Dilke (41 page)

On re-examination Matthews elicited only one important fact from Mrs. Crawford. This was that she fixed the date of her first meeting with Forster as February 15th, 1884, when she had been introduced to him at a ball. Then, before she stood down, the foreman of the jury handed up a written question to the President, who asked Phillimore to put it. It was a request that she should draw a plan of the bedroom in Warren Street, showing also the means of access to it and the shape of the staircase. This she did with apparent ease, and the result was passed from counsel to judge and from judge to jury.

Matthews then announced that as he had only a few witnesses to call he proposed not to address the jury until they
had been heard. The President readily agreed to this course, and Mrs. Ashton Dilke, the first of these witnesses, was put into the box. She was affirmed and not sworn. Her evidence was directed principally to an account of Dilke's behaviour when he came to see Mrs. Crawford three or four days after the confession. Mrs. Ashton Dilke said that he offered money if a quiet separation could be agreed to and also made repeated attempts to get Mrs. Crawford to sign a retraction. Mrs. Dilke also said that the evidence given by her sister was exactly in accordance with the account which she had given her during the summer and autumn of the previous year. The witness had believed her sister's confession when she first heard it, but details which had subsequently come to light had made her even more convinced of its truth. She confirmed her sister's story of the expedition from Maple's to find the Warren Street house, although of course she was not present when it was discovered. She herself had no other knowledge of the existence of this house, although she knew the name Rosalie Dessouslavy. She was not aware of any family pension being paid to Anna Dessouslavy.

Phillimore in cross-examination was unable to move her on any of these points, although he elicited the information that there had been a certain interchange of servants between the households of Sir Charles Dilke and Mrs. Ashton Dilke, the suggestion being that this might have been a possible source of knowledge to Mrs. Crawford of the internal arrangements at 76, Sloane Street, and of the existence of Fanny. He also got Mrs. Dilke to admit that, despite her claim to believe her sister's story and despite her expressions of indignation at Dilke's conduct, she wrote to congratulate him on his marriage, left cards on Lady Dilke, and twice called at 76, Sloane Street.

George Lewis, the solicitor to whom Mrs. Dilke had sent her sister and who was subsequently to act for Parnell and in many other trials of great note, was then called. In effect he merely testified to the fact that Mrs. Crawford's evidence was in accordance with the story she had told him before the first trial; but he had taken no written statement
from her until shortly before the second trial.

There followed a group of three witnesses whose evidence proved to be most damaging to Dilke. These were the members of the Hillier family—husband, wife and daughter—who had lived on the ground floor of 65, Warren Street, from April, 1882, to July, 1884. George Hillier was a tailor and he used to sit working in the window of the room which looked on the street. His evidence, and that of his wife and daughter, was that a man whom he now recognised as Dilke used to visit the house quite frequently. Hillier was extremely reluctant to define the degree of frequency, but under great pressure from counsel he agreed that it might have been once a month. When Dilke came, his visit, Hillier noted, was usually preceded by that of a lady. He would stay for half an hour to an hour, and would then leave the house first, turning up the collar of his coat, as though to avoid recognition, as he went. The lady left afterwards. Hillier was quite unwilling to give any description of the lady or to answer any question about her appearance. But he was perfectly certain that the man he had seen was Dilke. He rejected firmly a curious attempt by Phillimore to confuse him by getting a Swiss jeweller named Giuliano, who lived near Warren Street, was a friend of Mrs. Dessouslavy's and bore some superficial resemblance to Dilke, to stand up in court. Hillier placed the times of Dilke's visits as between 3-30 and 5 in the afternoon. They occurred mostly during the London season.

This evidence was confirmed by that of Mrs. Hillier and Miss Hillier, and they added some additional information. Mrs. Hillier said that the lady who used to come was tall and fair, and aged about twenty-eight, she thought. Both she and her daughter agreed that it was always the same lady who came, and that she was not Mrs. Crawford. They believed that Dilke used to be with her in the large back bedroom, the door of which Mrs. Hillier once or twice heard being locked, and that Mrs. Dessouslavy used to wait in the smaller front room. They agreed that the visits were always in the afternoon, generally between 3-30 and 5.

Matthews' next witness was Mary Ann Gray, a niece of
Sarah's, who had succeeded Ellen Drake as housemaid at 76, Sloane Street in March, 1883, and remained there for two years. She stated that on one occasion she went into Dilke's bedroom at about 11-30 in the morning and caught a glimpse of a lady there; but she was not quite sure whether it was a lady or a gentleman. The lady, if it was a lady, was wearing a dress, but no coat. Mary Gray left the room immediately, but she was later reprimanded by Sarah for having gone there, and for a month afterwards she was not allowed into Dilke's room. On another occasion, after the first incident, she saw Dilke conducting a lady upstairs. She thought this was in the afternoon. Phillimore, in cross-examination, was able to show, on Mary Gray's own fixing of the dates, that the incidents were very unlikely to have occurred before September, 1884. He also elicited the information that she had quarrelled with her aunt before leaving Sloane Street.

Another handwriting expert was then produced. He was an assistant in the manuscript department of the British Museum, but his evidence was almost as confusing as that of Phillimore's expert. Its burden was that the last two anonymous letters—the “Métropole” letter and the “cuckoo” letter—were both written by Mrs. Rogerson. Mrs. Rogerson's brother, Charles Stewart, also testified “with regret” to his belief that the “Métropole” letter at least had been written by his sister. Stewart, it will be recalled, was also Crawford's solicitor, and the main purpose of his being put into the box was to show that the statements he had originally taken from the footmen, Shanks and William Goode, were somewhat more incriminating to Dilke than the evidence they had given. Stewart appeared to be actuated by deep personal malice towards Dilke, and suddenly, at the end of his examination-in-chief, said that he wished to correct an inaccuracy in his sister's evidence. The President tried to prevent him, but he insisted on blurting out: “She (Mrs. Rogerson) stated Sir Charles Dilke was an intimate friend of my mother's. He was so at one time, but not latterly, for she became aware of his character.”

This, combined perhaps with Stewart's general behaviour,
provoked Phillimore into one of his few effective pieces of cross-examination:

Q.: Are you a solicitor of standing?

A.: Not of very long standing.

Q.: Have your professional studies told you or not that what you have been saying just now is not evidence?”

Phillimore then proceeded to discover that it was Stewart's practice, when taking statements, to repeat each sentence aloud as he wrote it, but not to read the whole document through to the witness at the end or to obtain a signature. This discovery destroyed the value of most of Stewart's evidence.

Donald Crawford was then called. He was asked to give his account of his meeting with Dilke, at the Reform Club, on the day after his wife's confession. Dilke, in evidence, had described this as being a perfectly friendly meeting. Crawford said:

“I was speaking to the hall-keeper at the lodge . . . and I suddenly heard Sir Charles Dilke's voice behind me saying ‘How do you do?' or ‘How do you do, Crawford?' I turned round and I said ‘How are you?' I did not shake hands with him. I had an umbrella in my right hand and I looked down at the umbrella and came to a decision on a certain point, and I merely said, ‘Sir Charles Dilke, how are you?' He then said, ‘How is North-east Lanarkshire?'—that is the constituency I was about to stand for. I said, ‘It is doing very well,' and I walked upstairs. That is the whole of the conversation.”

He was also asked whether he now believed that he had made a mistake about the two consecutive nights, and he said that he did. Those were the only points which Matthews put to him. Phillimore then asked him about his attitude to Dilke and Forster at the time of his wife's confession:

Q.: At the time of your getting the last anonymous letter were you suspecting Sir Charles Dilke?

A.: Not in the least.

Q.: Were you suspecting Captain Forster?

A.: I was.

Q.: And taking steps to have your wife watched with regard to Captain Forster?

A.: Yes, within a fortnight—within a very short time previous to her confession—before that I had not even asked questions.

Q.: Did you—after your wife had made a statement to you with regard to Sir Charles Dilke—did you accept it until she gave the details?

A.: Yes, I did not doubt it for a moment when she made it to me.

Q.: Then when she made the whole statement?

A.: I did not doubt it at all in my mind from the time she said, “The man who ruined me was Sir Charles Dilke.” From the solemnity of her manner I had no doubt at all.

Q.: Did you press her after that as to Captain Forster?

A.: Yes.

Q..: And she denied?

A.: Yes.

