Dilke (59 page)

“Here lies Mr. G., who has left us repining,
While he is, no doubt, still engaged in refining;
And explaining distinctions to Peter and Paul,
Who faintly protest that distinctions so small
Were never submitted to saints to perplex them.
Until the Prime Minuter came up to vex them.”

(D.P. 43886,154.)

³
He sold this house in 1882.

⁴
At that time Dilke thought it desirable that the services of another Brand, who was President of the Orange Free State, should be recognised by the Government. ‘“I think Brand should be knighted.—Chas. W.D.,” he wrote with characteristic brevity on a paper which was circulated to the members of the Cabinet. They almost all added initials of approval; and the Speaker received the G.C.B., (D.P. 43933, 183.)

⁵
“Although the Prince's attendance subsequently was somewhat fitful,” Sir Sidney Lee informs us, “he was present at 16 of the 38 meetings when witnesses were examined. In May he cut short a visit to Royat in order to attend.” (
Life of King Edward VII
, i., p. 550.)

⁶
“The only political question” was no doubt Dilke's meaning, for within a few weeks of this talk they had exchanged notes, at a Cabinet, about their respective religious beliefs. Chamberlain had written: “I do not know that we differ much except that I am more impatient than you of the
forms
, Religious people, and cannot stand Church or any other service.” Dilke noted: “But we did differ very much.” (D.P. 43887,77.)

⁷
His inexperience in this respect was, however, no greater than that of his Chief. Gladstone devoted the best part of twenty-five years to Irish problems but only three weeks to an Irish visit, which unique event took place in the autumn of 1877.

⁸
Not the least remarkable of the .occasions associated with the club was that when Gladstone arrived to dine, found himself by an unusual accident the only member present that night, and entered himself in the club books as having consumed one bottle of sherry and one bottle of champagne.

⁹
In view of the controversies which have since developed around the character and personal habits of Gordon, the following vivid account, written many years later by Joseph Reinach (formerly Gambetta's secretary) and contained in an unpublished letter amongst the Dilke papers, is perhaps worth appending. “J'ai beaucoup connu Gordon,” Reinach wrote. “J'ai fait sa connaissance en Janvier 1880 sur un bateau qui faisait la service entre Alexandria et Naples. Nous passâmes plusieurs journées à Naples. Il me mena chez Ismail. Je le menai un soir au théâtre à San-Carlo. Il n'etait pas allé au théâtre depuis vingt ans. On donnait un ballet Sardanapale, avec beaucoup de petites femmes à demi-nues. Il se scandalisa. ‘And you call that civilisation!' me dit-ii et il rentra à l'hotel. Je l'y trouvais vers une heure du matin en déshabille, lisant le Bible et ayant vidé une demi bouteille de whisky. Il buvait terriblement de brandy. Plus tard, à Paris, il venait souvent me voir le matin. Et, au bout de cinq minutes, il demandait du
cognac
.

“C'etait un héros, à très courte vue comme beaucoup d'héros, un mystique qui se payait de phrases, et aussi, comment dirai je? Un peu ‘un fumiste.' Vous savez ce que nous appelons ainsi. Il s'amusalt à étonner les gens. Il ne croyait pas tout ce qu'il disait. Dans les lettres de lui que j'ai conservées, il traitait volontiers Dizzie et ses amis de
Mountebanks
. Il était, lui-même,
Mountebank
. . .” (D.P. 33921, 186.)

¹⁰
One of the more attractive strands of Rosebery's strange contradictory character led him to place himself unreservedly in Gladstone's hands as soon as the news of the fall of Khartoum came through. Three months earlier he had contumaciously refused the Office of Works with the Cabinet. Now he was quite willing to accept this or even a lesser post. In fact he got the Privy Seal as well.

¹
Dilke's normal use of the verb “to upset” was always in the sense of “to overturn.” If he used it in the more common modern sense of “to disturb” he added inverted commas, and frequently a deprecating parenthesis—“as the servants say” or “to use housemaid's language.”

