Dilke (60 page)

⁸
Although it should be noted in fairness that she was far from laching in literary talent. (See p. 332
infra
.)

⁹
The Queen's Proctor is a legal official who acts in the capacity of solicitor on the Crown's behalf in the Probate and Divorce division of the High Court. He can intervene between the granting of a decree
nisi
and its being made absolute, and if he can show that the court was deceived or that relevant facts were kept from its notice, the interim decree can be upset.

¹⁰
Three months later, for instance, Dilke wrote to Chamberlain: “Mr. G.'s friendliness comes to me a little late. After sitting in front of me in the House for several weeks he suddenly discovered my presence (now some time ago) and turned round and shook hands suddenly and warmly—which was very awkward and might have got into the papers, but luckily didn't. The people whose kindness and friendship—and in your case something more—I shall remember will be those who did not wait” (D.P. 49610.)

¹¹
Special juries, abolished by the Criminal Justice Act of 1948, were chosen from persons with a relatively high property qualification.

¹²
Born 1826; Conservative M.P. for Dungarven, 1868–74, and for Birmingham, East, 1886–95; Home Secretary, 1886–92; created Viscount Llandaff, 1895; died, unmarried, in 1913.

¹³
The land purchase scheme which Gladstone at this time, largely on the advice of Spencer, was endeavouring to run in double harness with Home Rule. Dilke was as strongly opposed to this as was Chamberlain.

¹⁴
This letter, it should perhaps be noted, was written six weeks before the publication of Lord Randolph Churchill's election address which contained, amongst other pieces of invective, the memorable phrase: “An old man in a hurry.”

¹
He was the President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty division of the High Court. Later, as Lord Hannen, he became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. He was the father of Nicholas Hannen, the actor, and was known as the most handsome judge on the bench. Born in 1821, he died in 1894.

²
Perhaps the expectation of this was an additional, unspoken reason which weighed with James and Russell in February.

³
It was a remarkable slip on the part of the President to assume that Dilke had counsel to protect him, and one which caused great resentment.

⁴
Again, the Act of 1869 seems to have been forgotten.

⁵
When the cross-examination was resumed on the following day, Matthews repaid Dilke by a delicate piece of innuendo for this explanation. The following interchange then took place: Q.: Sir Charles, you said yesterday that on the 6th of May, 1882, you had lunch with the Earles, and you met your present wife? A.: Yes. Q.: Was she then married, and was her late husband then living? A.: Yes. Q.: When did he die? A.: I think in July, two years ago. Q.: July, 1884? A.: I think so.”

⁶
This was an astonishing answer, for as Dilke in fact knew Mrs. Crawford was a trained painter and had a highly intelligent artistic and literary appreciation.

¹
Thus he devoted much time to suggesting that, on May 6th, 1882, Mrs. Crawford would have found it difficult to remain at Warren Street until nearly 12.30, to go to Sydney Place to collect her luggage, and to catch the 2.15 train from Paddington to Oxford. Nearly twenty questions elicited from Mrs. Crawford the admission that she might have sacrificed her luncheon.

²
Mrs. Crawford's method of dealing with difficult questions could hardly have been more different from Dilke's. She was less addicted to explanation.

³
The President was perhaps inclined to give greater weight to Matthews's sense of delicacy, as opposed to his diligence as an advocate, than would most other followers of the trial.

¹
Francis Jeune, later Lord St. Helier.

²
Dilke himself, despite his dismay when it was originally decided upon, felt no resentment against the special jury. “. . . the Jury decided as they could not have helped deciding, and as I should have decided had I been one of them,” he wrote in his diary. (D.P. 46910.)

³
The comments of the
Pall Mall Gazette
on the trial, curiously enough, were a good deal more favourable to Dilke than were those of most other newspapers. It pointed out that there were many inconsistencies in Mrs. Crawford's story. The issue was still in doubt. It could be resolved only by Dilke suing Mrs. Crawford for slander or by the Crown prosecuting him for perjury. Stead was still unwilling to drop the bone which he had got so firmly between his teeth.

⁴
In such a trial the onus would of course have been reversed. Furthermore, a higher standard would have been required—proof beyond reasonable doubt, and not just a balance of probabilities. Corroboration of Mrs. Crawford's story would have been required and—an added advantage—Dilke would under the law as it then stood have been ineligible to give evidence in his own defence. Despite James's view, it is perhaps a pity that the prosecution did not occur.

⁵
Not even the popular press suggested that Dilke should be deprived of his baronetcy. Perhaps they regarded it as an appropriate title for him to continue to bear.

⁶
Mrs. Green, it will be recalled, was the name under which Mrs. Crawford admitted having received letters from Forster at the Kensington Post Office.

⁷
In 1885 Martin apparently wrote to Sir George Lewis saying that Forster had told him of affairs with four women—Mrs. Crawford, Mrs. Harrison, and two others.

⁸
De Jersey, it was discovered, came (a little confusingly) from Guernsey, was “something on the Stock Exchange” in addition to running a society for the recovery of lost property, and died in a brothel in 1891.

⁹
“Nia” was the diminutive of Virginia by which Mrs. Crawford was known to her intimates.

¹⁰
This was a younger sister, Ida, who had been born in 1864 and who lived until 1943.

¹¹
The original of this document found its way into the Dilke papers by a curious route. In 1931 Edward Marjoribanks sent it to Miss Tuckwell with the following letter: “I have been meaning to send you this document for a very long time; it is a proof taken by Humbert & Co. in the case of Crawford and Crawford from Fanny Stock before the trial. Marshall Hall stole this statement or failed to return it to the solicitors because I suppose of its unique interest; all the Marshall Hall papers were, I understood, to be destroyed, but I specially asked for this so as to send it to you if you wanted it.” (D.P. 49612.)

¹²
This was at a time when there was some Irish terrorist activity; and when the Home Secretary, Harcourt, took his duties as a protector of public safety almost excessively seriously.

¹³
Many of the Dilke papers (not only his engagement diaries) are appallingly lacerated. It is not always clear whether this was done by Sir Charles himself, or whether it was the result of the censorship which Miss Tuckwell exercised before entrusting the papers to the British Museum in 1939.

¹⁴
Hannah Rosebery, who died in 1890, was a rich Jewess, the only daughter of Baron Meyer de Rothschild. She was a first cousin of the Miss (Alice) Rothschild referred to later in the letter. See also p. 113,
supra
.

¹⁵
See pp. 355-8
infra
.

¹⁶
Dilke's act of faith was the greater in so far as he apparently believed that Mrs. Crawford herself posted the last anonymous letter to her husband—the one which provoked her “confession”—immediately after leaving Chamberlain's house (D.P. 43933,85)). This story was still circulating as late as 1952, when Miss Gertrude Tuckwell related it, sceptically, to Mr. Harry Pitt, Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. It is supported by the fact that, under the system of code numbers then used by the post office it would have been possible to tell from the envelope (which was available at the time of the trials) whether it had been posted, as was suggested, in the Princes Gardens pillar-box. But the story is made implausible by the dates not being right. Mrs. Crawford's visit to Princes Gardens was on the Wednesday afternoon, while the letter did not reach Bryanston Square until the Friday evening; and posts were somewhat quicker then than they are to-day.

¹⁷
It would also be well to have in mind at this point the thesis which was powerfully argued by Henry Harrison (1867–1954) in his previously cited
Parnell, Joseph Chamberlain and Mr. Garvin
. Harrison believed that in 1889, after the exposure as forgeries of
The Times
letters implicating Parnell in the Phoenix Park murders, Chamberlain found it essential to destroy the Irish leader, and played a decisive part in instigating O'Shea to start the divorce proceedings which achieved precisely this result. If Harrison's views are accepted (and he adduces much evidence in their support) there develops a temptation to treat Chamberlain with the suspicion which normally falls upon someone who has I cen present at the scene of an unsolved murder and is later found committing an almost exactly similar crime. Even if the lowest view is taken of Chamberlain's character, however, it is more probable that his knowledge of the Dilke case (and of Parnell's long-standing relations with Mrs. O'Shea) suggested to him a possible line of attack than that he was attempting to repeat his success in destroying a rival by acting against an enemy.

¹⁸
Bodley, of course, contradicts himself when he suggests both that it was in Chamberlain's interest to smash Dilke, and that Dilke suffered because Lady Salisbury and many others welcomed his downfall as a weakening of Chamberlain.

¹
Over a period of many years Gladstone tried to devote one evening a week to walks through the West End, interviewing prostitutes and trying to reclaim them. It was a work obviously open to misunderstanding. (See Magnus
op. cit
. 106-110.)

²
His denial of “adultery” with Mrs. Crawford, which was all that was directly put to him, was formally correct.

¹
According to Mr. Guy Deghy's recent book on the history of Romano's restaurant (
Paradise in the Strand
), habitués of that establishment amused themselves by giving renderings of this verse in several languages. The French and the Latin versions he gives as follows:

Mâitre Dilke a renversé le lait
En l'apportant à Chelsea,
Les journaux disent que Charlie est gai,
Tant soit peu arceur
Ce noble representant
De tout ce qui est bon à Chelsea
A fait sortir le chat,
Le méchant chat,
Du Gladstone sac.
Effundit Carolus domum reportans
Lac Dilkus media procax suburra
Hunc salsum putat, urbs virum, et facetum,
Eheu! nobilis hic patron us omnis
quodcunque est mediae boni suburrae,
Felem perdidit, improbam, ecce felem,
Grandaevis foculis diu retentam.

²
Prior to the establishment of the London County Council in 1889 the Chelsea vestry was the only local government authority for that part of the metropolis. Its powers were restricted in 1889 and it was swept away ten years later when the metropolitan boroughs were established.

³
James had become a Liberal Unionist by this time. The fact underlined the indirectness of Dilke's relations with his leader.

⁴
An old inn in the centre of the Forest, which was a traditional meeting-place, and which Dilke was later to make his headquarters on many constituency visits.

⁵
A local mining problem.

¹
Chamberlain had written to Dilke on March 31st, 1892: “My prediction is that unless the Gladstonians give up the idea of a separate Parliament (I do not say extended local government) they will not attain power—though they may attain office—for this generation. There is a bold prophecy for you—but it is my sincere opinion.” (D.P. 43889, 87.)

²
Labouchere had the corner seat, but unlike Dilke he never appeared at prayers in order to claim it in the accepted way. Sydney Gedge, Conservative member for Walsall, discovered how this was arranged. Dilke interrupted his devotions not only to slip a card into the back of his own seat, which was allowed, but also to slip another, on Labouchere's behalf, into the back of the next, which was not. Gedge drew the attention of the House to this, but secured no support for his objection. (Algar Thorold,
The Life of Henry Labouchere
, p. 477.)

³
Hyndman's letters were not always full of obvious revolutionary content. In August, 1896, he wrote protesting against the appointment of Sir Edward Monson as British Ambassador in Paris on the grounds of his poverty, his failure to pay his bills, and the bad company which he had kept in Vienna.

⁴
Deakin (1856–1919) had a political position closely in tune with Dilke's own. He was an advanced but undogmatic Liberal. He rejected free trade (Dilke as an Englishman did not follow him in this, but had much sympathy for the Australian protectionist viewpoint); he wanted effective imperial defence; and he returned to office as Commonwealth Prime Minister in 1905 by forming an alliance with the Australian Labour party.

⁵
1868–1947. Secretary of State for War from 191a until Asquith replaced him at the time of the Curragh mutiny in the spring of 1914. Later Lord Mottistone.

⁶
Between Campbell-Bannerman and Dilke there existed a strong mutual antipathy. A fair indication of one aspect of it is given by a letter which Campbell-Bannerman wrote to Herbert Gladstone on January 5th, 1900, after Dilke had tabled an amendment to the Address. “I do not think Citizen Dilke's amendment covers the ground,” the letter ran. “It is admirably fitted as a peg on which to hang up for public admiration the intimate knowledge of the facts possessed by the originator—but that is not our sole object.” (Spender,
Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
, Vol. I, p. 369.)