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

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The second of them, Charles Wentworth Dilke, his eldest son, and
grandfather to the subject of the memoir, was, like his father, a clerk in
the Admiralty; but early in life showed qualities which fitted him to
succeed in another sphere of work--qualities through which he exercised a
remarkable influence over the character and career of his grandson. So
potent was this influence in moulding the life which has to be chronicled,
that it is necessary to give some clear idea of the person who exercised
it.

Mr. Dilke--who shall be so called to distinguish him from his son
Wentworth Dilke, and from his grandson Charles Dilke--at an early period
added the pursuit of literature to his duties as a civil servant. By 1815,
when he was only twenty-six, Gifford, the editor of the _Quarterly
Review_, already spoke highly of him; and between that date and 1830 he
was contributing largely to the monthly and quarterly reviews. In 1830 he
acquired a main share in the _Athenaeum_, a journal 'but just born yet
nevertheless dying,' and quickly raised it into the high position of
critical authority which it maintained, not only throughout his own life,
but throughout his grandson's. So careful was Mr. Dilke to preserve its
reputation for impartial judgment, that during the sixteen years in which
he had virtually entire control of the paper, he withdrew altogether from
general society "in order to avoid making literary acquaintances which
might either prove annoying to him, or be supposed to compromise the
independence of his journal." [Footnote: From _Papers of a Critic_, a
selection of Mr. Dilke's essays, edited, with a memoir, by Sir Charles
Dilke, See _infra_, p. 184.]

After 1846 the editorship of the _Athenaeum_ was in other hands, but the
proprietor's vigilant interest in it never abated, and was transmitted to
his grandson, who continued to the end of his days not only to write for
it, but also to read the proofs every week, and repeatedly for brief
periods to act as editor.

When in 1846 Mr. Dilke curtailed his work on the _Athenaeum_, it was to
take up other duties. For three years he was manager of the recently
established _Daily News_, working in close fellowship with his friends
John Forster and Charles Dickens.

From the time when he gave up this task till his death in 1864 Mr. Dilke's
life had one all-engrossing preoccupation--the training of his grandson
Charles. But to the last, literary research employed him. In 1849 he
helped to establish _Notes and Queries_ 'to be a paper in which literary
men could answer each other's questions'; and his contributions to this
paper [Footnote: Its founder and first editor, Mr. W. J. Thorns
(afterwards Librarian of the House of Lords), had for three years been
contributing to the _Athenaeum_ columns headed "Folk-Lore"--a word coined
by him for the purpose. The correspondence which grew out of this
threatened to swamp other departments of the paper, and so the project was
formed of starting a journal entirely devoted to the subjects which he had
been treating. Mr. Dilke, being consulted, approved the plan, and lent it
his full support. In 1872, when Mr. Thorns retired from control of the
paper, Sir Charles Dilke bought it, putting in Dr. Doran as editor; and
thenceforward it was published from the same office as the _Athenaeum_.]
and to the _Athenaeum_ never ceased; though so unambitious of any personal
repute was he that in all his long career he never signed an article with
his own name, nor identified himself with a pseudonym. A man of letters,
he loved learning and literature for their own sake; yet stronger still
than this love was his desire to transmit to his heirs his own gathered
knowledge, experience, and convictions.

He had become early 'an antiquary and a Radical,' and this combination
rightly indicated unusual breadth of sympathy. The period in which he was
born favoured it: for, keen student as he was of the eighteenth century--
preserving in his own style, perhaps later than any other man who wrote in
England, that dignified but simple manner which Swift and Bolingbroke had
perfected--he yet was intimately in touch with the young genius of an age
in revolt against all the eighteenth-century tradition. Keats, only a few
years his junior, was his close friend; so was John Hamilton Reynolds, the
comrade of Keats, and author of poems known to every student of that
literary group. Thomas Hood and Charles Lamb had long and near association
with him. Lover of the old, he had always an open heart for the new; and,
bookish though he was, no one could be less a bookworm. The antiquary in
him never mastered the Radical: he had an unflagging interest in the large
facts of life, an undying faith in human progress. Slighting his own
lifework as he evidently did--for he never spoke of it to his son or his
son's son--he was yet prompted by instinct to kindle and tend a torch
which one after him should carry, and perhaps should carry high. It would
be difficult to name any man who had a stronger sense of the family bond.

