GAMBETTA, DISRAELI, ROYAL PERSONAGES, MORIER
I.
The New Year of 1881 had opened for Sir Charles with Gambetta's greetings:
"Chambre des Députés.
"CHER AMI,"
"Je vous envoie mes voeux les plus ardents pour tous les succès que
vous pouvez désirer dans cette année qui s'ouvre, et pour la
réalisation desquels j'ai confiance que votre bon génie continuera à
vous sourire.
"Quand vous passerez a Paris le 4 ou autre jour venez me voir. Je ne
bouge d'ici jusqu'au 20.
"Je vous embrasse et vous aime,
"Paris, 1 _Janvier_, 1881."
"L. GAMBETTA.
When they met, the Ferry Ministry was in office. Sir Charles met 'General
Farre, the Minister of War, who has left no name except for having
abolished drums, which were shortly afterwards reintroduced, and who, so
far as I could see, did not deserve to leave one,' and also Ranc, one of
Gambetta's satellites, who 'was entertaining with a description of the
various anarchical parties in Paris then engaged in sitting "on each
other's ruins."' A story which Sir Charles tells of his crossing to Paris
(in the end of August, 1881) illustrates the vehemence of prejudice
against Gambetta:
'I had made the journey alone in a compartment with the young Comte de
FitzJames, who was a Lieutenant in the army. He did not know me, and
assured me that, it being Gambetta's custom while President of the
Chamber to ask to breakfast each day the officer of the guard, if he
ever happened to be on duty at the Palais Bourbon, and, consequently,
were asked, and had to go, he should utter not one word.'
Gambetta, who heard the story, was greatly amused by it.
During part of September and part of October, 1881, the friends did not
meet, because Gambetta was away from Paris. 'It was rumoured he had been
to see Bismarck, which was untrue,' says Dilke. "But," he adds in a letter
to Lord Granville on October 24th, "Gambetta visited Memel and Kiel, and
saw the German fleet, of which he does not think much."
The Prince and Princess of Wales were in Paris when Sir Charles returned
there to resume commercial negotiations. On October 24th he breakfasted
with them at their hotel, and met them again on the 28th, when they
lunched with the Austrian Ambassador:
'Beust is a man that I never saw without marvelling how he should have
played so great a part in the affairs of Europe. He always reminded me
of Lord Granville with the brains left out. The same little jokes,
though less good, the same smile, the same courteous manner; but an
affectation and a real stupidity which were all his own.'
'I went in the afternoon with the Prince and Princess of Wales to see
Munkacsy's "Christ," an enormously overrated picture, in which the
chief figure was that of an Austrian village idiot, not a Christ, but
the half-revolutionist, half-idiot that Christ was to the Jews who
crucified Him, and who formed the crowd in the picture. If that was
what the man wanted to paint, he had succeeded, but that probably was
not what he wanted.'
'The Prince was most anxious to meet Gambetta again; Gambetta not at
all anxious to meet him. But the Prince having distinctly asked me to
ask him to breakfast, and to ask Gambetta to meet him, the latter was
obliged to come. The Prince, however, having asked me to invite
Galliffet as one of the guests, Gambetta, who liked Galliffet
personally, but was afraid of being attacked in the Press, absolutely
refused to come, so Galliffet had to be knocked off the list again.
Galliffet has misrepresented this in his Memoirs.'
This breakfast took place on Sunday, October 30th, and made much talk,
though the Prince was officially travelling as a private gentleman, an
incognito which the waiters had difficulty in remembering. Mr. Austin Lee
had been invited to take the place of General Galliffet in the party of
six, which was completed by Mr. Knollys and Colonel Stanley Clarke. The
place was known as the Moulin Rouge Restaurant, soon to disappear in the
rebuilding of the Avenue d'Antin. It is said to have been kept open for
some days beyond the date originally fixed, to furnish a _déjeûner_ worthy
of these guests. In spite of the privacy observed, Rumour was busy, and
_Punch_ of November 12th appeared with an amusing "Monologue du Garçon,"
giving at great length the supposed conversation and the menu of the
breakfast.
