A great Englishman died a few years ago, little known in America. His
name, Sir Charles Dilke. A statesman, a radical, a republican; and a
strong solid man.
There is one thing that strikes you about some of these leaders, in
England: the number of advantages they have when they're boys, growing
up. It gives them a tremendous head-start. Charles Dilke began meeting
great men when he was a mere child: the Duke of Wellington, Thackeray,
Dickens,--I could name a long list. And he had the close companionship
of a grandfather, a man of distinction, who treated him as an equal, and
devoted himself to his grandson's development.
A fortunate boy.
Think of other small boys, who show signs of fine brains and strong
characters. Are they ever introduced to Thackeray or treated as equals?
No, they're taught to respect their dull fathers and their fathers'
ideas. They are taught not to have any separate ideas of their own. Or
at best they run wild with no wise elder friend, like Charles Dilke's.
Here is one of his grandfather's letters. Shows the tone of their
friendship. The boy has just won an English Essay Prize, and "they say
that parts of my essay were vulgar," he writes. "My special interest,"
his grandfather answers, "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 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.... 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."
Good for Grandfather! Eh? He was a pretty interesting old boy. He might
have been a great man himself, if he could have brought himself up. But
Great-grandfather had been in the government's service in England, some
position in the Navy Department, or the Admiralty, as they call it. And
when his son grew up, he got him a place in the Admiralty too. He meant
well, but Grandfather might have done better without.
It gave him a berth, and a chance to lie back and look on. And while
that helped to ripen his wisdom, it sapped his initiative.
He had a fine mind; clear, impartial. Strong radical views. He had
character, integrity, insight. A man of much weight. But he saw there
was much to be learned and observed about life, and his instinct was to
go slow, and quietly study its problems. "Instead," you say, "of
immediately solving them like other young men!" But instead, too,--for
such was his instinct--of _handling_ the problems. He wished to know
more and feel wiser before he dealt with them. He had the preparatory
attitude.
The trouble with the preparatory attitude is there's no end to it. There
is so much to learn in this world that it won't do to wait. If you wait
to fit yourself before acting, you never will act. You will somehow lose
the habit of acting. Study too conscientiously the one hundred best
books on swimming, and of course you'll learn a great deal about it, but
you never will swim.
This was Grandfather's type. If he had been kicked out alone into the
world and found every one fighting him, and if he had had to fight back,
and fight hard, from his boyhood, it would have taught him the one thing
he needed--more force for his powers.
As it was, he remained in the Admiralty. Studying life.
[Illustration: The Preparatory Attitude]
Grandfather was thirty-seven years old when Great-grandfather died. He
(Grandfather) had been writing for the magazines for quite a long
time,--he was only twenty-six when the Quarterly Review editors began to
speak highly of him.
He now bought the London Athenaeum, which, though just born, was dying.
Under Grandfather's editorship it became an important authority. It was
known all over the world soon. But Grandfather wasn't. He never signed
one of his articles, not even pseudonymously. And during the sixteen
years in which he had control of the paper, this remarkable man withdrew
altogether from general society, in order, he said, to avoid making
literary acquaintances which might either prove annoying to him, or be
supposed to compromise the integrity of his journal.
That rings hollow, that reason. He doubtless thought it true; but it
wasn't. He withdrew from society, probably, because he liked
withdrawing. With the gifts of a great man he didn't have a great man's
robustness. Some kink in him held him back, and kept him from jousting
and tournaments. He should have been psychoanalyzed. It may have been
such a small kink.
I doubt if he ever would have married, but it happened quite young. He
was under nineteen, and the pretty girl he married still younger. Maybe
she married _him_. They had one son, soon after their marriage; but no
other children.
I wonder if Grandfather was a case of suppressed personality. It wasn't
a weak personality. It would not stay suppressed. But it didn't come out
boldly and naturally, and live a full life. Not as full a life as its
own wisdom and strength made appropriate. He achieved several things,
and they weren't unimportant or small, yet he constantly slighted his
life-work; in fact, hardly spoke of it. Modern psychologists do not call
this attitude modesty, like our nice naive fathers. No, they say it
comes oftenest from the sexual errors of boyhood. For instance,
repression. Or shame at misguided indulgence.
This kind of boyhood is unfortunate, but it might do small harm, if it
weren't for the sad sense of guilt with which it stains a man's mind.
Men try to forget it, and do: but their subconsciousness never forgets.
