The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume II Part 35

Chief of Pyrford's distinctions was the discovery on Sir Charles's own land, by Mr. Horace Donisthorpe, of a beetle (Lomechusa) which in Queen Anne's day Sir Hans Sloane had first identified in Hampstead, parasitic in a nest of red ants. A second specimen was found in 1710 in the mail- coach between Gloucester and Cheltenham; but from Queen Anne's day till 1906 it was regarded as extinct, until once more it was discovered, and discovered in its true place among the ants, on whose gestures and behaviour towards it, whether as indicating worship or serfdom, Sir Charles dilated with such rhetoric of description that the beetle a.s.sumed dimensions in the mind disappointing when it was viewed in reality.

Another rarity of insect life at Pyrford was a spider whose appearances have been oftenest noted at Hampton Court. These creatures, large, black, and horrific, were accordingly known as 'Hampton Courters,' but received no welcome, being slain on sight, their slayer quoting a characteristic saying which he had heard from Anatole France:

'We all know of dangers which seem more terrible than they are. The spider alone suffers death for his carelessness as to this habit of exaggeration. Many an uncle spider walks about by candlelight, and is slain by us on account of his monstrous shadow, whereas his body, being but small, would have escaped our rage.'

It was here that much of his Memoir was dictated, based on an enormous ma.s.s of letters, papers, and private diaries, kept throughout his Government career. After 1891 there is only a scattered series of entries, increasingly spa.r.s.e as time went on. Mr. Hudson recalls their walks from the station at Woking to Pyrford across the then open common, the lunch of eggs and milk, and the hours of work, during the period between the publication of _Problems of Greater Britain_ and Sir Charles's return to Parliament for the Forest of Dean.

These two country homes, Pyrford and Dockett, held Sir Charles so fast with their simple pleasures that the once insatiable traveller ceased to roam. At the close of 1892, after his return to Parliament, he sold his house and garden at Toulon. Pyrford to a great extent had come to take its place. But to the end of his days he was a constant visitor to that Provencal country which he loved. Apart from them there was another place where, though he neither owned nor rented house or land, he was no less at home than among his willows or his pines. No resident in the Forest of Dean was better known in it than its member, and nowhere had Sir Charles more real friends. For many years he spent three periods among them: his Whitsun holiday, which was very much a visit of pleasure; a visit in autumn, when he attended all meetings of the Revision Courts; and finally a month in the dead of winter, when he went round to meetings in each polling district, at night educating his electors in the political questions of the time, and in the day working with his local friends at the register till it became the most accurate record of its kind in all Great Britain--so perfect, indeed, that he was at last able to discontinue his attendance at the Revision Courts, though never relaxing his keen personal interest in every change.

His friendships in the Forest were not bounded by cla.s.s or party. He had the support, not merely of the Liberal and Labour groups, but of many strong Conservatives, here as before at Chelsea. Mention has been made of Mr. Blake, and another friend was Mr. John Probyn, who had stood as a Liberal candidate for Devizes as far back as 1868, and had not changed his views. Of his many faithful friends and supporters, one, the honorary secretary of the Liberal a.s.sociation for all Sir Charles's years of membership, had as far back as 1886 proclaimed his faith in him. [Footnote: Mr. John Cooksey, formerly proprietor of the _Dean Forest Mercury_.] Another equally active in conveying the original invitation to Sir Charles was the agent of the Forest miners, a Labour leader of the wisest type, [Footnote: Mr. G. H. Rowlinson.] who writes:

'He did not live for himself; it was always others first. I never made an appeal to him for any case of need in vain. With regard to local matters, he seemed at the beck and call of nearly everyone.

Nothing was too small or too large for him to undertake to a.s.sist any const.i.tuent, and oftentimes an avowed and lifelong political opponent. In a mult.i.tude of ways he did us service with his knowledge of affairs, his influence, his experience, his ability and work.

'In the matters of commoners' right, the right of "turnout" on the Forest, free miners' rights, questions of colliery owners, matters relating to the Crown, the development of the lower coal seams--in all these (and many of them are local intricate historical questions involving a ma.s.s of detail) he rendered valuable service.

