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

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He loved the Forest--not only the distant spots of interest, but every
tree, delighting to act as guide to all its pleasant places. So each new
guest was taken to see High Beeches and the great wind-swept row of
Scots firs by Clearwell Court. The aged oak-tree, which at a distance
resembled a barn--for nothing was left but its great trunk above the
roots--was another point of pilgrimage; so were the dwarf thorns on
Wigpool Common, which reminded him of the tiny Japanese trees centuries
old, as, indeed, probably were these.

Then there were the expeditions to the rocking stone called the
Buckstone, a relic of the Druids; to the Scowles, the wonderful Roman
iron workings like the Syracusan quarries; to Symons Yat, where the old
military earthworks ended in a triple dyke, with the Severn and the Wye
on either side; to Newland Church, in which a fifteenth-century brass
shows the free miner of those days equipped for work; or to the lovely
valley by Flaxley Abbey, once in the precincts of the Forest, where the
monks had their fish-ponds, and where on the side of the hills their old
ironworks may still be seen.

He and Lady Dilke rode early in their stay to all these outlying places,
with Miss Monck as their constant companion. She was President of the
Women's Liberal Association, stayed with them during their long visits
to the Forest, and was with him for the election at the end. [Footnote:
Miss Emilia Monck, sister of Mr. Berkeley Monck, of Coley Park, Heading,
of which he was several times Mayor, and which he contested as a Liberal
in 1886.]

These were far rides, but close about the Speech House the place teems
with interest. In the last years he would walk every evening to look at
the great stag-headed ruins of the oaks, which thrust their gnarled and
crooked limbs fantastically into the closing night, or stand watching
the shadows fall on the spruce rides which stretch out near the old inn,
till, in the fading light, it seemed as though figures were moving in
and out on the greensward of the great vistas. In the bright sunshine,
imposing silence on himself and his companions, he would watch for long
together the life in one of the forest glades, the moving creatures in
the grass, the tits playing on the branches of a silver birch
silhouetted against the sky, the little blue butterflies chasing each
other over the pink crab-apple bloom. He would follow the tapping of a
woodpecker, and wait in the evening for the owl's cry to begin; and
here, as elsewhere, to be with him was to see in everything unsuspected
things.

In the winter, Speech House was at first Sir Charles's headquarters for
part of January, but there, 500 feet above the sea, the roads were
sometimes impassable from snow. At last Lady Dilke became too delicate
to face the mid-winter visit, and, except for elections, Whitsuntide and
the autumn were the two occasions for their stay. He went also each year
to the miners' demonstration--in 1908 so ill that it seemed impossible
that even his power of endurance could enable him to bear the strain,
and in 1910 again because he said he 'would not fail Rowlinson and the
miners,' though he fainted after the meeting there.

One of their early headquarters in the Forest was Lindors, the home of
two among their first and warmest friends--Mr. Frederick Martin and his
wife. It is in a lovely little valley with sheltered lawns, the rush of
the water sounding always behind the house, above which the old castle
of St. Briavels stands. The ancient prison is still there, and the
castle dates back to the thirteenth century, and claims an almost
unbroken succession of Constables of the Castle and Wardens of the
Forest of Dean, beginning with John de Monmouth.

After Speech House the Victoria at Newnham saw them oftenest. Its
interior is fascinating, with a low hall and fine old oak stairway,
broad and shallow; a bit of quaint French glass let into the staircase
window bears an illustrated version of La Fourmi et la Cigale. Lady
Dilke found there a remnant of fine tapestry--a battle scene with a bold
picture of horses and their riders. She traced and located this as
belonging to a great panel which is in the Palace at Madrid. At each
election, after the declaration of the poll, Sir Charles made from a
balcony of the Victoria or from a motor-car his speech to the cheering
constituents, who had followed him from the town-hall, first under
happiest circumstance, with his wife waiting for him in the porch, later
alone, till the last occasion, in December, 1910, when he fought and won
the election, dying, but with dogged courage; and as he spoke of the
long term of Liberal government which would ensue before a new electoral
struggle, friends standing near caught the words, 'When I shall not be
here.'

* * * * *

Sir Charles had given up the habit of travel except for some special
purpose, as when in 1897 he journeyed with Lady Dilke to see the
Nattiers at Stockholm, or in another year to Bordeaux for her work on
French Art in the Eighteenth Century. But every Christmas they went for
a month to Paris. It was the great holiday of their year, and all the
engagements were made far ahead. There was interest in their Parisian
associations, for their differing attainments made them part of various
separate coteries not familiarly accessible to English people.

