enclosure for the Deputy Ranger in Hyde Park. The cottage was erected, but Sir Charles and his allies ‘were ultimately able to get back a large part of the land which had been enclosed near it.’ Another encroachment was resisted more successfully, and by other means. In Fulham ‘the Ecclesiastical Commissioners had made an enclosure shutting out the public from Eelbrook Common, the use of which it had enjoyed for many years.’
‘I went to a meeting at Beaufort House, and made, as I thought, a moderate speech recommending abstention from acts of violence, but one at the close of which the meeting went off to the place, pulled down the fence, and burnt it in a large bonfire. The enclosure was never reasserted, and the ground was ultimately handed over to the Metropolitan Board of Works to be managed as an open space, and is open now for ever…. In Lord Eversley’s _Commons_, revised edition of 1910, he names my services to the “cause,” but not _this_ one.’
At the close of the Session
‘On September 4th I addressed my constituents, and received an ovation in consequence of the passing of the Hours of Polling Bill (letting them vote till eight in the evening instead of four) and of my Registration Bill. Vast numbers of electors had been disfranchised by the former hours, who were able now to record their votes. My Registration Act was only to come into force in the course of the following year, and was to affect the next registration and revision.
‘Turning to foreign affairs, I pointed out the absolute impossibility of the fulfilment of the promises which the Government had made to give to Asiatic Turkey “rest from the heavy weight of military service, rest from the uncertainty of unjust Judges and persons placed in command.” I went on to discuss the Greek question, which I had to do somewhat fully, because the Greek Committee was at present only operating in the dark, and had not made known its constitution to the public. [Footnote: He made in this year the acquaintance of ‘Delyannis, Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs. He was a very inferior man to his great rival, Tricoupis.’]
‘Two days after my speech, on September 6th, I learnt that the Greek Government had decided to recognize the insurgent Debt of 1824. People often talk of the possibilities of Ministers speculating on the Stock Exchange on secret information. It is a curious and perhaps an interesting fact that during the more than five years that I was in office I do not think that any official information came into my hands the possession of which would have enabled any Minister to make money on the Stock Exchange, although a private secretary was charged with the offence during those years–most unjustly charged. On the other hand, it is the case that on at least two occasions when I was a private member of Parliament, before I had held office, I had secret information of a certain kind upon which I might have speculated, and which very probably was given me with the intention that I should do so. This was one of the two occasions. The other was my knowledge of the financial intervention in Egypt before it took place. [Footnote: He knew this from something said to him by Nubar Pasha.]
‘The Greek information of September 6th reached me in Paris, whither I had gone on the day after my speech, and to which I was followed by very favourable criticism upon it. Gambetta, with whom I breakfasted on the 6th, told me that Lord Salisbury, who had been in Paris, had come there with a view to reopen the Egyptian question, but had not received encouragement.
‘On Thursday, September 12th, I breakfasted with Gambetta in the country, he coming to fetch me at the Grand Hotel, and driving me down in a victoria. We talked partly of Egypt, partly of people.’
That autumn Sir Charles spent in the South of France, still working on his History. [Footnote: _History of the Nineteenth Century_. See Chapter XI., p. 154; also Chapter LX. (Vol. II., p. 537).] His son, then four years old, used to be with him at La Sainte Campagne, Cap Brun, his house near Toulon. In November a new crisis arose. ‘There seemed a chance of war with Russia about the Afghan complications,’ and Sir Charles proposed to his brother Ashton that, ‘in the event of Russia’s entry on the war, he should bring out a daily halfpenny noonday paper, to give, on a small sheet, news only, and not opinions. At that time evening papers could not be bought till four o’clock, and the idea was discussed between us until it became clear that we were only going to fight Afghans, and not Russians.’
The situation was serious enough to demand an autumn Session, because the beginnings of the war were directly connected with Russian action. After the Queen had assumed her new title of Empress of India, Lord Lytton was instructed to propose a Mission to the Amir. But the Amir, who had previously declined to admit surveying parties of British officers, now refused this. In the spring of 1878, when war threatened between England and Russia, the Russian Government also proposed an Embassy to Kabul, and although they likewise met with a refusal, the Mission was despatched and reached Kabul.
The Indian Government now saw themselves under a slight; Russia’s Mission had been received, theirs had been refused entrance. Peremptorily they renewed their request. No answer was returned; the Mission set out, and was stopped by armed force. Declaration of war followed, and by November 20th British troops had crossed the frontier. Invasion of Afghanistan was in full progress when Parliament assembled.
Sir Charles saw Gambetta on December 3rd, and returned to England, and by the 4th was discussing at the Radical Club the course to be taken on the Address. In his travels he had visited the north-west frontier of India. It was settled that he should speak, but, as he notes, the debate in the Commons ‘was swamped by that in the Lords,’ and, further, ‘I found myself once again in a difficulty on the Afghan question, as I had been on the Eastern Question, that of not agreeing with either side.’
Lord Hartington, as usual, had been prompt in the assurance of patriotic support for a Government actually engaged in war; Mr. Gladstone was passionate in denunciation of the war itself. Between these poles Sir Charles had to steer, and the pith of his speech was a charge against the Government that they were punishing the Afghans for having submitted to a violent act of aggression perpetrated by Russia.
‘On Tuesday, December 10th, I spoke in the debate, doing my best to calm down a revolt which had broken out below the gangway against Hartington for not having countenanced an amendment to the Address, and for having made on the Address a speech supposed to be too friendly to the Government.
‘On the other hand, Edward Jenkins, [Footnote: Author of _Ginx’s Baby_.] who called himself a Radical, and who was a strong Imperialist, was busy drawing amendments which were mere pretexts for voting with the Government, and I noted in my diary my despair at finding such men blaming Hartington for going too far, when Chamberlain was blaming him for not going far enough. While I was speaking on the 10th Wilfrid Lawson passed to me his copy of the Orders of the Day, bearing at the head the lines:
‘”Lord Salisbury once was the ‘master of jeers, But now he has met with disaster;
For, on reading the Blue Book, it plainly appears That Giers is Lord Salisbury’s master.”
The lines were excellent, and I burst out laughing in the middle of my speech. Giers was the new Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the phrase quoted in Lawson’s first line was, of course, an abridgment of Mr. Disraeli’s memorable quotation from Shakespeare about his colleague, and the four lines formed a summary of my speech…. [Footnote: On August 5th, 1874, Disraeli, speaking in the debate on the Lords’ disagreement to certain amendments made by the House of Commons in the Public Worship Regulation Bill, had described Lord Salisbury as “a great master of gibes and flouts and jeers.”] It came out clearly in these debates that Northcote had not expected war, and that Lord Lytton had acted directly under the instructions of the Prime Minister, and had not only expected, but intended it. I called Lord Lytton in my speech “a diplomatist rather than a Viceroy, a Secretary of Legation rather than a ruler of men.” This was not intended for abuse, but to bring the House to see him as I had seen him in my knowledge of him as Secretary at Paris, in order to show that he had been sent out to India to be an instrument–obedient to a policy dictated to him from home.’ [Footnote: Sir Charles had been staying with the Commander-in-Chief at Madras, General Haines, afterwards Field-Marshal, in January, 1876, when the news came of Lord Lytton’s appointment as Governor-General. ‘The old soldier absolutely refused to credit the information, being a strong Conservative, and unwilling to admit that Mr. Disraeli could have been guilty of so extraordinary a mistake.’]
This Afghan War, so lightly begun, and fraught with so much disaster, was the first of a series of events which sapped the credit of the Government that had triumphantly claimed to bring back “peace with honour” from the Congress of Berlin.
Some intimate aspects of that gathering are preserved in Sir Charles’s account of a dinner-party at Sir William Harcourt’s house on December 11th, the guests including the Russian Ambassador, who had been one of the plenipotentiaries.
‘Schouvalof was very funny. He gave us a fancy picture of the whole Congress of Berlin. He described almost every member of the Congress, standing up at the table speaking English when he did Lord Beaconsfield, and mimicking the Prime Minister’s grave manner, with absurdly comical effect. At last he came to Lord Salisbury, who, according to him, spoke bad French. He made Lord Salisbury coin an extraordinary phrase, at which he himself (Schouvalof), all the Frenchmen, and Gortschakof, shrugged their shoulders with one accord. Lord Salisbury turned fiercely round, and asked what was the matter with it, to which Saint-Vallier replied that “there was nothing the matter with it except that it was not French.” “Not French?” said Lord Salisbury, and rang the electric bell by the button in front of him, and when the door was opened, holding up his hand to show the messenger who had rung, said: “Fetch Mr. Currie.” Philip Currie appeared at the door, bowing deeply, whereon Lord Salisbury read his phrase to him, and said, “Mr. Currie, is that good French?” to which Currie replied, “Excellent French, my lord;” whereon Lord Salisbury turned, said Schouvalof, “to our French colleagues, and said: ‘There!'” Schouvalof carried on violent discussions between Lord Beaconsfield, speaking English, and Gortschakof, speaking French, about various boundary questions, and brought in Bismarck every minute or two as a chorus, the Chancellor stalking up and down the room with his arms folded, and growling in a deep voice: “Eh bien, messieurs, arrangez-vous; car, si vous ne vous arrangez pas, demain je pars pour Kissingen.” Under this Bismarckian pressure Schouvalof, after making us shriek for half an hour, brought his Congress to an end…. In a confidential talk with me afterwards Schouvalof said: “I have known many rude people, but I never knew anyone so rude as was Bismarck at the Congress. I happened to name our poor clients, the Montenegrins, when Bismarck roared at me: “Je ne veux pas entendre parler de ces gens-la.” Schouvalof also said of our relations with the Afghans: “You don’t understand dealing with Orientals. Compare your letters to the Amir and ours, published in your Blue-Book. We call him the Sun and Moon, and you call him an ‘earthen pipkin.'” This last was an allusion to the phrase used to the Amir, “an earthen pipkin between two iron pots,” the iron pots being ourselves and Russia.’
II.
Sir Charles Dilke in this year has record of meeting with many interesting persons, some of them links with a vanishing past, such as the daughter of Horace Smith, who with his brother wrote _Rejected Addresses_. Miss “Tizy” Smith was, he says,
‘the last survivor of that school of noisy, frolicsome, boisterous old ladies given to punning and banging people on the back; but she was very witty, and, for those who had spirits to bear her spirits, most entertaining. She was for many years known as the “Queen of Brighton,” but her sway was not despotic.’
In February he
‘dined with Lady Waldegrave to meet the Duc de Chartres–no better and no worse than the other Princes of his house…., 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, and the Comte de Paris is now (1890) almost as deaf as the Prince de Joinville, who was put into the navy in his youth, because, not hearing the big guns, he alone of all the family was not frightened by them.’
In March, 1878, Gambetta sent to Dilke with an introduction ‘Henri Hecht, who was deep in his secrets, and in the habit from this time forward of visiting for him Germany as well as England.’ Going backwards and forwards to his house at Toulon, Sir Charles always broke the journey at Paris to see Gambetta. He writes to Ashton Dilke:
“Gambetta says that he shall say at Grenoble that MacMahon said: ‘J’irai jusqu’au bout,’ and that he must–_i.e._, he must complete his term. He won’t have him again. ‘J’en ai assez d’une fois.'”
At Easter Sir Charles was using his influence with Gambetta on behalf of a great artist who had been politically compromised in the troubles of 1871 –Dalou the sculptor, who had done to Dilke’s commission a copy in has- relief of Flaxman’s “Mercury and Pandora.”
