One whose friendship dated far back was Émile Ollivier, and with him Sir Charles often discussed, both in Paris and at St. Tropez, a vanished era in France's history, that of the 'Liberal Empire.' To these talks the Prime Minister of Napoleon III. would bring such wealth of oratory and such fertility of gesticulation that his hearers felt themselves transported to a crowded chamber, of which he occupied the rostrum, and woke with bewilderment to find themselves in the tranquil calm of his sun-flooded Southern home. There were those who said that the point of view urged with such conviction varied, and Sir Charles retains a mot of M. Jusserand: 'Émile Ollivier change souvent d'idée fixe.' Mme. Émile Ollivier, his devoted second wife and helper, was also a great friend, and her photograph was one of those which Lady Dilke kept near her.
'Relations of the pleasantest kind,' says Sir Charles, were formed with the Due d'Aumale, in Mr. Bodley's phrase 'last of the grands seigneurs of France.' On September 25th, 1895, the Duke wrote asking them 'to spend a whole day going through the books at Chantilly.' 'The charm of these books, however, and of these repeated visits of 1895 and 1896, lay in the fact that books and drawings alike excited historic memory.'
'In October, 1895, we were in Paris, and took Went [Footnote: Sir Charles Dilke's son, the present Sir C. Wentworth Dilke.] to stay at Vaux, that he might see the finest of the châteaux, and also the room where, according to Dumas, Aramis and Porthos carried off Louis XIV., though d'Artagnan saved him again. We also went ourselves to lunch at Chantilly with the Due d'Aumale, who told us how Mme. Adélaïde, his aunt, used to slap his brother, the Prince de Joinville, already a distinguished naval officer, and stop his talking politics with, "Tais-toi, méchant morveux, qui oses critiquer la politique de ton père." Comtesse Berthe de Clinchamp has looked after the house since the days of the Duchesse d'Aumale, though she lives in another house. This distinguished old dame was also there. A daughter of the Due de Chartres was once slapped by her aunt, the Comtesse de Paris, in public, for asking to be taken to stay at Chantilly with "tante de Clinchamp." In 1896 to 1897 we were a great deal at Chantilly, finding the Duke interesting with his reminiscences of his father's account of the Court of Louis XVI. With the ex-King of Westphalia, and Bismarck, the Duc d'Aumale was in old age the most interesting companion that I have known. It was the projecting of his stories into a newer generation that made them good. Sir S. Smith ("Long Acre") was a bore at the Congress of Vienna, but would have been delightful to us could we have known him.' [Footnote: Sir Sidney Smith must have been prolix over his achievements at the siege of Acre and elsewhere. It is certain that a reputation for bombast injured his career and caused his remarkable achievements to be underrated.]
When in May, 1897, the Duke suddenly died, Lady Dilke wrote a little article which, in spite of the sadness of the circumstances of his death and the consequent deep note of pathos, in certain parts of the obituary recalled very happily the brightness of their talks. Letters of the time speak of the losses which the Dilkes and their friends had sustained by the fire at the charity bazaar which had indirectly caused the Duke's death, through that of the Duchesse d'Alençon, his favourite niece. One of Lady Dilke's dearest friends in France, the Marquise de Sassenaye, had escaped, but several of her relations who were with her had died a dreadful death. The tie with these friends was very close, and the daughter of the Marquise de Sassenaye, the Baronne de Laumont, and her granddaughter, the Comtesse Marquiset, were among Sir Charles's last guests at the House of Commons. But he did not live to know that his friend the Baron de Laumont and his only son laid down their lives for France in 1915.
