CHAPTER XV
HOME POLITICS AND PERSONAL SURROUNDINGS
In a week spent in Paris at the end of 1876 Sir Charles stayed with Gambetta, and took occasion to bring about a meeting between him and Sir William and Lady Harcourt, who were also in Paris. With Sir William Harcourt was his son and inseparable companion Mr. Lewis Harcourt, who recalls a day when Sir Charles said to him: "Now, Loulou, I want you to come and have lunch with me by yourself; I'm not asking your father and mother to-day." He remembers his pride in going off to the Café Anglais, where they were met by a man with a big black beard. "This, Loulou, is Monsieur Gambetta." The two men talked, and the boy listened, as he was well used to do, for in those days he constantly "ran about beside his father like a little dog." After lunch they went for a drive, and still the men talked, and Gambetta pointed to the window from which he had proclaimed the Republic, and Dilke showed where he had lain for half a day while the French troops were besieging the French of Paris. The boy listened eagerly—to understand, years after, how the whole drive had been planned for his edification and delight.
Since August, 1876, Gambetta had been talking of a visit, proposing, says Sir Charles, to "come to me in town, and probably bring Challemel-Lacour also to 76, Sloane Street." The visit was to be purely private and social; "he will receive no deputations, no addresses, and will visit no provincial towns."
'It was in 1876 that he sent to me a certain Gérard, who became French reader to the Empress Augusta of Germany, and it is supposed that the somewhat brilliant volume called The Society of Berlin, long afterwards published under the name of Count Paul Vasili by Madame Adam (although not the later volumes of the same series, which were by Vandam), was from Gérard's pen. Gambetta, when he came to power as Prime Minister, appointed Gérard, who was then in the Legation at Washington, his private secretary, Georges Pallain being the second, and Joseph Reinach the third. But Pallain and Reinach, in fact, exercised the functions, because Gambetta fell before Gérard arrived. Gérard is now (1909) an Ambassador.'
Just before Dilke's visit to Gambetta in the spring of 1877 another indication of his popularity in France occurred. 'Gavard had come to me from the French Embassy to ask me whether I should like to go to Paris with Sir Louis Mallet to arrange a new French Treaty, as "his Government would like me."' The proposal fell through. As Sir Charles said, 'the Government could not well, I think, have sent two Liberals at the head of the Commission.' Mallet
'was a very experienced official, not, however, very successful at the Board of Trade, and greatly given to grumble and growl. He held the mildly reciprocitarian views in which he followed Mill and expanded Cobden's opinions, and was thought by us to be the author of the Letters of a Disciple of Richard Cobden, the circulation of which by the Cobden Club, at his own request, nearly destroyed that institution. He afterwards left the Board of Trade for the India Office, where he became permanent Under-Secretary of State, on which occasion Grant Duff said, "Mallet will be happy now. He will have two worlds to despair of;" for he generally began each sentence with the words, "I despair," uttered in a deep voice.'
On April 10th, 1877, just before the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, which seemed as if it might involve all the Great Powers, is this entry of a dinner with the French Minister:
'Went to dine with Gavard, meeting his second and third secretaries, the Italian first secretary, the Dutch Minister (Baron de Bylandt), the Belgian Minister (Solvyns), and "The Viper" (alias Abraham Hayward, Q.C.). Cypher telegrams poured in all through dinner, and portended no good to the peace of Europe. It was, however, a pleasant dinner, in which Hayward and Solvyns had most of the talk to themselves, but made it good talk. Gavard was afterwards accused by the Republican party of having conspired against them, which for his friends seemed always to be a statement in the nature of a joke. I once asked Gambetta if he seriously believed that Gavard had conspired, at which Gambetta shook with laughter in his jovial way, but added that it was absolutely necessary to pretend he had, for other people had conspired in the Embassy, and the head man (in the absence of an Ambassador) must be held responsible in such a case.'
Another diplomatist whom Sir Charles met in the same month was the Comte de Montgélas, first secretary to the Austrian Embassy:
'… A man who played a great part at this time, belonging to a Bavarian family which had furnished a distinguished politician to the Congress of Vienna. He went everywhere, knew everyone, was clever, showy, talkative; but after being one of the leading exponents of the Beaconsfield policy, he was suddenly dismissed by his Government, … and when, many years afterwards, I again saw him, he had become a servant of the British North Borneo Company. I believe he was too friendly to Bismarck to please Beust (then Austrian Ambassador in London).'