He had married very young--before he was nineteen--Maria Dover Walker, the
beautiful daughter of a Yorkshire yeoman, still younger than he. This
couple, who lived together "in a most complete happiness" for forty years,
had one child only, born in 1810, Charles Wentworth Dilke, commonly called
Wentworth. [Footnote: _Papers of a Critic_, vol. i., p. 13.] Mr. Dilke
sent his son to Westminster, and removed him at the age of sixteen,
arranging--because his theory of education laid great stress on the
advantage of travel--that the lad should live for a while with Baron
Kirkup, British Consul and miniature painter, in Florence, as a
preparatory discipline before going to Cambridge. What he hoped and
intended is notably expressed in a letter written by him at Genoa on his
return journey to his son in Florence in 1826: [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 18.]

"I ought to be in bed, but somehow you are always first in my thoughts
and last, and I prefer five minutes of gossiping with you.... How,
indeed, could it be otherwise than that you should be first and last
in my thoughts, who for so many years have _occupied all_ my thoughts.
For fifteen years at least it has been my pleasure to watch over you,
to direct and to advise. Now, direct and personal interference has
ceased.... It is natural, perhaps, that I should take a greater
interest than other fathers, for I have a greater interest at stake. I
have _but one _son. That son, too, I have brought up differently from
others, and if he be not better than others, it will be urged against
me, not as a misfortune, but as a shame. From the first hour I never
taught you to believe what I did not myself believe. I have been a
thousand times censured for it, but I had that confidence in truth
that I dared put my faith in it and in you. And you will not fail me.
I am sure you will return home to do me honour, and to make me respect
you, as I do, and ever shall, love you."

It was a singular letter for a man of thirty-seven to write--singular in
its self-effacement before the rising generation, singular, too, in the
intensity of its forecast. Yet, after all, a measure of disappointment was
to be his return for that first venture. The son to whom so great a cargo
of hopes had been committed was a vigorous lad, backed when he was fifteen
'to swim or shoot or throw against any boy of his age in England,' and he
developed these and kindred energies, accepting culture only in so far as
it ministered to his fine natural faculty for enjoyment. He acquired a
knowledge of Italian and of operatic music at Florence; but when
afterwards at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he was, to his father's despair,
very idle, and during his early years in London 'was principally known to
his friends for never missing a night at the Opera.'

That interest in things of the mind which he could hardly have failed to
inherit had made of him a dilettante rather than a scholar; but later he
became very active in promoting those ideals which appealed to his taste.
He had a shrewd business eye, and showed it in founding the _Gardeners'
Chronicle_ and the _Agricultural Gazette_, both paying properties. He had,
moreover, a talent for organization, and a zeal in getting things done,
acknowledged in many letters from persons of authority in their
recognition of those services to the International Exhibitions of 1851 and
1862 which were rewarded by his baronetcy. An interesting National
Exhibition of 'Art Manufactures' had already been held by the Society of
Arts, on whose Council Wentworth Dilke was an active worker, at the time
when he, with two other members of the Council and the secretary, Mr.
Scott Russell, met the Prince Consort on June 30th, 1849, and decided to
renew the venture on a scale which should include foreign nations. When
the executive committee of four (to whom were added a secretary and a
representative of the contractors) was named in January, 1850, the work
practically fell on three persons--Sir William Reid communicating with the
public departments, Mr. Henry Cole settling questions of space and
arrangement, [Footnote: Mr. Cole, afterwards Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B., was,
says the Memoir, 'commonly known as King Cole,' and was afterwards
secretary to the South Kensington School of Design.] and Wentworth Dilke
'having charge of the correspondence and general superintendence,' and
attending 'every meeting of the executive except the first.'

Wentworth Dilke worked hard for this and for other objects. But his public
activities had to be fitted in with a great deal of shooting and other
sport at Alice Holt, the small house in Hampshire, with adjacent
preserves, which he rented, and which became the family's country home.

In 1840 he married, and, after the birth of Charles Wentworth Dilke, the
subject of this Memoir, on September 4th, 1843, all the grandfather's
thought centred on the child. His daughter-in-law became, from then till
her death, his chief correspondent, and the master of the house was
'completely overshadowed' in the family group.

