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

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'Two days after my speech, on September 6th, I learnt that the Greek
Government had decided to recognize the insurgent Debt of 1824. People
often talk of the possibilities of Ministers speculating on the Stock
Exchange on secret information. It is a curious and perhaps an
interesting fact that during the more than five years that I was in
office I do not think that any official information came into my hands
the possession of which would have enabled any Minister to make money
on the Stock Exchange, although a private secretary was charged with
the offence during those years--most unjustly charged. On the other
hand, it is the case that on at least two occasions when I was a
private member of Parliament, before I had held office, I had secret
information of a certain kind upon which I might have speculated, and
which very probably was given me with the intention that I should do
so. This was one of the two occasions. The other was my knowledge of
the financial intervention in Egypt before it took place. [Footnote:
He knew this from something said to him by Nubar Pasha.]

'The Greek information of September 6th reached me in Paris, whither I
had gone on the day after my speech, and to which I was followed by
very favourable criticism upon it. Gambetta, with whom I breakfasted
on the 6th, told me that Lord Salisbury, who had been in Paris, had
come there with a view to reopen the Egyptian question, but had not
received encouragement.

'On Thursday, September 12th, I breakfasted with Gambetta in the
country, he coming to fetch me at the Grand Hotel, and driving me down
in a victoria. We talked partly of Egypt, partly of people.'

That autumn Sir Charles spent in the South of France, still working on his
History. [Footnote: _History of the Nineteenth Century_. See Chapter XI.,
p. 154; also Chapter LX. (Vol. II., p. 537).] His son, then four years
old, used to be with him at La Sainte Campagne, Cap Brun, his house near
Toulon. In November a new crisis arose. 'There seemed a chance of war with
Russia about the Afghan complications,' and Sir Charles proposed to his
brother Ashton that, 'in the event of Russia's entry on the war, he should
bring out a daily halfpenny noonday paper, to give, on a small sheet, news
only, and not opinions. At that time evening papers could not be bought
till four o'clock, and the idea was discussed between us until it became
clear that we were only going to fight Afghans, and not Russians.'

The situation was serious enough to demand an autumn Session, because the
beginnings of the war were directly connected with Russian action. After
the Queen had assumed her new title of Empress of India, Lord Lytton was
instructed to propose a Mission to the Amir. But the Amir, who had
previously declined to admit surveying parties of British officers, now
refused this. In the spring of 1878, when war threatened between England
and Russia, the Russian Government also proposed an Embassy to Kabul, and
although they likewise met with a refusal, the Mission was despatched and
reached Kabul.

The Indian Government now saw themselves under a slight; Russia's Mission
had been received, theirs had been refused entrance. Peremptorily they
renewed their request. No answer was returned; the Mission set out, and
was stopped by armed force. Declaration of war followed, and by November
20th British troops had crossed the frontier. Invasion of Afghanistan was
in full progress when Parliament assembled.

Sir Charles saw Gambetta on December 3rd, and returned to England, and by
the 4th was discussing at the Radical Club the course to be taken on the
Address. In his travels he had visited the north-west frontier of India.
It was settled that he should speak, but, as he notes, the debate in the
Commons 'was swamped by that in the Lords,' and, further, 'I found myself
once again in a difficulty on the Afghan question, as I had been on the
Eastern Question, that of not agreeing with either side.'

Lord Hartington, as usual, had been prompt in the assurance of patriotic
support for a Government actually engaged in war; Mr. Gladstone was
passionate in denunciation of the war itself. Between these poles Sir
Charles had to steer, and the pith of his speech was a charge against the
Government that they were punishing the Afghans for having submitted to a
violent act of aggression perpetrated by Russia.

'On Tuesday, December 10th, I spoke in the debate, doing my best to
calm down a revolt which had broken out below the gangway against
Hartington for not having countenanced an amendment to the Address,
and for having made on the Address a speech supposed to be too
friendly to the Government.

'On the other hand, Edward Jenkins, [Footnote: Author of _Ginx's
Baby_.] who called himself a Radical, and who was a strong
Imperialist, was busy drawing amendments which were mere pretexts for
voting with the Government, and I noted in my diary my despair at
finding such men blaming Hartington for going too far, when
Chamberlain was blaming him for not going far enough. While I was
speaking on the 10th Wilfrid Lawson passed to me his copy of the
Orders of the Day, bearing at the head the lines:

'"Lord Salisbury once was the 'master of jeers,
But now he has met with disaster;
For, on reading the Blue Book, it plainly appears
That Giers is Lord Salisbury's master."

