This kind of boyhood is unfortunate, but it might do small harm, if it weren't for the sad sense of guilt with which it stains a man's mind. Men try to forget it, and do: but their subconsciousness never forgets. To be cured, a man must face and remember his past, open-eyed, and see his mistakes philosophically and understand better: understand what we all are, and what human nature is made of, and how it is distorted in youth by a rigid environment. The average moralist or parent won't tell us these things. But until we have learned them, a good many of us feel wicked, and can't put behind us the wretched mistakes of our youth. We don't know enough to regard our young struggles with sympathy. Our ignorance makes us believe we have blackened our souls. And the man who keeps silent and never tells, and hence never learns, goes through the world semi-subdued. Never gets what it owes him.
Was Grandfather Dilke such a case? I've no warrant for saying so. His conscience may have troubled him, possibly, for some quite different reason. He may have secretly hated some relative whom he should have loved. He may have done some small wrong and unfortunately not been found out. But whatever the reason was, he lived an odd, back-groundish life—for a man of his caliber. And his life didn't satisfy him. And this was his fault, not the world's.
The birth of a son, however, in a way gives a man a fresh chance. He decides to live a second and far better life through his son. Whenever a parent feels blue, or is not making good, he immediately declares that his hopes are in his little son anyhow. Then he has a sad, comfortable glow at his own self-effacement. Oh, these shirking fathers! They allow themselves to give way to weariness, or be halted by fears; but expect a son, when he comes to such moments, to find them quite jolly. He's to make up for the weakness of his father, and carry his own burdens, too!
I regret to say Grandfather Dilke sought relief in this way. Although young, strong, and gifted, he said when his own son was born that he then and there committed all his dreams of achievement to Baby. Baby was to go out in the world and do his papa honor.
The child was called Wentworth, and it grew up sound, healthy, and kind. But when poor Mr. Dilke bet on Wentworth, he backed the wrong horse. Wentworth didn't have anything in him of the statesman or scholar. He was idle at studies. No head for them. What he liked was athletics. He liked comradeship and enjoying life generally—in a nice way, however. A simple, conservative-minded and limited soul. During his early years in London he was principally known to his friends for never missing a night at the opera. And he was devoted to shooting-parties.
Later on, he became still more trying, it would seem, to his parent. Instead of remaining in his place as a plain disappointment, he began to be prominent; and, stupidly, in just the wrong field. He became a sort of parody of the man his father had hoped he would be. He hadn't the brains, for example, to do anything in the learned Athenaeum, but he founded The Gardeners' Chronicle and the Agricultural Gazette. He did well with them, too, which was irritating. He turned out to be a good man of business.
About this time a National Exhibition of some sort was held, and Wentworth was in on it. (It was an exhibition of "art manufacturers.") Then somebody got the idea of repeating it on a large scale and including foreign nations: in fact to make it the first of World's Fairs. So Wentworth and the others met the Prince Consort, to get Royalty's blessing.
The Prince Consort liked the plan immensely. He made it his hobby. Numerous committees were appointed, in true simian style, and amid endless speeches and palaverings, the thing was arranged. Wentworth, except when on shooting-parties, worked hard for it.
This made a great noise; but I doubt if it impressed Mr. Dilke. It was at bottom cheap stuff which any advertiser or promoter could do. It sounded well; it made a man prominent, but it didn't take brains. What Mr. Dilke had hoped or intended for his son I don't know; perhaps nothing definite; but he certainly wanted something that counted. He wanted him to make a contribution to the needs of mankind. Some achievement in scholarship, or some hand in the steering of England.
Mr. Dilke was, potentially, anyhow, a big sort of man, like a nation's prime minister: a publicist, not a mere showman. And for years he had given all his thoughts to his son's career. His son had been the one he first thought of when he woke in the morning, and the last one that stayed in his mind when he got into bed. And he hadn't just mooned around about him, he had worked for his welfare, planned each step of his education, for instance, and pondered his plans.