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
*** 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 Majesty, and begs to
inform your Majesty that..." The Queen in no way showed her
favouritism to Mr. Disraeli more than in excusing him from the
performance of this tiresome duty, which, however, had the one
advantage of giving Mr. Gladstone in his administration something
quiet to do during exciting divisions such as those on Bradlaugh....
'Lady Waldegrave pressed me to go to Strawberry Hill on a particular
Saturday in the month--the only one, I think, on which, as a fact, I
did not go--to meet the Prince of Wales, but as she playfully took me
to task at the same time for not attending levees, I connected the two
things, and thought she had been asked to speak to me, and declined. I
told her that I had left off going to levees in 1865, before I left
Cambridge, for no reason except that they bored me; and that if I were
suddenly to go, people would think that I had changed my views, and
wished it to be known that I had changed them, for they thought that
my not going was connected with my opinions, which, however, it was
not.'
There is a note early in this year:
'I was engaged at this moment on an attempt to form a circle of
friends who would be superior, from the existence with them of a
standpoint, to the mere ordinary political world, and I began doing my
best to meet frequently those whom I most liked--John Morley, Dillwyn,
Leonard Courtney, and Fitzmaurice, prominently among the politicians;
and Burton (Director of the National Gallery), Minto, and Joseph
Knight, prominently among the artists and men of letters. All these
were men with something noble in their natures, or something delicate
and beautiful, full of sterling qualities.'
Minto was the well-known man of letters. Joseph Knight, for many years
dramatic critic of the Athenaeum, and, later, editor of _Notes and
Queries_, was perhaps the best known and most beloved of Bohemians, a
pillar of the Garrick Club, and one of the men to whose tongue came
ceaselessly apt and unexpected quotations from Shakespeare. He had the
same passion as old Mr. Dilke for accumulating books, and like him, too,
was a living catalogue to his own library, or libraries, for he
accumulated and sold two in his lifetime.
Another man of letters needs no introduction:
'A wreck of glasses attests the presence of Swinburne. He compared
himself to Dante; repeatedly named himself with Shelley and Dante, to
the exclusion of all other poets; assured me that he was a great man
only because he had been properly flogged at Eton, the last time for
reading _The Scarlet Letter_ when he should have been reading Greek;
confessed to never having read Helvétius, though he talked of Diderot
and Rousseau, and finally informed me that two glasses of green
Chartreuse were a perfect antidote to one of yellow, or two of yellow
to one of green. It was immediately after this that Theodore Watts-
Dunton took charge of him and reduced him to absolute respectability.'
Sir Charles tells stories of a remarkable political and literary
personage.
'Lord Houghton's anecdotes were rendered good by the remarkable people
that he had known.... He once about this time said to me: "I have
known everyone in the present century that was worth knowing." With a
little doubt in my mind, I murmured, "Napoleon Bonaparte?" "I was
taken to Elba when I was a boy," said Houghton instantly. I thought
his recollections of the first Emperor apocryphal. There was, however,
a chance that the father--who was in Italy--did take the child to
Elba.'
Another story, of which Lord Houghton was not the narrator, but the
subject, came to Sir Charles during a party at Lady Pollock's, and
concerned the dinner which had preceded the party.
'It had been at seven o'clock in honour of Tennyson, who would not
dine at any other hour, and Tennyson sat on one side of the hostess,
and Lord Houghton on the other; and the latter was cross at being made
to dine at 7, preferring to dine at 8.30, and sup, after dinner, at
11. The conversation turned on a poem which had been written by
Tennyson in his youth, and Tennyson observed "I have not even a copy
myself--no one has it." To which Lord Houghton answered: "I have one.
I have copies of all the rubbish you ever wrote."--A pause.--"When you
are dead I mean to publish them all. It will make my fortune and
destroy your reputation." After this Tennyson was heard to murmur,
"Beast!" It must have been a real pleasure to him to find himself
survive his brother poet.
'On the same evening I heard a story (probably a well-known one, but
certainly good) of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon's body; how the
Government of the day wrote to the Duke to tell him they had agreed to
let the French transport the corpse from St. Helena, the Duke being in
Opposition at the time; how the answer ran: "F.-M. the Duke of
Wellington presents his compliments to H.M.'s Ministers. If they wish
to know F.-M. the Duke of Wellington's opinion as on a matter of
public policy, he must decline to give one. If, however, they wish
only to consult him as a private individual, F.-M. the Duke of
Wellington has no hesitation in saying that he does not care one
twopenny damn what becomes of the ashes of Napoleon Buonaparte."'
Sir Charles had always many friends among artists, and his weekly visit to
the National Gallery was rarely intermitted by him even when in office. To
the end of his life he maintained the habit of going there whenever he
could make time, and always inspecting each new purchase. He kept in
touch, too, regularly with the art of his own day, and records his sight
of the first exhibition in the still unfinished Grosvenor Gallery. The
exhibition did not please him as a whole, though he admired not only
Burne-Jones's "Days of Creation," but a picture called "Passing Days,"
also allegorical, the work of Burne-Jones's disciple, Mr. Strudwick. His
taste in art was always personal; Velasquez, the painters' painter, made
no appeal to him. He worshipped Perugino and Bellini, rating "The Doge"
among the masterpieces of the world; while Raphael had for him degenerated
from his master's (Perugino's) perfection into mere expressionless beauty.
His appreciations were made with great force and originality, and an old
Academician who had accompanied him round galleries once said to the
second Lady Dilke (herself a most authoritative judge of painting): "It is
always interesting to see what a man like that will admire."
Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Charles's frequent guest at 76, Sloane Street, was
usually his companion in picture-seeing. It is also recorded that in the
spring of this year Dilke took his friend, 'at an unearthly hour for one
of his lazy habits,' to see the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race.
In the matter of music his preferences were no less emphatic, as witness
this entry:
'On May 29th I dined with a sister of Edward Levy Lawson, married to a
German who was Rubinstein's great friend; and not only Rubinstein, but
Joachim, played to the guests. Mrs. Bourke, a sister-in-law of Lord
Mayo, was always asked everywhere in London where Joachim was meant to
play, inasmuch as she was his favourite accompanist among amateurs.
The modesty of the great man led him after dinner, once when I was
dining with the Mitfords, when he knew that his time had come, to turn
to Mrs. Bourke, who was famous only as shining in his reflected light,
and say: "Mrs. Bourke, won't you play us something, and I will just
come in with my fiddle?" Rubinstein's playing I never liked. To me he
seemed only the most violent of all the piano-bangers of the world;
but he was literally worshipped by his admirers, and was grand to look
at--as fine as Beethoven must have been.'
Early in March of this year occurred the death of George Odger. The
working class of London decided to show their great respect by giving him
such a funeral ceremony as is rare in England, and Sir Charles walked
bareheaded through the streets with the great procession that accompanied
the body from the house in High Street, St. Giles's, all the long miles to
Brompton Cemetery.
A shrewd observer of Parliaments wrote of Sir Charles at this time:
"There is no more popular man in the House of Commons than he who
seven years ago" (it was only five) "was hooted and howled at, and was
for many succeeding months the mark of contumely and scorn in all
well-conducted journals."
On this statement Sir Charles's diary affords a commentary:
'At this time (April, 1877) there occurred some discussion between
Chamberlain and me as to what should be our attitude in the event of
the formation of a Liberal Government, and he was willing to accept
office other than Cabinet office, provided that it was office such as
to give him the representation of his department in the House of
Commons. Chamberlain and I found that we could exercise much power
through the Executive Committee of the Liberal Central Association,
which was a new body which at this time managed the whole of the
electoral affairs of the party. It comprised the two Whips _ex-
officio_--the Right Hon. W. P. Adam, and Lord Kensington; and among
the other seven members, Chamberlain and I represented the Radicals,
and communicated with the union of Liberal associations commonly known
as the Birmingham Caucus. Of the others Waddy was there to represent
the Methodists; C. C. Cotes [Footnote: M.P. for Shrewsbury. He was a
Lord of the Treasury and one of the Whips in Mr. Gladstone's second
Government.] and Sir Henry James were there chiefly as amateur whips
fond of electoral work; Lord Frederick Cavendish, to represent his
brother, the leader of the party; and Whitbread, to strengthen the
Whig influence.'
Sir Charles notes here that on June 29th, when he was to second, as usual,
Mr. Trevelyan's annual motion concerning franchise and redistribution, he
'had a conference with Chamberlain on the question whether we could
possibly get together a small knot of young peers to help us in the
House of Lords. Rosebery seemed the only one that we could find worth
thinking of, and we had him to dinner, and went to stay with him, and
generally tried to join forces, but without any very marked effect.'
Dilke and Chamberlain also sounded the Home Rulers to see if they could
find any basis of co-operation; and about this date Sir Charles, with Lord
and Lady Francis Conyngham and Butt, and 'in their sitting-room, full of
perennial clouds of smoke,' where a captive nightingale sang ('thinking
the gas the moon unless he took Butt's face for that luminary of the
heavens'), settled with the Irish leader that in following years they
should amend Mr. Trevelyan's franchise resolution by moving for the
extension of the franchise in counties throughout the United Kingdom; not
even Radicals had previously proposed to enlarge the electorate in
Ireland.
But in these days the Irish party were beginning to apply and develop that
use of Parliamentary forms for obstructive purposes which had been first
systematically attempted by the "Colonels" in opposition to Mr. Cardwell's
Bill for abolishing purchase in the Army, and Liberals were a little
scandalized by their allies. In the close of July Sir John Lubbock, then a
Liberal, 'foreshadowed his future Unionism by observing that "the
obstructive Irish were the Bashi Bazouks, who did more harm to us by their
atrocities than good by their fighting."' A couple of days later, when
Liberals supported an Irish amendment, Dilke himself agreed with Mr.
Rylands's pun that "they would have had a bigger vote if it hadn't been
Biggar." Upon this matter Sir Charles's attitude was naturally affected by
that of Butt, in whose company he delighted. The great advocate believed
in his own power to effect by eloquence and reasoned argument that change
of mind in the British House of Commons which five-and-twenty years'
experience of Ireland had wrought in himself since the days when he
opposed O'Connell on Repeal, and this led him to resent the methods of
unreason. Mr. Parnell, who never believed that England was open to reason
in the matter of Ireland, was only beginning to impress his personality on
the House; there is but one incidental mention of his name in the Memoir
for 1877.
But notwithstanding all the claims of home politics, in Sir Charles's
judgment every statesman had, under existing conditions, to study the
details of modern warfare, and he kept closely in touch with naval
armament:
'On February 24th I suddenly went down to Portsmouth to go over the
dockyard and see the ships building there, taking letters from
Childers and from Sir Edward Reed to Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock,
the Arctic explorer (Superintendent), and to Mr. Robinson, the Chief
Constructor. I went over the _Inflexible_, the _Thunderer_, and the
_Glatton_, which were lighted up for me. Noting the number of sets of
engines, and the number of the separate watertight compartments of the
_Inflexible_, I wrote: "All these extremely complicated arrangements
are handed over to a captain, of whom ... is a favourable example, and
to engineers who are denied their due rank in command."'
Nearly thirty years later the necessary reform which the last words
indicate was carried out by Lord Fisher.
CHAPTER XVI
THE EASTERN QUESTION--TREATY OF SAN STEFANO AND CONGRESS OF BERLIN
At the beginning of 1878 Parliament was summoned a month earlier than
usual to tranquillize public feeling--a result not thereby attained, for
the Russians, now completely victorious, were but a short distance from
Constantinople.
Sir Charles returned from Toulon, 'breakfasting with Gambetta on the 14th
January,' and on the 15th delivered to his constituents the speech already
quoted, which gave a summary of the events leading up to the war, his
judgment of the facts as they existed at the time of his speaking being
that the Government's whole policy was "isolated, undignified,
inconsistent, unsafe." [Footnote: See p. 205]
"We stand alone, absolutely alone, in face of terms of peace which we
dislike, but can't resist. Turkey is crushed, about whose integrity
the Tory party raved. Russian influence will have risen and English
influence fallen in the East. Greece, the anti-Russian friend of
England, is not to gain. Servia and Montenegro, the tools of Russia,
are to be rewarded. Bulgaria is to owe its freedom, not to Europe, but
to Russia."
So much was accomplished fact. It had still to be decided how much farther
Russia should be allowed to push her advantage. Upon this he said,
speaking "as a European Liberal,"
'I agree with what the first Napoleon said, in those St. Helena days
when he was acting Liberalism for the benefit of his historic
character and of his line, that "it is necessary to set up a
guaranteed kingdom, formed of Constantinople and its provinces, to
serve as a barrier against Russia." The open question for discussion
is whether the present Turkey serves the purpose....
'Were the choice between Russia at Constantinople and Turkey at
Constantinople, I should prefer the latter. The Turkish is in ordinary
times a less stifling despotism than the Russian....
'The Turks let any man go to any church and read any book, the
Russians do not, and in such a position of power as Constantinople I
should prefer the Turk if, as I do not think, the choice lay only
there.'
Where else, then, did the choice lie? The answer is that Dilke, in his own
words, "dreamed of a new Greece." He spoke of the lands then blighted by
the Sultan's Government--of "rose-clad Roumelia and glorious Crete"--of
countries held back by Turkish incompetence, that were by Nature
incredibly rich--"the choicest parts of Europe, perhaps of the world."
"The Greek kingdom is a failure, we are told. Greece, liberated by the
wise foresight of Mr. Canning, but left, on his ill-timed death,
without Thessaly, Epirus, Crete, has been starved and shorn by the
Great Powers. As once said Lafayette, "the greater part of Greece was
left out of Greece." What kind of Greece is a Greece which does not
include Lemnos, Lesbos, or Mitylene, Chios, Mount Olympus, Mount Ossa,
and Mount Athos? Not only the larger part, but the most Greek part of
Greece, was omitted from the Hellenic kingdom. Crete and the other
islands, the coast of Thrace, and the Greek colony at Constantinople,
are the Greek Greece indeed, for Continental Greece within the limits
of the kingdom is by race half Slav and half Albanian. We must not,
however, attach too much importance to this fact, for in all times the
Greeks have been a little people, grafting themselves on to various
barbaric stocks. Race is a small thing by the side of national spirit,
and in national spirit the Greeks are as little Slav as the Italians
are Teutonic. Even the corrupting influence of long slavery--and it
was deep indeed--had not touched this spirit, and the very thieves and
robbers of the hills of Greece made for themselves in Byron's days a
glorious name in history. I do not think that Greece has failed. I
believe in Greece, believe In the ultimate replacement of the Turkish
State by powerful and progressive Greece, attached in friendship to
France and England, her creators--an outpost of Western Europe in the
East; and I think the day will come when even Homer's city may once
more be Greek. Those who do not wish to see Slavonic claims pushed
much farther than justice needs should speak their word on behalf of
Greece."
From this ideal he never swerved, and the authority which he possessed in
European politics helped to keep it present before the mind of Europe.
Greece knew her friend, and after his death the Municipality of Athens
gave his name--_hodos Dilke_--to a fine street in the true mother city of
Hellas. [Footnote: "The name of Sir Charles Dilke is more highly prized in
Greece than that of any living Englishman," wrote M. Zinopoulos, General
Secretary to the Ministry of the Interior in Greece. "This feeling still
survived in 1887, when we went to Athens," adds Sir Charles's note.] He
never lived to see Hellenic government extend itself over Turkish fiefs,
except in that poor strip of northern territory which, thanks greatly to
his exertions, was secured for Greece in 1881. But before this memorial of
him could be completed, while those who worked on it were still searching
among his papers to reconstitute the projects he had shaped, came the
realization of some of his premonitions, and the end of Turkish sway in
"the most Greek parts of Greece."
'It was a good speech so far as concerned the position of Russia, of
Turkey, and of the Opposition, and in its protest against Manchester
Doctrine and in favour of a broader view of foreign policy, but it
proposed the annexation of Egypt, a view from which I soon afterwards
drew back, and which I did not hold at the time at which it became
popular some years later on.'
Upon the main issue which in 1878 lay before the mind of Europe, he was
for a partition of the Turkish Empire, though upon condition of keeping
Constantinople secured to the Turk. But as to the question of England's
going to war, he asked:
"For what are we to fight? Against an extension of Russian boundaries
in Armenia which will be slight, and which, if it were great, would be
better met by an even greater extension of English territories in
Egypt? Against 'the passage of the Dardanelles'--which means in time
of war its passage if Russia can--a passage which Russia would equally
attempt if she could, but had not the right. Against this we are to
fight without allies. Again, let us pray for peace. I will not
describe what war must mean--your sons and daughters killed, or lying
crippled amid horrors worse than death; the proceeds of your toil
wrung from you by new taxes; the dearness of your children's bread. I
have seen too much of war. ... No tongue can depict its horrors. ...
It is said that the constituencies are warlike, and that party wire-
pullers think that war would be "a good card to play." I hope and
believe that English constituencies would be warlike if real honour
and real interests were at stake. If they are warlike now, it is that
they know not war. Are those for war who know its face? ... The day
may come when England will have to fight for her existence, but for
Heaven's sake let us not commit the folly of plunging into war at a
moment when all Europe would be hostile to our arms--not one Power
allied to the English cause."
It seemed as if that folly were to be committed. When Parliament opened in
January, a declaration of war was foreshadowed by the hint of a demand for
funds to make "adequate preparation against some unexpected occurrence."
Nor was there any steady rallying point offered by the Opposition:
'January 17th was the day of the meeting of the House, the Radical
Club Dinner having replaced our private Queen's Speech Dinner of 1877.
But the disorganization of the Liberal party at this moment was so
complete that no Front Bench party was given on the night before
Parliament met, and Liberal politicians, or such of them as were
asked, had had to do their best to talk at a Tory house--Lady
Stanhope's in Grosvenor Place--where I met Harcourt and some of the
others. The situation in the debate on the Address was one which ought
to have led to successful attack upon the Government. The Queen's
Speech was neither of war nor of peace, but of perplexity and
division, and gravely informed us that poor Turkey had not interfered
with British interests. The discourses of the Ministers were peaceful
in the Lower House, and warlike in the Upper. Money was to be asked
for in the event of an "unexpected occurrence" happening.'
'Nothing, however, was made of the situation by the Opposition, and I
felt more interest therefore for the moment in my proposed political
reforms, in which I was on the point of a partial success, [Footnote:
'I introduced my two Bills of the previous year--both destined this
year to pass, though one of them after amalgamation with a
Conservative Bill--my Hours of Polling Bill and my Registration Bill.
I moved for my return, intended to facilitate my action in the
direction of redistribution, and got my Select Committee promised
me.'] and sheered off from the Eastern Question, with regard to which
I felt that in Parliament at the moment I could do no good.'
The speech to his constituents had attracted much attention. Among the
personal congratulations which he received he valued most highly those of
a great diplomatist and friend, 'high praise from Sir William White.'
[Footnote: Sir William White (1821-1891): February 27th, 1875, British
Agent and Consul-General in Servia; March 3rd, 1879, Envoy Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary at Bucharest, Roumania; April 18th, 1885,
Envoy Extraordinary at Constantinople; October 11th, 1886, Special
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at Constantinople.] On
January 17th he 'received a deputation of London merchants with regard to
the Black Sea blockade.'
'On Friday the 18th I dined at Lady Waldegrave's to meet the old
Strawberry Hill set--the Duke of Argyll, the Duchess of Manchester,
Lord and Lady Granville, Harcourt, James, Ayrton, Lord William Hay,
and Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hughes--and some people came in after dinner, of
whom Sir J. Rose and his daughter (Mrs. Stanley Clarke) warmly
congratulated me on my speech. There was a discussion between the
Liberals and the Duchess of Manchester, who was in both camps, and Sir
John Rose, who as a financier was the same, as to the reasons for Lord
Carnarvon's absence from Lord Beaconsfield's Queen's Speech Dinner,
but we could not get farther than to learn that "Dizzy had made it
unpleasant for him. ..." [Footnote: 'Another matter as to which I was
personally interested, though the others seemed hardly to have heard
of it, was a communication which had been made to France about Egypt
with regard to joint inquiry into the state of finances, a
communication all but volunteered by us, and not, I thought, in the
least necessary, but which was so strong in terms as to appear to shut
the door in the future against any possibility of action on our part
other than joint action with the French.']
'On Saturday the 19th Mr. Gladstone sent Lefevre to me, and asked me
not to raise the case of Greece at present, as he thought that a
combined movement with regard to Greece might soon be made in the
House of Commons with some chance of success.
'On the Sunday Drummond Wolff dined with me, very full of the
intrigues to get rid of Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon from the
Conservative Front Bench, and very hopeful of success, for at this
moment the Conservatives were so angry with their two peaceful men
that they made no secret of their intention to force them out, and
used freely to discuss the situation with the Liberals.
'On January 22nd I started an attempt to get up a Greek Committee, an
attempt which was successful, for our little meeting of this day, of
Fitzmaurice and Lefevre and myself, with the adhesion by letter of
Lansdowne and of Rosebery, led to the private formation of a
Committee, afterwards made public, and much enlarged, of which I made
Lewis Sergeant secretary, and which was able to do much good in the
course of the three next years. ...That night I dined with Mrs. Inwood
Jones (Lady Morgan's niece), and met Mr. and Mrs. Stansfeld, Browning,
Charles Villiers, Lady Hamilton Gordon, and another man whom I will
not name, because I wish to mention that I received from him on that
occasion a document relating to Greek affairs, from which I was
afterwards able to show how badly our Government had treated Greece,
but the origin of which I ought not to reveal.
'On January 23rd Evelyn Ashley, Chamberlain, and I had a meeting with
regard to Greek matters, at which we drew up the public declaration to
be made on behalf of the friends of Greece.
'On the next day, January 24th, a good many startling events occurred.
A War Ministry was formed at Athens; the vote of money was announced
in the British Parliament. Lord Carnarvon resigned in the morning, and
Lord Derby at night; but Lord Derby's resignation was for a time
withdrawn.'
In 'the great debate' on Mr. Forster's motion against the vote of six
millions sterling for 'adequate preparation'--a debate which opened on
January 31st, and was prolonged to the second week in February--Sir
Charles took part on the fourth day. Great interest attaches to this
speech in view of all his later work:
'I pointed out that we spend normally on defence or war far more than
any other Power: at that time twenty-five millions sterling at home
and seventeen millions in India, or forty-two millions in all, swelled
in that year by the extraordinary vote to forty-eight millions, while
France and Germany spent much less. I was to return to this subject
after many years, and when I wrote upon it in 1890, while the Indian
expenditure stood at the same sum, the annual expenditure in England
had risen to over thirty-eight millions, making the whole fifty-five,
and with the rest of the Empire nearly fifty-seven millions sterling.'
A side-note adds: 'It is now (1905) vastly greater.'
As he was the first non-military politician to devote himself to the
question of defence and to call public attention to the subject, so this
question of wasteful expenditure always occupied his attention. He laid
stress on the inadequate return received for naval and military outlay,
not only on the popular ground that money was thus deflected from projects
of internal reform, but pre-eminently because the nation in time of peace
resents heavy defence expenditure, and he feared that the necessary money
might not be forthcoming for that naval equipment which he held to be
essential to our existence as a Great Power.
But the main burden of his complaint was that now when a Conference was
proposed, and when England ought to have gone into the Conference with all
the weight of a unanimous people, the bringing forward of a "sham war
vote," which was a contradiction of the alleged desire to negotiate, had
produced inevitable division of counsels. Before the debate closed came
the rumour of an occupation of Constantinople by the Russians, and under
the belief that the war vote might be needed in good earnest, Mr.
Forster's motion was withdrawn.
'On February 6th ... I dined with Lady Brett and went on to Mrs.
Brand's, and at the Speaker's House heard that the Russians had
occupied a fort in the Constantinople lines. This lie got out the next
day, and was universally believed; and after a panic in the City,
Hartington decided, also in a panic, to make W. E. Forster drop the
resolutions which he had brought forward at Hartington's request.
Hartington saw me, and told me this behind the Speaker's chair before
questions. Within an hour after the withdrawal of the resolutions had
been mentioned in the House the whole story had been blown into the
air by the Russian Ambassador.'
At this period Sir Charles Dilke had entered into relations with Lord
Randolph Churchill, who was virtually against the policy of the Government
and yet 'open-mouthed in his general dislike of Lord Derby and Lord
Carnarvon, though in complete agreement with their principles.' The Fourth
Party did not yet exist. Nor was it in this Parliament that Lord Randolph
achieved ascendancy.
'As late as the autumn of 1880 Lord Beaconsfield was to style Randolph
"only Dilke and water"; but had he lived for another twelvemonth
longer he would not have used this language, for Churchill had then
developed a very different "Moloch of Midlothian" style, and had made
himself through his party a greater power than I ever was.'
The attempt to concert action between independent Tory and independent
Radical began after the great scare of February 6th. [Footnote: This
correspondence was placed at Mr. Winston Churchill's disposal by Sir
Charles Dilke, and used by him in the _Life of Lord Randolph Churchill._
Sir Stafford Northcote was leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor
of the Exchequer.]
'On February 7th negotiations between Randolph Churchill and myself
began as to moving an address to the Crown praying that the objects
with which England should enter any Conference that might be held,
should be European and civilized rather than pro-Turkish. On this day
he wrote to me:
'"MY DEAR SIR CHARLES DILKE,
'"As I suppose this debate will come to a close with an enormous and
disproportionate majority for the Government, and as I think the
Opposition have made their stand on an unfortunate ground, and that
another fight might yet be fought with far greater chances of
commanding sympathy in the country, I want to know whether, if an
address to the Crown praying Her Majesty to use her influence at the
Conference in favour of the widest possible freedom to Bulgaria,
Bosnia, Herzegovina, Thessaly, and Epirus, and in favour of totally
and finally putting an end to all direct Turkish Government in these
provinces, was moved by me on the Tory side of the House, it would be
supported by the Liberal party. I think I could almost make sure of a
strong Home Rule vote on this. I think some Conservatives would
support it. If Northcote does not give some very clear intimation of
what is going to be the policy of the Government, I think a motion of
this sort should be made on the Report. The real cry for the country
is not sympathy with Russia, still less with Turkey, but complete
freedom for the Slav and Hellenic nationalities. I am off to Ireland
to-night. I don't care enough for the Government to vote for them. ...
I shall see Butt in Dublin, and shall sound him on what I have written
to you. My address is Phoenix Park, Dublin. Please excuse this lone
letter.
'"Yours truly,
'"RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL."
'The reference to Butt is curious, and the address of "Phoenix Park,"
for Lord Randolph was at this time private secretary to his father,
who was Viceroy of Ireland, and was living in the Viceregal Lodge,
which, of course, is in the Phoenix Park. How far the Duke of
Marlborough was cognizant of the intrigues between his son and the
Irish I never knew, but at one time relations were very close."
[Footnote: Sir John Gorst read this chapter in 1913 and wrote:
"With Randolph's negotiations with the Irish at this time I had
nothing to do. I was not cognizant of them; I never acted with R.
before 1880.
"So far as I knew, the alliance between the Fourth Party and the Irish
leader arose in this way: In the 1880 Parliament Parnell had not
enough men to move an adjournment of the House--in those days the most
effective form of obstruction. Forty members must stand up. On one
occasion after 1880, P., wanting to move an adjournment, sought an
interview with us--Balfour may or may not have been present. He stated
his case, and we replied that the matter was a proper case for an
adjournment, and we and those we could influence would stand up in
support. He thanked us and was leaving the room, when R., twirling his
moustache, said: 'I suppose, Mr. Parnell, that in cases of this kind
there will be a little reciprocity.' After that, when we moved
adjournments, the Parnellite members always stood up for us.--J. E.
G."]
'On February 8th Lord Randolph wrote:
'"THE CASTLE, DUBLIN.
'"DEAR SIR CHARLES DILKE,
'"Many thanks for your two letters. As you say, things remain in such
an uncertain state nothing can be done. The Government have too great
an advantage, but I think if we are led into taking any decisive steps
hostile to Russia, a great effort should be made for an authoritative
declaration that the ultimate aim and object of any move on our part
is the complete freedom and independence of the Slav nationality, as
opposed to any reconstruction of the Turkish Empire. This I am sure
should be the line for the Liberal party, and not the peace-at-any-
price cry which it is evident the country won't have. In this I shall
be ready to co-operate heartily as far as my poor efforts can be any
good. It is just possible that if any movement of this kind be made it
would be better for it to originate from the Conservative side of the
House. I regret to see so much excitement getting up among the masses.
It is dangerous matter for Beaconsfield to work on. Would you think me
very foolish or visionary if I say that I look for a republican form
of Government for Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, as far more to be
preferred than some German, Russian, or other Prince set up as a
puppet under the name of constitutional monarchy? Perhaps if these
ideas seem at all to your liking, and if you think they would command
the support of the Liberal party, you would advise me what appeared to
you the most favourable moment for bringing them forward. I shall have
some conversation with Butt, and have great hope of securing a solid
Irish vote on any proposition which might seem to favour the self-
government of nationalities.
'"Yours truly,
'"_February 8th_.
'"RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.
'A few days later Lord Randolph telegraphed to me from Careysville,
Fermoy: "I shall be in London Monday morning. Am not ambitious of
taking any prominent part unless it might contribute to the advantage
of ideas which I think we have in common that a motion should be made
from my side of the House. I leave it absolutely to your judgment."
'On this telegram I wrote to Lord Granville, who replied, dating his
letter "September 13th" by mistake for February 13th:
'" 18, CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE.
'"MY DEAR DILKE,
'"Such a motion as Lord R. C. proposes, supported by a certain number
of Conservatives, might be well worth consideration. But I doubt his
getting any Conservative support, and a contingent of Home Rulers
would hardly justify us in making another attack upon Plevna just yet,
with the probable alternative of either a crushing defeat or a second
withdrawal in face of the enemy. I gather that you are doubtful. What
did Hartington think?
'"Yours sincerely,
'"GRANVILLE.
'"If R. Churchill could give you evidence on which you felt you _could
rely_ that he would have real Conservative support, the case would be
different."
'Hartington thought nothing, merely recommended acceptance of Lord
Granville's advice. Lord Granville's mistake in date was
characteristic, for, while a most able man who did not, in my opinion,
decline in intellectual vigour during the many years in which he took
a great part in public affairs, he always had the habit of
substitution of words, and I have known him carry on a long
conversation with me at the Foreign Office about the proceedings of
two Ambassadors who were engaged on the opposite sides in a great
negotiation, and call A "B," and B "A," through the whole of it, which
was, to say the least, confusing. He also sometimes entirely forgot
the principal name in connection with the subject, as, for example,
that of Mr. Gladstone when Prime Minister, and had to resort to the
most extraordinary forms of language in order to convey his meaning.
'Randolph wrote after his telegram from a fishing lodge on the Irish
Blackwater:
'"MY DEAR SIR CHARLES,
'"I have sent you a telegram which I think you will understand. I am
sure that my views, whatever they are worth, are in accordance with
your speech, and Harcourt's, and Gladstone's, on the question of the
future policy of this country. I am convinced that under the present
circumstances no motion should be unduly hastened on. There is lots of
time. If I was asked to move a resolution my speech would be an attack
on Chaplin, Wolff, and the rest of the Pro-Turkish party, confidence
in the Government and invitation to the Liberal party to act as a
whole. I feel I am awfully young to endeavour to initiate such a line;
but I am so convinced of the soundness of our views that I would risk
a smash willingly to have them properly brought forward. If only your
party would agree as a whole to support a resolution moved from my
side, the Government would only at the best have a majority of 80,
after 190, and that would be a check. I shall see Butt before arriving
in London, and endeavour to make him take up a position upon this
question. The Government are apparently doing their 'level best' to
keep the peace, and perhaps another debate might not be unwelcome to
them.
'"Yours very truly,
'"_February 15th._
'"RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.
'In reply, and in consequence of Lord Granville's suggestion, I
pressed him closely as to who would vote with him, and he wrote:
'"CASTLE BERNARD,
'"BANDON.
'"MY DEAR SIR CHARLES,
'"In reply to your letter I shall be over in London on the 26th inst.,
and I think it will be time enough then to make my motion. I should
not like to make it unless it would command the support of a large
number of members. Such support could only come from your side. I
think the Conservative party are gone mad. Their speeches are
calculated to provoke war. As it is so uncertain whether we shall go
to war or to a Conference, I think I had better wait a little, as,
though the motion should, I think, be made in any case, the terms of
it would vary very much according to either alternative.... I know of
no one except Forsyth whom I could ask to ballot for me. If the motion
commanded much support, I should certainly like to press it even to a
division. Cowen's speech (and the vociferous cheers of the C. party)
evidently shows that the idea of the integrity and independence of the
Turkish Empire is still predominant on our side, and against that I
would try to go a great way. I should, of course, be very glad if you
would second any motion of the nature of those sketched.... I send a
sketch of it.
'"Yours very truly,
'"RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL."
'"_Draft of Motion._
'"That in view of the extreme sufferings so long undergone by the
Slav, Bulgarian, and Hellenic nationalities of Bosnia, Herzegovina,
Bulgaria, Thessaly, and Epirus, and considering that the Turkish rule
over these provinces has now been definitely put an end to, the
efforts of Her Majesty's Government, in the opinion of the House of
Commons, should be principally directed towards the establishment of
the complete freedom and independence of the populations of these
provinces."
'I have in my diary on Friday the 15th the note: "See Chamberlain as
to Churchill's plan, and say I won't go to a meeting." Evidently I had
seen that Churchill was unsafe.
'When Randolph Churchill came back to town I discovered, or rather he
discovered and told me, that old Walpole, the ex-Home Secretary, was
the only member upon his own side who would even pretend that he would
vote with him, and when it came to the point on one occasion, Walpole
himself said that he should go away.'
Preparations for war were pressed on till, on March 3rd, the signing of
the Treaty of San Stefano, which put an end to Turkish rule in Bulgaria,
seemed to close the crisis. But instantly the trouble broke out again. The
British Government claimed that this new treaty, since it altered the
European settlement ratified in 1856 by the Treaty of Paris, must be
submitted to and endorsed by a Congress of the Powers. Russia declined to
be thus bound, and a new crisis arose in which Lord Derby, who had
withdrawn his previous resignation, now finally gave up the Secretaryship
of Foreign Affairs, being succeeded by Lord Salisbury.
In 1881 Sir Charles, while Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, became
aware that Lord Derby's retention of office after his first resignation
had been little more than nominal. He says in the Memoir for that year:
'In the course of my researches among the Tunis papers I discovered
the curious fact that in February and March, 1878, foreign affairs
were being conducted by a committee of the Cabinet, consisting of Lord
Beaconsfield, Lord Cairns, and Lord Salisbury, and that Lord Derby,
the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was virtually shelved for
the whole period. At this moment Lord Beaconsfield proposed the
creation of a Mediterranean league for the maintenance of the _status
quo_ in the Mediterranean: England, France, Italy, and Greece to be
first consulted, and Austria to come in afterwards if she pleased.
Italy declining, the scheme collapsed. Foolish Italy!'
While in Parliament the Tory party was ridding itself of its 'peace men,'
party feeling out of doors ran to unusual heights. These were the days
when a music-hall song added a word to the political vocabulary, and the
"jingo" crowd signalized its patriotism by wrecking Mr. Gladstone's
windows at 73, Harley Street, where he went to live after his retirement
from the Liberal leadership.
'On Sunday, March 10th, in coming back from the Grosvenor Gallery, I
passed a great mob, who were going to howl at Mr. Gladstone--at this time
the ordinary Sunday afternoon diversion of the London rough.'
Schouvalof, the Russian Ambassador, had on March 4th summed up the
situation in an epigram: "England has challenged Russia to a duel, and has
chosen for her weapon swords at fifteen paces" (_l'épée à quinze pas_).
But the preparations for this combat were menacing.
'On March 29th the Eastern Question blazed up again with Lord Derby's
resignation, the discussion of which enlivened a party at Lady
Waldegrave's, there being before us a Queen's Message alleging the
existence of imminent national danger and great emergency as a reason
for calling out the reserves. On Saturday the 30th Trevelyan ...
informed me of a resolution which had been prepared by Lubbock on
behalf of those Whigs who had not gone with Gladstone, but wished to
make some movement of their own. Later in the evening I saw Childers,
who proposed a better motion in the form of an addition to the Message
in the sense of a strong desire for peace. The object of both
suggestions, of course, was by a moderate middle course to prevent a
division for and against the Message in which Gladstone and Bright and
eighty others would vote No, while eighty would follow Hartington in
voting Yes, and the majority of the party run away, thus destroying
the Liberal party, as it was destroyed in the time of Pitt and the war
with France. Later, again, in the evening I saw Montgélas (who told me
that Russia had held different language to Austria and to England, and
that she had drawn back and did not mean war) [Footnote: 'On February
9th I went to a party at the Austrian Embassy "to meet the Archduke
Rudolf." Beust was gone away and Montgélas was host. ... On February
12th I met again the Crown Prince of Austria.'] and Randolph
Churchill, who made an appointment to come to me on Sunday about the
papers, which he agreed with me in thinking damaging to the
Government, and full of evidence of their total isolation. When he
came, we decided only that the Government ought to be asked for
further papers.'
This demand Sir Charles accordingly made on April 1st. His position was at
this point extremely difficult. He was not prepared to acquiesce in the
aggrandisement of Russia, and therefore could not go with his habitual
associates, who had formed a Committee upon the Eastern Question. On the
other hand, he was determined to join with them in opposing the calling
out of the reserves, because this step implied that England would go to
war alone, and he did not believe either that England was likely to do so,
or that she ought, as a member of the European Concert, to take such a
step.
'There was a moment after the fall of Lord Derby when I became a
supporter of the Government in their Eastern policy, for they appeared
to me to adopt my own, but it did not last long. "Lord Salisbury's
circular" (so-called, but written by Lord Cairns), issued upon the
accession of Lord Salisbury to the Foreign Office, contained the
statement of this policy. ... Speaking in the House on April 9th ...,
I repudiated the defence which came from some on the Liberal side, of
the conduct of Russia, and, looking upon the Government despatch as a
vindication primarily of general European interests, and, in the
second place, of Hellenic interests, against Russian violence and
universal Slav dominion throughout the Levant, I separated myself from
my party and praised the new Minister of Foreign Affairs. I was
afterwards bitterly disappointed at finding the policy of the April
circular abandoned by its authors in the Congress of Berlin. ...
'On April 4th Gennadius, the Greek Chargé d'Affaires (afterwards
Minister), the American Minister, Matthew Arnold, W. E. Forster, Grant
Duff, Lubbock, George Sheffield (Lord Lyons' factotum), Tom Hughes,
and my old friend Sir David Wedderburn dined with me. And in this Whig
and Hellenic party a general agreement with my views was met with; but
the same was not the case amongst my brother Radicals of "Mr.
Dillwyn's Committee upon the Eastern Question."'
This Radical organization got into difficulties of its own while
contemplating a motion to condemn explicitly the calling out of the
reserves.
'On April 5th Dillwyn's Committee had had before it a letter from Lord
Hartington, saying that Mr. Gladstone on Monday wished to speak next
after Sir Stafford Northcote, and to deprecate the moving of an
amendment. It was in consequence resolved by a majority that no
amendment should be moved. Courtney then said that the intimation of
Mr. Gladstone's opinion had been obtained from him by gross pressure,
and that he himself should move an amendment if no one else did.
Wilfrid Lawson then said that he would move; and there were seven in
favour of an amendment. This broke up the Committee, and on Dillwyn
reporting to Hartington its dissolution, the latter said: "Well, Mr.
Dillwyn, you see it is not so easy to lead."
'On Sunday, April 7th, there dined with me, among others, Hartington,
Harcourt, Goschen, Lord Granville, and Lord Ripon, and we discussed
the position, on which Lord Ripon was far from agreement with me. I
warmly supported to them the Government circular (issued by Lord
Salisbury), as putting British action on European rather than on
British-interests grounds, and only differed from the policy of
calling out the reserves because this was an action of isolation.'
When Sir Wilfrid Lawson's amendment was moved, Sir Charles voted with the
Radical minority of sixty-four against calling out the reserves, but
'differed from every word in which the Radical speakers supported their
view.'
The pith of his speech was a powerful plea for allowing Greece to secure
the emancipation of Greek populations, then under a Turkish rule heavy as
that from which Russia claimed to liberate the Slavs of Bulgaria.
So far, the action of the Government had not united the Liberal party in
any concentrated attitude of resistance. But during the Easter recess,
which Sir Charles spent in France, meeting Gambetta, politics took a more
dramatic turn.
'When Parliament adjourned for the holidays, not one word had been
said of an act long previously determined, which was announced the
next day. The fact that Parliament was allowed to learn from the
newspapers that it was intended by the Government for the first time
to employ Indian troops within the European dominions of the Crown in
time of peace, without the previous consent of Parliament, [Footnote:
By despatching 7,000 Sepoys to Malta.] was a singular commentary upon
the Government declaration at the beginning of the Session that
Parliament had been called together at an unusually early date in
order that under circumstances of delicacy the Ministry might have the
advantage of its advice.... Public feeling, I found from Chamberlain,
had gone round a good deal during my absence, and to satisfy the
opinion of our Radicals he was determined to move something. I
suggested to him (on May 6th) a resolution condemning "the policy of
menace and warlike demonstration which has been pursued by the
Government," and expressing the belief "that an honourable and
peaceful settlement of existing difficulties will be best promoted by
their consenting to state frankly the changes in the Treaty of San
Stefano which they consider necessary for the general good of Europe
and the interests of this country."'
But already the Government were in secret negotiation with Russia, and had
entered into an agreement as to the modification of the provisions of the
Treaty of San Stefano. Amongst other changes it was proposed to curtail
the limits of Bulgaria by a division severing South from North, and to
allow Austria-Hungary to occupy Bosnia and the Herzegovina.
'On Tuesday, May 7th, after the Radical Club, at a party at the
Harcourts', I learned what the Government intended to do at the
Conference or Congress--namely, limit Bulgaria on the south by the
Balkans. But I was informed at the same time that they would
themselves propose to give Thessaly and Epirus to Greece, an
undertaking which I think they did give to the King of Greece, but
from which, if so, they afterwards departed. The Greek Patriarch from
Constantinople came over at this time, as did the Armenian Patriarch
shortly afterwards, and I met both, although conversation with these
dignitaries was not easy, for their French was about as feeble as my
Greek; but through Gennadius I, of course, knew the views of the
Greeks, and in the Armenian question I took no special part.'
The question of employing the Indian troops was debated on May 20th. Lord
Hartington opened; and Sir Charles replied to Sir Michael Hicks Beach, who
followed Lord Hartington. Concerning the discussion, he says:
'The technical point which we argued was a narrow one. Had Cyprus been
in Asia, our arguments would not have applied to Cyprus; and it is
very likely that the Government thought Cyprus was in Asia, and did
not like to say that they had made a mistake, and having first ordered
the troops to Cyprus, and then ordered them to Malta (which was
undoubtedly in Europe), had forgotten the distinction. The real
objection to the bringing of the Sepoys was the same as the objection
to the calling out of the reserves--that it was isolated action, and
that these military measures and the expenditure which they involved
were mere bunkum, and mere waste if the Government intended to give
up, as they were secretly telling Russia they did intend to give up,
the main points of dispute. Moreover, Russia could do us hurt in
India, and Indian troops could not touch her at all....
'The Government were said to have only "conquered by giving way," for
they agreed to put the number of men into the Estimate, and thus avoid
making a precedent, according to our contention, absolutely
unconstitutional. On the other hand, Lord Beaconsfield's speech in the
House of Lords was defiant in the extreme, and Holker's [Footnote: The
Attorney-General.] in the Lower House was an assertion of higher
prerogative doctrine than had been heard in Parliament since the days
of Elizabeth.'
'On May 30th I dined with Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, and met Lord
Northbrook (the former Viceroy of India) and his daughter, Lady Emma
Baring, Lord Rosebery, Lord and Lady Napier (he a most distinguished
man, the best of Ambassadors to Russia and the best of Governors of
Madras, too little known),[Footnote: Baron Napier and Ettrick.] Lord
Macduff (afterwards Duke of Fife), and Monty Corry, afterwards Lord
Rowton, Lord Beaconsfield's private secretary.' Corry 'told me what
was at the moment a startling secret--that Lord Beaconsfield was going
to the Congress himself. "Can he speak French?" I asked with wonder,
to which he shook his head.'
On the day after the meeting of the Congress a sensational disclosure
revealed to the world that it met; only to register foregone conclusions.
'At the end of the month (May) the secret agreement was signed with
Russia, and revealed to us by the _Globe_ [Footnote: The Globe
disclosure came from Mr. Marvin, a civil servant in temporary employ.
Dilke noted: "Besides the 'Marvin Memorandum' and an annex, there was
a curious stipulation insisted on by Russia, that the annex should
never be published, even if No. 1--that is, the 'Marvin Memorandum'--
should become public; and this looks very much as though Marvin was
really the Russian Government, which I have always suspected. They had
this to gain by publishing the Memorandum--that they showed themselves
the real victors in the Congress of Berlin, in spite of all our
bluster, and they damaged Lord Beaconsfield, who was their enemy.
Marvin could never have got a copy, and always pretended that he had
learned the whole document by heart, which, considering its length and
the total absence in the copy published in the _Globe_ of the
slightest error, even of punctuation, is incredible. The annex, which
was dated May 31st, only said that the Russians had no intention of
extending their conquests in Asiatic Turkey: 'The Emperor of Russia
... not having the intention of extending Ids conquests in Asia ...
the Imperial Government does not refuse to conclude with the British
Government a secret engagement for the purpose of reassuring it upon
this point.'"] on June 14th; and it then appeared that the military
preparations of the country must have been intended to keep up the
spirits of the Jingoes while their cherished principles were being
sacrificed behind their backs. The _Daily Telegraph_, which was the
Jingo organ, said: "If _such_ a compact has been concluded, this
country has fatally descended from the lofty position occupied by the
Salisbury despatch." Not only was the compact authentic, but there
were two other secret compacts of the same date which did not come
out. What the Government had done was to give up all the points for
which they had made their enthusiastic followers believe that they
would fight, and at the same time in the Anglo-Turkish Convention to
declare that their successors should fight for what was left. This may
have been a prudent policy, but it was not a policy which carried with
it the necessity for bringing Indian troops to Europe or spending
eight or nine millions sterling upon apparent preparations for
immediate war. The third agreement, in addition to the Salisbury-
Schouvalof agreement and the Anglo-Turkish Convention, the first of
which came out by chance and the second of which was ultimately
published by the Government, was an Anglo-Austrian secret agreement
which has never been printed, the character of which is revealed by
the fact that the English plenipotentiaries themselves proposed at
Berlin, in spite of the strong dissent of Turkey, to make to Austria
the gift of Bosnia and Herzegovina.'
To this note, written in 1890, there is added in the margin of the
manuscript: 'There was also a secret supplementary agreement with Russia,
of which later.' And also this: "The compact giving Bosnia and Herzegovina
to Austria is now (1908) known to Lucien Wolf." [Footnote: See Thomas
Erskine Holland, _The European Concert in the Eastern Question_, 292,
293.]
Before the Berlin Congress met, Sir Charles had pressed by way of
questions to secure if possible a representation for Greece at the
Congress, and failed; and the speech which he made in the debate (opened
on July 29th) on the Treaty of Berlin was mainly a censure on Great
Britain for having failed to support the Hellenic claims. He dwelt
specially on Crete, the government of which by Turkey was, he said, "a
perpetual menace to European peace."
Replying in the debate for the Liberal party to Mr. David Plunket
(afterwards Lord Rathmore), he notes that he
'spoke, and spoke well, making the best of my debating speeches, but
was overshadowed by one speech which would have caused better speeches
than mine to have been easily forgotten. Mr. Gladstone's speech on
this occasion, like all his speeches, does not read; but it was the
finest that I ever heard him make with one exception--the Bradlaugh
speech in the next Parliament.'
CHAPTER XVII
POLITICS AND PERSONS
I.
Sir Charles Dilke's first concern was with foreign affairs, but he was
also of high authority in whatever related to the business and management
of the House of Commons; and at this period the question of remodelling
forms which lent themselves to the arts of delay began to be urgent, and
threatened to become paramount. Here, early in 1878, is the first
considerable mention of the man whose relentless use of obstruction has
affected parliamentary procedure all over the world:
'On February 20th I was asked by Lord Hartington to serve upon the
Government Select Committee on the business and forms of the House,
upon which Parnell was asked to represent the obstructive element. It
was somewhat a distinction, as I was to be the sole representative of
the English independent members, and in consequence I gave up the
Standing Committee on Commons, upon which I asked Fitzmaurice to
replace me. The proceedings of Sir Stafford Northcote's Committee, as
the Committee on Public Business was called, presented only one
singularity--namely, the examination of the Speaker--a prolonged one--
by Parnell. Both of them were in a way able men; but both were
extraordinarily slow of intellect--that is, slow in appreciating a
point or catching a new idea--and Mr. Brand (as he then was) and
Parnell used to face one another in inarticulate despair in the
attempt to understand each the other's meaning. There were a good many
fairly stupid men on the Committee, but there was not a single member
of it who did not understand what Parnell meant by a question more
quickly than could the Speaker, and not a man who could not understand
what the Speaker meant by a reply more quickly than Parnell.'
'With Speaker Brand I afterwards had a singular connection.
'At the time when the President of the Free State, whose name was also
Brand, had rendered important services to the British Government, I
made one of the briefest of my brief minutes and put it in a box, and
sent it round the Cabinet: "I think Brand should be knighted.--Ch's W.
D." Nearly all the members of the Cabinet having added their initials
in approval, Brand was knighted, but the wrong Brand, for they gave
the G.C.B. to the Speaker, and it was only some time afterwards that
the G.C.M.G. was conferred on the South African statesman. I had not
thought of the Speaker, and Mr. Gladstone or his private secretary,
Edward Hamilton, had forgotten the Free State. What may have been the
frame of mind of the various members of the Cabinet who approved my
suggestion I do not know, but some probably meant the one and some
probably meant the other, and no one remembered that there were two.'
Concerning the proposals which Sir Stafford Northcote was contemplating as
the result of the Committee on Public Business, but not in exact
accordance with its decisions, Sir Charles notes, under June 25th, that he
was not in agreement with the mass of the Liberal party.
'Our men were inclined to oppose all proposals for closure by
majorities, and for investing the Speaker with large powers, while I
was beginning to feel as strongly favourable to such proposals as I
afterwards became. My "record" upon this subject constituted,
therefore, almost as "sharp a curve" as that of others. As a rule I
have not greatly changed my mind upon political subjects, but upon
this one (as upon Africa [Footnote: See Chapter XVI., p. 238, and also
Chapter XLVIII, (Vol. II., pp. 251-2).]) I undoubtedly turned round,
and did so in consequence of the full consideration which I had to
give it in the course of this single year.'
In the same year Sir Charles had secured support of Tory metropolitan
members, whose constituents were affected, for his Bill to extend the
hours of polling in London; and it passed before the end of January as an
agreed measure. Then came another advance:
'On February 27th, at the most important sitting of my Committee on
the Registration Bills, which had three Bills before it, mine being
one; and Martin, who had charge of the Conservative Bill, being in the
Chair, with a Conservative majority on the Committee, Martin's Bill
was rejected, and mine adopted by the Committee on a division as a
base for its proceedings. I at once decided that I would hand over my
Bill to Martin, so as to let him have charge of it, as Chairman of the
Committee, as the Bill of the Committee.'
This was designed not so much to insure the passage of his own Bill as 'to
prevent Martin from carrying a mere bit of a Bill with some of the things
in it which we wanted.' But, 'to the amazement of everyone,' Sir Charles's
measure, under its new sponsorship, actually passed, and 'became law in
1878, and ultimately added an enormous number of voters to the franchise
rolls.'
By June 7th the Registration Bill was read a third time, and
'My Hours of Polling Bill had now become "Dilke's Act," and I felt as
though I was making such progress towards the political reforms I had
long advocated that there might be some faint chance that one day
redistribution itself might be accomplished.'
Six years later he himself carried out redistribution and extension of the
suffrage on a scale hardly dreamed of by politicians in 1878. Already, in
the debate of February 22nd, when Sir Charles, as usual, seconded Mr.
Trevelyan's annual motion on the equalization of voting power, the
division was better than ever before, and the _Annual Register_, which a
few years earlier had known nothing but contempt and aversion for this
Radical group, devoted considerable space to the arguments by which reform
was supported, with full reference to Sir Charles's speech. Mr. Goschen
and Mr. Lowe were the only Liberals of note who opposed the motion--if,
indeed, Mr. Lowe could still be called a Liberal--and Lord Hartington
spoke for it.
One of Sir Charles's preoccupations at this moment was the choice of a
Liberal candidate to stand for Chelsea with him, and the matter presented
difficulties.
'Horace Davey ... was wishful to stand with us, and I had asked him to
a dinner at which he met some of the leading men, and later he called
on me to see whether he would "do." In the meantime I had sounded our
best people, and found that he would not.... I told him at once that
he must vote against fresh dowries to the Royal Family until a Civil
List inquiry had been held, which ... sent him away.'
Another lawyer followed, and was shown off at several dinners, but 'the
borough did not seem inclined to welcome Queen's Counsel,' and ultimately
settled, very much to its own satisfaction and Sir Charles's, on a great
friend, Mr. Firth.
The campaign in defence of open spaces was actively carried on this year,
and in March Sir Charles was fighting on behalf of the Commons
Preservation Society to resist the erection of a new cottage with an
enclosure for the Deputy Ranger in Hyde Park. The cottage was erected, but
Sir Charles and his allies 'were ultimately able to get back a large part
of the land which had been enclosed near it.' Another encroachment was
resisted more successfully, and by other means. In Fulham 'the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners had made an enclosure shutting out the public
from Eelbrook Common, the use of which it had enjoyed for many years.'
'I went to a meeting at Beaufort House, and made, as I thought, a
moderate speech recommending abstention from acts of violence, but one
at the close of which the meeting went off to the place, pulled down
the fence, and burnt it in a large bonfire. The enclosure was never
reasserted, and the ground was ultimately handed over to the
Metropolitan Board of Works to be managed as an open space, and is
open now for ever.... In Lord Eversley's _Commons_, revised edition of
1910, he names my services to the "cause," but not _this_ one.'
At the close of the Session
'On September 4th I addressed my constituents, and received an ovation
in consequence of the passing of the Hours of Polling Bill (letting
them vote till eight in the evening instead of four) and of my
Registration Bill. Vast numbers of electors had been disfranchised by
the former hours, who were able now to record their votes. My
Registration Act was only to come into force in the course of the
following year, and was to affect the next registration and revision.
'Turning to foreign affairs, I pointed out the absolute impossibility
of the fulfilment of the promises which the Government had made to
give to Asiatic Turkey "rest from the heavy weight of military
service, rest from the uncertainty of unjust Judges and persons placed
in command." I went on to discuss the Greek question, which I had to
do somewhat fully, because the Greek Committee was at present only
operating in the dark, and had not made known its constitution to the
public. [Footnote: He made in this year the acquaintance of
'Delyannis, Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs. He was a very inferior
man to his great rival, Tricoupis.']
'Two days after my speech, on September 6th, I learnt that the Greek
Government had decided to recognize the insurgent Debt of 1824. People
often talk of the possibilities of Ministers speculating on the Stock
Exchange on secret information. It is a curious and perhaps an
interesting fact that during the more than five years that I was in
office I do not think that any official information came into my hands
the possession of which would have enabled any Minister to make money
on the Stock Exchange, although a private secretary was charged with
the offence during those years--most unjustly charged. On the other
hand, it is the case that on at least two occasions when I was a
private member of Parliament, before I had held office, I had secret
information of a certain kind upon which I might have speculated, and
which very probably was given me with the intention that I should do
so. This was one of the two occasions. The other was my knowledge of
the financial intervention in Egypt before it took place. [Footnote:
He knew this from something said to him by Nubar Pasha.]
'The Greek information of September 6th reached me in Paris, whither I
had gone on the day after my speech, and to which I was followed by
very favourable criticism upon it. Gambetta, with whom I breakfasted
on the 6th, told me that Lord Salisbury, who had been in Paris, had
come there with a view to reopen the Egyptian question, but had not
received encouragement.
'On Thursday, September 12th, I breakfasted with Gambetta in the
country, he coming to fetch me at the Grand Hotel, and driving me down
in a victoria. We talked partly of Egypt, partly of people.'
That autumn Sir Charles spent in the South of France, still working on his
History. [Footnote: _History of the Nineteenth Century_. See Chapter XI.,
p. 154; also Chapter LX. (Vol. II., p. 537).] His son, then four years
old, used to be with him at La Sainte Campagne, Cap Brun, his house near
Toulon. In November a new crisis arose. 'There seemed a chance of war with
Russia about the Afghan complications,' and Sir Charles proposed to his
brother Ashton that, 'in the event of Russia's entry on the war, he should
bring out a daily halfpenny noonday paper, to give, on a small sheet, news
only, and not opinions. At that time evening papers could not be bought
till four o'clock, and the idea was discussed between us until it became
clear that we were only going to fight Afghans, and not Russians.'
The situation was serious enough to demand an autumn Session, because the
beginnings of the war were directly connected with Russian action. After
the Queen had assumed her new title of Empress of India, Lord Lytton was
instructed to propose a Mission to the Amir. But the Amir, who had
previously declined to admit surveying parties of British officers, now
refused this. In the spring of 1878, when war threatened between England
and Russia, the Russian Government also proposed an Embassy to Kabul, and
although they likewise met with a refusal, the Mission was despatched and
reached Kabul.
The Indian Government now saw themselves under a slight; Russia's Mission
had been received, theirs had been refused entrance. Peremptorily they
renewed their request. No answer was returned; the Mission set out, and
was stopped by armed force. Declaration of war followed, and by November
20th British troops had crossed the frontier. Invasion of Afghanistan was
in full progress when Parliament assembled.
Sir Charles saw Gambetta on December 3rd, and returned to England, and by
the 4th was discussing at the Radical Club the course to be taken on the
Address. In his travels he had visited the north-west frontier of India.
It was settled that he should speak, but, as he notes, the debate in the
Commons 'was swamped by that in the Lords,' and, further, 'I found myself
once again in a difficulty on the Afghan question, as I had been on the
Eastern Question, that of not agreeing with either side.'
Lord Hartington, as usual, had been prompt in the assurance of patriotic
support for a Government actually engaged in war; Mr. Gladstone was
passionate in denunciation of the war itself. Between these poles Sir
Charles had to steer, and the pith of his speech was a charge against the
Government that they were punishing the Afghans for having submitted to a
violent act of aggression perpetrated by Russia.
'On Tuesday, December 10th, I spoke in the debate, doing my best to
calm down a revolt which had broken out below the gangway against
Hartington for not having countenanced an amendment to the Address,
and for having made on the Address a speech supposed to be too
friendly to the Government.
'On the other hand, Edward Jenkins, [Footnote: Author of _Ginx's
Baby_.] who called himself a Radical, and who was a strong
Imperialist, was busy drawing amendments which were mere pretexts for
voting with the Government, and I noted in my diary my despair at
finding such men blaming Hartington for going too far, when
Chamberlain was blaming him for not going far enough. While I was
speaking on the 10th Wilfrid Lawson passed to me his copy of the
Orders of the Day, bearing at the head the lines:
'"Lord Salisbury once was the 'master of jeers,
But now he has met with disaster;
For, on reading the Blue Book, it plainly appears
That Giers is Lord Salisbury's master."
The lines were excellent, and I burst out laughing in the middle of my
speech. Giers was the new Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and
the phrase quoted in Lawson's first line was, of course, an abridgment
of Mr. Disraeli's memorable quotation from Shakespeare about his
colleague, and the four lines formed a summary of my speech....
[Footnote: On August 5th, 1874, Disraeli, speaking in the debate on
the Lords' disagreement to certain amendments made by the House of
Commons in the Public Worship Regulation Bill, had described Lord
Salisbury as "a great master of gibes and flouts and jeers."] It came
out clearly in these debates that Northcote had not expected war, and
that Lord Lytton had acted directly under the instructions of the
Prime Minister, and had not only expected, but intended it. I called
Lord Lytton in my speech "a diplomatist rather than a Viceroy, a
Secretary of Legation rather than a ruler of men." This was not
intended for abuse, but to bring the House to see him as I had seen
him in my knowledge of him as Secretary at Paris, in order to show
that he had been sent out to India to be an instrument--obedient to a
policy dictated to him from home.' [Footnote: Sir Charles had been
staying with the Commander-in-Chief at Madras, General Haines,
afterwards Field-Marshal, in January, 1876, when the news came of Lord
Lytton's appointment as Governor-General. 'The old soldier absolutely
refused to credit the information, being a strong Conservative, and
unwilling to admit that Mr. Disraeli could have been guilty of so
extraordinary a mistake.']
This Afghan War, so lightly begun, and fraught with so much disaster, was
the first of a series of events which sapped the credit of the Government
that had triumphantly claimed to bring back "peace with honour" from the
Congress of Berlin.
Some intimate aspects of that gathering are preserved in Sir Charles's
account of a dinner-party at Sir William Harcourt's house on December
11th, the guests including the Russian Ambassador, who had been one of the
plenipotentiaries.
'Schouvalof was very funny. He gave us a fancy picture of the whole
Congress of Berlin. He described almost every member of the Congress,
standing up at the table speaking English when he did Lord
Beaconsfield, and mimicking the Prime Minister's grave manner, with
absurdly comical effect. At last he came to Lord Salisbury, who,
according to him, spoke bad French. He made Lord Salisbury coin an
extraordinary phrase, at which he himself (Schouvalof), all the
Frenchmen, and Gortschakof, shrugged their shoulders with one accord.
Lord Salisbury turned fiercely round, and asked what was the matter
with it, to which Saint-Vallier replied that "there was nothing the
matter with it except that it was not French." "Not French?" said Lord
Salisbury, and rang the electric bell by the button in front of him,
and when the door was opened, holding up his hand to show the
messenger who had rung, said: "Fetch Mr. Currie." Philip Currie
appeared at the door, bowing deeply, whereon Lord Salisbury read his
phrase to him, and said, "Mr. Currie, is that good French?" to which
Currie replied, "Excellent French, my lord;" whereon Lord Salisbury
turned, said Schouvalof, "to our French colleagues, and said:
'There!'" Schouvalof carried on violent discussions between Lord
Beaconsfield, speaking English, and Gortschakof, speaking French,
about various boundary questions, and brought in Bismarck every minute
or two as a chorus, the Chancellor stalking up and down the room with
his arms folded, and growling in a deep voice: "Eh bien, messieurs,
arrangez-vous; car, si vous ne vous arrangez pas, demain je pars pour
Kissingen." Under this Bismarckian pressure Schouvalof, after making
us shriek for half an hour, brought his Congress to an end.... In a
confidential talk with me afterwards Schouvalof said: "I have known
many rude people, but I never knew anyone so rude as was Bismarck at
the Congress. I happened to name our poor clients, the Montenegrins,
when Bismarck roared at me: "Je ne veux pas entendre parler de ces
gens-là." Schouvalof also said of our relations with the Afghans: "You
don't understand dealing with Orientals. Compare your letters to the
Amir and ours, published in your Blue-Book. We call him the Sun and
Moon, and you call him an 'earthen pipkin.'" This last was an allusion
to the phrase used to the Amir, "an earthen pipkin between two iron
pots," the iron pots being ourselves and Russia.'
II.
Sir Charles Dilke in this year has record of meeting with many interesting
persons, some of them links with a vanishing past, such as the daughter of
Horace Smith, who with his brother wrote _Rejected Addresses_. Miss "Tizy"
Smith was, he says,
'the last survivor of that school of noisy, frolicsome, boisterous old
ladies given to punning and banging people on the back; but she was
very witty, and, for those who had spirits to bear her spirits, most
entertaining. She was for many years known as the "Queen of Brighton,"
but her sway was not despotic.'
In February he
'dined with Lady Waldegrave to meet the Duc de Chartres--no better and
no worse than the other Princes of his house...., not excepting the
Duc d'Aumale, who had, however, the reputation of being brilliant, and
who ... was interesting from his great memory of great men. They all
grew deaf as they grew old, and the Comte de Paris is now (1890)
almost as deaf as the Prince de Joinville, who was put into the navy
in his youth, because, not hearing the big guns, he alone of all the
family was not frightened by them.'
In March, 1878, Gambetta sent to Dilke with an introduction 'Henri Hecht,
who was deep in his secrets, and in the habit from this time forward of
visiting for him Germany as well as England.' Going backwards and forwards
to his house at Toulon, Sir Charles always broke the journey at Paris to
see Gambetta. He writes to Ashton Dilke:
"Gambetta says that he shall say at Grenoble that MacMahon said:
'J'irai jusqu'au bout,' and that he must--_i.e._, he must complete his
term. He won't have him again. 'J'en ai assez d'une fois.'"
At Easter Sir Charles was using his influence with Gambetta on behalf of a
great artist who had been politically compromised in the troubles of 1871
--Dalou the sculptor, who had done to Dilke's commission a copy in has-
relief of Flaxman's "Mercury and Pandora."
'When I was leaving for Paris I had several interviews with Dalou as
to getting him leave to return to France without his asking for it. He
had been sub-curator of the Louvre under the Commune, and had helped
to preserve the collections from destruction; but after he fled the
country he had always refused to ask for leave to return, which, had
he asked, would at once have been granted to him. Gambetta always
insisted, when I spoke to him upon the matter, that Dalou should write
some letter, however private and however personal, to ask for leave to
return; but this was just what Dalou's pride would never let him do,
and although he was willing to ask me verbally, and even to refer to
the matter in a private letter to myself, he never would write about
it to anyone in France. Dalou was afterwards selected to make the
official statues of the Republic, and may be said to have become,
after the general amnesty, Sculptor-in-Ordinary to the Government of
France.'
There is a story of Count Beust's difficulties when the Empress of Austria
suddenly asked herself to dine with him at the Austrian Embassy at six on
Sunday, at twenty-four hours' notice. Beust's cook was out of town; but
worse was the difficulty of finding guests of adequate importance. The
Prince of Wales had a dinner-party of his own at Marlborough House, so
recourse was had to another Royal couple, the Duke and Duchess of Teck.
They were engaged to the Marlborough House dinner, but suggested a heroic
expedient. "Why not dine with you at six, and go on at a quarter-past
eight and dine again!" So it was settled.
An eccentric dinner took place at 76, Sloane Street, when the Maharajah of
Johore returned the visit which Sir Charles had paid him in his States
near Singapore. Lord Randolph Churchill and other people interested in
India were among the guests, and the Maharajah brought his own cook, who
prepared enough for all, so that the guests had their choice of two menus.
The host took the Maharajah's, 'which was good but rich,' and 'suffered,
as did all who ate his garlics and his grease.'
'On March 21st I breakfasted with Lord Granville to meet Lord Lyons,
there being also there Lord Ripon, Lord Acton (a man of great learning
and much charm), Lord Carlingford (Chichester Fortescue that had
been), Grant Duff, Sir Thomas Wade (the great Chinese scholar, and
afterwards Professor of Chinese at Cambridge), Lefevre, Meredith
Townsend of the _Spectator_, old Charles Howard, and "old White,"
roaring with that terrible roar which seems almost necessary to go
with his appearance. I have known two men, both in the Foreign Office
service, that looked like bears--Lord Tenterden, [Footnote: Permanent
Under-Secretary of State, afterwards Dilke's colleague at the Foreign
Office.] a little black graminivorous European bear, and "old White,"
a polar bear if ever I saw one, always ready to hug his enemies or his
friends, and always roaring so as to shake the foundations of your
house. "Lord Lyons," I noted in my diary, "does not make any mark in
private, but that may be because he does his duty and holds his
tongue. The diplomatists who talk delightfully, like Odo Russell, are
perhaps not the best models of diplomacy." But White afterwards made a
great Ambassador.
'On March 3rd Goschen dined with me, asked by me to meet "Brett,
Hartington's new secretary"' (now Lord Esher). 'Reginald Brett was,
and is, an extremely pleasant fellow, and he was the ablest secretary,
except Edward Hamilton, that I ever came across; but he was far from
being a model secretary, because ... he always behaved as if he held
delegated authority from Hartington to represent Hartington's
conscience when it would not otherwise have moved, and "Hartington's
opinion" when the chief had none.... But Brett in all he did had
public ends in view....
'On July 30th I dined at a dinner given by a lion-hunter who managed
to get together some remarkable and some pleasant people--Cardinal
Manning, Ruskin, Greenwood, and Borthwick. But whether it was the
influence of the host, or whether it was because Manning did not like
his company except me, and Ruskin did not like his company at all, the
dinner was a failure. No one talked but Ruskin, and he prosed, and his
prose of speech was not his prose of pen. Manning wished to see me
about some education matter, and I called on him on August 2nd, and
from that time forward saw a good deal of the Cardinal.'
Next came members of what was to be the Fourth Party, although then
'isolated individuals.' In February Sir Charles had a long talk with Sir
Henry Drummond Wolff, and 'found him holding very different views upon
foreign affairs from those which afterwards united him with his future
leader. In fact, he had nothing at this moment in common with Lord
Randolph except a personal detestation of Lord Derby.'
Sir John Gorst had acted with Sir Charles to preserve the rights of native
races, especially the Maories; and thus a friendship had grown up, in
which Dilke was anxious to include Mr. Chamberlain.
'On July 26th Chamberlain dined with me to meet Richard Power, the new
Irish Whip, and Gorst, the latter soon afterwards to join with
Randolph Churchill in the formation of the memorable Fourth Party, and
to be known as "Randolph's Attorney-General." Many years afterwards,
when Randolph Churchill had quarrelled with Gorst, and the Fourth
Party had finally gone to pieces, Lord Randolph said to me: "Gorst was
the best adviser I ever had. I often failed to follow his advice, and
have always regretted not following it." When the Fourth Party was
first formed, he advised that we should sit immediately behind the
leaders--I with my knees in Northcote's back. I overruled him, and we
sat below the gangway; but he was right. We should have done far more
execution if I had been nearer to "the Goat." Lord Randolph never
alluded to Sir Stafford Northcote except by this playful appellation,
based upon the long, straggling, yellow-white beard of the
Conservative Chief. When he was in good humour the Fourth Party leader
alluded to the Conservative leader as "the goat"; but when angry as
"the old goat," and often with many of those disrespectful adjectives
in which in private conversation he delighted.
'At dinner at the Harcourts' on August 10th, Arthur Balfour present:
... I am the greatest of admirers of his "charm."'
Ireland, which makes or breaks politicians, made Mr. A. J. Balfour. Here
is some detail of one of the men whom Ireland broke. Towards the end of
the Session came to Sir Charles a letter from the Duchess of Manchester at
Aix-les-Bains:
"Please back up Mr. Forster. I think he is quite right. Fancy, to be
chosen and proposed by a Committee, adopted by 300 idiots or geniuses,
and to have to submit, when you can stand on your own merits."
'A German Conservative Duchess was not likely to be able to understand
the Caucus. Forster was her friend, going and sitting with her almost
every day, and chuckling over her politics with his extraordinary
chuckle, and playing cards with her at night. To his card-playing,
indeed, he ultimately owed his life, for the Invincibles in Dublin
used to wait for him night after night outside his club to murder him
(as afterwards came out in the Phoenix Park trial), and, tired out
with waiting, at last fancy that he must have gone home. Forster was
at this moment at loggerheads with his Bradford constituents, and
hence the letter of the Duchess; but I did not "back up" Forster,
being myself an absolute believer in the wisdom of the Caucus system.
I had, indeed, invented a Caucus in Chelsea before the first
Birmingham Election Association was started.'
Sir Charles left for Paris, and--
'on September 6th I met Émile Ollivier, who said that there had never
been in France a personal power equal to that of Gambetta at this
moment; even that of Napoleon, when First Consul, was not so great.
Then the Bourbons were dimly seen behind. "Now there is nothing
behind; nothing except Clericalism, and Clericalism can be bought."
'Ollivier I found still full of burning hatred for the Empress, but he
had forgiven Rouher and the Emperor for making him the scapegoat. I
discussed with him once more the origin of the war of 1870, and he
maintained most stoutly that France had been driven into it by
Bismarck, and had only put herself in the wrong by herself declaring
war, and had done this because her army system gave her a fortnight's
start, the advantage of which was lost through the Emperor's
hesitations. He thinks that in that fortnight the German Army could
have been destroyed. It is on this point that he is wrong.'
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ZULU WAR AND THE GREEK COMMITTEE
The chronicle of the year 1879 begins with a visit paid by Sir Charles to
Paris on his way back from his house near Toulon, to which he had returned
after the brief Session of December, On February 2nd 'I breakfasted with
Gambetta. His furniture was being packed up for removal to the Palais
Bourbon, where he was about to take up residence as President of the
Chamber,' and 'saw him again late at night at the office of his paper'
(_La République Française_). 'Gambetta was then,' says a note added later,
'at the height of his power, and, in fact, Dictator. He was a patriot, but
too big for the Republic.'
'On my return to London I found that Chamberlain was most anxious to see
me,' and on February 5th Sir Charles went to Birmingham, to discuss their
joint line of action in the coming Session. During this visit 'Chamberlain
told me of Lord Beaconsfield's pleasant prophecies with regard to myself,
of which I heard from all sides just after this time.'
The "pleasant prophecies" declared that Sir Charles would certainly be
Prime Minister. Mr. Gladstone, it will be seen later, came to the
conclusion in 1882 that Dilke would be his natural successor in the House
of Commons; but this opinion was given only a little in advance of a
widely received public estimate, and it came after the test of office had
proved those qualities which Lord Beaconsfield discerned while the younger
statesman was still only a private member of the Opposition, not promoted
to the Front Bench.
But no one, even in 1879, doubted that Sir Charles was of Front Bench
rank; and close upon this came a decisive opportunity in Parliament.