The lines were excellent, and I burst out laughing in the middle of my
speech. Giers was the new Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and
the phrase quoted in Lawson's first line was, of course, an abridgment
of Mr. Disraeli's memorable quotation from Shakespeare about his
colleague, and the four lines formed a summary of my speech....
[Footnote: On August 5th, 1874, Disraeli, speaking in the debate on
the Lords' disagreement to certain amendments made by the House of
Commons in the Public Worship Regulation Bill, had described Lord
Salisbury as "a great master of gibes and flouts and jeers."] It came
out clearly in these debates that Northcote had not expected war, and
that Lord Lytton had acted directly under the instructions of the
Prime Minister, and had not only expected, but intended it. I called
Lord Lytton in my speech "a diplomatist rather than a Viceroy, a
Secretary of Legation rather than a ruler of men." This was not
intended for abuse, but to bring the House to see him as I had seen
him in my knowledge of him as Secretary at Paris, in order to show
that he had been sent out to India to be an instrument--obedient to a
policy dictated to him from home.' [Footnote: Sir Charles had been
staying with the Commander-in-Chief at Madras, General Haines,
afterwards Field-Marshal, in January, 1876, when the news came of Lord
Lytton's appointment as Governor-General. 'The old soldier absolutely
refused to credit the information, being a strong Conservative, and
unwilling to admit that Mr. Disraeli could have been guilty of so
extraordinary a mistake.']

This Afghan War, so lightly begun, and fraught with so much disaster, was
the first of a series of events which sapped the credit of the Government
that had triumphantly claimed to bring back "peace with honour" from the
Congress of Berlin.

Some intimate aspects of that gathering are preserved in Sir Charles's
account of a dinner-party at Sir William Harcourt's house on December
11th, the guests including the Russian Ambassador, who had been one of the
plenipotentiaries.

'Schouvalof was very funny. He gave us a fancy picture of the whole
Congress of Berlin. He described almost every member of the Congress,
standing up at the table speaking English when he did Lord
Beaconsfield, and mimicking the Prime Minister's grave manner, with
absurdly comical effect. At last he came to Lord Salisbury, who,
according to him, spoke bad French. He made Lord Salisbury coin an
extraordinary phrase, at which he himself (Schouvalof), all the
Frenchmen, and Gortschakof, shrugged their shoulders with one accord.
Lord Salisbury turned fiercely round, and asked what was the matter
with it, to which Saint-Vallier replied that "there was nothing the
matter with it except that it was not French." "Not French?" said Lord
Salisbury, and rang the electric bell by the button in front of him,
and when the door was opened, holding up his hand to show the
messenger who had rung, said: "Fetch Mr. Currie." Philip Currie
appeared at the door, bowing deeply, whereon Lord Salisbury read his
phrase to him, and said, "Mr. Currie, is that good French?" to which
Currie replied, "Excellent French, my lord;" whereon Lord Salisbury
turned, said Schouvalof, "to our French colleagues, and said:
'There!'" Schouvalof carried on violent discussions between Lord
Beaconsfield, speaking English, and Gortschakof, speaking French,
about various boundary questions, and brought in Bismarck every minute
or two as a chorus, the Chancellor stalking up and down the room with
his arms folded, and growling in a deep voice: "Eh bien, messieurs,
arrangez-vous; car, si vous ne vous arrangez pas, demain je pars pour
Kissingen." Under this Bismarckian pressure Schouvalof, after making
us shriek for half an hour, brought his Congress to an end.... In a
confidential talk with me afterwards Schouvalof said: "I have known
many rude people, but I never knew anyone so rude as was Bismarck at
the Congress. I happened to name our poor clients, the Montenegrins,
when Bismarck roared at me: "Je ne veux pas entendre parler de ces
gens-la." Schouvalof also said of our relations with the Afghans: "You
don't understand dealing with Orientals. Compare your letters to the
Amir and ours, published in your Blue-Book. We call him the Sun and
Moon, and you call him an 'earthen pipkin.'" This last was an allusion
to the phrase used to the Amir, "an earthen pipkin between two iron
pots," the iron pots being ourselves and Russia.'

II.

