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

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'But the fact was that the subject was so funny that it was impossible
to make a speech about it which would not have been amusing, and
Randolph Churchill, who replied to me, was funnier than I was, though
he was not equally regardful of the truth.'

'One of the Corporations which I had attacked was that of Woodstock,
and Randolph Churchill brought the Prince of Wales down to the House
to hear his defence of his constituency. I had said in my speech that
the Mayor of Woodstock had been lately fined by his own Bench, he
being a publican, for breaking the law in a house the property of the
Corporation, and that he had said on that occasion in public court,
after hearing the evidence of the police: "I have always had a high
respect for the police, but in future I shall have none." Randolph
Churchill, answering me, said that I had slightly mistaken the Mayor's
words, and that what he had really said was: "I have always had a high
respect for the police, but in future I shall have _more_." After this
debate was over, Randolph came up to me outside, and said: "I was
terrified lest you should have heard anything to-day, but I see you
have not." I said: "What?" He said: "He was fined again yesterday."'

In the same speech the case of New Romney was described--"the worst of
all" the Cinque Ports, where the number of freemen, twenty-one at the
passing of the Reform Act (of 1832), had fallen to eight--

"the only town in England in which six gentlemen elected themselves to
every office, appointed themselves magistrates, let the whole of the
valuable town properties exclusively to themselves, audited their own
accounts, and never showed a balance sheet."

A cartoon in one of the comic papers displayed one selfsame and highly
complacent person, first as "Our Grocer," then as "Our Mayor," then as
"The Gentleman who elects our Mayor," "The Gentleman who disposes of our
Public Trusts," "The Gentleman who benefits by our Public Trusts, "and
"The Committee appointed annually to look into the Accounts of the
Gentleman who disposes of our Public Trusts."

Another of Sir Charles's topics in 1875 was the working of the Ballot Act.
'A dull speech on a dull subject,' it secured, however, the appointment of
a Committee to inquire whether secrecy of voting was not menaced by the
form in which ballot papers were issued. But the main object of his
activity in the field of electoral reform was redistribution, and this
object was the hardest to attain, because more than 400 members of the
House sat for constituencies not numerically entitled to representation.
The over-represented had a majority of two-thirds in Parliament, and this
was a tremendous vested interest to assail. Still, the whole Liberal party
was now committed to the support of his principle.

The same general support was given to his Bill 'known as the Allotments
Extension Bill, to provide for the letting to cottagers of lands held for
the benefit of the poor'--a scheme originally proposed by Mill.

'My Parliamentary Session of 1875 was my most successful.

'My motion on Ballot Act,
" " " Unreformed Boroughs,
" " " Redistribution,
" Bill " Allotments,
were all four great successes, and so spoken of in all the papers. On
the first I got my way. On the second I prepared it for next year, and
on the third and fourth I got the support of the whole Liberal party
and most of the Press.'

There are a good many pleasant stories of what seems to have been a very
easy-going Session of Parliament:

'At this time Plimsoll's name was in every mouth, and the only
formidable opposition in the House was that which he offered to the
Government in the sailors' name. Old Adderley, afterwards Lord Norton,
who was at the Board of Trade, assured me, in his solid hatred of the
man, that when Plimsoll told the House of Commons that he had stopped
a fearful shipwreck by taking a telegram to the Board of Trade at 3
a.m., and ringing for the porter and sending it then and there to the
President's house, Plimsoll had neglected to state that this telegram
had reached him at five o'clock in the afternoon, and had been kept
back by him till the middle of the night for the production of a
sensation....

'The other hero of the Session was Major O'Gorman, a hero of four-and-
twenty stone, who on two occasions at least made the House laugh as
they never laughed before, nor have laughed since. We used at first to
lose him at a quarter to twelve each night, as he had to get to the
Charing Cross Hotel, where he lived on the fourth storey, before the
lift had gone up for the last time. But later in the Session we
managed to keep him till 1.15, for he made the brilliant discovery
that the luggage lift, which just suited him, was available till 1.30.

'Some of his finest things are lost in the reports. For example,
"Swill the whisky through the streets till the very curs lie
prostrate," and this, which, however, in a weakened form, survives in
Mr. Lucy's Diary: "Some men who call themselves my constituents tell
me that if I oppose this Bill I shall never sit again. Well, _what
then?_" (This in a stentorian voice that nearly blew the windows out.)
"Athens ostracized Aristides."