'In his electoral battles he was always a keen fighter and a courteous opponent. In every campaign he seemed more anxious to beat his opponent by sheer weight of reason and argument, and intellect and knowledge, than by any appeal to party pa.s.sion or feeling.

'I have been at a great many of his meetings, and never saw him shirk a question, nor saw one put to him that he did not, nine times out of ten, know more about than the questioner, however local the point might be.

'As an example, he was holding a meeting at Newnham. Questions were invited; none asked. Sir Charles looked disappointed; so Mr. King, of the "Victoria," in a friendly way, thought he would put him a poser, and asked his opinion about Sir Cuthbert Quilter's Pure Beer Bill.

'For about twenty minutes Sir Charles talked beer--the origin, ingredients, what it should be, what it often is and what it is not, what it is in other countries. As Mr. King remarked afterwards, he told him more about beer than he ever knew before, though he had been in the trade all his life.'

Probably none was more rejoiced at the unexpected display than the genial Tory host of the Victoria, who lived to deplore his friend and to quote especially one of his observations: 'If you see a man put on "side," Sir Charles once said to me, you may be sure he feels the need of it.' [Footnote: Among those who worked with him and for him best and longest should be named at least Mr. Charles Ridler and Mr. T. A. H.

Smith of Lydney, Mr. Henry Davis of Newent, Mr. B. H. Taylor, and Mr. S.

J. Elsom.]

Part of the service which he rendered to the const.i.tuency was by means of the honorary presidency of the Liberal Four Hundred, first created, to be held by himself, in 1889. Under this t.i.tle the foremost spokesmen of Liberalism were in successive years brought into the Forest; [Footnote: The list included Mr. Asquith, Lord Morley, Mr. McKenna, Mr.

Lloyd George, and Lord Loreburn.] and thus member and const.i.tuents worked together alike in political and in personal friendship. He hailed the little clump of trees on the conical top of Mayhill, the first landmark which indicated the Forest, almost as if it stood above his home. All was homelike to him as he drove from the pastoral country by the Severn, with its apple and pear orchards, to the typical mining town of Cinderford, and on to the great expanse of Forest in whose midmost glade was the Speech House Hotel, more ancient than the hollies about it, which had been planted to mark Charles II.'s Restoration. The Panelled Room, always reserved for his use during his stay there, had been for many generations the place in which the free miners met to hold their courts; it had been built for the purpose, as the gallery for speakers showed.

He loved the Forest--not only the distant spots of interest, but every tree, delighting to act as guide to all its pleasant places. So each new guest was taken to see High Beeches and the great wind-swept row of Scots firs by Clearwell Court. The aged oak-tree, which at a distance resembled a barn--for nothing was left but its great trunk above the roots--was another point of pilgrimage; so were the dwarf thorns on Wigpool Common, which reminded him of the tiny j.a.panese trees centuries old, as, indeed, probably were these.

Then there were the expeditions to the rocking stone called the Buckstone, a relic of the Druids; to the Scowles, the wonderful Roman iron workings like the Syracusan quarries; to Symons Yat, where the old military earthworks ended in a triple d.y.k.e, with the Severn and the Wye on either side; to Newland Church, in which a fifteenth-century bra.s.s shows the free miner of those days equipped for work; or to the lovely valley by Flaxley Abbey, once in the precincts of the Forest, where the monks had their fish-ponds, and where on the side of the hills their old ironworks may still be seen.

He and Lady Dilke rode early in their stay to all these outlying places, with Miss Monck as their constant companion. She was President of the Women's Liberal a.s.sociation, stayed with them during their long visits to the Forest, and was with him for the election at the end. [Footnote: Miss Emilia Monck, sister of Mr. Berkeley Monck, of Coley Park, Heading, of which he was several times Mayor, and which he contested as a Liberal in 1886.]

These were far rides, but close about the Speech House the place teems with interest. In the last years he would walk every evening to look at the great stag-headed ruins of the oaks, which thrust their gnarled and crooked limbs fantastically into the closing night, or stand watching the shadows fall on the spruce rides which stretch out near the old inn, till, in the fading light, it seemed as though figures were moving in and out on the greensward of the great vistas. In the bright sunshine, imposing silence on himself and his companions, he would watch for long together the life in one of the forest glades, the moving creatures in the gra.s.s, the t.i.ts playing on the branches of a silver birch silhouetted against the sky, the little blue b.u.t.terflies chasing each other over the pink crab-apple bloom. He would follow the tapping of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r, and wait in the evening for the owl's cry to begin; and here, as elsewhere, to be with him was to see in everything unsuspected things.

