CHAPTER XII
RE-ELECTION TO PARLIAMENT—DEATH OF LADY DILKE
Having remained abroad until after Christmas, 1873, the Dilkes stayed at Brighton for the sake of Lady Dilke's health, Sir Charles coming to town as occasion needed.
His address to his constituents in 1874 assumed a special character in view of the approaching dissolution. He reviewed the whole work done by the 'Householder Parliament,' and more particularly the part taken in it by the members for Chelsea. It was an independent speech, making it quite clear that from the introduction of the Education Bill in 1870 the speaker had "ceased to be a steady supporter of the Government," and showing that "during the past three years the present Government had been declining in public esteem." Sir Charles recalled the various matters on which he had criticized their action, laying emphasis on two points. One was the Act of 1871 for amending the Criminal Law in regard to combinations of workmen, which had been passed in response to a long and vehement demand that the position of Trade Unions should be regularized. The amending Act had really left the Unions worse off than before: "the weapon of the men is picketing, and the weapon of the master is the black list. The picketing is practically prohibited by this Bill, and the black list is left untouched." [Footnote: See "Labour," Chapter LII. (Volume II., pp. 342- 367).]
The other matter of interest was the Irish Peace Preservation Bill of 1873, a Bill which, as he said, would have raised great outcry if applied to an English district; yet, 'because it applied only to Ireland, and the Irish were unpopular and were supposed to be an unaccountable people different from all others,' it had passed with small opposition. He could not understand 'how those who shuddered at arbitrary arrests in Poland, and who ridiculed the gagging of the Press in France, could permit the passing of a law for Ireland which gave absolute powers of arrest and of suppression of newspapers to the Lord-Lieutenant.'
Ireland has frequently afforded a test of the thoroughness of Liberal principles, and Sir Charles was distinguished from most of his countrymen by a refusal to impose geographical limitations on his notions of logic or of conduct. He was the least insular of Englishmen.
In this speech of January, 1874, printed for circulation to the electors, he went very fully into the matter of the Civil List controversy, but did not touch his avowal of republican principles, because that declaration had been made outside Parliament, and he had never spoken of it in Parliament. He dealt with the matter, however, in a letter written to one of his supporters for general publication:
"You ask me whether you are not justified in saying that I have always declined to take part in a republican agitation. That is so. I have repeatedly declined to do so; I have declined to attend republican meetings and I have abstained from subscribing to republican funds. I also refused to join the Republican Club formed at Cambridge University, though I am far from wishing to cast a slur on those Liberal politicians—Professor Fawcett and others—who did join it. The view I took was that I had no right to make use of my position as a member of the House of Commons, gained largely by the votes of those who are not even theoretical republicans, to push on an English republican movement. On the other hand, when denounced in a Conservative paper as a 'republican,' as though that were a term of abuse, I felt bound as an honest man to say I was one. But I am not a 'republican member' or a 'republican candidate,' any more than Mr. Gordon" (his opponent) "is a monarchical candidate, because there is neither Republican party nor Monarchical party in the English Parliament. I said at Glasgow two years ago: 'The majority of the people of Great Britain believe that the reforms they desire are compatible with the monarchic form of government,' and this I believe now as then."
'At the time when the letter was written,' notes the Memoir, 'an immediate dissolution of Parliament was not expected, but it was only just in time (being dated January 20th) to be of the most use, for the sudden dissolution occurred four days after its publication. The word "sudden" hardly perhaps, at this distance of time, conveys an impression of the extraordinary nature of the event.'
The Cabinet's decision to dissolve, arising out of difficulties on the Budget, was announced on January 24th. By February 16th the elections were over, and Mr. Gladstone's Government had resigned, the Tories having come back with a solid majority. It was an overthrow for the Liberal party, but Sir Charles survived triumphantly, though ten seats in London were lost to Mr. Gladstone's following. Mr. Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works, against whom Sir Charles and his fellow-Radicals had fought fiercely, was ejected from the Tower Hamlets, and never returned to public life. Another victim was Sir Charles's former colleague.
'To the astonishment of many people, I was returned at the head of the poll, the Conservative standing next, and then Sir Henry Hoare, while the independent Moderate Liberal who had stood against me and obtained the temperance vote, obtained nothing else, and was, at a great distance from us, at the bottom of the poll.'
