The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume II Part 53

In November, 1909, Sir Charles spent some days in the Record Office, coming back each time in much need of a bath, after rummaging amongst papers which had not been disturbed for a century. He found amongst other papers a letter from a Grand Duke of Modena to Castlereagh, written just after Napoleon's fall, saying how exultant were his subjects at his return to them, and asking Castlereagh to lend him 14. With the letter was the draft of Castlereagh's answer, congratulating the Duke's subjects and himself, but adding that there would be difficulty in applying to Parliament for the loan.

Sir Charles remarked on my _Athenaeum_ review of Francis Newman's Life. He said that when he himself was in bad odour for his early Civil List speeches, so that he had been exposed to serious disturbances, and a break-up of his intended meeting at Bristol was threatened, Newman, from sheer dislike to mob tyranny, came forward to take the chair; and through a tempest of shouts and rushes, and amid the stifling smell of burnt Cayenne pepper, sat in lean dignity, looking curiously out of place, but serene in vindication of a principle. [Footnote: See Vol. I, Chapter IX.]

The publication of the Life of Goldwin Smith led us to talk of University reform. I said how by means of it my own college had become _ex humili potens_, had arisen from depths to heights, from obscurity to fame. Of his, he said, the contrary was true: his college had been ruined by Parliamentary interference. Trinity Hall was founded for the study and teaching of jurisprudence, the old Roman canon and civil law, on which all modern law is based. It was the only inst.i.tution of the kind, a magnificent and useful monopoly.

This exclusive character was destroyed by Parliament; scholars.h.i.+ps in mathematics and cla.s.sics were inst.i.tuted; it is now like other colleges, and men who wish to study law at its source no longer frequent it. He talked to me of Cambridge, and related with mimicry anecdotes of "Ben" Latham, Master of Trinity Hall. Dining at Trinity Hall one Sunday in 1883, he said Latham told him that he had lately been sitting on an inter-University committee with Jowett, and that Jowett was so sharp a man of business that "it is like sitting to represent the Great Northern against the London and North-Western.

His one idea is to draw away pa.s.sengers from the rival line." Latham went on to say that the students for India who were made to stay two years at Cambridge or Oxford, under Jowett's scheme, "the first year learn _Sandford and Merton_ in Tamil, translated by a missionary; and the second year _Sandford and Merton_ in Telugu, translated by the same missionary. Thus they acquire a liberal education."

He talked of Waterloo, the battlefield being known to us both. It was, he said, as the Duke always owned, a wonderfully near thing. If Napoleon had had with him the two army corps left in France to overawe insurrectionary districts, who would have joined him in a week; and if at Ligny he had persevered in so smas.h.i.+ng the Prussians as to leave them powerless--if these two "if's" had become realities, Napoleon must have driven Wellington back on Brussels.

Then the Belgians would have joined him, and the Austrians would have forsaken the Allies, Metternich wis.h.i.+ng well to Bonaparte for the sake of his wife and child. The mystery of his escape from Elba, which the English fleet might easily have prevented, remains still to be explained: for the Vienna Congress was riddled with intrigue.

[Footnote: Sir Charles Dilke discussed the whole question of Napoleon's escape from Elba in an article in the _Quarterly Review_, January, 1910, ent.i.tled "Before and After the Descent from Elba."]

He made me laugh at a parson who in moments of provocation used to say "a.s.souan!" His friends at last remembered that at a.s.souan was the biggest dam in the world.

He gave me a recipe for beefsteak pudding: _no beef_, fresh kidney, fresh mushrooms, fresh oysters, great stress laid on the epithet: serve the pudding in its basin.

He came in to breakfast one morning whistling an attractive air. I asked what it was; he said from _Carmen_, and hummed the air through. He went on to say that he had well known the composer, Bizet, who founded his opera on Merimee's romance. It fell flat, and Bizet died believing it a failure; afterwards it became the rage.

This whistling of music was a favourite practice with him. His accurate ear enabled him to reproduce any tune which had at any time impressed him. He would give Chinese airs, would go through parts of a Greek Church service, would sing words and music of the _Dies Irae.

On the Sunday following the death of Florence Nightingale our Chertsey organist played Chopin's Funeral March. Sir Charles said its _motifs_ were Greek rustic popular airs, each of which he hummed, showing how Chopin had worked them in.

The dinner given to him in April, 1910, in connection with the Trade Boards Bill was a great success, and much delighted him. He said Bishop Gore had made a splendid speech. Sir Charles had a long chat with Gore, and was, as always, delighted with his information and bonhomie.

