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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.
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.
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 Provencal 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.
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 Sevres 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.]
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 Hotel 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 Vendome 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 Desiree Clary [Footnote: Eugenie
Bernardine
Desiree 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,
Montesinos, Baron Schwartz (Austria), Baron von Brunen 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.
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 role 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 Abbe 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
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. Lo, 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 ]
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 L10 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 progres 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, Fenelon, Helvetius, 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—Emile 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 Helvetius: Works.
“Victor Hugo: Les Miserables.
“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.'
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 opera 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 eclaires de son pays, M. Wentworth Dilke, vient d'ecrire 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-echangiste 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.
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 Helene. 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.'
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
Legislatif—“L'Italie ne s'emparera pas de Rome—jamais"
(shouts of
“Jamais!” from the Right): “Jamais la France ne supportera
cette
violence faite a son honneur et a la catholicite.” 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 Luneville 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 Bothmer—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-a-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 Luneville, and from Nancy were sent to
Pont-a-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 Worth 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-Prefecture, 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-a-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 Attache, 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 Worth, and the pen of the Procureur-Imperial 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 Baviere.” 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 decheance!
La
decheance!” It was a sunny cloudless day. The bridge leading to
the
Corps Legislatif 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 kepis 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 Republique!” and the
Captain
in command at last cried “Vive la Republique!” 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 Metiers, 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'Opera,
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-pots 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. Cremieux, 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
Pourtales 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'etat
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!”'
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 Felix (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 Montmedy, 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
Hotel 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 Hotel 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 Chatenay 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
Valerien 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 Elysee. 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
Clement
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
Valerien which suddenly burst, we not having heard it, close to
us in
a garden at the corner of the Place de l'Etoile and Avenue
d'Uhrich,
as the Avenue de l'Imperatrice 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
Valerien 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
Valerien, looks like a hole. In 1841, curiously enough, Thiers
had
been accused, at the time of the erection of the forts of which
Mont
Valerien 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 inonde 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 Hotel 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 Metiers. 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
“genie 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:
“WORTH. ORLEANS.
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.”
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 L15,000 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 L30,000 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
etre 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-Perier, 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
L590,000
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.
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
Pene
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 Emile 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 boutonne—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
fete-of-the-dead visit to the tomb of a Deputy killed on the
side of
the Constitution at the time of the coup d'etat, 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: “A
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 Hopital 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
Provencal 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, Emile 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 Felix 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 Regnier affair
at Metz,
when General Bourbaki was sent out under a pass from the
Prussians on
a fool's errand to the Empress Eugenie, there being some
treasonable
plot behind. This is now (1908) confirmed by the letter of the
King of
Prussia to the Empress Eugenie 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: Emile 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 L2,500 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.]
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 prefet. 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
Honore—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 Pere 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'eprouvai moi-meme 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 Republique Francaise,
“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 epreuves qui vous accablent, n'exprime que bien
imparfaitement les sentiments de profond attachement, de
volontaire
solidarite que je vous ai voues.
“Je sais, je mesure l'insuffisance amere de toute parole de
consolation pour d'aussi grandes douleurs, d'aussi irreparables
pertes. Car meme l'impuissance de semblables remedes qui m'ont
empeche
de vous ecrire plutot, m'ont arrete dans le desir de venir pres
de
vous a 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 a votre penetration 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 etre assez heureux pour etre de
quelque utilite dans les actes de votre existence.
“Je viendrai vous voir demain mardi a 2 heures et vous repeter
de
vive-voix ce que je dis ici. Je suis tout entier a vous et de
coeur,
“Votre ami,
“LEON 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.
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 Republique Francaise), 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 grace de vouloir bien avancer notre dejeuner au
Cafe
Anglais et de prevenir votre ami de ce petit derangement.
L'enterrement d'Edgar Quinet doit avoir lieu a une heure a
Montparnasse et je ne peux manquer a cette ceremonie. Donc a
demain
lundi 11h au Caf. Anglais.
“Votre toujours devoue,
“LEON GAMBETTA.”
At the breakfast talk turned naturally on Quinet, the professor and critic who was exiled after the coup d'etat, 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 lycees—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
Muller, 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.”'
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.'
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 Cafe 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 Gerard, 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 Gerard's pen. Gambetta, when he came to power
as
Prime Minister, appointed Gerard, 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 Gerard
arrived.
Gerard 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 Montgelas, 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 Helvetius, 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.
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'epee a 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 Montgelas (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 Montgelas 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 Charge 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.'
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-la.” 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 Emile 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.'
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 Republique Francaise). '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.
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 Attache 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 enrage
protectionniste.' He says he told him that if he were not so
violent a
Protectionist he would be 'l'homme absolument necessaire.'“
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 Munster) 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 DEPUTES,
'“PRESIDENCE,
'“31 Mai, 1879.