Trouble, which threatened to become acute, between the Zulu power under
Cetewayo and his encroaching Boer neighbours had led the British
Government to carry out the annexation of the Transvaal during the course
of 1877. The Zulus were inclined to trust the British more than the Dutch;
but the advent of Sir Bartle Frere as High Commissioner put a new
complexion on matters. Frere had made up his mind that the Zulu power must
be broken, and a pretext was soon found in a demand for the abolition of
the Zulu military system. This ultimatum was presented on December 11th,
1878, by Frere, of his own motion, and without warning to the Home
Government. The inevitable refusal followed, leading to invasion of the
Zulu territory, with disastrous result. On January 23rd, 1879, Lord
Chelmsford's force was cut to pieces at Isandhlwana; and it seemed
possible that the whole colony of Natal might be overrun by Zulu _impis_.
This was the governing factor of the political situation at the moment
when Parliament reopened in 1879. Sir Charles had not previously taken a
prominent part in the discussion of South African affairs, and his
attitude is indicated only by isolated passages in the Memoir.
In 1875, when Lord Carnarvon sent J. A. Froude to 'stump South Africa' in
advocacy of a scheme of federation devised in Downing Street, Sir Charles
condemned a mission which seemed to him to cast a slur on the local
Colonial governments. In his opinion, this mission helped to create those
disturbances which rent South Africa in the succeeding years. On May 27th,
1877, he noted that the Blue Book on the Transvaal, then published, was
'an indictment of the Republic intended to justify the annexation,' but
that it did not 'show the existence of any overwhelming necessity for
annexation, or, indeed, any necessity at all.' Yet he gave only a half-
hearted support to Mr. Courtney's opposition to the South Africa Bill when
those matters were debated in the House, for, as he wrote in a letter to
the _Spectator_, he was opposed, "not to the policy of annexation, which,
as leading up to confederation," he supported, "but to the manner in which
that annexation had been carried out." It was said to have been done by
the desire of the Dutch themselves. If so, why were three battalions of
British troops still needed in the Transvaal? The Bill did not establish a
self-governing federation; it only provided that federation might be
established by an Order in Council. What guarantee had the Dutch, he
asked, that such an order would ever be issued?
Events justified his question, for the promise was never made good, even
when the Liberals themselves came into office, and Sir Charles resented
the iniquity of this dealing.
In February, 1878, he met Froude at dinner, and 'discussed with him the
South African question, on which we took widely different views, and of
which his were to be the source of much unhappiness to the Mother Country
and the Colonies.'
With the difficulty of the Transvaal the Zulu outbreak was indirectly
connected. Great Britain had been drawn into strife with the Zulu power,
which had for more than thirty years lived peaceably beside the Natal
Government, only because the annexation had made England responsible for
the peace of the disputed territories beyond the Vaal. There was also a
strong if indirect connecting-link in the personality of Sir Bartle Frere,
who, as High Commissioner in South Africa, had belittled the Boer claims,
and who now by a violent stretch of authority had precipitated war with
the Zulus.
After his discussion with Chamberlain at Birmingham, Sir Charles had
decided to indict the Government's South African policy on the first
possible occasion, and he communicated this intention to Lord Hartington.
Owing to the prolonged winter Session there was to be no Queen's Speech,
and consequently no Address, at the opening of Parliament, and Sir
Stafford Northcote was to begin the proceedings with a general statement.
Lord Hartington, after some hesitation as to the course to be pursued,
ultimately commissioned Sir Charles to reply at once on behalf of the
Opposition--a task which would naturally fall to the official leader of
the party. The opportunity thus given to him was the more notable because
the Liberal chiefs were divided as to the line which should be taken.
Harcourt, Sir Charles records, 'tried to prevent me from bringing forward
any motion as to the Zulu War,' but Chamberlain was strong in the opposite
sense. "We want to din into the constituencies," he wrote, "that the
Government policy is one of _continual_, petty, fruitless, unnecessary,
and inglorious squabbles--all due to their bullying, nagging ways." This
was consonant with the Birmingham leader's fierce opposition to Jingoism;
and for once he shared the view of his titular leader.
'Hartington fell in with the view taken by Chamberlain, and my notice
to call attention to the South African papers and the causes of the
war was given with his consent. The bad news from the Cape '--news of
Isandhlwana--' which came on February 11th, had changed his former
view. My speech on Northcote's motion was on the 13th February.'
He then brought forward on behalf of the Liberal party a resolution
condemning the Government's policy in South Africa, and more especially
the conduct of Sir Bartle Frere. The date for this main attack was not
fixed till after considerable delay, and before it arrived the words of
the motion which stood in Sir Charles's name were annexed bodily, and put
down in the name of Lord Lansdowne, to be moved in the Lords on an earlier
day. Lord Lansdowne sat on the Liberal Front Bench in the Upper House
(where he took an active part in criticism of Conservative policy), and
Sir Charles called this proceeding "taking the bread out of a private
member's mouth," despite the implied compliment to his tact in drafting
the Resolution. Sunday, the 23rd March, he spent at Mentmore, Lord
Rosebery's house, where Lord and Lady Granville were staying, and he
notes:
'I could not but think (although Lord Granville was very civil and
told me that he had advised the King of the Belgians to go to the
House of Commons on the following Thursday to hear my speech) that if
Lord Granville had thought that my speech was going to be a success,
he would not have stolen my motion for Lord Lansdowne to bring it on
first in the House of Lords. I could not see the wisdom of the
tactics, because it was already certain we should have a better
division in the Commons, proportionately speaking, than in the Lords.
At Devonshire House, on the previous Wednesday, Lord Lansdowne came up
to me in the entrance hall, where it is rather dark, and began talking
to me, and as I did not see who it was, he introduced himself--
"Lansdowne the pirate," of course in allusion to the robbery of my
words.'
The words were--
"That this House, while willing to support Her Majesty's Government in
all necessary measures for defending the possessions of Her Majesty in
South Africa, regrets that the ultimatum which was calculated to
produce immediate war should have been presented to the Zulu king
without authority from the responsible advisers of the Crown, and that
an offensive war should have been commenced without imperative or
pressing necessity or adequate preparation; and this House further
regrets that after the censure passed, upon the High Commissioner by
Her Majesty's Government in the despatch of the 19th day of March,
1879, the conduct of affairs in South Africa should be retained in his
hands."
'These words did not please all men. Fawcett wrote me two strong
letters to protest against them. Lord Granville also discussed them at
some length with me in writing. Fawcett was largely moved by
detestation of Sir Bartle Frere, and, while my chief object was to
stop the war, his object was to force Frere to resign. The feeling
against the proconsul was strong among the Liberals.
'On the 25th the debate in the Lords took place. The House was
thronged, the galleries being filled with ladies, and (there being a
Court mourning) all in black--save one, Lady ----. She was in scarlet
from top to toe, or more than toe, for she displayed a pair of long
scarlet stockings to a startled House, and each member as he came in
said, "Good gracious me, who's that?" so that Lansdowne could hardly
begin for the buzz. His speech was dull, and the result was favourable
to the Government. Two days later I brought forward my motion in the
Commons, and had a great personal success, receiving the
congratulations of all the leading men of both parties. I spoke for
two hours and a half, and kept the House full, without ever for an
instant being in doubt as to the complete success of the speech;
greatly cheered by my own side, without being once questioned or
interrupted by the other. But the speech was far from being my best
speech, although it was by far my greatest success. It was an easy
speech to make--a mere Blue-Book speech. The case from the papers was
overwhelming. All that had to be done was to state it in a clear way,
and I should think that more than half the speech consisted of mere
reading of extracts, which, however, I read in such a way as to
incorporate them in the body of the speech. The opening and the
conclusion, both of which were effective, were not my own; for they
were suggested to me, only I think on the same day, by William
Rathbone, who sometimes thought of a good way of putting things. While
I was gratified by the success of the speech, I could not help feeling
how completely these things are a matter of opportunity, inasmuch as I
had made dozens of better speeches in the House, of which some had
been wholly unsuccessful.'
Nothing was wanting to the completeness of the after-effects of his House
of Commons triumph.
'The general feeling seemed to be, as Lord Reay put it in his letter
of congratulation, that my speech on South African affairs was "the
Cape of Good Hope of the Liberal party."' [Footnote: Lord Reay (Baron
Mackay of Ophemert), a Hollander by birth, then recently naturalized,
spoke with special authority when South Africa was in question. The
Barony was originally Scotch, and created in 1628. A peerage of the
United Kingdom was conferred on Lord Reay (the eleventh Baron) in
1881.]
By this speech his contemporaries remember Sir Charles as a speaker. Sir
George Trevelyan writes:
"His great speech on South Africa was a wonderful exposition, lucid,
convincing, detailed, without being heavy. I can well recall how old
members admired the manner in which he ticked off topic after topic,
with its due amount of illustration from the Blue-Books."
A letter to Mrs. Pattison, written, as he says in it, "under the violent
excitement of a splendid personal success," contains his own estimate. The
congratulations of leading men of all parties were couched, he said, "in
such a way as made me realize how badly I had always spoken before." And
in his Memoir he adds the modest comment that 'praise was forthcoming in
abundance. The only praise, however, that I can accept as fairly belonging
to this speech, is praise for a past of work which had led up to it.'
The result, especially with an indolent man like Lord Hartington as
leader, was that the conduct of the Opposition's case was increasingly
left to Sir Charles Dilke. _Truth_ put the popular view amusingly enough
in Hiawathan verse:
"Never absent, always ready
To take up the burning question
Of the hour and make a motion:
Be it Cyprus, be it Zulu,
He can speak for hours about it
From his place below the gangway.
No Blue Book avails to fright him:
He's the stomach of an ostrich
For the hardest facts and figures,
And assimilates despatches
In the most surprising fashion."
A serious tribute to his success follows:
'I was asked by Sir Thomas Bazley, who was eighty-two years of age, to
stand for Manchester in his place, with a promise from Manchester that
my expenses would be paid. But I was under a volunteered pledge not to
leave Chelsea until beaten, which I thought I should be "this time."'
Sir Charles records as one feature of the debate the sudden and painful
failure of Mr. Lowe's hitherto great debating powers:
'On the second night of the debate I dined with Sir Charles Forster'
(member for Walsall, and well known as a dinner-giver to the chiefs of
the Liberal party) 'to meet Lord Hartington, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr.
Bright. Almost the sole topic of conversation was the breakdown in the
debate of Lowe, who had apparently been trusting as usual to his
hitherto marvellous memory, when this had failed him, and he stopped
short' (in the middle of a sentence), 'and failed ever, henceforward,
to regain his power.'
The future of Greece engaged Sir Charles's attention far more constantly
than this South African embroilment. Cyprus was a branch of the Greek
question, and (in a speech of March 20th, 1879) he had attacked Wolseley's
administration of the island. The General replied in a Blue Book, which
was debated on June 20th, 1879:
'The Cypriotes were so excited that they were sending me not only
every fact, but every story, and as it was difficult to sift them in
London, I dare say some of the charges were untrue and some were
certainly trivial.'
One telegram had complained bitterly of the injustice done to two priests
whose beards were cut off in a British gaol, although nothing was said as
to the justice of their imprisonment. But "the existence of forced labour
under our rule had certainly been admitted," said Sir Charles in his
speeches on the question, and on this and on the law which the Government
of Cyprus had passed, taking to itself powers of arbitrary exile without
trial, he rested a case in which he persevered throughout the Session,
debating Cyprus 'at such length, I fear, as to bore the House.' He relates
that he once began a speech on Cyprus before a party of members set out
for the Crystal Palace to dine, and was still delivering the same speech
when they came back. Later, when in office, he was able to make the
administrative changes he desired for the benefit of the island.
One result of Sir Charles's interest in the affairs of Cyprus was to bring
down upon him 'an enormous correspondence in modern Greek, to read which I
had to engage the services of a translator.'
'The Cypriote Bishops are the most long-winded people with whom I ever
had to do, and their communications, although flattering, were
somewhat burdensome. I was also receiving many letters in modern Greek
from Athens and various centres of Greek activity with regard to the
proceedings of the Greek Committee, and I received addresses from
Epirus and from the other Turkish provinces and islands inhabited by
Greeks in which there was any thought of cession. I was appointed
Honorary President of the "Zenon," whatever that might be, and
received similar appointments from various Greek societies. I am,
indeed, also a "citizen of Athens."'
He received the freedom of that city on July 12th, 1879; the Grand Cross
of the Saviour was also offered, but declined.
'On Sunday, March 30th, Hartington sent to me to exchange notes upon
the position of the Greek question, and his attitude seemed to me
that, as he did not understand anything about it, he hoped I was being
careful and not doing anything very wrong. At all events, he left me
to myself, and I delivered my soul in the House.'
This he did on April 17th, putting forward a complaint that, although
Greece looked to Great Britain's representatives at the Congress of Berlin
for a traditional championship of the Hellenic claims, Lord Beaconsfield
and Lord Salisbury had allowed the proposal for an extension of Greek
territory to come from French diplomatists; and, further, that the
recommendation to this effect inserted in the Treaty of Berlin had been
evaded by Turkey. He described in his speech the delays and the
unsatisfactory proposals which had been put forward by Turkey in
conference with Greek delegates, and demanded European pressure to carry
out the declared intentions of Europe. A special obligation of honour
rested upon England, so he held, because England had induced Greece to
desist from war when Turkey was at grips with Russia, and when the Greeks,
by attacking, might easily have secured possession of the territory they
desired.
These representations were put forward a month later as the general appeal
of the Greek Committee, which had existed as a secret body for a year, but
was formally and publicly organized on April 25th, 1879. Preparations were
begun for a public meeting, and after several conferences with Lord
Lansdowne
'I invited the speakers and drew up an appeal to the public, and acted
as Chairman of the Executive Committee, with Rosebery for President
and Lefevre for Treasurer. The meeting was held at Willis's Rooms on
May 17th, 1879, and was attended by men of all shades of opinion--the
Duke of Westminster, Sir Robert Peel, an independent Conservative, and
several other Conservatives, as well as the mass of the Liberals. I
presided, and Lansdowne moved the first resolution.'
Dilke said afterwards that this meeting had been 'sufficiently interesting
to keep Harcourt and a Duke standing for three hours--putting Harcourt
first because he was the more august.'
Immediately afterwards he went to Liverpool, as the guest of the Liverpool
Reform Club, to speak specially upon the Greek question.
'My speech was dull; the best thing said in the course of the evening
was said by a man who had been _Daily News_ correspondent in Crete--
"They talk of Europe! What is Europe? Europe is a number of wicked old
gentlemen with decorations, assembled in a room."
'During my stay in the neighbourhood of Liverpool I was the guest at
Knowsley of Lord and Lady Derby, who were trying by all means in their
power to emphasize the fact that they were quite ready to go over to
the Liberal side' (as they did within the year). 'I tried hard to get
Rosebery to make some speeches in the country upon the Greek question,
but this attempt was a failure. He was greatly pressed to go to
Manchester in the same way in which I had gone to Liverpool, but after
taking a long time to think of the thing, he distinctly refused. I
never quite knew why; but caution was always the predominant element
in his nature, though he was occasionally rash just when he should
have been cautious.'
In June Sir Charles became possessed of 'a curious document which he
translated and made public.' According to the story told him, the letter
had been in the mailbags aboard a steamer which was wrecked, and it had
been retrieved along with the rest from the bottom of the sea. But
'it was probably bought for the Greeks by their spy Fitzgerald, the
"journalist" who afterwards disappeared--finally--about 1894. He had,
however, often disappeared for some years. The letter was stamped with
an Italian stamp for foreign post, addressed to Mouktar Pasha,
commanding in chief the Turkish army in Epirus; and, although the
envelope was plain and not calculated to attract attention, the letter
was on Italian Foreign Office paper, and dated from the Foreign Office
at Rome on April 6th. It was from Corte, an Italian Consul-General who
had been employed in Albania and afterwards in the Italian Foreign
Office, and pointed to Italian intrigue in Albania to make the
Italians rather than the Greeks the successors of the Turks in Albania
and Epirus. Seven years later I saw a good deal of Mouktar Pasha at
Constantinople, but I did not mention this letter either to him or to
the Sultan. It referred to Mouktar's idea of "colonization in Epirus,"
and, from the context, and from what we know of previous proceedings,
it would seem that this colonization of Epirus was to have been a
colonization by Italian peasants.'
This letter came to Sir Charles as President of the Greek Committee, and
here may be added notice of the birth of an enterprise kindred in spirit
to the political association of those who loved Greece:
'On Monday, June 16th, I took part in the meeting at which the
Hellenic Society was founded, it having grown out of a conference held
at Cambridge between Mr. Newton of the British Museum (afterwards Sir
Charles Newton), Professor Colvin, and me. The first resolution was
moved by Lord Morley (Earl Morley, afterwards Chairman of Committees
of the House of Lords), and seconded by Professor Sayce; the second by
me, and seconded by the Dean of St. Paul's; the third by Sir John
Lubbock, and seconded by Professor Jebb; and the fourth by Professor
Colvin, and seconded by Gennadius.'
Two other questions of abiding interest were touched on by Sir Charles
this year. That of Upper Houses is mentioned in connection with interviews
with Sir Graham Berry, one of his Colonial acquaintances.
'Mr. (afterwards Sir) Graham Berry, Prime Minister, or, as they call
it in the Colonies, "Premier" of Victoria; a rough, able man, son of a
Chelsea tradesman.... We arranged a reception, which was given to
Berry by the parish of Chelsea at the Chelsea Vestry Hall, myself in
the chair, when we presented him with an address expressing the hope
that the Victoria Lower House might prevail in its struggle against
the Upper. Professor Pearson, formerly of Oxford--a Free Trader,
though Mr. Berry was a Protectionist--was with him, and they were over
to try to persuade the Colonial Office to support them against the
Upper House.'
'Sir Graham Berry was afterwards the Agent-General of his Colony, but
still possessed the confidence of the Liberal party in Victoria in a
higher degree than any other man, and he afterwards returned to local
politics and became Speaker. Pearson wrote a great book before he
died.'
Sir Graham Berry wrote later in this year 'for opinions upon a Bill of
reform of the Upper House in his Parliament,' to which Sir Charles replied
'that I disliked Upper Houses so much as not to be in favour of reforming
them.'
This attitude he always maintained. His views upon the whole question of
representation were this year put into a pamphlet which
'advocated, in addition to the reforms upon which Liberals were
agreed, the system of double elections, as on the Continent--that is
to say, a second poll to be held when at the first the person at the
head of the poll did not obtain a clear majority of votes.'
The other question takes the first place in Sir Charles's note of his
conversations with Chamberlain at the beginning of the Session. This
touched on economic difficulties, and runs thus:
"That it would be wise to have a motion on the condition of the realm:
probably by moving for a Committee to inquire into the cause of the
present distress, and that Mundella would be the best person to move,
especially if the Front Bench would support him, as the distress is
most severe in Sheffield."
Some years, however, elapsed before Sir Charles was able to deal with such
questions authoritatively as President of the Local Government Board.
We can trace at this time the beginning of those close relations which
Dilke and Chamberlain cultivated (even after they had joined Mr.
Gladstone's Government) with the new power that was growing up in
Parliament. On February 15th, 'we were anxious that the Irish should vote
with us about the Zulu War, the more so because her leaders were
hesitating upon the subject,' and Sir Charles invited Mr. Parnell to meet
Mr. Chamberlain at dinner; but they 'were able to make but little of him.'
Further meetings took place, from which the only practical result was a
promise of Parnell's support in their opposition to the County Boards
Bill, which the Conservative Government were putting forward as their main
measure. The ground of opposition was that 'it was better to leave the
present system alone than to create new Boards only half elective.'
The Memoir has a note respecting one of these meetings with the Irish
leader at which Parnell was accompanied by Major Nolan, then member for
County Galway:
'Nolan showed opportunist Nationalism; Parnell irreconcilable
Nationalism. The latter let out, in spite of his great caution, that
if we chose to go to Ireland on Mill's land programme, we could
destroy his position and the Home Rule movement. Nolan said that a
party which would give security of tenure to the small tenants could
afford to leave the large ones out. (To touch the large tenancies in
that sense would be virtually to charge the possession of property in
Ireland with partial compensation.)'
At this moment, the beginning of 1879, the purely Nationalist agitation
for self-government had not yet been joined to the demand for an improved
and freer status for the Irish tenant. This was mainly the work of Davitt,
and Davitt had scarcely yet been heard of by the wider public.
CHAPTER XIX
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INTERESTS
Hospitable and popular, Sir Charles had the best of what those days could
offer in talk and talkers. He compared his own country very unfavourably
with the possible standard of social intercourse:
'In England and in France people seem wholly unaware that they cannot
either in politics or in literature deal with or even understand
questions involving philosophical and historical considerations
without any training in either philosophy or history, and one sees
writings and speeches by persons who think themselves members of an
educated class which are unintelligible to any who have the slightest
discipline of either habit of thought or form of expression.'
'In the best English political and literary society there is no
conversation. Mr. Gladstone will talk with much charm about matters
that he does not understand, or books that he is not really competent
to criticize; but his conversation has no merit to those who are
acquainted with the subjects on which he speaks. Men like Lord
Rosslyn, [Footnote: Lord Rosslyn died in 1890.] Lord Houghton, Lord
Granville (before his deafness), had a pleasant wit and some
cultivation, as had Bromley Davenport, Beresford Hope, and others, as
well as Arthur Balfour, but none of these men were or are at a high
level; and where you get the high level in England, you fall into
priggism. On the whole, Hastings, Duke of Bedford, was the best
specimen that I ever knew of an English gentleman as regards learning
and conversation; but then he was horrible as a man, in spite of his
pretty manners, because ferocious in his ideas upon property. Now, at
Rome is to be found that which is unknown in London, in Paris, in St.
Petersburg, and unknown, I fancy, at Vienna and Berlin, although of
these I know far less--namely, conversation not priggish or academic,
and yet consistently maintained at a high level.
'I often heard Mr. Gladstone talk well at little Charles Forster's.
"Mr. G." also seemed to me to talk especially well at the table of Sir
Walter James, [Footnote: The first Lord Northbourne.] an old gentleman
who had left Parliament soon after I was born. In those two houses he
was supreme; but if Coleridge or the Viper (Abraham Hayward) or
Browning were present, who talked better than he did, and would not
give way to him, he was less good. Villiers, who was another good
talker, "Mr. G." could not abide, and his presence also was a damper.'
In the next year we have 'a dinner at the French Embassy, where Gladstone
was very agreeable, talking French well in an old-fashioned style.'
Also, in 1880, there is a dinner to which
'the first man to come was the Duke of Cambridge, who gave Mr.
Gladstone his left hand, and said that his right was too painful
through gout. Mr. Gladstone threw his arms up to the sky, as though he
had just heard of the reception of Lord Beaconsfield in heaven, or of
some other similar terrible news. His habit of play-acting in this
fashion, in the interest of a supposed politeness, is a very odd one,
giving a great air of unreality to everything he does; but of course
it is a habit of long years.
'I heard good talk about this time at Coleridge's house, but preferred
his Blakes--which were even better than mine--to his conversation.'
Under the date February 23rd is record of sitting up late at night at the
Lubbocks' with Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the Judge:
'We did not agree upon any point, for his opinions upon all things,
especially hanging, were the exact opposite of my own. He talked of
"our dear old British gallows." But we got on well, and I was one of
those who greatly regretted his breakdown, which occurred some ten
years later. He and Leslie Stephen were the sons of Sir James Stephen,
Professor of History at Cambridge--very unlike one another in early
life, when J. F. Stephen was a fat, half-Whig, half-Tory lawyer and
_Saturday Reviewer_, and Leslie a starved-looking, free-thinking
Radical parson, afterwards to throw off his Orders. As they grew old
they became much alike in appearance, and in opinion.'
There is a note of spending a Sunday in March 'at Aston Clinton, with the
widow of Sir Anthony de Rothschild and her daughter, Mrs. Cyril Flower,
afterwards Lady Battersea.
'Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild and his wife came to dinner, and, well
knowing as I did two other members of the family, I could see how
strangely like a Royal family the Rothschilds are in one respect--
namely, that they all quarrel with one another, but are united as against
the world. When Cyril Flower, in 1878, made a speech unfriendly to the
Government, but not more so than might naturally be expected at that time
from a Liberal member, Baron Lionel sent for him, and told him that it was
"wicked and abominable for him to attack a man who had been a poor Jew and
was now the greatest man in England." "In Europe, papa," cut in Nathaniel,
who was present at this public cursing.
'From March 15th to the 17th I stayed at York House with the Grant
Duffs, where I met the Marquis and Marquise de la Ferronnays, Henry
Cowper, Minto, Lord Reay, and Herbert Spencer. La Ferronnays was at
this time Military Attaché at the French Embassy, but resigned as soon
as the Republic became consolidated, and, being elected to the
Chamber, was soon the fighting leader of the high Tory party--a not
clever, but excellent gentleman, like the others.
'On Monday, March 31st, I dined at the Harcourts', but, alas I this
time no Schouvalof. His place was occupied by Rancez, the Spanish
Minister, who had the same diplomatic capacity for concealing the
truth while talking with equal apparent frankness, but who was less
amusing.
'On Monday, April 7th, I dined with Lord and Lady Arthur Russell, to
meet old Lady Russell. I had seen her once before at Pembroke Lodge,
and once at Harcourt's at dinner, on both of which previous occasions
I had seen Lord Russell too--a shadow of his former self.... On this
occasion Lady Russell was alone, Lord Russell having died in the
previous year. [Footnote: In 1878.] The old lady was pleasant, and
gave me a general invitation to come to Pembroke Lodge any or every
Sunday, an invitation of which I afterwards availed myself.
'On April 9th I left for France for Easter, and had long and pleasant
breakfasts at the Palais Bourbon with Gambetta, varied by a grand
dinner on April 16th, at which I met many of those who afterwards held
office--Ferry, afterwards Prime Minister; Rouvier, afterwards Prime
Minister; Spuller, afterwards Minister for Foreign Affairs; Constans,
afterwards Minister of the Interior; and Freycinet, afterwards Prime
Minister--all of them dull men enough. Spuller, a kindly and pleasant
dull man; Constans, a red-faced Burgundy drinker; Freycinet, a little
white intriguer--on the whole a sorry crew, Gambetta towering above
them in ability, in joviality, and even in reading.'
In a scrap of an old letter, dated Wednesday, April 16th, Sir Charles
says:
"I've spent nearly all my time with Gambetta. He said that he thinks
Sella 'le premier homme politique de l'Italie, mais enragé
protectionniste.' He says he told him that if he were not so violent a
Protectionist he would be 'l'homme absolument nécessaire.'"
On this follows later the observation:
'If Gambetta was anything, he was anti-Russian and a Free Trader, and
his friends, professing to continue his work, became, after about
1887, rabid Russians and fierce Protectionists.'
He speaks of Gambetta's 'contempt for Sella because Sella was a
Protectionist,' and adds: 'I suppose Gambetta would have become one
had he lived.'
While Dilke was in Paris he received a letter from Chamberlain referring
to a motion about 'the interference of the Crown in politics,' of which
Mr. Dillwyn had given notice. Mr. Chamberlain thought the subject
"certainly a popular one, but very difficult to treat in the House of
Commons."
'Dillwyn's motion was obviously what people would call "interesting,"
but obviously also highly dangerous, as it was really impossible to
prove the case. The Queen does interfere constantly; more, however,
when Liberal Ministers are in power than when she has a Conservative
Cabinet, because the Conservatives on the whole do what she likes, as
she is a Conservative; whereas the Liberals are continually doing, and
indeed exist for the purpose of doing, the things she does not like.
But it is very doubtful how far her interference is unconstitutional,
and it would be quite impossible to prove it, unless Mr. Gladstone,
for example, were to publish her letters--a not very likely
supposition. The Queen is a woman of great ability.... She writes to
the Prime Minister about everything she does not like, which, when he
is a Liberal, means almost everything that he says or does. She
complains of his colleagues' speeches. She complains, with less
violence, of his own. She protests against Bills. She insists that
administrative acts should not be done without delay, for the purpose
of consulting with regard to them persons whose opinions she knows
will be unfavourable. But if the Minister acts as she directs, he, and
not she, becomes responsible; and he may be impeached, for example,
for so doing. And... her action, to my mind, is, strictly speaking,
constitutional. Even in the House of Commons, and in a speech taking a
rough popular view of the Constitution, it would be difficult to
maintain that with her immense experience the Queen is not justified
in asking for time in order that men of distinction should be
consulted upon various acts; and anything beyond this would be mere
matter of inference, not proving the case even if the facts were
known, which of course they are not. Our poor Dillwyn on this
occasion, prompted by Trevelyan, walked into a hornets' nest; and, as
he did it without consulting his two leaders, his leaders were not
bound to follow him.'
'On March 21st I dined with Sir Baliol and Lady Bret, meeting the
German Ambassador (Count Münster) and his daughter, and Lord and Lady
Derby. She was not at all bitter about Lord Beaconsfield, although
very bitter about the Court; and after dinner Lord Derby said that the
Queen was now carrying on a confidential correspondence with every
quarter of the globe, so that he was evidently bitter too....
'On April 22nd I received from Auberon Herbert a letter: "Things look
well. The gilding is much tarnished, and shows the brass underneath.
You have done right well. Many thanks for your letter. I went to
Leeds--on the chance but I suspect I am best out of the House. I can
do more to make people believe in themselves, and not in our Moslem
idea of government--perhaps--outside the House than in it. You do
agree in the fearfully paralyzing effect of belief in Government,
don't you?" The last words reveal the growth in Auberon Herbert of
anarchic views, which shortly afterwards turned him for all practical
purposes from a Radical into a Tory, or, rather, turned him back to
the point from which he had started, for as a Tory private secretary
to a Tory Cabinet Minister he had begun political life at the time
when he drew up the plan for the action of the troops against the mob
on the day of the Hyde Park railings being torn down--a plan so
drastic that the Home Secretary, Walpole, refused to move.
'On Wednesday, April 23rd, I dined with Waddy, M.P., Q.C., [Footnote:
Afterwards County Court Judge.] a man who would have been a Judge but
for his odd name and his odder manners, "to meet Lord Hartington and
the President of the Wesleyan Conference," an odd mixture. Waddy is a
Wesleyan, and wanted Hartington to make the acquaintance of the
leading Wesleyans in England, and took this course to bring about the
result.
'My Sundays at this time I had taken to spend at Pembroke Lodge,
preferring it to Strawberry Hill as quieter, for we often had there
(besides Lady Russell) only Lady Agatha and Rollo Russell, and little
Lord Russell when he was home for the holidays from Winchester.
'On Monday, April 28th, I had an interview with the Duke of Argyll at
his wish with regard to the Eastern Question generally, in which he
took deep interest, and on which he made, perhaps, on the whole, the
most conclusive speech delivered in Parliament against the policy of
the Conservative Government. The Duke of Argyll was at this time the
most finished and (for a stately occasion and a cultivated audience)
about the most convincing speaker that could be found--to me, not so
convincing as Gathorne Hardy, and, to all men, less gifted with charm
and melody of voice than Mr. Bright; but fine in the extreme, with no
serious drawbacks except a little too much satisfaction with himself;
a very able man, as his monumental book upon the Eastern Question will
suffice to show. In philosophy he dabbled, and for dabblers was a
philosopher.
'On Friday, May 9th, I lunched with Lord and Lady Lansdowne, and found
her one of the nicest women that I had ever met--a plain and simple
lady. In the evening I dined with Lady Elizabeth Biddulph, and made
the acquaintance of Herbert of the Colonial Office, whom I afterwards
heard described by Grant Duff in a public speech as "the perfect
permanent official." I had later, when Undersecretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, to act twice for a short time during changes in the
Colonial Office as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the
Colonial Office, in addition to my own duties, and I was able to
discover for myself how true was what Grant Duff said. On one of these
occasions Hicks Beach, who had been Colonial Secretary, gave notice to
call attention to salaries of officers on the West Coast of Africa,
and I at once sent over to the Colonial Office to tell Herbert that he
had done so. Herbert immediately replied that the salaries were low,
and the coast unhealthy, and that salaries could hardly be reduced;
while, on the other hand, when Sir Michael had been Secretary of
State, he had not proposed to raise them; but that so soon as we could
learn which it was that he intended--_i.e._, to lower or to raise--he
would send me, "in either event, a perfect case."
'On May 10th George Sheffield, the _alter ego_ of Lord Lyons, asked
himself to breakfast, and I gathered that Lord Lyons had told him to
come and pump me as to what Gambetta had indicated of his intentions
in France, as George Sheffield kept telling me that Gambetta evidently
intended to make himself Dictator in name, as he was in fact.
'On Sunday, May 11th, I dined with Edmund Yates and his wife, meeting
Irving, Browning, Sala, Mrs. Lynn Linton (just back from three years
in Florence), Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Murray, and some others. I was
intensely amused at watching Mrs. Douglas Murray, agreeable but rather
superfine, looking at the Bardolphian nose of "George Augustus," who
took her in to dinner, and of whom she had evidently never heard, and
wondering what manner of wild man he could be.
'On May 17th, after the Greek Committee, I dined with the Lyulph
Stanleys.... Chamberlain took Lord Airlie, whom he had never
previously met, for Sir George Campbell, and addressed him in a
friendly but disrespectful manner, whereupon Lord Airlie promptly and
publicly said: "It is all right. You take me for Sir George Campbell.
I am used to it; "for they were extraordinarily alike. [Footnote: Mr.
Gladstone once made exactly the same mistake at a great public meeting
in Scotland in 1879.] In fact, Lord Airlie used to wear his ribbon
oftener than other people chiefly because Campbell had not got one, so
that it formed a distinction, but not a sufficient one, for members of
the House sometimes said to me at parties, "What is that ribbon that
Campbell is wearing?" It must have been a relief to Sir George
Campbell when Lord Airlie died; but it would have been a greater
relief to Lord Airlie had Campbell died first.
'The next day I spent at Lubbock's.... Fitzmaurice, Fawcett, and I
went for a walk to the oak under which Wilberforce decided to abolish
slavery, and, strolling on, came to a stile, where we were doubtful of
our way. Fawcett sat down, and Fitzmaurice, looking for the road,
cried out: "Here comes a clod. We will ask him." The slouching
labourer was Lord Derby, as we recognized with a loud laugh, joined in
with terrific shouting by Fawcett as we privately informed him of the
cause, at which Lord Derby was no doubt astonished. However, he did as
well as the yokel, for he led us towards home. My low opinion of Lord
Derby as a politician does not prevent my thinking that in private he
is a most agreeable man; but his appearance is against him. He took us
round by Holmwood, where Pitt lived, and Hayes, where his father,
Chatham, lived.
'Whitsuntide I spent partly upon the river in my canoe, [Footnote:
Canoeing had at this time taken for him the place of rowing, and he
spent his Sundays on the river.] partly at Lord Derby's, and partly at
Dudbrook, Lady Waldegrave's place in Essex; but the first part of my
holiday was spoiled by a summer flood, although the river was very
beautiful, there being beds of the snowflake or summer snowdrop in
bloom, with large white cups tipped with green. They are all gone now
(1900). [Footnote: One at least grew in the willow thicket by his
house at Dockett Eddy in May, 1911, after his death, close by a
nesting swan--two sights which would have filled him with interest and
joy.] The weather was so cold that Lord Derby called it "winter
dressed in green." He and his wife seemed to me to have come over to
our side with almost indecent violence and suddenness; but to be
called "Titus Oates" in the House of Lords by your relative and
successor is too much. [Footnote: This speech of Lord Salisbury's was
made on July 18th, 1878.] The close family connection between the
Derbys and Lord Salisbury had a great deal to answer for in the
sharpness of the quarrel.
'At the beginning of June I received at my house two distinguished
Frenchmen whom I had not previously known: Edmond About and Coquelin
the actor, the latter introduced to me by Gambetta.'
Coquelin was thus introduced:
'"CHAMBRE DES DÉPUTÉS,
'"PRÉSIDENCE,
'"31 _Mai_, 1879.
'"CHER AMI,
'"J'introduis auprès de vous mon ami Coquelin dont vous pourrez
apprècier le charmant esprit, et je vous le recommande sans autrement
faire de phrases, sachant que vous savez à premier vu reconnaître les
vrais hommes.
'"C'est à l'ami que je confie l'ami,
'"À vous, LÉON GAMBETTA."
'About dined with me at the House of Commons on the day on which the
House of Commons met after the Whitsuntide recess; but I did not at
the moment know his peculiarity of being unable to touch any article
of food which contained onion in any form or had been cooked with it,
so that I am afraid I starved him. On June 13th I had prepared
accordingly, and he dined with me, and met all the people who spoke
good French--Leighton, Mitford, Fitzmaurice, Borthwick, Barrington,
Bourke (the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs), Chamberlain--and
Montebello and La Ferronnays of his own Embassy, and Gennadius the
Greek. It was hard to say whether Mitford, Leighton, or Borthwick
spoke the best French. But certainly neither Fitzmaurice, who was a
quarter French, nor the three Frenchmen, could venture to contest
matters with such talkers. I never heard any fault found with
Leighton's French except that it is too good, though I have heard
people declare that his Italian and his German were yet better; but I
myself could see no fault in Mitford's. About naturally came to the
conclusion, not entirely justified by fact, that all Englishmen could
speak French.
'On June 22nd I gave a dinner for Gambetta's friends, Coquelin and
Hecht, at which I had Lord Granville, Lord Lansdowne, Malet,
Montgélas, Lord Reay, Lord Arthur Russell, and Gavard. Lord Granville
was at his very best, shining as he always did when he could talk
French theatre anecdotes to a man playing up to him as could Coquelin.
'I think it was on Thursday night, June 19th (1879), that, about
midnight, Pender brought me a telegram to the House of Commons telling
me that Prince Louis Napoleon had been killed by the Zulus, in order
that I might telegraph it to Gambetta. I did so; and in the morning
received from Gambetta a telegram asking me to repeat my telegram if
it really came from me, evidently thinking that he had been hoaxed in
my name, for my news reached Paris long before the thing was known
there. The Queen was not told till 10.30 a.m., and she then informed
the Empress Eugénie, so that I knew it eleven hours before the poor
mother.'
On Sunday, June 29th, Sir Charles had stayed at Strawberry Hill. Within
the same week Lady Waldegrave died suddenly. He was among the friends who
went down to see her buried at Chewton, near Chewton Priory, her place in
Somersetshire.
'Carlingford was present at the funeral, although his condition was
very painful to his friends and he refused to leave the place, and
remained there, with great fortitude but little wisdom, for a long
time, until his nerve was completely gone. He never was afterwards the
same man, and, although Mr. Gladstone put him into his Cabinet in
1881, for friendship's sake, [Footnote: There was another reason: his
intimate knowledge of the details of the Irish Land Question, then the
subject of legislation. He became Lord Privy Seal on the resignation
of the Duke of Argyll.] he had become a broken invalid, and was unable
even to bear the smallest reference to past days or even the sudden
sight of friends who had known him in happier times.'
On July 8th there is a note of dining with Lord and Lady Derby, where were
'Lord Odo Russell and a good many other interesting people; Odo Russell
always easily the first wherever he goes. He told me, what I was glad to
hear, that Bismarck was most favourable to Greece.'
'_July_.--Two Crown Princes were in London at this time, and to both
of them I had to be introduced as the maker of speeches in the House
which they had heard: the Crown Prince of Sweden and the Hereditary
Duke (son of the Grand Duke) of Baden. Like all Kings and Princes,
except the King of Greece, and in later days the Emperor William II.,
they seemed to me heavy men, bored by having to pretend to be
thoughtful persons, and I found that difficulty in distinguishing them
the one from the other, which has always oppressed me in dealing with
Royal personages.'
'At this time I had several interviews with Cardinal Manning, at his
wish, about the Irish primary education question, in which I agreed
with him, differing, however, wholly from him with regard to English
education, which caused him always to reproach me with having what he
playfully called a "geographical conscience."'
'In the many visits that I received from the Cardinal and paid to him
at the end of July and beginning of August, 1879, I was amused by
finding how much he cared for general gossip and even scandal. He
insisted on talking to me about Sarah Bernhardt, and Gambetta, and the
Prince of Wales, and all sorts and conditions of people. He told me
that if he was not Cardinal Archbishop he would stand for Westminster
in the Radical interest. But, Radical though he be in social
questions, he is a ferocious Jingo.'
Manning, unlike almost all other Englishmen of his creed, had a sympathy
for Irish Nationalism. Dilke shared the Cardinal-Archbishop's view as to
the power of Rome in Irish politics, as may be seen from the concluding
sentence of this passage from a letter written by him in August, 1879,
with regard to the Act establishing what was called the Royal University:
"Shaw is a Protestant--a Congregationalist--who once was a preacher
and now is a banker, but he is the leader of the Irish party, and
speaks for the Bishops, as did Butt, who also was a Protestant.
Parnell, too, is a Protestant, curiously enough. Biggar was, but has
turned. I don't think popular feeling is engaged; but you must either
govern through and with the priests--or by force."
Mr. Shaw's day of influence was nearly ended. The revolutionary party--for
they aimed at, and effected nothing less than, a revolution--led by
Parnell in the House and by Davitt in the country, were sweeping away the
staunch adherents of pure constitutionalism, among whom Shaw and Butt were
to be numbered. The Irish party was not the only one which contained
conflicting elements:
'Manning attached more importance to an understanding with me and
Chamberlain than to one with Hartington, and sided with us in the
conflict which followed the scene between Hartington and Chamberlain
on July 7th.'
Sir Charles describes the occurrence, though somewhat toning down a
sufficiently stormy passage:
'What occurred was this: James, who was Hartington's right-hand man,
and absolutely in his confidence, had started a debate on flogging,
and came to us and told us that he quite agreed in our view that much
should be made of it, and that it offered a good opportunity for
getting rid of flogging in the Army, and then went away to dinner. Our
men kept up the debate with a good deal of violence of language; and
then Hartington, strolling in after dinner, and hearing that there was
this obstruction, made a violent attack upon poor Hopwood (the Queen's
Counsel, afterwards Recorder of Liverpool, a member of the Radical
Club) and on those acting with him, for obstruction. Chamberlain, much
nettled by this attack upon our men below the gangway for doing only
that which they had been told to do, got up and ironically referred to
Hartington as "the late leader," and I was stung, by Fawcett clumsily
siding with Hartington, into supporting Chamberlain and Hopwood.
'My talents of diplomacy were called into requisition after the
Hartington-Chamberlain quarrel, and I was very proud of managing to
get through nineteen clauses of the Irish University Bill on the next
day, July 8th, stopping all divisions except one, in which Parnell and
I told together, and got Hartington into our lobby, which was, I
think, a triumph of conciliation.
'Later in the month the Whigs, or men above the gangway, showed great
anger at the completeness of Hartington's surrender to us, which,
indeed, meant more than the immediate conquest, for it involved the
ultimate supersession of Hartington by Gladstone. Harcourt, James, and
Adam [Footnote: The Right Hon. W. P. Adam, afterwards Governor of
Madras.] (the Chief Whip), in giving Chamberlain the victory by
insisting that Hartington should yield, were considering the
constituencies, not the House. As regarded the House, the popularity
of stamping upon us would have been great. There was strong Whig
dislike of our activity, and strong Radical personal hatred among
ourselves. If Chamberlain were to have fought Hartington on any
question on which he had not the Liberal constituencies with him, he
would have got the worst of it; but then he was too wise to stir on
any question on which he could not at least carry all the active
elements of the party in large towns. The anti-Chamberlain set went to
work to get up a banquet to Hartington, and were very cross with me
when I told them that I was certain that the Whips would not let
Hartington accept the banquet unless they obtained Chamberlain's
signature to the requisition. It, of course, turned out as I expected.
Some twenty men said that they would not sign unless Chamberlain did
so, and he was then begged to sign, and, when he did, at once deprived
the manifestation of all significance. It was all rather small and
mean, but when one went to the root of the matter, one saw that the
whole difficulty sprang from the fact that the Whigs had now no
principles. Once upon a time they had had principles, but their
principles had been adopted by the other side, and long before 1879
their distinctive opinions had been taken from them. A party cannot be
dignified and consistent if its chiefs and the mass of its rank and
file have no principles. My own opinion, which I preached on all
occasions, was that the right course in these democratic days was for
leaders to say, "Here are my opinions, but I know that on certain
points they are not those of a majority;" and not to continue to
pretend that all agreed when, as a fact, they differed.
'In a note in my diary upon the question of the leadership I say:
"Harcourt's good points and bad points are both on a large scale.
Childers is too much in city business and in companies to be one of
the leading men in the party in the future. Hartington is too careless
and too much bored to interest others. Gladstone and Bright are old;
Bright 'past'; Gladstone still a great power, and, but for his Scotch
deference to the aristocracy, which is a sad drawback, I could admire
him with little check."
'On July 26th I received from Bradlaugh a letter about his candidature
for Parliament, in which he wrote: "It appears that the so-called
moderate Liberals mean to fight for one seat only at Northampton. I,
therefore, can only fight for myself. This means Phipps's seat sure,
and for the second either Merryweather or Ayrton, and I think the
order expresses--subject to contingencies--the probability. There are
one or two county constituencies and several boroughs where moderate
Liberals will stand who cannot be elected without the votes of my
friends. I am now consulted as to what my friends in such cases ought
to do. Speaking moderately, I think I could surely prevent the return
of five or six moderates, and render doubtful the return of ten or
twelve more. Is it reasonable to expect me to aid actively those who
do me the most possible mischief? I owe no debt of gratitude to anyone
in England ... except the people who love me. May it not be as well
for me this coming election to pick, say, twenty seats and make a few
burnt-offerings by way of example, to show the moderates that I am
strong enough to be worth reckoning with? Pardon me if I am boring you
with a matter in which you have no interest."'
At the close of the Session Sir Charles addressed his constituents--
'with an overwhelming case against the Government, in which I showed
the folly of the pretences which had been put forward as to the Berlin
settlement in Bulgaria and in Asia Minor, of the Anglo-Turkish
Convention, of the occupation of Cyprus, and of the South African
policy; and pointed out the fact that in the year we were spending
fifty millions sterling upon our army and navy, and that if the navy
was in excellent condition, no one would venture to make the same
assertion with regard to our land forces.'
He crossed to France, saw Gambetta in Paris, and also Nubar Pasha, and
went to drink waters at La Bourboule, and on to Le Puy, and thence started
on one of the long tramps by which he came to know France as few
Englishmen have done. He walked across to Vals, 'and so to the Rhone, and
then to my solemn Provençal country--to my mind, a better Italy.'
At Toulon he busied himself with the German history of the nineteenth
century for his projected book, and wrote much to his brother, who was now
hoping to enter Parliament.
'Nubar, who had a quarrel with our Foreign Office, and who had been
expelled from Egypt by the new Khedive, but, as Nubar thought, at the
wish of the French Consul-General, was another correspondent of these
days, destined afterwards to return to be made Prime Minister at the
hands of this same Khedive.'
The Government's sixth year of office was running out, and a General
Election was at hand.
'At the end of the year I had letters describing the state of things
in England from Harcourt, Chamberlain, and Adam. Chamberlain wrote:
"Things look bad for the Tories. We shall have a majority at the next
election. I feel confident." Adam wrote: "As things are at present, we
shall have a majority independent of Home Rulers." Harcourt wrote that
he was unusually dull and stupid: "I feel as if the soul of Northcote
had transmigrated into me, and, if only I had a flaxen beard, I am
sure I should make one of his Midland speeches to admiration.... I
really find nothing new to say. Of course, there is the old story of
Afghanistan, but the latter is already discounted, and it is rather a
ticklish question. I never felt it so difficult to mix a prescription
good for the present feeling of the constituencies.... Depend upon
it, if we are to win (as we shall), it will not be on some startling
cry, but by the turning over to us of that floating mass of middle
votes which went over to the Tories last time, and will come back from
them in disgust at the next election. It is much easier to persuade
the public that the Government are duffers than that we are conjurers.
I shall therefore ... be dull and safe, and not overabusive. That, at
least, is my diagnosis of the treatment the patient requires just
now.... Not having materials for one speech, I have got to make a
second. I must trust to the newspaper abuse of the first to supply me
with materials for the second."'
Sir William Harcourt was too diffident, as his brilliant speeches at
Oxford and elsewhere, full of epigrams, had more effect on the electorate
than any others--not even excepting Mr. Gladstone's speeches in his
Midlothian campaign.
There is no suggestion in the correspondence of the ferment which was
working in Midlothian. Mr. Gladstone was apart from both Whigs and
Radicals in these days.
So closed the last years of Sir Charles's second Parliament. He had played
in it a commanding part in debate upon matters of war and of foreign
policy without abating his activity in domestic politics, such as the
franchise, or flogging in the army, which he helped finally to abolish. No
man could well seem to have fewer enemies or more friends.
CHAPTER XX
THE FORMATION OF A MINISTRY
I.
By the close of 1879 the Beaconsfield Administration was deeply
discredited. The year had opened with the disaster in the Zulu War at
Isandhlwana; in September came the tragedy at Kabul, when Sir Louis
Cavagnari and his staff were slain by a sudden uprising of the tribesmen;
and though Sir Frederick Roberts fought his way into the Afghan capital on
October 12th, it was only to be beleaguered within the fortifications of
Sherpur.
The European situation Sir Charles described to his constituents before
the Session of 1880 opened:
'What, I asked, were they promised in the Treaty of Berlin? Turkey
restored to strength, reformed, and, if reformed, made secure for a
distant future; Greece contented; Russian influence excluded; and the
Balkans fortified as "an impregnable frontier" for Turkey. Very
different were the realities. Turkey had been partitioned; Greece had
not been satisfied; surrender of Turkish territory to Greece, though
it was the one form of surrender which might really have strengthened
Turkey, had been opposed rather than advocated by the British
delegates. Austria, gorged with Bosnia and Herzegovina, was alone
contented.
'Of the Asia Minor clandestine convention, it was beyond our power to
fulfil the terms. Russian intrigue would sooner or later create
insurrection in Armenia. The insurrection would be put down by the old
Turkish means, by the old savagery, and our guarantee would prove
useless in face of public opinion at home. The Government had allowed
Russia to gain exactly those things which in the excellent circular of
April 1st, 1878, they had declared that it would be fatal to our
country that she should possess. The Government had proclaimed British
interests in language which I had described as the gospel of
selfishness, but there was not a British interest which was not worse
off for their rule. In Egypt, their policy of joint action with France
was certain to lead to future trouble. Greece was dissatisfied, and
leant on France, and the rising nationalities of South-Eastern Europe
were all alienated from us. Russia was in possession, not only of
Bessarabia, not only of a firm hold over Turkey by the stipulations
with regard to the debt due to her, but of that fortress of Kars and
that port of Batoum which our Government had told us she could not
consistently with British interests be permitted to possess. To add
insult to injury, we were thought such silly children as to believe
that what was left of Turkey had been saved by our plenipotentiaries--
saved in Asia by a bit of paper, and in Europe by an "impregnable
frontier" which was situated in the middle of the Bulgarian country,
and which the Sultan's troops would never be allowed to approach.
'This was a strong indictment, and, as is now seen, it was all true.'
Sir Charles's "indictment" was strengthened by information he had received
as to England's treatment of M. Waddington's circular proposing mediation
between Turkey and Greece, and by the knowledge that the championship of
Greek interests was at this moment being left to France.
'On January 26th I reached Paris on my return from Toulon, and
breakfasted with Gambetta, stupid Spuller remaining with us all the
time. Barrère came to see me, and told me that the late ministerial
crisis in France had had for cause Waddington's refusal to accept
Gambetta's orders to turn out all the reactionaries from the Foreign
Office. "That lock has now been forced." [Footnote: The Waddington
Ministry had fallen in the last days of December, and M. de Freycinet
came into power. M. Camille Barrère was at this time Gambetta's chief
private secretary. Sir Charles had first met him in London during the
Commune. He has had a distinguished career, and is, in 1917,
Ambassador at Rome.] Tissot, French Minister at Athens, and known to
me as having been formerly the representative of the Government of
National Defence in London, when he occupied the Embassy and acted as
an unauthorized Minister, is to be Ambassador at Constantinople, and
Waddington will take the Embassy in London. Barrère has been made
French Commissioner on the European Commission of the Danube, which
enables him for nine months in the year to continue his newspaper work
in Paris. It is true, as stated in the French newspapers, that
Waddington's last circular proposing mediation between Turkey and
Greece was accepted by all the Continental Powers, but not answered by
England.
'On the 27th I breakfasted with Gambetta to meet General Billot,
commanding the Marseille _corps d'armée_, who, in the event of war
occurring between 1887 and 1890, would have been second in command of
the French armies.
'"On the 28th Gambetta, at a private interview, confirmed what Barrère
had said about Greece, regretted that Waddington had proposed to leave
the town of Janina to Turkey, and thought that the French Government
ought to go back to the old position of 'Thessaly and Epirus.' He
added (most confidentially) that as soon as the trouble about 'Article
7' was over Léon Say would come as Ambassador to London." [Footnote:
The double quotes here show that Sir Charles transcribed in his Memoir
a note of the conversation taken at the time.] Léon Say did come, but
Waddington came afterwards, though with some between. Article 7 was,
of course, the Ferry proposal with regard to unauthorized
congregations, which I opposed in conversations with Gambetta, who
supported it as strongly in private as in public. [Footnote: The
'Article 7' referred to was in the Education Bill then under
discussion in the French Assembly. By this article it was proposed
that members of religious bodies which were not recognized by the law
should be forbidden to teach in public or in private schools.] Opinion
in France undoubtedly backed him in his opposition to "Clericalism,"
but I myself continue to think that it was unwise to harry the Church,
although the position of the Government was in accordance with the
law.
'On the same morning I received a letter from Chamberlain inviting
himself to dine with me on February 4th "to discuss the situation."
Chamberlain was strongly opposed to taking Lord Derby in the next
Administration, and determined also, if he could, to shut out Goschen.
'On Wednesday, January 28th, I reached London, and on the 29th saw
Harcourt as to a request which had been made to him by A. M. Sullivan
on behalf of Lord Ramsay, who was standing at Liverpool as the Liberal
candidate, but who had pronounced in favour of Home Rule, to the great
scandal of the country. The Irish members were supposed to be doing
more harm than good by helping him, and were most anxious that someone
from the Liberal Front Bench should give them countenance. Hartington
was strongly opposed to Ramsay's action. Harcourt consented to go, and
went, which must have meant, I think, that he had decided to throw
over Hartington, seeing that Mr. G. was the only possible leader, and
that he did not think that Mr. Gladstone would feel strongly about the
Home Rule pledge. Harcourt told me that Lord Granville and Hartington
intended that Lord Derby should be in the next Government, but found
difficulties, inasmuch as they thought that the land question must be
dealt with, and he was too conservative for the party on it. The Duke
of Argyll was to be left out of the next Cabinet; no one would consent
to become Viceroy of Ireland or Irish Secretary; and there was a
difficulty about the Viceroyalty of India. I suggested Lansdowne for
India, if his wife would go, and it is curious that after many years
he was sent, although sent by the other party. Harcourt said that some
of the older men over whose heads I had passed were very jealous of
me. I said, half in jest: "I believe I am the only English politician
who is not jealous," at which Harcourt laughed very much, and replied:
"We all think that of ourselves." I said: "I mean it."'
The sincerity of that assertion was to be proved within three months. But
he notes in his diary a decision in consequence of Harcourt's warning "to
keep in the background this Session."
'On February 4th Harcourt wrote to me to say that, if I would go to
his house that night, someone from Devonshire House should meet me to
show me the Queen's Speech, as he had to go to Liverpool; Hartington,
he said, was full of approval of my speech.'
The dissolution came suddenly, hastened by the result of a by-election,
which encouraged the Government to believe that the country was with them.
On February 10th Sir Charles dined at Lady Ripon's, where were 'the Duke
of Argyll, Lord Granville, the Childers, and the Hayters.'
'The conversation of the evening turned upon the Southwark election,
where we all knew that the Conservative must win, Clarke (later Sir
Edward Clarke) being a popular Queen's Counsel, an excellent election
speaker, while the Liberals were divided between two bad
candidates.... When the numbers became known to me I wrote in my
diary: "Southwark not quite so bad as I expected, but quite bad
enough." Yet it was this election, which, to anyone who knew the
facts, should have meant nothing, which is supposed to have induced
the Tories to dissolve.' [Footnote: The Conservatives won both the
Liverpool and Southwark elections.]
'Cross drowns the Government,' is Sir Charles's comment on the Return on
the Water Question, for which he now moved; 'the notice contained such a
mass of statistics as to make the return of a very searching character in
its bearing on the agreement that the Home Secretary had come to with the
water companies.' It did frighten Cross, as Mr. Trevelyan had prophesied,
'and the trouble between himself and his colleagues over this question was
the immediate cause of the dissolution.' [Footnote: Mr. Cross, Home
Secretary, had introduced a Bill to provide for the purchase of the
undertakings of the London Water Companies, which was supposed to offer
the companies too favourable terms. Sir Charles notes (July, 1879):
"Manning was getting up a meeting on the water question, and got me to
manage it for him." 'I fancy, indeed,' he adds in his Memoir, 'that it was
the Cardinal who was the indirect cause of the dissolution in the spring
of 1880, for he induced Cross to undertake the purchase of the
Metropolitan Water Supply, and so got him into tangled negotiations.']
Just before the electoral campaign began--
'On March 4th I received a note from Lord Fife asking me to dine with
him on Friday, the 12th, to meet the Prince of Wales at the Prince's
wish. The note was of such a character that it left no choice. When
the dinner came off it turned out well. The Prince laid himself out to
be pleasant, and talked to me nearly all the evening--chiefly about
French politics and the Greek question. The other guests were
Lansdowne, Dunraven, Burnand of _Punch_, Bernal Osborne, and Colonel
Carington, brother of Lord Carrington, a very pleasant member of the
House.' [Footnote: Colonel Carington was M.P. for Wycombe, 1868-1883.]
There was still among leading politicians 'much doubt as to the prospects
of the election,' which Sir Charles found expressed when he spent Sunday,
March 7th, 'at Aston Clinton with the Cyril Flowers, Lord Hartington being
there, and Charles Villiers (at eighty), and Wolff walking over from Tring
Park.' However, on March 15th, Sir William Harcourt wrote from Oxford: "I
have never wavered in my opinion that the Government will be beaten,
though I thought a fortnight ago it would only be a shave."
In his own borough Sir Charles found that there were 580 publicans, and
that 500 of them were Conservative.
'My belief in the influence of the publicans made me hesitate with
regard to Chelsea, where I thought myself not unlikely to be beaten,
but I had a full belief in the success of the party generally. I was
triumphantly returned, bringing in Firth with me, by great majorities
over a clever Tory, Lord Inverurie (afterwards Earl of Kintore, and
Governor of South Australia), and a colonial sheep-farmer, who paid
the cost.'
The result was declared on April 2nd, and Sir Charles, having stayed to
vote in two divisions of Surrey where he owned property, left England for
Toulon on the 7th--a proceeding which separated him from those who were
importunate for office. Before his departure he had dined with Sir William
Harcourt:
'I found his ambition to be to ... succeed Lord Selborne as Lord
Chancellor. In order to reach this goal, he would prefer to be
Attorney-General rather than Home Secretary. James, however, cannot
well be anything but Attorney-General. Harcourt would like James to be
Home Secretary, for which James is not fit, but which he would like to
be. If this combination should fail, then Harcourt would like to be
Chancellor of the Exchequer.... He asked me what I should like, and I
told him that I did not expect to be offered a great post, but that if
there were any such chance the Navy was the only one that I should
like.' [Footnote: Sir Charles's view that a Foreign Secretary had
better be in the House of Lords, so long as there is a House of Lords
to put him in, no doubt influenced his preference for the Admiralty.]
In regard to the events which have now to be narrated, it must be
remembered that the Chamberlain of 1880 was not yet the author of any
"unauthorized programme" or any "gospel of ransom." He was admittedly the
controller of the Caucus. It was widely known that he, like Fawcett, had
professed republican principles. But Queen Victoria's objection to Sir
Charles Dilke--and it will be seen how strongly she maintained it--was
based not merely on his avowal of abstract Republican theories, but also
on his very concrete proposal to assert control over the Civil List.
Chamberlain upon this matter was not committed to a personal view, and it
had not yet been demonstrated that whatever position Dilke defended,
Chamberlain would defend also.
A compact laying down the principle of mutual support between the two
Radicals was proposed in a letter written by Chamberlain to Dilke--then at
Toulon--immediately after the General Election had given the Liberals a
sweeping triumph. They came back 349 against 243 Conservatives. Irish
Nationalists were 60, of whom 35 followed Mr. Parnell.
Chamberlain's proposal was in these words:
"The time has come when we must have a full and frank explanation.
"What I should like--what I hope for with you--is a thorough offensive
and defensive alliance, and in this case our position will be
immensely strong.
"I am prepared to refuse all offers until and unless both of us are
satisfied.
"Can you accept this position with perfect satisfaction? If you think
I am asking more than I can give, I rely upon your saying so--and in
this case you may depend on my loyalty and friendship--I shall support
your claim cordially and just as warmly as if I were personally
interested.
"But my own feeling is that if you are stronger than I am in the
House, my influence is greater than yours out of it, and therefore
that, together, we are much more powerful than separated; and that in
a short time, if not now, we may make our own terms.
"To join a Government as subordinate members, to be silenced and to
have no real influence on the policy, would be fatal to both of us. If
we both remain outside, any Government will have to reckon with us,
and, on the whole, this would be the position which on many grounds I
should prefer.
"I am ready to make all allowances for the difficulties in the way of
giving to both of us the only kind of places which it would be worth
our while to accept. If these are insuperable, I will give a hearty
support to any Government which is thoroughly liberal in its measures;
but I am not going to play the part of a Radical Minnow among Whig
Tritons.
"The victory which has just been won is the victory of the Radicals.
Gladstone and the Caucus have triumphed all along the line, and it is
the strong, definite, decided policy which has commended itself, and
not the halting, half-hearted, armchair business.... The country feels
it, and we should be mad to efface ourselves and disappoint the
expectations of all our strongest supporters.
[Illustration: THE RT. HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P.
From the painting by F. Holl, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.]
"You see that my proposed condition is--both of us to be satisfied.
"As to what ought to satisfy us, if you agree to the principle, we
will consult when the time comes, but my present impression is all or
nothing."
'In other words, Chamberlain's view was that we should insist on both
being in the Cabinet. My own view was that we should insist on one
being in the Cabinet, and the other having a place of influence,
giving him the opportunity of frequent speech in the House of Commons,
pleasant to himself; and my view prevailed.
'On April 19th, Chamberlain wrote again that he had heard from Mr.
Bright that "Mr. Gladstone will take the Premiership if pressed."'
'"I am glad to see that all the papers speak of you as a certainty for
the Cabinet. For myself, I am absolutely indifferent to office, and
the only thing on which I am clear is that I will take no
responsibility which does not carry with it some real power. Another
point on which I have made up my mind is that I will not play second
to Fawcett, or to anyone of the same standing, except yourself."'
On April 22nd, Sir Charles received at Toulon a telegram from Sir William
Harcourt insisting on his immediate return, and he started at once for
London, missing a second urgent telegram from Harcourt on his way. From
Mr. Frederic Harrison he received a letter strongly urging him to claim at
once a place in the Cabinet and 'to lead the new men.' He meant 'the
cultured Radicals; Mr. Bryce and the like.' He urged that the new Left
must have a full place in the Ministry, and that any Liberal Minister must
be pledged to deal with redistribution in the House.
'Hill of the _Daily News_ had written to me that with the exception of
Harcourt everybody thought that Gladstone must be Prime Minister.' Sir
Charles goes on to note a breakfast with Lord Houghton, Renan, Professor
Henry Smith of Oxford, Henry Reeve of the _Edinburgh Review,_ Lord Arthur
Russell, and Lord Reay, at which they
'agreed that Gladstone must be Prime Minister, or would upset the
Government within a year. ... Hill advised that I should take the
Cabinet without Chamberlain if Gladstone was Prime Minister, but
refuse the Cabinet without Chamberlain--_i.e.,_ insist on both being
in the Cabinet--if Hartington was Prime Minister.'
By the night of April 23rd, when Sir Charles reached London, the question
of Mr. Gladstone's primacy was settled, and Ministry-making had begun,
with the decision of Lord Granville to return to the Foreign Office, and
Lord Hartington's consent to act as Secretary of State for India. Mr.
Childers went to the War Office, Lord Northbrook to the Admiralty; Lord
Selborne, most conservative of Whigs, became Lord Chancellor; Lord Spencer
was President of the Council, Lord Kimberley took the Colonies, the Duke
of Argyll the Privy Seal. Sir William Harcourt, who had been called "a
Whig who talked Radicalism," was Home Secretary. Mr. Forster at the Irish
Office, with Lord Cowper as Lord-Lieutenant, did not commend himself
greatly to the advanced party, and Mr. Bright, in returning to the
Chancellorship of the Duchy, brought with him only a tradition of
Radicalism. When it is added that Mr. Dodson was President of the Local
Government Board, ground will be seen for a warning which Sir Charles
received that, although the victory had been forced upon them by the
Radicals almost against their will, the "incorrigible old place-hunters
would, if left to have their own way, appropriate the victory and the
prizes calmly enough to themselves."
On Saturday, April 24th, Sir Charles had two interviews with Sir William
Harcourt, and communicated the result to Chamberlain:
'The position is that Gladstone is in the hands of Lord Wolverton,
[Footnote: As Mr. Glyn he had been Chief Whip.] the evil counsellor of
1874, and that, while a Whig Premier must have had a Radical Cabinet,
Gladstone will say, "You have got me; that is what you asked for," and
will give us a Whig Cabinet. Stansfeld is likely to be in the Cabinet
owing to W. E. Forster's influence, of which I personally shall be
glad. Rosebery is likely to be put in, at which I shall not be
sorry.... Gladstone disapproves strongly of people being put straight
into the Cabinet who have not held office before. This is for
Chamberlain and for me. They are likely to offer me the Under-
Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs, which I suppose I shall be unable
to accept. Later in the evening I was informally offered the
Secretaryship of the Treasury, with management of the Government
business in the House. Harcourt at a second interview said that
Gladstone intended pedantically to follow Peel's rule that men should
not be put straight into the Cabinet without going through non-Cabinet
office; and that Chamberlain and I must both take non-Cabinet office;
[Footnote: It is worth noting that Sir Robert Peel himself had
violated this rule if it ever existed.] that he, Harcourt, strongly
advised us to take Under-Secretaryships of which the Secretary was in
the Upper House, or the Secretaryship of the Treasury. He then offered
me the Under-Secretaryship for the Colonies, to which I replied,
"Certainly not." He said, "Remember that with Mr. Gladstone Prime
Minister, the Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs will have no chance
to speak, because Gladstone will do all the talking." [Footnote: Sir
William Harcourt's prophecy received frequent confirmation. See
_infra_, pp. 384, 459, 535, and Vol. II., p. 51.] At the same time,
there was evidently another reason behind--namely, that Lord Granville
had sooner have anybody in his office than me; in other words, he
would like me in anybody's office except his own. Harcourt strongly
urged me to take office on personal grounds--namely, in order to get
over the Queen's prejudice, and so succeed naturally to the first
vacancy in the Cabinet. I replied that I had sooner keep my
independence than take office without power. He then said curtly, "It
will not be a pleasant opposition." I said it would not be an
opposition at all, as far as I could see, as I should support the
Government and lead a very quiet, humdrum Parliamentary existence.
Harcourt replied, "That is what is always said." "But I shall not be
cross," was my last word. I telegraphed at night for Chamberlain, who
replied that he would come up at five on Sunday afternoon and dine and
sleep. But I prepared him, and was prepared by him, for a double
refusal of office. In fact, we were decided on refusal of that which
alone was offered.
'On Sunday afternoon, 25th, before seeing Chamberlain, I saw James,
who went to Lord Granville and fully stated my views, reporting to me
afterwards that Lord Granville seemed inclined to come round a little.
James added of Harcourt: "Confound that Home Secretary! How discreet
he is even before kissing hands! I shall live at the Home Office." I
went to Euston to meet Chamberlain. We were fully agreed in our line,
and he remained at my house the next morning, when I was sent for by
Mr. Gladstone through Lord Granville, the note being simply to ask me
to call at four o'clock at Lord Granville's house, where Mr. Gladstone
was. The questions which I put to Chamberlain were--"Is your former
opinion changed by the fact that Mr. Gladstone can, if he likes, do
without us, whereas Hartington could not? Or is it changed by the fact
that Gladstone's Government will last six years, whereas Hartington's
would soon have been modified by Gladstone?" Chamberlain's view was my
own view, that, although we were much weaker, we could not change our
attitude as regards one of us being in the Cabinet. Before seeing Mr.
Gladstone I had calls from Fawcett and Lefevre. Nothing had been
offered to Fawcett; Lefevre had been sounded as to an Under-
Secretaryship, and would take it. He told me he was sure that
Stansfeld would have the Local Government Board again and be in the
Cabinet. Childers came three times to see me in the course of the day,
and said that he was most anxious that I should be in the Cabinet and
Chamberlain in a good place outside it; but that the Queen had made a
difficulty about my Republicanism, and he asked me to write him a
letter about it. I declined to say anything new, but ultimately we
agreed that I should write him a letter marked "Private," in which I
wrote to the effect that on March 13th I had been asked the question
at a meeting, and that my answer had been in the newspapers on March
15th, that it was the same answer which I had made before the election
in 1874, and that I had nothing to alter in it.' [Footnote: The rest
of the letter gave a full account of the incident of Saturday, March
13th, 1880:
"The Tories sent the 'Reverend' W. Pepperell, an ex-dissenting
minister, to a meeting of mine, who asked me 'whether it was true that
I was a republican?' I replied to the effect that 'while as a matter
of speculative opinion I thought that a country starting afresh--as
France after Sedan--would in these days generally do better to adopt a
republican form of government than a limited monarchy, yet that in a
country possessing a constitutional monarchy it would be mere folly to
attempt to upturn it, and consequently folly even to try to disturb
it.' The answer was a very long one, and was nowhere _fully_ reported,
but everything in it was on these lines."]
A copy of this letter was ultimately brought to the Queen, and on May 5th
returned by Sir Henry Ponsonby with the words, "Her Majesty accepts Sir
Charles Dilke's explanation." But Lord Granville, through whom it had been
sent, and who had by that time become Sir Charles's immediate chief,
softened the austerity of this formula by explaining that the Queen in a
private letter had said she was "quite ready to believe all I had told her
about you, having known you as a child."
These preliminary conversations having occupied the morning, Sir Charles
set out after luncheon for the decisive interview.
'When I got to Lord Granville's I found Lord Granville, Lord
Wolverton, and Mr. Gladstone in the room, and Mr. Gladstone at once
offered me the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs. I asked who
was to be in the Cabinet. I was told Mr. Gladstone, Lord Granville,
Hartington, Harcourt, and Lord Spencer. Further than this, they said,
nothing was settled. I asked, "What about Chamberlain?" Mr. Gladstone
replied to the effect that Chamberlain was a very young member of the
House who had never held office, and that it was impossible to put him
straight into the Cabinet. I then said that this made it impossible
that I should accept the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs, or
any place. Mr. Gladstone said he would see whether anything could be
done, but that he feared not. I then asked whether, supposing that
anything could be done in my direction, I should be excluding Grant
Duff [Footnote: Sir M. Grant Duff had been spoken of for this office
in 1868, and had then in that Ministry become Under-Secretary of State
for India. In 1880 he was--much to Sir Charles's joy--made Under-
Secretary for the Colonies, his chief, Lord Kimberley, being in the
Lords.] from the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs, because I
said that I should be very sorry to do that, for both personal and
public reasons. He replied that if I refused it, it would not be
offered to Grant Duff; and I then left....
'On Tuesday morning Chamberlain was sent for, and accepted a seat in
the Cabinet (with the Presidency of the Board of Trade), and at one
o'clock I accepted the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs. Just
about this time I received a message from James: "Do, for the sake of
our future comfort, take something. The Bench will be dreadfully dull.
Stansfeld _in_ office must be worse than Stansfeld out." But Stansfeld
was not in office. What had interfered at the last moment to prevent
an appointment which was resolved upon I never knew for certain.
[Footnote: Mr. Stansfeld is generally believed to have refused office
owing to his wish to devote himself entirely to the cause of a special
measure of social reform in which he was interested.] But, as they had
not intended to put Chamberlain in, and I forced him in, I suppose
that Stansfeld was the man who had to make way for Chamberlain.'
II.
So ended the negotiations. The Radical wing had asserted itself, and
asserted itself successfully. It had been enabled to do so by Sir
Charles's action. To him the matter represented the mere carrying out of a
bargain; but friends were, as is natural in such a case, remonstrant, and
he was accused of "needless self-sacrifice," of "Quixotic conduct," of
"self-abnegation," of "your usual disinterestedness in politics," and the
bargain was much criticized. A letter from Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice,
congratulating Sir Charles on the stand he had made, added: "Not that I am
altogether satisfied with the result. I had assumed that as a matter of
course you would be in the Cabinet. I share the universal feeling that of
the two you had the undoubted claim to priority." But this regret was
probably based on more than personal grounds, and may well be read with a
letter written many years afterwards, in July, 1914:
"The real truth is that Dilke was too big a man to be an Under-
Secretary in 1880, and the whole position was a false one. I fancy
Lord Granville felt it to be so. One of his best points was his
readiness to recognize ability. I think he desired Dilke's sphere in
the Office to be as large as possible consistently with the general
arrangements of the Office, but it is always difficult to make special
arrangements work smoothly if they are based on a false principle.
"Dilke ought to have insisted on being in the Cabinet. It was very
much to his honour that he did not do so."
