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

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How far the belief in the existence of a policy of encirclement, as the
current phrase went, which existed in Germany from 1905 to 1909,
[Footnote: See Hanotaux, _La Politique de l'Equilibre_, chap, xxiii.;
Reventlow, 279, 296-305; Baron Beyens, _L'Allemagne avant la Guerre_,
pp. 220-221.] was justified is a matter which the historian of the
future will have to discuss. Certain it is, however, that the British
Foreign Office after 1909 gave no just cause of offence to Germany. The
disappointing outcome of supporting Russia in the negotiations connected
with Bosnia; the failure at this time of the Entente to produce any
satisfactory results in Crete and in various negotiations at
Constantinople, where French policy was deemed to be influenced by
considerations more financial than political; the friendly reception of
King Edward VII. at Berlin in February, 1909, and the great changes
which death or retirement brought about, in the years immediately
succeeding, in the personnel of the Ministries of Germany, France,
Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Italy--amongst others the retirement of the
German Chancellor--produced a new situation. [Footnote: Hanotaux, _La
Politique de l'Equilibre_, chap, xviii.; Reventlow, p. 339. Prince von
Buelow resigned on July 20th, 1909; M. Clemenceau on July 14th, 1909; M.
Isvolski and M. Tittoni in October, 1910; and Count Aerenthal in
February, 1912.]

In 1910 things seemed to point again to the possibility of clearer
skies. The negotiations between Germany and Great Britain in regard to
the Bagdad Railway and the still outstanding African questions were
resumed, and proceeded without any serious hindrance. Favourable results
seemed, and with good reason, to be in sight. There were also
negotiations between Germany and Russia. Thus it was that, a few days
before he passed away, Sir Charles was justified in still writing in a
hopeful strain that the Great War could and would be avoided--fortunate
at least in this, that he did not live to see the breaking up of the
foundations of the great deep. [Footnote: In his recently published
work, _England and Germany_, 1740-1914, Mr. Bernadotte Schmitt says,
speaking of the beginning of the year 1911--prior, it is to be
remembered, to the Agadir incident: "In the early summer of 1911,
Anglo-German relations, if not cordial, had lost much of the animosity
engendered by the Bosnian troubles of 1908 and the naval scare of 1909.
The German Emperor had been well received when he attended the obsequies
of his uncle, Edward VII., and again on the occasion of the unveiling of
the national monument to Queen Victoria in May, 1911. On the 13th of
March of the same year, Sir Edward Grey had remarked upon the friendly
relations obtaining with all the Powers.... In Germany the death of
Edward VII., who passed for the inspirer of the _Einkreisungs Politik_,
caused a feeling of relief." Speaking of the period immediately
preceding the outbreak of the war, the same author observes: "Whatever
Germany's motives may have been, the fact remained that in July, 1914,
Anglo-German relations were more cordial than they had been at any time
since the Boer War.... The tragedy of the Great War lies in the fact
that early in the summer of 1914 a substantial agreement had been
reached between Great Britain and Germany on those matters about which
they had previously disagreed" (pp. 195, 373). This book, by an American
Rhodes Scholar of the Western Reserve University, is a very valuable and
impartial contribution to the history of recent events. On the condition
of things in 1911 and 1912, see also the despatches of Count Lalaing and
Baron Beyens, from London and Berlin, to M. Davignon, the Belgian
Minister for Foreign Affairs, published in the official German White
book, _Belgische Actenstuecke_, 1905-1914, pp. 85, 113.]

CHAPTER LIX

THE LAST YEARS

I.

Call no man happy or unhappy, said the philosopher, till you see his
end. With Sir Charles Dilke's life clear before us, if the question be
put, "Was he happy?" only one answer can be given. He was happy. With a
power of suffering which made bereavement poignant, with tragic
experience of disappointment and distress, he never lost the faculty of
enjoyment: he touched the world at many points, and his contact was
complete and vital.

Therefore, in the life that he lived after his second wife's death there
was nothing gloomy or half-hearted. At Pyrford and Dockett the same
interests continued to hold their charm, though in his home of homes,
the home that he did not make, but was born into, there was a change. At
76, Sloane Street, he still slept, breakfasted, and did his morning's
work; but he would never willingly return there for dinner, except on
very rare occasions when he entertained guests, or spend the evening
there.

