The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2

S >> Stephen Gwynn >> The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50

'Nous avons canote, mon fils et moi, sur la Tamise avec Sir Charles,
un de ces "Sundays" de liberte. Quand il avait bien rame, il
rentrait au logis, et s'etendant en un petit kiosque au seuil duquel
il placait des sandales, l'homme d'etat, ami du sport, accrochait a
la porte un ecriteau ou se lisait ces mots: "Priere de faire
silence. Je dors." Helas! Il dort a tout jamais maintenant le cher
Sir Charles. Ce fut une energie, un cerveau, un coeur, une force.'
[Footnote: _Le Temps_, February, 1911.]

Then there were men illustrious in another sphere, the famous oars of
their generation. Mr. S. D. Muttlebury, most illustrious of them all,
has compiled a list of Cambridge 'blues,' young and old, who rowed with
Sir Charles at his riverside home. These were--

_School_ _College_
Bell, A. S. .. .. Eton .. .. Trinity Hall.
Bristowe, C. J. .. Repton .. .. "
Escombe, F. J. .. Clifton .. .. "
Fernie, W. J. .. Malvern .. .. "
Howell, B. H. .. -- "
McKenna, R. .. King's College "
London
Maugham, F. H. .. Dover College .. "
Muttlebury, S. D. .. Eton .. .. Trinity College.
Rowlatt, J. F. .. Fettes .. .. Trinity Hall.
Steavenson, D. F. .. -- "
Wauchope, D. A. .. Repton .. .. "
Wood, W. W. .. Eton .. .. University
College, Oxford.

In the list here given, Judge Steavenson was Sir Charles's contemporary.
Judge Wood, [Footnote: He was the son of Dilke's friend and constituent,
the Rector of Newent.] his neighbour at Chertsey, known among Etonians
as 'Sheep' Wood, was a University oar of the sixties, and rowed for Eton
at Henley against the Trinity Hall crew which included Steavenson and
Dilke. But most of the others were young. Mr. Charles Boyd [Footnote:
Mr. Charles Boyd, C.M.G., sometime political secretary to Cecil Rhodes.]
sketched the life in an article written just after Sir Charles's death:

'To know Dilke as he was you had to be with him at Dockett Eddy, on
the river. Dilke's ability is praised everywhere, but almost, one
thinks, his manly, ungushing kindness exceeded it. He could never do
enough for people, or too stealthily, as it were. He had a special
kindness for young men, for Trinity Hall men perhaps by preference;
the black and white blazer of his old college carried a certain
prescriptive right to share in every belonging of the most famous of
old Hall men. But many, oars or others, at different times in the
past fifteen to twenty years, as sons of the house, spent between
Shepperton and Chertsey Locks, or on the tennis lawns among Sir
Charles's famous willows, or lying on deck-chairs on the long, deep
verandah, the happiest and healthiest of week-ends or more extended
summer holidays. There are few pleasanter reaches of our river, and
none quieter, than this, for the rush and the intolerable crowds are
above stream or below stream, but not here. And there is no such
holiday house for young men as Dockett, hidden in its willow walks
and islanded by the Thames in front and by the expanse of Chertsey
Mead behind.

'Less a country-house, indeed, than a camp of exercise. You did as
you pleased, but under Sir Charles's guidance you were pleased to be
strenuous. He called everybody to bathe at 7 a.m., and where was
ever better fresh-water bathing-place than the floating raft below
the boat-house at Dockett? Etiquette required you to dive in and go
straight across to the other bank, touch, and return; when, like as
not, Sir Charles, in shorts and sweater, might be seen very
precisely preparing tea on the landing-stage for the deserving
valiant. His little kindnesses had an added and affecting quality
from his reserve and sternness. A rare figure of an athlete he was,
and a rare athlete's day his was in that retreat. For hours before
he called and turned out the morning guard he had been up busy
gardening, or reading, or writing. At a quarter to nine he
breakfasted. Very shortly after breakfast an ex-champion sculler the
admirable Bill East, would arrive from Richmond, and he and Sir
Charles would row in a racing skiff a measured mile or more of the
river. One summer at least he changed from rowing kit to boots and
breeches after his rowing, and rode till luncheon. At four o'clock
there would be a second bout with East, and thereafter, having
changed from his rowing kit into flannels and his Hall cap, he would
take Lady Dilke in her dinghy, which nobody else has ever used or
will use.

