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

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"I am very sorry to see by your letter of this morning that you have
taken it into your head that I am not reading hard. I can assure you,
on the contrary, that I read harder than any freshman except Osborn,
who takes no exercise whatever; and that I have made the rowing-men
very dissatisfied by reading all day three days a week. On the other
three I never read less than six hours, besides four hours of lectures
and papers. I have not missed reading a single evening yet since I
have been here; that is, either from six, or seven, till eleven,
except Saturday at Latham's. This--except for a fourth-year man--is
more than even the tutors ask for.... I hope I have said enough to
convince you that you are entirely wrong; what has made you so has
been my account of breakfasts, which are universal, and neither
consume time nor attract attention. I was at one this morning--I left
my rooms at twenty-five minutes to nine, and returned to them at five
minutes to nine, everything being over."

This scrupulous economy of time was to be characteristic of Charles
Dilke's whole life, and nothing impressed his contemporaries more at all
times than the "methodical bee-like industry" attributed to him by the
present Master of Trinity Hall. Mr. Beck, who came up to the college just
after Dilke left it, thus expands the impression:

"There remained in Trinity Hall in 1867 a vivid tradition that he was
one of the few men who never lost a minute, would even get in ten
minutes of work between river and Hall (which was in those days at
five o'clock); and much resembled the Roman who learned Greek in the
time saved from shaving. On the doorpost inside his bedroom over the
Buttery there remained in pencil the details of many days of work thus
pieced together." [Footnote: _Cambridge Review_, February 2nd, 1911.]

Judge Steavenson recalls how he used to be "bundled out" of his friend's
rooms the instant that the appointed hour for beginning to read had
arrived, and he did his best to mitigate the strenuousness of that
application. But there were stronger influences at work than his: Sir
Wentworth Dilke was fully satisfied with the assurance he had received, as
well he might be; but the grandfather never ceased to enforce the claims
of study. He wrote ceaselessly, but with constant exhortations that he
should be answered only when work and play allowed.

When the letters from Cambridge told of success in athletics, he
responded, but with a temperate rejoicing. Here, for instance, is his
reference to the news that the freshman had rowed in the winning boat of
the scratch fours on March 14th, 1863:

"I am glad that you have won your 'pewter'--as I was glad when you
took rank among the best of the boating freshmen--although I have not
set my heart on your plying at Blackfriars Bridge, nor winning the
hand of the daughters of Horse-ferry as the 'jolly young waterman,' or
old Doggett's Coat and Badge. But all things in degree; and therefore
I rejoice a hundred times more at your position in the college Euclid
examination."

There was no mistaking old Mr. Dilke's distaste for all these athletics,
and it was to his father, on this one point more sympathetic, that the
freshman wrote this characteristic announcement of a great promotion:

"Edwards" (captain of the Trinity Hall Boat Club) "has just called to
inform me that I am to row in the head-of-the-river boat to-
morrow, and to go into training for it.

"The time wasted if I row in it will not be greater than in the 2nd,
but there is one difference--namely, that it may make me more sleepy
at nights. I must read hard before breakfast. Romer--who is my master
and pastor--tells me of all things to row in it,--this year at all
events."

He did row in the May races of his first year, and with so little
detriment to his work that in the following month he secured the first
mathematical scholarship in the college examination. This triumph may well
have disposed old Mr. Dilke to accept a suggestion which is recorded in
the correspondence. On June 2nd it was decided that Trinity Hall should
send an eight to Henley, and the letter adds: "I should think my
grandfather would like to come and stay at or near Henley while I am
there."

Before the date fixed, the oarsman had been inducted scholar, and so Mr.
Dilke could go with a free heart to see his grandson row in the Grand
Challenge against Brasenose and Kingston, where Trinity Hall defeated
Kingston, but were themselves defeated by Brasenose in a very fast race.

It was not only in the examination halls and on the river that Charles
Dilke was winning reputation. He had joined the Volunteers, and proved
himself among the crack rifleshots of the University corps; he had won
walking races, but especially he had begun to seek distinction in a path
which led straight to his natural goal.