‘When I was leaving for Paris I had several interviews with Dalou as to getting him leave to return to France without his asking for it. He had been sub-curator of the Louvre under the Commune, and had helped to preserve the collections from destruction; but after he fled the country he had always refused to ask for leave to return, which, had he asked, would at once have been granted to him. Gambetta always insisted, when I spoke to him upon the matter, that Dalou should write some letter, however private and however personal, to ask for leave to return; but this was just what Dalou’s pride would never let him do, and although he was willing to ask me verbally, and even to refer to the matter in a private letter to myself, he never would write about it to anyone in France. Dalou was afterwards selected to make the official statues of the Republic, and may be said to have become, after the general amnesty, Sculptor-in-Ordinary to the Government of France.’
There is a story of Count Beust’s difficulties when the Empress of Austria suddenly asked herself to dine with him at the Austrian Embassy at six on Sunday, at twenty-four hours’ notice. Beust’s cook was out of town; but worse was the difficulty of finding guests of adequate importance. The Prince of Wales had a dinner-party of his own at Marlborough House, so recourse was had to another Royal couple, the Duke and Duchess of Teck. They were engaged to the Marlborough House dinner, but suggested a heroic expedient. “Why not dine with you at six, and go on at a quarter-past eight and dine again!” So it was settled.
An eccentric dinner took place at 76, Sloane Street, when the Maharajah of Johore returned the visit which Sir Charles had paid him in his States near Singapore. Lord Randolph Churchill and other people interested in India were among the guests, and the Maharajah brought his own cook, who prepared enough for all, so that the guests had their choice of two menus. The host took the Maharajah’s, ‘which was good but rich,’ and ‘suffered, as did all who ate his garlics and his grease.’
‘On March 21st I breakfasted with Lord Granville to meet Lord Lyons, there being also there Lord Ripon, Lord Acton (a man of great learning and much charm), Lord Carlingford (Chichester Fortescue that had been), Grant Duff, Sir Thomas Wade (the great Chinese scholar, and afterwards Professor of Chinese at Cambridge), Lefevre, Meredith Townsend of the _Spectator_, old Charles Howard, and “old White,” roaring with that terrible roar which seems almost necessary to go with his appearance. I have known two men, both in the Foreign Office service, that looked like bears–Lord Tenterden, [Footnote: Permanent Under-Secretary of State, afterwards Dilke’s colleague at the Foreign Office.] a little black graminivorous European bear, and “old White,” a polar bear if ever I saw one, always ready to hug his enemies or his friends, and always roaring so as to shake the foundations of your house. “Lord Lyons,” I noted in my diary, “does not make any mark in private, but that may be because he does his duty and holds his tongue. The diplomatists who talk delightfully, like Odo Russell, are perhaps not the best models of diplomacy.” But White afterwards made a great Ambassador.
‘On March 3rd Goschen dined with me, asked by me to meet “Brett, Hartington’s new secretary”‘ (now Lord Esher). ‘Reginald Brett was, and is, an extremely pleasant fellow, and he was the ablest secretary, except Edward Hamilton, that I ever came across; but he was far from being a model secretary, because … he always behaved as if he held delegated authority from Hartington to represent Hartington’s conscience when it would not otherwise have moved, and “Hartington’s opinion” when the chief had none…. But Brett in all he did had public ends in view….
‘On July 30th I dined at a dinner given by a lion-hunter who managed to get together some remarkable and some pleasant people–Cardinal Manning, Ruskin, Greenwood, and Borthwick. But whether it was the influence of the host, or whether it was because Manning did not like his company except me, and Ruskin did not like his company at all, the dinner was a failure. No one talked but Ruskin, and he prosed, and his prose of speech was not his prose of pen. Manning wished to see me about some education matter, and I called on him on August 2nd, and from that time forward saw a good deal of the Cardinal.’
Next came members of what was to be the Fourth Party, although then ‘isolated individuals.’ In February Sir Charles had a long talk with Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, and ‘found him holding very different views upon foreign affairs from those which afterwards united him with his future leader. In fact, he had nothing at this moment in common with Lord Randolph except a personal detestation of Lord Derby.’
Sir John Gorst had acted with Sir Charles to preserve the rights of native races, especially the Maories; and thus a friendship had grown up, in which Dilke was anxious to include Mr. Chamberlain.
‘On July 26th Chamberlain dined with me to meet Richard Power, the new Irish Whip, and Gorst, the latter soon afterwards to join with Randolph Churchill in the formation of the memorable Fourth Party, and to be known as “Randolph’s Attorney-General.” Many years afterwards, when Randolph Churchill had quarrelled with Gorst, and the Fourth Party had finally gone to pieces, Lord Randolph said to me: “Gorst was the best adviser I ever had. I often failed to follow his advice, and have always regretted not following it.” When the Fourth Party was first formed, he advised that we should sit immediately behind the leaders–I with my knees in Northcote’s back. I overruled him, and we sat below the gangway; but he was right. We should have done far more execution if I had been nearer to “the Goat.” Lord Randolph never alluded to Sir Stafford Northcote except by this playful appellation, based upon the long, straggling, yellow-white beard of the Conservative Chief. When he was in good humour the Fourth Party leader alluded to the Conservative leader as “the goat”; but when angry as “the old goat,” and often with many of those disrespectful adjectives in which in private conversation he delighted.
‘At dinner at the Harcourts’ on August 10th, Arthur Balfour present: … I am the greatest of admirers of his “charm.”‘
Ireland, which makes or breaks politicians, made Mr. A. J. Balfour. Here is some detail of one of the men whom Ireland broke. Towards the end of the Session came to Sir Charles a letter from the Duchess of Manchester at Aix-les-Bains:
“Please back up Mr. Forster. I think he is quite right. Fancy, to be chosen and proposed by a Committee, adopted by 300 idiots or geniuses, and to have to submit, when you can stand on your own merits.”
‘A German Conservative Duchess was not likely to be able to understand the Caucus. Forster was her friend, going and sitting with her almost every day, and chuckling over her politics with his extraordinary chuckle, and playing cards with her at night. To his card-playing, indeed, he ultimately owed his life, for the Invincibles in Dublin used to wait for him night after night outside his club to murder him (as afterwards came out in the Phoenix Park trial), and, tired out with waiting, at last fancy that he must have gone home. Forster was at this moment at loggerheads with his Bradford constituents, and hence the letter of the Duchess; but I did not “back up” Forster, being myself an absolute believer in the wisdom of the Caucus system. I had, indeed, invented a Caucus in Chelsea before the first Birmingham Election Association was started.’
Sir Charles left for Paris, and–
‘on September 6th I met Emile Ollivier, who said that there had never been in France a personal power equal to that of Gambetta at this moment; even that of Napoleon, when First Consul, was not so great. Then the Bourbons were dimly seen behind. “Now there is nothing behind; nothing except Clericalism, and Clericalism can be bought.”
‘Ollivier I found still full of burning hatred for the Empress, but he had forgiven Rouher and the Emperor for making him the scapegoat. I discussed with him once more the origin of the war of 1870, and he maintained most stoutly that France had been driven into it by Bismarck, and had only put herself in the wrong by herself declaring war, and had done this because her army system gave her a fortnight’s start, the advantage of which was lost through the Emperor’s hesitations. He thinks that in that fortnight the German Army could have been destroyed. It is on this point that he is wrong.’
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ZULU WAR AND THE GREEK COMMITTEE
The chronicle of the year 1879 begins with a visit paid by Sir Charles to Paris on his way back from his house near Toulon, to which he had returned after the brief Session of December, On February 2nd ‘I breakfasted with Gambetta. His furniture was being packed up for removal to the Palais Bourbon, where he was about to take up residence as President of the Chamber,’ and ‘saw him again late at night at the office of his paper’ (_La Republique Francaise_). ‘Gambetta was then,’ says a note added later, ‘at the height of his power, and, in fact, Dictator. He was a patriot, but too big for the Republic.’
‘On my return to London I found that Chamberlain was most anxious to see me,’ and on February 5th Sir Charles went to Birmingham, to discuss their joint line of action in the coming Session. During this visit ‘Chamberlain told me of Lord Beaconsfield’s pleasant prophecies with regard to myself, of which I heard from all sides just after this time.’
The “pleasant prophecies” declared that Sir Charles would certainly be Prime Minister. Mr. Gladstone, it will be seen later, came to the conclusion in 1882 that Dilke would be his natural successor in the House of Commons; but this opinion was given only a little in advance of a widely received public estimate, and it came after the test of office had proved those qualities which Lord Beaconsfield discerned while the younger statesman was still only a private member of the Opposition, not promoted to the Front Bench.
But no one, even in 1879, doubted that Sir Charles was of Front Bench rank; and close upon this came a decisive opportunity in Parliament.
Trouble, which threatened to become acute, between the Zulu power under Cetewayo and his encroaching Boer neighbours had led the British Government to carry out the annexation of the Transvaal during the course of 1877. The Zulus were inclined to trust the British more than the Dutch; but the advent of Sir Bartle Frere as High Commissioner put a new complexion on matters. Frere had made up his mind that the Zulu power must be broken, and a pretext was soon found in a demand for the abolition of the Zulu military system. This ultimatum was presented on December 11th, 1878, by Frere, of his own motion, and without warning to the Home Government. The inevitable refusal followed, leading to invasion of the Zulu territory, with disastrous result. On January 23rd, 1879, Lord Chelmsford’s force was cut to pieces at Isandhlwana; and it seemed possible that the whole colony of Natal might be overrun by Zulu _impis_.
This was the governing factor of the political situation at the moment when Parliament reopened in 1879. Sir Charles had not previously taken a prominent part in the discussion of South African affairs, and his attitude is indicated only by isolated passages in the Memoir.
In 1875, when Lord Carnarvon sent J. A. Froude to ‘stump South Africa’ in advocacy of a scheme of federation devised in Downing Street, Sir Charles condemned a mission which seemed to him to cast a slur on the local Colonial governments. In his opinion, this mission helped to create those disturbances which rent South Africa in the succeeding years. On May 27th, 1877, he noted that the Blue Book on the Transvaal, then published, was ‘an indictment of the Republic intended to justify the annexation,’ but that it did not ‘show the existence of any overwhelming necessity for annexation, or, indeed, any necessity at all.’ Yet he gave only a half- hearted support to Mr. Courtney’s opposition to the South Africa Bill when those matters were debated in the House, for, as he wrote in a letter to the _Spectator_, he was opposed, “not to the policy of annexation, which, as leading up to confederation,” he supported, “but to the manner in which that annexation had been carried out.” It was said to have been done by the desire of the Dutch themselves. If so, why were three battalions of British troops still needed in the Transvaal? The Bill did not establish a self-governing federation; it only provided that federation might be established by an Order in Council. What guarantee had the Dutch, he asked, that such an order would ever be issued?
Events justified his question, for the promise was never made good, even when the Liberals themselves came into office, and Sir Charles resented the iniquity of this dealing.
In February, 1878, he met Froude at dinner, and ‘discussed with him the South African question, on which we took widely different views, and of which his were to be the source of much unhappiness to the Mother Country and the Colonies.’
With the difficulty of the Transvaal the Zulu outbreak was indirectly connected. Great Britain had been drawn into strife with the Zulu power, which had for more than thirty years lived peaceably beside the Natal Government, only because the annexation had made England responsible for the peace of the disputed territories beyond the Vaal. There was also a strong if indirect connecting-link in the personality of Sir Bartle Frere, who, as High Commissioner in South Africa, had belittled the Boer claims, and who now by a violent stretch of authority had precipitated war with the Zulus.
