The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume II Part 34

These things may be found in many a guide-book and in the lectures which he delivered more than once in Chelsea, but told as he told them they will never be told again.

This habit of a.s.sociating the prosaic business of his daily work in Parliament with picturesque traditions, and of peopling the dingy streets of London with great figures of the past, gave colour and character to his town life. He entertained still--at 76, Sloane Street, or at the House of Commons.

For exercise he relied on fencing, rowing, and his morning ride. Busy men, he held, needed what 'good exercise as contrasted with mere chamber gymnastics' could give them: 'a second life, a life in another world-- one which takes them entirely out of themselves, and causes them to cease to trouble others or to be troubled by the vexations of working life.' [Footnote: _Athletics for Politicians_, reprinted from _North American Review_.]

He was nowhere more characteristically English than through his faith in this regimen, and in the pages of the _North American Review_ he addressed to American public men in 1900 an advocacy of 'Athletics for Politicians.' This exists as a pamphlet, and some of the friends who received it were surprised to find themselves cited in confirmation of the theory that nearly all English politicians, 'having been athletes as boys, have found it wise as well as pleasant to keep to some sport in later life.' But Mr. Chamberlain, 'the most distinguished debater in the Government of the United Kingdom, who has an excellent seat on a horse, but is never now seen on one, and who is no mean hand at lawn tennis, which he scarcely ever plays,' had to be cited as a heretic who thought himself 'better without such gymnastics.'

Sculling on sliding-seats [Footnote: In 1873 'sliding-seats' had just taken the place of fixed ones, and Sir Charles, having gone as usual to see the Boat Race, criticized the crews, in a notice which he wrote, as not having yet learnt to make the best possible use of the slide.] and rapier fencing were the exercises which Sir Charles recommended to men no longer young. He continued his fencing in London and Paris. In Paris he frequented chiefly the school of Leconte in the Rue Saint Lazare, and always kept an outfit there. Teachers of this school remember with wonder Sir Charles's habit of announcing, at the termination of each stay in Paris, the precise day and hour, perhaps many months ahead, at which he would appear--and at which, like Monte Cristo, he never failed to be exactly punctual--to the joy and amus.e.m.e.nt of the expectant school.

It was at his riverside home that he found the exercise which beyond all others pleased him best.

'1890 I took a good deal of holiday in the summer and early autumn, doing much rowing with McKenna and others in a racing pair; we challenged any pair of our united ages.'

'On my fifty-third birthday,' he notes, 'I began to learn sculling. My rowing, to judge by the "clock," still improves. Fencing, stationary or declining.'

He timed himself regularly in his daily burst up and down the reach with some first-rate oarsman, very often 'Bill' East, now the King's Waterman, whose photograph stood with one or two others on the mantelpiece of his study in Sloane Street. In the same way he kept a daily record of his weight, which up to 1904 ranged between fourteen stone and thirteen.

Dockett was essentially a boating-place, a place for sun and air, where life was lived in the open or in the wide verandah hailed by Cecil Rhodes and others as the only 'stoep' in England. His son, who was travelling abroad much at this time, shared Sir Charles Dilke's love for Dockett, and was frequently there in the intervals of his journeyings.

Other than boating friends came to lunch or to dine and sleep, for the mere pleasure of talk. Such were the Arnold-Forsters, the H. J.

Tennants, Lady Abinger (the daughter of his old friend Sir William White) and her husband: and there came also members of Parliament--Mr.

Lloyd George, or in a later day Mr. Masterman; and the knights errant of politics, Mr. Cunninghame Graham and Mr. Schreiner. Many nationalities were represented--often, indeed, through official personages such as M.

Cambon, the French Amba.s.sador, or some member of the French Emba.s.sy.

Baron Hayashi and his wife came with many other j.a.panese friends, and the various representatives of the Balkan States met in pleasant converse. It was one of these who afterwards wrote: 'I never pa.s.s the house in Sloane Street without raising my hat to the memory of its former inmates.' That close friend M. Gennadius came also, and his predecessors in the Greek Legation, M. Metaxas, M. Athos Romanes, and half a score of other diplomatists, including Tigrane Pasha, and even Ras Makonnen, who was brought to Dockett by the British representative in Abyssinia, Sir John Harrington, a friend and correspondent of Dilke.

Thither also for leisure, not for athletics, came Cecil Rhodes, described in _Problems of Greater Britain_ as a 'modest, strong man'; there came Prince Roland Bonaparte, Coquelin, and Jules Claretie, with a host of others, politicians, wits, and artists, English and foreign. M.