The impression left on Sir Robert Romer's mind was that Dilke came up to
the University elaborately trained with a view to a political career. This
is to read into the facts a wrong construction; the purpose, if it existed
at all, was latent only in his mind. The training which he had received
from his grandfather lent itself admirably, it is true, to the making of a
statesman; but it was the pupil's temperament which determined the
application of that rich culture.

The first debate which he had the chance to attend at the Union was on
October 28th, 1862, the motion being: "That the cause of the Northern
States is the cause of humanity and progress, and that the widespread
sympathy with the Confederates is the result of ignorance and
misrepresentation."

The discussion gained in actuality from the fact that the President of the
Union was Mr. Everett, son of the distinguished literary man who had been
America's representative in London, and was at this time Secretary of
State in the Federal Government. But the South had a notable ally. Mr.
George Otto Trevelyan, author of some of the best light verse ever written
by an undergraduate, was still in residence, though he had before this
taken his degree; and he shared in those days the sentimental preference
for the South. Dilke reported to his grandfather: "Trevelyan's speech was
mere flash, but very witty." "Mere flash" the freshman was likely to think
it, for he shared his grandfather's opinions, and gave his first Union
vote for the North--in a minority of 34 against 117. "Very witty" it was
sure to be, and its most effective hit was a topical allusion. The Union
Society of those days had its quarters in what had originally been a
Wesleyan chapel--a large room in Green Street, the floor of which is now
used as a public billiard saloon, while the galleries from which applause
and interruption used to come freely now stand empty. There had long been
complaint of its inadequacy; Oxford had set the example of a special
edifice, and as far back as 1857 a Building Fund had been started, which,
however, dragged on an abortive existence from year to year, a constant
matter of gibes. 'Can the North restore the Union?' Mr. Trevelyan asked.
'Never, sir; they have no Building Fund'; and the punning jest brought
down a storm of applause.

But when Mr. Trevelyan, after a year spent in India, came back to England
and to Cambridge gossip in the beginning of 1864, he learnt that this
despised Building Fund had been taken seriously in hand, that one
undergraduate in particular was corresponding with all manner of persons,
and that this Union also was going to be restored. That was how the
present Sir George Trevelyan first heard the name of Charles Dilke.

Even in his earliest term Dilke soon passed out of the role of a mere
listener and critic. The Commissioners of the International Exhibition of
1862 were then being sharply criticized, and on November 25th "a man of
the name of Hyndman" (so the undergraduate's letter described this other
undergraduate, afterwards to be well known as the Socialist writer and
speaker) moved "a kind of vote of censure" upon them. It was natural
enough that Sir Wentworth Dilke's son should brief the defence, and among
the papers of 1862 is a bundle of "Notes by me for Everett's speech." Next
he was trying his own mettle; and opposed a motion "that Prince Alfred
should be permitted to accept the throne of Greece." His own note is:

'On the 8th December I made my first speech, advocating a Greek
Republic, and suggesting that if they must have a King, they had
better look to the northern nations to supply one. I was named by
Everett, the President, as one of the tellers in the Division.'

Probably the speech had been no more of a success than most maiden
speeches, for Mr. Dilke's letter reads like a consolation:

"The Greek debate I care little about. I would much rather have _read_
a paper on the subject. _Till a man can write he cannot speak_--
except, as Carlyle would say, 'in a confused babble of words and
ideas.'"

The main part of the grandson's letters were concerned with the topics
handled and the speeches made at the Union.

"_November 7th_, 1862.

"How wavering and shortsighted the policy of England in Turco-Grecian
matters has been of late! Compare Navarino and Sebastopol. Palmerston
will, if he has his way, oblige the Greeks to continue in much the
same state of degradation as hitherto, and will go on holding up the
crumbling Turkish Empire till some rising of Christians occurs at a
time when we have our hands full and cannot afford to help our 'old
friend.' Then Turkey-in-Europe will vanish. I do not myself believe in
the Pan-Slavonic Empire. The Moldavians, Hungarians, and Greeks could
never be long united; but I think that Greece might hold the whole of
the coast and mountain provinces without containing in itself fatal
elements of disunion.

"Brown--No. 3 of our four--broke from his training to-day, and spent
the whole day with the hounds. That will never do."

Mr. Dilke in reply did not conceal the amusement which was awakened in him
by the rowing man's deadly seriousness:

"_November 9th_, 1862.

"I agree with you. No Browns, no hunting fellows, no divided love!! If
'a man' goes in 'our boat' he goes in to win. "Broke from his
training!" Abominable! Had he 'broke from his training' when standing
out for Wrangler, why so be it, _his_ honour only would be concerned;
but here it is _our_ honour, T. H. for ever, and no fox-hunting!

"After this, the Greek question falls flat on the ears, but I will
suggest..."

and thereupon he goes into hints for research, very characteristic in
their thoroughness, ending with a practical admonition:

"Now comes 'The Moral.' As you could not speak on the great Ionian
question, why not _write_ on it? Write down what you would or could
have said on the subject. Take two or three hours of leisure and
quiet; write with great deliberation, but _write on_ till the subject
is concluded. No deferring, no bit by bit piecework, but all offhand.
No _correction_, not a word to be altered; once written let it stand.
Put the Essay aside for a month. Then criticize it with your best
judgment--the order and sequence of facts, its verbal defects, its
want or superabundance of illustration, its want or superabundance of
detail, etc., etc."

Another letter of Dilke's in his freshman year concerns the art of debate:

"What is wanted is common-sense discussion in well-worded speeches
with connected argument, the whole to be spoken loud enough to be
heard, and with sufficient liveliness to convince the hearers of the
speaker's interest in what he is saying. So far as this is oratory, it
is cultivated (with very moderate success) at the Union."

From the ideal here indicated--an accurate analysis of 'the House of
Commons manner'--Charles Dilke never departed, and his grandfather in
replying eagerly reinforced the estimate:

"I agree to all you say about that same Union, and about the Orators
and Oratory. I should have said it myself, but thought it necessary to
_clear the way_. I rejoice that no such preliminary labour was
required. I agree that even Chatham was a 'Stump'--what he was in
addition is not our question. I hope and believe he was the last of
our Stumpers. Burke, so far as he was an Orator, was a Stump and
something more, and the more may be attributed to the fact that he was
a practised _writer,_ where Chatham was not, and that he reported his
own speeches. Latterly his _writings_ were all Stump. I had not
intended to have written for a week or more, for you have so many
correspondents and are so punctual in reply that I fear the waste of
precious time; but I am as pleased with your letter as an old dog-
fancier when a terrier-pup catches his first rat--it is something to
see my boy hunt out and hunt down that old humbug Oratory."

Charles Dilke's own mature judgment on the matters concerned was expressed
in a letter to the _Cantab_ of October 27th, 1893:

"The value of Union debates as a training for political life? Yes, if
they are debates. There is probably little debate in the Union. There
was little in my time. There is little real debating in the House of
Commons. But debating is mastery. The gift of debate means the gift of
making your opinion prevail. Set speaking is useless and worse than
useless in these days."

Dilke was elected to the Library Committee of the Union in his second
term, and in his third to the Standing Committee. At this moment a
decision was taken to make a determined effort for new buildings, and it
was suggested that he should stand for the secretaryship. Declining this
as likely to engross more time than he could spare, he was put forward for
the Vice-Presidency, and elected at the beginning of October, 1863. His
prominence in the negotiations which followed may be inferred from the
fact that he was re-elected. This was in itself a rare honour; but in his
case was followed by election and re-election to the Presidency, a record
unique in the Society's annals.

It was through this phase of his activity that Charles Dilke took part in
the general life of the University. At the Union he was closely associated
with men outside his own college, one of whom, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice,
was destined to be a lifelong friend and fellow-worker. But his College
meant more to him than the University. A conservative in this, he
resented, and resisted later on, all tendencies to make the teaching of
the place communal by an opening of college lectures to students from
other colleges; he valued the distinctiveness of type which went with the
older usage, under which he himself was nurtured. Trinity Hall was a
lawyers' college; it had a library specially stored with law books, and it
was early determined that he should conform to the _genius loci_ so far at
least as to be called to the Bar. In his first Christmas vacation he began
to eat his dinners at the Middle Temple, where his nomination paper was
signed by John Forster; and in June, 1863, after he had spent a year at
mathematics and won his college scholarship, he took stock of his
position, and felt clear as to his own powers. He might, he thought,
attain to about a tenth wranglership in the Mathematical Tripos, which
would insure him a fellowship at his college; but this, although he valued
academic distinctions very highly, did not seem an end worth two years of
work, and he determined to devote the remainder of his time at the
University to the study of law and history.

He had not at any time limited himself to mathematics. Both before his
freshman year and during it he had read hard and deeply on general
subjects. His habit was to analyze on paper whatever he studied, and he
had dealt thus in 1861 (aged eighteen) with all Sir Thomas More,
Bolingbroke, and Hobbes. Among the papers for 1862 there is preserved such
an analysis of Coleridge's political system; a note on the views of the
Abbe Morellet, with essays on comparative psychology, the association of
ideas, and the originality of the anti-selfish affections. These are
deposits of that course of philosophic reading over which, says the
Memoir, 'I wasted a good deal of time in 1862, but managed also to give
myself much mental training.'

The determination to abandon mathematics for a line of study more germane
to that career of which he already had some vision met with no resistance
from his people; but it did not altogether please the college authorities.
He wrote to old Mr. Dilke:

"When I told Hopkins" (his tutor) "that I was not going out in
mathematics, he was taken aback, and seemed very sorry. He urged me to
_read law_, but still to go out as a high senior optime, which he says
I could be, without reading more than a very small quantity of
mathematics every day. My objection to this was that I knew myself
better than he did; that were I to go in for mathematics, I should be
as high in that tripos as my talents would let me, and that my law and
my life's purpose would suffer in consequence.

"He said--'You will be very sorry if it happens that you are not first
legalist of your year--that is the only place in the Law Tripos that
you can be content with--and yet remember you have Shee in your year,
who is always a dangerous adversary, and who starts with some little
knowledge on the subject.'

"I said I should read with Shee, and make him understand that I was
intended by Nature to beat him."

The dangerous Shee had been thus announced in a letter of February, 1863:
"Shee--son of the well-known Serjeant, [Footnote: Mr. Serjeant Shee was
later a Judge--the first Roman Catholic since the time of the Stuarts to
sit on the English Bench.] has come up and taken the rooms over me. He
seems a nice kind of fellow; of course, a strong Romanist."

Shee remained till the end Dilke's chief competitor, and he was also one
of the band of friends who met each other incessantly, and incessantly
talked over first principles till the small hours of morning. Perhaps it
is not without importance that Charles Dilke should have had the
experience, not very common for Englishmen, of living on terms of intimacy
with an Irish Roman Catholic: at all events, his relations in after-life,
both with Irishmen and with Roman Catholics, were more friendly than is
common. For the moment Shee made one factor in the discussions upon
theology which are inevitable among undergraduates, and which went on with
vigour in this little group, according to the recollection of Judge
Steavenson, who in those days, faithful to the orthodoxy of his Low Church
upbringing, found himself ranged by the side of the 'strong Romanist'
against a general onslaught upon Christianity. Charley Dilke himself had
come under the influences of the place and the time. There is an entry
headed May, 1863: "I find a fair argument against miracles in my notes for
this month." He had abandoned attendance at Communion, but, according to
Judge Steavenson, did not go further in opinions or in talk than a vague
agnosticism--which was also the attitude of another subtle and agile
intelligence in that circle.

Turning over, in 1891, the boxes which held his letters and papers of
college days, Charles Dilke wrote:

"1863.

"In every page of the destroyed notebooks of this year I could see the
influence of two men--my grandfather and H. D. Warr." [Footnote: Mr.
H. D. Warr became a journalist. In 1880 Sir Charles secured him the
post of Secretary to the Royal Commission upon City Companies, of
which Lord Derby was Chairman.]