'Gambetta said a great many good things. He called Blowitz a "crapaud
de Bohème," which Escott afterwards quoted from me in the _World_, I
think. He said, apropos of the then French Government: "To change a
policy you must have a policy, just as to change a shirt you must have
a shirt." Gambetta told me that he wished to make Tissot Foreign
Minister, and that as he intended to take Chanzy from St. Petersburg,
he should have three Ambassadors to find. Gambetta was satirical about
Ireland. He said, referring to Mr. Gladstone's speech: "Everything is
going on admirably in Ireland, it seems. You have thirty thousand
lawsuits under your new Land Act. Excellent!"'
The Prince returned to London next day, and sent to Sir Charles through
Mr. Knollys an expression of thanks and a request that Gambetta would send
him a signed photograph. The request was duly transmitted, and Gambetta
replied:
"CHER AMI,"
"Pensez-vous que ceci soit acceptable? Si oui, pas de réponse; si non,
dites-moi s'il suffit d'une simple signature comme autographe.
"À vous,
"L. GAMBETTA."
The inscription was: "Au plus aimable des princes--un ami de
l'Angleterre."
Four months later the Prince of Wales wrote to Dilke expressing his
personal regrets for Gambetta's fall from power, and Gambetta's letter in
reply was sent to Sir Charles for transmission on March 6th, 1882.
The Ferry Ministry fell on November 10th, 1881, and the thought of
Gambetta in power acted, said Bismarck, on the nerves of Europe "like a
drum in a sick man's room."
On November 1st
'I heard from Lord Lyons, and gathered from confidential telegrams,
that the idea of disarmament was in the air again in Europe. This, of
course, really meant a disarmament to be imposed by the Empires and
Italy upon France. But it was stopped again, as it had often been
stopped before, by Russia.
'I had told Lord Granville that I thought Gambetta would offer the
Embassy in London to Ferry, and that I did not know if the Queen would
like his marriage being only a civil one, and that the Roman Catholics
in England would certainly make it disagreeable for him. Lord
Granville wrote on this: "I am glad to be rid of Challemel-Lacour. He
must be a clumsy fellow to have got on such bad terms with both Saint-
Hilaire and Gambetta." In the following week, however, Gambetta made
up his mind that J. Casimir-Périer should become his Ambassador in
London. But Gambetta fell before he had been able to give him the
place.
'On the night before I left I dined with Pouyer-Quertier, who had been
Finance Minister of France under Thiers at the time of the Frankfort
Treaty. He told me a wonderful story about how, when the negotiations
had been all but broken off, he went to bed in despair. But in the
morning before light there was a knock at his door. He got up in his
nightshirt, and there was Bismarck in full uniform, who made him get
back into bed, saying he would catch cold. Then, drawing a chair to
the bedside, Bismarck spread out the treaty on the night-table and
wrangled on, till after a while he said that it was dry work, and got
up and rang and asked for beer. After the beer had been brought by a
sleepy waiter, he rang again and asked for kirsch, and poured a
quantity of the liqueur into the beer. Then he made the poker red-hot
in the fire which he had relighted, stirred up the mixture, and
invited Pouyer-Quertier to drink. Pouyer-Quertier said: "I drank it
thinking of my country, and Bismarck clapped me on the back, and said
that I was such a good fellow that the evacuation should take place at
once, and this is how the final article was signed; it was signed on
the table at my bedside." I did not believe the story, but when I
asked Bismarck years later he said that it was true.'
Returning to London on November 5th
'I left Paris at a moment of great excitement over the financial
situation, there having been a kind of Roman Catholic financial union
which had beaten a Jewish ring, and which afterwards itself collapsed.
It was said that James de Rothschild had lost his money in this
business; but his brother-in-law told me that ... it was not true that
he had lost a sixpence.'