Sir Charles Dilke in this year has record of meeting with many interesting
persons, some of them links with a vanishing past, such as the daughter of
Horace Smith, who with his brother wrote _Rejected Addresses_. Miss "Tizy"
Smith was, he says,

'the last survivor of that school of noisy, frolicsome, boisterous old
ladies given to punning and banging people on the back; but she was
very witty, and, for those who had spirits to bear her spirits, most
entertaining. She was for many years known as the "Queen of Brighton,"
but her sway was not despotic.'

In February he

'dined with Lady Waldegrave to meet the Duc de Chartres--no better and
no worse than the other Princes of his house...., not excepting the
Duc d'Aumale, who had, however, the reputation of being brilliant, and
who ... was interesting from his great memory of great men. They all
grew deaf as they grew old, and the Comte de Paris is now (1890)
almost as deaf as the Prince de Joinville, who was put into the navy
in his youth, because, not hearing the big guns, he alone of all the
family was not frightened by them.'

In March, 1878, Gambetta sent to Dilke with an introduction 'Henri Hecht,
who was deep in his secrets, and in the habit from this time forward of
visiting for him Germany as well as England.' Going backwards and forwards
to his house at Toulon, Sir Charles always broke the journey at Paris to
see Gambetta. He writes to Ashton Dilke:

"Gambetta says that he shall say at Grenoble that MacMahon said:
'J'irai jusqu'au bout,' and that he must--_i.e._, he must complete his
term. He won't have him again. 'J'en ai assez d'une fois.'"

At Easter Sir Charles was using his influence with Gambetta on behalf of a
great artist who had been politically compromised in the troubles of 1871
--Dalou the sculptor, who had done to Dilke's commission a copy in has-
relief of Flaxman's "Mercury and Pandora."

'When I was leaving for Paris I had several interviews with Dalou as
to getting him leave to return to France without his asking for it. He
had been sub-curator of the Louvre under the Commune, and had helped
to preserve the collections from destruction; but after he fled the
country he had always refused to ask for leave to return, which, had
he asked, would at once have been granted to him. Gambetta always
insisted, when I spoke to him upon the matter, that Dalou should write
some letter, however private and however personal, to ask for leave to
return; but this was just what Dalou's pride would never let him do,
and although he was willing to ask me verbally, and even to refer to
the matter in a private letter to myself, he never would write about
it to anyone in France. Dalou was afterwards selected to make the
official statues of the Republic, and may be said to have become,
after the general amnesty, Sculptor-in-Ordinary to the Government of
France.'

There is a story of Count Beust's difficulties when the Empress of Austria
suddenly asked herself to dine with him at the Austrian Embassy at six on
Sunday, at twenty-four hours' notice. Beust's cook was out of town; but
worse was the difficulty of finding guests of adequate importance. The
Prince of Wales had a dinner-party of his own at Marlborough House, so
recourse was had to another Royal couple, the Duke and Duchess of Teck.
They were engaged to the Marlborough House dinner, but suggested a heroic
expedient. "Why not dine with you at six, and go on at a quarter-past
eight and dine again!" So it was settled.

An eccentric dinner took place at 76, Sloane Street, when the Maharajah of
Johore returned the visit which Sir Charles had paid him in his States
near Singapore. Lord Randolph Churchill and other people interested in
India were among the guests, and the Maharajah brought his own cook, who
prepared enough for all, so that the guests had their choice of two menus.
The host took the Maharajah's, 'which was good but rich,' and 'suffered,
as did all who ate his garlics and his grease.'

'On March 21st I breakfasted with Lord Granville to meet Lord Lyons,
there being also there Lord Ripon, Lord Acton (a man of great learning
and much charm), Lord Carlingford (Chichester Fortescue that had
been), Grant Duff, Sir Thomas Wade (the great Chinese scholar, and
afterwards Professor of Chinese at Cambridge), Lefevre, Meredith
Townsend of the _Spectator_, old Charles Howard, and "old White,"
roaring with that terrible roar which seems almost necessary to go
with his appearance. I have known two men, both in the Foreign Office
service, that looked like bears--Lord Tenterden, [Footnote: Permanent
Under-Secretary of State, afterwards Dilke's colleague at the Foreign
Office.] a little black graminivorous European bear, and "old White,"
a polar bear if ever I saw one, always ready to hug his enemies or his
friends, and always roaring so as to shake the foundations of your
house. "Lord Lyons," I noted in my diary, "does not make any mark in
private, but that may be because he does his duty and holds his
tongue. The diplomatists who talk delightfully, like Odo Russell, are
perhaps not the best models of diplomacy." But White afterwards made a
great Ambassador.

