The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1, by Stephen Gwynn Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 Author: Stephen Gwynn Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7382] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 22, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR CHARLES W. DILKE V1 *** Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. THE LIFE OF THE RT. HON. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE, BART., M.P. [Illustration: RT. HON. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE, BART., M.P., IN THE YEAR 1873. From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery. Frontispiece, Vol. I.] THE LIFE OF THE RT. HON. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE BART., M.P. BEGUN BY STEPHEN GWYNN, M.P. COMPLETED AND EDITED BY GERTRUDE M. TUCKWELL. IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. PREFACE The following Life of Sir Charles W. Dilke consists mainly of his own Memoirs and of correspondence left by him or furnished by his friends. The Memoirs were compiled by Sir Charles Dilke from his private diaries and letters between the years 1888 and his return to Parliament in 1892. The private diaries consisted of entries made daily at the dates dealt with. Of the Memoirs he says: "These notes are bald, but I thought it best not to try, as the phrase goes, 'to write them up.'" In some cases the Memoirs have been condensed into narrative, for Sir Charles says of the periods his "notes" cover: "These chapters contain everything that can be used, and more than is needed, and changes should be by way of 'boiling down.'" The Memoirs were unfinished. He writes in May, 1893: "From this time forward I shall not name my speeches and ordinary action in the House, as I had now regained the position which I held up to 1878, though not my position of 1878-1880, nor that of 1884-85;" and as from this point onwards there are few entries, chapters treating of his varied activities have been contributed by those competent to deal with them. Sir Charles Dilke's will, after giving full discretionary powers to his literary executrix, contains these words: "I would suggest that, as regards those parts relating to Ireland, Egypt, and South Africa, the same shall be made use of (if at all) without editing, as they have been agreed to by a Cabinet colleague chiefly concerned." A further note shows that, so far as Ireland was concerned, the years 1884-85 cover the dates to which Sir Charles Dilke alludes. The part of the Memoirs dealing with these subjects has therefore been printed _in extenso_, except in the case of some detailed portions of a discussion on Egyptian finance. The closing words of this part of Sir Charles Dilke's will point out to his executrix that "it would be inconsistent with my lifelong views that she should seek assistance in editing from anyone closely connected with either the Liberal or Conservative party, so as to import into the publications any of the conventional attitude of the old parties. The same objection will not apply to members of the other parties." In consequence of this direction, Mr. Stephen Gwynn, M.P., whose name was among those suggested by Sir Charles Dilke, was asked to undertake the work of arranging the Memoirs, and supplementing them where necessary. This work was already far advanced when Mr. Gwynn joined the British forces on the outbreak of the War. His able and sympathetic assistance was thus withdrawn from the work entailed in the final editing of this book--a work which has occupied the Editor until going to press. A deep debt of gratitude is due to Mr. Spenser Wilkinson, who has contributed the chapters on "The British Army" and "Imperial Defence." Sir George Askwith was good enough, amidst almost overwhelming pressure of public duties, to read and revise the chapter entitled "The Turning- Point." Sir George Barnes and Sir John Mellor have also freely given expert advice and criticism. Mrs. H. J. Tennant, Miss Constance Smith, Mr. E. S. Grew, Mr. H. K. Hudson and Mr. John Randall have given much valuable assistance. The work of reading proofs and verifying references was made easy by their help. While thanking all those who have placed letters at her disposal, the Editor would specially acknowledge the kindness with which Mr. Austen Chamberlain has met applications for leave to publish much correspondence. Mr. John Murray's great experience has made his constant counsel of the utmost value; and from the beginning to the close of the Editor's task the literary judgment of the Rev. W. Tuck well has been placed unsparingly at her service. Sir H. H. Lee and Mr. Bodley, who were Sir Charles Dilke's official secretaries when he was a Minister, have given her useful information as to political events and dates. To the many other friends, too numerous to name, who have contributed "recollections" and aid, grateful acknowledgments must be made. Finally, the Editor expresses her warmest thanks to Lord Fitzmaurice, who has laid under contribution, for the benefit of Sir Charles Dilke's Life, his great knowledge of contemporary history and of foreign affairs, without which invaluable aid the work of editing could not have been completed. INTRODUCTION The papers from which the following Memoir is written were left to my exclusive care because for twenty-five years I was intimately associated with Sir Charles Dilke's home and work and life. Before the year 1885 I had met him only once or twice, but I recall how his kindness and consideration dissipated a young girl's awe of the great political figure. From the year 1885, when my aunt, Mrs. Mark Pattison, married Sir Charles, I was constantly with them, acting from 1893 as secretary in their trade- union work. Death came to her in 1904, and till January, 1911, he fought alone. In the earlier days there was much young life about the house. Mrs. H. J. Tennant, that most loyal of friends, stands out as one who, hardly less than I, used to look on 76, Sloane Street, as a home. There is no need to bear witness to the happiness of that home. _The Book of the Spiritual Life_, in which are collected my aunt's last essays, contains also the Memoir of her written by her husband, and the spirit which breathes through those pages bears perfect testimony to an abiding love. The atmosphere of the house was one of work, and the impression left upon the mind was that no life was truly lived unless it was largely dedicated to public service. To the labours of his wife, a "Benedictine, working always and everywhere," Sir Charles bears testimony. But what of his own labours? "Nothing will ever come before my work," were his initial words to me in the days when I first became their secretary. Through the years realization of this fact became complete, so that, towards the last, remonstrances at his ceaseless labour were made with hopeless hearts; we knew he would not purchase length of life by the abatement of one jot of his energy. He did not expect long life, and death was ever without terror for him. For years he anticipated a heart seizure, so that in the complete ordering of his days he lived each one as if it were his last. The house was a fine school, for in it no waste of force was permitted. He had drilled himself to the suppression of emotion, and he would not tolerate it in those who worked with him except as an inspiration to action. "Keep your tears for your speeches, so that you make others act; leave off crying and think what you can do," was the characteristic rebuke bestowed upon one of us who had reported a case of acute industrial suffering. He never indulged in rhetoric or talked of first principles, and one divined from chance words of encouragement the deep feeling and passion for justice which formed the inspiration of his work. He utilized every moment. The rapidity of his transition from one kind of work to another, and his immediate concentration on a subject totally different from that which he had previously handled, were only equalled by the rapidity with which he turned from work to play. With the same unerring quickness he would gather up the contents of a book or appreciate the drift of a question. This latter characteristic, I fear, often disconcerted disputants, who objected to leave their nicely turned periods incomplete because he had grasped the point involved before they were halfway through a sentence; but his delight in finding this same rapidity of thought in others was great, and I remember his instancing it as a characteristic of Mr. Asquith. His wide grasp of every question with which he dealt was accompanied by so complete a knowledge of its smallest details that vague or inaccurate statements were intolerable to him; but I think the patience with which he sifted such statements was amongst the finest features in the discipline of working under him. One felt it a crime to have wasted that time of which no moment was ever deliberately wasted by himself. The spirit in which he approached his work was one of detachment from all personal considerations; the introduction of private feuds or dislikes into public service was a thing impossible to him and to be severely rebuked in those who helped him. He never belittled antagonists, underrated his opponents' ability, or hesitated to admit a mistake. Others will testify in the pages which follow to the warmth and generosity of his friendship, but that which stands out in memory is his forbearance to his foes. Just as his knowledge was complete in its general grasp as in its smallest detail, so was his sympathy all-embracing. No suffering, says the Secretary of the Anti-Sweating League, was too small for his help; the early atrocities of Congo misrule did not meet with a readier response than did the wrongs of some heavily fined factory girl or the sufferings of the victim of a dangerous trade. For his own achievements he was curiously regardless of fame. He gave ungrudgingly of his knowledge to all who claimed his help and direction, and he trained many other men to great public service. In Mr. Alfred Lyttelton's happy phrase, he possessed "rare self-effacement." There are many instances in his early career of this habit of self-effacement, and the habit increased with years. Remonstrance met with the reply: "What does it matter who gets the credit so long as the work is done?" It is for this reason that we who love him shall ever bear in affectionate memory those who brought his laurels home to him in their celebration of the passing of the Trade Boards Act in 1910--that first instalment of the principle of the minimum wage, on which he united all parties and of which he had been the earliest advocate. It has been said of his public life that he knew too much and interested himself in too many things; but those coming after who regard his life as a whole will see the connecting link which ran through all. I can speak only of that side of his activities in which I served him. He saw the cause of labour in Great Britain as it is linked with the conditions of labour throughout the globe; his fight against slavery in the Congo, his constant pressure for enlightened government in India, his championship of the native races everywhere, were all part and parcel of the objects to which he had pledged himself from the first. For progress and development it is necessary that a country should be at peace, and his study of military and naval problems was dictated by the consideration of the best means under existing conditions to obtain that end for England. Yet to imagine that his life was all work would be to wrong the balance of his nature. He turned from letters and papers to his fencing bout, his morning gallop, or his morning scull on the river, with equal enthusiasm, and his great resonant boyish laugh sounded across the reach at Dockett or echoed through the house after a successful "touch." His keenness for athletic exercises, dating from his early Cambridge days, lasted, as his work did, to the end. In spite of the warnings of an overtaxed heart, he sculled each morning of the last summer at Dockett, and in Paris he handed over his foils to his fencing-school only a month before his death, leaving, like Mr. Valiant-for-Truth before he crossed the river, his arms to those who could wield them. It was well for him; he could not have borne long years of failing strength and ebbing mental energy. Anything less than life at its full was death to him. Released from work, he was intensely gay, and his tastes were sufficiently simple for him to find enjoyment everywhere. He loved all beautiful things, and, though he had seen everything, the gleam of the sinking sun through the pine aisles at his Pyrford cottage would hold him spellbound; and in summer he would spend hours trying to distinguish the bird notes, naming the river flora, or watching the creature life upon the river banks. So in the Forest of Dean, that constituency which he loved well and which well deserved his love, his greatest pleasure was to set himself as guide to all its pleasant places, rehearsing the name of each blue hill on the far horizon, tracing the windings and meeting of the rivers, loving all best, I think, when the ground was like a sea of bluebells and anemones in the early year. He watched eagerly each season for the first signs of spring, and when he was very ill he told me that it must ever be a joy untouched by advancing years. But indeed he had in him the heart of the spring. I think it was largely this simple love of nature which kept him always strong and sweet even after the deep blow of his wife's death in 1904. Wherever he was, life took on warmth and colour. Travel with him was a revelation, trodden and hackneyed though the road might be. In his vivid narrative the past lived again. Once more troops fought and manoeuvred as we passed through stretches of peaceful country which were the battlefields of France; Provence broke on us out of a mist of legendary lore, the enchantment deepening as we reached the little-traversed highlands near the coast--those Mountains of the Moors where in past days, _connu comme le loup blanc_ among the people, he had wandered on foot with his old Provençal servant before motors and light railways were. His care for the _Athenaeum_, inspired by the more than filial love he bore his grandfather, its earlier proprietor, led to continual reading and reviewing, and he would note with interest those few Parliamentarians who, keeping themselves fresh for their work of routine by some touch with the world of Literature, thereby, as he phrased it, "saved their souls." Of the events which cut his public life asunder it is sufficient to say here that those nearest him never believed in the truth of the charges brought, finding it almost inconceivable that they should have been made; while the letters and records in my hands bear testimony to that great outer circle of friends, known and unknown, who have expressed by spoken or by written word, in public and in private, their share in that absolute belief in him which was a cardinal fact of our work and life. The fortitude which gave to his country, after the crash of 1886, twenty- five years of tireless work, was inspired, for those who knew him best, by that consciousness of rectitude which holds a man above the clamour of tongues, and finds its reward in the fulfilment of his life's purpose. "To have an end, a purpose, an object pursued through all vicissitudes of fortune, through heart's anguish and shame, through humiliation and disaster and defeat--that is the great distinction, the supreme justification of a life." So wrote his wife in her preface for _The Shrine of Death_. The service of his country was the purpose of his life. Nor was that life justified alone by his unswerving pursuit of its great aim; it was justified also in its fulfilment, for his service was entirely fruitful-- he wrested success from failure, gain from loss. It has been said that in 1886 the nation lost one who would have been among its greatest administrators. Yet when we look back on all that was inspired and done by him, on the thousand avenues of usefulness into which his boundless energy was directed, there is no waste, only magnificent achievement. An independent critic both by pen and speech inside and outside the House of Commons, the consolidator of whatever Radical forces that chamber held, the representative of labour before the Labour Party was, he stood for all the forces of progress, and when his great figure passed into the silence his place was left unfilled. One writing for an African journal the record of his funeral, dreamed that as the strains of the anthem poured their blessings on "him that hath endured," there rose behind the crowd which gathered round him dead a greater band of mourners. "A vast unseen concourse of oppressed mankind were there, coming to do homage to one who had ever found time, amidst his manifold activities, to plead their cause with wisdom, unfailing knowledge, and with keen sympathy of heart." I commit his memory to the people whom he loved and served. G. M. T. CONTENTS OF VOL. 1 I. EARLY LIFE II. EDUCATION III. CAMBRIDGE IV. CAMBRIDGE (_continued_) V. LAST TERMS AT THE UNIVERSITY VI. "GREATER BRITAIN" VII. ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT VIII. THE EDUCATION BILL OF 1870--THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR IX. THE BLACK SEA TREATY--THE COMMUNE X. THE CIVIL LIST XI. PERIOD OF FIRST MARRIAGE XII. RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT--DEATH OF LADY DILKE XIII. RENEWAL OF ACTIVITY XIV. REVIVAL OF THE EASTERN QUESTION XV. HOME POLITICS AND PERSONAL SURROUNDINGS XVI. THE EASTERN QUESTION--TREATY OF SAN STEFANO AND CONGRESS OF BERLIN XVII. POLITICS AND PERSONS XVIII. THE ZULU WAR AND THE GREEK COMMITTEE XIX. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INTERESTS XX. THE FORMATION OF A MINISTRY XXI. AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE XXII. HOME POLITICS--COMMERCIAL TREATY--PERSONAL MATTERS XXIII. COERCION--CLOSURE--MAJUBA XXIV. EUROPEAN POLITICS XXV. COMMERCIAL RELATIONS WITH FRANCE XXVI. GAMBETTA, DISRAELI, ROYAL PERSONAGES, MORIER XXVII. DIFFICULTIES OF THE LIBERAL GOVERNMENT XXVIII. THE PHOENIX PARK MURDERS XXIX. EGYPT (JANUARY TO SEPTEMBER, 1882) XXX. ENTRY INTO THE CABINET (SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER, 1882) XXXI. AT THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD XXXII. FOREIGN AND COLONIAL AFFAIRS (OCTOBER, 1882, TO DECEMBER, 1883) XXXIII. EGYPT AFTER TEL-EL-KEBIR (SEPTEMBER, 1882, TO DECEMBER, 1883) LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I RT. HON. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE, M.P., IN THE YEAR 1873 Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE AS A CHILD From the miniature by Fanny Corbaux. MR. CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE (SIR CHARLES W. DILKE'S GRANDFATHER) Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by Arthur Hughes. SIR C. WENTWORTH DILKE (SIR CHARLES W. DILKE'S) FATHER Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by Arthur Hughes. LADY DILKE (MISS KATHERINE SHEIL) From a photograph by Hills and Saunders. JOHN STUART MILL Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A., bequeathed by Sir Charles W. Dilke to the Westminster Town Hall. RT. HON, JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P. Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by Frank Holl, R.A., bequeathed by Sir Charles W. Dilke to the National Portrait Gallery. LÉON GAMBETTA Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by Legros, bequeathed by Sir Charles W. Dilke to the Luxembourg and Louvre Museums. THE LIFE OF SIR CHARLES DILKE CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE The man whose history is here recorded was for more than forty years a commanding figure upon the theatre of English public life; a politician, who in the councils of a powerful Ministry exercised an influence more than proportioned to the offices he held; a statesman, who brought to triumphant issue many wise projects, and whose authority, even when he was a private member of Parliament, continued to be recognized not only among all parties of his countrymen, but also throughout Europe: yet, when he died, all thought and spoke not of what he had achieved, but of what he had missed. To write the biography of one so marked by a special malignity of fate is a difficult task. That bare justice may be done, it is necessary not only to follow out his openly recorded successes, things done in his own name and of his own right, but also to disentangle, as far as may be, the part which his authority, his knowledge, and his ceaseless industry played in framing and securing measures whose enactment redounded to the credit of other men. But above all, since a man's personality signifies far more than his achievements, and this man stands before the world overshadowed by a dishonouring accusation, it is necessary to establish by facts and by testimony not so much what he did as what he was. Yet it must not be supposed that he himself counted his career among life's failures. The record will tell of close and affectionate family ties; of a wonderfully vivid and varied experience acquired in many lands and through many phases of activity; and, even in his blackest hour, of a noble love retained and richly repaid. No trace will be found of a nature soured or warped by balked ambition, nor any resentful withdrawal from the public stage. In the story that has to be told, proof will emerge indisputably that, without affected indifference to the prizes of a public career, his passion was for work, not for its attendant honours; that he valued office as an opportunity to advance, not himself, but the causes which he had at heart; and that when further tenure of power was denied him, he abated no jot of his lifelong labours. The main purpose of his life was 'to revive true courage in the democracy of his country,' [Footnote: Throughout these volumes single quotation marks without further indication signify an excerpt from the Manuscript Memoir (compiled by Sir Charles, as explained in the Preface, from original diaries and letters), or (as here) from notes left with that document, but not embodied in it. Double quotation marks signify Correspondence and Memoranda found in the despatch-cases and letters sent by correspondents, etc.] and his immediate object always and everywhere to defend the weak. For the protection of toilers from their taskmasters at home and abroad, in the slums of industrial England and in the dark places of Africa, he effected much directly; but indirectly, through his help and guidance of others, he effected more; and in the recognition of his services by those for whom he worked and those who worked with him he received his reward. Charles Wentworth Dilke was born into a family of English gentlefolk, which after a considerable period of comparative obscurity had won back prosperous days. The baronetcy to which he succeeded was recent, the reward of his father's public services; but a long line of ancestors linked him to a notable landed stock, the Dilkes of Maxstoke. This family was divided against itself in the Civil Wars; and the brother of the inheritor of Maxstoke, Fisher Dilke, from whom Sir Charles descended, was a fanatical Puritan, and married into a great Puritan house. His wife, Sybil Wentworth, was granddaughter to Peter Wentworth, who led the Puritan party of Elizabeth's reign: she was sister to Sir Peter Wentworth, a distinguished member of Cromwell's Council of State. Property was inherited through her under condition that the Dilke heirs to it should assume the Wentworth name; and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Fisher Dilke's descendants were Wentworth Dilke or Dilke Wentworth from time to time. In George II.'s reign one Wentworth Dilke was clerk to the Board of Green Cloth at Kew Palace: his only son, Wentworth Dilke Wentworth, was secretary to the Earl of Litchfield of the first creation, and left an only son, Charles Wentworth Dilke, who was a clerk in the Admiralty. This Dilke was the first of five who successively have borne this combination of names. [Footnote: For convenience a partial table of descent is inserted, showing the five Dilkes who bore the same combination of names. CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, b. 1742, d. 1826. --------------------------------------------- | | Charles Wentworth Dilke = Maria Dover William Dilke, b. 1796, b. 1789, d. 1864. | Walker. d. 1885. | | ------------------------------------------------------- | | Charles Wentworth Dilke = M. Mary William Wentworth first Baronet, b. 1810, Chatfield. Grant Dilke, killed in d. 1869. Crimea, b. 1826, d. 1854 | | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | Charles Wentworth Dilke = (1) Katherine Ashton Dilke, second Baronet, | M. E. Sheil. b. 1850, d. 1883. b. 1843, d. 1911. | (2) Emilia F. S. | Pattison. | Charles Wentworth Dilke, present Baronet, b. 1874.] The second of them, Charles Wentworth Dilke, his eldest son, and grandfather to the subject of the memoir, was, like his father, a clerk in the Admiralty; but early in life showed qualities which fitted him to succeed in another sphere of work--qualities through which he exercised a remarkable influence over the character and career of his grandson. So potent was this influence in moulding the life which has to be chronicled, that it is necessary to give some clear idea of the person who exercised it. Mr. Dilke--who shall be so called to distinguish him from his son Wentworth Dilke, and from his grandson Charles Dilke--at an early period added the pursuit of literature to his duties as a civil servant. By 1815, when he was only twenty-six, Gifford, the editor of the _Quarterly Review_, already spoke highly of him; and between that date and 1830 he was contributing largely to the monthly and quarterly reviews. In 1830 he acquired a main share in the _Athenaeum_, a journal 'but just born yet nevertheless dying,' and quickly raised it into the high position of critical authority which it maintained, not only throughout his own life, but throughout his grandson's. So careful was Mr. Dilke to preserve its reputation for impartial judgment, that during the sixteen years in which he had virtually entire control of the paper, he withdrew altogether from general society "in order to avoid making literary acquaintances which might either prove annoying to him, or be supposed to compromise the independence of his journal." [Footnote: From _Papers of a Critic_, a selection of Mr. Dilke's essays, edited, with a memoir, by Sir Charles Dilke, See _infra_, p. 184.] After 1846 the editorship of the _Athenaeum_ was in other hands, but the proprietor's vigilant interest in it never abated, and was transmitted to his grandson, who continued to the end of his days not only to write for it, but also to read the proofs every week, and repeatedly for brief periods to act as editor. When in 1846 Mr. Dilke curtailed his work on the _Athenaeum_, it was to take up other duties. For three years he was manager of the recently established _Daily News_, working in close fellowship with his friends John Forster and Charles Dickens. From the time when he gave up this task till his death in 1864 Mr. Dilke's life had one all-engrossing preoccupation--the training of his grandson Charles. But to the last, literary research employed him. In 1849 he helped to establish _Notes and Queries_ 'to be a paper in which literary men could answer each other's questions'; and his contributions to this paper [Footnote: Its founder and first editor, Mr. W. J. Thorns (afterwards Librarian of the House of Lords), had for three years been contributing to the _Athenaeum_ columns headed "Folk-Lore"--a word coined by him for the purpose. The correspondence which grew out of this threatened to swamp other departments of the paper, and so the project was formed of starting a journal entirely devoted to the subjects which he had been treating. Mr. Dilke, being consulted, approved the plan, and lent it his full support. In 1872, when Mr. Thorns retired from control of the paper, Sir Charles Dilke bought it, putting in Dr. Doran as editor; and thenceforward it was published from the same office as the _Athenaeum_.] and to the _Athenaeum_ never ceased; though so unambitious of any personal repute was he that in all his long career he never signed an article with his own name, nor identified himself with a pseudonym. A man of letters, he loved learning and literature for their own sake; yet stronger still than this love was his desire to transmit to his heirs his own gathered knowledge, experience, and convictions. He had become early 'an antiquary and a Radical,' and this combination rightly indicated unusual breadth of sympathy. The period in which he was born favoured it: for, keen student as he was of the eighteenth century-- preserving in his own style, perhaps later than any other man who wrote in England, that dignified but simple manner which Swift and Bolingbroke had perfected--he yet was intimately in touch with the young genius of an age in revolt against all the eighteenth-century tradition. Keats, only a few years his junior, was his close friend; so was John Hamilton Reynolds, the comrade of Keats, and author of poems known to every student of that literary group. Thomas Hood and Charles Lamb had long and near association with him. Lover of the old, he had always an open heart for the new; and, bookish though he was, no one could be less a bookworm. The antiquary in him never mastered the Radical: he had an unflagging interest in the large facts of life, an undying faith in human progress. Slighting his own lifework as he evidently did--for he never spoke of it to his son or his son's son--he was yet prompted by instinct to kindle and tend a torch which one after him should carry, and perhaps should carry high. It would be difficult to name any man who had a stronger sense of the family bond. He had married very young--before he was nineteen--Maria Dover Walker, the beautiful daughter of a Yorkshire yeoman, still younger than he. This couple, who lived together "in a most complete happiness" for forty years, had one child only, born in 1810, Charles Wentworth Dilke, commonly called Wentworth. [Footnote: _Papers of a Critic_, vol. i., p. 13.] Mr. Dilke sent his son to Westminster, and removed him at the age of sixteen, arranging--because his theory of education laid great stress on the advantage of travel--that the lad should live for a while with Baron Kirkup, British Consul and miniature painter, in Florence, as a preparatory discipline before going to Cambridge. What he hoped and intended is notably expressed in a letter written by him at Genoa on his return journey to his son in Florence in 1826: [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 18.] "I ought to be in bed, but somehow you are always first in my thoughts and last, and I prefer five minutes of gossiping with you.... How, indeed, could it be otherwise than that you should be first and last in my thoughts, who for so many years have _occupied all_ my thoughts. For fifteen years at least it has been my pleasure to watch over you, to direct and to advise. Now, direct and personal interference has ceased.... It is natural, perhaps, that I should take a greater interest than other fathers, for I have a greater interest at stake. I have _but one _son. That son, too, I have brought up differently from others, and if he be not better than others, it will be urged against me, not as a misfortune, but as a shame. From the first hour I never taught you to believe what I did not myself believe. I have been a thousand times censured for it, but I had that confidence in truth that I dared put my faith in it and in you. And you will not fail me. I am sure you will return home to do me honour, and to make me respect you, as I do, and ever shall, love you." It was a singular letter for a man of thirty-seven to write--singular in its self-effacement before the rising generation, singular, too, in the intensity of its forecast. Yet, after all, a measure of disappointment was to be his return for that first venture. The son to whom so great a cargo of hopes had been committed was a vigorous lad, backed when he was fifteen 'to swim or shoot or throw against any boy of his age in England,' and he developed these and kindred energies, accepting culture only in so far as it ministered to his fine natural faculty for enjoyment. He acquired a knowledge of Italian and of operatic music at Florence; but when afterwards at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he was, to his father's despair, very idle, and during his early years in London 'was principally known to his friends for never missing a night at the Opera.' That interest in things of the mind which he could hardly have failed to inherit had made of him a dilettante rather than a scholar; but later he became very active in promoting those ideals which appealed to his taste. He had a shrewd business eye, and showed it in founding the _Gardeners' Chronicle_ and the _Agricultural Gazette_, both paying properties. He had, moreover, a talent for organization, and a zeal in getting things done, acknowledged in many letters from persons of authority in their recognition of those services to the International Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862 which were rewarded by his baronetcy. An interesting National Exhibition of 'Art Manufactures' had already been held by the Society of Arts, on whose Council Wentworth Dilke was an active worker, at the time when he, with two other members of the Council and the secretary, Mr. Scott Russell, met the Prince Consort on June 30th, 1849, and decided to renew the venture on a scale which should include foreign nations. When the executive committee of four (to whom were added a secretary and a representative of the contractors) was named in January, 1850, the work practically fell on three persons--Sir William Reid communicating with the public departments, Mr. Henry Cole settling questions of space and arrangement, [Footnote: Mr. Cole, afterwards Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B., was, says the Memoir, 'commonly known as King Cole,' and was afterwards secretary to the South Kensington School of Design.] and Wentworth Dilke 'having charge of the correspondence and general superintendence,' and attending 'every meeting of the executive except the first.' Wentworth Dilke worked hard for this and for other objects. But his public activities had to be fitted in with a great deal of shooting and other sport at Alice Holt, the small house in Hampshire, with adjacent preserves, which he rented, and which became the family's country home. In 1840 he married, and, after the birth of Charles Wentworth Dilke, the subject of this Memoir, on September 4th, 1843, all the grandfather's thought centred on the child. His daughter-in-law became, from then till her death, his chief correspondent, and the master of the house was 'completely overshadowed' in the family group. That group was so large as to be almost patriarchal. Wentworth Dilke, when he married, and established himself at 76, Sloane Street, took under his roof his wife's mother, Mrs. Chatfield, her grandmother, Mrs. Duncombe, and also her unmarried cousin, Miss Folkard. All these ladies lived out their lives there, Mrs. Chatfield and Miss Folkard surviving till Charles Dilke had become a Minister of State. Up to 1850 old Mr. Dilke and his wife lived at their house in Lower Grosvenor Place, which was a second home for their grandson Charles. But in 1850 the wife died, and Mr. Dilke 'spent sixteen months in wandering through the remoter parts of Scotland, and along the north and west coast of Ireland, but corresponded ceaselessly with his daughter-in-law, to whom he was much attached.' During a great part of this time he was accompanied by his grandson. Mrs. Wentworth Dilke, after giving birth in 1850 to her second child, Ashton Dilke, had 'fallen into a deep decline'; and Charles Dilke, at the age of seven, was handed over to his grandfather's charge, partly to solace the old widower's loneliness, partly to relieve the strain on his mother. The peculiar relation between grandfather, mother, and son, stands out clearly from the letter which that mother wrote shortly before her death in September, 1853, to be delivered to the boy Charles. After some tender exhortation, she added: "But moral discipline your grandfather will teach you. What I wish particularly to impress on you is the _necessity_ of worshipping God." And at the end: "My own boy, there is another thing still to name, for none can say whether this letter may be required soon, or whether I may have the delight of seeing my children grow up, but this last and cherished subject is my little Ashton. When he is old enough, dear, to understand, let him read this letter, and by his mother's blessing teach him to think and feel that all that I have said applies equally to him. Set him a good example in your own conduct, and be always affectionate brothers." Of the father, not a word--and for care of the younger boy, the dying woman's hope is in his brother. It will be shown how studiously the ten- year-old boy, on whom his mother so leant, fulfilled that charge. But he himself felt, in later life, that scant justice had been done to the man who was 'overshadowed' in his home, and wrote in 1890: 'My father loved my grandfather deeply, but my grandfather was greatly disappointed in him, and always a little hard towards him: my father suffered through life under a constant sense of his inferiority. He suffered also later from the fact that while his elder son was the grandfather's and not the father's boy, his younger son was as completely under my influence in most matters, as I was under the influence of my grandfather.' Yet in a sense the relation between old Mr. Dilke and the son whom he unconsciously slighted was strangely intimate and confiding. For in 1853 the elder man gave up his own house in Lower Grosvenor Place, made over all his money to his son, and came to live under the son's roof in Sloane Street for the remainder of his life. His confidence in the patriarchal principle justified itself. 'My father,' writes Sir Charles, 'for eleven years consulted his father--dependent on him for bread--in every act of his life.' To the world at large, Wentworth Dilke was a vastly more important person than the old antiquary and scholar. After his services in organizing the Great Exhibition of 1851, he declined a knighthood and rewards in money; but he accepted from the French Government a gift of Sèvres china; from the King of Saxony, the Collar of the Order of Albertus Animosus; from the King of Sweden and from the Prince Consort, medals; and from Queen Victoria, a bracelet for his wife. These remained among the treasures of 76, Sloane Street. But he acquired something far more important in the establishment of friendly relations with persons of mark and influence all over the Continent; for these relations were destined to be developed by Charles Dilke, then a pretty-mannered boy, who was taken everywhere, and saw, for instance, in 1851, the Duke of Wellington walk through the Exhibition buildings on a day when more than a hundred thousand people were present. He could remember how the Duke's 'shrivelled little form' and 'white ducks' 'disappeared in the throng which almost crushed him to death' before the police could effect his rescue. Wentworth Dilke's association in the Prince Consort's most cherished schemes had brought him on a footing of friendship with the Royal Family; and on July 25th, 1851, his wife wrote that the Queen had come over and talked to her in the Exhibition ground. Long afterwards, when the pretty- mannered boy had grown into a Radical, who avowed his theoretical preference for republican institutions, Queen Victoria said that "she remembered having stroked his head, and supposed she had stroked it the wrong way." [Illustration: Sir Charles as a child from the miniature by Fanny Corbin.] CHAPTER II EDUCATION The earliest memory that Sir Charles Dilke could date was 'of April 10th, 1848, when the Chartist meeting led to military preparations, during which I' (a boy in his fifth year) 'saw the Duke of Wellington riding through the street, attended by his staff, but all in plain clothes.' In 1850 'No Popery chalked on the walls attracted my attention, but failed to excite my interest'; he was not of an age to be troubled by the appointment of Dr. Wiseman to be Archbishop of Westminster. In 1851 he was taken to a meeting to hear Kossuth. From this year--1851--date the earliest letters preserved in the series of thirty-four boxes which contain the sortings of his vast correspondence. There is a childish scrap to his grandfather, and a long letter from the grandfather to him written from Dublin, which lovingly conjures up a picture of the interior at Sloane Street, with 'Cousin' (Miss Folkard) stirring the fire, 'Charley-boy' settling down his head on his mother's lap, and 'grandmamma' (his mother's mother, Mrs. Chatfield) sitting in the chimney-corner. For the year 1852 there are no letters to the boy; it was the time of his mother's failing health, and he was journeying with his grandfather all over England, 'reading Shakespeare, and studying church architecture, especially Norman.' It was a delightful way of learning history for a quick child of nine: 'We followed Charles II. in his flight, and visited every spot that has ever been mentioned in connection with his escape--a pilgrimage which took me among other places to my future constituency of the Forest of Dean. We went to every English cathedral, and when my grandfather was at work upon his Pope investigations, saw every place which was connected with the history of the Carylls.' [Footnote: John Caryll suggested to Pope the idea of the "Rape of the Look"; and many of the poet's letters were written to his son, a younger John Caryll. They were an ancient and distinguished Roman Catholic family, devoted partisans of, and centres of correspondence with, the exiled Stuarts.] Mr. Dilke combined his desire to instruct the child with the frankest interest in his play. Here, for instance, is a letter to Charles of October 15th, 1853: "DEAR OLD ADMIRAL, "Hope you found all right and tight: a gallant vessel--tackle trim-- noble crew of true blue waters--guns shining and serving for looking-- glasses to shave by--powder dry--plenty in the locker. Wishing you favourable gales, "I remain, "Your old friend and rough and tough "GRANDFATHER." It is worth while giving the reply--precocious for a boy of ten: "BEDHAMPTON, "HAVANT, "_October 16th, 1853._ "MY DEAR GRANDPAPA, "We arrived quite safely on Friday night, and were astonished to find that my Aunt and Uncle and Cousin Letitia were gone to Brighton and then to Hastings, and Godpapa had a letter this morning to say that they found it so hot at Hastings that they went on to Folkestone, and they are there now. The Admiral has to report for the information of his Cockney readers that he hoisted his Flag yesterday at the main peak. The weather was, however, so windy and wet that after hiding himself with his honoured father under the cuddy for half an hour, the Admiral thought that prudence was part of his duty, therefore struck his Pocket-handkerchief and retired to luncheon. A Salute from a black cloud hastened his departure. "Your affectionate grandson, "C. W. DILKE." The boy was his grandfather's to educate, and there has not often been such an education. A man ripe in years, still vigorous--for Mr. Dilke was only fifty-three when his elder grandson was born--yet retired from the business of life, and full of leisure, full of charm, full of experience, full of knowledge, devoted his remaining years to the education of his grandson. It may be held that he created a forcing-house of feeling, no less than of knowledge, under which the boy's nature was prematurely drawn up; but there can be no doubt as to the efficacy of the method. It was not coddling--Mr. Dilke was too shrewd for that--and if at a certain stage it seemed as though excessive stimulus had been given, maturity went far to contradict that impression. 'After my mother's death I began classics and mathematics with Mr. Bickmore, at that time a Chelsea curate and afterwards Vicar of Kenilworth. At the same time I took charge of teaching letters to my brother. I had few child friends, and used to see more of grown-up people, such as Chorley, [Footnote: Musical critic for the _Athenaeum._] Thackeray, and Dickens, of whom the latter was known to us as "young Charles Dickens," owing to my great-grandfather having known "Micawber."' Old Mr. Dilke's father had been employed in the Admiralty along with the father of Dickens. As for Thackeray, it was probably about this time that he came on the boy stretched out upon grass in the garden of Gore House, resting on elbows, deep in a book, and looked over his shoulder. "Is it any good?" he asked. "Rather!" said the boy. "Lend it me," said Thackeray. The book was _The Three Musketeers_, and we all know _The Roundabout Papers_ which came out of that loan. Charles Dilke had his free run of novels as a boy, and not of novels only. In 1854, when he was only eleven: 'I began my regular theatre-going, which became a passion with me for many years, and burnt itself out, I may add, like most passions, for I almost entirely ceased to go near a theatre when I went to Cambridge at nineteen. Charles Kean, and Madame Vestris, and Charles Mathews, were my delight, with Wright and Paul Bedford at the Adelphi, Webster and Buckstone at the Haymarket, and Mrs. Keeley. Phelps came later, but Charles Kean's Shakespearian revivals at the Princess's from the first had no more regular attendant. My earliest theatrical recollection is Rachel. 'I was a nervous, and, therefore, in some things a backward child, because my nervousness led to my being forbidden for some years to read and work, as I was given to read and work too much, and during this long period of forced leisure I was set to music and drawing, with the result that I took none of the ordinary boy's interest in politics, and never formed an opinion upon a political question until the breaking-out of the American Civil War when I was eighteen. I then sided strongly with the Union, as I showed at the Cambridge Union when I reached the University. Even in this question, however, I only followed my grandfather's lead, although, for the first time, in this case intelligently. So far indeed as character can be moulded in childhood, mine was fashioned by my grandfather Dilke.' It was not only character that Mr. Dilke formed. He made the boy the constant companion of his own intellectual pursuits, imbued him deeply with his own tastes, his own store of knowledge. In the summer of 1854 he had taken his pupil to 'Windsor, Canterbury, Rochester, Bury St. Edmunds, St. Albans, and many other interesting towns.' That autumn the pair went to France together--apparently the beginning of Charles Dilke's close acquaintance with that country, which was extended in the following year, 1855, when Wentworth Dilke was named one of the English Commissioners for the French International Exhibition, and took his family to live in Paris from April to August. 'We were all with him at Paris for some time, and I acquired a considerable knowledge of the antiquities of the town, before the changes associated with the name of Haussmann, by rambling about it with my grandfather, who, however, soon got sick of Paris and went home to his books, while we remained there for four months. I was at the party given at the Quai d'Orsay by Walewski, the son of Napoleon; at that given at the "Legion of Honour" by Flahaut, the father of Morny; at the Ball at the Hôtel de Ville to the Emperor and Empress and Queen Victoria; at the review; and at the Queen's entry and departure. The entry was the finest display of troops which I ever witnessed, as the National Guard of the City and its outskirts turned out in great form, and raised the numbers to 120,000, while the costumes both of the Guard and of the National Guard were very showy. There paraded also two hundred veterans of the wars of the First Empire in all the uniforms of the period. I heard Lablache in his last great part, and in this year I think I also saw Rachel for the last time; but I had seen her in England, I believe, in 1853. I certainly had seen her in a part in which many years later I remember Sarah Bernhardt, and can recall Rachel well enough to be able to institute a comparison entirely to Rachel's advantage. 'After our visit to Paris in 1855 my brother and I had taken to speaking and to writing to one another in French, and this practice we kept up until his death, even when he was Member of Parliament for Newcastle-on-Tyne, and I a member of the Government.' One memory of that year never left Sir Charles Dilke. In the evenings he used to go to the Place Vendôme to hear the Guards' combined tattoo. Every regiment was represented, and the drummers were a wonderful show in their different brilliant uniforms--Chasseurs of the Garde, Dragoons, Lancers, Voltigeurs, and many more. In the midst was the gigantic sergeant-major waiting, with baton uplifted, for the clock to strike. At the first stroke he gave the signal with a twirl and a drop of his baton, and the long thundering roll began, taken up all round the great square. Sir Charles, as he told of this, would repeat the tambour-major's gesture; and the boy's tense, eager look of waiting, and flash of satisfaction when the roll broke out, revived on the countenance of the man. 'In 1856 I became half attached to a day-school, which had for its masters, in mathematics a Mr. Acland, a Cambridge man, and in classics a Mr. Holme, a fellow of Durham, and for several years I used to do the work which they set in the school without regularly attending the school, which, however, my brother attended. My health at that time was not supposed to be sufficiently strong to enable me even to attend a day-school, and still less to go to a public school; but there was nothing the matter with me except a nervous turn of mind, overexcitable and overstrained by the slightest circumstance. This lasted until I was eighteen, when it suddenly disappeared, and left me strong and well; but the form which this weakness took may be illustrated by the fact that, although I did not believe in ghosts, I have known myself at the age of sixteen walk many miles round to avoid passing through a "haunted" meadow.' Also he made the experiments in literature common with clever lads: 'In 1856 I wrote a novel called _Friston Place_, and I have a sketch which I made of Friston Place in Sussex in August of that year, but the novel I have destroyed, as it was worthless.' Another aspect of his education is recalled by drawings preserved in the boxes from 1854 onwards--conscientious delineations of buildings visited, representing an excellent training for the eye and observation. In 1857 his grandfather took him to Oxford (where he rambled happily about the meadows while Mr. Dilke read in the Bodleian) and to Cambridge, going on thence to Ely, Peterborough, and Norwich. Later in the same year the pair travelled all over South Wales, everywhere rehearsing the historical memories of the place, everywhere mastering the details of whatever architecture presented itself. Each return home brought experiences of a different kind. 'I have known,' he says, 'everyone worth knowing from 1850 to my death.' At seven years old he was seeing and hearing the famous persons of that time, either at the home in Sloane Street, to which Wentworth Dilke's connection with the Exhibition drew men eminent in the world of physical science and industrial enterprise, as well as the artists with whom his connoisseurship brought him into touch; or else at old Mr. Dilke's house in Lower Grosvenor Place. He remembered visits with his grandfather to Gore House, 'before Soyer turned it into the Symposium,' and to Lady Morgan's. The brilliant little Irishwoman was a familiar friend, and her pen, of bog-oak and gold, the gift to her of the Irish people, came at last to lie among the treasures of 76, Sloane Street. Also there remained with him "memories from about 1851 of the bright eyes of little Louis Blanc, of Milner-Gibson's pleasant smile, of Bowring's silver locks, of Thackeray's tall stooping figure, of Dickens's goatee, of Paxton's white hat, of Barry Cornwall and his wife, of Robert Stephenson the engineer, to whom I wanted to be bound apprentice, of Browning (then known as 'Mrs. Browning's husband'), of Joseph Cooke (another engineer), of Cubitt the builder (one of the promoters of the Exhibition), of John Forster the historian, of the Redgraves, and of that greater painter, John Martin. Also of the Rowland Hills, at Hampstead. "1859 was the height of my rage for our South Kensington Trap-Bat Club, which I think had invented the name South Kensington. It was at it that I first met Emilia Francis Strong. We played in the garden of Gore House where the Conservatory of the Horticultural Society, behind the Albert Hall, was afterwards built." In the memoir of the second Lady Dilke, prefixed to _The Book of the Spiritual Life_, Sir Charles writes of this time, 1859 to 1860, when he "loved to be patronized by her, regarding her with the awe of a hobbledehoy of sixteen or seventeen towards a beautiful girl of nineteen or twenty." But at one point she bewildered him; for in those days Emilia Strong was devout to the verge of fanaticism: "We were all puzzled by the apparent conflict between the vitality and the impish pranks of the brilliant student, expounding to us the most heterodox of social views, and the 'bigotry' which we seemed to discern when we touched her spiritual side." [Footnote: _Book of the Spiritual Life_, Memoir, p. 10.] No doubt the fastings and mortifications which Emilia Strong practised at that period of her youth would seem 'bigotry' to a lad brought up under influences which, in so far as theology entered into them, had an Evangelical bent. Charles Dilke thus summed up his early prepossessions and practices in this respect: 'My mother had been a strong Low Church woman, and those of her letters which I have destroyed very clearly show that her chief fear in meeting death was that she would leave me without that class of religious training which she thought essential. My grandfather and my father, although both of them in their way religious men (and my grandfather, a man of the highest feeling of duty), were neither of them churchgoers, nor of her school of thought; and ... as I was till the age of twenty a regular church attendant and somewhat devout for a boy of that age, it was a grief to me to find that my brother's turn of mind as he grew up was different, and that he naturally thought his judgment on the subject as good as that of the mother whom he had lost at three years old, and could hardly be said to have known.' But the true spiritual influence on Charles Dilke's early life was derived from his grandfather, whose nature had in it much of the serenity and wise happiness which go to the making of a saint. This influence was no doubt ethical in its character rather than religious; but it can be traced, for example, in a humane scruple which links it with Dilke's affectionate cult of St. Francis of Assisi: 'In 1856 I had begun to shoot, my father being passionately fond of the sport, and I suppose that few people ever shot more before they were nineteen than I did. But about the time I went to Cambridge I found the interference with my work considerable, and I also began to have doubts as to considerations of cruelty, and on points affecting the Game Laws, which led me to give up shooting, and from 1862 I hardly ever shot at all, except, in travelling, for food.' The taste for travel, always in search of knowledge, but followed with an increasing delight in the quest, began for him in the rovings through England with his grandfather. As early as his seventeenth year he was out on the road by himself; and this letter written from Plymouth, April 5th, 1860 after a night spent at Exeter, indicates the results of his training: "This morning we got up early, and went to the Northerny [Footnote: Northernhay, or Northfield, a pleasure-ground at Exeter.] and Cathedral. Nothing much. Took the train at quarter before ten. Railway runs along the shore under the cliffs and in the cliffs. We saw a rather large vessel wrecked on the sands. Teignmouth pretty. Got to Totnes before twelve. Hired a boat and two men, 10s. 6d. Down the river to Dartmouth, twelve miles. The Dart is more like a series of lakes than a river; in some of the reaches it is impossible to see what way you are to get out. Very like the Wye until you get low down, then it opens into a lake about two miles across, free from all mud, nothing but hills and cliffs. Then it again contracts, and passes through a gorge, which is said to be very like parts of the Rhine. "The scene here is splendid. Dartmouth now comes, but the river, instead of spreading and becoming ugly, as most tidal rivers do, remains narrow and between cliffs, until you have the great sea waves thundering up against them. Dartmouth contains a church more curious than half the cathedrals in the kingdom: Norman (Late), fine brasses, barrel roof with the paint on, and stone pulpit painted, etc., etc. There are some very fine old houses also. The place is the most lovely by far of any that I ever saw--Paradise. "We have had a bad day--real Devonshire--where they say that they must have one shower every day and two on Sundays. 'Shower' means about six hours' quiet rain, _vide_ 'Murray' and our experience of to-day. The boatmen say 'it rains most days.' I hope Mrs. Jackson is going on well. Trusting you are all well, I send my love to all and remain "Your affectionate grandson, "CHARLES W. DILKE." A scrap from one of the grandfather's letters, April 25th, 1859, which points to the terms of intellectual equality that existed in the correspondence between the two, has also some historical interest: "Hope your news of the French troops landing in Genoa is premature. War, however, seems inevitable; but I hope on, hope ever. I should be sorry to see the Austrians triumph over the Sardinians, for then they would fasten the chains on Italy tighter than ever. Yet I cannot hope that the worst man in Europe, the Emperor of the French, should triumph." At the close of 1860, the lad set out on a more adventurous excursion to France, in a storm of snow so tremendous that trains were blocked in many places. However, he reached Amiens safely, saw and described it dutifully, then made for Paris. Charles Dilke's familiarity with France was destined to be extended year by year till the end of his life. This visit of Christmas 1860 was the first which he made alone to that country; but part of the summer of 1859 had been spent by him with his family at Trouville, whence he wandered over Normandy, adding detail to his knowledge of Norman architecture. But even stronger than the interest in historic architecture which his grandfather had imparted to him was the interest in men and affairs; above all, in those men who had assisted at great events. Throughout his life his love of travel, his taste for society, and his pursuit of first-hand information upon political matters helped to enlarge his list of remarkable acquaintances; and during this stay in France a new name was added to the collection of celebrities: 'At Havre I got to know King Jerome, father to "Plon-Plon" and father- in-law to my friend Princess Clothilde, and was duly interested in this last of the brothers of Napoleon. The ex-King of Westphalia was a wicked old gentleman; but he did not let a boy find this out, and he was courteous and talkative. We long had in both years, I think, the next rooms to his at Frascati's; and he used to walk in the garden with me, finding me a good listener. The old Queen of Sweden was still alive, and he told me how Désirée Clary [Footnote: Eugénie Bernardine Désirée Clary married, August 16th, 1798, Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, afterwards Charles XIV., King of Sweden. Her elder sister Julie had become the wife of Joseph Bonaparte in 1794.] had thrown Bonaparte over for him, and then had thrown him over for Bernadotte. He also described riding through Paris with Bonaparte on the day of Brumaire.' Having completely outgrown the nervous invalidishness of his earlier boyhood, Dilke at eighteen years of age was extending his activities in all directions. 