'After midnight a postponed Bill is fixed for the next sitting by the
words "This day." O'Gorman was opposing and watching such a Bill, and
shouted out: "_What_ day?" "This day" was solemnly repeated. Then the
puzzled Major, looking at the clock, and bowing to the chair, said:
"Mr. Speaker, is it yesterday or is it to-morrow?" I never heard a
question more difficult of reply under the circumstances of the case.

The best Irish bull uttered within his own hearing was, says Dilke, Sir
Patrick O'Brien's defence of Mr. Gladstone addressed to the Irish
Nationalists: "The right honourable gentleman has done much for our common
country. He has broken down the bridges that divided us."

III.

When the Session was ended, Sir Charles, according to his custom, set out
on travel, following a scheme mapped out far ahead. In December, 1874, he
had written to Miss Kate Field, correspondent of the _New York Tribune_
and a friend of Sir Charles and of his first wife, that he would be in
America in the following September on a journey round the world, and there
accordingly he appeared--'on my way to Japan, China, Java, Singapore, and
the Straits of Malacca--taking with me as travelling companion my scheme
for a history of the nineteenth century,' a work projected on such ample
lines that a note of this year sets down 1899 as the probable date of
completion, "if I live so long."

The record of this journey is to be found in the additional chapters to
_Greater Britain,_ first issued in 1876 as magazine articles, and added to
the eighth edition in 1885. He saw Japan before the Satsuma rebellion had
broken out in a last attempt to restore the old feudal regime, and he
stayed in the Tartar General's _yamen_ at Canton, where at gun-fire he and
the other Europeans in the same house were shut up within barred gates,
only representatives of the white race among 2,000,000 Chinese. As for the
Japanese, he wrote:

"I'm in love with this country and people.... The theatre is where I
spend all my time.... There alone can you now see the soldiers in
masks, ferocious and hairy, with the chain-armour and javelins of
fifteen years ago. [Footnote: This was written in 1875.] There alone
can you now see the procession of daimios accompanied by two-sworded
Samurai, there alone have the true old Japan of the times before this
cursed 'New Reform Government' arose."

'My stay at Tokio was at the same moment as that of Shimadzu Suboro,
the old Satsuma Chief, uncle and adoptive father to the Satsuma
Princes, and last constitutional light of the Feudal party. The "great
Marshal" Saigo was commanding in chief the forces, and was in the next
year to head the Satsuma rebellion. The Corean Envoys--tall men, with
wondrous stars in their hair--were at the capital also, and I met them
often.'

The beauty of Java, where he stayed at the Governor's Palace at
Buitenzorg, charmed him.

His journey from the East was very rapid, and January, 1876, saw him back
in England. He was in time to address his constituents as usual before the
opening of Parliament.

The speech contains what he points out as notable in one who 'so seldom
spoke upon the Irish question'--an attack on the Coercion Bill of the
previous year. It might be better, he said, to govern Ireland on the
assumption that human nature is much the same everywhere, and Irishmen
under no special bar of incapacity. A majority of the Irish
representatives were in favour of Home Rule, and "a reformed dual
constitution might possibly be devised which would work fairly well." This
was an extreme attitude for those days, and he went on to recommend "the
immediate creation of a local elective body, having power to deal with
public works and the like"--in short, very much what Mr. Chamberlain
advocated in 1885.

The speech also protested against Lord Carnarvon's policy as Colonial
Minister, "in sending out Mr. Froude to stump South Africa against the
local Ministers of the Crown, which was the beginning of all the frightful
evils which afflicted South African affairs for the next nine years."

