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

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'was a very experienced official, not, however, very successful at the
Board of Trade, and greatly given to grumble and growl. He held the
mildly reciprocitarian views in which he followed Mill and expanded
Cobden's opinions, and was thought by us to be the author of the
_Letters of a Disciple of Richard Cobden_, the circulation of which by
the Cobden Club, at his own request, nearly destroyed that
institution. He afterwards left the Board of Trade for the India
Office, where he became permanent Under-Secretary of State, on which
occasion Grant Duff said, "Mallet will be happy now. He will have
_two_ worlds to despair of;" for he generally began each sentence with
the words, "I despair," uttered in a deep voice.'

On April 10th, 1877, just before the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War,
which seemed as if it might involve all the Great Powers, is this entry of
a dinner with the French Minister:

'Went to dine with Gavard, meeting his second and third secretaries,
the Italian first secretary, the Dutch Minister (Baron de Bylandt),
the Belgian Minister (Solvyns), and "The Viper" (alias Abraham
Hayward, Q.C.). Cypher telegrams poured in all through dinner, and
portended no good to the peace of Europe. It was, however, a pleasant
dinner, in which Hayward and Solvyns had most of the talk to
themselves, but made it good talk. Gavard was afterwards accused by
the Republican party of having conspired against them, which for his
friends seemed always to be a statement in the nature of a joke. I
once asked Gambetta if he seriously believed that Gavard had
conspired, at which Gambetta shook with laughter in his jovial way,
but added that it was absolutely necessary to pretend he had, for
other people had conspired in the Embassy, and the head man (in the
absence of an Ambassador) must be held responsible in such a case.'

Another diplomatist whom Sir Charles met in the same month was the Comte
de Montgelas, first secretary to the Austrian Embassy:

'... A man who played a great part at this time, belonging to a
Bavarian family which had furnished a distinguished politician to the
Congress of Vienna. He went everywhere, knew everyone, was clever,
showy, talkative; but after being one of the leading exponents of the
Beaconsfield policy, he was suddenly dismissed by his Government, ...
and when, many years afterwards, I again saw him, he had become a
servant of the British North Borneo Company. I believe he was too
friendly to Bismarck to please Beust (then Austrian Ambassador in
London).'

He tells also the story of a 'King-maker':

'The Portuguese Minister in 1876 was the old Duc de Saldanha. This was
the man who some years previously, at the age of eighty, being
dissatisfied with the state of things in Lisbon, had taken the steamer
from Southampton, and, though he was at the time Minister in London,
landed at Lisbon, put himself at the head of the Guards, marched on
the palace, locked up the King, turned out the Ministers, put in his
friends, released the King, and returned by the next steamer to his
legation.'

Here too is gossip from Berlin:

'On June 15th, 1877, I breakfasted with Goschen to meet Lord Odo
Russell, who was most amusing. He told us that, Bismarck being ill,
the Chancellor's temper was so bad as to make him "impossible for his
family, his subordinates, and even his Sovereign." He said that
Bismarck hates the Empress Augusta with so deadly a hatred as to have
lately said to him: "I am not Foreign Secretary. My master's Foreign
Secretary is the Empress, whose Foreign Secretary is the French
Ambassador, whose Foreign Secretary is the General of the Jesuits."...

'At this time General Grant came to London, and, as I had known him at
Washington and he had liked me there, I had to go about a good deal to
meet him at his wish, and he also dined with me on June 10th, when I
invited him to choose his own party. He knew, however, so few men in
London that I had to suggest men to him, and asked him whether he
would like to meet Butt as the leader of the Irish party. He said he
should, but was very silent all through dinner and until he had begun
the second of two big cigars. Then, as usual with him, he began to
thaw under the influence of tobacco, and whispered to me--when Butt
was talking very pleasantly under the influence of something besides
tobacco, and with his enormous, perfectly round face assuming, as it
always did after dinner, the appearance of the harvest moon--"Is he a
Papist?" to which I replied "No"; whereupon Grant became friendly to
him. General Grant's chief weakness, unless that position be assigned
to his cigars, was his detestation of the Roman Catholics.'