'In 1861 I find by my diaries that I was at the very height of my theatre-going, attending theatres in Paris and in London with equal regularity; and in this year I wrote an elaborate criticism of Fechter's Hamlet, which is the first thing I ever wrote in the least worth reading, but it is not worth preservation, and has now been destroyed by me. At Easter, 1861, I walked to Brighton in a single day from London, and the next day attended the volunteer review. I was a great walker, and frequently walked my fifty miles within the day. My interest in military affairs continued, and I find among my letters of 1861 passages which might have formed part of my writings on military subjects of 1887 to 1889. I went down to see the new Tilbury forts, criticized the system of the distribution of strength in the Thames defences, advocated "a mile of vigorous peppering as against a slight dusting of feathers every half-hour"; and went to Shoeburyness to see the trial of the Whitworth guns.' His cousin, William Wentworth Grant Dilke, was Captain and Adjutant of the 77th Regiment, and Charles Dilke remembered the young officer's visit to bid good-bye before he departed for the Crimea, where he met his death. Though old Mr. Dilke had sympathized with the wonderful manoeuvres of the child's armies of leaden soldiers, and had added to them large reinforcements, he became troubled by his grandson's keen and excited following of all the reports from the Crimea. He had a terror of the boy's becoming a soldier, and 'used to do his best to point out the foolish side of war.' But this, as the passage already quoted shows, did not deter his pupil from beginning, while still a growing youth, detailed study of military matters. Under normal conditions, an undergraduate going up to an English University without public school friendships is at a disadvantage: and this was Charles Dilke's case. But he went to his father's college, Trinity Hall; and his father was a very well known and powerfully connected man. Offer of a baronetcy had been made to Wentworth Dilke in very unusual and gratifying terms. General Grey, the Queen's secretary, wrote: "ST. JAMES'S PALACE, "_January 1st_, 1862. "MY DEAR DILKE, "The Queen cannot forget for how many years you have been associated with her beloved husband in the promotion of objects which were dear to his heart; and she would fain mark her sense of the valuable assistance you have ever given him in his labours in some manner that would be gratifying to your feelings. "I am therefore commanded by Her Majesty to express the hope that the offer of a Baronetcy which she has informed Lord Palmerston of her desire to confer upon you, coming direct from Her Majesty herself, and as her own personal act, may be one which it will be agreeable to you to accept." Proof of the Queen's strong feeling for the man who had been so closely associated with the Prince Consort in his work of popularizing the arts and crafts had already been given by the fact that Wentworth Dilke was, except for those whom she was obliged to meet on business, the first person from the outside world whom she saw after the Prince Consort's death. And indeed, but for his sense of a personal graciousness in the offer, Wentworth Dilke would scarcely have departed from his lifelong habit of deference to his father's wish and judgment. Old Mr. Dilke, though gratified by the compliment, wrote to a friend: "My son's fortune is not strong enough to enable his children to carry such a burthen with ease; and as to the waifs and strays which it may help them to, I would rather see them fight their good fight unshackled." There came a time when the baronetcy was something of an encumbrance to one of these children: 'When I was accused of attacking the Queen, which I never did, somebody--I forget who--went further, and said I had "bitten the hand which fed me," and I really believe that this metaphor expressed publicly a private belief of some people that my father had made money by his labours. All I can say is that he never made a farthing by them in any form at any time, and that in '51 and in '62 he spent far more than his income on entertainments.... He wished for no reward, and he knew the conditions under which his life was given to public rather than to private service: but he killed himself at it; he left me much less rich than I should otherwise have been, and it is somewhat hard to find myself told that if I call attention to notorious illegalities I am "biting the hand that fed me." The Queen herself has, as I happen to know, always spoken in a very different sense.' The newly made Baronet, in the course of his labours for the second Great Exhibition, added to his already very numerous friendships. 'My father's chief foreign friends in '62 were Prince Napoleon, Montésinos, Baron Schwartz (Austria), Baron von Brünen von Grootelind (Holland), Prince Oscar (afterwards King of Sweden), and Senator Fortamps (Belgium).' Finally, there is this entry, written in 1890: 'Just as I had made the acquaintance of the Duke of Wellington through father in the Exhibition of 1851, so I made that of Palmerston in the Exhibition of 1862. He was still bright and lively in walk and talk, and was extremely kind in his manner to me, and asked me to one of Lady Palmerston's Saturday nights at Cambridge House, to which I duly went. I should think that there is no one living but myself who was at the Ball to the Queen at the Hotel de Ville in 1855, at the famous Guards' Ball in 1862, and also at one of Lady Palmerston's evenings.' Charles Dilke matriculated at Trinity Hall in October 1862. CHAPTER III CAMBRIDGE Charles Dilke was sent in 1862, as in later days he sent his own son, to his father's college. Trinity Hall in the early sixties was a community possessing in typical development the combination of qualities which Cambridge has always fostered. Neither very large nor very small, it had two distinguishing characteristics: it was a rowing college, and it was a college of lawyers. Although not as a rule distinguished in the Tripos Lists, it was then in a brilliant period. The Memoir will show that in Dilke's first year a Hall man was Senior Wrangler, and that the boat started head of the river. Such things do not happen without a cause; and the college at this moment numbered on its staff some of the most notable figures in the University. The Vice-Master, Ben Latham, for thirty-five years connected with the Hall, was of those men whose reputation scarcely reaches the outside world; but he had found the college weak, he had made it strong, and he was one of the institutions of Cambridge. Among the junior Fellows were Fawcett and Leslie Stephen. Both were profound believers in hard tonic discipline of mind and body, inculcating their belief by doctrine and example; and both, with great diversity of gifts, had the rough strong directness of intellectual attack which Cambridge, then perhaps more than at any other time, set in contrast to the subtleties of Oxford culture. Leslie Stephen in particular, who had been a tutor and who was still a clerical Fellow, made it his business to meet undergraduates on their own ground. Hard work and hard bodily exercise--but, above all, hard bodily exercise--made up the gospel which he preached by example. No one ever did more to develop the cult of athletics, and there is no doubt that he thought these ideals the best antidote to drunkenness and other vices, which were far more rife in the University of that day than of this. Both he and Fawcett were strenuous Radicals, and contact with them was well fitted to infuse fresh vitality into the political beliefs which Charles Dilke had assumed by inheritance from his grandfather. In these ways of thought he met them on ground already familiar and attractive to him. His introduction to Fawcett was at the Economics and Statistics Section of the British Association, which he attended at Cambridge in the first week of his first term. "I am one of the few people who really enjoy statistics," he said, long years after this, in a presidential address to the Statistical Society. But it was early at nineteen to develop this exceptional taste. In another domain of modern thought these elder men affected his mind considerably and with a new order of ideas. Old Mr. Dilke seems to have left theology out of his purview altogether; and it was at Cambridge that Charles Dilke first met the current of definitely sceptical thought on religious matters. Fawcett was aggressively unorthodox. But far more potent was the influence of Leslie Stephen, then with infinite pain struggling under the yoke that he had taken on himself at ordination, and had not yet shaken off. The effect of Stephen's talk--though he influenced young men as much by his dry critical silence as by his utterances--was heightened by admiration for his athletic prowess. He coached the college Eights: anyone who has been at a rowing college will realize how commanding an ascendancy is implied. But his athletics covered every phase of muscular activity; and Fawcett joined him in encouraging the fashion of long walks. Another of the long-walkers whom the Memoir notes as among the chief influences of those days was Leslie Stephen's pupil Romer, the Admirable Crichton of that moment--oarsman, cricketer, and Trinity Hall's hope in the Mathematical Tripos. The future Lord Justice of Appeal was then reading for the Tripos, in which he was to be Senior Wrangler; and, according to Cambridge custom, took a certain amount of coaching as part of his work. Charles Dilke was one of those whom he instructed, and it was the beginning of a friendship which lasted many years. Looking back, Sir Robert Romer says that most undergraduates are simply grown-up boys, and that at Trinity Hall in his day there was no variation from this type till Dilke came there--a lad who, to all appearance, had never associated with other lads, whose companions had been grown-up people, and who had mature ideas and information on everything. But, thrown among other young men, the young man found himself with surprising rapidity. Elements in his nature that had never been brought out developed at once; and one of these was a great sense of fun. Much stronger than he looked, he plunged into athletics with a perfectly simple delight. "Nobody," says Sir Robert Romer, "could make more noise at a boating supper." This frank natural glee remained with him to the end. Always disputatious, always a lover of the encounter of wits, he had none the less a lifelong gift for comradeship in which there was little clash of controversy and much hearty laughter. One of the eight-and-twenty freshmen who matriculated at Trinity Hall along with Charles Dilke in 1862 was David Fenwick Steavenson, a dalesman from Northumberland, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. The two had seemingly little in common. Dilke to all appearance was "very serious," and in disposition of mind ten years older than his fellows, while the young Northumbrian's whole preoccupation was to maintain and enlarge the fame of his college on the river. If the friendship was to develop, Steavenson must undoubtedly become interested in intellectual matters, but not less certainly Dilke must learn to row. It was a very useful discipleship for the future politician. Sloping shoulders, flat and narrow chest, height too great for his build: these were things that Cambridge helped to correct. Dilke, a willing pupil, was diligently coached by the stronger man, until he became an accomplished and effective oar. In general Judge Steavenson's recollection confirms Sir Robert Romer's, and gives precision to one detail. In their second year, upon the occasion of some triumph on the river, there was to be a bump supper, but the college authorities forbade, whereupon an irregular feast was arranged--this one bringing a ham, that a chicken, and so on. When the heroes had put from them desire of eating and drinking, they sallied out, and after a vigorous demonstration in the court, proceeded to make music from commanding windows. It was Charles Dilke who had provided the whistles and toy drums for this ceremony, and Judge Steavenson retains a vision of the future statesman at his window [Footnote: Dilke's rooms were on Staircase A, on the first floor, above the buttery. They have not for very many years been let to an undergraduate, as they are too near the Fellows' Combination Room.] blowing on a whistle with all his might. The authorities were vindictive, and Dilke suffered deprivation of the scholarship which he had won at the close of his freshman year. Such penalties carry no stigma with them. It should be noted, too, that at a period of University history when casual excess in drink was no reproach, but rather the contrary, Charles Dilke, living with boating men in a college where people were not squeamish, drank no wine. Judge Steavenson adds that the dislike of coarse talk which was marked with him later was equally evident in undergraduate days. Charles Dilke's own ambition and industry were reinforced by the keen anxiety of his people. Concealing nothing of their eagerness for him to win distinction, those who watched his career with such passionate interest set their heart, it would seem, on purely academic successes. Sir Wentworth Dilke may well have feared, from his own experience, that old Mr. Dilke's expectations might again be disappointed by a student who found University life too full of pleasure. At all events it was to his father that the freshman wrote, October 24th, 1862, a fortnight after he had matriculated: "I am very sorry to see by your letter of this morning that you have taken it into your head that I am not reading hard. I can assure you, on the contrary, that I read harder than any freshman except Osborn, who takes no exercise whatever; and that I have made the rowing-men very dissatisfied by reading all day three days a week. On the other three I never read less than six hours, besides four hours of lectures and papers. I have not missed reading a single evening yet since I have been here; that is, either from six, or seven, till eleven, except Saturday at Latham's. This--except for a fourth-year man--is more than even the tutors ask for.... I hope I have said enough to convince you that you are entirely wrong; what has made you so has been my account of breakfasts, which are universal, and neither consume time nor attract attention. I was at one this morning--I left my rooms at twenty-five minutes to nine, and returned to them at five minutes to nine, everything being over." This scrupulous economy of time was to be characteristic of Charles Dilke's whole life, and nothing impressed his contemporaries more at all times than the "methodical bee-like industry" attributed to him by the present Master of Trinity Hall. Mr. Beck, who came up to the college just after Dilke left it, thus expands the impression: "There remained in Trinity Hall in 1867 a vivid tradition that he was one of the few men who never lost a minute, would even get in ten minutes of work between river and Hall (which was in those days at five o'clock); and much resembled the Roman who learned Greek in the time saved from shaving. On the doorpost inside his bedroom over the Buttery there remained in pencil the details of many days of work thus pieced together." [Footnote: _Cambridge Review_, February 2nd, 1911.] Judge Steavenson recalls how he used to be "bundled out" of his friend's rooms the instant that the appointed hour for beginning to read had arrived, and he did his best to mitigate the strenuousness of that application. But there were stronger influences at work than his: Sir Wentworth Dilke was fully satisfied with the assurance he had received, as well he might be; but the grandfather never ceased to enforce the claims of study. He wrote ceaselessly, but with constant exhortations that he should be answered only when work and play allowed. When the letters from Cambridge told of success in athletics, he responded, but with a temperate rejoicing. Here, for instance, is his reference to the news that the freshman had rowed in the winning boat of the scratch fours on March 14th, 1863: "I am glad that you have won your 'pewter'--as I was glad when you took rank among the best of the boating freshmen--although I have not set my heart on your plying at Blackfriars Bridge, nor winning the hand of the daughters of Horse-ferry as the 'jolly young waterman,' or old Doggett's Coat and Badge. But all things in degree; and therefore I rejoice a hundred times more at your position in the college Euclid examination." There was no mistaking old Mr. Dilke's distaste for all these athletics, and it was to his father, on this one point more sympathetic, that the freshman wrote this characteristic announcement of a great promotion: "Edwards" (captain of the Trinity Hall Boat Club) "has just called to inform me that I am to row in the head-of-the-river boat to- morrow, and to go into training for it. "The time wasted if I row in it will not be greater than in the 2nd, but there is one difference--namely, that it may make me more sleepy at nights. I must read hard before breakfast. Romer--who is my master and pastor--tells me of all things to row in it,--this year at all events." He did row in the May races of his first year, and with so little detriment to his work that in the following month he secured the first mathematical scholarship in the college examination. This triumph may well have disposed old Mr. Dilke to accept a suggestion which is recorded in the correspondence. On June 2nd it was decided that Trinity Hall should send an eight to Henley, and the letter adds: "I should think my grandfather would like to come and stay at or near Henley while I am there." Before the date fixed, the oarsman had been inducted scholar, and so Mr. Dilke could go with a free heart to see his grandson row in the Grand Challenge against Brasenose and Kingston, where Trinity Hall defeated Kingston, but were themselves defeated by Brasenose in a very fast race. It was not only in the examination halls and on the river that Charles Dilke was winning reputation. He had joined the Volunteers, and proved himself among the crack rifleshots of the University corps; he had won walking races, but especially he had begun to seek distinction in a path which led straight to his natural goal. The impression left on Sir Robert Romer's mind was that Dilke came up to the University elaborately trained with a view to a political career. This is to read into the facts a wrong construction; the purpose, if it existed at all, was latent only in his mind. The training which he had received from his grandfather lent itself admirably, it is true, to the making of a statesman; but it was the pupil's temperament which determined the application of that rich culture. The first debate which he had the chance to attend at the Union was on October 28th, 1862, the motion being: "That the cause of the Northern States is the cause of humanity and progress, and that the widespread sympathy with the Confederates is the result of ignorance and misrepresentation." The discussion gained in actuality from the fact that the President of the Union was Mr. Everett, son of the distinguished literary man who had been America's representative in London, and was at this time Secretary of State in the Federal Government. But the South had a notable ally. Mr. George Otto Trevelyan, author of some of the best light verse ever written by an undergraduate, was still in residence, though he had before this taken his degree; and he shared in those days the sentimental preference for the South. Dilke reported to his grandfather: "Trevelyan's speech was mere flash, but very witty." "Mere flash" the freshman was likely to think it, for he shared his grandfather's opinions, and gave his first Union vote for the North--in a minority of 34 against 117. "Very witty" it was sure to be, and its most effective hit was a topical allusion. The Union Society of those days had its quarters in what had originally been a Wesleyan chapel--a large room in Green Street, the floor of which is now used as a public billiard saloon, while the galleries from which applause and interruption used to come freely now stand empty. There had long been complaint of its inadequacy; Oxford had set the example of a special edifice, and as far back as 1857 a Building Fund had been started, which, however, dragged on an abortive existence from year to year, a constant matter of gibes. 'Can the North restore the Union?' Mr. Trevelyan asked. 'Never, sir; they have no Building Fund'; and the punning jest brought down a storm of applause. But when Mr. Trevelyan, after a year spent in India, came back to England and to Cambridge gossip in the beginning of 1864, he learnt that this despised Building Fund had been taken seriously in hand, that one undergraduate in particular was corresponding with all manner of persons, and that this Union also was going to be restored. That was how the present Sir George Trevelyan first heard the name of Charles Dilke. Even in his earliest term Dilke soon passed out of the rôle of a mere listener and critic. The Commissioners of the International Exhibition of 1862 were then being sharply criticized, and on November 25th "a man of the name of Hyndman" (so the undergraduate's letter described this other undergraduate, afterwards to be well known as the Socialist writer and speaker) moved "a kind of vote of censure" upon them. It was natural enough that Sir Wentworth Dilke's son should brief the defence, and among the papers of 1862 is a bundle of "Notes by me for Everett's speech." Next he was trying his own mettle; and opposed a motion "that Prince Alfred should be permitted to accept the throne of Greece." His own note is: 'On the 8th December I made my first speech, advocating a Greek Republic, and suggesting that if they must have a King, they had better look to the northern nations to supply one. I was named by Everett, the President, as one of the tellers in the Division.' Probably the speech had been no more of a success than most maiden speeches, for Mr. Dilke's letter reads like a consolation: "The Greek debate I care little about. I would much rather have _read_ a paper on the subject. _Till a man can write he cannot speak_-- except, as Carlyle would say, 'in a confused babble of words and ideas.'" The main part of the grandson's letters were concerned with the topics handled and the speeches made at the Union. "_November 7th_, 1862. "How wavering and shortsighted the policy of England in Turco-Grecian matters has been of late! Compare Navarino and Sebastopol. Palmerston will, if he has his way, oblige the Greeks to continue in much the same state of degradation as hitherto, and will go on holding up the crumbling Turkish Empire till some rising of Christians occurs at a time when we have our hands full and cannot afford to help our 'old friend.' Then Turkey-in-Europe will vanish. I do not myself believe in the Pan-Slavonic Empire. The Moldavians, Hungarians, and Greeks could never be long united; but I think that Greece might hold the whole of the coast and mountain provinces without containing in itself fatal elements of disunion. "Brown--No. 3 of our four--broke from his training to-day, and spent the whole day with the hounds. That will never do." Mr. Dilke in reply did not conceal the amusement which was awakened in him by the rowing man's deadly seriousness: "_November 9th_, 1862. "I agree with you. No Browns, no hunting fellows, no divided love!! If 'a man' goes in 'our boat' he goes in to win. "Broke from his training!" Abominable! Had he 'broke from his training' when standing out for Wrangler, why so be it, _his_ honour only would be concerned; but here it is _our_ honour, T. H. for ever, and no fox-hunting! "After this, the Greek question falls flat on the ears, but I will suggest..." and thereupon he goes into hints for research, very characteristic in their thoroughness, ending with a practical admonition: "Now comes 'The Moral.' As you could not speak on the great Ionian question, why not _write_ on it? Write down what you would or could have said on the subject. Take two or three hours of leisure and quiet; write with great deliberation, but _write on_ till the subject is concluded. No deferring, no bit by bit piecework, but all offhand. No _correction_, not a word to be altered; once written let it stand. Put the Essay aside for a month. Then criticize it with your best judgment--the order and sequence of facts, its verbal defects, its want or superabundance of illustration, its want or superabundance of detail, etc., etc." Another letter of Dilke's in his freshman year concerns the art of debate: "What is wanted is common-sense discussion in well-worded speeches with connected argument, the whole to be spoken loud enough to be heard, and with sufficient liveliness to convince the hearers of the speaker's interest in what he is saying. So far as this is oratory, it is cultivated (with very moderate success) at the Union." From the ideal here indicated--an accurate analysis of 'the House of Commons manner'--Charles Dilke never departed, and his grandfather in replying eagerly reinforced the estimate: "I agree to all you say about that same Union, and about the Orators and Oratory. I should have said it myself, but thought it necessary to _clear the way_. I rejoice that no such preliminary labour was required. I agree that even Chatham was a 'Stump'--what he was in addition is not our question. I hope and believe he was the last of our Stumpers. Burke, so far as he was an Orator, was a Stump and something more, and the more may be attributed to the fact that he was a practised _writer,_ where Chatham was not, and that he reported his own speeches. Latterly his _writings_ were all Stump. I had not intended to have written for a week or more, for you have so many correspondents and are so punctual in reply that I fear the waste of precious time; but I am as pleased with your letter as an old dog- fancier when a terrier-pup catches his first rat--it is something to see my boy hunt out and hunt down that old humbug Oratory." Charles Dilke's own mature judgment on the matters concerned was expressed in a letter to the _Cantab_ of October 27th, 1893: "The value of Union debates as a training for political life? Yes, if they are debates. There is probably little debate in the Union. There was little in my time. There is little real debating in the House of Commons. But debating is mastery. The gift of debate means the gift of making your opinion prevail. Set speaking is useless and worse than useless in these days." Dilke was elected to the Library Committee of the Union in his second term, and in his third to the Standing Committee. At this moment a decision was taken to make a determined effort for new buildings, and it was suggested that he should stand for the secretaryship. Declining this as likely to engross more time than he could spare, he was put forward for the Vice-Presidency, and elected at the beginning of October, 1863. His prominence in the negotiations which followed may be inferred from the fact that he was re-elected. This was in itself a rare honour; but in his case was followed by election and re-election to the Presidency, a record unique in the Society's annals. It was through this phase of his activity that Charles Dilke took part in the general life of the University. At the Union he was closely associated with men outside his own college, one of whom, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, was destined to be a lifelong friend and fellow-worker. But his College meant more to him than the University. A conservative in this, he resented, and resisted later on, all tendencies to make the teaching of the place communal by an opening of college lectures to students from other colleges; he valued the distinctiveness of type which went with the older usage, under which he himself was nurtured. Trinity Hall was a lawyers' college; it had a library specially stored with law books, and it was early determined that he should conform to the _genius loci_ so far at least as to be called to the Bar. In his first Christmas vacation he began to eat his dinners at the Middle Temple, where his nomination paper was signed by John Forster; and in June, 1863, after he had spent a year at mathematics and won his college scholarship, he took stock of his position, and felt clear as to his own powers. He might, he thought, attain to about a tenth wranglership in the Mathematical Tripos, which would insure him a fellowship at his college; but this, although he valued academic distinctions very highly, did not seem an end worth two years of work, and he determined to devote the remainder of his time at the University to the study of law and history. He had not at any time limited himself to mathematics. Both before his freshman year and during it he had read hard and deeply on general subjects. His habit was to analyze on paper whatever he studied, and he had dealt thus in 1861 (aged eighteen) with all Sir Thomas More, Bolingbroke, and Hobbes. Among the papers for 1862 there is preserved such an analysis of Coleridge's political system; a note on the views of the Abbé Morellet, with essays on comparative psychology, the association of ideas, and the originality of the anti-selfish affections. These are deposits of that course of philosophic reading over which, says the Memoir, 'I wasted a good deal of time in 1862, but managed also to give myself much mental training.' The determination to abandon mathematics for a line of study more germane to that career of which he already had some vision met with no resistance from his people; but it did not altogether please the college authorities. He wrote to old Mr. Dilke: "When I told Hopkins" (his tutor) "that I was not going out in mathematics, he was taken aback, and seemed very sorry. He urged me to _read law_, but still to go out as a high senior optime, which he says I could be, without reading more than a very small quantity of mathematics every day. My objection to this was that I knew myself better than he did; that were I to go in for mathematics, I should be as high in that tripos as my talents would let me, and that my law and my life's purpose would suffer in consequence. "He said--'You will be very sorry if it happens that you are not first legalist of your year--that is the only place in the Law Tripos that you can be content with--and yet remember you have Shee in your year, who is always a dangerous adversary, and who starts with some little knowledge on the subject.' "I said I should read with Shee, and make him understand that I was intended by Nature to beat him." The dangerous Shee had been thus announced in a letter of February, 1863: "Shee--son of the well-known Serjeant, [Footnote: Mr. Serjeant Shee was later a Judge--the first Roman Catholic since the time of the Stuarts to sit on the English Bench.] has come up and taken the rooms over me. He seems a nice kind of fellow; of course, a strong Romanist." Shee remained till the end Dilke's chief competitor, and he was also one of the band of friends who met each other incessantly, and incessantly talked over first principles till the small hours of morning. Perhaps it is not without importance that Charles Dilke should have had the experience, not very common for Englishmen, of living on terms of intimacy with an Irish Roman Catholic: at all events, his relations in after-life, both with Irishmen and with Roman Catholics, were more friendly than is common. For the moment Shee made one factor in the discussions upon theology which are inevitable among undergraduates, and which went on with vigour in this little group, according to the recollection of Judge Steavenson, who in those days, faithful to the orthodoxy of his Low Church upbringing, found himself ranged by the side of the 'strong Romanist' against a general onslaught upon Christianity. Charley Dilke himself had come under the influences of the place and the time. There is an entry headed May, 1863: "I find a fair argument against miracles in my notes for this month." He had abandoned attendance at Communion, but, according to Judge Steavenson, did not go further in opinions or in talk than a vague agnosticism--which was also the attitude of another subtle and agile intelligence in that circle. Turning over, in 1891, the boxes which held his letters and papers of college days, Charles Dilke wrote: "1863. "In every page of the destroyed notebooks of this year I could see the influence of two men--my grandfather and H. D. Warr." [Footnote: Mr. H. D. Warr became a journalist. In 1880 Sir Charles secured him the post of Secretary to the Royal Commission upon City Companies, of which Lord Derby was Chairman.] Warr was a classical exhibitioner of Trinity Hall in Dilke's year, and was not among the few who are named at first as likely friends, though he figures early as a competitor in the Euclid and Algebra 'fights' at his tutor's. In February, 1863, his name must have been on Dilke's tongue or pen, since this is evidently a reply to inquiries: "Warr is a clergyman's son. He will probably be about fourth or fifth for the Bell (Scholarship)." It is not till the October term of his second year that more explicit notice of this friend occurs, when Dilke is giving an account of his first speech as Vice-President of the Union. He opened a debate on the metric system, concerning which he had solid and well-thought-out opinions: "My speech was logical but not fluent. Warr says it was the best opening speech he ever listened to, but by no means the best speech. Warr is a candid critic whom I dread, so that I am glad he was satisfied." Of this candour Dilke has preserved some specimens which show that Warr's influence was mainly used in laughing his friend out of his solemnity. Thus Warr characterizes him as a dealer in logic," and, breaking off from some fantastic speculation as to the future of all their college set, January 9th, 1864, moralizes. "I am an ass, my friend, a great ass, to write in this silly strain to you, but you must not be very angry, though I own now to a feeling of _having half insulted your kind serious ways by talking nonsense to them on paper_." APPENDIX Sir Charles Dilke's association with the river and with rowing men was so constant that we ate justified in preserving this contemporary report of his first race for the Grand Challenge, on which he always looked back with pride: "It was," says the report, which Dilke preserved, "one of the finest and fastest races ever seen at Henley, and the losers deserve as much credit as the winners. The Oxford crew were on the Berks side, Kingston on the Oxon, and Cambridge in the middle. It was a very fine and even start, and they continued level for about 50 yards, when Brasenose began to show the bow of their boat in front, the others still remaining oar and oar, rowing in fine form and at a great pace. So finely were the three crews matched, that, although Brasenose continued to increase their lead, it was only inch by inch. At the end of about 400 yards Brasenose were about a quarter of a length only ahead. The race was continued with unabated vigour, Brasenose now going more in front, and being a length ahead at the Poplars, where they began to ease slightly. The contest between Cambridge and Kingston was still admirable; Cambridge had made some fine bursts to get away from them, but they were not to be shaken off, and the gallant effort of the one crew was met by a no less gallant effort on the part of the other. The Cambridge crew began to show in front as they neared Remenham, and a most determined race was continued to the end. Brasenose won by a length clear, and the Cambridge boat was not clear of the Kingston, only having got her about three-quarters of their length." The time--seven minutes, twenty-six seconds--was the fastest that had been rowed over that course, and more than half a minute faster than that of the final heat, in which Brasenose were beaten by University. But next day in the Ladies' Plate University brought down the record by three seconds. Trinity Hall had the worst station, and if they were beaten by only a length, must have been as fast as Brasenose. Kingston was stroked by L. Pugh Evans, Brasenose by D. Pocklington (W. B. Woodgate rowing 4). The Trinity Hall eight were as follows: st. lb. E. F. Dyke 9 12 H. W. Edwardes 10 13 W. H. Darton 11 2 C. W. Dilke 11 5 D. F. Steavenson 12 1 R. E. Neane 11 0 W. J. S. Cadman 10 6 R. Richardson 9 10 A. A. Berens (cox.) 9 8 CHAPTER IV CAMBRIDGE (_Continued_) In these years of all-round training Cambridge was doing for Charles Dilke what it has done for hundreds of other young men. The exceptional in his case sprang from the tie which linked this young athlete to the old scholar who, in his library at Sloane Street, or among his flowers at Alice Holt, was ceaselessly preoccupied with detail of the undergraduate's life and work. From the first there was a pathos in his eagerness to follow and understand all the minutiae of an unfamiliar scene. At the close of Charles Dilke's first term he wrote (December 1st, 1862): "Your letter gave me great pleasure, as indeed for one reason or another, or for no reason if you please, your letters always do; though not being a Cambridge man, I am at times a little puzzled.... What a bore I shall be after the 13th with my endless enquiries." Ten days later he is jubilant over the results of the college examination which closed the first term: "Hurrah! hurrah! my dear grandson. Ninety-seven out of a hundred-- eleven above the second 'man'--is a position that would satisfy a whole family of loving friends, even if they were all grandfathers." After every college examination the grandson sent lists of results, compiled with elaborate detail. The grandfather studied them, treasured them, compared them, wanted to know why this man had fallen back, how the other had advanced, and always with the same warm outflow of sympathy and pride over his own pupil. There they lie to-day in the despatch-boxes, preserved as a memorial of that love by the man on whom it was expended. On one is noted: "Many scraps such as this, and his letters, show the loving care with which my grandfather watched over my progress at the University." The beginning of his first Long Vacation he spent in travelling through Germany, Holland, and Belgium with his father. Later, in August, he visited Jersey and Guernsey, and went to France alone, making pilgrimage from Cherbourg to Tocqueville's two houses, and filling notebooks with observations on Norman architecture at St. Lô, Coutances, and elsewhere. He was perfecting his mastery of the language, too, and notes long after: "On this journey I was once taken for a Frenchman, but my French was not so good as it was about 1870." But always and everywhere he observed; and sent back the results of his observation to the man who had trained it. On June 30th, 1863, he writes: "I have been all over Brussels to-day. My previous estimate of the place is confirmed. It apes Paris without having any of the Parisian charms, just as its people speak French without being able to pronounce it. "The two modern pictures in the Palais de Justice are to me worth all the so-called Rubenses in the place. They are by Gallait and de Biefve, and the one is our old friend of last year in London, 'The Abdication of Charles V.' "Rogier--the great Belgian Minister--has failed to secure his return in the late elections, owing to his having given a vote unpopular to his constituents on the fortification scheme. The Catholics lost three votes (regained by the advanced party) in the Senate these elections. "The names of the sides of the chambers are significant: "Liberals. -- Catholics. "What a fine country Belgium would be if it could get rid of its priests a little more. The people understand freedom. In Ghent the priests are rich, but utterly powerless owing to the extent of the manufacturing interest." When he returned to Cambridge for the October term of 1863, his hard reading did not satisfy his prodigious power for work. He was Vice- President of the Union, and he undertook the more arduous duties of Secretary and Treasurer of the College Boat Club. When at the beginning of 1864 he was re-elected Vice-President of the Union, his grandfather wrote: "Your University career has proved to me that you have a happiness of manner that wins friends." Mr. Dilke's health began to decline notably in the early part of 1864, and loss of sight menaced him. He took the doctor's sentence, that he must refrain altogether from reading, with characteristic philosophy, but added: "I have ordered that newspapers are not to be sent here, so you must excuse it if, when we meet, I am a little in arrear of the course of life." Early in February, 1864, Charles Dilke had entered without training for a walking race, and had beaten the University champion, Patrick, covering the mile ("in a gale of wind and over heavy slush") in eight minutes and forty-two seconds. [Footnote: Mr. Patrick, afterwards member of Parliament, and from 1886 Permanent Under-Secretary for Scotland.] To this announcement his grandfather made pleasant reply, threatening to come up and compete in person, but three days later wrote: "I wish you had sent me a Cambridge paper which contained an account of your Olympic games. It is not too late now if you can get one; _I reserve the right of reading everything that relates to you and your concerns_." Meanwhile Charles Dilke's reading went on with feverish energy. The dangerous rival was closely watched. "Shee has been sitting up till ominously late hours for some nights past. His father came up last night and left again to-night, but I fear he did not make his son waste much time." The competitors were straining then for a college law prize, but the letter goes on to observe very sagely: "The law is of little consequence, as neither of us can know anything about it at present; but I should like to win the essay prize." The prize was the annual college prize for the best English essay, and that year's subject was "Sir Robert Walpole." Compositions were presumably sent in after the Christmas vacation, for on February 29th, 1864, a fortnight after the announcement as to the walking race, comes this laconic bulletin: "MY DEAR GRANDFATHER, "English Essay Prize: Dilke. Honourably mentioned: Osborn, Shee. Latin Essay Prize: Warr. Honourably mentioned: Casswell. [Footnote: A scholar of Sir Charles's year, and one of his most frequent associates in undergraduate days.] "They say that parts of my essay were vulgar. "Your affectionate grandson, "CHAS. W. DILKE." That last sentence roused the old critic: "I should like to read the _whole_ essay. My especial interest is aroused by the charge of occasional _vulgarity_. If it be true, it is not improbable that the writer caught the infection from his grandfather. With one half the world, in its judgment of literature and of life, vulgarity is the opposite of gentility, and gentility is merely negative, and implies _the absence of all character_, and, in language, of all idiom, all bone and muscle. I have a notion--only do not whisper such heresy within college walls--that a college tutor must be genteel in his _college judgments_, that 'The Polite Letter Writer' was the work of an M.A. in the 'Augustan Age.' You may find in Shakespeare household words and phrases from every condition and walk in life--as much coarseness as you please to look for--anything and everything except gentility and vulgarity. Occasional vulgarity is, therefore, a question on which _I_ refuse to take the opinion of any man not well known to me." On one matter the pupil was recalcitrant. Mr. Dilke begged him to give "one hour or one half-hour a day" to mastering Greek, so as to be able to read it with pleasure--a mastery which could only be acquired "before you enter on the direct purpose and business of life." But "insuperable difficulties" presented themselves. "It is of considerable importance that I should be first in the college Law May examination." Hopes of compliance in a later period were held out, to which Mr. Dilke replied shrewdly that "insuperable difficulties" were often temperamental, and that during the whole period of study equally strong reasons for postponement would continue to present themselves; and then would come "the all-engrossing business of life, and there is an end of half-hours." In May, 1864, Mr. Dilke was present on the bank at 'Grassy' when, on the second night of the races, Trinity Hall, with his grandson rowing at No. 3, went head of the river. "_The ever-memorable May 12th_, 1864. "MY DEAR FATHER, "Last night we gained on 3rd Trinity all the way to Ditton Corner, where we were overlapping. Our coxswain made a shot, missed them, and we went into the mid-stream. After our misfortune we paddled slowly over the long reach, and came in half a length behind 3rd Trinity and 2 lengths ahead of 1st Trinity. To-night we did not gain much up to the Plough, where we spurted and caught up 3rd directly; we rowed round Ditton Corner overlapping, and so for 100 yds. more, and then made our bump. The whole of the crew and Stephen were chaired and carried round the quad. [Footnote: Leslie Stephen had coached the boat, which stayed head throughout the races. Judge Steavenson rowed in it at No. 5, where he had rowed earlier in the year for the University. In 1868 it was settled that 'the outrigger which was rowed head of the river in 1864 should be cut up, and the pieces distributed amongst the members of the crew who rowed in her in that year.' Dilke's piece always hung against the wall in his study in Sloane Street.] Our 2nd has made its bump each night, and is 8th on the river!!!" Hardly were the May races over before the college Law examination began. On May 31st Charles Dilke wrote to his grandfather: "The results will be known to-morrow. I have worked as hard as it is possible for me to do, for I have worked till I became almost deprived of memory.... Shee has worked, too, as hard as he could, and was in a dreadful state of nervous excitement this evening. I almost hope that he is first, for I should like to see him get his scholarship. Warr tried to get me to refuse to go in for the examination, or find some pretext for being away, in order to let our common friend get his scholarship; but I said that I thought he would beat me, and that he should have the glory of beating my _best_ efforts if he beat me at all." An underlying reason against his acceptance of Warr's advice may be found in this letter from Mr. Dilke at Alice Holt to his son Wentworth: "_June 3rd_, 1864. "If you carried out your intention of going to and returning from Cambridge this day, you know, and all in Sloane Street know, that our noble fellow has again won the prize. But the weather may have deterred you, and on the possible chance I copy the results: "1. Chas. Dilke, 570 marks. Prize. Shee, 440 "What a blessing that boy has been to my old age! May God reward him! I feel for Shee! for he has laboured long and zealously. I wish there had been two prizes. "I will not mix the subject with baser matter, so shall write my memoranda on another sheet. "Your affectionate father, "C. W. D." After the May term came Henley Regatta, and Trinity Hall was again entered for the Grand Challenge. Many of the friends, Shee amongst them, had taken up their quarters there, along with the oarsmen; and Warr, who was not at Henley, wrote pressing a prompt return to Cambridge for the Long Vacation term. As the Henley week progressed [Footnote: Dilke rowed again both for the Grand Challenge and the Ladies' Plate. In each Trinity Hall met the ultimate winner in the trial heat, and were defeated by Kingston and by Eton, but beat London and Radley.] Mr. Dilke writes: "My movements may be absolutely regulated by your wishes or convenience. If you desire to pay a visit to the Holt, I have there the chance of a quicker recovery, if I am to go on well; whereas if there be more inducements to visit London, why here I have the benefit of the doctors should I not make progress. The pleasure and the advantages being _equal_ to me, you have only to decide. Let me know your decision by return of post." Charles Dilke decided for London, and there spent three or four days in the company of his family, and, above all, of his grandfather. Then he went back to Cambridge, and lived the life of strenuous, healthy young men in the summer weather; getting up at five o'clock in the mornings, bathing, reading long hours, walking long walks, talking the long talks of youth. The correspondence with his grandfather centred chiefly now on the subject for the next year's essay competition, which had been announced at the close of the May term, and which, as Charles Dilke said, "seems to be rather in my line." It was Pope's couplet: "For forms of government let fools contest, Whatever is best administered is best." It was no less in old Mr. Dilke's line than in his grandson's. He wrote on July 14th from Alice Holt a page of admirable criticism on the scheme as outlined by his grandson, and concludes in his habitual tone of affectionate self-depreciation: "This is another of my old prosings--another proof that love and good will and good wishes remain when power to serve is gone...." With the precocious maturity of Charles Dilke's intellect had gone a slowness of development in other directions. It is true that those Cambridge men who remember him as an undergraduate remember him as serious, but full of high animal spirits and sense of fun; while everyone speaks of his charm and gaiety. "We were all in love with him," says one vivacious old lady, who belonged to the circle of connections and relatives that frequented 76, Sloane Street. But the letters of his early days at Cambridge hardly show that 'happiness of manner' which his grandfather attributed to him. Only now does the whole personality begin to emerge, as in a letter of 1864, in which he begs his grandfather, because "writing is irksome to you," to send two very short letters rather than one longer one; "for the receipt of a letter gives me an excuse to write again, while on the other hand I can by habit catch your meaning by the first words of your shortest criticisms." The rest of the sheet was occupied by very able analysis of an article which had been published in the _Athenaeum_--criticism mature and manly both in thought and expression. The change did not escape the shrewd observer. Mr. Dilke replied: "ALICE HOLT, "BY FARNHAM, SURREY, "_July 28th_, 1864. "MY VERY DEAR GRANDSON, "Your letters give me very great pleasure, not because they are kind and considerate, of which I had evidence enough long since, not because they flatter the vanity of the old man by asking his opinion, which few now regard, but because I see in them a gradual development of your own mind." He added a few words in praise of the analysis, but pointed out that the reviewer, whom Charles Dilke censured, was treating a well-worn subject-- Bentham's Philosophy--and therefore needed to aim at freshness of view rather than thoroughness of exposition. He added: "I, however, am delighted with the Article, which is full of promise of a coming man by which the old journal may benefit." Save for a final "God bless you!" from "as ever, your affectionate Grand.," that was the last word written by Mr. Dilke to his grandson. Within a week he was struck down by what proved to be his fatal illness. Early on August 8th Charles Dilke wrote to his father that he was deterred from coming home only by the fear lest his sudden arrival might "frighten grandfather about himself and make him worse." A few hours later he was summoned. The rest may be given in his own words: '_August 8th, Monday_.--I received a telegram from my father at noon: "You had better come here." I left by the 1.30 train, and reached Alice Holt at half-past six. My Father met me on the lawn: he was crying bitterly, and said, "He lives only to see you." I went upstairs and sat down by the sofa, on which lay the Grand., looking haggard, but still a noble wreck. I took his hand, and he began to talk of very trivial matters--of Cambridge everyday life--his favourite theme of old. He seemed to be testing his strength, for at last he said: "I shall be able to talk to-morrow; I may last some weeks; but were it not for the pang that all of you would feel, I should prefer that it should end at once. I have had a good time of it." 'He had been saying all that morning: "Is that a carriage I hear?" or "I shall live to see him." '_Tuesday_.--When I went in to him, he sent away the others, and told me to look for an envelope and a key. I failed to find it, and fetched Morris, who after a careful search found the key, but no envelope. We had both passed over my last letter (August 6th), which lay on the table. He made us both leave the room, but recalled me directly, and when I entered had banknotes in his hand, which he must have taken from the envelope of my letter. (This involved rising.) He said: "I cannot live, I fear, to your birthday--I want to make you a present--I think I have heard you say that you should like a stop-watch--I have made careful inquiries as to the price--and have saved--as I believe-- sufficient." He then gave me notes, and the key of a desk in London, in the secret drawer of which I should find the remaining money. He then gave me the disposition of his papers and manuscripts, directing that what I did not want should go to the British Museum. He then said: "I have nothing more to say but that you have fulfilled--my every hope--beyond all measure--and--I am deeply--grateful." 'He died in my presence on Wednesday, 10th, at half-past one, in perfect peace.' [Illustration: MR. C. W. DILKE. From the painting by Arthur Hughes ] CHAPTER V LAST TERMS AT THE UNIVERSITY After his grandfather's death Charles Dilke went away alone on a walking tour in Devon. The death of his grandfather was hardly realized at first; 'the sense of loss' deepened: 'it has been greater with me every year that followed.' He corresponded with his college friends, and of this date is a letter of remonstrance at his overstudious habits from the sententious H. D. Warr: "My dear Dilke will forgive me if I say that, though I honour him much for his many strong and good qualities, I think he is far too given to laborious processes in work and social life.... My warm regard for you rests to some extent on my very high appreciation of your strength and consistency of character: you have always appeared to me to be a supremely honest man, almost comically so, at least when I am in a profane humour: I do not know that anything you could do would possibly make me like you better. But I think if you gave yourself a little wider fling and liberty, and did not walk always as it were on the seam of the carpet, it would be better; there would be less to lean on in you, perhaps, but if possible more to love." Charles Dilke used to say that Fawcett and Warr had between them cured him of that priggishness which he often recalled with amusement. Almost inevitably his grandfather's devotion, the absolute engrossment of so considerable a personality in his least important concerns, would emphasize the inclination to take himself over-seriously which is marked in every clever and resolute young man. In the beginning of 1865 he won the college essay prize for the second time. A pile of dockets from the British Museum shows that, as soon as coming of age qualified him to be a reader there, he plunged deep into all the works on ideal commonwealths to complete his survey of 'forms of government'--the subject indicated by Pope's couplet, which had appealed so strongly both to his grandfather and himself. This was a side issue. Beading for his Tripos went on with unremitting energy, and he had in use ninety-four notebooks crammed with analyses. In June, 1865, he was announced Senior Legalist, easily at the head of the law students of his year, thus crowning his college successes by the highest University distinction open to a man who followed that course. A month before he entered for the Tripos, he had stroked the college boat, which was head of the river. Trinity Hall, however, retained its pride of place only for one day, and it was no small achievement to accomplish even this, since Third Trinity, who bumped them on the second night, were a wonderful crew, with five University oars, 'including some of the most distinguished Eton oars that ever rowed.' [Footnote: The Memoir details them: 'Chambers, the winner of the pairs, sculls, and "walk," President of the University Boat Club, and afterwards Secretary of the Amateur Athletic Club; Kinglake, afterwards President of the University Boat Club; W. E. Griffith, afterwards President of the University Boat Club, and formerly stroke of the finest Eton eight ever seen; Selwyn, afterwards Bishop of Melanesia, stroke of the University eight; and C. B. Lawes, afterwards the well-known sculptor, who had been captain of the Boats at Eton, and who had won the Diamond Sculls and the amateur championship of the Thames, and had rowed stroke of the University crew the year after Selwyn.'] The Hall had only one 'blue,' Steavenson, but to Charles Dilke himself had been offered in February, 1865, and was offered again in 1866, the place of 'seven' in the University eight. He declined on grounds of health, fearing the strain of the four-mile course on his heart. A note added later says regretfully: 'I believe that I was unduly frightened by my doctor, and that I might have rowed.' To be Senior Legalist and to stroke the first boat on the river in the same term was an unusual combination: in the next Charles Dilke added to it the Presidency of the Union. The new Union buildings were now in process of construction, and he had done more than any other man to bring them from a derisive by-word into solid realization of brick and mortar. He took credit to himself for 'the selection of Waterhouse as architect against Gilbert Scott and Digby Wyatt.' Care to see this business fully through was one of the reasons which determined him to come up for a fourth year, and to hold the Presidency a second time in the Lent term of 1866. On his retirement he proposed Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice for his successor, and thus left the lead in hands he could trust. Of his own speeches he has preserved some detail, showing how early his opinions displayed the character which was to be constant in them: 'In 1864-65 I spoke twice at the Union [Footnote: After Dilke's death, when a resolution of regret was carried at the Union, the Vice- President, Mr. J. H. Allen of Jesus, said in moving it: "Sir Charles was in a double sense the architect of the fortunes of the Society, because he was responsible for the superintendence of the change from the old inadequate home in Queens' Street into the more glorious building which they now enjoyed. It was for that reason that on two occasions the Society elected him to the highest position which they could confer."] in favour of the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston, opposing several of my friends who were condemning it. Cobden at the time was attacking supposed extravagance, based, as he thought, on panic, and I sided with Palmerston in thinking that the enormous increase of the French Navy could only be intended for an anti-English policy, while in the event of even the temporary loss of the command of the Channel, invasion by an immense French army would become possible. To Poland I was friendly, but unwilling to contemplate, as Lord Palmerston was unwilling to contemplate, interference by England in alliance with the Emperor Napoleon. I was so far from strongly taking the Danish side in the war that I chose the opportunity to put up in my rooms at Cambridge a photograph of Bismarck, for whom I had a considerable admiration. I had made Lord Palmerston's acquaintance during the Exhibition in '62 (to the ceremonies of which I also owed that of Auber, Meyerbeer, and many other distinguished people), but I do not think that the chat of the jaunty old gentleman in his last days had had any effect upon my views, and I was certainly more pro- German than was Palmerston, who was not pro-anything except pro- English.'