Lord Fitzmaurice goes on to say that in the making of the Cabinet public
opinion would have substituted Sir Charles Dilke for Mr. Dodson, who, in
spite of his work as Chairman of Committees from 1868 to 1873, and
afterwards as Secretary to the Treasury--("he would have made an excellent
Speaker")--had done but little in the House for the party in the long
period of Opposition from 1874 to 1880.
A mistake had, in fact, been made. The strong man should be put where his
services can avowedly be best utilized. This statement is true of
Chamberlain. He was, as the _Times_ put it, "the Carnot of the moment, the
organizer of Liberal victory." [Footnote: Neither Sir Charles Dilke nor
Mr. Chamberlain would, however, have desired to underrate the great share
in organizing the victory of Mr. Adam, the principal Liberal Whip in the
House of Commons, whose services were generally considered to have been
very insufficiently recognized by Mr. Gladstone.] Moreover, the confidence
and friendship which led to constant consultations on every point between
the two men guaranteed an added power to Sir Charles behind the scenes,
and to him power, and not the appearance of power, was the essential
thing. But Dilke's position also as a Parliamentarian, his acknowledged
power and insight on questions both of Home and Foreign Affairs, his
following inside and outside the House of Commons, had created a claim of
long standing to Cabinet rank, and its abandonment made the "false
position" to which Lord Fitzmaurice alludes. Although Mr. Disraeli was
reported to have said, apropos of Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, that an Under-
Secretary for Foreign Affairs with his chief in the House of Lords holds
one of the most important positions in a Ministry, nevertheless the Under-
Secretary is the subordinate of his chief, and Lord Granville's reputation
as Foreign Minister was great.
That personal difficulties at least were overcome is shown by a note of
Lord Granville, written when Sir Charles left the Foreign Office in 1882,
but the note is in itself a commentary on the "false position":
"WALMER CASTLE,
"_December 27th_, '82.
"MY DEAR DILKE,
"As this is the day you expect to go to the Local Government Board, I
cannot help writing you one line. I will not dwell upon the immense
loss you are to me and to the Office. You are aware of it, and I have
no doubt will continue to help us both in the Cabinet and in the
House, and will be ready to advise the Under-Secretary and myself. I
must, however, say how deeply grateful I am for our pleasant
relations, which might easily have been a little strained from the
fact that it was a sort of fluke that you were my Under-Secretary
instead of being my colleague in the Cabinet. As it is, nothing could
be more satisfactory and more pleasant to me, and the knowledge we
have obtained of one another will strengthen and cement our
friendship.
"Yours,
"G."
III.
Sir Charles's acknowledged authority in foreign affairs made his
appointment a matter of congratulation among foreign diplomatists. It was
welcomed on the ground that it would correct Mr. Gladstone's presumed
tenderness towards Russia, and, above all, would make a bond of union with
France through his personal relations with Gambetta, who wrote on April
28th:
"CHER AMI,
"Merci pour votre lettre de ce matin. Je trouve votre détermination
excellente, et si la dépêche de 4 heures qui annonce votre entrée dans
le Cabinet, en qualité de sous secrétaire d'état aux Affaires
Étrangères, est vraie, vous serez universellement approuvé.
"Pour ma part, je vous félicite bien cordialement de la victoire que
vous venez de remporter, car je sais qu'avec des hommes tels que vous
on peut être assuré que c'est une victoire féconde en résultats pour
la civilisation occidentale et le droit européen.
"Votre présence au Foreign Office est bien décisive pour dissiper les
dernières appréhensions et effacer jusqu'aux souvenirs les plus
persistents.
"Mais vous devez avoir autre chose à faire qu'à lire des lettres
inutiles.
"Je vous serre les mains,
"LÉON GAMBETTA."
The letter was 'couched in such terms as to make it desirable to answer
him with some statement of the views of the Government,' and Sir Charles
consulted Lord Granville about his reply, which would 'really be a
despatch,' and must 'say something about 1870' and the period of Lord
Granville's previous tenure of the Foreign Office. With recollections of
that time in their minds, and of England's entry upon the Black Sea
Conference without the presence of a French representative, French
politicians had commented very jealously upon some references to Gambetta
in a speech delivered by Lord Granville at Hanley in March of this year.
Lord Granville accordingly sent Dilke a memorandum in his own hand,
suggesting words for the reply. Gambetta was to be told that a speech
"made before the election" had been interpreted by some of his supporters
in the Press "as of a personal character against him," that Dilke knew
this to have been "the reverse of the speaker's intention," and that he
would be glad to have a talk with Gambetta on the subject of Lord
Granville's policy during the war when he next had the opportunity of
meeting him in Paris.
'But it was indeed difficult for Lord Granville to say anything about his
policy during the war which would please the French.' Gambetta's official
reply was, however, that, having read Lord Granville's speech, he found it
"proper under the circumstances and impartial," and that, although "absurd
ideas with regard to our recent elections had been ascribed to himself,"
he had "desired nothing in those elections" except Sir Charles's personal
triumph. To this Lord Granville rejoined: "Please thank M. Gambetta for
his friendly message. I presume you will not tell him that Lyons says his
assertion about the elections is a tremendous cracker."
Sir Edward Malet, Resident at Cairo, [Footnote: Afterwards Ambassador at
Berlin.] wrote:
"We have had one Under-Secretary after another" (at the Foreign
Office) "who knows nothing about these affairs, and who has therefore
never been able to exert the legitimate influence to which his
position entitled him. It will now be different, and I hope soon to
recognize the thread of your thought in the texture of the Government
policy."
M. Gennadius, the Greek Chargé d'Affaires, while the matter was still
open, implored him not to decline. "All your Greek friends consider our
country's cause as dependent on your acceptance. You have done much for us
already. Make this further sacrifice."
Sir Charles entered upon his functions on Thursday, April 29th, when his
colleague, the Permanent Under-Secretary, Lord Tenterden, took him round
to be introduced to the heads of the various departments. For his private
secretary he chose Mr. George Murray, [Footnote: Now the Right Hon. Sir G.
Murray, G.C.B.] "an extraordinarily able man." But in a few weeks Mr.
Murray was transferred to the Treasury, and afterwards became secretary to
Mr. Gladstone, and, later, to Lord Rosebery when Prime Minister.
'I found' (from Bourke, his predecessor, who had written to him with
great cordiality) 'that as Under-Secretary for the Foreign Office, I
had the Cabinet key--or most secret key that at that time there was:
another still more secret key being introduced after I was in the
Cabinet, and confined to the Cabinet itself. I found in the Foreign
Office that if I liked I might have got back the "Department" which
Lord Derby took away from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary in 1874,
leaving him only the Commercial Department. [Footnote: The
"Department" assigned to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary before 1874
was 'control of' some branch of foreign affairs in its details. See
also below, p. 349.] But I at once decided that I would not have it,
as I wanted to concern myself with the Parliamentary business and with
the important business, instead of doing detailed work at the head of
one section of it.'
On the evening of his first day in office Sir Charles gave a dinner at
Sloane Street to several of his colleagues. There were present
'Fawcett, just appointed Postmaster-General, Lord Northbrook,
Childers, Forster, Hartington, and Goschen.... Chamberlain was at my
dinner, having taken up his quarters with me for a week....
'Hartington after dinner showed me Indian despatches which were very
startling. Mr. Goschen told us that he had refused the Governor-
Generalship of India and the Embassy at Constantinople, but he
afterwards took Constantinople. He appeared at this moment to have
made up his mind to stay in the House of Commons to oppose
equalization of the franchise and redistribution of seats....
'Forster told us that he was starting for Ireland to see whether he
could avoid some renewal of coercion; and Chamberlain and I told him
that he _must_ avoid it. This was the cloud no bigger than a man's
hand.'
Sir Charles goes on to tell how he stayed for a time its development:
'On the night of May 13th, between one and two o'clock in the morning,
I did a thing which many will say I ought not to have done--namely,
went down to a newspaper office to suggest an article against the
policy of another member of the Government. Under the circumstances, I
think that I was justified. I was not a member of the Privy Council or
of the Cabinet, and the interests of the party were at stake, as
subsequent events well showed. There was no shade of private or
personal interest in the matter. The effect of what I did was to stop
the policy of which I disapproved for the year, and might easily have
been to stop it for ever. I had found out in the course of the evening
that Forster was in favour of a Coercion Bill, and that the Cabinet
were likely to adopt it. I went down to the _Daily News_ office, and
told Hill, not even telling Chamberlain until two years afterwards
what I had done. The result of it was that the _Daily News_ had an
article the next morning which smashed Forster's plan.'
IV.
Chamberlain had written on May 4th to Mrs. Pattison: "The charmed circle
has been broken and a new departure made, which is an event in English
political history." But although the circle was broken, only one man had
found his way to the innermost ring; and in the composition of the
Ministry the Radicals were overwhelmingly outnumbered. Such a situation
did not lead to the stability of the Government, and by his reluctance in
the admission of Radicalism to office Mr. Gladstone had created
difficulties for himself. In the House his personal authority was
overridden in a matter which came up at once.
'In the morning of May 3rd I received a note from Lord Frederick
Cavendish, the Secretary of the Treasury, asking me to be at the House
at two, as there would be trouble about Bradlaugh's application to
affirm instead of take the oath. It had been decided by the Cabinet
that "Freddy" Cavendish, [Footnote: Lord F. Cavendish was Financial
Secretary to the Treasury.] who was leader of the House in the absence
of the Ministers who had gone for re-election, should move for a
Committee, and I spoke in support of that view.'
Sir Charles never took part again in any debate upon this once famous
struggle. He supported Mr. Gladstone's view in favour of allowing
affirmation, but he did so without heartiness, disliking 'the trade of
living on blatant atheism,' and finding in himself tendencies which led
him to fear that he was 'clerically minded.' He had always an extreme
dislike of talk or writing that offended legitimate susceptibilities.
The completion of the Ministry inevitably left some personal claims
unsettled.
'On May 1st I had John Morley to dinner to meet Chamberlain, who was
still staying with me. We talked over the men who had been left out.
Edmond Fitzmaurice was one, but Mr. Gladstone did not care about
having brothers. [Footnote: Mr. Gladstone was believed in 1868 to have
declined to have Lord Clarendon and his brother, Mr. Charles Villiers,
both in the Cabinet. See _Life of Granville,_ vol. i., p. 537. In the
new Government Lord Lansdowne was Under-Secretary for India, but
resigned in the course of the year on the Irish Land Question.] At
Chamberlain's wish Courtney had been offered the Secretaryship of the
Board of Trade, which, however, he declined. He would have taken the
place of Judge Advocate General, but it was not offered to him.
Chamberlain told us that the Cabinet were unanimous for getting rid of
Layard, the Ambassador at Constantinople, but that the Queen was
trying hard to keep him. The result of this difference of opinion
ultimately was that Goschen went to Constantinople on a special
embassy, without salary, and keeping his place in the House of
Commons, and that Layard continued to draw the salary without doing
any work.'
A large section of the Liberal Press was at this period very independent,
and helped to frustrate Mr. Gladstone's determination to exclude Radicals
from office.
Sir Charles's relations with Mr. Hill, then editor of the _Daily News,_
were close, as also was the alliance between the two Radical Ministers and
Mr. John Morley, who had just then become editor of the _Pall Mall
Gazette_.
'On May 14th John Morley asked me to see him to give him information
as to the general position of foreign affairs, and I consented to do
so. "It would be worth silver and gold and jewels," he said, "if I
could have ten minutes with you about three times a week."'
Chamberlain gave him the same privilege concerning domestic policy--a
privilege 'which he used so well that no complaint ever arose in regard to
it.' Chamberlain was much in touch with 'Escott of the _Standard_ and the
_World_.'
It was suggested at the dinner of May 1st that Mr. Courtney might succeed
Sir H. Drummond Wolff on the Commission for Reforms, appointed under
Article XXIII. of the Treaty of Berlin, for the European provinces of
Turkey and Crete; but this too Mr. Courtney declined, and the place was
eventually filled by Lord E. Fitzmaurice. Mr. Trevelyan was not included
in the Ministry. [Footnote: See the _Life of Goschen_, by the Hon. Arthur
Elliot, vol. i., pp. 215, 216; T. E. Holland, _The European Concert in the
Eastern Question_, pp. 291, 292; also _Turkey_, No. 15 (1880). Lord E.
Fitzmaurice was subsequently appointed British Plenipotentiary, under
Articles LIV. and LV. of the Treaty of Berlin, to the Conference in regard
to the navigation of the Danube. Both Mr. Courtney and Mr. Trevelyan
joined the Ministry later.]
At the moment Conservative society was inclined to regard the new Ministry
with suspicious wonder, and Sir Charles tells how, on May 5th, a week
after taking office, when he and Chamberlain were dining with the Prince
of Wales--
'most of the Cabinet were present with their wives; also the new
Viceroy of India (Lord Ripon), and Rosebery and his wife. When the
Duke of Cambridge came in, following the Prince and Princess, after
shaking hands with those he knew, he stood staring about, whereupon
Harcourt, nudging Chamberlain and myself, said, "He is looking for
Bradlaugh."'
New men were coming to the front; a new political era had begun, and to
the Radicals the situation was summed up by the House of Commons' jest
which stated that B.C. now meant "Before Chamberlain," and A.D. "Anno
Dilke."
The break with the past was real and important: 1880 is a marking date in
the political history of Great Britain, and the change was due to the
Radical combination.
CHAPTER XXI
AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE
I.
In "a memorandum of later years," quoted by his biographer, Mr. Gladstone
defined his own understanding of "the special commission under which the
Government had taken office" in 1880. "It related to the foreign policy of
the country, the whole spirit and effect of which we were to reconstruct."
Sir Charles's views as to the need for this had long been before the
public, and he threw all his energies into the task of helping to achieve
it.
'The Liberals, having come into office after violent denunciation of
the whole foreign and colonial policy of their predecessors, had a
general wish to reverse it in all parts of the world, and to dismiss
the agents by whom it had been carried out. They were especially
violent against Lytton in India, Layard at Constantinople, and Frere
in South Africa.'
Questions of the Indian frontier and Africa lay outside the immediate
sphere of the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, yet he was constantly
consulted upon both of them, and had his full part in defending the
reversal of Lord Lytton's policy by the new Viceroy, Lord Ripon, who
restored, or perhaps established, the unity of Afghanistan.
In the matter of South Africa, the Boer leaders wrote at once to express
their confidence that the new Government would consist of "men who look
out for the honour and glory of England, not by acts of injustice and
crushing force, but by the way of justice and good faith." They were
answered by promises of local self-government, but such promises had been
made to them before, and the retention of Sir Bartle Frere no doubt seemed
a bad omen. So, at all events, it was regarded by the Radical party. On
May 24th--
'I found that Courtney and my brother, with Dr. Cameron and Jesse
Collings, were getting up an attempt to coerce the Colonial Office and
Mr. Gladstone by preparing a list of between one and two hundred
members who would vote with Wilfrid Lawson for a censure on the
Government for not recalling Frere. Childers had found that it would
be easy to recall him, for Frere had said that he would only go out
for two years, and the two years were over. No doubt Frere, while
blameworthy for the Zulu War, was not responsible for the Transvaal
business, which had been done by Shepstone and Lord Carnarvon before
he went out; but with our people he received the whole discredit for
all that went wrong in South Africa, and it was impossible to wonder
at this when one recalled the language that he habitually made use
of....
'Frere was protected by Mr. Gladstone, and allowed to remain, a
mistake for which we very gravely suffered. As this matter became of
great importance in 1899, I ought to add that Lord Granville backed
Mr. Gladstone in abstaining from rescinding the annexation of the
Transvaal, on the ground that as we were retiring from Kandahar we had
better not also retire from Pretoria.'
When, a few months later, the Boer rising followed, Dilke, with three
other Radical Ministers, Bright, Chamberlain, and Courtney, refused to
defend the Government's action even by a silent vote. 'Everything went as
badly as possible in South Africa, and Lord Kimberley' (the Colonial
Secretary) 'must share the blame with Mr. Gladstone.'
The third instance in which the recall of a man was demanded by Liberal
opinion as essential to the reversal of a policy touched matters in whose
development Sir Charles had a considerable part to play:
'_May 20th._--One of our first troubles in debate was with regard to
Layard's position at Constantinople, we being attacked by our own
people on May 20th, who were more Gladstonian than Mr. Gladstone, as
to the public insults which Layard had heaped upon him. Mr. Gladstone
discussed with me what he was to say, and I have his note which, in
addition to the statement about Layard, contains the curiously large
one, "Statements made in Opposition not to be taken too literally when
in office."'
Next day Mr. Gladstone wrote: "Thank you for the wonderful despatch you
kindly made in obtaining for me the particulars about Layard's
appointment."
The new Under-Secretary writes of these early days and first impressions:
'The general opinion of the party was that a Liberal policy was being
pursued in foreign affairs, and that we had in the Foreign Office
carried out that which the country intended us to do. We were able to
bring about joint action on the part of Europe, and by means of it to
settle the Greek and Montenegrin questions; and Goschen's presence at
Constantinople was useful, inasmuch as he fully shared the views of
the Liberal party upon foreign affairs, although he differed from them
in domestic matters. On the other hand, the party were frightened
about India, for, although Lord Lytton had been removed, the
Government refused to make any sign as to the immediate evacuation of
Kandahar, and, as a matter of fact, it was a long time before the
Queen's resistance upon this point could be overcome. She no doubt
felt more able to stand out against Hartington, whom she liked, than
against Lord Granville.' [Footnote: See _Life of Granville_, vol. ii.,
p. 5.]
Lord Lytton's policy is thus described:
'The _Allgemeine Zeitung_ for one of the last days of February
contained a remarkable disclosure of the Government scheme for the
settlement of Afghan affairs, which, so far as I know, did not appear
in the English newspapers. It was quoted from some Indian paper, and
revealed the fact that Persia was to occupy Herat, Kabul and Kandahar
being capitals of two separate States. I did not at the time believe
that it was possible that the Government should have absolutely
reversed the past British policy by proposing the cession of Herat to
Persia, but when I came into office at the end of April I made
immediate inquiry into the subject, and found that it was true, and
that they had done so. It was afterwards admitted.'
This proposal, however, had been declined by Persia. Before the fall of
the Beaconsfield Ministry--
'The Amir of Afghanistan had written to tell us that he must be the
friend of Russia, though he would be our friend too. We had replied
(that is to say, the outgoing Government had replied) that Russia had
sworn to us to have no dealings with Afghanistan, but that we should
in any case evacuate his country in October without conditions,
although he must respect our hold on Kandahar. Persia, it was clear
from Lytton's despatches, had acted under Russian influence when
declining Herat on our conditions.'
Under Lord Ripon, the policy of breaking up Afghanistan disappeared. But
although there was a clear intention to abandon all claim to remain in
Kandahar, yet the difficulty which attends any retrogressive movement in
Central Asia was at this moment intensified, because Russia was
threatening to advance on Merv, only 250 miles from Herat; and it seemed
as if the Tsar's troops might occupy one Afghan stronghold at the moment
when the Queen's forces withdrew from another.
'Lord Granville showed me, 15th May, some notes of language which he
intended to hold to Russia as to Central Asia, very strong indeed upon
the question of Merv; but the Cabinet afterwards took all this out,
not a single man being found in the Cabinet to back up Lord Granville
upon this question.'
In the succeeding months Sir Charles maintained a steady correspondence
with the new Viceroy, Lord Ripon, who described his task as a hard one.
"But I will do my best to perform it faithfully, and trust to you to back
me up." In it appears the reason for Lord Ripon's unwilling acceptance of
Abdurrahman, whom he called "the most Russian of the candidates" for the
Afghan throne, but also the inevitable choice. If Lord Ripon broke with
him, no hope appeared of establishing "even a semblance of order" before
the Indian Government withdrew the troops, "as," said the Viceroy, "we
_must_, because the service in Afghanistan, especially in winter, is so
unpopular with the native troops as to be a serious difficulty if it
should continue long. I hate the idea of leaving the Afghans a prey to
anarchy, created to some extent, at all events, by our policy, and I shall
do all I can to avoid it."
The Eastern Question was still dominant. The Treaty of Berlin had left
three sources of discontent in the region affected by its provisions. In
Bulgaria, Turkey complained that the Bulgarians had not fulfilled their
promise to disarm and to raze fortifications. In Greece, evasive
negotiations concerning the promised 'rectification of the frontier' were
being deliberately spun out. On the Montenegrin border, territory
surrendered and evacuated by the Turks had immediately been occupied by
Mohammedan Albanians before the Montenegrin troops could reach it.
'On my first examination of the papers at the Foreign Office, I found
that the black spot was Montenegro; the Roman Catholic Albanians on
the frontier and the Mahomedan Albanians being equally determined not
to become Montenegrin, and the Montenegrins insisting either on the
line of the Treaty, which would give them some Mahomedan, or on the
lines of the "Corti compromise," which would give them some Roman
Catholic Albanian subjects.' [Footnote: The "Corti compromise" was so
named after the Italian Ambassador at Constantinople, who advocated a
frontier line more favourable to Turkey than those previously proposed
(Sir Edward Hertslet's _Map of Europe by Treaty_, vol. iv.).]
Immediate steps were taken to remove the menace to European tranquillity
which arose from what the Austrian Ambassador called "the Porte's long
delays and tergiversation."
'_May 1st._--Pressure at Constantinople had begun this day, the
Cabinet having on the previous day approved an excellent and firm
despatch from Lord Granville to Layard, really written from the first
word to the last by Tenterden, containing the phrase, "While Her
Majesty's Government wish to abstain from anything like menace, any
intimation they give will be adhered to to the letter." The weak point
about the despatch, however, was that the Russians had written us a
despatch in the same sense, and that it might have been made to appear
that we were only acting under Russian dictation. At the same time the
despatch returned to the position of the circular bearing Lord
Salisbury's name, which I have called the April 1st (1878) Circular,
and set up that Concert of Europe which was destined to be kept
together until the Greek and Montenegrin frontier questions had been
settled....
'On May 3rd the Cabinet again considered our circular despatch
(calling on the Powers to address an identic and simultaneous note to
the Porte to fulfil its Treaty obligations as regards Greece,
Montenegro, and Armenia) in its final form.... On May 4th I lunched
with Lord Granville, and found that it was finally settled that
Goschen would go as Ambassador to Constantinople and Edmond
Fitzmaurice in Wolff's place.'
Meanwhile France was vigorously backing the new policy. Lord Granville was
deeply engaged in trying to unite Germany with the Powers in carrying out
concerted action, which was constantly evaded by Bismarck.
'_May 7th_.--On this day I had an opportunity of reading quietly a
curious despatch of Odo Russell, dated April 29th, recounting the
views of Prince Bismarck, who seemed to me to have been laughing at
him. The Prince "is even more willing to give his support to any
combined policy of England and France, as for instance in Egypt,
because he looks upon an Anglo-French alliance as the basis of peace
and order in Europe." [Footnote: This despatch is to be found in the
_Life of Granville_, vol. ii., p. 211, where the date is given as May
1st.]
'On Sunday, May 9th, I had to dinner Léon Say, the new French
Ambassador; Montebello, his first secretary, afterwards Ambassador at
Constantinople; Lord Lyons and his secretary Sheffield; Lord
Tenterden, my colleague at the Foreign Office; my secretary Murray;
Harcourt, and C. E. D. Black, who the week afterwards became
Harcourt's secretary on my recommendation. Léon Say brought with him
from the French "bag" Gambetta's answer to my letter. Gambetta
informed me that the French Government were unanimous in throwing over
Waddington's compromise and giving Greece all that she had been
intended to have; and Gambetta was in favour, and said that his Prime
Minister' (M. de Freycinet) 'was in favour, of taking active steps to
prevent further delay on the part of Turkey.' [Footnote:
"CHAMBRE DES DÉPUTÉS,
"PARIS,
"_le 7 Mai_, 1880.
"CHER AMI,
"Les dernières Élections Cantonales m'avaient si vivement absorbé que
je n'ai pu trouver la minute de liberté nécessaire pour répondre à vos
deux lettres.
"Permettez-moi d'ailleurs, après m'être excusé du retard, de vous dire
que je ne partageais ni votre émotion ni votre point d'impatience. Je
crois fermement que la solution grecque sera prochainement obtenue, en
dépit des résistances et des tergiversations qui peuvent se produire
chez les Turcs ou ailleurs. L'important est de maintenir le concert de
l'Europe, de le manifester par l'action commune d'une démonstration
navale; et d'après tout ce que je sais, j'ai confiance que le
gouvernement de la République est resté dans la ligne de conduite et
qu'il y persévérera.
"Quant à la Grèce, il convient qu'elle attende aussi, sans faire
mesure, l'effet de cette démonstration. Je suis peut-être optimiste,
mais je crois à une issue favorable.
"En ce qui touche le traité de Commerce votre lettre m'a fort surpris,
et je ne peux m'expliquer une attitude si contraire aux préliminaires
pris par M. L. Say: je vous prie de ne pas trop vous hâter de la
porter à la connaissance du public. Je crois qu'il y a là quelque
malentendu que je serai bien aise de faire disparaître, si vous voulez
m'y donner le temps.
"Je vais demain à Cherbourg, où je verrai vos amis qui sont invités
par la Ville, et au retour je vous manderai ce que j'aurai appris sur
les négociations du traité de Commerce qu'il serait si bon de voir
conclure.
"Bien cordialement,
"L. GAMBETTA."
"CHAMBRE DES DÉPUTÉS,
"PARIS,
"_le 8 Mai_, 1880.
"MON CHER AMI,
"Je profite de l'intermédiaire d'un jeune ami, M. Auguste Gérard, que
vous avez déjà rencontré, pour vous envoyer quelques lignes de réponse
a votre aimable dernière communication.
"J'ai vu le Président de notre cabinet au sujet de la question
Grecque, et comme vous pensez, le gouvernement est unanime pour
reprendre la question de Janina intégralement, en écartant
définitivement la dernière proposition de Waddington; on accepte la
formation de la commission internationale, chargée de reprendre le
tracé au double point de vue diplomatique et technique. On y défendra
le tracé qui englobe Janina. Ce qui importerait aujourd'hui serait
d'agir promptement, et de concert. On commettrait une lourde faute en
laissant la Porte atermoyer plus longtemps et épuiser toutes les
forces des diverses nationalités auxquelles elle refuse de donner les
maigres satisfactions fixées par le traité de Berlin.
"M. Léon Say doit avoir reçu d'ailleurs à ce sujet les instructions
les plus nettes, et vous l'avez probablement déjà vu.
* * * * * * *
"A bientôt, je l'espère,
"Votre dévoué,
"LÉON GAMBETTA."]
Such a step had already been taken by Great Britain on May 8th, when the
Cabinet--
'wrote a despatch to the Courts proposing a Conference at Berlin or
Paris as to the Greek frontier, which led, in fact, to the Conference
summoned at Berlin to consider the fulfilment of the terms of the
Treaty.'
On May 10th this activity was resented by the Sultan, who 'telegraphed his
unwillingness to receive Goschen, and great pressure had to be brought to
bear upon him during the next few days to induce him to consent.'
There was another matter arising out of the Russo-Turkish War which had
occupied Sir Charles much while in Opposition--namely, the government of
Cyprus. He did not think that the Foreign Office was the proper department
to administer dependencies, and accordingly, within a few days of taking
office, he raised the question whether there was any ground for keeping
Cyprus under the Foreign Office, and suggested its transfer to the
Colonial Office. In this Lord Granville concurred. But--
'Philip Currie, who as head of the Turkish department was managing the
affairs of Cyprus, did not want to lose it, and asked to be allowed to
prepare a memorandum in the opposite sense, and Lord Granville wrote,
"I do not expect to be converted by Currie's memorandum. Do you? If
not, the Colonial Office will have to bolt it." The Colonial Office
did have to bolt it, for the island was soon handed over to them!'
By the close of the year, as has been seen, Sir Charles was able to report
to his constituents "that, acting under the instructions of Lord
Granville, he had secured a greatly improved administration for this
island."
On May 21st--
'Egypt began to trouble me, and I was not to be clear of the
embarrassment which it caused for several years. I wrote to Lord
Granville to say that I had been sounded through Rivers Wilson as to
how the Government would take the appointment of a Nubar Ministry with
an English Finance Minister,' and Sir Charles again warned Lord
Granville of dissensions between the English representatives in Egypt.
It became the most serious of all the embarrassments which involved Mr.
Gladstone's Government. On May 8th--
'I had to see Lord Ripon, who had appointed Colonel Gordon to be his
private secretary, and to inform him privately that the Foreign Office
feared that he would find him too excitable to be possible as a
secretary, which, indeed, very speedily proved to be the case.'
Gordon resigned before Lord Ripon reached India, and on June 14th
telegraphed to Sir Charles--
'to know whether we would let him take service again with the Chinese.
I saw a friend of his in London, one of the Chinese Commissioners of
Customs, and asked whether Gordon could be got to telegraph that he
would refuse any military command in the event of war between China
and Russia. He said he thought so, and I told Lord Granville, who
wrote back, "I have told the Duke of Cambridge that on these
conditions he might have leave."'
Lord Ripon wrote on his arrival:
"... So, you see, your warnings about Gordon came true. It is
fortunate that the arrangement came to an end before I got here. As it
is, there is no real harm done; we parted the best of friends, and I
learned to my astonishment, after I left him at Bombay, that he was
off for China."
So passes out of sight for the moment, but only for the moment, this
fateful personality.
An immediate trouble, however, arose out of the Anglo-Turkish Convention
of 1878, by which Great Britain had been pledged to defend Turkey's
possessions in Asia Minor on condition that necessary reforms in
government were introduced. This pledge made England indirectly
responsible for the character of Turkish rule in Armenia; and Sir Charles
had repeatedly expressed the view that England was committed to more than
she could perform, either as against Russia or on behalf of Armenia. On
May 14th the Cabinet left in the draft of instructions to Mr. Goschen 'a
passage of Tenterden's, in which we recognized the Asia Minor Convention
of our predecessors.... But I induced Lord Granville to strike it out
after the Cabinet on his own responsibility.'
On the other hand, since the Convention existed, Sir Charles held that by
abrogating it they 'might appear to invite the Russians to invade Armenia,
which Russia might proceed to do in the name of humanity.' So far as
Turkey was concerned, it was considered likely that the Porte would wish
to see the Convention annulled, because it could then sell Cyprus to Great
Britain for cash instead of leasing it in return for the Asiatic
guarantee; and Turkish Pashas would be free from any interference about
reforms in Asia Minor. Ultimately the fear of letting Russia in outweighed
the other considerations, and the Convention was recognized, leaving
England with a heavy burden of moral responsibility for all that
subsequently occurred in Armenia under the protection of what Mr.
Gladstone himself had not unjustly called this "insane covenant."
Meanwhile, Musurus Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador, was complaining to Lord
Granville that 'the Sultan had assented to the Convention under a false
impression, not knowing that a portion of his dominions would be given
over to Austrian control, an alienation not contemplated by the Treaty of
San Stefano.' He complained, moreover, that the arrangement went, in
reality, beyond temporary occupation of provinces. 'We (Lord Salisbury)
had given Bosnia and Herzegovina secretly to Austria without reserve.'
The whole Eastern situation was ill-defined and full of difficulties. Mr.
Goschen, before he left England on his mission, came to Dilke to 'bewail
the unwillingness of Gladstone and of Lord Granville to make up their
minds how far they were going in the direction of coercion of Turkey.' On
May 26th--
'Looking about to see how Turkey was to be coerced with regard to the
Greek and Montenegrin questions, I discovered that all reinforcements
and officials were sent, and all money received by the Constantinople
Government, by the sea route, so that a blockade of the Dardanelles
would cut their Empire in two until they came to terms.'
Sir Charles's aim throughout all these frontier negotiations was to
support the claims of Greece, left indefinite by the Berlin Treaty. At
Great Britain's instance, the Greeks had refrained from attacking Turkey
when Turkey was engaged with Russia; but the Treaty of Berlin had only
promised to Greece in general terms "a rectification of frontier." On the
other hand, the Treaty had awarded to Montenegro certain districts of
Albania, which, as already stated; showed great repugnance to accept
Montenegrin rule. Sir Charles now conceived a plan--
"for combining Albanian autonomy with personal union with Greece,
finding that the Albanians were willing to accept the King of the
Hellenes, provided they succeeded in obtaining securities or
privileges for the Roman Catholic Church, to which great numbers of
them belonged."
On May 28th he learnt from the Greek Chargé d'Affaires that proposals for
such a personal union had been made to the King of Greece, directly and
very secretly, "on the part of a Turkish statesman." The Southern
Albanians, wrote M. Gennadius, are to all intents and purposes Greeks.
But, the latter added, "the initiative ought to proceed from the
Albanians." A few days later Mr. Goschen wrote from Constantinople that
the proposed union would be a solution "very valuable for Europe," but
that the Turks would struggle hard to outbid the Greeks, and the Albanians
were very strong in the Palace, and were trusted all over the Empire.
Still, autonomy, Mr. Goschen thought, the Albanians "would and must have
in some shape." [Footnote: See also _Life of Goschen_, vol. ii., pp. 215,
216.]
In their attempt to reverse the Beaconsfield policy there was one
influence steadily opposed to the Government.
'On June 11th there went out a despatch, which had been for several
days on the stocks, as to the Anglo-Turkish Convention. It had come
back on the 10th from the Queen, who had written by the side of our
words: "The acquisition of Cyprus is, in their view, of no advantage
to the country either in a military or political sense." "I do not in
the least agree in this.--V.R.I." But we sent it, all the same.'
The King of Greece had come to London, and on June 4th Sir Charles went by
his wish to Marlborough House, and had an hour's conversation, 'chiefly
upon the question of personal union with Albania, but partly with regard
to the past, as to which I received his thanks.' 'I thought him a very
able man, an opinion which I have never changed.' All Europe confirmed
this judgment when the King of the Hellenes was struck down more than
thirty years later in the very achievement of his long-planned schemes. In
1880 the note of disparagement was widespread; but Sir Charles was not
alone in his estimate:
'Dizzy was once, after this date, talking to me and the Duchess of
Manchester about him, and the Duchess said to me: "How you Liberals
have deceived that poor little King!" Whereupon Dizzy replied: "It
would take a very clever Government to deceive that youth."'
Elsewhere Sir Charles wrote that the King was a "good talker, but
academic," and, dining at Marlborough House on June 6th, he heard an
estimate of him as the too industrious apprentice:
'A big aide-de-camp of the King of Greece took more champagne than was
good for him, and was extremely funny. Pointing to his King, he said:
"Now, there is my King. He is a good little King; but he is not what I
call a fashionable King." And then, pointing to the Prince of Wales,
he said: "Now, that is what I call a fashionable Prince--_un Prince
vraiment 'chic.'_ He goes to bed late, it is true, but he gets up--
well, never. That is what I call a really fashionable Prince. My King
gets up at six!"'
Sir Charles met the King repeatedly during the next fortnight, to follow
out, with the maps, the military details of the proposed new frontier. As
soon as the French and Austrian Governments had accepted the British
proposal for a Conference at Berlin to settle the question of the
frontiers, and Bismarck had consented to call it, Lord Odo Russell wrote
that he would have to "act on the Greek Frontier Commission, in which
Dilke was better versed than anyone," and begged Sir Charles to "lend him
his lights," 'which,' says the Memoir, 'I had to proceed to do' by an
exhaustive letter.
A naval demonstration in the Adriatic now followed, generally known as
'the Dulcigno demonstration,' carried out by ships of the concerted
Powers, under command of the senior Admiral present, and acting under a
_protocole de désintéressement_. It was imposing rather than formidable,
since France and Italy both instructed their officers in no case to fire a
shot. But it was powerfully reinforced by the threat of independent
British action, on the lines which Sir Charles Dilke suggested, and, so
helped, it did its work, so far as the Montenegrin question was concerned.
The Greek question still remained for settlement.
Phases in the development of this situation are thus chronicled:
'On June 23rd I went to the State Ball, and had a good deal of talk
with Musurus, to try and find out about a curious business which I
noted in my diary as follows: "The Russians and Turks are working
together. The Russians came yesterday to propose to send 20,000
Russian men in English ships to coerce Turkey, and the Turks tell us
to-day that they will yield to an occupation by a European force, but
not to a mere naval demonstration. Both want to raise the difficulties
which this will cause, and to fish in troubled waters."
'On Wednesday, June 30th, at three o'clock, an interview took place
between Lord Granville, Lord Northbrook' (First Lord of the
Admiralty), 'Childers' (Secretary of State for War), 'Sir John Adye'
(Childers' adviser), 'and myself at the Foreign Office as to the means
of coercing Turkey. The War Office wished to place an army corps in
Greece, which, if they were to send a full complement of guns, would
take a month. I suggested the far cheaper plan of a naval occupation
of the port of Smyrna, and the collection and stoppage of customs and
dues. Mr. Gladstone came in a little late, and took up my idea. But,
preferring his Montenegrins to my Greeks, he insisted that we should
first deal by the fleet with the Montenegrin question at Dulcigno.
Both ideas went forward. The Dulcigno demonstration took place, and
produced the cession of territory to the Montenegrins; and we
afterwards let out to the Turks our intentions with regard to Smyrna,
and produced by this means the cession of territory to Greece.
[Footnote: _Life of Granville_, vol. ii., p. 231.]
'On Thursday, July 1st, we had a further interview with the Admiralty
to arrange our naval demonstrations. On this day there came to see me
Professor Panariétoff, a secret agent of the Prince of Bulgaria. He
informed me that his Government intended to press on a union between
Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia. They did not see any reason why they
should wait. It might suit the English Liberal Cabinet that they
should wait; but from their point of view, why wait? At a party in the
evening I met Borthwick, who playfully assured me that he knew that
our policy was to send one army corps to Greece to support the Greeks
against the Turks, and another to Eastern Roumelia to support the
Turks in maintaining the Treaty of Berlin. The two, after each of them
had accomplished its mission, would probably, he thought, come into
hostilities with one another in Macedonia.'
On July 5th the Austrian Ambassador, Count Karolyi, told Sir Charles that
the Turkish representative at Vienna had been solemnly warned to reckon no
longer upon the possibility of disagreement among the Powers, and to
consider 'the danger which would result if the Powers became convinced
that the Porte had no respect either for their pledges or its own.' This
Dilke hailed as 'a great step in advance on Austria's part,' and on July
7th he called at the Austrian Embassy, at the wish of the Ambassador, who
explained the views of his Government:
'It would send two ships to meet two ships of each Power that chose to
send any, to watch the Montenegro coast with a view to carrying out
the Dulcigno proposal if the Porte would not give effect to the Corti
compromise within three weeks.' Count Karolyi 'then went on to speak
warmly in favour of the future of Greece, and to say that as regarded
the Greek frontier Austria would be willing even to send troops.'
Public feeling in Austria, it appeared, was willing to sanction much
stronger measures in support of Greece than it would tolerate on behalf of
Montenegro. The British Foreign Office now proceeded to utilize the
position of vantage which had been gained.
'On July 16th I noted that, Lord Granville having urged the Queen to
write an autograph letter to the Sultan of a nature to induce him to
give in, the Queen very naturally refused, on the ground that she
dissented from every proposition in the draft sent her. She offered to
write a mild word of advice or recommendation to him to yield without
bloodshed, and this proposal was accepted by the Government. A
telegram based on it was despatched on the 17th, and it asked in the
name of united Europe for a complete fulfilment of the conditions of
the Treaty of Berlin. The Sultan had at this moment despatched a
secret agent, a French advocate at Constantinople, to Gambetta, who
assured him that it was because France was interested in the
maintenance of the Ottoman Empire that it was absolutely necessary to
force Turkey to allow herself to be saved.
'The attitude of the French Government had begun to embarrass us a
good deal. On July 28th I wrote to Gambetta that we could not
understand the hesitations of the French Government, which was
continually putting in reserves. All this was known at Constantinople,
and augmented the resistance of the Porte; the Prime Minister's paper
was attacking us, and Gambetta's paper (the _République Française_)
giving us no support.... In his telegraphic reply Gambetta used words
of encouragement with regard to the attitude of his Government, as to
which, no doubt, he was himself finding a good deal of trouble. A
little later he sent over one of his private secretaries with a fuller
letter.'
A conversation with Gambetta would have been valuable to Sir Charles at
this moment, and he regretted having to forgo an opportunity which
offered. He had procured invitations for--
'the Brasseys and Samuelson to the Cherbourg banquet, [Footnote: This
banquet was the occasion of Gambetta's famous Cherbourg speech, a
passage from which is inscribed on his monument in Paris.] which was
to be given to the President of the Republic and the Presidents of the
two Chambers (that is, Grévy, Gambetta, and Léon Say). Brassey asked
me to go with him in the _Sunbeam_. Although I should like to have
gone, I was under engagements in London; and I spent the Sunday
dismally ... instead of at Cherbourg with Gambetta.'
But he sent him messages by Mr. Bernhard Samuelson [Footnote: M.P. for
Banbury; afterwards Sir Bernhard Samuelson.] which were quickly effective.
Also, although public opinion in Austria favoured Greece, Sir Charles had
ground for believing that Italian Ministers kept the Turks perfectly
informed, and that even while advising concession upon Montenegro, they
did so with the suggestion that the Greek claims might be the more easily
resisted. Austria's concern was, of course, with the northern part of the
Illyrian coast; Italy's with the southern. As he noted later in the year,
'the European Concert was about as easy to manage as six horses to drive
tandem.' Nevertheless, by the first week in August, 1880, he was able to
write:
'A collective note had now been presented by the Powers to the Porte,
so that we had carried the Powers with us as fully in our Montenegrin
policy, represented by the collective note, as in our Greek policy,
represented by the previous Identic note--a most considerable success,
contrasting strongly with the failure which our foreign policy met
with two or three years later.'
These impressions were shared by Lord Ripon, who followed European and
domestic affairs keenly, from India. He wrote on August 17th:
"I rejoice to see that the F.O. seems to be distancing all competitors
in the race of success, ... which" (he added) "in regard to some
parliamentary proceedings is not very high praise, you will be perhaps
inclined to say."
II.
Even after the collective note had been presented, the European situation
remained delicate and difficult through the mutual distrust of the Powers.
On August 9th Lord Granville, who through all these negotiations was
exerting his greatest diplomatic skill in keeping Germany in the Concert,
expressed to Sir Charles his conviction that 'Bismarck had spies in the
Queen's household, and knew everything that went on.' On the side of
France matters improved. [Footnote: See _Life of Granville_, vol. ii.,
chapter vi.]
'On the 8th I received, at last, a reply from Gambetta to my letters--
a reply in which he showed that he fully agreed with me, but that he
was not as a fact all-powerful with the Prime Minister (Freycinet).
The same post, however, brought me a letter from Lord Houghton, who
was at Vichy, and who complained that it was an unhealthy state of
things that Gambetta (who had talked freely to him while in Paris)
"should exercise so much irresponsible power." ... The result of my
attempts to stir up Gambetta upon our side was seen in the report by
Bernhard Samuelson of Gambetta's conversation with him at Cherbourg on
Monday, August 9th, and in an article which appeared on Wednesday,
August 11th, and another on Friday, the 13th, in Gambetta's paper on
the coercion of the Turks. These articles were from the pen of
Barrère, who had been over in the previous week to see me, and were
written at the personal direction of Gambetta; and Adams (Secretary to
the Embassy) wrote from Paris on the 13th that the tone of the French
Government had correspondingly improved.'
But even while France assisted in one direction, she introduced fresh
complications in another by her quickly maturing designs on Tunis--which
had been mentioned to Sir Charles by the French Ambassador, M. Léon Say,
as early as June 8th. French diplomatists claimed an authorization from
Lord Salisbury. [Footnote: See Crispi's _Memoirs_, vol. ii., pp. 98-109
and 121; _Life of Granville_, vol. ii., pp. 215, 270, 436, as to Tunis and
Tripoli.] "How can you," he was reported to have said, during the
conversations which attended the Congress of Berlin, "leave Carthage to
the barbarians?"
'It was on this day (June 8th, 1880) that I became fully aware of the
terms of Lord Salisbury's offer of Tunis to France, as to which he
misled the public, Lord Salisbury having, when reminded of the
statement, said privately that it was "a private conversation," and
publicly that there was "no foundation for the statement."'
Later Sir Charles made inquiries of M. Say, who gave the dates of the two
conversations as July 21st and 26th, 1878.
'Lord Salisbury made a denial which is on record at the Foreign Office
in his own handwriting in red ink, but this denial is dated July 16th
--_i.e._, before the conversations.'
The trouble developed rapidly. By August 14th, 1880, Italy was threatening
to withdraw her Ambassador from Paris, 'on account of the receipt of
information showing that the French intended to occupy Tunis under Lord
Salisbury's permission.'
At this moment Sir Charles's health broke down. Two notes from his chief,
Lord Granville, are preserved, the first evidently sent across in the
office:
"MY DEAR DILKE,
"Please don't be a d--d fool. Go home and do exactly what your doctor
tells you.
"Yrs. G."
And again on August 18th Lord Granville wrote:
"I must formally request you not to leave the house till you send me
the doctor's written statement that he has advised you to do so. I
consider myself an honorary member of the gouty faction, and entitled
to speak with weight on the folly of trying to bully the disorder."
To this friendly dictation the patient submitted till the 23rd, when he
insisted on going to the House to answer questions, but returned to bed,
and next morning underwent an operation. [Footnote: He worked hard during
his enforced confinement to the house, and one of his visitors was M.
Joseph Arnaud, one of Gambetta's secretaries, who was sent by his friend
to reassure him as to the pressure he was using in the Frontier Question.
It is of M. Arnaud that Sir Charles tells a Gambetta story: 'G. was jovial
to-day, November 12th, 1880. Arnaud having said that all the people to
whom tickets were given for the presidential tribune were grateful to
Gambetta, and all who were angry were angry with him--Arnaud--the reply
was: "Tu ne comprends donc pas que tu es institué pour ça?"'] In a few
days he was again in Parliament, where the peace party, headed by Sir
Wilfrid Lawson, had begun to denounce the naval demonstration against
Turkey. In this they were backed by the Fourth Party, who spoke of it as
"the combined filibustering." However, on September 7th, the general
question was raised on the motion for adjournment of the House, and Sir
Charles, 'replying to the peace party on the one hand, and on the other to
Cowen, who attacked them in the name of Albanian nationality,' drew from
Lord Granville this compliment:
"My mother once said that Clarendon--with a slight headache--was the
pleasantest man she knew. I will not say that an operation makes you
speak better, but it certainly does not prevent your speaking as well
as usual."
The Fourth Party [Footnote: Dilke dates the birth of the Fourth Party at
the beginning of the Gladstone Ministry, and says: 'Gorst was its real
brain, the other two members (for Arthur Balfour hardly belonged to it)
contributing "brass."'] were also busy in denunciation of the Government's
policy in Afghanistan, which had been finally determined on August 7th,
when--
'the Cabinet directed Lord Hartington and Lord Ripon to retire from
Kandahar, although we had now heard of the intention of the Russians
to occupy Merv, a step on their part which was certain to make our
retirement from Kandahar unpopular with those who did not know its
necessity.'
Another circumstance even more certain to add to the unpopularity of the
retirement was not then known to the Home Government. On July 26th, Lord
Ripon, writing to Sir Charles, complained of the "embarrassing
engagements" with which "Lytton's reckless proceedings" had hampered him.
One of these engagements bound him to maintain Shere Ali as Wali of
Kandahar; and on July 27th, Ayub Khan, Shere Ali's rival, defeated at
Maiwand the force under General Burrows which was supporting Great
Britains' nominee. The policy of evacuation met with resistance in a
quarter where such policies were always opposed. On September 7th Sir
Charles left London to stay with Lord Granville at Walmer Castle, and Lord
Hartington joined them on the 9th.
'The Queen had written for the second time to Hartington urging with
great warmth that we should retain Kandahar, although, as Hartington
said, this meant, to India, an expenditure of four millions sterling a
year, on local troops, for no military return.... The Queen ... at
this moment was not only protesting strongly with regard to Kandahar,
but also, in cipher telegrams, against the naval demonstration....
'On September 20th Lord Granville, just starting for Balmoral, came to
see me. He told me that he thought of sending Dufferin to
Constantinople at the end of Goschen's special mission, and Paget to
Petersburg, and Layard to Rome if he could not get a pension out of
the Treasury for Layard.'
The Queen conceived the interests of England as Lord Beaconsfield had
presented them. But Mr. Gladstone did not conceive of English interests as
bound up with Turkish success, and wrote on September 21st:
"If Turkey befools Europe at Dulcigno, we may as well shut up shop
altogether."
About the same time Chamberlain expressed his mind on questions of foreign
policy in their bearing on party politics:
"Kandahar will have to be given up.... I only hope Hartington will
have the pluck to do it at once and before we get into some fresh
scrape. I observe the papers generally speak well of the session, the
Government, and especially of the Radicals. So far so good. We have
scored very well up to this time."
'In another letter Chamberlain added:
'"What about the Concert of Europe? Will it last through a bombardment
of Dulcigno? I don't much like concerts. Our party of two, with
Dillwyn as chorus, was about as numerous as is consistent with
harmony, and I fear five great Powers are too many to make a happy
family."'
In France the great ally of the Sultan's Fabian policy had fallen. M. de
Freycinet found himself forced to resign on September 19th:
'On September 9th I recorded that Gambetta means to turn out
Freycinet. He foretold all this when Freycinet took office, and said
to me at that time: "He will do well enough until he tries to fly. But
one of these days he will set off flying." Gambetta turned out
Freycinet on this occasion, but the day was to come when Freycinet
would turn out Gambetta.'
On the 23rd Sir Charles 'heard from Paris that the fallen Minister "had
been discovered to have been negotiating with the Vatican for months,
without the knowledge even of his own colleagues."'
In the new Ministry, with Jules Ferry as Prime Minister, the Foreign
Office fell to Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, [Footnote: M. Barthélemy Saint-
Hilaire, born in 1805, the well-known philosophical writer and translator
of Aristotle, was now seventy-five years of age. He entered the Chamber of
Deputies in 1848 as a member of the Left, and became a member of the
Senate in 1876. He was the first Secrétaire-Général de la Présidence de la
République.] and Lord Houghton said: "Think of the old Aristotelian
Barthélemy having the F.O.! Without pretension, I think at my age I am
just as fit for the English one." This was a view in which Sir Charles
inclined to agree, although M. Barrère wrote: "Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire's
tendencies are excellent. He is in complete accord with _us_, and his
views are wholly ours."
Lord Houghton also spoke of an interview with Moltke, who had told him
that 'Russia was the cause of the necessity for the immense arming of
Europe, not France, which at present might be trusted to keep quiet.'
'On September 28th I noted: "Cabinet suddenly and most unexpectedly
summoned for Thursday to sit on Parnell, the Sultan, and the Queen,
about Ireland, Dulcigno, and Kandahar respectively."... [Footnote: The
decisions as to the Irish difficulties are dealt with in the first
portion of Chapter XXII., pp. 343-348.]
'On September 30th Chamberlain, who was staying at Sloane Street, gave
me a note of what passed at the Cabinet. With regard to Kandahar, the
Generals whose names had been suggested by the Queen had been
consulted, and had, of course, pronounced against giving it up. So the
Queen had got her own way sufficiently for the matter to be left over
till after Christmas. The Cabinet were evidently sorry that they had
not more fully and more early adopted my suggestion of British
coercion of the Turks at Smyrna. And on this occasion they agreed to
try to induce the other Powers to agree upon (1) local action, or (2)
the seizure of a material guarantee: (1) meaning a demonstration at
the Dardanelles, and (2) meaning Crete.'
But the Eastern, unlike the Irish, trouble was now nearing a close,
though--
'On October 1st Lord Granville came to sit with me, and was very
gloomy. He thought that Mr. Gladstone was inclined to give in to the
Turks rather than resort to coercion. Harcourt came in also--at one
moment, "Whatever we do, we must not be snubbed," and the next, "After
all, it will be no worse than Palmerston and Denmark."'
Sir Charles's plan for the seizure of Smyrna was now agreed to in
principle by the Ministers in London, but while it still remained
uncertain whether they could carry other Powers with them in this coup,
Lord Lyons, British Ambassador at Paris, had written expressing a wish to
see, Dilke concerning negotiations for a commercial treaty, 'and the
Foreign Office also desired that I should deal with the Danube question
later.' Sir Charles left London on October 11th.
'Before I left, Lord Granville showed me a letter from Hartington from
Balmoral saying that the Queen had not named Kandahar to him, and had
"agreed to the Smyrna seizure project," but was angry about Ireland.
Hartington added that he had pledged Forster to put down Parnell. As
to her not naming Kandahar, Lord Granville said that she never
attacked the policy of a department to its chief.'
At Paris Sir Charles was warned by Lord Lyons that '"you will find the
French Foreign Office in some confusion, as the new Under-Secretary of
State is vigorously employed in 'purging' it of clericals and
reactionaries."' On October 12th he went with Lord Lyons to see Barthélemy
Saint-Hilaire, and also Jules Ferry, the Prime Minister, and Tirard, the
Minister of Commerce, with whom he would be principally brought into
touch.
Lord Granville was in London with Mr. Gladstone, bewailing the unhappy
fate of those who have to wait for an Eastern Power to make up its mind.
But at last the Porte's decision to surrender Dulcigno was announced, and
Lord Granville wrote:
"MY DEAR DILKE,
"I accept your felicitations _d'avance_--the Turkish Note has got us
out of a great mess. My liver feels better already. I hope you will
improve the occasion by impressing upon all that it only requires firm
language from all, such as was used by them on Saturday, to make the
Turk yield.
"I wonder whether they will be keen about Turkish finance. It is
rather in their line.
"How are we to help our poor friends the Greeks?"
The letter closed by a warning not to write by the post, "unless to say
something which it is desirable the French Government should know."
Caution as to danger of gossip about his frequent meetings with Gambetta
was also urged. [Footnote: Sir Charles notes on 11th November: 'Having had
a telegram from Lord Granville to caution me, I told Gambetta that I did
not want my visits talked about because of the German newspapers. The
result of it was that the _Agence Havas_ stated that I had not seen
Gambetta, and this was copied by Blowitz next day, so that the _Times_
repeated the untrue statement!']
Acting on these suggestions, Sir Charles Dilke during the next four days
discussed with the French Foreign Office and with Gambetta (who had
written on September 28th to say, "Je reviendrai exprès de Suisse pour
vous vous en causer à fond"), not only commercial negotiations, but also
Turkish finance and the affairs of Greece. According to Lord Edmond
Fitzmaurice, the interests of Greece were at this time suffering because
Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire was anxious to reconcile the Porte to those
designs "which France was executing at Tunis and contemplating at
Tripoli"; [Footnote: _Life of Granville_, vol. ii., pp. 215, 436.] and in
Sir Charles's notes of these interviews there is repeated mention of
Gambetta's references to what Lord Salisbury had promised or suggested in
regard to Tunis. Gambetta himself was strongly Philhellene, but said to
his friend on October 17th: "Mr. Gladstone has spoilt our European affairs
by putting Montenegro first." He held, and M. de Courcel agreed with him,
that the Concert was for the moment "used up," and that Greece must wait
until it could be reinvigorated. The conclusion which Sir Charles drew and
conveyed to Lord Granville was that 'France waited on Germany, and Germany
on Austria, in regard to the Eastern Question, and consequently that,
Austria being absolutely mistress of the situation, a confidential
exchange of opinions at Vienna was essential.'
The demonstration at Dulcigno was carried out in December, but no further
progress was made then towards helping their "poor friends the Greeks."
Sir Charles's health was not at this time fully restored, but he was hard
at work. Even when he went for a short rest to his villa near Toulon he
was obliged to take a cipher with him, and, having no secretary at hand,
spent much of his time (most grudgingly) in ciphering and deciphering
telegrams.
'On October 25th Lord Granville wrote to me to Toulon, in cipher, to
the effect that Odo Russell thought that "Bismarck was jealous of the
leading part in Europe which we were now taking."'
Later, in November, the Prince of Wales, just returned from Berlin,
confirmed this. At the German Court Sir Charles was regarded as a "most
dangerous man" and as "a French spy." "But," the Prince added, "they say
the same of me." On November 22nd Lord Odo Russell is quoted as saying
'that at the Court of Berlin I was considered a most dangerous man, but
that the Crown Princess fought my battles like a sound Liberal and a true
Briton as she is.'
At the close of the year, addressing his constituents, Sir Charles
delivered a very effective general reply to Lord Salisbury's attacks on
the Government's European policy. It was a little hard to be blamed for
delay in settling difficulties which all sprang from Lord Salisbury's own
"harum-scarum hurry" when he was Foreign Minister and Second
Plenipotentiary of England. Lord Salisbury might say of the naval
demonstration that the Powers might as well have sent "six washing-tubs
with flags attached to them." The fact was that only to the concerted
action of the whole of the Powers had Turkey yielded.
"The European Concert is the first real attempt in modern times to
arrive at such an understanding between the six Great Powers as might
gradually become a basis for partial disarmament, and for the adoption
of a policy which would cease to ruin nations in time of peace by
perpetual preparations for war. In arriving at the idea that when
territorial changes are to be made it is for Europe to arrange them, a
practical step has been taken in the direction of this policy."
"Quite excellent," wrote Lord Granville. "I am delighted, and so, let us
hope, is Salisbury." [Footnote: The complicated story of the negotiations
relating to the Montenegrin and Greek frontier questions will be found in
detail in the _Life of Granville_, vol. ii., chap, vi., and the _Life of
Lord Goschen_, vol. ii., chap. vii. The principal documents, with
illustrative maps, are given in Sir Edward Hertslet's _Map of Europe by
Treaty_, vol. iv.]
CHAPTER XXII
HOME POLITICS--COMMERCIAL TREATY--PERSONAL MATTERS
I.
The opening successes of British foreign policy under the Gladstone
Government were to a large extent neutralized by other difficulties in
which the new Administration found itself at once involved. Ireland
carried confusion into the very heart of Imperial authority, and discord
into the counsels of the Government.
On October 30th, 1880, Lord Tenterden wrote:
'Odo Russell says there is a general opinion abroad that the Gladstone
Government will be in a minority when Parliament meets, ... and that
then the policy of England will have to be changed. There will be no
more demonstrations, or concerts, or inconvenient proposals. I told
him that such ideas were illegitimate offspring of Musurus and the
_Morning Post_.'
These rumours of coming defeat sprang from the Irish situation. Captain
Boycott's case had given a new word to the language; agrarian murders were
frequent; and the decision to seek no powers outside the ordinary law,
which had been pressed on Mr. Forster, was vehemently challenged by the
Opposition. Radicals wished for a Bill offering compensation to tenants
evicted under harsh conditions; but this proposal bred dissension in a
Government largely composed of great landlords, two of whom, Lords
Hartington and Lansdowne, possessed wide domains in Ireland. On June 13th,
1880, Sir Charles, after dining with Lord Rosebery in company with Mr.
Gladstone, noted that there was disagreement in the Cabinet, 'all the
peers being opposed to an Irish Land Bill, and all the Commoners
supporting Forster in this branch of his proposals.'
'On July 2nd trouble broke out in the Cabinet with a letter from Lord
Hartington advising the withdrawal of Forster's Irish Land Bill.
[Footnote: The Compensation for Disturbance measure.] ... I placed my
conditional resignation in Chamberlain's hands, and he his and mine in
Forster's, in case the latter was inclined to nail his colours to the
mast. I noted in my diary: "I do not care in the least about the Bill,
but I must either go out with these men or climb into the Cabinet over
their bodies, to either become a Whig or to eventually suffer the same
fate, so I prefer to make common cause. I suppose there will be a
compromise once more;" and so, at the Cabinet of the next day,
Saturday, the 3rd, there was.'
The compromise of July 3rd did not terminate dissension. Lord Lansdowne
retired from the Government, and in the first days of August the
Compensation for Disturbance Bill itself was rejected by the Lords, many
of Mr. Gladstone's nominal supporters voting against it.
This was the first revolt of the Whigs. The old order was passing, and
shrewd eyes perceived it. Lord Houghton wrote to Sir Charles from Vichy on
August 8th:
"I told Hugessen [Footnote: Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen had been created
Lord Brabourne in this summer.] that a peer always voted with his
party the first Session as a matter of etiquette; but it seems he does
not think so. The Government will have to decide in the vacation
whether they can govern without the Whigs or not. I am glad that I
have not to decide this point, but I own I am glad that I have lived
in a Whig world. It has been a wonderful combination of public order
and personal liberty. I do not care much for future order, but I care
a good deal for individual liberty, which is slipping away from under
us."
For the moment the House of Lords had given victory to the Whigs; but the
sequel was, in Mr. Gladstone's own words, "a rapid and vast extension of
agrarian disturbance," which grew all through the winter of that famine-
stricken year, presenting to the Chief Secretary the traditional Irish
problem, how to deal with a lawless demand for redress of grievances.
Towards the end of September Mr. Chamberlain wrote:
"Next Session will settle Forster one way or the other. Either he will
pass a Land Bill and be a great statesman, or he will fail and be a
pricked bubble for the rest of his natural life."
Mr. Forster wanted to pass a Land Bill, but he also wanted to deal with
lawlessness by coercive legislation, and, after the Cabinet hurriedly
called on September 28th, Mr. Chamberlain reported:
'"With regard to Ireland, Forster made a strong case for a Coercion
Bill, but the Cabinet thought it best that the insufficiency of the
present law should be thoroughly proved before new powers were asked
for."
'Chamberlain went on:
'"Probably a prosecution will be tried against Parnell and the Land
League for intimidating tenants and others. Even if it fails, it may
divert the attention of the Land League from its present agitation,
and so lead to a cessation of outrages."'
'I added in my diary: "I hope they will not commit the folly of
prosecuting Parnell, which they discussed to-day. I sent for Hill, and
got the _Daily News_ to damn the idea." But my intervention through
the _Daily News_ was not on this occasion sufficiently strong
ultimately to prevent this folly, for I had not, this time, any
following at my back.'
Later in the year he told Mr. Chamberlain that "to try to stop Irish land
agitation by making arrests was like firing a rifle at a swarm of midges."
Mr. Chamberlain replied from Birmingham on October 27th;
"I do not half like the Irish prosecutions, but I fear there is no
alternative, except, indeed, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus,
which I should like still less. Parnell is doing his best to make
Irish legislation unpopular with English Radicals. The workmen here do
not like to see the law set at defiance, and a dissolution on the
'Justice for Ireland' cry would under present circumstances be a
hazardous operation."
Mr. Forster was eager to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and wanted to have
Parliament specially summoned in order to carry through repressive
legislation.
'On Monday morning, November 15th, on my return to London, I saw
Harcourt, and told him that I should follow Chamberlain in resigning
if a special Irish Coercion Session without a Land Bill were to be
called. I saw Chamberlain immediately after the Cabinet which was held
this day. Bright and Chamberlain were as near splitting off at one end
as Lord Selborne at the other. Mr. Gladstone proposed at the Cabinet
the creation of English, Scotch, and Irish Grand Committees, but
obtained very little support....
'It seemed probable that there would be a Coercion Bill and a Land
Bill, and that the Land Bill (although the resignation of the Lord
Chancellor was threatened) would give what was known as "the three
F's," and that the Government would insist on both Bills. [Footnote:
The "three F's" were "Fair Rent" (_i.e._, judicially fixed rent),
"Free Sale" (of tenant right), and "Fixity of Tenure."] The Lords
would probably throw out the Land Bill, and the Government would
resign....
'Chamberlain had dined with me on November 17th, and had given me late
news of the condition of the Cabinet, which had been adjourned until
Friday, the 19th.
'The division was really a division between the Commons' members on
the one side (except Forster and Hartington, but with the support of
Lord Granville), and Forster and Hartington and the Peers upon the
other side; Lord Cowper, the Viceroy of Ireland' (who, although not a
member of the Cabinet, had been called in for the occasion), 'making
common cause, of course, with Forster....
'On the 19th the adjourned Cabinet was held; Forster was isolated, and
all became calm. The Queen had telegraphed on the previous evening to
Lord Granville in a personal telegram, in which she said that Mr.
Gladstone had told her nothing about the dissensions in the Cabinet,
and that she "must request Lord Granville either to tell her what
truth there is in the statement as to dissensions or to induce Mr.
Gladstone to do so!" Mr. Gladstone always held that the Queen ought
not to be told about dissensions in the Cabinet; that Cabinets existed
for the purpose of differing--that is, for the purpose of enabling
Ministers who differed to thrash out their differences--and that the
Queen was only concerned with the results which were presented to her
by, or in the name of, the Cabinet as a whole. This seems reasonable,
and ought, I think, to be the constitutional view; but the Queen
naturally ... hates to have personal differences going on of which she
is not informed....
'On November 23rd I noted in my diary that Hartington ... had grown
restive, and wanted to resign and get Forster to go with him, and that
Forster talked of it but did not mean it. Kimberley and Northbrook had
come over to Mr. Gladstone's side, and the other view was chiefly
represented by Lord Spencer and Lord Selborne; and I could not help
feeling that if, as I expected, the split with Whiggery had to come,
it had better be this split, so that we should have the great names of
Gladstone and Bright upon our side. One could not help feeling that we
had no men to officer our ranks, and that really, besides Mr.
Gladstone, who was an old man, there was only Chamberlain....
Hartington was a real man, but a man on the wrong side, and with
little chance of his getting rid of his prejudices, which were those,
not of stupidity, but of ignorance; with his stables and his wealth it
was useless to expect him to do serious work. Bright was a great name,
and had a power of stringing together a series of sound commonplaces,
so put that they were as satisfactory to the ear as distinct
statements of policy would be; and had a lovely voice, but it was
rhetoric all the same--rhetoric very different from Disraeli's
rhetoric, but equally rhetoric, and not business.'
By November 25th the severity of the crisis may be gathered from a letter
of Sir Charles's to Mrs. Pattison, which describes the grouping of forces.
On the one side were "Gladstone, Bright, Chamberlain, Granville, Harcourt,
Kimberley, Childers, Dodson, Northbrook; on the other Hartington, Forster,
Spencer, Argyll, the Chancellor." "Forster," he wrote, "talks about
resigning, but does not mean it. It is _meaning_ it which gives us so much
power."
'"If Chamberlain and I should be driven to resign alone, we shall have a
great deal of disagreeable unpopularity and still more disagreeable
popularity to go through." His old kinsfolk who cared for him were "hard-
bitten Tories": Mr. Dilke of Chichester; his cousin, John Snook, of
Belmont Castle; and Mrs. Chatfield, if she were still able to follow
political events, would "badger him horribly." Worse still, he would have
to endure "patting on the back by Biggar," to which he would prefer stones
from "a Tory mob."
The lull in Cabinet troubles was only momentary:
'On December 10th, Chamberlain, the stormy petrel, came to stay. When
we were at dinner there suddenly arrived a summons for a Cabinet to be
held on Monday, instead of Thursday for which it stood, and we went
off to Harcourt's. We found that he was not in the secret, and
therefore decided that the Cabinet must have been called at the demand
of the Queen on the suggestion of Dizzy, who was staying with her at
this moment; "but it may have been called on account of Forster's
renewed demand for coercion," as I noted.
'The next morning, December 11th, Lulu Harcourt came, and brought a
note: "Dear Dilke, L. will tell you what he heard from Brett. It is
odd that the Sawbones should know what we are trying to find out."
Lulu reported that Dr. Andrew Clarke had told Reggie Brett,
Hartington's secretary, that Parliament was, after all, to meet before
Christmas. When Lulu was gone, Chamberlain and I decided that if there
was only a pretended and not a real change we would resign, whatever
our unpopularity. In the afternoon of the same day Harcourt wrote to
Chamberlain that he had seen Hartington; that Forster had written to
Gladstone that he could not wait till January 6th' (for extended
powers of coercion). 'Harcourt said that the reports were not much
worse, and only of a general kind; that Hartington thought Forster
worried and ill. "In fact, I think he is like the Yankee General after
Bull Run--not just afraid, but dreadful demoralized. I have only one
counsel to give--let us all stick to the ship, keep her head to the
wind, and cram her through it. Yours ever, W. V. H."
'_Monday, December 13th._--... called before the Cabinet to find out
whether the offer of Chamberlain's place would now tempt me to sell
him! We won, after all!'
Mr. Forster had accordingly to wait till the New Year for the introduction
of his Coercion Bill.
II.
A departmental change in the Foreign Office at this time greatly increased
the responsibilities of the Under-Secretary. Complaint had become frequent
in the House of Commons of an apparently insufficient representation of
the Government in regard to commercial questions, which belonged partly to
the sphere of the Board of Trade and partly to that of the Foreign Office,
with unsatisfactory results. Lord Granville determined, on returning to
office, to make a new distribution of duties, and to take advantage of the
Under-Secretaryship being occupied by a Member of Parliament whose
competence on commercial questions was universally recognized to place the
commercial business of the Office more completely under his control--as
supervising Under-Secretary. [Footnote: This arrangement continued in the
Under-Secretaryship of Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Mr. James Bryce, Mr.
Robert Bourke, and Sir James Fergusson, but was subsequently altered. See
also above, p. 314.]
'On Sunday, May 2nd, Lord Granville asked me to take over general
supervision of the commercial department of the Foreign Office, and,
although I should have preferred to keep free of all departmental work
in order to attend to larger affairs of policy, I admitted that there
were strong reasons for my taking the Commercial Department, inasmuch
as the commercial members of the House of Commons were dissatisfied
with its management, and because also it was certain that I should
have to defend in the House of Commons treaty negotiations with
foreign Powers, which would in any case force me to give much time to
the consideration of commercial questions. When I first agreed to take
over the Commercial Department, it was only with the view of keeping
it for a short time, but I was unable to rid myself of it during the
whole time I was at the Foreign Office, and it gave me heavy work.'
The first and chief instalment of this burden consisted in the
negotiations for a new commercial treaty with France.
In January Dilke had learnt from Gambetta that M. Léon Say, late President
of the Finance Committee of the Senate, would come to London as Ambassador
'when the trouble about "Article 7" was ended.' [Footnote: See Chapter
XX., p. 300.] It was in the month of May (when the "trouble" about M.
Ferry's attack on the religious Orders was by no means ended) that M. Say
arrived, charged with an important mission, specially suited to his
qualifications as an ex-Minister of Finance. France was revising her
commercial policy; several commercial treaties, including that with Great
Britain, had been only provisionally prolonged up to June 30th; and M. Say
was instructed to try to secure England's acceptance of the new general
tariff, which had not yet passed the Senate. Gambetta and his friends
still held to the ideals of Free Trade. M. Tirard, the Minister of
Commerce, supported the same view, but there was a strong Protectionist
campaign on foot.
M. Say arrived on May 5th, and on the 6th had his first interview with Sir
Charles:
'At this moment I was showing my disregard for the old Free-Trade
notions in which I had been brought up by my grandfather, and my
preference for reciprocitarian views, by carefully keeping back all
grievances with the countries with which we were negotiating upon
commercial matters, in order that they might be thrown in in the
course of the negotiations. On this ground I managed to cause the
Colonial Office to be directed to keep all Gibraltar grievances in
hand.
'Immediately on taking charge of the Commercial Department, I had sent
a memorandum on the wine duties to Mr. Gladstone, who replied, "I have
never yet seen my way to reduction below a shilling or to a uniform
rate. _At present, we have not a sixpence to give away._ I do not like
bargaining away revenue for treaties, or buying over again from France
what has been bought already.... In my view the treaty of 1860 was
exceptional; it was to form an accommodation to the exigencies of the
French Emperor's position. _We_ never professed to be exchanging
concessions, but only allowed him to say _he_ had done it. I am, of
course, open to argument, but must say, as at present advised, that I
see but very little room for what is called negotiating a commercial
treaty."'
This was discouraging, since it came from the author of the treaty of
1860, who by lowering the duties on light wines had brought into general
popularity the "Gladstone clarets"; and Mr. Gladstone's expression of
opinion, renewed in a second letter of May 11th, caused M. Say to 'let me
clearly understand that as Mr. Gladstone was unwilling to lower the wine
duties, he should resign his Embassy and try to become President of the
Senate,' then vacant by the resignation of M. Martel. In this he
succeeded, much to the regret of Gambetta, who afterwards said to Dilke:
'"People never know for what they are fit. There was Léon Say, the
best possible Ambassador at London, who insists on resigning the
Embassy in order to become a bad President of the Senate."'
But M. Léon Say, even in the act of resigning, advanced the possibility of
a treaty. While visiting Paris in May, to promote his candidature, he
'attacked Mr. Gladstone so fiercely through the French Press for not
offering to lower our wine duties that the Prime Minister, afraid to face
our merchants, gave way.' In the supplementary Budget, proposed on June
9th, provision was made for a reduction from one shilling to sixpence of
the duty on some wines. This new scale, however, was not to take effect
unless compensating advantages were obtained from other countries.
France, of course, was not the only country concerned; and the Portuguese
Minister, M. Dantas, wrote to Sir Charles holding out great prospects of
expansion for British trade if Portuguese wines were let into the English
market at a cheaper rate.
The Prime Minister first demurred, but finally agreed that the Portuguese
might be asked--
'"whether, supposing fiscal conditions allowed us to give a great
advantage to their wines between 26 and 36 degrees of alcoholic
strength, they could engage for some considerable improvements in
their duties upon our manufactures, and what would be their general
character and effect?
'"The Spaniards appear to have been much less unreasonable in their
demands. Please to consider whether the same question should be put to
them. Both probably should understand that _we have_ no money, and
should have to make it, so that their replies respectively would form
a serious factor in our deliberations."
'Here, at last, I had got all I wanted. I merely begged leave to put
the same questions at Rome and Vienna, and, obtaining his consent
("Pray do as you think best about Rome and Vienna.--W. E. G."), I went
on fast.'
Cipher telegrams were despatched on May 28th to Portugal, Spain, Italy,
and Austria--countries which produce strong wines more abundantly than
France--inquiring what corresponding advantages would be offered for a
change in the wine duties; and Sir Charles resumed his discussions with M.
Say, who had returned to London.
