Dilke (58 page)

And his skinny hands in loose black gloves enveloped;

Irresistably, I fear

Suggesting the idea

Of a discontented lizard with a cold.”

(Quoted in V. H. H. Green's
Oxford Common Room
, p. 265.)

³
In 1876 she wrote to Pattison from Nice stating with brutal frankness that she felt a strong physical distaste for him. “I cannot forget,” she said, “that from the first I expressed the strongest aversion to that side of the common life; during 73–4 this became almost insufferable—for I tried to conceal it hoping that it might settle itself.” (Green,
op. cit
. p. 309.) The characters of Edward Casaubon and Dorothea Brooke in
Middlemarch
are generally considered to be closely based on Mark Pattison and his wife. They were both well known to George Eliot.

⁴
In the abandonment of Tractarianism at least she followed in the steps of her husband. As a young don he had been a disciple of Newman, but he afterwards reacted sharply against the whole spirit of the Oxford Movement. “I once and only once,” he wrote, “got so low by fostering a morbid state of conscience as to go to confession to Dr. Pusey. Years afterwards it came to my knowledge that Pusey had told a fact about myself, which he got from me on that occasion, to a friend of his, who used it to annoy me.” (Pattison:
Memoirs
, p. 189.)

⁵
“She is now wholly unsympathetic—reserving all her interest for the other man and his affairs,” Pattison wrote about his wife after six years of this correspondence. (Green,
op. cit
. p. 311.) But it must be said that he was by this time anxious to see as little of her as possible.

⁶
In 1878 Dixon reminded the country that they must not believe that “Chamberlain is Birmingham or Birmingham Chamberlain.” Chamberlain responded with a typical truculence by announcing that “Birmingham must choose between Dixon and me,” but the quarrel subsided without being put to the test. (Garvin,
Life of Joseph Chamberlain
, Vol. I, p. 225.)

⁷
Bright was an obvious choice as a parliamentary sponsor, but Cowen a good deal less so. Although he had succeeded his Whig father in the representation of Newcastle he affected a style of dress—“like a workman, with a black comforter round his neck, and the only wide-awake hat at that time known in the House of Commons”—which can hardly have commended him to the meticulous and elegant Chamberlain. Furthermore, according to Dilke, he spoke with an almost incomprehensible Tyneside burr. But he was regarded as a considerable force in radical politics at the time. Within a year, however, the strength of his anti-Russian views had driven him into a position of virtual support for Disraeli's foreign policy, and hence of isolation from his former associates.

⁸
Athens was the only municipality to accord him this honour. Dilke Street, Chelsea, is named not after Sir Charles, but after his father, who worked with Sir William Tite, similarly honoured, to arrange for the building of a part of the Embankment.

⁹
Chichester Fortescue, 1823-1898, created Lord Carlingford, 1874, Liberal politician (he had been Chief Secretary for Ireland and President of the Board of Trade in the first Gladstone Government) and fourth husband of Frances Braham (born 1821), the daughter of a great singer, who had married, previously and successively, John Waldegrave, his elder brother George, 7th Earl Waldegrave, and George Granville Harcourt, an uncle of Sir William.

¹⁰
Mrs. Stewart's chief claim to a place in a biography of Dilke must rest upon her being the mother of Mrs. Rogerson, later Mrs. George Steevens, of whom more will be heard in subsequent chapters; but she also gave a luncheon party in 1876, which, according to Dilke, was “one of the most agreeable parties of clever people to which I ever went. . . at which I was the only man, the party chiefly consisting of old ladies. . .”

¹¹
This was Dilke's somewhat mysterious method of referring to the wife of Mountstuart Grant Duff, then Liberal member for Elgin Burghs and later Governor of Madras. Her Christian name was Anna and she then had no title.

¹²
Miss Laffan was a friend of the Rector of Lincoln. “I have a heap to tell you of
Dilke
—I can't write it,” she wrote to him a few years later. (V. H. H. Green,
op. cit
. pp. 309-10.)