Claretie thus, after Sir Charles's death, chronicled one visit:

'Nous avons canote, mon fils et moi, sur la Tamise avec Sir Charles, un de ces "Sundays" de liberte. Quand il avait bien rame, il rentrait au logis, et s'etendant en un pet.i.t kiosque au seuil duquel il placait des sandales, l'homme d'etat, ami du sport, accrochait a la porte un ecriteau ou se lisait ces mots: "Priere de faire silence. Je dors." Helas! Il dort a tout jamais maintenant le cher Sir Charles. Ce fut une energie, un cerveau, un coeur, une force.'

[Footnote: _Le Temps_, February, 1911.]

Then there were men ill.u.s.trious in another sphere, the famous oars of their generation. Mr. S. D. Muttlebury, most ill.u.s.trious of them all, has compiled a list of Cambridge 'blues,' young and old, who rowed with Sir Charles at his riverside home. These were--

_School_ _College_ Bell, A. S. .. .. Eton .. .. Trinity Hall.

Bristowe, C. J. .. Repton .. .. "

Es...o...b.., F. J. .. Clifton .. .. "

Fernie, W. J. .. Malvern .. .. "

Howell, B. H. .. -- "

McKenna, R. .. King's College "

London Maugham, F. H. .. Dover College .. "

Muttlebury, S. D. .. Eton .. .. Trinity College.

Rowlatt, J. F. .. Fettes .. .. Trinity Hall.

Steavenson, D. F. .. -- "

Wauchope, D. A. .. Repton .. .. "

Wood, W. W. .. Eton .. .. University College, Oxford.

In the list here given, Judge Steavenson was Sir Charles's contemporary.

Judge Wood, [Footnote: He was the son of Dilke's friend and const.i.tuent, the Rector of Newent.] his neighbour at Chertsey, known among Etonians as 'Sheep' Wood, was a University oar of the sixties, and rowed for Eton at Henley against the Trinity Hall crew which included Steavenson and Dilke. But most of the others were young. Mr. Charles Boyd [Footnote: Mr. Charles Boyd, C.M.G., sometime political secretary to Cecil Rhodes.]

sketched the life in an article written just after Sir Charles's death:

'To know Dilke as he was you had to be with him at Dockett Eddy, on the river. Dilke's ability is praised everywhere, but almost, one thinks, his manly, ungushing kindness exceeded it. He could never do enough for people, or too stealthily, as it were. He had a special kindness for young men, for Trinity Hall men perhaps by preference; the black and white blazer of his old college carried a certain prescriptive right to share in every belonging of the most famous of old Hall men. But many, oars or others, at different times in the past fifteen to twenty years, as sons of the house, spent between Shepperton and Chertsey Locks, or on the tennis lawns among Sir Charles's famous willows, or lying on deck-chairs on the long, deep verandah, the happiest and healthiest of week-ends or more extended summer holidays. There are few pleasanter reaches of our river, and none quieter, than this, for the rush and the intolerable crowds are above stream or below stream, but not here. And there is no such holiday house for young men as Dockett, hidden in its willow walks and islanded by the Thames in front and by the expanse of Chertsey Mead behind.

'Less a country-house, indeed, than a camp of exercise. You did as you pleased, but under Sir Charles's guidance you were pleased to be strenuous. He called everybody to bathe at 7 a.m., and where was ever better fresh-water bathing-place than the floating raft below the boat-house at Dockett? Etiquette required you to dive in and go straight across to the other bank, touch, and return; when, like as not, Sir Charles, in shorts and sweater, might be seen very precisely preparing tea on the landing-stage for the deserving valiant. His little kindnesses had an added and affecting quality from his reserve and sternness. A rare figure of an athlete he was, and a rare athlete's day his was in that retreat. For hours before he called and turned out the morning guard he had been up busy gardening, or reading, or writing. At a quarter to nine he breakfasted. Very shortly after breakfast an ex-champion sculler the admirable Bill East, would arrive from Richmond, and he and Sir Charles would row in a racing skiff a measured mile or more of the river. One summer at least he changed from rowing kit to boots and breeches after his rowing, and rode till luncheon. At four o'clock there would be a second bout with East, and thereafter, having changed from his rowing kit into flannels and his Hall cap, he would take Lady Dilke in her dinghy, which n.o.body else has ever used or will use.

'After these exercises came dinner, and after dinner talk; and what talk! How his intellectual weight and equipment affected those who were much with him as young men, and who had a chance to revise their impressions after years of close observation of the world and its big men, a sc.r.a.p of dialogue may ill.u.s.trate. One who in his "twenties" was much at Sloane Street and Dockett, and who pa.s.sed later into close working relations with several at least of the most conspicuous, so to say, of Front Bench men in the Empire, after an interval of thirteen years sat once more for a whole long evening with three others at the feet of Gamaliel. A well-known scholar and historian put questions which drew Sir Charles out; and all were amazed and delighted by the result. After Sir Charles had gone, one of the others, a distinguished editor, said to the wanderer: "Come, you have known the Mandarins as well as anybody. Where do you put Dilke with them?" "Well, I rule Lord Milner out," said ----: "but all the others, compared to Sir Charles, strike me in point of knowledge, if you must know, as insufficiently informed school- boys." That is how his brain struck this contemporary. As for the moral qualities observed, you get to know a man well when you see him constantly and over years at play. And what intimate's affection and respect for Sir Charles, and confidence in him, did not grow greater with every year? It seems admitted that he was a great man.