On November 19th Sir Charles left London, and saw Rouvier and Gambetta
late that evening in Paris. 'The Gambetta Ministry had been formed, and it
was thought important that I should see Rouvier at once.' Next day, Sunday
the 20th, he 'breakfasted with Gambetta, meeting Spuller and General
Billot.' To the latter he had been introduced by Gambetta in January,
1880, when Billot was 'commanding the Marseille Corps d'Armée: an
intriguer who, in the event of war occurring between 1887 and 1890, would
have been second-in-command of the armies of France.' [Footnote: "A letter
to a friend of this date shows that Sir Charles did not think Gambetta's
Ministry was likely to be in a strong position when it came into power:
"FOREIGN OFFICE,
"PARIS,
"21st November, 1881.
"Gambetta is, according to the papers, at war with the Senate and with
the Church. I think that he is at war with the Senate, and that this
is foolish of him. I don't think he is at war with the Church. It is
the Senate, more than the Church, which is offended by the appointment
of a rampant atheist and vivisector as Minister of Religion. The
Church has probably less to fear from Bert than from less known men.
Gambetta is to see the Nuncio to-day, and I don't think that the
Nuncio, who has long been his warm personal friend, is likely to
express much alarm.
"The Senate is more serious. The monstrous folly of Bert's
appointment, the dismissal of the senator de Normandie, governor of
the Bank, and the putting only one senator into the Cabinet, have
irritated it beyond all bearing. Gambetta may gain twenty seats in
January, but even supposing that he is supposed to have a majority in
the Senate, it is a majority in which you have to count semi-
Conservative rivals such as Leon Say and de Freycinet, foes like
Challemel-Lacour, and men of the extreme Left like Victor Hugo, who
are more likely to follow Clémenceau than Gambetta. And yet he needs
the Senate to keep the other House in order by the threat of a
dissolution, which requires the consent of the Senate."]
Gambetta had taken the Foreign Office himself:
'He seemed to me solid, strong, and prudent. Indeed, I never saw him
appear to so much advantage. We walked from his "den" to the dining-
room, where the guests were waiting for breakfast, through his
bedroom. A fine Louis XVI. bed from the _garde-meuble_ was in the
alcove. I pointed, and asked: "Le lit de Talleyrand?" "Le lit de
Dagobert!" At our meeting on the 20th we discussed fully the Danube
question, and also that of Newfoundland, in which I always took a deep
interest, but with regard to which I was far from agreement with the
French. [Footnote: The Danube question was left unsettled by the
Treaty of Berlin. The question of the navigation and outlets gave rise
to constant trouble, owing to the claims of Russia and Austria-
Hungary. After prolonged negotiations the Conference of 1883 arrived
at a compromise. See _Life of Granville._ vol. ii., chap, vii., Lord
Granville's despatch, March 14th, Turkey, No. 3, 1883.]
'During the whole of this visit to Paris I deeply admired Gambetta,
with whom I spent almost the whole of my three days. He showed to
great advantage, sobered by power, rapid in his acquisition and
mastery of new subjects. He had grasped the Danube difficulties and
those of Newfoundland in a moment. How different from those about him,
of whom Spuller, of all men in the world, was one day to be his
successor--a heavy fellow, who, as long as Gambetta lived, used only
to open his mouth for the purpose of "thee-and-thouing" Gambetta in
asking for the salt, just to show that he dared to "thee" and "thou"
him.
'On December 28th I breakfasted with Gambetta, when he told me that he
would himself have given Jules Simon any Embassy or any place in his
Government, for he was fit for any ("the cleverest man in France"),
had he not known that Simon was too bitter, and would think that he
was being bought, and would refuse. Freycinet was at Gambetta's, and
also Spuller, Rouvier, Ranc, Pallain, Reinach, and Gerard. They were
much excited as to the selection by Gambetta of Weiss of the _Figaro_
as Secretary in the Foreign Office' (in place of Baron de Courcel),
'as Weiss was said to have made the anti-Republican Government of May
16th; but Gambetta merely answered that he could not see why he should
not be allowed to employ as a despatch writer "the first pen of
France." The same difficulty had arisen about the army, Gambetta
wishing to make Miribel Chief of the Staff, although he was a
reactionary. This appointment was afterwards made by Freycinet in
1890, amid public applause, although the suggestion had been one of
the causes of Gambetta's overthrow....
'Gambetta says that the American despatches to us about Panama raise a
monstrous pretension--that they might as well claim the Straits of
Magellan and Cape Horn'. [Footnote: The Americans had announced that
in the event of the completion of the Canal they intended to keep it
in their own hands.]
On December 29th Sir Charles dined with Lord Lyons to meet Gambetta and
some of the new Ministers:
'On this evening I heard Gambetta for the first time say "If I can,"
for he was beginning to feel how sharply limited by the hostility of
the Chamber was his power. He was speaking of revision of the
constitution for the purpose of the adoption of _scrutin de liste_.'
[Footnote: Sir Henry Brackenbury, in _Some Memories of My Spare Time_,
observes that in 1881 he dined at the Embassy, when "Gambetta and M.
Spullor, his _fidus Achates_, were also present, as well as Sir
Charles Dilke." He thought Dilke "by far the best talker of the
party."]
On January 2nd, 1882, he again breakfasted with Gambetta.
'Gambetta told me that the Chamber would never forgive him for having
suggested _scrutin de liste_, and hated him. At the same time he
informed me of his intention of again proposing it, although he
expected to be beaten, and seemed to have made up his mind to go out.'
Writing to Grant Duff of this coming conflict, Dilke said:
"Gambetta means to put _scrutin de liste_ into the constitution at the
revision--_if he can_. That will be a warm day! I never heard him say
'If I can' before. I wonder if his great exemplar ever said 'If I
can'? Sala and Rosebery, who are the two best Napoleonists I know, can
tell us."
II.
Sir Charles, as representing the Foreign Office in the House of Commons,
was naturally in close touch with Mr. Gladstone; in addition, the
commercial negotiations necessitated frequent interviews. The admiration
which Sir Charles felt for his chief was, however, frequently crossed by
differences of opinion, especially as to his method of approaching foreign
affairs.
'Writing to express his concurrence in my action with regard to the
commercial negotiations, Mr. Gladstone went on to say: "I am glad
Gambetta says that he is in the same boat as us as to Panama. Our
safety there will be in acting as charged with the interests of the
world minus America." This was a curious example of the world of
illusions in which Mr. Gladstone lives. The Americans had informed us
that they did not intend to be any longer bound by the Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty, and that in the event of the completion of the Panama Canal
they intended virtually to keep it in their own hands. Mr. Gladstone
called in France in joint protest with us against this view, although
he might have foreseen the utter impossibility in the long-run of
resisting American pretensions on such a point, and although he
himself would have been the first, when the Americans threatened war
(as they would have done later on), to yield to threats that which he
would not yield to argument. It amused Harcourt, however, to concoct
with the Chancellor and the Foreign Office portentous despatches to
Mr. Blaine, in which we lectured the Americans on the permanency of
their obligations. How childish it all was! Moreover, the Monroe
doctrine suits our interests.'
Sir Charles's letters to Mr. Gladstone, even when short and business-like,
are marked by a deference which he used to no one else; and the deference
at times has the accent of affection. Sir Charles always enjoyed Mr.
Gladstone's old-world courtesy, and especially his playfulness.
"It would be impossible," he said, "to give a true account of Mr.
Gladstone without recalling the manner in which, however absorbed he
might be in his subject, he would break off to discuss some amusing
triviality. When we were talking once of the real and inner views of
French statesmen with regard to our occupation of Egypt, some chance
expression suddenly diverted Mr. Gladstone's mind to the subject of
rowing; and he began recalling in the most amusing way incidents of
his own Eton days of some sixty-eight or sixty-nine years previously,
shivering at the thought of his sculling in cold weather against
strong stretches of the stream near Monkey Island."