To be cured, a man must face and remember his past, open-eyed, and see
his mistakes philosophically and understand better: understand what we
all are, and what human nature is made of, and how it is distorted in
youth by a rigid environment. The average moralist or parent won't tell
us these things. But until we have learned them, a good many of us feel
wicked, and can't put behind us the wretched mistakes of our youth. We
don't know enough to regard our young struggles with sympathy. Our
ignorance makes us believe we have blackened our souls. And the man who
keeps silent and never tells, and hence never learns, goes through the
world semi-subdued. Never gets what it owes him.
Was Grandfather Dilke such a case? I've no warrant for saying so. His
conscience may have troubled him, possibly, for some quite different
reason. He may have secretly hated some relative whom he should have
loved. He may have done some small wrong and unfortunately not been
found out. But whatever the reason was, he lived an odd, back-groundish
life--for a man of his caliber. And his life didn't satisfy him. And
this was his fault, not the world's.
The birth of a son, however, in a way gives a man a fresh chance. He
decides to live a second and far better life through his son. Whenever
a parent feels blue, or is not making good, he immediately declares that
his hopes are in his little son anyhow. Then he has a sad, comfortable
glow at his own self-effacement. Oh, these shirking fathers! They allow
_themselves_ to give way to weariness, or be halted by fears; but expect
a son, when _he_ comes to such moments, to find them quite jolly. He's
to make up for the weakness of his father, and carry his own burdens,
too!
I regret to say Grandfather Dilke sought relief in this way. Although
young, strong, and gifted, he said when his own son was born that he
then and there committed all his dreams of achievement to Baby. Baby was
to go out in the world and do his papa honor.
The child was called Wentworth, and it grew up sound, healthy, and kind.
But when poor Mr. Dilke bet on Wentworth, he backed the wrong horse.
Wentworth didn't have anything in him of the statesman or scholar. He
was idle at studies. No head for them. What he liked was athletics. He
liked comradeship and enjoying life generally--in a nice way, however. A
simple, conservative-minded and limited soul. During his early years in
London he was principally known to his friends for never missing a
night at the opera. And he was devoted to shooting-parties.
Later on, he became still more trying, it would seem, to his parent.
Instead of remaining in his place as a plain disappointment, he began to
be prominent; and, stupidly, in just the wrong field. He became a sort
of parody of the man his father had hoped he would be. He hadn't the
brains, for example, to do anything in the learned Athenaeum, but he
founded The Gardeners' Chronicle and the Agricultural Gazette. He did
well with them, too, which was irritating. He turned out to be a good
man of business.
About this time a National Exhibition of some sort was held, and
Wentworth was in on it. (It was an exhibition of "art manufacturers.")
Then somebody got the idea of repeating it on a large scale and
including foreign nations: in fact to make it the first of World's
Fairs. So Wentworth and the others met the Prince Consort, to get
Royalty's blessing.
The Prince Consort liked the plan immensely. He made it his hobby.
Numerous committees were appointed, in true simian style, and amid
endless speeches and palaverings, the thing was arranged. Wentworth,
except when on shooting-parties, worked hard for it.
This made a great noise; but I doubt if it impressed Mr. Dilke. It was
at bottom cheap stuff which any advertiser or promoter could do. It
sounded well; it made a man prominent, but it didn't take brains. What
Mr. Dilke had hoped or intended for his son I don't know; perhaps
nothing definite; but he certainly wanted something that counted. He
wanted him to make a contribution to the needs of mankind. Some
achievement in scholarship, or some hand in the steering of England.
Mr. Dilke was, potentially, anyhow, a big sort of man, like a nation's
prime minister: a publicist, not a mere showman. And for years he had
given all his thoughts to his son's career. His son had been the one he
first thought of when he woke in the morning, and the last one that
stayed in his mind when he got into bed. And he hadn't just mooned
around about him, he had worked for his welfare, planned each step of
his education, for instance, and pondered his plans.
And then the creature grows up to run The Gardeners' Chronicle, and work
for World Fairs.
There were some small advantages. The creature was brought into
relations with prominent men and kings throughout Europe, mostly
figureheads, perhaps, but not all; and these relations were destined to
be of use to the Dilkes later on. But it must have seemed awfully silly
to Grandfather to see Wentworth being presented with medals, and
honors, and gifts from foreign governments. And as though this weren't
enough, Queen Victoria wished to make him a baronet! Mr. Dilke, being a
radical, was opposed to his taking a title; so Wentworth, who was
fifty-one, declined it, like a dutiful child. But the Queen made a
personal matter of it, so he had to accept. It seems that he and the
Prince Consort had become quite good friends--both being pleasant,
gentlemanly, and wooden (at least in some ways), and having in common an
innocent love of World Fairs; and this had endeared Wentworth Dilke,
more or less, to the Queen. So, after the Prince Consort died, and while
she was feeling her grief, she pressed this small title on Wentworth
because the Prince liked him.