In the winter, Speech House was at first Sir Charles's headquarters for part of January, but there, 500 feet above the sea, the roads were sometimes impa.s.sable from snow. At last Lady Dilke became too delicate to face the mid-winter visit, and, except for elections, Whitsuntide and the autumn were the two occasions for their stay. He went also each year to the miners' demonstration--in 1908 so ill that it seemed impossible that even his power of endurance could enable him to bear the strain, and in 1910 again because he said he 'would not fail Rowlinson and the miners,' though he fainted after the meeting there.

One of their early headquarters in the Forest was Lindors, the home of two among their first and warmest friends--Mr. Frederick Martin and his wife. It is in a lovely little valley with sheltered lawns, the rush of the water sounding always behind the house, above which the old castle of St. Briavels stands. The ancient prison is still there, and the castle dates back to the thirteenth century, and claims an almost unbroken succession of Constables of the Castle and Wardens of the Forest of Dean, beginning with John de Monmouth.

After Speech House the Victoria at Newnham saw them oftenest. Its interior is fascinating, with a low hall and fine old oak stairway, broad and shallow; a bit of quaint French gla.s.s let into the staircase window bears an ill.u.s.trated version of La Fourmi et la Cigale. Lady Dilke found there a remnant of fine tapestry--a battle scene with a bold picture of horses and their riders. She traced and located this as belonging to a great panel which is in the Palace at Madrid. At each election, after the declaration of the poll, Sir Charles made from a balcony of the Victoria or from a motor-car his speech to the cheering const.i.tuents, who had followed him from the town-hall, first under happiest circ.u.mstance, with his wife waiting for him in the porch, later alone, till the last occasion, in December, 1910, when he fought and won the election, dying, but with dogged courage; and as he spoke of the long term of Liberal government which would ensue before a new electoral struggle, friends standing near caught the words, 'When I shall not be here.'

Sir Charles had given up the habit of travel except for some special purpose, as when in 1897 he journeyed with Lady Dilke to see the Nattiers at Stockholm, or in another year to Bordeaux for her work on French Art in the Eighteenth Century. But every Christmas they went for a month to Paris. It was the great holiday of their year, and all the engagements were made far ahead. There was interest in their Parisian a.s.sociations, for their differing attainments made them part of various separate coteries not familiarly accessible to English people.

Their friends were of all worlds, political, literary, artistic, and social; and since Sir Charles's intimacy with France dated back to boyhood, and Lady Dilke's to the days of her first close study of French art, which, beginning in the sixties with the French Renaissance, terminated in her big work on French Art in the Eighteenth Century, their friendships extended over a long period of years, though each fresh visit enlarged their circle of friends and acquaintances.

In the memoir prefixed to her _Book of the Spiritual Life_ Sir Charles says of his wife:

'Those who are familiar with several languages learn instinctively to take the natural manners of the people who are for the moment their companions. So it was with Lady Dilke.... In Paris she was French with sufficient difference to give distinction.' As to himself, his great friend M. Joseph Reinach wrote, 'Dilke connaissait la France mieux que beaucoup d'entre nous.' But while his command of the French language and his knowledge of many sides of French life quickened his genial intercourse with the French, he never failed to impress them as an English statesman. He paid his French friends the compliment of adopting many little mannerisms; and however pure the French he spoke, he always entertained himself by keeping up to date his acquaintance with French slang, so that the latest developments of fashionable Paris jargon were familiar to him. Yet that never could be said of him which he himself noted of his friend M. Richard Waddington, brother to William Waddington, for many years Amba.s.sador in London, and, in Sir Charles's opinion, a man of even higher ability than the Amba.s.sador. Of this friend, half French, half English, he said that he had two mentalities, and that among Englishmen he was English, among Frenchmen French. Sir Charles's talk with Frenchmen was unrestrained; as Bismarck felt of England, so he of France: 'We have nothing to conceal from the French; they are our natural allies.' But it was always the Englishman who spoke; no slight veneer of manner in his social intercourse could conceal that.