After his discussion with Chamberlain at Birmingham, Sir Charles had decided to indict the Government’s South African policy on the first possible occasion, and he communicated this intention to Lord Hartington. Owing to the prolonged winter Session there was to be no Queen’s Speech, and consequently no Address, at the opening of Parliament, and Sir Stafford Northcote was to begin the proceedings with a general statement. Lord Hartington, after some hesitation as to the course to be pursued, ultimately commissioned Sir Charles to reply at once on behalf of the Opposition–a task which would naturally fall to the official leader of the party. The opportunity thus given to him was the more notable because the Liberal chiefs were divided as to the line which should be taken. Harcourt, Sir Charles records, ‘tried to prevent me from bringing forward any motion as to the Zulu War,’ but Chamberlain was strong in the opposite sense. “We want to din into the constituencies,” he wrote, “that the Government policy is one of _continual_, petty, fruitless, unnecessary, and inglorious squabbles–all due to their bullying, nagging ways.” This was consonant with the Birmingham leader’s fierce opposition to Jingoism; and for once he shared the view of his titular leader.
‘Hartington fell in with the view taken by Chamberlain, and my notice to call attention to the South African papers and the causes of the war was given with his consent. The bad news from the Cape ‘–news of Isandhlwana–‘ which came on February 11th, had changed his former view. My speech on Northcote’s motion was on the 13th February.’
He then brought forward on behalf of the Liberal party a resolution condemning the Government’s policy in South Africa, and more especially the conduct of Sir Bartle Frere. The date for this main attack was not fixed till after considerable delay, and before it arrived the words of the motion which stood in Sir Charles’s name were annexed bodily, and put down in the name of Lord Lansdowne, to be moved in the Lords on an earlier day. Lord Lansdowne sat on the Liberal Front Bench in the Upper House (where he took an active part in criticism of Conservative policy), and Sir Charles called this proceeding “taking the bread out of a private member’s mouth,” despite the implied compliment to his tact in drafting the Resolution. Sunday, the 23rd March, he spent at Mentmore, Lord Rosebery’s house, where Lord and Lady Granville were staying, and he notes:
‘I could not but think (although Lord Granville was very civil and told me that he had advised the King of the Belgians to go to the House of Commons on the following Thursday to hear my speech) that if Lord Granville had thought that my speech was going to be a success, he would not have stolen my motion for Lord Lansdowne to bring it on first in the House of Lords. I could not see the wisdom of the tactics, because it was already certain we should have a better division in the Commons, proportionately speaking, than in the Lords. At Devonshire House, on the previous Wednesday, Lord Lansdowne came up to me in the entrance hall, where it is rather dark, and began talking to me, and as I did not see who it was, he introduced himself– “Lansdowne the pirate,” of course in allusion to the robbery of my words.’
The words were–
“That this House, while willing to support Her Majesty’s Government in all necessary measures for defending the possessions of Her Majesty in South Africa, regrets that the ultimatum which was calculated to produce immediate war should have been presented to the Zulu king without authority from the responsible advisers of the Crown, and that an offensive war should have been commenced without imperative or pressing necessity or adequate preparation; and this House further regrets that after the censure passed, upon the High Commissioner by Her Majesty’s Government in the despatch of the 19th day of March, 1879, the conduct of affairs in South Africa should be retained in his hands.”
‘These words did not please all men. Fawcett wrote me two strong letters to protest against them. Lord Granville also discussed them at some length with me in writing. Fawcett was largely moved by detestation of Sir Bartle Frere, and, while my chief object was to stop the war, his object was to force Frere to resign. The feeling against the proconsul was strong among the Liberals.
‘On the 25th the debate in the Lords took place. The House was thronged, the galleries being filled with ladies, and (there being a Court mourning) all in black–save one, Lady —-. She was in scarlet from top to toe, or more than toe, for she displayed a pair of long scarlet stockings to a startled House, and each member as he came in said, “Good gracious me, who’s that?” so that Lansdowne could hardly begin for the buzz. His speech was dull, and the result was favourable to the Government. Two days later I brought forward my motion in the Commons, and had a great personal success, receiving the congratulations of all the leading men of both parties. I spoke for two hours and a half, and kept the House full, without ever for an instant being in doubt as to the complete success of the speech; greatly cheered by my own side, without being once questioned or interrupted by the other. But the speech was far from being my best speech, although it was by far my greatest success. It was an easy speech to make–a mere Blue-Book speech. The case from the papers was overwhelming. All that had to be done was to state it in a clear way, and I should think that more than half the speech consisted of mere reading of extracts, which, however, I read in such a way as to incorporate them in the body of the speech. The opening and the conclusion, both of which were effective, were not my own; for they were suggested to me, only I think on the same day, by William Rathbone, who sometimes thought of a good way of putting things. While I was gratified by the success of the speech, I could not help feeling how completely these things are a matter of opportunity, inasmuch as I had made dozens of better speeches in the House, of which some had been wholly unsuccessful.’
Nothing was wanting to the completeness of the after-effects of his House of Commons triumph.
‘The general feeling seemed to be, as Lord Reay put it in his letter of congratulation, that my speech on South African affairs was “the Cape of Good Hope of the Liberal party.”‘ [Footnote: Lord Reay (Baron Mackay of Ophemert), a Hollander by birth, then recently naturalized, spoke with special authority when South Africa was in question. The Barony was originally Scotch, and created in 1628. A peerage of the United Kingdom was conferred on Lord Reay (the eleventh Baron) in 1881.]
By this speech his contemporaries remember Sir Charles as a speaker. Sir George Trevelyan writes:
“His great speech on South Africa was a wonderful exposition, lucid, convincing, detailed, without being heavy. I can well recall how old members admired the manner in which he ticked off topic after topic, with its due amount of illustration from the Blue-Books.”
A letter to Mrs. Pattison, written, as he says in it, “under the violent excitement of a splendid personal success,” contains his own estimate. The congratulations of leading men of all parties were couched, he said, “in such a way as made me realize how badly I had always spoken before.” And in his Memoir he adds the modest comment that ‘praise was forthcoming in abundance. The only praise, however, that I can accept as fairly belonging to this speech, is praise for a past of work which had led up to it.’
The result, especially with an indolent man like Lord Hartington as leader, was that the conduct of the Opposition’s case was increasingly left to Sir Charles Dilke. _Truth_ put the popular view amusingly enough in Hiawathan verse:
“Never absent, always ready
To take up the burning question
Of the hour and make a motion:
Be it Cyprus, be it Zulu,
He can speak for hours about it
From his place below the gangway. No Blue Book avails to fright him:
He’s the stomach of an ostrich
For the hardest facts and figures, And assimilates despatches
In the most surprising fashion.”
A serious tribute to his success follows:
‘I was asked by Sir Thomas Bazley, who was eighty-two years of age, to stand for Manchester in his place, with a promise from Manchester that my expenses would be paid. But I was under a volunteered pledge not to leave Chelsea until beaten, which I thought I should be “this time.”‘
Sir Charles records as one feature of the debate the sudden and painful failure of Mr. Lowe’s hitherto great debating powers:
‘On the second night of the debate I dined with Sir Charles Forster’ (member for Walsall, and well known as a dinner-giver to the chiefs of the Liberal party) ‘to meet Lord Hartington, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Bright. Almost the sole topic of conversation was the breakdown in the debate of Lowe, who had apparently been trusting as usual to his hitherto marvellous memory, when this had failed him, and he stopped short’ (in the middle of a sentence), ‘and failed ever, henceforward, to regain his power.’
The future of Greece engaged Sir Charles’s attention far more constantly than this South African embroilment. Cyprus was a branch of the Greek question, and (in a speech of March 20th, 1879) he had attacked Wolseley’s administration of the island. The General replied in a Blue Book, which was debated on June 20th, 1879:
‘The Cypriotes were so excited that they were sending me not only every fact, but every story, and as it was difficult to sift them in London, I dare say some of the charges were untrue and some were certainly trivial.’
One telegram had complained bitterly of the injustice done to two priests whose beards were cut off in a British gaol, although nothing was said as to the justice of their imprisonment. But “the existence of forced labour under our rule had certainly been admitted,” said Sir Charles in his speeches on the question, and on this and on the law which the Government of Cyprus had passed, taking to itself powers of arbitrary exile without trial, he rested a case in which he persevered throughout the Session, debating Cyprus ‘at such length, I fear, as to bore the House.’ He relates that he once began a speech on Cyprus before a party of members set out for the Crystal Palace to dine, and was still delivering the same speech when they came back. Later, when in office, he was able to make the administrative changes he desired for the benefit of the island.
One result of Sir Charles’s interest in the affairs of Cyprus was to bring down upon him ‘an enormous correspondence in modern Greek, to read which I had to engage the services of a translator.’
‘The Cypriote Bishops are the most long-winded people with whom I ever had to do, and their communications, although flattering, were somewhat burdensome. I was also receiving many letters in modern Greek from Athens and various centres of Greek activity with regard to the proceedings of the Greek Committee, and I received addresses from Epirus and from the other Turkish provinces and islands inhabited by Greeks in which there was any thought of cession. I was appointed Honorary President of the “Zenon,” whatever that might be, and received similar appointments from various Greek societies. I am, indeed, also a “citizen of Athens.”‘
He received the freedom of that city on July 12th, 1879; the Grand Cross of the Saviour was also offered, but declined.
‘On Sunday, March 30th, Hartington sent to me to exchange notes upon the position of the Greek question, and his attitude seemed to me that, as he did not understand anything about it, he hoped I was being careful and not doing anything very wrong. At all events, he left me to myself, and I delivered my soul in the House.’
This he did on April 17th, putting forward a complaint that, although Greece looked to Great Britain’s representatives at the Congress of Berlin for a traditional championship of the Hellenic claims, Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury had allowed the proposal for an extension of Greek territory to come from French diplomatists; and, further, that the recommendation to this effect inserted in the Treaty of Berlin had been evaded by Turkey. He described in his speech the delays and the unsatisfactory proposals which had been put forward by Turkey in conference with Greek delegates, and demanded European pressure to carry out the declared intentions of Europe. A special obligation of honour rested upon England, so he held, because England had induced Greece to desist from war when Turkey was at grips with Russia, and when the Greeks, by attacking, might easily have secured possession of the territory they desired.
These representations were put forward a month later as the general appeal of the Greek Committee, which had existed as a secret body for a year, but was formally and publicly organized on April 25th, 1879. Preparations were begun for a public meeting, and after several conferences with Lord Lansdowne
‘I invited the speakers and drew up an appeal to the public, and acted as Chairman of the Executive Committee, with Rosebery for President and Lefevre for Treasurer. The meeting was held at Willis’s Rooms on May 17th, 1879, and was attended by men of all shades of opinion–the Duke of Westminster, Sir Robert Peel, an independent Conservative, and several other Conservatives, as well as the mass of the Liberals. I presided, and Lansdowne moved the first resolution.’
Dilke said afterwards that this meeting had been ‘sufficiently interesting to keep Harcourt and a Duke standing for three hours–putting Harcourt first because he was the more august.’
Immediately afterwards he went to Liverpool, as the guest of the Liverpool Reform Club, to speak specially upon the Greek question.
‘My speech was dull; the best thing said in the course of the evening was said by a man who had been _Daily News_ correspondent in Crete– “They talk of Europe! What is Europe? Europe is a number of wicked old gentlemen with decorations, assembled in a room.”
‘During my stay in the neighbourhood of Liverpool I was the guest at Knowsley of Lord and Lady Derby, who were trying by all means in their power to emphasize the fact that they were quite ready to go over to the Liberal side’ (as they did within the year). ‘I tried hard to get Rosebery to make some speeches in the country upon the Greek question, but this attempt was a failure. He was greatly pressed to go to Manchester in the same way in which I had gone to Liverpool, but after taking a long time to think of the thing, he distinctly refused. I never quite knew why; but caution was always the predominant element in his nature, though he was occasionally rash just when he should have been cautious.’
