Authors: Roy Jenkins
For the moment, however, Dilke's most pressing problem was not whether people would believe in his innocence, but whether criminal proceedings would be taken against him. Even before the trial, as was seen, he envisaged the possibility of a prosecution for perjury. After the trial, when it was clear that his evidence had not been believed, these fears greatly increased. Nor were they a product only of his own mind. They were shared by Chamberlain and, to some extent, by James. Chamberlain wrote to Dilke on July 27th: “James is absolutely convinced that in the present state of the evidence a conviction and a heavy sentence would be certain. . . . The whole question turns, as I have said, on the possibility of getting fresh evidence. Will you await this possibility in prison or in a quiet home abroad?”
1
Three days later he wrote advocating Dilke's departure from England in still more urgent terms: “I cannot see what duty is fulfilled or what interest served by facing a prosecution, which I fear must come, and which may end in a sentence of seven or even fourteen years' penal servitude.”
2
Dilke himself, however, had moved into a defiant mood. At first he had believed that his conviction for perjury might involve not only a prison sentence but also the confiscation of his goods. This, indeed, had been the state of the law until a few years previously, and it was a penalty which he was not prepared to face. Once he discovered that his property was not at stake he became less nervous. There was even an idea
at one stage that he might himself invite a trial for perjury. James received this suggestion with dismay and replied saying: “You must do anything sooner than stand a trial
now
. The atmosphere must be cleared before justice would be done you, and as I have said before time may unravel much.” This wise advice turned Dilke's mind away from the active course, but it did not persuade him to seek refuge abroad. He had to make a short visit to France, but this was to be in no sense a “flight.” To underline the fact he wrote to the Attorney-General in the new Conservative Government, Sir Richard Webster, giving him his address and announcing that he would return at once if proceedings were started.
“I intend to remain abroad as short a time as Emilia's arm, which is crippled with rheumatism, will allow,” he wrote to Chamberlain on July 28th, “and if a prosecution is begun we shall return at once, arm or no arm. I have put off going till the 13th to âface' prosecution, which I think Stead
[3]
and
The Times
will force on. I do not expect a favourable verdict, but Emilia and I decided three months ago that seven years' penal servitude is better for me, better for her, better for Wentie's future, and better above all for our love and happiness than life in Paris. Emilia is quite able to conduct the case while I am in penal servitude, and will conduct it better than I should.”
3
In the event any thought of a prosecution was abandoned before Dilke set off to take his wife to Royat. On August 5th Chamberlain was able to write decisively: “I have the best reasons for knowing that the present Government are most unlikely to initiate a prosecution for perjury.” James also reported in the same sense. Dilke believed that the Government took this decision because of advice that there was no
possibility of Mrs. Crawford being believed in a criminal trial.
[4]
âMatthews, who had become Home Secretary, would have been in a good position to assess thisâbut it seems equally probable that they were influenced by the obvious advantages of magnanimity over vindictiveness. No further blows were needed to destroy Dilke's political usefulness.
Social ostracism was also inevitable. Dilke's inclination was to recognise this by resigning from all his clubs, but he was dissuaded by Sir Henry James. There was also the question of his membership of the Privy Council. The Queen was extremely anxious that it should be terminated and assumed that Salisbury or Gladstone would see that this was done. Gladstone agreed with her to the extent of believing that continued membership was inappropriate, although he thought that the initiative should come from Dilke himself. But it did not come, for Dilke thought, and no doubt rightly, that such an act would be construed as an admission of guilt. Gladstone, in these circumstances, was prepared to take no further action; and Salisbury never wished to concern himself with the matter. Dilke therefore retained the designation “right honourable,”
[5]
but he retained little else, so far as the general public was concerned, in the way of honour.
The slow journey which he made across France to Royat was therefore a dismal one, still more so perhaps than if there had been the challenge of a prosecution still to face. He remained away for a month, returning to England in the middle of September and going straight to Dockett Eddy. After a few days he removed to Pyrford and stayed there until early November, when he and his wife again went abroad, this time to Paris for four weeks. In December they opened
76, Sloane Street for the first time since the beginning of August.