He talked of a Parisian jeweller who lived by selling jewels and by lending money to the great Indian native potentates, and had establishments for that purpose in India. This man wished to be employed by our Government as a spy: Sir Charles applied on his behalf to Lord George Hamilton, who handed to him the man's _dossier_, an appalling catalogue of crimes and misdemeanours. He had an extraordinarily n.o.ble presence; Sir Charles said to him: "_You_ ought to be Amir of Afghanistan." "No," he replied; "I should never have the patience to kill a sufficient number of people."

Of a French gentleman who had come to tea, recommended by the French Amba.s.sador, Sir Charles said that he was a French fool, the worst kind of fool, _corruptio optimi_.

He showed the number of peerages having their origin in illegitimacy, although the official books conceal the fact where possible. The facts come out in such memoirs as Lady Dorothy Nevill's. He went on to talk of divorce in the Roman Church, and to scout their boast that with them marriage is an indissoluble sacrament. The Prince of Monaco was for years the husband of Lady Mary Hamilton. They tired of each other, wished for a divorce; the Pope, with heavy fees for the transaction, declared the marriage to have been for some ecclesiastical reason null and void. Each married again; but the son of the nominally annulled union succeeded his father as legitimate heir.

Sir Charles spoke--this was in 1906--of Bulow's speech in the German Parliament, as one of the best ever made by any statesman, and creating universal astonishment. Its appreciation of France and of Gambetta was magnificent as well as generous. The French, after the _debacle_, behaved as a nation self-respecting and patriotic ought to have behaved. His hint at the bad feeling between the Kaiser and King Edward was dexterous; it was real and insuperable; none of our Royal Family can forgive the seizure of Hanover by Prussia; and added to this was our King's indignation at the Kaiser's treatment of the Empress Frederick, a member of his family for whom he felt strong affection.

Of Morny he said that he was very handsome, but in an inferior style. His beautiful Russian wife never cared for him, but in obedience to Russian custom cut off her wonderful hair to be laid with him in his coffin.

He spoke of the brothers Chorley, one the supreme musical critic of his time, the other a profound Spanish scholar, shut up through life in his library of 7,300 volumes.

Dilke told me one morning that he had been writing since five o'clock an article for the _United Service Gazette_, and had finished it to his satisfaction, adding that papers dashed off under an impulse were always the best. I demurred. "Those papers of mine,"

I said, "specially praised by you have been always the fruit of long labour." "Ah!" he answered, "but you have style--a rare accomplishment; that is what I have admired in yours." "Would you,"

I said, "admire the style if the matter were ill considered?" "Yes."

He often talked admiringly of the Provencal language, declaiming more than once what he called a fine Homeric specimen:

"Pesto, liona, sablas, famino, dardai fou, Avie tout affronta."

(Pestilence, lions, sandy deserts, famine, maddening sun-heat, Ye have all this faced.)

He was fond, too, of quoting Akbar's inscription on the Agra bridge: "Said Jesus, on whom be peace, Life is a bridge: pa.s.s over!"

He described the French Foreign Legion: two regiments employed by the French chiefly among the natives in the Tonquin settlement-- desperate men most of them, many of high social position and of army rank, who had "done something" and had gone wrong; disgraced, hiding from society, criminals escaped from justice, with a sprinkling of young adventurers and riotous Germans. No enormity they would not commit, no danger they would not court; some even seeking death; all knowing that if left wounded in the bush by retreating comrades they would be tortured horribly by the Tonquin women. They had a hospital served by Roman Catholic nurses, to whom they paid every respect.

When a man newly joined once whistled rudely while the Sister was praying, as was her custom before leaving the ward, his comrades severely punished him. Intra-regimental offences, such as theft, were visited with death.

He mentioned one morning that he had just received a Privy Council summons. I asked why the Bidding Prayer held a pet.i.tion for the Lords _and others_ of Her Majesty's Privy Council: old Regius Professor Jacobson used to tell us that it was a mistake, that all Privy Councillors were "Lords" of the Privy Council. He thought that the word "others" represented the Lord Mayor, who attends Accession Councils and signs the parchment, but, not being a Lord of Council, is then required to leave, while other business proceeds.

Twice in these years he dined at Oxford--once at All Souls as the guest of Mr. Spenser Wilkinson, again on the invitation of some undergraduates, sons mostly of his political acquaintances. He greatly enjoyed both; the young men were the pick and flower of Oxford; the All Souls high table was full of young teachers and professors. What a change from the aristocratic college of my time, whose head was Lewis Sneyd, its Fellows William Bathurst, Henry Legge, Sir Charles Vaughan, Augustus Barrington, etc.! Anson very charmingly presided; the talk was everything except political.