That group was so large as to be almost patriarchal. Wentworth Dilke, when
he married, and established himself at 76, Sloane Street, took under his
roof his wife's mother, Mrs. Chatfield, her grandmother, Mrs. Duncombe,
and also her unmarried cousin, Miss Folkard. All these ladies lived out
their lives there, Mrs. Chatfield and Miss Folkard surviving till Charles
Dilke had become a Minister of State.

Up to 1850 old Mr. Dilke and his wife lived at their house in Lower
Grosvenor Place, which was a second home for their grandson Charles. But
in 1850 the wife died, and Mr. Dilke 'spent sixteen months in wandering
through the remoter parts of Scotland, and along the north and west coast
of Ireland, but corresponded ceaselessly with his daughter-in-law, to whom
he was much attached.' During a great part of this time he was accompanied
by his grandson. Mrs. Wentworth Dilke, after giving birth in 1850 to her
second child, Ashton Dilke, had 'fallen into a deep decline'; and Charles
Dilke, at the age of seven, was handed over to his grandfather's charge,
partly to solace the old widower's loneliness, partly to relieve the
strain on his mother.

The peculiar relation between grandfather, mother, and son, stands out
clearly from the letter which that mother wrote shortly before her death
in September, 1853, to be delivered to the boy Charles. After some tender
exhortation, she added:

"But moral discipline your grandfather will teach you. What I wish
particularly to impress on you is the _necessity_ of worshipping God."

And at the end:

"My own boy, there is another thing still to name, for none can say
whether this letter may be required soon, or whether I may have the
delight of seeing my children grow up, but this last and cherished
subject is my little Ashton. When he is old enough, dear, to
understand, let him read this letter, and by his mother's blessing
teach him to think and feel that all that I have said applies equally
to him. Set him a good example in your own conduct, and be always
affectionate brothers."

Of the father, not a word--and for care of the younger boy, the dying
woman's hope is in his brother. It will be shown how studiously the ten-
year-old boy, on whom his mother so leant, fulfilled that charge. But he
himself felt, in later life, that scant justice had been done to the man
who was 'overshadowed' in his home, and wrote in 1890:

'My father loved my grandfather deeply, but my grandfather was greatly
disappointed in him, and always a little hard towards him: my father
suffered through life under a constant sense of his inferiority. He
suffered also later from the fact that while his elder son was the
grandfather's and not the father's boy, his younger son was as
completely under my influence in most matters, as I was under the
influence of my grandfather.'

Yet in a sense the relation between old Mr. Dilke and the son whom he
unconsciously slighted was strangely intimate and confiding. For in 1853
the elder man gave up his own house in Lower Grosvenor Place, made over
all his money to his son, and came to live under the son's roof in Sloane
Street for the remainder of his life. His confidence in the patriarchal
principle justified itself. 'My father,' writes Sir Charles, 'for eleven
years consulted his father--dependent on him for bread--in every act of
his life.'

To the world at large, Wentworth Dilke was a vastly more important person
than the old antiquary and scholar. After his services in organizing the
Great Exhibition of 1851, he declined a knighthood and rewards in money;
but he accepted from the French Government a gift of Sevres china; from
the King of Saxony, the Collar of the Order of Albertus Animosus; from the
King of Sweden and from the Prince Consort, medals; and from Queen
Victoria, a bracelet for his wife. These remained among the treasures of
76, Sloane Street. But he acquired something far more important in the
establishment of friendly relations with persons of mark and influence all
over the Continent; for these relations were destined to be developed by
Charles Dilke, then a pretty-mannered boy, who was taken everywhere, and
saw, for instance, in 1851, the Duke of Wellington walk through the
Exhibition buildings on a day when more than a hundred thousand people
were present. He could remember how the Duke's 'shrivelled little form'
and 'white ducks' 'disappeared in the throng which almost crushed him to
death' before the police could effect his rescue.

Wentworth Dilke's association in the Prince Consort's most cherished
schemes had brought him on a footing of friendship with the Royal Family;
and on July 25th, 1851, his wife wrote that the Queen had come over and
talked to her in the Exhibition ground. Long afterwards, when the pretty-
mannered boy had grown into a Radical, who avowed his theoretical
preference for republican institutions, Queen Victoria said that "she
remembered having stroked his head, and supposed she had stroked it the
wrong way."

[Illustration: Sir Charles as a child from the miniature by Fanny Corbin.]

CHAPTER II

EDUCATION

The earliest memory that Sir Charles Dilke could date was 'of April 10th,
1848, when the Chartist meeting led to military preparations, during which
I' (a boy in his fifth year) 'saw the Duke of Wellington riding through
the street, attended by his staff, but all in plain clothes.' In 1850 'No
Popery chalked on the walls attracted my attention, but failed to excite
my interest'; he was not of an age to be troubled by the appointment of
Dr. Wiseman to be Archbishop of Westminster. In 1851 he was taken to a
meeting to hear Kossuth.

From this year--1851--date the earliest letters preserved in the series of
thirty-four boxes which contain the sortings of his vast correspondence.
There is a childish scrap to his grandfather, and a long letter from the
grandfather to him written from Dublin, which lovingly conjures up a
picture of the interior at Sloane Street, with 'Cousin' (Miss Folkard)
stirring the fire, 'Charley-boy' settling down his head on his mother's
lap, and 'grandmamma' (his mother's mother, Mrs. Chatfield) sitting in the
chimney-corner.

For the year 1852 there are no letters to the boy; it was the time of his
mother's failing health, and he was journeying with his grandfather all
over England, 'reading Shakespeare, and studying church architecture,
especially Norman.' It was a delightful way of learning history for a
quick child of nine:

'We followed Charles II. in his flight, and visited every spot that has
ever been mentioned in connection with his escape--a pilgrimage which took
me among other places to my future constituency of the Forest of Dean. We
went to every English cathedral, and when my grandfather was at work upon
his Pope investigations, saw every place which was connected with the
history of the Carylls.' [Footnote: John Caryll suggested to Pope the idea
of the "Rape of the Look"; and many of the poet's letters were written to
his son, a younger John Caryll. They were an ancient and distinguished
Roman Catholic family, devoted partisans of, and centres of correspondence
with, the exiled Stuarts.]

Mr. Dilke combined his desire to instruct the child with the frankest
interest in his play. Here, for instance, is a letter to Charles of
October 15th, 1853:

"DEAR OLD ADMIRAL,

"Hope you found all right and tight: a gallant vessel--tackle trim--
noble crew of true blue waters--guns shining and serving for looking--
glasses to shave by--powder dry--plenty in the locker. Wishing you
favourable gales,

"I remain,

"Your old friend and rough and tough

"GRANDFATHER."

It is worth while giving the reply--precocious for a boy of ten:

"BEDHAMPTON,
"HAVANT,
"_October 16th, 1853._

"MY DEAR GRANDPAPA,

"We arrived quite safely on Friday night, and were astonished to find
that my Aunt and Uncle and Cousin Letitia were gone to Brighton and
then to Hastings, and Godpapa had a letter this morning to say that
they found it so hot at Hastings that they went on to Folkestone, and
they are there now. The Admiral has to report for the information of
his Cockney readers that he hoisted his Flag yesterday at the main
peak. The weather was, however, so windy and wet that after hiding
himself with his honoured father under the cuddy for half an hour, the
Admiral thought that prudence was part of his duty, therefore struck
his Pocket-handkerchief and retired to luncheon. A Salute from a black
cloud hastened his departure.

"Your affectionate grandson,

"C. W. DILKE."

The boy was his grandfather's to educate, and there has not often been
such an education. A man ripe in years, still vigorous--for Mr. Dilke was
only fifty-three when his elder grandson was born--yet retired from the
business of life, and full of leisure, full of charm, full of experience,
full of knowledge, devoted his remaining years to the education of his
grandson. It may be held that he created a forcing-house of feeling, no
less than of knowledge, under which the boy's nature was prematurely drawn
up; but there can be no doubt as to the efficacy of the method. It was not
coddling--Mr. Dilke was too shrewd for that--and if at a certain stage it
seemed as though excessive stimulus had been given, maturity went far to
contradict that impression.

'After my mother's death I began classics and mathematics with Mr.
Bickmore, at that time a Chelsea curate and afterwards Vicar of
Kenilworth. At the same time I took charge of teaching letters to my
brother. I had few child friends, and used to see more of grown-up
people, such as Chorley, [Footnote: Musical critic for the
_Athenaeum._] Thackeray, and Dickens, of whom the latter was known to
us as "young Charles Dickens," owing to my great-grandfather having
known "Micawber."'

