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

"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'eprouvai moi-meme 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 Republique Francaise,_
"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 epreuves qui vous accablent, n'exprime que bien
imparfaitement les sentiments de profond attachement, de volontaire
solidarite que je vous ai voues.

"Je sais, je mesure l'insuffisance amere de toute parole de
consolation pour d'aussi grandes douleurs, d'aussi irreparables
pertes. Car meme l'impuissance de semblables remedes qui m'ont empeche
de vous ecrire plutot, m'ont arrete dans le desir de venir pres de
vous a 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 a votre penetration 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 etre assez heureux pour etre de
quelque utilite dans les actes de votre existence.

"Je viendrai vous voir demain mardi a 2 heures et vous repeter de
vive-voix ce que je dis ici. Je suis tout entier a vous et de coeur,

"Votre ami,

"LEON 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 _Republique Francaise_), 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 grace de vouloir bien avancer notre dejeuner au Cafe
Anglais et de prevenir votre ami de ce petit derangement.
L'enterrement d'Edgar Quinet doit avoir lieu a une heure a
Montparnasse et je ne peux manquer a cette ceremonie. Donc a demain
lundi 11h au Caf. Anglais.

"Votre toujours devoue,

"LEON GAMBETTA."

At the breakfast talk turned naturally on Quinet, the professor and critic
who was exiled after the _coup d'etat_, 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."