[Footnote: For Sir Charles's opinion of Lord Palmerston, see vol. ii., p. 493. ] The best speech, in Dilke's own opinion, that he made during 1866 was in opposition to the proposal to congratulate Governor Eyre upon his suppression of 'the supposed insurrection in Jamaica.' This was the first of the many occasions on which Sir Charles Dilke criticized the severity of white men towards natives in the name of civilized government. Fuller anticipation of the views he supported in Parliament is to be found in his speeches on home politics. In the spring of 1866 the country was violently agitated over the Reform Bill introduced by Lord Russell, who had become Prime Minister on the death of Lord Palmerston in 1865. Of course there was a debate at the Union, and it was prolonged to a second night. Dilke writes: 'I took up for the first time broad democratic ground. Attacking the famous speech of Mr. Lowe, [Footnote: Mr. Lowe had asked in the debate on the "Representation of the People Bill," as reported in Hansard, on March 13th, 1866: "If you want venality, ignorance, drunkenness; if you want impulsive, unreflecting, violent people, where do you look for them? Do you go to the top, or to the bottom?"] I declared that so far was I from agreement with these calumnies, that I was of opinion that those homely and truly English qualities which had to some slight extent grown slack among the upper classes were to be met with in all their strength as much in the more intelligent portion of the now unrepresented classes, as among those familiarly styled "their betters." With regard to the question of the fitness of the artisans for the franchise, I argued that they had not to decide for themselves between Austria and Prussia in the Holstein question, but had to decide between candidates who would settle the more abstruse questions for them. The middle classes, I contended, could as a body do no more, and the artisan was just as competent to judge of honesty and ability as the £10 householder; and less likely to be influenced by bribery and intimidation, as being more independent and more fearless of consequences. Moreover, any attempt to keep the great mass of the people from all share of political power seemed to me idle: whether we liked their advent to government or whether we feared it, it was inevitable, and the longer we delayed to prepare for it the worse it would be for so-called Conservative interests when it came. I contended that the working man had proportionately a greater stake in the country than the rich; that the taxes which he paid were a vastly more serious matter to him than those which the rich paid were to them, and that a hundred of the laws passed by Parliament vitally affected the interests of the working people to one which injured those of the upper class.' For a young man whose political views were so maturely thought out, debate was no mere exercitation; his education was fast passing into apprenticeship for public life; and in February, 1865, his father, Sir Wentworth Dilke, coming forward at a by-election in the Liberal interest for Wallingford, gave the Union debater his first chance on a public platform. Long afterwards, when Sir Charles Dilke was travelling down to the Forest of Dean with a party of guests and friends, one of them, looking out as the train swept along the Thames Valley, caught sight of a little white church nestling under a hill and asked, "Is that Cholsey?" Sir Charles turned round in his eager way: "What, do you know this district? Yes, that is Cholsey;" and went on to tell how intimate he had become with all the villages round Wallingford when speaking and canvassing for his father, and how the experience gained among the Berkshire peasants had supplied valuable lessons for his own contests in later years. Sir Wentworth was elected, and Lord Granville, who had a real friendship for him, wrote, in a spirit very typical of the traditional view: "I know no one to whom Parliamentary life will afford more interest and amusement." Charles Dilke's conception of Parliamentary life was very different from that of his father, and from that which Lord Granville indicated. On the other hand, the son seemed to the father deficient in appreciation of the pleasures acceptable to himself: 'One of the difficulties between my father and myself about this period arose from his vexation at my refusing to take part in the shooting-parties at Alice Holt. He was passionately fond of shooting; ... I had now but little sympathy with the amusement, and had shown my dislike for it in many ways.' Yet despite differences, the father was immensely proud of his son, and consulted him in regard to the younger brother's education. In his reply Charles Dilke discussed the view of certain Dons who held that the cultivated English gentleman ought not to go in for honours at all, and admitted that "reading for a high place here involves loss of many pleasures, of almost all society; it makes a man fretful, and often leaves him behind the world; as an education for the mind it is not so good as the self-education of a non-honours man ought to be, _but never is_." He thought, nevertheless, that classics--of which he avowed himself "more ignorant than an English gentleman ought to be"--offered the field in which success was best worth having. He himself "would gladly be put back to fourteen or fifteen, and 'grind my life out' till two-and-twenty, in order to get a high place in the first-class classics." But it must be all or nothing. A second-class he dismissed as not worth winning. Moreover, "if the boy has not a high standard set up for him, he will do nothing whatever, which is far worse than doing too much." Meanwhile, in the midst of all that full college life which was becoming more and more definitely a preparation for the political career, he was trying his strength in the field of journalism. His grandfather had never ceased to impress upon him that every public man should have learned and practised thoroughly the craft of writing. This precept allied itself with the inherited ownership of a great literary journal; and very shortly after old Mr. Dilke's death the undergraduate, as he then was, began to associate himself actively with the work of the _Athenaeum_. His first published writing in it appeared on October 22nd, 1864, when he reviewed a well-known work on economics by the writer whom the Memoir styles 'that dull Frenchman, Le Play.' [Footnote: French Senator, son-in-law of the celebrated economist Michel Chevalier. He wrote works on the principles of agriculture, the application of chemistry to agriculture, and kindred subjects.] Le Play wrote from Paris to thank Sir Wentworth Dilke for a copy of the article which had been sent him, and had already attracted attention in France: "On y trouve un sentiment de vrai progrès et une intelligence de la vie pratique qui se rencontrent rarement chez nos critiques." The British Museum tickets show the course of reading which Charles Dilke was pursuing at this period: Bacon, Filmer, Mandeville, Hume, represent the older English writers on Commonwealths, ideal and actual; Crousaz, Condorcet, Diderot, Linguet, Fénelon, Helvétius, stood for the influences of eighteenth-century France. With them were writers more recondite; the _Mundus Alter et Idem_ of "Britannicus," _Barclay his Argenis_, Holberg's _Journey in the Underworld_, Sadeur's _Terre Australe Connue_, Ned Lane's _Excellencie of a Free State_, were all out-of-the-way books with an antiquarian flavour. Of recent or contemporary authors, Montalembert was included, with Proudhon, as were men whom Charles Dilke came to know personally--Émile de Girardin, Michel Chevalier, and, a close friend afterwards, Louis Blanc. Works of Mohl and Willick brought in the Germans, and a volume of the _Federalist_ introduced him to that great American commonwealth which he was soon to visit. A sheaf of dockets for works upon the Swedenborgian Association and theories complete this very extensive range of reading, which may be supplemented by the following note of his own: "Favourite books, 1864 (in themselves--for no object): "Shakespeare. "The Bible. "J. S. Mill: _Political Economy; On Liberty; Dissertations._ "Longfellow: _Evangeline_ and _Miles Standish_. "Homer: _Works_. "Tennyson: nearly all. "Plato: _Republic_. "Sir P. Sidney: _Arcadia_. "Claude Adrien Helvétius: _Works_. "Victor Hugo: _Les Misérables_. "William Godwin: _Political Justice_." He notes also in the Memoir that the reading of Mill at this period marked the beginning of Mill's influence over him. This influence was a great factor in Dilke's life, and, when it passed into a personal relation, became almost one of discipleship. His taste for Victor Hugo led him to write in the _Athenaeum_ a long notice of _Les Travailleurs de la Mer_ in 1866, when that romance appeared; but another article about the same period on international law indicates the main bent of his studies. As early as the Long Vacation of 1864, in the course of preparing his essay on forms of government, he had found himself tracing 'the future of the Anglo-Saxon race both in the United States and Australasia'; and he thus, without knowing it, laid the foundation lines of _Greater Britain_. Also, in 1865, 'I had already dreamt of visiting and writing upon Russia, a country which always had a great hold on my imagination.' Another project of these undergraduate years was less his own than his grandfather's. Old Mr. Dilke contemplated a universal catalogue of books, to be prepared by international action. This scheme was completely abandoned, yet it is interesting that the grandson entertained it. The scholar, not merely the lover, but the active servant, of learning, was always present in Charles Dilke's many-sided personality, though never dominant. We approach the central preoccupations of his mind with the _History of Prevalent Opinions in Politics_, towards which 'a great deal of work' was done by him in the winter of 1864-65. In 1866 the same underlying group of ideas took form in the outline of a treatise on _Radicalism_. In working for this he read 'most of the writers upon the theory of politics--Hooker, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Linguet, Locke, Bentham, and many more.' 'Many more' included some very unusual reading; for the plan of his book was in three chapters, 'the first chapter being upon the Radicalism of the days before the coming of Jesus; the second chapter upon the period between the teaching of our Lord and 1789; and the third on Radicalism in modern history.' In the second part he 'gave much space to Arius, Huss, Wyclif, Savonarola, Vane, Roger Williams, Baxter, Fox, Zinzendorf, and other religious reformers.' All this reading taught him the 'extent to which forgotten doctrines come up again, and are known by the names of men who have but revived them'; and, on the other hand, how doctrines change and degenerate while keeping the original name. 'In the sketch of my book, so far as it was worked out, I gave much space to the falling-off in the Church from the Radicalism of primitive Christianity.... It began with a definition of Radicalism as a going to the root of things, which naturally led to the doctrine of the perfectibility of man, and, quoting the gospels freely, I attempted to prove the essential Radicalism of Christ's teaching.' Here, then, is suggested another aspect of his mind's history. He notes: 'As I rejected at this period of my life the Divinity of Christ, I sought, under Renan's guidance, more fully than I need have done, the origin of Christ's teaching and of that of Paul, in the doctrines previously taught by the Essenes and the Sadducees.' Elsewhere a manuscript note describes his varying attitude towards Christianity: 'In the course of 1863 I ceased my attendance upon Holy Communion, and fell into a sceptical frame of mind which lasted for several years, was modified in 1874, and came to an end in 1875. I had been a very strong believer, and in the loss of my belief in the supernatural, as it is called--_i.e._, in the Divinity of our Blessed Lord--I kept an unbounded admiration for His words, as recorded in the Sermon on the Mount, and belief in duty towards others. From 1885 to 1888 the Holy Sacrament was a profound blessing to me, but in 1905 I ceased again to find any help in forms.' To what he called in 1865 the essential Radicalism of Christ's teaching-- to-day it would be called Christian Socialism--he was always constant. It was the guiding principle of that inner idealism which underlay his whole life and which strengthened with his maturity. The world was for him 'a Christian' world. But acceptance not so much of the dogma as of the mystical faith of Christians would seem to have varied with him from time to time, and to have varied also in its formal expression. His mind was too positive, too much occupied in the detail of life, to have time either for brooding meditation or for the metaphysics of religious inquiry; and, at least in 1866, Christianity interested him mainly as one of the most potent shaping forces of human society. The desire to follow out and investigate at first hand certain of its modern manifestations helped to direct the impulse for travel which was already prompting him. The Long Vacation of 1865 had found him tramping, first with Warr in Guernsey, afterwards alone 'through Brittany and Normandy and partly into the provinces south of the Loire,' eloquent on the charms of travelling without luggage, sketching also, and increasing his carefully gathered knowledge of French architecture. He had explored France very thoroughly before he found the part of it which was to become almost a second homeland in his affections; and he had the Frenchman's appreciation of what was most characteristically France. "I think the better of the French," he wrote at this time, "for their admiration of the scenery of the Loire, the Indre, and the Vienne. Few English people are capable of appreciating the scenery of Anjou.... I never saw anything more lovely than the scenery of the Vilaine south of Guichen and Bourg des Comptes." But this was only an excursion. The whole bent of his desire lay towards serious travel, in which he should pass from the training- ground of the University to that wider school where knowledge was to be gained, applied, and perfected. In the early part of 1866 he was talking only of a journey in America, and it was a journey with a literary purpose. In his _History of Radicalism_ he had given much space to the Revivals in Prussia led by Ebel, and also to the rise in America of the school of the Perfectionists in 1834. He proposed to take with him the sketch of this book, and work into it the results of inquiry made on the spot as regards the communistic experiments which had been tried in the United States. But travel for its own sake tempted him, and even before he set out, 'I fancy,' he writes, 'my intention was already to go round the world: but if I had asked my father's leave to do so, I should have been refused.' At all events, when once fairly launched, the interest of travelling absorbed his mind; and accordingly the book on Radicalism was finally put aside, though not before some work had been done on it at Quebec and Ottawa. Nor was it altogether abandoned; for, he says, in treating of 'Radicalism in modern history': 'I discussed it under various heads, of which the first was Great Britain, the second the British Colonies, the third the United States, showing, as this table was made before I left England, the predominance which Colonial questions were already assuming in my mind.' Also: 'In the last part of the sketch of the work I dealt with the political Radicalism of the future. I wrote strongly in favour of the removal of the disabilities of sex. I took the Irish Catholic view of the Irish question, and I commenced the discussion of some of those questions which made the freshness and the success of _Greater Britain_--for example, "Effects upon Radicalism of Increased Facility of Communication," and "Development of the Principle of Love of Country into that of Love of Man."' 'Such,' he writes, at the end of that passage which describes the purposes and the labours of his last academic terms--'such were the dispositions in which I commenced my journey round the world.' CHAPTER VI "GREATER BRITAIN" In June, 1866, Charles Dilke, not yet twenty-three, started on the travels which are recorded in the first and most popular of his books, _Greater Britain_. Its original draft was in reality the numbered series of long descriptive letters which he sent home to Sloane Street. His first prolonged absence, coupled with the unspent shock of his grandfather's death, had bred in him a homesickness, which under the influence of a Virginian summer he tried to dissipate by an outburst of verse; but the medium was unsuited to his pen, and he soon returned to the 'dispositions' with which he started on his journey. 'Leaving England as I did with my mind in this kind of ferment, my visit to Boston became deeply interesting to me, as I met there a group of men undoubtedly, on the whole, the most distinguished then collected at any city in the world. At one party of nine people, at Cambridge, I met Emerson, Agassiz, Longfellow, Wendell Holmes, Asa Gray, Lowell ("Hosea Biglow"), Dr. Collyer the Radical Unitarian, and Dr. Hedge the great preacher. It is hard to say by which of them I was the most charmed. Emerson, Longfellow, Asa Gray, and Wendell Holmes seemed to me equal in the perfection of their courtesy, the grace of their manner, and the interest of their conversation, while Hedge and Collyer were full of an intellectual energy which was new to me, and which had a powerful effect upon my work of the time; to be traced indeed through the whole of the American portion of _Greater Britain_.' There is no need here to attempt any sketch of a journey which is described in a book which is still read after half a century. Charles Dilke began with the South, where the earth had scarcely closed over the graves of the great war, where the rebel spirit still smouldered fiercely, and where reorganization was only beginning to establish itself. He went on to New York, to New England, and to Canada; then, crossing the line of the Great Lakes, followed that other highway of the northern continent, the Mississippi, to St. Louis. Here he met with Mr. Hepworth Dixon, then editor of the _Athenaeum_, and the character of his journey changed: he travelled in company, and he travelled for the first time under privations and in real danger. Together they crossed the plains from the eastern head of the Pacific Railway at a period of Indian war, and parted at Salt Lake City. This is a marking-point in the experience. Before Charles Dilke set out to cross a land still debatable, where travel still was what travel had been for the pioneers, he wrote home two letters. Both are dated August 26th, 1866, from Leavenworth in Kansas, now a sober town of twenty thousand inhabitants, then carrying recent memories of the days "when the Southern 'Border Ruffians' were in the habit of parading its streets, bearing the scalps of Abolitionists stuck on poles," and even after the war basing its repute for health on the story that, when it became necessary to "inaugurate" the new graveyard, "they had to shoot a man on purpose." The first of these letters is to his father: "MY DEAR FATHER, "I have been for some days considering whether I would write to you upon my present theme before or after my journey across the plains, but I have come to the conclusion that it is in every way better that I should do it now. Before leaving you, I had prepared, with the knowledge only of Casswell" (one of his Trinity Hall set), "elaborate plans for my long-thought-of visit to Australia. "After landing in the States, I came to think that, in spite of the evident advantages to be gleaned by taking the two tours in one, you might be seriously averse to my more lengthy absence. When, however, I came to sketch out plans for the great work which I have long intended some day to write, and of which I completed the first map during my stay at Ottawa, I found that I must go to Australia before getting very far through with the book, and that I could not be even so much as certain of my basement and groundwork until after such a visit. "Were I to postpone my trip to Australia, I might find it impossible ever to go there, remembering that it is not a tour which can be made from England, at any time, much more quickly than I shall have made it now; and whenever I did make it, you would have to expect an absence more prolonged than that for which this letter will prepare you. Of course that absence is fully as grievous to me as to you, and nothing but necessity would drive me to it. Of course my going will depend upon my health, and upon the letters I shall receive at San Francisco. I have ample funds to take me as far as Sydney, and to enable me to live there a long time, were anything to prevent your letters reaching there as soon as I do. I enclose a letter to Knight for Tasmanian introductions; you can no doubt get me Australian from Sir Daniel Cooper and others. I propose to visit Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Geelong, Adelaide, Hobart Town, Wellington, and Auckland, but the order in which I take them, of course, depends on local circumstances. Will you send me some money to Sydney, with such introductions as you can get? If they don't turn up, I shall start a Shaker colony, or a newspaper, or row people ashore from the emigrant ships." When the travellers halted to rest for some time at Denver, after six days' journey across the plains, Charles Dilke, with a brain excited by the keen atmosphere of the prairie, "sketched out many projects of a literary kind." 'In addition to my book on Radicalism, there was a plan for a book of "Political Geography" based on the doctrine that geographical centres ultimately become political centres--ideas which are also to be traced in _Greater Britain_ under the name of Omphalism; and a scheme for a book to be called "The Anglo-Saxon Race or The English World," which is noted as dating from June, 1862, and being a head under which should be treated the infusion of foreign elements into the Saxon world--such as, for example, Chinese immigration. A fifth work was to be on "International Law," in two parts--"As it is," and "As it might be." Another was to be on the offer to an unembodied soul of the alternatives of non-existence, or of birth accompanied by free-will, followed by life in sin or life in Godliness.' But all the time literature figured in his mind only as an accompaniment to political life. There was more than jest in the young man's answer to Governor Gilpin of Colorado, when that dignitary suggested permanent stay in Denver, with promise of all sorts of honours and rewards in his infant state. Charles Dilke writes home: "I told him that unless he would carry a constitutional amendment allowing a foreign-born subject to be President of the United States, he would not receive my services. This he said he would 'see about.'" What underlay the jesting is set out in this letter to his brother Ashton, sent by the same mail that carried to his father news of the projected journey to Australia: "MY DEAR ASHTON, "I write in English [Footnote: The brothers usually corresponded with each other in French; see Chap. II., p. 15.] because I write of serious matters, best to be talked over in our serious mother-tongue. I shall also write very simply, saying exactly what I want you to hear, and that in the plainest manner. "I have been thinking of late that in talking to you I may have failed to make you comprehend why 'I wanted to make you do things that would pay,' and that if I failed to lead you to look at these things as I do, I must have debased your mind and done you as much harm as any man can do his dearest friend. I will, then, in this memorandum explain my views about you and your future, leaving it to you, my dear brother, to apply or reject them as your judgment prompts, without letting your love for me bias you in favour of my argument. "I believe that the bent of your mind is not unlike that of mine. My aim in life is to be of the greatest use I can to the world at large, not because that is my duty, but because that is the course which will make my life happiest--_i.e._, my motives are selfish in the wide and unusual sense of that word. I believe that, on account of my temperament and education, I can be most useful as a statesman and as a writer. I have, therefore, educated myself with a view to getting such power as to make me able at all events to teach men my views, whether or not they follow them. I believe that you and I together would be more than twice as strong as each of us alone; I, therefore, if you are not disinclined, wish to see you acting with me and ever standing by my side in all love and happiness. To do this you must make a name, and you must begin by making a name at Cambridge. If you can go up to college 'a certain future first-class man'--then you can give up classics if you like, and read other and more immediately useful things--be President of the Union, and so on; but you cannot do that from a god-like height unless you are 'a certain first.' So with music, if you play at all, you must play like a whole band of seraphs (as, indeed, you seem in a fair way to do). Of course, it is very easy to say--Music is an art which, if cultivated merely because it will 'pay,' ceases to be either art or music. True! Quite true!! But only true if you insert merely--merely because it will 'pay.' I think (I may be wrong) that it is possible to cultivate it so as to 'pay,' and yet love and reverence it (and yourself in it) as the highest form of art. "Now I come to riding. I do most earnestly suggest that if you can bring yourself to learn to ride so as to be able to ride an ordinary horse along a road with perfect safety, you should do so. I am clear that you cannot go into the diplomatic service without it. In travel you must ride. If you can bring yourself to it at all, it must be at once. "Now for my absence. Part of my plan is the writing of serious and grave works, neither of which can be written until I have seen Australia as well as America. I find it, then, a necessity to go there; and I go there now, firstly because I have it within reach, and secondly, because absence from all, and above all from you, dearest, would be worse at any future time than now. "Keep, however, constantly before you the ultimate doing good or being useful--which is (for I firmly hold the Jesuit doctrine, if it be rightly understood) to justify the means. "I need hardly say that this talk is for you, and not even for father, nor for Casswell. "Your devoted friend and brother, "CHARLES." "What a prig he was!" is scrawled across the page, as Charles Dilke's judgment on himself, when later the letter fell into his hands. But, happily, in all the ordinary intercourse of life, ease and geniality were native to him; he got on readily with all manner of men; and nothing could have been better for him than the plunge into a society where all was in the rough. He shed his priggishness once and for all somewhere on the "Great Divide." What makes the permanent charm of _Greater Britain_ is its sense of enjoyment, its delighted acceptance of new and unconventional ways. In crossing the plains, he first made the experience of actual physical privations, and for the first time saw and fell in love with "the bright eyes of danger." Through all the seriousness and solid concentration of _Greater Britain_ there runs a vein of high spirits. Facts are there, but with them is a ferment of ideas and of feeling. Part of that feeling is just a contagious delight in the joyous business of living. But the strong current which lifted him so buoyantly was an emotion which no shyness or stiffness hampered in the expression--in its essence an exultant patriotism of race. Democracy meant to him in this stage of his development, not any abstract theory of government, but the triumph of English ideas. California, then in the full rush of mining, was the touchstone of Democracy; where, out of the chaos of blackguardism, through lynchings and vigilance committees, judge and jury were at work evolving decent security and settled government. "The wonder is" (he wrote) "not that, in such a State as California was till lately, the machinery of government should work unevenly, but that it should work at all. Democracy has never endured so rough a test as that from which it has triumphantly emerged in the Golden State and City.... "California is too British to be typically American: it would seem that nowhere in the United States have we found the true America or the real American. Except as abstractions, they do not exist; it is only by looking carefully at each eccentric and irregular America--at Irish New York, at Puritan New England, at the rowdy South, at the rough and swaggering Far West, at the cosmopolitan Pacific States-- that we come to reject the anomalous features, and to find America in the points they possess in common. It is when the country is left that there rises in the mind an image that soars above all local prejudice --that of the America of the law-abiding, mighty people who are imposing English institutions on the world." [Footnote: _Greater Britain_ (popular edition), p. 193.] The same thought is summed up in the chapter where he sets down his recollected impressions on board the ship that carried him southwards along the shores of America from the Golden Gate towards Panama: "A man may see American countries, from the pine-wastes of Maine to the slopes of the Sierra; may talk with American men and women, from the sober citizens of Boston to Digger Indians in California; may eat of American dishes, from jerked buffalo in Colorado to clambakes on the shores near Salem; and yet, from the time he first 'smells the molasses' at Nantucket light-ship to the moment when the pilot quits him at the Golden Gate, may have no idea of an America. You may have seen the East, the South, the West, the Pacific States, and yet have failed to find America. It is not till you have left her shores that her image grows up in the mind. "The first thing that strikes the Englishman just landed in New York is the apparent Latinization of the English in America; but before he leaves the country, he comes to see that this is at most a local fact, and that the true moral of America is the vigour of the English race-- the defeat of the cheaper by the dearer peoples, the victory of the man whose food costs four shillings a day over the man whose food costs four pence."[Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 216.] That is the governing idea of the book--an idea in which were merged those other projects which passed before him when he halted at Denver; and it is set forth with most fulness and vigour in the opening chapters, which deal with a "Greater Britain" that is outside the British Empire--with the Britain that no longer dwells under the British flag. He left the Pacific shores in tremendous spirits, and on the voyage to New Zealand was a provider of entertainment for his fellow- passengers, writing an _opéra bouffe_, _Oparo, or the Enchanting Isle_, in which he himself spoke the prologue as Neptune, 'two hundred miles west- sou'-west of Pitcairn Island.' His head might be full of politics and of the ethics which touch on politics; but he was in the humour to turn his mind to jesting and to find material for comedy as well as for grave discourse in the advent of white men to cannibal islands. The rest of the book is a sequel or corollary. English institutions are studied in New Zealand and in Australia, among autonomous communities of Britons. Later on they are studied in Ceylon and India, where they have their application to white men, living not as part of a democracy, but as the arbiters of their fate to Orientals. Dilke's own exposition of this governing conception was set out in the preface to the book: "In 1866 and 1867 I followed England round the world: everywhere I was in English-speaking or in English-governed lands. If I remarked that climate, soil, manners of life, that mixture with other peoples, had modified the blood, I saw, too, that in essentials the race was always, one. "The idea which in all the length of my travels has been at once my fellow and my guide--a key wherewith to unlock the hidden things of strange new lands--is a conception, however imperfect, of the grandeur of our race, already girdling the earth, which it is destined perhaps eventually to overspread. "In America the peoples of the world are being fused together, but they are run into an English mould: Alfred's laws and Chaucer's tongue are theirs whether they would or no. There are men who say that Britain in her age will claim the glory of having planted greater Englands across the seas. They fail to perceive that she has done more than found plantations of her own--that she has imposed her institutions upon the offshoots of Germany, of Ireland, of Scandinavia, and of Spain. Through America, England is speaking to the world. "Sketches of Saxondom may be of interest even upon humbler grounds: the development of the England of Elizabeth is to be found, not in the Britain of Victoria, but in half the habitable globe. If two small islands are by courtesy styled 'Great,' America, Australia, India, must form a 'Greater Britain.'" He wrote of this passage in his Memoir: 'The preface of _Greater Britain_, in which the title is justified and explained, is the best piece of work of my life. It states the doctrine on which our rule should be based--remembered in Canada-- forgotten in South Africa--the true as against the bastard Imperialism. As will be seen from it, I included in my "Greater Britain" our Magna Graecia of the United States. As late as 1880, twelve years after the publication of my book, not only was the title "Greater Britain" often used for the English world--as I used it--but, speaking at the Lotus Club of New York, Mr. Whitelaw Reid used it specially of the United States. Tom Hughes, he declared, "led a pioneer English colony to this Greater Britain, to seek here a fuller expansion." It is contracting an idea which, as its author, I think lofty and even noble, to use "Greater Britain" only of the British Empire, as is now done.' The touch of enthusiasm in this book lifted his writing to its highest plane. He himself was specially proud of the praise which P. G. Hamerton bestowed on the landscape passages: [Footnote: See Appendix, pp. 72, 73.] and they have the quality, which his grandfather schooled him in, of being really descriptive. But his characteristic excellence is found far more in such a passage as that which follows his sketch of the time when "the thinking men of Boston and the Cambridge professors, Emerson, Russell Lowell, Asa Gray, and a dozen more ... morally seceded from their country's councils," because in those councils the slave-holders still had the upper hand. Here are a few of its ringing sentences: "In 1863 and 1864 there came the reckoning. When America was first brought to see the things that had been done in her name, and at her cost, and, rising in her hitherto unknown strength, struck the noblest blow for freedom that the world has seen, the men who had been urging on the movement from without at once re-entered the national ranks, and marched to victory. Of the men who sat beneath Longfellow, and Agassiz, and Emerson, whole battalions went forth to war. From Oberlin almost every male student and professor marched, and the University teaching was left in the women's hands. Out of 8,000 school-teachers in Pennsylvania, of whom 300 alone were drafted, 3,000 volunteered for the war. Everywhere the students were foremost among the Volunteers, and from that time forward America and her thinkers were at one." [Footnote: _Greater Britain_ (popular edition), p. 41.] The book was written at high pressure--in twelve months of desk work, beginning in June, 1867, when the traveller returned from his year's wandering--and it was not written under favourable conditions. He had contracted malaria in Ceylon, which gradually destroyed his appetite, and so induced a state of weakness leading to delirium at night. The end was an attack of typhoid fever, which came on while the book was still in the press; and his father, thinking it important to hurry the publication, took on himself to correct the proofs while his son was ill. The result was a crop of blunders; but nothing interfered with the unforeseen success of the book, which was published in the last months of 1868. Large portions of the work were translated into Russian, its circulation in America was enormous (under a pirate flag), and in England it rapidly ran through three editions, and was praised in the newspapers almost without exception. In the reviews which appeared there stood out a general acceptance of the book as fair and friendly to all. In spite of its audacious patriotism, it was no way limited in sympathy. This fairness of mind received the homage of Thiers in a great defence of his Protectionist budget. "Un membre du parlement d'Angleterre, qui est certainement un des hommes les plus éclairés de son pays, M. Wentworth Dilke, vient d'écrire un livre des plus remarquables," he said, and pressed the argument that Charles Dilke's defence of Protection from the American and Australian point of view gained authority by the very fact that its author was _libre-échangiste d'Europe_. Dilke always called himself, more accurately, "a geographical Free Trader." He accepted, that is to say, the doctrine for Great Britain unreservedly, only because of Great Britain's geographical conditions. This was very different from the orthodox English Liberal's view of Free Trade as a universal maxim to be accepted under penalty of political excommunication. On a matter of even wider import for Imperial statesmanship his sympathies were at once and clearly declared. From this his first entry into the arena of public debate he was the champion of the dark-skinned peoples-- all the more, perhaps, because he recognized clearly that the Anglo-Saxons were "the only extirpating race." In lands where white men could rear their children it seemed to him inevitable that the Anglo-Saxon race should replace the coloured peoples as, to take his own illustration, the English fly was superseding all other flies in New Zealand. Yet at least while the American-Indians or the Maoris remained, he was determined to secure justice for them; and he incurred angry criticism for outspoken condemnation of English dealing with the natives in Tasmania. But a great part of his book is devoted to discussion of questions which must be of constant recurrence, affecting the relations of Englishmen to natives in lands where the English are only a governing handful. These matters received special comment in a letter from John Stuart Mill at Avignon on February 9th, 1869. Mill, although a stranger to Dilke, was moved to write his commendation in the most ungrudging terms: "It is long" (he said) "since any book connected with practical politics has been published on which I build such high hopes of the future usefulness and distinction of the writer, showing, as it does, that he not only possesses a most unusual amount of real knowledge on many of the principal questions of the future, but a mind strongly predisposed to what are (at least in my opinion) the most advanced and enlightened views of them. "There are so few opinions expressed in any part of your book with which I do not, so far as my knowledge extends, fully and heartily coincide, that I feel impelled to take the liberty of noting the small number of points of any consequence on which I differ from you. These relate chiefly to India; though on that subject also I agree with you to a much greater extent than I differ. Not only do I most cordially sympathize with all you say about the insolence of the English even in India to the native population, which has now become not only a disgrace, but, as you have so usefully shown, a danger to our dominion there; but I have been much struck by the sagacity which, in so short a stay as yours must have been, has enabled you to detect facts which are as yet obvious to very few: as, for instance, the immense increase of all the evils and dangers you have pointed out by the substitution of the Queen's army for a local force of which both men and officers had at least a comparatively permanent tie to the country; and again, that the superior authority in England, having the records of all the presidencies before it, and corresponding regularly with them all, is the only authority which really knows India; the local governments and offices only knowing, at most, their own part of it, and having generally strong prejudices in favour of the peculiarities of the system of government there adopted, and against those of the other party." [Footnote: James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, was the historian of India, and for a long time one amongst its official rulers at the India House.] Then followed an exhaustive and very friendly criticism, in which the most interesting points are his challenge of Dilke's proposal to make the Secretary of State for India a permanent office, not changing with party upheavals, and, lastly, this: "If there is any criticism of a somewhat broader character that I could make, I think it would be this--that (in speaking of the physical and moral characteristics of the populations descended from the English) you sometimes express yourself almost as if there were no sources of national character but race and climate, as if whatever does not come from race must come from climate, and whatever does not come from climate must come from race. But as you show in many parts of your book a strong sense of the good and bad influences of education, legislation, and social circumstances, the only inference I draw is that you do not, perhaps, go so far as I do myself in believing these last causes to be of prodigiously greater efficacy than either race or climate, or the two combined." The writing of this letter marked the beginning of a friendship which lasted till Mill's death. If the book had done nothing but secure Dilke this friend, it would have been well rewarded. But rewards were not lacking. The fortunate author was crowned with a great popular success invaluable for a young man about to enter political life. Yet more important even than the prestige acquired was the sum of experience gained. APPENDIX EXTRACT FROM "LANDSCAPE," BY PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON A traveller who did not set out with the intention of word-painting, but to see how men of English race fared wherever they had settled, said that 'travellers soon learn, when making estimates of a country's value, to despise no feature of the landscape.' If Sir Charles Dilke wrote that rather from the political than the artistic point of view, it is not the less accurate in any case, for the landscape, however uninteresting it may seem, or even ugly, is never without its great influence on human happiness and destiny. The interest in human affairs which Sir Charles Dilke has in common with most men of any conspicuous ability, does not prevent him from seeing landscape-nature as well as if his travels had no other object. His description of the Great Plains of Colorado is an excellent example of that valuable kind of description which is not merely an artful arrangement of sonorous words, but perfectly conveys the character of the landscape, and makes you feel as if you had been there. "Now great roaring uplands of enormous sweep, now boundless grassy plains; there is all the grandeur of monotony and yet continual change. Sometimes the distances are broken by blue buttes, or rugged bluffs. Over all there is a sparkling atmosphere and never-failing breeze; the air is bracing even when most hot, the sky is cloudless, and no rain falls. A solitude which no words can paint, the boundless prairie swell conveys an idea of vastness which is the overpowering feature of the Plains.... The impression is not merely one of size. There is perfect beauty, wondrous fertility, in the lonely steppe; no patriotism, no love of home, can prevent the traveller wishing here to end his days. "To those who love the sea, there is here a double charm. Not only is the roll of the prairie as grand as that of the Atlantic, but the crispness of the wind, the absence of trees, the multitude of tiny blooms upon the sod, all conspire to give a feeling of nearness to the ocean, the effect of which is that we are always expecting to hail it from the top of the next hillock.... "The colour of the landscape is, in summer, green and flowers; in fall-time, yellow and flowers, but flowers ever." [Footnote: _Greater Britain_, p. 80 (popular edition).] If the reader will take the trouble to analyze this description, he will perceive that, although powerful, it is extremely simple and sober. The traveller does not call in the aid of poetical comparisons (the only comparison indulged in is the obvious one of the Atlantic), and the effect of the description on the mind is due to the extreme care with which the writer has put together in a short space the special and peculiar characteristics of the scenery, not forgetting to tell us everything that we of ourselves would naturally fail to imagine. He corrects, one after another, all our erroneous notions, and substitutes a true idea for our false ones. The describer has been thoroughly alive; he has travelled with his eyes open; so that every epithet tells. The reader feels under a real obligation; he has not been put off with mere phrases, but is enriched with a novel and interesting landscape experience. In a good prose description, such as these by Kingsley and Sir Charles Dilke, the author has nothing to do but to convey, as nearly as he can, a true impression of what he has actually seen. The greatest difficulties that he has to contend against are the ignorance and the previous misconceptions of his readers. He must give information without appearing didactic, and correct what he foresees as probable false conceptions, without ostentatiously pretending to know better. His language must be as concise as possible, or else important sentences will be skipped; and yet at the same time it must flow easily enough to be pleasantly readable. It is not easy to fulfil these conditions all at once, and therefore we meet with many books of travel in which attempted descriptions frequently occur, which fail, nevertheless, to convey a clear idea of the country. A weak writer wastes precious space in sentimental phrases or in vain adjectives that would be equally applicable to many other places, and forgets to note what is peculiarly and especially characteristic of the one place that he is attempting to describe. CHAPTER VII ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT I. While engaged in the writing of Greater Britain, Charles Dilke entered upon the main business of his life by coming forward as a candidate for the House of Commons. Immediate action was necessary; for the position of parties indicated the near approach of a General Election. The constituency to which he addressed his candidature in the autumn of 1867 was the borough of Chelsea, a new Parliamentary division created by the Reform Act of that year. It was of vast extent, embracing Chelsea, Fulham, Hammersmith, Kensal Town, and Kensington. In Chelsea Charles Dilke had his home, and, as representing the Parliamentary borough, he would speak "backed by the vote and voice of 30,000 electors." "I would willingly wait any time," he said in his opening address on November 25th, in the Vestry Hall at Chelsea, "rather than enter the House of Commons a member for some small trumpery constituency." The electors should hear his opinions, "not upon any one subject or upon any two subjects or any three, but as nearly as might be upon all." His speech began with the electoral machinery of democracy--questions of franchise and redistribution. Purity of election he laid down as a necessary condition of reform, and to that end two points must be assured: the removal of election petitions from the House of Commons to a legal tribunal, [Footnote: A Bill with that object was at the time passing through Parliament.] and, secondly, the security of the ballot. Upon the first matter he came perhaps to doubt the new system after he had seen it tried; upon the second he was able to tell his audience from first-hand knowledge that in Australia opposition to the ballot was unknown, and that in Virginia a conquered minority looked to it as their best defence against oppression. From the machinery of Government he passed to its application. Ireland was then the burning question, and Dilke's attitude upon Ireland may be indicated in a sentence. After the Church should have been disestablished, the land system reformed, [Footnote: His views on the Irish Land Question had been stated in _Greater Britain_ (popular edition), p. 209: "Customs and principles of law, the natural growth of the Irish mind and the Irish soil, can be recognized and made the basis of legislation without bringing about the disruption of the Empire. The first Irish question that we shall have to set ourselves to face is that of land. Permanent tenure is as natural to the Irish as free-holding to the English people. All that is needed of our statesmen is that they recognize in legislation that which they cannot but admit in private talk--namely, that there may be essential differences between race and race."] and a wide measure of Parliamentary reform given to Ireland; after they should have passed Fawcett's Bill "for throwing open Trinity College, Dublin, and destroying the last trace of that sectarian spirit which has hitherto been allowed to rule in Ireland" --they might hope "not perhaps for instant quiet in the country, but at least for the gradual growth of a feeling that we have done our duty, and that we may well call upon the Irish to do theirs." There went with that a moderate censure upon the lawlessness of Fenianism. But the Irish question did not occupy so much space in his discourse as in those of most speakers at that moment, and this for a reason which he gave later in his life: 'About Ireland I was never given to saying much, because, except for a short time in 1885, when moderate Home Rule could have been carried, I never thoroughly saw my own way.' But as early as 1869 he deplored the lack of local deliberative bodies which elsewhere did much of the State's work, and in 1871 he advocated their creation as a means of relieving Parliament. This, rather than any special sympathy with Nationalism as such, was always the governing consideration with him on the Irish question. 'I showed in this way,' he notes, 'a working of the opinion which in 1874 caused me to vote, alone of English members unpledged by their constituents, in support of Mr. Butt when he brought forward his Home Rule Bill.' [Footnote: Eight in all voted; all except Dilke represented Northern constituencies, with a large Irish vote among miners or operatives.] He foreshadowed also his attitude towards Labour questions. He proposed, as early as 1867, that the Factory Acts should be extended to all employment; the best way of compelling children to attend school was, he thought, to prohibit their employment as premature wage-earners. Another declaration set forth that Trade Unions must be recognized, and their funds protected just as much as those "of any association formed for purposes not illegal." By no means were all Liberals in 1867 ready to distinguish between Trade Unions and criminal conspiracies. Taxation came next. His desire to "sweep away many millions of Customs and Excise," and to establish a system so far as possible of direct taxation, is notable because it was put forward at the very moment when he was explaining in _Greater Britain_ to the precisians of Free Trade that young countries, like America and the Colonies, had reasonable grounds for maintaining a rigid Protective system. Questions put at this first meeting with the electors elicited a declaration for triennial Parliaments; if these failed, then for annual; for payment of members, with preference for the plan of payment by the constituency, advocated by "Mr. Mill, the great leader of political thinkers." As to manhood suffrage, the candidate held "that the burden of proof lies on those who would exclude any man from the suffrage; but I also hold that there is sufficient proof for the temporary exclusion of certain classes at the present time." This, with some other points in the exposition of his political creed, needs to be read in the light of a passage in the Memoir: 'I tried to be moderate in order to please my father, and not to lose the general Liberal vote; my speeches are more timid than were my opinions.' Yet for all his efforts after moderation he was too extreme for his father, who probably was shocked to hear that the Game Laws "needed an amendment, which should extend perhaps to their total abolition." Sir Wentworth Dilke remonstrated. His son replied in December, 1867: "I am a Radical, I know; still I have for your sake done everything I can to speak moderately. I have spoken against Fenianism in spite of my immense sympathy for it. For my own part, though I should immensely like to be in Parliament, still I should feel terribly hampered there if I went in as anything except a Radical.... Radicalism is too much a thing of nature with me to throw it off by any effort of mine. If you think it a waste of money for me to contest Chelsea, I will cheerfully throw the thing up and turn to any pursuit you please." Many other matters which were to occupy Charles Dilke later are mentioned in this first and detailed exposition of his political faith. He dealt with army reform: would abolish "purchase of commissions and flogging"; he condemned "an army in which we systematically deny a man those advantages that in entering an employment he naturally looked to receive," and the double responsibility of the Horse Guards and the War Office as "a system which is in its very essence costly and inefficient." On Foreign Affairs he said: "I am very wishful indeed for peace, but a peace more dignified than that which has of late prevailed." [Footnote: Speech in Chelsea, November 25th, 1867.] He spoke at Chelsea, Kensington, Hammersmith, Fulham, Brompton, Notting Hill, and Walham Green, earning from the electors the name of Mr. Indefatigable Dilke. The borough deserved that a man who sought to represent it should state his case thoroughly, and there was an uncommon degree of truth in a not uncommon compliment when he called it "the most intelligent constituency in England." South Kensington was the home of many judges and other important lawyers, many great merchants and men of business; Brompton was still a literary quarter; Holland Park and Notting Hill the home of the artists who figured largely on Dilke's committee--the names of Leighton, Maclise, Faed, and other Academicians are among the list. The honorary committee was made up almost entirely of resident Members of Parliament. In Kensal Town was a very strong artisan element, and at one time a working-man candidate was before the electors, George Odger, who was 'the best representative of the Trade Unions, and a man of whom the highest opinion was entertained by Mr. Mill.' He not only withdrew, but became also an active supporter. Of the Tory candidates, perhaps the more important was Mr. Freake, a big contractor who had built Cromwell Road, in which he lived, and who was not on the best of terms with his workmen. Some of this unpopularity reflected itself on the allied candidature of Dr. W. H. Russell, whose expenses Mr. Freake was said to be paying. But the contest led to a lasting friendship between Charles Dilke and the famous war correspondent. The other Liberal candidate was Sir Henry Hoare, a Radical baronet, twenty years older than Dilke, who had for a short time sat as member for Windsor. So long as he represented Chelsea he voted with the extreme Radicals, and his name may be found in many division lists in the minority along with that of his colleague. But later in life he changed his politics, joined the Carlton Club, and was a member of it for many years. Charles Dilke always spoke of him in terms of cordial friendship even after their political association had long been ended. Their candidature was not a joint one, as Dilke put himself forward independently; but when the election actually came the Liberal candidates joined forces, and two picture-cards represent the contest as between rival teams of cocks. In one the Odger cock is seen retreating; Freake is on his back, gasping; Russell and Hoare still contend, while under the banner "Dilke and Hoare for ever," Dilke crows victorious. In the second card Odger has no place, and Russell is as dead as Freake. This graphic forecast was justified by the result. Polling took place on Wednesday, November 18th, 1868, and, according to a local paper, "the proceedings were of a most orderly character; indeed, the absence of vehicles, favours, etc., made the election dull." The voting was open. The results were published from hour to hour at the booths, and the unpopular candidates were in one or two places driven away by hisses. Even in Cromwell Road Dilke and Hoare led, and Dilke's advantage in his own district of Chelsea proper was conspicuous. The final figures were: Dilke........ 7,374 Hoare........ 7,183 Russell...... 4,177 Freake....... 3,929 The triumph was all the more gratifying because it had been achieved by a volunteer canvass. No member has ever been bound to a constituency by closer ties of personal feeling than those which linked Charles Dilke, first to Chelsea and later to the Forest of Dean. He worked for his constituents, and taught them to work for him. At this same General Election Sir Wentworth Dilke lost his seat, and Lord Granville sent him a note "to condole with you and to congratulate you. I suspect that the cause of the latter gives you more pleasure than the cause of the former gives you regret. How very well your son seems to have done!" After the election Charles Dilke sought a rest by one of his flying trips abroad. He stopped a day in Paris to examine the details of the French registration system. Thence he proceeded to Toulon, 'to which I took a fancy, which ultimately led, many years after, to my buying a property there'; the scenery of Provence captured him from the first moment. Parliament was summoned to meet on December 10th for the election of a Speaker, and for the swearing-in of members. By the beginning of December the member for Chelsea was on the eve of return, rejoicing in the news of Mr. Gladstone's defeat in South-West Lancashire and election for Greenwich. "He is much more likely to become a democratic leader now that he sits for a big town." A note preserved in one of the boxes gives Charles Dilke's first impressions of the party and Government to which he had vowed a somewhat qualified allegiance. "_December 10th_, 1868.--House met for election of Speaker. The Liberal party is more even in opinion than ever before. No Adullamites, no Radicals but myself. The Cabinet is somewhat behind the party, which is bad. Too many peers." The House of Commons of 1868 was superficially very much like any of its predecessors. Dilke notes that it 'contained some survivals of the old days, such as Mr. Edward Ellice, son of "Bear" Ellice [Footnote: This was Mr. Edward Ellice, who had been in the House since 1836, and who continued to represent St. Andrews till 1879. He was sometimes called "the young Bear." See _Life of Lord Granville_, i. 80, 81, 141, 171, 175, as to the "old Bear."] of the days of Lord Melbourne,' a consistent and typical Liberal. The Liberal party consisted then mainly of men born into that governing class which Lord Melbourne had in mind when he said "that every English gentleman is qualified to hold any post which he has influence enough to secure." This element was accompanied by a fair sprinkling of manufacturers and other business men, for the most part Nonconformists. But no separate Irish party existed to complicate the grouping; indeed, the Irish were much less a corps apart than they had been in O'Connell's time. Labour had not one direct representative, though the importance of the artisan vote had made itself felt; and this was recognized by the choice of Mundella, then returned as a new member for Sheffield, to second the address at the opening of the session. The personal composition of the assembly had greatly altered. More than a third of its members were new to Parliament. W. Vernon Harcourt, Henry James, and Campbell-Bannerman, sat then for the first time, and sat, as did Charles Dilke, below the gangway. In the same quarter was Fawcett, who helped them in creating the new phenomenon of a House of Commons alive in all its parts. Sir George Trevelyan, who almost alone of living men can compare from experience the House of Commons before the Reform Bill of 1867 and after, holds that it would be difficult to overstate the contrast. The House was no longer an arena for set combat between a few distinguished parliamentarians, whose displays were watched by followers on either side, either diffident of their ability to compete, or held silent by the unwritten rule which imposed strict reserve upon a new member. For the greater number promotion had come through slow and steady service in the lobbies. Charles Dilke from the first was always in his place--that corner seat below the gangway which became gradually his traditional possession; and from the first he assumed a responsible part in all Parliamentary business. "He was the true forerunner, in his processes, his industry, his constant attendance, and his frequent speaking, of Lord Randolph Churchill." The revolt against 'the old gang' began on the Liberal side, and Charles Dilke was the chief beginner of it. Although the new Reform Act had led to far-reaching change in the quality of the House of Commons, the choice by Mr. Gladstone of the members of the Ministry made it plain that no break with the past was contemplated by the leaders. Lowe, whose anti-democratic utterances on Reform had been denounced by Dilke at the Cambridge Union, was Chancellor of the Exchequer; and only half the Cabinet were commoners. Among these was indeed Bright; but the only other Minister whose name carried a hint of Radicalism was Forster, Vice- President of the Council of Education, and he was not in the Cabinet when it was first formed. On the other hand, Bright and Forster were to an exceptional degree responsible for the general trend of the Government policy. The dissolution and election had turned with more than usual definiteness on a clear issue--the proposal to conciliate Ireland by disestablishing the privileged Church of the minority; and behind this immediate proposal lay a less clearly defined scheme for giving security of tenure to Irish tenants. Ireland was the first business of Charles Dilke's first Parliament, and it was Bright more than any other man who had stirred English feeling with the sense that England had failed in her duty to the smaller country, and that an attempt to do justice must be made. Yet in both Church reform and land reform the actual brunt of the Parliamentary struggle fell upon Mr. Gladstone. Bright had a marvellous gift for rousing political emotion, but he had not the application necessary to give legislative effect to his aims; and Charles Dilke, though fully sensitive to the beauty of cadence in Bright's language, and enthusiastic for the music of "his unmatched voice," nevertheless inherited something of his grandfather's suspicion of "that old humbug Oratory"--at all events, when the oratorical gift was not allied with executive capacity. There was no lack of masterful grip and handling of detail in the other great orator of the Liberal party, yet the young Radical's attitude to his leader was one of admiration indeed, but always of limited sympathy. Not only did a long generation lie between them, but Charles Dilke had been bred a Radical, and Gladstone had been bred a Tory. The Government policy after 1868 was dominated by the education controversy, and was dictated by Forster. There was probably no man among his colleagues with whom Dilke more often came into collision. Forster was a strong natural Conservative, though he had been brought up in the traditions of Radicalism, and Mr. Gladstone was suspected of not being willing to abolish Collegiate as well as University tests. On the Opposition front bench Disraeli's primacy was not less marked than Mr. Gladstone's, and his romantic figure always fascinated Dilke. But his special admiration was for Gathorne Hardy (afterwards Lord Cranbrook), in whom High Toryism found its most eloquent and sincerest spokesman. Later, in 1876, Sir Charles was to complain ironically that the Conservatives "never will be able to employ the services of the man best fitted by nature to be their leader. Mr. Gathorne Hardy will never lead the Conservative party because he is not a Liberal." In 1869 he saw little of either the Tories or the Whigs, 'but acted with the Radicals.' He had modified his first estimate of the composition of the House. This Radical group largely represented the industrial towns and Nonconformist interests. It included Peter Rylands, member for Warrington; Peter Taylor, member for Leicester; Henry Richard, member for Merthyr Tydvil; George Anderson, member for Glasgow; and Llewellyn Dillwyn, member for Swansea. Some, such as Peter Taylor, were theoretical Republicans, but all were peace-at-any-price men, Bright's votaries, though when Bright joined the Government they were ready to vote against Bright. The group contained also some men of Charles Dilke's own stamp, with whom Cambridge associations created a bond. 