Their friends were of all worlds, political, literary, artistic, and
social; and since Sir Charles's intimacy with France dated back to
boyhood, and Lady Dilke's to the days of her first close study of French
art, which, beginning in the sixties with the French Renaissance,
terminated in her big work on French Art in the Eighteenth Century,
their friendships extended over a long period of years, though each
fresh visit enlarged their circle of friends and acquaintances.

In the memoir prefixed to her _Book of the Spiritual Life_ Sir Charles
says of his wife:

'Those who are familiar with several languages learn instinctively to
take the natural manners of the people who are for the moment their
companions. So it was with Lady Dilke.... In Paris she was French with
sufficient difference to give distinction.' As to himself, his great
friend M. Joseph Reinach wrote, 'Dilke connaissait la France mieux que
beaucoup d'entre nous.' But while his command of the French language and
his knowledge of many sides of French life quickened his genial
intercourse with the French, he never failed to impress them as an
English statesman. He paid his French friends the compliment of adopting
many little mannerisms; and however pure the French he spoke, he always
entertained himself by keeping up to date his acquaintance with French
slang, so that the latest developments of fashionable Paris jargon were
familiar to him. Yet that never could be said of him which he himself
noted of his friend M. Richard Waddington, brother to William
Waddington, for many years Ambassador in London, and, in Sir Charles's
opinion, a man of even higher ability than the Ambassador. Of this
friend, half French, half English, he said that he had two mentalities,
and that among Englishmen he was English, among Frenchmen French. Sir
Charles's talk with Frenchmen was unrestrained; as Bismarck felt of
England, so he of France: 'We have nothing to conceal from the French;
they are our natural allies.' But it was always the Englishman who
spoke; no slight veneer of manner in his social intercourse could
conceal that.

There are many scattered entries in his Diary which show how great a
relaxation the Paris holiday yielded.

'At Christmas at Paris we were always gay, though often among the
aged. The gayest dinner I remember was at Henri Germain's with
Gerome, Gaston Boissier, Laboulaye, and others, all about eighty, I
being the chicken of the party.'

Gerome, the painter, is often mentioned. Laboulaye must have been Paul
Laboulaye, born 1833, the diplomatist who had been Ambassador to St.
Petersburg in 1886. It was during his embassy that the _rapprochement_
took place between France and Russia which was announced to Europe by
the welcome of the French fleet to Cronstadt.

Gaston Boissier, Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy, and a great
classical scholar, figures again with another friend, M. Bonnat, in Sir
Charles's memoir of his wife; for he notes that during their last
Christmas in Paris, in 1903, 'the gaiety of their meetings' with these
two friends and others 'had been as unrestrained as ever.' Earlier
memories recall the sculptors Christophe and Gustave Moreau.
Christophe's beautiful 'Mask,' of which Lady Dilke had written, stands
in the Tuileries Garden, and was some time ago horribly disfigured by
inkstain. One of Sir Charles's late letters was written to M. Joseph
Reinach, to ask whether anything had yet been done to cleanse this work
of the sculptor she venerated. Only two small casts were made by
Christophe from the statue, and one of these, given to her by him,
decorated the Pyrford home. So did a picture by Francois Louis Francais,
another artist friend, chief in his day of the water-colour school, a
picture which had inspired one of her stories, and gave the motto,
'Dites-moi un Pater,' to her _Shrine of Death_. In all the later and in
some of the earlier friendships Sir Charles shared, as he did in those
of the great custodians of art treasures. M. de Nolhac, the poet and the
Curator of Versailles, was prominent among them, and Eugene Muentz, head
of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Lady Dilke's correspondence with the
latter, extending over a period of twenty-three years, is preserved at
the Bibliotheque Nationale.

One great friend among collectors was M. Gustave Dreyfus, a high
authority on Donatello and on the medallists of the Italian Renaissance.
At his house there was another attraction in the shape of the
concierge's cat, on whom Sir Charles would call before paying his
respects upstairs. At another house a cat named Pouf was held in great
honour by him, and his feelings were deeply wounded when, with feline
capriciousness, it turned, on Paul Hervieu's entrance, to bestow all its
blandishments on the writer. His love of cats was as well known to his
French as to his English friends, Emile Ollivier writes in 1891 from La
Moutte: 'Campion lui-meme cherche d'un regard afflige son protecteur
disparu'; and M. Andre Chevrillon, being 'touche par la facon dont je
vous ai entendu parler de ce divin animal,' sent him Taine's sonnets 'A
trois chats, Puss, Ebene, et Mitonne, dedies par leur ami, maitre, et
serviteur.'