In June Sir Charles became possessed of ‘a curious document which he translated and made public.’ According to the story told him, the letter had been in the mailbags aboard a steamer which was wrecked, and it had been retrieved along with the rest from the bottom of the sea. But
‘it was probably bought for the Greeks by their spy Fitzgerald, the “journalist” who afterwards disappeared–finally–about 1894. He had, however, often disappeared for some years. The letter was stamped with an Italian stamp for foreign post, addressed to Mouktar Pasha, commanding in chief the Turkish army in Epirus; and, although the envelope was plain and not calculated to attract attention, the letter was on Italian Foreign Office paper, and dated from the Foreign Office at Rome on April 6th. It was from Corte, an Italian Consul-General who had been employed in Albania and afterwards in the Italian Foreign Office, and pointed to Italian intrigue in Albania to make the Italians rather than the Greeks the successors of the Turks in Albania and Epirus. Seven years later I saw a good deal of Mouktar Pasha at Constantinople, but I did not mention this letter either to him or to the Sultan. It referred to Mouktar’s idea of “colonization in Epirus,” and, from the context, and from what we know of previous proceedings, it would seem that this colonization of Epirus was to have been a colonization by Italian peasants.’
This letter came to Sir Charles as President of the Greek Committee, and here may be added notice of the birth of an enterprise kindred in spirit to the political association of those who loved Greece:
‘On Monday, June 16th, I took part in the meeting at which the Hellenic Society was founded, it having grown out of a conference held at Cambridge between Mr. Newton of the British Museum (afterwards Sir Charles Newton), Professor Colvin, and me. The first resolution was moved by Lord Morley (Earl Morley, afterwards Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords), and seconded by Professor Sayce; the second by me, and seconded by the Dean of St. Paul’s; the third by Sir John Lubbock, and seconded by Professor Jebb; and the fourth by Professor Colvin, and seconded by Gennadius.’
Two other questions of abiding interest were touched on by Sir Charles this year. That of Upper Houses is mentioned in connection with interviews with Sir Graham Berry, one of his Colonial acquaintances.
‘Mr. (afterwards Sir) Graham Berry, Prime Minister, or, as they call it in the Colonies, “Premier” of Victoria; a rough, able man, son of a Chelsea tradesman…. We arranged a reception, which was given to Berry by the parish of Chelsea at the Chelsea Vestry Hall, myself in the chair, when we presented him with an address expressing the hope that the Victoria Lower House might prevail in its struggle against the Upper. Professor Pearson, formerly of Oxford–a Free Trader, though Mr. Berry was a Protectionist–was with him, and they were over to try to persuade the Colonial Office to support them against the Upper House.’
‘Sir Graham Berry was afterwards the Agent-General of his Colony, but still possessed the confidence of the Liberal party in Victoria in a higher degree than any other man, and he afterwards returned to local politics and became Speaker. Pearson wrote a great book before he died.’
Sir Graham Berry wrote later in this year ‘for opinions upon a Bill of reform of the Upper House in his Parliament,’ to which Sir Charles replied ‘that I disliked Upper Houses so much as not to be in favour of reforming them.’
This attitude he always maintained. His views upon the whole question of representation were this year put into a pamphlet which
‘advocated, in addition to the reforms upon which Liberals were agreed, the system of double elections, as on the Continent–that is to say, a second poll to be held when at the first the person at the head of the poll did not obtain a clear majority of votes.’
The other question takes the first place in Sir Charles’s note of his conversations with Chamberlain at the beginning of the Session. This touched on economic difficulties, and runs thus:
“That it would be wise to have a motion on the condition of the realm: probably by moving for a Committee to inquire into the cause of the present distress, and that Mundella would be the best person to move, especially if the Front Bench would support him, as the distress is most severe in Sheffield.”
Some years, however, elapsed before Sir Charles was able to deal with such questions authoritatively as President of the Local Government Board.
We can trace at this time the beginning of those close relations which Dilke and Chamberlain cultivated (even after they had joined Mr. Gladstone’s Government) with the new power that was growing up in Parliament. On February 15th, ‘we were anxious that the Irish should vote with us about the Zulu War, the more so because her leaders were hesitating upon the subject,’ and Sir Charles invited Mr. Parnell to meet Mr. Chamberlain at dinner; but they ‘were able to make but little of him.’ Further meetings took place, from which the only practical result was a promise of Parnell’s support in their opposition to the County Boards Bill, which the Conservative Government were putting forward as their main measure. The ground of opposition was that ‘it was better to leave the present system alone than to create new Boards only half elective.’
The Memoir has a note respecting one of these meetings with the Irish leader at which Parnell was accompanied by Major Nolan, then member for County Galway:
‘Nolan showed opportunist Nationalism; Parnell irreconcilable Nationalism. The latter let out, in spite of his great caution, that if we chose to go to Ireland on Mill’s land programme, we could destroy his position and the Home Rule movement. Nolan said that a party which would give security of tenure to the small tenants could afford to leave the large ones out. (To touch the large tenancies in that sense would be virtually to charge the possession of property in Ireland with partial compensation.)’
At this moment, the beginning of 1879, the purely Nationalist agitation for self-government had not yet been joined to the demand for an improved and freer status for the Irish tenant. This was mainly the work of Davitt, and Davitt had scarcely yet been heard of by the wider public.
CHAPTER XIX
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INTERESTS
Hospitable and popular, Sir Charles had the best of what those days could offer in talk and talkers. He compared his own country very unfavourably with the possible standard of social intercourse:
‘In England and in France people seem wholly unaware that they cannot either in politics or in literature deal with or even understand questions involving philosophical and historical considerations without any training in either philosophy or history, and one sees writings and speeches by persons who think themselves members of an educated class which are unintelligible to any who have the slightest discipline of either habit of thought or form of expression.’
‘In the best English political and literary society there is no conversation. Mr. Gladstone will talk with much charm about matters that he does not understand, or books that he is not really competent to criticize; but his conversation has no merit to those who are acquainted with the subjects on which he speaks. Men like Lord Rosslyn, [Footnote: Lord Rosslyn died in 1890.] 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, you fall into priggism. On the whole, Hastings, Duke of Bedford, was the best specimen that I ever knew of an English gentleman as regards learning and conversation; but then he was horrible as a man, in spite of his pretty manners, because ferocious in his ideas upon property. Now, at Rome is to be found that which is unknown in London, in Paris, in St. Petersburg, and unknown, I fancy, at Vienna and Berlin, although of these I know far less–namely, conversation not priggish or academic, and yet consistently maintained at a high level.
‘I often heard Mr. Gladstone talk well at little Charles Forster’s. “Mr. G.” also seemed to me to talk especially well at the table of Sir Walter James, [Footnote: The first Lord Northbourne.] an old gentleman who had left Parliament soon after I was born. In those two houses he was supreme; but if Coleridge or the Viper (Abraham Hayward) or Browning were present, who talked better than he did, and would not give way to him, he was less good. Villiers, who was another good talker, “Mr. G.” could not abide, and his presence also was a damper.’
In the next year we have ‘a dinner at the French Embassy, where Gladstone was very agreeable, talking French well in an old-fashioned style.’
Also, in 1880, there is a dinner to which
‘the first man to come was the Duke of Cambridge, who gave Mr. Gladstone his left hand, and said that his right was too painful through gout. Mr. Gladstone threw his arms up to the sky, as though he had just heard of the reception of Lord Beaconsfield in heaven, or of some other similar terrible news. His habit of play-acting in this fashion, in the interest of a supposed politeness, is a very odd one, giving a great air of unreality to everything he does; but of course it is a habit of long years.
‘I heard good talk about this time at Coleridge’s house, but preferred his Blakes–which were even better than mine–to his conversation.’
Under the date February 23rd is record of sitting up late at night at the Lubbocks’ with Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the Judge:
‘We did not agree upon any point, for his opinions upon all things, especially hanging, were the exact opposite of my own. He talked of “our dear old British gallows.” But we got on well, and I was one of those who greatly regretted his breakdown, which occurred some ten years later. He and Leslie Stephen were the sons of Sir James Stephen, Professor of History at Cambridge–very unlike one another in early life, when J. F. Stephen was a fat, half-Whig, half-Tory lawyer and _Saturday Reviewer_, and Leslie a starved-looking, free-thinking Radical parson, afterwards to throw off his Orders. As they grew old they became much alike in appearance, and in opinion.’
There is a note of spending a Sunday in March ‘at Aston Clinton, with the widow of Sir Anthony de Rothschild and her daughter, Mrs. Cyril Flower, afterwards Lady Battersea.
‘Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild and his wife came to dinner, and, well knowing as I did two other members of the family, I could see how strangely like a Royal family the Rothschilds are in one respect– namely, that they all quarrel with one another, but are united as against the world. When Cyril Flower, in 1878, made a speech unfriendly to the Government, but not more so than might naturally be expected at that time from a Liberal member, Baron Lionel sent for him, and told him that it was “wicked and abominable for him to attack a man who had been a poor Jew and was now the greatest man in England.” “In Europe, papa,” cut in Nathaniel, who was present at this public cursing.
‘From March 15th to the 17th I stayed at York House with the Grant Duffs, where I met the Marquis and Marquise de la Ferronnays, Henry Cowper, Minto, Lord Reay, and Herbert Spencer. La Ferronnays was at this time Military Attache at the French Embassy, but resigned as soon as the Republic became consolidated, and, being elected to the Chamber, was soon the fighting leader of the high Tory party–a not clever, but excellent gentleman, like the others.
‘On Monday, March 31st, I dined at the Harcourts’, but, alas I this time no Schouvalof. His place was occupied by Rancez, the Spanish Minister, who had the same diplomatic capacity for concealing the truth while talking with equal apparent frankness, but who was less amusing.
‘On Monday, April 7th, I dined with Lord and Lady Arthur Russell, to meet old Lady Russell. I had seen her once before at Pembroke Lodge, and once at Harcourt’s at dinner, on both of which previous occasions I had seen Lord Russell too–a shadow of his former self…. On this occasion Lady Russell was alone, Lord Russell having died in the previous year. [Footnote: In 1878.] The old lady was pleasant, and gave me a general invitation to come to Pembroke Lodge any or every Sunday, an invitation of which I afterwards availed myself.
‘On April 9th I left for France for Easter, and had long and pleasant breakfasts at the Palais Bourbon with Gambetta, varied by a grand dinner on April 16th, at which I met many of those who afterwards held office–Ferry, afterwards Prime Minister; Rouvier, afterwards Prime Minister; Spuller, afterwards Minister for Foreign Affairs; Constans, afterwards Minister of the Interior; and Freycinet, afterwards Prime Minister–all of them dull men enough. Spuller, a kindly and pleasant dull man; Constans, a red-faced Burgundy drinker; Freycinet, a little white intriguer–on the whole a sorry crew, Gambetta towering above them in ability, in joviality, and even in reading.’
In a scrap of an old letter, dated Wednesday, April 16th, Sir Charles says:
“I’ve spent nearly all my time with Gambetta. He said that he thinks Sella ‘le premier homme politique de l’Italie, mais enrage protectionniste.’ He says he told him that if he were not so violent a Protectionist he would be ‘l’homme absolument necessaire.'”
On this follows later the observation:
‘If Gambetta was anything, he was anti-Russian and a Free Trader, and his friends, professing to continue his work, became, after about 1887, rabid Russians and fierce Protectionists.’
He speaks of Gambetta’s ‘contempt for Sella because Sella was a Protectionist,’ and adds: ‘I suppose Gambetta would have become one had he lived.’
