section or Director
of the Secret Police, with the power of life and death over everyone
except the Emperor. It was a somewhat sinister contrast to find, in
one who used to the full the awful powers of his office, the greatest
gaiety that existed in mortal man, unless in Gambetta.
'K. Aksakof was in Moscow the superior in power even of Tcherkasky the
Mayor, even of the two Samarines, even of Miliutine of Moscow, the
brother of the General. He was not in reality so strong a man, but he
had the ear of the heir-apparent, and I cannot but think, from a good
deal which came to my knowledge at the time, that there was some
secret society organization among the Slavophiles, of which he was the
occult chief. Some think that had he liked he would have continued to
rule Alexander III. after the latter ascended the throne, but my own
impression is that he would have ended his days in Siberia. His
brother John, who survived and had influence, was a very different
man, and held other views. His influence for a time was enormous,
although I could more easily have understood the dominance in the
party of Miliutine or of Samarine. Katkof retained his influence
because he was above all of the despotic party. Aksakof would have
failed to retain his, because, although he held, as an article of
faith, that reforms must come from the Emperor to the people, yet he
desired that the Emperor should be a Russian Liberal--a very different
thing from a "European" Liberal, but still something different from
Alexander III. or from Count Tolstoi's ideal of a Russian autocrat....
'Among those I knew' (says a later note) 'was the pretty little child
of Count Chotek of the Austrian Embassy, the bosom friend of Prince
Henry VII. of Reuss, the Prussian Ambassador. The child's mother,
Chotek's wife, was Countess Kinsky. She became the wife of the
Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and the birth of her son, in 1902, was
hailed by the Magyars as that of an heir to the throne of the dual
monarchy, and may lead to civil war in Austria some day.' [Footnote:
It was the assassination of this Archduke which preceded the Great War
of 1914.]
Sir Charles continued to correspond with Lord Granville about the
international complication. The Foreign Secretary wrote in December of the
proposed Conference of London that--
"It would not be a bad result that each side should imagine it had had
a victory. There would remain the public opinion of Europe, and as we
are neither of us popular, that may be tolerably impartial."
The Russian point of view had been put to Sir Charles before he left
England in a letter from Baron Jomini, who complained that attempts to
revise the Treaty of Paris by a European Congress had repeatedly failed,
because England had always made it a condition that at such "a Congress
the Eastern question should not be raised." What, then, was open to
Russia--since "all the world privately admitted that the position created
for her by the Treaty of 1856 was inequitable and an obstacle to good
understanding" but to show the signatory Powers the impossibility of her
remaining any longer in a false position?
The view which Sir Charles formed at the time was in strong condemnation
of Lord Granville's action. In his opinion, Great Britain, by consenting
to a Conference (proposed by Russia's friend; Prussia), consented to
negotiate upon an act of repudiation by which her own rights were
infringed; and this surrender seemed to him wholly unnecessary. Later
knowledge only confirmed him in his opinion.
'We knew' (he writes in the Memoir) 'that Austria, the original
proposer of the neutralization, had on November 22nd stated that she
would join us in a war with Russia if we declared war upon the
question, and Italy had already declared that she would act with
Austria and ourselves. On the other hand, we now know (1906) that the
British Cabinet of 1856 did not contain a member who thought the
neutralization worth anything, or that it could be maintained beyond
"the first opportunity." Gladstone, in 1879, returned to the question,
and said that even Turkey had been willing to agree in 1870 to what
had been done; but from a despatch to Lord Granville, dated November
24th, 1870, which has been published, it is clear that Austria, Italy,
and Turkey would have gone along with us. Under these circumstances no
fighting would have been wanted. All that we need have done would have
been to have declared that we should take no notice of the Russian
denunciation, and to have sent our fleet into the Black Sea, and the
Russians could have done nothing but give in, as a platonic
declaration that they were free would not have enabled them to launch
a ship. Then we might gracefully have yielded; but as it was, we gave
in to a mere threat of force.'
Acceptance of the Conference, moreover, seemed to Sir Charles a betrayal
of France. France, who had been England's ally in the Crimea, one of the
signatory Powers to the Black Sea Treaty, saw her capital beleaguered by
the Prussian friends of the Power which repudiated the Treaty, and could
not even send a representative to the Conference to protest.
It was natural, then, that at the opening of Parliament in 1871 the member
for Chelsea should raise this question. But to do so involved the bringing
forward of a motion tantamount to a vote of censure on the Government,
which Sir Charles Dilke himself supported; and Mr. Gladstone contrived to
put his too critical supporter in a difficulty.
The Queen's Speech inevitably contained reference to Prince Gortschakof's
action, and in both Houses there was considerable comment upon this in the
debate on the Address. The Prime Minister referred to the opportunity for
fuller discussion which would be afforded by Sir Charles's motion, but,
when pressed to name a day for the motion, deprecated discussion while the
Conference was sitting. Frequent questioning led finally to the
intervention of Mr. Disraeli, who raised the whole question of Conference
and Treaty in a speech, and was answered by Mr. Gladstone. When after all
this Sir Charles still persisted in his motion, the purpose of which was
not to discuss either the methods or the results of the Conference, but to
deplore the Government's action in having entered on it at all, Mr.
Gladstone declared that Government could spare no time, and would give a
day only if it were taken as a direct vote of censure, which they must in
honour meet; adding that the day could only be found by the postponement
of a Licensing Bill which had much support in the Liberal party. Sir
Charles persevered, and made a very able speech, to which no serious
answer was given. He entirely destroyed the pretence that the Conference
had met without a "foregone conclusion," and stigmatized the indecent
haste which could not wait to secure the presence of France even as an
assenting party to this acceptance of an act of repudiation. But the House
was dominated by dislike for anything which seemed to hint at opening up a
new European war at the moment when a settlement of the existing conflict
was expected. The Tories, 'would only speak, and would not vote'; while
Sir Charles's Radical associates, such as Mr. Peter Rylands, welcomed
anything done under pretext of avoiding war.
'An attempt was made by Sir Henry Bulwer, the cynical and brilliant
brother of Lord Lytton, by Mr. Horsman and Mr. Otway, to use my motion
for their own purposes. Otway had resigned his Under-Secretaryship of
Foreign Affairs on account of his strong opinion upon the question,
and was distressed to find that his resignation had fallen flat.
Horsman was always discontented, and Bulwer wanted to be a peer.
[Footnote: Sir Henry Bulwer was afterwards created Lord Calling; Mr.
Horsman had been a conspicuous Adullamite in the previous Parliament.]
I used to tell Bulwer up to his death that I gave him his peerage, for
he received Gladstone's offer of the peerage just in time to prevent
him from speaking for my motion. Bulwer, whom I had known as
Ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Andrew Buchanan, whom I had known as
Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Horsman, and Otway came and dined with
me, and we made a great plot, and thought we were going to upset the
arrangement with the Russians. But Gladstone succeeded in taking away
Goldsmid, who was one of our very few Liberal supporters, made Bulwer
a peer, and left me only with Otway, Gregory, afterwards Governor of
Ceylon, and Horsman....
'I ought to have divided, even if I had been in a minority of one, for
the proposal to withdraw my motion brought a hornet's nest about my
ears, and was a parliamentary mistake.'
Michel Chevalier, the celebrated French Economist and Free Trader, wrote
thanking Sir Charles. He had spent, he said, thirty years of his life in
advocating an Anglo-French understanding, and now he would not know how to
look his countrymen in the face were it not for the courageous utterances
of a few friendly Englishmen to which he could point as evidences of a
good-will that had not forsaken France in her evil day.
II.
'Immediately after my return to England in the middle of the winter of
1870-1871, which had already been the severest ever known in Russia, I
again started for the scene of war. I first visited the army of
General Faidherbe, which was gallantly fighting in the north, and I
was present at one of the engagements near Bapaume, in which the
French took prisoners sixty sharpshooters of the Prussian Landwehr--
splendid soldiers, towering above our little Frenchmen, to whom it
seemed incredible, whatever the odds, they should have surrendered. I
never saw so wretched an army to look at as Faidherbe's. His cavalry
were but a squadron. He had one good regiment of foot Chasseurs and
two good regiments of marines; and the gunners of his artillery
(escaped men from Sedan) were excellent, and the guns were new; but he
had for his main body some 20,000 second-skim of the National Guard,
the cream from the north having been sent south to the Army of the
East under Bourbaki, with whom they were driven into Switzerland.
'Ours were what schoolboys would call second choice. Oh, such men! and
without boots, without overcoats, facing arctic weather in wooden
shoes and old sacks--facing the Prussians, too, with old muzzle-
loading guns; but they fought well, and their leader, a man of genius,
made the most of them. I returned two or three times to England--that
is, to Dover--to eat and buy things I could carry, for I could hardly
get anything at Lille, where, by the way, I heard Gambetta make his
great speech. It was the finest oratorical display to which I ever
listened, though I have heard Castelar, Bright, Gladstone, the Prime
Minister Lord Derby, Gathorne Hardy, and Father Félix (the great
Jesuit preacher) often, at their very best.
'Picking up Auberon Herbert, who was on his way to Versailles to wait
for the surrender of Paris in order to take in food to his brother
Alan, who was serving as a doctor on the ambulance inside, I went to
the siege of Longwy. Like all the fortresses of France bombarded in
this war, with two exceptions, it surrendered far too easily.
'From Longwy we passed on to Montmédy, at which latter place we
witnessed the immediate effects of a fearful railway accident, a
collision in a tunnel between a trainful of French prisoners and one
of recruits for the Prussian Guards. The scene in the darkness and
smoke, with the stalwart, long-bearded Landwehr men, who formed the
garrison of the town, holding blazing torches of pine and pitch, and
the glare from the fires of the upset engines, was one which would
have delighted Rembrandt. When a rush of water, a cataract from the
roof of the lately blown-up tunnel, suddenly occurred, adding to the
horror of the night, the place was pandemonium. Almost the only men
unhurt in the front carriages, which were smashed to pieces, were the
Mayors of the villages on the line, travelling compulsorily as
hostages for the safety of the trains. I made military reflections on
the advantage of blowing up tunnels, as against the practice of
destroying bridges and so forth.'
Sir Charles was one of the first in Paris after the siege (which was
raised by an armistice on January 29th, 1871), taking in with him a large
quantity of condensed milk, of which he made presents to his Paris
friends. The purpose of the armistice was to enable regular conditions to
be signed between the conqueror and the conquered. The Imperial Government
had declared war on Prussia; but the Empire had fallen and the existing
Government was only provisional. It had a branch in Paris, another branch
in Bordeaux, and between these the investing army barred all
intercommunication. The purpose of the armistice was to allow the holding
of elections throughout France to return a National Assembly, which in its
turn should appoint Ministers fully authorized to treat for peace. The
elections did but emphasize the division between Paris and the provinces,
for in Paris an Ultra-Radical representative was returned, while in the
country a considerable majority of monarchical deputies were elected.
Republican France feared, and not without cause, some attempt to re-
establish a dynasty.
When, on February 20th, the new Government, with Thiers at its head,
signed preliminaries of peace, a condition was included which stipulated
that the Prussian troops should formally enter Paris and remain for three
days in possession of all the forts before evacuating the place. The
National Guard, refusing to obey orders, entrenched itself in Montmartre;
the seat of government was transferred to Versailles, lately the Prussian
headquarters; fighting broke out in the streets, and the control of the
city was seized in the name of the Commune.
So began the second siege, in which revolutionary Paris stood at bay
against those whom they called 'the Prussians of Versailles,' while the
real Prussians, still occupying part of the exterior line of forts, looked
on, impartial spectators. Sir Charles writes:
'At this time my attention was exclusively turned to foreign affairs,
and immediately after my Black Sea speech I started for Paris. I took
with me an appointment as a Daily News correspondent--not that I
intended to correspond, but only because it would explain my presence.
Having been unable to leave London during the first days of the rising
of March 18th, which developed into the Commune of Paris, I left it
with my brother on April 2nd, and reached Creil at night, and St.
Denis in the morning. From Creil I wrote to my grandmother: "We shall
reach Paris in the morning. It is no use writing, and we shall not be
able to write to you." We drove into Paris, and at once went to the
Hotel de Ville, where we found the famous Central Committee sitting.
We obtained from some Garibaldian officers of the Staff a special pass
to leave Paris in order to see Gustave Flourens, for whom I was
carrying a private letter from a friend of his in London.... The drums
were beating through the streets all day, and great numbers of
National Guards were under arms attempting to march upon Versailles,
and there was heavy fighting, which we witnessed from a distance.
'We counted 160 battalions of National Guards all carrying the red
flag, and saw altogether, as near as we could compute, almost 110,000
men. That all Paris was in the movement at this time was clear, not
only from this fact, but also from the following: that on March 26th
between 226,000 and 227,000 electors voted, a full vote for Paris
considering the great number of persons who, having left Paris before
the siege, had not returned. In the municipal elections after the
Commune, when the Conservatives had come back and made a great attempt
to win, the total number of voters was only 186,000. I noticed at the
Hôtel de Ville that the Parisians had a great many sailors in uniform
with them. These were sailors who had remained in Paris after serving
there during the siege, and my pass was handed to me by a splendid
specimen of a French tar wearing the name of the _Richelieu_ on his
hat. I was one of the few persons not in the insurrection (and these
were mostly killed) who saw the pictures in the Hôtel de Ville so
late--that is, so soon before the fire which destroyed them all--and I
recognized old friends which I had known from 1855, when I was there
at the great ball. Those who showed us from room to room were chiefly
Garibaldian Poles, among them the Dombrowskis, one of whom was killed,
and two of whom I afterwards befriended in London in their exile.
'The next morning we left Paris early by the Vaugirard gate, for no
one could tell us where Flourens was engaged. We had followed the main
line of fighting; his death occurred upon the other line; but so great
was the confusion of these days that we knew nothing of it until the
5th. We thought that to make for Clamart would be the surest course to
bring us to the forefront of battle, and at 8 a.m. we were in Issy. We
then heard heavy firing, and came over the hill between Forts Issy and
Vanves, but there was a dense fog which deadened sound, and it was not
till we were well down the hillside that we heard the crunch of the
machine-guns, when we suddenly found ourselves under a heavy fire from
the other side. Seeing the railway embankment in front of us at the
bottom of the hill, we ran down and got under shelter near an arch at
the corner of a park wall, which may, perhaps, have been the cemetery.
Here we sat in safety while the bullets sang in swarms through the
trees over our heads, while the forts cannonaded the heights, and the
heights bombarded the forts, and while the federal regiments of the
National Guard tried in vain to carry once more the line of hills
which they had carried on the previous day, but had of their own
accord at night abandoned, having no commissariat. They used, in fact,
to go home to dinner. Indeed, many would in the morning take an
omnibus to the battlefield, and fight, and take the omnibus back home
again to dine and sleep--a system of warfare which played into the
hands of the experienced old soldiers--the police of Paris--all ex-
non-commissioned officers, and the equally well-trained Customs guards
and forest guards, by whom they were opposed. General Vinoy, who was
commanding, had, however, heavy work on this day, in which Duval, the
General of the Commune, met his death within a quarter of a mile of
the spot where we were hiding. With this day ended, indeed, the
offensive operations of the Federalists against Versailles, and began
the offensive operations of the regulars against Paris. After sitting
a long time in our corner we found ourselves starved, and ran up the
hill by the park wall, under a heavy fire, to Issy and then walked
into Paris. I have a bullet in my room which struck the wall between
us just as we reached shelter at the top. One of my curiosities of the
time is the official newspaper of April 4th, which was conducted, of
course, for the insurrection, but which played so well at being
official that it announced as good news the telegrams from Algeria
showing that the Arab insurrection was being put down, although the
Government which was putting down this insurrection was the very same
Government which was engaged in putting down the more formidable
insurrection in Paris, to which the journal temporarily belonged.
'On Wednesday, the 5th, my brother went to the fighting at Neuilly
bridge, where the troops from Versailles were beginning to develop a
serious attack, destined, however, to continue for six weeks without
result, for Paris was not entered at this point. I, with a letter from
Franqueville [Footnote: Le Comte de Franqueville, well known to a
large circle of English friends by his book, _Le Gouvernement et le
Parlement Britanniques_ (Paris, 1887).] to the Duc de Broglie,
afterwards Prime Minister, in one pocket, and a pass from the
Insurrection in the other, left Paris at 5 a.m. by the Porte
Montrouge, and walked by Bourg la Reine to La Croix de Berny, and
thence by Châtenay to La Cour Roland, where I met a cavalry patrol of
the regular forces, and then came to an infantry camp. Having shown my
letter, my English passport, and my appointment as a newspaper
correspondent, I was allowed to go on to Versailles. There I slept on
a table, there being a terrible crowd of Paris fugitives in the town.
In the morning I had my interview with the Duke. He was kind to me,
and I saw much of him in London and in Paris in later years. Thiers
was right in alluding to his dull father as "The Duc de Broglie; the
other, _the_ duke." But both were narrow doctrinaires.
'After looking at M. Thiers' reserves, which at this time consisted of
250 guns parked on the Place d'Armes, with no artillerymen to work
them, and a Paris regiment, the 118th, raised during the siege, locked
up in the park to prevent their joining the insurrection, I started
for St. Germain, where I met Major Anson, M.P., afterwards the leader
of "the Colonels" (who resisted abolition of army purchase) in the
House of Commons, and lunched, watching the firing of Mont Valérien on
Paris. I then drove to St. Denis, the Prussian headquarters. Thence I
drove again (the La Chapelle gate of Paris being shut) to Pantin.
After a long parley the Belleville-Villette drawbridge was lowered for
me, and I was admitted to Paris, having been almost all round it in
the two days.
'Major Anson gave me a bag of gold to pay to his brother's (Lord
Lichfield's) cook. This man was in Paris, and on the 7th I called on
him at a house close to the Ministry of the Interior, and to the
Palace of the Elysée. The cook's rooms were at the top of the house,
over the Librairie, still there in 1907. He received the visit of
myself and my brother in bed. "Excuse me," he said, "but I have been
fighting these three days, and I am tired out." I asked his wife what
he was fighting for, and she did not in the least know. No more did
he, for the matter of that. He was fighting because his battalion was
fighting. "The Prussians of Versailles" had taken the place of the
other Prussians; that was all. At this moment 215 battalions of the
National Guard supported the insurrection, having joined in pursuance
of the resolution that, in the event of the seat of Government being
transferred from Paris to any other place, Paris was to constitute
itself a separate Republic. This more than anything else was at the
bottom of the insurrection, and, as M. Jules Simon has said, "many
Republicans who were neither Socialists nor Revolutionists hesitated.
One asked oneself if in fighting on the side of order one was not at
the same time fighting for a dynasty." Then, again, serving in the
National Guard meant pay and food, especially for the working man, for
there was no work to be got in Paris, as business had not been
reopened. Moreover, Paris was writhing with rage at the Prussian
entry, and Parisian vanity was engaged on the side of the
insurrection.
'The insurrection was certainly at this time very far from being a
communistic movement, as from a natural confusion of names it was
thought to be by foreigners. There was a burning jealousy in Paris of
the "Rurals," and a real fear, not ill-founded, that a Royalist
conspiracy was on foot. The irritations of the siege, however, played
the largest part. The National Guard, who had fought very well at
Buzenval on January 19th, profoundly moved by the capitulation, had
carried off their guns to their own part of Paris in February, and it
may be said that the insurrection dated from that time, and was
historically a protest against the peace, for M. Thiers temporized
with the insurrection until the old seasoned soldiers were beginning
to return to him from their captivity in Germany. The fighting began
with the sudden attempt of the Government to remove by force the guns
which had been taken to Montmartre, followed as it was by the murder
of two Generals by the mob. [Footnote: General Lecomte and Clément
Thomas, the Commandant of the National Guard, were shot on March 18th,
1871, under conditions of peculiar brutality.] A number of men threw
themselves into the movement from love of fighting for fighting's
sake, like the Garibaldian Poles. Some joined it from ambition, but
the majority of the men who later on died on the walls or in the
streets in the Federalist ranks died, as they believed, for the
Republic, and had no idea of the plunder of the rich. Ricciotti
Garibaldi was near Dijon "in observation," as he afterwards told me.
He said that he wanted to march upon Versailles with his excellent
little army, which would have followed him, and fought well, and would
certainly have taken the new capital, although it would have been
crushed later on. He telegraphed to Garibaldi, and "Papa" telegraphed
to him not to move, Garibaldi being wiser, perhaps, in his son's case
than he would have been had it been his own, for he was not remarkable
for wisdom. It was a strange moment: the Prussians watching the
fighting from those of the forts which were still in their hands, and
a careless, idle Paris crowd of boys and women watching it from the
walls.
'On the 7th my brother and I were all but killed by a shell from Mont
Valérien which suddenly burst, we not having heard it, close to us in
a garden at the corner of the Place de l'Étoile and Avenue d'Uhrich,
as the Avenue de l'Impératrice had at this time been named, from the
General who defended Strasbourg. During the 7th and 8th a senseless
bombardment of a peaceable part of Paris waxed warm, and continued for
some days uselessly to destroy the houses of the best supporters of
the Conservative Assembly without harming the Federalists, who did not
even cross the quarter. M. Simon has said that Thiers did not bombard
Paris; that he only bombarded the walls of Paris at the two points at
which he intended to make a breach.... All I can say is that if this
was the intention there must have been someone in command at Mont
Valérien who failed to carry it into effect, and who amused himself by
knocking the best part of Paris to pieces out of mischief, for no
artilleryman could have been so incapable as to fire from hill to hill
when intending to fire down into that which, viewed from Mont
Valérien, looks like a hole. In 1841, curiously enough, Thiers had
been accused, at the time of the erection of the forts of which Mont
Valérien was one, of making it possible that Paris should be bombarded
in this way, and had indignantly replied, asking the Assembly if they
believed that after having _inondé de ses feux la demeure de vos
familles_ a Government could expect to be continued in power. But in
1871 he did it, and was continued in power for a time, and that with
the triumphant support at the moment of the very persons whose houses
he had destroyed. The Commune had a broad back, and that back was made
to bear the responsibility of the destruction.'
Sir Charles returned to his duties in London after the Easter recess, but
he was back in Paris to see the last moments of the second siege. On May
21st the army had forced its way into the city, though several days of
bitter street fighting remained, in which the town was fired, and the
Hôtel de Ville and Ministry of Finance were destroyed. [Footnote: Sir
Charles writes of the celebrated order, "Flambez Finances": 'the order to
burn the Ministry of Finance was an undoubted forgery, as a distinguished
Frenchman, signing himself "A Communalist," showed in the _Pall Mall
Gazette_. The evidence before the court-martial of the porter of the
Ministry of Finance, that the fire was caused by shells, confirms my view,
and shows how the events of the moment have been distorted by the passions
of writers.'] Sir Charles had foreseen the destruction of these uildings,
"because they were behind great barricades in the direct line of the
necessary attack," and was also proud of the verification which a minor
military forecast received. Alan Herbert, Auberon's elder brother, who for
many years practised as a doctor in Paris, was awakened on May 21st by a
disturbance in the street, and
'"saw several National Guards and dirty-looking fellows taking counsel
together whether they should raise a barricade opposite my windows,
and they were actually beginning it. However," he wrote to his mother,
Lady Carnarvon, "Sir Charles Dilke, when he was in Paris with Auberon,
came to see me here, and the question being raised as to a barricade
being placed opposite my windows he decided it could not be, as the
only proper place for one would be some doors lower down at the
meeting of the three streets. This recollection was some consolation
to me, and his opinion was quite correct, for an officer arrived,
supposed to have been the General Dombrowski, who made them begin
lower down."'
It was on May 25th that Sir Charles left London to reach Paris, which was
known by the 24th to be in flames.
'Crossing by Calais, I reached St. Denis at night, drove to Le
Bourget, got a pass into Paris from the Germans at dawn, with a
warning, however, that it would not bring me out again. By the
drizzling rain I passed unhindered into Paris, all the gates being
open and the drawbridges down, as the Federalists were both within and
without the walls. I reached the great barricade in front of the gates
of the Docks de la Villette at seven in the morning. My road had been
lighted till the daylight grew strong by the flames of the
conflagration of the warehouses. This day, Friday the 26th, was that
of the third or last massacre of hostages--the thirty-seven gendarmes,
the fifteen policemen, the eleven priests, and four other people, I
believe. It was a very useless crime. When I reached the great
barricade at a meeting of roads, one of which I think was called Route
d'Allemagne, fighting had just recommenced after a pause during the
night. At this point the field artillery were bombarding the barricade
from the Rue Lafayette. I stood all day in comparative safety at the
door of a baker's shop in the Rue de Flandre, for the baker was
interested in what was going on sufficiently to keep his door open and
look out and talk with me, though his shutters were up at all the
windows. When evening came the Federalists still at this point
maintained their strong position, and I, of course, knew nothing of
the movements on the south by which the troops had all but hemmed them
in. The baker with whom I had made friends offered me hospitality for
the night, which I accepted, and I might have stayed longer with him
had I pleased; but not knowing how long the fighting might continue, I
determined to make my way into the Versailles lines at dawn.
'Fighting in our quarter had been again suspended at night, and in the
grey light of early morning (it was fine after a long rain) I left my
baker and made my way to the left, the left again, and then down a
long street towards the Eastern Railway. A sentry about two hundred
yards off presented his piece. I stood still in the middle of the
street. He seemed then not to know what to do. I had on the red-cross
armlet which I wore throughout the war, and held a white handkerchief
in my hand. I suppose I looked respectable enough to be allowed to
come nearer, for he let me advance. When near enough I called to him
that I wished to speak with the officer of the post. He called out a
corporal, to whom I made the same statement. They kept me there for a
time which seemed an age, and then brought an officer. I shouted to
him that I was an English newspaper correspondent, that I had an
authorization as such, an English passport, and a Prussian pass into
Paris, and that I was known to the Due de Broglie and to Lord Lyons;
also that I could name friends in the centre of Paris to whom I might
be sent under guard. He let me pass, and said: "Allez! Vous avez eu de
la chance." I went straight to the Arts et Métiers. The dead were
lying thick in the streets, especially at the Porte St. Martin
barricade, where they were being placed in tumbrils. The fighting had
been very heavy; the troops alone had lost 12,000 killed and wounded
after entering Paris. At least as many Federalists were killed
fighting, or wounded and finished, besides the great number shot after
their surrender. I found Tresca, the father, picking up the pieces of
the shells which were bursting in the courtyard, and putting them all
together with wires, to the greater glory of his own particular make.
It was the Federal artillery on the heights which was bombarding Paris
with Tresca's shells. When one burst perfectly into some twenty equal
pieces he would say:" Beautiful; that is one of mine." Any that burst
into one large piece and two or three little ones he set down to the
"génie militaire" of Vincennes.
'After several days I left Paris with Dr. W. H. Russell of the
_Times_, my former opponent at Chelsea at the '68 election, whom I had
last previously seen at Nancy on the day of Mars la Tour, and returned
to London, having for the purpose of leaving Paris a pass from Marshal
MacMahon's Chief of the Staff, which I still preserve.' [Footnote:
This Diary Extract of the War of 1870 was published in the _Nineteenth
Century_ of January, 1914.]
So ends the story. Later in life, during his championship of army reform
in the House of Commons, a Tory Colonel interrupted the civilian critic
with some bluntness. "I have been on more battlefields," Sir Charles
retorted, "than the honourable and gallant member has ever seen." The
white ambulance cap, with its black and green peak, which he preserved as
a memento, bore on its lining:
"WÖRTH. ORLÉANS.
PHALSBOURG. LONGWY.
MARS LA TOUR. BAPAUME.
GRAVELOTTE. PARIS."
Preserved among Sir Charles's papers, and dated September 30th, 1870,
there is this letter from John Stuart Mill:
"If Gladstone had been a great man, this war would never have broken
out, for he would have nobly taken upon himself the responsibility of
declaring that the English Navy should actively aid whichever of the
two Powers was attacked by the other. This would have been the
beginning of the international justice we are calling for. I do not
blame Gladstone for not daring to do it, for it requires a morally,
braver man than any of our statesmen to run this kind of risk."
At the outset of hostilities France, and not Germany, appeared to Sir
Charles not only ostensibly, but really the attacking Power, and therefore
the true menace to the liberties of Europe. The policy of Louis Napoleon
was apparently responsible for the Franco-German War, and as he said in
_Greater Britain_: "If the English race has a mission in the world, it is
surely this, to prevent peace on earth from depending upon the verdict of
a single man." With the fall of Napoleon and observation of the Germans as
conquerors, Sir Charles became wholly French in his sympathies, and before
long his close study of events preceding the war showed him that it had
really been of Bismarck's making. This did not lead him to advocate
"alliance," for when alliances between various Powers were constantly
advocated, he declared his belief that "the time for permanent alliances
is past"; [Footnote: Speech at Chelsea to his constituents, January 24th,
1876.] but his observations in these years made him through life the
steady friend of France, the constant upholder of her value to Europe, the
advocate of fellowship between her free greatness and that of his own free
country. "France," said he, "has in England no stronger friend than I." He
lectured and spoke more than once upon the great war and its results, and
the passage which ends a Recess speech of 1875 was delivered after one of
the critical moments when Germany had shown a disposition to renew attack
on France. Someone had spoken of Germany "as the most 'moral' among the
nations." Sir Charles replied:
'Not only do I think the conduct of Prussia towards Denmark the
reverse of "moral," but I confess I have the same opinions of her
later conduct towards France.... No doubt the military law presses
hardly on the German people, and no doubt the Prussian Court tells
them that it is the fault of France; but is it true? Do not believe in
the French lamb troubling the waters to the hurt of the Prussian wolf.
Taxes and emigration increase in Germany because, as Count Moltke said
in his place in Parliament, "Germany must stand armed to the teeth for
fifty years to defend the provinces which it took her but six months
to win." But why have taken them? Did not England and Austria at the
time warn Prussia what would be the wretched consequences of the act?
German fears of to-day are the direct outcome of the frightful terms
which victorious Germany imposed on France. She might have had money,
reduction of forces, dismantlement of fortresses, but she would have
the dismemberment of France and her money too. She insisted, in
defiance of all modern political ideas, in tearing provinces from a
great country against their will. France has since that time set an
example of moderation of tone, yet Germany cries out that she will
fight again, and crush her enemy to the dust. Poor German Liberals,
who abandoned all their principles when they consented to tear Alsace
and Lorraine from France, and who now find themselves powerless
against the war party, who say: "What the sword has won the sword
shall keep!"'
He then quoted 'the words of an Alsatian Deputy who spoke before the
German Parliament on February 16th, 1874, words which were received with
howls and jeers, but which were none the less eloquent and true.' The
words dealt with the dismemberment of France, and ended with this passage:
"Had you spared us you would have won the admiration of the world, and war
had become impossible between us and you. As it is, you go on arming, and
you force all Europe to arm also. Instead of opening an age of peace, you
have inaugurated an era of war; and now you await fresh campaigns, fresh
lists of killed and wounded, containing the names of your brothers and
your sons." "The view of this Alsatian Deputy is my view," said Sir
Charles: "I do not believe that might makes right.... For our own sakes as
well as hers, T pray that France may not be crushed. France is not merely
_one_ of the nations. The place of France is not greater than the place of
England, but it is different. The place of France is one which no other
nation can quite hold."
CHAPTER X
THE CIVIL LIST
The disregard of party allegiance which Sir Charles showed in regard to
the Education Bill and the Black Sea Conference did not grow less as time
went on. When the Ballot Bill of 1870 was in Committee, he moved an
amendment to extend the hours of polling from four o'clock to eight, as
many working men would be unable to reach the poll by the earlier hour.
There was much talk in debate of the danger which would ensue from
carrying on so dangerous an operation as voting after dark, and the
Government Whips were actually put on to tell against this proposal; nor
was any extension of the hours effected till 1878, and then by Sir Charles
Dilke himself, in a Bill applying to London only, which he introduced as a
private member of the Opposition under a Tory Government.
The first of the many Bills introduced by him was that to amend the
procedure of registration, which in the session of 1871 he got
successfully through Committee stage; but it perished in the annual
"slaughter of the innocents."
One of the measures which contributed to a decline of the Government's
popularity was the unlucky proposal in Mr. Lowe's Budget of 1871 to levy a
tax on matches; and Sir Charles was the first to raise this matter
specifically in Committee, condemning the impost as one which would be
specially felt by the poor, and would deprive the humblest class of
workers of much employment. On the day when Lowe was forced to withdraw
the obnoxious proposal, Sir Charles had opened the attack by a question
challenging Government interference with a procession of the matchmakers
organized to protest against the tax. He was, therefore, personally
identified with the rebuff administered to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
The tremendous spectacle of events in France had inevitably bred a panic
in England. It was proposed to increase the active army by 70,000 men. Sir
Charles was no friend to panics, and he was one of the seven who voted
against the motion.
But his was not merely a blank negative directed against any proposal for
increasing the standing army. He writes:
"About this time" (March, 1871) "I promoted a movement in favour of a
system of universal instruction in arms, and between fifty and sixty
members of Parliament attended the meeting which I called, the most
prominent among them being Sir M. Hicks Beach, Mr. Mundella, and Henry
James. We all lived to know better."
Those who joined him in this momentary propaganda dropped the proposal of
universal instruction in arms, and turned their attention elsewhere. He
substituted for it another ideal of military efficiency, and laboured all
his life to give it effect. Speaking to his constituents at Kensington in
the autumn of 1871, he advocated "the separation of the Indian from the
home army, and the adoption of the Swiss rather than of the Prussian
military system." As a Radical, he faced the question whether Radicals
ought to interest themselves at all in army reform, and he answered:
"As a mere matter of insurance, it is worth taking some trouble to
defend ourselves. There are, however, higher reasons for such
interest, and among them are treaty obligations and the duty which we
owe to the rest of the world of not suppressing our influence--on the
whole a just and moral one."
'In these words,' Sir Charles notes, 'there lies in a nutshell all that I
afterwards wrote at much greater length upon army reform in my book, _The
British Army_.'
In this year he made a visit to the autumn manoeuvres, then held for the
first time, and 'looked upon by the army reformers as the dawn of a new
day.' Sir Charles, however, with his knowledge of war, 'thought them
singularly bad.' He was to repeat that experience several times, attending
manoeuvres both in France and England. He held that annual manoeuvres were
"essential to efficiency," and with other army reformers brought later
much pressure to bear on the Government to secure this end.
As early as February, 1871, Mr. Trevelyan (then out of office) had written
to propose "a little meeting of Radical army reformers, say ten or twelve
or fifteen, to arrange parts for practical work in the House, and to found
a nucleus for an Army Reform Association in case of dire need (to stump
the country)." The stumping of the country Mr. Trevelyan did himself, and
his speeches led to the abolition in this year of the purchase system.
What he wanted of Sir Charles is indicated by another sentence: "There
never was a time when your turn for organization would be of more
immediate value." But even more immediate use was made of Sir Charles's
willingness to confront unpopularity. The "practical" part assigned to him
in House of Commons' work was to undertake a motion (on going into
Committee of Supply) for the suppression of two regiments of Household
Cavalry and the substitution of two regiments of cavalry of the line. The
change was justified by Sir Charles not only on the score of economy, but
upon the ground that heavy cavalry had proved unserviceable in the Franco-
Prussian War. Whatever his arguments, this attack on the maintenance of
privileged troops brought social displeasure on the assailant.
In 1870 the Queen had consented to abandon the tradition which made the
appointment of the Commander-in-Chief a matter within the Sovereign's
personal control; and the subordination of the military head of the forces
to the Secretary for War was formally recognized. But the Duke of
Cambridge continued to be Commander-in-Chief, and army reformers were
extremely desirous to remove him. On this subject the Press was reticent
no less than public speakers, and finally it was left for Sir Charles to
advocate in the speech at Kensington already referred to the substitution
of some other officer "more amenable to parliamentary control."
In 1870 the Civil Service had been (with the exception of one preserve,
the Foreign Office) thrown open to competitive examination. In 1871 the
institution of purchase in the army perished after a fierce conflict.
In the autumn of 1871 Sir Charles arranged to deliver at great centres
throughout the country a series of speeches advocating a redistribution of
seats which should make representation more real because more equitable.
The first of the series, delivered in Manchester, merely propounded the
view that a minority in Parliament very often represented a large majority
of voters, because one member might have 13,000 electors and another only
130. But when he came to speak at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on November 6th, he
gave this general principle definite application to a particular instance,
in which very small minorities had nevertheless represented very large
bodies of the electorate, and, as Sir Charles held, very widespread
opinions.
This instance was the vote for an allowance of £15,000 a year to Prince
Arthur, proposed on his coming of age. Radical opinion had been already
stirred in the earlier part of the Session by the Queen's request for a
dowry of £30,000 for the Princess Louise on her marriage with the Marquis
of Lorne; and Mr. Peter Taylor, in opposing the dowry, had spoken of the
probability that such a grant would strengthen the tendency towards
republican views among the artisan class. [Footnote: Taylor's opposition
had led to a division, in which Fawcett had a lobby to himself, Dilke,
with Taylor, being tellers for the "Noes." But on the question of the
allowance to Prince Arthur fifty-three voted for a reduction of the
allowance, and eleven against any grant at all.]
'I visited Newcastle, and there spoke chiefly upon the Dowry question,
which had led to a division in the House of Commons, in which the
minority had consisted of but three persons, with two tellers.... But
in the course of the recess I had gone into the question of the Civil
List expenditure upon the Court, and at Newcastle I made references to
this subject which were accurate, though possibly unwise.'
The Queen's long retirement (now of ten years' duration) from all
ceremonial functions had occasioned considerable discontent. A pamphlet,
under the title _What does She do with it?_ written, as Sir Charles
believed, by one who had been a member of the Government, had received
wide publicity. Sir Charles alluded to this, and, taking up the
pamphleteer's argument, drew a picture of royal power as increasing, of
quaint survivals of ancient offices kept up at high cost, and of the
army's efficiency impaired by the appointment of Royal personages to
command. He concluded by a peroration on the model State, inspired, one
fancies, not only by his early training, but by Vacation reading of that
long series of Utopias and "Commonwealths ideal and actual," the
recollection of which fascinated him to the end: [Footnote: Chapter V., p.
55.]
"It is said that some day a commonwealth will be our government. Now,
history and experience show that you cannot have a republic unless you
possess at the same time the republican virtues. But you answer: Have
we not public spirit? Have we not the practice of self-government? Are
not we gaining general education? Well, if you can show me a fair
chance that a republic here will be free from the political corruption
that hangs about the monarchy, I say, for my part--and I believe that
the middle classes in general will say--let it come."
This was the abstract avowal of a theoretical preference, which Sir
Charles expressed with greater clearness and decision than others who
professed it--than Fawcett, who preached Republicanism at Cambridge, or
than Chamberlain; whose attitude is sufficiently indicated by the letter
which he wrote to Dilke on seeing the very violent leader with which the
_Times_ greeted the Newcastle speech:
"I am glad to see that you have raised the Philistine indignation of
the _Times_ by your speech at Newcastle, which, as well as that at
Manchester, I have read with interest and agreement."
'Going on beyond my utterances, or indeed my belief, Chamberlain
added:
'"The Republic must come, and at the rate at which we are moving it
will come in our generation. The greater is the necessity for
discussing its conditions beforehand, and for a clear recognition of
what we may lose as well as what we shall gain."'
The essence of Republicanism to Sir Charles was equality of opportunity
for all citizens in a well-ordered State.
His theoretical avowal of Republicanism was seized upon by all who were
offended by his lack of deference in dealing with a matter so nearly
connected with Royalty. Charges of treason were made against the member of
Parliament who, in defiance of his oath of allegiance, proposed to
overthrow the monarchy.
This general outcry did not begin till the _Times_ leader had circulated
for a few days. But within a week the whole Press had broken out in fury.
The London correspondent of the _New York Tribune_ reported that "Sir
Charles Dilke's speech competes with the Tichborne trial" as a subject of
public comment. There was a second article in the _Times_ The _Spectator_
imputed to Dilke a want both of sense and decency, and declared that he
"talked sheer vulgar nonsense and discourteous rubbish in order to mislead
his audience." But as the correspondent of the _New York Tribune_ said:
"No one proved or attempted to prove that Sir Charles Dilke had misstated
facts."
'On one point, and on one point only, had I any reason to think that I was
wrong--namely, upon the Queen's Income Tax.' No documents existed, and
information was promised to Sir Charles by Mr. W. E. Baxter, Secretary to
the Treasury, 'but when he applied for it he was told that it could not be
given unless Mr. Gladstone agreed, and on this Mr. Gladstone wrote one of
his most mysterious letters, and I never really believed that the matter
was cleared up.'
In December, when the Prince of Wales was brought to the extremity of
danger by grave illness, an outburst of loyalty was aroused which shaped
itself into a protest against the "republican" demonstrations. But in the
hearts of thousands of working men who had expected some great change from
the Reform Act of 1868 and found no real alteration, there was a deep
resentment against the power and the attitude of the upper classes; and
against this power Sir Charles had struck a blow. The Press campaign
against him had the result which always follows when popular clamour seeks
to brand a strong man for an act of moral courage--it made him notable. He
was at a crisis in his political career, and the risks were great.
Opposition to him in Chelsea was threatened from orthodox Liberalism. A
letter from Labouchere warned him of this, and of the support which such
opposition would assuredly receive from Government organizers. Dilke went
straight ahead. It happened that the projected campaign on Representation
had pledged him to a series of speeches, and he did not therefore need to
seek occasions.
His next appearance on a public platform after the Newcastle meeting was
fixed for November 20th at Bristol, and opposition was promptly
threatened, somewhat to the surprise of Professor F. W. Newman, who had
been asked to take the chair.
"I do not read the papers daily" (the Professor wrote), "and was quite
unaware that any animosity against Sir Charles Dilke existed among the
Bristol Liberals. But I think it is high time that the Liberal party
everywhere be pulled out of the grooves of routine, and that _new men_
take the lead of it. I hope there will not be a mere noisy
disturbance, but I will try to do my duty in any case."
There was a noisy disturbance, but at Leeds on November 23rd the chairman
of the meeting was Alderman Carter, a Radical member of Parliament, of
considerable local influence, and an immense hall was packed by 5,000
supporters who secured the speaker from any interruption. Under these
conditions, Sir Charles delivered a speech much better, in his own
opinion, than the Newcastle discourse. As he put it many years later, the
former was on the cost of the Crown, the second a defence of the right of
free speech in the discussion of the cost of the Crown. [Footnote: Private
letter to the Editor of _Reynolds's Newspaper_, June 23rd, 1894.]
A main part of his defence was devoted to one point on which throughout
all this controversy he showed himself sensitive. "I care nothing," he
said at Leeds, "for the ridiculous cry of 'treason,' but I do care a great
deal for a charge of having used discourteous words towards the Queen;"
and he went on to explain by citation of his speech that 'the
malversation, if there was one,' had been charged, not against the Queen,
but against the neglect of her Ministers. He added now that the "breach of
the spirit of the Civil List Act," in allowing the savings to accumulate,
was one for which neither the present Government nor the Opposition were
responsible so much as their predecessors; and he made it doubly clear
that, although he desired to see savings made for the public, his true
objection to the office of Hereditary Grand Falconer and other sinecures
was 'not on account of the money that they cost, but on account of the
miserable political and moral tone which was set by their retention.'
Asserting that the Duke of Edinburgh had been appointed to an independent
naval command without the training which other officers would have
undergone, he reverted to the ideal of the model State:
"To say these things is not to condemn the monarchy, because they are
no necessary part of the monarchy, although the opposite idea--that of
promotion by merit alone and of the non-recognition of any claims
founded upon birth--is commonly accepted as republican. I care not
whether you call it republican or whether you do not, but I say that
it is the only principle upon which, if we are to keep our place among
the nations, we can for the future act."
'Not only was the Leeds meeting a success, but so also was one at
Middlesboro' a few days later than that at Leeds. But on November
30th, when I attempted to address a meeting at Bolton under the
auspices of the local leaders of the Liberal party, such as Mr. Cross
[Footnote: Eventually the chairman named withdrew his support in view
of the agitation; and the Liberal Association (on the casting vote of
their Chairman, Mr. J. K. Cross) decided to refuse sanction to the
meeting.] (afterwards Under Secretary of State for India), Mr. Mellor,
and Mr. Haslam, there was a fearful riot, at which a man was killed
and a great number of persons injured by iron nuts and bars being
thrown in through the windows by the Tory roughs outside the hall.'
[Footnote: Eight of the party who broke up the meeting were put on
their trial, and Serjeant Ballantine, who defended, made such play
with "Citizen" Dilke's unpopular opinions that "most of the jury felt
that, as loyal men, they were bound to acquit the prisoners." Mr.
George Harwood, the late member for Bolton, related in a letter of
1911 what he saw as "an indifferent young fellow" who had "strolled
down to look on." "The crowd" he writes, "was very thick and very
fierce, having declared that Sir Charles should not get away alive;
but when the excitement was hottest, Sir Charles came out of the main
door and stood quietly in sight of all, then struck a match and lit
his cigar, and walked unguarded and unaccompanied through the thickest
part of the crowd. His cool courage quite took everyone's breath away,
so not a sound was uttered."]
One passage in the speech is notable in view of later events: "I think
working men should not make themselves too much the slaves of any
political party, but should take care of the means of seeking
representation in Parliament, and when they have got the means in their
hands, they will then be able to use them so as to be favourable to their
interests as a whole."
'My speech at Newcastle had been not only as true as Gospel, but a
speech which, as Americans would say, "wanted making." But I was
nearly subjected to physical martyrdom for it at Bolton, and was
actually and really subjected to moral martyrdom for a time. The thing
was not, however, wholly painful. It had its ludicrous side. The then
Lord Chelsea, for example, afterwards my friend Lord Cadogan,
regretted, in a discourse at Bath with regard to my speech, "that the
days of duelling were over."'
The Memoir goes on to note that Lord Chelsea and Sir Alfred Slade, the
Receiver-General of Inland Revenue--
'who had both accused me of inventing "lies," afterwards asked to be
introduced to me and were very civil, and I, for political and local
reasons, had to forget their speeches and to be civil to them.
'On December 6th I spoke at Birmingham Town Hall, and Chamberlain, who
was Mayor, and who was my host, had the whole borough police force
present or in reserve, and had every interrupter (and there were
several hundred) carried out singly by two policemen, with a
Conservative Chief of Police to direct them, after which I delivered
an extremely humdrum speech to a very dull assembly. [Footnote: He
spoke on the House of Lords.] Chamberlain was more lively, and made a
speech in ridicule of Second Chambers, in which I still (1895) agree.
On the other hand, in Chelsea we carried the war into the enemy's
camp. The "loyal inhabitants" tried to hold a meeting at the Vestry
Hall to censure me, on which occasion no article or piece of furniture
larger than a match was left in existence in the room, and the meeting
concluded with a vote of confidence in me, carried in the dark after
the gas had been put out. The second attempt was made outside the
borough, at the Duke of Wellington's Riding School at Knightsbridge,
but the result was the same. Although the meeting was a ticket
meeting, the hall was stormed, and the loyal address to the Queen
captured and carried off in triumph by my friends. It is still (May,
1905) at the Eleusis Club--the centre for the Radical working men in
Chelsea.'
Hostility concentrated on Sir Charles because the courage and cogency with
which he expounded views shared by many men of standing, and men far
senior to himself at this time, marked him out for the public as the
leader:
'Fawcett had taken a far more active republican line, as had
Chamberlain, and both of them had joined republican clubs in towns,
while Fawcett had himself founded one in the University of Cambridge,
which had but a short existence. I had refused to join these clubs,
and to work in any way in connection with republican propaganda, but
it was difficult to get people to understand my position, and the
perfect legality of holding republican opinions was even denied by
many, while the wisdom of expressing them was denied by almost all.
Some thought that I was of opinion that an immense amount of
revolutionary feeling existed in the country, and that I wished to
lead a storm to my own profit. Some thought that I was sorry I had
said what I did.
'It never seemed to occur to anyone that there were many persons who
had been trained up in families republican in sentiment, and that it
was possible that I should have never been anything but a republican
without the trace of a "reason," and thought it honest to say so when
I was charged with Republicanism as with some fearful crime. But to
think and even to say that monarchy in Western Europe is a somewhat
cumbersome fiction is not to declare oneself ready to fight against it
on a barricade. It is only to protest against the silence of many
being read into agreement with the fulsome nonsense that the majority
talk about the personal loyalty of the country to the reigning House.
My Republicanism was, however, with me a matter of education. My
grandfather was a conservative republican in old age, a radical
republican in youth, but a republican through life, and, as I have
said before, my young ideas were my grandfather's ideas. It is a
mistake to think that republican opinions in England died with
Algernon Sidney, that Tom Paine was about the only English sympathizer
with the French Revolution, and Shelley, Landor, and Swinburne only
three mad poets. It is forgotten now that Burns subscribed to the
funds of the French Republic, that Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Moore
all wrote republican odes to it, and that at the beginning of the
century Southey and Brougham were republican, not to speak of Bentham
and Godwin and other writers on whose books I had been brought up.'
Sir Charles was not only denounced, but boycotted. [Footnote: Shirley
Brooks of _Punch_ wrote in his diary, under date December 5th, 1871:
"Macmillan asked me to dine, but as Sir C. Dilke, who has been spouting
Republicanism, was to be one, I would not go, hating to dine with a man
and abuse him in print, as I must do." (_Life, Letters, and Diaries of
Shirley Brooks_, by G. S. Layard).] He seems for the moment to have had
only two close friends available in London, Mr. Trevelyan and Lord Edmond
Fitzmaurice. The former--
'who had been deeply engaged in the anti-dowry agitation, although
keeping himself in the background ... used to come every Sunday to go
for walks with me; generally the two of us only, though on one of
these occasions he brought Wilfrid Lawson, the wit of the public
platforms, but a dismal man enough in private, [Footnote: Sir
Charles's friendship with the great Temperance Reformer was cemented
five years later by his adhesion to the Temperance ranks.
'February 4th, 1877, in Paris on my road I received a letter from
Wilfrid Lawson, who had learnt that I had turned teetotaller. I was as
a fact teetotaller for some eleven years, from 1874-1885. Lawson's
letter was in verse with a chorus:
"Coffee and tea,
Coffee and tea,
Those are the liquors for Lawson and me."
There was a good deal of chaff of the Bishop of Peterborough in the
letter, as this Bishop, whose name unfortunately rhymed to "tea," had
been speaking against Lawson's views in the House of Lords:
"Some day, perhaps, we both bishops may be,
And both much more sober than Doctor Magee,
Who finds that he cannot be sober _and_ free;
But it's only last week that I heard from you, Dilke,
That you'd rashly and recklessly taken to milk.
Abandon the habit, I beg and I pray,
Only think what the scoffers and mockers will say.
They'll say, with a cynical grin and a laugh,
'He has taken to milk--just the thing for a calf.'
Oh, abandon that milk--stick to coffee and tea,
For those are the liquors for you and for me.
_Chorus:_
"Coffee and tea,
Coffee and tea,
Finest of Mocha and best of Bohea;
"Coffee and tea,
Coffee and tea,
Those are the liquors for Dilke and for me."'] while George
Trevelyan was in private most agreeable.'
This social isolation, if it severed Sir Charles from some acquaintances,
restored to him a friend, Miss Katherine Sheil, who was living in Sloane
Street with Miss Louisa Courtenay, a near neighbour and old friend of
Charles Dilke. Both Miss Sheil's parents were dead. Her father, who died
when she was a baby, had been a Captain in the 89th Foot; her mother came
of an old Devonshire family, the Wises. Although she and Sir Charles had
been close friends for about three years, their friendship had broken
down.
For a long time we avoided one another, and I was only forgiven when
the attacks on me in November, 1871, and the Bolton riot led to an
expression of sympathy on her part. Miss Courtenay, who knew us both
extremely well, ... said: "A very suitable marriage. You are neither
of you in love with one another, but you will get on admirably
together." Miss Courtenay was, perhaps, at this time not far wrong. I
had a profound respect for Miss Sheil's talent and a high admiration
of her charm and beauty, and I think she had more liking than love for
me. We both of us had a horror of the ordinary forms of wedding
ceremonies, and we told only five persons in all-my great-uncle, who
came up to town for the wedding, and was present at it; my brother,
who was in Russia; my grandmother, who kept house for me, and who was
present at it; George Trevelyan, [Footnote: 'On January 14th I
announced to him my intended marriage with Miss Sheil, which was a
profound secret... but our walks did not come to an end with my
wedding a fortnight later.' Sir Charles's marriage to Miss Sheil took
place January 30th, 1872.] and Kitty's maid.'
[Illustration: LADY DILKE (MISS KATHERINE SHEIL)
From a photograph by Hills and Saunders]
'We did not go far away till Easter. Castelar [Footnote: 'Easter,
1870, I spent in Spain. I made the acquaintance of Castelar, then
Professor of Political Economy in the University of Madrid, and
probably the first orator in the world--a little man, though not so
small as Thiers, or my other orator friend, Louis Blanc.'] sent over a
friend to ask me to go to stay with him in Spain, but when I had been
in Paris at the end of '71, I had found myself watched by the French
police, doubtless under the impression that I was helping the English
Comtists under Harrison in supplying English passports to the
Communards in hiding to help them to leave France; and I objected to
return to the Continent till this spy system was at an end.'
[Footnote: "Kinglake, dining with Thiers at the close of the Franco-
German War--the sole Englishman at a dinner to Deputies of the Extreme
Left--tells how 'among the servants there was a sort of reasoning
process as to my identity, ending in the conclusion, "il doit être Sir
Dilke."' Soon the inference was treated as a fact, and in due sequence
came newspaper paragraphs declaring that the British Ambassador had
gravely remonstrated with the President for inviting Sir Charles Dilke
to his table. Then followed articles defending the course taken by the
President, and so for some time the ball was kept up. The remonstrance
of the Ambassador was a myth; Lord Lyons was a friend of Sir Charles,
but the latter was suspect at the time, both in England and France--in
England for his speeches and motion on the Civil List; in France
because, with Frederic Harrison, he had helped to get some of the
French Communards away from France, and the French Government was
watching him with spies" (A. W. Kinglake: _a Biographical and Literary
Study_, by the Rev. W. Tuckwell, p. 114).]
This assurance was procured for him by his friend Louis Blanc from
Casimir-Périer, then Minister of the Interior, who wrote by the hand of
his son, afterwards President of the Republic.
'Before I could leave London, I had to meet my constituents, which I
did with complete success, and to stand the fire of my enemies by
bringing forward in the House of Commons, on the earliest day that I
could obtain, a motion on which I should be able to repeat the
statements of my Newcastle speech, that they might be answered if any
answer could be given.
'I had a rival in this project, a member who had given notice in the
previous session for a Committee to inquire into the Civil List,
George Dixon, known at that time in connection with the Education
League.'
But as the day, March 19th, approached, Mr. Dixon wrote to Sir Charles--
'saying that his mind had been greatly exercised with regard to the
motion of which he had given notice, and which had originally been
suggested to him by Trevelyan, that he had come to the conclusion to
leave the matter in my hands, but that he thought it one which ought
to be brought before the House. "Of course," he added, "I shall go
into the lobby with you if you divide the House." This, however, he
did not do.'
No ordinary moral courage was needed to face the demonstration which had
been carefully prepared. The House of Commons has seldom witnessed a
stormier scene.
When Sir Charles stood up in a crowded House, charged with that atmosphere
which the expectation of a personal incident always engenders there, Lord
Bury intervened with an appeal to privilege, and, backed by tempestuous
cheers, asked the Speaker to refuse the member for Chelsea a hearing on
the ground that by declaration of republican principles he had violated
the oath of allegiance. When this appeal had been dismissed, Sir Charles,
on rising again to address the House, was, in the discreet words of
Hansard, "received with much confusion." There was a "chorus of groans and
Oh's and ironical cheers." But the House, after a brief demonstration,
settled down to hear the speaker, who proceeded to set out the grounds on
which he asked for full information concerning the Civil List under a
number of tabulated heads, "his object," said the London correspondent of
the New York Tribune, "clearly being to crowd as many facts as possible
into a certain amount of time." It was, he says himself, 'solid and full
of matter, but studiously wooden, 'unutterably dull,' and 'towards the
latter part of the speech members went trooping out of the House, and
conversation was general.' At last Sir Charles sat down, and men crowded
in, all agog to hear Mr. Gladstone, who had sat uneasily on his bench,
"longing to be at him," says one reporter; and at him he went, with
tremendous artillery of argument, sarcasm, and declamation, while the
Opposition cheered every point to the echo, though the Liberals sat in
glum silence. Probably many of them shared the feeling which Sir Wilfrid
Lawson reflects in his _Reminiscences_, that Mr. Gladstone was "often most
unfair in debate," and on this occasion (not for the first time) "simply
tried to trample upon Dilke, having the whole House at his back."
The Prime Minister ended with an appeal for the division to be taken at
once, but Sir Charles's seconder, one of the most picturesque figures in
the politics of that time, insisted upon claiming his part in the
condemnation. Not so much Radical as Anarchist, converted from the
traditional Toryism of his surroundings by the influence of J. S. Mill and
Ruskin, Auberon Herbert was at this moment vehemently republican, and
nothing would serve him but to rise and, in supporting this motion purely
on the Civil List, to make an avowal of republican principles:
'He stood up before a howling House, which had listened quietly to me,
but was determined to have no more, with remarkable pluck, equal to
that with which he had faced bullets in the Danish lines; but it was
partly useless and partly mischievous.'
When clamour failed to silence the speaker, members trooped out, and
attempts were made to count out the House, but unsuccessfully. Thereupon
Lord George Hamilton "spied strangers," and the Press having been
excluded, Tories trooped back and went resolutely to work to howl Herbert
down. Imitations of the crowing of cocks were said to have been given by
Mr. George Bentinck, though Sir Wilfrid Lawson declared that he did not
hear them, and added:
"If there was such a manifestation it was, however, for the last time
in the House of Commons; therefore I mention it. The division was 276
against 2--the two consisting of Anderson, one of the Glasgow members,
and myself. [Footnote: Dilke and Herbert acted as tellers.] I think my
vote was quite right, for the returns asked for by Dilke were due to
the country, and Mr. Gladstone did not at all benefit the monarchy by
withholding them."
That was the impression which Sir Charles desired to leave on the mind of
Radicals. But he had produced also the effect that he intended on the mind
of the general public. The Press complained
'that my speech was voted prosy, and that my want of vivacity tended
to prevent the interruptions which had been organized, and that it
would have been impossible to make an oration more mild and
inoffensive. This was exactly what I had wished and intended....
'My speech was left unanswered, and I afterwards had the satisfaction
of arranging while in office for acting on the principles which I laid
down, and that action has since been taken. My main point was the
right of the House of Commons to inquire into the Civil List even
during the continuance of the reign, a right important because inquiry
at the beginning of a reign is held under circumstances which prevent
the possibility of its being satisfactory. This has since been
admitted by Mr. Gladstone himself, and my view has been acted on. Mr.
Gladstone professed to answer me at the time, and to do so with much
vigour, but as a fact he carefully avoided coming to close quarters.
He stated indignantly that he had not been able to find who were the
members of the Committee of 1837 who had complained of insufficient
investigation, to whose complaints I had referred, and he said this as
though none did complain, although it is notorious that Grote and his
friends, especially Hawes, did so complain. He maintained that I was
wrong in saying that the Civil List in the present reign was greater
than in the last, although I was quoting a Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and although Mr. Gladstone made his figures support his
view by including the allowance to Queen Adelaide, while I properly
excluded both that allowance and the allowance of Prince Albert, as
these personages were supposed to spend these allowances themselves,
and not to hand them over to the King or to the Queen Regnant, as the
case might be. Mr. Gladstone denied the pretended statement by me that
the annuities to Princes and Princesses in the present reign were
unprecedented in amount, but I had never named Princes, and I had
never named amount. What I had said was that the provisions made for
the Royal children during the reign were unprecedented in character,
and so they were, as I showed clearly in my speech, and especially the
allowances to the Princesses. Mr. Gladstone, with regard to the Royal
savings, declined to go into the Exchequer accounts on the ground that
I had not given him enough notice. I had given him eight days' notice,
and he had not asked for any further information than that which I had
afforded him. He argued that the savings were not great, for £590,000
had been spent on private allowances and personal pensions, a fact
which was wholly new to us and not intended by Parliament. He argued
that there was little to say about sinecures, because none had been
created during the present reign, a reply which gave the go-by to the
fact that the old ones continue. Long afterwards, when I was Mr.
Gladstone's colleague, he recanted a good deal of his doctrine of
1872, as I shall show. Indeed, in 1889 all the information was given
to the House which I had asked for and been refused in 1872, and the
principle was laid down by the Committee on grants to the Royal
Family, which I had privately suggested in 1880.' [Footnote: See also
Chapter LIX., which deals with the Committee on the Civil List (Volume
II., pp. 526, 527).]
During the whole of 1872 it was not easy to find a platform on which local
Liberals would be at ease in company with the member for Chelsea. Even
Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice hinted that at a meeting held in Wiltshire to
promote the cause of the agricultural labourer, Dilke and Auberon Herbert
would be better away. But towards the close of the year, when a meeting
devoted to the same cause was fixed for Exeter Hall, Joseph Arch, its
chief promoter, insisted that Sir Charles should speak, and though the
appointed chairman, Sir Sydney Waterlow, resigned his office, Archbishop
Manning and Dr. Jackson, Bishop of London, made no scruple of attending
while Dilke's speech was delivered.
'It was a dreary speech, and, given the fact that my speaking was
always monotonous, and that at this time I was trying specially to
make speeches which no one could call empty noise, and was therefore
specially and peculiarly heavy, there was something amusing to lovers
of contrast in that between the stormy heartiness of my reception at
most of these meetings, and the ineffably dry orations which I
delivered to them--between cheers of joy when I rose and cheers of
relief when I sat down.'
But courage and resource and knowledge had got their chance. His opponents
had gone about to make a marked man of Sir Charles Dilke; within six
months they had established his position beyond challenge as a man of
mark.
CHAPTER XI
PERIOD OF FIRST MARRIAGE
I.
Having successfully faced his opponents in Parliament, and having also got
assurances from the authorities in France that he would not be shadowed,
Sir Charles was able to spend the Easter recess with Lady Dilke in Paris:
'At Easter we went to Paris and went about a good deal, seeing much of
Gambetta, of Milner Gibson (who had completely left the world of
English politics, and lived at Paris except when he was cruising in
his yacht), Michel Chevalier, and the Franquevilles. We attended
sittings of the Assembly at Versailles, drove over the battlefields,
dined with the Louis Blancs to meet Louis's brother, Charles Blanc,
the critic and great master of style, ... breakfasted with Evarts the
American lawyer, to meet Caleb Gushing, his colleague on the American
case on the Alabama claims; met at the Franquevilles' Henri de Pène
and Robert Mitchell, the Conservative journalists; and saw "Mignon,"
Katie's favourite opera, and "Rabagas." This last famous piece, which
was being played at the Vaudeville, where it was wonderfully acted,
had been written during the premiership of Émile Ollivier, but being
brought out when Ollivier was half forgotten, and when the name of
Gambetta was in all men's mouths, was supposed by many to have been
intended as a satire of the tribune, though it is far more applicable
in every point to Ollivier's career.'
Many years later Sir Charles was to form a friendship of lifelong duration
with Louis Napoleon's Minister Ollivier. But from this visit to Paris
dates the beginning of an intimacy between the young English member of
Parliament and the leader of French democracy.
He had already met Gambetta once in the end of 1871, and to renew this
acquaintance was a special purpose in going to Paris. He had conceived the
plan of writing a history of the nineteenth century. On the origin of the
Franco-German War Gambetta was a high authority, and it was to discuss
these questions that during this visit he for the first time came to see
Sir Charles, who records: 'Had Gambetta to breakfast with us, when he
stayed the whole day talking with me.'
In five minutes the two men must have been in touch. Those who knew Sir
Charles knew how his intense geniality of nature, masked sometimes for
outsiders by a slight austerity, his _air boutonné_--as it was described
by those who did not pass the barrier--showed immediately with those to
whom he was drawn. That _rire enfantin_, described by Challemel-Lacour,
would burst out at the first quick turn of talk, and he would give his
whole self, with an almost boyish delight, to the encounter with a nature
whose superabundant vitality and delight in life, as in Gambetta's case,
equalled his own.
For these two the common points of interest were strongly marked. Not only
was there the kindred geniality of disposition, and the kindred interest
in the history and fortune of France: there was in each an overwhelming
love of country; strong, indeed, in Gambetta, and in Dilke so strong that
it can best be described in the words of a French friend who, watching
him, said to Sir Charles's second wife: "That man is a great patriot, for
with his whole self he serves his country, never staying to consider how
she has served him."
In the spring of 1872 both men were young: Dilke not yet twenty-nine,
Gambetta just thirty-four. But the past of one was crowded with
experience, and the other had already made history.
Sir Charles here inserts--
'a word of the personality of Gambetta, who for a long time was my
most intimate friend, and for whose memory I have still the deepest
regard.
'It was on All Saints' Day of 1868 that a few republicans had paid a
fête-of-the-dead visit to the tomb of a Deputy killed on the side of
the Constitution at the time of the _coup d'état_, and had found it in
a miserable state. Delescluze (who was two and a half years later to
meet Baudin's fate, being killed, like him, in a black coat, unarmed,
on a Paris barricade) communicated with Challemel-Lacour, and a
subscription for a fitting tomb was started, which soon became an
imposing manifestation of anti-Bonapartist opinion. [Footnote: The
need for a fitting tomb is shown by the circumstance of Baudin's death
and burial. He had gone early in the morning of December 3rd, 1851, to
help in the construction of a barricade at the point where the Rue
Ste. Marguerite and the Rue de Cotte meet. Two companies of the line
arrived from the Bastille and formed an attacking party, and were
joined by some men in blouses, who cried, on seeing the deputies: "À
bas les vingt-cinq francs!" Baudin, unarmed, standing on the top of
the barricade, replied: "Vous allez voir comment on meurt pour vingt-
cinq francs." An attempt to address the soldiers by the
Constitutionalists failed, and a shot from the barricade was replied
to by a general volley, and Baudin fell, pierced by three shots. His
body was taken to the Hôpital Ste. Marguerite, and when claimed by his
brothers was given up only on condition that it should not be shown to
the people, but immediately and quietly buried. He was buried on
December 5th secretly in the cemetery of Montmartre (See _Dictionnaire
des Parlementaires_, by Robert and Cougny).]
'The Government having prosecuted the papers which published the
subscription lists, Challemel-Lacour caused the selection of Gambetta
as counsel. He was a young barrister speaking with a strong Southern
accent, which, however, disappeared when he spoke in public, vulgar in
language and appearance, one-eyed, of Genoese (possibly Jewish) race,
full of power. Gambetta made a magnificent speech, which brought him
at one bound into the front rank among the republican leaders. His
description of December 2nd was such as had never been excelled even
by Cicero or by Berryer: "At that time there grouped themselves around
a pretender a number of men without talent, without honour, sunk in
debt and in crime, such as in all ages have been the accomplices of
arbitrary violence, men of whom one could repeat what Sallust had said
of the foul mob that surrounded Catiline, what Caesar said himself of
those who conspired along with him: 'Inevitable dregs of organized
society.'" The word Pretender, without adjectives, may seem somewhat
weak as applied to the Prince President, the head of the band, but
those who have heard Gambetta alone know the contempt which he could
throw into his voice in the pronunciation of such a word. Finest of
all the passages that remain to us of Gambetta's eloquence was one
near the close of this memorable speech, which began: "During
seventeen years you who are the masters of France have never dared to
keep December 2nd as the national anniversary. That anniversary we
take as that on which to commemorate the virtues of our dead who died
that day--" Here the Advocate Imperial tried to interrupt him so as to
spoil his peroration, and the written version now printed in his
speeches differs altogether in language from that which was taken down
by the shorthand writers at the time, although the idea is exactly the
same. The two counsel spoke together for some minutes, each trying to
shout down the other, until Gambetta's tremendous roar had crushed his
adversary, whereupon, in the middle of his peroration, with a really
Provençal forgetfulness of his art and subject, Gambetta interposed--
"He tried to close my mouth, but I have drowned him"--and then went
on.'
This picture is made more vivid by the pencillings on Sir Charles's copy
of Daudet's _Numa Roumestan_, where the word "Gambetta" is scribbled again
and again opposite passages which describe Numa's wonderful ringing voice,
his quick supple nature, all things to all men, catching as if by magic
the very tone and gestures of those with whom he spoke, prodigal as the
sun in greetings and in promises, poured out in a torrent of words, which
seemed "not to proceed from ideas, but to waken them in his mind by the
mechanical stimulus of their sound, and by certain intonations even
brought tears into his eyes."
'My friendship with Gambetta perhaps meant to me something more than
the friendship of the man. Round him gathered all that was best and
most hopeful in the state of the young republic. He, more than any
other individual, had both destroyed the Empire and made new France,
and to some extent the measure of my liking for the man was my hatred
of those that he had replaced. Louis Napoleon ... had dynastic ends in
view.... The Napoleonic legend did not survive Sedan, and that it was
unable to be revived in the distress which followed the Commune was
largely owing to the policy and courage of Gambetta.
'There is some permanent importance in the discussions as to the
origin of the war of 1870 which I had with Gambetta at this time; for
it so happens that I have been able at various periods to discuss with
the most absolute freedom the history of this period with the five men
who knew most of it--Bismarck, Émile Ollivier, Gambetta, Nigra, and
Casa Laigleisia (at that time Rancez), the Spanish diplomatist,
afterwards three times Spanish Minister in London.
'The question which I often discussed with Gambetta, with Ollivier,
with Nigra, with Rancez, until, in September, 1889, Bismarck's frank
admissions settled the matter in my mind for good, has been one of the
most disputed points in modern history. My opinion that Bismarck had
prepared the war, and had brought about the Hohenzollern candidature
in order to provoke it, was only strengthened by an article entitled
"Who is responsible for the War?" by "Scrutator"--probably from the
pen of Congreve, the Comtist, who I know was in correspondence with
the Duc de Gramont. At Easter, 1872, I discussed the matter fully with
Gambetta, with Rancez, with Klaszco (author of _The Two Chancellors_,
and secret agent of the Austrian Government), and with Hansen, a Dane,
and spy of the French Government. Rancez long represented Spain at
Berlin, and it was he who, under Prim's orders, prepared the
Hohenzollern candidature. He was then sent to Vienna, as it was wise
for him to be out of the way when war, brought about by his agency,
was impending; but he was fetched suddenly to Berlin from Vienna in
1869, and this was when the thing was settled. The facts are all known
now." [Footnote: Bismarck, _Gedanken und Erinnerungen_, ii., chap,
xxii., p. 90 (German edition); Benedetti, _Ma Mission en Prusse_,
chap, vi., pp. 409, 410.] The King of Prussia, on July 13th (1870),
refused to give assurances for the future, in simple and dignified
language which meant peace. His telegram to Berlin was one of 200
words. Bismarck told me, when I was staying with him in September,
1889, that he was with Moltke and von Roon when it was received by
them at Berlin, and that he deliberately altered the telegram by
cutting it down "from a telegram of 200 words which meant peace into a
telegram of 20 words which meant war;" and in this form it was
placarded throughout North Germany in every village.
'I discussed repeatedly with Gambetta the incidents of the Cabinet at
St. Cloud on the 14th (July, 1870). Gambetta proved to me that on the
14th the mobilization order was given by the Minister of War, and that
on the same day the order was itself ordered by the Cabinet to be
countermanded. The Duc de Gramont has said, with singular confusion,
that it was decided on the 15th that the orders of the Minister of War
should not be countermanded, and that the reserves should be called
out. Ollivier assured me that after a six hours' sitting of the
Cabinet he had finally left St. Cloud long before that hour at which
Delord states in his history that the Cabinet again met in the
presence of the Empress. There was no such sitting of the Cabinet, but
there may have been a meeting of the Empress, the Duc de Gramont, and
the Minister of War, and they may have dared to take it upon
themselves to reverse the decision at which the Cabinet had arrived.
'The Duc de Gramont and the Minister of War had been in the minority
at the Cabinet on the 14th when the Cabinet withdrew the order for the
mobilization of the reserves, and this minority took it upon itself in
the night to maintain the order for the calling out of the reserves.
On the other hand, if there was ground for the impeachment of the Duc
de Gramont, I am afraid that there was also ground for that of
Ollivier in his own admissions. The declaration made to the Chambers
on July 15th states that the reserves were called out on the 14th, and
Ollivier allowed the decision of his Cabinet, which was his own, to be
reversed in his own name, apparently with his approval. [Footnote: See
note on p. 486, and the authorities cited there.]