'Harcourt, of whom I saw much, was then a below-the-gangway Radical.' He, though sixteen years Dilke's senior, was also a newcomer, but a newcomer well known already at Westminster by his famous letters to the _Times_, signed "Historicus," and by his career at the Parliamentary bar. Another was Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, who had been Charles Dilke's contemporary and coadjutor at the Union. A great figure in the Radical group came from Trinity Hall-- Fawcett, who had first won his seat for Brighton in 1865. Among Government Liberals, Lord Granville in the House of Lords was an hereditary friend, through his attachment to Dilke's father, but belonged to a much older generation. Grant Duff, a man to whom later on Dilke came to be strongly attached, was Under-Secretary of State for India. From the first, however, a close alliance formed itself between Charles Dilke and a junior member of the Government, who had still been debating at the Union when Dilke came to Trinity Hall. Entering Parliament in 1865, Mr. Trevelyan had distinguished himself by a vigorous campaign against the system of purchase in the Army, and, in 1868, he was put in office as Junior Lord of the Admiralty. Senior to Charles Dilke by five years, he had not known him at Cambridge; but they "speedily became very intimate." So writes Sir George Trevelyan in a letter of 1911: "I was a very young Minister, worked hard all day by Mr. Childers, a very strict but very friendly taskmaster, and never, according to the Treasury Bench discipline of those heroic times, allowed to be absent from the House of Commons for a single moment. I used to come to the House unlunched, and desperately hungry; and I got my dinner at four o'clock in an empty dining-room. Afternoon after afternoon, Charles Dilke used to come and sit with me; and a greater delight than his company, young to the young, I can hardly describe. But it does not need description to you, for never did anyone's talk alter less as time went on. The last time I saw him was at the swearing-in of Privy Councillors last May (1910), when we talked for half an hour as if we were respectively thirty and five-and-twenty years old." An enrichment of that talk, as his friend remembers it, lay in Charles Dilke's multifarious knowledge. "This man seems to know all about everything in the world," someone remarked in those days. "Yes," was the answer, "and last week we were talking about the other world: Dilke seemed to know all about that too." It was characteristic of Charles Dilke to choose for his maiden effort the most highly technical of subjects, and one which lent itself as little as possible to tricks of oratory. He would recall how Mr. George Melly, the member for Stoke-on-Trent, had cautioned him: "Don't talk to them about God Almighty; even Mr. Gladstone can't; they'll only stand it from John Bright." On March 9th, 1869, Mr. William Vernon Harcourt (as he then was) came forward with a motion for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into registration in Parliamentary boroughs. Upon this Charles Dilke made his first speech, filled with detailed knowledge, and with suggestions drawn from French procedure. Later speakers recognized the special competence shown, and when the Select Committee was appointed, he was named to serve on it--thus taking his place at once in the normal working life of the House. 'I acquired in the early months of this Session a knowledge of the registration and rating systems which lasted for a good many years, and the plan for the restoration of compounding, which was accepted by Mr. Goschen and moved by him in the form of new clauses in his Bill in April, 1869, was of my suggestion. By the joint operation of this plan, and of the Registration Act of 1878, which was my own, an immense increase of the electorate in boroughs was effected.' No subject could have appeared less attractive than all this dull lore of compound householders and lodger's franchises. But the spirit of official Liberalism was constantly at war with Radical views. 'My diary continually expressed my regret at what I thought the timidity of Mr. Gladstone's Government.' Thus, when it was beaten by the abstention of Liberals on Fawcett's Election Expenses Bill, which proposed to throw the necessary expenses of returning officers on the local rates, Charles Dilke 'was angry with the Government for not having so much as named the Bill upon their Whip.' Again, when his group had proposed to penalize a corrupt borough, the member for which had been unseated on petition, the entry ran: 'We Radicals beaten by Government and Tories on the Bewdley writ,' the issue of which the Radicals had moved to postpone for twelve months. In the case of Fawcett's motion to abolish University Tests, of whose injustice Dilke had personal experience: [Footnote: Having taken his Master's degree at Cambridge in this year, Dilke was 'immediately nominated to the Senate as an examiner for the Law Tripos by the Regius Professor of Laws.' But on further inquiry it appeared that an examiner for honours in Law must be a member of the Senate, and that a member of the Senate must declare himself a member of the Church of England. Dilke, strongly objecting to this exclusiveness, had refused to make the required profession. The 'grace,' therefore, was withdrawn, and he was not allowed to examine. Sir Roundell Palmer became Chancellor in 1872, on the retirement of Lord Hatherley. He was again Chancellor from 1880 to 1885.] 'My diary records a division in connection with which Sir Roundell Palmer did us some harm, the fact being that the great lawyer, who was afterwards Lord Selborne, was one of those gentlemen calling themselves Liberals in whom it was difficult to find any agreement with Liberal principles at any time or upon any subject. He was, in fact, a High Church Tory, as I found when I served with him in a Liberal Cabinet.' On yet another motion of Fawcett's the Radicals found themselves in collision with the head of the Liberal Government. This advocated open competition for the Civil Service, and Dilke supported Fawcett by speech as well as vote. Mr. Gladstone, following Dilke in the debate, suggested that he had spoken without examining his facts, a charge specially calculated to excite this conscientious worker's resentment. 'I recorded a strong opinion as to the crushing of independent members by Mr. Gladstone.' Charles Dilke was already displaying that blend of opinions which made him always a trial to the party Whips. He notes that, 'taking as I did an independent line, I supported on the Navy Estimates the Conservative ex- chief First Lord of the Admiralty' (Mr. Corry) 'on a motion which deprecated the building of further turret ships till those already built had been tested.' [Illustration: SIR C. WENTWORTH DILKE, BART. From the painting by Arthur Hughes.] These outbreaks of independence led to remonstrance from his father, and remonstrance to this reply: "I don't mean to let either you or Glyn" (the Chief Whip, afterwards Lord Wolverton) "frighten me into supporting the Government when I think they are wrong, but I vote for them when I am at all doubtful." This letter was written to Sir Wentworth Dilke, then on a tour through the north of Europe with his son Ashton, by this time a Cambridge undergraduate, and inclined to regard his elder brother as a very timid politician. 'My father and my brother went to Berlin, and saw the Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick, and Prince Bismarck, who many years later described to me the impression which they--the Whig and the Republican--had made on him.' From Germany they passed into Russia, where Wentworth Dilke was commissioned to represent England at the Horticultural Congress. In May a sudden telegram called Charles Dilke to St. Petersburg. His father had been attacked with 'that deadly form of Russian influenza, a local degeneration of the tissues, which kills a man in three days, without his being able to tell you that he feels anything except weakness.' Before Charles Dilke could reach the Russian capital, his father had been already 'embalmed and temporarily buried,' with a view to interment in England. His successor entered upon his position while still several months short of the age of twenty-six. He took steps to give up at once Alice Holt--'a mere shooting place'--and also sold Hawkley in Hampshire, keeping only the London house, 76, Sloane Street, in which he had been born, and which was to be his home till he died there. It was home also for his brother Ashton, now reading classics and rowing in the Trinity Hall boat. The house continued to be managed for the two young men by their grandmother, Mrs. Chatfield, known to Sir Charles and to all his intimates as the "Dragon," 'on account of the sportive old soul calling herself the Dragon of Wantley whenever she attacked me in arms.' With her lived her niece, Miss Folkard, a quiet little old lady. When Charles Dilke married, Mrs. Chatfield and Miss Folkard made way for the bride, and Ashton Dilke's home was then with his grandmother. When death cut short that marriage, the old ladies returned, and lived out the end of their lives in Sloane Street. Mrs. Chatfield was a very popular personage; and many letters from Sir Charles's friends have affectionate or jesting messages to 'Dragon.' II. John Stuart Mill returned to England from Avignon in the spring of 1869, and followed up his earlier letter of friendly criticism on _Greater Britain_ by a suggestion of meeting. On Easter Sunday the meeting took place, and the acquaintance 'rapidly ripened into a close friendship.' Sir Charles was elected in May to the Political Economy Club, of which Mill was a leading member, 'defeating George Shaw Lefevre, Sir Louis Mallet, Lord Houghton, and John Morley, although, or perhaps because, I was somewhat heterodox. Still,' a marginal note adds, 'Mallet and Houghton were pretty heterodox too.' The heterodoxy challenged that economic orthodoxy of which the Political Economy Club was the special guardian. Forty years later Sir Charles wrote, against the date May, 1869: 'This was the moment of the domination of the Ricardo religion.[Footnote: It will be remembered that the fundamental principle of the "Ricardian theory"--distinguishing it from that o± Adam Smith--is the determination of wages by the law of population. According to Ricardo, it is the influence of high or low wages on the numbers of the population which adjusts the "market rate" to the "natural rate."] It is admirably pointed out in Professor Ashley's address, as President of the Economic Section of the British Association, 1907, that this doctrine had become a complete creed, with a stronger hold over the educated classes of England (and I should add France) by 1821 than any creed has had. The Political Economy Club is shown by Ashley to have been the assembly of the elders of the Church, of which the founder assumed that they possessed a complete code, representing just principles necessary to "diffuse." The Club was to watch for the propagation of any doctrine hostile to sound views. The sect grew rapidly from the small body of Utilitarian founders, and conquered all the statesmen who rejected the other opinions of James Mill. As I tried to show, with the support of a majority of the Club, in April, 1907, the heresy of which I was elected in 1869 as a representative has now (1908) triumphed. The facts announced as "certain" by Ricardo have crumbled, and the doctrine crumbles with them. Professor Ashley declared from the Ricardo chair in 1907 that "the Ricardian orthodoxy is, by general consent, ... dead to-day among the English-speaking economists." 'The son of the Club's founder, John Stuart Mill, lived to lead the way out of the doctrine of his father, James Mill, Malthus, and Ricardo, against the opposition of his own disciple Fawcett, into the new land which he just lived to see. 'In the debates, which I regularly attended, Mill, who had become semi-socialist in his views, was usually at odds with his own disciple Fawcett, who had remained individualist. The rows which they had at this Club were carried to the Radical Club after its formation later, and I gradually deserted Fawcett, and, more and more influenced by Mill's later views, finally came to march even in front of Mill in our advance.' Sir Charles was from the first actually _in_ political life, to which Mill had come after more than half a lifetime spent in study; and experience transformed the philosopher. "The whole tone of his writings before he entered Parliament," said Sir Charles a quarter of a century afterwards, "had been marked by a vein of practical Conservatism, which entirely disappeared when he found himself in touch with the destructive realities of British politics." [Footnote: "John Stuart Mill, 1869-1873," _Cosmopolis_, March, 1897.] Dilke, rightly zealous for the repute of a teacher under whose influence his own political faith developed, was always at pains to confute the popular opinion as to Mill's hardness. Addressing the Economic Society in 1909, he said: "John Mill's nature was far more spiritual than that of his father. His self-training was far more permeated by what may be loosely called Comtist-Christianity than by the utilitarian philosophy." He cited as an example the conclusion expressed by Mill so far back as 1848 that "cheapness of goods was not desirable when the cause was that labour is ill-remunerated." Here was one of the points where Fawcett 'fiercely differed' from Mill, denying the possibility of any 'exception to the wage principle laid down by Malthus and Ricardo.' Sir Charles was destined not merely to affirm the principle which Mill conceded, but to show by infinitely patient investigation of the facts, first the need for applying the principle, and later--far more difficult--the means by which it could be brought into operation. The change foreshadowed by this division among leaders of democratic thought was no ordinary one; the whole direction of forces and tendencies was altered; and from 1870 onwards Sir Charles was at the centre of the movement which has established the 'semi-socialism' of Mill's last years as the normal political opinion accepted by both parties to-day. He, more than any other man, translated it from abstract theory into terms of political reality. III. Since his undergraduate years Charles Dilke had entertained the project of writing on Russia, and perhaps the journey to his father's death-bed revived the plan. While on the way to St. Petersburg in May, 1869, he chanced to share a railway carriage with a distinguished member of the Russian Diplomatic Service, Baron Jomini, son of the famous writer on strategy, and 'almost,' says Sir Charles, 'the cleverest man I ever met with, and to me always an excellent friend.' Jomini was useful even on that journey, when difficulties arose over an irregular passport; and in later years he rendered Sir Charles various services with officialdom--as, for example, when the Russian Customs officers, not unnaturally, objected to the English traveller's bringing in for his personal use 'books prohibited in Russia, the most extraordinary collection that was probably ever got together in that country unless in the office of the censorship of police.' From the first Baron Jomini was at hand to introduce Sir Charles to society in Russia, but in other directions the traveller was not less well equipped. He learnt Russian; and before setting out on his second visit to St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1869 he had made a special journey to Geneva, with an introduction from Louis Blanc to Herzen, leader of the moderate Russian revolutionists. He knew Mazzini well, and through him had visited Baden to make a lasting acquaintance with Tourgenief. Tourgenief was then 'living with the Viardots, the sister and brother-in-law of Malibran.' Long years after Dilke spoke of him as one of the finest of talkers. At St. Petersburg he met many of the advanced revolutionaries to whom Herzen had commended him, and he was also received by more orthodox Liberalism. The Political Economy Club gave a dinner in his honour, at which he made a speech in French on the Irish Land Question; and the Geographical Society held a reception in recognition of the author of _Greater Britain_, with Baron von der Osten Sacken in the chair, son of a comrade and colleague of the elder Jomini in days of Napoleonic war. [Footnote: Nicolas Dmitrivitch von der Osten Sacken, Chamberlain of the Imperial Court, afterwards Russian Ambassador at Berlin; born 1834, died 1912.] Osten Sacken's father was the Governor of Paris in 1815 after the entry of the Allies. After a visit to Taganrog, at the eastern end of the Sea of Azof, he came back to St. Petersburg, and occupied by chance the next rooms to the great singer Mario--"an embarrassing neighbour, as he used to come in about 2 a.m., and give me far too much of the quality of his voice." Here also Sir Charles made friends with Governor Curtin, the American Minister, 'formerly Lincoln's Governor of Pennsylvania during the war, and the best story-teller in the world.' 'I went about a good deal with Baron Jomini and Baron von der Osten Sacken, and saw much of the Emperor's aunt, the Grande Duchesse Hélène. My chief friends were at this time Princess Galitzin, Prince Orlof Davydof, leader of the high Tory party, and the old Princess Kotchubey, afterwards Grand Mistress of the Robes.' Later in the year he pushed across into Siberia; and in the Christmas vacation Ashton Dilke came out to join his brother. They met at Kazan, whither Charles had returned from his Siberian wanderings, and went down the Volga together to Astrakan, and thence travelled across the Don Cossack Steppe. Sir Charles returned in the last days of 1869. He notes that Ashton showed at this time the beginnings of consumption--symptoms which led him to give up rowing, and became more grave in the years of his travels in Central Asia. Russia exercised from the first for Charles Dilke a fascination which it never lost. A picture by Vladimir Makofsky, which he bought about this time, hung in the breakfast-room at Sloane Street; 'it represents a scene from one of Tourgenief's early stories, a summer's night in the government of Toula: boys telling ghost stories while they watch horses grazing on the lammas land.' A chapter in _Greater Britain_ had set out the opinion which, after travel in the East, he formed of Russia, from talk both with Englishmen and with Orientals. The great power, which he then guessed at from the other side of the Himalayan barrier, seemed to him essentially Asiatic, not European, and not a civilizing power. He quoted with approval the saying of an Egyptian under Ismail's rule: "Why, Russia is an organized barbarism,-- why--the Russians are--why, they are--why, nearly as bad as _we_ are." This was his view of the Russian Government. The opinion which he formed of the Russian people as a whole was in itself 'contradictory because they are a contradictory people.' He found them 'avid of new ideas.' Yet, 'however fond half-educated Russians may be of professing a knowledge of things they do not understand, I never doubted for one moment the greatness of the future that lies before Russia, nor the essential patriotism and strength of the Russian race; and it was these last considerations that took me so often to their country.' CHAPTER VIII THE EDUCATION BILL OF 1870--THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR I. From his Russian journeys Sir Charles returned to take part in an election in which occurred his first opportunity for helping the cause of direct Labour Representation. In 1869-- 'at the extreme end of the year, I returned to London, and worked hard for Odger in the Southwark Election, in which, opposed by a Conservative and a Liberal (Sir Sydney Waterlow), he beat the Liberal, with the result, however, that the Conservative got in. Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice subscribed towards Odger's expenses, and Fawcett also worked for him. The incident contributed a good deal towards that separate organization of the Radicals which was attempted early in the following year.' Already another organization of far-reaching influence had been planned, and it led to a great alliance. 'In the course of 1869 I became Chairman of the London Branch of the newly formed Education League, and my friendship with Joseph Chamberlain began, he being Chairman of the Committee of the League and its real head.' Dilke was seven years the junior of Chamberlain, who in 1869 was thirty- three. But he had seven years' Parliamentary seniority over his friend, who did not become a member of the House of Commons till 1876. Chamberlain was in 1869, and indeed for several years later, a politician and member of the Birmingham Town Council, known throughout the Midland area for the boldness of his Radicalism--which did not stop short of avowing Republican principles--and also for extraordinary ability in developing the municipal improvements in which Birmingham under his auspices led the way. He had conceived, and in the Education League partly carried out, the idea of a political association independent of official party control, which should cover the whole country with its branches, and so become a power behind and beyond the Parliamentary leadership. Sir Charles, on his side, brought into the partnership the resources possessed by a young man of considerable reputation both in literature and in public life, who at an early age had established himself in a metropolitan seat. 'The principle of the League was that of general education, and of compulsion and freedom from fees as a consequence. The teaching of religion was left to the Sunday-schools, and upon this head difficulties soon arose.' The mass of English Liberals inherited the Protestant conviction that "simple Bible teaching" could offend nobody, and must be good for everybody, and consequently should be included in the term "education," while the view of more sophisticated politicians was given by Sir William Harcourt (then Mr. Vernon Harcourt). He wrote to Sir Charles in 1870: "We are fighting with inferior forces, and everything must depend upon husbanding our strength, using it to the best advantage, and not exposing ourselves to needless defeats. We must always seem to win, even though we do not get what we want. That is what up to this point we have accomplished. But we must not allow ourselves to be precipitated upon destruction by men who may be philosophers, but who are no politicians.... We must now retire on the second line of defence. What is that to be? I lay down first that the thing to be resisted is denominationalism. If it can be got rid of altogether-- best; but if not, then to the greatest degree--next best. Now, as a politician (not as a philosopher) I am quite satisfied that neither in the House of Commons nor in the country can we beat denominationalism by secularism. If we attempt to meet the flood by this dyke it will come over our heads. We must break the force of the wave by a slope, and deal with its diminished weight afterwards as best we may." 'Harcourt then went on to defend that to which I was strongly opposed --namely, Bible reading--on the ground that "we should give our republic not the best possible laws, but the best which they will bear. This is the essence of politics. All the rest is speculation.... We must make up our minds before the meeting on Monday, for in the multitude of counsellors there is folly."' A definite principle was at stake. Under this proposal the teaching, though called undenominational, would not in fact be so. Bible reading, subject, no doubt, to a conscience clause, would be enforced on Roman Catholics, Jews, and secularists, and Bible reading, though undenominational as regarded the different divisions of Protestant Christianity, would still be denominational as regards these three: 'I myself took the extreme and logical line of not only opposing Bible reading, but of opposing Mr. Jacob Bright's and Mr. Cowper Temple's amendments for excluding creeds, and for setting up a general undenominational Protestantism of the majority.' He was in agreement with John Stuart Mill in resisting a proposal which in his opinion did injustice to large classes of the community for the sake of introducing what (in his own words) "could be only religion of the driest and baldest kind, and such as would be hardly worthy of the name." At the beginning of 1870 Sir Charles was not openly in revolt, though after working for Odger against the Government candidate, he had gone on to condemn in a speech the Whig influences and fear of the House of Lords, which in his opinion were destroying Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill. Mr. Gladstone showed a desire to conciliate this overactive critic by inviting him to second the Address to the Crown. Accordingly at the opening of Parliament on February 8th, 1870, Sir Charles had his part to play in the modest ceremonial which still survives, rather shamefacedly, in the House of Commons, when a couple of commoners, uniformed or in Court dress, are put forward as the spokesmen of that sombre assembly. His speech, advocating the European concert, dwelt on the cloudless calm which lay--in February, 1870--over the civilized world, and for another six months wrapped it in delusive peace. For the moment domestic affairs held the field. In spite of Bright's observation about driving six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar, Forster's Education Bill was pressed forward along with the Irish Land proposals, and the Government were at once in trouble with their advanced wing, in which Sir Charles Dilke was a leader of revolt. He acted as teller along with Henry Richard when Richard took sixty dissentient Liberals into the Lobby in support of a general motion demanding that school attendance should be compulsory, and that all religious teaching should be separately paid for out of voluntary funds. When compromise was accepted: [Footnote: The Cowper Temple clause practically left religious teaching to local option. Each school was to give or not give such religious teaching as it thought well, so long as no _Board_ School was used to attach a child to a particular denomination.] 'I was, I believe, the only Liberal member who resisted the Cowper Temple amendment as accepted by the Government, and I resigned my post as Chairman of the London Branch of the Education League. I published a letter explaining the reasons for my resignation; the Committee wrote in reply that they fully agreed with me in matters of principle, and asked me to reconsider my resignation.' This, however, he refused to do, since the London Branch and the League generally were abandoning the principle in the support they gave to compromise. Throughout the Committee stage his name appears in all the numerous division lists, voting against Government as often as with it. Thus it was from a position of complete independence that he carried two amendments of great importance. 'The Bill as brought in made the School Boards mere committees of Boards of Vestries, and the amendment that School Boards should be elected by the ratepayers, which was forced on and ultimately accepted by the Government, was mine. I also was the author of the proposal that the School Board elections should be by ballot, which was carried.' [Footnote: He always regretted the substitution later of the Educational Committees of County Councils for the School Boards.] The ballot was then the question of the hour, and it was a matter upon which his study of foreign and Colonial institutions had made him an authority. In 1869 he had given evidence before the Select Committee on Parliamentary and Municipal Elections, 'explaining the working of the ballot in France, in the United States, and, above all, in Tasmania and Australia.' The evidence which he gave was of service in the preparation of the Ballot Bill of 1870, which closely followed the example set by Tasmania and South Australia. Sir John Gorst, who was already a well-known figure in English politics, though not yet in Parliament, remembered attending a debate specially to hear what this newcomer had to say upon the question of the hour. This first practical application of the ballot, 'forced on and ultimately accepted by the Government,' did not pass unchallenged. When Sir Charles's amendment was at last put to the vote, he was privileged to tell with George Glyn, the Chief Whip, in a division which took place 'after the fiercest conflict ever up to that known within the walls of Parliament, we having sat up all night.' There was a long series of dilatory motions, a fresh one being moved after a division had disposed of its predecessor 'This was the first birth of obstruction, and the lesson taught by Mr. G. C. Bentinck on this occasion was afterwards applied by "the colonels" in the proceedings on the Army Purchase Scheme in 1871, and then by Butt's Irish after 1874.' In all the discussions on the Ballot Bill for Parliamentary elections Sir Charles steadily opposed the introduction of a scrutiny which involved the numbering of the ballot papers. This appeared to him 'a pernicious interference with the principle of secrecy, chiefly important because it would be impossible to convince ignorant voters that their votes would not be traced.' His view 'prevailed,' he says, 'in the House of Commons, but the provisions of which we secured the omission from the second Ballot Bill were once more inserted by the House of Lords' at its passage in 1871. There was another matter connected with the franchise in which Sir Charles had effected by an amendment an even more remarkable change, and that in his first session. The proposal to give women ratepayers the franchise in municipal elections, or rather 'to restore to them a right which was taken away by the Municipal Reform Act of 1835,' was his. Two amendments were on the paper, and though by a chance Mr. Jacob Bright's was taken first, the suggestion, as Mr. Bright admitted, really came from Sir Charles, and it was carried in the session of 1869. This proposal, as he explained to a meeting of the London Society for Woman's Suffrage over which Mrs. Grote presided, was in his opinion 'merely experimental, and only a first step to adult suffrage.' In 1870 he seconded Jacob Bright's Woman's Suffrage Bill, which was carried through the second reading--'the only occasion when a majority of the House of Commons declared for the principle till 1897.' Divergencies of opinion had in the meantime arisen. The Bill of 1870 did not debar married women from obtaining the vote. When in later years a proviso excluding them was introduced, Dilke, with Jacob Bright, withdrew from the parent society. He held throughout his life that to attempt compromise on this matter was to court failure, and that women would never get the vote except as part of a scheme for universal suffrage. This was no mere academic opinion; and he gave later on proof of his earnestness for the principle involved in convincing fashion. To the argument still urged against that principle--the argument that most women are against it--he gave his answer in 1870: "You will always find that in the case of any class which has been despotically governed--and though I do not wish to use strong language, it cannot be denied that women have been despotically governed in England, although the despotism has been of a benevolent character--the great majority of that class are content with the system under which they live." He pointed out that to admit women to the franchise did not compel those to vote who did not desire to do so. In this matter Jacob Bright was his leading associate in Parliament; but outside Parliament he was working with Mill. To the two questions already dealt with--Education and Woman's Suffrage-- was now added a third, which Sir Charles describes as 'chief of all the questions I had to do with in 1870--the land question.' There is this endorsement on one of Mill's letters written in 1870: "I acted as his secretary for above a year on (_a_) his land movement = taxation of land values; (_b_) the women's suffrage proposal, which followed the carrying of his municipal franchise for women by me in 1869 and the School Boards, 1870." The Radical Club was founded, with Sir Charles as Secretary, in 1870, and Mill was among the original members of the Club. [Footnote: The others were Professor Cairnes, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Frank Hill (editor of the _Daily News_), Leslie Stephen, Mr. Leonard Courtney, Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. W. C. Sidgwick, Mr. McCullagh Torrens, and Mr. Fawcett. Sir David Wedderburn, Mr. Peter Taylor, and Mr. Walter Morrison were added at the first meeting, as also was Mr. Hare. At the first meeting it was decided that women should be eligible. Half the Club was to consist of members of Parliament, half of non-members.] From this platform Mill propounded, in 1870, his views on land--views which forty years later became the adopted principles of the Liberal party; and at the inaugural public meeting of the Land Tenure Association in 1870 Sir Charles for the first time promulgated the doctrine of taxing the "unearned increment." He insisted that England's system of land tenure was "unique in the world," and answerable for tragic consequences. "One who has seen our race abroad under fair conditions knows how frank and handsome the Englishman is elsewhere, and might be here. But when he looks around him in Sheffield or in East London, he sees none but miserable and stunted forms. The life of the English labourer is a steady march down a hill with a poorhouse at the bottom. At the same time the observer finds, when he asks for the remedy, that in these matters there is not a pin to choose between the two parties in the State." [Footnote: A note sent to Lord Courtney in 1909 will show exactly what Sir Charles's position had been on this fundamental matter from the very outset of his political career: "Mill's object was-- "To claim for the benefit of the State the interception by taxation of a great part of the unearned increase of the value of land which is continually accruing, without effort or outlay by the proprietors, through the growth of population and wealth. "To purchase land for the State, and let for co-operative agriculture under conditions of efficiency and to smallholders on durable cultivating interests." He adds a reference to his own Bill "for utilizing public and quasi- public lands under public management, with repeal of the Statute of Mortmain and forbidding of alienation." This Bill was introduced by him in the early seventies, but obtained no support till 1875 (see Chapter XIII., p. 192).] Within the previous twenty-five years over six hundred thousand acres of common land had been enclosed, under Orders sanctioned by Parliament. Of this vast amount only four thousand had been set apart for public purposes. In 1866 the commons near London were threatened, and a Society for their preservation was formed, in which Mr. Shaw Lefevre was the moving spirit. [Footnote: Now Lord Eversley.] Sir Charles became in 1870 Chairman of the Society. Among the latest of his papers is a note from Lord Eversley accompanying an early copy of the new edition of his _Commons and Forests_ "which I hope will remind you of old times and of your own great services to the cause." 'We saved Wisley Common and Epping Forest,' says the Memoir. It was more important that on April 9th, 1869, the annual Enclosure Bill was referred to a Select Committee, notwithstanding the determined opposition of the Government. The date is memorable in the history of the question, for the Committee recommended that all further enclosures should be suspended until the general Act had been amended, as it was in 1876. About the same time Sir Charles became publicly committed to another cause, barren of political advantage, into which he put, first and last, as much labour as might have filled the whole of a creditable career. He began to take an active part in connection with the Aborigines Protection Society and presided at its Annual Meeting in 1870. This, says the Memoir laconically, 'threw on me lifelong duties.' II. The Franco-German War broke upon Europe in July, 1870. Later, it became one of the chief interests of Sir Charles's mind to track out the workings of those few men who prepared what seemed a sudden outburst; here it is important only to outline his attitude towards the combatants. In that period of European history every politician was of necessity attracted or repelled by the personality of the Emperor of the French. In Sir Charles's case there was no wavering between like and dislike: he carried on his grandfather's detestation of the lesser Napoleon. The chapter in _Greater Britain_ which is devoted to Egypt shows this feeling; and when news of Sadowa reached him during his American journey in the autumn of 1866, he wrote home to say that he rejoiced in Prussia's triumph, and hoped "Louis Napoleon would quarrel with the Germans over it, and get well thrashed, with the result that German unity might be brought about." 'This' (he notes in the Memoir) 'is somewhat curious at a time when everybody believed (except myself and Moltke and Bismarck, not including, I think, the King of Prussia) that the French Army was superior to the armies of all Germany.' In coming down the Mexican coast he touched at Acapulco, which was under Mexican fire, as the French still held the bay and city; and he had then, later in 1866, 'begun to hope for the fall of Louis Napoleon, who was piling up debt for France at the average rate of ten millions sterling every year, and whose prestige was vanishing fast in the glare of the publicity given to the actions of Bazaine.' Before Sir Charles returned to Europe in 1867, Maximilian, the Austrian Archduke sent by Napoleon III to be 'Emperor of Mexico,' had fallen, an unlucky victim of French intrigue. But Paris was still the centre of Europe; and the traveller on his way home from Egypt--where he had seen French enterprise opening the Suez Canal, French language and influence dominant--saw Louis Napoleon preside at a pageant, already darkened by the rising storm-cloud: 'Reaching Paris' (in June, 1867), 'I attended the review held (during the Exhibition of 1867) by the Emperors of Russia and of the French, and the King of Prussia, at which I saw Gortschakof, Schouvalof, Bismarck, and Moltke, on the day on which the Pole Berezowski shot at Alexander II. Sixty thousand men marched past the three Sovereigns at the very spot at which, three years later, one of them was, to review a larger German force. The crash was near; Maximilian had been shot. It is, however, not pleasant to contrast the horror with which the news of the execution of the puppet Emperor was received in Europe, with the indifference with which all but a handful of Radicals had regarded the Paris executions of December, 1851.' 'In October, 1867, three months later, I again visited Paris, with my father, and made the acquaintance of the Queen of Holland, the Queen of Sheba to Louis Napoleon's Solomon in his glory. The Emperor of Austria, the King of Bavaria, and Beust were also in Paris on business which boded no good to Bismarck, and the populace were amusing themselves in crying "Vive Garibaldi!" to the Austrian Emperor, as three or four months earlier they had cried "Vive la Pologne!" to the Tsar. At a banquet to the Foreign Commission to the Exhibition, at which I dined, I heard Rouher make his famous speech, "L'Italie n'aura jamais Rome," which he afterwards in December repeated in the Corps Législatif--"L'Italie ne s'emparera pas de Rome--jamais" (shouts of "Jamais!" from the Right): "Jamais la France ne supportera cette violence faite à son honneur et à la catholicité." When I heard the word "jamais," I believed I should live to see Italy at Rome, but hardly so soon.' His governing dislike of France's rulers had reflected itself in that part of his first address to the electors of Chelsea which laid down his views on foreign affairs. "Our true alliance," he had told them, "is not with the Latin peoples, but with men who speak our tongue, with our brothers in America, and with our kinsmen in Germany and Scandinavia." This prepossession, notable in one who came afterwards to be regarded as the closest friend of France among English politicians, shaped his action when the crash came. It tempted him to the German side, but contact with Prussian militarism showed where his real sympathies lay. War was declared on Tuesday, July 19th. On the following Saturday morning Sir Charles left London for Paris: left Paris for Strasbourg the same evening: visited Metz on the Monday, and saw the Imperial Guard at Nancy. Within four days from the time of leaving he was back in London, and busy with preparations. He had decided to attach himself to the ambulances of the Crown Prince of Prussia's army, and in this expedition two other members of Parliament joined him: 'Auberon Herbert (physically brave, and politically the bravest, though not politically the strongest, man of our times) and Winterbotham, afterwards Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and a man of eloquence, whose early death is still deplored by those who knew him. We took letters from Count von Bernstorff, the Prussian Ambassador, and following up the German armies through the Bavarian Palatinate, a journey during which we were arrested and marched to Kaiserslautern to the King's headquarters by Bavarian gendarmes, as French spies, we were enrolled under the Prussian Knights of St. John at Sulz by Count Goertz, and received billets from that time, although we used to pay for all we had at every place. At Wissembourg and at Sulz we were sent to the inn, and at Lunéville I was planted on an ironmonger, but we were divided. At Nancy only, being fixed on a legitimist Baron, I was not allowed to pay for what I had, but I was put with him by his wish, by his friend the Mayor, as he would not have real Prussians. He made things so unpleasant for my companion, Count Böthmer--though, unlike his brother, the Count was a non-combatant--that this Knight of St. John had to go elsewhere. Auberon and Winterbotham were also put elsewhere at Nancy. At Sarrebourg and Pont-à-Mousson I forget with whom we were, but we were together and were nearly starved. 'We marched with the Poseners, or Fifth Army Corps, through Froeschwilier and Reichshoffen; went off the road to Saverne to witness the bombardment of Phalsbourg; joined again at Sarrebourg; marched by Lunéville, and from Nancy were sent to Pont-à-Mousson during the battles before Metz. 'The first thing that struck us much during this portion of the war was that the grandest of the early victories in this so-called war of races, the Battle of Worth, was won and lost in the centre of the position by pure Poles and native Algerians. Poseners were arrayed against Turcos, and both fought well, while hardly a German or a Frenchman was in sight. On the field of Wörth I noted that the Poseners had all many cartridges as well as their Polish hymn-books with them, but the Turcos were as short of cartridges as of hymn- books. Wanting a French cartridge, I was unable to find one in the pouches of the dead, while of German cartridges I had at once as many dozens as I pleased. I fancy, however, that it would not be safe to conclude, from the fact that the French had fired away their ammunition, that they fired carelessly because too fast; for the Germans, vastly outnumbering the French (who ought not to have fought a battle, but rather should have fallen back), had probably opposed at different portions of the day different corps to the same French regiments, who had not been relieved. After this battle all was lost to the French cause. The scattered French spread terror where they went, and while the railway might have been wholly destroyed by the simple plan of blowing up some tunnels, only bridges were blown up, which in the course of a few days were, of course, replaced even where they were not in a few hours easily repaired.... 'I was glad to have seen the beginning of the invasion. At no other time could I have gained a real knowledge of that which every politician ought to know--the working of the transport system of a modern army. We were the smaller of the two invading forces, yet we needed a stream of carts the whole way to Nancy from Bingen upon the Rhine, perpetually moving day and, night. The French compared the swarming in of Germany to the invasions of the Huns.... 'My letters to my grandmother (by the military field post) were not numerous. My first (written from Wissembourg) states that we are much elated at the victory of Wissembourg; while the second is as follows: '"I write on paper left by the French in the Palace of Justice. They seem to have fled in haste, for... the judges' pen-and-ink portraits of one another still adorn the blotting-paper. This place (Wissembourg) is in much confusion.... When, by straining, and a good deal of pressure upon the members of the old French municipal council, a regiment is housed, in comes another with a demand for food and lodging for six hundred horses and four hundred men; then a Prussian infantry regiment two thousand strong, and so on all night.... We are leaving as members of the Prussian Order of St. John for the Bavarian camp. The whole series of French telegrams up to July 30th are still posted here on the Sous-Préfecture, inside which is confined Baron de Rosen, Colonel of the 2nd Cuirassiers of the French Guard." I go on to say that the "town commandant is an English volunteer and lives in London when at home.... He is a most accomplished man." He was accomplished enough, but he was a lunatic; and there is no more singular episode in the war than the fact that an unauthorized lunatic should have appointed himself to the command of an important depot, and been recognized for at least a week as commandant by all the authorities. The fact was that no regiment was stopping many hours in the town, and that each Colonel, finding a particular person established there, although he may have thought him a curious commandant, never thought of questioning his authority. 'One of my letters appeared in the _Daily News_. It was dated August 15th, and prophesied the complete destruction of the French armies, and it contained a somewhat amusing paragraph: '"In our march last night we came into a part of the country unoccupied by either army. We were twice driven from villages by the Mayors, who seemed at their wits' end in the mazes of international law. One said to us: 'This town is not Prussian. It is French, and martial law is proclaimed in this part of France. Accordingly I must tell you that you need a French military safe-conduct. If you stop here without it I must arrest you, and send you'--he thought for a while--'to the Prussian Commandant at Sarrebourg.'" At Nancy I saw the Crown Prince, Dr. Russell of the _Times_, Mr. Hilary Skinner of the _Daily News_, and Mr. Landells of the _Illustrated London News_, who afterwards died of rheumatism caused by exposure in the war. Lord Ronald Gower was there on the same day, but was sent away, as his presence with Dr. Russell as a guest was unauthorized. 'Among our adventures, in addition to our arrest near Kreuznach and to our obtaining passes from the maniac commandant, was the adventure of our being lost in the Vosges, and nearly coming to be murdered by some French peasants, who in the night tried to force their way into the village school in which we had barricaded ourselves. Another adventure was our being nearly starved at Pont-à-Mousson, where at last we managed to buy a bit of the King of Prussia's lunch at the kitchen of the inn on the market-place at which it was being cooked in order to be placed in a four-in-hand break. While we were ravenously gorging ourselves upon it, a man burst into the room, and suddenly exclaimed: "Winterbotham!" It was Sir Henry Havelock, who was hiding in the place, being absent without leave from the Horse Guards, where he was, I think, an Assistant Quartermaster-General. He had made friends with the Prussian Military Attaché, to whom Bismarck had lent his maps, and we thus saw them and learnt much. It was on the same day that Bismarck himself was nearly starved. The first part of the story had appeared in print, and I asked him about it when I was staying with him in September, 1889. He told me that he had with him at his lodging the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and General Sheridan, the American cavalry officer. Bismarck had gone out to forage, and had succeeded in finding five eggs, for which he had paid a dollar each. He then said to himself: "If I take home five, I must give two to the Grand Duke and two to Sheridan, and I shall have but one." "I ate," he said, "two upon the spot and took home three, so that the Grand Duke had one, and Sheridan had one, and there was one for me. Sheridan died: he never knew--but I told the Grand Duke, and he forgave me."' No turn of fortune any longer seemed possible, and in Sir Charles's mind hatred of the Emperor began to be replaced by sympathy for France. 'Writing on the day of Gravelotte to my grandmother, I said: "I have no notion how I shall get back.... Perhaps I shall come from Paris when we take it, as I suppose we shall do in a week or two." Such was the impression made on me by the rapidity of the early successes of the Germans. My feelings soon changed. Winterbotham continued to be very German, but Herbert and I began to wish to desert when we saw how overbearing success had made the Prussians, and how determined they were to push their successes to a point at which France would have been made impotent in Europe.... 'During the week which followed Gravelotte I saw much of Gustav Freytag, the celebrated Prussian writer and politician, who was the guest of the Crown Prince. This "Liberal," who had the bad taste to wear the Legion of Honour in conquered France, was odious in his patriotic exultation. 'Bringing back with me nothing but a couple of soldiers' books from the field of Wörth, and the pen of the Procureur-Impérial of Wissembourg, which still hangs outside my room, I got myself sent to Heidelberg in charge of a train full of wounded French officers of Canrobert's Division, wounded at the Battle of Mars la Tour on August 16th, but not picked up until after Gravelotte on August 18th. It was the first train back; and as there was no signal system, and we had to keep a lookout ahead, it took me two days to reach the German frontier. We halted for the night at Bischweiler, and, passing through Hagenau, were received at the frontier of the Palatinate by a young man who came and spoke to every French officer, and asked after his wounds, introducing himself at each compartment by saluting and saying: "Je suis le duc Othon de Bavière." This pleasant boy was afterwards to show the hereditary madness of his unhappy race. One of my prisoners was a Nancy man, and at this station I managed to find a boy who ran to his house, and brought down his old nurse with wine and food. It was a touching scene of a simple kind, and we were all the gainers by the officer's hospitality. 'From Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, where I was examined as a spy, I made my way by Switzerland and Paris to London. Almost the moment I reached London I saw a telegram in an evening paper announcing Sedan. I started that evening for Paris, accompanying Major Byng Hall, who carried despatches to Lord Lyons. We were the first to bring the news to Calais, where it was not believed, and we were mobbed in the railway-station. Old Byng Hall put his hand on his heart, and assured the crowd upon his honour that, though he was very sorry, it was true. 'On the morning of September 4th, my birthday and that of the French Republic, I was standing in Paris with Labouchere, afterwards the "Besieged Resident," in front of the Grand Hotel upon the Boulevard in an attitude of expectation. We had not long to wait. A battalion of fat National Guards from the centre of Paris, shopkeepers all, marched firmly past, quietly grunting: "L'abdication! L'abdication!" They were soon followed by a battalion from the outskirts marching faster, and gaining on them to the cry of "Pas d'abdication! La déchéance! La déchéance!" It was a sunny cloudless day. The bridge leading to the Corps Législatif was guarded by a double line of mounted Gardes de Paris, but there were few troops to be seen, and were indeed very few in Paris. We stood just in front of the cavalry, who were perhaps partly composed of mounted Gendarmerie of the Seine, only with their undress _képis_ on, instead of the tall bearskins which under the Empire that force wore.... Labouchere kept on making speeches to the crowd in various characters--sometimes as a Marseillais, sometimes as an Alsatian, sometimes as an American, sometimes as an English sympathizer; I in terror all the while lest the same listeners should catch him playing two different parts, and should take us for Prussian spies. We kept watching the faces of the cavalry to see whether they were likely to fire or charge, but at last the men began one by one to sheathe their swords, and to cry "Vive la République!" and the Captain in command at last cried "Vive la République!" too, and withdrew his men, letting the crowd swarm across the bridge. So fell the Second Empire, and I wished that my grandfather had lived to see the day of the doom of the man he hated. 'The crowd marched across the bridge singing the "Marseillaise" in a chorus such as had never been heard before, perhaps, for the throng was enormous. After ten minutes' parley inside the Chamber the leaders returned from it, and chalked up on one of the great columns the names of the representatives of Paris declared to constitute the Provisional Government, and I drew the moral--on a day of revolution always have a bit of chalk. The crowd demanded the addition of Rochefort's name, and it was added. We then parted, one section going off to look for Paul de Cassagnac, [Footnote: M. Paul de Cassagnac was a conspicuous Imperialist.] who was the only man that the crowd wanted to kill. 'I went with the others, first to the statue of Strasbourg, which was decorated with flowers, and to which a sort of worship was paid on account of the gallant defence of the city, Labouchere making another speech, and then on to the Tuileries. A Turco detained us for some time at the gates by dancing in face of the crowd. But at last they insisted on the private gardens being thrown open, and then swept in, and we passed through the whole of the apartments. Privates of the National Guard stationed themselves as sentries in all the rooms, and not a thing was touched, an inscription proclaiming "Death to thieves" being chalked upon every wall. Precautions were necessary, for the police, knowing themselves to be unpopular, had disappeared. Indeed the first proof to me in the early morning of the certainty of a revolution had been that on the boulevards the squads had passed me, relieving themselves in the usual way, but no squads going to take their places. The crowds were orderly, but the eagles, of course, were broken down, and a bit of one from the principal guardroom hangs still on the wall of my London study. The next day I wrote to my grandmother: "I would not have missed yesterday for the world. Louis Blanc and other exiles have come over, but I fear that the great northern line will be cut by Wednesday, and then you will get no more news from me." 'I had dined with Lord Lyons on the previous evening in such a costume as had never till then been seen at dinner at the Embassy, and had listened with him to the bands playing the "Marseillaise" and "Mourir pour la Patrie," and on the morning of the 5th I had seen Louis Blanc. On the 6th I wrote that I feared that my letters would be stopped. In the course of the following days I visited all the forts with Alfred Tresca, of the Arts et Métiers, who had been set by Government, although a civil engineer, to organize the bastion powder-magazines, so I saw the defences well. Alfred Tresca was afterwards arrested while I was in Paris under the Commune, in the first week in April, 1871, for refusing to point out where his powder was. 'I did not believe in food being got in fast enough to enable Paris to hold out long. Knowing as I do that the German cavalry were within 100 miles of Melun for a fortnight before they cut the Lyons line, I consider that to have allowed the French its use was a great error on the part of Germany, an error equal to that of letting Canrobert's army join Bazaine by Frouard Junction without hindrance on August 13th, when we were already in Nancy, only five miles off. Both errors turned out well enough, as the luck of the Germans had it; but I do not believe that anyone now realizes the narrowness of the escape that the Prussians had of being crushed by Gambetta. They undertook too much when, with 210,000 men (at first), they set themselves to besiege Paris, which had in it 500,000 (though of bad material and no discipline), with 300,000 more French upon the Loire. The Germans succeeded, but I believe, with the French, that if Bazaine had held out a fortnight longer they must have failed.... 'What was done in thirteen days at Paris was wonderful. It is to Jules Favre and to Gambetta that France owed the exhaustion of the Germans by a siege in 132 days, instead of a collapse in ten days, and it is to them, therefore, that they nearly owed success--success which would have crowned Gambetta a king of men, though he had done no more than what, as it is, he did. I had an interview with Jules Favre [Footnote: Jules Favre was at this time Vice-President of the Provisional Government for National Defence with the Portfolio of Foreign Affairs.] at the Foreign Office one morning at 6 a.m. I also met Blanqui, [Footnote: Blanqui, well known as an agitator and revolutionary writer, was elected to Parliament in 1871 for Montmartre. He was disqualified from membership by various judicial condemnations, but "the Chamber decided to invalidate his election by solemn vote, instead of accepting as his disqualification the recital of the sentences passed on him depriving him of political rights" (_France_, by J. E. C. Bodley, vol. ii., p. 101). Theirs had him arrested and imprisoned.] afterwards too famous, at breakfast at Louis Blanc's restaurant (opposite the old Town Hall), the headquarters of the Reds. Naquet, the hunchback, now known for his divorce law, was also there. 'On one of the last sad days before the commencement of the siege (Vinoy's or) Ducrot's army crossed Paris, and the 30,000 men which formed it marched down the Rue Lafayette, across the Place de l'Opéra, and down the Rue de la Paix towards the south-western heights, where they afterwards ran away on September 19th. I never saw a more depressing sight. I stood all day and through the evening in the rain, comparing these wretched, draggled, weary, dejected men, on the one hand, with the French troops I had seen at Nancy six weeks earlier, and, on the other, with the Prussian Fifth Army Corps I now knew so well. Troops, however, cannot be always judged by the eye alone, for the Bavarians, who fought admirably throughout the war, when I saw them on the march at the beginning of it looked so bad that I expected daily to see the whole 60,000 of their two strong corps eaten up by the single French corps which I knew was just in front of them. This French corps was commanded by de Failly, who had commanded three years earlier a mixed Papal and French force against Garibaldi at Mentone, near Monte Rotondo, and reported: "Les chasse-pôts ont fait merveille." 'The day before I left Paris I saw a sergeant of foot surrounded by a crowd of roughs. He was explaining to them that he was an Alsatian. "I come from down there. They have eaten my cow!" "Ah," cried the witty Paris crowd, "if they had only eaten _Leboeuf!