[Illustration: He had medals from potentates.]
Wentworth was now a powerfully connected person and a vastly more
important man in the public eye than Grandfather was. But he and his
father lived in the same house; and, although Mr. Dilke didn't say much,
he had his own scale of values; and, measured by any such scale,
Wentworth was a great disappointment. Their daily relations were kindly,
considering this; but Wentworth knew well, all the time, he was deemed
an inferior. When he was out and about, in the public eye, he may have
felt like a lord, but when he came home nights he had to check his pride
at the door.
Meantime he had married and had two sons; and Charles, the elder, was
bright. So Mr. Dilke, the incorrigible, began life all over again. He
hadn't been satisfied with his own life, and far less with Wentworth's,
but he planned a third career for himself in this promising grandson. He
didn't merely take an interest in the child, or just make him his hobby.
He centered his whole mind upon him. He made it his business in life to
develop that infant--in order that through him he might at last reach
the front row.
And this time he won. It looked doubtful at first; Charles was nervous
and frail, and hence backward. His mind was too excitable and his health
too poor to send him to school. That's a handicap in England; school
associations and training count much. However, the boy easily mastered
his studies at home, and he often met eminent men who came around to the
house, and he made some experiments in literature--in fact, wrote a
novel. And when sixteen, he met a beautiful girl, Emilia Strong, whom he
worshiped. And he traveled, and talked with his grandfather; and so he
grew up.
At eighteen his health grew much better: in fact, grew robust. He
immediately entered Cambridge, and there he began a new life. This was a
splendid thing for him, in a number of ways. For instance, one of the
first things he did was to go in for athletics. He had a flat, narrow
chest, sloping shoulders; but the rowing men trained him; and he worked
until he became a good oar, and could row on a crew.
He had lived almost entirely with grown-ups before going to college, and
was much more mature and well-informed than the fellows he met there.
But some parts of his nature had never had a chance to come out; his
sense of fun, for example. He now began having good times with boys of
his own age. He worked so hard at his rowing that he finally stroked the
first crew. And "nobody could make more noise at a boating supper," one
of his friends said. He even got into a scrape and was deprived of a
scholarship he had won.
All these new ways of Charles--except the scrape, possibly--must have
seemed right and normal, and even, perhaps, reassuring to his father,
Sir Wentworth. But Sir Wentworth became alarmed lest they shouldn't
please Mr. Dilke. He feared Mr. Dilke was going to be disappointed all
over again, by a student who found university life too full of pleasure.
The unfortunate baronet, therefore, wrote Charles for heaven's sake to
be studious.
He need not have worried. Charles became a wonder at studies. And it
wasn't just brilliance--it was long, steady hours, plus brains and
concentration, that did it. One thing that helped him do so much was
that he never wasted time--he used every spare minute for something. He
"would even get in ten minutes of work between river and Hall." He not
only became a prize scholar and oarsman, but won walking races; he
joined the Volunteers and became a crack rifle shot, and went in for
debating.
His votes and speeches in the debates show the trend of his mind, which
was balanced yet radical, like his grandfather's, and always
progressive. The American Civil War, which was then being fought, was
debated; and the undergraduates voted for the Confederate side, three to
one. This was the general feeling in England. But Charles was for the
North. Again, when Lord Palmerston was helping to start the Greek
monarchy, Charles spoke in favor of a Greek republic, in a college
debate.
He wrote long letters to his grandfather regularly about studies and
politics, and sent him able analyses and criticisms of articles in the
Athenaeum. The old man at first had been rather silent because of the
athletics; but as Charles' mind developed, and as he continued winning
prizes in studies, Mr. Dilke grew happier and happier. They were forever
corresponding, and were on the most affectionate terms.
Then, one day, a telegram came for Charles, and he hurried home.
Wentworth was on the lawn, crying. "He lives only to see you," he said.
"I went upstairs," Charles wrote afterward, "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 trivial matters.... 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.'"
The next day they had their last talk. Mr. Dilke made his boy a present
he had planned for his birthday, and entrusted him with the disposition
of his papers and manuscripts. And he told him, "I have nothing more to
say but that you have fulfilled--my every hope--beyond all
measure--and--I am deeply--grateful."
So he died.