Colonel Picquart Sir Charles had met in 1891 during the 'belles journees de ces manoeuvres de l'Est,' chronicled by M. Joseph Reinach. He deeply admired the character of this noble and chivalrous gentleman, who, convinced that wrong had been done to an innocent man, sacrificed his fine career to save him, and suffered for his Dreyfusism by imprisonment and military degradation. Sir Charles met Picquart often at the table of M. Labori and elsewhere, and at one dinner when Emile Zola was present in 1899 there were also two English friends, the genial Sir Campbell Clarke, Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, and his kind wife, at whose house in Paris the Dilkes dined almost every Christmas Day. He touched in this way the struggle over the Dreyfus affair, and his attitude is summed up in a letter conveying through M. Reinach to Colonel Picquart 'that intense sympathy which I do not express publicly only because all we English say does more harm than good.' [Footnote: 'At Christmas, 1900, in Paris we met Labori and Colonel Picquart two nights running, and heard fully the reasons of their quarrel with the Dreyfus family, which will probably all come out. Labori with great eloquence, and Picquart quietly, developed the view that Dreyfus, by virtually accepting the amnesty along with his own freedom, has taken up the position of a guilty man and sacrificed all those who have sacrificed everything for him. When, during the season of 1901, Labori came to London, and we saw much of him, he had toned down this view, or did not think it wise to express it. But it came out in November, 1901.']
His friendship with M. Joseph Reinach, so often mentioned, dates back to the days when the latter was Gambetta's secretary. 'C'est par Gambetta que j'ai connu Dilke,' says M. Reinach. 'Gambetta avait pour lui une vive affection.' In London and in Paris they met and talked and fenced, and kept in touch by close political correspondence. 'Dilke was a great friend of mine, and I thought him a true and intrepid patriot and citizen,' said M. Reinach; and perhaps of all M. Reinach's great qualities it was his courage which most provoked the admiration of Sir Charles and of his wife. They knew all the three brothers, and M. Salomon Reinach, asking Sir Charles to come and discuss manuscripts, signs himself 'in admiration of your enormous knowledge'—a happy tribute from one of whom it was said 'il sait tout.' 'Salomon Reinach, the outgoing President of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres,' writes Sir Charles in 1908 to Lord Fitzmaurice, 'is what Arthur Strong (Librarian of House of Lords) was, and Acton tried to be, "universal." He asked me to listen to him for two whole evenings, till we became a nuisance to our hosts—on the way in which, despite our Historical Manuscripts Commission, we still lock up papers. His strongest examples were Horace Mann's letters to Horace Walpole, and the letters received by the Duke of Wellington (the loss of nearly all the letters written by J. S. Mill moves me more).'
M. Pallain, Regent of the Bank of France, was another friend whose acquaintance with Sir Charles dated back to the days when he was Gambetta's secretary. His book on Talleyrand, the 'fameux livre de Pallain,' as Sir Charles calls it in a letter to M. Jusserand, was hardly less interesting to him than his mastership of French finance.
The Siegfrieds, representatives of the wealthy and serious Protestant world, were friends who shared Sir Charles' interest in questions of social reform, as was that wisest of permanent officials, M. Fontaine, head of the French Labour Department; and he discussed these matters also with the great representative of Roman Catholic Socialism, Count Albert de Mun. The list of his Diary engagements, ranging over a long period of time, is filled with the names of French writers, from Ludovic Halevy, the novelist and dramatist (passages from whose Belle Helene he would recite and whistle), to Anatole France; and of politicians of every school of thought, from Leon Say, 'a statesman of rare competence,' to M. Delcasse, whom he saw often, Deschanel, Leon Bourgeois, Millerand, Viviani, and that great friend of Greece—M. Denys Cochin; Calmette, the editor of the Figaro, assassinated by Mme. Caillaux; and Lepine, the Prefect of Police; while Jaures was a London as well as a Paris guest.
The excellence of much French acting attracted Sir Charles and his wife to the theatre in Paris, though in London their visits to a play were rare. M. Jules Claretie, the Academician, and for nearly thirty years, till his death in 1913, the distinguished Director of the Theatre Francais, constantly put his box at their disposal, and rarely failed to join them for a talk between the acts.
There is a reply from General de Galliffet, the 'beau sabreur'—that brilliant soldier whom Sir Charles had followed through the French manoeuvres accepting a theatre invitation in 1892: 'J'ai, en principe, l'horreur du theatre; j'en benis le ciel puisque je pourrai ainsi mieux jouir de votre societe et de celle de Lady Dilke.'