I.
Having successfully faced his opponents in Parliament, and having also got assurances from the authorities in France that he would not be shadowed, Sir Charles was able to spend the Easter recess with Lady Dilke in Paris:
'At Easter we went to Paris and went about a good deal, seeing much of Gambetta, of Milner Gibson (who had completely left the world of English politics, and lived at Paris except when he was cruising in his yacht), Michel Chevalier, and the Franquevilles. We attended sittings of the Assembly at Versailles, drove over the battlefields, dined with the Louis Blancs to meet Louis's brother, Charles Blanc, the critic and great master of style, … breakfasted with Evarts the American lawyer, to meet Caleb Gushing, his colleague on the American case on the Alabama claims; met at the Franquevilles' Henri de Pène and Robert Mitchell, the Conservative journalists; and saw "Mignon," Katie's favourite opera, and "Rabagas." This last famous piece, which was being played at the Vaudeville, where it was wonderfully acted, had been written during the premiership of Émile Ollivier, but being brought out when Ollivier was half forgotten, and when the name of Gambetta was in all men's mouths, was supposed by many to have been intended as a satire of the tribune, though it is far more applicable in every point to Ollivier's career.'
Many years later Sir Charles was to form a friendship of lifelong duration with Louis Napoleon's Minister Ollivier. But from this visit to Paris dates the beginning of an intimacy between the young English member of Parliament and the leader of French democracy.
He had already met Gambetta once in the end of 1871, and to renew this acquaintance was a special purpose in going to Paris. He had conceived the plan of writing a history of the nineteenth century. On the origin of the Franco-German War Gambetta was a high authority, and it was to discuss these questions that during this visit he for the first time came to see Sir Charles, who records: 'Had Gambetta to breakfast with us, when he stayed the whole day talking with me.'
In five minutes the two men must have been in touch. Those who knew Sir Charles knew how his intense geniality of nature, masked sometimes for outsiders by a slight austerity, his air boutonné—as it was described by those who did not pass the barrier—showed immediately with those to whom he was drawn. That rire enfantin, described by Challemel-Lacour, would burst out at the first quick turn of talk, and he would give his whole self, with an almost boyish delight, to the encounter with a nature whose superabundant vitality and delight in life, as in Gambetta's case, equalled his own.
For these two the common points of interest were strongly marked. Not only was there the kindred geniality of disposition, and the kindred interest in the history and fortune of France: there was in each an overwhelming love of country; strong, indeed, in Gambetta, and in Dilke so strong that it can best be described in the words of a French friend who, watching him, said to Sir Charles's second wife: "That man is a great patriot, for with his whole self he serves his country, never staying to consider how she has served him."
In the spring of 1872 both men were young: Dilke not yet twenty-nine, Gambetta just thirty-four. But the past of one was crowded with experience, and the other had already made history.
Sir Charles here inserts—
'a word of the personality of Gambetta, who for a long time was my most intimate friend, and for whose memory I have still the deepest regard.
'It was on All Saints' Day of 1868 that a few republicans had paid a fête-of-the-dead visit to the tomb of a Deputy killed on the side of the Constitution at the time of the coup d'état, and had found it in a miserable state. Delescluze (who was two and a half years later to meet Baudin's fate, being killed, like him, in a black coat, unarmed, on a Paris barricade) communicated with Challemel-Lacour, and a subscription for a fitting tomb was started, which soon became an imposing manifestation of anti-Bonapartist opinion. [Footnote: The need for a fitting tomb is shown by the circumstance of Baudin's death and burial. He had gone early in the morning of December 3rd, 1851, to help in the construction of a barricade at the point where the Rue Ste. Marguerite and the Rue de Cotte meet. Two companies of the line arrived from the Bastille and formed an attacking party, and were joined by some men in blouses, who cried, on seeing the deputies: "À bas les vingt-cinq francs!" Baudin, unarmed, standing on the top of the barricade, replied: "Vous allez voir comment on meurt pour vingt- cinq francs." An attempt to address the soldiers by the Constitutionalists failed, and a shot from the barricade was replied to by a general volley, and Baudin fell, pierced by three shots. His body was taken to the Hôpital Ste. Marguerite, and when claimed by his brothers was given up only on condition that it should not be shown to the people, but immediately and quietly buried. He was buried on December 5th secretly in the cemetery of Montmartre (See Dictionnaire des Parlementaires, by Robert and Cougny).]
