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

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'I should like to talk to the most romantic character of our time, but
I fear it is only vulgar curiosity, for I really know a great deal
more already about him than I could find out in conversation.'

The curiosity had been sharpened by the publication of _Endymion_, for Sir
Charles thought that in devising the story of Endymion Ferrars Lord
Beaconsfield had taken a general suggestion from the career of the Radical
who, like Endymion, had made his debut as Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs; and the novelist admitted the debt.

The meeting took place on Sunday, January 30th, at Lady Lonsdale's house.

'Wolff, Chaplin and Lady Florence, Hartington, the Duchess of
Manchester, Lord and Lady Hamilton, and Captain and Lady Rosamond
Fellowes (Randolph Churchill's sister) were there. Arthur Balfour and
the Randolph Churchills came in after dinner. Lord Beaconsfield told
me that he had been very anxious to meet me, since he had taken the
liberty of writing about me without my leave in his novel _Endymion_,
and that he thought we wore never destined to meet, for he had twice
asked Alfred de Rothschild to invite me, and that I had not "been" on
those two or on a third occasion which he had made. He was, as usual,
over-complimentary and over-anxious to captivate, but was certainly
most pleasant. He praised my grandfather, a sure way to my heart, and
said that my grandfather and his own father were "the last two men in
England who had a thorough knowledge of English letters." The talk at
dinner was dull, in spite of Wolff's attempts to enliven it, but
Arthur Balfour and the Randolph Churchills brightened it afterwards,
and Dizzy said a good many rather good things--as, for example, that
he should like to get married again for the purpose of comparing the
presents that he would get from his friends with the beggarly ones
that he had got when he had married. Also that he "objects to the
rigid bounds of honeymoons as an arbitrary attempt to limit
illimitable happiness." I thought him very polite and pretty in all
his ways and in all he said.'

On Sunday evening, February 20th, Sir Charles dined with Mr. Alfred de
Rothschild to meet the Prince of Wales;

'but was more pleased with again meeting Lord Beaconsfield.'...

'After dinner I was next him. When he was offered a cigar, he said:
"You English once had a great man who discovered tobacco, on which you
English now live, and potatoes, on which your Irish live, and you cut
off his head." This foreign point of view of Sir Walter Raleigh was
extremely comical, I think.'

Finally there is this entry:

'Having made no note in my diary, I cannot tell if it was on Sunday,
April 3rd, or on Sunday, March 27th, that Lord Barrington met Edmond
Fitzmaurice and me in Curzon Street, where Lord Beaconsfield's house
was, and said: "Come in and see him; he's ill, but would like to see
you." He was on a couch in the back drawing-room, in which he died, I
think, on April 19th. There was a bronchitis kettle on the hob, and
his breathing was difficult, but he was still the old Disraeli, and,
though I think that he knew that he was dying, yet his pleasant
spitefulness about "Mr. G." was not abated. He meant to die game.'

Lord Beaconsfield made no secret of his liking for Sir Charles, but is
said to have doubted the permanency of his Radicalism. "The sort of man
who will die a Conservative peer," is said to have been his commentary
after their first meeting, echoing an idea then widespread in the
fashionable world, that of the two men so often compared, Sir Charles
would gravitate towards the opinions of the _Times_, leaving his colleague
'to the unassisted championship of democratic rights.'

To the greatest of all European statesmen Dilke did not at this time
become known; but Bismarck watched his career, and in the early part of
this year, after the Prince of Wales's visit to Berlin,

'On March 16th Arthur Ellis, who had been with the Prince at Berlin,
came to me from the Prince to say that the Prince had had much talk
with Lord Ampthill (Odo Russell) about me. Our Ambassador was most
anxious that I should visit Berlin, and thought that I could do much
then with Bismarck, and usefully remove prejudices about myself at the
Court. Ellis was the bearer of an invitation from the Embassy for me
to stay there, and of a message that Bismarck much wished to make my
acquaintance.'

There was no doubt as to the attractiveness of the invitation, but it was
at once ruled out on public grounds.

'The visit, however, would give rise to much speculation in the Press,
and would also make the Queen angry and Mr. Gladstone most uneasy.
"But," I added in my diary, "if we want to stop the French from going
to Tunis, there is a safe and easy way to do it--_i.e.,_ let me go to
Berlin for one day and see Bismarck and talk about the weather, and
then to Rome for one hour and see, no one, merely to let the fact get
into the newspapers."'

In December

'Dufferin wrote to me from Paris: "The Sultan is besotted with the
notion of a German alliance against France, and of obtaining the
assistance of Germany in freeing himself from foreign control in
Asia."'

On New Year's Day, 1882, Sir Charles, while accompanying Lord Lyons on his
round of official New Year visits, saw a despatch from Lord Odo Russell.
[Footnote: Ambassador at Berlin.] In it Bismarck described his attitude
towards the Turks, who had "asked him for protection against their
protectors, who, with the sole exception of Germany, in their opinion,
wanted 'to cut slices out of their skin.'" Bismarck had assured the Turks
that he should never attack France unless seriously threatened by France,
and would never in any circumstances "fire a cartridge for Turkey."

In the course of the summer of 1881 Sir Charles had become acquainted with
a great personage in whom Bismarck always saw an enemy of his policy, and
in so far as it was hostile to France the Memoir bears out his judgment.

'On July 13th the Prince of Wales introduced me to his sister, the
Crown Princess of Germany. [Footnote: Though this was Sir Charles's
first meeting with the Crown Princess, she had at the time of his
father's death 'telegraphed her condolences to me at St. Petersburg,
and to the Embassy, asking them to call on me and help me in the
matter.'] She talked to me at length in the most friendly way with
regard to France and Gambetta. She told me that she had been secretly
to Cherbourg to hear Gambetta's famous speech, which he himself called
"the first glass of wine administered to the convalescent." But she
added that she stood absolutely alone in Germany in her pro-French
opinions.

'The Crown Princess seemed very able, but inclined to sacrifice
anything in order to produce an effect. I was afterwards sent for by
them, and had a long talk in what are called the Belgian Rooms at the
back of Buckingham Palace, on the gardens.

'On Monday, August 22nd, I called at Buckingham Palace by the wish of
the Crown Prince, and saw him and the Crown Princess together. I
thought him a dull, heavy German, and noted in my diary: "He dare not
speak before he sees that she approves of his speaking." But he was a
nice-minded, kind, and even pleasant man in his way.'

Sir Charles's formal summing-up of his impressions is to be found in his
work on _The Present Position of European Politics_ (1887):

"It is no secret that at times the Crown Princess has been unfriendly
to Prince Bismarck. They are perhaps two personalities too strong to
coexist easily in the same Court.... The Crown Prince, it must be
admitted, intellectually speaking, is, largely by his own will, the
Crown Princess. But that most able lady, when she shares the German
throne, must inevitably have for her policy the Bismarck policy--the
strength and glory of the German Empire."

Sir Charles notes that, although he was hard-worked in Parliament and in
the Office, the peculiar nature of the Foreign Office work brought him
necessarily a good deal into contact with royal personages and foreigners
of distinction visiting London, and forced him 'to go out a good deal and
burn the candle at both ends.' Of these official gaieties he gives no very
grateful impression:

'Some of the parties to which the Prince of Wales virtually insisted
that I should go were curious; the oddest of them a supper which he
directed to be given on July 1st, 1881, for Sarah Bernhardt, at the
wish of the Duc d'Aumale, and at which all the other ladies present
were English ladies who had been invited at the distinct request of
the Prince of Wales. It was one thing to get them to go, and another
thing to get them to talk when they were there; and the result was
that, as they would not talk to Sarah Bernhardt and she would not talk
to them, and as the Duc d'Aumale was deaf and disinclined to make
conversation on his own account, nobody talked at all, and an absolute
reign of the most dismal silence ensued....

'On March 13th we had received news of the murder of the Emperor of
Russia; and when Lord Granville came to dinner with me (for he dined
with me that night to meet the French Ambassador), he told me that I
must attend in the morning at a Mass at the Russian Chapel, and attend
in uniform. I had two of these Masses at the Russian Chapel in a short
time, one for the Emperor and one for the Empress, and painful
ceremonies they were, as we had to stand packed like herrings in a
small room, stifled with incense, wearing heavy uniform, and carrying
lighted tapers in our hands. On this occasion I saw the Prince of
Wales go to sleep standing, his taper gradually turn round and gutter
on the floor.'