Q.: And with as much solemnity as she made her statement with regard to Sir Charles Dilke?

A.: Yes, very earnestly: there were certain things which seemed a little suspicious. She asked me not to make him a co-respondent. She said, “I do not want to ruin more men than one.” It seemed in one interpretation as if it were not quite true.

Mrs. Rogerson's son-in-law was then called, and gave it as his opinion too that his mother-in-law had written the “Métropole” letter. Then came Forster, Matthews's last witness. He was apparently called in order that he might give his account of his quarrel with Dilke at Albert Mansions, where Mrs. Rogerson had her flat. He said that he went there because Mrs. Rogerson had asked him to go to castigate Dilke on her behalf. Dilke, she said, had slandered her by telling Mrs.
Crawford that she had been his mistress. As to the form of the quarrel, Forster said that Mrs. Rogerson came to him in her dining-room and told him that Dilke was on the stairs.

“I followed him down,” Forster continued, “and overtook him only at the bottom. There is a glass door there. As he was going into the street I said to him, ‘Sir Charles Dilke, I believe?' He said, ‘Yes.' I said, ‘I wish to tell you you are a scoundrel and a liar.' I remember the words of his answer accurately—‘I am afraid you must add a coward too.' He then said to me, ‘Captain Forster, I understand that you are a gentleman—you would not take an unfair advantage of me—my political reputation is everything to me.'”

Phillimore interposed an objection to this evidence and the account was broken off there. Later both Mrs. Rogerson and Sir Charles Dilke were recalled briefly in order to refute this account. Dilke did so with characteristic circumlocution. If he had used the word coward it was with regard to Forster's conduct “in making a scene of that kind at the house of a lady.” Mrs. Rogerson was more direct. She had never asked Forster to her house and she had never asked him to defend her from Dilke.

Forster was then available to Phillimore for cross-examination. He asked him about his engagement to Miss Smith Barry, and discovered that it was first made in September, 1884, was broken off in January, 1885, and renewed at the beginning of July of that year. The marriage took place two months after the renewal. Phillimore also asked him the following questions:

Q.: Did you take Mrs. Crawford to No. 9, Hill Street, Knightsbridge?

A.: I have taken her there.

Q.: You know that house?

A.: I do.

Q.: Is it a house of ill-fame?

A.: I presume it is.

Q.: You have met Mrs. Crawford there?

A.: I have.

That was the end of the evidence, and Matthews proceeded to deliver his speech to the jury. He chose a high note of moral indignation and sought his verdict with a mixture of sustained invective against Dilke and scornful dismissal of the arguments upon which Phillimore had sought to build his case. He began with a reference to his client, Crawford, who “stood alone amidst all the mud and filth as a gentleman of stainless life and unblemished honour.” What a contrast with Dilke, whose behaviour at the first trial he castigated with particular vigour.

“The Judge who tried the case had rightly decided that there was no legal evidence against Sir Charles Dilke: but was there not moral evidence of the strongest kind against him? He was charged by (Mrs. Crawford's) confession not merely with adultery, but with having committed adultery with the child of one friend and the wife of another. He was charged with having committed with Mrs. Crawford ruthless adultery unredeemed by love or affection—he was charged with coarse brutal adultery more befitting a beast than a man, he was charged with having done with an English lady what any man of proper feeling would shrink from doing with a prostitute in a French brothel, and yet he was silent.”

He could not shelter behind his counsel for the course which he had taken. Did the jury believe that they had not acted on instructions? Here Russell tried to interrupt, but the President silenced him with “I cannot allow you to interfere at all, Mr. Attorney-General,” and Matthews swept on. What made Dilke change his mind? It was not a respect for the truth as such but the fact that the Press campaign against him had become politically inconvenient.

Mrs. Crawford's story was contradicted only by the denials of Dilke. All the other evidence went to strengthen her allegations; and if her account were a fabrication, what
possible motive could she have for inventing such a traduce-ment of her own character? As for the value of Dilke's oath, was this not shown up by the evidence of the Hilliers, upon which Matthews said that he relied strongly? Did not Mrs. Crawford's ability to sketch the apartment in Warren Street powerfully bear out her account of what had occurred there? Nor was Matthews prepared to attach weight to the evidence against the possibility of adulterous meetings at 76, Sloane Street.