While Dilke was in Paris he received a letter from Chamberlain referring to a motion about ‘the interference of the Crown in politics,’ of which Mr. Dillwyn had given notice. Mr. Chamberlain thought the subject “certainly a popular one, but very difficult to treat in the House of Commons.”
‘Dillwyn’s motion was obviously what people would call “interesting,” but obviously also highly dangerous, as it was really impossible to prove the case. The Queen does interfere constantly; more, however, when Liberal Ministers are in power than when she has a Conservative Cabinet, because the Conservatives on the whole do what she likes, as she is a Conservative; whereas the Liberals are continually doing, and indeed exist for the purpose of doing, the things she does not like. But it is very doubtful how far her interference is unconstitutional, and it would be quite impossible to prove it, unless Mr. Gladstone, for example, were to publish her letters–a not very likely supposition. The Queen is a woman of great ability…. She writes to the Prime Minister about everything she does not like, which, when he is a Liberal, means almost everything that he says or does. She complains of his colleagues’ speeches. She complains, with less violence, of his own. She protests against Bills. She insists that administrative acts should not be done without delay, for the purpose of consulting with regard to them persons whose opinions she knows will be unfavourable. But if the Minister acts as she directs, he, and not she, becomes responsible; and he may be impeached, for example, for so doing. And… her action, to my mind, is, strictly speaking, constitutional. Even in the House of Commons, and in a speech taking a rough popular view of the Constitution, it would be difficult to maintain that with her immense experience the Queen is not justified in asking for time in order that men of distinction should be consulted upon various acts; and anything beyond this would be mere matter of inference, not proving the case even if the facts were known, which of course they are not. Our poor Dillwyn on this occasion, prompted by Trevelyan, walked into a hornets’ nest; and, as he did it without consulting his two leaders, his leaders were not bound to follow him.’
‘On March 21st I dined with Sir Baliol and Lady Bret, meeting the German Ambassador (Count Munster) and his daughter, and Lord and Lady Derby. She was not at all bitter about Lord Beaconsfield, although very bitter about the Court; and after dinner Lord Derby said that the Queen was now carrying on a confidential correspondence with every quarter of the globe, so that he was evidently bitter too….
‘On April 22nd I received from Auberon Herbert a letter: “Things look well. The gilding is much tarnished, and shows the brass underneath. You have done right well. Many thanks for your letter. I went to Leeds–on the chance but I suspect I am best out of the House. I can do more to make people believe in themselves, and not in our Moslem idea of government–perhaps–outside the House than in it. You do agree in the fearfully paralyzing effect of belief in Government, don’t you?” The last words reveal the growth in Auberon Herbert of anarchic views, which shortly afterwards turned him for all practical purposes from a Radical into a Tory, or, rather, turned him back to the point from which he had started, for as a Tory private secretary to a Tory Cabinet Minister he had begun political life at the time when he drew up the plan for the action of the troops against the mob on the day of the Hyde Park railings being torn down–a plan so drastic that the Home Secretary, Walpole, refused to move.
‘On Wednesday, April 23rd, I dined with Waddy, M.P., Q.C., [Footnote: Afterwards County Court Judge.] a man who would have been a Judge but for his odd name and his odder manners, “to meet Lord Hartington and the President of the Wesleyan Conference,” an odd mixture. Waddy is a Wesleyan, and wanted Hartington to make the acquaintance of the leading Wesleyans in England, and took this course to bring about the result.
‘My Sundays at this time I had taken to spend at Pembroke Lodge, preferring it to Strawberry Hill as quieter, for we often had there (besides Lady Russell) only Lady Agatha and Rollo Russell, and little Lord Russell when he was home for the holidays from Winchester.
‘On Monday, April 28th, I had an interview with the Duke of Argyll at his wish with regard to the Eastern Question generally, in which he took deep interest, and on which he made, perhaps, on the whole, the most conclusive speech delivered in Parliament against the policy of the Conservative Government. The Duke of Argyll was at this time the most finished and (for a stately occasion and a cultivated audience) about the most convincing speaker that could be found–to me, not so convincing as Gathorne Hardy, and, to all men, less gifted with charm and melody of voice than Mr. Bright; but fine in the extreme, with no serious drawbacks except a little too much satisfaction with himself; a very able man, as his monumental book upon the Eastern Question will suffice to show. In philosophy he dabbled, and for dabblers was a philosopher.
‘On Friday, May 9th, I lunched with Lord and Lady Lansdowne, and found her one of the nicest women that I had ever met–a plain and simple lady. In the evening I dined with Lady Elizabeth Biddulph, and made the acquaintance of Herbert of the Colonial Office, whom I afterwards heard described by Grant Duff in a public speech as “the perfect permanent official.” I had later, when Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to act twice for a short time during changes in the Colonial Office as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonial Office, in addition to my own duties, and I was able to discover for myself how true was what Grant Duff said. On one of these occasions Hicks Beach, who had been Colonial Secretary, gave notice to call attention to salaries of officers on the West Coast of Africa, and I at once sent over to the Colonial Office to tell Herbert that he had done so. Herbert immediately replied that the salaries were low, and the coast unhealthy, and that salaries could hardly be reduced; while, on the other hand, when Sir Michael had been Secretary of State, he had not proposed to raise them; but that so soon as we could learn which it was that he intended–_i.e._, to lower or to raise–he would send me, “in either event, a perfect case.”
‘On May 10th George Sheffield, the _alter ego_ of Lord Lyons, asked himself to breakfast, and I gathered that Lord Lyons had told him to come and pump me as to what Gambetta had indicated of his intentions in France, as George Sheffield kept telling me that Gambetta evidently intended to make himself Dictator in name, as he was in fact.
‘On Sunday, May 11th, I dined with Edmund Yates and his wife, meeting Irving, Browning, Sala, Mrs. Lynn Linton (just back from three years in Florence), Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Murray, and some others. I was intensely amused at watching Mrs. Douglas Murray, agreeable but rather superfine, looking at the Bardolphian nose of “George Augustus,” who took her in to dinner, and of whom she had evidently never heard, and wondering what manner of wild man he could be.
‘On May 17th, after the Greek Committee, I dined with the Lyulph Stanleys…. Chamberlain took Lord Airlie, whom he had never previously met, for Sir George Campbell, and addressed him in a friendly but disrespectful manner, whereupon Lord Airlie promptly and publicly said: “It is all right. You take me for Sir George Campbell. I am used to it; “for they were extraordinarily alike. [Footnote: Mr. Gladstone once made exactly the same mistake at a great public meeting in Scotland in 1879.] In fact, Lord Airlie used to wear his ribbon oftener than other people chiefly because Campbell had not got one, so that it formed a distinction, but not a sufficient one, for members of the House sometimes said to me at parties, “What is that ribbon that Campbell is wearing?” It must have been a relief to Sir George Campbell when Lord Airlie died; but it would have been a greater relief to Lord Airlie had Campbell died first.
‘The next day I spent at Lubbock’s…. Fitzmaurice, Fawcett, and I went for a walk to the oak under which Wilberforce decided to abolish slavery, and, strolling on, came to a stile, where we were doubtful of our way. Fawcett sat down, and Fitzmaurice, looking for the road, cried out: “Here comes a clod. We will ask him.” The slouching labourer was Lord Derby, as we recognized with a loud laugh, joined in with terrific shouting by Fawcett as we privately informed him of the cause, at which Lord Derby was no doubt astonished. However, he did as well as the yokel, for he led us towards home. My low opinion of Lord Derby as a politician does not prevent my thinking that in private he is a most agreeable man; but his appearance is against him. He took us round by Holmwood, where Pitt lived, and Hayes, where his father, Chatham, lived.
‘Whitsuntide I spent partly upon the river in my canoe, [Footnote: Canoeing had at this time taken for him the place of rowing, and he spent his Sundays on the river.] partly at Lord Derby’s, and partly at Dudbrook, Lady Waldegrave’s place in Essex; but the first part of my holiday was spoiled by a summer flood, although the river was very beautiful, there being beds of the snowflake or summer snowdrop in bloom, with large white cups tipped with green. They are all gone now (1900). [Footnote: One at least grew in the willow thicket by his house at Dockett Eddy in May, 1911, after his death, close by a nesting swan–two sights which would have filled him with interest and joy.] The weather was so cold that Lord Derby called it “winter dressed in green.” He and his wife seemed to me to have come over to our side with almost indecent violence and suddenness; but to be called “Titus Oates” in the House of Lords by your relative and successor is too much. [Footnote: This speech of Lord Salisbury’s was made on July 18th, 1878.] The close family connection between the Derbys and Lord Salisbury had a great deal to answer for in the sharpness of the quarrel.
‘At the beginning of June I received at my house two distinguished Frenchmen whom I had not previously known: Edmond About and Coquelin the actor, the latter introduced to me by Gambetta.’
Coquelin was thus introduced:
‘”CHAMBRE DES DEPUTES,
‘”PRESIDENCE,
‘”31 _Mai_, 1879.
‘”CHER AMI,
‘”J’introduis aupres de vous mon ami Coquelin dont vous pourrez apprecier le charmant esprit, et je vous le recommande sans autrement faire de phrases, sachant que vous savez a premier vu reconnaitre les vrais hommes.
‘”C’est a l’ami que je confie l’ami,
‘”A vous, LEON GAMBETTA.”
‘About dined with me at the House of Commons on the day on which the House of Commons met after the Whitsuntide recess; but I did not at the moment know his peculiarity of being unable to touch any article of food which contained onion in any form or had been cooked with it, so that I am afraid I starved him. On June 13th I had prepared accordingly, and he dined with me, and met all the people who spoke good French–Leighton, Mitford, Fitzmaurice, Borthwick, Barrington, Bourke (the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs), Chamberlain–and Montebello and La Ferronnays of his own Embassy, and Gennadius the Greek. It was hard to say whether Mitford, Leighton, or Borthwick spoke the best French. But certainly neither Fitzmaurice, who was a quarter French, nor the three Frenchmen, could venture to contest matters with such talkers. I never heard any fault found with Leighton’s French except that it is too good, though I have heard people declare that his Italian and his German were yet better; but I myself could see no fault in Mitford’s. About naturally came to the conclusion, not entirely justified by fact, that all Englishmen could speak French.
‘On June 22nd I gave a dinner for Gambetta’s friends, Coquelin and Hecht, at which I had Lord Granville, Lord Lansdowne, Malet, Montgelas, Lord Reay, Lord Arthur Russell, and Gavard. Lord Granville was at his very best, shining as he always did when he could talk French theatre anecdotes to a man playing up to him as could Coquelin.
‘I think it was on Thursday night, June 19th (1879), that, about midnight, Pender brought me a telegram to the House of Commons telling me that Prince Louis Napoleon had been killed by the Zulus, in order that I might telegraph it to Gambetta. I did so; and in the morning received from Gambetta a telegram asking me to repeat my telegram if it really came from me, evidently thinking that he had been hoaxed in my name, for my news reached Paris long before the thing was known there. The Queen was not told till 10.30 a.m., and she then informed the Empress Eugenie, so that I knew it eleven hours before the poor mother.’
On Sunday, June 29th, Sir Charles had stayed at Strawberry Hill. Within the same week Lady Waldegrave died suddenly. He was among the friends who went down to see her buried at Chewton, near Chewton Priory, her place in Somersetshire.
‘Carlingford was present at the funeral, although his condition was very painful to his friends and he refused to leave the place, and remained there, with great fortitude but little wisdom, for a long time, until his nerve was completely gone. He never was afterwards the same man, and, although Mr. Gladstone put him into his Cabinet in 1881, for friendship’s sake, [Footnote: There was another reason: his intimate knowledge of the details of the Irish Land Question, then the subject of legislation. He became Lord Privy Seal on the resignation of the Duke of Argyll.] he had become a broken invalid, and was unable even to bear the smallest reference to past days or even the sudden sight of friends who had known him in happier times.’
