The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume I Part 19

"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 const.i.tution for his country.' Gambetta suggested as an alternative that they should allow the National a.s.sembly 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 t.i.tle or give to any person that he pleased any t.i.tle, 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 pa.s.ses 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 fias...o...b.. 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 pet.i.t derangement.

L'enterrement d'Edgar Quinet doit avoir lieu a une heure a Montparna.s.se 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 "a.s.sisted" 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-cla.s.s 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 Amba.s.sador 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 d.u.c.h.esse de Sesto--my old friend of 1860, the d.u.c.h.esse 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 pet.i.t 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Let.i.tia 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 Emba.s.sies 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."