_" The Marshal was looked upon in Paris as the cause of the war in virtue of his influence with the Empress. The investment of Paris was completed on September 15th, and on the 16th 'I parted from Louis Blanc, who was despondent, and to whom I was able to give no reassuring words, for I had seen the wonderful organization of the Germans. I left by the southern station for Geneva. Thousands of packing-cases encumbered the courts, the luggage abandoned by the women and children flying from Paris. At Villeneuve St. Georges the French marines were drawn up in skirmishing order, and the enemy's cavalry were in sight. Our train was the last but one which passed, but we could, if stopped, have left Paris two days later by the Rouen line, although on the 18th the trains by that last line were fired at. I wrote home that I could not help thinking of one of the plays of Aristophanes, in which a peasant wings his way to heaven on the back of a gigantic dung-beetle in order to remonstrate with God upon the evils which He has inflicted upon man by war, and finds that God is out, and that His place has been taken by a devil, who is pounding all the powers together in a mortar. 'I went to Lyons, where the red flag was flying from the Town Hall, but where the feeling in favour of continuing the war was just as strong as in the districts of the tricolour. I then crossed France to Tours, where I saw M. Crémieux, a Jew, the representative of the Government outside Paris, Gambetta not having yet descended from his balloon.... 'I visited the camp of the Army of the Loire, of which the organization was commencing, saw Lord Lyons and Sheffield, his secretary, near Tours, and took despatches for them to Calais by Rouen and Amiens. They included the correspondence of Mme. de Pourtalès and Mme. de Metternich. The railways were in terrible confusion--National Guards moving, people flying before the Prussians, no food. I was three days and three nights on this little bit of road, and slept on tables in waiting-rooms at Vierzon and elsewhere. Passports were strictly demanded at this time on leaving as well as on entering France. When I reached Calais I found that the boat (and even that boat one with no passengers) would leave about 4 a.m., after the arrival of mails by sea. The inspection of my passport could only take place, I was told, when the boat was starting. It was midnight, the gates of the town were shut and drawbridges up, and the hotel at the station had been closed for lack of visitors. Watching my time, I dropped on board the steamer from off the quay, when the coastguardsman's head was turned, and, finding a deck-cabin unlocked, I popped in and bolted the door, going fast asleep, and woke only when we were outside the harbour in the grey light of early morning, which shows that passport regulations can be evaded. All through the war Prussian spies could get into France with ease, without any need of false papers, by visiting the Savoy coast of Lake Leman as Swiss peasants. I was not called upon to show my papers when I passed from the Germans to the French by way of Basle, Ouchy, and Evian.' Sir Charles here concludes the story of his French adventures of this year by giving his judgment of that moment upon the-- 'events which will never be forgotten by those of my time ... the downfall of the most magnificent imposture of any age--the Second Empire.... 'As I noted in my diary at the time, "it is possible that the Bonapartists may raise their heads again, though if so, it is more likely to be under Plon-Plon than under the Empress, an impossible woman, whom even her son would have to exile should he come to the throne. But the 'Sphinx' who dominated Europe for so long is fallen, and it seems that my grandfather and dear old Kinglake were right, who always said that he had long ears and was a sorry beast after all. Now Europe thinks so, except the Rothschilds and the _Daily Telegraph_. What will future ages say of the shameful story of the _coup d'état_ of 1851, of the undermining of the honour of every officer in the French Army by promises of promotion for treachery to the nation, of France ruined by the denying of all advancement to those who had not Court favour, of the Morny war in Mexico--of Maximilian, abandoned after having been betrayed, of the splendour of the Guards and of the Imperial stables, of the plundering, of the degradation of justice, of the spying by everybody on everybody else? What a sad farce the whole thing was, but how seriously Europe took it at the time!"' CHAPTER IX THE BLACK SEA TREATY--THE COMMUNE I. In September, 1870, shortly after the Siege of Paris had begun, the Russian Chancellor, Gortschakof, intimated to the Powers that the Tsar proposed to repudiate that article in the Treaty of Paris which declared the Black Sea neutral, forbade Russia to build arsenals on it, and limited her fleet there to six small vessels. [Footnote: Treaty of Paris, July 13th, 1856 (Hertslet's _Treaties_, vol. xiv., p. 1172).] This particular article had been specially demanded by England; and when France, desirous of closing the Crimean War, spoke of yielding to Russia's resistance, Palmerston had declared that without this stipulation England and Turkey must carry on the war alone. Sir Charles, on this matter as on many others, inclined to the Palmerstonian tradition, which was certainly neither that of Mr. Gladstone nor of Lord Granville. But Lord Granville gave him introductions for his projected second journey to Russia, and charged the young Liberal member with the task of representing the Cabinet's views: "In talking to Russians I hope that you will say that we are about the most peaceable Ministry it is possible for England to have, but we are determined not to put up with any indignity. On the other hand, we greatly regret any stop to increasing good relations between the two countries, and shall be glad to make them even more cordial than before if we are properly treated." He added the request that Sir Charles would write him first-hand impressions of the situation in Russia. From St. Petersburg Sir Charles, in November, 1870, went to Moscow, where he lived with the Mayor, Prince Tcherkasky, 'who afterwards became Governor of Bulgaria, and died at San Stefano, just after the signature of the Treaty.' He was thus brought into touch with 'the political intrigues' of the moment: 'The Imperial Prince, who was afterwards Alexander III., was no stranger to them. Alexander II. was, like his grandfather Alexander I., a German and a dreamer, as well as melancholy mad. His son, the Imperial Prince, like his grandfather Nicholas and like Paul, was both violent and sulky; but he was patriotic, and had at this time the sense to put himself in the hands of the Moscow men.' "It is satisfactory to know that the antagonism of an heir-apparent to the reigning Sovereign docs not depend on race or climate," was, says Sir Charles, Lord Granville's comment on this description. 'It was an interesting moment, and no foreign residence of my life was ever more full of the charm which attaches to the development of new political situations. The Emperor Alexander II. had fallen back from a most brilliant early part of his reign into its second period, which saw the rise of his unpopularity and the birth of Nihilism. He had become frightened, had not perhaps lost all his good intentions, but become too terrified to escape political reaction. His son, afterwards Alexander III., was, as often happens in despotisms, glorified by a popularity which he afterwards did not retain. When I saw the heir- apparent at his palace he seemed to me to be a hard-working, stupid man, and I never afterwards was able during his reign to divest myself of this first impression. 'Of all those that I met in Russia, the ablest were the two brothers Miliutine. The General, I think, survived his brother by a long time, and continued to be Minister of War for years after his brother's death; but the brother, the Miliutine of the reorganization of Poland after the last Polish insurrection, who was when I knew him half paralyzed in body but most brilliant in mind, struck me as being more full of ideas than any man I have ever met. His inferior brother was, though inferior, nevertheless a good Minister of War. 'The Miliutines were Liberals. The leader of the high Tory party of my time was an equally remarkable man, Count Tolstoi, the iron representative of iron Toryism, of perfect honesty, in whom energy and strength were not destroyed by prejudice. He was the most ideal minister of despotism that autocracy has produced, representing the principles of order and authority with more ability than is generally found in leaders of his type. He was intensely hated by the Universities and by most of those, chiefly Liberals, with whom he lived. But although he is said by his terrorism to have created Nihilism, I am far from being convinced that any other course was possible to the Russian Empire, and if this course was to be taken, he took it well. In modern times there never was so unpopular a Minister, and when, in after years, Alexander III. recalled him to power as Minister of the Interior, one could not but feel that the break between the principles acted on by this Sovereign as Emperor, and those which he had honestly professed when heir-apparent, was complete. 'I not only well knew Jomini, but I had made the acquaintance in 1868 in London (and renewed it at a later date) of his colleague Vlangali, at that time as truly brilliant and as supple as Jomini himself, though as silent as Jomini was talkative; ... and between them and their marvellous subordinates, Hamburger the hunchback Jew, and his head of the Asiatic Department, Westmann, I do not wonder that two stupid men, the vain Gortschakof and the drill-sergeant de Giers, were able successively to pretend to rule the Foreign Office without the policy of the country suffering. 'In Katkof I was greatly disappointed. The man was very powerful under two reigns, and with the exception of Count Tolstoi, he was the only man who was so, since otherwise all the adherents of Alexander II. were in disgrace during the reign of Alexander III.; but I could see nothing in Katkof except strength of will and obstinacy. He was entirely without judgment or measure or charm. The two Vassiltchikofs were men of what is called in Russia a "European" type, or "civilized." There was nothing specially Russian about them, but they were far pleasanter than as a rule are able Russians, and this was also the case with Madame Novikof's brothers, the two Kiriefs. In general it may be said that in the Moscow chiefs of the Slav Committees there was more European give and take, and less obstinacy or pig-headed Toryism of Russian character, than among any other set. One of the Vassiltchikofs had an art collection, and afterwards became, I think, Art Director at St. Petersburg, while the other, who was the greater Slav, and who was the son-in-law of Prince Orlof Davydof of St. Petersburg, who sent me to him at Moscow, was chiefly given to good works in Moscow. I think, if I remember right, that my hostess, Princess Tcherkasky, with whom I lodged, was their sister. 'I saw a good deal of Peter Schouvalof, known as "all-powerful," of whom I afterwards again saw a great deal when I was at the Foreign Office and he was Ambassador in London. He was the bitter enemy of Count Tolstoi all through life; but his complete fall, and it may even be said utter destruction, during the reign of Alexander III., was, I think, not owing to this fact, but because he was easygoing and had made friends with the morganatic wife of Alexander II. in his last years. Alexander III. never forgave anyone who had shown this disrespect to the memory of his mother, although as soon as his son in time succeeded to the throne, the members of the Imperial family visiting France, who had never acknowledged the existence of the Princess during all the years of Alexander III.'s reign, immediately began to revisit her at Biarritz or in Paris. 'Peter Schouvalof represented the French Regency in our times, with all its wit, with all its half-refined coarseness--the coarseness of great gentlemen--with the drunkenness of the companions of the Regent, and with their courage. At the time that I knew him in St. Petersburg he was as much hated as his enemy Count Tolstoi, but that was because he held the terrible office of head of the Third Section or Director of the Secret Police, with the power of life and death over everyone except the Emperor. It was a somewhat sinister contrast to find, in one who used to the full the awful powers of his office, the greatest gaiety that existed in mortal man, unless in Gambetta. 'K. Aksakof was in Moscow the superior in power even of Tcherkasky the Mayor, even of the two Samarines, even of Miliutine of Moscow, the brother of the General. He was not in reality so strong a man, but he had the ear of the heir-apparent, and I cannot but think, from a good deal which came to my knowledge at the time, that there was some secret society organization among the Slavophiles, of which he was the occult chief. Some think that had he liked he would have continued to rule Alexander III. after the latter ascended the throne, but my own impression is that he would have ended his days in Siberia. His brother John, who survived and had influence, was a very different man, and held other views. His influence for a time was enormous, although I could more easily have understood the dominance in the party of Miliutine or of Samarine. Katkof retained his influence because he was above all of the despotic party. Aksakof would have failed to retain his, because, although he held, as an article of faith, that reforms must come from the Emperor to the people, yet he desired that the Emperor should be a Russian Liberal--a very different thing from a "European" Liberal, but still something different from Alexander III. or from Count Tolstoi's ideal of a Russian autocrat.... 'Among those I knew' (says a later note) 'was the pretty little child of Count Chotek of the Austrian Embassy, the bosom friend of Prince Henry VII. of Reuss, the Prussian Ambassador. The child's mother, Chotek's wife, was Countess Kinsky. She became the wife of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and the birth of her son, in 1902, was hailed by the Magyars as that of an heir to the throne of the dual monarchy, and may lead to civil war in Austria some day.' [Footnote: It was the assassination of this Archduke which preceded the Great War of 1914.] Sir Charles continued to correspond with Lord Granville about the international complication. The Foreign Secretary wrote in December of the proposed Conference of London that-- "It would not be a bad result that each side should imagine it had had a victory. There would remain the public opinion of Europe, and as we are neither of us popular, that may be tolerably impartial." The Russian point of view had been put to Sir Charles before he left England in a letter from Baron Jomini, who complained that attempts to revise the Treaty of Paris by a European Congress had repeatedly failed, because England had always made it a condition that at such "a Congress the Eastern question should not be raised." What, then, was open to Russia--since "all the world privately admitted that the position created for her by the Treaty of 1856 was inequitable and an obstacle to good understanding" but to show the signatory Powers the impossibility of her remaining any longer in a false position? The view which Sir Charles formed at the time was in strong condemnation of Lord Granville's action. In his opinion, Great Britain, by consenting to a Conference (proposed by Russia's friend; Prussia), consented to negotiate upon an act of repudiation by which her own rights were infringed; and this surrender seemed to him wholly unnecessary. Later knowledge only confirmed him in his opinion. 'We knew' (he writes in the Memoir) 'that Austria, the original proposer of the neutralization, had on November 22nd stated that she would join us in a war with Russia if we declared war upon the question, and Italy had already declared that she would act with Austria and ourselves. On the other hand, we now know (1906) that the British Cabinet of 1856 did not contain a member who thought the neutralization worth anything, or that it could be maintained beyond "the first opportunity." Gladstone, in 1879, returned to the question, and said that even Turkey had been willing to agree in 1870 to what had been done; but from a despatch to Lord Granville, dated November 24th, 1870, which has been published, it is clear that Austria, Italy, and Turkey would have gone along with us. Under these circumstances no fighting would have been wanted. All that we need have done would have been to have declared that we should take no notice of the Russian denunciation, and to have sent our fleet into the Black Sea, and the Russians could have done nothing but give in, as a platonic declaration that they were free would not have enabled them to launch a ship. Then we might gracefully have yielded; but as it was, we gave in to a mere threat of force.' Acceptance of the Conference, moreover, seemed to Sir Charles a betrayal of France. France, who had been England's ally in the Crimea, one of the signatory Powers to the Black Sea Treaty, saw her capital beleaguered by the Prussian friends of the Power which repudiated the Treaty, and could not even send a representative to the Conference to protest. It was natural, then, that at the opening of Parliament in 1871 the member for Chelsea should raise this question. But to do so involved the bringing forward of a motion tantamount to a vote of censure on the Government, which Sir Charles Dilke himself supported; and Mr. Gladstone contrived to put his too critical supporter in a difficulty. The Queen's Speech inevitably contained reference to Prince Gortschakof's action, and in both Houses there was considerable comment upon this in the debate on the Address. The Prime Minister referred to the opportunity for fuller discussion which would be afforded by Sir Charles's motion, but, when pressed to name a day for the motion, deprecated discussion while the Conference was sitting. Frequent questioning led finally to the intervention of Mr. Disraeli, who raised the whole question of Conference and Treaty in a speech, and was answered by Mr. Gladstone. When after all this Sir Charles still persisted in his motion, the purpose of which was not to discuss either the methods or the results of the Conference, but to deplore the Government's action in having entered on it at all, Mr. Gladstone declared that Government could spare no time, and would give a day only if it were taken as a direct vote of censure, which they must in honour meet; adding that the day could only be found by the postponement of a Licensing Bill which had much support in the Liberal party. Sir Charles persevered, and made a very able speech, to which no serious answer was given. He entirely destroyed the pretence that the Conference had met without a "foregone conclusion," and stigmatized the indecent haste which could not wait to secure the presence of France even as an assenting party to this acceptance of an act of repudiation. But the House was dominated by dislike for anything which seemed to hint at opening up a new European war at the moment when a settlement of the existing conflict was expected. The Tories, 'would only speak, and would not vote'; while Sir Charles's Radical associates, such as Mr. Peter Rylands, welcomed anything done under pretext of avoiding war. 'An attempt was made by Sir Henry Bulwer, the cynical and brilliant brother of Lord Lytton, by Mr. Horsman and Mr. Otway, to use my motion for their own purposes. Otway had resigned his Under-Secretaryship of Foreign Affairs on account of his strong opinion upon the question, and was distressed to find that his resignation had fallen flat. Horsman was always discontented, and Bulwer wanted to be a peer. [Footnote: Sir Henry Bulwer was afterwards created Lord Calling; Mr. Horsman had been a conspicuous Adullamite in the previous Parliament.] I used to tell Bulwer up to his death that I gave him his peerage, for he received Gladstone's offer of the peerage just in time to prevent him from speaking for my motion. Bulwer, whom I had known as Ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Andrew Buchanan, whom I had known as Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Horsman, and Otway came and dined with me, and we made a great plot, and thought we were going to upset the arrangement with the Russians. But Gladstone succeeded in taking away Goldsmid, who was one of our very few Liberal supporters, made Bulwer a peer, and left me only with Otway, Gregory, afterwards Governor of Ceylon, and Horsman.... 'I ought to have divided, even if I had been in a minority of one, for the proposal to withdraw my motion brought a hornet's nest about my ears, and was a parliamentary mistake.' Michel Chevalier, the celebrated French Economist and Free Trader, wrote thanking Sir Charles. He had spent, he said, thirty years of his life in advocating an Anglo-French understanding, and now he would not know how to look his countrymen in the face were it not for the courageous utterances of a few friendly Englishmen to which he could point as evidences of a good-will that had not forsaken France in her evil day. II. 'Immediately after my return to England in the middle of the winter of 1870-1871, which had already been the severest ever known in Russia, I again started for the scene of war. I first visited the army of General Faidherbe, which was gallantly fighting in the north, and I was present at one of the engagements near Bapaume, in which the French took prisoners sixty sharpshooters of the Prussian Landwehr-- splendid soldiers, towering above our little Frenchmen, to whom it seemed incredible, whatever the odds, they should have surrendered. I never saw so wretched an army to look at as Faidherbe's. His cavalry were but a squadron. He had one good regiment of foot Chasseurs and two good regiments of marines; and the gunners of his artillery (escaped men from Sedan) were excellent, and the guns were new; but he had for his main body some 20,000 second-skim of the National Guard, the cream from the north having been sent south to the Army of the East under Bourbaki, with whom they were driven into Switzerland. 'Ours were what schoolboys would call second choice. Oh, such men! and without boots, without overcoats, facing arctic weather in wooden shoes and old sacks--facing the Prussians, too, with old muzzle- loading guns; but they fought well, and their leader, a man of genius, made the most of them. I returned two or three times to England--that is, to Dover--to eat and buy things I could carry, for I could hardly get anything at Lille, where, by the way, I heard Gambetta make his great speech. It was the finest oratorical display to which I ever listened, though I have heard Castelar, Bright, Gladstone, the Prime Minister Lord Derby, Gathorne Hardy, and Father Félix (the great Jesuit preacher) often, at their very best. 'Picking up Auberon Herbert, who was on his way to Versailles to wait for the surrender of Paris in order to take in food to his brother Alan, who was serving as a doctor on the ambulance inside, I went to the siege of Longwy. Like all the fortresses of France bombarded in this war, with two exceptions, it surrendered far too easily. 'From Longwy we passed on to Montmédy, at which latter place we witnessed the immediate effects of a fearful railway accident, a collision in a tunnel between a trainful of French prisoners and one of recruits for the Prussian Guards. The scene in the darkness and smoke, with the stalwart, long-bearded Landwehr men, who formed the garrison of the town, holding blazing torches of pine and pitch, and the glare from the fires of the upset engines, was one which would have delighted Rembrandt. When a rush of water, a cataract from the roof of the lately blown-up tunnel, suddenly occurred, adding to the horror of the night, the place was pandemonium. Almost the only men unhurt in the front carriages, which were smashed to pieces, were the Mayors of the villages on the line, travelling compulsorily as hostages for the safety of the trains. I made military reflections on the advantage of blowing up tunnels, as against the practice of destroying bridges and so forth.' Sir Charles was one of the first in Paris after the siege (which was raised by an armistice on January 29th, 1871), taking in with him a large quantity of condensed milk, of which he made presents to his Paris friends. The purpose of the armistice was to enable regular conditions to be signed between the conqueror and the conquered. The Imperial Government had declared war on Prussia; but the Empire had fallen and the existing Government was only provisional. It had a branch in Paris, another branch in Bordeaux, and between these the investing army barred all intercommunication. The purpose of the armistice was to allow the holding of elections throughout France to return a National Assembly, which in its turn should appoint Ministers fully authorized to treat for peace. The elections did but emphasize the division between Paris and the provinces, for in Paris an Ultra-Radical representative was returned, while in the country a considerable majority of monarchical deputies were elected. Republican France feared, and not without cause, some attempt to re- establish a dynasty. When, on February 20th, the new Government, with Thiers at its head, signed preliminaries of peace, a condition was included which stipulated that the Prussian troops should formally enter Paris and remain for three days in possession of all the forts before evacuating the place. The National Guard, refusing to obey orders, entrenched itself in Montmartre; the seat of government was transferred to Versailles, lately the Prussian headquarters; fighting broke out in the streets, and the control of the city was seized in the name of the Commune. So began the second siege, in which revolutionary Paris stood at bay against those whom they called 'the Prussians of Versailles,' while the real Prussians, still occupying part of the exterior line of forts, looked on, impartial spectators. Sir Charles writes: 'At this time my attention was exclusively turned to foreign affairs, and immediately after my Black Sea speech I started for Paris. I took with me an appointment as a Daily News correspondent--not that I intended to correspond, but only because it would explain my presence. Having been unable to leave London during the first days of the rising of March 18th, which developed into the Commune of Paris, I left it with my brother on April 2nd, and reached Creil at night, and St. Denis in the morning. From Creil I wrote to my grandmother: "We shall reach Paris in the morning. It is no use writing, and we shall not be able to write to you." We drove into Paris, and at once went to the Hotel de Ville, where we found the famous Central Committee sitting. We obtained from some Garibaldian officers of the Staff a special pass to leave Paris in order to see Gustave Flourens, for whom I was carrying a private letter from a friend of his in London.... The drums were beating through the streets all day, and great numbers of National Guards were under arms attempting to march upon Versailles, and there was heavy fighting, which we witnessed from a distance. 'We counted 160 battalions of National Guards all carrying the red flag, and saw altogether, as near as we could compute, almost 110,000 men. That all Paris was in the movement at this time was clear, not only from this fact, but also from the following: that on March 26th between 226,000 and 227,000 electors voted, a full vote for Paris considering the great number of persons who, having left Paris before the siege, had not returned. In the municipal elections after the Commune, when the Conservatives had come back and made a great attempt to win, the total number of voters was only 186,000. I noticed at the Hôtel de Ville that the Parisians had a great many sailors in uniform with them. These were sailors who had remained in Paris after serving there during the siege, and my pass was handed to me by a splendid specimen of a French tar wearing the name of the _Richelieu_ on his hat. I was one of the few persons not in the insurrection (and these were mostly killed) who saw the pictures in the Hôtel de Ville so late--that is, so soon before the fire which destroyed them all--and I recognized old friends which I had known from 1855, when I was there at the great ball. Those who showed us from room to room were chiefly Garibaldian Poles, among them the Dombrowskis, one of whom was killed, and two of whom I afterwards befriended in London in their exile. 'The next morning we left Paris early by the Vaugirard gate, for no one could tell us where Flourens was engaged. We had followed the main line of fighting; his death occurred upon the other line; but so great was the confusion of these days that we knew nothing of it until the 5th. We thought that to make for Clamart would be the surest course to bring us to the forefront of battle, and at 8 a.m. we were in Issy. We then heard heavy firing, and came over the hill between Forts Issy and Vanves, but there was a dense fog which deadened sound, and it was not till we were well down the hillside that we heard the crunch of the machine-guns, when we suddenly found ourselves under a heavy fire from the other side. Seeing the railway embankment in front of us at the bottom of the hill, we ran down and got under shelter near an arch at the corner of a park wall, which may, perhaps, have been the cemetery. Here we sat in safety while the bullets sang in swarms through the trees over our heads, while the forts cannonaded the heights, and the heights bombarded the forts, and while the federal regiments of the National Guard tried in vain to carry once more the line of hills which they had carried on the previous day, but had of their own accord at night abandoned, having no commissariat. They used, in fact, to go home to dinner. Indeed, many would in the morning take an omnibus to the battlefield, and fight, and take the omnibus back home again to dine and sleep--a system of warfare which played into the hands of the experienced old soldiers--the police of Paris--all ex- non-commissioned officers, and the equally well-trained Customs guards and forest guards, by whom they were opposed. General Vinoy, who was commanding, had, however, heavy work on this day, in which Duval, the General of the Commune, met his death within a quarter of a mile of the spot where we were hiding. With this day ended, indeed, the offensive operations of the Federalists against Versailles, and began the offensive operations of the regulars against Paris. After sitting a long time in our corner we found ourselves starved, and ran up the hill by the park wall, under a heavy fire, to Issy and then walked into Paris. I have a bullet in my room which struck the wall between us just as we reached shelter at the top. One of my curiosities of the time is the official newspaper of April 4th, which was conducted, of course, for the insurrection, but which played so well at being official that it announced as good news the telegrams from Algeria showing that the Arab insurrection was being put down, although the Government which was putting down this insurrection was the very same Government which was engaged in putting down the more formidable insurrection in Paris, to which the journal temporarily belonged. 'On Wednesday, the 5th, my brother went to the fighting at Neuilly bridge, where the troops from Versailles were beginning to develop a serious attack, destined, however, to continue for six weeks without result, for Paris was not entered at this point. I, with a letter from Franqueville [Footnote: Le Comte de Franqueville, well known to a large circle of English friends by his book, _Le Gouvernement et le Parlement Britanniques_ (Paris, 1887).] to the Duc de Broglie, afterwards Prime Minister, in one pocket, and a pass from the Insurrection in the other, left Paris at 5 a.m. by the Porte Montrouge, and walked by Bourg la Reine to La Croix de Berny, and thence by Châtenay to La Cour Roland, where I met a cavalry patrol of the regular forces, and then came to an infantry camp. Having shown my letter, my English passport, and my appointment as a newspaper correspondent, I was allowed to go on to Versailles. There I slept on a table, there being a terrible crowd of Paris fugitives in the town. In the morning I had my interview with the Duke. He was kind to me, and I saw much of him in London and in Paris in later years. Thiers was right in alluding to his dull father as "The Duc de Broglie; the other, _the_ duke." But both were narrow doctrinaires. 'After looking at M. Thiers' reserves, which at this time consisted of 250 guns parked on the Place d'Armes, with no artillerymen to work them, and a Paris regiment, the 118th, raised during the siege, locked up in the park to prevent their joining the insurrection, I started for St. Germain, where I met Major Anson, M.P., afterwards the leader of "the Colonels" (who resisted abolition of army purchase) in the House of Commons, and lunched, watching the firing of Mont Valérien on Paris. I then drove to St. Denis, the Prussian headquarters. Thence I drove again (the La Chapelle gate of Paris being shut) to Pantin. After a long parley the Belleville-Villette drawbridge was lowered for me, and I was admitted to Paris, having been almost all round it in the two days. 'Major Anson gave me a bag of gold to pay to his brother's (Lord Lichfield's) cook. This man was in Paris, and on the 7th I called on him at a house close to the Ministry of the Interior, and to the Palace of the Elysée. The cook's rooms were at the top of the house, over the Librairie, still there in 1907. He received the visit of myself and my brother in bed. "Excuse me," he said, "but I have been fighting these three days, and I am tired out." I asked his wife what he was fighting for, and she did not in the least know. No more did he, for the matter of that. He was fighting because his battalion was fighting. "The Prussians of Versailles" had taken the place of the other Prussians; that was all. At this moment 215 battalions of the National Guard supported the insurrection, having joined in pursuance of the resolution that, in the event of the seat of Government being transferred from Paris to any other place, Paris was to constitute itself a separate Republic. This more than anything else was at the bottom of the insurrection, and, as M. Jules Simon has said, "many Republicans who were neither Socialists nor Revolutionists hesitated. One asked oneself if in fighting on the side of order one was not at the same time fighting for a dynasty." Then, again, serving in the National Guard meant pay and food, especially for the working man, for there was no work to be got in Paris, as business had not been reopened. Moreover, Paris was writhing with rage at the Prussian entry, and Parisian vanity was engaged on the side of the insurrection. 'The insurrection was certainly at this time very far from being a communistic movement, as from a natural confusion of names it was thought to be by foreigners. There was a burning jealousy in Paris of the "Rurals," and a real fear, not ill-founded, that a Royalist conspiracy was on foot. The irritations of the siege, however, played the largest part. The National Guard, who had fought very well at Buzenval on January 19th, profoundly moved by the capitulation, had carried off their guns to their own part of Paris in February, and it may be said that the insurrection dated from that time, and was historically a protest against the peace, for M. Thiers temporized with the insurrection until the old seasoned soldiers were beginning to return to him from their captivity in Germany. The fighting began with the sudden attempt of the Government to remove by force the guns which had been taken to Montmartre, followed as it was by the murder of two Generals by the mob. [Footnote: General Lecomte and Clément Thomas, the Commandant of the National Guard, were shot on March 18th, 1871, under conditions of peculiar brutality.] A number of men threw themselves into the movement from love of fighting for fighting's sake, like the Garibaldian Poles. Some joined it from ambition, but the majority of the men who later on died on the walls or in the streets in the Federalist ranks died, as they believed, for the Republic, and had no idea of the plunder of the rich. Ricciotti Garibaldi was near Dijon "in observation," as he afterwards told me. He said that he wanted to march upon Versailles with his excellent little army, which would have followed him, and fought well, and would certainly have taken the new capital, although it would have been crushed later on. He telegraphed to Garibaldi, and "Papa" telegraphed to him not to move, Garibaldi being wiser, perhaps, in his son's case than he would have been had it been his own, for he was not remarkable for wisdom. It was a strange moment: the Prussians watching the fighting from those of the forts which were still in their hands, and a careless, idle Paris crowd of boys and women watching it from the walls. 'On the 7th my brother and I were all but killed by a shell from Mont Valérien which suddenly burst, we not having heard it, close to us in a garden at the corner of the Place de l'Étoile and Avenue d'Uhrich, as the Avenue de l'Impératrice had at this time been named, from the General who defended Strasbourg. During the 7th and 8th a senseless bombardment of a peaceable part of Paris waxed warm, and continued for some days uselessly to destroy the houses of the best supporters of the Conservative Assembly without harming the Federalists, who did not even cross the quarter. M. Simon has said that Thiers did not bombard Paris; that he only bombarded the walls of Paris at the two points at which he intended to make a breach.... All I can say is that if this was the intention there must have been someone in command at Mont Valérien who failed to carry it into effect, and who amused himself by knocking the best part of Paris to pieces out of mischief, for no artilleryman could have been so incapable as to fire from hill to hill when intending to fire down into that which, viewed from Mont Valérien, looks like a hole. In 1841, curiously enough, Thiers had been accused, at the time of the erection of the forts of which Mont Valérien was one, of making it possible that Paris should be bombarded in this way, and had indignantly replied, asking the Assembly if they believed that after having _inondé de ses feux la demeure de vos familles_ a Government could expect to be continued in power. But in 1871 he did it, and was continued in power for a time, and that with the triumphant support at the moment of the very persons whose houses he had destroyed. The Commune had a broad back, and that back was made to bear the responsibility of the destruction.' Sir Charles returned to his duties in London after the Easter recess, but he was back in Paris to see the last moments of the second siege. On May 21st the army had forced its way into the city, though several days of bitter street fighting remained, in which the town was fired, and the Hôtel de Ville and Ministry of Finance were destroyed. [Footnote: Sir Charles writes of the celebrated order, "Flambez Finances": 'the order to burn the Ministry of Finance was an undoubted forgery, as a distinguished Frenchman, signing himself "A Communalist," showed in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. The evidence before the court-martial of the porter of the Ministry of Finance, that the fire was caused by shells, confirms my view, and shows how the events of the moment have been distorted by the passions of writers.'] Sir Charles had foreseen the destruction of these uildings, "because they were behind great barricades in the direct line of the necessary attack," and was also proud of the verification which a minor military forecast received. Alan Herbert, Auberon's elder brother, who for many years practised as a doctor in Paris, was awakened on May 21st by a disturbance in the street, and '"saw several National Guards and dirty-looking fellows taking counsel together whether they should raise a barricade opposite my windows, and they were actually beginning it. However," he wrote to his mother, Lady Carnarvon, "Sir Charles Dilke, when he was in Paris with Auberon, came to see me here, and the question being raised as to a barricade being placed opposite my windows he decided it could not be, as the only proper place for one would be some doors lower down at the meeting of the three streets. This recollection was some consolation to me, and his opinion was quite correct, for an officer arrived, supposed to have been the General Dombrowski, who made them begin lower down."' It was on May 25th that Sir Charles left London to reach Paris, which was known by the 24th to be in flames. 'Crossing by Calais, I reached St. Denis at night, drove to Le Bourget, got a pass into Paris from the Germans at dawn, with a warning, however, that it would not bring me out again. By the drizzling rain I passed unhindered into Paris, all the gates being open and the drawbridges down, as the Federalists were both within and without the walls. I reached the great barricade in front of the gates of the Docks de la Villette at seven in the morning. My road had been lighted till the daylight grew strong by the flames of the conflagration of the warehouses. This day, Friday the 26th, was that of the third or last massacre of hostages--the thirty-seven gendarmes, the fifteen policemen, the eleven priests, and four other people, I believe. It was a very useless crime. When I reached the great barricade at a meeting of roads, one of which I think was called Route d'Allemagne, fighting had just recommenced after a pause during the night. At this point the field artillery were bombarding the barricade from the Rue Lafayette. I stood all day in comparative safety at the door of a baker's shop in the Rue de Flandre, for the baker was interested in what was going on sufficiently to keep his door open and look out and talk with me, though his shutters were up at all the windows. When evening came the Federalists still at this point maintained their strong position, and I, of course, knew nothing of the movements on the south by which the troops had all but hemmed them in. The baker with whom I had made friends offered me hospitality for the night, which I accepted, and I might have stayed longer with him had I pleased; but not knowing how long the fighting might continue, I determined to make my way into the Versailles lines at dawn. 'Fighting in our quarter had been again suspended at night, and in the grey light of early morning (it was fine after a long rain) I left my baker and made my way to the left, the left again, and then down a long street towards the Eastern Railway. A sentry about two hundred yards off presented his piece. I stood still in the middle of the street. He seemed then not to know what to do. I had on the red-cross armlet which I wore throughout the war, and held a white handkerchief in my hand. I suppose I looked respectable enough to be allowed to come nearer, for he let me advance. When near enough I called to him that I wished to speak with the officer of the post. He called out a corporal, to whom I made the same statement. They kept me there for a time which seemed an age, and then brought an officer. I shouted to him that I was an English newspaper correspondent, that I had an authorization as such, an English passport, and a Prussian pass into Paris, and that I was known to the Due de Broglie and to Lord Lyons; also that I could name friends in the centre of Paris to whom I might be sent under guard. He let me pass, and said: "Allez! Vous avez eu de la chance." I went straight to the Arts et Métiers. The dead were lying thick in the streets, especially at the Porte St. Martin barricade, where they were being placed in tumbrils. The fighting had been very heavy; the troops alone had lost 12,000 killed and wounded after entering Paris. At least as many Federalists were killed fighting, or wounded and finished, besides the great number shot after their surrender. I found Tresca, the father, picking up the pieces of the shells which were bursting in the courtyard, and putting them all together with wires, to the greater glory of his own particular make. It was the Federal artillery on the heights which was bombarding Paris with Tresca's shells. When one burst perfectly into some twenty equal pieces he would say:" Beautiful; that is one of mine." Any that burst into one large piece and two or three little ones he set down to the "génie militaire" of Vincennes. 'After several days I left Paris with Dr. W. H. Russell of the _Times_, my former opponent at Chelsea at the '68 election, whom I had last previously seen at Nancy on the day of Mars la Tour, and returned to London, having for the purpose of leaving Paris a pass from Marshal MacMahon's Chief of the Staff, which I still preserve.' [Footnote: This Diary Extract of the War of 1870 was published in the _Nineteenth Century_ of January, 1914.] So ends the story. Later in life, during his championship of army reform in the House of Commons, a Tory Colonel interrupted the civilian critic with some bluntness. "I have been on more battlefields," Sir Charles retorted, "than the honourable and gallant member has ever seen." The white ambulance cap, with its black and green peak, which he preserved as a memento, bore on its lining: "WÖRTH. ORLÉANS. PHALSBOURG. LONGWY. MARS LA TOUR. BAPAUME. GRAVELOTTE. PARIS." Preserved among Sir Charles's papers, and dated September 30th, 1870, there is this letter from John Stuart Mill: "If Gladstone had been a great man, this war would never have broken out, for he would have nobly taken upon himself the responsibility of declaring that the English Navy should actively aid whichever of the two Powers was attacked by the other. This would have been the beginning of the international justice we are calling for. I do not blame Gladstone for not daring to do it, for it requires a morally, braver man than any of our statesmen to run this kind of risk." At the outset of hostilities France, and not Germany, appeared to Sir Charles not only ostensibly, but really the attacking Power, and therefore the true menace to the liberties of Europe. The policy of Louis Napoleon was apparently responsible for the Franco-German War, and as he said in _Greater Britain_: "If the English race has a mission in the world, it is surely this, to prevent peace on earth from depending upon the verdict of a single man." With the fall of Napoleon and observation of the Germans as conquerors, Sir Charles became wholly French in his sympathies, and before long his close study of events preceding the war showed him that it had really been of Bismarck's making. This did not lead him to advocate "alliance," for when alliances between various Powers were constantly advocated, he declared his belief that "the time for permanent alliances is past"; [Footnote: Speech at Chelsea to his constituents, January 24th, 1876.] but his observations in these years made him through life the steady friend of France, the constant upholder of her value to Europe, the advocate of fellowship between her free greatness and that of his own free country. "France," said he, "has in England no stronger friend than I." He lectured and spoke more than once upon the great war and its results, and the passage which ends a Recess speech of 1875 was delivered after one of the critical moments when Germany had shown a disposition to renew attack on France. Someone had spoken of Germany "as the most 'moral' among the nations." Sir Charles replied: 'Not only do I think the conduct of Prussia towards Denmark the reverse of "moral," but I confess I have the same opinions of her later conduct towards France.... No doubt the military law presses hardly on the German people, and no doubt the Prussian Court tells them that it is the fault of France; but is it true? Do not believe in the French lamb troubling the waters to the hurt of the Prussian wolf. Taxes and emigration increase in Germany because, as Count Moltke said in his place in Parliament, "Germany must stand armed to the teeth for fifty years to defend the provinces which it took her but six months to win." But why have taken them? Did not England and Austria at the time warn Prussia what would be the wretched consequences of the act? German fears of to-day are the direct outcome of the frightful terms which victorious Germany imposed on France. She might have had money, reduction of forces, dismantlement of fortresses, but she would have the dismemberment of France and her money too. She insisted, in defiance of all modern political ideas, in tearing provinces from a great country against their will. France has since that time set an example of moderation of tone, yet Germany cries out that she will fight again, and crush her enemy to the dust. Poor German Liberals, who abandoned all their principles when they consented to tear Alsace and Lorraine from France, and who now find themselves powerless against the war party, who say: "What the sword has won the sword shall keep!"' He then quoted 'the words of an Alsatian Deputy who spoke before the German Parliament on February 16th, 1874, words which were received with howls and jeers, but which were none the less eloquent and true.' The words dealt with the dismemberment of France, and ended with this passage: "Had you spared us you would have won the admiration of the world, and war had become impossible between us and you. As it is, you go on arming, and you force all Europe to arm also. Instead of opening an age of peace, you have inaugurated an era of war; and now you await fresh campaigns, fresh lists of killed and wounded, containing the names of your brothers and your sons." "The view of this Alsatian Deputy is my view," said Sir Charles: "I do not believe that might makes right.... For our own sakes as well as hers, T pray that France may not be crushed. France is not merely _one_ of the nations. The place of France is not greater than the place of England, but it is different. The place of France is one which no other nation can quite hold." CHAPTER X THE CIVIL LIST The disregard of party allegiance which Sir Charles showed in regard to the Education Bill and the Black Sea Conference did not grow less as time went on. When the Ballot Bill of 1870 was in Committee, he moved an amendment to extend the hours of polling from four o'clock to eight, as many working men would be unable to reach the poll by the earlier hour. There was much talk in debate of the danger which would ensue from carrying on so dangerous an operation as voting after dark, and the Government Whips were actually put on to tell against this proposal; nor was any extension of the hours effected till 1878, and then by Sir Charles Dilke himself, in a Bill applying to London only, which he introduced as a private member of the Opposition under a Tory Government. The first of the many Bills introduced by him was that to amend the procedure of registration, which in the session of 1871 he got successfully through Committee stage; but it perished in the annual "slaughter of the innocents." One of the measures which contributed to a decline of the Government's popularity was the unlucky proposal in Mr. Lowe's Budget of 1871 to levy a tax on matches; and Sir Charles was the first to raise this matter specifically in Committee, condemning the impost as one which would be specially felt by the poor, and would deprive the humblest class of workers of much employment. On the day when Lowe was forced to withdraw the obnoxious proposal, Sir Charles had opened the attack by a question challenging Government interference with a procession of the matchmakers organized to protest against the tax. He was, therefore, personally identified with the rebuff administered to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The tremendous spectacle of events in France had inevitably bred a panic in England. It was proposed to increase the active army by 70,000 men. Sir Charles was no friend to panics, and he was one of the seven who voted against the motion. But his was not merely a blank negative directed against any proposal for increasing the standing army. He writes: "About this time" (March, 1871) "I promoted a movement in favour of a system of universal instruction in arms, and between fifty and sixty members of Parliament attended the meeting which I called, the most prominent among them being Sir M. Hicks Beach, Mr. Mundella, and Henry James. We all lived to know better." Those who joined him in this momentary propaganda dropped the proposal of universal instruction in arms, and turned their attention elsewhere. He substituted for it another ideal of military efficiency, and laboured all his life to give it effect. Speaking to his constituents at Kensington in the autumn of 1871, he advocated "the separation of the Indian from the home army, and the adoption of the Swiss rather than of the Prussian military system." As a Radical, he faced the question whether Radicals ought to interest themselves at all in army reform, and he answered: "As a mere matter of insurance, it is worth taking some trouble to defend ourselves. There are, however, higher reasons for such interest, and among them are treaty obligations and the duty which we owe to the rest of the world of not suppressing our influence--on the whole a just and moral one." 'In these words,' Sir Charles notes, 'there lies in a nutshell all that I afterwards wrote at much greater length upon army reform in my book, _The British Army_.' In this year he made a visit to the autumn manoeuvres, then held for the first time, and 'looked upon by the army reformers as the dawn of a new day.' Sir Charles, however, with his knowledge of war, 'thought them singularly bad.' He was to repeat that experience several times, attending manoeuvres both in France and England. He held that annual manoeuvres were "essential to efficiency," and with other army reformers brought later much pressure to bear on the Government to secure this end. As early as February, 1871, Mr. Trevelyan (then out of office) had written to propose "a little meeting of Radical army reformers, say ten or twelve or fifteen, to arrange parts for practical work in the House, and to found a nucleus for an Army Reform Association in case of dire need (to stump the country)." The stumping of the country Mr. Trevelyan did himself, and his speeches led to the abolition in this year of the purchase system. What he wanted of Sir Charles is indicated by another sentence: "There never was a time when your turn for organization would be of more immediate value." But even more immediate use was made of Sir Charles's willingness to confront unpopularity. The "practical" part assigned to him in House of Commons' work was to undertake a motion (on going into Committee of Supply) for the suppression of two regiments of Household Cavalry and the substitution of two regiments of cavalry of the line. The change was justified by Sir Charles not only on the score of economy, but upon the ground that heavy cavalry had proved unserviceable in the Franco- Prussian War. Whatever his arguments, this attack on the maintenance of privileged troops brought social displeasure on the assailant. In 1870 the Queen had consented to abandon the tradition which made the appointment of the Commander-in-Chief a matter within the Sovereign's personal control; and the subordination of the military head of the forces to the Secretary for War was formally recognized. But the Duke of Cambridge continued to be Commander-in-Chief, and army reformers were extremely desirous to remove him. On this subject the Press was reticent no less than public speakers, and finally it was left for Sir Charles to advocate in the speech at Kensington already referred to the substitution of some other officer "more amenable to parliamentary control." In 1870 the Civil Service had been (with the exception of one preserve, the Foreign Office) thrown open to competitive examination. In 1871 the institution of purchase in the army perished after a fierce conflict. In the autumn of 1871 Sir Charles arranged to deliver at great centres throughout the country a series of speeches advocating a redistribution of seats which should make representation more real because more equitable. The first of the series, delivered in Manchester, merely propounded the view that a minority in Parliament very often represented a large majority of voters, because one member might have 13,000 electors and another only 130. But when he came to speak at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on November 6th, he gave this general principle definite application to a particular instance, in which very small minorities had nevertheless represented very large bodies of the electorate, and, as Sir Charles held, very widespread opinions. This instance was the vote for an allowance of £15,000 a year to Prince Arthur, proposed on his coming of age. Radical opinion had been already stirred in the earlier part of the Session by the Queen's request for a dowry of £30,000 for the Princess Louise on her marriage with the Marquis of Lorne; and Mr. Peter Taylor, in opposing the dowry, had spoken of the probability that such a grant would strengthen the tendency towards republican views among the artisan class. [Footnote: Taylor's opposition had led to a division, in which Fawcett had a lobby to himself, Dilke, with Taylor, being tellers for the "Noes." But on the question of the allowance to Prince Arthur fifty-three voted for a reduction of the allowance, and eleven against any grant at all.] 'I visited Newcastle, and there spoke chiefly upon the Dowry question, which had led to a division in the House of Commons, in which the minority had consisted of but three persons, with two tellers.... But in the course of the recess I had gone into the question of the Civil List expenditure upon the Court, and at Newcastle I made references to this subject which were accurate, though possibly unwise.' The Queen's long retirement (now of ten years' duration) from all ceremonial functions had occasioned considerable discontent. A pamphlet, under the title _What does She do with it?_ written, as Sir Charles believed, by one who had been a member of the Government, had received wide publicity. Sir Charles alluded to this, and, taking up the pamphleteer's argument, drew a picture of royal power as increasing, of quaint survivals of ancient offices kept up at high cost, and of the army's efficiency impaired by the appointment of Royal personages to command. He concluded by a peroration on the model State, inspired, one fancies, not only by his early training, but by Vacation reading of that long series of Utopias and "Commonwealths ideal and actual," the recollection of which fascinated him to the end: [Footnote: Chapter V., p. 55.] "It is said that some day a commonwealth will be our government. Now, history and experience show that you cannot have a republic unless you possess at the same time the republican virtues. But you answer: Have we not public spirit? Have we not the practice of self-government? Are not we gaining general education? Well, if you can show me a fair chance that a republic here will be free from the political corruption that hangs about the monarchy, I say, for my part--and I believe that the middle classes in general will say--let it come." This was the abstract avowal of a theoretical preference, which Sir Charles expressed with greater clearness and decision than others who professed it--than Fawcett, who preached Republicanism at Cambridge, or than Chamberlain; whose attitude is sufficiently indicated by the letter which he wrote to Dilke on seeing the very violent leader with which the _Times_ greeted the Newcastle speech: "I am glad to see that you have raised the Philistine indignation of the _Times_ by your speech at Newcastle, which, as well as that at Manchester, I have read with interest and agreement." 'Going on beyond my utterances, or indeed my belief, Chamberlain added: '"The Republic must come, and at the rate at which we are moving it will come in our generation. The greater is the necessity for discussing its conditions beforehand, and for a clear recognition of what we may lose as well as what we shall gain."' The essence of Republicanism to Sir Charles was equality of opportunity for all citizens in a well-ordered State. His theoretical avowal of Republicanism was seized upon by all who were offended by his lack of deference in dealing with a matter so nearly connected with Royalty. Charges of treason were made against the member of Parliament who, in defiance of his oath of allegiance, proposed to overthrow the monarchy. This general outcry did not begin till the _Times_ leader had circulated for a few days. But within a week the whole Press had broken out in fury. The London correspondent of the _New York Tribune_ reported that "Sir Charles Dilke's speech competes with the Tichborne trial" as a subject of public comment. There was a second article in the _Times_ The _Spectator_ imputed to Dilke a want both of sense and decency, and declared that he "talked sheer vulgar nonsense and discourteous rubbish in order to mislead his audience." But as the correspondent of the _New York Tribune_ said: "No one proved or attempted to prove that Sir Charles Dilke had misstated facts." 