'After these exercises came dinner, and after dinner talk; and what
talk! How his intellectual weight and equipment affected those who
were much with him as young men, and who had a chance to revise
their impressions after years of close observation of the world and
its big men, a scrap of dialogue may illustrate. One who in his
"twenties" was much at Sloane Street and Dockett, and who passed
later into close working relations with several at least of the most
conspicuous, so to say, of Front Bench men in the Empire, after an
interval of thirteen years sat once more for a whole long evening
with three others at the feet of Gamaliel. A well-known scholar and
historian put questions which drew Sir Charles out; and all were
amazed and delighted by the result. After Sir Charles had gone, one
of the others, a distinguished editor, said to the wanderer: "Come,
you have known the Mandarins as well as anybody. Where do you put
Dilke with them?" "Well, I rule Lord Milner out," said ----: "but
all the others, compared to Sir Charles, strike me in point of
knowledge, if you must know, as insufficiently informed school-
boys." That is how his brain struck this contemporary. As for the
moral qualities observed, you get to know a man well when you see
him constantly and over years at play. And what intimate's affection
and respect for Sir Charles, and confidence in him, did not grow
greater with every year? It seems admitted that he was a great man.
Well, if there is anything in the intimate, not undiscerning
impression of nearly eighteen years, he was a good man, or goodness
is an empty name.'

Another account of his talk and ways comes from Mr. Spenser Wilkinson:

'I moved to London in 1892, and from that time on found the intimacy
with Dilke one of the delights of life. We used always to meet,
either for breakfast or lunch, at Dilke's house in Sloane Street, or
for lunch at the Prince's Restaurant in Piccadilly, or at 2.30 in
the lobby of the House of Commons. I was also frequently a guest at
the dinner-parties either at Sloane Street on Wednesdays, when Lady
Dilke was alive, or at the House of Commons. Then there were small
house-parties on Saturday and Sunday at Dockett Eddy, near
Shepperton on the Thames, where Sir Charles had built two cottages,
and where a guest was expected to do exactly what he pleased from
the time when he was punted across the river on arrival until he
left the punt on departing. In winter I used to bicycle over to the
cottage at Pyrford, where Dilke and his wife were always to be found
alone and where I spent many a charming afternoon.

'Every man takes a certain tinge from the medium in which he is, and
is therefore different in different company and different
surroundings. I knew three Dilkes. First there was the statesman,
the man of infinite information which he was ever working to
increase. When you went to see him it was on some particular
subject; he wanted precise information, and knew exactly what he
wanted. With him my business was always finished in five minutes,
after which I used to feel that I should be wasting his time if I
stayed. This Dilke, in this particular form of intercourse, was by
far the ablest man I ever met.

'Then came Dilke the host, the Dilke of general conversation. Here
again he towered above his fellows. The man who had been everywhere
and knew everybody--for there seemed to be no public man of great
importance in any country with whom Dilke was not acquainted and
with whom he had not corresponded--a man who was almost always in
high spirits and full of fun, had an inexhaustible fund of
delightful conversation, about which the only drawback was that, in
order to appreciate it, you had to be uncommonly well informed
yourself.

'But the Dilke I liked best was the one I used to have to myself
when I spent a day with him either in the country or on the river,
when neither of us had anything to do, when there was no business in
hand, and when we either talked or were silent according to the
mood. In these circumstances Dilke was as natural and simple as a
civilized man can be. If one started an uncongenial subject, he
would say. "It does not interest me," but the moment one approached
any of the matters he cared for he mobilized all his resources and
gave himself with as little reserve as possible.

'Dilke was a past-master in the art of ordering his time, and this
was the secret of the vast quantity of work which he was able to do.
He was a voracious and quick reader, as is proved by the number of
books which he used to review for the _Athenaeum_, of which he was
proprietor. Yet he was an early riser and went to bed early, and a
part of his day was given to exercise.

