The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume I Part 17

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 a.s.sociations 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN STUART MILL.

From the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A., in the Westminster Town Hall.]

CHAPTER XII

RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT--DEATH OF LADY DILKE

Having remained abroad until after Christmas, 1873, the Dilkes stayed at Brighton for the sake of Lady Dilke's health, Sir Charles coming to town as occasion needed.

His address to his const.i.tuents in 1874 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 h.o.a.re, 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 const.i.tuents. 'I had indeed invented a caucus in Chelsea before the first Birmingham Election a.s.sociation 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 const.i.tuency 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 cla.s.srooms 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 a.s.sociation), 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude at this moment towards "the Republican"-- "Citizen Dilke"--is ill.u.s.trated by an anecdote in the _Reminiscences of Charles Gavard_, who was for many years First Secretary at the French Emba.s.sy. 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 ident.i.ty. 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 a.s.sail 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 princ.i.p.ality 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 n.o.body 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 a.s.sumed 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 ma.n.u.script 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 const.i.tution, 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."