'Bismarck's action in forcing on a war might be justified by his
probable acquaintance with the engagement of Austria to France that
she would join her in attacking Prussia in the early spring of 1871;
but it is a curious fact that he has never, either to me or to anybody
else, made use of this justification.
'Upon all these subjects the papers found in the palaces and published
by the Government of National Defence had an essential bearing, and
these I discussed, while they were fresh, with Gambetta and Ollivier.
The same matters were again before me in the following year (1873),
when I had the opportunity of attending the Bazaine Court-Martial,
presided over by the Duc d'Aumale, and of again reading the papers
found in the Tuileries (including the volume afterwards suppressed) on
the spot, and while the events related were fresh in men's minds, as
well as of talking over all doubtful points with my two friends.
'Bazaine at the Court-Martial looked only stupid, like a fat old seal,
utterly unmilitary, and, as the French would say, "become cow-like."
It was difficult to see in him the man who, however great his crimes
in Mexico, had at least been a man of the most daring courage and of
the most overweening ambition. In the suppressed volume of the papers
of the Imperial family seized at the Tuileries there is a letter from
General Félix Douay to his brother in which he describes Bazaine's
attempt to become the Bernadotte of Mexico, and shows how, in order to
obtain the Mexican throne, he kept up treasonable relations with the
chiefs of the republican bands which it was his duty to combat. It is
curious to find the French second-in-command writing to his brother,
also a General, a letter which, somehow or other, came into the
possession of the Emperor himself, in which he says: "It is terrible
to see a great dignity prostrated in such fashion.... We have to go
back to Cardinal Dubois to find such an accomplished scoundrel having
made use of a situation of the highest confidence to sell his country
and his master.... He will not long escape the infamy to which he is
consigned by the wishes of all honest men in the army, who are daily
more and more shocked by the scandal of his personal fortune." Colonel
Boyer was chief of the staff to Bazaine in Mexico, and is mentioned in
the correspondence between the two Generals Douay as being mixed up in
these discreditable transactions; and he was afterwards, as General
Boyer, concerned, it may be remembered, in the Régnier affair at Metz,
when General Bourbaki was sent out under a pass from the Prussians on
a fool's errand to the Empress Eugénie, there being some treasonable
plot behind. This is now (1908) confirmed by the letter of the King of
Prussia to the Empress Eugénie in the Bernstorff Memoirs.'
From 1872 onwards Sir Charles, in his many passages through Paris,
invariably met Gambetta, 'and spent as much time with him as possible.' He
was in this way kept fully informed on French politics by the most
powerful politician in France. As Gambetta's power grew, Dilke's influence
grew also, until there came a time when the friendship between the two was
of international interest.
II.
On returning to London after the Easter recess of 1872, Sir Charles
resumed his political duties in and out of Parliament. The Radical Club,
of which he remained Secretary till he took office in 1880, exercised some
little influence in the House of Commons, and was of some value in
bringing men together for the exchange of ideas, but began to present
difficulties in its working, and soon 'dropped very much into the hands of
Fawcett. Fitzmaurice, and myself.'
Apart from weekly attendance at its meetings, Sir Charles did not go out
much. 'We were so wrapped up in ourselves,' he says, 'that I have no doubt
we were spoken of as selfish.' The marriage had resulted in a tie much
closer than the simple union of two people who would "get on very well
together." Lady Dilke was a creature of glowing life. Those who remember
her say that when she entered a room the whole atmosphere seemed to
change: she was so brilliant, so handsome, so charged with vitality, so
eager always in everything.
From this period there were dinners at 76, Sloane Street, twice a week,
and among those who gathered about the Dilkes 'were Harcourt; Kinglake,
the historian; Stopford Brooke (who had not then left the Church of
England), Brookfield, the Queen's chaplain, commonly known as the "naughty
parson," and husband of Thackeray's Amelia, Fitzmaurice; Charles Villiers;
Mrs. Procter (widow of Barry Cornwall); Miss Tizy Smith, daughter of
Horace Smith, of _Rejected Addresses_; James (afterwards Sir Henry
James).' Browning also 'was constantly at the house,' and read there his
"Red Cotton Nightcap Country"--'at his own request.' Lord Houghton began
in these days an intimacy which lasted till his death. Of Americans, there
were Leland ("Hans Breitmann") and Mark Twain, and with these are named a
number of foreign guests: Émile de Laveleye, the economist; Ricciotti
Garibaldi; Moret, the Spanish Minister.
'We used to judge the position of affairs in Spain by whether Moret
wore or did not wear the Golden Fleece when he came to dinner. When
Castelar was dictator and the Republic proceeding upon conservative
lines, the sheep hung prominently at his side. When the Republic was
federalist and democratic, as was the case from time to time, the
sheep was left at home in a box.'
Others in the list of guests were Taglioni, 'in her youth the famous
dancer, and in her old age Comtesse Gilbert de Voisins, the stupidest and
most respectable of old dames,' and Ristori, the tragedian, who stayed at
Sloane Street 'with her husband, the Marquis Capranica del Grillo, and
their lovely daughter Bianca.'
A novel feature at some of Lady Dilke's evenings was the production of
French comedies by M. Brasseur, the celebrated comedian, and father of the
well-known actor of the present day. At all times in Sir Charles Dilke's
life his house was a great meeting-place for those who loved and knew
France and the French tongue.
Many painters were among the Chelsea constituents, and in 1868 Rossetti,
having been pressed to vote, replied:
"I think if Shakespeare and Michael Angelo were going to the poll, and
if the one were not opposing the other, and if there were no danger of
being expected to take an active part in the chairing of either, I
might prove for once to have enough political electricity to brush a
vote out of me, like a spark out of a cat's back. But I fear no other
kind of earthly hero could do it."
Another constituent was Carlyle, who in 1871 came to Dilke with a memorial
in favour of a Civil List pension for Miss Geraldine Jewsbury. Out of him
also no vote had been "brushed": he had exercised the franchise only once
in his life. Passing through his native village, he had seen a notice that
persons who would pay half a crown could be registered, and he had paid
his fee and had been registered. He had thought at the time, so he told
Sir Charles, that "heaven and hell hung on that vote," but he "had found
out afterwards that they did not."
It was in the course of 1872 that Sir Charles carried out one of his
grandfather's instructions by distributing old Mr. Dilke's books--
'in those quarters where I thought they would be useful in the cause
of historic research, or where they would be best preserved. The
British Museum had the first choice, and took those of the books
relating to the Commonwealth, to the Stuarts, to Pope, and to Junius,
which they had not already on their shelves. [Footnote: 'The Stuart
papers consisted of the Caryll papers and the Seaforth Mackenzie
papers, which last were first used by the Marchesa Campana da Cavelli
in the preparation of a great work on the Stuart documents, in which
they were fully quoted.'] I then offered the remainder of the Junius
collection to Chichester Fortescue, at that time President of the
Board of Trade (afterwards Lord Carlingford), husband of the famous
Lady Waldegrave, and tenant in consequence of Strawberry Hill, where
he was reforming Horace Walpole's library.'
It was a house at which Sir Charles became very intimate but not till some
years later. About this time Lady Strachie remembers the interest with
which, as a young girl at her aunt's table, she glanced down the row of
guests to catch the profile of 'Citizen Dilke,' who, with his wife, was
dining there for the first time.
Lord Carlingford believed that Francis wrote Junius, a view which old Mr.
Dilke opposed.
'But Abraham Hayward, who was constantly with him, held anti-
Franciscan opinions, and he would, I knew, have the full run of the
books, which I was certain in Fortescue's hands would be carefully
preserved. My arrangements were not concluded until the end of the
following year, 1873, when I presented the last of the Pope books and
all my grandfather's Pope manuscripts to John Murray, the publisher,
in consequence of his great interest in the new edition.' [Footnote:
Elwin and Courthope's edition of Pope's works.]
In the same year Sir Charles Dilke made another arrangement which
testified to the strength of his brotherly affection. Wentworth Dilke had
left his personal property in the proportion of two-thirds to the elder
son and one-third to the younger; and had also exercised a power of
appointment which he held by dividing his wife's property in the same way.
Charles Dilke now decided that the shares should be equalized, and secured
this by handing over one-sixth of his property to Ashton, who was at this
time in Russia, on a journey of exploration extending over the greater
part of that Empire.
About this time also Sir Charles purchased _Notes and Queries_ for £2,500
from its founder, Mr. Thoms, the Librarian of the House of Lords, 'one of
the dearest old men that ever was worshipped by his friends,' and a
devoted admirer of old Mr. Dilke. He appointed Dr. Doran to be editor,
"partly as consolation for having refused him the editorship of the
_Athenaeum_, for which he had asked as an old contributor and as the
yearly acting editor in the 'editor's holiday.'" But Sir Charles's choice
had fallen on Mr. Norman MacColl, 'that Scotch Solomon,' as he sometimes
called this admirable critic, who conducted the paper for thirty years.
'In the autumn we went abroad again, and took a letter of introduction
to George Sand, for whose talent Katie had a great admiration. We
missed her at Trouville, but found her afterwards in Paris--an
interesting person, hideously ugly, but more pleasant than her English
rival novelist, the other pseudonymous George. They had few points in
common except that both wrote well and were full of talent of a
different kind and were equally monstrous, looking like two old
horses.'
Of George Eliot's "talent" he wrote to Hepworth Dixon in 1866:
"The only fact of which I am at this present very certain ... is that
Miss Evans is not far from being the best _indirect describer_ of
character and the wittiest observer of human nature that has lived in
England since Shakespeare, and I think that there are touches in _Amos
Barton, Scenes from Clerical Life_, and in the first few chapters of
_The Mill on the Floss_ quite worthy of Shakespeare himself."
Also there is reference to a letter quoted in George Eliot's Life which
tells that the year 1873 "began sweetly" for her, because "a beautiful
bouquet with a pretty legend was left at my door by a person who went away
after ringing." 'It was I,' says Sir Charles, 'who left that bouquet and I
who wrote that legend. It was Katie who prepared the bouquet and asked me
to take it.'
III.
After the tempestuous scene of March 19th, Sir Charles had remained on the
whole a silent member of Parliament.
'I am going to keep quiet till the general election' (he says in a
letter of May 1st, 1873) 'as the best means of retaining my present
seat. If I should be turned out, look out for squalls, as I should
then stand on an extreme platform for every vacancy in the North.'
The main objects of the Radical group were, first, extension and
redistribution of the voting power, and, secondly, a universal system of
compulsory education, controlled by elective school boards. In October of
this year (1872) Sir Charles and Lady Dilke went down as Mr. Chamberlain's
guests to Birmingham, where Sir Charles spoke on free schools (basing
himself, as usual, on his observation of other countries) with Mr.
Chamberlain in the chair. In November there was a return visit, and Mr.
Chamberlain spoke under Dilke's chairmanship at St. James's Hall on
electoral reform. 'Chamberlain's was the first important speech that he
had delivered to a London public meeting,' and probably these reciprocal
visits and chairmanships gave the first general intimation of an alliance
which for a dozen years was destined to influence Liberal policy.
In the autumn of 1872, Sir Charles 'started a small Electoral Reform
Committee.' Its purpose was to assist, first, the Bill of Mr. Trevelyan
making the qualification for a vote in counties the same as in boroughs,
and, secondly, his own resolution which demanded that seats should be
redistributed in proportion to the number of electors. The outcome was an
arrangement under which Mr. Trevelyan substituted for his Bill a
resolution dealing with both matters; and this resolution, moved by him
and seconded by Sir Charles, afforded annually a gauge of the progress
made, as indicated by the division list.
'Chamberlain co-operated with me, but was more keen about his own
education subjects.'
At this time the attitude of Sir Charles and his associates towards the
Liberal party was one of detachment bordering on hostility. Chamberlain,
writing from Birmingham on March 2nd, 1873, noted that the Irish
University Bill was "going badly in the country, and the Noncons. and
Leaguers in the House ought to have the game in their hands." He wished
"they would have the pluck to tell Mr. Gladstone that they will do nothing
to bolster up a Ministry which will not give satisfactory assurances upon
English education;" and he wanted Mr. George Dixon to go on with his
resolution in favour of universal free schools and carry it to a division.
"If members do not vote with him, and there is a general election
soon, they will have a nice little crow to pick with their
constituents; whereas if there is no division on this issue, all our
labour during the recess is lost, and our friends are disheartened....
Viewed _ab extra_, there is no doubt the boldest policy is the best.
It is probable from what I have seen that the weakest course is best
suited to the atmosphere of what some people are pleased to call a
'_reformed_ House of Commons.'"
In the following week the Irish University Bill which was "going badly in
the country" received a new and unexpected stab: Cardinal Cullen denounced
it in a pastoral on March 9th. The debate on the second reading terminated
during the small hours of March 12th. Government was defeated by three on
a division of 284-287. On the 13th Mr. Gladstone's Ministry tendered their
resignations, and the Queen sent for Mr. Disraeli, who declined either to
accept office or to recommend a dissolution. By March 20th it was formally
announced that the Government would go on, but it went on with power and
prestige greatly diminished.
On July 6th Chamberlain wrote to Dilke advocating an "irreconcilable
policy," and asking for news of any "fanatics willing to join the Forlorn
Hope and help in smashing up that whited sepulchre called the Liberal
party." This letter concluded with an attack on Mr. Bright, who had just
joined the reconstructed Ministry, but whose influence Mr. Chamberlain
thought was "quite too small to save the Government." [Footnote: One cause
of the Government's unpopularity was the attempt of Mr. Ayrton (First
Commissioner of Public Works) to limit the right of public meeting in Hyde
Park, to which there is this allusion: 'In July I was greatly occupied in
the House of Commons in fighting against Ayrton's Parks Bill. It was at
dinner at my house one night that, in his dry, quiet way, old Kinglake
chirped out, "For so insignificant a personage Mr. Ayrton is quite the
most pompous individual that I know." Mr. Ayrton's unpopularity was a
powerful cause of Mr. Gladstone's downfall in 1874.'] Sir William
Harcourt, though hardly less discontented, was openly more conformable,
and towards the close of 1873 took office as Solicitor-
General. He wrote:
"I do not know if I have done a very wise or a very foolish thing.
Probably the latter. But it is done, and my friends must help me to
make the best of it. It was a great inducement to me the having Henry
James [Footnote: Sir Henry James became Attorney-General in September,
1873.] as a colleague.... I feel like an old bachelor going to leave
his lodgings and marry a woman he is not in love with, in grave doubt
whether he and she will suit. However, fortunately, _she_ is going to
die soon, and we shall soon again be in opposition below the gangway.
The Duke of Argyll says that now I am in harness I must be driven in
blinkers; but, then, dukes are insolent by nature. Whatever comes, I
shall never leave the House of Commons. I do not see why I am not to
be a politician because I am a law officer. Law officers used to be
politicians some years ago."
The Civil List question was raised again in Parliament in this year, when
the Crown Private Estates Bill was introduced; and an amendment moved by
Mr. George Anderson, member for Glasgow, complaining of the secrecy which
attached to Royal wills, was supported, not only by Sir Charles, but by
"the leader of the old Whigs in the House of Commons," Mr. E. P. Bouverie,
a Privy Councillor, who to his horror found himself named to tell against
the Bill, and thus identified with the "republican" opposition. 'Speaker
Brand no doubt owed him some grudge.' [Footnote: The Right Hon. E. P.
Bouverie had been a very successful Chairman of Committees of the whole
House, and was indicated by public option as a probable Speaker. He was
recognized as a leading authority on the Law of Parliament.] Dilke's own
speech had demanded the annual publication of the receipts and
disbursements of the Crown Private Estates, and though he waited long to
carry his point, he saw this amongst other proposals adopted on the
recommendation of the Civil List Committee of 1910, on which he served.
Proof was not wanting that his determined attitude on these matters had
won him the support of great masses of the democracy. Miners' Unions and
Labourers' Unions wrote, begging, some for his portrait, others for an
address; also, in places where opposition had been offered to his
speaking, reprisals were exacted.
'Early in January, 1873, we went to Derby, at the request of the
chairman of my meeting at Derby which had failed in the winter of
'71-72, when, though a majority were upon our side, a gang of hired
poachers had entrenched themselves in a corner of the room, had burned
cayenne pepper, and defied all attempts to drive them out. The
chairman was a man of determination who did not mean to be beaten. He
organized his meeting on this occasion with almost too much care, for
I fancy he brought fighting friends from Nottingham and other bruising
places to it. The Tory roughs appeared, as on the former occasion.
Before we were allowed to enter the room they were charged by means of
battering rams with such effect that their entrenchments were
destroyed, and they themselves were mostly stunned and carried out one
by one. No one was dangerously hurt, but there were many broken heads.
Lady Dilke was present in the thick of it, and, according to the
newspaper reports, anxiously begged the stewards to deal gently with
those whom they threw out. After this the meeting was held in peace.
But the result was a formal Government inquiry, and the removal of the
chairman of the meeting from the County Bench by the Lord Chancellor.
He turned clergyman, to the benefit of _Notes and Queries_ and of the
societies for antiquarian research, for, being a man of active mind,
and finding the care of small parishes of ritualistic tendencies
insufficient to occupy his whole time, he became the author of the
famous book, _Churches of Derbyshire_, and of much other antiquarian
work.'
Sir Charles notes that this address at Derby was in fact his first
pronouncement on "Free Land." In the following week, at Chelsea, he spoke
upon Free Trade, and in both these speeches used the phrase, "Free land,
free church, free schools, free trade, free law," laying down, early in
1873, 'the principles on which Chamberlain and John Morley afterwards went
in the construction of the pamphlet known as _The Radical Programme_.'
Sir G. Trevelyan writes:
"In the first months of 1872 he was supposed to have injured himself
greatly by his proceedings with regard to the Civil List; and yet, _to
my knowledge, within a very few years Mr. Disraeli stated it as his
opinion that Sir Charles Dilke was the most useful and influential
member, among quite young men, that he had ever known."
In pursuit of his plan of "keeping quiet" till the impending dissolution,
he took no prominent action in these months; but he backed independent
Liberalism whenever he saw a chance, as, for instance, by subscribing to
forward the candidature of Mr. Burt, who had then been selected by the
Morpeth miners to represent them. There was, however, a further reason for
this quiescence. Lady Dilke at the close of the season was seriously ill,
and it was late in autumn before she could be taken abroad to Monaco.
Here, under the associations of the place, Dilke wrote his very successful
political fantasy, _Prince Florestan_.
Another event which clouded 1873 was Mill's death--'a great loss to us.
Ours was the last house at which he dined, and we, with the Hills' (the
editor of the _Daily News_ and his wife), 'were the last friends who dined
with him. The Watts portrait for which he had consented to sit was
finished for me just when he died.'
'I loved him greatly,' Sir Charles writes. The relation between the two
had been that of master and disciple, and Mill may be said to have carried
on and completed the work of old Mr. Dilke.
[Illustration: JOHN STUART MILL.
From the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A., in the Westminster Town Hall.]
CHAPTER XII
RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT--DEATH OF LADY DILKE
Having remained abroad until after Christmas, 1873, the Dilkes stayed at
Brighton for the sake of Lady Dilke's health, Sir Charles coming to town
as occasion needed.
His address to his constituents in 1874 assumed a special character in
view of the approaching dissolution. He reviewed the whole work done by
the 'Householder Parliament,' and more particularly the part taken in it
by the members for Chelsea. It was an independent speech, making it quite
clear that from the introduction of the Education Bill in 1870 the speaker
had "ceased to be a steady supporter of the Government," and showing that
"during the past three years the present Government had been declining in
public esteem." Sir Charles recalled the various matters on which he had
criticized their action, laying emphasis on two points. One was the Act of
1871 for amending the Criminal Law in regard to combinations of workmen,
which had been passed in response to a long and vehement demand that the
position of Trade Unions should be regularized. The amending Act had
really left the Unions worse off than before: "the weapon of the men is
picketing, and the weapon of the master is the black list. The picketing
is practically prohibited by this Bill, and the black list is left
untouched." [Footnote: See "Labour," Chapter LII. (Volume II., pp. 342-
367).]
The other matter of interest was the Irish Peace Preservation Bill of
1873, a Bill which, as he said, would have raised great outcry if applied
to an English district; yet, 'because it applied only to Ireland, and the
Irish were unpopular and were supposed to be an unaccountable people
different from all others,' it had passed with small opposition. He could
not understand 'how those who shuddered at arbitrary arrests in Poland,
and who ridiculed the gagging of the Press in France, could permit the
passing of a law for Ireland which gave absolute powers of arrest and of
suppression of newspapers to the Lord-Lieutenant.'
Ireland has frequently afforded a test of the thoroughness of Liberal
principles, and Sir Charles was distinguished from most of his countrymen
by a refusal to impose geographical limitations on his notions of logic or
of conduct. He was the least insular of Englishmen.
In this speech of January, 1874, printed for circulation to the electors,
he went very fully into the matter of the Civil List controversy, but did
not touch his avowal of republican principles, because that declaration
had been made outside Parliament, and he had never spoken of it in
Parliament. He dealt with the matter, however, in a letter written to one
of his supporters for general publication:
"You ask me whether you are not justified in saying that I have always
declined to take part in a republican agitation. That is so. I have
repeatedly declined to do so; I have declined to attend republican
meetings and I have abstained from subscribing to republican funds. I
also refused to join the Republican Club formed at Cambridge
University, though I am far from wishing to cast a slur on those
Liberal politicians--Professor Fawcett and others--who did join it.
The view I took was that I had no right to make use of my position as
a member of the House of Commons, gained largely by the votes of those
who are not even theoretical republicans, to push on an English
republican movement. On the other hand, when denounced in a
Conservative paper as a 'republican,' as though that were a term of
abuse, I felt bound as an honest man to say I was one. But I am not a
'republican member' or a 'republican candidate,' any more than Mr.
Gordon" (his opponent) "is a monarchical candidate, because there is
neither Republican party nor Monarchical party in the English
Parliament. I said at Glasgow two years ago: 'The majority of the
people of Great Britain believe that the reforms they desire are
compatible with the monarchic form of government,' and this I believe
now as then."
'At the time when the letter was written,' notes the Memoir, 'an
immediate dissolution of Parliament was not expected, but it was only
just in time (being dated January 20th) to be of the most use, for the
sudden dissolution occurred four days after its publication. The word
"sudden" hardly perhaps, at this distance of time, conveys an
impression of the extraordinary nature of the event.'
The Cabinet's decision to dissolve, arising out of difficulties on the
Budget, was announced on January 24th. By February 16th the elections were
over, and Mr. Gladstone's Government had resigned, the Tories having come
back with a solid majority. It was an overthrow for the Liberal party, but
Sir Charles survived triumphantly, though ten seats in London were lost to
Mr. Gladstone's following. Mr. Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works,
against whom Sir Charles and his fellow-Radicals had fought fiercely, was
ejected from the Tower Hamlets, and never returned to public life. Another
victim was Sir Charles's former colleague.
'To the astonishment of many people, I was returned at the head of the
poll, the Conservative standing next, and then Sir Henry Hoare, while
the independent Moderate Liberal who had stood against me and obtained
the temperance vote, obtained nothing else, and was, at a great
distance from us, at the bottom of the poll.'
When all the political journalists in England were reviewing, after his
death in 1911, the remarkable career that they had watched, some for half
a lifetime, one of the veterans among them wrote: [Footnote: The
_Newcastle Daily Chronicle_.]
"_We do not think that Sir Charles Dilke owed a great deal to the
Liberal party, but we certainly think that the Liberal party owed a
very great deal to Sir Charles Dilke_. In the dark days of 1874, when
the party was deeper in the slough of despond than it has ever been
before or since in our time, it was from the initiative and courage of
Sir Charles Dilke that salvation came. His work in organizing the
Liberal forces, especially in the Metropolis, has never received due
acknowledgment.'
The centre of his influence was among those who knew him best--his own
constituents. 'I had indeed invented a caucus in Chelsea before the first
Birmingham Election Association was started,' he says of his own electoral
machinery. [Footnote: See Chapter XVII., p. 268.] The Eleusis Club was
known all over England as a propagandist centre. Here he had no occasion
to explain his speeches at Newcastle or elsewhere. "We were all
republicans down Chelsea way when young Charlie Dilke came among us
first," said an old supporter. Yet the propaganda emanating from the
Eleusis Club was not republican.
Here and all over the constituency he made innumerable and unreported
speeches to instruct industrial opinion. He laid under contribution his
whole store of extraordinary knowledge, suggesting and answering questions
till no Parliamentary representative in the country was followed by his
supporters with an attention so informed and discriminating.
"Nothing of the sort had been known since David Urquhart, in the first
half of the Victorian age, opened his lecture-halls and classrooms
throughout the world for counter-working Palmerston, and for teaching
artisans the true inwardness of the Eastern Question." [Footnote: Mr.
T. H. S. Escott, the _New Age_, February 9th, 1911.]
Sir Charles himself gives in the Memoir some sketch of the feelings with
which Liberals confronted that rout of Liberalism, and of the steps taken
to repair the disaster.
'Harcourt wrote (upon paper which bore the words "Solicitor-General"
with a large "No longer" in his handwriting at the top):
'"_Rari nantes in gurgite vasto._ Here we are again.... To tell you
the truth, I am not sorry. It had to come, and it is as well over. We
shall get rid of these canting duffers of the party and begin afresh.
We must all meet again _below_ the gangway. We shall have a nice
little party, though diminished. I am very sorry about Fawcett, but we
shall soon get him back again."
'My first work was to bring back Fawcett, and by negotiations with
Homer, the Hackney publican (Secretary of the Licensed Victuallers'
Protection Association), into which I entered because Fawcett's defeat
had been partly owing to the determined opposition of Sir Wilfrid
Lawson's friends, who could not forgive his attacks on the direct
veto, I succeeded in securing him an invitation to contest Hackney,
where there was an early vacancy. Fitzmaurice and I became
respectively Chairman and Treasurer of a fund, and we raised more
money than was needed for paying the whole of Fawcett's expenses, and
were able to bank a fund in the name of trustees, of whom I was one,
for his next election.
'Fitzmaurice, in accepting my invitation to co-operate with me in this
matter, said that he had succeeded in discovering a place to which
posts took two days, "wherein I can moralize at leisure on the folly
of the leaders of the Liberal party."
'When Fawcett returned to the House, he would not let himself be
introduced by the party Whips; but was introduced by me, in
conjunction, however, with Playfair, who, besides being one of his
most intimate political friends, had been for a short time before the
dissolution a member of the Government. On this occasion Fitzmaurice
wrote: "Gladstone, I imagine, is the person least pleased at the
return of Fawcett, and I should think has been dreaming ever since
that Bouverie's turn will come next." Cowen said in the _Newcastle
Chronicle_, Fawcett "contributed as much as any man in the late House
of Commons to damage the late Government. During the last session he
voted in favour of the proposals made by Mr. Gladstone's Government
about 160 times, and he voted against them about 180 times. It always
struck me that Professor Fawcett's boasted independence partook
greatly of crotchety awkwardness." Fawcett's personal popularity was,
however, great, not only with the public, but with men who did not
share his views and saw much of him in private life, such as the
ordinary Cambridge Dons among whom he lived, and whose prejudices upon
many points he was continually attacking. Nevertheless he was a
popular guest.'
Elsewhere, relating how Fawcett disturbed the peace of Mr. Glyn, the
ministerial Chief Whip from 1868 onwards. Sir Charles explained that--
'when he had some mischief brewing late at night, he used to get one
of the Junior Whips to give him an arm through the lobby, and as he
passed the Senior Whip at the door leading to the members' entrance
would say "Good-night, Glyn," as though he were going home to bed.'
Mr. Glyn thought "the blind man" had gone to bed, but in reality he had
simply passed down to the terrace, and would sit there smoking till the
other conspirators saw the moment to go down and fetch him. 'I fear it was
by this stratagem that he had helped me to defeat Ayrton's Bill for
throwing a piece of the Park into the Kensington Road opposite the Albert
Hall.'
It is possible that Dilke was a name of even greater horror to the
orthodox Whiggish opinion of this date than to the regular adherents of
Toryism. The general attitude at this moment towards "the Republican"--
"Citizen Dilke"--is illustrated by an anecdote in the _Reminiscences of
Charles Gavard_, who was for many years First Secretary at the French
Embassy. He says that when Sir Charles Dilke stood for Chelsea in 1874, he
attended several of his meetings--
"partly, I must admit, in the spirit of the Englishman who never
missed a performance of van Amburg, the lion-tamer, hoping some day to
see him devoured by his lions. On one occasion, at Chelsea Town Hall,
I had the honour of leading Lady Dilke on to the platform, and was
greeted, with such a round of applause as I am not likely to enjoy
again in my life. But, to my horror, I heard the reporters inquiring
as to my identity. Fortunately, Sir Charles perceived the peril I was
in, and gave them some misleading information. Otherwise, my name
might have appeared in the Press, and my diplomatic career have been
abruptly ended for figuring in public among the supporters of so
hostile an opponent of the form of government prevailing, in the
country to which I was accredited."
Sir Charles's personal triumph at the polls amid the general rout of his
party inevitably enhanced his position in the House. And upon it there
followed a wholly different success which established his prestige
precisely on the point where it was the fashion to assail it. He had been
decried as 'dreary'; yet London suddenly found itself applauding him as a
wit.
_The Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco_ was published anonymously in
March, 1874. To-day the little book is perhaps almost forgotten, although
one can still be amused by the story of the Cambridge undergraduate,
trained in the fullest faith of free-thinking Radicalism, who finds
himself suddenly promoted to the principality of Monaco, and who arrives
in his microscopic kingdom only to realize that his monarchical state
rests on the support of two pillars--a Jesuit who controls the Church and
education, and M. Blanc, who manages the gaming tables. The consequence of
Prince Florestan's attempt to put in practice democratic principles where
nobody wanted them was wittily and ingeniously thought out, and the tone
of subdued irony admirably kept up. The work was characteristically
thorough. The 126 functionaries, the 60 soldiers and carbineers, the 150
unpaid diplomatic representatives of Monaco abroad, the Vicar-General, the
Treasurer-General, the Honorary Almoner, and all the other "appliances and
excrescences of civilized government," which went to make up that
"perfection of bureaucracy and red tape in a territory one mile broad and
five miles long," were all statistically accurate. Throughout the whole a
reference to other monarchies and other swarms of functionaries was
delicately implied.
The quality of the book is rather that of talk than of writing. It has the
dash, the quick turn, and the vivacity of a good improvisation at the
dinner-table; and a quotation will illustrate not so much Sir Charles's
literary gift as the manner of his talk:
"On the 5th of February I reached Nice by the express, and, after
reading the telegram which announced the return of Mr. Gladstone by a
discerning people as junior colleague to a gin distiller, was
presented with an address by the Gambettist mayor at the desire of the
legitimist préfêt. The mayor, being a red-hot republican in politics,
but a carriage-builder by trade, lectured me on the drawbacks of
despotism in his address, but informed me in conversation afterwards
that he had had the honour of building a Victoria for Prince Charles
Honoré--which was next door to giving me his business card. The
address, however, also assumed that the Princes of Monaco were
suffered only by Providence to exist in order that the trade of Nice,
the nearest large French town, might thrive.
"In the evening at four we reached the station at Monaco, which was
decked with the white flags of my ancestors. What a pity, was my
thought, that M. de Chambord should not be aware that if he would come
to stay with me at the castle he would live under the white flag to
which he is so much attached all the days of his life. My reception
was enthusiastic. The guards, in blue uniforms not unlike the
Bavarian, but with tall shakos instead of helmets, and similar to that
which during the stoppage of the train at Nice I had rapidly put on,
were drawn up in line to the number of thirty-nine--one being in
hospital with a wart on his thumb, as M. de Payan told me. What an
admirable centralization that such a detail should be known to every
member of the administration! Two drummers rolled their drums French
fashion. In front of the line were four officers, of whom--one fat;
Baron Imberty; the Vicar-General; and Père Pellico of the Jesuits of
the Visitation, brother, as I already knew, to the celebrated Italian
patriot, Silvio Pellico, of dungeon and spider fame.
"'Where is M. Blanc?' I cried to M. de Payan, as we stopped, seeing no
one not in uniform or robes. "'M. Blanc,' said M. de Payan severely,
'though a useful subject to Your Highness, is neither a member of the
household of Your Highness, a soldier of His army, nor a functionary
of His Government. M. Blanc is in the crowd outside'" [Footnote:
_Prince Florestan_, p. 23.]
Sir Charles sent the manuscript anonymously to Macmillans, with a
statement that the work would certainly be a success, and that the author
would announce himself on the appearance of the second edition. But the
Macmillans, who had published _Greater Britain_, noted that the proposed
little book contained several contumelious references to the "lugubrious
speeches" of Sir Charles Dilke and his brother, and refused to have
anything to do with it. To pacify them, Sir Charles, from behind his mask,
had to excise some of the disagreeable things which he had said about
himself. Enough was left to convince one egregious London daily paper not
only that Matthew Arnold was the author, but that the special object of
his new satire was Sir Charles Dilke, "a clever young man who fancies that
his prejudices are ideas, and who, if he had the misfortune to be made
King, would stir up a revolution in a week."
This was the very thing that Sir Charles wanted. Fundamentally the book
was chaff--chaff of other people for their estimate of him. Finding
himself perpetually under the necessity of explaining that his theoretic
preference for Republicanism would not constrain him to upset a monarchy
which happened to suit the nation where it existed, he wrote _Prince
Florestan_, as though to say: 'This is what you take me for'; and even
while it satirized the absurdity of Florestan's court and constitution,
the book showed that it would be still more absurd to upset even the most
ridiculous Government so long as it suited the people governed.
The ascription to Matthew Arnold was frequent. The book came out on March
16th, and within forty-eight hours had been reviewed in five leading
papers, and, in all the guessing, no one in print guessed right.
The disclosure was made by Lady Dilke, who, entering a friend's drawing-
room, caused herself to be announced as "Princess Florestan." Newspapers
proclaimed the authorship; a popular edition of the book appeared, with
malicious extracts from the various reviews that had been written when the
authorship was unknown; and the result was to make Sir Charles, already
universally known, now universally the fashion.
Though he had faced social ostracism with a courage all the greater in one
who enjoyed society, he was unaffectedly glad to take his place again. One
shrewd critic wrote that "Florestan's" success "had led some people to
discover that they always liked Sir Charles Dilke."
"Society" (the writer went on) "still bears Sir Charles a grudge, and
would have voted anything known to be his to be dull--like his
speeches, as he good-naturedly said of himself. Amused, without
knowing who amused them, the few fine people who supply views to the
many fine people in need of them prove not ungrateful."
The return of a Conservative Government was accompanied by a period of
comparative inaction on the part of Sir Charles and his friends; and the
activities of the whole Liberal party were in a measure paralyzed by the
withdrawal of Mr. Gladstone, not merely from leadership, but almost from
the Parliamentary arena. Mr. Chamberlain, who had stood for Parliament and
been defeated at Sheffield, wrote that he was engaged in purchasing the
Birmingham Gasworks for the Corporation, and did not want to stand again
till he had finished his mayoralty.'
"It may be well to let the crude attempts at democratic organizations,
Radical unions, etc., etc., be disposed of before we talk over our
propositions. I do not think the League will do. We must be a new
organization, although our experience and acquired information may be
useful."
'This was the death-warrant of the Education League, and the birth-
certificate of the National Liberal Federation, always privately
called by Chamberlain after the name given to it by his enemies, The
Caucus.'
Sir Charles himself was mainly occupied in Parliament with pioneer work
for the extension of the franchise; and by a series of small steps towards
electoral reform he obtained ultimately, as a private member in
opposition, very considerable results. It was not merely with the right to
vote, but with the opportunity that he concerned himself, and his Bill to
extend the polling hours till 8 p.m., introduced in the session of 1874,
although it was opposed by the Government and rejected on a division,
nevertheless became law in a few years, as a measure applying to London
first, and then to the whole of the United Kingdom.
In the same session he served on a Committee to inquire into the
adulteration of food, and obtained through a careful watching of the
evidence "a considerable knowledge of the processes of manufacture, which
was afterwards useful when I came to be charged with the negotiation of
commercial treaties."
'I continued to interest myself in the question of local government,
until I had shaped my views into the form of proposals which I was
able to place in a Bill when afterwards at the Local Government Board,
and to make public in a speech at Halifax in 1885.'
He adds: 'In 1874 I voted for Home Rule.' This was always for him a form
of local government in its highest sense.
