The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1

S >> Stephen Gwynn >> The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50

'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 etre 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-Perier, 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 L590,000
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 Pene
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 Emile 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 boutonne_--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
fete-of-the-dead visit to the tomb of a Deputy killed on the side of
the Constitution at the time of the _coup d'etat_, 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: "A
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 Hopital 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
Provencal forgetfulness of his art and subject, Gambetta interposed--
"He tried to close my mouth, but I have drowned him"--and then went
on.'