'A great deal of time was consumed in interviews with all sorts and
conditions of men, and his attendance at the House of Commons,
constant and assiduous, accounted for a large part of half the days
in the year. But everything was mapped out in advance; he would make
appointments weeks, or even months, in advance, and keep them to the
minute. His self-control was complete, his courtesy constant and
unvarying; he was entirely free from sentimentality and the least
demonstrative of mankind, yet he was capable of delicate and tender
feelings, not always detected by those towards whom they were
directed. He was simple, straightforward, frank, and generous. It
was delightful to do business with him, for he never hesitated nor
went back upon himself. Modest and free from self-consciousness, he
was aware both of his powers and of their limitations. I once tried
to persuade him to change the manner of his Parliamentary speeches,
to stop his minute expositions of facts and to make some appeal to
the emotions of his hearers--at any rate in cases where he had
strong feelings of his own. He made one experiment in accord with
this suggestion, and told me that it had been most successful; but
he said that he would not try it again, because it was not in accord
with his natural bent, and he was unwilling to be anything but
himself.'

Dockett was the home of the Birds. Sir Charles's evidence before the
Select Committee on the Thames as to the destruction of kingfishers led
to a prohibition of all shooting on the river, and to an increase of
these lovely birds. In 1897 he had two of their nests at Dockett Eddy.
His acres of willow-grown all-but-island were made a sanctuary for
birds, and therefore from Dockett only, of all his homes, cats were kept
away. Nests were counted and cherished; it was a great year when a
cuckoo's egg was discovered among the linnet's clutch, and its
development was watched in breathless interest. Owls were welcome
visitors; and the swans had no better nesting-place on the Thames than
the lower end of Dockett. They and their annual progeny of cygnets were
the appointed charge of Jim Haslett, Dilke's ferryman and friend.
Pensioners upon the house, they used to appear in stately progress
before the landing raft--the mother perhaps with several little ones
swarming on her back or nestling in her wings, and from time to time
splashing off into the water. Always at their appearance, in answer to
Sir Charles's special call, a cry of 'Swan's bread' would be raised, and
loaf after loaf would disappear down their capacious throats. A place
with such privileges was not likely to be undisputed, and many times
there were battles royal against 'invaders from the north,' as Sir
Charles called the Chertsey swans who came to possess themselves of the
Dockett reach and its amenities. Swan charged swan, with plumage
bristling and wings dilated, but not alone they fought; Jim Haslett and
his employer took part against the invaders, beating them off with
sticks; and even in the night, when sound of that warfare rose, the
master of Dockett was known to scull out in a dinghy, in his night gear,
carrying a bedroom candlestick to guide his blows in the fray.

Evening and morning he would steal along the bank in his dinghy,
counting and observing the water-voles, which he was accustomed to feed
with stewed prunes and other dishes, while they sat nibbling,
squirrel-like, with the dainty clasped in their hands.

A few gay beds of annuals by the house, a purple clematis on the
verandah, and a mass of syringa at the landing-stage, were all the
garden permitted; roughly mown grass paths here and there led through
the wild growth of nature, where the willows met overhead.

Such was his summer home, described in the lines of Tibullus which were
carved on the doorway of the larger house:

'Jam modo iners possim epntentus vivere parvo
Nec semper longae deditus esse viae,
Sed canis aestivos ortus vitare sub umbra
Arboris, ad rivos praetereuntis aquae.'

[Footnote: Thus translated by the Rev. W. Tuckwell:

'Here, fancy-free, and scorning needless show,
Let me from Life's dull round awhile retreat,
Lulled by the full-charged stream's unceasing flow,
Screened by tall willows from the dog-star's heat.']

He guarded its quiet, and, champion as he had always been of the public
right of common on land and on the river, he was resentful when its
privilege was carelessly abused. He rebuked those who broke the rules of
the river in his marches--above all, such as disturbed swans or pulled
water-lilies. After every Bank Holiday he would spend a laborious day
gathering up the ugly leavings.

Many associations endeared to him what he thus defended. When he was out
in the skiff, darting here and there, Lady Dilke, in the little dinghy
which he had caused to be built for her--called from its pleasant round
lines the _Bumble Bee_--would paddle about the reach. After her death he
would paddle out in the dinghy which no one else might take out, and lie
for hours watching the light change on that familiar and tranquil beauty
of green mead and shining water, of high-waving poplar and willow, with
drooping boughs awash. When he also was gone, the little boat was not
suffered to pass into the use of strangers, but burnt there on the bank.

