The life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, bart., M.P.

Front matter

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BOUGHT WITH THE [NCOME OF THE

Introduction

The papers from which the following Memoir is written were left to my exclusive care because for twenty-five years I was intimately associated with Sir Charles Dilke's home and work and life. Before the year 1885 1 had met him only once or twice, but I recall how his kindness and consideration dissipated a young girl's awe of the great political figure.

From the year 1885, when my aimt, Mrs. Mark Pattison, married Sir Charles, I was constantly with them, acting from 1893 as secretary in their trade-union work. Death came to her in 1904, and till January, 1911, he fought alone.

In the earlier days there was much young life about the house. Mrs. H. J. Tennant, that most loyal of friends, stands out as one who, hardly less than I, used to look on 76, Sloane Street, as a home. There is no need to bear witness to the happiness of that home. The Booh of the Spiritual Life, in which are collected my aunt's last essays, contains also the Memoir of her written by her husband, and the spirit which breathes through those pages bears perfect testimony to an abiding love.

The atmosphere of the house was one of work, and the impression left upon the mind was that no life was truly lived unless it was largely dedicated to public service. To the labours of his wife, a " Benedictine, working always and everywhere," Sir Charles bears testimony. But what of his own labours ? " Nothing will ever come before my

X INTRODUCTION

-work," were his initial words to me in the days when I first became their secretary. Through the years realization of this fact became complete, so that, towards the last, remonstrances at his ceaseless labour were made with hopeless hearts ; we knew he would not purchase length of life by the a.batement of one jot of his energy. He did not expect long life, and death was ever without terror for him. For years he anticipated a heart seizure, so that in the complete ordering of his days he lived each one as if it were his last.

The house was a fine school, for in it no waste of force was permitted. He had drilled himself to the suppression of emotion, and he would not tolerate it in those who worked with him except as an inspiration to action. " Keep your tears for your speeches, so that you make others act; leave off crying and think what you can do," was the characteristic rebuke bestowed upon one of us who had reported a case of acute industrial suffering. He never indulged in rhetoric or talked of first principles, and one divined from chance words of encouragement the deep feeling and passion for justice which formed the inspiration of his work.

He utilized every moment. The rapidity of his transition from one kind of work to another, and his immediate concentration on a subject totally different from that which he had previously handled, were only equalled by the rapidity with which he turned from work to play.

With the same unerring quickness he would gather' up the contents of a book or appreciate the drift of a question. This latter characteristic, I fear, often disconcerted disputants, who objected to leave their nicely ttirned periods incomplete because he had grasped the point involved before they were halfway through a sentence ; but his delight in finding this same rapidity of thought in others was great, and I xemember his instancing it as a characteristic of Mr. Asquith.

His wide grasp of every question with which he dealt

INTRODUCTION xi

was accompanied by so complete a knowledge of its smallest details that vague or inaccurate statements were intolerable to him ; but I thiiik the patience with which he sifted such statements was amongst the finest features in the discipline ■of working under him. One felt it a crime to have wasted that time of which no moment was ever deliberately wasted by himself.

The spirit in which he approached his work was one of detachment from all personal considerations; the introduction of private feuds or dislikes into public service was a thing impossible to him and to be severely rebuked in those who helped him. He never belittled antagonists, underrated his opponents' ability, or hesitated to admit a mistake. Others will testify in the pages which follow to the warmth and generosity of his friendship, but that which stands out in memory is his forbearance to his foes.

Just as his knowledge was complete in its general grasp as in its smallest detail, so was his sympathy all-embracing. No suffering, says the Secretary of the Anti-Sweating League, was too small for his help ; the early atrocities of Congo misrule did not meet with a readier response than did the wrongs of some heavily fined factory girl or the sufferings of the victim of a dangerous trade.

For his own achievements he was curiously regardless of fame. He gave ungrudgingly of his knowledge to all who claimed his help and direction, and he trained many other men to great public service. In Mr. Alfred Lyttelton's happy phrase, he possessed " rare self-effacement." There are many instances in his early career of this habit of self-effacement, and the habit increased with years. Remonstrance met with the reply: " What does it matter who gets the credit so long as the work is done V

It is for this reason that we who love him shall ever bear xii INTRODUCTION

in affectionate memory those who brought his laurels home to him in their celebration of the passing of the Trade Boards Act in 1910 — that first instalment of the principle of the minimum wage, on which he united all parties and of which he had been the earliest advocate.