He was strong enough to take up a position of detachment, and from that
vantage-ground he made at Hammersmith, on September 8th, 1874, an
interesting speech, in which he gave free rein to the ironical mood of
Prince Florestan. The Tories, he said, came into office with at all events
a strong list of names: Mr. Disraeli, Lord Cairns and Mr. Gathorne Hardy
could not easily be matched.
"On the other hand, our chiefs were nowhere. Mr. Gladstone was in the
sulks, and Mr. Forster had been returned by Tory votes at Bradford, than
which nothing is more weakening to a Liberal politician. Mr. Cardwell and
Mr. Chichester Fortescue had gone to the Whig heaven; and Sir William
Harcourt, whose great abilities were beginning to be recognized, was
draping himself in the mantle of Lord Palmerston, and looked rather to a
distant than to an immediate future.
"As though to strengthen the Conservative position, we were at the
same time on our side called upon to surrender our parliamentary
liberties as independent members to a triumvirate, composed of Mr.
Goschen, Lord Hartington, and Mr. Forster--the title of the first
being founded upon the fact that he was the intimate friend of Mr.
Gladstone, whom the country had just condemned; that of the second,
that he was a serious Marquis, the son of a highly respectable Duke;
and that of the third, that he had the confidence of gentlemen who sat
upon the other side of the House. Believing, as we did, that Mr.
Disraeli never made mistakes, it was not easy to foresee the end of
his administration.
"When people talked about the extinction of the Whigs, it certainly
then seemed, on the contrary, that that party, instead of being
extinct, had become all-embracing, for one knew nobody who was not a
Whig. With a Whig Government in office under Mr. Disraeli, and a
disorganized Whig opposition on the other side, there seemed to be in
question only persons, and not principles. At the Same time, many
Liberals thought that it would be better, as far as principles went,
to keep the Conservatives in office, inasmuch as they possessed a
majority in the House of Lords, and, being forced by the House of
Commons and the country into passing Whig measures, would have to
carry them through both Houses and into law, instead of dropping them
halfway, as our people had often been compelled to do."
In this speech he assailed Mr. Disraeli's Government for legislation which
laid restrictions only on "the poor and the lower middle classes, and
which put down a servants' betting club, though it had precisely the same
rules as prevail at Tattersall's." The Friendly Societies Bill, again,
seemed to him "harassing," and drawn on the assumption that working men
have not sense enough to investigate for themselves the position of the
society which they wish to join.
"There cannot be too little interference with the great self-governed
popular Societies. I think that this Bill is the thin end of the
wedge, that espionage is the first step to control, and that control
is a long step on the road which leads to the destruction of the
Societies, and to the creation of a single Government provident
organization, which I should regard as a great evil."
The speech attracted much attention, and Sir Charles was now quoted as one
whom men would wish to see in any Liberal Ministry. In the public field,
during the spring and summer of 1874, all went well with him. But his
personal life during these months was overshadowed by approaching
calamity.
Lady Dilke was again in ill-health, and was under the presentiment of
approaching death. 'Our last happy time was at Paris at Christmas, 1873,
on our way home from Monaco, when Gambetta's brightness was answered by
our own.' Sir Charles occupied himself with buying land at Broadstairs,
where the climate was specially favourable to his wife's health, but as
the plans for building on it progressed, he could note that the keenness
of her interest 'drooped and died.' After the beginning of August there
were no more dinner-parties, and although those who came to the house--of
whom Sir William Harcourt was the last to be admitted--found its mistress
wearing a gay face, the gloom deepened over her, and she suffered acutely
from insomnia. A child was born in September; she lived to see her son,
the present Sir Wentworth Dilke, but she never rallied. Death came to her
with difficulty, early in the night of September 20th. Sir Charles,
overstrained already by long watching, was completely unstrung by the
unlooked-for end of the final and terrible vigil. Having summoned his
grandmother, Mrs. Chatfield, and asked her to take charge of his house and
son--a charge which she fulfilled till her death--he fled from the scene
of his suffering, and hid himself in Paris, seeing no one, and holding
communication with no one.
'For about a month I think I did not see a letter. I worked steadily
at historical work; but I have very little recollection of the time
(except by looking at the notebooks which contain the work I did), and
even within a few months afterwards was unable to recall it.'
All the letters which poured in speak again and again of Lady Dilke's
radiant charm. Moret, the Spanish Minister, who had been one of the guests
at the last of all her dinner-parties, recalled her as he saw her then,
"si belle, si bonne, si souriante, que j'éprouvai moi-même le bonheur
qu'elle respirait."
'The beginning of my friendship with Cardinal Manning was his letter
to me at this time, in which he said, "We have met only once, and that
in public, but it was that meeting which enables me to understand what
your affliction is now."'
Gambetta wrote to him 'a really beautiful letter ':
_"La République Française,_
"16, RUE DU CROISSANT,
"PARIS,
"_le 2 novembre_, 1874.
"MON BIEN CHER AMI,
"Plus que jamais permettez-moi de vous donner ce nom, qui, au milieu
des terribles épreuves qui vous accablent, n'exprime que bien
imparfaitement les sentiments de profond attachement, de volontaire
solidarité que je vous ai voués.
"Je sais, je mesure l'insuffisance amère de toute parole de
consolation pour d'aussi grandes douleurs, d'aussi irréparables
pertes. Car même l'impuissance de semblables remèdes qui m'ont empêché
de vous écrire plutôt, m'ont arrêté dans le désir de venir près de
vous à un moment aussi lugubre pour votre grand coeur. J'ai cru plus
digne, plus respectueux de vos angoisses, d'attendre; et je m'en suis
remis à votre pénétration naturelle pour comprendre et accepter mon
silence.
"Aujourd'hui je viens vous dire que le plus haut prix que je puisse
obtenir de notre commune affection serait de pouvoir penser que dans
la fuite de la vie, je pourrais être assez heureux pour être de
quelque utilité dans les actes de votre existence.
"Je viendrai vous voir demain mardi à 2 heures et vous répéter de
vive-voix ce que je dis ici. Je suis tout entier à vous et de coeur,
"Votre ami,
"LÉON GAMBETTA."
From that day forward Sir Charles met him constantly.
'It would have been difficult to find a better companion at such a
moment than one who was so full of interest in life, about things
which were absolutely outside my own life, who was surrounded by
people who could recall to me no circumstances of pain.'
After seeing Gambetta, Sir Charles roused himself to write a reply in the
last days of October to Sir William Harcourt, whose sympathy had been
expressed with a rare warmth of kindness, and who caused his son--then a
boy of eleven, [Footnote: Afterwards the Right Hon. Lewis Harcourt,
created Viscount at the end of 1916.]--'to write to me about Katie, who
had been kind to him, which was a pretty thought, and proposed that I
should go and live with him, which I ultimately did.'
'Some scraps of polities' were added to they letter, in the hope of
reviving his interest in life; but Sir Charles at this moment was fully
determined to resign his seat, feeling himself unable to face old
associates and associations again. His brother Ashton, now busily and
successfully at work in directing his newspaper, the _Weekly Dispatch_,
begged him at least to consider his constituents. An election caused by
the Radical member's retirement would certainly let in a second Tory.
Also:
"For yourself, I really think, my dear boy, that work is the best
remedy, and though you may not think it now, you could not give it
up.... It seems selfish to speak of myself, but I should have to give
up the _Dispatch_, as the thing is too serious for me to go into
without your advice. Do think it over again, Charlie; there is no
hurry. I will come next week. We must not make dear Dragon's
[Footnote: Mrs. Chatfield, their grandmother.] last days unhappy by
wandering over the world year after year. Remember your child, and
that you must regard the living as well as the dead. I am sure she
would never have let you sacrifice your career. Do think it over
again."
Sir Charles adds: 'It was, however, Gambetta, I think, that saved me.'
In the course of the month (November, 1874) he wrote to his constituents
in reply to a resolution sent by them, but could not promise to take his
seat during the following session, and said that in any event he should
have for a long time to transact business only by letter. 'From this time
forward I got rapidly better as far as nervousness at meeting people went,
although for many months I was completely changed and out of my proper
self.' [Footnote: He, however, began to attend Parliament in the early
part of the session of 1875.]
He sought escape in travel, starting suddenly in December for Algeria by
way of Oran, and pushing through the desert as far as Laghouat and the
Mzab.
CHAPTER XIII
RENEWAL OF ACTIVITY
I.
On his return from Algeria Sir Charles reached Paris and crossed to
England in the last week of January, 1875.
'On reaching London, instead of going to Harcourt's, I had to go
first to my own house, for I was sickening with disease, and had,
indeed, a curious very slight attack of smallpox, which passed off,
however, in about two days, but I had to be isolated for another week.
When I became what the doctors called well I moved to Harcourt's; but
my hand still shook, and I had contracted a bad habit of counting the
beating of my heart, and I was so weak of mind that the slightest act
of kindness made me cry. To my grandmother and brother I wrote to ask
them to let me go on living with Harcourt for the present, not because
I preferred him to them, but because I could not live in my own house,
and should have a better chance of sleep if I returned elsewhere at
night from the House of Commons.'
From this prostration he slowly recovered, occupying himself partly in
arranging for the publication by Murray of _Papers of a Critic_, which he
describes as 'a reprint of some of my grandfather's articles, with a
memoir of him by myself which I had written while in Paris.'
The book was well received, and a copy sent to Mr. Disraeli brought this
acknowledgment:
"2, WHITEHALL GARDENS,
"_June 28th_, '75.
"DEAR SIR CHARLES,
"I am obliged to you for sending me your book; I find it agreeable and
amusing. _Belles Lettres_ are now extremely rare, but, I must confess,
very refreshing. Your grandfather had a true literary vein, and you
have done wisely in collecting his papers.
"Very much yours,
"B. DISRAELI."
This pleasant note was the beginning of an acquaintance, though by a
series of chances Sir Charles never met the Tory leader outside Parliament
till Lord Beaconsfield was in the last year of his life.
When coming through Paris he had, 'of course at once' gone to see
Gambetta, whom he found 'privately ridiculing the various suggestions made
as to a constitution for his country.' Gambetta suggested as an
alternative that they should allow the National Assembly elected after the
war--
'to continue to govern the country without filling up death vacancies,
and with the provision that when at last it became reduced to one
member, he should take any title or give to any person that he pleased
any title, or adopt any form of government that he should think fit!'
Shortly after Mr. John Morley went with an introduction from Sir Charles
to Gambetta, which nearly miscarried.
"I went for two nights" (he wrote) "to Gambetta's office (the office
of the _République Française_), and found him 'not come.' As I would
not sit up late three nights ... I desisted. Then he wrote me the most
courteous letter, making a more sensible appointment at his private
quarters. This I kept. He gave a most gracious and even caressing
reception, and I was intensely interested in him."
On this Sir Charles comments: 'Morley was no doubt told by Gambetta's
faithful secretary to call at "2 a.m.," which was a playful way this old
gentleman had of choking off callers.'
As his health became re-established Sir Charles took an increasing part in
political life. The independent man is on much better terms with his party
when that party is in opposition; his critical faculty is directed against
other men's measures, and if he has force, he easily passes into the
position of being consulted. The process was the easier in Sir Charles's
case, because the governing group of the Liberal party in Parliament was
much disorganized. A great effort was being made to escape from the
unsatisfactory relations between Liberals and their Front Bench, which a
witty member had defined by saying that the party sat "like Scotch
communicants trying aspirants for the ministry of their church by their
sermons."
'Fierce fighting was taking place over the choice of a leader of the
Liberal party. Up to the day on which there went out the notices for
the meeting there was the greatest doubt as to the result.... Sir H.
James reported 'Forster very loyal and quite willing to give way.
Hartington careless. Mundella, Fawcett, and Trevelyan working hard for
Forster, but Adam" (the Chief Whip) "says the great bulk of our men
all for Hartington. Richard very strong against Forster, and he
represents a great many Nonconformists. Adam says Fawcett is going to
Birmingham to-morrow in order to support Forster there, but this I do
not believe.' James added that he had ventured to say to Adam that as
far as he knew Harcourt was not disposed to take any part, one way or
the other, in reference to the matter, which was the case also with
himself.'
Sir Charles had declined to attend the meeting, but before it took place
the matter was arranged.
'At one moment, after a fiasco by Mr. Bright at Birmingham, it had
looked as though Forster might win, in spite of Chamberlain and the
Nonconformists. Although James professed Harcourt's indifference in
the matter, Harcourt and James were both, as a fact, for Hartington.
Harcourt had conceived a strong feeling against Fawcett immediately
before this, in January, for trying to keep Mr. Gladstone as the
leader, a course to which Harcourt was bitterly opposed....'
In these years Sir William Harcourt, then a widower devoted to his one
boy, stood nearer to Sir Charles than any other of his English friends.
Dilke wrote to him: "How little credit you get for your heart! How few
people know you have one!"
'In this month of February, 1875,' he goes on to say, 'I revived an
acquaintance which had slumbered for thirteen years, but was destined
not again to drop.'
Account has already been given of Sir Charles's boyish friendship with
Emilia Strong, a brilliant girl three years his elder. In 1861 she had
married Mark Pattison, the Rector of Lincoln College, and from that time
onward Dilke, although he had seen something of the famous scholar, her
husband, had scarcely met Mrs. Pattison, as she seldom came to London, and
he at that time never went to Oxford. Now, in 1875, she was staying with
her husband in Gower Street, under the roof of Sir Charles Newton, Keeper
of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, and was gradually
becoming convalescent after a terrible attack of gout, which had left both
her arms useless for many months. During this time they were strapped to
her sides, and she had to invent a machine to turn over the pages of her
book. But the bracing influence of her mind on those around her was
unimpaired. In the years which followed, the habit of correspondence grew
up between them, strengthening, until at any important crisis in his
political life it became natural to him to consult her or take her into
his confidence.
We have also at this moment reference to the beginnings of an acquaintance
with a remarkable opponent.
Sir Charles notes that at Easter, 1875, when crossing to France, he met
Lord Randolph Churchill, already known to him in the House, who expressed
a wish to be presented to Gambetta. The meeting was a success, and
Gambetta, delighted with his talk, asked him to breakfast along with
Dilke, fixing the hour at noon; but later there came this note:
"MON CHER AMI,
"Je vous prie en grâce de vouloir bien avancer notre déjeuner au Café
Anglais et de prévenir votre ami de ce petit dérangement.
L'enterrement d'Edgar Quinet doit avoir lieu à une heure à
Montparnasse et je ne peux manquer à cette cérémonie. Donc à demain
lundi 11h au Caf. Anglais.
"Votre toujours dévoué,
"LEON GAMBETTA."
At the breakfast talk turned naturally on Quinet, the professor and critic
who was exiled after the _coup d'état_, and whom the Third Republic
welcomed back to his place on the Extreme Left. This led to mention of the
recent occasion when Gambetta had "assisted" at the funeral of another
famous Republican exile, Ledru-Rollin, who had died on the last day of
1874. Hereupon--
'Randolph turned to Gambetta, and in his most apologetic style, which
is extremely taking, said: "_Would_ you mind telling me who Ledru-
Rollin was?" Gambetta looked him all up and down, as though to say,
"What sort of a politician are you, never to have heard of Ledru-
Rollin?" and then broke into a laugh, and replied: "Ledru-Rollin was a
republican in the days when there were none, so we were bound to give
him a first-class funeral."'
Sir Charles adds:
'When I was a boy, Hepworth Dixon used to tell a story of how an
omnibus driver had nudged him one day when he was sitting on the box-
seat, and pointing out Ledru-Rollin in Oxford Street, had said, "See
that gentleman? I have heard say how he once was King of France"--
which had been pretty true at the beginning of 1848.'
After the Easter recess 'was the moment of the German war scare' of 1875
in France--
'Bourke' (the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs) 'kept me quiet in
the Commons by keeping me informed. He told me of the Queen's letter
to the Emperor William the day it went. Gavard, the French Charge
d'Affaires, told me that England and Russia received official thanks
from France for preventing war by pressure at Berlin. Peace was not in
danger.'
There is a note referring to conversations held earlier in 1875 with
Gambetta, and to other conversations with Bismarck in 1889:
'I had heard a rumour that Thiers had signed secret articles of peace
in addition to the public treaty, and further that in these articles
there was something about the number of men to be kept under arms by
France. In the Arnim trial it came out that one of the despatches
concerned Prussian spies in France in 1872, while two of the
despatches were "so secret that they could not be even named or
catalogued." It was thought that these despatches concerned the secret
articles, and it was sought in this way to explain the efforts made by
Germany to prevent the fall of Thiers on the ground that he must be
kept on his legs for fear a different Government would disregard his
secret articles. Bismarck himself, it should be remembered, spoke of
the two uncatalogued despatches as "perhaps decisive of the question
of peace or war." [Footnote: Secret articles of the Versailles and
Frankfort.]
When at Friedrichsruh in September, 1889, [Footnote: This was during
Sir Charles's visit to Prince Bismarck, described in Chapter L.
(Volume II.).] as Bismarck was talking very freely about everything
that was past and gone, I asked him about this, and he said that I
should agree with him that it was plain that the suggestions as to the
limit of the number of men had been wrong, inasmuch as France had
repeatedly increased her forces; but the sudden risk of war between
France and Germany which arose in 1875, when war was only prevented by
the interference of the Russian Emperor, has never been adequately
explained.
On this point Sir Charles afterwards pencilled in the margin: 'The
Prussian Staff wanted war; I doubt whether the old German Emperor intended
to permit it.'
There follow other references of this year to foreign politics and
politicians:
'Don Alfonso at this moment (January, 1875) had become King of Spain.
Two years previously Moret told me to a day when Amedeo, whose
Ambassador in England he then was, would fall; and on Boxing Day of
1874 in Paris, before I left for Algeria, he recalled to me this
prophecy, and told me that Serrano would "bring back" Alfonso that
week, and so he did. [Footnote: Marshal Serrano was Minister of War to
Queen Isabella II., with whom he had great influence. His opposition
to the illegal prorogation of the Cortes led to his imprisonment, but
after the revolution of 1868, when Isabella was dethroned and her
dynasty proscribed, he became Regent of Spain from 1868 to 1871. He
resigned this power when Amedeo I. entered Madrid, but remained
President of the Council and Minister of War. On the abdiction of
Amedeo and proclamation of a Republic he was again at the head of
affairs until Alfonso II., son of Isabella, was "brought back."]
'Sigismund Moret is not only the handsomest and pleasantest of men,
but about the cleverest; but at this moment his country offered him no
place, and his friends could only regret that he could find nothing
better to do than play whist. He afterwards became Prime Minister.
'Alfonso was said to be greatly under the influence at this time of
the Duchesse de Sesto--my old friend of 1860, the Duchesse de Morny,
lovely of the lovely at that time at Trouville, but afterwards when I
saw her at La Bourboule, I think in 1881, become much like other
people, and somewhat weighed down by the responsibility of being the
mother of that terrible young man "Le petit Duc."
'It was about this time that Rochefort, who had escaped from New
Caledonia with Pascal Grousset (died 1909), came to London, and I saw
them. I afterwards quarrelled with Rochefort, or rather ceased to see
him, for I had seen him only this once, because of his behaviour
towards Gambetta, who had been very good to him.'
Of Grousset Sir Charles writes:
'This handsome youth had in 1868 just become notorious for his grossly
impertinent and indecent reply to the President of the Tribunal at the
trial of Prince Peter Bonaparte for shooting Victor Noir. Grousset was
the principal witness, and when asked the usual first question of
French law, "Witness, are you the husband, wife, father, mother, son,
daughter, brother, sister, ascendant or descendant, or any relation of
the prisoner?" replied: "It is impossible to say; Madame Letitia was
not particular"--alluding to the mother of Napoleon the Great.
'Grousset had conducted the "Foreign Affairs" of the Commune of Paris,
and had been so polite to the representatives of the Embassies that
George Sheffield, the private secretary to Lord Lyons, who conducted
British affairs at Paris, used to declare that of all the many French
Governments he had known the Commune was the only one that knew how to
behave itself in society....'
But this feeling was not universal.
'Mrs. Wodehouse (formerly Minnie King, an American beauty, and
afterwards Lady Anglesey) asked me to breakfast with her to meet
Grousset.' (She was receiving the refugee at the request of Madame
Novikoff.)
'When her butler, who was an old French gendarme, found who was coming
to breakfast, he refused to serve, and a hired waiter had to be called
in, the old man saying that he had had charge of Grousset to convey
him from Versailles to the hulks before the Communalists had been sent
to New Caledonia, and that Grousset had been so impertinent to him
that nothing would induce him to wait upon him as a servant.
'This clever boy of all the persons deeply compromised in the Commune
was, with one exception, the one who made his peace most rapidly with
French society, and in 1890 he was received by the President of the
Republic officially as elected Director of the federation of all the
Gymnastic Societies of France.' [Footnote: It was perhaps on account
of his youthful appearance that Pascal Grousset was described as a
boy. He was only two years younger than Sir Charles, and was twenty-
six at the time of the Commune. He was later, for twenty years, one of
the Deputies for Paris.]
II.
Sir Charles in this Session contributed to the gaiety of Parliament by his
motion upon unreformed Borough Corporations, and, said the newspapers,
"kept the House of Commons in a roar."
'But the fact was that the subject was so funny that it was impossible
to make a speech about it which would not have been amusing, and
Randolph Churchill, who replied to me, was funnier than I was, though
he was not equally regardful of the truth.'
'One of the Corporations which I had attacked was that of Woodstock,
and Randolph Churchill brought the Prince of Wales down to the House
to hear his defence of his constituency. I had said in my speech that
the Mayor of Woodstock had been lately fined by his own Bench, he
being a publican, for breaking the law in a house the property of the
Corporation, and that he had said on that occasion in public court,
after hearing the evidence of the police: "I have always had a high
respect for the police, but in future I shall have none." Randolph
Churchill, answering me, said that I had slightly mistaken the Mayor's
words, and that what he had really said was: "I have always had a high
respect for the police, but in future I shall have _more_." After this
debate was over, Randolph came up to me outside, and said: "I was
terrified lest you should have heard anything to-day, but I see you
have not." I said: "What?" He said: "He was fined again yesterday."'
In the same speech the case of New Romney was described--"the worst of
all" the Cinque Ports, where the number of freemen, twenty-one at the
passing of the Reform Act (of 1832), had fallen to eight--
"the only town in England in which six gentlemen elected themselves to
every office, appointed themselves magistrates, let the whole of the
valuable town properties exclusively to themselves, audited their own
accounts, and never showed a balance sheet."
A cartoon in one of the comic papers displayed one selfsame and highly
complacent person, first as "Our Grocer," then as "Our Mayor," then as
"The Gentleman who elects our Mayor," "The Gentleman who disposes of our
Public Trusts," "The Gentleman who benefits by our Public Trusts, "and
"The Committee appointed annually to look into the Accounts of the
Gentleman who disposes of our Public Trusts."
Another of Sir Charles's topics in 1875 was the working of the Ballot Act.
'A dull speech on a dull subject,' it secured, however, the appointment of
a Committee to inquire whether secrecy of voting was not menaced by the
form in which ballot papers were issued. But the main object of his
activity in the field of electoral reform was redistribution, and this
object was the hardest to attain, because more than 400 members of the
House sat for constituencies not numerically entitled to representation.
The over-represented had a majority of two-thirds in Parliament, and this
was a tremendous vested interest to assail. Still, the whole Liberal party
was now committed to the support of his principle.
The same general support was given to his Bill 'known as the Allotments
Extension Bill, to provide for the letting to cottagers of lands held for
the benefit of the poor'--a scheme originally proposed by Mill.
'My Parliamentary Session of 1875 was my most successful.
'My motion on Ballot Act,
" " " Unreformed Boroughs,
" " " Redistribution,
" Bill " Allotments,
were all four great successes, and so spoken of in all the papers. On
the first I got my way. On the second I prepared it for next year, and
on the third and fourth I got the support of the whole Liberal party
and most of the Press.'
There are a good many pleasant stories of what seems to have been a very
easy-going Session of Parliament:
'At this time Plimsoll's name was in every mouth, and the only
formidable opposition in the House was that which he offered to the
Government in the sailors' name. Old Adderley, afterwards Lord Norton,
who was at the Board of Trade, assured me, in his solid hatred of the
man, that when Plimsoll told the House of Commons that he had stopped
a fearful shipwreck by taking a telegram to the Board of Trade at 3
a.m., and ringing for the porter and sending it then and there to the
President's house, Plimsoll had neglected to state that this telegram
had reached him at five o'clock in the afternoon, and had been kept
back by him till the middle of the night for the production of a
sensation....
'The other hero of the Session was Major O'Gorman, a hero of four-and-
twenty stone, who on two occasions at least made the House laugh as
they never laughed before, nor have laughed since. We used at first to
lose him at a quarter to twelve each night, as he had to get to the
Charing Cross Hotel, where he lived on the fourth storey, before the
lift had gone up for the last time. But later in the Session we
managed to keep him till 1.15, for he made the brilliant discovery
that the luggage lift, which just suited him, was available till 1.30.
'Some of his finest things are lost in the reports. For example,
"Swill the whisky through the streets till the very curs lie
prostrate," and this, which, however, in a weakened form, survives in
Mr. Lucy's Diary: "Some men who call themselves my constituents tell
me that if I oppose this Bill I shall never sit again. Well, _what
then?_" (This in a stentorian voice that nearly blew the windows out.)
"Athens ostracized Aristides."
'After midnight a postponed Bill is fixed for the next sitting by the
words "This day." O'Gorman was opposing and watching such a Bill, and
shouted out: "_What_ day?" "This day" was solemnly repeated. Then the
puzzled Major, looking at the clock, and bowing to the chair, said:
"Mr. Speaker, is it yesterday or is it to-morrow?" I never heard a
question more difficult of reply under the circumstances of the case.
The best Irish bull uttered within his own hearing was, says Dilke, Sir
Patrick O'Brien's defence of Mr. Gladstone addressed to the Irish
Nationalists: "The right honourable gentleman has done much for our common
country. He has broken down the bridges that divided us."
III.
When the Session was ended, Sir Charles, according to his custom, set out
on travel, following a scheme mapped out far ahead. In December, 1874, he
had written to Miss Kate Field, correspondent of the _New York Tribune_
and a friend of Sir Charles and of his first wife, that he would be in
America in the following September on a journey round the world, and there
accordingly he appeared--'on my way to Japan, China, Java, Singapore, and
the Straits of Malacca--taking with me as travelling companion my scheme
for a history of the nineteenth century,' a work projected on such ample
lines that a note of this year sets down 1899 as the probable date of
completion, "if I live so long."
The record of this journey is to be found in the additional chapters to
_Greater Britain,_ first issued in 1876 as magazine articles, and added to
the eighth edition in 1885. He saw Japan before the Satsuma rebellion had
broken out in a last attempt to restore the old feudal regime, and he
stayed in the Tartar General's _yamen_ at Canton, where at gun-fire he and
the other Europeans in the same house were shut up within barred gates,
only representatives of the white race among 2,000,000 Chinese. As for the
Japanese, he wrote:
"I'm in love with this country and people.... The theatre is where I
spend all my time.... There alone can you now see the soldiers in
masks, ferocious and hairy, with the chain-armour and javelins of
fifteen years ago. [Footnote: This was written in 1875.] There alone
can you now see the procession of daimios accompanied by two-sworded
Samurai, there alone have the true old Japan of the times before this
cursed 'New Reform Government' arose."
'My stay at Tokio was at the same moment as that of Shimadzu Suboro,
the old Satsuma Chief, uncle and adoptive father to the Satsuma
Princes, and last constitutional light of the Feudal party. The "great
Marshal" Saigo was commanding in chief the forces, and was in the next
year to head the Satsuma rebellion. The Corean Envoys--tall men, with
wondrous stars in their hair--were at the capital also, and I met them
often.'
The beauty of Java, where he stayed at the Governor's Palace at
Buitenzorg, charmed him.
His journey from the East was very rapid, and January, 1876, saw him back
in England. He was in time to address his constituents as usual before the
opening of Parliament.
The speech contains what he points out as notable in one who 'so seldom
spoke upon the Irish question'--an attack on the Coercion Bill of the
previous year. It might be better, he said, to govern Ireland on the
assumption that human nature is much the same everywhere, and Irishmen
under no special bar of incapacity. A majority of the Irish
representatives were in favour of Home Rule, and "a reformed dual
constitution might possibly be devised which would work fairly well." This
was an extreme attitude for those days, and he went on to recommend "the
immediate creation of a local elective body, having power to deal with
public works and the like"--in short, very much what Mr. Chamberlain
advocated in 1885.
The speech also protested against Lord Carnarvon's policy as Colonial
Minister, "in sending out Mr. Froude to stump South Africa against the
local Ministers of the Crown, which was the beginning of all the frightful
evils which afflicted South African affairs for the next nine years."
The conduct of the Opposition did not escape comment. "The duty of a
Liberal leader is to follow his party, and this Lord Hartington has done
with exemplary fidelity and unexampled patience." Another phrase noted
that the Session of 1875 had left its mark on the House of Commons, "for
pillows had been for the first time provided for members who wished to
sleep," and the same atmosphere of repose marked the Session of 1876. The
Memoir sketches some Parliamentary operations with which Sir Charles was
connected:
'Early in this session occurred the introduction of the Royal Titles
Bill, conferring the Imperial title upon the Queen, and I wrote for
Fawcett a motion for an address to pray the Queen that she would be
graciously pleased not to assume any addition to her title in respect
of India other than the title of Queen. When the matter came on for
discussion Cowen, who had now come into the House for Newcastle, rose
to make his first speech. He had succeeded his old father, who was a
Whig in politics and an old fogey in appearance, the son being now an
ultra-Radical, now a democratic Tory, dressing like a workman, with a
black comforter round his neck, and the only wideawake hat at that
time known in the House of Commons. The next day Mr. Disraeli said: "I
am told that we are blamed for not having put up a Minister to answer
Cowen. How could we? I came into the House while he was speaking. I
saw a little man with one hand in his pocket, and the other arm
raising and waving uncouthly a clenched fist, making what appeared to
be a most impassioned oration. But I was in this difficulty. I did not
understand a word of it. I turned to my colleagues, and found that
they were in the same position. We could not reply to him; we did not
understand the tongue in which the speech was delivered." Cowen spoke
with a Newcastle burr so strong that it was not easy to follow his
words, and it was only by the context that one could guess what he
meant, when he used, for example, such a word as "rowing," which he
pronounced "woane."...
'I again brought forward my motion with regard to unreformed
corporations, with fresh illustrations and new jokes, and the second
edition was voted as popular as the first. Corfe Castle, with the Lord
High Admiral of the Isle of Purbeck, and a Corporation consisting of
one person, was a gem. Sir John Holker, who had to deal with the
question for the Government, and who prepared the Royal Commission
which sat to consider it in consequence of my motions, laid down some
law for my information, which I doubted, and thereon showed to
Harcourt, who said: "You will find the Attorney-General's law as bad
as might be expected." Holker was personally popular. But he
certainly, though a great winner of verdicts from juries, was one of
the dullest men who ever addressed the House of Commons.'
Although Sir Charles was active and, generally speaking, successful during
this session, on two points he found himself without support. One was his
opposition to the principle of the Bills dealing with the University of
Oxford and the University of Cambridge, on both of which he "took a highly
Conservative tone without securing any assistance from Conservative
opinion." But a passage in his diary, March, 1877, describes his action
and that of the Liberal party on the "Universities Bill" of that year, and
mentions a meeting at which Lord Hartington, Goschen, Harcourt, Fawcett,
and Fitzmaurice were present, and at which 'it was decided to support my
amendments to the Bill.' [Footnote: See Appendix, p. 200.]
His conservatism in academic matters revealed itself fully in 1878, as did
that abiding feeling for his old college which characterized every after--
allusion to it or to his University life. The Papal diplomatist, Bishop
Bateman, founder of Trinity Hall, was mentioned by Sir Charles with the
respect due to a patron saint. No traditions were dearer to him than those
of Trinity Hall. Speaking at the College annual dinner, he impressed upon
the reforming Fellows their obligation, in the college interests, to
retain its exclusive teaching and qualifications for fellowship as laid
down by its founder, "for the study of the canon and civil law."
[Footnote: A scrap of the menu of the dinner of June 19th, 1878, is
preserved, which shows these toasts: '"The Lord Chief Justice of England--
proposed by the Master; responded to by the Lord Chief Justice of England,
Sir Alexander Cockburn. Fellows and ex-Fellows--proposed by Sir Charles
Dilke, Bart., M.P.; responded to by (Fellows) Professor Fawcett, M.P.,
(ex-Fellows) R. Romer, Esq. Our Old Blues and Captains of the T.H. Boat
and Cricket Clubs--Proposed by Leslie Stephen, Esq."]
"It is a good thing for a small college that it should not be merely
one of the herd. It is a bad thing that a small college should be
driven to teach everything--classics, mathematics, law, theology,
medicine, and science, physical and moral--for if it teaches so many
things, of necessity, from its poverty in money and in men, it cannot
teach all well. A small college can only keep at a high moral and
social and intellectual level by having a distinguishing note or
accent. In our dear old House we have already in existence by our
history and by the Instrument of Foundation that special mark to
distinguish us from others which the most advanced University
Reformers clamour to see created as regards each College in the
University....
"It should keep its distinguishing note, and flourish for another five
hundred and twenty-eight years, not only in manners, good-fellowship,
and rowing, but as a school of law.
"In rowing and law it had fallen off, but good-fellowship still
differentiates the College, and prevents it from surrendering to the
prevailing tendency to make the colleges in our grand old University
pale copies of French _lycées_--all cut on one pattern and
administered by schoolmasters, who will rule over dunces of universal
acquirements examined to the point of death."
The other question on which he failed to secure support was his attack on
the Royal Academy:
'What I really wanted was that the Academy should be reminded that
they obtained their present magnificent site upon conditions which
have not been observed, and that they ought at least to give a free
day a week at their exhibition, and give up a portion of their
privileges against outsiders.'
But the attack, as he admits, was not pressed with spirit for he had only
the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and the _Examiner_ with him in the Press. In the
House Lord Elcho [Footnote: Better known as Lord Wemyss, long the
venerable father of Parliament.] and Mr. George Bentinck 'alone understood
the question,' and the latter was too intimate with all the Academy
leaders to afford a hope that he would do otherwise than take their side.
So, feeling his isolation in the matter, Dilke limited himself to moving
for some papers, which were given.
By the summer of 1876 Sir Charles was well again:
'I began this year to stay a great deal at Lady Waldegrave's, both at
Dudbrook in Essex and at Strawberry Hill; and ultimately I had a room
at Strawberry Hill, to which I went backwards and forwards as I chose.
The house was extremely pleasant, and so was Fortescue, and he
passionately adored his wife, and was afterwards completely broken
down and almost killed by her death. Fortescue was my friend; but she
was an excellent hostess, and the house was perfectly pleasant, and
that in a degree in which no other house of our time has been. The
other house which was always named as "the rival establishment,"
Holland House, I also knew. Some of the same people went there--
Abraham Hayward, commonly called the "Viper," and Charles Villiers,
for example. Lady Waldegrave always made everybody feel at home, which
Lady Holland did not always do. Those of whom I saw the most this
year, in addition to the Strawberry Hill people (who were Harcourt,
James, Ayrton, Villiers, Hayward, Dr. Smith the editor of the
_Quarterly,_ Henry Reeve the editor of the _Edinburgh,_ the Comte de
Paris, and the Due d'Aumale), were Lord Houghton and Mrs. Duncan
Stewart. Lord Houghton never met me without referring to a review of
his collected works, which appeared in the _Athenaeum_ in the spring,
and which had cut the old man to the heart' (because it rated his
poetry on a level with that of Eliza Cook).
'One of the most agreeable parties of clever people to which I ever
went was a luncheon given by Mrs. Stewart, when she was living a few
doors from me in my street, at which I was the only man, the party
chiefly consisting of old ladies; indeed, I was by far the youngest
person present. Besides Mrs. Stewart herself, there were friends, Lady
Hamilton Gordon, Lady Pollock, Lady Hopetoun, Mrs. Frank Hill, Mrs.
Oliphant, and Mrs. Lynn Linton--Lady Gordon, a remarkably able woman,
one of the bedchamber women of the Queen and a great gossip; Lady
Pollock, slow, but full of theatrical anecdote, being stage-mad, as
was her husband, old Sir Frederick, the Queen's Remembrancer, father
of my Cambridge friend Professor Pollock (now Sir Frederick) and of
Walter Pollock, the editor of the _Saturday Review_. A few days later
I met Lady Pollock at a great party given by Lord Houghton. Irving was
coming down the stairs, at the bottom of which we stood, having Mrs.
