I.
When Mr. Gladstone's Ministry left office in the summer of 1885, there seemed to be in all England no man for whom the future held out more assured and brilliant promise than Sir Charles Dilke. He was still young, not having completed his forty-second year; in the Cabinet only Lord Rosebery was his junior; he had seventeen years of unremitting Parliamentary service to his credit, and in the House of Commons his prestige was extraordinary. His own judgment and that of all skilled observers regarded his party's abandonment of office as temporary: the General Election would inevitably bring them back with a new lease of power, and with an Administration reorganized in such fashion that the Radicals would no longer find themselves overbalanced in the shaping of policy. The Dilke-Chamberlain alliance, which had during the past five years been increasingly influential, would in the next Parliament become openly authoritative; and, as matters looked at the moment, it was Sir Charles, and not Mr. Chamberlain, who seemed likely to take the foremost place.
Chamberlain's dazzling popular success had been of the kind to which a certain unpopularity attaches. Moderate men of both parties were prone to impute it to demagogism, and Dilke was in the fortunate position of seeing those Radical principles for which he stood advocated by his ally with a force of combined invective and argument which has had few parallels in political history, while to him fell the task, suited to his temperament, of reasoned discussion. Those who denounced Chamberlain's vehemence could hardly fail to point a comparison with Dilke's unfailing courtesy, his steady adherence to argument, his avoidance of the appeal to passion. Some strong natures have the quality of making enemies, some the gift for making friends, outside their own immediate circle, and Sir Charles Dilke possessed the more genial endowment.
This capacity for engendering good-will in those whom he encountered certainly did not spring from any undue respect of persons. Members of the Royal Family, whose privileges he had assailed, were constant in their friendliness; high Tories such as Lord Salisbury, whose principles he combated on every platform, liked him, and were not slow to show it. On the other hand, the friendship which Sir Charles inspired did not proceed, as is sometimes the case, from a mere casual bounty of nature. In Parliament his colleagues liked him, but this, assuredly, was not without cause. No member of the Ministry had given so much service outside his own department. Lord Granville wrote at this time: 'I have not seen you alone since the smash, or I should have told you how much I feel the support you have given me both when we were together at the F.O. and quite as much since. I shall not soon forget it.' Sir William Harcourt at the Home Office, Sir Henry James in the conduct of the Corrupt Practices Bill, had been beholden to him for no ordinary assistance. Moreover, as he was good to work with, so he was good to work under. Those who served him at the Local Government Board remember him as in no way prompt to praise; but if a suggestion was made to him, he never failed to identify it with the suggester, recognizing its source in adopting it. If he made a mistake and was set right, he admitted his error—a trait very rare in Ministers, who feel that they have constantly as amateurs to direct the decision of experts, and are therefore chary of such admissions. Sir Charles always gave his men their due, and he took care that they should not be treated as machines. When colleagues called on him at his office, and found him with one of his staff, he never allowed the subordinate to be ignored in greetings. The Minister in a hurry would be stopped with, 'I think you know So-and-so.' These are small matters to set down, but by such small things men indicate their nature; and one of the oldest servants in that office summed up the matter in a sentence which is not the less interesting because it brings in another name. 'When Sir Charles Dilke was at the Local Government Board,' he said, 'the feeling towards the President, from the heads of departments down to the messengers in the hall, was the same as it was in the time of Mr. Walter Long, and I can say no more than that.'
Nobody, perhaps, has a better right to be counted fortunate than a man who can feel that he is strong, that he is liked, and that he is successfully promoting principles of government for his fellow- countrymen in which he sincerely believes. In July, 1885, Sir Charles Dilke had all these grounds for satisfaction, and in no common measure. Of course there were anxieties, politically speaking; Mr. Gladstone's future course of action was uncertain, and Mr. Gladstone was so great a force that he might at any time derange all calculations—as, in point of fact, he did. Still, time was on the side of the Radicals, and from day to day they held what they called 'cabals' of the group formed by Chamberlain, Shaw-Lefevre, Trevelyan, Morley, and Dilke himself. At these meetings Sir Charles regularly presided.
The work of the Commission on Housing was in its last stages; its chairman was able to announce on July 1st, when laying the foundation- stone of some artisans' dwellings in Hoxton, that the Commission's Bill would be introduced in the Lords by Lord Salisbury, and that he himself would have charge of it in the Commons. For a man who had so laboured during the past five years such duties as these were child's play, and Sir Charles was able for the first time for many months to take his share in social enjoyments. He dined repeatedly at Grillion's; he went to parties at famous houses both of his political allies and political opponents; above all, he found time for restful days upon his beloved river. He went to Henley in that July with his old rowing comrade Steavenson 'to see Bristowe's fine Trinity Hall eight'; he spent Sunday, July 12th, at Dockett in company with Mr. Cyril Flower; and for the next Sunday, the 19th, he was engaged to be at Taplow Court with Mr. W. H. Grenfell, famous among oarsmen. But of that day more has to be written.
Throughout the month one dark cloud had hung over him: Mrs. Pattison was grievously ill in the Madras hills, and not until the fourth week in July did he know even the nature of her illness. It was typhoid, and it left her weak to face what had to come, like a 'bolt from the blue,' upon her and her future husband. Her first marriage had brought her discipline rather than happiness; now in the middle years of life her vivid nature was blossoming out again in the promise of union with a man before whom there lay open an illustrious career. Illness struck her down, and while she lay convalescent there came to her as black a message as ever tried the heart of any woman.
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