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

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'We took time by the forelock as a Government with regard to the
preparation in advance, and, even before our landing in Egypt, for
that which was to happen after the revolutionary movement was put
down. Sir A. Colvin thought that 4,000 men in addition to the military
police would be ample for the security of the country, and Sir E.
Malet appeared to agree. Mr. Gladstone wrote a minute himself upon the
future of the country, in which he proposed to act upon all my ideas.
He suggested the banishment of Arabi, a minimum military force
'(Egyptian),' a large police force, in which Indian Mohammedans were
to be allowed to enlist; but he wished a small British force to remain
temporarily in the country--a point to which I was much opposed,
inasmuch as I felt certain that if we stayed there at all we should
never be able to come away.

'A good deal of Cabinet work fell upon me at this moment because
Harcourt buried himself in the New Forest, and Chamberlain went away
to Sweden, asking me for a full table of instructions as to what he
was to do as to calling upon Kings, inasmuch as, he declared in his
letter, I was his _arbiter elegantiarum_. I went down to Birmingham in
his absence to see my son' (who was living at Mr. Chamberlain's
house). 'Hartington came up to town now and then, but apparently was
soon tired of it, as in the middle of September he wrote to me to ask
what was the meaning of the Cabinet on the 13th which he meant "to
shirk." There were two Governments at this moment--the one consisting
of Childers and Northbrook in London, carrying on operations in Egypt;
and the other consisting of Lord Granville at Walmer and Mr. Gladstone
at Hawarden, connected by the telegraph, explaining them to the
Powers.

'During the period of the invasion of Egypt by us I used to meet
Childers, Northbrook, and Hartington at the War Office almost every
day, when Hartington was in town, and the other two when Hartington
was away. Tel-el-Kebir was on September 13th, and we met on that day
as well as the days before and immediately after.

'Immediately after Tel-el-Kebir I had from Auberon Herbert a letter,
which began: "My dear successful Jingo, whom Heaven confound, though
it does not appear to have the least intention of doing so.... How I
hate you all! But am bound to admit you have managed your affair up to
this point skilfully and well. The gods, however, do not love, says
Horace, people who have three stories to their houses."'

APPENDIX

'The refusal of the Italian Cabinet was afterwards explained to me in a
most interesting letter from Baron Blanc, at that time (March, 1888)
Italian Ambassador at Constantinople, and afterwards (December, 1893)
Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs:

'"The refusal of the Cabinet of Rome in 1882 to intervene, with England
only, as allies in Egypt was a success of French diplomacy, but at the
same time a result of the past policy of England.

'"Nothing on the part of England had prepared the Italian Government to
believe it possible that England would cease to gravitate towards France
in Mediterranean questions, especially when Mr. Gladstone was in power.
The hope that England would join the Italian-German understanding,
concluded in principle in 1882, had remained in these early days merely
theoretic. The Mancini Cabinet, in doing that which Minghetti, Visconti,
Bonghi--the old Right, in short--had not dared to do--that is, in drawing
towards the Central Powers--did not go so far as to understand that the
rupture of the English-French condominium in Egypt--brought about in 1881-
82 by the appearance on the scene of the Arabi party, secretly pushed from
Berlin--offered Italy the chance of leading Gladstone himself to lean on
Italy and her allies, and no longer upon Paris and Petersburg; or, if it
was understood, faith and courage were wanting.

'"It was an axiom with Menabrea, with Nigra, with Corti, that Italy and
England herself could do nothing in the Mediterranean without France,
still less do anything against France. The last conversation of Corti with
Crispi shows plainly his conviction that a real alliance of Italy and
England was a Utopia. How many times after 1870 had not Italy been
disappointed in attempts to obtain from England a share of influence in
Egypt! How many times had not Italy been sacrificed to the private
arrangements of England with France in Egyptian affairs! How could the
idea that Germany was to replace France in the Eastern policy of Italy and
England have entered into the mind of the Cabinet of Rome when it had not
entered into the mind of the Cabinet of St. James's!

'"A thousand financial, journalistic, parliamentary connections attached
to France both the Gladstone Cabinet and the Ministry of Mancini--the
legal counsel of M. de Lesseps. The dream of treble condominium in Egypt
was strong in Mancini and Depretis, as in Minghetti, Visconti, and
Cairoli. This dream was encouraged by the Cabinet of Paris, which kept
Italy in tow by this vain hope, and also by the fear of fresh French
enterprises in Africa, for the French threatened Italy with renewing in
Tripoli the precedent of Tunis if Italy broke towards French policy in the
East the bonds contracted between them in the Crimean War and the treaties
of 1856.