Warr was a classical exhibitioner of Trinity Hall in Dilke's year, and was
not among the few who are named at first as likely friends,
though he figures early as a competitor in the Euclid and Algebra 'fights'
at his tutor's. In February, 1863, his name must have been on Dilke's
tongue or pen, since this is evidently a reply to inquiries:

"Warr is a clergyman's son. He will probably be about fourth or fifth
for the Bell (Scholarship)."

It is not till the October term of his second year that more explicit
notice of this friend occurs, when Dilke is giving an account of his first
speech as Vice-President of the Union. He opened a debate on the metric
system, concerning which he had solid and well-thought-out opinions:

"My speech was logical but not fluent. Warr says it was the best
opening speech he ever listened to, but by no means the best speech.
Warr is a candid critic whom I dread, so that I am glad he was
satisfied."

Of this candour Dilke has preserved some specimens which show that Warr's
influence was mainly used in laughing his friend out of his solemnity.
Thus Warr characterizes him as a dealer in logic," and, breaking off from
some fantastic speculation as to the future of all their college set,
January 9th, 1864, moralizes.

"I am an ass, my friend, a great ass, to write in this silly strain to
you, but you must not be very angry, though I own now to a feeling of
_having half insulted your kind serious ways by talking nonsense to
them on paper_."

APPENDIX

Sir Charles Dilke's association with the river and with rowing men was so
constant that we ate justified in preserving this contemporary report of
his first race for the Grand Challenge, on which he always looked back
with pride:

"It was," says the report, which Dilke preserved, "one of the finest
and fastest races ever seen at Henley, and the losers deserve as much
credit as the winners. The Oxford crew were on the Berks side,
Kingston on the Oxon, and Cambridge in the middle. It was a very fine
and even start, and they continued level for about 50 yards, when
Brasenose began to show the bow of their boat in front, the others
still remaining oar and oar, rowing in fine form and at a great pace.
So finely were the three crews matched, that, although Brasenose
continued to increase their lead, it was only inch by inch. At the end
of about 400 yards Brasenose were about a quarter of a length only
ahead. The race was continued with unabated vigour, Brasenose now
going more in front, and being a length ahead at the Poplars, where
they began to ease slightly. The contest between Cambridge and
Kingston was still admirable; Cambridge had made some fine bursts to
get away from them, but they were not to be shaken off, and the
gallant effort of the one crew was met by a no less gallant effort on
the part of the other. The Cambridge crew began to show in front as
they neared Remenham, and a most determined race was continued to the
end. Brasenose won by a length clear, and the Cambridge boat was not
clear of the Kingston, only having got her about three-quarters of
their length."

The time--seven minutes, twenty-six seconds--was the fastest that had been
rowed over that course, and more than half a minute faster than that of
the final heat, in which Brasenose were beaten by University. But next day
in the Ladies' Plate University brought down the record by three seconds.
Trinity Hall had the worst station, and if they were beaten by only a
length, must have been as fast as Brasenose. Kingston was stroked by L.
Pugh Evans, Brasenose by D. Pocklington (W. B. Woodgate rowing 4). The
Trinity Hall eight were as follows:

st. lb.
E. F. Dyke 9 12
H. W. Edwardes 10 13
W. H. Darton 11 2
C. W. Dilke 11 5
D. F. Steavenson 12 1
R. E. Neane 11 0
W. J. S. Cadman 10 6
R. Richardson 9 10
A. A. Berens (cox.) 9 8

CHAPTER IV

CAMBRIDGE (_Continued_)

In these years of all-round training Cambridge was doing for Charles Dilke
what it has done for hundreds of other young men. The exceptional in his
case sprang from the tie which linked this young athlete to the old
scholar who, in his library at Sloane Street, or among his flowers at
Alice Holt, was ceaselessly preoccupied with detail of the undergraduate's
life and work. From the first there was a pathos in his eagerness to
follow and understand all the minutiae of an unfamiliar scene. At the
close of Charles Dilke's first term he wrote (December 1st, 1862):

"Your letter gave me great pleasure, as indeed for one reason or
another, or for no reason if you please, your letters always do;
though not being a Cambridge man, I am at times a little puzzled....
What a bore I shall be after the 13th with my endless enquiries."

Ten days later he is jubilant over the results of the college examination
which closed the first term: