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

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The royal funeral brought to London another Sovereign with whom Sir
Charles had friendly personal relations, and the last page in his Memoir
tells of a 'long talk with King George of Greece at Buckingham Palace.'
The King was inclined to deprecate the summoning of a National Assembly
for that autumn. He called it "stupid," whereat, says Sir Charles,
'blank look on my part.' Then, after a pause ('whereas till then we had
talked in a perpetual duet'), the King went on to admit that the
National Assembly was his own creation.

"Well, I was against it at first because we can do by law already
everything that is to be done by the National Assembly. But I saw that
it was the only way out."

"I am glad, Sir," Sir Charles quickly rejoined, "that I was not
'stupid,' for I attributed the invention to" (and he pointed) "its
author."

The King, however, was afraid that some might "blame him," and when Sir
Charles answered, "No one," he quoted the phrase once applied to him:
"Bon petit roi, manque d'energie." The reply was: "I don't know who said
that, Sir! Your prestige is exactly opposite to the German Emperor's
prestige, but equally important to your country and to peace. It may
have been a fool who said it, but it was probably chaff."

"... My family?"

"Oh, well, that is chaff--that is what I meant by chaff."

But Sir Charles took occasion to tell a very important member of the
"family" that "Berlin and Athens were different."

When autumn came, the sitting of the Constitutional Conference silenced
Sir Charles and all men who desired a fair field for that great
experiment. Its failure precipitated a new General Election.

By this time there was no doubt in Sir Charles's mind as to the gravity
of his physical condition. To a friend, who in October was setting out
for extended travel in West Africa, he wrote these words in a letter
wishing him God-speed:

"You are much more likely to come back alive than I am to be alive
to welcome you. Yet I _hope_ that the less likely survival _may_ be,
and of the other I feel pretty sure."

Knowing what he did of his own health, knowing the loyalty of his
constituents, who had within a few months returned him by a majority of
over two thousand, he might well have consented, as his friends wished,
to fight the new election by deputy. It was not his way. Haggard and
physically oppressed, he spent a fortnight in that bitter December going
the round of meetings, addressing his supporters as best his bodily
weakness allowed that strong will and fine courage to have their way.
The result was foregone: his majority was triumphant; but the exertion
killed him. None the less, he came out of the fray jubilant; his side
had won, the victory had been decisive. In Paris, where he went with Mr.
Hudson, the journalists came to him for his accustomed review of the
total situation. "Depuis que je suis au Parlement, je n'ai pas connu un
Ministere aussi solide que le Ministere preside par M. Asquith," was his
emphatic word to M. Leudet in the _Figaro_.

The strain had in no way impaired his intellectual vitality. Those of
his old friends who saw him, such as M. Reinach, had never known him
more animated. To M. Andre Chevrillon, a newer friend by whom he had
been greatly attracted, he wrote:

"I see in the _Times_ that you are writing on Russian literature and
_music_. Please, then, include _Bell_ music: a saint's eve at
Troitsa Sergeifski! The silver notes floating in the dusty--or the
frozen--air. I've been there in September, and I've been there in
December.

"Any chance of seeing you--without moving, for I'm suffering from
weak heart, after two winter-contested elections in one year? I'm
extraordinarily better to-day, but am apt to 'blow' in other than
the Australian sense."

M. Chevrillon has written his impression of the gravity which lay behind
that cheery tone.

"J'allai le voir a l'Hotel St. James. Je n'oublierai jamais
l'impression que m'a laissee cette visite. II etait d'une paleur de
marbre; il m'a dit brievement qu'il se savait en danger immediat,
que le medecin l'avait averti; et tout de suite, quittant ce sujet,
il m'a parle avec son animation, sa verve et sa precision habituelle
de la situation politique en Angleterre. II y avait ce jour--la sur
cette noble figure toute bleme, une dignite, j'ose dire une majeste,
extraordinaire; il etait deja marque par la mort; il la regardait
venir avec une tranquillite et un courage absolu; j'emportai de
cette visite le douloureux sentiment que je ne le reverrais pas, et
une admiration qui me restera toujours pour ce que je venais
d'entrevoir de son caractere."

From Paris he insisted on moving South once more. He travelled now as an
invalid; but when morning light came into the compartment where he lay,
he made his way to the window and beheld again cypress and olive,
sun-baked swarthy soil, little hills with rocky crests fantastically
chiselled, all bathed in the dazzling sunshine of the South. Leaning his
face against the window, he said: "Provence always plays up."

At Hyeres he was kept in bed. But he still read the books that came to
him by post, still dictated his reviews for the _Athenaeum_, and still
enjoyed the reading aloud of French plays, which had become a habit of
holiday time. And, above all, from his window as he lay he watched with
delight unjaded the spectacle of sea and sky. "Am I not a fortunate
invalid," he said, "to have the most beautiful view in the world to look
at?"

Now and then his shout of laughter would be heard and the old spirit of
fun would assert itself. When the journey home in January, 1911, had to
be faced, he rallied for it, came to the restaurant on the train, and
during the crossing sat on deck with Miss Constance Smith, who writes:

"At that time his thoughts seemed to stray from this last journey
back to that which we had taken in the autumn. 'It is worth while,'
he said, 'to have seen Aosta. I am glad to have done it. It is not
often at my age that one can get so much pleasure out of a new
thing.' I think he had a double motive in mentioning Aosta. He put
it forward partly to obliterate for me the sadness of the past three
weeks by raising the memory of the pleasant times that lay behind."

When he reached London he was happy to be again at home and he felt
better. Those with him had no fear for the immediate future, and he
himself fully expected to take his place in Parliament when it met.
Friends would have induced him to consider what part of his work could
be abandoned, but his answer was peremptory: "I won't be kept alive to
do nothing." Confined to bed as he was, work still went on; he received
and answered letters, read and annotated Blue-books. Curiously and
almost dramatically, the occupations of these last days sifted
themselves out in such fashion that the very latest things he handled
became, in some sort, an epitome of his life's work. M. Michelidakis,
President of the Cretan Executive Committee, had written to complain, on
behalf of the Cretan people, that the last note of the Powers seemed to
reverse their policy of slowly transferring Crete to a local government.
On January 24th Sir Charles answered this appeal for his help. It was
the last letter that he signed with his own hand--fit close to a
lifelong championship.

Other clients were knocking at his door that same day, other voices from
that strange retinue of petitioners who brought from all quarters of the
world to this one man their cry for protection and redress. What they
asked was no romantic action, nothing stirring or picturesque, but
simply the weight of his authority exhibited on their side, and the
wisdom of his long practice in public life for their guidance. He was to
fix a date for introducing a deputation concerning certain grievances of
the coloured people in Jamaica, and was to advise upon the best way to
raise a number of minor West African questions in the new Parliament.
His answer was sent from 76, Sloane Street:

_January 24th_, 1911.

"I am still lying up, but I think that I could answer any ordinary
call to duty, and I am trying a small private meeting to-morrow
afternoon, though I shall return to bed here.

"I will note Thursday, 2nd, at noon, on the chance of being well
enough.

"The questions which personally interest me the most are those
affecting the concessionary companies, and I should be glad if you
would ask Wedgwood to keep very close touch with me on these. He
likes me, and is quite willing to show me things; but he does too
much and, like myself, is always tired, and the result is that he
has to be reminded as to consultation in advance, though he does not
mind this being done.

"I doubt there being much danger about the Gambia. As for the
Southern Nigerian ordinances, I am not competent, and have a general
impression that as a rule we do best on more general lines, though
some of the concessionary companies make such 'cases' as to form
exceptions."

His strength was far spent. This letter, says Mr. Hudson, writing two
days later to the President of the Aborigines' Protection Society, "he
asked me to sign, after wishing to sign himself."

Yet the brain was clear and the will unshaken. The "small private
meeting" of which he wrote was a committee of directors of the
_Gardeners' Chronicle_, and on the 25th he was preparing to rise and
dress to attend this, but was persuaded to go back to bed. In bed, he
was still busy reading and marking Blue-books which bore upon the case
of the unorganized workers. The papers so prepared were, by his
direction, set aside for the service of the Women's Trade-Union League.
They were delivered next morning, but the messenger who took them
carried with them the tidings of Sir Charles Dilke's death. He had
slipped suddenly out of life, his heart failing, soon after four o'clock
on the morning of Thursday, January 26th, 1911.

