Dilke (28 page)

Even if this tactic failed, however, and Gladstone handed
over to Hartington, there would still be great strength in the radical position. Hartington would probably have to compensate for his own whiggery by giving the highest posts, next to the premiership, to his radical colleagues. Indeed, at the time of Gladstone's rumoured retirement in the previous January, Dilke had been informed by Harcourt that it was Hartington's intention to offer him the Foreign Office and Chamberlain the Exchequer.
³
Admittedly this was before the launching of the Unauthorised Programme, but as Hartington's appointments would have been dictated by the need for a balance of power rather than by love of the radicals, there is no reason to suppose that he would have made less generous offers at a later stage. Dilke and Chamberlain were likely to possess the same paradoxical power in his Cabinet which the Whig magnates had enjoyed under Gladstone. Nor would even the Foreign Office and the Exchequer be the limit of their possible advance. Hartington was an indolent man; and it might well be that after a short period of leading liberalism from the extreme right he would find the strain too great and throw in the Whig hand. In this event the way would be equally wide open to a radical leadership.

Both in these circumstances, and in those of Gladstone forcing Hartington out of the Liberal party before his own retirement, a choice between Chamberlain and Dilke would have had to be made. In retrospect Chamberlain looks the more obvious candidate. His speeches were more memorable; he was the favourite of the constituencies; and he had broken more new political ground with the Unauthorised Programme than Dilke had ever done. In fact, however, Dilke was the more likely choice. He had far fewer enemies; he would have been more acceptable to Gladstone; and he was on much better terms with Whigs, Tories and neutral “establishment” opinion. Whether consciously or not he had outflanked Chamberlain to the right during the previous winter, but he had done it without impairing his own radical credentials. The negotiation of the seats bill was a far better preparation for an early premiership than the proclamation of the Unauthorised Programme.

This position was recognised by one significant development which occurred immediately after the fall of the Government. The radicals of Cabinet rank—Dilke, Chamberlain, Trevelyan, Shaw Lefevre and Morley—decided to meet in regular conclave. This “cabal,” as they referred to it, assembled as often as twice a week and concerned itself both with the issues of day-to-day politics and with longer-term radical strategy. The meetings had been suggested by Chamberlain, but they were all presided over by Dilke. Furthermore, at least according to Dilke's own testimony,
⁴
Chamberlain at this stage recognised the fact that Dilke would be a more acceptable leader than he would be himself, and suggested an agreement with Dilke to this end. In addition, Dilke tells us, Gladstone expressed a clear wish that Dilke should be the future leader. Altogether, at midsummer, 1885, Dilke's prospects of becoming Prime Minister were almost as good as those of anyone who is neither the leader of his party nor a universally acclaimed crown prince can ever be.

With this future to contemplate, his life in the six weeks or so after the resignation of the Government was agreeable and relaxed. He had no lack of things to do. He became more socially active and went out a great deal. He dined often at Grillion's. He spent long and frequent days on the Thames, either at Dockett or at the houses of friends. He presided at the concluding meetings of the Housing Commission. And he tried to complete his plans for a visit with Chamberlain to the Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops in Ireland, in order to discover, in direct discussion, what were their real wishes.
^[1]
These plans went awry, but this was a matter of much greater moment to Chamberlain than to Dilke.

Manning had promised introductions, but with the change of Government and the unfolding of the new Conservative policy, he grew cool. “What am I to do?” the prince of the church wrote to Dilke on June 25th. “I am afraid of your Midlothian in Ireland. How can I be godfather to Hengist and Horsa?”
⁵
Dilke was disappointed, but allowed himself
neither to quarrel with the Cardinal nor to be deflected from his plan. He tried to secure the introductions from the new Archbishop of Dublin, and Dr. Walsh responded to the extent of writing two encouraging letters. But the reaction of the nationalist press to the proposed visit was hostile in the extreme. “We plainly tell Messrs. Chamberlain and Dilke that if they are wise, they will keep out of our country . . .” was the advice of
United Ireland
.
⁶
In the authoritative opinion of Mr. Conor Cruise O'Brien, the current of anti-radicalism, always important in Irish politics, was at this time running strongly and close to the surface. Archbishop Walsh was infected by the prevailing mood, and soon withdrew from his attitude of welcome. At the end of July he wrote to say that he, too, could give no introductions, as such an action would be interpreted as hostile to “the excellent tenor and promise of Lord Carnarvon's Conservative regime.”
⁷
By this time Dilke was too concerned with other matters to care, but Chamberlain, always more prickly, was bitterly affronted. He had finished with Irish nationalism. He believed himself to have been deceived by Parnell in the negotiations of the early spring, and to have been spurned by the Church and the popular press in his overtures of the summer. These experiences led on directly to a new note of hard hostility to Ireland, which he struck in his Warrington speech of September 8th, and to his subsequent actions.