Singleton (now, 1894, the Ambassadress, Lady Currie) upon his arm. Old
Lady Pollock, clutching at my arm, exclaimed: "Who is that woman with
Irving?" To which I answered: "Mrs. Singleton, author of _Denzil
Place_--Violet Fane." "She won't do him any harm, will she?" was the
embarrassing question by which Lady Pollock replied to me.'
In this summer Sir Charles gave dinner-parties which included ladies--'a
plan which I found so uncomfortable for a politician who had only a
grandmother to entertain them that I dropped it after August, 1876.' His
dinners were always among the pleasantest in London, but till 1886 they
were only dinners of men.
Of men friends of this year he specially notes 'Gennadius, the Greek
Secretary, afterwards Minister,' with whom his friendship was lifelong.
APPENDIX
A meeting was held at Devonshire House on March 1st, 1877:
'There were present, besides Lord Hartington and myself, Lowe,
Goschen, Harcourt, Fawcett, and Fitzmaurice.--It was decided to
support Grant Duff in adding the names of Huxley and Max Müller, and
not to support Fitzmaurice in adding Bryce, but to support him in
adding Hooker, and Goschen in adding Professor Bartholomew Price to
the Oxford Commission, and to support Hartington in moving to add Dr.
Bateson, the Master of John's, to the Cambridge Commission. Bouverie
was to be proposed by Harcourt, as against Cockburn, for chairman of
the Cambridge Commission, because we objected to overworked Judges
being on Commissions. The name of Bradley, afterwards Dean of
Westminster, was suggested for the Oxford Commission by Lowe, but not
supported by the meeting, and it was decided to support my amendments
to the Bill. The Commissions as originally suggested were badly
composed. The best men suggested were not good--Dr. Bellamy (President
of St. John's, Oxford), for example, the wealthiest of all college
officials, a precise, old-fashioned, kind-hearted nonentity, a simple
tool of more intelligent Conservatives; and Henry Smith, an Irishman
of the keenest order of intelligence, ready to give an intellectual
assent to the abstract desirability of the best and highest in all
things. On another of the names originally suggested I may quote Smith
himself, for when Dean Burgon's appointment was attacked in the House
of Commons by me and others, Smith, approaching Lord Salisbury at a
party, and engaging in conversation upon the matter, said that the
reasons for appointing him were overwhelming, at which Lord Salisbury
was greatly pleased; when Henry Smith went on: "No such Commission
could possibly be complete without its buffoon."'
CHAPTER XIV
REVIVAL OF THE EASTERN QUESTION
Sir Charles at this period of his career was passing from the status of a
formidable independent member to that of a recognized force in his party.
In May, 1876, he became Chairman of the Elections Committee at the Liberal
Central Association, and from that time forward up to 1880 'took a very
active part in connection with the choice of candidates.'@@Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain had been elected for Birmingham. He was lame from gout, and
resented it, saying to Sir Charles 'that it was an illness which should be
exclusively reserved by a just Providence for Tories.' On July 8th, 1876,
he wrote to Dilke that before coming up to take his seat he had called his
friends together and settled a programme and general course of action. "I
think there is every chance of our Union being productive of useful
practical results, but it is agreed that our arrangements shall remain
strictly private for the present. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico._" On August
2nd Sir Charles introduced to Lord Hartington at Devonshire House 'a great
private deputation upon the Education Bill from the North Country Liberal
Associations, which was in fact the first movement by what was afterwards
the National Liberal Federation.' So the "Caucus" began to make itself
felt in domestic affairs.
Sir Charles notes that he 'for the first time began to be summoned to
meetings respecting the course to be taken by the party.' Here already he
found that--
'Mr. Gladstone began, although somewhat ostentatiously proclaiming in
public the opposite principle, to interfere a good deal in
Hartington's leadership, and even Harcourt, who only a few months
before had ridiculed Mr. Gladstone's pretensions in such strong terms,
on the rare occasions when he was unable to get his way with
Hartington always now went off to Mr. Gladstone, to try to make use of
the power of his name.'
"Foreign affairs had suddenly risen out of complete obscurity into a
position in which they overshadowed all other things, and left home
politics in stagnation." [Footnote: Speech at Notting Hill, August, 1876.]
These complications were destined to bring Mr. Gladstone back into an
activity not merely unimpaired, but redoubled, and to shake the power of
Mr. Disraeli to its fall.
Sir Charles was, first and foremost, a "good European"; he conceived of
Europe as a body politic, bound in honour to regulate its own members.
Isolation appeared to him a mere abandonment of the duty of civilized
powers to maintain order in the civilized world. Corporate action was to
be encouraged, because, in most cases, the mere threat of it would suffice
either as between States to prevent wars of aggression, or as between
ruler and ruled to assert the ordinary principles of just government.
The enforcement of this view might involve its support by force of arms,
and he worked all his life for our military preparedness, holding that it
was the best guarantee that armed intervention would be unnecessary, as it
was also the best guarantee of our own immunity from attack.
At this moment "foreign affairs" meant the Eastern Question, in regard to
which the future of two nations, Russia and Greece, specially interested
him. He was notably a Phil-Hellene, who "dreamed of a new Greece"--a
"force of the future instead of a force of the past; a force of trade
instead of a force of war; European instead of Asiatic; intensely
independent, democratic, maritime." Here, and not in any Slavonic State,
did he see the rightful successors to the Ottoman dominion. Towards Russia
his feelings were complex: admiration for the people accompanied
detestation of the Government, and the unscrupulous power commanding the
services of so vast and virile a people always appeared in his eyes as a
menace to civilization. Yet in the future of Russia he "firmly believed,"
and he repeats in speech after speech this creed: "Behind it are ranged
the forces of the future." "To compare the Russia of to-day to the Russia
that is to come is to compare chaos to the universe." "If by Russia we
mean the leading Slavonic power, whether a Russia one and indivisible, or
a Slavonian confederation, we mean one of the greatest forces of the
future." [Footnote: Speech at Notting Hill, August, 1876.]
Sir Charles's speeches, taken in conjunction with the diary, give the
story of these Eastern troubles from the outside as well as from the
inside. His constituents had little excuse for being carried away by
popular cries. In his speech on the last day of the session he advocated
the sending of a "strong and efficient man to Constantinople in the name
of the Western Powers to carry out that policy of protection of Christian
subjects of Turkey which England had intended after the Crimea,"
[Footnote: _Ibid._] But while condemning with the greatest energy the
Turkish barbarities in Bulgaria, he warned his constituents against
overlooking atrocities committed elsewhere, "for there was not one pin to
choose between Circassian ruffians on the one side and Montenegrin
ruffians on the other." To those who "were carried away by their belief
that the conflict was one between the present and the past, and between
Christianity and Islamism, and declared that the Turks must be driven out
of Europe," he pointed out the larger questions at stake.
Turning to the Balkan States, he did not believe in a continuous united
movement among these "which would suffice to drive the Mohammedan out of
Europe." "To allow the Russians to interfere openly" would rouse Austria,
a Power which, in spite of the difficulties presented by its internal
"differences of creed and hostilities of races," must in the interests of
South-Eastern Europe be "bolstered up." In this instance he urged the need
for joint action, and laid bare some underlying difficulties awaiting
diplomacy. It was a situation complicated by the fact that "this Europe is
probably mined beneath our feet with secret treaties." [Footnote: Sir
Charles notes later: 'Since the accession of George III. the country had
concluded about forty treaties or separate articles of a secret nature
which were not communicated to Parliament at the time of their conclusion,
and in some instances not at all; but these secret engagements were mostly
concluded in anticipation of war, or during war, and ceased to have effect
when war was over.']
In his speech of January 15th, 1878, in Kensington, at one of the critical
moments of the struggle, he told the whole story, which began in August,
1875, when Mr. Disraeli's Government consented "with reluctance" to take
part in sending a European Consular Mission to inquire into disturbances
occasioned by Turkish misrule in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Great Britain's
reluctance weakened, so Sir Charles thought, the European concert, and the
mission resulted only in delusive promises of reform. In the following
winter Turkey was increasingly encouraged to lean upon British support in
withstanding pressure from the other Powers; and in May, 1876, after
disturbances in Bulgaria had been repressed with appalling ferocity, Mr.
Disraeli's Cabinet positively refused to join in a demand for certain
reforms to be carried out by Turkey under European supervision.
'Our Government had refused to sign the Berlin Memorandum on account
of a reference in it to the possible need of taking "efficacious
measures" to secure good government in Turkey.
'But' (commented Sir Charles in 1878, making plain exactly what he
meant by European intervention) 'it was England who, not shrinking
from mere words, but herself proposing deeds, had taken a really
"efficacious" part in the "efficacious measures" of 1860, when, after
the massacres in the Lebanon, Europe sent Lord Dufferin to Syria with
a French armed force--the Powers making that engagement not to accept
territory which could also have been made in 1876. In 1860 Lord
Dufferin, in the name of Europe, hanged a guilty Pasha and pacified
the Lebanon, which to this moment still enjoys, in consequence of
European intervention, a better government than the rest of Turkey,
and this with the result of an increase of strength to the Turkish,
power. Only the obstructiveness of our Government prevented the still
more easy pacification of the European provinces of Turkey in 1876,
and caused the present war with all its harm to British trade and all
its risks to "British interests."' [Footnote: Speech delivered at
Kensington on January 15th, 1878.]
Holding these views, Sir Charles encouraged Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice to
place on the notice paper of the House of Commons a formal resolution of
censure on the Government for refusing to join in the Berlin Memorandum
without making a counter-proposal of their own. It was believed that Mr.
Gladstone approved the course indicated, but he was still in retirement,
and not only did Lord Granville and Lord Hartington think that any formal
action in the House would be impolitic, but many of the 'peace-at-any-
price' Radicals, who regarded Lord Derby's extreme policy of non-
intervention with favour, refused to support the proposed censure. The
resolution accordingly had to be withdrawn, amid the general disapproval,
however, of the Liberal Press. Thus the first attempt at action at
once betrayed a profound cleavage of opinion. This was unfortunately
only typical of everything which followed in this chapter of events,
though the debate which took place towards the end of the Session proved
very damaging to the Government. [Footnote: See _Hansard_, cxlii. 22;
_Life of Gladstone_, ii, 549; _Life of Granville, ii. 166 and 264, where
Lord Ampthill, writing in 1882, expresses the opinion that Lord Derby's
policy was most unfortunate.]
It was on May 19th, 1876, that the British Government dated their refusal
to intervene. As early as June, accounts of what had been done in Bulgaria
began to appear in the Press. Mr. Disraeli ridiculed them in the House of
Commons, but testimony soon accumulated, and the most important evidence
was that of Mr. Eugene Schuyler, then attached to the American Legation at
Constantinople. As American Consul at St. Petersburg in 1869-70, he had
become acquainted with Sir Charles, and had seen a good deal of him in
London during the earlier part of 1875. It was, therefore, to Dilke that
Schuyler wrote his account of the massacres at Batak, based upon his visit
to the spot, which he found still horrible with unburied corpses; and in
August, on the last day of the Session, Dilke, addressing his constituents
at Notting Hill, read Schuyler's letter to them.
Early in September, 1876, public indignation was set ablaze by Mr.
Gladstone's famous pamphlet, which demanded that the Turk should clear out
of Bulgaria, "bag and baggage." On the 14th of the same month Mr. Baring's
official report confirmed the Schuyler letter, and on the 21st Lord Derby
sent a despatch, which, says Sir Charles, 'in the sharpest words ever, I
think, used in a despatch, demanded reparation, and the "signal,
conspicuous, and exemplary punishment" of Chefket Pasha, director of the
Bulgarian massacres.'
Meanwhile Servia and Montenegro, feudatory States of the Porte, had gone
to war with their overlord; and in order to induce the Turks to grant an
armistice, Russia and Austria proposed to England a joint naval
demonstration, carried out in the name of Europe, by England and France.
Lord Derby proposed instead a conference of Europe to take place at
Constantinople, and to this the Powers agreed. But Russia, not contented
with this step, presented an ultimatum to Turkey demanding an armistice
for Servia, and obtained it on November 1st. Thus, by Lord Derby's action,
'the armistice was refused to Europe and yielded to a Russian ultimatum.'
The conference met at Constantinople in December, 1876, and on the 14th
Lord Salisbury, who represented England, was advocating the "efficacious
measure" of occupying Bulgaria by English troops, and, when this was
refused, proposed the employment of Belgians. But--
'It was now too late. Turkey had been encouraged by us into
mobilization. Russia had been thwarted by us into mobilization. The
time was past when we might have averted war, might have pacified the
East, protected alike the Eastern Christians and "British interests"
by a signature.'
Replying to a common argument, he said: 'Want of money will not cause
Russia to terminate the war. Machiavelli has truly said that nothing is
more false than the common belief that money is the sinews of war.'
The conference failing, all Ambassadors were withdrawn from the Porte, and
Russia continued to parley with the other Powers. 'Early in March, 1877, a
draft Protocol regarding the expectation of the Powers with regard to
Turkish reforms was handed to Lord Derby, who promised to sign if Russia
would promise to disarm.' Russia specified the conditions on which she
would 'disarm,' and Lord Derby then signed the Protocol, but added a
declaration that his signature should be null unless disarmament followed
both in Russia and Turkey. This, in Sir Charles's judgment, was tantamount
to a refusal to sign, because Lord Derby must have known that Turkey would
never grant, except under coercion, the conditions on which Russia had
consented to disarm. "All Turkish promises are of one material--
paper," he said, and in severely criticizing the action of the Government
added: "The unreformed state of Turkey is, and will continue to be, the
greatest standing menace to the peace of Europe."
Further, at the same moment England again separated herself from the other
Powers by sending an Ambassador--Mr. Layard--to Constantinople, 'to which
the Turks replied: "The Porte is very sensible of this delicate mark of
attention."'
The effect was to encourage Turkey to count on English support, and
Russia, unable to secure concerted action, declared war single-handed.
Thus, not only was the result missed which Sir Charles desired and thought
possible--namely, the restoration of order by joint action of Europe--but
the way was paved for another result which he deplored--the extension of
Russia's influence, and even of her territorial sway.
As his speeches gave the story of the European position, so his diary
provides a commentary on that story from within:
'Things generally were in a disturbed condition at this moment. The
Eastern Question, which was to be so prominent for the next four
years, had grown critical, and Bourke, the Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs (afterwards Lord Connemara and Governor of Madras), said to me
at the House of Commons: "The one thing that astonishes me is the
confidence of people in Lord Derby." Now, Lord Derby was his chief.
This proved pretty clearly that Mr. Disraeli was, in fact, his own
Foreign Secretary, and had made up his mind that Lord Derby should
"go." [Footnote: Lord Derby did not "go" till the spring of 1878.]
'June 28th, 1876, is the date of the first of my letters mentioning
the Eastern Question. It is from Auberon Herbert: "We are sure to get
into some frightful trouble if Dizzy is to be allowed uninterruptedly
to offer what sacrifices he will on the altar of his vanity. You all
seem to me to be living in Drowsy Hollow, while Dizzy is consulting
his imagination, and Hartington politely bowing. What can you all be
doing? Is it the hot weather? Or are all of you secretly pleased at
England's 'determined attitude'? Please, dear Neros, cease fiddling
for a short time, and let us poor, harmless, innocent-minded country-
folk have some assurance that you are not going to fight all
Europe.... You sleepy and unfaithful guardians." ...
'Although I was the first politician to make a speech upon the
Bulgarian massacres, [Footnote: See reference to Eugene Schuyler's
letter in speech of August, 1876, p. 207.] I afterwards refused to
follow Mr. Gladstone into what was called the "atrocity agitation,"
because I feared that we should find ourselves plunged into a war with
Turkey in alliance with Russia, of which I should have disapproved.'
He subscribed, however, to the funds of those who took charge of the
fugitives on both sides.
The agitation offended him by its extravagance. "If Gladstone goes on much
longer, I shall turn Turk," he wrote to Sir William Harcourt. There was
general disquiet in the Liberal party. On October 10th, 1876, Sir William
Harcourt wrote:
"Things here are in the most damnable mess that politics have ever
been in in my time. Gladstone and Dizzy seem to cap one another in
folly and in pretence, and I do not know which has made the greatest
ass of himself. Blessed are they that hold their tongue and wait to be
wise after the event. To this sagacious policy you will see we"
(_i.e.,_ the Hartington section) "have adhered, and shall adhere. I
had a long letter from Hartington from Constantinople (whither, as you
will see, he has prudently retired), full of his usual good sense and
caution. I quite concur with him that, though a strong case can be
made against the Government for their deliberate _status quo_ policy
during the months of June, July, and August, there is little fault to
find with what they have been doing since Derby has taken the matter
into his own hands in September. There is a decided reaction against
Gladstone's agitation. The Brooksite Whigs are furious with him, and
so are the commercial gents and the Norwood-Samuda [Footnote: Leading
shipowners and Members of Parliament.] lot, whose pecuniary interests
are seriously compromised. The Bucks election [Footnote: This by-
election, on September 22nd, 1876, was consequent on Mr. Disraeli's
acceptance of a Peerage. The Conservative (Hon. T. F. Fremantle) beat
the Liberal (Mr. R. Carington, brother to Lord Carrington), but only
by 186 votes on a poll of over 5,000.] has a good smell for Dizzy. All
the Rothschild tenants voted Tory, though, to save his own skin, Nat.
went on Carington's committee. The Rothschilds will never forgive
Gladstone and Lowe for the Egyptian business. Chamberlain and Fawcett
... are using the opportunity to demand the demission of Hartington
and the return of Gladstone. But you need not ... prepare for extreme
measures."
By the same post came a letter from Mr. Chamberlain, who declared that he
was "not Gladstonian," but considered that--
"After all, he is our best card. You see Forster's speech--trimming as
usual, and trying to dish the Radicals by bidding for the Whigs and
Moderates. Gladstone is the best answer to this sort of thing, and if
he were to come back for a few years he would probably do much for us,
and pave the way for more. Lord Hartington ... is away and silent,
besides which he is pro-Turk. If Gladstone could be induced formally
to resume the reins, it would be almost equivalent to a victory, and
would stir what Bright calls 'the masses of my countrymen' to the
depths."
Sir Charles's own considered opinion was written to Sir William Harcourt
on October 16th:
"I, as you know, think Hartington the best man for us--the Radicals--
because he is quite fearless, always goes with us when he thinks it
safe for the party, and generally judges rightly--or takes the
soundest advice on this point. In fact, I don't think he's ever made a
mistake at all--as yet; but Chamberlain seems, by a sort of quasi-
hereditary Birmingham position, to look at him as Bright used to look
at Palmerston. This is serious, because Chamberlain is a strong man
and does not easily change, unlike the other member of our
triumvirate, Cowen, who is as fickle as the wind, one day Hartington,
one day you, one day Gladstone, and never seeming to know even his own
mind."
Mr. Gladstone's return to leadership was more and more assured, but he
would not find his old antagonist face to face with him in the House of
Commons. At the close of the Session of 1876 Sir Charles had unknowingly
witnessed a great withdrawal.
'On the night of August 11th I had listened to Mr. Disraeli's last
speech as a Commoner, and had noticed that on leaving the House in a
long white overcoat and dandified lavender kid gloves, leaning on his
secretary's arm, he had shaken hands with a good many people, none of
whom knew that he was bidding farewell to the House of Commons.'
This withdrawal marked no lessening of power. As Sir Charles had
perceived, Disraeli was his own Foreign Secretary, and a Foreign
Minister's influence gained by being exercised in the House of Lords.
Meanwhile, in Gladstone's absence the Liberal party seemed broken and
divided beyond hope of recovery. In the country, though the campaign
launched by the Bulgarian pamphlet had seemed so immediately effective
that a Tory county member said to Mr. Gladstone, "If there were a
dissolution now, I should not get a vote," yet the reaction, spoken of in
Harcourt's letter to Dilke on October 10th, very quickly developed. Those
who supported Mr. Gladstone identified themselves unreservedly with the
Slav as against the Turk. But by others the demand for ejection of the
Turk, "bag and baggage," from Bulgaria was construed as an invitation for
Russia to seize Constantinople, and thus as a direct infringement of
British interests in Egypt and the Mediterranean. Lord Beaconsfield
skilfully played upon this feeling, and there ensued a condition of
affairs in which Mr. Gladstone made triumphal progresses through the north
of England, and was hooted weekly in the streets of London.
Sir Charles himself was in a great difficulty, being as he says, 'anti-
Russian without being for that pro-Turk.' Sharing to the full the general
detestation of these massacres, of which the earliest complete exposure
had been made public [Footnote: See p. 207, Schuyler's letter.] by him, he
held that there ought to be armed intervention. But he knew too much of
Russia's action in conquered provinces to feel that the matter could be
settled satisfactorily by allowing Russian influence to replace Turkish
control.
What was more, he knew that in 1870, when Russia repudiated the Black Sea
article in the Treaty of Paris, March 30th, 1856, Mr. Gladstone's
Government had pressed the Powers of Europe to make general the Tripartite
Treaty, April 27th, 1856, 'Our Government (Gladstone-Granville) proposed
to answer the Russian Circular by extending the Tripartite Treaty to all
the Powers, and it was only Germany's refusal that stopped it.' By this
treaty, 'France, Austria, and the United Kingdom bound themselves to
consider any breach of the Treaty of Paris, 1856, or any invasion of the
integrity of the Ottoman Empire, as a _casus belli_.' In other words, the
Liberal Government had been anxious in 1870 that all the Powers should
guarantee for all time the power of the Turk in its full extension, though
Turkish methods were in 1870 and before it no other than they revealed
themselves at Batak in 1876. Sir Charles thought that, as Liberals had
been precipitate in their desire to guarantee Ottoman integrity in 1870,
so now they were precipitate in their Pan-Slavism. Moreover, the
vacillation of the Liberal leaders had put a weapon into the hands of the
Government. 'Fancy what a temptation to the present Government to publish
the despatches,' notes Sir Charles, in comment on Sir William Harcourt's
remark 'that the Tripartite Treaty discussion would be a mine of gunpowder
to the Liberal Front Bench.'
He set forth his position in a speech to his constituents at Kensington on
January 9th, 1877. He condemned Lord Derby, who had neither "the energy
nor the force of character to fit him for the post of Foreign Secretary,"
and whose policy had left them at the close of 1876 in "absolute
isolation." Yet, "on the other hand, he marvelled to see Radicals, for
years the enemies of Russian autocracy, propose the immediate adoption of
the policy of Canon Liddon and of the Emperor Alexander." [Footnote: Dr.
H. P. Liddon and Dr. Malcolm MacColl were conspicuous as enthusiastic
supporters of Mr. Gladstone's campaign.] And he went on to depict what
that policy might mean:
"The world could not afford to see 120,000,000 of Slavs united under the
sceptre of an absolute despot, holding at Constantinople the strongest
position in all Europe, stretching from the Adriatic to Kamskatka and the
Behring Straits, and holding in Corea the strongest position in the
Pacific." Then he recalled the record of "that Power with which the
Liberals of England were to strike alliance--an absolute autocracy of the
purest type, the Power which crushed Poland, the Power which crushed
Hungary for Austria." And by what methods! The long story of violation
"both of the public and the moral law" was repeated, with citation of
British Ministers who had spoken in fierce condemnation of, Russian
methods; the decoration of Mouravief, the "woman-flogging General," was
set off against the promotion of Chefket Pasha. He himself had seen in
1869 "long processions of Polish exiles, who were still being sent by
hundreds into the solitudes of Siberia." In Turkestan General Kaufmann had
ordered a massacre of women and children, and Kaufmann, "loaded with
favours by the Emperor Alexander, still ruled in Turkestan." It was a
vehement denunciation of the autocracy of Russia, and he notes that he had
never before so moved his hearers. To his attack on the Russian Government
were added some severe strictures on the barbarities perpetrated by
Servians, and by Mr. Gladstone's special favourites, the Montenegrins,
inhabitants of "countries whose civilization had not sufficiently
progressed to allow of the belief that they were the unselfish champions
of an outraged Christianity."
Holding these views, and holding them the more strongly because they were
the outcome of personal experience and knowledge laboriously acquired, he
was in a considerable degree isolated, not only from the Liberal party as
a whole, but even from that more intimate organization whose existence was
already recognized in the autumn of 1876, when Mr. Knowles asked him to
write in the _Nineteenth Century_ on the "New Party."
His closest associate, now and henceforward, was Mr. Chamberlain, who in
1877 stayed a great deal in Sloane Street, and Dilke notes that in
February of that year he was giving dinners almost every night to
introduce the member for Birmingham to London. But the "New Party," when
Mr. Knowles made his unsuccessful request, consisted
'of Chamberlain and myself and Cowen in the House of Commons, and
Morley outside of it.... As Chamberlain and Cowen failed to agree upon
any subject whatever, the House of Commons portion of the party soon
dwindled to two leaders, in the persons of Chamberlain and myself,
who, however, picked up one faithful follower in Dillwyn. From
September, 1876, to April, 1880, there did exist a very real and very
influential, but little numerous, party, consisting of Chamberlain and
myself, followed blindly by dear old Dillwyn, and supported in the
Press by Morley. As Randolph Churchill afterwards said to me, shaking
his head over Balfour's desertion: "When you and Chamberlain were
together, your party was not too large." He had begun with four (three
regular and one half-attached), and found it certainly one, perhaps
two, and I sometimes think three, too many, though Wolff indeed
followed him almost as steadily as Dillwyn followed us.'
For a time the "New Party" consisted of six. Mr. Edmund Dwyer Gray, an
Irish Nationalist, owner of the _Freeman's Journal_, was of it, but soon
dropped out, and for a time Mr. Burt--Father of the House in 1910--was
also included.
At the beginning of 1877 summons was sent to a meeting before the opening
of Parliament, to which Mr. Chamberlain replied solemnly: "The party will
be complete." Further solemnity was added by the holding, at 76, Sloane
Street, of a Queen's Speech dinner in due form on the eve of the Session,
but--
'the dinner of six members, which assembled democratically without
dressing in order to suit Burt's habits, was not graced by that copy
of the Queen's Speech which is sent by Government to the leaders of
the regular Opposition.'
The "New Party" of 1876-77 differed notably in one respect from the other
small and influential group of which it was the forerunner. It had no
leader.
'On Saturday, February 17th, Chamberlain dined with the Prince of
Wales. In noting the invitation in my diary I put down: "The Prince of
Wales has asked Chamberlain to dinner for Saturday. I call this
'nobbling my party.'" But the possessive pronoun with regard to the
party was not according to my custom. We always said that the party
consisted of three in all--two leaders and a follower--and Dillwyn
acknowledged Chamberlain and myself as equal leaders.'
'On July 4th I drove Dillwyn down to Chiswick to the Duke of
Devonshire's garden party. The Prince of Wales was there, and gave
Dillwyn a very friendly bow, whereupon I asked Dillwyn how he came to
know him so well, to which "the party" answered that he had shot
pigeons with him; and on my reproaching my old friend for indulging in
such sport, he said that he not only shot pigeons, but that the Prince
had been so struck with his shooting that he had asked who the old
gentleman was "who looked like a Methodist parson and shot like an
angel."'
At the beginning of 1877, when they were still six, division existed even
in that small group on the burning question of the hour. Mr. Cowen was
strongly influenced by his intercourse with a settlement of Poles at
Newcastle, and--
'although his anti-Russian views were only the same as my own, yet he
allowed them, as I think, without reason, to drive him into a position
of support of the Government which from this time forward separated
him from the Liberal party.'
None of Sir Charles's other colleagues approached the Eastern Question
entirely on its own merits as distinct from party. His study of foreign
politics had, however, forced him to understand the issues, and thus his
position was rendered difficult: 'I was anti-Russian, and in this with
Hartington. On the other hand, I was for avowed intervention in the East,
and in this more extreme than Mr. Gladstone.' But at the same time his
exceptional competence in the discussion brought him steadily to the
front. Without any sacrifice of independent judgment he found himself
increasingly consulted.
His Memoir gives, therefore, an interesting picture of the movement of
opinion in the Liberal party. At the beginning of the Session, when it was
known that Lord Salisbury had advocated active interference in the name of
Europe, Sir Charles found that 'only Harcourt and the Duke of Argyll were
for strong action in the sense of coercion of Turkey.' The Duke, however,
soon made two converts, and Dilke wrote to his brother on January 6th,
1877:
"Lord Granville and Lord Hartington will, I am delighted to say, speak
for concerted intervention. The only man who strongly opposed their
doing so was Mr. Gladstone, who ran away from his own views." Against
this Sir Charles notes later: 'Both at the meeting of Parliament in
1877, and also later on in the Session in the case of his own
memorable resolutions.'
'Mr. Gladstone had in private conversation told Harcourt that such a
course as European intervention to coerce Turkey "should only be
resolved upon after much deliberation." To this Harcourt had retorted:
"Well, Mr. Gladstone, if people outside knew what you were saying,
they might reflect it was you that hung the bag of powder on the
door."'
On February 11th Sir Charles noted, 'Harcourt has got frightened and has
gone back,' fearing a division in the House of Commons on which Henry
Richard and the peace men would either support the Government or abstain
from voting, lest intervention should mean war.
Thus party feeling fluctuated. On February 16th, 1877, Sir Charles's diary
recorded that 'the popular name for our Front Bench with the London mob is
"Bag and baggage Billy and his long-eared crew."' This showed that 'in the
popular mind the personality of Mr. Gladstone had finally triumphed over
that of Hartington.'
At this moment Sir Charles's views coincided with those of Lord Hartington
to the extent of being anti-Russian, and, as already seen, he was more
drawn by personal feeling to him than to any of the various leaders. Mr.
Forster and Mr. Goschen seemed to him inclined to what a letter of
Harcourt's called "the old facing-both-ways style," and the magic of Mr.
Gladstone's personality never exercised its spell on Dilke. But he liked
Lord Hartington personally, and liked also Lord Hartington's ally, the
Duchess of Manchester, who, he says--
'used to try very hard to pick up political information for Lord
Hartington; but her own strong Conservative prejudices and her want of
clearness of head made her by no means a useful guide, and in fact the
wonder to me always was to see how Hartington's strong common sense
kept him from making the mistakes into which she always tried by her
influence to press him.'
That was written after an interview which Sir Charles had with her, at her
request, on January 8th, 1877. The Duchess had read a report of a speech
of his, in which 'I lectured on the Franco-German War, and condemned the
taking of territory as bound to lead to further wars.' On February 10th he
met her again to discuss the difficulties which were beginning to spring
up, since Mr. Gladstone's sudden access of activity, as to the leadership
of the party. In this matter Sir Charles kept himself 'absolutely
independent, going now with one and now with the other, with mere regard
to the opinions which they put forward.... I had a full knowledge of what
was going on behind the scenes,' although, because he was not in complete
agreement with either party among the Liberal leaders, he 'had not the
complete confidence of either side.'
This detachment of attitude adds the more weight to the judgment which is
passed in the following detailed review of the situation as it was in the
spring of 1877:
'At this moment' (February 18th, 1877) 'London was a centre of
intrigue. But my interest in the Eastern Question had nothing to do
with persons, and was an honest one, and I found myself able to act
only with those who had no candidate of their own for the leadership
of the party, or who, like Lord Granville, were brought to a similar
position by the conflict between party loyalty and a personal
affection for Mr. Gladstone, and I was able therefore at this moment
to act more steadily with Lord Granville than with any other leading
member of the Liberal party. He was jealous of Lord Hartington, but he
was loyal to him as the party chief. Towards Mr. Gladstone he was
affectionate, but not blind.' [Footnote: Sir Charles summarises here a
memorandum he drew for Lord Granville for the debate on February 19th,
used then and on several other occasions. He pointed out that the
Government policy, since the failure of the Conference, of leaving
things alone, was safe for the moment, but it did nothing for the
Eastern Christians, gave no satisfaction to the demands made in the
name of the Queen by Lord Derby on September 21st, 1876, offered no
bridge to Russia for the avoidance of war, and therefore left the
Turkish Empire and British interests exposed to the gravest danger.
Concerted action was the course Liberals desired.]
'There can be no doubt that many were making use of the Eastern
Question for the purpose of advancing their particular views as to the
leadership of the party. When men have to use other men as tools for
the execution of any plan, it is difficult for them to refrain from
that tricky handling of them which is best for the immediate end, but
debases both the user and the used. To sway men by knowledge of their
weaknesses is the task of a charlatan rather than of a statesman. Mr.
Gladstone, with all his inconsistency upon the Eastern Question, and
in spite of the fact that he had only just seen evils which had always
been there, had that which the others lacked, moral conviction, and
Hartington was infected with moral indifferentism. The Conservatives
no doubt thought that Mr. Gladstone's attitude was mere emotional
facility, a mere exhibition of spasmodic power of transient
enthusiasm, an effect rather of temperament than of conviction, and
unlikely therefore to produce a continued consequence of action
sustained at a high level. The public, however, saw more clearly.
Power over the moral fibre of other natures is not given to those
whose own nature is wanting in this moral force, and Mr. Gladstone's
attitude on the Eastern Question, in spite of his contradictions and
of his occasional running away from the consequences of his own acts,
was appreciated with accuracy by that large section of the public
which ultimately followed him.'
To this estimate should be added the record of a talk which passed in June
of the same year at a dinner party, where Sir Charles, 'along with Matthew
Arnold, Bowen, afterwards Lord of Appeal, and Frederick Pollock,'
discussed 'what is known as moral force':
'I upheld the view that to me Gathorne Hardy (although I never agreed
in a word which the future Lord Cranbrook said) possessed moral force
in the highest degree, but that this moral force was one which I felt
had only prejudice behind it. Still to me the intense conviction of
the man gave him immense strength, and made him the most really
eloquent Englishman to whom I had ever listened. Gladstone, I thought,
had moral force, because he believed in the particular thing of which
he was speaking at the particular moment at which he spoke. I somewhat
differed from the others with regard to Bright, thinking that he was
seldom really in earnest, although I admitted that no man gave more
strongly the impression of earnestness to his hearers, and therefore
no man had "moral force" in a higher degree.... Courtney (who had come
in during the autumn of 1876) and Fawcett both have "moral force."'
In March, 1877, the last stage was reached in those long-drawn
negotiations by which the statesmen of Europe endeavoured to avoid war,
and the declaration which Lord Derby attached in the name of England to
the Protocol of London was virtually a refusal to assent to coercion of
Turkey. Acting as leader of the Opposition, Lord Hartington asked Dilke to
'sketch a vote of censure on the declaration.' In the debate which took
place on April 13th (the day after Russia declared war against Turkey)--
'I spoke at great length, but too late for good reports, and by my
"gospel of selfishness" and other similar phrases raised ringing
cheers and counter-cheers, which for some time stopped my going on. I
felt after this day no longer afraid to stand up to anyone upon the
other side, but I noted that if Mr. Disraeli had been still in the
House I should not have hoped to have escaped as I did, after saying
all I had said of his colleagues in a full house, and coining such a
phrase of their proceedings as "gospel of selfishness"; but that which
struck me most in the whole debate was above all the want of
statesmanlike suggestion.'
A week after the declaration of war it seemed all but certain that Great
Britain must be drawn into the conflict; and Sir Charles--
'prepared (on April 20th, 1877) a resolution, which put on record my
opinions, and stated that the House regretted the failure of the
policy of the Government either to improve the position of Christian
subjects of the Porte or to avert war. It also regretted their
unwillingness to co-operate with any other of the European Powers.'
But the Liberal party as a whole was not able to formulate any such clear
conclusion. Within a week Mr. Gladstone had determined to break away from
the "upper official circles of Liberalism," and to move a series of
Resolutions, which were actually drafted on April 26th, but the existence
of which did not become generally known till the 29th.
'_29th April_.--Took Chamberlain to a party at Lord Houghton's, where
Lord and Lady Salisbury were leading figures, and where was Harcourt,
boiling over with rage at Mr. Gladstone, whose Resolutions had just
been heard of. Gladstone will very probably split the Liberal party
into two factions, but I do not see that he could have avoided doing
as he has done. Chamberlain and I and Fawcett must vote with him.
Cowen will vote against him, although if principles and not persons
were in question he must vote the other way. Gladstone will move a
string of resolutions, of which only one will touch the past--namely,
one to condemn the Turks for not carrying out the sentences on their
officers employed in the Bulgarian massacres. The main one, which
touches the future, will, I believe, bind over the Government not to
give aid to Turkey. His speech will be very fine.'
The "upper official circles" met, and in full conclave decided to separate
themselves publicly from Mr. Gladstone.
More serious still, this decision to oppose their colleague and quondam
leader was communicated to the Press. But on May 5th reconciliation was
effected. Concerning this Lord Morley says:
"What was asked was that he (Mr. Gladstone) should consent to an
amended form of his second resolution, declaring more simply and
categorically that the Turk by his misgovernment had lost his claims."
Gladstone himself wrote that the change was "little more than nominal."
But Sir Charles's Memoir of the time shows at once how far the schism had
gone, and also how different a view was taken of the alteration by some of
Mr. Gladstone's supporters:
'On May 3rd I noted in my diary: "The Liberal party will next week
cease to exist. I have already eighty-eight names of men who will vote
with Gladstone, and, the Front Bench having foolishly decided to
support the previous question, the party will be equally divided, and
Hartington will resign. Gladstone will, I think, refuse to lead.
Hartington will be asked to come back, but Goschen's friends may spoil
the absolute unanimity of the request, and Hartington then refusing,
Goschen would succeed. This seems to be the Goschen intrigue. I am
sincerely sorry. The Front Bench people might perfectly well have
voted against the 'previous question' on the ground that they support
the first resolution, and yet have spoken against Gladstone's later
resolutions."' He added later: 'I have still in my possession (1890)
the list of the party as made up by me, showing who would have voted
with Mr. Gladstone, who would have voted with Lord Hartington, ... and
who had stated that they would abstain. The analysis is of interest,
as the facts have never been made known.' [Footnote: For analysis see
Appendix at end of this chapter, p. 223.]
The outcome was a day in which Mr. Gladstone had to sustain singlehanded
from half-past four to seven a Parliamentary wrangle of the most
embarrassing kind, concerning the alteration of the form (and possibly the
substance) of his original motion, and then to speak for another two hours
and a half.[Footnote: See _Life of Gladstone_, vol. ii., chap, iv., p.
565.]
'At the last moment Mr. Gladstone executed a sudden change of front,
which prevented a break-up of the party, but made his own position
somewhat foolish. I was lunching with old Mrs. Duncan Stewart to meet
Mrs. Grote and Lady Aberdare, the wife of Mr. Gladstone's former
colleague (Bruce, the Home Secretary), when I heard what was to
happen. But publicity was only given to the change at the last moment.
'On May 8th I recorded in my diary that "Gladstone's noble delivery of
his peroration last night saved the evening from being a complete
fiasco, but only just saved it. The Duke of Westminster, who was to
have presided at the meeting at St. James's Hall, absented himself on
account of the change of front; but the meeting was not told that the
third and fourth resolutions were to be withdrawn. Both Gladstone and
also the rest of the Front Bench people are in the wrong--he for
moving at all in a sense hostile to Lord Hartington unless he meant to
go through with the thing, and they for not finding a better way out.
Such a way was clear last night. If Hartington had given notice of a
direct vote of censure on the new reply to Russia published yesterday,
as he might have done consistently with his views, Gladstone could
have withdrawn in face of it."'
A general note on his personal difficulties follows later:
'In August (1877) I was again embarrassed by my attitude upon the
Eastern Question. The fact that, being responsible, we had neglected
to be humane, or to be politic, during the previous one-and-twenty
years in which we might have taken the lead--might have insisted upon
reform in Turkey and fostered the possibilities of self-government in
the dependent States--made it difficult to approve the sudden activity
which the conduct of the Turks in their straits called forth on the
part of many Liberal politicians. Action might doubtless have been
taken by us at any time between the Crimean War and the outbreak of
the Russo-Turkish War, but, as the opportunity had been neglected, it
was difficult to inaugurate such a policy under pressure of the
atrocities agitation....
'The new position of the Eastern Question, although it did not unite
me with Mr. Gladstone, made a political breach between myself and
Hartington. He fell more and more under the somewhat stupid influence
of his surroundings, and I, holding a position between the two wings
of the party, found few with whom I myself agreed. Randolph
Churchill... made advances towards me which led to joint action, as
will be seen, in 1878. But in the autumn of '77 I was isolated, for
Chamberlain went, although with moderation, with Mr. Gladstone's
agitation.'
APPENDIX
'The division of the party was a very singular one. The Whigs were
divided; the Radicals were divided; the wild Irish were divided, for the
wild Irish at this particular moment were receiving the Liberal whip, and
were, accordingly, on the party lists. On the whole, out of 296 members
who were at this moment receiving the Liberal whip, about 110 had
pronounced for Mr. Gladstone, and about 110 for Lord Hartington against
Mr. Gladstone, the remainder, who included a majority of the Irish, having
announced their intention of walking out, or having refused to take
sides.... With Lord Hartington and against Mr. Gladstone were, of course,
nearly all the Front Bench, even those who at first promised to support
Mr. Gladstone having seen fit to change under pressure. One curious fact
about my list is the large number of persons at first marked with a single
line, as having promised Mr. Gladstone, and afterwards altered to crosses
as having yielded under Front-Bench pressure. The Basses were with Lord
Hartington; Sir Thomas Bazley, leader of the middle-class Lancashire
Whigs, who at first had gone with Mr. Gladstone, had gone over to Lord
Hartington. The Beaumonts were with Lord Hartington, as were the Brasseys.
The two Brights, John and Jacob, who at first had been expected to support
Mr. Gladstone, had finally decided, under peace influences, to support
Lord Hartington, on the ground that his policy was less likely than that
of Mr. Gladstone to bring about an armed intervention. Campbell-Bannerman
was frankly with Lord Hartington from the first; and Lord Frederick and
Lord Edward Cavendish went with their brother, although Lord Frederick
Cavendish was one of Mr. Gladstone's dearest friends. Childers knew no
doubts, but Joe Cowen's support of Hartington was more peculiar. Peace
men, like Sir Wilfrid Lawson, who disapproved the Crimean War, were
perhaps in their right place in supporting Lord Hartington's opposition to
Mr. Gladstone's resolutions; but Cowen and his set, such as Norwood and
Leatham, went with Lord Hartington chiefly, I think, on account of their
bitter personal hatred for Mr. Gladstone. J. K. Cross, afterwards to be
Under-Secretary of State for India, went with Hartington, against our
expectation; but the joint weight of Devonshire influence and the Brights
was too much for Lancashire. Cowper Temple, de Grey (afterwards lady
Ripon), and Grant Duff were with Lord Hartington, as was to be expected.
Ellice, and Evans of Derbyshire, representative Whigs, separated
themselves from such other ordinary Whigs as Leveson-Gower and Young, and
went with Hartington. Fitzmaurice separated himself from Fawcett and me
and Chamberlain and Courtney, and pronounced, after some hesitation, for
Hartington. W. E. Forster, the two Goldsmids, Goschen, Harcourt, and
Hayter, were, of course, with Hartington, as was also Herschell. Sir Henry
James could no more be expected to separate himself from Hartington than
could Nigel Kingscote, Knatchbull-Hugessen, or Lord Kensington, the Second
Whip.... Stansfeld supported Hartington, as did very naturally Sir N. de
Rothschild (afterwards Lord Rothschild), the Marquis of Stafford, Lord
Tavistock, and Mr. Roebuck (who, oddly enough, received our whip, though
he never voted with us unless we went wrong). Trevelyan went with
Hartington--a thing which had been less expected than the support of
Hartington by Mr. Villiers, by Mr. Whitbread, and by Walter of the
_Times_.... Mr. Biggar characteristically stated to various people that he
should vote against Hartington, for Hartington, and not at all.... Mr.
Butt from the first declared that he should not compromise his party by
taking part in the division.... Parnell, like Butt, from the first said
that he should abstain.... P. J. Smyth, the orator of the Irish party, or
who might perhaps rather be described as forming a party in himself, for
he was not a Home Ruler, but a Repealer, also, after at first intending to
support Mr. Gladstone, decided not to vote.'
CHAPTER XV
HOME POLITICS AND PERSONAL SURROUNDINGS
In a week spent in Paris at the end of 1876 Sir Charles stayed with
Gambetta, and took occasion to bring about a meeting between him and Sir
William and Lady Harcourt, who were also in Paris. With Sir William
Harcourt was his son and inseparable companion Mr. Lewis Harcourt, who
recalls a day when Sir Charles said to him: "Now, Loulou, I want you to
come and have lunch with me by yourself; I'm not asking your father and
mother to-day." He remembers his pride in going off to the Café Anglais,
where they were met by a man with a big black beard. "This, Loulou, is
Monsieur Gambetta." The two men talked, and the boy listened, as he was
well used to do, for in those days he constantly "ran about beside his
father like a little dog." After lunch they went for a drive, and still
the men talked, and Gambetta pointed to the window from which he had
proclaimed the Republic, and Dilke showed where he had lain for half a day
while the French troops were besieging the French of Paris. The boy
listened eagerly--to understand, years after, how the whole drive had been
planned for his edification and delight.
Since August, 1876, Gambetta had been talking of a visit, proposing, says
Sir Charles, to "come to me in town, and probably bring Challemel-Lacour
also to 76, Sloane Street." The visit was to be purely private and social;
"he will receive no deputations, no addresses, and will visit no
provincial towns."
'It was in 1876 that he sent to me a certain Gérard, who became French
reader to the Empress Augusta of Germany, and it is supposed that the
somewhat brilliant volume called _The Society of Berlin_, long
afterwards published under the name of _Count Paul Vasili_ by Madame
Adam (although not the later volumes of the same series, which were by
Vandam), was from Gérard's pen. Gambetta, when he came to power as
Prime Minister, appointed Gérard, who was then in the Legation at
Washington, his private secretary, Georges Pallain being the second,
and Joseph Reinach the third. But Pallain and Reinach, in fact,
exercised the functions, because Gambetta fell before Gérard arrived.
Gérard is now (1909) an Ambassador.'
Just before Dilke's visit to Gambetta in the spring of 1877 another
indication of his popularity in France occurred. 'Gavard had come to me
from the French Embassy to ask me whether I should like to go to Paris
with Sir Louis Mallet to arrange a new French Treaty, as "his Government
would like me."' The proposal fell through. As Sir Charles said, 'the
Government could not well, I think, have sent two Liberals at the head of
the Commission.' Mallet
'was a very experienced official, not, however, very successful at the
Board of Trade, and greatly given to grumble and growl. He held the
mildly reciprocitarian views in which he followed Mill and expanded
Cobden's opinions, and was thought by us to be the author of the
_Letters of a Disciple of Richard Cobden_, the circulation of which by
the Cobden Club, at his own request, nearly destroyed that
institution. He afterwards left the Board of Trade for the India
Office, where he became permanent Under-Secretary of State, on which
occasion Grant Duff said, "Mallet will be happy now. He will have
_two_ worlds to despair of;" for he generally began each sentence with
the words, "I despair," uttered in a deep voice.'
On April 10th, 1877, just before the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War,
which seemed as if it might involve all the Great Powers, is this entry of
a dinner with the French Minister:
'Went to dine with Gavard, meeting his second and third secretaries,
the Italian first secretary, the Dutch Minister (Baron de Bylandt),
the Belgian Minister (Solvyns), and "The Viper" (alias Abraham
Hayward, Q.C.). Cypher telegrams poured in all through dinner, and
portended no good to the peace of Europe. It was, however, a pleasant
dinner, in which Hayward and Solvyns had most of the talk to
themselves, but made it good talk. Gavard was afterwards accused by
the Republican party of having conspired against them, which for his
friends seemed always to be a statement in the nature of a joke. I
once asked Gambetta if he seriously believed that Gavard had
conspired, at which Gambetta shook with laughter in his jovial way,
but added that it was absolutely necessary to pretend he had, for
other people had conspired in the Embassy, and the head man (in the
absence of an Ambassador) must be held responsible in such a case.'
Another diplomatist whom Sir Charles met in the same month was the Comte
de Montgélas, first secretary to the Austrian Embassy:
'... A man who played a great part at this time, belonging to a
Bavarian family which had furnished a distinguished politician to the
Congress of Vienna. He went everywhere, knew everyone, was clever,
showy, talkative; but after being one of the leading exponents of the
Beaconsfield policy, he was suddenly dismissed by his Government, ...
and when, many years afterwards, I again saw him, he had become a
servant of the British North Borneo Company. I believe he was too
friendly to Bismarck to please Beust (then Austrian Ambassador in
London).'
He tells also the story of a 'King-maker':
'The Portuguese Minister in 1876 was the old Duc de Saldanha. This was
the man who some years previously, at the age of eighty, being
dissatisfied with the state of things in Lisbon, had taken the steamer
from Southampton, and, though he was at the time Minister in London,
landed at Lisbon, put himself at the head of the Guards, marched on
the palace, locked up the King, turned out the Ministers, put in his
friends, released the King, and returned by the next steamer to his
legation.'
Here too is gossip from Berlin:
'On June 15th, 1877, I breakfasted with Goschen to meet Lord Odo
Russell, who was most amusing. He told us that, Bismarck being ill,
the Chancellor's temper was so bad as to make him "impossible for his
family, his subordinates, and even his Sovereign." He said that
Bismarck hates the Empress Augusta with so deadly a hatred as to have
lately said to him: "I am not Foreign Secretary. My master's Foreign
Secretary is the Empress, whose Foreign Secretary is the French
Ambassador, whose Foreign Secretary is the General of the Jesuits."...
'At this time General Grant came to London, and, as I had known him at
Washington and he had liked me there, I had to go about a good deal to
meet him at his wish, and he also dined with me on June 10th, when I
invited him to choose his own party. He knew, however, so few men in
London that I had to suggest men to him, and asked him whether he
would like to meet Butt as the leader of the Irish party. He said he
should, but was very silent all through dinner and until he had begun
the second of two big cigars. Then, as usual with him, he began to
thaw under the influence of tobacco, and whispered to me--when Butt
was talking very pleasantly under the influence of something besides
tobacco, and with his enormous, perfectly round face assuming, as it
always did after dinner, the appearance of the harvest moon--"Is he a
Papist?" to which I replied "No"; whereupon Grant became friendly to
him. General Grant's chief weakness, unless that position be assigned
to his cigars, was his detestation of the Roman Catholics.'
Many political personages are sketched in passing reference. Here is
Roebuck, who in his fierce prime had been known as 'Tear 'em':
'The famous orator and Radical of past days was now a little,
shrivelled-up old man, but he was still able to play a great part in
the House of Commons, although entirely decayed in mind. His vinegary
hatred of Mr. Gladstone, and of the Liberal party generally, uttered
from the Liberal side in a piercing treble, was destined to be cheered
to the echo for a short time from the Tory benches, and Roebuck, later
than this, saw himself made a Privy Councillor by Lord Beaconsfield.'
In January, 1877, is this reference to a force of the future:
'Randolph Churchill and Drummond Wolff to dinner; amusing in the style
of Robert Macaire and his man.'
Among more disciplined sections of the Tory party Sir Charles had many
friends. One of them, a social figure of great charm and distinction, was
Lord Barrington,
'who used, when Mr. Disraeli was leader of the House of Commons, to
keep for him the notes which have to be kept by the Prime Minister for
the Queen.... Barrington showed me his one night; it began: "Lord
Barrington presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs to
inform your Majesty that..." The Queen in no way showed her
favouritism to Mr. Disraeli more than in excusing him from the
performance of this tiresome duty, which, however, had the one
advantage of giving Mr. Gladstone in his administration something
quiet to do during exciting divisions such as those on Bradlaugh....
'Lady Waldegrave pressed me to go to Strawberry Hill on a particular
Saturday in the month--the only one, I think, on which, as a fact, I
did not go--to meet the Prince of Wales, but as she playfully took me
to task at the same time for not attending levees, I connected the two
things, and thought she had been asked to speak to me, and declined. I
told her that I had left off going to levees in 1865, before I left
Cambridge, for no reason except that they bored me; and that if I were
suddenly to go, people would think that I had changed my views, and
wished it to be known that I had changed them, for they thought that
my not going was connected with my opinions, which, however, it was
not.'
There is a note early in this year:
'I was engaged at this moment on an attempt to form a circle of
friends who would be superior, from the existence with them of a
standpoint, to the mere ordinary political world, and I began doing my
best to meet frequently those whom I most liked--John Morley, Dillwyn,
Leonard Courtney, and Fitzmaurice, prominently among the politicians;
and Burton (Director of the National Gallery), Minto, and Joseph
Knight, prominently among the artists and men of letters. All these
were men with something noble in their natures, or something delicate
and beautiful, full of sterling qualities.'
Minto was the well-known man of letters. Joseph Knight, for many years
dramatic critic of the Athenaeum, and, later, editor of _Notes and
Queries_, was perhaps the best known and most beloved of Bohemians, a
pillar of the Garrick Club, and one of the men to whose tongue came
ceaselessly apt and unexpected quotations from Shakespeare. He had the
same passion as old Mr. Dilke for accumulating books, and like him, too,
was a living catalogue to his own library, or libraries, for he
accumulated and sold two in his lifetime.
Another man of letters needs no introduction:
'A wreck of glasses attests the presence of Swinburne. He compared
himself to Dante; repeatedly named himself with Shelley and Dante, to
the exclusion of all other poets; assured me that he was a great man
only because he had been properly flogged at Eton, the last time for
reading _The Scarlet Letter_ when he should have been reading Greek;
confessed to never having read Helvétius, though he talked of Diderot
and Rousseau, and finally informed me that two glasses of green
Chartreuse were a perfect antidote to one of yellow, or two of yellow
to one of green. It was immediately after this that Theodore Watts-
Dunton took charge of him and reduced him to absolute respectability.'
Sir Charles tells stories of a remarkable political and literary
personage.
'Lord Houghton's anecdotes were rendered good by the remarkable people
that he had known.... He once about this time said to me: "I have
known everyone in the present century that was worth knowing." With a
little doubt in my mind, I murmured, "Napoleon Bonaparte?" "I was
taken to Elba when I was a boy," said Houghton instantly. I thought
his recollections of the first Emperor apocryphal. There was, however,
a chance that the father--who was in Italy--did take the child to
Elba.'
Another story, of which Lord Houghton was not the narrator, but the
subject, came to Sir Charles during a party at Lady Pollock's, and
concerned the dinner which had preceded the party.
'It had been at seven o'clock in honour of Tennyson, who would not
dine at any other hour, and Tennyson sat on one side of the hostess,
and Lord Houghton on the other; and the latter was cross at being made
to dine at 7, preferring to dine at 8.30, and sup, after dinner, at
11. The conversation turned on a poem which had been written by
Tennyson in his youth, and Tennyson observed "I have not even a copy
myself--no one has it." To which Lord Houghton answered: "I have one.
I have copies of all the rubbish you ever wrote."--A pause.--"When you
are dead I mean to publish them all. It will make my fortune and
destroy your reputation." After this Tennyson was heard to murmur,
"Beast!" It must have been a real pleasure to him to find himself
survive his brother poet.
'On the same evening I heard a story (probably a well-known one, but
certainly good) of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon's body; how the
Government of the day wrote to the Duke to tell him they had agreed to
let the French transport the corpse from St. Helena, the Duke being in
Opposition at the time; how the answer ran: "F.-M. the Duke of
Wellington presents his compliments to H.M.'s Ministers. If they wish
to know F.-M. the Duke of Wellington's opinion as on a matter of
public policy, he must decline to give one. If, however, they wish
only to consult him as a private individual, F.-M. the Duke of
Wellington has no hesitation in saying that he does not care one
twopenny damn what becomes of the ashes of Napoleon Buonaparte."'
Sir Charles had always many friends among artists, and his weekly visit to
the National Gallery was rarely intermitted by him even when in office. To
the end of his life he maintained the habit of going there whenever he
could make time, and always inspecting each new purchase. He kept in
touch, too, regularly with the art of his own day, and records his sight
of the first exhibition in the still unfinished Grosvenor Gallery. The
exhibition did not please him as a whole, though he admired not only
Burne-Jones's "Days of Creation," but a picture called "Passing Days,"
also allegorical, the work of Burne-Jones's disciple, Mr. Strudwick. His
taste in art was always personal; Velasquez, the painters' painter, made
no appeal to him. He worshipped Perugino and Bellini, rating "The Doge"
among the masterpieces of the world; while Raphael had for him degenerated
from his master's (Perugino's) perfection into mere expressionless beauty.
His appreciations were made with great force and originality, and an old
Academician who had accompanied him round galleries once said to the
second Lady Dilke (herself a most authoritative judge of painting): "It is
always interesting to see what a man like that will admire."
Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Charles's frequent guest at 76, Sloane Street, was
usually his companion in picture-seeing. It is also recorded that in the
spring of this year Dilke took his friend, 'at an unearthly hour for one
of his lazy habits,' to see the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race.
In the matter of music his preferences were no less emphatic, as witness
this entry:
'On May 29th I dined with a sister of Edward Levy Lawson, married to a
German who was Rubinstein's great friend; and not only Rubinstein, but
Joachim, played to the guests. Mrs. Bourke, a sister-in-law of Lord
Mayo, was always asked everywhere in London where Joachim was meant to
play, inasmuch as she was his favourite accompanist among amateurs.
The modesty of the great man led him after dinner, once when I was
dining with the Mitfords, when he knew that his time had come, to turn
to Mrs. Bourke, who was famous only as shining in his reflected light,
and say: "Mrs. Bourke, won't you play us something, and I will just
come in with my fiddle?" Rubinstein's playing I never liked. To me he
seemed only the most violent of all the piano-bangers of the world;
but he was literally worshipped by his admirers, and was grand to look
at--as fine as Beethoven must have been.'
Early in March of this year occurred the death of George Odger. The
working class of London decided to show their great respect by giving him
such a funeral ceremony as is rare in England, and Sir Charles walked
bareheaded through the streets with the great procession that accompanied
the body from the house in High Street, St. Giles's, all the long miles to
Brompton Cemetery.
A shrewd observer of Parliaments wrote of Sir Charles at this time:
"There is no more popular man in the House of Commons than he who
seven years ago" (it was only five) "was hooted and howled at, and was
for many succeeding months the mark of contumely and scorn in all
well-conducted journals."
On this statement Sir Charles's diary affords a commentary:
'At this time (April, 1877) there occurred some discussion between
Chamberlain and me as to what should be our attitude in the event of
the formation of a Liberal Government, and he was willing to accept
office other than Cabinet office, provided that it was office such as
to give him the representation of his department in the House of
Commons. Chamberlain and I found that we could exercise much power
through the Executive Committee of the Liberal Central Association,
which was a new body which at this time managed the whole of the
electoral affairs of the party. It comprised the two Whips _ex-
officio_--the Right Hon. W. P. Adam, and Lord Kensington; and among
the other seven members, Chamberlain and I represented the Radicals,
and communicated with the union of Liberal associations commonly known
as the Birmingham Caucus. Of the others Waddy was there to represent
the Methodists; C. C. Cotes [Footnote: M.P. for Shrewsbury. He was a
Lord of the Treasury and one of the Whips in Mr. Gladstone's second
Government.] and Sir Henry James were there chiefly as amateur whips
fond of electoral work; Lord Frederick Cavendish, to represent his
brother, the leader of the party; and Whitbread, to strengthen the
Whig influence.'
Sir Charles notes here that on June 29th, when he was to second, as usual,
Mr. Trevelyan's annual motion concerning franchise and redistribution, he
'had a conference with Chamberlain on the question whether we could
possibly get together a small knot of young peers to help us in the
House of Lords. Rosebery seemed the only one that we could find worth
thinking of, and we had him to dinner, and went to stay with him, and
generally tried to join forces, but without any very marked effect.'
Dilke and Chamberlain also sounded the Home Rulers to see if they could
find any basis of co-operation; and about this date Sir Charles, with Lord
and Lady Francis Conyngham and Butt, and 'in their sitting-room, full of
perennial clouds of smoke,' where a captive nightingale sang ('thinking
the gas the moon unless he took Butt's face for that luminary of the
heavens'), settled with the Irish leader that in following years they
should amend Mr. Trevelyan's franchise resolution by moving for the
extension of the franchise in counties throughout the United Kingdom; not
even Radicals had previously proposed to enlarge the electorate in
Ireland.
But in these days the Irish party were beginning to apply and develop that
use of Parliamentary forms for obstructive purposes which had been first
systematically attempted by the "Colonels" in opposition to Mr. Cardwell's
Bill for abolishing purchase in the Army, and Liberals were a little
scandalized by their allies. In the close of July Sir John Lubbock, then a
Liberal, 'foreshadowed his future Unionism by observing that "the
obstructive Irish were the Bashi Bazouks, who did more harm to us by their
atrocities than good by their fighting."' A couple of days later, when
Liberals supported an Irish amendment, Dilke himself agreed with Mr.
Rylands's pun that "they would have had a bigger vote if it hadn't been
Biggar." Upon this matter Sir Charles's attitude was naturally affected by
that of Butt, in whose company he delighted. The great advocate believed
in his own power to effect by eloquence and reasoned argument that change
of mind in the British House of Commons which five-and-twenty years'
experience of Ireland had wrought in himself since the days when he
opposed O'Connell on Repeal, and this led him to resent the methods of
unreason. Mr. Parnell, who never believed that England was open to reason
in the matter of Ireland, was only beginning to impress his personality on
the House; there is but one incidental mention of his name in the Memoir
for 1877.
But notwithstanding all the claims of home politics, in Sir Charles's
judgment every statesman had, under existing conditions, to study the
details of modern warfare, and he kept closely in touch with naval
armament:
'On February 24th I suddenly went down to Portsmouth to go over the
dockyard and see the ships building there, taking letters from
Childers and from Sir Edward Reed to Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock,
the Arctic explorer (Superintendent), and to Mr. Robinson, the Chief
Constructor. I went over the _Inflexible_, the _Thunderer_, and the
_Glatton_, which were lighted up for me. Noting the number of sets of
engines, and the number of the separate watertight compartments of the
_Inflexible_, I wrote: "All these extremely complicated arrangements
are handed over to a captain, of whom ... is a favourable example, and
to engineers who are denied their due rank in command."'
Nearly thirty years later the necessary reform which the last words
indicate was carried out by Lord Fisher.
CHAPTER XVI
THE EASTERN QUESTION--TREATY OF SAN STEFANO AND CONGRESS OF BERLIN
At the beginning of 1878 Parliament was summoned a month earlier than
usual to tranquillize public feeling--a result not thereby attained, for
the Russians, now completely victorious, were but a short distance from
Constantinople.
Sir Charles returned from Toulon, 'breakfasting with Gambetta on the 14th
January,' and on the 15th delivered to his constituents the speech already
quoted, which gave a summary of the events leading up to the war, his
judgment of the facts as they existed at the time of his speaking being
that the Government's whole policy was "isolated, undignified,
inconsistent, unsafe." [Footnote: See p. 205]
"We stand alone, absolutely alone, in face of terms of peace which we
dislike, but can't resist. Turkey is crushed, about whose integrity
the Tory party raved. Russian influence will have risen and English
influence fallen in the East. Greece, the anti-Russian friend of
England, is not to gain. Servia and Montenegro, the tools of Russia,
are to be rewarded. Bulgaria is to owe its freedom, not to Europe, but
to Russia."
So much was accomplished fact. It had still to be decided how much farther
Russia should be allowed to push her advantage. Upon this he said,
speaking "as a European Liberal,"
'I agree with what the first Napoleon said, in those St. Helena days
when he was acting Liberalism for the benefit of his historic
character and of his line, that "it is necessary to set up a
guaranteed kingdom, formed of Constantinople and its provinces, to
serve as a barrier against Russia." The open question for discussion
is whether the present Turkey serves the purpose....
'Were the choice between Russia at Constantinople and Turkey at
Constantinople, I should prefer the latter. The Turkish is in ordinary
times a less stifling despotism than the Russian....
'The Turks let any man go to any church and read any book, the
Russians do not, and in such a position of power as Constantinople I
should prefer the Turk if, as I do not think, the choice lay only
there.'
Where else, then, did the choice lie? The answer is that Dilke, in his own
words, "dreamed of a new Greece." He spoke of the lands then blighted by
the Sultan's Government--of "rose-clad Roumelia and glorious Crete"--of
countries held back by Turkish incompetence, that were by Nature
incredibly rich--"the choicest parts of Europe, perhaps of the world."
"The Greek kingdom is a failure, we are told. Greece, liberated by the
wise foresight of Mr. Canning, but left, on his ill-timed death,
without Thessaly, Epirus, Crete, has been starved and shorn by the
Great Powers. As once said Lafayette, "the greater part of Greece was
left out of Greece." What kind of Greece is a Greece which does not
include Lemnos, Lesbos, or Mitylene, Chios, Mount Olympus, Mount Ossa,
and Mount Athos? Not only the larger part, but the most Greek part of
Greece, was omitted from the Hellenic kingdom. Crete and the other
islands, the coast of Thrace, and the Greek colony at Constantinople,
are the Greek Greece indeed, for Continental Greece within the limits
of the kingdom is by race half Slav and half Albanian. We must not,
however, attach too much importance to this fact, for in all times the
Greeks have been a little people, grafting themselves on to various
barbaric stocks. Race is a small thing by the side of national spirit,
and in national spirit the Greeks are as little Slav as the Italians
are Teutonic. Even the corrupting influence of long slavery--and it
was deep indeed--had not touched this spirit, and the very thieves and
robbers of the hills of Greece made for themselves in Byron's days a
glorious name in history. I do not think that Greece has failed. I
believe in Greece, believe In the ultimate replacement of the Turkish
State by powerful and progressive Greece, attached in friendship to
France and England, her creators--an outpost of Western Europe in the
East; and I think the day will come when even Homer's city may once
more be Greek. Those who do not wish to see Slavonic claims pushed
much farther than justice needs should speak their word on behalf of
Greece."
From this ideal he never swerved, and the authority which he possessed in
European politics helped to keep it present before the mind of Europe.
Greece knew her friend, and after his death the Municipality of Athens
gave his name--_hodos Dilke_--to a fine street in the true mother city of
Hellas. [Footnote: "The name of Sir Charles Dilke is more highly prized in
Greece than that of any living Englishman," wrote M. Zinopoulos, General
Secretary to the Ministry of the Interior in Greece. "This feeling still
survived in 1887, when we went to Athens," adds Sir Charles's note.] He
never lived to see Hellenic government extend itself over Turkish fiefs,
except in that poor strip of northern territory which, thanks greatly to
his exertions, was secured for Greece in 1881. But before this memorial of
him could be completed, while those who worked on it were still searching
among his papers to reconstitute the projects he had shaped, came the
realization of some of his premonitions, and the end of Turkish sway in
"the most Greek parts of Greece."
'It was a good speech so far as concerned the position of Russia, of
Turkey, and of the Opposition, and in its protest against Manchester
Doctrine and in favour of a broader view of foreign policy, but it
proposed the annexation of Egypt, a view from which I soon afterwards
drew back, and which I did not hold at the time at which it became
popular some years later on.'
Upon the main issue which in 1878 lay before the mind of Europe, he was
for a partition of the Turkish Empire, though upon condition of keeping
Constantinople secured to the Turk. But as to the question of England's
going to war, he asked:
"For what are we to fight? Against an extension of Russian boundaries
in Armenia which will be slight, and which, if it were great, would be
better met by an even greater extension of English territories in
Egypt? Against 'the passage of the Dardanelles'--which means in time
of war its passage if Russia can--a passage which Russia would equally
attempt if she could, but had not the right. Against this we are to
fight without allies. Again, let us pray for peace. I will not
describe what war must mean--your sons and daughters killed, or lying
crippled amid horrors worse than death; the proceeds of your toil
wrung from you by new taxes; the dearness of your children's bread. I
have seen too much of war. ... No tongue can depict its horrors. ...
It is said that the constituencies are warlike, and that party wire-
pullers think that war would be "a good card to play." I hope and
believe that English constituencies would be warlike if real honour
and real interests were at stake. If they are warlike now, it is that
they know not war. Are those for war who know its face? ... The day
may come when England will have to fight for her existence, but for
Heaven's sake let us not commit the folly of plunging into war at a
moment when all Europe would be hostile to our arms--not one Power
allied to the English cause."
It seemed as if that folly were to be committed. When Parliament opened in
January, a declaration of war was foreshadowed by the hint of a demand for
funds to make "adequate preparation against some unexpected occurrence."
Nor was there any steady rallying point offered by the Opposition:
'January 17th was the day of the meeting of the House, the Radical
Club Dinner having replaced our private Queen's Speech Dinner of 1877.
But the disorganization of the Liberal party at this moment was so
complete that no Front Bench party was given on the night before
Parliament met, and Liberal politicians, or such of them as were
asked, had had to do their best to talk at a Tory house--Lady
Stanhope's in Grosvenor Place--where I met Harcourt and some of the
others. The situation in the debate on the Address was one which ought
to have led to successful attack upon the Government. The Queen's
Speech was neither of war nor of peace, but of perplexity and
division, and gravely informed us that poor Turkey had not interfered
with British interests. The discourses of the Ministers were peaceful
in the Lower House, and warlike in the Upper. Money was to be asked
for in the event of an "unexpected occurrence" happening.'
'Nothing, however, was made of the situation by the Opposition, and I
felt more interest therefore for the moment in my proposed political
reforms, in which I was on the point of a partial success, [Footnote:
'I introduced my two Bills of the previous year--both destined this
year to pass, though one of them after amalgamation with a
Conservative Bill--my Hours of Polling Bill and my Registration Bill.
I moved for my return, intended to facilitate my action in the
direction of redistribution, and got my Select Committee promised
me.'] and sheered off from the Eastern Question, with regard to which
I felt that in Parliament at the moment I could do no good.'
The speech to his constituents had attracted much attention. Among the
personal congratulations which he received he valued most highly those of
a great diplomatist and friend, 'high praise from Sir William White.'
[Footnote: Sir William White (1821-1891): February 27th, 1875, British
Agent and Consul-General in Servia; March 3rd, 1879, Envoy Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary at Bucharest, Roumania; April 18th, 1885,
Envoy Extraordinary at Constantinople; October 11th, 1886, Special
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at Constantinople.] On
January 17th he 'received a deputation of London merchants with regard to
the Black Sea blockade.'
'On Friday the 18th I dined at Lady Waldegrave's to meet the old
Strawberry Hill set--the Duke of Argyll, the Duchess of Manchester,
Lord and Lady Granville, Harcourt, James, Ayrton, Lord William Hay,
and Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hughes--and some people came in after dinner, of
whom Sir J. Rose and his daughter (Mrs. Stanley Clarke) warmly
congratulated me on my speech. There was a discussion between the
Liberals and the Duchess of Manchester, who was in both camps, and Sir
John Rose, who as a financier was the same, as to the reasons for Lord
Carnarvon's absence from Lord Beaconsfield's Queen's Speech Dinner,
but we could not get farther than to learn that "Dizzy had made it
unpleasant for him. ..." [Footnote: 'Another matter as to which I was
personally interested, though the others seemed hardly to have heard
of it, was a communication which had been made to France about Egypt
with regard to joint inquiry into the state of finances, a
communication all but volunteered by us, and not, I thought, in the
least necessary, but which was so strong in terms as to appear to shut
the door in the future against any possibility of action on our part
other than joint action with the French.']
'On Saturday the 19th Mr. Gladstone sent Lefevre to me, and asked me
not to raise the case of Greece at present, as he thought that a
combined movement with regard to Greece might soon be made in the
House of Commons with some chance of success.
'On the Sunday Drummond Wolff dined with me, very full of the
intrigues to get rid of Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon from the
Conservative Front Bench, and very hopeful of success, for at this
moment the Conservatives were so angry with their two peaceful men
that they made no secret of their intention to force them out, and
used freely to discuss the situation with the Liberals.
'On January 22nd I started an attempt to get up a Greek Committee, an
attempt which was successful, for our little meeting of this day, of
Fitzmaurice and Lefevre and myself, with the adhesion by letter of
Lansdowne and of Rosebery, led to the private formation of a
Committee, afterwards made public, and much enlarged, of which I made
Lewis Sergeant secretary, and which was able to do much good in the
course of the three next years. ...That night I dined with Mrs. Inwood
Jones (Lady Morgan's niece), and met Mr. and Mrs. Stansfeld, Browning,
Charles Villiers, Lady Hamilton Gordon, and another man whom I will
not name, because I wish to mention that I received from him on that
occasion a document relating to Greek affairs, from which I was
afterwards able to show how badly our Government had treated Greece,
but the origin of which I ought not to reveal.
'On January 23rd Evelyn Ashley, Chamberlain, and I had a meeting with
regard to Greek matters, at which we drew up the public declaration to
be made on behalf of the friends of Greece.
'On the next day, January 24th, a good many startling events occurred.
A War Ministry was formed at Athens; the vote of money was announced
in the British Parliament. Lord Carnarvon resigned in the morning, and
Lord Derby at night; but Lord Derby's resignation was for a time
withdrawn.'
In 'the great debate' on Mr. Forster's motion against the vote of six
millions sterling for 'adequate preparation'--a debate which opened on
January 31st, and was prolonged to the second week in February--Sir
Charles took part on the fourth day. Great interest attaches to this
speech in view of all his later work:
'I pointed out that we spend normally on defence or war far more than
any other Power: at that time twenty-five millions sterling at home
and seventeen millions in India, or forty-two millions in all, swelled
in that year by the extraordinary vote to forty-eight millions, while
France and Germany spent much less. I was to return to this subject
after many years, and when I wrote upon it in 1890, while the Indian
expenditure stood at the same sum, the annual expenditure in England
had risen to over thirty-eight millions, making the whole fifty-five,
and with the rest of the Empire nearly fifty-seven millions sterling.'
A side-note adds: 'It is now (1905) vastly greater.'
As he was the first non-military politician to devote himself to the
question of defence and to call public attention to the subject, so this
question of wasteful expenditure always occupied his attention. He laid
stress on the inadequate return received for naval and military outlay,
not only on the popular ground that money was thus deflected from projects
of internal reform, but pre-eminently because the nation in time of peace
resents heavy defence expenditure, and he feared that the necessary money
might not be forthcoming for that naval equipment which he held to be
essential to our existence as a Great Power.
But the main burden of his complaint was that now when a Conference was
proposed, and when England ought to have gone into the Conference with all
the weight of a unanimous people, the bringing forward of a "sham war
vote," which was a contradiction of the alleged desire to negotiate, had
produced inevitable division of counsels. Before the debate closed came
the rumour of an occupation of Constantinople by the Russians, and under
the belief that the war vote might be needed in good earnest, Mr.
Forster's motion was withdrawn.
'On February 6th ... I dined with Lady Brett and went on to Mrs.
Brand's, and at the Speaker's House heard that the Russians had
occupied a fort in the Constantinople lines. This lie got out the next
day, and was universally believed; and after a panic in the City,
Hartington decided, also in a panic, to make W. E. Forster drop the
resolutions which he had brought forward at Hartington's request.
Hartington saw me, and told me this behind the Speaker's chair before
questions. Within an hour after the withdrawal of the resolutions had
been mentioned in the House the whole story had been blown into the
air by the Russian Ambassador.'
At this period Sir Charles Dilke had entered into relations with Lord
Randolph Churchill, who was virtually against the policy of the Government
and yet 'open-mouthed in his general dislike of Lord Derby and Lord
Carnarvon, though in complete agreement with their principles.' The Fourth
Party did not yet exist. Nor was it in this Parliament that Lord Randolph
achieved ascendancy.
'As late as the autumn of 1880 Lord Beaconsfield was to style Randolph
"only Dilke and water"; but had he lived for another twelvemonth
longer he would not have used this language, for Churchill had then
developed a very different "Moloch of Midlothian" style, and had made
himself through his party a greater power than I ever was.'
The attempt to concert action between independent Tory and independent
Radical began after the great scare of February 6th. [Footnote: This
correspondence was placed at Mr. Winston Churchill's disposal by Sir
Charles Dilke, and used by him in the _Life of Lord Randolph Churchill._
Sir Stafford Northcote was leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor
of the Exchequer.]
'On February 7th negotiations between Randolph Churchill and myself
began as to moving an address to the Crown praying that the objects
with which England should enter any Conference that might be held,
should be European and civilized rather than pro-Turkish. On this day
he wrote to me:
'"MY DEAR SIR CHARLES DILKE,
'"As I suppose this debate will come to a close with an enormous and
disproportionate majority for the Government, and as I think the
Opposition have made their stand on an unfortunate ground, and that
another fight might yet be fought with far greater chances of
commanding sympathy in the country, I want to know whether, if an
address to the Crown praying Her Majesty to use her influence at the
Conference in favour of the widest possible freedom to Bulgaria,
Bosnia, Herzegovina, Thessaly, and Epirus, and in favour of totally
and finally putting an end to all direct Turkish Government in these
provinces, was moved by me on the Tory side of the House, it would be
supported by the Liberal party. I think I could almost make sure of a
strong Home Rule vote on this. I think some Conservatives would
support it. If Northcote does not give some very clear intimation of
what is going to be the policy of the Government, I think a motion of
this sort should be made on the Report. The real cry for the country
is not sympathy with Russia, still less with Turkey, but complete
freedom for the Slav and Hellenic nationalities. I am off to Ireland
to-night. I don't care enough for the Government to vote for them. ...
I shall see Butt in Dublin, and shall sound him on what I have written
to you. My address is Phoenix Park, Dublin. Please excuse this lone
letter.
'"Yours truly,
'"RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL."
'The reference to Butt is curious, and the address of "Phoenix Park,"
for Lord Randolph was at this time private secretary to his father,
who was Viceroy of Ireland, and was living in the Viceregal Lodge,
which, of course, is in the Phoenix Park. How far the Duke of
Marlborough was cognizant of the intrigues between his son and the
Irish I never knew, but at one time relations were very close."
[Footnote: Sir John Gorst read this chapter in 1913 and wrote:
"With Randolph's negotiations with the Irish at this time I had
nothing to do. I was not cognizant of them; I never acted with R.
before 1880.
"So far as I knew, the alliance between the Fourth Party and the Irish
leader arose in this way: In the 1880 Parliament Parnell had not
enough men to move an adjournment of the House--in those days the most
effective form of obstruction. Forty members must stand up. On one
occasion after 1880, P., wanting to move an adjournment, sought an
interview with us--Balfour may or may not have been present. He stated
his case, and we replied that the matter was a proper case for an
adjournment, and we and those we could influence would stand up in
support. He thanked us and was leaving the room, when R., twirling his
moustache, said: 'I suppose, Mr. Parnell, that in cases of this kind
there will be a little reciprocity.' After that, when we moved
adjournments, the Parnellite members always stood up for us.--J. E.
G."]
'On February 8th Lord Randolph wrote:
'"THE CASTLE, DUBLIN.
'"DEAR SIR CHARLES DILKE,
'"Many thanks for your two letters. As you say, things remain in such
an uncertain state nothing can be done. The Government have too great
an advantage, but I think if we are led into taking any decisive steps
hostile to Russia, a great effort should be made for an authoritative
declaration that the ultimate aim and object of any move on our part
is the complete freedom and independence of the Slav nationality, as
opposed to any reconstruction of the Turkish Empire. This I am sure
should be the line for the Liberal party, and not the peace-at-any-
price cry which it is evident the country won't have. In this I shall
be ready to co-operate heartily as far as my poor efforts can be any
good. It is just possible that if any movement of this kind be made it
would be better for it to originate from the Conservative side of the
House. I regret to see so much excitement getting up among the masses.
It is dangerous matter for Beaconsfield to work on. Would you think me
very foolish or visionary if I say that I look for a republican form
of Government for Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, as far more to be
preferred than some German, Russian, or other Prince set up as a
puppet under the name of constitutional monarchy? Perhaps if these
ideas seem at all to your liking, and if you think they would command
the support of the Liberal party, you would advise me what appeared to
you the most favourable moment for bringing them forward. I shall have
some conversation with Butt, and have great hope of securing a solid
Irish vote on any proposition which might seem to favour the self-
government of nationalities.
'"Yours truly,
'"_February 8th_.
'"RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.
'A few days later Lord Randolph telegraphed to me from Careysville,
Fermoy: "I shall be in London Monday morning. Am not ambitious of
taking any prominent part unless it might contribute to the advantage
of ideas which I think we have in common that a motion should be made
from my side of the House. I leave it absolutely to your judgment."
'On this telegram I wrote to Lord Granville, who replied, dating his
letter "September 13th" by mistake for February 13th:
'" 18, CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE.
'"MY DEAR DILKE,
'"Such a motion as Lord R. C. proposes, supported by a certain number
of Conservatives, might be well worth consideration. But I doubt his
getting any Conservative support, and a contingent of Home Rulers
would hardly justify us in making another attack upon Plevna just yet,
with the probable alternative of either a crushing defeat or a second
withdrawal in face of the enemy. I gather that you are doubtful. What
did Hartington think?
'"Yours sincerely,
'"GRANVILLE.
'"If R. Churchill could give you evidence on which you felt you _could
rely_ that he would have real Conservative support, the case would be
different."
'Hartington thought nothing, merely recommended acceptance of Lord
Granville's advice. Lord Granville's mistake in date was
characteristic, for, while a most able man who did not, in my opinion,
decline in intellectual vigour during the many years in which he took
a great part in public affairs, he always had the habit of
substitution of words, and I have known him carry on a long
conversation with me at the Foreign Office about the proceedings of
two Ambassadors who were engaged on the opposite sides in a great
negotiation, and call A "B," and B "A," through the whole of it, which
was, to say the least, confusing. He also sometimes entirely forgot
the principal name in connection with the subject, as, for example,
that of Mr. Gladstone when Prime Minister, and had to resort to the
most extraordinary forms of language in order to convey his meaning.
'Randolph wrote after his telegram from a fishing lodge on the Irish
Blackwater:
'"MY DEAR SIR CHARLES,
'"I have sent you a telegram which I think you will understand. I am
sure that my views, whatever they are worth, are in accordance with
your speech, and Harcourt's, and Gladstone's, on the question of the
future policy of this country. I am convinced that under the present
circumstances no motion should be unduly hastened on. There is lots of
time. If I was asked to move a resolution my speech would be an attack
on Chaplin, Wolff, and the rest of the Pro-Turkish party, confidence
in the Government and invitation to the Liberal party to act as a
whole. I feel I am awfully young to endeavour to initiate such a line;
but I am so convinced of the soundness of our views that I would risk
a smash willingly to have them properly brought forward. If only your
party would agree as a whole to support a resolution moved from my
side, the Government would only at the best have a majority of 80,
after 190, and that would be a check. I shall see Butt before arriving
in London, and endeavour to make him take up a position upon this
question. The Government are apparently doing their 'level best' to
keep the peace, and perhaps another debate might not be unwelcome to
them.
'"Yours very truly,
'"_February 15th._
'"RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.
'In reply, and in consequence of Lord Granville's suggestion, I
pressed him closely as to who would vote with him, and he wrote:
'"CASTLE BERNARD,
'"BANDON.
'"MY DEAR SIR CHARLES,
'"In reply to your letter I shall be over in London on the 26th inst.,
and I think it will be time enough then to make my motion. I should
not like to make it unless it would command the support of a large
number of members. Such support could only come from your side. I
think the Conservative party are gone mad. Their speeches are
calculated to provoke war. As it is so uncertain whether we shall go
to war or to a Conference, I think I had better wait a little, as,
though the motion should, I think, be made in any case, the terms of
it would vary very much according to either alternative.... I know of
no one except Forsyth whom I could ask to ballot for me. If the motion
commanded much support, I should certainly like to press it even to a
division. Cowen's speech (and the vociferous cheers of the C. party)
evidently shows that the idea of the integrity and independence of the
Turkish Empire is still predominant on our side, and against that I
would try to go a great way. I should, of course, be very glad if you
would second any motion of the nature of those sketched.... I send a
sketch of it.
'"Yours very truly,
'"RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL."
'"_Draft of Motion._
'"That in view of the extreme sufferings so long undergone by the
Slav, Bulgarian, and Hellenic nationalities of Bosnia, Herzegovina,
Bulgaria, Thessaly, and Epirus, and considering that the Turkish rule
over these provinces has now been definitely put an end to, the
efforts of Her Majesty's Government, in the opinion of the House of
Commons, should be principally directed towards the establishment of
the complete freedom and independence of the populations of these
provinces."
'I have in my diary on Friday the 15th the note: "See Chamberlain as
to Churchill's plan, and say I won't go to a meeting." Evidently I had
seen that Churchill was unsafe.
'When Randolph Churchill came back to town I discovered, or rather he
discovered and told me, that old Walpole, the ex-Home Secretary, was
the only member upon his own side who would even pretend that he would
vote with him, and when it came to the point on one occasion, Walpole
himself said that he should go away.'
Preparations for war were pressed on till, on March 3rd, the signing of
the Treaty of San Stefano, which put an end to Turkish rule in Bulgaria,
seemed to close the crisis. But instantly the trouble broke out again. The
British Government claimed that this new treaty, since it altered the
European settlement ratified in 1856 by the Treaty of Paris, must be
submitted to and endorsed by a Congress of the Powers. Russia declined to
be thus bound, and a new crisis arose in which Lord Derby, who had
withdrawn his previous resignation, now finally gave up the Secretaryship
of Foreign Affairs, being succeeded by Lord Salisbury.
In 1881 Sir Charles, while Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, became
aware that Lord Derby's retention of office after his first resignation
had been little more than nominal. He says in the Memoir for that year:
'In the course of my researches among the Tunis papers I discovered
the curious fact that in February and March, 1878, foreign affairs
were being conducted by a committee of the Cabinet, consisting of Lord
Beaconsfield, Lord Cairns, and Lord Salisbury, and that Lord Derby,
the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was virtually shelved for
the whole period. At this moment Lord Beaconsfield proposed the
creation of a Mediterranean league for the maintenance of the _status
quo_ in the Mediterranean: England, France, Italy, and Greece to be
first consulted, and Austria to come in afterwards if she pleased.
Italy declining, the scheme collapsed. Foolish Italy!'
While in Parliament the Tory party was ridding itself of its 'peace men,'
party feeling out of doors ran to unusual heights. These were the days
when a music-hall song added a word to the political vocabulary, and the
"jingo" crowd signalized its patriotism by wrecking Mr. Gladstone's
windows at 73, Harley Street, where he went to live after his retirement
from the Liberal leadership.
'On Sunday, March 10th, in coming back from the Grosvenor Gallery, I
passed a great mob, who were going to howl at Mr. Gladstone--at this time
the ordinary Sunday afternoon diversion of the London rough.'
Schouvalof, the Russian Ambassador, had on March 4th summed up the
situation in an epigram: "England has challenged Russia to a duel, and has
chosen for her weapon swords at fifteen paces" (_l'épée à quinze pas_).
But the preparations for this combat were menacing.
'On March 29th the Eastern Question blazed up again with Lord Derby's
resignation, the discussion of which enlivened a party at Lady
Waldegrave's, there being before us a Queen's Message alleging the
existence of imminent national danger and great emergency as a reason
for calling out the reserves. On Saturday the 30th Trevelyan ...
informed me of a resolution which had been prepared by Lubbock on
behalf of those Whigs who had not gone with Gladstone, but wished to
make some movement of their own. Later in the evening I saw Childers,
who proposed a better motion in the form of an addition to the Message
in the sense of a strong desire for peace. The object of both
suggestions, of course, was by a moderate middle course to prevent a
division for and against the Message in which Gladstone and Bright and
eighty others would vote No, while eighty would follow Hartington in
voting Yes, and the majority of the party run away, thus destroying
the Liberal party, as it was destroyed in the time of Pitt and the war
with France. Later, again, in the evening I saw Montgélas (who told me
that Russia had held different language to Austria and to England, and
that she had drawn back and did not mean war) [Footnote: 'On February
9th I went to a party at the Austrian Embassy "to meet the Archduke
Rudolf." Beust was gone away and Montgélas was host. ... On February
12th I met again the Crown Prince of Austria.'] and Randolph
Churchill, who made an appointment to come to me on Sunday about the
papers, which he agreed with me in thinking damaging to the
Government, and full of evidence of their total isolation. When he
came, we decided only that the Government ought to be asked for
further papers.'
This demand Sir Charles accordingly made on April 1st. His position was at
this point extremely difficult. He was not prepared to acquiesce in the
aggrandisement of Russia, and therefore could not go with his habitual
associates, who had formed a Committee upon the Eastern Question. On the
other hand, he was determined to join with them in opposing the calling
out of the reserves, because this step implied that England would go to
war alone, and he did not believe either that England was likely to do so,
or that she ought, as a member of the European Concert, to take such a
step.
'There was a moment after the fall of Lord Derby when I became a
supporter of the Government in their Eastern policy, for they appeared
to me to adopt my own, but it did not last long. "Lord Salisbury's
circular" (so-called, but written by Lord Cairns), issued upon the
accession of Lord Salisbury to the Foreign Office, contained the
statement of this policy. ... Speaking in the House on April 9th ...,
I repudiated the defence which came from some on the Liberal side, of
the conduct of Russia, and, looking upon the Government despatch as a
vindication primarily of general European interests, and, in the
second place, of Hellenic interests, against Russian violence and
universal Slav dominion throughout the Levant, I separated myself from
my party and praised the new Minister of Foreign Affairs. I was
afterwards bitterly disappointed at finding the policy of the April
circular abandoned by its authors in the Congress of Berlin. ...
'On April 4th Gennadius, the Greek Chargé d'Affaires (afterwards
Minister), the American Minister, Matthew Arnold, W. E. Forster, Grant
Duff, Lubbock, George Sheffield (Lord Lyons' factotum), Tom Hughes,
and my old friend Sir David Wedderburn dined with me. And in this Whig
and Hellenic party a general agreement with my views was met with; but
the same was not the case amongst my brother Radicals of "Mr.
Dillwyn's Committee upon the Eastern Question."'
This Radical organization got into difficulties of its own while
contemplating a motion to condemn explicitly the calling out of the
reserves.
'On April 5th Dillwyn's Committee had had before it a letter from Lord
Hartington, saying that Mr. Gladstone on Monday wished to speak next
after Sir Stafford Northcote, and to deprecate the moving of an
amendment. It was in consequence resolved by a majority that no
amendment should be moved. Courtney then said that the intimation of
Mr. Gladstone's opinion had been obtained from him by gross pressure,
and that he himself should move an amendment if no one else did.
Wilfrid Lawson then said that he would move; and there were seven in
favour of an amendment. This broke up the Committee, and on Dillwyn
reporting to Hartington its dissolution, the latter said: "Well, Mr.
Dillwyn, you see it is not so easy to lead."
'On Sunday, April 7th, there dined with me, among others, Hartington,
Harcourt, Goschen, Lord Granville, and Lord Ripon, and we discussed
the position, on which Lord Ripon was far from agreement with me. I
warmly supported to them the Government circular (issued by Lord
Salisbury), as putting British action on European rather than on
British-interests grounds, and only differed from the policy of
calling out the reserves because this was an action of isolation.'
When Sir Wilfrid Lawson's amendment was moved, Sir Charles voted with the
Radical minority of sixty-four against calling out the reserves, but
'differed from every word in which the Radical speakers supported their
view.'
The pith of his speech was a powerful plea for allowing Greece to secure
the emancipation of Greek populations, then under a Turkish rule heavy as
that from which Russia claimed to liberate the Slavs of Bulgaria.
So far, the action of the Government had not united the Liberal party in
any concentrated attitude of resistance. But during the Easter recess,
which Sir Charles spent in France, meeting Gambetta, politics took a more
dramatic turn.
'When Parliament adjourned for the holidays, not one word had been
said of an act long previously determined, which was announced the
next day. The fact that Parliament was allowed to learn from the
newspapers that it was intended by the Government for the first time
to employ Indian troops within the European dominions of the Crown in
time of peace, without the previous consent of Parliament, [Footnote:
By despatching 7,000 Sepoys to Malta.] was a singular commentary upon
the Government declaration at the beginning of the Session that
Parliament had been called together at an unusually early date in
order that under circumstances of delicacy the Ministry might have the
advantage of its advice.... Public feeling, I found from Chamberlain,
had gone round a good deal during my absence, and to satisfy the
opinion of our Radicals he was determined to move something. I
suggested to him (on May 6th) a resolution condemning "the policy of
menace and warlike demonstration which has been pursued by the
Government," and expressing the belief "that an honourable and
peaceful settlement of existing difficulties will be best promoted by
their consenting to state frankly the changes in the Treaty of San
Stefano which they consider necessary for the general good of Europe
and the interests of this country."'
But already the Government were in secret negotiation with Russia, and had
entered into an agreement as to the modification of the provisions of the
Treaty of San Stefano. Amongst other changes it was proposed to curtail
the limits of Bulgaria by a division severing South from North, and to
allow Austria-Hungary to occupy Bosnia and the Herzegovina.
'On Tuesday, May 7th, after the Radical Club, at a party at the
Harcourts', I learned what the Government intended to do at the
Conference or Congress--namely, limit Bulgaria on the south by the
Balkans. But I was informed at the same time that they would
themselves propose to give Thessaly and Epirus to Greece, an
undertaking which I think they did give to the King of Greece, but
from which, if so, they afterwards departed. The Greek Patriarch from
Constantinople came over at this time, as did the Armenian Patriarch
shortly afterwards, and I met both, although conversation with these
dignitaries was not easy, for their French was about as feeble as my
Greek; but through Gennadius I, of course, knew the views of the
Greeks, and in the Armenian question I took no special part.'
The question of employing the Indian troops was debated on May 20th. Lord
Hartington opened; and Sir Charles replied to Sir Michael Hicks Beach, who
followed Lord Hartington. Concerning the discussion, he says:
'The technical point which we argued was a narrow one. Had Cyprus been
in Asia, our arguments would not have applied to Cyprus; and it is
very likely that the Government thought Cyprus was in Asia, and did
not like to say that they had made a mistake, and having first ordered
the troops to Cyprus, and then ordered them to Malta (which was
undoubtedly in Europe), had forgotten the distinction. The real
objection to the bringing of the Sepoys was the same as the objection
to the calling out of the reserves--that it was isolated action, and
that these military measures and the expenditure which they involved
were mere bunkum, and mere waste if the Government intended to give
up, as they were secretly telling Russia they did intend to give up,
the main points of dispute. Moreover, Russia could do us hurt in
India, and Indian troops could not touch her at all....
'The Government were said to have only "conquered by giving way," for
they agreed to put the number of men into the Estimate, and thus avoid
making a precedent, according to our contention, absolutely
unconstitutional. On the other hand, Lord Beaconsfield's speech in the
House of Lords was defiant in the extreme, and Holker's [Footnote: The
Attorney-General.] in the Lower House was an assertion of higher
prerogative doctrine than had been heard in Parliament since the days
of Elizabeth.'
'On May 30th I dined with Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, and met Lord
Northbrook (the former Viceroy of India) and his daughter, Lady Emma
Baring, Lord Rosebery, Lord and Lady Napier (he a most distinguished
man, the best of Ambassadors to Russia and the best of Governors of
Madras, too little known),[Footnote: Baron Napier and Ettrick.] Lord
Macduff (afterwards Duke of Fife), and Monty Corry, afterwards Lord
Rowton, Lord Beaconsfield's private secretary.' Corry 'told me what
was at the moment a startling secret--that Lord Beaconsfield was going
to the Congress himself. "Can he speak French?" I asked with wonder,
to which he shook his head.'
On the day after the meeting of the Congress a sensational disclosure
revealed to the world that it met; only to register foregone conclusions.
'At the end of the month (May) the secret agreement was signed with
Russia, and revealed to us by the _Globe_ [Footnote: The Globe
disclosure came from Mr. Marvin, a civil servant in temporary employ.
Dilke noted: "Besides the 'Marvin Memorandum' and an annex, there was
a curious stipulation insisted on by Russia, that the annex should
never be published, even if No. 1--that is, the 'Marvin Memorandum'--
should become public; and this looks very much as though Marvin was
really the Russian Government, which I have always suspected. They had
this to gain by publishing the Memorandum--that they showed themselves
the real victors in the Congress of Berlin, in spite of all our
bluster, and they damaged Lord Beaconsfield, who was their enemy.
Marvin could never have got a copy, and always pretended that he had
learned the whole document by heart, which, considering its length and
the total absence in the copy published in the _Globe_ of the
slightest error, even of punctuation, is incredible. The annex, which
was dated May 31st, only said that the Russians had no intention of
extending their conquests in Asiatic Turkey: 'The Emperor of Russia
... not having the intention of extending Ids conquests in Asia ...
the Imperial Government does not refuse to conclude with the British
Government a secret engagement for the purpose of reassuring it upon
this point.'"] on June 14th; and it then appeared that the military
preparations of the country must have been intended to keep up the
spirits of the Jingoes while their cherished principles were being
sacrificed behind their backs. The _Daily Telegraph_, which was the
Jingo organ, said: "If _such_ a compact has been concluded, this
country has fatally descended from the lofty position occupied by the
Salisbury despatch." Not only was the compact authentic, but there
were two other secret compacts of the same date which did not come
out. What the Government had done was to give up all the points for
which they had made their enthusiastic followers believe that they
would fight, and at the same time in the Anglo-Turkish Convention to
declare that their successors should fight for what was left. This may
have been a prudent policy, but it was not a policy which carried with
it the necessity for bringing Indian troops to Europe or spending
eight or nine millions sterling upon apparent preparations for
immediate war. The third agreement, in addition to the Salisbury-
Schouvalof agreement and the Anglo-Turkish Convention, the first of
which came out by chance and the second of which was ultimately
published by the Government, was an Anglo-Austrian secret agreement
which has never been printed, the character of which is revealed by
the fact that the English plenipotentiaries themselves proposed at
Berlin, in spite of the strong dissent of Turkey, to make to Austria
the gift of Bosnia and Herzegovina.'
To this note, written in 1890, there is added in the margin of the
manuscript: 'There was also a secret supplementary agreement with Russia,
of which later.' And also this: "The compact giving Bosnia and Herzegovina
to Austria is now (1908) known to Lucien Wolf." [Footnote: See Thomas
Erskine Holland, _The European Concert in the Eastern Question_, 292,
293.]
Before the Berlin Congress met, Sir Charles had pressed by way of
questions to secure if possible a representation for Greece at the
Congress, and failed; and the speech which he made in the debate (opened
on July 29th) on the Treaty of Berlin was mainly a censure on Great
Britain for having failed to support the Hellenic claims. He dwelt
specially on Crete, the government of which by Turkey was, he said, "a
perpetual menace to European peace."
Replying in the debate for the Liberal party to Mr. David Plunket
(afterwards Lord Rathmore), he notes that he
'spoke, and spoke well, making the best of my debating speeches, but
was overshadowed by one speech which would have caused better speeches
than mine to have been easily forgotten. Mr. Gladstone's speech on
this occasion, like all his speeches, does not read; but it was the
finest that I ever heard him make with one exception--the Bradlaugh
speech in the next Parliament.'
CHAPTER XVII
POLITICS AND PERSONS
I.
Sir Charles Dilke's first concern was with foreign affairs, but he was
also of high authority in whatever related to the business and management
of the House of Commons; and at this period the question of remodelling
forms which lent themselves to the arts of delay began to be urgent, and
threatened to become paramount. Here, early in 1878, is the first
considerable mention of the man whose relentless use of obstruction has
affected parliamentary procedure all over the world:
'On February 20th I was asked by Lord Hartington to serve upon the
Government Select Committee on the business and forms of the House,
upon which Parnell was asked to represent the obstructive element. It
was somewhat a distinction, as I was to be the sole representative of
the English independent members, and in consequence I gave up the
Standing Committee on Commons, upon which I asked Fitzmaurice to
replace me. The proceedings of Sir Stafford Northcote's Committee, as
the Committee on Public Business was called, presented only one
singularity--namely, the examination of the Speaker--a prolonged one--
by Parnell. Both of them were in a way able men; but both were
extraordinarily slow of intellect--that is, slow in appreciating a
point or catching a new idea--and Mr. Brand (as he then was) and
Parnell used to face one another in inarticulate despair in the
attempt to understand each the other's meaning. There were a good many
fairly stupid men on the Committee, but there was not a single member
of it who did not understand what Parnell meant by a question more
quickly than could the Speaker, and not a man who could not understand
what the Speaker meant by a reply more quickly than Parnell.'
'With Speaker Brand I afterwards had a singular connection.
'At the time when the President of the Free State, whose name was also
Brand, had rendered important services to the British Government, I
made one of the briefest of my brief minutes and put it in a box, and
sent it round the Cabinet: "I think Brand should be knighted.--Ch's W.
D." Nearly all the members of the Cabinet having added their initials
in approval, Brand was knighted, but the wrong Brand, for they gave
the G.C.B. to the Speaker, and it was only some time afterwards that
the G.C.M.G. was conferred on the South African statesman. I had not
thought of the Speaker, and Mr. Gladstone or his private secretary,
Edward Hamilton, had forgotten the Free State. What may have been the
frame of mind of the various members of the Cabinet who approved my
suggestion I do not know, but some probably meant the one and some
probably meant the other, and no one remembered that there were two.'
Concerning the proposals which Sir Stafford Northcote was contemplating as
the result of the Committee on Public Business, but not in exact
accordance with its decisions, Sir Charles notes, under June 25th, that he
was not in agreement with the mass of the Liberal party.
'Our men were inclined to oppose all proposals for closure by
majorities, and for investing the Speaker with large powers, while I
was beginning to feel as strongly favourable to such proposals as I
afterwards became. My "record" upon this subject constituted,
therefore, almost as "sharp a curve" as that of others. As a rule I
have not greatly changed my mind upon political subjects, but upon
this one (as upon Africa [Footnote: See Chapter XVI., p. 238, and also
Chapter XLVIII, (Vol. II., pp. 251-2).]) I undoubtedly turned round,
and did so in consequence of the full consideration which I had to
give it in the course of this single year.'
In the same year Sir Charles had secured support of Tory metropolitan
members, whose constituents were affected, for his Bill to extend the
hours of polling in London; and it passed before the end of January as an
agreed measure. Then came another advance:
'On February 27th, at the most important sitting of my Committee on
the Registration Bills, which had three Bills before it, mine being
one; and Martin, who had charge of the Conservative Bill, being in the
Chair, with a Conservative majority on the Committee, Martin's Bill
was rejected, and mine adopted by the Committee on a division as a
base for its proceedings. I at once decided that I would hand over my
Bill to Martin, so as to let him have charge of it, as Chairman of the
Committee, as the Bill of the Committee.'
This was designed not so much to insure the passage of his own Bill as 'to
prevent Martin from carrying a mere bit of a Bill with some of the things
in it which we wanted.' But, 'to the amazement of everyone,' Sir Charles's
measure, under its new sponsorship, actually passed, and 'became law in
1878, and ultimately added an enormous number of voters to the franchise
rolls.'
By June 7th the Registration Bill was read a third time, and
'My Hours of Polling Bill had now become "Dilke's Act," and I felt as
though I was making such progress towards the political reforms I had
long advocated that there might be some faint chance that one day
redistribution itself might be accomplished.'
Six years later he himself carried out redistribution and extension of the
suffrage on a scale hardly dreamed of by politicians in 1878. Already, in
the debate of February 22nd, when Sir Charles, as usual, seconded Mr.
Trevelyan's annual motion on the equalization of voting power, the
division was better than ever before, and the _Annual Register_, which a
few years earlier had known nothing but contempt and aversion for this
Radical group, devoted considerable space to the arguments by which reform
was supported, with full reference to Sir Charles's speech. Mr. Goschen
and Mr. Lowe were the only Liberals of note who opposed the motion--if,
indeed, Mr. Lowe could still be called a Liberal--and Lord Hartington
spoke for it.
One of Sir Charles's preoccupations at this moment was the choice of a
Liberal candidate to stand for Chelsea with him, and the matter presented
difficulties.
'Horace Davey ... was wishful to stand with us, and I had asked him to
a dinner at which he met some of the leading men, and later he called
on me to see whether he would "do." In the meantime I had sounded our
best people, and found that he would not.... I told him at once that
he must vote against fresh dowries to the Royal Family until a Civil
List inquiry had been held, which ... sent him away.'
Another lawyer followed, and was shown off at several dinners, but 'the
borough did not seem inclined to welcome Queen's Counsel,' and ultimately
settled, very much to its own satisfaction and Sir Charles's, on a great
friend, Mr. Firth.
The campaign in defence of open spaces was actively carried on this year,
and in March Sir Charles was fighting on behalf of the Commons
Preservation Society to resist the erection of a new cottage with an
enclosure for the Deputy Ranger in Hyde Park. The cottage was erected, but
Sir Charles and his allies 'were ultimately able to get back a large part
of the land which had been enclosed near it.' Another encroachment was
resisted more successfully, and by other means. In Fulham 'the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners had made an enclosure shutting out the public
from Eelbrook Common, the use of which it had enjoyed for many years.'
'I went to a meeting at Beaufort House, and made, as I thought, a
moderate speech recommending abstention from acts of violence, but one
at the close of which the meeting went off to the place, pulled down
the fence, and burnt it in a large bonfire. The enclosure was never
reasserted, and the ground was ultimately handed over to the
Metropolitan Board of Works to be managed as an open space, and is
open now for ever.... In Lord Eversley's _Commons_, revised edition of
1910, he names my services to the "cause," but not _this_ one.'
At the close of the Session
'On September 4th I addressed my constituents, and received an ovation
in consequence of the passing of the Hours of Polling Bill (letting
them vote till eight in the evening instead of four) and of my
Registration Bill. Vast numbers of electors had been disfranchised by
the former hours, who were able now to record their votes. My
Registration Act was only to come into force in the course of the
following year, and was to affect the next registration and revision.
'Turning to foreign affairs, I pointed out the absolute impossibility
of the fulfilment of the promises which the Government had made to
give to Asiatic Turkey "rest from the heavy weight of military
service, rest from the uncertainty of unjust Judges and persons placed
in command." I went on to discuss the Greek question, which I had to
do somewhat fully, because the Greek Committee was at present only
operating in the dark, and had not made known its constitution to the
public. [Footnote: He made in this year the acquaintance of
'Delyannis, Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs. He was a very inferior
man to his great rival, Tricoupis.']
'Two days after my speech, on September 6th, I learnt that the Greek
Government had decided to recognize the insurgent Debt of 1824. People
often talk of the possibilities of Ministers speculating on the Stock
Exchange on secret information. It is a curious and perhaps an
interesting fact that during the more than five years that I was in
office I do not think that any official information came into my hands
the possession of which would have enabled any Minister to make money
on the Stock Exchange, although a private secretary was charged with
the offence during those years--most unjustly charged. On the other
hand, it is the case that on at least two occasions when I was a
private member of Parliament, before I had held office, I had secret
information of a certain kind upon which I might have speculated, and
which very probably was given me with the intention that I should do
so. This was one of the two occasions. The other was my knowledge of
the financial intervention in Egypt before it took place. [Footnote:
He knew this from something said to him by Nubar Pasha.]
'The Greek information of September 6th reached me in Paris, whither I
had gone on the day after my speech, and to which I was followed by
very favourable criticism upon it. Gambetta, with whom I breakfasted
on the 6th, told me that Lord Salisbury, who had been in Paris, had
come there with a view to reopen the Egyptian question, but had not
received encouragement.
'On Thursday, September 12th, I breakfasted with Gambetta in the
country, he coming to fetch me at the Grand Hotel, and driving me down
in a victoria. We talked partly of Egypt, partly of people.'
That autumn Sir Charles spent in the South of France, still working on his
History. [Footnote: _History of the Nineteenth Century_. See Chapter XI.,
p. 154; also Chapter LX. (Vol. II., p. 537).] His son, then four years
old, used to be with him at La Sainte Campagne, Cap Brun, his house near
Toulon. In November a new crisis arose. 'There seemed a chance of war with
Russia about the Afghan complications,' and Sir Charles proposed to his
brother Ashton that, 'in the event of Russia's entry on the war, he should
bring out a daily halfpenny noonday paper, to give, on a small sheet, news
only, and not opinions. At that time evening papers could not be bought
till four o'clock, and the idea was discussed between us until it became
clear that we were only going to fight Afghans, and not Russians.'
The situation was serious enough to demand an autumn Session, because the
beginnings of the war were directly connected with Russian action. After
the Queen had assumed her new title of Empress of India, Lord Lytton was
instructed to propose a Mission to the Amir. But the Amir, who had
previously declined to admit surveying parties of British officers, now
refused this. In the spring of 1878, when war threatened between England
and Russia, the Russian Government also proposed an Embassy to Kabul, and
although they likewise met with a refusal, the Mission was despatched and
reached Kabul.
The Indian Government now saw themselves under a slight; Russia's Mission
had been received, theirs had been refused entrance. Peremptorily they
renewed their request. No answer was returned; the Mission set out, and
was stopped by armed force. Declaration of war followed, and by November
20th British troops had crossed the frontier. Invasion of Afghanistan was
in full progress when Parliament assembled.
