'Other points which struck me in the manners and customs of Friedrichsruh were that the Chancellor invariably took a barrel of beer out driving, and stopped halfway in the afternoon and insisted on his guests consuming it out of a two-handled mug which appeared from under the coachman's seat. I had some talk with him about the wisdom of his going unprotected for great distances through the woods, and he answered, "But I am not unprotected," and showed me a pistol which he carried, but, of course, a man with a blunderbuss behind a tree might easily have killed him. He never takes a servant on the box by the side of the coachman, and generally drives entirely alone. He rides alone without a groom, and walks alone with only his dog, or rather the forester's dog, the daughter of the Reichshund, who walks six or seven miles every morning to go out with him, and six or seven miles every night to come to dinner.
'The Prince was evidently discontented with the Emperor, but wholly unable to believe that he himself could be done without. He told me that he must work each day and could never take a holiday, but that even a few minutes' work was sufficient, as all that was necessary was that he should keep an eye on what was going on. All was now so well arranged that the only thing which gave him trouble was the internal condition of Alsace, which as a Reichsland had him alone as a Minister. In the evening he chatted much about the past; told me of his visit to London in 1842, of how a cabman tried to cheat him, and how at last he held out all his money in his hand and said to the man, "Pay yourself"; how then the man took less than that which he had refused, his right fare, and then with every sign of scorn ejaculated, "What I say is, God damn all Frenchmen!" Bismarck speaks admirable English, with hardly any trace of accent, but spoken very slowly. French he speaks more rapidly but less well; and of Russian he has a fair knowledge. He told me how (also in 1842) he had visited Barclay and Perkins's, and had been offered an enormous tankard of their strongest ale. "Thinking of my country, I drank it slowly to the last drop, and then left them, courteously I hope; I got as far as London Bridge, and there I sat down in a recess, and for hours the bridge went round." He told me how he had striven to keep the peace through the time of Napoleon III., but finding it useless had prepared for war; and he made no secret of the fact that he had brought the war about. He told me himself, in so many words, that at the last moment he had made war by cutting down a telegram from the King of Prussia, as I have said above; [Footnote: See Chapter XL (Vol. I., p. 157).] "the alteration of the telegram from one of two hundred words to one of twenty words" had "made it into a trumpet blast"—as Moltke and Von Roon, who were with him at dinner when it came, had said—"a trumpet blast which" had "roused all Germany." As he mellowed with his pipes he told me that, though he was a high Tory, he had come to see the ills of absolutism, which, to work, required the King to be an angel. "Now," he said, "Kings, even when good, have women round them, who, even if Queens, govern them to their personal ends." It was very plain that he was on bad terms with the Emperor, and equally clear that he did not believe that the Emperor would dare dismiss him.'
A commentary on the last sentence follows at no long interval, whenProblems of Greater Britainappeared and 'Herbert Bismarck, in thanking me for a copy of my book, said: "My father … sends you his kindest regards. He is just going to disentangle himself from the Prussian administration altogether, and will resign the post as Prime Minister, so that he will only remain Chancellor of the Empire." This was on February 10th, 1890, and before long Bismarck had been still further "disentangled," not by his own act,' but by a blow almost as sudden and dramatic as that which, in 1661, had struck down the owner of Vaux. [Footnote: See theMémoires de Fouquet, by A. Chéruel, vol.ii., chap, xxxviii.]
'In a second letter that young Bismarck wrote, he thanked me for sending him the famous sketch fromPunch(Tenniel's cartoon) of the captain of the ship sending away the pilot. He wrote:
'"My Dear Dilke,
'"I thank you very much for your kind note, which warmed my heart, and for the sketch you have cut out ofPunch. It is indeed a fine one, and my father, to whom I showed it yesterday when your letter reached me, was pleased with its acuteness, as well as with the kind messages you sent him and which he requites. He has left last night for good, and I follow to-night to Friedrichsruh. It was a rather melancholy historical event, when my father stepped out of the house in which he has lived for the benefit of my country for nearly twenty-eight years. When I wrote you last, my father thought only of leaving the offices he held in Prussia, but things went on so rapidly that he did not see his way to remain as Chancellor in Berlin after the Emperor had let him know that His Majesty wished him to resign. I had no choice what course to take after he had been dismissed. My health is so much shaken that I am not able to take upon my shoulders alone the tremendous amount of responsibility for the foreign affairs of Germany which hitherto fell upon my father. When we drove to the station yesterday, our carriage was almost upset by the enthusiastic crowd of many thousand people who thronged the streets and cheered him on his passage in a deafening way; but it was satisfactory for my father to see that there are people left who regret his departure. I shall come back to Berlin after April 1st to clear my house and to pack my things, and then I shall stay with my father till the end of April. In May I hope to come to England, and I look forward to the pleasure of seeing you then.
'"Believe me,
'"Ever yours sincerely,
'"H. Bismarck."
'He dined with me on May 15th, 1890, when Arnold Morley, Borthwick, Jeune, Fitzmaurice, Harry Lawson, and others, came to meet him; and from this time forward he came frequently to England.'
Sir Charles, while meeting the younger man thus often, never again had sight or speech of the old Chancellor. 'In Christmas week [1892] I had a general invitation from Prince Bismarck to stay with him again at Friedrichsruh. But the chance never came.' Immediately on his return from Germany Sir Charles wrote to his friend Reinach:
'Pyrford by Maybury,'Near Woking,'Septemberl3_th_, 1889.