For a time there seemed hope of a settlement, based on a new
classification of wines; but when the bases of agreement arrived at were
seen in France, there was violent opposition to the proposed
countervailing 'amelioration,' which was construed to mean 'a lowering of
duties upon the principal products of British industry.' Protectionist
feeling ran too high to accept this.
While Lord Granville left commercial matters entirely to his junior
colleague, every detail of every proposal had to be thrashed out with the
Prime Minister, who was his own Chancellor of the Exchequer. In such a
correspondence there was much for a young Minister to learn; there was
also an opportunity for Mr. Gladstone to take the measure of a man whose
appetite for detail was equal to his own.
One of the minor difficulties lay in the fact that the Portuguese and
Spaniards wanted changes in the wine scale, but not the same as those
which the French required. Owing to the accumulation of obstacles, Mr.
Gladstone, on going into Committee with his Budget, dropped the proposed
alteration in the wine duties for that year. But in October Sir Charles
was sent to Paris in order to open the matter afresh, and on November 11th
Gambetta 'promised commercial negotiations in January in London, and an
immediate declaration in the Senate.' Beyond this nothing could be done in
1880. The details of this first phase of these long-drawn-out transactions
will be found in a very full despatch written by Sir Charles on August
6th, 1880 (and published subsequently in the Blue Book 'Commercial
Relations with France, 1880-1882'), which placed on record the whole of
the dealings between himself and the two successive French Ambassadors.
'On Tuesday, June 1st, Léon Say called on me to settle the words which
he should use before a Commission of the Senate in answer to a
question as to the new treaty. What I think he had really come about
was as to his successor. Challemel-Lacour, a friend of Gambetta, had
forced himself upon his Government; ... and Say came to tell me that
Gambetta did not really want Challemel to come, but wanted Noailles,
if an anticipated difficulty with the Queen could be got over.'
The difficulty was not got over, and so the appointment stood. The Memoir
gives another version of the story, which Sir Charles heard in 1896, when
he was staying with his friends the Franquevilles at Madame de Sévigné's
château, Bourbilly.
'Franqueville said that Lord Granville had told him that when the
Queen refused Noailles, the French Government had not meant to send
him, but that he had been proposed only in order that Challemel-
Lacour should be accepted. Lord G. had said: "The fact is that I told
them the Queen would not have Challemel. They said they must send him
or no one. Then said I, Propose Noailles.... She will refuse Noailles,
and, having done that, she will take Challemel! So it happened."'
'Stories were at once set afloat that Challemel had shot a lot of monks,
and various other inventions about him were started.' [Footnote: He had
been in authority at Lyons during the war.] Matters went so far that the
Prince of Wales wrote through his secretary suggesting that Sir Charles
should use his personal influence with Gambetta to have the appointment
cancelled. Trouble broke out in Parliament, where one Irish member put on
the order paper a question specifying all the charges against the new
Ambassador. The question having been (not without hesitation) allowed by
the Speaker, Sir Charles gave a full reply, completely exonerating the new
Ambassador from all these accusations. This, however, did not satisfy Mr.
O'Donnell, who proposed to discuss the matter on a motion for the
adjournment of the House. The Speaker interposed, describing this as an
abuse of privilege, and when Mr. O'Donnell proceeded, Mr. Gladstone took
the extreme course of moving that he be not heard. So began a most
disorderly discussion, which ended after several hours in Mr. O'Donnell's
giving notice of the questions which at a future date he proposed to put
on the matter, but which were never put.
Gambetta wrote to Dilke on June 18th:
"Let me thank you from the bottom of my heart for the lofty manner in
which you picked up the glove thrown down by that mad Irish clerical.
In my double capacity of friend and Frenchman, I am happy to have seen
you at this work."
A few days later the Prince of Wales's secretary wrote to say that the
Prince had received M. Challemel-Lacour, and found him very agreeable. On
this Dilke comments:
'Challemel was delightful when he pleased; but he did not always
please, except very late at night.'
In November of this year Dilke met Rouher, the great Minister of the
fallen Empire.
'He told me that he had quite dropped out of politics, and was
becoming a philosopher, and that Gambetta was the only man in France,
and could do anything he pleased with it.'
Sir Charles's own opinion of contemporary France was conveyed to Lord
Granville in one of several despatches, which have never been printed,
partly because the Queen raised objection to his writing officially from a
capital at which there was an Ambassador. It gives his impressions of the
state of things under "the Grévy régime," some years later exposed in
connection with the Wilson trial.
"Paris, _October_ 17, 1880.
"Your Lordship asked me to send you any general remarks that I might
have to offer upon the existing state of things in Paris, so that I
may perhaps be permitted to express the conviction which I feel that
at this moment there is an extraordinary contrast between the strength
and wealth of France and the incapacity of those who are responsible
for the administration of its Government. In addition, it is
impossible not to be struck with the atmosphere of jobbery which
surrounds the public offices. Transactions which in England would
destroy a Ministry, in Paris arouse at the most a whisper or a smile.
Something was heard in England of the terrible conversion of 'rentes'
scandal of last year, and there is reason to suppose that the
administration of Algeria by the persons who surround the brother of
the President of the Republic, its Governor-General (Albert Grévy),
constitutes a standing disgrace to France. The venality not only of
the Opposition, but also of the Ministerial Press, is admitted on all
sides, and the public offices are disorganised by the sudden dismissal
of well-trained public servants, who are replaced by the incompetent
favourites of those in power. The lightest suspicion of what is known
as clericalism, even when only a suspicion, based on anonymous and
calumnious denunciation, is sufficient to condemn a functionary. If it
be not trivial to give a simple example, I would quote one which will,
I think, remind your Lordship of the name of an old friend. Monsieur
Tresca, who was for more than thirty years the Assistant-Director of
the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, is a member of the Institute,
the most distinguished Civil Engineer in France, and not past work.
The Director having lately died, I expected to find that he had been
succeeded by Monsieur Tresca, but I discovered that this was not the
case. I took an opportunity while sitting next to the Prime Minister
at dinner at Her Majesty's Embassy to mention M. Tresca's name, in
order to see if I could discover the reason for his disgrace. 'Mais il
paraît qu'il est clérical,' was the phrase. Monsieur Tresca was a
moderate Orleanist who followed M. Thiers when the latter gave his
adhesion to the Republican form of government, and is certainly not a
man who could be properly described as clerical in his views.
"Strange as it may seem, however, I am not inclined to see in the
existing and increasing degradation of French politics an actual
danger to the form of government which has been adopted in France. It
is, on the contrary, an undoubted fact that the Imperialist,
Legitimist, and Orleanist parties are continuing steadily to lose
ground. But if the Government is not only to last, but to succeed,
those who are responsible for its guidance will have at all hazards to
abandon their present policy of suspicion and exclusion, and to adopt
that of tolerance and comprehension, which, with magnificent effect
upon the power of France, was followed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801.
If they continue in their present course, the result must be fatal to
the reputation and to the influence of France."
III.
'I was rather given to interfering in the affairs of other offices,
which is not as a rule a wise thing to do; but then it must be
remembered that I was in the position of having to represent the
interests and opinions of the men below the gangway, and that they
used to come to Chamberlain and to me in order to put pressure upon
our colleagues through us, and that I was the person approached in all
Indian, Colonial, naval, and military questions, and Chamberlain in
domestic ones.'
In the last week of May, 1880,
'I engaged in a struggle with Lord Northbrook over the proceedings of
some of his ships.... The town of Batanga, on the west coast of
Africa, had been bombarded, sacked, and burnt for a very trifling
outrage; and I succeeded in inducing Lord Northbrook to telegraph for
further information. Ultimately the First Lord reported that--"The
Commodore has only done what was forced upon him, but it is necessary
to look very sharply after our commercial and consular people in those
parts, who constantly want to use force."'
At the beginning of July hostilities between Russia and China seemed
probable, and there was a rumour of a Russian defeat on the Kashgar
frontier. Serious apprehensions were entertained, especially in India, as
to the effect on British trade:
'I went to W. H. Smith, and asked him to ask me whether we would
strengthen the China squadron in view of a possible Russian blockade
of the Treaty ports. I strongly recommended this increase of force,
but had been unable to get our people to agree to it; and through
Smith's question the thing was done....
'On May 31st I was asked to explain why I had taken the unusual course
for a member of the Government of walking out from a Government
division on the Secret Service money. I replied that I thought that
there was room for reduction in the sum, that I knew nothing about
what was spent in Ireland, but that what went abroad was chiefly spent
in America, "in buying Fenians to write reports about other Fenians,
probably at the wish of the latter, who divide the spoils." There was
a Consul at Philadelphia who was perpetually writing to us with plans
of infernal machines, models of bombs, specimens of new kinds of
dynamite, and so forth, and we had to forward all his letters to the
Home Office, and always received from Harcourt the same reply--that we
were very probably being imposed on, but that the matter was so
important that whether we were imposed on or not we must buy; so that
naturally there was a good deal of waste.' [Footnote: In 1881 Sir
Charles again abstained from voting on this question.]
Another note shows how some Secret Service money was expended:
'On December 2nd Sir Henry Thring told me that a great number of the
Queen's telegrams had been sent to be pulped, and that the pulper had
taken them to America, whence they were recovered by a plentiful
expenditure of Secret Service money.'
Dilke maintained his practice of seeing Gambetta every time he passed
through Paris to or from Toulon. But the British Embassy now gave him
another object in these visits, and he notes a pleasant story of the
Ambassador:
'As I was passing through Paris on my way to Toulon for Christmas, I
started with Lord Lyons negotiations for the renewal of representation
by England to the Mexican Republic, [Footnote: The Mexican
negotiations were not at this time successful, but in 1883 Lord Edmond
Fitzmaurice, who followed Sir Charles at the Foreign Office, again
raised the matter, and ultimately a representative was appointed. See
_Life of Granville_, vol. ii., p. 304.] which I thought important for
commercial reasons, and which was ultimately brought about. I said to
Lord Lyons as we were walking together across the bridge from the
Place de la Concorde to the Chamber: "If you bring about this renewal
of relations, you will have the popularity in the Service of making a
fresh place--for a Minister Plenipotentiary." "Yes," said he, "but if
I were to jump off this bridge I should be still more popular--as that
would make promotion _all the way down_."'
At the beginning of December Sir Charles received an offer from the Greek
Government of the Grand Cross of the Saviour, which he was obliged,
according to the English custom, to decline.
'But as I afterwards, when out of Parliament, declined the Turkish
Grand Cross of the Medjidieh, I became one of the few persons, I
should think, who ever had the chance of declining those two
decorations.'
His home anxieties in this year had been great. He tells very sadly of the
death of the grandmother who had kept house for him from his childhood.
Shortly after "her little old niece, Miss Folkard," who had always lived
with them, also passed away.
His uncle, Mr. Dilke of Chichester, and Mr. Chamberlain came often to stay
with him, but he was anxious as to the care and education of his little
boy. Early in the new year Mr. Chamberlain proposed that Wentworth Dilke
should come and live with his own children. A year later the boy was
sending messages to his father to say that 'he had made up his mind not to
return to London, but proposed to reside permanently at Birmingham, and
thought that I had better go to live there too.'
It was also for Sir Charles a year of change in one of the more intimate
relations of political life. Mr. George Murray, his secretary at the
Foreign Office, was taken 'by the Treasury, [Footnote: See mention of Mr.
George Murray, Chapter XX., p. 314.] and in his place was appointed Mr.
Henry Austin Lee, formerly a scholar and exhibitioner of Pembroke College,
Oxford.' Also his private secretary, Mr. H. G. Kennedy, who had been with
him for many years, was now in ill-health, and had been much away for two
years. On July 27th, 1880, his place was taken by 'a volunteer from
Oxford,' Mr. J. E. C. Bodley, the future author of _France_--one of the
few Englishmen who has attained to the distinction of writing himself
"Membre de l'Institut."
CHAPTER XXIII
COERCION--CLOSURE--MAJUBA
In November, 1880, Mr. Forster's "resignation" had only been staved off by
the Cabinet's promise to him of coercive powers in the new year, and it
was certain that such a Coercion Bill, when introduced, would be met by
the Irish members with obstruction outdoing all previous experience. The
Land Bill, which was to accompany coercion, went far enough in limitation
of the rights of property to be a grievous trial to the Whigs, and yet to
Radicals such as Dilke and Chamberlain seemed complicated, inconclusive,
and unsatisfactory.
Bad as was the Irish trouble, South Africa was worse. Finding no attempt
made by Liberal statesmen to fulfil the expectations of free institutions
which had been held out even by the Tory Government, the Boers rose for
independence in December, 1880. War followed--a half-hearted war
accompanied by negotiations. All was in train for the day of Majuba.
Sir Charles's Memoir shows this ferment working. By January 6th, 1881, he
was back in London from his Christmas at Toulon.
'The Radicals were angry with the weakness of the Land Bill, which,
however, was Mr. Gladstone's own. Oddly enough, both Hartington and
Forster would have gone further, and Hartington certainly even for the
"three F's," though he would have preferred to have had no Bill at
all; but then Hartington did not care about stepping in, and Gladstone
did, and feared the Lords. Chamberlain thought that the Land Bill was
sure to be vastly strengthened in passing through the House....
'I noted on January 7th that I was very restive under Mr. Gladstone's
Irish policy, but I found that if I were to go I should have to go
alone, for Chamberlain at this moment was not in a resigning humour.'
A second element of discord lay in the preparations for the struggle on
the Coercion Bill.
'On January 8th Chamberlain gave me a minute by Hartington, which I
still have (dated the 3rd), proposing a summary method of dealing with
Irish obstruction. Hartington thought that the Speaker, "by a stretch
of the rule against wilful obstruction, might, if assured of the
support of the great majority of the House, take upon himself the
responsibility of declaring that he would consider any member rising
to prolong the debate as guilty of wilful obstruction, and thus liable
to be silenced." If the Speaker exceeded his power, he would
(Hartington thought) only render himself liable to censure by the
House, and if previously assured of its support there was hardly any
limit to the authority which he might not assume. Chamberlain wrote
strongly to Hartington against this proposal. He was convinced that
with a stretch of authority the number of opponents would be
increased. He added: "I believe the time has passed when Ireland can
be ruled by force. If justice also fails, the position is hopeless,
but this is a remedy which has never yet been tried fairly."
Hartington wrote in reply, on January 10th: "If we cannot pass the
Coercion Bill without locking up fifty or sixty members, they must be
locked up." Hartington's view was accepted by the Speaker, and led to
the wholesale expulsion from the body of the House of the Irish
members....
'On January 12th I somewhat unwillingly made up my mind that I must
remain in the Government, as Chamberlain insisted on remaining. I
feared that if I came out by myself I should be represented as
encouraging disorder, and to some extent should encourage it, and
should be driven to act with mere fanatics. In coming out with
Chamberlain I always felt safe that we could carry a large section of
the party with us. Coming out by myself, I feared that that was not
so. Chamberlain's position at this moment was that he personally did
not believe in coercion, but that the feeling in the country was such
that any Government would be forced to propose it, and he was not
sufficiently clear that it was certain to fail to be bound as an
honest man to necessarily oppose it. I received on this day a letter
from a constituent upon the point, and answered that, agreeing
generally as regarded pending Irish questions with Bright and
Chamberlain, I should follow them if they remained united. [Footnote:
The phrase 'pending Irish questions' is important. It excluded Home
Rule.] Should they at any point differ from Mr. Gladstone, or the one
with the other, as to the course to be adopted, I should have to
reconsider my position.
'On January 14th I had a full talk with Bright, trying to get him to
go with me. Bright told me that the outrages had got much worse in
Ireland since the middle of December, as for example that of firing
into houses. He had come round a great deal in the coercion direction.
He now distinctly favoured suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act--that
is to say, did not unwillingly yield to it, like Chamberlain, but
supported it almost willingly, and he evidently had been converted by
Forster to the view that things had grown to be very bad, and that by
locking up a small number of the chiefs the rule of law might be
restored. I did not agree, but his opinion showed me how completely I
was isolated. I seemed trying to put people a point beyond themselves
before they were naturally ready to go, and risked only being followed
by those who are always ready to run on any fresh scent and whose
support is but a hindrance. I felt myself face to face with the
necessity for self-sacrifice of the hardest kind, the sacrifice of my
own judgment as to the right course in the attempt to work with
others. It was clear that few men thought at this time that coercion
was so inexpedient that a single member of the Government would be
justified in venturing on a course which would weaken the hands of
Government itself, increase Mr. Gladstone's difficulties, and retard
or hamper the remedial legislation which I myself thought most
desirable. Moreover, we had weakened the Irish executive in past years
by continually teaching them to rely on unconstitutional expedients,
and it seemed very difficult to choose a moment of great outrage to
refuse them the support which we had long accustomed them to look for
in every similar stress of circumstances.
'The Cabinet of January 22nd dealt with the allied questions of
closure, coercion, and remedial legislation for Ireland. It was
decided to produce a scheme of closure as soon as it was certain that
Northcote was in favour of the principle, and it was left to Mr.
Gladstone to make sure of this, and I noted in my diary, "He had
better make _very_ sure." I was right in my doubt, and this question
of Parliamentary procedure led to such a breach between Mr. Gladstone
and his former private secretary that the Prime Minister told me he
should never in future believe a word that Northcote might say. The
apparent tortuousness of Northcote's conduct was caused by the
weakness of his position as leader of the Opposition in the House of
Commons. He was in favour of moderate courses, and always began by
agreeing with us in private, after which Randolph Churchill would send
a man to him with the message: "Go and tell the old goat that I won't
have it." And then the unfortunate Northcote, to avoid being denounced
in public, had to turn round and say that he could not answer for his
party.'
Chronicling another talk with Gladstone, in which the latter spoke of
Northcote's "shiftiness," Sir Charles says:
'I had a high opinion of Sir Stafford, but in face of Churchill he was
not a free agent....
'The Cabinet rejected Chamberlain's proposal to accompany coercion by
a provision against ejectments in the sense of the Compensation Bill
of 1880. In my diary I add: "By a majority they decided that there
should be no declaration of the nature of the Land Bill as yet; but,
as Gladstone was in the minority on this point, we shall probably not
wait long for the declaration. The Land Bill was finally settled. It
really gives the 'three F's,' applied by a Court, but so wrapped up
that nobody will find them."'
Mr. Forster's Coercion Bill was introduced as the first business of the
Session, and was met by obstruction which more than realized the forecast.
From Monday, January 31st, through the whole of Tuesday, February 1st, the
debate was prolonged in a House possessing no recognized authority to
check it; and at nine on the Wednesday morning Speaker Brand adopted the
course which had been advocated by Lord Hartington. Acting in the exercise
of his own discretion, he ordered the question to be put. The Irish
members, having refused to submit, were removed one by one, technically by
force. In face of these circumstances the Cabinet met on the Wednesday
afternoon.
'The Cabinet decided not to have general closure in the form in which
Chamberlain had asked for it in my name as well as in his. Gladstone
wanted to have a special closure for Irish coercion, but Chamberlain
presented our ultimatum against that, and won. When Chamberlain and I
talked over the whole situation, I told him that I thought we had been
too popular up to now for it to last. We were now unpopular with our
own people in the constituencies on account of coercion, but, holding
their opinions, were not really trusted by the moderates. I thought
this position inevitable. The holding of strongly patriotic and
national opinions in foreign affairs combined with extreme Radical
opinions upon internal matters made it difficult to act with anybody
for long without being attacked by some section with which it was
necessary to act at other times, and made it difficult to form a solid
party.'
When Dilke and Chamberlain, neither of whom was averse from the idea of
closure in itself, resisted a proposal which meant treating the Irish
members in a category apart from the rest of the House of Commons, they
took a course which now seems simple and inevitable. But there is some
difficulty in realizing to-day how Irishmen, and more especially Irish
members, were viewed in England through the early eighties. Something of
the public feeling towards them may be gathered from a string of extracts
dealing with another source of dissension in this Cabinet. Sir William
Harcourt, as Home Secretary, had adopted determined views of what may be
conceded to the exigencies or the demands of detectives. Sir Charles
writes on February 5th:
'It was at this moment that I first had to do with dynamite. Lord
Granville had instructed me to deal with such matters at once myself
without their passing through the Office; and receiving despatches
from Washington (containing despatches from our Consul at Philadelphia
offering information as to plots), and having missed Harcourt, I took
them to Mr. Gladstone. I said that I had no doubt a sharp Yankee was
trying to get a couple of hundred pounds out of us.'
But Sir William Harcourt wished for the information, and Sir Charles adds:
'The result of this policy undoubtedly was the fabrication of plots,
as exposed by Michael Davitt in the _Labour World_ in 1890.'
Later Harcourt modified his view, but 'this was like shutting the stable
door when the steed was stolen.'
'On February 16th I noted in my diary my dissatisfaction with regard
to the Secret Service money. In 1880 I had walked out instead of
voting for it, and I proposed this year to follow the same course. I
knew of nothing on which was spent the £15,000, except one sum of £40
for a service not secret at all in its nature, "and £200 spent in
America on a ... panic of Harcourt's." I believe that as a fact most
of the money was spent in the United States, but as I was not trusted
with the information, I again walked out.'
On February 12th 'there was a great row between Fawcett and Harcourt.'
'Harcourt and Fawcett had been opening the letters of the Irish
members, and when the Irishmen found it out Fawcett wanted to admit
it, and Harcourt insisted on a blank refusal of information. My
brother came to me with this question from the Radicals: "What is the
use of having a blind Postmaster-General if he reads our letters?"'
The matter came up in the Cabinet along with a discussion on the Arms Act,
which prohibited the possession of firearms in Ireland without licence
from a Magistrate, and authorized the police to search. This Act had been
in force before, but had been dropped by the Government on coming into
office, and was now proposed as a supplement to Mr. Forster's "Protection
of Property" measure.
'On February 12th Mr. Gladstone, with Bright and Chamberlain, fought
hard against the Arms Bill. Harcourt, however, said that "coercion was
like caviare: unpleasant at first to the palate, it becomes agreeable
with use"; and, led by Harcourt, the majority insisted on having more
coercion, and it was settled that the second Bill should go on. At
dinner at Lord and Lady Cork's in the evening I was astonished to see
in what excellent spirits Mr. Gladstone was, although he had been
entirely overruled in his own Cabinet in the afternoon.'
Meanwhile the Home Secretary's activity was making trouble for the Foreign
Office.
'It having been stated in the House of Commons by Parnell that he had
been watched and followed in Paris by persons connected with the
Embassy, Lord Lyons telegraphed to me to ask me to contradict the
statement. On February 19th he telegraphed again: "No one known to or
in communication with the Embassy followed Parnell or watched him in
any way in Paris, and nobody reported to the Embassy about him." I
wrote to Harcourt and told him that Lord Lyons wished a contradiction
made, and that Lord Granville wished me to make the contradiction "if
Harcourt sees no objection." I afterwards wrote to Harcourt, "From
what you said, I imagine that you do see objection; but if we can, it
is better to keep the Embassies out of police matters." Harcourt,
however, would not allow a contradiction to be given; and the fact was
that Parnell had been watched, but watched by the Home Office, through
the police, without the knowledge of the Embassy. Through this
watching of the Irish leaders, Parnell's relations with Mrs. O'Shea
were known to some of those who afterwards professed to be amazed by
the discovery.'
Another subject produced open symptoms of a "split." On January 21st,
1881, during the debate on the Address, Mr. Rylands proposed a resolution
condemning the annexation of the Transvaal as impolitic and unjustifiable,
which was tantamount to declaring that the Boers had been justified in
their revolt.
'After my dinner party on the 21st, I went down to the House of
Commons and deliberately walked out on the Transvaal division, as did
three other members of the Government--Bright, Chamberlain, and
Courtney. We had all along been opposed to the annexation.'
This was only the beginning. In South Africa difficulties accumulated for
the British Government. General Colley was repulsed at Laing's Nek on
January 28th, and on February 8th at the Ingogo River. But in this war
there was a real anxiety on both sides to negotiate, and President Kruger
despatched an offer to submit the whole dispute to an English Royal
Commission if troops were withdrawn from the Transvaal. On Wednesday,
February 16th, Sir Charles learnt from Mr. Chamberlain that there had been
a special Cabinet that afternoon 'to consider proposals from President
Kruger of the Transvaal, which Mr. Gladstone was most anxious to accept.'
On the 18th 'the Transvaal question came up again on a Dutch petition
brought over by delegates, as to which Lord Granville wrote to me: "I
suppose it would not be right for you or me to see them. We shall probably
bear with fortitude the sacrifice."' But the Government were trying to
meet Kruger's advances in a reasonable spirit, and they instructed Colley
by telegram to suspend hostilities if the Boers abandoned armed
opposition. Colley telegraphed back for more precise instructions. The
Boers hold Laing's Nek, which was in Natal territory. Was he to insist on
their evacuating it--and thus opening the pass into the Transvaal--before
he suspended hostilities? The answer sent back on February 19th was that
he should forward to the Boers the British proposal, and fix a reasonable
time within which they must reply. During that time he was not to attempt
to occupy Laing's Nek. Sir Charles's Memoir makes it plain that the
decision to negotiate with the Boers was due to Mr. Gladstone and Mr.
Chamberlain:
'At the Cabinet of Saturday, February 19th, Mr. Gladstone and
Chamberlain, for a wonder, were in the majority, and it was decided to
drop the Arms Bill and to negotiate with the Boers; but at a further
Cabinet on the 26th, Mr. Gladstone being in bed... the decision of the
previous week was reversed, and it was decided to go forward with the
Arms Bill.'
No reply came from the Boers within the time appointed, and on the night
of February 26th Colley seized the height of Majuba, which commanded
Laing's Nek. By noon on the 27th he was a dead man, and his force
defeated. The stated time had expired, and Colley did his duty as a
soldier. [Footnote: See an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ (March,
1904) by Lady Pomeroy Colley (Lady Allendale) in reply to some points in
the account of these events in the _Life of Gladstone_, iii., pp. 36-38.]
But it is none the less true that the Boers, even after the action, still
believed themselves to be in negotiation. On the 28th Kruger, ignorant of
what had befallen, was writing a grateful acknowledgment of the proposal
to suspend hostilities, and was suggesting a meeting of representatives
from both sides.
It was urged, of course, that a disgrace to the British Army must be wiped
out before there could be any further talk of parleying. Yet in Mr.
Gladstone's Government there had been from the first an element which
plainly thought the war unjustified, and with that element Mr. Gladstone
had some sympathy. The Radicals now asserted themselves.
'On Wednesday, March 2nd, after a long interview between me and
Chamberlain on the state of affairs, Chamberlain had an hour and a
half with Bright, and got him to write a strong letter to Gladstone
about the Transvaal, which we put forward as the ground for a proposed
resignation, although of course the strength of the Coercion measures,
the weakness of the Land measures, and the predominance of the Whigs
in the Cabinet were the reasons which weighed chiefly with Chamberlain
and myself. In the Transvaal matter, however, we should not be two,
but four, for Bright and Courtney must go out with us, and Lefevre
might do so. On the other hand, we had reason to think that if the
Whigs yielded to us on the Transvaal, Kimberley would go. On the next
day, Thursday the 3rd, Bright was sent for by Mr. Gladstone on his
letter. Bright found him in entire harmony with our views. Kimberley
at once gave in, and telegraphed what he was told; so the difficulty
was over before the Cabinet was able to meet, and we as far from
resignation as ever.
'On March 5th, I noted in my diary that the Land Bill was
unsatisfactory. Chamberlain told me of a scene between Bright and
Dodson which amused me much. Says Bright to Dodson: "You were put into
the Cabinet to vote with Gladstone. Surely you ought not to oppose
him." Says Dodson indignantly, "A man may have an opinion." "But why
express it?" said the old Quaker.'
In the middle of March
'Things looked bad again at this moment, for on the 14th I wrote a
draft address to the electors of Chelsea, prepared in view of my
resignation along with Bright and Chamberlain. I alluded in it to "the
non-reversal in the Transvaal of an act of high-handed aggression,
which at the time of its inception I had condemned by vote and
speech," and also condemned the resort to coercive measures for
Ireland.'
So far as the Transvaal was concerned, the sympathies of Chamberlain and
Dilke with the Boers prevailed; negotiations proceeded, and a Commission
was named, which finally recommended a reversal of the annexation. The
selection of Chamberlain--whose department had no connection with South
Africa--to justify this step in debate indicated how strong was his
opinion in favour of the Boers. But the Duke of Argyll, who was leaving
the Government from disapproval of their Irish Land Bill, nevertheless on
this matter defended the action of his former colleagues.
The situation was summed up by an observation of the Queen's to Lord
Spencer, which, says Sir Charles, amused the Cabinet on March 26th. The
Queen's Speech on January 7th had contained this curt phrase: "A rising in
the Transvaal has imposed upon me the duty of taking military measures
with a view to the prompt vindication of my authority." To this the Queen
replied: "I cannot see how my 'authority' has been 'vindicated' in the
Transvaal." "There was nothing else to be done, Ma'am," says Spencer. "I
quite understand that," says Her Majesty, "but still I do not see how my
'authority' has been 'vindicated.'"
Mr. Gladstone was meanwhile doing the right thing in Ireland with his Land
Bill, but Mr. Forster, Sir Charles thought, was destroying the effect by
the free use of his new measure, which, having become law by the end of
February, enabled the Irish Government to put any man into gaol on a mere
suspicion and without form of trial. Members of Parliament were not at
first attacked, but the officials of the Land League were seized. Mr.
Davitt had been general manager; his ticket-of-leave, as an ex-Fenian
prisoner, was recalled by Sir William Harcourt, and he was re-arrested.
Mr. Dillon took Davitt's place. Sir Charles writes on Saturday, April
30th, 1881:
'At the Cabinet, which I think was on the previous night, but of which
I heard the details on this day, it was decided to arrest Dillon.
Spencer and Granville, who were both of them away, for it was not, I
think, a regular Cabinet, were both against it rather than for it;
Harcourt was really neutral, though Gladstone counted him for it;
Kimberley, Hartington, and the Chancellor alone supported Gladstone
and Forster. Bright, Chamberlain, Childers, and, wonderful to relate,
Carlingford (who was present, though the newspapers said he was
absent), Northbrook, and Dodson opposed the arrest. Gladstone declared
that it was six to six, and gave himself a casting vote. A few days
later Lord Granville spoke to me warmly against the decision of the
Cabinet. He said he never knew numbers counted in the Cabinet before,
and that it was absurd to count heads in assemblies in which there was
such a difference in the contents of the heads. This criticism,
however, goes too far, and strikes at the root of the decisions of
Parliament itself.'
Meanwhile the Land Bill had reached its second reading. But the Irish
executive was constantly appealed to for constabulary to assist in
carrying out sentences of eviction, while, on the other hand, tenants were
fighting landlords by a general strike against rents.
'At the Cabinet on May 4th the chief topic discussed was the
possibility of checking evictions in Ireland without preventing the
payment of rent by tenants perfectly able to pay.'
In addition to the Irish trouble in Ireland, there was the Irish trouble
in the House of Commons, in no way settled by the Speaker's one arbitrary
imposition of closure at his own discretion. That Mr. Gladstone's mind was
working towards another solution is evident from the following note:
'On June 8th I went to The Durdans to lunch with the Roseberys, and
walked with Mr. Gladstone. We marched round the Derby course, and Mr.
Gladstone said that the first business after the Irish Land Bill must
be procedure, and that this must be the business of next year. He
said, "there must no doubt be some repression by the closure, but
there must also be still more delegation."'
The discussion of the Land Bill was long almost beyond precedent, but by
August it left the Commons, and Lord Salisbury, though furious in his
invective, declined to advise its total rejection. The Irish landlords had
their will of it in Committee, and sent it back unrecognizable. The Lords'
amendments were then reviewed by Mr. Gladstone, and, broadly speaking,
rejected. There was the usual threat of a collision between the Houses.
Sir Charles's first note, in his diary of August 12th, indicates how
completely Mr. Gladstone controlled this situation:
'"Harcourt is very violent against the Lords, more so than either
Bright or Chamberlain, but the decision, whatever it may be, of the
Cabinet, will on this occasion be Mr. Gladstone's."
'On the 14th I noted, "The claim of Lord Salisbury to force us to
'consult the country' is a claim for annual Parliaments when we are in
office, and septennial Parliaments when they are in office." I did
not, however, believe in this particular crisis. On the 14th Lord
Houghton wrote complaining that we did not meet so often as we used to
do. "This is a penalty one pays for having one's friends in power. I
fear there is no hope of their ceasing to be so by the instrumentality
of the House of Lords." On the 15th Lady Lytton's sister told me that
Lytton had "enjoyed the fighting attitude of the Lords. It seemed more
worthy than talking so much and doing so little." But she added:
"After it was all over they were in a most horrid fright."'
Lord Ripon wrote from India of the proceedings in the House of Lords that
he thought Lord Salisbury "would succeed in blowing the institution to
pieces before long."
With a Cabinet so divided, rumour of changes was certain to be rife.
'On August 17th there occurred the Ministerial fish dinner at
Greenwich, which was then a yearly institution. Rosebery was in the
chair--for on these occasions the Chairman is arbitrarily chosen,
generally from among the very youngest members of the Government, and
is a sort of lord of misrule. [Footnote: Lord Rosebery was Under-
Secretary at the Home Office.]
'Harcourt told Chamberlain at the dinner that Mr. Gladstone had made
up his mind to put Lord Frederick Cavendish into the Cabinet, as
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Chamberlain arguing that he ought not to
be put in over my head.
'On the way home Harcourt told me that there were other changes to be
made besides putting in Cavendish, and that one of them was that he
should become Lord Chancellor.... I did not myself believe any of
these reports, but confined myself to urging that Chamberlain should
be Chancellor of the Exchequer.'
This assumed continuance in office, but a little later Mr. Chamberlain,
writing to Sir Charles, entered the domain of prophecy, with some hint of
the 'unauthorized programme.' He thought that the Liberals would be beaten
at the next election, and that their business was to try to get the
farmers over to their side.
"What is the good of bothering about Bankruptcy or Local Government
when our real business is to outbid Chaplin and Co. with the farmers?
But, then, what will our Whig friends say to Radical proposals as to
tenant right, improvements, rating, etc.?"
While Sir Charles was in Paris Mr. Chamberlain wrote on October 4th:
"I am very uneasy about the Irish business. It does not look as if the
Land Bill would do much, and meanwhile 'outrages,' exaggerated
probably by the Press, are forming a large part of the information
supplied by the papers for the autumn season. It is the history of
last October over again, and I expect every day to hear of some
proposal for further coercion. I am clear that we were right in
resisting coercion last year, and I even wish we had gone further and
gone out upon it. But what is to be done now? Can we go on drifting
without a policy? We cannot go back. It is too late to release the
'suspects,' and, if we were to do so, the experience of the past few
weeks shows that this would not make things smoother with Parnell and
Co., while it would bring down a storm of denunciation from the other
side. Then, can we go further in the direction of coercion? I doubt if
the House of Commons would stand it. To put down the Land League would
involve so many questions affecting public agitation in this country
that the Radicals would surely be up in arms. It is possible the
Tories might do it if they were in office, which I wish to God they
were. But can the Liberals do it, and, above all, can you and I be
parties to any more of such work? I should not have a moment's
hesitation in saying 'No,' if I could find any alternative, but it is
evident that Parnell has now got beyond us. He asks for 'No Rent,' and
Separation, and I am not prepared to say that the refusal of such
terms as these constitutes an Irish grievance. I should like to stand
aside and let the Coercionists and Parnell fight it out together, but
I fear this is not now possible. Altogether it is a horrible
imbroglio, and for the moment I do not see my way out of the fog. I
wish I could talk it all over with you."
A little later, however, he wrote:
"'The resources of civilization'--see Mr. G.'s speech--will mean
immediate and greatly extended use of the Protection Act. There will
be a miraculous draught of fishes directly. In for a penny, in for a
pound. I hope it will be a clean sweep. The electors will better stand
a crushing blow than coercion by driblets. There is no other
alternative except new legislation--and from that may Heaven defend
us."
On October 12th, 1881, Mr. Parnell was arrested and put into gaol. On
October 17th, Sir Charles, then in the South of France, wrote to Sir M.
Grant Duff--who had become Governor of Madras--that "Bright and
Chamberlain supported the proposed general _razzia_ on the Land League
leaders in order to avoid fresh coercive legislation." Fresh legislation
would have meant trouble in the House of Commons. But the arrest of Mr.
Parnell, which "folly" Sir Charles had tried to prevent, led to greater
trouble.
The British Government now endeavoured to back up the policy of force by
dividing the opposition. Ever since the trouble generated by the rejection
of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, Dublin Castle had been (not for
the first time) seeking to enlist on its side the spiritual power of Rome.
There were two lines of approach, of which the first is indicated in a
note under November 22nd, 1880:
'Lord Granville was engaged at this moment in trying, through Cardinal
Newman, to induce the Pope to bully the Irish Bishops; but the Irish
Bishops told the Pope, in reply to his remonstrances, that if he
adopted a policy of compromise in Italy which was unpopular with the
Church, he must leave them alone with Irish affairs.'
The "policy of compromise" was not likely to be adopted. Cardinal Manning,
talking to Sir Charles on July 15th, 1880, on his return from Rome,
expressed his belief that the Vatican was badly advised in its hostile
attitude towards the Italian Monarchy, which he personally would be
prepared to support against the Revolutionary Party, since its fall would
probably bring about an anti-clerical republic.
Far more continuous were the negotiations, with a view to influencing the
Irish Church, carried on through Mr. George Errington, a gentleman of old
Roman Catholic family, who had sat since 1874 as a moderate Home Rule
member for County Longford. [Footnote: The historic difficulties in the
way of an Embassy to the Vatican, fully given by Lord Fitzmaurice in the
_Life of Lord Granville_, vol. ii., chap, viii., pp. 281-282, had been
surmounted "by the practice of allowing a Secretary of Legation, nominally
appointed to the Grand Ducal court of Tuscany, to reside at Rome, where he
was regarded as _de facto_ Minister to the Vatican." Lord Derby had,
however, withdrawn Mr. Jervoise, the last representative, and no other
appointment had been made.]
The following notes show the points at which Sir Charles came into touch
with the development of Mr. Errington's 'Mission' to the Vatican. On
December 1st, 1880, Mr. Errington wrote--in pursuance of a conversation of
the previous day--to solicit Sir Charles's offices with the French
Government towards mitigating the severity with which expropriation of the
unauthorized congregations might be carried out under M. Ferry's Article
7. The letter dealt also with the matter on which his 'Mission' was
afterwards based:
"I am constantly receiving news from Ireland of the evil effects
already produced by the temporary success at Rome of Archbishop
Croke"--who represented advanced Nationalism--"and his party. This
would have been quite impossible had any diplomatic relations existed.
Cardinal Jacobini will take care, I am sure, that such a thing does
not occur again. Whether he can undo or counteract the mischief
already done is, I am afraid, doubtful....
"I suppose it would be desirable in the interests of government and
order in Ireland that the Vatican should do all in its power to keep
the clergy from going with or countenancing the Land League."
On December 6th, 1880:
'Errington came to me in Paris, nominally on behalf of the Vatican,
with a view of having negotiations entered upon, and I believe this
was the time at which he obtained, at Lord Spencer's request, some
sort of private commission from Lord Granville. The commission was
afterwards made more definite.'
October 28th, 1881:
'I saw Errington, who was in Paris on his way to Rome with letters
from Lord Granville, based on the request of Spencer and Forster that
he, Errington, should represent the Irish Government at Rome during
its great struggle with Parnell, matters in Ireland being too serious
to make roundabout dealing through Lord Emly [Footnote: An Irish Roman
Catholic M.P. who, after being Postmaster-general, was raised to the
Peerage.] and Cardinal Howard safe; and Errington was to be tried from
October until Easter....
'In the evening of November 10th, at dinner at the Harcourts', Mr.
Gladstone, taking me aside about Errington's mission, told me that he
was bitterly opposed to the notion of reopening relations with the
Papal Court; and there can be no doubt that he assented most
unwillingly to the views of Spencer, Forster, and Harcourt in favour
of the Errington "Mission." He deceived the House of Commons about it,
because he always closed his own eyes to the facts. [Footnote: The
line taken by the Government in the House of Commons was that Mr.
Errington had no formal appointment, and that his communications were
not officially dealt with by the Foreign Office. These diplomatic
explanations only increased the suspicion of the followers of Parnell
and of the Ultra-Protestants led by Sir H. Drummond Wolff.]
'On December 24th, 1881, Lord O'Hagan passed through Paris, despatched
on a secret mission to Rome about Ireland by Forster, who was not
satisfied with the results up to then of the Errington Mission.'
'On December 31st I received a letter from Forster, in which he said
that Lord O'Hagan had returned, and that no notice had been taken by
the papers of his visit to Rome, which was a good thing.'
To the principle of such intermediation Sir Charles had no objection. What
he disliked was that the thing should be done and denied. He himself in
the previous year had written by the Government's request to Cardinal
Manning at Rome for assurance that the future Bishop of a new See in
Canada would be a British subject. Manning also had written to him
concerning the establishment of a new See for Catholics of the Levant,
with its seat in Cyprus, guaranteeing that "the influence of our Bishop
and all about him would be ... strictly in support of the Government," and
asking therefore that, "when the seat of Government for Cyprus had been
fixed, Rome might be informed, as it would be desirable for the Bishop to
be in the same place."
Manning was quite content with the influence that he could wield, and, as
a letter from him in 1885 shows, was strongly against diplomatic relations
between England and the Vatican. Sir Charles, however, did not take that
view:
'Such perpetual applications have to be made to the Court of Rome, not
only (as the public thinks) with regard to Irish affairs, but with
regard to Roman Catholic interests in all parts of the world, that I
have always been favourable to taking the public into our confidence
in the matter and appointing a representative at the Court of Rome. At
one time we used to carry on our affairs with the Papal Court through
Cardinal Howard, an English Cardinal; but the Pope is so anxious to
obtain official representation that he throws difficulties in the way
of ecclesiastics acting as informal representatives. Then Lord O'Hagan
used to go to Rome, at the expense of Irish Secret Service money, as a
private traveller, and he used to carry on negotiations with the
Vatican.'
Sir Charles resented 'the complications that are caused by our having to
do that in fact which we refuse to do in form.' The Errington "Mission,
which was no mission," was an instance.
Though the year drew to its close there was still no decision as to the
means of dealing with obstruction. But approach was being made to a
settled policy.
'On my return to London I found that a Cabinet had been called for
Thursday, November 10th, to deal with the forms of the House, as the
Speaker and Erskine May had been concocting a new code, which, I
added, "is certain to be perfectly useless, as the Speaker is
generally, and May invariably, wrong.... Direct closure is the only
thing of any use. That would be one fight and no more; but the
Speaker-May code would probably take a whole Session to get, and be
useless when we have got it.'
'When Chamberlain came to dinner on November 11th, he left with me till
the next day the "secret" paper printed for the Cabinet as to the forms of
the House, which was written by May and annotated by the Speaker, and I
was glad to find that it included closure.'
In a Parliamentary Session marked by so much that was inconclusive, Sir
Charles had the satisfaction of recording in his diary one piece of
progressive legislation which was his own. By April, 1881, he had got
ready his Bill for putting an end to the Unreformed Municipal
Corporations, and so carrying out the policy which he had recommended
while in Opposition, and it became law.
CHAPTER XXIV
EUROPEAN POLITICS
In 1881 the general European situation was still critical. The Greeks had
seen Montenegro's claim made good while their own pretensions remained
unsatisfied, and at the beginning of the year war between Greece and
Turkey seemed so probable that Lord Houghton was writing anxiously to ask
Sir Charles by what means the antiquities of Athens could be guaranteed
against bombardment.
Sir Charles notes, on January 18th and 21st, conversations between himself
and Mr. Goschen, who had temporarily returned from his mission at
Constantinople, 'as to helping Greece by a naval force, which he and I
both desired.' But Mr. Gladstone refused his sanction to this project, and
Sir Charles for the moment took a very grave view, noting in his diary on
February 1st:
"Lord Granville has now to decide (in two days), before Goschen starts
for Constantinople via Berlin, whether he will disgracefully abandon
Greece or break up the Concert of Europe."
The Concert was kept together, but only upon condition of limiting Greece
to a frontier with which Sir Charles was extremely discontented.
'On March 27th I was in a resigning humour about Greece, but could not
get anybody to agree with me, and Chamberlain said that not even
Liberal public opinion in England would now support isolated action or
Anglo-Italian intervention. Chamberlain thought that in the interest
of Greece herself it was desirable that she should be made to take the
last Turkish offer, which gave her all the revenue-producing country,
and kept from her the costly and the dangerous country.'
A week later he wrote a minute for Lord Granville and Mr. Gladstone,
proposing that autonomy should be given to those portions of Epirote
territory which were being withheld from Greece; but this plan was
negatived, and a final settlement was reached on May 17th.
The settlement of 1881 was not a settlement which contented Greece and the
friends of Greece; and it was only a provisional settlement.
But new complications were developing elsewhere.
'On February 1st I wrote to Gambetta by our "bag" to tell him that
Sheffield' (Lord Lyons's secretary) 'would call on him from me to tell
him a secret. This secret was that the Three Emperors' League was
again revived and France once more isolated. But this was such a dead
secret that even our Cabinet were not to know for fear some of them
might talk.' [Footnote: The murder of the Emperor Alexander II. on
March 13th terminated these plans for the time. But out of them
subsequently grew the meeting of the three Emperors at Skierniewice on
September 15th and 16th, 1884; and indirectly Prince Bismarck's
"reinsurance" treaty with Russia, which his successor, Caprivi,
refused to renew in 1890.]
France, though 'isolated,' was beginning to take action which threatened
far-spreading trouble. Mention has been made of her pretension to Tunis,
and of the support to that pretension afforded by a hint of Lord
Salisbury's in 1878. In the early spring of 1881 the first serious step
was taken to threaten the independence or quasi-independence of Tunis.
This development was the more serious because an important dispute was in
progress concerning a Tunisian estate called the Enfida, to which rival
claims were put forward by M. Lévy, a British subject, and by a French
company, the Société Marseillaise. On January 12th M. Lévy's
representative, himself also a British subject, was expelled from the
property by agents of the French Consulate.
'On February 3rd there came to me at ten o'clock in my Foreign Office
boxes a telegram from Lord Lyons, which told us that the French had
sent the _Friedland_ from Toulon to Tunis to bully the Bey. I wrote
off by special messenger to Lord Granville that we ought at once to
send the fleet to Tunis unless the _Friedland_ were withdrawn, and
Lord Granville accepted this view, and telegraphed to Lord Lyons to
that effect at noon. [Footnote: 'On February 5th, the Cabinet having
approved our suggestion, we telegraphed for the _Thunderer_ and a
despatch-boat to sail at once for Tunis.']
'Our difficulty was in this matter to avoid acting with Italy. We did
not want to keep the French out of Tunis, but we could not have
ironclads used to force Tunisian law courts into giving decisions
hostile to British subjects. Barrère wrote to me from Paris at
Gambetta's wish saying that I was labouring under a grievous mistake
in thinking that the _Friedland_ was sent to settle the Enfida case
against the English. The ship was sent because the Bey "declines to
sign a treaty of alliance with us." At the same time he went on to say
that the present policy of France would not last longer than six
months, which meant, of course, that Gambetta intended to form a
Government at that time (which as a fact he did), and that "our friend
deplores the present policy of the Government and declines all
responsibility."'
On August 25th Gambetta expressed to Dilke "profound disapprobation of all
that has been done in Tunis," on which is noted: 'Possibly he would have
done the same, but he is very wise after the event.'
'On May 6th Lord Granville, against Tenterden's opinion and my own,
sketched drafts to Germany and Austria as to the position of the
French in Tunis, with a view to raise the Concert of Europe in their
path. We pointed out to him that Germany and Austria would snub us,
and succeeded at last in stopping this precious scheme. The wily
Russian got up the trouble by hinting verbally to Lord Granville that
Russia would act with England and Italy in this matter. A curious
league: England, Russia, and Italy against France; and a queer
Concert. The proposal led to trouble three days later, for, of course,
the Russians told the French in such a way as to make them believe
that the idea was ours.'
On the evening of May eth Sir Charles met Laffitte, "the Comtist Pope," at
the Political Economy Club.
'Frederic Harrison treated him as an old lady of the Faubourg would
treat the Pope or the Comte de Chambord, or both rolled into one. But
Laffitte happening to say that he approved of the French expedition to
Tunis, Harrison's feelings became too much even for his reverence and
his religion. Laffitte's remark, from Laffitte, showed, however, how
unanimous was the French feeling....
'On the 9th the trouble which I had expected broke out. The French
Ambassador (Challemel-Lacour) came to see me in a great rage, and told
me that his Government had heard that we had tried to raise Germany
against France on the Tunis question by an alliance offered at Berlin,
though not through our Ambassador. This particular story was untrue. I
denied it, and I then went to Lord Granville, who denied it.... I then
wrote to Challemel to ask him to give up names; but he declined.'
France was in conflict with the Kroumirs on her Algerian frontier, the
expeditionary force penetrated the interior, and by the middle of June the
Bey had appointed M. Roustan, the French Consul, to represent him in all
matters.
Justifications were put forward, and there was much discussion as to what
Lord Salisbury had said or not said at Berlin in 1878.
'Lord Salisbury had made Wolff withdraw the question, of which
(foolishly from the Conservative point of view) he had given notice,
but the matter having been raised, the Cabinet, on Friday, 13th,
decided to publish a portion of Lord Salisbury's despatches, though
not the worst.... [Footnote: A letter from Lord Granville to Sir
Charles, of May 15th, 1881, shows the difficulty. "I sent, according
to custom, the Salisbury Tunis papers to the Marquis. You will be
surprised to hear that he does not like them. He objects to all, but
principally to the extracts from Lord Lyons' despatch." Lord Granville
goes on to suggest alternative courses, the first being "to consent at
his request to leave out the extracts, with a warning that it is not
likely it will be possible to refuse them later."]
'I wrote to Lord Granville to say that I was sorry there had not been
included in the papers a despatch of July 16th, 1878, giving the
conversation between Lord Lyons and Waddington on Waddington's return
to Paris' (from the Congress of Berlin). 'On the 9th, on the 11th, and
on the 13th July, 1878, Lord Lyons had reported the irritation in
France at the Cyprus Convention. On July 16th Waddington returned to
Paris, and the row in the French Press suddenly ceased. In his
despatch Lord Lyons says that Waddington told him that Lord Salisbury
"had assured him" that "H. M. G. would make no objection if it suited
France to take possession of Tunis." [Footnote: The Life of Lord
Lyons, by Lord Newton, gives, on July 20th, 1878, a letter from Lord
Salisbury which evidently refers to the despatch. In this letter Lord
Salisbury says: "What M. Waddington said to you is very much what he
said to me at Berlin...." A further passage in the letter is: "If
France occupied Tunis tomorrow, we should not remonstrate." See _Life
of Lord Lyons_, vol. ii., p. 152.] Waddington said that he--
Waddington--had pointed out to Lord Salisbury that Italy would object,
and that Lord Salisbury had replied that she must "seek compensation
in Tripoli." Corti had also assured me that Lord Salisbury had said
this to him at the time. I strongly urged the publication of Lord
Lyons' despatch in justice to ourselves, if anything was to be
published. Lord Salisbury undoubtedly, and even by his own admission,
had used most impolitic language, giving up that which was contrary to
British interests to give up and which was not ours to give. (He was
fated to do the same thing in the case of Madagascar.) He had
afterwards denied that he had done anything of the kind. He also had
denied that France had minded our occupation of Cyprus, and doubly
concealed the fact that after making the foolish mistake of taking
Cyprus, he had got out of the difficulty in a still more foolish
fashion.'
This led to correspondence between Count Corti, then Italian Ambassador at
Constantinople, and Sir Charles--a discussion which was renewed later in
conversation:
'He in fact admitted the truth of what I had said, but added that he
disapproved of the Berlin conversations. "At that time everybody was
telling everybody else to take something which belonged to somebody
else. One more powerful than Lord Salisbury, more powerful than Lord
Beaconsfield, advised me to take Tunis. [Footnote: _Life of Lord
Lyons_, vol. ii., p. 224; letter from Lord Lyons to Lord Granville,
May 13th, 1881: "They got Bismarck's leave for this."] Lord Salisbury
advised me to take an island, and Lord Salisbury may have advised me
to take Tripoli." At the State ball in the evening, I told Odo Russell
this. He told me that Lord Salisbury had disgusted Corti by forgetting
him on the occasion when he told the great men at the Congress of
Berlin about the occupation of Cyprus, and that Corti had never
forgiven him.'
Egypt also was now a growing anxiety, made graver by the events in Tunis,
which excited apprehensions of like proceedings elsewhere. In such a
condition of feeling even trifling incidents--as, for example, that of the
Smyrna Quays, where the Porte had violated some rights of an English
company--grew delicate and critical. All such matters and many others had
to be dealt with in the House of Commons by question and answer--a task of
no small difficulty, since the susceptibilities of foreign Powers had to
be considered, while British interests, no less sensitive, could not be
ignored.
The fulfilment of the Treaty of Berlin was meanwhile an enormous addition
to the work of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, especially as it was at
first complicated by the ill will of Russia, which had hoped that the
change of Government might bring about some modifications. It was also
complicated by the Porte's unlimited capacity for wasting time. The topics
regulated by the treaty and its supplementary conventions, when taken in
connection with the Treaties of Paris and London, which it partly
superseded, fell under at least seventeen separate heads; each of these
branched off into numerous divisions and subdivisions, most of which
admitted of possible controversy, while many required executive action by
Commissioners on the spot, [Footnote: Thomas Erskine Holland, _The
European Concert in the Eastern Question_, pp. 222-225.] such as the
delimitation of the boundaries of the new States. Nearly every question
involved communications with the signatory Powers, and each of them had a
long diplomatic history which had to be studied. M. de Courcel told Sir
Charles that in his dreams he always saw a second river flowing by the
side of the Danube, as large and as swift, but black--the river of ink
which had been shed over the Danube question! Sir Julian Pauncefote, the
Permanent Under-Secretary, was credited by Sir Charles with being the only
man in England who then understood it; and the question of the Danube,
after all, was only one of many.
Questions were continually being asked in the House of Commons, where the
expert in foreign affairs was not so rare as he became in a subsequent
period; but the inquiries of inexpert persons were the most troublesome of
all.
Sir Charles's power of terse and guarded reply was universally considered
supreme, and was all the more valuable at a time when the practice had
grown up, then comparatively new and since gradually limited, of asking
questions on foreign and colonial affairs, with the object of embarrassing
Ministers, and without regard to the consequences abroad. It gradually
became a dangerous growth, greatly facilitated by the lax procedure, as it
then existed, of the House of Commons in regard to supplementary
questions. This procedure often allowed question time to degenerate into a
sort of ill-regulated debate. Mr. Gladstone's habit of allowing himself
very frequently to be drawn into giving a further answer, after the
carefully prepared official answer had already been given by the Under-
Secretary, was another complication. The brunt of all these troubles had
to be borne by the representative of the Foreign Office. [Footnote: Sir
Henry Lucy, writing "From the Cross Benches" in this year, discussed
critically the various styles of answering questions:
"Sir Charles Dilke's answers are perfect, whether in regard of manner,
matter, or style. A small grant of public money might be much worse
expended than in reprinting his answer to two questions put last night on
the subject of Anglo-French commercial relations, having them framed and
glazed, and hung up in the bedroom of every Minister. A good test of the
perhaps unconscious skill and natural art with which the answer is drawn
up would be for anyone to take the verbatim report which appears in this
morning's papers and attempt to make it shorter. There is not a word too
much in it. It occupies just twenty-eight lines of print, and it contains
a clear and full account of an exceedingly intricate negotiation. The
majority of the answers given by Ministers in their places in Parliament
appear much better in print than when spoken, redundancies being cut out,
parentheses put straight, and hesitancy of manner not appearing. But to
the orderly mind and clear intelligence which instinctively brings
uppermost and in due sequence the principal points of a question, Sir
Charles Dilke adds a frank manner, a clear voice, and an easy delivery."]
Sir Charles was always a close student of Indian government, and many
notes on it are scattered through his diary. On January 9th, meeting
Mallet at York House with the Grant Duffs, he says: 'I had always held a
strong opinion against the India Council, and Mallet confirmed me in my
view that the existing constitution was bad. He ought to know.' The
Government turned to Dilke for assistance in debates on foreign affairs,
even in a case where the Government of India rather than the Foreign
Office was involved.
By the beginning of 1881 England's policy in Afghanistan had been finally
determined. The evacuation of Kandahar was now definitive, in spite of
opposition from a high quarter. On January 18th 'the Queen telegraphed to
Mr. Gladstone at length in a tone of severe rebuke that all her warnings
as to Kandahar had been disregarded.' On March 8th Sir Charles received a
preliminary warning from Lord Hartington to read up his Central Asian
papers, and--
'the Cabinet of March 19th wrote to me to follow Edward Stanhope as to
Kandahar debate' (who had been Lord Beaconsfield's Under-Secretary of
State for India in 1878, and now naturally led the Tory attack). 'I
had to move the direct negative on behalf of the Government. This was
a great compliment, as the matter was not in my department, and the
only three members of the Government who were to speak were Mr.
Gladstone and Lord Hartington and myself.'
After the debate on March 24th, Lord Granville, having first sent his own
congratulations, wrote to say: "Gladstone expressed himself almost
poetically about the excellence of your speech." [Footnote: "The speech of
the debate was that of Sir Charles Dilke. It was close, cogent, and to the
point throughout. His facts were admirably marshalled, so as to strengthen
without obscuring his arguments. There was no fencing, no rhetoric, no
fighting the air.
He came at once to close quarters with his adversary, and demolished his
arguments one after another by a series of cut-and-thrust rejoinders,
which left but little to be added by those who followed him on the same
side. Mr. Stanhope's attack on the Ministry has been of conspicuous
service to at least one Minister" (_Pall Mall Gazette_, edited by Mr. John
Morley).]
In the course of this year, Sir Charles, once more diverging from Radical
preconceptions, helped Sir Robert Sandeman, who was
'sent over by the Viceroy to state his views. I was able to give him
such assistance with my colleagues as to save the districts (the
Pishin districts and the Khojak frontier) to the Indian Government.'
In this Sir Charles was with Lord Ripon, but a draft treaty of Lord
Ripon's, which proposed to surrender Merv ('not ours to give'), roused his
fierce opposition, and was rejected by the Cabinet. He was always resolute
for a strong frontier policy in Central Asia.
The assassination of the Emperor of Russia on March 13th in this year
roused all the Home Offices into activity, and England was as usual taxed
with being the asylum of every desperado. Sir William Harcourt inclined
strongly to the demands of the police, including the prosecution of
Socialist publications, and he carried the Cabinet with him.
'On March 26th I noted in my diary: "...At to-day's Cabinet Bright was
the only Minister who opposed the prosecution of the _Freiheit_, and
Chamberlain positively supported it."'
It may be added that Sir Charles was charged by a certain Mr. Maltman
Barry with having subscribed to the funds of the _Freiheit_, which was an
anarchist publication. The charge was met by an absolute denial, and was
supported by no evidence. It was, however, fathered in the House by Lord
Randolph Churchill, and this led to a breach of friendly relations with
the latter, which lasted for some time.
'On April 9th I was in Paris, and breakfasted with Gambetta, who told
me that Bismarck was about to propose a Conference, which was insisted
on by Russia, concerning the right of asylum, and we agreed that
England and France should refuse together to take part in it.'
A fortnight later Sir Charles, returning from Toulon, was able to offer
his congratulations to Gambetta, because France had declined to attend the
Conference. But the matter was still open as regarded England, and
'on April 30th, and again on May 3rd, I noted that Sir William was
"wrongheaded about the right of asylum," but that I hoped he would not
be allowed by his colleagues to offer to legislate on extradition to
please the Russians.'
At the Cabinet on May 4th
'there was a long debate upon nihilism. Lord Granville some time
before had told the Russians that legislation was intended. That was
so, for a Bill had been prepared. But it was clear that it would be
foolish to introduce it. Kimberley and Chamberlain were against all
proposals to meet the Russians. Then came before the Cabinet the
question of Harcourt's reply to Cowen's question to be put on the next
day, whether information was given by the English police to the
Austrian police as to Socialist addresses in Vienna, which had led to
arrests. Our police say that they only told the Austrians of a place
where dynamite was stored. This seemed to me a cock and bull of Howard
Vincent's. Harcourt had drafted a reply about Napoleon Bonaparte,
which the Cabinet wanted him to alter, but when he is pleased with an
answer it is not easy to make him alter it, as I noted. As our police
virtually denied the charge, Harcourt might have given their denial,
as theirs, in their own words, but nothing would induce him to do
this.'
As regarded Russia, Lord Granville based himself on the fact that a
similar arrangement existed between England and Germany, and he questioned
whether political offenders would be much safer in a German than in a
Russian court of law. To the promise of backing from France, he objected
that M. Saint-Hilaire had already pledged himself to an extradition treaty
with Russia. On the latter point Sir Charles answered that for this
amongst other reasons M. Saint-Hilaire was about to be removed from the
French Foreign Office. In the end of October, 1881, Sir Charles was seeing
Gambetta frequently, and observes that he was
'much excited about the question of the extradition treaty with
Russia....
'Curious though it seems to us (in 1890-1895), when we know how
intensely pro-Russian Gambetta's friends now are, Gambetta was
intensely anti-Russian and pro-Turk....
'There is the same difference of opinion in the French Cabinet as to
the making of an extradition treaty with Russia as there is in ours,
where Harcourt wants it and his colleagues do not. This was the only
subject discussed at the interview of the Russian and German Emperors
at Danzig' (September, 1881), 'and England and France are in their
black books.'
Lord Granville constantly referred to Sir Charles for advice as to the
temper of the House of Commons, though in this case he supported Sir
William Harcourt, and might be excused for failing to see what was plain
to Sir Charles as a practical House of Commons politician, that, apart
from principles, a Liberal Ministry would be sadly embarrassed if it had
to defend the handing over of political refugees to the Russian police,
and that the Tories would probably support the Radical wing in a vote of
censure.
The combination at the Foreign Office of the two Ministers, the old and
the young, the Whig and the democrat, worked excellently, and Lord
Granville, in telling Sir Charles that in his absence in France during the
Session Hartington must answer his questions, said that 'picking out any
of those who are not in the Cabinet is an indication of what would be done
when that terrible moment may come to me of your leaving the P.O.' One
matter had, however, caused Sir Charles uneasiness.
In the close of the year 1880 there was a proposal to give a charter to
the North Borneo Company. No ordinary politician knew anything of this
Company, but Sir Charles, while in Opposition, had grounds for asking
questions hostile to it, and had stirred up Mr. Rylands to do the same.
This fact Dilke mentioned to Lord Granville. But, finding Foreign Office
opinion in favour of the concession, he promised that
'I would not take an active part in opposition to the Charter scheme
if and providing the Cabinet approved of it.... On November 19th,
1880, the box, which had been round the Cabinet on the North Borneo
business, having returned without any comment by Mr. Gladstone, I got
it sent again to Mr. Gladstone, who finally decided, I was informed by
Lord Granville, against Herbert of the Colonial Office, Harcourt,
Chamberlain, Bright, Childers, and myself, and with Lord Kimberley,
the Chancellor, and Lord Granville. So it was settled that the Charter
was to be granted; but a little later Mr. Gladstone forgot the
decision which he had given, insisted that he had never heard of the
matter at all, went the other way and would have stopped the Charter,
but for the fact that it was too late.'
This made Sir Charles exceedingly indisposed to undertake the defence of
it in a House of Commons where his own questions asked in Opposition would
assuredly be quoted against him by Sir John Gorst, who, when the Charter
was published in December, tabled a motion against it. 'It was not so much
to the thing itself I was opposed as to the manner in which it was done.'
He therefore wrote to Lord Granville that he had made full search for
precedents, 'the first thing which occurs to a Radical in distress,' and
that finding no modern precedent, he simply could not undertake to defend
the Charter, his objections being that to make such a grant without the
knowledge of Parliament strained the prerogative of the Crown, and,
further, that the Foreign Office was not the fit department to control a
colony (as had been urged in the case of Cyprus). He notes: 'Gambetta
tells me that he has at once had an application from a similar French
Company--for the New Hebrides.' Lord Granville made official reply, with
some asperity. But he sent a separate unofficial letter, in which, after
treating of other matters, he smoothed over his more formal communication.
These letters were received by Sir Charles on December 27th, 1881, on his
return to Paris from Toulon.[Footnote: Later Sir Charles notes: 'My own
objections (besides those to the form in which the matter had been
considered) were to the absence of sufficient provisions with regard to
domestic slavery and opium, but as regards these two latter points I
succeeded in getting the gap filled in.'] The unofficial letter ran:
"I have sent you an answer on a separate piece of paper to your rather
blowing-up letter about Borneo. You have been misled by Spencer's
ignorance and Gladstone's very natural forgetfulness of the
particulars. It was more inexcusable of me to have forgotten what it
appears you told me about your and Rylands' previous action. When my
liver does not act and official work becomes unusually irksome, I
sometimes ask myself upon what question I should like to be beaten and
turned out. The first would be fair trade. The second, which the _St.
James's_ and Raikes, the late Chairman of Committees, seem to
anticipate, is failure to reform the procedure of the Commons owing to
Tory and Home Rule obstruction. I should not think Borneo a fatal
question for this purpose.... There is a great run upon us now as to
Ireland, but do you remember a December when it was not generally
supposed that the Government of the day was going to the dogs?"
The matter passed over, but was serious enough for Mr. Chamberlain to say
in January of the following year:
"If, what I do not expect, the affair should proceed to extremities, I
shall stand or fall with you."
One other matter of this period is interesting as showing Sir Charles and
his chief at work. A draft was on its way to the Colonial Office, 'laying
down the law for dealing with fugitive slaves who escaped into the British
sphere of influence'--a case of constant occurrence at Zanzibar. Sir
Charles's views on this and kindred subjects were strong, and he worked
then, as always, with the Aborigines Protection Society. He stopped it--
'and Lord Granville wrote upon my views a characteristic minute': "I
think our proposed draft is right and defensible in argument. I also
am of opinion that your condemnation of it is right, because the fact
is that the national sentiment is so strongly opposed to what is
enjoined by international law that it is better not to wake the cat as
long as she is asleep!"'
At the end of July, 1881, Lord Granville's health seemed seriously
affected, and Sir Charles noted that, apart from his own personal feeling,
his chief's enforced retirement would be 'a great misfortune.' The choice
would be between Lords Derby, Hartington, Kimberley, and Northbrook. Lord
Derby seemed to him 'undecided and weak,' Lord Northbrook still weaker,
while Lord Hartington 'knew no French and nothing of foreign affairs.' Of
Lord Kimberley's ability he had not then formed a high estimate; but he
adds that, having afterwards sat with him in the Cabinet, he changed that
opinion, finding him 'a wise man,' who never did himself justice in
conversation.
CHAPTER XXV
COMMERCIAL RELATIONS WITH FRANCE
Although in the course of 1881 Sir Charles had refused to defend in the
House of Commons a special grant for defraying the Prince of Wales's
expenses on a Garter Mission to St. Petersburg, and Lord Frederick
Cavendish, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, had to undertake this
task, which more properly belonged to the Foreign Office, the Prince's
relations with him were cordial. The Prince was increasingly inclined to
interest himself in foreign politics, but received very little
encouragement from the Court. In June, 1880 (when the rumours as to
Challemel-Lacour were being set afloat [Footnote: For an account of these
rumours see Chapter XXII., p. 353.]), Sir Charles noted that, as far as he
could ascertain, the Prince of Wales,
'being not at this time admitted by the Queen to "official knowledge,"
got the whole of his modern history from the _Figaro_....
'On the evening of February 19th, 1881, I dined with Lord and Lady
Spencer to meet the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Prince spoke to
me about his anxiety to be kept informed of foreign affairs, and the
Princess spoke to me in the same sense, telling me how fond she was of
her brother the "King of Greece," and how anxious therefore about his
business. The Prince asked me whether he could, while in Paris, do
anything to help on the negotiation of a new treaty of commerce, and I
wrote to him next morning to suggest the language that he should hold.
Ferry, the Prime Minister, I pointed out, was a Protectionist, and I
suggested that the Prince should say to Ferry how important for the
good understanding of the two countries it would be to conclude a fair
treaty at once....
'On the 18th I had written to Gambetta to tell him that I should be in
Paris on April 9th and on April 24th, and that I was to see him, but
that no one was to know; and on March 20th I received his answer
accepting my conditions. The Prince of Wales had carried out the
suggestion which I had made, having taken my letter with him, and read
it over immediately before seeing Jules Ferry, upon whom he seemed to
have made some impression.'
This Sir Charles learnt from a letter of Gambetta's of March 30th, which
ended: "Je vous attends le 9 avril au matin, incognito strict
impénétrable, ou le 24 au retour Á votre choix." At this meeting Sir
Charles received from Gambetta the assurance that delegates would be sent
to London to attempt the negotiation of a treaty.
Sir Charles did not believe that a treaty would be concluded. In his
judgment England would not consent to accept a treaty unless it were an
improvement on the existing position, and such a treaty France was not
likely to give. But he believed that by negotiating better terms could be
obtained, not indeed by treaty, but under the tariff which the French
legislature would introduce by Bill. [Footnote: Gambetta kept in touch
with Sir Charles throughout on this matter, writing April 16th: "Nous
causerons de toutes ces sottes affaires, que je ne peux m'imaginer aussi
mal conduites, mais il y a encore de l'espoir, croyez-moi."]
A joint Commission was nominated to sit in London, with Challemel-
Lacour and Dilke for its respective heads. The other English Commissioners
were Sir C. Rivers Wilson, who was a Treasury official before he became
Finance Minister in Egypt; Mr. C. M. Kennedy, head of the Commercial
Department of the Foreign Office; and Mr. W. E. Baxter, the member for
Dundee. Sir Charles says of the preliminary meetings, which were concerned
with a wrangle between him and Challemel-Lacour as to the extent to which
M. Léon Say had committed his Government:
'We got no further, but we were both very much pleased with ourselves
for the manner in which we argued. Challemel, being an orator and
having the use of his own tongue, was at an advantage, but I managed
to hold my own, I think, pretty well.'
'At the second meeting, May 30th, I began a course of speeches on pig
iron and such matters which was destined to continue for many months.
I used to get up my technical terms in the morning (the "jargon," as
the French call it), and to forget them immediately after. I believe
that on this day I forgot the French for "steel blooms" within five
minutes after being most learned in regard to them.'
The sittings went on throughout June, 1881, with results in some respects
favourable. But the matter had now a political as well as a commercial
aspect. It was probable that Gambetta was about to form a Government,
though it was unlikely to come into being before the late autumn, after
the French general election. On both sides there was a desire to have
friendly relations, but public feeling was extremely sensitive in both
countries. The occupation of Tunis had produced a certain tension with the
Foreign Office; and in France the growing Protectionist movement made it
certain that if England, which from 1860 onward had enjoyed special terms
in her commerce with France, was again to have a special treaty, it would
not be so favourable.
The position in July was that a treaty giving certain advantages to
England could be secured at once from M. Ferry's Ministry, and that a
total failure of the negotiations was in itself to be deprecated. Lord
Lyons was for concluding the treaty which might be made at once, fearing
lest England should be put under the general tariff. Here Sir Charles's
familiarity with Parliament made him invaluable. He perceived that any
treaty which could be made at this moment would leave certain leading
British industries--notably cottons and woollens--worse off than they had
been under the expiring arrangement, and therefore would probably be upset
by a vote in the House of Commons. This would be disastrous. It seemed to
him better to wait till Gambetta came in, and to do the best he could with
the new Government. This decision prevailed, Sir Charles persuading Mr.
Chamberlain to support his view in the Cabinet.
It was decided, however, to insist on prolongation of the existing treaty
as a condition of continuing the negotiations, and Sir Charles now
proposed to strengthen his hand by a threat of retaliation. He was invited
by the Prime Minister to attend a meeting of the Cabinet in regard to
commercial treaties on August 6th.
'The result was a despatch from myself to Mr. Adams [Footnote:
Afterwards Sir Francis Adams. He was then Chargé d'Affaires in Paris,
and later Minister in Switzerland. He was at this moment in charge of
the Embassy during Lord Lyons's absence.] which was not included in
the Blue-Book afterwards laid before Parliament. It ended by relating
a conversation with the French Ambassador on the previous day, in
which I threatened (and this was the reason for not placing the
despatch before Parliament) that if we did not come to a satisfactory
understanding with France, we should make treaties with Spain,
Portugal, and Italy, in which we should reduce the rate of duty on the
dear wines produced by those countries, and raise the rate of duty on
the less strong wines produced by France. I have always been a
reciprocitarian to this extent, and was always backed in using such
arguments by Chamberlain, who held the same view in a still stronger
form. Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville always prevented any public
reference to such matters, but they allowed me to put them in
despatches, although not to lay them before Parliament.'
On August 17th Gambetta again suggested a private interview, and it was
decided that Dilke should cross, ostensibly on a visit to La Bourboule,
and hold the interview on his way. [Footnote: Gambetta wrote: "Nons serons
strictement seuls. Si! les choses électorales ont fort bien tourné, non
sans peine, mais pas de guerre sans blessures." (22 août, 1881).] On
August 22nd Mr. Adams reported that--
'Gambetta was determined that Tirard' (Minister of Commerce in M.
Ferry's Cabinet) 'should fail, in order that his Government should
have the glory of succeeding in our negotiations....
'On Thursday, August 25th, I breakfasted with Gambetta, and then went
on to La Bourboule. He told me that he was prepared to take office
without portfolio, "in order to be able to watch all the others."'
"Tuesday, August 30th, '81.--As to the treaty, Gambetta said that M.