Charles went back to Cambridge and finished his course with the greatest
distinction. He then began contributing to the Athenaeum, and planning
to write books. "A History of Radicalism," for example. "The Effects
Upon Radicalism of Increased Facility of Communication." "Development of
the Principle of Love of Country Into That of Love of Man." In politics
he took the Irish Catholic side of the Irish Question; he wrote strongly
in favor of removing the political disabilities of women, and he
criticized the severity of white men toward natives in the tropics.
He also had a row with his father. Sir Wentworth was vexed because
Charles didn't wish to come to his shooting-parties.
When he was twenty-two, Charles made a tour of the world, and recorded
his observations in a remarkable book. It was a solid, serious volume,
yet written in a vein of high spirits. It dealt with Canada, the United
States--East, South, and West--New Zealand, Australia, Ceylon and India;
it was a study of what Anglo-Saxons were doing in these great
civilizations. Charles mailed his MSS. to England, and Sir Wentworth
took it upon himself to correct the proofs, in order to hurry the book
through the press. The result was a crop of blunders. But still, it was
an enormous success. It ran through three editions rapidly, and brought
Charles the friendship of some great men.
Meantime in his twenty-fifth year he was elected to Parliament--at the
very election at which Sir Wentworth lost his seat, by the way. Charles
advocated laws ('way back in the Sixties) to prohibit child labor, to
recognize trades unions, and stop the buying of commissions in the army.
He advised English workmen not to join the regular political parties,
but to start a Labor Party of their own and gain influence that way. He
also upset his father a good deal by urging amendments to the game laws.
His first speech in Parliament was on some dry, technical subject, but
he showed himself so well-informed, so full of detailed knowledge and
foreign comparisons, that he was immediately put on a committee and
began to make his way in the House.
It's interesting to look back and see how able men get their start.
In his twenty-eighth year this able man got into frightful hot water. He
said publicly that a miserable moral and political tone resulted from
the nation's retaining a lot of sinecure offices--Hereditary Grand
Falconer, and all that sort of thing. He pointed out that the Duke of
Edinburgh had been given a naval command without much naval training,
and he advocated promotion by merit instead of by claims due to birth.
He allowed himself to criticize some large grants of money to the
monarchy. His remarks indicated that theoretically he preferred a
republic. For this he was denounced by the papers, and socially
shunned. He was accused of disloyalty and treason, with the greatest
heat, everywhere. His name was a byword. The Prince of Wales happened
about this time to get very ill, and this added still further to the
anger men felt at Charles Dilke.
He didn't back down. He went out and made speeches to workmen, repeating
his anti-King criticisms. There was rioting by Tory roughs--iron bars
thrown--men injured and killed. Crowds collected who swore that Dilke
should not get away alive from the hall. He waited till the excitement
was hottest, then came out the main door alone, stood quietly looking at
them, lit a cigar, and walked off.
He did, however, gradually calm down the nation in one way, by showing
them that, though he objected to monarchical errors, he didn't wish to
upset the monarchy while it suited the people. He thought it absurd, but
it would be still more absurd to upset it--that is to say, while those
governed wanted it. This attitude, and time (several years of it) slowly
stilled the excitement. The net result was to make this man a notable
and recognized power.
His power kept growing. His influence was great in the House. His views
were strong, but reasoned and sane, and his industry endless. He was now
forty-two. Gladstone, with whom he tilted at first, picked him as his
successor. It looked as though this great progressive would be premier
of England.
Then, in a night, the Fates crushed him. Returning home from a dinner in
his honor, he found a letter there, waiting.
It said that the wife of a member of Parliament had confessed to her
husband that she had been unfaithful to him with Charles Dilke soon
after her marriage.
This, of course, meant a scandal. And a scandal meant he couldn't be
premier. He couldn't even sit in the cabinet. His career was destroyed.
Sir Charles (as he now was) had been married, but his wife had soon
died. After ten years as a widower, he had become engaged to Emilia
Strong--you remember?--the same Emilia whom he had worshiped when he was
sixteen. (She had been married, too, in the meantime, but she now was a
widow.) His principal concern with this blow was not to let it hurt her.
He sent her the news, told her he was innocent, and added, "I feel this
may kill you--and it will kill me, either if it kills you or if you
don't believe me."
She stood by him, married him. They had nineteen years of each other. He
was sixty-one when she died in his arms. He lived to be sixty-eight.
He never could clear his name of the scandal, though he took it to
court. They failed to show he was guilty, but he couldn't _prove_ that
he wasn't. So he never was premier, and he never again sat in the
cabinet.
His friends said his whole career showed that the scandal was false.
They stood by him strongly. But the People, whom he would have served
with such courage, did not.