He tells also the story of a 'King-maker':
'The Portuguese Minister in 1876 was the old Duc de Saldanha. This was the man who some years previously, at the age of eighty, being dissatisfied with the state of things in Lisbon, had taken the steamer from Southampton, and, though he was at the time Minister in London, landed at Lisbon, put himself at the head of the Guards, marched on the palace, locked up the King, turned out the Ministers, put in his friends, released the King, and returned by the next steamer to his legation.'
Here too is gossip from Berlin:
'On June 15th, 1877, I breakfasted with Goschen to meet Lord Odo Russell, who was most amusing. He told us that, Bismarck being ill, the Chancellor's temper was so bad as to make him "impossible for his family, his subordinates, and even his Sovereign." He said that Bismarck hates the Empress Augusta with so deadly a hatred as to have lately said to him: "I am not Foreign Secretary. My master's Foreign Secretary is the Empress, whose Foreign Secretary is the French Ambassador, whose Foreign Secretary is the General of the Jesuits."…
'At this time General Grant came to London, and, as I had known him at Washington and he had liked me there, I had to go about a good deal to meet him at his wish, and he also dined with me on June 10th, when I invited him to choose his own party. He knew, however, so few men in London that I had to suggest men to him, and asked him whether he would like to meet Butt as the leader of the Irish party. He said he should, but was very silent all through dinner and until he had begun the second of two big cigars. Then, as usual with him, he began to thaw under the influence of tobacco, and whispered to me—when Butt was talking very pleasantly under the influence of something besides tobacco, and with his enormous, perfectly round face assuming, as it always did after dinner, the appearance of the harvest moon—"Is he a Papist?" to which I replied "No"; whereupon Grant became friendly to him. General Grant's chief weakness, unless that position be assigned to his cigars, was his detestation of the Roman Catholics.'
Many political personages are sketched in passing reference. Here is
Roebuck, who in his fierce prime had been known as 'Tear 'em':
'The famous orator and Radical of past days was now a little, shrivelled-up old man, but he was still able to play a great part in the House of Commons, although entirely decayed in mind. His vinegary hatred of Mr. Gladstone, and of the Liberal party generally, uttered from the Liberal side in a piercing treble, was destined to be cheered to the echo for a short time from the Tory benches, and Roebuck, later than this, saw himself made a Privy Councillor by Lord Beaconsfield.'
In January, 1877, is this reference to a force of the future:
'Randolph Churchill and Drummond Wolff to dinner; amusing in the style of Robert Macaire and his man.'
Among more disciplined sections of the Tory party Sir Charles had many friends. One of them, a social figure of great charm and distinction, was Lord Barrington,
'who used, when Mr. Disraeli was leader of the House of Commons, to keep for him the notes which have to be kept by the Prime Minister for the Queen…. Barrington showed me his one night; it began: "Lord Barrington presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs to inform your Majesty that…" The Queen in no way showed her favouritism to Mr. Disraeli more than in excusing him from the performance of this tiresome duty, which, however, had the one advantage of giving Mr. Gladstone in his administration something quiet to do during exciting divisions such as those on Bradlaugh….
'Lady Waldegrave pressed me to go to Strawberry Hill on a particular Saturday in the month—the only one, I think, on which, as a fact, I did not go—to meet the Prince of Wales, but as she playfully took me to task at the same time for not attending levees, I connected the two things, and thought she had been asked to speak to me, and declined. I told her that I had left off going to levees in 1865, before I left Cambridge, for no reason except that they bored me; and that if I were suddenly to go, people would think that I had changed my views, and wished it to be known that I had changed them, for they thought that my not going was connected with my opinions, which, however, it was not.'
There is a note early in this year:
'I was engaged at this moment on an attempt to form a circle of friends who would be superior, from the existence with them of a standpoint, to the mere ordinary political world, and I began doing my best to meet frequently those whom I most liked—John Morley, Dillwyn, Leonard Courtney, and Fitzmaurice, prominently among the politicians; and Burton (Director of the National Gallery), Minto, and Joseph Knight, prominently among the artists and men of letters. All these were men with something noble in their natures, or something delicate and beautiful, full of sterling qualities.'
Minto was the well-known man of letters. Joseph Knight, for many years dramatic critic of the Athenaeum, and, later, editor of Notes and Queries, was perhaps the best known and most beloved of Bohemians, a pillar of the Garrick Club, and one of the men to whose tongue came ceaselessly apt and unexpected quotations from Shakespeare. He had the same passion as old Mr. Dilke for accumulating books, and like him, too, was a living catalogue to his own library, or libraries, for he accumulated and sold two in his lifetime.
Another man of letters needs no introduction:
'A wreck of glasses attests the presence of Swinburne. He compared himself to Dante; repeatedly named himself with Shelley and Dante, to the exclusion of all other poets; assured me that he was a great man only because he had been properly flogged at Eton, the last time for reading The Scarlet Letter when he should have been reading Greek; confessed to never having read Helvétius, though he talked of Diderot and Rousseau, and finally informed me that two glasses of green Chartreuse were a perfect antidote to one of yellow, or two of yellow to one of green. It was immediately after this that Theodore Watts- Dunton took charge of him and reduced him to absolute respectability.'
Sir Charles tells stories of a remarkable political and literary personage.
'Lord Houghton's anecdotes were rendered good by the remarkable people that he had known…. He once about this time said to me: "I have known everyone in the present century that was worth knowing." With a little doubt in my mind, I murmured, "Napoleon Bonaparte?" "I was taken to Elba when I was a boy," said Houghton instantly. I thought his recollections of the first Emperor apocryphal. There was, however, a chance that the father—who was in Italy—did take the child to Elba.'
Another story, of which Lord Houghton was not the narrator, but the subject, came to Sir Charles during a party at Lady Pollock's, and concerned the dinner which had preceded the party.
'It had been at seven o'clock in honour of Tennyson, who would not dine at any other hour, and Tennyson sat on one side of the hostess, and Lord Houghton on the other; and the latter was cross at being made to dine at 7, preferring to dine at 8.30, and sup, after dinner, at 11. The conversation turned on a poem which had been written by Tennyson in his youth, and Tennyson observed "I have not even a copy myself—no one has it." To which Lord Houghton answered: "I have one. I have copies of all the rubbish you ever wrote."—A pause.—"When you are dead I mean to publish them all. It will make my fortune and destroy your reputation." After this Tennyson was heard to murmur, "Beast!" It must have been a real pleasure to him to find himself survive his brother poet.
'On the same evening I heard a story (probably a well-known one, but certainly good) of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon's body; how the Government of the day wrote to the Duke to tell him they had agreed to let the French transport the corpse from St. Helena, the Duke being in Opposition at the time; how the answer ran: "F.-M. the Duke of Wellington presents his compliments to H.M.'s Ministers. If they wish to know F.-M. the Duke of Wellington's opinion as on a matter of public policy, he must decline to give one. If, however, they wish only to consult him as a private individual, F.-M. the Duke of Wellington has no hesitation in saying that he does not care one twopenny damn what becomes of the ashes of Napoleon Buonaparte."'
Sir Charles had always many friends among artists, and his weekly visit to the National Gallery was rarely intermitted by him even when in office. To the end of his life he maintained the habit of going there whenever he could make time, and always inspecting each new purchase. He kept in touch, too, regularly with the art of his own day, and records his sight of the first exhibition in the still unfinished Grosvenor Gallery. The exhibition did not please him as a whole, though he admired not only Burne-Jones's "Days of Creation," but a picture called "Passing Days," also allegorical, the work of Burne-Jones's disciple, Mr. Strudwick. His taste in art was always personal; Velasquez, the painters' painter, made no appeal to him. He worshipped Perugino and Bellini, rating "The Doge" among the masterpieces of the world; while Raphael had for him degenerated from his master's (Perugino's) perfection into mere expressionless beauty. His appreciations were made with great force and originality, and an old Academician who had accompanied him round galleries once said to the second Lady Dilke (herself a most authoritative judge of painting): "It is always interesting to see what a man like that will admire."
Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Charles's frequent guest at 76, Sloane Street, was usually his companion in picture-seeing. It is also recorded that in the spring of this year Dilke took his friend, 'at an unearthly hour for one of his lazy habits,' to see the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race.
In the matter of music his preferences were no less emphatic, as witness this entry:
'On May 29th I dined with a sister of Edward Levy Lawson, married to a German who was Rubinstein's great friend; and not only Rubinstein, but Joachim, played to the guests. Mrs. Bourke, a sister-in-law of Lord Mayo, was always asked everywhere in London where Joachim was meant to play, inasmuch as she was his favourite accompanist among amateurs. The modesty of the great man led him after dinner, once when I was dining with the Mitfords, when he knew that his time had come, to turn to Mrs. Bourke, who was famous only as shining in his reflected light, and say: "Mrs. Bourke, won't you play us something, and I will just come in with my fiddle?" Rubinstein's playing I never liked. To me he seemed only the most violent of all the piano-bangers of the world; but he was literally worshipped by his admirers, and was grand to look at—as fine as Beethoven must have been.'