Tirard would not be got rid of in time; some mode must be found of
turning the difficulty which he had created. He would see him, and
Tirard would probably propose some plan to me when I called on
Tuesday" (this might be Thursday). "_I suggested... a treaty with some
small country, and the most-favoured-nation clause with us--we giving
nothing...._ This was the excellent ultimate outcome." [Footnote: This
paragraph is from a note made at the time.]
On September 5th, on his way back from La Bourboule, 'I was officially in
Paris, and saw the Ministers, Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Jules Ferry, and
Tirard; and on the next day, Tuesday the 6th, saw Gambetta privately
without their knowledge.'
At this moment prolongation of the existing treaty had not been accorded,
and negotiations were in suspense. Sir Charles frankly "told the Ministers
that I did not expect we should be able to agree," and suggested a plan
which, without a special commercial treaty, should secure what had up till
then been settled in negotiation. France was obliged to renew her treaties
with Switzerland and Belgium, and might concede to these countries in
detail 'those things which up to this point we had obtained in
negotiation.'
Prolongation of the existing treaty was, however, at last accorded, and
conferences were resumed on September 19th in Paris-a change of scene
greatly to the Commission's advantage.
'We now continued to sit day by day in state at the French Foreign
Office, which contrasted with the simplicity of Downing Street under
the rule of a parsimonious Treasury. The French certainly know how to
spend their money, and I fancy that the United Kingdom must suffer in
negotiations both from the superior style in which foreign Governments
treat negotiators and from our abstention from the practice pursued by
foreign Governments of showering decorations upon negotiators. At the
French Foreign Office, outside the magnificent room in which the
conferences are held, was a great buffet covered with the most costly
luxuries, behind which stood tall footmen dressed in the national
livery of red and blue, and I think that our manufacturers who came in
to give evidence were in some cases not altogether insensible to the
attractions offered them. Some of our witnesses, however, were really
first-class men, and it was a pleasure to hear Mr. Joseph Lee of
Manchester, who was afterwards knighted on my suggestion, hammering
the French.... When I called the name of Wedgwood as that of my
witness upon pottery I noticed the sensation that ran round the French
Commission, who were under the impression that "Wedgwood" was a
contemporary of Michael Angelo; but, of course, my Wedgwood was not
the original, though he was a descendant....
'During my first long visit to Paris the French Government gave me
every night the official box at either the Opera or one of the great
theatres, and I used to go, not that I cared about the theatre, but
because I was able to give hospitality in this way to our leading
manufacturers, who were over as our witnesses. We used, indeed, to do
a good deal of our business at the theatre. The official boxes having
drawing-rooms at the back, we retired into these, and discussed what
we were going to say at the Conference the next morning.'
But after many sittings negotiations did not seem likely to lead to any
settlement, and Sir Charles was anxious to break them off. The French
opposed this, urging that prolongation of the treaty would then have been
gained for nothing; and they made a good many small concessions on the
numerous articles subject to their tariff.
During the sittings Sir Charles Dilke kept Lord Granville posted in a mass
of detail: Ivory and pearl buttons reduced to half; vulcanite goods, an
improvement on the _status quo_; great and wholly unexpected reduction on
biscuits; but starch very bad (this was on "an excellent day for the small
things"). Other reports dealt with steel scrap, phosphorus, faience, and
so forth, and by tabulated figures set off the total of losses and gains.
Lord Granville, thanking him for these constant reports, remarked with
serene detachment that they were "as interesting as lists of the betting
in the newspapers just before the Derby. I hope you will win the race." He
added that in his opinion "Tirard and the Temps were only playing a game
of brag."
'At my conference on October 24th I had found Tirard very cross, he
apparently having made up his mind that Gambetta intended to turn him
out, and having therefore resolved to make the conclusion of a treaty
impossible in order to attack his successor and to destroy the treaty
if one were made. He suddenly asked for a vast reduction in the
English wine duties, and on my refusing to discuss the matter, he
replied that after the "enormous concessions" which had been made to
us, any French Minister who did not obtain similar concessions from us
would be worthy of impeachment. He was very rude to me, and evidently
wanted to provoke an immediate rupture.'
On this Sir Charles wrote to Mr. Gladstone:
"The Commissioners are in the singular position of trying to arrange
the terms of a treaty with a Minister who, if the treaty is made, is
likely to become the private member to move its rejection."
'I was not much hampered from London at this time. Mr. Gladstone
wrote: "I have nothing to do but commend and concur."'
'On October 28th I determined not to break off negotiations, but
simply to finish--that is to say, to go clean through the tariff, and
stop when we had no more to say. We then could leave matters open, and
begin again in the following month with the new Government which
Gambetta was about to form.'
Already Sir Charles was being introduced to the future members of what
came to be called the "Grand Ministère," and was not favourably impressed:
'On November 2nd, Gambetta having informed me that Rouvier would be
his Minister of Commerce, and having asked me to meet him, we dined
together at the Café Anglais, but I was greatly disappointed in him.'
On November 5th Sir Charles left Paris for London, nominally for purposes
of consultation; but this was only a pretext to suspend operations till
Gambetta came into office, which he did on November 10th. Sir Charles,
being then in London, found the British Government of his own opinion,
that they could hope for no more than most-favoured-nation treatment; but
opinions differed as to how this should be obtained. Mr. Gladstone wanted
to give a pledge that the low duty on the lighter wines--which favoured
France, since no other country could produce them-should not be raised.
Sir Charles, on the other hand, wanted to threaten the French with a
change in the duties, which would favour Italy by letting in the slightly
stronger Italian wines at the same rate as "Gladstone" clarets.
On November 19th he was back in Paris, seeing Rouvier and Gambetta, both
of whom asked for time to prepare the way for a final meeting of the
Commission, and Sir Charles went to his house near Toulon. On December
28th the detail of the French proposals was known, and they were held to
be unsatisfactory. Gambetta still insisted that an agreement could and
must be reached, but Dilke was of another opinion, and at the thirty-
seventh sitting, held on the last day of the year, negotiations were
really broken off. The last sitting, held on January 2nd, 1882, was merely
formal, and that evening Sir Charles left for London. He had not expected
to succeed in concluding a treaty, and he had not concluded one, but he
had earned high credit from experts. Lord Granville wrote: "From all sides
I hear praises of your knowledge, tact, and judgment." His secretary, Mr.
Austin Lee, [Footnote: Now Sir Henry Austin Lee, K.C.M.G., C.B.,
Commercial attaché for France, Belgium, and Switzerland at the British
Embassy in Paris.] showed him a letter from one of the Under-Secretaries
of State in the Foreign Office, who
'said that it was a blessing to have had me at Paris, because any
other negotiator would have sent yards of cipher telegram to the
Office asking to be allowed to give the French all that they demanded
from us, and proving that we must take whatever we could get from
them.'
The British members of the Commission were unanimous in support of their
chairman, and when Gambetta fell and M. de Freycinet became Prime
Minister, they refused to hold any further sittings. Lord Lyons was
uneasy, and in February, 1882, wrote that the most-favoured-nation treaty
was a very forlorn hope." Mr. Gladstone thereupon wished to give his
pledge against any raising of the duties.
'I succeeded in stopping this, for I felt sure that we should get it
for nothing, as, in fact, we did.
'That we obtained most-favoured-nation treatment without giving way
upon our wine duties and sacrificing revenue was a triumph, as we got
all the reductions (which on yarns were very large) which we had
obtained in the course of the negotiations. These had, after being won
by us, been given to the Swiss and Belgians--who were "behind" us, and
signed treaties. The result was that there was an increase, not a
falling off, in our trade with France.' [Footnote: Full information
with regard to the negotiations of a new commercial treaty between
France and Great Britain, will be found in Commercial No. 37, 1881,
and Commercial No. 9, 1882.]
"The foresight shown by Sir Charles Dilke in proposing this arrangement is
brought out by the fact that it has been maintained, and given entire
satisfaction, during the thirty years and more which have elapsed from its
conclusion," says Sir Henry Austin Lee.
M. Hanotaux, in his _France Contemporaine_, observes that Dilke was often
a _précurseur_. He certainly was so in an important matter of Imperial
policy which connects itself with these negotiations. Leave was granted,
through Sir Charles at the Foreign Office, to the Canadian High
Commissioner, Sir A. Galt, 'to negotiate upon his own account, provided
that he concluded no stipulations unfavourable to the mother country. In
this, I made a precedent which has been followed,' and which was not made
without opposition. The Colonial Office, while unable to prevent Canada
from acting for herself, prevented Sir Charles at the Foreign Office from
acting conjointly with Canada. The matter developed in 'the following
spring':
'On March 1st (1882) Sir A. Galt asked me to let Kennedy' (Sir C. M.
Kennedy) 'of the Foreign Office go to Paris as Second Commissioner for
Canada to help make a Franco-Canadian treaty. On the 2nd I agreed, and
got Lord Granville's consent, and the Foreign Office officially asked
the Colonial Office, when Lord Kimberley refused. I pressed the matter
in angry, but as I think conclusive, minutest Lord Kimberley, however,
set his teeth, and refused point blank, and Lord Granville then backed
him up, saying that "on a Colonial matter it was impossible to fly in
the face of the Colonial Secretary of State." I wrote, 2nd March,
1882:
'"I think Lord Kimberley's decision a great misfortune to British
trade and to friendly relations with the Colonies, and wish this
minute and opinion to that effect placed on record with the despatch
which he wishes to withdraw. We could have stipulated that the mother
country should have been entitled to all reductions made to France, a
further advantage which, if Canada is angry at the refusal, may be
needed but not obtained."'
'April 20th, 1882: At this moment I called attention to the bearing of
our most-favoured-nation-clause treaties on the commercial condition
of the British Empire generally, and pointed out that the bearing of
the matter on the Colonies would become very important some day; and I
found even too much support from the head of the Trade Department, who
was a Protectionist, or at least a strong Reciprocitarian, and who at
once grasped my idea by arguing that there was a chance that some day
there would be formed a British Zollverein, raising discriminating
duties upon foreign produce as against that of the British Empire. I
had only pointed out the possibility. The representation of Canada by
Sir A. Galt at Paris also provoked minutes by me on this question
later in the year.'
CHAPTER XXVI
GAMBETTA, DISRAELI, ROYAL PERSONAGES, MORIER
I.
The New Year of 1881 had opened for Sir Charles with Gambetta's greetings:
"Chambre des Députés.
"CHER AMI,"
"Je vous envoie mes voeux les plus ardents pour tous les succès que
vous pouvez désirer dans cette année qui s'ouvre, et pour la
réalisation desquels j'ai confiance que votre bon génie continuera à
vous sourire.
"Quand vous passerez a Paris le 4 ou autre jour venez me voir. Je ne
bouge d'ici jusqu'au 20.
"Je vous embrasse et vous aime,
"Paris, 1 _Janvier_, 1881."
"L. GAMBETTA.
When they met, the Ferry Ministry was in office. Sir Charles met 'General
Farre, the Minister of War, who has left no name except for having
abolished drums, which were shortly afterwards reintroduced, and who, so
far as I could see, did not deserve to leave one,' and also Ranc, one of
Gambetta's satellites, who 'was entertaining with a description of the
various anarchical parties in Paris then engaged in sitting "on each
other's ruins."' A story which Sir Charles tells of his crossing to Paris
(in the end of August, 1881) illustrates the vehemence of prejudice
against Gambetta:
'I had made the journey alone in a compartment with the young Comte de
FitzJames, who was a Lieutenant in the army. He did not know me, and
assured me that, it being Gambetta's custom while President of the
Chamber to ask to breakfast each day the officer of the guard, if he
ever happened to be on duty at the Palais Bourbon, and, consequently,
were asked, and had to go, he should utter not one word.'
Gambetta, who heard the story, was greatly amused by it.
During part of September and part of October, 1881, the friends did not
meet, because Gambetta was away from Paris. 'It was rumoured he had been
to see Bismarck, which was untrue,' says Dilke. "But," he adds in a letter
to Lord Granville on October 24th, "Gambetta visited Memel and Kiel, and
saw the German fleet, of which he does not think much."
The Prince and Princess of Wales were in Paris when Sir Charles returned
there to resume commercial negotiations. On October 24th he breakfasted
with them at their hotel, and met them again on the 28th, when they
lunched with the Austrian Ambassador:
'Beust is a man that I never saw without marvelling how he should have
played so great a part in the affairs of Europe. He always reminded me
of Lord Granville with the brains left out. The same little jokes,
though less good, the same smile, the same courteous manner; but an
affectation and a real stupidity which were all his own.'
'I went in the afternoon with the Prince and Princess of Wales to see
Munkacsy's "Christ," an enormously overrated picture, in which the
chief figure was that of an Austrian village idiot, not a Christ, but
the half-revolutionist, half-idiot that Christ was to the Jews who
crucified Him, and who formed the crowd in the picture. If that was
what the man wanted to paint, he had succeeded, but that probably was
not what he wanted.'
'The Prince was most anxious to meet Gambetta again; Gambetta not at
all anxious to meet him. But the Prince having distinctly asked me to
ask him to breakfast, and to ask Gambetta to meet him, the latter was
obliged to come. The Prince, however, having asked me to invite
Galliffet as one of the guests, Gambetta, who liked Galliffet
personally, but was afraid of being attacked in the Press, absolutely
refused to come, so Galliffet had to be knocked off the list again.
Galliffet has misrepresented this in his Memoirs.'
This breakfast took place on Sunday, October 30th, and made much talk,
though the Prince was officially travelling as a private gentleman, an
incognito which the waiters had difficulty in remembering. Mr. Austin Lee
had been invited to take the place of General Galliffet in the party of
six, which was completed by Mr. Knollys and Colonel Stanley Clarke. The
place was known as the Moulin Rouge Restaurant, soon to disappear in the
rebuilding of the Avenue d'Antin. It is said to have been kept open for
some days beyond the date originally fixed, to furnish a _déjeûner_ worthy
of these guests. In spite of the privacy observed, Rumour was busy, and
_Punch_ of November 12th appeared with an amusing "Monologue du Garçon,"
giving at great length the supposed conversation and the menu of the
breakfast.
'Gambetta said a great many good things. He called Blowitz a "crapaud
de Bohème," which Escott afterwards quoted from me in the _World_, I
think. He said, apropos of the then French Government: "To change a
policy you must have a policy, just as to change a shirt you must have
a shirt." Gambetta told me that he wished to make Tissot Foreign
Minister, and that as he intended to take Chanzy from St. Petersburg,
he should have three Ambassadors to find. Gambetta was satirical about
Ireland. He said, referring to Mr. Gladstone's speech: "Everything is
going on admirably in Ireland, it seems. You have thirty thousand
lawsuits under your new Land Act. Excellent!"'
The Prince returned to London next day, and sent to Sir Charles through
Mr. Knollys an expression of thanks and a request that Gambetta would send
him a signed photograph. The request was duly transmitted, and Gambetta
replied:
"CHER AMI,"
"Pensez-vous que ceci soit acceptable? Si oui, pas de réponse; si non,
dites-moi s'il suffit d'une simple signature comme autographe.
"À vous,
"L. GAMBETTA."
The inscription was: "Au plus aimable des princes--un ami de
l'Angleterre."
Four months later the Prince of Wales wrote to Dilke expressing his
personal regrets for Gambetta's fall from power, and Gambetta's letter in
reply was sent to Sir Charles for transmission on March 6th, 1882.
The Ferry Ministry fell on November 10th, 1881, and the thought of
Gambetta in power acted, said Bismarck, on the nerves of Europe "like a
drum in a sick man's room."
On November 1st
'I heard from Lord Lyons, and gathered from confidential telegrams,
that the idea of disarmament was in the air again in Europe. This, of
course, really meant a disarmament to be imposed by the Empires and
Italy upon France. But it was stopped again, as it had often been
stopped before, by Russia.
'I had told Lord Granville that I thought Gambetta would offer the
Embassy in London to Ferry, and that I did not know if the Queen would
like his marriage being only a civil one, and that the Roman Catholics
in England would certainly make it disagreeable for him. Lord
Granville wrote on this: "I am glad to be rid of Challemel-Lacour. He
must be a clumsy fellow to have got on such bad terms with both Saint-
Hilaire and Gambetta." In the following week, however, Gambetta made
up his mind that J. Casimir-Périer should become his Ambassador in
London. But Gambetta fell before he had been able to give him the
place.
'On the night before I left I dined with Pouyer-Quertier, who had been
Finance Minister of France under Thiers at the time of the Frankfort
Treaty. He told me a wonderful story about how, when the negotiations
had been all but broken off, he went to bed in despair. But in the
morning before light there was a knock at his door. He got up in his
nightshirt, and there was Bismarck in full uniform, who made him get
back into bed, saying he would catch cold. Then, drawing a chair to
the bedside, Bismarck spread out the treaty on the night-table and
wrangled on, till after a while he said that it was dry work, and got
up and rang and asked for beer. After the beer had been brought by a
sleepy waiter, he rang again and asked for kirsch, and poured a
quantity of the liqueur into the beer. Then he made the poker red-hot
in the fire which he had relighted, stirred up the mixture, and
invited Pouyer-Quertier to drink. Pouyer-Quertier said: "I drank it
thinking of my country, and Bismarck clapped me on the back, and said
that I was such a good fellow that the evacuation should take place at
once, and this is how the final article was signed; it was signed on
the table at my bedside." I did not believe the story, but when I
asked Bismarck years later he said that it was true.'
Returning to London on November 5th
'I left Paris at a moment of great excitement over the financial
situation, there having been a kind of Roman Catholic financial union
which had beaten a Jewish ring, and which afterwards itself collapsed.
It was said that James de Rothschild had lost his money in this
business; but his brother-in-law told me that ... it was not true that
he had lost a sixpence.'
On November 19th Sir Charles left London, and saw Rouvier and Gambetta
late that evening in Paris. 'The Gambetta Ministry had been formed, and it
was thought important that I should see Rouvier at once.' Next day, Sunday
the 20th, he 'breakfasted with Gambetta, meeting Spuller and General
Billot.' To the latter he had been introduced by Gambetta in January,
1880, when Billot was 'commanding the Marseille Corps d'Armée: an
intriguer who, in the event of war occurring between 1887 and 1890, would
have been second-in-command of the armies of France.' [Footnote: "A letter
to a friend of this date shows that Sir Charles did not think Gambetta's
Ministry was likely to be in a strong position when it came into power:
"FOREIGN OFFICE,
"PARIS,
"21st November, 1881.
"Gambetta is, according to the papers, at war with the Senate and with
the Church. I think that he is at war with the Senate, and that this
is foolish of him. I don't think he is at war with the Church. It is
the Senate, more than the Church, which is offended by the appointment
of a rampant atheist and vivisector as Minister of Religion. The
Church has probably less to fear from Bert than from less known men.
Gambetta is to see the Nuncio to-day, and I don't think that the
Nuncio, who has long been his warm personal friend, is likely to
express much alarm.
"The Senate is more serious. The monstrous folly of Bert's
appointment, the dismissal of the senator de Normandie, governor of
the Bank, and the putting only one senator into the Cabinet, have
irritated it beyond all bearing. Gambetta may gain twenty seats in
January, but even supposing that he is supposed to have a majority in
the Senate, it is a majority in which you have to count semi-
Conservative rivals such as Leon Say and de Freycinet, foes like
Challemel-Lacour, and men of the extreme Left like Victor Hugo, who
are more likely to follow Clémenceau than Gambetta. And yet he needs
the Senate to keep the other House in order by the threat of a
dissolution, which requires the consent of the Senate."]
Gambetta had taken the Foreign Office himself:
'He seemed to me solid, strong, and prudent. Indeed, I never saw him
appear to so much advantage. We walked from his "den" to the dining-
room, where the guests were waiting for breakfast, through his
bedroom. A fine Louis XVI. bed from the _garde-meuble_ was in the
alcove. I pointed, and asked: "Le lit de Talleyrand?" "Le lit de
Dagobert!" At our meeting on the 20th we discussed fully the Danube
question, and also that of Newfoundland, in which I always took a deep
interest, but with regard to which I was far from agreement with the
French. [Footnote: The Danube question was left unsettled by the
Treaty of Berlin. The question of the navigation and outlets gave rise
to constant trouble, owing to the claims of Russia and Austria-
Hungary. After prolonged negotiations the Conference of 1883 arrived
at a compromise. See _Life of Granville._ vol. ii., chap, vii., Lord
Granville's despatch, March 14th, Turkey, No. 3, 1883.]
'During the whole of this visit to Paris I deeply admired Gambetta,
with whom I spent almost the whole of my three days. He showed to
great advantage, sobered by power, rapid in his acquisition and
mastery of new subjects. He had grasped the Danube difficulties and
those of Newfoundland in a moment. How different from those about him,
of whom Spuller, of all men in the world, was one day to be his
successor--a heavy fellow, who, as long as Gambetta lived, used only
to open his mouth for the purpose of "thee-and-thouing" Gambetta in
asking for the salt, just to show that he dared to "thee" and "thou"
him.
'On December 28th I breakfasted with Gambetta, when he told me that he
would himself have given Jules Simon any Embassy or any place in his
Government, for he was fit for any ("the cleverest man in France"),
had he not known that Simon was too bitter, and would think that he
was being bought, and would refuse. Freycinet was at Gambetta's, and
also Spuller, Rouvier, Ranc, Pallain, Reinach, and Gerard. They were
much excited as to the selection by Gambetta of Weiss of the _Figaro_
as Secretary in the Foreign Office' (in place of Baron de Courcel),
'as Weiss was said to have made the anti-Republican Government of May
16th; but Gambetta merely answered that he could not see why he should
not be allowed to employ as a despatch writer "the first pen of
France." The same difficulty had arisen about the army, Gambetta
wishing to make Miribel Chief of the Staff, although he was a
reactionary. This appointment was afterwards made by Freycinet in
1890, amid public applause, although the suggestion had been one of
the causes of Gambetta's overthrow....
'Gambetta says that the American despatches to us about Panama raise a
monstrous pretension--that they might as well claim the Straits of
Magellan and Cape Horn'. [Footnote: The Americans had announced that
in the event of the completion of the Canal they intended to keep it
in their own hands.]
On December 29th Sir Charles dined with Lord Lyons to meet Gambetta and
some of the new Ministers:
'On this evening I heard Gambetta for the first time say "If I can,"
for he was beginning to feel how sharply limited by the hostility of
the Chamber was his power. He was speaking of revision of the
constitution for the purpose of the adoption of _scrutin de liste_.'
[Footnote: Sir Henry Brackenbury, in _Some Memories of My Spare Time_,
observes that in 1881 he dined at the Embassy, when "Gambetta and M.
Spullor, his _fidus Achates_, were also present, as well as Sir
Charles Dilke." He thought Dilke "by far the best talker of the
party."]
On January 2nd, 1882, he again breakfasted with Gambetta.
'Gambetta told me that the Chamber would never forgive him for having
suggested _scrutin de liste_, and hated him. At the same time he
informed me of his intention of again proposing it, although he
expected to be beaten, and seemed to have made up his mind to go out.'
Writing to Grant Duff of this coming conflict, Dilke said:
"Gambetta means to put _scrutin de liste_ into the constitution at the
revision--_if he can_. That will be a warm day! I never heard him say
'If I can' before. I wonder if his great exemplar ever said 'If I
can'? Sala and Rosebery, who are the two best Napoleonists I know, can
tell us."
II.
Sir Charles, as representing the Foreign Office in the House of Commons,
was naturally in close touch with Mr. Gladstone; in addition, the
commercial negotiations necessitated frequent interviews. The admiration
which Sir Charles felt for his chief was, however, frequently crossed by
differences of opinion, especially as to his method of approaching foreign
affairs.
'Writing to express his concurrence in my action with regard to the
commercial negotiations, Mr. Gladstone went on to say: "I am glad
Gambetta says that he is in the same boat as us as to Panama. Our
safety there will be in acting as charged with the interests of the
world minus America." This was a curious example of the world of
illusions in which Mr. Gladstone lives. The Americans had informed us
that they did not intend to be any longer bound by the Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty, and that in the event of the completion of the Panama Canal
they intended virtually to keep it in their own hands. Mr. Gladstone
called in France in joint protest with us against this view, although
he might have foreseen the utter impossibility in the long-run of
resisting American pretensions on such a point, and although he
himself would have been the first, when the Americans threatened war
(as they would have done later on), to yield to threats that which he
would not yield to argument. It amused Harcourt, however, to concoct
with the Chancellor and the Foreign Office portentous despatches to
Mr. Blaine, in which we lectured the Americans on the permanency of
their obligations. How childish it all was! Moreover, the Monroe
doctrine suits our interests.'
Sir Charles's letters to Mr. Gladstone, even when short and business-like,
are marked by a deference which he used to no one else; and the deference
at times has the accent of affection. Sir Charles always enjoyed Mr.
Gladstone's old-world courtesy, and especially his playfulness.
"It would be impossible," he said, "to give a true account of Mr.
Gladstone without recalling the manner in which, however absorbed he
might be in his subject, he would break off to discuss some amusing
triviality. When we were talking once of the real and inner views of
French statesmen with regard to our occupation of Egypt, some chance
expression suddenly diverted Mr. Gladstone's mind to the subject of
rowing; and he began recalling in the most amusing way incidents of
his own Eton days of some sixty-eight or sixty-nine years previously,
shivering at the thought of his sculling in cold weather against
strong stretches of the stream near Monkey Island."
But the elder statesman who fascinated Sir Charles's imagination was the
great Tory chief; and in 1881 came at last the realization of a wish long
entertained by him for a meeting with Lord Beaconsfield. More than once he
had been balked of the opportunity by his punctilio of holding rigidly to
even the most ordinary social engagements. After one of these
disappointments he wrote:
'I should like to talk to the most romantic character of our time, but
I fear it is only vulgar curiosity, for I really know a great deal
more already about him than I could find out in conversation.'
The curiosity had been sharpened by the publication of _Endymion_, for Sir
Charles thought that in devising the story of Endymion Ferrars Lord
Beaconsfield had taken a general suggestion from the career of the Radical
who, like Endymion, had made his debut as Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs; and the novelist admitted the debt.
The meeting took place on Sunday, January 30th, at Lady Lonsdale's house.
'Wolff, Chaplin and Lady Florence, Hartington, the Duchess of
Manchester, Lord and Lady Hamilton, and Captain and Lady Rosamond
Fellowes (Randolph Churchill's sister) were there. Arthur Balfour and
the Randolph Churchills came in after dinner. Lord Beaconsfield told
me that he had been very anxious to meet me, since he had taken the
liberty of writing about me without my leave in his novel _Endymion_,
and that he thought we wore never destined to meet, for he had twice
asked Alfred de Rothschild to invite me, and that I had not "been" on
those two or on a third occasion which he had made. He was, as usual,
over-complimentary and over-anxious to captivate, but was certainly
most pleasant. He praised my grandfather, a sure way to my heart, and
said that my grandfather and his own father were "the last two men in
England who had a thorough knowledge of English letters." The talk at
dinner was dull, in spite of Wolff's attempts to enliven it, but
Arthur Balfour and the Randolph Churchills brightened it afterwards,
and Dizzy said a good many rather good things--as, for example, that
he should like to get married again for the purpose of comparing the
presents that he would get from his friends with the beggarly ones
that he had got when he had married. Also that he "objects to the
rigid bounds of honeymoons as an arbitrary attempt to limit
illimitable happiness." I thought him very polite and pretty in all
his ways and in all he said.'
On Sunday evening, February 20th, Sir Charles dined with Mr. Alfred de
Rothschild to meet the Prince of Wales;
'but was more pleased with again meeting Lord Beaconsfield.'...
'After dinner I was next him. When he was offered a cigar, he said:
"You English once had a great man who discovered tobacco, on which you
English now live, and potatoes, on which your Irish live, and you cut
off his head." This foreign point of view of Sir Walter Raleigh was
extremely comical, I think.'
Finally there is this entry:
'Having made no note in my diary, I cannot tell if it was on Sunday,
April 3rd, or on Sunday, March 27th, that Lord Barrington met Edmond
Fitzmaurice and me in Curzon Street, where Lord Beaconsfield's house
was, and said: "Come in and see him; he's ill, but would like to see
you." He was on a couch in the back drawing-room, in which he died, I
think, on April 19th. There was a bronchitis kettle on the hob, and
his breathing was difficult, but he was still the old Disraeli, and,
though I think that he knew that he was dying, yet his pleasant
spitefulness about "Mr. G." was not abated. He meant to die game.'
Lord Beaconsfield made no secret of his liking for Sir Charles, but is
said to have doubted the permanency of his Radicalism. "The sort of man
who will die a Conservative peer," is said to have been his commentary
after their first meeting, echoing an idea then widespread in the
fashionable world, that of the two men so often compared, Sir Charles
would gravitate towards the opinions of the _Times_, leaving his colleague
'to the unassisted championship of democratic rights.'
To the greatest of all European statesmen Dilke did not at this time
become known; but Bismarck watched his career, and in the early part of
this year, after the Prince of Wales's visit to Berlin,
'On March 16th Arthur Ellis, who had been with the Prince at Berlin,
came to me from the Prince to say that the Prince had had much talk
with Lord Ampthill (Odo Russell) about me. Our Ambassador was most
anxious that I should visit Berlin, and thought that I could do much
then with Bismarck, and usefully remove prejudices about myself at the
Court. Ellis was the bearer of an invitation from the Embassy for me
to stay there, and of a message that Bismarck much wished to make my
acquaintance.'
There was no doubt as to the attractiveness of the invitation, but it was
at once ruled out on public grounds.
'The visit, however, would give rise to much speculation in the Press,
and would also make the Queen angry and Mr. Gladstone most uneasy.
"But," I added in my diary, "if we want to stop the French from going
to Tunis, there is a safe and easy way to do it--_i.e.,_ let me go to
Berlin for one day and see Bismarck and talk about the weather, and
then to Rome for one hour and see, no one, merely to let the fact get
into the newspapers."'
In December
'Dufferin wrote to me from Paris: "The Sultan is besotted with the
notion of a German alliance against France, and of obtaining the
assistance of Germany in freeing himself from foreign control in
Asia."'
On New Year's Day, 1882, Sir Charles, while accompanying Lord Lyons on his
round of official New Year visits, saw a despatch from Lord Odo Russell.
[Footnote: Ambassador at Berlin.] In it Bismarck described his attitude
towards the Turks, who had "asked him for protection against their
protectors, who, with the sole exception of Germany, in their opinion,
wanted 'to cut slices out of their skin.'" Bismarck had assured the Turks
that he should never attack France unless seriously threatened by France,
and would never in any circumstances "fire a cartridge for Turkey."
In the course of the summer of 1881 Sir Charles had become acquainted with
a great personage in whom Bismarck always saw an enemy of his policy, and
in so far as it was hostile to France the Memoir bears out his judgment.
'On July 13th the Prince of Wales introduced me to his sister, the
Crown Princess of Germany. [Footnote: Though this was Sir Charles's
first meeting with the Crown Princess, she had at the time of his
father's death 'telegraphed her condolences to me at St. Petersburg,
and to the Embassy, asking them to call on me and help me in the
matter.'] She talked to me at length in the most friendly way with
regard to France and Gambetta. She told me that she had been secretly
to Cherbourg to hear Gambetta's famous speech, which he himself called
"the first glass of wine administered to the convalescent." But she
added that she stood absolutely alone in Germany in her pro-French
opinions.
'The Crown Princess seemed very able, but inclined to sacrifice
anything in order to produce an effect. I was afterwards sent for by
them, and had a long talk in what are called the Belgian Rooms at the
back of Buckingham Palace, on the gardens.
'On Monday, August 22nd, I called at Buckingham Palace by the wish of
the Crown Prince, and saw him and the Crown Princess together. I
thought him a dull, heavy German, and noted in my diary: "He dare not
speak before he sees that she approves of his speaking." But he was a
nice-minded, kind, and even pleasant man in his way.'
Sir Charles's formal summing-up of his impressions is to be found in his
work on _The Present Position of European Politics_ (1887):
"It is no secret that at times the Crown Princess has been unfriendly
to Prince Bismarck. They are perhaps two personalities too strong to
coexist easily in the same Court.... The Crown Prince, it must be
admitted, intellectually speaking, is, largely by his own will, the
Crown Princess. But that most able lady, when she shares the German
throne, must inevitably have for her policy the Bismarck policy--the
strength and glory of the German Empire."
Sir Charles notes that, although he was hard-worked in Parliament and in
the Office, the peculiar nature of the Foreign Office work brought him
necessarily a good deal into contact with royal personages and foreigners
of distinction visiting London, and forced him 'to go out a good deal and
burn the candle at both ends.' Of these official gaieties he gives no very
grateful impression:
'Some of the parties to which the Prince of Wales virtually insisted
that I should go were curious; the oddest of them a supper which he
directed to be given on July 1st, 1881, for Sarah Bernhardt, at the
wish of the Duc d'Aumale, and at which all the other ladies present
were English ladies who had been invited at the distinct request of
the Prince of Wales. It was one thing to get them to go, and another
thing to get them to talk when they were there; and the result was
that, as they would not talk to Sarah Bernhardt and she would not talk
to them, and as the Duc d'Aumale was deaf and disinclined to make
conversation on his own account, nobody talked at all, and an absolute
reign of the most dismal silence ensued....
'On March 13th we had received news of the murder of the Emperor of
Russia; and when Lord Granville came to dinner with me (for he dined
with me that night to meet the French Ambassador), he told me that I
must attend in the morning at a Mass at the Russian Chapel, and attend
in uniform. I had two of these Masses at the Russian Chapel in a short
time, one for the Emperor and one for the Empress, and painful
ceremonies they were, as we had to stand packed like herrings in a
small room, stifled with incense, wearing heavy uniform, and carrying
lighted tapers in our hands. On this occasion I saw the Prince of
Wales go to sleep standing, his taper gradually turn round and gutter
on the floor.'
Two months later, Friday, May 27th,
'I dined with Lord and Lady Spencer to meet the King of Sweden and the
Gladstones....
'The King talked to me after dinner about the murder of the Emperor of
Russia.... It was clear that the Swedish loathing for Russia on
account of the loss of Finland was not over. The King might, however,
have reflected upon his own popularity in Norway, a country which had
been given to his grandfather because the people used to hate the
Danes. They now hated the Swedes still more.'
A royalty known to Sir Charles by correspondence was King Mtsa of Uganda,
'who had been presented by us in 1880, at the request of the Queen and the
Church Missionary Society, with a Court suit, a trombone, and an Arabic
Bible,' but who relapsed early in 1881, and became again the chief pillar
of the slave trade in his district. Another strange monarch played his
part that year in London society.
'On Sunday, July 10th, Lord Granville wrote to me to ask me to lunch
with him the next day to meet "the King of the Cannibal Islands
[Footnote: Sandwich Islands, in reality.] at 12.55, an admirable
arrangement, as he must go away to Windsor at 1.20." I went, but
unfortunately was not able to clear myself of all responsibility for
Kalakaua so rapidly, for I was directed to show him the House of
Commons; and when he parted from me in the evening in St. Stephen's
Hall he asked me for a cigar, and on my offering him my case he put
the whole of its contents into his pocket. The Crown Prince of Germany
and the Crown Princess (Princess Royal of England) were in London at
the same time, and at all the parties the three met. The German
Embassy were most indignant that the Prince of Wales had decided that
Kalakaua must go before the Crown Prince. At a party given by Lady
Spencer at the South Kensington Museum, Kalakaua marched along with
the Princess of Wales, the Crown Prince of Germany following humbly
behind; and at the Marlborough House Ball Kalakaua opened the first
quadrille with the Princess of Wales. When the Germans remonstrated
with the Prince, he replied, "Either the brute is a King or else he is
an ordinary black nigger, and if he is not a King, why is he here at
all?" which made further discussion impossible. Kalakaua, however,
having only about 40,000 nominal subjects, most of them American
citizens who got up a revolution every time he went away, his kingship
was very slight.'
May 20th:
'At this Cabinet a curious matter came up, though not for decision.
The Cabinet had been intending to give the commission for the public
statue of Lord Beaconsfield to a British sculptor, and I had been
trying hard to get it for Nelson Maclean; but a communication from the
Queen settled the matter, she absolutely insisting that Boehm should
do the statue. Everybody felt that it was wrong that she should
interfere, but nobody, of course, resisted.'
On May 27th we hear that the Queen, having received
'warning in an anonymous letter of threats against her life by
"persons of rank," wrote to Harcourt to say she did not see who could
be meant "unless it were Lord Randolph Churchill"!'
Elsewhere Sir Charles noted:
'The only subjects upon which the Prince of Wales agreed with any
Liberals were (1) detestation of Randolph Churchill; (2) the
government of London. But then, as I personally, although assailed by
Randolph Churchill and not then on speaking terms in consequence, did
not dislike him, there remained only the government of London, and the
topic became well worn between us, for we had found by experience that
it was the only one upon which we could safely talk.'
III.
One correspondent, the length of whose letters was 'fabulous,' was Sir
Robert Morier, then Minister at Lisbon, 'an old friend.'
'He had more brains than all the other Foreign Office servants put
together (excepting Lord Lyons and 'old White' and Lord Odo Russell),
but, although "impossible" in a small place, he was afterwards a
success at St. Petersburg.... He used to send ultimatums to any weak
Government to which he was despatched, and he used to treat the
Foreign Office almost as badly, for he was the only Minister given to
swearing at the Office in despatches.'
Comment on this is afforded by a note of Lord Granville's to Sir Charles
in 1884, when the Embassy at Constantinople was vacant: "The Turks had
been behaving so badly, we should send Morier, to pay them out." Sir
Charles's respect for his friend's 'immense ability' led to his taking
great trouble in dealing with Sir Robert Morier's difficulties, put before
him in a voluminous correspondence, both private and public, and in return
he received 'a veritable testimonial on February 22nd, 1881: "You have
done the right thing at exactly the right moment, and this is to me so
utterly new a phenomenon in official life that it fills me with admiration
and delight."' He had previously noted a letter in which, describing
himself as "a shipwrecked diplomat on the rocks of Lisbon," Morier wrote:
"To have for once in my life received help, co-operation, and
encouragement in a public work from a man _in the Office_, instead of
the cuffs and snubs I am used to, is so altogether new a sensation
that you must excuse my being gushing."
In an earlier letter of the same year there is complaint of the "utter
absence of co-operation" between the Foreign Office at home and its
servants abroad:
"You who are still a human being and able to see things from the
general home point of view, will be over-weighted by two such
bureaucrats as ---- and ---- ."
Morier's plea for reorganization which should ensure "intercommunion and
intercommunication" was emphasized a few weeks later by
'a letter from White, then our Minister at Bucharest (afterwards our
Ambassador at Constantinople), which concluded with a general grumble
against the Foreign Office:
'"... Servants kept in the dark--thorough darkness--as to proceedings
in the next-door house cannot be profitable servants, and such is,
alas!
'"Yours ever truly,
'"W. A. White.'"
The idea bore fruit in Dilke's mind to this extent, that in
'1890 I was able to give evidence before a Royal Commission in favour
of amalgamating the two services, and the Ridley Commission accepted
my view and recommended the amalgamation. It was not carried out.'
Sir Robert Morier suffered, in his own judgment, more than anyone else
from this lack of intercommunication, and this is probably true because he
was restlessly fertile in suggestions, and when these raised opposition he
turned to Sir Charles for help. Having just concluded the negotiation of a
treaty respecting Goa, he was now pressing hard for another respecting
Lorenço Marques and Delagoa Bay, in which he discerned the future gate of
the Transvaal, and was projecting arrangements with regard to Portuguese
West Africa. In these projects Sir Charles helped him indirectly, as he
did in a larger proposal which the Minister at Lisbon was making.
'Morier's letter contained the draft of a proposed Congo treaty, which
was afterwards put into shape, which I strongly favoured, and which in
1883, after I had left the Foreign Office, was virtually stopped by
the House of Commons. The House and country were wrong, and the
Foreign Office right.' [Footnote: This treaty would have associated
Great Britain with Portugal in maintaining the freedom of the Congo
River and in policing its waters, while it would have established a
joint control of the whole Congo basin by the European Powers which
had subjects settled in that region. Such an agreement would have
altered the course of history in tropical Africa, and the Congo State
would never have come into being. See _Life of Lord Granville_, vol.
ii., pp. 341-354.]
Lord Ripon was Sir Charles's regular Indian correspondent, and a letter
from the Viceroy in this year begs him not to intermit his communications
whenever he could make time to write. To Lord Ripon another correspondent
was now added:
'Grant Duff, having accepted the Governorship of Madras, asked me to
write to him regularly in India, which I promised to do, and did, and
in thanking me he said that my opinions would have interest for him,
since among other things I knew was "that strange wild beast--the
House of Commons." This saying was pathetic from him, for there never
was a man who more utterly failed to understand the House of Commons
than Grant Duff....'
CHAPTER XXVII
DIFFICULTIES OF THE LIBERAL GOVERNMENT
I.
The close of 1881 virtually terminated the protracted negotiations with
France which had occupied most of Sir Charles Dilke's time, and had kept
him for long periods absent from London. In the new year he was more
closely concerned with the general business of the Government, and
especially with its attempts at legislation.
Two important subjects mentioned in the Queen's Speech of 1882 were the
reform of local government in the counties, [Footnote: This was
foreshadowed in a note of November 11th, 1881: 'Local Government (Boards
in all the three kingdoms on a tax-paying basis) will be the chief
measure.'] and the proposed recasting of London's system of government,
which appealed to Sir Charles both as a municipal reformer and as a
metropolitan member. In the previous summer Mr. Gladstone had shown
himself to Dilke as 'very keen' on this latter measure, and proposals to
undertake it were actually put before the Cabinet on Lord Mayor's Day,
1881. The choice of a date seemed
'dramatic and courageous.... We all dined with the Lord Mayor, and as
the men came in I felt that, knowing what I did as to Harcourt's
resolution, we were there under false pretences.'
This project began to take shape when Ministers reassembled after
Christmas.
'On the morning of January 3rd, 1882, I saw Harcourt about his London
Government scheme, of which he had sent me a rough sketch asking for
my criticisms. I found that he had adopted all the ideas of Beal and
Firth and of myself. [Footnote: Mr. Firth was Sir Charles Dilke's
fellow-member for Chelsea. Mr. James Beal, a Chelsea man and a veteran
reformer, was Honorary Secretary of the Metropolitan Municipal
Association, which existed to advocate the creation of a general
municipality for London.] We formed a committee, consisting of the
four, which met daily at Harcourt's house for some time.
'On the 6th regular Cabinets began, and Chamberlain came to stay with
me, although he offered to go to the hotel, "as there is no crisis on
hand just now." Hartington, who had a shooting party at Hardwick, ...
scandalized his colleagues by declaring that he was too lazy to come
up for the first Cabinet, although it had been fixed for between a
fortnight and three weeks....
'On January 7th a Committee of the Cabinet on the London Government
scheme was appointed, but it met only once, for the informal committee
of Harcourt, Beal, Firth, and myself did the whole work....
'On January 11th the single meeting of the London Government Committee
took place, Harcourt, Spencer, Childers, Chamberlain, and myself being
present. But instead of discussing London Government, we discussed the
Borneo Charter, to which all present were opposed.'
Over and above this work of preparation on another Minister's Bill, Sir
Charles had a variety of occupations outside his own official duties.
Thus, he notes on February 12th that he 'had a quarrel with Dodson' (then
President of the Local Government Board) 'as to a rating question'; and a
few weeks later, on April 28th:
'I was very busy at this moment because I had the Corrupt Practices
Bill and the Ballot Bill on hand in the House, as well as Foreign
Affairs debates.' [Footnote: In these measures he was helping Sir
Henry James, Attorney-General.]
The main difficulties immediately in hand were those caused by
Parliamentary procedure, and Mr. Bradlaugh, who had been re-elected during
the Recess, and now proposed to take the oath; but the House was unwilling
to let him do so, thus bringing itself into sharp conflict with the
constituency.
'It was reported by the Prime Minister to the Cabinet of January eth
that the Queen refused to open Parliament on the ground of health....
The Queen and Prince Leopold (who was about to marry) had urged that
an additional allowance to the Prince should be voted before the
discussions on the forms of the House began; but Mr. Gladstone
insisted, and the Cabinet decided, that it was to come only after the
Address, after the Bradlaugh business (upon which the Cabinet felt
certain that we should be beaten), and after the reform of the
procedure of the House--that is to say, at Easter at the earliest.'
When Mr. Bradlaugh presented himself to be sworn, Sir Stafford Northcote
moved to prohibit his taking the oath. To this motion the Government
opposed a motion for the 'previous question,' and were beaten. Feeling ran
high, and the House of Commons as a whole would have endorsed a saying of
Lord Winchilsea's. Having been asked to subscribe to the Northampton
Horticultural Show, he replied:
'"A town which enjoys the flowers of Mr. Labouchere's oratory and the
fruits of Mr. Bradlaugh's philosophy can need no further horticultural
exhibition."...
No one quite knew how to deal with the situation which was now created by
Mr. Bradlaugh's hurried advance up the floor of the House, when he
administered the oath to himself.
'On February 22nd there was a Cabinet at one o'clock, at which there
was a tremendous disturbance about Bradlaugh, Chamberlain and Mr.
Gladstone standing alone against all their colleagues, most of whom,
under Hartington's lead, had proposed expulsion, and wanted Mr.
Gladstone himself to move it. While Mr. Gladstone was addressing the
Cabinet, Harcourt wrote a paper, and got Hartington, Childers, and
Dodson to sign it. Forster was in Ireland, and Bright was away with a
cold. Harcourt did not ask Chamberlain to sign his paper, which,
Chamberlain thought, probably suggested that Mr. Gladstone should
himself propose some middle course, but Mr. Gladstone turned round
angrily and hissed through his teeth at Harcourt "I cannot!" When the
time came, even Northcote did not dare to move expulsion, which showed
how foolish our people must be to long to go further in an anti-
popular sense than the Tories themselves.'
There was also the other question of reform of Parliamentary procedure.
'On January 7th the Cabinet discussed the Closure, which was warmly
supported (in the strongest form) by Harcourt and Chamberlain.
Hartington walked in in the middle of the afternoon.
'On February 1st I had a chat with Manning, who says the Church
applied the Closure at the Vatican Council to put down the minority
against the Promulgation of the Doctrine of Infallibility, and that it
must therefore be a good thing.
'On February 9th I was consulted by Harcourt and Chamberlain as to
what I thought about sticking to Closure in the face of the great
probability of defeat. I advised making it a question of life and
death, but advised that if beaten we should immediately prepare for
dissolution by bringing in the County Franchise Bill, and if the Lords
threw it out, stop in to carry it. On a vote of confidence the Tories
could not turn us out, so that we could play the game with them as
long as necessary to carry County Franchise.
'On March 26th we learnt our majority on the power to close debate was
far from certain, and that on Sir John Lubbock's amendment we very
probably should be beaten. Mr. Gladstone began to wish to bow before
the storm, but Chamberlain and others were for holding to our
proposals at all risks.
'On March 31st there was a Cabinet, at which Mr. Gladstone, thinking
with the Whips that we should be beaten on the Closure, again wished
to give way. It was decided to make no fresh declaration of standing
or falling by our rule.'
The question of Procedure remained till the Autumn Session, a constant
embarrassment to the Government. But a difficulty, personal to Sir
Charles, and affecting the Government only through him, arose on the Civil
List.
'On this day (March 31st) the Queen wrote to Lord Granville to
complain of my having walked out on the division on the annuity to
Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, and Sir Henry Ponsonby also wrote. I
refused to give any further explanation, and on April 1st Lord
Granville wrote:
'"HOLMBURY, DORKING.
'"MY DEAR DILKE,--I thought Chamberlain had voted in the majority. The
Queen appears to me to have a _prima facie_ right to complain of any
of her servants refusing to support a Government measure which she and
the administration think necessary for her comfort and position. But
if you stated to the Prime Minister on taking office that you did not
intend to vote for these grants, your responsibility ceases.
Resignation is not in question either with the Queen, yourself, or
Gladstone. The thing to consider is how to put the matter best in
answer to Ponsonby's letter. I do not mind the bother in the least.
'"Yours sincerely,
'"Granville."'
A reply from Sir Charles explained to Lord Granville why Mr. Chamberlain's
name had come in. Although he had voted for the grant
"neither he nor I would ever be likely to let the other resign alone. Our
relations are so close that I should resign with him if he were to resign
because he thought Forster did not have his hair cut sufficiently often."
This explanation was promptly endorsed by Mr. Chamberlain.
'Chamberlain wrote on April 2nd two letters, one for me and one for me
to show to Lord Granville.... In the latter he said:
'"I am very sorry to hear that any notice has been taken of the
absentees in the vote for Prince Leopold's grant. Considering the
strong views held on this subject by the Radical party in the country,
I think their representatives in the Government made great sacrifices
in order to maintain unity of action as far as possible. You and
Fawcett and Trevelyan have on previous occasions, both by speech and
vote, and on strictly constitutional grounds, opposed these grants,
and you could not have supported the present one without loss of self-
respect and of public reputation. For myself, I agree in your
opposition, but having never taken any public part in reference to the
question, and having never voted against the grant itself, I felt
myself free to yield my opinion to that of the majority, and to vote
with the rest of my colleagues in the Cabinet. In your case such a
course was impossible, having regard to the prominence which, through
no fault or desire of your own, has been given to your past action in
the matter, and which has made you in some sort the chief
Parliamentary representative of objections which are widely felt to
the present mode of providing for members of the Royal Family. When
the Government was formed I mentioned this point to Mr. Gladstone, and
told him you could not vote for any grant of the kind. He asked me if
I was equally pledged, and I replied that this was not the case. Mr.
Gladstone then said that, of course, a divergence of opinion in a
member of the Cabinet would be more serious than in a Minister outside
the Cabinet, and I took it for granted that under the circumstances
you, at least, would not be expected to vote at all. I assume that
although the subject has now been referred to, there is not the
slightest intention or suggestion from any quarter that you should
resign on such a matter. If there were, I have not the least
hesitation in saying that I should make common cause with you; and I
cannot conceive that any Radical would consent to hold office in a
Government which had expelled one of its most popular members, and one
of the few representatives of the most numerous section of the Liberal
party, for such a cause. But I cannot believe in the possibility of
any such intention. If I did I might end with Lord Hartington's
celebrated postscript, and 'Thank God we should soon be out of this
d--d Government.'
'"Yours ever,
'"J. Chamberlain."
'I received further letters about the matter from Lord Granville, who
ultimately replied on April 4th that "Gladstone does not admit your
contention." But he said, "The case is not likely to arise again for
some time.... In the meantime he approves my writing to the Queen off
my own bat," and this was done accordingly, the letter not being shown
to me, so that I do not know what was in it. But the whole matter came
up again in the autumn, when it was proposed to put me in the
Cabinet.'
Sir Charles wished on public grounds to get rid of questions as to these
grants, the recurrence of which must always lead to trouble, and to do
this by settling them on a principle. But also he was desirous to forward
the wishes of the Prince of Wales, and in the month of May he devised a
method for meeting the difficulty, which might be proposed by the Prince
himself.
'On Friday Mr. Gladstone talked for an hour to me about the Royal
Grants question, and the conversation was satisfactory on both sides,
for he told the Cabinet yesterday that it had been satisfactory to
him. In the course of it he said that many years ago a memorandum on
the provision for the younger branches of the Royal Family had been
agreed upon by the Cabinet, and shown to the chiefs of the Opposition.
He added that this was a course perhaps not so wise as would have been
the appointment of a Select Committee of the House of Commons. I at
once told him that the consideration of the subject, which had not
been discussed by the Civil List Committee at the beginning of the
reign, by a later Select Committee, would in my opinion have prevented
all but most unreasonable opposition to the various grants. There are
many years to spare, and I only write because the matter is fresh in
my mind.... My suggestion is that when provision is proposed for the
establishment of the eldest son of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, for
whom a liberal provision would be made without reasonable opposition,
as he is in the direct line of succession, it should (at the same
time) be stated by the Government of the day that the question of the
extent of the provision for the younger children of the Prince and
Princess of Wales should be, on the motion of the Government,
considered by a Select Committee. On that Committee all shades of
opinion ought in prudence to be represented, and to it as much
information be given as is given to the Civil List Committee at the
beginning of the reign. Its decisions would be respected by all who
value Parliamentary methods, and much unseemly wrangling would be
prevented for many years. The fate of this plan, however prudent it
may be, would be certain if it came from anyone except His Royal
Highness himself or the Prime Minister of the day.'
Sir Charles embodied this suggestion in a letter to Mr. Knollys of May
9th. The proposal was agreed to in principle by Mr. Gladstone's Government
in 1885, and it was adopted later on.
'On May 3rd I had heard from Knollys that the Prince, who had
frequently been restive about not getting Foreign Office information,
which Lord Granville would not allow him to have for fear he should
let it out, had made Knollys write to Sir Henry Ponsonby to ask him to
beg the Queen to direct Lord Granville to send the Prince the
confidential telegrams.... On the 7th Knollys sent me Sir Henry
Ponsonby's "not very satisfactory reply," and a copy of his answer.'
In the reply Mr. Knollys pointed out that the Prince was under the
impression that the Queen would have wished him to know as much of what
was going on as possible. The question whether telegrams were to be shown
to the Prince depended entirely on Her Majesty, as Lord Granville would
not be likely to raise difficulties in the matter if the Prince put his
wishes before him. The fact that the private secretaries of Cabinet
Ministers had Cabinet keys, and therefore had access to all confidential
documents, was quoted as showing the curious position of the Prince.
The Queen persisted in her objection, and Sir Charles supplied the lack of
official access to the papers by keeping the Prince privately informed
from day to day in critical moments. He spent the first Sunday in February
of this year at Sandringham,
'where the company was chiefly sporting, even the clergyman who
performed the service being the famous "Jack" Russell, eighty-seven
years of age, known in Devonshire as "the hunting parson"....
'On March 21st the Prince of Wales invited me to go with him to see
the Channel Tunnel works, and to bring the map of Central Asia, and to
explain to him the matters that we were discussing with the Russians.
But I was unable or unwilling to go--probably unwilling because of
overwork, and dislike to commit myself to the Channel Tunnel project.
I was one of those who thought that the Channel Tunnel was far less
important in a commercial sense than was generally believed, and, on
the other hand, I feared that the creation of it might lead to
panic....'
Later: 'I converted the Prince of Wales to oppose the Channel Tunnel.'
The one matter which, Sir Charles notes, still caused serious friction
between himself and his Chief came up in this Session. On February 12th
'I was still fighting about Borneo and about a Garter Mission to the
King of Saxony, which I thought a waste of public money, and I was in
a difficulty with the Cabinet as to Errington's mission--of the
details of which I was not kept informed.
'Wolff, who evidently had been told something by Errington himself,
gave notice of a question to ask Hartington whether communications had
taken place with the Papal See as to prelates in India, and Lord
Granville directed me to answer that no such communications had been
made by Her Majesty's Government. As, however, I thought that
communications had been made by Errington, I felt that this would be a
virtual lie, and wrote to Hartington to ask him. Hartington then took
the answer upon himself, and in his reply to me he said that there had
been some discussions on a closely connected matter, but not exactly
on that mentioned in the question, and that nothing had been done by
him in the matter. Who, then, instructed Errington?... The Errington
mission led for a moment to strained relations between Lord Granville
and myself, and one of my letters he said was evidently intended to be
"wholesome in Lent." "The tone of it is hardly that of two members of
the same Government, more particularly when they are excellent
friends."'
Sir Charles apologized frankly and cordially for the tone of his certainly
peremptory letter, but
'I had to stick to my text....
'It was evidently monstrous that I should be made to answer questions
about negotiations of which I knew nothing, thus leading the House of
Commons to believe that I was in some sense responsible to them for
what passed, when as a matter of fact I was not informed, except
privately, and in strict confidence, by Errington himself. One result
of the concealment as to the whole Errington business was that Mr.
Gladstone on one occasion gave an answer in the House of Commons which
was untrue, although he did not know that it was untrue, and that on
another occasion the same thing happened to Courtney, who as Under-
Secretary of State for the Colonies denied that a Roman Catholic
question affecting the Colonies' (the proposal for a cathedral at
Gibraltar) 'had been discussed, when Errington himself told me that it
had. The Colonial Office did not know.'
Later:
'There never was a more discreditable piece of business than the whole
of this Errington matter. Errington himself is an excellent fellow. I
have not a word to say against him. It is the Government and not
Errington that must be blamed.
'At this time I received a pamphlet from Auberon Herbert on the title-
page of which he had drawn a picture of Gladstone in the fiery pit
beckoning me, and I, winged and crowned as an archangel, falling from
heaven to him, with the inscription: "Lapsus e coelo; or how C.D.
accepted an invitation."'
II.
Notwithstanding his attention to domestic politics, Sir Charles was first
and foremost the representative of the Foreign Office, and during the
spring of 1882 he was ceaselessly concerned in the negotiations which were
in progress between the Russian Government and the British India Office,
over which Lord Hartington then presided.
'I had received from the India Office on January 6th a private
communication suggesting arrangement with Russia as to the
delimitation of the new Russo-Persian frontier. The India Office were
inclined to hand over Merv nominally to Persia, regardless of the fact
that the Russians would not consent to any proposal of the kind. I
wrote to Lord Granville on the 9th, "I must say I don't like it at
all," and he answered: "It appears to me that some of the permanent
Jingoes in the I.0. want to establish that they are always pressing
the F.O. to do spirited things, and constantly thwarted. I rather
agree with you that it is better to do nothing than to do that which
is not really effective, but Hartington is very anxious not to be
altogether quiet.--G."
'On January 17th I had the first of a series of important interviews
with Brett, Hartington's secretary, with regard to Central Asian
affairs. He gave up Merv, and in return I agreed with him that the
Foreign Office should propose to the India Office to ask Russia to
define the Persian frontier by an English-Russian-Persian Commission,
and the Afghan frontier by an English-Russian-Afghan Commission. Lord
Granville was unfavourable, Lord Hartington favourable to this view,
which after a great number of meetings at the Foreign Office
prevailed, the Russians ultimately accepting the Afghan delimitation,
a matter to which I shall have to return. The policy to which I have
always adhered was on this occasion stated in a paper which we drew
up--a secret "Memorandum on the question of the undefined frontiers
between Persia, Afghanistan, and Russia"--in words which, referring to
the probability that without an agreement Russia would establish
herself at Herat, went on:
'"Peace might be maintained for a time, but it would always be a
precarious peace, for the direct influence of Russia, backed by her
show of military force, would in time overawe the Afghans, and give
her a preponderance of which we should feel the effects, either in the
necessity for costly defensive preparations and a large increase of
the garrison of India, or in the danger to the tranquillity and
permanence of our rule.... Secure on a strong line, flanked at one end
by Balkh and at the other by Herat, covered towards Kabul by a zone of
friendly Hazara tribes ... and connected by rail and steam with her
bases in the Caucasus and on the Volga, she could afford to laugh at
threats from India, and might deal at leisure with Afghan tribes and
leaders."'
Two later jottings on the manuscript follow:
'"This is still true in 1906."
'"In 1908 I approved the main lines of an agreement with Russia."
'On February 20th (1882) a conference took place between Lord
Granville, Lord Hartington, Tenterden, and myself as to Central Asia.
Hartington wanted to pay Persia to hold the Turcoman oasis--a most
monstrous proposition.
'On the next day, the 21st, a telegram was written to go to India,
which was so drawn by Hartington as to make the Foreign Office approve
his absurd Merv scheme. I got it altered, and Merv left out, and
guarding words put in.
'On February 22nd the Russian Ambassador promised Lord Granville that
we should be allowed to carry out my idea of a joint commission for
the Afghan frontier.
'On March 10th there was a meeting between Lord Hartington and Lord
Granville and myself as to Central Asia.'
Lord Ripon wrote from Simla on May 15th to condemn Lord Hartington's
policy of
'"trying to interpose Persia as a buffer between Russia and the
Afghans.... I do not believe either in the strength or in the good
faith of Persia," said Lord Ripon. "...I am afraid that the India
Office have by no means got rid of the notions which were afloat in
Salisbury's time." On the other hand, Lord Ripon was in favour of a
treaty with the Afghans, to which I was opposed except in the form of
a mere frontier delimitation.'
The India Office, however, never caused Dilke so many heart-burnings as
sprang from his concern with those African and Australasian matters on
which the Foreign Office was obliged to secure co-operation from the
Colonial Office.
'On January 13th, in addition to further trouble about Borneo, a new
controversy sprang up between me and the Colonial Office. It was, I
think, on January 6th, 1882, that I received from Mr. Gladstone the
letter which began: "Cameroon River, West Africa. Mr. Gladstone. Dear
Sir, We both your servants have meet this afternoon to write to you
these few lines of writing, trusting it may find you in a good state
of life, as it leaves us at present. As we heard here that you are the
chief man in the House of Commons, so we write to you to tell you that
we want to be under Her Majesty's control." It ended: "Please to send
us an answer as quick as you can. With kind regards, we are, dear sir,
your obedient servants, King Bell and King Akua."
'Lord Kimberley had absolutely refused; but I, holding that this spot was
after all the best on the West Coast of Africa, and the only one where a
health station could be established, urged acceptance, without being able
to get my own way. Lord Granville wrote concerning Lord Kimberley' (not
without a retrospective glance at his own Under-Secretary): '"Perhaps he
fears Cameroon cold water too much in consequence of the scalding water
from Borneo." Being entirely unable to get my way, I proposed that the
letter of the Kings should be "made official," and sent to Lord Granville;
that he should officially invite the opinion of the Colonial Office on it,
and that if the Colonial Office wrote a despatch against it we should
refuse, but not refuse without the Colonial Office opinion being on
official record. The offer of the cession of the Cameroons having been
renewed later, and I having again most strongly urged acceptance, a consul
was sent to the country to investigate the matter, when the Germans
suddenly interfered; snapped it up, and made it a new colony. Kimberley
was entirely responsible, as I had persuaded Lord Granville to agree with
me.'
III.
Among the passages which carry on the Parliamentary narrative come sundry
jottings and observations. Those for the first session of 1882 concern
themselves mainly with two names--Bismarck and Gambetta.
'On January 14th I heard from Germany that the Crown Prince had
suddenly broken away from Bismarck on the issue of the last rescript,
and that he had sent his secretary to the Liberal leaders to tell them
that he had first heard of the rescript when he read it in the paper.
Writing to Grant Duff, I added that the Crown Prince "swears that
nothing will induce him to employ Bismarck when he ascends the
throne." This was but a passing feeling caused by Bismarck's attacks
on the Princess.'
"Herbert Bismarck is coming to see me in Paris at his father's
wish....
"_18th_.--He is confined to his bed in London; I am to see him there
instead of here."
'On January 20th Herbert Bismarck dined with me--a man to whom I took
a liking. I had not seen much of him before this date, but from this
time forward we had continual meetings--a man of far stronger ability
than that for which the public gives him credit. He had a special
aversion to being called "Herbert," and insisted on being called the
Count of Bismarck-Schoenhausen.
'On Sunday, January 22nd, I dined with the German Councillor of
Embassy... and met again Count Bismarck. I wrote in my diary on this
day: "Bismarck is a chip of the old block: not a bad sort of brute,
with a great deal of humour of a rough kind. He saw through ----, an
Austrian, who is a toad-eater, in a moment, and stopped a pompous
story of his about ----. As soon as we were told by the narrator, with
a proper British shake of the head, that he 'drank,' Bismarck shouted
at the top of his voice: 'Well, that is _one_ point in his favour.'
----, disconcerted, went on and said: 'He fell from the landing and
was killed.' 'Ah,' cried Bismarck, 'what a wretched constitution he
must have had!'" In an aside to me Bismarck violently attacked
Papists, and broke out against the Confessional in the tone of
Newdegate, or of Whalley, or of General Grant. To the whole table he
stoutly maintained that it was right that no Jew should be admitted
into the Prussian Guards or into clubs. One man at table said: "But
you had a Jew in the Guards"; to which Bismarck replied: "We precious
soon hunted him out." The man hunted out was the son of Prince
Bismarck's banker, the Rothschilds' agent, British Consul at Berlin,
and Bismarck's confidential adviser at the time of the treaty of
Versailles. I added in my diary of young Bismarck: "He is only 'sham'
mad."
'On March 29th I received a letter from Crowe [Footnote: Of Sir Joseph
Crowe, British Commercial Attaché, Sir Charles says:
"Joseph Archer Crowe had been known to me as _Daily News_
correspondent in Paris when I was six years old in 1849, and when my
grandfather was managing the _Daily News_. Many years afterwards I got
to know of a Crowe, a great authority on Italian Painters, but I had
not the least idea that this Crowe was the same person as the other
Crowe. When I entered the Foreign Office I became aware of the
diplomatic and consular work that had been done by J. A. Crowe, but I
was not aware of his identity with either of the others till we sat
together on the Royal Commission. After ceasing to be a young painter
in Paris, Crowe became _Illustrated London News_ correspondent in the
Crimea, and then accepted an art appointment in India. He was at
Bombay during the Mutiny. Subsequently he went through the Franco-
Italian campaign of 1859 as the war-correspondent of the _Times_,
being present at the battle of Solferino. He was appointed in 1860
Consul-General for Saxony. Few men wrote four languages so well, and
while I never heard him speak German I'm told that it was as good as
his English, and his French was as good as either."] from Berlin,
saying that the Chancellor was weak in health and prophesying ultimate
war. In sending it to Lord Granville, I wrote: "I obstinately refuse
to believe that the Russian Emperor will go to his destruction at the
behest of his revolutionists." And Lord Granville wrote back: "I
agree. Herbert Bismarck confirms the account of his father's weakness.
Cannot walk eighty yards without sitting down."'
In France, the greatest of French statesmen had been turned out of office
on January 26th. [Footnote: The Gambetta Ministry fell by a vote on
Scrutin de Liste on January 26th. The Freycinet Ministry succeeded to
office on January 31st. On January 31st, 1882, Sir Charles wrote to Mr.
Frank Hill: "No member of the new French Government is taken from the
majority that overthrew Gambetta. All who are deputies voted in the
Minority. All who are senators would have so voted."] But already people
were saying that Gambetta must be President, and that by 1886, the date of
the next Presidential election, he would have recovered all his
popularity--or lost it for ever. 'The alternative of death,' says Dilke,
'had not occurred to them; yet it was death, coupled with popularity, that
came.'
The friends had not met since Gambetta's fall, but
'Gambetta found time to write and thank me for my speech, as well as
for what I had said to him about his fall. He again promised a visit
to London in one of these letters.'
"PARIS,
"_Le 31 Janvier_, 1882.
"MON CHER AMI,
"Je vous remercie de votre bonne et forte parole. Elle me plaît par-
dessus tout venant de vous, qui êtes bon juge en fait de dignité et
d'autorité politique.
"Je ne regrette en partant qu'une seule chose--de n'avoir pu terminer
le traité. Mais j'ai grand espoir d'avoir porté les choses assez loin
pour empêcher les successeurs de reculer.
"Quand vous reverrai-je? Je compte bien que ce sera ê Londres, qui
sera toujours en beau quand vous y serez.
"Bien cordialement,
"LÉON GAMBETTA."
'But the visit was destined never to take place,' though for years it had
been continually talked of between them. About August, 1876, when it was
almost settled, Sir Charles had noted:
'Gambetta never came to England in his life but once (about 1869), and
that was on a curious mission, considering what the future was to
bring forth; for he came under the Empire as the representative of the
Republicans to enter into consultation with the Orleans Princes for
the overthrow of Louis Napoleon. This interview would no doubt be
denied if mentioned by many of Gambetta's friends, but he told me of
it himself.'
On April 16th, 1882, Sir Charles, on his way back from spending the Easter
recess at Toulon, breakfasted with Gambetta, who told his friend 'that he
was "unique among fallen Ministers, for others, once fallen, are
forgiven," whereas he was "worse hated and more attacked than when in
power."'
He was none the less witty. There was talk of reforms in Russia--reforms
that had been suddenly obliterated by the murder of the reforming Tsar.
"What did Russia want with a 'Parlement'?" (Gambetta asked). "She has two
Generals who provide her with it. Skobelef, _Parle_; et Ignatief, _Ment._"
'On the 21st January, 1882, Alfred de Rothschild came to see me to
tell me that Bontoux had been to "Alphonse" [Footnote: The head of the
Paris house.] to ask him to help the Union Générale, which had been a
Catholic alliance against the Jews, and was now on its last legs. On
the next day Alphonse de Rothschild decided that he would not, as was
indeed to be expected, unless he had very strong, purely financial,
reasons the other way. He ultimately helped enough to save the
brokers, but not enough to save Bontoux or the rest. I found that,
ever since the Battle of Waterloo, the Rothschilds in London and in
Paris have been in the habit of writing to one another long letters
every day, and from time to time I saw these letters from Alphonse
when they bore upon political affairs.'
Sir Charles was not impressed by the political insight of those documents,
which seemed to him 'extraordinarily uninteresting,' expressing old-
fashioned Conservative ideas, though 'the Rothschilds all think they are
Liberals.'
The jottings end with a definition of diplomacy:
'On the 24th January, 1882, I dined at the French Embassy, where Baron
Solvyns, the Belgian Minister, amused me with the saying that diplomacy
meant "to pass one's life à expliquer les choses sans les comprendre."'
[Footnote: Adapted from Beaumarchais, who thus describes "la politique" in
'Le Mariage de Figaro,' Act III., Scene ii.]
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE PHOENIX PARK MURDERS
I.
Ireland and Egypt fill the most important places in the history of 1882.
That was the year, in Ireland, of the Kilmainham Treaty, the resignation
of Mr. Forster, and the Phoenix Park murders; in Egypt, of the riots in
Alexandria, followed by the bombardment, which caused Mr. Bright's
resignation, and the battle of Tel-el-Kebir.
They had their roots far back in preceding years. But the abrupt
development of the trouble in Egypt was due to an accident; that of the
Irish question was of no sudden or casual growth. The Parliamentary
difficulty as to procedure of the House was only part of Parnell's
deliberate design to paralyze legislature and executive alike. [Footnote:
Sir Charles notes: 'In 1890, when I wrote out these diaries, I showed them
to Chamberlain, and gave him a copy of some part, notably that relating to
the Kilmainham Treaty and that relating to Egypt (1882). His remembrance
of events agreed with the notes made by me at the time.']
Government, for the moment, was trying to suppress Parnell and his
associates. The Irish leader himself had been in gaol since October 12th,
1881; Mr. Dillon, Mr. Sexton, Mr. Davitt, and many hundreds of lesser men,
had been imprisoned without sentence or form of trial. Sir Charles Dilke,
whom nobody believed to be an adviser of coercion, experienced as a member
of the Government manifestations of Irish displeasure.
'On January 31st I addressed my constituents. The Irish attacked the
meeting, and one East-Ender came at my private secretary with a chair,
howling Mr. Bright's phrase: "Force is no remedy!" As a very violent
breach of the peace had been committed, the police came in and cleared
the room, and after that our people came back again, and I was able to
make my speech quietly.... Congratulations upon my speech on all hands
were warm, especially those of Chamberlain and Lord Granville.
Chamberlain had written to me before the meeting to recommend a free
resort to "chuckers-out," and on my informing him of the use made of
Bright's maxim, he amused himself by communicating it to Bright, who
was only grim upon the subject.'
Irish discontent could count on sympathy and support from the rulers of
America. On March 31st, 1882, the Memoir notes: 'It was settled to tell
the Americans that those suspects who would leave the United Kingdom and
engage not to return might go.'
'On April 20th I had to point out to Lord Granville the fact that the
Irish had shown on the previous day that they had got hold of the
condition which we had attempted to make with the Americans as to the
liberation of American suspects, a condition which the Americans had
indignantly refused.'
All these things affected public opinion in Great Britain. At this moment
the Radical wing was demanding a change of policy in Ireland, while Mr.
Forster was pressing hard for renewal of the Coercion Act, which, having
been passed in 1881 for a year only, was now expiring. The Radicals won,
and the change of policy was inaugurated by the so-called Kilmainham
Treaty.
'At this moment' (April, 1882) 'Parnell was let out of prison, at Mr.
Gladstone's wish, to go to Paris to attend a funeral, but he was away
from prison, also at Mr. Gladstone's wish, unnecessarily long, and,
staying in London with Captain and Mrs. O'Shea, was seen by
Chamberlain at the wish of Mr. Gladstone (expressed on April 20th),
with the view that Chamberlain should offer him leave of absence from
prison with the view of concocting some arrangement (for his release
and for the pacification of Ireland) between him and the Government.
On the 21st Chamberlain and I met and decided that we would resign if
it was proposed to renew the Coercion Act, or the power of arbitrary
arrest in its then naked form.
'On April 22nd, 1882, Chamberlain obtained from the Cabinet, by a
majority, Mr. Gladstone being strongly with him, his own way in the
Irish Question, with full leave to enter into negotiations with
Parnell through O'Shea, but to be disavowed if he failed. Mr.
Gladstone reported the Cabinet of the 22nd to the Queen, stating that
the decision of the Cabinet was to the effect that it was wise "to
strengthen the law in Ireland." This was one way of putting it. What
the Cabinet really decided on April 22nd was to let out Parnell and
his friends, and to drop arbitrary arrest, although they did decide to
have a new Coercion Bill on minor points, to which Coercion Bill
Parnell himself was favourable. The statement that Parnell was
favourable would be denied, but O'Shea showed me a draft Bill, which
was, so he said, in Parnell's writing. I knew the hand, and it seemed
to be so.
'On April 25th Chamberlain reported to the Cabinet the result of his
interviews. Lord Cowper had already resigned the Lord-Lieutenancy, but
Forster's resignation (for some reason which I have never understood)
was kept back for a little. It is a curious fact that the Duchess of
Manchester told me in the middle of March that Lord Spencer was to
succeed Lord Cowper; but the first the Cabinet heard of it was on
April 25th.