Dilke was trying to find ways of occupying his time. He wrote a series of anonymous articles on European politics for the
Fortnightly
, which, with the anonymity abandoned, were later published in book form, and he contemplated journalistic work of a more executive nature. “What I want is work on foreign affairs, or rather external affairs, or foreign and colonial,” he wrote to his friend Thursfield of
The Times
in January, 1887. “I would prefer not to write, but to suggest and supervise foreign news, and to work up the subjects of leaders which others would write.”
4
Dilke's idea was partly to gain experience with a view to starting a new London evening newspaper, but it came to nothing, which was hardly surprising if his proposal was that he should work for
The Times
.
He continued to see some friends, but not to any extent those who had been in his circle immediately before the crash. Lady Dilke's academic and professional connections were on the whole more faithful than his own acquaintances of the great world. James and Chamberlain were almost the only politicians of the front rank with whom he maintained any real contact. “You can't think how
dear
James has been to us and about us,” Dilke wrote about the former. But the ex-Attorney-General, while always sympathetic and always available for consultation, was too
mondain
a figure to continue to fit easily into the rather dowdy atmosphere which had descended upon 76, Sloane Street. Even with Chamberlain intimacy became rather attenuated. Dilke saw him on October 1st, and received “an interesting picture of the political state.” They met again at the end of the year, but on January 11th, 1887, Chamberlain was writing: “I have so much to do in London that I fear I cannot call at 76, this time. If you want to see me for anything will you call at 40, Princes Gardens on Saturday morning at 11-30? In this case send me a line saying you are coming.”
5
He was not a man to smother in false delicacy the change in the balance of a friendship.
Dilke, it must be admitted, was probably not a very stimulating companion during this period. His mind was too exclusively occupied with the search for new evidence against Mrs. Crawford, and with the possibility that at some stage he might successfully confront her in yet another action and at last demonstrate his innocence. Even had his former political friends been available, he would probably have preferred to dine and correspond with those whose interest in the case was almost as great as his own. Fortunately he succeeded in collecting such a band of adherents. Their leader was F. W. Chesson, a former constituent of Dilke's who had long been active in a whole series of good causes. He developed the idea of forming a committee to investigate the case and to produce further facts to lay before the public. Dilke welcomed this plan enthusiastically and suggested that his former Trinity Hall friend, D. F. Steavenson, might be a useful legal member. Steavenson, in the earlier part of his life, had built up a £2,000-a-year practice at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne bar. Later he had moved to London, but had failed to achieve legal success there. In 1886 he was living quietly on his private money. He was able and willing to devote a great deal of time to work on the case. In 1891, Dilke, through the agency of Chamberlain, secured his appointment as a county court judge.
The other members of the committee were Howel Thomas, a Local Government Board official; W. A. McArthur, who had just become a member of Parliament and was later to be a Liberal Whip; Clarence Smith, former sheriff of the City of London and subsequently Liberal M.P. for Hull, East; and Canon MacColl, a clergyman whose political interests made him a frequent correspondent of both Gladstone and Salisbury. The last three were in no way close friends of Dilke. Chesson died in 1889, but the committee continued, and in 1891 a pamphlet incorporating some of the findings of its members was published. They did not publish everything because of an expressed wish not to involve “other persons besides those hitherto named in the case,” and also, perhaps, because of a desire to avoid libel suits. In addition, Dilke himself, working
through a solicitor and providing large sums of money for the employment of detectives, accumulated other new evidence. These two sources provide the information additional to that forthcoming at the two trials upon which any definitive view of the case must be based.
Before it is considered, however, it is perhaps relevant to give the facts about Mrs. Crawford's subsequent career. This, too, must be a factor in any final judgment. When she was divorced from her husband she was twenty-three years of age; she was in ill-health; she had enough money of her own to live on, but she was not rich; and she was the most notorious woman in England. Forster, whom she had probably wished to marry, was no longer available. It was not easy to see how she would shape her future life.
She did not remain long at her sister's house, but removed in the course of 1887 to a flat of her own in Oxford and Cambridge Mansions, in the Marylebone Road. In that neighbourhood she lived for more than forty years. At first, as has been said, she did some journalistic work under Stead for the
Pall Mall Gazette
. This arrangement did not last long. By the end of 1889 Stead had ceased to be editor and Mrs. Crawford's interests had moved in another direction. In the course of that year she became closely acquainted with Manning and was received into the Roman Catholic church by the Cardinal himself. Thereafter her religion was the centre of her life, although, as it appeared from outside, it was its social rather than its mystical aspects which primarily attracted her. She was associated with St. Joan's Social and Political Alliance, a Roman Catholic society concerned with securing, by means other than those which Mrs. Crawford had herself employed, a greater influence for women in politics. She became chairman of this body and also of the St. Joseph's Home for Girl Mothers. In 1909 she was one of the founders of the Catholic Social Guild and served for many years as its honorary secretary. But her social work, while clearly arising directly out of her religious beliefs, was not confined to Roman Catholic outlets. She was a member of her local Board of Guardians for thirty years, and in 1919 she was elected to the St. Marylebone
borough council as its first Labour member. She remained on the council for twelve years, and played a major part in building up the borough's public libraries. In 1931 she moved to Kensington and lived on Camden Hill for the remainder of her life.
She had also a large literary output, partly on socio-religious subjects and partly works of criticism. In 1899 she wrote a series of essays on nineteenth-century European writers, including Daudet, Maeterlinck, Huysmans and D'Annunzio, which were published under the title
Studies in Foreign Literature
. In the following year she wrote a small book on Fra Angélico, and also published a work entitled
Philanthropy and Wage Paying. Ideals of Charity, Catholic Social Doctrine
and
The Church and the Worker
were the titles of her other works in this latter
genre. The Church and the Worker
, written as a textbook for the Catholic Social Guild, sold more than 50,000 copies before it went out of print. She also published a descriptive work on Switzerland and a life of Frederic Ozanam, a French Catholic thinker who had been one of the leaders of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. This last book appeared as late as 1947. She died, at the age of 85, on October 19th, 1948. She had never re-married, and towards the end of her life had become extremely reluctant to discuss the events of the 'eighties. Perhaps she had forgotten that they ever occurred. To some of those who knew her in her later years she appeared a rather formidable old lady. But others were struck by her devoutness, by her untroubled mind, and by the force and sympathy of her character. “The day of her death was the feast of St. Peter of Alcantara,” one who knew her well has written, “a saint whose human sympathy, charity and realisation of the spirit of penance were reflected in Mrs. Crawford's own life.”
The first part of the new evidence which was accumulated between 1886 and 1891 concerned Mrs. Crawford's relations with Captain Forster and other men. At the second trial, it will be remembered, she admitted her adultery with Forster, but said that she had not known him prior to February 15th, 1884; and she resolutely denied that she had been guilty with
others. In particular, she said that Frederick Warnerâthe “F.W.” of her diaryâwas scarcely known to her. On this showing her statement that she had implicated Dilke because it was he who had “ruined” her had some plausibility; and Matthews, in his address to the jury, stressed the point that Dilke had been her first lover.
The first aim was to show that Mrs. Crawford's liaison with Forster had begun well before 1884. The evidence on this point came primarily, but not entirely, from those associated with 9, Hill Street, the house of assignation to which Forster had admitted in cross-examination that he had taken her. The witnesses were therefore, in Chamberlain's words, somewhat “tainted,” but there were a sufficient number of them to render it highly unlikely that they were all lying. The house had been kept by a Mr. and Mrs. Harvey, who sometimes passed under the name of Murray. Harvey or Murray owned a number of other brothels as well, but at the end of 1884 he parted from his wife, which led to the closing down of 9, Hill Street. There was also some danger of police action against the house, and Mrs. Harvey, indeed, was subsequently prosecuted and fined £150. It was difficult to get her to produce a statement (which may have been because, as she eventually admitted, she had been given £100 by Sir George Lewis on Forster's behalf as the price of her silence), but she eventually signed a declaration that she remembered the visits of Forster and Mrs. Crawford as extending over a long period, although she was imprecise about the dates.