Well, if there is anything in the intimate, not undiscerning impression of nearly eighteen years, he was a good man, or goodness is an empty name.'

Another account of his talk and ways comes from Mr. Spenser Wilkinson:

'I moved to London in 1892, and from that time on found the intimacy with Dilke one of the delights of life. We used always to meet, either for breakfast or lunch, at Dilke's house in Sloane Street, or for lunch at the Prince's Restaurant in Piccadilly, or at 2.30 in the lobby of the House of Commons. I was also frequently a guest at the dinner-parties either at Sloane Street on Wednesdays, when Lady Dilke was alive, or at the House of Commons. Then there were small house-parties on Sat.u.r.day and Sunday at Dockett Eddy, near Shepperton on the Thames, where Sir Charles had built two cottages, and where a guest was expected to do exactly what he pleased from the time when he was punted across the river on arrival until he left the punt on departing. In winter I used to bicycle over to the cottage at Pyrford, where Dilke and his wife were always to be found alone and where I spent many a charming afternoon.

'Every man takes a certain tinge from the medium in which he is, and is therefore different in different company and different surroundings. I knew three Dilkes. First there was the statesman, the man of infinite information which he was ever working to increase. When you went to see him it was on some particular subject; he wanted precise information, and knew exactly what he wanted. With him my business was always finished in five minutes, after which I used to feel that I should be wasting his time if I stayed. This Dilke, in this particular form of intercourse, was by far the ablest man I ever met.

'Then came Dilke the host, the Dilke of general conversation. Here again he towered above his fellows. The man who had been everywhere and knew everybody--for there seemed to be no public man of great importance in any country with whom Dilke was not acquainted and with whom he had not corresponded--a man who was almost always in high spirits and full of fun, had an inexhaustible fund of delightful conversation, about which the only drawback was that, in order to appreciate it, you had to be uncommonly well informed yourself.

'But the Dilke I liked best was the one I used to have to myself when I spent a day with him either in the country or on the river, when neither of us had anything to do, when there was no business in hand, and when we either talked or were silent according to the mood. In these circ.u.mstances Dilke was as natural and simple as a civilized man can be. If one started an uncongenial subject, he would say. "It does not interest me," but the moment one approached any of the matters he cared for he mobilized all his resources and gave himself with as little reserve as possible.

'Dilke was a past-master in the art of ordering his time, and this was the secret of the vast quant.i.ty of work which he was able to do.

He was a voracious and quick reader, as is proved by the number of books which he used to review for the _Athenaeum_, of which he was proprietor. Yet he was an early riser and went to bed early, and a part of his day was given to exercise.

'A great deal of time was consumed in interviews with all sorts and conditions of men, and his attendance at the House of Commons, constant and a.s.siduous, accounted for a large part of half the days in the year. But everything was mapped out in advance; he would make appointments weeks, or even months, in advance, and keep them to the minute. His self-control was complete, his courtesy constant and unvarying; he was entirely free from sentimentality and the least demonstrative of mankind, yet he was capable of delicate and tender feelings, not always detected by those towards whom they were directed. He was simple, straightforward, frank, and generous. It was delightful to do business with him, for he never hesitated nor went back upon himself. Modest and free from self-consciousness, he was aware both of his powers and of their limitations. I once tried to persuade him to change the manner of his Parliamentary speeches, to stop his minute expositions of facts and to make some appeal to the emotions of his hearers--at any rate in cases where he had strong feelings of his own. He made one experiment in accord with this suggestion, and told me that it had been most successful; but he said that he would not try it again, because it was not in accord with his natural bent, and he was unwilling to be anything but himself.'

Dockett was the home of the Birds. Sir Charles's evidence before the Select Committee on the Thames as to the destruction of kingfishers led to a prohibition of all shooting on the river, and to an increase of these lovely birds. In 1897 he had two of their nests at Dockett Eddy.

His acres of willow-grown all-but-island were made a sanctuary for birds, and therefore from Dockett only, of all his homes, cats were kept away. Nests were counted and cherished; it was a great year when a cuckoo's egg was discovered among the linnet's clutch, and its development was watched in breathless interest. Owls were welcome visitors; and the swans had no better nesting-place on the Thames than the lower end of Dockett. They and their annual progeny of cygnets were the appointed charge of Jim Haslett, Dilke's ferryman and friend.

