The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume II Part 18

CHAPTER XLIII

THE TURNING-POINT

JULY, 1885, TO JULY, 1886

[Greek: ou thruon, ou malachaen avemos pote, tus de megistas ae druas ae platanous oide chamai katagein.]

[Footnote: It is not the rush or mallow that the wind can lay low, but the largest oaks and plane-trees.]

Lucian in "Anthologia."

I.

When Mr. Gladstone's Ministry left office in the summer of 1885, there seemed to be in all England no man for whom the future held out more a.s.sured and brilliant promise than Sir Charles Dilke. He was still young, not having completed his forty-second year; in the Cabinet only Lord Rosebery was his junior; he had seventeen years of unremitting Parliamentary service to his credit, and in the House of Commons his prestige was extraordinary. His own judgment and that of all skilled observers regarded his party's abandonment of office as temporary: the General Election would inevitably bring them back with a new lease of power, and with an Administration reorganized in such fas.h.i.+on that the Radicals would no longer find themselves overbalanced in the shaping of policy. The Dilke-Chamberlain alliance, which had during the past five years been increasingly influential, would in the next Parliament become openly authoritative; and, as matters looked at the moment, it was Sir Charles, and not Mr. Chamberlain, who seemed likely to take the foremost place.

Chamberlain's dazzling popular success had been of the kind to which a certain unpopularity attaches. Moderate men of both parties were p.r.o.ne to impute it to demagogism, and Dilke was in the fortunate position of seeing those Radical principles for which he stood advocated by his ally with a force of combined invective and argument which has had few parallels in political history, while to him fell the task, suited to his temperament, of reasoned discussion. Those who denounced Chamberlain's vehemence could hardly fail to point a comparison with Dilke's unfailing courtesy, his steady adherence to argument, his avoidance of the appeal to pa.s.sion. Some strong natures have the quality of making enemies, some the gift for making friends, outside their own immediate circle, and Sir Charles Dilke possessed the more genial endowment.

This capacity for engendering good-will in those whom he encountered certainly did not spring from any undue respect of persons. Members of the Royal Family, whose privileges he had a.s.sailed, were constant in their friendliness; high Tories such as Lord Salisbury, whose principles he combated on every platform, liked him, and were not slow to show it.

On the other hand, the friends.h.i.+p which Sir Charles inspired did not proceed, as is sometimes the case, from a mere casual bounty of nature.

In Parliament his colleagues liked him, but this, a.s.suredly, was not without cause. No member of the Ministry had given so much service outside his own department. Lord Granville wrote at this time: 'I have not seen you alone since the smash, or I should have told you how much I feel the support you have given me both when we were together at the F.O. and quite as much since. I shall not soon forget it.' Sir William Harcourt at the Home Office, Sir Henry James in the conduct of the Corrupt Practices Bill, had been beholden to him for no ordinary a.s.sistance. Moreover, as he was good to work with, so he was good to work under. Those who served him at the Local Government Board remember him as in no way prompt to praise; but if a suggestion was made to him, he never failed to identify it with the suggester, recognizing its source in adopting it. If he made a mistake and was set right, he admitted his error--a trait very rare in Ministers, who feel that they have constantly as amateurs to direct the decision of experts, and are therefore chary of such admissions. Sir Charles always gave his men their due, and he took care that they should not be treated as machines.

When colleagues called on him at his office, and found him with one of his staff, he never allowed the subordinate to be ignored in greetings.

The Minister in a hurry would be stopped with, 'I think you know So-and-so.' These are small matters to set down, but by such small things men indicate their nature; and one of the oldest servants in that office summed up the matter in a sentence which is not the less interesting because it brings in another name. 'When Sir Charles Dilke was at the Local Government Board,' he said, 'the feeling towards the President, from the heads of departments down to the messengers in the hall, was the same as it was in the time of Mr. Walter Long, and I can say no more than that.'

n.o.body, perhaps, has a better right to be counted fortunate than a man who can feel that he is strong, that he is liked, and that he is successfully promoting principles of government for his fellow- countrymen in which he sincerely believes. In July, 1885, Sir Charles Dilke had all these grounds for satisfaction, and in no common measure.

Of course there were anxieties, politically speaking; Mr. Gladstone's future course of action was uncertain, and Mr. Gladstone was so great a force that he might at any time derange all calculations--as, in point of fact, he did. Still, time was on the side of the Radicals, and from day to day they held what they called 'cabals' of the group formed by Chamberlain, Shaw-Lefevre, Trevelyan, Morley, and Dilke himself. At these meetings Sir Charles regularly presided.