* * * * *

To the funeral service at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, on January 30th,
there came from the House of Commons members of the Cabinet and of the
Ministry, representatives of Liberalism and Labour, the Irish leader
with several of his colleagues, while from the Unionist benches also men
paid this tribute to an honoured opponent. But the Parliamentary figure
of most interest was Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who carried from a
sick-room to the graveside the farewell of old comrade to old comrade.

Among the congregation were men who had been official representatives of
great dominions of the Empire or of foreign Governments. These came in
their private capacity, but one nation as a nation was represented
there. The King of the Hellenes sent his Minister in London to be his
deputy, and the Greek Government ordered a wreath, the token of their
sorrow and gratitude, to be laid upon the bier.

Tributes poured in from the great mass of his fellow-countrymen; from
philanthropic societies; from those who, in or out of Parliament, had
worked with his help and guidance. But above all there were messages
from every trade union and organization of wage-earners, letters from
men and from women in every kind of employ, testifying of service done,
of infinitely varied knowledge, of devotion that knew no limit, and that
had not gone without the one reward acceptable to the man they honoured,
their responsive love and gratitude.

So closed a life across which many commentators of the moment wrote,
some lightly, some in sincere regret, the word Failure. It was
ill-chosen. They should have written Loss. His career had not fulfilled
the promise of its opening; his abilities had never found the full scope
which once seemed assured to them; he had done for his country only what
his country permitted him to do. Over this it was natural, it was
reasonable, to speak words of sorrow. Those who said--and there were not
a few who said it--that he had accomplished more out of office than he
could ever have achieved in office, paid a tribute to the greatness of
his work, but they did not understand the force which had been wasted.
He combined two gifts rarely found in combination--the gift of
Parliamentary leadership and a profound knowledge of foreign affairs.
Amongst the men of his time he stood out as essentially a House of
Commons man, but he was also a European personality. In these
characteristics he recalls Lord Palmerston. Whether to foreign or to
domestic affairs, he brought a knowledge, a judgment, and a mastery of
detail, which none of his contemporaries surpassed and few equalled; and
he added to these the priceless gift of tact in dealing with men and
with bodies of men. In the only Parliament which knew him as an
administrator his advance was rapid and decisive: five years placed him
by universal admission in the front rank; and yet the general opinion
was not less clear than that of the few great ones. Beaconsfield and
Bismarck singled him out by their special interest; Gladstone looked to
him as probably his own ultimate successor.

Then came the day when there was taken from him for ever the opportunity
of directing great affairs, and Sir Charles Dilke's career must be
numbered among things that might have been. Yet was his "the failure"?
"It was England's misfortune, and perhaps her fault," wrote one
[Footnote: Mr. Spenser Wilkinson.] who knew him intimately and shared
but few of his political opinions, "that she could thus have been
deprived of the services of one of her best statesmen."

All that he could do to repair the misfortune to his country was done
without stint. Dismissed from his high command by a scandal, the truth
of which he persistently denied, when a life of ease was open to him he
chose, in spite of obloquy, to return to the ranks. Of what he
accomplished in the ranks some outline has been given; its record stands
as an answer to those who think, as many are tempted to think, that work
in Parliament without office is, in these days, foredoomed to futility.

Yet not in the external results of his wisdom and his labour, but in
another sphere, lies his supreme achievement. The same fate which
obscured the statesman's greatness revealed, what prosperity must have
hidden, the full measure of the man. To have requited public contumely
with public service; in the midst of humiliation to have kept his nature
unspoilt, unimbittered, every faculty bright and keen; to have abated no
jot of his happiness; and at the last to have passed away in serene
dignity, all the voices of reproach hushed and overawed--this was not
defeat, but victory; this, complete in its fulfilment, was the triumph
of Sir Charles Dilke's life.

CHAPTER LX

LITERARY WORK AND INTERESTS

[Footnote: By Miss Constance Hinton Smith.]