When all the political journalists in England were reviewing, after his death in 1911, the remarkable career that they had watched, some for half a lifetime, one of the veterans among them wrote: [Footnote: The Newcastle Daily Chronicle.]
"We do not think that Sir Charles Dilke owed a great deal to the Liberal party, but we certainly think that the Liberal party owed a very great deal to Sir Charles Dilke. In the dark days of 1874, when the party was deeper in the slough of despond than it has ever been before or since in our time, it was from the initiative and courage of Sir Charles Dilke that salvation came. His work in organizing the Liberal forces, especially in the Metropolis, has never received due acknowledgment.'
The centre of his influence was among those who knew him best—his own constituents. 'I had indeed invented a caucus in Chelsea before the first Birmingham Election Association was started,' he says of his own electoral machinery. [Footnote: See Chapter XVII., p. 268.] The Eleusis Club was known all over England as a propagandist centre. Here he had no occasion to explain his speeches at Newcastle or elsewhere. "We were all republicans down Chelsea way when young Charlie Dilke came among us first," said an old supporter. Yet the propaganda emanating from the Eleusis Club was not republican.
Here and all over the constituency he made innumerable and unreported speeches to instruct industrial opinion. He laid under contribution his whole store of extraordinary knowledge, suggesting and answering questions till no Parliamentary representative in the country was followed by his supporters with an attention so informed and discriminating.
"Nothing of the sort had been known since David Urquhart, in the first half of the Victorian age, opened his lecture-halls and classrooms throughout the world for counter-working Palmerston, and for teaching artisans the true inwardness of the Eastern Question." [Footnote: Mr. T. H. S. Escott, the New Age, February 9th, 1911.]
Sir Charles himself gives in the Memoir some sketch of the feelings with which Liberals confronted that rout of Liberalism, and of the steps taken to repair the disaster.
'Harcourt wrote (upon paper which bore the words "Solicitor-General" with a large "No longer" in his handwriting at the top):
'"Rari nantes in gurgite vasto. Here we are again…. To tell you the truth, I am not sorry. It had to come, and it is as well over. We shall get rid of these canting duffers of the party and begin afresh. We must all meet again below the gangway. We shall have a nice little party, though diminished. I am very sorry about Fawcett, but we shall soon get him back again."
'My first work was to bring back Fawcett, and by negotiations with Homer, the Hackney publican (Secretary of the Licensed Victuallers' Protection Association), into which I entered because Fawcett's defeat had been partly owing to the determined opposition of Sir Wilfrid Lawson's friends, who could not forgive his attacks on the direct veto, I succeeded in securing him an invitation to contest Hackney, where there was an early vacancy. Fitzmaurice and I became respectively Chairman and Treasurer of a fund, and we raised more money than was needed for paying the whole of Fawcett's expenses, and were able to bank a fund in the name of trustees, of whom I was one, for his next election.
'Fitzmaurice, in accepting my invitation to co-operate with me in this matter, said that he had succeeded in discovering a place to which posts took two days, "wherein I can moralize at leisure on the folly of the leaders of the Liberal party."
'When Fawcett returned to the House, he would not let himself be introduced by the party Whips; but was introduced by me, in conjunction, however, with Playfair, who, besides being one of his most intimate political friends, had been for a short time before the dissolution a member of the Government. On this occasion Fitzmaurice wrote: "Gladstone, I imagine, is the person least pleased at the return of Fawcett, and I should think has been dreaming ever since that Bouverie's turn will come next." Cowen said in the Newcastle Chronicle, Fawcett "contributed as much as any man in the late House of Commons to damage the late Government. During the last session he voted in favour of the proposals made by Mr. Gladstone's Government about 160 times, and he voted against them about 180 times. It always struck me that Professor Fawcett's boasted independence partook greatly of crotchety awkwardness." Fawcett's personal popularity was, however, great, not only with the public, but with men who did not share his views and saw much of him in private life, such as the ordinary Cambridge Dons among whom he lived, and whose prejudices upon many points he was continually attacking. Nevertheless he was a popular guest.'
Elsewhere, relating how Fawcett disturbed the peace of Mr. Glyn, the ministerial Chief Whip from 1868 onwards. Sir Charles explained that—
'when he had some mischief brewing late at night, he used to get one of the Junior Whips to give him an arm through the lobby, and as he passed the Senior Whip at the door leading to the members' entrance would say "Good-night, Glyn," as though he were going home to bed.'