But the elder statesman who fascinated Sir Charles's imagination was the
great Tory chief; and in 1881 came at last the realization of a wish long
entertained by him for a meeting with Lord Beaconsfield. More than once he
had been balked of the opportunity by his punctilio of holding rigidly to
even the most ordinary social engagements. After one of these
disappointments he wrote:
'I should like to talk to the most romantic character of our time, but
I fear it is only vulgar curiosity, for I really know a great deal
more already about him than I could find out in conversation.'
The curiosity had been sharpened by the publication of _Endymion_, for Sir
Charles thought that in devising the story of Endymion Ferrars Lord
Beaconsfield had taken a general suggestion from the career of the Radical
who, like Endymion, had made his debut as Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs; and the novelist admitted the debt.
The meeting took place on Sunday, January 30th, at Lady Lonsdale's house.
'Wolff, Chaplin and Lady Florence, Hartington, the Duchess of
Manchester, Lord and Lady Hamilton, and Captain and Lady Rosamond
Fellowes (Randolph Churchill's sister) were there. Arthur Balfour and
the Randolph Churchills came in after dinner. Lord Beaconsfield told
me that he had been very anxious to meet me, since he had taken the
liberty of writing about me without my leave in his novel _Endymion_,
and that he thought we wore never destined to meet, for he had twice
asked Alfred de Rothschild to invite me, and that I had not "been" on
those two or on a third occasion which he had made. He was, as usual,
over-complimentary and over-anxious to captivate, but was certainly
most pleasant. He praised my grandfather, a sure way to my heart, and
said that my grandfather and his own father were "the last two men in
England who had a thorough knowledge of English letters." The talk at
dinner was dull, in spite of Wolff's attempts to enliven it, but
Arthur Balfour and the Randolph Churchills brightened it afterwards,
and Dizzy said a good many rather good things--as, for example, that
he should like to get married again for the purpose of comparing the
presents that he would get from his friends with the beggarly ones
that he had got when he had married. Also that he "objects to the
rigid bounds of honeymoons as an arbitrary attempt to limit
illimitable happiness." I thought him very polite and pretty in all
his ways and in all he said.'
On Sunday evening, February 20th, Sir Charles dined with Mr. Alfred de
Rothschild to meet the Prince of Wales;
'but was more pleased with again meeting Lord Beaconsfield.'...
'After dinner I was next him. When he was offered a cigar, he said:
"You English once had a great man who discovered tobacco, on which you
English now live, and potatoes, on which your Irish live, and you cut
off his head." This foreign point of view of Sir Walter Raleigh was
extremely comical, I think.'
Finally there is this entry:
'Having made no note in my diary, I cannot tell if it was on Sunday,
April 3rd, or on Sunday, March 27th, that Lord Barrington met Edmond
Fitzmaurice and me in Curzon Street, where Lord Beaconsfield's house
was, and said: "Come in and see him; he's ill, but would like to see
you." He was on a couch in the back drawing-room, in which he died, I
think, on April 19th. There was a bronchitis kettle on the hob, and
his breathing was difficult, but he was still the old Disraeli, and,
though I think that he knew that he was dying, yet his pleasant
spitefulness about "Mr. G." was not abated. He meant to die game.'
Lord Beaconsfield made no secret of his liking for Sir Charles, but is
said to have doubted the permanency of his Radicalism. "The sort of man
who will die a Conservative peer," is said to have been his commentary
after their first meeting, echoing an idea then widespread in the
fashionable world, that of the two men so often compared, Sir Charles
would gravitate towards the opinions of the _Times_, leaving his colleague
'to the unassisted championship of democratic rights.'
To the greatest of all European statesmen Dilke did not at this time
become known; but Bismarck watched his career, and in the early part of
this year, after the Prince of Wales's visit to Berlin,
'On March 16th Arthur Ellis, who had been with the Prince at Berlin,
came to me from the Prince to say that the Prince had had much talk
with Lord Ampthill (Odo Russell) about me. Our Ambassador was most
anxious that I should visit Berlin, and thought that I could do much
then with Bismarck, and usefully remove prejudices about myself at the
Court. Ellis was the bearer of an invitation from the Embassy for me
to stay there, and of a message that Bismarck much wished to make my
acquaintance.'