He still enjoyed the life of the House of Commons. Old friends were a
pleasure, new-comers a fresh spring of interest, and the younger men
naturally drew round this most willing teacher. One of the young
Liberals [Footnote: Mr. A. F. Whyte, M.P.] who came within his influence
describes the amazing interest of his talk, with its personal memories
of the leading personalities in Europe during half a century past. But
the true attraction was something simpler than that. "He made you
extraordinarily fond of him."

What is implied in that very simple phrase has been set out by another
friend of an opposing political school, brought into touch with him by a
common interest in Social Reform: [Footnote: Mr. J. W. Hills, M.P.]

"What first brought us together I forget; I think it was some action
I took with regard to sweated trades. At any rate he asked me to
stay for a Sunday at Dockett Eddy; and after my first visit I went
often. For one thing, we were both devoted to rowing; he was, of
course, a far more distinguished and accomplished oarsman than I,
but he and I went extraordinarily well together in a pair. Everyone
who has rowed knows that pair-oar rowing is the most difficult, as
it is the most fascinating, form of the art. We had many long rows
together.

"The life at Dockett Eddy had an atmosphere and a colour different
from that of other houses. Breakfast was at a fairly early hour.
After breakfast, Dilke was invisible till lunch. Lunch was at 12.30,
French in character, and always, wet or fine, took place on the
broad verandah which ran along one side of the house. During the
afternoon Dilke rowed on the river, walked about the green and
winding paths of his beloved willow-clad island, and talked to his
friends. The prevailing recollection that I shall always have of
Dockett Eddy is good talk. No one who did not talk to Dilke knew the
man. His speeches--at any rate, from 1906 to his death--did not give
all his qualities. These came out in his talk. His amazing
knowledge, which occasionally overloaded his speeches and diverted
them from their main argument, wove itself naturally into the
texture of his talk and gave it a wonderful richness and depth. And
he talked to everybody and on all subjects; and to all he brought
his tremendous vitality and his vivid and many-sided personality.
You always felt that the whole force of the man was behind what he
said--the active, eager, questioning mind, determined to master all
facts that gave true knowledge, and when this was done, when all
facts were noted and weighed, coming to a conclusion which was both
clear-cut and unalterable. He was most tolerant of the views of
others, and never overwhelmed with greater knowledge; but all that
he had in him he gave freely and without stint. The talks I
recollect best are either on industrial conditions in other
countries, or on French history from 1848 onwards, or on English
politics. On French history I always listened to him with delight;
he not only knew literally every fact and every date, but he also
knew personally most of the great men who had latterly played
leading parts. On English politics it was characteristic of the man
to have a tremendous belief in the present. For instance, I said
something about the decadence of Parliament and Parliamentary
speaking. He at once burst out: 'You are quite wrong. The men of
to-day are much greater than their predecessors'; and then he went
through all our prominent politicians and compared them with the men
of the past. The only comparisons I remember are Winston Churchill
with his father, and Asquith with Disraeli and Gladstone, in each
instance to the advantage of the present generation.

"Dilke was a great man, if ever there was one. He was a man of big
ideas, too big for prejudice or suspicion or self-interest. His mind
was at once imaginative and matter-of-fact, making him that rare
combination, a practical idealist. But the abiding memory which I
shall retain of him as long as I live is not his wide knowledge, his
singleness of purpose, his vital energy and driving force, so much
as the friendship he gave me. He put the whole of himself into his
friendship, and gave himself abundantly and without reserve. He was
so great a man, and meant so much to his friends, that he played a
large part in the lives of all he honoured with his regard. Though I
only knew him during the last three years, he filled so big a place
in my life that his death left a wide and empty gap. I regarded him
with love and veneration."

"He talked to everybody and on all subjects," and he talked to everybody
on a common ground of fellowship. Newman, the cabdriver at Shepperton,
beside whom he always insisted on sitting when he came to Dockett; Jim
Haslett, his ferryman; Busby, his old gardener and lodge-keeper at
Pyrford: these no less than "Bill" East who rowed with him, and "Fred"
Macpherson with whom he fenced, keep the same memory of his friendliness
and of the pleasure that they had in being with him. For his
constituents he was more than a representative: he was their friend, a
personal influence, a centre of affection in the lives of many among
them. "I hardly know what to do or say," wrote one of them after his
death. "For one man to say of another it seems strange, but I _loved_
Sir Charles."

