The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume I Part 15

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.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sports 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 ident.i.ty, 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 Amba.s.sador 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 Amba.s.sador 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 a.s.surance 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 const.i.tuents, 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 c.o.c.ks 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 circ.u.mstances which prevent the possibility of its being satisfactory. This has since been admitted by Mr. Gladstone himself, and my view has been acted on. Mr.

Gladstone professed to answer me at the time, and to do so with much vigour, but as a fact he carefully avoided coming to close quarters.

He stated indignantly that he had not been able to find who were the members of the Committee of 1837 who had complained of insufficient investigation, to whose complaints I had referred, and he said this as though none did complain, although it is notorious that Grote and his friends, especially Hawes, did so complain. He maintained that I was wrong in saying that the Civil List in the present reign was greater than in the last, although I was quoting a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and although Mr. Gladstone made his figures support his view by including the allowance to Queen Adelaide, while I properly excluded both that allowance and the allowance of Prince Albert, as these personages were supposed to spend these allowances themselves, and not to hand them over to the King or to the Queen Regnant, as the case might be. Mr. Gladstone denied the pretended statement by me that the annuities to Princes and Princesses in the present reign were unprecedented in amount, but I had never named Princes, and I had never named amount. What I had said was that the provisions made for the Royal children during the reign were unprecedented in character, and so they were, as I showed clearly in my speech, and especially the allowances to the Princesses. Mr. Gladstone, with regard to the Royal savings, declined to go into the Exchequer accounts on the ground that I had not given him enough notice. I had given him eight days' notice, and he had not asked for any further information than that which I had afforded him. He argued that the savings were not great, for 590,000 had been spent on private allowances and personal pensions, a fact which was wholly new to us and not intended by Parliament. He argued that there was little to say about sinecures, because none had been created during the present reign, a reply which gave the go-by to the fact that the old ones continue. Long afterwards, when I was Mr.

Gladstone's colleague, he recanted a good deal of his doctrine of 1872, as I shall show. Indeed, in 1889 all the information was given to the House which I had asked for and been refused in 1872, and the principle was laid down by the Committee on grants to the Royal Family, which I had privately suggested in 1880.' [Footnote: See also Chapter LIX., which deals with the Committee on the Civil List (Volume II., pp. 526, 527).]

During the whole of 1872 it was not easy to find a platform on which local Liberals would be at ease in company with the member for Chelsea. Even Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice hinted that at a meeting held in Wiltshire to promote the cause of the agricultural labourer, Dilke and Auberon Herbert would be better away. But towards the close of the year, when a meeting devoted to the same cause was fixed for Exeter Hall, Joseph Arch, its chief promoter, insisted that Sir Charles should speak, and though the appointed chairman, Sir Sydney Waterlow, resigned his office, Archbishop Manning and Dr. Jackson, Bishop of London, made no scruple of attending while Dilke's speech was delivered.

'It was a dreary speech, and, given the fact that my speaking was always monotonous, and that at this time I was trying specially to make speeches which no one could call empty noise, and was therefore specially and peculiarly heavy, there was something amusing to lovers of contrast in that between the stormy heartiness of my reception at most of these meetings, and the ineffably dry orations which I delivered to them--between cheers of joy when I rose and cheers of relief when I sat down.'

But courage and resource and knowledge had got their chance. His opponents had gone about to make a marked man of Sir Charles Dilke; within six months they had established his position beyond challenge as a man of mark.

CHAPTER XI

PERIOD OF FIRST MARRIAGE

I.

Having successfully faced his opponents in Parliament, and having also got a.s.surances 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 a.s.sembly 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 Mitch.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.s 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 Const.i.tution 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 circ.u.mstance 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 Const.i.tutionalists 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 Sall.u.s.t 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 p.r.o.nunciation of such a word. Finest of all the pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sages 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 ent.i.tled "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 a.s.surances 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 a.s.sured 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.