In his other home at Pyrford, all the day's relaxations were of this
intimate kind. [Footnote: Here, too, work was disturbed by his natural
history researches. He writes apologetically to Mr. Hudson as to some
mistake in a letter: 'I can plead as a disturbing cause three young
brown owls, quite tame; one barks, and two whistle, squeak--between a
railway guard and a door-hinge. The barker lets me get within four or
five feet before he leaves off yapping. He worries the cuckoo into
shouting very late. I leave the owls unwillingly, late--one night 1 a.m.
They are still going strong.'] Here also was no formal garden; Nature
had her way, but under superintendence of a student of forestry. Sir
Charles was a planter of pines; great notebooks carefully filled tell
how he studied, before the planting, the history of each species, how he
watched over the experiments and extended them. [Footnote: Here is a
detail entered concerning Lawson's cypress--_Erecta vividis_: 'I
remember Andrew Murray, of the Royal Horticultural, first describing
Lawson's cypress, introduced by his brother in 1862, when my father was
chairman of the society of which Murray was secretary. Our two are
gardener's varieties, one greener and the other bluer than the true
Lawson. The American name is Port Orford cedar. It will not do very well
on our bad soil, but I've given it a pretty good place. It is said that
Murray _first_ sent it to Lawson of Edinburgh in 1854. This variety was
made by A. Waterer in 1870.']

In summer, on the dry heathy commons of Surrey, there is always danger
of a chance fire spreading, and it was part of his care to maintain a
cleared belt for fending off this danger. Much of his day went in
gathering debris and undergrowth, so as to keep clear ground about the
trees, and then the heaped-up gatherings rewarded him with a bonfire in
which he had a child's pleasure, mingled with an artist's appreciation
of the shapes and colours of flame. It was for praise of this beauty
that he specially loved Anatole France's _Rotisserie de la Reine
Pedauque_, with its celebrations of the salamanders and their vivid
element.

The heath blossom in all its kinds was cultivated, and it was his
invariable custom to come up on a Monday from Pyrford with a spray of
his favourite white heather in his buttonhole.

Here, too, were associations, interesting if not exactly historic. The
Battle of Dorking was fought close by, and in this neighbourhood the
Martians descended.

Chief of Pyrford's distinctions was the discovery on Sir Charles's own
land, by Mr. Horace Donisthorpe, of a beetle (Lomechusa) which in Queen
Anne's day Sir Hans Sloane had first identified in Hampstead, parasitic
in a nest of red ants. A second specimen was found in 1710 in the mail-
coach between Gloucester and Cheltenham; but from Queen Anne's day till
1906 it was regarded as extinct, until once more it was discovered, and
discovered in its true place among the ants, on whose gestures and
behaviour towards it, whether as indicating worship or serfdom, Sir
Charles dilated with such rhetoric of description that the beetle
assumed dimensions in the mind disappointing when it was viewed in
reality.

Another rarity of insect life at Pyrford was a spider whose appearances
have been oftenest noted at Hampton Court. These creatures, large,
black, and horrific, were accordingly known as 'Hampton Courters,' but
received no welcome, being slain on sight, their slayer quoting a
characteristic saying which he had heard from Anatole France:

'We all know of dangers which seem more terrible than they are. The
spider alone suffers death for his carelessness as to this habit of
exaggeration. Many an uncle spider walks about by candlelight, and
is slain by us on account of his monstrous shadow, whereas his body,
being but small, would have escaped our rage.'

It was here that much of his Memoir was dictated, based on an enormous
mass of letters, papers, and private diaries, kept throughout his
Government career. After 1891 there is only a scattered series of
entries, increasingly sparse as time went on. Mr. Hudson recalls their
walks from the station at Woking to Pyrford across the then open common,
the lunch of eggs and milk, and the hours of work, during the period
between the publication of _Problems of Greater Britain_ and Sir
Charles's return to Parliament for the Forest of Dean.

These two country homes, Pyrford and Dockett, held Sir Charles so fast
with their simple pleasures that the once insatiable traveller ceased to
roam. At the close of 1892, after his return to Parliament, he sold his
house and garden at Toulon. Pyrford to a great extent had come to take
its place. But to the end of his days he was a constant visitor to that
Provencal country which he loved. Apart from them there was another
place where, though he neither owned nor rented house or land, he was no
less at home than among his willows or his pines. No resident in the
Forest of Dean was better known in it than its member, and nowhere had
Sir Charles more real friends. For many years he spent three periods
among them: his Whitsun holiday, which was very much a visit of
pleasure; a visit in autumn, when he attended all meetings of the
Revision Courts; and finally a month in the dead of winter, when he went
round to meetings in each polling district, at night educating his
electors in the political questions of the time, and in the day working
with his local friends at the register till it became the most accurate
record of its kind in all Great Britain--so perfect, indeed, that he was
at last able to discontinue his attendance at the Revision Courts,
though never relaxing his keen personal interest in every change.

