He was nowhere more characteristically English than through his faith in this regimen, and in the pages of the North American Review he addressed to American public men in 1900 an advocacy of 'Athletics for Politicians.' This exists as a pamphlet, and some of the friends who received it were surprised to find themselves cited in confirmation of the theory that nearly all English politicians, 'having been athletes as boys, have found it wise as well as pleasant to keep to some sport in later life.' But Mr. Chamberlain, 'the most distinguished debater in the Government of the United Kingdom, who has an excellent seat on a horse, but is never now seen on one, and who is no mean hand at lawn tennis, which he scarcely ever plays,' had to be cited as a heretic who thought himself 'better without such gymnastics.'
Sculling on sliding-seats [Footnote: In 1873 'sliding-seats' had just taken the place of fixed ones, and Sir Charles, having gone as usual to see the Boat Race, criticized the crews, in a notice which he wrote, as not having yet learnt to make the best possible use of the slide.] and rapier fencing were the exercises which Sir Charles recommended to men no longer young. He continued his fencing in London and Paris. In Paris he frequented chiefly the school of Leconte in the Rue Saint Lazare, and always kept an outfit there. Teachers of this school remember with wonder Sir Charles's habit of announcing, at the termination of each stay in Paris, the precise day and hour, perhaps many months ahead, at which he would appear—and at which, like Monte Cristo, he never failed to be exactly punctual—to the joy and amusement of the expectant school.
It was at his riverside home that he found the exercise which beyond all others pleased him best.
'1890 I took a good deal of holiday in the summer and early autumn, doing much rowing with McKenna and others in a racing pair; we challenged any pair of our united ages.'
'On my fifty-third birthday,' he notes, 'I began to learn sculling. My rowing, to judge by the "clock," still improves. Fencing, stationary or declining.'
He timed himself regularly in his daily burst up and down the reach with some first-rate oarsman, very often 'Bill' East, now the King's Waterman, whose photograph stood with one or two others on the mantelpiece of his study in Sloane Street. In the same way he kept a daily record of his weight, which up to 1904 ranged between fourteen stone and thirteen.
Dockett was essentially a boating-place, a place for sun and air, where life was lived in the open or in the wide verandah hailed by Cecil Rhodes and others as the only 'stoep' in England. His son, who was travelling abroad much at this time, shared Sir Charles Dilke's love for Dockett, and was frequently there in the intervals of his journeyings. Other than boating friends came to lunch or to dine and sleep, for the mere pleasure of talk. Such were the Arnold-Forsters, the H. J. Tennants, Lady Abinger (the daughter of his old friend Sir William White) and her husband: and there came also members of Parliament—Mr. Lloyd George, or in a later day Mr. Masterman; and the knights errant of politics, Mr. Cunninghame Graham and Mr. Schreiner. Many nationalities were represented—often, indeed, through official personages such as M. Cambon, the French Ambassador, or some member of the French Embassy. Baron Hayashi and his wife came with many other Japanese friends, and the various representatives of the Balkan States met in pleasant converse. It was one of these who afterwards wrote: 'I never pass the house in Sloane Street without raising my hat to the memory of its former inmates.' That close friend M. Gennadius came also, and his predecessors in the Greek Legation, M. Metaxas, M. Athos Romanes, and half a score of other diplomatists, including Tigrane Pasha, and even Ras Makonnen, who was brought to Dockett by the British representative in Abyssinia, Sir John Harrington, a friend and correspondent of Dilke. Thither also for leisure, not for athletics, came Cecil Rhodes, described in Problems of Greater Britain as a 'modest, strong man'; there came Prince Roland Bonaparte, Coquelin, and Jules Claretie, with a host of others, politicians, wits, and artists, English and foreign. M. Claretie thus, after Sir Charles's death, chronicled one visit:
'Nous avons canoté, mon fils et moi, sur la Tamise avec Sir Charles, un de ces "Sundays" de liberté. Quand il avait bien ramé, il rentrait au logis, et s'étendant en un petit kiosque au seuil duquel il plaçait des sandales, l'homme d'état, ami du sport, accrochait à la porte un écriteau où se lisait ces mots: "Prière de faire silence. Je dors." Hélas! Il dort à tout jamais maintenant le cher Sir Charles. Ce fut une énergie, un cerveau, un coeur, une force.' [Footnote: Le Temps, February, 1911.]
Then there were men illustrious in another sphere, the famous oars of their generation. Mr. S. D. Muttlebury, most illustrious of them all, has compiled a list of Cambridge 'blues,' young and old, who rowed with Sir Charles at his riverside home. These were—
School College
Bell, A. S. .. .. Eton .. .. Trinity Hall.
Bristowe, C. J. .. Repton .. .. "
Escombe, F. J. .. Clifton .. .. "
Fernie, W. J. .. Malvern .. .. "
Howell, B. H. .. — "
McKenna, R. .. King's College "
London
Maugham, F. H. .. Dover College .. "
Muttlebury, S. D. .. Eton .. .. Trinity College.
Rowlatt, J. F. .. Fettes .. .. Trinity Hall.
Steavenson, D. F. .. — "
Wauchope, D. A. .. Repton .. .. "
Wood, W. W. .. Eton .. .. University
College, Oxford.