Many political personages are sketched in passing reference. Here is
Roebuck, who in his fierce prime had been known as 'Tear 'em':

'The famous orator and Radical of past days was now a little,
shrivelled-up old man, but he was still able to play a great part in
the House of Commons, although entirely decayed in mind. His vinegary
hatred of Mr. Gladstone, and of the Liberal party generally, uttered
from the Liberal side in a piercing treble, was destined to be cheered
to the echo for a short time from the Tory benches, and Roebuck, later
than this, saw himself made a Privy Councillor by Lord Beaconsfield.'

In January, 1877, is this reference to a force of the future:

'Randolph Churchill and Drummond Wolff to dinner; amusing in the style
of Robert Macaire and his man.'

Among more disciplined sections of the Tory party Sir Charles had many
friends. One of them, a social figure of great charm and distinction, was
Lord Barrington,

'who used, when Mr. Disraeli was leader of the House of Commons, to
keep for him the notes which have to be kept by the Prime Minister for
the Queen.... Barrington showed me his one night; it began: "Lord
Barrington presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs to
inform your Majesty that..." The Queen in no way showed her
favouritism to Mr. Disraeli more than in excusing him from the
performance of this tiresome duty, which, however, had the one
advantage of giving Mr. Gladstone in his administration something
quiet to do during exciting divisions such as those on Bradlaugh....

'Lady Waldegrave pressed me to go to Strawberry Hill on a particular
Saturday in the month--the only one, I think, on which, as a fact, I
did not go--to meet the Prince of Wales, but as she playfully took me
to task at the same time for not attending levees, I connected the two
things, and thought she had been asked to speak to me, and declined. I
told her that I had left off going to levees in 1865, before I left
Cambridge, for no reason except that they bored me; and that if I were
suddenly to go, people would think that I had changed my views, and
wished it to be known that I had changed them, for they thought that
my not going was connected with my opinions, which, however, it was
not.'

There is a note early in this year:

'I was engaged at this moment on an attempt to form a circle of
friends who would be superior, from the existence with them of a
standpoint, to the mere ordinary political world, and I began doing my
best to meet frequently those whom I most liked--John Morley, Dillwyn,
Leonard Courtney, and Fitzmaurice, prominently among the politicians;
and Burton (Director of the National Gallery), Minto, and Joseph
Knight, prominently among the artists and men of letters. All these
were men with something noble in their natures, or something delicate
and beautiful, full of sterling qualities.'

Minto was the well-known man of letters. Joseph Knight, for many years
dramatic critic of the Athenaeum, and, later, editor of _Notes and
Queries_, was perhaps the best known and most beloved of Bohemians, a
pillar of the Garrick Club, and one of the men to whose tongue came
ceaselessly apt and unexpected quotations from Shakespeare. He had the
same passion as old Mr. Dilke for accumulating books, and like him, too,
was a living catalogue to his own library, or libraries, for he
accumulated and sold two in his lifetime.

Another man of letters needs no introduction:

'A wreck of glasses attests the presence of Swinburne. He compared
himself to Dante; repeatedly named himself with Shelley and Dante, to
the exclusion of all other poets; assured me that he was a great man
only because he had been properly flogged at Eton, the last time for
reading _The Scarlet Letter_ when he should have been reading Greek;
confessed to never having read Helvetius, though he talked of Diderot
and Rousseau, and finally informed me that two glasses of green
Chartreuse were a perfect antidote to one of yellow, or two of yellow
to one of green. It was immediately after this that Theodore Watts-
Dunton took charge of him and reduced him to absolute respectability.'

Sir Charles tells stories of a remarkable political and literary
personage.

'Lord Houghton's anecdotes were rendered good by the remarkable people
that he had known.... He once about this time said to me: "I have
known everyone in the present century that was worth knowing." With a
little doubt in my mind, I murmured, "Napoleon Bonaparte?" "I was
taken to Elba when I was a boy," said Houghton instantly. I thought
his recollections of the first Emperor apocryphal. There was, however,
a chance that the father--who was in Italy--did take the child to
Elba.'

Another story, of which Lord Houghton was not the narrator, but the
subject, came to Sir Charles during a party at Lady Pollock's, and
concerned the dinner which had preceded the party.