On July 8th there is a note of dining with Lord and Lady Derby, where were ‘Lord Odo Russell and a good many other interesting people; Odo Russell always easily the first wherever he goes. He told me, what I was glad to hear, that Bismarck was most favourable to Greece.’
‘_July_.–Two Crown Princes were in London at this time, and to both of them I had to be introduced as the maker of speeches in the House which they had heard: the Crown Prince of Sweden and the Hereditary Duke (son of the Grand Duke) of Baden. 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 the one from the other, which has always oppressed me in dealing with Royal personages.’
‘At this time I had several interviews with Cardinal Manning, at his wish, about the Irish primary education question, in which I agreed with him, differing, however, wholly from him with regard to English education, which caused him always to reproach me with having what he playfully called a “geographical conscience.”‘
‘In the many visits that I received from the Cardinal and paid to him at the end of July and beginning of August, 1879, I was amused by finding how much he cared for general gossip and even scandal. 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 in social questions, he is a ferocious Jingo.’
Manning, unlike almost all other Englishmen of his creed, had a sympathy for Irish Nationalism. Dilke shared the Cardinal-Archbishop’s view as to the power of Rome in Irish politics, as may be seen from the concluding sentence of this passage from a letter written by him in August, 1879, with regard to the Act establishing what was called the Royal University:
“Shaw is a Protestant–a Congregationalist–who once was a preacher and now is a banker, but he is the leader of the Irish party, and speaks for the Bishops, as did Butt, who also was a Protestant. Parnell, too, is a Protestant, curiously enough. Biggar was, but has turned. I don’t think popular feeling is engaged; but you must either govern through and with the priests–or by force.”
Mr. Shaw’s day of influence was nearly ended. The revolutionary party–for they aimed at, and effected nothing less than, a revolution–led by Parnell in the House and by Davitt in the country, were sweeping away the staunch adherents of pure constitutionalism, among whom Shaw and Butt were to be numbered. The Irish party was not the only one which contained conflicting elements:
‘Manning attached more importance to an understanding with me and Chamberlain than to one with Hartington, and sided with us in the conflict which followed the scene between Hartington and Chamberlain on July 7th.’
Sir Charles describes the occurrence, though somewhat toning down a sufficiently stormy passage:
‘What occurred was this: James, who was Hartington’s right-hand man, and absolutely in his confidence, had started a debate on flogging, and came to us and told us that he quite agreed in our view that much should be made of it, and that it offered a good opportunity for getting rid of flogging in the Army, and then went away to dinner. Our men kept up the debate with a good deal of violence of language; and then Hartington, strolling in after dinner, and hearing that there was this obstruction, made a violent attack upon poor Hopwood (the Queen’s Counsel, afterwards Recorder of Liverpool, a member of the Radical Club) and on those acting with him, for obstruction. Chamberlain, much nettled by this attack upon our men below the gangway for doing only that which they had been told to do, got up and ironically referred to Hartington as “the late leader,” and I was stung, by Fawcett clumsily siding with Hartington, into supporting Chamberlain and Hopwood.
‘My talents of diplomacy were called into requisition after the Hartington-Chamberlain quarrel, and I was very proud of managing to get through nineteen clauses of the Irish University Bill on the next day, July 8th, stopping all divisions except one, in which Parnell and I told together, and got Hartington into our lobby, which was, I think, a triumph of conciliation.
‘Later in the month the Whigs, or men above the gangway, showed great anger at the completeness of Hartington’s surrender to us, which, indeed, meant more than the immediate conquest, for it involved the ultimate supersession of Hartington by Gladstone. Harcourt, James, and Adam [Footnote: The Right Hon. W. P. Adam, afterwards Governor of Madras.] (the Chief Whip), in giving Chamberlain the victory by insisting that Hartington should yield, were considering the constituencies, not the House. As regarded the House, the popularity of stamping upon us would have been great. There was strong Whig dislike of our activity, and strong Radical personal hatred among ourselves. If Chamberlain were to have fought Hartington on any question on which he had not the Liberal constituencies with him, he would have got the worst of it; but then he was too wise to stir on any question on which he could not at least carry all the active elements of the party in large towns. The anti-Chamberlain set went to work to get up a banquet to Hartington, and were very cross with me when I told them that I was certain that the Whips would not let Hartington accept the banquet unless they obtained Chamberlain’s signature to the requisition. It, of course, turned out as I expected. Some twenty men said that they would not sign unless Chamberlain did so, and he was then begged to sign, and, when he did, at once deprived the manifestation of all significance. It was all rather small and mean, but when one went to the root of the matter, one saw that the whole difficulty sprang from the fact that the Whigs had now no principles. Once upon a time they had had principles, but their principles had been adopted by the other side, and long before 1879 their distinctive opinions had been taken from them. A party cannot be dignified and consistent if its chiefs and the mass of its rank and file have no principles. My own opinion, which I preached on all occasions, was that the right course in these democratic days was for leaders to say, “Here are my opinions, but I know that on certain points they are not those of a majority;” and not to continue to pretend that all agreed when, as a fact, they differed.
‘In a note in my diary upon the question of the leadership I say: “Harcourt’s good points and bad points are both on a large scale. Childers is too much in city business and in companies to be one of the leading men in the party in the future. Hartington is too careless and too much bored to interest others. Gladstone and Bright are old; Bright ‘past’; Gladstone still a great power, and, but for his Scotch deference to the aristocracy, which is a sad drawback, I could admire him with little check.”
‘On July 26th I received from Bradlaugh a letter about his candidature for Parliament, in which he wrote: “It appears that the so-called moderate Liberals mean to fight for one seat only at Northampton. I, therefore, can only fight for myself. This means Phipps’s seat sure, and for the second either Merryweather or Ayrton, and I think the order expresses–subject to contingencies–the probability. There are one or two county constituencies and several boroughs where moderate Liberals will stand who cannot be elected without the votes of my friends. I am now consulted as to what my friends in such cases ought to do. Speaking moderately, I think I could surely prevent the return of five or six moderates, and render doubtful the return of ten or twelve more. Is it reasonable to expect me to aid actively those who do me the most possible mischief? I owe no debt of gratitude to anyone in England … except the people who love me. May it not be as well for me this coming election to pick, say, twenty seats and make a few burnt-offerings by way of example, to show the moderates that I am strong enough to be worth reckoning with? Pardon me if I am boring you with a matter in which you have no interest.”‘
At the close of the Session Sir Charles addressed his constituents–
‘with an overwhelming case against the Government, in which I showed the folly of the pretences which had been put forward as to the Berlin settlement in Bulgaria and in Asia Minor, of the Anglo-Turkish Convention, of the occupation of Cyprus, and of the South African policy; and pointed out the fact that in the year we were spending fifty millions sterling upon our army and navy, and that if the navy was in excellent condition, no one would venture to make the same assertion with regard to our land forces.’
He crossed to France, saw Gambetta in Paris, and also Nubar Pasha, and went to drink waters at La Bourboule, and on to Le Puy, and thence started on one of the long tramps by which he came to know France as few Englishmen have done. He walked across to Vals, ‘and so to the Rhone, and then to my solemn Provencal country–to my mind, a better Italy.’
At Toulon he busied himself with the German history of the nineteenth century for his projected book, and wrote much to his brother, who was now hoping to enter Parliament.
‘Nubar, who had a quarrel with our Foreign Office, and who had been expelled from Egypt by the new Khedive, but, as Nubar thought, at the wish of the French Consul-General, was another correspondent of these days, destined afterwards to return to be made Prime Minister at the hands of this same Khedive.’
The Government’s sixth year of office was running out, and a General Election was at hand.
‘At the end of the year I had letters describing the state of things in England from Harcourt, Chamberlain, and Adam. Chamberlain wrote: “Things look bad for the Tories. We shall have a majority at the next election. I feel confident.” Adam wrote: “As things are at present, we shall have a majority independent of Home Rulers.” Harcourt wrote that he was unusually dull and stupid: “I feel as if the soul of Northcote had transmigrated into me, and, if only I had a flaxen beard, I am sure I should make one of his Midland speeches to admiration…. I really find nothing new to say. Of course, there is the old story of Afghanistan, but the latter is already discounted, and it is rather a ticklish question. I never felt it so difficult to mix a prescription good for the present feeling of the constituencies…. Depend upon it, if we are to win (as we shall), it will not be on some startling cry, but by the turning over to us of that floating mass of middle votes which went over to the Tories last time, and will come back from them in disgust at the next election. It is much easier to persuade the public that the Government are duffers than that we are conjurers. I shall therefore … be dull and safe, and not overabusive. That, at least, is my diagnosis of the treatment the patient requires just now…. Not having materials for one speech, I have got to make a second. I must trust to the newspaper abuse of the first to supply me with materials for the second.”‘
Sir William Harcourt was too diffident, as his brilliant speeches at Oxford and elsewhere, full of epigrams, had more effect on the electorate than any others–not even excepting Mr. Gladstone’s speeches in his Midlothian campaign.
There is no suggestion in the correspondence of the ferment which was working in Midlothian. Mr. Gladstone was apart from both Whigs and Radicals in these days.
So closed the last years of Sir Charles’s second Parliament. He had played in it a commanding part in debate upon matters of war and of foreign policy without abating his activity in domestic politics, such as the franchise, or flogging in the army, which he helped finally to abolish. No man could well seem to have fewer enemies or more friends.
CHAPTER XX
THE FORMATION OF A MINISTRY
I.
By the close of 1879 the Beaconsfield Administration was deeply discredited. The year had opened with the disaster in the Zulu War at Isandhlwana; in September came the tragedy at Kabul, when Sir Louis Cavagnari and his staff were slain by a sudden uprising of the tribesmen; and though Sir Frederick Roberts fought his way into the Afghan capital on October 12th, it was only to be beleaguered within the fortifications of Sherpur.
The European situation Sir Charles described to his constituents before the Session of 1880 opened:
‘What, I asked, were they promised in the Treaty of Berlin? Turkey restored to strength, reformed, and, if reformed, made secure for a distant future; Greece contented; Russian influence excluded; and the Balkans fortified as “an impregnable frontier” for Turkey. Very different were the realities. Turkey had been partitioned; Greece had not been satisfied; surrender of Turkish territory to Greece, though it was the one form of surrender which might really have strengthened Turkey, had been opposed rather than advocated by the British delegates. Austria, gorged with Bosnia and Herzegovina, was alone contented.
‘Of the Asia Minor clandestine convention, it was beyond our power to fulfil the terms. Russian intrigue would sooner or later create insurrection in Armenia. The insurrection would be put down by the old Turkish means, by the old savagery, and our guarantee would prove useless in face of public opinion at home. The Government had allowed Russia to gain exactly those things which in the excellent circular of April 1st, 1878, they had declared that it would be fatal to our country that she should possess. The Government had proclaimed British interests in language which I had described as the gospel of selfishness, but there was not a British interest which was not worse off for their rule. In Egypt, their policy of joint action with France was certain to lead to future trouble. Greece was dissatisfied, and leant on France, and the rising nationalities of South-Eastern Europe were all alienated from us. Russia was in possession, not only of Bessarabia, not only of a firm hold over Turkey by the stipulations with regard to the debt due to her, but of that fortress of Kars and that port of Batoum which our Government had told us she could not consistently with British interests be permitted to possess. To add insult to injury, we were thought such silly children as to believe that what was left of Turkey had been saved by our plenipotentiaries– saved in Asia by a bit of paper, and in Europe by an “impregnable frontier” which was situated in the middle of the Bulgarian country, and which the Sultan’s troops would never be allowed to approach.