No view of Sir Charles Dilke's life can be complete which fails to take
account of his literary interests and activities. He disclaimed the
title of man of letters. [Footnote: 'Except in editing some of my
grandfather's papers, I never myself at all ventured into the paths of
pure literature; but I have lived near enough to it and them ... to be
able to enjoy.'] Except for the little memoir of his second wife, all
the books he gave to the world, as well as the larger part of his
periodical writing, were inspired by political, though not by party,
considerations. And throughout the years of his public career the
pressure of daily work inside and outside Parliament left him small
leisure for reading other than that through which he kept himself
acquainted with every movement, and as far as was humanly possible with
every fact, that seemed to bear upon the wide range of subjects handled
by him. So prodigious was his industry, however--only Dominie Sampson's
adjective will serve--and so quick his faculty for detecting at a glance
the quality of a book and extracting from it the pith and marrow, that
even in the busiest periods of his life he contrived to keep abreast of
the things best worth knowing, not only in English, but also in French
literature. From the time when, by his father's death, he inherited the
proprietorship of the _Athenaeum_, he exercised, through that journal, a
definite if indirect influence in the maintenance of the high standards
of literary honesty, accuracy, and taste in which he had been brought
up. This was done partly by means of his own contributions to the paper,
which covered a field which included history, travel, art, poetry, and
archaeology in two languages, and partly through "his comments and
suggestions on the proofs," of which Mr. C. A. Cook, a former acting
editor, writes with abiding gratitude. Other newspaper proprietors have
doubtless done as much to preserve uniformity of tone and principle;
few, if any, have probably brought such close and unwearied care to bear
upon those details in which tone is audible and principle expresses
itself.

Sir Charles Dilke's attitude towards literature, like his attitude to
politics and art, was peculiar to himself. He judged books, as he judged
men, not by the conventional verdict of the world--in this case the
world of critics--but by the quality his own mind discerned in them. His
judgments, therefore, were personal judgments, uncoloured, as far as
human judgments can be, by traditional respect or prejudice. This does
not mean that he had no literary canons: his grandfather's pupil could
hardly have left old Mr. Dilke's hands so unfurnished; but he never
became the slave of a rule or the docile worshipper of any reputation,
however well established. This mental freedom was partly due to
intellectual courage. The humour of Lamb, for example, delights the
majority of educated Englishmen: it had no charm for Sir Charles, and he
was not afraid to say so. But his liberty of appreciation owed something
also to the circumstances of his education. The fact that he had never
been at a public school--thus missing, in the plastic years of a
sensitive boyhood, the influences which make most strongly for
conventionality of outlook among men of a certain class--made it easier
for him than it might otherwise have been to examine literary questions
with his own eyes, and not through the medium of special glasses imposed
by authority. By the time he went up to Cambridge this habit of judging
for himself was already formed; and although Cambridge did much to
mould, she did not remake him.

The catalogue of his published writings, apart from those contributed to
magazines and newspapers, is brief. It consists practically of the early
book that made him famous as a political thinker, _Greater Britain_; the
brilliant satire, _Prince Florestan_, published anonymously in 1874, of
which he subsequently acknowledged the authorship; and the few volumes
written after the close of his official career, each of which deals with
large questions of public and international interest. _Problems of
Greater Britain_ and _Imperial Defence_ (the latter written in
collaboration with Mr. Spenser Wilkinson) were the most important of
these works, which do not represent fully the literary ambition of his
earlier years. There is plenty of evidence in the Memoir to show that,
at the time of that journey round the world of which _Greater Britain_
was the result, he had not only formed, but had begun to carry out,
several literary projects. Some of these, essays in verse, story-
writing, and metaphysical speculation, belong to the category of
experiment or amusement, and represent nothing more than the natural
activity of a fertile mind trying its powers now in this direction, now
in that. Others are more characteristic: a History of Radicalism, a
Political Geography, a book to be called _The Anglo-Saxon Race_ or _The
English World_, and a work on _International Law_. [Footnote: See
Chapter VI. (Vol. I.)]

As late as 1878 he was 'working hard at' a _History of the Nineteenth
Century_ 'for three or four months' in Provence, 'besides managing to do
some little work towards it when I was in London.' At this time he was
engaged upon the History of Germany in the early part of his chosen
period, and was corresponding with Professor Seeley as the highest
authority on that subject.

'My history of events began with 1814. I showed that the doctrine of
nationality had been made use of for their own purposes by the Kings
in 1812-13, and crushed by them at congresses between 1814 and 1822,
and then appealed to by the revolutionary party in 1823, and in a
less degree in 1848. That doctrine of nationality was described even
in our own times by Heine as a dead thing, when it was yet destined
to prove, in 1859 and 1866 and 1870 and 1878, the phenomenon of the
century, and nowhere to work such change as in Heine's own Germany.
Heine thought that the idea of the emancipation of nationality had
already in his day been replaced by the emancipation of humanity;
but, whatever may be the case in the long-run, the emancipation of
nationalities was destined to prove the more lasting side of the
movement of 1848.'

After stating that the nineteenth century must be held to have begun in
1814, he writes:

'History to me was one and could know no commencements, yet in the
development of a concerted action of the Powers I found 1814 so
convenient a starting-point as to be as good as a real beginning. In
the rise of the new society, the social revolution,'

he found himself less fortunate. There was no clear starting-point, and
when he selected August 4th, 1789, as his,

'I felt that I chose only the moment of the springing of the plant
from the soil ... and stood in some danger of neglecting the
previous germination of the seed beneath the soil.'

After delivering a lecture on "Old Chelsea," in which 'I made a
considerable attempt to clear up some points in the life of Sir Thomas
More, for whom I have a great admiration ... I conceived ... the idea of
writing a Life of More, whose life has never been well told since it was
written by his son-in-law at the time; but the immense difficulty of
writing any Life which would stand a comparison with the son-in-law's
notes ultimately deterred me.'

It is easy to understand why the foregoing projects were dropped; but
why Sir Charles never published the book on Russia which he was known to
have had in preparation is not so apparent. He had paid four protracted
visits to the country, travelled over a great part of it, and was
intimately acquainted with Russians of the most widely differing
opinions. Obviously he would have enjoyed writing the book that he had
planned. He had actually fixed the date of publication, when he found
that Mr. Hepworth Dixon had come, almost at the same time, to a decision
to write on his subject. On August 3rd, 1869, he wrote to Mr. Dixon:

"My Dear Dixon,

"In reference to your request that in good feeling and friendship
towards you I should defer the publication of my _Russia_ from
February 1st, 1870 (the date fixed with Macmillan), to a later
period, I have carefully thought the matter over, and have decided
to do as you wish. The only condition that I make is that you will
write to me by return of post saying whether, if I fix January 1st,
1871, as my day, you will date your preface not later than February
1st, 1870, and issue your first edition not more than a week after
that date."

Dixon wrote back on the same day:

"My Dear Charles,

"I am more pleased at your resolution than words can say. It is more
than right. It is friendly and noble."

'Mr. Dixon immediately went to Russia, where we met in the course of
the autumn, and speedily published his _New Russia_, a remarkable
book considering the haste with which it was prepared. After five
visits to Russia, I handed over the whole of my notes to my brother,
who spent two years at one time in that country, and who finished
the book.' [Footnote: Only two chapters ever appeared--in
magazines.]

Sir Charles's contributions to the _Athenaeum_ began while he was still
at Cambridge. His article of October 22nd, 1864, [Footnote: See Chapter
V. (Vol. I.)] was the first of a long series of reviews and notices,
which continued unbrokenly till within a week of his death. It was
natural that, as years went by, his knowledge and experience should be
drawn upon for reviews of important political biographies, and of books
on imperial and colonial questions or military history. But he did not
confine himself entirely to such grave topics. The files of the
_Athenaeum_ contain many columns from his hand dealing with the lighter
matters of topography (especially in France), travel, and fiction. The
fiction was mainly French, modern English novels commending themselves
little to his liking, though he was among the earliest and steadiest, if
also among the more discriminating, admirers of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and
Robert Louis Stevenson's _Prince Otto_ had a place with his favourite
books. Another subject which attracted his pen was the local and
legendary history of his beloved Provence. His intimate acquaintance
with the beliefs and fancies of that region could be gathered from his
slightest notice of an ephemeral book on the country, as readily as his
store of political knowledge and familiarity with the events that made
history in his time from an extended review of a volume of _L'Empire
Liberal_ or the life of a leading contemporary in the House of Commons.
In neither case could his hand be hid.