Mr. Dilke—who shall be so called to distinguish him from his son Wentworth Dilke, and from his grandson Charles Dilke—at an early period added the pursuit of literature to his duties as a civil servant. By 1815, when he was only twenty-six, Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review, already spoke highly of him; and between that date and 1830 he was contributing largely to the monthly and quarterly reviews. In 1830 he acquired a main share in the Athenaeum, a journal 'but just born yet nevertheless dying,' and quickly raised it into the high position of critical authority which it maintained, not only throughout his own life, but throughout his grandson's. So careful was Mr. Dilke to preserve its reputation for impartial judgment, that during the sixteen years in which he had virtually entire control of the paper, he withdrew altogether from general society "in order to avoid making literary acquaintances which might either prove annoying to him, or be supposed to compromise the independence of his journal." [Footnote: From Papers of a Critic, a selection of Mr. Dilke's essays, edited, with a memoir, by Sir Charles Dilke, See infra, p. 184.]
After 1846 the editorship of the Athenaeum was in other hands, but the proprietor's vigilant interest in it never abated, and was transmitted to his grandson, who continued to the end of his days not only to write for it, but also to read the proofs every week, and repeatedly for brief periods to act as editor.
When in 1846 Mr. Dilke curtailed his work on the Athenaeum, it was to take up other duties. For three years he was manager of the recently established Daily News, working in close fellowship with his friends John Forster and Charles Dickens.
From the time when he gave up this task till his death in 1864 Mr. Dilke's life had one all-engrossing preoccupation—the training of his grandson Charles. But to the last, literary research employed him. In 1849 he helped to establish Notes and Queries 'to be a paper in which literary men could answer each other's questions'; and his contributions to this paper [Footnote: Its founder and first editor, Mr. W. J. Thorns (afterwards Librarian of the House of Lords), had for three years been contributing to the Athenaeum columns headed "Folk-Lore"—a word coined by him for the purpose. The correspondence which grew out of this threatened to swamp other departments of the paper, and so the project was formed of starting a journal entirely devoted to the subjects which he had been treating. Mr. Dilke, being consulted, approved the plan, and lent it his full support. In 1872, when Mr. Thorns retired from control of the paper, Sir Charles Dilke bought it, putting in Dr. Doran as editor; and thenceforward it was published from the same office as the Athenaeum.] and to the Athenaeum never ceased; though so unambitious of any personal repute was he that in all his long career he never signed an article with his own name, nor identified himself with a pseudonym. A man of letters, he loved learning and literature for their own sake; yet stronger still than this love was his desire to transmit to his heirs his own gathered knowledge, experience, and convictions.
He had become early 'an antiquary and a Radical,' and this combination rightly indicated unusual breadth of sympathy. The period in which he was born favoured it: for, keen student as he was of the eighteenth century— preserving in his own style, perhaps later than any other man who wrote in England, that dignified but simple manner which Swift and Bolingbroke had perfected—he yet was intimately in touch with the young genius of an age in revolt against all the eighteenth-century tradition. Keats, only a few years his junior, was his close friend; so was John Hamilton Reynolds, the comrade of Keats, and author of poems known to every student of that literary group. Thomas Hood and Charles Lamb had long and near association with him. Lover of the old, he had always an open heart for the new; and, bookish though he was, no one could be less a bookworm. The antiquary in him never mastered the Radical: he had an unflagging interest in the large facts of life, an undying faith in human progress. Slighting his own lifework as he evidently did—for he never spoke of it to his son or his son's son—he was yet prompted by instinct to kindle and tend a torch which one after him should carry, and perhaps should carry high. It would be difficult to name any man who had a stronger sense of the family bond.
He had married very young—before he was nineteen—Maria Dover Walker, the beautiful daughter of a Yorkshire yeoman, still younger than he. This couple, who lived together "in a most complete happiness" for forty years, had one child only, born in 1810, Charles Wentworth Dilke, commonly called Wentworth. [Footnote: Papers of a Critic, vol. i., p. 13.] Mr. Dilke sent his son to Westminster, and removed him at the age of sixteen, arranging—because his theory of education laid great stress on the advantage of travel—that the lad should live for a while with Baron Kirkup, British Consul and miniature painter, in Florence, as a preparatory discipline before going to Cambridge. What he hoped and intended is notably expressed in a letter written by him at Genoa on his return journey to his son in Florence in 1826: [Footnote: Ibid., p. 18.]
"I ought to be in bed, but somehow you are always first in my thoughts and last, and I prefer five minutes of gossiping with you…. How, indeed, could it be otherwise than that you should be first and last in my thoughts, who for so many years have occupied all my thoughts. For fifteen years at least it has been my pleasure to watch over you, to direct and to advise. Now, direct and personal interference has ceased…. It is natural, perhaps, that I should take a greater interest than other fathers, for I have a greater interest at stake. I have _but one _son. That son, too, I have brought up differently from others, and if he be not better than others, it will be urged against me, not as a misfortune, but as a shame. From the first hour I never taught you to believe what I did not myself believe. I have been a thousand times censured for it, but I had that confidence in truth that I dared put my faith in it and in you. And you will not fail me. I am sure you will return home to do me honour, and to make me respect you, as I do, and ever shall, love you."
It was a singular letter for a man of thirty-seven to write—singular in its self-effacement before the rising generation, singular, too, in the intensity of its forecast. Yet, after all, a measure of disappointment was to be his return for that first venture. The son to whom so great a cargo of hopes had been committed was a vigorous lad, backed when he was fifteen 'to swim or shoot or throw against any boy of his age in England,' and he developed these and kindred energies, accepting culture only in so far as it ministered to his fine natural faculty for enjoyment. He acquired a knowledge of Italian and of operatic music at Florence; but when afterwards at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he was, to his father's despair, very idle, and during his early years in London 'was principally known to his friends for never missing a night at the Opera.'
That interest in things of the mind which he could hardly have failed to inherit had made of him a dilettante rather than a scholar; but later he became very active in promoting those ideals which appealed to his taste. He had a shrewd business eye, and showed it in founding the Gardeners' Chronicle and the Agricultural Gazette, both paying properties. He had, moreover, a talent for organization, and a zeal in getting things done, acknowledged in many letters from persons of authority in their recognition of those services to the International Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862 which were rewarded by his baronetcy. An interesting National Exhibition of 'Art Manufactures' had already been held by the Society of Arts, on whose Council Wentworth Dilke was an active worker, at the time when he, with two other members of the Council and the secretary, Mr. Scott Russell, met the Prince Consort on June 30th, 1849, and decided to renew the venture on a scale which should include foreign nations. When the executive committee of four (to whom were added a secretary and a representative of the contractors) was named in January, 1850, the work practically fell on three persons—Sir William Reid communicating with the public departments, Mr. Henry Cole settling questions of space and arrangement, [Footnote: Mr. Cole, afterwards Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B., was, says the Memoir, 'commonly known as King Cole,' and was afterwards secretary to the South Kensington School of Design.] and Wentworth Dilke 'having charge of the correspondence and general superintendence,' and attending 'every meeting of the executive except the first.'
Wentworth Dilke worked hard for this and for other objects. But his public activities had to be fitted in with a great deal of shooting and other sport at Alice Holt, the small house in Hampshire, with adjacent preserves, which he rented, and which became the family's country home.