‘This was a strong indictment, and, as is now seen, it was all true.’
Sir Charles’s “indictment” was strengthened by information he had received as to England’s treatment of M. Waddington’s circular proposing mediation between Turkey and Greece, and by the knowledge that the championship of Greek interests was at this moment being left to France.
‘On January 26th I reached Paris on my return from Toulon, and breakfasted with Gambetta, stupid Spuller remaining with us all the time. Barrere came to see me, and told me that the late ministerial crisis in France had had for cause Waddington’s refusal to accept Gambetta’s orders to turn out all the reactionaries from the Foreign Office. “That lock has now been forced.” [Footnote: The Waddington Ministry had fallen in the last days of December, and M. de Freycinet came into power. M. Camille Barrere was at this time Gambetta’s chief private secretary. Sir Charles had first met him in London during the Commune. He has had a distinguished career, and is, in 1917, Ambassador at Rome.] Tissot, French Minister at Athens, and known to me as having been formerly the representative of the Government of National Defence in London, when he occupied the Embassy and acted as an unauthorized Minister, is to be Ambassador at Constantinople, and Waddington will take the Embassy in London. Barrere has been made French Commissioner on the European Commission of the Danube, which enables him for nine months in the year to continue his newspaper work in Paris. It is true, as stated in the French newspapers, that Waddington’s last circular proposing mediation between Turkey and Greece was accepted by all the Continental Powers, but not answered by England.
‘On the 27th I breakfasted with Gambetta to meet General Billot, commanding the Marseille _corps d’armee_, who, in the event of war occurring between 1887 and 1890, would have been second in command of the French armies.
‘”On the 28th Gambetta, at a private interview, confirmed what Barrere had said about Greece, regretted that Waddington had proposed to leave the town of Janina to Turkey, and thought that the French Government ought to go back to the old position of ‘Thessaly and Epirus.’ He added (most confidentially) that as soon as the trouble about ‘Article 7’ was over Leon Say would come as Ambassador to London.” [Footnote: The double quotes here show that Sir Charles transcribed in his Memoir a note of the conversation taken at the time.] Leon Say did come, but Waddington came afterwards, though with some between. Article 7 was, of course, the Ferry proposal with regard to unauthorized congregations, which I opposed in conversations with Gambetta, who supported it as strongly in private as in public. [Footnote: The ‘Article 7’ referred to was in the Education Bill then under discussion in the French Assembly. By this article it was proposed that members of religious bodies which were not recognized by the law should be forbidden to teach in public or in private schools.] Opinion in France undoubtedly backed him in his opposition to “Clericalism,” but I myself continue to think that it was unwise to harry the Church, although the position of the Government was in accordance with the law.
‘On the same morning I received a letter from Chamberlain inviting himself to dine with me on February 4th “to discuss the situation.” Chamberlain was strongly opposed to taking Lord Derby in the next Administration, and determined also, if he could, to shut out Goschen.
‘On Wednesday, January 28th, I reached London, and on the 29th saw Harcourt as to a request which had been made to him by A. M. Sullivan on behalf of Lord Ramsay, who was standing at Liverpool as the Liberal candidate, but who had pronounced in favour of Home Rule, to the great scandal of the country. The Irish members were supposed to be doing more harm than good by helping him, and were most anxious that someone from the Liberal Front Bench should give them countenance. Hartington was strongly opposed to Ramsay’s action. Harcourt consented to go, and went, which must have meant, I think, that he had decided to throw over Hartington, seeing that Mr. G. was the only possible leader, and that he did not think that Mr. Gladstone would feel strongly about the Home Rule pledge. Harcourt told me that Lord Granville and Hartington intended that Lord Derby should be in the next Government, but found difficulties, inasmuch as they thought that the land question must be dealt with, and he was too conservative for the party on it. The Duke of Argyll was to be left out of the next Cabinet; no one would consent to become Viceroy of Ireland or Irish Secretary; and there was a difficulty about the Viceroyalty of India. I suggested Lansdowne for India, if his wife would go, and it is curious that after many years he was sent, although sent by the other party. Harcourt said that some of the older men over whose heads I had passed were very jealous of me. I said, half in jest: “I believe I am the only English politician who is not jealous,” at which Harcourt laughed very much, and replied: “We all think that of ourselves.” I said: “I mean it.”‘
The sincerity of that assertion was to be proved within three months. But he notes in his diary a decision in consequence of Harcourt’s warning “to keep in the background this Session.”
‘On February 4th Harcourt wrote to me to say that, if I would go to his house that night, someone from Devonshire House should meet me to show me the Queen’s Speech, as he had to go to Liverpool; Hartington, he said, was full of approval of my speech.’
The dissolution came suddenly, hastened by the result of a by-election, which encouraged the Government to believe that the country was with them. On February 10th Sir Charles dined at Lady Ripon’s, where were ‘the Duke of Argyll, Lord Granville, the Childers, and the Hayters.’
‘The conversation of the evening turned upon the Southwark election, where we all knew that the Conservative must win, Clarke (later Sir Edward Clarke) being a popular Queen’s Counsel, an excellent election speaker, while the Liberals were divided between two bad candidates…. When the numbers became known to me I wrote in my diary: “Southwark not quite so bad as I expected, but quite bad enough.” Yet it was this election, which, to anyone who knew the facts, should have meant nothing, which is supposed to have induced the Tories to dissolve.’ [Footnote: The Conservatives won both the Liverpool and Southwark elections.]
‘Cross drowns the Government,’ is Sir Charles’s comment on the Return on the Water Question, for which he now moved; ‘the notice contained such a mass of statistics as to make the return of a very searching character in its bearing on the agreement that the Home Secretary had come to with the water companies.’ It did frighten Cross, as Mr. Trevelyan had prophesied, ‘and the trouble between himself and his colleagues over this question was the immediate cause of the dissolution.’ [Footnote: Mr. Cross, Home Secretary, had introduced a Bill to provide for the purchase of the undertakings of the London Water Companies, which was supposed to offer the companies too favourable terms. Sir Charles notes (July, 1879): “Manning was getting up a meeting on the water question, and got me to manage it for him.” ‘I fancy, indeed,’ he adds in his Memoir, ‘that it was the Cardinal who was the indirect cause of the dissolution in the spring of 1880, for he induced Cross to undertake the purchase of the Metropolitan Water Supply, and so got him into tangled negotiations.’]
Just before the electoral campaign began–
‘On March 4th I received a note from Lord Fife asking me to dine with him on Friday, the 12th, to meet the Prince of Wales at the Prince’s wish. The note was of such a character that it left no choice. When the dinner came off it turned out well. The Prince laid himself out to be pleasant, and talked to me nearly all the evening–chiefly about French politics and the Greek question. The other guests were Lansdowne, Dunraven, Burnand of _Punch_, Bernal Osborne, and Colonel Carington, brother of Lord Carrington, a very pleasant member of the House.’ [Footnote: Colonel Carington was M.P. for Wycombe, 1868-1883.]
There was still among leading politicians ‘much doubt as to the prospects of the election,’ which Sir Charles found expressed when he spent Sunday, March 7th, ‘at Aston Clinton with the Cyril Flowers, Lord Hartington being there, and Charles Villiers (at eighty), and Wolff walking over from Tring Park.’ However, on March 15th, Sir William Harcourt wrote from Oxford: “I have never wavered in my opinion that the Government will be beaten, though I thought a fortnight ago it would only be a shave.”
In his own borough Sir Charles found that there were 580 publicans, and that 500 of them were Conservative.
‘My belief in the influence of the publicans made me hesitate with regard to Chelsea, where I thought myself not unlikely to be beaten, but I had a full belief in the success of the party generally. I was triumphantly returned, bringing in Firth with me, by great majorities over a clever Tory, Lord Inverurie (afterwards Earl of Kintore, and Governor of South Australia), and a colonial sheep-farmer, who paid the cost.’
The result was declared on April 2nd, and Sir Charles, having stayed to vote in two divisions of Surrey where he owned property, left England for Toulon on the 7th–a proceeding which separated him from those who were importunate for office. Before his departure he had dined with Sir William Harcourt:
‘I found his ambition to be to … succeed Lord Selborne as Lord Chancellor. In order to reach this goal, he would prefer to be Attorney-General rather than Home Secretary. James, however, cannot well be anything but Attorney-General. Harcourt would like James to be Home Secretary, for which James is not fit, but which he would like to be. If this combination should fail, then Harcourt would like to be Chancellor of the Exchequer…. He asked me what I should like, and I told him that I did not expect to be offered a great post, but that if there were any such chance the Navy was the only one that I should like.’ [Footnote: Sir Charles’s view that a Foreign Secretary had better be in the House of Lords, so long as there is a House of Lords to put him in, no doubt influenced his preference for the Admiralty.]
In regard to the events which have now to be narrated, it must be remembered that the Chamberlain of 1880 was not yet the author of any “unauthorized programme” or any “gospel of ransom.” He was admittedly the controller of the Caucus. It was widely known that he, like Fawcett, had professed republican principles. But Queen Victoria’s objection to Sir Charles Dilke–and it will be seen how strongly she maintained it–was based not merely on his avowal of abstract Republican theories, but also on his very concrete proposal to assert control over the Civil List. Chamberlain upon this matter was not committed to a personal view, and it had not yet been demonstrated that whatever position Dilke defended, Chamberlain would defend also.
A compact laying down the principle of mutual support between the two Radicals was proposed in a letter written by Chamberlain to Dilke–then at Toulon–immediately after the General Election had given the Liberals a sweeping triumph. They came back 349 against 243 Conservatives. Irish Nationalists were 60, of whom 35 followed Mr. Parnell.
Chamberlain’s proposal was in these words:
“The time has come when we must have a full and frank explanation.
“What I should like–what I hope for with you–is a thorough offensive and defensive alliance, and in this case our position will be immensely strong.
“I am prepared to refuse all offers until and unless both of us are satisfied.
“Can you accept this position with perfect satisfaction? If you think I am asking more than I can give, I rely upon your saying so–and in this case you may depend on my loyalty and friendship–I shall support your claim cordially and just as warmly as if I were personally interested.
“But my own feeling is that if you are stronger than I am in the House, my influence is greater than yours out of it, and therefore that, together, we are much more powerful than separated; and that in a short time, if not now, we may make our own terms.
“To join a Government as subordinate members, to be silenced and to have no real influence on the policy, would be fatal to both of us. If we both remain outside, any Government will have to reckon with us, and, on the whole, this would be the position which on many grounds I should prefer.
“I am ready to make all allowances for the difficulties in the way of giving to both of us the only kind of places which it would be worth our while to accept. If these are insuperable, I will give a hearty support to any Government which is thoroughly liberal in its measures; but I am not going to play the part of a Radical Minnow among Whig Tritons.
“The victory which has just been won is the victory of the Radicals. Gladstone and the Caucus have triumphed all along the line, and it is the strong, definite, decided policy which has commended itself, and not the halting, half-hearted, armchair business…. The country feels it, and we should be mad to efface ourselves and disappoint the expectations of all our strongest supporters.
[Illustration: THE RT. HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P. From the painting by F. Holl, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.]
“You see that my proposed condition is–both of us to be satisfied.
“As to what ought to satisfy us, if you agree to the principle, we will consult when the time comes, but my present impression is all or nothing.”
‘In other words, Chamberlain’s view was that we should insist on both being in the Cabinet. My own view was that we should insist on one being in the Cabinet, and the other having a place of influence, giving him the opportunity of frequent speech in the House of Commons, pleasant to himself; and my view prevailed.