'“CHER AMI,
'“J'introduis aupres de vous mon ami Coquelin dont vous pourrez
apprecier le charmant esprit, et je vous le recommande sans
autrement
faire de phrases, sachant que vous savez a premier vu
reconnaitre les
vrais hommes.
'“C'est a l'ami que je confie l'ami,
'“A vous, LEON 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,
Montgelas, 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 Eugenie, 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 Provencal 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.
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. Barrere 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 Barrere 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. Barrere 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'armee, 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
Barrere
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 Leon 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.] Leon 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
determination
excellente, et si la depeche de 4 heures qui annonce votre
entree dans
le Cabinet, en qualite de sous secretaire d'etat aux Affaires
Etrangeres, est vraie, vous serez universellement approuve.
“Pour ma part, je vous felicite bien cordialement de la victoire
que
vous venez de remporter, car je sais qu'avec des hommes tels
que vous
on peut etre assure que c'est une victoire feconde en resultats
pour
la civilisation occidentale et le droit europeen.
“Votre presence au Foreign Office est bien decisive pour
dissiper les
dernieres apprehensions et effacer jusqu'aux souvenirs les plus
persistents.
“Mais vous devez avoir autre chose a faire qu'a lire des lettres
inutiles.
“Je vous serre les mains,
“LEON 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 Charge 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.
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 Leon 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. Leon 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 DEPUTES,
“PARIS,
“le 7 Mai, 1880.
“CHER AMI,
“Les dernieres Elections Cantonales m'avaient si vivement
absorbe que
je n'ai pu trouver la minute de liberte necessaire pour
repondre a vos
deux lettres.
“Permettez-moi d'ailleurs, apres m'etre excuse du retard, de
vous dire
que je ne partageais ni votre emotion ni votre point
d'impatience. Je
crois fermement que la solution grecque sera prochainement
obtenue, en
depit des resistances 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
demonstration
navale; et d'apres tout ce que je sais, j'ai confiance que le
gouvernement de la Republique est reste dans la ligne de
conduite et
qu'il y perseverera.
“Quant a la Grece, il convient qu'elle attende aussi, sans faire
mesure, l'effet de cette demonstration. Je suis peut-etre
optimiste,
mais je crois a une issue favorable.
“En ce qui touche le traite de Commerce votre lettre m'a fort
surpris,
et je ne peux m'expliquer une attitude si contraire aux
preliminaires
pris par M. L. Say: je vous prie de ne pas trop vous hater de
la
porter a la connaissance du public. Je crois qu'il y a la
quelque
malentendu que je serai bien aise de faire disparaitre, si vous
voulez
m'y donner le temps.
“Je vais demain a Cherbourg, ou je verrai vos amis qui sont
invites
par la Ville, et au retour je vous manderai ce que j'aurai
appris sur
les negociations du traite de Commerce qu'il serait si bon de
voir
conclure.
“Bien cordialement,
“L. GAMBETTA.”
“CHAMBRE DES DEPUTES,
“PARIS,
“le 8 Mai, 1880.
“MON CHER AMI,
“Je profite de l'intermediaire d'un jeune ami, M. Auguste
Gerard, que
vous avez deja rencontre, pour vous envoyer quelques lignes de
reponse
a votre aimable derniere communication.
“J'ai vu le President de notre cabinet au sujet de la question
Grecque, et comme vous pensez, le gouvernement est unanime pour
reprendre la question de Janina integralement, en ecartant
definitivement la derniere proposition de Waddington; on
accepte la
formation de la commission internationale, chargee de reprendre
le
trace au double point de vue diplomatique et technique. On y
defendra
le trace 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 epuiser toutes
les
forces des diverses nationalites auxquelles elle refuse de
donner les
maigres satisfactions fixees par le traite de Berlin.
“M. Leon Say doit avoir recu d'ailleurs a ce sujet les
instructions
les plus nettes, et vous l'avez probablement deja vu.
* * * * * * *
“A bientot, je l'espere,
“Votre devoue,
“LEON 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 Charge 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 desinteressement. 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 Panarietoff, 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 Republique
Francaise)
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, Grevy, Gambetta, and Leon 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
Barrere, 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. Leon 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 institue pour ca?”'] 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 Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, [Footnote: M. Barthelemy 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 Secretaire-General de la Presidence de la Republique.] and Lord Houghton said: “Think of the old Aristotelian Barthelemy 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. Barrere wrote: “Barthelemy 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 Barthelemy 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 expres de Suisse pour vous vous en causer a 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 Barthelemy 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.]
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. Leon 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 Leon 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. Leon 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, Leon 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 Sevigne's chateau, 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 Grevy regime,” 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
Grevy),
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 Metiers, 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
parait qu'il est clerical,' 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.”
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 L15,000, except one sum
of L40
for a service not secret at all in its nature, “and L200 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.
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. Levy, a British subject, and by a French company, the Societe Marseillaise. On January 12th M. Levy'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. Barrere 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.
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 impenetrable, ou le 24 au retour A 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. Leon 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 Charge 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 electorales ont fort bien tourne, non sans peine, mais pas de guerre sans blessures.” (22 aout, 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, Barthelemy 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 Ministere,” 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 Cafe 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 attache 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 precurseur. 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.'
I.
The New Year of 1881 had opened for Sir Charles with Gambetta's greetings:
“Chambre des Deputes.
“CHER AMI,”
“Je vous envoie mes voeux les plus ardents pour tous les succes
que
vous pouvez desirer dans cette annee qui s'ouvre, et pour la
realisation desquels j'ai confiance que votre bon genie
continuera a
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 dejeuner worthy of these guests. In spite of the privacy observed, Rumour was busy, and Punch of November 12th appeared with an amusing “Monologue du Garcon,” 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 Boheme,” 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 reponse;
si non,
dites-moi s'il suffit d'une simple signature comme autographe.
“A 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-Perier 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'Armee: 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 Clemenceau 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 Lorenco 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....'
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 Attache, 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 plait
par-
dessus tout venant de vous, qui etes bon juge en fait de
dignite et
d'autorite politique.
“Je ne regrette en partant qu'une seule chose—de n'avoir pu
terminer
le traite. Mais j'ai grand espoir d'avoir porte les choses
assez loin
pour empecher les successeurs de reculer.
“Quand vous reverrai-je? Je compte bien que ce sera e Londres,
qui
sera toujours en beau quand vous y serez.
“Bien cordialement,
“LEON 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 Generale, 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 a expliquer les choses sans les comprendre.”' [Footnote: Adapted from Beaumarchais, who thus describes “la politique” in 'Le Mariage de Figaro,' Act III., Scene ii.]
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 meme;
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.'
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 ou, meme a 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 tres 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. Emile Ollivier:
“SAINT TROPEZ,
“4 Aout, 1882.
“MON CHER MONSIEUR,
“Vous avez ete si aimable lorsque j'ai eu la bonne fortune de
faire
votre connaissance, que vous ne pouvez douter de l'interet
sympathique
avec lequel j'ai suivi le brillant developpement de votre
carriere
politique. Aujourd'hui je tiens a sortir de mon adhesion muette
et a
vous exprimer combien j'admire et combien j'approuve la
politique
actuelle de votre gouvernement en Egypte. Commissaire du
gouvernement
egyptien aupres de la compagnie de Suez depuis pres de vingt
ans, j'ai
etudie de pres ce qui se passait sur le Nil, et je ne crois pas
ceder
a un mouvement d'amitie pour le Khedive, en pensant que c'est
de son
cote que se trouvent le Droit, la justice, la civilisation.
Apres
l'avoir intronise, lui avoir promis de l'appui; l'avoir pousse
contre
Arabi, le laisser entre les mains d'une grossiere soldatesque,
ce
serait une felonie doublee d'une sottise, car on perdrait ainsi
ce qui
a ete gagne sur la barbarie par les efforts de plusieurs
generations.
Aucune paix ne vaut qu'on l'achete 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 separant de
vous, nos
seuls amis, en ce moment, en abandonnant le Khedive malgre tant
d'engagements repetes, les personnages qui nous gouvernent
consomment
la premiere des consequences qu'il etait dans la logique de
leurs
idees d'attirer sur nous—l'aneantissement a l'exterieur. Les
autres
suivront. Nous ferons une fois de plus la triste experience
qu'on ne
supprime pas impunement de l'ame d'une nation l'idee de
sacrifice, de
devouement, d'heroisme, pour reduire son ideal aux jouissances
de la
vie materielle et a l'amour bestial des gras paturages. Vous
etes bien
heureux de n'en etre pas la.
“Je vous felicite chaleureusement de la part que vous avez prise
aux
males resolutions de votre gouvernement, et je vous prie de
croire a
mes sentiments les plus sincerement cordiaux.
“Emile 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 Munster
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 L1,300,000; not of
L1,000,000
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.'
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. Emile 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—Demosthene, 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 Felix 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 Frejus, 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 chateaux 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 Eugenie 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 Charge 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 “Ecossais"
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'Ecossais.”'
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.”
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 Fouche, 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 Grevy 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.'
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 Munster 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 Ecrehous 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 Ecrehous 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.'
'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 Emile 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 Munster 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 Munster 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