Two months later, Friday, May 27th,

'I dined with Lord and Lady Spencer to meet the King of Sweden and the
Gladstones....

'The King talked to me after dinner about the murder of the Emperor of
Russia.... It was clear that the Swedish loathing for Russia on
account of the loss of Finland was not over. The King might, however,
have reflected upon his own popularity in Norway, a country which had
been given to his grandfather because the people used to hate the
Danes. They now hated the Swedes still more.'

A royalty known to Sir Charles by correspondence was King Mtsa of Uganda,
'who had been presented by us in 1880, at the request of the Queen and the
Church Missionary Society, with a Court suit, a trombone, and an Arabic
Bible,' but who relapsed early in 1881, and became again the chief pillar
of the slave trade in his district. Another strange monarch played his
part that year in London society.

'On Sunday, July 10th, Lord Granville wrote to me to ask me to lunch
with him the next day to meet "the King of the Cannibal Islands
[Footnote: Sandwich Islands, in reality.] at 12.55, an admirable
arrangement, as he must go away to Windsor at 1.20." I went, but
unfortunately was not able to clear myself of all responsibility for
Kalakaua so rapidly, for I was directed to show him the House of
Commons; and when he parted from me in the evening in St. Stephen's
Hall he asked me for a cigar, and on my offering him my case he put
the whole of its contents into his pocket. The Crown Prince of Germany
and the Crown Princess (Princess Royal of England) were in London at
the same time, and at all the parties the three met. The German
Embassy were most indignant that the Prince of Wales had decided that
Kalakaua must go before the Crown Prince. At a party given by Lady
Spencer at the South Kensington Museum, Kalakaua marched along with
the Princess of Wales, the Crown Prince of Germany following humbly
behind; and at the Marlborough House Ball Kalakaua opened the first
quadrille with the Princess of Wales. When the Germans remonstrated
with the Prince, he replied, "Either the brute is a King or else he is
an ordinary black nigger, and if he is not a King, why is he here at
all?" which made further discussion impossible. Kalakaua, however,
having only about 40,000 nominal subjects, most of them American
citizens who got up a revolution every time he went away, his kingship
was very slight.'

May 20th:

'At this Cabinet a curious matter came up, though not for decision.
The Cabinet had been intending to give the commission for the public
statue of Lord Beaconsfield to a British sculptor, and I had been
trying hard to get it for Nelson Maclean; but a communication from the
Queen settled the matter, she absolutely insisting that Boehm should
do the statue. Everybody felt that it was wrong that she should
interfere, but nobody, of course, resisted.'

On May 27th we hear that the Queen, having received

'warning in an anonymous letter of threats against her life by
"persons of rank," wrote to Harcourt to say she did not see who could
be meant "unless it were Lord Randolph Churchill"!'

Elsewhere Sir Charles noted:

'The only subjects upon which the Prince of Wales agreed with any
Liberals were (1) detestation of Randolph Churchill; (2) the
government of London. But then, as I personally, although assailed by
Randolph Churchill and not then on speaking terms in consequence, did
not dislike him, there remained only the government of London, and the
topic became well worn between us, for we had found by experience that
it was the only one upon which we could safely talk.'

III.

One correspondent, the length of whose letters was 'fabulous,' was Sir
Robert Morier, then Minister at Lisbon, 'an old friend.'

'He had more brains than all the other Foreign Office servants put
together (excepting Lord Lyons and 'old White' and Lord Odo Russell),
but, although "impossible" in a small place, he was afterwards a
success at St. Petersburg.... He used to send ultimatums to any weak
Government to which he was despatched, and he used to treat the
Foreign Office almost as badly, for he was the only Minister given to
swearing at the Office in despatches.'

Comment on this is afforded by a note of Lord Granville's to Sir Charles
in 1884, when the Embassy at Constantinople was vacant: "The Turks had
been behaving so badly, we should send Morier, to pay them out." Sir
Charles's respect for his friend's 'immense ability' led to his taking
great trouble in dealing with Sir Robert Morier's difficulties, put before
him in a voluminous correspondence, both private and public, and in return
he received 'a veritable testimonial on February 22nd, 1881: "You have
done the right thing at exactly the right moment, and this is to me so
utterly new a phenomenon in official life that it fills me with admiration
and delight."' He had previously noted a letter in which, describing
himself as "a shipwrecked diplomat on the rocks of Lisbon," Morier wrote:

"To have for once in my life received help, co-operation, and
encouragement in a public work from a man _in the Office_, instead of
the cuffs and snubs I am used to, is so altogether new a sensation
that you must excuse my being gushing."