His friendships in the Forest were not bounded by class or party. He had
the support, not merely of the Liberal and Labour groups, but of many
strong Conservatives, here as before at Chelsea. Mention has been made
of Mr. Blake, and another friend was Mr. John Probyn, who had stood as a
Liberal candidate for Devizes as far back as 1868, and had not changed
his views. Of his many faithful friends and supporters, one, the
honorary secretary of the Liberal Association for all Sir Charles's
years of membership, had as far back as 1886 proclaimed his faith in
him. [Footnote: Mr. John Cooksey, formerly proprietor of the _Dean
Forest Mercury_.] Another equally active in conveying the original
invitation to Sir Charles was the agent of the Forest miners, a Labour
leader of the wisest type, [Footnote: Mr. G. H. Rowlinson.] who writes:

'He did not live for himself; it was always others first. I never
made an appeal to him for any case of need in vain. With regard to
local matters, he seemed at the beck and call of nearly everyone.
Nothing was too small or too large for him to undertake to assist
any constituent, and oftentimes an avowed and lifelong political
opponent. In a multitude of ways he did us service with his
knowledge of affairs, his influence, his experience, his ability and
work.

'In the matters of commoners' right, the right of "turnout" on the
Forest, free miners' rights, questions of colliery owners, matters
relating to the Crown, the development of the lower coal seams--in
all these (and many of them are local intricate historical questions
involving a mass of detail) he rendered valuable service.

'In his electoral battles he was always a keen fighter and a
courteous opponent. In every campaign he seemed more anxious to beat
his opponent by sheer weight of reason and argument, and intellect
and knowledge, than by any appeal to party passion or feeling.

'I have been at a great many of his meetings, and never saw him
shirk a question, nor saw one put to him that he did not, nine times
out of ten, know more about than the questioner, however local the
point might be.

'As an example, he was holding a meeting at Newnham. Questions were
invited; none asked. Sir Charles looked disappointed; so Mr. King,
of the "Victoria," in a friendly way, thought he would put him a
poser, and asked his opinion about Sir Cuthbert Quilter's Pure Beer
Bill.

'For about twenty minutes Sir Charles talked beer--the origin,
ingredients, what it should be, what it often is and what it is not,
what it is in other countries. As Mr. King remarked afterwards, he
told him more about beer than he ever knew before, though he had
been in the trade all his life.'

Probably none was more rejoiced at the unexpected display than the
genial Tory host of the Victoria, who lived to deplore his friend and to
quote especially one of his observations: 'If you see a man put on
"side," Sir Charles once said to me, you may be sure he feels the need
of it.' [Footnote: Among those who worked with him and for him best and
longest should be named at least Mr. Charles Ridler and Mr. T. A. H.
Smith of Lydney, Mr. Henry Davis of Newent, Mr. B. H. Taylor, and Mr. S.
J. Elsom.]

Part of the service which he rendered to the constituency was by means
of the honorary presidency of the Liberal Four Hundred, first created,
to be held by himself, in 1889. Under this title the foremost spokesmen
of Liberalism were in successive years brought into the Forest;
[Footnote: The list included Mr. Asquith, Lord Morley, Mr. McKenna, Mr.
Lloyd George, and Lord Loreburn.] and thus member and constituents
worked together alike in political and in personal friendship. He hailed
the little clump of trees on the conical top of Mayhill, the first
landmark which indicated the Forest, almost as if it stood above his
home. All was homelike to him as he drove from the pastoral country by
the Severn, with its apple and pear orchards, to the typical mining town
of Cinderford, and on to the great expanse of Forest in whose midmost
glade was the Speech House Hotel, more ancient than the hollies about
it, which had been planted to mark Charles II.'s Restoration. The
Panelled Room, always reserved for his use during his stay there, had
been for many generations the place in which the free miners met to hold
their courts; it had been built for the purpose, as the gallery for
speakers showed.