'On March 3rd Goschen dined with me, asked by me to meet "Brett,
Hartington's new secretary"' (now Lord Esher). 'Reginald Brett was,
and is, an extremely pleasant fellow, and he was the ablest secretary,
except Edward Hamilton, that I ever came across; but he was far from
being a model secretary, because ... he always behaved as if he held
delegated authority from Hartington to represent Hartington's
conscience when it would not otherwise have moved, and "Hartington's
opinion" when the chief had none.... But Brett in all he did had
public ends in view....

'On July 30th I dined at a dinner given by a lion-hunter who managed
to get together some remarkable and some pleasant people--Cardinal
Manning, Ruskin, Greenwood, and Borthwick. But whether it was the
influence of the host, or whether it was because Manning did not like
his company except me, and Ruskin did not like his company at all, the
dinner was a failure. No one talked but Ruskin, and he prosed, and his
prose of speech was not his prose of pen. Manning wished to see me
about some education matter, and I called on him on August 2nd, and
from that time forward saw a good deal of the Cardinal.'

Next came members of what was to be the Fourth Party, although then
'isolated individuals.' In February Sir Charles had a long talk with Sir
Henry Drummond Wolff, and 'found him holding very different views upon
foreign affairs from those which afterwards united him with his future
leader. In fact, he had nothing at this moment in common with Lord
Randolph except a personal detestation of Lord Derby.'

Sir John Gorst had acted with Sir Charles to preserve the rights of native
races, especially the Maories; and thus a friendship had grown up, in
which Dilke was anxious to include Mr. Chamberlain.

'On July 26th Chamberlain dined with me to meet Richard Power, the new
Irish Whip, and Gorst, the latter soon afterwards to join with
Randolph Churchill in the formation of the memorable Fourth Party, and
to be known as "Randolph's Attorney-General." Many years afterwards,
when Randolph Churchill had quarrelled with Gorst, and the Fourth
Party had finally gone to pieces, Lord Randolph said to me: "Gorst was
the best adviser I ever had. I often failed to follow his advice, and
have always regretted not following it." When the Fourth Party was
first formed, he advised that we should sit immediately behind the
leaders--I with my knees in Northcote's back. I overruled him, and we
sat below the gangway; but he was right. We should have done far more
execution if I had been nearer to "the Goat." Lord Randolph never
alluded to Sir Stafford Northcote except by this playful appellation,
based upon the long, straggling, yellow-white beard of the
Conservative Chief. When he was in good humour the Fourth Party leader
alluded to the Conservative leader as "the goat"; but when angry as
"the old goat," and often with many of those disrespectful adjectives
in which in private conversation he delighted.

'At dinner at the Harcourts' on August 10th, Arthur Balfour present:
... I am the greatest of admirers of his "charm."'

Ireland, which makes or breaks politicians, made Mr. A. J. Balfour. Here
is some detail of one of the men whom Ireland broke. Towards the end of
the Session came to Sir Charles a letter from the Duchess of Manchester at
Aix-les-Bains:

"Please back up Mr. Forster. I think he is quite right. Fancy, to be
chosen and proposed by a Committee, adopted by 300 idiots or geniuses,
and to have to submit, when you can stand on your own merits."

'A German Conservative Duchess was not likely to be able to understand
the Caucus. Forster was her friend, going and sitting with her almost
every day, and chuckling over her politics with his extraordinary
chuckle, and playing cards with her at night. To his card-playing,
indeed, he ultimately owed his life, for the Invincibles in Dublin
used to wait for him night after night outside his club to murder him
(as afterwards came out in the Phoenix Park trial), and, tired out
with waiting, at last fancy that he must have gone home. Forster was
at this moment at loggerheads with his Bradford constituents, and
hence the letter of the Duchess; but I did not "back up" Forster,
being myself an absolute believer in the wisdom of the Caucus system.
I had, indeed, invented a Caucus in Chelsea before the first
Birmingham Election Association was started.'