In an earlier letter of the same year there is complaint of the "utter
absence of co-operation" between the Foreign Office at home and its
servants abroad:

"You who are still a human being and able to see things from the
general home point of view, will be over-weighted by two such
bureaucrats as ---- and ---- ."

Morier's plea for reorganization which should ensure "intercommunion and
intercommunication" was emphasized a few weeks later by

'a letter from White, then our Minister at Bucharest (afterwards our
Ambassador at Constantinople), which concluded with a general grumble
against the Foreign Office:

'"... Servants kept in the dark--thorough darkness--as to proceedings
in the next-door house cannot be profitable servants, and such is,
alas!

'"Yours ever truly,

'"W. A. White.'"

The idea bore fruit in Dilke's mind to this extent, that in

'1890 I was able to give evidence before a Royal Commission in favour
of amalgamating the two services, and the Ridley Commission accepted
my view and recommended the amalgamation. It was not carried out.'

Sir Robert Morier suffered, in his own judgment, more than anyone else
from this lack of intercommunication, and this is probably true because he
was restlessly fertile in suggestions, and when these raised opposition he
turned to Sir Charles for help. Having just concluded the negotiation of a
treaty respecting Goa, he was now pressing hard for another respecting
Lorenco Marques and Delagoa Bay, in which he discerned the future gate of
the Transvaal, and was projecting arrangements with regard to Portuguese
West Africa. In these projects Sir Charles helped him indirectly, as he
did in a larger proposal which the Minister at Lisbon was making.

'Morier's letter contained the draft of a proposed Congo treaty, which
was afterwards put into shape, which I strongly favoured, and which in
1883, after I had left the Foreign Office, was virtually stopped by
the House of Commons. The House and country were wrong, and the
Foreign Office right.' [Footnote: This treaty would have associated
Great Britain with Portugal in maintaining the freedom of the Congo
River and in policing its waters, while it would have established a
joint control of the whole Congo basin by the European Powers which
had subjects settled in that region. Such an agreement would have
altered the course of history in tropical Africa, and the Congo State
would never have come into being. See _Life of Lord Granville_, vol.
ii., pp. 341-354.]

Lord Ripon was Sir Charles's regular Indian correspondent, and a letter
from the Viceroy in this year begs him not to intermit his communications
whenever he could make time to write. To Lord Ripon another correspondent
was now added:

'Grant Duff, having accepted the Governorship of Madras, asked me to
write to him regularly in India, which I promised to do, and did, and
in thanking me he said that my opinions would have interest for him,
since among other things I knew was "that strange wild beast--the
House of Commons." This saying was pathetic from him, for there never
was a man who more utterly failed to understand the House of Commons
than Grant Duff....'

CHAPTER XXVII

DIFFICULTIES OF THE LIBERAL GOVERNMENT

I.

The close of 1881 virtually terminated the protracted negotiations with
France which had occupied most of Sir Charles Dilke's time, and had kept
him for long periods absent from London. In the new year he was more
closely concerned with the general business of the Government, and
especially with its attempts at legislation.

Two important subjects mentioned in the Queen's Speech of 1882 were the
reform of local government in the counties, [Footnote: This was
foreshadowed in a note of November 11th, 1881: 'Local Government (Boards
in all the three kingdoms on a tax-paying basis) will be the chief
measure.'] and the proposed recasting of London's system of government,
which appealed to Sir Charles both as a municipal reformer and as a
metropolitan member. In the previous summer Mr. Gladstone had shown
himself to Dilke as 'very keen' on this latter measure, and proposals to
undertake it were actually put before the Cabinet on Lord Mayor's Day,
1881. The choice of a date seemed

'dramatic and courageous.... We all dined with the Lord Mayor, and as
the men came in I felt that, knowing what I did as to Harcourt's
resolution, we were there under false pretences.'

This project began to take shape when Ministers reassembled after
Christmas.