It has been said of his public life that he knew too much and interested himself in too many things ; but those coming after who regard his life as a whole will see the connecting link which ran through all. I can speak only of that side of his activities in which I served him. He saw the cause of labour in Great Britain as it is linked with the conditions of labour throughout the globe; his fight against slavery in the Congo, his constant pressure for enlightened government in India, his championship of the native races everywhere, were all part and parcel of the objects to which he had pledged himself from the first. For progress and development it is necessary that a country should be at peace, and his study of military and naval problems was dictated by the consideration of the best means under existing conditions to obtain that end for England.

Yet to imagine that his life was all work would be to wrong the balance of his nature. He turned from letters and papers to his fencing bout, his morning gaUop, or his morning scull on the river, with equal enthusiasm, and his great resonant boyish laugh sounded across the reach at Dockett or echoed through the house after a successful " touch." His keenness for athletic exercises, dating from his early Cambridge days, lasted, as his work did, to the end. In spite of the warnings of an overtaxed heart, he sculled each morning of the last summer at Dockett, and in Paris he handed over his foUs to his fencing-school only a month before his death, leaving, like Mr. Valiant-for-Truth before he crossed the river, his arms to those who could wield them. It was well for him; he could not have borne long

INTRODUCTION xiii

years of failing strength and ebbing mental energy. Anything less than life at its full was death to him.

Released from work, he was intensely gay, and his tastes were sufficiently simple for him to find enjoyment everywhere. He loved all beautiful things, and, though he had seen everything, the gleam of the sinking sun through the pine aisles at his Pyrford cottage would hold him spellbound; and in summer he would spend hours trying to distinguish the bird notes, naming the river flora, or watching the creature life upon the river banks. So in the Forest of Dean, that constituency which he loved well and which well deserved his love, his greatest pleasiu-e was to set himself as guide to all its pleasant places, rehearsing the name of each blue hill on the far horizon, tracing the windings and meeting of the rivers, loving all best, I think, when the ground was like a sea of bluebells and anemones in the early year. He watched eagerly each season for the first signs of spring, and when he was very ill he told me that it must ever be a joy untouched by advancing years. But indeed he had in him the heart of the spring. I think it was largely this simple love of nature which kept him always strong and sweet even after the deep blow of his wife's death in 1904.

Wherever he was, life took on warmth and colour. Travel with him was a revelation, trodden and hackneyed though the road might be. In his vivid narrative the past lived again. Once more troops fought and manoeuvred as we passed through stretches of peaceful country which were the battlefields of France; Provence broke on us out of a mist of legendary lore, the enchantment deepening as we reached the little-traversed highlands near the coast — those Mountains of the Moors where in past days, connu comme le loup blanc among the people, he had wandered on foot with his old Provenfal servant before motors and light railways were.

xiv INTRODUCTION

His care for the Athenaeum, inspired by the more than filial love he bore his grandfather, its earlier proprietor, led to continual reading and reviewing, and he would note with interest those few Parliamentarians who, keeping themselves fresh for their work of routine by some touch with the world of Literature, thereby, as he phrased it, " saved their souls."

Of the events which cut his public life asunder it is sufficient to say here that those nearest him never believed in the truth of the charges brought, finding it almost inconceivable that they should have been made ; while the letters and records in my hands bear testimony to that great outer circle of friends, known and unknown, who have expressed by spoken or by written word, in public and in private, their share in that absolute belief in him which was a cardinal fact of oiu" work and life.

The fortitude which gave to his country, after the crash of 1886, twenty-five years of tireless work,' was inspired, for those who knew him best, by that consciousness of rectitude which holds a man above the clamour of tongues, and finds its reward in the fulfilment of his life's purpose.

" To have an end, a purpose, an object pursued through all vicissitudes of fortune, through heart's anguish and shame, through humiliation and disaster and defeat — that is the great distinction, the supreme justification of a life." So wrote his wife in her preface for The Shrine of Death.

The service of his country was the purpose of his life. Nor was that life justified alone by his unswerving pursuit of its great aim; it was justified also in its fulfilment, for his service was entirely fruitful — ^he wrested success from failure, gain from loss.

It has been said that in 1 886 the nation lost one who would have been among its greatest administrators. Yet when we look back on all that was inspired and done by him, on the

INTRODUCTION xv

thousand avenues of usefulness into which his boundless energy was directed, there is no waste, only magnificent achievement.

An independent critic both by pen and speech inside and outside the House of Commons, the consolidator of whatever Radical forces that chamber held, the representative of labour before the Labour Party was, he stood for all the forces of progress, and when his great figure passed into the silence his place was left unfilled.

One writing for an African journal the record of his funeral, dreamed that as the strains of the anthem poured their blessings on " him that hath endured," there rose behind the crowd which gathered round him dead a greater band of mourners. " A vast unseen concourse of oppressed mankind were there, coming to do homage to one who had ever found time, amidst his manifold activities, to plead their cause with wisdom, unfailing knowledge, and with keen sympathy of heart."

I commit his memory to the people whom he loved and

served.

G. M. T.

CONTENTS OF VOL. 1

CHAPTKR

PA OB

I. EAKLY LIFE - . . 1

II. EDUCATION - - 11

m. CAMBRIDGE - - - - 24

IV, CAMBEIDQE (continued) - - 40

V. LAST TERMS AT THE TTNIYERSITY - 49 VI. " GREATER BRITAIN " . . 60

VU. ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT - - - 74

Vin. THE EDUCATION BILL OF 1870 — THE FRANCO- GERMAN WAR - - 94

IX. THE BLACK SEA TREATY — THE COMMUNE - 115

X. THE CIVIL LIST - 135

XI. PERIOD OF FIRST MARRIAGE 153

Xn. RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT — DEATH OF LADY DILKE 169

Xni. RENEWAL OF ACTIVITY - 184

XIV. REVIVAL OF THE EASTERN QUESTION 202

XV. HOME POLITICS ANP PERSONAL SURROUNDINGS 225

XVI THE EASTERN QUESTION — TREATY OF SAN STEFANO

AND CONGRESS OF BERLIN - - 236

XVII. POLITICS AND PERSONS - 256

XVIII. THE ZULU WAR AND THE GREEK COMMITTEE - 270

XIX. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INTERESTS - - 283

XX. THE FORMATION OF A MINISTRY - - 298

XXI. AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE . - . . 318

xvii xviii CONTENTS

OHAPTUR

XXtl. HOME POLITICS— COMMBBCIAL TREATY — PEBHONAL

343 360 378 392

MATTERS

XXIII. COERCION — CLOSURE — MAJUBA

XXIV. EUROPEAN POLITICS XXV. COMMERCIAL RELATIONS WITH I'-RANCE

XXVI. GAMBETTA, DISRAELI, ROYAL PERSONAGES, MOBIER 402

XXVII. DIFFICULTIES OF THE LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 420

XXVIII. THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS - 436

XXIX. EGYPT (JANUARY TO SEPTEMBER, 1882) - 4C0

XXX. ENTRY INTO THE CABINET (SEPTEMBER TO DECEM- BER, 1882) - 481

XXXI. AT THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD - 5503

XXXII. FOREIGN AND COLONIAL AFFAIRS (OCTOBER, 1882, TO

XXXIII. EGYPT AFTER TEL-BL-KEBIR (SEPTEMBER, 1882, TO

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. 1

RT. HON. SIR CHARLES W. DILKE, M.P., IN THE YEAR

1873 - Frontispiece

Photographed by P. HoUyer from the paintiDg by Q. F. Watta, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

TO FACE PAGE

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE AS A CHILD 10

From the miniature by Fanny Corbaux.

MR. CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE (SIR CHARLES W. DILKE'S

GRANDFATHER) - 48

Photographed by F. HoUyer from the painting by Arthur Hughes.

SIR C. WENTWORTH DILKE (SIR CHARLES W. DILKE's)

FATHER - 88

Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by Arthur Hughes.

LADY DILKE (MISS KATHERINE SHEIL) 146

From a photograph by Hills and Saunders.

JOHN STUART MILL 168

Photographed by F. HoUyer from the painting by Q. F, Watts, R.A., bequeathed by Sir Charles W. Dilke to the Westminster Town Hall.

RT. HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P. - 304

Photographed by F. Hollyer from the painting by Frank HoU, R.A., bequeathed by Sir Charles W. Dilke to the National Portrait QaUery.

LiON OAMBETTA - 514

Photographed by F. HoUyer from the painting by Legroa, bequeathed by Sir Charles W. Dilke to the Luxembourg and Louvre Museums.

THE LIFE OF SIR CHARLES DILKE

Chapter I Eaely Life

The man whose history is here recorded was for more than forty years a commanding figure upon the theatre of English public life; a politician, who in the councils of a powerful Ministry exercised an influence more than proportioned to the offices he held; a statesman, who brought to triumphant issue many wise projects, and whose authority, even when he was a private member of Parliament, continued to be recognized not only among all parties of his countrymen, but also throughout Europe : yet, when he died, all thought and spoke not of what he had achieved, but of what he had missed.

To write the biography of one so marked by a special malignity of fate is a difficult task. That bare justice may be done, it is necessary not only to follow out his openly recorded successes, things done in his own name and of his own right, but also to disentangle, as far as may be, the part which his authority, his knowledge, and his ceaseless industry played in framing and securing measures whose enactment redounded to the credit of other men. But above all, since a man's personality signifies far more than his achievements, and this man stands before the world overshadowed by a dishonouring accusation, it is necessary to establish by facts and by testimony not so much what he did as what he was.

Yet it must not be supposed that he himself counted his career among life's failures. The record will tell of

VOL. I 1

2 EARLY LIFE Iohap. i

close and affectionate family ties; of a wonderfully vivid and varied experience acquired in many lands and through many phases of activity ; and, even in his blackest hour, of a noble love retained and richly repaid. No trace wUl be found of a nature soured or warped by balked ambition, nor any resentful withdrawal from the public stage.

In the story that has to be told, proof will emerge indisputably that, without affected indifference to the prizes of a public career, his passion was for work, not for its attendant honours; that he valued office as an opportunity to advance, not himseK, but the causes which he had at heart ; and that when further tenure of power was denied him, he abated no jot of his lifelong labours. The main purpose of his life was ' to revive true courage in the democracy of his country,'* and his immediate object always and everywhere to defend the weak. For the protection of toilers from their taskmasters at home and abroad, in the slums of industrial England and in the dark places of Africa, he effected much directly ; but indirectly, through his help and guidance of others, he effected more; and in the recognition of his services by those for whom he worked and those who worked with him he received his reward.

Charles Wentworth Dilke was born into a family of English gentlefolk, which after a considerable period of comparative obscurity had won back prosperous days. The baronetcy to which he succeeded was recent, the reward of his father's public services; but a long line of ancestors linked him to a notable landed stock, the Dilkes of Maxstoke.

This family was divided against itself in the Civil Wars ; and the brother of the inheritor of Maxstoke, Fisher Dilke, from whom Sir Charles descended, was a fanatical Puritan,

* Throughout these volumes single quotation marks without further indication signify an excerpt from the Manuscript Memoir (compiled by Sir Charles, as explained in the Preface, from original diaries and letters), or (as here) from notes left with that document, but not embodied in it. Double quotation marks signify Correspondence and Memoranda found in the despatch- cases and letters sent by correspondents, etc.

1742-1826] WENTWORTH AND DILKE 3

and married into a great Puritan house. His wife, Sybil Wentworth, was granddaughter to Peter Wentworth, who led the Puritan party of Elizabeth's reign : she was sister to Sir Peter Wentworth, a distinguished member of Cromwell's Council of State. Property was inherited through her under condition that the Dilke heirs to it should assume the Wentworth name; and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Fisher Dilke's descendants were Wentworth Dilke or Dilke Wentworth from time to time.

In George II. 's reign one Wentworth Dilke was clerk to the Board of Green Cloth at Kew Palace: his only son, Wentworth Dilke Wentworth, was secretary to the Earl of Litchfield of the first creation, and left an only son, Charles Wentworth Dilke, who was a clerk in the Admiralty. This Dilke was the first of five who successively have borne this combination of names.* The second of them, Charles Wentworth DUke, his eldest son, and grandfather to the subject of the memoir, was, like his father, a clerk in the Admiralty ; but early in life showed qualities which fitted him to succeed in another sphere of work — qualities through which he exercised a remarkable influence ovse the character and career of his grandson. So potent was this influence in

* For convenience a partial table of descent is inserted, showing the five Dilkes who bore the same combination of names.

Charles "VVENTWOKTn Dilke, ft. 1742, d. 1826.

Charles Wentworth I)ilke=Maria Dover William DUke, h. 1796, h. 1789, d. 1864. I Walker. d. 1885.

Charles Wentworth Dilke=M. Mary William Wentworth

Chatfleld. Grant Dilke, killed in Crimea, b. 1826, d. 1854.

Charles Wentworth Dilke=(l) Katherine Ashton Dilke,

second Baronet, M. E. Sheil. fe. 1850, d. 1883.

Pattison.

Charles WentWorth Dilke, present Baronet, 6. 1874.

4 EARLY LIFE [ohap. i

moulding the life which has to be chronicled, that it is necessary to give some clear idea of the person who exercised it.

Mr. Dilke— who shall be so called to distinguish him from his son Wentworth Dilke, and from his grandson Charles DUke — at an early period added the pursuit of literature to his duties as a civil servant. By 1815, when he was only twenty-six, Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review, already spoke highly of him; and between that date and 1830 he was contributing largely to the monthly and quarterly reviews. In 1830 he acquired a main share in the Athenceum, a journal ' but just bom yet nevertheless dying,' and quickly raised it into the high position of critical authority which it maintained, not only throughout his own life, but throughout his grandson's. So careful was Mr. Dilke to preserve its reputation for impartial judgment, that during the sixteen years in which he had virtually entire control of the paper, he withdrew altogether from general society " in order to avoid making literary acquaintances which might either prove annoying to him, or be supposed to compromise the independence of his journal."*

After 1846 the editorship of the Athenceum was in other hands, but the proprietor's vigilant interest in it never abated, and was transmitted to his grandson, who continued to the end of his days not only to write for it, but also to read the proofs every week, and repeatedly for brief periods to act as editor.

When in 1846 Mr. Dilke curtailed his work on the Athenceum, it was to take up other duties. For three years he was manager of the recently established Daily News, working in close fellowship with his friends John Forster and Charles Dickens.

From the time when he gave up this task till his death in 1864 Mr. Dilke's life had one all-engrossing preoccupation— the training of his grandson Charles. But to the last, literary research employed him. In 1849 he helped to establish Notes and Queries ' to be a paper in which

* From Papers of a Critic, a selection of Mr. Dilke's essays, edited, with a memoir, by Sir Charles Dilke. See vnfra, p. 184.

literary men could answer each other's questions ' ; and his contributions to this paper* and to the AthencBum never ceased; though so unambitious of any personal repute was he that in all his long career he never signed an article with his own name, nor identified himself with a pseudonym. A man of letters, he loved learning and literature for their own sake; yet stronger still than this love was his desire to transmit to his heirs his own gathered knowledge, experience, and convictions.

He had become early ' an antiquary and a Radical,' and this combination rightly indicated unusual breadth of sympathy. The period in which he was born favoured it: for, keen student as he was of the eighteenth century — preserving in his own style, perhaps later than any other man who wrote in England, that dignified but simple manner which Swift and Bolingbroke had perfected — he yet was intimately in touch with the young genius of an age in revolt against all the eighteenth-century tradition. Keats, only a few years his junior, was his close friend ; so was John Hamilton Reynolds, the comrade of Keats, and author of poems known to every student of that literary group. Thomas Hood and Charles Lamb had long and near association with him. Lover of the old, he had always an open heart for the new ; and, bookish though he was, no one could be less a bookworm. The antiquary in him never mastered the Radical : he had an unflagging interest in the large facts of life, an undying faith in human progress. Slighting his own lifework as he evidently did — for he never spoke of it to his son or his son's son — he was yet prompted by instinct to kindle and tend a torch which one after him should