Mr. Glyn thought "the blind man" had gone to bed, but in reality he had simply passed down to the terrace, and would sit there smoking till the other conspirators saw the moment to go down and fetch him. 'I fear it was by this stratagem that he had helped me to defeat Ayrton's Bill for throwing a piece of the Park into the Kensington Road opposite the Albert Hall.'
It is possible that Dilke was a name of even greater horror to the orthodox Whiggish opinion of this date than to the regular adherents of Toryism. The general attitude at this moment towards "the Republican"— "Citizen Dilke"—is illustrated by an anecdote in the Reminiscences of Charles Gavard, who was for many years First Secretary at the French Embassy. He says that when Sir Charles Dilke stood for Chelsea in 1874, he attended several of his meetings—
"partly, I must admit, in the spirit of the Englishman who never missed a performance of van Amburg, the lion-tamer, hoping some day to see him devoured by his lions. On one occasion, at Chelsea Town Hall, I had the honour of leading Lady Dilke on to the platform, and was greeted, with such a round of applause as I am not likely to enjoy again in my life. But, to my horror, I heard the reporters inquiring as to my identity. Fortunately, Sir Charles perceived the peril I was in, and gave them some misleading information. Otherwise, my name might have appeared in the Press, and my diplomatic career have been abruptly ended for figuring in public among the supporters of so hostile an opponent of the form of government prevailing, in the country to which I was accredited."
Sir Charles's personal triumph at the polls amid the general rout of his party inevitably enhanced his position in the House. And upon it there followed a wholly different success which established his prestige precisely on the point where it was the fashion to assail it. He had been decried as 'dreary'; yet London suddenly found itself applauding him as a wit.
The Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco was published anonymously in March, 1874. To-day the little book is perhaps almost forgotten, although one can still be amused by the story of the Cambridge undergraduate, trained in the fullest faith of free-thinking Radicalism, who finds himself suddenly promoted to the principality of Monaco, and who arrives in his microscopic kingdom only to realize that his monarchical state rests on the support of two pillars—a Jesuit who controls the Church and education, and M. Blanc, who manages the gaming tables. The consequence of Prince Florestan's attempt to put in practice democratic principles where nobody wanted them was wittily and ingeniously thought out, and the tone of subdued irony admirably kept up. The work was characteristically thorough. The 126 functionaries, the 60 soldiers and carbineers, the 150 unpaid diplomatic representatives of Monaco abroad, the Vicar-General, the Treasurer-General, the Honorary Almoner, and all the other "appliances and excrescences of civilized government," which went to make up that "perfection of bureaucracy and red tape in a territory one mile broad and five miles long," were all statistically accurate. Throughout the whole a reference to other monarchies and other swarms of functionaries was delicately implied.
The quality of the book is rather that of talk than of writing. It has the dash, the quick turn, and the vivacity of a good improvisation at the dinner-table; and a quotation will illustrate not so much Sir Charles's literary gift as the manner of his talk:
"On the 5th of February I reached Nice by the express, and, after reading the telegram which announced the return of Mr. Gladstone by a discerning people as junior colleague to a gin distiller, was presented with an address by the Gambettist mayor at the desire of the legitimist préfêt. The mayor, being a red-hot republican in politics, but a carriage-builder by trade, lectured me on the drawbacks of despotism in his address, but informed me in conversation afterwards that he had had the honour of building a Victoria for Prince Charles Honoré—which was next door to giving me his business card. The address, however, also assumed that the Princes of Monaco were suffered only by Providence to exist in order that the trade of Nice, the nearest large French town, might thrive.
"In the evening at four we reached the station at Monaco, which was decked with the white flags of my ancestors. What a pity, was my thought, that M. de Chambord should not be aware that if he would come to stay with me at the castle he would live under the white flag to which he is so much attached all the days of his life. My reception was enthusiastic. The guards, in blue uniforms not unlike the Bavarian, but with tall shakos instead of helmets, and similar to that which during the stoppage of the train at Nice I had rapidly put on, were drawn up in line to the number of thirty-nine—one being in hospital with a wart on his thumb, as M. de Payan told me. What an admirable centralization that such a detail should be known to every member of the administration! Two drummers rolled their drums French fashion. In front of the line were four officers, of whom—one fat; Baron Imberty; the Vicar-General; and Père Pellico of the Jesuits of the Visitation, brother, as I already knew, to the celebrated Italian patriot, Silvio Pellico, of dungeon and spider fame.