The work of the Commission on Housing was in its last stages; its chairman was able to announce on July 1st, when laying the foundation- stone of some artisans' dwellings in Hoxton, that the Commission's Bill would be introduced in the Lords by Lord Salisbury, and that he himself would have charge of it in the Commons. For a man who had so laboured during the past five years such duties as these were child's play, and Sir Charles was able for the first time for many months to take his share in social enjoyments. He dined repeatedly at Grillion's; he went to parties at famous houses both of his political allies and political opponents; above all, he found time for restful days upon his beloved river. He went to Henley in that July with his old rowing comrade Steavenson 'to see Bristowe's fine Trinity Hall eight'; he spent Sunday, July 12th, at Dockett in company with Mr. Cyril Flower; and for the next Sunday, the 19th, he was engaged to be at Taplow Court with Mr. W. H.

Grenfell, famous among oarsmen. But of that day more has to be written.

Throughout the month one dark cloud had hung over him: Mrs. Pattison was grievously ill in the Madras hills, and not until the fourth week in July did he know even the nature of her illness. It was typhoid, and it left her weak to face what had to come, like a 'bolt from the blue,'

upon her and her future husband. Her first marriage had brought her discipline rather than happiness; now in the middle years of life her vivid nature was blossoming out again in the promise of union with a man before whom there lay open an ill.u.s.trious career. Illness struck her down, and while she lay convalescent there came to her as black a message as ever tried the heart of any woman.

II.

On the evening of Sat.u.r.day, July 18th, Sir Charles Dilke was entertained at a dinner given by the Reform Club--a very rare distinction--to celebrate the pa.s.sing of the Redistribution Bill into law. From this ceremony, which crowned and recognized his greatest personal achievement, he returned late, and found at his house a letter from an old family friend who asked him to call on the following Sunday morning on grave business. He then learnt that the wife of a Liberal member of Parliament had volunteered a 'confession' to her husband, in which she stated that she had been unfaithful to him with Sir Charles immediately after her marriage.

His note in his private diary on Sunday is: '19th.--Early heard of the charge against me. Put myself in hands of J. B. Balfour, and afterwards of Chamberlain and James.'

Later Sir Charles Dilke went down to Taplow, and spent the day there.

This accusation found him separated from his future wife by many thousand miles; worse than that, she had been dangerously ill; the risk to her of a telegraphed message must be great; yet there was the chance from day to day that newspaper rumour might antic.i.p.ate direct tidings from him to her. He was 'in as great misery as perhaps ever fell upon a man.'

He returned next morning to preside at the last meeting of the Commission on Housing, when, he says, 'the Prince of Wales proposed a vote of thanks to me in an extremely cordial speech.' From that att.i.tude of friendliness the future King Edward never departed.

'I had a dinner-party in the evening, which was one of several in preparation for our Ward meetings in Chelsea, which I had to continue to hold in spite of my private miseries.

'I was engaged on the one night for which none of these dinners had been fixed to dine with Lord and Lady Salisbury, and to attend the Princess of Wales's Ball at Marlborough House, and I wrote to put off my engagements, for which I was much blamed; but I think that I was right.'

For three or four days Sir Henry James, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. J. B.

Balfour, the Lord Advocate of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, moved to secure a court of inquiry which would act without prejudice to the right of legal action. But within the week it was certain that public proceedings would be taken.

The blow had come suddenly; it came with dramatic incidence at the moment when Sir Charles's prestige was most effectively recognized; and from the moment that it fell he knew that the whole tenor of his life was altered. On Thursday, July 23rd, four days afterwards, he wrote in his Diary of the time this judgment:

'Left for the last time the House of Commons, where I have attained some distinction. It is curious that only a week ago Chamberlain and I had agreed, at his wish and suggestion, that I should be the future leader, as being more popular in the House, though less in the country, than he was, and that only three days ago Mr. Gladstone had expressed the same wish. Such a charge, even if disproved, which is not easy against perjured evidence picked up with care, is fatal to supreme usefulness in politics. In the case of a public man a charge is always believed by many, even though disproved, and I should be weighted by it through life. I prefer, therefore, at once to contemplate leaving public life.'

Upon the first sentence of this he added in a marginal note, written after his marriage with Mrs. Mark Pattison, and after he had, in spite of that first decision, returned to the House of Commons: 'Chamberlain overpersuaded Emilia, and, through her, me, but he was wrong.'

Of honourable ambition Sir Charles Dilke had as much as any man. Yet in the innermost record of these days--in those letters which, not yet daring to despatch them, he wrote to his future wife--there is not a hint of his personal loss, not a word of the career that he saw broken.

These things had no place in the rush of feeling which overwhelmed him, and left him for the moment unable to trust his own judgment or a.s.sert his own will.