'It had been at seven o'clock in honour of Tennyson, who would not
dine at any other hour, and Tennyson sat on one side of the hostess,
and Lord Houghton on the other; and the latter was cross at being made
to dine at 7, preferring to dine at 8.30, and sup, after dinner, at
11. The conversation turned on a poem which had been written by
Tennyson in his youth, and Tennyson observed "I have not even a copy
myself--no one has it." To which Lord Houghton answered: "I have one.
I have copies of all the rubbish you ever wrote."--A pause.--"When you
are dead I mean to publish them all. It will make my fortune and
destroy your reputation." After this Tennyson was heard to murmur,
"Beast!" It must have been a real pleasure to him to find himself
survive his brother poet.

'On the same evening I heard a story (probably a well-known one, but
certainly good) of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon's body; how the
Government of the day wrote to the Duke to tell him they had agreed to
let the French transport the corpse from St. Helena, the Duke being in
Opposition at the time; how the answer ran: "F.-M. the Duke of
Wellington presents his compliments to H.M.'s Ministers. If they wish
to know F.-M. the Duke of Wellington's opinion as on a matter of
public policy, he must decline to give one. If, however, they wish
only to consult him as a private individual, F.-M. the Duke of
Wellington has no hesitation in saying that he does not care one
twopenny damn what becomes of the ashes of Napoleon Buonaparte."'

Sir Charles had always many friends among artists, and his weekly visit to
the National Gallery was rarely intermitted by him even when in office. To
the end of his life he maintained the habit of going there whenever he
could make time, and always inspecting each new purchase. He kept in
touch, too, regularly with the art of his own day, and records his sight
of the first exhibition in the still unfinished Grosvenor Gallery. The
exhibition did not please him as a whole, though he admired not only
Burne-Jones's "Days of Creation," but a picture called "Passing Days,"
also allegorical, the work of Burne-Jones's disciple, Mr. Strudwick. His
taste in art was always personal; Velasquez, the painters' painter, made
no appeal to him. He worshipped Perugino and Bellini, rating "The Doge"
among the masterpieces of the world; while Raphael had for him degenerated
from his master's (Perugino's) perfection into mere expressionless beauty.
His appreciations were made with great force and originality, and an old
Academician who had accompanied him round galleries once said to the
second Lady Dilke (herself a most authoritative judge of painting): "It is
always interesting to see what a man like that will admire."

Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Charles's frequent guest at 76, Sloane Street, was
usually his companion in picture-seeing. It is also recorded that in the
spring of this year Dilke took his friend, 'at an unearthly hour for one
of his lazy habits,' to see the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race.

In the matter of music his preferences were no less emphatic, as witness
this entry:

'On May 29th I dined with a sister of Edward Levy Lawson, married to a
German who was Rubinstein's great friend; and not only Rubinstein, but
Joachim, played to the guests. Mrs. Bourke, a sister-in-law of Lord
Mayo, was always asked everywhere in London where Joachim was meant to
play, inasmuch as she was his favourite accompanist among amateurs.
The modesty of the great man led him after dinner, once when I was
dining with the Mitfords, when he knew that his time had come, to turn
to Mrs. Bourke, who was famous only as shining in his reflected light,
and say: "Mrs. Bourke, won't you play us something, and I will just
come in with my fiddle?" Rubinstein's playing I never liked. To me he
seemed only the most violent of all the piano-bangers of the world;
but he was literally worshipped by his admirers, and was grand to look
at--as fine as Beethoven must have been.'

Early in March of this year occurred the death of George Odger. The
working class of London decided to show their great respect by giving him
such a funeral ceremony as is rare in England, and Sir Charles walked
bareheaded through the streets with the great procession that accompanied
the body from the house in High Street, St. Giles's, all the long miles to
Brompton Cemetery.

A shrewd observer of Parliaments wrote of Sir Charles at this time:

"There is no more popular man in the House of Commons than he who
seven years ago" (it was only five) "was hooted and howled at, and was
for many succeeding months the mark of contumely and scorn in all
well-conducted journals."