"'Where is M. Blanc?' I cried to M. de Payan, as we stopped, seeing no one not in uniform or robes. "'M. Blanc,' said M. de Payan severely, 'though a useful subject to Your Highness, is neither a member of the household of Your Highness, a soldier of His army, nor a functionary of His Government. M. Blanc is in the crowd outside'" [Footnote: Prince Florestan, p. 23.]
Sir Charles sent the manuscript anonymously to Macmillans, with a statement that the work would certainly be a success, and that the author would announce himself on the appearance of the second edition. But the Macmillans, who had published Greater Britain, noted that the proposed little book contained several contumelious references to the "lugubrious speeches" of Sir Charles Dilke and his brother, and refused to have anything to do with it. To pacify them, Sir Charles, from behind his mask, had to excise some of the disagreeable things which he had said about himself. Enough was left to convince one egregious London daily paper not only that Matthew Arnold was the author, but that the special object of his new satire was Sir Charles Dilke, "a clever young man who fancies that his prejudices are ideas, and who, if he had the misfortune to be made King, would stir up a revolution in a week."
This was the very thing that Sir Charles wanted. Fundamentally the book was chaff—chaff of other people for their estimate of him. Finding himself perpetually under the necessity of explaining that his theoretic preference for Republicanism would not constrain him to upset a monarchy which happened to suit the nation where it existed, he wrote Prince Florestan, as though to say: 'This is what you take me for'; and even while it satirized the absurdity of Florestan's court and constitution, the book showed that it would be still more absurd to upset even the most ridiculous Government so long as it suited the people governed.
The ascription to Matthew Arnold was frequent. The book came out on March 16th, and within forty-eight hours had been reviewed in five leading papers, and, in all the guessing, no one in print guessed right.
The disclosure was made by Lady Dilke, who, entering a friend's drawing- room, caused herself to be announced as "Princess Florestan." Newspapers proclaimed the authorship; a popular edition of the book appeared, with malicious extracts from the various reviews that had been written when the authorship was unknown; and the result was to make Sir Charles, already universally known, now universally the fashion.
Though he had faced social ostracism with a courage all the greater in one who enjoyed society, he was unaffectedly glad to take his place again. One shrewd critic wrote that "Florestan's" success "had led some people to discover that they always liked Sir Charles Dilke."
"Society" (the writer went on) "still bears Sir Charles a grudge, and would have voted anything known to be his to be dull—like his speeches, as he good-naturedly said of himself. Amused, without knowing who amused them, the few fine people who supply views to the many fine people in need of them prove not ungrateful."
The return of a Conservative Government was accompanied by a period of comparative inaction on the part of Sir Charles and his friends; and the activities of the whole Liberal party were in a measure paralyzed by the withdrawal of Mr. Gladstone, not merely from leadership, but almost from the Parliamentary arena. Mr. Chamberlain, who had stood for Parliament and been defeated at Sheffield, wrote that he was engaged in purchasing the Birmingham Gasworks for the Corporation, and did not want to stand again till he had finished his mayoralty.'
"It may be well to let the crude attempts at democratic organizations, Radical unions, etc., etc., be disposed of before we talk over our propositions. I do not think the League will do. We must be a new organization, although our experience and acquired information may be useful."
'This was the death-warrant of the Education League, and the birth- certificate of the National Liberal Federation, always privately called by Chamberlain after the name given to it by his enemies, The Caucus.'
Sir Charles himself was mainly occupied in Parliament with pioneer work for the extension of the franchise; and by a series of small steps towards electoral reform he obtained ultimately, as a private member in opposition, very considerable results. It was not merely with the right to vote, but with the opportunity that he concerned himself, and his Bill to extend the polling hours till 8 p.m., introduced in the session of 1874, although it was opposed by the Government and rejected on a division, nevertheless became law in a few years, as a measure applying to London first, and then to the whole of the United Kingdom.