'"The reserve, the abstention of Germany and Austria, which Powers
pretended to disinterest themselves from the Egyptian question, and opened
to France in Africa a chance of compensation for the loss of Alsace,
helped to keep Mancini and Depretis, tied also by party connections to the
French democracy, in the absurd idea that Italy could keep herself in
stable equilibrium between two alliances--an alliance with Germany in
Continental affairs, and with France in Mediterranean questions. This idea
had for its result to render unintelligible for the Italian public the
alliance of Italy with the Central Powers, sterilized and perverted
through not being boldly applied by Italy to the affairs of the
Mediterranean and of the Levant. But once again Italy did not believe
herself strong enough to overcome the indifference which England showed
for Mediterranean questions--more and more thrown into the background in
English minds by the interests of the British colonial empire in distant
seas. Australia seemed looked upon at London as more important than Turkey
or Egypt itself, and the idea that the first line of defence of India is
at Constantinople, the seat of the Khalifat, seemed forgotten by the
successors of Disraeli. It took seven years for the idea, born in 1881, of
making Italy a connecting link in an Anglo-German alliance, to become a
practical one at Home, as it did under Crispi.

'"To return to the question of the refusal of Italy to intervene alone
with England in Egypt in 1882, it is necessary to know that when the
French Government was informed of the drawing together of Italy and of the
Central Powers, France hastened at the end of 1881 to exercise pressure
upon the Mancini-Depretis Cabinet by threatening it, not only with fresh
enterprise in Tripoli, but with direct hostility if Italy took sides
against France in those Egyptian affairs which were at that moment
becoming complicated. The Radical Committees of France and Italy were
threatening armed movements in the former Papal States, and French money
was spent in the Italian elections of 1881. The greater part of the
Italian Press was bought up by a Gambetta-Wilson group in such a way that
Italian opinion was directed from Paris by the Italian newspapers, as it
had already been by the Stefani-Havas Agency. The effect of this
preparation was seen when the bombardment of Alexandria was taken as the
text for a general opening of fire on the part of the Italian and French
Press against England. When Freycinet refused the English proposal for
treble intervention, he caused it to be known at Rome that France would
look upon it as an act of hostility on the part of Italy if that Power
should take in Egypt the position which belonged to France, and occupy,
without France, any portion of Egyptian territory.

'"He also used as a bait to Mancini the idea of a treble condominium, by
making him believe that Italy and Russia could, by procuring for a treble
intervention the adhesion of the whole concert of European Powers, prevent
it becoming dangerous from the point of view of the two-faced policy of
which Germany was suspected at Rome. To act so that France could, without
the fear of a snare on the part of Germany, intervene in Egypt with Italy
and England--such was the part which France proposed to Mancini that he
should play, and which he accepted and did play in the Constantinople
conference. The outward and visible sign of this programme was that
wonderful patrol of the Canal which was adopted in principle on the motion
of Corti, and was intended to lead up to the treble condominium by the
treble occupation of the Suez Canal with a mandate of Europe. 'Success
seemed certain,' funnily declared the Mancini telegrams of the moment,
when came the British invitation to Italy for a double intervention.
Neither Menabrea, nor Mancini, nor Corti, took this invitation seriously,
and they saw in it only the hesitation of England, a Power which they
supposed entirely incapable of such boldness as isolated action. They
never believed for a moment but that the refusal by Italy of a double
intervention would have for effect a treble occupation. You know how this
illusion of a treble occupation died a wretched death in the ridiculous
appearance of Italian and French ships in the neighbourhood of the Canal
just at the moment when Wolseley seized it before Tel-el-Kebir.

'"The same idea of becoming the binding link in Mediterranean affairs, not
between Berlin and London, but between Paris and London, continued to
animate Mancini and Depretis even after England had become the sole power
in occupation of Egypt. The expedition to Massowah in 1885 was an
expression of this tendency. From the beginning of 1884, in face of the
Hicks disaster, of the prolongation of the British occupation, of the
return to power of Nubar, France considered a plan for disembarking at
Massowah troops recalled from Tonquin, where she was supposed to be safe
after the success of Sontay. In order not to leave without some
counterweight in the Red Sea the consolidation of British domination in
Egypt, France would have returned to Egypt by Massowah and the Soudan.
When she decided to suspend this operation, she advised it to Italy as a
means of giving expression to the Franco-Italian view of the
internationality of the Canal and Red Sea. Mancini, whom the Italian
Chamber blamed for having not taken part in the colonial fever which had
affected Germany herself in 1884-85, adopted the idea of an expedition to
Massowah at the moment when Wolseley seemed likely to enter Khartoum.'