There are many scattered entries in his Diary which show how great a relaxation the Paris holiday yielded.

'At Christmas at Paris we were always gay, though often among the aged. The gayest dinner I remember was at Henri Germain's with Gerome, Gaston Boissier, Laboulaye, and others, all about eighty, I being the chicken of the party.'

Gerome, the painter, is often mentioned. Laboulaye must have been Paul Laboulaye, born 1833, the diplomatist who had been Amba.s.sador to St.

Petersburg in 1886. It was during his emba.s.sy that the _rapprochement_ took place between France and Russia which was announced to Europe by the welcome of the French fleet to Cronstadt.

Gaston Boissier, Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy, and a great cla.s.sical scholar, figures again with another friend, M. Bonnat, in Sir Charles's memoir of his wife; for he notes that during their last Christmas in Paris, in 1903, 'the gaiety of their meetings' with these two friends and others 'had been as unrestrained as ever.' Earlier memories recall the sculptors Christophe and Gustave Moreau.

Christophe's beautiful 'Mask,' of which Lady Dilke had written, stands in the Tuileries Garden, and was some time ago horribly disfigured by inkstain. One of Sir Charles's late letters was written to M. Joseph Reinach, to ask whether anything had yet been done to cleanse this work of the sculptor she venerated. Only two small casts were made by Christophe from the statue, and one of these, given to her by him, decorated the Pyrford home. So did a picture by Francois Louis Francais, another artist friend, chief in his day of the water-colour school, a picture which had inspired one of her stories, and gave the motto, 'Dites-moi un Pater,' to her _Shrine of Death_. In all the later and in some of the earlier friendships Sir Charles shared, as he did in those of the great custodians of art treasures. M. de Nolhac, the poet and the Curator of Versailles, was prominent among them, and Eugene Muntz, head of the ecole des Beaux Arts. Lady Dilke's correspondence with the latter, extending over a period of twenty-three years, is preserved at the Bibliotheque Nationale.

One great friend among collectors was M. Gustave Dreyfus, a high authority on Donatello and on the medallists of the Italian Renaissance.

At his house there was another attraction in the shape of the concierge's cat, on whom Sir Charles would call before paying his respects upstairs. At another house a cat named Pouf was held in great honour by him, and his feelings were deeply wounded when, with feline capriciousness, it turned, on Paul Hervieu's entrance, to bestow all its blandishments on the writer. His love of cats was as well known to his French as to his English friends, emile Ollivier writes in 1891 from La Moutte: 'Campion lui-meme cherche d'un regard afflige son protecteur disparu'; and M. Andre Chevrillon, being 'touche par la facon dont je vous ai entendu parler de ce divin animal,' sent him Taine's sonnets 'A trois chats, Puss, ebene, et Mitonne, dedies par leur ami, maitre, et serviteur.'

Memorials of dinners with the well-known collector Camille Groult were preserved in the shape of some sketches, one of a cavalier in peruke and cravat, another an excellent crayon head of the host, by Domingo, the Spanish artist, drawn on the back of a torn menu and given by him to Lady Dilke.

The Groults' admiration of the beauty of Dockett Eddy was testified in the gift of a little reflecting mirror, a 'camera obscura,' which, held to the light, made exquisite vignettes of river, clematis, and syringa; and a dinner at 76, Sloane Street was marked by the gift of little copies of M. Groult's famous lately acquired Fragonard, in which Cupid levels his arrows at the dainty feet of a well-known dancer of the time.

The sculptor Rodin was an acquaintance of late years, and a Christmas card sent to 76, Sloane Street, in the form of a framed and signed pencil sketch of a female head, was that master's tribute to Sir Charles's heresy that Rodin drew much better than he sculptured.

'For old Francais,' says Sir Charles, 'Lady Dilke had the veneration she felt for Christophe among sculptors,' and for a few women, such as Mme.