He was extraordinarily impressed by the funeral of the King--a wonderful and novel ceremony he called it. As a senior Privy Councillor he had an excellent place with Asquith close to the coffin. The most magnificent figure in the show was Garter King-of-Arms, but all the heralds were splendid. The Archbishop, with the Dean of Westminster and a cross-bearer, was the only prominent ecclesiastic, the Bishops in their places as peers being crowded out of sight. The colouring was most effective, black setting off the scarlet. The singing was somewhat drowned by the Guards' bands, but the Dead March came in grandly through the windows from Palace Yard. He mentioned a curious fact: that Westminster Hall is controlled, not by Parliament, not by any Government department, but by the Great Chamberlain. It is the sole remaining part of the royal palace, which was lent to Parliament by our early Kings. I said that it had not witnessed such a scene since, on Mary's accession, the Sovereign and the two Houses met there to receive Papal absolution from the Legate Pole. He wished I had told him so before.

He recalled the Cambridge Union debates of his time: the best he ever heard was on a personal question, the impeachment of a man named Harris for some breach of rule. Henry Sidgwick was in the chair, the speaking extraordinarily animated and well sustained. The finest orator of his time was a man called Payne. [Footnote: Payne belonged to the same college as Dilke, Trinity Hall, and was bracketed Senior in the Law Tripos of 1868. He had begun to make his mark both at the Bar and in the Press, when, still a very young man, he was killed in a mountaineering accident in Wales.] I said our best speaker in my day was Goschen; his Union reports caused Gladstone to pick him out and bring him forward. He said yes, but that Goschen never fulfilled his promise until his really powerful speech on Free Trade in 1903.

He enumerated the Jewish types in England. There is (1) the sallow Jew with a beak; (2) the same without a beak; (3) the "hammy" Jew, with pink face like a _cochon-a-lait_. The Florentine type, with fair hair and beautiful clear face, is not seen in England.

His criticism of a certain lady led me to ask who, of people he had known, possessed the most perfect manners. He said Lord Clarendon, who had the old carefully cultivated Whig manners, yet with the faintest possible tendency to pomposity. This style became unfas.h.i.+onable, and was succeeded by what he called the "early Christian" or "Apostolic" manners, of which the late Lord Knutsford was a perfect exemplar. The best-mannered woman he had known was the late Lady Waterford. Domestic servants too, he said, have manners; he instanced as magnificent specimens Turner, Lady Waldegrave's groom of the chambers, and Miss Alice Rothschild's Jelf. Lady Lonsdale once spoke of the latter as "Guelph, or whatever member of the Royal Family it is that waits on Alice."

Sir Charles talked about the Wallace Collection. Sir Richard was not the natural son either of the fourth Lord Hertford, or of his father the third Lord, Thackeray's Steyne and Disraeli's Monmouth. He was brought up by the fourth Lord Hertford, under the name of Monsieur Richard, not by any means as the expectant heir; yet, excepting the settled estates, which went to the fifth Marquis, all was left to him. Part of the great art collection remained at Bagatelle, which became the property of a younger Wallace, an officer in the French army; the rest has come to the English nation through Lady Wallace, to whom her husband left the whole. Why Sir Richard a.s.sumed the name Wallace no one knows. He was French, not English, speaking English imperfectly: a kind, cheery, polished gentleman.

Apropos of the Education Bill: old Lady Wilde from her window in t.i.te Street heard a woman bewailing herself in the street--her son had been "took away," to gaol that is. "He was a good boy till the Eddication came along;" then, kneeling down on the pavement and joining her hands, she prayed solemnly "G.o.d d.a.m.n Eddication."

Sir Charles contrasted the idiosyncrasies of some politicians: Grey reserved, Balfour telling everything to everybody; Arnold-Forster closely "b.u.t.toned up," Gorst dangerously frank. On Gorst he enlarged: a nominal Tory, in fact a Radical, ever battering his own side for the mere fun of the operation; old in years, young in activity of brain and body; a poor man all his life.

He said that the two incomparable sights which this country could show to a foreigner were (1) Henley in regatta week; (2) the Park on a fine summer day: everyone out riding, and the Life Guards' band going down to a Drawing-room.

I asked if he had heard a certain London preacher who was drawing large audiences. He said yes, and that he was well worth hearing.

"He is High Church and anti-ritualist, Socialist and aristocrat, orthodox while holding every heresy extant, not cultured or literary, slovenly and almost coa.r.s.e; yet grasping his listeners by the feeling impressed on each that the preacher knows and is describing his (the hearer's) experiences, troubles, hopes, life-history."

I questioned him about Leonard Montefiore, a memoir of whom had caught my eye in one of the bookcases. He was a man of brilliant promise, unpopular at Balliol, giving himself intellectual airs; went unwashed, with greenish complexion and generally repulsive appearance; would have been prominent had he lived; was much petted by Ruskin.

He said that, if London were destroyed to-morrow, in ten years' time its site would be covered with a forest of maple, sycamore, robinia, showing an undergrowth of Persian willow-herb.

He told of a man whom his groom p.r.o.nounced to be "the footiest gent on a 'oss and the 'ossiest gent on foot as he ever see."

He spoke of the "Local Veto Bill," forced by Harcourt on a reluctant Cabinet; Harcourt was, he said, a genuine convert to the principle-- a curious intellectual phenomenon, this development of a belated conviction in a mind hitherto essentially opportunist. It cost him his seat later on.

Sir Charles described Speaker Peel's farewell to the House: said that it was quite perfect in every way. He thought Gully undesirable as his successor, and should not vote for him.

Of the rising I.L.P. he said once, in early days, they had done wrongly in formulating a programme. Their name was a sufficient programme; now they would indirectly help the Tories.

He had an extraordinary insight into the mental habits and emotions of domestic animals, interpreting the feelings and opinions of his horses when out riding, of his Pyrford dog Fafner, of his Sloane Street cat Calino, in a manner at once graphic and convincing. His love for cats amounted to a pa.s.sion; a menagerie of eight or ten tailless white or ginger Persians was kept in an enclosure, at Pyrford. Once, when exploring a fine Ravenna church, we missed him, returning from our round to find him near the door, caressing a cat belonging to the custodian, which he had inveigled into his lap.

His literary dislikes and preferences were numerous and frankly expressed, deeply interesting as the idiosyncrasies of a rich and highly trained intelligence, even when to myself somewhat unaccountable. While keenly appreciating the best in modern French literature, he could see no charm in Corneille or Racine. Quite lately Rabelais, reopened after many years, appealed to him strongly, as keen satire and invective veiled by wit, and, so only, tolerated by those scourged. To be laid hold of and temporarily possessed by a book was as characteristic of him as of old Gladstone; in their turn, _Pantagruel_, Anatole France's _Penguins_, most of all _The Blue Bird_, which he read delightedly, but would not see acted, formed of late the breakfast equipage as certainly as the eggs and toast: any utterance of conventional apology or regret was expressed by, "Voulez-vous que j'embra.s.se le chat?"

His acquaintance with English literature was intermittent. He was apparently a stranger to our eighteenth-century authors, both in poetry and prose; of those who followed them in time, he undervalued Scott, disliked Macaulay, admired Napier, admired Trollope.

Wordsworth he condemned as puerile, inheriting the _Edinburgh Review_ estimate of his poetry, and often called on me ecstatically to repeat Hartley Coleridge's parody of _Lucy_. Of Keats he was immeasurably fond, drawn to him by the poet's relation to his family, declaiming his lines often--as he did sometimes those of Sh.e.l.ley, whose verses in his own copy of the poems are heavily and with wise selection scored--in tones which showed a capacity for deep poetic feeling. A quotation would accidentally arrest him, and he would call for the book, usually after short perusal discarding the author as a "p.o.o.pstick," a favourite phrase with him. I remember this occurring with the _Rejected Addresses_, though he knew and loved James Smith. A travesty of Omar Khayyam, called _The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten_, he read delightedly, much preferring it to the original. He professed contempt for the study of English grammar, more especially for the scientific a.n.a.lysis of English sentence-structure, which plays so large a part in modern education.

The contempt was certainly, as...o...b..rne Gordon said, not bred of familiarity. I fear that, like most University or public school men, he would have been foiled by the simplest Preliminary Grammar Paper of a University Local Examination to-day.

But his knowledge of political history, foreign and domestic, during the last centuries was marvellously extensive and minute. In earlier history he was oblivious often of his own previous knowledge, argumentatively maintaining untenable propositions. Though fortified by Freeman and Bryce, I could never get him to admit that all the historic "Emperors," from Augustus Caesar in 27 B.C. down to Francis, King of Germany, who gave up the Empire in A.D. 1806, were Emperors, not of Germany or Austria, but of Rome; or that the Reformed English Church of Tudor times, with all its servility, had never relinquished, but steadily held and holds, its claim to continuous Catholicity. But a query as to the French Revolution, the Napoleonic dynasties, the Vienna Congress, the South African or Franco-Prussian War, or the developments in India, Canada, Egypt, would draw forth a stream of marshalled lucid information, which it was indeed a privilege to hear.

"Neque ille in luce modo atque in oculis civium magnus, sed intus domique praestantior. Qui sermo! quae praecepta! quanta not.i.tia antiquitatis! quae scientia juris! Omnia memoria tenebat, non domestica solum, sed etiam externa bella. Cujus sermone ita tunc cupide tenebar, quasi jam divinarem, id quod evenit, illo exstincto fore unde discerem neminem" (Cicero, _De Senectute_).