The conduct of the Opposition did not escape comment. "The duty of a
Liberal leader is to follow his party, and this Lord Hartington has done
with exemplary fidelity and unexampled patience." Another phrase noted
that the Session of 1875 had left its mark on the House of Commons, "for
pillows had been for the first time provided for members who wished to
sleep," and the same atmosphere of repose marked the Session of 1876. The
Memoir sketches some Parliamentary operations with which Sir Charles was
connected:

'Early in this session occurred the introduction of the Royal Titles
Bill, conferring the Imperial title upon the Queen, and I wrote for
Fawcett a motion for an address to pray the Queen that she would be
graciously pleased not to assume any addition to her title in respect
of India other than the title of Queen. When the matter came on for
discussion Cowen, who had now come into the House for Newcastle, rose
to make his first speech. He had succeeded his old father, who was a
Whig in politics and an old fogey in appearance, the son being now an
ultra-Radical, now a democratic Tory, dressing like a workman, with a
black comforter round his neck, and the only wideawake hat at that
time known in the House of Commons. The next day Mr. Disraeli said: "I
am told that we are blamed for not having put up a Minister to answer
Cowen. How could we? I came into the House while he was speaking. I
saw a little man with one hand in his pocket, and the other arm
raising and waving uncouthly a clenched fist, making what appeared to
be a most impassioned oration. But I was in this difficulty. I did not
understand a word of it. I turned to my colleagues, and found that
they were in the same position. We could not reply to him; we did not
understand the tongue in which the speech was delivered." Cowen spoke
with a Newcastle burr so strong that it was not easy to follow his
words, and it was only by the context that one could guess what he
meant, when he used, for example, such a word as "rowing," which he
pronounced "woane."...

'I again brought forward my motion with regard to unreformed
corporations, with fresh illustrations and new jokes, and the second
edition was voted as popular as the first. Corfe Castle, with the Lord
High Admiral of the Isle of Purbeck, and a Corporation consisting of
one person, was a gem. Sir John Holker, who had to deal with the
question for the Government, and who prepared the Royal Commission
which sat to consider it in consequence of my motions, laid down some
law for my information, which I doubted, and thereon showed to
Harcourt, who said: "You will find the Attorney-General's law as bad
as might be expected." Holker was personally popular. But he
certainly, though a great winner of verdicts from juries, was one of
the dullest men who ever addressed the House of Commons.'

Although Sir Charles was active and, generally speaking, successful during
this session, on two points he found himself without support. One was his
opposition to the principle of the Bills dealing with the University of
Oxford and the University of Cambridge, on both of which he "took a highly
Conservative tone without securing any assistance from Conservative
opinion." But a passage in his diary, March, 1877, describes his action
and that of the Liberal party on the "Universities Bill" of that year, and
mentions a meeting at which Lord Hartington, Goschen, Harcourt, Fawcett,
and Fitzmaurice were present, and at which 'it was decided to support my
amendments to the Bill.' [Footnote: See Appendix, p. 200.]

His conservatism in academic matters revealed itself fully in 1878, as did
that abiding feeling for his old college which characterized every after--
allusion to it or to his University life. The Papal diplomatist, Bishop
Bateman, founder of Trinity Hall, was mentioned by Sir Charles with the
respect due to a patron saint. No traditions were dearer to him than those
of Trinity Hall. Speaking at the College annual dinner, he impressed upon
the reforming Fellows their obligation, in the college interests, to
retain its exclusive teaching and qualifications for fellowship as laid
down by its founder, "for the study of the canon and civil law."
[Footnote: A scrap of the menu of the dinner of June 19th, 1878, is
preserved, which shows these toasts: '"The Lord Chief Justice of England--
proposed by the Master; responded to by the Lord Chief Justice of England,
Sir Alexander Cockburn. Fellows and ex-Fellows--proposed by Sir Charles
Dilke, Bart., M.P.; responded to by (Fellows) Professor Fawcett, M.P.,
(ex-Fellows) R. Romer, Esq. Our Old Blues and Captains of the T.H. Boat
and Cricket Clubs--Proposed by Leslie Stephen, Esq."]

"It is a good thing for a small college that it should not be merely
one of the herd. It is a bad thing that a small college should be
driven to teach everything--classics, mathematics, law, theology,
medicine, and science, physical and moral--for if it teaches so many
things, of necessity, from its poverty in money and in men, it cannot
teach all well. A small college can only keep at a high moral and
social and intellectual level by having a distinguishing note or
accent. In our dear old House we have already in existence by our
history and by the Instrument of Foundation that special mark to
distinguish us from others which the most advanced University
Reformers clamour to see created as regards each College in the
University....

"It should keep its distinguishing note, and flourish for another five
hundred and twenty-eight years, not only in manners, good-fellowship,
and rowing, but as a school of law.

"In rowing and law it had fallen off, but good-fellowship still
differentiates the College, and prevents it from surrendering to the
prevailing tendency to make the colleges in our grand old University
pale copies of French _lycees_--all cut on one pattern and
administered by schoolmasters, who will rule over dunces of universal
acquirements examined to the point of death."

The other question on which he failed to secure support was his attack on
the Royal Academy:

'What I really wanted was that the Academy should be reminded that
they obtained their present magnificent site upon conditions which
have not been observed, and that they ought at least to give a free
day a week at their exhibition, and give up a portion of their
privileges against outsiders.'

But the attack, as he admits, was not pressed with spirit for he had only
the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and the _Examiner_ with him in the Press. In the
House Lord Elcho [Footnote: Better known as Lord Wemyss, long the
venerable father of Parliament.] and Mr. George Bentinck 'alone understood
the question,' and the latter was too intimate with all the Academy
leaders to afford a hope that he would do otherwise than take their side.
So, feeling his isolation in the matter, Dilke limited himself to moving
for some papers, which were given.

By the summer of 1876 Sir Charles was well again:

'I began this year to stay a great deal at Lady Waldegrave's, both at
Dudbrook in Essex and at Strawberry Hill; and ultimately I had a room
at Strawberry Hill, to which I went backwards and forwards as I chose.
The house was extremely pleasant, and so was Fortescue, and he
passionately adored his wife, and was afterwards completely broken
down and almost killed by her death. Fortescue was my friend; but she
was an excellent hostess, and the house was perfectly pleasant, and
that in a degree in which no other house of our time has been. The
other house which was always named as "the rival establishment,"
Holland House, I also knew. Some of the same people went there--
Abraham Hayward, commonly called the "Viper," and Charles Villiers,
for example. Lady Waldegrave always made everybody feel at home, which
Lady Holland did not always do. Those of whom I saw the most this
year, in addition to the Strawberry Hill people (who were Harcourt,
James, Ayrton, Villiers, Hayward, Dr. Smith the editor of the
_Quarterly,_ Henry Reeve the editor of the _Edinburgh,_ the Comte de
Paris, and the Due d'Aumale), were Lord Houghton and Mrs. Duncan
Stewart. Lord Houghton never met me without referring to a review of
his collected works, which appeared in the _Athenaeum_ in the spring,
and which had cut the old man to the heart' (because it rated his
poetry on a level with that of Eliza Cook).

'One of the most agreeable parties of clever people to which I ever
went was a luncheon given by Mrs. Stewart, when she was living a few
doors from me in my street, at which I was the only man, the party
chiefly consisting of old ladies; indeed, I was by far the youngest
person present. Besides Mrs. Stewart herself, there were friends, Lady
Hamilton Gordon, Lady Pollock, Lady Hopetoun, Mrs. Frank Hill, Mrs.
Oliphant, and Mrs. Lynn Linton--Lady Gordon, a remarkably able woman,
one of the bedchamber women of the Queen and a great gossip; Lady
Pollock, slow, but full of theatrical anecdote, being stage-mad, as
was her husband, old Sir Frederick, the Queen's Remembrancer, father
of my Cambridge friend Professor Pollock (now Sir Frederick) and of
Walter Pollock, the editor of the _Saturday Review_. A few days later
I met Lady Pollock at a great party given by Lord Houghton. Irving was
coming down the stairs, at the bottom of which we stood, having Mrs.
Singleton (now, 1894, the Ambassadress, Lady Currie) upon his arm. Old
Lady Pollock, clutching at my arm, exclaimed: "Who is that woman with
Irving?" To which I answered: "Mrs. Singleton, author of _Denzil
Place_--Violet Fane." "She won't do him any harm, will she?" was the
embarrassing question by which Lady Pollock replied to me.'

In this summer Sir Charles gave dinner-parties which included ladies--'a
plan which I found so uncomfortable for a politician who had only a
grandmother to entertain them that I dropped it after August, 1876.' His
dinners were always among the pleasantest in London, but till 1886 they
were only dinners of men.

Of men friends of this year he specially notes 'Gennadius, the Greek
Secretary, afterwards Minister,' with whom his friendship was lifelong.