Sir Charles left for Paris, and--

'on September 6th I met Emile Ollivier, who said that there had never
been in France a personal power equal to that of Gambetta at this
moment; even that of Napoleon, when First Consul, was not so great.
Then the Bourbons were dimly seen behind. "Now there is nothing
behind; nothing except Clericalism, and Clericalism can be bought."

'Ollivier I found still full of burning hatred for the Empress, but he
had forgiven Rouher and the Emperor for making him the scapegoat. I
discussed with him once more the origin of the war of 1870, and he
maintained most stoutly that France had been driven into it by
Bismarck, and had only put herself in the wrong by herself declaring
war, and had done this because her army system gave her a fortnight's
start, the advantage of which was lost through the Emperor's
hesitations. He thinks that in that fortnight the German Army could
have been destroyed. It is on this point that he is wrong.'

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ZULU WAR AND THE GREEK COMMITTEE

The chronicle of the year 1879 begins with a visit paid by Sir Charles to
Paris on his way back from his house near Toulon, to which he had returned
after the brief Session of December, On February 2nd 'I breakfasted with
Gambetta. His furniture was being packed up for removal to the Palais
Bourbon, where he was about to take up residence as President of the
Chamber,' and 'saw him again late at night at the office of his paper'
(_La Republique Francaise_). 'Gambetta was then,' says a note added later,
'at the height of his power, and, in fact, Dictator. He was a patriot, but
too big for the Republic.'

'On my return to London I found that Chamberlain was most anxious to see
me,' and on February 5th Sir Charles went to Birmingham, to discuss their
joint line of action in the coming Session. During this visit 'Chamberlain
told me of Lord Beaconsfield's pleasant prophecies with regard to myself,
of which I heard from all sides just after this time.'

The "pleasant prophecies" declared that Sir Charles would certainly be
Prime Minister. Mr. Gladstone, it will be seen later, came to the
conclusion in 1882 that Dilke would be his natural successor in the House
of Commons; but this opinion was given only a little in advance of a
widely received public estimate, and it came after the test of office had
proved those qualities which Lord Beaconsfield discerned while the younger
statesman was still only a private member of the Opposition, not promoted
to the Front Bench.

But no one, even in 1879, doubted that Sir Charles was of Front Bench
rank; and close upon this came a decisive opportunity in Parliament.

Trouble, which threatened to become acute, between the Zulu power under
Cetewayo and his encroaching Boer neighbours had led the British
Government to carry out the annexation of the Transvaal during the course
of 1877. The Zulus were inclined to trust the British more than the Dutch;
but the advent of Sir Bartle Frere as High Commissioner put a new
complexion on matters. Frere had made up his mind that the Zulu power must
be broken, and a pretext was soon found in a demand for the abolition of
the Zulu military system. This ultimatum was presented on December 11th,
1878, by Frere, of his own motion, and without warning to the Home
Government. The inevitable refusal followed, leading to invasion of the
Zulu territory, with disastrous result. On January 23rd, 1879, Lord
Chelmsford's force was cut to pieces at Isandhlwana; and it seemed
possible that the whole colony of Natal might be overrun by Zulu _impis_.

This was the governing factor of the political situation at the moment
when Parliament reopened in 1879. Sir Charles had not previously taken a
prominent part in the discussion of South African affairs, and his
attitude is indicated only by isolated passages in the Memoir.

In 1875, when Lord Carnarvon sent J. A. Froude to 'stump South Africa' in
advocacy of a scheme of federation devised in Downing Street, Sir Charles
condemned a mission which seemed to him to cast a slur on the local
Colonial governments. In his opinion, this mission helped to create those
disturbances which rent South Africa in the succeeding years. On May 27th,
1877, he noted that the Blue Book on the Transvaal, then published, was
'an indictment of the Republic intended to justify the annexation,' but
that it did not 'show the existence of any overwhelming necessity for
annexation, or, indeed, any necessity at all.' Yet he gave only a half-
hearted support to Mr. Courtney's opposition to the South Africa Bill when
those matters were debated in the House, for, as he wrote in a letter to
the _Spectator_, he was opposed, "not to the policy of annexation, which,
as leading up to confederation," he supported, "but to the manner in which
that annexation had been carried out." It was said to have been done by
the desire of the Dutch themselves. If so, why were three battalions of
British troops still needed in the Transvaal? The Bill did not establish a
self-governing federation; it only provided that federation might be
established by an Order in Council. What guarantee had the Dutch, he
asked, that such an order would ever be issued?