The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume I Part 2

"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 Let.i.tia were gone to Brighton and then to Hastings, and G.o.dpapa 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 c.o.c.kney 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 cla.s.sics 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 d.i.c.kens, of whom the latter was known to us as "young Charles d.i.c.kens," owing to my great-grandfather having known "Micawber."'

Old Mr. Dilke's father had been employed in the Admiralty along with the father of d.i.c.kens. As for Thackeray, it was probably about this time that he came on the boy stretched out upon gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sion with me for many years, and burnt itself out, I may add, like most pa.s.sions, 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 a.s.sociated 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 inst.i.tute 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--Cha.s.seurs 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 cla.s.sics 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 circ.u.mstance. 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 pa.s.sing 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 Suss.e.x 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 d.i.c.kens'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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sisi:

'In 1856 I had begun to shoot, my father being pa.s.sionately 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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.ses 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 bra.s.ses, 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 sc.r.a.p 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 a.s.sisted 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 pa.s.sages 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 s...o...b..ryness to see the trial of the Whitworth guns.'