Pensioners upon the house, they used to appear in stately progress before the landing raft--the mother perhaps with several little ones swarming on her back or nestling in her wings, and from time to time splashing off into the water. Always at their appearance, in answer to Sir Charles's special call, a cry of 'Swan's bread' would be raised, and loaf after loaf would disappear down their capacious throats. A place with such privileges was not likely to be undisputed, and many times there were battles royal against 'invaders from the north,' as Sir Charles called the Chertsey swans who came to possess themselves of the Dockett reach and its amenities. Swan charged swan, with plumage bristling and wings dilated, but not alone they fought; Jim Haslett and his employer took part against the invaders, beating them off with sticks; and even in the night, when sound of that warfare rose, the master of Dockett was known to scull out in a dinghy, in his night gear, carrying a bedroom candlestick to guide his blows in the fray.

Evening and morning he would steal along the bank in his dinghy, counting and observing the water-voles, which he was accustomed to feed with stewed prunes and other dishes, while they sat nibbling, squirrel-like, with the dainty clasped in their hands.

A few gay beds of annuals by the house, a purple clematis on the verandah, and a ma.s.s of syringa at the landing-stage, were all the garden permitted; roughly mown gra.s.s paths here and there led through the wild growth of nature, where the willows met overhead.

Such was his summer home, described in the lines of Tibullus which were carved on the doorway of the larger house:

'Jam modo iners possim epntentus vivere parvo Nec semper longae deditus esse viae, Sed canis aestivos ortus vitare sub umbra Arboris, ad rivos praetereuntis aquae.'

[Footnote: Thus translated by the Rev. W. Tuckwell:

'Here, fancy-free, and scorning needless show, Let me from Life's dull round awhile retreat, Lulled by the full-charged stream's unceasing flow, Screened by tall willows from the dog-star's heat.']

He guarded its quiet, and, champion as he had always been of the public right of common on land and on the river, he was resentful when its privilege was carelessly abused. He rebuked those who broke the rules of the river in his marches--above all, such as disturbed swans or pulled water-lilies. After every Bank Holiday he would spend a laborious day gathering up the ugly leavings.

Many a.s.sociations endeared to him what he thus defended. When he was out in the skiff, darting here and there, Lady Dilke, in the little dinghy which he had caused to be built for her--called from its pleasant round lines the _b.u.mble Bee_--would paddle about the reach. After her death he would paddle out in the dinghy which no one else might take out, and lie for hours watching the light change on that familiar and tranquil beauty of green mead and shining water, of high-waving poplar and willow, with drooping boughs awash. When he also was gone, the little boat was not suffered to pa.s.s into the use of strangers, but burnt there on the bank.

In his other home at Pyrford, all the day's relaxations were of this intimate kind. [Footnote: Here, too, work was disturbed by his natural history researches. He writes apologetically to Mr. Hudson as to some mistake in a letter: 'I can plead as a disturbing cause three young brown owls, quite tame; one barks, and two whistle, squeak--between a railway guard and a door-hinge. The barker lets me get within four or five feet before he leaves off yapping. He worries the cuckoo into shouting very late. I leave the owls unwillingly, late--one night 1 a.m.

They are still going strong.'] Here also was no formal garden; Nature had her way, but under superintendence of a student of forestry. Sir Charles was a planter of pines; great notebooks carefully filled tell how he studied, before the planting, the history of each species, how he watched over the experiments and extended them. [Footnote: Here is a detail entered concerning Lawson's cypress--_Erecta vividis_: 'I remember Andrew Murray, of the Royal Horticultural, first describing Lawson's cypress, introduced by his brother in 1862, when my father was chairman of the society of which Murray was secretary. Our two are gardener's varieties, one greener and the other bluer than the true Lawson. The American name is Port Orford cedar. It will not do very well on our bad soil, but I've given it a pretty good place. It is said that Murray _first_ sent it to Lawson of Edinburgh in 1854. This variety was made by A. Waterer in 1870.']

In summer, on the dry heathy commons of Surrey, there is always danger of a chance fire spreading, and it was part of his care to maintain a cleared belt for fending off this danger. Much of his day went in gathering debris and undergrowth, so as to keep clear ground about the trees, and then the heaped-up gatherings rewarded him with a bonfire in which he had a child's pleasure, mingled with an artist's appreciation of the shapes and colours of flame. It was for praise of this beauty that he specially loved Anatole France's _Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque_, with its celebrations of the salamanders and their vivid element.

The heath blossom in all its kinds was cultivated, and it was his invariable custom to come up on a Monday from Pyrford with a spray of his favourite white heather in his b.u.t.tonhole.

Here, too, were a.s.sociations, interesting if not exactly historic. The Battle of Dorking was fought close by, and in this neighbourhood the Martians descended.