Into this affection there entered that peculiar tenderness of loyalty to
the wronged which finds fit expression in these words of his old
comrade, Judge Steavenson, who had known his life since they were young
athletes together in the Trinity Hall boat: "I loved him, my oldest and
best friend, and how I mourn him! The tragedy of his life has been pain
and suffering to me for more years than I care to remember. Some say a
little band of friends never wavered in their belief in his innocence. I
am one, and so believing in good time I shall go to my grave."

Many a brave man has under the sense of injustice grown hard and bitter;
it was not so with Sir Charles. After his death a friend's widow wrote
to one who mourned him: "I should like to tell you how divinely kind he
was to me in my great grief." A lady who for long years had been on a
bed of pain said of his visits to her: "He seems to take your suffering
from you and give it back to you on a higher plane. I think he
understands because he has suffered so much himself."

In these last years after Lady Dilke's death, Sir Charles resumed, in
some moderate degree, the old habit of travel. From 1906 it grew to be
an institution that, when the Trade-Union Congress closed its sittings
in autumn, he should meet the editor of this book and her friend Miss
Constance Hinton Smith, [Footnote: Who attended these Congresses as
visitors representing the Women's Trade-Union League.] and with them
proceed leisurely from the trysting-place to Dean Forest for his annual
visit to the constituency. Thus in different years they set out from
Tewkesbury, from Bath, from Leicester, from Ipswich, and explored towns
and country places of beauty or historic interest, under the guidance of
one who had the gift for placing every detail in its setting, whether on
the physical map of England or on that crowded chart which depicts the
long course of British history. For him these journeys were each a
revisiting of places seen before--seen, as he would often recall, under
his grandfather's guidance in boyhood.

The annual Christmas visit to Paris, where his son often joined him, was
revived in company of his secretary, Mr. Hudson, and his wife. In more
than one autumn, after his stay in the Forest of Dean was completed, he
made a journey through Switzerland to the Italian lakes. He journeyed
under a resolution not to visit any gallery of pictures, for these must
recall too poignantly the companionship which had made the special joy
of all his picture-seeing. But he sent his companions that they might
compare their impressions with his memory, always astonishingly vivid
and exact. The sights to which he gave himself were sun and air,
mountain and lake. Here, as in England, trees especially appealed to
him, and in the famous garden of the Isola Madre on Lago Maggiore he
amazed the gardener by his acquaintance with all the collection, from
the various kinds of cypress and cedar down to the least impressive
shrub. But what gave him most pleasure was the actual journeying,
awakening not only associations with the places seen, but memories of
other places in far-off corners of the earth.

In the last year of his life the International Association for Labour
Legislation met at Lugano, and he stopped there on his autumn tour. His
health was already failing, he attended no meetings and received few
visitors; but experts in the subject, Ministers and ex-Ministers of
Labour from Prussia, France, Canada, and other countries, sought him, to
consult him on points of international policy. Two years later, when the
Congress met again at Zurich, M. Fontaine recalled the memory of Sir
Charles and the "conseils precieux" which other workers drew from him in
their interviews. It was only when the Congress was over that the
holiday really began, with a day on Maggiore and two days on Orta,
before the travellers made for their real destination, Aosta among its
hills, a scene new to him as to them, that filled him with fresh life.
All about it charmed him: the mountains, the Roman gateways, the
mediaeval cloisters, the long procession of the cattle coming down from
the hill-slopes during the night; the keen air gave him energy to walk
as he had never thought to walk again; and, for a touch of familiar
humours, the landlord of the rough little inn where they stayed had been
in his day a waiter in Willis's Rooms and remembered his guest among the
diners there.

An accident to one of his companions had caused him to go on alone, and,
accordingly, when he came back to Turin to fetch them it was as a guide
already fully qualified. On the drive up from Ivrea, in a valley whence
can be seen at the same moment Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, and the glacier
of the Gran Paradiso, he could show them the fort of Bard, blocking the
gorge just as in the days when it checked Napoleon on his road to
Marengo. But the memories awakened in him were not only of Napoleon; the
valley of the Dora Baltea was a complete image of the Khyber Pass, and
Bard the very counterpart of Ali Musjid.

As they came home through France, halt was made at Lyons, and, though he
refused to see the gallery, he could describe almost every canvas and
the place where it hung; but best of all he remembered Charlet's great
picture of the retreat from Moscow and the army that "dragged itself
along like a wounded snake." In Paris, too, on that homeward journey a
stop was made, and since few of his friends were yet back from the
country, there was more theatre-going than usual. Guitry, his favourite
actor, was not playing, but Brasseur and Eve la Valliere amused him, and
he found special delight in the _Mariage de Mademoiselle Beulemans_. Yet
not even the acting of Jaques as the good-natured, choleric old Belgian
brewer could induce him to depart from his practice of going away after
the first act.

Three times in the last years of his life he went back to Provence. The
first of these visits was in the January of 1909, and he with his
companions set out from Paris on the last day of the old year,
travelling by motor-car in defiance of heavy snow and frost. These made
obstacles which only gave piquancy to his journey through scenes where
stories of the Franco-German War crowded to his tongue, and when
difficulties delayed the car he struck up wayside intimacies--once with
an old non-commissioned officer now transformed into a _Garde
Champetre_, anon with a peasant couple from whose cottage he begged hot
water to make tea. In one such household, arriving with beard and
moustache frozen white, he announced himself to the children of the
family group as Father Christmas, and made good his claim with
distribution of little gifts.

At Hyeres he was rejoined by the old servant, once his gardener and
vine-dresser, who had marketed the produce of La Sainte Campagne in the
days when Sir Charles was trading, like any other petty Provencal
landowner, in grapes and artichokes, mimosa and roses and violets, for
the Toulon market. That former life lived again in his talk as he
recalled those whom he had known in his Provencal home: neighbours,
servants, local politicians; and from his hotel at Hyeres he never
failed to make excursions to Toulon, and to visit his old friend and
sometime man of business, M. Bertrand, who would carry him to the cafe
frequented by the leading citizens, to feast on a Provencal dejeuner
with red mullet and bouillabaisse. Another recurring visit was to Emile
Ollivier at La Moutte, his beautiful seaward-facing house on the
promontory beyond Saint Tropez.

"Sir Dilke" had friends everywhere in that corner of the world. His near
neighbour at Cap Brun, M. Noel Blache, leader of the local bar, a famous
teller of Provencal stories and declaimer of Provencal verse, said of
him: "He knows our country and our legends better than we know them
ourselves." In the years during which he lived for part of the
twelvemonth at Toulon he had followed every winding of the coast, had
explored all the recesses of the hills.

"It is my boast, probably vain," he wrote to M. Andre Chevrillon in
1909, "to have invented the Mountains of the Moors. Sizeranne had been
staying there for six weeks before he came into the British Hyeres, but,
_he_, only on the coast. When I first showed that coast to Emile
Ollivier, Noel Blache, then President of the Conseil-General of the Var,
and Felix Martin, the latter advised the narrow-gauge railway which
ruined the politicians of the Var, and became 'le Panama du Midi.' My
journey this time was to assure myself that the road and railway along
the coast had not spoilt the _interior_. They have improved indeed, and
I was glad, a road from the entrance to the forest on the main road from
Hyeres to Cogolin, turning to the north over two cols to Collobrieres.
The T.C.F. has made a road from Collobrieres up the hill to the
south-east, whence the walk to La Chartreuse de la Verne is easy. I used
to have to reach that spot from Campo, the police post on the stream,
called Campeaux upon the maps. The whole forest is unharmed. It is
unknown to the British inhabitants of Hyeres. Not one had been there,
or, I think, heard of it; and I met no human creature upon some twelve
miles of the finest parts of the improved road. Grimaud, at the other
end, I have no doubt you know. It was the Moorish capital. I went there
the day that I lunched with Emile Ollivier this time. There was a foot
of ice on the top, at La Garde-Freinet, and one looked back, down on to
Grimaud, standing baked by an African sun, and could make out the ripe
oranges and the heads of the great cactus."

"Why does not someone 'discover' France?" he writes to M. Joseph
Reinach. "How few Frenchmen know the sunset view _north_ from St. Tropez
in January!" And again to M. Chevrillon in 1909: "I adore the solitude
of Sainte Baume, and believe in Marie Madeleine--except her head and
tomb at St. Maxime, where Brutus Bonaparte helped keep the inn.
[Footnote: The eldest of the Bonapartes was not the only person of the
Napoleonic days as to whom stories were told in the neighbourhood.
Desiree Clary was said to have lived at the inn of St. Maxime, and Sir
Charles wrote to Mr. Morley concerning La Sainte Campagne: "My old
cottage is supposed to be that where Murat was concealed after the 100
days."] Intellect is represented here by Robert de la Sizeranne, _but_
it is only two and a half hours in motor or two and a half by rail to La
Moutte, where I make E. Ollivier read his fourteenth volume!"

All the little hill towns were known to him, and their history; he could
show the spot at Cavalaire where the Moorish lords of Provence trained
their famous horses; he knew the path at Le Lavandou, worn into the
solid rock by the bare feet of countless generations. It irked him that
the plain of Frejus was spoilt by the intrusion of white villas on what
had once been called "a better Campagna." But these changes were of the
surface only. Provence was still Provence, its people still unchanged
from the days when Gambetta said to Sir Charles of one who projected a
watercourse at Nice: "Jamais il ne coulera par cette riviere au tant
d'eau qu'il n'en depensera de salive a en parler." There was still the
local vintage in every inn, still the _beurre du berger_, the cheese and
the conserves of fruit which every housewife in Provence sets out with
pride in her own making; still the thin breeze of the mistral through
the tree-tops, still the long white roads running between fields of
violets and narcissi, and still white farmhouses among the terraced
oliveyards and vines. All these things were an abiding joy, but a
greater joy than all, and still more unchangeable, was the daily
oncoming of light, the subtle flush and gradations of colour before the
sun rose from that beloved sea.

II.

In the year 1908 Sir Charles's health had been very bad, and he risked
his life in attending the annual miners' meeting at the Speech House,
leaving Dockett Eddy, as his custom was, at six in the morning, and
returning home the same night. But by the following year he had regained
his physical condition and his cheerfulness. The aspect of politics,
too, had been transfigured. Speaking to his constituents in September,
1909, he reminded them how a year earlier the Liberal party had been
despondent.

'This year all of them felt that the Government, with the country
behind it--for the country was thoroughly behind the Government in
the matter of the Budget--had taken, not only a new lease of life,
but had adopted an attitude which on the whole, apart from any
little doubts in reference to particular details, commanded a
confident and an enthusiastic support on the part of a wider
majority of people than any other movement of modern times.'

He told them of his own objections to the famous Budget--one in regard
to the cider duty, upon which he had carried his point, the other to the
increased tax on tobacco, which he had unsuccessfully resisted. So long
as tea and tobacco were taxed as they were, the working classes, in his
judgment, paid more than their just proportion. Still, a great stride
forward had been taken. As for the House of Lords throwing out the
Budget, "those who did not like that Chamber wanted that fight, but it
did not seem to him natural that the House of Lords would desire it,
because it appeared to him to be a fight in which the Peers were
perfectly certain to be beaten." Nevertheless it came to pass, a General
Election followed, and the huge independent Liberal majority
disappeared. Sir Charles was active to keep together the various
sections which most desired to limit the power of the House of Lords,
and on February 22nd, 1910, he, on behalf of the Radicals, held an
interview with the Labour and Irish leaders together, to ascertain and
discuss the line of action contemplated. Also, since there was a
proposal that Government should, as a matter of urgency, oust private
members and take all the time of the House, he saw Mr. J. S. Sandars,
Mr. Balfour's chief private secretary, and in Sir Charles's phrase
"factotum," to find out what the Opposition was going to do.

In the debates upon the Government's Resolutions which laid the
foundation for the Parliament Act, Sir Charles took no part. The matter
had gone as he desired.

By April the Resolutions were adopted; but before action by Bill could
be begun, the Parliamentary struggle was suspended by the death of King
Edward. In that national loss Sir Charles Dilke felt special sorrow.
Whether as Prince of Wales or as King, the dead Sovereign had
consistently shown him, not merely consideration, but friendship. It was
among the satisfactions of Sir Charles's last years of life that the
principle, for which he had incurred odium by contending forty years
earlier, now came to be fully recognized as that most respectful to the
Crown. Lord Knollys writes that on the accession of King Edward VII.,
Sir Charles had called and "offered to support any reasonable Civil List
which might be proposed." A Civil List Committee was appointed, on which
Sir Charles served, and the result of its deliberations was to recommend
a discontinuance of occasional grants from Parliament to members of the
Royal Family. It did not, indeed, go to the length of making adequate
provision for the family and leaving its distribution to the King, which
was what Sir Charles always recommended; but it moved far in that
direction, and to that extent carried out his views.