Dilke, even before his attention was distracted, reacted less sharply to these rebuffs than did Chamberlain. He never expected to be acclaimed as a hero by the Irish people, and he was consequently less disappointed when difficulties arose. In any event he had much else to occupy his mind. On June 30th he wrote to Mrs. Pattison a strange disquisition upon the subject of power in politics. After some rather conventional remarks about the unattractiveness for him of the minutiae of the game, he continued:

“It is in old age that power comes. It is possible for an old man in English politics to exert enormous power without effort, and with but little call upon his time, and no drain
at all upon his health and vital force. The work of thirty or more years of political life goes in England to the building up of a political reputation and position. During that period no power is exercised except by irregular means, such as the use of threats of resignation. It is in old age only that power comes that can be used legitimately and peacefully by the once strong man.”
⁸

When he wrote these words Dilke was more than half-way through the long journey to full power, but he was never to reap the rewards which he saw ahead of him. In the third week of July his career was shattered. He was struck by a blow from which he never recovered.

The week had begun well enough. The Sunday he spent on the river at Dockett. On the Monday he presided at his Royal Commission and dined at Grillion's. Later in the week he went to parties at Lady Salisbury's, at the Austrian Embassy and at the Duchess of Westminster's. He had a meeting about electoral organisation with Harcourt and Chamberlain. On the Friday evening he gave the last of his major political dinner parties at 76, Sloane Street. On the Saturday morning he presided at a meeting of the “cabal.” On the Saturday evening the Reform Club paid him the unusual compliment of organising a banquet in his honour, to congratulate him upon the passing into law of the redistribution bill. The former Lord Advocate proposed the principal toast.

He returned home late, with the intention of going next morning to Taplow Court for another quiet day upon the river. But this Sunday, July 19th, was not to be a quiet one. At Sloane Street on the Saturday evening there awaited him a note from Mrs. Rogerson, a close friend, asking him to call on the following morning as she had some grave information to give him. He went early and learned that Mrs. Donald Crawford, the sister of his brother's widow, had announced to her husband that, soon after her marriage, Dilke had become her lover; and that Crawford, in consequence, was proposing to sue for divorce, and to name Dilke as the co-respondent.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the seriousness for Dilke of the charge. Divorce, other than by private Act of Parliament, had been possible in England only since 1857, and during this twenty-eight year period there had been no case involving a prominent politician. The nearest parallel had been the Mordaunt case of 1870, in which the Prince of Wales had been cited as a co-respondent. This case, indeed, bore some striking resemblances to the Crawford case, as will emerge later. Lady Mordaunt, aged twenty-one, had made a confession to her husband shortly after the birth of her first child. “Charlie, you are not the father of that child,” she had said according to her husband's court evidence; “Lord Cole is the father of it, and I am the cause of its blindness.” Sir Charles Mordaunt's account continued: “She sat silent for a quarter of an hour, then burst into tears and said, ‘Charlie, I have been very wicked; I have done very wrong.' I said, ‘Who with?' She said, ‘With Lord Cole, the Prince of Wales and others, often, and in open day.'”
¹
Lady Mordaunt, however, was declared mad by her father and a number of doctors. This, combined with the Prince appearing in the witness-box and denying on oath that there had ever been anything improper in his association with her—a denial which was greeted with a burst of applause in the court—resulted in the husband losing his case.
^[1]
But the incident did the Prince's reputation a great deal of harm, and was one of the factors, ironically enough, which made it possible for
Dilke to mount his republican offensive of the following year.