'"We have not as yet been able to get out of this trap in which we are
caught, and in which the Russians and French try to keep us paralyzed.
Capital and disastrous blunders, evident contradictions with the idea of
the alliance of Italy with the Central Powers, completed by the
understanding with England! But England herself, is she without fault? Is
her Egyptian policy more clear and more strong? Is she not herself in
Egypt also taken in the toils of Franco-Levantine influences, as dominant
at Cairo as they are at Constantinople? It is not on the national and
Mohammedan spirit that England in Egypt leans, but on Franco-Levantine
cliques and Graeco-Armenian cliques sold to French finance. Hence the
decline of British influence in the Levant. The memorandum which I have
sent shows what a different line Italy and England may follow if they do
not wish the Mediterranean to become a Franco-Russian lake, and the
Khalif, in the character of a new Bey of Tunis, lending the flag of the
Prophet to Russia for the conquest of India and to France to complete her
African Empire."

'The memorandum enclosed by him to which he refers was sent by him for the
purpose that it should be communicated by us to friends in Rome who were
likely to bring it before Crispi, whose Foreign Minister in 1893 Blanc
became.'

CHAPTER XXX

ENTRY INTO THE CABINET
SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER, 1882

I.

Part of Sir Charles's routine was his morning bout of fencing. [Footnote:
Sir Charles's fencing seems to have dated from 1874, during his stay in
Paris after his first wife's death. Fuller reference to fencing at 76,
Sloane Street and to his antagonists will be found in Chapter XLVII. (Vol.
II., pp. 233, 234). ] This was the relaxation which he managed to fit into
his crowded daily life, but his weekly holiday he spent upon the river. He
notes, just before the Parliamentary crisis due to the bombardment of
Alexandria:

'At this time I had given up the practice of going out of town to stay
with friends for Sundays, and I did not resume it, for I found it
better for me to get my work done on the Saturday night and my Foreign
Office boxes early on the Sunday morning, to go to the Abbey on the
Sunday morning at ten, and after this service to go on the river, and
go to bed at eight o'clock at least this one night in the week, and I
bought a piece of land at Dumsey Deep, near Chertsey, with the view of
building a cottage there.'

It was not here, however, that he built his riverside house, but close by,
at Dockett Eddy, which he bought in the following summer. [Footnote: A
fuller account of life in his riverside home is to be found in Chapter LI.
(Vol. II., pp. 317-324).] The two pieces of ground were connected by a
long strip of frontage which he acquired, thereby saving the willows and
alders which then sheltered that reach, and made it a windless course for
sculling. Even more perfect was it, by reason of its gravelly bottom, for
another form of watermanship. On Sunday, October 22nd, 1882,

'after Westminster Abbey I went down to Teddington, and took a lesson
in punting from Kemp, the Teddington fisherman, and from this time
forward became devoted to the art, for which I gave up my canoeing.'

His resolve to spend his Sundays in retreat on the river did not pass
without protest from his friends, as is shown by a characteristic letter
from Sir William Harcourt:

"CUFFNELLS, LYNDHURST,
"_August 28_, 1882."

"DEAR DILKE,"

"Don't be an odious solitary snipe in the ooze of the Thames, but come
down here at once and nurse Bobby.

"Yours ever, W. V. H."

"Bobby" was Mr. Robert Harcourt, now M.P. for the Montrose Burghs.

He replied:

"LALEHAM FERRY (_for this night only.
I shall be at the P.O. every day this week_).
"_August 29th._

"MY DEAR HARCOURT,

"I went to bed on Saty. night at dark and on Sunday night at dark.
Last night I was late from London, and sat up till nearly 9! Bobby
himself can hardly beat that, can he? On the other hand, he does not
get a swim in the Thames at 5 a.m., or breakfast at 6, as I do.