APPENDIX

A meeting was held at Devonshire House on March 1st, 1877:

'There were present, besides Lord Hartington and myself, Lowe,
Goschen, Harcourt, Fawcett, and Fitzmaurice.--It was decided to
support Grant Duff in adding the names of Huxley and Max Muller, and
not to support Fitzmaurice in adding Bryce, but to support him in
adding Hooker, and Goschen in adding Professor Bartholomew Price to
the Oxford Commission, and to support Hartington in moving to add Dr.
Bateson, the Master of John's, to the Cambridge Commission. Bouverie
was to be proposed by Harcourt, as against Cockburn, for chairman of
the Cambridge Commission, because we objected to overworked Judges
being on Commissions. The name of Bradley, afterwards Dean of
Westminster, was suggested for the Oxford Commission by Lowe, but not
supported by the meeting, and it was decided to support my amendments
to the Bill. The Commissions as originally suggested were badly
composed. The best men suggested were not good--Dr. Bellamy (President
of St. John's, Oxford), for example, the wealthiest of all college
officials, a precise, old-fashioned, kind-hearted nonentity, a simple
tool of more intelligent Conservatives; and Henry Smith, an Irishman
of the keenest order of intelligence, ready to give an intellectual
assent to the abstract desirability of the best and highest in all
things. On another of the names originally suggested I may quote Smith
himself, for when Dean Burgon's appointment was attacked in the House
of Commons by me and others, Smith, approaching Lord Salisbury at a
party, and engaging in conversation upon the matter, said that the
reasons for appointing him were overwhelming, at which Lord Salisbury
was greatly pleased; when Henry Smith went on: "No such Commission
could possibly be complete without its buffoon."'

CHAPTER XIV

REVIVAL OF THE EASTERN QUESTION

Sir Charles at this period of his career was passing from the status of a
formidable independent member to that of a recognized force in his party.
In May, 1876, he became Chairman of the Elections Committee at the Liberal
Central Association, and from that time forward up to 1880 'took a very
active part in connection with the choice of candidates.'@@Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain had been elected for Birmingham. He was lame from gout, and
resented it, saying to Sir Charles 'that it was an illness which should be
exclusively reserved by a just Providence for Tories.' On July 8th, 1876,
he wrote to Dilke that before coming up to take his seat he had called his
friends together and settled a programme and general course of action. "I
think there is every chance of our Union being productive of useful
practical results, but it is agreed that our arrangements shall remain
strictly private for the present. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico._" On August
2nd Sir Charles introduced to Lord Hartington at Devonshire House 'a great
private deputation upon the Education Bill from the North Country Liberal
Associations, which was in fact the first movement by what was afterwards
the National Liberal Federation.' So the "Caucus" began to make itself
felt in domestic affairs.

Sir Charles notes that he 'for the first time began to be summoned to
meetings respecting the course to be taken by the party.' Here already he
found that--

'Mr. Gladstone began, although somewhat ostentatiously proclaiming in
public the opposite principle, to interfere a good deal in
Hartington's leadership, and even Harcourt, who only a few months
before had ridiculed Mr. Gladstone's pretensions in such strong terms,
on the rare occasions when he was unable to get his way with
Hartington always now went off to Mr. Gladstone, to try to make use of
the power of his name.'

"Foreign affairs had suddenly risen out of complete obscurity into a
position in which they overshadowed all other things, and left home
politics in stagnation." [Footnote: Speech at Notting Hill, August, 1876.]
These complications were destined to bring Mr. Gladstone back into an
activity not merely unimpaired, but redoubled, and to shake the power of
Mr. Disraeli to its fall.

Sir Charles was, first and foremost, a "good European"; he conceived of
Europe as a body politic, bound in honour to regulate its own members.
Isolation appeared to him a mere abandonment of the duty of civilized
powers to maintain order in the civilized world. Corporate action was to
be encouraged, because, in most cases, the mere threat of it would suffice
either as between States to prevent wars of aggression, or as between
ruler and ruled to assert the ordinary principles of just government.

The enforcement of this view might involve its support by force of arms,
and he worked all his life for our military preparedness, holding that it
was the best guarantee that armed intervention would be unnecessary, as it
was also the best guarantee of our own immunity from attack.