²
He had not, of course, abolished plural voting, although he would like to have done so. At the first general election following the act based on his scheme, Dilke himself had nine votes, scattered over the different constituencies in which he held property. He made several special journeys in order to exercise these votes, and when this was not possible he attempted to make “pairing” arrangements with Tory politicians whom he knew to own property in the same area.

³
Dilke also recorded, in characteristic terms, his impressions of one of the pictures. “The portrait of the first Cavendish—who was usher of Cardinal Wolsey, and who married Bess of Hardwick, the richest lady of the day—is exactly like Hartington, but a vulgar Hartington—fat and greasy—a Hartington who might have kept a public-house.” (D.P. 43939, 34.)

⁴
This Garvin version is disputed by Henry Harrison in his polemical but often convincing
Parnell, Joseph Chamberlain and Mr. Garvin
(pp. 96-101). Harrison accepted O'Shea's untrustworthiness, but believed the objective evidence pointed strongly to Chamberlain being far more aware of Parnell's real state of mind than he subsequently admitted. Mr. Conor Cruise O'Brien (
Parnell and His Party
, p. 91) reserves judgment on the point. What is in any event clear is that Chamberlain and Dilke both believed at this stage in the possibility of a great step forward on Ireland.

⁵
Dilke noted on this letter: “But the Old Testament Radical went on to make proposals to me with regard to the Roman Catholic vote in Chelsea which would have astonished the Old Testament prophets.”

⁶
Myles Joyce, aged eighteen, was amongst those hanged for the Maamtrasna murders. All the others died protesting his innocence.

¹
The Anglican Dilke and the erstwhile Unitarian Chamberlain consistently over-estimated the power of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Irish politics.

¹
Nevertheless, Mordaunt was successful in another petition five years later, when Lord Cole was cited as the sole co-respondent.

²
The account which follows is a summary of the evidence which Donald Crawford gave in the divorce court on February 12th, 1886. Whatever view is taken of the other parties to the case there is not the slightest reason to believe that Crawford did not tell the truth according to the best of his recollection.

³
The first of these, received as long ago as the spring of 1882, began by warning Crawford that his wife who, with her sister, was visiting the latter's husband in St. George's Hospital, had “been carrying on flirtations” with the students there. It concluded, on a quite different tack, with the words: “Beware of the member for Chelsea.” The second anonymous letter reached Crawford in March, 1885. It told him that his wife was Dilke's mistress, that she was a frequent visitor to 76, Sloane Street and was known to the servants there; it gave, in fact, most of the details of her subsequent confession. The third was received in June of the same year and referred to Mrs. Crawford having lunched with a Captain Forster at the Hotel Métropole.

⁴
Some of the details of this “confession” were supplied to Crawford, not on the night of July 17th, but two days later when he interviewed his wife at the house of her sister, where she was then staying.

⁵
At the side of this last comment Dilke noted, many years later: “Chamberlain overpersuaded Hoya (Mrs. Pattison) and through her me, but he was wrong.”

⁶
T. M. Healy recounts in his memoirs that, before this stage was reached, Gladstone tried, through Labouchere, to buy Crawford off. Crawford proved unyielding, but Labouchere, always generous with invention, reported to Gladstone that he wanted a judgeship. “A Scottish judgeship, I presume,” Gladstone replied; but on being told that it was an English judgeship which was required was undismayed. “Can any good reason be brought forward against his being made an English judge?” was the G.O.M.'s next answer, as he contemplated the possibility of a bargain. (Healy,
Letters and Leaders of My Day
, I, p. 215.) The story is uncorroborated from any other source.

⁷
See
infra
p. 368.

⁸
Perhaps the most significant of these was in the following terms: “F. Harrison's sources of information are tainted. Please tell him from me for what it is worth that I am
certain
Dilke is innocent of the charge brought against him. I do not answer for his whole life—nor for my own—nor for any man's—but the particular charge and its accompaniments are false.” (Letter written on October 22nd, 1885, and quoted in Garvin,
op. cit
., Vol. II, p. 45.)

⁹
At this stage the details of Mrs. Crawford's confession were not generally known. What had been published was that Crawford was suing his wife and citing Dilke as co-respondent.