In the same session he served on a Committee to inquire into the adulteration of food, and obtained through a careful watching of the evidence "a considerable knowledge of the processes of manufacture, which was afterwards useful when I came to be charged with the negotiation of commercial treaties."
'I continued to interest myself in the question of local government, until I had shaped my views into the form of proposals which I was able to place in a Bill when afterwards at the Local Government Board, and to make public in a speech at Halifax in 1885.'
He adds: 'In 1874 I voted for Home Rule.' This was always for him a form of local government in its highest sense.
He was strong enough to take up a position of detachment, and from that vantage-ground he made at Hammersmith, on September 8th, 1874, an interesting speech, in which he gave free rein to the ironical mood of Prince Florestan. The Tories, he said, came into office with at all events a strong list of names: Mr. Disraeli, Lord Cairns and Mr. Gathorne Hardy could not easily be matched.
"On the other hand, our chiefs were nowhere. Mr. Gladstone was in the sulks, and Mr. Forster had been returned by Tory votes at Bradford, than which nothing is more weakening to a Liberal politician. Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Chichester Fortescue had gone to the Whig heaven; and Sir William Harcourt, whose great abilities were beginning to be recognized, was draping himself in the mantle of Lord Palmerston, and looked rather to a distant than to an immediate future.
"As though to strengthen the Conservative position, we were at the same time on our side called upon to surrender our parliamentary liberties as independent members to a triumvirate, composed of Mr. Goschen, Lord Hartington, and Mr. Forster—the title of the first being founded upon the fact that he was the intimate friend of Mr. Gladstone, whom the country had just condemned; that of the second, that he was a serious Marquis, the son of a highly respectable Duke; and that of the third, that he had the confidence of gentlemen who sat upon the other side of the House. Believing, as we did, that Mr. Disraeli never made mistakes, it was not easy to foresee the end of his administration.
"When people talked about the extinction of the Whigs, it certainly then seemed, on the contrary, that that party, instead of being extinct, had become all-embracing, for one knew nobody who was not a Whig. With a Whig Government in office under Mr. Disraeli, and a disorganized Whig opposition on the other side, there seemed to be in question only persons, and not principles. At the Same time, many Liberals thought that it would be better, as far as principles went, to keep the Conservatives in office, inasmuch as they possessed a majority in the House of Lords, and, being forced by the House of Commons and the country into passing Whig measures, would have to carry them through both Houses and into law, instead of dropping them halfway, as our people had often been compelled to do."
In this speech he assailed Mr. Disraeli's Government for legislation which laid restrictions only on "the poor and the lower middle classes, and which put down a servants' betting club, though it had precisely the same rules as prevail at Tattersall's." The Friendly Societies Bill, again, seemed to him "harassing," and drawn on the assumption that working men have not sense enough to investigate for themselves the position of the society which they wish to join.
"There cannot be too little interference with the great self-governed popular Societies. I think that this Bill is the thin end of the wedge, that espionage is the first step to control, and that control is a long step on the road which leads to the destruction of the Societies, and to the creation of a single Government provident organization, which I should regard as a great evil."
The speech attracted much attention, and Sir Charles was now quoted as one whom men would wish to see in any Liberal Ministry. In the public field, during the spring and summer of 1874, all went well with him. But his personal life during these months was overshadowed by approaching calamity.
Lady Dilke was again in ill-health, and was under the presentiment of approaching death. 'Our last happy time was at Paris at Christmas, 1873, on our way home from Monaco, when Gambetta's brightness was answered by our own.' Sir Charles occupied himself with buying land at Broadstairs, where the climate was specially favourable to his wife's health, but as the plans for building on it progressed, he could note that the keenness of her interest 'drooped and died.' After the beginning of August there were no more dinner-parties, and although those who came to the house—of whom Sir William Harcourt was the last to be admitted—found its mistress wearing a gay face, the gloom deepened over her, and she suffered acutely from insomnia. A child was born in September; she lived to see her son, the present Sir Wentworth Dilke, but she never rallied. Death came to her with difficulty, early in the night of September 20th. Sir Charles, overstrained already by long watching, was completely unstrung by the unlooked-for end of the final and terrible vigil. Having summoned his grandmother, Mrs. Chatfield, and asked her to take charge of his house and son—a charge which she fulfilled till her death—he fled from the scene of his suffering, and hid himself in Paris, seeing no one, and holding communication with no one.