'On April 26th, Parnell having returned to gaol, leave was given to
Captain O'Shea to go and see him at Kilmainham with full powers, but
nothing in writing. On the same day a letter, which was sent me by
Chamberlain, after Forster had seen it and sent it on to him, shows
that Forster was still acting, or at all events being treated by Mr.
Gladstone as though he was going forward with his policy. But on the
28th Chamberlain told me that Forster would resign. In my diary I say:
"The Chancellor and Lord Kimberley may go with him. In this case the
Irish Secretaryship would be offered to Shaw" (member for Limerick,
Mr. Butt's successor as leader of the moderate Home Rulers), "but he
would refuse because he could not get his county to return him. Then
it must come either to Chamberlain or to myself. I said I should wish
in this event that he should take it and I succeed him at the Board of
Trade. He said that my appointment would make less row than his. I
admitted this, but said that his would be the best for the public
service. Besides, my opinion in favour of Home Rule would form a grave
difficulty in my way." It will be seen that it never occurred for a
moment to either Chamberlain or myself that the Irish Secretaryship
would be offered without a seat in the Cabinet; but we counted without
remembering Mr. Gladstone's affection for Lord Spencer.... It will
also be seen that I did not count Chamberlain as being a Home Ruler
like myself.
'On the 29th Forster told Harcourt at the banquet of the Royal Academy
that he should resign "if it is decided to let out the men." It is
necessary to be careful about one's history of this moment, for no
authorities are to be trusted. My diary was written at the time from
information chiefly supplied by Chamberlain, and Chamberlain has since
seen and agreed to this record (1906). On Sunday, April 30th, the
_Observer_ gave an account of what had passed at a Cabinet of the
previous day; but no such Cabinet was held, and on May 1st the _Times_
also gave an account of what passed at "Saturday's Cabinet"!
'On May 1st I saw Chamberlain before the Cabinet. Parnell had written
to Justin McCarthy to promise that if let out he was ready to advise
payment of rent and cessation of outrages, but McCarthy would not
allow the letters to be made public. Forster insisted that he should
give a public promise. I suggested to Chamberlain that to call on
Parnell to give a public promise was to recognize Parnell as the
Government of Ireland. Chamberlain agreed to argue that the promise
should be a private one so far as Parnell was concerned, but that the
Government should state that such a promise had been made. After the
Cabinet Chamberlain told me that at the Cabinet of the next day
Forster would resign; but he thought that the Chancellor, who was
restive about the remedial legislation proposed in the shape of an
Arrears Bill, would "go" too. I fancy the Chancellor had promised to
resign, but he didn't.'
This reference to Lord Selborne is supplemented by the Memoir for 1893,
where Sir Charles has a detached note:
'Our former Chancellor at eighty-two is "not less" prosy in the Lords
than he used to be, for he was always "slow." When W. E. Forster
resigned in 1882, Lord Granville left the Cabinet room to go down to
tell the Queen. Then, and then only, Lord Selborne said: "But I agree
with him, and must resign also." "It is too late," said Harcourt, "it
would not now be respectful to the Queen as Granville has started." So
the Chancellor did not resign.'
The Memoir continues: 'On May 3rd Chamberlain, who had decided to take
the Irish Secretaryship if offered to him, was astonished at having
received no offer. At 11.30 p.m. on the same day, the 3rd, I found
that the appointment had been offered to and declined by Hartington;
but the offer to, and acceptance by, his brother, Lord Frederick
Cavendish, came as a complete surprise both to me and to Chamberlain.
'In the night between May 4th and 5th the Queen telegraphed to
Harcourt: "I can scarcely believe that Davitt, one of the most
dangerous traitors, has been released without my having been
consulted, as I was in the case of the three members." The fact was
that Harcourt had so impressed upon the Queen the wickedness of
Davitt, at the time when he withdrew Davitt's ticket-of-leave, that it
was rather difficult for him to explain to the Queen his very sudden
change of front.
'On the 5th I had an interview with Mr. Gladstone as to royal grants.
I carefully abstained from giving any pledge as to future action, and
at the Cabinet of the 8th' (after Lord Frederick Cavendish's murder),
'when the question of my being offered the Chief Secretaryship with
the Cabinet came up, Mr. Gladstone stated to the Cabinet that I
remained unpledged.
'On May 6th I heard from Brett and from the Duchess of Manchester that
Hartington had proposed me in the Cabinet for Chief Secretary, with a
seat in the Cabinet, and that both Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville
had said: "Dilke won't do." The Duchess asked me what this meant, and
I said that it was the Queen's objection on account of the Leopold
grant, which it was; but Mr. Gladstone was glad to give Spencer his
own way without a Chief Secretary in the Cabinet.'
At half-past six that afternoon, May 6th, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr.
Burke, the permanent Under-Secretary, were murdered in the Phoenix Park,
within sight of the Viceregal Lodge.
'On the night of May 6th the scene at the party at the Admiralty was
most dramatic. Mrs. Gladstone had come there from a dinner party at
the Austrian Embassy, not knowing of the murder, while everybody else
in the room knew. At last she was sent for suddenly to Downing Street
to be told, and went away under the impression that the Queen had been
shot, for she was assured that it was very dreadful, but "nothing
about Mr. Gladstone."
'Early on Sunday morning, the 7th, Parnell came to see me with Justin
McCarthy. He was white and apparently terror-stricken. He thought the
blow was aimed at him, and that if people kept their heads, and the
new policy prevailed, he himself would be the next victim of the
secret societies. [Footnote: In the letters of Justin McCarthy to Mrs.
Campbell Praed (_Our Book of Memoirs_, p. 97) there is an account of
what happened in London on that Sunday. There was a gathering of Irish
leaders at Parnell's rooms.
"Then Parnell and I talked together, and we thought the best thing for
us--we two--was to go and consult some of our English friends. We
started out, and went first to see Sir Charles Dilke. Our impression
was that either Dilke or Chamberlain would be asked to take the post
of Irish Secretary. Indeed, the general impression was that either one
man or the other would have been asked at the time when Lord Frederick
Cavendish was appointed.... We saw Dilke. He was perfectly composed
and cool. He said that if Gladstone offered him the post of Irish
Secretary, nothing that had happened lately would in the least deter
him from accepting it....
"He went on to say that he was a Home Ruler _quand même_; that he
would be inclined to press Home Rule on the Irish people, even if they
were not wholly inclined for it, because he so fully believed in the
principle, whereas Chamberlain would only give Home Rule if the Irish
people refused to accept anything less. But on the other hand,
Chamberlain was an optimist in the matter, and thought he could do
great good as Irish Secretary; and he (Dilke) was not so certain,
seeing the difficulty of dealing with the Castle and the permanent
officials, and therefore they agreed that as far as they were
concerned it was better Chamberlain should go.
"He said, 'If Chamberlain goes, he'll go to smash things'--meaning the
Dublin Castle system.
"Then we went to Chamberlain and had a long talk with him. We found
him perfectly willing to go to Ireland, but he said he must have his
own way there and he would either make or mar--by which we understood
the Castle system...."]
'On this day, May 8th, I noted that I thought it most unlikely that
Mr. Gladstone would send Chamberlain to Ireland, inasmuch as to do so
would be to admit that he had been wrong in not sending him in the
previous week. To Grant Duff I sent the reason for Mr. G.'s decision:
"Spencer wishes the policy to be _his_ policy, and does not want his
Chief Secretary in the Cabinet." At three o'clock Chamberlain sent a
note across to me from the Cabinet: "Prepare for an offer." I was
somewhat surprised at this, because Chamberlain knew that I would not
take it without the Cabinet, and that I would take it with the
Cabinet, whereas his note seemed to imply a doubt. At four he came
across himself, and the first difference that had ever occurred
between us took place, because although he knew that I would not
accept, he urged acceptance of the post without the Cabinet. He argued
that it carried with it the Privy Council, that it established great
personal claims upon the party, and that it afforded a means of
getting over the difficulty with the Queen. I declined, however,
without hesitation and with some anger. It was obvious that I could
not consent to be "a mere mouthpiece." Mr. Gladstone and Lord
Carlingford then sent back to say, personally from each of them, that
I was to be present at the Cabinet at every discussion of Irish
affairs; and I then asked: "Why, then, should I not be in the
Cabinet?" Carlingford came back to the Foreign Office again and again,
and cried over it to me; and Lord Granville came in twice, and
threatened me with loss of prestige by my refusal, by which I
certainly felt that I had lost Mr. Gladstone's confidence. I was angry
with Chamberlain at having placed me in this position.... Had he acted
on this occasion with the steadiness with which he acted on every
other, he would have told the Cabinet that the offer would be an
insult, because he knew that this was my view. The ground on which the
refusal of the Cabinet was put to me was the impossibility of having
both myself and Spencer in the Cabinet. Lord Granville came in
finally, and said in his sweetest manner (which is a very disagreeable
one) that he had vast experience, and had "never known a man stand on
his extreme rights and gain by it." This I felt to be a monstrous
perversion of the case, and I was glad on the morning of the 9th to
find that my reasons were very fairly stated in the _Standard_, the
_Telegraph_, and the _Daily News_. Chamberlain had seen Escott of the
_Standard_, and Lawson of the _Telegraph_, and I had seen Hill of the
_Daily News_.
'That the Cabinet position towards me was dishonest is shown by the
fact that they had given Lord Spencer Cowper's place when they had
still reason to suppose that Forster was going to continue in the
Irish Secretaryship and in the Cabinet, and had afterwards asked
Hartington to take the Chief Secretaryship.
'An honourable (I trust) defence of myself is in a letter in the
possession of Grant Duff under date "May 5th, closed on 11th."
The letter to Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, which has separate brief
jottings on May 5th, 6th, and 7th, has so far been reproduced almost
textually from Sir Charles's Memoir. The rest runs as follows:
"_8th_.--Mr. Gladstone is determined not to send Chamberlain to
Ireland, and does not want a Chief Secretary in the Cabinet, and to
send Chamberlain and so have a Chief Secretary in the Cabinet would be
to admit that the decision of last week was wrong. I, of course,
refused to go. I should have had to defend any policy that Spencer
chose to adopt without having a voice in it. Acceptance would not have
been only a personal mistake; it would have been a political blunder.
Outside the Cabinet I should not have had the public confidence, and
rightly so, because I could not have had a strong hand. I should have
inherited accumulated blunders, and I was under no kind of obligation
to do so, for I have never touched the Irish Question. Never have I
spoken of it from first to last. Many of the measures rendered
necessary by the situation are condemned by my whole past attitude;
but they have really been made inevitable by blunders for which I had
no responsibility and which I should not have been allowed to condemn.
"Yours ever,"
"CHS. W. D."
"Closed on 11th."
He wrote also this month in a letter to Mrs. Pattison:
"In a matter of this sort it is essential to have the look of the
thing in view, when a question of personal courage is involved. Of
course, I know that I have personal courage, but the public can only
judge from the look of things. The reason why Chamberlain even doubted
if I ought not after the murder to go--though I was not to have gone
before it--lay in the doubt as to how the public would take the look
of it. It has turned out right, but it might have turned out wrong. If
the public had gone the other way, I should have said I ought to have
taken it, and resigned."
But, as Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff pointed out when replying to the letter
of May 11th, in the state of things then existing in Ireland a Minister
could hardly have resigned without the gravest embarrassment to the
Government, and he cordially approved Sir Charles's refusal: "You could
not have accepted the Secretaryship without a seat in the Cabinet." That
refusal was also approved and understood by the heir to the Throne:
'On the 8th the Prince of Wales wrote to me through Knollys to ask me
as to the Chief Secretaryship, and on my informing him how matters
stood, replied: "If you had accepted the post without a seat in the
Cabinet, your position, especially at the present moment, would be a
very unsatisfactory one. If the policy, whatever it is, prove a
success, I doubt whether _you_ would have obtained much credit for it;
and if it turned out a failure, you may be quite sure that a great
deal of the blame would fall upon you without your having been
responsible for the initiation of the steps that were adopted."'
The Phoenix Park murders having immediately followed the appointment of
Lord Frederick Cavendish, those who had always pressed for further powers
of police now asserted themselves with vehemence. Sir William Harcourt
spoke strongly on Ireland and the necessity for coercion in the House of
Commons. Mr. Gladstone, in whom the Radicals had always found a mainstay
against these tendencies, was broken in spirit and suddenly aged. All
relations in the Cabinet were jarred and embittered, as the successive
entries in this Memoir show:
'In the night between May 11th and 12th the Irish, although angry at
Harcourt's coercion speech, sent O'Shea to Chamberlain at 3 a.m. with
the olive-branch again.
'On May 13th Mr. Gladstone again stated privately that he intended to
give up the Exchequer on account of his advancing years.
'On this day the Cabinet unanimously decided to give an extradition
treaty to Russia--to my mind a most foolish proposal.
'On Monday, May 15th, Mr. Gladstone sent Chamberlain to O'Shea to see
if Parnell could be got to support the new Coercion Bill with some
changes. When Harcourt heard of this, which was done behind his back,
he was furious, and went so far as to tell me: "When I resign I shall
not become a discontented Right Honourable on a back bench, but shall
go abroad for some months, and when I come back rat boldly to the
other side." This reminds me of Randolph Churchill on Lord Derby, "A
man may rat once, but not rat and re-rat."
'On Tuesday, May 16th, Mr. Gladstone wrote, on Chamberlain's
suggestion, to Harcourt to try to smooth him over, and proposed a
Cabinet on the matter for the next day, Wednesday, May 17th, at which
Harcourt declared that if any change was made in the principle of his
Coercion Bill he would resign; but then nobody knew what was the
principle of the Bill. At this Cabinet Harcourt ... told the Cabinet
that the Kilmainham Treaty would not be popular when the public
discovered that it had been negotiated by Captain O'Shea, "the husband
of Parnell's mistress." He informed the Cabinet that ... after this it
would hardly "do for the public" "for us to use O'Shea as a
negotiator." I wrote to Grant Duff on this day (closed 18th) as to
Parnell's relations to Mrs. O'Shea as disclosed in Cabinet.
'On Friday, May 19th, Lord Derby said to me: "You were right to refuse
the Chief Secretaryship; still Mr. Gladstone must say to himself:
'Surely I am about to die, for I am not obeyed.'" On Monday, the 22nd,
Mr. Gladstone was very strongly in favour of accepting Parnell's
privately suggested amendments to the new Coercion Bill, obtained
through O'Shea, but Hartington going with Harcourt against touching
the Bill, Mr. Gladstone got no support except from Chamberlain.
'On May 25th Chamberlain was anxious to resign on account of
Harcourt's position as to coercion; but the fit passed off again.
'On June 5th I noted in my diary that I heard that Goschen was soon to
be asked to become Chancellor of the Exchequer.
'On the 9th Lord Granville told me that the hatred of Mr. Gladstone
for Goschen was such that he had point blank refused to make him
Chancellor of the Exchequer; but this proved to be untrue, for an
offer was as a fact made to him, although perhaps very privately.
'At this time I received a letter from Lord Ripon in India as to the
Kilmainham Treaty, in which he said that he was convinced that
Forster's policy had completely broken down, and went on: "But between
ourselves is not the Government still ... on a wrong track in its
coercive measures? I do not like the suspension of trial by jury....
Again, if Reuter is right, it is proposed to take a power to expel
dangerous foreigners. I am too much of a Foxite to like an Alien Bill,
and, besides, if you are not very careful, the expulsion of foreigners
will land you in a very disagreeable state of relations with the
United States." These, I noted, were exactly the arguments which
Chamberlain was using against Harcourt without avail.'
II.
On June 11th Mr. Chamberlain wrote that the Cabinet had decided on some
important changes in the Prevention of Crimes Bill, and that things looked
better.
But on that day the Alexandria riots took place, and opinion was sharply
divided as to the measures which should be taken. Here Sir Charles Dilke,
and with him Mr. Chamberlain, were strongly for forcible action, while Mr.
Bright, who in the matter of Ireland had come round towards the side of
coercion, opposed the use of force in Egypt. On July 5th there was a
stormy meeting of the Cabinet, which two days later had its echo in
public.
'Mr. Gladstone, mixing Ireland and Egypt together, broke out in the
House of Commons on July 7th, and afterwards privately told his
colleagues that he intended to resign!'
The occasion of this outbreak was a debate on the Prevention of Crimes
Bill, which the Tories were seeking to render more drastic. The Prime
Minister declared with emphasis that if coercive powers which he did not
seek were to be thrust upon him, he must "consider his personal position."
The words were at once in debate construed as a threat of retirement, and
there was a critical position in the Cabinet.
'Bright would follow Mr. Gladstone; and Chamberlain and I decided that
if this were so, although we were against him about Egypt, which would
be one of the causes of his resignation, we must go with him all the
same and refuse to join the new administration. Although I concurred
in this view, after discussion, it was not mine. On this occasion I
thought it was our duty to stay. But after discussion, as I have
stated, I came round to Chamberlain's view so far as this--that we
decided that we would not join the new Government if Mr. Gladstone
were outside it in the House of Commons; although the case might be
different if he quitted political life or went to the Lords, and if we
were satisfied with the new bill of fare.
'At this moment Chamberlain and I were anxious to get Courtney into
the Cabinet, and Mr. Gladstone having asked us, after Playfair's worst
mess, if we thought Courtney would take the place of Chairman of Ways
and Means, we told him that we thought he would only if it was
understood that it was not to lessen his chances of obtaining Cabinet
office. [Footnote: Sir Lyon Playfair, Chairman of Committees, had
suspended eighteen Irish members on July 1st.]
'When the House met at nine o'clock [Footnote: This means after the
dinner interval, for which at this time the House used to adjourn.] on
Friday, July 7th, I sounded Trevelyan' (then Chief Secretary for
Ireland) 'as to his course, and found him most anxious to stop in at
all hazards. I then saw Childers, who had walked home with Hartington
at seven. He said that he had urged Hartington not to form a weak Whig
Administration, and had told him that if Chamberlain would stay he,
Childers, would go on, but that he thought that to go on without
Chamberlain would be fatal, and that it would be far better to let the
Tories come in, and help them through with Egypt, and then make them
go to their constituents. At ten o'clock Grosvenor came and told me
that he thought that Mr. Gladstone would stay on. Chamberlain, who
still thought that Mr. Gladstone would resign, told Hartington that in
the event of the formation of a new Liberal Ministry he should insist
that Goschen should not be put in, and that the vacancies should be
filled up by myself, Courtney, and Trevelyan. At midnight the storm
had blown over.'
A Bill to prevent eviction for arrears of excessive rents had been
demanded by the Nationalist party as a necessary amendment to the Land Act
of 1881, and it had been introduced by the Government, and was carried
through _pari passu_ with the new measure of coercion. It was furiously
opposed by the high Tories, and a new crisis seemed imminent.
'On Monday, July 10th, it again seemed probable that Mr. Gladstone
would resign. The intention of the Lords to throw out the Arrears
Bill, at Lord Salisbury's dictation, was loudly proclaimed, and it was
said by Mr. Gladstone's friends that Mr. Gladstone would at once
resign, and that if Lord Salisbury refused to form a Government, Mr.
Gladstone would retire from public life. Chamberlain was determined
then to insist with either Lord Granville or Lord Hartington for
myself, Courtney, and Trevelyan, on the ground that a Liberal
Government with a Whig Prime Minister must be Radical.'
It was the apprehension of such an increase of power to the Radicals that
made the threat of Mr. Gladstone's resignation formidable both to Whigs
and Tories.
Mr. Gladstone, however, did not resign, though Mr. Bright did, after the
bombardment of Alexandria had taken place. On the contrary, by July 12th,
'so belligerent was the Prime Minister that he had now decided, in
face of the prospect of Lord Salisbury throwing out the Arrears Bill,
unless Lord Waterford on behalf of the Irish landlords begged him not
to do so, to prorogue, have another Session a week after, and pass the
Bill again.'
This quarrel between the Houses remained open till August 8th, when Lord
Salisbury, under pressure from the Irish landlords, was forced to content
himself with acquiescence under angry protest. But in the meanwhile the
Government were in other difficulties. After the bombardment of Alexandria
it was still necessary to deal with the rebellion against the Khedive,
whose authority England was seeking to support; and the Tories, allied
with a section of the peace party, offered strong resistance to any
military expedition.
'On Wednesday, August 2nd, I had a conversation with Mr. Gladstone,
who agreed in my view that if beaten we should force the county
franchise, and dissolve only if the Lords would carry that. It began
to look as if we should sit till Christmas.
'On Monday, August 7th, I had an interesting talk with Brett. Knowing
his great influence with Hartington, I complained to him of his
chief's folly in always acting as the leader of a Whig section instead
of as deputy-leader of the whole party. Brett agreed that it was
foolish in the particular case of franchise, "as he must give in at
last." I replied: "But he has given in already, and gone back again."
Brett answered: "He declares he never voted for it." This is a curious
example of Hartington's complete detachment from politics and want of
interest in them, for he had not only voted, but had made a long,
strong, and elaborate speech, explaining his reasons for so doing, and
then absolutely forgotten the whole thing, and thought that he was
still committed to opposition. At the Cabinet of the 5th he had
declared against a Franchise Bill.'
When the Session ended on August 27th the question of Sir Charles Dilke's
personal position came up. Neither his refusal of the Chief Secretaryship
nor his attitude of opposition to Mr. Gladstone's own wishes as to Egypt
had in the least impaired his standing, and promotion was felt to be his
due. The old difficulties, however, were still in the way, and Sir Charles
refused to buy his way into the Cabinet by a sham recantation. The matter
accordingly stood over, as appears from this entry:
'At this moment there were fresh discussions as to my saying something
to the Queen to get over her difficulty about receiving me into the
Cabinet. Lord Granville, in congratulating me upon the way in which I
had done the Foreign Office work, said that Mr. Gladstone had been
unable to say anything to the Queen because I had hot given him enough
upon which to go. Mr. Gladstone then wrote to me a long letter in
favour of my making some statement to my constituents, but he went on
to admit in writing what he had previously admitted in conversation--
namely, that a Committee' (to inquire into the Civil List) 'would be
wise. Therefore I at once insisted that I should have the distinct
promise of this Committee before I said anything. Mr. Gladstone's
letter came very near a promise, as he said that when any new set of
cases came forward the question of a Committee would naturally come
up, and would, he hoped, be favourably entertained. I again called in
Chamberlain, and acting with him, declined to make any statement, as I
had in no way changed my opinion, but I pressed the appointment of the
Committee, or at least the promise of one. Mr. Gladstone again
promised to communicate with the Queen.'
CHAPTER XXIX
EGYPT
JANUARY TO SEPTEMBER, 1882
I.
At the beginning of 1881 the form of government which Europe had set up in
Egypt was but young. Tewfik, the Khedive chosen by the French and British
Governments to replace Ismail, had occupied his position for less than two
years. Riaz Pasha, head of the Ministry after the fall of his predecessor
Nubar, [Footnote: There is a note of October 13th, 1880: 'I saw Nubar
Pasha about Egypt, and I had received an extremely able long letter from
Rivers Wilson asking me to interfere to restore Nubar to power, but I did
not as a fact discuss Egypt with the French.'] had brought about a mutiny
of officers early in 1879, and was carrying on public affairs with
difficulty. He had been forced to sacrifice his War Minister to the second
mutiny (of February, 1881) which followed on the arrest and secured the
release of Arabi. In the spring of the year the smouldering discontent of
the army was fanned into flame by the advance of the French to Tunis.
'On May 12th' (1881--the very date on which the French Expeditionary
Force constrained the Bey of Tunis to accept French suzerainty) 'steps
were taken on behalf of Lord Hartington, Lord Granville, and myself to
see whether, now that France had knocked another bit out of the bottom
of the Ottoman Empire by her attack on Tunis, we ought to try to get
any compensation in Egypt for ourselves. Hartington was to consult the
India Office upon the question, and I wrote to Sir Edward Hertslet,
asking him to consider how we stood with reference to the despatch of
troops through Egypt in the event of (1) a rising in India, (2) an
invasion of India by Russia.'
On July 28th, 1881, there took place at the Foreign Office the first
meeting of a Committee 'to consider the affairs of Egypt, consisting of
Tenterden, myself, Pauncefote, Malet, Scott the Judge, young Maine, and
Reilly.' Sir Charles Rivers Wilson, who had been Finance Minister under
Ismail, was called in from time to time.
'My own endeavours on this Committee were directed against increasing
internationally in Egypt, as I thought the Governments of England and
France would be driven sooner or later to occupy the country with a
joint force, and that internationality (which would mean German
influence) would then be a great difficulty in the way.'
The need for intervention soon grew urgent. On September 9th, 1881, a
large body of troops, headed by Arabi, threatened the Khedive's palace,
demanding the dismissal of all the Ministers, the convocation of a
parliament, and a great increase of the army. Again the mutiny succeeded,
and this time, in Sir Edward Malet's words, "it was more than a mutiny, it
was a revolution." Riaz Pasha was replaced by Cherif, but all real power
was in the hands of the soldiery.
The question now came to be, Who should step in to establish order? The
Sultan of Turkey, who saw a chance of making his nominal suzerainty real,
proposed to despatch troops, but confined himself to sending envoys. As a
counter-demonstration, France and England each sent a warship to
Alexandria; and Gambetta's accession to power in November meant a great
reinforcement to the policy of joint intervention.
Sir Charles was then in Paris engaged in the commercial negotiations
already described, and he chronicled in his diary a sporting suggestion:
"_September 19th_, 1881.--After the seventeenth sitting of the Treaty
Joint Commission I had an interview with Delia Sala, the Italian who
is an Egyptian General, and governs the Soudan. He is a great fencer,
and has killed his man before now. He declares himself willing to put
down insubordination in the Egyptian Army by calling out three of the
Colonels in succession. A more practical but hardly less bold
suggestion of his is that he should be allowed to increase his anti-
slavery regiment of 600 men, and then to use it as a bodyguard for
Malet instead of the putting down of slavery."
'On December 27th, 1881, Lord Granville asked me by letter to discuss
with Gambetta all the possible alternatives, and especially joint
occupation (to which Lord Granville saw objection), and a Turkish
intervention under the control of England and France (to which French
opinion was opposed): "The more you can get out of Gambetta without
committing us the more grateful we shall be." I have no recollection
of having discussed Egypt with Gambetta.'
Shortly afterwards
'Malet wrote from Cairo to Paris, telling me that he still had
confidence in the moderation of the progressist party represented by
Arabi and the Colonels, and that he was managing them through Wilfrid
Blunt, who was acting as a go-between; but a little later on the
relations between Blunt and Malet became such as to show that each had
thought he was using the other as a tool.'
"Moderation" is an ambiguous term. When the Chamber of Notables met at the
end of December, 1881, the army put forward through the Minister for War a
demand for an increase of 18,000 men. This increase the European
controllers refused to sanction, on the ground that the country could not
afford it. Thus came to pass a conflict between the national movement and
the joint European control upon an issue which united the interests of the
military party with the aspirations of the parliamentarian Nationalists
for the power of the purse. Gambetta, however, was now dominant in France,
and Gambetta had no tolerance for the pretensions of what he called a
"sham assembly." A Joint Note, dated January 6th, 1882, was issued by the
two Powers, in which England and France declared their intention to "guard
by their united efforts against all cause of complication, internal or
external, which might menace the order of things established in Egypt."
Another phrase in the Note attributed the exchange of views between the
Powers to "recent circumstances, especially the meeting of the Chamber of
Notables convoked by the Khedive," and this was naturally construed by
Nationalists to mean that parliamentary institutions were internal causes
of complication.
The issue of this Note is one of the marking-points of modern Egyptian
history. It asserted the determination of the joint Powers to make their
will obeyed in Egypt, by force if necessary. According to general
admission, its issue was due to the overmastering influence of Gambetta.
Dilke, whom everyone knew to be Gambetta's intimate, was in France almost
continuously from the time when Gambetta became Prime Minister on November
10th, 1881, till the eve of the issue of the Joint Note. In 1878, while in
Opposition, he had publicly advocated a policy of annexation in Egypt, and
it was inevitable that critics should fasten upon him a special
responsibility for the course pursued.
Yet, as the Memoir makes clear, in 'this weighty affair' Dilke had
virtually no voice. He was not in the Cabinet, and he was absent from
Paris for nearly the whole of December, taking a holiday in Provence from
commercial negotiations. Only on his return, on December 27th, did he
receive Lord Granville's letter--which was dated December 21st--asking him
to discuss with Gambetta the possible alternatives. But although the two
men met repeatedly between December 27th and January 2nd, when Dilke left
Paris, Gambetta refrained from discussing Egypt. The Memoir says, under
date January 7th, 1882:
'The Cabinet had before it the state of affairs in Egypt, and resolved
upon agreeing on Gambetta's policy of a Joint Note on the part of
England and of France in support of the Khedive against the
revolutionary party. Mr. Ashmead Bartlett, misled by the dates of
interviews, has asserted from that time to this (1890) that the Joint
Note was arranged in Paris between Gambetta and myself. I have
repeatedly denied that statement, for curiously enough it so happens
that the Joint Note was the only important matter relating to Foreign
Affairs which happened while I was at the Foreign Office in which I
was not consulted. Gambetta never broached the subject with me, and I
knew nothing of it until it was done. As we talked a little about
Egypt, I suppose that he had reasons for not wishing to speak of the
Joint Note to me, but I do not know what they were.'
II.
Sir Charles Dilke's policy for Egypt differed from that of his chief, who
always inclined to leave Turkey to undertake the necessary coercion, under
the surveillance of England and France. Dilke, with Gambetta, desired
joint intervention. [Footnote: Lord Cromer wrote to Sir Charles Dilke
asking him about a letter of M. Joseph Reinach's of July 28th, 1909, in
which the latter spoke of his doubts as to the complete sincerity of the
English Government at the time of the Gambetta Ministry. At that moment
Dilke, in whose company he had breakfasted at Gambetta's with MM. Rouvier,
Spuller, and other guests, did not, in spite of his great friendship for
Gambetta, believe in the duration of his Ministry, any more than the
English Government did. M. Reinach thought that Sir Charles Dilke's Diary
would throw an interesting light on the point as to whether, foreseeing
Gambetta's fall, the English Government did not foresee the probability of
their sole intervention in Egypt.
Sir Charles's comment was as follows:
"My diary (agreed to by Chamberlain after he had changed the opinions
he held at the time described) shows that permanent occupation was not
thought consistent with British interests by any who took a leading
part in the Cabinet action. I was not in the Cabinet until after Tel-
el-Kebir, but, as you know, I was--from the time of the riots at
Alexandria--of the 'inner Cabinet' for such purposes. Of course, all
men knew that the Gambetta Cabinet was dead before its birth. Hanotaux
... is right on this. But we wanted the Turk to go for us, and,
failing the Turk (under our lead), then Italy in place of France,
after France backed out....
"There was no moment up to '96--or perhaps '98--when if France had
known her mind and meant business she could not have had her way--
'reasonably.'
"Gambetta's policy was dominated by hatred of Russia. 'I will seek my
alliances--n'importe où, même à Berlin'--meant anywhere except at St.
Petersburg.... Say to Reinach that I tell you that I don't mind
_showing_ him the governing passages in my diaries if he wants to
_see_ them, but that they are dead against him."]
'On January 15th, 1882, I started the idea that England and France
should not act as England and France only, but should ask Europe for a
mandate, and on the 16th Lord Granville took it up, and wrote to Lord
Lyons in its favour on the 17th. I sent to Lord Granville notes of
what I proposed to say in a speech on Egypt. I pointed out that I had
been one of those who had opposed the creation of the Anglo-French
control, but that it was the invention of our predecessors. Lord Derby
had created, when Conservative Foreign Secretary, a mild form of
control, which had been raised into the sharper form of control by
Lord Salisbury, who had refused successively to Germany, to Austria,
and to Italy, any share in the control. Lord Salisbury was wholly
responsible for it; but, however great its political dangers, from the
Egyptian and the economical point of view it had worked well, and,
being there, must be maintained, as it was the only thing between us
and anarchy. It was due to the controllers that the country had been
relieved from arbitrary rule. The co-operation with France
deliberately created by Lord Salisbury must be loyally maintained.
'Lord Granville wrote back praising the proposed statement, but
suggesting that I should not run down the control so much, and not
initiate an attack upon our predecessors. Although I slightly toned
down my observations upon this occasion, when we were afterwards
attacked on the matter in the House of Commons I more than once said
everything that I had proposed to say against the control and our
responsibility for its existence.'
'On January 18th Sheffield' (Lord Lyons's secretary) 'came to see me.
He said that Gambetta was angry with Malet, as Malet was under the
influence of Wilfrid Blunt, which meant that of Arabi Bey. I wrote a
minute of our conversation upon this point, and Lord Granville
replied: "Gambetta must not drag us into too arbitrary a way of
dealing with the Egyptians. He is _très autoritaire_." On the 20th
Lord Granville received a private letter from Lord Lyons, who would
not hear of the mandatories of Europe plan for Egypt, which, however,
Mr. Gladstone had approved. It was from Lord Lyons's reply that I
discovered that Lord Granville had given the credit of the scheme to
Malet. I had never heard Malet mention any such idea; but on the next
day, January 21st, Malet did telegraph the plan, and I could not help
wondering who had sent it to him.
'On the 26th Lord Granville informed me that at the Cabinet of the
previous day my Egyptian "Mandatories" proposal had been considered,
and had been opposed by Lord Kimberley, but had received pretty
general support.'
On January 26th an event happened which destroyed the chances of joint
intervention. Gambetta fell. The policy of joint intervention in support
of any menace to the established order in Egypt, to which both Powers were
committed by the Joint Note of January 6th, now passed into the hands of
Lord Granville and of M. de Freycinet, concerning whom Sir Charles wrote
on March 9th, 1882:
'I noted that Freycinet had begun his official career by doing what he
had done when in office before--namely, asking Bismarck's consent to
every act. He was so anxious to stop the Turks from going to Egypt
that he was willing at this moment to agree even to Italian
intervention in the name of Europe; and he was personally anxious for
reconciliation with Italy.'
Meanwhile in Egypt there had been a new ministerial crisis. Cherif Pasha
was deposed from the Presidency of the Council, and Arabi was made the
Minister for War. The control, according to Sir Edward Malet, "existed
only in name." In the provinces there was anarchy. Either the order of
things established in Egypt must disappear, or intervention in some shape
was inevitable.
'On February 1st there was a Cabinet upon the Egyptian Question. Lord
Granville wrote to me before it met to say that the Cabinet had
complained that we had not told them anything about Egypt, to which he
had replied that they had received the telegrams if they had not read
them.... At this day's Cabinet Hartington alone was in favour of
Anglo-French intervention, and he fell out with Lord Granville over
it, and they were on bad terms for some time. Some of the Cabinet
wanted English intervention, and some wanted Anglo-French-Turkish
intervention....
'On March 4th there was a Cabinet, at which Hartington made a great
fight against all his colleagues, who were unanimous against him upon
the question of Anglo-French intervention in Egypt.
'On March 20th the new French Ambassador Tissot came. I had previously
known him when he was the Agent of the Government of National Defence
inhabiting the London Embassy, virtually as Ambassador but without a
staff. On this occasion he immediately startled us out of our senses
by proposing that we should depose the Khedive and set up Prince
Halim. He had converted Freycinet to this madcap view.'
Halim, the heir by Mohammedan law, was Arabi's candidate for sovereignty.
During Sir Charles's visit to France in the middle of April this
suggestion became fully official, as he learnt on returning.
'France had proposed to us to depose the Khedive and set up Halim, and
we had refused on the ground of breach of faith. On April 20th the
Cabinet decided absolutely and unanimously against any suggestion with
regard to Halim.'
Since the policy of united intervention in the name of Europe, to which
Sir Charles had sought to fix the Powers, had no longer any support in
France, and since the French proposal of a new Khedive had been rejected,
the plan of Turkish intervention which Lord Granville had always
preferred, as being the least bad, was now formally put forward.
'On April 23rd Lord Granville invented a plan of sending three
Generals to Egypt, because the French had told him that we had refused
their plan without having one of our own. The idea was that a Turkish
General should go with full powers, and accompanied by a French and an
English General, the full powers not to be used by the Turk unless his
French and English colleagues should agree.
'On Friday, May 12th, I noted in my diary that the French had suddenly
"caved in" to us about Egypt, and declared that a Turkish intervention
at the request of England and France would not be Turkish
intervention; and on Saturday, May 13th, I found Lord Granville ten
years younger than on the 12th in consequence. But the French
afterwards not only got out of this, but pretended that they had never
done anything of the kind.'
The decision to call in Turkey was not publicly announced, and the
situation at Cairo grew daily more threatening. Sir Edward Malet
telegraphed that a fanatical feeling against foreigners was being
sedulously fostered. The Governments then, says Lord Cromer, "authorized
their Consuls-General to take whatever steps they considered possible to
insure the departure from Egypt of Arabi and his principal partisans, and
the nomination of Cherif Pasha to be President of the Council." [Footnote:
Lord Cromer's _Modern Egypt_, vol. i., chap, xv., p. 273.] Acting on this
instruction, Sir Edward Malet and his French colleague, on May 25th, 1882,
handed in an official Note to the President of the Council, which
demanded, first, the temporary withdrawal of Arabi from Egypt, and,
secondly, the resignation of the Ministry. On May 26th the Egyptian
Ministry resigned. Thereupon the French Government decided that the need
for Turkish intervention had passed.
'Late on Tuesday afternoon, May 23rd, Lord Granville was in such a
hurry to adjourn the House of Lords, and bolt out of town for
Whitsuntide, that he let the French send off our Identic Note to the
Powers in a form in which it would do much harm, although this was
afterwards slightly altered. On the next day, Wednesday, the 24th, Mr.
Gladstone brought Lord Granville up to town again, and stopped his
going to the Derby, and at 1.30 p.m. they decided to call for
immediate Turkish intervention in Egypt. The necessity for it had been
caused by the childish folly of the French in trying to conceal the
fact that they had proposed in writing to us, through Tissot on the
12th, to send six ships to Alexandria, and that if in addition troops
must be employed on shore, they should be Turkish. The agreement
between England and France was useless unless it was to be known, but
if known, would have prevented the need for intervention. The most
foolish course possible was that adopted by the French in first
agreeing, and then concealing. On May 24th, at night, we proposed to
the French to call in the Turks at once, and Freycinet went to bed to
avoid answering.
'On Friday, the 26th, Tissot wrote to Lord Granville, "M. de Freycinet
telegraphs to me that he is better, and will call the Cabinet together
for to-morrow to submit to it your proposal"; and on Saturday, May
27th, accordingly, the French completely sold us, and we once more
realized the fact that they are not pleasant people to go tiger-
hunting with.'
He quotes from his diary of the moment the comment:
'"The French tried to throw us (and themselves) over as to Turkish
intervention. I wanted to say so in the House. Lord Granville
agreed."'
'On May 30th I strongly urged that we should tell the truth and say
so, and a Cabinet was called for the next day, and on the 31st decided
that we were not to say so; but Hartington agreed with me, and made
himself very disagreeable to Lord Granville and Mr. Gladstone, who
held the opposite opinion.'
Sir Charles's entry of the moment was--"Lord G. and Hartington fell out
even rather more than usual."
'On June 1st, in the House of Commons, I half said what I meant, but
Mr. Gladstone spoilt the whole debate. I noted in my diary: "When Mr.
Gladstone begins to talk on foreign affairs it is impossible to tell
what he will say--witness his revelations of a cock-and-bull telegram
of Malet's to-day as to the immediate proclamation of Prince Halim by
Arabi." On the same day, it having been decided on the previous day
that we should send ships to Egypt, Tenterden and I sent off a
telegram _en clair_ to Lord Lyons about it in order that the French
should know what we were doing....
'The Parliamentary difficulties of the Government upon the Egyptian
Question at this moment were considerable, as the Opposition were
taking with much vigour two inconsistent lines; Wolff and Chaplin
violently attacking us upon Jingo grounds because we did not intervene
by force in Egypt, and Bourke threatening us at every sign of
intervention.'
Meanwhile the Khedive had failed to form another Ministry, and on May 28th
Arabi had been reinstated, with the result that his supporters redoubled
their confidence and that panic was general among the European residents.
'On June 13th we received full information with regard to the riots
which had happened in Alexandria on the 11th' (there being a British
and a French fleet there), 'in which several British subjects had been
assaulted and our Consul severely beaten. I formed a clear opinion
that it was impossible for us not to take active steps in intervention
after this, [Footnote: A private letter of this date gives the
estimate that "there is an overwhelming public opinion here for very
strong measures; that the great majority of the Cabinet share that
view; that France is most unpopular; and that Lord Granville, Mr.
Gladstone, and Mr. Bright will apparently bow to the storm."] as we
had been acting strictly within our rights along with France and
representing joint control. If the French would not go with us in
restoring order or allow the Turks to do so, I felt that we must do it
for ourselves, but I was clearly of opinion, and have always remained
so, that it was undesirable to embark upon a prolonged occupation of
Egypt. I thought, and still think, that anarchy could have been put
down, and a fairly stable state of things set up, without any
necessity for a British occupation. The riots, however, were the cause
on my part of a considerable error. I believed on the information
furnished me from Alexandria and Cairo that they were the work of the
revolutionary leaders in the capital. A long time afterwards I
gradually came to think that this had not been so, and that they had
been purely local and spontaneous. This does not, however, affect my
judgment upon the need for intervention.
'On Wednesday, June 14th ... brought me a telegram from Wilfrid Blunt
to Arabi ... "Praise God for victory." This abominable telegram
naturally had much to do with exciting the suspicions that I have just
mentioned as to Arabi having organized the riots. But I now believe
that the English sympathizer was more extreme than the Egyptian
revolutionist. In my diaries I wrote: "Our side in the Commons are
very Jingo about Egypt. They badly want to kill somebody. They don't
know who. Mr. G., who does not like the Stock Exchange, sent 'Egypts'
up 3 1/2 per cent. by a word in his speech." [Footnote: Mr. Gladstone
on June 14th: "... The ends we have in view ... are well known to
consist in the general maintenance of all established rights in Egypt,
whether they be those of the Sultan, those of the Khedive, those of
the people of Egypt, or _those of the foreign bondholders_."] At 6.30
in the afternoon there was a Cabinet on Egypt, Chamberlain and
Hartington pressing for action, and I being most anxious that action
should take place. As there was now to be a conference at
Constantinople upon Egyptian affairs, I urged without success that
Rivers Wilson should be sent out to assist Lord Dufferin, on account
of his incomparable knowledge of Egyptian affairs, Lord Granville
refusing on the ground that "there's great jealousy of him among the
Egyptian English. He is under the charm of that arch-intriguer Nubar."
But we needed Nubar to get us out of our difficulties, and had
ultimately to call him in as Prime Minister.
'On June 15th the French Ambassador came to fence at my house at ten,
and I reported to Lord Granville: "He volunteered the statement that
Freycinet was 'an old woman'; in fact, talked in the sort of way in
which Bourke used to talk of Lord Derby in '77-'78."
'In the evening I met Musurus Bey at the French Embassy, and had a
conversation with him, which I reported and he afterwards denied, but
I don't think much importance was attached to his denial. I need not
discuss the matter, as the despatches were laid before Parliament.
'On the next day I wrote to Lord Granville: "The one thing we have to
fear is the murder of Malet or of the Khedive. If the Khedive obeys
the Sultan and returns to Cairo, it is very difficult to keep Malet at
Alexandria. I think we ought to tell the Sultan that we are sorry to
hear of the direction given to the Khedive to return to Cairo, and
tell the Khedive and Malet that we have said so. Also privately tell
the Khedive not to move." This I think was done.
'On June 17th I decided that I would resign if no steps were taken
with regard to the Alexandria massacre; but in the evening Lord
Granville telegraphed to Lord Ampthill: [Footnote: Lord Odo Russell
had become Lord Ampthill, and was still Ambassador at Berlin.] "No.
130 ... it is impossible that the present state of things should be
allowed to continue, and if the Sultan is unwilling to do anything,
some other means must be found." On the 18th, after much pressure and
a threat of resignation from me, Lord Granville telegraphed to Lord
Ampthill: "No. 131. Intimate to Prince Bismarck ... that sharing as he
does the strong wish of H. M. G. to avoid unnecessary complications,
he must feel that, even if H. M. G. did not object, as they do, public
opinion would prevent them permanently acquiescing in any arrangements
in Egypt, especially after the late massacres at Alexandria, which
would destroy not only the prestige of this country, but also of
Europe, in the East...."
'The French having, according to Count Hatzfeldt, stated to the
Germans, as reported by Lord Ampthill in his No. 214, "that to
sanction Turkish intervention in Egypt would be to commit suicide," I
proposed that we should direct Lord Ampthill to read to him Tissot's
communication of May 12th. in which the French had agreed to the use
of Turkish troops. Lord Granville assented. On June 19th Lord
Granville repeated, through Lord Ampthill, to Prince Bismarck, "the
strong warning contained in my 131 of yesterday." I afterwards found
out, however, that at the last moment, on June 17th, Lord Granville
had telegraphed withdrawing the word "must" in his No. 130, and
substituting the word "should." He afterwards telegraphed again,
resubstituting "must," and wrote to me: "I have let the word stand, as
Hartington and you attached importance to it, and as it had been
already sent." There was great trouble about this change afterwards,
for Lord Granville was not exact in saying that he had let the word
"stand." What he had done was, as I say, first to withdraw it, and
then to resubstitute it upon our strong pressure.
'On June 19th there were two meetings of the Cabinet about Egypt, to
which I was called in; one at two, and another at six o'clock. I
simply said, like the servants when they fall out: "Either Arabi must
go or I will."
'On June 20th another meeting of the Cabinet took place at half-past
three. Lord Hartington called attention to the fact that Lord
Granville had altered "must" into "should" in No. 130, for the
telegram had after all been printed for the Cabinet and the Embassies
with the word "should." The Cabinet sat for four hours, and then
adjourned to the next day, on a proposal by Northbrook and Childers to
ask the French whether they would go halves with us in sending 15,000
men to guard the Canal. On June 21st I came down a little from my
position of the previous day, and stated that I would go out with
Hartington if he liked, but that if he would not, and I stood alone,
then I would swallow Arabi on the ground that the oath to take him out
was sworn by England and France together, and that if France would not
do her half, we could not do both halves, provided that they gave me
(1) protection of the Canal, (2) a startling reparation for the
murders and the insult to our Consul at Alexandria.
'At two o'clock the Cabinet met again. Lord Granville had in the
meantime written me a letter ... as to the leaving out of "must" and
inserting "should." He said that if we changed our minds or had to
adopt palliatives, such as the defence of the Canal and reparation at
Alexandria, "our nose would be rubbed in 'must.'" I wrote back that
our position was not the same, inasmuch as he was evidently looking
forward to having to defend in Parliament a complete surrender, which
I was determined I would not do. On the same day, however, we
exchanged very pleasant letters about an accident to Lady Granville,
of which Lord Granville wrote: "It frightened me out of my wits."
'The Cabinet decided on the instructions to Dufferin for the
Conference, adopting proposals with regard to them which were made by
Chamberlain, and which were, in fact, mine. Lord Granville refused to
take them from Chamberlain, but Mr. Gladstone, with some slight
changes, made them his own, and then Lord Granville took them
directly. Northbrook went off delighted to continue his transport
preparations. Hartington warned Indian troops without consulting his
colleagues, but escaped censure. On June 23rd I suggested that
somebody should be appointed to assess damages to property at
Alexandria by the riots, as a ground for a claim against the
revolutionary Government, and suggested Lord Charles Beresford for the
work; but Lord Granville refused the man though he accepted the thing.
I obtained his consent to telegraph that we should insist on payment
of money to the relatives of the eight British subjects killed, of
money for the men hurt, of damages for the destruction of property, on
the execution of the murderers, on a salute to our flag at Alexandria,
and a salute to our flag at Cairo.
'On Saturday, June 24th, as I was only getting my way from day to day
upon these points by continually threatening resignation, Lord
Granville wrote to me in solemn reproof: "Nothing should be so sacred
as a threat of resignation." But I cannot see, and never could, why if
one intends to resign if one does not get one's way about a point
which one thinks vital, one should not say frankly exactly what one
means. I never blustered, and never threatened resignation except when
I fully meant it.
'On Sunday, June 25th, there came a curious telegram from Dufferin,
stating that the Sultan was "quite prepared to hand over to us the
exclusive control and administration of Egypt, reserving to himself
only those rights of suzerainty which he now possessed. In fact, what
he offered was an Egyptian convention on the lines of the Cyprus
convention." Lord Granville and Mr. Gladstone took upon themselves to
decline this offer without laying it before the Cabinet, and on
Tuesday, the 27th, the Queen sent to Hartington to express her anger
that the Sultan's offer of Sunday should have been declined without
consultation with her. I certainly think that a Cabinet ought to have
been called, but the Cabinet would have backed the refusal, though
they afterwards regretted it.
'On June 28th I was again sent for to the Cabinet, which discussed a
proposal from the Sultan to send troops.
'On June 30th I dined with the German Ambassador, who told me that
Musurus had said to him exactly what he had said to me at the French
Embassy, and that he had placed the conversation upon record. On the
same day two additional British gunboats were ordered to the Canal.
'On July 1st I had one of the most difficult tasks to perform that
were ever laid upon me. I had wanted to get off the Cobden Club dinner
fixed for that day; but, Lesseps having come over as a flaming Arabist
for the express purpose of making a ferocious Arabi speech at this
banquet, I had to go in order to propose his health, to sit next him
at the dinner, to frighten him out of making his speech, and to make
such a speech myself that he could not without provoking his audience
mention Egypt at all. In all this I succeeded. I told him privately
that, after the massacre of eight British subjects at Alexandria and
the promise by England and France that they would jointly keep order
in Egypt, if he introduced the subject I would speak again after him
and raise the audience against him. The old gentleman was very angry,
but he made a different speech, and the matter passed off
successfully. Lord Derby was in the chair, and gave me great
assistance, because, through Lord Granville, he allowed me to inform
Lesseps that if he began to deliver the speech which he had in his
pocket, he should rise and tell him that it was contrary to the rule
of the Club to introduce controversial topics likely to lead to
violent discussion, and, in fact, make him sit down. Lesseps brought
me a telegram from his son, who was at Ismailia, stating that there
could be no danger in Egypt unless there were an armed intervention,
and threatening us with the destruction of the Canal if intervention
should take place.
'On July 3rd there was a Cabinet on a proposal by Italy for the free
navigation of the Canal. This was most unnecessary, as a virtual
neutralization in practice existed, but the Italians wanted to do
something, and after an enormous deal of discussion they ultimately
got their way upon this unimportant point.
'On Monday, July 3rd, I received from Bourke, my predecessor, the
first warning of strong Tory opposition to British intervention in
Egypt.
'On the 4th Mr. Gladstone, Hartington, and Childers met to decide
whether the reserves should be called out and the troops sent forward,
but just before their meeting I saw Lesseps come past my door and go
to Mr. Gladstone's room at the House of Commons, which was next to
mine, and going in afterwards to Mr. Gladstone I saw the effect that
Lesseps had produced. Lesseps had a promise from Arabi to let him make
a fresh-water irrigation canal without payment for the concession, as
I afterwards discovered.
'On this day I wrote a memorandum on the subject of intervention (I
have an impression that it was based on Chamberlain's views, but I am
not sure). I pointed out that many Liberals thought that intervention
was only contemplated on account of financial interests--that if we
intervened to protect the Canal and to exact reparation due to us for
the Alexandria outrages, this feeling need not be taken into account;
but that if we were going to Cairo, we ought to make our position
clear. As far as Arabi personally was concerned, his use of the phrase
"national party" was a mere prostitution of the term. But there was in
Egypt a very real desire to see Egyptians in office, and a certain
amount of real national sentiment, and that sentiment we might
conciliate. I thought that if we intervened by ourselves the control
might be considered dead. The intervention must be placed on the
ground either of the need for settled government at Cairo, in order to
make the Canal safe and our route to India free, or else on that of
the probable complicity of the revolutionary party in the Alexandria
massacres, or on both. But in the event of such an intervention I was
of opinion that we should say that the recommendations of the Notables
for the revision of existing institutions would be favourably
considered, with the proviso, however, that the army should be either
disbanded or diminished, the only military force necessary in Egypt
being one for the Soudan and a bodyguard for the Khedive. To these
views I have always adhered, and while I strongly supported an
intervention of this kind, I was always opposed to an intervention
which made us in the least responsible for Egyptian finance, or to an
intervention followed by an occupation.
'Late on this afternoon of July 4th I secretly informed the Khedive,
through Rivers Wilson, of the instructions that had been given to
Beauchamp Seymour to bombard the Alexandria forts if the construction
of new earthworks erected against our ships were not discontinued; for
I felt that the man's life was in danger. I had been refused leave to
tell him, and I did it without leave. When I saw Wilson he told me
that Lesseps had officially informed him--Wilson being one of the
British directors of the Suez Canal, and Lesseps Chairman of the
Company--that we by our action were endangering the Canal. This was
evidently a French menace on behalf of Arabi, and I took upon myself
not to report it, as it would have only further weakened the minds of
men already weak. Lesseps was not truthful. He told Mr. Gladstone that
the Khedive had informed him that he was satisfied with the existing
situation. We immediately telegraphed to the Khedive, through
Sinadino, his Greek banker, who was representing him in London, to
ask him whether this was true, and the Khedive answered by sending us
all that had passed between him and Lesseps, from which it was quite
clear that it was not true....
'On July 5th there was a Cabinet as to the sending forward of troops,
at which it was decided to somewhat "strengthen our garrisons in the
Mediterranean." Chamberlain afterwards told me that before this
Cabinet Lord Granville had begged his colleagues to remember who Mr.
Gladstone was, and not push him too hard. On this day, however, Mr.
Bright, Lord Granville, and Mr. Gladstone stood alone against the rest
of the Cabinet in supporting a let-alone policy.'
On the 7th, as has been told in the last chapter, Mr. Gladstone, under the
combined irritation of Irish and Egyptian difficulties, used words in
debate which indicated his intention to resign, and "the two
representative Radicals," Dilke and Chamberlain, had to consider what
their course would be if he went out.
They agreed, as has been seen, to go with Mr. Gladstone and Bright; to
refuse to join a new Administration should Mr. Gladstone be outside it; to
reconsider their position if--Mr. Gladstone going to the Lords or quitting
political life--they were satisfied with the new Government's programme;
but the storm blew over. [Footnote: The full diary dealing with the
difficulties of this moment has been given in the chapter on Ireland of
this date (see supra. Chapter XXVIII., pp. 446, 447).]
'On Monday, the 10th, it again seemed probable that Mr. Gladstone would
resign,' but this time it was in consequence of the loudly expressed
intention of the Lords to throw out the Arrears Bill.
Mr. Gladstone, however, decided not to go; the majority prevailed, and Sir
Charles was able to write on Monday, July 10th:
'I had now given the reply which informed the House exactly of the
steps which would be taken. Guns having been again mounted on the 9th,
the Admiral told the Commander of the troops at daylight on July 10th
of his intention to open fire on the forts at daylight on July 11th.
Exactly one month after the Alexandria riots reparation for those
riots was tardily exacted at the same spot.'
Sir Charles's personal attitude cost him some friends in France. His
brother Ashton wrote to him from La Bourboule a letter (received on July
9th), in which he said: "To judge by the French newspapers, you are as
popular in France as Pitt at the height of the great war." A note from the
Memoir renders this state of feeling explicable: [Footnote: A very
different current in French opinion from that of the newspapers found
outlet in this letter from M. Émile Ollivier:
"SAINT TROPEZ,
"_4 Août_, 1882.
"MON CHER MONSIEUR,
"Vous avez été si aimable lorsque j'ai eu la bonne fortune de faire
votre connaissance, que vous ne pouvez douter de l'intérêt sympathique
avec lequel j'ai suivi le brillant développement de votre carrière
politique. Aujourd'hui je tiens à sortir de mon adhésion muette et à
vous exprimer combien j'admire et combien j'approuve la politique
actuelle de votre gouvernement en Égypte. Commissaire du gouvernement
égyptien auprès de la compagnie de Suez depuis près de vingt ans, j'ai
étudié de près ce qui se passait sur le Nil, et je ne crois pas céder
à un mouvement d'amitié pour le Khédive, en pensant que c'est de son
côté que se trouvent le Droit, la justice, la civilisation. Après
l'avoir intronisé, lui avoir promis de l'appui; l'avoir poussé contre
Arabi, le laisser entre les mains d'une grossière soldatesque, ce
serait une félonie doublée d'une sottise, car on perdrait ainsi ce qui
a été gagné sur la barbarie par les efforts de plusieurs générations.
Aucune paix ne vaut qu'on l'achète aussi cher. Votre pays s'honore et
se grandit en le comprenant, et sa victoire sera celle de la
civilisation autant que la sienne propre. En se séparant de vous, nos
seuls amis, en ce moment, en abandonnant le Khédive malgré tant
d'engagements répétés, les personnages qui nous gouvernent consomment
la première des conséquences qu'il était dans la logique de leurs
idées d'attirer sur nous--l'anéantissement à l'extérieur. Les autres
suivront. Nous ferons une fois de plus la triste expérience qu'on ne
supprime pas impunément de l'âme d'une nation l'idée de sacrifice, de
dévouement, d'héroïsme, pour réduire son idéal aux jouissances de la
vie matérielle et à l'amour bestial des gras pâturages. Vous êtes bien
heureux de n'en être pas là.
"Je vous félicite chaleureusement de la part que vous avez prise aux
mâles résolutions de votre gouvernement, et je vous prie de croire à
mes sentiments les plus sincèrement cordiaux.
"Émile Ollivier."]
'The French Government having ordered their ships to leave Alexandria
in the event of a bombardment of the forts, I suggested that our
sailors ought to pursue them with ironical cheers, such as those with
which in the House of Commons we were given to pursue those who walked
out to avoid a division.'
III.
From July 11th it was clear that France had decided to do nothing.
England's course of action was still undecided.
'Although reparation at Alexandria was being virtually exacted by the
bombardment, in spite of this having been put only on the safety of
the fleet and the defiance of Beauchamp Seymour's orders, yet it had
not, on account of Mr. Gladstone's opposition, up to this time been
settled that we should land troops. There was now no hope that the
threat which the French had proposed to us, and which we had accepted
in January, declaring that "the dangers to which the Government of the
Khedive might be exposed ... would certainly find England and France
united to oppose them," would be acted upon; but there was still some
idea that Turkish troops might be landed under strict safeguards for
supervision. On July 11th Chamberlain suggested to Lord Granville that
Lord Ampthill should be sent to Varzin to see Bismarck, and ask him
what intervention would be best if Turkish failed. This suggestion was
not accepted, but Lord Granville wrote to the German Ambassador to the
same effect.
'Mr. Gladstone was in a fighting humour on the next day, July 12th. I
have the notes on which he made his speech, which give all the heads,
and are interesting to compare with the speech as it stands in
Hansard. He put our defence upon "the safety of the fleet" and "safety
of Europeans throughout the East." He was indignant, in reply to
Gourley, about the bondholders, and, in reply to Lawson, about our
"drifting into war," and he certainly believed, as I believed at that
moment, that the Alexandria massacres had been the work of Arabi, for
one of his notes is: "International atrocity. Wholesale massacre of
the people, to overrule the people of that country." [Footnote: Sir
Charles, as has been said, did not adhere to his view concerning
Arabi's responsibility.]
'On July 13th the Foreign Office prepared a most elaborate despatch
from Lord Granville to Lord Dufferin, explaining the whole position of
affairs in Egypt. The despatch was much knocked about by Chamberlain
and myself. It had recited how an officer and two men of our fleet had
been killed, another officer wounded, the British Consul dragged out
of his carriage and severely injured; six British-born subjects
killed, and the Greek Consul-General beaten; but it had omitted the
important fact that a French Consular-Dragoman, and one, if not two
men of the French fleet, and several other French subjects had been
killed. The chief alterations, however, which we made, or tried to
make, in the despatch were in the direction of omitting all reference
to the financial engagements of Egypt, which we were most unwilling to
take upon ourselves in any manner. I actively pursued the question of
the outrages upon British subjects at Alexandria and of compensation.
We went into the case of Marshal Haynau, that of Don Pacifico,
[Footnote: Both cases furnished precedents for dealing with an
instance in which foreigners had been maltreated when visiting or
residing in another country. Marshal Haynau, the Austrian General
infamous for his brutalities in Italy (especially at Brescia) and in
Hungary in 1848, came to England on a private visit in 1850, went to
see Barclay and Perkins' brewery in Southwark, and was mobbed by the
employees. The Queen, in response to indignant remonstrance by the
Austrian Government, pressed the sending of a note of apology and
regret for this maltreatment of "a distinguished foreigner." Lord
Palmerston, then Foreign Minister in Lord John Russell's Ministry,
sent the Note, but added a paragraph which indicated that, in his
personal opinion, the brewery men were justified in their action, and
that Haynau had acted improperly in coming to this country at all,
knowing the feeling against him here.
Don Pacifico, a Portuguese Jew who had settled in Athens, was, as a
native of Gibraltar, a British subject. Having had his house pillaged
by a Greek mob, he appealed to the Home Government, and Lord
Palmerston sent the Fleet to the Piraeus to enforce his demand for
settlement of the claim put in. Greece appealed to Russia and France,
and part of Don Pacifico's claim was referred to arbitration by a
Convention of the Powers signed in London. Our Minister at Athens
continued to take measures which resulted in the Greek Government
giving way, and, in consequence, the French Ambassador was recalled,
while Russia threatened to recall Baron Brunnow. It was in the Don
Pacifico debate that Lord Palmerston made his great speech of five
hours, containing the famous _Civis Romanus sum_, which turned the
House of Commons in his favour, and saved him from defeat by a
majority of forty-six.] and others mentioned in a memorandum printed
for the use of the Foreign Office in August, 1877; but the inquiry
afterwards held broke down our case.
'On July 14th the Admiralty and War Office fell out; the Admiralty
maintaining that they could put down all the trouble in Egypt by the
employment of a few marines commanded by an Admiral, whereas the War
Office had set their hearts upon a great expedition under Wolseley.
'On July 16th the German Ambassador complained of my having stated in
the House of Commons that Germany approved our action, not denying the
fact that she did, but saying that such "announcements made
confidential communications impossible," and I had to reply that,
while Austria had approved and Germany not disapproved, I was not
justified in stating that Germany had approved, although there had
been "circumstances calculated to make me believe that such had been
the case." On July 16th Wolff wrote to me from the country: "I suppose
Bright has resigned. _Si sic omnes_ except yourself." Bright had
resigned, and there were some who were anxious that I should be put
into the Cabinet in his place, but I was not one of them. On July 17th
Wilfrid Blunt was at the window of the St. James's Club in Piccadilly,
and, seeing me pass, cried out to Lord Blandford and others who were
with him: "There's Dilke that has done it all." That seemed to me to
be an answer to those who wanted me put in in the place of Bright.
"The great peace man goes out, and they want-Mr. Gladstone to put in a
man who is looked upon as a war man, although he thinks he is not and
thinks he is right." ...
'On July 18th I received a letter from Labouchere which was
characteristic: "Dear Dilke,--I am one of those who regretted that the
late Government did not seize Egypt.... Many on our side--being fools
--regret that we ever interfered in Egypt.... Personally I think ...
unless you seize upon the opportunity ... to establish yourselves
permanently in Egypt, you all deserve to be turned out of office.
Success is everything. This is the 'moral law' as understood by the
English nation. Bombard any place, but show a _quid pro quo_." There
was, however, no member of the Government, unless it was Lord
Hartington, who held these views, and not one who at this moment even
contemplated a permanent occupation, though I was fearful that unless
the matter was fairly faced, in advance, upon the lines which I had
suggested, a permanent occupation would be set on foot.
'Late on July 18th there was a Cabinet to discuss a proposal from me
to tell Dufferin in a "personal" telegram that we should not object to
Italy being third with England and France; which was afterwards
expanded into a direct invitation, upon my suggestion, for Italy to go
with us without France, which Italy declined. [Footnote: The reason
for Italy's refusal will be found explained in the Appendix to this
chapter (p. 477) in a letter from Baron Blanc, who was Italian
Ambassador at Constantinople.]
'After the sitting Lord Granville told me that Mr. Gladstone's letter
to Bright about his resignation was far from pleasant in tone, and had
put an end to a very long friendship. Morley, in his _Life of
Gladstone_, states the contrary, but he is wrong. [Footnote: _Life of
Gladstone_, iii. 83-90.]
'On July 19th I suggested that Arabi had probably told the people in
Cairo that he had defeated us at Alexandria, and that it would be well
to inform the Khedive, and through him the Governor of Cairo, that
intervention was about to take place on a scale which would make
resistance ridiculous, and Lord Granville asked Sinadino to do this.
'On July 20th the German first secretary came to me about Bismarck's
complaint of my speech, and Lord Granville wrote back in reply to my
report of the conversation: "I do not think much of Stumm's
observations.... There is something in Bob Lowe's maxim, never to
admit anything; but if you do, I have always found it better to shut
the admission against any rejoinder." After all, Count Münster
admitted that we had the "moral support" of Germany, and I could not
myself see much difference between "moral support" and "approval."
Lord Granville even reported in writing that we had Bismarck's "good
wishes, good will, and moral support," and I certainly could not see
that I was wrong. The last position of all of Bismarck was that we
were not justified in saying even "moral support," but that we had his
"best wishes," I think he must have had a touch of gout at the moment
when he read my speech.
'A Cabinet was to have been held early on July 20th to decide to send
out an army corps; Mr. Gladstone forgot to call it, and it had to be
brought together suddenly (some members being absent), and agreed to
the proposal for a vote of credit. Mr. Gladstone informed his
colleagues that he should not meet Parliament again in February, but
should leave the House of Commons after the Autumn Session, if not
before it. Late at night there came the news that Arabi had turned the
salt water from the Lake into the great fresh--water canal, and I had
to go to inform Mr. Gladstone and Childers in their rooms. Their
replies were full of character. Mr. Gladstone dramatically shivered,
and said with a grimace: "What a wicked wretch!" Childers said: "How
clever!"
'Early in the afternoon of Saturday, July 22nd, when the House of
Commons sat, I was two hours in Mr. Gladstone's room with Lord
Granville, Northbrook, and Childers. There had been a mistake in the
vote of credit, really a blunder of £1,300,000; not of £1,000,000
only, as was afterwards pretended, for the estimate had been cut down
in the meantime. It was entirely Northbrook's fault, ... but Childers,
like a good-natured fellow, in spite of their many quarrels, let it
rest upon his shoulders, where the public put it. In the course of our
conversation it came out that Childers was in hot water with the
Queen, and had sent her a letter of apology on the Friday night, Mr.
Gladstone writing at the same time that he himself had nothing to add
to what Childers said. Childers broke out against the Duke of
Cambridge, who "went chattering about the place, refused to behave as
a subordinate, and wrote direct to the Queen." I guessed that the
trouble had been either about the employment of the Duke of Connaught
or about the sending of the Household Cavalry; both of which had been
decided. The Queen likes the Duke of Connaught to be employed, but
never to run the slightest risk; and in dealing with soldiers this is
a little awkward. The Duke of Cambridge was always a great source of
trouble to Governments, Liberal or Conservative, for even Conservative
Governments have, from the necessity of the case, to desire military
reform. He is essentially not a grandson, as history tells us, but a
son of King George III., just such a man as the royal Dukes whose
oaths and jollity fill the memoirs of the time of the great war. But
the Duke of Cambridge ... knows how to stop all army reform without
incurring personal responsibility or personal unpopularity with the
public. A distinguished General once said to me: "When we are invaded
and the mob storm the War Office, the Duke of Cambridge will address
them from the balcony, and, amid tumultuous cheering, shout, 'This is
what those clever chaps who have always been talking about army reform
and brains have brought us to,' and lead them on to hang the Secretary
of State for War."
'On Monday, July 24th, there was a Cabinet to consider the obstruction
of the French, who were trying to prevent our intervention. I was not
called in, but I believe that my suggestion as to Italy was again
mentioned, for on Tuesday, the 25th, Lord Granville told me that he
had been intending to ask the Italians to go with us, but that the
Queen had objected and caused the loss of a day, and that he thought
he should be able to ask them on the morrow.
'On July 25th I made a speech which was much liked by the House, and
Northcote congratulated me quite as warmly as did our own people. When
Mr. Gladstone was finishing his letter to the Queen late at night,
Chamberlain asked him to let him look at it, which I never had the
"cheek" to do. The phrase about me was "answered the hostile
criticisms with marked ability and with the general assent of the
House," and there was no praise of Chamberlain's own speech, which had
been spoilt by mine. On this occasion, as in the great Zulu debate in
the previous Parliament, when he had been my seconder, it so happened
that I took all Chamberlain's points beforehand, and in almost the
very words in which he had meant to take them. On the other hand, on
occasions when he spoke before me and I had to follow, as, for
example, in the famous debate with Randolph Churchill about the Aston
riots, [Footnote: At the height of Mr. Chamberlain's influence in
Birmingham Lord Randolph Churchill proposed to stand against him, and
held a meeting at Aston. Lord Randolph accused Mr. Chamberlain in the
House of Commons of having hired roughs to break up this meeting.] the
converse occurred. This was, of course, the inevitable result of our
habit of very free and continual conversation.
'When we sounded Paget in advance as to our invitation to the Italians
on this evening, he replied that "if we pressed her, swearing she
would ne'er consent, she _would_ consent." But, although I afterwards
thought and said that I had been amazed at her refusal, my notes of
the moment show that I had anticipated it.
'On July 27th a new element of disturbance was introduced by the
Prince of Wales applying to the Government for leave to take a
military command in Egypt. The Queen at once interfered to stop it;
some members of the Cabinet consulted together at a sudden meeting in
the Cabinet room at Downing Street, to which I was called in,
Childers, Northbrook, and Mr. Gladstone being present, and it was
decided to back the Queen's refusal. It was agreed between Lord
Northbrook, Childers, and myself that for the future I should see all
the Admiralty and War Office telegrams.
'At 5.30 there was a regular Cabinet to consider the tardy consent of
the Turks to send troops at once. They were informed that
circumstances had changed, and that we must go on with our
intervention; but that they would be allowed to occupy forts not at
Alexandria.
'One of the first Admiralty telegrams that were brought to me was one
which directed the Admiral to inform the Khedive that we were going to
restore his authority, which was the most emphatic thing which I had
seen.'
On July 29th M. de Freycinet's Government was defeated on a vote of credit
for money to send ships to protect the Suez Canal, [Footnote: A new
Ministry was formed under M. Duclerc.] and so terminated all possibility
of France's partnership in the enterprise. On the same day General
Menabrea politely refused an invitation that Italy should co-operate.
But the Turks were still disposed to assist, on their own terms, and these
did not yet make it clear what, if they landed, would be their attitude
towards Arabi and his partisans. Accordingly,
'On Monday, July 31st, we had to tell the Turks that if they insisted
on going to Alexandria we should sink them, and matters began to look
like a second Navarino.
'On Thursday, August 3rd, the Cabinet approved our previous proposals
to send instructions to the Admiral not to allow the Turks to land in
Egypt until they agreed to all our terms.
'On Tuesday, August 8th, Childers insisted that if Turks landed in
Egypt they should not be treated as allied forces, but as a portion of
our forces under our General. Lord Granville, Hartington, and
Northbrook thought this too strong, and it was left to the Cabinet to
decide, and on the next day, Wednesday, the 9th, Harcourt expressed
his concurrence with the majority.'
'About this time I had a letter from Dufferin, describing how he had
tried to frighten the Sultan by the bogey of an Arab caliph. But
Dufferin was at this moment in despair; the face of politics changed
too rapidly for Turkish diplomacy, and just as he had succeeded in
getting the Turks to send troops to Egypt, as he had been told to do,
it was so much too late that we had to tell them that we should sink
them if they went--so doubtless the Turks were a little confused in
their minds as to what we really wanted.'
The Memoir now carries the story down to the close of the expedition by
which Sir Garnet Wolseley destroyed Arabi's power in the Battle of Tel-el-
Kebir.
'_August 10th_.--At this moment the Prince of Wales being most anxious
as to what was going on in Egypt, and having again failed to obtain
the telegrams, I promised that I would write to him daily, or whenever
there was anything of importance, and keep him informed, and this I
did.
'On August 16th there was a debate in which we defended the general
policy of the expedition, and I again have Mr. Gladstone's notes for
his reply to Sir Wilfrid Lawson, in which he again asserted that the
supporters of Arabi Pasha were not only rebels, but criminals as well,
accusing them of misuse of a flag of truce, and of deliberately
setting fire to the town of Alexandria.
'On August 17th I had a visit from a brother of the Khedive, Ibrahim
Pasha, who said: "I want to go to Egypt. I should be very glad to go
as a Sub-Lieutenant, although there may be a little difficulty, for I
am a Field-Marshal in the Turkish Army." This modest youth, who looked
like the full moon, had been trained at Woolwich, spoke English well,
and was a devout Mohammedan, thought that he would be of use to us,
but his brother would no more let him land in Egypt than he would any
of the other and abler brothers.'
Parliament was prorogued on August 27th.
'On August 28th Mr. Gladstone thought that we should refuse to make a
Convention with the Turks, which they had now agreed to. But Lord
Granville and I thought that we had better make it for the sake of the
effect in Egypt, and Mr. Gladstone half yielding, our willingness was
telegraphed. On September 5th, however, Lord Granville told me at
Walmer that the Queen was strongly opposed to the Convention, and I
noted that this was the first time when I had ever known the Queen and
Mr. Gladstone to be agreed upon any subject.
'We took time by the forelock as a Government with regard to the
preparation in advance, and, even before our landing in Egypt, for
that which was to happen after the revolutionary movement was put
down. Sir A. Colvin thought that 4,000 men in addition to the military
police would be ample for the security of the country, and Sir E.