'On the morning of January 3rd, 1882, I saw Harcourt about his London
Government scheme, of which he had sent me a rough sketch asking for
my criticisms. I found that he had adopted all the ideas of Beal and
Firth and of myself. [Footnote: Mr. Firth was Sir Charles Dilke's
fellow-member for Chelsea. Mr. James Beal, a Chelsea man and a veteran
reformer, was Honorary Secretary of the Metropolitan Municipal
Association, which existed to advocate the creation of a general
municipality for London.] We formed a committee, consisting of the
four, which met daily at Harcourt's house for some time.

'On the 6th regular Cabinets began, and Chamberlain came to stay with
me, although he offered to go to the hotel, "as there is no crisis on
hand just now." Hartington, who had a shooting party at Hardwick, ...
scandalized his colleagues by declaring that he was too lazy to come
up for the first Cabinet, although it had been fixed for between a
fortnight and three weeks....

'On January 7th a Committee of the Cabinet on the London Government
scheme was appointed, but it met only once, for the informal committee
of Harcourt, Beal, Firth, and myself did the whole work....

'On January 11th the single meeting of the London Government Committee
took place, Harcourt, Spencer, Childers, Chamberlain, and myself being
present. But instead of discussing London Government, we discussed the
Borneo Charter, to which all present were opposed.'

Over and above this work of preparation on another Minister's Bill, Sir
Charles had a variety of occupations outside his own official duties.
Thus, he notes on February 12th that he 'had a quarrel with Dodson' (then
President of the Local Government Board) 'as to a rating question'; and a
few weeks later, on April 28th:

'I was very busy at this moment because I had the Corrupt Practices
Bill and the Ballot Bill on hand in the House, as well as Foreign
Affairs debates.' [Footnote: In these measures he was helping Sir
Henry James, Attorney-General.]

The main difficulties immediately in hand were those caused by
Parliamentary procedure, and Mr. Bradlaugh, who had been re-elected during
the Recess, and now proposed to take the oath; but the House was unwilling
to let him do so, thus bringing itself into sharp conflict with the
constituency.

'It was reported by the Prime Minister to the Cabinet of January eth
that the Queen refused to open Parliament on the ground of health....
The Queen and Prince Leopold (who was about to marry) had urged that
an additional allowance to the Prince should be voted before the
discussions on the forms of the House began; but Mr. Gladstone
insisted, and the Cabinet decided, that it was to come only after the
Address, after the Bradlaugh business (upon which the Cabinet felt
certain that we should be beaten), and after the reform of the
procedure of the House--that is to say, at Easter at the earliest.'

When Mr. Bradlaugh presented himself to be sworn, Sir Stafford Northcote
moved to prohibit his taking the oath. To this motion the Government
opposed a motion for the 'previous question,' and were beaten. Feeling ran
high, and the House of Commons as a whole would have endorsed a saying of
Lord Winchilsea's. Having been asked to subscribe to the Northampton
Horticultural Show, he replied:

'"A town which enjoys the flowers of Mr. Labouchere's oratory and the
fruits of Mr. Bradlaugh's philosophy can need no further horticultural
exhibition."...

No one quite knew how to deal with the situation which was now created by
Mr. Bradlaugh's hurried advance up the floor of the House, when he
administered the oath to himself.

'On February 22nd there was a Cabinet at one o'clock, at which there
was a tremendous disturbance about Bradlaugh, Chamberlain and Mr.
Gladstone standing alone against all their colleagues, most of whom,
under Hartington's lead, had proposed expulsion, and wanted Mr.
Gladstone himself to move it. While Mr. Gladstone was addressing the
Cabinet, Harcourt wrote a paper, and got Hartington, Childers, and
Dodson to sign it. Forster was in Ireland, and Bright was away with a
cold. Harcourt did not ask Chamberlain to sign his paper, which,
Chamberlain thought, probably suggested that Mr. Gladstone should
himself propose some middle course, but Mr. Gladstone turned round
angrily and hissed through his teeth at Harcourt "I cannot!" When the
time came, even Northcote did not dare to move expulsion, which showed
how foolish our people must be to long to go further in an anti-
popular sense than the Tories themselves.'

There was also the other question of reform of Parliamentary procedure.

'On January 7th the Cabinet discussed the Closure, which was warmly
supported (in the strongest form) by Harcourt and Chamberlain.
Hartington walked in in the middle of the afternoon.