Old Mr. Dilke's father had been employed in the Admiralty along with the
father of Dickens. As for Thackeray, it was probably about this time that
he came on the boy stretched out upon grass in the garden of Gore House,
resting on elbows, deep in a book, and looked over his shoulder. "Is it
any good?" he asked. "Rather!" said the boy. "Lend it me," said Thackeray.
The book was _The Three Musketeers_, and we all know _The Roundabout
Papers_ which came out of that loan.

Charles Dilke had his free run of novels as a boy, and not of novels only.
In 1854, when he was only eleven:

'I began my regular theatre-going, which became a passion with me for
many years, and burnt itself out, I may add, like most passions, for I
almost entirely ceased to go near a theatre when I went to Cambridge
at nineteen. Charles Kean, and Madame Vestris, and Charles Mathews,
were my delight, with Wright and Paul Bedford at the Adelphi, Webster
and Buckstone at the Haymarket, and Mrs. Keeley. Phelps came later,
but Charles Kean's Shakespearian revivals at the Princess's from the
first had no more regular attendant. My earliest theatrical
recollection is Rachel.

'I was a nervous, and, therefore, in some things a backward child,
because my nervousness led to my being forbidden for some years to
read and work, as I was given to read and work too much, and during
this long period of forced leisure I was set to music and drawing,
with the result that I took none of the ordinary boy's interest in
politics, and never formed an opinion upon a political question until
the breaking-out of the American Civil War when I was eighteen. I then
sided strongly with the Union, as I showed at the Cambridge Union when
I reached the University. Even in this question, however, I only
followed my grandfather's lead, although, for the first time, in this
case intelligently. So far indeed as character can be moulded in
childhood, mine was fashioned by my grandfather Dilke.'

It was not only character that Mr. Dilke formed. He made the boy the
constant companion of his own intellectual pursuits, imbued him deeply
with his own tastes, his own store of knowledge. In the summer of 1854 he
had taken his pupil to 'Windsor, Canterbury, Rochester, Bury St. Edmunds,
St. Albans, and many other interesting towns.' That autumn the pair went
to France together--apparently the beginning of Charles Dilke's close
acquaintance with that country, which was extended in the following year,
1855, when Wentworth Dilke was named one of the English Commissioners for
the French International Exhibition, and took his family to live in Paris
from April to August.

'We were all with him at Paris for some time, and I acquired a
considerable knowledge of the antiquities of the town, before the
changes associated with the name of Haussmann, by rambling about it
with my grandfather, who, however, soon got sick of Paris and went
home to his books, while we remained there for four months. I was at
the party given at the Quai d'Orsay by Walewski, the son of Napoleon;
at that given at the "Legion of Honour" by Flahaut, the father of
Morny; at the Ball at the Hotel de Ville to the Emperor and Empress
and Queen Victoria; at the review; and at the Queen's entry and
departure. The entry was the finest display of troops which I ever
witnessed, as the National Guard of the City and its outskirts turned
out in great form, and raised the numbers to 120,000, while the
costumes both of the Guard and of the National Guard were very showy.
There paraded also two hundred veterans of the wars of the First
Empire in all the uniforms of the period. I heard Lablache in his last
great part, and in this year I think I also saw Rachel for the last
time; but I had seen her in England, I believe, in 1853. I certainly
had seen her in a part in which many years later I remember Sarah
Bernhardt, and can recall Rachel well enough to be able to institute a
comparison entirely to Rachel's advantage.

'After our visit to Paris in 1855 my brother and I had taken to
speaking and to writing to one another in French, and this practice we
kept up until his death, even when he was Member of Parliament for
Newcastle-on-Tyne, and I a member of the Government.'

One memory of that year never left Sir Charles Dilke. In the evenings he
used to go to the Place Vendome to hear the Guards' combined tattoo. Every
regiment was represented, and the drummers were a wonderful show in their
different brilliant uniforms--Chasseurs of the Garde, Dragoons, Lancers,
Voltigeurs, and many more. In the midst was the gigantic sergeant-major
waiting, with baton uplifted, for the clock to strike. At the first stroke
he gave the signal with a twirl and a drop of his baton, and the long
thundering roll began, taken up all round the great square. Sir Charles,
as he told of this, would repeat the tambour-major's gesture; and the
boy's tense, eager look of waiting, and flash of satisfaction when the
roll broke out, revived on the countenance of the man.