'For about a month I think I did not see a letter. I worked steadily at historical work; but I have very little recollection of the time (except by looking at the notebooks which contain the work I did), and even within a few months afterwards was unable to recall it.'
All the letters which poured in speak again and again of Lady Dilke's radiant charm. Moret, the Spanish Minister, who had been one of the guests at the last of all her dinner-parties, recalled her as he saw her then, "si belle, si bonne, si souriante, que j'éprouvai moi-même le bonheur qu'elle respirait."
'The beginning of my friendship with Cardinal Manning was his letter to me at this time, in which he said, "We have met only once, and that in public, but it was that meeting which enables me to understand what your affliction is now."'
Gambetta wrote to him 'a really beautiful letter ':
"La République Française,
"16, RUE DU CROISSANT,
"PARIS,
"le 2 novembre, 1874.
"MON BIEN CHER AMI,
"Plus que jamais permettez-moi de vous donner ce nom, qui, au milieu des terribles épreuves qui vous accablent, n'exprime que bien imparfaitement les sentiments de profond attachement, de volontaire solidarité que je vous ai voués.
"Je sais, je mesure l'insuffisance amère de toute parole de consolation pour d'aussi grandes douleurs, d'aussi irréparables pertes. Car même l'impuissance de semblables remèdes qui m'ont empêché de vous écrire plutôt, m'ont arrêté dans le désir de venir près de vous à un moment aussi lugubre pour votre grand coeur. J'ai cru plus digne, plus respectueux de vos angoisses, d'attendre; et je m'en suis remis à votre pénétration naturelle pour comprendre et accepter mon silence.
"Aujourd'hui je viens vous dire que le plus haut prix que je puisse obtenir de notre commune affection serait de pouvoir penser que dans la fuite de la vie, je pourrais être assez heureux pour être de quelque utilité dans les actes de votre existence.
"Je viendrai vous voir demain mardi à 2 heures et vous répéter de vive-voix ce que je dis ici. Je suis tout entier à vous et de coeur,
"Votre ami,
"LÉON GAMBETTA."
From that day forward Sir Charles met him constantly.
'It would have been difficult to find a better companion at such a moment than one who was so full of interest in life, about things which were absolutely outside my own life, who was surrounded by people who could recall to me no circumstances of pain.'
After seeing Gambetta, Sir Charles roused himself to write a reply in the last days of October to Sir William Harcourt, whose sympathy had been expressed with a rare warmth of kindness, and who caused his son—then a boy of eleven, [Footnote: Afterwards the Right Hon. Lewis Harcourt, created Viscount at the end of 1916.]—'to write to me about Katie, who had been kind to him, which was a pretty thought, and proposed that I should go and live with him, which I ultimately did.'
'Some scraps of polities' were added to they letter, in the hope of reviving his interest in life; but Sir Charles at this moment was fully determined to resign his seat, feeling himself unable to face old associates and associations again. His brother Ashton, now busily and successfully at work in directing his newspaper, the Weekly Dispatch, begged him at least to consider his constituents. An election caused by the Radical member's retirement would certainly let in a second Tory. Also:
"For yourself, I really think, my dear boy, that work is the best remedy, and though you may not think it now, you could not give it up…. It seems selfish to speak of myself, but I should have to give up the Dispatch, as the thing is too serious for me to go into without your advice. Do think it over again, Charlie; there is no hurry. I will come next week. We must not make dear Dragon's [Footnote: Mrs. Chatfield, their grandmother.] last days unhappy by wandering over the world year after year. Remember your child, and that you must regard the living as well as the dead. I am sure she would never have let you sacrifice your career. Do think it over again."
Sir Charles adds: 'It was, however, Gambetta, I think, that saved me.'
In the course of the month (November, 1874) he wrote to his constituents in reply to a resolution sent by them, but could not promise to take his seat during the following session, and said that in any event he should have for a long time to transact business only by letter. 'From this time forward I got rapidly better as far as nervousness at meeting people went, although for many months I was completely changed and out of my proper self.' [Footnote: He, however, began to attend Parliament in the early part of the session of 1875.]
He sought escape in travel, starting suddenly in December for Algeria by way of Oran, and pushing through the desert as far as Laghouat and the Mzab.