Dilke (49 page)

During 1887 and the immediately following years Dilke had to learn to live with his new situation in life. He still hoped that the fresh evidence which was being collected might form the basis for a decisive vindication of his name; but as time went by it became increasingly difficult to count upon this. Even if it did not happen he had to continue to live. He was only in his middle forties. He still had a restless energy and a great appetite for work. He had a new wife, with whom he was apparently very happy but who, perhaps because of her character, perhaps because of the circumstances in which he had married her, came to exercise an increasingly dominant influence upon him. His reputation had survived better abroad than in England, for although he had some staunch friends at home he also had a great number of enemies who were determined to prevent his return to public life. And he was still rich.

His plans for doing regular newspaper work came to little. He worked for a few months for the National Press Agency, but he soon grew tired of this, and concentrated instead upon his own writing. He achieved a considerable output. Apart from his work, already mentioned, on the current state of European politics, he wrote a further series of articles for the
Fortnightly
which were published in the winter of 1887-8. These were on the British Army, and like those on European politics were subsequently collected and issued in book form. In addition, he wrote a major, two-volume treatise, entitled
Problems of Greater Britain
, which was published in 1890. This was intended as a sequel to his youthful and
highly successful
Greater Britain
, but was in fact quite different both in tone and scope. The later work was not a travel book, but a detailed analytical survey of the political, economic and military problems of the British Empire. It was a heavy work, and a tribute more to Dilke's compendious knowledge than to anything else. The introduction, however, contained one penetrating shaft. In the second half of the twentieth century, Dilke thought, the powers of Central and Western Europe would no longer dominate the world scene; they would be replaced by the United States and Russia, although Britain might retain her place by virtue of her overseas connections. The book—“this record of the peaceful progress of Greater Britain which is made securer by his sword”—was dedicated to Field-Marshal Lord Roberts.

Dilke also did a good deal of journalism, mainly for American and Colonial papers, and was very highly paid—thirty guineas a column in the Colonies, he told Chamberlain—for anything he chose to write. He also travelled widely. In the autumn of 1887 he went to Turkey and Greece, and received almost a royal welcome in Athens. In the following year he went to India and stayed there for much of the winter, devoting many weeks to a study of the Indian Army under the guidance of Roberts, who was then commander-in-chief. He also pursued his military studies in Europe, being Gallifet's guest at the French manoeuvres in the autumn of 1891 and a frequent visitor to our own on Salisbury Plain.

In 1889 he paid a visit to Bismarck at his country house at Friedrichsruh and wrote a somewhat censorious account of the austerities practised by the Chancellor, in his last days of power, when he was away from Berlin.

“The coachman alone wears livery,” Dilke wrote, “and that only a plain blue with ordinary black trousers and ordinary black hat—no cockades and no stripes. . . . The family all drink beer at lunch, and offer the thinnest of thin Mosel. Bismarck has never put on a swallow-tail coat but once, which he says was in 1835, and which is of peculiar shape. A tall hat he does not possess, and he proscribes
tall hats and evening dress among his guests. His view is that a Court and an Army should be in uniform, but that when people are not on duty at Court or in war, or preparation for war, they should wear a comfortable dress. . . . The Prince eats nothing at all except young partridges and salt herring, and the result is that the cookery is feeble, although for game eaters there is no hardship. . . . A French cook would hang himself. There is no sweet at dinner except fruit, stewed German fashion with the game. Trout, which the family themselves replace by raw salt herring, and game form the whole dinner. Of wines and beer they drink at dinner a most extraordinary mixture, but as the wine is all the gift of Emperors and merchant princes it is good. The cellar card was handed to the Prince with the fish, and, after consultation with me, and with Hatzfeldt, we started on sweet champagne, not suggested by me, followed by Bordeaux, followed by still Mosel, followed by Johannesberg (which I did suggest), followed by black beer, followed by corn brandy. When I reached the Johannesberg I stopped and went on with that only, so that I got a second bottle drawn for dessert. When the Chancellor got to his row of great pipes, standing against the wall ready stuffed for him, we went back to black beer. The railway station is in the garden, and the expresses shake the house.”
¹

The radical Dilke was clearly unimpressed with the style of living of his High Tory host; but they appear nevertheless to have got on well enough together. Bismarck thought that Dilke's knowledge of European politics was remarkable, and appeared to be attracted rather than repelled by the fact that his guest had become almost without influence. Dilke thought that the Chancellor was “dear in his polite ways,” and was interested to discover how bad were his relations with the Emperor, and how he had turned against absolutism because he believed that it led to women having too great an influence on politics.

At home Dilke continued to suffer a great deal of ostracism
and occasional insults. His name had become something of a music-hall joke, and a ribald ditty which ran as follows achieved a wide currency:

Master Dilke upset the milk,
Taking it home to Chelsea,
The papers say that Charlie's gay,
Rather a wilful wag.
This noble representative,
Of everything good in Chelsea
Has let the cat, the naughty cat,
Right out of the Gladstone bag.
^[1]

On a similar level, obscene messages were frequently written across his doorstep in Sloane Street. Sometimes incidents of a more serious nature occurred. On one occasion he was refused communion at his parish church (at Pyrford, not in London), and on another Canon Barnett of Whitechapel (who had appeared as a witness in the case) rose to a fine height of self-righteousness by ostentatiously cancelling a lecture on the châteaux of the Loire, accompanied by illustrated lantern slides, which Lady Dilke had been asked to give at Toynbee Hall.
The Times
offered competition to the Canon by trying to pretend that Dilke did not exist. It refused
to print a word of any of his speeches, to review his books, or to mention him in any form. This agitated Dilke a good deal, as he regarded it “as a great check on usefulness of any form.” He wrote to Chamberlain to ask him if he could do anything to get the ban removed. The latter replied in very friendly terms saying that he would prefer to wait until he had seen Buckle (the editor) in person. Two weeks later, however, on December 3rd, 1890, he wrote in less encouraging terms: “I have seen Buckle to-day and am not very hopeful—though I think I have shaken him. But Walter is behind and he is an obstinate old gentleman.”
²
It was clear that Dilke could hope for no help from
The Times
.

The key question was when he might attempt a return to politics. In 1887 his part in public life was reduced to the chairmanship of the Chelsea Board of Guardians and membership of the vestry.
^[2]
But the possibility of a re-entry to a much wider field did not seem too distant. In November, 1887, he received a warm letter from Mr. J. Cooksey, the editor of a local paper in the Forest of Dean, where there was a by-election pending, pressing him to pay a visit to the radicals there, and clearly holding out the possibility of the candidature. Three months later he received similar tentative offers from Merthyr Tydfil and the northern division of West Ham. All three of the constituencies were safe radical seats.

Dilke might have been expected to leap at these chances. But he did not do so. This was partly because he knew that, as soon as he made a move, Stead and others would mount a great new campaign against him, the result of which would probably be the withdrawal of the tentative offers and great damage to his prospects of future success. Partly, also, it was because his sights were still fixed above the mere securing of another seat in Parliament. He wished to come back into the inner councils of his party, and this made it desirable that he should move only with the approval of Gladstone and the
other leaders. This was not easy to obtain. Relations between Gladstone and Dilke were almost non-existent during this period, although there was an occasional indirect contact through James.
^[3]
This contact was sufficient to make it clear that, for the time being, Gladstone regarded silence as Dilke's best policy.

In August, 1888, Chamberlain came to visit Dilke at Dockett and urged him to stand both for Parliament and for the newly established London County Council. The first elections to the County Council were to take place in November of that year. Dilke was strongly pressed to allow his name to go forward for Fulham, even though he would have left for India before the contest began. “Stead can't fight your shadow,” a supporter encouragingly wrote. But Dilke declined; and perhaps he was right, for apart from what Stead might or might not have done, even the rumour of his candidature caused the publication of a petition of protest backed by influential signatures.

In the Forest of Dean a new Liberal member had been elected; but Dilke continued to receive pressing invitations, at least to pay a visit and make some speeches. He replied saying that he would address no meetings outside Chelsea during 1888. Nevertheless in March, 1889, he was elected (with some opposition and in his absence) to the presidency of the body known in the Forest as the Liberal Four Hundred. Then, in May, he and Lady Dilke at last paid their long-awaited visit to the area, and were received with enthusiasm. This enthusiasm was not diminished by the fact that the sitting member, Samuelson, even though it was only two years since he had been first elected, was already unpopular.

The Forest of Dean, which politically had been carved out of the old West Gloucestershire division in 1885, was primarily a mining constituency. There was an electoral roll of just over 10,000, and there were more than 5,000 miners in the area—although some of these would have been excluded from the franchise. But it was not a typical mining seat. It was cut off from any other mining district, the collieries were small and
scattered, and it possessed unusual scenic beauty. It was a wooded plateau, bounded by the Wye on the west and the Severn on the east. The principal towns were Cinderford, Coleford, Lydney and Newnham. It offered the prospect of being an ideal seat for Dilke. The miners were strong enough to insist on a member who would support their principal demands. Legislation to restrict the working day in the mines to eight hours was becoming the most important of these, and unwillingness to support this proposal was the main cause of Samuelson's unpopularity.

At the same time the Gloucestershire rural tradition which persisted in the area made a candidature from the Miners' Federation seem less attractive than in South Wales or Northumberland. The Forest of Dean throughout its whole independent existence as a parliamentary division (which lasted until 1950) never had a member who had himself worked in the mines, and was in this respect unique amongst coal constituencies. What the Foresters wanted was a radical of some outside distinction; and if he could be rich as well this would be an added advantage, for their Liberal Association was con-stantly short of funds. They did not much care about the divorce scandal, not because they themselves were loose-living, but because the sense of independence and apartness which has always been a characteristic of mining communities gave them a certain indifference to the opinion of the outside world.

Dilke found the atmosphere there sufficiently encouraging for him to return to London with a more urgent desire to secure Gladstone's approval of his candidature. In June he wrote to James asking him to approach Gladstone and see if his views had changed. Gladstone responded by calling on Dilke at Sloane Street, but he did not find him at home. In consequence, and after a delay of several weeks, he wrote to Dilke and set out his views at length. His letter is given in full, not only because of its significance in Dilke's attempted rehabilitation, but because of the light it throws on the working of Gladstone's mind:

Hawarden Castle,
Chester
August 10th, '89

My dear Dilke,

I was very sorry to find that my call in Sloane Street on July I was premature, I suppose by a few hours. Not indeed that I could have added much, or perhaps anything, to what you have stated in your letter to Sir Henry James. But I should have been glad of an opportunity which would at least have sufficed to show friendly intention.

There is nothing, according to my belief, in which human beings either individually or collectively seem, and are, so small as in their judgments upon one another. The profound wisdom of the laconic precept “Judge not” comes home more and more every day: as does the prudence and necessity of arresting the mind on its course towards conclusions, and adopting the rational as well as Christian alternative of suspending judgment unless when we know facts and persons sufficiently well to go forward.

But you will perceive that the judgments of the world are in certain cases irresistible as well as inexorable, and must be treated as if they were infallible. It was in this view that I felt what, judging from your letter, you have felt still more strongly, namely that according to the dictates of prudence your abstention, whether a longer or a shorter one, should be absolute; and that (I should think) each year when the abstention is visibly absolute is worth several of any course of proceeding in which an acutely hostile criticism professes to detect any sign of resistance or impatience.