Early in March of this year occurred the death of George Odger. The working class of London decided to show their great respect by giving him such a funeral ceremony as is rare in England, and Sir Charles walked bareheaded through the streets with the great procession that accompanied the body from the house in High Street, St. Giles's, all the long miles to Brompton Cemetery.
A shrewd observer of Parliaments wrote of Sir Charles at this time:
"There is no more popular man in the House of Commons than he who seven years ago" (it was only five) "was hooted and howled at, and was for many succeeding months the mark of contumely and scorn in all well-conducted journals."
On this statement Sir Charles's diary affords a commentary:
'At this time (April, 1877) there occurred some discussion between Chamberlain and me as to what should be our attitude in the event of the formation of a Liberal Government, and he was willing to accept office other than Cabinet office, provided that it was office such as to give him the representation of his department in the House of Commons. Chamberlain and I found that we could exercise much power through the Executive Committee of the Liberal Central Association, which was a new body which at this time managed the whole of the electoral affairs of the party. It comprised the two Whips ex- officio—the Right Hon. W. P. Adam, and Lord Kensington; and among the other seven members, Chamberlain and I represented the Radicals, and communicated with the union of Liberal associations commonly known as the Birmingham Caucus. Of the others Waddy was there to represent the Methodists; C. C. Cotes [Footnote: M.P. for Shrewsbury. He was a Lord of the Treasury and one of the Whips in Mr. Gladstone's second Government.] and Sir Henry James were there chiefly as amateur whips fond of electoral work; Lord Frederick Cavendish, to represent his brother, the leader of the party; and Whitbread, to strengthen the Whig influence.'
Sir Charles notes here that on June 29th, when he was to second, as usual,
Mr. Trevelyan's annual motion concerning franchise and redistribution, he
'had a conference with Chamberlain on the question whether we could possibly get together a small knot of young peers to help us in the House of Lords. Rosebery seemed the only one that we could find worth thinking of, and we had him to dinner, and went to stay with him, and generally tried to join forces, but without any very marked effect.'
Dilke and Chamberlain also sounded the Home Rulers to see if they could find any basis of co-operation; and about this date Sir Charles, with Lord and Lady Francis Conyngham and Butt, and 'in their sitting-room, full of perennial clouds of smoke,' where a captive nightingale sang ('thinking the gas the moon unless he took Butt's face for that luminary of the heavens'), settled with the Irish leader that in following years they should amend Mr. Trevelyan's franchise resolution by moving for the extension of the franchise in counties throughout the United Kingdom; not even Radicals had previously proposed to enlarge the electorate in Ireland.
But in these days the Irish party were beginning to apply and develop that use of Parliamentary forms for obstructive purposes which had been first systematically attempted by the "Colonels" in opposition to Mr. Cardwell's Bill for abolishing purchase in the Army, and Liberals were a little scandalized by their allies. In the close of July Sir John Lubbock, then a Liberal, 'foreshadowed his future Unionism by observing that "the obstructive Irish were the Bashi Bazouks, who did more harm to us by their atrocities than good by their fighting."' A couple of days later, when Liberals supported an Irish amendment, Dilke himself agreed with Mr. Rylands's pun that "they would have had a bigger vote if it hadn't been Biggar." Upon this matter Sir Charles's attitude was naturally affected by that of Butt, in whose company he delighted. The great advocate believed in his own power to effect by eloquence and reasoned argument that change of mind in the British House of Commons which five-and-twenty years' experience of Ireland had wrought in himself since the days when he opposed O'Connell on Repeal, and this led him to resent the methods of unreason. Mr. Parnell, who never believed that England was open to reason in the matter of Ireland, was only beginning to impress his personality on the House; there is but one incidental mention of his name in the Memoir for 1877.
But notwithstanding all the claims of home politics, in Sir Charles's judgment every statesman had, under existing conditions, to study the details of modern warfare, and he kept closely in touch with naval armament:
'On February 24th I suddenly went down to Portsmouth to go over the dockyard and see the ships building there, taking letters from Childers and from Sir Edward Reed to Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock, the Arctic explorer (Superintendent), and to Mr. Robinson, the Chief Constructor. I went over the Inflexible, the Thunderer, and the Glatton, which were lighted up for me. Noting the number of sets of engines, and the number of the separate watertight compartments of the Inflexible, I wrote: "All these extremely complicated arrangements are handed over to a captain, of whom … is a favourable example, and to engineers who are denied their due rank in command."'
Nearly thirty years later the necessary reform which the last words indicate was carried out by Lord Fisher.