'The Government having prosecuted the papers which published the subscription lists, Challemel-Lacour caused the selection of Gambetta as counsel. He was a young barrister speaking with a strong Southern accent, which, however, disappeared when he spoke in public, vulgar in language and appearance, one-eyed, of Genoese (possibly Jewish) race, full of power. Gambetta made a magnificent speech, which brought him at one bound into the front rank among the republican leaders. His description of December 2nd was such as had never been excelled even by Cicero or by Berryer: "At that time there grouped themselves around a pretender a number of men without talent, without honour, sunk in debt and in crime, such as in all ages have been the accomplices of arbitrary violence, men of whom one could repeat what Sallust had said of the foul mob that surrounded Catiline, what Caesar said himself of those who conspired along with him: 'Inevitable dregs of organized society.'" The word Pretender, without adjectives, may seem somewhat weak as applied to the Prince President, the head of the band, but those who have heard Gambetta alone know the contempt which he could throw into his voice in the pronunciation of such a word. Finest of all the passages that remain to us of Gambetta's eloquence was one near the close of this memorable speech, which began: "During seventeen years you who are the masters of France have never dared to keep December 2nd as the national anniversary. That anniversary we take as that on which to commemorate the virtues of our dead who died that day—" Here the Advocate Imperial tried to interrupt him so as to spoil his peroration, and the written version now printed in his speeches differs altogether in language from that which was taken down by the shorthand writers at the time, although the idea is exactly the same. The two counsel spoke together for some minutes, each trying to shout down the other, until Gambetta's tremendous roar had crushed his adversary, whereupon, in the middle of his peroration, with a really Provençal forgetfulness of his art and subject, Gambetta interposed— "He tried to close my mouth, but I have drowned him"—and then went on.'
This picture is made more vivid by the pencillings on Sir Charles's copy of Daudet's Numa Roumestan, where the word "Gambetta" is scribbled again and again opposite passages which describe Numa's wonderful ringing voice, his quick supple nature, all things to all men, catching as if by magic the very tone and gestures of those with whom he spoke, prodigal as the sun in greetings and in promises, poured out in a torrent of words, which seemed "not to proceed from ideas, but to waken them in his mind by the mechanical stimulus of their sound, and by certain intonations even brought tears into his eyes."
'My friendship with Gambetta perhaps meant to me something more than the friendship of the man. Round him gathered all that was best and most hopeful in the state of the young republic. He, more than any other individual, had both destroyed the Empire and made new France, and to some extent the measure of my liking for the man was my hatred of those that he had replaced. Louis Napoleon … had dynastic ends in view…. The Napoleonic legend did not survive Sedan, and that it was unable to be revived in the distress which followed the Commune was largely owing to the policy and courage of Gambetta.
'There is some permanent importance in the discussions as to the origin of the war of 1870 which I had with Gambetta at this time; for it so happens that I have been able at various periods to discuss with the most absolute freedom the history of this period with the five men who knew most of it—Bismarck, Émile Ollivier, Gambetta, Nigra, and Casa Laigleisia (at that time Rancez), the Spanish diplomatist, afterwards three times Spanish Minister in London.
'The question which I often discussed with Gambetta, with Ollivier, with Nigra, with Rancez, until, in September, 1889, Bismarck's frank admissions settled the matter in my mind for good, has been one of the most disputed points in modern history. My opinion that Bismarck had prepared the war, and had brought about the Hohenzollern candidature in order to provoke it, was only strengthened by an article entitled "Who is responsible for the War?" by "Scrutator"—probably from the pen of Congreve, the Comtist, who I know was in correspondence with the Duc de Gramont. At Easter, 1872, I discussed the matter fully with Gambetta, with Rancez, with Klaszco (author of The Two Chancellors, and secret agent of the Austrian Government), and with Hansen, a Dane, and spy of the French Government. Rancez long represented Spain at Berlin, and it was he who, under Prim's orders, prepared the Hohenzollern candidature. He was then sent to Vienna, as it was wise for him to be out of the way when war, brought about by his agency, was impending; but he was fetched suddenly to Berlin from Vienna in 1869, and this was when the thing was settled. The facts are all known now." [Footnote: Bismarck, Gedanken und Erinnerungen, ii., chap, xxii., p. 90 (German edition); Benedetti, Ma Mission en Prusse, chap, vi., pp. 409, 410.] The King of Prussia, on July 13th (1870), refused to give assurances for the future, in simple and dignified language which meant peace. His telegram to Berlin was one of 200 words. Bismarck told me, when I was staying with him in September, 1889, that he was with Moltke and von Roon when it was received by them at Berlin, and that he deliberately altered the telegram by cutting it down "from a telegram of 200 words which meant peace into a telegram of 20 words which meant war;" and in this form it was placarded throughout North Germany in every village.