Malet appeared to agree. Mr. Gladstone wrote a minute himself upon the
future of the country, in which he proposed to act upon all my ideas.
He suggested the banishment of Arabi, a minimum military force
'(Egyptian),' a large police force, in which Indian Mohammedans were
to be allowed to enlist; but he wished a small British force to remain
temporarily in the country--a point to which I was much opposed,
inasmuch as I felt certain that if we stayed there at all we should
never be able to come away.
'A good deal of Cabinet work fell upon me at this moment because
Harcourt buried himself in the New Forest, and Chamberlain went away
to Sweden, asking me for a full table of instructions as to what he
was to do as to calling upon Kings, inasmuch as, he declared in his
letter, I was his _arbiter elegantiarum_. I went down to Birmingham in
his absence to see my son' (who was living at Mr. Chamberlain's
house). 'Hartington came up to town now and then, but apparently was
soon tired of it, as in the middle of September he wrote to me to ask
what was the meaning of the Cabinet on the 13th which he meant "to
shirk." There were two Governments at this moment--the one consisting
of Childers and Northbrook in London, carrying on operations in Egypt;
and the other consisting of Lord Granville at Walmer and Mr. Gladstone
at Hawarden, connected by the telegraph, explaining them to the
Powers.
'During the period of the invasion of Egypt by us I used to meet
Childers, Northbrook, and Hartington at the War Office almost every
day, when Hartington was in town, and the other two when Hartington
was away. Tel-el-Kebir was on September 13th, and we met on that day
as well as the days before and immediately after.
'Immediately after Tel-el-Kebir I had from Auberon Herbert a letter,
which began: "My dear successful Jingo, whom Heaven confound, though
it does not appear to have the least intention of doing so.... How I
hate you all! But am bound to admit you have managed your affair up to
this point skilfully and well. The gods, however, do not love, says
Horace, people who have three stories to their houses."'
APPENDIX
'The refusal of the Italian Cabinet was afterwards explained to me in a
most interesting letter from Baron Blanc, at that time (March, 1888)
Italian Ambassador at Constantinople, and afterwards (December, 1893)
Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs:
'"The refusal of the Cabinet of Rome in 1882 to intervene, with England
only, as allies in Egypt was a success of French diplomacy, but at the
same time a result of the past policy of England.
'"Nothing on the part of England had prepared the Italian Government to
believe it possible that England would cease to gravitate towards France
in Mediterranean questions, especially when Mr. Gladstone was in power.
The hope that England would join the Italian-German understanding,
concluded in principle in 1882, had remained in these early days merely
theoretic. The Mancini Cabinet, in doing that which Minghetti, Visconti,
Bonghi--the old Right, in short--had not dared to do--that is, in drawing
towards the Central Powers--did not go so far as to understand that the
rupture of the English-French condominium in Egypt--brought about in 1881-
82 by the appearance on the scene of the Arabi party, secretly pushed from
Berlin--offered Italy the chance of leading Gladstone himself to lean on
Italy and her allies, and no longer upon Paris and Petersburg; or, if it
was understood, faith and courage were wanting.
'"It was an axiom with Menabrea, with Nigra, with Corti, that Italy and
England herself could do nothing in the Mediterranean without France,
still less do anything against France. The last conversation of Corti with
Crispi shows plainly his conviction that a real alliance of Italy and
England was a Utopia. How many times after 1870 had not Italy been
disappointed in attempts to obtain from England a share of influence in
Egypt! How many times had not Italy been sacrificed to the private
arrangements of England with France in Egyptian affairs! How could the
idea that Germany was to replace France in the Eastern policy of Italy and
England have entered into the mind of the Cabinet of Rome when it had not
entered into the mind of the Cabinet of St. James's!
'"A thousand financial, journalistic, parliamentary connections attached
to France both the Gladstone Cabinet and the Ministry of Mancini--the
legal counsel of M. de Lesseps. The dream of treble condominium in Egypt
was strong in Mancini and Depretis, as in Minghetti, Visconti, and
Cairoli. This dream was encouraged by the Cabinet of Paris, which kept
Italy in tow by this vain hope, and also by the fear of fresh French
enterprises in Africa, for the French threatened Italy with renewing in
Tripoli the precedent of Tunis if Italy broke towards French policy in the
East the bonds contracted between them in the Crimean War and the treaties
of 1856.
'"The reserve, the abstention of Germany and Austria, which Powers
pretended to disinterest themselves from the Egyptian question, and opened
to France in Africa a chance of compensation for the loss of Alsace,
helped to keep Mancini and Depretis, tied also by party connections to the
French democracy, in the absurd idea that Italy could keep herself in
stable equilibrium between two alliances--an alliance with Germany in
Continental affairs, and with France in Mediterranean questions. This idea
had for its result to render unintelligible for the Italian public the
alliance of Italy with the Central Powers, sterilized and perverted
through not being boldly applied by Italy to the affairs of the
Mediterranean and of the Levant. But once again Italy did not believe
herself strong enough to overcome the indifference which England showed
for Mediterranean questions--more and more thrown into the background in
English minds by the interests of the British colonial empire in distant
seas. Australia seemed looked upon at London as more important than Turkey
or Egypt itself, and the idea that the first line of defence of India is
at Constantinople, the seat of the Khalifat, seemed forgotten by the
successors of Disraeli. It took seven years for the idea, born in 1881, of
making Italy a connecting link in an Anglo-German alliance, to become a
practical one at Home, as it did under Crispi.
'"To return to the question of the refusal of Italy to intervene alone
with England in Egypt in 1882, it is necessary to know that when the
French Government was informed of the drawing together of Italy and of the
Central Powers, France hastened at the end of 1881 to exercise pressure
upon the Mancini-Depretis Cabinet by threatening it, not only with fresh
enterprise in Tripoli, but with direct hostility if Italy took sides
against France in those Egyptian affairs which were at that moment
becoming complicated. The Radical Committees of France and Italy were
threatening armed movements in the former Papal States, and French money
was spent in the Italian elections of 1881. The greater part of the
Italian Press was bought up by a Gambetta-Wilson group in such a way that
Italian opinion was directed from Paris by the Italian newspapers, as it
had already been by the Stefani-Havas Agency. The effect of this
preparation was seen when the bombardment of Alexandria was taken as the
text for a general opening of fire on the part of the Italian and French
Press against England. When Freycinet refused the English proposal for
treble intervention, he caused it to be known at Rome that France would
look upon it as an act of hostility on the part of Italy if that Power
should take in Egypt the position which belonged to France, and occupy,
without France, any portion of Egyptian territory.
'"He also used as a bait to Mancini the idea of a treble condominium, by
making him believe that Italy and Russia could, by procuring for a treble
intervention the adhesion of the whole concert of European Powers, prevent
it becoming dangerous from the point of view of the two-faced policy of
which Germany was suspected at Rome. To act so that France could, without
the fear of a snare on the part of Germany, intervene in Egypt with Italy
and England--such was the part which France proposed to Mancini that he
should play, and which he accepted and did play in the Constantinople
conference. The outward and visible sign of this programme was that
wonderful patrol of the Canal which was adopted in principle on the motion
of Corti, and was intended to lead up to the treble condominium by the
treble occupation of the Suez Canal with a mandate of Europe. 'Success
seemed certain,' funnily declared the Mancini telegrams of the moment,
when came the British invitation to Italy for a double intervention.
Neither Menabrea, nor Mancini, nor Corti, took this invitation seriously,
and they saw in it only the hesitation of England, a Power which they
supposed entirely incapable of such boldness as isolated action. They
never believed for a moment but that the refusal by Italy of a double
intervention would have for effect a treble occupation. You know how this
illusion of a treble occupation died a wretched death in the ridiculous
appearance of Italian and French ships in the neighbourhood of the Canal
just at the moment when Wolseley seized it before Tel-el-Kebir.
'"The same idea of becoming the binding link in Mediterranean affairs, not
between Berlin and London, but between Paris and London, continued to
animate Mancini and Depretis even after England had become the sole power
in occupation of Egypt. The expedition to Massowah in 1885 was an
expression of this tendency. From the beginning of 1884, in face of the
Hicks disaster, of the prolongation of the British occupation, of the
return to power of Nubar, France considered a plan for disembarking at
Massowah troops recalled from Tonquin, where she was supposed to be safe
after the success of Sontay. In order not to leave without some
counterweight in the Red Sea the consolidation of British domination in
Egypt, France would have returned to Egypt by Massowah and the Soudan.
When she decided to suspend this operation, she advised it to Italy as a
means of giving expression to the Franco-Italian view of the
internationality of the Canal and Red Sea. Mancini, whom the Italian
Chamber blamed for having not taken part in the colonial fever which had
affected Germany herself in 1884-85, adopted the idea of an expedition to
Massowah at the moment when Wolseley seemed likely to enter Khartoum.'
'"We have not as yet been able to get out of this trap in which we are
caught, and in which the Russians and French try to keep us paralyzed.
Capital and disastrous blunders, evident contradictions with the idea of
the alliance of Italy with the Central Powers, completed by the
understanding with England! But England herself, is she without fault? Is
her Egyptian policy more clear and more strong? Is she not herself in
Egypt also taken in the toils of Franco-Levantine influences, as dominant
at Cairo as they are at Constantinople? It is not on the national and
Mohammedan spirit that England in Egypt leans, but on Franco-Levantine
cliques and Graeco-Armenian cliques sold to French finance. Hence the
decline of British influence in the Levant. The memorandum which I have
sent shows what a different line Italy and England may follow if they do
not wish the Mediterranean to become a Franco-Russian lake, and the
Khalif, in the character of a new Bey of Tunis, lending the flag of the
Prophet to Russia for the conquest of India and to France to complete her
African Empire."
'The memorandum enclosed by him to which he refers was sent by him for the
purpose that it should be communicated by us to friends in Rome who were
likely to bring it before Crispi, whose Foreign Minister in 1893 Blanc
became.'
CHAPTER XXX
ENTRY INTO THE CABINET
SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER, 1882
I.
Part of Sir Charles's routine was his morning bout of fencing. [Footnote:
Sir Charles's fencing seems to have dated from 1874, during his stay in
Paris after his first wife's death. Fuller reference to fencing at 76,
Sloane Street and to his antagonists will be found in Chapter XLVII. (Vol.
II., pp. 233, 234). ] This was the relaxation which he managed to fit into
his crowded daily life, but his weekly holiday he spent upon the river. He
notes, just before the Parliamentary crisis due to the bombardment of
Alexandria:
'At this time I had given up the practice of going out of town to stay
with friends for Sundays, and I did not resume it, for I found it
better for me to get my work done on the Saturday night and my Foreign
Office boxes early on the Sunday morning, to go to the Abbey on the
Sunday morning at ten, and after this service to go on the river, and
go to bed at eight o'clock at least this one night in the week, and I
bought a piece of land at Dumsey Deep, near Chertsey, with the view of
building a cottage there.'
It was not here, however, that he built his riverside house, but close by,
at Dockett Eddy, which he bought in the following summer. [Footnote: A
fuller account of life in his riverside home is to be found in Chapter LI.
(Vol. II., pp. 317-324).] The two pieces of ground were connected by a
long strip of frontage which he acquired, thereby saving the willows and
alders which then sheltered that reach, and made it a windless course for
sculling. Even more perfect was it, by reason of its gravelly bottom, for
another form of watermanship. On Sunday, October 22nd, 1882,
'after Westminster Abbey I went down to Teddington, and took a lesson
in punting from Kemp, the Teddington fisherman, and from this time
forward became devoted to the art, for which I gave up my canoeing.'
His resolve to spend his Sundays in retreat on the river did not pass
without protest from his friends, as is shown by a characteristic letter
from Sir William Harcourt:
"CUFFNELLS, LYNDHURST,
"_August 28_, 1882."
"DEAR DILKE,"
"Don't be an odious solitary snipe in the ooze of the Thames, but come
down here at once and nurse Bobby.
"Yours ever, W. V. H."
"Bobby" was Mr. Robert Harcourt, now M.P. for the Montrose Burghs.
He replied:
"LALEHAM FERRY (_for this night only.
I shall be at the P.O. every day this week_).
"_August 29th._
"MY DEAR HARCOURT,
"I went to bed on Saty. night at dark and on Sunday night at dark.
Last night I was late from London, and sat up till nearly 9! Bobby
himself can hardly beat that, can he? On the other hand, he does not
get a swim in the Thames at 5 a.m., or breakfast at 6, as I do.
"It is very good of you--and like old times--for you to press me to
come down, and, believe me, I should like my company. But when, as
now, I am splendidly well, and only want to make up arrears of sleep,
the river is the best place for me. I shall go to Walmer next week,
but then that is sea, and sea is sleepy too; and I have all my work
there with the telegraph in the House, and messengers four times a day
as if I was in the F.O., so I can be away--and yet be on duty--as I
promised to be till 19th or 20th Septr....
"... This is the longest letter that I was ever known to write in all
my life, except perhaps once or twice to you in the old days."
It had now been decided that Wentworth Dilke, being eight years old,
should go to school and leave Mr. Chamberlain's house, of which he had
been an inmate for some eighteen months.
'On the day of Tel-el-Kebir I received a very pleasing letter from
Chamberlain, thanking me for what I had said to him about his
reception for so long a period at Highbury of my son. It was a
touching letter, which showed both delicacy and warmth of affection.'
On September 21st Sir Charles Dilke went to Birmingham to take his boy to
Mrs. Maclaren's school at Summerfields, near Oxford. 'Then crossing to
Waterford, spent five days in the South of Ireland--and afterwards went
straight to St. Tropez to stay with M. Émile Ollivier.' "Il faut fermer la
boutique et alors on se trouve tout de suite bien," is his comment as he
started on one such journey.
'During my visit to Ollivier I explored the south coast of the
mountains of the Moors, along which there was no road, and bought some
land at Cavalaire, against the possible chance of a boulevard being
made through my land at Toulon in such a way as to cut me off from the
sea. I walked from Bormes to the Lavandou upon the coast, and fancied
I found the path by which St. Francis journeyed when he landed to save
Provence from the plague. It is hollowed out by feet, in some places
to three feet deep through the hard quartz and schist, and everywhere
at least six inches, so its age is evidently great, and it must have
been a path in the days of Saracen domination, if not even in or
before the Roman times, for the two villages were ever small.
'At Ste. Claire, the first bay eastward from the Lavandou, I had seen
a funeral in which all the crucifixes were borne before the corpse by
women, and the coffin carried by women. Ollivier's father was still
living--Démosthène, born under the First Republic, and a deputy under
the Second: an old Jacobin of an almost extinct type. Ollivier's house
is as pretty as the whole coast. It stands on a peninsula with perfect
sands, one or other of which is sheltered for bathing in any wind, and
instead of the usual parched sterility of Provence, springs rise all
round the house, which is lost in a dense forest of young palms. The
views are not from the house, but from the various shores of the
peninsula, all these, however, being close at hand. I had for escort
in my trips about the coast the famous Félix Martin, founder and Mayor
of St. Raphael and of Valescure, a railway engineer who was known as
the American of Provence, and who, in fact, is the most desperate and
the most interesting and pleasant speculator of France. Speaking to me
of Fréjus, my favourite town, and its surroundings, Martin called it
"the Roman Campagna on the Bay of Naples," a very pretty phrase,
absolutely true of it, for the scenery is that of the plain between
Naples and Capua, but the ruins and the solemnity of the foreground
were those of the outskirts of Rome till Martin spoilt it. At the spot
where I bought my land eighty boats of Spanish and Italian coral
fishers were at anchor. I picked up Roman tiles upon my ground, and
found a Roman tomb in the centre of my plot.'
'I was struck with some of the old châteaux in the woods as I returned
along the coast to Toulon. Near Bormettes there are two which were
nationalized at the Revolution, and the families of the buyers, having
turned Legitimist and put stained glass into the chapel windows, are
now becoming nobles in their turn, at all events in their own
estimation, and thriving upon cork and American vines.[Footnote: The
piece of land at Cavalaire was never built on by Sir Charles, but he
remained owner of it till 1905, when it was sold by him. His
friendship with the Ollivier household continued till the end of his
life.]
'It was during this visit that Ollivier made use of a phrase which I
have repeated: "When one looks at the Republic one says: 'It can't
last a week--it is dead.' But when one looks at what is opposed to it,
one says: 'It is eternal.'"'
The true inner history and genesis of the Franco-Prussian War formed
matter for talk with Ollivier, who was among the half-dozen men in Europe
best able to inform Sir Charles on the question. The Memoir records a
reminiscence told by M. Ollivier.
'When the war broke out, he naturally asked the Emperor about his
alliances. The Emperor, who was singularly sweet and winning in his
ways, smiled his best smile but said nothing, walked to a table,
unlocked a drawer, and took out two letters-one from the Emperor of
Austria, and the other from the King of Italy, both promising their
alliance. But, although this was Ollivier's story, the Italian letter
must have been conditional. Ollivier set down the defeat to this
slowness of action, and supineness, due first to the Emperor's firm
belief that Austria would move, and then to his stone in the bladder
and refusal to let anyone else command. At a later date I became aware
of the true story, which was that afterwards told by me in
_Cosmopolis_. [Footnote: "The Origin of the War of 1870," by Sir
Charles Dilke, _Cosmopolis_, January, 1896.] Austria had declined to
join in a war begun in the middle of the summer. It had been fixed for
May, 1871. Bismarck found this out from the Magyars, and made the war
in 1870.'
To the detail thus gained at first hand Sir Charles Dilke added another in
the next year. On February 1st, 1883, he met at Sir William Harcourt's
house the Italian Ambassador Count Nigra, who had been in 1870 Minister in
Paris:
'He told me that in 1866 the Italians had sent to Paris to ask whether
they should join Prussia or Austria, both of whom had promised to give
them Venice, and how the Emperor had told them that Italy was to join
Prussia as the weaker side, and that when the combatants were
exhausted he intended to take the Rhine. Nigra also told me that in
1870 the Emperor had told him that he meant peace, and that it was
Gramont on his own account who had told Benedetti to get from the King
of Prussia the promise for the future. This was all superficial, as we
now know that Nigra was, as the Empress Eugénie said in 1907, a "false
friend." Nigra said that Bismarck had made the war by telegraphing his
own highly coloured account of the interview; for the French official
account, which had only reached Paris (according to Nigra) after war
had been declared, had shown that the King had been very civil to
Benedetti, although the French Ambassador had persisted in raising the
question no less than three several times.... [Footnote: The famous
interview at Ems between the King of Prussia and M. Benedetti, the
French Ambassador at Berlin, is referred to. See Benedetti, _Ma
Mission en Prusse_, chap. vi.; _Bismarck, His Reflections and
Reminiscences_, translated from the German under the supervision of A.
J. Butler, vol. ii., chap, xxii.; _Life of Granville_, vol. ii., chap.
ii.]
'On my return through Paris in September, 1882, I had interviews with
Duclerc, the French Prime Minister, and with Nubar, as well as with
Gambetta. Duclerc I found a cross old man, who was furious because I
mentioned Madagascar. On the Tunis capitulations I found the French
willing to come to an agreement; but Egypt, the Suez Canal, the Congo,
the Pacific Islands, and Newfoundland were all of them difficult
questions at this time....
'In a talk with Gambetta on October 19th he said to me that it was his
intention, "whether _I_ liked Duclerc or not," to keep him in power,
whether he does what he ought, does nothing, or does what is
ridiculous. The curse of France is instability. Duclerc is an honest
man.' Gambetta was 'aged and in bad spirits.'
Sir Charles communicated this expression through Mr. Plunkett, the British
Chargé d'Affaires, to M. Duclerc. "I gave him the third alternative in
more diplomatic language," Mr. Plunkett wrote, "but he understood me, and
we laughed over the idea."
A general reflection of this year is that 'Gambetta hates fools in theory,
and loves them, I think, in practice.'
In London during the autumn session Sir Charles records some interesting
gossip, to which may be added this first entry of earlier date:
'Lord Granville was a most able man, who did not, in my opinion,
decline in intellectual vigour during the many years in which he took
a great part in public affairs. He always had the habit of
substitution of words, and I have known him carry on a long
conversation with me at the Foreign Office about the proceedings of
two Ambassadors who were engaged on opposite sides in a great
negotiation, and call "A" B, and "B" A through the whole of it, which
was, to say the least of it, confusing. He also sometimes entirely
forgot the principal name in connection with the subject--as, for
example, that of Mr. Gladstone when Prime Minister--and had to resort
to the most extraordinary forms of language in order to convey his
meaning. The only other person in whom I have ever seen this
peculiarity carried to such a point was the Khedive Ismail, who sent
for me when I was in office and he in London, and when the Dervishes
were advancing upon Egypt, to say that he had an important piece of
information to give the Government, which was the name of a spot at
which the Dervishes might easily be checked, owing to the narrowness
of the valley. He kept working up to the name, and each time failing
to give it, so that I ultimately went away without having been able to
get from him the one thing which would have made the information
useful. Each time he closed his speech by saying, "Le nom de ce point
important est--chose--machine--chose," and so on...
'On Thursday, November 2nd, I breakfasted with Mr. Gladstone to meet
the Duc de Broglie. We discussed the question of the authorship of the
pretty definition of Liberal-Conservatives as men who sometimes think
right, but always vote wrong. But even Arthur Russell, who was at the
breakfast with his wife, could throw no light upon the matter. Madame
Olga Novikof was also present, and, of course, the Duc de Broglie took
me into a corner to ask me if it was true that Mr. Gladstone was
absolutely under her influence. She announced her intention of going
the next day to Birmingham, and Mr. Gladstone asked Chamberlain to go
with her, although he did not know her and although there was a
Cabinet; but Chamberlain refused.
'In the evening of November 15th there dined with me John Morley, Lord
Arthur Russell, and Gibson, afterwards Lord Ashbourne, Huxley, the
Rector of Lincoln, and some others; and, thanks to Gibson, who was
very lively, the conversation was better than such things often are.
He was deep in the secrets of Randolph Churchill...
'I was asked from 24th to 27th to stay with the Duke and Duchess of
Edinburgh at Eastwell Park, but was also asked to Sandringham.
'The Princess of Wales told me a story of the Shah which had amused
her. Walking with her at the State Ball, he had clutched her arm, and
with much excitement asked about the Highland costume which he had
seen for the first time. Having thus got the word "Écossais" into his
head, and afterwards seeing Beust with his legs in pink silk
stockings, he again clutched her, and exclaimed: "Trop nu--plus nu
qu'Écossais."'
II.
The business of the autumn Session was limited, by agreement, to
determining the new "Rules of Procedure."
'On Friday, October 20th, there was a Cabinet which decided to stick
to our first resolution on procedure--that is on the closure--without
change; or, in other words, to closure by a bare majority.'
When the matter came to a vote in the House, the Government were saved
from defeat by the support of Mr. Parnell and his adherents, who were
determined not to have closure by a two-thirds majority, which could in
practice be used only against a small group.
'On Monday, October 23rd, the Cabinet considered the principle of
delegation of duties from Parliament itself to Grand Committees, to be
proposed in the procedure resolutions.'
This was the beginning of what is now the ordinary procedure in all Bills,
except those of the first importance. It was introduced expressly as an
experiment on six months' trial; and it appears that it was not adopted
without much opposition in the Cabinet, for the Memoir records:
'On November 21st Hartington and Harcourt tried hard to induce Mr.
Gladstone to drop his idea of Grand Committees, and I noted in my
diary: "If they are dropped now they are dead for ever--that is, for a
year at least. 'Ever' in politics means one year."'
On November 13th Lord Randolph Churchill, in a discourse upon the right to
make motions for adjournment, contrived, by way of happy illustration, to
refer to the "Kilmainham Treaty." The phrase in itself was a red rag to
Mr. Gladstone, but Lord Randolph added to the provocation by describing it
as "a most disgraceful transaction, so obnoxious that its precise terms
had never been made known." Mr. Gladstone charged fiercely at the lure,
denied that there had been any "treaty," and challenged the Opposition to
move for a Committee of Inquiry.
On November 14th, between two meetings at Lord Granville's house, at which
'Kimberley, Northbrook, Carlingford, and Childers were present with
myself, there was a discussion at lunch as to Mr. Gladstone's promise of a
Committee on the Kilmainham Treaty, at which all his colleagues of the
Cabinet were furious.'
On November 16th:
'a Cabinet was suddenly called for this afternoon to consider Mr.
Gladstone's extraordinary blunder in granting a Committee on the
Treaty of Kilmainham. The whole of his colleagues had been against him
when he had previously wished to do it, and now he had done it without
asking one of them. Grosvenor, the Whip, thought it would upset the
Government. Mr. Gladstone expressed his regret to his colleagues that
he had been carried away by his temper. Harcourt said that no two of
the witnesses would give the same account of the transaction, and that
while Mr. Gladstone might force Chamberlain, as his subordinate, to
make a clean breast of it, it was hard on Parnell.
'There was later in the day a private conversation between Chamberlain
and Harcourt and Grosvenor as to the Kilmainham Committee, Chamberlain
declaring that if called before a Committee he must read all the
letters, and Harcourt saying that if they were read he should resign.'
When the Session opened on October 27th, the Memoir indicates that the
Prime Minister's retirement was expected.
On November 4th there was a dinner at 76, Sloane Street, at which Mr.
Gladstone, Lord Granville, the Dean of Westminster, Mr. Balfour, and
others, came to meet the Duc de Broglie. In the course of the evening,
'Mr. Gladstone told me that he had finally decided not to meet
Parliament again in February. The gossip was that Hartington was to be
Prime Minister, that Fawcett would resign if not put into the Cabinet,
and Chamberlain and I had agreed to insist on county franchise '(which
meant a very large extension of the suffrage),' and to withdraw our
opposition to Goschen, it being understood that he gave way on county
franchise. It was far from certain that Mr. Gladstone meant Hartington
to be leader on his retirement. The Duchess of Manchester had told me
just before my dinner on Saturday, November 4th, that Mr. Gladstone
had written to Lord Granville to tell him he should not meet
Parliament again, saying that he wrote to him as he had been leader
when the party had been in Opposition. The letter had been shown to
Hartington, who was much irritated at the phrase. The letter was also
sent on to the Queen, and the Duchess thought that the Queen had said
in reply that if Mr. Gladstone resigned she should send not for Lord
Granville, but for Hartington.
'On Monday, November 6th, I heard more about the proposed resignation
of Mr. Gladstone. He had declared that he would not take a peerage,
but had promised not to attend the House of Commons, and I thought
that Hartington would make his going to the Lords, or at least leaving
the Commons, a condition. I pressed for the inclusion of Courtney in
the Cabinet in the event of any change.'
Although one of Mr. Gladstone's junior colleagues from 1880 onwards, Sir
Charles Dilke had been frequently in disagreement with him, and in 1882
had refused to accept the Irish Secretaryship. Yet it was to Sir Charles
that Mr. Gladstone in 1882 was beginning to look as his ultimate successor
in the lead of the House of Commons. A passage in Lord Acton's
correspondence shows how Mr. Gladstone's mind was working at this time. A
breakfast-table discussion between Miss Gladstone and her father is noted
by her, at which, on the assumption of Mr. Gladstone's retirement and the
removal of Lord Hartington to the House of Lords, the names of possible
successors to the leadership of the House of Commons were discussed. The
Chief's estimate of Dilke was thus given:
"The future leader of H. of C. was a great puzzle and difficulty. Sir
Charles Dilke would probably be the man best fitted for it; he had
shown much capacity for learning and unlearning, but he would require
Cabinet training first." [Footnote: _Letters of Lord Acton_, p. 90.]
It followed, then, that if Mr. Gladstone seriously contemplated
resignation, he was bound to insure that Sir Charles got without more
delay the "Cabinet training." It was absurd that the Minister in whom Mr.
Gladstone saw the likeliest future leader of the House of Commons should
be kept technically, and to some extent really, outside the inner circle
of confidence and responsibility.
By the middle of November the hint of Mr. Gladstone's retirement had
leaked out, and conjecture was busy with reconstruction of the Cabinet.
Apart from the question of the Prime Minister's position, speculation was
kept active by the fact that since Mr. Bright's retirement in June no
appointment had been made to the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster,
that office having no very urgent or definite duties. There was also the
widespread feeling that Sir Charles Dilke's admission to the Cabinet was
overdue, and men guessed rightly at the cause of the delay. Meanwhile the
leaders of the party were considering how far these causes still operated.
On November 16th Sir Charles was approached by the Chief Whip.
'Lord R. Grosvenor, after the Cabinet, came to me, and asked me if I
thought that the Queen was now willing to have me in the Cabinet. I
said that so far as I knew the trouble was at an end. He replied that
he had had two accounts of it. Harcourt told him that both the Prince
of Wales and Prince Leopold had said that she had made up her mind to
take me; but Hartington said that she had told him a different story.
I said I did not know which was right; but that she could take me or
leave me, for not another word would I say.
'Sunday, November 19th, I spent at Cuffnells, Lyndhurst--the home of
"Alice in Wonderland," Mrs. Hargreaves, Dean Liddel's daughter--with
the Harcourts, and Harcourt told me that he believed in Mr.
Gladstone's retirement.'
In the last days of November Sir Charles was at Sandringham with Mr.
Chamberlain.
'Chamberlain told me that Lord Hartington and Lord Granville were
going to insist with Mr. Gladstone that he should stay as nominal
Prime Minister, Hartington taking the Exchequer and dividing the lead
of the House with him, and Rosebery and I being put into the Cabinet.
'On December 1st there was a Cabinet, before which Lord Granville told
me that I was to be put into the Cabinet at once if the Queen
consented. When they met at two o'clock the Cabinet were told of this
and strict secrecy sworn, but two of them immediately came and told me
that it was settled I was to be Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.'
The Chancellorship of the Duchy presented itself to Sir Charles Dilke as a
kind of roving commission to help other Ministers with the detail of
measures. But the Queen took the view that this place was a "peculiarly
personal one," and should be held by someone whom she considered a
"moderate" politician, and who need not be in the Cabinet. On December 4th
'the Queen, who had been informed that she was still a free agent with
regard to me, had hesitated with regard to the Duchy of Lancaster,
which had, of course, been conditionally accepted by me on the
understanding that I was to be man-of-all-work in the Cabinet. It was
understood on this day that Childers was to be Chancellor of the
Exchequer if his health allowed it, and a delay was granted for his
decision or that of his doctors; and it was understood that Lord Derby
was to come in in Childers' place. Evelyn Ashley was suggested for my
place; and Edmond Fitzmaurice, Henry Brand, or Brett for Ashley's'
(that of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade).
On December 7th it was settled that
'Hartington was to go to the War Office if the doctors pronounced
Childers well enough to take the Exchequer, and this would leave the
Under-Secretaryships for the Colonies and India, as well as for
Foreign Affairs, open between Fitzmaurice, Ashley, Brand, and Brett.
'Harcourt wrote on the 7th about Mr. Gladstone: "The resignation
project is for the present adjourned _sine die_."
'On Saturday, December 9th, Childers came to me from Mr. Gladstone to
ask if I objected (as we had settled that it would be improper for me
to invite a contest in Chelsea on the old register in the last month
of the year) to letting my appointment be known before it was made,
and I consented, although this would have had the effect, in the event
of opposition, of giving me a twenty days' fight instead of one of
only seventeen.'
Mr. Gladstone now put forward a different proposal:
'On Monday, the 11th, I saw the Prince of Wales with regard to my
appointment. On the same day Mr. Gladstone had some trouble with the
Queen about the Primacy, as he told me on December 12th.... On the
12th I wrote to Chamberlain that Austin Lee had told me that the Queen
had some days earlier told our friend Prince Leopold that she was
willing that I should be in the Cabinet, but not in the Duchy, and it
was this that she had said to Mr. Gladstone on the 11th about which he
sent for me on the 12th. He said that he thought it would be possible
to get over this objection in time, but that there was another
possibility about which he asked me to write to Chamberlain, but not
as from him. I wrote: "Would you take the Duchy and let me go to the
Board of Trade, you keeping your Bills? This would be unpleasant to
you personally, I feel sure, unless for my sake, though the Duchy is
of superior rank. It would, of course, be a temporary stopgap, as
there must be other changes soon. It is not necessary that you should
do it, else I know that you would do it for me. So that please feel
you are really free. I told Mr. Gladstone that I could only put it to
you in such a way as to leave you free. You had better perhaps write
your answer so that I can show it him, though I suppose he will
suppose himself not to have seen it!"'
On December 13th the Prince of Wales sent for Sir Charles to advise his
pressing this course on Mr. Chamberlain. But on that same day Mr.
Chamberlain replied from Highbury:
"MY DEAR DILKE,
"Your letter has spoilt my breakfast. The change will be loathsome to
me for more than one reason, and will give rise to all sorts of
disagreeable commentaries. But if it is the only way out of the
difficulty, I will do what I am sure you would have done in my place--
accept the transfer. I enclose a note to this effect which you can
show to Mr. G. Consider, however, if there is any alternative. I
regard your _immediate_ admission to the Cabinet as imperative, and
therefore if this can only be secured by my taking the Duchy, _cadit
quaestio_, and I shall never say another word on the subject. Two
other courses are possible, though I fear unlikely to be accepted: (1)
Mr. Gladstone might tell the Queen that I share the opinions you have
expressed with regard to the dowries, and intend to make common cause
with you--that if your appointment is refused I shall leave the
Government, and that the effect will be to alienate the Radical Party
from the Ministry and the Crown, and to give prominence to a question
which it would be more prudent to allow to slumber. I think the Queen
would give way. If not we should both go out. We should stand very
well with our party, and in a year or two we could make our own terms.
Personally I would rather go out than take the Duchy.... (2) Has the
matter been mentioned to Dodson? He _might_ like an office with less
work, [Footnote: Mr. Dodson was President of the Local Government
Board.] and he _might_ be influenced by the nominally superior
rank.... Now you have my whole mind. I would gladly avoid the
sacrifice, but if your inclusion in the Cabinet depends upon it, I
will make it freely and with pleasure for your sake."
'The result was that Dodson "put himself in Mr. Gladstone's hands."
There was, however, an interval of ten days, during which things went
backwards and forwards much.'
The probability of the Queen's refusal to accept Mr. Chamberlain for the
Duchy made his threat of resignation more serious, and a letter came to
Sir Charles from Mr. Francis Knollys deprecating this vehemently on behalf
of the Prince of Wales. Its last sentence is worth quoting, as it endorsed
what was known to be Dilke's own special wish:
"What he would like to see would be Lord Northbrook at the India
Office and you at the Admiralty."
'On December 14th I saw Mr. Gladstone, but a new opening had arisen,
for Fawcett was very ill, and supposed to be dying, and Mr. Gladstone
determined to wait for a few days to see whether he got better....
'On December 16th Mr. Gladstone pledged himself to me in writing with
regard to putting me immediately into the Cabinet in some place, and
on December 17th the Queen agreed that a paragraph to that effect
should be sent to the newspapers. On the 18th, however, she declined
to entertain the question of taking Chamberlain for the Duchy. On
December 20th Mr. Gladstone wrote that he was "between the devil and
the deep sea." I do not know which of the two meant the Queen, and
whether the other was myself or Chamberlain. On December 21st
Chamberlain came up to town to see me. On the 22nd the Dodson plan
went forward in letters from Mr. Gladstone to Sir Henry Ponsonby, the
Queen's Secretary, and from Lord Hartington, to the Queen. On the 22nd
at night Dodson accepted it, and on the 23rd I was formally so
informed, and virtually accepted the Presidency of the Local
Government Board, which I nominally accepted on December 26th.'
Before Sir Charles vacated the seat by his letter of acceptance, the
Tories in Chelsea had met and decided not to oppose him. Among the letters
of congratulation none gratified the new Minister more than one from Lord
Barrington, Lord Beaconsfield's former private secretary, who wrote, even
before the appointment was officially confirmed:
"I like watching your political career as, besides personal feeling,
it makes me think of what my dear old chief used to say about you--
that you were _the_ rising man on the other side."
On December 27th Lord Granville sent from Walmer Castle a letter of
characteristic courtesy and charm.[Footnote: The letter given in Chapter
XX., p. 311.] It crossed an expression of gratitude already despatched by
his junior:
"MY DEAR LORD GRANVILLE,
"Having received Mr. Gladstone's letter with the Queen's approval, I
write to thank you for all your many kindnesses to me while I have
been under your orders. I shall continue to attend the office until
the Council, but I cannot let the day close without trying to express
in one word all that I owe to you as regards the last thirty-two
months.
"Sincerely yours,
"CHARLES W. DILKE."
But it was much later, when the Government had fallen, that this "one
word" came to be developed.
"76, SLOANE STREET, S.W.
"_Tuesday, July 14th_, 1885.
"MY DEAR LORD GRANVILLE,
"I am glad you feel as you do about me. Malicious people and foolish
people have both so long said that I wanted to be S. of S. for For.
Affs. myself that I never expect to be believed when I say the simple
truth--that in my opinion it ought to be in the Lords as long as there
are Lords, and that my only wish was to be of any help I could. I can
only think of the Errington-Walsh business when I think over points on
which we have differed, and I cannot help scoring that down to Forster
and the silly Irish Government, and not to you, though you are so
loyal a colleague that when you have accepted you always actively
support.
"I do not suppose I shall ever, if again in office, have such pleasant
official days as those I spent in the F.O. under you, but the next
best thing would be at the Admiralty--the office to which all my life
has always inclined me--to obey your orders from the F.O.
"I am sure you will believe this even if no one else will, and believe
me also ever
"Yours very affectionately and sincerely,
"CHARLES W. DILKE."
'Trevelyan, in sending his congratulations from the Chief Secretary's
Office at Dublin, asked me for the earliest possible draft of heads of my
Local Government Bill for England: "in case it is settled that we are to
bring one in--a move which I have come to think is necessary. They need
not run on all fours, but there are points on which it would not do to
adopt a different policy."'
To the Secretary of State's congratulations, Sir Julian Pauncefote,
permanent head of the Foreign Office staff, added his tribute:
"How we all deplore your departure, _none so much as myself_. You will
leave behind you a lasting memory of your kindness and geniality, and
of your great talents."
Other friends, among them Mr. Knollys, assumed as a matter of course that
the promotion would bring a change from congenial to uncongenial work.
They were right. "I shall be in the Local Government Board by Wednesday,
as I shan't, after Chamberlain's kindness, put him in a place which he
will like less than the Board of Trade. Shan't I hate it after this
place!" Sir Charles Dilke wrote. "But," he added, "it will 'knock the
nonsense out of me.'" That was the view put to him, for instance, by Lord
Barrington. "In the end it is well that a Minister should go through the
comparative drudgery of other offices. It gets him 'out of a groove.'"
Mr. Gladstone, on making what Sir Charles Dilke calls 'the formal
announcement' on December 23rd, wrote:
"Notwithstanding the rubs of the past, I am sanguine as to your future
relations with the Queen. There are undoubtedly many difficulties in
that quarter, but they are in the main confined to three or four
departments. Your office will not touch them, while you will have in
common with all your colleagues the benefit of two great modifying
circumstances which never fail--the first her high good manners, and
the second her love of truth....
"I have entered on these explanations, because it is my fervent
desire, on every ground, to reduce difficulties in such high and
delicate matters to their minimum; and because, with the long years
which I hope you have before you, I also earnestly desire that your
start should be favourable in your relations with the Sovereign."
This was written only a few weeks after the Prime Minister had spoken to
his intimates of Dilke as some day his probable successor in the
leadership of the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone did not omit to urge
that the new Minister should do his best to conciliate good-will. The
Queen, he said, "looked with some interest or even keenness to the words
of explanation as to the distant past," which Sir Charles himself had--
"not in any way as a matter of bargain, but as a free tender"--proposed to
use.
They were guarded. In an address delivered at Kensington before his re-
election, he dwelt almost exclusively on questions of Local Government,
and coming to the Government of London, he said:
"There were very many subjects upon which one might modify one's
opinions as one grew older; there were opinions of political infancy
which, as one grew older, one might regard as unwise, or might prefer
not to have uttered; but upon the Government of London--the opinions
he expressed in 1867 were his personal opinions at the present time."
This and the closing admission that when he first came before the electors
of Chelsea, he "was only between three-and four-and-twenty years of age,
and was perhaps at that time rather scatter-brained," are all the
allusions to the remote past which the speech contains; but there is every
reason to believe that it was taken as satisfactory. Mr. Gladstone wrote
that the comments of the Conservative press, which were pretty certain to
be read at Osborne, would be useful. Finally, "to integrate their
correspondence," he added this reference to Sir Charles's known wish for
the Admiralty:
"I passed over the suggestion about clearing the Admiralty (_a_) from
reluctance to start Northbrook's removal to any less efficient place;
(_b_) on account of Parliamentary displacements; not at all because it
was too big a place to vacate and offer."
'All the same,' the Memoir adds, 'I liked the L.G.B.'
The change of office did not mean any severance from foreign policy, which
Sir Charles could now approach in his proper sphere, with the authority of
a Cabinet Minister. He was succeeded by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, who had
returned from his mission to Constantinople. Dilke wrote on December 23rd
to Lord Granville: "I should suggest that no time be lost in getting
Fitzmaurice here. He likes work, and will go at these matters like a
lion."
'On the last day of the old year Lord Granville, writing from Walmer
to thank me for what I had said about him to my constituents, added:
"I have given the sack to ---- at the end of the five years' limit
which now expires. He would like to keep the appointment on leave for
six months, and might be very useful in advising the office. But would
there be any House of Commons objection to this prolongation?" This
was a specimen of the way in which, after I had left the Foreign
Office, all Foreign Office questions were still thrown on to me; and
as a matter of fact I did almost as much Foreign Office work during
the year 1883 as I had done from 1880 to 1882. Fitzmaurice, however,
was able, and worked very hard, and he gradually acquired an enormous
mastery of the detail of the questions.' [Footnote: Sir Charles notes
how glad he was to induce Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice to continue Mr.
Austin Lee in the post of official private secretary.]
His unopposed return for Chelsea did not take place till January 8th,
1883. Before this he had been formally admitted to the Privy Council.
'I had left the Foreign Office on December 27th, having been there
exactly two years and eight months, and on Thursday, the 28th, I went
down to a Council at Osborne to be sworn; and on the 29th addressed
the principal meeting held in my constituency with regard to my re-
election, and advocated a policy of decentralization in Local
Government affairs. I was rather amused at Osborne by the
punctiliousness with which, after I had kissed hands on being sworn a
member of the Council, the Queen pointed out to the Clerk of the
Council that it was necessary for me again to immediately go through
precisely the same ceremony on appointment as President of the Local
Government Board--a curious point of strict etiquette. I could not but
think that the portion of the Privy Councillor's oath which concerns
keeping secret matters treated of secretly in Council is more honoured
in the breach than in the observance; but when Mr. Gladstone chose,
which was not always, he used to maintain the view that the clause is
governed by the first part of the oath, so as to make it secret only
in respect of the interests of the country and the position of other
members of Council. There is nothing in the oath about any limit of
time, but it has always been held in practice that a time comes when
all political importance has departed from the proceedings of the
Council, and when the obligation of secrecy may be held to lapse.
There is nothing, however, more delicate than the question of where
the line is drawn. Chamberlain was directed by the Cabinet, for
example, at the time of the Kilmainham Treaty, to carry on
negotiations with Parnell which were absolutely impossible except by a
partial revelation of matters discussed secretly in Council; but as
the Prime Minister was a party to this, I suppose that the Queen's
consent to the removal of the obligation would be in such a case
assumed, though it was not in this case real. Another difficulty about
the oath is that it in no way provides for the position towards their
chiefs of members of the Government not members of the Privy Council.
'It is difficult, therefore, to say that the oath in practice imposes
any obligation other than that which any man of honour would feel laid
upon him by the ordinary observances of gentlemen.'
Sir Charles was only thirty-nine when he entered the Cabinet, yet the
general feeling was that his admission was overdue rather than early, and
no one had shown more anxiety for it than the future King.
'During the whole month while my position in the Cabinet was under hot
discussion, I saw a great deal of the Prince of Wales, who wished to
know from day to day how matters stood, and I was able to form a more
accurate opinion both of himself and of the Princess, and of all about
them, than I had formed before. The Prince is, of course, in fact, a
strong Conservative, and a still stronger Jingo, really agreeing in
the Queen's politics, and wanting to take everything everywhere in the
world and to keep everything if possible, but a good deal under the
influence of the last person who talks to him, so that he would
sometimes reflect the Queen and sometimes reflect me or Chamberlain,
or some other Liberal who had been shaking his head at him. He has
more sense and more usage of the modern world than his mother, whose
long retirement has cut her off from that world, but less real brain
power. He is very sharp in a way, the Queen not sharp at all; but she
carries heavy metal, for her obstinacy constitutes power of a kind.
The strongest man in Marlborough House is Holzmann, the Princess's
Secretary and the Prince's Librarian. He is a man of character and
solidity, but then he is a Continental Liberal, and looks at all
English questions as a foreigner! The Princess never talks
politics.... It is worth talking seriously to the Prince. One seems to
make no impression at the time ... but he does listen all the same,
and afterwards, when he is talking to somebody else, brings out
everything that you have said.'
Some letters of this date show how strongly the personal friendship of Sir
Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain had developed during their political
alliance.
In September, 1881, Mr. Chamberlain writes that he has been "reading over
again a book called _Greater Britain_, written, I believe, by a young
fellow of twenty-five, and a very bright, clever, and instructive book it
is." He petitions for a copy "properly inscribed to your devoted friend
and admirer, J. C." Sir Charles, in acknowledging this, protested against
the word "instructive," and his friend apologized. "But it is instructive
for all that. When you next come to Birmingham you shall inscribe my
copy.... Let me add that in all my political life the pleasantest and the
most satisfactory incident is your friendship."
These expressions were further emphasized by another letter of this date.
Sir Charles, hurrying into Mr. Chamberlain's room in the House of Commons,
had found him busy and preoccupied, and so followed up his visit with a
letter. Mr. Chamberlain replied:
"_December 6th._
"I am not sorry to have the opportunity of saying how much I
appreciate and how cordially I reciprocate all your kind words.
"The fact is that you are by nature such a reserved fellow that all
_demonstration_ of affection is difficult, but you may believe me when
I say that I feel it--none the less. I suppose I am reserved myself.
The great trouble we have both been through has had a hardening effect
in my case, and since then I have never worn my heart on my sleeve.
"But if I were in trouble I should come to you at once--and that is
the best proof of friendship and confidence that I know of."
About that same time Lord Granville was writing to Sir Charles on foreign
affairs, and diverged into general politics, remarking on the Free Trade
speeches then being delivered. "With what ability Chamberlain has been
speaking! I doubt whether going on the stump suits the Tory party." To
this Sir Charles replied with an enthusiasm rare in his utterances:
"Chamberlain's speech was admirable, I thought. I, as you know,
delight in his triumphs more than he does himself. It is absurd that
this should be so between politicians, but so it is. Our friendship
only grows closer and my admiration for him stronger day by day."
CHAPTER XXXI
AT THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD
I.
Under the pressure of the excitements of 1882 caused by foreign affairs,
business legislation for the needs of the British community had been
crushed out, but there was agreement that in the New Year time must be
given for Mr. Chamberlain's Bankruptcy Bill to become law; also that the
electioneering question of Corrupt Practices should be dealt with. Beyond
this immediate programme lay two matters of the first importance--reform
of local government in town and in country, and reform of the electorate.
In regard to these, the year was chiefly consumed by Government
dissensions, partly as to the character of the measures, but principally
as to their order of precedence.
As administrator in his new office, Sir Charles turned at once to the
position of the civil servants under his control:
'On New Year's Day I had begun to be bothered about what was called my
patronage at the Local Government Board, which was considerable. At
the Foreign Office I had none at all, and had had the greatest
possible difficulty in getting Lord Granville to give a consulate to
Henry George Kennedy, who had been my secretary for many years, and
who had considerable claims--as he had lost his health in the consular
service before he first came to me, and then recovered his health
after a serious illness. At the Local Government Board I was my own
master, and all the patronage of the office was absolutely at my
disposal, and the first post or two that fell vacant I gave to persons
suggested by Hartington, James, and other colleagues. But I very soon
formed a strong opinion that the patronage of the Local Government
Board ought to be used in a different way from that which had
prevailed ever since the end of Stansfeld's term of office' (1871-
1874). 'Stansfeld had made excellent use of his patronage, but
Sclater-Booth' [Footnote: Mr. George Sclater-Booth, created Lord
Basing in 1887.] (1874-1880) 'and Dodson' (1880-1882), 'and even
Goschen' (1868-1871), 'had used it less well, and had put in men of
the kind that colleagues often force upon one--political partisans or
supporters, not always the best men. I talked the matter over, and
decided to make the service during my term of office a close service,
and to promote men already in the service to all vacancies as they
occurred, making inspectors of auditors or clerks, and giving the good
auditorships to the best men in the inferior ones. As regarded new
appointments to auditorships at the lowest scale, I had a list of men
who were working with auditors without pay on the chance of my giving
them appointments later on, and I brought in several of this kind on
good reports from auditors. Bodley, my Private Secretary, managed the
whole of my patronage for me, and did it extremely well, and after I
had started the system I was able to leave it absolutely in his
hands.'
He notes later on that one of his colleagues was 'furious' with him
because he would not do a job for the family solicitor, who was also
Parliamentary agent of the colleague's son. A previous President had
'jobbed in a Tory agent,' and the colleague expected that Sir Charles
should follow with the Whig agent. 'I refused, as I intended to promote
one of our best and worst-paid men.'
An illustration of the same principle is the case of Mr. Walter Sendall:
'It was at this time' (November, 1883) 'that I had taken up, as
against Lord Kimberley and Lord Derby, the case of Sendall--an
Assistant Secretary in the Local Government Board, who had been
previously appointed Governor of Natal, and then withdrawn on account
of Natal feeling that he would be too much under the control of Sir
Hercules Robinson, the Governor of the Cape. There being nothing
against Sendall, I thought that we were bound to find him another
Governorship, and Horace Seymour, Mr. Gladstone's secretary, was in
strong agreement with me. The matter was brought to a point at this
moment by the selection of Blake for a Governorship in preference to
Sendall. A strong letter from Seymour pointed out that "heaps of
deserving men in the Colonial service were passed by to make this
appointment, and Sendall, who has a _real_ claim on the Government, is
put on one side. In my opinion an appointment of this kind is most
mischievous, and I sincerely trust that the Healys and the Biggars
will make the most of it, and for once they will have at least my
hearty sympathy...." Seymour was Lady Spencer's brother, and he on his
side and I on mine made the lives of Lord Derby and Lord Kimberley'
(Ministers responsible in regard to the withdrawal) 'so uncomfortable
that we finally got Sendall an appointment. Blake turned out a success
as a Colonial Governor.'
Mr. H. Preston Thomas, C.B., in his _Work and Play of a Government
Inspector_, written after fifty years' experience of the Civil Service,
bears testimony to Sir Charles's work as an administrator, especially by
the introduction of the principle of competition:
"It was during the presidency of Sir Charles Dilke that the staff of
the Local Government Board was reorganized, and for the first time
placed on a more or less satisfactory footing.... A leaven of highly
educated men was much wanted in the junior ranks, and this was secured
by the reorganization of 1884, when eight clerkships of the Higher
Division were thrown open to public competition.... Every one of the
successful candidates had graduated in honours at Oxford or Cambridge,
while two or three were Fellows of their Colleges. The infusion of new
blood acted most beneficially, and the heads of the department were
able to delegate to subordinates some of the duties of which the
enormous mass had fairly overwhelmed them." [Footnote: P. 195.]
The new President threw himself with energy into the administrative work
of his department: the Memoir abounds in references to visits of
inspection to workhouse infirmaries, sewage farms, schools, and training-
ships. One instance in which he personally intervened was that of Nazareth
House at Hammersmith, a Roman Catholic establishment at which there had
been an outbreak of typhus. There were reasons which made Sir Charles
think, after a visit to the house, that the local Medical Officer had been
unjustly severe. Instructions were given as to changes to be made, and a
letter of warm gratitude came from Cardinal Manning, April 27th, 1883, who
spoke of himself as "disabled and shut up, and therefore doubly grateful."
This was endorsed by the action of the Sisters, and Sir Charles's own
phrase, 'I have always continued on intimate terms with the Sisters of
Nazareth House until this day,' gives but a slight idea of the homage
rendered to him and his wife by this community until the end.
When he was standing for re-election in January, his speeches contained
strong protests against over-centralization. Even where he was most
zealous for reform, Sir Charles bore in mind that local bodies are liable
to make mistakes, but that public interest is often best served by
allowing such errors to correct themselves. Here is an instance:
'On August 31st, 1883, I inspected Westminster Union Workhouse, in
consequence of the serious misconduct of the master, who had been
bitterly attacked in the House of Commons, and with regard to whom I
had laid down the principle that it was for the Guardians and not for
me to dismiss him. This was a test case with regard to centralization.
Feeling in the Press was strong against the master, and his acts were
entirely indefensible, but he had the support of the majority of his
Guardians. I made public my opinion, but did nothing else, and
ultimately the Guardians who supported him lost their seats, and the
master was removed by the new Board.'
At this time the unravelling of the conspiracy which had led to the
Phoenix Park murders and dynamite outrages was causing a panic in London
itself. Sir William Harcourt at the Home Office, while he threw himself
into the task of fighting these menaces with energy, demanded exemption
from less engrossing cares. On March 17th
'he told the Cabinet that he was so overburdened with work that he
must hand all the ordinary business over to the Local Government
Board.... I noted that Harcourt thought himself a Fouché, and wanted
to have the whole police work of the country, and nothing but police.
The matter was finally completed during the Easter recess by letter on
a scheme drawn up by Hibbert' (Parliamentary Secretary to the Local
Government Board), 'who knew both offices. It was even proposed at one
moment that a Bill should be brought in to give the Local Government
Board for ever the inspections, such as mines, factories, etc., and
the Artisans' Dwellings Acts and other matters not connected with
Police and Justice; but no legislation took place, as the idea was
hotly opposed by the Home Office, and we went on from hand to mouth by
a mere personal arrangement between Harcourt and myself. [Footnote:
The Diary of this time deals with the Ministry of Agriculture; it was
decided to create an Agricultural Vice-President of the Council, so as
to separate Agriculture from Education, and to appoint 'Dodson as
Vice-President, under Carlingford as Lord President.' 'Some had asked
for the creation of a Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, as in
France, a wonderful combination.' Sir Charles reported to the Cabinet
the fact that a new Ministry had been unanimously agreed to by the
House of Commons some years before (though no notice had been taken of
the resolution)--a Ministry of Justice.
Sir Charles Dilke was always opposed to the increase of Ministers
Ministries. See "Labour," Chapter LII. (Vol. II., pp. 342-367).]
'On Monday, April 2nd, there came up the question of whether Harcourt
would himself deal with the matter of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade,
which was raised by a debate in the House, and which the Home Office
insisted on his taking. To their disgust, however, Harcourt would not
look at the documents, and sent them all to me in a box for me to deal
with.'
Home Office duties, as Sir Charles discovered, are 'highly miscellaneous,'
and at the end of May an item in the 'curious mixture of subjects' that he
had before him was a letter from the Primate, giving the views of a
meeting of Bishops about cemeteries.
The transference of so much business to the Minister of another department
was not pleasing to the Home Office permanent officials. When Lord
Rosebery resigned in the beginning of June, Sir Charles secured the
promotion of Mr. Hibbert, Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government
Board, to the Under-Secretaryship of the Home Office; [Footnote: Mr. J.
Tomlinson Hibbert, afterwards for many years Chairman of the Lancashire
County Council and of the County Councils Association.] and out of several
names submitted to him by Mr. Gladstone for Mr. Hibbert's place he
selected that of Mr. G. W. E. Russell, who, a short time before this, had
published in one of the reviews an article vehemently attacking the Whig
tradition. Sir Charles notes that Mr. Russell was congratulated by his
kinsman, that great Whig, the Duke of Bedford, as follows:
'After singing Russell's praises, he concluded: "As, my dear George,
you have now not only an official _but also a literary income_, it
will, perhaps, no longer be necessary that I should offer to continue
to pay your election expenses." This story has been denied, but is
true.
'All through the autumn I felt myself in considerable difficulties in
dealing with the important questions which Harcourt had handed over to
me from the Home Office, but as to which in many cases new departure
was evidently needed which I had no authority to take. One such
question was factory inspection. The current work was thrown on me,
and I had to defend what the factory branch of the Home Office did. On
the other hand, although I had the strongest opinion that the
Inspectorate should be increased, and women inspectors appointed for
factories where women were employed, Harcourt would not agree to this,
and kept the patronage in his private secretary's hands, so that I had
no real control.'
It was, however, in Sir Charles's power to appoint women inspectors at the
Local Government Board, and he did so, thus leading the way in the
movement for associating women with public work.
'The same was the case at first with regard to what were known as
Cross's Acts, or the larger scheme affecting artisans' dwellings, as
to which I had at the end of October some correspondence with Cardinal
Manning, who was in Italy. Manning had written, in a letter which I
received on November 2nd: "Without a high-handed executive nothing
will be done till another generation has been morally destroyed, but
construction must keep pace with destruction. Some of my parishes are
so crowded owing to destruction without construction as to reproduce
the same mischiefs in new places. You know I am no narrow politician,
but I am impatient at political conflicts while these social plagues
are destroying our people."
'The matter was brought to a head on the next day by the receipt of a
letter from Mr. Gladstone sending me a letter from the Queen on the
dwellings of the people, with copy of what he had said in reply. The
letter was:
'"BALMORAL CASTLE,
'"_October 30th_, '83.
'"The Queen has been much distressed by all she has heard and read
lately of the deplorable condition of the homes of the poor in our
great towns.... The Queen will be glad to hear Mr. Gladstone's
opinion ... and to learn whether the Government contemplate the
introduction of any measures, or propose to take any steps to obtain
more precise information as to the _true_ state of affairs in these
overcrowded, unhealthy, and squalid bodies. She cannot but think that
there are questions of less importance than these which are under
discussion, and which might wait till one involving the _very_
existence of thousands, nay, millions, had been fully considered by
the Government."
'Mr. Gladstone, in reply, said: "Mr. Gladstone will not fail to
communicate with Sir Charles Dilke ... on the subject of your
Majesty's letter. He himself does not doubt that improvements in local
government which he trusts are near at hand will lead to a sensible
progress...."
'In consequence of this communication from the Queen, I decided to
examine all the worst parts of London for myself, and on November 9th
I wrote to Lyulph Stanley and to Miss Maude Stanley and others for a
list of what they considered the worst places in London, "as we want
to test our administrative powers under the present law. As we have to
show that the Local Authority have 'made default,' it would be best to
take cases as to which the Medical Officers have reported to the
Vestry in the past, and nothing has been done." During the remainder
of the year I met all the Medical Officers of London with the District
Surveyors of the parishes, each man in his own district, and visited
with them all those places on which they had reported without success;
and, making my own notes, I picked out the very worst cases, and when
I was certain that I was on firm ground took occasion to mention them
in public.'
After some discussion, in which Mr. Gladstone and also Harcourt and
Chamberlain were consulted, it was agreed that Dilke should do what he
pleased in the name either of the Home Office or Local Government Board
'as to fighting Vestries about the dwellings of the poor.' At this moment,
near the end of November, several delicate diplomatic questions were in
hand, upon which, as a member of the Cabinet, Sir Charles was now taking a
leading part. Accordingly Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, who thoroughly
understood Local Government problems, took charge of the work on the
detail of the Local Government Bill:
'It might be said that Fitzmaurice was doing my work and I was doing
his. Although I was visiting St. Giles and the courts about the
Strand, the worst streets near Judd Street (St. Pancras), Lisson
Grove, and other curious places in Marylebone, Lord Salisbury's Courts
in the neighbourhood of St. Martin's Lane, and the worst slums of St.
George the Martyr, Newington, St. Saviour's, and St. George's in the
East, yet as regarded the preparation of the details of my Bill I
turned the matter over to Fitzmaurice....'
Sir Charles's main interest of these months was making up the case against
those responsible for bad housing, and he fixed responsibility on some who
showed themselves honourably sensitive:
'About this time I received a very strong and detailed anonymous
letter calling my attention to the condition of the Northampton
tenants in Clerkenwell, and I sent it to Lord William Compton--
afterwards Lord Compton, and later Lord Northampton--who was serving
as a clerk in the Turkish Department of the Foreign Office. At my
request he went down to Clerkenwell and looked into the matter for
himself, and found the state of things so horrible that he warmly took
up the question, and I then took him down to Clerkenwell again. I
found Clerkenwell to be my strongest case, as it was the only parish
in which the local authority was entirely in the house-farmers' hands,
and from this time forward I put it in a prominent place in all my
speeches.'
Before departing, on December 20th, for Toulon,
'I had a correspondence with the Archbishop of Canterbury (Benson)
with regard to the condition of the property in London of the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners, which I thought a disgrace to the
Church. He only asked me to send him the facts, which I did, pointing
out that the district "in the Borough" at the meeting of St.
Saviour's, Bermondsey, Newington, and St. George the Martyr, was in a
shameful state.'
The outcome of these inquiries was the appointment of the Royal Commission
on Housing. The subject afforded safe ground on which to meet the Queen
when he first went down as a guest to Windsor, and it was supplemented by
another matter, on which much correspondence had passed between him and
Sir Henry Ponsonby--that of certain cement works near West Cowes, the
smoke from which killed the Queen's shrubs at Osborne.
'On Tuesday, November 27th, I dined and slept at Windsor, and the
Queen talked artisans' dwellings and Osborne chemical works. Ponsonby
I thought very able and very pleasant. I suppose I had Dizzy's rooms,
because there was not only a statue of him, but also a framed
photograph, in the sitting-room, while in the bedroom there was a
recent statue of the Empress Eugenie. The Queen was, of course, very
courteous, but she was more bright and pleasant than I had expected.
The Duke and Duchess of Albany were at Windsor, and I had her next me
at dinner. Lorne was also there, and after the Queen had gone to bed
the Duke and Lorne showed me all the curiosities, having had the whole
of the galleries lighted. We sat up very late. Loene is serious-
minded ... through his real attempt to understand his work, and would
do most things well....'
In this year Sir Charles opposed the scheme of "assisted emigration" under
which was offered to the world the amazing spectacle of a Government
paying its own subjects to quit its shores and its flag. Irish peasants,
half starved, clad in garments promiscuously flung out from the slop-shop,
often quite unfit to make their way in a strange country, were induced by
the offer of a free passage (without even inspection to see that they were
decently accommodated on board) to pour in thousands out of a country
whose rulers had no better thing to offer them than this cynical quittance
in full. Sir Charles 'violently opposed the scheme' in one of his first
Cabinets (May 5th), and again on July 25th tried to abolish it, but 'only
succeeded in getting a promise that the second year of it should be the
last.'
At the beginning of 1883 his brother Ashton was very ill at Algiers, and
on February 17th the manager of his paper, the Weekly Dispatch, brought to
Sloane Street a communication in Ashton Dilke's own hand, which contained,
amongst other directions to be carried out after his death, the actual
paragraph by which it was to be announced. When the end came, on March
12th, 1883, it meant 'a serious breaking with the past. William Dilke
alone was left to me, if, indeed, at eighty-eight one could speak of a man
as left.' This old grand-uncle, with his military memories of Waterloo
days, whom Sir Charles Dilke yearly visited at Chichester, and who often
stayed at Sloane Street, was also at this moment very ill, and supposed to
be dying; but he recovered, and lived on for more than two years. In April
Sir Charles ordered from Mr. W. E. F. Britten, the painter, whom Leighton
had commended to him, a portrait of his brother, which 'proved very good,'
and which hung always in 76, Sloane Street.
He clung to family ties, and later in the year paid a visit to distant
kindred, the heads of the Dilke family:
'On Saturday, August 25th, I went to Maxstoke, and returned on Monday,
the 27th. There dined on the Saturday night Lord and Lady Norton and
their eldest son, Charles Adderley. The old man said a very true thing
to me about the place. "What a good castle this is, and how lucky that
it has always been inhabited by people too poor to spoil it!" From the
Commonwealth times, when Peter Wentworth plundered the Dilke of his
day for delinquency after the two years during which Fairfax had held
the Castle, they have never had money, and no attempt was ever made to
rebuild the interior house after the two fires by which two-thirds of
it were successively destroyed. They are, owing to Mrs. Dilke having a
little money, a little more prosperous just now, and there is a larger
herd of deer than usual; on this occasion I counted over one hundred
from the walls.'
The loss of his only brother had been preceded by a 'heavy blow.' That
"great and illustrious friend" for whom, in the early seventies, Sir
Charles prophesied that, in spite of the opposition of French aristocracy
and clericalism, he would govern France, had passed away on the last day
of 1882. Gambetta was dead.
On New Year's Day, 1883, Sir Charles, speaking to the electors of Chelsea,
dwelt on the qualities of "the greatest of all Frenchmen of his time"--
"the magnitude of his courage, his tremendous energy, his splendid
oratory, and, for those who knew him in private, his unmatched gaiety and
sparkling wit."
Among those who wrote to him was Mr. Gladstone, condoling on a death "you
will much feel." To one friend who wrote of Gambetta's "moral power," he
replied: "It seems difficult to speak of 'moral' power about Gambetta. His
kind of power was almost purely physical; it was a power of courage,
energy, and oratory." During his visit to Paris in January, 1883, 'my
first visit after Gambetta's death,' he and Lord Lyons 'talked chiefly
about Gambetta.'
Later, turning--with the detachment of judgment which characterized his
attitude to public life--from his private friendship to his estimate of
the needs of France, he left this estimate of Gambetta and the Republic:
'Much as I loved his society, I did not think him a loss to the
Republic, for he was too dictatorial and too little inclined to let
other men do important work to suit that form of government, except,
indeed, in time of war. It is quite true that his was the only strong
personality of which France could boast, and it was possible that, so
long as he was there, the people would not be likely in a panic to
hunt in other camps for a saviour: but great as was his power--
physical power, power of courage and of oratory--and terrible as was
the hole in France made by his death, nevertheless the smaller men
were perhaps more able to conduct the Republic to prosperity and to
general acceptance by the people.'
II.
The governing fact of English politics at this moment was the general
expectation of Mr. Gladstone's retirement. Since Lord Hartington would
undoubtedly succeed him, the Radical wing, led by Dilke and Chamberlain,
was doubly eager to commit the Government in advance to Radical measures.
Each of the two main subjects contemplated had two subdivisions. Reform of
the electorate included extension of the franchise, to which the Radicals
attached most importance, and to which Lord Hartington was sullenly
opposed; it also included redistribution of seats. Reform of local
government included, first, proposals for a new system of county
government; [Footnote: These had taken some shape, and Dilke found a draft
of them in his office when he succeeded to it; but Mr. Chamberlain agreed
with him in thinking it "a poor thing which I should not like to father."]
secondly, the Bill for the Government of London, which Sir William
Harcourt and Sir Charles Dilke had prepared with the help of Mr. Beal and
Mr. Firth, and this was ready for circulation to the Cabinet.
While Dilke, with his son, was passing Christmas-time at Toulon, Mr.
Gladstone had also come to the Mediterranean coast.
'I went to Cannes, where I dined with Mr. Gladstone twice, and went to
church with him on Sunday, January 21st, 1883.
'While Mr. Gladstone was at Cannes he talked very freely to Ribot and
other Frenchmen in the presence of Mrs. Emily Crawford, the _Daily
News_ correspondent in Paris, about the London Government Bill.
Harcourt had insisted, against myself and Firth and Beal, and against
most of the Commons members of the Cabinet, including the Prime
Minister, on keeping the control of the police in the hands of the
Government. Ribot asked Mr. Gladstone whether we could really trust
London with its police, as few Frenchmen dared trust Paris, and Mr.
Gladstone said that we could and should, a statement which was at once
sent to the _Daily News_, and printed, to Harcourt's horror.'
[Illustration: LEON GAMBETTA.
From the painting by Legros in the Luxembourg Museum at Paris.]
'On February 2nd we had a conference on London Government at the Home
Office, in which the police question again came up. In consequence of
our difference of opinion Harcourt shortly after circulated to the
Cabinet a memorandum on the police authority in the new municipality
of London....
'"No competent statesmen and no authoritative body of men have
considered this matter without arriving at the same conclusion--
namely, that there ought to be one police force, and not two, in the
Metropolis. I will therefore take it for granted that it is impossible
to raise an argument against the union of the whole of the police
force in the Metropolis under one control.... There is only one
question worthy of debate--namely, whether the united force shall be
placed under the control of the corporation or of the Government.... A
practical consideration of the case will, I think, demonstrate the
sheer impossibility of vesting in a popular council the discipline and
administration of such a force as the Metropolitan Police.... Suppose,
for example, that news arrived either from America or Ireland which
required instant and secret action by the police throughout London
against a Fenian outbreak. Is it to be contended that a meeting of the
Watch Committee is to be summoned ... a debate to be raised and a vote
taken?... When the Government determined to arrest Davitt, was the
warrant to be canvassed ... in the Watch Committee?..."
'On this I wrote in strong dissent: "Suppose the same news as regards
Liverpool. A case in point was the attack on Chester Castle. Liverpool
was the Fenian centre for this. Liverpool is by far the most Fenian
town in England. Yet all the arrests were made in Liverpool, and all
worked perfectly. If all this argument were really true, there would
be Fenian Alsatias in existence now. We do not find any difference
between town and town. We do not find that the Fenians avoid London,
where Harcourt has all his force and all his powers."
'Harcourt's memorandum went on in extraordinarily violent and anti-
popular language.... To this reasoning neither Mr. Gladstone nor
Chamberlain nor I yielded.'
Extension of the franchise involved Ireland. It was certain enormously to
increase Mr. Parnell's following, and Lord Hartington's opposition to the
proposal was very largely due to this fact. The Whig leader's attitude to
Ireland was expressed in a speech at Bacup, in which he declared that it
would be "madness to give Ireland more extended self-government" unless
they could "receive from the Irish people some assurance that this boon
would not be used for the purposes of agitation."
'Chamberlain wrote to me January 20th:
'"Hartington's speech was very Conservative the other day. I cannot
complain, as he has as much right to talk Whiggism as you and I to
spout Radicalism. Only I don't see how we are to get on together when
Mr. G. goes.... But the general impression left on my mind is that the
country (_our_ country, that is--the great majority of Liberal
opinion) is ripe for a new departure in constructive Radicalism, and
only wants leaders. So if we are driven to fight, we shall easily
recruit an army."'
Speaking at Swansea on February 1st, Mr. Chamberlain said:
"So long as Ireland is without any institution of Local Government
worthy of the name, so long the seeds of discontent and disloyalty
will remain, and burst forth into luxuriant growth at the first
favourable occasion."
Radicals were already uneasy about Lord Spencer's administration, and
their uneasiness was finding expression in public. Sir Charles notes in
January, 1883, before his brother Ashton's death:
'My brother had in January placed his application for the Chiltern
Hundreds secretly in the hands of his Newcastle friends, to be used so
soon as they had found a candidate, and I managed through Chamberlain
the selection of John Morley. Lord Spencer and Trevelyan were at this
time very hostile to Morley, who was writing against their policy in
the _Pall Mall_, and was supposed to be instigated by Chamberlain. In
sending me a letter of complaint from Trevelyan, Chamberlain wrote:
'"It seems to me devilishly like Forster over again. I think it may
wait without further reply; but I fear there may be more trouble in
store in Ireland yet, and we may have to put our feet down on further
coercion."
'In a letter of February 2nd, Chamberlain wrote:
'"If Spencer and Trevelyan really believe that I have set Morley
against them, they are very foolish. On the other hand, I have done
all I can to keep him straight, but you know he is kittle cattle to
drive. If I have not converted him, I must admit that he has rather
shaken me, and I have not quite so much confidence in their discretion
as I thought it politic to express last night" (at Swansea). "The more
I think of the prosecutions of the Press and of Members of Parliament,
the less I like them. But I have said nothing of this to Morley. You
will see that I replied to Hartington by implication. I do not want to
have a row, but if it must come I shall not shrink from it.'"
The Radicals were pressing forward a proposal to deal at once with the
extension of franchise instead of with Local Government; but here they
were overruled.
'On this last point of the order of our chief Bills, Chamberlain and I
jointly consulted the Cabinet in writing, with the result that all
pronounced against our view except Mr. Gladstone, who was away and did
not write.' (Mr. Gladstone did not return from Cannes till the
beginning of March.) 'Hartington showed in his minute not only that he
wanted County Government dealt with first, but that he wanted
redistribution dealt with in the same Session with franchise. Lord
Spencer and Lord Selborne strongly agreed with Hartington. Lord
Granville was against binding ourselves to couple redistribution with
equalization of franchise, but thought that to introduce Bills dealing
with one or both of these subjects "would be prematurely hastening the
end of a good Parliament, and would delay the passing of useful
measures, including Local Government. It seems to me important to test
the utility of the new rules of procedure by several non-political
Bills, together with such Bills as the Local Government Bill and the
reform of the municipality of London." Lord Granville, of course, was
anxious to stop in, and was merely finding reasons for not touching a
subject which he thought dangerous.
'Lord Derby agreed with Lord Granville: "The objection on general
grounds to bringing forward a County Franchise Bill in the present
Session seems to me strong. You could not postpone redistribution of
seats, and this latter measure would involve the necessity for
dissolution, either in order to carry it or immediately after it was
carried. Local Government would thus be delayed for several years."
Lord Kimberley wrote: "I agree with Lord Derby. From the time when we
propose the extension of the county franchise until (by some
Governments) the redistribution of seats is carried, there will be a
political crisis, and all other measures will be postponed."
'In consequence of the position taken up by the Cabinet, I proceeded
to draft a Local Government Bill.' [Footnote: The measure was a large
one, but he notes in his Memoir that 'it was a less complete and
comprehensive measure than that prepared by me for Chamberlain in
1886.']
Thus, immediately on his entry into the Cabinet Sir Charles found himself
entrusted with the task of framing the chief measure for the succeeding
Session. When the outlines had been sketched in, he wrote:
'Before I started for my Easter holiday I went through the draft of
the Local Government Bill. Drawing great Bills is heart-breaking work,
for one always feels that they will never be introduced or seen, so
considerable are the chances against any given Bill going forward. All
the great labour that we had given to the London Bill was wasted, and
this forms a reason why the Foreign Office is pleasanter than other
offices, as no work is wasted there.'
The decision to postpone extension of the franchise, though it eased the
situation, did not solve all difficulties. Mr. Chamberlain urged a Tenant
Rights Bill for England, which, he said to Sir Charles, "would be a great
stroke of business. Without it" they would "lose the farmers for a
certainty." Sir Charles concurred, and an Agricultural Holdings Bill was
amongst the measures carried in that Session. It did not go far in the
direction of tenant right, and therefore created no controversy with the
Whigs. But with regard to Ireland, Mr. Chamberlain 'was strongly in favour
of an Irish Local Government Bill' (which had been promised in a previous
Queen's Speech). The Prime Minister was of Mr. Chamberlain's view. On
February 3rd to 5th, when Dilke was staying with the Duke of Albany at
Claremont (and 'admiring Clive's Durbar carpet, for which the house was
built'), the Duke 'talked over Mr. Gladstone's strong desire for an Irish
Local Government Bill.' That desire was, indeed, no secret, for Mr.
Gladstone, still in his expansive mood of Cannes, gave an interview to M.
Clemenceau, in which he expressed his hope to "make the humblest Irishman
feel that he is a self governing agency, and that the Government is to be
carried on by him and for him."
At the Cabinet of February 9th
'we looked forward to what the schoolboys call "a jolly blow up," when
Mr. Gladstone should return. The letter from Mr. Gladstone, which was
read, was so steady in its terms that I passed a paper to Chamberlain,
saying: "He is quite as obstinate as you are."
'On February 12th I ... found Harcourt perfectly furious at Mr.
Gladstone's conversations as reported in the _Daily News_. I wrote to
Chamberlain to tell him, and he replied: u It is lovely. And his
conversation with Clemenceau will send Hartington into hysterics re
Irish Local Government.'
Sir Charles's first Cabinet Council was on Tuesday, February 6th, 1883.
'This was the Queen's Speech Cabinet, and my notes show that I wrote a
good deal of the speech, especially the part which concerned the
Bills. I was much surprised at the form of the circular calling the
Cabinet: "A Meeting of Her Majesty's servants will be held," etc....
We were thirteen on this day, and spent a portion of our valuable time
in wondering which of us would be gone before the year was out. Mr.
Gladstone still stated in his letters that he would retire at Easter,
or at the latest in August, and it was generally thought that he meant
August.'
A series of Cabinets followed in which the Prime Minister continued to
make himself felt, though absent, and Sir Charles wrote in his Diary:
"Talk of two Kings of Brentford! This Cabinet has to serve two
despotic monarchs--one a Tory one, at Osborne, and one a Radical one,
at Cannes."
It shows the temper of the moment that Sir Charles should have described
the second monarch as 'Radical.' But Ireland was then the central subject
of contention, and concerning Ireland Mr. Gladstone was with the Radicals,
Dilke and Chamberlain, and against those who wanted to revenge upon the
whole Irish nation, the plots of the "Invincibles," then being exposed by
the evidence of James Carey, the Phoenix Park assassin, who had been
accepted as an informer.
'On Sunday, February 18th, I dined with the Prince and Princess of
Wales at Marlborough House, where were present Prince Edward of Saxe-
Weimar, Hartington, the Duchess of Manchester, Lord and Lady Hamilton
(afterwards Duke and Duchess of Abercorn), Lord and Lady Granville,
Lady Lonsdale (afterwards Lady de Grey), Lord Rowton, H. Bismarck,
Leighton, Alfred de Rothschild, and Sir Joseph Crowe. Lord Granville
and I sat in a corner and talked Danube Conference. Lord Granville
told me, when we returned to other matters, that Harcourt was in a
dangerous frame of mind, and might at any moment burst out publicly
about the necessity of governing Ireland by the sword. He was also
threatening resignation on account of Mr. Gladstone's views about the
Metropolitan Police.'
'On February 19th there was an informal Cabinet in Mr. Gladstone's
room, which was now temporarily mine.... Harcourt fought against Lord
Granville, Kimberley, Northbrook, Carlingford, and Childers, in favour
of his violent views about the Irish. At last Carlingford, although an
Irish landlord, cried out: "Your language is that of the lowest Tory."
Harcourt then said: "In the course of this very debate I shall say
that there must be no more Irish legislation, and no more
conciliation, and that Ireland can only be governed by the sword." "If
you say that," replied Carlingford, "it will not be as representing
the Government, for none of your colleagues agree with you." It was
only temper, and Harcourt said nothing of the kind, but made an
excellent speech.' [Footnote: Sir Charles Dilke's view of the Irish
movement is expressed in a letter of March 7th, 1883: "I don't think
that the movement in Ireland is to be traced to the same causes as
that on the Continent. The Irish movement is Nationalist. It is
patriotic--not cosmopolitan, and is as detached from French Anarchism
and German or American Socialism as is the Polish Nationalist
movement."]
'On March 1st I heard that when the Irish Government, through the Home
Office, had applied to the Foreign Office to ask the Americans for P.
J. Sheridan, the Home Office had said that they feared it was useless
to apply to the United States except on a charge of murder. On this
hint the Irish Government at once charged Sheridan with murder.
Harcourt told me that their promptitude reminded him of a story which
he had heard from Kinglake, who was once applied to by a friend as to
the circumstances which would be sufficient to legalize a "nuncupative
[Footnote: "Nuncupative" is a legal term for an oral as distinguished
from a written will.] death-bed will." Kinglake wrote a figurative
account of an imaginary case in much detail, and by the next post
received a solemn affidavit from the man setting out Kinglake's own
exact series of incidents as having actually occurred.'
Prosecutions and sentences had no more effect than such things generally
have in face of a suppressed revolution and on the night of March 15th,
1883, a dynamite explosion took place at the Local Government Board. Sir
Charles, however, did not take a very serious view of it:
'The dynamiters chose a quiet corner, and they chose an hour when
nobody was about, which showed that the object was not to hurt
anybody, but only to get money from the United States. At the same
time they picked their office most unfortunately, for the Local
Government Board is the only office where people worked late at night,
and two out of my four leading men were still in their rooms, although
they had come at ten in the morning and the explosion did not take
place till nine at night.'
Mr. Gladstone had returned at the beginning of this month, and on March
5th Sir Charles saw him for the first time in Cabinet, 'singularly quiet,
hardly saying anything at all.' He did, however, say that Mr. Bradlaugh
was "a stone round their necks," 'which in a Parliamentary sense he was.'
Despite one of Mr. Gladstone's greatest speeches, Government were again
beaten when they proposed to let him affirm.
In this spring there was an agitation to create a Secretaryship of State
for Scotland, and Lord Rosebery was looked upon as designate for the
office. Sir Charles did not think the change necessary, but was strongly
for having Lord Rosebery in the Cabinet, and wrote to Sir M. Grant Duff,
Governor of Madras:
"It would be natural to give Rosebery the Privy Seal, and let him keep
the Scotch work; but nothing will induce Mr. G. to look upon him as
anything but a nice promising baby, and he will not hear of letting
him into the Cabinet." 'Nothing,' he adds, 'was settled on this
occasion.'
"A smaller Bill than those which I have mentioned, but one in which I
was interested, was my Municipal Corporations (unreformed) Bill, which
had passed the House of Lords, but failed to pass the Commons.
[Footnote: Previous reference to Sir Charles's persistent fight for
this Bill is to be found in Chapter XIII.] Rosebery thought that this
time it should be introduced into the Commons... because, although the
Lords were pledged to it by having passed it," this pledge must not be
strained too hard by constantly waving the red flag of uncomfortable
reform before the hereditary bull. "Harcourt having agreed with me
that the Bill should be introduced into the Lords, and having also
agreed with Rosebery that it should be introduced in the Commons,
Rosebery again wrote: 'I am afraid if you go on bringing this measure
before the peers they will begin to smell out suspicious matter in
it."'
On April 21st 'Rosebery again promised me to introduce a Bill,' and the
Bill became law in 1884.
After his brother's death on March 12th Sir Charles Dilke, in his reply to
a very kind letter from the Prince of Wales in the name of himself and the
Princess, mentioned Lord Rosebery and the Scotch agitation. The Prince
wrote back:
"I quite agree. If Rosebery was not to be President of the Council, he
ought at least to be Privy Seal. It seems very hard, as he has every
claim, especially after the Midlothian election."
Several matters relating to the Queen and Royal Family appear at this time
in the Memoir. At the Cabinet of March 5th
'a letter from the Queen was read as to her strong wish to have an
Indian bodyguard, consisting of twenty noncommissioned officers of the
native cavalry. I did not say a word, and Chamberlain not much, but
all the others strongly attacked the scheme, which they ended by
rejecting. Lord Derby said that the Empress title had been forced on
the former Conservative Cabinet, of which he had been a member, in the
same way. It was pointed out that if India consented to pay the men,
and they only carried side-arms, they might be treated as pages or
servants, not soldiers, and need not be voted at all as "men" in the
Army Estimates.'
'A day or two later Villiers, our military attach. in Paris, reported
the existence of a military plot, said to have been got up by General
Billot, the Minister of War: the plan being that fifteen commanders of
corps were to turn out Grévy and put in the due d'Aumale. The story
was probably a lie.'
'On March 18th there was to have been a "forgiving party" at Windsor,
for Lord Derby was commanded as well as I. The Harcourts were to have
gone, but the Queen sent in the morning to say she had slipped down,
and must put off her Sunday dinner.'
'At this time peace was restored between Randolph Churchill and the
Royal Family. The reconciliation was marked by Lady Randolph attending
the Drawing-Room held on March 13th at the Queen's special wish.'
'At the Marlborough House dinner on May 27th, the Prince spoke to me
about the allowance for his sons as they came of age, and told me that
he thought the money might be given to him as head of the family. My
own view is very much the same, but I would give it all to the Crown,
and let the King for the time being distribute it so that we should
not deal with any other members of the family.'
'At Claremont I found, from the conversation of the Duke of Albany and
of his secretary, that if the Duke of Cambridge resigned speedily, as
then seemed probable, the Duke of Connaught had no chance of obtaining
the place; but it was hoped at Court that the Commander-in-Chief would
hold his position for five or six years, and then might be succeeded
by the Duke of Connaught.'
Later Sir Charles mentions the Duke of Albany's conversation with him as
to Canada, of which he wished to be Governor, but the Queen opposed the
project, and Lord Lansdowne was eventually sent out.
Returning to the Easter recess:
'The Government programme now began to be revised in the light of
men's declared intentions.'
'On Wednesday, March 21st, I crossed to Paris, and went to Toulon. I
must have been back in London on Thursday, March 29th, on which day I
had a long interview with Mr. Gladstone on things in general. He had
told Harcourt that he would hardly budge about the London police. His
last word was that they should be retained by the Home Office for a
period distinctly temporary, and to be named in the Bill. I gathered
from Mr. Gladstone's talk that all idea of retirement had gone out of
his mind.'
There was a Cabinet on April 7th, and 'London Government was again
postponed, but, owing to the fierce conflict between Harcourt and Mr.
Gladstone, was looked upon as dead.'
Mr. Gladstone, in his anger, told Sir Charles that "Harcourt, through
laziness, wanted to get out of the Government of London Bill." But the
truth was, says the Memoir, 'that he could think of nothing but the
dynamite conspiracy.' A Bill to meet this was being rushed through
Parliament, with an almost grotesque haste, that was as grotesquely
baffled in the end.
'On April 9th the Queen sat up half the night at Harcourt's wish in
order to be ready to sign the Explosives Bill at once, but Mr. Palmer
of the Crown Office (the gentleman who signs "Palmer" as though he
were a peer) could not be found; and the other man, Zwingler, was in
bed at Turnham Green, and to Harcourt's rage the thing could not be
done. On the 16th Harcourt told the Chancellor that in the discussion
of the Crown Office vote he should move the omission of the item for
his nephew's pay.' [Footnote: Mr. Ralph Charlton Palmer was Lord
Selborne's second cousin, and secretary to Lord Selborne in the Lord
Chancellor's Office. He was afterwards a Commissioner in Lunacy.]
The London Government Bill was not yet given up for lost. On April 11th
Sir Charles Dilke wrote to Mr. Gladstone to deprecate its withdrawal, and
the Prime Minister replied, agreeing that "withdrawal ... would be a
serious mischief, and a blow to the Government."
'On April 14th there was a Cabinet, at which Mr. Gladstone announced
that Harcourt had written to him refusing to go on with the Government
of London Bill after the second reading of the measure, and proposing
that I should conduct it through Committee.'
'At the Cabinet of this day (April 21st) Mr. Gladstone said that he
wanted the bearing of the Agricultural Holdings Bill on Scotland
explained to him. "I wish Argyll were here," said he. "I wish to God
he was," said Hartington, who had been fighting alone against the
Bill, deserted even by the Chancellor and by Lord Derby. Indeed, all
my lords were very Radical to-day except Hartington, who was simply
ferocious, being at bay. He told us that Lord Derby was a mere owner
of Liverpool ground rents, who knew nothing about land.'
'On Thursday, May 24th, there was a meeting at the Home Office of nine
members of the Cabinet as to the Government of London Bill, and I
wrote after it to Chamberlain: "Victory! Hartington alone dissenting,
everybody was for going on with everything, and sitting in the
autumn." And Chamberlain replied: "At last! But why the devil was it
not decided before?"'
At a full Cabinet a few days later 'the police difficulty finally slew the
London Bill.' This seemed to Sir Charles a very serious matter, and he
thought of resigning. Mr. Chamberlain, however, was against this, though
agreeing that he should resign in the autumn 'unless Mr. Gladstone would
promise to put franchise first next year.'
So it was left. But presently Mr. Chamberlain himself became the cause of
very grave dissensions. On June 13th, 1883, a great assembly was held at
Birmingham to celebrate the twenty-fifth year of Mr. Bright's membership
for the borough, and Mr. Chamberlain in speaking observed that
representatives of royalty were not present, neither were they missed.
[Footnote: On Monday, June 11th, 1883, there was a "monster procession and
fete constituting the popular prelude to the more serious business of the
Bright celebration at Birmingham" that week. On June 13th Mr. Chamberlain
said: "Twice in a short interval we have read how vast multitudes of human
beings have gathered together to acclaim and welcome the ruler of the
people. In Russia, in the ancient capital of that mighty Empire, the
descendant of a long line of ancient Princes, accompanied by a countless
host of soldiers, escorted by all the dignitaries of the State, and by the
representatives of foreign Powers, was received with every demonstration
of joy by the vast population which was gathered together to witness his
triumphal entry. I have been told that more than a million sterling of
public money was expended on these ceremonies and festivities.... Your
demonstration on Monday lacked nearly all the elements which constituted
the great pageant of the Russian Coronation. Pomp and circumstance were
wanting; no public money was expended; no military display accompanied Mr.
Bright. The brilliant uniforms, the crowds of high officials, the
representatives of Royalty, were absent, and nobody missed them; for yours
was essentially a demonstration of the people and by the people, in honour
of the man whom the people delighted to honour, and the hero of that
demonstration had no offices to bestow--no ribands, or rank, or Court
titles, to confer. He was only the plain citizen--one of ourselves...."
(the Times, June 14th, 1883).] He added that the country was in his
opinion more Radical than the majority of the House of Commons, but not
more Radical than the Government; that the country was in favour of
Disestablishment, and that three things were wanted: First, "a suffrage
from which no man who is not disqualified by crime or the recipient of
relief shall be excluded "; secondly, equal electoral districts; and,
thirdly, payment of members.
'On June 25th Mr. Gladstone had sent for me about a recent speech by
Chamberlain at Birmingham.
'The Queen had been angry at his "They toil not, neither do they
spin," but was still more angry about this recent speech, at which Mr.
Gladstone was also himself offended. [Footnote: "This speech is open
to exception from three points of view, I think--first in relation to
Bright, secondly in relation to the Cabinet, thirdly and most
especially in relation to the Crown, to which the speech did not
indicate the consciousness of his holding any special relation," wrote
Mr. Gladstone to Sir Henry Ponsonby (Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol.
iii., p. 112).] I pointed out that Hartington had committed his
colleagues on a practical question when he spoke as to Irish Local
Government last January, and Mr. Gladstone had committed them when he
talked on Ireland and on London government to Ribot and Clemenceau at
Cannes. Mr. Gladstone defended himself, but threw over Hartington, who
had "behaved worse than Chamberlain." I went to see Chamberlain about
it, and found him very stiff, but tried to get him to say something
about it at the Cobden Club, where he was to preside on Saturday, the
30th. On the next day he promised that he would do this, but when he
came to read me the words that he intended to use I came to the
conclusion that, although they would make his own position very clear,
they would only make matters worse as far as Mr. Gladstone and the
Queen were concerned.'
Dilke's mediation was ultimately successful, and 'on July 2nd Mr.
Gladstone, in a letter to Chamberlain, accepted his explanations with
regard to his speech.' In the House of Commons, charge of the Corrupt
Practices Bill had been entrusted to the President of the Local Government
Board--a very unusual arrangement--and it meant sitting late many nights,
once till 5.30 a.m., after which 'I had to get up as usual for my fencing
people.'
'On July 25th there was another Cabinet, before which I had
"circulated" to my colleagues my local government scheme. Many members
of the Cabinet objected to it as too complete, and on my communicating
their views to the draftsman, Sir Henry Thring, he wrote:
'"I believe that the great superiority of your plan of local
government over any other I have seen consists in its extent. I
believe that you will find that your scheme, though apparently far
more extreme than any scheme yet proposed, will practically not make a
greater alteration in existing arrangements than a far less
comprehensive scheme would make. It is, as far as I can judge,
impossible to make a partial plan for local government: such a plan
disturbs everything and settles nothing.... Your plan, when carried
into effect, will disturb most things, no doubt, but will at the same
time settle everything."'
At a Cabinet held in the recess on October 25th
'Mr. Gladstone made a speech about the next Session which virtually
meant franchise first, and the rest nowhere. After this I locked up my
now useless Local Government Bill, of which the principal draft had
been dated August 24th. One of its most important parts had been the
consolidation of rates and declaration of the liability of owners for
half the rates. It had then gone on to establish district councils,
and then the County Councils. There was, however, to be some slight
resuscitation of the Bill a little later.'
Two minor concerns which interested Sir Charles exceedingly were under
prolonged discussion this year. The first was the proposed purchase of the
Ashburnham and Stowe collections. Sir Charles 'voted all through against
the purchase of the Ashburnham manuscripts, being certain that we were
being imposed upon.' He noted
'the experts always want to buy, and always say that the thing is
invaluable and a chance which will never happen again. No one can care
for the National Gallery more than I do; I know the pictures very
well, for I go there almost every week.'
He thought, however, that some wholesale purchases for public collections
had been all but worthless, with perhaps one admirable thing in a mass of
rubbish.
Secondly, there arose in May a discussion over the Duke of Wellington's
statue, which Leighton and the Prince of Wales wanted to remove from Hyde
Park Corner, but which Sir Charles cherished as an old friend. It was one
of the matters on which he and Mr. Gladstone were united by a common
conservatism:
'The ridiculous question of the Duke of Wellington's statue had come
up again at the Cabinet of August 9th, and the numbers were taken
three times over by Mr. Gladstone, who was in favour of the old statue
and against all removals, in which view I steadily supported him, the
Cabinet being against us, and Mr. Gladstone constantly trying to get
his own way against the majority. It was the only subject upon which,
while I was a member of it, I ever knew the Cabinet take a show of
hands.'
In the last Cabinet of the Session they 'once more informally divided
about the Wellington statue'; and he recorded the fact that he 'still
hoped to save it.' Yet in the end he failed; and 'now,' he notes
pathetically, 'I should have to go to Aldershot to see it if I wished to
do so.'
CHAPTER XXXII
FOREIGN AND COLONIAL AFFAIRS
OCTOBER, 1882, TO DECEMBER, 1883
Sir Charles Dilke's transference to the Local Government Board scarcely
lessened his contact with the more important branches of the Foreign
Office work, while his entry into the Cabinet greatly increased the range
of his consultative authority.
The Triple Alliance was a fact, but only guessed as yet. It is not till
the middle of 1883 that Sir Charles writes:
'On June 4th, 1883, I heard the particulars of the alliance of the
Central Powers, signed at Vienna between Germany and Austria in
October, 1879, and ratified at Berlin on October 18th of that year, to
which Italy had afterwards adhered.' [Footnote: Sir Charles knew that
Prince Bismarck had tried first for an English alliance, and wrote on
August 17th, 1882, to Sir M. Grant Duff: "N. Rothschild told me that
the late Government had twice declined an offensive and defensive
alliance offered by Germany." See also _Life of Lord Granville_, vol.
ii., p. 211.]
An extension was contemplated which would have put France between two
fires. Later, in the autumn of 1883,
'a private letter from Morier to Lord Granville showed that Bismarck
had sent the Crown Prince of Germany to Spain to induce Spain to join
the "peace league"' (Triple Alliance), 'and had failed.'
On November 22nd, 1883,
'At the Cabinet I saw a telegram from Lord Dufferin, No. 86, received
late on the previous night, in which the Sultan asked our advice as to
offers of alliance in the event of immediate general war, which had
probably been made him by both sides. We replied to it after the
Cabinet (No. 68): "We cannot enter into hypothetical engagements or
make arrangements in contemplation of war between friendly Powers now
at peace. The Sultan must be aware that Germany is the most powerful
military nation on the Continent, and that she has no ambitious views
against Turkey. Strongly advise the Sultan not to enter into
entangling engagements." This whole story of the Sultan's was probably
a lie, to get us to say whether we would defend his Armenian frontier,
but, curiously enough, Dufferin seemed to believe it.'
'On May 24th, 1883, I informed the Ministers assembled of two
interesting matters of foreign affairs. The one was Bismarck's
denunciation to us of a league among the small Christian States of the
Balkan Peninsula for provoking popular votes in Turkey in favour of
annexation of various provinces to one or other of the partners. The
other was an offer by the Grand Sherif of Mecca to turn the Turks out
of Arabia, and place it under British protection.'
The gravest danger to the world's peace lay in the fact that to the
ordinary Englishman Russia was still the natural enemy, and that France,
smarting under the rebuff she had experienced in Egypt, was assuming a
more unfriendly attitude towards Great Britain.
In South Africa the state of things established after Majuba was revealing
itself as one of constant friction, and border wars between the Boers and
African tribes claiming British protection led to ceaseless controversy.
'On the 10th (March, '83) there was another Cabinet. A Transvaal
debate was coming on on Thursday the 15th, and in view of this
Chamberlain asked for support of his opinion that an expedition should
be sent out to save Montsioa. He was supported only by Hartington and
myself, but he afterwards managed to commit us to it, and to force his
view upon Mr. Gladstone. He passed a paper to me when he found we
could not win at the Cabinet: "How far would the difficulty be met by
supplying arms to Mankowane and (query) to Montsioa, and permitting
volunteers to go to their assistance?" I replied, "I don't think it
would stand House of Commons discussion." To this he answered,
"Perhaps not. But the first is what Mankowane himself asks for, and if
we gave him what he wants that course ought to be defensible." I
wrote, "Yes, I was thinking more of Montsioa."' [Footnote: Mankowane
and Montsioa were independent native chiefs of Bechuanaland, for whose
protection the Aborigines' Protection Society was appealing to the
British Government.]
'March 16th, 1883, Mr. Gladstone asked me to speak in the event of the
Transvaal debate coming on again, and I refused, as I did not agree in
the policy pursued. Chamberlain said he would speak in my place, and
did so.
'May 26th or 27th. We decided at the Cabinet to keep Basutoland.
'June 13th. As to South Africa, the Colonial Office told us that they
hoped to induce the Cape to take Bechuanaland. A little later on the
whole of their efforts were directed in the opposite direction--
namely, to induce the Cape to let us keep Bechuanaland separate from
the Cape. It was announced that Reay had accepted the Transvaal
Mission.
'June 23rd. We decided that Reay was not to go out, because the
Transvaal people preferred to come to us.
'November 30th. We talked of the Transvaal, which looked bad.'
The Transvaal deputation is mentioned immediately after this as having
arrived.
There are also allusions to South African affairs having been raised at
other Cabinets in this year, but no details given.
Late in 1883, Sir Charles says, 'I was pressing for the restoration of
Cetewayo, and Lord Derby insisted that he had brought all his troubles on
himself.'
At this time Russia had subdued the Turcomans and made herself paramount
in the territories north of Persia and Afghanistan. It was only a matter
of months before Russian troops would be on the ill-defined frontiers of
Afghanistan. Great Britain was bound to the Amir of Afghanistan by an
engagement to assist him against external attack, provided that he
complied with British advice as to his foreign relations. Not only was a
collision predicted between Russia and the Amir, whose territory Great
Britain had thus guaranteed, but it was known where the struggle would be.
'It was also about this time' (February, 1883) 'that the Russian
Government took up my suggestion as to the delimitation of the
boundary of Afghanistan. But, as Currie wrote, "the object of the
Russian Foreign Office may only be to keep the British Government
quiet, while they are settling the boundary question with Persia and
annexing ... Merv, with a view to a fresh departure in the direction
of Herat as soon as that process is accomplished."'
'We already foresaw that the struggle would be over Penjdeh. A
memorandum of 1882, by Major Napier, [Footnote: Lieutenant-Colonel the
Hon. G. C. Napier, C.I.E., son of the first Lord Napier of Magdala,
and twin brother of the second Lord Napier.] had told us that "below
Penjdeh the Afghans would not appear to have ever extended their
authority." Mr. Currie, [Footnote: Afterwards Lord Currie, Assistant
Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office.] as he then was, prophesied
that the line proposed by the Russians would strike the Murghab near
Penjdeh.'
This was a situation well fitted to arouse Sir Charles, who wrote to Lord
Edmond Fitzmaurice: "I'm as great a jingo in Central Asia as I am a
scuttler in South Africa." His policy was not that of the India Office. He
advocated delimitation of the Afghan frontiers, and in October, 1882, the
Amir had asked for this. [Footnote: 'On October 17th, 1882, the Amir had
proposed to Lord Ripon that delimitation of his frontiers which I was
pressing at the time, but which had been refused by Lord Ripon. Lord
Granville and Fitzmaurice had come round to my view. Northbrook strongly
resisted, and wanted his famous treaty.'] 'The Government of India
insisted at this time upon the proposal to Russia of a treaty with regard
to Afghanistan.' Sir Charles thought that British interests in India would
be better served by strengthening Afghanistan, by ascertaining exactly
what the Amir's rights were, and by making him feel that he would be
protected in them. To-day, when Afghanistan is one of the self-equipping
Asiatic military powers, and admittedly an awkward enemy to tackle, the
situation seems plain enough; but in those days Abdurrahman, new on the
throne, was still a 'King with opposition.'
'On April 20th, 1883, there was a meeting at the Foreign Office as to
Central Asia between Lord Granville, Hartington, Kimberley,
Northbrook, Edmond Fitzmaurice, and myself. The Amir was in a friendly
humour, and I felt that the evacuation of Kandahar had been better
than a dozen victories.'
The evacuation of Kandahar had been Lord Ripon's work, but Lord Ripon was
now inclining to compromise the unity of the Native State which he had
then laboured to establish. He was disposed to keep the Amir at arm's
length, and wished to decline a visit of ceremony which Abdurrahman
proposed. All the Committee at the Foreign Office were against this,
except Lord Northbrook, who 'did not believe in Abdurrahman's strength,
and believed that he would soon be turned out of Herat by his own
Governor.'
'On June 7th it was settled that the Amir should have twelve lakhs of
rupees a year.' But Sir Charles had not yet carried his point as to
preventing a treaty with Russia, and
'Philip Currie and Fitzmaurice both wrote to me in favour of the India
Office view, while Condie Stephen [Footnote: Sir Alexander Condie
Stephen, K.C.M.G., was in 1882-83 despatched from the Legation at
Teheran on a mission to Khorassan, the north-east province of Persia]
returned from Central Asia with the same view in favour of a
treaty.... But Currie put a postscript to his long letter, in which he
departed altogether from the treaty position, and took up my own view
as to delimitation: "In view of our engagement to defend Afghanistan
from foreign aggression, we ought surely to know the limits of the
territory we have guaranteed."
'I finally said that I had no objection to a treaty which would merely
recapitulate facts and set out the Afghan frontier. This was my last
word, and, Lord Granville agreeing with me, we went on with
delimitation as against treaty.... It was not until June 8th, 1888,
that the Emperor of Russia recognized the arrangement and the frontier
marked by the boundary pillars.'
For Sir Charles's policy it was necessary to propitiate the ruler of
Afghanistan, and in July, 1883, it was reported that the Amir had applied
to the British Government for a new set of teeth. The application had
really been for a European dentist. When Lord Ripon persisted in refusing
Abdurrahman's proffered visit, Sir Charles tried to get civil expressions
of regret from the Government, and, failing in this, wrote in despair to
Lord Kimberley: "I hope to goodness he has got his teeth."
It was not, however, till 1885 that the tension with Russia became really
acute.
In France, Gambetta's death had been followed by a Ministerial crisis, and
in the disturbances which resulted M. Duclerc fell in February, 1883, and
after a time of confusion M. Ferry became, for a second time, Prime
Minister, having M. Challemel-Lacour, no lover of England, for his Foreign
Secretary.
"In order to distract the country's attention from internal dissensions
and the Eastern frontier," [Footnote: _Life of Lord Granville_, vol. ii.,
p. 313.] M. Ferry developed that "Colonial policy" of which Sir Charles
said, in 1887, that
"it greatly weakens the military position of France in Europe, and
disorganizes her finances, while it compromises the efficiency of the
only thing which really counts in modern European war, the rapidity of
mobilization of the reserves." [Footnote: _Present Position of
European Politics_, p. 101.]
Germany also was embarking on a "Colonial policy" disapproved of by
Bismarck, but to which later he had to bow. One instance of the
difficulties thus created was that of the Congo. A sketch of our proposed
treaty with Portugal has already been given; [Footnote: See Chapter XXVI.,
p. 418.] but while the negotiations were proceeding,
'de Brazza, employed by the French, had been making treaties in the
Congo district, which had been approved by the French Government and
Parliament. The King of the Belgians pulled the strings of the
Manchester Chamber of Commerce, and succeeded in arousing a good deal
of feeling against our negotiations with the Portuguese, and
ultimately the French and Germans joined the King of the Belgians in
stopping our carrying through our treaty.'
Mr. Jacob Bright became the spokesman of those who opposed the Portuguese
negotiations, and in 1883 Sir Charles, though offering to express his own
clear belief that the treaty was right, foretold to Lord Granville that
the House of Commons would not accept the arrangement, and Mr. Gladstone
avoided an adverse vote only by promising that the treaty should not be
made without the express consent of Parliament. Sir Charles's reference to
this lays down an opinion upon the relation of Parliament to the Foreign
Office which is interesting as coming from so strong a democrat:
'In the Congo debate, which took place on Tuesday, April 3rd, 1883,
Mr. Gladstone went perilously near giving up the valuable treaty-
making power of the Crown. What he said, however, applied in terms
only to this one case. To Grant Duff I wrote: "In all other countries
having parliamentary government, the Parliaments have to be consulted.
We stood alone, and it was hard to keep the special position, but it
was good for the country, I feel sure."'
In 1883 a Committee of the Cabinet was appointed to deal with affairs on
the West Coast of Africa, and this Committee 'by its delays and
hesitations lost us the Cameroons,' where two native Kings had asked to be
taken under British protection. [Footnote: See Chapter XXVII., p. 431.] On
the East Coast there was a more serious result of procrastination in
regard to Zanzibar.
'As late as November 16th, 1882, I wrote to Lord Northbrook, "Are you
going to let Zanzibar die without a kick?" a note which applied to an
offer which had been made to us by the Sultan, that we should become
his heirs--an offer which Mr. Gladstone had wished us to decline, and
which I was in favour of accepting.'
'The Foreign Office, in a memorandum upon this subject, assigned as
the chief reason for not accepting this trust "the fear lest it should
infringe the agreement entered into with France in 1862." ... It may
be open to argument whether our acceptance of a voluntary offer by the
Sultan of the above nature would have been a breach of the agreement.
In the autumn of 1884 the Government, waking up too late, telegraphed
to our agent at Zanzibar as to the importance of our not being
forestalled by any European nation in the exercise of at least
paramount influence over the mountain districts situated near the
coast and to the north of the equator. The Foreign Office at my
suggestion pointed out at this time that "to the north of the
Portuguese dominions we are at present, but who can say for how long?
without a European rival; where the political future of the country is
of real importance to Indian and Imperial interests, where the climate
is superior, where commerce is capable of vast extension, and where
our influence could be exercised unchecked by the rivalry of Europe in
the extension of civilization and the consequent extinction of the
slave trade." The Government, however, delayed too long, and we
afterwards lost our position at Zanzibar, and had ultimately to buy
half of it back again by the cession of a British colony.'
(Heligoland).
Sir Charles was especially concerned at the heedlessness which disregarded
the interests of the great self-governing colonies, who had no authority
to deal with foreign affairs. He gives the history of the New Hebrides.
Here native chiefs had asked to be taken under British protection; New
South Wales had urged action; the French had three times declared
intention to annex, but Great Britain had done nothing. Australian anxiety
as to the French occupation extended to New Guinea, and in March, 1883,
officials of the Government of Queensland declared an annexation of half
New Guinea. They were disavowed, but their action had created a feeling
that something must be done.
'On June 12th, 1883, there was hatched a scheme for the partial
annexation of New Guinea, which had been prepared by the Chancellor,
Mr. Gladstone, and Sir Arthur Gordon, [Footnote: Sir Arthur Gordon was
one of the philanthropists who believed in making the coloured peoples
work by a labour tax. Sir Charles had met him in 1879, and described
him as one 'who invented, in the name of civilization and progress, a
new kind of slavery in Fiji.'] of Fiji and New Zealand fame. On the
13th a Cabinet decided to go slowly in this matter, and they went so
slowly that we lost half of our half of New Guinea to Germany, and
almost lost the whole of it.'
'As early as June, 1883, we had told Italy that any attempt to occupy
any portion of New Guinea without a previous agreement with the
British Government would undoubtedly "excite a violent outbreak of
public feeling in the Australian colonies." Lord Derby was a party to
this communication to the Italians, and it was absurd for the Cabinet
and Lord Derby afterwards to argue, when the Germans landed in New
Guinea, that steps ought not to have been taken in advance to have
prevented such action. The difference was that we were willing to
bully Italy, and not willing to stand up to Germany.'
The Colonial Secretary's general attitude upon these matters may be
illustrated from a correspondence which passed between him and Sir Charles
in the autumn of this year. Replying to criticisms concerning the
Australian Colonies, Lord Derby
'somewhat sneeringly observed that in order to keep out foreign
convicts "it is not necessary that they should annex every island
within a thousand miles of their coast. They cannot have at once the
protection of British connection and the pleasures of a wholly
independent foreign policy."'
On this Sir Charles comments:
'Lord Derby had lost all credit with the Conservative party about the
time of his resignation of the Secretaryship of State for Foreign
Affairs in the Conservative Administration. But he had retained
considerable weight with Liberals. During his tenure of the
Secretaryship of State for the Colonies in Mr. Gladstone's
Administration, he lost his credit with the Liberals as well, and his
influence reached a position of decline which makes it difficult even
to remember the enormous weight he had possessed in the earliest part
of his political career. For many years Lord Derby was the ideal
spokesman of the middle man not fiercely attached to either party.
Going over this diary in 1900, it is a curious reflection that the
immense weight gained by Sir Edward Grey in the period between 1890
and 1900 was similar to that which Lord Derby had enjoyed at the
earlier period. Each of them in his time appeared to express, though
far from old, the lifelong judgment of a Nestor. Each of them extorted
from the hearer or reader the feeling: "What this man says is
unanswerable. It is the dispassionate utterance of one who knows
everything, and has thought it out in the simplest but the most
convincing form." Lord Derby could sum up a discussion better,
probably, than anyone has ever done, unless it is Sir Edward Grey. Sir
Edward Grey's summing up of a discussion on a difficult problem, such
as that presented by the Chinese question, 1897-1900, was better than
was to be expected from anyone else, unless it had been the Lord
Stanley of, say, thirty-five years before.'
On May 27th
'I dined at Marlborough House at a dinner to meet a little tin soldier
cousin in white epaulettes, who was over from Germany ... and (the
German Ambassador) Count Münster told me that the French had hoisted
their flag on a reef, as he said, within cannon-shot of Jersey, as to
the British or neutral nature of which there had long been a dispute
between the two Governments.' [Footnote: The Memoir has a note upon
this episode of the Ecréhous Books, which led to the publication of
Parliamentary papers in June of that year:
'The rocks were not within three miles of the coast of Jersey at low-
water mark, and this was the limit of the reservation of the Jersey
oyster fishery, and it was upon this fact that the French went. It
afterwards appeared that the French flag never had been hoisted on the
rocks, but only on a boat which came thither for the purpose of
fishing, so that the whole matter was somewhat of a storm in a teacup.
It raised, however, another question. The Convention of 1839, which
defined the limits of the oyster fishery between Jersey and France,
also defined the limits of the exclusive French rights of fishery on
all other parts of the coast of the British islands; and some day an
Irish Parliament may find interest in Sir Edward Hertslet's
"Memorandum as to the French right of fishery upon the coast of
Ireland, printed for the Foreign Office on the 5th June, 1883."']
'On May 28th there was a Levee, at which d'Aunay, of the French
Embassy, told me that the act of the fishermen at Ecréhous was
disavowed by France. "But," he added, "there is perhaps some Challemel
in it," an admission which rather weakened the other statement, and it
again struck me that it was a pity we had been so rude to Challemel
when he was Ambassador.'
Relations with France were going from bad to worse. Not only were they
strained by the breach of 1882 over Egypt, but French colonizing
aspirations had created trouble in Madagascar. The understanding between
the two Great Powers that an "identic attitude" in regard to the Hova
people was to be maintained was broken down by France, which under various
pretexts intervened by force in Madagascar, claiming a protectorate over
certain narrow strips of territory on the north-west coast. This claim was
denounced by Lord Granville. Yet 'on October 27th, 1882, there was a
dinner at Lord Granville's, at which I met Hartington, Kimberley, and
Northbrook.' This meeting of the heads of the military and foreign
services discussed the affairs of the Congo, and also Madagascar; 'it was
decided against my strong opposition to put no difficulties in the way of
the French. 'At this time the growing tension was disagreeably felt, and
Sir Charles learnt a month later that the Cabinet of November 28th, 1882,
'had been much frightened at the prospect of trouble with France.'
At this time an Embassy from Madagascar was in Paris to protest against
the oppressive policy pursued. An ultimatum was presented which left the
envoys no option but to depart, and they came with their bitter complaint
to London, where Sir Charles Dilke very warmly espoused their cause:
'At this moment, December 1st, 1882, I was having difficulties with
Lord Granville about Madagascar, as I was seeing much of the Malagasy
envoys, and was very friendly to them; whereas Lord Granville was
frightened of the French. A deputation came to us, got up by Chesson,
Secretary of the Aborigines' Protection Society, and introduced by
Forster; it suggested American arbitration, and Lord Granville threw
much cold water upon the scheme.'
A few days later he adds:
'I was still at this moment fighting for my Malagasy friends. Not only
did Lord Granville snub me, but Courtney wrote from the Treasury: "I
hope you will get rid of these people as soon as possible. Even the
Baby Jenkins sees the absurdity of the anti-French feeling." But
whatever "Ginx's Baby" might do, I could not see the absurdity of the
anti-French feeling with regard to Madagascar, for the French were
wantonly interfering with an interesting civilized black people in
whose country they had not even trade, for All the trade was in
American, British, or German hands.
'On December 15th, 1882, there was a fresh trouble, for Lord Granville
was furious at a speech by Lord Derby, and, indeed, I never knew him
so cross about anything at all. The difficulty was once more
Madagascar. Lord Granville _meant_ to do nothing about Madagascar, but
he did not like Lord Derby saying so in public. It spoiled his play,
by allowing his French adversary to look over his hand and see how bad
the cards were.'
The Malagasys were unique in that since 1869 they had become definitely a
Christian State, and a State Christianized by English missionaries, and
this fact was impressively brought home to Sir Charles by a scene which he
afterwards (in 1886) thus described in a public lecture:
"At Westminster Abbey there came in to the Morning Service the whole
of the members of the Madagascar Embassy, which had just come to
London from France. The two Malagasy Ambassadors were at the head of
the party. They sat very silently through the service, which the
senior Ambassador did not understand at all, and which the second
Ambassador only partly understood, until a hymn which had been given
out was sung, when, recognizing the familiar tune, the two Ambassadors
and the whole of their secretaries struck boldly in with the Malagasy
words. There could be no better instant proof, to anyone who saw the
scene, of their familiarity with the missionary teaching of England
and America, and of the extent to which, though separated from us by
language, they look upon themselves as members of the Christian
Church."
In 1882-83 Sir Charles failed to interest his colleagues in the matter,
till on August 22nd, 1883, just before Parliament was prorogued, the
Cabinet had to discuss 'what was known as the Tamatave incident, which
nearly brought England and France to war over matters growing out of the
French operations in Madagascar.'
The town of Tamatave had been bombarded and occupied by the French in
June. The matter was aggravated by the treatment of the British Consul and
of a British missionary, and difficulties were made as to adequate apology
and indemnity.
'In the course of September I had frequent interviews with Fitzmaurice
at the Foreign Office with regard to Madagascar.... Lord Granville
wrote to me, about the middle of October, that (the French Ambassador)
Waddington "professed to have a solution of the Tamatave" difficulty,
and on the 22nd a Cabinet was called with regard to the Tamatave
difficulty, Egypt, and South Africa. The French despatch from
Challemel to Waddington was most unsatisfactory.'
Another Cabinet having been summoned for October 25th, Harcourt wrote:
"I have heard nothing about its cause or object, but conjecture that
it is Granville's Cabinet for France.... It is ominous Northbrook
(First Lord of the Admiralty) being a principal assistant. I am myself
for being _stiff_ with France."
'The Cabinet was upon the two points of Tamatave and withdrawal from
Egypt, but, in the absurd way in which Cabinets behave when summoned
upon important questions, we spent most of our time in discussing a
scheme of Lefevre's for widening Parliament Street; Mr. Gladstone
wishing to widen King Street and to make a fork. A Committee was
appointed on the matter, to consist of Harcourt, Childers, Lefevre,
Northbrook, and myself. Hartington came late as usual, and on his
arrival our Tamatave despatch was discussed.'
The complete destruction of the native State and dynasty did not come at
this time, and French "protection" of Madagascar was only recognized by
Lord Salisbury's Government in 1890. But the encroachments of France led
in this year to further friction, arising from their conflict for the
possession of Tonquin. On November 17th the Cabinet discussed 'the
protection of British subjects in China in view of a French attack on the
Chinese Empire, and decided to concert measures with Germany and the
United States.' On the 19th they proposed to France mediation in the
Chinese difficulty, 'with the full expectation that it would be refused.'
'On December 7th there was a paragraph in the _Times_ in large type
intended to reassure the French, by stating that our interference in
China to protect our own subjects was not combined with Germany in
particular. The paragraph, although it may have been wanted, was
untrue. We _had_ combined our action with the Germans, and then found
it was resented by the French.'
So dissension grew at a pace which enabled Bismarck to turn his attention
from European politics, and, in one of his many meetings with Count
Herbert, Sir Charles reports that about the second week in November
'I had a conversation with H. Bismarck about his father. He said that
the Prince had turned as yellow as a guinea, and could not now work
more than an hour at a time, and that the only thing on which he
troubled himself was his workman's insurance scheme.'
CHAPTER XXXIII
EGYPT AFTER TEL-EL-KEBIR
SEPTEMBER, 1882, TO DECEMBER, 1883
'On September 19th, 1882, at noon we had a conference at the War
Office with regard to the future of Egypt, at which were present Lord
Granville, Childers, Sir Auckland Colvin, and myself, and which was
followed afterwards by a further conference, when there were admitted
to us Pauncefote for the Foreign Office and Sir Louis Mallet for the
India Office, Admiral Sir Cooper Key for the Admiralty, Sir F.
Thompson, Permanent Under-Secretary for War, and Generals Sir Andrew
Clarke and Sir Henry Norman for the War Office. In preparation for the
conference I had stirred up Lord Granville as to the volunteering of
Indian Moslem troops for the Khedive's guard. But Lord Granville in
his reply to me was more concerned with abusing my handwriting in
choice language than with answering my questions. Hartington, however,
had telegraphed to India for me on the 17th to ask the opinion of the
Indian Government on the point. Harcourt, writing from Balmoral on the
19th, said: "If you have any ideas on the settlement of Egypt, I wish
you would let me have them. I confess I am myself _in nubibus_, and I
do not find that my betters are much more enlightened. I am constantly
asked here what we are going to propose, and I do not know what to
say. I have written to Mr. G. and to Lord G. to ask for light, but I
should like to have your own personal views as to what is practicable.
I think we must cut the cord between Egypt and Turkey, but one cannot
conceal from oneself that the consequences will be serious, and may
lead to far-reaching complications. The one good thing is that
Bismarck is honestly friendly, and I believe will support us in
whatever we propose. Austria seems to be almost as nasty as Russia,
and France naturally jealous. I suppose Bismarck can and will keep
Austria in order. Please write me a real letter on these knotty
points."
'Our Egyptian conference decided upon free navigation of the Canal,
or, in other words, that ships of war were to pass at all times; on
increased influence for England on the Directorate of the Canal; and
on the destruction of the Egyptian fortresses. Childers promised to
prepare a scheme for taking over the Egyptian railroads. A paper by us
was printed for the use of the Cabinet on October 20th, in which we
stated our views about the Canal, and incidentally our decision
against a British protectorate of Egypt. The arrangement proposed by
us was pretty much that afterwards agreed upon by the Powers.'
Before this paper was issued Sir Charles had seen Émile Ollivier, who, as
a legal adviser of the Khedive, 'had great knowledge of the affairs of the
Suez Canal':
'I possess the draft of a full memorandum of Ollivier's conversation
which I sent to Lord Granville, and which represented his private
protests to Lesseps and his argument to the Khedive. Ollivier, who was
more English than French in the matter, accepted the position that by
the Khedival decree of August 14th England had been substituted for
the Khedive in all measures for the re-establishment of order in
Egypt, and that it was under this decree that we occupied the ends of
the Canal as the delegates of the Khedive; therefore there was no
violation of the neutrality, and when the Canal Company on August 19th
set up as a new Great Power, and addressed to the Khedive a diplomatic
note, their arguments became nonsensical, inasmuch as they virtually
argued that the Khedive himself had violated his own neutrality by an
internal act. Moreover, the neutrality of the Canal had never been
declared at all. The word "neutral" was indeed found in the original
concession, but it evidently meant that the Company was not to give to
one Power an advantage not given to others as regards trade and
passage. Lesseps had set up the Canal as a new Great Power, whereas it
was only an Egyptian Limited Company.
'Even, however, if the Canal had been neutral, Ollivier would have
argued against the Company that the suppression of an internal
rebellion in the Khedive's name, at his request, was not war or
violation of neutrality. It was the duty of the Khedive to suppress
rebellion, and the duty of the Canal as an Egyptian Company to aid,
and not to impede, as it had impeded, the lawful action of the
Egyptian ruler through his representatives. It had not been contended
by the Porte, as the overlord of the Khedive, that the Khedive had not
power to delegate authority to England to suppress Arabi's rebellion.
The Porte had delegated to France power to suppress the rebellion in
Syria in 1860 in its name. Lesseps seemed to think that it was within
the power of the Khedive to delegate to him sovereignty over the
Canal, and not in his power to delegate to anybody else the
suppression of a rebellion.'
A casual reference at this point recalls the fact that the Khedive's
dethroned predecessor was still moving about the world and capable of
causing trouble. Sir Charles went abroad for his autumn vacation:
'In Paris' (in the middle of October) 'I found a letter from Lord
Granville as to a visit which the ex-Khedive Ismail proposed to pay to
London. Lord Granville said that the Government could not object to
his "coming to this country. But at this moment his arrival would be
misunderstood, and any civilities, which in other circumstances they
would be desirous to show to His Highness, would lead to
misconstruction."' [Footnote: 'In November, 1883, the ex-Khedive had
come to London, and when asked to see him, at his wish, I at first
refused, but as, after he clearly understood that I knew him to be a
rascal, he wished to see me "all the same," I saw him privately at
Lady Marian Alford's house in Kensington; but he had little to say,
and seemed very stupid.' ]
'I was at this time in correspondence with my friend d'Estournelles,
[Footnote: Baron d'Estournelles de Constant.] who was Acting Resident
at Tunis, as to the capitulations. In the course of his letter
d'Estournelles expressed his bitter regret that France had not gone to
Egypt with us.'
When Sir Charles came back to London from France on October 20th, the
Cabinet was still vacillating as to its Egyptian policy:
'I had found on my return that nothing had been done towards setting
up such an Egyptian Army as could take the place of our own, although
Sir Charles Wilson, Colonel Valentine Baker, Baring, [Footnote: Major
Evelyn Baring, afterwards Lord Cromer, was then Financial Member of
Council in India. Sir Charles Wilson (Colonel Wilson) must not be
confounded with Sir Charles Rivers Wilson. Colonel Valentine Baker was
head of the Egyptian Gendarmerie.] and others, had written memoranda
upon the subject. Baring, in the course of his memorandum, strongly
defended the honesty, humanity, and conscience of the Khedive, and
opposed annexation and protectorate. On the whole, Baring's memorandum
was a better one than that of his relative Lord Northbrook, or that of
Lord Dufferin, which afterwards attracted much attention. Chamberlain
and I discussed on Saturday, October 21st, a letter to me from
Labouchere, in which the latter seemed to take a different view from
that recorded above. Labouchere said that the dissatisfaction with the
Egyptian policy was growing, that we seemed to be administering Egypt
mainly for the good of the bondholders. He was a bondholder, so it
could not be said that he was personally prejudiced against such a
policy. But he was sure that it would not go down.
'He went on to recommend the policy which I was in fact maintaining--
namely, that we should warn off other Powers, hand Egypt over to the
Egyptians, but, establishing our own influence over the Canal, remain
masters of the position so far as we needed to do so. Chamberlain
wrote on Labouchere's letter: "I am convinced the war was submitted to
rather than approved by Radicals, and, unless we can snub the
bondholders in our reorganization scheme, we may suffer for it. I have
written a long paper upon the subject, and sent it to Mr. G. I have
arranged for a copy to be sent you."'
A further Cabinet held on Saturday, October 21st, "decided" (so Sir
Charles noted in his Diary at the moment) "to be very civil to the French
--too civil by half, I think. They rejected a complicated scheme of Lord
Granville's, and substituted a single English (not to be so expressed)
controller (not to be so called)."
At this moment the autumn Session was approaching, in which the thorny
subject of reforming Parliamentary procedure must be disposed of, and the
Cabinet were preoccupied with this till 6 p.m. on October 23rd. They
'scamped their work on the draft despatch to Lord Lyons as to what he
was to tell the French as to Egypt, and so made a wretched job of it.
At night I pointed this out to Lord Granville, and told him that the
despatch was slipslop, and on the next day, October 24th, I managed to
get a good many changes made--one by telegraph, and the others by an
amending despatch.'
'Chamberlain's view of Lord Granville's proposals was that they were
childishly insincere. Europe would not be deceived into believing them
to be anything more than a proposal to restore the old system in its
entirety, with an English nominee as controller in place of the dual
control. Nothing, Chamberlain thought, was being done to develop
Egyptian interests or promote Egyptian liberties.
'Chamberlain was absent from some of the Cabinets at this moment,
detained at Birmingham by the gout, but his memorandum was sent round
the Cabinet. He was, however, in London on October 24th to assist me
in somewhat improving the despatch. His memoranda show the strong view
he held that, in spite of the almost unanimous approval of the Press,
the war had not been popular, but had only been accepted on the
authority of Mr. Gladstone as a disagreeable necessity; and that
dissatisfaction existed upon several points, but above all with regard
to the civil reorganization of the country. "There is great anxiety
lest after all the bondholders should be the only persons who have
profited by the war, and lest the phrases which have been used
concerning the extension of Egyptian liberties should prove to have no
practical meaning." Chamberlain thought that our first duty was to our
principles and our supporters rather than towards other Powers, and
that, if the other Powers insisted upon financial control, we should
at least put forward as our own the legitimate aspirations of Egyptian
national sentiment. Chamberlain refused to believe that an Egyptian
Chamber would repudiate the debt, inasmuch as such a course of action
would at once render them liable to interference by the Great Powers.'
'On October 27th, 1882, there was a dinner at Lord Granville's, at
which I met Lords Hartington, Kimberley, and Northbrook' (representing
India, the Colonies, and the Admiralty). 'I noted with regard to
Egypt:
'"Chamber of Notables: decided to do nothing, at which I am furious.
What do four peers know about popular feeling?"'
In view of the temper of the House of Commons, Sir Charles Dilke warned
Lord Granville by letter of the danger that the Fourth Party might carry
"the mass of the Tories" with Liberals on a cry for the "liberties of the
Egyptian people." Considerable delay was occasioned by negotiations as to
whether Arabi and his associates should or should not be represented by
European counsel at their trial, and in the interval rumours were set
afloat as to ill usage of them in prison.
'I had had in the course of this week a good deal of trouble in the
House of Commons, caused by a sensational telegram in the _Daily
News_, and a letter from a Swiss Arabist in the _Times_ containing
most ridiculous lies as to the treatment of political prisoners in
Egypt, but believed by our supporters, who were backed up by the
Fourth Party.'
These attacks involved the British Agent-General in Egypt, and Sir Edward
Malet felt the situation cruelly. He telegraphed home begging to be
relieved from the sole responsibility.
'On Sunday, October 29th, 1882, Lord Granville, with the gout, got the
French refusal of our proposals, and the bad news from the Soudan'
(where the Mahdi was laying siege to El Obeid, the capital of
Kordofan). 'He called a Cabinet, but only five Ministers were in town,
so it was decided that it was not to be called a Cabinet.'
'On Tuesday, October 31st, the Queen, who had at first approved of the
idea of Dufferin being sent to Egypt to supersede Malet, had now been
turned against him by Wolseley, who was staying with her, and, not
having seen the telegrams of the 27th, because we had made them into
private telegrams and kept them back, told us that she thought that to
send Dufferin was bad treatment of Malet. We had therefore to send her
Malet's telegrams in order to persuade her that it was necessary that
Dufferin should go.'
'On Monday, November 6th, there was held at the House of Commons, by
Lord Granville's wish, a meeting at which were present, besides Lord
Granville and myself, Hartington, Childers, Harcourt, Chamberlain, and
Dodson. We met to consider a further violent refusal by France of all
our proposals. Chamberlain and Harcourt were strong in the one sense,
and Hartington in the other, while Childers and Dodson sat meek like
mice. Hartington was fiercely for the old control, Harcourt and
Chamberlain against all control, and no one except Lord Granville in
favour of the proposals which were actually made, and Lord Granville a
man who constitutionally would always prefer a compromise to a clear
course. None of them knew what to do. I noted that I wished they would
not first agree upon some foolish course, and then call me in when it
had been taken beyond all possibility of alteration. When I was
talking to Brett afterwards, he said of his chief, Hartington, that it
was somewhat a pity that, being so violent as he always was in
Cabinet, he should frequently forget what his opinions were on
particular questions, as, for example, closure and county franchise.'
'Brett also told me that the Queen, to whom, he said, Lord Granville
had had to "crawl" for having sent Lord Dufferin to Egypt, was now
still more furious with him because the instructions to Dufferin had
been sent off on Friday, the 3rd, without her having seen them.
'Having trouble in the House with regard to the legal points connected
with the trial of Arabi, I had at the time frequent meetings with Lord
Selborne, who drew draft answers to the questions in the House of
Commons, which were ingenious, but hardly suited to the Commons
atmosphere.
'On the 8th there was a Cabinet at which Mr. Gladstone only attended
for a minute, merely to prevent his name being omitted from the list.
He was ostentatiously devoting himself to procedure only, and taking
no part with regard to Egypt.
'On Friday, the 10th, Count Münster called on me to tell me that
Prince Bismarck objected to any plan for a temporary dealing with
Egyptian finance, as he feared panic towards the end of the term
fixed; but the Ambassador said that the Chancellor attached no
importance to any form of control.
'On Monday, November 13th, I had a formal conference at the House of
Lords with the Chancellor, the Attorney-General, and Pauncefote, on
the whole of the legal questions connected with the trial of Arabi and
our position in Egypt; and I cannot but think that Lord Selborne in
all those many letters to me about the subject, which I have retained,
showed himself given rather to legal quibbles than to a broad view of
the questions raised. At three o'clock there was a Cabinet to consider
whether a day should be given to Bourke for the discussion of a
motion, but the Cabinet went on to decide to accept a suggestion by
Childers and Chamberlain that the sending of a Turkish envoy to Egypt
was to involve the breaking off of diplomatic relations with Turkey.
Six members, however, stopped after Mr. Gladstone, Chamberlain, and
Childers had gone away, and toned down the phrase to be made use of to
Musurus Pasha.
'On Tuesday, November 14th, we had a Suez Canal conference at Lord
Granville's at noon, and in the afternoon a Congo deputation. Between
the two we discussed at Lord Granville's house (Kimberley, Northbrook,
Carlingford, and Childers being present with Lord Granville and
myself) the question of the employment of Baker Pasha in Egypt as
Chief of the Staff.... Coming back to the Suez Canal question,
Childers, who wished us to obtain preponderance, made a characteristic
observation, saying: "_I would do it boldly_ by making the Khedive
say--" It struck me that some people had an odd idea of boldness.
'On November 15th we had a further meeting on the Canal question at
Mr. Gladstone's room at the House.... When all had come, there were
present Childers, Hartington, Northbrook, Kimberley, Carlingford, Lord
Granville, and myself. I found that Count Münster had not told Lord
Granville that which he had told me on November 10th. It was decided
to send my notes, based on my conversations with Ollivier, to
Dufferin. With regard to Arabi's trial, it was decided that Dufferin
should be told to consider the case against him, and to decide that
there was no proof of common crime, after which, by arrangement
between us and the Khedive, we were to put him away safely in
Ascension, Barbados, Bermuda, Ceylon; or any other island than St.
Helena, which would be ridiculous. Mr. Gladstone had written us a
letter proposing that we should make the Sultan banish Arabi, but we
did not much like the idea of his coming to England and stumping the
country between Wilfrid Lawson and Wilfrid Blunt. Childers asked leave
to arrest any Turkish envoy who might be sent to Cairo, but the matter
was left open.'
On November 16th the Cabinet again 'discussed the fate of Arabi, and
decided to let him run riot anywhere; but the decision was afterwards
reversed.'
On November 21st
'there was sent off to Lord Dufferin a personal telegram to say that
Baker was to be sent to fight in the Soudan, and that another
Englishman must be chosen for his post, that Arabi was to be interned
on some island on parole.
'I received letters at this time from Lord Dufferin on his arrival at
Cairo, asking me to keep him informed of my views on the Egyptian
situation.
'On December 4th there was a Cabinet which decided to send Arabi to
Ceylon, but after a consultation with Lord Ripon, whose advice was not
to be followed if it was hostile; and on the next day Lord Ripon
protested, as had been foreseen.
'Evelyn Wood, who was to command the Egyptian Army, asked the Cabinet
for such large figures as to startle them.'
'I heard from Dufferin also in December from Cairo, in reply to
Chamberlain's memorandum. He thought that Egyptian Members of
Parliament would many of them be tools in the hands of the Sultan or
of foreign Powers, but added that he would sooner run any risk than
wholly abandon representative institutions. "But I think we should
make a mistake if we forced upon this country premature arrangements
which we dare not apply to India, where the strength of our own
position and other circumstances afford not only better guarantees for
success, but the power of retreating if the experiment should prove a
failure."
'In a further letter Lord Dufferin confirmed a story which I had heard
as to Halim having bribed Arabi and the other Egyptian Colonels, but
most of the money stuck to the hands of the agent who was employed.'
"Two days after I had left the Foreign Office, Hartington wrote to me
to ask whether his soldiers might pay military honours to the holy
carpet on its return from Mecca--an amusing example of the kind of
question with which British Ministers are sometimes called on to
deal."
After Dilke's promotion to the Cabinet,
'On Thursday, February 15th, 1883, Parliament met, and I was very hard
worked, and on February 17th had heavy business in the House with
regard to Egypt, as revealed in the division of the previous night, in
which we only had a majority of thirty-five, although I had been
permitted distinctly to announce our intention to withdraw our troops,
and not to stay permanently in the country. This, after all, was a
mere expansion of the promise given to the Powers by Lord Granville in
his circular despatch of January 3rd, in which he said that we were
desirous of withdrawing British force as soon as the state of the
country would permit.
'In the meantime the Soudan was in a disturbed condition. On January
1st, 1883, we had heard from Cairo: "Second false prophet appeared,
hung by first;" or, as the despatch by post expanding the telegram put
it, "A second Mahdi has lately appeared, but was hung by order of the
first." The Mahdi, however, was making progress. The Foreign Office
were inclined to adopt some responsibility for the Egyptian attempt to
defeat the Mahdi, and reconquer the Soudan; but I invariably insisted
on striking out all such words from their despatches, and, so far as I
know, no dangerous language was allowed to pass. In consequence of my
observations a despatch was sent by Lord Granville to our consulate in
Egypt, pointing out that telegrams had been received from General
Hicks in relation to his military operations in the Soudan, and that
Lord Granville understood that these were messages intended for
General Baker, and only addressed to the consulate because Hicks found
it convenient to make use of the cipher which had been entrusted to
Colonel Stewart, who was acting as our Consul at Khartoum; but we
repeated that "H. M. G. are in no way responsible for the operations
in the Soudan, which have been undertaken under the authority of the
Egyptian Government, or for the appointment or actions of General
Hicks." At this time the Turkish Government were supplying the Mahdi
with money and officers in the hope that the troubles in the Soudan
would afford them an excuse for sending troops to "assist the
Khedive." As we continued to get telegrams from Hicks Pasha, Sir
Edward Malet informed the Egyptian Government by letter that we must
repeat that we had no responsibility for the operations in the Soudan.
We foresaw the failure of the Hicks expedition, and should perhaps
have done better had we more distinctly told the Egyptian Government
that they must stop it and give up the Soudan, holding Khartoum only;
but to say this is to be wise after the event. What we did was to
"offer no advice, but" point out that the Egyptian Government should
make up their minds what their policy was to be, and carefully
consider whether they could afford the cost of putting down the Mahdi.
In other words, we discouraged the expedition without forbidding it. I
fear, however, that Malet, against our wish, was a party to the
sending of reinforcements "to follow up successes already obtained";
for after his conversation with the Egyptian Prime Minister he added:
"This view seems reasonable."'
'On May 4th; 1883, I noted in my Diary, in reference to a matter which
I have named, that Colonel Hicks's telegram to Malet, about which both
Hicks and Malet would be reproved, the British Government having
nothing to do with the expedition, was to request that communications
should be made to General Baker which were, in fact, intended for Sir
Evelyn Wood. This showed how completely it had been settled in advance
that Baker should command the Egyptian Army, for Hicks in the Soudan
fully believed that Baker was in command.'
Expressions of opinion in England had, however, prevented this
appointment.
Another entry indicates that French opinion was beginning to accept the
British position in Egypt as a _fait accompli_:
'On May 2nd, 1883, d'Aunay, the French Secretary, told me that
Waddington was coming as Ambassador, and intended to ask for Syria for
the French as a compensation for our position in Egypt.'....
During the summer there was much negotiation concerning the Suez Canal,
and the proposal to cut a rival waterway.
'On July 4th there was a meeting of Mr. Gladstone, Lord Granville,
Childers, Chamberlain, and myself, as to the Suez Canal, and we
decided to ask Lesseps to come over and meet us. Childers had a scheme
with regard to the Canal, to which only Chamberlain and I in the
Cabinet were opposed.
'On July 19th there was another Cabinet. Chamberlain and I tried to
get them to drop Childers's Canal scheme, but they would not. The
Cabinet was adjourned to the 23rd, and on Monday, the 23rd, they
dropped it.'
In the end, however, M. de Lesseps won. An entry of November 22nd follows
up the question of widening the Canal:
'Another matter which was active at this moment was that of the
position of Lesseps, with whom we had now made peace, and to whom we
had given our permission for the widening of the first Canal. We
supported him against the Turkish Government, who wanted to screw
money out of him for their assent, and got the opinion of the law
officers of the Crown to show that no Turkish assent was needed. On a
former occasion we had contended that his privileges must be construed
strictly, as he was a monopolist. On this occasion the law officers
took a more liberal view. The fact is that the questions referred to
the law officers for opinions by the Foreign Office have very often
much more connection with policy than with law, and their opinions are
elastic. There never were such law officers as James and Herschell.
They did their work with extraordinary promptitude and decision, and
with the highest possible skill. They never differed, and they always
gave us exactly what we wanted in the best form. Comparing their
opinions with those of law officers of other days, which I often at
the Foreign Office had to read, I should call James and Herschell
unsurpassed and unsurpassable for such a purpose. Lord Selborne, who
was, I suppose, a much greater lawyer, was nothing like so good for
matters of this kind, for he always tried to find a legal basis for
his view, which made it unintelligible to laymen.'
'On August 7th I had to set to work hard to read up all the Egyptian
papers in order to support Fitzmaurice on the 9th. In the course of
this speech I announced our intention from November, 1883, to allow
Sir Evelyn Wood to maintain order in Cairo with his Egyptian forces,
we withdrawing the British forces to Alexandria. There was a Cabinet
on the 8th, at which, after a good deal of fighting, it had been
decided, against Hartington, to allow me to make the statement with
regard to Egypt which I made upon the 9th.'
By August 22nd Lord Hartington had 'come round so fast that he told us he
would be able to evacuate Cairo even before our meeting in October.' On
August 31st Sir Charles Dilke 'received Sir Evelyn Wood, who was anxious
to assure me that he was perfectly able to hold Egypt with his Egyptians.'
The report did not wholly convince Sir Charles, and he expressed some of
his doubts to Lord Granville, with whom Sir Evelyn Wood had been staying
at Walmer.
'Lord Granville wrote: "His conversation gives one more the notion of
activity, energy, and conscientiousness, than of great ability. I
presume you were not able to slip in a question, but, on the other
hand, if you had succeeded he would not have heard it. He is in favour
of the complete evacuation of Cairo.... He has full confidence in that
half of the Egyptian Army which is officered by English officers. He
has only a negative confidence in the other half. Evelyn Baring will
find a private letter on his arrival, and a despatch by this mail,
instructing him to send us a full report. Till we get this we had
better not go beyond the declarations which have already been publicly
made." Baring had just (September, '83) reached Cairo as Consul-
General.'
Government policy shaped itself on the assumption that Sir Evelyn Wood was
right. On October 25th
'we formally decided to leave Cairo and concentrate a force of between
2,000 and 3,000 men at Alexandria. This was no new decision, but was
taken on this occasion in order that the Queen should be informed,
which had not previously been done.'
Ten days after this date the Egyptian Army of the Soudan, under General
Hicks, was destroyed by the Mahdi in Kordofan. The news only reached Cairo
on November 22nd, and the question was now raised as to what should become
of the upper valley of the Nile.
'On December 12th there was a meeting at the War Office about the
Soudan, Lord Granville, Hartington, Northbrook, Carlingford, and
myself, being present, with Wolseley in the next room, and the Duke of
Cambridge in the next but one. We again told the Egyptians that they
had better leave the Soudan and defend Egypt at Wady Halfa, and that
we would help them to defend Egypt proper. Wolseley was at one time
called in, as was Colonel Stewart, the last man who had left Khartoum.
Lord Granville told Hartington, who was starting for Windsor, what to
tell the Queen, and I noted that "the old stagers, like Lord Granville
and Mr. Gladstone, waste a great deal of their time on concocting
stories for the Queen, who is much too clever to be taken in by them,
and always ends by finding out exactly what they are doing. It is
certainly a case where honesty would be a better policy."
'I cannot but think that Malet was largely responsible for the state
of things in Egypt (Lord Granville being so far responsible that I had
much difficulty in getting him to interfere against Malet), and that
we had interfered somewhat late.... Malet left before the army
commanded by Hicks was surrounded, and it was on Baring that the blow
fell. But Baring was always strongly opposed to the attempt of the
Egyptians to reconquer the Soudan, and, moreover, thought that they
were quite unfit to govern it. Immediately after the bad news about
Hicks first came, Baring told us that Khartoum must fall, and
recommended us to tell the Egyptian Government, which we did, that
under no circumstances must they expect the assistance of British or
Indian troops in the Soudan. We even stopped their sending Wood's army
to the Soudan, and we told Baring not to encourage retired British
officers to volunteer, and told him to recommend the evacuation of the
Soudan. On December 3rd Baring sent us a most able report upon the
whole situation, and he and General Stephenson commanding the British
troops, Sir Evelyn Wood commanding the Egyptian Army, and General
Baker, were all of opinion that it was impossible to hold Khartoum,
and that the Egyptians must be made to fall back on Wady Halfa. On the
other hand, the Egyptian Government could not make up their minds to
leave Khartoum. Malet up to the last days of his stay in Egypt was
rendering himself, in fact, responsible for the Hicks expedition and
for the Soudan policy of the Egyptians, and there is one fatal
despatch of his in existence in which he relates how he interfered, at
the wish of Hicks, to suggest a change of Egyptian Governor. He was
privately censured for this, but he was publicly approved for his
whole course, and therefore we were in a sense responsible, although
we expressly repudiated this responsibility in our despatches to him,
and forced the Egyptian Government to acknowledge that they thoroughly
understood our repudiation. The only thing that could have been done
more than was done would have been to have publicly censured Malet,
and Lord Granville should have had the courage to do this.
'In September I had succeeded in getting Edgar Vincent appointed to
the Egyptian Cabinet as the English financier, virtually Prime
Minister; but, able as he was, it was a long time before he felt his
feet, and could take the government into his own hands.' [Footnote:
When on August 15th Mr. (afterwards Sir) Edgar Vincent dined in Sloane
Street with Edward Hamilton, Mr. Gladstone's private secretary, and
some other people, Sir Charles noted that he 'was once more struck
with the extraordinary strength displayed by Vincent for a man of
twenty-four.']
'Two additional points concerning Egypt which should be mentioned here
are, in the first place, Lord Granville's mistake in creating a place
with Egyptian pay, at Lord Spencer's wish, for Clifford Lloyd, who had
made Ireland too hot to hold him; and, in the second place, the
violent protests of the Anti-Slavery Society, backed up by ours in
December, as to the employment of Zebehr Pasha. We should undoubtedly
have been censured by the House of Commons had we allowed any
important place to have been given to Zebehr Pasha, but it was
difficult to prevent it when it was wished both by the Egyptians and
by Baring--given the fact that we had washed our hands of their Soudan
policy.
'What we should have done, if I may be allowed to be wise after the
event, was to have distinctly ordered the Egyptians to abandon
Khartoum and to fall back to Wady Halfa. At the end of the year Baring
forwarded to us a memorandum from the Egyptian Government. They
pointed out that the Khedive was forbidden by Turkey to cede
territory; that we were asking them to abandon enormous provinces,
with Berber and Dongola, and great tribes who had remained loyal. They
thought that if they fell back Egypt would have to continually resist
the attacks of great numbers of fanatics, and that the Bedouin
themselves would rise. They were wrong, but they put their case so
well that they converted Baring; and he told us that he doubted if any
native Ministers could be found willing to carry out the policy of
retirement, and he thought that it would be necessary to appoint
English Ministers if we decided to force it on them.
'In the last lines of Baring's despatch of December 22nd there occur
words which afterwards became of great importance: "If the abandonment
policy is carried out ... it will be necessary to send an English
officer of high authority to Khartoum, with full powers to withdraw
the garrisons and to make the best arrangements he can for the future
government of the country." It was on those words that we acted in
sending for Gordon, and asking him whether he would go to the Soudan
for this purpose, which he agreed to do, and when we sent him there
was no question of his going for any other purpose than this.'
END OF VOL. I
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles
W. Dilke V1, by Stephen Gwynn
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR CHARLES W. DILKE V1 ***
This file should be named 7382-8.txt or 7382-8.zip
Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
even years after the official publication date.
Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.
Most people start at our Web sites at:
https://gutenberg.org or
http://promo.net/pg
These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.
Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our
projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
eBooks Year Month
1 1971 July
10 1991 January
100 1994 January
1000 1997 August
1500 1998 October
2000 1999 December
2500 2000 December
3000 2001 November
4000 2001 October/November
6000 2002 December*
9000 2003 November*
10000 2004 January*
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
We need your donations more than ever!
As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
that have responded.
As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
In answer to various questions we have received on this:
We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and
you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
just ask.
While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
donate.
International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
ways.
Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
method other than by check or money order.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are
tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising
requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
We need your donations more than ever!
You can get up to date donation information online at:
https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html
***
If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:
Michael S. Hart
Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
We would prefer to send you information by email.
**The Legal Small Print**
(Three Pages)
***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.
To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.
THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.
INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
or [3] any Defect.
DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this
requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however,
if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word
processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:
[*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author of the work, although tilde
(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
the case, for instance, with most word processors);
OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are
payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to
let us know your plans and to work out the details.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.
The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
[email protected]
[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
they hardware or software or any other related product without
express permission.]
*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
