Dilke (14 page)

Dilke, therefore, had a certain obvious constituency interest in not appearing too resistant to Beaconsfield's determination to make the Russians disgorge part of their gains from the Turks; and the interest was the stronger because of his view that Chelsea was far from safe. But these considerations did not lead him to jump on the Government's jingo band wagon.

“There was a moment after the fall of Lord Derby (from the Foreign Office) when I became a supporter of the Government in their Eastern policy,” Dilke wrote, “for they appeared to me to adopt my own, but it did not last long. . . . Speaking in the House on April 9th against the calling out of national reserves . . . . I repudiated the defence which had come from some on the Liberal side, of the conduct of Russia, and, looking upon the Government despatch as a vindication primarily of general European interests, and, in the second place, of Hellenic interests, against Russian violence and universal Slav dominion throughout the Levant, I separated myself from my party and praised the new Minister of Foreign Affairs. I was afterwards bitterly disappointed at finding the policy of the April circular abandoned by its authors in the Congress of Berlin.”
¹⁴

Even during this brief period of agreement with Lord Salisbury, Dilke spoke against the Government's action in calling out the reserves. He wanted pressure put upon Russia, but he wanted it done by conference rather than by force, and by Europe acting in concert rather than by England acting alone. Furthermore, he wanted the pressure directed not towards the maintenance of the integrity of the Turkish Empire but towards the full independence of the Balkan nationalities—it had been on this last point that he had co-operated, briefly and fruitlessly, with Lord Randolph Churchill in the early spring. These desires separated him
sharply from Gladstone and most radicals but they separated him equally from the policy pursued by the Government both before and during the Congress of Berlin.

In these years of foreign policy dispute Dilke's political position became greatly strengthened. A period of rapidly shifting alliances within the Liberal party was almost inevitably helpful to one who had previously been a rather isolated and intransigent figure. Men who had hitherto assumed automatically that he would be against them began to bid for his support. He was no longer outside the range of combination; and he came increasingly to be consulted by his party chiefs. He assisted the process by a series of highly competent speeches in the House, and by occasional well-reported, well-informed, and independent addresses to his constituents.

Furthermore, in the session of 1878, he succeeded in carrying into law two important measures of electoral reform. The first was a Registration Bill, which although modest in its apparent impact, eventually effected a great addition to the number of voters on the lists. The second, an Hours of Polling Bill, made it much easier for those entitled to vote to do so. Hitherto, polling had closed at 4 p.m., a time by which it was quite impossible for many working-class voters to get to the booths. “Dilke's Act,” as it was widely known, extended the hours until 8 p.m. At first it applied only to London, but was later extended to cover the whole country.

Not only did Dilke's political reputation grow rapidly, but he also had the agreeable experience of being frequently told that this was so. The most notable of his political admirers was Lord Beaconsfield. Dilke never knew him well, and never indeed met him outside the House of Commons until a few weeks before his death in 1881; but he had a high respect for the successful adventure of the Prime Minister's career, and long retained as one of his most lively memories a picture of the latter leaving the House of Commons for the last time in August, 1876, “in a long white overcoat and dandified lavender kid gloves, leaning on his secretary's arm, and shaking hands with a good many people, none of whom knew that he was bidding farewell. . . .”
¹⁵
Beaconsfield, in turn, saw in Dilke
the most effective politician of his generation. “. . . Mr. Disraeli stated it as his opinion,” according to G. O. Trevelyan, “that Sir Charles Dilke was the most useful and influential member, among quite young men, that he had ever known.”
¹⁶
Soon Beaconsfield went still further, and at the beginning of 1879 was responsible for a widely disseminated prophecy that Dilke was almost certain to be Prime Minister. Dilke heard of it from Chamberlain and from many others too. A year later he had become almost too well spoken of, by the newspapers at any rate, for his popularity, and was thought to have departed so far from his former intransigence that he wrote in the following terms to Mrs. Pattison:

“I guess rather than feel in interviews with different men that I have been so much talked of by the papers for the Cabinet, and so much has been said of my having been consulted last year a great deal—that there is intense personal jealousy of me on the part of Fawcett, Courtney, Cowen and others. It takes the form of an assumption which is very irritating, that I never say what I mean—unless it happens to be that which party interest requires. I think I can only control it by keeping a little in the background this session.”
¹⁷

From 1876 onwards it was not only Dilke's political life which had gone well; he had also enjoyed himself in a more relaxed way and in a wider social circle than ever before. For a time the Waldegrave establishments became almost the centre of his life.

“I began this year (1876) to stay a great deal at Lady Waldegrave's,” he wrote, “both at Dudbrook in Essex and at Strawberry Hill; and ultimately I had a room at Strawberry Hill to which I went backwards and forwards as I chose. The house was extremely pleasant, and so was Fortescue,
^[9]
and he passionately adored his wife, and was afterwards completely broken down and almost killed by
her death. Fortescue was my friend. I never much liked An- in spite of her good nature, but she was an excellent hostess and the house was perfectly pleasant, and in a degree in which no other house of our time has been. The other house which was always named as ‘the rival establishment,' Holland House, I also knew. Some of the same people went there—Abraham Hayward, commonly called the ‘Viper,' and Charles Villiers, for example. But Lady Holland was disagreeable and bitter, and far from a good hostess, whereas Lady Waldegrave always made everybody feel at home. Those of whom I saw the most this year, in addition to the Strawberry Hill people (who were Harcourt, James, Ayrton, Villiers, Hayward, Dr. Smith the editor of the
Quarterly
, Henry Reeve the editor of the
Edinburgh
, the Comte de Paris and the Duc d'Aumale) were Lord Houghton and Mrs. Duncan Stewart.”
*
¹⁸

Despite his frequent visits to Strawberry Hill, Dilke always retained an element of reserve towards the charms of life at Horace Walpole's gothic mansion, as towards those of Frances Waldegrave herself. He listed first amongst its attractions his ability, when staying there, to walk down the road, take a train from Twickenham station to London, and escape from the chatter from morning until dinner-time. He was also a little cynical about the royal princes, mainly French and exiled, who frequently visited the place. He met there the Prince Imperial, usually remembered, perhaps on account of his early death, as a most sympathetic and agreeable youth, and wrote later of having “described him in my diary as having the manners and appearance of a tobacconist. Why tobacconist I do not know, although I remember his appearance, which was vulgar and his manners which were common, but at this
distance of time I should be inclined to alter tobacconist into hairdresser.” Lest it should be thought that he attached too much importance to manners and appearance, Dilke hastened to add that “his (the Prince Imperial's) father, who had not been brought up as a gentleman, was a gentleman in manners, although in character he was vile.”
¹⁹

The Orleanist princes pleased Dilke little better than the Bonapartes. After dining with the Duc de Chartres, again at Strawberry Hill, he wrote that he was “no better and no worse than the other princes of his house, all dull men, not excepting the Duc d'Aumale, who had, however, the reputation of being brilliant, and who . . . was interesting from his great memory of great men. They all grew deaf as they grew old . . .”
²⁰
he added. Dilke was always a little patronising about those of royal blood. In 1879 there were two Crown Princes (those of Sweden and Baden) in London to whom he was introduced and of whom he noted: “Like all Kings and Princes, except the King of Greece, and in later days the Emperor William II, they seemed to me heavy men, bored by having to pretend to be thoughtful persons, and I found that difficulty in distinguishing them one from the other, which has always oppressed me in dealing with royal personages.”
²¹

Dilke's acquaintances during this period were by no means all heavy, anxious to be considered thoughtful, and difficult to distinguish from one another. Swinburne and Manning, for instance, were each in their different ways
sui generis
. The poet was brought into Dilke's life by Lord Houghton, and for a time became a frequent visitor to Sloane Street. “A wreck of glasses attests the presence of Swinburne,” Dilke wrote of one visit in 1876. “He compared himself to Dante; repeatedly named himself with Shelley and Dante to the exclusion of all other poets; assured me that he was a great man only because he had been properly flogged at Eton . . . and finally informed me that two glasses of green Chartreuse were a perfect antidote to one of yellow, or two of yellow to one of green.”
²²
Some time after this visitation Swinburne wrote and sent to Dilke the following snatch of political verse:

For the Greek will not fight, which is far from right
And the Russian has all to gain
Which I deeply regret should so happen—but yet
'Tis true, tho' it gives me pain
And methinks it were vulgar to cheat a poor Bulgar
With offers of help in vain.”
²³

Dilke was greatly shocked by the quality of the poetry; but perhaps Swinburne did not take the Eastern Question as seriously as he himself did.

Dilke's acquaintance with the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster had begun at the time of the death of Lady Dilke, when Manning had written a letter of sympathy. It did not ripen until 1878, however, when they met again at one of those frequent dinner parties which Manning thought it proper to attend, but at which he also thought it proper to touch neither food nor drink. After this occasion he asked Dilke to come and discuss Irish primary education with him, and by the following year a friendship had sprung up. The Cardinal's visits to 76, Sloane Street became almost as frequent as those of Dilke to Archbishop's House.

“I was amused by finding how much he cared for general gossip and even scandal,” Dilke noted. “He insisted on talking to me about Sarah Bernhardt, and Gambetta, and the Prince of Wales, and all sorts and conditions of people. He told me that if he was not Cardinal Archbishop he would stand for Westminster in the Radical interest. But, Radical though he be on social questions, he is a ferocious Jingo.”
²⁴

Another more specifically political acquaintanceship of this period was with Parnell, who had entered Parliament in 1875 and was rapidly forcing himself into a position of leadership. Dilke and Chamberlain joined in inviting him to dinner, with a view both to securing his support against the Zulu war and to hammering out some sort of joint programme on Ireland, but “were able to make little of him.” Dilke found him more
useful as a consulting barber than as a political collaborator. “One of the grave questions upon which I consulted Parnell in the course of February (1878),” he wrote, “was suggested by my brother, who had objected to my becoming bald. Parnell had been going bald and had shaved his head with much success for his hair had grown again. . . .”
²⁵
But Dilke did not in the event follow his example; perhaps he was frightened by the information, also imparted by Parnell, that in some cases the hair never grew again at all. Another of Dilke's memories of the Irish leader came from a Select Committee on House of Commons procedure, of which they were both members and before which Mr. Speaker Brand was examined as a witness. Parnell conducted a long cross-examination of the Speaker.

“Both of them were in a way able men,” Dilke noted, “but both were extraordinarily slow of intellect—that is, slow in appreciating a point or catching a new idea—and Mr. Brand. . . and Parnell used to face one another in inarticulate despair in the attempt to understand each the other's meaning. There were a good many fairly stupid men on the Committee, but there was not a single member of it who did not understand what Parnell meant by a question more quickly than could the Speaker, and not a man who could not understand what the Speaker meant by a reply more quickly than Parnell.”
²⁶

Most of Dilke's dinner table acquaintances were more conversationally rewarding than Parnell, but not sufficiently so to induce a high view of English talk.

“In the best English political and literary society there is no conversation,” he noted rather extremely. “Mr. Gladstone will talk with much charm about matters he does not understand, or books that he is not really competent to criticise; but his conversation has no merit to those who are acquainted with the subjects on which he speaks. Men like Lord Rosslyn, Lord Houghton, Lord Granville (before his deafness) had a pleasant wit and some cultivation,
as had Bromley Davenport, Beresford Hope, and others, as well as Arthur Balfour, but none of these men were or are at a high level; and where you get the high level in England, as with Hastings, Duke of Bedford (the one who killed himself), Grant Duff, and some among their friends, you fall into priggism.”
²⁷

It was much the same, Dilke was convinced, in Paris and St. Petersburg and probably in Berlin and Vienna too. Only in Rome, he rather surprisingly concluded, were things better. There you had “conversation not priggish or academic, and yet consistently maintained at a high level.” Dilke knew little Italian, and had passed hardly any time in Rome; but Mrs. Pattison had just spent a winter there.