¹⁰
G. W. E. Russell, who had been a junior minister under Dilke at the Local Government Board, first suggested that the invitation should be sent. He recorded that Gladstone “could not have looked more amazed if I had suggested inviting the Pope or the Sultan.” (
Cornhill Magazine
, Sept., 1914.)

¹¹
Self-pity was not normally one of Dilke's vices, but the tone of this part of the letter would have been more appropriate had he been going to gaol rather than on to the back benches.

¹
It was then both permissible and usual for the law officers to accept private briefs. Russell's appearance for Dilke implied no official backing.

²
In the relevant section of the Act there occurs the following passage: “The parties to any proceedings instituted in consequence of adultery, and the husbands and wives of such parties, shall be competent to give evidence in such proceedings provided that no witness to any proceeding, whether a party to the suit or not, shall be liable to be asked or bound to answer any question tending to show that he or she has been guilty of adultery, unless such witness shall have already given evidence in the same proceeding in disproof of his or her alleged adultery.”

³
Bigham P. was to take a contrary view in
Hall v. Hall
(
The King's Proctor showing cause
), 1909 (25 TLR 524), but the decision was disapproved and not followed by McCardie J. in
Hensley v. Hensley and Nevin
, 1920 (30 TLR 288), and Hill J. in
Mourilyan v. Mourilyan
, 1922 (38 TLR 482). For a full discussion of the point and the conclusion that the judgment of Bigham P. “cannot be supported,” see Rayden on
Divorce
, Seventh Edition, pp. 437-7.

⁴
Dilke's objection to Russell's statement was slightly amplified in the memoir which he later wrote up from his diary: “The way in which Sir Charles Russell spoke of ‘indiscretions,'” he wrote, “looked to the public as though he was alluding to something more recent than this old story of capture in 1868 and recapture for two months in 1874-5—the winter in which I was mad.” (D.P. 43940, 117.) This is the only available written comment of Dilke's upon his relations with Mrs. Eustace Smith.

⁵
Any picture of Stead should perhaps be supplemented by a postcard which Bernard Shaw wrote in reply to a request for his views on the subject from Robertson Scott, who was writing a history of the
Pall Mall Gazette
. “I never spoke to Stead in my life,” Shaw wrote, “nor even saw him except once at a public meeting, where he behaved so outrageously that I walked out in disgust. I was a contributor to the
Pall Mall
under his editorship; but as my department was literature and art, and he was an utter Philistine, no contacts between us were possible. Outside political journalism such as can be picked up in a newspaper office he was a complete ignoramus. I wrote him a few letters about politics which he acknowledged very sensibly as ‘intended for his instruction'; but he was unteachable except by himself.

“We backed him up over the Maiden Tribute only to discover that the Eliza Armstrong case was a put-up job of his. After that, it was clear that he was a man who could not work with anybody; and nobody would work with him. When he was set up years after as the editor of a new London daily he had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, being so hopelessly out of date journalistically that the paper collapsed almost at once. He wanted me to review for it on the old P.M.G. terms though I had become a Big Noise in the interval.” (Scott,
The Life and Death of a Newspaper
, p. 85.)

⁶
His attitude was illustrated by the fact that for many years afterwards, on the anniversary of his conviction, he wore his convict suit, an attire which attracted a good deal of attention as he travelled up in the suburban train from Wimbledon and walked across Waterloo Bridge to his office. The gesture would have been more justified had he not been treated as a first-class misdemeanant for all but the first two days of his sentence, and allowed to wear ordinary clothes.

⁷
Stead's remarkable inaccuracy in writing about a case in which he was so closely interested is more than matched by that of his admirer, Robertson Scott. Scott, in summarising the proceedings, showed not merely inaccuracy but a formidable imagination. “Mrs. Crawford,” he wrote, “was the respondent in the divorce suit brought by a Scottish M.P. in which Sir Charles Dilke, the Duke of Marlborough and Shaw, Captain of the London Fire Brigade, were co-respondents.” (
The Life and Death of a Newspaper
, p. 82n.)