'On one point, and on one point only, had I any reason to think that I was wrong--namely, upon the Queen's Income Tax.' No documents existed, and information was promised to Sir Charles by Mr. W. E. Baxter, Secretary to the Treasury, 'but when he applied for it he was told that it could not be given unless Mr. Gladstone agreed, and on this Mr. Gladstone wrote one of his most mysterious letters, and I never really believed that the matter was cleared up.' In December, when the Prince of Wales was brought to the extremity of danger by grave illness, an outburst of loyalty was aroused which shaped itself into a protest against the "republican" demonstrations. But in the hearts of thousands of working men who had expected some great change from the Reform Act of 1868 and found no real alteration, there was a deep resentment against the power and the attitude of the upper classes; and against this power Sir Charles had struck a blow. The Press campaign against him had the result which always follows when popular clamour seeks to brand a strong man for an act of moral courage--it made him notable. He was at a crisis in his political career, and the risks were great. Opposition to him in Chelsea was threatened from orthodox Liberalism. A letter from Labouchere warned him of this, and of the support which such opposition would assuredly receive from Government organizers. Dilke went straight ahead. It happened that the projected campaign on Representation had pledged him to a series of speeches, and he did not therefore need to seek occasions. His next appearance on a public platform after the Newcastle meeting was fixed for November 20th at Bristol, and opposition was promptly threatened, somewhat to the surprise of Professor F. W. Newman, who had been asked to take the chair. "I do not read the papers daily" (the Professor wrote), "and was quite unaware that any animosity against Sir Charles Dilke existed among the Bristol Liberals. But I think it is high time that the Liberal party everywhere be pulled out of the grooves of routine, and that _new men_ take the lead of it. I hope there will not be a mere noisy disturbance, but I will try to do my duty in any case." There was a noisy disturbance, but at Leeds on November 23rd the chairman of the meeting was Alderman Carter, a Radical member of Parliament, of considerable local influence, and an immense hall was packed by 5,000 supporters who secured the speaker from any interruption. Under these conditions, Sir Charles delivered a speech much better, in his own opinion, than the Newcastle discourse. As he put it many years later, the former was on the cost of the Crown, the second a defence of the right of free speech in the discussion of the cost of the Crown. [Footnote: Private letter to the Editor of _Reynolds's Newspaper_, June 23rd, 1894.] A main part of his defence was devoted to one point on which throughout all this controversy he showed himself sensitive. "I care nothing," he said at Leeds, "for the ridiculous cry of 'treason,' but I do care a great deal for a charge of having used discourteous words towards the Queen;" and he went on to explain by citation of his speech that 'the malversation, if there was one,' had been charged, not against the Queen, but against the neglect of her Ministers. He added now that the "breach of the spirit of the Civil List Act," in allowing the savings to accumulate, was one for which neither the present Government nor the Opposition were responsible so much as their predecessors; and he made it doubly clear that, although he desired to see savings made for the public, his true objection to the office of Hereditary Grand Falconer and other sinecures was 'not on account of the money that they cost, but on account of the miserable political and moral tone which was set by their retention.' Asserting that the Duke of Edinburgh had been appointed to an independent naval command without the training which other officers would have undergone, he reverted to the ideal of the model State: "To say these things is not to condemn the monarchy, because they are no necessary part of the monarchy, although the opposite idea--that of promotion by merit alone and of the non-recognition of any claims founded upon birth--is commonly accepted as republican. I care not whether you call it republican or whether you do not, but I say that it is the only principle upon which, if we are to keep our place among the nations, we can for the future act." 'Not only was the Leeds meeting a success, but so also was one at Middlesboro' a few days later than that at Leeds. But on November 30th, when I attempted to address a meeting at Bolton under the auspices of the local leaders of the Liberal party, such as Mr. Cross [Footnote: Eventually the chairman named withdrew his support in view of the agitation; and the Liberal Association (on the casting vote of their Chairman, Mr. J. K. Cross) decided to refuse sanction to the meeting.] (afterwards Under Secretary of State for India), Mr. Mellor, and Mr. Haslam, there was a fearful riot, at which a man was killed and a great number of persons injured by iron nuts and bars being thrown in through the windows by the Tory roughs outside the hall.' [Footnote: Eight of the party who broke up the meeting were put on their trial, and Serjeant Ballantine, who defended, made such play with "Citizen" Dilke's unpopular opinions that "most of the jury felt that, as loyal men, they were bound to acquit the prisoners." Mr. George Harwood, the late member for Bolton, related in a letter of 1911 what he saw as "an indifferent young fellow" who had "strolled down to look on." "The crowd" he writes, "was very thick and very fierce, having declared that Sir Charles should not get away alive; but when the excitement was hottest, Sir Charles came out of the main door and stood quietly in sight of all, then struck a match and lit his cigar, and walked unguarded and unaccompanied through the thickest part of the crowd. His cool courage quite took everyone's breath away, so not a sound was uttered."] One passage in the speech is notable in view of later events: "I think working men should not make themselves too much the slaves of any political party, but should take care of the means of seeking representation in Parliament, and when they have got the means in their hands, they will then be able to use them so as to be favourable to their interests as a whole." 'My speech at Newcastle had been not only as true as Gospel, but a speech which, as Americans would say, "wanted making." But I was nearly subjected to physical martyrdom for it at Bolton, and was actually and really subjected to moral martyrdom for a time. The thing was not, however, wholly painful. It had its ludicrous side. The then Lord Chelsea, for example, afterwards my friend Lord Cadogan, regretted, in a discourse at Bath with regard to my speech, "that the days of duelling were over."' The Memoir goes on to note that Lord Chelsea and Sir Alfred Slade, the Receiver-General of Inland Revenue-- 'who had both accused me of inventing "lies," afterwards asked to be introduced to me and were very civil, and I, for political and local reasons, had to forget their speeches and to be civil to them. 'On December 6th I spoke at Birmingham Town Hall, and Chamberlain, who was Mayor, and who was my host, had the whole borough police force present or in reserve, and had every interrupter (and there were several hundred) carried out singly by two policemen, with a Conservative Chief of Police to direct them, after which I delivered an extremely humdrum speech to a very dull assembly. [Footnote: He spoke on the House of Lords.] Chamberlain was more lively, and made a speech in ridicule of Second Chambers, in which I still (1895) agree. On the other hand, in Chelsea we carried the war into the enemy's camp. The "loyal inhabitants" tried to hold a meeting at the Vestry Hall to censure me, on which occasion no article or piece of furniture larger than a match was left in existence in the room, and the meeting concluded with a vote of confidence in me, carried in the dark after the gas had been put out. The second attempt was made outside the borough, at the Duke of Wellington's Riding School at Knightsbridge, but the result was the same. Although the meeting was a ticket meeting, the hall was stormed, and the loyal address to the Queen captured and carried off in triumph by my friends. It is still (May, 1905) at the Eleusis Club--the centre for the Radical working men in Chelsea.' Hostility concentrated on Sir Charles because the courage and cogency with which he expounded views shared by many men of standing, and men far senior to himself at this time, marked him out for the public as the leader: 'Fawcett had taken a far more active republican line, as had Chamberlain, and both of them had joined republican clubs in towns, while Fawcett had himself founded one in the University of Cambridge, which had but a short existence. I had refused to join these clubs, and to work in any way in connection with republican propaganda, but it was difficult to get people to understand my position, and the perfect legality of holding republican opinions was even denied by many, while the wisdom of expressing them was denied by almost all. Some thought that I was of opinion that an immense amount of revolutionary feeling existed in the country, and that I wished to lead a storm to my own profit. Some thought that I was sorry I had said what I did. 'It never seemed to occur to anyone that there were many persons who had been trained up in families republican in sentiment, and that it was possible that I should have never been anything but a republican without the trace of a "reason," and thought it honest to say so when I was charged with Republicanism as with some fearful crime. But to think and even to say that monarchy in Western Europe is a somewhat cumbersome fiction is not to declare oneself ready to fight against it on a barricade. It is only to protest against the silence of many being read into agreement with the fulsome nonsense that the majority talk about the personal loyalty of the country to the reigning House. My Republicanism was, however, with me a matter of education. My grandfather was a conservative republican in old age, a radical republican in youth, but a republican through life, and, as I have said before, my young ideas were my grandfather's ideas. It is a mistake to think that republican opinions in England died with Algernon Sidney, that Tom Paine was about the only English sympathizer with the French Revolution, and Shelley, Landor, and Swinburne only three mad poets. It is forgotten now that Burns subscribed to the funds of the French Republic, that Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Moore all wrote republican odes to it, and that at the beginning of the century Southey and Brougham were republican, not to speak of Bentham and Godwin and other writers on whose books I had been brought up.' Sir Charles was not only denounced, but boycotted. [Footnote: Shirley Brooks of _Punch_ wrote in his diary, under date December 5th, 1871: "Macmillan asked me to dine, but as Sir C. Dilke, who has been spouting Republicanism, was to be one, I would not go, hating to dine with a man and abuse him in print, as I must do." (_Life, Letters, and Diaries of Shirley Brooks_, by G. S. Layard).] He seems for the moment to have had only two close friends available in London, Mr. Trevelyan and Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. The former-- 'who had been deeply engaged in the anti-dowry agitation, although keeping himself in the background ... used to come every Sunday to go for walks with me; generally the two of us only, though on one of these occasions he brought Wilfrid Lawson, the wit of the public platforms, but a dismal man enough in private, [Footnote: Sir Charles's friendship with the great Temperance Reformer was cemented five years later by his adhesion to the Temperance ranks. 'February 4th, 1877, in Paris on my road I received a letter from Wilfrid Lawson, who had learnt that I had turned teetotaller. I was as a fact teetotaller for some eleven years, from 1874-1885. Lawson's letter was in verse with a chorus: "Coffee and tea, Coffee and tea, Those are the liquors for Lawson and me." There was a good deal of chaff of the Bishop of Peterborough in the letter, as this Bishop, whose name unfortunately rhymed to "tea," had been speaking against Lawson's views in the House of Lords: "Some day, perhaps, we both bishops may be, And both much more sober than Doctor Magee, Who finds that he cannot be sober _and_ free; But it's only last week that I heard from you, Dilke, That you'd rashly and recklessly taken to milk. Abandon the habit, I beg and I pray, Only think what the scoffers and mockers will say. They'll say, with a cynical grin and a laugh, 'He has taken to milk--just the thing for a calf.' Oh, abandon that milk--stick to coffee and tea, For those are the liquors for you and for me. _Chorus:_ "Coffee and tea, Coffee and tea, Finest of Mocha and best of Bohea; "Coffee and tea, Coffee and tea, Those are the liquors for Dilke and for me."'] while George Trevelyan was in private most agreeable.' This social isolation, if it severed Sir Charles from some acquaintances, restored to him a friend, Miss Katherine Sheil, who was living in Sloane Street with Miss Louisa Courtenay, a near neighbour and old friend of Charles Dilke. Both Miss Sheil's parents were dead. Her father, who died when she was a baby, had been a Captain in the 89th Foot; her mother came of an old Devonshire family, the Wises. Although she and Sir Charles had been close friends for about three years, their friendship had broken down. For a long time we avoided one another, and I was only forgiven when the attacks on me in November, 1871, and the Bolton riot led to an expression of sympathy on her part. Miss Courtenay, who knew us both extremely well, ... said: "A very suitable marriage. You are neither of you in love with one another, but you will get on admirably together." Miss Courtenay was, perhaps, at this time not far wrong. I had a profound respect for Miss Sheil's talent and a high admiration of her charm and beauty, and I think she had more liking than love for me. We both of us had a horror of the ordinary forms of wedding ceremonies, and we told only five persons in all-my great-uncle, who came up to town for the wedding, and was present at it; my brother, who was in Russia; my grandmother, who kept house for me, and who was present at it; George Trevelyan, [Footnote: 'On January 14th I announced to him my intended marriage with Miss Sheil, which was a profound secret... but our walks did not come to an end with my wedding a fortnight later.' Sir Charles's marriage to Miss Sheil took place January 30th, 1872.] and Kitty's maid.' [Illustration: LADY DILKE (MISS KATHERINE SHEIL) From a photograph by Hills and Saunders] 'We did not go far away till Easter. Castelar [Footnote: 'Easter, 1870, I spent in Spain. I made the acquaintance of Castelar, then Professor of Political Economy in the University of Madrid, and probably the first orator in the world--a little man, though not so small as Thiers, or my other orator friend, Louis Blanc.'] sent over a friend to ask me to go to stay with him in Spain, but when I had been in Paris at the end of '71, I had found myself watched by the French police, doubtless under the impression that I was helping the English Comtists under Harrison in supplying English passports to the Communards in hiding to help them to leave France; and I objected to return to the Continent till this spy system was at an end.' [Footnote: "Kinglake, dining with Thiers at the close of the Franco- German War--the sole Englishman at a dinner to Deputies of the Extreme Left--tells how 'among the servants there was a sort of reasoning process as to my identity, ending in the conclusion, "il doit être Sir Dilke."' Soon the inference was treated as a fact, and in due sequence came newspaper paragraphs declaring that the British Ambassador had gravely remonstrated with the President for inviting Sir Charles Dilke to his table. Then followed articles defending the course taken by the President, and so for some time the ball was kept up. The remonstrance of the Ambassador was a myth; Lord Lyons was a friend of Sir Charles, but the latter was suspect at the time, both in England and France--in England for his speeches and motion on the Civil List; in France because, with Frederic Harrison, he had helped to get some of the French Communards away from France, and the French Government was watching him with spies" (A. W. Kinglake: _a Biographical and Literary Study_, by the Rev. W. Tuckwell, p. 114).] This assurance was procured for him by his friend Louis Blanc from Casimir-Périer, then Minister of the Interior, who wrote by the hand of his son, afterwards President of the Republic. 'Before I could leave London, I had to meet my constituents, which I did with complete success, and to stand the fire of my enemies by bringing forward in the House of Commons, on the earliest day that I could obtain, a motion on which I should be able to repeat the statements of my Newcastle speech, that they might be answered if any answer could be given. 'I had a rival in this project, a member who had given notice in the previous session for a Committee to inquire into the Civil List, George Dixon, known at that time in connection with the Education League.' But as the day, March 19th, approached, Mr. Dixon wrote to Sir Charles-- 'saying that his mind had been greatly exercised with regard to the motion of which he had given notice, and which had originally been suggested to him by Trevelyan, that he had come to the conclusion to leave the matter in my hands, but that he thought it one which ought to be brought before the House. "Of course," he added, "I shall go into the lobby with you if you divide the House." This, however, he did not do.' No ordinary moral courage was needed to face the demonstration which had been carefully prepared. The House of Commons has seldom witnessed a stormier scene. When Sir Charles stood up in a crowded House, charged with that atmosphere which the expectation of a personal incident always engenders there, Lord Bury intervened with an appeal to privilege, and, backed by tempestuous cheers, asked the Speaker to refuse the member for Chelsea a hearing on the ground that by declaration of republican principles he had violated the oath of allegiance. When this appeal had been dismissed, Sir Charles, on rising again to address the House, was, in the discreet words of Hansard, "received with much confusion." There was a "chorus of groans and Oh's and ironical cheers." But the House, after a brief demonstration, settled down to hear the speaker, who proceeded to set out the grounds on which he asked for full information concerning the Civil List under a number of tabulated heads, "his object," said the London correspondent of the New York Tribune, "clearly being to crowd as many facts as possible into a certain amount of time." It was, he says himself, 'solid and full of matter, but studiously wooden, 'unutterably dull,' and 'towards the latter part of the speech members went trooping out of the House, and conversation was general.' At last Sir Charles sat down, and men crowded in, all agog to hear Mr. Gladstone, who had sat uneasily on his bench, "longing to be at him," says one reporter; and at him he went, with tremendous artillery of argument, sarcasm, and declamation, while the Opposition cheered every point to the echo, though the Liberals sat in glum silence. Probably many of them shared the feeling which Sir Wilfrid Lawson reflects in his _Reminiscences_, that Mr. Gladstone was "often most unfair in debate," and on this occasion (not for the first time) "simply tried to trample upon Dilke, having the whole House at his back." The Prime Minister ended with an appeal for the division to be taken at once, but Sir Charles's seconder, one of the most picturesque figures in the politics of that time, insisted upon claiming his part in the condemnation. Not so much Radical as Anarchist, converted from the traditional Toryism of his surroundings by the influence of J. S. Mill and Ruskin, Auberon Herbert was at this moment vehemently republican, and nothing would serve him but to rise and, in supporting this motion purely on the Civil List, to make an avowal of republican principles: 'He stood up before a howling House, which had listened quietly to me, but was determined to have no more, with remarkable pluck, equal to that with which he had faced bullets in the Danish lines; but it was partly useless and partly mischievous.' When clamour failed to silence the speaker, members trooped out, and attempts were made to count out the House, but unsuccessfully. Thereupon Lord George Hamilton "spied strangers," and the Press having been excluded, Tories trooped back and went resolutely to work to howl Herbert down. Imitations of the crowing of cocks were said to have been given by Mr. George Bentinck, though Sir Wilfrid Lawson declared that he did not hear them, and added: "If there was such a manifestation it was, however, for the last time in the House of Commons; therefore I mention it. The division was 276 against 2--the two consisting of Anderson, one of the Glasgow members, and myself. [Footnote: Dilke and Herbert acted as tellers.] I think my vote was quite right, for the returns asked for by Dilke were due to the country, and Mr. Gladstone did not at all benefit the monarchy by withholding them." That was the impression which Sir Charles desired to leave on the mind of Radicals. But he had produced also the effect that he intended on the mind of the general public. The Press complained 'that my speech was voted prosy, and that my want of vivacity tended to prevent the interruptions which had been organized, and that it would have been impossible to make an oration more mild and inoffensive. This was exactly what I had wished and intended.... 'My speech was left unanswered, and I afterwards had the satisfaction of arranging while in office for acting on the principles which I laid down, and that action has since been taken. My main point was the right of the House of Commons to inquire into the Civil List even during the continuance of the reign, a right important because inquiry at the beginning of a reign is held under circumstances which prevent the possibility of its being satisfactory. This has since been admitted by Mr. Gladstone himself, and my view has been acted on. Mr. Gladstone professed to answer me at the time, and to do so with much vigour, but as a fact he carefully avoided coming to close quarters. He stated indignantly that he had not been able to find who were the members of the Committee of 1837 who had complained of insufficient investigation, to whose complaints I had referred, and he said this as though none did complain, although it is notorious that Grote and his friends, especially Hawes, did so complain. He maintained that I was wrong in saying that the Civil List in the present reign was greater than in the last, although I was quoting a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and although Mr. Gladstone made his figures support his view by including the allowance to Queen Adelaide, while I properly excluded both that allowance and the allowance of Prince Albert, as these personages were supposed to spend these allowances themselves, and not to hand them over to the King or to the Queen Regnant, as the case might be. Mr. Gladstone denied the pretended statement by me that the annuities to Princes and Princesses in the present reign were unprecedented in amount, but I had never named Princes, and I had never named amount. What I had said was that the provisions made for the Royal children during the reign were unprecedented in character, and so they were, as I showed clearly in my speech, and especially the allowances to the Princesses. Mr. Gladstone, with regard to the Royal savings, declined to go into the Exchequer accounts on the ground that I had not given him enough notice. I had given him eight days' notice, and he had not asked for any further information than that which I had afforded him. He argued that the savings were not great, for £590,000 had been spent on private allowances and personal pensions, a fact which was wholly new to us and not intended by Parliament. He argued that there was little to say about sinecures, because none had been created during the present reign, a reply which gave the go-by to the fact that the old ones continue. Long afterwards, when I was Mr. Gladstone's colleague, he recanted a good deal of his doctrine of 1872, as I shall show. Indeed, in 1889 all the information was given to the House which I had asked for and been refused in 1872, and the principle was laid down by the Committee on grants to the Royal Family, which I had privately suggested in 1880.' [Footnote: See also Chapter LIX., which deals with the Committee on the Civil List (Volume II., pp. 526, 527).] During the whole of 1872 it was not easy to find a platform on which local Liberals would be at ease in company with the member for Chelsea. Even Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice hinted that at a meeting held in Wiltshire to promote the cause of the agricultural labourer, Dilke and Auberon Herbert would be better away. But towards the close of the year, when a meeting devoted to the same cause was fixed for Exeter Hall, Joseph Arch, its chief promoter, insisted that Sir Charles should speak, and though the appointed chairman, Sir Sydney Waterlow, resigned his office, Archbishop Manning and Dr. Jackson, Bishop of London, made no scruple of attending while Dilke's speech was delivered. 'It was a dreary speech, and, given the fact that my speaking was always monotonous, and that at this time I was trying specially to make speeches which no one could call empty noise, and was therefore specially and peculiarly heavy, there was something amusing to lovers of contrast in that between the stormy heartiness of my reception at most of these meetings, and the ineffably dry orations which I delivered to them--between cheers of joy when I rose and cheers of relief when I sat down.' But courage and resource and knowledge had got their chance. His opponents had gone about to make a marked man of Sir Charles Dilke; within six months they had established his position beyond challenge as a man of mark. CHAPTER XI PERIOD OF FIRST MARRIAGE I. Having successfully faced his opponents in Parliament, and having also got assurances from the authorities in France that he would not be shadowed, Sir Charles was able to spend the Easter recess with Lady Dilke in Paris: 'At Easter we went to Paris and went about a good deal, seeing much of Gambetta, of Milner Gibson (who had completely left the world of English politics, and lived at Paris except when he was cruising in his yacht), Michel Chevalier, and the Franquevilles. We attended sittings of the Assembly at Versailles, drove over the battlefields, dined with the Louis Blancs to meet Louis's brother, Charles Blanc, the critic and great master of style, ... breakfasted with Evarts the American lawyer, to meet Caleb Gushing, his colleague on the American case on the Alabama claims; met at the Franquevilles' Henri de Pène and Robert Mitchell, the Conservative journalists; and saw "Mignon," Katie's favourite opera, and "Rabagas." This last famous piece, which was being played at the Vaudeville, where it was wonderfully acted, had been written during the premiership of Émile Ollivier, but being brought out when Ollivier was half forgotten, and when the name of Gambetta was in all men's mouths, was supposed by many to have been intended as a satire of the tribune, though it is far more applicable in every point to Ollivier's career.' Many years later Sir Charles was to form a friendship of lifelong duration with Louis Napoleon's Minister Ollivier. But from this visit to Paris dates the beginning of an intimacy between the young English member of Parliament and the leader of French democracy. He had already met Gambetta once in the end of 1871, and to renew this acquaintance was a special purpose in going to Paris. He had conceived the plan of writing a history of the nineteenth century. On the origin of the Franco-German War Gambetta was a high authority, and it was to discuss these questions that during this visit he for the first time came to see Sir Charles, who records: 'Had Gambetta to breakfast with us, when he stayed the whole day talking with me.' In five minutes the two men must have been in touch. Those who knew Sir Charles knew how his intense geniality of nature, masked sometimes for outsiders by a slight austerity, his _air boutonné_--as it was described by those who did not pass the barrier--showed immediately with those to whom he was drawn. That _rire enfantin_, described by Challemel-Lacour, would burst out at the first quick turn of talk, and he would give his whole self, with an almost boyish delight, to the encounter with a nature whose superabundant vitality and delight in life, as in Gambetta's case, equalled his own. For these two the common points of interest were strongly marked. Not only was there the kindred geniality of disposition, and the kindred interest in the history and fortune of France: there was in each an overwhelming love of country; strong, indeed, in Gambetta, and in Dilke so strong that it can best be described in the words of a French friend who, watching him, said to Sir Charles's second wife: "That man is a great patriot, for with his whole self he serves his country, never staying to consider how she has served him." In the spring of 1872 both men were young: Dilke not yet twenty-nine, Gambetta just thirty-four. But the past of one was crowded with experience, and the other had already made history. Sir Charles here inserts-- 'a word of the personality of Gambetta, who for a long time was my most intimate friend, and for whose memory I have still the deepest regard. 'It was on All Saints' Day of 1868 that a few republicans had paid a fête-of-the-dead visit to the tomb of a Deputy killed on the side of the Constitution at the time of the _coup d'état_, and had found it in a miserable state. Delescluze (who was two and a half years later to meet Baudin's fate, being killed, like him, in a black coat, unarmed, on a Paris barricade) communicated with Challemel-Lacour, and a subscription for a fitting tomb was started, which soon became an imposing manifestation of anti-Bonapartist opinion. [Footnote: The need for a fitting tomb is shown by the circumstance of Baudin's death and burial. He had gone early in the morning of December 3rd, 1851, to help in the construction of a barricade at the point where the Rue Ste. Marguerite and the Rue de Cotte meet. Two companies of the line arrived from the Bastille and formed an attacking party, and were joined by some men in blouses, who cried, on seeing the deputies: "À bas les vingt-cinq francs!" Baudin, unarmed, standing on the top of the barricade, replied: "Vous allez voir comment on meurt pour vingt- cinq francs." An attempt to address the soldiers by the Constitutionalists failed, and a shot from the barricade was replied to by a general volley, and Baudin fell, pierced by three shots. His body was taken to the Hôpital Ste. Marguerite, and when claimed by his brothers was given up only on condition that it should not be shown to the people, but immediately and quietly buried. He was buried on December 5th secretly in the cemetery of Montmartre (See _Dictionnaire des Parlementaires_, by Robert and Cougny).] 'The Government having prosecuted the papers which published the subscription lists, Challemel-Lacour caused the selection of Gambetta as counsel. He was a young barrister speaking with a strong Southern accent, which, however, disappeared when he spoke in public, vulgar in language and appearance, one-eyed, of Genoese (possibly Jewish) race, full of power. Gambetta made a magnificent speech, which brought him at one bound into the front rank among the republican leaders. His description of December 2nd was such as had never been excelled even by Cicero or by Berryer: "At that time there grouped themselves around a pretender a number of men without talent, without honour, sunk in debt and in crime, such as in all ages have been the accomplices of arbitrary violence, men of whom one could repeat what Sallust had said of the foul mob that surrounded Catiline, what Caesar said himself of those who conspired along with him: 'Inevitable dregs of organized society.'" The word Pretender, without adjectives, may seem somewhat weak as applied to the Prince President, the head of the band, but those who have heard Gambetta alone know the contempt which he could throw into his voice in the pronunciation of such a word. Finest of all the passages that remain to us of Gambetta's eloquence was one near the close of this memorable speech, which began: "During seventeen years you who are the masters of France have never dared to keep December 2nd as the national anniversary. That anniversary we take as that on which to commemorate the virtues of our dead who died that day--" Here the Advocate Imperial tried to interrupt him so as to spoil his peroration, and the written version now printed in his speeches differs altogether in language from that which was taken down by the shorthand writers at the time, although the idea is exactly the same. The two counsel spoke together for some minutes, each trying to shout down the other, until Gambetta's tremendous roar had crushed his adversary, whereupon, in the middle of his peroration, with a really Provençal forgetfulness of his art and subject, Gambetta interposed-- "He tried to close my mouth, but I have drowned him"--and then went on.' This picture is made more vivid by the pencillings on Sir Charles's copy of Daudet's _Numa Roumestan_, where the word "Gambetta" is scribbled again and again opposite passages which describe Numa's wonderful ringing voice, his quick supple nature, all things to all men, catching as if by magic the very tone and gestures of those with whom he spoke, prodigal as the sun in greetings and in promises, poured out in a torrent of words, which seemed "not to proceed from ideas, but to waken them in his mind by the mechanical stimulus of their sound, and by certain intonations even brought tears into his eyes." 'My friendship with Gambetta perhaps meant to me something more than the friendship of the man. Round him gathered all that was best and most hopeful in the state of the young republic. He, more than any other individual, had both destroyed the Empire and made new France, and to some extent the measure of my liking for the man was my hatred of those that he had replaced. Louis Napoleon ... had dynastic ends in view.... The Napoleonic legend did not survive Sedan, and that it was unable to be revived in the distress which followed the Commune was largely owing to the policy and courage of Gambetta. 'There is some permanent importance in the discussions as to the origin of the war of 1870 which I had with Gambetta at this time; for it so happens that I have been able at various periods to discuss with the most absolute freedom the history of this period with the five men who knew most of it--Bismarck, Émile Ollivier, Gambetta, Nigra, and Casa Laigleisia (at that time Rancez), the Spanish diplomatist, afterwards three times Spanish Minister in London. 'The question which I often discussed with Gambetta, with Ollivier, with Nigra, with Rancez, until, in September, 1889, Bismarck's frank admissions settled the matter in my mind for good, has been one of the most disputed points in modern history. My opinion that Bismarck had prepared the war, and had brought about the Hohenzollern candidature in order to provoke it, was only strengthened by an article entitled "Who is responsible for the War?" by "Scrutator"--probably from the pen of Congreve, the Comtist, who I know was in correspondence with the Duc de Gramont. At Easter, 1872, I discussed the matter fully with Gambetta, with Rancez, with Klaszco (author of _The Two Chancellors_, and secret agent of the Austrian Government), and with Hansen, a Dane, and spy of the French Government. Rancez long represented Spain at Berlin, and it was he who, under Prim's orders, prepared the Hohenzollern candidature. He was then sent to Vienna, as it was wise for him to be out of the way when war, brought about by his agency, was impending; but he was fetched suddenly to Berlin from Vienna in 1869, and this was when the thing was settled. The facts are all known now." [Footnote: Bismarck, _Gedanken und Erinnerungen_, ii., chap, xxii., p. 90 (German edition); Benedetti, _Ma Mission en Prusse_, chap, vi., pp. 409, 410.] The King of Prussia, on July 13th (1870), refused to give assurances for the future, in simple and dignified language which meant peace. His telegram to Berlin was one of 200 words. Bismarck told me, when I was staying with him in September, 1889, that he was with Moltke and von Roon when it was received by them at Berlin, and that he deliberately altered the telegram by cutting it down "from a telegram of 200 words which meant peace into a telegram of 20 words which meant war;" and in this form it was placarded throughout North Germany in every village. 'I discussed repeatedly with Gambetta the incidents of the Cabinet at St. Cloud on the 14th (July, 1870). Gambetta proved to me that on the 14th the mobilization order was given by the Minister of War, and that on the same day the order was itself ordered by the Cabinet to be countermanded. The Duc de Gramont has said, with singular confusion, that it was decided on the 15th that the orders of the Minister of War should not be countermanded, and that the reserves should be called out. Ollivier assured me that after a six hours' sitting of the Cabinet he had finally left St. Cloud long before that hour at which Delord states in his history that the Cabinet again met in the presence of the Empress. There was no such sitting of the Cabinet, but there may have been a meeting of the Empress, the Duc de Gramont, and the Minister of War, and they may have dared to take it upon themselves to reverse the decision at which the Cabinet had arrived. 'The Duc de Gramont and the Minister of War had been in the minority at the Cabinet on the 14th when the Cabinet withdrew the order for the mobilization of the reserves, and this minority took it upon itself in the night to maintain the order for the calling out of the reserves. On the other hand, if there was ground for the impeachment of the Duc de Gramont, I am afraid that there was also ground for that of Ollivier in his own admissions. The declaration made to the Chambers on July 15th states that the reserves were called out on the 14th, and Ollivier allowed the decision of his Cabinet, which was his own, to be reversed in his own name, apparently with his approval. [Footnote: See note on p. 486, and the authorities cited there.] 'Bismarck's action in forcing on a war might be justified by his probable acquaintance with the engagement of Austria to France that she would join her in attacking Prussia in the early spring of 1871; but it is a curious fact that he has never, either to me or to anybody else, made use of this justification. 'Upon all these subjects the papers found in the palaces and published by the Government of National Defence had an essential bearing, and these I discussed, while they were fresh, with Gambetta and Ollivier. The same matters were again before me in the following year (1873), when I had the opportunity of attending the Bazaine Court-Martial, presided over by the Duc d'Aumale, and of again reading the papers found in the Tuileries (including the volume afterwards suppressed) on the spot, and while the events related were fresh in men's minds, as well as of talking over all doubtful points with my two friends. 'Bazaine at the Court-Martial looked only stupid, like a fat old seal, utterly unmilitary, and, as the French would say, "become cow-like." It was difficult to see in him the man who, however great his crimes in Mexico, had at least been a man of the most daring courage and of the most overweening ambition. In the suppressed volume of the papers of the Imperial family seized at the Tuileries there is a letter from General Félix Douay to his brother in which he describes Bazaine's attempt to become the Bernadotte of Mexico, and shows how, in order to obtain the Mexican throne, he kept up treasonable relations with the chiefs of the republican bands which it was his duty to combat. It is curious to find the French second-in-command writing to his brother, also a General, a letter which, somehow or other, came into the possession of the Emperor himself, in which he says: "It is terrible to see a great dignity prostrated in such fashion.... We have to go back to Cardinal Dubois to find such an accomplished scoundrel having made use of a situation of the highest confidence to sell his country and his master.... He will not long escape the infamy to which he is consigned by the wishes of all honest men in the army, who are daily more and more shocked by the scandal of his personal fortune." Colonel Boyer was chief of the staff to Bazaine in Mexico, and is mentioned in the correspondence between the two Generals Douay as being mixed up in these discreditable transactions; and he was afterwards, as General Boyer, concerned, it may be remembered, in the Régnier affair at Metz, when General Bourbaki was sent out under a pass from the Prussians on a fool's errand to the Empress Eugénie, there being some treasonable plot behind. This is now (1908) confirmed by the letter of the King of Prussia to the Empress Eugénie in the Bernstorff Memoirs.' From 1872 onwards Sir Charles, in his many passages through Paris, invariably met Gambetta, 'and spent as much time with him as possible.' He was in this way kept fully informed on French politics by the most powerful politician in France. As Gambetta's power grew, Dilke's influence grew also, until there came a time when the friendship between the two was of international interest. II. On returning to London after the Easter recess of 1872, Sir Charles resumed his political duties in and out of Parliament. The Radical Club, of which he remained Secretary till he took office in 1880, exercised some little influence in the House of Commons, and was of some value in bringing men together for the exchange of ideas, but began to present difficulties in its working, and soon 'dropped very much into the hands of Fawcett. Fitzmaurice, and myself.' Apart from weekly attendance at its meetings, Sir Charles did not go out much. 'We were so wrapped up in ourselves,' he says, 'that I have no doubt we were spoken of as selfish.' The marriage had resulted in a tie much closer than the simple union of two people who would "get on very well together." Lady Dilke was a creature of glowing life. Those who remember her say that when she entered a room the whole atmosphere seemed to change: she was so brilliant, so handsome, so charged with vitality, so eager always in everything. From this period there were dinners at 76, Sloane Street, twice a week, and among those who gathered about the Dilkes 'were Harcourt; Kinglake, the historian; Stopford Brooke (who had not then left the Church of England), Brookfield, the Queen's chaplain, commonly known as the "naughty parson," and husband of Thackeray's Amelia, Fitzmaurice; Charles Villiers; Mrs. Procter (widow of Barry Cornwall); Miss Tizy Smith, daughter of Horace Smith, of _Rejected Addresses_; James (afterwards Sir Henry James).' Browning also 'was constantly at the house,' and read there his "Red Cotton Nightcap Country"--'at his own request.' Lord Houghton began in these days an intimacy which lasted till his death. Of Americans, there were Leland ("Hans Breitmann") and Mark Twain, and with these are named a number of foreign guests: Émile de Laveleye, the economist; Ricciotti Garibaldi; Moret, the Spanish Minister. 'We used to judge the position of affairs in Spain by whether Moret wore or did not wear the Golden Fleece when he came to dinner. When Castelar was dictator and the Republic proceeding upon conservative lines, the sheep hung prominently at his side. When the Republic was federalist and democratic, as was the case from time to time, the sheep was left at home in a box.' Others in the list of guests were Taglioni, 'in her youth the famous dancer, and in her old age Comtesse Gilbert de Voisins, the stupidest and most respectable of old dames,' and Ristori, the tragedian, who stayed at Sloane Street 'with her husband, the Marquis Capranica del Grillo, and their lovely daughter Bianca.' A novel feature at some of Lady Dilke's evenings was the production of French comedies by M. Brasseur, the celebrated comedian, and father of the well-known actor of the present day. At all times in Sir Charles Dilke's life his house was a great meeting-place for those who loved and knew France and the French tongue. Many painters were among the Chelsea constituents, and in 1868 Rossetti, having been pressed to vote, replied: "I think if Shakespeare and Michael Angelo were going to the poll, and if the one were not opposing the other, and if there were no danger of being expected to take an active part in the chairing of either, I might prove for once to have enough political electricity to brush a vote out of me, like a spark out of a cat's back. But I fear no other kind of earthly hero could do it." Another constituent was Carlyle, who in 1871 came to Dilke with a memorial in favour of a Civil List pension for Miss Geraldine Jewsbury. Out of him also no vote had been "brushed": he had exercised the franchise only once in his life. Passing through his native village, he had seen a notice that persons who would pay half a crown could be registered, and he had paid his fee and had been registered. He had thought at the time, so he told Sir Charles, that "heaven and hell hung on that vote," but he "had found out afterwards that they did not." It was in the course of 1872 that Sir Charles carried out one of his grandfather's instructions by distributing old Mr. Dilke's books-- 'in those quarters where I thought they would be useful in the cause of historic research, or where they would be best preserved. The British Museum had the first choice, and took those of the books relating to the Commonwealth, to the Stuarts, to Pope, and to Junius, which they had not already on their shelves. [Footnote: 'The Stuart papers consisted of the Caryll papers and the Seaforth Mackenzie papers, which last were first used by the Marchesa Campana da Cavelli in the preparation of a great work on the Stuart documents, in which they were fully quoted.'] I then offered the remainder of the Junius collection to Chichester Fortescue, at that time President of the Board of Trade (afterwards Lord Carlingford), husband of the famous Lady Waldegrave, and tenant in consequence of Strawberry Hill, where he was reforming Horace Walpole's library.' It was a house at which Sir Charles became very intimate but not till some years later. About this time Lady Strachie remembers the interest with which, as a young girl at her aunt's table, she glanced down the row of guests to catch the profile of 'Citizen Dilke,' who, with his wife, was dining there for the first time. Lord Carlingford believed that Francis wrote Junius, a view which old Mr. Dilke opposed. 'But Abraham Hayward, who was constantly with him, held anti- Franciscan opinions, and he would, I knew, have the full run of the books, which I was certain in Fortescue's hands would be carefully preserved. My arrangements were not concluded until the end of the following year, 1873, when I presented the last of the Pope books and all my grandfather's Pope manuscripts to John Murray, the publisher, in consequence of his great interest in the new edition.' [Footnote: Elwin and Courthope's edition of Pope's works.] In the same year Sir Charles Dilke made another arrangement which testified to the strength of his brotherly affection. Wentworth Dilke had left his personal property in the proportion of two-thirds to the elder son and one-third to the younger; and had also exercised a power of appointment which he held by dividing his wife's property in the same way. Charles Dilke now decided that the shares should be equalized, and secured this by handing over one-sixth of his property to Ashton, who was at this time in Russia, on a journey of exploration extending over the greater part of that Empire. About this time also Sir Charles purchased _Notes and Queries_ for £2,500 from its founder, Mr. Thoms, the Librarian of the House of Lords, 'one of the dearest old men that ever was worshipped by his friends,' and a devoted admirer of old Mr. Dilke. He appointed Dr. Doran to be editor, "partly as consolation for having refused him the editorship of the _Athenaeum_, for which he had asked as an old contributor and as the yearly acting editor in the 'editor's holiday.'" But Sir Charles's choice had fallen on Mr. Norman MacColl, 'that Scotch Solomon,' as he sometimes called this admirable critic, who conducted the paper for thirty years. 'In the autumn we went abroad again, and took a letter of introduction to George Sand, for whose talent Katie had a great admiration. We missed her at Trouville, but found her afterwards in Paris--an interesting person, hideously ugly, but more pleasant than her English rival novelist, the other pseudonymous George. They had few points in common except that both wrote well and were full of talent of a different kind and were equally monstrous, looking like two old horses.' Of George Eliot's "talent" he wrote to Hepworth Dixon in 1866: "The only fact of which I am at this present very certain ... is that Miss Evans is not far from being the best _indirect describer_ of character and the wittiest observer of human nature that has lived in England since Shakespeare, and I think that there are touches in _Amos Barton, Scenes from Clerical Life_, and in the first few chapters of _The Mill on the Floss_ quite worthy of Shakespeare himself." Also there is reference to a letter quoted in George Eliot's Life which tells that the year 1873 "began sweetly" for her, because "a beautiful bouquet with a pretty legend was left at my door by a person who went away after ringing." 'It was I,' says Sir Charles, 'who left that bouquet and I who wrote that legend. It was Katie who prepared the bouquet and asked me to take it.' III. After the tempestuous scene of March 19th, Sir Charles had remained on the whole a silent member of Parliament. 'I am going to keep quiet till the general election' (he says in a letter of May 1st, 1873) 'as the best means of retaining my present seat. If I should be turned out, look out for squalls, as I should then stand on an extreme platform for every vacancy in the North.' The main objects of the Radical group were, first, extension and redistribution of the voting power, and, secondly, a universal system of compulsory education, controlled by elective school boards. In October of this year (1872) Sir Charles and Lady Dilke went down as Mr. Chamberlain's guests to Birmingham, where Sir Charles spoke on free schools (basing himself, as usual, on his observation of other countries) with Mr. Chamberlain in the chair. In November there was a return visit, and Mr. Chamberlain spoke under Dilke's chairmanship at St. James's Hall on electoral reform. 'Chamberlain's was the first important speech that he had delivered to a London public meeting,' and probably these reciprocal visits and chairmanships gave the first general intimation of an alliance which for a dozen years was destined to influence Liberal policy. In the autumn of 1872, Sir Charles 'started a small Electoral Reform Committee.' Its purpose was to assist, first, the Bill of Mr. Trevelyan making the qualification for a vote in counties the same as in boroughs, and, secondly, his own resolution which demanded that seats should be redistributed in proportion to the number of electors. The outcome was an arrangement under which Mr. Trevelyan substituted for his Bill a resolution dealing with both matters; and this resolution, moved by him and seconded by Sir Charles, afforded annually a gauge of the progress made, as indicated by the division list. 'Chamberlain co-operated with me, but was more keen about his own education subjects.' At this time the attitude of Sir Charles and his associates towards the Liberal party was one of detachment bordering on hostility. Chamberlain, writing from Birmingham on March 2nd, 1873, noted that the Irish University Bill was "going badly in the country, and the Noncons. and Leaguers in the House ought to have the game in their hands." He wished "they would have the pluck to tell Mr. Gladstone that they will do nothing to bolster up a Ministry which will not give satisfactory assurances upon English education;" and he wanted Mr. George Dixon to go on with his resolution in favour of universal free schools and carry it to a division. "If members do not vote with him, and there is a general election soon, they will have a nice little crow to pick with their constituents; whereas if there is no division on this issue, all our labour during the recess is lost, and our friends are disheartened.... Viewed _ab extra_, there is no doubt the boldest policy is the best. It is probable from what I have seen that the weakest course is best suited to the atmosphere of what some people are pleased to call a '_reformed_ House of Commons.'" In the following week the Irish University Bill which was "going badly in the country" received a new and unexpected stab: Cardinal Cullen denounced it in a pastoral on March 9th. The debate on the second reading terminated during the small hours of March 12th. Government was defeated by three on a division of 284-287. On the 13th Mr. Gladstone's Ministry tendered their resignations, and the Queen sent for Mr. Disraeli, who declined either to accept office or to recommend a dissolution. By March 20th it was formally announced that the Government would go on, but it went on with power and prestige greatly diminished. On July 6th Chamberlain wrote to Dilke advocating an "irreconcilable policy," and asking for news of any "fanatics willing to join the Forlorn Hope and help in smashing up that whited sepulchre called the Liberal party." This letter concluded with an attack on Mr. Bright, who had just joined the reconstructed Ministry, but whose influence Mr. Chamberlain thought was "quite too small to save the Government." [Footnote: One cause of the Government's unpopularity was the attempt of Mr. Ayrton (First Commissioner of Public Works) to limit the right of public meeting in Hyde Park, to which there is this allusion: 'In July I was greatly occupied in the House of Commons in fighting against Ayrton's Parks Bill. It was at dinner at my house one night that, in his dry, quiet way, old Kinglake chirped out, "For so insignificant a personage Mr. Ayrton is quite the most pompous individual that I know." Mr. Ayrton's unpopularity was a powerful cause of Mr. Gladstone's downfall in 1874.'] Sir William Harcourt, though hardly less discontented, was openly more conformable, and towards the close of 1873 took office as Solicitor- General. He wrote: "I do not know if I have done a very wise or a very foolish thing. Probably the latter. But it is done, and my friends must help me to make the best of it. It was a great inducement to me the having Henry James [Footnote: Sir Henry James became Attorney-General in September, 1873.] as a colleague.... I feel like an old bachelor going to leave his lodgings and marry a woman he is not in love with, in grave doubt whether he and she will suit. However, fortunately, _she_ is going to die soon, and we shall soon again be in opposition below the gangway. The Duke of Argyll says that now I am in harness I must be driven in blinkers; but, then, dukes are insolent by nature. Whatever comes, I shall never leave the House of Commons. I do not see why I am not to be a politician because I am a law officer. Law officers used to be politicians some years ago." The Civil List question was raised again in Parliament in this year, when the Crown Private Estates Bill was introduced; and an amendment moved by Mr. George Anderson, member for Glasgow, complaining of the secrecy which attached to Royal wills, was supported, not only by Sir Charles, but by "the leader of the old Whigs in the House of Commons," Mr. E. P. Bouverie, a Privy Councillor, who to his horror found himself named to tell against the Bill, and thus identified with the "republican" opposition. 'Speaker Brand no doubt owed him some grudge.' [Footnote: The Right Hon. E. P. Bouverie had been a very successful Chairman of Committees of the whole House, and was indicated by public option as a probable Speaker. He was recognized as a leading authority on the Law of Parliament.] Dilke's own speech had demanded the annual publication of the receipts and disbursements of the Crown Private Estates, and though he waited long to carry his point, he saw this amongst other proposals adopted on the recommendation of the Civil List Committee of 1910, on which he served. Proof was not wanting that his determined attitude on these matters had won him the support of great masses of the democracy. Miners' Unions and Labourers' Unions wrote, begging, some for his portrait, others for an address; also, in places where opposition had been offered to his speaking, reprisals were exacted. 'Early in January, 1873, we went to Derby, at the request of the chairman of my meeting at Derby which had failed in the winter of '71-72, when, though a majority were upon our side, a gang of hired poachers had entrenched themselves in a corner of the room, had burned cayenne pepper, and defied all attempts to drive them out. The chairman was a man of determination who did not mean to be beaten. He organized his meeting on this occasion with almost too much care, for I fancy he brought fighting friends from Nottingham and other bruising places to it. The Tory roughs appeared, as on the former occasion. Before we were allowed to enter the room they were charged by means of battering rams with such effect that their entrenchments were destroyed, and they themselves were mostly stunned and carried out one by one. No one was dangerously hurt, but there were many broken heads. Lady Dilke was present in the thick of it, and, according to the newspaper reports, anxiously begged the stewards to deal gently with those whom they threw out. After this the meeting was held in peace. But the result was a formal Government inquiry, and the removal of the chairman of the meeting from the County Bench by the Lord Chancellor. He turned clergyman, to the benefit of _Notes and Queries_ and of the societies for antiquarian research, for, being a man of active mind, and finding the care of small parishes of ritualistic tendencies insufficient to occupy his whole time, he became the author of the famous book, _Churches of Derbyshire_, and of much other antiquarian work.' Sir Charles notes that this address at Derby was in fact his first pronouncement on "Free Land." In the following week, at Chelsea, he spoke upon Free Trade, and in both these speeches used the phrase, "Free land, free church, free schools, free trade, free law," laying down, early in 1873, 'the principles on which Chamberlain and John Morley afterwards went in the construction of the pamphlet known as _The Radical Programme_.' Sir G. Trevelyan writes: "In the first months of 1872 he was supposed to have injured himself greatly by his proceedings with regard to the Civil List; and yet, _to my knowledge, within a very few years Mr. Disraeli stated it as his opinion that Sir Charles Dilke was the most useful and influential member, among quite young men, that he had ever known." In pursuit of his plan of "keeping quiet" till the impending dissolution, he took no prominent action in these months; but he backed independent Liberalism whenever he saw a chance, as, for instance, by subscribing to forward the candidature of Mr. Burt, who had then been selected by the Morpeth miners to represent them. There was, however, a further reason for this quiescence. Lady Dilke at the close of the season was seriously ill, and it was late in autumn before she could be taken abroad to Monaco. Here, under the associations of the place, Dilke wrote his very successful political fantasy, _Prince Florestan_. Another event which clouded 1873 was Mill's death--'a great loss to us. Ours was the last house at which he dined, and we, with the Hills' (the editor of the _Daily News_ and his wife), 'were the last friends who dined with him. The Watts portrait for which he had consented to sit was finished for me just when he died.' 