'My Dear Reinach,
'Bismarck c'est la paix. As long as he lives, which he thinks will not be long, he expects no movement. He agrees with me that the first movement will come from Russia. He expects the Republic to last in France. Bleichröder tells him that Ferry is the one man of energy and power.
'Yours,'Chs. W. D.'
Three weeks later, in answer to a question by M. Reinach, this is added:
'Health as good as he says. But he doesnotsay that. He says he suffers very much. The fact is that he looks very much older than he is, and his hands look like ninety instead of seventy-four.'
What Bismarck thought of his guest may be gathered from a saying quoted in public by Dr. Stephen Bauer. Baron Rottenburg, Bismarck's first secretary, had told him that, after Sir Charles's visit to Friedrichsruh, the Chancellor spoke of him as 'the most interesting of living English statesmen.' [Footnote: At the banquet given to Sir Charles Dilke in April, 1910.]
In spite of Bismarck's efforts to bring about another meeting, this visit was the only occasion on which the two men met. It was at a time when the great maker of United Germany was nearing his fall. He was becoming the bitter adversary of the Kaiser and of his policy, a policy which he foresaw might imperil 'the strength and glory of the German Empire.' In the often-quoted words of his instructions to diplomatic representatives abroad—'Do all in your power to keep up good relationship with the English. You need not even use a secret cipher in cabling. We have nothing to conceal from the English, for it would be the greatest possible folly to antagonize England'—is to be found one main point of Bismarck's diplomacy; and feeling thus, he welcomed a conference with the English statesman of that generation whom he had looked upon as certain to be a force in the approaching years. When at last the meeting took place, Dilke had been overtaken by circumstances which altered his political position in England. But neither Bismarck nor any other statesman on the Continent anticipated that they could possibly have the result of excluding permanently from office one of the very few English statesmen whose names carried weight with foreign Powers on military and international politics.
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 theHouse of Commons,' he said, 'but I was never favourable to theParliamentary, 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.
One habit of his may be traced to his hatred of wasting time. The instant a division was announced he was on his feet, hurrying so as to avoid long minutes of waiting in a crush; and it came to be regarded as part of the natural order that Sir Charles should be first through the lobby.
With all this industry, the record of divisions so carefully chronicled by the hard-working M.P. was not of moment to him. If the business did not seem to him important, he had no objection to absent himself and dine at home. He was weatherwise in the assembly, and knew the conditions which might lead to unforeseen disturbance.
In questions raised by alteration of rules or standing orders, he was never averse from innovation, and even generally an advocate of change. But while the rules were there he insisted rigorously on their observance, in so far as they affected the larger interests of division or debate. Also he fulfilled punctiliously the prescribed courtesies, making it a usage to be down early and to secure his place, although no one ever thought of appropriating it. He rigidly observed the rule, transgressed by others, which prescribes the wearing of a tall hat by members in the House. The hat which was thus endeared to him by traditional usage is therefore inseparable from Parliamentary memory of him. He was generally to be seen handling a sheaf of papers more than Ministerial in dimensions; and he made his hat the receptacle for them; often it would be crammed to bursting before the speech had concluded. Yet there remained with him always the trace of his younger days of grave dandyism; he never abandoned the Parliamentary frock-coat, and sketches of him in the illustrated papers convey the austere correctness of its folds; and the hat from which so much service was exacted appeared each day unsurpassable in gloss.
The intricate mass of historical associations delighted his imagination at Westminster. He took pleasure in all the quaint survivals, from the long-transmitted ceremonial of the Speaker's entrance, the formal knockings of Black Rod, the cry of 'Who goes home?' down to the still continued search before each session for some possible Guy Fawkes. Keenly alive to the past and to the present, he saw with special pleasure any happy grafting of a new usage on to that old stock of memories. Speaking in his constituency after the lying in state of King Edward, which he had attended (standing next to the Prime Minister as the senior Privy Councillor present), he welcomed the precedent which gave a new association to Westminster Hall—that 'epitome of English history.' He recalled to his hearers the outstanding incidents and persons whose record had then come into his mind. His habit of tracing out links with the past made him at Westminster the best and most animated of guides.
So it was in Provence, in the Forest of Dean, on the road down from London to Surrey; so it was always in the neighbourhood of his Chelsea home.
There could be no such companion for a ramble through its streets. His memory, astounding in its recollections of his own time, held stories of older records; in his eager, vivid talk the past lived again. As we passed along Cheyne Walk, George Eliot held court in her house once more, while a few doors off Rossetti's servant pushed aside the little grating to inspect his visitors before admission. Carlyle dwelt again in the house in Cheyne Row, with Whistler for his neighbour. Sir Charles would tell how earlier the Kingsley brothers lived with their father in the old rectory, and one at least of their novels was founded afterwards on the traditions of the place. Then, as layer after layer of history was lifted, Smollett wrote his novels or walked the Chelsea streets with John Wilkes; Sir Richard Steele and 'his dear Prue' reinhabited their house, and Dr. Johnson worked at the furnaces in the cellars where Chelsea china was made. [Footnote: 'Sir Charles Dilke, in hunting about for materials for his lecture on "Old Chelsea" to-morrow, has made some very interesting discoveries. He has found that part of the building once occupied by the famous Chelsea china works, which was thought to have gone for ever, exists as part of a public-house with a modern frontage looking out on the Embankment. The cellars are in an admirable state of preservation. Another interesting point has been the exploration of the old Moravian cemetery, which is now completely enclosed by houses, the ironwork of the gate worn, and, as it were, eaten out by age. Here lie the bones of Count von Zinzendorf, one of the founders of the Moravian sect, and many other famous folk. This, again, has led to some interesting discoveries about Sir Thomas More, all of which will find a place in Wednesday's lecture' (Extract fromLeicester Daily Post, January 11th, 1888, on lecture to be delivered in Town Hall, Chelsea).]