Memorials of dinners with the well-known collector Camille Groult were
preserved in the shape of some sketches, one of a cavalier in peruke and
cravat, another an excellent crayon head of the host, by Domingo, the
Spanish artist, drawn on the back of a torn menu and given by him to
Lady Dilke.

The Groults' admiration of the beauty of Dockett Eddy was testified in
the gift of a little reflecting mirror, a 'camera obscura,' which, held
to the light, made exquisite vignettes of river, clematis, and syringa;
and a dinner at 76, Sloane Street was marked by the gift of little
copies of M. Groult's famous lately acquired Fragonard, in which Cupid
levels his arrows at the dainty feet of a well-known dancer of the time.

The sculptor Rodin was an acquaintance of late years, and a Christmas
card sent to 76, Sloane Street, in the form of a framed and signed
pencil sketch of a female head, was that master's tribute to Sir
Charles's heresy that Rodin drew much better than he sculptured.

'For old Francais,' says Sir Charles, 'Lady Dilke had the veneration she
felt for Christophe among sculptors,' and for a few women, such as Mme.
Renan. To both the Renans they were bound by ties of familiar
friendship, and some of their pleasantest hours were spent at the
College de France. On November 11th, 1880, there is a note of Sir
Charles's of a talk with Gambetta: 'They discussed Renan's "Souvenirs,"
which were appearing in the _Revue_ for November, wonderfully
entertaining, and perfectly beautiful in style.' It was Renan who had
presented Lady Dilke's two volumes on the French Renaissance, in 1880,
to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, with an admiring
report, and Sir Charles's admiration for Renan's writing was great. Of
Mme. Renan he says: 'This homely-looking old dame was not only a good
wife, but a woman of the soundest sense and the most upright judgment.'

The same feeling of attachment and respect bound them to Mme. de
Franqueville, [Footnote: Mlle. Erard.] the first wife of Sir Charles's
old friend M. de Franqueville, whom he saw often both in Paris and
London. They visited them at La Muette, famous for its memories of Marie
Antoinette, where in the early years of her prosperity she would take
her companions to play at dairying with dainty emblazoned milkpails.

One whose friendship dated far back was Emile Ollivier, and with him Sir
Charles often discussed, both in Paris and at St. Tropez, a vanished era
in France's history, that of the 'Liberal Empire.' To these talks the
Prime Minister of Napoleon III. would bring such wealth of oratory and
such fertility of gesticulation that his hearers felt themselves
transported to a crowded chamber, of which he occupied the rostrum, and
woke with bewilderment to find themselves in the tranquil calm of his
sun-flooded Southern home. There were those who said that the point of
view urged with such conviction varied, and Sir Charles retains a _mot_
of M. Jusserand: 'Emile Ollivier change souvent d'idee fixe.' Mme. Emile
Ollivier, his devoted second wife and helper, was also a great friend,
and her photograph was one of those which Lady Dilke kept near her.

'Relations of the pleasantest kind,' says Sir Charles, were formed with
the Due d'Aumale, in Mr. Bodley's phrase 'last of the grands seigneurs
of France.' On September 25th, 1895, the Duke wrote asking them 'to
spend a whole day going through the books at Chantilly.' 'The charm of
these books, however, and of these repeated visits of 1895 and 1896, lay
in the fact that books and drawings alike excited historic memory.'

'In October, 1895, we were in Paris, and took Went [Footnote: Sir
Charles Dilke's son, the present Sir C. Wentworth Dilke.] to stay at
Vaux, that he might see the finest of the chateaux, and also the
room where, according to Dumas, Aramis and Porthos carried off Louis
XIV., though d'Artagnan saved him again. We also went ourselves to
lunch at Chantilly with the Due d'Aumale, who told us how Mme.
Adelaide, his aunt, used to slap his brother, the Prince de
Joinville, already a distinguished naval officer, and stop his
talking politics with, "Tais-toi, mechant morveux, qui oses
critiquer la politique de ton pere." Comtesse Berthe de Clinchamp
has looked after the house since the days of the Duchesse d'Aumale,
though she lives in another house. This distinguished old dame was
also there. A daughter of the Due de Chartres was once slapped by
her aunt, the Comtesse de Paris, in public, for asking to be taken
to stay at Chantilly with "tante de Clinchamp." In 1896 to 1897 we
were a great deal at Chantilly, finding the Duke interesting with
his reminiscences of his father's account of the Court of Louis XVI.
With the ex-King of Westphalia, and Bismarck, the Duc d'Aumale was
in old age the most interesting companion that I have known. It was
the projecting of his stories into a newer generation that made them
good. Sir S. Smith ("Long Acre") was a bore at the Congress of
Vienna, but would have been delightful to us could we have known
him.' [Footnote: Sir Sidney Smith must have been prolix over his
achievements at the siege of Acre and elsewhere. It is certain that
a reputation for bombast injured his career and caused his
remarkable achievements to be underrated.]