Sir Charles saw Gambetta on December 3rd, and returned to England, and by
the 4th was discussing at the Radical Club the course to be taken on the
Address. In his travels he had visited the north-west frontier of India.
It was settled that he should speak, but, as he notes, the debate in the
Commons 'was swamped by that in the Lords,' and, further, 'I found myself
once again in a difficulty on the Afghan question, as I had been on the
Eastern Question, that of not agreeing with either side.'
Lord Hartington, as usual, had been prompt in the assurance of patriotic
support for a Government actually engaged in war; Mr. Gladstone was
passionate in denunciation of the war itself. Between these poles Sir
Charles had to steer, and the pith of his speech was a charge against the
Government that they were punishing the Afghans for having submitted to a
violent act of aggression perpetrated by Russia.
'On Tuesday, December 10th, I spoke in the debate, doing my best to
calm down a revolt which had broken out below the gangway against
Hartington for not having countenanced an amendment to the Address,
and for having made on the Address a speech supposed to be too
friendly to the Government.
'On the other hand, Edward Jenkins, [Footnote: Author of _Ginx's
Baby_.] who called himself a Radical, and who was a strong
Imperialist, was busy drawing amendments which were mere pretexts for
voting with the Government, and I noted in my diary my despair at
finding such men blaming Hartington for going too far, when
Chamberlain was blaming him for not going far enough. While I was
speaking on the 10th Wilfrid Lawson passed to me his copy of the
Orders of the Day, bearing at the head the lines:
'"Lord Salisbury once was the 'master of jeers,
But now he has met with disaster;
For, on reading the Blue Book, it plainly appears
That Giers is Lord Salisbury's master."
The lines were excellent, and I burst out laughing in the middle of my
speech. Giers was the new Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and
the phrase quoted in Lawson's first line was, of course, an abridgment
of Mr. Disraeli's memorable quotation from Shakespeare about his
colleague, and the four lines formed a summary of my speech....
[Footnote: On August 5th, 1874, Disraeli, speaking in the debate on
the Lords' disagreement to certain amendments made by the House of
Commons in the Public Worship Regulation Bill, had described Lord
Salisbury as "a great master of gibes and flouts and jeers."] It came
out clearly in these debates that Northcote had not expected war, and
that Lord Lytton had acted directly under the instructions of the
Prime Minister, and had not only expected, but intended it. I called
Lord Lytton in my speech "a diplomatist rather than a Viceroy, a
Secretary of Legation rather than a ruler of men." This was not
intended for abuse, but to bring the House to see him as I had seen
him in my knowledge of him as Secretary at Paris, in order to show
that he had been sent out to India to be an instrument--obedient to a
policy dictated to him from home.' [Footnote: Sir Charles had been
staying with the Commander-in-Chief at Madras, General Haines,
afterwards Field-Marshal, in January, 1876, when the news came of Lord
Lytton's appointment as Governor-General. 'The old soldier absolutely
refused to credit the information, being a strong Conservative, and
unwilling to admit that Mr. Disraeli could have been guilty of so
extraordinary a mistake.']
This Afghan War, so lightly begun, and fraught with so much disaster, was
the first of a series of events which sapped the credit of the Government
that had triumphantly claimed to bring back "peace with honour" from the
Congress of Berlin.
Some intimate aspects of that gathering are preserved in Sir Charles's
account of a dinner-party at Sir William Harcourt's house on December
11th, the guests including the Russian Ambassador, who had been one of the
plenipotentiaries.
'Schouvalof was very funny. He gave us a fancy picture of the whole
Congress of Berlin. He described almost every member of the Congress,
standing up at the table speaking English when he did Lord
Beaconsfield, and mimicking the Prime Minister's grave manner, with
absurdly comical effect. At last he came to Lord Salisbury, who,
according to him, spoke bad French. He made Lord Salisbury coin an
extraordinary phrase, at which he himself (Schouvalof), all the
Frenchmen, and Gortschakof, shrugged their shoulders with one accord.
Lord Salisbury turned fiercely round, and asked what was the matter
with it, to which Saint-Vallier replied that "there was nothing the
matter with it except that it was not French." "Not French?" said Lord
Salisbury, and rang the electric bell by the button in front of him,
and when the door was opened, holding up his hand to show the
messenger who had rung, said: "Fetch Mr. Currie." Philip Currie
appeared at the door, bowing deeply, whereon Lord Salisbury read his
phrase to him, and said, "Mr. Currie, is that good French?" to which
Currie replied, "Excellent French, my lord;" whereon Lord Salisbury
turned, said Schouvalof, "to our French colleagues, and said:
'There!'" Schouvalof carried on violent discussions between Lord
Beaconsfield, speaking English, and Gortschakof, speaking French,
about various boundary questions, and brought in Bismarck every minute
or two as a chorus, the Chancellor stalking up and down the room with
his arms folded, and growling in a deep voice: "Eh bien, messieurs,
arrangez-vous; car, si vous ne vous arrangez pas, demain je pars pour
Kissingen." Under this Bismarckian pressure Schouvalof, after making
us shriek for half an hour, brought his Congress to an end.... In a
confidential talk with me afterwards Schouvalof said: "I have known
many rude people, but I never knew anyone so rude as was Bismarck at
the Congress. I happened to name our poor clients, the Montenegrins,
when Bismarck roared at me: "Je ne veux pas entendre parler de ces
gens-là." Schouvalof also said of our relations with the Afghans: "You
don't understand dealing with Orientals. Compare your letters to the
Amir and ours, published in your Blue-Book. We call him the Sun and
Moon, and you call him an 'earthen pipkin.'" This last was an allusion
to the phrase used to the Amir, "an earthen pipkin between two iron
pots," the iron pots being ourselves and Russia.'
II.
Sir Charles Dilke in this year has record of meeting with many interesting
persons, some of them links with a vanishing past, such as the daughter of
Horace Smith, who with his brother wrote _Rejected Addresses_. Miss "Tizy"
Smith was, he says,
'the last survivor of that school of noisy, frolicsome, boisterous old
ladies given to punning and banging people on the back; but she was
very witty, and, for those who had spirits to bear her spirits, most
entertaining. She was for many years known as the "Queen of Brighton,"
but her sway was not despotic.'
In February he
'dined with Lady Waldegrave to meet the Duc de Chartres--no better and
no worse than the other Princes of his house...., not excepting the
Duc d'Aumale, who had, however, the reputation of being brilliant, and
who ... was interesting from his great memory of great men. They all
grew deaf as they grew old, and the Comte de Paris is now (1890)
almost as deaf as the Prince de Joinville, who was put into the navy
in his youth, because, not hearing the big guns, he alone of all the
family was not frightened by them.'
In March, 1878, Gambetta sent to Dilke with an introduction 'Henri Hecht,
who was deep in his secrets, and in the habit from this time forward of
visiting for him Germany as well as England.' Going backwards and forwards
to his house at Toulon, Sir Charles always broke the journey at Paris to
see Gambetta. He writes to Ashton Dilke:
"Gambetta says that he shall say at Grenoble that MacMahon said:
'J'irai jusqu'au bout,' and that he must--_i.e._, he must complete his
term. He won't have him again. 'J'en ai assez d'une fois.'"
At Easter Sir Charles was using his influence with Gambetta on behalf of a
great artist who had been politically compromised in the troubles of 1871
--Dalou the sculptor, who had done to Dilke's commission a copy in has-
relief of Flaxman's "Mercury and Pandora."
'When I was leaving for Paris I had several interviews with Dalou as
to getting him leave to return to France without his asking for it. He
had been sub-curator of the Louvre under the Commune, and had helped
to preserve the collections from destruction; but after he fled the
country he had always refused to ask for leave to return, which, had
he asked, would at once have been granted to him. Gambetta always
insisted, when I spoke to him upon the matter, that Dalou should write
some letter, however private and however personal, to ask for leave to
return; but this was just what Dalou's pride would never let him do,
and although he was willing to ask me verbally, and even to refer to
the matter in a private letter to myself, he never would write about
it to anyone in France. Dalou was afterwards selected to make the
official statues of the Republic, and may be said to have become,
after the general amnesty, Sculptor-in-Ordinary to the Government of
France.'
There is a story of Count Beust's difficulties when the Empress of Austria
suddenly asked herself to dine with him at the Austrian Embassy at six on
Sunday, at twenty-four hours' notice. Beust's cook was out of town; but
worse was the difficulty of finding guests of adequate importance. The
Prince of Wales had a dinner-party of his own at Marlborough House, so
recourse was had to another Royal couple, the Duke and Duchess of Teck.
They were engaged to the Marlborough House dinner, but suggested a heroic
expedient. "Why not dine with you at six, and go on at a quarter-past
eight and dine again!" So it was settled.
An eccentric dinner took place at 76, Sloane Street, when the Maharajah of
Johore returned the visit which Sir Charles had paid him in his States
near Singapore. Lord Randolph Churchill and other people interested in
India were among the guests, and the Maharajah brought his own cook, who
prepared enough for all, so that the guests had their choice of two menus.
The host took the Maharajah's, 'which was good but rich,' and 'suffered,
as did all who ate his garlics and his grease.'
'On March 21st I breakfasted with Lord Granville to meet Lord Lyons,
there being also there Lord Ripon, Lord Acton (a man of great learning
and much charm), Lord Carlingford (Chichester Fortescue that had
been), Grant Duff, Sir Thomas Wade (the great Chinese scholar, and
afterwards Professor of Chinese at Cambridge), Lefevre, Meredith
Townsend of the _Spectator_, old Charles Howard, and "old White,"
roaring with that terrible roar which seems almost necessary to go
with his appearance. I have known two men, both in the Foreign Office
service, that looked like bears--Lord Tenterden, [Footnote: Permanent
Under-Secretary of State, afterwards Dilke's colleague at the Foreign
Office.] a little black graminivorous European bear, and "old White,"
a polar bear if ever I saw one, always ready to hug his enemies or his
friends, and always roaring so as to shake the foundations of your
house. "Lord Lyons," I noted in my diary, "does not make any mark in
private, but that may be because he does his duty and holds his
tongue. The diplomatists who talk delightfully, like Odo Russell, are
perhaps not the best models of diplomacy." But White afterwards made a
great Ambassador.
'On March 3rd Goschen dined with me, asked by me to meet "Brett,
Hartington's new secretary"' (now Lord Esher). 'Reginald Brett was,
and is, an extremely pleasant fellow, and he was the ablest secretary,
except Edward Hamilton, that I ever came across; but he was far from
being a model secretary, because ... he always behaved as if he held
delegated authority from Hartington to represent Hartington's
conscience when it would not otherwise have moved, and "Hartington's
opinion" when the chief had none.... But Brett in all he did had
public ends in view....
'On July 30th I dined at a dinner given by a lion-hunter who managed
to get together some remarkable and some pleasant people--Cardinal
Manning, Ruskin, Greenwood, and Borthwick. But whether it was the
influence of the host, or whether it was because Manning did not like
his company except me, and Ruskin did not like his company at all, the
dinner was a failure. No one talked but Ruskin, and he prosed, and his
prose of speech was not his prose of pen. Manning wished to see me
about some education matter, and I called on him on August 2nd, and
from that time forward saw a good deal of the Cardinal.'
Next came members of what was to be the Fourth Party, although then
'isolated individuals.' In February Sir Charles had a long talk with Sir
Henry Drummond Wolff, and 'found him holding very different views upon
foreign affairs from those which afterwards united him with his future
leader. In fact, he had nothing at this moment in common with Lord
Randolph except a personal detestation of Lord Derby.'
Sir John Gorst had acted with Sir Charles to preserve the rights of native
races, especially the Maories; and thus a friendship had grown up, in
which Dilke was anxious to include Mr. Chamberlain.
'On July 26th Chamberlain dined with me to meet Richard Power, the new
Irish Whip, and Gorst, the latter soon afterwards to join with
Randolph Churchill in the formation of the memorable Fourth Party, and
to be known as "Randolph's Attorney-General." Many years afterwards,
when Randolph Churchill had quarrelled with Gorst, and the Fourth
Party had finally gone to pieces, Lord Randolph said to me: "Gorst was
the best adviser I ever had. I often failed to follow his advice, and
have always regretted not following it." When the Fourth Party was
first formed, he advised that we should sit immediately behind the
leaders--I with my knees in Northcote's back. I overruled him, and we
sat below the gangway; but he was right. We should have done far more
execution if I had been nearer to "the Goat." Lord Randolph never
alluded to Sir Stafford Northcote except by this playful appellation,
based upon the long, straggling, yellow-white beard of the
Conservative Chief. When he was in good humour the Fourth Party leader
alluded to the Conservative leader as "the goat"; but when angry as
"the old goat," and often with many of those disrespectful adjectives
in which in private conversation he delighted.
'At dinner at the Harcourts' on August 10th, Arthur Balfour present:
... I am the greatest of admirers of his "charm."'
Ireland, which makes or breaks politicians, made Mr. A. J. Balfour. Here
is some detail of one of the men whom Ireland broke. Towards the end of
the Session came to Sir Charles a letter from the Duchess of Manchester at
Aix-les-Bains:
"Please back up Mr. Forster. I think he is quite right. Fancy, to be
chosen and proposed by a Committee, adopted by 300 idiots or geniuses,
and to have to submit, when you can stand on your own merits."
'A German Conservative Duchess was not likely to be able to understand
the Caucus. Forster was her friend, going and sitting with her almost
every day, and chuckling over her politics with his extraordinary
chuckle, and playing cards with her at night. To his card-playing,
indeed, he ultimately owed his life, for the Invincibles in Dublin
used to wait for him night after night outside his club to murder him
(as afterwards came out in the Phoenix Park trial), and, tired out
with waiting, at last fancy that he must have gone home. Forster was
at this moment at loggerheads with his Bradford constituents, and
hence the letter of the Duchess; but I did not "back up" Forster,
being myself an absolute believer in the wisdom of the Caucus system.
I had, indeed, invented a Caucus in Chelsea before the first
Birmingham Election Association was started.'
Sir Charles left for Paris, and--
'on September 6th I met Émile Ollivier, who said that there had never
been in France a personal power equal to that of Gambetta at this
moment; even that of Napoleon, when First Consul, was not so great.
Then the Bourbons were dimly seen behind. "Now there is nothing
behind; nothing except Clericalism, and Clericalism can be bought."
'Ollivier I found still full of burning hatred for the Empress, but he
had forgiven Rouher and the Emperor for making him the scapegoat. I
discussed with him once more the origin of the war of 1870, and he
maintained most stoutly that France had been driven into it by
Bismarck, and had only put herself in the wrong by herself declaring
war, and had done this because her army system gave her a fortnight's
start, the advantage of which was lost through the Emperor's
hesitations. He thinks that in that fortnight the German Army could
have been destroyed. It is on this point that he is wrong.'
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ZULU WAR AND THE GREEK COMMITTEE
The chronicle of the year 1879 begins with a visit paid by Sir Charles to
Paris on his way back from his house near Toulon, to which he had returned
after the brief Session of December, On February 2nd 'I breakfasted with
Gambetta. His furniture was being packed up for removal to the Palais
Bourbon, where he was about to take up residence as President of the
Chamber,' and 'saw him again late at night at the office of his paper'
(_La République Française_). 'Gambetta was then,' says a note added later,
'at the height of his power, and, in fact, Dictator. He was a patriot, but
too big for the Republic.'
'On my return to London I found that Chamberlain was most anxious to see
me,' and on February 5th Sir Charles went to Birmingham, to discuss their
joint line of action in the coming Session. During this visit 'Chamberlain
told me of Lord Beaconsfield's pleasant prophecies with regard to myself,
of which I heard from all sides just after this time.'
The "pleasant prophecies" declared that Sir Charles would certainly be
Prime Minister. Mr. Gladstone, it will be seen later, came to the
conclusion in 1882 that Dilke would be his natural successor in the House
of Commons; but this opinion was given only a little in advance of a
widely received public estimate, and it came after the test of office had
proved those qualities which Lord Beaconsfield discerned while the younger
statesman was still only a private member of the Opposition, not promoted
to the Front Bench.
But no one, even in 1879, doubted that Sir Charles was of Front Bench
rank; and close upon this came a decisive opportunity in Parliament.
Trouble, which threatened to become acute, between the Zulu power under
Cetewayo and his encroaching Boer neighbours had led the British
Government to carry out the annexation of the Transvaal during the course
of 1877. The Zulus were inclined to trust the British more than the Dutch;
but the advent of Sir Bartle Frere as High Commissioner put a new
complexion on matters. Frere had made up his mind that the Zulu power must
be broken, and a pretext was soon found in a demand for the abolition of
the Zulu military system. This ultimatum was presented on December 11th,
1878, by Frere, of his own motion, and without warning to the Home
Government. The inevitable refusal followed, leading to invasion of the
Zulu territory, with disastrous result. On January 23rd, 1879, Lord
Chelmsford's force was cut to pieces at Isandhlwana; and it seemed
possible that the whole colony of Natal might be overrun by Zulu _impis_.
This was the governing factor of the political situation at the moment
when Parliament reopened in 1879. Sir Charles had not previously taken a
prominent part in the discussion of South African affairs, and his
attitude is indicated only by isolated passages in the Memoir.
In 1875, when Lord Carnarvon sent J. A. Froude to 'stump South Africa' in
advocacy of a scheme of federation devised in Downing Street, Sir Charles
condemned a mission which seemed to him to cast a slur on the local
Colonial governments. In his opinion, this mission helped to create those
disturbances which rent South Africa in the succeeding years. On May 27th,
1877, he noted that the Blue Book on the Transvaal, then published, was
'an indictment of the Republic intended to justify the annexation,' but
that it did not 'show the existence of any overwhelming necessity for
annexation, or, indeed, any necessity at all.' Yet he gave only a half-
hearted support to Mr. Courtney's opposition to the South Africa Bill when
those matters were debated in the House, for, as he wrote in a letter to
the _Spectator_, he was opposed, "not to the policy of annexation, which,
as leading up to confederation," he supported, "but to the manner in which
that annexation had been carried out." It was said to have been done by
the desire of the Dutch themselves. If so, why were three battalions of
British troops still needed in the Transvaal? The Bill did not establish a
self-governing federation; it only provided that federation might be
established by an Order in Council. What guarantee had the Dutch, he
asked, that such an order would ever be issued?
Events justified his question, for the promise was never made good, even
when the Liberals themselves came into office, and Sir Charles resented
the iniquity of this dealing.
In February, 1878, he met Froude at dinner, and 'discussed with him the
South African question, on which we took widely different views, and of
which his were to be the source of much unhappiness to the Mother Country
and the Colonies.'
With the difficulty of the Transvaal the Zulu outbreak was indirectly
connected. Great Britain had been drawn into strife with the Zulu power,
which had for more than thirty years lived peaceably beside the Natal
Government, only because the annexation had made England responsible for
the peace of the disputed territories beyond the Vaal. There was also a
strong if indirect connecting-link in the personality of Sir Bartle Frere,
who, as High Commissioner in South Africa, had belittled the Boer claims,
and who now by a violent stretch of authority had precipitated war with
the Zulus.
After his discussion with Chamberlain at Birmingham, Sir Charles had
decided to indict the Government's South African policy on the first
possible occasion, and he communicated this intention to Lord Hartington.
Owing to the prolonged winter Session there was to be no Queen's Speech,
and consequently no Address, at the opening of Parliament, and Sir
Stafford Northcote was to begin the proceedings with a general statement.
Lord Hartington, after some hesitation as to the course to be pursued,
ultimately commissioned Sir Charles to reply at once on behalf of the
Opposition--a task which would naturally fall to the official leader of
the party. The opportunity thus given to him was the more notable because
the Liberal chiefs were divided as to the line which should be taken.
Harcourt, Sir Charles records, 'tried to prevent me from bringing forward
any motion as to the Zulu War,' but Chamberlain was strong in the opposite
sense. "We want to din into the constituencies," he wrote, "that the
Government policy is one of _continual_, petty, fruitless, unnecessary,
and inglorious squabbles--all due to their bullying, nagging ways." This
was consonant with the Birmingham leader's fierce opposition to Jingoism;
and for once he shared the view of his titular leader.
'Hartington fell in with the view taken by Chamberlain, and my notice
to call attention to the South African papers and the causes of the
war was given with his consent. The bad news from the Cape '--news of
Isandhlwana--' which came on February 11th, had changed his former
view. My speech on Northcote's motion was on the 13th February.'
He then brought forward on behalf of the Liberal party a resolution
condemning the Government's policy in South Africa, and more especially
the conduct of Sir Bartle Frere. The date for this main attack was not
fixed till after considerable delay, and before it arrived the words of
the motion which stood in Sir Charles's name were annexed bodily, and put
down in the name of Lord Lansdowne, to be moved in the Lords on an earlier
day. Lord Lansdowne sat on the Liberal Front Bench in the Upper House
(where he took an active part in criticism of Conservative policy), and
Sir Charles called this proceeding "taking the bread out of a private
member's mouth," despite the implied compliment to his tact in drafting
the Resolution. Sunday, the 23rd March, he spent at Mentmore, Lord
Rosebery's house, where Lord and Lady Granville were staying, and he
notes:
'I could not but think (although Lord Granville was very civil and
told me that he had advised the King of the Belgians to go to the
House of Commons on the following Thursday to hear my speech) that if
Lord Granville had thought that my speech was going to be a success,
he would not have stolen my motion for Lord Lansdowne to bring it on
first in the House of Lords. I could not see the wisdom of the
tactics, because it was already certain we should have a better
division in the Commons, proportionately speaking, than in the Lords.
At Devonshire House, on the previous Wednesday, Lord Lansdowne came up
to me in the entrance hall, where it is rather dark, and began talking
to me, and as I did not see who it was, he introduced himself--
"Lansdowne the pirate," of course in allusion to the robbery of my
words.'
The words were--
"That this House, while willing to support Her Majesty's Government in
all necessary measures for defending the possessions of Her Majesty in
South Africa, regrets that the ultimatum which was calculated to
produce immediate war should have been presented to the Zulu king
without authority from the responsible advisers of the Crown, and that
an offensive war should have been commenced without imperative or
pressing necessity or adequate preparation; and this House further
regrets that after the censure passed, upon the High Commissioner by
Her Majesty's Government in the despatch of the 19th day of March,
1879, the conduct of affairs in South Africa should be retained in his
hands."
'These words did not please all men. Fawcett wrote me two strong
letters to protest against them. Lord Granville also discussed them at
some length with me in writing. Fawcett was largely moved by
detestation of Sir Bartle Frere, and, while my chief object was to
stop the war, his object was to force Frere to resign. The feeling
against the proconsul was strong among the Liberals.
'On the 25th the debate in the Lords took place. The House was
thronged, the galleries being filled with ladies, and (there being a
Court mourning) all in black--save one, Lady ----. She was in scarlet
from top to toe, or more than toe, for she displayed a pair of long
scarlet stockings to a startled House, and each member as he came in
said, "Good gracious me, who's that?" so that Lansdowne could hardly
begin for the buzz. His speech was dull, and the result was favourable
to the Government. Two days later I brought forward my motion in the
Commons, and had a great personal success, receiving the
congratulations of all the leading men of both parties. I spoke for
two hours and a half, and kept the House full, without ever for an
instant being in doubt as to the complete success of the speech;
greatly cheered by my own side, without being once questioned or
interrupted by the other. But the speech was far from being my best
speech, although it was by far my greatest success. It was an easy
speech to make--a mere Blue-Book speech. The case from the papers was
overwhelming. All that had to be done was to state it in a clear way,
and I should think that more than half the speech consisted of mere
reading of extracts, which, however, I read in such a way as to
incorporate them in the body of the speech. The opening and the
conclusion, both of which were effective, were not my own; for they
were suggested to me, only I think on the same day, by William
Rathbone, who sometimes thought of a good way of putting things. While
I was gratified by the success of the speech, I could not help feeling
how completely these things are a matter of opportunity, inasmuch as I
had made dozens of better speeches in the House, of which some had
been wholly unsuccessful.'
Nothing was wanting to the completeness of the after-effects of his House
of Commons triumph.
'The general feeling seemed to be, as Lord Reay put it in his letter
of congratulation, that my speech on South African affairs was "the
Cape of Good Hope of the Liberal party."' [Footnote: Lord Reay (Baron
Mackay of Ophemert), a Hollander by birth, then recently naturalized,
spoke with special authority when South Africa was in question. The
Barony was originally Scotch, and created in 1628. A peerage of the
United Kingdom was conferred on Lord Reay (the eleventh Baron) in
1881.]
By this speech his contemporaries remember Sir Charles as a speaker. Sir
George Trevelyan writes:
"His great speech on South Africa was a wonderful exposition, lucid,
convincing, detailed, without being heavy. I can well recall how old
members admired the manner in which he ticked off topic after topic,
with its due amount of illustration from the Blue-Books."
A letter to Mrs. Pattison, written, as he says in it, "under the violent
excitement of a splendid personal success," contains his own estimate. The
congratulations of leading men of all parties were couched, he said, "in
such a way as made me realize how badly I had always spoken before." And
in his Memoir he adds the modest comment that 'praise was forthcoming in
abundance. The only praise, however, that I can accept as fairly belonging
to this speech, is praise for a past of work which had led up to it.'
The result, especially with an indolent man like Lord Hartington as
leader, was that the conduct of the Opposition's case was increasingly
left to Sir Charles Dilke. _Truth_ put the popular view amusingly enough
in Hiawathan verse:
"Never absent, always ready
To take up the burning question
Of the hour and make a motion:
Be it Cyprus, be it Zulu,
He can speak for hours about it
From his place below the gangway.
No Blue Book avails to fright him:
He's the stomach of an ostrich
For the hardest facts and figures,
And assimilates despatches
In the most surprising fashion."
A serious tribute to his success follows:
'I was asked by Sir Thomas Bazley, who was eighty-two years of age, to
stand for Manchester in his place, with a promise from Manchester that
my expenses would be paid. But I was under a volunteered pledge not to
leave Chelsea until beaten, which I thought I should be "this time."'
Sir Charles records as one feature of the debate the sudden and painful
failure of Mr. Lowe's hitherto great debating powers:
'On the second night of the debate I dined with Sir Charles Forster'
(member for Walsall, and well known as a dinner-giver to the chiefs of
the Liberal party) 'to meet Lord Hartington, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr.
Bright. Almost the sole topic of conversation was the breakdown in the
debate of Lowe, who had apparently been trusting as usual to his
hitherto marvellous memory, when this had failed him, and he stopped
short' (in the middle of a sentence), 'and failed ever, henceforward,
to regain his power.'
The future of Greece engaged Sir Charles's attention far more constantly
than this South African embroilment. Cyprus was a branch of the Greek
question, and (in a speech of March 20th, 1879) he had attacked Wolseley's
administration of the island. The General replied in a Blue Book, which
was debated on June 20th, 1879:
'The Cypriotes were so excited that they were sending me not only
every fact, but every story, and as it was difficult to sift them in
London, I dare say some of the charges were untrue and some were
certainly trivial.'
One telegram had complained bitterly of the injustice done to two priests
whose beards were cut off in a British gaol, although nothing was said as
to the justice of their imprisonment. But "the existence of forced labour
under our rule had certainly been admitted," said Sir Charles in his
speeches on the question, and on this and on the law which the Government
of Cyprus had passed, taking to itself powers of arbitrary exile without
trial, he rested a case in which he persevered throughout the Session,
debating Cyprus 'at such length, I fear, as to bore the House.' He relates
that he once began a speech on Cyprus before a party of members set out
for the Crystal Palace to dine, and was still delivering the same speech
when they came back. Later, when in office, he was able to make the
administrative changes he desired for the benefit of the island.
One result of Sir Charles's interest in the affairs of Cyprus was to bring
down upon him 'an enormous correspondence in modern Greek, to read which I
had to engage the services of a translator.'
'The Cypriote Bishops are the most long-winded people with whom I ever
had to do, and their communications, although flattering, were
somewhat burdensome. I was also receiving many letters in modern Greek
from Athens and various centres of Greek activity with regard to the
proceedings of the Greek Committee, and I received addresses from
Epirus and from the other Turkish provinces and islands inhabited by
Greeks in which there was any thought of cession. I was appointed
Honorary President of the "Zenon," whatever that might be, and
received similar appointments from various Greek societies. I am,
indeed, also a "citizen of Athens."'
He received the freedom of that city on July 12th, 1879; the Grand Cross
of the Saviour was also offered, but declined.
'On Sunday, March 30th, Hartington sent to me to exchange notes upon
the position of the Greek question, and his attitude seemed to me
that, as he did not understand anything about it, he hoped I was being
careful and not doing anything very wrong. At all events, he left me
to myself, and I delivered my soul in the House.'
This he did on April 17th, putting forward a complaint that, although
Greece looked to Great Britain's representatives at the Congress of Berlin
for a traditional championship of the Hellenic claims, Lord Beaconsfield
and Lord Salisbury had allowed the proposal for an extension of Greek
territory to come from French diplomatists; and, further, that the
recommendation to this effect inserted in the Treaty of Berlin had been
evaded by Turkey. He described in his speech the delays and the
unsatisfactory proposals which had been put forward by Turkey in
conference with Greek delegates, and demanded European pressure to carry
out the declared intentions of Europe. A special obligation of honour
rested upon England, so he held, because England had induced Greece to
desist from war when Turkey was at grips with Russia, and when the Greeks,
by attacking, might easily have secured possession of the territory they
desired.
These representations were put forward a month later as the general appeal
of the Greek Committee, which had existed as a secret body for a year, but
was formally and publicly organized on April 25th, 1879. Preparations were
begun for a public meeting, and after several conferences with Lord
Lansdowne
'I invited the speakers and drew up an appeal to the public, and acted
as Chairman of the Executive Committee, with Rosebery for President
and Lefevre for Treasurer. The meeting was held at Willis's Rooms on
May 17th, 1879, and was attended by men of all shades of opinion--the
Duke of Westminster, Sir Robert Peel, an independent Conservative, and
several other Conservatives, as well as the mass of the Liberals. I
presided, and Lansdowne moved the first resolution.'
Dilke said afterwards that this meeting had been 'sufficiently interesting
to keep Harcourt and a Duke standing for three hours--putting Harcourt
first because he was the more august.'
Immediately afterwards he went to Liverpool, as the guest of the Liverpool
Reform Club, to speak specially upon the Greek question.
'My speech was dull; the best thing said in the course of the evening
was said by a man who had been _Daily News_ correspondent in Crete--
"They talk of Europe! What is Europe? Europe is a number of wicked old
gentlemen with decorations, assembled in a room."
'During my stay in the neighbourhood of Liverpool I was the guest at
Knowsley of Lord and Lady Derby, who were trying by all means in their
power to emphasize the fact that they were quite ready to go over to
the Liberal side' (as they did within the year). 'I tried hard to get
Rosebery to make some speeches in the country upon the Greek question,
but this attempt was a failure. He was greatly pressed to go to
Manchester in the same way in which I had gone to Liverpool, but after
taking a long time to think of the thing, he distinctly refused. I
never quite knew why; but caution was always the predominant element
in his nature, though he was occasionally rash just when he should
have been cautious.'
In June Sir Charles became possessed of 'a curious document which he
translated and made public.' According to the story told him, the letter
had been in the mailbags aboard a steamer which was wrecked, and it had
been retrieved along with the rest from the bottom of the sea. But
'it was probably bought for the Greeks by their spy Fitzgerald, the
"journalist" who afterwards disappeared--finally--about 1894. He had,
however, often disappeared for some years. The letter was stamped with
an Italian stamp for foreign post, addressed to Mouktar Pasha,
commanding in chief the Turkish army in Epirus; and, although the
envelope was plain and not calculated to attract attention, the letter
was on Italian Foreign Office paper, and dated from the Foreign Office
at Rome on April 6th. It was from Corte, an Italian Consul-General who
had been employed in Albania and afterwards in the Italian Foreign
Office, and pointed to Italian intrigue in Albania to make the
Italians rather than the Greeks the successors of the Turks in Albania
and Epirus. Seven years later I saw a good deal of Mouktar Pasha at
Constantinople, but I did not mention this letter either to him or to
the Sultan. It referred to Mouktar's idea of "colonization in Epirus,"
and, from the context, and from what we know of previous proceedings,
it would seem that this colonization of Epirus was to have been a
colonization by Italian peasants.'
This letter came to Sir Charles as President of the Greek Committee, and
here may be added notice of the birth of an enterprise kindred in spirit
to the political association of those who loved Greece:
'On Monday, June 16th, I took part in the meeting at which the
Hellenic Society was founded, it having grown out of a conference held
at Cambridge between Mr. Newton of the British Museum (afterwards Sir
Charles Newton), Professor Colvin, and me. The first resolution was
moved by Lord Morley (Earl Morley, afterwards Chairman of Committees
of the House of Lords), and seconded by Professor Sayce; the second by
me, and seconded by the Dean of St. Paul's; the third by Sir John
Lubbock, and seconded by Professor Jebb; and the fourth by Professor
Colvin, and seconded by Gennadius.'
Two other questions of abiding interest were touched on by Sir Charles
this year. That of Upper Houses is mentioned in connection with interviews
with Sir Graham Berry, one of his Colonial acquaintances.
'Mr. (afterwards Sir) Graham Berry, Prime Minister, or, as they call
it in the Colonies, "Premier" of Victoria; a rough, able man, son of a
Chelsea tradesman.... We arranged a reception, which was given to
Berry by the parish of Chelsea at the Chelsea Vestry Hall, myself in
the chair, when we presented him with an address expressing the hope
that the Victoria Lower House might prevail in its struggle against
the Upper. Professor Pearson, formerly of Oxford--a Free Trader,
though Mr. Berry was a Protectionist--was with him, and they were over
to try to persuade the Colonial Office to support them against the
Upper House.'
'Sir Graham Berry was afterwards the Agent-General of his Colony, but
still possessed the confidence of the Liberal party in Victoria in a
higher degree than any other man, and he afterwards returned to local
politics and became Speaker. Pearson wrote a great book before he
died.'
Sir Graham Berry wrote later in this year 'for opinions upon a Bill of
reform of the Upper House in his Parliament,' to which Sir Charles replied
'that I disliked Upper Houses so much as not to be in favour of reforming
them.'
This attitude he always maintained. His views upon the whole question of
representation were this year put into a pamphlet which
'advocated, in addition to the reforms upon which Liberals were
agreed, the system of double elections, as on the Continent--that is
to say, a second poll to be held when at the first the person at the
head of the poll did not obtain a clear majority of votes.'
The other question takes the first place in Sir Charles's note of his
conversations with Chamberlain at the beginning of the Session. This
touched on economic difficulties, and runs thus:
"That it would be wise to have a motion on the condition of the realm:
probably by moving for a Committee to inquire into the cause of the
present distress, and that Mundella would be the best person to move,
especially if the Front Bench would support him, as the distress is
most severe in Sheffield."
Some years, however, elapsed before Sir Charles was able to deal with such
questions authoritatively as President of the Local Government Board.
We can trace at this time the beginning of those close relations which
Dilke and Chamberlain cultivated (even after they had joined Mr.
Gladstone's Government) with the new power that was growing up in
Parliament. On February 15th, 'we were anxious that the Irish should vote
with us about the Zulu War, the more so because her leaders were
hesitating upon the subject,' and Sir Charles invited Mr. Parnell to meet
Mr. Chamberlain at dinner; but they 'were able to make but little of him.'
Further meetings took place, from which the only practical result was a
promise of Parnell's support in their opposition to the County Boards
Bill, which the Conservative Government were putting forward as their main
measure. The ground of opposition was that 'it was better to leave the
present system alone than to create new Boards only half elective.'
The Memoir has a note respecting one of these meetings with the Irish
leader at which Parnell was accompanied by Major Nolan, then member for
County Galway:
'Nolan showed opportunist Nationalism; Parnell irreconcilable
Nationalism. The latter let out, in spite of his great caution, that
if we chose to go to Ireland on Mill's land programme, we could
destroy his position and the Home Rule movement. Nolan said that a
party which would give security of tenure to the small tenants could
afford to leave the large ones out. (To touch the large tenancies in
that sense would be virtually to charge the possession of property in
Ireland with partial compensation.)'
At this moment, the beginning of 1879, the purely Nationalist agitation
for self-government had not yet been joined to the demand for an improved
and freer status for the Irish tenant. This was mainly the work of Davitt,
and Davitt had scarcely yet been heard of by the wider public.