He would give, as a curious illustration of the way in which many years may be covered by a few generations, the fact that he himself had known intimately the daughter of Woodfall, printer of theLetters of Junius; while Woodfall's acquaintance included Smollett as a resident, and Pope as a visitor to Chelsea. He would talk long of Sir Thomas More, [Footnote: He writes: 'On December 18th, 1886, Cardinal Manning wrote to me: "On Saturday last Sir Thomas More was declared both martyr and saint, to my great joy. We have bought a house and garden, 28, Beaufort Street, which is said to be a piece of Sir Thomas More's garden. The tradition seems probable. If you can give me any light about it, I shall be very thankful."' Later (January, 1888) Sir Charles writes: 'In the course of this same month I lectured on Old Chelsea, and made a considerable attempt to clear up some points in the life of Sir Thomas More, for whom I have a great admiration. The result was that Cardinal Manning asked me to visit Father Vaughan at the house which stands on the site of Old Beaufort House, which the Roman Catholics have purchased as a house of expiation for the martyrdom of Sir Thomas More.'] 'the first of Chelsea worthies,' whose memory is loved and commemorated by every true inhabitant, and to whose voluntary poorhouse for the parish he pointed, as the direct progenitor of the Chelsea Benevolent Society and the Board of Guardians. But one episode in More's career specially fascinated him: it was when two great lives touched, and More, journeying to Calais, met that famous lady, Margaret of Austria, the first Governess of the Netherlands, and negotiated the treaty between the Emperor, England, and France, 1527. Great as was his respect for Sir Hans Sloane, after whom the street in which he lived was named, and who gave to Chelsea its beautiful Physic Garden, he never forgave him the destruction of More's house or the removal of its water gateway.
He would describe the tidal shore, as it lies in the picture which he bequeathed to the Chelsea Free Library, and which hangs on its staircase, when below the old church the bank sloped to the water's edge; or he would pass back to the earlier time when the boats of the nobles lay there in such numbers that Charles II. described the river as 'Hyde Park upon the Thames.' Once more Bess of Hardwick lived at Shrewsbury House, Princess Elizabeth sheltered under the Queen's Elm; at the old Swan in Swan Walk, Doggett founded the coat and badge to be rowed for by the watermen's apprentices 'when the tide shall be full.' These things may be found in many a guide-book and in the lectures which he delivered more than once in Chelsea, but told as he told them they will never be told again.
This habit of associating the prosaic business of his daily work in Parliament with picturesque traditions, and of peopling the dingy streets of London with great figures of the past, gave colour and character to his town life. He entertained still—at 76, Sloane Street, or at the House of Commons.
For exercise he relied on fencing, rowing, and his morning ride. Busy men, he held, needed what 'good exercise as contrasted with mere chamber gymnastics' could give them: 'a second life, a life in another world— one which takes them entirely out of themselves, and causes them to cease to trouble others or to be troubled by the vexations of working life.' [Footnote:Athletics for Politicians, reprinted fromNorth American Review.]
He was nowhere more characteristically English than through his faith in this regimen, and in the pages of theNorth American Reviewhe 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 inProblems of Greater Britainas 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—
SchoolCollegeBell, 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 "LondonMaugham, 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 .. .. UniversityCollege, Oxford.
In the list here given, Judge Steavenson was Sir Charles's contemporary. Judge Wood, [Footnote: He was the son of Dilke's friend and constituent, the Rector of Newent.] his neighbour at Chertsey, known among Etonians as 'Sheep' Wood, was a University oar of the sixties, and rowed for Eton at Henley against the Trinity Hall crew which included Steavenson and Dilke. But most of the others were young. Mr. Charles Boyd [Footnote: Mr. Charles Boyd, C.M.G., sometime political secretary to Cecil Rhodes.] sketched the life in an article written just after Sir Charles's death:
'To know Dilke as he was you had to be with him at Dockett Eddy, on the river. Dilke's ability is praised everywhere, but almost, one thinks, his manly, ungushing kindness exceeded it. He could never do enough for people, or too stealthily, as it were. He had a special kindness for young men, for Trinity Hall men perhaps by preference; the black and white blazer of his old college carried a certain prescriptive right to share in every belonging of the most famous of old Hall men. But many, oars or others, at different times in the past fifteen to twenty years, as sons of the house, spent between Shepperton and Chertsey Locks, or on the tennis lawns among Sir Charles's famous willows, or lying on deck-chairs on the long, deep verandah, the happiest and healthiest of week-ends or more extended summer holidays. There are few pleasanter reaches of our river, and none quieter, than this, for the rush and the intolerable crowds are above stream or below stream, but not here. And there is no such holiday house for young men as Dockett, hidden in its willow walks and islanded by the Thames in front and by the expanse of Chertsey Mead behind.
'Less a country-house, indeed, than a camp of exercise. You did as you pleased, but under Sir Charles's guidance you were pleased to be strenuous. He called everybody to bathe at 7 a.m., and where was ever better fresh-water bathing-place than the floating raft below the boat-house at Dockett? Etiquette required you to dive in and go straight across to the other bank, touch, and return; when, like as not, Sir Charles, in shorts and sweater, might be seen very precisely preparing tea on the landing-stage for the deserving valiant. His little kindnesses had an added and affecting quality from his reserve and sternness. A rare figure of an athlete he was, and a rare athlete's day his was in that retreat. For hours before he called and turned out the morning guard he had been up busy gardening, or reading, or writing. At a quarter to nine he breakfasted. Very shortly after breakfast an ex-champion sculler the admirable Bill East, would arrive from Richmond, and he and Sir Charles would row in a racing skiff a measured mile or more of the river. One summer at least he changed from rowing kit to boots and breeches after his rowing, and rode till luncheon. At four o'clock there would be a second bout with East, and thereafter, having changed from his rowing kit into flannels and his Hall cap, he would take Lady Dilke in her dinghy, which nobody else has ever used or will use.
'After these exercises came dinner, and after dinner talk; and what talk! How his intellectual weight and equipment affected those who were much with him as young men, and who had a chance to revise their impressions after years of close observation of the world and its big men, a scrap of dialogue may illustrate. One who in his "twenties" was much at Sloane Street and Dockett, and who passed later into close working relations with several at least of the most conspicuous, so to say, of Front Bench men in the Empire, after an interval of thirteen years sat once more for a whole long evening with three others at the feet of Gamaliel. A well-known scholar and historian put questions which drew Sir Charles out; and all were amazed and delighted by the result. After Sir Charles had gone, one of the others, a distinguished editor, said to the wanderer: "Come, you have known the Mandarins as well as anybody. Where do you put Dilke with them?" "Well, I rule Lord Milner out," said ——: "but all the others, compared to Sir Charles, strike me in point of knowledge, if you must know, as insufficiently informed school- boys." That is how his brain struck this contemporary. As for the moral qualities observed, you get to know a man well when you see him constantly and over years at play. And what intimate's affection and respect for Sir Charles, and confidence in him, did not grow greater with every year? It seems admitted that he was a great man. Well, if there is anything in the intimate, not undiscerning impression of nearly eighteen years, he was a good man, or goodness is an empty name.'
Another account of his talk and ways comes from Mr. Spenser Wilkinson:
'I moved to London in 1892, and from that time on found the intimacy with Dilke one of the delights of life. We used always to meet, either for breakfast or lunch, at Dilke's house in Sloane Street, or for lunch at the Prince's Restaurant in Piccadilly, or at 2.30 in the lobby of the House of Commons. I was also frequently a guest at the dinner-parties either at Sloane Street on Wednesdays, when Lady Dilke was alive, or at the House of Commons. Then there were small house-parties on Saturday and Sunday at Dockett Eddy, near Shepperton on the Thames, where Sir Charles had built two cottages, and where a guest was expected to do exactly what he pleased from the time when he was punted across the river on arrival until he left the punt on departing. In winter I used to bicycle over to the cottage at Pyrford, where Dilke and his wife were always to be found alone and where I spent many a charming afternoon.
'Every man takes a certain tinge from the medium in which he is, and is therefore different in different company and different surroundings. I knew three Dilkes. First there was the statesman, the man of infinite information which he was ever working to increase. When you went to see him it was on some particular subject; he wanted precise information, and knew exactly what he wanted. With him my business was always finished in five minutes, after which I used to feel that I should be wasting his time if I stayed. This Dilke, in this particular form of intercourse, was by far the ablest man I ever met.
'Then came Dilke the host, the Dilke of general conversation. Here again he towered above his fellows. The man who had been everywhere and knew everybody—for there seemed to be no public man of great importance in any country with whom Dilke was not acquainted and with whom he had not corresponded—a man who was almost always in high spirits and full of fun, had an inexhaustible fund of delightful conversation, about which the only drawback was that, in order to appreciate it, you had to be uncommonly well informed yourself.
'But the Dilke I liked best was the one I used to have to myself when I spent a day with him either in the country or on the river, when neither of us had anything to do, when there was no business in hand, and when we either talked or were silent according to the mood. In these circumstances Dilke was as natural and simple as a civilized man can be. If one started an uncongenial subject, he would say. "It does not interest me," but the moment one approached any of the matters he cared for he mobilized all his resources and gave himself with as little reserve as possible.
'Dilke was a past-master in the art of ordering his time, and this was the secret of the vast quantity of work which he was able to do. He was a voracious and quick reader, as is proved by the number of books which he used to review for theAthenaeum, of which he was proprietor. Yet he was an early riser and went to bed early, and a part of his day was given to exercise.
'A great deal of time was consumed in interviews with all sorts and conditions of men, and his attendance at the House of Commons, constant and assiduous, accounted for a large part of half the days in the year. But everything was mapped out in advance; he would make appointments weeks, or even months, in advance, and keep them to the minute. His self-control was complete, his courtesy constant and unvarying; he was entirely free from sentimentality and the least demonstrative of mankind, yet he was capable of delicate and tender feelings, not always detected by those towards whom they were directed. He was simple, straightforward, frank, and generous. It was delightful to do business with him, for he never hesitated nor went back upon himself. Modest and free from self-consciousness, he was aware both of his powers and of their limitations. I once tried to persuade him to change the manner of his Parliamentary speeches, to stop his minute expositions of facts and to make some appeal to the emotions of his hearers—at any rate in cases where he had strong feelings of his own. He made one experiment in accord with this suggestion, and told me that it had been most successful; but he said that he would not try it again, because it was not in accord with his natural bent, and he was unwilling to be anything but himself.'
Dockett was the home of the Birds. Sir Charles's evidence before the Select Committee on the Thames as to the destruction of kingfishers led to a prohibition of all shooting on the river, and to an increase of these lovely birds. In 1897 he had two of their nests at Dockett Eddy. His acres of willow-grown all-but-island were made a sanctuary for birds, and therefore from Dockett only, of all his homes, cats were kept away. Nests were counted and cherished; it was a great year when a cuckoo's egg was discovered among the linnet's clutch, and its development was watched in breathless interest. Owls were welcome visitors; and the swans had no better nesting-place on the Thames than the lower end of Dockett. They and their annual progeny of cygnets were the appointed charge of Jim Haslett, Dilke's ferryman and friend. Pensioners upon the house, they used to appear in stately progress before the landing raft—the mother perhaps with several little ones swarming on her back or nestling in her wings, and from time to time splashing off into the water. Always at their appearance, in answer to Sir Charles's special call, a cry of 'Swan's bread' would be raised, and loaf after loaf would disappear down their capacious throats. A place with such privileges was not likely to be undisputed, and many times there were battles royal against 'invaders from the north,' as Sir Charles called the Chertsey swans who came to possess themselves of the Dockett reach and its amenities. Swan charged swan, with plumage bristling and wings dilated, but not alone they fought; Jim Haslett and his employer took part against the invaders, beating them off with sticks; and even in the night, when sound of that warfare rose, the master of Dockett was known to scull out in a dinghy, in his night gear, carrying a bedroom candlestick to guide his blows in the fray.
Evening and morning he would steal along the bank in his dinghy, counting and observing the water-voles, which he was accustomed to feed with stewed prunes and other dishes, while they sat nibbling, squirrel-like, with the dainty clasped in their hands.
A few gay beds of annuals by the house, a purple clematis on the verandah, and a mass of syringa at the landing-stage, were all the garden permitted; roughly mown grass paths here and there led through the wild growth of nature, where the willows met overhead.
Such was his summer home, described in the lines of Tibullus which were carved on the doorway of the larger house:
'Jam modo iners possim epntentus vivere parvoNec semper longae deditus esse viae,Sed canis aestivos ortus vitare sub umbraArboris, ad rivos praetereuntis aquae.'
[Footnote: Thus translated by the Rev. W. Tuckwell:
'Here, fancy-free, and scorning needless show,Let me from Life's dull round awhile retreat,Lulled by the full-charged stream's unceasing flow,Screened by tall willows from the dog-star's heat.']
He guarded its quiet, and, champion as he had always been of the public right of common on land and on the river, he was resentful when its privilege was carelessly abused. He rebuked those who broke the rules of the river in his marches—above all, such as disturbed swans or pulled water-lilies. After every Bank Holiday he would spend a laborious day gathering up the ugly leavings.
Many associations endeared to him what he thus defended. When he was out in the skiff, darting here and there, Lady Dilke, in the little dinghy which he had caused to be built for her—called from its pleasant round lines theBumble Bee—would paddle about the reach. After her death he would paddle out in the dinghy which no one else might take out, and lie for hours watching the light change on that familiar and tranquil beauty of green mead and shining water, of high-waving poplar and willow, with drooping boughs awash. When he also was gone, the little boat was not suffered to pass into the use of strangers, but burnt there on the bank.
In his other home at Pyrford, all the day's relaxations were of this intimate kind. [Footnote: Here, too, work was disturbed by his natural history researches. He writes apologetically to Mr. Hudson as to some mistake in a letter: 'I can plead as a disturbing cause three young brown owls, quite tame; one barks, and two whistle, squeak—between a railway guard and a door-hinge. The barker lets me get within four or five feet before he leaves off yapping. He worries the cuckoo into shouting very late. I leave the owls unwillingly, late—one night 1 a.m. They are still going strong.'] Here also was no formal garden; Nature had her way, but under superintendence of a student of forestry. Sir Charles was a planter of pines; great notebooks carefully filled tell how he studied, before the planting, the history of each species, how he watched over the experiments and extended them. [Footnote: Here is a detail entered concerning Lawson's cypress—Erecta vividis: 'I remember Andrew Murray, of the Royal Horticultural, first describing Lawson's cypress, introduced by his brother in 1862, when my father was chairman of the society of which Murray was secretary. Our two are gardener's varieties, one greener and the other bluer than the true Lawson. The American name is Port Orford cedar. It will not do very well on our bad soil, but I've given it a pretty good place. It is said that Murrayfirstsent it to Lawson of Edinburgh in 1854. This variety was made by A. Waterer in 1870.']
In summer, on the dry heathy commons of Surrey, there is always danger of a chance fire spreading, and it was part of his care to maintain a cleared belt for fending off this danger. Much of his day went in gathering débris and undergrowth, so as to keep clear ground about the trees, and then the heaped-up gatherings rewarded him with a bonfire in which he had a child's pleasure, mingled with an artist's appreciation of the shapes and colours of flame. It was for praise of this beauty that he specially loved Anatole France'sRôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque, with its celebrations of the salamanders and their vivid element.
The heath blossom in all its kinds was cultivated, and it was his invariable custom to come up on a Monday from Pyrford with a spray of his favourite white heather in his buttonhole.
Here, too, were associations, interesting if not exactly historic. TheBattle of Dorking was fought close by, and in this neighbourhood theMartians descended.
Chief of Pyrford's distinctions was the discovery on Sir Charles's own land, by Mr. Horace Donisthorpe, of a beetle (Lomechusa) which in Queen Anne's day Sir Hans Sloane had first identified in Hampstead, parasitic in a nest of red ants. A second specimen was found in 1710 in the mail- coach between Gloucester and Cheltenham; but from Queen Anne's day till 1906 it was regarded as extinct, until once more it was discovered, and discovered in its true place among the ants, on whose gestures and behaviour towards it, whether as indicating worship or serfdom, Sir Charles dilated with such rhetoric of description that the beetle assumed dimensions in the mind disappointing when it was viewed in reality.
Another rarity of insect life at Pyrford was a spider whose appearances have been oftenest noted at Hampton Court. These creatures, large, black, and horrific, were accordingly known as 'Hampton Courters,' but received no welcome, being slain on sight, their slayer quoting a characteristic saying which he had heard from Anatole France:
'We all know of dangers which seem more terrible than they are. The spider alone suffers death for his carelessness as to this habit of exaggeration. Many an uncle spider walks about by candlelight, and is slain by us on account of his monstrous shadow, whereas his body, being but small, would have escaped our rage.'
It was here that much of his Memoir was dictated, based on an enormous mass of letters, papers, and private diaries, kept throughout his Government career. After 1891 there is only a scattered series of entries, increasingly sparse as time went on. Mr. Hudson recalls their walks from the station at Woking to Pyrford across the then open common, the lunch of eggs and milk, and the hours of work, during the period between the publication ofProblems of Greater Britainand Sir Charles's return to Parliament for the Forest of Dean.
These two country homes, Pyrford and Dockett, held Sir Charles so fast with their simple pleasures that the once insatiable traveller ceased to roam. At the close of 1892, after his return to Parliament, he sold his house and garden at Toulon. Pyrford to a great extent had come to take its place. But to the end of his days he was a constant visitor to that Provençal country which he loved. Apart from them there was another place where, though he neither owned nor rented house or land, he was no less at home than among his willows or his pines. No resident in the Forest of Dean was better known in it than its member, and nowhere had Sir Charles more real friends. For many years he spent three periods among them: his Whitsun holiday, which was very much a visit of pleasure; a visit in autumn, when he attended all meetings of the Revision Courts; and finally a month in the dead of winter, when he went round to meetings in each polling district, at night educating his electors in the political questions of the time, and in the day working with his local friends at the register till it became the most accurate record of its kind in all Great Britain—so perfect, indeed, that he was at last able to discontinue his attendance at the Revision Courts, though never relaxing his keen personal interest in every change.
His friendships in the Forest were not bounded by class or party. He had the support, not merely of the Liberal and Labour groups, but of many strong Conservatives, here as before at Chelsea. Mention has been made of Mr. Blake, and another friend was Mr. John Probyn, who had stood as a Liberal candidate for Devizes as far back as 1868, and had not changed his views. Of his many faithful friends and supporters, one, the honorary secretary of the Liberal Association for all Sir Charles's years of membership, had as far back as 1886 proclaimed his faith in him. [Footnote: Mr. John Cooksey, formerly proprietor of theDean Forest Mercury.] Another equally active in conveying the original invitation to Sir Charles was the agent of the Forest miners, a Labour leader of the wisest type, [Footnote: Mr. G. H. Rowlinson.] who writes:
'He did not live for himself; it was always others first. I never made an appeal to him for any case of need in vain. With regard to local matters, he seemed at the beck and call of nearly everyone. Nothing was too small or too large for him to undertake to assist any constituent, and oftentimes an avowed and lifelong political opponent. In a multitude of ways he did us service with his knowledge of affairs, his influence, his experience, his ability and work.
'In the matters of commoners' right, the right of "turnout" on the Forest, free miners' rights, questions of colliery owners, matters relating to the Crown, the development of the lower coal seams—in all these (and many of them are local intricate historical questions involving a mass of detail) he rendered valuable service.
'In his electoral battles he was always a keen fighter and a courteous opponent. In every campaign he seemed more anxious to beat his opponent by sheer weight of reason and argument, and intellect and knowledge, than by any appeal to party passion or feeling.
'I have been at a great many of his meetings, and never saw him shirk a question, nor saw one put to him that he did not, nine times out of ten, know more about than the questioner, however local the point might be.
'As an example, he was holding a meeting at Newnham. Questions were invited; none asked. Sir Charles looked disappointed; so Mr. King, of the "Victoria," in a friendly way, thought he would put him a poser, and asked his opinion about Sir Cuthbert Quilter's Pure Beer Bill.
'For about twenty minutes Sir Charles talked beer—the origin, ingredients, what it should be, what it often is and what it is not, what it is in other countries. As Mr. King remarked afterwards, he told him more about beer than he ever knew before, though he had been in the trade all his life.'
Probably none was more rejoiced at the unexpected display than the genial Tory host of the Victoria, who lived to deplore his friend and to quote especially one of his observations: 'If you see a man put on "side," Sir Charles once said to me, you may be sure he feels the need of it.' [Footnote: Among those who worked with him and for him best and longest should be named at least Mr. Charles Ridler and Mr. T. A. H. Smith of Lydney, Mr. Henry Davis of Newent, Mr. B. H. Taylor, and Mr. S. J. Elsom.]
He loved the Forest—not only the distant spots of interest, but every tree, delighting to act as guide to all its pleasant places. So each new guest was taken to see High Beeches and the great wind-swept row of Scots firs by Clearwell Court. The aged oak-tree, which at a distance resembled a barn—for nothing was left but its great trunk above the roots—was another point of pilgrimage; so were the dwarf thorns on Wigpool Common, which reminded him of the tiny Japanese trees centuries old, as, indeed, probably were these.
Then there were the expeditions to the rocking stone called the Buckstone, a relic of the Druids; to the Scowles, the wonderful Roman iron workings like the Syracusan quarries; to Symons Yat, where the old military earthworks ended in a triple dyke, with the Severn and the Wye on either side; to Newland Church, in which a fifteenth-century brass shows the free miner of those days equipped for work; or to the lovely valley by Flaxley Abbey, once in the precincts of the Forest, where the monks had their fish-ponds, and where on the side of the hills their old ironworks may still be seen.
He and Lady Dilke rode early in their stay to all these outlying places, with Miss Monck as their constant companion. She was President of the Women's Liberal Association, stayed with them during their long visits to the Forest, and was with him for the election at the end. [Footnote: Miss Emilia Monck, sister of Mr. Berkeley Monck, of Coley Park, Heading, of which he was several times Mayor, and which he contested as a Liberal in 1886.]
These were far rides, but close about the Speech House the place teems with interest. In the last years he would walk every evening to look at the great stag-headed ruins of the oaks, which thrust their gnarled and crooked limbs fantastically into the closing night, or stand watching the shadows fall on the spruce rides which stretch out near the old inn, till, in the fading light, it seemed as though figures were moving in and out on the greensward of the great vistas. In the bright sunshine, imposing silence on himself and his companions, he would watch for long together the life in one of the forest glades, the moving creatures in the grass, the tits playing on the branches of a silver birch silhouetted against the sky, the little blue butterflies chasing each other over the pink crab-apple bloom. He would follow the tapping of a woodpecker, and wait in the evening for the owl's cry to begin; and here, as elsewhere, to be with him was to see in everything unsuspected things.
In the winter, Speech House was at first Sir Charles's headquarters for part of January, but there, 500 feet above the sea, the roads were sometimes impassable from snow. At last Lady Dilke became too delicate to face the mid-winter visit, and, except for elections, Whitsuntide and the autumn were the two occasions for their stay. He went also each year to the miners' demonstration—in 1908 so ill that it seemed impossible that even his power of endurance could enable him to bear the strain, and in 1910 again because he said he 'would not fail Rowlinson and the miners,' though he fainted after the meeting there.
One of their early headquarters in the Forest was Lindors, the home of two among their first and warmest friends—Mr. Frederick Martin and his wife. It is in a lovely little valley with sheltered lawns, the rush of the water sounding always behind the house, above which the old castle of St. Briavels stands. The ancient prison is still there, and the castle dates back to the thirteenth century, and claims an almost unbroken succession of Constables of the Castle and Wardens of the Forest of Dean, beginning with John de Monmouth.
After Speech House the Victoria at Newnham saw them oftenest. Its interior is fascinating, with a low hall and fine old oak stairway, broad and shallow; a bit of quaint French glass let into the staircase window bears an illustrated version of La Fourmi et la Cigale. Lady Dilke found there a remnant of fine tapestry—a battle scene with a bold picture of horses and their riders. She traced and located this as belonging to a great panel which is in the Palace at Madrid. At each election, after the declaration of the poll, Sir Charles made from a balcony of the Victoria or from a motor-car his speech to the cheering constituents, who had followed him from the town-hall, first under happiest circumstance, with his wife waiting for him in the porch, later alone, till the last occasion, in December, 1910, when he fought and won the election, dying, but with dogged courage; and as he spoke of the long term of Liberal government which would ensue before a new electoral struggle, friends standing near caught the words, 'When I shall not be here.'
* * * * *
Sir Charles had given up the habit of travel except for some special purpose, as when in 1897 he journeyed with Lady Dilke to see the Nattiers at Stockholm, or in another year to Bordeaux for her work on French Art in the Eighteenth Century. But every Christmas they went for a month to Paris. It was the great holiday of their year, and all the engagements were made far ahead. There was interest in their Parisian associations, for their differing attainments made them part of various separate coteries not familiarly accessible to English people.
Their friends were of all worlds, political, literary, artistic, and social; and since Sir Charles's intimacy with France dated back to boyhood, and Lady Dilke's to the days of her first close study of French art, which, beginning in the sixties with the French Renaissance, terminated in her big work on French Art in the Eighteenth Century, their friendships extended over a long period of years, though each fresh visit enlarged their circle of friends and acquaintances.
In the memoir prefixed to herBook of the Spiritual LifeSir Charles says of his wife:
'Those who are familiar with several languages learn instinctively to take the natural manners of the people who are for the moment their companions. So it was with Lady Dilke…. In Paris she was French with sufficient difference to give distinction.' As to himself, his great friend M. Joseph Reinach wrote, 'Dilke connaissait la France mieux que beaucoup d'entre nous.' But while his command of the French language and his knowledge of many sides of French life quickened his genial intercourse with the French, he never failed to impress them as an English statesman. He paid his French friends the compliment of adopting many little mannerisms; and however pure the French he spoke, he always entertained himself by keeping up to date his acquaintance with French slang, so that the latest developments of fashionable Paris jargon were familiar to him. Yet that never could be said of him which he himself noted of his friend M. Richard Waddington, brother to William Waddington, for many years Ambassador in London, and, in Sir Charles's opinion, a man of even higher ability than the Ambassador. Of this friend, half French, half English, he said that he had two mentalities, and that among Englishmen he was English, among Frenchmen French. Sir Charles's talk with Frenchmen was unrestrained; as Bismarck felt of England, so he of France: 'We have nothing to conceal from the French; they are our natural allies.' But it was always the Englishman who spoke; no slight veneer of manner in his social intercourse could conceal that.
There are many scattered entries in his Diary which show how great a relaxation the Paris holiday yielded.
'At Christmas at Paris we were always gay, though often among the aged. The gayest dinner I remember was at Henri Germain's with Gérôme, Gaston Boissier, Laboulaye, and others, all about eighty, I being the chicken of the party.'
Gérôme, the painter, is often mentioned. Laboulaye must have been Paul Laboulaye, born 1833, the diplomatist who had been Ambassador to St. Petersburg in 1886. It was during his embassy that therapprochementtook place between France and Russia which was announced to Europe by the welcome of the French fleet to Cronstadt.
Gaston Boissier, Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy, and a great classical scholar, figures again with another friend, M. Bonnat, in Sir Charles's memoir of his wife; for he notes that during their last Christmas in Paris, in 1903, 'the gaiety of their meetings' with these two friends and others 'had been as unrestrained as ever.' Earlier memories recall the sculptors Christophe and Gustave Moreau. Christophe's beautiful 'Mask,' of which Lady Dilke had written, stands in the Tuileries Garden, and was some time ago horribly disfigured by inkstain. One of Sir Charles's late letters was written to M. Joseph Reinach, to ask whether anything had yet been done to cleanse this work of the sculptor she venerated. Only two small casts were made by Christophe from the statue, and one of these, given to her by him, decorated the Pyrford home. So did a picture by François Louis Français, another artist friend, chief in his day of the water-colour school, a picture which had inspired one of her stories, and gave the motto, 'Dites-moi un Pater,' to herShrine of Death. In all the later and in some of the earlier friendships Sir Charles shared, as he did in those of the great custodians of art treasures. M. de Nolhac, the poet and the Curator of Versailles, was prominent among them, and Eugène Müntz, head of the École des Beaux Arts. Lady Dilke's correspondence with the latter, extending over a period of twenty-three years, is preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale.
One great friend among collectors was M. Gustave Dreyfus, a high authority on Donatello and on the medallists of the Italian Renaissance. At his house there was another attraction in the shape of the concierge's cat, on whom Sir Charles would call before paying his respects upstairs. At another house a cat named Pouf was held in great honour by him, and his feelings were deeply wounded when, with feline capriciousness, it turned, on Paul Hervieu's entrance, to bestow all its blandishments on the writer. His love of cats was as well known to his French as to his English friends, Émile Ollivier writes in 1891 from La Moutte: 'Campion lui-même cherche d'un regard affligé son protecteur disparu'; and M. André Chevrillon, being 'touché par la façon dont je vous ai entendu parler de ce divin animal,' sent him Taine's sonnets 'A trois chats, Puss, Ébène, et Mitonne, dédiés par leur ami, maître, et serviteur.'
Memorials of dinners with the well-known collector Camille Groult were preserved in the shape of some sketches, one of a cavalier in peruke and cravat, another an excellent crayon head of the host, by Domingo, the Spanish artist, drawn on the back of a torn menu and given by him to Lady Dilke.
The Groults' admiration of the beauty of Dockett Eddy was testified in the gift of a little reflecting mirror, a 'camera obscura,' which, held to the light, made exquisite vignettes of river, clematis, and syringa; and a dinner at 76, Sloane Street was marked by the gift of little copies of M. Groult's famous lately acquired Fragonard, in which Cupid levels his arrows at the dainty feet of a well-known dancer of the time.
The sculptor Rodin was an acquaintance of late years, and a Christmas card sent to 76, Sloane Street, in the form of a framed and signed pencil sketch of a female head, was that master's tribute to Sir Charles's heresy that Rodin drew much better than he sculptured.
'For old Français,' says Sir Charles, 'Lady Dilke had the veneration she felt for Christophe among sculptors,' and for a few women, such as Mme. Renan. To both the Renans they were bound by ties of familiar friendship, and some of their pleasantest hours were spent at the Collège de France. On November 11th, 1880, there is a note of Sir Charles's of a talk with Gambetta: 'They discussed Renan's "Souvenirs," which were appearing in theRevuefor November, wonderfully entertaining, and perfectly beautiful in style.' It was Renan who had presented Lady Dilke's two volumes on the French Renaissance, in 1880, to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, with an admiring report, and Sir Charles's admiration for Renan's writing was great. Of Mme. Renan he says: 'This homely-looking old dame was not only a good wife, but a woman of the soundest sense and the most upright judgment.'
The same feeling of attachment and respect bound them to Mme. de Franqueville, [Footnote: Mlle. Érard.] the first wife of Sir Charles's old friend M. de Franqueville, whom he saw often both in Paris and London. They visited them at La Muette, famous for its memories of Marie Antoinette, where in the early years of her prosperity she would take her companions to play at dairying with dainty emblazoned milkpails.
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 amotof 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 theDaily 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.