When in May, 1897, the Duke suddenly died, Lady Dilke wrote a little
article which, in spite of the sadness of the circumstances of his death
and the consequent deep note of pathos, in certain parts of the obituary
recalled very happily the brightness of their talks. Letters of the time
speak of the losses which the Dilkes and their friends had sustained by
the fire at the charity bazaar which had indirectly caused the Duke's
death, through that of the Duchesse d'Alencon, his favourite niece. One
of Lady Dilke's dearest friends in France, the Marquise de Sassenaye,
had escaped, but several of her relations who were with her had died a
dreadful death. The tie with these friends was very close, and the
daughter of the Marquise de Sassenaye, the Baronne de Laumont, and her
granddaughter, the Comtesse Marquiset, were among Sir Charles's last
guests at the House of Commons. But he did not live to know that his
friend the Baron de Laumont and his only son laid down their lives for
France in 1915.

Colonel Picquart Sir Charles had met in 1891 during the 'belles journees
de ces manoeuvres de l'Est,' chronicled by M. Joseph Reinach. He deeply
admired the character of this noble and chivalrous gentleman, who,
convinced that wrong had been done to an innocent man, sacrificed his
fine career to save him, and suffered for his Dreyfusism by imprisonment
and military degradation. Sir Charles met Picquart often at the table of
M. Labori and elsewhere, and at one dinner when Emile Zola was present
in 1899 there were also two English friends, the genial Sir Campbell
Clarke, Paris correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_, and his kind wife,
at whose house in Paris the Dilkes dined almost every Christmas Day. He
touched in this way the struggle over the Dreyfus affair, and his
attitude is summed up in a letter conveying through M. Reinach to
Colonel Picquart 'that intense sympathy which I do not express publicly
only because all we English say does more harm than good.' [Footnote:
'At Christmas, 1900, in Paris we met Labori and Colonel Picquart two
nights running, and heard fully the reasons of their quarrel with the
Dreyfus family, which will probably all come out. Labori with great
eloquence, and Picquart quietly, developed the view that Dreyfus, by
virtually accepting the amnesty along with his own freedom, has taken up
the position of a guilty man and sacrificed all those who have
sacrificed everything for him. When, during the season of 1901, Labori
came to London, and we saw much of him, he had toned down this view, or
did not think it wise to express it. But it came out in November,
1901.']

His friendship with M. Joseph Reinach, so often mentioned, dates back to
the days when the latter was Gambetta's secretary. 'C'est par Gambetta
que j'ai connu Dilke,' says M. Reinach. 'Gambetta avait pour lui une
vive affection.' In London and in Paris they met and talked and fenced,
and kept in touch by close political correspondence. 'Dilke was a great
friend of mine, and I thought him a true and intrepid patriot and
citizen,' said M. Reinach; and perhaps of all M. Reinach's great
qualities it was his courage which most provoked the admiration of Sir
Charles and of his wife. They knew all the three brothers, and M.
Salomon Reinach, asking Sir Charles to come and discuss manuscripts,
signs himself 'in admiration of your enormous knowledge'--a happy
tribute from one of whom it was said 'il sait tout.' 'Salomon Reinach,
the outgoing President of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles
Lettres,' writes Sir Charles in 1908 to Lord Fitzmaurice, 'is what
Arthur Strong (Librarian of House of Lords) was, and Acton tried to be,
"universal." He asked me to listen to him for two whole evenings, till
we became a nuisance to our hosts--on the way in which, despite our
Historical Manuscripts Commission, we still lock up papers. His
strongest examples were Horace Mann's letters to Horace Walpole, and the
letters received by the Duke of Wellington (the loss of nearly all the
letters written by J. S. Mill moves me more).'

M. Pallain, Regent of the Bank of France, was another friend whose
acquaintance with Sir Charles dated back to the days when he was
Gambetta's secretary. His book on Talleyrand, the 'fameux livre de
Pallain,' as Sir Charles calls it in a letter to M. Jusserand, was
hardly less interesting to him than his mastership of French finance.