¹³
There is, however, a local legend that his life there was not entirely solitary. The present owner of La Sainte Campagne writes: “Je me souviens toutefois que Mme, de Jonquières (an old lady now dead who knew Dilke well) racontait que c'était par amour d'une jeune beauté toulonnaise, et pour âtre près d'elle, que Sir Charles Dilke avait, durant plusieurs années, habité La Sainte Campagne.”

¹
Dilke        . .       . .   12,406
Firth          . .       . .   12,046
Lord Inverurie     . .     9,666
W. J. Browne        . .     9,488

²
Frederic Harrison wrote to Dilke at this time: “It will take you a tremendous pull yet to force the poor old lady to let you kiss her hand. Harcourt, Fawcett, Chamberlain she might swallow without a wry face, but she will strain at you unless you are made absolutely inevitable and undeniable.” (D. P. 439341 149.)

³
Membership of the Cabinet was as follows:

Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer:
Lord Chancellor:
Lord President:
Lord Privy Seal:
Home Secretary:
Foreign Secretary:
Colonial Secretary:
Secretary for War:
Secretary for India:
First Lord of the Admiralty:
President of the Board of Trade:
President of the Local Government Board:
Chief Secretary for Ireland:
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster:
W. E. Gladstone
Lord Selborne
Earl Spencer
Duke of Argyll
Sir William Harcourt
Earl Granville
Earl of Kimberley
H. C. E. Childers
Marquess of Hartington
Earl of Northbrook
Joseph Chamberlain
J. G. Dodson
W. E. Forster
John Bright

⁴
Freiheit
was a German anarchist paper published in London. Dilke had no reason to be friendly towards it or its sponsors, as one of them—Maltman Barry—had recently announced that in 1877 Dilke had subscribed to the funds of the paper and the election expenses of revolutionary candidates in Germany. Dilke denied that this was so, although he thought that he might have given Barry a small sum of money for “some case of charity among his socialists.” This incident caused him some embarrassment. Lord Randolph Churchill raised the matter in the House of Commons in terms sufficiently venomous to cause a breach between himself and Dilke which lasted for several years.

⁵
The loss of their wives in childbirth. In Chamberlain's case this occurred twice. His first wife, Harriet, died in 1863, when Austen was born; his second wife, Florence, in 1874.

⁶
A resignation on this account might not have been quite impossible. Chamberlain and Dilke were both highly critical of the tonsorial and sartorial deficiences of their colleagues. After Dilke had joined the Cabinet Chamberlain occupied himself at one meeting by writing and passing to Dilke the following note: “Someone ought to move the appointment of a hair-cutter to the Cabinet. It wd. not be a sinecure office. Look at the Chancellor, Harcourt, Ld. G. and Mr. G. for example—but really they are nearly all pretty bad.” At another Cabinet Chamberlain wrote to Dilke: “Look at Dodson's boots! It is the Minister of Agriculture and not the Chancellor of the Duchy who is present to-day.” (D.P. 43887, 149): (D.P. 43886,46.)

⁷
A fairly typical example is provided by the following letters: On February 12th, 1882, Dilke wrote a postcard to Granville: “Does anything occur to you to be said in favour of the Garter Mission to Saxony, which appears to have been a mere waste of public money? The one to Spain can be defended, perhaps. I confess that it seems to me monstrous that the U.S. for Foreign Affairs, who is not consulted on these missions, should be expected to defend in the House such a one as that to Saxony, of which no advantage to the country can, apparently, come.” Granville protested sharply, although good-humouredly, at the tone of this note and received the following reply from Dilke, dated February 13th: “My dear Lord Granville: I am very sorry the tone of my card was objectionable. I was perhaps cross at the moment I wrote it, but as I was only cross with Dodson that ought not to have made me seem cross with you. I will come over from the office between one and two and if you are not in I will wait. It is not given to everybody to have your unruffled calm, and Dodson is enough to provoke a saint. But, seriously, I am very sorry indeed. I am writing in my bath as I did not want to keep your messenger. Sincerely yours, Chas. W. D.” (D.P. 43880,72.)

⁸
Many years later Dilke wrote in the margin, alongside this opinion: “I have since known Winston Churchill.” (D.P. 43934,198.)

⁹
Mrs. Crawford (at this time aged eighteen) was a younger sister of Mrs. Ashton Dilke and Helen (Mrs. Robert Harrison). In the previous summer she had married Donald Crawford, a middle-aged Scottish lawyer, who had been a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and was in consequence known to Mrs. Pattison.

¹
Lady Frederick Cavendish was her neice, and a great favourite both of her and of the Prime Minister.

²
This was not strictly true. See for example, page 137
supra
.

³
Carlingford (formerly Chichester Fortescue) was an old friend of Dilke's. He had joined the Government as Lord Privy Seal in 1881.

⁴
“And am still so 1903,” Dilke later wrote in the margin; “and still 1906,” he added by way of still greater emphasis. In 1890 he wrote to Chamberlain: “By the way they (Dilke's old political papers) reminded me of many things half forgotten, and I note that I never thought you wrong in any personal question except once—when you came from the Cabinet to my room at the F.O. to offer me from them the Chief Secretaryship without the Cabinet, after we had decided together that it was impossible to take it. I know, however, that two things weighed with you in giving me the chance of reconsideration: the difficulty about the Queen, and the fear of my being accused of personal cowardice in declining. But it was wrong . . .” (D.P. 43936, 106.)

⁵
Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, 1828-1906, had just been appointed Governor of Madras, after serving for two years as under-secretary at the Colonial Office. For several years after his Madras appointment Dilke kept up an intensive correspondence with him.

⁶
Already by the summer of 1879 Derby was sufficiently Liberal to act as Dilke's host when the latter went to Liverpool to make a political speech. But Dilke was unimpressed by the amenities offered. “Nothing,” he wrote, “not even £100,000 a year ‘clear' would induce (me) to live in such a stink of chemicals as Knowsley.” (D.P. 43903, 246.)

⁷
Until 1918 Cabinet (but not junior) office disqualified a member from sitting in the House of Commons until he had successfully sought re-election by his constituents. Amongst other disadvantages this produced an inconvenient few weeks at the beginning of most Governments when the senior minister with a seat in the House of Commons was the Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

⁸
The letter was as follows: “Dear Lord Granville: When I was asked my views upon republicanism during the recent elections I gave a public answer which formed, I hope, a complete refutation of the suggestion of disloyalty to the Queen. I said that I thought that the republican might be the best form of government in many new countries, and I viewed with pleasure the consolidation of a new republic in France, thinking that government adapted to the conditions of a country which was making as it were a fresh start in national life after a great convulsion, and where there would have been rival claimants to a throne supposing one to have been again set up. It would be folly, I thought, to apply such reasoning to England, where we possessed a well-established constitutional monarchy, and where the true constitutional theory had been so much strengthened by the illustrious occupant of the throne. The traditions and the feelings of the country were on the side of constitutional monarchy, and the existing order of things contained every guarantee for freedom and the possibility of reform. Believe me, dear Lord Granville, sincerely yours, Charles W. Dilke.” (D.P. 43878, 38.)

⁹
Dilke's thoughts on this occasion were more occupied with reservations about the oath he was taking than with reflections on the majesty of the Queen's presence. “I could not but think that the portion of the Privy Councillor's oath which concerns keeping secret matters treated of secretly in Council is more honoured in the breach than in the observance; but when Mr. Gladstone chose, which was not always, he used to maintain the view that the clause is governed by the first part of the oath, so as to make it secret only in respect of the interests of the country and the position of other members of the Council. There is nothing in the oath about any limit of time, but it has always been held in practice that a time comes when all political importance has departed from the proceedings of the Council, and when the obligation of secrecy may be held to lapse. . . . It is difficult, therefore, to say that the oath in practice imposes any obligation other than that which any man of honour would feel laid upon him by the ordinary observances of a gentleman.” (D.P. 43936, 286.)

¹
Beside this part of the account Dilke noted: “He
didn't
. He made a very good speech.”

²
In less exasperated moments, Chamberlain could take a lighter view of Gladstone. At a Cabinet in May of the same year he scribbled and tossed to Dilke the following snatch of verse: