Dilke (11 page)

Dilke was playing with the idea of writing a history of European politics in the nineteenth century, and was particularly concerned to enquire closely into the origins of the Franco-Prussian War. Much of his time in Paris was devoted to interviews in connection with the work. One of them was with Gambetta. Dilke had invited him to “breakfast,” as he always called it when in Paris, although both in time and composition the meal was much more the equivalent of luncheon. Gambetta came, and stayed the whole day, talking throughout with immense vitality. He and Dilke were both equally delighted with each other. Thereafter, whenever Dilke was in Paris, they spent much of the time together. Long “breakfasts” at the Café Anglais formed the regular background to their friendship. Sometimes they were alone; sometimes Gambetta produced one or two of those now rather shadowy figures of the early days of the Third Republic, men with names like a Paris street guide, Edgar Quinet or Denfert-Rochereau; and sometimes Dilke introduced Englishmen—Harcourt, Lord Randolph Churchill, and John Morley were amongst them—who were anxious to meet the great French orator.

Gamhetta's attraction for Dilke was partly political. Anyone who was French, republican, and a great world figure would have been three-quarters of the way to arousing his admiration. “My friendship with Gambetta,” he wrote, “perhaps meant to me something more than the friendship of the man. Round him gathered all that was best and most hopeful in the state of the young republic. He, more than any other individual, had both destroyed the Empire and made the new France; and to some extent the measure of my liking for the man was my hatred of those that he had replaced.”
²⁷
At the same time there was a degree of genuinely strong personal attraction, and Dilke could describe Gambetta, with perhaps a little exaggeration, as “for a long time . . . my most intimate friend.”

Back in England, Dilke settled down to a somewhat quieter political life than he had lived immediately before his marriage. He continued to be discontented with the Government, to act as secretary of the Radical Club, and to discuss in correspondence with Chamberlain the most violent measures for bringing Gladstone to heel. But neither in the House of Commons nor in the country did he speak much. His attitude was well summed up in a letter which he wrote on May 1st, 1873, to Miss Kate Field, a young American journalist whom he described as “a slightly outrageous person,” but who was nonetheless one of his closest friends during this period. “I am going to keep quiet until the general election as the best means of retaining my
present
seat,” he wrote. “If I should be turned out—look out for squalls—as I should then stand on an extreme platform for every vacancy in the North.”
²⁸

This temporary political withdrawal, combined with a gradual lessening of the ostracism of the winter of 1871-2, enabled the Dilkes to build up a more active social life. Dilke claimed that they did not go out much, partly because they were so wrapped up in each other and partly because of Katie's ill-health, but said that they gave two dinners a week at 76, Sloane Street, and “saw a good many people in this way.” They saw most of Miss Field, and after her of William Harcourt. Henry James (the politician, not the novelist) was also
an habitué of the house, as were Robert Browning, Kinglake the historian, and Monckton Milnes (by that time Lord Houghton). Among frequent foreign guests were Moret, the Spanish Minister in London, and Gavard, at that time at the French Embassy; among those who came less frequently were Ricciotti Garibaldi, the son of a more famous father, Mark Twain, the dancer Taglioni, who in her old age had become “the stupidest and most respectable of old dames,” and the tragédienne Ristori, then the Marchesa del Grillo. Stanley, the explorer, came on one occasion, but he struck Dilke as “brutal, bumptious, and untruthful,” and was presumably not asked again. The dinners were mostly for twelve people, and the menus were long rather than exciting.
^[4]
During the first year of the married establishment at Sloane Street, 262 different people received and accepted invitations to dinner.

On at least one occasion the Dilkes offered a much more elaborate entertainment. For a sum of 12,000 francs (about £500) they engaged Brasseur, a famous comedy actor of the Théâtre du Palais Royal, to come to London with two other players and give six performances at 76, Sloane Street. For each evening from June 2nd to June 7th, 1873, more than fifty invitations were sent out.

Nor was it by any means entirely the case that Dilke never went out. He began at this time to visit Strawberry Hill, the house of Lady Waldegrave and of her fourth husband, Chichester Fortescue, then President of the Board of Trade; and he often dined with Harcourt and other political friends
and acquaintances. But his great period of social activity did not come until the spring and summer of 1874. Then, in the sharpest possible contrast to the position two and a half years earlier, he was invited everywhere in London. This arose directly out of the publication of his second book.

In September, 1873, Lady Dilke had been delivered of a still-born son, and had been seriously ill as a result. As soon as she was well enough to travel her husband took her to Monaco, where they remained until after Christmas. While there Dilke wrote a short, satirical novel entitled
The Fall of Prince Florestan
. In twelve thousand words he recounted the story of a Cambridge undergraduate who succeeded unexpectedly to the throne of the Principality of Monaco, who there attempted to put into practice the liberal ideas he had learned in England, and who, in consequence of an unpopular collision with the Church, came to an early downfall. The beginning contained some agreeable satire on Cambridge life and English politics; the middle part made the most of the ludicrous aspects, less well known then to the English-speaking public than they are to-day, of a tiny court resting in theory upon the full panoply of feudal privilege, but in fact upon the enterprise of M. Blanc, the manager of the casino; and at the end a moral was drawn, although not too portentously, and addressed to the author's French friends. “No system of government can be permanent,” he wrote, “which has for its opponents all the women in the country, and for supporters only half the men; and any party will have for opponents all the women which couples the religious question with the political and the social, and raises the flag of materialism. Women are not likely to abandon the idea of a compensation in the next world for the usage which too many of them meet with in this.”
²⁹
The whole thing was written with a delicate touch, and still makes easy and agreeable reading.

The novel was published anonymously on March 16th, 1874. Dilke had at first tried to conceal his identity from his publisher, Daniel Macmillan, but this attempt foundered when Macmillan objected, on the ground that he must protect
the interests of the author of
Greater Britain
, to some jokes at Dilke's own expense which, by a rather elaborate stratagem, had been included in
Prince Florestan
. “As a republican,” one passage ran, “I had a cordial aversion for Sir Charles Dilke, a clever writer, but an awfully dull speaker, who imagines that his
forte
is public speaking, and who, having been brought up in a set of strong prejudices, positively makes a merit of never having got over them.”
³⁰
Macmillan was then let into the secret, and a highly complex memorandum of Dilke's wishes and intentions was drawn up and accepted by the publisher. The first edition was to be strictly anonymous and “Mr. Macmillan's secrecy as a man of honour” was “to be relied upon to this end.” If, however, “the work is, as it most likely will be, a success,” the author undertook to make known his name on the appearance of the second edition, Dilke was to receive no payment for the first edition, but as a substitute he stipulated that the book should enjoy both expensive binding and extensive advertising. There should be full-page advertisements in the
Pall Mall Gazette
, the
Saturday Review
, and the
Academy
. He was also to receive fifty presentation copies, which were to be carefully packed, addressed to Mr. Robert Allnert, not marked on the outside, and delivered to No. 6 sitting-room on the ground floor of the Grosvenor Hotel at Victoria Station. It was all very elaborate. Provision was also made for Macmillan to bring out an edition in French. “If not seized in France the work would have a large sale there,” Dilke stated, “and if seized there would sell in Belgium.”
³¹

Dilke was right in predicting the success of the book. Within two days of publication it had been reviewed in five London dailies, and a spate of notices continued for some time. It became the fashionable success of the moment, and was the more talked about because of the mystery surrounding its authorship. The wildest guesses were made at this, but Dilke's name was mentioned as a possible object of the satire rather than as its author. The editor of the
Pall Mall Gazette
was convinced that Matthew Arnold was the author, while
others confidently attributed the book to pens ranging from Benjamin Jowett's to a Cambridge undergraduate's. Frederic Harrison was alone in making a correct guess, and wrote urging Dilke to “make the joke better” by revealing his identity. It had always been Dilke's intention to make such a revelation, and he required little urging, even although Macmillan was at this stage suggesting to him that it would be better to maintain the incognito. It was broken by Lady Dilke, on arrival at a party, causing herself to be announced as “Princess Florestan.”

What were Dilke's motives in writing the book and in presenting it to the public in the manner described? In part, no doubt, as his official biographers suggested,
³²
he found it a convenient way of explaining to his acquaintances, as he had failed to do by more direct methods, that he could combine a theoretical preference for republicanism with a belief that it was unwise to attempt to upset even the most absurd government if it suited the people who lived under it. In part, also, he wished to present himself to the London social world in a more attractive light. He was widely thought of as a dull extremist. This was not a very engaging combination, and anything which was known to come from his pen would have started with a strong prejudice against it. If he wrote anonymously he would still this prejudice; if he wrote a light-hearted satire he might achieve a new reputation for the unknown author; and if the book were a success he could reveal his identity and exchange something of this reputation for his own. This is how matters in fact worked out, and it may well be that this was how he had planned them. Certainly he was delighted with the changed social atmosphere which followed the revelation of his identity. From a position of semi-ostracism he passed quickly to being the much sought-after, fashionable success of the moment. There were a few, however, who stood out against the stream, and in noting two attacks on his views which appeared several months after the general change, Dilke added the revealing comment: “Everything that was needed to set me right with cultivated people had not been done at once by
Prince Florestan
. . .”
³³
But a great deal had been done, and Dilke was very pleased that it was so.

While
Florestan
was in the press, Dilke had triumphantly survived an ordeal the prospect of which had worried him for some time. On January 24th, Gladstone promised the abolition of the income tax and announced a sudden dissolution of Parliament. The country was less impressed by the promise than by the evident exhaustion of the Liberal Government, and the Conservatives were returned with a clear majority of more than fifty. Ten Liberal seats were lost in London, but Dilke's was not amongst them. He was again at the head of the poll, and in at least one sense it was still more of a personal triumph than in 1868; the second seat was taken by a Conservative, Gordon, and Sir Henry Hoare was defeated.

Dilke's election tactics were to free himself, so far as possible, of the twin handicaps of republicanism on the one hand and of the record of the Liberal administration on the other. A few days before the announcement of the dissolution he had followed the practice of the age for those who wished to explain away embarrassing actions or statements by writing a letter for publication to one of his Chelsea supporters. This constituent had indicated his support by asking the most convenient questions.

“You ask me whether you are not justified in saying that I have always declined to take part in a republican agitation,” Dilke wrote. “That is so. I have repeatedly declined to do so; I have declined to attend republican meetings and I have abstained from subscribing to republican funds. I also refused to join the Republican Club formed at Cambridge University, though I am far from wishing to cast a slur on those Liberal politicians—Professor Fawcett and others—who did join it. The view I took was that I had no right to make use of my position as a member of the House of Commons, gained largely by the votes of those who are not even theoretical republicans, to push on an English republican movement. On the other
hand, when denounced in a Conservative paper as a ‘republican' as though that were a term of abuse, I felt bound as an honest man to say that I was one. But I am not a ‘republican member' or a ‘republican candidate' any more than Mr. Gordon is a monarchical candidate, because there is neither Republican party nor Monarchical party in the English Parliament. I said at Glasgow two years ago: ‘The majority of the people of Great Britain believe that the reforms they desire are compatible with the monarchic form of government,' and this I believe now as then.”

Dilke then referred to the suggestions that in his Newcastle speech he had made a personal attack upon the Queen.

“Opinion has become so much calmer upon this point,” he added, “that all will believe me when I say that nothing was further from my mind than to impute blame to Her Majesty, that I never for a moment thought my words to be so understood, that I am heartily sorry that they were so understood, and that the very fact that they were shows that they were wrong.”
³⁴