On this statement Sir Charles's diary affords a commentary:

'At this time (April, 1877) there occurred some discussion between
Chamberlain and me as to what should be our attitude in the event of
the formation of a Liberal Government, and he was willing to accept
office other than Cabinet office, provided that it was office such as
to give him the representation of his department in the House of
Commons. Chamberlain and I found that we could exercise much power
through the Executive Committee of the Liberal Central Association,
which was a new body which at this time managed the whole of the
electoral affairs of the party. It comprised the two Whips _ex-
officio_--the Right Hon. W. P. Adam, and Lord Kensington; and among
the other seven members, Chamberlain and I represented the Radicals,
and communicated with the union of Liberal associations commonly known
as the Birmingham Caucus. Of the others Waddy was there to represent
the Methodists; C. C. Cotes [Footnote: M.P. for Shrewsbury. He was a
Lord of the Treasury and one of the Whips in Mr. Gladstone's second
Government.] and Sir Henry James were there chiefly as amateur whips
fond of electoral work; Lord Frederick Cavendish, to represent his
brother, the leader of the party; and Whitbread, to strengthen the
Whig influence.'

Sir Charles notes here that on June 29th, when he was to second, as usual,
Mr. Trevelyan's annual motion concerning franchise and redistribution, he

'had a conference with Chamberlain on the question whether we could
possibly get together a small knot of young peers to help us in the
House of Lords. Rosebery seemed the only one that we could find worth
thinking of, and we had him to dinner, and went to stay with him, and
generally tried to join forces, but without any very marked effect.'

Dilke and Chamberlain also sounded the Home Rulers to see if they could
find any basis of co-operation; and about this date Sir Charles, with Lord
and Lady Francis Conyngham and Butt, and 'in their sitting-room, full of
perennial clouds of smoke,' where a captive nightingale sang ('thinking
the gas the moon unless he took Butt's face for that luminary of the
heavens'), settled with the Irish leader that in following years they
should amend Mr. Trevelyan's franchise resolution by moving for the
extension of the franchise in counties throughout the United Kingdom; not
even Radicals had previously proposed to enlarge the electorate in
Ireland.

But in these days the Irish party were beginning to apply and develop that
use of Parliamentary forms for obstructive purposes which had been first
systematically attempted by the "Colonels" in opposition to Mr. Cardwell's
Bill for abolishing purchase in the Army, and Liberals were a little
scandalized by their allies. In the close of July Sir John Lubbock, then a
Liberal, 'foreshadowed his future Unionism by observing that "the
obstructive Irish were the Bashi Bazouks, who did more harm to us by their
atrocities than good by their fighting."' A couple of days later, when
Liberals supported an Irish amendment, Dilke himself agreed with Mr.
Rylands's pun that "they would have had a bigger vote if it hadn't been
Biggar." Upon this matter Sir Charles's attitude was naturally affected by
that of Butt, in whose company he delighted. The great advocate believed
in his own power to effect by eloquence and reasoned argument that change
of mind in the British House of Commons which five-and-twenty years'
experience of Ireland had wrought in himself since the days when he
opposed O'Connell on Repeal, and this led him to resent the methods of
unreason. Mr. Parnell, who never believed that England was open to reason
in the matter of Ireland, was only beginning to impress his personality on
the House; there is but one incidental mention of his name in the Memoir
for 1877.

But notwithstanding all the claims of home politics, in Sir Charles's
judgment every statesman had, under existing conditions, to study the
details of modern warfare, and he kept closely in touch with naval
armament:

'On February 24th I suddenly went down to Portsmouth to go over the
dockyard and see the ships building there, taking letters from
Childers and from Sir Edward Reed to Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock,
the Arctic explorer (Superintendent), and to Mr. Robinson, the Chief
Constructor. I went over the _Inflexible_, the _Thunderer_, and the
_Glatton_, which were lighted up for me. Noting the number of sets of
engines, and the number of the separate watertight compartments of the
_Inflexible_, I wrote: "All these extremely complicated arrangements
are handed over to a captain, of whom ... is a favourable example, and
to engineers who are denied their due rank in command."'

Nearly thirty years later the necessary reform which the last words
indicate was carried out by Lord Fisher.

CHAPTER XVI

THE EASTERN QUESTION--TREATY OF SAN STEFANO AND CONGRESS OF BERLIN

At the beginning of 1878 Parliament was summoned a month earlier than
usual to tranquillize public feeling--a result not thereby attained, for
the Russians, now completely victorious, were but a short distance from
Constantinople.

Sir Charles returned from Toulon, 'breakfasting with Gambetta on the 14th
January,' and on the 15th delivered to his constituents the speech already
quoted, which gave a summary of the events leading up to the war, his
judgment of the facts as they existed at the time of his speaking being
that the Government's whole policy was "isolated, undignified,
inconsistent, unsafe." [Footnote: See p. 205]

"We stand alone, absolutely alone, in face of terms of peace which we
dislike, but can't resist. Turkey is crushed, about whose integrity
the Tory party raved. Russian influence will have risen and English
influence fallen in the East. Greece, the anti-Russian friend of
England, is not to gain. Servia and Montenegro, the tools of Russia,
are to be rewarded. Bulgaria is to owe its freedom, not to Europe, but
to Russia."

So much was accomplished fact. It had still to be decided how much farther
Russia should be allowed to push her advantage. Upon this he said,
speaking "as a European Liberal,"

'I agree with what the first Napoleon said, in those St. Helena days
when he was acting Liberalism for the benefit of his historic
character and of his line, that "it is necessary to set up a
guaranteed kingdom, formed of Constantinople and its provinces, to
serve as a barrier against Russia." The open question for discussion
is whether the present Turkey serves the purpose....

'Were the choice between Russia at Constantinople and Turkey at
Constantinople, I should prefer the latter. The Turkish is in ordinary
times a less stifling despotism than the Russian....

'The Turks let any man go to any church and read any book, the
Russians do not, and in such a position of power as Constantinople I
should prefer the Turk if, as I do not think, the choice lay only
there.'

Where else, then, did the choice lie? The answer is that Dilke, in his own
words, "dreamed of a new Greece." He spoke of the lands then blighted by
the Sultan's Government--of "rose-clad Roumelia and glorious Crete"--of
countries held back by Turkish incompetence, that were by Nature
incredibly rich--"the choicest parts of Europe, perhaps of the world."

"The Greek kingdom is a failure, we are told. Greece, liberated by the
wise foresight of Mr. Canning, but left, on his ill-timed death,
without Thessaly, Epirus, Crete, has been starved and shorn by the
Great Powers. As once said Lafayette, "the greater part of Greece was
left out of Greece." What kind of Greece is a Greece which does not
include Lemnos, Lesbos, or Mitylene, Chios, Mount Olympus, Mount Ossa,
and Mount Athos? Not only the larger part, but the most Greek part of
Greece, was omitted from the Hellenic kingdom. Crete and the other
islands, the coast of Thrace, and the Greek colony at Constantinople,
are the Greek Greece indeed, for Continental Greece within the limits
of the kingdom is by race half Slav and half Albanian. We must not,
however, attach too much importance to this fact, for in all times the
Greeks have been a little people, grafting themselves on to various
barbaric stocks. Race is a small thing by the side of national spirit,
and in national spirit the Greeks are as little Slav as the Italians
are Teutonic. Even the corrupting influence of long slavery--and it
was deep indeed--had not touched this spirit, and the very thieves and
robbers of the hills of Greece made for themselves in Byron's days a
glorious name in history. I do not think that Greece has failed. I
believe in Greece, believe In the ultimate replacement of the Turkish
State by powerful and progressive Greece, attached in friendship to
France and England, her creators--an outpost of Western Europe in the
East; and I think the day will come when even Homer's city may once
more be Greek. Those who do not wish to see Slavonic claims pushed
much farther than justice needs should speak their word on behalf of
Greece."

From this ideal he never swerved, and the authority which he possessed in
European politics helped to keep it present before the mind of Europe.
Greece knew her friend, and after his death the Municipality of Athens
gave his name--_hodos Dilke_--to a fine street in the true mother city of
Hellas. [Footnote: "The name of Sir Charles Dilke is more highly prized in
Greece than that of any living Englishman," wrote M. Zinopoulos, General
Secretary to the Ministry of the Interior in Greece. "This feeling still
survived in 1887, when we went to Athens," adds Sir Charles's note.] He
never lived to see Hellenic government extend itself over Turkish fiefs,
except in that poor strip of northern territory which, thanks greatly to
his exertions, was secured for Greece in 1881. But before this memorial of
him could be completed, while those who worked on it were still searching
among his papers to reconstitute the projects he had shaped, came the
realization of some of his premonitions, and the end of Turkish sway in
"the most Greek parts of Greece."