There was no doubt as to the attractiveness of the invitation, but it was
at once ruled out on public grounds.
'The visit, however, would give rise to much speculation in the Press,
and would also make the Queen angry and Mr. Gladstone most uneasy.
"But," I added in my diary, "if we want to stop the French from going
to Tunis, there is a safe and easy way to do it--_i.e.,_ let me go to
Berlin for one day and see Bismarck and talk about the weather, and
then to Rome for one hour and see, no one, merely to let the fact get
into the newspapers."'
In December
'Dufferin wrote to me from Paris: "The Sultan is besotted with the
notion of a German alliance against France, and of obtaining the
assistance of Germany in freeing himself from foreign control in
Asia."'
On New Year's Day, 1882, Sir Charles, while accompanying Lord Lyons on his
round of official New Year visits, saw a despatch from Lord Odo Russell.
[Footnote: Ambassador at Berlin.] In it Bismarck described his attitude
towards the Turks, who had "asked him for protection against their
protectors, who, with the sole exception of Germany, in their opinion,
wanted 'to cut slices out of their skin.'" Bismarck had assured the Turks
that he should never attack France unless seriously threatened by France,
and would never in any circumstances "fire a cartridge for Turkey."
In the course of the summer of 1881 Sir Charles had become acquainted with
a great personage in whom Bismarck always saw an enemy of his policy, and
in so far as it was hostile to France the Memoir bears out his judgment.
'On July 13th the Prince of Wales introduced me to his sister, the
Crown Princess of Germany. [Footnote: Though this was Sir Charles's
first meeting with the Crown Princess, she had at the time of his
father's death 'telegraphed her condolences to me at St. Petersburg,
and to the Embassy, asking them to call on me and help me in the
matter.'] She talked to me at length in the most friendly way with
regard to France and Gambetta. She told me that she had been secretly
to Cherbourg to hear Gambetta's famous speech, which he himself called
"the first glass of wine administered to the convalescent." But she
added that she stood absolutely alone in Germany in her pro-French
opinions.
'The Crown Princess seemed very able, but inclined to sacrifice
anything in order to produce an effect. I was afterwards sent for by
them, and had a long talk in what are called the Belgian Rooms at the
back of Buckingham Palace, on the gardens.
'On Monday, August 22nd, I called at Buckingham Palace by the wish of
the Crown Prince, and saw him and the Crown Princess together. I
thought him a dull, heavy German, and noted in my diary: "He dare not
speak before he sees that she approves of his speaking." But he was a
nice-minded, kind, and even pleasant man in his way.'
Sir Charles's formal summing-up of his impressions is to be found in his
work on _The Present Position of European Politics_ (1887):
"It is no secret that at times the Crown Princess has been unfriendly
to Prince Bismarck. They are perhaps two personalities too strong to
coexist easily in the same Court.... The Crown Prince, it must be
admitted, intellectually speaking, is, largely by his own will, the
Crown Princess. But that most able lady, when she shares the German
throne, must inevitably have for her policy the Bismarck policy--the
strength and glory of the German Empire."
Sir Charles notes that, although he was hard-worked in Parliament and in
the Office, the peculiar nature of the Foreign Office work brought him
necessarily a good deal into contact with royal personages and foreigners
of distinction visiting London, and forced him 'to go out a good deal and
burn the candle at both ends.' Of these official gaieties he gives no very
grateful impression:
'Some of the parties to which the Prince of Wales virtually insisted
that I should go were curious; the oddest of them a supper which he
directed to be given on July 1st, 1881, for Sarah Bernhardt, at the
wish of the Duc d'Aumale, and at which all the other ladies present
were English ladies who had been invited at the distinct request of
the Prince of Wales. It was one thing to get them to go, and another
thing to get them to talk when they were there; and the result was
that, as they would not talk to Sarah Bernhardt and she would not talk
to them, and as the Duc d'Aumale was deaf and disinclined to make
conversation on his own account, nobody talked at all, and an absolute
reign of the most dismal silence ensued....