'I discussed repeatedly with Gambetta the incidents of the Cabinet at St. Cloud on the 14th (July, 1870). Gambetta proved to me that on the 14th the mobilization order was given by the Minister of War, and that on the same day the order was itself ordered by the Cabinet to be countermanded. The Duc de Gramont has said, with singular confusion, that it was decided on the 15th that the orders of the Minister of War should not be countermanded, and that the reserves should be called out. Ollivier assured me that after a six hours' sitting of the Cabinet he had finally left St. Cloud long before that hour at which Delord states in his history that the Cabinet again met in the presence of the Empress. There was no such sitting of the Cabinet, but there may have been a meeting of the Empress, the Duc de Gramont, and the Minister of War, and they may have dared to take it upon themselves to reverse the decision at which the Cabinet had arrived.
'The Duc de Gramont and the Minister of War had been in the minority at the Cabinet on the 14th when the Cabinet withdrew the order for the mobilization of the reserves, and this minority took it upon itself in the night to maintain the order for the calling out of the reserves. On the other hand, if there was ground for the impeachment of the Duc de Gramont, I am afraid that there was also ground for that of Ollivier in his own admissions. The declaration made to the Chambers on July 15th states that the reserves were called out on the 14th, and Ollivier allowed the decision of his Cabinet, which was his own, to be reversed in his own name, apparently with his approval. [Footnote: See note on p. 486, and the authorities cited there.]
'Bismarck's action in forcing on a war might be justified by his probable acquaintance with the engagement of Austria to France that she would join her in attacking Prussia in the early spring of 1871; but it is a curious fact that he has never, either to me or to anybody else, made use of this justification.
'Upon all these subjects the papers found in the palaces and published by the Government of National Defence had an essential bearing, and these I discussed, while they were fresh, with Gambetta and Ollivier. The same matters were again before me in the following year (1873), when I had the opportunity of attending the Bazaine Court-Martial, presided over by the Duc d'Aumale, and of again reading the papers found in the Tuileries (including the volume afterwards suppressed) on the spot, and while the events related were fresh in men's minds, as well as of talking over all doubtful points with my two friends.
'Bazaine at the Court-Martial looked only stupid, like a fat old seal, utterly unmilitary, and, as the French would say, "become cow-like." It was difficult to see in him the man who, however great his crimes in Mexico, had at least been a man of the most daring courage and of the most overweening ambition. In the suppressed volume of the papers of the Imperial family seized at the Tuileries there is a letter from General Félix Douay to his brother in which he describes Bazaine's attempt to become the Bernadotte of Mexico, and shows how, in order to obtain the Mexican throne, he kept up treasonable relations with the chiefs of the republican bands which it was his duty to combat. It is curious to find the French second-in-command writing to his brother, also a General, a letter which, somehow or other, came into the possession of the Emperor himself, in which he says: "It is terrible to see a great dignity prostrated in such fashion…. We have to go back to Cardinal Dubois to find such an accomplished scoundrel having made use of a situation of the highest confidence to sell his country and his master…. He will not long escape the infamy to which he is consigned by the wishes of all honest men in the army, who are daily more and more shocked by the scandal of his personal fortune." Colonel Boyer was chief of the staff to Bazaine in Mexico, and is mentioned in the correspondence between the two Generals Douay as being mixed up in these discreditable transactions; and he was afterwards, as General Boyer, concerned, it may be remembered, in the Régnier affair at Metz, when General Bourbaki was sent out under a pass from the Prussians on a fool's errand to the Empress Eugénie, there being some treasonable plot behind. This is now (1908) confirmed by the letter of the King of Prussia to the Empress Eugénie in the Bernstorff Memoirs.'
From 1872 onwards Sir Charles, in his many passages through Paris, invariably met Gambetta, 'and spent as much time with him as possible.' He was in this way kept fully informed on French politics by the most powerful politician in France. As Gambetta's power grew, Dilke's influence grew also, until there came a time when the friendship between the two was of international interest.