"It is very good of you--and like old times--for you to press me to
come down, and, believe me, I should like my company. But when, as
now, I am splendidly well, and only want to make up arrears of sleep,
the river is the best place for me. I shall go to Walmer next week,
but then that is sea, and sea is sleepy too; and I have all my work
there with the telegraph in the House, and messengers four times a day
as if I was in the F.O., so I can be away--and yet be on duty--as I
promised to be till 19th or 20th Septr....

"... This is the longest letter that I was ever known to write in all
my life, except perhaps once or twice to you in the old days."

It had now been decided that Wentworth Dilke, being eight years old,
should go to school and leave Mr. Chamberlain's house, of which he had
been an inmate for some eighteen months.

'On the day of Tel-el-Kebir I received a very pleasing letter from
Chamberlain, thanking me for what I had said to him about his
reception for so long a period at Highbury of my son. It was a
touching letter, which showed both delicacy and warmth of affection.'

On September 21st Sir Charles Dilke went to Birmingham to take his boy to
Mrs. Maclaren's school at Summerfields, near Oxford. 'Then crossing to
Waterford, spent five days in the South of Ireland--and afterwards went
straight to St. Tropez to stay with M. Emile Ollivier.' "Il faut fermer la
boutique et alors on se trouve tout de suite bien," is his comment as he
started on one such journey.

'During my visit to Ollivier I explored the south coast of the
mountains of the Moors, along which there was no road, and bought some
land at Cavalaire, against the possible chance of a boulevard being
made through my land at Toulon in such a way as to cut me off from the
sea. I walked from Bormes to the Lavandou upon the coast, and fancied
I found the path by which St. Francis journeyed when he landed to save
Provence from the plague. It is hollowed out by feet, in some places
to three feet deep through the hard quartz and schist, and everywhere
at least six inches, so its age is evidently great, and it must have
been a path in the days of Saracen domination, if not even in or
before the Roman times, for the two villages were ever small.

'At Ste. Claire, the first bay eastward from the Lavandou, I had seen
a funeral in which all the crucifixes were borne before the corpse by
women, and the coffin carried by women. Ollivier's father was still
living--Demosthene, born under the First Republic, and a deputy under
the Second: an old Jacobin of an almost extinct type. Ollivier's house
is as pretty as the whole coast. It stands on a peninsula with perfect
sands, one or other of which is sheltered for bathing in any wind, and
instead of the usual parched sterility of Provence, springs rise all
round the house, which is lost in a dense forest of young palms. The
views are not from the house, but from the various shores of the
peninsula, all these, however, being close at hand. I had for escort
in my trips about the coast the famous Felix Martin, founder and Mayor
of St. Raphael and of Valescure, a railway engineer who was known as
the American of Provence, and who, in fact, is the most desperate and
the most interesting and pleasant speculator of France. Speaking to me
of Frejus, my favourite town, and its surroundings, Martin called it
"the Roman Campagna on the Bay of Naples," a very pretty phrase,
absolutely true of it, for the scenery is that of the plain between
Naples and Capua, but the ruins and the solemnity of the foreground
were those of the outskirts of Rome till Martin spoilt it. At the spot
where I bought my land eighty boats of Spanish and Italian coral
fishers were at anchor. I picked up Roman tiles upon my ground, and
found a Roman tomb in the centre of my plot.'

'I was struck with some of the old chateaux in the woods as I returned
along the coast to Toulon. Near Bormettes there are two which were
nationalized at the Revolution, and the families of the buyers, having
turned Legitimist and put stained glass into the chapel windows, are
now becoming nobles in their turn, at all events in their own
estimation, and thriving upon cork and American vines.[Footnote: The
piece of land at Cavalaire was never built on by Sir Charles, but he
remained owner of it till 1905, when it was sold by him. His
friendship with the Ollivier household continued till the end of his
life.]

'It was during this visit that Ollivier made use of a phrase which I
have repeated: "When one looks at the Republic one says: 'It can't
last a week--it is dead.' But when one looks at what is opposed to it,
one says: 'It is eternal.'"'

The true inner history and genesis of the Franco-Prussian War formed
matter for talk with Ollivier, who was among the half-dozen men in Europe
best able to inform Sir Charles on the question. The Memoir records a
reminiscence told by M. Ollivier.