'On March 13th we had received news of the murder of the Emperor of
Russia; and when Lord Granville came to dinner with me (for he dined
with me that night to meet the French Ambassador), he told me that I
must attend in the morning at a Mass at the Russian Chapel, and attend
in uniform. I had two of these Masses at the Russian Chapel in a short
time, one for the Emperor and one for the Empress, and painful
ceremonies they were, as we had to stand packed like herrings in a
small room, stifled with incense, wearing heavy uniform, and carrying
lighted tapers in our hands. On this occasion I saw the Prince of
Wales go to sleep standing, his taper gradually turn round and gutter
on the floor.'
Two months later, Friday, May 27th,
'I dined with Lord and Lady Spencer to meet the King of Sweden and the
Gladstones....
'The King talked to me after dinner about the murder of the Emperor of
Russia.... It was clear that the Swedish loathing for Russia on
account of the loss of Finland was not over. The King might, however,
have reflected upon his own popularity in Norway, a country which had
been given to his grandfather because the people used to hate the
Danes. They now hated the Swedes still more.'
A royalty known to Sir Charles by correspondence was King Mtsa of Uganda,
'who had been presented by us in 1880, at the request of the Queen and the
Church Missionary Society, with a Court suit, a trombone, and an Arabic
Bible,' but who relapsed early in 1881, and became again the chief pillar
of the slave trade in his district. Another strange monarch played his
part that year in London society.
'On Sunday, July 10th, Lord Granville wrote to me to ask me to lunch
with him the next day to meet "the King of the Cannibal Islands
[Footnote: Sandwich Islands, in reality.] at 12.55, an admirable
arrangement, as he must go away to Windsor at 1.20." I went, but
unfortunately was not able to clear myself of all responsibility for
Kalakaua so rapidly, for I was directed to show him the House of
Commons; and when he parted from me in the evening in St. Stephen's
Hall he asked me for a cigar, and on my offering him my case he put
the whole of its contents into his pocket. The Crown Prince of Germany
and the Crown Princess (Princess Royal of England) were in London at
the same time, and at all the parties the three met. The German
Embassy were most indignant that the Prince of Wales had decided that
Kalakaua must go before the Crown Prince. At a party given by Lady
Spencer at the South Kensington Museum, Kalakaua marched along with
the Princess of Wales, the Crown Prince of Germany following humbly
behind; and at the Marlborough House Ball Kalakaua opened the first
quadrille with the Princess of Wales. When the Germans remonstrated
with the Prince, he replied, "Either the brute is a King or else he is
an ordinary black nigger, and if he is not a King, why is he here at
all?" which made further discussion impossible. Kalakaua, however,
having only about 40,000 nominal subjects, most of them American
citizens who got up a revolution every time he went away, his kingship
was very slight.'
May 20th:
'At this Cabinet a curious matter came up, though not for decision.
The Cabinet had been intending to give the commission for the public
statue of Lord Beaconsfield to a British sculptor, and I had been
trying hard to get it for Nelson Maclean; but a communication from the
Queen settled the matter, she absolutely insisting that Boehm should
do the statue. Everybody felt that it was wrong that she should
interfere, but nobody, of course, resisted.'
On May 27th we hear that the Queen, having received
'warning in an anonymous letter of threats against her life by
"persons of rank," wrote to Harcourt to say she did not see who could
be meant "unless it were Lord Randolph Churchill"!'
Elsewhere Sir Charles noted:
'The only subjects upon which the Prince of Wales agreed with any
Liberals were (1) detestation of Randolph Churchill; (2) the
government of London. But then, as I personally, although assailed by
Randolph Churchill and not then on speaking terms in consequence, did
not dislike him, there remained only the government of London, and the
topic became well worn between us, for we had found by experience that
it was the only one upon which we could safely talk.'
III.
One correspondent, the length of whose letters was 'fabulous,' was Sir
Robert Morier, then Minister at Lisbon, 'an old friend.'