Earlier there had been cases, not involving divorce, but touching a politician as prominent as Lord Melbourne. Melbourne had twice appeared in the courts, once while Prime Minister, and had denied, with legal success if not with complete public acceptance, allegations concerning his relationship with Lady Branden (an Irish peeress) and Mrs. George Norton. But the 'eighties were a different decade from the 'thirties. The Court had become much more puritanical, and, more important for Dilke, middle-class nonconformity had become an essential ally of the Liberal party. When the Parnell case broke five years later, Gladstone, Harcourt and Morley forced the Irish party to renounce its leader, not because they were shocked by his adulterous relationship with Mrs. O'Shea, of which they had known for at least seven years, but because of the feelings of the National Liberal Federation, which was in session at Sheffield, and the thunderings of the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes.

Quite apart from any changes in the moral climate, however, Dilke's position was much more vulnerable than Melbourne's had been. To many people he was still a dangerous radical, and an ally of that even more objectionable politician, Chamberlain. If he could be ruined what a blow it would be to the left-wing forces in the Liberal party and how much less potent would appear the dreadful doctrines which Chamberlain had enunciated in the Unauthorised Programme. This was the reasoning of many people who, in other circumstances, would have been Dilke's natural defenders against the moralists. Furthermore, the Queen and her entourage were most willing to take the blackest view of his actions. Even before the charges were made she had received him into the Cabinet only with the greatest reluctance. How right she had been! How gratifying to discover that radical views and a republican past were associated with the blackest moral turpitude. No doubt the Queen would have looked askance at anyone who had become involved in divorce court proceedings, but she would have been a good deal more inclined to make excuses for, say, Hartington than for Dilke.

There was another factor which made the charge against Dilke unusually damaging-—still more so, for example, than that which was to be made against Parnell. This was the nature of Mrs. Crawford's accusations. These would have done a great deal of harm to the most unassailable of politicians in the most tolerant of decades. They were made to her husband on the night of Friday, July 17th, 1885.
^[2]
He arrived home at their London lodgings, then in George Street, Bryan-ston Square, at about 11.30 that night, and found a letter waiting for him. It was anonymous—one of a series which he had received
^[3]
—and in the following terms: “Fool, looking for the cuckoo when he has flown, having defiled your nest. You have been vilely deceived, but you dare not touch the real traitor.”

Crawford then went to his bedroom where his wife was waiting for him. She asked if he had received the letter and what were its contents. He told her, and then said: “Virginia, is it true that you have defiled my bed? I have been a faithful husband to you.” She replied: “Yes, it is true, it is time that you should know the truth. You have always been on the wrong track, suspecting people who are innocent, and you have never suspected the person who is guilty.” Crawford answered: “I never suspected anybody except Captain Forster,” and Mrs. Crawford replied: “It was not Captain Forster. The man who ruined me was Charles Dilke.”

She then related how, a few months after their marriage in 1881, when she was aged eighteen, Dilke had called upon
her at Bailey's Hotel in the Gloucester Road, where they were staying after their wedding trip.
^[4]
On this occasion “he made love to me and kissed me but nothing more.” There was no further meeting until the following February, because the Grawfords were away in Scotland. On their return, however, Dilke again called upon Mrs. Crawford, this time at a house in Sydney Place, Chelsea, which they had taken for the session. In the course of this call (on February 23rd, 1882) he persuaded her to meet him that afternoon at a house “off Tottenham Court Road.” There they spent about an hour together, and she became Dilke's mistress. Their liaison continued, Mrs. Crawford said, for two and a half years, until the summer of 1884, although in a somewhat spasmodic way. She went only once again to the house near Tottenham Court Road, but in February, 1883, when she came to London from Scotland before her husband, she spent two nights in Dilke's Sloane Street house, returning home on one morning at 4 o'clock and on the other at 7-30. In addition there were frequent but brief adulterous meetings, both at Sloane Street and at the Grawfords' rented house in Young Street, Kensington, during the sessions of 1883 and 1884. These meetings took place between eleven and twelve in the mornings and lasted sometimes half an hour and sometimes an hour. In Sloane Street she mounted to Dilke's bedroom, but in Young Street they remained in the drawing-room. In the late summer of 1884, Mrs. Crawford said, Dilke tired of her and their clandestine meetings ceased, although they saw each other occasionally at family tea parties during the following autumn. She admitted that she had been “too familiar” with other men, including Captain Forster, but solemnly denied that she had committed adultery with anyone other than Dilke. About Captain Forster she was quite specific. “He had always treated her like a lady,” and, less ambiguously, he was not and never had been her lover.