Through the months of Mrs. Pattison's absence in India one note had been constant in his letters--the reiterated antic.i.p.ation of what he hoped to bring her. Up to the middle of July his letters, apart from the news of his daily life, are filled with joyful forecast, not of his own happiness, but of his and hers together--of his happiness in seeing her happy. When the stroke fell, the note, even though it changed, was the same in essence: 'I feel this may kill you--and it will kill me either if it kills you or if you don't believe me.'

That was written down within an hour after he had the news. Never afterwards did he consider the possibility of her failing him.

The next day he wrote:

'Taplow Court, Taplow, _July 20th._

'The only thing I can do in future is to devote myself entirely to _you_ and helping in your work. To that the remainder of my life must be dedicated. I fancy you will have the courage to believe me whatever is by madness and malevolence brought against me....'

He wrote again:

'The less you turn from me, and the more you are true--and of course you will be all true ... --the more misery and not the less is it to me to bring these horrors on you. This thing is not true, but none the less do I bring these horrors on you.'

So desperate was the tumult in Sir Charles Dilke's mind that Mr.

Chamberlain strove to tranquillize him by a change of scene. Some spot, such as is to be found in Sir Charles's own holiday land of Provence, at first occurred to his friend, though this would have meant the cancelling of all Mr. Chamberlain's public engagements at that most critical moment in politics. But Sir Charles instead went down to Highbury, where he pa.s.sed his days much in the open air, playing lawn tennis and riding with his host's son, Mr Austen Chamberlain.

Here he rapidly came back to something of his normal self. As news had been telegraphed of Mrs. Pattison's gradual recovery, it was decided to inform her of what had happened. Mr. Chamberlain undertook the delicate task of wording the communications. She telegraphed back at once that full a.s.surance of her trust and of her loyalty on which Sir Charles had counted. But it was characteristic of her not to stop there. A telegram from Mrs. Pattison to the _Times_ announcing her engagement to Sir Charles Dilke immediately followed on public intimation of the proceedings for divorce. Lord Granville wrote to Sir Charles: 'I wish you joy most sincerely. The announcement says much for the woman whom you have chosen.'

Yet days were to come when the storm was so fierce about Sir Charles Dilke and 'the woman whom he had chosen' that few cared to face it in support of the accused man and the wife who had claimed her share in his destiny.

When those days came, they found no broken spirit to meet them. Through his affections, and only through his affections, this man could be driven out of his strongholds of will and judgment; when that inner life was a.s.sured, he faced the rest with equanimity. He writes:

'_August 28th._--I continue to be much better in health and spirit.

I was five and a half weeks more or less knocked over; I am strong and well, and really happy in you and for you, and confident and all that you could wish me to be these last few days.'

Mrs. Pattison, before she left Ceylon on her way to England, sent him a telegram, the reply to which was written to meet her at Port Said: 'Nothing ever made me so happy.... Though it has been a frightful blow, I am well now; and the blow was only a blow to me because of you.'

At first sympathy and support were proffered in ample measure. On being formally notified of proceedings in the divorce case, he wrote at once a letter to the Liberal a.s.sociation of Chelsea, in which he declared that the charge against him was untrue and that he looked forward with confidence to the result of a judicial inquiry; but at the same time he offered to withdraw his candidature for the seat at the forthcoming election, if the Council thought him in the circ.u.mstances an undesirable candidate. To this offer the Council replied by reiterating their confidence in him. About the same time, yielding to Chamberlain's advice, he returned to the House of Commons while the Housing Bill was in Committee, and took part in the proceedings as usual.

The Prince of Wales, to whom he communicated news of his engagement before the public announcement, wrote warm congratulations and wishes for dispersal of the overhanging trouble. Mr. Gladstone, who had frequent occasion to write to him on public business, in one of these political letters added congratulations on the engagement, though he had made no allusion to the Divorce Court proceedings. But Mr. Gladstone's chief private secretary, Sir Edward Hamilton, had written at the first publication of them this a.s.surance:

'You may depend upon it that your friends (among whom I hope I may be counted) are feeling for you and will stand by you; and, if I am not mistaken, I believe your const.i.tuents will equally befriend you; indeed, I am convinced that the ma.s.ses are much more fair and just than the upper cla.s.ses. Anything that interfered with your political career would not only be a political calamity, but a national one; and I do not for a moment think that any such interference need be apprehended.'

This letter represented the att.i.tude that was generally observed towards Sir Charles Dilke by political a.s.sociates till after the first trial.

Mr. Chamberlain's support was unwavering, though there were some who antic.i.p.ated that the misfortunes of the one man might disastrously affect the political career of the other.