The Siegfrieds, representatives of the wealthy and serious Protestant
world, were friends who shared Sir Charles' interest in questions of
social reform, as was that wisest of permanent officials, M. Fontaine,
head of the French Labour Department; and he discussed these matters
also with the great representative of Roman Catholic Socialism, Count
Albert de Mun. The list of his Diary engagements, ranging over a long
period of time, is filled with the names of French writers, from Ludovic
Halevy, the novelist and dramatist (passages from whose _Belle Helene_
he would recite and whistle), to Anatole France; and of politicians of
every school of thought, from Leon Say, 'a statesman of rare
competence,' to M. Delcasse, whom he saw often, Deschanel, Leon
Bourgeois, Millerand, Viviani, and that great friend of Greece--M. Denys
Cochin; Calmette, the editor of the _Figaro_, assassinated by Mme.
Caillaux; and Lepine, the Prefect of Police; while Jaures was a London
as well as a Paris guest.

The excellence of much French acting attracted Sir Charles and his wife
to the theatre in Paris, though in London their visits to a play were
rare. M. Jules Claretie, the Academician, and for nearly thirty years,
till his death in 1913, the distinguished Director of the Theatre
Francais, constantly put his box at their disposal, and rarely failed to
join them for a talk between the acts.

There is a reply from General de Galliffet, the 'beau sabreur'--that
brilliant soldier whom Sir Charles had followed through the French
manoeuvres accepting a theatre invitation in 1892: 'J'ai, en principe,
l'horreur du theatre; j'en benis le ciel puisque je pourrai ainsi mieux
jouir de votre societe et de celle de Lady Dilke.'

In these visits to Paris they went always to the Hotel St. James, in the
Rue St. Honore, attracted by the beauty and interest of their rooms
there. It is the old Hotel de Noailles, and the staircase and landing,
and several of the rooms, are still as they were when three members of
the family--grandmother, mother, and daughter--were guillotined at the
time of the French Revolution. The guardroom at the head of the stairs,
with its great folding doors, and the paved landing with its old
_dalles_, are intact, as are some of the state-rooms. Their sitting-room
and the great bedroom opening from it looked out on to the courtyard,
where in old days, before it became a courtyard and when the garden
stretched away to the Seine, Marie Antoinette walked and talked, the
story goes, with La Fayette, with whom her friend Mme. de Noailles had
arranged an interview. The windows and balconies here, and part of the
garden front, resemble exactly their representations in pictures of the
period.

They saw many of their friends during the year both at the House of
Commons and at Dockett. Describing them in London, dining in the room
decorated by Gambetta's portrait, M. Jules Claretie writes: 'La premiere
fois que j'eus l'honneur d'etre l'hote de Sir Charles la charmante Lady
Dilke me dit, souriante, "Ici vous etes en France. Savez-vous qui est
notre cuisinier? L'ancien brosseur de General Chanzy."' And among Sir
Charles's collection of Dockett photographs was one in which the chef,
accompanied by the greater artist, the elder Coquelin, was fishing from
a punt on the Thames.

'Je me rappelle avec tristesse,' says the same friend in February, 1911,
'les beaux soirs ou, sur la terrasse du Parlement, en regardant, de
l'autre cote de la Tamise, les silhouettes des hauts monuments, la-bas,
sous les etoiles, dans la nuit, nous causions avec Sir Charles de cet
_Athenaeum_, la revue hebdomadaire ou il accumulait tant de science, et
dont j'avais ete un moment, apres Philarete Chasles et Edmond About, le
correspondant Parisien; puis de Paris, de la France de Pavenir-du passe
aussi.'

When M. Jules Claretie came to London to deliver a lecture in 1899 on
the French and English theatre, Sir Charles was asked to preside, and
also to assist in welcoming him at the Ambassador's table. The charming
and unfailing friendship of that Ambassador, M. Paul Cambon, is worthy
of record, and Sir Charles's admiration for him was very marked. He used
to say that so long as a great Ambassador, either French or English,
represented his nation in Paris or London, the other representative
might be a cipher, and M. Cambon's embassy in London sufficed for both
countries. 'He is a man,' he wrote to Mr. Morley in 1892, 'who (with his
brother Jules) will survive Ribot, and even Freycinet.'

Another close friend was M. Jusserand, whose graceful studies of English
literary history adorned the Pyrford bookshelves. While he was
counsellor to the Embassy in London he was a frequent guest at 76,
Sloane Street, and when he became Ambassador at Washington he still kept
in constant touch with Sir Charles.