'I loved him greatly,' Sir Charles writes. The relation between the two had been that of master and disciple, and Mill may be said to have carried on and completed the work of old Mr. Dilke. [Illustration: JOHN STUART MILL. From the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A., in the Westminster Town Hall.] CHAPTER XII RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT--DEATH OF LADY DILKE Having remained abroad until after Christmas, 1873, the Dilkes stayed at Brighton for the sake of Lady Dilke's health, Sir Charles coming to town as occasion needed. His address to his constituents in 1874 assumed a special character in view of the approaching dissolution. He reviewed the whole work done by the 'Householder Parliament,' and more particularly the part taken in it by the members for Chelsea. It was an independent speech, making it quite clear that from the introduction of the Education Bill in 1870 the speaker had "ceased to be a steady supporter of the Government," and showing that "during the past three years the present Government had been declining in public esteem." Sir Charles recalled the various matters on which he had criticized their action, laying emphasis on two points. One was the Act of 1871 for amending the Criminal Law in regard to combinations of workmen, which had been passed in response to a long and vehement demand that the position of Trade Unions should be regularized. The amending Act had really left the Unions worse off than before: "the weapon of the men is picketing, and the weapon of the master is the black list. The picketing is practically prohibited by this Bill, and the black list is left untouched." [Footnote: See "Labour," Chapter LII. (Volume II., pp. 342- 367).] The other matter of interest was the Irish Peace Preservation Bill of 1873, a Bill which, as he said, would have raised great outcry if applied to an English district; yet, 'because it applied only to Ireland, and the Irish were unpopular and were supposed to be an unaccountable people different from all others,' it had passed with small opposition. He could not understand 'how those who shuddered at arbitrary arrests in Poland, and who ridiculed the gagging of the Press in France, could permit the passing of a law for Ireland which gave absolute powers of arrest and of suppression of newspapers to the Lord-Lieutenant.' Ireland has frequently afforded a test of the thoroughness of Liberal principles, and Sir Charles was distinguished from most of his countrymen by a refusal to impose geographical limitations on his notions of logic or of conduct. He was the least insular of Englishmen. In this speech of January, 1874, printed for circulation to the electors, he went very fully into the matter of the Civil List controversy, but did not touch his avowal of republican principles, because that declaration had been made outside Parliament, and he had never spoken of it in Parliament. He dealt with the matter, however, in a letter written to one of his supporters for general publication: "You ask me whether you are not justified in saying that I have always declined to take part in a republican agitation. That is so. I have repeatedly declined to do so; I have declined to attend republican meetings and I have abstained from subscribing to republican funds. I also refused to join the Republican Club formed at Cambridge University, though I am far from wishing to cast a slur on those Liberal politicians--Professor Fawcett and others--who did join it. The view I took was that I had no right to make use of my position as a member of the House of Commons, gained largely by the votes of those who are not even theoretical republicans, to push on an English republican movement. On the other hand, when denounced in a Conservative paper as a 'republican,' as though that were a term of abuse, I felt bound as an honest man to say I was one. But I am not a 'republican member' or a 'republican candidate,' any more than Mr. Gordon" (his opponent) "is a monarchical candidate, because there is neither Republican party nor Monarchical party in the English Parliament. I said at Glasgow two years ago: 'The majority of the people of Great Britain believe that the reforms they desire are compatible with the monarchic form of government,' and this I believe now as then." 'At the time when the letter was written,' notes the Memoir, 'an immediate dissolution of Parliament was not expected, but it was only just in time (being dated January 20th) to be of the most use, for the sudden dissolution occurred four days after its publication. The word "sudden" hardly perhaps, at this distance of time, conveys an impression of the extraordinary nature of the event.' The Cabinet's decision to dissolve, arising out of difficulties on the Budget, was announced on January 24th. By February 16th the elections were over, and Mr. Gladstone's Government had resigned, the Tories having come back with a solid majority. It was an overthrow for the Liberal party, but Sir Charles survived triumphantly, though ten seats in London were lost to Mr. Gladstone's following. Mr. Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works, against whom Sir Charles and his fellow-Radicals had fought fiercely, was ejected from the Tower Hamlets, and never returned to public life. Another victim was Sir Charles's former colleague. 'To the astonishment of many people, I was returned at the head of the poll, the Conservative standing next, and then Sir Henry Hoare, while the independent Moderate Liberal who had stood against me and obtained the temperance vote, obtained nothing else, and was, at a great distance from us, at the bottom of the poll.' When all the political journalists in England were reviewing, after his death in 1911, the remarkable career that they had watched, some for half a lifetime, one of the veterans among them wrote: [Footnote: The _Newcastle Daily Chronicle_.] "_We do not think that Sir Charles Dilke owed a great deal to the Liberal party, but we certainly think that the Liberal party owed a very great deal to Sir Charles Dilke_. In the dark days of 1874, when the party was deeper in the slough of despond than it has ever been before or since in our time, it was from the initiative and courage of Sir Charles Dilke that salvation came. His work in organizing the Liberal forces, especially in the Metropolis, has never received due acknowledgment.' The centre of his influence was among those who knew him best--his own constituents. 'I had indeed invented a caucus in Chelsea before the first Birmingham Election Association was started,' he says of his own electoral machinery. [Footnote: See Chapter XVII., p. 268.] The Eleusis Club was known all over England as a propagandist centre. Here he had no occasion to explain his speeches at Newcastle or elsewhere. "We were all republicans down Chelsea way when young Charlie Dilke came among us first," said an old supporter. Yet the propaganda emanating from the Eleusis Club was not republican. Here and all over the constituency he made innumerable and unreported speeches to instruct industrial opinion. He laid under contribution his whole store of extraordinary knowledge, suggesting and answering questions till no Parliamentary representative in the country was followed by his supporters with an attention so informed and discriminating. "Nothing of the sort had been known since David Urquhart, in the first half of the Victorian age, opened his lecture-halls and classrooms throughout the world for counter-working Palmerston, and for teaching artisans the true inwardness of the Eastern Question." [Footnote: Mr. T. H. S. Escott, the _New Age_, February 9th, 1911.] Sir Charles himself gives in the Memoir some sketch of the feelings with which Liberals confronted that rout of Liberalism, and of the steps taken to repair the disaster. 'Harcourt wrote (upon paper which bore the words "Solicitor-General" with a large "No longer" in his handwriting at the top): '"_Rari nantes in gurgite vasto._ Here we are again.... To tell you the truth, I am not sorry. It had to come, and it is as well over. We shall get rid of these canting duffers of the party and begin afresh. We must all meet again _below_ the gangway. We shall have a nice little party, though diminished. I am very sorry about Fawcett, but we shall soon get him back again." 'My first work was to bring back Fawcett, and by negotiations with Homer, the Hackney publican (Secretary of the Licensed Victuallers' Protection Association), into which I entered because Fawcett's defeat had been partly owing to the determined opposition of Sir Wilfrid Lawson's friends, who could not forgive his attacks on the direct veto, I succeeded in securing him an invitation to contest Hackney, where there was an early vacancy. Fitzmaurice and I became respectively Chairman and Treasurer of a fund, and we raised more money than was needed for paying the whole of Fawcett's expenses, and were able to bank a fund in the name of trustees, of whom I was one, for his next election. 'Fitzmaurice, in accepting my invitation to co-operate with me in this matter, said that he had succeeded in discovering a place to which posts took two days, "wherein I can moralize at leisure on the folly of the leaders of the Liberal party." 'When Fawcett returned to the House, he would not let himself be introduced by the party Whips; but was introduced by me, in conjunction, however, with Playfair, who, besides being one of his most intimate political friends, had been for a short time before the dissolution a member of the Government. On this occasion Fitzmaurice wrote: "Gladstone, I imagine, is the person least pleased at the return of Fawcett, and I should think has been dreaming ever since that Bouverie's turn will come next." Cowen said in the _Newcastle Chronicle_, Fawcett "contributed as much as any man in the late House of Commons to damage the late Government. During the last session he voted in favour of the proposals made by Mr. Gladstone's Government about 160 times, and he voted against them about 180 times. It always struck me that Professor Fawcett's boasted independence partook greatly of crotchety awkwardness." Fawcett's personal popularity was, however, great, not only with the public, but with men who did not share his views and saw much of him in private life, such as the ordinary Cambridge Dons among whom he lived, and whose prejudices upon many points he was continually attacking. Nevertheless he was a popular guest.' Elsewhere, relating how Fawcett disturbed the peace of Mr. Glyn, the ministerial Chief Whip from 1868 onwards. Sir Charles explained that-- 'when he had some mischief brewing late at night, he used to get one of the Junior Whips to give him an arm through the lobby, and as he passed the Senior Whip at the door leading to the members' entrance would say "Good-night, Glyn," as though he were going home to bed.' Mr. Glyn thought "the blind man" had gone to bed, but in reality he had simply passed down to the terrace, and would sit there smoking till the other conspirators saw the moment to go down and fetch him. 'I fear it was by this stratagem that he had helped me to defeat Ayrton's Bill for throwing a piece of the Park into the Kensington Road opposite the Albert Hall.' It is possible that Dilke was a name of even greater horror to the orthodox Whiggish opinion of this date than to the regular adherents of Toryism. The general attitude at this moment towards "the Republican"-- "Citizen Dilke"--is illustrated by an anecdote in the _Reminiscences of Charles Gavard_, who was for many years First Secretary at the French Embassy. He says that when Sir Charles Dilke stood for Chelsea in 1874, he attended several of his meetings-- "partly, I must admit, in the spirit of the Englishman who never missed a performance of van Amburg, the lion-tamer, hoping some day to see him devoured by his lions. On one occasion, at Chelsea Town Hall, I had the honour of leading Lady Dilke on to the platform, and was greeted, with such a round of applause as I am not likely to enjoy again in my life. But, to my horror, I heard the reporters inquiring as to my identity. Fortunately, Sir Charles perceived the peril I was in, and gave them some misleading information. Otherwise, my name might have appeared in the Press, and my diplomatic career have been abruptly ended for figuring in public among the supporters of so hostile an opponent of the form of government prevailing, in the country to which I was accredited." Sir Charles's personal triumph at the polls amid the general rout of his party inevitably enhanced his position in the House. And upon it there followed a wholly different success which established his prestige precisely on the point where it was the fashion to assail it. He had been decried as 'dreary'; yet London suddenly found itself applauding him as a wit. _The Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco_ was published anonymously in March, 1874. To-day the little book is perhaps almost forgotten, although one can still be amused by the story of the Cambridge undergraduate, trained in the fullest faith of free-thinking Radicalism, who finds himself suddenly promoted to the principality of Monaco, and who arrives in his microscopic kingdom only to realize that his monarchical state rests on the support of two pillars--a Jesuit who controls the Church and education, and M. Blanc, who manages the gaming tables. The consequence of Prince Florestan's attempt to put in practice democratic principles where nobody wanted them was wittily and ingeniously thought out, and the tone of subdued irony admirably kept up. The work was characteristically thorough. The 126 functionaries, the 60 soldiers and carbineers, the 150 unpaid diplomatic representatives of Monaco abroad, the Vicar-General, the Treasurer-General, the Honorary Almoner, and all the other "appliances and excrescences of civilized government," which went to make up that "perfection of bureaucracy and red tape in a territory one mile broad and five miles long," were all statistically accurate. Throughout the whole a reference to other monarchies and other swarms of functionaries was delicately implied. The quality of the book is rather that of talk than of writing. It has the dash, the quick turn, and the vivacity of a good improvisation at the dinner-table; and a quotation will illustrate not so much Sir Charles's literary gift as the manner of his talk: "On the 5th of February I reached Nice by the express, and, after reading the telegram which announced the return of Mr. Gladstone by a discerning people as junior colleague to a gin distiller, was presented with an address by the Gambettist mayor at the desire of the legitimist préfêt. The mayor, being a red-hot republican in politics, but a carriage-builder by trade, lectured me on the drawbacks of despotism in his address, but informed me in conversation afterwards that he had had the honour of building a Victoria for Prince Charles Honoré--which was next door to giving me his business card. The address, however, also assumed that the Princes of Monaco were suffered only by Providence to exist in order that the trade of Nice, the nearest large French town, might thrive. "In the evening at four we reached the station at Monaco, which was decked with the white flags of my ancestors. What a pity, was my thought, that M. de Chambord should not be aware that if he would come to stay with me at the castle he would live under the white flag to which he is so much attached all the days of his life. My reception was enthusiastic. The guards, in blue uniforms not unlike the Bavarian, but with tall shakos instead of helmets, and similar to that which during the stoppage of the train at Nice I had rapidly put on, were drawn up in line to the number of thirty-nine--one being in hospital with a wart on his thumb, as M. de Payan told me. What an admirable centralization that such a detail should be known to every member of the administration! Two drummers rolled their drums French fashion. In front of the line were four officers, of whom--one fat; Baron Imberty; the Vicar-General; and Père Pellico of the Jesuits of the Visitation, brother, as I already knew, to the celebrated Italian patriot, Silvio Pellico, of dungeon and spider fame. "'Where is M. Blanc?' I cried to M. de Payan, as we stopped, seeing no one not in uniform or robes. "'M. Blanc,' said M. de Payan severely, 'though a useful subject to Your Highness, is neither a member of the household of Your Highness, a soldier of His army, nor a functionary of His Government. M. Blanc is in the crowd outside'" [Footnote: _Prince Florestan_, p. 23.] Sir Charles sent the manuscript anonymously to Macmillans, with a statement that the work would certainly be a success, and that the author would announce himself on the appearance of the second edition. But the Macmillans, who had published _Greater Britain_, noted that the proposed little book contained several contumelious references to the "lugubrious speeches" of Sir Charles Dilke and his brother, and refused to have anything to do with it. To pacify them, Sir Charles, from behind his mask, had to excise some of the disagreeable things which he had said about himself. Enough was left to convince one egregious London daily paper not only that Matthew Arnold was the author, but that the special object of his new satire was Sir Charles Dilke, "a clever young man who fancies that his prejudices are ideas, and who, if he had the misfortune to be made King, would stir up a revolution in a week." This was the very thing that Sir Charles wanted. Fundamentally the book was chaff--chaff of other people for their estimate of him. Finding himself perpetually under the necessity of explaining that his theoretic preference for Republicanism would not constrain him to upset a monarchy which happened to suit the nation where it existed, he wrote _Prince Florestan_, as though to say: 'This is what you take me for'; and even while it satirized the absurdity of Florestan's court and constitution, the book showed that it would be still more absurd to upset even the most ridiculous Government so long as it suited the people governed. The ascription to Matthew Arnold was frequent. The book came out on March 16th, and within forty-eight hours had been reviewed in five leading papers, and, in all the guessing, no one in print guessed right. The disclosure was made by Lady Dilke, who, entering a friend's drawing- room, caused herself to be announced as "Princess Florestan." Newspapers proclaimed the authorship; a popular edition of the book appeared, with malicious extracts from the various reviews that had been written when the authorship was unknown; and the result was to make Sir Charles, already universally known, now universally the fashion. Though he had faced social ostracism with a courage all the greater in one who enjoyed society, he was unaffectedly glad to take his place again. One shrewd critic wrote that "Florestan's" success "had led some people to discover that they always liked Sir Charles Dilke." "Society" (the writer went on) "still bears Sir Charles a grudge, and would have voted anything known to be his to be dull--like his speeches, as he good-naturedly said of himself. Amused, without knowing who amused them, the few fine people who supply views to the many fine people in need of them prove not ungrateful." The return of a Conservative Government was accompanied by a period of comparative inaction on the part of Sir Charles and his friends; and the activities of the whole Liberal party were in a measure paralyzed by the withdrawal of Mr. Gladstone, not merely from leadership, but almost from the Parliamentary arena. Mr. Chamberlain, who had stood for Parliament and been defeated at Sheffield, wrote that he was engaged in purchasing the Birmingham Gasworks for the Corporation, and did not want to stand again till he had finished his mayoralty.' "It may be well to let the crude attempts at democratic organizations, Radical unions, etc., etc., be disposed of before we talk over our propositions. I do not think the League will do. We must be a new organization, although our experience and acquired information may be useful." 'This was the death-warrant of the Education League, and the birth- certificate of the National Liberal Federation, always privately called by Chamberlain after the name given to it by his enemies, The Caucus.' Sir Charles himself was mainly occupied in Parliament with pioneer work for the extension of the franchise; and by a series of small steps towards electoral reform he obtained ultimately, as a private member in opposition, very considerable results. It was not merely with the right to vote, but with the opportunity that he concerned himself, and his Bill to extend the polling hours till 8 p.m., introduced in the session of 1874, although it was opposed by the Government and rejected on a division, nevertheless became law in a few years, as a measure applying to London first, and then to the whole of the United Kingdom. In the same session he served on a Committee to inquire into the adulteration of food, and obtained through a careful watching of the evidence "a considerable knowledge of the processes of manufacture, which was afterwards useful when I came to be charged with the negotiation of commercial treaties." 'I continued to interest myself in the question of local government, until I had shaped my views into the form of proposals which I was able to place in a Bill when afterwards at the Local Government Board, and to make public in a speech at Halifax in 1885.' He adds: 'In 1874 I voted for Home Rule.' This was always for him a form of local government in its highest sense. He was strong enough to take up a position of detachment, and from that vantage-ground he made at Hammersmith, on September 8th, 1874, an interesting speech, in which he gave free rein to the ironical mood of Prince Florestan. The Tories, he said, came into office with at all events a strong list of names: Mr. Disraeli, Lord Cairns and Mr. Gathorne Hardy could not easily be matched. "On the other hand, our chiefs were nowhere. Mr. Gladstone was in the sulks, and Mr. Forster had been returned by Tory votes at Bradford, than which nothing is more weakening to a Liberal politician. Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Chichester Fortescue had gone to the Whig heaven; and Sir William Harcourt, whose great abilities were beginning to be recognized, was draping himself in the mantle of Lord Palmerston, and looked rather to a distant than to an immediate future. "As though to strengthen the Conservative position, we were at the same time on our side called upon to surrender our parliamentary liberties as independent members to a triumvirate, composed of Mr. Goschen, Lord Hartington, and Mr. Forster--the title of the first being founded upon the fact that he was the intimate friend of Mr. Gladstone, whom the country had just condemned; that of the second, that he was a serious Marquis, the son of a highly respectable Duke; and that of the third, that he had the confidence of gentlemen who sat upon the other side of the House. Believing, as we did, that Mr. Disraeli never made mistakes, it was not easy to foresee the end of his administration. "When people talked about the extinction of the Whigs, it certainly then seemed, on the contrary, that that party, instead of being extinct, had become all-embracing, for one knew nobody who was not a Whig. With a Whig Government in office under Mr. Disraeli, and a disorganized Whig opposition on the other side, there seemed to be in question only persons, and not principles. At the Same time, many Liberals thought that it would be better, as far as principles went, to keep the Conservatives in office, inasmuch as they possessed a majority in the House of Lords, and, being forced by the House of Commons and the country into passing Whig measures, would have to carry them through both Houses and into law, instead of dropping them halfway, as our people had often been compelled to do." In this speech he assailed Mr. Disraeli's Government for legislation which laid restrictions only on "the poor and the lower middle classes, and which put down a servants' betting club, though it had precisely the same rules as prevail at Tattersall's." The Friendly Societies Bill, again, seemed to him "harassing," and drawn on the assumption that working men have not sense enough to investigate for themselves the position of the society which they wish to join. "There cannot be too little interference with the great self-governed popular Societies. I think that this Bill is the thin end of the wedge, that espionage is the first step to control, and that control is a long step on the road which leads to the destruction of the Societies, and to the creation of a single Government provident organization, which I should regard as a great evil." The speech attracted much attention, and Sir Charles was now quoted as one whom men would wish to see in any Liberal Ministry. In the public field, during the spring and summer of 1874, all went well with him. But his personal life during these months was overshadowed by approaching calamity. Lady Dilke was again in ill-health, and was under the presentiment of approaching death. 'Our last happy time was at Paris at Christmas, 1873, on our way home from Monaco, when Gambetta's brightness was answered by our own.' Sir Charles occupied himself with buying land at Broadstairs, where the climate was specially favourable to his wife's health, but as the plans for building on it progressed, he could note that the keenness of her interest 'drooped and died.' After the beginning of August there were no more dinner-parties, and although those who came to the house--of whom Sir William Harcourt was the last to be admitted--found its mistress wearing a gay face, the gloom deepened over her, and she suffered acutely from insomnia. A child was born in September; she lived to see her son, the present Sir Wentworth Dilke, but she never rallied. Death came to her with difficulty, early in the night of September 20th. Sir Charles, overstrained already by long watching, was completely unstrung by the unlooked-for end of the final and terrible vigil. Having summoned his grandmother, Mrs. Chatfield, and asked her to take charge of his house and son--a charge which she fulfilled till her death--he fled from the scene of his suffering, and hid himself in Paris, seeing no one, and holding communication with no one. 'For about a month I think I did not see a letter. I worked steadily at historical work; but I have very little recollection of the time (except by looking at the notebooks which contain the work I did), and even within a few months afterwards was unable to recall it.' All the letters which poured in speak again and again of Lady Dilke's radiant charm. Moret, the Spanish Minister, who had been one of the guests at the last of all her dinner-parties, recalled her as he saw her then, "si belle, si bonne, si souriante, que j'éprouvai moi-même le bonheur qu'elle respirait." 'The beginning of my friendship with Cardinal Manning was his letter to me at this time, in which he said, "We have met only once, and that in public, but it was that meeting which enables me to understand what your affliction is now."' Gambetta wrote to him 'a really beautiful letter ': _"La République Française,_ "16, RUE DU CROISSANT, "PARIS, "_le 2 novembre_, 1874. "MON BIEN CHER AMI, "Plus que jamais permettez-moi de vous donner ce nom, qui, au milieu des terribles épreuves qui vous accablent, n'exprime que bien imparfaitement les sentiments de profond attachement, de volontaire solidarité que je vous ai voués. "Je sais, je mesure l'insuffisance amère de toute parole de consolation pour d'aussi grandes douleurs, d'aussi irréparables pertes. Car même l'impuissance de semblables remèdes qui m'ont empêché de vous écrire plutôt, m'ont arrêté dans le désir de venir près de vous à un moment aussi lugubre pour votre grand coeur. J'ai cru plus digne, plus respectueux de vos angoisses, d'attendre; et je m'en suis remis à votre pénétration naturelle pour comprendre et accepter mon silence. "Aujourd'hui je viens vous dire que le plus haut prix que je puisse obtenir de notre commune affection serait de pouvoir penser que dans la fuite de la vie, je pourrais être assez heureux pour être de quelque utilité dans les actes de votre existence. "Je viendrai vous voir demain mardi à 2 heures et vous répéter de vive-voix ce que je dis ici. Je suis tout entier à vous et de coeur, "Votre ami, "LÉON GAMBETTA." From that day forward Sir Charles met him constantly. 'It would have been difficult to find a better companion at such a moment than one who was so full of interest in life, about things which were absolutely outside my own life, who was surrounded by people who could recall to me no circumstances of pain.' After seeing Gambetta, Sir Charles roused himself to write a reply in the last days of October to Sir William Harcourt, whose sympathy had been expressed with a rare warmth of kindness, and who caused his son--then a boy of eleven, [Footnote: Afterwards the Right Hon. Lewis Harcourt, created Viscount at the end of 1916.]--'to write to me about Katie, who had been kind to him, which was a pretty thought, and proposed that I should go and live with him, which I ultimately did.' 'Some scraps of polities' were added to they letter, in the hope of reviving his interest in life; but Sir Charles at this moment was fully determined to resign his seat, feeling himself unable to face old associates and associations again. His brother Ashton, now busily and successfully at work in directing his newspaper, the _Weekly Dispatch_, begged him at least to consider his constituents. An election caused by the Radical member's retirement would certainly let in a second Tory. Also: "For yourself, I really think, my dear boy, that work is the best remedy, and though you may not think it now, you could not give it up.... It seems selfish to speak of myself, but I should have to give up the _Dispatch_, as the thing is too serious for me to go into without your advice. Do think it over again, Charlie; there is no hurry. I will come next week. We must not make dear Dragon's [Footnote: Mrs. Chatfield, their grandmother.] last days unhappy by wandering over the world year after year. Remember your child, and that you must regard the living as well as the dead. I am sure she would never have let you sacrifice your career. Do think it over again." Sir Charles adds: 'It was, however, Gambetta, I think, that saved me.' In the course of the month (November, 1874) he wrote to his constituents in reply to a resolution sent by them, but could not promise to take his seat during the following session, and said that in any event he should have for a long time to transact business only by letter. 'From this time forward I got rapidly better as far as nervousness at meeting people went, although for many months I was completely changed and out of my proper self.' [Footnote: He, however, began to attend Parliament in the early part of the session of 1875.] He sought escape in travel, starting suddenly in December for Algeria by way of Oran, and pushing through the desert as far as Laghouat and the Mzab. CHAPTER XIII RENEWAL OF ACTIVITY I. On his return from Algeria Sir Charles reached Paris and crossed to England in the last week of January, 1875. 'On reaching London, instead of going to Harcourt's, I had to go first to my own house, for I was sickening with disease, and had, indeed, a curious very slight attack of smallpox, which passed off, however, in about two days, but I had to be isolated for another week. When I became what the doctors called well I moved to Harcourt's; but my hand still shook, and I had contracted a bad habit of counting the beating of my heart, and I was so weak of mind that the slightest act of kindness made me cry. To my grandmother and brother I wrote to ask them to let me go on living with Harcourt for the present, not because I preferred him to them, but because I could not live in my own house, and should have a better chance of sleep if I returned elsewhere at night from the House of Commons.' From this prostration he slowly recovered, occupying himself partly in arranging for the publication by Murray of _Papers of a Critic_, which he describes as 'a reprint of some of my grandfather's articles, with a memoir of him by myself which I had written while in Paris.' The book was well received, and a copy sent to Mr. Disraeli brought this acknowledgment: "2, WHITEHALL GARDENS, "_June 28th_, '75. "DEAR SIR CHARLES, "I am obliged to you for sending me your book; I find it agreeable and amusing. _Belles Lettres_ are now extremely rare, but, I must confess, very refreshing. Your grandfather had a true literary vein, and you have done wisely in collecting his papers. "Very much yours, "B. DISRAELI." This pleasant note was the beginning of an acquaintance, though by a series of chances Sir Charles never met the Tory leader outside Parliament till Lord Beaconsfield was in the last year of his life. When coming through Paris he had, 'of course at once' gone to see Gambetta, whom he found 'privately ridiculing the various suggestions made as to a constitution for his country.' Gambetta suggested as an alternative that they should allow the National Assembly elected after the war-- 'to continue to govern the country without filling up death vacancies, and with the provision that when at last it became reduced to one member, he should take any title or give to any person that he pleased any title, or adopt any form of government that he should think fit!' Shortly after Mr. John Morley went with an introduction from Sir Charles to Gambetta, which nearly miscarried. "I went for two nights" (he wrote) "to Gambetta's office (the office of the _République Française_), and found him 'not come.' As I would not sit up late three nights ... I desisted. Then he wrote me the most courteous letter, making a more sensible appointment at his private quarters. This I kept. He gave a most gracious and even caressing reception, and I was intensely interested in him." On this Sir Charles comments: 'Morley was no doubt told by Gambetta's faithful secretary to call at "2 a.m.," which was a playful way this old gentleman had of choking off callers.' As his health became re-established Sir Charles took an increasing part in political life. The independent man is on much better terms with his party when that party is in opposition; his critical faculty is directed against other men's measures, and if he has force, he easily passes into the position of being consulted. The process was the easier in Sir Charles's case, because the governing group of the Liberal party in Parliament was much disorganized. A great effort was being made to escape from the unsatisfactory relations between Liberals and their Front Bench, which a witty member had defined by saying that the party sat "like Scotch communicants trying aspirants for the ministry of their church by their sermons." 'Fierce fighting was taking place over the choice of a leader of the Liberal party. Up to the day on which there went out the notices for the meeting there was the greatest doubt as to the result.... Sir H. James reported 'Forster very loyal and quite willing to give way. Hartington careless. Mundella, Fawcett, and Trevelyan working hard for Forster, but Adam" (the Chief Whip) "says the great bulk of our men all for Hartington. Richard very strong against Forster, and he represents a great many Nonconformists. Adam says Fawcett is going to Birmingham to-morrow in order to support Forster there, but this I do not believe.' James added that he had ventured to say to Adam that as far as he knew Harcourt was not disposed to take any part, one way or the other, in reference to the matter, which was the case also with himself.' Sir Charles had declined to attend the meeting, but before it took place the matter was arranged. 'At one moment, after a fiasco by Mr. Bright at Birmingham, it had looked as though Forster might win, in spite of Chamberlain and the Nonconformists. Although James professed Harcourt's indifference in the matter, Harcourt and James were both, as a fact, for Hartington. Harcourt had conceived a strong feeling against Fawcett immediately before this, in January, for trying to keep Mr. Gladstone as the leader, a course to which Harcourt was bitterly opposed....' In these years Sir William Harcourt, then a widower devoted to his one boy, stood nearer to Sir Charles than any other of his English friends. Dilke wrote to him: "How little credit you get for your heart! How few people know you have one!" 'In this month of February, 1875,' he goes on to say, 'I revived an acquaintance which had slumbered for thirteen years, but was destined not again to drop.' Account has already been given of Sir Charles's boyish friendship with Emilia Strong, a brilliant girl three years his elder. In 1861 she had married Mark Pattison, the Rector of Lincoln College, and from that time onward Dilke, although he had seen something of the famous scholar, her husband, had scarcely met Mrs. Pattison, as she seldom came to London, and he at that time never went to Oxford. Now, in 1875, she was staying with her husband in Gower Street, under the roof of Sir Charles Newton, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, and was gradually becoming convalescent after a terrible attack of gout, which had left both her arms useless for many months. During this time they were strapped to her sides, and she had to invent a machine to turn over the pages of her book. But the bracing influence of her mind on those around her was unimpaired. In the years which followed, the habit of correspondence grew up between them, strengthening, until at any important crisis in his political life it became natural to him to consult her or take her into his confidence. We have also at this moment reference to the beginnings of an acquaintance with a remarkable opponent. Sir Charles notes that at Easter, 1875, when crossing to France, he met Lord Randolph Churchill, already known to him in the House, who expressed a wish to be presented to Gambetta. The meeting was a success, and Gambetta, delighted with his talk, asked him to breakfast along with Dilke, fixing the hour at noon; but later there came this note: "MON CHER AMI, "Je vous prie en grâce de vouloir bien avancer notre déjeuner au Café Anglais et de prévenir votre ami de ce petit dérangement. L'enterrement d'Edgar Quinet doit avoir lieu à une heure à Montparnasse et je ne peux manquer à cette cérémonie. Donc à demain lundi 11h au Caf. Anglais. "Votre toujours dévoué, "LEON GAMBETTA." At the breakfast talk turned naturally on Quinet, the professor and critic who was exiled after the _coup d'état_, and whom the Third Republic welcomed back to his place on the Extreme Left. This led to mention of the recent occasion when Gambetta had "assisted" at the funeral of another famous Republican exile, Ledru-Rollin, who had died on the last day of 1874. Hereupon-- 'Randolph turned to Gambetta, and in his most apologetic style, which is extremely taking, said: "_Would_ you mind telling me who Ledru- Rollin was?" Gambetta looked him all up and down, as though to say, "What sort of a politician are you, never to have heard of Ledru- Rollin?" and then broke into a laugh, and replied: "Ledru-Rollin was a republican in the days when there were none, so we were bound to give him a first-class funeral."' Sir Charles adds: 'When I was a boy, Hepworth Dixon used to tell a story of how an omnibus driver had nudged him one day when he was sitting on the box- seat, and pointing out Ledru-Rollin in Oxford Street, had said, "See that gentleman? I have heard say how he once was King of France"-- which had been pretty true at the beginning of 1848.' After the Easter recess 'was the moment of the German war scare' of 1875 in France-- 'Bourke' (the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs) 'kept me quiet in the Commons by keeping me informed. He told me of the Queen's letter to the Emperor William the day it went. Gavard, the French Charge d'Affaires, told me that England and Russia received official thanks from France for preventing war by pressure at Berlin. Peace was not in danger.' There is a note referring to conversations held earlier in 1875 with Gambetta, and to other conversations with Bismarck in 1889: 'I had heard a rumour that Thiers had signed secret articles of peace in addition to the public treaty, and further that in these articles there was something about the number of men to be kept under arms by France. In the Arnim trial it came out that one of the despatches concerned Prussian spies in France in 1872, while two of the despatches were "so secret that they could not be even named or catalogued." It was thought that these despatches concerned the secret articles, and it was sought in this way to explain the efforts made by Germany to prevent the fall of Thiers on the ground that he must be kept on his legs for fear a different Government would disregard his secret articles. Bismarck himself, it should be remembered, spoke of the two uncatalogued despatches as "perhaps decisive of the question of peace or war." [Footnote: Secret articles of the Versailles and Frankfort.] When at Friedrichsruh in September, 1889, [Footnote: This was during Sir Charles's visit to Prince Bismarck, described in Chapter L. (Volume II.).] as Bismarck was talking very freely about everything that was past and gone, I asked him about this, and he said that I should agree with him that it was plain that the suggestions as to the limit of the number of men had been wrong, inasmuch as France had repeatedly increased her forces; but the sudden risk of war between France and Germany which arose in 1875, when war was only prevented by the interference of the Russian Emperor, has never been adequately explained. On this point Sir Charles afterwards pencilled in the margin: 'The Prussian Staff wanted war; I doubt whether the old German Emperor intended to permit it.' There follow other references of this year to foreign politics and politicians: 'Don Alfonso at this moment (January, 1875) had become King of Spain. Two years previously Moret told me to a day when Amedeo, whose Ambassador in England he then was, would fall; and on Boxing Day of 1874 in Paris, before I left for Algeria, he recalled to me this prophecy, and told me that Serrano would "bring back" Alfonso that week, and so he did. [Footnote: Marshal Serrano was Minister of War to Queen Isabella II., with whom he had great influence. His opposition to the illegal prorogation of the Cortes led to his imprisonment, but after the revolution of 1868, when Isabella was dethroned and her dynasty proscribed, he became Regent of Spain from 1868 to 1871. He resigned this power when Amedeo I. entered Madrid, but remained President of the Council and Minister of War. On the abdiction of Amedeo and proclamation of a Republic he was again at the head of affairs until Alfonso II., son of Isabella, was "brought back."] 'Sigismund Moret is not only the handsomest and pleasantest of men, but about the cleverest; but at this moment his country offered him no place, and his friends could only regret that he could find nothing better to do than play whist. He afterwards became Prime Minister. 'Alfonso was said to be greatly under the influence at this time of the Duchesse de Sesto--my old friend of 1860, the Duchesse de Morny, lovely of the lovely at that time at Trouville, but afterwards when I saw her at La Bourboule, I think in 1881, become much like other people, and somewhat weighed down by the responsibility of being the mother of that terrible young man "Le petit Duc." 'It was about this time that Rochefort, who had escaped from New Caledonia with Pascal Grousset (died 1909), came to London, and I saw them. I afterwards quarrelled with Rochefort, or rather ceased to see him, for I had seen him only this once, because of his behaviour towards Gambetta, who had been very good to him.' Of Grousset Sir Charles writes: 'This handsome youth had in 1868 just become notorious for his grossly impertinent and indecent reply to the President of the Tribunal at the trial of Prince Peter Bonaparte for shooting Victor Noir. Grousset was the principal witness, and when asked the usual first question of French law, "Witness, are you the husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, ascendant or descendant, or any relation of the prisoner?" replied: "It is impossible to say; Madame Letitia was not particular"--alluding to the mother of Napoleon the Great. 'Grousset had conducted the "Foreign Affairs" of the Commune of Paris, and had been so polite to the representatives of the Embassies that George Sheffield, the private secretary to Lord Lyons, who conducted British affairs at Paris, used to declare that of all the many French Governments he had known the Commune was the only one that knew how to behave itself in society....' But this feeling was not universal. 'Mrs. Wodehouse (formerly Minnie King, an American beauty, and afterwards Lady Anglesey) asked me to breakfast with her to meet Grousset.' (She was receiving the refugee at the request of Madame Novikoff.) 'When her butler, who was an old French gendarme, found who was coming to breakfast, he refused to serve, and a hired waiter had to be called in, the old man saying that he had had charge of Grousset to convey him from Versailles to the hulks before the Communalists had been sent to New Caledonia, and that Grousset had been so impertinent to him that nothing would induce him to wait upon him as a servant. 'This clever boy of all the persons deeply compromised in the Commune was, with one exception, the one who made his peace most rapidly with French society, and in 1890 he was received by the President of the Republic officially as elected Director of the federation of all the Gymnastic Societies of France.' [Footnote: It was perhaps on account of his youthful appearance that Pascal Grousset was described as a boy. He was only two years younger than Sir Charles, and was twenty- six at the time of the Commune. He was later, for twenty years, one of the Deputies for Paris.] II. Sir Charles in this Session contributed to the gaiety of Parliament by his motion upon unreformed Borough Corporations, and, said the newspapers, "kept the House of Commons in a roar." 'But the fact was that the subject was so funny that it was impossible to make a speech about it which would not have been amusing, and Randolph Churchill, who replied to me, was funnier than I was, though he was not equally regardful of the truth.' 'One of the Corporations which I had attacked was that of Woodstock, and Randolph Churchill brought the Prince of Wales down to the House to hear his defence of his constituency. I had said in my speech that the Mayor of Woodstock had been lately fined by his own Bench, he being a publican, for breaking the law in a house the property of the Corporation, and that he had said on that occasion in public court, after hearing the evidence of the police: "I have always had a high respect for the police, but in future I shall have none." Randolph Churchill, answering me, said that I had slightly mistaken the Mayor's words, and that what he had really said was: "I have always had a high respect for the police, but in future I shall have _more_." After this debate was over, Randolph came up to me outside, and said: "I was terrified lest you should have heard anything to-day, but I see you have not." I said: "What?" He said: "He was fined again yesterday."' In the same speech the case of New Romney was described--"the worst of all" the Cinque Ports, where the number of freemen, twenty-one at the passing of the Reform Act (of 1832), had fallen to eight-- "the only town in England in which six gentlemen elected themselves to every office, appointed themselves magistrates, let the whole of the valuable town properties exclusively to themselves, audited their own accounts, and never showed a balance sheet." A cartoon in one of the comic papers displayed one selfsame and highly complacent person, first as "Our Grocer," then as "Our Mayor," then as "The Gentleman who elects our Mayor," "The Gentleman who disposes of our Public Trusts," "The Gentleman who benefits by our Public Trusts, "and "The Committee appointed annually to look into the Accounts of the Gentleman who disposes of our Public Trusts." Another of Sir Charles's topics in 1875 was the working of the Ballot Act. 'A dull speech on a dull subject,' it secured, however, the appointment of a Committee to inquire whether secrecy of voting was not menaced by the form in which ballot papers were issued. But the main object of his activity in the field of electoral reform was redistribution, and this object was the hardest to attain, because more than 400 members of the House sat for constituencies not numerically entitled to representation. The over-represented had a majority of two-thirds in Parliament, and this was a tremendous vested interest to assail. Still, the whole Liberal party was now committed to the support of his principle. The same general support was given to his Bill 'known as the Allotments Extension Bill, to provide for the letting to cottagers of lands held for the benefit of the poor'--a scheme originally proposed by Mill. 'My Parliamentary Session of 1875 was my most successful. 'My motion on Ballot Act, " " " Unreformed Boroughs, " " " Redistribution, " Bill " Allotments, were all four great successes, and so spoken of in all the papers. On the first I got my way. On the second I prepared it for next year, and on the third and fourth I got the support of the whole Liberal party and most of the Press.' There are a good many pleasant stories of what seems to have been a very easy-going Session of Parliament: 'At this time Plimsoll's name was in every mouth, and the only formidable opposition in the House was that which he offered to the Government in the sailors' name. Old Adderley, afterwards Lord Norton, who was at the Board of Trade, assured me, in his solid hatred of the man, that when Plimsoll told the House of Commons that he had stopped a fearful shipwreck by taking a telegram to the Board of Trade at 3 a.m., and ringing for the porter and sending it then and there to the President's house, Plimsoll had neglected to state that this telegram had reached him at five o'clock in the afternoon, and had been kept back by him till the middle of the night for the production of a sensation.... 'The other hero of the Session was Major O'Gorman, a hero of four-and- twenty stone, who on two occasions at least made the House laugh as they never laughed before, nor have laughed since. We used at first to lose him at a quarter to twelve each night, as he had to get to the Charing Cross Hotel, where he lived on the fourth storey, before the lift had gone up for the last time. But later in the Session we managed to keep him till 1.15, for he made the brilliant discovery that the luggage lift, which just suited him, was available till 1.30. 'Some of his finest things are lost in the reports. For example, "Swill the whisky through the streets till the very curs lie prostrate," and this, which, however, in a weakened form, survives in Mr. Lucy's Diary: "Some men who call themselves my constituents tell me that if I oppose this Bill I shall never sit again. Well, _what then?_" (This in a stentorian voice that nearly blew the windows out.) "Athens ostracized Aristides." 'After midnight a postponed Bill is fixed for the next sitting by the words "This day." O'Gorman was opposing and watching such a Bill, and shouted out: "_What_ day?" "This day" was solemnly repeated. Then the puzzled Major, looking at the clock, and bowing to the chair, said: "Mr. Speaker, is it yesterday or is it to-morrow?" I never heard a question more difficult of reply under the circumstances of the case. The best Irish bull uttered within his own hearing was, says Dilke, Sir Patrick O'Brien's defence of Mr. Gladstone addressed to the Irish Nationalists: "The right honourable gentleman has done much for our common country. He has broken down the bridges that divided us." III. When the Session was ended, Sir Charles, according to his custom, set out on travel, following a scheme mapped out far ahead. In December, 1874, he had written to Miss Kate Field, correspondent of the _New York Tribune_ and a friend of Sir Charles and of his first wife, that he would be in America in the following September on a journey round the world, and there accordingly he appeared--'on my way to Japan, China, Java, Singapore, and the Straits of Malacca--taking with me as travelling companion my scheme for a history of the nineteenth century,' a work projected on such ample lines that a note of this year sets down 1899 as the probable date of completion, "if I live so long." The record of this journey is to be found in the additional chapters to _Greater Britain,_ first issued in 1876 as magazine articles, and added to the eighth edition in 1885. He saw Japan before the Satsuma rebellion had broken out in a last attempt to restore the old feudal regime, and he stayed in the Tartar General's _yamen_ at Canton, where at gun-fire he and the other Europeans in the same house were shut up within barred gates, only representatives of the white race among 2,000,000 Chinese. As for the Japanese, he wrote: "I'm in love with this country and people.... The theatre is where I spend all my time.... There alone can you now see the soldiers in masks, ferocious and hairy, with the chain-armour and javelins of fifteen years ago. [Footnote: This was written in 1875.] There alone can you now see the procession of daimios accompanied by two-sworded Samurai, there alone have the true old Japan of the times before this cursed 'New Reform Government' arose." 'My stay at Tokio was at the same moment as that of Shimadzu Suboro, the old Satsuma Chief, uncle and adoptive father to the Satsuma Princes, and last constitutional light of the Feudal party. The "great Marshal" Saigo was commanding in chief the forces, and was in the next year to head the Satsuma rebellion. The Corean Envoys--tall men, with wondrous stars in their hair--were at the capital also, and I met them often.' The beauty of Java, where he stayed at the Governor's Palace at Buitenzorg, charmed him. His journey from the East was very rapid, and January, 1876, saw him back in England. He was in time to address his constituents as usual before the opening of Parliament. The speech contains what he points out as notable in one who 'so seldom spoke upon the Irish question'--an attack on the Coercion Bill of the previous year. It might be better, he said, to govern Ireland on the assumption that human nature is much the same everywhere, and Irishmen under no special bar of incapacity. A majority of the Irish representatives were in favour of Home Rule, and "a reformed dual constitution might possibly be devised which would work fairly well." This was an extreme attitude for those days, and he went on to recommend "the immediate creation of a local elective body, having power to deal with public works and the like"--in short, very much what Mr. Chamberlain advocated in 1885. The speech also protested against Lord Carnarvon's policy as Colonial Minister, "in sending out Mr. Froude to stump South Africa against the local Ministers of the Crown, which was the beginning of all the frightful evils which afflicted South African affairs for the next nine years." The conduct of the Opposition did not escape comment. "The duty of a Liberal leader is to follow his party, and this Lord Hartington has done with exemplary fidelity and unexampled patience." Another phrase noted that the Session of 1875 had left its mark on the House of Commons, "for pillows had been for the first time provided for members who wished to sleep," and the same atmosphere of repose marked the Session of 1876. The Memoir sketches some Parliamentary operations with which Sir Charles was connected: 'Early in this session occurred the introduction of the Royal Titles Bill, conferring the Imperial title upon the Queen, and I wrote for Fawcett a motion for an address to pray the Queen that she would be graciously pleased not to assume any addition to her title in respect of India other than the title of Queen. When the matter came on for discussion Cowen, who had now come into the House for Newcastle, rose to make his first speech. He had succeeded his old father, who was a Whig in politics and an old fogey in appearance, the son being now an ultra-Radical, now a democratic Tory, dressing like a workman, with a black comforter round his neck, and the only wideawake hat at that time known in the House of Commons. The next day Mr. Disraeli said: "I am told that we are blamed for not having put up a Minister to answer Cowen. How could we? I came into the House while he was speaking. I saw a little man with one hand in his pocket, and the other arm raising and waving uncouthly a clenched fist, making what appeared to be a most impassioned oration. But I was in this difficulty. I did not understand a word of it. I turned to my colleagues, and found that they were in the same position. We could not reply to him; we did not understand the tongue in which the speech was delivered." Cowen spoke with a Newcastle burr so strong that it was not easy to follow his words, and it was only by the context that one could guess what he meant, when he used, for example, such a word as "rowing," which he pronounced "woane."... 'I again brought forward my motion with regard to unreformed corporations, with fresh illustrations and new jokes, and the second edition was voted as popular as the first. Corfe Castle, with the Lord High Admiral of the Isle of Purbeck, and a Corporation consisting of one person, was a gem. Sir John Holker, who had to deal with the question for the Government, and who prepared the Royal Commission which sat to consider it in consequence of my motions, laid down some law for my information, which I doubted, and thereon showed to Harcourt, who said: "You will find the Attorney-General's law as bad as might be expected." Holker was personally popular. But he certainly, though a great winner of verdicts from juries, was one of the dullest men who ever addressed the House of Commons.' Although Sir Charles was active and, generally speaking, successful during this session, on two points he found himself without support. One was his opposition to the principle of the Bills dealing with the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, on both of which he "took a highly Conservative tone without securing any assistance from Conservative opinion." But a passage in his diary, March, 1877, describes his action and that of the Liberal party on the "Universities Bill" of that year, and mentions a meeting at which Lord Hartington, Goschen, Harcourt, Fawcett, and Fitzmaurice were present, and at which 'it was decided to support my amendments to the Bill.' [Footnote: See Appendix, p. 200.] His conservatism in academic matters revealed itself fully in 1878, as did that abiding feeling for his old college which characterized every after-- allusion to it or to his University life. The Papal diplomatist, Bishop Bateman, founder of Trinity Hall, was mentioned by Sir Charles with the respect due to a patron saint. No traditions were dearer to him than those of Trinity Hall. Speaking at the College annual dinner, he impressed upon the reforming Fellows their obligation, in the college interests, to retain its exclusive teaching and qualifications for fellowship as laid down by its founder, "for the study of the canon and civil law." [Footnote: A scrap of the menu of the dinner of June 19th, 1878, is preserved, which shows these toasts: '"The Lord Chief Justice of England-- proposed by the Master; responded to by the Lord Chief Justice of England, Sir Alexander Cockburn. Fellows and ex-Fellows--proposed by Sir Charles Dilke, Bart., M.P.; responded to by (Fellows) Professor Fawcett, M.P., (ex-Fellows) R. Romer, Esq. Our Old Blues and Captains of the T.H. Boat and Cricket Clubs--Proposed by Leslie Stephen, Esq."] "It is a good thing for a small college that it should not be merely one of the herd. It is a bad thing that a small college should be driven to teach everything--classics, mathematics, law, theology, medicine, and science, physical and moral--for if it teaches so many things, of necessity, from its poverty in money and in men, it cannot teach all well. A small college can only keep at a high moral and social and intellectual level by having a distinguishing note or accent. In our dear old House we have already in existence by our history and by the Instrument of Foundation that special mark to distinguish us from others which the most advanced University Reformers clamour to see created as regards each College in the University.... "It should keep its distinguishing note, and flourish for another five hundred and twenty-eight years, not only in manners, good-fellowship, and rowing, but as a school of law. "In rowing and law it had fallen off, but good-fellowship still differentiates the College, and prevents it from surrendering to the prevailing tendency to make the colleges in our grand old University pale copies of French _lycées_--all cut on one pattern and administered by schoolmasters, who will rule over dunces of universal acquirements examined to the point of death." The other question on which he failed to secure support was his attack on the Royal Academy: 'What I really wanted was that the Academy should be reminded that they obtained their present magnificent site upon conditions which have not been observed, and that they ought at least to give a free day a week at their exhibition, and give up a portion of their privileges against outsiders.' But the attack, as he admits, was not pressed with spirit for he had only the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and the _Examiner_ with him in the Press. In the House Lord Elcho [Footnote: Better known as Lord Wemyss, long the venerable father of Parliament.] and Mr. George Bentinck 'alone understood the question,' and the latter was too intimate with all the Academy leaders to afford a hope that he would do otherwise than take their side. So, feeling his isolation in the matter, Dilke limited himself to moving for some papers, which were given. By the summer of 1876 Sir Charles was well again: 'I began this year to stay a great deal at Lady Waldegrave's, both at Dudbrook in Essex and at Strawberry Hill; and ultimately I had a room at Strawberry Hill, to which I went backwards and forwards as I chose. The house was extremely pleasant, and so was Fortescue, and he passionately adored his wife, and was afterwards completely broken down and almost killed by her death. Fortescue was my friend; but she was an excellent hostess, and the house was perfectly pleasant, and that in a degree in which no other house of our time has been. The other house which was always named as "the rival establishment," Holland House, I also knew. Some of the same people went there-- Abraham Hayward, commonly called the "Viper," and Charles Villiers, for example. Lady Waldegrave always made everybody feel at home, which Lady Holland did not always do. Those of whom I saw the most this year, in addition to the Strawberry Hill people (who were Harcourt, James, Ayrton, Villiers, Hayward, Dr. Smith the editor of the _Quarterly,_ Henry Reeve the editor of the _Edinburgh,_ the Comte de Paris, and the Due d'Aumale), were Lord Houghton and Mrs. Duncan Stewart. Lord Houghton never met me without referring to a review of his collected works, which appeared in the _Athenaeum_ in the spring, and which had cut the old man to the heart' (because it rated his poetry on a level with that of Eliza Cook). 