'When the war broke out, he naturally asked the Emperor about his
alliances. The Emperor, who was singularly sweet and winning in his
ways, smiled his best smile but said nothing, walked to a table,
unlocked a drawer, and took out two letters-one from the Emperor of
Austria, and the other from the King of Italy, both promising their
alliance. But, although this was Ollivier's story, the Italian letter
must have been conditional. Ollivier set down the defeat to this
slowness of action, and supineness, due first to the Emperor's firm
belief that Austria would move, and then to his stone in the bladder
and refusal to let anyone else command. At a later date I became aware
of the true story, which was that afterwards told by me in
_Cosmopolis_. [Footnote: "The Origin of the War of 1870," by Sir
Charles Dilke, _Cosmopolis_, January, 1896.] Austria had declined to
join in a war begun in the middle of the summer. It had been fixed for
May, 1871. Bismarck found this out from the Magyars, and made the war
in 1870.'

To the detail thus gained at first hand Sir Charles Dilke added another in
the next year. On February 1st, 1883, he met at Sir William Harcourt's
house the Italian Ambassador Count Nigra, who had been in 1870 Minister in
Paris:

'He told me that in 1866 the Italians had sent to Paris to ask whether
they should join Prussia or Austria, both of whom had promised to give
them Venice, and how the Emperor had told them that Italy was to join
Prussia as the weaker side, and that when the combatants were
exhausted he intended to take the Rhine. Nigra also told me that in
1870 the Emperor had told him that he meant peace, and that it was
Gramont on his own account who had told Benedetti to get from the King
of Prussia the promise for the future. This was all superficial, as we
now know that Nigra was, as the Empress Eugenie said in 1907, a "false
friend." Nigra said that Bismarck had made the war by telegraphing his
own highly coloured account of the interview; for the French official
account, which had only reached Paris (according to Nigra) after war
had been declared, had shown that the King had been very civil to
Benedetti, although the French Ambassador had persisted in raising the
question no less than three several times.... [Footnote: The famous
interview at Ems between the King of Prussia and M. Benedetti, the
French Ambassador at Berlin, is referred to. See Benedetti, _Ma
Mission en Prusse_, chap. vi.; _Bismarck, His Reflections and
Reminiscences_, translated from the German under the supervision of A.
J. Butler, vol. ii., chap, xxii.; _Life of Granville_, vol. ii., chap.
ii.]

'On my return through Paris in September, 1882, I had interviews with
Duclerc, the French Prime Minister, and with Nubar, as well as with
Gambetta. Duclerc I found a cross old man, who was furious because I
mentioned Madagascar. On the Tunis capitulations I found the French
willing to come to an agreement; but Egypt, the Suez Canal, the Congo,
the Pacific Islands, and Newfoundland were all of them difficult
questions at this time....

'In a talk with Gambetta on October 19th he said to me that it was his
intention, "whether _I_ liked Duclerc or not," to keep him in power,
whether he does what he ought, does nothing, or does what is
ridiculous. The curse of France is instability. Duclerc is an honest
man.' Gambetta was 'aged and in bad spirits.'

Sir Charles communicated this expression through Mr. Plunkett, the British
Charge d'Affaires, to M. Duclerc. "I gave him the third alternative in
more diplomatic language," Mr. Plunkett wrote, "but he understood me, and
we laughed over the idea."

A general reflection of this year is that 'Gambetta hates fools in theory,
and loves them, I think, in practice.'

In London during the autumn session Sir Charles records some interesting
gossip, to which may be added this first entry of earlier date:

'Lord Granville was a most able man, who did not, in my opinion,
decline in intellectual vigour during the many years in which he took
a great part in public affairs. He always had the habit of
substitution of words, and I have known him carry on a long
conversation with me at the Foreign Office about the proceedings of
two Ambassadors who were engaged on opposite sides in a great
negotiation, and call "A" B, and "B" A through the whole of it, which
was, to say the least of it, confusing. He also sometimes entirely
forgot the principal name in connection with the subject--as, for
example, that of Mr. Gladstone when Prime Minister--and had to resort
to the most extraordinary forms of language in order to convey his
meaning. The only other person in whom I have ever seen this
peculiarity carried to such a point was the Khedive Ismail, who sent
for me when I was in office and he in London, and when the Dervishes
were advancing upon Egypt, to say that he had an important piece of
information to give the Government, which was the name of a spot at
which the Dervishes might easily be checked, owing to the narrowness
of the valley. He kept working up to the name, and each time failing
to give it, so that I ultimately went away without having been able to
get from him the one thing which would have made the information
useful. Each time he closed his speech by saying, "Le nom de ce point
important est--chose--machine--chose," and so on...