‘On April 19th, Chamberlain wrote again that he had heard from Mr. Bright that “Mr. Gladstone will take the Premiership if pressed.”‘
‘”I am glad to see that all the papers speak of you as a certainty for the Cabinet. For myself, I am absolutely indifferent to office, and the only thing on which I am clear is that I will take no responsibility which does not carry with it some real power. Another point on which I have made up my mind is that I will not play second to Fawcett, or to anyone of the same standing, except yourself.”‘
On April 22nd, Sir Charles received at Toulon a telegram from Sir William Harcourt insisting on his immediate return, and he started at once for London, missing a second urgent telegram from Harcourt on his way. From Mr. Frederic Harrison he received a letter strongly urging him to claim at once a place in the Cabinet and ‘to lead the new men.’ He meant ‘the cultured Radicals; Mr. Bryce and the like.’ He urged that the new Left must have a full place in the Ministry, and that any Liberal Minister must be pledged to deal with redistribution in the House.
‘Hill of the _Daily News_ had written to me that with the exception of Harcourt everybody thought that Gladstone must be Prime Minister.’ Sir Charles goes on to note a breakfast with Lord Houghton, Renan, Professor Henry Smith of Oxford, Henry Reeve of the _Edinburgh Review,_ Lord Arthur Russell, and Lord Reay, at which they
‘agreed that Gladstone must be Prime Minister, or would upset the Government within a year. … Hill advised that I should take the Cabinet without Chamberlain if Gladstone was Prime Minister, but refuse the Cabinet without Chamberlain–_i.e.,_ insist on both being in the Cabinet–if Hartington was Prime Minister.’
By the night of April 23rd, when Sir Charles reached London, the question of Mr. Gladstone’s primacy was settled, and Ministry-making had begun, with the decision of Lord Granville to return to the Foreign Office, and Lord Hartington’s consent to act as Secretary of State for India. Mr. Childers went to the War Office, Lord Northbrook to the Admiralty; Lord Selborne, most conservative of Whigs, became Lord Chancellor; Lord Spencer was President of the Council, Lord Kimberley took the Colonies, the Duke of Argyll the Privy Seal. Sir William Harcourt, who had been called “a Whig who talked Radicalism,” was Home Secretary. Mr. Forster at the Irish Office, with Lord Cowper as Lord-Lieutenant, did not commend himself greatly to the advanced party, and Mr. Bright, in returning to the Chancellorship of the Duchy, brought with him only a tradition of Radicalism. When it is added that Mr. Dodson was President of the Local Government Board, ground will be seen for a warning which Sir Charles received that, although the victory had been forced upon them by the Radicals almost against their will, the “incorrigible old place-hunters would, if left to have their own way, appropriate the victory and the prizes calmly enough to themselves.”
On Saturday, April 24th, Sir Charles had two interviews with Sir William Harcourt, and communicated the result to Chamberlain:
‘The position is that Gladstone is in the hands of Lord Wolverton, [Footnote: As Mr. Glyn he had been Chief Whip.] the evil counsellor of 1874, and that, while a Whig Premier must have had a Radical Cabinet, Gladstone will say, “You have got me; that is what you asked for,” and will give us a Whig Cabinet. Stansfeld is likely to be in the Cabinet owing to W. E. Forster’s influence, of which I personally shall be glad. Rosebery is likely to be put in, at which I shall not be sorry…. Gladstone disapproves strongly of people being put straight into the Cabinet who have not held office before. This is for Chamberlain and for me. They are likely to offer me the Under- Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs, which I suppose I shall be unable to accept. Later in the evening I was informally offered the Secretaryship of the Treasury, with management of the Government business in the House. Harcourt at a second interview said that Gladstone intended pedantically to follow Peel’s rule that men should not be put straight into the Cabinet without going through non-Cabinet office; and that Chamberlain and I must both take non-Cabinet office; [Footnote: It is worth noting that Sir Robert Peel himself had violated this rule if it ever existed.] that he, Harcourt, strongly advised us to take Under-Secretaryships of which the Secretary was in the Upper House, or the Secretaryship of the Treasury. He then offered me the Under-Secretaryship for the Colonies, to which I replied, “Certainly not.” He said, “Remember that with Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister, the Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs will have no chance to speak, because Gladstone will do all the talking.” [Footnote: Sir William Harcourt’s prophecy received frequent confirmation. See _infra_, pp. 384, 459, 535, and Vol. II., p. 51.] At the same time, there was evidently another reason behind–namely, that Lord Granville had sooner have anybody in his office than me; in other words, he would like me in anybody’s office except his own. Harcourt strongly urged me to take office on personal grounds–namely, in order to get over the Queen’s prejudice, and so succeed naturally to the first vacancy in the Cabinet. I replied that I had sooner keep my independence than take office without power. He then said curtly, “It will not be a pleasant opposition.” I said it would not be an opposition at all, as far as I could see, as I should support the Government and lead a very quiet, humdrum Parliamentary existence. Harcourt replied, “That is what is always said.” “But I shall not be cross,” was my last word. I telegraphed at night for Chamberlain, who replied that he would come up at five on Sunday afternoon and dine and sleep. But I prepared him, and was prepared by him, for a double refusal of office. In fact, we were decided on refusal of that which alone was offered.
‘On Sunday afternoon, 25th, before seeing Chamberlain, I saw James, who went to Lord Granville and fully stated my views, reporting to me afterwards that Lord Granville seemed inclined to come round a little. James added of Harcourt: “Confound that Home Secretary! How discreet he is even before kissing hands! I shall live at the Home Office.” I went to Euston to meet Chamberlain. We were fully agreed in our line, and he remained at my house the next morning, when I was sent for by Mr. Gladstone through Lord Granville, the note being simply to ask me to call at four o’clock at Lord Granville’s house, where Mr. Gladstone was. The questions which I put to Chamberlain were–“Is your former opinion changed by the fact that Mr. Gladstone can, if he likes, do without us, whereas Hartington could not? Or is it changed by the fact that Gladstone’s Government will last six years, whereas Hartington’s would soon have been modified by Gladstone?” Chamberlain’s view was my own view, that, although we were much weaker, we could not change our attitude as regards one of us being in the Cabinet. Before seeing Mr. Gladstone I had calls from Fawcett and Lefevre. Nothing had been offered to Fawcett; Lefevre had been sounded as to an Under- Secretaryship, and would take it. He told me he was sure that Stansfeld would have the Local Government Board again and be in the Cabinet. Childers came three times to see me in the course of the day, and said that he was most anxious that I should be in the Cabinet and Chamberlain in a good place outside it; but that the Queen had made a difficulty about my Republicanism, and he asked me to write him a letter about it. I declined to say anything new, but ultimately we agreed that I should write him a letter marked “Private,” in which I wrote to the effect that on March 13th I had been asked the question at a meeting, and that my answer had been in the newspapers on March 15th, that it was the same answer which I had made before the election in 1874, and that I had nothing to alter in it.’ [Footnote: The rest of the letter gave a full account of the incident of Saturday, March 13th, 1880:
“The Tories sent the ‘Reverend’ W. Pepperell, an ex-dissenting minister, to a meeting of mine, who asked me ‘whether it was true that I was a republican?’ I replied to the effect that ‘while as a matter of speculative opinion I thought that a country starting afresh–as France after Sedan–would in these days generally do better to adopt a republican form of government than a limited monarchy, yet that in a country possessing a constitutional monarchy it would be mere folly to attempt to upturn it, and consequently folly even to try to disturb it.’ The answer was a very long one, and was nowhere _fully_ reported, but everything in it was on these lines.”]
A copy of this letter was ultimately brought to the Queen, and on May 5th returned by Sir Henry Ponsonby with the words, “Her Majesty accepts Sir Charles Dilke’s explanation.” But Lord Granville, through whom it had been sent, and who had by that time become Sir Charles’s immediate chief, softened the austerity of this formula by explaining that the Queen in a private letter had said she was “quite ready to believe all I had told her about you, having known you as a child.”
These preliminary conversations having occupied the morning, Sir Charles set out after luncheon for the decisive interview.
‘When I got to Lord Granville’s I found Lord Granville, Lord Wolverton, and Mr. Gladstone in the room, and Mr. Gladstone at once offered me the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs. I asked who was to be in the Cabinet. I was told Mr. Gladstone, Lord Granville, Hartington, Harcourt, and Lord Spencer. Further than this, they said, nothing was settled. I asked, “What about Chamberlain?” Mr. Gladstone replied to the effect that Chamberlain was a very young member of the House who had never held office, and that it was impossible to put him straight into the Cabinet. I then said that this made it impossible that I should accept the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs, or any place. Mr. Gladstone said he would see whether anything could be done, but that he feared not. I then asked whether, supposing that anything could be done in my direction, I should be excluding Grant Duff [Footnote: Sir M. Grant Duff had been spoken of for this office in 1868, and had then in that Ministry become Under-Secretary of State for India. In 1880 he was–much to Sir Charles’s joy–made Under- Secretary for the Colonies, his chief, Lord Kimberley, being in the Lords.] from the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs, because I said that I should be very sorry to do that, for both personal and public reasons. He replied that if I refused it, it would not be offered to Grant Duff; and I then left….
‘On Tuesday morning Chamberlain was sent for, and accepted a seat in the Cabinet (with the Presidency of the Board of Trade), and at one o’clock I accepted the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs. Just about this time I received a message from James: “Do, for the sake of our future comfort, take something. The Bench will be dreadfully dull. Stansfeld _in_ office must be worse than Stansfeld out.” But Stansfeld was not in office. What had interfered at the last moment to prevent an appointment which was resolved upon I never knew for certain. [Footnote: Mr. Stansfeld is generally believed to have refused office owing to his wish to devote himself entirely to the cause of a special measure of social reform in which he was interested.] But, as they had not intended to put Chamberlain in, and I forced him in, I suppose that Stansfeld was the man who had to make way for Chamberlain.’
II.
So ended the negotiations. The Radical wing had asserted itself, and asserted itself successfully. It had been enabled to do so by Sir Charles’s action. To him the matter represented the mere carrying out of a bargain; but friends were, as is natural in such a case, remonstrant, and he was accused of “needless self-sacrifice,” of “Quixotic conduct,” of “self-abnegation,” of “your usual disinterestedness in politics,” and the bargain was much criticized. A letter from Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, congratulating Sir Charles on the stand he had made, added: “Not that I am altogether satisfied with the result. I had assumed that as a matter of course you would be in the Cabinet. I share the universal feeling that of the two you had the undoubted claim to priority.” But this regret was probably based on more than personal grounds, and may well be read with a letter written many years afterwards, in July, 1914:
“The real truth is that Dilke was too big a man to be an Under- Secretary in 1880, and the whole position was a false one. I fancy Lord Granville felt it to be so. One of his best points was his readiness to recognize ability. I think he desired Dilke’s sphere in the Office to be as large as possible consistently with the general arrangements of the Office, but it is always difficult to make special arrangements work smoothly if they are based on a false principle.
“Dilke ought to have insisted on being in the Cabinet. It was very much to his honour that he did not do so.”
Lord Fitzmaurice goes on to say that in the making of the Cabinet public opinion would have substituted Sir Charles Dilke for Mr. Dodson, who, in spite of his work as Chairman of Committees from 1868 to 1873, and afterwards as Secretary to the Treasury–(“he would have made an excellent Speaker”)–had done but little in the House for the party in the long period of Opposition from 1874 to 1880.
A mistake had, in fact, been made. The strong man should be put where his services can avowedly be best utilized. This statement is true of Chamberlain. He was, as the _Times_ put it, “the Carnot of the moment, the organizer of Liberal victory.” [Footnote: Neither Sir Charles Dilke nor Mr. Chamberlain would, however, have desired to underrate the great share