'One of the most agreeable parties of clever people to which I ever went was a luncheon given by Mrs. Stewart, when she was living a few doors from me in my street, at which I was the only man, the party chiefly consisting of old ladies; indeed, I was by far the youngest person present. Besides Mrs. Stewart herself, there were friends, Lady Hamilton Gordon, Lady Pollock, Lady Hopetoun, Mrs. Frank Hill, Mrs. Oliphant, and Mrs. Lynn Linton--Lady Gordon, a remarkably able woman, one of the bedchamber women of the Queen and a great gossip; Lady Pollock, slow, but full of theatrical anecdote, being stage-mad, as was her husband, old Sir Frederick, the Queen's Remembrancer, father of my Cambridge friend Professor Pollock (now Sir Frederick) and of Walter Pollock, the editor of the _Saturday Review_. A few days later I met Lady Pollock at a great party given by Lord Houghton. Irving was coming down the stairs, at the bottom of which we stood, having Mrs. Singleton (now, 1894, the Ambassadress, Lady Currie) upon his arm. Old Lady Pollock, clutching at my arm, exclaimed: "Who is that woman with Irving?" To which I answered: "Mrs. Singleton, author of _Denzil Place_--Violet Fane." "She won't do him any harm, will she?" was the embarrassing question by which Lady Pollock replied to me.' In this summer Sir Charles gave dinner-parties which included ladies--'a plan which I found so uncomfortable for a politician who had only a grandmother to entertain them that I dropped it after August, 1876.' His dinners were always among the pleasantest in London, but till 1886 they were only dinners of men. Of men friends of this year he specially notes 'Gennadius, the Greek Secretary, afterwards Minister,' with whom his friendship was lifelong. APPENDIX A meeting was held at Devonshire House on March 1st, 1877: 'There were present, besides Lord Hartington and myself, Lowe, Goschen, Harcourt, Fawcett, and Fitzmaurice.--It was decided to support Grant Duff in adding the names of Huxley and Max Müller, and not to support Fitzmaurice in adding Bryce, but to support him in adding Hooker, and Goschen in adding Professor Bartholomew Price to the Oxford Commission, and to support Hartington in moving to add Dr. Bateson, the Master of John's, to the Cambridge Commission. Bouverie was to be proposed by Harcourt, as against Cockburn, for chairman of the Cambridge Commission, because we objected to overworked Judges being on Commissions. The name of Bradley, afterwards Dean of Westminster, was suggested for the Oxford Commission by Lowe, but not supported by the meeting, and it was decided to support my amendments to the Bill. The Commissions as originally suggested were badly composed. The best men suggested were not good--Dr. Bellamy (President of St. John's, Oxford), for example, the wealthiest of all college officials, a precise, old-fashioned, kind-hearted nonentity, a simple tool of more intelligent Conservatives; and Henry Smith, an Irishman of the keenest order of intelligence, ready to give an intellectual assent to the abstract desirability of the best and highest in all things. On another of the names originally suggested I may quote Smith himself, for when Dean Burgon's appointment was attacked in the House of Commons by me and others, Smith, approaching Lord Salisbury at a party, and engaging in conversation upon the matter, said that the reasons for appointing him were overwhelming, at which Lord Salisbury was greatly pleased; when Henry Smith went on: "No such Commission could possibly be complete without its buffoon."' CHAPTER XIV REVIVAL OF THE EASTERN QUESTION Sir Charles at this period of his career was passing from the status of a formidable independent member to that of a recognized force in his party. In May, 1876, he became Chairman of the Elections Committee at the Liberal Central Association, and from that time forward up to 1880 'took a very active part in connection with the choice of candidates.'@@Mr. Joseph Chamberlain had been elected for Birmingham. He was lame from gout, and resented it, saying to Sir Charles 'that it was an illness which should be exclusively reserved by a just Providence for Tories.' On July 8th, 1876, he wrote to Dilke that before coming up to take his seat he had called his friends together and settled a programme and general course of action. "I think there is every chance of our Union being productive of useful practical results, but it is agreed that our arrangements shall remain strictly private for the present. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico._" On August 2nd Sir Charles introduced to Lord Hartington at Devonshire House 'a great private deputation upon the Education Bill from the North Country Liberal Associations, which was in fact the first movement by what was afterwards the National Liberal Federation.' So the "Caucus" began to make itself felt in domestic affairs. Sir Charles notes that he 'for the first time began to be summoned to meetings respecting the course to be taken by the party.' Here already he found that-- 'Mr. Gladstone began, although somewhat ostentatiously proclaiming in public the opposite principle, to interfere a good deal in Hartington's leadership, and even Harcourt, who only a few months before had ridiculed Mr. Gladstone's pretensions in such strong terms, on the rare occasions when he was unable to get his way with Hartington always now went off to Mr. Gladstone, to try to make use of the power of his name.' "Foreign affairs had suddenly risen out of complete obscurity into a position in which they overshadowed all other things, and left home politics in stagnation." [Footnote: Speech at Notting Hill, August, 1876.] These complications were destined to bring Mr. Gladstone back into an activity not merely unimpaired, but redoubled, and to shake the power of Mr. Disraeli to its fall. Sir Charles was, first and foremost, a "good European"; he conceived of Europe as a body politic, bound in honour to regulate its own members. Isolation appeared to him a mere abandonment of the duty of civilized powers to maintain order in the civilized world. Corporate action was to be encouraged, because, in most cases, the mere threat of it would suffice either as between States to prevent wars of aggression, or as between ruler and ruled to assert the ordinary principles of just government. The enforcement of this view might involve its support by force of arms, and he worked all his life for our military preparedness, holding that it was the best guarantee that armed intervention would be unnecessary, as it was also the best guarantee of our own immunity from attack. At this moment "foreign affairs" meant the Eastern Question, in regard to which the future of two nations, Russia and Greece, specially interested him. He was notably a Phil-Hellene, who "dreamed of a new Greece"--a "force of the future instead of a force of the past; a force of trade instead of a force of war; European instead of Asiatic; intensely independent, democratic, maritime." Here, and not in any Slavonic State, did he see the rightful successors to the Ottoman dominion. Towards Russia his feelings were complex: admiration for the people accompanied detestation of the Government, and the unscrupulous power commanding the services of so vast and virile a people always appeared in his eyes as a menace to civilization. Yet in the future of Russia he "firmly believed," and he repeats in speech after speech this creed: "Behind it are ranged the forces of the future." "To compare the Russia of to-day to the Russia that is to come is to compare chaos to the universe." "If by Russia we mean the leading Slavonic power, whether a Russia one and indivisible, or a Slavonian confederation, we mean one of the greatest forces of the future." [Footnote: Speech at Notting Hill, August, 1876.] Sir Charles's speeches, taken in conjunction with the diary, give the story of these Eastern troubles from the outside as well as from the inside. His constituents had little excuse for being carried away by popular cries. In his speech on the last day of the session he advocated the sending of a "strong and efficient man to Constantinople in the name of the Western Powers to carry out that policy of protection of Christian subjects of Turkey which England had intended after the Crimea," [Footnote: _Ibid._] But while condemning with the greatest energy the Turkish barbarities in Bulgaria, he warned his constituents against overlooking atrocities committed elsewhere, "for there was not one pin to choose between Circassian ruffians on the one side and Montenegrin ruffians on the other." To those who "were carried away by their belief that the conflict was one between the present and the past, and between Christianity and Islamism, and declared that the Turks must be driven out of Europe," he pointed out the larger questions at stake. Turning to the Balkan States, he did not believe in a continuous united movement among these "which would suffice to drive the Mohammedan out of Europe." "To allow the Russians to interfere openly" would rouse Austria, a Power which, in spite of the difficulties presented by its internal "differences of creed and hostilities of races," must in the interests of South-Eastern Europe be "bolstered up." In this instance he urged the need for joint action, and laid bare some underlying difficulties awaiting diplomacy. It was a situation complicated by the fact that "this Europe is probably mined beneath our feet with secret treaties." [Footnote: Sir Charles notes later: 'Since the accession of George III. the country had concluded about forty treaties or separate articles of a secret nature which were not communicated to Parliament at the time of their conclusion, and in some instances not at all; but these secret engagements were mostly concluded in anticipation of war, or during war, and ceased to have effect when war was over.'] In his speech of January 15th, 1878, in Kensington, at one of the critical moments of the struggle, he told the whole story, which began in August, 1875, when Mr. Disraeli's Government consented "with reluctance" to take part in sending a European Consular Mission to inquire into disturbances occasioned by Turkish misrule in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Great Britain's reluctance weakened, so Sir Charles thought, the European concert, and the mission resulted only in delusive promises of reform. In the following winter Turkey was increasingly encouraged to lean upon British support in withstanding pressure from the other Powers; and in May, 1876, after disturbances in Bulgaria had been repressed with appalling ferocity, Mr. Disraeli's Cabinet positively refused to join in a demand for certain reforms to be carried out by Turkey under European supervision. 'Our Government had refused to sign the Berlin Memorandum on account of a reference in it to the possible need of taking "efficacious measures" to secure good government in Turkey. 'But' (commented Sir Charles in 1878, making plain exactly what he meant by European intervention) 'it was England who, not shrinking from mere words, but herself proposing deeds, had taken a really "efficacious" part in the "efficacious measures" of 1860, when, after the massacres in the Lebanon, Europe sent Lord Dufferin to Syria with a French armed force--the Powers making that engagement not to accept territory which could also have been made in 1876. In 1860 Lord Dufferin, in the name of Europe, hanged a guilty Pasha and pacified the Lebanon, which to this moment still enjoys, in consequence of European intervention, a better government than the rest of Turkey, and this with the result of an increase of strength to the Turkish, power. Only the obstructiveness of our Government prevented the still more easy pacification of the European provinces of Turkey in 1876, and caused the present war with all its harm to British trade and all its risks to "British interests."' [Footnote: Speech delivered at Kensington on January 15th, 1878.] Holding these views, Sir Charles encouraged Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice to place on the notice paper of the House of Commons a formal resolution of censure on the Government for refusing to join in the Berlin Memorandum without making a counter-proposal of their own. It was believed that Mr. Gladstone approved the course indicated, but he was still in retirement, and not only did Lord Granville and Lord Hartington think that any formal action in the House would be impolitic, but many of the 'peace-at-any- price' Radicals, who regarded Lord Derby's extreme policy of non- intervention with favour, refused to support the proposed censure. The resolution accordingly had to be withdrawn, amid the general disapproval, however, of the Liberal Press. Thus the first attempt at action at once betrayed a profound cleavage of opinion. This was unfortunately only typical of everything which followed in this chapter of events, though the debate which took place towards the end of the Session proved very damaging to the Government. [Footnote: See _Hansard_, cxlii. 22; _Life of Gladstone_, ii, 549; _Life of Granville, ii. 166 and 264, where Lord Ampthill, writing in 1882, expresses the opinion that Lord Derby's policy was most unfortunate.] It was on May 19th, 1876, that the British Government dated their refusal to intervene. As early as June, accounts of what had been done in Bulgaria began to appear in the Press. Mr. Disraeli ridiculed them in the House of Commons, but testimony soon accumulated, and the most important evidence was that of Mr. Eugene Schuyler, then attached to the American Legation at Constantinople. As American Consul at St. Petersburg in 1869-70, he had become acquainted with Sir Charles, and had seen a good deal of him in London during the earlier part of 1875. It was, therefore, to Dilke that Schuyler wrote his account of the massacres at Batak, based upon his visit to the spot, which he found still horrible with unburied corpses; and in August, on the last day of the Session, Dilke, addressing his constituents at Notting Hill, read Schuyler's letter to them. Early in September, 1876, public indignation was set ablaze by Mr. Gladstone's famous pamphlet, which demanded that the Turk should clear out of Bulgaria, "bag and baggage." On the 14th of the same month Mr. Baring's official report confirmed the Schuyler letter, and on the 21st Lord Derby sent a despatch, which, says Sir Charles, 'in the sharpest words ever, I think, used in a despatch, demanded reparation, and the "signal, conspicuous, and exemplary punishment" of Chefket Pasha, director of the Bulgarian massacres.' Meanwhile Servia and Montenegro, feudatory States of the Porte, had gone to war with their overlord; and in order to induce the Turks to grant an armistice, Russia and Austria proposed to England a joint naval demonstration, carried out in the name of Europe, by England and France. Lord Derby proposed instead a conference of Europe to take place at Constantinople, and to this the Powers agreed. But Russia, not contented with this step, presented an ultimatum to Turkey demanding an armistice for Servia, and obtained it on November 1st. Thus, by Lord Derby's action, 'the armistice was refused to Europe and yielded to a Russian ultimatum.' The conference met at Constantinople in December, 1876, and on the 14th Lord Salisbury, who represented England, was advocating the "efficacious measure" of occupying Bulgaria by English troops, and, when this was refused, proposed the employment of Belgians. But-- 'It was now too late. Turkey had been encouraged by us into mobilization. Russia had been thwarted by us into mobilization. The time was past when we might have averted war, might have pacified the East, protected alike the Eastern Christians and "British interests" by a signature.' Replying to a common argument, he said: 'Want of money will not cause Russia to terminate the war. Machiavelli has truly said that nothing is more false than the common belief that money is the sinews of war.' The conference failing, all Ambassadors were withdrawn from the Porte, and Russia continued to parley with the other Powers. 'Early in March, 1877, a draft Protocol regarding the expectation of the Powers with regard to Turkish reforms was handed to Lord Derby, who promised to sign if Russia would promise to disarm.' Russia specified the conditions on which she would 'disarm,' and Lord Derby then signed the Protocol, but added a declaration that his signature should be null unless disarmament followed both in Russia and Turkey. This, in Sir Charles's judgment, was tantamount to a refusal to sign, because Lord Derby must have known that Turkey would never grant, except under coercion, the conditions on which Russia had consented to disarm. "All Turkish promises are of one material-- paper," he said, and in severely criticizing the action of the Government added: "The unreformed state of Turkey is, and will continue to be, the greatest standing menace to the peace of Europe." Further, at the same moment England again separated herself from the other Powers by sending an Ambassador--Mr. Layard--to Constantinople, 'to which the Turks replied: "The Porte is very sensible of this delicate mark of attention."' The effect was to encourage Turkey to count on English support, and Russia, unable to secure concerted action, declared war single-handed. Thus, not only was the result missed which Sir Charles desired and thought possible--namely, the restoration of order by joint action of Europe--but the way was paved for another result which he deplored--the extension of Russia's influence, and even of her territorial sway. As his speeches gave the story of the European position, so his diary provides a commentary on that story from within: 'Things generally were in a disturbed condition at this moment. The Eastern Question, which was to be so prominent for the next four years, had grown critical, and Bourke, the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (afterwards Lord Connemara and Governor of Madras), said to me at the House of Commons: "The one thing that astonishes me is the confidence of people in Lord Derby." Now, Lord Derby was his chief. This proved pretty clearly that Mr. Disraeli was, in fact, his own Foreign Secretary, and had made up his mind that Lord Derby should "go." [Footnote: Lord Derby did not "go" till the spring of 1878.] 'June 28th, 1876, is the date of the first of my letters mentioning the Eastern Question. It is from Auberon Herbert: "We are sure to get into some frightful trouble if Dizzy is to be allowed uninterruptedly to offer what sacrifices he will on the altar of his vanity. You all seem to me to be living in Drowsy Hollow, while Dizzy is consulting his imagination, and Hartington politely bowing. What can you all be doing? Is it the hot weather? Or are all of you secretly pleased at England's 'determined attitude'? Please, dear Neros, cease fiddling for a short time, and let us poor, harmless, innocent-minded country- folk have some assurance that you are not going to fight all Europe.... You sleepy and unfaithful guardians." ... 'Although I was the first politician to make a speech upon the Bulgarian massacres, [Footnote: See reference to Eugene Schuyler's letter in speech of August, 1876, p. 207.] I afterwards refused to follow Mr. Gladstone into what was called the "atrocity agitation," because I feared that we should find ourselves plunged into a war with Turkey in alliance with Russia, of which I should have disapproved.' He subscribed, however, to the funds of those who took charge of the fugitives on both sides. The agitation offended him by its extravagance. "If Gladstone goes on much longer, I shall turn Turk," he wrote to Sir William Harcourt. There was general disquiet in the Liberal party. On October 10th, 1876, Sir William Harcourt wrote: "Things here are in the most damnable mess that politics have ever been in in my time. Gladstone and Dizzy seem to cap one another in folly and in pretence, and I do not know which has made the greatest ass of himself. Blessed are they that hold their tongue and wait to be wise after the event. To this sagacious policy you will see we" (_i.e.,_ the Hartington section) "have adhered, and shall adhere. I had a long letter from Hartington from Constantinople (whither, as you will see, he has prudently retired), full of his usual good sense and caution. I quite concur with him that, though a strong case can be made against the Government for their deliberate _status quo_ policy during the months of June, July, and August, there is little fault to find with what they have been doing since Derby has taken the matter into his own hands in September. There is a decided reaction against Gladstone's agitation. The Brooksite Whigs are furious with him, and so are the commercial gents and the Norwood-Samuda [Footnote: Leading shipowners and Members of Parliament.] lot, whose pecuniary interests are seriously compromised. The Bucks election [Footnote: This by- election, on September 22nd, 1876, was consequent on Mr. Disraeli's acceptance of a Peerage. The Conservative (Hon. T. F. Fremantle) beat the Liberal (Mr. R. Carington, brother to Lord Carrington), but only by 186 votes on a poll of over 5,000.] has a good smell for Dizzy. All the Rothschild tenants voted Tory, though, to save his own skin, Nat. went on Carington's committee. The Rothschilds will never forgive Gladstone and Lowe for the Egyptian business. Chamberlain and Fawcett ... are using the opportunity to demand the demission of Hartington and the return of Gladstone. But you need not ... prepare for extreme measures." By the same post came a letter from Mr. Chamberlain, who declared that he was "not Gladstonian," but considered that-- "After all, he is our best card. You see Forster's speech--trimming as usual, and trying to dish the Radicals by bidding for the Whigs and Moderates. Gladstone is the best answer to this sort of thing, and if he were to come back for a few years he would probably do much for us, and pave the way for more. Lord Hartington ... is away and silent, besides which he is pro-Turk. If Gladstone could be induced formally to resume the reins, it would be almost equivalent to a victory, and would stir what Bright calls 'the masses of my countrymen' to the depths." Sir Charles's own considered opinion was written to Sir William Harcourt on October 16th: "I, as you know, think Hartington the best man for us--the Radicals-- because he is quite fearless, always goes with us when he thinks it safe for the party, and generally judges rightly--or takes the soundest advice on this point. In fact, I don't think he's ever made a mistake at all--as yet; but Chamberlain seems, by a sort of quasi- hereditary Birmingham position, to look at him as Bright used to look at Palmerston. This is serious, because Chamberlain is a strong man and does not easily change, unlike the other member of our triumvirate, Cowen, who is as fickle as the wind, one day Hartington, one day you, one day Gladstone, and never seeming to know even his own mind." Mr. Gladstone's return to leadership was more and more assured, but he would not find his old antagonist face to face with him in the House of Commons. At the close of the Session of 1876 Sir Charles had unknowingly witnessed a great withdrawal. 'On the night of August 11th I had listened to Mr. Disraeli's last speech as a Commoner, and had noticed that on leaving the House in a long white overcoat and dandified lavender kid gloves, leaning on his secretary's arm, he had shaken hands with a good many people, none of whom knew that he was bidding farewell to the House of Commons.' This withdrawal marked no lessening of power. As Sir Charles had perceived, Disraeli was his own Foreign Secretary, and a Foreign Minister's influence gained by being exercised in the House of Lords. Meanwhile, in Gladstone's absence the Liberal party seemed broken and divided beyond hope of recovery. In the country, though the campaign launched by the Bulgarian pamphlet had seemed so immediately effective that a Tory county member said to Mr. Gladstone, "If there were a dissolution now, I should not get a vote," yet the reaction, spoken of in Harcourt's letter to Dilke on October 10th, very quickly developed. Those who supported Mr. Gladstone identified themselves unreservedly with the Slav as against the Turk. But by others the demand for ejection of the Turk, "bag and baggage," from Bulgaria was construed as an invitation for Russia to seize Constantinople, and thus as a direct infringement of British interests in Egypt and the Mediterranean. Lord Beaconsfield skilfully played upon this feeling, and there ensued a condition of affairs in which Mr. Gladstone made triumphal progresses through the north of England, and was hooted weekly in the streets of London. Sir Charles himself was in a great difficulty, being as he says, 'anti- Russian without being for that pro-Turk.' Sharing to the full the general detestation of these massacres, of which the earliest complete exposure had been made public [Footnote: See p. 207, Schuyler's letter.] by him, he held that there ought to be armed intervention. But he knew too much of Russia's action in conquered provinces to feel that the matter could be settled satisfactorily by allowing Russian influence to replace Turkish control. What was more, he knew that in 1870, when Russia repudiated the Black Sea article in the Treaty of Paris, March 30th, 1856, Mr. Gladstone's Government had pressed the Powers of Europe to make general the Tripartite Treaty, April 27th, 1856, 'Our Government (Gladstone-Granville) proposed to answer the Russian Circular by extending the Tripartite Treaty to all the Powers, and it was only Germany's refusal that stopped it.' By this treaty, 'France, Austria, and the United Kingdom bound themselves to consider any breach of the Treaty of Paris, 1856, or any invasion of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, as a _casus belli_.' In other words, the Liberal Government had been anxious in 1870 that all the Powers should guarantee for all time the power of the Turk in its full extension, though Turkish methods were in 1870 and before it no other than they revealed themselves at Batak in 1876. Sir Charles thought that, as Liberals had been precipitate in their desire to guarantee Ottoman integrity in 1870, so now they were precipitate in their Pan-Slavism. Moreover, the vacillation of the Liberal leaders had put a weapon into the hands of the Government. 'Fancy what a temptation to the present Government to publish the despatches,' notes Sir Charles, in comment on Sir William Harcourt's remark 'that the Tripartite Treaty discussion would be a mine of gunpowder to the Liberal Front Bench.' He set forth his position in a speech to his constituents at Kensington on January 9th, 1877. He condemned Lord Derby, who had neither "the energy nor the force of character to fit him for the post of Foreign Secretary," and whose policy had left them at the close of 1876 in "absolute isolation." Yet, "on the other hand, he marvelled to see Radicals, for years the enemies of Russian autocracy, propose the immediate adoption of the policy of Canon Liddon and of the Emperor Alexander." [Footnote: Dr. H. P. Liddon and Dr. Malcolm MacColl were conspicuous as enthusiastic supporters of Mr. Gladstone's campaign.] And he went on to depict what that policy might mean: "The world could not afford to see 120,000,000 of Slavs united under the sceptre of an absolute despot, holding at Constantinople the strongest position in all Europe, stretching from the Adriatic to Kamskatka and the Behring Straits, and holding in Corea the strongest position in the Pacific." Then he recalled the record of "that Power with which the Liberals of England were to strike alliance--an absolute autocracy of the purest type, the Power which crushed Poland, the Power which crushed Hungary for Austria." And by what methods! The long story of violation "both of the public and the moral law" was repeated, with citation of British Ministers who had spoken in fierce condemnation of, Russian methods; the decoration of Mouravief, the "woman-flogging General," was set off against the promotion of Chefket Pasha. He himself had seen in 1869 "long processions of Polish exiles, who were still being sent by hundreds into the solitudes of Siberia." In Turkestan General Kaufmann had ordered a massacre of women and children, and Kaufmann, "loaded with favours by the Emperor Alexander, still ruled in Turkestan." It was a vehement denunciation of the autocracy of Russia, and he notes that he had never before so moved his hearers. To his attack on the Russian Government were added some severe strictures on the barbarities perpetrated by Servians, and by Mr. Gladstone's special favourites, the Montenegrins, inhabitants of "countries whose civilization had not sufficiently progressed to allow of the belief that they were the unselfish champions of an outraged Christianity." Holding these views, and holding them the more strongly because they were the outcome of personal experience and knowledge laboriously acquired, he was in a considerable degree isolated, not only from the Liberal party as a whole, but even from that more intimate organization whose existence was already recognized in the autumn of 1876, when Mr. Knowles asked him to write in the _Nineteenth Century_ on the "New Party." His closest associate, now and henceforward, was Mr. Chamberlain, who in 1877 stayed a great deal in Sloane Street, and Dilke notes that in February of that year he was giving dinners almost every night to introduce the member for Birmingham to London. But the "New Party," when Mr. Knowles made his unsuccessful request, consisted 'of Chamberlain and myself and Cowen in the House of Commons, and Morley outside of it.... As Chamberlain and Cowen failed to agree upon any subject whatever, the House of Commons portion of the party soon dwindled to two leaders, in the persons of Chamberlain and myself, who, however, picked up one faithful follower in Dillwyn. From September, 1876, to April, 1880, there did exist a very real and very influential, but little numerous, party, consisting of Chamberlain and myself, followed blindly by dear old Dillwyn, and supported in the Press by Morley. As Randolph Churchill afterwards said to me, shaking his head over Balfour's desertion: "When you and Chamberlain were together, your party was not too large." He had begun with four (three regular and one half-attached), and found it certainly one, perhaps two, and I sometimes think three, too many, though Wolff indeed followed him almost as steadily as Dillwyn followed us.' For a time the "New Party" consisted of six. Mr. Edmund Dwyer Gray, an Irish Nationalist, owner of the _Freeman's Journal_, was of it, but soon dropped out, and for a time Mr. Burt--Father of the House in 1910--was also included. At the beginning of 1877 summons was sent to a meeting before the opening of Parliament, to which Mr. Chamberlain replied solemnly: "The party will be complete." Further solemnity was added by the holding, at 76, Sloane Street, of a Queen's Speech dinner in due form on the eve of the Session, but-- 'the dinner of six members, which assembled democratically without dressing in order to suit Burt's habits, was not graced by that copy of the Queen's Speech which is sent by Government to the leaders of the regular Opposition.' The "New Party" of 1876-77 differed notably in one respect from the other small and influential group of which it was the forerunner. It had no leader. 'On Saturday, February 17th, Chamberlain dined with the Prince of Wales. In noting the invitation in my diary I put down: "The Prince of Wales has asked Chamberlain to dinner for Saturday. I call this 'nobbling my party.'" But the possessive pronoun with regard to the party was not according to my custom. We always said that the party consisted of three in all--two leaders and a follower--and Dillwyn acknowledged Chamberlain and myself as equal leaders.' 'On July 4th I drove Dillwyn down to Chiswick to the Duke of Devonshire's garden party. The Prince of Wales was there, and gave Dillwyn a very friendly bow, whereupon I asked Dillwyn how he came to know him so well, to which "the party" answered that he had shot pigeons with him; and on my reproaching my old friend for indulging in such sport, he said that he not only shot pigeons, but that the Prince had been so struck with his shooting that he had asked who the old gentleman was "who looked like a Methodist parson and shot like an angel."' At the beginning of 1877, when they were still six, division existed even in that small group on the burning question of the hour. Mr. Cowen was strongly influenced by his intercourse with a settlement of Poles at Newcastle, and-- 'although his anti-Russian views were only the same as my own, yet he allowed them, as I think, without reason, to drive him into a position of support of the Government which from this time forward separated him from the Liberal party.' None of Sir Charles's other colleagues approached the Eastern Question entirely on its own merits as distinct from party. His study of foreign politics had, however, forced him to understand the issues, and thus his position was rendered difficult: 'I was anti-Russian, and in this with Hartington. On the other hand, I was for avowed intervention in the East, and in this more extreme than Mr. Gladstone.' But at the same time his exceptional competence in the discussion brought him steadily to the front. Without any sacrifice of independent judgment he found himself increasingly consulted. His Memoir gives, therefore, an interesting picture of the movement of opinion in the Liberal party. At the beginning of the Session, when it was known that Lord Salisbury had advocated active interference in the name of Europe, Sir Charles found that 'only Harcourt and the Duke of Argyll were for strong action in the sense of coercion of Turkey.' The Duke, however, soon made two converts, and Dilke wrote to his brother on January 6th, 1877: "Lord Granville and Lord Hartington will, I am delighted to say, speak for concerted intervention. The only man who strongly opposed their doing so was Mr. Gladstone, who ran away from his own views." Against this Sir Charles notes later: 'Both at the meeting of Parliament in 1877, and also later on in the Session in the case of his own memorable resolutions.' 'Mr. Gladstone had in private conversation told Harcourt that such a course as European intervention to coerce Turkey "should only be resolved upon after much deliberation." To this Harcourt had retorted: "Well, Mr. Gladstone, if people outside knew what you were saying, they might reflect it was you that hung the bag of powder on the door."' On February 11th Sir Charles noted, 'Harcourt has got frightened and has gone back,' fearing a division in the House of Commons on which Henry Richard and the peace men would either support the Government or abstain from voting, lest intervention should mean war. Thus party feeling fluctuated. On February 16th, 1877, Sir Charles's diary recorded that 'the popular name for our Front Bench with the London mob is "Bag and baggage Billy and his long-eared crew."' This showed that 'in the popular mind the personality of Mr. Gladstone had finally triumphed over that of Hartington.' At this moment Sir Charles's views coincided with those of Lord Hartington to the extent of being anti-Russian, and, as already seen, he was more drawn by personal feeling to him than to any of the various leaders. Mr. Forster and Mr. Goschen seemed to him inclined to what a letter of Harcourt's called "the old facing-both-ways style," and the magic of Mr. Gladstone's personality never exercised its spell on Dilke. But he liked Lord Hartington personally, and liked also Lord Hartington's ally, the Duchess of Manchester, who, he says-- 'used to try very hard to pick up political information for Lord Hartington; but her own strong Conservative prejudices and her want of clearness of head made her by no means a useful guide, and in fact the wonder to me always was to see how Hartington's strong common sense kept him from making the mistakes into which she always tried by her influence to press him.' That was written after an interview which Sir Charles had with her, at her request, on January 8th, 1877. The Duchess had read a report of a speech of his, in which 'I lectured on the Franco-German War, and condemned the taking of territory as bound to lead to further wars.' On February 10th he met her again to discuss the difficulties which were beginning to spring up, since Mr. Gladstone's sudden access of activity, as to the leadership of the party. In this matter Sir Charles kept himself 'absolutely independent, going now with one and now with the other, with mere regard to the opinions which they put forward.... I had a full knowledge of what was going on behind the scenes,' although, because he was not in complete agreement with either party among the Liberal leaders, he 'had not the complete confidence of either side.' This detachment of attitude adds the more weight to the judgment which is passed in the following detailed review of the situation as it was in the spring of 1877: 'At this moment' (February 18th, 1877) 'London was a centre of intrigue. But my interest in the Eastern Question had nothing to do with persons, and was an honest one, and I found myself able to act only with those who had no candidate of their own for the leadership of the party, or who, like Lord Granville, were brought to a similar position by the conflict between party loyalty and a personal affection for Mr. Gladstone, and I was able therefore at this moment to act more steadily with Lord Granville than with any other leading member of the Liberal party. He was jealous of Lord Hartington, but he was loyal to him as the party chief. Towards Mr. Gladstone he was affectionate, but not blind.' [Footnote: Sir Charles summarises here a memorandum he drew for Lord Granville for the debate on February 19th, used then and on several other occasions. He pointed out that the Government policy, since the failure of the Conference, of leaving things alone, was safe for the moment, but it did nothing for the Eastern Christians, gave no satisfaction to the demands made in the name of the Queen by Lord Derby on September 21st, 1876, offered no bridge to Russia for the avoidance of war, and therefore left the Turkish Empire and British interests exposed to the gravest danger. Concerted action was the course Liberals desired.] 'There can be no doubt that many were making use of the Eastern Question for the purpose of advancing their particular views as to the leadership of the party. When men have to use other men as tools for the execution of any plan, it is difficult for them to refrain from that tricky handling of them which is best for the immediate end, but debases both the user and the used. To sway men by knowledge of their weaknesses is the task of a charlatan rather than of a statesman. Mr. Gladstone, with all his inconsistency upon the Eastern Question, and in spite of the fact that he had only just seen evils which had always been there, had that which the others lacked, moral conviction, and Hartington was infected with moral indifferentism. The Conservatives no doubt thought that Mr. Gladstone's attitude was mere emotional facility, a mere exhibition of spasmodic power of transient enthusiasm, an effect rather of temperament than of conviction, and unlikely therefore to produce a continued consequence of action sustained at a high level. The public, however, saw more clearly. Power over the moral fibre of other natures is not given to those whose own nature is wanting in this moral force, and Mr. Gladstone's attitude on the Eastern Question, in spite of his contradictions and of his occasional running away from the consequences of his own acts, was appreciated with accuracy by that large section of the public which ultimately followed him.' To this estimate should be added the record of a talk which passed in June of the same year at a dinner party, where Sir Charles, 'along with Matthew Arnold, Bowen, afterwards Lord of Appeal, and Frederick Pollock,' discussed 'what is known as moral force': 'I upheld the view that to me Gathorne Hardy (although I never agreed in a word which the future Lord Cranbrook said) possessed moral force in the highest degree, but that this moral force was one which I felt had only prejudice behind it. Still to me the intense conviction of the man gave him immense strength, and made him the most really eloquent Englishman to whom I had ever listened. Gladstone, I thought, had moral force, because he believed in the particular thing of which he was speaking at the particular moment at which he spoke. I somewhat differed from the others with regard to Bright, thinking that he was seldom really in earnest, although I admitted that no man gave more strongly the impression of earnestness to his hearers, and therefore no man had "moral force" in a higher degree.... Courtney (who had come in during the autumn of 1876) and Fawcett both have "moral force."' In March, 1877, the last stage was reached in those long-drawn negotiations by which the statesmen of Europe endeavoured to avoid war, and the declaration which Lord Derby attached in the name of England to the Protocol of London was virtually a refusal to assent to coercion of Turkey. Acting as leader of the Opposition, Lord Hartington asked Dilke to 'sketch a vote of censure on the declaration.' In the debate which took place on April 13th (the day after Russia declared war against Turkey)-- 'I spoke at great length, but too late for good reports, and by my "gospel of selfishness" and other similar phrases raised ringing cheers and counter-cheers, which for some time stopped my going on. I felt after this day no longer afraid to stand up to anyone upon the other side, but I noted that if Mr. Disraeli had been still in the House I should not have hoped to have escaped as I did, after saying all I had said of his colleagues in a full house, and coining such a phrase of their proceedings as "gospel of selfishness"; but that which struck me most in the whole debate was above all the want of statesmanlike suggestion.' A week after the declaration of war it seemed all but certain that Great Britain must be drawn into the conflict; and Sir Charles-- 'prepared (on April 20th, 1877) a resolution, which put on record my opinions, and stated that the House regretted the failure of the policy of the Government either to improve the position of Christian subjects of the Porte or to avert war. It also regretted their unwillingness to co-operate with any other of the European Powers.' But the Liberal party as a whole was not able to formulate any such clear conclusion. Within a week Mr. Gladstone had determined to break away from the "upper official circles of Liberalism," and to move a series of Resolutions, which were actually drafted on April 26th, but the existence of which did not become generally known till the 29th. '_29th April_.--Took Chamberlain to a party at Lord Houghton's, where Lord and Lady Salisbury were leading figures, and where was Harcourt, boiling over with rage at Mr. Gladstone, whose Resolutions had just been heard of. Gladstone will very probably split the Liberal party into two factions, but I do not see that he could have avoided doing as he has done. Chamberlain and I and Fawcett must vote with him. Cowen will vote against him, although if principles and not persons were in question he must vote the other way. Gladstone will move a string of resolutions, of which only one will touch the past--namely, one to condemn the Turks for not carrying out the sentences on their officers employed in the Bulgarian massacres. The main one, which touches the future, will, I believe, bind over the Government not to give aid to Turkey. His speech will be very fine.' The "upper official circles" met, and in full conclave decided to separate themselves publicly from Mr. Gladstone. More serious still, this decision to oppose their colleague and quondam leader was communicated to the Press. But on May 5th reconciliation was effected. Concerning this Lord Morley says: "What was asked was that he (Mr. Gladstone) should consent to an amended form of his second resolution, declaring more simply and categorically that the Turk by his misgovernment had lost his claims." Gladstone himself wrote that the change was "little more than nominal." But Sir Charles's Memoir of the time shows at once how far the schism had gone, and also how different a view was taken of the alteration by some of Mr. Gladstone's supporters: 'On May 3rd I noted in my diary: "The Liberal party will next week cease to exist. I have already eighty-eight names of men who will vote with Gladstone, and, the Front Bench having foolishly decided to support the previous question, the party will be equally divided, and Hartington will resign. Gladstone will, I think, refuse to lead. Hartington will be asked to come back, but Goschen's friends may spoil the absolute unanimity of the request, and Hartington then refusing, Goschen would succeed. This seems to be the Goschen intrigue. I am sincerely sorry. The Front Bench people might perfectly well have voted against the 'previous question' on the ground that they support the first resolution, and yet have spoken against Gladstone's later resolutions."' He added later: 'I have still in my possession (1890) the list of the party as made up by me, showing who would have voted with Mr. Gladstone, who would have voted with Lord Hartington, ... and who had stated that they would abstain. The analysis is of interest, as the facts have never been made known.' [Footnote: For analysis see Appendix at end of this chapter, p. 223.] The outcome was a day in which Mr. Gladstone had to sustain singlehanded from half-past four to seven a Parliamentary wrangle of the most embarrassing kind, concerning the alteration of the form (and possibly the substance) of his original motion, and then to speak for another two hours and a half.[Footnote: See _Life of Gladstone_, vol. ii., chap, iv., p. 565.] 'At the last moment Mr. Gladstone executed a sudden change of front, which prevented a break-up of the party, but made his own position somewhat foolish. I was lunching with old Mrs. Duncan Stewart to meet Mrs. Grote and Lady Aberdare, the wife of Mr. Gladstone's former colleague (Bruce, the Home Secretary), when I heard what was to happen. But publicity was only given to the change at the last moment. 'On May 8th I recorded in my diary that "Gladstone's noble delivery of his peroration last night saved the evening from being a complete fiasco, but only just saved it. The Duke of Westminster, who was to have presided at the meeting at St. James's Hall, absented himself on account of the change of front; but the meeting was not told that the third and fourth resolutions were to be withdrawn. Both Gladstone and also the rest of the Front Bench people are in the wrong--he for moving at all in a sense hostile to Lord Hartington unless he meant to go through with the thing, and they for not finding a better way out. Such a way was clear last night. If Hartington had given notice of a direct vote of censure on the new reply to Russia published yesterday, as he might have done consistently with his views, Gladstone could have withdrawn in face of it."' A general note on his personal difficulties follows later: 'In August (1877) I was again embarrassed by my attitude upon the Eastern Question. The fact that, being responsible, we had neglected to be humane, or to be politic, during the previous one-and-twenty years in which we might have taken the lead--might have insisted upon reform in Turkey and fostered the possibilities of self-government in the dependent States--made it difficult to approve the sudden activity which the conduct of the Turks in their straits called forth on the part of many Liberal politicians. Action might doubtless have been taken by us at any time between the Crimean War and the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, but, as the opportunity had been neglected, it was difficult to inaugurate such a policy under pressure of the atrocities agitation.... 'The new position of the Eastern Question, although it did not unite me with Mr. Gladstone, made a political breach between myself and Hartington. He fell more and more under the somewhat stupid influence of his surroundings, and I, holding a position between the two wings of the party, found few with whom I myself agreed. Randolph Churchill... made advances towards me which led to joint action, as will be seen, in 1878. But in the autumn of '77 I was isolated, for Chamberlain went, although with moderation, with Mr. Gladstone's agitation.' APPENDIX 'The division of the party was a very singular one. The Whigs were divided; the Radicals were divided; the wild Irish were divided, for the wild Irish at this particular moment were receiving the Liberal whip, and were, accordingly, on the party lists. On the whole, out of 296 members who were at this moment receiving the Liberal whip, about 110 had pronounced for Mr. Gladstone, and about 110 for Lord Hartington against Mr. Gladstone, the remainder, who included a majority of the Irish, having announced their intention of walking out, or having refused to take sides.... With Lord Hartington and against Mr. Gladstone were, of course, nearly all the Front Bench, even those who at first promised to support Mr. Gladstone having seen fit to change under pressure. One curious fact about my list is the large number of persons at first marked with a single line, as having promised Mr. Gladstone, and afterwards altered to crosses as having yielded under Front-Bench pressure. The Basses were with Lord Hartington; Sir Thomas Bazley, leader of the middle-class Lancashire Whigs, who at first had gone with Mr. Gladstone, had gone over to Lord Hartington. The Beaumonts were with Lord Hartington, as were the Brasseys. The two Brights, John and Jacob, who at first had been expected to support Mr. Gladstone, had finally decided, under peace influences, to support Lord Hartington, on the ground that his policy was less likely than that of Mr. Gladstone to bring about an armed intervention. Campbell-Bannerman was frankly with Lord Hartington from the first; and Lord Frederick and Lord Edward Cavendish went with their brother, although Lord Frederick Cavendish was one of Mr. Gladstone's dearest friends. Childers knew no doubts, but Joe Cowen's support of Hartington was more peculiar. Peace men, like Sir Wilfrid Lawson, who disapproved the Crimean War, were perhaps in their right place in supporting Lord Hartington's opposition to Mr. Gladstone's resolutions; but Cowen and his set, such as Norwood and Leatham, went with Lord Hartington chiefly, I think, on account of their bitter personal hatred for Mr. Gladstone. J. K. Cross, afterwards to be Under-Secretary of State for India, went with Hartington, against our expectation; but the joint weight of Devonshire influence and the Brights was too much for Lancashire. Cowper Temple, de Grey (afterwards lady Ripon), and Grant Duff were with Lord Hartington, as was to be expected. Ellice, and Evans of Derbyshire, representative Whigs, separated themselves from such other ordinary Whigs as Leveson-Gower and Young, and went with Hartington. Fitzmaurice separated himself from Fawcett and me and Chamberlain and Courtney, and pronounced, after some hesitation, for Hartington. W. E. Forster, the two Goldsmids, Goschen, Harcourt, and Hayter, were, of course, with Hartington, as was also Herschell. Sir Henry James could no more be expected to separate himself from Hartington than could Nigel Kingscote, Knatchbull-Hugessen, or Lord Kensington, the Second Whip.... Stansfeld supported Hartington, as did very naturally Sir N. de Rothschild (afterwards Lord Rothschild), the Marquis of Stafford, Lord Tavistock, and Mr. Roebuck (who, oddly enough, received our whip, though he never voted with us unless we went wrong). Trevelyan went with Hartington--a thing which had been less expected than the support of Hartington by Mr. Villiers, by Mr. Whitbread, and by Walter of the _Times_.... Mr. Biggar characteristically stated to various people that he should vote against Hartington, for Hartington, and not at all.... Mr. Butt from the first declared that he should not compromise his party by taking part in the division.... Parnell, like Butt, from the first said that he should abstain.... P. J. Smyth, the orator of the Irish party, or who might perhaps rather be described as forming a party in himself, for he was not a Home Ruler, but a Repealer, also, after at first intending to support Mr. Gladstone, decided not to vote.' CHAPTER XV HOME POLITICS AND PERSONAL SURROUNDINGS In a week spent in Paris at the end of 1876 Sir Charles stayed with Gambetta, and took occasion to bring about a meeting between him and Sir William and Lady Harcourt, who were also in Paris. With Sir William Harcourt was his son and inseparable companion Mr. Lewis Harcourt, who recalls a day when Sir Charles said to him: "Now, Loulou, I want you to come and have lunch with me by yourself; I'm not asking your father and mother to-day." He remembers his pride in going off to the Café Anglais, where they were met by a man with a big black beard. "This, Loulou, is Monsieur Gambetta." The two men talked, and the boy listened, as he was well used to do, for in those days he constantly "ran about beside his father like a little dog." After lunch they went for a drive, and still the men talked, and Gambetta pointed to the window from which he had proclaimed the Republic, and Dilke showed where he had lain for half a day while the French troops were besieging the French of Paris. The boy listened eagerly--to understand, years after, how the whole drive had been planned for his edification and delight. Since August, 1876, Gambetta had been talking of a visit, proposing, says Sir Charles, to "come to me in town, and probably bring Challemel-Lacour also to 76, Sloane Street." The visit was to be purely private and social; "he will receive no deputations, no addresses, and will visit no provincial towns." 'It was in 1876 that he sent to me a certain Gérard, who became French reader to the Empress Augusta of Germany, and it is supposed that the somewhat brilliant volume called _The Society of Berlin_, long afterwards published under the name of _Count Paul Vasili_ by Madame Adam (although not the later volumes of the same series, which were by Vandam), was from Gérard's pen. Gambetta, when he came to power as Prime Minister, appointed Gérard, who was then in the Legation at Washington, his private secretary, Georges Pallain being the second, and Joseph Reinach the third. But Pallain and Reinach, in fact, exercised the functions, because Gambetta fell before Gérard arrived. Gérard is now (1909) an Ambassador.' Just before Dilke's visit to Gambetta in the spring of 1877 another indication of his popularity in France occurred. 'Gavard had come to me from the French Embassy to ask me whether I should like to go to Paris with Sir Louis Mallet to arrange a new French Treaty, as "his Government would like me."' The proposal fell through. As Sir Charles said, 'the Government could not well, I think, have sent two Liberals at the head of the Commission.' Mallet 'was a very experienced official, not, however, very successful at the Board of Trade, and greatly given to grumble and growl. He held the mildly reciprocitarian views in which he followed Mill and expanded Cobden's opinions, and was thought by us to be the author of the _Letters of a Disciple of Richard Cobden_, the circulation of which by the Cobden Club, at his own request, nearly destroyed that institution. He afterwards left the Board of Trade for the India Office, where he became permanent Under-Secretary of State, on which occasion Grant Duff said, "Mallet will be happy now. He will have _two_ worlds to despair of;" for he generally began each sentence with the words, "I despair," uttered in a deep voice.' On April 10th, 1877, just before the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, which seemed as if it might involve all the Great Powers, is this entry of a dinner with the French Minister: 'Went to dine with Gavard, meeting his second and third secretaries, the Italian first secretary, the Dutch Minister (Baron de Bylandt), the Belgian Minister (Solvyns), and "The Viper" (alias Abraham Hayward, Q.C.). Cypher telegrams poured in all through dinner, and portended no good to the peace of Europe. It was, however, a pleasant dinner, in which Hayward and Solvyns had most of the talk to themselves, but made it good talk. Gavard was afterwards accused by the Republican party of having conspired against them, which for his friends seemed always to be a statement in the nature of a joke. I once asked Gambetta if he seriously believed that Gavard had conspired, at which Gambetta shook with laughter in his jovial way, but added that it was absolutely necessary to pretend he had, for other people had conspired in the Embassy, and the head man (in the absence of an Ambassador) must be held responsible in such a case.' Another diplomatist whom Sir Charles met in the same month was the Comte de Montgélas, first secretary to the Austrian Embassy: '... A man who played a great part at this time, belonging to a Bavarian family which had furnished a distinguished politician to the Congress of Vienna. He went everywhere, knew everyone, was clever, showy, talkative; but after being one of the leading exponents of the Beaconsfield policy, he was suddenly dismissed by his Government, ... and when, many years afterwards, I again saw him, he had become a servant of the British North Borneo Company. I believe he was too friendly to Bismarck to please Beust (then Austrian Ambassador in London).' He tells also the story of a 'King-maker': 'The Portuguese Minister in 1876 was the old Duc de Saldanha. This was the man who some years previously, at the age of eighty, being dissatisfied with the state of things in Lisbon, had taken the steamer from Southampton, and, though he was at the time Minister in London, landed at Lisbon, put himself at the head of the Guards, marched on the palace, locked up the King, turned out the Ministers, put in his friends, released the King, and returned by the next steamer to his legation.' Here too is gossip from Berlin: 'On June 15th, 1877, I breakfasted with Goschen to meet Lord Odo Russell, who was most amusing. He told us that, Bismarck being ill, the Chancellor's temper was so bad as to make him "impossible for his family, his subordinates, and even his Sovereign." He said that Bismarck hates the Empress Augusta with so deadly a hatred as to have lately said to him: "I am not Foreign Secretary. My master's Foreign Secretary is the Empress, whose Foreign Secretary is the French Ambassador, whose Foreign Secretary is the General of the Jesuits."... 'At this time General Grant came to London, and, as I had known him at Washington and he had liked me there, I had to go about a good deal to meet him at his wish, and he also dined with me on June 10th, when I invited him to choose his own party. He knew, however, so few men in London that I had to suggest men to him, and asked him whether he would like to meet Butt as the leader of the Irish party. He said he should, but was very silent all through dinner and until he had begun the second of two big cigars. Then, as usual with him, he began to thaw under the influence of tobacco, and whispered to me--when Butt was talking very pleasantly under the influence of something besides tobacco, and with his enormous, perfectly round face assuming, as it always did after dinner, the appearance of the harvest moon--"Is he a Papist?" to which I replied "No"; whereupon Grant became friendly to him. General Grant's chief weakness, unless that position be assigned to his cigars, was his detestation of the Roman Catholics.' Many political personages are sketched in passing reference. Here is Roebuck, who in his fierce prime had been known as 'Tear 'em': 'The famous orator and Radical of past days was now a little, shrivelled-up old man, but he was still able to play a great part in the House of Commons, although entirely decayed in mind. His vinegary hatred of Mr. Gladstone, and of the Liberal party generally, uttered from the Liberal side in a piercing treble, was destined to be cheered to the echo for a short time from the Tory benches, and Roebuck, later than this, saw himself made a Privy Councillor by Lord Beaconsfield.' In January, 1877, is this reference to a force of the future: 'Randolph Churchill and Drummond Wolff to dinner; amusing in the style of Robert Macaire and his man.' Among more disciplined sections of the Tory party Sir Charles had many friends. One of them, a social figure of great charm and distinction, was Lord Barrington, 'who used, when Mr. Disraeli was leader of the House of Commons, to keep for him the notes which have to be kept by the Prime Minister for the Queen.... Barrington showed me his one night; it began: "Lord Barrington presents his humble duty to your