'On February 4th Harcourt wrote to me to say that, if I would go to his house that night, someone from Devonshire House should meet me to show me the Queen's Speech, as he had to go to Liverpool; Hartington, he said, was full of approval of my speech.'
The dissolution came suddenly, hastened by the result of a by-election, which encouraged the Government to believe that the country was with them. On February 10th Sir Charles dined at Lady Ripon's, where were 'the Duke of Argyll, Lord Granville, the Childers, and the Hayters.'
'The conversation of the evening turned upon the Southwark election, where we all knew that the Conservative must win, Clarke (later Sir Edward Clarke) being a popular Queen's Counsel, an excellent election speaker, while the Liberals were divided between two bad candidates…. When the numbers became known to me I wrote in my diary: "Southwark not quite so bad as I expected, but quite bad enough." Yet it was this election, which, to anyone who knew the facts, should have meant nothing, which is supposed to have induced the Tories to dissolve.' [Footnote: The Conservatives won both the Liverpool and Southwark elections.]
'Cross drowns the Government,' is Sir Charles's comment on the Return on the Water Question, for which he now moved; 'the notice contained such a mass of statistics as to make the return of a very searching character in its bearing on the agreement that the Home Secretary had come to with the water companies.' It did frighten Cross, as Mr. Trevelyan had prophesied, 'and the trouble between himself and his colleagues over this question was the immediate cause of the dissolution.' [Footnote: Mr. Cross, Home Secretary, had introduced a Bill to provide for the purchase of the undertakings of the London Water Companies, which was supposed to offer the companies too favourable terms. Sir Charles notes (July, 1879): "Manning was getting up a meeting on the water question, and got me to manage it for him." 'I fancy, indeed,' he adds in his Memoir, 'that it was the Cardinal who was the indirect cause of the dissolution in the spring of 1880, for he induced Cross to undertake the purchase of the Metropolitan Water Supply, and so got him into tangled negotiations.']
Just before the electoral campaign began—
'On March 4th I received a note from Lord Fife asking me to dine with him on Friday, the 12th, to meet the Prince of Wales at the Prince's wish. The note was of such a character that it left no choice. When the dinner came off it turned out well. The Prince laid himself out to be pleasant, and talked to me nearly all the evening—chiefly about French politics and the Greek question. The other guests were Lansdowne, Dunraven, Burnand of Punch, Bernal Osborne, and Colonel Carington, brother of Lord Carrington, a very pleasant member of the House.' [Footnote: Colonel Carington was M.P. for Wycombe, 1868-1883.]
There was still among leading politicians 'much doubt as to the prospects of the election,' which Sir Charles found expressed when he spent Sunday, March 7th, 'at Aston Clinton with the Cyril Flowers, Lord Hartington being there, and Charles Villiers (at eighty), and Wolff walking over from Tring Park.' However, on March 15th, Sir William Harcourt wrote from Oxford: "I have never wavered in my opinion that the Government will be beaten, though I thought a fortnight ago it would only be a shave."
In his own borough Sir Charles found that there were 580 publicans, and that 500 of them were Conservative.
'My belief in the influence of the publicans made me hesitate with regard to Chelsea, where I thought myself not unlikely to be beaten, but I had a full belief in the success of the party generally. I was triumphantly returned, bringing in Firth with me, by great majorities over a clever Tory, Lord Inverurie (afterwards Earl of Kintore, and Governor of South Australia), and a colonial sheep-farmer, who paid the cost.'
The result was declared on April 2nd, and Sir Charles, having stayed to vote in two divisions of Surrey where he owned property, left England for Toulon on the 7th—a proceeding which separated him from those who were importunate for office. Before his departure he had dined with Sir William Harcourt: