The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume I Part 27

'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 rea.s.serted, and the ground was ultimately handed over to the Metropolitan Board of Works to be managed as an open s.p.a.ce, 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 const.i.tuents, and received an ovation in consequence of the pa.s.sing 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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.sumed her new t.i.tle 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 Emba.s.sy 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 a.s.sembled.

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 a.s.surance of patriotic support for a Government actually engaged in war; Mr. Gladstone was pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sed 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 Amba.s.sador, 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 b.u.t.ton 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 Gren.o.ble 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 a.s.sez 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 Emba.s.sy 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 Joh.o.r.e 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 Amba.s.sador.

'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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 const.i.tuents, and hence the letter of the d.u.c.h.ess; 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 a.s.sociation 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.'