* Its founder and first editor, Mr. W. J. Thorns (afterwards Librarian of the House of liords), had for three years been contributing to the Athenceum columns headed " Polk-Lore " — a word coined by him for the purpose. The correspondence which grew out of this threatened to swamp other departments of the paper, and so the project was formed of starting a journal entirely devoted to the subjects which he had been treating. Mr. Dilke, being consulted, approved the plan, and lent it his full support. In 1872, when Mr. Thoms retired from control of the paper, Sir Charles Dilke bought it, putting in Dr. Doran as editor; and thenceforward it was published &om the same office as the Athenoewm.

6 EARLY LIFE [ohap. i

carry, and perhaps should carry high. It would be difficult to name any man who had a stronger sense of the family bond.

He had married very young — before he was nineteen — Maria Dover Walker, the beautiful daughter of a Yorkshire yeoman, still younger than he. This couple, who lived together " in a most complete happiness " for forty years, had one child only, born in 1810, Charles Wentworth Dilke, commonly called Wentworth.* Mr. DUke sent his son to Westminster, and removed him at the age of sixteen, arranging — because his theory of education laid great stress on the advantage of travel — that the lad should live for a while with Baron Kirkup, British Consul and miniature painter, in Florence, as a preparatory discipline before going to Cambridge. What he hoped and intended is notably expressed in a letter written by him at Genoa on his return journey to his son in Florence in 1826:f

" I ought to be in bed, but somehow you are always first in my thoughts and last, and I prefer five minutes of gossiping with you. . . . How, indeed, could it be otherwise than that you should be first and last in my thoughts, who for so many years have occupied all my thoughts. For fifteen years at least it has been my pleasure to watch over you, to direct and to advise. Now, direct and personal interference has ceased. ... It is natural, perhaps, that I should take a greater interest than other fathers, for I have a greater interest at stake. I have but one son. That son, too, I have brought up differently from others, and if he be not better than others, it will be urged against me, not as a misfortune, but as a shame. From the first hour I never taught you to believe what I did not myself believe. I have been a thousand times censured for it, but I had that confidence in truth that I dared put my faith in it and in you. And you will not fail me. I am sure you will return home to do me honour, and to make me respect you, as I do, and ever shall, love you."

It was a singular letter for a man of thirty-seven to write

singular in its self-effacement before the rising generation, singular, too, in the intensity of its forecast. Yet, after aU, a

* Papers of a Oritie, vol. i., p. 13. -j- Ibid., p. 18.

1826-1862J MR. WENTWOETH DILKE 7

measure of disappointment was to be his return for that first venture. The son to whom so great a cargo of hopes had been committed was a vigorous lad, backed when he was fifteen ' to swim or shoot or throw against any boy of his age in England,' and he developed these and Mndred energies, accepting culture only in so far as it ministered to his fine natural faculty for enjoyment. He acquired a knowledge of Italian and of operatic music at Florence; but when afterwards at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he was, to his father's despair, very idle, and during his early years in London ' was principally known to his friends for never missing a night at the Opera.'

That interest in things of the mind which he could hardly have failed to inherit had made of him a dilettante rather than a scholar; but later he became very active in promoting those ideals which appealed to his taste. He had a shrewd business eye, and showed it in founding the Gardeners' Chronicle and the Agricultural Gazette, both paying properties. He had, moreover, a talent for organization, and a zeal in getting things done, acknowledged in many letters from persons of authority in their recognition of those services to the International Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862 which were rewarded by his baronetcy. An interesting National Exhibition of ' Art Manufactures ' had already been held by the Society of Arts, on whose Council Wentworth Dilke was an active worker, at the time when he, with two other members of the Council and the secretary, Mr. Scott Russell, met the Prince Consort on June 30th, 1849, and decided to renew the venture on a scale which should include foreign nations. When the executive committee of four (to whom were added a secretary and a representative of the contractors) was named in January, 1850, the work practically fell on three persons — Sir William Reid communicating with the public departments, Mr. Henry Cole settling questions of space and arrangement,* and Wentworth Dilke ' having charge