Renan. To both the Renans they were bound by ties of familiar friendship, and some of their pleasantest hours were spent at the College de France. On November 11th, 1880, there is a note of Sir Charles's of a talk with Gambetta: 'They discussed Renan's "Souvenirs,"

which were appearing in the _Revue_ for November, wonderfully entertaining, and perfectly beautiful in style.' It was Renan who had presented Lady Dilke's two volumes on the French Renaissance, in 1880, to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, with an admiring report, and Sir Charles's admiration for Renan's writing was great. Of Mme. Renan he says: 'This homely-looking old dame was not only a good wife, but a woman of the soundest sense and the most upright judgment.'

The same feeling of attachment and respect bound them to Mme. de Franqueville, [Footnote: Mlle. erard.] the first wife of Sir Charles's old friend M. de Franqueville, whom he saw often both in Paris and London. They visited them at La Muette, famous for its memories of Marie Antoinette, where in the early years of her prosperity she would take her companions to play at dairying with dainty emblazoned milkpails.

One whose friendship dated far back was emile Ollivier, and with him Sir Charles often discussed, both in Paris and at St. Tropez, a vanished era in France's history, that of the 'Liberal Empire.' To these talks the Prime Minister of Napoleon III. would bring such wealth of oratory and such fertility of gesticulation that his hearers felt themselves transported to a crowded chamber, of which he occupied the rostrum, and woke with bewilderment to find themselves in the tranquil calm of his sun-flooded Southern home. There were those who said that the point of view urged with such conviction varied, and Sir Charles retains a _mot_ of M. Jusserand: 'emile Ollivier change souvent d'idee fixe.' Mme. emile Ollivier, his devoted second wife and helper, was also a great friend, and her photograph was one of those which Lady Dilke kept near her.

'Relations of the pleasantest kind,' says Sir Charles, were formed with the Due d'Aumale, in Mr. Bodley's phrase 'last of the grands seigneurs of France.' On September 25th, 1895, the Duke wrote asking them 'to spend a whole day going through the books at Chantilly.' 'The charm of these books, however, and of these repeated visits of 1895 and 1896, lay in the fact that books and drawings alike excited historic memory.'

'In October, 1895, we were in Paris, and took Went [Footnote: Sir Charles Dilke's son, the present Sir C. Wentworth Dilke.] to stay at Vaux, that he might see the finest of the chateaux, and also the room where, according to Dumas, Aramis and Porthos carried off Louis XIV., though d'Artagnan saved him again. We also went ourselves to lunch at Chantilly with the Due d'Aumale, who told us how Mme.

Adelade, his aunt, used to slap his brother, the Prince de Joinville, already a distinguished naval officer, and stop his talking politics with, "Tais-toi, mechant morveux, qui oses critiquer la politique de ton pere." Comtesse Berthe de Clinchamp has looked after the house since the days of the d.u.c.h.esse d'Aumale, though she lives in another house. This distinguished old dame was also there. A daughter of the Due de Chartres was once slapped by her aunt, the Comtesse de Paris, in public, for asking to be taken to stay at Chantilly with "tante de Clinchamp." In 1896 to 1897 we were a great deal at Chantilly, finding the Duke interesting with his reminiscences of his father's account of the Court of Louis XVI.

With the ex-King of Westphalia, and Bismarck, the Duc d'Aumale was in old age the most interesting companion that I have known. It was the projecting of his stories into a newer generation that made them good. Sir S. Smith ("Long Acre") was a bore at the Congress of Vienna, but would have been delightful to us could we have known him.' [Footnote: Sir Sidney Smith must have been prolix over his achievements at the siege of Acre and elsewhere. It is certain that a reputation for bombast injured his career and caused his remarkable achievements to be underrated.]

When in May, 1897, the Duke suddenly died, Lady Dilke wrote a little article which, in spite of the sadness of the circ.u.mstances of his death and the consequent deep note of pathos, in certain parts of the obituary recalled very happily the brightness of their talks. Letters of the time speak of the losses which the Dilkes and their friends had sustained by the fire at the charity bazaar which had indirectly caused the Duke's death, through that of the d.u.c.h.esse d'Alencon, his favourite niece. One of Lady Dilke's dearest friends in France, the Marquise de Sa.s.senaye, had escaped, but several of her relations who were with her had died a dreadful death. The tie with these friends was very close, and the daughter of the Marquise de Sa.s.senaye, the Baronne de Laumont, and her granddaughter, the Comtesse Marquiset, were among Sir Charles's last guests at the House of Commons. But he did not live to know that his friend the Baron de Laumont and his only son laid down their lives for France in 1915.

Colonel Picquart Sir Charles had met in 1891 during the 'belles journees de ces manoeuvres de l'Est,' chronicled by M. Joseph Reinach. He deeply admired the character of this n.o.ble and chivalrous gentleman, who, convinced that wrong had been done to an innocent man, sacrificed his fine career to save him, and suffered for his Dreyfusism by imprisonment and military degradation. Sir Charles met Picquart often at the table of M. Labori and elsewhere, and at one dinner when Emile Zola was present in 1899 there were also two English friends, the genial Sir Campbell Clarke, Paris correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_, and his kind wife, at whose house in Paris the Dilkes dined almost every Christmas Day. He touched in this way the struggle over the Dreyfus affair, and his att.i.tude is summed up in a letter conveying through M. Reinach to Colonel Picquart 'that intense sympathy which I do not express publicly only because all we English say does more harm than good.' [Footnote: 'At Christmas, 1900, in Paris we met Labori and Colonel Picquart two nights running, and heard fully the reasons of their quarrel with the Dreyfus family, which will probably all come out. Labori with great eloquence, and Picquart quietly, developed the view that Dreyfus, by virtually accepting the amnesty along with his own freedom, has taken up the position of a guilty man and sacrificed all those who have sacrificed everything for him. When, during the season of 1901, Labori came to London, and we saw much of him, he had toned down this view, or did not think it wise to express it. But it came out in November, 1901.']

His friendship with M. Joseph Reinach, so often mentioned, dates back to the days when the latter was Gambetta's secretary. 'C'est par Gambetta que j'ai connu Dilke,' says M. Reinach. 'Gambetta avait pour lui une vive affection.' In London and in Paris they met and talked and fenced, and kept in touch by close political correspondence. 'Dilke was a great friend of mine, and I thought him a true and intrepid patriot and citizen,' said M. Reinach; and perhaps of all M. Reinach's great qualities it was his courage which most provoked the admiration of Sir Charles and of his wife. They knew all the three brothers, and M.

Salomon Reinach, asking Sir Charles to come and discuss ma.n.u.scripts, signs himself 'in admiration of your enormous knowledge'--a happy tribute from one of whom it was said 'il sait tout.' 'Salomon Reinach, the outgoing President of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres,' writes Sir Charles in 1908 to Lord Fitzmaurice, 'is what Arthur Strong (Librarian of House of Lords) was, and Acton tried to be, "universal." He asked me to listen to him for two whole evenings, till we became a nuisance to our hosts--on the way in which, despite our Historical Ma.n.u.scripts Commission, we still lock up papers. His strongest examples were Horace Mann's letters to Horace Walpole, and the letters received by the Duke of Wellington (the loss of nearly all the letters written by J. S. Mill moves me more).'

M. Pallain, Regent of the Bank of France, was another friend whose acquaintance with Sir Charles dated back to the days when he was Gambetta's secretary. His book on Talleyrand, the 'fameux livre de Pallain,' as Sir Charles calls it in a letter to M. Jusserand, was hardly less interesting to him than his mastership of French finance.

The Siegfrieds, representatives of the wealthy and serious Protestant world, were friends who shared Sir Charles' interest in questions of social reform, as was that wisest of permanent officials, M. Fontaine, head of the French Labour Department; and he discussed these matters also with the great representative of Roman Catholic Socialism, Count Albert de Mun. The list of his Diary engagements, ranging over a long period of time, is filled with the names of French writers, from Ludovic Halevy, the novelist and dramatist (pa.s.sages from whose _Belle Helene_ he would recite and whistle), to Anatole France; and of politicians of every school of thought, from Leon Say, 'a statesman of rare competence,' to M. Delca.s.se, whom he saw often, Deschanel, Leon Bourgeois, Millerand, Viviani, and that great friend of Greece--M. Denys Cochin; Calmette, the editor of the _Figaro_, a.s.sa.s.sinated by Mme.

Caillaux; and Lepine, the Prefect of Police; while Jaures was a London as well as a Paris guest.