'He had more brains than all the other Foreign Office servants put
together (excepting Lord Lyons and 'old White' and Lord Odo Russell),
but, although "impossible" in a small place, he was afterwards a
success at St. Petersburg.... He used to send ultimatums to any weak
Government to which he was despatched, and he used to treat the
Foreign Office almost as badly, for he was the only Minister given to
swearing at the Office in despatches.'
Comment on this is afforded by a note of Lord Granville's to Sir Charles
in 1884, when the Embassy at Constantinople was vacant: "The Turks had
been behaving so badly, we should send Morier, to pay them out." Sir
Charles's respect for his friend's 'immense ability' led to his taking
great trouble in dealing with Sir Robert Morier's difficulties, put before
him in a voluminous correspondence, both private and public, and in return
he received 'a veritable testimonial on February 22nd, 1881: "You have
done the right thing at exactly the right moment, and this is to me so
utterly new a phenomenon in official life that it fills me with admiration
and delight."' He had previously noted a letter in which, describing
himself as "a shipwrecked diplomat on the rocks of Lisbon," Morier wrote:
"To have for once in my life received help, co-operation, and
encouragement in a public work from a man _in the Office_, instead of
the cuffs and snubs I am used to, is so altogether new a sensation
that you must excuse my being gushing."
In an earlier letter of the same year there is complaint of the "utter
absence of co-operation" between the Foreign Office at home and its
servants abroad:
"You who are still a human being and able to see things from the
general home point of view, will be over-weighted by two such
bureaucrats as ---- and ---- ."
Morier's plea for reorganization which should ensure "intercommunion and
intercommunication" was emphasized a few weeks later by
'a letter from White, then our Minister at Bucharest (afterwards our
Ambassador at Constantinople), which concluded with a general grumble
against the Foreign Office:
'"... Servants kept in the dark--thorough darkness--as to proceedings
in the next-door house cannot be profitable servants, and such is,
alas!
'"Yours ever truly,
'"W. A. White.'"
The idea bore fruit in Dilke's mind to this extent, that in
'1890 I was able to give evidence before a Royal Commission in favour
of amalgamating the two services, and the Ridley Commission accepted
my view and recommended the amalgamation. It was not carried out.'
Sir Robert Morier suffered, in his own judgment, more than anyone else
from this lack of intercommunication, and this is probably true because he
was restlessly fertile in suggestions, and when these raised opposition he
turned to Sir Charles for help. Having just concluded the negotiation of a
treaty respecting Goa, he was now pressing hard for another respecting
Lorenço Marques and Delagoa Bay, in which he discerned the future gate of
the Transvaal, and was projecting arrangements with regard to Portuguese
West Africa. In these projects Sir Charles helped him indirectly, as he
did in a larger proposal which the Minister at Lisbon was making.
'Morier's letter contained the draft of a proposed Congo treaty, which
was afterwards put into shape, which I strongly favoured, and which in
1883, after I had left the Foreign Office, was virtually stopped by
the House of Commons. The House and country were wrong, and the
Foreign Office right.' [Footnote: This treaty would have associated
Great Britain with Portugal in maintaining the freedom of the Congo
River and in policing its waters, while it would have established a
joint control of the whole Congo basin by the European Powers which
had subjects settled in that region. Such an agreement would have
altered the course of history in tropical Africa, and the Congo State
would never have come into being. See _Life of Lord Granville_, vol.
ii., pp. 341-354.]
Lord Ripon was Sir Charles's regular Indian correspondent, and a letter
from the Viceroy in this year begs him not to intermit his communications
whenever he could make time to write. To Lord Ripon another correspondent
was now added:
'Grant Duff, having accepted the Governorship of Madras, asked me to
write to him regularly in India, which I promised to do, and did, and
in thanking me he said that my opinions would have interest for him,
since among other things I knew was "that strange wild beast--the
House of Commons." This saying was pathetic from him, for there never
was a man who more utterly failed to understand the House of Commons
than Grant Duff....'