PERSONAL LIFE—IN OPPOSITION
1895 TO 1904
Few members of the House of Commons can have been sorry to see the last of the Parliament which ended in June, 1895; and Sir Charles had nothing to regret in its disappearance. In respect of foreign affairs, he saw little to choose between the Liberal and Tory Ministers except that, of the two, Lord Salisbury was 'the less wildly Jingo.' On questions of Imperial Defence many of his old friends in the Liberal Government were arrayed against him; and with matters standing as they stood between the two Houses, there was no hope of any important Labour legislation. Lord Salisbury had again become Prime Minister, and under the new Conservative Administration everything went more easily. Sir Charles testified in one of his speeches that Mr. Balfour's leadership, 'by his unfailing courtesy to all members, made the House of Commons a pleasant place'; and Mr. Balfour's leadership was well assured of several years' continuance.
A great Parliamentarian, Sir Charles nevertheless held no brief for Parliament. As a practical statesman, he realized the advantages in a strong hand of such a machine as Bismarck controlled; while his democratic instincts made him favour the Swiss methods, with direct intervention of the people through the Referendum.
'I trained a whole generation of professional politicians to respect the
House of Commons,' he said, 'but I was never favourable to the
Parliamentary, and I was even hostile to the Party, system.'
Nevertheless, since England was wedded to its traditional system, to work this efficiently was the first duty of an English politician. A note from Sir Reginald Palgrave in 1893 acknowledges gratefully some criticisms of the tenth edition of the classical work which deals with this subject. No one was ever better qualified than Sir Charles to say what could or could not be done by the rules of order, and he would certainly have inculcated upon every politician the necessity of this knowledge as a practical equipment.
'What Dilke did,' writes Mr. McKenna, 'was to impress upon me the importance of a thorough understanding of the procedure and business of the House of Commons, a branch of knowledge in which he was an accomplished master.'
Sir Charles's whole scheme of existence was arranged with reference to the work of Parliament. Of it he wrote on December 15th, 1905, in reply to Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, who had dwelt on the interest of county government:
'The development of character in politics and the human side of the House of Commons have an extraordinary dramatic interest for me, and an attraction so strong that Harcourt told me that, knowing it, he did not see how I could live out of the House of Commons. I managed to do so, but only by shutting it for a time absolutely out of my mind, as though it did not exist. Having the happiness of being able to interest myself in everything, I suppose I am born to be generally happy. You have known me so long and so closely that few men are more aware of the kind of suffering I have gone through, but the happiness of interest in life has rarely been wanting for long in me, and if it were, I should go out—not of Parliament—but of life.' [Footnote: Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice was Chairman of the Wiltshire County Council. He had re-entered Parliament as M.P. for North Wilts in 1898.]
Sir Charles never left London while the House was sitting, except for the annual gathering of the Forest miners at the Speech House. On all other working days of the session he was to be found in the House of Commons. He held that the House offered the extremest form of interest or of boredom, according as a man did or did not follow closely all that was going on. For this reason, the smoking-room, where most Parliamentary idling is transacted, saw little of him; cigars, of which he was a great consumer, were for periods of leisure, and he was at the House for business. He might be seen in the passages, going by with coat-tails streaming behind him, most often in the members' lobby on his way to the first corridor, where was his locker—marvellously stuffed with papers, yet kept in a methodical order that made it a general centre of reference for himself and his colleagues, who consulted him on all subjects; or sometimes in the library, with multifarious correspondence and documents outspread, snipping away with a pair of scissors, after his habit, all in them that was not vitally important. [Footnote: Mr. Hudson tells how in February, 1911, after Sir Charles's death, he went down to clear his locker in the House of Commons, and found it empty. Mr. Hudson surmised that, foreseeing his need for it was over, Sir Charles had himself prepared it for his successor in its use.] Again, since one form of relaxation which he permitted himself was his afternoon cup—or cups, for they were many—of tea, the tea-room also offered a chance to those who sought him. But whoever wanted Sir Charles went first into the Chamber itself, and in five cases out of six would find him there alert in his corner seat below the gangway, primed and armed with documented information, and ready at any minute to interpose. Every day he went through the whole bewildering mass of papers from which members are presumed to instruct themselves concerning the business of the sittings and to keep a check upon the general proceedings of Government. In his case the presumption was realized. Probably no private member ever equalled him in demands for 'papers to be laid,' and certainly none was ever better able to justify his requests for additional information. If these requests were refused, it was never because he wanted what was superfluous, but that which, in his hands, might become inconveniently serviceable.